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Joe Biden changed his mind over the Thanksgiving holiday, according to Karine Jean-Pierre, and decided to pardon his son Hunter despite his many promises not to do so. Biden explained his reversal by claiming that Hunter’s prosecution was politically motivated–by Biden’s own DOJ, apparently.

It isn’t easy to bring the White House press corps to life, but Biden’s about-face triggered lots of uncomfortable questions for Jean-Pierre, aboard Air Force One en route to Angola:

Journalists, incredulous, asked Jean-Pierre whether she was saying that the Department of Justice was politicized; if so, whether it was the president’s own fault, because of his appointees; and how many politicized cases there were.

Jean-Pierre declined to answer these questions, though she did say that President Biden was not going to demand the resignation of Attorney General Merrick Garland for the alleged singling out of his son in deference to Republicans.

There is much that one could say about this, but I think the most important point is that the Biden scandal, now drawing to a close, was never about Hunter. It has always been about Joe.

Hunter Biden was a drug-addled nonentity who was barely capable of functioning at an adult level. Indeed, that ultimately became his defense. And yet the press dutifully talked about Hunter’s overseas business interests and deals, and whether Joe was involved in them, or had knowledge of them.

But what business interests were those? Hunter had nothing to do with any company that manufactured products or sold services–other than the services of his father. His only business was selling access to Joe to foreigners who assumed, rightly or wrongly, that Joe, as Vice President, had significant influence.

The most notorious instance was Burmisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company that paid Hunter $1 million a year to be on its board of directors, even though Hunter knew nothing about natural gas and did not speak Ukrainian, the language in which board meetings were conducted. Not to mention the fact that most board members receive nominal compensation.

But Burmisma knew what it was doing. When the company came under attack in the U.S. for being corrupt, which it evidently was, it swung into action. Burisma’s top-drawer lobbyists at Blue Star Strategies were able to get the company a meeting at the top level of the U.S. State Department within a week, having told State that “Hunter Biden [is] a board member.”

All of Hunter’s “business” dealings were of that sort–influence peddling, in short. And the influence was Joe’s.

The House Oversight Committee traced more than $20 million that came from foreign sources and went into Biden family bank accounts. The Bidens engaged in a shell game, moving cash from one account to another to cover up the trail. Nevertheless, banks filed numerous “suspicious activity reports” on the Bidens’ cash transfers. Foreign cash wound up in, among other places, an account belonging to one of Biden’s granddaughters. What services do you suppose she provided to a foreign power? Have any reporters asked Joe whether he was aware of his granddaughter’s foreign “business transactions”? I don’t suppose so.

Joe Biden may be the most blatantly corrupt politician in American history. He certainly is a contender. So in one sense, it is just that he should pardon Hunter. Hunter was merely his barely-competent bagman. If Joe goes free, it arguably would be unfair to send his subordinate to prison, even though Hunter committed firearms violations and evaded taxes for his own benefit.

In any event, the Biden scandal has never been about Hunter. It has always been about Joe. And the press has been complicit in using Hunter as a shield to deflect attention from where it really belongs.