By MARK ANTONIO WRIGHT of The National Review-The first thing Joe Biden should do this morning is invite Donald Trump to the traditional visit in the Oval Office between the outgoing and incoming president. Biden should extend all the traditional and lawful assistance to Trump that is appropriate in anticipation of his forming a new administration.
Biden should then move to use his constitutional authority to pardon Donald Trump of all pending federal charges, and relieve special counsel Jack Smith of his duties. He should then ask New York governor Kathy Hochul to use her authority to pardon Trump for the crimes he was convicted of in New York State.
He should do this not because Trump is entirely blameless for the circumstances surrounding the indictments that have been leveled against him — he’s not blameless, most especially in the Mar-a-Lago classified-documents case, where the publicly available evidence shows that Trump was, at minimum, negligent and, at maximum, absolutely complicit in ignoring the statutes governing the handling of classified information and, possibly, those concerning the obstruction of justice. The constellation of charges surrounding Trump’s actions on and before January 6, 2021, are more opaque, not because Trump’s actions were not mendacious, self-serving, and contemptible, but because I’m not certain that Trump’s plan crossed the line from low politics and clearly impeachable conduct to criminal behavior, though my mind is open on that question. (The Stormy Daniels hush-money prosecution in New York was clearly bogus, turning an embarrassing situation that should have been handled administratively or as a misdemeanor into a criminal proceeding.)
But regardless of Trump’s fault in any of the above, I can’t see how the 2024 election wasn’t a definitive verdict on the subject delivered by the highest authority: the people.
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Wise or not, a majority of the public chose to reelect Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. He deserves to enter that term in January 2025 with the slate wiped clean of the controversies of the previous era.
No good at all will come of an American president fulfilling his constitutional duties at home and abroad under the cloud of pending criminal prosecutions. No good whatsoever will come of Trump himself ordering the Justice Department to drop the charges or by crossing the Rubicon in American life of “self-pardoning.”
Joe Biden has not often spent his time in office acting much like a statesman. But a pardon now of Donald Trump would be statesmanlike. And such an act would go a long way toward ending the cycle of lawfare that, if left unchecked, will cause more harm and more damage to the body politic. Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon is the precedent here, and it’s a good one. Ford’s Presidential Proclamation 4311, delivered in September 1974, was politically unpopular at the time. It enraged Nixon’s enemies. But it was the right thing to do. Ford’s pardon put a bandage on a festering national wound and closed the door on a regrettable era in our politics.
Donald Trump should accept such a pardon, if offered by Joe Biden. Trump should then find a way to, at least rhetorically, extend an olive branch to the outgoing president.
I’m not naïve enough to think that partisan rancor will not be a major factor in our national life in the next weeks and months and years. But a newly elected president deserves a fresh start and a grown up, gracious, and honorable approach to the peaceful transfer of power. Trump didn’t give his predecessor that courtesy the last time around of course. That’s no reason, however, that Biden ought not rise above revenge to the level of the statesman.
For anyone caught up in the idea that such a move by Biden would “let Trump off the hook” for one Trump controversy after another, there’s no need to worry. There will be other controversies. I promise.
