A November 29, 2024 photo shows President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden stepping out of a bookstore while shopping in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on November 29, 2024. | Source: MANDEL NGAN / Getty
The staunchest supporters of President-elect Donald Trump were in the throes of a major meltdown following the announcement that President Joe Biden would be officially pardoning his son following a federal conviction.
Meanwhile, those same MAGA cultists reveled with glee last week as a special prosecutor moved to drop all federal charges against Trump over stolen classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election ahead of the deadly Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021.
In case you missed it, Biden announced on Sunday that his oldest living son, Hunter Biden, would be given a “full and unconditional pardon” following his conviction for failing to pay federal income tax and illegally possessing a weapon.
Hunter Biden, 54, was convicted in September, more than a year after the U.S. Department of Justice indicted him.
Shortly afterward, President Biden said he would not pardon his son, whose battle with addiction has been amplified by political opponents.
Just about 50 days later, though, President Biden changed his tune as evidenced by his announcement on Sunday.
“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,” President Biden said in a statement. “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.”
Biden also added: “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.”
Hunter Biden was set to be sentenced later this month.
President Biden’s pardon of his son stood in stark contrast to the message he shared with America following Trump’s conviction in May: “No one is above the law.”
President Biden’s reversal on pardoning his son, in particular, prompted outrage from MAGA World and especially Trump, who called it “an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”
Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said on X, formerly Twitter, that he was “shocked Pres Biden pardoned his son Hunter bc he said many many times he wouldn’t & I believed him Shame on me.”
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who has literally defended the institution of slavery as a “necessary evil,” wrote on X that “Most Americans can sympathize with a father’s decision to pardon his son, even if they disagree. What they can’t forgive is Biden lying about it repeatedly before the election.”
Republican Congressman James Comer of Kentucky went full-fledged MAGA conspiracy theory in his response to the pardon, writing in part: “The charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg in the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden Crime Family have lied about to the American people. 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.”
The New York Post, a right-wing tabloid that all but serves as a megaphone for MAGA grievances, even got in on the meltdown with an op-ed authored by its editorial board lamenting “the latest chapter of spoiled man-child Hunter Biden coasting on his family name.”
But perhaps MAGA World has forgotten how Trump was also the beneficiary of similarly benevolent actions that alleviated his own legal woes after having juggled four separate criminal cases in this calendar year alone.
Special counsel Jack Smith likely only moved to drop the aforementioned federal criminal charges against Trump because the U.S. Supreme Court in July granted immunity for crimes that a president may commit. The historic decision meant that no matter how valid the charges were, Trump — and any president who either commits or is charged with a crime — shouldn’t expect to be held accountable for them.
In that ruling, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented that the decision not only makes a “mockery” of the Constitution and the American government but also paves the way for a potential abuse of such power to flout the law.
Republicans hailed the decision a victory, but Sotomayor sounded the alarm about potential consequences in a dissent that was joined by fellow liberal Associate Supreme Court Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan.
“Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.”
As it turns out, Sotomayor’s foreshadowing accurately predicted the future.
As such, a New York judge last month moved to indefinitely postpone Trump’s sentencing for his conviction for paying hush money to a porn star for political purposes — a case in which he was convicted on 34 felony counts. Trump was scheduled to be sentenced last month, but now that case has been thrown in limbo after Trump won the 2024 presidential election.
Despite those legal updates that also effectively allowed Trump to be pardoned, MAGA World and Trump were in an uproar after President Biden announced the pardon.
Now, who else will President Biden pardon during his final days in office?
This is America.
SEE ALSO:
Trump, Now A Felon, Earns His Stripes As The Grand Dragon Of Political Racism
Jack Smith’s 165-Page Legal Brief Detailing Trump’s 2020 Election Fraud Propaganda Unsealed
