Joe Manchin asks Joe Biden to pardon Trump after controversial Hunter Biden decision, ‘Why don’t you go ahead and…’

Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) said Joe Biden must pardon Donald Trump too, now that he has pardoned his son Hunter Biden.

Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) said Joe Biden must pardon Donald Trump too, now that he has pardoned his son Hunter Biden. Manchin, a former Democrat, will be retiring from the upper chamber at the end of the year.

Joe Manchin asks Joe Biden to pardon Trump after controversial Hunter Biden decision (Photo by Bonnie Cash / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP, photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP)

“I am just saying, wipe them out,” Manchin told CNN. “Why don’t you go ahead and pardon Donald Trump for all his charges and make it, you know, it would have gone down a lot more balanced, if you will.”

Biden said he pardoned Hunter as his son was being “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.” Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended the move too, alleging “war politics” prompted the first son’s legal woes.

Similarly, Trump previously claimed that four criminal cases against him were politically motivated. Trump was accused of mishandling classified documents, attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, falsifying business records and interfering in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. Trump was charged in all the cases after announcing his 2024 White House bid.

‘Just clean that slate up’

“The president has to be the president for the next four years, fighting all these criminal [cases] and all this other stuff’s coming after him,” Manchin said. “Just clean that slate up.”

Manchin also claimed that the pardon made the president’s legacy “difficult.” Many of the West Virginia senator’s colleagues, including Democrats, have blasted Biden’s move.

Meanwhile, Biden’s claim that his son was “selectively and unfairly prosecuted” for federal tax and gun crimes was dismissed by special counsel David Weiss, who called the claim “nonsensical.” “The Government does not challenge that the defendant has been the recipient of an act of mercy. But that does not mean the grand jury’s decision to charge him, based on a finding of probable cause, should be wiped away as if it never occurred,” Weiss wrote in a filing with the US District Court for the Central District of California.