CNN anchor Kasie Hunt reported Monday that Democrats believe it will be more difficult to criticize President Donald Trump for any pardons he may issue after former President Joe Biden preemptively granted several of his family members clemency on his last day in office.
Biden issued preemptive pardons for his brothers Frank and James, James’ wife Sara Biden, his sister Valerie Owens and her husband, John Owens as one of his last moves as president. Hunt, during CNN’s cov
erage of Trump’s inauguration, said Democrats are reeling from Biden’s pardons of his family members, noting that they already believed that the December pardon of his son Hunter had weakened their ability to attack Trump’s anticipated pardons of Jan. 6 rioters.
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“The politics here are such — and I’ve heard from a number of sources today — Democrats are quite frankly surprised, flabbergasted, blown away by the preemptive pardons of his family members that we saw come out at the very end right before Donald Trump was about to be sworn in and Joe Biden was going to lose that pardon power,” Hunt said. “The Hunter Biden pardon, many of my sources felt, already made it easier, less politically painful for Donald Trump to pardon all of these January 6th rioters, to use that pardon power in a way that could hurt him.”
“Doing this with his own family at this 11th hour, is clearly, at least in the minds of the Democrats I’m talking to, going to make it even harder to criticize Donald Trump for using the pardon power because of what Joe Biden did on his way out the door,” she continued.
Trump pledged to pardon Jan. 6 protesters during his 2024 presidential campaign, saying during a May 2023 CNN town hall that he would pardon a “large portion” of them “very early on” in his second administration. CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali said shortly after the former president pardoned Hunter that the move “helps justify” Trump’s planned clemency grants for the protesters.
Biden’s pardons for Hunter and his other five other family members all span back to 2014.
The former president claimed that his family members were victims of “the worst kind of partisan politics” in his statement unveiling the pardons. He also issued preemptive pardons to former White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley and Jan. 6 Committee members during the final hours of his presidency, asserting they do not deserve to be “targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions.”
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