“There was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case” – Special Prosecutor David Weiss
Why would Joe Biden pardon his son for crimes he ‘may have’ committed over 11 years
Anyone who has followed Joe Biden’s political career knew that he would be pardoning his son Hunter – not as an “anguished father,” as The New York Times suggests but because the path to implicating Joe Biden in corruption passes through Hunter. The only way to block that path is to pardon him – not for so much for the petty crimes for which the son was convicted – but rather the unnamed crimes covered by the sweeping eleven-year period that he “may have committed.” These would, naturally, include the influence peddling as a corporate hack for Chinese, Romanian, Kazak, Russian, and most importantly, Ukrainian companies.
It is worth recalling that when Hunter Biden with no experience in the oil and gas industry was a member of the Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, the company was under investigation in Ukraine by Prosecutor General Victor Shokin, no stranger to controversy, himself. He was not able to complete his investigation as the Ukraine Parliament under extreme pressure from then Vice-President, Joe Biden voted to dismiss him in April, 2016.
Indeed, Joe Biden publicly claimed credit for Shokin’s firing by threatening to withhold $1 billion in aid to Ukraine in 2018: “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired,” Biden crowed at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Why would the Vice-President of United States be so interested in the career of a criminal prosecutor in a foreign country? The official version is that Shokin was corrupt and failed to prosecute politicians implicated in corruption. He was bought and paid for by the Oligarch who became president, Petro Poroshenko. He did however successfully prosecute the murders of a number of journalists, and one source quoted by The Independent quoted a source who said his tenure was “no more, but no less corrupt” than what went before it. Ukrainian government officials have never been known for being paragons of virtue. Playing the game was how someone rose through the ranks. Surely, ordering the dismissal of a public official stands as a gross instance of foreign interference in the domestic matters of Ukraine. Why was this so important to then Vice-President Biden?
Shokin was investigating Burismo Holdings an oil and gas company that was paying then Vice-President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden a million dollars a year for a position on their board of directors despite the younger Biden’s utter lack of expertise or experience in the oil and gas industry. The United States House of Representatives Oversight and Accountability Committee stated on their website that their investigation alleges that Hunter Biden received $6.5 million from Burismo. Could that have been the real reason why Biden had Shokin removed? Following the dismissal, the Burismo investigation died a quick death.
News agencies have reported that the theory that then Vice-President Biden had Shokin ousted in a quid pro quo arrangement netting his son millions in one that has been debunked. How precisely this theory was debunked is difficult to find in all of the verbiage on the allegations and the defence of the Biden family. Vague statements about Russian plants in the Ukranian government, a lying informant, and other reasons have been given. During the 2020 election campaign, information appearing to corroborate Biden influence peddling schemes contained on an laptop owned by Hunter Biden and mistakenly left but not retrieved at a Delaware repair shop were discredited by no less than fifty-one intelligence officials as bearing “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
The FBI has since validated the authenticity of the laptop, and allowed it to be entered as evidence in the trial of Hunter Biden resulting in two criminal convictions for which now President Biden has pardoned his son.
Interestingly, if there was nothing to the influence peddling allegations, then why did President Biden issue such a sweeping pardon, covering not only the two convictions but also any crime that Hunter Biden may have committed within an eleven-year time period ending December 1st, 2024. This would include the period during which Hunter Biden was allegedly engaged in influence peddling.
If there were nothing to the influence peddling allegations, it follows that President Biden would have had no reason to issue such a sweeping and pre-emptive reprieve for his son. Indeed, the pardon has no precedent in history and is the vastest unconditional pardon in American history.
The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability made the following allegations on the Biden family’s alleged crimes:
1) Romania: On September 28, 2015, Vice President Biden welcomed Romanian President Klaus Iohannis to the White House. Within five weeks of this meeting, a Romanian businessman involved with a high-profile corruption prosecution in Romania, Gabriel Popoviciu, began depositing a Biden associate’s bank account, which ultimately made their way into Biden family accounts. Popoviciu made sixteen of the seventeen payments, totaling over $3 million, to the Biden associate account while Joe Biden was Vice President. Biden family accounts ultimately received approximately $1.038 million. The total amount from Romania to the Biden family and their associates is over $3 million.
2) China- CEFC: On March 1, 2017—less than two months after Vice President Joe Biden left public office—State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company, wired $3 million to a Biden associate’s account. This is the same bank account used in the above “Romania” section. After the Chinese company wired the Biden associate account the $3 million, the Biden family received approximately $1,065,692 over a three-month period in different bank accounts. Additionally, the CEFC Chairman gives Hunter Biden a diamond worth $80,000. Lastly, CEFC creates a joint venture with the Bidens in the summer of 2017. The timeline lays out the “WhatsApp” messages and subsequent wires from the Chinese to the Bidens of $100,000 and $5 million. The total amount from China, specifically with CEFC and their related entities, to the Biden family and their associates is over $8 million.
3) Kazakhstan: On April 22, 2014, Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani oligarch used his Singaporean entity, Novatus Holdings, to wire one of Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca entities $142,300. The very next day—April 23, 2014—the Rosemont Seneca entity transferred the exact same amount of money to a car dealership for a car for Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden and Devon Archer would represent Burisma in Kazakhstan in May/June of 2014 as the company attempted to broker a three-way deal among Burisma, the Kazakhstan government, and a Chinese state-owned energy company.
4) Ukraine: Devon Archer joined the Burisma board of directors in spring of 2014 and was joined by Hunter Biden shortly thereafter. Hunter Biden joined the company as counsel, but after a meeting with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky in Lake Como, Italy, was elevated to the board of directors in the spring of 2014. Both Biden and Archer were each paid $1 million per year for their positions on the board of directors. In December 2015, after a Burisma board of directors meeting, Zlochevsky and Hunter Biden “called D.C.” in the wake of mounting pressures the company was facing. Zlochevsky was later charged with bribing Ukrainian officials with $6 million in an attempt to delay or drop the investigation into his company. The total amount from Ukraine to the Biden family and their associates is $6.5 million.
5) Russia: On February 14, 2014, a Russian oligarch and Russia’s richest woman, Yelena Baturina, wired a Rosemont Seneca entity $3.5 million. On March 11, 2014, the wire was split up: $750,000 was transferred to Devon Archer, and the remainder was sent to Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a company Devon Archer and Hunter Biden split equally. In spring of 2014, Yelena Baturina joined Hunter Biden and Devon Archer to share a meal with then-Vice President Biden at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. The total amount from Russia to the Biden family and their associates is $3.5 million.
Beyond this timeline, here are links to our First, Second, Third, and Fourth Bank Memorandums that provide detailed descriptions and show actual bank records and wires.
President Biden’s rationale for pardoning his son was that “raw politics” had infected the judicial system, and that the prosecution of his son was unjustified. However, the cases were brought by his own justice department – and not those of his political enemies. Would that mean that he should fire the Attorney General, Merrick Garland for abuse of power?
Special prosecutor, David Weiss belied President Biden’s accusations of unfair prosecution, stating, “The defendant filed eight (8) motions to dismiss the indictment, making every conceivable argument for why it should be dismissed, all of which were determined to be meritless. Of note, the defendant argued that the indictment was a product of vindictive and selective prosecution. The Court rejected that claim finding that “[a]s the Court stated at the hearing, Defendant filed his motion without any evidence. And there was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case.”
The only other pardon that comes close to Biden’s recent decision was that of President Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon for all crimes he committed as President. Even this didn’t come close to the period for which Hunter Biden has been pardoned. And, Nixon and Ford were not blood relatives as the two Bidens are. After Ford left the White House in 1977, he privately justified his pardon of Nixon by carrying in his wallet a portion of the text of Burdick v. United States, a 1915 U.S. Supreme Court case where the dictum stated that a pardon carries an imputation of guilt.
It would follow that Biden’s 11-year pardon of Hunter implies guilt in other crimes over that time span.
Assuming for the sake of argument that President Biden was correct in asserting that the prosecution of his son and subsequent convictions and guilty pleas were a result of politics skewing the judicial process for malicious purposes then why not simply pardon Hunter Biden for those convictions? Why is there this seemingly urgent requirement to issue a pardon that covers crimes yet to be charged within the preceding eleven-year period?
A more likely reason for the sweeping pardon has nothing to do with justice or protecting his son. Any path to prosecuting Joe Biden in the future for corruption would necessarily go through Hunter Biden who was the point of contact for the companies who stood to gain from a proximity to Joe Biden. By pardoning his son for the period in which Joe Biden is vulnerable, he may well have pre-emptively shut down any future prosecution of himself for corruption.
Hunter Biden has complained in his correspondence to relatives of the way he was treated by his father who favoured his older brother, the late Beau Biden over the younger Hunter. Knowing that almost all of Joe Biden’s decisions in politics have been to benefit him and only him, it is unlikely that any fatherly feeling factored into his decision to pardon Hunter Biden. Then, as now, his decision was made to protect a constituency of one: Joseph Robinette Biden Jr
The Global Calcuttan Magazine 
