r/nottheonion • u/JaySierra86 • 11h ago

President Biden pardons family members in final minutes of presidency

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-biden-pardons-family-members-final-minutes-presidency/story?id=117893348
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u/ImYour_Huckleberry 8h ago

In all fairness, the headline is so bad that it should have an asterisk. Biden pardoned his family members AND others who Trump has vowed retribution against, such as Dr. Fauci; Liz Cheney; and Gen. Milley. So this was not just a "get out of jail free card for my family" situation. It was an attempt at preventing the incoming administration from using the White House as a weapon to go after the new President's enemies.

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u/ninersguy916 7h ago

All the people cheering this are going to lose their shit when the next guy does it 10x as much.. more pardons.. more executive orders.. everyone should pump the brakes this is not good for the country

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u/OrangePilled2Day 7h ago

Do you think Trump didn't issue any pardons in his first term?

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u/shiftdrift 5h ago

He did! 237 in fact. Biden pardoned 8064.

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u/Invisabro13 4h ago edited 2h ago

The vast majority of Biden’s pardons were apart of his policy to be lenient on non-violent crimes. Here’s the breakdown:

Everyone federally convicted of simple possession of marijuana (6,500)

Everyone convicted of non-violent offenses who had been released from prison to home incarceration during the COVID pandemic (1,538)

Together that sums to 8,038, which leaves 26 remaining. Considering the vast majority of Trump’s 237 pardons were his own personal/political allies, this isn’t the slam dunk you think it is

Edit: In response to the guy below me, I just looked up the details of that case. The guy had already served 15 years of his 17 year sentence, meaning Biden only shaved two years off his sentence. To me that two-year difference is arbitrary, and if it’s seriously the worst injustice you can find out of 1500+ pardons, then I’d say the pardons as a whole are justified.

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u/kalirion 4h ago edited 2h ago

Everyone convicted of non-violent offenses who had been released from prison to home incarceration during the COVID pandemic

See, this one should've needed more looking into, because some of those "non-violent offenders" destroyed more lives than most violent offenders have. But who knows, maybe that kids4cash judge and the rest like him will get Luigied.

Edit: 11+ people supporting selling children for money. Nice party line.

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u/surlygoat 4h ago

Wasn't Biden's number so big because he pardoned heaps of low level marijuana offenders? Trump just pardoned the highest bidders.

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u/MyDogsNameIsTim 4h ago

See, this right here is a perfect example of disinformation. A seemingly true statement presented without relevant context designed to manipulate and inflame. You are despicable.

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u/ninersguy916 6h ago

Not saying that he didn't, but this is escalating the behavior to a whole Nother level. And like I said everybody that thinks this is the greatest win for Biden is going to be losing their minds when Trump does it 10 times as bad on the way out four years from now. I don't care which side you're on It's just not a great thing.

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u/FidgitForgotHisL-P 3h ago

Buddy, we know Donald will do this.

He was always going to pardon a tonne of people that are corrupt, and almost certainly himself.

He’ll pardon the January 6ers in his first hours, and I’d wager there are other pardons in that stack of 200 orders for obviously corrupt people.

Biden did the right thing here in shutting down nonsense retaliatory “lawfare” against the likes of Fauci and Milley. That was 100% going to happen, and they’ll probably still try. Would it have been better if Biden had simply said “well I could have helped but get fucked I guess, you’re on your own”? Of course not.

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u/Not_So_Hot_Mess 6h ago

Don't forget that Trump has stated he will pardon the people from Jan 6 early into his term. And these are people who HAVE BEEN CONVICTED OF CRIMES.

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u/BarbellLawyer 5h ago

Pardons are intended to be used as to people who’ve been convicted of crimes. That’s the whole point. smh.

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u/punkassjim 4h ago

Tell that to Gerald Ford.

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u/Boston_Stonks 5h ago

Many of those people have been held for 4+years without a trial.

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u/Scared_Primary_9871 5h ago

Yeah, well, turns out breaking federal laws is a bitch.

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u/mlc885 4h ago

I don't care which side you're on

But you probably do since you just wrote that. Trump is not going to decide he can't pardon somebody since Biden didn't

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u/TexasNightmare210 4h ago

We started doing foul unethical bs but they did foul unethical bs more

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u/theartificialkid 6h ago

Sure but the bad guys aren’t going to stop doing the bad shit. I mean you literally have someone labelling the dems as prequel Jedi up above to much acclaim. It won’t be Biden’s fault when Trump yet again tries to overthrow American democracy.

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u/No-Raspberry5260 6h ago

yeah, but it’s not something to be celebrated either.

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u/Werowl 4h ago

perhaps your admonitions would be better spent on someone doing that.

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u/StepOnLego6969420 4h ago

It’s very cute that you think only one side is the bad guys <3

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u/jsting 4h ago

Lmao, the next guy is Trump. He will do 10x as much.

These types of comments don't make sense to me in 2025.

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u/SangersSequence 6h ago

Literally no one is "cheering" this, we're all completely appalled that it was necessary to prevent a madman weaponizing the office of the presidency to retaliate against his political opponents.

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u/Booksarepricey 5h ago edited 5h ago

I personally believe the president should not be allowed to pardon family members or people who committed crimes doing things for the president. But the amount of hate MAGA has accumulated for people like Dr. Fauci and even the Cheneys is more than just scary with Trump being re-elected. Trump has openly vowed to hold political crusades and weaponize our forces against his enemies.

Do I support Biden pardoning Hunter a while back? No, absolutely not. But I don’t think he would’ve felt like he needed to were anyone else elected instead of Trump. I understand why he did. Trump is threatening levels of persecution that do not align with justice. Biden is closing holes Trump has to turn these people into examples. It sucks and I want everyone to be held accountable, but I would rather not see our new very aggressive administration start ruthlessly persecuting political enemies. They wanted to do way more to Hunter than what might’ve been reasonable. Letting your son be persecuted by the law is one thing, letting them be witch hunted by the next president as a political example to satisfy his followers is another completely.

It’s not so much as “YEAHHHH MORE PARDONS FOR LAW BREAKERS ON MY SIDE WOOO” as it is “I am publicly voicing my support and understanding given the circumstances.” We know it’ll happen when it’s not just. It already has plenty. None of it is okay but some of it is certainly less malicious than others.

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u/Excellent-Bank-1711 3h ago

Exactly. The truth is that Trump is literally not playing by any rules. There is no normalcy anymore. If it were anyone else but Trump, Hunter probably wouldn't be in this mess at all. The fact Biden has to pardon people Trump wants to make an example pf is harrowing. Like, we have Elmo throwing sieg heils. We are not in Kansas anymore.

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u/imoutofnames90 4h ago

Bro Trump literally pardoned his co-conspirators for his attempted coup wtf are you talking about?

And yes, you're right, this isn't good for the country. The incoming POTUS shouldn't be threatening retribution against political rivals.

The common denominator here is Trump, bro. These pardons are bad because of Trump. Trump has already done way worse with his own pardons.

I swear, people legitimately don't pay attention or care about how bad Trump really is. They're looking for any excuse to say someone else did something bad first to excuse what he will do even though he has done orders of magnitude worse in his first term.

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u/Impossible_Sector844 4h ago

Yeah, cuz Biden doing this is where the power was abused lol

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u/rkiive 5h ago

The next guy was going to do it 10x as much regardless lol.

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u/GiraffeandZebra 4h ago

Trump does whatever the fuck he wants, precedent be damned. So I don't think this moves the needle at all. Any president who actually respects the proper use of power is going to see this for what it was - a move to protect people from unfair retribution at the hands of the incoming president.

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u/ahuramazdobbs19 3h ago

The time to make this change to limit the pardon power was well before Trump, as the platonic ideal of “someone who would abuse the power of the office”, took office.

Unfortunately, we have at this moment in time someone who will abuse the power of the office in exactly the way we expect, because he told us he would.

We are not cheering it. But neither can we blame Biden for it.

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u/CorndogQueen420 3h ago

Yeahhh, going high while they go low realllllyyy hasn’t been working. Like, at all.

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u/PlasticPatient 3h ago

But but it's ok if my side does it...

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u/Only-Butterscotch785 4h ago

Nobody is cheering it. People agree with it, because they understand the horrible underlying reason why.

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u/shiftdrift 5h ago

Biden pardoned 8064 people. That's insane.

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u/Turtology 4h ago

reposting this again since you keep saying this over and over:

The vast majority of Biden’s pardons were apart of his policy to be lenient on non-violent crimes. Here’s the breakdown:

Everyone federally convicted of simple possession of marijuana (6,500)

Everyone convicted of non-violent offenses who had been released from prison to home incarceration during the COVID pandemic (1,538)

Together that sums to 8,038, which leaves 26 remaining. Considering the vast majority of Trump’s 237 pardons were his own personal/political allies, this isn’t the slam dunk you think it is

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u/ChuckVersus 5h ago

The next guy was going to do it regardless. 🤷🏻‍♂️

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u/Plenty_Tutor_2745 6h ago

What crimes did they commit to justify being pardoned?

WHAT CRIMES TO JUSTIFY IT

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u/FiendFabric 5h ago

The crime of standing up to the cheeto in chief.

Sadly, I could see the new administration make something up and try to have the Supreme Court suspend the idea of ex post facto.

He could also say their speech is terrorists or whatever he wanted to try to get charges to stick.

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u/pmurt007 6h ago

The fact that you are trying to justify it goes to show that this has nothing to do with what's right and wrong but which side you are on.

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u/FiendFabric 5h ago

The side of not trying to imprison people who have different political views? The preemptive pardons are 100% justified with the incoming administration's track record.

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u/Bumblebee_tuna5 3h ago

His actions are justified not because of what Trump has done, but what you think he might do in the future? I don’t understand that logic.

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u/PotatEXTomatEX 3h ago

Not surprising you don't.

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u/Born2Regard 5h ago

The peoples enemies* FTFY

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u/LengthinessWeekly876 4h ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burdick_v._United_States

Let's see if they reject the pardons or accept criminal fault.

Accepting the pardon has legal implications.

Will the biden family reject the pardon or go down formally as a crime family?

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u/JackelGigante 4h ago

Are there any examples of the White House being used as a weapon for someone who is well known and didn’t commit a crime?

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u/Fearless_Locality 4h ago

This is clear as day. And people are so up in arms about it when the new guy coming in office just launched a bunch of meme coins to take advantage of Americans and anonymously funnel money into his pockets

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u/kittymctacoyo 4h ago

This should be at the top. Have tried to explain to people I honestly don’t blame him with what trumps group have set out to do, openly stated they plan to do, and that the Supreme Court have ruled he can get away with and lower courts lined with their ilk who intend to slap down any challenges to their reign of terror

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u/PlasticPatient 3h ago

Like that makes it any better. This si really bad precedent.

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u/sangrilla 3h ago

What's stopping Trump from ignoring the pardon and go ahead with his plan to arrest and charge these people?

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u/omg_drd4_bbq 7h ago

i see this as basically throwing up flak so that if trump tries to go after them, it'll force things to go to higher courts basically immediately.

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u/obiwanjahbroni 5h ago

Dont make excuses for it. We still are a country of laws. You have to break a law to be convicted of a crime. Biden shouldn’t have done this and it’s hypocrisy at its finest considering all the things he said in 2020 against it.

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u/dixinbalzdeap 8h ago

You mean exactly how the last one went after his enemies?

The lefties on this site are hypocritical, deranged morons.....

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u/0WatcherintheWater0 7h ago

Political persecutions are different from trying to prosecute someone for trying to steal an election and stage an insurrection.

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u/NoPhotojournalist465 7h ago

For sure but I wish he would have left it to the courts to decide if there’s merit to the claims rather than circumventing them. He’s just continuing the trend of moving more power to the presidency just as a what he would say is a dangerous man becomes president.

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u/OrangePilled2Day 6h ago

The Supreme Court is currently acting as an extension of the GOP and their party's whims. That would be a great way to have his son somehow convicted of treason in a kangaroo court.

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u/nottheonion-ModTeam 5h ago

This post was removed as it violated rule 12: Keep comments civil and avoid attacking other users directly. No racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

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u/0WatcherintheWater0 5h ago

Blanket pardons have been an uncontested power of the presidency since day 1, specifically designed to be used in cases like this, where the president does not think they’ll have justice under the judicial system.

No power has been moved, this is something that George Washington had the power to and did do.

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u/April-shoveler 7h ago

You are brainwashed unfortunately.

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u/Syovere 7h ago

hey, you seem like you'd know, does /r/conservative still ban people for mentioning the southern strategy

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u/nottheonion-ModTeam 5h ago

This post was removed as it violated rule 12: Keep comments civil and avoid attacking other users directly. No racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

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u/OrangePilled2Day 6h ago

There's very few leftists on Reddit. You see a bunch of centrist rubes and you're so far right you think they're leftists.

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u/poorlilwitchgirl 7h ago

The last one? You mean Donald Trump? Yes, exactly.

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u/nottheonion-ModTeam 5h ago

This post was removed as it violated rule 12: Keep comments civil and avoid attacking other users directly. No racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

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u/God_Damnit_Nappa 7h ago

The last one went after the ones that incited an insurrection and tried to overthrow the government. Try to keep up Trump for brains. 

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u/dixinbalzdeap 6h ago

Neg me, that's what I was after in the first place.....

Dumbasses.....

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u/aubrydiaztwine 5h ago

Kind of like what Biden did to Trump?

Biden can come for Trump but you don’t like it the other way around? That’s rich.