Via ABC News: President Biden pardons family members in final minutes of presidency.
“My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me — the worst kind of partisan politics,” Biden wrote in a statement. “Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end.”
“That is why I am exercising my power under the Constitution to pardon James B. Biden, Sara Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John T. Owens, and Francis W. Biden,” he continued. “The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that they engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.”
The pardon itself can be found here.
James Joyner and Matt Bernius have already written several posts about the various preemptive pardons, and I am going to join Matt, to the chagrin of many readers, and agree this is a terrible idea.*
This is just confirmation that justice derives not from abstract principles, but instead flows from power. Moreover, justice is partisan. This will deepen cynicism in the country and fuel any number of Trump’s narratives. It makes it all the harder to criticize Trump’s approach to the presidency.
I will add that I am actually highly sympathetic to the goals here. I understand he is trying to protect people who might have been unjustly targeted.
I expect exactly four years from now we will see quite the flurry of pardons, and I expect that the readership will not be too happy when it happens. And yes, I realize that Trump might have done it anyway, but it is going to be awfully hard to get the public to be scandalized by it when it happens.
I was already not the biggest fan of the pardon power, and now I really would like to see substantial reforms, to include at least some kind of independent assessment with DoJ. But that is likely just dreaming on my part.
More on this, I expect, as time goes on.
*Update: I will note that I am not unsympathetic to James’ position that, “While unprecedented and unseemly, it is, alas, almost certainly the right thing to do. The incoming President has vowed revenge on these people and, as Biden implies, simply having to defend oneself against scurrilous charges can be ruinous.” I might have been more persuadable before the blanket family pardons came out.
