By Mayank Chhaya-
President Joe Biden’s full and unconditional pardon of his son Hunter has the potential to make the confirmation process of Kashyap “Kash” Patel as the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) easier than it might otherwise have been.
Those who watch such confirmation process closely had said before the Hunter Biden pardon that there is a 60-40 chance that Patel would be confirmed. The sweeping pardon gives the Republicans some moral maneuverability, especially because Biden has practically echoed the language used by President-elect Donald Trump to describe his own once perilous but now perishing legal troubles as a result of him being treated unfairly via “weaponization of the Justice Department.”
Biden went to some length to offer extenuation for the pardon in his relatively lengthy official statement. “Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted. Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently,” he said.
“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room – with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases,” the president said.
“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,” he said.
While what Trump was charged with in both the January 6, 2021 insurrection and obstruction of justice in the classified documents case is far graver than Hunter Biden’s cases, in so much as both are about the principle of no one being above the law, the pardon is a case of manifest hypocrisy. It knocks the bottom out of the Democratic Party’s moralizing on Trump cases even though they are nowhere near comparable.
It is against this backdrop that nomination such as Patel’s will now be viewed and tested. Both House and Senate Democrats will be on the defensive in the aftermath of the pardon.
What is intriguing many is the pardon is that it is “for those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024.” A period of ten years is strikingly long and encompassing in nature and does create the perception of things being swept under the rug.
As for Patel, even if he is confirmed, it is reasonable to assume that a new president come 2028 will be unlikely to keep him on in the job even though the tenure of the FBI director is 10 years.
Meanwhile, Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton tweeted, “Trump has nominated Kash Patel to be his Lavrenty Beria, the NKVD boss who once reportedly said to Stalin, “show me the man, and I will show you the crime.” Fortunately, the FBI is not the NKVD. The Senate should reject this nomination unanimously.”
The NKVD was the dreaded secret police of the erstwhile Soviet Union.
