Alan Raul: The Biden Pardon is Dubious and Dangerous

Alan Raul is a former Associate White House Counsel for President Reagan, and serves as Board Secretary of the Society for the Rule of Law.

President Biden’s decision to grant an unprecedentedly broad pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, is appalling. For constitutional conservatives like myself who have been highly critical of and deeply concerned about Donald Trump, it is essential to call out transgressions when they arise from the left as well as the right. Though the President possesses an unqualified constitutional power to pardon anyone, including his son, a pardon that disrespects the rule of law by absolving the politically connected is fundamentally bad for the country.

While I certainly understand any parent’s justifiable compassion for the tribulations of their progeny, a President must also love the Constitution passionately. In this case, the two could have been reconciled. The American people would understand the actions of Joe Biden to protect his son if he had only extended clemency by commuting the threat of incarceration from the federal firearm and tax crimes with which Hunter was charged (and to which Hunter had previously pled guilty before a judge rejected a plea agreement).

But expunging the crimes altogether after the President expressly and unequivocally promised not to do so—indeed, he specifically promised to respect the decision of a jury convicting his son—places the Biden family above the law. Even worse, in his statement defending the pardon, he baselessly condemned the criminal prosecutions as “raw politics” even though he conceded that the criminal plea deal his son had agreed to was “a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.” So how is making the cases disappear entirely a fair and reasonable disposition of equal justice under law?

For President Biden to have granted such an extraordinary, unconditional filial pardon was, simply, to place family over country. This sets a dubious and potentially dangerous precedent. The Constitution’s system of checks and balances works when members of the three branches respect their fiduciary obligations to the American people and the principle of equality under the law. Senior officeholders, particularly Presidents, must have the personal strength to ensure they can stop themselves from exercising raw political power just because they can. That is what good character in a President means—at a minimum.

Constitutional governance requires honor, devotion to duty and self-restraint from our public servants. At a time when the Supreme Court has essentially placed the President above the law by extending nearly plenary criminal immunity to the most powerful person in the world, and the President-elect is vowing to deploy the power of government to exact retribution from his political adversaries, it is deeply unfortunate that President Biden used his raw power to contribute to the further erosion of our legal norms.

It is important that other current and former officeholders speak out about the impropriety of the Biden pardon in order to help reinforce the constitutional and democratic first principle that even Presidents and their families are subject to the rule of law.