In the name of the father, the son, and the wholly outraged

The big news that broke late on Sunday, December 1, 2024 was President Joe Biden's sweeping and unconditional pardon of his troubled son Hunter on firearms purchase violations and tax evasion charges, as well as a granting of clemency for Hunter's conduct dating back to January 1, 2014. This apparently took lots of folks by surprise, Biden supporters and detractors alike, as the president had been so adamant for such a long time about taking the high road, insisting that he would let the wheels of "justice" turn as they would and that he absolutely would not intervene in his son's cases.

But he changed his mind. In the official statement about the reasons he did this, he wrote, in part:

No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough. 
 
For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.

Well, a lot of Americans, including me, do understand and support the president's decision, but not surprisingly he is also facing a torrent of outrage. To me the backlash seems to be more extreme than any of the reactions against DonOld Trump's continual fascist threats and utterly appalling administration appointees. It could be that Trump is so profoundly awful and evil in every way that the commentariat have become numb to it all. It's no longer news when Trump threatens to do, or actually does, something else that will further hasten the wholesale destruction of American democracy. But when Biden, who unlike Trump has always been held to higher standards, does something that goes against the grain... well, now, that's a scandal.

Bring on the backlash
It's no big shocker that the reich-wing/rethuglican pearl clutchers are fuming about the injustice of it all, claiming that Biden is a hypocrite and that the pardon is a blatant attempt to "avoid accountability." (Given their choice for "president," rethuglicans talking about "accountability" is a joke in and of itself.)

Any jokers who are okay with the lineup of scoundrels who benefited from Trump's last-minute pardons and commutations a few years ago have zero room to criticize the pardoning of Hunter Biden. NBC News (January 20, 2021) published the list.

Trump had abused his pardon power earlier in his administration as well, as I wrote about on this Whirled back in June of 2018. (He never did pardon or commute the sentence of serial scammer and all-too-frequent Whirled subject Kevin Trudeau, though.)

And here, straight from the Department of Justice, is a complete list of pardons and commutations during Trump's first term. Several of these scumbags have already been granted a place in the next Trump administration.

But the backlash against the president hasn't just been coming from the reich. Even some (though by no means all) Democrats and liberals are wagging their fingers, as reported by Axios, among numerous other sources.

In an opinion piece by Matt Ford on The New Republic site, the headline reads, "The Hunter Biden Pardon Is Joe Biden’s Ultimate Failure." Ford describes Biden's time in office as a "failed presidency," seemingly basing that assessment on the fact that Biden broke his promise to "restore good government, protect American democracy, and cure the republic of Trumpism." (Apparently the numerous actual accomplishments that the Biden administration managed despite what turned out to be the out-of-control plague of Trumpism are irrelevant.)

Ford grouses that Biden broke his oath of office and that pardoning Hunter is "a quintessentially corrupt act" because the president is using his awesome presidential power to protect his own child -- but hasn't extended his pardon power to numerous others who are also clearly in danger from the Trumpublican wrecking ball. (Pssst, Matt, Joe still has a few weeks to add to the pardon list.)

In short, to Ford, this pardon is a blatant abuse of power.

To his credit, Ford acknowledges that Trump himself abused the presidential pardon power in the past and that he is planning to do it again "in even more grotesquely self-interested ways" -- and that he would have done this whether Biden pardoned his son or not. Nevertheless Ford insists that none of this excuses Biden's act of pardoning his own son. And he seems to be on the crowded bandwagon -- a bandwagon that includes Trump himself -- of those who believe that this one single act by President Biden clearly paves the way for Trump to go full speed ahead with his own pardon orgy.

That's nonsense.

Trump's gonna do what he's gonna do, regardless of what anyone else does or doesn't do
As even Matt Ford and other critics have noted -- and it cannot be overstated -- everyone who has been paying attention for the past nine years knows that Trump was and is always going to do whatever the hell he wants to do, with no respect for protocol or high standards or the rule of law. Most notably, ever since he launched his 2024 campaign — long before President Biden pardoned Hunter — Trump has been promising that if re-elected he will free and pardon virtually all of the convicted and/or imprisoned January 6 “patriots” and “political prisoners,” including the most violent ones.

In addition, he is hellbent on aggressively weaponizing the justice system and every tool within his reach to prosecute his political opponents as well as those within the justice system who have advanced the numerous cases against him, and journalists who have reported honestly on his lies and misdeeds.

Even though Trump lies about pretty much everything else, we have no reason to disbelieve him when he makes these threats. And he is building powerful alliances to help him carry out his threats.

As someone on a Xitter thread about this matter wrote, Biden's pardon of his son is not a green light for Trump, who was going to run the red light anyway. So those who are whining about Hunter’s pardon as if it were THE event that broke the last guardrail -- and who are insisting that anyone who supports the pardon can no longer claim the moral or legal high ground -- should really just sit this one out.

Now, could President Biden have handled the whole thing better? Probably. In a December 2 opinion piece on Intelligencer, legal analyst Elie Honig wrote that the president made all of this much harder than it needed to be on himself, Hunter, and the justice system. Honig wrote that instead of being so insistent that he would never, ever intervene in his son's cases, Biden could have just offered a standard political hedge: “I haven’t fully considered it yet, but I’ll examine it carefully when the time is right, and I’ll do what I believe is in the best interest of justice.”

Moreover, Honig added, he "could have positioned the pardon as a merits-based decision on which reasonable minds can disagree. Instead, he broke out the sanctimony and cried victimhood while breaking his unequivocal promise to the American public."

Well, Mr. Honig, even though your opinion piece is marginally more nuanced than that of numerous other critics, it seems that you're pouring on the sanctimony too. We'll just have to agree to disagree about your opinion that Biden has "tarnished his own legacy and undermined the very justice system he claims to so deeply revere." In his statement about the pardon/clemency, the president acknowledged that he had always been a strong supporter of the justice system, but that it has been grievously misused in this case. And I think he made a pretty clear and honest case about the merits of his decision, and why he changed his mind about pardoning his son.

What the critics are missing: there's a huge difference between a lie and a genuine change of heart
Critics of the pardon, including Elie Honig, have repeatedly whined that Biden "lied" to the American public. They're operating under the assumption that Biden never really intended to stick to his vow to butt out of his son's cases, and that an ultimate pardon was what he had in mind all along. That would be the definition of a lie in this case: a deliberate attempt to deceive or to hide one's real intentions.

But I am willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt. I think Biden really did intend to keep his promise, and that he was still clinging, however tenuously, to that intention even a few days after the disastrous 2024 election, when his press secretary, in answer to a question, said that the president still had no plans to pardon Hunter.

But extraordinary circumstances can crack even the strongest intentions. In the weeks after that statement at the presser, which seem like years in some ways, it became increasingly apparent that Hunter was most likely in real jeopardy from the Mango Mussolini mafia. Trump's recent announcement that he'd picked rabid Trump toady Kash Patel to head the FBI -- which he'd actually wanted to do during his first term -- could very well have been the last straw for Biden and his family.

Patel, like his orange idol, is obsessed with revenge against any and all factions who have stood up to Trump, including Trump's political opponents and their families. As Ron Filipkowski noted on Xitter December 2:

MONTHS AFTER Joe said he would not pardon Hunter, Trump won the election & appointed a man as FBI Director who has spent the last 4 years on every right-wing podcast ranting that he was going to go after Hunter. Obsessed with him. Were you aware of that, critics? Not relevant?

I'd say it's pretty damn relevant.

And I really do think that President Biden should get busy with some additional sweeping preemptive pardons, which at the very least should include everybody on the enemies list that Krazy Kash published in his 2023 magnum dopus, Government Gangsters. Here's one place where you can read that list, which includes Joe Biden himself as well as Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, current FBI director Christopher Wray, Merrick Garland, Bill Barr, John Bolton, Alexander Vindman, Fiona Hill, Cassidy Hutchinson, and even some of Trump's former communications team members, such as Alyssa Farah Griffin (currently a co-host on The View) and Stephanie Grisham.

Would that be an abuse of the presidential pardon power? The reich will surely say yea, but again, given their dear leader's history and promised future of gross abuse of power -- including prosecution of the people on Kash's enemies list -- they have no room to squawk.

Real reasons for outrage
One would expect the reich to march lockstep with Der Furor, but the wholly outraged in the center and on the left really should find something more substantial to be outraged about than a father protecting his son from the thugs and criminals who had been gunning for both father and son for years -- most notably, the fact that Trump and many of those thugs and criminals are coming after all of us in 2025. America and the rest of the "free world" may never recover. From The Bulwark:

The theory here is simple: Trump will do what he has repeatedly promised to do and what he started doing in his first term. He will impose widespread tariffs, undercutting the postwar open trade regime, which disincentivizes conflict by promoting economic interdependence. He will break commitments to democratic allies and cozy up to authoritarians. Defenders of the U.S.-led international order from Trump’s first term, such as Secretary of Defense James Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly won’t be there to slow it down. In their stead will be enablers, including Russia sympathizers. The administration will act without fear of impeachment, legal punishment, or loss of re-election, because Trump already overcame all three...

That's what you should be making you outraged, and scared as hell. And don't tell me that it's possible and prudent to focus on both the outrage over Hunter being pardoned and the outrage over Trump and gang's plans. I know it's possible. I'm just saying that it's a stupid waste of precious energy, not to mention that it's grossly unfair to President Biden, to be outraged over this pardon.

Before you leave...
All politics aside, this has been, for several reasons that have nothing to do with politics, a nightmare of a year for me personally. Money, alas, cannot make the nightmare go away, but it can make it far easier to bear. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
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• Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of my husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

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Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.

SCOTUS crowns Trump king and sets fire to American democracy

"The President is now a king above the law...
"...With fear for our democracy, I dissent."
~ Sonya Sotomayor, in her dissent to July 1, 2024 SCOTUS ruling on presidential immunity

On July 1, 2024, the six members of the deeply corrupt Christofascist/Trumpist supermajority in the Supreme Court of the United States did what millions of us feared they would do: they presented a huge, sloppy gift-wrapped package of immunity to #NeverWasMyPresident Donald John Trump to shield him from any real accountability for his many and serious crimes against American voters, American national security, and American democracy. Specifically, the Court ruled that a president has absolute immunity from criminal charges for any "official" act committed while in office, though not immunity from any "private" act.

Which even someone with only a rudimentary understanding of the United States Constitution and the law can see leaves far too much leeway for interpretation of "official" versus "private" acts. The fact that courts are forbidden from even considering a president's motive when determining whether an act is official or private makes the decision all the more insidious, and outrageous.

The dissenting opinion was written by Justice Sonya Sotomayor, who was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. From the intro to that dissent:

Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law. Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action” by the President, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more. Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent.

Chief Justice John Roberts engaged in furious gaslighting regarding the seriousness of the Trump v. United States decision, saying that the dissents "strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today." Don't believe a word of it. From a July 1 opinion piece in Slate.com by Mark Joseph Stern:

The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority fundamentally altered American democracy on Monday, awarding the president a sweeping and novel immunity when he weaponizes the power of his office for corrupt, violent, or treasonous purposes. This near-insurmountable shield against prosecution for crimes committed while in office upends the structure of the federal government, elevating the presidency to a king-like status high above the other branches. The immediate impact of the court’s sweeping decision will be devastating enough, allowing Donald Trump to evade accountability for the most destructive and criminal efforts he took to overturn the 2020 election. But the long-term impact is even more harrowing. It is unclear, after Monday’s decision, what constitutional checks remain to stop any president from assuming dangerous and monarchical powers that are anathema to representative government. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor put it in her terrified and terrifying dissent, “the President is now a king above the law.”

Trump v. United States, Monday’s decision, has no basis in the Constitution as written. Donald Trump brought the case as a delay tactic, an effort to run out the clock on his prosecution before the November election. Special counsel Jack Smith has charged the former president with a series of crimes related to his conspiracy to block the peaceful transition of power in 2020, culminating in the insurrection of Jan. 6. The indictment weaves a narrative of election subversion out of various actions the president took—many of which involved abuse of his office. In response, Trump raised a claim of “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for any “official act” he took before leaving the White House. The theory was, again, largely designed to stall the case, but also meant to shield him from the most damning charges if the case moved forward. First, the Supreme Court abetted his stalling strategy, taking up the appeal then sitting on it for months. Now it has rewarded his larger plan, too, cutting the legs from Smith’s indictment...

It's worth your time to read the entire piece, which, though billed as opinion, breaks down the facts quite well.

And if you want more specifics about why this SCOTUS decision is so frightening, read the July 2 analysis on Slate by the aforementioned Mr. Stern and Dahlia Lithwick, who were joined by Brown University professor of constitutional law and political theory Corey Brettschneider, author of the new book The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It. Here's the headline:

Can the President Send SEAL Team Six to Assassinate His Rival? After Monday, Yes.

That headline would most likely be poo-pooed by John Roberts too, but we already know that he's a gaslighting gasbag. Here's a snippet from the conversation:

Lithwick: Corey, the court is drawing all these lines, like “core functions” vs. “outer perimeter,” that make it sound like they’re solving a math problem. Can you help us understand what a sea change this actually is? Because this is not just a Donald Trump story. This is a separation-of-powers story and fundamentally a structural change to democracy as we understand it.

Corey Brettschneider: You know, the court claims that it has this method of originalism that requires us to look at the text of the Constitution as it was originally understood. So you would expect, in a monumental decision like this—granting immunity to a former president’s “official acts”—that the Constitution would say something about presidential immunity. But it doesn’t. There was a disagreement at the founding about this: John Adams, for instance, defended the idea that presidents are immune from prosecution, which suits his disposition toward an aggrandized idea of presidential power. On the other side, though, there was James Wilson; at the Pennsylvania ratifying convention, he said the thing that we thought defined our Constitution until Monday—that no person, not even a president, is above the law, and the president can be prosecuted.

So it’s not like there was some universal understanding of presidential immunity at the founding. There’s no textual evidence in the Constitution. The Framers just disagreed when they talked about this issue. So the idea that this is based on originalism is false. And the main precedent they do rely on, Nixon v. Fitzgerald, gets extended way beyond what it actually said. I’d argue Roberts is saying something contrary to what that case actually said. And we have stronger cases on the other side, like U.S. v. Nixon, which held that a president facing a criminal subpoena is not above the law. They may claim to respect precedent, but they’re not doing it. They may claim to respect text, but they aren’t. And they may claim to respect history, as if the Framers sort of agreed about this, but that’s not true either.

Of course Slate was far from the only media outlet to have a few words to say about the effects of the July 1 decision. The web is a veritable conflagration of reports and analyses about SCOTUS' latest attempts to burn down America and recreate it as Trumpistan.

As President Joe Biden said, echoing the words of Justice Sotomayor, "I dissent."

And speaking of President Biden, despite his historic respect for the rule of law, separation of powers, and the office of the presidency, lots of folks are suggesting, with various degrees of seriousness, that he should take full advantage of his current status as "king." But the reality is that SCOTUS only crowned Trump king, not Biden. As Heather Cox Richardson pointed out on her July 1, 2024 Substack:

...this extraordinary power grab does not mean President Joe Biden can do as he wishes. As legal commentator Asha Rangappa pointed out, the court gave itself the power to determine which actions can be prosecuted and which cannot by making itself the final arbiter of what is “official” and what is not. Thus any action a president takes is subject to review by the Supreme Court, and it is reasonable to assume that this particular court would not give a Democrat the same leeway it would give Trump. 

So, yeah... don't believe John Roberts. The SCOTUS decision on presidential immunity is very big deal, and it's truly awful, and the only way we can possibly delay, if not stop, a total fascist takeover of America is for all eligible and registered voters who still believe in American democracy and the rule of law to Vote Blue in November. Or as President Biden reminded us, “Now the American people will have to do what the court should have been willing to do and would not: Americans will have to render a judgment about Donald Trump’s behavior."

For now, as a Facebook friend of mine, journalist and author David Theis, wrote, "This will be my first 4th of July in mourning."

Let's take a few days to mourn, and then let's double down on our efforts to keep Trump out of the Oval Office forever.

Before you leave...
This has been, through what is no apparent fault of her own (excluding, perhaps karmic matters that are quite beyond her ability to comprehend), a nightmare of a year for the ruler of this Whirled. Money, alas, cannot make the nightmare go away, but it can make it easier to bear. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
  New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to Cosmic Connie's PayPal page.
  Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of Cosmic Connie's husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is a gift, which it is (as opposed to a conventional purchase, for which PayPal deducts a percentage for their fee).

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.