Bad Pardons and Outrageous Pardons
A difference in degree is a difference in kind.
We’ve written a lot about Presidential pardons the last 24 hours. President Biden issued a flurry of them on his last day, including of his immediate family members. And, as POLITICO notes (“Biden said his pardon of family was meant to shield them from Trump. That’s not the full story.”), the pretext was dubious.
Joe Biden cast his last-minute pardons of family members merely as an effort to shield them from the retribution of Donald Trump.
In reality, his brother, serial entrepreneur Jim Biden, had already come under scrutiny from investigators in Biden’s own Justice Department.
In addition to calls from Republicans in Congress to prosecute him for allegedly lying to congressional impeachment investigators, Jim Biden’s activities have been investigated in recent years in two federal criminal probes, as POLITICO previously reported. Jim Biden, 75, has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing in those cases.
Both investigations deal with a now-bankrupt hospital operator, Americore, that Jim Biden worked with in the years between his older brother’s vice presidency and presidency.
It is not clear where existing DOJ probes might have led before Monday’s pardons. Joe Biden’s 11th-hour issuance of a blanket pardon protects his brother not only from Trump’s revenge, but also from ordinary inquiries into his business activities.
In one case, the Justice Department has for years been investigating schemes to defraud Medicare and other government health care programs that occurred in part at an Americore hospital in Pennsylvania.
In a recording of a 2023 conversation reviewed by POLITICO, one of Jim Biden’s associates, Mississippi health care executive Keaton Langston, said he misled Justice Department investigators when he was questioned about some of Jim Biden’s contacts with Americore.
Langston, then facing prosecution, said on the recording that he could have improved his own negotiating position with the government “If I’d have just told the truth about Jimmy Biden,” but did not explain how.
While this is hardly the most egregious abuse of the pardon power in American history up to that point, it’s highly problematic. I fully understand the instinct to protect one’s family from an incoming President who has promised to exact vengeance on his enemies but letting one under investigation by his own DOJ off the hook stinks to high heaven.
And, yes, it gives Trump cover.
WaPo (“Biden started the day with pardons. Trump finished with many more.”):
When outgoing president Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons earlyMonday to an array of people who he said “do not deserve to be the targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions,” he broke new ground in the depth and breadth of the pardon power, legal scholars said. He also opened up an avenue for future presidents — including his immediate successor — to do the same.
Just hours before Donald Trump’s inauguration, Biden pardoned retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, Anthony S. Fauci, members and staff of the Jan. 6 congressional committee, police officers who testified before that panel, and several members of his family. Together, the moves marked the first time a president has pardoned people neither charged with nor suspected by law enforcement authorities of wrongdoing.
Biden’s announcements Monday “are a valid exercise of pardon power. But that doesn’t answer whether they are a wise use of that power,” said Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law and an expert on clemency. “You can see the incoming administration will see this as an invitation to do the same.”
Trump did not need the invitation.
Later Monday, Trump issued a blanket pardon for virtually all of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot defendants and commuted the sentences of the remaining 14 — a broad move that gives some form of clemency to all those charged or convicted in the violent attack.Taken together, “they reflect a wholesale rethinking of what pardoning means,” said Osler.
“Clemency is the soul of the Constitution, and it’s been used to show our highest principles of national reconciliation and mercy,” said Osler. “To see it used for political purposes and as a chess game does sully that history.”
On the one hand, I hold Biden, who campaigned in 2020 on restoring our norms and in 2024 on protecting democracy and the rule of law, to a higher standard than Trump, who has spent the last decade demonstrating that he cares not a whit about rules and norms. His feckless use of the pardon power absolutely gave Trump supports ammunition.
But, come on. Do we really believe that Trump had these orders prepared but was waiting to see if Biden would pardon Fauci, Milley, Cheny, and “the Biden Crime Family” before acting? That he wasn’t going to do this, anyway? It’s absurd. Of course he was.
To the extent Biden’s transgressions set precedent, it’s for the next normal President. Assuming we ever get one again.
And, so far as we know, the personally-connected* folks Biden pardoned committed no crimes. Except for Hunter Biden and Jim Biden, none have not even been accused of any crimes. Trump pardoned over a thousand people convicted of crimes, including some serving very long sentences for violent felonies. These are not equivalent transgressions.
*Biden did, of course, pardon and commute the sentences of various death row inmates, drug offenders, and cop killer Leonard Peltier. But, so far as I know, those were in the ordinary course of clemency processes, not to the benefit of Biden or his political allies.
None of the people except for Hunter have had charges brought and only Hunter and Jim Biden have been investigated. Being charged for owning a gun while using drugs was a BS charge that only happened because he was Biden’s son. There is no reason other than claims by Trump and his cronies to believe the others committed a crime. In fact, when Congress kept bringing in their star witnesses to testify about the Bidens they kept admitting they were liars. Besides Trump let’s not forget this is largely the same GOP Congress that investigated Benghazi 8 times! Add in all of the other hearings/investigations they did that didnt find anything. It’s understandable wanting to protect people from that kind of expensive harassment.
That said, even though Trump was going to pardon all of those people anyway, in the minds of lots of people it gives him cover.
Steve
You have squared the circle, James.
Trump had to pardon those people. He was always going to pardon those people and “scrub” his record.
Otherwise his Presidency would function under the dark cloud of illegitimacy and criminality, with 1,500 artifacts every day attesting to his corrupt nature.
Now he has the pretense of legitimacy, and for Trump, pretense is always enough. In fact, it’s everything.
@Rob1: I’d disagree. Trump doesn’t care. The Republican Party, on the other hand, wants cover. And the press gives it to them.
“Yastreblyansky”
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But just read the whole thing, lots of stuff hard to copy/paste.
Fauci is a liar and has blood on his hands. A truly despicable person. His response to the questions about funding gain of function research and cooperation with Wuhan was Clintonian at its worst, and lying to Congress. (And let’s give credit where its due. It was Obama who banned it.) His attempts to cover it all up as natural viral evolution is now known to be fraud.
Biden has pre-emptively pardoned a mass murderer. The pardon of his son was politically cynical and wrong, and a stain on him. But the Fauci pardon is of another world.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/despite-biden-pardon-fauci-still-faces-legal-perils-here-they-are
@Connor:
Zero Hedge, home base for nutsacks.
James, Trump would have done this anyway, and the press would have supported this just as much.
@Barry: That was my position in the OP as well.
@Connor:
—- what people say who have zero justification for Trump’s thoroughly negligent failure to curb the onset of 1.2 million US covid deaths. Trump should be in prison.
@Kevin:
Watch how hard he works to scrub the felony charges and discredit the people who brought him to justice. In his mind’s eye, Trump sees himself as a superlative. Anything that disrupts that reflection has to be rubbed out. Jean Carroll hasn’t heard the last of him either.
Yeah, he cares.
@Connor: Fauci has done so much against so many diseases, from AIDS to COVID. But once again Connor is here to demonstrate that there is no cure for stupid.
It’s not like Trump pardoned someone who ran an online drugs and cp/csam marketplace that operated in bitcoin…
Oh, wait…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/21/ross-ulbricht-silk-road-trump-pardon