- President Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, for any crimes committed in the last decade, citing politically-charged lawfare against his son.
- Sen. Joe Manchin supports Biden's decision but suggested that Trump should also be pardoned.
- President-elect Donald Trump also accuses the Justice Department of steered persecution.
President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son for any crimes committed in the last decade has proven to be controversial from all sides. One lawmaker called for the presidential pardon powers to be reformed, while another pushed for continuing to investigate the Biden family.
There’s one senator — West Virginia’s Joe Manchin — who backs the president’s decision but says he would have done one thing differently.
“My recommendation as the counsel would have been, why don’t you go ahead and pardon Donald Trump for all his charges and make it you know, it would have gone down a lot more balanced, if you will,” Manchin told CNN’s Manu Raju.
“I am just saying, wipe them out,” he added. Manchin argued that instead of putting the president-elect through another four-year term, where he is navigating several court cases, “just clean that slate up,” and “move forward.”
It wouldn’t be the first time a president has pardoned another. As the Deseret News reported, Richard Nixon resigned following the Watergate scandal, which exposed his campaign’s wiretapping of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters. His successor, President Gerald Ford, issued a full pardon for any offenses Nixon may or may not have committed — a move that also proved to be controversial.
Although Trump didn’t ask for a pardon, he tied the pardoning of Hunter Biden to those individuals charged with storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump said. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”
Trump said he was open to the idea of pardoning Hunter Biden. “I wouldn’t take it off the books ... despite what they’ve done to me,” he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt last month, as Forbes reported.
“See, unlike Joe Biden, despite what they’ve done to me, where they’ve gone after me so viciously ... and Hunter’s a bad boy,” Trump said at the time. “He’s been a bad boy. ... But I happen to think it’s very bad for our country.”
Trump’s transition team argued that the Democrats weaponized the Department of Justice against him, and the president-elect will change that.
“The failed witch hunts against President Trump have proven that the Democrat-controlled DOJ and other radical prosecutors are guilty of weaponizing the justice system,” Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for President-elect Donald Trump, told ABC News.
“That system of justice must be fixed and due process must be restored for all Americans, which is exactly what President Trump will do as he returns to the White House with an overwhelming mandate from the American people.”
While pardoning his son Hunter, President Biden echoed Trump’s complaints about politically charged lawfare.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” Biden said in a statement announcing the pardon, despite saying that he wouldn’t pardon his son for months.
“Here’s the truth,” he continued. “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
Biden’s sweeping pardon wipes off Hunter’s convictions related to tax and firearm-related charges. Where Trump accuses the left of instigating a “witch hunt” against him, Biden implies the Justice Department came under Republican pressure and “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted” his family, as The New York Times reported.