(The Center Square) – President Joe Biden’s controversial pardon of his son Hunter may give President-elect Donald Trump a blank check to issue his own round of pardons upon taking office.
Trump said as much in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press when he vowed to pardon a number of people convicted in connection to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan.. 6, 2021, saying he’d look at each case individually.
“These people are living in hell,” he told NBC’s Kristen Welker, noting that some had been in jail for three years and promising pardons on Day 1 in office.
More than 1,500 individuals were charged in connection with the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol.
“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump said in a statement last week. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”
Trump also promised on the campaign trail to set free many Jan. 6 protesters.
“I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can’t say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control,” Trump said at CNN Town Hall in 2023.
“I would say it will be a large portion of them and it would be early on,” he added.
Many lawyers involved in protesting the 2020 election results have faced prosecution as well. However, defendants facing state charges can receive little help from Trump, barring an extraordinary action from the president-elect.
Trump could issue a blanket pardon for lawyers who worked with him broadly covering at least federal crimes for more than a decade, similar to Hunter’s pardon and the ones under consideration for other Biden officials.
“Christmas is coming, and as the old saying goes, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” Colin Reed, a Republican strategist, former campaign manager for U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., and co-founder of South and Hill Strategies, told The Center Square.
“After thumbing his nose at the idea that ‘no one is above the law,’ President Biden has undermined the entire Democratic Party’s messaging apparatus and robbed their ability to claim the moral high ground.
The Department of Justice has signaled that its own cases against Trump will be dropped, keeping with a longstanding policy preventing prosecution of sitting presidents.
It may be the season of grace because media reports indicate that Biden’s team is considering issuing many more pardons preemptively protecting Biden allies from prosecution by a Trump administration, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Democratic Sen. Blumenthal said on CNN this week that he would “strongly oppose” those kinds of blanket pardons.
“The way to stand up to a bully like Donald Trump is not to run and hide,” Blumenthal said. “It’s to confront him. And that’s what we ought to do if they misuse the Department of Justice. I was a prosecutor, U.S. attorney and then state attorney, and I believe that the way to confront Donald Trump is to put together a defense team and a defense fund.
“I’d be happy to join it,” he added. “And what we should do is support those people who are potentially in jeopardy but there is no way to offer this kind of immunity to anyone who may be a target of Donald Trump because they will go after whoever doesn’t have that kind of pardon, and there are plenty of targets who they can assail.”
Despite Trump’s pledges in the 2016 cycle to drain the swamp and prosecute Hillary Clinton, his DOJ never prosecuted political opponents.
“By issuing the pardon so early in the lame duck period rather than on his way out the door, President Biden also provided President Trump time to plan his next moves,” Reed told The Center Square. “The Hunter pardon and its implications will live on long after the Biden presidency has reached its final chapter.”
Regarding Presidential Pardons, Trump should do his pardons the Constitutionally correct way, pardoning only those who have been unjustly accused and punished, and revoke every unconstitutional Blank Pardon issued or about to be issued by Biden to cover Hunter, his crime family and other co-conspirators and coverers of crimes for which any have yet to be accused and convicted of. If Trump cannot void previous indicted and convicted crimes of Hunter’s, he certainly can revoke those for which he has yet to be found out, that have yet to reach a point in time they cannot be prosecuted. If we cannot get jail Hunter for decades for the real crimes he has committed, then arrest him for Jay-walking and give him a life sentence. Over-sentencing one crime to balance the books of his father’s immoral pardons is not unequal justice under the law, but equalizing justice under the law that Joe Biden stole from WE THE PEOPLE in his pardons that will stop nobody from committing His and Hunter’s crimes again. Blanket pardons for any crimes over previous periods of time are not only immoral but should be declared totally unconstitutional. These people are not Gods but mortal men and to grant blanket pardons not yet even discovered places them not only above the law, but equal to Gods, and even the secular socialists should deny these rights to any mortal imperfect being, able to morally, financially, or physically kill or corrupt the rights of other righteous American people.
IMO EVERY ONE in jail for ‘Jan 6th’, were there illegally!
“After thumbing his nose at the idea that ‘no one is above the law,’ President Biden has undermined the entire Democratic Party’s messaging apparatus and robbed their ability to claim the moral high ground.”
Does the Pardon given by Joe Biden to criminally guilty Hunter Biden include the not so guilty J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Trump said in a statement last week. Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice by this treasonous, puppet president Joe OBiden administration.
Now is the perfect chance for Trump to take the moral high ground.
1. Under no circumstances should he pardon himself, as that would further erode the public’s trust in the “system”.
2. Those who committed vandalism or acts of violence should have their sentences commuted, not pardoned, if those sentences exceed what any other person would draw, committing the same acts in any other jurisdiction.
3. Everyone else should have their cases vacated, as the vast majority were simply there and got caught up in the FBI’s dragnet. Furthermore, none of those cases have been adjudicated in a court of law.
4. While money can’t undo the damage, Trump should require the Feds to pay this last group of folks a substantial financial settlement to compensate for income lost, mental anguish, legal bills, etc.
Doing all these things might begin to restore people’s trust? Here’s hoping.
PAY OUT of the FBI’s own pockets, NOT THEIR BUDGET.
Not only should Trump pardon the J6 Hostages but he needs to imprison those involved in this travesty of justice against these American Patriots AND undue the unconstitutional pardon of Hunter Biden.