Can Biden and the media let all the bad guys off the hook? Or will Democrats still face consequences? My new column from RealClearPolitics.

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By FRANK MIELE

Every parent knows that the best way to maintain discipline is to mete out consequences for inappropriate behavior. Too bad Joe Biden never learned that lesson.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have given a blanket pardon to his son Hunter “for those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”

That is the ultimate “get out of jail free” card and covers a multitude of sins Hunter may have committed, including influence peddling, unregistered foreign lobbying, bribery, tax evasion, drug use, and sex trafficking.

No one is surprised. Joe Biden has enabled and encouraged his son’s misbehavior for decades. Thanks to the “Big Guy,” there have been no consequences for Hunter except for the disrepute he has brought to his family name.

But it doesn’t stop there. If there are no consequences for members of the first family, doesn’t that set the standard for the rest of us? Aides and lawyers close to President Biden are reportedly discussing the possibility of issuing preemptive pardons to other public figures who have been accused of wrongdoing by incoming President-elect Trump.

That would potentially include FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Special Counsel Jack Smith, and anyone else involved in prosecuting Trump for alleged federal crimes. It would also include members of the House January 6 Committee, such as Liz Cheney and Adam Schiff, but could extend far beyond that to include Gen. Mark Milley and former COVID czar Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The final two names are illustrative of the danger of a blanket pardon since both men have been accused by their critics of serious misdeeds. Milley, for instance, has been accused of improper communications with China in the last month of the previous Trump administration. Fauci is being scrutinized for acts ranging from conflicts of interest to collusion for the U.S. government’s possible role in creating COVID itself – and then covering it up. How do you simply ignore such behavior unless your goal is to obstruct justice?

The answer to that is obvious. Justice be damned. The only thing Democrats care about is circling the wagons before the second Trump presidency begins. Biden and his Cabinet officers will be working overtime to “gum up the works,” as Trump supporter Jeff Clark said about a move made by outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray to promote his own staff prior to resigning.

Wray is one more of those senior officials who is being considered for a pardon by Joe Biden, and his resignation came about only because Trump had made it clear that he planned to fire him anyway, something which rattled not just Democrats but also the mainstream media.

The interview that President-elect Donald Trump did with Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press” was illustrative of the double standard that the legacy media uses to protect Democrats from consequences.

Repeatedly, Welker intimated that Trump had no right, let alone obligation, to pursue investigations into criminal or civil wrongdoing by members of the previous administration. The implicit assumption was that such an investigation would, by its very nature, be corrupt.

But hold on there. By what logic does a new president or attorney general overlook potentially criminal behavior by a predecessor or other government official?

Trump responded vigorously that he would support investigations if his FBI nominee, Kash Patel, considered them warranted: “If they think that somebody was dishonest or crooked or a corrupt politician, I think he probably has an obligation to do it.”

Welker twisted that answer into a suggestion that Trump was authorizing Patel to “pursue investigations against your political enemies.” But Trump hit back. First, he said it would be entirely up to Patel and that the White House would not interfere. And rather than focus on Welker’s suggestion that the investigations would be launched against “political enemies,” Trump zeroed in on the real reason why investigations happen. “If they were crooked, if they did something wrong, if they have broken the law,” Trump said, it would be appropriate to investigate them.

Later in the interview, Trump revisited – and rejected – the notion that he intends to go after his personal enemies. He even withdrew his campaign promise to appoint a special prosecutor “to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States, Joe Biden.”

After winning the election, Trump was in a more generous spirit. “I’m not looking to go back into the past. I’m looking to make our country successful,” he said. “Retribution will be through success. If we can make our success – this country successful, that would be my greatest, that would be such a great achievement.”

When pressed by Welker, Trump said he had no plans to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden and that it would have to be a decision made by Pam Bondi, his attorney general designate, not by him. But that did not stop him from expressing his disgust for how the justice system had been weaponized against him and his supporters – in other words, how Biden had, in fact, gone after his own “political enemies” – something which Welker seemed oblivious to.

When it came to the so-called House January 6 Committee, Trump was adamant about the political nature of the investigation that tried to pin blame on him for the riot that impeded the congressional review of the Electoral College votes in the 2020 election.

Welker noted that “President Biden is considering giving preemptive pardons to the likes of Liz Cheney [and] Adam Schiff,” two members of the committee, and asked Trump whether they would be wise to accept them. He said they should all go to jail because of what they did – catering their report to evidence that they solicited to provide an anti-Trump narrative and ignoring other evidence that exonerated him, such as proof that he had authorized at least 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol only to have Nancy Pelosi and the mayor of D.C. reject the help.

But though the president-elect expressed his personal belief that the members of the J6 Committee were legally culpable for how the investigation was handled, he said he would not order his attorney general or FBI director to review the matter. “They can do whatever they want.”

There is one area that Trump has made clear he, too, will issue pardons – the hundreds of people charged with crimes related to Jan. 6 – and Democrats might like to seize on this as the equivalent of Biden’s use of the pardon power. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Most of the Jan. 6 prisoners were charged with crimes related to trespassing, and they received sentences far in excess of the norm – only because they were supporters of Donald Trump. Moreover, the Justice Department refused to prosecute crimes related to the George Floyd riots of 2020 that led to several deaths and billions of dollars in damages. That selective prosecution alone warrants corrective action, but even more so, the treatment of the prisoners has been outrageous.

“I hear the jail is a hell hole,” Trump told Welker. “This is the most disgusting, filthy place. These people are living in hell…. They’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”

And what was the crime that led to such treatment? Creating a riot that actually hindered Trump’s effort to convince Congress to reject questionable state results in the 2020 election. If anyone had a reason to resent the Jan. 6 defendants, it was Trump, yet he has vowed to set most of them free.

Could anyone make the case that these J6 defendants did not suffer consequences for their actions? Ridiculous. They have suffered enough, and that is what the pardon and clemency power is designed for – to correct an error or acknowledge that the punishment does not fit the crime.

Kristen Welker and NBC obviously don’t believe so, and they have no interest in looking at the underlying facts of the 2020 election or the distrust in government that followed it. Welker ended her interview with her most audacious question of all:

“For the sake of unifying this country, will you concede the 2020 election and turn the page on that chapter?”

Doesn’t she realize that the entire 2024 election was a referendum on whether the 2020 election was legitimate? Biden and Kamala Harris painted Trump as a threat to democracy specifically because he rejected the results of the 2020 election, and the voters sided with Trump.

Now, we get to the most important turning point in American history since the Civil War. As Barack Obama famously said, “Elections have consequences.” And the most important consequence of 2024 is that Democrats are now on notice – you can run, but you can’t hide.

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About Heartland Diary USA

Heartland Diary is solely operated by Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. If you enjoy reading these daily essays, I hope you will SUBSCRIBE to www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com by leaving your email address on the home page. Also please consider purchasing one of my books. They are available through the following Amazon links. My new book is “What Matters Most: God, Country, Family and Friends” and is a collection of personal essays that transcend politics. My earlier books include “How We Got Here: The Left’s Assault on the Constitution,”  “The Media Matrix: What if everything you know is fake?” and the “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy. Part 1 is subtitled “Bush’s Global Failure: Half Right.” Part 2 is “Obama’s Fundamental Transformation: Far Left.” Part 3 is “Trump’s American Vision: Just Right.” As an Amazon Associate, I may earn referral fees for qualifying purchases through links on my website.