OPINION:
President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden undermines the rule of law in the United States (“Biden faces bipartisan backlash for reversal on pardon for son Hunter: ‘Got this wrong,’” web, Dec. 1). He is one of only four presidents to have pardoned a family member.
On Sept. 5, when Hunter Biden suspiciously changed his plea to guilty at the last minute (preventing a trial that could have been damaging to his father) it paved the way for his pardon as soon as the election was over. It was “the switch in time.” In effect, the president also pardoned himself, since the accusations that have been made about his receiving foreign money from China and Ukraine were done through Hunter on behalf of “the Big Guy.”
As a senator, Mr. Biden sought to block the Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991. Why? Because, according to Mr. Biden, of the men’s failure to meet Mr. Biden’s own high standards as a lawyer and legislator. Yet Justice Thomas has proved himself to be the star judge on the Supreme Court.
On July 1, when the Supreme Court held that Mr. Trump was immune from criminal prosecution, hypocrite Mr. Biden complained about the ruling on the grounds that “no one is above the law, not even the president.”
Mr. Biden’s pardon of his son (and effectively himself) confirms the veracity of allegations that Attorney General Merrick Garland and Democratic prosecutors around the country were trying to exile the popular Mr. Trump in order to hold onto power.
This is precisely the sort of thing William Safire was talking about when he discussed “the misrule of law” in a 1997 op-ed: “In Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, dictators used the power of a corrupted and compliant judiciary to cloak with legitimacy the regime’s need to lock up, torture or drive out any who dared oppose them. That same device — the misrule of law — is being used today.”
ANDREW DELANEY
St. Louis
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