WASHINGTON \u2014 Democrats spent much of the presidential campaign warning that Donald Trump is a threat to the rule of law, to faith in public institutions \u2014 even to the truth itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In pardoning his son<\/a>, President Joe Biden undercut each of those arguments while giving Trump political cover to pursue the far-right ambitions that Democrats fear will damage the country, some <\/strong>party lawmakers and strategists said Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sweeping pardon means Hunter Biden won\u2019t face any punishment for criminal convictions in two separate cases, one involving gun charges, the other tax evasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond that, the pardon that Biden had repeatedly vowed he would never give insulates his son from any federal offenses he may have committed for the last 10 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A father\u2019s natural wish to protect a son who has struggled with drug and alcohol addiction is something people may appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDo you know of any fathers that wouldn\u2019t have done the same?\u201d retiring Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W-Va., asked NBC News on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., told reporters, “I’ll put it this way \u2014 if it was my son, I’d pardon him, too.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, in justifying the pardon, Biden went further than a father\u2019s love, impugning federal prosecutors in much the same way Trump has in claiming he\u2019s a victim of partisan persecution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hunter Biden, the president said in a statement Sunday, was \u201cselectively and unfairly prosecuted.\u201d The legal saga was \u201cinfected\u201d with \u201craw politics\u201d that created a \u201cmiscarriage of justice,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nowhere does he use Trump\u2019s favorite phrase \u2014 \u201cWitch hunt!\u201d \u2014 but the meaning is the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A senior law enforcement official called the White House\u2019s approach \u201cridiculous\u201d and noted that it was Biden who decided shortly after he took office in 2021 to keep David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware, in place to continue an investigation into Hunter Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey took a gamble that didn\u2019t play out as they hoped,\u201d former Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having spared his son any punishment, Biden and, by extension, fellow Democratic leaders may lose some of the moral authority needed to object to future pardons that Trump grants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump has already said he\u2019d “absolutely” consider pardoning<\/a> each of the rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. If he follows through, Trump may try to blunt the fallout by invoking the Biden pardon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhatever Trump plans for pardons of the Jan. 6 felons, he\u2019ll use it as a justification,\u201d said Ty Cobb, a former special counsel in the Trump White House who has become a critic of the ex-president. \u201cAnd certainly, his supporters will accept it as a justification. That\u2019s a tragedy for the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rationale Biden used in pardoning his son provides grist for Trump\u2019s argument that there\u2019s rot in the judicial system that needs to be removed. It helps Trump make his case and potentially fire some of the career attorneys trying to enforce the law, critics of the pardon said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt used Biden’s pardon in an interview with Fox News on Monday night to buttress Trump’s arguments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJoe Biden’s pardon of Hunter Biden proves President Trump’s signature campaign promise to end the weaponization of our justice system needs to happen,\u201d she said, adding: \u201cPresident Trump has made that promise. He’s going to deliver on it. He’s going to root out the corruption.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist, said in an interview: \u201cThe unfortunate thing here is he [Biden] basically has legitimized these accusations against the Justice Department, and that is going to reverberate for the next four years. That\u2019s the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The incoming Trump team already views the Justice Department with plenty of suspicion. An aim of the MAGA movement is to dismantle what adherents call the \u201cdeep state\u201d consisting of career government employees, and the Justice Department is clearly in Trump’s crosshairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump\u2019s pick to head the department, Pam Bondi, has said in the past that prosecutors who filed charges against Trump were members of a “deep state<\/a>” bent on undermining Trump. She said last year that the \u201cprosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Justice Department is among the most powerful and important institutions in the U.S. Prosecutors can upend people\u2019s lives and sap their savings through investigations, trials and subpoenas. Robert H. Jackson, a former U.S. attorney general, cautioned in a speech<\/a> in 1940 that \u201cwhile the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If Americans lose faith in the Justice Department\u2019s impartiality, it can breed cynicism toward the rule of law. Democrats have argued that Trump has fed a collective distrust of institutions like the Justice Department with his repeated claims that he\u2019s a continuing target of rogue prosecutors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, it\u2019s Biden who is straining the rule of law, justifying the pardon on what prosecutors see as the false claim that Hunter Biden is being singled out for political reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A judge has already ruled there is no merit to the idea that Hunter Biden is a victim of selective prosecution. In a ruling filed in April, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi<\/a>, who is overseeing the tax case, said Hunter Biden \u201cfails to present a reasonable inference, let alone clear evidence, of discriminatory effect and discriminatory purpose,” according to an order rejecting his attorneys’ assertions that he had been targeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether it\u2019s Trump or Biden maligning federal prosecutors, trust in government suffers. Indeed, faith in public institutions has been drifting downward in the U.S. since the 1960s, according to the Pew Research Center<\/a>. As of April, only 22% of Americans said they trusted government to do the right thing most of the time. Sixty years ago, the figure was 77%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., said Monday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press Now”: \u201cWe need the American people to have confident in important institutions like the Department of Justice. \u2026 And I think what happened in the last 24 hours has hurt that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., a typically solid Biden ally, condemned the pardon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI just think it was wrong what he did. It\u2019s just going to further erode folks\u2019 confidence in the Department of Justice and in our judicial system at large,\u201d said Peters, who faces re-election in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another casualty of the pardon is a piece of Biden’s legacy. He has always prided himself of being a truth-teller, giving what he calls \u201cmy word as a Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Biden had promised he wouldn\u2019t pardon his son, and he did. That now-false vow was also repeated by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who t<\/a>ried t<\/a>o defend it<\/a> Monday and insisted that Biden hadn’t lied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe said he came to this decision this weekend, and he said he wrestled with this and because he believes in the justice system, but he also believes that the raw politics infected the process and led to a miscarriage of justice,\u201d she told reporters aboard Air Force One.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University presidential historian, said: “The perception that Biden was selling \u2014 ‘I give you my word as a Biden’ \u2014 doesn’t hold up. So, in that case, there’s a further erosion of his legacy.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n