CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, on Sunday if he had any concerns about President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter Biden.
Last Sunday, Biden issued a pardon to his son that covers not only his federal gun crime and tax convictions, but also any other “offenses against the United States that he has committed or may have committed or to which he participated during the period from January 1st.” 2014 to December 1, 2024.”
The pardon, which was a complete reversal of Biden’s previous promises not to pardon his son or commute his sentence after he was convicted of gun charges in Delaware and tax charges in California, sparked backlash, even among some Democrats.
Sen. Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, wrote Monday on is fair and equal for all. »
Tapper, CNN co-host State of the Unionasked Durbin, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Majority Whip, if he agreed with Bennet and asked, “Do you have any concerns about this pardon?”
Durbin defended Biden, his friend of more than 20 years, saying, “I will tell you that most of the conversations I have with him are about his family. “He’s a man who loves his children and has been through a lot,” referring, in part, to the loss of his first wife, Neilia Hunter, and his one-year-old daughter, Naomi Biden, in a car accident in 1972.
The senator continued, “And seeing the two boys, Beau and Hunter, go through serious hospital stays and try to rebuild their lives.” Beau Biden, an Iraq War veteran, died in 2015 of brain cancer. Hunter Biden suffered from drug and alcohol addiction his entire life, but has been clean for five and a half years.
“If I have to be biased in this area, it’s a loving parent who wants to protect their child. I understand this situation and I understand Michael Bennett’s observation. He promised he wouldn’t do it and now he does. But it’s a labor of love, as far as I’m concerned, from a loving father,” Durbin said.
News week contacted the White House by email for comment Sunday morning.
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Biden said in a statement announcing the pardon: “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the decision-making of the Justice Department, and I kept my word even if I saw my son being pursued selectively and unfairly. … No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s cases can come to any other conclusion than this: Hunter was chosen solely because he is my son – and that is wrong.
The president ended by saying, “I hope the American people understand why a father and a president would make this decision. »
During an interview with Durbin, Tapper read a 2019 quote from Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, who said: “The president has broad authority to grant pardons, but not when they are designed to protect himself himself, his family and his associates of a criminal investigation. Such abuse of the pardon power would amount to obstruction of justice and is not authorized by the Constitution. »
Schiff, who will be sworn in Monday as California’s junior senator, was referring to then-President and current President-elect Donald Trump, who during his first presidency issued 144 pardons, including pardons to the father of his son-in-law Jared. Kushner, Charles Kushner; former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
“The Democrats’ argument for the last eight years has been that Trump is trampling on the rule of law and there are commentators, including some on the left, who say, based on what Joe Biden has done, that Democrats don’t seem to be any different,” Tapper told Durbin.
Durbin’s response was to point out that Biden had promised to keep a Trump-appointed Delaware U.S. attorney “at work investigating his son and they pursued the case.”
The senator was referring to U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel David Weiss, who prosecuted Hunter Biden’s tax and gun cases. In June, Hunter Biden was convicted of three crimes related to his illegal purchase of a gun in October 2018, including making a false statement regarding his drug use when purchasing the gun.
Nearly three months later, he pleaded guilty to three tax crimes and six tax misdemeanors related, in part, to his failure to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed. 2016 to 2019.
Weiss asked the judge presiding over Hunter Biden’s tax case not to dismiss the indictment against the president’s son, despite the pardon.
The special counsel wrote in a filing Monday that Hunter Biden’s charges should not be dismissed “because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of an improper motive,” noting that “no court did not agree with the accused on these baseless allegations. and his motion to dismiss the indictment finds no support in the law or practice of this district.
