How apropos–or perhaps ironic–that over a holiday weekend where I’m told people were spending time with family members (not in my case, mind you) that the breaking news alerts that popped up most frequently involved politicians and their respective family members.
Perhaps the noisiest was the one that happened yesterday that CNN’s duo of Marshall Cohen and Betsy Klein dutifully reported on the network website late last night:
President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he has pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who faced sentencing this month for federal tax and gun convictions, marking a reversal as he prepares to leave office.
“Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” the president said in a statement. It is a “full and unconditional pardon,” according to a copy of the executive grant of clemency. By pardoning his son, Joe Biden has reneged on a public promise that he made repeatedly before and after dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. The president and his top White House spokesperson said unequivocally, including after Trump won the 2024 election, that he would not pardon Hunter Biden or commute his sentence. The broadly crafted pardon explicitly grants clemency for the tax and gun offenses from his existing cases, plus any potential federal crimes that Hunter Biden may have committed “from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.” This time frame, importantly, covers his entire tenure on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and much of his other overseas work, including in China. He had faced scrutiny for his controversial foreign business dealings, and Trump has repeatedly said he should be prosecuted for his activities in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Naturally, his new fireplace buddy and fellow senior citizen in chief didn’t take this news all that positively, as Cohen and Klein added:
In a social media post Sunday night, Trump called the pardon “such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” In an apparent joke, Trump also asked whether the pardon includes his supporters who attacked the US Capitol during the January 6, 2021, insurrection — whom he has promised to pardon once he’s back in office.
Methinks Fat Orange Jesus doth protest too much. It’s a move straight out of his playbook, both in terms of pardoning folks in the waning days of his presidency (per the official U.S. government website, no less than 116 in total were handed out between November 25, 2020 and January 20, 2021–with plenty of familiar names in the mix) and in terms of timing, since the next noisiest news nuggets just happened to involve his latest appointments to significant government positions, and there’s a common thread to them.
On Saturday THE NEW YORK TIMES’ Zach Montague was among the many to report this:
President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Saturday that he would name Charles Kushner, the wealthy real estate executive and father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France, handing one of his earliest and most high-profile ambassador appointments to a close family associate.
The announcement was the latest step in a long-running exchange of political support between the two men. Mr. Kushner received a pardon from Mr. Trump in the final days of his first term for a variety of violations and then emerged as a major donor to Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign.
And yesterday yet another machatunim benefitted in ways other than fostering a son worthy of potentially fathering another grandchild, as the LOS ANGELES TIMES’ Fatima Hussein told what remains of her paper’s readership:
President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday named Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American businessman who is the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany, as a senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.
Boulos arranged Trump campaign efforts to engage the Arab American community in Michigan, organizing dozens of meetings in areas with large Arab American populations angered by Democratic President Biden’s backing of Israel’s offensives in Gaza and Lebanon. Trump won the majority Arab American city of Dearborn Heights on his way to sweeping Michigan and other swing states.
These shouldn’t have been surprises, and it’s commendable that at least in these cases his critics didn’t whine and bitch as much as he did. After all, cronyism is a fact of life in politics, especially when it’s a reward for helping to get a key voting constituency on your side. Biden secured the support of Jim Clyburn in similar fashion, as NBC NEWS’ Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes told their readers back in January 2021:
It was Feb. 25, four days before the South Carolina primary, and Biden was blowing it again. Almost an hour and 45 minutes had passed already, and Biden hadn’t mentioned the one promise Clyburn had said would nail down Black votes in South Carolina, throughout the rest of the primary, and in the general election. “You’ve had a couple of opportunities to mention naming a Black woman to the Supreme Court,” Clyburn lectured his friend of nearly half a century, like a schoolteacher scolding a child. “I’m telling you, don’t you leave the stage tonight without making it known that you will do that.”
Ketanji Brown Jackson, you of the 3-6 minority presence in the current Court, you know who to send Christmas cards to this year.
As for the issue of politicans helping out family, please don’t try to think this is without precedent. The most obvious and significant was John F. Kennedy appointing his younger brother Robert as Attorney General. Yes, he had a law degree and slightly more experience than, say, Matt Goetz but he was hardly the most experienced or possibly qualified candidate out there at the time. And we know they shared a lot more than just conversations in the White House (true, Norma Jean Baker?)
And as a 2017 piece on BALLOTPEDIA detailed, there’s a lot more precedent over several centuries, especially prior to 1967, when Congress included in the Postal Revenue and Federal Salary Act a section containing restrictions on government officials appointing family members to federal government jobs. Before that, as the site rattled off:
According to the National Constitutional Center, at least six 19th century presidents appointed family members to positions in the White House or other positions in the executive branch, including James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, John Tyler, James Buchanan, and Ulysses Grant. Franklin Roosevelt appointed his son James to the position of administrative assistant to the president in January 1937. Six months later, James was promoted to secretary to the president. In October of that year, James’ responsibilities expanded and he became the White House coordinator for 18 federal agencies.[15] In October 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed his son John as assistant staff secretary in the White House. At the time, John Eisenhower was a major in the U.S. Army.[16] [17]
But in 1993, things changed:
Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit suggested the anti-nepotism statute might not apply to presidential appointments of White House personnel. In his decision in Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc. v. Clinton, Silberman wrote,
| “ | Although [the statute] defines agency as ‘an executive agency,’ we doubt that Congress intended to include the White House or the Executive Office of the President. So, for example, a President would be barred from appointing his brother as Attorney General, but perhaps not as a White House special assistant.[9][5] | ” |
Silberman was ruling on whether federal open meetings laws applied to the President’s Task Force on National Health Care Reform created in 1993 by President Bill Clinton and chaired by First Lady Hillary Clinton.[9] At issue in the case was whether Hillary Clinton, in her capacity as head of the task force, could be considered an employee of the federal government. Since the anti-nepotism statute was not at issue in the case, Silberman’s opinion had effect on its legal status.
Hillary Clinton’s appointment to the task force is the only instance of a president appointing a family member to a position in the executive branch since the passage of the passage of the anti-nepotism statute.[3]
Well, until this past weekend, at least.
Look, I’ve worked in an industry where nepotism has been rampant, and not just the more egregious examples such as Shari Redstone and David Ellison. I’ve worked in and a client of companies where key sales positions were held by the sons and daughters of their CEOs. The most recent department I worked with had a fast-rising analyst who just happens to have a father who was in charge of one of the division’s most profitable areas. After a brief sabbatical at another company and taking time home to get married and have a child, the company just hired her back as a mid-level executive.
Besides, if one accepts the “mob rule” approach that Trump seems to take with all of the businesses he oversees, rewarding family is actually kinda nice. Do remember that Tony Soprano always treated Uncle Junior nicely.
And as for the “Celebrity Apprentice” cabinet that he’s cobbling together with allegedly unqualified toadies with decent Q scores among his target audience, things could have been even more bizarre. When one thinks of “Family Matters”, one can’t help but think of Steve Urkel. He’s out there waiting for an appointment. And hey–he’s a game show host these days!! That’s pretty much the top resume line of the guy doing the hiring.
Bizarre? Of course. Unprecented? Clearly not. And unique to one side of the aisle? Definitely not.
Until next time…