RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Biden’s spared his son Christmas in jail. But the real reason why is utterly self-serving – and he’s the one who REALLY benefits

With less than seven weeks to go before the second coming of Donald J. Trump, Joe Biden is cleaning house.

On Sunday night, he pardoned his degenerate son Hunter who was due to have been sentenced for gun and tax crimes, despite repeatedly denying that he had any such intention.

‘No one is above the law,’ he insisted.

Biden Junior could have faced up to 25 years in prison, although it was unlikely as a first-time offender he would have been given such a long sentence.

But the timing of the pardon was crucial. Hunter was due back in court this month, and would almost certainly have served some jail time. If Joe Biden had waited until he left office in January, his son could well have spent Christmas and New Year behind bars.

Presidents have traditionally handed out pardons at the end of their term, often on the very last day. Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger, who had a conviction for drug trafficking.

Trump pardoned, among others, his son-in-law’s father Charles Kushner, who had been found guilty of tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign contributions. (Former presidential candidate, New Jersey governor and big-time Bruce Springsteen fan Chris Christie, prosecuted Kushner and called him one of the ‘most loathsome, disgusting’ criminals he had ever had the misfortune to deal with. Kushner has just been nominated by Trump as America’s ambassador to France, which probably deserves him.)

Barack Obama pardoned, commuted or rescinded the convictions of almost 2,000 people.

While every President since George Washington has handed down pardons, few – if any – have been as self-serving as that granted to Hunter Biden by his own father. The suspicion is that Joe is not just pardoning his son, he’s also protecting himself from possible future prosecution.

This particular pardon applies not just to the charges for which Hunter was due to be sentenced, but all and every crime he may have committed since January 1, 2014.

The significance of that date is that it extends to the time Hunter served on the board of the Ukrainian energy corporation Burisma, for which he was paid an astonishing $1 million a year, despite having no previous experience in the oil and gas sector.

During this period, Joe Biden was Obama’s Vice-President, responsible for America’s foreign policy in Ukraine. It has since been alleged by a source described by the FBI as a ‘trusted confidential informant’ that both Bidens received bribes of $5 million each from a corrupt Ukrainian businessman.

It is also alleged that Joe put pressure on the government in what we used to call Kiev to sack a prosecutor investigating corruption at Burisma, threatening to block $1billion in U.S. aid unless he got his way.

What isn’t in dispute is the fact that Hunter and Joe’s kid brother James have for decades been involved in a string of commercial enterprises cashing in on his political connections, leading Trump to dub them the ‘Biden Crime Family’.

Two Inland Revenue Service agents told a Senate hearing that the Biden family had received $17 million in fees from overseas corporations.

I covered all this in a Saturday essay for the Mail last year. It was further reported that Hunter is said to have leveraged his father’s position to force through a lucrative business deal with a Chinese conglomerate.

In 2017, an email from Hunter about the Chinese deal stated that 10 per cent was for the ‘Big Guy’. Whistleblowers have since said that the Big Guy was Joe Biden.

That email was recovered from a laptop abandoned by Hunter at a Delaware repair shop, along with another to his sister complaining that he was expected to hand over half his income to his father.

The hard-drive contained a mine of explosive material and was copied by the repair shop’s owner, who handed it over to Trump’s then lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

It featured photographs of Hunter taking crack cocaine and consorting with prostitutes. One picture showed a stark naked Hunter waving a handgun.

Although the potentially incriminating evidence was published by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, Fox News and Dailymail.com online, it was ignored by America’s pro-Democrat mainstream media because it might have compromised Joe Biden’s first Presidential election bid in 2020.

In the run-up to that election, the FBI refused to admit that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden and insisted it was part of a Russian disinformation campaign – a fiction advanced by none other than Joe Biden himself.

President Biden has always denied that he ever discussed business or was ‘in business’ with his son or his brother, something disputed under oath by Hunter’s former business partner in evidence to a Senate committee.

Whatever the truth of these claims and counter-claims, there is no disguising the fact that Biden has done well financially over the years.

He has always traded on his ‘middle-class’ – what we call working-class – Ordinary Joe image. When he became Veep in 2009, he claimed to have a net worth of just $30,000. As he prepares to leave office, his wealth is estimated at anything up to $40 million, depending on who you believe. It must have come from somewhere.

There’s a widespread belief that any jail time for Hunter, especially with an incoming Trump Presidency, would open up a jumbo-sized can of worms, which could implicate Joe in all manner of financial impropriety.

For the past eight years, the Democrat-dominated Deep State has been waging total lawfare against The Donald and now he is gagging for revenge. He’s putting MAGA loyalists into the Department of Justice and the FBI, and they’ll soon start going through what’s left of the files.

That sound coming out of the retreating administration in Washington is shredders working overtime and hard-disks smashing under the hammer, Hillary Clinton-style.

The Biden presidency is ending in ignominy and disgrace. No one was especially surprised that he pardoned Hunter, but what sticks in the craw of genuine ‘Ordinary Joes’ is that Biden has repeatedly lied to the American people.

When he stood down in the summer, was there a deal with the Democrat establishment based on the assumption that Kamala Harris would beat Trump and grant Hunter a Get Out Of Jail Free card?

When she lost, having painted himself into corner, Joe had no other option than to walk out over the paint.

Can’t be ruled out. Biden had already lost one son to an untimely death, and didn’t want to lose another to Rikers Island prison.

He claimed yesterday that his decision to pardon Hunter was based on paternal love, but couldn’t resist adding that ‘raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice’.

Which is pretty rich coming from a cynical, partisan President who set the legal dogs of war on his Republican political opponent, dragging Trump through the courts, raiding his home in Palm Beach military-style and trying to put him in jail.

The politically motivated cases against Trump have collapsed since the election. And while he seeks retribution against the Democrat Deep State apparatchiks responsible, there are indications that he’s prepared to let Joe slink off into the sunset, taking Hunter with him.

Was there a carve-up when the two men met at the White House recently, which would allow Joe to pardon Hunter and, in exchange, Trump would pardon all those January 6 ‘rioters’ at the Capitol found guilty of non-violent offences?

Shouldn’t be surprised. Everything is transactional with Trump. America needs him to start with a clean sheet, after decades of bitter division.

As for Biden, he’s a Dead Man Walking, but I don’t give much credence to the speculation that he might now withdraw and let Kamala become America’s first female President of Colour for the last ten minutes.

I think Trump got it right when he told a pre-election rally: ‘I think Joe likes me more than her.’

So Biden’s got another few weeks to clean house before the Second Coming. But, whatever else, he won’t be leaving office with clean hands.