CNN’s Brianna Keilar grilled Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) on Monday over President Joe Biden giving a blanket pardon to his son, convicted felo...
CNN’s Brianna Keilar grilled Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) on Monday over President Joe Biden giving a blanket pardon to his son, convicted felon Hunter Biden, by playing Goldman’s own words from the past denying that Biden would do so.
Keilar played Goldman’s remarks on the network’s “News Central” after Biden issued the sweeping pardon that covered every crime Hunter Biden was convicted of and any additional crime that he may have committed over an 11-year period.
When asked in 2023 — after the sweetheart plea deal that Hunter Biden had with federal prosecutors fell apart — if a pardon would be a mistake, Goldman responded: “Yes.”
“And I don’t think there’s any chance that President Biden is going to do that, unlike his predecessor, who pardoned all of his friends and anyone who had any access to him,” Goldman claimed. “And I think you see that in this case, where he kept on — and Merrick Garland kept on — a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney to investigate the president’s son. If there is not an indication of the independence of the Department of Justice beyond that, I don’t know what we could look for.”
When asked what it felt like “watching yourself back then reassuring people that Biden was not going to issue a pardon for his son”, Goldman tried to wiggle out of answering the question.
“Yeah, and I think that if that plea agreement and that plea deal had gone through, there would be no pardon,” he claimed. “That was a satisfactory outcome already fallen.”
Keilar fired back: “It had already fallen through… When you reacted, this was when the deal had fallen through. And I hear what you’re saying about the Kash Patel appointment, but you know, you took him at his word. So what does that feel like, knowing that he’s gone back on it?”
Goldman refused to directly answer the question and instead blamed Republicans, claiming that Republicans in Congress — who have no power to prosecute anyone — were responsible for Hunter Biden being charged.
He concluded, “When you start to see what Donald Trump is planning to do with his Department of Justice and with his FBI, and the degree to which Hunter Biden has already been shamelessly attacked as a private citizen by Republicans, I certainly understand why the president felt like this miscarriage of justice should not carry forward, and that he should not be at risk of retributive prosecution for political reasons, which is not the proper way to execute our rule of law.”
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