OPINION: Biden's Big Mistake Wasn't Pardoning Hunter; It Was Not Pardoning Trump
EJ Montini posits if Biden had pardoned Trump months ago, it would have put a damper on claims of 'lawfare' and weaponizing the Justice Department (as well as making Hunter's pardon more palatable)
By Denise Rivette
EJ Montini of The Arizona Republic wrote an interesting opinion piece today in which he recalled a suggestion he made April 2023 that “if Donald Trump was charged with any federal crimes, President Joe Biden should pardon him…But not because I believed that granting a pardon to Trump would have – in any way – begun a process of healing in the country.” Instead he reflects on 1974 and President Gerald Ford’s thoughts on pardoning President Richard Nixon.
He quotes Ford, who said at the time:
“Our nation is under the severest of challenges now to employ its full energies and efforts in the pursuit of a sound and growing economy at home and a stable and peaceful world around us.
“We would needlessly be diverted from meeting those challenges if we as a people were to remain sharply divided over whether to indict, bring to trial, and punish a former president.”
Montini explores and applies the history of pardons pertinent to his stance that President Joe Biden should have pardoned President Donald Trump during the first debate. He ends his piece as follows:
But something former President Ford said at a later appearance before a congressional committee, talking about his pardon for Nixon, still seems relevant.
Ford said, “I was absolutely convinced then as I am now that if we had had (an) indictment, a trial, a conviction, and anything else that transpired after this that the attention of the president, the Congress and the American people would have been diverted from the problems that we have to solve.”
True then. True now.
You can read Montini’s entire commentary at AZCentral.com.
EJ Montini is a columnist at The Arizona Republic, where this column first appeared.
trump is far worse than Nixon was. And who cares if Biden pardoned Hunter? trump has pardoned people who have done far worse than Hunter. And trump rewarded them with jobs, on the taxpayers’ dime.