The outrage surrounding President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden is not just about clemency for the relatively minor charges he was facing. The younger Biden has lived a life of great privileges, all granted to him by his father, who is equally undeserving of his own success. Fortunately, the two corrupt mediocrities will soon fade away and the public will be spared from watching them fail upward.
“If you have a piece of crack cocaine, no bigger than this quarter that I’m holding in my hand, one quarter of one dollar, we passed a law through the leadership of Senator Thurmond and myself and others. A law that says you’re caught with that, you go to jail for five years. You get no probation. You get nothing other than five years in jail, judge doesn’t have a choice.”
Senator Joe Biden in 1991
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.”
Vadym Pozharsky, Burisma executive
President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden was inevitable and inevitably controversial. Hunter Biden is the quintessential nepotism baby, the recipient of privileges such as being appointed to the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Burisma paid him $50,000 per month for doing nothing other than existing with the last name Biden. The younger Biden was the butt of jokes for years, a cocaine addict who somehow managed to never have any interaction with the criminal justice system and who achieved nothing without an assist from his father. He lamented having to give up his lucrative lobbying business after his father became Barack Obama’s running mate. “Dad joined the Obama ticket, and I had to find new work.”
Hunter Biden came to greater public attention in the waning days of the 2020 presidential campaign, when an email in his laptop (which he left unclaimed at a repair shop) indicated that his father had at least one meeting with a Burisma colleague, creating a possible conflict of interest. The laptop also contained videos of the younger Biden using the drug that if his father is to be believed, warranted five years in prison.
The laptop affair should have been a bigger news story but was quashed by the Biden campaign in collusion with corporate media, especially social media platforms such as Facebook and the site then known as Twitter. Twitter and Facebook censored any links about the laptop from appearing in any posts. In addition, the Biden campaign convened a group of intelligence “experts” who claimed the laptop story was little more than a Russian disinformation campaign. This conspiracy among the media and the permanent government may have killed the story late in the campaign, but the establishment interference was never forgotten or forgiven.
The case can be made that absent being Joe Biden’s child, Hunter wouldn’t be facing any charges at all. But it isn’t surprising that there is so much conversation about the pardon, especially after Biden previously stated that he would not pardon his son.
In addition to doing what he said he would not do, there are two other problems for the elder Biden. One is his lackluster record of issuing pardons for others during his term in office. He can pardon anyone convicted of a federal offense before January 20, 2025, the date he leaves office and Donald Trump returns to the white house. But to date his pardon record has been stingy, with the fewest number of presidential pardons since Richard Nixon.
The other issue is Ukraine. Hunter Biden’s pardon is interesting because it covers any crimes committed from January 1, 2014, to the present. The year 2014 is the year of the U.S. backed Maidan coup against the elected Ukrainian government. He was charged with an illegal gun purchase made in 2018 and of tax evasion from 2016 to 2019. Why does the pardon begin in 2014?
Vice President Biden was the Obama administration point man on Ukraine. The Maidan coup was the beginning of an effort to destroy Russia’s economy and use Ukraine as a proxy in that conflict. As president, Biden is very much committed to this misguided plan, claiming in 2022 that sanctioning Russia’s economy would “turn the ruble to rubble.” Now as he leaves office, he is escalating conflict with Russia in Ukraine and in Syria.
It isn’t clear what the younger Biden might have been doing on his Burisma seat that caused his father to extend the pardon back to 2014. It’s possible that there isn’t really much to find out, that Hunter Biden existed as a cipher for his father, and contributed little to his position, but we are only left with speculation. Now we will never know or if we ever do, it won’t matter because Hunter Biden cannot be prosecuted for any activity related to his work in Ukraine.
Young Biden was at the center of a scandal but all in all things turned out well for him. He wrote a memoir, “Beautiful Things,” and he even sold artwork which netted him $1.5 million. He made money from a book and his paintings and in all probability didn’t worry about his legal troubles, knowing that his father would pardon him.
The outrage generated by the pardon is in large part due to Hunter’s failson status. He is a man who only succeeded in life because his father was a powerful senator, then vice president, and finally president of the United States. His drug addiction created personal problems for himself and for his family, but he once smoked crack in a rental car which means his identity could have been easily traced, but no one called the police.
If father and son have anything in common, it is mediocrity. Biden was never thought of as an intellectual giant in the senate. He was known as a race baiting right winger. In 1977 he warned that school busing would create a “racial jungle” and in later years he proudly shepherded Bill Clinton’s 1994 Crime Bill through the senate and bragged about the draconian sentences and mass incarceration that resulted.
Senator Biden’s conservatism made him an attractive running mate for Barack Obama, who had marketed himself as a progressive when he was anything but that. The phony leftist needed racist, right-wing cover, and the senator who bragged about “death penalty for jaywalking” was the perfect antidote.
Biden was no different as vice president, known for blurting out what are kindly referred to as gaffes, a nice way of saying that he is not very bright. This not very bright man was influential however, and was able to make sure that his lightweight son had every undeserved advantage.
Hunter Biden was troubled though, so addicted to drugs that he forgot he left a laptop in a Delaware repair shop and that it contained videos of sex acts and drug use. Of course, it caused embarrassment to his equally mediocre father who was fortunate to have the Democratic Party establishment and oligarchy coalesce around his presidential campaign in 2020.
Aside from deadender democrats, most of the nation is sick of Joe Biden. Some 7 million people who voted for him couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Kamala Harris, his handpicked successor. Instead of concluding his affairs as a lame duck soon to leave office, he instead extended the anti-Russia proxy battle from Ukraine to Syria and continues funding the Israeli genocidal apartheid government.
Millions of people watched a man whose health declined, yet who continued his re-election bid. The top-down oligarchic machinations which made Kamala Harris the nominee were a bridge too far and of course she was defeated.
Now with less than two months in office, Joe threw his disgraced son a lifeline. President Biden will not be missed. Even before he was shoved out of the race his approval ratings were in the basement.
He said himself he was a “transitional” figure. He should have acted like it and accepted being a one-term president. In doing so he would have kept his dignity and his party's fortunes intact. Instead, he’ll be remembered for genocide, cognitive decline, and a failed son who always manages to land on his feet.
Updated on December 4, 2024.
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents . You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret dot kimberley at blackagendareport dot com.
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