Hunter Biden Par­don Is Just Anoth­er Exam­ple Of Biden Admin’s Fail­ure To Bring Promised Trans­paren­cy To Gov­ern­ment

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s deci­sion to par­don his son after repeat­ed­ly stat­ing he would not is one of many bro­ken promis­es from his admin­is­tra­tion.

On day one, Biden’s for­mer press sec­re­tary Jen Psa­ki promised the admin­is­tra­tion would “bring trans­paren­cy and truth back to the gov­ern­ment.” Yet gov­ern­ment watch­dog com­plaints and con­gres­sion­al inquiries into exec­u­tive agen­cies doc­u­ment how the past four years have been char­ac­ter­ized by the oppo­site.

“The par­don is only the most recent of the egre­gious exam­ples of the president’s pat­tern of not deliv­er­ing on promis­es – espe­cial­ly eth­i­cal promis­es,” Pro­tect the Public’s Trust direc­tor Michael Cham­ber­lain told the Dai­ly Caller News Foun­da­tion. “Many of us remem­ber the promis­es to be the most eth­i­cal admin­is­tra­tion in his­to­ry. The real­i­ty of this admin­is­tra­tion and its top offi­cials has been quite dif­fer­ent.”

Ethics Takes The ‘Back Seat’

Psa­ki said in Jan­u­ary 2021 that Biden is “com­mit­ted to ensur­ing we have the most eth­i­cal­ly vig­or­ous admin­is­tra­tion in his­to­ry,” yet a recent PPT report doc­u­ments how agen­cies have faced seri­ous ethics con­cerns on his watch. Psa­ki her­self was sub­ject to an ethics com­plaint when she con­tin­ued field­ing ques­tions at the White House while nego­ti­at­ing for a job with MSNBC in 2022. (RELATED: ‘More Skele­tons In The Fam­i­ly Clos­et’: Biden’s Broad Par­don For His Son Looks Like Cov­er For ‘Nixon­ian’ Cor­rup­tion)

Deb­o­rah Haa­land, sec­re­tary of the Inte­ri­or, faced ques­tions from con­gres­sion­al lead­ers over her involve­ment with and poten­tial “mis­use of her posi­tion” to ben­e­fit the anti-fos­sil fuel group Pueblo Action Alliance (PAA), an orga­ni­za­tion where her daugh­ter works. After Haa­land par­tic­i­pat­ed in a film pro­duced by PAA, DOI ethics offi­cials con­tact­ed the film’s spon­sors to remove her title and pho­to from the pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al, accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by PPT.

Office of Air and Radi­a­tion (OAR) Assis­tant Admin­is­tra­tor Joseph Goff­man faced sev­er­al com­plaints from PPT for arrang­ing meet­ings with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from his for­mer employ­er and over 80 finan­cial hold­ings requir­ing his recusal from mat­ters involv­ing the same inter­ests. In a 71-page Sep­tem­ber report, the EPA Inspec­tor Gen­er­al found Goff­man “failed” to meet eth­i­cal oblig­a­tions regard­ing poten­tial finan­cial con­flicts of inter­est.

At the State Depart­ment, for­mer Spe­cial Cli­mate Envoy John Ker­ry mis­rep­re­sent­ed sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence by claim­ing green­house gasses kill 15 mil­lion annu­al­ly in a May 2023 speech, accord­ing to a com­plaint filed by PPT. Ker­ry also attract­ed con­gres­sion­al scruti­ny over the sus­pect­ed influ­ence of out­side envi­ron­men­tal groups on his office.

“From Karine Jean-Pierre’s mul­ti­ple Hatch Act vio­la­tions to BLM Direc­tor Tra­cy Stone-Manning’s appar­ent false state­ments to the Sen­ate dur­ing her con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing to Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Health Rachel Levine mak­ing unequiv­o­cal state­ments about gen­der tran­si­tion treat­ments for minors with vir­tu­al­ly no sci­en­tif­ic back­ing, it is clear that, as a Depart­ment of Ener­gy spokesper­son implied, ethics and keep­ing promis­es have tak­en the back seat,” Cham­ber­lain told the DCNF.

‘Nev­er Have Smok­ing Guns’

Dur­ing COVID-19, senior offi­cials in for­mer Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­ease direc­tor Dr. Antho­ny Fauci’s office used “decep­tive tac­tics” like inten­tion­al mis­spelling of key words to avoid their email com­mu­ni­ca­tions show­ing up in Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act (FOIA) requests, accord­ing to a Decem­ber report by the House Over­sight Com­mit­tee.

“We are all smart enough to know to nev­er have smok­ing guns, and if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails and if we found them we’d delete them,” David Morens, for­mer senior advi­sor to Fau­ci, wrote in a 2020 email released by the com­mit­tee in May.

Mean­while, White House offi­cials pres­sured social media plat­forms to restrict dis­fa­vored con­tent and to cen­sor spe­cif­ic indi­vid­u­als over vac­cine-relat­ed posts. (RELATED: Mark Zucker­berg Admits Biden-Har­ris Admin Pres­sured Face­book To Cen­sor Con­tent, Express­es Regret)

The Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol (CDC) like­wise flagged posts for plat­forms to remove, while the Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and Infra­struc­ture Secu­ri­ty Agency (CISA) engaged in “switch­board­ing,” send­ing posts deemed mis­in­for­ma­tion by local elec­tion offi­cials to social media com­pa­nies.

Biden also went back on his promise not to impose a fed­er­al vac­cine man­date.

Access For Activists

Activist groups qui­et­ly influ­enced admin­is­tra­tion pol­i­cy and received gov­ern­ment sup­port across mul­ti­ple agen­cies.

Biden’s Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) direct­ed mil­lions from the Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act (IRA) to left-wing activist groups, accord­ing to a House Ener­gy and Com­merce Com­mit­tee report.

Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices (HHS) Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Health Rachel Levine pres­sured the World Pro­fes­sion­al Asso­ci­a­tion for Trans­gen­der Health (WPATH) to remove min­i­mum age rec­om­men­da­tions from its guide­lines.

When the HHS’ Admin­is­tra­tion for Chil­dren and Fam­i­lies (ACF) was devel­op­ing its rule direct­ing LGBTQ-iden­ti­fy­ing fos­ter chil­dren to be placed homes that sup­port their iden­ti­ty, offi­cials con­sult­ed with social work­ers and activists who spent years test­ing a pro­gram that strong-arms par­ents into affirm­ing their child’s gen­der con­fu­sion, doc­u­ments obtained by the DCNF pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed.

Biden’s Men­tal State

For over a year, White House staff worked to con­ceal signs of Biden’s men­tal decline by tight­ly man­ag­ing his sched­ule, the Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed in July. Talk­ing about laps­es was a “no-go zone,” one for­mer offi­cial told the Wash­ing­ton Post in July.

The Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ) denied FOIA requests seek­ing audio record­ings from for­mer spe­cial coun­sel Robert Hur’s inter­view with Biden after Hur wrote in his report that Biden’s mem­o­ry was “sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­it­ed.” Biden invoked exec­u­tive priv­i­lege to block the tapes’ release in May.

Hur’s Feb­ru­ary report focused on Biden’s han­dling of clas­si­fied doc­u­ments. Biden’s attor­neys claimed to dis­cov­er the doc­u­ments at the Penn Biden Cen­ter in Nov. 2022, though House Over­sight Chair James Com­er not­ed the time­line began over a year before the midterm elec­tion, when White House employ­ees were sent to retrieve box­es of mate­r­i­al from the cen­ter.

After Biden’s dis­as­trous debate per­for­mance unleashed Democ­rats’ con­cern about his men­tal fit­ness, Biden pulled out of the pres­i­den­tial race with­out offer­ing a real expla­na­tion, while Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris evad­ed ques­tions about her knowl­edge of his state.

White House press sec­re­tary Karine Jean-Pierre con­tin­ued to affirm that Biden was “sharp as ever” after the debate, call­ing con­cerns that he could not fin­ish out his term “ridicu­lous.” Pri­or to the debate, the White House spun videos of Biden appear­ing to wan­der away or freeze as “cheap-fakes.”

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