Hunter Biden’s Pardon Has All the Idiots Riled Up

I myself always have thought “Because fck you/him/her/them, that’s why” to be a perfectly adequate explanation for any action taken. So I am ready and willing to attribute most of the weekend’s news to that most durable human motivation. The difference is that the president-elect is saying, “Because fck you, that’s why” to democracy while the current president is saying, “Because fck you, that’s why” to the president-elect, and that, frankly, makes all the difference.

In pardoning his son, Hunter, the president got straight to the point.

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. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room – with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases. 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. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.

This, of course, has caused the birth of many bovines across the starboard half of our politics. This started with the president-elect, who will be free to pardon all his shock troops from the January 6 insurrection against the government a month from now. From NBC News:

Shortly after, Trump himself reacted publicly to the news, invoking prosecutions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Trump said on Truth Social.

No. Why? Because fck you, that’s why.

Many Republicans in Congress who have been longtime critics of Hunter Biden’s conduct swiftly attacked the decision on social media, calling it an effort to “avoid accountability” and casting the president as a “hypocrite.” “His FBI and DOJ raided Barron’s bedroom and Melania’s closet at Mar-a-Lago,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said on X, referring to the federal raid on Trump’s home in Florida in connection with the now-dismissed classified documents case against Trump. “Joe Biden is a liar and a hypocrite, all the way to the end.” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said on X that Biden “will go down as one of the most corrupt presidents in American history.”

Says the guy who was begging for a pardon back in ’21, when it looked like he might be joining the rest of the “hostages” in the hoosegow. And then, of course, Mr. Haney chimed in.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the House Oversight Committee, said on X, “It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability.” Comer’s committee has sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department recommending charges against Hunter Biden.

Meanwhile, the president-elect continued to fill up the Cabinet of Dr. Caligula with whatever he can find in the grease trap of his previous administration. Intriguingly, given the other major news of the weekend, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago found a job for a family member whom he’d pardoned.

“I am pleased to nominate Charles Kushner, of New Jersey, to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to France,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post announcing his choice. “He is a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our Country & its interests.” Mr. Kushner, 70, pleaded guilty in 2004 to 16 counts of tax evasion, a single count of retaliating against a federal witness and one of lying to the Federal Election Commission in a case that became a lasting source of embarrassment for the family. As part of the plea, Mr. Kushner admitted to hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, a witness in a federal campaign finance investigation, and sending a videotape of the encounter to his sister.

Well, it can’t have been a very long “lasting source of embarrassment” to his family considering a) none of them ever have evinced any shame whatsoever and b) he now has been greased into one of the best diplomatic posts the country has to offer. Oh, and they found a gig for Tiffany’s father-in-law, too, just as soon as someone reminded the president-elect who Tiffany was.

But the true news bookend to the Hunter Biden pardon was the announcement that Kash Patel, the living embodiment of the president-elect’s unslaked thirst for vengeance, would be nominated to head the FBI just as soon as they can figure out a way to shuffle Christopher Wray offstage. (Take no meetings in the upper floors for a while, Mr. Director.) Wray is in the middle of a ten-year term, and to install Patel the president-elect would have to fire Wray, for which I am certain he could concoct a reason. But still, putting Patel in charge of the FBI would finish the process of turning the Department of Justice into the Pequod. From The New Republic:

Patel has said he wants to go after government employees who leak information to the press, as well as journalists themselves. On Steve Bannon’s podcast in December, he said that he and other Trump loyalists “will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media. We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said to Bannon. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”

Because fck you, democracy. That’s why.

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