The tale of the presidential pardons

A SPATE of pardons issued by US President Donald Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, highlighted one of the powers of the US Executive Branch that may end up being challenged in court.

In fulfillment of his campaign promise, Trump signed an executive order granting full pardon and commutation of sentences to all those arrested during the so-called ‘J6’ (January 6, 2020) US Capitol “riot” numbering nearly 2,000 persons.

Majority of them were Trump supporters and unwitting participants who got swept by the crowd who forced their way inside the US Capitol, the seat of the US Congress, amidst allegation that the election is being “stolen” from Trump to install Biden as president.

Trump also removed the security clearance of about 51 intelligence officers who signed a letter during the 2019 election campaign claiming the contents of Hunter Biden’s controversial laptop was a ‘Russian disinformation campaign’ to help Trump win, as part of Russia’s meddling in US politics.

The accusation that Russia meddled in the 2020 election was later proven to be a fraud, a ‘psywar’ operation initiated by the camp of former US president Barak Obama and the US intelligence community under the direction of Anthony Blinken. Blinken was then appointed as US Secretary of State by Biden.

It also turned out that the content of Hunter’s laptop details his financial transactions involving Ukrainian oligarchs and Chinese businessmen currying business favors thru his father.

The ‘Russian spin,’ released in time for the presidential debate between Trump and Biden in October 2019, was then concocted by Blinken and Obama to turn the heat away from the Bidens’ corrupt activities.

Hunter, eldest son of Joe Biden who was also found guilty of illegal gun possession, was pardoned by his father on December 1 “for all offenses” that Hunter committed or “may have committed or taken part of” dating back to January 1, 2014, when Joe was vice president to Obama.

Curiously, Biden also pardoned his entire family also on the same ground and covering the same period.

Biden signed the pardon covering his siblings, James, Valerie and John and their spouses, Sara Biden and James Owens, on January 20, hours before Trump was formally inaugurated.

“The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that they engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense,” Biden claimed.

In another set of pardons that got the public wondering and enraged also on January 20, Biden issued a pardon for Dr. Anthony Fauci, US Armed Forces General Mark Milley, former chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Trump, and the members and staff of the so-called ‘J6 Committee’ headed by Wyoming Rep. Elizabeth Cheney and wife of former US Vice President Richard ‘Dick’ Cheney.

Fauci, the controversial former director of the US’ National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was in the forefront of the campaign against COVID-19 but is now accused as behind its global spread thru his ‘gain of function’ experiments with deadly consequences for humanity.

These experiments were done on behalf of the global pharmaceutical industry such as Pfizer and MModerna where they earned billions from the mRNA vaccines that they sold and which are now being found to cause cancer, heart attack and death.

Fauci is also believed as behind the proliferation of US biochemical warfare laboratories in Ukraine that include one of Hunter Biden’s companies. These biolabs were discovered by Russia after its 2022 attack on Eastern Ukraine.

Like Hunter, Fauci’s pardon dated back to any offenses he committed, or may have committed, since January 1, 2014.

Trump had accused the members of the J6 Committee of “destroying evidence” contradicting the Biden administration’s narrative that he instigated the attack on Capitol Hill and in order to incarcerate as many people as possible related to the attack.

Milley, on the other hand, had backstabbed Trump by calling him a “fascist” behind the president’s back and subsequently siding with the Democrats’ attack on Trump resulting to his being retained in his post until his retirement in September 2023.

Biden claimed he issued all these ‘preemptive pardons’ to “protect” those named from the “vengeance” of Trump. BIden had adopted the tactic of putting a time period on the pardon similar to that given by President Gerald Ford to his predecessor, Richard Nixon in 1974.

In all these pardons, however, the beneficiaries are hampered by a ruling of the US Supreme Court (Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79, 1915) that a pardon “carries an imputation of guilt and that acceptance carries a confession of guilt.”

In the case of Fauci, Milley, Cheney and Biden’s siblings, none of them are yet formally charged in court and their pardon is deemed “private” despite its being publicly announced, unless presented to the court.

Biden’s pardon may also in the end, prove useless as it can still be challenged in court thru a formal trial as it has no precedent yet in US jurisprudence.