WATCH: Top Democrat Rep. Throws Biden Under The Bus, Slams ‘Disappointing’ Pardon

Calls of disappointment over President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter have finally reached the upper echelons of the Democratic Party.

On Wednesday morning, Congressman Pete Aguilar (D-TX), chair of the U.S. House Democratic Caucus, told members of the media it was “disappointing” to see the president and fellow Democrat go back on his word after repeatedly promising for more than a year that he would let the justice system take its course. “As a father, I understand it and I get it, but as someone who has spent a lot of time at this podium talking about the importance of respecting the rule of law, it’s disappointing. And so we didn’t have a robust conversation about this in the caucus, but those are my personal beliefs. The president said publicly he wasn’t going to give a pardon, and then he did. So that part — that part’s disappointing. I believed him when he said he wasn’t.”

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Aguilar, who will begin his sixth two-year term in 2025, is third in line behind House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA), underscoring how corrosive the pardoning of Hunter Biden has been to the Democratic coalition. His comments came after other prominent party members denounced the decision to give Hunter blanket immunity for a period spanning 11 years and exonerating him from a conviction on felony gun charges and an active trial on multi-million dollar tax fraud.

“President Biden’s decision put personal interest ahead of duty and further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all,” Democratic Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) wrote Monday on X, Newsweek reported. Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) added, “President Biden’s decision to pardon his son was wrong. A president’s family and allies shouldn’t get special treatment. This was an improper use of power, it erodes trust in our government, and it emboldens others to bend justice to suit their interests.” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) struck a different chord. “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,” he added.

President Biden dodged a slew of questions about the pardon during his visit to Angola on Tuesday before briefly appearing to fall asleep at the economic summit. Aboard Air Force One, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pushed back forcefully against accusations she lied for a year when insisting Biden had no plan to pardon Hunter and came to the decision only over the weekend. “One thing the president believes is to always be truthful with the American people,” Jeane-Pierre said, Fox News reported. She repeated several times the president “wrestled with [the decision]” while decrying “war politics” that led to Hunter being “singled out politically” in his prosecution.

In a scathing rebuke, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi, who oversaw Hunter’s federal tax case, issued a five-page rationale for why Biden’s pardon and critique of the justice system rings hollow. “The President’s own attorney general and Department of Justice personnel oversaw the investigation leading to the charges. In the President’s estimation, this legion of federal civil servants, the undersigned included, are unreasonable people,” Scarsi wrote, according to Newsweek. “In short, a press release is not a pardon. The Constitution provides the President with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history.”

The Department of Justice told the New York Post that it was caught off guard by the pardon, saying that normally its Office of the Pardon Attorney is consulted by the White House before such a high-profile move is made. In this case, sources say, the office would not have recommended a pardon.

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