Is it time to rid the U.S. Constitution of the massive pardon powers bestowed upon presidents and governors?

Coloradans remember well three years ago this month — after a phone call with Kim Kardashian — Gov. Jared Polis used his constitutional clemency powers to hijack our criminal justice process to reduce the sentence of a convicted killer of four (who caused a fiery crash that damaged 28 vehicles and burned numerous other victims) to a historically low 10-year sentence. That was a miscarriage of justice.

Earlier this week, President Joe Biden said “hold my beer.”

One day after President-elect Donald Trump announced his nomination of Kash Patel to take over the FBI, President Biden issued a pardon of his son, Hunter Biden. It was a more sweeping pardon than then-President Gerald Ford’s pardon of President-resigned Richard Nixon during Watergate. Biden absolved his son of federal criminal liability for every possible criminal act Hunter may have committed going back to January 2014. In April 2014, coincidentally (I’m sure), Hunter joined the board of Burisma (when “the Big Guy” Biden was then-President Barack Obama’s vice president), a Ukrainian energy company.

All of this would merely be controversial if it had not been preceded by repeated promises to Americans President Biden would do no such thing as pardon his son. As well, Biden did not have to pardon Hunter for his rightly earned felony convictions. He could have pardoned Hunter for every crime he committed other than his two federal convictions. Instead, he attacked the system through false statements he issued after his unprecedented pardon.

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election.” False — Hunter dared the FBI to look into his conduct.

In April 2021, three months after Joe Biden was sworn in as POTUS, Hunter Biden published his memoir, “Beautiful Things,” in which he recounted in detail his prolific drug use and addiction during the time he purchased a firearm while denying drug use and addiction on a federal form. Hunter was not targeted because he was a Biden, but because he used the Biden name to publish a memoir in which he openly touted his violations of federal and local law. It is pure privilege to think any person could confess to prosecutable crimes and not be investigated. Had the FBI refused to investigate, that decision would have been because Hunter was a Biden.

“I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.” False.

Aside from the tacit admission he has now gone back on his word, Biden — of course — attacks the prosecutor and the entire justice system. That unfair prosecutor Biden decried who selectively picked on Hunter was David C. Weiss, who was appointed to be the special prosecutor for Hunter’s cases by Merrick Garland — Joe Biden’s hand-picked attorney general. Far from a political hack, that same unfair and selective prosecutor months earlier indicted an FBI informant for lying about Hunter and President Biden’s roles in the Burisma scandal.

“It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.” False — these charges were not trumped up (no pun intended) from innocuous facts. On June 11, a jury Hunter helped pick convicted him of lying on a mandatory gun-purchasing form on which he denied illegal drug use — the same drug use he confessed to in his memoir.  Special Counsel Weiss said, “It was these choices and the combination of guns and drugs that made his conduct dangerous. No one in this country is above the law.” President Dad gave a full-throated agreement and said he would accept the outcome and “continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal.”

Three months later, Hunter “pleaded guilty in federal court… to all counts in a nine-count indictment, including three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses. There was no plea agreement.” Hunter chose to live an extravagant lifestyle instead of paying more than $1.4 million in taxes owed from 2016 to 2019, as well as filing “false returns.” Pleading guilty “naked” (that is to say “without any offer or deal”) under those circumstances is crazy — unless he knew those charges will all go away before any sentence was imposed.

“For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth.” Aside from his brazen plagiarism in his failed 1988 presidential campaign, his lie of graduating in the top half of his law school class, a canard about growing up in a Puerto Rican community, or any of the other myriad false statements he has made in his political career, Biden’s repeated pledge not to pardon his son is the most damning and definitive of his credibility.

“I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.”

Anyone can understand why a father would come to this decision. But President Biden was not elected to the highest office in the land to prioritize his family’s interests. He was elected to prioritize America’s. Biden’s legacy will be forever marred by this gratuitous act of self-dealing.

We would never permit a district attorney to prosecute the victimizer of his children, or a judge to issue a sentence against someone who hurt his family. We could not envision a chief executive — either a governor or, unbelievably, a president of the United States — abusing their powers in such an unapologetically political (Polis) or selfish (Biden) way. This is the definition of privilege. In exercising that privilege no other person in the country has, President Biden further cheapened the already-battered concept of the Rule of Law.

Here is what America understands. When we ask, “Who is above the law?” Joe Biden says, “I am.”

George Brauchler is district attorney-elect for the 23rd Judicial District and former district attorney for the 18th Judicial District. He has served as an Owens Early Criminal Justice Fellow at the Common Sense Institute. Follow him on Twitter(X): @GeorgeBrauchler.