Former Vice President Joe Biden is pledging that, as president, he
would treat his attorney general as an independent lawyer for the
nation, not as his own personal fixer.
Biden made that commitment in an MSNBC virtual town hall Thursday night in response to an attention-grabbing question: would he do as Gerald Ford did in pardoning Richard Nixon, or would he “commit to the American ideal that no one is above the law?” “Absolutely, yes, I commit,” Biden answered.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell followed up, asking more broadly about potential investigations into Donald Trump himself or members of his administration. “It's hands off completely. The attorney general is not the president's lawyer. It's the people's lawyer,” Biden answered.
“We never saw anything like the prostitution of that office like we see it today. It is not something the president is entitled to do, to direct either a prosecution and/or decide to drop a case. That is not the president’s role or responsibility and it’s a dereliction of his duty.”
There are some large differences between Ford-Nixon and Biden-Trump, of course. Situationally, the appropriate person to ask if he’d be Ford to Trump’s Nixon would be Mike Pence, and of course even that doesn’t quite get the right dynamic, since Ford only became Nixon’s vice president to replace Spiro Agnew. But it’s kinda nice to think about Trump needing a pardon, isn’t it?
Biden, though, went way beyond the idea of Trump needing a pardon in addressing the independence of the Department of Justice to fulfill its mission and “ensure fair and impartial justice for all Americans” rather than serving a president’s whims and political ambitions.
Speaking of putting competence and impartiality first, Biden also said, “I hope if I'm president that Dr. Fauci will stay on in the administration.”
Biden made that commitment in an MSNBC virtual town hall Thursday night in response to an attention-grabbing question: would he do as Gerald Ford did in pardoning Richard Nixon, or would he “commit to the American ideal that no one is above the law?” “Absolutely, yes, I commit,” Biden answered.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell followed up, asking more broadly about potential investigations into Donald Trump himself or members of his administration. “It's hands off completely. The attorney general is not the president's lawyer. It's the people's lawyer,” Biden answered.
“We never saw anything like the prostitution of that office like we see it today. It is not something the president is entitled to do, to direct either a prosecution and/or decide to drop a case. That is not the president’s role or responsibility and it’s a dereliction of his duty.”
There are some large differences between Ford-Nixon and Biden-Trump, of course. Situationally, the appropriate person to ask if he’d be Ford to Trump’s Nixon would be Mike Pence, and of course even that doesn’t quite get the right dynamic, since Ford only became Nixon’s vice president to replace Spiro Agnew. But it’s kinda nice to think about Trump needing a pardon, isn’t it?
Biden, though, went way beyond the idea of Trump needing a pardon in addressing the independence of the Department of Justice to fulfill its mission and “ensure fair and impartial justice for all Americans” rather than serving a president’s whims and political ambitions.
Speaking of putting competence and impartiality first, Biden also said, “I hope if I'm president that Dr. Fauci will stay on in the administration.”
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