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June 12, 2024
"The White House isn’t ruling out a potential commutation for Hunter Biden after his conviction"
The title of this post is the headline of this notable new AP article. Here is how it begins:
The White House is not ruling out a potential commutation for Hunter Biden, the president’s son who was convicted on three federal gun crimes and is set to be sentenced by a judge in the coming months. “As we all know, the sentencing hasn’t even been scheduled yet,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday on Air Force One as President Joe Biden traveled to the Group of Seven summit in Italy.
She said she has not spoken to the president about the issue since the verdict was delivered Tuesday. Biden definitively ruled out pardoning his son during an ABC News interview last week. “He was very clear, very upfront, obviously very definitive,” Jean-Pierre said of the president’s remarks about a potential pardon. But on a commutation, “I just don’t have anything beyond that.”
A pardon is an expression of forgiveness of a criminal offense that restores some rights, such as voting, that a person loses upon conviction. Meanwhile, a commutation reduces a sentence but leaves the conviction intact.
The position from the White House is a shift from what it said in September, when Jean-Pierre was asked whether the president would “pardon or commute his son if he’s convicted.” The press secretary responded at the time that “I’ve answered this question before. It was asked of me not too long ago, a couple of weeks ago. And I was very clear, and I said no.”
Update on June 13: This AP article reports on comments made by President Biden on this topic. It startes this way: "President Joe Biden said Thursday that he will not use his presidential powers to lessen the eventual sentence that his son Hunter will receive for his federal felony conviction on gun crimes."
June 12, 2024 at 02:10 PM | Permalink
Comments
Presidential clemency has earned and received a bad name in recent year from Presidents of both parties. Probably the most flagrant example up to now was Clinton's pardon for Marc Rich, a zillionaire Democratic donor. What made that pardon particularly odious was that, at the time, Rich was a fugitive -- literally thumbing his nose at the law, saying he was outside its reach, so tough. Clinton's other pardons were not so hot either, collectively known as the "Midnight Pardons" because he gave them at a time where he had essentially no political accountability left.
But for however that may be, at least he didn't pardon or commute his offspring. For Biden or anyone else to do that would be the very definition of conflict of interest, a gross and flagrant abuse of power simply because the power is there.
If we really care about citizens being equal before the law, there should be an outcry against even the prospect that Biden would do this.
It was often said against Trump that a President has no business acting like a king. This was true then and it's true now. The fact that a commutation would not be illegal under the Constitution would not made it any less a betrayal of equality for all citizens, the connected and the not-so-connected, and thus a scandal. I
Posted by: Bill Otis | Jun 12, 2024 2:45:56 PM
I have a near-impossible time seeing any such action taking place before the election, even were the son ordered into custody immediately upon sentencing. It would simply be such a flagrant action.
Although, at the same time, this election is one that will make 2016 look tame by comparison.
Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Jun 12, 2024 4:40:22 PM
Bill, Otis, you can get off your high horse now. Did you conveniently forget about Trump's pardon of his son-in-law's father, Charles Kushner
?
To refresh your recollection. Kushner was a wealthy real estate executive and the father of Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law. After Kushner learned that his brother-in-law was cooperating with federal investigators, Kushner hired a prostitute to lure the man into a motel room with a hidden camera, and sent the recording of the subsequent encounter to the man's wife (Kushner's sister) to retaliate against him.Then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie called the case "one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes" that he prosecuted. Kushner pleaded guilty to 18 counts, including tax evasion, witness tampering, and violating federal contribution regulations.He was sentenced to two years in prison (and ultimately ended up spending 14 months) and ordered to pay $508,900 to the FEC. After being released, Kushner returned to his real estate businesses
Posted by: anon | Jun 13, 2024 10:17:01 AM
anon,
Seriously? He said, “both parties.” And, yes, the Rich case is the most flagrant.
You need to get help for your Trump porn addiction.
Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jun 13, 2024 10:34:33 AM
anon --
I'll get off my horse if you'll get ON yours, ride it to school, go to reading class, and try (as TarlsQtr points out) to figure out what "both parties" means.
I know that's a toughie but give it a try.
I'll often go after people for not signing their names, but I'm not going to do that with you, given that whether you can master more than four letters, a-n-o-n, is open to considerable doubt.
Posted by: Bill Otis | Jun 13, 2024 11:21:07 AM
Dear Bill Otis: While President Clinton did not pardon his offspring, he did pardon his brother, Roger Clinton, at the end of his term in office. Roger had an old cocaine conviction, for which he had already served the entire sentence years earlier.
No President has ever tested the idea that he can pardon himself, and there are many reasons to believe that the U.S. Supreme Court would find a self-pardon to be unconstitutional.
The Marc Rich pardon was thoroughly investigated by Congress and no one was ever prosecuted for any wrongdoing. Mr. Rich's attorney, Kathleen "Kitty" Behan who had prepared the Pardon Application [she was a partner at Arnold & Porter in D.C.] and had it delivered directly to Pres. Clinton (without going thru the Office of Pardon Counsel) is an acquaintance of mine. For $300,000, she flew to Switzerland to meet with Rich and then did research and drafted the Application. She got her friend, Lanny David, a former Deputy White House Counsel, to deliver the Application directly to President Clinton. After the Application was granted by President Clinton [who had even discussed Marc Rich's Application with the Prime Minister of Israel], Kitty had to hire her own counsel to represent her in the Congressional investigation, and she eventually even testified before Congress about it. While Mr. Rich was never shown to have given or done anything for the Clintons to get the pardon [Rich's indictment was for violating the "Trading with the Enemy Act" by buying and selling oil from Iran while they were subject to American sanctions, wire fraud and tax evasion]. Mr. Rich's ex-wife [they had been divorced since 1992 and shared a child together] did contribute $450,000 to the Clinton Presidential Library a few months before the Pardon was granted, and also donated more than $100,000 directly and indirectly to Hillary Clinton's U.S. Senate campaign. Denise Rich came from a wealthy family herself, and had earned much money of her own as a song writer, so there was no evidence that Mr. Rich had secretly given her the money to make donations with. Marc Rich died in June 2013 and is buried in Israel. Rich was originally born in Antwerp, Belgium, but became a U.S. citizen when his parents immigrated to America when he was a child. Rich was a citizen of several countries, including Spain. Mr. Rich had attempted to renounce his American citizenship, but about 1991, a Federal Court found that the attempt was incomplete and that he remained a U.S. citizen.
Posted by: Jim Gormley | Jun 14, 2024 11:49:18 AM
A poignant footnote to history is that Marc Rich was indicted in the S.D. of New York by then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Guiliani.
Posted by: Jim Gormley | Jun 14, 2024 11:55:32 AM
Another footnote to history is that for many years before Scooter Libby worked at the White House for V.P. Dick Cheney as Chief of Staff, got prosecuted and convicted and then received a commutation of his entire prison sentence (but not a pardon) from George W. Bush, Libby had represented Marc Rich in his civil and criminal conflicts with the U.S. Government.
Posted by: Jim Gormley | Jun 14, 2024 12:01:44 PM
Jim Gormley --
Thanks for the details. Quite a show, all in all.
Posted by: Bill Otis | Jun 14, 2024 4:18:18 PM
Bill Otis: It's a well-worn story. Wealth buys representation by attorneys with access and connections to the hallways of power.
Posted by: Jim Gormley | Jun 14, 2024 10:34:09 PM
Criminal and military history are full of perverse issues and results. One favorite of mine is the Iran-Contra Affair. The architect of the affair was William Casey, Director of the C.I.A. under President Reagan. Congress had passed the Boland Amendment, which forbade the President or any Executive Branch Agency from providing aid to the Contras. As an expert on the structure of the Federal government, Casey appreciated the fact that the National Security Council (NSC) is not an Executive Branch Agency! The NSC is an independent agency that is not in any of the 3 branches of government! This is why Casey got Lt. Col. Oliver North to run the Iran-Contra Affair from the NSC -- technically, it did not violate the Boland Amendment! Casey's background was with the O.S.S. during World War II. He was in charge of parachuting agents into occupied Europe. He personally saw them off at the airfields in England, because he expected half of them to be captured and/or killed. Casey was also a brilliant attorney. He invented the concept of the tax shelter, using some provisions of the Internal Revenue Code to shield income from taxation by other provisions. Casey was the original outside counsel and a Director of CBS. He was a self-made and wealthy man. He found the ultimate way to avoid a Congressional subpoena about the Iran-Contra Affair. Casey was served with the subpoena in a hospital and died before he was due to testify before Congress! Lt. Col. Oliver North was immunized by Congress to make him tell the story. His subsequent criminal convictions were overturned by the D.C. Circuit, which found that the prosecutors had violated North's grant of immunity -- use plus derivative use immunity when they prosecuted him at trial. President Reagan's National Security Advisor, Admiral John Poindexter ran the Iran Contra Affair and had a secret communications channel to Lt. Col. North at the NSC. While Poindexter was convicted of 5 counts of lying to Congress and obstruction of a Congressional investigation in 1990, all of those convictions were reversed on appeal, on the grounds that the witnesses against him had been influenced by his immunized Congressional testimony. Admiral Poindexter graduated #1 in his class at the Naval Academy. The guy fifth from last in Poindexter's college class was a playboy plebe named John McCain, who became successful and famous as a long-serving prisoner of war in Vietnam and as a U.S. Senator from Arizona! They were bold men.
Posted by: Jim Gormley | Jun 14, 2024 11:08:53 PM
Jim,
I hope youre clear on the difference between Marc Rich on the one hand and Colonel North and Admiral "Buster" Poindexter on the other. Iran is Iran but weapons are one thing and oil is something else.
Bold men indeed! We could use more of that breed.
We just have to elect them, and stop the steal. MAGA
Posted by: MAGA 2024 | Jun 15, 2024 11:04:46 AM
