After four years of lawfare against President Donald Trump and in the waning hours of his failed presidency, Joe Biden has issued preemptive pardons to his family members and political allies to protect them from the turnabout to which they were now exposed having failed to jail Trump or stop his return to the White House.
In a statement accompanying the pardons for his famously crooked, ne’er-do-well brothers James and Frank, among others, Biden argued that “baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety and financial security of targeted individuals and their families. Even when individuals have done nothing wrong and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage their reputations and finances.”
Given Biden’s diminished mental state, a modicum of self-awareness is a lot to ask. But it is shocking language coming from the leader of a party that pioneered and embraced lawfare as its core political strategy, something Biden now characterizes as “the worst kind of partisan politics.”
For his part, Trump may have egged on his supporters in 2015 when they chanted, “Lock her up!” but his Justice Department did not actually investigate the woman he dubbed “Crooked Hillary.” Nor did he investigate Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders or Pete Buttigieg. Yet somehow Democrats imagine themselves as both responsible stewards of the justice system and most at risk of being targeted by it.
Trump didn’t need to imagine the nature of politicized justice. He lived it, and in his second Inaugural Address, he pledged: “Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents, something I know something about. We will not allow that to happen.”
We hope that is true. But if Trump decides to preemptively pardon his friends and family and every single member of his administration four years from now in what may well be a new American tradition, we would understand why—and Democrats will have one more reason to regret the calamity that was the Biden administration.
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