It is an all-too-familiar story: A president is pursued by his political enemies who target his family and use deep-state actors to engage in lawfare. That was the narrative last week, but it was not coming from President-elect Donald Trump. The victim of what the White House press secretary called “war politics” is none other than President Joe Biden.
The president’s epiphany that lawfare is real and he is the victim came after he decided to pardon his own son. This act shattered not only every ethical principle of his office but also every promise he made to the public. He explained that the reason was not him but “them.”
The president suggested that his own Justice Department was part of a political hit job against his family. Biden blamed his “political opponents” for the prosecution of his son and insisted that “in trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me.”
Biden was tapping into a reservoir of rage among Democrats he knew would forgive anything, even lying to them during the campaign about never, ever pardoning his son.
In my book, The Indispensable Right, I explore what I call an “age of rage.” Rage is more than an emotion. It is a liberating act that gives people a certain license to do and say things they would not otherwise say or do. With rage comes a degree of righteous freedom to transcend ordinary limits or obligations.
Other Democrats struggled to excuse the fact that President Biden repeatedly lied to the public and that the White House amplified those lies for the last two years.
When he was running for reelection, Biden grew angry at even the suggestion that he would pardon his son. Last June, he said he had “ruled out a pardon,” and later that month, he grew exasperated by the continued press inquiries. He repeated, “I said I’d abide by the jury decision, and I will do that. And I will not pardon him.”
The fact is that they did not need to bother with the rationalizations of Biden suddenly changing his mind — just in time before his son was sentenced and he left office. Rage, not reason, is the motivator of American politics.
Of course, the key to an age of rage is to gauge the right time to be outraged.
Not long ago, Attorney General Merrick Garland was outraged at any suggestion that his department was engaging in political prosecutions or succumbing to political pressure. In an unusually fiery press conference, Garland declared, “It is outrageous that you have to face these unfounded attacks because you are doing what is right and upholding the rule of law.”
Of course, that outrage was directed by Trump and his supporters. Garland remained entirely silent in the face of Biden denouncing the Justice Department for a purely political investigation and prosecution of his son.
Also uncharacteristically silent is now-Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA). On April 19, 2018, Schiff declared, “If the president issues a pardon in a case in which he or his family are implicated, the American people need to know whether it is part of an attempt to obstruct justice.” He even proposed a new law to pursue such abuses of the pardon power.
For many on the Left, it does not even matter that the president was reportedly discussing the pardon last June when Biden and the White House were denying that there was any consideration of a pardon. If true, that means that White House officials were fully aware that the president was lying to the public, and officials who were aware of these meetings said nothing.
The Biden pardon was clearly drafted with the Nixon pardon as the model. Then-President Gerald Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon for any crimes that he “has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.”
Biden pardoned his son for any crime he “has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”
However, we have never seen a pardon like this one. First, Ford was not implicated in the crimes of Nixon. Joe Biden has been implicated in alleged crimes related to the massive influence-peddling scandal. In that sense, it is not just Hunter but the president who benefited from this pardon. Crimes ranging from false statements to federal investigators to fraud to being an unregistered foreign agent are not foreclosed. Those possible cases could have implicated the president and further established how he repeatedly lied to the public about his lack of knowledge and involvement.
Second, this 10-year period is not only twice as long as the Nixon period but covers the period when Joe Biden was both vice president and a private citizen. It further insulates the president from the type of pressure used by prosecutors on alleged co-conspirators like Hunter. As shown in the cases of figures such as Michael Flynn, the Justice Department was able to threaten the prosecution of the children of the target to force plea deals.
With this pardon, Biden effectively reconstructed the infamous sweetheart deal that collapsed in open court with special counsel David Weiss. It would have immunized Hunter for unnamed crimes, but the federal judge balked.
When U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika asked the federal prosecutor if he had ever seen such a plea bargain offered to a defendant other than the president’s son, he admitted he had not.
The pardon went even further than the deal, widely condemned as unprecedented and a special deal for the president’s son.
While arguably unprecedented and inexplicable, the pardon did finally answer some long-standing questions over the bizarre criminal defense mounted by Hunter over the last year.
I wrote previously how Hunter’s bizarre defense strategy looked like nothing I had seen in decades as a criminal defense attorney. He was taking only three-point shots that he had no hope of sinking in Delaware and California. With loss after loss, he did not seem concerned about minimizing his exposure. That included refusing to negotiate for any plea other than the sweeping immunity grant under the plea bargain. When Weiss suggested narrowing the scope, his counsel told him to “just rip it up” in open court. In other words, he acted like he already had a pocket pardon.
Now, shortly before his sentencing, Hunter filed in Delaware and California to play the ultimate trump card. He filed for dismissal of both cases as Weiss objected that he should be able to show that there was no political agenda as claimed by the president. It was a belated effort by Weiss to try to scrub away his record in the cases.
Weiss allowed major crimes to expire even though he could have extended the statute of limitations. He refused to indict Hunter for being an unregistered foreign agent. Then, he tried to get a judge to sign off on a ridiculous sweetheart deal that would have spared Hunter any jail time and immunized him for unnamed crimes. Given his record, the attempt to suddenly feign aggressive and zealous prosecution came across as rather pathetic.
The Bidens have again proven that they are among Washington’s untouchable class, a ruling elite that exists separate and above the rules that apply to others. The millions secured through alleged influence peddling will not be seized or repaid. Hunter will not spend a day in jail for any alleged crimes. Indeed, he will not face accountability for any federal crime, even murder, that he may have decided to commit over the prior 10 years. In the end, he was made immune from the entirety of the criminal conduct.
The result confirms what Biden stated previously: “No one f***s with a Biden.” Indeed, Biden himself embodied the rule. After finding that the president had unlawfully possessed and mishandled classified material for decades, another special counsel said he would not pursue charges because of the president’s diminished mental state. Like his son, the criminal code would not apply to Joe Biden, who would remain unindictable and untouchable.
Yet, this sweeping pardon might not be sweeping enough. The House committees have been pursuing the money trail from foreign business figures to various Biden family members. They could now call Hunter to testify and challenge any invocation of the Fifth Amendment. The House could argue that the pardon means that Hunter is not at risk of incriminating himself in these underlying crimes from the prior decade. While Hunter could claim that he remains at risk for state offenses, the statute of limitations has likely run on any such offenses.
If Hunter were to testify, any false statement to federal investigators or under oath could be charged as a new crime — outside of the 10-year period of the pardon.
Hunter has already been accused of false statements in his prior testimony. With neither the executive nor the legislative branch under the control of the Democratic Party, Hunter could not expect any special or sweetheart deals. He would face the thing that he has feared his whole life: accountability under the laws like an average schnook.
Yet, the damage to the office of the president has already been done, and Joe Biden may not be done with pardons. Other Bidens, including his brother, remain at risk. Any remaining Biden without protection could be used as the weakest link in the family chain.
In the meantime, Joe Biden just bulldozed any moral or ethical high ground. With Biden wiping out the crimes of his son, Trump can now claim that the same treatment should be extended to those arrested on Jan. 6. After years of what the Justice Department’s lead prosecutor called “shock and awe,” Trump can claim it is time to close the books on all of the “war politics” and close the books on what occurred before. He could claim that he was pardoning for the actions on one day rather than over a decade. Trump could add that, unlike Biden, who lied during the 2024 campaign about never pardoning his son, he ran on the pledge to pardon the Jan. 6 defendants.
The point is that Joe Biden removed any navigational beacons for the use of pardon authority. The checkered history of presidential pardons has never been pristine. President Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger without any claim of injustice or irregularity in his conviction. He also pardoned Marc Rich, a major Democratic donor who was a fugitive from justice and one of the least worthy recipients of a pardon in history.
Other presidents have used pardons to benefit friends or donors. President Warren Harding and his attorney general, Harry M. Daugherty, were even accused of selling pardons, including one for the notorious Ignazio Lupo. Known as “Lupo the Wolf,” Lupo was accused of at least 60 murders and was able to rejoin the mob war raging in New York City.
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Yet, somehow, Biden’s pardon may be worse from an ethical standpoint because he is accused of knowledge or involvement in the underlying corruption. He first lied to the public and then used the power of his office to shut down any investigation into any offenses in the last decade.
None of this means that Trump will ascend to any high ground. The point is that Biden left Trump with a subterranean standard, leaving little but high ground.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.