Republicans fume after President Joe Biden pardons his son Hunter
Republicans fume after President Joe Biden pardons his son Hunter
President-elect Donald Trump's communications director responded to Biden's decision without directly naming the president or his son.
Summary
President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden, prompting strong backlash from Republicans.
GOP lawmakers criticized the move as an abuse of power and an attempt to avoid accountability, with figures like Rep. James Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley calling it hypocritical and corrupt.
Biden defended the pardon, citing “selective prosecution” and claiming Hunter was unfairly targeted due to their family connection.
Hunter faced convictions for federal gun and tax charges.
I think Biden should use his pardon power for good. I don't have a huge problem with this, but I want him to do something unexpected. Biden should pardon all the married immigrants after his program was recently shot down in court. For those that don't know, Many immigrants are married to US citizens, but cannot achieve citizenship that you normally would be able to do. It hinges on entering the country Illegally, which requires them to leave for up to 10 years before re applying for citizenship. Biden could pardon the "crime" of illegal entry, this removing the INS statue of not allowing them citizenship.
See the problem with that is. While the president can try to pardon unlawful entry, unlawful entry is a civil offense, meaning, you aren't even entitled to a court appointed lawyer. So the supreme court might try to weigh in on pardons for civil offenses.
But even if the pardon is all legit and pass the supreme court, it doesn't matter, in immigration law, all arrests, all convictions, any juvenile proceeding within the past 5 years, are all visible to USCIS and they are legally allowed to consider them when determining whether or not to allow someone to enter the US, whether or not to deport them, or whether or not to allow adjustment of legal status. Yes ALL records, even pardoned, even if sealed or expunged by court, they see everything. You can visit the USCIS website and see for yourself.
Edit: And oh, even if you are never arrested, but the FBI investigated you a few times, USCIS might have access to those and if the FBI agents wrote bad things on your file, you might have problems with immigration or naturalization. Yea its quite fucked up, but it is what it is.
Everyone needs to play the same game they do.
Is it hypocritical, yeah probably, does he have any reason to answer for it? Naw
Trump just put Kusher in a role .. a person he pardoned for ... "preparing false tax returns, witness retaliation, and making false statements to the FEC" per his own statement.
Right.
People voted this kind of behavior into office, repeatedly. Anyone clutching pearls right now can fuck off.
I sure as hell wouldn't want my son at the mercy of Trumps DOJ.
Right?
Americans don't get to complain about corruption anymore. We gleefully voted for corruption after it was shown to us in pretty much the most blatant way possible and given to us as a choice going forward.
It's who we are now and we voted for it. Complaints will not be forwarded to management.
If you think that Trump's DOJ is gonna respect pardons from a Democrat...
Fuck 'em. Let them fume. This is the party that wants to let the terrorists from Jan 6 off with a pardon. The party that thinks donvict can do no wrong.
I'll bet the Jan 6 pardons are quietly forgotten. They were a bunch of useful idiots who have already played their role and can be safely disposed of.
Only exception might be anyone who could be potentially squeezed for more information that might lead to more evidence against Trump, but even that's probably a non-issue for him.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't pardon them.
Not only does he have a history of throwing basically everyone in the universe under the bus, but it's his second term. He doesn't have to please anyone now.
Free pardons for joining Trump Force, the Premier Private Deportation Group.
Offer only applicable to people with violent felony convictions or Jan 6th related charges
Biden had all the justification he needed when Trump indicated he'd target his political opponents if he won.
Anyone complaining about this can fuck off.
He should pardon himself for everything before he leaves office so Maga can't drum up some stupid made up thing to tie up his last years.
Or resign so Kamala can in the last day if he can't.
Use trumps political retribution statement as the reason.
Yup. I’d do the same.
The only people allowed to be outraged on this are Democrats. The Republican party lost their right to be angry about this kinda stupid stuff shortly after they elected a rapist.
In a perfect world I'd say he needs to let the system work and nobody is above the law, yada yada yada. Clearly this world and country are horribly fucked. For YEARS Republicans have been using the term "Biden Family" to make them sound like some kind of crime syndicate, coming up with "ominous facts" that were not indicative of any actual crime, held an impeachment over President Bidens head for years, distributed naked pictures of Hunter, and interfered with what would've been a simple plea deal, all the while trying to downplay the most corrupt presidency in our history.
Fuck the norms. Fuck ethics. Fuck propriety. The new America requires you to use every tool at your disposal just to get your most basic fucking rights. If Republicans think this is such an abuse of power they can do their fucking jobs for once in their lives and pass some fucking ethics reform. I applaud Joe's embrace of the new normal and I hope other Democrats figure out this is the new normal, whether they like it or not, and stop playing pussyfoot with a party that's been playing "kick the groin" for over 30 years.
Republicans are faux angry. They clearly don't really care about the deed at all. If anything they're gleeful because they get to run around and call Biden a nepotistic liar.
Some Democrats are angry because Biden just handed the Republican a stinky turd that they're going to throw in our face every time someone brings up any of their lies or nepotism.
Many Democrats don't seem to care either, as long as Trump is worse.
a stinky turd that they’re going to throw in our face every time someone brings up any of their lies or nepotism.
They already had the stinky turd and were going to throw it anyway. They have many stinky turds. Much throwing!
Good. Fuckem. I’d be pissed about it, too, if we had something resembling justice in this country. Let them have aneurysms.
Words have proven futile. If Dems don't play the same game Republicans play we WILL lose this democracy.
Democracy has already been lost if every party has to play that game
Cool, so pardon someone besides your own son Joe. You can dress it up in flowery speech if you want but until this supposed willingness to play dirty leads to improvements in someone else's life this is just more of the same bullshit. He's not helping America with this action he's helping himself. That's not noble at all.
This isn't even "the game". It's not getting Democrats anything, but it's also incredibly irrelevant and no one can credibly clutch pearls about abusing pardon powers when it's basically been a get out of jail free card for big donors for years. It's already broken and corrupt, and Hunter doesn't even rank anywhere close to the previous ghouls that have been pardoned, including by the guy who's succeeding Biden. Never mind Republicans who have been 100x worse, this isn't even remotely as bad as Clinton's pardons.
Democracy has already been lost. Turning into mindless beasts won't bring it back. Neoliberals have voted for the lesser evil so many times that they're cheering for blatant political corruption, why would you expect them to want a return to democracy? They just want a dictatorship with "their guy" in charge.
I would have felt better if Biden was more honest about this. "Yes, this is a blatant abuse of my power, and shouldn't be allowed, but it is squarely within my Official Duties. The Supreme Court says that the only remedy is impeachment. Hey, Mike, I double-dog dare ya to do it!"
Conveniently forgetting the fact Trump has literally thousands of pardons lined up for when he gets back in office
How does that saying go? Something like "if they didn't have double standards they'd have no standards at all"
I'm surprised Republicans can even remember what a moral high ground looks like let alone pretend to hold it. According to them attempted insurrection, rape, grifting, child sex trafficking, taking away citizens rights on religious grounds, nepotism in high ranking government roles bypassing security screening, soliciting other countries for election interference, abandoning foreign allies, attempting to undermine elections, pardoning murderers, denying election results, etc are all legal and morally okay for people to commit with no restitution for victims or consequences for perpetrators.
Wow, they can’t even see far enough ahead to when their side is pardoning all the toadies. Shaking my head.
Definitely a bad look but in all honesty it’s justified.
The right was definitely unfairly targeting Hunter. They were using him as a scapegoat since they couldn’t get to Joe.
Exiting President handing away high profile pardons just before leaving office? I kind of remember when it happened before, and much worse: https://www.vox.com/22238571/trump-pardons-bannon-broidy-corruption
Would this pardon allow Hunter full ability to leave the US and enter into other countries? Because I can totally see Biden doing this as a move to get all of his family out of harms way once Trump takes office and I don't blame them one bit. The Republicans have been very vocal about their vengeance and honestly if this was the reasoning behind the pardon it would be the first time since the election that we've seen the president taking the threat we all face seriously.
I sorta dont blame them... Its not right, but I dont blame them.
Now, with return of darth cheeto and his ultra loyal crew of apointees, its now a priority to not have any active cases for the saftey of the biden family. 47 may seek vengance for any percieved offense, and the bidens going forward should not expect the DOJ to behave in the interest of justice for a few years.
The GOP can seethe and cope all they want, they laid the groundwork for this use of this sort of behaivior and uncle joe has not used it (at great expense to his sons future prospects, being national news for this long cant be healthy) up until this point.
It's a show.
They know that under standard circumstances there would have been no charges, let alone jail time. But, his name is Biden and they needed to prosecute and get their pound of flesh. Now, when Trump pardons violent felons and murders, as he has done before, they can point to Biden. As if tax evasion is a simular crime.
Performative theatre aided by the media.
Let em fume..anger is the only thing Magatards understand
Die mad about it, Republicans!
I don't care if they're mad when it happens, that's just a nice bonus
I'm really warming up to the idea of Biden doing some other "official acts" before he departs.
stay mad
libsrepubs 😎😎😎am i doing this right
everyone was mad
Who cares? Fuck them.
Good thing Joe is not a king right? What if a king assigned a rapist to be the FBI tzar. And what if this tzar could just walk through main street and rape men and women equally in plain daylight? Nobody would bat an eye because hold on, I'm getting rapped right now, but I'll talk about it afterwards?
Many of the same liberals who have been browbeating me over the past several years with their insistence that they are NOT the same as the Trump Republicans, are excusing this.
You're right, liberals. Once again you prove that you are not the same as the Trumpists. Even with this pardon, you do continue to be better than them. You're better than terrible. You're better than horrible, better than abysmal, ever so slightly better than abhorrent. Congratulations.
I saw an excellent analogy on here. The Republican Party is a dad molesting their kid. The Democrats are the mom turning a blind eye. One of those is objectively better than the other, but the kid should be seperated from both. Cheering for blatant political corruption is disgusting regardless of which side does it.
I'm pretty sure this was part of their plan. It's now legit cover for Trump to pardon whoever they want.
Plus yeah, they want to talk smack. It's not like they have any worthwhile policy ideas.
He already did that during his first term. This has nothing to do with Trump. It also doesn't fucking matter. If people are mad about Hunter Biden owning a gun and doing cocaine, then why aren't they mad about Don Jr doing literally exactly the same thing?
It doesn't have anything to do with Trump. But that's not to say he won't take advantage of it.
They're not mad at Don Jr because they don't want to be. That's all.
I mean there's something to be said for handing them some ammo.
Dominate a news cycle with some bullshit and do something shady under the table.
Jon Stewart outlined it pretty well.
The Dems put this artificial moral framework around themselves that limits how well they can compete with the Right, because it's important
But as soon as they need something for themselves or their family they just break it.
They never break it for the people who need it most.
Leftists are fuming too. I guess these politicians are all just dynasties out for themselves. Thanks for nothing, Bye-den.
Guess we're losing the next election too... oh yeah, there isn't one.
Just the Russian "leftists."
The man's complicit in genocide, I'm not worried about him making sure outright fascists can't use the courts against his family.
I just think it's silly that he thinks that will be enough, he needs to get his ass out of this country before the handover I'll tell you that.
Yeah, the teeth-gnashing about this is incredible. This is not even in the top 50 worst pardons in recent history nor in the top 10 worst acts by Joe Biden. Fuck him, he sucks, but this is an irrelevant footnote compared to both his own actions and the actions of other presidents.
I really don't think giving the head of state the power to pardon is a very good idea. I used to be totally baffled how it was a thing at all but the rationale has since been explained to me. While I sorta get it, the theoretical benefit is far outweighed by the inevitable grimy reality. Like others, probably mostly because of my own biases, I find it hard to summon a great deal of outrage about this understandable if blatantly hypocritical move after so much prior abuse of the lower had already occurred, but frankly if the option weren't even there then nobody would even need to talk about this. If the justice system of the nation is supposedly well designed and theoretically trustworthy then there isn't the need to have the ability for it to be arbitrarily overrulled in a manner that operates very much like the monarchical tyrants the United States was supposedly foundationally opposed to.
If an incoming fascist government were promising retribution for their political opponents, and if there were threats, however fringe, of public executions, I would also pardon my child. I'm honestly surprised more high profile people aren't leaving the country. Though I guess that would be a bad move on multiple levels. What did that one article say? Don't bend the knee until there's a memo saying you have to?
Also it's probably easier to have them killed outside the country. The CIA and Mossad operate with impunity.
Fumes a party that endorsed a convicted felon for presidency.
I’m not happy about it either. It’s an abuse of power, no matter whose side the guy is on. This just further degrades the office of the president into a self-serving free-for-all.
https://x.com/joncoopertweets/status/1859602254577230289
“Republicans” “Fume”
I don’t lend any credence to headlines like this anymore. I saw way too many headlines about how “young voters hate Trump” and clearly that meant nothing when election day came so I wish these “news” organizations would shut the fuck up with this bullshit. Just because 2 people do something doesn’t make it news.
Fumes a party that endorsed a convicted felon for presidency.
