President Biden’s decision to give his son Hunter a get-out-of-jail-free card undermines Democrats’ attempt to claim the moral high ground on debates over gun laws and taxes.
The pardon allows Hunter to sidestep the fate that awaits ordinary Americans in his position: sentencing for illegally purchasing a gun and failing to pay his taxes.
“It makes a mockery of the Democrats’ argument that everybody else should pay higher taxes when their own children decide not to pay taxes,” Grover Norquist, founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, told The Washington Times.
Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said the pardon “is an affront to all the people who have been convicted and or served prison time for falsely filling out the same federal form that Hunter Biden did.”
“Especially those who committed a non-violent crime as a young adult and were never told that they lost the right to own a gun and had no intention of lying,” Mr. Gottlieb said.
President Biden announced over the weekend that he was pardoning his son after repeatedly promising to stay out of the criminal cases. He said he was stepping in because of a “miscarriage of justice.”
SEE ALSO: Biden faces bipartisan backlash for reversal on pardon for son Hunter: ‘Got this wrong’
The pardon hands Republicans more ammunition to use against Democrats as they gird for a series of political battles on Capitol Hill over the Trump agenda.
Republicans are expected to cite the pardon when the new Congress considers extending the expiring Trump tax cuts, the signature achievement of the president-elect’s first term.
It also could bolster the Trump team’s hand when defending Second Amendment rights and pursuing changes at the Department of Justice.
On the 2017 Trump tax cuts, Democrats support extending middle-class relief but have wanted to strip away the breaks for higher earners.
Relegated to the minority in both chambers, it was already going to be hard for them to influence the debate.
Mr Norquist said the Hunter Biden pardon will make it more challenging for Democrats.
SEE ALSO: House Speaker Mike Johnson says Hunter Biden’s pardon damages justice system
“It reminds all voters of what they already knew — that Democrats like tax increases on them and they view the American people the way the shepherd views his flock — as something to be sheered,” he said. “I think it is fair to point out that the president and Democratic politicians believe paying taxes is an important thing for other people to do.”
Hunter Biden was prosecuted on nine federal tax charges in California for failing to pay more than $1.4 million in taxes — much of it on the money he earned from lucrative overseas deals that Republicans maintain derived from selling influence and trading on his father’s name — over the past decade. He pled guilty in September, and his sentencing was set for this month before his father stepped in.
Hunter Biden also was convicted in June on three felony charges related to the 2018 purchase of a gun where he lied on a mandatory gun-purchase form by saying he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.
“President Biden is a hypocrite,” Philip Van Cleave, head of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a pro-gun rights group, said in an email. “There are plenty of Americans in prison for doing exactly what Hunter Biden did.”
“Like Hunter, they didn’t have any of the ’aggravating factors’ that Joe Biden used as an excuse to pardon Hunter,” he said. “This is the same Joe Biden who ordered ATF to revoke the licenses of gun dealers for simple paperwork mistakes!”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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