Newsweek: “Biden’s ‘Preemptive Pardons’ Once Again Prove That the Democrats’ Accusations Are Confessions”

By Selwyn Duke

Are preemptive pardons the inverse of preemptive convictions? Sometimes, yes, because they can be equally unjust.

In the wake of Joe Biden’s pardoning of his son Hunter, something he said he would not do, we learned that Biden (his handlers, to be precise) is considering “preemptive pardons” for certain ex-government officials and administration allies. These include Dr. Anthony Fauci, the ex-bureaucrat responsible for much destructive Covid-19 policy; and Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former representative Liz Cheney, who were party to Congress’ January 6 Committee shenanigans.

Of course, deep staters justify this by claiming that President Trump wants to persecute political opponents. Here’s what they don’t say:

Pardoning allies (partners in crime?) is a good way to ensure they won’t implicate you.

Moreover, states one observer in a title, “Preemptive Pardons’ Once Again Prove That the Democrats’ Accusations Are Confessions.”

“Pardon Me — for Destroying the Republic”

As Newsweek deputy opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon wrote late last week:

The very idea of a preemptive pardon is shocking — the exact kind of norm breaking that the Democrats love to accuse Trump of. Think about what a preemptive pardon means: It is a tacit admission that the Democrats believe that Fauci or Schiff committed crimes — that there would be something to find if one went looking — but also that the Democrats will not and would never go looking there. In other words, if Biden issues these blanket pardons, he will be ratifying the idea that was so aptly laid out by Peru’s General Óscar Benavides: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”

It’s a complete assault on the rule of law — an admission that the Democrats believe that justice not only is political but should be politicized. It sets an extremely dangerous precedent — from the side constantly yammering on about the dangers posed by Trump to our democracy. I guess we’ve arrived at the “doing away with the rule of law” stage of defending democracy!

Every accusation from the Democrats is a confession.

Perspective

In fairness and as radio station WBUR pointed out last month (in a very biased piece), preemptive pardons aren’t unprecedented. Yet consider some of the examples the outlet cites: President Gerald Ford pardoning ex-president Richard Nixon, President Jimmy Carter’s 1977 pardon of all Vietnam-era draft evaders, and Trump’s pardon of ex-Arizona sheriff Joseph Arpaio. These instances differ in character from what the Biden administration is contemplating.

Whether or not Ford should have pardoned Nixon, he arguably did it, he explained, to help heal a fractured nation. Ditto with Carter, who said he wanted to “heal the domestic wounds of Vietnam.” As for Arpaio, he’d already been convicted of contempt and was a very old man when Trump pardoned him. (It was a blanket pardon.) But then there’s that significant difference.

None of these presidents, or their upper-echelon associates, would’ve been implicated in crimes had these pardons not been issued. In fact, Ford’s and Carter’s pardons might have redounded negatively upon their ultimately unsuccessful reelection efforts.

This is not at all the case with the prospective Biden pardons. Fauci lied continually, as The New American has reported, and was party to the institution of destructive Covid policy. Other officials were complicit in this as well. And who knows how deep that rabbit hole goes?

(Fauci knows.)

January 6 Committee malfeasance may be even worse. There are troubling charges that the committee destroyed troves of evidence mere days before the Republicans took control of the House in 2023. It’s also inconceivable that figures such as Schiff and Cheney didn’t in some way coordinate with the White House. What are they hiding, precisely, and how high does the rot go? We may never know exactly if pardons are issued.

That’s the whole idea, too.

Projection

But then there’s that pardon-advocate justification. As Ungar-Sargon also writes:

They say that Trump’s appointees are hell bent on revenge. It is Republicans who plan to weaponize the Department of Justice and the FBI against Trump’s political enemies — as though the Democrats didn’t deploy the DOJ and courts across the country to attempt to imprison Donald Trump, in an obviously politically-motivated witch hunt. As though the FBI were not instrumental in covering up the Hunter Biden laptop story to help Biden win in 2020. As though the intelligence community didn’t routinely collude with President Trump’s political opponents to undermine him at every turn, both while he was in office and since.

Ungar-Sargon points out that, in reality, Trump never used lawfare against his political opponents while in office. The aforementioned WBUR quotes Trump as making statements such as, “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones.” But shouldn’t “bad” public officials be prosecuted? Or does being left-wing and connected mean never having to say you’re sorry?

Ungar-Sargon says the message will be the latter if the preemptive pardons are issued. It would signal that the pseudo-elite Democrats believe no crime is severe enough to warrant prosecuting a fellow traveler.

Nation of Laws — or Men?

Apropos to this, there’s a question Ungar-Sargon asks of all, including of Democrats who support the pardon scheme.

Don’t Americans have a right to hold the powerful accountable?

Shouldn’t we want to know if and when we’ve been lied to, and about what?

Or are the pardons to be yet another reminder that this is post-rule-of-law America, a place where laws are for the little people and those opposing the establishment?

One more thing: Ungar-Sargon mentions how the intelligence community routinely colluded with Trump’s political opponents. This was predicted, too, mind you — by a liberal Democrat.

Shortly before Trump took office in 2017, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) issued an ominous warning. Referencing Trump’s locking of horns with the intel establishment, he said:

Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.

Now, think about that. Schumer was saying that our elected leaders, even the world’s supposedly most powerful man, mustn’t cross intel-community overlords. Does this scary reality reflect a government of, by, and for the people?

In point of fact, it reflects the kind of undemocratic deep-state swamp most Americans want to see drained.

And that draining of the swamp is precisely the kind of thing preemptive pardons can prevent.

                   This article was originally published at The New American.