Much has been said about the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter on false statement and tax charges, and many have argued that it sets a bad example because, among other reasons, it involves nepotism and special treatment. I, for one, cannot fault our 82-year-old president for pardoning the sole surviving child of his first marriage—his first wife and their daughter were killed in a car crash in 1972, and their other son, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015—and I say that both as a former career prosecutor and as the assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York who, in 2001, investigated President Bill Clinton’s pardon of his brother Roger, previously convicted on drug charges. (No charges were ultimately brought in that matter.)

For his part, Hunter Biden has already been subject to the public opprobrium attendant to the guilty verdicts in his trial for lying on a firearms application form about his drug use and his guilty pleas in a tax case—both non-violent offenses for which, as a first time offender, he would likely have been sentenced to little or no jail time in any event.