CNN
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President Joe Biden made history on Sunday when he granted his son Hunter Biden a pardon for criminal convictions for gun and tax crimes.

The power to grant pardons for federal crimes is given exclusively to the President of the United States in the Constitution: “…he shall have power to grant redress and pardon for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”

Presidents have pardoned friends and donors, political allies and political arguments, but no president until Biden pardoned his son.

In a statement, Biden argued that the criminal cases against his son “came only after several of my political opponents in Congress incited them to attack me and oppose my election.”

He argued that Hunter Biden was being prosecuted solely because he was the president’s son, particularly on the sole allegation of lying on the form required to purchase a handgun.

To be sure, Republicans have long tried to link Hunter Biden’s lucrative business career to his father. And remember, it was then-President Donald Trump’s attempt to get Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden’s ties to a natural gas company that led to his first impeachment.

Hunter Biden’s personal battle with addiction and his business career built on his father’s name were clearly political liabilities for Joe Biden. The federal investigation into Hunter Biden has dragged on for years; It began in 2018 during the Trump presidency and continued throughout the Biden presidency. With the pardon, Biden broke a clear public promise not to interfere in the justice system on behalf of his son, which will now tarnish his presidential legacy.

According to Alexis Coe, author of “You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington,” only two other presidents have pardoned family members.

► Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger for drug offenses.

► Donald Trump pardoned his son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner, who was convicted of witness tampering, tax evasion and illegal campaign contributions. Charles Kushner is now in line to become US ambassador to France.

Coe wrote for CNN in 2023 about the long list of presidential sons in particular who cause problems for their fathers. She told me the drafters did not expect the pardon power to be used for close relationships.

“I can guarantee you that when the framers debated presidential pardons at the Constitutional Convention, one of their concerns was not that the pardon would be used as a free pass for the First Family in the future,” she said after Biden pardoned his son. “It is meant to inspire unity and justice,” a last resort for people who have been failed by the system. There is now a risk of pardons being normalized as a kind of access benefit.

Interestingly, pardoning a family member was not the most controversial issue for either Clinton or Trump.

Clinton’s pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich was more shocking than the pardon of his half-brother.

Trump pardoned a long list of political allies, including his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his former adviser Stephen Bannon, who were on trial for defrauding investors in a private border wall. Bannon was later convicted and served time in prison on various federal charges related to his refusal to comply with a congressional subpoena. He also faces state charges related to the alleged private border wall plan.

Now the debate over presidents and the judiciary will turn from the fact that Trump’s election eliminated many of his legal problems to Biden’s decision to resolve his own son’s legal problems after the Democrats’ devastating defeat. Trump’s felony conviction in New York was postponed indefinitely and federal charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 election and misusing classified data were dropped.

Republicans have long argued that there is a two-tier justice system and they are being unfairly targeted. But when CNN compiled a list of recent federal prosecutions, there was no evidence that Republican federal lawmakers should expect higher prosecution rates.

In pardoning his son, Biden said Americans should continue to believe in the justice system. But in his son’s case, he said, “I also believe that raw politics has infected this process and led to a miscarriage of justice.”

That’s a serious indictment of the justice system at a time when Trump is promising to change things significantly, including putting loyalists at the top of the Justice Department and FBI. Trump, in particular, seriously considered pardoning himself during his first term in the White House.

There is a process by which pardons are to be requested, reviewed and granted, which is handled through a special office within the Ministry of Justice.

They list several criteria that ordinary people should meet before applying for a pardon, including good post-conviction behavior, acceptance of responsibility, the need for exoneration and recommendations from officials, according to a review of pardon powers by the Congressional Research Service .

Biden also used his pardon power much more broadly to eliminate simple marijuana convictions on federal lands and in Washington, DC in 2022. This mass pardon was carried out in the weeks leading up to the 2022 midterm elections. This unique pardon came in the lame-duck period after Democrats lost the White House in the November election, but while Biden was still president. In these final weeks in office, presidents often use their pardon powers in the most controversial ways.