President Joe Biden speaks at a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House commemorating World AIDS Day on December 1, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
President Joe Biden isn’t sweating persistent MAGAworld threats of persecution.
When asked on Friday if he would use his presidential pardon power to preemptively pardon himself, Biden seemed baffled.
“Well, what would I pardon myself for?” Biden asked. “No, I have no contemplation of pardoning myself for anything. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
The question came amid a blitz of pardons and commutations from Biden. The president pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, feeling that ongoing prosecutions on tax and gun charges were political (and would be ramped up under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump).
“From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” President Biden wrote in a statement about his pardon of Hunter. “Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form… It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.”
President Biden said the continued cases against his son were an attempt to punish him led by his political opposition.
“Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” he said. “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.”
Trump has frequently painted Democrats as “enemies from within” and floated the idea of jailing his political opponents. Trump lamented his own criminal cases and said they set a “terrible precedent” in an interview with Newsmax last June.
“It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to,” Trump said of the possible incarceration of Democrats. “It’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them.”