Joe Biden Pardons Son Hunter Biden in Gun and Tax Cases–And Any Federal Crimes From 2014 Through 2024

After many denials he would do so, Joe Biden granted his son Hunter Biden a blanket pardon in the federal gun and tax cases against him Sunday night. The pardon, which covers any federal crimes by Hunter from 2014 to 2024, ends a case that was blown open by IRS whistleblowers who spoke out after the Biden Justice Department slow-walked an investigation into Hunter, allowing the statute of limitations to pass on some charges and offering Hunter a sweetheart plea deal that was ultimately rejected by an incredulous federal judge in Delaware resulting in the appointment of a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland in the case. Incredibly, Garland appointed the same federal prosecutor who sabotaged the Hunter case, Robert Weiss, to be special counsel.

The pardon absolves Hunter of any possible drug involvement, sex trafficking, lobbying, bribery, foreign agent or other crimes involving Ukraine and several other foreign governments or companies including China. The start date of 2014 coincides with the year Hunter joined the board of the Ukraine energy firm Burisma in an influence peddling scheme alleged to have involved Joe Biden.

Hunter was later convicted on three felony charges related to the purchase of a gun in June of 2024 (AP excerpt):

Hunter Biden was convicted Tuesday of all three felony charges related to the purchase of a revolver in 2018 when, prosecutors argued, the president’s son lied on a mandatory gun-purchase form by saying he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.

…Jurors found Hunter Biden guilty of lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the application by saying he was not a drug user and illegally having the gun for 11 days.

Link to Special Counsel Weiss’ statement on the gun case conviction.

Hunter faced sentencing in the gun case on December 12 and for the tax case on December 16.

Celebrate Trump’s Win With New Deals At Mike Lindell’s MyPillow — For All Of America!

In September, Hunter pled guilty to tax charges (NPR excerpt):

President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, pleaded guilty Thursday to tax charges in a surprise move just before jury selection was set to start in his federal criminal trial in Los Angeles.

The last-minute change of plea headed off what would likely have been a painful legal and personal ordeal filled with sordid details of the younger Biden’s life when he was addicted to crack cocaine.

The case centered on Biden’s failure to pay $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019, even as he spent millions of dollars on what prosecutors described as an “extravagant lifestyle” replete with escorts, luxury hotels and a sex club membership.

…Hunter Biden was facing nine counts in the Los Angeles case: three felony counts for tax evasion and filing false returns, plus six misdemeanor counts.

Link to Special Counsel Weiss’ statement on the tax case guilty plea.

Attorney Mike Davis noted a few days ago that once pardoned, Hunter could no longer invoke his 5th Amendment rights if called to testify in matters related to Biden family corruption, “If Biden pardons someone–like, say, Hunter or Jack Smith–they can no longer invoke the Fifth Amendment’s right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before Congress or grand juries. If those pardoned refuse to testify, they can face new charges for criminal contempt.”

Hunter spent the Thanksgiving holiday with Joe and family in Nantucket.

Text of the pardon.

Statement from President Joe Biden

Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted. Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.

The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room – with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.

No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. 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. 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.

For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.

###

Executive Grant of Clemency
Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
President of the United States of America

To All to Whom These Presents Shall Come, Greeting:

Be It Known, That This Day, I, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States, Pursuant to My Powers Under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, of the Constitution, Have Granted Unto

ROBERT HUNTER BIDEN

A Full and Unconditional 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 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted (including any that have resulted in convictions) by Special Counsel David C. Weiss in Docket No. 1:23-cr-00061-MN in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware and Docket No. 2:23-CR-00599-MCS-1 in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF I have hereunto signed my name and caused the Pardon to be recorded with the Department of Justice.

Done at the City of Washington this 1st day of December in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty-four and of the Independence of the United States the Two Hundred and Forty-ninth.

###

A sample of pardon denials:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/12/breaking-joe-biden-pardons-son-hunter-biden-gun/

Trump White House affords chance to confront Lebanese terror bank

Hezbollah terrorists attending the funeral of a killed terrorist. (Shutterstock)

The reason MEAB has evaded sanctions is that it has friends in high places.

President-elect Donald Trump’s electoral victory offers a golden opportunity to shut down a Lebanese bank, one critical to Iran and Hezbollah, that has so far escaped sanctions even as it serves as one of the main conduits of terror financing, observers tell JNS.

While numerous Lebanese banks and individuals have been slapped with sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the Middle East & Africa Bank (MEAB), the 15th largest by deposits in Lebanon, has fallen through the cracks.

In 2019, MEAB bank was named as a defendant in a case, still ongoing, in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of New York, brought by American citizens and the families of American citizens who were killed or injured in Iraq between 2004 and 2011 in attacks orchestrated by Hezbollah in coordination with other terrorist groups.

In 2006, MEAB Bank’s offices were targeted by Israeli fighter jets after a fundraising appeal aired on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station asking that donations for the terrorist group be sent to a specific account at the bank.

Haig Melkessetian, a former intelligence operative for the U.S. Defense and State departments, has investigated MEAB extensively. He told JNS that the reason MEAB has evaded sanctions is that it has friends in high places.

In January 2015, during the Iran nuclear talks, Mohammad Zarif, the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister at the time, asked then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry “to go easy on MEAB,” in other words, that it be kept off the OFAC sanctions list, Melkessetian said.

David Wurmser, a senior analyst at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, who has researched the bank and the Shi’ite clan behind it, told JNS, “It’s very clear that the Iranians were out to preserve their core structures, and this bank really lies at the center of the global reach of Hezbollah, and through Hezbollah, the global reach of Iran.”

The Obama administration, which had already signaled it intended to sanction MEAB bank, couldn’t simply drop its plan entirely, Melkessetian said, so instead of sanctioning MEAB, the U.S. sanctioned its chairman, Kassem Hejeij.

The African connection

Kassem Hejeij bears responsibility for the August 2020 Beirut port explosion, according to the Global Fight Against Terror Funding (GFATF), a website dedicated to exposing individuals, institutions and states contributing to the spread of global terrorism.

The ammonium nitrate that exploded, causing 218 deaths and more than 7,000 injuries was supposed to go to a company in Mozambique, Fabrica de Explosivos de Moçambique, after it left the Republic of Georgia, where it had been produced.

Kassem used an African connection to offer the company $700,000 to pretend to be the official destination of the ammonium nitrate, and after that to shut down, GFATF reported. The company, in financial straits, agreed.

In June 2015, the U.S. labeled Kassem a Specially Designated Global Terrorist with direct links to Hezbollah.

“[Kassem] Hejeij has helped open bank accounts for Hezbollah in Lebanon and provided credit to Hezbollah procurement companies. Hejeij has also invested in infrastructure that Hezbollah uses in both Lebanon and Iraq,” the U.S. Treasury Department said, announcing its sanctions against him.

Hejeij had himself sanctioned, rather than his bank, making the best of a bad situation. He hired lobbyists in Washington to plead his case, leading to the agreement to shift the target of sanctions from the bank to himself. As part of the deal, he would step down as bank chairman in favor of his son Ali.

“The former chairman has no relationship whatsoever or ownership interest in MEAB,” claimed the bank in its June 15, 2015, announcement that Kassem was removing himself from his position as head of the bank.

“Kassem isn’t supposed to be involved with banking, but his office is in the bank. Across the hall from him is his son,” Melkessetian said. “Do you think the son is going to be more loyal to U.S. Treasury sanctions or to his father?”

According to a 2017 article in The Daily Caller, Hejeij told a Lebanese government source that “turning the bank over to Ali changes nothing because me and my son are one and he is following my orders.”

He also said that “he never has to worry about business, because of go-betweens connecting him with U.S. lawyers and lobbyists willing to represent Treasury sanctioned individuals.”

(This is likely a reference to his brother, Mohsen Hejeij, who can operate freely in the U.S. and hired law firm Squire Patton Boggs and consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal to help keep MEAB bank off OFAC’s list.)

“I have the Americans in my pocket and I can buy Washington,” Kassem boasted, according to The Daily Caller report.

It’s impossible to talk about MEAB Bank without understanding the Hejeij clan that runs it. The GFATF website describes the clan as “one of the pillars of Hezbollah’s financial structure and operative mechanism.”

The clan is led by Kassem and his brother Mohsen. They operate business ventures in various countries with a network of “governors, bank managers, lawyers, accountants, police officers and organized crime members,” the website reported.

The opportunity to deal with that network may be at hand. The incoming U.S. administration brings a clear understanding of the danger of these “mafioso underworld” type networks, which enjoy illicit and political ties throughout Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, Wurmser said.

The incoming administration also understands that the 2021 China–Iran Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement has opened these strategic terrorist networks to the Chinese.

“It becomes a very dangerous struggle to shut these networks down because they also serve Chinese interests in sub-Saharan Africa, and particularly in Latin America,” Wurmser said.

The Hejeij clan

In a September 2020 paper for the Center for Security Policy, Wurmser took a deep dive into the workings of the Hejeij clan, concluding it owes its success to its connection to Hezbollah and Amal, a secularist Shi’ite Lebanese movement and ally of Hezbollah.

“Without lineage nor pedigree,” this undistinguished family tied its coattails to the rise of those new powers in Lebanese politics, he wrote, describing it as a creation “bootstrapped up from insignificant origins” by Hezbollah, Amal and Iran, “to become the new—and entirely beholden—elite of the Shi’ite community in Lebanon.”

The Hejeij clan would be nothing without Hezbollah and Iran and so it is “all-in” with the terrorist group as the clan’s survival depends on it, he wrote.

Hejeij family members often post on social media in support of Hezbollah and broadcast their attendance at Hezbollah meetings and events.

“While we in the West might wonder why they tip their hand so, we must remember that their stature is entirely dependent within Lebanon at this point on being understood as an extension of the reigning Hezbollah power. So, they must flaunt their connection as loudly and widely as possible for validation,” Wurmser explained.

The clan members’ work on behalf of Hezbollah is what led it to establish the bank in the first place. Starting their own bank was their answer to the problem of maintaining an international business presence when reputable banks were reluctant to lend money or issue credit to a group on which hung a “thick cloud of suspicion,” Wurmser noted.

The problem of the Hejeij clan, and others like it, goes beyond terrorism financing. History shows that unless uprooted, such criminal networks become strategic assets that survive their patrons, in this case, Iran, he said.

To think that Shi’ite criminal networks such as the Hejeij clan wouldn’t survive the Islamic Republic’s demise is “pollyannish,” Wurmser wrote. “They will seek new masters, and China and [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan are eagerly awaiting them.”

Sectarian divides are no barrier. “The history of the Middle East shows that there’s a fluidity of identity that allows for transfer of bad behavior. They basically transfer networks from one global threat to another,” Wurmser told JNS.

“The Nazis developed extensive networks across the Middle East, which were absorbed wholesale into the KGB structure of networks in the whole region, which then were easily transferred and absorbed into the Islamist network that the Iranians employed,” he added.

“These terror networks, thus, are no longer just criminal problems. They are strategic assets and commodities with flexible talents used by adversarial powers for strategic objectives. And they are playing an increasingly important role in great power rivalries worldwide, not only in the Middle East,” Wurmser said.

https://worldisraelnews.com/trump-white-house-affords-chance-to-confront-lebanese-terror-bank/?vwo_powered=1

Revival Happening: Bible Sales Are Booming in 2024

A new report by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Bible sales have increased by 22% compared to last year.

Book sale tracker Circana BookScan has released data showing Bible sales through the end of October are up 22% compared to 2023 sales.

By the end of October last year, Bible sales were only up 1% from 2022.

Jeff Crosby, who serves as the president of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, stated, “People are experiencing anxiety themselves, or they’re worried for their children and grandchildren.”

“It’s related to artificial intelligence, election cycles…and all of that feeds a desire for assurance that we’re going to be OK,” added Crosby.

Many Bible sales stem from first-time Bible buyers.

Per The Wall Street Journal:

Hallelujah! Bibles are a bright spot in books this year.

Worries about the economy, conflicts abroad and uncertainty over the election pushed readers toward the publication in droves. Bible sales are up 22% in the U.S. through the end of October, compared with the same period last year, according to book tracker Circana BookScan. By contrast, total U.S. print book sales were up less than 1% in that period.

“People are experiencing anxiety themselves, or they’re worried for their children and grandchildren,” said Jeff Crosby, president of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. “It’s related to artificial intelligence, election cycles…and all of that feeds a desire for assurance that we’re going to be OK.”

Cely Vazquez, a 28-year-old artist and influencer who has appeared on the reality TV show “Love Island USA,” recently bought her first Bible—one from the “She Reads Truth” line—at Barnes & Noble.

“I’ve had Bibles that my mom gave me, but I felt I needed my own to start my own journey, that it symbolized I was starting a walk with God,” she said. “I felt something was missing. It’s a combination of where we are in the world, general anxiety and the sense that meaning and comfort can be found in the Bible.”

In 2019, Bible sales hit 9.7 million, and in the first 10 months of 2024, they have already surpassed 13.7 million, marking a 41% increase.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/12/revival-happening-bible-sales-are-booming-2024/ 

She's Chief Resident of Yale's Child Psychiatry Program. She Also Says Her Husband Can't Have White Friends 'Unless They Meet Me First.'

Ahead of the holiday season, Amanda Calhoun appeared on MSNBC's The ReidOut to deliver a message to its liberal viewers: It's okay to cut off your conservative relatives.

"So, if you are going into a situation where you have family members, where you have close friends who you know have voted in ways that are against you," Calhoun told Joy Reid earlier this month, "it's completely fine to not be around those people and to tell them why. I think you should very much be entitled to do so, and I think it may be essential for your mental health."

While such sentiments may be common enough among the resistance left, Calhoun is no average liberal activist. She's a psychiatrist who serves as chief resident of Yale's prestigious Albert J. Solnit Integrated Adult/Child Psychiatry program—and she's not shy about her far-left activism and racial biases.

A Saint Louis University graduate, Calhoun began her Yale residency in June 2019, according to her LinkedIn page. One year later, she was the keynote speaker at Yale Medical School's "White Coats for Black Lives," a demonstration held in the wake of George Floyd's death in which "around 300 doctors took a knee in front of the Yale School of Medicine to demonstrate their solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement."

"Before I was a doctor, I was a black person in America, and this white coat does not protect me," Calhoun told attendees. Her website touts similar rhetoric, including Calhoun's belief that "all doctors should be activists."

On X, meanwhile, Calhoun routinely laments what she views as systemic racism in psychiatry, arguing that the field as a whole "is rooted in anti-Black racism." Black children, according to Calhoun, are less likely to go to therapy not because of "access" issues, but rather because of "racist therapists."

The "racial gap in breastfeeding," she argued in a June 2022 Washington Post op-ed, "reflects white supremacy." And black men "don't get to enjoy old age" because "racism affects our longevity, literally shortens our lives," Calhoun wrote last year.

Calhoun's most controversial statements, however, involve her white colleagues, friends, and acquaintances.

Though Calhoun is married to a white man, she is openly hesitant toward Caucasians and gatekeeps her husband's white acquaintances. In a 2022 X thread, she said she and her husband "left our hometown" because "white neighbors would meet my husband and I together, and then straight up ignore me when I greeted them if I was alone." As a result, Calhoun wrote, she requires her husband's white acquaintances to meet her first before befriending them.

"My husband dropped a lot of white friends and acquaintances. He doesn't befriend white folks now unless they meet me first and respect me."

Calhoun also says white therapists are inherently inferior to their black counterparts when it comes to treating black patients. "I also believe that white (and non-Black) therapists can never gain the unique and brilliant skill set that Black therapists can bring. You will never be us," she wrote.  "BUT a lot of 'therapy experts' still think that white folks can get there. Get to a place where they can match the expertise of Black therapists with Black patients (and other groups). This is a white supremacist mindset. You can't. Accept it."

Calhoun's chief resident status at Yale—home to one of the highest-ranking psychiatry programs in the world—reflects the proliferation of left-wing activism within America's top medical schools.

At the University of California, San Francisco, for example, medical students are subject to a mandatory six-week unit on "Justice and Advocacy in Medicine." That unit, the Washington Free Beacon reported, covers "issues like racism, ableism, and patriarchy." In one lesson, the school cited an anti-Israel protest on the San Francisco Bay Bridge—which stopped traffic for hours, delaying three trucks associated with the school's health system from delivering organs set to be transplanted—as an example of "direct action" that disrupts "business as usual" and pressures "targeted decision-makers."

"I have worked with and taught UCSF medical students for many years and was shocked to see mandated course content that promotes ideological activism," one professor said of the unit. "It sends a shockingly harmful message to our students: 'Your role is to disrupt and dismantle the system you are about to enter.'"

Reached for comment, Calhoun said she would "LOVE" to speak to the Free Beacon but "unfortunately, because of how viral my MSNBC interview went, my department at Yale is barring me from speaking with the media or press in any way."

"I do NOT agree with their decision at all," Calhoun wrote in an email, "but as I am a child psychiatry fellow, as you know, completing my final year of training, I have to comply with their rules, no matter how much I disagree.

"The good news is … this will only mean a slight delay," Calhoun continued. "I graduate at the end of June, and I would love it if we could talk about a piece on my activism, what it means to have backlash, and how institutions can support us and not silence us.

"Working with the media and getting my voice out there is so imperative. I so appreciate your work. I think this would be a very interesting piece that many readers might resonate with."

https://freebeacon.com/campus/shes-chief-resident-of-yales-child-psychiatry-program-she-also-says-her-husband-cant-have-white-friends-unless-they-meet-me-first/