SAUNDERS: Joe Biden flips, pardons son Hunter. No one is surprised

I am glad President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter. I don’t think it would be good for the country if a president’s son were put behind bars for a nonviolent crime.

Besides, I never believed President Biden when he said he wouldn’t pardon his son. I don’t take the president at his word. In 2019, Biden said he had “never spoken” to Hunter about his business dealings. But then his son refuted that.

I don’t blame Joe Biden for flipping on the pardon so much as I blame Hunter Biden for walking away from a plea deal on gun and tax evasion charges that would have spared him from prison time. He wanted an ironclad guarantee that other charges for other crimes would not follow.

Hunter later pleaded guilty. Because he was guilty.

In the pardon statement, Biden offered that he pardoned his son because a 2023 plea deal “unraveled in the courtroom” — without mentioning that his arrogant, entitled princeling of a son walked away from the package, even though, as Biden wrote Sunday, the deal “would have been a fair, reasonable solution of Hunter’s cases.”

I have another beef: the Bidens’ lack of introspection. POTUS claims Hunter was “singled out” because he is Biden’s son — without recognizing that his son was cashing in because he was Biden’s son.

Biden also claimed that he made the decision to pardon Hunter over the holiday weekend. Does anyone believe that?

Many Democrats are appalled. On 2Way’s “The Morning Meeting,” which streams on YouTube, Democratic strategist Dan Turrentine called the pardon “incredibly selfish” and added that Biden’s decision to run for re-election, announced in 2023, also was incredibly selfish.

The Hunter Biden pardon is a gift to Donald Trump. When he was president, Trump used the pardon power to the benefit family (Charles Kushner, the father of son-in-law Jared) and supporters (ex-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio).

Be it noted, Kushner was pardoned after he pleaded guilty and served two years in prison for a suite of charges that included tax evasion, lying to the Federal Election Commission and retaliation against a witness.

Arpaio’s pardon followed his conviction for criminal contempt after he flouted a court order in a racial profiling case.

In 2025, Trump will be able to point to Biden’s example when he issues second-term pardons and commutations.

While his father served as Barack Obama’s veep, Biden the Younger was paid more than $2 million by Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm under investigation. Hunter was greedy.

He was a tax cheat who eventually pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges, because, as Special Counsel David Weiss wrote, he spent profligately “on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes.”

The Yale Law graduate was discharged from the Navy Reserve after he tested positive for cocaine in 2013 and lied about his drug use to facilitate a gun purchase in 2018. Hunter was arrogant.

In October 2020, when the New York Post first reported about Hunter Biden’s laptop and incriminating emails, Big Media promptly dismissed the story’s credibility. The New York Times even reported that New York Post scribes didn’t want their bylines on laptop stories. He thought he had Big Media in his pocket.

More than 50 intelligence big-shots signed a public letter on the laptop story that warned, “our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

There was a caveat: There was no evidence of Russian involvement. Of course, that didn’t stop them.

Former Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper, former CIA head Mike Hayden and former acting CIA Director Mike Morell signed the document. That’s how cheaply they held their reputations.

Like Biden.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.