Recently I wrote an article here in the Northside Sun on the preemptive pardons that President Joe Biden handed out to his family in the last hour of his presidency. I speculated that the reason for this was to pardon in advance any and every wrongdoing his family may have committed over the last several years. I quoted from the work of Congressman James Comer, the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, written in his just-published book All The President's Money. In an appendix to that book Comer details many SARs (Suspicious activity reports) that banks entered against Hunter Biden's bank accounts. There was a total of 170 such reports which focused on the amounts and foreign sources of those funds.
I have now finished my reading of this short book. Comer recounts the influence peddling schemes of the Biden family, going back to the days when Joe Biden was vice president. The "Biden Brand" was being sold to anyone who hoped to gain access to Joe. However, the payments for such access had to be disguised. They were often conducted through shady characters. Comer says that Hunter and his brother James Biden were involved in a complicated shell game to mask the payments from foreign sources to their other family members. Comer writes: "Hunter and James Biden made these transactions as complex as possible to confuse investigators at the DOJ and deceive auditors at the IRS." It makes my head spin to try to follow the intricate details of the shell companies they formed, and the payment schemes they cooked up.
If Comer's conclusions are correct, and I must say he is very convincing, then these findings need to be aired in a public investigation. It is hard to believe that these things have been going on in the United States of America rather than a banana republic. How can we guarantee the general public that future presidents or high officials will not repeat such crimes? That should be the object of the investigations. We can't convict anyone--they've been pardoned. As a start I think that preemptive pardons need to be banned. They open the flood gates to further malfeasance.
Peter Gilderson is a Northsider.
