Some Republicans have seized on President Joe Biden‘s decision to pardon his son Hunter Biden to criticize the president of lying after pledging he would abide court decisions, while many came to the president’s defense and accused the right-wing of a double standard.
President-elect Donald Trump took to Truth Social to slam Biden for “an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”
“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump wrote.
Steven Cheung, President-elect Donald Trump’s communications director, told Newsweek, “The failed witch hunts against President Trump have proven that the Democrat-controlled DOJ and other radical prosecutors are guilty of weaponizing the justice system.”
“That system of justice must be fixed and due process must be restored for all Americans, which is exactly what President Trump will do as he returns to the White House with an overwhelming mandate from the American people,” Cheung said.
Donald Trump Jr. had a more direct criticism of Biden, writing on Truth Social: “Everyone with a brain knew he was going to do it. He was just going to do it when it was if no consequence to democrat electability.”
While he did not post any comment directly on the news, Elon Musk reposted Donald Trump Jr.’s comment on X, where Trump Jr. did not include the “with a brain” part of his Truth Social post.
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Republican Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley wrote on social media platform X that he was “shocked” Biden chose to pardon his son because “he said many many times he wouldn’t & I believed him,” adding, “Shame on me.”
Republican Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio also took to X to express his confusion about the president’s change of heart, writing: “Democrats said there was nothing to our impeachment inquiry,” referring to the long-running Republican effort to bring charges against Biden.
“If that’s the case, why did Joe Biden just issue Hunter Biden a pardon for the very things we were inquiring about?” Jordan asked.
Political commentator Ben Shapiro slammed the president for his decision to issue the pardon, saying that Biden “has always been a venal liar who utilized his political power to pursue familial gain. So of course he’s pardoning Hunter. He was always going to pardon Hunter. Hunter was the bagman.”
Shapiro and many other voices on the right have seized on the timeframe of Hunter’s pardon to note that it starts before he joined Ukrainian gas company Burisma’s board of directors. Shapiro later posted a video trying to connect the dots on this narrative.
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Lawyer and Fox News Contributor Jonathan Turley posted several thoughts about the pardon, warning that “Americans may have a more difficult time understanding how a president could repeatedly and adamantly deny that he would issue this pardon when he was running for reelection.”
Turley noted that while Biden insisted the cases against his son were politically motivated, he pardoned Hunter Biden for “ANY crimes that may have been committed,” which is “precisely the type of sweeping immunity grant that the federal judge balked at in the hearing when the earlier sweetheart deal fell apart.”
“Hunter Biden is hardly the poster child for a victim of over-enforcement of federal laws,” Turley wrote. “He was given a free pass on allegations that he was an unregistered agent and was the personification of influence peddling in Washington.”
Some high-profile figures took had more muted and middling responses, such as former presidential hopeful Andrew Yang, who wrote on X that “Joe Biden pardoning Hunter looks bad but most fathers would do the same thing under the circumstances.”
Ezra Klein, a popular New York Times opinion columnist, acknowledged that “it’s terrible politics and precedent,” but argued that “the Trump team has been brutally clear they want revenge on their enemies, they are obsessed with Hunter in particular, and that would weigh like hell on me if I were his father and could protect him.”
Klein also joked about the “Dark Brandon” memes and endorsed the suggestion that Hunter Biden should appear on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Political pollster Nate Silver had harsh words for the president, writing on X that he “voted for Harris despite feeling like Democrats indulged in a lot of bad behavior that voters were rational to publish. After the White House lying about the Hunter pardon I’m not sure how much more I can tolerate.”
Silver also called for voters to reject “any Democrat in 2028 who doesn’t repudiate the pardon within 48 hours.” He also accused the White House of “consistently” lying about Biden’s plan to abide by the court’s decision on Hunter Biden’s cases and called Biden “a selfish and senile old man.”
However, many on the Left could only roll their eyes at what they perceived has hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over the pardon, noting that it amounted to another double-standard that they didn’t similarly criticize Trump for appointing apparent family and friends to powerful positions in the government.
“We’re not accepting complaints about the Hunter Biden pardon unless you also complained about the Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort pardons,” David Corn, DC bureau chief of Mother Jones and an MSNBC analyst, wrote on X.
Juliette Kayyem, a Harvard Kennedy School professor and CNN national security analyst argued on X that “Whatever Biden said may have been legitimately superseded by intervening events, such as Patel’s nomination to the FBI. If all reporters are tweeting is that Biden changed his mind, perhaps do some reporting as to why.”
Kayyem earlier on Sunday had appeared on CNN to discuss the potential for Biden to pardon his son in light of Patel’s nomination as FBI director, noting that Patel had repeatedly vowed to go after the Biden family and that “Trump isn’t messing around (with the Patel pick.”
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Progressive commentator and journalist Mehdi Hasan slammed MAGA Republicans for criticizing Biden, noting that “Yesterday Trump nominated his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law to be ambassador to France. Today he appoints his daughter Tiffany’s unqualified father-in-law to be his senior adviser on MidEast affairs.”
“This is banana republic stuff from a party that obsessed over Hunter Biden,” Hasan wrote on X.
Bakari Sellers, who served in South Carolina’s House of Representatives for nearly a decade, argued that Republicans “ran (AND won on pardoning actual insurrectionist). Chill on a man pardoning his son.”
“Thank God. Pardon Hunter. Trump plays by no rules. Abuses the law. He would’ve pardoned Hunter and called you a coward for not doing it,” Sellers wrote on X.
Popular influencer and young progressive politico Hasan Piker laughed at Nate Silver’s comments about his distaste over the Hunter Biden pardon, quipping that “for this liberal, genocide is not a red line – pardoning Hunter Biden is,” referring to the Israeli operations in Gaza, which proved a dealbreaker for many progressive voters in the 2024 election.
Political commentator Keith Olbermann argued that Biden didn’t go far enough with his pardon and that he should “pardon everybody else.”
“Every prosecutor, every Biden administration staffer, every media figure, everybody Trump will persecute. 10,000,000 pardons. At least,” Olbermann wrote on X.
Former Democrat hopeful Qasim Rashid, a human rights lawyer, also argued that his main issue with Biden’s pardon is that “he can’t stop there” and should “commute death penalty for 40 Americans on federal death row, cancel student debt via EO & force Trump to revive it, & protect abortion nationwide via EO. Get bold. Take action. Slow down MAGA fascism!”
Update, 12/1/24 at 10:57 p.m. ET: Updated to include reaction from Donald Trump and update Donald Trump Jr.’s comment.
Corrected 12/2/24 at 8:57 p.m. ET: Corrects to move incorrect reference to Parik Patel
