It came as a surprise that President Biden unconditionally pardoned his son Hunter, a convicted felon, after repeatedly promising not to. Over the past few months, every time Biden or his press secretary was asked if a pardon was in the cards, both responded emphatically no.
Too much for one of the presidents favorite lines“I give you my word as Biden.”
Hunter, who faced a possible sentence of years in prison for tax evasion and lying on a federal firearms application, is now free to pursue his career as a mediocre painter of expensive art.
I admit that when I first heard the news of the pardon, I thought, “Good for you, Joe! Why should you follow the rules when no one on Planet Trump does? Let the people who voted to return a felon who committed sex crimes, defamed and defrauded the White House to the White House get a taste of their own medicine.”
However, thinking about it, it's more complicated than that.
How can any of us be outraged by the way Trump and those in his circle seem immune to the consequences of their evil actions if we applaud Biden's pardon of his son for crimes for which he has been convicted or pleaded guilty? ?
How can we be outraged that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner received $2 billion from Saudi assassins if we think it's perfectly fine for Hunter Biden to be paid millions of dollars to sit on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that was being investigated for corruption while his father was vice president and oversaw White House Ukraine policy?
The real outrage is the general lack of accountability for the illegal, unethical or immoral behavior of children born into conditions of wealth and privilege, whose only “talents” are their ability to exploit their proximity to powerful people. Nepo babies are going to be nepo babies.
Hunter Biden was accused of lying on a gun purchase form, after having stated, under penalty of perjury, that he did not use drugs when, as he recounts in his memoirs, he was a raging coke and methamphetamine addict. He was also accused of evading more than $1 million in taxes, which he has since paid, along with penalties and interest.
Was he singled out unfairly? Maybe, but he still broke the law.
As President Biden stated in announcing the pardon: “Without aggravating factors such as use in a crime, multiple purchases, or purchasing a gun as a straw buyer, people are almost never brought to trial for serious crimes solely because of the way they They completed a weapons form. . “Those who fell behind on paying their taxes due to serious addictions, but later repaid them with interest and penalties, generally receive non-criminal resolutions.”
It's all true, which is why the government originally offered Hunter a deal that would have allowed him to avoid prison. He was required to plead guilty to two misdemeanors for failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time, and agree to a diversion program that would allow him to avoid prosecution on a charge of lying when he purchased a gun in 2018.
But a federal judge suspended the plea deal last year, saying she did not want to “seal” an unorthodox and complex agreement that was reached without her participation. Republicans went ahead and filed an amicus brief complaining that the agreement was too lenient and that the investigation was tainted by political interference from the Biden administration.
At that point, with the plea deal in tatters, Atty. General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel for the case. A month later, in September 2023, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opened his bogus impeachment inquiry into the president, alleging that Biden lied about his knowledge of his son's business affairs.
The final House report basically found that Hunter used his father's name to enrich himself. Yawn.
Last summer, after a salacious trial that, as the New York Times put it, “made painfully public Mr. Biden's crack addiction, reckless behavior and ruinous spending,” a federal jury found Hunter guilty of three serious crimes related to the request of weapons. In September, Hunter Biden avoided tormenting his family with another trial by pleading guilty to nine federal tax charges.
“There has been an effort to break Hunter, who has been sober for five and a half years, even in the face of relentless attacks and targeted prosecution,” President Biden's statement read. “By trying to break Hunter, they have tried to break me, and there is no reason to believe it will end here. “That's enough.”
Hunter may have been singled out for prosecution, but Hunter actually made a mistake. And President Biden, who has often said that Americans in the Trump era are engaged in a “battle to save the soul of the nation,” has shown that he, too, will distort justice for his own ends. I thought it was better than that.
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