CHRIS CRUCIAL: The shameful final day of Joe Biden's presidency 😳

PLUS: Vivek💔 DOGE

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1. Joe Biden’s awful final act

On his final day as president, Joe Biden issued a series of preemptive pardons for both high-profile targets of incoming president Donald Trump as well as all of his closest family members.

It’s hard to overstate what a disaster for both Biden’s legacy and our broader political process this is.

First, let’s start with who Biden pre-emptively pardoned in the final hours of his presidency. There was Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger and General Mark Milley — all of whom have earned special ire from Trumpworld due to their willingness to speak out against the current president.

Then, just 20 minutes before Biden’s term officially ended, he did something previously unimaginable: He pardoned his brothers, Frances and Jim, as well as his sister, Valerie, and their respective spouses.

“My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me — the worst kind of partisan politics,” Biden said in explaining his decision. “Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end.”

This is all wrong — for three reasons: 1) the hypocrisy 2) how it looks and 3) the precedent it sets.

Start with the hypocrisy.

In December 2020, as he was preparing to take office, Biden was asked about the rumor that Trump, then the outgoing president, was going to issue preemptive pardons to — wait for it — his immediate family.

Here’s how Biden responded to CNN’s Jake Tapper on that point: “Well, it concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets in how the rest of the world looks at us as a nation of laws and justice.”

Later in the interview, Biden added:

You're not going to see in our administration that kind of approach to pardons. Nor are you going to see in our administration the approach to making policy by tweets. You know, it's going to be a totally different way in which we approach the justice system.

Ahem.

If this hypocrisy rings a bell, it’s because we’ve seen it before — when Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, late last year.

As recently as the summer of 2024, Biden had said publicly he would not pardon his son. And then he did just that.

Now to how this all looks. What crime did Anthony Fauci commit? Or Liz Cheney? Or Biden’s brothers and sister?

None that I know of! So why then are they being preemptively pardoned? To protect against the possibility that they might be charged by Trump? For what? On what grounds?