The most telling sentence in President Joe Biden’s disgustingly dishonest statement pardoning his son Hunter was, “For my entire career, I have followed a simple principle: Just tell the American people the truth.”
People don’t plead their honesty like that unless they know it is in tatters. And, boy, is Biden’s in tatters. He is well aware that the nation (everyone except his toadies) will recoil at the pardon. For it is odious both for the fact of it and for the string of falsehoods the president used to justify it.
The pardon covers every federal crime Hunter Biden committed or was connected to in the past 11 years and even any and all unknown offenses that might yet come to light. It is the most sweeping pardon in history.
It is doubtful that more will come to light, however, although that is not because there were not many more crimes committed. The reason is that the pardon was the first and biggest element in a cleanup operation to wipe the Biden family’s influence-peddling away from public view — not least the president’s probable take as the “Big Guy.”
Prosecutors don’t waste time investigating crimes they cannot prosecute, and that is what Hunter’s pardon ensures. Before the president leaves office on Jan. 20, more pardons will surely follow, expunging every stain of wrongdoing and shutting off all lines of prosecutorial attack. It is, simply, a massive and outrageous cover-up.
Biden senior focused in his statement on Hunter’s conviction for tax fraud and a minor and procedural gun offense. These distract from much bigger offenses lurking beneath the surface that reaped many millions of dollars for the Biden family and compromised national security with China and in Ukraine.
It is plausible to argue, and it is being argued, that the prosecution of those lesser crimes was done knowing full well that they would be pardoned after the election. This allowed Democrats to build their campaign against Donald Trump on the basis of a false comparison between him as a “convicted felon” (in truth, the victim of a lawfare campaign) and their upstanding principle that no one is above the law. No one is above the law, we now know, until after the election is safely over!
Biden and his minions lied and lied and lied again that Hunter would not be pardoned and his sentences would not be commuted. Which is why the president’s pardon statement Sunday night, in which he said he always told the nation the truth, was itself the most sweeping lie.
It was an expression of contempt for the nation and its people. Just like the falsehoods of his entire administration (that Trump was responsible for inflation, that the economy was in tatters when Biden came to office, that the border was secure, etc.), the assertion that Biden would “just tell the American people the truth” was an expression of scorching indifference and disdain for Biden’s fellow citizens.
He knew he was lying, the nation knows he was lying, and he knows we all know he is lying. But he doesn’t care. He pardoned his son because he has the power to do so and because the plebs he pretends to have worked for during his 50-year climb up the greasy pole of politics can do nothing about it.
What about the timing of the pardon? One suspects Biden and his advisers “pounced” (to borrow a phrase usually used against Republicans) on Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel to run the FBI, seeing the controversy surrounding it as cover for the president’s unprecedented act of familial clemency.
The Senate must weigh whether Patel is fit for the office and whether or not he deserves the excoriation he has received from critics who depict him as a Trump henchman out for vengeance against political enemies. But either way, his nomination allows Biden’s adherents to argue that it is the former president who is politicizing the judicial system and thus excuse his shielding of the Biden family from persecution.
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Note how this neatly fits the Left’s pattern of accusing others of doing exactly what they do themselves. They turned the judicial system into a political weapon — this is incontrovertible, as they made election promises to do so — and yet excuse their own shameless behavior because of politicization they say Trump and his top officials will perpetrate in office.
Biden doubtless hopes few people will not notice his sleight of hand that sets the facts on their head, just as his administration has entertained such hopes for the past four years. But he knows full well that most people will see through the fraud. Frankly, however, he doesn’t give a damn.