Some time ago, I was asked on air whether President Joe Biden would pardon his son, Hunter. My response was blunt, if not obvious: ‘He repeatedly insists that he will not, which means that he will.’
The question was a no-brainer. Biden was always going to pardon his son. That he lied about it repeatedly for months should surprise no one. While his record in Washington is conspicuous for his many failures, it is his proclivity for dishonesty, fabrications, and epic lies that are so pronounced.
They date back to 1988 when Biden was forced to drop out of the presidential race for plagiarizing a speech and brazenly lying about his academic resume. Since then, the fibs, fables, and falsehoods became so prodigious they would consume volumes of print. He belongs at the apex of the DC Liars Hall of Fame for his mendacious whoppers.
Biden’s pardon fiction was months in the making and politically driven. As NBC reports, the likelihood of clemency was discussed last June when Hunter was first convicted on gun charges in Delaware. But the White House decided to ‘publicly say that (the president) would not pardon his son even though doing so remained on the table.’
Over and over again in the run up to the presidential election, Biden proclaimed that he would honor the justice system and allow the convictions to stand. When Hunter entered guilty pleas on tax charges in Los Angeles, the elder Biden doubled-down on the promise that he had no intention of keeping.
Knowing that a pardon would trigger an electoral firestorm, Biden and his staff deliberately chose to deceive the American people because disclosing the truth would damage Democrat chances of holding on to the presidency. The ends of power justified the amoral means. It makes a mockery of Biden’s assertion that ‘No one is above the law.’
But it’s actually worse than that.
With the stroke of a pen, Biden went far beyond wiping out his son’s criminal convictions in both Delaware and California. The president issued a broad and unconditional pardon for any and all other crimes that his son ‘committed or may have committed’ during a decade of suspected influence peddling that netted the Biden family tens of millions of dollars.
The sad coda to the Biden corruption saga is that Americans can no longer trust that our legal system is fair and impartial. The ideal of equal justice under law seems dead and buried.
That tidbit of information was conveniently omitted from Biden’s presidential statement that accompanied the pardon document itself. As if no one would notice.
It turns out this is the same blanket immunity that Hunter demanded in his infamous sweetheart deal with his dad’s Department of Justice and the Delaware U.S. Attorney last year. It infamously imploded when the federal judge began asking uncomfortable questions about favoritism.
President Biden’s sweeping absolution means that Hunter can never be charged with a variety of federal offenses that prosecutors should have brought all along, including bribery, conspiracy, money laundering, and foreign lobbying crimes.
The incoming DOJ might well have reconsidered such charges based on compelling evidence that Hunter was running crooked financial schemes with Ukraine, China, Russia, Romania, Kazakhstan and other foreign adversaries in what may be the largest corruption scandal involving a public official in U.S. history.
The president’s pardon was not only beneficial to his son, it was self-serving. There is substantial evidence that Joe Biden actively aided and abetted Hunter’s schemes of selling access and promises of influence. Foreclosing future charges against the son impedes further inquiry into the father.
Hunter’s laptop proved to be a treasure trove of incriminating evidence that implicates Joe Biden as complicit in secret deals to profit from his public office as vice president. One email warned an associate, ‘Don’t mention Joe being involved.’ The personal enrichment and graft continued unabated.
The notorious Burma affair in Ukraine had all the earmarks of a classic quid pro quo —conferring a benefit in exchange for millions of dollars lavished on his son. The China pay-to-play deal banked some $5 million after Hunter threatened a Beijing businessman that his dad was sitting next to him and would exact vengeance if the cash did not come through. It did.
Time and again, Biden’s Justice Department ignored clear evidence of wrongdoing. IRS whistleblowers recounted how prosecutors tipped off Hunter’s lawyers, scuttled legitimate search warrants, forbid any questions about Joe’s involvement, and deliberately allowed the statutes of limitations on the most serious crimes to expire.
By protecting Hunter, they were protecting the president.
In his pardon announcement on Sunday night, President Biden absurdly claimed that his son was ‘selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.’ The opposite is true. Hunter was the beneficiary of preferential treatment. He is not a victim, he’s a perpetrator. Anyone else not named Biden would have felt the full force of federal law.
Biden’s statement explaining his Executive Grant of Clemency is a remarkable feat of dishonesty. He incorrectly states that failure to pay taxes is typically resolved non-criminally. That must come as quite a surprise to the hundreds of tax cheats with different surnames who are criminally prosecuted each year. Biden also avers that people are never brought to trial on the same type of gun charges filed against his son. That is also demonstrably untrue.
In a head-banging whiplash, Biden insists, ‘I believe in the justice system.’ But in the same sentence he condemns the result as a ‘miscarriage of justice.’ His cognitive dissonance demonstrates that Joe Biden is little more than a remorseless hypocrite. His litany of lies continue still.
The sad coda to the Biden corruption saga is that Americans can no longer trust that our legal system is fair and impartial. The ideal of equal justice under law seems dead and buried.
In his four years in office, Joe Biden sought to imprison his political opponent with an unconscionable lawfare campaign while abusing the levers of power to protect himself and his family from criminal responsibility.
There is no greater tyranny than justice denied or oppressed.