The PAMELA Project: A Rejoinder of Biden’s Past, and the Hope for a Successive 2020 Presidential Pardon
“If President Biden doesn’t grant clemency to all the people that are sitting in federal prison on January 20 then he will be a failure,” Eisen says. There’s a lot of time.
While Biden’s most recent — and most personal — pardon is in the spotlight, Eisen hopes he will take this opportunity to afford the same grace to many others who are already serving what she calls excessive sentences.
More than 60 members of Congress wrote a letter to Biden asking that he use his authority to help people with cases, including elderly and chronically ill people, people on death row, and women who were punished for defending themselves against their abusers.
The Brennan Center, which describes itself as a nonpartisan law and policy organization, is among the groups urging the president to commute all death sentences to life without parole.
Even so, Eisen says there is much more Biden could do before his term ends — including addressing the more than 8,000 petitions for clemency pending before his administration.
Pot possession, mail fraud, and murder have all been pardoned by presidents. They started pardoning turkeys so they could not be at the dinner table.
Before he was pardoned in 2020, Trump cited his philanthropic record, saying “of reform and charity”, after he served about two years in prison. Trump announced on the weekend that he intends to appoint Charles Kushner as ambassador to France.
Charles Kushner, himself a real estate billionaire, pleaded guilty in 2004 to filing false tax returns, lying to the Federal Election Commission and retaliating against a witness: his own brother-in-law.
He had previously pardoned many other members of his inner circle who had been charged with various crimes, including Republican operative Roger Stone, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner — the father of his senior advisor, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
He got much more flack for pardoning Marc Rich, a disgraced financier who had fled to Switzerland after being indicted for evading more than $48 million in taxes, among other charges. Rich’s ex-wife Denise had donated over $1 million to Democrats and Clinton’s presidential library, raising questions and a Justice Department investigation into the pardon, which ultimately found no wrongdoing by Clinton.
President Clinton pardoned Roger on his last day in office, after Roger had been sentenced to one year in jail on drug charges.
Presidents have often granted pardons since George Washington pardoned the two men for their role in the Whiskey Rebellion. Many have been cause for celebration as well as controversy over the years.
After Eugene Debs was sentenced to a decade for speaking out against World War I, Warren Harding and Richard Nixon both pardoned him.
The only limits — at least according to the Constitution — are that a president can only grant pardons for federal criminal offenses, not state or civil offenses, and cannot issue pardons in cases of impeachment.
Eisen says that clemency is an expression of mercy, and often tempers the harsh, inequitable results of the criminal justice system.
Ross Douthat: I think it’s important to stress that Biden always kept Hunter close, within the larger aura of his own power, in ways that likely helped his son trade on his dad’s name even as his own life was completely out of control. This pardon is a continuation or completion of that closeness: It’s a moral failure because of the president’s inability to separate his position and his son’s lifestyle from the family’s inner circle. A clearer separation would have been better not just for the president and the country, but also for Hunter himself — even if he’s benefiting from it now, at the last.
Even though the charges against Trump and Biden are very different, his rationale matches Donald Trump’s claims of a politicized Justice Department. Trump was charged with trying to overturn the 2020 election and endangering national security through his handling of classified documents, though both cases were dismissed after his 2024 election victory.
“I think the justice system is good, but I also think that raw politics has corrupted it and led to a miscarriage of justice,” Biden said. “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”
Biden claimed that no reasonable person who looked at the facts of Hunter’s cases could reach a different conclusion than that of his father.
Biden blamed his opponents in Congress for instigating the charges against Hunter and unraveling his would-be plea deal through political pressure, though the special counsel leading the firearm probe has denied facing political interference.
Hunter Biden, the father of a teenager, was sentenced to six months in prison for lying about his crack cocaine addiction and failing to pay his taxes
The president has said publicly that he would not pardon his son — but reversed that promise in an announcement on Sunday in which he called the prosecution unfair and selective.
Hunter Biden was sentenced to six months in prison for lying about his crack cocaine addiction and failing to pay his taxes, after he bought a gun. The cases were supposed to be handed down later this month.
It is important for people with addiction to understand that their addiction is not an excuse for breaking the law. You think Biden should have preferred his son to be in office, even though he has legitimate powers as president.