Monday
Dec022024
The Conversation -- December 2, 2024
Jonathan Chait of the Atlantic: “President Biden’s complaint about the higher standard applied to his son reflects the perspective of myopic privilege. Crimes by family members of powerful public officials are far more damaging to public confidence than similar crimes by anonymous people. Holding them to account through strict enforcement of the law is good and correct. What the president fails to note in his self-pitying statement is that Hunter Biden for years engaged in legal but wildly inappropriate behavior by running a business based on selling the perception of access to his father.... Joe Biden’s defense of Hunter’s influence peddling by stressing its narrow legality merely serves to highlight the hypocrisy of his fatherly indulgence.... With the pardon decision, like his stubborn insistence on running for a second term he couldn’t win, Biden chose to prioritize his own feelings over the defense of his country.” Thanks to laura h. for this gift link. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Whatever you think of this pardon, it's nearly impossible to refute Chait's arguments. What Biden conveniently forgot, and what criminals like Trump never consider, is what Julius Caesar said: that his wife must be above suspicion. It isn't just the wife; it's the relatives in general. A person certainly cannot control what his relatives do, and he can forgive them for their bad behavior for their sake and his own. But to issue a public pardon, to ensure that the relative will not face the consequences of his unlawful behavior, and to hold that relative to be above the law for whatever lame excuse or valid reason, is quite a different matter. To break one's own oath in doing so only magnifies the error in judgment.
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⭐Michael Shear & Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: “President Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon of his son Hunter on Sunday night after repeatedly insisting he would not do so, using the power of his office to wave aside years of legal troubles, including a federal conviction for illegally buying a gun and for tax evasion. In a statement issued by the White House, Mr. Biden said he had decided to issue the executive grant of clemency for his son 'for those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024.' He said he made the decision because the charges against Hunter were politically motivated and designed to hurt him politically. 'The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,' Mr. Biden said in the statement. '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.'...
It was a remarkable turnaround for a man whose presidency and five-decade career was built in part on the idea that he would never interfere with the administration of justice.... In fact, the president’s announcement came at the same time that Mr. Trump made it clearer than ever that his second term would be focused on retribution and revenge against Mr. Biden — with Hunter Biden as a prime target. The president-elect on Saturday said he would name Kash Patel, a loyalist who has vowed to go after Mr. Trump’s enemies, as F.B.I. director.... In a post on social media, Mr. Trump called the pardon 'Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!'” The NBC News story is here. The AP's report is here. ~~~
~~~ President Biden's statement is here. Via the White House. ~~~
~~~ Devlin Barrett of the New York Times: “President Biden blamed 'political pressure' for the collapse of a plea deal for Hunter Biden, but it was the judge overseeing the case who questioned the agreement. Hunter Biden’s plea deal did fall apart in dramatic form at the last minute last year. But it did so after the judge overseeing the case at the time raised issues about its unusual construction, involving two separate agreements meant to work in tandem. That construction violated one of the basic tenets of federal guilty pleas: that any agreement not have any side deals.... That is a far cry from the president’s suggestion that the deal ... collapsed because of political pressure.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Barrett is a study in why it's a bad idea to have a partisan hack "reporting” the news. Barrett may be right to question the President's charge of political pressure. But he fails to mention in an article in which he is claiming there was no political pressure that the judge who destroyed the plea deal was a Trump appointee. Furthermore, according to a New York Times analysis in August 2023, published shortly after the judge deep-sixed the plea agreement, she did so not because of a “basic tenet of federal” plea deals but because the two parties to the deal didn't agree on what the deal meant. “Judge Maryellen Noreika ... picked apart the deal, exposing substantial disagreements over the extent of the immunity provision.... [Hunter's attorney] said the deal indemnified his client not merely for the tax and gun offenses uncovered during the inquiry, but for other possible offenses stemming from his lucrative consulting deals. [Leo] Wise[, the prosecutor who was new to the case and had not negotiated the plea deal,] said it was far narrower — and suggested the government was still considering charges against Mr. Biden under laws regulating foreign lobbying.” As for there being no political pressure, Devlin, read just this one article from the paper you've just joined. Congressional Republicans were foaming at the mouth at every hint of a turn in the Hunter Biden case.
~~~ Peter Baker of the New York Times: “[President] Biden’s decision to use the extraordinary power of executive clemency to wipe out his son’s convictions on gun and tax charges came despite repeated statements by him and his aides that he would not do so. Just this past summer, after his son was convicted at trial, the president rejected the idea of a pardon and said that 'I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process.' The statement he issued on Sunday night made clear he did not accept the outcome or respect the process.... Mr. Trump has long argued that the justice system has been 'weaponized' against him and that he is the victim of selective prosecution, much the way Mr. Biden has now said his son was.... The prosecutions of Mr. Trump and the younger Mr. Biden were each handled by separate special counsels appointed specifically to insulate the cases from politics.... There is no evidence that Mr. Biden had any involvement in Mr. Trump’s cases.... [This pardon] will also be harder for Democrats to criticize Mr. Trump for his prolific use of the pardon power to absolve friends and allies, some of whom could have been witnesses against him in previous investigations.... Mr. Biden’s pardon will also give ammunition to Republicans who have contended that Hunter Biden was guilty of wrongdoing beyond the charges for which he was actually prosecuted....
“To be sure, the cases against Mr. Trump and the younger Mr. Biden are hardly comparable. Mr. Trump was charged with illegally trying to overturn an election that he lost so that he could hold on to power and, in a separate indictment, with endangering national security and trying to obstruct justice by taking classified documents when he left office and refusing to return them.... Hunter Biden was convicted of lying on a firearms application form about his drug addiction and pleaded guilty to failing to pay taxes that he later did pay, with penalties. At least some legal experts have agreed with the president’s contention that such offenses would normally have been resolved without felony charges.” ~~~
~~~ Betsy Swan of Politico: “Hunter Biden’s pardon looks a lot like Richard Nixon’s. President Joe Biden’s grant of clemency on Sunday night — an extraordinary political act with extraordinary legal breadth — insulates his son from ever facing federal charges over any crimes he possibly could have committed over the past decade.... Joe Biden’s 'full and unconditional pardon' of his son is deliberately vague. Donald Trump and his allies have long fixated on the president’s son, and Trump has repeatedly pledged to use his second term to investigate and prosecute members of the Biden family. Conservative commentators have engaged in parlor-game speculation that Hunter Biden could be charged with bribery, illegal lobbying or other crimes stemming from his foreign business activities and drug addiction.”
~~~ Paul Campos in LG&$: “(1) Hunter Biden was subject to criminal prosecution for purely political reasons. The offenses he was convicted for are almost literally never prosecuted. The tax evasion charge is particularly outrageous: pursuing criminal charges for tax evasion when the defendant has paid back all the taxes, penalties, and fines that the taxpayer owes essentially never happens. (2) That Republicans will scream about this is, under the circumstances, something to which any decent person, i.e., not a Republican, should pay exactly zero attention.”
Peter Baker of the New York Times: “His first selection for attorney general collapsed in spectacular fashion. His choice for defense secretary is awash in scandal. His picks for intelligence, health and other posts are being panned.... Even with so many appointees already under fire, Mr. Trump has doubled down on defiance as he assembles his next administration. Rather than turning to more credentialed and respected choices with easier paths to Senate confirmation, Mr. Trump in rapid-fire fashion keeps naming more ideological warriors, conspiracy theorists and now even family members to senior government positions....
The persistence in advancing unconventional appointments underscores how determined Mr. Trump is to surround himself this time with loyalists he can trust to carry out his agenda, including 'retribution' against his perceived enemies.... Mr. Trump’s contentious selections also represent something of a dare to Senate Republicans to see how far they will go in standing against other nominees they view as unqualified....”
All in the Family. Holly Bailey of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump said Sunday that he would nominate Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American businessman and the father-in-law of his daughter Tiffany, as a senior adviser covering Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.... The advisory White House post doesn’t require Senate confirmation.” CNN's report is here. MB: So far, I haven't seen any information that Boulos is a criminal, but he's a billionaire international businessman with ties to Hezbollah, so we'll see what journalists develop. (Also linked yesterday.) Update: The New York Times reports that Boulos' connections to Lebanese politicians and Hezbollah are “murky.”
Annals of “Journalism,” Ctd. Marcy Wheeler: “... by picking Kash and including false claims about the Deep State in his announcement, Trump forces journalists to address his false claims.” But, as Wheeler notes, Devlin Barrett & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times (and others) don't address those false claims at all. They just type 'em up and publish “without correction,” which as Wheeler writes, “is simply participation in propaganda.” Instead, journalist at various outlets concentrate on other things that render Patel's appointment questionable: like Politico, whose reporters refer to his perpetuation of conspiracy theories, or CNN, where reporters say Trump shouldn't be firing Chris Wray in the midst of his 10-year term.
Holly Bailey, et al., of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump’s announcement that he wants to replace FBI Director Christopher A. Wray with Kash Patel, a staunch loyalist who has vowed to fire the agency’s leadership and dramatically reshape its mission, was met with bipartisan concern that his appointment could undermine the agency’s independence.... FBI directors typically have 10-year tenures, unique among appointments in the executive branch. That span ... was imposed in 1976 as a post-Watergate government reform effort after it became clear that Richard M. Nixon’s pick to serve as FBI director, L. Patrick Gray, destroyed documents related to the bureau’s investigation of the Watergate scandal and gave Nixon’s administration briefings on the investigation. The term limit is meant to assert the independence of FBI directors from any political leader or party.” MB: The Republicans cited who supposedly expressed “concern” about Patel sound a lot less “concerned” than Susan Collins does about the lowlifes she ultimately votes to seat. Indeed, the Senators' “concerns” strike me as performance art: “Look at me! I'm a Senator! I'm doing my very senatorish thing.” In fact, (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Michael Shear of the New York Times: “Several Republican lawmakers fell in line on Sunday behind ... Donald J. Trump’s plan to choose Kash Patel to lead the F.B.I., defending the incoming president’s right to install a loyalist who has vowed to use the position to exact revenge on Mr. Trump’s adversaries. Mr. Trump’s announcement on Saturday that he intends to replace Christopher A. Wray, the current F.B.I. director, who still has three years left on his 10-year term, with Mr. Patel has stunned Democrats and many in the national security establishment. Mr. Patel has said he would launch a sweeping campaign of retribution against F.B.I. agents, journalists and others.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ David Corn of Mother Jones: Kash “Patel is a MAGA combatant who has fiercely advocated Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and who has championed January 6 rioters as patriots and unfairly persecuted political prisoners.... Patel is also a fervent promoter of conspiracy theories. At the end of Trump’s first presidency, when he was a Pentagon official, he spread the bonkers idea that Italian military satellites had been employed to turn Trump votes to Joe Biden votes in the 2020 election. And he has falsely claimed that the Trump-Russia scandal was a hoax cooked up by the FBI and so-called Deep State to sabotage Trump. Moreover, Patel has been supportive of the most loony conspiracy theory in MAGA land: QAnon.” Corn goes on to outline many instances in which Patel has promoted or accommodated Q & its crazy, often pro-violence, beliefs. “Patel’s relationship with QAnon shows either that he has a severely distorted view of reality or that he will recklessly exploit dangerous, misguided, and false ideas for political benefit.” ~~~
~~~ Rachel Scully of the Hill: “Former national security adviser John Bolton compared Kash Patel..., Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, to one of the former Soviet Union’s most feared secret police chiefs, Lavrentiy Beria. 'Trump has nominated Kash Patel to be his Lavrentiy Beria,' Bolton said in a statement to NBC News’s 'Meet The Press' on Sunday. '... The Senate should reject this nomination 100-0.' NKVD refers to the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union, which was in place from 1934 to 1946. Beria was appointed by ... Joseph Stalin as deputy chief of the Soviet secret police and was head of the Soviet atomic bomb project.... He is known for his violent tactics, including kidnapping, torture and rape, which he used to advance within the ranks of the secret police.”
New York Times Notices the Most Obvious Dangers Trump Poses: Carl Hulse of the New York Times: “... Donald J. Trump’s determination to crash over traditional governmental guardrails will present a fundamental test of whether the Republican-controlled Senate can maintain its constitutional role as an independent institution and a check on presidential power. With Mr. Trump putting forward a raft of contentious prospective nominees and threatening to challenge congressional authority in other ways, Republicans who will hold the majority come January could find themselves in the precarious position of having to choose between standing up for their institution or bowing to a president dismissive of government norms. The clearest and most immediate point of tension is likely to be Mr. Trump’s efforts to skip the Senate’s traditional confirmation process to install loyalists, including some with checkered backgrounds, in his cabinet. But the president-elect has also signaled he expects Republicans on Capitol Hill to accede to his wishes on policy, even if that means ceding Congress’s control over federal spending. Both are powers explicitly given to the legislative branch in the Constitution.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Perry Stein & Yvonne Sanchez of the Washington Post: “Attorney General Merrick Garland and top Justice Department officials are encouraging career staffers to remain in their jobs through the next administration, stressing that institutional knowledge is important.... As top officials inside the Justice Department have led meetings about transition protocols, Trump and his allies have continued their vows to fire career staffers and seek retribution on those they consider their political enemies.... [Besides nominating Matt Gaetz as AG & Kash Patel to replay Chris Wray as head the FBI,] Trump ... announced earlier in November that his personal defense lawyers, who represented him in his criminal cases, would be nominated for top Justice Department jobs. While some people interviewed said that those lawyers’ relevant job qualifications for the jobs were reassuring — two are former prosecutors — they were also concerned about whether Trump would expect the would-be officials to act like his personal counsel....
“The people interviewed for this article said the private legal market couldn’t swallow up a huge number of departing Justice Department staffers, adding that most prosecutors, FBI agents and other career staffers would rather stay put and do work that they believe serves the public good.... Still, more Justice Department employees than usual appear to be exploring jobs outside the government.”
Yes, JayDee Is Exceptionally Weird. Yesterday, RAS posted a link to this. I had seen the graphic earlier and assumed it was posted by someone trolling JayDee & Trump. But no. JayDee originated the, uh, artwork or at least initiated the post. But why? Justin Baragona in the Independent: “While ... Donald Trump was sharing a Thanksgiving parody video of himself leaping out of a turkey and gyrating in front of prominent Democrats, his soon-to-be vice president decided to up the ante by posting an image of himself as 'Trump’s wife.' In a mock-up of Norman Rockwell’s famous painting 'Freedom From Want,' JD Vance superimposed his face onto the matriarch serving up a Thanksgiving turkey to her family. A grinning Trump takes the place of the husband, who is standing behind a dress-clad Vance. The turkey, meanwhile, has been replaced with an electoral map of the United States showing all of the counties that voted Republican.... [Many observers] were just in awe that Vance intentionally posted the picture in the first place, especially since it could be interpreted that he is portraying himself as a 'trad wife' or part of a same-sex couple.”
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California. Silvia Foster-Frau of the Washington Post: “In Hinkley, [California -- the the town ‘Erin Brockovich’ made famous nearly three decades ago --] water at nine of the 44 wells tested this year as part of PG&E’s state-mandated cleanup efforts were found to have chromium-6 levels more than five times higher than the state’s legal maximum and 2,500 times higher than what the state deems safe for public consumption. The regional water board, an arm of the state, has given the company until 2032 to bring the water’s chemical content down to legal levels — 36 years after Brockovich’s lawsuit and 80 years after the toxic substance was first dumped into the ground by PG&E, the state’s largest utility. Experts, lawyers and local residents here said the long timeline for the cleanup stems partly from the logistical difficulty of removing a toxic substance that has swirled for years in the groundwater but also because the effort has been largely the undertaking of a small regional government water board in charge of regulating a corporate behemoth.”
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Iceland. AP: “Voters in Iceland joined a global trend of punishing incumbents in a parliamentary election, with a center-left party winning the largest share of votes in the North Atlantic island nation. With all the votes tallied on Sunday, the Social Democratic Alliance had won 15 seats in the 63-seat parliament, the Althingi — more than doubling its total — and secured almost 21% of votes, according to national broadcaster RUV. The conservative Independence Party, which led the outgoing government, had 14 seats and a 19.4% vote share, and the centrist Liberal Reform Party 11 seats and about 16% of votes.”
Ireland. Lisa O'Carroll of the Guardian: “The Green party in Ireland has been virtually wiped out in the general election, and its leader admitted it was entering a period of 'rebuild' after the electorate removed any prospect of the party re-entering government. The Greens lost all but one of their 12 seats, with its leader, Roderic O’Gorman, scraping through on the 13th count. It means the party is unlikely to team up again with the two centre-right parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which are on track to come within a few seats of the 88-seat majority needed to form the new government. Counting from Friday’s election could continue into Monday. The proportional representation system involves multiple counts and too-close-to-call scraps for the final seats in many constituencies.”
Israel/Palestine, et al. Adam Rasgon, et al., of the New York Times: “A former Israeli defense minister has accused Israel of committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, a rare critique from a member of the security establishment at a time of war. The comments by Moshe Yaalon came amid mounting criticism of the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza. They were swiftly denied and condemned by allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, saying that they would hurt the country and help its enemies. Mr. Yaalon served as the Israeli military’s chief of staff during the second intifada and as Mr. Netanyahu’s defense minister during the 2014 war in Gaza, the longest conflict between Israel and Hamas before the current war. But he broke with Mr. Netanyahu in 2016 and has since become a critic of the Israeli leader.... 'The path they’re dragging us down is to occupy, annex, and ethnically cleanse — look at the northern strip,' he said. He also said Israel was being pulled in the direction of building settlements in Gaza, a notion that is supported by far-right politicians in Mr. Netanyahu’s government.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Ukraine, et al. Michael Birnbarum, et al., of the Washington Post: “The Biden administration is engaged in an 11th-hour scramble to provide Ukraine with billions of dollars in additional weaponry, a massive effort that is generating concerns internally about its potential to erode U.S. stockpiles and sap resources from other flash points, officials said. The lame-duck initiative was spurred in part by Russia’s battlefield momentum and a fear among Ukraine’s fiercest advocates that once ... Donald Trump takes office Jan. 20, there will be an abrupt shift in U.S. policy toward the war. Yet some in the administration have taken the view that no matter what Washington does, Kyiv’s military will remain outmatched without far more soldiers to sustain its fight. And even as they accelerate arms shipments, there is growing frustration with Ukraine’s leaders, who have resisted U.S. calls to lower the country’s draft age from 25 to 18.”
20 Comments
Reader Comments (20)
Call it Monday morning speculation.
Why are voters across the world turning out the incumbents, regardless of the flavor of the government in power?
Two answers.
Governments have not been able (willing?) to deal with the two most disruptive issues that are keeping people upset: the rapid human migration of the last fifty years that has moved people by the millions across borders from their traditional homes to places where they and their cultures seem out of place.....and the worldwide concentrations of wealth in the hands of the relative few, aided and abetted by many governments themselves.
Jonathan Chait, in The Atlantic calls out Biden’s Unpardonable Hypocrisy
"President Biden’s complaint about the higher standard applied to his son reflects the perspective of myopic privilege. Crimes by family members of powerful public officials are far more damaging to public confidence than similar crimes by anonymous people. Holding them to account through strict enforcement of the law is good and correct."
George Packer, in The Atlantic, considers why american voters turned out the incumbents in The End of Democratic Delusions
"The organizing principle in Trump’s chaotic campaigns, the animating passion among his supporters, has been a reactionary turn against dizzying change, specifically the economic and cultural transformations of the past half century: the globalization of trade and migration, the transition from an industrial to an information economy, the growing inequality between metropolis and hinterland, the end of the traditional family, the rise of previously disenfranchised groups, the 'browning' of the American people. Trump’s basic appeal is a vow to take power away from the elites and invaders who have imposed these changes"
Re: Chait in the Atlantic... "Crimes by family members.." huh?
The hypocrisy, it burns. Kushner for ambassador to France, anyone? And all the other pardons handed out by trump?
I say, thank you Joe, you have saved us (and Hunter) from just a bit of bad news over the next four years.
And this "cabinet" is nothing less that a clown car of corruption and incompetence. And this is just the first month!! A prelude of things to come.
Laura,
And the irony is that the Pretender is himself one of those elites, and a particularly unsavory example of them at that. That irony is the very essence of his grift, the only genuine element of which is his racism, which I'd guess that's very sincere.
Though I understand and sympathize with his feelings, I'd say Biden's pardon of his sad son, while maybe to not to so egregious a degree as what we've seen and are seeing from the Pretender, still stems from the Pretender's deep-seated confusion of self with country.
@pat: Read Chait again. Tell us why he's wrong. You haven't done that. Pointing at Trump does nothing to refute Chait. Are you arguing that two wrongs make a right, and Joe is the guy who's right? Just because?
Of course the the cases against Hunter, such as they were, are political. Just look at the NYT article I linked to see how not just Trump's but Jim Comer and friends' fingers are all over it, too.
But Hunter admitted to some of his crimes and a jury of his peers convicted him of others. For many "indiscretions," some of which may have been crimes, Hunter was never charged. And now he never will be. Just because a prosecution is brought for political reasons doesn't mean the perp committed no crimes.
In other news:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/georgia-police-fire-tear-gas-scatter-protesters-russian-agencies-say-2024-12-02/
And the Georgians sure can't count on the Pretender.
Many objective observers also did not respect the process. Hunter was prosecuted by a special counsel appointed under the corrupt Trump administration on charges that would have been brought if not for the political pressures. Trump just promised to appoint a family member, Charles Kushner, that he pardoned to be France's ambassador. He floated pardons for people who stayed loyal to him like Paul Manafort who got a pardon. It was widely reported that people were paying to have their pardons pushed to Trump. Trump also put forth Gaetz, Bondi and Patel to head the Justice Department and FBI. Those appointments make Trump's threats of retaliation all the more real. So fuck the journalists with their deliberate lack of context and double standards. Biden's pardon was the right thing to do under the circumstances that the rest of us actual people are forced to live under. I wished we lived in the fantasy world that so many journalists live in in their minds, but that place does not and has never existed.
@RAS: How do Trump's myriad wrongdoings justify Biden's?
Those who say Biden is justified because Trump is way worse sound like the guy who get stopped for speeding and yells at the officer that s/he should be out catching the "real criminals."
@Marie: I think it is more the future wrongs and abuses that justify the pardon. And the past wrongs by Trump predict his future actions. Much of what Hunter did was unethical, but not illegal. There should be rules against that some of that kind of stuff and actual prosecutions when it is done to stop it happening. Though that is more a problem for our dysfunctional Congress. If Hunter's plea deal had not been undermined by Wise and the other pressures I would have a much harder time with this pardon. The fact that Hunter's attempt to take responsibility was thwarted is a huge mitigating factor for me. Chait has valid points about how the rich and powerful receive special treatment, but I don't think this pardon changes how people view the rule of law. Unfortunately the inequities are baked into the perceptions of the system at this point. That is not meant to justify it, but an acknowledgement of the reality.
excerpt from Jane Mayer
"Pete Hegseth’s Secret History
A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.
A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity"
Full New Yorker link
@RAS: Hunter seems to have done all kinds of things that were both unethical and illegal. For instance, he probably would have been required under U.S. law to register as a foreign agent when he was lobbying U.S. federal agencies for Burisma and for whatever the hell he was doing for that Chinese investment company where he "earned" a bundle for sitting on the board.
Typically, in a plea bargain, prosecutors forget about the big stuff and charge only some small stuff. And typically, the small stuff might be a stretch -- like tax evasion or false statements. Especially since Hunter paid his back taxes and the false statement is not all that serious (and is seldom prosecuted), I suspect his sentences would have been of tolerable duration and severity.
Could Trump & Co have changed him with other made-up crimes, as you suggest? Of course. But unless Hunter didn't leave the country, unless Trump, et al., charged him right away, quickly found a jury to convict him of some capital crime and executed him, I expect Hunter eventually would have come out all right, especially because he has Secret Service protection.
I don't blame Joe for wanting to pardon his only living son. I do hold him responsible for promising not to do that and then breaking his promise. Joe has done it now. It's part of his legacy. In fact, it's a big blot on his legacy. Hunter committed "sins" which ironically visited iniquity upon his father.
I don't think any of this is "fair." I don't think it was fair that Hunter got to pull all the stunts he pulled in the first place, and I don't think it's fair that -- after using his family connections to gain advantages you and I don't have -- those same family connections were the reason for his downfall. I don't think it's "fair" that Trump left President Biden in an unenviable quandary: whether to pardon or not to pardon, whether to trust the Justice Department or assume Pam Bondi would exact retribution on the son to punish the father.
I'm glad none of these problems is mine, and I can't say what I would do if I were Joe Biden. I certainly don't think I'm a better person than he. But I know what he did was wrong.
Selective enforcement always stinks, but I think Joe got the pardon right.
https://digbysblog.net/
Sadly, sadly, the consensus here seems to be IOKIYAD. Alas, not the first time the concept of "the reasonable man" has proved untenable.
@Marie: I think the reality of Trump winning the election and the people he is attempting to put into government positions does change Biden's calculus about his decision to pardon Hunter. The fact that most of the Republicans have already signaled their fealty to Trump and a lack of spine to stand up to him on even the most crazy of his ideas and power grabs is also a big factor. Along with the fact that both Houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans so the oversight and any pushback will be few and far between. We saw how much Trump was able to corrupt the justice system even with "responsible" Republicans at the helm. Also they don't need convictions to destroy people. They can financially ruin people with their investigations and the stress and anxiety of their investigations can destroy people too, particularly addicts. They already had free reign to investigate Hunter for years and the gun and taxes was the worst that they could prove in a court of law. I'm sure they could bring other charges, but it seems to be the same as their investigations of Hillary Clinton and the Mueller investigation where they couldn't find actual provable crimes that would be prosecuted. Marcy Wheeler has a good rundown of what went on in this prosecution, but I think I mostly agree with Paul Campos here in that "No, this ISN’T two wrongs make a right. Pardoning the victim of a completely corrupt political prosecution is the right thing to do. It’s the right thing to do if it’s your own son, and it’s the right thing to do if you had to lie about it in advance in order to avoid helping a fascist get elected president.
That Hunter Biden is not to put it mildly an admirable person in general has exactly nothing to do with any of this. Corrupt political prosecutions aren’t somehow any less corrupt because the target is no angel, to coin a phrase, any more than police murders are somehow any less murderous if the victim also happened to be a bad guy".
@RAS: I agree with all of your analysis.
The one thing I'm certain I would have done in Biden's circumstance would be to wait until Hunter was sentenced, something that was scheduled to happen next week. If he were sentenced to two months in a "Club Fed," I would not have pardoned him, or -- at worst -- I would have pardoned him only for crimes not yet charged (since Trump DOJ could just make up stuff). If, on the other hand, Hunter had received a long sentence, not commensurate with the crimes for which he has been found or pleaded guilty, then it would have been much more understandable to pardon him despite a promise not to do so.
Wonder how much Biden's loss of his son Beau might have played into his feelings. That aside I agree. Biden should have waited until after the sentencing to jump one way or another.
And in other news:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/us/wisconsin-court-decision-unions.html
A second front in the Putin war?
Ken -
Alanis Morissette has been stuck in my head all day!
It is ironic that the cult considers him a wildly successful businessman who is sacrificing his business in order to MAGA when he has only ever been successful playing a success on tv.
It is ironic that the cult portrays him as someone holy when he is such a horrible human being.
There is plenty of material there to rewrite all of Alanis's verses and more.
Tom Nichols, in The Atlantic, considers the pardon "a tremendous strategic blunder, one that will haunt Democrats as they head into the first years of another Trump administration....
Biden has effectively neutralized pardons as a political issue, and even worse, he has inadvertently given power to Trump’s narrative about the unreliability of American institutions. Biden at first promised to respect the jury’s verdict in Hunter’s gun trial, and vowed he would not pardon Hunter—and then said that because 'raw politics' had 'infected this process,' he had to act. "
Strategic Mistake