President Biden pardons his son Hunter Biden
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.
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Honestly? With the absolute thought crime aspect and the way the plea deal was handled, I don't blame him one bit. There's no public interest in locking up Hunter Biden.
There's no public interest in locking a lot of people up, yet they still do.
Rules should be applied equally, regardless of who you or your parents are.
This rule should be disregarded equally.
Ya but he's white and wealthy. That shits better than Teflon these days.
Yeah, I don't see any public interest involved at all when it comes to the issue of presidents using their power to get their relatives off jail time. I don't think it undermines the sense of justice and equality that all citizens are supposed to have if the "first among equal citizens" can get their crackhead middle ages son off of already lenient legal consequences for actions that others are serving hard time for. Not at all a conspicuous legal hole that undermines the concept of the rule of law, and definitely not open to abuse.
That was part of the problem. The judge bowed to political pressure and rejected a completely normal plea deal to throw the book at the guy instead.
If you ask me the pardon power isn't used nearly enough.
Judges do that all the time. Hunter Biden was the 50+ year old son of one of the most powerful people in the country. Not some 22 year old street kid from a poor district.
Yeah well they shouldn't.
They absolutely should.
This isn't some small point, either. Your view validates mandatory minimum sentencing and other systemically racist structures.
Judges should make judgments. It's literally the job title. A judge is someone you're supposed to be able to trust to take into account all the human stuff and make decisions based off it.
You want a judge that makes the judgment call that a plea deal is okay? Fine.
You want a judge that throws away a plea deal they think is too light? Fine.
You want a judge that adds up minimum sentences and could be replaced by a computer? Not fine.
Yeah sure. And how many scandals are we seeing about judges? It's obviously not fine. This isn't the 1800's any more and we need to stop giving someone that much power. If a plea deal is done between the state and a defendant them the judge's only role should be to make sure the defendant isn't being taken advantage of. The state hardly needs protection here and the precedent for political interference in the judicial system is really not okay.
Life isn't a Hollywood movie where the judge is some all knowing good intentioned white guy that always does the right thing. Our founding fathers understood this, that's why they gave us what protections they could. Now over 200 years later we've forgotten it all. We even have debtor's prison back, specifically with the help of the people you say are supposed to uphold trust in law and order.
At this point I would rather a computer than read one more Pro Publica story about a judge taking kickbacks to send kids to torture camps.
You're complaining about corruption in elected positions, and want to replace it by giving more power to the DA, or to remove the human aspect and give everything over a computer assigning mandatory minimums that only ever seem to go up.
If you have a problem with corruption, you fight the corruption. You don't consolidate power into even fewer hands, with no mercy(not that there is much of that in the first place.)
The founding fathers were a bunch of rich white dudes, that almost to a one, fail every moral standard today. Some of them would and were considered assholes in their own time. Acting like they were incredibly thoughtful/wise elder statesmen is the only Hollywood trope either one of us has brought up. Part of the protections they did try and put into place was to spread power out, and make those positions ones that elected. You know, the stuff you want to remove?
Congratulations, you've put words in my mouth. You beat that straw man so good! I never mentioned just shifting it to the DA. We have an entire civil service to use.
And yeah they were flawed, but apparently less flawed than you. Because they understood that the people are to be protected from the state, not the other way around.
..... ..... Haven't put any words in your mouth. You're just too ignorant to recognize that you're arguing for more centralization of power.
You're still doing. Is this non-existant civil service you want to create elected, or just another branch of the executive.
Just to restate, you actually believe creating an entire new civil service with less public oversight would be easier then just combating corruption in people with elected positions? A civil service that would be less likely to become corrupt with less oversight?
You do realize the founding fathers you venerate intentionally created three Manchus of government intentionally to protect people from the state, right? One of those branches, the one you want to get rid of, is called the judicial branch.
Jesus, you know next to nothing of American civics and you have the gall to completely misrepresent the founding fathers to justify undoing their work to accomplish what they already created for the same person.
I'm amazed you can even spell strawman.
I never said I wanted to get rid of the judicial branch either. This isn't going to be much of a conversation if you keep tilting at these strawmen.
Actually judges can and should call foul on plea deals that are poorly worded so as to allow future violations of tax law.
A violation is a violation. A plea deal can't make a future act not a crime. That's completely nonsense.
Exactly, which is why the judge objected to plea deal. Are you following now?
No that's a fig leaf of a cover, not an actual reason.
No, it was quite literally the reason.
It was "the" reason in the same way that SCOTUS decided history doesn't support gun control. He made it up.
There’s no public interest in locking up Hunter Biden.
Nonsense. Theres a massive public interest in a privileged member of the political elite being held to the same legal standards and to the same due process as you and me.
That's not the same legal standards. Tax charges that the IRS bends over backwards not to use and gun charges that are literally thought crime and also very rarely used.
This was the witch hunt the GOP cries wolf about. The original thing they were looking for was Ukrainian money deals.
For anyone else the IRS would have had a payment plan and the gun charges would have been a plea deal. But we go from politically motivated investigation to politically motivated judge rejecting the plea deal
What about this is the same due process we would have?
