Normally I am not a gambling person even though in my youth I spent many weekends in Las Vegas. I’d set aside $100 to gamble with and add any winnings to that pile, but once it was gone, I was done. Afterward, I turned my attention to the food, shopping and shows. Similarly, I rarely buy lottery tickets unless the jackpots are huge, or the drawing is on a Friday the 13th.
But I would have doubled my Vegas wager gambling that I’d be the odd man out with our recent Editorial Board’s opinion about the pardon of Hunter Biden — and I would have won. (“Editorial: Biden’s disgraceful pardon of his son is nothing less than Trumpian,” Dec. 3.)
Unlike the majority of my fellow board members, when I heard the news that President Joe Biden had pardoned his son, I said, Hooray! There’s one less smirk we’ll have to see, one less target of retribution for President-elect Donald Trump.
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On Dec. 1, Jonathan Chait wrote in The Atlantic of Hunter’s pardon that the president’s son walked through “a door no average American could access.”
Bullfeathers. Didn’t Trump pardon his son-in-law’s father of corruption charges at the end of his first term? He did indeed. Now Charles Kushner has been nominated as ambassador to France. Throughout the last election cycle, Trump hinted he will pardon the insurrectionists who desecrated the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after he’s inaugurated.
President Biden was completely correct in saying that his son was targeted unfairly in his criminal prosecutions. The potential punishment didn’t fit the crimes. How many other people would be looking at serious jail time for lying to federal workers on an application for the purchase of a gun, or for screwing up income taxes?
I would have expected that any other person not named Biden would have been given probation for both crimes and a fine for the second one, since he’d paid the money back. But since Joe Biden’s Republican foes failed to find anything to prove the president had profited from or contributed to any of his son’s misdeeds, the younger Biden is left to pay the excessive price.
I cannot imagine any parent remaining silent and watching his child be hurt if he could prevent it. Protecting him with a pardon is what I would have expected a father to do.
I don’t care that President Biden went back on his prior statements statements saying he wouldn’t pardon Hunter, even though that will give Trump more fodder for name-calling and I-told-you-so’s about his own claims that the Justice Department has been politicized.
The election proved that the American people do not care one iota about Trump’s crimes or his lack of morality. Yet President Biden is expected to take the high road and sacrifice his kid to a justice system Trump will soon control?
In my early 20s, I teasingly asked my mother if she’d lie to the police to alibi me if I was ever charged with a crime. This was a ridiculous question to ask a woman who could not lie with a straight face, much less condone a criminal act. I was surprised when she said, “I’d have to think about it. It would depend upon what crime you committed.”
This is exactly what I feel about Biden’s pardon of his son. If he’d murdered someone and there was incontrovertible proof, I’d hope his father would not have pardoned him. Otherwise, he’s just a scapegoat, targeted because of his name.
