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December 2, 2024 - 10:20pm
Joe Biden’s blanket pardon of his son Hunter is so sweeping that it boomerangs all the way back to the Resolute Desk, where the President himself will enjoy protection from his own pardon. Now the elder Biden’s knowledge of and involvement in his family’s sordid foreign lobbying business can fade away quietly. (Although it arguably already was.)
Aaron Blake, hardly a conservative, characterised the Hunter Biden pardon as one of “extraordinary breadth” and “remarkable” scope on Monday. Nothing, not even pardons of Michael Flynn or Iran-Contra or Roger Clinton or Vietnam draft dodgers were quite as sweeping. Even on Watergate, Blake rightfully observes Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon covered a period only half as long as Hunter Biden’s pardon, and Nixon may have been covered by presidential immunity. The precedent, for those who remained concerned with such matters, is staggering. But this is where many analysts are stopping short.
The pardon also means that Biden’s blanket pardon will shield his son from any future charges stemming from felony violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. As far as we know, much of that work is now beyond the statute of limitations — perhaps intentionally — but that’s also not certain. Hunter Biden quite clearly lobbied on behalf of foreign governments without registering with the Justice Department. Before the Trump era, such errors frequently resulted in slaps on the wrist. But since Paul Manafort and Tony Podesta were implicated in a Ukrainian lobbying scheme, K Street has been on high alert.
The tax and gun charges Hunter Biden was set to be sentenced on this month do not directly implicate his father in significant wrongdoing. FARA charges, on the other hand, involve access peddling which, in Hunter Biden’s case, necessarily involve selling that access to his father.
There is some evidence that Joe Biden knew about Hunter Biden’s foreign lobbying and misled the public about that knowledge. A FARA trial could expose much more about the extent of the president’s deceptions and involvement in the business, along with evidence that Hunter’s foreign lobbying income was intentionally routed to his father for personal financial benefit. As Turley explains about the elder Biden, “He was repeatedly asked if he knew about Hunter’s foreign dealings, including millions in alleged deals with Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese and other clients. President Biden lied and denied such knowledge.”
Joe Biden will be an ailing 82-year-old man in a few weeks’ time. The public has known about his son’s influence-peddling antics for years now, and the President himself clearly misled voters about his own understanding of the business. While the pardon itself isn’t surprising or a game-changer when it comes to Joe Biden’s legacy, it should be understood not merely as an act of fatherly love but also one of personal protection.
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SubscribeAnd with a stroke of his pen, Biden has sent the moral high-horse of the Democrats straight to the knackers yard.
Shameless. And yet delicious; the perfect end to the worst presidency since Obama.
The knackers yard seems to be where American politics lives these days – no reason why Joe Biden shouldn’t do exactly what Trump would have done in the same situation!
Nor now of course the reverse.
Trump has already demonstrated that he will do whatever he feels like and you people are just fine with that – but now you have the vapors because Biden did something a wee bit Trumpy?
Spare us the phony outrage…
“Vapours” you ignorant muppet.
‘You people’. Oh dear!
Trump did do it to his daughter’s father in law amongst others. Both sides are as bad as each other
They all suck – period. But at least his son in law’s father actually served his sentence.
Biden can partially redeem his presidency by using these last week’s in office to forcefully condemn the corruption that is Washington DC.
He should include his role and call out Obama’s FBI, DOJ and IRS.
He should acknowledge the Steele dossier contribution to public cynism.
Hillary’s email server and subsequent destruction of evidence must be included.
Finally, attest to what everyone knows, the claim that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation was a blatant campaign hoax that may have won Biden’s miserable one term.
Yes but you Lefties are supposed to be virtuous… Like a priest with his hand in the till, the sin is far worse*
(*Before you bang on, I am no Trump fan just disgusted by hypocrisy…)
They’re all like that. Trump, Biden, Pelosi – all of them. Really nothing to see here. What makes Biden a special POS is his constant moralizing. Even in the press release announcing the pardon, he had the temerity to say he doesn’t lie.
The difference is that the Democrats have espoused moral superiority and have been found out for the hypocrites that they are. It’s the same with Starmer making a massive issue about Boris’ wallpaper, then accepting pay offs as though he had a God given right to receive them!
My rule about politicians is that the more sanctimonious they proclaim to be, the less I trust them.
You seem to have forgotten the perfect ending to the disastrous first Trump presidency, old chap! Riots in the streets, an attempted coup, runaway inflation and unemployment, and the first president to be impeached twice!
And the sequel is always worse than the original. Smart play, America!
Still pushing that lump of ordure uphill and spreading the lies, are you? Pitiful!
Quit crying, Bidenfanboy
It’s ‘toy season’. Get a pram to go with them so you can throw them out at your leisure whilst taking the moral high ground.
The Biden Administration is the worst Presidency ever.
Worse than Wilson?
In the vernacular of my nation and generation, no duh. A headline wholeheartedly arguing the sun will rise tomorrow would have produced about as much surprise as the revelation that Biden’s unprecedented pardon was an attempt to protect his own sorry hide.
Unlike most commentators, I’m not so naive as to believe that there was any point in American history where such nepotism and influence peddling was not occurring. There is no mythical time when American government or any other was pure and innocent of all corruption. There was, however, a time when both parties and virtually all politicians refrained from using the criminal justice system to make such backroom dealings public and parade them before the masses in order to score political points. For most of US history, this was avoided, because it made little sense to use a tactic on your opponent that could easily turned on you once someone else gained power. When such scandals were prosecuted at all, it was usually because someone screwed up and the media got wind of it. The scandals of the past were prosecuted halfheartedly because both sides were rightly concerned with politicizing the justice system. There is a delicate balance between maintaining respect for anti-corruption laws and being perceived as persecuting political enemies.
Traditionally, the fear of being perceived as politicizing the justice system tempered any prosecutions of controversies involving major political figures. Alas, the threat of Trumpian populism to the neoliberal globalist project prompted the ruling class to break precedent and try to use the justice system in multiple ways, first by investigating and trying to find some plausible connection between the Trump campaign and so-called Russian election interference, which basically amounted to posting lies on social media, something anybody with a computer is capable of doing. Then, and more importantly, by trying to find something, anything, whether deliberate or inadvertent they could use to imply Trump’s unfitness for further office. This had the predictable effect of creating the appearance of political motivations for criminal prosecutions, the very thing that earlier, more competent, politicians had always feared. This had the effect of galvanizing his supporters who already felt the system was against them, feeding into his anti-elite narrative, and even gave possible credence to his ridiculous assertion that the election had been ‘stolen’. They threw out centuries of precedent and went above and beyond what any political faction or party has attempted in two and a half centuries of American history to stop one man and failed to do so. Of course Biden is worried about protecting his family and himself revenge prosecutions. Given what’s happened over the past eight years, what sane person wouldn’t be worried about revenge prosecutions? They just got through doing it to Trump. Of course they’re afraid he will retaliate in kind. From 2016 up to the present, the elite response to the Trump movement can be summarized in two words, epic fail.
Now, of course, Biden’s unprecedented pardon will give Trump plenty of cover to issue an equally broad pardon of himself and/or his family for whatever prosecutions are ongoing when he leaves office. I fully expect all future presidents to pardon themselves and whoever else might be necessary to cover whatever scandals the other side’s media has managed to unearth over their four or eight year terms. This new precedent will replace the old, and become accepted for about the same reason the old one was. There’s really not much point in pursuing minor white collar crimes perpetrated by politicians because whatever actual merit they may have, there’s no escaping the perceptual trap of prosecuting one’s political opponents. Even if the crimes are real and proven, it’s still political. If a political figure does something obviously wrong and inarguably criminal and it’s discovered, prosecution won’t be necessary. That’s because in the American system with its complex layers of local, state, and federal officials and multiple legislative bodies, voters are represented by many different politicians at any one time, politicians who all have influence in both the government and the political parties themselves. In such cases where conduct is so egregious that most voters can agree on it, the political pressure from voters and their many other representatives will always be harsher and more immediate than any legal remedy, as was the case with Nixon, who was forced to resign long before any criminal prosecution could come to fruition.
Brevity. It’s the soul of wit. Try it.
This is the third time you have made such a criticism, and i acknowledge you have a point, but give it a rest. I can recognize my shortcomings. How about you? If brevity is the soul of wit, then repetition is the death of imagination.
I’ll give it a rest when you manage to make a point in less that 600 words. Until then expect me to remind you every single time….
At least he manages to make a point
You could try responding to the argument for a change.
But, as you so clearly demonstrate, insufficient.
Not always, as you show here.
Pity your own brevity is witless.
Not a word out of place.
The vagaries of American politics continues to fascinate those of us who aren’t particularly well versed in it.
When we see all these new appointments to dozens of agencies & departments it seems inefficient at least to always be changing the person at the top.
The pardon system seems an archaic system that probably needs constraining or reform.
It seems equally strange that Congress has to approve the various appointments a new President makes, but they can pardon at will.
Perhaps it’s time for a bit of oversight of the pardon system.
But then I’m commenting from the UK where a pardon is so rare as to be unheard of.
You have some good points – but Trump is the man who won his first campaign on ‘Lock Hilary up’ and more or less spurious attacks on her for using the wrong email server (!) – and who was greatly aided by Russian intelligence leaks of Democrat emails and openly invited the FSB to keep up the good work. It is frankly ridiculous to pretend that he did nothing wrong, and it is only the dastardly Democrats who invented lawfare. Just like it is ridiculous to blame Biden for ‘setting a bad precedent’ when Trump is openly boasting of using the justice system to stick it to his political (and personal) enemies. The great thing about norms of propriety – even if they are widely flouted – is that people feel a need to at least appear clean, and this limits what they dare try to get away with. Once you establish that you can proudly break every norm and still get (re)elected – as Trump has done – there is no restraint on anyone.
As for trusting to the electorate to keep the politicians in line, that means that anyone who can get a majority (including by gerrymandering, electoral fraud, or locking up his enemies) is above the law and free to break it with impunity. Is that really the kind of society you want to live in?
I’ll answer your final question first. To be direct, yes, I do prefer a system that trusts the electorate to keep politicians in line, provided there is a robust system of checks and balances and a division of powers in place to make such things as direct majority rule over the entire country extremely difficult. My reasoning is simple. What is the alternative? To paraphrase Churchill, democracy is the worst form of government, except for everything else that’s been tried. If we do not trust the people themselves to choose their leaders who do we trust, for surely somebody must make such judgements. Do we place all our faith in a single autocrat to make such judgements, and if so, do we allow such a person to choose himself through his own strategies and machinations or do we choose through the principal of hereditary inheritance as we have for so much of human history. Neoliberal globalism has in fact, whether inadvertently or by deliberate design, offered us another alternative, the system that some Unherd writers, particularly Mary, refers to as ‘swarmism’, that is rule by experts chosen by virtue of their education and credential either individually or in committee with other experts who are empowered to make decisions over their sphere of expertise with little practical accountability to elected representatives or anybody else. A full critique of this philosophy is beyond the scope of this reply, but the chief problem is that swarmism is simply another form of totalitarianism in disguise, a totalitarianism enforced not by individuals but by the system itself. In its purest and most fully realized form, it is reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984, a system with no leaders that runs itself regardless of who is in charge, a system that requires no leader, yet obliterates freedom, necessitates conformity, and reduces men and women at all levels of power and influence to the interchangeable parts of a machine that whirs, churns, hums, and grinds along but produces nothing of any real value. I categorically reject this form of government, which you seem to favor by virtue of your implication that the electorate cannot be trusted to choose their leadership and you seem to simultaneously reject the notion of autocracy and totalitarianism by virtue of your objection to individuals being ‘above the law’ which true autocrats must always be.
I sympathize to some extent with your sentiments. I myself am deeply disappointed that the people have chosen someone of such questionable character as Donald Trump to be their mechanism of protest against an entrenched and intransigent ruling class that refused to respect or even address the popular will over a long period of time. I would have infinitely preferred someone like Bernie Sanders, or Josh Hawley, or Rand Paul, or any number of others to Donald Trump, but I am not so self-absorbed as to place my opinion above that of my countrymen. They have chosen Trump, and though I disagree and fear the possible implications of their choice, as Trump is unpredictable, chaotic, and divisive, prone to impulsive and ill considered words and actions, in the end, I respect their choice. I respected it four and eight years ago as well, though then, as now, I was deeply disappointed with both the available options.
At the end of the day, to debate human political systems is to debate imperfections and defects, to argue which problems are preferable to other problems and which imperfections one can live with. I concede the possibility of a tyranny of the majority in the American system. I concede that there are risks. Given the historical trauma of the world wars, I cannot fault European observers for fearing Trump will become America’s Hitler. Still, all forms of government have their flaws. All can descend into tyranny and oppression given the right conditions. There is really no such thing as an ideal government. We can only choose the least bad of the options. I can live with a representative government that embraces the popular sovereignty of the people over themselves even when it produces what I consider less than optimal results. Over the longer term, and through history, there is no better alternative that I can find.
That is a deep and convincing reply and I can only agree with much of it. However, I would challenge your point “provided there is a robust system of checks and balances and a division of powers in place to make such things as direct majority rule over the entire country extremely difficult“. If the only check on the executive is the need to be re-elected, where are those checks and balances to come from? The first port of call for would-be autocrats, from Modi to Orban to Netanyahu is always to take control of the media and the courts. Also democracy has always been tempered by the rule of experts, and to some degree I would say that is a good thing: it was the people, not the elite, who were in favour of the death penalty, witch burnings, and faith healing. More specifically I would say that a community of knowledgable people socialised to know and respect the central purpose of their craft is a good counterweight to arbitrary decision-making by those in power. Engineers dedicated to building planes that do not fall down (such as Boeing seems to be short of, at the moment), doctors dedicated to using methods that work to keep people healthy, scientists socialised to respect the power of evidence, election officials dedicated to making elections work, police dedicated to catching law-breakers, judges dedicated to uphold and respect the law, and civil servants dedicated to enforcing the procedures that prevents arbitrary and corrupt practices, all of these provide at least some bulwark against abuses and bad results. Imagine a system that had none of these things, where all these people were happy to do whatever they were paid or ordered to do – how would that look?
Specifically on the criminal acts of politicians it would be very good indeed to have a justice system that could and would enforce obedience to existing laws – also against elected politicians. Admittedly such a system would have to stay strictly out of politics and refrain from trying to *make* the laws, which is hard at the best of times when the system is under stress. And the US system with its elected prosecutors and hopelessly politicised judiciary is far from ideal, to put it mildly. It does not help that (because the legislative and executive are set up to keep each other in check?) the courts have tended to take it upon themselves to resolve all the most thorny questions with little reference to pre-existing law, from slavery (the Dred Scott decision), to abortion (Roe v. Wade, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization), gay marriage, gun control, presidential immunity, …). You cannot stay above politics when you take all the important decisions.
If we leave it all to the electorate, then any President who could get a majority in the Senate would have full impunity for anything up to and including attempted coups or arresting the opposition. Or, to take another example, one notorious South-African minister was adamant that AIDS was a plot by evil westerners, and that any similar symptoms could be dealt with perfectly well by traditional African medicine, like beetroot juice. Her party was in power, and so was she. Is it not kind of nice to have a medical establishment to obstruct that kind of thing?
On another topic: You seem to be a thoughtful person who believes in evidence – so could you help me out? Can you give me the reasons why a reasonable and rational person would decide to vote for Trump in this election? With the best will in the world I cannot see them – and that puts me at a disadvantage. If I ever want to convince anybody to change their vote I really need to understand where they are coming from.
The assertion that 2020 was a stolen election may or may not be true but it is not ridiculous. Until a fair and detailed account is made about the ten million total vote shortfall between the 2020 and 2024 elections the shadow of fraud remains.
I did notice that and it certainly did give me pause. I still consider it extremely unlikely that someone could deliberately turn an election result given that it isn’t known how many votes will be needed in what places beforehand, and I still think Trump was foolish to make such a claim without conclusive evidence. It was certainly ridiculous when he made the assertion. It looks less ridiculous only in light of the results of this election. Hindsight is always 20/20. I maintained at the time that Trump’s assertion of a stolen election was ridiculous and I will remain consistent to that until proven otherwise. On the other hand, I am far less certain of my assertion than I was just one month ago.
Logically, one cannot help but question such a surplus of total votes versus the previous and subsequent elections, and further wonder how these extra votes overwhelmingly favored one candidate over the other to such an extreme degree. I cannot and will not ignore evidence that contradicts my previous assertion, even if such evidence is not conclusive proof. I know enough about statistics to understand that outliers certainly can exist as legitimate results, but they can also signify the possibility of a problem in the data collection methods or some other procedural error. In this case, it could also mark the possibility of fraud. In a less politically fraught era, an investigation would be in order to determine exactly how such an outlier was produced to reassure voters of all sides that elections are fair and mostly free of fraud or cheating. In a democracy, there is little that is more critical than the perception that elections are fair and legitimate. However, given the results of this election and the fraught political climate, it may be better in this case to simply let sleeping dogs lie.
Trouble is, I could say the same about the Steele Dossier. It was a plausible enough story and it fitted with a number of observations. I never put it higher than a maybe, and since there is no reliable evidence for it and the people who back it all seem heavily biased I now discount it completely. If I apply your methods, can I say that until the FSB opens their archives we have to consider it as reliable enough to cast a shadow over Trump?
Obama politicized the FBI, DOJ & IRS before Trump entered the political fray.
But you are right. Before the 21st century politicians respected the risks of so blatantly abusing the bureaucrats for such blatantly biased ends.
I think the social media amplification of extremists has warped the powers behind the politicians to loose their bearings.
If there was any foolish doubt that the American Left was any better or more virtuous than the American (Trumpist) Right than there you have it…
Moreover, any thought that Socialism somehow how removes class differences and eliminates privilege welp just a reminder that the in crowd will always take care of their own…
It was a Right wing conspiracy theory that Hunter Biden had committed any wrongdoing.
And now he has been pardoned!
Meh. We know Biden is corrupt. He’ll probably give himself a pardon as well. Washington is littered with Bidens, in both parties.
He has, in a sense, pardoned himself. The wording of the pardon clearly states that Hunter cannot be prosecuted for any federal illegal acts between January 1, 2014 and December 1 2024, thereby shielding Joe from any blow back from the Congressional investigations into Hunter’s foreign agent shenanigans (which could possibly pull Joe into the legal crosshairs).
After 50 years of grifting and a mountain of evidence showing the pattern of pathological lying, corruption and plagiarism, Biden should be given a statue in Washington DC to cement his legacy for posterity.
When the new administration is in place, Congress or the DOJ might pursue investigations of Joe and Hunter Biden’s associates in the payola schemes the Biden family has been running. For associates’ conduct still ‘live’ for prosecution within statute of limitation rules, Hunter can be called to testify but could not ‘plead the fifth’ and decline to give evidence to Congress or the Courts, because he himself cannot be prosecuted under Joe’s pardon terms. He would have to answer, and therefore is at risk of prosecution for contempt for silence, or for false testimony. It’s not over yet folks……
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You’re just about to nail Hillary for Benghazi too, right?
Who on earth would nail Hillary? Disgusting!
I would really like to know how much influence Ukraine got for its payments to Hunter (and thus to Joe) from the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Is there any connection between those payments and support for Ukraine in their war with Russia? It’s very hard not to be cynical– Hunter could hardly have been receiving those large payments because of his business expertise.
In Biden’s statement, he was furious that the President’s son should be held to a higher standard than ordinary people.
And, Biden has trashed the Democrats claim to be 100% behind background gun control checks.
Just lie on the form. Biden has explained that nobody can be expected to be prosecuted for lying on a background gun control check. ‘..people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form’
I’m no Trump fan but he never did pursue prosecution of her and it was FBI Director Comey that made a mess of the email server situation. She used a private server and email address to conduct Govt business. Illegal and try that with your employer if you don’t want to keep your job…For that he got the Steele Dossier and a 3 year investigation of Russian collusion. The CIA, NSA and FBI couldn’t find any….lawfare indeed
Hunter’s pardon means all ongoing investigations against him will be closed, and cancel potential risks to judicial process. This then removes some of the blocks the DOJ use to prevent the release of documents relating to ongoing cases. With Trump’s pro-transparency appointees coming in, this might not be the end of the matter…
Biden’s relationship to the Democratic Party is now a bit like that old Latino gangster in Breaking Bad who is wheelchair bound and mute following a stroke, but goes out blowing up his mortal enemy who was once his business partner.
By pardoning his son, despite previous denials, Joe could have been giving a big middle finger to the Dem Party for kicking him to the curb. I think his demotion to make way for Kamala was something he never got over and now he couldn’t care less about the parties fortunes.
I believe that Biden’s immediate support for Kamala as he was forced to withdraw was his (or Jill’s) way of getting back at the Democratic elite for that ouster. He made it awkward for them to support anyone else, and he knew she was a total disaster. So this pardon is his second middle finger IMHO.
We need to be generous. Maybe Sleepy Joe ‘accidentally misled himself’ to use the parlance of Queensland politics.
I’m no Trump fan but he never did pursue prosecution of Hillary and it was FBI Director Comey that made a mess of the email server situation. She used a private server and email address to conduct Govt business. Illegal and try that with your employer if you don’t want to keep your job…For that he got the Steele Dossier and a 3 year investigation of Russian collusion. The CIA, NSA and FBI couldn’t find any….lawfare indeed
Those countless commentators and writers who, so often, initially qualify their forthcoming observations with something like “I don’t like Trump but …” would be taken more seriously if they came straight to the point, rather than tiresomely signalling their virtue and supposed social acceptability by distancing themselves from any possible positive association with The Donald!
I preface mine with “I like Trump”. I don’t get much flak from Harris supporters.
No dirt on Hunter pre 1914 then? He didn’t just go rogue overnight.
If Hunter is pardoned he is definitely guilty and he must therefore have many guilty accomplices. These type of people don’t err on their own. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kamala wasn’t privy to such deeds herself. Biden was Obama’s protegé. Heaven forbid any fingers point to St Barack and Queen Michelle. The bottom would really fall out of Democrat World.
Begs the question of history books’ accuracy with so many ‘victors’.
The only problem, and a big one at that, is that Hunter Biden cannot invoke the 5th Amendment if he is called to testify on investigations that pertain to events that occurred during his Pardon period. He either sells out his old man and family or spends a long time in jail. Love it.
Trump, Biden. Leaders of the free for me world! What can you expect from people who cheerlead terrorists in their efforts at a genocide of the victims who refuse to take it lying down?
Top class trolling by Joe Biden!