President Joe Biden unleashed a firestorm of controversy and further eroded public trust in his already damaged party by giving a shocking blanket pardon to his son, Hunter, on Sunday.
Biden fled from the controversy by jetting to Angola, one of the most corrupt nations in the world.
Biden was wheels-up for Angola within a few hours of pardoning his son for all crimes, both known and yet to be revealed, over a ten-year period. He refused to answer questions about the pardon from reporters during a stopover in Cape Verde.
WATCH — Joe Biden Lands in Angola Shortly After Pardoning Hunter Biden:
According to the 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index prepared by Transparency International (TI), Angola is 121st on the parade of 180 most corrupt nations.
Angola is rife with cronyism and nepotism, bribery, and conflicts of interest, particularly in its real estate, energy, and mining industries. Powerful individuals and corporations routinely pay off the justice system to avoid prosecution. Many of Angola’s municipalities do not have a court system at all. For the Angolan elite, paying bribes to avoid taxation is cheaper and easier than paying their taxes.
Just two weeks ago, the United Kingdom imposed heavy sanctions on Isabel dos Santos, the billionaire daughter of former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, in a wide-ranging crackdown on corruption and money laundering. Dos Santos has been under investigation by numerous countries ever since her father’s 38-year reign came to an end in 2017. She claims all of the charges against her are political fabrications, while international anti-corruption activists point to her as a textbook example of kleptocracy.
Angola also has major problems with slavery and human trafficking, although the Biden State Department gives the Angolan government credit for making progress on these issues over the past few years. The Labor Department was less enthusiastic, giving Angola only tepid applause for making “moderate advancement” against the use of child labor in mining, agriculture, and construction.
The Biden White House clearly wanted the president’s visit to Angola to be “historic,” as he is the first American president to visit the country, and he is making the only trip to Africa of his presidency. Early media releases touted the trip as an effort to reinforce the Biden administration’s competition against China and Russia for influence in West Africa.
Unfortunately for the outgoing president, he scribbled a much larger entry in the history books with his blanket pardon for Hunter Biden. News coverage on Monday was generally dour, with Biden’s trip portrayed more as a last-ditch gamble or desperate attempt to salvage a “legacy” in Africa. The fact that Biden avoided visiting Africa for his entire term – even after promising to pay a visit almost two years ago – sent a louder message than finally getting around to a desultory visit in the final two months of his term.
One of the major items on Biden’s agenda is a visit to the town of Lobito, where his administration has lavished billions on an 835-mile railroad that is supposed to link cobalt, lithium, and copper mines in the Congo and Zambia to Angola’s Atlantic ports.
The “Lobito Corridor” project was billed as the first serious Western attempt to provide African nations with an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It is not yet clear if the second Trump administration will continue funding the project. Trump may be skeptical of a rail line that could benefit Chinese companies as much as it does American interests and, if Africa’s mineral nations make good on their plans to develop more domestic refining capacity, the Lobito Corridor might never become as profitable as its planners hoped.
The leftist New York Times (NYT) on Monday spoke to ordinary Angolans who had absolutely no idea the United States was helping to fund a railroad in their country, while being keenly aware of China’s massive infrastructure investments.
“Beijing has built ostentatious shopping malls and roads with Chinese logos and signs. Angolans say the Chinese have made life easier and created jobs. Rather than funding such development projects, the United States has sought to create conditions that will attract private investment, though there’s no telling how long that will take or when Angolans might see the benefits. Some are skeptical those benefits will come at all,” the NYT summarized.
Some Angolans are skeptical enough to believe that the vaunted Lobito Corridor project will just be a mechanism for Western companies to rob Africa of its mineral wealth. The U.S. government has been trying to counter this cynicism by advertising the rail line as an opportunity for Angolan farmers to ship their produce overseas at modest cost. To reinforce this argument, the U.S. implemented programs to teach advanced agricultural techniques to Angolan farmers.
Supporters of the Lobito Corridor hope to convince Trump it will provide an effective counter to Chinese influence at the perfect moment for such a pitch to be made, as China’s deflating economy means it has less money available to pour into Africa, and developing nations are growing wary of Chinese debt.
Biden’s trip to Angola might have been intended to make it harder for Trump to disengage from the Lobito Corridor, but the Hunter Biden pardon is eclipsing U.S. coverage of Biden’s Africa trip, so Joe Biden may have just sabotaged his own last chance to create a “legacy” in Africa.