Noted attorney Alan Dershowitz said Monday that President Joe Biden had a moral obligation to pardon non-violent protesters charged in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot after granting clemency to Hunter Biden.
Biden announced he pardoned his son in a statement released Sunday night, alleging Hunter Biden had been “singled out” and claiming that “political opponents” wanted to “break” both him and his son. Dershowitz said that Biden was correct that people were not “normally prosecuted” for lying about drug use when buying firearms but said that Biden had to address the disparate treatment of those involved in Black Lives Matter riots and the Capitol riot.
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“Joe Biden was right when he said no reasonable person would disagree with the fact that if his name were not Biden, he would not have been prosecuted, so I 100% agree with Joe Biden’s decision to pardon,” Dershowitz said. “I don’t agree with this decision not to pardon, and I surely do not agree if he makes a decision not to pardon the January 6 people. He must pardon the January 6 people now.”
“He really has no moral choice, because these people were prosecuted not for what they did, but for who they are,” Dershowtiz said. “If they were Black Lives Matter people doing the same thing, they wouldn’t have been prosecuted. But they’re not. They’re Trump people. They’re MAGA people, and so they were prosecuted for doing exactly the same thing.”
The riots that took place during some of the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in police custody in May 2020 killed at least 24 people and caused nearly $1 billion in property damage. Dershowitz said that in both cases, while there was violence, there were also non-violent protesters.
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“Neither of them were insurrections. They were protests which got out of hand. Both had violent elements, and both had many non-violent elements,” Dershowitz said. “I’m talking about the non-violent people. I’m talking about the people who just trespassed, people like my own client who came there protesting. I don’t agree with him. I thought the election myself was fairly decided. He didn’t. He has the right to his views. He’s a law student. He wanted just to protest, and he was standing outside. He was waived, then, by the police. We have it on videotape, waved in by the police.”
“It’s far less bad than some, what Black Lives Matter and intifada protesters did over the years,” Dershowitz added.
A jury in Delaware convicted Hunter Biden in June on three felony gun charges in connection with the 2018 purchase of a Colt .38-caliber revolver. The president’s son entered a guilty plea on federal tax charges in September in a federal court in California, shortly before the trial was scheduled to start.
“I think in order have equal justice, in order to say that really nobody is above or below the law, I hate that cliche because most of these things are done according to law, for example, immunity of a president, it’s done pursuant to law, the Supreme Court said it,” Dershowitz said. “You know, congressmen not being able to be prosecuted for what they say on the floor of Congress, it’s in the Constitution. Judges not being able to be sued for their actions in court, not in the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has said that.”
“So, let’s, let’s understand what we mean by the rule of law. The rule of law means equally situated people should be treated in an equal way under principles of law,” Dershowitz said.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.