Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s largest mistake was fleeing to Moscow and to not Washington.
Had he gone to Joe Biden’s White Home fairly than Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, he might need gotten a pardon like all people else.
All Assad needed to do was get some Biden aide or a high-powered lobbyist to slide his title into the pile of 1,500 pardons and commutations that Biden signed off on final week.
All people is aware of the ailing and forgetful 82-year-old outgoing president doesn’t learn the paperwork he indicators.
He doesn’t know what he’s signing. He simply indicators what’s put in entrance of him. And so far as the pardons went, there have been simply too lots of them to learn or to placed on a teleprompter.
You may image Biden squinting up from his desk within the Oval Workplace asking Jeff Zients, his chief of employees, “Jeff, what am I signing?”
And Zients saying, “Simply signal right here, Mr. President.”
You can too image Biden asking, “Do these pardons embrace one for my press secretary– you understand, the woman with three names — for all of the lies I informed her to inform?”
“No, however to not fear. We’ll be getting her a job at CNN.”
Not that Assad would want a pardon from Biden for the horrendous crimes he dedicated towards his personal individuals. There are not any pardons for that, solely hanging or a firing squad.
However it could look good on his resume if the widely unemployable murderous weirdo sought employment on the United Nations, as an illustration.
Educated and practising as an ophthalmologist (eye physician) working in London earlier than turning into a dictator again in his dwelling nation, Assad may open a store on the UN the place he would see eye to eye with many kindred spirits.
Assad apart, Joe Biden’s pardons and commutations, together with the all-encompassing pardon of his deadbeat son Hunter, went over like a Kamala Harris speech.
Even Anita Dunn, an elitist former loyal senior advisor to Joe Biden, earlier than leaping ship, took difficulty with, if not for the outright Hunter pardon, then at the very least the timing of it.
Hunter Biden, the Biden household bagman, confronted jail time after he was convicted on gun costs and after pleading responsible to tax evasion.
His blanket pardon additionally consists of alleged crimes he might have dedicated for the previous 10 years.
“I don’t agree with the way in which it was performed,” Dunn mentioned. “I don’t agree with the timing, and I don’t agree, frankly, with the assault on our judicial system.” Biden ought to have waited till the top of his time period, she mentioned.
Biden, who ran for president promising to revive and defend the rule of regulation, ended up saying, “Nicely, possibly not proper now,” she mentioned.
Extra criticism of the pardons got here from Democrat Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was on Harris’ shortlist as her vice-presidential working mate.
Shapiro took sharp difficulty with the commutation of the 17-year jail sentence meted out to former Pennsylvania Decide Michael Conahan within the notorious 2008 “Youngsters for money scandal” that rocked the state.
Conahan, together with Decide Mark Ciavarella, had been convicted of shutting down a county-run juvenile detention middle to ship youngsters to 2 privately run lockups in return for some $2.8 million in unlawful funds, based on the Related Press.
The scandal prompted the Pennsylvania Supreme Courtroom to throw out some 4,000 juvenile convictions involving greater than 2,300 youngsters.
Conahan was launched to dwelling confinement throughout the COVID-19 disaster in 2020 with six years left on his sentence. Ciavarella is serving a 28-year sentence.
Of Biden’s commutation, Shapiro mentioned, “I do really feel strongly that President Biden acquired it completely incorrect and created quite a lot of ache in northeastern Pennsylvania.”
“Some youngsters took their lives due to this. Households had been torn aside. There was all types of psychological well being points and anguish that got here on account of these corrupt judges deciding they wished to make a buck off a child’s again.”
He mentioned Conahan “ought to have been in jail for at the very least the 17 years he was sentenced to by a jury of his friends. He deserves to be behind bars not strolling as a free man.”
That’s what individuals say about Hunter Biden.
Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter. Electronic mail him at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
