It's worse by far than what most other presidents have done though - many of the more nepotist pardons in the past were for people who'd already served time, in some cases several years before, or for people who had crossed the line in their attempts to best serve the president himself. Giving Hunter such a sweeping pardon, not only for crimes he's already been tried for but also anything else he might have done in a ten year period, is on an entirely different level. I saw experts commenting that the only real precedent is Ford's pardon for Nixon - which was rightly very controversial at the time as well, but there at least Ford could argue, whether one accepts the argument or not, that he did it for the good of the country to avoid further polarization from Nixon being tried for his actions.

Spinning Biden's pardon for Hunter as good for the country, or for anyone other than the Biden family, is a lot harder, though. Yes, Trump and his cronies, including the nutcase he wants to go lead the FBI, have made no secret of their plans to use and abuse whatever power they can get their hands on to prosecute Hunter Biden, as well as various other nasty plans. But on the other hand, it's clear to everyone that Hunter did commit crimes, not to mention his long career of possibly legal but still extremely dubious attempts to earn money based purely on his family connections, so those fears for what was likely to happen in the future weren't sufficient to justify such a sweeping pardon covering everything including the existing prosecution under the authority of a Democratic-led DoJ.

Indeed. Plenty of Democrats are making clear that they don't agree with this and Biden's action shouldn't be considered as representative of their party - but the fallout will obviously affect far more people than just himself.




Sadly true.