His father did the right thing.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty
December 7, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. ET
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Critics say President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter is political cronyism, bad for the country, selfish and the height of privilege. But the real story is the exact opposite of nepotism, with Hunter Biden being treated worse than the average citizen because of his family ties. It is good for the country when the president takes action against injustice. President Biden rightly condemned the unfairness of his son’s prosecution. His pardon was necessary to prevent Donald Trump’s Justice Department from targeting Hunter for years to come.
I served as a federal criminal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York for 12 years, during which time I oversaw and prosecuted many gun and tax cases. President Biden maintains that the gun and tax charges Hunter was convicted of should never have been filed. I agree. When I was Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division for the Southern District of New York, my job was to approve indictment and non-prosecution decisions in gun and tax cases. I would not have approved the gun and tax felonies filed against Hunter Biden. Such charges are rarely, if ever, brought forward in similar circumstances.
Prosecutors charged Hunter with lying about his drug addiction when purchasing the firearm and possessing the firearm while he was a drug addict. They were wrong to do that. He was a first-time offender, had no prior convictions or history of violence, possessed the gun for only 11 days and did not use it, and did not pose a danger to public safety to warrant federal gun charges. The public interest is served by treating addiction, not weaponizing it. In a clear display of shame over his drug addiction, prosecutors quoted Hunter’s own words from his memoir about overcoming drug addiction at trial. They forced his ex-girlfriends to testify and unearthed details of his addiction. The prosecution’s trial was brutal and humiliating.
Prosecutors also should not have charged Hunter with failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes while he was struggling with drug addiction. The IRS’s primary goal of recovering unpaid taxes was accomplished when Hunter repaid all taxes owed, including interest and penalties. The felony tax charge is unwarranted here, given that the taxes were not exorbitant, his failure to pay occurred while he was using illegal drugs, and he repaid the taxes in full. A civil settlement or misdemeanor tax charges would have been appropriate.
Notably, Congressional Republicans worked to undermine Hunter’s fair plea deal, which did not include any felonies, between Trump-appointed Delaware attorney David Weiss and Hunter. It is. They launched an investigation into the Justice Department’s plea deal, took testimony from IRS case officers and prosecutors, held hearings, and attempted to intervene in the case before the plea deal. Under intense political pressure from Republicans, Weiss reneged on the deal, requested and obtained the position of special prosecutor, and charged Hunter with gun and tax felonies. As President Biden said when he announced Hunter’s pardon, many opponents in Congress took credit for bringing political pressure to the process. President Biden is right that Hunter received special treatment. Most criminal defendants do not have legislators intervening in their cases to lobby for harsher treatment. Our criminal justice system should not work that way.
If Hunter had reason to believe he committed more serious crimes than those currently reportedly under investigation, including bribery, money laundering, and illegal foreign lobbying, I would be less sympathetic to a presidential pardon. Probably not. However, Hunter was never charged with these more serious crimes. Weiss investigated Hunter for six years. This is an unusually long time for a criminal investigation focused on a single individual. If Weiss hasn’t actually filed a lawsuit against Hunter after six years, then the lawsuit doesn’t exist. (Complicating matters, in February, Weiss, a former FBI informant and a leading Republican against Hunter, falsely accused President Biden and Hunter of accepting bribes from a Ukrainian businessman. (This is the fact that he accused the witness, Mr. Alexander Smirnov.)
Just because there is no credible case against Hunter doesn’t mean the Trump Justice Department won’t bring false charges against him. During his campaign, Trump vowed that if elected, he would appoint a special counsel to “go after” the “Biden crime family.” President Trump further signaled how serious he is about using the Justice Department as a vehicle for personal vendettas by nominating Pam Bondi for attorney general and Kash Patel for FBI director. Bondi claimed at the 2020 Republican National Convention that President Biden and his son are corrupt. Patel recently proposed using the law “criminally or civilly” against President Trump’s political opponents. “In trying to break Hunter, they tried to break me, and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here,” President Biden said when announcing the pardon. That’s enough. ‘He’s right.
Now is not the time to cling to the norms that President Trump is trying to shatter. Political prosecution is looming, and I fear that our democratic institutions will not be able to withstand it.
That’s why President Biden’s pardon shouldn’t be the last. President Biden should use his pardon power to protect others from political prosecution, just as he used it to protect his son. He should condemn President Trump’s political prosecution plans. President Trump’s political opponents should be pre-emptively pardoned in order to obstruct politically motivated investigations by the Trump Justice Department. In particular, public servants whose job performance has earned President Trump’s ire do not need to spend precious time and money defending themselves from Trump’s lies. Nor do they have to endure the reputational damage, safety risks, and emotional burden of political prosecution. Only President Biden has the power to stop other unnecessary political prosecutions before they even begin. he should use it.
