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I have to admit darkly enjoying the NPC's switching their talking points from "Biden respects institutions and would never attack the legitimacy of our justice system by pardoning Hunter Biden" to "Biden proves what a great father he is by protecting his son from the selective and unjust prosecution of the politicized DOJ". But it is going to cause me to have a stroke at Christmas when my FIL sperges out about Trump apropos of nothing.
I'm continually amazed at the cognitive dissonance of the people who buy into the rehabilitation of Joe Biden. This is a man with a career longer than most of us have been alive. A career consistently marked by crass shameless lies, retarded own goals, and a long reputation for being highly inappropriate with women and children. So much so Obama was joking about Biden's "special backrubs". Who's raised deeply troubled and dysfunctional children, so bursting at the seems with the horrors of their parentage that it continually leaks out through forgotten journals and laptops.
And somehow people believed in the span of 6 months of propaganda that Biden was an honest, decent man, and his administration would be a "return to normalcy". Ignore everything you knew about the man for 50 years. Ignore that his previous failed presidential run became a historically remembered punchline of a campaign.
I've seen a few people remark that the pardon isn't even a pardon for specific enumerated crimes, but a blanket pardon for everything Hunter did from 2014 through now. Things we know, things we don't know, you name it. Is that typical? It reads like one of those Hollywood tropes where some supervillian has a hostage tied to a biological weapon hidden in a school for blind molested girls, and demands a blanket pardon or he'll give all those poor kids Super AIDS.
It would tickle me pink if Biden turned out to be just like Trump, in that the pardon is written so poorly and hastily that it doesn't hold up in court. But somehow I doubt such a sloppily issued order will receive an ounce of the legal scrutiny a Trump order received.
I don't think it is atypical in cases that warrant it. In cases where crimes may have been committed over a period of time pardons will apply to a time frame in addition to specific crimes. Otherwise the pardon has potential to not feel very pardon-like in a few years. Who knows what kind of goofy antics Hunter was up to we don't know about? The draft dodgers pardons, general amnesty pardons, and a pardon like the one Nixon received apply to chunks of time rather than a pardon for only a specific crime.
As I understand, presidential pardons are basically magical spells. Make'em how you want. Biden wants his son safe from prosecution, so he casts a more powerful spell. Biden may know there is more dirt to find, fears or knows of Republican intentions to go digging, or simply doesn't trust his son with an ounce of mud to be honest about things. If you're going to pardon him properly, then it's best to pardon him for the time period he was a bad boy.
The breadth of Hunter Biden's pardon is unprecedented, with Ford's pardoning of Nixon the closest comparison. That source goes through other presidential pardons in history for comparison. Since it's MSN, I take it as a sign that Democratic Party partisans are less-than-pleased with Biden pissing in their well.
Okay, fair enough. Kudos to me for thinking of all the same examples as an MSN journalist. Eek. Bad of me to assume that should mean more. So sure, unprecedented in some ways, but it adheres to the spirit of the pardon in this case. For the good and bad reasons
It makes sense to be unprecedented. We don't see many mob bosses who require big blocks of time washed away receive pardons. That article led me to reporting on Bush 2. At the end of his second term in 2008 he issued then rescinded a pardon. All to avoid a look of impropriety. The concern? The recipient had donated to Republican candidates. How far we've come in 15 short years!
Another thing that article led me to was this 2020 paper from a bygone and never ending era. I skimmed. It's by a UConn professor that argues the presidential pardon has a "specificity requirement" based on the practices in English common law at the time of the American Founders. It doesn't seem like a great paper, but maybe I will finish it and report back.
Yes a lot of people believe pardon power is unfettered but what if SCOTUS ruled it wasn't and you had to specify crimes? What good would a pardon be if you couldn't get your son off the hook because he probably can't even remember all his crimes? I suppose it'd be fine if it was more like a guilty plea, so long as it still had broad power.
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