President Biden faced mounting criticism Monday for the “sweeping” pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, with critics citing fears that it could be used by Trump to further his views of a “politicized” Justice Department and erode the role of the judiciary as an important check on executive power.
In a statement announcing the pardon, Biden took aim at what he described as a politically motivated investigation.
“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,” the president wrote.
That Biden used his final weeks as a lame duck president to protect his only living son from prosecution was met with less shock among legal analysts than was the sheer breadth of the pardon itself, which spans a nearly 11-year period beginning in January 2014, the year Hunter was appointed to the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and ending on Sunday, the day that the White House announced the pardon.
While that time frame includes both the federal firearm and tax evasion convictions that Hunter was convicted of this year, experts say the scope of the pardon could go much further by extending to any actions committed for more than a decade, virtually ensuring the president’s son cannot be held accountable for any activity conducted during that period.
In terms of both length and scope, the Hunter Biden pardon “could really could not be more sweeping, to be honest with you,” Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor and member of Congress, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
The time frame included in the pardon covers “almost all federal statutes of limitations,” Gowdy said. “For the vast majority of federal crimes, this covers this time period and means that charges cannot be brought.”
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President Biden and Hunter Biden (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
Critics note that Biden broke his own repeated declarations that he would not pardon Hunter earlier this year. First, after he was found guilty in June on three felony firearm charges, and then in September after he pleaded guilty to separate federal charges of tax evasion.
“I am not going to do anything,” Biden said this summer. “I will abide by the jury’s decision.”
This week, Biden did the opposite.
White House officials insist that Biden still backs his contention this summer that “no one is above the law.”
“As he said in his statement, he has deep respect for our justice system,” a spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “And as a wide range of legal experts have pointed out, this pardon is indisputably within his authority and warranted by the facts of the case.”
“The pardon power was written in absolute terms, and a president can even, in my view, pardon himself,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote in an op-ed for Fox News Digital.
“However, what is constitutional is not necessarily ethical or right,” Turley said, adding that in his view, Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter is “one of the most disgraceful pardons even in the checkered history of presidential pardons.”
“His portrayal of his son as a victim stands in sharp contrast to the sense of immunity and power conveyed by Hunter in his dealings,” Turley said.
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Hunter Biden and his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden (Ryan Collerd/AFP via Getty Images)
Some lawmakers and legal analysts separately cited fears that the pardon could further erode public trust in the Justice Department, giving more credence to Trump’s frequent complaints that the Department of Justice is a political apparatus capable of being “weaponized” rather than a department that strives to act independently and largely without political influence.
In granting the pardon, Biden is “essentially endorsing Trump’s long-held opinion that the Department of Justice is politicized and isn’t acting impartially,” longtime GOP strategist and communicator Ryan Williams told Fox News in an interview.
Gowdy said Biden’s pardon reflects his longtime view that the Justice Department has been too politicized in recent years and needs to be reformed, citing a swirl of investigations during recent administrations, including probes that were led by House committees, and which looked into the actions of both Biden and Trump family members.
“When I was a prosecutor, politics had nothing to do with the job,” Gowdy said. “I didn’t know the politics of a single one of my co-workers.” The focus, he said, should be shifted back not to “targeting people, but targeting fact patterns.”
“Prosecuting your political enemies, involving family members, all of this stuff is new, and all of it’s really dangerous.”
Special Counsel David Weiss, who brought both cases against Hunter Biden, has defended his actions against claims that the prosecutions were politically motivated, noting in a court filing Monday that Hunter Biden’s team had filed “eight motions to dismiss the indictment, making every conceivable argument for why it should be dismissed, all of which were determined to be meritless.”
Weiss added, “There was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case.”
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Hunter Biden (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
Still, some have objected to the intense investigation surrounding Hunter Biden, noting that if not for his father’s presidency, he likely would not have faced charges in the gun case.
Gowdy, a former Republican House member, said he ultimately agreed with that contention.
“I prosecuted gun cases for six years,” Gowdy told Fox News Digital. “I would not have taken this case.”
“There’s a lot of really serious federal violent crime out there, and I would not have wasted the resources on the gun part of this,” Gowdy explained.
But the former South Carolina lawmaker also said that doesn’t mean he would have let Biden’s son off the hook.
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“I definitely would have gone forward on the taxes and allegations of corruption,” Gowdy said of the other allegations against Biden.
Ultimately, the Justice Department and FBI need to be “significantly reformed,” Gowdy said.
“They need to get out of the business of politics.”
Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.