Though it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, I nevertheless marvel at how quickly the mainstream media slips into “everything’s a scandal!” mode when a Republican president takes office.
They did it in 2017 when Donald Trump first took office, and they’ve done it again, this time in the aftermath of the start of Trump’s second term.
The latest one revolves around presidential pardon power, which Trump has used at various points in the first four months of his second term. The vast majority of these actions were taken on day one, with the pardoning of more than 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants, as well as the sentence commutations of 14 others.
More recently, the president pardoned reality TV show stars Todd and Julie Chrisley from prison some three years after they were convicted of bank fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy charges.
The Chrisley pardons prompted ABC News, for example, to write a piece detailing how “Of Trump’s 60 pardons or commutations unrelated to Jan. 6, about one in five of them have gone to those who have some sort of financial or political connection to him.”
In other words, around 12 of them. Of those dozen, they found that only four who had donated large sums to Trump’s previous campaigns or “committees associated with Trump and the Republican Party.” The rest were merely listed as political “supporters.”
Stories like these from the mainstream press would probably hold more weight had they expressed the same level of concern when Joe Biden pardoned numerous family members and political allies in his final few weeks in office — including his son Hunter Biden, who is a convicted felon — and some he pardoned and preemptively pardoned in the last hours of his term.
Although ABC News gave them a mention in their story on Trump, they only referenced them in passing while insinuating those particular pardons were justified because the former president was doing it to try and protect those he pardoned from the incoming Trump administration.
“Joe Biden, for example, issued pardons — including preemptive ones — during the final hours of his presidency to several of his close family members and others who he felt were potential targets of the incoming Trump administration, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and lawmakers who served on the House Jan. 6 Committee,” they wrote.
Especially galling about the “full and unconditional” Hunter Biden pardon was the fact that it was done just ahead of what was to be Hunter Biden’s sentencing on felony gun and tax evasion convictions. Further, Joe Biden dated the pardon back to Jan. 1, 2014, which covers a large time frame that saw Hunter Biden engaged in questionable foreign lobbying and using his last name and powerful father as leverage.
Another issue ABC News took with Trump’s pardons is that they are happening early in his term rather than at the end of it.
“In previous administrations, presidents have typically issued the majority of their pardons in their final weeks in office,” they reported.
So I guess they’d be OK with them as long as Trump issued the pardons at the end of his second term? Probably not, of course, but putting that line in there did make one wonder.
As always for Democrats and the mainstream media, “no one is above the law” — except for Democrats and any other political ally willing to go down with the sinking ship as long as they can try taking a bite out of Trump and the rule of law on the way down.
North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.
