Washington Post: Biden’s last chance to polish his heavy legacy

Most Americans today know that the charges against Trump are politically motivated, and that continuing his trial won’t only divide but erode confidence in the judicial system, Marc Thiessen wrote in The Washington Post.

During his inaugural address, President Joe Biden promised to devote his “entire soul” to “unite America,” however, he has failed to deliver on that promise, instead accusing Republicans of supporting “Jim Crow 2.0,” comparing them to George Wallace, Bull Connor, and Jefferson Davis, and declaring just before the election that “the only garbage I see floating around out there is Trump supporters”.

But Biden has one last chance to fulfill his inaugural promise before he leaves office, and he can do so with one simple act: pardoning Donald Trump.

To be clear, legally, Trump doesn’t need a presidential pardon.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is in the process of closing his federal investigations.

If Smith doesn’t close his cases, Trump could simply fire him once he takes office.

At the state level, Biden has no pardon power, but the cases against Trump appear to be collapsing.

New York’s hush-money case has raged in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, and Judge Juan Merchan will decide in the coming weeks whether to freeze the case during Trump’s presidency or dismiss it entirely, and in Georgia, a state appeals court just threw out arguments, leaving the election interference case there in limbo.

But while Trump may not need Biden’s pardon, America does.

More than a year ago, we suggested that Biden should pardon Trump before the 2024 election.

We argued that the threshold for a sitting president’s administration to indict the opposing party’s leading candidate should be unusually high, and polls at the time showed that most Americans believed the charges were politically motivated.

Continuing Trump’s trial wouldn’t only be divisive, it would erode public confidence in our justice system and the principle of equal justice under the law.

Unfortunately, Biden didn’t take our advice; Americans watched the unfolding legal landscape, and in November they rendered their verdict, decisively electing Trump.

In retrospect, Biden’s failure to stop Trump’s prosecutions helped make the former president’s unlikely comeback possible, spurring Republican primary voters—many of whom had been open to supporting another candidate—to rally around Trump, helping him secure his party’s nomination and ultimately the White House.

Trump has now endured an investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller III (which concluded that he did not engage in a criminal conspiracy with Russia), two impeachments, and 91 federal, state, and local criminal charges—all of which he has so far escaped.

As UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo recently said in an interview on our podcast, “Trump has won the lawfare”.

But while Trump has survived, the collateral damage to our democracy may only be beginning.

Absent decisive action, we may find ourselves at the beginning of a vicious cycle, in which Republicans now claim that they are justified in weaponizing the justice system to go after Democrats, and Democrats then feel free to retaliate when they regain power—pushing the country into a spiral of partisan litigation.

Biden should issue a blanket pardon for Trump, allowing him to begin his presidency with a clean legal slate.

In announcing his decision, he should recommend that state officials in New York and Georgia drop their cases as well. Biden should also declare, “The American people chose Donald Trump to lead our country… He deserves a chance to succeed—and America deserves a chance to heal”.

The move will give Biden the opportunity to burnish his heavy legacy.

He oversaw one of the worst foreign policy disasters in US history in Afghanistan, the spread of war across two continents, the worst inflation in 40 years, and the worst peacetime border crisis in the nation’s history.

His failure to step down early in his term left his party vulnerable to defeat at the ballot box this month.

As a result, he will leave the White House as one of the most unpopular presidents since World War II.

But if he pardons Trump, history will remember him as a unifier of a divided America.

As he said in his 2020 victory speech, “Everything has its season—a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow, and a time to heal, and this is the time to heal in America”.

If he acts, history will record that in the final days of his presidency, Joe Biden finally made good on that promise.