Pitiful end to Biden presidency

Countless times Joe Biden and his aides pledged he would not pardon his son, Hunter. Yet that is what he has done in a disgraceful act of political cynicism that casts a shadow over his White House term.

As Gerard Baker writes in The Australian on Wednesday, Mr Biden is a father, first and foremost, and “what parent, equipped with a magical power granted to him by a dusty document to wipe away a child’s errant behaviour and shield that child – even a grown one – from punishment, wouldn’t be tempted to exercise it”. But the cost to US Democrats will be immense. It is another blow to the institutions of US democracy that will play into Donald Trump’s hands as he contemplates using his powers to pardon supporters jailed after the January 6, 2021 insurrection. But for all the Democrats’ claims about the threat Mr Trump poses to US democracy, they have no more respect for basic democratic principles than he does. Mr Trump also granted pardons to a bunch of unsavoury characters, notably including his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner, another New York property developer, who had been jailed for fraud. Mr Trump now has named him to be the US ambassador to France. Bill Clinton, too, had no compunction in granting a presidential pardon to his half-brother, Roger, who had served time for cocaine trafficking.

Such precedents do nothing to diminish justifiable criticism of Mr Biden as he stumbles towards the White House exit: Hunter’s unconditional pardon covers all and any offences from January 1, 2014 to the present – an effort to shield him from prosecution under Mr Trump. Legal experts say they’ve never seen a presidential pardon so open-ended – other than, possibly, Gerald Ford’s for Richard Nixon in 1974.