Despite saying he would not issue a pardon for his son Hunter, President Joe Biden did just that on Sunday, sparing his son a possible prison sentence for felony gun and tax convictions; and President-elect Donald Trump picks Kash Patel to lead the FBI.

Biden's pardon of son Hunter draws strong reactions

It didn’t take long for President Joe Biden’s critics to react to pardoning his son Hunter on Sunday.

The younger Biden was facing a possible prison sentence for federal felony gun and tax convictions when the president granted him a pardon, saying “raw politics” had caused him to be “treated differently.”

“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” President-elect Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social, referencing the hundreds of people who have been convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”

One day after issuing the pardon, “no one is above the law” and White House press secretary “Karine Jean-Pierre” are both trending on the social media platform X. Over the summer, Biden said “no one is above the law,” referring to Trump, following the Supreme Court’s ruling that granted presidents broad immunity from prosecution. Jean-Pierre had also repeatedly insisted the president would not pardon his son.

“Joe Biden has lied from start to finish about his family’s corrupt influence peddling activities,” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, wrote on X. “President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability.” 

Some Democrats expressed understanding of Biden’s pardon, including Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who said, "The president lost one son and would do anything he could for his remaining son. I'm in no way surprised as the father-son relationship is so strong."

Added Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., on X: “If you defended the 34x felon, who committed sexual assault, stole national security documents, and tried running a coup on his country…you can sit out the Hunter Biden pardon discussion."

Other Democrats, however, were openly critical.

“I respect President Biden, but I think he got this one wrong,” Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., wrote on X. “This wasn’t a politically-motivated prosecution. Hunter committed felonies and was convicted by a jury of his peers.”

Trump taps Kash Patel for FBI director, a loyalist who would aid effort to upend law enforcement

President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate Kash Patel to serve as FBI director, turning to a fierce ally to upend America’s premier law enforcement agency and rid the government of perceived “conspirators.” It’s the latest bombshell Trump has thrown at the Washington establishment and a test for how far Senate Republicans will go in confirming his nominees.

The selection is in keeping with Trump's view that the government's law enforcement and intelligence agencies require a radical transformation and his stated desire for retribution against supposed adversaries. It shows how Trump, still fuming over years of federal investigations that shadowed his first administration and later led to his indictment, is moving to place atop the FBI and Justice Department close allies he believes will protect rather than scrutinize him.

Patel “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,” Trump wrote Saturday night in a social media post.

The announcement means current FBI director Christopher Wray must either resign or be fired after Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Wray had previously been named by Trump and began the 10-year term — a length meant to insulate the agency from the political influence of changing administrations — in 2017, after Trump fired his predecessor, James Comey.

In his final months in office, Trump unsuccessfully pushed the idea of installing Patel as the deputy director at either the FBI or CIA in an effort to strengthen the president’s control of the intelligence community. William Barr, Trump’s attorney general, wrote in his memoir that he told then-chief of staff Mark Meadows that an appointment to Patel as deputy FBI director would happen “over my dead body.”

“Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency,” Barr wrote.

Patel’s past proposals, if carried out, would lead to convulsive change for an agency tasked not only with investigating violations of federal law but also protecting the country from terrorist attacks, foreign espionage and other threats.

He's called for dramatically reducing the agency's footprint, a perspective that sets him apart from earlier directors who have sought additional resources for the bureau, and has suggested closing down the bureau's headquarters in Washington and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state” — Trump's pejorative catch-all for the federal bureaucracy.

And though the Justice Department in 2021 halted the practice of secretly seizing reporters' phone records during leak investigations, Patel has said he intends to aggressively hunt down government officials who leak information to reporters and change the law to make it easier to sue journalists.

During an interview with Steve Bannon last December, Patel said he and others “will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media.”

The decision sets up what’s likely to be an explosive confirmation battle in the Senate not long after Trump’s first pick to lead the Justice Department, Matt Gaetz, withdrew his nomination amid intense scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations. Patel is a lesser-known figure, but his nomination was still expected to cause shockwaves. He's embraced Trump’s rhetoric about a “deep state,” called for a “comprehensive housecleaning” of government workers who are disloyal to Trump and has referred to journalists as traitors, promising to try to prosecute some reporters.

Trump’s nominees will have allies in what will be a Republican-controlled Senate next year, but his picks are not certain of confirmation. With a slim majority, Republicans can only lose a few defectors in the face of expected unified Democratic opposition — though as vice president, JD Vance would be able to break any tie votes.

But the president-elect had also raised the prospect of pushing his selections through without Senate approval using a congressional loophole that allows him to make appointments when the Senate is not in session.