Thanks, Joe, for saving the worst for last. Uncle Joe’s utter failure to deal with his pathetic son’s abysmal self-promotion and exploitation of his family name was always “unattractive”, but this miserable pardon is infinitely worse, giving anti-anti-Trumpers and pro-Trumpers alike an infinite amount of wind both beneath their wings and in their mouths to proclaim the “corruption” of America’s federal justice system, when the true corruption lies, not in the Justice Departement (not now, at least), but in Donald Trump, Hunter Biden, and now Uncle Joe as well.
It's “arguable” that the gun charges against Biden—basically, owning a gun while stoned and lying about it—were excessive, the tax charges most clearly were not. Biden pleaded guilty to nine tax charges, including three felonies. Here’s a list:
Subverted the payroll and tax withholding process of his own company by withdrawing millions outside of the payroll and tax withholding process;
Spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills;
In 2018, stopped paying his outstanding and overdue taxes for tax year 2015;
Willfully failed to pay his 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 taxes on time, despite having access to funds to pay some or all of these taxes;
Willfully failed to file his 2017 and 2018 tax returns, on time; and
When he did finally file his 2018 returns, included false business deductions in order to reduce the very substantial tax liability he faced as of February 2020.
Not only did Uncle Joe wipe the slate clean for all of these charges, along with the gun thing, he included language pardoning Hunter for all “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024,” protecting Hunter from any charges that might be filed by the Trump administration as well—probably a “good idea” if Joe was going to pardon his son for the charges standing against him now, but, of course, he shouldn’t have pardoned him for the offenses outstanding against him now.
It's a measure of the contentiousness of our current politics that ugly presidential pardons have become pretty much a permanent part of our political landscape. Trump’s pardons were in a class of their own, naturally—how could they not be?—but Bill Clinton’s “Fuck you, I’m shipping out” get out of jail free cards were pretty disgusting as well, though not as bad as George H. W. Bush’s ass-covering pardons that he handed out to many of the leading participants in the Iran-Contra affair. Many of these individuals had been indicted for either obstruction of justice or perjury or both, and might have been tempted to strike a bargain with prosecutors by, among other things, testifying against Bush himself, who famously claimed to be “out of the loop”, which was a very deliberate lie on Bush’s part, contradicted by his own White House diary, in which he said, speaking of the return of American hostages held by Iranian terrorists, “I'm one of the few people that know fully the details, and there is a lot of flak and misinformation out there. It is not a subject we can talk about...”.
