I have had a belly full of “journalists,” “pundits” and “opinion writers” whining about Joe Biden’s pardoning of family members in the closing hours of his presidential administration. I have not read Jake Tapper’s book and never will. But every time I see a reference to Trump’s pardoning of the January 6 insurrectionists he directed to attack the Capitol in pursuit of a false narrative about the 2020 election, I see a reference to Biden’s pardon and how “history” will judge him poorly for doing it. Virtually everyone who addresses the pardon issue (Trump has now pardoned over 1,500 people, I have read, and more are in the pipeline as the payoffs keep coming) seems to feel they have to compare Biden’s family pardons to what Trump is doing.

What did they expect Biden to do? It was a no-win situation. He knew that Trump had vowed revenge against him and his family for the investigations that Trump still whines about. Should Biden have left his family to their fate at the hands of a lunatic bent on revenge and any form of pay-back he could produce? I think not. If Biden had abandoned his family to Trump’s revenge, what would the pundits have said then?

And we see this playing out as could be expected. Reuters reports “Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, wrote in an email seen by Reuters that the investigation involves whether Biden “was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of AutoPen or other means.” https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-justice-department-examining-pardons-issued-by-biden-2025-06-02/ This will ultimately be a futile quest to exact revenge on Biden and his family, but that has never stopped Trump from trying. Trump sees the Department of Justice as his personal law firm. The Supreme Court has essentially ratified that idea in its immunity decision.

It’s clear to me at least that Biden foresaw correctly what Trump was likely to do. Rather than leave his family at the mercy of a revenge-obsessed Trump who is still rage-tweeting his claims to have won the 2020 election, Biden chose to protect his family. I see no fault in this. He had a difficult choice to make and made it. Surely the pundits can find something else to whine about.