Pardon All J6ers

Joe Biden's sweeping pardon of his son opened the door for blanket amnesty for every January 6 defendant as Biden's DOJ continues to investigate, charge, incarcerate, and put on trial J6 protesters.

Reaction on both sides is mixed in response to Joe Biden’s sprawling pardon last night of his son, Hunter.

Claiming his son had been “singled out” and “treated differently” by the Department of Justice and federal judges, Biden not only absolved Hunter of the two criminal convictions for which he was set to be sentenced this month but any crime over a nearly 11-year period:

Be It Known, That This Day, I, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States, Pursuant to My Powers Under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, of the Constitution, Have Granted Unto

ROBERT HUNTER BIDEN

A Full and Unconditional Pardon

For those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted.

The declaration is now filed with Biden’s DOJ for posterity.

Thanks, Joe

I will leave it to others, including the great Miranda Devine, to detail how the decade-long international Biden family crime spree will end without legal accountability for those—including Joe himself—involved. Or explain how the pardon represents another lie told by “my word as a Biden” Joe or speculate that more pardons, perhaps for his brother Jim and every other relative who benefitted from the family’s global grift, are in the making.

Instead, I tip my hat to Joe Biden for laying the groundwork for President-elect Donald Trump to offer similarly-generous clemency to all January 6 defendants on Day One of his presidency. That’s not to say Trump is not already considering such a plan—but Biden’s claims that his own DOJ “selectively” and “unfairly” targeted his son will be delicious words for J6 pardon-detractors to eat when the time comes. So too will Biden’s accusations that “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”

This from the man whose DOJ not only initiated two investigations into his predecessor, which led to an armed raid of Mar-a-Lago and historic federal criminal indictments against Trump and co-defendants, but whose DOJ also continues to investigate, arrest, prosecute, and imprison Americans involved in protesting the rigged 2020 presidential election.

Biden’s unprecedented persecution of J6ers has become a rallying cry among the MAGA base; while most Republican political leaders ignored their plight, Trump did not. On the campaign trail, Trump often promised to pardon the more than 1,500-and-counting Americans ensnared in the most abusive and politically motivated federal prosecution in the DOJ’s history.

A Trump spokeswoman recently said pardons would be reviewed on a “case-by-case” basis but others suggest a broad-based pardon could be in the works for so-called “nonviolent” offenders convicted or charged with misdemeanors; how to handle those convicted of violent charges such as assault on law enforcement present a more complicated political calculation for the new administration, one that may have required a piecemeal approach to ease expected outrage by the media and among lily-livered Republicans in Washington.

Until yesterday.

Trump himself wasted little time before raising the issue of January 6 defendants in a post on Truth Social:

Influencers also flooded X with calls for unequivocal clemency for all J6ers:

Even regime-friendly outlets expressed shock at the broad nature of Biden’s missive. “President Joe Biden’s grant of clemency on Sunday night — an extraordinary political act with extraordinary legal breadth — insulates his son from ever facing federal charges over any crimes he possibly could have committed over the past decade,” Politico’s Betsy Woodruff Swan wrote Sunday night. The closest comparison, Swan noted, was President Gerald Ford’s broad pardon of Richard Nixon in 1974.

Pardon “experts” expressed alarm at Biden’s move and worried how it helps Trump make his case for J6ers. “It justifies what Trump wants to do,” Samuel Morison, a former lawyer for the DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, told Swan. “Now, he was going to do it anyway. But it gives him some political cover. I think some January 6 pardons are probably coming—at least some, maybe all.”

Indeed.

Hunter Did Not Get the J6 Treatment

Despite Biden’s whining about an unfair process for his son, Hunter in reality was handled with kid gloves. Hunter Biden did not endure a predawn armed raid by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Task Force and see automatic rifles pointed at his wife and children. Hunter Biden was not hauled off to an inhumane gulag in the nation’s capital and denied release by the DOJ and federal judges on bogus, novel charges. Hunter Biden was not left to the mercy of a public defender overloaded with similar cases and hostile to his political leanings. Hunter Biden did not face a jury populated by voters who hate his father. Hunter Biden did not have to fight excessive sentencing recommendations by a bloodthirsty DOJ.

All of that and more, however, represents the torment endured by every J6er who, unlike Hunter, did not have the political pull, the means, or public sympathy to successfully prevail over a weaponized legal and judicial system. And while Hunter escapes scot-free, four trials of J6ers begin in Washington today while others face sentencing before judges with a proven track record of contempt for J6 defendants.

If there is any upside to the pardoning of Hunter Biden, it is that the task ahead for Trump and his team just got that much easier.

Pardon them all.