That Joe Biden’s was destined to be the saddest of the White House farewells has been, for a long time, something very well known. It was known, in fact, long before the incumbent announced, at the end of last July, his decision to withdraw from a race he was bound to lose anyway. For too long, Joe Biden had refused to look at himself and his ambitions in the mirror of time. And on June 21 that mirror had finally fallen on him or, worse, exploded in his face, ruthlessly shattering his image – or what of his image remained – during the first (and for him humiliating) presidential debate. Leaving the scene had been, at that point, a way – the only one left – to face as a loser, but with honor, the manzonian “arduous sentence” of posterity. Or, more simply – putting aside any forced reminiscence of Napoleon – to relieve the discouragement of an undesired, nor planned departure, with the pride of a dignified good bye. Or, even more: by projecting a clean image of himself and, in its cleanliness, in sharp contrast with that of the winner.
It was hard to imagine that, a few weeks from his definitive abandonment of the neoclassic mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, D.C., “Uncle Joe” would have thrown away even that last veil of political and personal decency by doing – now at the exit door and with the stealthy grace of a fleeing thief – what he had for four years assured that he would never do. That is: giving a pardon of 360 degrees – valid for the past, the present and the future – to his son Hunter and, at the same time, lend an aura of legitimacy and a sinister ethical justification to the man who, with the worst intentions, is now preparing to replace him in the White House.
Why did he do it? Answering this question is very simple and, at the same time, extremely complicated. Very simple because very simple – paternally simple – are the reasons that Biden himself has given to explain his decision. And extremely complicated, because very difficult to understand are the logic and timing of this decision, the apparent Biden’s indifference to the obvious consequences of pardoning Haunter, breaking his own promise. I have pardoned my son – said the outgoing president in substance – to save him from what was in effect a political persecution. The crimes for which today he was going to be judged – he added – would never have been considered such and would not have never been pursued with such fierce ferocity, had it not been son of a president who was the real target of the attack. This is why I pardon him today, making use in extremis of my presidential prerogatives.
There is, of course, a bottom (just a bottom) of truth in this reconstruction of the facts. It’s an old story that of Hunter Biden. Much older than the presidency of his father. It’s a story that began during the two-term presidency of Barak Obama, when, with Joe Biden as vice president, Hunter tried to use his last name to foster his rather improvised business as an international consultant. Focal point of the story: Ukraine, where Hunter had entered, by virtue exclusively of his surname and with a high salary, in the Administration Department of an energy company, the Burisma, at the center of a very ramified and unpunished system of corruption. Over all these years – starting from this known truth – the question has always been only one: to what extent did Hunter’s activities involve his father (first in the role of vice president and then president)? And the answer has always been one: to no extent. Or, at least, to no extent of any measurable political or judicial relevance.
Many will surely remember. In 2019, the then-president in office, Donald J. Trump – the same Donald J. Trump who will return to the White House on January 20 – had suspended military aid to Ukraine already sanctioned by Congress, using the money as a means of blackmail against President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. We’ll give you that money – had said Trump in a famous phone call that would then cost him his first impeachment process – but before that “you should do us a favor”. And that favor was to officially announce the opening of an investigation into the relations between Burisma and Hunter Biden, or rather between Burisma and all the Bidens. Starting obviously with the one that, at the time, was already considered the most likely democratic opponent in the 2020 presidential race. (Watch out: Trump was not demanding an inquiry to find out what the facts were. He was asking for the announcement of an investigation to be used as electoral propaganda or, more specifically, as mud to throw at a political rival).
On the unspeakable nefarious acts of Hunter Biden and, above all, on the links of these nefarious acts with the Joe who lived in the White House, the Republican majority of the House of Representatives conducted an investigation that, for two long years, hearing after hearing and under the cloud of an “inevitable” impeachment process against the president in office, has almost weekly announced clamorous and “definitive” revelations, all then vanished into nothingness – a not seldom ridiculous nothingness – like soap bubbles. And one thing is certain: the two crimes for which Hunter Biden must, or rather should now have been brought to justice (false declarations in order to obtain a purchase permit for a firearm, and the non-payment of taxes for 1.7 million dollars) They are, in fact, only the last byproducts of this prolonged manhunt.
The very context of this long history, paradoxically, is what makes it more enigmatic – sadly enigmatic – not only Joe Biden’s pardon, but the whole interweaving of his relations with his son Hunter. Why – consider these antecedents – did Joe Biden decide to give the protagonists of this manhunt, or of this long-standing soap bubble, a hasty “outgoing” pardon destined only to refeed insinuations, slander and conspiracy theories, as well as creating moral alibis for pardons and vendettas that, something he has never made a secret of, Donald Trump has in mind for the near future?
Someone – and not without some valid reason – offers an explanation that would have been very popular with the classics of Greek tragedy. Biden could have killed this story in the cradle by immediately and publicly distancing himself from his son’s international activities. But he never did. In fact, for Hunter, Joe Biden has never had, since his name became news, anything but words of comfort, affection and admiration. My son, he always said, never did “anything wrong”. And, he always added, “I am very proud of the courage he showed in his fight against drug addiction” (Hunter has been, for many years and in very dramatic terms, a “crack-addicted”. An experience he told himself in an autobiography entitled “Beautifull Things”).
Why is “Uncle Joe” remained – before this last stealthy “total” pardon – in this kind of limbo, without raising any insurmountable and visible barrier between him and the business that, using his surname, Hunter went here and there doing? Perhaps for the simplest and most human of reasons: for the love of a father who has already lost two children in tragic circumstances – Naomi died still an infant together with Joe’s first wife in a terrible car accident, and Beau, killed in 2015 by brain cancer – he did not want to lose a third. In essence (and here comes the Greek tragedy): the children will not pay for the sins of their fathers. Joe Biden finally destroyed his reputation in the face of history today, for not having to pass on to Hunter the penalty of his presidential ambitions. It may be so.
What surely is, it was already there to be tasted yesterday in the first reactions of the entourage Donald J. Trump, fresh winner of the elections. You have pardoned yours. Now we pardon ours. And then, once pardoned ours, we will take revenge on yours that attacked ours when you were in the White House. Just look at the names chosen by Trump for his upcoming government – few experts, many hitmen – to understand the meaning of these words. The most undemocratic and corrupt president is about to (re)enter the White House. And, with his pardon, Joe Biden has just given him, metaphorically speaking, the safe combination. Putting aside the Manzoni’s Napoleon Bonaparte and paraphrasing the young Fidel Castro: for all that, History will not absolve him.
Yes, it is a sad farewell, the one Joe Biden gave to his presidency in these last throes of 2024. And sad, very sad are the days, months and years that await the “oldest democracy in the world”.
