New Bedford Mayor: Biden Pardon ‘Hugely Damaging’ for President’s Legacy

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell called President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter “a very poor decision” and said that the move was “hugely damaging” for Biden’s legacy and for the Democratic party.

In the mayor's weekly appearance on WBSM, host Chris McCarthy asked Mitchell, a former federal prosecutor, what he thought of Biden’s decision to pardon his son. Mitchell said he was “disappointed” when he saw the news break Sunday night.

“As a father, you have to do stuff for your kids, so that part’s tough,” Mitchell said, noting how Joe Biden’s situation was “especially tough” because of the loss of Biden’s first wife and infant daughter in a 1972 car crash, and then son Beau’s death from cancer in 2015.

Mitchell also said presidential pardon power is “unchecked” in the Constitution.

“It really derives from the English tradition of the king’s ability to pardon subjects convicted of a crime, or exonerate them before there’s any kind of charge,” he said. “It’s baked into the British legal tradition and was adopted by the framers of the Constitution, but it's been unchecked.”

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While Mitchell felt the federal cases against Hunter Biden for lying about his drug use on a form for purchasing a handgun and for tax offenses were “somewhat ticky-tack,” he felt the federal government had to prosecute considering who was the defendant, and that the charge about lying on the gun application was “kind of a layup of a case.”

“All that said, it’s kind of a minor offense in the big scheme of things, but I think it’s something the government had to bring and I don’t think the president should have gone back on his word on this one,” Mitchell said. “I don’t think he was lying, I don’t think he intended to pardon his son…I think he changed his mind.”

“He’s entitled to change his mind, but I don’t think he should have,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell said the biggest thing that will come out of this is that it will “increase people’s cynicism.”

“For Democrats like me, it cedes the moral high ground,” he said. “Now we can’t say we’re not like (Donald) Trump, we’re not allowing conflicts of interest in our governance of the country, we don’t give deals to family members.”

“Now that he did something like that, I think it’s hugely damaging, for his legacy for sure but also for Democrats because it gives Trump license to do a whole lot and get away with it,” Mitchell said. “Now if he pardons the January 6th folks, even some of them, he can say, ‘Well, what about Hunter Biden?’ and there’s no good answer for that. There’s an answer but it’s not a good answer, coming from a party whose leader did what he did.”