River News: Our View

Well, you know what they say about life: Three things are certain — death, taxes, and a pardon for Hunter Biden. 

No doubt not a soul in America, not even a low-propensity voter, whatever that is, doubted that, once the election was done, Joe Biden would pardon his son. And he would have done so regardless of the election outcome.

For those who were actually surprised, we simply say that the writing on the wall grew clearer with each presidential assertion that he would not, in fact, pardon the First Son. When a Biden tells you twice that he or she is not going to do something, it’s still possibly the truth, if suspect, but after Biden’s sixth assertion that he definitely would not pardon his son under any circumstance, it was clear that the pardon was a done deal.

The pardon underscores Mr. Biden’s political life as a serial liar. It also underscores the absolute corruption of the Democratic Party and the corporate media, who have spent five years covering for Mr. Biden and those lies.

Most everything progressives accuse conservatives of is pure projection, and so their favorite line that Donald Trump is a liar tells you everything you need to know about Joe Biden. He might go down as one of the least popular and worst presidents of all time — Jimmy Carter’s soon-to-be ghost can give thanks for Joe Biden — but he will certainly go down as one of the greatest of presidential liars.

And that’s saying something. If ever there was a single personification of a Washington Swamp Creature, it is Joe Biden, in a political career that saw him swim past the tragedy (and publicity) of his family dying in a car accident, leaving the backwaters of a Delaware lagoon for the serious swamps of Washington. For 50 years he has internalized the Reptilia of the pond.

We shouldn’t give the president all the credit for his lies. We haven’t had a president for a while now, and the nomination of soon-to-be forgotten Kamala Harris proved that Democrats don’t believe you really need one. A committee of whoever has run the country for most of Biden’s term, and look how that turned out.

But we can give Joe Biden most of the credit for pardoning Hunter, and for all the hypocrisy, corruption, and sleaziness that comes with it. If people didn’t trust government before — they didn’t, and Trump’s re-election underscores that — this doozy of a decision will set back confidence in our institutions a generation or more.

Joe Biden’s lies involving Hunter are the most telling of his administration. Perhaps the biggest whopper is his accusation that his own Department of Justice is corrupt, and that the DOJ led an unfair and weaponized prosecution of his son. Among other things, Hunter was just late filing and paying his taxes, like many Americans, Biden moaned over the tax charges, overlooking Hunter’s guilty plea to willful international tax evasion.

The funny part of this is that Biden’s DOJ really is corrupt and weaponized, but only against conservatives and parents who want a say in raising their children. And never mind that, if Joe Biden really thought the agency was corrupt, he would not only pardon Hunter Biden but fire Merrick Garland. 

Instead he chose to let the rot continue to eat away what’s left of the fabric of justice, throwing the one and only legal lifeline to his son. It’s an excuse for brazen cronyism.

The truth is, the DOJ was forced to prosecute Hunter Biden by public pressure and because of its truly unholy pursuit of Donald Trump, but even then the agency went out of its way to offer a sweetheart plea deal that would have essentially let Hunter off the hook. It offered him the same immunity from prosecution he has now secured from dear old Dad.

A federal judge recognized the favoritism for what it was and blew up the plea deal, which is what got us to the pardon. The pardon gives to Hunter Biden all that the DOJ had tried to do behind the scenes.

All of which calls into question the sweeping nature of Biden’s pardon. Biden’s get-out-of-jail card doesn’t just cover the guilty plea for tax evasion and the jury finding of guilty in the gun case, it covers all crimes potentially committed for a 11-year period dating back to Jan. 1, 2014, in other words a time period when all the Burisma stuff that could implicate Uncle Joe was taking place.

Only Richard Nixon got such a sweeping reprieve before.

Why such a sweeping immunity? There’s a reason: Joe Biden — or, more likely, Jill Biden and Hunter Biden — sought re-election to forestall what would be ongoing investigations into Hunter Biden’s activities over the past decade, and what, if any, role his father had in them. 

Writing in The Wall Street Journal this week, IRS special agents and whistleblowers Joseph Ziegler and Gary Shapley alleged that the Justice Department and the special prosecutor in the case shielded the Biden family “from a thorough investigation of alleged corruption in Ukraine, Romania and China,” and they also noted that, in a public filing this past summer, the special counsel’s office alleged that Hunter Biden “agreed to attempt to influence U.S. public policy” on behalf of a Romanian businessman.

Hunter Biden was never charged, nor will he be.

But enough about Hunter Biden. The pardon accomplishes the same thing as the plea deal did. It stops before it can start an investigation into Hunter Biden’s potential financial crimes that might have led straight to “the big guy.” Now there’s no need to investigate Hunter and not enough evidence to launch an inquiry into old Joe.

The sweeping misdeeds are out in the open now, which is likely why some Democrats, including Wisconsin’s U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, haven’t embraced the pardon. It’s a parade of images for all the world to look at and remember: Joe Biden saying falsely that his son’s laptop wasn’t really his but a Russian hoax; Joe Biden saying falsely that his family never received any payments from China; Joe Biden falsely insisting he never met with any of Hunter Biden’s business associates; Joe Biden’s administration churning so hard for the prosecution of Donald Trump that one hush-money payment magically morphed into 34 felony convictions.

Not least, Joe Biden saying at least six times, with conviction, that he would not pardon Hunter Biden.

Lies. All lies. Remember that the next time you hear Democrats call Donald Trump a liar. Remember that when Trump pardons — as he should — most of the January 6 political prisoners, imprisoned not because they wandered like tourists around the capitol, which is what most did, but because they supported Donald Trump.

Remember the Democrats’ lies and corruption the next time you think about voting for the Democratic Party for any office, but especially for president. 

The truth is, conservatives need an opposing political party — any governing party does — but the Democratic Party has outlived its usefulness in this regard. It’s nothing but a stable of corrupt cronies and woke ideologues bound together by a bloodthirst for power.

If you doubt that characterization of the Democratic Party, just look at the record. The Democratic Party’s leading dissidents — known as The Squad — arrived in Congress a few years back to give traction to that party’s populist wing. Instead, AOC and her comrades fell in line with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi — with the establishment — on every major issue, from sending more and more aid to Ukraine to nationalizing the capitol police, two things they said they would never support.

Bernie Sanders, a suddenly house-rich (he has three) socialist, also parroted the establishment line.

On the other side of the aisle, however, we hear a lot about the loyalty Donald Trump demands, but yet when he nominated a Trump supporter to head the DEA, who turned out to have been a Covidian tyrant who threw a pastor in jail for holding a church service during the pandemic, conservatives didn’t make excuses and fall in line. They screamed.

Led by Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — but backed up nationally across the grassroots — conservatives objected vociferously to Hillsborough County sheriff Chad Chronister’s nomination.

This week, Chronister withdrew. See what a little resistance can do.

But the Democratic Party, no matter which wing, falls in line with their corrupt leader, over and over again.

With the corporate media, it’s even worse. There was Whoopi Goldberg defending the pardon and saying, “this is what presidents do.”  There was Morning Joe whining about any negative press coverage of the pardon. After all, it’s the media’s duty to serve the master regime.

We guess the best lesson to be taken away from this week’s not-so-shocking pardon: Never believe a word the Democrats say. Never believe a word the corporate legacy media says.

Fortunately, given the results of November 5, it seems those are lessons the American people have already learned.