Chapter 1: Broken Scales CHAPTER 1 BROKEN SCALES In his final minutes as president, Joe Biden gave blanket pardons to five of his family members. The list included three siblings and their respective spouses: James "Jim" Biden and his wife, Sara Biden; Valerie Biden Owens and her husband, John T. Owens; and Francis "Frank" Biden. All three siblings have been suspected of potential crimes. For years reports have indicated that Joe''s brothers Jim and Frank Biden used the family name to bag foreign cash and engage in questionable business dealings. Valerie, Joe''s sister, leveraged her last name to nab lucrative consulting gigs stateside. Sara Biden, Jim''s wife, was accused of laundering money for her husband and brother-in-law when Jim admitted to lending Joe $200,000 without a repayment plan.1 Controversial as the Biden family pardons were, the uproar was a fraction of what had come before.
These were not the first Biden family pardons. Just a few weeks earlier, Joe had granted his son Hunter a full and unconditional pardon dating back more than ten years for any crimes of which he might be accused in the future. America had largely grown numb to Biden family antics, but this news was jarring, especially since Hunter had been investigated for several crimes during Joe''s presidency. In June 2024, Hunter was convicted of three felony charges related to a gun offense. Reports of Hunter''s criminal misdoings had circulated for years, amplified by a leak of the contents of his laptop in the run-up to the 2020 election. The fact that he was convicted on a gun charge and only a gun charge was notable, as it was Hunter''s only alleged crime (to my knowledge) that did not implicate Joe. Hunter got away with any impropriety in his extensive business ties to oligarchs around the world, especially in China and Ukraine. He never registered as a foreign agent even though he clearly took money from influential people and businesses with close connections to foreign governments.
The pardons extended all the way back to 2014, right before Hunter''s career as an international businessman took off. Anyone who thinks this is a coincidence isn''t paying attention. Pardon recipients extended beyond the Biden family. Biden made wide use of preemptive pardons that granted high-profile political allies amnesty from future prosecution. Recipients included Dr. Anthony Fauci (who had overseen the mismanagement of funds that were used for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and then lied about it in a Senate hearing), Congresswoman Liz Cheney (who appeared to tamper with at least one witness on the January 6th Committee), and General Mark Milley (who had told the Chinese Communist Party that he would warn them if President Trump had planned to attack). Most if not all of Biden''s high-profile pardons extended back to January 1, 2014, a period spanning ten years. The stunning breadth of these pardons all but guarantees that many crimes will go uncovered and uninvestigated.
We will probably never learn the full truth of Hunter''s influence-peddling, since he was pardoned of all potential wrongdoing before anyone investigated his actions. It was the most far-reaching use of the pardon power in American history, a gross act of hypocrisy--even for an administration that traded in doublespeak and propaganda. But there are only two creatures that never forget a thing: elephants and the Internet. And the Internet to be consistent soon took Joe Biden to task for his about-face regarding the rule of law. Clips quickly flooded social media of Biden and his media allies criticizing Trump for even contemplating granting preemptive pardons on his way out in 2020. Biden and his surrogates repeatedly stated that he would not pardon his son. This, like so many of Biden''s utterances over the years, was bullshit. "You sit there and go, if you haven''t done anything wrong, then what do you need a preemptive pardon for?" asked lawfare poohbah and Mueller Report henchman Andrew Weissmann on MSNBC.
At that time, Biden responded with emphatic bullshit: "It concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets and how the rest of the world looks at us as a nation of laws and justice. You''re not going to see in our administration that approach to pardons."2 In his first administration, President Trump never issued the preemptive pardons liberals had fixated on, not even one. Joe Biden, on the other hand, dished them out like dollar bills at an erotic club. It was ironic, infuriating, and darkly hilarious--the perfect way for Joe Biden to end his failed presidency. His last act confirmed what we already knew: The man who standardized the modern practice of lawfare (more on this momentarily), proved once and for all that two systems of justice exist in the country. I saw it coming, of course. We weren''t being entirely tongue-in-cheek at Breitbart News when we began calling them "The Biden Crime Family.
" I knew from my extensive research into the Bidens that Joe would never let his family members go to jail, so long as he could help it, nor would he let protracted legal entanglements bankrupt them. Unending lawsuits, expensive legal bills, and judicial harassment from your political opponents? That was for the Trump family! For those MAGAts who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th! No Biden was ever going to rot in a cell. Throughout the Biden administration, Democrats tried to bankrupt Trump by filing civil cases against him in liberal districts. Judges and juries who hated Trump awarded absurd penalties to accusers in flimsy cases. And when that failed to alienate Trump from the American public, Biden''s DOJ, together with some suspiciously recent DOJ alumni, tried to throw him in jail. Yet, luckily, they all failed.
In the end, Trump fought off his most malicious detractors and proved they were powerless against him. At least for the time being. Despite Trump''s victory, however, it''s still important to consider the damage the left has done to our legal system. Lawfare is a multifaceted tool. The left deploys it at the court to enact change and tarnish their adversaries. They use it at the White House to circumvent constitutional roadblocks. They use it at the ballot box so they don''t leave a single close election to chance. Joe Biden, a famously lousy law student (as thoroughly documented in Breaking Biden ), had introduced modern lawfare decades earlier with the "borking" of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and the unsuccessful high-tech lynching of nominee Clarence Thomas.
In the intervening years, the Democrats built a lawfare superstructure that remains one of their most potent political weapons. The Democrats always had long odds for the 2024 election. They had a weak candidate at the top of the ticket, then swapped him out for a candidate who was even worse. Republicans had both political and cultural tailwinds and a candidate so strong it looked at times like God himself willed Trump to take back the presidency. The Democrats should have known they were in a losing battle. They should have stood down and lain low. But they are fighters, and they fought to the bitter end. This was a fateful choice because it meant they didn''t just lose in November, they exposed their playbook in the process.
Now it''s on us to identify its elements, dismantle what we can, and prepare for the battles ahead. If we fail, the machine will only get stronger. The left plans to use lawfare to expand voter eligibility to include illegal aliens, eliminate voter ID requirements, and widen the time window in which people can vote. They want to rig the deck so they can''t lose. They will game campaign finance laws so that they always have a fundraising advantage. They will pack courts to limit the power of conservative and originalist judges. They will add new left-leaning states, grant mass amnesty to illegal aliens, and more. Scariest of all, they will try to declare the conservative movement an existential threat to "democracy" itself with no legitimate right to exist.
If they had their way, 2024 would have been the last real election. Under a second Biden or Kamala Harris administration, the political left would have used their power to cement their gains and guarantee that no sane Republican would ever test the lawfare machine again. Anyone who challenged them would have been subjected to the Trump treatment. It would have been the end of democracy as we know it. In November 2024, we got a stay of execution, but we still have much to fear. The left believes that America is not an exceptional place and that our core institutions are not worthy of respect. Once you understand this fundamental outlook, you can begin to understand how easily they are willing to bend the system to their will. They don''t believe in precedent, tradition, and principle: their only pursuit is power.
THE LEFT HATES LAW AND ORDER The left has never regarded the rule of law as essential. They consider it a means to an end, and when it doesn''t work in their favor, it''s viewed as an obstacle on the way to their progressive utopia that can be swept aside. That attitude made the prosecutions of Trump possible. My first conscious experience with the left''s anti-law and order culture concerned immigration, and illegal immigration specifically. Our open border was a national disgrace, and I dedicated much of my career to bringing attention to that fact. The left has waged war on imm.