Don’t like the Hunter Biden pardon? Wait till Joe pardons himself | Opinion
Joe Biden shattered his already dim legacy with a blanket decade-long pardon of his influence-peddling son after promising not to. In six or seven weeks when the president steps down, there’s a chance we’ll look back on the Hunter pardon as a moral high point of Joe’s waning White House days.
The Hunter pardon may be only the first of what is going to be a stream of pardons for Joe’s minions now all in the cross-hairs of an FBI and Justice Department soon to be stocked with vengeful Trump-loyalists who have openly said they will use the government to come after their political enemies. President Biden could well end up pardoning himself.
Democratic Senator Chris Coons, who CNN calls a “close Biden ally,” explained Biden’s thinking on his son to the cable network like this, “I think what changed was that President-elect Trump put people in place who made it really clear that they intended to go after, not just anybody, but in their campaign activity, had talked about going after Hunter Biden directly,” Coons told me.
Republicans have named a lot of people as targets for their revenge. Kash Patel, slated to be the new director of the FBI named a few in his book as “government gangsters” in need of retribution:
▪ Biden Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin
▪ Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland
▪ Biden VP Kamala Harris
▪ FBI Director Christopher Wray
Patel’s enemies list includes top names from the Obama administration, as well, including John Podesta, Robert Mueller, Eric Holder and Sally Yates.
Coon’s logic could apply to these men and women as much as it does to Hunter. And there is no reason to believe that such powerful individuals in the orbit of Biden and Obama want to find out what the Trump administration can dish out by standing on the principle that they don’t need a pardon as they have done nothing wrong. Being found not guilty by a jury can cost the innocent millions of dollars and years of their lives. Trump doesn’t need to get a jail sentence when the investigation and legal process are already punishing.
The list of the names of individuals who might be thinking about a pardon doesn’t stop at those named by Trump and Patel among others. Republicans already impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his role in the Biden administration’s disastrous border policies. What might Trump do to Mayorkas and the people who worked most closely with him on immigration policy?
I sure wouldn’t want to be “lock her up” Hillary Clinton when Trump regains a seat in the Oval Office. Remember all the millions the Clinton Foundation took in from foreign governments and foreign billionaires as Hillary was Obama’s secretary of State?
The perceived need for a pardon could extend all the way to the top of the Biden administration – to Joe himself. Biden knows even in the Hunter prosecution, he was the real target. “In trying to break Hunter, they tried to break me – and there is no reason to believe it will stop here,” Biden wrote in his statement on Hunter’s pardon.
Indeed, there is no reason to believe the effort to break Biden will stop with his retirement. Plenty of the evidence developed in the course of the Hunter investigations points to a larger role than Joe wanted to admit. Take for just one example, the hidden email trail between Vice President Biden and Hunter’s business associate linked to Joe’s diplomatic Ukraine trips.
There might be a reasonable case to be made all that would be justified, but as a preemptive move it would show total disregard for the rule of law and set an appalling precedent Trump would surely use to insulate his administration from justice when he leaves office.
Don’t like the Hunter pardon? Well, just wait. This may be only the beginning.
This story was originally published December 3, 2024 at 1:56 PM.