No. of Recommendations: 2
You realize that your last sentence contradicts the first one, though.
Guilty as charged. Although from reading further, I see that you understood my point there.
I agree the DoJ did their job. I agree that Biden didn't use his position as President to try to stop them from doing their job.
That is my main point in this entire conversation. And it is the one most important to protecting the integrity of the DOJ and the Presidency.
I also feel that Biden acted unconscionably in asserting that the DoJ's decision to charge Hunter was in any way inappropriate.
I don't see where President Biden asserted that the DOJ's charging decision was inappropriate. What I'm reading is that he said it was the result of political pressure. The DOJ was absolutely pressured by Republicans to take on the case. There is nothing inappropriate about that. And once the DOJ took on the case, they found evidence and successfully prosecuted that evidence to convictions. Nothing inappropriate about that, either.
Political pressure was also put on the DOJ to refrain from entering into the plea deal. That was, IMHO, inappropriate. Plea deals are entered into all the time (even by the rich and famous in the list you posted earlier). Pushing the DOJ to go to trial was nothing more than a successful attempt to drag Hunter through the mud (and by extension, his father) and keep him in the news for political purposes. If there was a failure at the DOJ, that was it. But that wasn't a failure by President Biden. Once again, he stayed out of it. He and the DOJ remained independent.
But Hunter didn't deserve a pardon. From Jeffrey Toobin:
Toobin can stuff his opinion where the sun don't shine. And the stuff usually coming out of that orifice at least has some value as fertilizer. Toobin doesn't even have that.
Other defendants DO have the President of the United States to bail them out. Every Presidential pardon over the last two and a half centuries has been the President bailing someone out. And anyone convicted of a Federal crime can ask for that bail out. That those actual bail outs go to people with either good connections or a good story is the way the system works. Hunter happened to have a good connection. So did Nixon. Get over it.
As I reflect on all of this a bit, it's got the flavor of a Greek Tragedy. Hopefully history will be kinder to both Joe and Hunter than we are being today.
--Peter
