Yesterday I wrote:

Everyone’s hair is on fire because a president pardoned his son. Unprecedented? Sure.

Early this morning, I came across an Esquire article from Charles P. Pierce in Apple News+, headlined:

A President Shouldn’t Pardon His Son? Hello, Anybody Remember Neil Bush?

The deck was as straightforward:

Nobody defines Poppy Bush’s presidency by the fact that he pardoned his progeny. The moral: Shut the fck up about Hunter Biden, please.

The article included the following paragraph (emphasis added):

But the luckiest thing about this lucky American businessman is that his father and brother were both presidents of the United States, and that his father exercised his unlimited constitutional power of clemency to pardon The Lucky American Businessman for all that S&L business way back when. The president’s name was George H.W. Bush. The Lucky American Businessman was his son, Neil, whose brother, George, later became president of the United States himself.

I bookmarked it, prepared to post an update to my “unprecedented” comment, but in tracking down the direct web link, I instead got a “Sorry, this story isn’t available in Apple News” error.

Hm. The article was still available in Apple News+ when visited it directly, but both the headline and the deck were now changed. It now read:

Hunter Biden Isn’t the First Presidential Son Caught Up in Controversy. Anybody Remember Neil Bush?

Nobody defines Poppy Bush’s presidency by his son’s struggles or the pardons he issued on his way out of the White House. The moral: Shut the fck up about Hunter Biden, please.

It includes an Editor’s Note:

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated. An earlier version stated incorrectly that George H. W. Bush gave a presidential pardon to his son, Neil Bush. Esquire regrets the error.

The paragraph I quoted also removed the reference to a pardon:

But the luckiest thing about this lucky American businessman is that his father and brother were both presidents of the United States. The president’s name was George H.W. Bush. The Lucky American Businessman was his son, Neil, whose brother, George, later became president of the United States himself.

On the Esquire Politics site simply pulled the article, giving it a title “This Column Is No Longer Available,” with the content of article itself also replaced by an Editor’s Note.

It appears Pierce, the article’s author, got caught spreading misinformation, possibly originating on Threads (archive). The Threads post itself now has a Community note linking to a fact-check.

I wanted to believe that H.W. Bush had pardoned his son—and no one has thought about it since—because I also believe Hunter Biden’s pardon would have absolutely zero impact on President Biden’s legacy.

I’m not sure if Pierce wrote the story based on the misinformation, or added the “pardon” bits to an existing story.

Either way, it’s a reminder of the importance of double-checking what you read, especially when it validates your own viewpoint.

President Joe Biden, in a direct and unapologetic statement:

Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.

When the news broke Sunday evening that President Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, my first thought was good for him. I also knew I’d awake to a string of pearl clutching.

Sure enough, the deluge of denunciations came fast and furious. Almost every story led with the “reversal” of President Biden’s “previous pledges” to not pardon his son, with the “hypocrisy” of his decision “sparking backlash.” Republicans called him a “liar”, Democrats were “disappointed.”

I can’t get into President Biden’s head, but I think that once Trump won, a pardon was a fait accompli. I’m sure the prosecutors knew that, too, at least at some level. There was no way he’d let his son twist in the wind ahead of a vindictive incoming president who nominated Matt Gaetz/Pam Bondi as Attorney General and Kash Patel to lead the FBI. He may have “broken” his promise, but I believe that promise was made under very different circumstances, before the American public elected a criminal. At this point, I think there’s a bit of “fuck it” happening, and I’m OK with that.

I’m only surprised that he did it now, and not at 11:59 a.m. on January 20, 2025, as a massive, Dark Brandon middle finger to the incoming administration.

If Donald Trump’s children were facing jail time, is there any doubt in your mind that he would immediately use his one incontrovertible power as president and pardon them? Heck, I suspect he might do it preemptively as soon as he’s sworn in, just in case.

May I remind you that Donald Trump pardoned his daughter’s father-in-law four years ago, and then, last week, nominated him as ambassador to France?

Beyond that, Trump has a litany of self-serving pardons. I don’t recall the Right raising a ruckus about it four years ago.

Everyone’s hair is on fire because a president pardoned his son. Unprecedented? Sure. But only because the president’s son was prosecuted for a crime few other people would be charged with. As Biden notes in his statement:

Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form.

From that previously linked list of Trump pardons and commutations:

The rapper Kodak Black […] was granted a commutation. In 2019, he was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for lying on background paperwork while attempting to buy guns.

Sounds familiar. Except:

[Black] admitted to lying on background check forms while buying multiple firearms […].

Prosecutors said two of the guns were later found by the police at crime scenes, including one — with Black’s fingerprints and a live round in the chamber — that had been used to fire at a “rival rap artist.” […]

Another weapon was discovered in the trunk of a car as the rapper and his team attempted to cross the Canadian border into upstate New York in April. Black was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana and criminal possession of a firearm.

The underlying crimes are superficially similar. If Trump can commute a stranger’s sentence in this situation, why shouldn’t President Biden pardon his son for a less serious version of the same basic crime?

Unsurprisingly, the New York Times has the pearl-clutchiest of takes. Under the hed “Broad Pardon for Hunter Biden Troubles Experts,” writer Kenneth P. Vogel suggests the pardon

[…] is raising awkward historical comparisons and sharp questions about the use of presidential clemency.

Vogel then quotes one of those experts:

“It is extraordinarily hazardous to use the pardon power in a case where the person is an intimate of the president,” said Aziz Z. Huq, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School.

It’s unclear why the good professor believes this, providing no evidence to support his belief, only that:

[…] President Biden’s pardon of his son “really does strike at the rule of law.”

Except it doesn’t. The president has the absolute authority to issue pardons, which Vogel himself immediately notes:

Presidents have unchecked authority to issue pardons, which wipe out convictions, and commutations, which reduce prison sentences.

We may not like how some have used that authority, but it is very much within “the rule of law.”

I’m not big on bothsidesism, but in a world where the president-elect is a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist, who was granted “presidential immunity” by a stolen Supreme Court, and who successfully ran out the clock on his own prosecutions, I’m perfectly comfortable with President Biden exercising his power as a president, and as a father.

The hypocrisy of the Right and everyone else handwringing over this is staggeringly vomitous. Their side has—and will do—much, much worse.

Now, I’d like for President Biden to take it a million steps farther, and offer preemptive pardons and commutations to everyone incarcerated for minor drug offenses, sitting in jails pending bail, and all the people the president-elect has suggested will be targeted by his incoming “Justice” Department. To quote Keith Olbermann:

Literally offer a pardon to anybody Trump might go after for prosecuting him, criticizing him, covering him, or looking at him funny. I want a 1-800-PARDONME hotline. I want 10 million pardons.

After all, if the President’s decision to pardon his son will, says the reliably execrable Jonathan Turley,

be a decision that lives in infamy in presidential politics.

he might as well go all the way. He’s got nothing to lose.