Mulvaney outlined how Trump’s legal woes could play out in an opinion piece published in The Hill Wednesday morning.
He described an “outlandish” scenario in which President Joe Biden offers Trump a deal if the former president is convicted. Under that agreement, Biden would pardon Trump in exchange for his dropping out of the presidential race. Biden would then end his 2024 campaign to assure Americans that the deal was not done to make his reelection chances easier.
Mulvaney predicted Trump would ultimately accept that offer. While he said the scenario is not likely to happen, he described how the former president might approach such an offer to avoid serving time in prison.
I don’t see Biden doing this. It has nothing but downsides for him to get involved in this matter.
If he does this and Trump (against all odds) abides by the agreement, then Biden just added legitimacy to the whole “this is a political hit job to get Trump out of the election” theory. It’s a garbage theory which shouldn’t be given any legitimacy, but this would push that forward on the right. Meanwhile, people on the left would be furious that Trump avoided punishment.
If Biden does this and Trump reneges on the deal, then you get the “legitimization” of the political hit job theory except without Trump dropping out. Meanwhile, the left would be angry that Biden gave Trump a get out of jail free card.
And this doesn’t even get into the fact that Biden couldn’t make the Georgia criminal case or the New York civil fraud case go away. He could call the prosecutors and ask them nicely to drop the cases, but they would be under no pressure to listen to him.
Biden’s best bet is to just let the criminal justice system play out without sticking a single finger on the scales. Exactly like he’s currently done.