Joe Biden's Pardon-Party: Let Him Eat Cake?

Is Joe Biden's Pardoning of Hunter An Act of Strategic Genius or Karmic Self-Destruction?

As Joe “No one is above the Law” Biden continues to roll out a shocking list of pardons—for the likes of Chinese pedophiles and judges who take bribes to convict innocent children—it might be easy to forget about the pardon that started it all: that of Joe Biden’s delinquent son, Hunter. When Joe Biden pardoned Hunter—in a move that, deep down, everyone knew was coming—many saw it as a thinly-veiled attempt to cover up his son’s criminal activity . . . as well as his own. However, a deeper look at the legal implications of the Pardon Heard Around the World reveals this plan was even more poorly thought out than it appeared at first glance. In a strange twist of fate, Hunter’s pardon may bring about the very outcome it was intended to avoid: Biden, his son, and any other criminal accomplices in federal jail.

A Brief History of the Presidential Pardon and its Application to America’s Favorite Nepo Baby

Joe Biden’s pardoning of his son Hunter for any and all crimes, known or unknown, over the span of a decade, is absolutely unprecedented. Prior to this, the broadest pardons we’d seen were Nixon’s Watergate pardon, and the Carter-era draft-dodge pardons. Nixon enjoyed the broadest pardon of a single person in American history—but, in that case, the broadness was justified by the special circumstances. For one thing, Nixon’s pardon was aimed at quieting all problems surrounding the Watergate scandal, and thus broadly covered all legal issues arising from Watergate with regard to Nixon. Although some portions of the public felt the breadth of Nixon’s pardon cheated them out of any real investigation and publicization of Nixon’s alleged misdeeds, it made good political sense. At the time, half the country thought Nixon was innocent and should’ve remained President, while the other half wanted him removed and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The ‘middle ground’ to best heal and unify the country was probably removing Nixon from office but pardoning him of any prosecutable offenses.

Jimmy Carter’s pardon, in contrast, was historical in that it applied to so many people: covering all Vietnam War draft dodgers. The scope of the pardon, however, was still extremely narrow: dodgers were pardoned for the discrete act of dodging the draft—and nothing else. Carter’s pardon relied on the same justifications as the Nixon pardon: national healing and unity. Further, Carter’s pardon had an additional justification: popular consent. Carter promised to pardon draft dodgers as a part of his 1976 presidential campaign and was elected with both the electoral college and popular votes. Clearly the people liked the idea.

Now, let’s consider Joe Biden’s pardon. Unlike the Nixon and Carter pardons, Biden’s pardon is not limited to a specific act (like dodging a draft) or a specific scandal (like Watergate)—Joe Biden gave Hunter a decade of blanket immunity for literally anything, known or unknown, that Hunter may have done since 2014. What’s more, unlike the Nixon and Carter pardons, Biden has not indicated a single national interest served by the pardon. As a country, we have not been waiting with bated breath for someone to heal our national divisions on the issue of Hunter Biden’s criminality; as a nation, we certainly never expressed popular will for Hunter to be pardoned so that we could all ‘move on’. Despite how divided the nation is today—arguing over everything from whether a Presidential election was rigged to whether women can have penises—pardoning Hunter Biden was pretty low on our national list of priorities.

Nevertheless, Biden still decided to give Hunter the broadest pardon in American History; a pardon with NO legal precedent. Legal experts can’t stress that enough. Margaret Love, a US pardon attorney, states “It’s very broad. It does not pardon specific offenses, but rather takes a rather broad time span and pardons anything, any crime that may have been committed during that time span.” Mark Osler, a pardon expert from the University of Saint Thomas, agreed, calling the pardon “insanely broad.”

If we take a stroll down memory lane with America’s favorite Nepo-Baby, we’ll find this pardon covers a looot of potential criminal activity. Suspiciously, the blanket pardon covers a decade of time in which Biden has adamantly claimed there was no wrong-doing, but for which there are mountains of evidence of wrong-doing, including but not limited to:

• Federal investigations revealing that Biden and Friends received over $27 Million from foreign individuals/entities since 2014;

• Suspicious Activity Reports detailing Hunter’s bags of cash from foreign adversaries like China;

• A 292-page congressional report on Biden’s “impeachable conduct” which concluded Biden “abused his office” and “defrauded the United States to enrich his family” by soliciting tens of millions of dollars from foreign interests by “leading those interests to believe that such payments would provide them access to and influence with President Biden”;

• Various other records of illegal money laundering, bribes, and sex and drug crimes uncovered from a 2018 seizure of Hunter’s Laptop (you know, the one the media denied existed until comfortably after Joe Biden’s 2020 Presidential Election?).

Or our personal favorite: Joe Biden’s open admission that—as VP and while running U.S.-Ukraine relations and policy for Obama—he ousted a Ukrainian Prosecutor General for daring to investigate Hunter’s lucrative role on the board of a Ukrainian energy company (which Hunter attained despite knowing nothing about energy) by threatening to withhold $1 billion in critical U.S. aide to Ukraine if the prosecutor was not fired.

Yet, Joe Biden suggests Hunter’s pardon is purely for the ‘unfair’ gun and tax charges. Why the decade-long pardon time frame, then, beginning two years before any of the gun or tax crimes? Biden wants you just to forget everything you’ve heard about personal transactions with Ukraine and China, emails on Hunter’s laptop about keeping 10% in trust for “the big guy”, violations of the Federal Agent Restriction Act, well-documented bribery claims, and the fact Hunter’s laptop details various additional sex and drug crimes . . . never mind that the pardon extends beyond any “known” crimes to function as a blanket “get out of jail free card” for anything else we may have missed . . .

Joe Biden’s Pardon Justification: Love, Justice, and Fear?

Unpacking Biden’s explanation for the pardon, we run into a lot of problems. First and foremost, Biden wants Americans to believe that he pardoned Hunter out of fatherly love. Wouldn’t we all do everything in our power to protect our children? The issue is, of course, that Biden has been lying to the American people for months saying that he was absolutely not, under any circumstances, going to pardon Hunter. The significance of this lie cannot be understated. Biden’s administration had pointed to Hunter’s prosecution as evidence that the DOJ was not being weaponized to unfairly investigate, prosecute, and convict Donald Trump absent any legal basis for doing so. If they were prosecuting Hunter, they muuuust be bipartisan and objective, right? Well, wrong. Besides the fact that, unlike Trump, Hunter actually engaged in numerous prosecutable offenses with strong legal and factual bases for prosecution, Joe Biden just admitted that Hunter was never in any real danger of going to prison. If all else failed, Biden was always going to swoop in with a pardon at the end of the charade.

Further, Biden would have Americans believe that Hunter has been the subject of unfair prosecution such that this pardon is necessary for true justice. Firstly, the charges that Hunter was convicted on—the nine tax charges and three counts relating to federal firearms laws—were air-tight. Former federal prosecutor Cully Stimson stated: “Hunter Biden’s favorable trial conditions—ranging from a lenient Special Counsel to his political fame in the state he was prosecuted in—did not stop the jury from rightfully convicting him.” Secondly, the Biden DOJ originally negotiated a plea deal that would have exonerated Hunter not only for these charges, but for any other conduct he was responsible for during that time period. Sound familiar? Special treatment is one thing, but that plea deal was blatant nepotistic corruption—the federal judge presiding over the case took one look at the deal and tore it up, as any remotely honest judge would. Sorry, Joe: it’s not political persecution when the law applies to the President’s son the same as it would any other person who had committed the same crime.

Lastly, Biden would have Americans believe that the pardon was necessary to stop President Trump from prosecuting Hunter. This theory is of course troubled by the fact that Trump was President for four years and never activated his DOJ to prosecute any political rivals—despite joking about throwing Hillary in jail. In fact, as we all know, Biden was the one to activate his DOJ against Trump—so, what he’s really saying is, “since we broke this norm of not investigating and prosecuting our political rivals, I’m worried you’ll do the same . . . and scared of how much you’ll uncover if you do.”

Oops! Biden’s Pardon Might Nullify Hunter’s 5^th Amendment Rights

This brings us to the most interesting legal question to arise from Biden’s pardon: whether a presidential pardon neutralizes the recipient’s 5^th Amendment right to not testify against themselves, such that Hunter could be congressionally or judicially ordered to spill the beans on every misdeed in the “Biden and Friends” criminal enterprise. . .

The 5^th Amendment ensures a right against self-incrimination by guaranteeing that citizens may refuse to answer any question if doing so could potentially incriminate them. When subject to police interrogations, grand jury proceedings, or when testifying in court, a person can invoke their right to remain silent (i.e. “plead the 5^th”) if answering the question honestly would pose a substantial hazard of exposing the person to criminal prosecution. For example, you might plead the 5^th to questions like: Were you at the scene of the crime? Or: Do you know who committed this crime?

Now, importantly, the 5^th Amendment has a limitation. Singularly aimed at protecting a person from providing information that could be used against them in a criminal prosecution, the 5^th Amendment doesn’t apply where there’s no threat of criminal prosecution. Individuals cannot plead the 5^th when being questioned about crimes for which they were granted immunity, because their statements can no longer be used against them. This is why, in a criminal enterprise, the police will often offer plea deals to lesser criminals in exchange for their testimony about the crimes they were involved in—the plea deal will immunize the lesser criminals from prosecution for those crimes, essentially nullifying their 5^thAmendment right and allowing them to provide information necessary to convict the criminal masterminds. Similarly, an individual pardoned for a specific crime cannot plead the 5^th when questioned about that crime because they face no threat of their testimony being used against them—so long as their testimony doesn’t implicate a different crime not subject to such pardon.

So what does this mean for Hunter, who has now been pardoned for literally every single thing he has done in the last decade? It means that the “limit” on the 5th Amendment right to remain silent is essentially annihilated. After all: If Hunter is immune for anything he did for an entire decade, is there still a danger he will incriminate himself if asked questions about that decade? Unless he’s really been grabbing the bull by the horns in his criminal endeavors since the pardon period ended 18 days ago, what other crimes could he incriminate himself for?

Hunter’s Only Hope?

Unfortunately, with some clever legal maneuvering, there is a potential workaround for Hunter to still be able to rely on the 5th Amendment—at least to some extent. Presidential pardons only cover federal crimes, so Hunter might still be able to rely on the 5th when asked questions that potentially incriminate him under state law. Hunter’s lawyers, presumably, have spent these past few weeks digging up any such state laws they could find…

There is, however, a silver lining for Hunter-Haters: If Hunter can assert the 5^th, that means there’s something a state prosecutor can still charge him for (we may see his day in jail yet!). And anything that he cannot assert the 5th over . . . well, that’s something he can be judicially compelled to spill the beans about if called to testify, implicating the “big man” and whoever else is involved . . .

You may be thinking: What if Hunter just refuses to answer the questions anyway? Well, if you refuse to comply with a judicial or congressional order in a situation where the 5th doesn’t apply, you can be held in contempt and even face jail time. In other words, Hunter could be in quite a quandary if he is compelled to testify and can no longer plead the 5th. He’d be faced with the choice to either (1) sell out his family and send them to jail, or (2) refuse to answer, be held in contempt, and end up in jail himself. You read that right—Joe Biden’s pardon puts Hunter in a position where he may very well end up in jail anyway.

It wouldn’t even be beyond the realm of convention if Hunter found himself jailed for refusing to testify—in July 2022, Steve Bannon was convicted on two counts of Contempt of Congress and sentenced to four months in federal prison after refusing to comply with subpoenas seeking his communications with then-President Donald Trump. Perhaps Biden now regrets the standard set that Bannon could not assert presidential privilege to avoid Contempt of Congress—Oh, how Biden wishes Hunter could assert executive privilege if asked about his dad’s crimes now! But, alas, once we set a standard we cannot selectively “un-set” it later to avoid its evenhanded application to those we favor… Food for thought now that Biden, having obliterated countless Presidential standards—such as those against weaponizing the DOJ against political rivals and doling out blanket, nepotistic pardons to their partners in crime—must transfer to Trump the legitimacy and power to do the same. After all, Biden can’t just have his cake and eat it too.

So, the broad takeaway here: it’s unclear what’s going to happen. Hunter’s blanket pardon is unprecedented, so no one really knows much or has much to go on when trying to analyze its limits. What is clear, at the very least, is some basic logic: If Joe is allowed to pardon Hunter broadly for all crimes, then Hunter shouldn’t be able to broadly hide behind his right against self-incrimination. But it seems Joe is indeed trying to have his cake and eat it too…