Presidential pardons

To the editor:

Those who have condemned President Biden for pardoning his son would do well to bear in mind that former South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy, a former prosecutor and an ardent social conservative, who is now a Fox News host, declared last June that the chances that any person would be charged for lying on a federal firearms application were minuscule. 

“I bet you there weren't ten cases prosecuted nationwide of addicts or unlawful drug users who possessed firearms or lied on applications,” he declared publicly on Fox, suggesting that had the younger Biden not been the son of the president, he would not have faced any such charge.

Similarly, the number of people found guilty in a court of law for tax evasion, as was Hunter Biden, is a tiny percentage of those charged with the same crime.

Furthermore, before he completed his first term in the White House, President Trump issued pardons to or commuted the sentences of, many people who had been convicted of crimes or indicted for criminal federal offenses. They included Charles Kushner, his daughter, Ivanka’s, father-in-law, who spent two years in prison for witness tampering, tax evasion and making illegal campaign contributions. They also included seven Republican congressmen, among them Randall “Duke” Cunningham, who received an eight-year prison sentence for bribery, fraud and tax evasion. They included Trump's allies Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Steve Bannon, the last of whom was convicted of contempt of Congress, for which he served two months in prison, and who is scheduled to go on trial in New York State in February 2025 for a fraudulent fund-raising scheme that bilked thousands of individuals out of a total of $20 million.

Even more damning, several of the people whom Trump pardoned have gone on to commit more crimes. Among them, Eliyahu Weinstein, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2013 for operating a fraudulent real-estate Ponzi scheme that robbed investors of a total of $200 million. In early 2024, he was again indicted on similar charges.

 It remains to be seen whether after he is inaugurated to a second term, Trump will carry out his promise of pardoning the hundreds of people serving prison sentences after being found guilty of participating in the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Miriam Levine Helbok