Before commenting, I came across several posts on social media that did a good job expressing my thoughts, though more pithily.
​
“At this point I guess Biden has zero fu**s left to give.”
-- Brian J. Karem (White House correspondent)

We’re not accepting complaints about the Hunter Biden pardon unless you also complained about the Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort pardons.
-- David Corn (journalist for Mother Jones)

“Literally, if you're a self-imagined journalist who did ABSOLUTELY NO coverage of Trump's pardons during the election, you should crawl into a dark room in shame for caring about this. There is nothing sleazier.
-- Marcy Wheeler (national security expert journalist), in response to press criticism.


If you were Joe Biden watching Trump appoint his son-in-law's pardoned extortionist daddy as ambassador, then you'd pardon Hunter Biden too.
-- Grant Stern (executive editor of Occupy Democrats)
 
Okay, just one more.  It’s not pithy, but worth including.  That’s because it’s a tweet from former Attorney General Eric Holder.

​What’s stood out to me from the criticisms of the pardon are that it’s hurts the public’s perception of the rule of law, and that it’s hypocritical of President Biden after saying he wouldn’t pardon his son.  That, and one other thing:  the extensive coverage of the pardon.
 
To start with, when some of wrung their hands in distress over the rule of law, I don’t think the impact of this pardon on how the public sees the rule of law borders on zero.  After all, the public has lived through Trump trying to overthrow the government and being able to use the rule of law to force so many delays that he hasn’t had to face a single court trial on it, despite two federal indictments, both of which have now been dismissed.  Further, the public has seen the Supreme Court rule that a president can commit almost any crime (!) while in the White House and have immunity for it.  Moreover, the public has also seen Trump convicted of 35 felonies, been found liable of rape, and been found guilty of business fraud – and then shrugged and elected him president.  So, when it comes to the presidency their perception of “the rule of rule” has already been bent out of shape so much that a president using his Constitutional right to pardon his own son for reasons (whether or not one agrees with the reasons) that most legal experts say are justifiable pretty much doesn’t even register on the “Rule of Law-o-meter.”
 
On top of which, the public has also seen Trump, when previously in the White House, pardon four men -- Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort -- under threat of indictment for their involvement in trying to overthrow the government.  So, I suspect that pardoning one’s son convicted of basically tax evasion (which he paid back) and filling out a form illegally not only doesn’t rise to that level, but doesn’t rise to any level when impacting how the public sees the rule of law.
 
And beyond even that, the public saw Trump say repeatedly as a campaign issue that he may pardon everyone in prison who was convicted from their part in the January 6 Insurrection.  So, thinking that Joe Biden pardoning his son for crimes that most legal experts say almost all others would never have even been charged in the first place will be something that the public sees as warping their view of the rule of law…is ludicrous and ignores the world of Trump we live in.
 
As for whether or not President Biden was hypocritical for pardoning his son after saying he wouldn’t, I don’t think there’s anything remotely hypocritical about it.  Conditions changed, and so opinions change.  It’s how life works and should work. And the conditions that changed are critically important:  because we now have an incoming president who has stated clearly and repeatedly that “I will be your retribution.”  That when in office, he plans to use the courts for revenge to go after his enemies.  And has named as his nominee to head the FBI someone who has been just as clear about politicizing the agency and using it to go after those who opposed the party and against whom he holds grudges.  And further, Trump just named his daughter’s father-in-law, who is a convicted felon that he pardoned, to be the Ambassador to France!  So, when those conditions changed, some which put his son at risk of further retribution, and some which took the power of the pardon to reprehensible and uncaring levels, a president pardoning his son after having his life dragged publicly through more mud and for longer than likely anyone ever convicted for the same charges does pass the smell test.
 
And if ultimately someone does want to believe that the pardon is hypocritical (and as I said, I don't believe it is in the slightest), if that’s the absolute worst charge that can be made about the pardon compared to the unending stream of gross hypocrisies that Trump has foisted onto the American public, changing positions from the minimum wage, health care (supporting a single-payer plan in 1999), vaccines and abortion, or changing positions when someone has offered him money – whether on cyber-currency, criticism Bud Light or wanting to ban TikTok or a range of other issues – not to mention the 30,000+ lies that the Washington Post reported when he was in office, it’s an empty case devoid of substance.
 
Which leaves the matter of press coverage.  President Biden pardoned his son for being convicted of crimes (and yes, they were crimes) that almost all legal experts say others are almost never charged.  That he was hounded and charged solely because he was the son of President Biden, and MAGOPs wanted to impeach him but couldn’t find grounds after years of investigation.  So, they went after his son.  And the press has made this an on-going story.  In fact, right before posting this article this morning (two days after the pardon), MSNBC spent 20 minutes on their morning show still dealing with criticism.  And seemingly will continue doing so.  Despite having let it largely fall through their reportorial cracks when Trump pardoned Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort – people who were involved in trying to overthrow the government and democracy.  And pardoned donors, Blackwater war criminals, corrupt MAGOP politicians, participants in the Russia probe scandal and more.  Many of which actually impacted “the rule of law” in the United States.  And despite having just said he would appoint an extended family member, who he had pardoned, to be U.S. Ambassador to France.  (Which has received a ho-hum, oh-my, well, that's Trump response.)  But…Hunter Biden!  Who most legal analysts have said wouldn't have been charged if his last name wasn't Biden.

Or as Marcy Wheeler explained the situation yesterday morning:  “Literally, if you're a self-imagined journalist who did ABSOLUTELY NO coverage of Trump's pardons during the election, you should crawl into a dark room in shame for caring about this. There is nothing sleazier."

Yes, there have been reporters, legal analysts and commentators who’ve complained that pardoning his son is a gift to Trump, who will use it to justify whatever horrific pardons he makes in the future.  To me (and plenty enough others I've seen, as noted above), this is an almost stunning belief devoid of meaning or grasp of the real world.  To think Trump wouldn’t make the pardons otherwise, to think Trump wouldn’t find some issue to try to explain away his pardons, to think Trump even cares about ever justifying his actions making a pardon or for doing anything ignores everything we all have seen of Trump over the past eight years – or through our lifetime observing Trump. 
 
(On Jon Stewart's Monday hosting of The Daily Show last night, after giving lip service for 90 seconds to Kash Patel being Trump's nominee to run the FBI, showing news clips of Patel being called "the most dangerous nominee for democracy" and about him saying he wanted to jail judges, bureaucrats and judges -- a topic I therefore thought was about to be the theme of his segment ("the most dangerous nominee for democracy" seemed a pretty notable one, after all...) -- Stewart then brushed that aside and devoted the remainder of his 18 minutes to slamming President Biden for pardoning his son and ceding the moral high ground.  This is the same Jon Stewart, by the way, who only weeks ago slammed Democrats for them so-genteelly playing by the standard rules of politics, always taking the moral high ground, as it were, while Trump and the MAGOP found ways around that, bulldozing it into dust.  But now, oh-dear, President Biden pardoned his son!  As if the sociopathic, amoral Trump cares one tiny speck of dust about having the moral high ground "ceded" to him before he'll consider doing anything that undermines democracy. Let alone that it would take a lifetime to have the moral high ground ceded to him.  NOTE: Trump wouldn't know the moral high ground unless it was pointed out to him by a battalion shining klieg lights on it, and it was then reported on Fox -- at which point he'd bulldoze the thing.)

The bottom line:
 
There were no costs to past Trump pardons of those involved in the Insurrection to overthrow the government, or of war criminals, or of those involved in investigations of his own scandals, or more.  To try to put President Biden in the same category for pardoning his son for charges that would never have been brought if his last name wasn’t Biden and to protect his son against future retribution by those publicly out for vengeance and think there will be a cost to President Biden and the rule of law for it is twisting known reality until it’s unrecognizable.
 
And most people who are not the MAGOP base will fully understand the difference between a father pardoning his son wrongly targeted, and Trump pardoning white supremacist terrorists and those in prison for trying to overthrow the government.

Do I wish President Biden hadn't pardoned his son?  What I wish is that the MAGOP hadn't hounded and investigated Hunter Biden in Congress for two years, trying to get his father (and finding nothing), putting Joe Biden in the position where decency required appointing a special prosecutor who, in turn, likely felt obligated to charge him when he wouldn't likely have charged anyone else under the same conditions -- and that Trump and his FBI Director-nominee haven't relentlessly made clear they were about retribution and revenge, as MAGOP officials continue riling their base by talking about the non-existent "Biden Crime Family," making a pardon seem an understandable response.  At which point it should have been covered as a valid issue for a few hours before getting back to focusing on actual, literal threats to democracy.
 
And in the end, as Briam Karem so eloquently put it -- “At this point I guess Biden has zero fu**s left to give.”

​Yesterday, Rudy Giuliani and his legal team moved to have his trial postponed, but the judge didn’t allow it and said it would move forward as scheduled.  Afterwards, outside the courthouse, Giuliani spoke to the press –
 
"The reality is I have no cash. It's all tied up,” he said, adding -- "I don’t have a car. I don’t have a credit card. I don’t have cash.… I don’t have a penny, they have put stop orders on my Social Security account."
 
Sprinkled through that are words Giuliani uses to create sympathy and make a non-existence point, explaining things he doesn’t have – cash.  A car.  Credit card.  Cash, again.  A penny.  Social security.  All symbolic of money.  But missing in his mournful plea is the non-symbolic, actual word itself:  money.  That’s because of four words buried amidst it all – “It’s all tied up.”
 
Just to be clear, "It's all tied up" means he has money.  In fact, it means he probably has a lot.  Because if you don’t have much money and are leaving from paycheck to check, without savings, you don’t tie up your money.  And it requires a lot of money to tie it up. 
 
And if it’s “all tied up,” that means he can work on untying it, which he can then sell off.  For, y'know...cash.
 
I’m actually very sorry that Rudy Giuliani, after an admired career prosecuting criminals, being praised as “America’s Mayor,” chose to divert his life and tie his future to a racist, hate-filled, fascist sociopath and has fallen from such a high perch in society to become financially destroyed.  But that was his decision.  Of his own free will, he went on television, looked in the camera and defended his new circle of criminals who tried to undermine democracy and insisted “Truth is not truth.”  But I’m overwhelmingly more sorry that, using the office of president to shout from, he knowingly and repeatedly destroyed the lives of two people, even putting their lives at risk, as well, despite them doing absolutely nothing wrong, and who were in fact doing their civic duty as volunteers, helping run a free and fair election.
 
As a former U.S. Attorney, it’s a very safe bet that Mr. Giuliani understands how the court system, legal cases, civil offenses and penalties work.  And he, even more than most, is fully aware, having spent a lifetime making the very point in court, that there are actually consequences when you break the law.  And so his financial troubles, he most surely knows, are a direct by-product of when a jury finds you guilty of defamation to the extent of smearing, lying and ruining not just one, but two innocent people's lives, dragging them relentlessly through the mud, from the highest-profile platform.
 
Or as he might have put it before his law license was disbarred --
 
If you don’t have the cash, don’t malign and trash.

I completely understand why Special Prosecutor Jack Smith moved to dismiss his two cases against Trump.  I just wish he hadn’t done it.
 
There was no way that Smith’s prosecutions against Trump would go anywhere.  For starters, it’s obvious to pretty much anyone sentient that Trump would have his Attorney General end the cases.  But further, as CNN special legal analyst Ellie Honig pointed out, “He's making these moves because he has to under long-standing Justice Department policy that goes back to 1973,” saying that Smith had confirmed with the Justice Department that, under DOJ policy, the prosecution of a sitting president could not continue.
 
So, I get all that.
 
But given that these were both serious cases – “serious,” not just from the perspective of the amount of evidence that Smith and his team had amassed, but serious for what they both were about, trying to overthrow the government and taking national security secrets – I think it would have not only been far more impactful, but also the only impact that could have existed (given that Smith knew he would be unable to prosecute the cases) if the public saw that it was Trump himself who had the charges against him dismissed and forced to defend his action, rather than the prosecutor dismissing them, which risks giving the impression that he might have believed he didn’t have a case.
 
The cases couldn’t have proceeded.  So be it.  But there is a mid-term election in two years -- let voters see Trump burying his own prosecution.  Make Trump keep ranting about how it was a witch hunt and fake.  He’s been doing that for years, and he’ll keep doing it.  But those are words without substance, especially given how he’s been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable of rape, and found guilty of fraud.  And rather than just spouting words contrary to what people saw with their own eyes, there’s something visceral to people actually seeing someone at the top take action as judge and jury and making all one’s own charges go away.  Everyone understands that, even for those who believe Trump is innocent.  They may love that he did it, but they know what he did.  They know it’s putting your hand on the scale of justice and tipping it over in your favor.  And so, too, does everyone else know it.  Everyone, even those who voted for Trump but don’t believe him.  It reeks of corruption.
 
And now, instead, Trump and his MAGOP enablers in Congress can say, see, it was a witch hunt.  It was prosecutorial misconduct.  It was politization of the justice system.  Even though it wasn’t.  It was required the DOJ policy. 
 
It just wasn’t required now.
 
Further, as proof that this wasn’t dropped for lack of evidence, it’s important to note that the cases were dismissed “without prejudice,” meaning that the charges can be brought again in when Trump is out of office.  And if Jack Smith had waited to let the Trump administration get rid of the cases, it's possible they would have asked from the to dismiss the "with prejudice."  In which case they'd be finished, completely.  So, this leaves the possibility of them being brought to court again.  (Besides which, there's no guarantee Judge Chutkan would have dismissed with prejudice.)
 
The problem, unfortunately, is that, as attorney Honig said, “That's not going to happen. Let's be realistic. Some prosecutors are not going to come in four-and-change years from now and revive these cases. For all intents and purposes, it's over.”

Which brings us back to the beginning.  I completely understand why Jack Smith moved to dismiss his two cases against Trump.  I just wish he hadn’t done it.  And let Trump do it himself.

It’s been increasingly clear the influence that money and most-especially of billionaires have had on politics, and mostly notably the MAGOP Party. 
 
For starters, that’s easy.  There’s the world’s richest man Elon Musk buying Twitter and changing policies to allow far-right fascism creep back onto the platform, bringing more of the material, racism and division to be posted than before, and drive many users away.  And then himself promoting Russian talking points and racist propaganda, interviewing Trump, campaigning with him at campaign rallies and running one of the party’s get out the vote efforts.  Topping it off by giving away a million dollars daily to those who signed up for his PAC.  Not to mention the news today that ABC reporter Jon Karl reported a Trump advisor telling him, "If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you're buying yourself a primary. That is all. And there's a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it."
 
But that only touches the surface.  This includes billionaire Peter Thiel who groomed and paid for most of “JD Vance’s Senate campaign and pushed him to be Trump’s vice presidential running mate, a heartbeat from the presidency, for a 78-year-old man with dementia.
 
There’s also Leonard Leo, vice-president of the Federalist Society, who received control of a $1.6 billion gift to fund his efforts to push his far-right legislative agenda.  His many payments to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas – as well as “gifts” to SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito would force the jurists to resign his seat on any other court in the country for ethics violations, except that the High Court has no such rules.
 
Billionaire Miriam Adelson, widow of long-time benefactor of the MAGOP Sheldon Adelson, got upset at a slight she perceived from someone on Trump’s staff and threatened to withhold future funding.  How much money did she donate?  Enough for Trump to make nice by awarding her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  The money flowed again.

Not to mention billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and billionaire owner of the Washington Post Jeff Bezos blocking their newspapers a week before the election from publishing prepared endorsements for Kamala Harris.
 
And we haven’t even gotten to hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, Texas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow (who also made “friendly gifts” to Justices Thomas and Alito) and the Koch family billionaires, whose donations to Trump and the MAGOP have been profound over the years.
 
Yes, Democrats have their billionaire donors, as well.  But nothing at this level of payment, and nothing even remotely close to this level of deep, substantive influence.  Just from Elon Musk (the richest man in the world) and Peter Thiel alone.  And that's before even getting to all the rest.
 
All of which got me to thinking about an article I wrote for the Huffington Post about this very problem – 14 years ago.  That was when the Supreme Court, in all its infinite wisdom, for reasons know only to itself, ludicrously ruled that money is free speech.
 
I thought it was therefore an appropriate time to revisit that piece.  I tracked down a dollar bill for an interview, to make its case that it was indeed deserving of free speech.

Written January 26, 2010.

If you didn't see Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Sunday, the Main Story was a bit different from usual.  It's about traffic stops.  As the show writes, while acknowledging the critical importance of traffic stops, Oliver discusses the power given to cops during traffic stops, how they sometimes abuse that power, and some simple ways we can start to change that -- and what it all has to do with the worst musical on Broadway.  It's a very good report, quite interesting, at times very serious -- and (not surprising) often very funny.