The Hunter Biden Pardon

an interesting little feature of our constitution. It's really this holdover from the monarch of Great Britain, where the monarch, the King or Queen of England, has the ability to pardon people for different kinds of criminal offenses, for criminal offenses, and it's this sense that yes, we have the laws, we have criminal law, we have the role of prosecutors, but the system it's sort of this admission that the system isn't always perfect, and it's this kind of fail

safe for look, sometimes justice is done, but sometimes there are factors surrounding a given criminal prosecution that call for some measure of clemency, and that maybe the executive who oversees the enforcement of criminal law within the jurisdiction, who is the top level overseer, perhaps it makes sense that that person could step in to mitigate the strict application of justice in a given circumstance, or an application of justice that we think in retrospect was flawed or wrong.

And as a result, the president has the ability to pardon or commute crimes. Pardon to pardon someone for crimes, to commute the sentence someone has received for a crime, et cetera. And it's a completely uncontestable, unreviewable power that a president that the president has over federal crimes, in which a governor has over state crime, over state crimes. So Gavin Newsom, for example, has exercised his pardon or commuting power. So if the governor has the power to

completely pardon someone who has committed a crime. And most crimes, by the way, are not prosecuted at the federal level. They're prosecuted at the state level. So most of the time criminal law is enforced by state criminal prosecutors. Our prosecutor in Fresno County is Lisa Smith Camp. She's the elected district attorney and her job is to enforce California criminal law within the County of Fresno, and Sally Moreno does that for Madera County, and this person does it

for this county, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The federal government has its federal prosecutors who prosecute people for federal crimes. And usually a federal crime is a crime that involves some kind of Usually it's a crime that involves some kind of interstate conduct or something that directly impacts a federal government role or something that is interstate.

So a lot of drug crime prosecution is interstate. If someone is really cheating, really really badly on their federal income taxes, as Hunter Biden was, that's a federal criminal matter. If someone lies on a federal background check before they get a gun, as Hunter Biden did, that results in federal criminal prosecution. So let's talk about Hunter's pardon, and just so you guys get a sense of like, now, this is a bad dude. Not that any of you really need to be convinced of this. I think Hunter's

general badness is fairly well established by this point. But the way that Joe Biden is rationalizing this pardon for his son is to say, look, Hunter would never have been prosecuted had it not been for the fact that I'm President of the United States. This is a politicized prosecution that's only being brought about by his last name, which seems kind of insane to me. First of all, a lot of these prosecutions finally came to be in the course of a Biden administration Department of Justice, under

prosecutors who are inclined towards Biden. Why would they inclined towards prosecuting him. I could understand if it was if Hunter Biden had been convicted in twenty nineteen, after the Trump Justice Department had ruthlessly investigated him from twenty seventeen onward and had nailed him for some things. Okay, that

would make sense. But Hunter didn't get convicted until this year for and by the way, only after for years the Department of Justice under both Trump and Joe Biden trying to pursue a kind of sweetheart plea deal and inexplicably not indicting Hunter for all kinds of crimes that he never even got indicted for. So let's give kind of the timeline here, all right, And it's very interesting, by the way, the things that specifically Hunter's been pardoned for.

All Right, Hunter goes into his weird little influence pedaling business, because that's precisely what he was doing. He was pedaling to foreign investors access to his dad, and he was getting business deals in which people were paying him or other members of the Biden family millions and millions of dollars with no clear service being rendered back. And this started when Joe was the vice president. A lot of this seems to have happened sort of during the second

Obama term, starting kind of twenty thirteen. Twenty fourteen seems to be the year when a lot of this stuff started. This is when Hunter started to be involved with that Ukrainian energy company Barisma. This is when Hunter was doing

stuff with the Chinese. Is when Hunter had that weird flight on Air Force two for six hours going with Joe Biden to China where he had a business meeting with some Chinese tycoon who was tied in with Chinese intelligence and apparently never talked about his business once on a six hour plane flight with his dad. And the whole setup of the business, it's so completely implausible that by Joe Biden's oh, I didn't know anything about any

of this. The whole idea of the business of what Hunter and Jim Biden, who's Joe's brother, were doing was basically intimating to these people, I will get you access to Vice President Biden and influence with Vice President Biden if you give me money. And that's just that's what happened. There is a lot of evidence that Joe was almost in controvertible evidence that Joe met with, interacted with talked

on the phone with clients of Hunter Biden. And that's and that's the thing that makes this all so ridiculous. Joe knew that they were peddling this influence, but the explanation as well, he never actually did anything. It was only the appearance of influence from Joe Biden. But which if that's true, then Joe would have sat Hunter and Jim down after the first time he learned about it and said, hey, don't you ever dare sell to people this idea that I will do something for them if

they give you money. I can't do that. That's a that's a quid pro that's a corrupt looking quid pro quo.

Like it gives like this suspicion that we're engaging in bribery, that I'm doing legal favors for foreign governments in exchange for you guys getting money, Like you know this is benefiting me when I mean oftentimes, when a fraud scheme happens, one of the ways prosecutors can go after people is well one of the ways criminals will try to evade it is by having the dirty transaction happen, but having the money go to the criminal's family member to their son,

to their daughter in law, et cetera. Well, that seems to be what Biden was doing to avoid the appearance of money going directly into his bank accounts, to avoid the appearance of money going directly to him. Biden knew this was all happening. He could have stopped this whole thing with a snap of his fingers, and he never did so. Hunter's engaged in all this activity twenty fourteen, fifteen,

twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. Well, the way that the statute of limitations works in America is that basically, if you have a claim or if the government has a criminal charge to bring against you, they have to bring it within a certain timeframe. They have to bring it within a certain window. You can't wait thirty years before you charge someone for ola. Thirty years ago, you stole a snickerbar from mister mister mcbuttersworth's convenience store. Now we're going

to charge you with a misdemeanor theft. No, you can't do that. If you've committed theft, the government has a certain number of years within which they have to charge you. Similarly, for violations of federal tax law, the federal government has to charge you, has to indict you within six years.

It's a six year statute of limitations. Hunter, for a lot of this money, was just basically not paying taxes, just not paying millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars of income he was getting, and he just was not paying taxes. When you're ten thousand dollars short on your taxes, I don't actually know the precise numbers, but I think this ballpark is accurate. When you're ten thousand dollars short on your taxes, the IRS is involved.

When you're six million dollars short on your taxes, federal prosecutors get involved. This is a situation where you go to jail. Okay, it's not a question of the IRS dealing with it. This is where the DOJ Tax Division steps in. But what seems to have been happening. Here's Biden not paying his taxes for years and years and years and years and years. He then has this gun charge added on, which we talk about, and prosecutors seemed to instead of like treating this as hey, this is

a criminal. This is a criminal who lied on a federal background check, got a gun. It was used in a dangerous fashion that you'd suspect a druggie would use it. And he has millions of dollars of back taxes. He only got the taxes paid by a bunch of Joe Biden for President donors who suspiciously swooped in and paid all of his tax debt for him, which should have raised more than the zero eyebrows that it did raise.

And the prosecutors instead of charging indicting Hunter by twenty twenty, when Donald Trump was president, they didn't indict Hunter in twenty twenty, they didn't indict Hunter in twenty twenty one, they didn't indict him in eighteen, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three. And guess what, that six year statute of Limitations just keeps moving.

So all of the tax stuff that Hunter did, all of the violations of the law that Hunter may have committed in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, twenty seven, I think, going ball to twenty seventeen, all of that stuff, basically the federal government couldn't charge him for anymore because

the Statute of Limitations had passed. It had expired. Hunter was never actually charged with any of his federal crimes, either his gun crime or his tax crimes, his financial crimes until this year, or until about a year ago. So all the really juicy stuff about what Joe, what was Hunter doing with Barisma, the Ukrainian energy company in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, all the stuff that he was doing while Joe was vice president, none of that has

been indicted. The idea that Hunter was treated with unfair hyper focus is insane. Of course, the federal prosecutors were looking into him. He like he didn't pay millions and millions and millions of dollars of taxes. The prosecutors, even in the Trump era, were treating him with kid gloves. They continued to treat him with kid gloves in the Buying era. They were gonna give him this sweetheart deal, a plea deal where he would serve no jail time,

have only pled guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses. And the judge just sort of asks some basic elementary questions about it, like how is this being structured? So this is being structured where he's off the hook for absolutely everything he's ever done in connections, and it was so embarrassing to the prosecutors that they had to let the thing fall apart. So I understand the role that the pardon power plays.

It's a legitimate thing. I think it's a wise mechanism within our constitution to mitigate the strict application of justice to a specific case or circumstance where the president, a little detached from the on the ground work of the federal prosecutors under his command, might say, Hey, I don't know here this. This doesn't seem like they're mitigating circumstances here that the prosecutor didn't seem to take into account where there's direct like, no, this just doesn't seem right,

This doesn't seem fair. I think that's a legitimate power. But this notion that's being pedaled that Hunter was unfairly targeted only because he's the president's son. If anything, Hunter has been given a free pass and a free ride on everything for his entire life, and he's gotten away with everything his entire life because his dad was a senator, because his dad was the vice president, and now because

his dad is the president. When we return explaining a little bit Hunter's gun thing and why it's really really bad and further about the implausibility of Biden's explanation. Next on The John Growardy Show, just to remind you guys about Hunter Biden's gun thing that he received a pardon for yesterday, President pardon which it's so hilarious, how I'm not Are you gonna pardon your son? No, I'm not gonna pardon my son. And then the election's done, I'm

going to pardon my son. Nothing changed, Absolutely nothing changed. There was no change in the circumstances other than the election was over, and it would have looked embarrassing before the election to have pardoned his son. Now after the election, who cares like that? There's no like President Biden issues this statement about it that he's like, Oh, I think this is a miscarriage of justice. And the more I've wrestled with this, the more I think, No, you don't

want your son to go to jail. Okay, I understand it. But you were completely lying to everyone for the whole rest of this past year about whether you were going to pardon your son or not. You knew you were going to part like everyone with a working brain cell in their head knew what was going to happen. He was gonna wait until after the election, and then he was going to pardon them, especially if he lost, Like it was no doubt that he was going to pardon Hunter. Now,

let's just remind everybody what Hunter did. I talked to the first segment about the tax stuff that you know, gazillions, gazillions of dollars of federal income tax that he just refused to pay for money that was pouring into him by influence pedaling that his dad was the vice president, would maybe do something for these foreign governments that they gave him money, and then he didn't pay any taxes, and then the taxes only got paid back once criminal

investigations were initiated, and it was a bunch of Biden donors who all just all just cozied up to Hunter and were paying for his these millions of dollars of back taxes and interest that he owed. The money did get paid back, but it was paid back by various Biden political donors, which really I think nobody asked questions

about this. But you know, for all the sterm and drown that you know, Trump paying Stormy Daniels to keep a non disclosure agreement, paying Stormy Daniels in exchange for a non disclosure agreement, that that was an unreported gift in kind and an unreported campaign contribution in kind campaign contribution. That was the whole theory behind the Stormy Daniels thing.

The thing that people allege was wrong with Trump paying off Stormy Daniels, that people alleged was illegal was that that was a campaign expense to keep her from talking during the campaign, and that Trump never reported that as a campaign expense. That was the whole theory about why the Stormy danil Neel's thing was illegal, which was completely implausible. Not everything that helps your campaign is necessarily a campaign expense or needs to be reported as a federal campaign expense.

So the idea that oh, Trump paying off Stormy Daniels all also campaign expense an on calculated campaign expense, But Joe Biden's own donors making his son's criminal problems go away by paying off or attempting to make his son's criminal problems go away by paying off his federal tax debt that raised no election hearing problems that raised no federal elections problems that didn't raise any sort of eyebrow raised impropriety of no, no, no, These Biden donors didn't

want anything in return from the Biden administration for paying for his son's six million dollars worth of tax debt. No, they didn't want anything in return. They were just doing out of the kindness of their hearts. I don't know. All right, Well, let's talk about the gun thing real quick. All right, long story short? Did what did Hunter do with the gun thing? So you know what, It's long enough,

We're going to save it to the next segment. Okay, So when we return Hunter got pardoned for the gun thing? Why it seems that the left doesn't take gun stuff seriously? And I'm going to talk about a little bit of Roman history in connection with all this that is next on the John Juwardy Show. I think Joe Biden pardoning Hunter specifically for the gun thing is a richly ironic tale, and I want to talk about the insanity of how the left has approached just Hunter's violation of this particular

gun crime. The Democrats have they made a gun control a huge aspect of what they believe as a party. The fundamental position is that American gun laws are too loose, too permissive, too many people can buy guns, too many people can the wrong kinds of people can buy guns, the kind of guns, kinds of guns they can buy are too powerful. The federal government or state governments should have far more power to regulate guns than they do.

They are furious at the courts who say that the Second Amendment is an individual right that Americans possess, and the broad latitude towards gun ownership that the courts have interpreted the Second Amendment as allowing. If Democrats completely had their way, I think they would eviscerate the Second Amendment to basically just me. Nope, the only people who can own guns really are militias. That's you know, the Second Amendment talks about a well regulated militia being necessary, that

that's the only context. It's not an individual right. In spite of the fact that the whole idea of a militia was a militia was in eighteenth century America, a militia was a group of individual citizens who already had their own guns, who had just come together for you know, civil defense purposes. Now, gun control is a huge aspect of what they believe. It's a huge aspect of what Joe Biden has publicly believed and talked about and promoted,

et cetera. Hunter violated federal gun control laws. He violated a federal Basically, what he did was he lied on a federal background check in order to get a gun. Federal background check asked questions about drug use. Hunter lied, indicated he didn't have a track record with gun with the drug use, and Hunter Biden has a rich and storied history of drug abuse. You could write whole novels about the enduring relationship Hunter Biden has with drugs. So

there's also this aspect of it. It wasn't a lie and try case where someone falsifies something on a federal background check or on some federal document, lies to federal investigators, lies in some way, but doesn't accomplish the end goal for which the lie was made. No, this wasn't lie and try. This was lie and succeeded on the federal background check, and by lying successfully was able to obtain at least one gun. In fact, there's evidence there was

a second gun. There's some evidence out there that there was a second gun. But Hunter was never charged with the second gun, just this one. And that's significant. You know, it's not like he was just it's not like this was a harmless thing altogether. He actually got a gun. We had the bad end result of a druggie who

shouldn't be getting a gun getting a gun. Hunter's girlfriend, at the time, his dead brother's widow, was so alarmed at the combo of Hunter having this gun and being a druggie that she took the gun in a moment of desperation, seemingly and got rid of it, got it out of the house and put it into a garbage can near a school. That's a bad end result, all right, That this is, this outcome is the precise kind of thing that the federal background check is supposed to prevent.

It's supposed to prevent a druggie from getting a gun, being a erratic with the gun, and some bad outcome with the gun happening, in this case, specifically a gun being put in a garbage can near a school where some kid could have grabbed it and shot somebody or

shot himself or god knows what. It's the precise kind of thing that Joe Biden's whole career in public life has been pushing for preventing and writing laws to prevent, and the only response from the left seems to be well, you know, these kind of lying on federal background checks because it's it's prosecuted rarely. So why why would Hunter be prosecuted for it? Well, it's prosecuted rarely, orgo it

should never be prosecuted. What is that? What kind of what kind of reasoning is that People on the right have also noted that if Hunt, if if Joe is going to pardon Hunter for crimes that are rarely for because he committed a crime that is quote rarely prosecuted, does this more or less give Donald Trump carte blanche to pardon most or maybe even all of the January sixth protesters. Right, Many of the January sixth protesters were prosecuted with the kinds of things that are rarely ever

prosecuted by the federal government. Right, most of them were charged with I think the name of the charges is parading. It's basically trespath. It's a kind of species of trespass. It's being on a feat being on a piece of federal property that you're not authorized to be on. Right, So, yeah, the federal government owns some property that people are allowed

to walk around on. Okay, you know the grounds of the Washington Monument are open to visitors, the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial or open to visitors, or you know, blah blah blah. Certain areas of the Capitol are open to visitors, but you're not allowed to walk into places that are not open to visitors. If I try to walk onto a military base, they'll be like, hey, who the heck are you? You're not allowed to just walk in here. Okay, let's see some military ID on the

authorized personnel. That's what a lot of the January sixth protesters were prosecuted for. And there's never been the kind of super ultra aggressive of prosecution that happened to a lot of the January sixth protests. Now, some of the January sixth protesters did assault police officers, assault the Capitol police officers. That's I think needs to be that probably

should be viewed a little differently. But if we're making the argument, well, a hunter's gun thing, it was rarely charged, so therefore hunter should just be pardoned for it, well, boy, we're really setting things up for a pretty broad January sixth pardon in that case. But beyond that, it's also this like it makes me think of this Roman history example Titus Manlius Turquatas. Now, who was this guy? He was a Roman politician and general in the Roman Republic.

He was elected to be the Roman consul three different years, three times in three forty seven, three forty four, and three forty BC. The highest level magistrate in the Roman state who had sort of judicial powers but also like military powers, was the consul. And every year there were two consuls elected, they could veto the actions of the other. So he was elected consul three times. This is obviously

a very prominent Roman. Now, he was so far back in Roman history that a lot of the stories about him, probably many of them are true. Some of them are a bit legendary and a little sort of moralizing. A lot of old early Roman history stories or sort of history and legend gets mixed and a lot of it turns into sort of moralizing stories for younger Romans and Titus Manlius Torquatis was no exception. So he was part

of the man family. I know it sounds like manly, but that's a different thing, the Manlius and LUs and he sort of his story one of the reasons why people kind of think it's legendary. His story was given as sort of an example of Roman adherence to the law and the sort of severe fidelity to the law

and sacrifice for the state that the law required. His son, Manlius, was leading military operations and he and his the proconsul, who was sort of working with him, they were commanding these troops and they basically said, all right, we need to hold the line until the opportune time to attack. Manlius's son saw some opportunity that he could capture. Basically, there's some weakness in the enemy lines whatever, and he sprang out against orders to attack and actually helped defeat

a bunch of the enemy. After the battle, Manlius followed the law, which the law in the Roman army is if you disobey an order to attack without leave without permission, the penalty was death, and so he executed his own son. And this example was held up to the Romans as basically like, really, nobody is above the law. I know, we've heard that again and again and again over the last you know, five or six years. Nobody should be above law. Donald Trump shouldn't be above the law. Donald

Trump shouldn't be above the law. And what Joe is Biden is doing here is basically the opposite of that example. His son clearly violated a bunch of laws. His son clearly violated a bunch of laws that if his name weren't Biden, he probably would have gone to jail for at least one of these things. Okay, if it was only the gun charge, maybe not. If it was only

some of the taxes, maybe not. But the combination of millions and millions of millions of dollars of unpaid taxes and lying on a federal background check to get a gun that he successfully obtained, Like think of Biden's whole career. Biden's whole career has been dedicated to a couple of principles. One the idea that the wealthiest one percent, those big rich fat cats, are not paying anything in taxes, and you poor, the poor little guy that I Joe Biden represent.

You know, I'm just one of the regular guys down at the Knights of Columbus Hall. That's me, old, good old Joe, neighborhood scrant, and Joe, you know I'm for you. I'm not for those fat cats who don't pay their fair share of taxes. And I think gun control is necessary. The kinds of crazy lunatics out there getting guns and doing dangerous things with guns. We need federal background checks,

We need that. His whole career has been dedicated to fighting against the exact kinds of things his own son did. And I guess I can't judge Joe too harshly because I think of myself in his shoes. And what would I do if my son was a complete screw up and I alone had the power to make him not have to go to jail? I mean, I'd probably be sorely tempted to do exactly what Joe did. And you know, maybe that human instinct isn't wrong. I don't know. I

find it hard to criticize him too much. But this shameful way of acting, like, let I love my son, I am the president. I can't bear for him to face the music like this, honestly, is almost more understandable than trying to make some bs argument that oh, this wasn't really that serious of a crime, And well, your whole political career has been oriented around the idea that

these are serious crimes, these are really serious issues. Pardoning Hunter for this specific stuff, that's what's that's what's almost the most galling thing about it. It's like two of the issues that he has spent his entire political career campaigning against. The rich don't pay their fair share of

taxes and we need gun to control. And his own son didn't pay his taxes in millions of millions and millions millions of dollars of income that he did pay taxes in, and he lied on a federal background check resulting in dangerous mishandling of a gun. It's again, I'm not saying he has to execute his own son, but I think a commuting of his son's sentence or something would have been a more fitting thing than complete a

complete and utter part. It's just me when we return how the real story about the Hunter Biden pardon is Republicans noticing Next on the John Girardi Show, It's amazing how Politico didn't even wait twenty four hours before coming out with the headline, this headline that you all know. I mean, it's a joke at this point, and yet

the media just keeps doing it. Anytime a liberal does something bad, anytime a liber does something stupid, anytime a liberal does something hypocritical, anytime a liberal does something politically damaging or embarrassing. The problem is not the liberal doing it the way the media constantly frame it, frames it, frame it, frames it the way media outlets constantly frame it is with the phrase Republicans pounce Politico. Republicans pounce on Biden pardoning his son Hunter. Oh, I'm sorry. We

shouldn't have noticed that. Joe Biden said for a solid year he wasn't going to pardon his son, he was gonna let the DOJ's process happen, and then he just bardened his son. Come on, whoa, we're just not supposed to notice. We're the problem. Yes, we're the problem for having any issue whatsoever with Joe Biden just completely lying to the American people on something he clearly intended to do the whole time. That everyone could have seen this coming a mile away. Man, No, it's it's our fault.

The Republicans are pouncing, staying pouncing Republicans. That'll do it for John Die already, Show see you next time on Power Talk.