Joe pardoned Hunter, and I don’t care.
Gavin Newsom: “With everything the president and his family have been through, I completely understand the instinct to protect Hunter. But I took the president at his word. So, by definition, I’m disappointed and can’t support the decision.”
A Republican senator said that he understood why Joe executed the pardon and admitted that he would likely pardon his own child in similar circumstances but that the problem is that Joe lied.
The editorial in my local newspaper, the Albany Times Union, suggested that the pardon has ” provided a measure of bipartisan cover for [djt] to use his pardon power to exonerate anyone in his immediate sphere – family, friends, political donors, alleged co-conspirators – on the stated basis that their investigation or prosecution was ‘political persecution’ or the more current ‘lawfare,'” as though they hadn’t 45 hadn’t already done that. This is disingenuous.
On his way out of office in 2021, djt “displayed both nepotism and vengeance. Amid dozens of dubious (and worse) acts of clemency in those final days, he pardoned his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, who had been convicted of 18 counts of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. (Last week, Mr. Trump announced he plans to nominate Mr. Kushner as ambassador to France.)”
The other guy
Joe’s predecessor and successor posted on social media that the pardon was “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” He mentioned the rioters from Jan. 6, 2021, some of whom he has suggested could be pardoned when he takes office. This is what he had said long before Joe’s pardon of Hunter.
Cory Doctorow wrote, in a different context: “Remember the 2016 debate where [Hillary] Clinton accused Trump of cheating on his taxes, and he admitted to it, saying, ‘That makes me smart’? Trumpism is the movement of ‘that makes me smart’ life, where if you get scammed, that’s your own damned fault. Sorry, loser, you lost.”
The comparison between Joe’s “sin” and the wealth of distortions told by 45 is not even in the same ballpark. According to the Washington Post, during 45’s four-year term, his false or misleading claims totaled 30,573.
This time around, his insistence that he knew nothing about Project 2025 and then appointed people who wrote the document is classic. He… what is the word I’m looking for? Oh, yeah… lied. (And polling suggests that 1) his voters know he’s lying, but 2) they either don’t mind or actively appreciate it, which hurts my head.)
Retribution
But sometimes, he does tell the truth. His nominee to head the FBI, Kash Patel, is being very open about how he’ll persecute MAGA’s enemies. A shrewd observer of autocracy explains how far he’ll be able to get—and why there’s cause for serious worry.
From ABC News This Week for 1 Dec 2024:
KASH PATEL, DONALD TRUMP’S NOMINEE FOR FBI DIRECTOR: I am going to go on a government gangster’s manhunt in Washington, D.C., for our great president. Who’s coming with me?
JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS: The president-elect names Kash Patel to serve as FBI director. A loyalist who said Trump’s political opponents should be very afraid. And may be the toughest confirmation battle yet.
If there was any doubt that President-elect Donald Trump intends to follow through with his promises of radical change and retribution, both here at home and abroad, those doubts have been erased…
Unqualified
“Patel is so controversial that when President Trump talked about making him the deputy FBI director in 2020, then-Attorney General Bill Barr said it would happen, quote, ‘over my dead body,’ according to his memoir, adding, quote, ‘Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency. The very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality.’”
[h/t Paul Rapp] “Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch notes that Biden’s pardon came after [djt’s announcement of Patel]… Filipkowski studies right-wing media and points out that Patel’s many appearances there suggest he is obsessed with Hunter Biden, especially the story of his laptop, which Patel insists shows that Hunter and Joe Biden engaged in crimes with Ukraine and China.
“As legal commentator Asha Rangappa noted: ‘People criticizing the Hunter Biden pardon need to recognize: For the 1st time, the FBI and Justice Department could literally fabricate evidence, or collaborate with a foreign government to ‘find’ evidence of a ‘crime,’ with zero accountability. That’s why the pardon goes back to 2014.'”
Context
Having watched Joe Biden for half a century, I don’t think he intended to lie at all. When he made his initial comment that he wouldn’t pardon Hunter, it was with the thought that he would be President and wouldn’t take action to subvert his own Justice Department. Similarly, when Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic nominee, he didn’t worry about retribution from the Department of Justice.
But with Kash Patel potentially heading the FBI, all bets were off. Moreover, I think that Jill Biden had an outsized hand in this. When asked about how she felt about the pardon at a Christmas event, she said, “Of course, I wanted a pardon for my son.”
More pardons!
I’m sure there’ll be many more pardons in the coming weeks. One group he should pardon is most, if not all, of the folks on this list of Patel “enemies,” including Lloyd Austin, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Stephanie Grisham, Kamala Harris, Gina Haspel, Fiona Hill, Eric Holder, Cassidy Hutchinson, Lisa Monaco, Robert Mueller, Jake Sullivan, Alexander Vindman, Christopher Wray, and Sally Yates.
Do you know who else is on the list? Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. Can Joe Biden pardon himself? This is an interesting question. The former /next guy has indicated that he might pardon himself, so why the heck not?
Satirist Andy Borowitz notes that JRB would give “his dog Commander a sweeping pardon in exchange for biting South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.”
He’s 