When I saw this afternoon that President Biden had pardoned Hunter, his son, my immediate reaction was "Great news! Hunter was given a raw deal by the special prosecutor who investigated him."
It seems clear that if Hunter didn't have the last name of Biden, he never would have faced such serious charges for merely stating on a federal gun purchase form that he wasn't an addict or user of illegal drugs. Hunter has said that when he filled out the form, he wasn't a user and didn't consider himself an addict.
I'm pretty sure that lots of people in states where marijuana is legal state on that form that they don't use marijuana, even if they do, since because marijuana is illegal under federal law, no one who uses marijuana can purchase a firearm if they say they use it. And if they lie on the form, that's a federal offense.
Regarding Hunter's other offense, failing to pay federal income taxes, he has paid the IRS what was owed. Again, lots of people fail to pay their taxes, but they rarely face jail time, as Hunter did.
So President Biden is justified in pardoning his son. A Politico story says:
President Joe Biden on Sunday signed a “full and unconditional” pardon for his son Hunter, saying he “wrestled” with the decision but believed that “raw politics” had “infected” the process that led to the younger Biden’s criminal convictions on gun and tax charges.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” the president said in a statement.
It's amusing to hear the predictable Republican cries of outrage over the pardon. Astoundingly, another Politico story is about Republicans decrying Biden's lying, since he had been saying that he wouldn't pardon his son. Somehow those Republicans seem to have forgotten that Trump is the Liar in Chief, with just about everything he says being filled with blatant lies.
Biden didn't lie. He simply changed his mind. Trump has said that he's going to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada. There's a good chance this will never happen. If so, hopefully Republicans will scream "Liar!" at Trump as loudly as they're calling Biden a liar.
Trump's pardons during his first term as president were much more objectionable than Biden's pardon of his son. A December 2020 CNN story describes Trump's latest batch of pardons before he left office.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday evening announced 26 new pardons, including for longtime ally Roger Stone, former campaign chairman Paul Manafortand White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s father, Charles.
The pardons extend Trump’s streak of wielding his clemency powers for criminals who are loyalists, well-connected or adjacent to his family. While all presidents issue controversial pardons at the end of their terms, Trump appears to be moving at a faster pace than his predecessors, demonstrating little inhibition at rewarding his friends and allies using one of the most unrestricted powers of his office.
The pardons of Manafort and Stone reward two of the most high-profile and widely condemned former advisers of the President, both of whom were indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, went to trial and were convicted by juries of multiple crimes.
Manafort, who is serving home confinement, admitted his crimes and initially agreed to cooperate with Mueller then lied to prosecutors, while Stone never cooperated after lying to Congress to protect the President. Manafort spent close to two years in prison for bank and tax fraud, illegal foreign lobbying and witness tampering conspiracies before being released because of the Covid-19 pandemic, while Stone’s sentence for obstruction of Congress and threatening a witness was commuted by Trump earlier this year days before he was set to surrender.
Charles Kushner, meanwhile, had been prosecuted by then-US Attorney for New Jersey Chris Christie in the early 2000s for tax evasion, witness tampering and illegal campaign contributions.
So I have no sympathy for Republican hypocritical moaning and crying over Biden using his pardon power to benefit his son. If the political shoe was on the other foot, Trump would have ordered a criminal investigation by the Justice Department into one of his sons to be dropped right off the bat.
To his credit, President Biden allowed the special prosecutor's investigation of his son to proceed, stepping in with a pardon only after it became obvious that the legal system was being used to single out Hunter for special punishment rather than treating him like any other defendant.
I didn't think things could get any better than the GOP Trump landslide...but now we have Joe Biden lying to save his son (and quite possibly himself, with this blanket pardon that goes back to 2014 and the puzzling 11 million dollars that Hunter somehow "earned" (and disappeared!) while his father was VP and envoy to Ukraine.
You kick Biden out of the running for POTUS, you install a totally hapless DEI candidate to win the hearts of America, she spends $ like a drunken sailor and still loses badly, you lie to your own constituents about how far behind Kamala was -- to get more $ out of them.....you overspend by 20 million dollars with idiotic attempts to win the election by Hollywood celeb endorsements.
If that wasn't enough...Biden reveals himself as a total liar! "No one is above the law." What hypocrisy.
You dems and your sententious moralizing.
No one is "moaning and crying" because Joe Biden pardoned his son. They're just aghast at the utter hypocrisy of Biden's lying to America for y e a r s that "No one is above the law" and that "I will not issue a pardon for my son." So much for his and yours bullshit.
Posted by: sant64 | December 02, 2024 at 03:50 PM
Hey Sant64, why deal with monkeys when you can sit at the feet of the organ grinders and laugh at their lies and hypocrisy directly?:
https://news.grabien.com/story/corporate-media-obviously-joe-biden-would-never-pardon-hunter-supercut
Posted by: manjit | December 06, 2024 at 02:12 AM