Jeffrey Toobin says Joe Biden tarnished his legacy by pardoning his son, and Donald Trump cemented one of the knocks against him with his own slew of presidential pardons.
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00:00If you look at the Constitution as a whole, one of the main ideas is checks and balances,
00:07is that the branches of government are meant to interact with each other.
00:14But the pardons are an exception, that it is the part of the Constitution that comes
00:20most directly from the powers of the kings of England.
00:25And there is no check or balance.
00:28It is the Congress can't overturn a pardon, the courts can't overturn a pardon.
00:33And as a result, if you look over the broad span of history, I think presidents reveal
00:39their characters most directly in pardons, because they are sort of the purest essence
00:46of what a president can do.
00:49And that's often not a very pretty picture.
00:52So let's talk about two people, Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
00:56Joe Biden pardoned his son, notably, when he said he wouldn't.
01:01And Donald Trump has pardoned a slew of people, probably for various reasons.
01:08What does it reveal about both of them?
01:09Well, it reveals so much.
01:14With Biden, he has this obsession with his own family.
01:21And you know, I think you can go back to the death of his first wife and and and, you
01:26know, he has this, you know, just almost physical desire to protect them.
01:32In fact, one theory, which I find believable, his physical and mental decline, which was
01:38so pronounced in his last year as president, you can date it from the trial of his son
01:44in Delaware, that that it was so emotionally wrenching for him.
01:49And not only did he go back on his word about not pardoning his son, but I mean, he sent
01:55a terrible message, I think, with with that pardon, because, you know, whatever you think
02:01of Hunter Biden, he committed the crimes that he was convicted of.
02:06You know, he did, you know, commit that gun crime in Delaware.
02:09He did cheat on his taxes in California.
02:12And you know, my view is, you know, maybe he was treated more harshly than some other
02:17people.
02:18And that's true of a lot of people in the in the criminal justice system.
02:22But their fathers aren't president of the United States.
02:25And I thought by singling him out, much less than, you know, going back on your word, he
02:31really damaged his legacy as president.
02:34OK, so Trump has pardoned his father in law.
02:37He has his son's father in law, his daughter, his daughter's father in law rather.
02:44He has pardoned Blagojevich.
02:46He has pardoned January 6th convicts.
02:50What does it say about Trump?
02:51Well, I think to see what it says about Trump, you have to go back to the first term and
02:56remember what he did at the end of at the end of of his first term when he pardoned
03:04a scad of people, many of whom were completely undeserving.
03:08You know, he settled his score with Robert Mueller by pardoning everyone Mueller had
03:14prosecuted.
03:15Roger Stone, among others.
03:18Then, you know, he pardoned Charles Kushner, Jared Kushner's father, you know, who was
03:24who was convicted in an egregious scam.
03:27He pardoned a bunch of Republican congressmen, former congressmen who had engaged in grotesque
03:34bribery and crimes.
03:36And I think the word about Trump and pardons is a word that really sums up his his worldview,
03:43which is transactional.
03:45You know, you hurt me.
03:46I'm going to hurt you.
03:48You help me.
03:49I'm going to help you.
03:50And that's been the motive for all these pardons, most dramatically with the January 6th pardons,
03:57because, you know, he was a January 6th defendant to remember not the same set of cases.
04:03But he was accused of, you know, trying to get the election overturned through the use
04:08of fake fake electors, which put him on the same team as those 1500 he pardoned.
04:15And that's why he pardoned them, even the most violent among them.
04:19So I suspect that the transactional nature of his pardons will continue throughout the
04:24second term.