Trump taunts Biden over pardoning his son; raises case of imprisoned supporters

New York (The Uttam Hindu): President-elect Donald Trump has taunted President Joe Biden for pardoning his son Hunter, asking if the pardon includes his supporters serving prison terms for participating in the January 6 riots when Congress was attacked In a post on Truth Social on Sunday night. he called the pardon “such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice”!

“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years,” he asked using a shorthand for the January 6, 2021 riots. After Trump held a rally claiming he had won the 2020 election and it was "stolen" from him, some of his supporters invaded the Capitol threatening then-Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress as they were certifying Biden's election.

Trump called those rioters who were convicted political prisoners and “hostages” who he claims were wrongfully prosecuted and has said he would pardon them. Trump had himself indicated that he was open to pardoning Hunter Biden “despite what they’ve done to me, where they’ve gone after me so viciously, despite what, and Hunter’s a bad boy”.

Hoping to put a sordid family case behind him as he leaves office, Biden pardoned his son Hunter who was convicted of gun and tax evasion charges sparing him the possibility of prison sentences. Announcing the pardon, Biden said that “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice” in his son’s case.

“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,” he said. Biden’s claims about the selective prosecution of his son because of political pressures echo Trump’s assertion that he was tried and convicted for political reasons by prosecutors who weaponised the justice system. The president asserted that others who committed the same offences as his son and under similar circumstances were not prosecuted like him unless there were other circumstances or were given non-criminal deals.

Trump and his supporters have made the same arguments -- politically motivated selective prosecution -- in his two convictions in New York. The 34 criminal convictions that the Democrats touted in the campaign were for mislabeling payments in his account books and each cheque was made into separate offences. In the civil case where he was fined $354 million, he was accused of inflating his net worth in applying for bank loans, although the loans were repaid and the banks did not complain.

Both cases were brought by elected Democratic Party prosecutors. Before Biden announced the pardon, a Representative from his party, Jamie Raskin cited Trump’s claims to make the case for Hunter Biden. “There is a defence called selective prosecution if you can show that the government has a set of cases that all look alike, but they pick one person out to prosecute based on, say, a political animus towards the person, which essentially is the claim that Donald Trump has been making about why he was targeted,” he said. Trump’s Spokesperson Steven Cheung said without referring to Biden’s pardon, “The failed witch hunts against President Trump have proven that the Democrat-controlled DOJ (Department of Justice) and other radical prosecutors are guilty of weaponising the justice system.”

“That system of justice must be fixed and due process must be restored for all Americans, which is exactly what President Trump will do as he returns to the White House with an overwhelming mandate from the American people,” he said. Other Republicans piled on, attacking the pardon. Senator John Barrasso posted on X, “Tonight’s pardon is wrong. It proves to the American people that there is a two-tier system of justice”. Rep. Wesley Hunt posted, “Joe Biden just did the thing he told us he would never do, PARDONING his son for crimes he and the majority of the media told us he never committed.”

And Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said on Truth Social, “This pardon is Joe Biden’s admission that Hunter is a criminal”. She added that Biden’s “FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and DOJ (Department of Justice) raided Barron’s bedroom and Melania’s closet at Mar-a-Lago”, referring to Trump’s son and wife. Biden had said, “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision” to pardon his son. Senator Tom Cotton conceded in his X post, “Most Americans can sympathise with a father’s decision to pardon his son, even if they disagree”, but he added, ”What they can’t forgive is Biden lying about it repeatedly before the election.”

Hunter Biden played a central role in Trump’s first impeachment in which he was accused of pressuring Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate alleged business irregularities in order to impair Biden’s bid for the presidency. A Ukrainian gas company had appointed Hunter Biden as a director with monthly payments even though he had no experience in the energy field. While the House of Representatives impeached Trump, the Senate did not convict him.