CNN
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President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter has deepened the entanglement of politics and the rule of law that has tarnished confidence in the American justice system and will almost certainly worsen in Donald Trump’s second term.

The move Sunday night was a stunning development because Biden took office promising to restore the Justice Department’s independence, which had been undermined during Trump’s first term, and because he had repeatedly said he would not pardon his son.

Now, weeks before he leaves the White House, Biden has exercised presidential power to acquit his son ahead of sentencing later this month on two gun and tax abuse convictions that arose from due process.

His decision came days after special counsel Jack Smith moved to dismiss federal cases against Trump for election interference and hoarding classified documents on the grounds that presidents cannot be prosecuted.

Overall, the convergence of legal controversies raises questions about the fundamental idea underlying the United States justice system that everyone — even presidents and their families — are equal before the law.

As of Sunday, Biden had not intervened in the cases against his son, and the White House has always insisted he would not do so, even though the changing political environment caused by Trump’s victory last month was likely to alter his calculations.

Politically, Biden’s about-face could be seen as a stain on his legacy and credibility. It contributes to an ignominious end to a presidency that failed in its disastrous debate performance in June and will now be remembered as much for paving the way for Trump’s return to the White House as for pulling him out four years ago.

The president may also have offered Trump’s party an opportunity to rally behind Kash Patel, the loyalist whom the president-elect named Saturday night to head the FBI and an apparent agent of his political retaliation campaign.

There is no evidence of wrongdoing by the president. An impeachment inquiry by House Republicans looking into business dealings between Biden and his son – which Democrats saw as an attempt to inflict political damage ahead of the election – was inconclusive. And the cases against Hunter Biden lack the constitutional gravity or historical significance of the charges against Trump and his frequent attacks on the rule of law.

But the political implications of Sunday night’s drama could be profound. Republicans are already arguing that Hunter Biden’s pardon shows that the current president, not the next one, is largely to blame for politicizing the justice system by giving his son preferential treatment. Your claim may not be accurate, but it can still be politically effective.

Trump used pardons to protect several political advisers and contacts during his first term, including his daughter’s father-in-law, now chosen by him to be ambassador to France. But any time in the future Trump is criticized for his use of pardon powers, he will be able to argue that Biden did the same to protect his own relatives.

This could be particularly significant as Trump faces pressure from supporters in the coming months to pardon those convicted of crimes related to the mob attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 – many of whom are ever still in prison.

But after a life of tragedy and heartache, Biden urged Americans to judge him as a father who clearly worried about the impact of a possible prison sentence on his son, a recovering addict.

Trump and Biden now both argue that the Justice Department has been politicized

Hunter Biden was convicted by a jury in June of illegally purchasing and possessing guns after a trial exposed his drug abuse and family problems. In September, he pleaded guilty to nine tax offenses stemming from $1.4 million in taxes he failed to pay while spending heavily on escorts, strippers, cars and drugs.

The president’s claim in his Sunday statement that his son was “treated differently” because of his father’s identity has some merit. For example, charges of illegal possession of weapons when addicted to narcotics and of making false statements on this subject are quite rare. And the Republican congressional investigations into the matter, which failed for lack of evidence, seemed like naked attempts to harm the president.

“No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s cases could come to any conclusion other than that Hunter was chosen solely because he is my son — and that is false,” Joe Biden said in the statement. “An attempt was made to break Hunter – who has been sober for five and a half years despite relentless attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they tried to break me – and there’s no reason to think it will stop there. Enough is enough.”

His statement is extraordinary because Biden is now arguing something similar to Trump — that his own Justice Department has been unfairly politicized. Biden was referring to the way the Hunter Biden case was handled by David Weiss, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney from Delaware who originally investigated the president’s son and was later appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

But at the same time, Hunter Biden put himself in a position where he created political vulnerability and a potential conflict of interest for his father. In addition, his business activities in Ukraine and China during his father’s tenure as vice president and thereafter raised serious ethical questions, although Republicans were unable to provide evidence to support the claim that the current president benefited from the transactions.

So it’s telling that Joe Biden’s pardon covers all of his son’s activities from January 1, 2014 – the year Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, while his father, then vice president, did so deeply involved in US policy towards Kiev.

While the pardon represents a controversy in its own right, it may not have occurred were it not for the extraordinary circumstances of a tense political moment, with Trump set to return to power at noon on January 20.

Given Patel’s election as FBI chief and Trump’s second choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi, there is reasonable reason to believe that Hunter Biden may have been among those targeted by the president-elect’s supporters given their vows to exploit them , would likely have been targeted by their forces to pursue his enemies.

And now that he has acted to protect his son, Joe Biden could face calls to expand his pardon powers much further, perhaps to include prosecutors who worked on cases against Trump, including over his attempt to overturn the outcome of the to overturn the 2020 election.

The president-elect quickly took advantage of the situation, releasing a comment that will raise expectations that he will pardon those convicted on January 6 soon after he takes office again.

“Does the pardon granted by Joe Hunter extend to the J-6 hostages who have been imprisoned for years now?” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Sunday. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of justice!”

And Trump’s Republican allies sought to use the situation to boost the chances of Senate confirmation for some of his most provocative proposals. “Democrats can save us the lectures about the rule of law if, for example, President Trump nominates Pam Bondi and Kash Patel to clean up this corruption,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton wrote on X.

Still, the idea that there is any moral high ground for Trump — who issued a series of seemingly politicized pardons in his first term — is laughable. Just on Saturday, for example, the president-elect announced that he had chosen Charles Kushner, his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law, as ambassador to Paris. Trump had pardoned him for tax evasion, retaliation against a federal witness – Kushner’s brother-in-law – and another lie to the Federal Election Commission.

Trump also pardoned other associates and people well connected to his family and inner circle, including longtime fixer Roger Stone and 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

The most recent wave of politicization surrounding the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation dates back to 2016, when then-FBI Director James Comey launched an investigation into the FBI’s use of a private email server just days before the election Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton resumed. Many Democrats blame his move for Clinton’s defeat and have never regained their trust in the office.

Then the investigation into the Trump campaign’s 2016 ties to Russia angered many of the 45th president’s supporters in the justice system. The investigation culminated in the Mueller report, which found that while the Trump campaign expected to benefit from Russian interference, there was no evidence of collusion.

Trump’s obsession with the FBI and Justice Department, which led him to vow retaliation, grew worse when he was investigated and indicted for his election interference and hoarding of classified documents – both based on extensive and damaging evidence.

If Trump responds with more weapons to those he claims have weaponized the system against him, it could end up irreparably damaging trust in the system in the eyes of millions of Americans for decades to come .