Blue State Blues: The Real Sur­prise in the Hunter Biden Par­don

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Blue State Blues: The Real Surprise in the Hunter Biden Pardon

I must admit that I was sur­prised by at least one aspect of the Hunter Biden par­don: the fact that any­one else was sur­prised by it.

Few of us in the alter­na­tive media believed Pres­i­dent Joe Biden when he promised, for years, that he would not par­don his son — even after Hunter was con­vict­ed ear­li­er this year of lying on his gun pur­chase form. We nev­er trust­ed Biden — a liar through­out his half-cen­tu­ry in pol­i­tics. We also expect­ed that any father would do the same.

We also knew that Pres­i­dent Biden would par­don Hunter Biden to cov­er up his own crimes, name­ly his involve­ment in an influ­ence-ped­dling scheme that dates back to the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and per­haps even ear­li­er.

Hunter took a posi­tion on the board of Buris­ma, a Ukrain­ian ener­gy com­pa­ny, in 2014, when his father was not only the Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States but also Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s point man on Ukraine — a clear con­flict of inter­est.

That was only one of sev­er­al for­eign busi­ness rela­tion­ships that Hunter Biden cul­ti­vat­ed, trad­ing on his prox­im­i­ty to his father to rake in cash that, accord­ing to Hunter’s own claims, went back to his father and the fam­i­ly.

In an even more egre­gious exam­ple from 2017, doc­u­ment­ed on Hunter’s aban­doned lap­top, he set aside 10% own­er­ship for the “big guy” in a joint ven­ture with a state-linked Chi­nese com­pa­ny that lat­er blew up (with Hunter tak­ing the cash).

That is why Pres­i­dent Biden’s par­don extend­ed back­wards in time to Jan­u­ary 1, 2014 — long before the gun crimes, and some of the tax eva­sions (at least, those that were pros­e­cut­ed — ear­li­er years of alleged eva­sion had already run the statute of lim­i­ta­tions, thanks to pros­e­cu­tors who, far from sin­gling Hunter Biden out, tried to pro­tect him until their gam­bit was exposed). The pres­i­dent wants to keep a lid on his own role in the influ­ence-ped­dling busi­ness.

None of this was a sur­prise to con­ser­v­a­tives. We report­ed Hunter Biden’s odd ascent at Buris­ma in 2014. We not­ed, in 2019, report­ing by John Solomon (then writ­ing at The Hill) about Joe Biden’s bizarre boast in 2018 about how he had threat­ened to with­hold $1 bil­lion in cru­cial loan guar­an­tees from Ukraine in 2016 unless the gov­ern­ment fired an alleged­ly cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tor who just hap­pened to have juris­dic­tion over an active inves­ti­ga­tion into Buris­ma.

To con­ser­v­a­tives, the 2019–2020 impeach­ment of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump was as much about cov­er­ing up the Biden family’s cor­rup­tion as it was about remov­ing or tar­nish­ing Trump. We also believed that the efforts by the media, the tech com­pa­nies, and the nation­al secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus to cen­sor sto­ries about Hunter Biden’s lap­top were part of a coor­di­nat­ed effort to cov­er for the Biden fam­i­ly and inter­vene on Joe Biden’s behalf in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

But to Democ­rats, and to sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of the main­stream media, Hunter Biden was just a recov­er­ing addict; Joe Biden was clean­ing up Ukraine when he demand­ed the pros­e­cu­tor be fired; Don­ald Trump was abus­ing his pow­er when he asked Ukraine to look into the Bidens; the lap­top was (and still might be!) Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion; Joe nev­er had any­thing to do with his family’s busi­ness inter­ests; and Hunter was being unfair­ly tar­get­ed by nasty Repub­li­cans.

They believed all of that, because some­how they believed that Joe Biden was trust­wor­thy; that he meant it when he ran on a slo­gan of “truth over lies”; and that he, unlike evil Trump, cared about “insti­tu­tions” and the “rule of law.”

They didn’t believe it because Joe Biden fooled them. They believed it because they con­vinced them­selves to believe it.

That was the real sur­prise. Per­haps it shouldn’t have been. Here are their names. Nev­er trust them, if you ever did.

Joel B. Pol­lak is Senior Edi­tor-at-Large at Bre­it­bart News and the host of Bre­it­bart News Sun­day on Sir­ius XM Patri­ot on Sun­day evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agen­da: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, avail­able for pre-order on Ama­zon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Lega­cy of Don­ald Trump’s Pres­i­den­cy, now avail­able on Audi­ble. He is a win­ner of the 2018 Robert Novak Jour­nal­ism Alum­ni Fel­low­ship. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @joelpollak.