He knows that, one way or another, a presidential pardon just like the one Joe Biden offered to his son is coming.
As one long familiar with the folkways of Trump, I was not a bit surprised to read that, in May, his son Donald Trump Jr. married Bettina Anderson in a pricey destination wedding somewhere in the Bahamas. It’s a Trump family member, after all — of course it wasn’t going to be a quickie wedding in Vegas.
It was a little surprising, however, to find out why Don Jr. was unconcerned with saving money: His multiday wedding shindig was secretly bought and paid for by Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch (and head of the notoriously corrupt International Boxing Association) who is close friends with Vladimir Putin. Suffice it to say, the howlingly obvious conflict of interest — the president’s son is getting an all-expenses-paid luxury wedding courtesy of a man directly connected to the adversary sitting across the table from our ally Ukraine, even as we are trying to negotiate an end to a war — did not escape notice, even in times as jaded as ours.
My colleague Noah Rothman wrote a fine piece about how compromising it is for Don Jr. to be so openly intertwined with Kremlev (who speaks little English and presumably isn’t funding a Trump wedding to acquire new Anglophone friends). Noah also noted the obvious, and fiercely ironic, parallels between this and Hunter Biden’s Burisma connections. Recall that it was President Trump’s acute “concern” about the business corruption of his impending rival’s son that got him impeached the first of two times (to date). Clearly he is less concerned about such issues now that the shoe is on the other foot.
Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, is out today to state the truth, entirely in vain: “The country should not have to accept one standard for the family of a Republican president and another for the family of a Democratic president.” Curtis is calling for a Senate investigation into Don Jr.’s financial interests, including the various foreign cryptocurrency ventures that both the president and his son have been involved in.
It’s a nice gesture — and proof of what kind of political pebbles can start shaking loose once a president’s approval rating begins gathering mold in the mid-30s — but the gesture feels largely meaningless in this case. Trump is beyond shame and will be beyond electoral reach after November; anyone thinking that he cares about the Republican Party’s fortunes is deluding himself. The title of Noah’s piece is “Don Jr. Will Regret It.” That strikes me as overly optimistic.
I suspect, in fact, that the opposite is true: Donald Trump’s son will ultimately regret nothing and is free to act with near-impunity, from now until January 2029, because he knows he is forever beyond the reach of the law. Don Jr. knows that, one way or another, a presidential pardon just like the one Joe Biden offered to his son is coming. (The excuse is now ready-made, despite the appalling irony.) In fact, I suspect he’s not the only figure counting on one.