No background is needed for this one, presumably…
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is..
Which is more ethical: for President Biden to pardon his black sheep son Hunter, or for him to let Hinter be sentenced to prison?
By that wording you can tell that I regard this not as an ethical dilemma but rather an ethics conflict. In the latter variety of ethics problem, two separate ethical principles dictate diametrically opposed solutions. This same ethics conflict has been explored in too many novels, movies and TV episodes to list. “Blue Bloods,” Tom Selleck’s ethics-obsessed cop show revisits the problem regularly: does loyalty to family always trump professional duties and obligations, and if not, when?
The Presidential pardon power is absolute, and many have opined, “Why wouldn’t Biden pardon Hunter?” Other Presidents have pardoned friends, benefactors (Gerald Ford pardoned the man who made him President), donors and supporters. Ann Althouse weighed in with this cynical rant…
“President Biden, we’re told, ‘repeatedly said that he will not pardon or commute the sentences of his son.’ But, yeah, who cares? He was running for office, and he didn’t even win on that promise. He didn’t even lose. He got ousted by fellow Democrats who thought he couldn’t win and then they lost. Worst loss ever. Ignominious. And he’s still got to drag his ancient body through 7 more weeks of this “presidency” nobody thinks he can do anymore. Surely, he can do one thing — that thing maybe he can’t even remember promising he wouldn’t do — and pardon his only living son, the scoundrel Hunter. Who believes promises these days? Everyone promises anything and everything to get elected. Is he supposed to drag himself through his last days on Earth — his post-presidency days — with his son in prison? Is he supposed to satisfy himself instead with the hollow, icy honor of posing as a weirdly scrupulous man who kept a promise not to pardon his son? Promise? Was there really a promise? Love. Family love. That’s the greater thing. No joke.”
Most of the reasons for Biden not to pardon Hunter are based upon non-ethical considerations. For example, doing so could tarnish his reputation and ranking as President, though that horse has left the barn already. The pardon would, or at least should, make it more difficult for Democrats to attack Trump for his pardons, but hypocrisy is now SOP for that party. Me? I am firmly on the side of a President putting his own welfare and that of his family well behind his duties to the nation. However, pardoning a small fish like Hunter hardly is going to cause genuine or lasting harm to the Republic.
Later today, I may subject this quiz to one of the Ethics decision-making processes, depending on how much interest I see in the comments.
Ethics Alarms 
Ford pardoned Nixon because it was thought that going after him would do irreparable damage to the Republic. Personally, I think that was a wise choice.
The shrewdest move (ethical or not), it seems to me, would be for Trump to assure Biden that he’ll issue a pardon for Hunter – and a blanket pardon for Biden himself (who is obviously dirty as sin). This, announced at the same time as the highly-likely pardon of all the J6 protestors, would be one of the most statesman-like things Trump could do, allowing Biden to keep his “promise,” muting the criticism of those who howl about the J6 folks, and sparing the nation a lot of angst.
Perhaps he’s already made that assurance. Then again, this is Trump we’re talking about, and he certainly doesn’t owe Joe Biden any favors. His key appointments so far certainly suggest that he doesn’t intend to let the bureaucrats and D operatives who hamstrung him for the past 8 years off the hook.
Oh, I agree on Ford, but it still had “the appearance of impropriety,” with many believing that Ford made a deal with Tricky Dick.
Well now… this comment didn’t age well!
It aged fine, it’s not your fault Biden chose to do the wrong thing.
I don’t see how Biden can ethically pardon his son for crimes his son put in print. He has himself admitted to using drugs, paying prostitutes, etc. There is plenty of evidence of his influence peddling. He filled out the background check fraudulently, the gun was discarded recklessly, and the FBI tried to cover it up. The penalty for this is up to 10 years in prison. He did it. There are a lot of people in prison for gun crimes with lesser culpability. It wasn’t a political prosecution, in fact, the politics tried to save him from punishment several times.
That isn’t to say you can’t pardon a relative or political ally ethically. I think the Michael Flynn case is an example of that
A good friend (and adamant Trump supporter from Trump’s early days) told me he would pardon his son. I responded, “But Jim, you wouldn’t let your son turn into a felonious derelict.” Personally, just on general principal, the entire Biden operation should be sentenced to five years in a minimum-security federal prison. Including Jill Biden, its current and extremely vicious head.
Let’s face the facts, if Hunter hadn’t been Biden’s son he probably wouldn’t have been prosecuted but that doesn’t absolve him of wrong doing. Hunter needs to learn a lesson the hard way. If I were President and Hunter were my son I would say, allow Hunter to be sentenced and allow him to believe that he is heading to prison if that is what the court chooses as the sentence, then commute the actual prison sentence and let him be on parole. Hunter should suffer any and all of the other punishment consequences for his actions if there are any. Hunter did actually break the law and here should be some kind of negative consequences.
If Biden doesn’t do this, then Trump should give Hunter a full pardon likely forcing a public acknowledgement from Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and the political left. The optics of a full pardon from Trump would go a long way to humanize Trump, at least in the short run.
I failed to finish; I think President Biden will choose to pardon Hunter to prevent Trump from having that option. I don’t think anyone in the political left want’s to be forced to thank Donald Trump for anything.
“I don’t think anyone in the political left want’s to be forced to thank Donald Trump for anything.”
I think you are absotively/posilutley right!
PWS
I strongly disagree. If Hunter wasn’t Joe Biden’s son, it is likely that he would already have served several years in federal prison, just on the gun charge. Remember, they found his discarded gun in a dumpster near a school. They traced the serial number back to him (legally dubious if there isn’t gun registration, but they did). Then they found the illegal background check. Well, that is an open and shut case. It carries a long federal prison term. Many people have been convicted for less. In this case, the FBI went to the gun store where Hunter bought the gun and demanded the paper form (which is illegal). The gun store owner called the ATF on the FBI. He hurriedly photocopied the Form 4473 before the FBI took it from him (the loss of which could put the gun store owner in jail). If anything, the government obstructed the prosecution of Hunter Biden, tried to cover up his crimes, and put other people in jeopardy of being convicted of federal felonies in the process.
Look at this case. A man loaned an AR-15 to someone who was thinking about buying it. A part broke as he was using it at a gun range. When the part broke, the gun fired twice with one trigger pull, then became non-functional. Someone told the ATF and they decided that the gun had become a ‘machine gun’ for that 0.1 seconds and that the owner was in possession of a unregistered machine gun and had transferred it to another. The ATF would not allow an independent examination of the gun, their own analyst deemed it not a machine gun, then a machine gun without a good explanation, and potentially exculpatory documents were withheld. The man served 30 months in prison and is a felon now. This wasn’t a political prosecution, it is what the ATF does. You can find hundreds of similar cases. Does Biden’s case seem more or less serious than this?
https://firearmscoalition.org/olofson-sentenced/
Agreed. Steve, I think he’d have had serious problems with his failure to file returns and failure to pay taxes on all sorts of unreported income. The Feds let various statutes of limitation expire. That just doesn’t happen.
Michael R. & Old Bill,
I don’t disagree with much of what either of you wrote; however, when I wrote…
…I should have made it clearer what that all meant to me. Without the extra scrutiny from Republican eyes trying to “Get Hunter”, because he was Joe Biden’s son, everything could have been quietly sweep under a rug by the Biden Administration and Hunter wouldn’t have been prosecuted for anything and the general public wouldn’t have known a damn thing about any of it.
Does that make my intent clearer?
P.S. In my opinion, President Trump needs to find a way to strip the FBI, the IRS, and the ATF of some of the powers they’ve been intentionally abusing for years. I’m absolutely certain that there have been people intentionally railroaded into prison that never belonged there.
Got it, Steve. Si!
Fox News is reporting that President Biden has pardoned his son.
Speculation already ginning up on how much this might protect Joe from criminal investigations on influence peddling, etc.
Hunter was set to be sentenced mid-December, so this pardon stops the pre-sentencing investigation, effectively shutting down any investigation in Hunter and hus various crimes. The breadth is surprising in that in clears Hunter of crimes for which he has not been charged.
“I am shocked, shocked I tell you that there is gambling going on in this establishment.”
He’s getting the same deal he was going to get before the Circuit Court judge in Delaware threw out the immunity deal the feds were going to give him, John. “Surprise, surprise, surprise.” Crooked Joe Biden indeed.
I wonder if Joe’s been given the good news. Maybe they just gave him more ice cream.
From CNN: The broadly crafted pardon explicitly grants clemency for the tax and gun offenses from his existing cases, plus any potential federal crimes that Hunter Biden may have committed “from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.” This time frame, importantly, covers his entire tenure on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and much of his other overseas work, including in China. He had faced scrutiny for his controversial foreign business dealings, and Trump has repeatedly said he should be prosecuted for his activities in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Here is an opinion from a extreme Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) progressive about the Hunter Biden pardon. Notice in paragraph two, three, and four how the author rationalizes the pardon using Donald Trump as the excuse. The author focuses on Trump for 3/5’s of the article’s five paragraphs and Trump had absolutely ZILCH to do with Hunter’s pardon, talk about obvious TDS. As much as the author defaults to blaming Trump for everything, Trump should probably be blamed for sun spots, magnetic north drift, and the implosion of the Titan sub. In my opinion, you can’t fix what’s wrong with the author.
Man, that guy hit all the high notes. The most annoying is “everybody has a drug addled son. Joe’s just being a loving dad.” Give me a break. That’s just of a piece with, “the nuclear family is toxic and has to go.”
The pardon is unethical because the unfettered pardon power serves the purpose of cutting off unjust criminal law results which have somehow come from the courts – it is a check and balance on judges and prosecutors, in effect. The trouble is, you can’t have it so that all individual injustices can potentially be undone without creating the situation where individual just results can be undone as well (ethics incompleteness). But the pardon power was not put in the Constition so that a president’s family and friends could get away with literally everything and anything. Reminds me that someone said the Constitution was fit for a righteous people only.
Whew. That’s an award winningly succinct and on point comment!