Joe Biden ostensibly ran for president more than four years ago promising to bring America back to normalcy. He presented himself as a defender of American political norms.
It was bad enough last month when Biden issued a blanket pardon for his son, Hunter, for federal crimes he may have committed from January 1, 2014, through December 1, 2024. But on his way out of the presidency, Biden went further and granted sweeping pardons to figures like Anthony Fauci and members of Biden’s family.
Presidents of course have the pardon power thanks to the Constitution. And many presidents have used that power imprudently. Biden is certainly not the first to bail out people with the pardon power who didn’t deserve it.
However, Biden has now set an alarming and norm-breaking precedent with his sweeping preemptive pardons.
While Biden portrayed these pardons as shielding people from unjustified retaliatory prosecutions under Trump, there will now be a precedent for future presidents, including Trump, to invoke similar language to shield even the guilty from future accountability.
Biden’s pardons will also no doubt contribute to deepening cynicism about government and how it really works.
One beneficiary of Biden’s pardons, California Sen. Adam Schiff, who in 2020 was asked by MSNBC’s Joy Reid about preemptive pardons: “Have you ever heard of somebody getting a preemptive pardon who was innocent of all crime, just an innocent person? Have you ever heard of that, just somebody getting a blanket pardon and they’re an innocent person?”
Schiff answered, “No. I think that in the cases, the very few cases, where there have been prospective pardons, such as Ford pardoning Nixon for whatever he may have done during the presidency, there was some idea of the potential criminal liability facing Richard Nixon. Here, it’s an effort not only to prospectively pardon people for things they have not yet been charged with and may never be charged with, but also it’s the president’s own family. It’s people that have been covering up for the president.”
Many Americans can see and hear the disconnect. For all his intentions, Biden failed the American people. Is it any wonder Trump is back?