Goodbye, Joe Biden, and thanks for nothing. History’s verdict will not be kind. His one-term presidency failed almost immediately with the chaotic retreat from Afghanistan and has culminated in a blanket pardon for his criminal son, Hunter. This blatant act of favouritism will have opened the door for Donald Trump to behave like a despot in his second term of office, without having to suffer the stench of hypocrisy enveloping his predecessor.
The January 6 rioters are celebrating in their cells after Trump pointedly asked whether Biden’s pardon included those who had been imprisoned for years. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Trump exclaimed on Truth Social. Doubtless he feels personally exonerated. Biden’s indulgence towards Hunter has made a mockery of all the wasted years of lawfare against Trump for relatively minor offences such as falsifying business records or retaining classified documents (when Biden stored his own in a garage).
To quote the radio host, Charlamagne tha God, “I just want Democrats to stop acting like they are on this moral high ground politically when they have shown us they’re not.”
This is not how Biden regards matters. The father of America’s most feckless, middle-aged nepo-baby whined in an exculpatory statement that the criminal charges against Hunter “came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me”. So Biden doesn’t believe in an impartial US justice system any more than Trump does. With an extra dollop of self-pity, the president added: “In trying to break Hunter they’ve tried to break me.”.
Biden then unsheathed the simple sword of truth, never a good sign. “Enough is enough. For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded.” Those who languish in jail for drugs and tax offences without a pardon may feel differently. There was not one word of apology from Biden for promising repeatedly not to offer special treatment to Hunter. At the G7 summit in June this year he said explicitly: “I will abide by the jury’s decision…And I will not pardon him.”
Several close confidants have now admitted they always doubted Biden’s sincerity. In that case, they did not only hide his advancing senility from the public. They should hang their heads in shame at their complicity. It would have been better for the president to say nothing rather than to deceive the public, while purporting to defend American democracy.
Don’t compare me to the Almighty, Biden often said. Compare me to the alternative. All right then. In 2020 he presented himself as a transitional father-of-the-nation figure who would save his country from Trump before returning to his plough, like Cincinnatus. In practice he clung to power like a limpet while his aides and his wife lied about his fitness to serve a second term. Did this make Biden more trustworthy than the “alternative” he warned voters against? Or did he prove Trump’s point that Washington politicians are creatures of the swamp?
Biden has made Trump appear authentic. At least the president-elect is open about his nefarious intentions
Biden’s act of hubris has made the autocratic Trump appear authentic. At least the president-elect is open about his nefarious intentions. Kamala Harris’s message to Americans on election day was “country over party”. Law-abiding Democrats were supposed to triumph over the lying, felonious Trump. Voters didn’t buy it. Why should they have? As Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, noted bitterly, Biden chose to “put his family above the country”.
Polis prefaced his comment with polite throat-clearing about how he could understand Biden’s “natural desire” to help his son. There have been many observations like this by dejected loyalists. But let’s look at the facts. Hunter Biden left a laptop for repair that was full of d*** pics, shots of him smoking crack and evidence that he traded on his father’s status to make millions of dollars from Ukrainian business interests. Instead of fessing up, pressure was put on the press and social media moguls to suppress the story on the grounds that he was the victim of Russian disinformation.
Ultimately, Hunter was convicted by a jury of peers in his home state of Delaware for lying about his drug addiction while buying a handgun. This, his father now maintains, is a piffling charge, despite making gun control a key plank of his presidency. Hunter also pleaded guilty to nine counts of tax fraud – something we’re meant to overlook, even though Biden poured $80 billion of public money into the Inland Revenue Service to crack down on tax evaders.
That’s not all. Hunter has been granted a “full and unconditional” pardon for any federal offences stretching back to 2014, when he joined the board of the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, with no qualifications other than being the vice-president’s son. Could this relate to Republican accusations – never proven – about the “Biden crime family”? Suffice to say it is the most sweeping presidential pardon since President Ford let Richard Nixon off the hook half a century ago for Watergate.
What sticks in the craw is that through all these scandals, Hunter continued to appear in his tux with his father at White House banquets among heads of state and Nobel prize winners while flogging his overpriced abstract “art” to anonymous buyers. He was also one of the last people in the room urging his father to run again for president despite his obvious incapacity for the job – a significant turn-off for many Democrats who had been hitherto dithering about telling Biden to go.
It is now harder for the Democrats to protest against the hotch-potch of nominees for senior positions in the Trump administration, including alleged sex offenders and relatives
Biden’s leniency towards his son has made it all the harder for his party to protest against the hotch-potch of nominees for senior positions in the Trump administration, including alleged sex offenders and relatives. Take Charles Kushner, Ivanka’s father-in-law, a property developer and former felon who has just been offered the plum job of ambassador to France. At least he did time before being pardoned by Trump in 2021.
Kushner was jailed for two years in 2005 for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering after hiring a prostitute to have sex with his brother-in-law, filming the act and sending the tape to his sister. Nice guy! But no worse than Hunter, who smoked crack with his brother’s widow, Hallie, and then terrified her by buying a gun. “I didn’t want him to hurt himself, and I didn’t want my kids to find it and hurt themselves,” she testified in court.
Biden is said to have feared Hunter would be persecuted by Trump officials. Kash Patel, a conspiracy theorist and unabashed election denier, has just been tapped by Trump to head the FBI (although the current director has not resigned or been sacked yet). His appointment suggests that Trump really does intend to come after his enemies.
“I am your retribution”, Trump has vowed, and Patel will be his instrument. By sparing his son, Biden has given Trump cover to chip away at the rule of law and thumb his nose at constitutional niceties.
Sarah Baxter is a contributing editor of the Standard and director of the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting
