By pardoning Hunter, Biden validates Trump voters’ resentment

In the 1988 movie “Big,” starring Tom Hanks, a 13-year-old boy makes a wish that turns him into a man. Hiding out in New York City until he can change back to a boy, the now-30-year-old gets a job at a toy company, working in product development.

The 30-year-old boy’s big idea is electronic comic book with a computer chip that allows the reader to control the character’s choices at every step. Long before the invention of the modern-day smartphone, tablet or e-reader, this concept was pretty revolutionary: A single story that, when allowing for multiple variables, can have many different potential outcomes.

The story in which President Joe Biden uses the powers of his office to pardon his son to keep him out of prison is quite different. Multiple variables with different scenarios lead to the same outcome in the eyes of even the more reluctant of Trump voters: validation, served on a figurative silver platter.

Hunter Biden was convicted of three felony gun charges in June before pleading guilty in September to three more felonies and six misdemeanors for tax crimes. No one should be surprised that the President used his constitutional powers to pardon his son. No one should get too angry about it, either.

I’m not saying we don’t have a reason. After all, we were fed the line “No one is above the law” ad nauseam for several years, only to abruptly learn last Sunday that some people indeed are above the law.

Not anyone who you know and love, of course, if you’re among the one in seven adults in the U.S. with an immediate family member who has spent a minimum of one year in prison. Almost none of your incarcerated loved ones will ever have a realistic hope or expectation of having their sentence commuted or their convictions pardoned.

Still, no one gains anything from hating Hunter Dearest over his undeserved luck. I hope he can remain clean and sober under the pressure of the added scrutiny he now faces, and that in the future he stays out of jail the old-fashioned way.

Nevertheless, the story unfolds. One important variable is the matter of when (and how) the president came to his decision.

Multiple former White House officials told reporters they had known for months that the elder Biden would likely use his presidential powers to pardon the younger.

If that were the case, forget the fact that Biden’s explicit insistence that he would not pardon his son was an outright lie. It would also mean that the scales of justice had long been intended to tip in Hunter’s favor. The grievances of Trump voters professing that “the system is rigged” would be more than validated.

On the other hand, Team Biden insists that he had only decided to issue the pardon over the Thanksgiving holiday. Calling it “war politics,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed during a press gaggle last Monday that the younger Biden had endured “an unfair process” in which he was “singled out.”

The previous day, the President had put out a statement saying that “raw politics has infected this process,” and that by “trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me.”

Let me get this straight: Joe Biden is acknowledging that the law can be wielded as a weapon of political war and that criminal charges can be used in an attempt to ruin a president, even when a jury returns a guilty verdict?

Fine. But that means, then, that it’s just as plausible that the same force can be wielded against Trump as a means of trying to “break” him. Trump was indicted in 2023 on many dozens of state and federal criminal charges and has since been convicted of 34 of them.

That Trump won re-election by popular vote suggests that many already believe or suspect that those charges were not exactly rendered for legitimate purposes. Biden’s suggestion of the same against his son last Sunday validates those voters’ suspicions.

Another potential variable in the Pardongate saga deals with whether anyone else might get the royal pardon treatment, who that might be, and why.

Last Thursday, multiple reports emerged that Biden has discussed with senior White House officials the possibility of a blanket “preemptive” pardon for a number of perceived enemies of Donald Trump.

Names floated as recipients of the Joe Biden Get Out of Jail Free Card include Liz Cheney, another political legacy and Republican congresswoman ousted in the 2022 GOP primary over her opposition to Trump; and Adam Schiff, a congressman turned senator-elect from California also at the forefront of congressional anti-Trump resistance.

Also mentioned for a potential preemptive pardon was former public health official Dr. Anthony Fauci, leader of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci pushed controversial measures including social distancing and mask mandates only to admit later to a congressional committee that the social distancing guidelines were “an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data” and that he couldn’t recall any particular studies on the efficacy of masking in children.

A preemptive pardon itself is not unprecedented. President Gerald Ford issued a preemptive pardon to former president Richard Nixon before he could be impeached for any crimes related to his involvement in the Watergate scandal. The blanket pardon covered the time frame beginning Jan. 20, 1969 and ending with Nixon’s resignation in August 1974.

It’s widely agreed that had Nixon not resigned, he would have likely been not only impeached, but convicted and removed from office as well. Ford issued the pardon, he said, as a means of closing the book on the Watergate scandal and helping the nation move on.

Mass pardons, however, are highly unprecedented, especially absent the threat of charges to the would-be pardoned.

Though they are deeply disliked by most who don’t hate Trump, characters like Cheney, Schiff and Fauci have never, to our knowledge, been the subject of criminal investigation. There’s been no serious talk of their possibility. Even the typical blustering by Trump that Biden’s team appears to use to justify talk of mass pardons doesn’t yield any specific examples of criminal offense or relevant charges.

By merely considering mass pardons under such unclear circumstances, Biden again implies that the concept of a president using their political power to destroy their enemies isn’t so far-fetched, again validating the frustrations of Trump voters who spent months hearing claims that if elected, Trump would pardon himself.

Biden is the one still in charge. Trump is the one still fighting piles of criminal charges likely brought through “war politics.” Hunter is the one who’s gotten off scot-free.

By pardoning Hunter and possibly mulling more pardons, Biden lowers the bar for their legitimacy immensely. Ironically, if Trump were to take the drastic step of pardoning himself from those charges not already dismissed, such a move would be a lot less galling in light of Biden’s own self-dealing.

And yes, it is self-dealing. Biden, the loving father, undoubtedly wants to spare his son the pain of incarceration. But at best, he also wants to spare himself the impossible-to-overstate heartbreak of seeing his son go to jail.

At worst? The time frame of Hunter’s blanket pardon — beginning in 2014, years before his earliest charged crime — prompts a lot of questions about Hunter’s activities with Ukrainian energy company Burisma starting that same year. Whistleblower testimony from 2023 suggests those questions potentially extend to the elder Biden’s own involvement in his son’s dealings. The suspicious voter is once again validated.

Trump issued a number of pardons during his first term. Some were given to people of color serving arguably excessive drug-related convictions, pardons which might have earned any other president praise. Others were issued posthumously to historical figures such as heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson, who was convicted in 1913 for transporting his white girlfriend across state lines.

Most who received Trump-issued pardons had served time and completed their sentences — including Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

The elder Kushner, who was recently chosen as Trump’s pick for ambassador to France, was released from prison over 18 years ago. Loyalty to Trump notwithstanding, he got none of the deference given to the younger Biden.

With over a month left in the Biden presidency, the Pardongate story has yet to conclude. I dare not make any predictions.

Regardless of how his story ends, Joe Biden has given a parting gift to disaffected Americans. He has reminded them that government — and politicians — are every they always suspected them to be; and that in light of it all, the big shake-up they voted for is truly what they want.

Comments: Call or text 319-398-8266. Email: althea.cole@thegazette.com