Will resolve to yes if he issues any pardon or commutation of sentence.
@datachef 's YES take is wild to me: that Joe will pardon Hunter and it will be good for his legacy. My YES take is that Joe will pardon Hunter and it will be neutral or bad for his legacy and Joe will do it anyway.
Joe has motive, means, and opportunity. Joe can follow Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton and pardon 100+ people on January 19th-20th. He can't be held accountable by voters, congress, or the courts. This is not the best part of the US constitution, it is easily abusable and heavily abused.
The base rates also push me to buy YES. Bill Clinton pardoned Roger Clinton, his brother. As far as I can tell, this is the only opportunity where a US president had an immediate family member who could be pardoned post-conviction. Notably to me, Bill pardoned Roger even though Bill was criticized for it and even though it was purely symbolic.
Some people are betting NO because Joe has said he won't do it. This is weak evidence in 2024. Biden 2024 says things like "I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump". He is not a pathological liar, sure, but he changes his mind when it's convenient to do so. Some people are betting NO because pardoning Hunter would be putting family ahead of country. Again, this is weak evidence in 2024. Biden 2024 kept running for re-election well past the point when he should have quit.
Additionally, traders need to consider Joe Biden's fluctuating energy levels and reports of "sundowning", and the people who most influenced him during these periods. After Joe Biden's debate with Trump, it was widely reported that he was heavily relying on advice from Jill and Hunter Biden to decide whether to continue to run for re-election. Hunter only needs to convince Joe once, and he has 70 days between election and inauguration to try.
The best NO arguments:
Nothing ever happens, and this is a market on something happening.
Smarter people than me are buying NO at 15%.
I put a 1k YES order at 17% and I encourage you to fill it.
The only good argument for no I have seen so far is that Hunter won't be sentenced to any jail time rendering any question of a pardon moot. But the other arguments about his legacy and the like are EXTREMELY weak post-dropping out of the race. Personally, I would think less of Biden if he doesn't pardon Hunter and I am quite certain I am not alone. It is his constitutional right to pardon anyone for any reason and most presidents effectively sell pardon's to wealthy donors with no impact whatsoever on their legacy, so I can't imagine anyone being outraged or historians not being sympathetic if the guy used that power to keep his son out of prison.
So what are the odds he receives a combined sentence with no jail time?
@nsokolsky Limit is up
My take: Biden wouldn’t want to ruin his legacy by pardoning his son on what’s clearly not a political charge (unlike Nixon getting pardoned by his former VP). He’ll probably pull the strings to get an early release but I doubt he’ll do a full pardon.
@nsokolsky Unclear how it’s not a political charge. He wouldn’t have been indicted typically for either crime, but particularly the tax charges because he has paid the outstanding balance. How could it not be political when Donald Trump talks about him nonstop?? Isn’t he the living evidence of the “Biden crime family”??
Nixon spied on his political opponents so it started out a political crime, but then he destroyed the evidence and it became a crime crime. His pardon was a quid pro quo basically as Ford didn’t start the term as his VP but replaced Spiro Agnew who was himself charged with a crime and resigned. So basically you don’t really know much about US history, but it’s irrelevant but there are exactly zero prior examples of a president in a position to pardon their child.
Also, can someone tell me why Biden’s legacy would be negatively affected AMONGST PEOPLE WHO LIKE HIM??? He doesn’t give a shit about his legacy among Trump voters for sure and those are the only people who would be the least bit bothered by him pardoning Hunter. I think there is a strong argument that not pardoning Hunter would do MORE DAMAGE to his legacy among the people he cares about than letting Hunter go to prison.
Why hasn’t pardoning Steve Bannon tarnished Trump’s legacy? Because his supporters don’t give a shit. The same applies to Biden. This is obvious stuff that all of the confident No bettors are completely ignoring.
@Joshua I was wondering the same thing and then felt very unconfident that my confusion was appropriate. I haven't been following closely enough and assumed there had been some news or something.
@Joshua Hunter unexpectedly pled guilty two days ago so he could be sentenced before his dad is out of office. So obviously. It makes no sense otherwise as they didn’t even alert the prosecutor. Plus all the other obvious reasons like not having anything to lose and people have pardoned their campaign donors before so why not their son?
“This plea is not just a smart legal move,” said Anthony Coley, a former Biden Justice Department official, who pointed to elements of Hunter’s own memoir that he said had bolstered the government’s tax evasion case. “If the judge accepts it, it would spare the younger Biden from a spectacle in the court of public opinion.”
Biden pledged in June not to pardon or commute Hunter’s convictions, saying he was “satisfied” that the trial had been fair.
“I am not going to do anything,” he said on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Italy. “I will abide by the jury’s decision.”
On Thursday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden would keep his vow in the wake of Hunter’s latest plea.
“No,” she said in response to a question about whether Biden was reconsidering at all. “It’s still no.”
Doing a 180 on all that would be an insane move that would wreck Biden's legacy and the entire Democratic party's credibility on being the party that respects the rule of law. I would have guessed this market would have been at like 5%.
@Joshua What are you talking about?!? Even Polynarket is over 20 percent. https://polymarket.com/event/will-joe-pardon-hunter-biden?tid=1725723009311
@Joshua Nothin you just quoted matters at all after the election is over. And it quotes Biden when he was still a candidate. Come on man. How did you get so rich on here??
@Joshua I disagree that pardoning Hunter would harm Biden’s legacy, at least not as much as letting his son go to prison and doing nothing about it. Nobody gives a shit Trump pardoned Steve Bannon and Paul Manafort, literally nobody is going to be mad about Hunter getting pardoned that doesn’t already think there is actually a Biden crime family.
@Joshua Like are you suggesting Democrats are gonna be like, “fuck that asshole, how could be put his son before his political donors??” 😂😂
Polymarket still thinks there's a 13% chance Biden dies or resigns before the end of his term and that there's a 3% chance the US confirms aliens exist by the end of the year.
Not going to speculate on exactly what his sentence will be, I think that requires pretty specific expertise. But if you want to trust polymarket, it thinks 65% no prison time for the gun case.
But if it is prison, Joe's not going to stoop to using the presidential pardon on a member of his own family. It'd be a comically corrupt act, straight out of an InfoWars segment.
@Joshua The tax case is more serious. Plus is a a prior offender. So prison is not avoidable. If your argument is that it won’t be for long then all the more reason it’s not a big deal to pardon him. You still haven’t told us who is going to be outraged by it that doesn’t already hate Biden and why should he give a shit about what they think??
@Joshua Like you are not updating your priors on new information. But that’s cool. You got plenty of mana to lose.
For a start I think Biden himself would be outraged at the suggestion. But in terms of politics, independent voters who say "both parties are the same" would see this as the ultimate confirmation of that hypothesis.
I've certainly updated up from my initial 5% guess but this still seems to me as less likely than his resignation, which is what he would have to immediately follow a pardon by announcing.
@Joshua Why would he have to resign to pardon Hunter? He can literally pardon anyone for anything he wants without it consequences or anyone undoing it including the Supreme Court. What are you talking about??
@Joshua If you are right about Biden caring more about how he is perceived politically than his son he is a sociopath. That is what you are describing. His political career is over, in that context you make no sense.
@datachef
> Hunter unexpectedly pled guilty two days ago so he could be sentenced before his dad is out of office.
A sentence is not a precondition for a pardon, is it? Nixon was pardoned even before any criminal prosecution
@lxgr It is not, but seems obvious he would want to know final outcome first, since no need to pardon him if he is just sentenced to house arrest. Biden needs to know his sentence is my point. It does look bad if he preempts it, but not so much if he waits to find out for certain.