President Biden is paving the way for a pardon for his son Hunter as his Justice Department considers possible indictment stemming from a years-long federal investigation, according to the New York Post columnist and author of “Laptop from Hell”, Miranda Devine.
“This mythology of Joe Biden that’s been around for over four decades, which is that he’s a charming family man … a moderate Democrat, lunch pail Joe, working class Joe, the poor man of Congress and a wonderful family man full of empathy because of the tragedies in his own life. That’s what he’s playing,” Devine said on Sunday’s “Fox & Friends Weekend.”
“I think the endgame is that he’s setting up … framing this sympathy card so that when the time comes, maybe in his lame duck period, he forgives Hunter and Americans will forgive him because they’ll say, well, Hunter was a drug addict and Joe just loves his family, and he’s been through enough tragedies in his life,” she continued. “Leave him alone.”
Devine’s warning follows President Biden’s rare interview, in which he dismissed the possibility that his son’s charges will have any effect on his tenure, claiming the issue is a “political witch hunt” orchestrated by his opponents
“My son has done nothing wrong,” Biden said during an interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
“I trust him. I have faith in him and that affects my presidency making me proud of him,” he added.
The Post columnist issued a prognostication about how the fallout from the criminal charges filed against his son would play out.
“It’s obviously rehearsed, and Joe Biden’s plan is to completely recuse himself from the influence peddling operation he was involved in with his son Hunter and his brother Jim, pretend it has nothing to do with him and that Hunter is just being persecuted in a political witch hunt,” Devine said.
“That’s probably the only way it can go, given that he’s been lying about his involvement since before the 2020 election,” he continued. “And it will work for him with these Americans, and there are still many of them who believe that Joe Biden, that his only scene is that he loves his son too much.”
He also gave his perspective on how the Hunter Biden laptop is directly related to Joe Biden, which would further complicate matters because the president might have to take the unprecedented step of pardoning both him and his son.
“I think from his point of view, he feels he hasn’t done anything wrong,” Devine said. “Remember, on his laptop, he says that he gave half to give half of his money to his father, who was basically playing the bag man of the operation, so he just wants to save himself.”
The Justice Department has a number of rules on presidential pardons, which may apply to the Bidens’ case. According to the American Bar Association, it is an open question whether a president can pardon himself.
“An unsettled legal question is whether a president can pardon himself,” the ABA states. “The Constitution says that a president cannot pardon ‘in cases of impeachment.’ Legal expert opinions on this matter vary, and the United States Supreme Court has not ruled on the issue.”
A decision on possible charges against Hunter is expected soon, according to sources close to the matter who spoke to The Washington Post. US Attorney David Weiss is said to be close to a verdict in the case, which focuses on possible tax and gun-related crimes. The report came after Hunter’s lawyers met with DOJ officials in late April, during which tensions allegedly escalated between her and her father’s lawyers, according to a report by Axios .
The same report claimed Friday that those tensions led Hunter Biden to hire a new lawyer to take a more combative approach without first consulting his father’s legal advisers. A former Justice Department spokesman noted that Hunter Biden’s actions, which could go over the rails of the president’s advisers, could be “a legitimate headache for the White House.”
Hunter Biden is also the subject of a congressional investigation into his foreign business dealings and a legal battle in Arkansas over child support for his four-year-old daughter.
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