In today’s America, it sure is nice to be a Biden.
Presidential prodigal son Hunter Biden’s transparently sweetheart plea deal consummated this week with his daddy’s Justice Department encapsulates, in many ways, the two-tiered system of justice that conservatives have been decrying at least since then-FBI Director James Comey let then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton off scot-free for her infamous email server because, in his words, “no reasonable prosecutor” would have brought the case. After a “five”-year Department of Justice criminal probe, which was rocked in recent months by an IRS whistleblower coming forward to sound the alarm on the feds’ all-too-predictable kid-gloves treatment of Hunter, the ex-crack addict and foreign influence-peddler will escape jail time and avoid any punishment at all (other than a two-year probation period) for having brazenly lied on a federal firearms background check form.
It is easy to envision how this whole sordid business may very well have gone down.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss — a Trump appointee, presumably retained after the 2020 presidential election to give Uncle Joe a pretense of “apolitical” legitimacy in the Hunter probe — calls Attorney General Merrick Garland to report his findings, given the closely scrutinized nature of the investigatory subject. Garland, like any good henchman, then calls his superior — the “Big Guy” — at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And the “Big Guy,” in turn, then calls his wayward son, last seen in an Arkansas courthouse for a paternity/child support hearing, to request a favor. “Hunter, I love you and I’ll always be proud of you,” one imagines how this call from the guilt-ridden, senile, octogenarian commander in chief might have gone. “But I need you to take this slap on the wrist so that our troubles go away.”
And so the deed was done. But what “troubles,” exactly?
Well, as it turns out, Don Corleone — the “big guy” of his own crime syndicate family — had nothing on Joe Biden. And Corleone certainly had nothing on Biden if the latest scuttlebutt of Biden family venality and quid pro quo corruption to the tune of millions of dollars, pertaining to Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky’s alleged 17 recorded phone calls with Joe and Hunter, bears fruit. I predict it will. After all, Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma, was unceremoniously sacked by the parliament of that notoriously corrupt country around the same time of the recorded Zlochevsky phone calls. Recall also that then-Vice President Joe Biden, at the time, was the Obama administration’s designated point man on all things Ukraine.
That scuttlebutt, incidentally, does not come courtesy of a young, frivolous, “MAGA-ite” elected official. It comes from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who turns 90 years old in three months and has been in Washington, D.C. only two fewer years than Uncle Joe. Grassley’s allegations, stemming from a FBI document that the senator claims he has seen himself, cannot be easily dismissed. And given the current stakes of open-ended U.S. foreign entanglement in “Ukraine,” of all countries, the prospect of President Biden’s being financially compromised when it comes to that particular country starts to look quite a bit darker. That is doubly so when one considers the appalling idiocy of America’s approach to the Russo-Ukrainian War to date, which has focused almost exclusively on mindless escalation without so much as considering off-ramps and exit strategies.
It is only in that broader context that we can interpret Hunter’s plea deal with David Weiss. The Regime seems to think that by dropping the news of Hunter’s sweetheart deal “now,” five years into the DOJ probe but a mere week after former President Donald Trump’s arraignment for his own unprecedented federal indictment, the American people will cease their caviling. No more kvetching about our two-tiered system of justice, they think, now that Hunter has confessed his guilt of federal crimes to a United States attorney. No more Republican fixation on Burisma and Mykola Zlochevsky, the feds speculate — or on the Ukrainian boondoggle in general, for that matter.
Do not fall for this cynical trap. The latest Burisma quid pro quo allegations — which, while thus far uncorroborated, are eminently plausible and match the timelines for both Shokin’s firing and Hunter’s well-known largesse sitting on Burisma’s board — are a matter of profound national interest and concern, not least because they cut to the very heart of America’s current most entrenched and expensive overseas escapade: Ukraine. If the president of the United States and his degenerate criminal son are somehow personally compromised when it comes to the Zelensky government in Kyiv, we need to know that. And we need to know that “now” — before the threat of a direct, broader conflagration with the Russian Federation becomes even more likely than it already is. Senate and House Republicans, aided by any remaining intellectually honest Democrats, must focus on that intently right now.
David Weiss, Merrick Garland and Uncle Joe himself have dangled in front of us all a very shiny object: the prodigal son has pleaded guilty to federal offenses. “You see, the system really is fair!” they claim. How patently silly. Really, how stupid do our rulers think we are?
To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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