Subscribe Learn more about subscriber benefits Log In

Opinion

Joe Biden should pardon Donald Trump — in part

By Wendell Jamieson
New York Daily News • Oct 24, 2022 at 5:00 am

Expand LATEST
NYC Crime
Man riding scooter may be
paralyzed after being rear-
nded by hit-and-run
Manhattan Mercedes driver
19m

Yankees
Yankees reflect on how and
when the 2022 season fell
apart
22m

NYC Crime
Man, 62, fatally shot in head
on Bronx street
47m

A partially clean slate. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

President Biden should pardon President Trump.

Stop screaming. You heard me right. Let me explain.

Joe Biden should grant a pre-emptive, blanket pardon to Donald Trump for all and any crimes
he may have committed related to the withholding of classified materials, as well as other
government property, at his Mar-a-Lago estate, as well as any crimes of perjury he may have
committed regarding those materials.

Biden should hold a primetime broadcast to announce the pardon. He should say he is doing
this for the benefit of the nation, and for history, and he will be right. But what he need not say
is that doing this will also be very good news for Democrats and bad news for Trump himself.

Think about it. The ongoing controversy over the 11,000 documents seized by the feds, the
filings and court battles regarding special masters and access, is a tiresome sideshow to what
should be the main event: a criminal investigation of Trump’s actions on and before the Capitol
riot of Jan. 6, 2021, which sought to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. This is where there
is the potential for a far more important prosecution.

Was a crime committed when those papers were taken to Mar-a-Lago and stored? It would
certainly seem so, based on published accounts. And that would be a serious crime. But big
enough to create the stupendous precedent of prosecuting, for the first time in history, a
former president of the United States?

Maybe, maybe not. But maybe isn’t good enough.

Politically, Democrats are in a bind, and so is Merrick Garland, the attorney general, who will
have to decide whether to prosecute. Man, I wouldn’t want to be him. He’s damned if he does,
damned if he doesn’t.

Many Democrats would love an indictment. But imagine if it goes to trial and Trump wins. It

would be like a repeat of the Russia investigation, a two-year, molasses-slow process that,
while somewhat critical in the end, allowed Trump to proclaim his innocence and argue that he
was the victim of a witch hunt that distracted the nation.

Do people out there in America truly care if Trump took home a bunch of documents, even the
100 or so marked classified? I’m not sure they do.

We’re learning more about the documents all the time — Friday came news that the trove of
files contained details on Iran’s nuclear program and detailing intelligence work aimed at
China. I don’t know what I don’t know.

But I do know that this is a discombobulated, haphazard, aggrieved ex-president who routinely
took actions that were not only against the nation’s best interests, but against his own best
interests. Keeping the papers appears to have been a sloppy, ego-driven move with little more
at its heart than resentment, and the only person likely to have been harmed by all of this is

Trump himself.

A pardon takes it all off the table. It would be one less thing for Trump fans to hang their hate
on. Garland would be spared late-night battles in his mind: What should I do? How can I

squeeze out of this rock and hard place?

The Daily News Flash

Weekdays

Catch up on the day’s top five stories every weekday afternoon.

>

A pardon would clear the landscape. The focus would be squarely on Jan. 6. The decision by
the House select committee on Jan. 6 to subpoena Trump on Friday was a step in the right
direction. Naturally, proving the former president was culpable for that violence would be
tough, and would be accompanied by the familiar screams about a witch hunt. It will certainly
be tougher to prove than the seemingly incontrovertible fact that he illegally kept government
documents.

But the stakes there are infinitely higher, the potential crime so much more dangerous to our
nation. It is a far more worthy endeavor.

Then there’s the passive-aggressive joy that Biden, who’s had a rough few months, would
derive by issuing the pardon. Think how minimized and diminished Trump would appear as he
sits in Florida watching on television as the old guy who beat him doles out a generous helping
of seemingly benevolent charity.

Along with a twist of the verbal knife: a pardon, in a sense, is a guilty verdict. There’s no reason
to be pardoned if you did nothing wrong. “All and any crimes he may have committed.” Biden
should make a point of saying that phrase repeatedly.

Could Trump reject the pardon? Is that even a thing you can do? Assuming the investigation is

closed after Biden’s announcement, Trump would have to claim he was guilty to get it rolling
again, and even then, well…

Who the hell knows? We’d be in uncharted territory. But we’ve been there since Trump rode
down that escalator in Trump Tower in 2015 and announced his candidacy. Let’s let the
records go, and move on to what’s really important.

Jamieson, a former editor at this newspaper and at The New York Times, is an author and
political consultant.

Copyright © 2022, New York Daily News