With the stroke of a pen, Joe Biden torched his reputation and proved Donald Trump right
They say history is written by the winners, but in Biden’s case, history will have to make an exception, thanks to his actions in his final moments as president, says James Morrow
Opinion
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When Donald Trump sat down to draft his second inaugural address and got to writing the paragraph about needing to fix America’s “radical and corrupt establishment”, he probably had no idea just how right he would wind up being proven.
On Monday local time, with just moments to spare in his presidency and with all the shambling subtlety of a drunk trying to sneak out on a bar tab, Joe Biden signed blanket pre-emptive pardons for his brothers James and Frank, his sister Valerie, and their respective spouses.
As if to prove Trump’s point, with a stroke of a pen Joe Biden undid all his previous pledges (“I give you my word as a Biden!”) to not issue pre-emptive pardons for family members.
At the same time, he torched years of Democrat Party rhetoric that to accept a pardon is to admit guilt while blunting criticism of Trump’s pardons for January 6 rioters.
A retiring politician organising legal immunity for his family to protect them from claims they cashed in on the family name is (or at least should be) the sort of thing you might see in the third world, not the United States of America.
They say history is written by the winners, but in Biden’s case, history will have to make an exception.
Former president Biden’s reputation as a failed and narcissistic one term president who skulked out of the White House covering his own tracks is entirely of his own making.
Nor was it just his family who got get out of jail free cards.
Dr Anthony Fauci, who has stood accused of outsourcing deadly gain of function research to China to get around US law, potentially unleashing the coronavirus pandemic, won a pardon.
Coincidentally, Fauci’s pardon dates back to 2014 – the very year the US banned domestic labs from playing with viruses to weaponise them and make them stronger.
Talk about Covid immunity.
Former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who is said to have tampered with witnesses as part of her committee’s investigations in to the January 6 riots, also won a pardon.
Weirdly, just two weeks ago, Biden presented Cheney with the Presidential Citizens Medal, raising the obvious question of why would anyone so esteemed need such extraordinary privilege?
Finally, the architect of Biden’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, General Mark Milley, was another lucky winner.
Milley’s critics have accused him of, among other things, going outside the chain of command by calling up his Chinese counterparts to undermine Trump in the final months of his first term as president.
The line from the Biden camp and its lapdogs is that the pardons were to protect the former president’s family and allies from revenge attacks via the Department of Justice.
Yet there is a huge, glaring flaw in this logic.
These pre-emptive pardons have caught Biden’s legacy in a trap of his own making.
Either they are an admission either that the Bidens and their pals did something wrong, or they are ad admission that federal law enforcement is a servant of its political masters.
After all, if the DOJ and the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies cannot be weaponised, why would Biden’s family and friends need pre-emptive pardons?
Alternatively, if these agencies can be used for political ends, Biden’s signing of pre-emptive pardons is all but an admission that he used them as his own secret police to persecute his political enemies.
But even if there are reams of evidence that federal agencies can and have been used for political purposes (whether subjecting conservatives to tax audits or raiding former presidents’ homes as at Mar-a-Lago) Biden’s fear that it could happen again does not mean the Bidens are innocent. Just the opposite.
Now, it will be left to historians and investigative journalists to dive into the true extent of the Biden family and their influence peddling schemes which were perhaps most dramatically revealed – and covered up – via Hunter Biden’s wayward laptop.
Questions about the Bidens’ dealings with China, Ukraine, and a host of other actors still remain unanswered.
As does the source of all the cash that paid for the former president’s real estate portfolio and cut countless rent, alimony, and rehab cheques for Hunter.
In the meantime, perhaps the last word is given to Barack Obama, whom Biden served as vice-president.
Speaking to a fellow Democrat nearly a decade ago about the prospect of Biden running for president, Obama reportedly warned against the move, saying, “don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.”
Just maybe, they should have taken his advice.
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