The problem here isn't that Joe Biden pardoned Hunter. I think everyone knew that was going to happen from the moment it became clear that Hunter wasn't going to get a complete pass on his criminal behavior. The problem is that Joe Biden spent so many months lecturing the country about the rule of law and how no one was above it 

On May 31, after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies for paperwork violations in which no one was harmed, Biden made a speech. "The Americans principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed," he said. He continued, "Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself...and it was heard by a jury of 12 citizens, twelve Americans...After careful deliberation, the jury reached a unanimous verdict...That's how the American system of justice works."

And here's the key point he sought to make: "It's reckless, it's dangerous, it's irresponsible for anyone to say that this was rigged just because they don't like the verdict." In short, anyone who complains about the outcome of a fair trial is undermining the entire system.

Six months later Biden is singing a very different tune. Here he is literally saying "I believe in the justice system, but..."

"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," Biden said in his statement.

"Raw politics has infected this process" is just Biden's way of saying the system is rigged. By his own metric, this is reckless, dangerous and irresponsible. After all, his son also got a fair trial. His son also was convicted by a jury of twelve Americans. Those jurors treated Hunter just as they would have treated anyone else.

The president’s son “was just like anybody else,” Juror No. 10 told CNN. But, the juror said, he based his decision to convict on the fact that Biden did not disclose that he was a drug addict when he bought a gun.

“We all knew he was a drug addict,” he said. “In his mind, how could he not know he was an addict?”

Juror No. 10 said that the case boiled down to whether Biden was addicted to crack when he purchased the gun. “All 12 jurors did agree that, yes, he knowingly bought a gun when he was an addict, or he was addicted to drugs,” he said.

But Joe Biden thinks that verdict was "infected" so out it goes. And here comes CNN to backstop his claim that Hunter wasn't treated like any other person. [emphasis added]

There is some validity to the president’s claim in his Sunday statement that his son was “treated differently” because of who his father is. Charges relating to the illegal possession of a firearm while being addicted to a controlled substance and regarding a false statement on the matter are quite rare, for instance. And Republican congressional probes into the matter, which imploded over a lack of evidence, looked like naked attempts to damage the president.

“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,” Joe Biden said in the statement.

And while CNN won't say the same about Trump's conviction (that it was extremely unusual to the point of being tailor made for one defendant) they do acknowledge that Biden now sounds a lot like Trump.

His statement is extraordinary because Biden is now arguing something rather similar to Trump — that his own Justice Department has been unfairly politicized. Biden was referring to the way that the Hunter Biden case was handled by David Weiss, a Trump-appointed US attorney from Delaware who originally investigated the president’s son and was later appointed as a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

And it goes far beyond the two cases in which he was convicted.

Joe Biden’s pardon includes any activity by his son starting on January 1, 2014 — the year that Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company — while his father, who was then vice president, was deeply involved in US policy toward Kyiv.

Hunter Biden was a drug addict who illegally bought a gun and a tax cheat. He won't be punished for those crimes or any others he may have committed. Indeed, even the convictions will be wiped away on the grounds that they were political. Joe Biden, by claiming the system really is politically rigged, just gave Donald Trump an opening big enough to drive a truckload of J6 pardons through. He can tack that onto his already embarrassing legacy.

Update: Biden is getting what he deserves on X.

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