Yes, Biden Should Issue a Blanket Pardon

Even a bigger one that is being debated now.

December 6, 2024

By Marc Cooper

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A new survey reveals that, on at least 100 occasions during his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump threatened revenge, retribution, or prosecution of his perceived political enemies—none of whom have been accused of any crimes.

His recent pick for FBI chief, Kash Patel, has escalated the rhetoric, sounding like a mafia boss intent on eliminating all competing families.

Patel has compiled a list of more than 50 targets, ranging from Democrats (and Liz Cheney) who served on the January 6th House committee, to the congressional managers of Trump’s impeachment, to the federal prosecutors who brought criminal cases against Trump, to the leadership of the DOJ, to the media and journalists whom he claims conspired with Democrats to discredit Trump. Oh, and Dr. Fauci is also on the Trump-Patel hit list for the high crime of trying to contain the COVID epidemic.

This is unabated madness. And as I wrote earlier this week, it’s an open declaration of war against American rule of law, as well as a costly threat to perfectly innocent high-profile political and media figures whom Trump calls “the enemy within.” With the Supreme Court ruling that the president can commit crimes while in office, these threats should be taken 100% seriously.

Call it what you like—fascism, dictatorship, authoritarianism, or normalized psychopathy—but whatever you call it, this is a mortal threat to American democracy. And don’t think this sort of repression will be limited to a few dozen politicians. It threatens the basic civil liberties of all Americans who might dissent from Trump once he’s in office.

Politico reports that this has set off a high-level debate in the White House about whether Biden should take the step of issuing dozens, or even scores, of preemptive blanket pardons for those publicly targeted:

“That the conversations are taking place at all reflects the growing anxieties among high-level Democrats about just how far Trump’s reprisals could go once he reclaims power. The remarkable, 11-year breadth of Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter illustrated how worried the White House is about Trump officials seizing any potential openings for prosecution.”

“At issue, to repurpose a phrase, is whether to take Trump seriously and literally when it comes to his prospective revenge tour against Democrats and others in the so-called Deep State who’ve raised his ire.”

Excuse me, but why wouldn’t we take these threats literally? A few Democrats and a barge full of pundits have dismissed the idea, claiming it would cede the moral high ground to Trump.

AYFKM? What moral ground? Trump has already announced that he plans to pardon some or perhaps all of those jailed or convicted for trashing Congress and attacking cops on January 6th, whom he calls political prisoners. That promise was made months ago and has been constantly repeated. So, it would not be a tit-for-tat for these possible Biden pardons (which I fully endorse).

The usual quaking liberal fear that anything Biden or the Democrats do that challenges norms (not laws) will only give Trump more excuses to commit more outrages is a threadbare laughable notion. It’s like claiming that someone who throws a matche into a raging 1,000-square-mile forest fire is only making it worse.

Trump has full agency, with or without Democratic moves, to do whatever the hell he wants and knows he is backed up by the MAGA lackeys in the SCOTUS majority, and for that matter, by the U.S. Congress.

We should be taking every step possible NOW to prepare for the sort of political combat we are about to face in less than two months. At a minimum, the Trump regime will be a presidential dictatorship with a democratic façade. That’s the best-case scenario. The worst case, as unthinkable as it might be, however, is not to be discarded.

Yes, a blanket pardon will cause some outrage and pushback from MAGA. There will be ethical questions raised by professors and pundits who think they are somehow immune from the coming storm.

Yes, there are some legitimate questions about the “ethics” of such a move by Biden, as if ethics had anything to do with MAGA politics, or the Supreme Court for that matter.

Yes, this sort of blanket pardon would be elitist, as it would protect only some dozens of high-profile folks. On the other hand, if Trump sees he can get away with jailing his former prosecutors and a couple dozen reporters without any cost, what would stop him from deepening his enemies list?

Do those who resisted dictatorships in South America, or those who currently oppose Putin through “unethical” acts, deserve to be criticized for not being obedient and adhering to lawless regimes?

Would the assassination of a Russian field general by a Ukrainian sniper also be considered unethical?

Let’s get real and stop playing word games, which I suspect to be a covert form of denialism about what is coming. Should we all stand around and quote well-meaning liberals on political ethics as the FBI starts knocking on our doors and ICE starts raiding factories, breaking up families, and deporting immigrants — as we learned today — to small countries in the Caribbean that Trump is trying to buy off as dumping grounds for the deported? Are we supposed to wait quietly and obediently for whatever DOD chief replaces the current drunk, sexual predator candidate for the job to implement the Insurrection Act, which will use troops to quash peaceful demonstrations?

Is it a good idea for the anti-Trump forces to engage in unilateral disarmament, even unilateral ethical disarmament, on the brink of some sort of dictatorship?

I think not. I think we should already be organizing in a network of person-to-person community groupings to be ready to respond to the outrages on the horizon. And, my friends, sorry to say, but the physically fit should already be training themselves and others for non-violent mass civil disobedience because that is surely going to be a tactic we will need to be ready for really soon. When southern blacks were forced to physically (and illegally) to fight back against Jim Crow cops also unethical? After all, it was illegal.

I don’t expect much from the Democrats, who are flat on their backs. A friend of mine asked me who I thought was the leading spokesman for the Anti-Trump/Center-Left forces, and neither of us could come up with a single name.

Frankly, I don’t think Biden will show the courage to follow through with blanket pardons, though I am pleasantly surprised that at least it is being considered. It also seems to be gaining approval from some Democratic lawmakers. Again, from Politico:

“The White House is facing contradictory pressures from Capitol Hill. Some longtime Democratic lawmakers, like Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), have talked favorably about the precedent of former President Gerald Ford’s preemptive pardon of Richard Nixon, issued before any charges were filed against the disgraced former president.”

“If it’s clear by January 19 that [revenge] is his intention, then I would recommend to President Biden that he provide those preemptive pardons to people, because that’s really what our country is going to need next year,” Markey said on WGBH last week.

“Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Penn.), a close Biden ally who hosted the president in his district shortly before the election, issued a plea Wednesday for Biden to offer blanket pardons.”

“This is no hypothetical threat,” Boyle said in a statement, adding, “The time for cautious restraint is over. We must act with urgency to push back against these threats and prevent Trump from abusing his power.”

Other lawmakers have been just as emphatic in private with Biden’s aides, calling for preemptive pardons.

One pundit I like, Matt Dowd, says it would be a big mistake to issue the pardons. He argues that any persecution of Trump’s opponents will escalate the movement against him (one that, for my part, I fail to see so far), and that fighting each individual case will build the movement. I like Matt a lot, but he’s wrong on this one. He argues that any arrest and prosecution will wind up in the Supreme Court and offer more grounds for resistance. This is a variation on the theory that making things worse will eventually make them better. I’ve never seen that work, honestly. Anywhere.

And about the Hunter Biden pardon: Yes, Biden lied—or maybe he changed his mind—after he repeatedly said he would not pardon his son. So? Did the roof collapse? No. Most of the criticism I heard came from Democrats. This, while the incoming president is vowing to liberate the hooligans from January 6th and has pardoned virulent racists like former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, as well as naming Jared’s father to Ambassador to France, despite his conviction and jail time by Chris Christie for a sordid sex blackmail plot against his own brother. Not to mention that Trump himself is a convicted felon and an adjudicated sexual abuser.

Hunter Biden should never have faced jail time and only did because, when Joe Biden came into office, he purposefully left in place the Republican U.S. Attorney handling the case…this was when Biden was still babbling about bipartisanship, before Trump declared war on America. Just to be clear, Hunter was convicted on two charges: tax evasion and lying on a gun background check (claiming he did not use drugs, though he was using them when he signed the gun form). He had already paid back the IRS, and that rarely, if ever, results in jail time. As for the "gun charge," as the media calls it, I offer this brief clarification. I own about half a dozen guns, all legally purchased in California. For each purchase, I had to fill out the required federal form, which clearly states that providing any false information is a federal offense.

Since background checks have been in place for the last 20 years or so, more than a million people have failed them. And the only way to fail is to falsely answer any of the questions, which, as stated, is a federal offense. Of those more than a million "liars," about 25 were referred to prosecutors, and exactly 12—one dozen—were convicted. Hmm... some selective prosecution might be at play in Hunter’s case, considering it was handled by a GOP U.S. Attorney? The only mistake Biden made regarding his son was not immediately denouncing the rampant political hypocrisy behind his conviction and issuing a pardon. He should have challenged federal prosecutors to do something about the million others who will fail the background check in the coming years. If I were president and my son was facing these thin, Trumped-up offenses, I would have signed the pardon the same day.

Final thought: Not only do I support a blanket pardon under Biden, but I would argue he should shoot the moon. He should offer a sweeping pardon to thousands of other nonviolent prisoners who do not have the social privileges that the Trump-Patel targets do.

And yes, I have little doubt that if the blanket pardons for the announced targets go through, Trump will indict some of them anyway, knowing he can take the case to the Supreme Court, where they will, unethically, find some way to invalidate the pardons. So be it. We better be ready to seriously take on the Supreme Court, because in the end, they are Trump’s most consequential and reliable allies. Get ready to rumble—or turn over and go back to sleep.++

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