He doesn't have to explain to anybody. This is his right as president. He can pardon. If he wants to pardon Bozo the Clown, he can pardon Bozo the Clown. I'm not sure why again, why people are clutching their pearls while the left is clutching their pearls. Because did y'all forget all the stuff that we said was going on or. [00:00:18] That doesn't matter. Democrats. You can't have it both ways. You can't have it both ways. You can't let people tell you you're not taking the moral high ground. When we take the moral high ground all the time and you see what's going on, and you get why he's decided to do this, or you don't, but you don't go out [00:00:38] and chew up other Democrats. No, I'm going to go ahead and chew up the Democrats because, you know, when they're wrong, they're wrong. And when it comes to Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter Biden, I think that there's a really big problem here that more and more people are waking up to. [00:00:56] For me, the. Pardon? Yes. Look, I said it the first time we covered this story. I'm going to say it right now as well. I think all politicians are liars. Okay. I didn't clutch my pearls over Biden lying because I know Biden's a liar. [00:01:11] Okay. So I think that the hypocrisy angle is the most boring angle to this story. Of course he's hypocritical. Of course he's a liar. If it talks like a politician, if it walks like a politician, it's lying. Okay. For sure. [00:01:27] So putting that aside entirely for me, the issue is, you know, the fact that this is a blanket pardon that spans for a pretty long period of time for 11 years. And when you consider the crimes that Hunter Biden was being [00:01:45] prosecuted for, they didn't span in the time frame of 11 years. So why exactly did Joe Biden decide to make the dates, or the period of time where Hunter Biden is totally, like, clear of any fear of prosecution so vast. [00:02:05] Well, as I shared yesterday, the blanket pardon does stretch 11 years. Again, far surpassing the period of time in which he, you know, in which Hunter lied on a government form in order to buy a gun. [00:02:21] Yes, that is a crime. That's what he's being prosecuted for. It stretches well beyond the years in which he failed to pay his taxes. That's the second thing he's getting prosecuted for. Right. And so it seems like that period of time is kind of meant to protect Biden [00:02:38] from prosecution of other potential crimes he committed that he isn't currently being prosecuted for, but could potentially be prosecuted for under the Trump administration. Right. And so, Lee Fang writes over at Substack, where he, you know, [00:02:54] is an independent journalist, that the order grants Hunter a pardon for those offenses against the United States, which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1st, 2014 through December 1st, 2024. [00:03:11] Fascinating. Now that 11 year pardon window extends beyond the period of the crimes prosecuted by the Department of Justice. After all, the illegal firearm purchase was on October 12th, 2018 [00:03:27] and Hunter failed to pay his taxes in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. So, in other words, in other words, Biden's pardon essentially protects Hunter Biden for two additional years prior to [00:03:47] his failing failure to pay taxes in 2016. So what happened between 2014 and 2016? What could Hunter Biden have possibly gotten himself into that? It appears Joe Biden is trying to protect him from getting prosecuted for. [00:04:02] Well, there are some issues. Okay, now I want to remind you all of what happened to Paul Manafort. Paul Manafort, close advisor to Donald Trump. He ended up serving some time in prison because he failed to register as a foreign agent. He was doing lobbying work on behalf of foreign entities. [00:04:23] And when you do that, you're supposed to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act or Fara. He didn't do that. And so as a result, he got prosecuted. There were other issues involved, but Paul Manafort was certainly punished for his failure to register as a foreign agent. [00:04:40] Now there's evidence showing that Joe Biden, I'm sorry, Hunter Biden also engaged in lobbying on behalf of foreign entities, but did not register as a foreign agent. So what's up with that double standard? [00:04:56] Now, to be clear, you know, the special counsel never pursued prosecution of Hunter Biden for failure to register as a foreign agent. But he was thinking about it. He was getting ready to do it. It appears so. Let me give you the details. So Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma Holdings Limited. [00:05:15] That's the, you know, the gas company, Ukrainian gas company. And he did so from May 2014 and left in April of 2019. Interesting. From the time his father served as vice president until he began running [00:05:32] for president, records which the Biden administration had withheld for years, indicate that Hunter Biden wrote at least one letter to the US ambassador to Italy in 2016, seeking assistance for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. [00:05:51] Okay, well, that's lobbying on behalf of a foreign entity. Embassy officials, though, were uneasy with the request from Hunter Biden because of the fact that it's the son of the current sitting vice president, and he's lobbying on behalf of a foreign company. [00:06:09] And so the response was, I want to be careful about promising too much, wrote a Commerce Department official based in the US embassy in Rome, who was tasked with responding. This is a Ukrainian company and purely to protect ourselves, [00:06:26] US government should not be actively advocating with the government of Italy, with or without the company going through the Department of Commerce Advocacy Center, the official wrote. So this individual is like, yo, you look like you're trying to, you know, [00:06:44] skip some people, skip some processes that were supposed to undergo in order to do some favors for this Ukrainian company. And there's more, including Hunter's involvement with a Romanian oligarch who was under investigation and sought Hunter's help. [00:07:01] He hired Hunter Biden, hoping that Hunter Biden would help him with, like, some business dealings. Yes. But also, can you help, like, make this investigation go away. Here are some more details on that. This is the closest the special counsel has come to tying President Biden [00:07:17] to his son's foreign business affairs. Special counsel David Weiss accused Hunter Biden of accepting about $1 million from a Romanian businessman who was attempting to influence U.S. Policy and public opinion while Joe Biden was vice president. In a new court filing, the special counsel said Hunter Biden and two associates [00:07:34] were hired in 2015 by Gabriel Popoviciu, a Romanian real estate tycoon who was facing corruption charges in his home country and wanted the U.S. To intervene. The filing said Hunter Biden was concerned lobbying work might cause political ramifications for his father, [00:07:50] so the payment was structured in a way that concealed the true nature of the work he was performing. That's bad. That seems pretty bad. And the more you learn about this, the more you scratch beneath the surface. [00:08:06] It really helps to explain why the time frame in which Joe Biden provided a blanket pardon for his son is so vast. When it doesn't need to be so vast, when you're only thinking about the. [00:08:21] You know, gun charge and Hunter Biden's failure to pay his taxes, which, by the way, to be clear, he has since paid back to the IRS with interest, with penalties and fines included. So if it was literally all about the fact that he failed to pay his taxes [00:08:37] but made right on his, you know, failure to do so and paid back the government, okay, like I wouldn't have a problem with the pardon. And honestly, the government form lying about his addiction to obtain the gun. That's bad. I don't think that's a great thing. But I do think that the prosecution and what the, you know, special counsel [00:08:55] is pursuing in regard to that charge, it's like a little ridiculous, right? It's too much. But this stuff is a big deal. And the reason why I find it a big deal. I want guys, I want you to understand I am being very consistent here. I don't like corruption. [00:09:11] I get that corruption thanks to the Supreme Court, is now baked into our political system. But we can't have foreign countries or foreign companies or foreign entities also get mixed up in our corruption. I know that it still happens to some extent. [00:09:27] I know that there are some loopholes. Okay, like in this case, all Hunter Biden even needed to do really is register as a foreign agent. And he didn't do that. So I need to understand why is it that others, especially those tied to Donald Trump, were, in my opinion, rightly prosecuted for that? [00:09:45] But Hunter Biden is now free to go. He doesn't have to worry. He doesn't even have to worry about any charges being filed, regardless of what he did between January of 2014 and, you know, December 1st of this year, by the way, in 2016, that Romanian oligarch Popoviciu [00:10:05] was convicted on charges related to a land deal in northern Bucharest, which is the capital of Romania. Also, there's more. Hunter Biden and his associates received millions of dollars from Chinese entities such as State Energy HK limited and the [00:10:24] now bankrupt Cefc China Energy Co Limited. Now, Hunter Biden had cultivated a business relationship with Ye Jian Ming, the founder of Cefc, who has been investigated by the Chinese authorities [00:10:41] on suspicion of economic crimes. In 2017, ye gave Hunter Biden a 2.8 carat diamond as a thank you for a meeting. Now, this happened in 2017, and Hunter Biden was actually asked about this in a sit down interview. [00:10:58] And he's like, I mean, this wasn't this was in 2017 when my father was no longer the vice president. So what's the what's the problem here? Okay. I mean, look, first of all, I get why he answered that way because at the time, [00:11:13] the Republican Party was essentially trying to tie Hunter Biden's shady foreign dealings with his father, Joe Biden, because they really wanted to go after Joe Biden, right? And so what Hunter Biden was doing here was essentially protecting [00:11:28] his father to say, well, he was no longer vice president. So what could he have done as someone who is no longer in office, but Joe Biden has been a career politician. I mean, he he was a politician when he was a zygote. [00:11:44] Okay, that's hyperbole, but you guys know what I mean. His entire adult life, he was he's been a politician, which means that he's got lifelong relationships with people in the federal government. So first of all, to say that someone like Joe Biden wouldn't have any sway [00:12:01] when it comes to our foreign policy, domestic policy, if he's not in office, is laughable, to say the least. He's got buddies. He can lobby them to do all sorts of favors. But it's not just about Joe Biden. It's also about Hunter Biden. Why are you lobbying on behalf of foreign entities without registering as a foreign [00:12:21] agent, as you are required to do by law? Now, the CFC, that's the Chinese company again, had hoped to invest in a liquefied natural gas venture in Louisiana, but that deal ultimately flopped. [00:12:37] But during the presidential debate, Joe Biden actually lied about Hunter Biden's dealings with Chinese entities. And I think it's important to know about that as well. Let's take a look. My son has not made money in terms of this thing about what are [00:12:53] you talking about, China. I have not had the only guy made money from China is this guy. He is the vice president of the United States. And his son, his brother and his other brother are getting rich. They're like a vacuum cleaner. They're sucking up money. [00:13:08] - President Trump, thank you. - We do not to move on. But it was true. So family members of Joe Biden's, including Hunter Biden, of course, have, you know, made as much as $10 million in recent years [00:13:24] through these foreign, you know, dealings. And so it is true, and it's obvious here that Hunter Biden did make money from these Chinese entities. And by the way, there's more. As a result, in late October of last year, Justice Department Special Counsel David Weiss was actually investigating [00:13:43] whether Hunter Biden should have registered for the overseas foreign work that he was doing. Now, although prosecutors had not charged Hunter Biden with violating the foreign lobbying laws yet, they did cite all of these various like arrangements and issues, [00:14:03] especially with the, you know, Romanian oligarch and stuff. In order to make a point that there was quite a bit of smoke, there's quite a bit of evidence, and it appears that Weiss was preparing to file those charges. Now we'll never know. Now we'll have no idea. [00:14:19] And I think that's the issue here. Right? So Charlamagne responded to Joe Biden pardoning his son by saying, look, you know, you're going to do what you're going to do. That's fine. But the Democratic Party shouldn't act so pure. [00:14:35] And that's really what I want to get to here. There's a lot of moralizing from the Democratic Party. I can't help but think of people like Whoopi Goldberg, like Sunny Hostin, who act like the corruption is so much worse. [00:14:52] Like the behavior of people involved in the Trump administration are so much worse. And in some ways, certainly rhetorically speaking, you can definitely make that case. The inability to accept the 2020 election results definitely make that case. [00:15:08] There are certainly areas in which, you know, Trump's behavior and the behavior of those around him were unacceptable and unique from what we have seen from the Democratic Party. However, however, as it pertains to corruption, as it pertains [00:15:23] to the disgusting muddy swamp that all of these politicians are swimming in. Do not make the mistake of thinking that Republicans are special creatures in that regard, because they're not. Okay. The Democrats, I think, were able to benefit from the goodwill [00:15:40] and the successes of people like and former presidents like FDR, but that branding, that pro-worker anti-corruption branding ain't going to fly anymore. People aren't going to buy it. And so when Joe Biden presents himself as this decent moral human being, [00:16:02] it's not just what he has aided and abetted in Israel or Gaza, I should say. It's also the fact that he engages in the same corrupt acts he engages in using a two tier justice system to protect [00:16:19] his own, just like Donald Trump would. It's just that he's got a polite tone. He doesn't use the same harsh rhetoric. But I don't know. Is it better to have a corrupt politician smile in your face, or would you prefer [00:16:38] to have a politician just tell you exactly how corrupt they really are? Both are terrible. Both are bad. But I need people to understand that Democrats can't keep getting away with presenting themselves as the pure ones and the moral ones, [00:16:54] because they're anything but. And the story is a great example of that. Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. [00:17:12] But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. Thank you.