Presidential Pardons have always been used at least once by every president who has held office, and will likely continue to be used, as long as the president has been granted that power.
A Presidential Pardon clears a person of any federal crimes that they have committed. Their federal criminal record is scrubbed clean and if they are in prison, they are set free.
When Donald Trump was in his first term as president he used the Presidential Pardon to clear one hundred forty-four people of their federal crimes. One of them happened to have a certain personal connection to Trump, Charles Kushner.
Kushner is the billionaire founder of the real estate company Kushner Companies. He pled guilty to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign donations. He was sentenced to two years in prison and had to pay over $500,000 to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). He is also the father-in-law to Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter.
Leading up to the 2020 Election, Biden criticized Trump for pardoning Kushner. Biden spoke out saying a president pardoning family members for their crimes just because they have the power isn’t right, and he would never do that for his son, even though his son is the only immediate family that Joe has left.
Biden’s son, Hunter, had been charged with multiple federal crimes dating back to 2014, including committing tax fraud and fraud on a handgun application.
However, on December 1, President Biden made a controversial announcement as he pardoned his son from the crimes he committed from 2014 to 2024. This drew much criticism from across the country.
Biden had contradicted himself, going against his word to reprieve his son of any criminal charges.
Some say Biden did this because he believes Trump would make sure the courts would go harder on Hunter Biden, with Trump previously stating “[David Weiss] gave out a traffic ticket instead of a death sentence”. In this case, Biden wanted to make sure that his son was out of harm’s way.
While some think this was too far, many others believe that it was one of the president-elect’s common exaggerations to help him emphasize his point, saying Trump doesn’t really want Hunter executed, but just wants a stronger punishment for his crimes.
Another likely scenario was that Biden made promises about not pardoning his son at the beginning of his term, in an attempt to get voters on his side, when he was still preparing to run again. Now that he doesn’t have to worry about being re-elected, he can essentially only worry about what he finds most important before he leaves office.
