
In one of his very final acts as the putative President, literally minutes before Donald Trump was re-inaugurated, the Big Guy issued a pardon to all his siblings and their spouses.
Joe’s five pardons together with his earlier pardon of his son Hunter for tax evasion and gun-running convictions (and all other crimes known and unknown over a period of ten years) bring Joe’s pardons of family members to a total of six.
In case you’re wondering what crimes these six family members could possibly have committed that required a presidential pardon, let’s just say it was a family business. It was a lucrative one that raked in tens of millions of dollars in exchange for unidentified work. According to emails from Hunter, 10% was earmarked for the guy issuing the pardon – that very same Big Guy.
These Sordid Six thus join the 1,499 rapists, murderers and molesters whose sentences Joe commuted last week. It wouldn’t surprise me if the 1,499 feel insulted to be lumped in with these particular six.
Altogether, Joe issued 8,064 pardons and commutations – far more than any President in history and dwarfing the 237 by President Trump in his first term or even the 1927 by President Obama in two terms.
But I’m OK with the pardoning of the Sordid Six, despite the obvious self-dealing and miscarriage of justice. Here’s why.
Because it labels them guilty.
It’s true that, as a technical legal matter, a pardon does not necessarily mean a person is guilty. (On the other hand, an old Supreme court case suggests that accepting a pardon is, indeed, an admission of guilt.) And it’s true that Joe included some self-serving happy talk about how his fam’ is really, truly not guilty of the crimes for which he pardoned them.
Like Hunter, the other five did “nothing wrong,” Joe tells us. He’s just concerned that overzealous prosecutors might make their lives hell for political purposes. You see, using the justice system to make a person’s life hell is something Joe is familiar with.
(There is the possibility that the pardons open the door to Congress or enterprising prosecutors calling these people to testify under oath against Joe or others – testimony they would be obligated to give since they won’t be able to invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege against incriminating themselves of crimes for which they’ve been pardoned. On the other hand, they haven’t been pardoned for state crimes, since the presidential pardon power does not go that far. Therefore, there’s the possibility of being prosecuted for, say, criminally evading state income taxes, and so they might still have a Fifth Amendment privilege. I’ll let lawyers better than I sort this out.)
Leave aside the legalisms. At this stage, the court that matters most is the court of public opinion, and a subsidiary court that could be called the court of historians. In those courts, Joe’s pardon of all three of his siblings, their spouses, and his son, will be seen through common sense eyes, especially in view of highly incriminating hard evidence that has already been uncovered (such as the Big Guy emails mentioned above).
And so, common sense and public opinion says the seven Biden family members are guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, and guilty.
In a matter of weeks, Donald Trump and his fusillades were able to get guilty verdicts on Joe Biden’s entire family that Joe and his army of prosecutors were not able to get on Trump, alone, over the course of four years.
Remind me never to play poker – or geopolitics – against President Donald J. Trump.



