Pardon for Hunter. Pardons for All?

With Hunter Biden pardoned, news reports are now telling us that the Biden administration is considering pardons for lots more people.  The rationale is that Donald Trump has threatened to go after numerous people once he gets in office, so the Biden administration has to give pardons to these people to protect them against persecution by the incoming Trump administration. 

While I understand the Biden administration’s theory, I hope they don’t do it.  First, I note that, even though Donald Trump said on the campaign trail in 2016 that he would go after Hillary Clinton, he never did so.  More importantly, however, giving blanket pardons to all of the people being mentioned would create a precedent that I don’t think anybody knows the consequences of. 

In 2013, Republicans were filibustering three of President Obama’s nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, so then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got the Senate Democrats to abolish the filibuster for District Court and Court of Appeals judges.  At the time, then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Senator Reid he would regret what he was doing.  Harry Reid got his three nominees approved for the Court of Appeals.  Mitch McConnell got three nominees approved to the US Supreme Court because once you abolished the filibuster for lower courts, it was always going to be abolished for the Supreme Court, too.

Which is what I worry about here.  The Biden administration may think it is solving some immediate problem, but does it really know what the consequences of this kind of action might be?  Could people in some future administration take such Biden pardons as meaning they can do whatever they want, knowing they can always get a pardon on their way out?  Obviously, that could happen anyway, but without the example of a large number of pardons by Joe Biden, it would be harder to justify and less likely to be done. 

All in all, while the Biden administration might think the pardons it is discussing are a good idea, if they grant them, at some point in the future, we may all rue the day they did so.
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UPDATE (12/15/24 12:25 pm): An edited version of this post appeared in the Chicago Tribune's "Voice of the People" today.  You can see it here (it's the last letter).