Tipsheet

Okay, Does Anyone Believe This One From Joe Biden?

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  June 10, 2024 2:15 PM

President Joe Biden deeply improperly put his thumb on the scale of the Justice Department's investigation into his son, which resulted in an outrageous, zero-accountability sweetheart deal for Hunter.  That arrangement would have gone through if not for the actions of IRS whistleblowers, as well as a well-placed question from a federal judge.  After the scheme was exposed at the eleventh hour, it collapsed.  The younger Biden is still off the hook for most of the most serious alleged crimes he may have committed -- especially the ones that promised to be most problematic for his father, as DOJ officials suspiciously allowed those statutes of limitation to expire (contrast that approach to Alvin Bragg's end-run around such limitations against Donald Trump in New York).  But because the sweeping immunity machinations were exposed in embarrassing fashion, Hunter Biden is now on trial for clear-cut gun crimes and awaits another trial on tax-related charges.  

In an interview late last week, the president asserted that if his son is convicted, he will respect the verdict and will not issue a pardon:


His Press Secretary has offered similar assurances, appearing to also rule out a commutation of any potential sentence.  With all due respect, I do not believe any of this.  Not even for a nanosecond.  Biden tried hard to make this all go away without charges or trials.  He almost succeeded.  His team issued leaks expressing frustration with -- ie putting pressure on -- the Attorney General, in addition to the president's incredibly inappropriate pronouncement on national television mid-probe.  His aides have been whispering to reporters about how sick with worry all of this has made their boss, and what a strain this has placed on the family.  Despite what the president says now, I fully expect him to deliver a broad pardon for his son after the election, or to at least erase any federal sentence that may be handed down.  Joe Biden is currently politically invested in talking points about equal justice under the law.  But once voters have had their say, regardless of the electoral outcome, Biden will never have to face them again.  He will be entirely unaccountable.  And I believe it's a very strong bet that any pre-election answers on this subject will immediately fly out the window.  

Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy is having similar thoughts -- and, quite frankly, who isn't?  He calls the current answers "all about political calculations," and offers the justifiably skeptical headline, "Biden Won’t Pardon His Son — at Least Until after Election Day."  Exactly.  Meanwhile, there's this, via Politico:

For years, Joe Biden shared a bookkeeper with his son, Hunter. He also shared a personal lawyer with his brother, Jim. And when Jim Biden wanted to know more about one of Hunter Biden’s associates, he hired the former head of Joe Biden’s Secret Service detail to investigate. Since 2019, Joe Biden has repeatedly distanced himself from his family’s business dealings, saying that he has never so much as discussed them with his relatives or with anyone else. But House impeachment inquiry interviews, public records and emails reviewed by POLITICO show that members of his inner circle were regularly enmeshed in those dealings: Many of the president’s closest staffers and advisers have doubled as his relatives’ business associates, both during and after their stints working for the man at the center of the Biden family orbit. Those overlaps reflect an all-in-the family approach to business and politicking that dates back a half-century to the president’s first Senate bid, run primarily by his parents and siblings. 

Since then, his political patrons have at times forged business ties with his relatives, who in turn have converted some of their business partners into campaign supporters. And over a lifetime in public life, some of the president’s aides have taken on roles as surrogate members of the tight-knit Biden clan.  The Bidens’ approach complicates their efforts to distance the president from his family’s ventures. To allay concerns about any intermingling of their affairs, the Bidens have said that they observe strict interpersonal firewalls to avoid discussing business among themselves. But with so many former and current aides in the mix — and with the surfacing of private communications in which Jim and Hunter Biden suggest they represent their powerful relative in business matters — onlookers are forced to take family members at their word that those firewalls always held.

We know it's a proven lie that Biden had nothing to do with his family's enrichment scheme, just as Biden has brazenly lied on other related matters.  It's laugh-out-loud funny to contemplate how Americans should "take [Biden] family members at their word" that the supposed "firewalls" have remained in place.  They demonstrably have not, even on manipulations like Hunter's ridiculous art "career."  Meanwhile, as Biden surrogates continue to peddle lines about Biden being "fit as a fiddle," and amid revelations that the president still hasn't reached out to his little granddaughter whose existence the family scrupulously ignored for years, I'll simply direct you to some additional lies from Team Biden -- on issues relatively small, and unquestionably large.  Consider all of this as you weigh anything Biden or his team might say on any subject.  They will do or say whatever it takes, always:

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And since we mentioned above how internal whistleblowers interfered with Hunter Biden's thwarted 'get-off-scot-free' deal with his dad's administration, I'll leave you with the administration pursuing a separate, politicized crackdown on an ideologically-inconvenient whistleblower:


Deep, deep rot.  Imagine how they'd behave in a second term.