The Week: President Biden Pardons His Son

• In fairness, they did say if Trump won there’d be martial law.

• President Biden repeatedly vowed, and his White House indignantly insisted, that he would never pardon his adult son Hunter, then claimed he had changed his mind out of fatherly love. But Hunter’s legal strategy made sense only on the assumption that a pardon would occur. It was the political calendar that temporarily stayed his hand. A pre-election pardon would have wounded his and, ultimately, Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign; so Hunter was charged and, when the Department of Justice failed in its efforts to make the case disappear with a sweetheart plea deal, he was prosecuted for his tax and gun offenses. The defense strategy—admit nothing, allow Hunter to be found guilty on every charge with no concern about mounting prison exposure—presumed a pardon. And so the pardon came . . . with Biden already out to pasture and Harris having lost. Judge Mark Scarsi, who presided over the tax case, acknowledged Biden’s power to erase the charges but ripped the president’s attempt to pretend that Hunter had been selectively prosecuted by Biden’s own DOJ. The opposite was true: The pardon continues a pattern of coddling and advantage no normal defendant would have received.

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• In fairness, they did say if Trump won there’d be martial law.

• President Biden repeatedly vowed, and his White House indignantly insisted, that he would never pardon his adult son Hunter, then claimed he had changed his mind out of fatherly love. But Hunter’s legal strategy made sense only on the assumption that a pardon would occur. It was the political calendar that temporarily stayed his hand. A pre-election pardon would have wounded his and, ultimately, Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign; so Hunter was charged and, when the Department of Justice failed in its efforts to make the case disappear with a sweetheart plea deal, he was prosecuted for his tax and gun offenses. The defense strategy—admit nothing, allow Hunter to be found guilty on every charge with no concern about mounting prison exposure—presumed a pardon. And so the pardon came . . . with Biden already out to pasture and Harris having lost. Judge Mark Scarsi, who presided over the tax case, acknowledged Biden’s power to erase the charges but ripped the president’s attempt to pretend that Hunter had been selectively prosecuted by Biden’s own DOJ. The opposite was true: The pardon continues a pattern of coddling and advantage no normal defendant would have received.