Hunter Biden has been convicted of lying about his drug use while purchasing a firearm, and tax evasion.
Dec 5, 2024 05:24 IST First published on: Dec 5, 2024 at 04:55 IST
A presidential pardon in the US — and across democracies — is an opportunity to occupy the moral high ground. Joe Biden’s “complete and unconditional” pardon to his son, Hunter, doesn’t merely represent a retreat and abdication. It also reeks of a hypocrisy that undermines the Democratic Party, and lends weight to the criticisms that, for all their righteous rhetoric, its leaders are in it only for themselves. As recently as June, Biden had said that “I abide by the jury decision… I will not pardon him [Hunter]”. The White House repeated Biden’s claim several times this year. The arguments in defence of outgoing president Biden’s actions — that the conviction was part of a “witch hunt” and that sans the pardon, Hunter would be persecuted by a Donald Trump-led White House and Justice Department — merely echo the grouse of the Republicans over the last four years. That other US presidents have also questionably used the pardon is whataboutery. Given how Washington champions a “rules-based order” worldwide, and chides other countries on this count, the pardon seems all the more unpardonable.
Hunter Biden has been convicted of lying about his drug use while purchasing a firearm, and tax evasion. His actions and conviction were indeed used by the Republicans during the election campaign — just as the cases against Trump were a major part of Kamala Harris’s platform. Biden’s reasoning for the pardon echoes Trump’s response to the cases against him: “I also believe raw politics has… led to a miscarriage of justice.” This is not merely a father ensuring his son does not go to prison. That few Democrats have criticised his action is telling. It speaks of a degradation of liberal politics which sees an action as deplorable only when it is committed by an opponent. Finally, the argument that the pardon is constitutional and legal distracts from the larger issue: A pardon that is not given for ethical reasons — for a free speech activist whistleblower or protestor — violates the justice principle.
In the aftermath of the US election — and the collapse of centrist and centre-left governments in many countries — liberal politics faces a challenge and a question: Why are voters who once supported such parties abandoning them? A part of the answer may well lie in the widening chasm between the talk of equality of opportunity and the reality of selective justice. In the US, Biden’s decision and the lack of criticism from his own camp has given voters no reason to change that view.
