Dec.04

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

Pardon Me, Again

The Hunter Biden pardon dominated a second news cycle, sucking up the vast majority of the oxygen. Here's a rundown of some of the more significant storylines:

• Unreliable Source: David Weiss is the special counsel who investigated and charged Hunter Biden, and yesterday he was all over the place insisting that the whole process was handled fairly and that the First Son was not singled out because of who his father is.
  
  Weiss is not exactly an unbiased source here; we've already pointed out that his handling of the gun offense and the tax cheating were both... extraordinary, if not unique. But how about we add another data point? There have been 69 people who have been appointed special counsel/independent prosecutor/whatever name was being used at the time. Do you know how many of them were tasked with investigating a private citizen, one who did not hold an appointed or elected position of any sort? One. Only David Weiss' investigation of Hunter Biden meets those criteria. That certainly suggests to us that the First Son was not treated the way an ordinary American would have been.
  
  
• Legacy: A whole lot of people yesterday had the "insightful" take that the pardon was a bad idea because it complicates/stains the President's "legacy" (see here, here and here for three examples, among many).
  
  There was no argument or talking point being made yesterday that was stupider than this one. First, presidential legacies are complicated things, and nobody can really know what will happen for a generation or more. Second, and consistent with that, Biden's legacy will not come into focus until after he's shuffled off this mortal coil. Third, any person who would let their last remaining son rot in prison for a few years in service of some amorphous concept like "legacy" is an a**hole. Joe Biden has his weaknesses, but he is clearly not an a**hole.
  
  
• Democrats Gone Wild: A great many Democrats, particularly in the Senate, took Biden to task yesterday for issuing the pardon. Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) were particularly outspoken.
  
  Forgive us for our ongoing bluntness today, but these people need to shut their pieholes. From a human standpoint, if they would do the exact same thing in Biden's place, then they are hypocrites for presuming to criticize him. And if they would not do the same thing, and would let their own kid go to prison under highly questionable circumstances, then they are jerks. From a political standpoint, a bunch of Democrats taking "principled" stands is not going to change anyone's mind on whether or not the Democratic Party is corrupt. All it's going to do is give further oxygen to right-wing talking points.
  
  
• Ch-Ch-Changes: Another common refrain yesterday was "Biden said he wasn't going to pardon his son, and then he did. Argh!"
  
  In some cases, the critic believes that Biden was lying when he made his previous promises not to issue a pardon. We tend to doubt this. Joe Biden is a veteran politician, and knows how to thread the needle so he can give the answer people want to hear without actually committing himself. Remember, for example, how carefully he handled the questions back in 2020 about whether or not he would run for a second term. If he really knew he was going to issue a pardon (or was likely to issue a pardon) all along, he would have hedged his bets more.
  
  Other critics don't think he was lying, but they do believe he changed his mind, and they don't like that kind of... indecisiveness, we guess? Truth be told, at least as far back as the John Kerry election, we've never really understood this notion that a "leader" has to pick a position and stick with it, no matter what. In what other line of work is it not preferable to adapt one's thinking when one is presented with new information? Sure, if you change positions so often that people think you are a weathervane—like, say, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)—then it's just vulgar opportunism. But beyond that, isn't it preferable to have a leader who's open to re-examining their thinking? Suppose the CEO of General Motors said: Our company was founded making gasoline-powered cars and that's who we are and we're never going to go for this new-fangled electric car-thingie. Nope. We have our principles. How would the board of directors react?
  
  Our guess is that is what happened here. In particular, do you think it's a coincidence that the pardon came the same weekend as the Kash Patel story? Donald Trump made it very clear that he was serious, and he was going to staff the Justice establishment with score-settlers, who care little for such niceties as the Constitution. It is entirely plausible to us that Biden could tolerate the idea of leaving his son's fate in the hands of Pam Bondi, but that once Patel entered the equation, it was a bridge too far.
  
  
• Paging Gerald Ford: Customarily, presidential pardons are pretty specific in their terms. A person is being pardoned for [specific crime X] or their punishment is being altered to [reduced punishment Y]. The Hunter Biden pardon, by contrast, is both broad and unspecific, clearing the First Son of any wrongdoing for any federal offense he might have committed over a roughly 10-year period, from 2014 to 2024. Betsy Woodruff Swan, writing for Politico, points out that there's really only one other pardon like this—the one that Gerald Ford issued to Richard Nixon.
  
  For those who are convinced that the President has committed some great offense against the American way of life, the breadth of the pardon deepens the extent of his "crime." For us, however, the clear message here is that Biden really was concerned about the Trump administration targeting his son, very possibly on Trumped-up charges if the existing charges (the gun offense, the tax cheating) had been wiped off the ledger.
  
  
• A Fair Point: When Biden issued the pardon, he made a big point of noting that while he was stepping in to save his son, he otherwise has great confidence in the American justice system. Alexandra Gibbs, also writing for Politico, observes that the President's words and his actions are incongruous. Even if he (or anyone else) says "Well, it's just that you can't trust the Justice Department under Donald Trump," that's nonetheless an assertion that something at the DoJ is broken. That, in turn, gives momentum to folks who think the whole system needs an overhaul. Some of those folks think this means there is a two-tiered system of justice, and that the nation needs to work towards more equitable outcomes. Others of those folks, by contrast, think that the DoJ is a deeply corrupted instrument of the Deep State, and that it needs to be blown up and its focus redirected toward the "real" enemies of the nation. It is the latter faction that is about to be ascendant in the federal government, incidentally.
  
  
• Another Fair Point: Speaking of a two-tiered justice system, there is little question that Hunter Biden got different treatment than "Hunter Jones" would have gotten. There is also little question that there are plenty of people in federal prisons who were treated even more unfairly than the First Son was. Slate's Mark Joseph Stern advises the President that he should spend some fair chunk of the balance of his term wielding the pardon baton, so as to correct for injustices not involving people named "Biden." To take one example, there are about 40 people on federal death row. The President says he opposes capital punishment, both as a Catholic and as a politician. He could commute all of those sentences to life imprisonment, meaning those folks would still not be a danger to society, but they also would not be in danger of being executed. The next president will work hard to get all 40 killed ASAP, having done a similar thing during his last term.
  
  In case you are wondering, Biden is not the least generous user of the pardon power, but he's not far off. Here's how often the 10 presidents prior to him wielded this particular tool:
  
  

  President	Pardons	Commutations	Other	Total
  Donald Trump	143	94	0	237
  Barack Obama	212	1,715	0	1,927
  George W. Bush	189	11	0	200
  Bill Clinton	396	61	2	459
  George H.W. Bush	74	3	0	77
  Ronald Reagan	393	13	0	406
  Jimmy Carter	534	29	3	566
  Gerald Ford	382	22	5	409
  Richard Nixon	863	60	3	926
  Lyndon B. Johnson	960	226	1	1,187

  
  
  "Other" refers to remissions (waivers of financial penalties) and respites (temporary reprieves usually granted for medical reasons).
  
  Thus far, Biden has issued 25 pardons and 77 commutations, for a total of 102. So, he's only outpacing the elder Bush. Well, unless you count the blanket pardon Biden granted to those convicted of marijuana possession. That adds 6,500 more pardons to his total.

And that's the rundown for today. We're in touch, so you'll be in touch. (Z)