Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Joe Biden has about 17 months left as an elected politician—if he is lucky. That projection guides most of the inexplicable and shameless behavior of the Department of Justice and Biden himself. View Biden as in a race against the truth. Will he be physically and mentally able to complete his term and head to retirement before his decades-long crimes of corruption catch up to him?
Joe Biden’s serial yarn that he never knew anything about his son Hunter’s quid pro quo grifting with rich foreign grandees has been finally exposed as the old lie it always was.
Biden’s fallback untruth—that he never got involved in Hunter’s business—proved instantly laughable, given prior damning testimonies from Hunter’s business associates, from IRS whistleblowers, from the assertions of foreign beneficiaries, from Hunter’s own laptop, and from Joe’s own earlier loudmouth braggadocio about using threats of canceling U.S. foreign aid to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor looking into corruption of the sort in which his own son was knee deep. (Did not then president Barack Obama know the nature of Biden corruption when he appointed him as point man on Ukraine)?
To his partners in corruption, Hunter referred to his father variously as the “big guy” as well as the recipient of “ten percent” of the leveraged income. And apparently as a rather greedy pop, Hunter whined that Joe himself demanded half of all Hunter’s own shake-down income from abroad—despite Hunter’s payment of many of Joe’s monthly bills incurred on his palatial lakeshore mansion.
At some point, even the corrupt leftwing media and DNC cannot continue to laugh off eyewitness testimonies, whistleblowers’ revelations, bank records, Hunter Biden’s own computer messaging, Joe Biden’s phone calls and personal appearances, and the evidence from foreign beneficiaries.
And then there is simply the power of reason and logic.
Over the last five years of this hushed-up tawdry saga, Americans knew immediately that Joe Biden was lying in all his denials of any involvement whatsoever in the procurement of a large part of his income from abroad simply because no one in the entire Biden family had any business, investment, or energy expertise. In other words, as grifters without Joe, the Bidens had zero market value.
As energy consultants, financial investors, or international analysts, they had no qualifications—a fact known and remarked upon by their corrupt foreign partners. If any doubt about that, try to guess how much the prior cash recipients Jim or Hunter or Sarah or Hallie or Kathleen Biden will be getting from foreign concerns for services rendered after Joe leaves office.
The Biden familial mediocrities had nothing to offer shady wealthy foreign interests other than they were not only related to the Vice President of the United States, but also could guarantee that Joe Biden had no scruples whatsoever, and so even while in office he would call or meet his son’s associates to substantiate Hunter’s promises of favorable diplomatic or business treatment from the Obama—or a future Biden—administration. Note Biden seemed to have no worries whether his family’s lobbying of Ukraine, Russia, or China was in conflict with the interests of his own country.
And so deals were cut, millions were rerouted to Biden accounts to avoid scrutiny, and the Biden clan got rich off Joe’s offices and his son’s rank criminality. Joe’s adjusted gross income on his 2016 return of $396,456 soared on his 2017 return to more than $11 million. No one knows whether these or any of Biden’s returns showed reported income commensurate with what either he actually received or with his lavish lifestyle, bank accounts, and his multiple expensive homes.
Rarely has any prosecutor enjoyed a more riveting confessional than Hunter Biden’s own laptop that established his credentials as a drug addict who burned up millions of dollars on his various drug and sex addictions, while confirming that his own father was central to the family consortium’s shake-downs. Without an obsequious media, a Democratic Senate, and a weaponized Department of Justice, all the Biden recipients of foreign cash would by now have been prosecuted, and likely found guilty of an array of felonies.
But like everything Joe and Hunter do to excess, they were not just shameless in their raking in money by using Joe’s senatorial and then vice presidential offices and likely presidential candidacy, but in covering up their crimes.
Nothing is more emblematic of that brazenness than Biden aide and future Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s phone call to a former CIA interim director to round up 50 intelligence “authorities” to lie on the eve of the 2020 debate and election that the laptop was likely “Russian disinformation.” To go to such extremes to leverage proverbially retired “wise men” to so blatantly misinform, disinform and warp a presidential election reflects the paranoia of the Biden family over Hunter’s laptop confessional.
Enter Merrick Garland. Like Blinken, his job description entailed hiding the truth about Hunter Biden’s incriminating evidence. First, Garland had assured the nation that no special counsel was needed to investigate the Bidens’ influence peddling. And on spec his lieutenant Delaware prosecutor David Weiss slow walked for years all investigations of Biden family wrongdoing.
The Biden Department of Justice since January 2021 assumed that with a Democratic House and an obsequious media, it could simply run out the clock on any of the many Biden crimes that were not sufficiently covered up. Any problematic data or testimony that eventually entered the public domain, would do so only after the statute of limitations had expired. This cover-up continued to work well for the first two years of the Biden administration.
But then the unexpected happened. First, the Republicans took the House in 2022 and suddenly had the ability to subpoena witnesses and documents over the objections of the media and Democratic congressional toadies.
Second, the Ukraine war broke out and had refocused popular interest in the past Biden-Ukrainian profiteering.
Third, when Donald Trump announced his reelection candidacy, he was soon met with a cohort of weaponized leftwing prosecutors. Immediately he and his supporters legitimately pointed out that while he was being politically neutered by the left, his possible 2024 opponent Joe Biden was given de facto exemptions.
Finally, the congressional testimonies and whistleblowers grew so embarrassing, and the stark contrast between the government coverup of Biden crimes and the weaponized effort to destroy Trump so glaring, that even Biden’s handlers and Merrick Garland were forced to act—at least sort of.
So last week the DOJ flipped. It abruptly announced that after years of a deliberately stalled David Weiss investigation and the collapse of Weiss’s own phony plea deal before an honest judge, Garland would now appoint a special counsel, after all—again, sort of.
Garland then did something so outrageous that it eclipsed even his prior blatant politicalization of his department. First, he violated the special counsel statute by hiring an inside government attorney—another apparent confirmation that Garland and Biden were paranoid that any legitimate outside counsel might well tap into a gold mine of Biden family felonies.
Second, he selected as independent counsel none other than David Weiss, the very prosecutor who had tried but failed to fool a judge into accepting a laughable Hunter Biden plea deal. Weiss’s only other alluring recommendation was that he had previously spearheaded and slow walked the DOJ non-investigation of Hunter.
Third, by elevating the title—but not the mission—of Weiss in a manner that previously he promised he would not, Garland cleverly ensured that Weiss would likely not show up to testify before the House about prior and ongoing whistleblower allegations that prosecutor Weiss had blocked investigations concerning Hunter that otherwise might well have led to multiple felony indictments. Now as special counsel, Weiss will even likely refuse congressional subpoenas concerning incriminating Biden information on grounds they would prejudice or interfere with his own special counsel inquiries.
How could Garland believe he could fool the American people with the veneer of a special counsel appointee and then violate the very spirit and text of the law about such appointments by naming Weiss?
Reason is not what guides the petulant Garland, who has never recovered from the trauma of being humiliated when his Barack Obama lame-duck supreme court appointment was recessed by a Republican Senate. Instead, Biden rescued Garland from bitter obscurity with the implied rationale, as Joe himself has mused openly to friends, that Garland should go after Trump, Biden’s past nemesis, and now his leading opponent in the 2024 presidential race.
What then is the long-term Democrat strategy that requires such short-term malodorous skullduggery?
Biden must be healthy and crime-free enough to finish his remaining term, but at all costs not run for reelection. A full one-term Biden prevents a 2023 or 2024 presidency of an utterly incompetent Kamala Harris and thus in addition her route to the 2024 Democratic nomination—and in theory perhaps even a longer presidential tenure.
Democrats will have enough trouble keeping Biden semi-coherent and upright over the 17 months without a string of indictments involving high crimes and misdemeanors from bribery to treason, if indeed Biden did alter U.S. policy at the bequest of his paymasters in China, Russia, Ukraine or Romania.
In other words, Weiss was selected for his past loyal suppression of the Hunter investigation and his future further quashing indictments as special counsel. That fact almost ensures that Biden can finish his first term without an impeachment trial in the Senate or a forced Nixon-style resignation, given the enormity of his own illegality.
Ensuring the viability of Biden’s next year-and-half will mean Kamala Harris does not inherit the presidency from either a physically or mentally incompetent Biden—or a president so reduced by bribery and racketeering counts that he is forced to resign.
Biden then will likely not run for reelection, pleading age rather than his own and family’s blatant corruption. That will be another subtext for Weiss’s slothful investigation to be ground down into oblivion. Harris will not be president, and be reduced to just another wannabe 2024 primary candidate. She will likely, as in 2016, not win a single delegate.
By 2024, Democrats will be seeking a young Gavin Newson-like candidate. Harris will not be the nominee, much less President by default. And Joe will likely be so bewildered that Weiss in a few months “for the sake of the country” will not hound either an enfeebled ex-president or his dutiful son.
DOJ lawfare then works in two ways: by commission in neutering the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump after trying to ensure that he will win the Republican primary and nomination; by omission, in de facto suppressing momentum for Biden indictments and thus allowing the Biden family to be prison-free through 2024 and onto retirement—and thus sparing the nation a Harris presidency.
Excellent analysis. Newsome is supremely malleable by the Leftist/Marxist cabal in power now. Ultimately, he is as expendable as the Bidens predicated upon his various perfidies and peccadilloes which are well known in CA. His connection to Aunt Nancy’s donor lists and bank of secrets keeps him firmly tethered to the ruling cabal. But, it all depends on Slo Joe’s ability to continue to breathe. That is a very shaky bridge indeed.
It is not the fact that Slo Joe is becoming too feeble to function as a president of the US. He was incapable the day of his pseudo election. I will go further in stating that he has never been capable even before his mental and physical lapses.
Dr. Hanson,
Beautifully done. You always take my chaotic thoughts and observations, put them together in a logical straight-forward manner, and of course, add so much more. You continue to expand my knowledge and understanding. I thank you.
There is one thing that bothers me about all analyses of what is going to happen in 2024.. Is Joe Biden going to be here either mentally or physically next year? I keep looking at his continued decline, and as you have mentioned, it is accelerating. It what hat you have been saying about Hemingway’s character who went broke, it happened gradually and then it happened suddenly.
“How could Garland believe he could fool the American people with the veneer of a special counsel appointee and then violate the very spirit and text of the law about such appointments by naming Weiss?”
He doesn’t have to fool anyone; the Democrats are on board, regardless of Joe’s business dealings, just as they were on board regardless of Hillary’s server sharing state secrets with the world.
It all boils down to their successful propagandistic trashing of MAGA and Trump.
Sadly there is more than 1 truth. There is the version where JRB received 81 million votes in the freest and fairest election ever. That his presidency has been a huge success and everything that’s bad is DJT’s fault. Speaking of DJT, will he. Be going to jail for more or less than 300 years? To many & too many believe that to be their “truth”
Now tell me why if you are not talking about election integrity you are being distracted.
A Great essay as usual, Professor Hanson but to a CRASH landing. Bottom line: The Corrupt Biden and his corrupt family skate entirely free and slither off in the sunset with their pockets full. America “Ain’t” supposed to work that way! Is this the American way of the future?
Perhaps this has been the American way for a while and America has just been asleep at the wheel?
–JB
Depressing, pure and simple. My overall impression is that Democrats are simply immoral, and/or evil. They act exactly like the CCP in China. They have usurped all power in our society, and they are amassing more and more power. Nothing can be done. Seccession is no longer a wild idea. I don’t see any other way, would love to hear your thoughts on that.
Everything points to Garland being the bad guy. But even he appears to be a puppet on a string.
Have we always been this corrupt? Human nature has not changed over time. That’s a constant.
If the stakes are high enough, and you think you can get away with it, most will do the crime every time.
Throw in a dose of “moral outrage” aimed at Trump, and anything is possible and “justified”.
Add to this mix the unquestioning cover that the media consistently gives you.
And now we have the outrageously blunt and openly biased “lawfare” directed at Trump.
Everybody can see this happening right out in the open. We can imagine the meetings behind closed doors where they discuss exactly how to manipulate and game the system. They have sufficient levers of power to make their demented dreams come true.
There is no shame. The truth is meaningless. Holding on to power, at any cost, is the name of the game.
And they know that if Trump is elected it is game over for all of them.
That’s why they seem so desperate. They will do anything NOT to lose the next presidential election.
Whatever it takes.
Conservative America may need to re-examine its tactics. The current manner of opposing domestic Marxists appears to be ineffective. We are being bullied by soy boys, flash mobs, purple haired screamers, worthless academics and Hollywood air-brains.
We can start by putting a few woke companies out of business. That appears to be effective. Any other ideas?
As usual, professor, I find your commentary interesting reading. I have to ask, though, why anybody is talking about any of this as if something could be done about it or that somehow by some miracle things could change for the better. This country is doomed. Every public institution has been taken over by a gang of some of the most corrupt criminals to appear on the stage of history. Godfather Biden and Kamala the Kackler are the perfect poster children for this once great country which has become the land of the indoctrinated, the home of the anesthetized.
ThNks for all you do.
Regards, Jim T.
Our Social Compact:
Politicians agree to lie and voters agree to be lied to. You can’t have one without the other.
So, we are under a system called “Government by Manipulation”.
Seems like your conclusion infers a democrat wins the 2024 presidency? Biden and his deep state cast of clowns (Blinken, Garland, Wray, Fauci, and Weiss) need to be held accountable. Biden and Harris are ruining honest hard working American lives and harming future generations of Americans.
Very astute, insightful, and powerful, the evidence so well assembled. In the broadest sense, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, I must say that yours is a valiant voice against the forces straining Western civilization.
So well told and said, it just gets me more pissed off at what these slim ball creatures, Marxist,Commie, DemocRATS have done to our country! I see only 2 solutions, steps leading to a gallows, or a wall and being blind folded! Sadly, it will be neither…….
Thank You for this article.
It is emblematic of how far our country has sunk to consider that Biden’s 1987 presidential run was scuttled mainly by his plagiarism of Kinnock and RFK. Yet now the same NYT etc., that declaimed his lying and cheating then do everything they can to keep him in office. He always was a nasty, vile, venal empty vessel as VDH as so eloquently described.
This is all so true. The idea that these corrupt criminals will almost certainly escape prosecution fills me with sadness and rage. But the mind-numbing fact is that there are those in this country who still support biden, including in my own family.
We need a tsunami of change if this country is to survive.
And where does Michelle Obama figure in the Democratic Nomination Contest?
How can anyone with a shred of intelligence not embrace the merit and truth of professor Hanson’s comments..
It is quite plausable that Obama is running the administration and must protect Joe Biden at all costs. Why; 4 homes, a couple of which are described as mansions in some of the wealthiest neighborhoods. One does not accumulate that much wealth from book sales, a Netflix contract and a $200k governement retirement package. Should Joe Biden go down, would he implicate Obama? Is the book sales and Netflix deal a money laundering operation?
China paid millions to Univ Penn which in turn paid Biden and Blinken for minimal lecturing. Russia paid Bill Clinton huge sums for a lecture or two. Will the DOJ/IRS even attempt to unravel the corruption within the swamp!
Just my opinion but I would guess millions of citizens are coming to similar conclusions.
Why wouldn’t Joe’s handlers handle Kamala the same way? Joe is corrupt and senile beyond redemption, but Kamala is just dumb. I don’t understand why they don’t prop her up.
Because the case is so damning that Joe should be impeached this fall. He most likely won’t be convicted because of the Senate’s Democratic majority, but if Alzy Feinstein and Fettered Addleman couldn’t show up for the vote, he could be. Then…
we would have Kamala….sigh.
Professor when you mention reason and logic you are forced to face two a very tough choice. Either half the voting population is being reasonable and logical are corrupt or willfully blind to these issues, or half the population is an example of public education and incapable of reason and logic. Tragic yes , but i do not know of any other way to look at it. Even with the corporate media information machine controlling 90% of the output people take in through phones and TV morbid curiosity would lead a fair percentage to question the news and there are other outlets. By the way you Utube channel is pretty slick and i am a subscriber.
“malodorous skullduggery”. I could not have come up with a more befitting term to describe the awful actions ongoing from the leftists who hold power.
Thank you Sir for your thoughtful words of wisdom & insight. You are one of the very few who genuinely merit to be referred to as sage or great father. I am sure that many along with me share an affection for you as if you were our own father. Even if we’ve never met you in person. May God bless you in every endeavor.
Doyce Kolb, Jr.
Grapevine, Texas
As bad as letting Biden off is, Kamal as president would be even worse.
Trying to live with that thought.
Thank you Dr. Hanson. You remain a beacon of facts in a sea full of misdirection and obfuscation.
We hope and pray that those in public service working under an upper crust of corruption retain the values and honesty that will indeed make America great again.
Mr. Hanson’s commentary helps me better understand the historical perspective of the current events in America and western civilizations. I look forward to the weekly podcast and articles. Mr. Hanson is like a lone voice for America in the media today.
I have for sometime believed that Joe BIden will not be the Democratic Nominee for President in 2024. Who would vote for an 80 year old senile corrupt politician? But then I didn’t think he would be elected in 2020?
VDH a national treasure. The op-ed and the last 31++ months of corruption by a cadre of criminals with a history of traitorous behavior screams military trial, conviction and firing squad essential to ferret out the rot.
I am so interested in getting your perspective of how the GOP can actually seize these opportunities and win, or is it not possible?
Influence peddling by the President’s family has been going on for decades+. Do you think Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner wasn’t bringing in major dollars for influence with the Saudis? Hell, I don’t think he had security clearance for any of his ‘documented’ actions. And when the Clintons were in office, the family was doing the same, peddling their influence for money.
This is a long established pattern of greed calling… hello… calling 9-1-1 G-R-E-E-D… Prosecute them all. Both sides. Us middle class ‘cats’ aren’t that stupid to think that this is only the Bidens family.
How about a hypothetical resolution?
After the 2024 Presidential election, Harris ponders that she has been eliminated and treated in a dastardly manner by Biden and the Democrat Party, seeks ultimate revenge and “spills the beans” confirming the underlying corruption existing in the Biden Administration.
Biden must be impeached. Removed and Commie Harras must be made POTUS>
THis is the way our system is set up. Commie would not be worse than Joe and she would know that she is next if she does no good for the American people.
She is almost as dumb as Joe so McCarthy would likely wind up our POTUS for a few months. A definite promotion.
This is why the founding fathers set this system up. We should actually try the American system and exercise our treason laws too.