Hunter’s pardon was always on the table

Tribune Chronicle/Vindicator Editor Ed Puskas. by R. Michael Semple
“Honesty is such a lonely word
Everyone is so untrue
Honesty is hardly ever heard
And mostly what I need from you”
— Billy Joel, “Honesty,” from the 1978 album
“52nd Street”
I don’t think Billy wrote that song with politics in mind, but he might as well have. As another verse states, ” … but if you search for truthfulness, you might just as well be blind. It always seems to be so hard to give.”
It’s like the old joke goes: “How can you tell if a politician is lying? If his lips are moving, he’s lying.”
We should be used to it by now in American politics. Remember all the lies attributed to former President Donald Trump during his first term? It started Day 1 with exaggerated claims about the crowd size at his inauguration. It continued from there, with media fact-checking teams compiling ongoing lists of outright lies, exaggerations and half-truths from Trump on a regular basis during his term.
The 2024 campaign was no different, most notably including his “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” stories about Springfield.
And to be fair, let’s not forget the lies told about Trump during those four years and in the ensuing four years, right up until Nov. 5. In fact, some of his political opponents still insist that Trump is, at worst, a modern-day Adolf Hitler and, at best, a power-hungry fascist who hates women, people of color, kids and old people.
If the people saying those things really believed them, why did President Joe Biden host Trump at the White House after the election? Why did Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, the married hosts of “Morning Joe,” spend months vilifying Trump every day leading up to Nov. 5, only to grovel and meet him at Mar-a-Lago to beg forgiveness?
Could most of the vitriol have been an eminence front … a put-on?
How about the latest huge lie that became apparent when Biden pardoned his son Hunter? Joe spent months swearing up and down that he would not pardon Hunter on federal gun charges. But days before he was supposed to be sentenced, daddy came through with a get-out-of-jail-free card for his incorrigible offspring.
There was some predictable outrage, including a surprising amount from Democrats, who somehow ignored Joe’s 50-year history of doing what’s best for his family and bought the “I won’t pardon Hunter” promise.
I’m not sure how many people really believed Joe, but I didn’t. Maybe I’m just too jaded at this point in my life to buy into much of anything politicians say when they step in front of the cameras.
I get it. Hunter is Joe’s son. The Big Guy was always going to pardon Hunter if it came down to it. Once Hunter was convicted, there was never a doubt that one of Joe’s final acts in office would be to pardon him.
But Joe went even further than a simple pardon on the gun conviction. He also issued a “blanket pardon” for any criminal acts that Hunter “may have committed” going all the way back to 2014.
Doesn’t that make you wonder what might have been going on for the last decade that has not yet come to light? Here’s what else the pardon does: Hunter will be unable to invoke the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination if he is called to testify in the future.
That might be a reason the pardon hasn’t resulted in much of a ripple among Republicans, aside from GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson. There is a chance it could come back to bite the Bidens.
Another could be that most on the right probably knew — or at least suspected — that Joe was lying all along and wasn’t going to keep his promise.
Honesty? Yeah, right. This is politics in 2024. I’m not sure there is a lonelier word than “honesty” when it comes to American politics.
But let’s give Joe the benefit of the doubt for a moment. It could well be that he changed his mind about Hunter’s potential pardon after the Democrats orchestrated a virtual coup to get him off the ticket when they realized after his terrible debate performance that his chances of winning another term were gone.
Republicans also probably didn’t mind the pardon much because there won’t be much for Democrats to complain about when Trump takes office next month and issues some pardons of his own. (They’ll still complain anyway, though.)
Trump could conceivably issue pardons to supporters who were convicted on federal charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Earlier this week, Trump linked the Hunter pardon to the Jan. 6 prosecutions and called them “an abuse and a miscarriage of Justice” in a social media post.
It sure sounds as if one of Trump’s first acts in his second term will be pardons of at least some of those charged and convicted for storming the Capitol.
At least the president-elect hasn’t spent months denying his intentions. But I’m sure some other lies, exaggerations and half-truths will be uncovered before too long.
That’s how it goes today in politics, an arena in which honesty is hardly ever heard.
Ed Puskas is editor of the Tribune Chronicle and The Vindicator. He can be reached at epuskas@tribtoday.com and 330-841-1786.