The uproar over Biden’s pardon issued to his son is a true tempest in a teapot.
In the first case, the charges against his son for the statements made in connection with a gun purchase were “status offenses” rather than any actual criminal behavior, which in the absence of any aggravating criminal circumstances would usually result in a non-criminal resolution.
In the second case, the tax return was amended and the correct tax paid before the charges were filed, meaning that in a normal situation, the most that would be done would be a misdemeanor charge leading to a fine and probation.
The purchase of a gun was not an illegal act, nor was it a crime in the abstract to misstate the answers to questions asked on the purchase form. If he had misstated his address or listed his age wrong, for example, there would probably have been no basis for any criminal complaint. In this case, the statutes made it wrong to misstate the answer to the drug question, and the statute made it a wrong for one using drugs to purchase a weapon. But for the specific statute, there would be no basis to charge any crime in connection with the statements made in connection with the gun purchase But in the usual case, if no harm results from the purchase, there is no reason for a felony prosecution on the gun form. In fact, unless some harm occurs, there is no reason to even examine the gun form. Where harm results, and separate criminal behavior occurs, the status offenses may be added to the actual criminal behavior to place the circumstances in proper perspective. As to the tax charges, from a standpoint of judicial economy, isolated instances of an erroneous tax return seldom result in prosecution if the subject return is amended and all taxes paid. Sometimes exceptions are made where a prominent individual is involved to emphasize a point – as in the recent case of Martha Stewart — but in this case it was President Biden, not his son, who was the apparent prominent individual.
Biden’s son was not a prominent target warranting the example punishment for the single misfiled return. In most instances, a single status offense standing alone would not warrant full prosecution. In this case, however, the prosecutor was a “special prosecutor.” appointed exclusively to determine whether President Biden’s son was guilty of any crime. The special prosecutor was a prominent Republican under pressure from some Republican Congressmen. The apparent expectation was that President Biden would be found to have been involved with his son in some or any of the questioned activities.
When the special prosecutor came up empty handed with this objective, and could only find the related charges against the son, he did not close the inquiry as unproductive – which he could have done under the circumstances. But since he was only charged with one target defendant, he chose to proceed with a case that a regular prosecutor with a normal case load might well have declined.
Dividing the circumstances into separate counts makes the conduct appear much worse than it was. In the tax case, there was only one tax return involved, and the crime was in the failure to report one taxable amount – being the tax on the correct total income for the year in question. The fact that the total was arrived at from several separate amounts could be considered an irrelevant detail insofar as the criminal act was concerned – was the crime committed in filling out the return or in filing it? In my view, the crime was in filing the return with erroneous entries, and it would only be one count per return rather than separate counts for each wrong line in the return.
I suspect that if it were not for the fact that this defendant has a prominent father, the case would have been disposed of by informal resolution months ago. In my court, for example, I would expect it to be a misdemeanor resolution of the tax case for a fine and probation and a referral of the drug case to a rehabilitation program.
Since that is not the direction the case was apparently headed, and since the President was no longer concerned with any fallout in a campaign for his re-election, I see no reason to blame the President for exercising his prerogatives and reacting like a father.
