Will Biden par­don Trump? Hunter clemen­cy gift opens door for once-unthink­able move

Amid the fall­out from irri­tat­ed Democ­rats who accuse the pres­i­dent of an “improp­er use of pow­er,” some make the case that Biden par­don­ing Trump could even the scales and extend an olive branch to the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion.

“The slate should be wiped clean. I think it’s by far the most bal­anced way to do it,” retir­ing Sen. Joe Manchin (I‑WV), who cau­cus­es with Democ­rats, told the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er. “Here in Con­gress, with the sen­a­tors and con­gress­peo­ple, it would bal­ance things out and calm things down.”

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Sen. John Fet­ter­man (D‑PA) made the case that Trump, like Hunter Biden, has faced a “weaponized” legal process in the case of fal­si­fy­ing busi­ness records for a hush-mon­ey pay­ment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

“Those cas­es were clear­ly weaponized against them for polit­i­cal gain. That’s unde­ni­able,” he told Politi­co. “That was always inap­pro­pri­ate in my opin­ion. And a par­don in both are appro­pri­ate. And, for me, that col­lec­tive­ly has dam­aged America’s trust in these insti­tu­tions.”

Hunter Biden was crim­i­nal­ly con­vict­ed in two fed­er­al felony cas­es and was await­ing sen­tenc­ing this month.

In June, a jury in Delaware con­vict­ed Biden of three counts relat­ed to lying about drug use on a form when pur­chas­ing a hand­gun and car­ried a sen­tence of up to 25 years in prison. In a sep­a­rate case in Sep­tem­ber, Biden plead­ed guilty to nine charges relat­ed to fail­ing to pay income tax­es on mil­lions of dol­lars worth of income, which car­ried a sen­tence of up to 17 years in prison.

But Biden issued a sweep­ing par­don on Sun­day of his son’s con­vic­tions, in a rever­sal of his past com­ments claim­ing he would not inter­vene. The par­don cov­ers the past decade going back to the begin­ning of 2014 for any crime Hunter Biden “has com­mit­ted or may have com­mit­ted.”

The blow­back on Biden was imme­di­ate and bipar­ti­san. Democ­rats bemoaned Biden’s actions as a “set­back” that would “erode” Amer­i­cans’ trust while Repub­li­cans claimed it as anoth­er instance of a two-tiered jus­tice sys­tem.

“As a father, I get it. But as some­one who wants peo­ple to believe in pub­lic ser­vice again, it’s a set­back,” said Rep. Greg Lands­man (D‑OH).

The prospects of Biden par­don­ing Trump may seem out­landish, giv­en the Democrat’s long­time warn­ing to vot­ers that the Repub­li­can pos­es a “threat to democ­ra­cy.” Such a move would ful­ly under­mine Biden’s rhetoric and elic­it fury from fel­low Democ­rats extend­ing beyond their dis­plea­sure for par­don­ing Hunter.

In three addi­tion­al crim­i­nal cas­es beyond the fal­si­fied doc­u­ments for the hush-mon­ey pay­ment, Trump was charged for mis­han­dling clas­si­fied doc­u­ments after leav­ing office, and sep­a­rate state and fed­er­al charges for try­ing to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion.

Sev­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers had lit­tle appetite to enter­tain the notion of a par­don or flat­ly reject­ed it.

“It’s a ter­ri­ble idea,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D‑OR) said, declin­ing to elab­o­rate.

“I haven’t even con­sid­ered it,” said Sen. Chris Mur­phy (D‑CT).

Sim­i­lar­ly, Sen. Richard Blu­men­thal (D‑CT) said he would not “spec­u­late about any oth­er par­don.”

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Sen. Kirsten Gilli­brand (D‑NY), expect­ed to be the next chair of Sen­ate Democ­rats’ cam­paign arm for the 2026 elec­tions, declined to stake out a posi­tion and said the deci­sion was entire­ly left to Biden.

“It would send a mes­sage that there’s been a trend towards polit­i­cal pros­e­cu­tions,” Gilli­brand told the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er. “It’s cer­tain­ly some­thing he can con­sid­er, but it’s entire­ly his deci­sion.”

Pro­po­nents of a par­don for Trump say it could ease some of the polit­i­cal ten­sions Biden is fac­ing.

“I think Biden and his par­ty would prob­a­bly ben­e­fit more from it than they would lose,” said Jon Schaff, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at North­ern State Uni­ver­si­ty in South Dako­ta.

“It would be seen as a move of comi­ty, of heal­ing,” Schaff added. “There is a rel­a­tive­ly broad con­sen­sus that our pol­i­tics have been embit­tered and our pol­i­tics lacks in any kind of mag­na­nim­i­ty. And this would be the mag­nan­i­mous move by Biden.”

Biden jus­ti­fied his flip-flop on par­don­ing Hunter by argu­ing his son was sin­gled out by the Jus­tice Depart­ment for polit­i­cal rea­sons and the vic­tim of selec­tive pros­e­cu­tion. “Enough is enough,” the pres­i­dent said in his Sun­day state­ment that railed against “raw pol­i­tics” infect­ing the jus­tice sys­tem.

The tone was Trump-esque as the for­mer pres­i­dent has insist­ed his charges were only because his polit­i­cal ene­mies want to destroy him. If Biden is seri­ous about end­ing anoth­er “mis­car­riage of jus­tice,” Trump’s argu­ment has long been he’s the ulti­mate vic­tim of unfound­ed pros­e­cu­tions.

Some draw sim­i­lar­i­ties to the sit­u­a­tion Biden finds him­self to that of for­mer Pres­i­dent Ger­ald Ford par­don­ing Richard Nixon in the wake of the Water­gate scan­dal. “My fel­low Amer­i­cans, our long nation­al night­mare is over,” Ford would quip after tak­ing an oath admin­is­tered by Chief Jus­tice War­ren Burg­er.

Accord­ing to recent sta­tis­tics from the Office of the Par­don Attor­ney, Biden has received at least 11,863 requests for clemen­cy and par­dons. Of those requests, 25 par­dons and 132 com­mu­ta­tions have been grant­ed.

Yet a blan­ket par­don for Trump would come with its own set of issues.

Cayce Myers, a pro­fes­sor at Vir­ginia Tech’s School of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, pushed back against a Biden par­don of Trump as remov­ing a per­son­al issue from the polit­i­cal are­na.

“It seri­ous­ly calls into ques­tion the pres­i­den­tial par­don pow­er and it calls into ques­tion, is it abused, and is it legit­i­mate? And is it some­thing that needs to be revis­it­ed?” Myers said. “From a per­spec­tive of Biden … I think it would be crit­i­cized heav­i­ly by Democ­rats. I think any Repub­li­can that’s call­ing for Biden to do that knows that he’s not. It’s just sort of a polit­i­cal talk­ing point to under­score the bias in his own par­don of his son.”

Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty law pro­fes­sor Bri­an Kalt fore­shad­owed “out­rage” from Democ­rats and a failed attempt at uni­ty.

“Repub­li­cans would like it, but it’s not like they would change their minds about Biden over­all,” Kalt said. “I don’t see the pay­off for him, and I don’t think it would bring any sort of uni­ty.”

“It’s too late. If he par­dons Trump it’s going to be seen as noth­ing oth­er than an attempt to reduce the back­lash,” added Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fel­low in the Meese Cen­ter for Legal and Judi­cial Stud­ies at the Her­itage Foun­da­tion.

“If he want­ed to do this, he should have had a large num­ber of par­don war­rants that he was going to sign, that he signed for all sorts of peo­ple, includ­ing Don­ald Trump and his son,” he added.

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Notably, pres­i­den­tial par­dons only extend to fed­er­al crimes and would not ben­e­fit Trump’s felony con­vic­tion in New York in his hush mon­ey case or the charges against him in the Geor­gia elec­tion sub­ver­sion case for efforts to over­turn the state’s results. Only gov­er­nors pos­sess the pow­er to ful­ly cleanse Trump of his legal trou­bles at the state lev­el.

Spe­cial coun­sel Jack Smith has moved to drop the two fed­er­al cas­es he was pros­e­cut­ing against Trump, which are for alleged­ly mis­han­dling clas­si­fied doc­u­ments and efforts at the fed­er­al lev­el to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion.

It remains unclear whether the Geor­gia case brought by Ful­ton Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney Fani Willis will have to wait until 2029 when Trump is out of office. Kalt doubt­ed legal cas­es would con­tin­ue to plague Trump after a sec­ond term.

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“It is unlike­ly that Trump would face pros­e­cu­tion after leav­ing office any­way, at this point,” said Kalt, the law pro­fes­sor. “But if he did, and if a par­don was appro­pri­ate, it would be for the new pres­i­dent at that time to issue a par­don.”

The Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er reached out to the White House for com­ment.