December 3, 2024
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“My word as a Biden.”
Well, we know what that’s worth now. Of course, those of us who were paying attention have known for years that the word of Joe Biden was worth nothing. But now, with the inventive, all-encompassing presidential pardon of son Hunter, everyone can see the emptiness of his trademark phrase.
As with Hunter’s “sweetheart” plea deal that was negotiated with prosecutors before being questioned by the presiding judge, no one has ever seen a pardon like this. It covers any and all charges against Hunter that might arise from his activities during an 11-year time frame. This, after Biden had repeatedly claimed that he would not pardon Hunter, period.
But few are surprised Hunter was pardoned, and even they might be pretending to be surprised. President Trump said to FOX NEWS in October, “I’ll bet you the father probably pardons him. Let’s see what happens, but he’s a bad boy, there is no question about it.”
Still, Biden has lied countless times about this and about his family’s history of influence peddling. Karine Jean-Pierre has the thankless job of covering for him, but in lying to defend the indefensible, she just looks pathetic. This exchange took place Monday with the press on board Air Force One on its way to Angola (notice he’s far from the U.S. right now):
Reporter: “You and Biden said for months that he wouldn’t pardon Hunter...could those statements now be seen as lies [by] the American people?”
Karine Jean-Pierre: “One of the things that the President always believes is to be truthful to the American people. That is something he always truly believes.”
KJP’s biggest challenge these days must be getting through press briefings with a straight face.
Here’s the full story from the NEW YORK POST. Obviously, the focus-group-tested term of the day was “war politics,” which KJP repeated three times. It’s supposed to mean the politicization of the Justice Department, which she insists led to their persecution of...Hunter Biden. (Huh? We thought it was somebody else.) At the same time, President Biden is trying to maintain that, when it comes to Trump prosecutions, the DOJ is NOT politicized. It’s nonsensical.
She said that Biden had simply changed his mind over Thanksgiving. To their credit, some of the reporters actually pressed her on this. But, really, why do they even bother with these ridiculous press briefings at this point? Surely, they aren’t doing it for the free trip to...Angola. These briefings are nothing more than an exercise in hiding the truth, a waste of everybody’s time.
U.S. District Judge Maryellen Norieka, who first raised an eyebrow at that never-before-seen “sweetheart deal” put together by Hunter’s attorneys and U.S. Attorney David Weiss, said in a court filing on Monday that she’ll accept the President’s pardon related to the firearms charges and “intends to terminate the proceedings against Defendant.”
But David Weiss denied that Hunter had been “treated differently” and also that the verdict against him was a “miscarriage of justice,” words Karine Jean-Pierre had used. In a court filing, he said that “there was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case. To the extent that Defendant’s claim that he is being selectively prosecuted rests solely on him being the son of the sitting President, that claim is belied by the facts.” After all, they said, it’s the President’s own appointees who run the Justice Department.
Weiss can’t overturn a presidential pardon, of course, but in “terminating” the case, he’s expressing resistance to actually dismissing the indictment against Hunter. It’s an interesting distinction, and both he and Judge Norieka deserve credit for making it...
Recall that according to IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, it was just the opposite of a political prosecution, in that Hunter, as a member of the First Family, definitely got preferential treatment. As BREITBART reports, Shapley and Ziegler made at least 13 allegations against Hunter and his family in congressional testimony last year, saying that supervisor Lesley Wolf restricted their investigation, particularly when it threatened to include “the Big Guy.”
CNN reports that First Lady Jill Biden was strongly lobbying/pressuring for the pardon. But, really, they’re such fake news, who knows how it really went down? Here’s the story anyway; make of it what you will...
House Speaker Mike Johnson posted this on X: “President Biden has insisted many times he would not pardon his own son for his serious crimes. But last night, he suddenly granted a ‘Full and Unconditional Pardon’ for any and all offenses that Hunter committed for more than a decade! Trust in our justice system has been almost irreparably damaged by the Bidens and their use and abuse of it. Real reform cannot begin soon enough!”
https://x.com/SpeakerJohnson/
Indeed, this looks so bad that Democrats are joining the chorus of criticism. According to the NY POST, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis was the first Democrat to denounce the pardon. “This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation,” Polis said of Biden, ignoring the fact that Biden’s reputation was already badly in need of some Tarn-X.
Arizona Rep. Greg Stanton said, “I respect President Biden [editorial aside: Why??], but I think he got this one wrong. This wasn’t a politically motivated prosecution. Hunter committed felonies, and was convicted by a jury of his peers.”
Mark Penn, a former adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, called the pardon “disgraceful.” He actually summed it up in a way we might write about it for the newsletter: “This was not a pardon of just Hunter Biden but of Joe Biden himself as his son ran a scheme with Joe’s brother to shake down adversaries of over $20 million and then didn’t even pay taxes on it. And the loot was distributed even to grandchildren. And this is yet another of the many issues the American public was shamefully gaslighted over.” (Editor’s Note: Well, not ONE grandchild…)
That pretty much tells the story in a few sentences. Penn left out just a couple of things: 1) Joe Biden himself apparently was in the pipeline to receive “loot” from this scheme, and 2) Barack Obama, in naming Biden to be “point man” to Ukraine, surely had to know about the Biden family’s foreign “business” dealings.
Law professor Jonathan Turley, who used to be a Democrat, says that “President Biden has set a standard that is not merely a new low but positively subterraneous for future Presidents.”
“It is not just that the President used his constitutional powers to benefit his family,” Turley wrote in a column for FOX NEWS. “It is because the action culminates years of lying to the public about his knowledge and intentions in the influence-peddling scandal surrounding his family.”
Turley looked at the history of the power to pardon, acknowledging that it was “not a pristine power.” He noted that in 2023 he’d suggested that Biden might withdraw from the 2024 race and then, as a lame-duck President, use his power to pardon Hunter. “The pardon-and-apology approach,” he wrote at that time, “might appeal to Biden not only as an effort to convert vice into virtue but also to justify his withdrawal from the election as a selfless act.”
But Biden is by no means a selfless person. He lingered in office, repeatedly lying --- there’s plenty of evidence of this --- about his family’s business dealings, and insisted on running for a second term when it was obvious to anyone with open eyes that he was cognitively unfit.
“The pardon power was written in absolute terms,” Turley wrote, “and a President can even, in my view, pardon himself. [Editorial aside: that’s a preview of coming attractions.] However, what is constitutional is not necessarily ethical or right. This is one of the most disgraceful pardons even in the checkered history of presidential pardons.”
“The President has now pardoned Hunter for his convicted felonies and ANY CRIMES HE MAY HAVE COMMITTED [emphasis ours] from January 1, 2014, to December 1, 2024.
“It is all now being buried under a sweeping immunity deal and a pack of presidential lies.”
(For the record, presidential pardons normally go to people who have been convicted and served at least part of their sentences, not given as “Get Out Of Jail” free cards for any and all crimes someone might later be found to have committed.)
CNN senior analyst Elie Honig called this pardon “a historic act of political nepotism.”
https://www.breitbart.com/
On the other hand, some Democrats are so shameless that they want pedal-to-the-metal pardons for everyone now. One MSNBC commentator expressed the hope that President Biden would issue preemptive pardons for “Special Counsel” Jack Smith, all his staff, and DOJ attorneys. Not kidding.
Others in the media either ignored the story, as MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” did, or predictably played the sympathy card for the Biden family…
So, what ARE the alleged crimes, charged or not, that Hunter has been pardoned for (just the ones we know about)? Victoria Taft at PJ MEDIA runs through them (brace yourselves)…
https://pjmedia.com/victoria-
Follow-the-money expert Peter Schweizer is expecting Joe’s brother James Biden to be pardoned next…
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/
Scott Pinsker at PJ MEDIA makes a good point: that in offering this sweeping pardon to his son, President Biden might have inadvertently handed Trump the mandate he needs to reform the “justice” system.
This pardon, and the timing of it, was probably orchestrated by President Biden’s legal advisors and Hunter’s legal team. Such a broad pardon obviously had its purposes but at the same time might have been short-sighted. That’s because with Hunter now pardoned for anything he might have done for the past 11 years, he no longer has Fifth Amendment protection, as he can’t be prosecuted for anything during that time. If he’s called to testify under oath, as before a congressional committee next year, and he makes false statements, he can be prosecuted just like anyone else. And Pam Bondi’s DOJ, unlike Merrick Garland’s, might actually do it.
In all the back-and-forth about the pardon, we’ve hardly heard this mentioned.
Even this piece by FOX NEWS legal analyst Gregg Jarrett doesn’t get into it, but it still sums up the whole story very well. Recommended reading...
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