"[T]he younger Mr. Biden named names, unleashing a profane tirade against a host of perceived enemies, including..."

"... the senior Biden aide Anita Dunn; the Democratic éminences grises David Axelrod and James Carville; the Obama administration alumni who built Crooked Media, a booming liberal podcast network; the CNN host Jake Tapper; and the actor George Clooney.... ... Mr. Biden dismissed Mr. Clooney as 'a brand' and Mr. Carville as someone who 'hasn’t run a race in 40 years.' Mr. Axelrod, he said, 'had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama, and that was because of Barack Obama.' The former Obama aides behind Crooked Media and its 'Pod Save America' flagship, he said, were 'four white millionaires that are dining out on their association with Barack Obama from 16 years ago.' And he asserted that Ms. Dunn, who ran the White House press operation throughout most of Mr. Biden’s presidency, had made '$40 to $50 million' from the Democratic Party.... Mr. Biden saved perhaps his strongest venom for Mr. Tapper.... 'What influence does Jake Tapper have over anything? He has the smallest audience on cable news'..."

From "Hunter Biden Trashes Democrats He Saw as Betraying His Father/In a profane tirade, the former president’s son sought to settle scores with Anita Dunn, David Axelrod, James Carville and George Clooney. Among others" (NYT).

I put the video up last night, in this post. There, I highlighted Hunter's assertion that his father's problem during his debate with Trump was the drug Ambien. What I'm highlighting in this second post is Hunter's naming and blaming a lot of Democrats. 

Responses from the Democrats Hunter named:

Axelrod: "Never have the words ‘no comment’ been more appropriate."

Carville: "[The Bidens] got into this frenzy that they were these people who were disrespected and that’s their whole culture."

Tommy Vietor, a “Pod Save America” co-host: "It’s good to see that Hunter has taken some time to process the election, look inward, and hold himself accountable for how his family’s insular, dare I say arrogant at times, approach to politics led to this catastrophic outcome we’re all now living with." 

You're probably seeing some hot clips from this Hunter Biden interview.

Here's the whole fucking thing:

Go to 2:24:10 for the material about Joe Biden's disastrous debate with Trump. Snippet: "They give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage and he looks like he's a deer in the headlights. And it feeds into every fucking story that anybody wants to tell, and Jake Tapper with literally how many anonymous sources. If  this was a conspiracy, Andrew, you know this, somehow the entirety of a White House in which you're literally living on top of each other has kept their mouth shut about, you know, like what and what's the conspiracy? Yeah. That Joe Biden got old. Yeah, he got old. He got old before our eyes. The people that came out against him were who? Nobody. Except speaker Pelosi. Speaker Pelosi did not give a full-throated endorsement which allowed everybody else to kind of go okay. Except who who came out full-throated? Progressives. AOC, Bernie, the entire  progressive wing."

"The search for a liberal Joe Rogan has led Democrats to an unlikely candidate: Jaime Harrison, their former party chair."

"Harrison will launch At Our Table on Thursday. It’s an interview show he’s been recording from his home in South Carolina and from the road, where he frequently spends time with the party’s once and future stars. 'Civic education in America is at an all-time low,' Harrison told Semafor this week, shortly before meeting up with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, the latest ambitious Democrat to visit Harrison’s home state ahead of its 2028 presidential primary...."

Semafor nonsense.

That's David Weigel, by the way.

If there's ever going to be a "liberal Joe Rogan," it's not going to happen that way.

In my opinion there is one — but only one — way to find a liberal Joe Rogan: He's right there. It's Joe Rogan. Let me help you in 3 steps: 1. See that Joe Rogan, as he already is, is pretty damned liberal, 2. Persuade Joe Rogan to lean further in the liberal direction on various issues where the liberal position is genuinely appealing, 3. Adjust your own vision of what it means to be liberal, so that it isn't gummed up with illiberal junk that has turned the public away from you, and maybe then you'll be able to see that Joe Rogan is more or less on your side, and, more important, maybe then you won't be so pathetically desperate to find "a Joe Rogan" to save you from the unpopularity that you deserve.

But, aside from all that, might Jaime Harrison do a good podcast? I'll cherry-pick from the little interview at the link to give you a sense of what he has to say:

"Hunter Biden has had Secret Service protection for an extended period of time, all paid for by the United States Taxpayer."

"There are as many as 18 people on this Detail, which is ridiculous! He is currently vacationing in, of all places, South Africa, where the Human Rights of people has been strenuously questioned. Because of this, South Africa has been taken off our list of Countries receiving Economic and Financial Assistance. Please be advised that, effective immediately, Hunter Biden will no longer receive Secret Service protection. Likewise, Ashley Biden who has 13 agents will be taken off the list."

Writes Donald Trump, at Truth Social.

"Hunter Biden has asked a federal judge to drop the laptop hacking lawsuit he slapped against a former Trump White House aide — because he’s 'millions of dollars' in debt..."

"... 'exacerbated' by losing a home in the Los Angeles wildfires, court filings show. The embattled former first son, 55, blamed the recent fires, as well as dwindling sales from his artwork and memoir, for him being plagued by 'significant debt' keeping him from 'litigating this case' against Garrett Ziegler, according to a motion filed in federal court in California on Wednesday.... Ziegler, who worked as an aide to Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, during the last administration, has published much of Hunter’s laptop data on his site in the years since The Post first exposed the device in 2020...."

The NY Post reports.

"In private, Biden has also said he should have picked someone other than Merrick Garland as attorney general..."

"... complaining about the Justice Department’s slowness under Garland in prosecuting Trump, and its aggressiveness in prosecuting Biden’s son Hunter, according to people familiar with his comments.... Had the Justice Department moved faster to prosecute Trump for allegedly seeking to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents, they say, the former president might have faced a politically damaging trial before the election.... Biden has often looked to Franklin D. Roosevelt as a model, while governing in an age dominated by pop culture figures like podcast host Joe Rogan, tech billionaire Elon Musk and Trump himself.... Substantively, few analysts deny Biden’s accomplishments. He mobilized the government to vaccinate Americans against covid-19, bringing the country out of a devastating pandemic. He avoided a recession that many economists had considered inevitable. He rebuilt the transatlantic alliance, rallying the world to help Ukraine battle Russia’s invasion.... But Biden’s critics fault him for failing to grasp that his record itself was not enough, that he needed to tell a story that would resonate in a tribal America...."

Writes Tyler Pager, in "Joe Biden’s lonely battle to sell his vision of American democracy/In his presidency’s final chapter, Biden has mused about whether he should have handled some decisions differently" (WaPo)(free-access link).

This feels like an effort to puff up Biden. Few analysts deny Biden’s accomplishments?! Maybe the trick is to ascribe special meaning to the word "analysts" — if you don't think this is an impressive accomplishment, you're not an analyst. Or maybe the idea is that any accomplishment is an accomplishment, so what's to deny?

But look how clearly the article states that Biden intended to use the Justice Department to destroy his political adversary!

The NYT purports to show us "how" Biden did something we don't even know that he did.

This is an embarrassing headline: "How Biden Changed His Mind on Pardoning Hunter: ‘Time to End All of This’/The threat of a retribution-focused Trump administration and his son’s looming sentencings prompted the president to abandon a promise not to get involved in Hunter Biden’s legal problems."

They — the authors are Katie Rogers and Glenn Thrush — cannot know the interior of the President's mind. He may have changed what he was saying about his thoughts, but I presume that he was lying all along, for political purposes, when he said he wouldn't pardon Hunter, and I presume that he always intended to pardon him.

The phrase "How Biden Changed His Mind" is misdirection — sleight of hand. If we fall for it, we unwittingly form a belief that Biden did change his mind. He and his supporters weren't lying to us throughout the campaign season. He was weighing all the factors and the factors changed after the election. He painfully reweighed and his consistent and honorable decision-making process yielded a new result. Let Rogers and Rush detail the factors and burnish our respect for the venerable statesman.

No, no, absolutely not. Now, and only now, am I reading past the headline. So let's see:

A dark sky had fallen over Nantucket, Mass., on Saturday evening when President Biden left church alongside his family after his final Thanksgiving as president.

It was a dark and stormy night. We begin with a weather report.  

Inside a borrowed vacation compound earlier in the week, with its views of the Nantucket Harbor, Mr. Biden had met with his wife, Jill Biden, and his son Hunter Biden to discuss a decision that had tormented him for months....

Who, if anyone, is the source of this knowledge of Biden's months-long mental torment? 

Support for pardoning Hunter Biden had been building for months within the family...

Who? Jill? Hunter? Who's talking to the NYT? How is building support observed? Was this support in the mind of Jill? Was it voiced to the President? 

... but external forces had more recently weighed on Mr. Biden, who watched warily as President-elect Donald J. Trump picked loyalists for his administration who promised to bring political and legal retribution to Mr. Trump’s enemies.

Biden also "watched" as Trump got elected, but that's not mentioned. It's not politically convenient to characterize Biden as waiting to see if his party might win, lying about the pardon in an effort to produce that win, and needing a new plan when the party lost. It needs to be about Trump's bad behavior, and son of a bitch, it was!... in this dark-and-stormy-night tale the NYT is telling. 

Mr. Biden had even invited Mr. Trump to the White House, listening without responding as the president-elect aired familiar grievances about the Justice Department — then surprised his host by sympathizing with the Biden family’s own troubles with the department, according to three people briefed on the conversation.

So Trump was sympathetic, and it's here, for the first time in the article, that we see a reference to sources. It's harder to portray Trump as a vengeful narcissist when 3 sources say he sympathized with Biden. It was sympathy, we're told, in the context of Trump's complaining that Biden's administration was using criminal prosecution against Trump. Maybe that inspired Biden to see how a pardon of Hunter could be portrayed not as a political favor to Hunter but as an end to political disfavor. It sounds crazy, but we're looking for "How Biden Changed His Mind."

But the article doesn't pursue that, perhaps because it had no evidence that the meeting with Trump jogged Biden's thoughts on the subject. Or do you think the fact that Biden was smiling widely is circumstantial evidence that a wonderful new idea had arisen?

The next thing in the article is this:

But it was Hunter Biden’s looming sentencings on federal gun and tax charges, scheduled for later this month, that gave Mr. Biden the final push....

The final push. So we were supposed to see the Trump meeting as a push? This is a long article, and it purports to tell us "How Biden Changed His Mind," but there was no elaboration of "how" in that bit about the meeting with Trump. Now, I'm wondering if Trump cleverly played Biden somehow? The Times had 3 sources about the conversation and we got one unenlightening sentence.

But there is much more to the article after that introduction. We're told the NYT spoke with "a half dozen people close to the president and his family," but not told who they are or anything about how they could have access to Biden's mind and why they should be trusted to tell the truth.

When the president returned to Washington late Saturday evening, he convened a call with several senior aides to tell them about his decision. “Time to end all of this,” Mr. Biden said, according to a person briefed on the call....

That's says nothing about how or when Biden decided to pardon Hunter, only about the timing of the action. 

Mr. Biden’s decision has tarnished a storied public legacy that began more than 50 years ago....

Here's a good place for elision. 

Hunter Biden’s decision to plead guilty on the tax charges — after a weeklong gun trial in Delaware in June that rehashed the family’s darkest days — had further embittered Mr. Biden....  [who] began to realize there might not be any way out beyond issuing a pardon. It appears that there was never serious consideration of anything short of a full pardon, such as a commutation of his sentence, they said.

Was there any serious consideration of restricting the full pardon to the gun and tax charges? The article doesn't mention the sweep of the pardon Biden gave, covering every possible federal crime in a 10-year period, such as the oft-alleged corrupt dealings with Ukraine and China!  

For his part, Hunter Biden was hardly shy about telling the people around him that he wanted — needed — a pardon, although it is unclear how often he had discussed the matter directly with his father before this past week....

You've got sources. What did he say? Did he threaten to do drugs again and yell about how it would all be dad's fault? Did he say he's writing a memoir that will destroy Joe's reputation forever? Did he threaten to offer his testimony to Trump officials about Joe's involvement in corrupt dealings with Ukraine and China? You're inviting your readers to visualize this scene. That's what I'm seeing.

And here's a hint that the corrupt dealings were part of the discussion:

While both father and son expressed anger over the yearslong effort by Republicans to link Hunter Biden’s questionable foreign business consulting to the president — the unproven “Biden crime family” narrative — they were almost equally contemptuous of the prosecutors who aggressively pursued both cases....

The door was cracked open for half a sentence, then quickly shut.

The statement that followed from Mr. Biden on Sunday offered a window into the mind-set of an aggrieved president who, in the end, could not separate his duty as a father from his half century of principled promises as a politician....

The most comforting possible narrative is chosen! That's the answer to how — how Biden "changed" his mind. He's just too devoted a father — to his duty as a father. Surely, you won't subtract very much from the value of his half century of principled promises as a politician!

I've read the whole thing now, and the NYT hasn't rebutted my presumption that Biden was lying all along, for political purposes, when he said he wouldn't pardon Hunter. And I need to know much more about the 10-year sweep of the pardon, covering all federal crimes, and how that connects to Joe Biden's own possible corruption. Don't just label that "unproven." Investigate it!

ADDED: I just listened to this morning's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, and it is much better. The guest is the NYT reporter Peter Baker. Excerpts:

I think obviously the only thing that's changed between June... and December when he gives this pardon, is the election. And you can look at it a couple of different ways. You could look at it in the way of him not being honest in the summer. That he really was in fact considering this, but didn't want to say before an election because it would be politically damaging. And only after the election does he admit that in fact he is going to use his extraordinary power for his son. Or — and this may be an and/or — you can also look at it as waking up to the reality of a Trump-run Justice Department in which this new president is promising retribution and specifically to go after Hunter Biden and a president who's on the way out thinking, I'm not going to let that happen. I'm not only going to pardon him for this tax and gun charges. I'm going to protect him from the next guy who's making very clear he's going to use the FBI for retribution....

[In his statement announcing the pardon, Biden] talks about the current prosecutions that his son has faced being unfair and selective. He doesn't say the other part... which is that he is guarding against politicization of the Justice Department by his successor. Right? He could have framed it that way, but he didn't. But the net effect of what he did by making it a 10-year sweeping pardon for any and everything that his son might have done does have that effect. And it does tell you what was probably going through his mind when he decided to issue the pardon.

What Peter Baker says was "probably going through his mind" is what I was saying Rogers and Thrush left out of their "How Biden Changed His Mind" article.

Here's a tightly edited 9-minute montage of lavishing praise on Joe Biden for not pardoning his son.

All of it done, I presume, with an intent to influence the 2024 election. All of it bullshit. By the midpoint you'll have lost the capacity to take the phrase "rule of law" seriously:

One of the best supercuts ever.

President Biden won't pardon Hunter because Joe Biden is a man of great character! 🤣😂pic.twitter.com/lM8aTRGrq5

— MAZE (@mazemoore) December 2, 2024

My favorite nugget: "There's a kind of old-school, sort of flinty core to his conception of how you are to be in the system — how you are to be as a person, a moral person...."

Flinty core!

(I googled the phrase "flinty core" and setting aside a couple descriptions of a singer's voice everything was about wine, where I hear it as a fancy/bullshit way to this tastes like a rock.)

"In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me"/"And guess what, we broke them and now they’re whining like little children"/"Hitler knows that he will have to break us...."

This blog has a theme today.

The quotes in the post headline are from the first 2 posts of the day, below. The Bannon article has 2 more quotes about breakage:

• Spoken in a new interview: "Somebody’s got to break the system so somebody else can come in and build it. People have roles in life, right?"

• Spoken on January 5, 2021: "All hell is going to break loose tomorrow."

"President Biden and President-elect Donald J. Trump now agree on one thing: The Biden Justice Department has been politicized."

Thanks to the NYT for stating the obvious point obviously.

The article, by Peter Baker, is "In Pardoning His Son, Biden Echoes Some of Trump’s Complaints/President Biden complained about selective prosecution and political pressure in a system he has spent his public life defending."

The prosecutions of Mr. Trump and the younger Mr. Biden were each handled by separate special counsels appointed specifically to insulate the cases from politics.... There is no evidence that Mr. Biden had any involvement in Mr. Trump’s cases.... But Mr. Biden’s pardon will make it harder for Democrats to defend the integrity of the Justice Department and stand against Mr. Trump’s unapologetic plans to use it for political purposes even as he seeks to install Kash Patel, an adviser who has vowed to “come after” the president-elect’s enemies, as the next director of the F.B.I. It will also be harder for Democrats to criticize Mr. Trump for his prolific use of the pardon power to absolve friends and allies, some of whom could have been witnesses against him in previous investigations.... 

Mr. Biden’s pardon will also give ammunition to Republicans who have contended that Hunter Biden was guilty of wrongdoing beyond the charges for which he was actually prosecuted.... The pardon Mr. Biden issued to his son specifically covers any offenses “which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024,” not just the tax and gun charges.... 

“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,” the president said. “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.”

You can only cogently say "Enough is enough" about the things that lie within your own power.

"Pardon your son. Let the Republicans howl. Who cares?"

That's the top-rated comment at the Washington Post's article "Hunter Biden’s team issues a fiery defense ahead of sentencing, possible pardon/Judges are scheduled to sentence the president’s son for gun and tax offenses in December."

President Biden, we're told, "repeatedly said that he will not pardon or commute the sentences of his son." But, yeah, who cares? He was running for office, and he didn't even win on that promise. He didn't even lose. He got ousted by fellow Democrats who thought he couldn't win and then they lost. Worst loss ever. Ignominious. And he's still got to drag his ancient body through 7 more weeks of this "presidency" nobody thinks he can do anymore. Surely, he can do one thing — that thing maybe he can't even remember promising he wouldn't do — and pardon his only living son, the scoundrel Hunter. Who believes promises these days? Everyone promises anything and everything to get elected. Is he supposed to drag himself through his last days on Earth — his post-presidency days — with his son in prison? Is he supposed to satisfy himself instead with the hollow, icy honor of posing as a weirdly scrupulous man who kept a promise not to pardon his son? Promise? Was there really a promise? Love. Family love. That's the greater thing. No joke.

UPDATE, later the same day: Biden pardoned Hunter. 

"I've answered this question directly a million times: NO. I think there were serious problems in 2020. So did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use. Okay?"

"So look... I really couldn't care less if you agree or disagree with me on this issue, and here's... the thing that I that I focus on — because what the media will do, they'll focus on the court cases, or they'll focus on some crazy conspiracy theory — what I know — what verifiably I know — happened is that in 2020 large technology companies censored Americans from talking about things like the Hunter Biden laptop story, and that had a major major consequence on the election. Now... take that as a baseline reality. Even the journalists who constantly fact check me admit that that's real. Well, okay, you could say, well, let's say your view is: That happened, and we still think Trump lost. Or: That happened, and we think that means Trump won. Who cares? It happened. Censorship is bad, and that's the substance of what we're focused on, and that's what we care the most about — and here's the final point that I'll make — is, you know, what I care a lot more about than what happened three and a half years ago is what Kamala Harris has done over the last three and a half years and what she's going to do if the American people give her four years in office. It's a disaster."

That's J.D. Vance answer this question from a reporter: "What message do you think it sends to independent voters when you do not directly answer the question: Did Donald Trump lose in 2020?" 

I agree with the reporter that Vance has been avoiding giving a direct answer, but he said he'd "answered this question directly a million times." This is the first clear "no" he's said.

Vance goes on to say what I've heard him say before, mostly, that it doesn't matter, but then also that censorship affected the election.

"I mean, like, what I think probably happened on January 6th where they withheld the police presence? If something happens, well, this will sink Trump forever."

"I mean, Pelosi, her people knew about this. They knew about possible plans to breach the Capitol. And according to J. Michael Waller, there was not one law enforcement officer present on the west side of the Capitol. How can that possibly be? But of course, the Senate Committee, they didn't investigate that. The House January 6th committee obviously didn't investigate that. I mean, those were also just whitewashes, committees designed to not get to the truth, but to cover up what probably happened. Okay. To get Trump. So I completely understand the suspicion that's out there. It's legitimate suspicion, and that's why this has to be fully investigated. I'm not going to rest until we uncover things. "

Said Senator Ron Johnson (text and audio at Real Clear Politics), asked about the assassination attempt.

"And let's face it, I uncovered an awful lot. I know firsthand how corrupt the FBI's investigation was. I've been a target of their corruption - the recipient of unsolicited briefings where they talked about being a target of Russian disinformation to try and obviously sabotage the revelation of the Hunter Biden laptop. But it kind of worked because we didn't take possession that when it was first offered to us. We went to the FBI to find out what they knew about it. They wouldn't tell us for weeks until the computer shop guy turned it over to Rudy Giuliani's attorney. The rest is history. So, no, these guys know what they're doing. They pre-sabotaged the Hunter Biden laptop. They completely, it was a complete corruption of the Russian collusion hoax. And by the way, has the Washington Post, have these guys given back the Pulitzer Prizes they earned or won for a complete false story, the narrative they promoted that put America in political turmoil, that it's still present to this day. I mean, where's the mea culpas in the media? You'll never get it. Because they're active advocates for the left themselves. That's the problem. Trump is not up against Kamala Harris. He's up against the leftist media."

"Top Dems threatened to forcibly remove Biden from office unless he dropped out, set him up to fail at Trump debate: Sources."

A New York Post headline.

The well-orchestrated “palace coup” to stop the faltering president seeking re-election has been in place for weeks, but stubborn Biden fought against it every step of the way, a source close to the Biden family told The Post Monday. The insider also made clear the anger, paranoia and frustration Biden displayed as the party elite circled around him and piled on the pressure.

Paranoia? But they were out to get him. If only he'd been more "paranoid" when the set up that early debate. But he gave them the material to use against him, and they spent the next 3 weeks jacking up the pressure on the staunch old man, and it seems they were ready to go as far as necessary.

“That debate was a set-up to convince Democrats that he couldn’t run for president,” the source said Monday. As calls for him to bow out mounted, Biden insisted he would continue, but party bigwigs threatened to invoke the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution.... 

Following the debate, first son Hunter Biden suddenly became more involved in his father’s day-to-day business and insisted upon attending every official and unofficial meeting, the source said. “Hunter felt he [Joe Biden] was being set up and he was very concerned about his father,” the source said. “These people, these officials were not on Joe’s side.”... 

Democratic Party insiders have also known for at least two years how Biden was in decline, said the source. “When I saw him a couple of years ago, it was frightening,” said the source. “He was just repeating slogans and had no idea who I was.”

They were out to get him, but only after he'd sewn up the nomination, excluding all challengers. Did the old man enjoy his seeming triumph, winning the nomination — a nomination that Kamala Harris would probably not have won, had Biden dropped out a year ago —  before they grabbed it and handed it to Kamala?

Was the NY Post's source Hunter?

"People should be ebullient and happy.... you have to sit back and enjoy this particular period in our history...."

"A senile man refuses to abdicate the presidency. He's being encouraged to stay in the race by his wife, a woman who at 55 years old got a doctorate of education and makes people call her doctor. She's not a doctor. She's no more of a doctor than I'm a doctor. His son, a crack addict... is encouraging him to stay in the race. His wife is saying stay in the race. Everybody else is pulling out... and he still refuses to leave. The senile president refuses to leave. You must enjoy it. You must sit back and enjoy it.... The media has been covering for Biden... and the campaign just dribbled him out for a press conference here a state of the union there — very scripted, very tightly controlled appearances.... They juiced him for the state of the union and it worked and drugs don't always work... so whatever they shot him up with,  whatever... Pulp Fiction adrenaline shot they gave him through the... breast plate.... I'm not a doctor — Jill is — but whatever — that didn't work here...."

In case you want to sit back and enjoy the Biden debacle, there's no better companion than Tim Dillon....

"The president declared flatly last week that he would not pardon his son if convicted, but did not address a commutation..."

"... which would leave the guilty verdict intact but wipe out some or all of the punishment. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Wednesday that she could not say whether the president might consider such an action. 'He was very clear, very upfront, obviously very definitive' in ruling out a pardon.... But as for a commutation, she added, 'I just don’t have anything beyond that.' Ms. Jean-Pierre said she had not spoken with the president about the matter yet and so her careful response may only reflect not wanting to go beyond her talking points, not an effort to leave the option open...."

The NYT reports.

Hunter Biden found guilty.

"Hunter Biden guilty of felony gun charges, faces 25 years in prison" (NY Post).

Hunter Biden became the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of a crime Tuesday after a federal jury found him guilty on three counts related to lying about his drug use in order to buy a gun....

The first son stared at the jury and made no visible reaction as the foreperson read the verdict.... First lady Jill Biden, who was present at every day of the trial except one, was caught out by the speed with which the verdict was reached — entering the courtroom two minutes after it had been read.

"[Hunter Biden] was gonna plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges, do deferred prosecution on the gun charges. And the judge asked a very simple question..."

"... so does this mean that Hunter Biden has immunity from all other past crimes that he has committed? And the defense said, yes, that's our understanding. And the prosecution said, no, we're still investigating him for financial crimes. And the judge said, Then, we don't have a deal. Right? There's no meeting of the minds. There's no contract that can be formed.... [T]he reason this thing blew up was related to the other Hunter Biden stuff, all of the foreign stuff going on.... I'm not figuring out this willingness to go to trial on these charges with these facts.... All of that is gonna be horrible for the Biden family. And again, politically really unpleasant for his father.... Joe Biden has said he will not pardon his son, but... why would you say you're gonna pardon your son before it's necessary and before an election?..."

From the new episode of the Advisory Opinions podcast, "Will President Biden Pardon His Son?"

... the other Hunter Biden stuff, all of the foreign stuff going on.... In my view, all this theater about taking gun statutes seriously serves at least 3 purposes.:

1. It might con people into into thinking that the government is vigorously enforcing gun statutes.

2. It might make people forget "the other Hunter Biden stuff, all of the foreign stuff" that is much more serious and that might intertwine with Joe Biden.

3. It might make people empathize with Joe Biden — that poor father! — and respect him for standing back and declining to rescue his son from what might look like the normal workings of the legal system — and maybe that will make it seem more as though Donald Trump is just another guy caught in a ruthless and neutral meat grinder called criminal justice.

NOTE: I added the words "In my view" to this post, because a commenter wasn't sure whether these 3 points were taken from the podcast. They were not! Be assured that if I were quoting or paraphrasing ideas from someone else, I would say so. Quotes are in quotes or blocked and indented. The 3 points are mine.

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

Bill Clinton famously explained, defending himself for having said under oath that "there's nothing going on between" him and Monica Lewinsky. He continued: "if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."

I'm reminded of the ballsy precision of Clinton's defense as I read the NYT live reporting from Day 1 of the Hunter Biden trial:

[Abbe] Lowell, Hunter Biden's lawyer... implies that the present tense of the question about drug use on the form to buy a gun — the verb “is” — means the government must prove Biden was getting high at the exact time he bought the gun.

It's called the Rule of Lenity.

Let me quote a SCOTUSblog piece from 2016, "The Court after Scalia: The Rule of Lenity":

"For months, Republicans have claimed, without producing evidence, that President Biden somehow profited from his son’s overseas business deals..."

"... in hopes of diverting attention from the accusations against former President Donald J. Trump and initiating a tit-for-tat impeachment. But it is the son — and not the father — who will stand trial during an election year in which Mr. Trump has already been convicted of felony."

From "Live Updates: Hunter Biden’s Trial in Gun Case Begins/The president’s son goes on trial in Wilmington, Del., on three charges that he lied about his drug use on a federal firearms application in 2018. The unusual prosecution carries stiff penalties: up to 25 years in prison and a $750,000 fine" (NYT).

ADDED: Here's good background, "For Hunter Biden, a dramatic day with his brother’s widow led to charges/Six years ago, Hallie Biden threw out a gun that prosecutors say Hunter Biden bought improperly. His trial starts Monday" (WaPo):