Constitutional law expert Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Monday that President Joe Biden, using the same principle he applied in pardoning his son, Hunter Biden, should pardon President-elect Donald Trump as well as nonviolent Jan. 6, 2021, offenders to "send a message of equality."
If the president doesn't do it, if his sweeping pardon of his son "becomes a one-off," Dershowitz predicted "history will look very, very negatively upon him."
Dershowitz joined "Finnerty" to say that the principle the president applied to his son is a correct one: "that you don't have selective prosecution."
"Now, what Hunter Biden did was criminal, whereas what Donald Trump did, certainly in New York, was not criminal. But in both cases, they would never have been prosecuted if their names were 'Smith' rather than Biden and Trump," Dershowitz said.
"And to be consistent with [Biden's] principles, I think that Trump should be pardoned. I think that the Jan. 6 nonviolent offenders should be pardoned."
Dershowitz pointed out that any President Biden pardon of Trump would largely by symbolic but important nonetheless.
"He can't pardon [Trump] for New York, which is the worst abuse of the legal system I've seen in 60 years of practicing law," Dershowitz said of the business records case brought by the state, for which Trump was found guilty on 34 counts.
"But he could pardon him from the Florida case and from the D.C. case, even though those are not going to be tried while he's president," Dershowitz said of the two federal cases.
"Still, it would send a message of equality, one that says, look, this is not just a father pardoning a son. This is a man, a principled president, applying a standard across the board, saying that people shouldn't be prosecuted based on their convictions, based on their political views, on their partisan affiliations," he told host Rob Finnerty.
"Will he do that? I'm not sure."
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