After months of insisting that he would do no such thing, President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter on Sunday night.
The president’s son was facing sentencing in federal gun and tax evasion cases, and several members of the incoming Trump administration had made it clear they intended to restart investigations into corruption allegations. Now that’s off the table with Biden’s full and unconditional pardon, which covers all possible crimes Hunter may have committed from 2014 to the present.
A pair of former White House attorneys joined KNX News’ daily political show Countdown 2024 to break down the pardon – and what it means about the shifting political norms in the United States.
John Dean served as White House counsel for President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, and Richard Painter served as chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush.
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Dean, who was famously disbarred after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice, said he thought pardoning Hunter Biden “was a great move.” He said the president’s change of opinion on the pardon was likely the result of new information that came to light before Hunter’s sentencing.
“Apparently there was a 62-some page document that his lawyers prepared to show how out-of-the-ordinary the two cases that he'd been subjected to were,” Dean said. “They were not in the norm. And there were also strong indications that there would be abusive use of the process against him if indeed he ever did have to serve time in jail.”
While Biden had initially promised not to interfere in his son’s case, Dean called it “ludicrous” to criticize the president for changing his mind.
“The democrats at large have played by the norms, thinking somehow that this might influence Trump to honor the norms,” he said. “Trump doesn't honor norms. He does whatever the hell he thinks he can get away with, and then pushes it even further.”
Painter also didn’t fault Biden for issuing the pardon, but did criticize his decision to issue a detailed statement criticizing the Justice Department for their handling of the case.
“It's his son. Simply pardon his son without the statement about the Justice Department,” he said. ”The problem is that President Biden's very critical statement that was released yesterday about the Justice Department about the special prosecutor plays into the Trump playbook, the argument that, well, all these independent prosecutors, they're all just political.”
Listen to the full episode above, and catch new episodes of Countdown 2024 every weekday at 2:30 p.m.
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