Today’s notice: A new way to look at the Hunter Biden pardon. The most cynical way possible to look at the Hunter Biden pardon. Finally, are Republicans going to give the past lives of two controversial Trump nominees a pardon?
Pardon Me
The outrage over the Hunter Biden pardon has fallen into two buckets: the first, that it is rank hypocrisy; the second, that Joe Biden is signaling that Donald Trump is onto something with his weaponization-of-the-government schtick. The result has been a general take that the president’s clemency powers are bad.
But we’ve started hearing a third bipartisan argument: presidents’ incredibly broad clemency power is actually really good, and the problem with Biden is he hasn’t pardoned enough. According to the DOJ, he has used his clemency power less than any president in the last 25 years.