Biden’s allies set him up as the embodiment of respect for the law. He just pulled the rug out from under them.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we flashback to all the times we were guaranteed that President Biden would not pardon his son Hunter — and all the times he was celebrated for that promise. And of course, we cover more media misses.
Biden and the Rule of Law
After doing his best to fade into the background of American life in recent months, President Biden reemerged Sunday night for one final, cynical act, issuing an unprecedentedly broad pardon for his son ahead of Hunter’s sentencing on federal gun and tax crimes.
“From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” Biden said in a statement.
He went on to claim it was “clear that Hunter was treated differently,” in both cases.
The move came despite at least ten guarantees from Biden and his White House that he was not planning to pardon his son, who was found guilty in June on three felony charges for federal gun violations and pleaded guilty in September in a separate felony tax case.
White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre even reaffirmed that commitment just last month, after former president Donald Trump won the presidential election.
Republican senator Chuck Grassley expressed what many were feeling in a social-media post on Sunday night: “I’m shocked Pres Biden pardoned his son Hunter bc he said many many times he wouldn’t & I believed him Shame on me.”
Biden said again and again that “no one is above the law.” Americans were led to believe the president and his party truly cared about the rule of law and democracy — unlike Republicans.
And in fact, Biden was celebrated time and time again for his brave commitment to the law.
“His decision not to pardon his son is not an expression of restraint or removal in any way from what his son has gone through and is continuing to go through, but of principle,” White House press secretary-turned-MSNBC host Jen Psaki told viewers in June.
“Because the justice system that convicted his only surviving son is the same justice system he vowed to protect,” Psaki said at the time. “If that doesn’t tell you who Joe Biden is, I don’t really know what does.”
MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann offered similar praise, calling Biden “a president living the rule of law.”
“He’s not pardoning his son . . . because he’s living what it means to have a rule of law. . . . If you want to know if he believes it, you can see what’s happening with his own son,” he said.
The ladies of The View also gushed over Biden’s impressive character.
“He stands with [Hunter] and he’s not pardoning him because he’s a true American who believes in democracy and the way the system is supposed to work,” Joy Behar said.
Whoopi Goldberg agreed: “He didn’t pressure Merrick Garland to kill the case or to fire the investigator or to rail against the judge. He didn’t complain that this is rigged. He promised not to pardon his child, so this is kind of what it looks like when you don’t abuse power.”
Back on MSNBC, former U.S. senator Claire McCaskill said Biden could not be more different than Trump. “You have a president who doesn’t interfere, doesn’t pardon his friends, doesn’t lambaste the rule of law even though he had the power to stop this prosecution against his own son.”
McCaskill’s MSNBC colleagues, chief Biden defenders Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, did their best to gloss over the pardon news during their Monday morning show — an understandable decision given that they’ve spent the past four years holding up Joe Biden as the embodiment of moral rectitude and respect for Democratic norms.
Those few pundits who correctly predicted that Biden would inevitably go back on his word and pardon his son before leaving office were naturally scolded for their lack of faith in Biden’s integrity.
Mediaite took CNN anchor Chris Wallace and Jonah Goldberg to task in June for claiming “without evidence” that Biden was likely to pardon Hunter, despite the president’s guarantees to the contrary.
But now that Biden has officially done what he promised never to do, pundits have been quick to excuse his hypocrisy as an unfortunate response to his opponent’s weaponization of the Justice Department.
“It’s terrible politics and precedent but I’m going to be honest and say that the Trump team has been brutally clear they want revenge on their enemies, they are obsessed with Hunter in particular, and that would weigh like hell on me if I were his father and could protect him,” said Ezra Klein.
The possibility of a Trump DOJ looking into Biden did appear to factor into his decision to pardon his son, as Biden granted him a sweeping get-out-of-jail-free card for any crimes he committed or may have committed for an eleven-year period.
“Joe Biden bent over backwards not to intervene in order to show, you know, sort of how much of a respecter of norms he was, unlike Donald Trump,” New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg said. “But you know, we see kind of what that got him. And I certainly understand why [he] would not want to forfeit the future and life of his son to uphold a set of norms that are about to go up in smoke.”
The Bulwark published its own piece “in defense of the Hunter Biden pardon.”
And of course, right on time, CNN’s Jessica Dean stepped in to say the 2015 death of Biden’s son Beau makes him a more sympathetic character as he disregards the rule of law for his family.
“President Biden is incredibly close to his son Hunter, but just reminding people that he lost his other son Beau Biden in 2015 and that Hunter Biden is his only living son,” she said, asking CNN reporter MJ Lee to “shed any light and just kind of give people some context around that relationship and just the way just how close knit this family is?”
Lee agreed that the Bidens are a “very close knit family,” and said Biden has often leaned on his family members when making major decisions, including his decision earlier this year to drop out of the presidential race.
“He really leaned on his son Hunter, particularly as you point out in Beau’s absence,” she said. “Beau, of course, died a number of years ago. This is somebody that has been in the room for these kinds of important moments, somebody that the President has really leaned on. And again, I think that is why it’s important for us to talk about this decision, having been made by President Biden as he is in office in his remaining months in office, but also, again as a father, he believed that this was the right thing to do as a father.”
Headline Fail of the Week
The writers at Politico saw the criticism unfolding over Biden’s pardon and decided to bring out an old classic: “Republicans pounce on Biden pardoning his son, Hunter.”
Never mind that Politico‘s Playbook noted on Monday afternoon that the backlash was bipartisan or that Republicans and any other critic would have every reason to be riled up over the lies Biden told and the terrible precedent he set. We all know that any Republican criticism — no matter how valid — will always be pouncing.
Media Misses