President Biden, Go Nuclear on Pardons
Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
President Biden, Go Nuclear on Pardons
Dear President Biden,
There has been a lot of moral handwringing about your pardon of your son Hunter for all the crimes he committed, and might have committed, over the past decade. On CNN’s The Source, Michael Bennet (D-CO) branded your pardon of Hunter “a gift” to MAGA because, before the election, you promised not to do so:
“When you turn around after you say—month after month after month—you’re not gonna pardon your son, and then you do pardon him— putting the personal ahead of your responsibilities to the American people—it just gives the American people a sense that there’s one system for the rich and powerful and one system for everyone else.”
Yesterday, both MSNBC and CNN were abuzz with this kind of self-flagellation on the part of the Democrats.
Of course, Donald Trump and his MAGA minions were going to exploit this about face. Trump let this one loose on Truth Social, writing: “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of justice.”
But does anyone really think that Donald Trump needs you to give him permission, or an opening, to do what he was going to do anyway? That is, to release as many insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6 2021 as he can get away with? Please.
Don’t kid yourself. Acts like this will be a mere warmup for the Stalinist purges to come. Consider that the inauguration hasn’t even happened yet and that he’s packed its ranks with the likes of Tom Homan, a border czar who has attended a white supremacist event and told CBS’ 60 Minutes that “families can be deported together” even if some of them are citizens. Trump’s most recent pick is Kash Patel, a Q-Anon conspiracy theorist, for FBI director. Biden can—and should—point to the likes of Patel who has said he wants the FBI to focus on going after Donald Trump’s enemies “both civilly and criminally” when defending his pardon of his son. For Trump, his M.O. as president will be, to quote Brazilian President Getulio Vargas, “For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.” I don’t need remind you that there’s nothing you’ll be able to do to stop this come January 20, 2025. Whether Patel gets confirmed by the Senate or not, a Fascist shitstorm is coming, the likes of which we’ve never seen before in the history of this great republic.
That’s why you should spend the last six weeks of your administration deploying umbrellas, as it were. Not only should you grant blanket immunity to the likes of Jack Smith and anyone else involved in prosecuting Trump for attempting to rape the government and overthrow the women who accused him of sexual assault, as it were, but you should grant pardons to people who’ve faced unjust prosecution because of their skin color and those on death row who don’t deserve to be there.
But most urgently, I think, you should look at granting clemency to as many undocumented persons as possible. You should pardon the Dreamers who were brought to this country through no fault of their own. You should pardon those that you granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS), whose only crime, oftentimes, is to have entered this country illegally. As you know, your power to grant pardons for federal crimes is broad and virtually limitless. You can grant pardons for federal crimes that have occurred, and might have occurred, during a given time period like you did with your son. You can grant pardons to as many people as you want. And yes, you can grant pardons to non-citizens. Please don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not saying you should pardon any ACTUAL crimes like those Donald Trump has been accused of, like those he has committed. But you shouldn’t just be deploying umbrellas, as it were. You should go nuclear with this power the way Trump was thinking of going nuclear on hurricanes.
When I was in Columbus, Ohio, I met Kaetlie Moise, a Haitian immigrant on TPS status, who had started a restaurant called Keket BonGout. She was trying to begin a new life here after her mom had been killed and her business burnt in Haiti. She told me that, in the wake of Trump falsely claiming that Haitians in Springfield were eating residents’ pets, many Haitians she knew were leaving. Now, Haitians in Springfield fear deportation, as Trump has promised to revoke their TPS status.
Give Kaetlie a chance to rebuild her life here.
Between Hope and Dread in Springfield, Ohio by Dan Grossman
President Biden, you should be doing everything you can to make it as hard as possible for Trump to carry out, in his words, “the largest deportation program in American history.” You should be making it as hard as possible for Trump to reach into factories, farms, warehouses, and schools, deporting productive members of society. Trump’s deportation plan is expensive, self-defeating, and only serves the private prison industry—that will operate the deportation camps—and their investors.
Go nuclear. Make it hard as possible for Trump to carry out his plan. While you’re at it, you should grant blanket pardons to journalists for pursuing journalism. I’d certainly appreciate that.
Godspeed to you, your son, Hunter, and the rest of your family.
Best wishes,
Dan
