CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Senator 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 for his son that not only covered his federal felony gun and tax convictions but also any other “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through 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 on gun charges in Delaware and tax charges in California, sparked backlash, even among some Democrats.
Senator Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday, “President Biden’s decision put personal interest ahead of duty and further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all.”
Tapper, co-host of CNN‘s State of the Union, asked 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 over 20 years, saying, “I’ll tell you most conversations I have with him are about his family. This is a man who loves his children and has gone through quite an ordeal,” referring, in part, to the loss of his first wife, Neilia Hunter, and his 1-year-old daughter, Naomi Biden, in a 1972 car crash.
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 from brain cancer. Hunter Biden had suffered from a lifelong addiction to drugs and alcohol but has been five-and-a-half years sober.
“If I have to have a bias in this area, it’s a loving parent who wants to protect his child. I understand that situation and I understand Michael Bennett’s observation. He promised he wouldn’t do it and now he’s doing it. But it’s a labor of love, as far as I’m concerned, from a loving father,” Durbin said.
Newsweek has reached out to the White House via email for comment Sunday morning.
Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Biden said in a statement announcing the pardon, “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted…No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong.”
The president ended by saying, “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”
While interviewing Durbin, Tapper read a 2019 quote from Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, that read, “The President has a broad power to confer pardons, but not when they are designed to insulate himself, his family and his associates from criminal investigation. Such an abuse of the pardon power would amount to obstruction of justice and is not countenanced by the Constitution.”
Schiff, who will be sworn in as California junior senator on Monday, was referring to then-President and current President-elect Donald Trump, who during his first presidency granted 144 pardons, including pardons for 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.
“Democrats‘ argument over the last eight years was Trump was trampling all over the rule of law and there are commentators out there, including some on the left, who say based on what Joe Biden did, Democrats don’t seem to be any different,” Tapper told Durbin.
Durbin’s response was to point out that Biden promised to keep a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney from Delaware “on the job to investigate his son and they went forward with the case.”
The senator was referring to the U.S. Department of Justice‘s (DOJ) special counsel David Weiss, who prosecuted Hunter Biden’s gun and tax cases. In June, Hunter Biden was found guilty of three felonies connected with his illegal purchase of a firearm in October 2018, which included making a false statement relating to his drug use when buying the gun.
Almost three months later, he pleaded guilty to three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses relating, in part, to his refusal to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed from 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 on Monday that Hunter Biden’s charges should not be dismissed “because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of some improper motive,” noting, “no court has agreed with the defendant on these baseless claims, and his request to dismiss the indictment finds no support in the law or the practice of this district.”
