President Biden’s pardon of his son absolves Hunter Biden of crimes both committed and not yet discovered. WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his "On My Mind" commentary, says it’s a sad coda to the Biden legacy.
Public servant.
It’s a phrase that doesn’t get much run lately, because so many people in American politics seem devoted to serving only themselves. But at least in theory, across party lines, a public servant is what voters want and what candidates aspire to be.
Service comes with sacrifice. Elected officials don’t get paid like business CEOs. They’re constantly, and rightfully, scrutinized by the media and by regular citizens. And public servants are supposed to live by a different set of rules, one of those rules being: Don’t use your job to enrich, or protect, your family.
In one of his final tests as a public servant, Joe Biden failed.
Biden used his presidential powers to pardon his son, Hunter, who was due to be sentenced this month in two separate cases, one for tax evasion, the other for federal gun charges.
But the pardon goes a lot further than that. Biden pardoned his son for any crimes he might have committed for an 11-year period from the beginning of 2014 until the end of this year. That suggests more trouble might have been coming Hunter Biden’s way.
President Biden said his son has been unfairly targeted. “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,” the president said.
He’s not wrong about the “raw politics” part. Hunter Biden has been the focus of Republican politicians for years, mainly because Joe Biden has led a relatively clean public life — especially compared to his Republican opponent. It does appear, based on many reports, that Hunter Biden did try to leverage his connections to get ahead in the business world. So Republicans did for political reasons what they accused Hunter’s business partners of doing for financial reasons — using Hunter to get to Joe.
The Bidens are right to fear that the Justice Department under Donald Trump would keep going after Hunter Biden, fairly or not. And of course, you can understand why a father would do whatever he could to protect his wayward son.
But this is exactly where being a public servant should matter.
Hunter Biden had already been convicted of one charge and pleaded guilty to another. Now he gets to walk on both those charges. And if any other crimes he committed over the past 11 years are ever uncovered, he’s been pre-pardoned for those.
That is a middle finger to the justice system, no matter how flawed Biden thinks it might be. And it sets a precedent for President Trump to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, any shady-dealing family members, and possibly even himself.
It wasn’t as if Hunter Biden faced the death penalty. He was just due to serve prison time that it appears he had earned. And to keep that from happening, Joe Biden played into every cynic’s belief — into Trump’s continual pounding message — that the system is rigged.
Joe Biden is about to end more than half a century of public service. This is a sad and disappointing curtain call.
Tommy Tomlinson’s On My Mind column runs Mondays on WFAE and WFAE.org. It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section below. You can also email Tommy at ttomlinson@wfae.org.
