Jail in America is for commoners

Just remember that jail in America is for commoners, not for the rich and politically connected. You can do drugs, traffic women, evade taxes, buy and toss away guns and your father will spare you jail.

President Joe Biden's pardon of his son Hunter deepened an entanglement of politics and the rule of law that has tarnished faith in American justice.

The Sunday evening move was a stunning development since Biden came to office vowing to restore the independence of the Justice Department, and because he had repeatedly said he wouldn't pardon his son.

Now, weeks before he leaves the White House, Biden has wielded presidential power to absolve his son ahead of sentencings later this month over a pair of gun and tax convictions that emerged from the due process of law.

His decision came days after special counsel Jack Smith moved to dismiss the federal cases against Trump - over election interference and the hoarding of classified documents - on the grounds that presidents can't be prosecuted.

Taken together, the convergence of legal controversies raises questions about the bedrock notion that underpins the system of justice in the United States that everyone - even presidents and their families - are equal before the law.

Until Sunday, Biden had not intervened in the cases against his son, and the White House always insisted that he wouldn't, even though the shifting political environment caused by Trump's election victory last month seemed likely to shift his calculations.

Politically, Biden's reversal may be seen as a stain on his legacy and his credibility. It contributes to an ignominious end for a presidency that dissolved in his disastrous debate performance in June and that will now be remembered as much for opening the way for Donald Trump's return to the White House as evicting him four years ago.

There is no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the president. An impeachment inquiry by House Republicans that looked at Biden's and his son's business relationships - which Democrats saw as an attempt to inflict political damage ahead of the election - went nowhere.

But the political impact of Sunday night's drama could be profound. Already, Republicans are arguing the Hunter Biden pardon shows that the current president, and not the next one, is most to blame for politicizing the system of justice by meting out favorable treatment to his son. Their claim may be politically effective.

Hunter Biden was convicted by a jury in June of illegally buying and possessing a gun after a trial that exposed his drug abuse and family dysfunction. He pleaded guilty in September to nine tax offenses, stemming from $1.4 million in taxes that he didn't pay while spending lavishly on escorts, strippers, cars and drugs.

"No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter's cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son - and that is wrong," Joe Biden said in the statement. "There has been an effort to break Hunter - who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me - and there's no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough."

His statement is extraordinary because Biden is now arguing something rather similar to Trump - that his own Justice Department has been unfairly politicized. Biden was referring to the way that the Hunter Biden case was handled by David Weiss, a Trump-appointed US attorney from Delaware who originally investigated the president's son and was later appointed as a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Yet at the same time, Hunter Biden put himself in a position in which he created a political vulnerability and potential conflict of interest for his father. In addition, his business activities in Ukraine and China while his father was vice president and afterward raised serious ethical questions, even though Republicans have failed to produce evidence for claims that the current president benefited from the transactions.

It is significant, therefore, that Joe Biden's pardon includes any activity by his son starting on January 1, 2014 - the year that Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company - while his father, who was then vice president, was deeply involved in US policy toward Kyiv.

While the pardon is its own distinct controversy, it may not have happened but for the extraordinary circumstances of a fraught political moment, with Trump due to return to power at noon on January 20.

Donal Trump, the president-elect, moved quickly to capitalize on the situation in a comment that will raise expectations that he will issue pardons for January 6 convicts shortly after he takes office again.

"Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?" Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Sunday. "Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!"

And Trump's Republican allies sought to use the situation to bolster the chances of Senate confirmation for some of his most provocative picks. "Democrats can spare us the lectures about the rule of law when, say, President Trump nominates Pam Bondi and Kash Patel to clean up this corruption," Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton wrote on X.