The White House’s traditional Turkey Pardon took place at the start of the week, with outgoing President Joe Biden giving Peach and Blossom a new lease on life. On Wednesday’s (November 27) episode of The View, the cohosts decided to discuss a very different kind of presidential pardon: Biden’s own son Hunter Biden.
Hunter Biden, who has admitted to overcoming addiction, pleaded guilty to three federal counts of tax evasion, with additional related misdemeanors, and was found guilty of three counts of illegal purchase of a firearm. He is awaiting sentencing on both, but his father, the sitting president, has insisted he will not pardon him for any crime, even after the results of the election. However, there is a growing call for Joe Biden to either pardon his son or commute his sentence, especially since Trump’s own charges have disappeared, and several members of The View‘s panel are among those calling for just that.
Whoopi Goldberg introduced the matter by noting, “There’s a much more serious pardon that many people are wondering about, and that is people are wondering, should Biden pardon his son Hunter or does that make him an even bigger target for You Know Who coming in? It’s an interesting question, which I pose to you all.”
Alyssa Farah Griffin was the first to answer and had mixed feelings on the matter, saying, “So personally, I think I would pardon my child. I don’t even have kids, I’d bury a body for my child. So I get it as a personal decision. I worry a little bit about the implications for the country. And I mean this not because Hunter Biden affects the country, but because there’s such a distrust in the powerful, the politically connected. There’s this idea that there’s a different system of justice. We just saw Donald Trump, his indictments go away because he’s in power. I feel like this would add to that. And then think of the fact that you’ve got a lot of people who are wrongly incarcerated right now or they’re incarcerated on minor charges, who don’t have a connected, powerful father. So I have very mixed feelings on it. If he does it, there will certainly be a lot of criticism and a lot of people who will praise it.”
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Ana Navarro, however, was strongly in favor of a Biden pardon, saying, “Well, Jared Kushner had a powerful, connected father-in-law, right? Because one of the people that Donald Trump pardoned in his first term was Charlie Kushner, Jared Kushner’s father, who pleaded guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion, one count of retaliating against a federal witness, and another count of lying to the Federal Election Commission. So I would say if people didn’t have an issue with Trump pardoning his son-in-law’s father, I don’t think they should have a nation with Joe Biden pardoning his son.”
Griffin then countered that two wrongs don’t make a right, saying, “I think a lot of the country might have an issue with both, with the idea that the politically connected…” But Joy Behar quickly interrupted to point out that it’s not just two wrongs we’re talking about here: “We do know that Trump is going to be handing out pardons like cheeseburgers as soon as he gets into office,” she said, which Sunny Hostin concurred with. “And to the people who have actually stormed the Capitol,” Behar further clarified of Trump’s apparent pardon plans upon taking office.
“One of the issues that I have is when you look at the charges that Hunter Biden was indicted on, less than .09 percent of the population is indicted on that charge, and so it’s basically close to zero. So I actually think that the only reason he was indicted is because his last name is Biden,” Hostin then offered. “So if you look at it like that… then it is the right thing to do to correct course and correct that wrong and pardon his son. The other piece of this is Hunter Biden has acknowledged his addiction. He is an addict, and in the law, you know, there are all sorts of ways to handle people that commit crimes because of their addiction. There are drug deferment programs. And he should be someone that should be treated a bit differently because of the addiction. And I would support not only, I think, his pardon on the illegal gun application one, but the other one in California as well.”
Sara Haines was less convinced by that argument but also had her own reasons for favoring a pardon for Hunter Biden. “Normally, I take what you’re saying, Sunny … But I think President Biden always recognized that and still took the higher road of what it meant for the country, even in how he talked about it and handled it,” Haines explained. “But I’m exhausted, and I think Biden has taken such a punching this time, with all the losing the election, having to hand it off, the way everything’s gone, that I just feel like this would be the one thing I would wish for him that he could just say, ‘You know what, I’m out. And so is Hunter.’”
“They should also pardon those dogs that bit the Secret Service agents. Those dogs need to be pardoned,” Behar added.
“Pardon Commander Biden, that I’m on board with!” Griffin said with a laugh to close the conversation.
The View, Weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC
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