The decision, which was first reported by NBC News, is a reversal for the president, who repeatedly said he would not use his authority to pardon his son or commute his sentence.

Summary

President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden, reversing his prior stance against using executive clemency.

The pardon covers Hunter’s federal gun conviction and tax evasion guilty plea, sparking political controversy.

Biden cited political attacks and a “miscarriage of justice” as reasons for his decision, emphasizing his son’s recovery from addiction and the targeting of his family.

Critics argue the move undermines the judicial process, while supporters view it as within Biden’s constitutional powers.

This decision shields Hunter from potential prison time as Biden nears the end of his presidency.

  • Allonzee@lemmy.world
    13·
    10 days ago

    Trump is held to a standard of hatred and cruelty. If he was visited by 3 ghosts in the night and suddenly started enacting pro-social policies that helped non-wealthy people, Republican voters, even the ones benefitting, would turn on him as decades of right wing media has trained them to do. Republicans don’t hold the same standards, they approve of cheating, of violence, of malice, of threats, of dishonesty when they’re convinced it’s to help their tribe win.

    The neoliberals claim to have more enlightened standards. And no, spending months on the pulpit declaring correctly that democracy is under threat, and then going on a swank vacation when she loses sends a demoralizing message, and Biden doing something as corrupt as Trump sends an even more powerful version of that message.

    Hardly matters though, nothing can improve without a major party that stands against the greed of the capitalists in defense of laborers, and the capitalists only fund parties that maintain their economic oppression, so all we’re voting for is the velocity of our decline. A little slower under (D) with rainbow pins for all the homeless and destitude our economy makes by design, and a little faster under ® with scapegoating and state violence against those same victims. Either way, our beloved 🌈economy🇺🇸 will be protected from the needs of the society that perversely lives in servitude to it instead of the other way around.

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 days ago

      Six days of vacation after a crazy stressful campaign, and she can afford the nicer room because she worked her ass off.

      There are important things to worry about. This story is an intentional distraction.

      • Allonzee@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 days ago

        There are important things to worry about, climate change, widening income inequity, homelessness, and our global economy that demands ever more growth/metastasis instead of equilibrium/homeostasis dictates our policy positions that continue to make them increasingly dire under either of our bought and paid for major parties.

        So neither of our major parties will allow that core rot, that most important of blights that informs or creates the others, to be seriously discussed, much less addressed as the central existential threat to humanity that it has become.

        I want trans people to have all the rights. I want abortion and all non healthcare to be legal and free, I want education based on aptitude and not net worth as that benefits society, I want public education that we can take pride instead of shame in as a societal institution, but we can’t get to any of that, especially in a stable way, without remaking our economy and it’s perverse incentives that drive us to see our neighbors loss as our zero sum gain.