Heather Cox Richardson writes here about President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, which was condemned widely in the media, even in liberal publications like The Atlantic and The New Yorker. in her post, she wrote first about Jane Mayer’s expose of Pete Hegseth’s drunken sprees, then turned to the pardon.
She writes:
Also last night, President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden after repeatedly saying that he would not.
Trump-appointed Special Counsel David Weiss charged Hunter Biden on firearms and tax charges, but as former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance made clear in her Civil Discourse, Hunter Biden would not have been charged if he had been anyone other than the president’s son. He was charged with possession of a firearm by someone who is addicted to illegal drugs, a charge that prosecutors do not usually bring. Biden owned a gun for eleven days and apparently lied on the paperwork for it by saying he was not a drug addict when he was, in fact, in the throes of addiction.
The other charges stem from Hunter Biden’s failure, while dealing with addiction, to pay about $1.4 million in federal income taxes, which he has since paid in full plus interest and penalties. Vance explains that the government usually handles cases like his with administrative or civil penalties rather than criminal prosecution, as it did in the case of Trump henchman Roger Stone, with whom the government reached a settlement in 2022 for more than $2 million in unpaid income taxes, interest, and penalties without criminal charges.
But President Biden’s pardon covers not just those charges, but also “those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.” The pardon’s sweeping scope offers an explanation for why Biden issued it after saying he would not.
Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch notes that Biden’s pardon came after Trump’s announcement that he wants to place conspiracy theorist Kash Patel at the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Filipkowski studies right-wing media and points out that Patel’s many appearances there suggest he is obsessed with Hunter Biden, especially the story of his laptop, which Patel insists shows that Hunter and Joe Biden engaged in crimes with Ukraine and China.
House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) spent two years investigating these allegations and turned up nothing—although Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia used the opportunity to display pictures of Hunter Biden naked on national media—yet Patel insists that the Department of Justice should focus on Hunter Biden as soon as a Trump loyalist is back in charge.
Notably, Trump’s people, including former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his ally Lev Parnas, spent more than a year trying to promote false testimony against Hunter Biden by their Ukrainian allies. Earlier this year, in the documentary From Russia with Lev, produced by Rachel Maddow, Parnas publicly apologized to Hunter Biden for his role in the scheme.
As legal commentator Asha Rangappa noted: “People criticizing the Hunter Biden pardon need to recognize: For the 1st time, the FBI and Justice Department could literally fabricate evidence, or collaborate with a foreign government to ‘find’ evidence of a ‘crime,’ with zero accountability. That’s why the pardon goes back to 2014.”
And yet, much of American media today has been consumed not with the story that Trump has appointed a deeply problematic candidate to run what could be considered the nation’s most important department, overseeing about 3 million personnel and managing a budget of more than $800 billion, or with the reality that Biden’s distrust of our legal system under Trump is a profound warning for all of us.
Instead, they have focused on President Biden’s pardon of his son, many of them condemning what they say is Biden’s rejection of the rule of law.
Some have suggested that Biden’s pardoning his son will now give Trump license to pardon anyone he wants, apparently forgetting that in his first term, Trump pardoned his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner, who pleaded guilty to federal charges of tax evasion, campaign finance offenses, and witness tampering and whom Trump has now tapped to become the U.S. ambassador to France.
Trump also pardoned for various crimes men who were associated with the ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian operatives working to elect Trump. Those included his former national security advisor Michael Flynn, former campaign manager Paul Manafort, and former allies Roger Stone and Steve Bannon. Those pardons, which suggested Trump was rewarding henchmen, received a fraction of the attention lavished on Biden’s pardon of his son.
In today’s news coverage, the exercise of the presidential pardon—which traditionally gets very little attention—has entirely outweighed the dangerous nominations of an incoming president, which will have profound influence on the American people. This imbalance reflects a longstanding and classic power dynamic in which Republicans set the terms of public debate, excusing their own objectionable behavior while constantly attacking Democrats in a fiery display that attracts media attention but distorts reality.
The degree to which the media endorsed that abusive power dynamic today does not bode well for its accurate reporting during Trump’s upcoming term. It also leaves the public badly informed about matters that are important for understanding modern politics
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well, at least the GOP is consistent–the pot calling the kettle black AGAIN.
Their situation with Biden is similar, however, to an abused wife finally leaving the home, then the husband screams–“but judge, she made me do it and SHE’s the one who left!”
The analogy is that (a) the GOP/MAGA applied the law unfairly in the first place and keeps going on and on and on–no one who committed the same crimes was treated the same way. (The wife wants to be a wife to this man who disrespects her and abuses his vows, he doesn’t play by the same rules, and she doesn’t remember signing on to being abused regularly.)
(b) Biden tried to follow the law anyway for a long time. (The wife stays and honors her vows, as long as she can.) Then the potential new Justice Department comes on the scene with the “writing on the wall” that it would only get worse where Biden’s son was concerned, Biden is leaving office, and he has the legal right to pardon his son from further overkill of the Justice Department and the to-be-new president. (The wife finally realizes there is no end to it and finally leaves.)
(c) The GOP who has dropped all pretense of fairness screams to high heaven all sorts of drivel about “Biden’s dishonesty,” “betraying the American people,” blah blah blah. (The husband feels abandoned and blames the wife for his abusing her.)
(d) True to the analogy, any American with a brain understands why the wife left and why Biden pardoned his son. I’m fine with it and probably most of American is too. And btw, now you can go kill your new puppy. CBK
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TRUMP’S LIST OF PARDONS
Trump pardoned his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, who was in prison for — and what he admitted doing — hiring a prostitute to seduce the husband of a witness against him and videotaping them having sex to blackmail the witness. The case against Kushner had another witness testify against him: His sister.
Trump says he will make Charles Kushner Ambassador to France, which is a slap in the face to France. France is likely to reject having a convicted criminal as America’s ambassador.
Trump also pardoned other convicted cronies, including Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Duncan Hunter, Margaret Hunter, Jesse Benton, and on and on for a total of 65 pardons.
Before President Biden leaves office he should pardon all the Department of Justice and FBI people who are on Trump’s enemies list so that Trump can’t prosecute them.
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A preemptive pardon was used before when President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, who resigned because of the Watergate scandal in 1974 but had not been charged with any crimes. Biden could do it, but I doubt he will.
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The Hunter Biden pardon is even broader than the Nixon pardon. It’s
preemptive—it’s not limited to the tax or gun charges, and in fact it’s not connected to any specific charges or investigation. It covers an 11-year period, whereas Nixon’s only covered the years of his presidency. And like the Nixon pardon, it pardons Biden for crimes he “committed or may have committed.”
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Psst.
“Trump’s pardon of his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, includes an extremely broad reprieve from any possible crimes he might have committed connected to special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Trump’s pardon absolves Flynn of ‘any and all possible offenses’ arising from Mueller’s investigation, as well as any related grand jury proceedings. The clemency grant uses sweeping language, immunizing Flynn from charges based on ‘facts and circumstances, known to, identified by, or in any manner related to the investigation of the Special Counsel.’
Some legal experts described Trump‘s move as perhaps the broadest act of clemency since President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon in 1974.
‘Pardons are typically directed at specific convictions or at a minimum at specific charges,’ said Margaret Love, former pardon attorney for Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who now leads the Collateral Consequences Resource Center. ‘I can think of only one other pardon as broad as this one, extending as it does to conduct that has not yet been charged, and that is the one that President Ford granted to Richard Nixon.’
‘In fact, you might say that this pardon is even broader than the Nixon pardon, which was strictly cabined by his time as president,’ Love said. ‘In contrast, the pardon granted to Flynn appears to extend to conduct that took place prior to Trump‘s election to the presidency, and to bear no relationship to his service to the president, before or after the election.’
Even the broadly construed Iran-Contra pardons granted by Bush ‘were limited to conduct that took place in the service of the presidency,’ Love said.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/30/trump-flynn-pardon-reprieve-441527
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The Flynn pardon was explicitly connected to an investigation. The Biden pardon is connected to nothing. It’s much broader. B
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When I first read that Biden had pardoned his son, and the president was being attacked by the news media and on social media, I did not agree with those negative opinions.
I also did not agree with Democrats who criticized Biden. As for Republicans who criticized Biden, they are all hypocrites or worse.
Still, I’m a lifelong reader. I read a lot. I’m one of those woke people that fascists love to hate and want to eliminate. I’m educated. I’m literate. I think for myself.
I already knew about the BS, thanks to the convicted rapist, fraud and felon, Donald Trump, behind the Hunter Biden witch hunt.
I already knew about the malignant narcissist, sociopath and megalomaniac’s list of pardons for convicted criminals, murders and traitors.
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the worst, I rate Hunter Biden’s pardon at most a three, but rank all of the orange toddler’s pardons with a 10+.
Never forget the day that Donald Trump became a traitor. Many were injured. Some died. Trump’s mob marched on the capital chanting “fight for Trump.” That day was January 6, 2021.
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The pearl clutching by the so-called liberal media is exactly as expected.
Biden bent over backward to allow the unprecedented persecution of his addict son for years because the so-called liberal media had already declared Hunter Biden was as guilty as Michael Sussmann- another Democrat persecuted by a right wing Republican prosecutor whose biased and unethical actions were presented as upright and honorable by the NYT whose reporters all but declared Sussmann’s conviction to be a slam-dunk due to so much evidence of his guilt. (There was no credible evidence, but since the NYT presented the word of Republican sources as if it was gospel, readers certainly believed there was.)
The so-called liberal media never believes in examining facts when it comes to pushing the right wing narrative of a Democrat’s “crimes”.
In September, Hunter Biden thought he was acting honorably by pleading guilty after the politicized Republican prosecutor gave in to Republican demands to reneg on the plea agreement which STILL would have given Hunter a more severe punishment than a typical addict who owned a gun for 11 days. Biden was willing to serve a lot more time than other addicts because he didn’t want the trial to distract from the election.
But Trump has made UNPRECEDENTED threats that the media has of course ignored, just as they ignored his threats to judges and prosecutors (1 day story at most), but pearl clutch and give endless coverage to stories about any “thought crime” Republicans tell them that a Democrat committed.
Had the Hunter Biden case gone to trial before an impartial judge – one who didn’t censor all mention of evidence that exonerated him – it would likely have resulted in a non-guilty verdict or hung jury.
The witnesses – the right wing folks who sold a gun to an addict – were outrageously compromised! They did not even begin to do the minor due diligence that gun shop owners are expected to do. They did not even ask for an ID!
“The government was aware that the gun shop owner, Ron Palimere, who approved selling Hunter the revolver on October 12, 2018 did so in violation of the requirement that a purchaser have and present a valid state-issued identification with proof of current address. (86) Hunter presented only his U.S. passport to the salesclerk, which has no address. The store accepted the passport as validID and made the sale anyway in violation of the requirements. Then, things got worse. Two of the charges centered on Hunter’s falsely stating on a federal form (ATF 4473) he was not a user of or addicted to drugs—a form the gun store was required to keep. Sometime after the October 2018 sale, the gun shop owner altered the form to include that a “Delaware vehicle registration” had been presented by Hunter as a supplemental form of identification on October 12 (along with the passport). That never happened. Mr. Palimere then gave the doctored form to the ATF as part ofthe investigation in September 2021. At the time Mr. Palimere did that, the government did not ask him and he did not volunteerwhat had happened. Only in pre-trial discovery was it revealed that Mr. Palimere realized the salewas in fact flawed, that a proper ID was not presented, and a change needed to be made after the fact. It also was revealed that, despite Mr. Palimere explaining he made that alteration in 2021 as a result of a media inquiry and to avoid “get[ting] in trouble,” his own WhatsApp messages indicate he was handing the 2018 form a year earlier and for a different reason. In 2020, he and others, including one of the very Delaware State Police troopers who investigated the original sale in 2018, were communicating about making Hunter’s purchase a campaign issue in the 2020 race to help Donald Trump—whom they supported. They even talked about coordinating with DonaldTrump Jr. to expose the story. To this day, it does not appear that the Special Counsel nor anyother law enforcement or regulatory agency has taken any action for these clearly improper events.8”
**Quote above from Hunter Biden White Paper, produced by Hunter’s law firm but which provides evidence (not disputed by any Republican) of the facts they present.
Although much of this prosecutorial misconduct and bias has been in plain sight for years, the so-called liberal media has ignored it to focus on far more serious issue of prosecutor misconduct and bias – Fani Willis having sex with a fellow prosecutor, which the media declared was so terrible that it was totally correct that a Republican hack judge essentially shut down a trial of powerful Republicans who Trump wanted to protect DESPITE many defendants already pleading guilty and willing to testify against those Republicans. (or I should say that hack judge shut down the trial BECAUSE many defendants pleaded guilty and were willing to testify against the Republicans.) Because two prosecutors hooked up!
Brett Kavanaugh committed the crime of perjury – Kavanaugh lied under oath when he swore that he and his friends were honoring their good friend Renate when they smeared her reputation throughout their yearbook, and there was nothing at all sexual about it. Yet the media never questioned why Kavanaugh didn’t face prosecution for his crime. The Republican double standard in effect.
Biden is right to pardon his son and I suspect he will have to pardon every prominent Democrat (or never Trumper) who ever challenged Trump to protect them from the unethical, biased prosecutors like Durham and Weiss, and an FBI that has been infected with extreme pro-Republican bias for decades but that Republicans say (and the so-called liberal media amplifies for them) is so anti-Republican and pro-Democrat that their new director will be cleaning house and prosecuting all those Democrats who must be thrown in jail.
Imagine an even MORE anti-Democrat, pro-Republican FBI! With the NYT writing daily stories about how upright and honorable all those new Republicans prosecuting Democrats are.
If the so-called liberal media wasn’t so infected with fear of looking “too biased”, there would be endless articles about why this pardon was necessary because Republicans have politicized the judicial and law enforcement system. There are plenty of stories to tell about this.
But the media instead will write 1000 stories about how it’s Dems who are corrupt because two prosecutors had sex.
And then will write another 1000 stories about how the convictions of Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi are slam dunks.
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NYCPSP,
Jamelle Bouie of The NY Times said this on BlueSky:
“the frenzy over the hunter biden pardon is a good reminder that the press knows how to make something a scandal and has decided that nothing trump does is truly deserving of that treatment”
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Ever the tribalist, Diane Ravitch posts another piece justifying her fellow tribalist Joe Biden’s disgraceful pardon of his son. Hunter was purely an influence peddler; he had no experience, knowledge, or skills that justified his being paid millions of dollars from foreign entities. The fact that the Bidens used at least 20 shell companies to hide their ill-gotten gains raises the eyebrows of anyone who is rational, i.e. not blindly partisan. Principled liberals – those few who still exist like Dean Phillips – condemn this abuse of presidential power.
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The false bravado of your comment illustrates that you don’t even believe your own bullshit.
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Just repeating lies doesn’t make them true, “Michelle.” They’re still lies.
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OK, Biden apologists, show me where I have told lies about Hunter Biden. You can’t.
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If I were Biden and were asked to choose between my legacy, I would choose my son every time.
Who knows what kind of treatment Trump, Patel, and the others would have inflicted on Hunter as their sacrificial lamb.
Any father who would put his legacy over the life of his son would be a vainglorious fool.
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Joseph Biden’s pardon also prevents investigation/prosecution of his son for influence peddling. Hunter Biden sold access to his father on behalf of businesses in Europe and China. President Biden’s self-serving pardon of his son is a massive betrayal of American values. Neither references to Donald Trump nor all perfumes of Arabia can’t cleanse the stench of scandal that will forever be Joseph Biden’s legacy.
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“prevents” investigations???
The Republican appointed prosecutors were investigating that for at least 8 years!!!!
It’s like “Benghazi” and “Whitewater”. Republican “investigations” go on for years and find nothing, until finally they find some minor crime that the NYT helps the far right turn into the biggest scandal since Nixon.
Not to worry, Putin’s playbook is being embraced by Trump as we speak and no investigation will be needed in the future to simply order life prison sentences or the death penalty for Democrats.
And like the complicit Russians who re-elect Putin by voting 90% to keep him in power, folks like you will be complicit in saying “finally, those enemies of the state Trump correctly identified as needing to be locked up are getting their just punishment.”
It’s sad that you are the one who is betraying American values and embracing the MAGA Putin values. It’s all good until one of your family members or friends’ existence becomes inconvenient for Trump.
How many Benghazi investigations were you calling for when the first dozen didn’t show the evidence of guilt that the far right fascists knew was there?
How many Biden investigations are you calling for since the first 6 years didn’t unearth enough?
I have an idea! How about if we tell Zelensky he will get no more aid unless he finds dirt on Biden!!!
I wonder how outraged you’d be if you heard that Biden used extortion to attempt to falsely smear a political rival as corrupt. I suspect you’d realize that anyone who needs extortion to make a case because multiple investigations have failed to unearth any evidence is a good sign that the person didn’t do anything wrong. So why the double standard? Because Biden is a Democrat?
A single, constrained investigation showed how corrupt Trump was. Multiple investigations could not find evidence of Biden’s guilt. Ergo, right wingers say there needs to be more investigation of Biden! To unearth the missing evidence!
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NYCPSP,
You could have written that comment without directing it to another reader. It did not need to be personal.
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It’s all she knows how to do.
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Diane,
Please ask Bob Shepherd to refrain from being personal with me. I don’t know why I get corrected for supposedly hurling personal insults, when Bob regularly writes snide comments insulting me even when he is not part of a conversation.
If Bob sees an opportunity to jump in to insult or belittle me, he does, even when he was no part of the conversation previously.
If you look at how I replied to flerp! below, I did not believe it was personal at all. It was not insulting the way that Bob and flerp! gratuitously insult me in their replies (and CBK has experienced this too with one of them, and I refrained from stepping in but I wished you had because it feels like there is a double standard here.)
Bob should not have inserted himself here just because he saw a chance to get a little dig in at someone he dislikes so much.
If my polite reply to flerp! is your idea of an unacceptable reply, but flerp! and Bob can write all the snarky things they want to myself and other people, then I really don’t belong here.
That being said, I WAS personal in my reply to “James Eales”, and I apologize. But I hope I am not held to a different standard than other people simply because flerp! and Bob have such a strong dislike of me. On Dec. 4, 2024 at 5:16am, Callisto wrote in reply to someone:
“The false bravado of your comment illustrates that you don’t even believe your own bullshit.”
And no one said a word.
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I have and I will.
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Bob Shepherd [shakes head and sighs deeply]
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We have been through all this. Diane asked us to not respond to each other’s comments or address each other in comments. The way you continuously try to renegotiate this is just weird. Why can’t you just agree not to respond to my comments? I certainly will never respond to yours with the exception of annoying situations caused by your inability to not respond to mine. We’ve been asked to do this. You can do it. Exercise control.
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Diane,
All the best people here agree: “All I know how to do is to be personal!”
I forgot that only some people here are allowed to be personal – and directly insulting and belittling.
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Diane,
Thank you very much.
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Diane,
apologies. I assumed this was a Russian troll post since it began with “Joseph Biden’s pardon also prevents investigation/prosecution of his son for influence peddling.” = a statement that is patently untrue since there were multiple investigations into Hunter Biden’s affairs for years (!) and the ONLY “crime” they could find is the gun charge.
It seemed as intentionally dishonest as someone in 1999 who said “The Senate’s refusal to convict Bill Clinton plea also prevents investigation/prosecution of Clinton for his Whitewater crimes”. As if the previous 6 years of Ken Starr digging through every paper for dirt and only finding an extramarital affair was not ENOUGH investigating!
But I should not have been personal, and I hope that my comment below refrained from being personal in any way. I apologize for being personal in this comment above.
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For several years I’ve enjoyed reading posts and comments on this website. I appreciate being able to share my opinions here, even when my views are sometimes very different from others. I’m a recently retired high school teacher living in California, not a Russian troll. (My former colleagues remember that I occasionally purchased and donated copies of books by Diane to our local library!) When discussing politics, I try not to (1) use profanity, (2) engage in name calling, and (3) never question another’s motives. Thanks to Diane, this forum allows us to learn from her knowledge and experience—and from each other!
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Thank you, James. I welcome your views.
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lol, everyone is losing their minds over this. Charles Pierce wrote a piece for Esquire with the headline: “Hunter Biden Isn’t the First Presidential Son
Caught Up in Controversy.
Anybody Remember Neil
Bush?” The callout: “Nobody defines Poppy Bush’s presidency by his son’s struggles or the pardons he issued on his way out of the White House. The moral: Shut the fck up about Hunter Biden, please.”
Esquire just issued a correction stating that Bush St. did not, in fact, pardon Neil Bush. Not sure how the heck that slipped through—is Pierce using ChatGPT for his research?—but good lord.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a63082689/neil-bush-george-hw-bush-presidential-sons/
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It’s sure lucky that George HW Bush didn’t have to pardon his criminal son Neil because the Democrats didn’t task a partisan Democratic special prosecutor to comb through Neil’s life for the last 8 years to find something to charge him for! Maybe he had owned a gun for 11 days too, and didn’t show proper id! Or confess to his use of pot.
Of course, Republican son Neil’s corrupt behavior just caused direct financial harm to many, many people, while Democrat son Hunter was an addict whose addiction (and suicidal depression) made him susceptible to a law spurning Trump-supporting gun shop owner talking him into buying a gun despite the sells knowing Hunter did not have proper ID (and then falsifying records which the corrupt partisan Republican prosecutor conveniently overlooked since he definitely didn’t want to prosecute a criminal owner of a gun shop selling guns illegally, he wanted to prosecute a suicidal addict because Republican politicians wanted to “get” him.
It’s hard for me to embrace the same outrage as you about a pardon for a depressed person fighting addiction buying a gun to commit suicide and (thankfully) having a family member taking it away, when a corrupt Republican prosecutor politicized that into a serious crime demanding a long jail sentence.
Lucky for George HW Bush, Neil didn’t have a politicized Democratic special prosecutor digging for dirt to force Neil to serve a long prison sentence, while overlooking far more serious crimes by the Democrats who solicited Neil to commit that crime!
If Neil had been thrown in jail because of such a partisan Democratic prosecutor, when Neil’s “crimes” was clearly his attempt to commit suicide because of an addiction, I suspect that the media would be demanding Bush 1 pardon Neil, not outraged because he did.
“The callout: “Nobody defines Poppy Bush’s presidency by his son’s struggles or the pardons he issued on his way out of the White House. The moral: Shut the fck up about Hunter Biden, please.”
Charles Pierce is right with that particular sentence, which does NOT explicit say that Poppy pardoned Neil. Bush 1 issued pardons that helped cover up his administration’s corruption. Not to address the outrageously politicized persecution of his suicidal addict son.
Charles Pierce is right to point out the media’s double standard, even if an earlier version of the story may have first incorrectly stated explicitly that Bush pardoned Neil before it was corrected.
The NYT issues corrections all the time. So does Esquire. But Pierce is right about the double standard. Bush didn’t have to pardon Neil because Neil wasn’t victimized by a politicized Democratic prosecutor and thus was able to commit far more serious crimes without one worry that he would ever pay a price.
Whereas the so-called liberal media is up in arms because Biden’s pardon of a crime that was only prosecuted because the Republicans did not like the plea deal and pressured the unethical prosecutor into retracting it.
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