It’s not just that President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter. It’s how he did it that’s upsetting some fellow Democrats.
The president issued a "full and unconditional pardon" for any offenses Hunter Biden has “committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024," according to a White House statement issued Sunday night.
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The pardon comes after Biden repeatedly said he would not use his executive authority to pardon his son or commute his son's sentence. And in his statement, Biden said he was granting the pardon because his son had been “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.”
That, as Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona told NBC News’ “Meet the Press Now” on Monday, plays against years of core Democratic Party policy positioning — and into the way President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have described his investigations and prosecutions.
“I'm pretty angry because it's going to be incredibly important that political leaders of both parties stand up for the independence of the Department of Justice, stand up to these attacks suggesting that the Department of Justice has become politicized and needs to be dismantled or the FBI needs to be dismantled,” Stanton said. (See more from Stanton below.)
Trump, in response to Biden’s action, raised the issue of the defendants and people convicted of violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when he was pushing to overturn the 2020 election results.
"Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Special counsel David Weiss's office on Monday appeared to push back on Biden's claim that its prosecutions of Hunter Biden were politically motivated, calling such allegations "baseless." In a court filing challenging Hunter Biden's request to have his California tax and fraud indictment dismissed in light of his father's pardon, Weiss noted that a number of judges had already rejected the younger Biden’s claims of vindictive prosecution.
While a handful of members of Congress have spoken out about the pardon so far, one notable group has been silent — those Democrats seen as early possibilities to run for president in 2028. Watch this space going forward.
