Biden pardons threaten a reputation. Trump’s threaten a nation | Opinion
On Monday, the day with two presidents, our pair of commanders in chief both offered examples of how the pardon power can be abused. One showed how the power can darken a president’s reputation. The other much more seriously showed how pardon power can threaten the stability of our democracy.
Biden solidified the perception that his family is sleazy by pardoning the whole lot — James, Sarah, Valerie, John and Francis — for anything they may have done during the time he was vice president, a presidential candidate and president between 2014 and 2025.
True, Donald Trump had threatened to use criminal investigations to take revenge on his political enemies, but a criminal investigation was only a plausible route for such abuse because James and Hunter Biden had apparently made selling access to Biden into the family business to the tune of eight figures in payments over those years.
Biden deepened the mystery by lying about his contacts with James and Hunter, as well as the access their clients — some of whom were foreign — had with him as vice president and then president. Whatever the truth, it is a cliche in Washington that the scandal is not what is illegal, but how much is perfectly legal. There can be a lot of unethical smoke without any illegal fire.
But there is no doubt about the illegality of the conduct that Trump condoned later on Monday with more than 1,000 pardons and more than a dozen sentence commutations that may later turn into pardons. In addition, Trump has ordered pending cases against hundreds of defendants to be dismissed in a way that means they can never be filed again.
It used to be a matter of bipartisan consensus that assaulting and even injuring police officers was wrong. Judges and juries had found that is exactly what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol in dozens of cases pardoned or commuted by Trump.
That there would be many pardons for the Jan. 6 rioters who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election was no surprise to those who follow Trump. Before the American people returned him to office, he said exactly that.
But there was an expectation, supported by Trump backers and confidants alike, that clemency would not extend to the most violent insurgents who attacked police officers.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said only days ago that “peaceful protesters should be pardoned, but violent criminals should not.” Vice President J.D. Vance said earlier in January that “if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
Trump insider Jason Miller told CNN that “President Trump has said we’re going to look through each of the cases individually” and that “we do not support in any way, shape or form, anyone who’s been violent towards law enforcement or things of that nature.”
If Trump and his aides looked at the cases individually, then they came to the conclusion that assaulting U.S. Capitol Police is just dandy. That’s a dangerous endorsement of political violence, one that will come back to haunt Trump in the months to come.
Indeed, unthinkable violence stalked Trump’s campaign. He was nearly killed by a would-be assassin in a Pennsylvania field, and later a sniper set up on a Trump golf course to try to end the president’s life with a precisely targeted attack from under a bush.
And the threat of political violence is not far-fetched. In just one month last year, the Capitol Police investigated more than 700 threats against members of Congress, according to testimony from the police chief. Moreover, support for political violence is growing among both Democrats and Republicans. One poll found that before the election, 12% of Republicans supported using violence to return Trump to office. Twelve percent of Democrats supported violence to keep that from happening.
Trump’s pardons and commutations not only excuse past political violence — they give the green light for future violence if perpetrated to further Trump’s political ambitions.
Monday was a day of ill-considered pardons. One set will haunt Joe Biden’s reputation for years to come. The other may haunt us all.
This story was originally published January 22, 2025 at 5:06 AM.
