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stereotomy says
RWSGFY says
Who's gonna pardon Bidet now that Kummalala is not a thing anymore?
Indeed . . .
Biden can pardon himself and the rest of the Biden family. I predict a Biden family pardon after New Years.
Just when depressed Democrats, still licking their post-election wounds, thought things couldn’t get any worse, Joe broke wind at the DC dinner party. If anything, the Biden Crime Family Pardon was an absurd faux pas, which continued heaving up hilarity and political entertainment all day yesterday, in heaping handfuls, as corporate media flailed wildly in desperate search of a mutually agreed narrative. It’s almost like their handlers won’t tell them what to do. Behold, Google’s Fractured Fairy Tales, I mean Top Stories, this morning:
For most of yesterday morning, the media tried coalescing around a typical “Republicans Pounce” narrative, sketching Biden as, perhaps, a good father, even if a bad president. In this failed morality play, Republicans were the unfeeling interlopers butting into a private family drama, like a nosy neighbor who saw cop cars at the house last night, and came over to deliver the unsolicited advice that “if you want to know what I think, you should just let him go to jail, to learn his lesson.”
But that narrative quickly collapsed, since Republicans weren’t so much pouncing as they were rolling around on the floor laughing and pointing at duped Democrat talking heads who, having bought Joe’s regularly regurgitated lie about never ever pardoning Hunter, swanked around for a year bragging about their party’s undying love and irrevocable respect for the majesty of the law, compared to knuckle-dragging Republicans. But now, these ‘elites’ look like idiots, and it smarts.
When the “Republicans Pounce” narrative collapsed yesterday, the narrative devolved into a chaotic free-for-all. Even beyond how bad the pardon looked yesterday, this scandal is further damaging the already well-dinged Democrat ‘brand.’ Democrats who crossed the aisle and voted for Trump are probably thanking their lucky stars. To witness the astonishing same-day rhetorical evolution, consider just two headlines, both from far-left Axios. Here’s Sunday’s headline, right after the pardon news broke. ...
Here’s the bigger point: the reason for the Democrats’ deepening identity crisis is that, at least on the Hunter pardon issue, corporate media is obviously adrift, for the first time in years having no one to tell them what the approved narrative is. The Democrat party is both leaderless, thanks to an irascible, grudge-holding, hell-hath-no-fury like a scorned commander in chief who’s turned against the party, and also rudderless, having been abandoned by its deep state handlers. (At least, on this issue.)
Believe me, it’s tempting to speculate on where media coordination and Democrat party discipline has run off to. Let’s watch and see if they can stitch a coherent narrative back together today.
Meanwhile, yesterday’s comments included tons of questions about legal points relating to Hunter’s pardon. Evidently, I did a poor job anticipating the issues, so I’ll do my best today to answer these fine legal points.
How broad was Hunter’s pardon? Does it include (x, y, z)?
Hunter’s pardon was unusually and historically broad. The next closest example was Gerald Ford’s controversial 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon. This is a deeply embarrassing comparison for politically savvy Democrats, to whom Nixon was arguably even more Hitler than Donald Trump.
Hunter’s pardon was so broad it included unknown crimes and a breathtaking decade-long time span. Usually, presidents prefer not to pardon unknown crimes, because it could be badly embarrassing later if it turned out the person murdered somebody or blew up an airplane or something.
In other words, it wasn’t even close to being “just” a pardon. People are intentionally lying who claim Biden “understandably” pardoned his son out of protective fatherly instinct. Had Biden just been acting as a reluctant but loving father, the pardon would have been as narrow as possible or at least, limited to known crimes. Saying this pardon was just because Biden didn’t “want to see his son go to jail” is kind of like saying he only asked the Ukrainians for a little walking around money during his visit.
As for its scope, the pardon can’t reach two types of crimes: first, no future crime can be pardoned. Second, since the president's pardon power applies only to federal offenses, Hunter can still be charged under state law, if there was any state Attorney General brave enough to do it.
Did Hunter Biden’s pardon also ‘essentially’ pardon Joe Biden?
No, I don’t agree with this hot take. Biden did not “essentially pardon himself.” He might have pardoned his agent or his co-conspirator, but it seems unlikely to me that Joe can raise for himself any effective pardon-related defense. The only truth in this hot take is the pardon might make it harder to prosecute Joe — if, that is, you believed Hunter would have ever testified truthfully against his dad.
Can Hunter be compelled to testify since, having been pardoned, he cannot raise the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination?
Unfortunately, Hunter probably cannot be compelled to testify. He could still incriminate himself in crimes under state law (that were not pardoned).
Why did Hunter’s DOJ prosecutors refuse to voluntarily dismiss his case?
Yesterday, Newsweek ran a story headlined, “Prosecutors urge court not to dismiss Hunter Biden case after pardon.” This new created confusion and a lot more hot takes. But there’s nothing there. It’s only a fine procedural argument.
Hunter’s lawyers immediately and correctly sought dismissal of the criminal cases after the pardon came through. The DOJ special counsel handling the cases immediately responded, saying ‘dismissal’ wasn’t the correct procedure, since the crimes and convictions were only pardoned, not vacated or expunged. The special counsel argued instead that the cases should be administratively terminated.
In other words, everyone agrees the cases should end. The only argument is over how to end them. Hunter’s lawyers are earning their fees by trying to clean up his record as best they can on the way out.
If you are looking for a deeper dive, including the Hunter Pardon Kiev Connection, try Ron Paul’s reaction discussion:
https://x.com/RonPaul/status/1863710255462412337
@RonPaul
Joe Biden's pardon of his son Hunter is the most sweeping Presidential pardon since Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon.
It represents the deep corruption and contempt for the rule of law that has characterized the Biden presidency.
But it is also important for another reason: the pardon is an attempt to erase the Biden family involvement with Ukraine from the time of the 2014 coup through the millions that passed into family accounts.
Our current state of near WWIII is directly tied to the Biden family seeking personal riches in Ukraine.
Mike Benz: Hunter Biden Pardoned For "Selling U.S. Foreign Policy For The Personal Profit Of The Biden Family"
Tim Hains
December 3, 2024
"Foundation For Freedom Online" founder Mike Benz comments on the Hunter Biden pardon during an interview with Liz Wheeler.
MIKE BENZ: Yeah, so shocking! The size and scope of it, though, is honestly even a little surprising to me. I mean, it's an 11-year total blank-slate, get-out-of-all-crimes-free card. I don't know if this is completely unprecedented in all pardons in U.S. history, but I've never seen anything like it.
This is 11 years, from January 2014 to the present day -- all crimes, whether charged or not. I mean, he could have murdered someone in between that time, and he's evidently got a pardon for it now. And I think the reason for this wide scope is because what Hunter Biden was doing was essentially selling U.S. foreign policy for the personal profit of the Biden family.
That's why it seems like almost every member of the Biden family has a professional job, almost like in the mafia. It's like they keep it in the blood, so they can share bank accounts, keep things close-held, and everyone has their different parts -- between Hunter and Jim. I know a lot of people are now expecting, you know, James Biden to receive pardons as well.
LIZ WHEELER: Don't you think he will before Biden's out of office?
MIKE BENZ: It seems highly likely, and it may have the same sort of almost indefinite term. I mean, why not make it 40 years going back? Why stop at 11? Obviously, it's for the reasons that you noted.
I think what's implicated here is something far more vast and deep than Hunter Biden himself or even Joe Biden himself. I think this really gets to the heart of the diplomatic octopus of the U.S. empire, which could potentially create international and diplomatic blowback on the U.S. if these crimes are revealed -- not just to the American people but to the international community.
I think this is why you have the CIA all over this story. You have the State Department all over this story. You have USAID all over this story. You have the Pentagon all over it. I mean, you mentioned the Ukraine impeachment in 2019. That was led by, effectively, the Pentagon through the Vindman brothers and the CIA whistleblower -- whose name you were not allowed to say on social media for several weeks -- Eric Ciaramella, right?
Ciaramella was actually on the email chain about Burisma with Joe Biden directly from the CIA. And if you recall, we have whistleblower testimony to Congress that the CIA actually intervened in the Justice Department's intent to do an interview of Kevin Morris, the "sugar daddy" who paid Hunter Biden's taxes for five years consecutively. And when the IRS and the Justice Department sought to get more information about Hunter's financial sponsor, they were waved off by the Central Intelligence Agency.
This really gets to the heart of what Burisma and Hunter Biden are all about. On the one hand, there's the personal profit side of it -- the fact that Hunter was getting personally enriched by his presence on the Ukrainian private energy company board. Just as he was, for example, in ePlata, which was a micro-financing company to provide banking services to illegal immigrants. He had an almost 10% equity stake in that, Hunter Biden did, at the same time that his father was opening up the U.S. border in order to create a flood of the market for those micro-finance transactions.
On top of that, Joe Biden then used his Justice Department to pressure banks to provide banking services to illegal immigrants. So you basically have a locked-in market for the illegal immigrant micro-financing company that Hunter was on. He was doing the same thing with China and the LNG space there. But the Burisma story, I think, activated the FBI in the 2020 election cycle. It activated the CIA. It activated the defense and intelligence spheres because nobody wants the dirty laundry to air on the international stage.
If Russia is able to hold up these disclosures and documents and forensically piece it all together -- just how corrupt the whole U.S. involvement in Ukraine was -- then that provides a powerful forum for Russian propaganda to win hearts and minds in Ukraine, in Central and Eastern Europe, and to neutrals like India or Pakistan. They can say, "This is what the U.S. has been doing this whole time. They've been using this as their personal piggy bank. Here we have the direct files from the CIA, from the Pentagon, from the State Department."
There's so much more to this, but I think that's what's motivating this need to stop -- not just pardoning Hunter, but to block a Justice Department investigation into the underlying crimes.
Jean-Pierre said as far back as July to Fox News reporter Mark Meredith that no pardon would happen.
At the time, the question was hypothetical, but when Hunter was indicted a few weeks later, she doubled down.
“So I’ve answered this question before,” Jean-Pierre responded.
“It was asked of me not too long ago — a couple of weeks ago — and I was very clear, and I said no.” ...
Hunter was set up on those charges to get the heat off his dad’s alleged bribery and payoffs from foreign entities.
He was clearly told to let the process play out and that he’d get pardoned at some point.
After all, Hunter knows exactly what his dad did, and could spill the beans if his father let him hang out to dry.
That issue is moot because there is neither a Biden nor a Hunter. We'll probably watch this thing dry up and blow away because it disposes of the masks and requires no further actions. Like the Durham big nothing fiasco, I would imagine lawyers behinds the scene will be told to drop it.
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