A recent headline in my local newspaper exclaimed in large bold letters, ‘A terrible mistake’. The quote was from Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal concerning the pardon granted by former President Biden to a Connecticut man convicted of conspiracy to commit the murders of a woman and her young son who were scheduled to appear as witnesses in a murder trial back in 1999.
Blumenthal attributed Biden’s mistake to an “oversight” but did not explain how such an oversight could have occurred? How could the name of this convicted criminal, as well as the names of a dozen other convicted Connecticut drug dealers mentioned in a related article, have come to Biden’s attention in the first place? Who pleaded their cause? Who wanted them pardoned? Most of them had long criminal histories that included illegal firearm possession.
What reason could President Biden have had for pardoning these criminals? Perhaps he did not even know who he was pardoning and just signed the document placed before him. But in that case, who was responsible for the terrible mistake? I suppose we will never know.
It is different in the case of the pardons meted out to Biden’s own family in the last minutes of his Presidency. Actually, these family members have so far never been accused or convicted of anything. The President took the unprecedented step of pardoning them for anything they may have done wrong since 2014.
The start date of this immunity, 2014, is very important. It was in that year that then Vice-President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, became involved in the affairs of Ukraine. At that time Biden openly bragged that he had forced the government of Ukraine to fire a prosecutor investigating corruption. At the same time, Biden’s son Hunter enjoyed a lucrative position of the board of a Ukrainian energy company that was the focus of the corruption investigation. In pardoning his family and his son, Biden effectively pardoned himself for any wrongdoing over the past ten years.
The pardon given to Hunter Biden late last year is somewhat different. Hunter had actually been convicted of tax evasion and a violation of Federal gun control laws. While he was still running for re-election, Joe Biden said that he would not pardon his son, but when a plea deal fell through, he had no choice. At the time progressive commentators gushed that even though the President lied, he was motivated by love of his son. Who can blame such a loving father? Who would not do the same?
Nevertheless, it appears to me that the pardon had more to do with fear than with love. I suspect that ever since their meddling in the Ukraine back in 2014, the son had something potentially damaging on his father. Hunter’s pardon was not just for his recent convictions but went all the way back to 2014.
I have been poring through Miranda Devine’s recent book, “The Big Guy,” about Joe Biden and his son Hunter. On many occasions Hunter claimed that over the past ten years he had worked very hard for his family. He was not going to take the fall.
Reading Miranda Devine’s book, it is not hard to imagine that the relationships in the Biden family were not always loving especially when Hunter was addicted to crack, sex, and porn. Devine writes that at the time Hunter dropped the now famous lap-top off at the repair shop, his “life was at rock bottom. His crack addiction was out of control, and he had been bouncing between cheap motels filming himself having threesomes with hookers.”
“He was in a rage with his family. His relationship with his widowed sister-in-law Hallie had grown toxic. He accused her of cheating, and she had banned him from seeing her children until he sought rehab. He accused his father of siding with her and was on the outs even with Uncle Jim. [98]…”
He seemed to have little regard for his father and stepmom Jill. Perhaps it was the crack addiction, but Miranda Devine quotes the following words from Hunter about Jill and Joe.
“And you do know the drunkest I’ve ever been is still smarter than you could ever even comprehend and you’re a shit grammar teacher that wouldn’t survive one class in a ivy graduate program.
“So go fuck yourself Jill let’s all agree I don’t like you anymore than you like me.”
He also complained to his uncle that he had been to drug rehab seven times, but his father “literally has never come to one never actually called me while in rehab.” [109].
In his famous little political treatise, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli, an Italian Renaissance diplomat and political observer, devoted a whole section to whether it is better to be loved or feared. For a number of reasons he concluded that for anyone in power it was better to be feared than to be loved. Hunter was a loose cannon to be feared and had to be pardoned.
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