President Joe Biden allowed himself to cover up his own apparent role in his son Hunter’s influence peddling by issuing a pardon Sunday evening that extended back through 2014, including Hunter’s corrupt role in Ukraine.
While President Biden focused on his son’s conviction for gun crimes, and his son responded with a statement about addiction, the reality is that the pardon covers more serious conduct: selling U.S. foreign policy for monetary gain.
The pardon covers actions between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024. Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of the corrupt Ukrainian gas company Burisma was announced in May 2014. Reporters and State Department staff immediately flagged the appointment as a potential conflict of interest, given that then-Vice President Joe Biden was in charge of the Obama-Biden administration’s foreign policy in Ukraine (which is likely why Hunter was appointed).
The Obama White House repeatedly ducked questions on the topic, and journalists let it go. Bureaucrats who tried to find answers from the Vice President’s office were ignored or told Joe Biden was busy mourning his other son, Beau.
Joe Biden was directly implicated in his son’s role in Ukraine — especially when evidence emerged on his son’s laptop in 2020 that then-Vice President Biden had met with one of Hunter’s Burisma associates. That exposed Joe Biden’s repeated claims to have had nothing to do with his son’s business interests as a lie. More importantly, it exposed the fact that Biden may have been an accomplice in his son’s knowing refusal to register as a foreign agent for Ukraine.
Hunter Biden had a variety of other foreign business associations in which his father was also involved. Pardoning Hunter Biden for actions dating back to January 1, 2014, not only protects Hunter, but President Joe Biden as well.
Ironically, Democrats impeached then-President Donald Trump in 2019 for asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens for crimes that Biden has now pardoned his son for committing. Trump was acquitted, and is now fully vindicated.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.