Good morning. Today, my colleague Peter Baker is writing about the pardon of Hunter Biden. We're also covering Trump, North Korea and the best TV and movies of 2024. —David Leonhardt
A familial pardon
President Biden and President-elect Donald Trump now agree on one thing: The Biden Justice Department has been politicized. Biden pardoned his son Hunter last night, brushing away two federal convictions and granting his son clemency for any wrongdoing over the past decade. In his statement announcing the pardon, Biden complained about selective prosecution and political pressure. And he questioned the fairness of a system that he had, before now, defended. "No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter's cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong," Biden said. "Here's the truth," he added. "I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice." Biden's decision to wipe his son's convictions on gun and tax charges came despite repeated statements that he would not do so. This past summer, after Hunter Biden was convicted, he said, "I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process." The statement he issued last night made clear he did not accept the outcome or respect the process. Trump has long argued that the justice system was "weaponized" against him, and that he is the victim of selective prosecution, much the way Biden has now said his son was. Similarities and differencesTheir arguments are different in important respects. Trump contends that the two indictments against him by Biden's Justice Department amounted to a partisan witch hunt targeting the sitting president's main rival. Biden did not explicitly accuse the Justice Department of being biased against his family, but he suggested that it was influenced by Republican politicians who have waged a long public campaign assailing Hunter Biden. The Justice Department has rejected both accusations. The prosecutions of Trump and Hunter Biden were each handled by separate special counsels, appointed specifically to insulate the cases from politics. Senior department officials have denied that politics entered the equation against either man. There is no evidence that Biden had any involvement in Trump's cases. But the pardon will make it harder for Democrats to defend the integrity of the Justice Department and stand against Trump's unapologetic plans to use it for political purposes. Trump has picked Kash Patel, an adviser who vowed to "come after" the president-elect's enemies, to be the next director of the F.B.I. To be sure, the cases against Trump and Hunter Biden are hardly comparable. Trump was charged with illegally trying to overturn an election and, in a separate indictment, with endangering national security. Hunter Biden was convicted of lying on a firearms application form about his drug addiction, and he pleaded guilty to failing to pay taxes, which he later paid. In his pardon statement, Biden sought to appeal to empathy for a father of a son who struggled with drug addiction, framing his decision in personal terms as Hunter Biden faced the possibility of years in prison. "I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision," he wrote. If he had left it at that, that might have been one thing. But it was his attack on the prosecution that raised questions of a dual-track justice system. "There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution," the president said. "In trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me — and there's no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough." Read more of Peter's analysis. More on the pardon
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