The most gobsmacking line of historical revisionism written about Joe Biden’s norm-decimating tenure in the White House was published by the Associated Press, which described our doddering former president as an “institutionalist.”
From degrading Supreme Court confirmation hearings as a senator to disgracing his presidential oath, the only institution Biden has ever cared about was himself. What was unique about Biden’s tenure is that he was not only exceptionally corrupt on a personal level but also adopted a radical political posture that corroded the constitutional order for the long haul. Presidents typically pick one or the other.
And, on his way out, as expected, Biden handed out 10-year blanket pardons for members to his greasy brother, among others who profited in the millions from influence-peddling schemes. The venality is breathtaking.
But the pardons of Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci, Bennie Thompson, Liz Cheney, and others create an unprecedented moral hazard that will long outlive Biden.
Ponder the long-term consequences of blanket pardons for political allies. It’s difficult to imagine anything could incentivize criminality and abuse of power more than knowing a president will simply bestow amnesty on his cronies at the end of a term.
Indeed, even if pardoning your allies doesn’t become a White House tradition, and it might, a president can simply intimate that forgiveness is coming, sanctioning his minions to abuse their office with impunity. What stops the president’s family from trading in on the prestige of the presidency for cash?
“The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense,” Biden writes.
Why not? The pardons are either an acknowledgment by Democrats that the Justice Department can easily be weaponized against political foes or, conversely, that these actors behaved in ways that were possibly criminal or corrupt.
You will remember, not long ago, uttering a negative word about law enforcement was tantamount to sedition. Of course, the modern Left acts as if any investigation into Democrats is “politically motivated” because it believes every abuse of power is justified in the crusade to save democracy, a malleable term that means whatever Democrats say it does. When you treat partisan goals as more important than the rule of law, as progressives do, this is where you end up.
Now, the former president bears responsibility for his actions, but the man has always been a weak-willed, easily manipulatable, unprincipled boor. And with his mental capacity severely diminished — it would be nice to know who participated in that cover-up, as well — it’s likely that the progressives he brought into the White House, the ones he listened to for four years as they damaged the economy, our foreign policy, and the constitutional order, were behind the political pardons as well.
But let’s momentarily set aside future effects of the pardons. What about the culpability of those Biden let off the hook? Most of these operatives deserve scrutiny.
Biden contends that the United States “owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.” The term “public servant” is one of the most misleading in our vernacular. It insinuates that government officials are sacrificing themselves for the common good, when most not only make a great living but are imbued with undeserved power and prestige. The state has gotten so big that we are the ones who end up being servants.
Indeed, those in power deserve a higher level of scrutiny. If the Jan. 6 committee broke the law, because they certainly ignored all norms of due process, we should know about it. We certainly don’t owe Fauci, the epitome of an abusive mandarin, anything. It is unlikely that any American has ever done more to damage trust in public health.
Fauci released a statement expressing gratitude for Biden’s pardon, noting that the threat of prosecution “creates immeasurable and intolerable distress on me and my family.” Surely, the distress Fauci feels is trifling compared to the anguish experienced by those who were barred from attending the funerals of their loved ones, those who had their businesses needlessly decimated, or parents who sat helpless while profound harm was inflicted on their children because of shutdowns.
The federal government is an all-powerful entity that will destroy your life, throw you in prison, and shut down your church. Fauci is not solely responsible for what happened, but he steered the ship.
Recall that Fauci, along with former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, conspired to smear and censor dissenting scientists, most notably the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. As it turned out, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and Dr. Sunetra Gupta were far more prescient than Fauci, whose continually evolving dikats, fearmongering, and coaxing, all meant to manipulate behavior, were disastrous. Governors regularly leaned on Fauci’s positions as justification for their unconstitutional shutdowns of churches, economic lockdowns, and school closures. And Fauci praised them for it. It was the most undemocratic exertion of state power over individuals in modern history.
In a real “democracy,” the public would be entitled to know if Fauci, who later admitted that “draconian” COVID-19 policies led to “collateral negative consequences,” had been lying to Congress and presidents. What if I knew there was overwhelming evidence that the virus that causes COVID-19 had originated in China and lied about that as well? These are completely legitimate issues for Congress and the Justice Department to investigate.
Like Fauci, Milley was bestowed with unprecedented pardon “for any offenses against the U.S. which he may have committed or taken part in” from January 2014 to the issuing of the pardon. That’s 10 years. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says he’s “deeply grateful” for the pardon. I bet he is.
A rank partisan, Milley deserves to be investigated not only for his incompetence and dishonesty in the deadly Afghanistan pullout but also for his possibly criminal behavior during the 2020 election. Milley, who cooked up a counterhistorical fantasy of President Donald Trump nuking adversaries to save his White House bid, made two phone calls to Chinese communist generals, promising to give them a heads-up should the commander in chief of the U.S. Army attack — an unambiguous and possibly treasonous subversion of Constitution and civilian authority over the military.
Milley likely leaked his heroics to the Atlantic and other outlets knowing they would heap praise on him for his imaginary bravery. But there is zero evidence that Trump had any intention of using the military to secure his presidency. Say what you will about him, Trump was probably more judicious in exerting military power than most presidents.
What of the pardoned Sen. Adam Schiff (R-CA), perhaps the most mendacious and unethical person serving in Congress? Schiff famously claimed that Congress had not only uncovered a criminal conspiracy by the president’s 2016 campaign to put assets of a foreign power into the White House, more than once alleging to be in the personal possession of a “smoking gun.” It’s not criminal to lie to a credulous press, but it is to use your post on the House Intelligence Committee to leak highly classified documents that plunged the U.S. into four years of insanity over Russian collusion. Why shouldn’t the public know what happened? None of this is to even mention the fact that Schiff used the surveillance powers of the state to smear not only his political rivals but also a journalist and disclosed them.
Detesting Trump does not make you innocent of wrongdoing.
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What happens next time around? Trump has far greater reason to fear retribution than Biden. The Democratic-run Justice Department already tried to destroy the lives of his personal lawyers and launched an unprecedented round of lawfare that was meant to put him in prison. Trump, incidentally, despite concerns at the time, didn’t preemptively pardon everyone in his administration and family in 2021. Why wouldn’t he do it next time?
If not Trump, what about whoever comes next? History consistently shows us that every morsel of power taken by one leader is likely to be used by another. Few have done more damage than Biden.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
