The NPR Politics Podcast - Hunter Biden Pardoned

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

President Biden previously had said he would not issue a pardon to his son, Hunter, who was convicted in June of federal gun charges for lying about his addiction to crack cocaine when he purchased a gun. Three months later, he entered a guilty plea to tax offenses for failing to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes. Sentencing was expected later this month in both cases. The decision is attracting criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. This episode: voting correspondent Ashley Lopez, national justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han and Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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What a nice coda to the year. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, Senior National Political Correspondent. And today on the show, outgoing President Joe Biden has issued a pardon to his son,

Hunter Biden. Ryan, before we get into what happens next and what this all means, I wonder if you can just walk us through, first of all, what is a pardon and why is it that presidents have the ability to do this? So the presidential pardon power is rooted in the Constitution. It's a core presidential power. It only applies to federal crimes, not crimes at the state level. And there are several forms of presidential clemency, but two are the most common. One of them is commutation. That's when a

president reduces a sentence partially, could also wipe it out totally, but doesn't erase the criminal conviction from the books. The other is the one that we're talking about here, and that's a pardon. It's basically presidential forgiveness. They can be full and unconditional. It also removes things that can accompany a federal criminal conviction. For example, barring the right to vote, prohibiting that. In the case that we're talking about here and President Biden's pardon for his son, Hunter, this is a full and unconditional pardon, and it applies to any offenses he committed or may have committed between January 1st, 2014 and yesterday.

Yeah. And what specific offenses are we talking about here in Hunter's case? Well there are two things, two cases in particular that are mentioned in the White House statement. One of them is a gun case in Delaware in which a jury convicted Hunter of lying on a federal background check form about his addiction to crack cocaine when he bought a gun in 2018. There were three counts in that case, two false statements counts about his drug use and one count of illegal possession of a firearm by a drug user. And then the second case is for failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes.

Hunter pleaded guilty to three felony and six misdemeanor counts in that case in California. So those two specifically are wiped off the books. Yeah, what kind of punishment could he have been facing if he wasn't pardoned? So in both of those cases, he had not been sentenced yet. Sentencing actually was scheduled for later this month. But the max sentence in the gun case was 25 years, but it is really important to make

clear here that he was not going to face 25 years in prison. There are a whole bunch of things that factor into a judge's decision on what the sentence ultimately will be. A lot of experts thought he could face maybe a little bit of prison time, although probation was definitely a possibility. In the tax case, the max possible sentence would have been 17 years, but again, the same thing factors in there. And there was the possibility again that he might ultimately have faced no prison time there either. Danielle Pletka Well, Ryan, what is unusual about this pardon?

I mean, you said it's a constitutional prerogative of the president, but the fact that this is kind of retroactive and proactive, in other words, it sounds like Joe Biden is trying to protect his son against future actions by the Justice Department. Marc Thiessen Well, that's certainly one way that you could read into this. And there's been obviously a lot of talk about what the future Trump Justice Department and FBI might do. Trump talked, and you know this better than anyone, Trump talked a lot on the campaign about vengeance and perhaps going after what he calls the Biden crime family.

There's actually one line in the statement that the president issued accompanying this pardon where he says, in trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me and there's no reason to believe it will stop here. And that may be a nod to concerns that Hunter could face some sort of legal action from a future Trump trust. Right. And even if it doesn't end up in conviction or prison time, you can bankrupt somebody, you can ruin their lives. I mean, the law and prosecution is tremendous power,

and that's why it needs to be wielded judiciously. I was talking to a former federal prosecutor about this last night, and one thing that he mentioned is there could also be a concern, not necessarily about future prosecution, but about would you want to entrust Hunter to the Bureau of Prisons, Federal Bureau of Prisons in a future Trump Justice Department and any future decisions that they might make

if he's already into the system? And that could have been a concern that was factoring into this decision as well. Which I guess is why President Biden made a note in his pardon statement that Hunter was being singled out because he was the president's son. I mean, Mara, how does that pardon, like, sort of impact the characterization of all this? Well, the problem is that we have two competing equities in our system. One is no one is above the law. The second is we don't want presidents to use the Department of Justice to persecute or prosecute their political opponents, their political enemies. And we have to find the right balance between those

things. You know, Joe Biden is now saying he believes his son was investigated and by the Trump administration for political reasons. Donald Trump believes that the January 6 investigation that alleged that he encouraged a mob to go to the Capitol to overturn a free and fair election was persecution, not prosecution. It was unfair. He believes the same thing for the classified documents case where he refused to turn over classified documents after he left office the first time. So, you know, I believe that the era of Donald Trump can be defined by a huge stress test on democratic institutions, and this is just another example. Okay, well, we'll talk more about that in a bit. Let's take a quick break. More in

a moment. You might have heard this song on TikTok blow up this summer. I'm looking for a man in finance. Trust fund. Six-five. Day wise. On It's Been a Minute, we're asking the big questions about dating. Like is it okay to date with money in mind? And what are we really looking for from a man in finance? To find out, listen to the It's Been A Minute podcast from NPR. And we're back.

Ryan, many presidents exercise their part pardon power, right? Particularly on their way out of office. I mean, Trump pardoned a bunch of folks in the last days of his first term too, right? Remind us of who some of these people were and what they had been charged with doing. It's a long list. We can start with Republican political operative Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally. He was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering, obstruction, revolving around the Russia investigation. He was pardoned. Trump's former campaign manager for 2016, Paul Manafort, he was convicted of bank and tax fraud. There's his first national

security advisor, Michael Flynn. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. George Papadopoulos, he was a low level aide, also wrapped up in the Russia investigation. He lied to the FBI. There are also a number of politicians, Chris Collins, Duncan Hunter, but one that stands out in particular now in light of this Biden pardon for his son is Trump's decision to pardon Charles Kushner, Ivanka Trump's father-in-law. He was sentenced to two years in prison for tax evasion and other crimes. He received a pardon from Trump and most recently, just this past weekend, Trump announced that he would be his pick for Ambassador to France in his incoming administration.

Mara, what should we make of the fact that now two outgoing presidents have pardoned not just people close to them, you know, in some cases this is family and for political reasons now. Well, and it just isn't just Trump and Biden. Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother, Roger Clinton. And I think up until now, people would have said, you know, this is a family matter, and especially in Joe Biden's case, Hunter has suffered a lot.

He's Biden's only surviving son. But as Ryan just explained, Donald Trump has used the pardon power very widely and maybe perhaps pardoned more of his close associates and allies than any other president. And he'll continue to do that because I think he has a certain view of the Justice Department, he's been very explicit about it, that a president should be able to direct the Justice Department to go after his political enemies and opponents and protect his allies and associates. That's how he sees the world. The idea of the Justice Department being weaponized, it's certainly a line that we've heard a lot from Trump and we've heard from his Republican allies. I think that it's important

to point out that, yes, the case against Hunter, the investigation started under the Trump administration, but it continued and was fulfilled, went to trial under the Biden administration. Because Biden wanted to show that he believed in the justice system, and he was going to let the chips fall where they may, and he believed that the justice system was fair. That was his previous position. Now it turns out in this statement, which many people are going to say is an example of hypocrisy, that he didn't believe that, that he always felt that Hunter was being investigated just because he was his son.

Is that the case or has the world changed a little bit since he said that? I mean, the voters did elect a felon to be the president-elect. Yes. Like things are different. Yes, America just elected a felon as president and I think you're absolutely right. Why do people care about democratic norms or even in some cases breaking the law? I just want to come back to the question of politicization of the Justice Department, because yes, Hunter Biden is one case, but there are three other cases of high-level

Democrats who have been indicted and in one instance, even gone to trial and been convicted. That would be powerful Democratic Senator from New Jersey, Bob Menendez. You also have Democratic Congressman, Henry Cuellar. And most recently, the Democratic Mayor of New York, Eric Adams was indicted. And the thing that's so important about this is that that's because Democratic administrations

tend to believe that justice is impartial and they are willing to countenance the investigation of democratic politicians. That, according to Donald Trump's view of the world, those people are suckers. You know, I think we're in the midst of a big sea change where he has said explicitly the Department of Justice should be basically run by the president and execute the president's wishes and go after his political enemies. Yeah. I guess I wonder how useful an argument from Democrats about the rule of law is considering

all this. Like, is this something that voters even care about? I mean, you could look at the results of this. Well, they certainly didn't seem to. Yeah, they didn't seem to, right. No. I think the only thing that I would question is whether a president exercising the pardon power undermines the justice system when it is a central part of the constitutional system. No, I don't think it undermines the justice system.

I think the only thing that helps Donald Trump transform the justice system is the fact that Biden changed his mind. He first for many, many years was a staunch defender of the justice system and its impartiality. Now he's saying it was all political. Well, guess who that sounds like? Donald Trump. That's the problem here. I mean, I do think that Donald Trump, who is an incredible disrupter, he challenged the justice system to decide, do you believe no one is above the law? Or do you want to have all of the complications that come with looking like one president is using the justice system to investigate his predecessor?

I mean, this stuff is complicated. Danielle Pletka Morra, is there a risk that Biden is damaging his legacy on his way out by going back on his quote, word as a Biden that he wouldn't pardon Hunter. I don't know how much that will figure in his legacy when all is said and done, but I can tell you that it's causing tremendous angst among Democrats right now. Not so much that he pardoned Hunter. He has every right to do that. And many presidents before him have done similar things. It's that he insisted over and over and over again that he believed in the justice system, he

wouldn't pardon Hunter, he wouldn't commute his sentence. And he said that even after Trump had won. All right. Let's leave it there for today. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Eliason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.