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Hunter Biden’s pardon is humanly understandable — and politically devastating.
Two stories from overseas made headlines over the weekend: Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter and Donald Trump wanted to appoint Kash Patel as the new FBI director. On the surface, these two things have nothing to do with each other, but on the surface, they have a lot to do with each other. But first things first:
The saga of Hunter Biden and his “Hell Notebook” has haunted us for years. In a nutshell, here it is: Hunter is Joe Biden’s second son, and in some ways a tragic figure. His mother and sister died in a car accident early in his life, and his brother Beau, the model son of the family, died of a brain tumor in 2015.
Hunter subsequently became the black sheep of the Biden family. Although he knew nothing about natural gas or Ukraine, he was elected to the board of directors of a Ukrainian gas company at a high fee. In his private life he was completely devastated. He became severely addicted to crack cocaine and his marriage fell apart.
The Bidens.Image: trapezoid
He met prostitutes and filmed his drug-fuelled sex acts. There is no doubt he collected the images on his laptop, along with emails from other businesses. He once took the laptop to a computer store for repair but forgot to pick it up. The computer store owner opened the laptop, recognized the explosive content and forwarded it to Donald Trump's then-personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Giuliani hopes to make “Laptop from Hell” a central theme of his 2020 campaign. It failed because the FBI didn't believe it and said the Russians were again trying to rig the election in Trump's favor. Giuliani rushed to the Wall Street Journal, which also had a reputation, at least in its news pages, with his laptop, but he refused.
The New York Post, on the other hand, took action and reported the story at length. However, the plan largely failed as Twitter and Facebook refused to include it in their news feeds. To this day, Republicans complain that this is why Trump lost the election.
Wanted to use Hunter's laptop for political purposes: Rudy Giuliani.Image: trapezoid
In any case, things are far from over. Delaware prosecutors appointed by Trump investigated the Hunter laptop incident in detail but concluded that no major crime was committed. Ultimately, two things can be blamed on Hunter Biden: buying a gun while he was addicted to cocaine and staying silent about his addiction. In gun-crazy America, such crimes are often dismissed with condemnation. He also defaulted on his taxes, another crime that is not typically prosecuted.
That's why prosecutors and Hunter's lawyers reached a settlement that allowed Biden's son to escape more or less unscathed. However, a conservative judge blocked the settlement, giving Republicans and Fox News, who currently hold a majority in the House of Representatives, the opportunity to create a huge media storm.
The controversy didn't reveal anything new, but it did result in Hunter having to appear in court for a jury trial. The court found him guilty, and the US legal system now allows him to be sentenced to up to 25 years in prison.
Joe Biden has promised not to interfere in the criminal proceedings against his son. He wanted to prove that he insisted on the separation of politics and justice, which is so important in a constitutional state. Now he has broken that promise. From a human perspective, this is understandable, because while Hunter Biden is by no means an innocent angel, the political agitation against him has gotten completely out of control.
President Biden later defended his son’s pardon, saying: “Any reasonable person considering the facts must conclude that Hunter was targeted because he was my son — and that’s not the case. ”
It should also be mentioned here: Joe Biden is not the first president to pardon a family member. Bill Clinton and his brother did it, and so did Donald Trump and his father-in-law.
Yet Biden’s decision — understandably and humanely — is a political disaster. Which brings us to Kash Patel.
Patel is an ambitious lawyer who wants to build a career at any cost. The 44-year-old worked briefly at the Justice Department and played a minor role in the Benghazi case. In September 2012, terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate in the Libyan port city, killing four Americans, including the ambassador. Republicans tried to spin the case as a failure of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and held endless hearings with no results.
Should be FBI Director: Kash Patel.Image: trapezoid
Patel was later joined by Devine Nunes. At the time, he was a Republican congressman and chairman of the committee responsible for intelligence. Today, Nunes runs Trump’s social platform, Truth Social.
Patel is an unconditional Trump supporter. He has espoused the Big Lie and repeatedly threatened to pursue political opponents of the president-elect by any means possible. As he explained on Steve Bannon’s podcast last year: “We will go after those in the media who lied to the American people, helped Joe Biden rig the election, and persecute us. Whether it’s through judicial means or through civil means , we will all find a way.
For Trump, Patel is the ideal weapon for his announced campaign of retaliation. He can count on Patel to make good on his threats to pursue Trump's political opponents regardless of the law. In addition, Patel would purge the FBI, whom Trump hates, of any members suspected of harboring “woke” sympathies.
If the Senate approves Patel's nomination as the new FBI director, it would be a serious blow to the rule of law. By pardoning his son, Joe Biden gave Republicans a clear opportunity to justify the nomination. By the same token, Trump can now also delegitimize the leaders of the planned coup on January 6, 2021.
It’s not just America’s constitutional state that is at risk. Columnist David Brooks noted in the New York Times that his country is experiencing a moral paradigm shift. What does he mean?
The morality of a decent bourgeois politician is fundamentally different from the morality represented by “MAGA”. “I think MAGA officials are a disgrace to people who are decent and admirable, and I think MAGA officials are heroes to people who are corrupt and selfish,” Brooks said.
Example of old morality: Mitt Romney.Image: trapezoid
Brooks cited Mitt Romney as an example of a quintessentially decent politician. The latter behaved in a manner consistent with civic ethics and respect for state institutions. Typical MAGA heroes have completely different characteristics. “In this morality, the virtuous person is assertive, combative, aggressive and vengeful. “He is not afraid to break existing rules and draw his own conclusions,” Brooks said. “He despises institutions and would love to destroy them. He does not care about the anger of the elite; on the contrary, he will do whatever it takes to stoke it. “
A second Trump term threatens a fundamental attack on the rule of law and the politicization of the judiciary, which Biden’s pardons encourage. As we already know from authoritarian states such as Russia, the new morality faces the threat of victory. Can the existing checks and balances weather this storm?
