Joe Biden is not known for his audaciousness, but he still made the incredibly bold decision on Dec. 1 to grant his son Hunter Biden a sweeping pardon.
The second Biden son has been a political target for years, as Joe Biden’s detractors work to punish him and, by extension, his father. That’s not to say he’s never done anything wrong — on the contrary, numerous investigations have yielded proof that Biden engaged in criminal acts on more than one occasion. He was even slapped with a trio of felony charges for lying on a federal firearms application back in 2018, and — despite the overall blandness of his actions (he had the gun for less than two weeks in total, and never used it) — he’s been among the far-right’s primary villains ever since.
All of that led to major pushback against his early December pardon, largely from figures on the far right. Even Democrats are concerned over the use of executive privilege, though many people understand the motivation behind it. At the end of the day, we all know Hunter would have become a scapegoat for the notoriously vengeful Trump, and Biden was just trying to protect his kid. Using the office of the presidency to do so is questionable, but it’s also within his right as the nation’s commander in chief.
His crimes also pale massively in comparison to those of previously pardoned figures. As noted by our lord and savior Mark Hamill over on Bluesky, compared to Trump’s first-term pardons, Hunter is “an absolute angel.”
Among the nearly 150 pardons issued by Trump in his first term are quite a few deeply concerning instances, including people whose crimes were directly related to Trump and his own criminal activity. He pardoned Kristian Mark Saucier despite the severity of his offense — he was sentenced over “unauthorized retention of defense information,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice — and of course a slew of the Jan. 6 rioters who attempted to overthrow the government.
He also pardoned Chalmer Lee Williams, and funny enough he also faced charges related to firearms. Rather than simply purchasing a pistol without properly identifying himself as an addict, however, Williams was charged with conspiracy to “steal firearms and other goods as part of an interstate shipment; theft from shipment in interstate commerce; theft of firearms shipped in interstate commerce.”
That seems a bit more serious than Hunter’s offense, but that won’t stop Trump, Lauren Boebert, and all his rabble-rousing rioters from clutching their pearls at the thought of a criminal walking free. And of course let’s not forget the slew of pardons that came down just days before Trump left office, many of them targeting those aforementioned insurrectionists. This man pardoned people convicted of wire fraud, of insider trading, of espionage, of “conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
Most notably, he pardoned numerous people facing almost identical charges to Hunter himself. Those gun charges are seen as a lot less damning when they’re carried out by someone on the right side of the aisle, but no one’s screeching about the second amendment in defense of Hunter Biden.
The clear political motivations for the outcry against the second Biden son are not surprising, but Hamill’s list is a refreshing reminder of just how absurd the pushback is. This is not about Hunter committing crimes, and it’s most certainly not about a fraudulent firearms application. It’s about getting payback for Trump’s own convictions wherever they can, no matter how absurd it makes them look.