Pardon the Reality: Will Biden Block Trump’s Revenge?

Members of Congress, businessmen, and national security people going back as far as the Obama administration are all reported to be targets

The nomination of Kash Patel as FBI Director has White House aides debating the efficacy of blanket pardons for a broad range of current and former officials who could find themselves facing inquiries and even indictments.

President Biden has faced criticism in the wake of pardoning his son Hunter, especially about the breadth of the action, dating back to 2015. The time period covered, as far as I’m concerned, indicates that the White House is seriously taking broad and specific threats of revenge made by Republicans.

In the case of Hunter Biden, he’d already been convicted and was facing sentencing for two crimes former Atty General Eric Holder called not worth the governments’ time. And the Republican point man for prosecutions over the next four years was promising additional charges based on conjecture.

All the critiques absolutely fail to acknowledge the promised upcoming civil and criminal cases Republicans will use to silence and intimidate any opposition. They’re going to do it if they can, folks, and the incoming administration is much more organized than it was in 2016.

An article in Politico about those Oval office discussions has gone viral, prompting calls by Democrats Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Brendan Boyle for consideration of preemptive pardons by the outgoing president.

• “This is no hypothetical threat,” Boyle said in a statement, adding: “The time for cautious restraint is over. We must act with urgency to push back against these threats and prevent Trump from abusing his power.”

• Other lawmakers, I’m told, have been just as emphatic in private with Biden’s aides in calling for preemptive pardons.

According to ABC News, possible names include current and former officials such as retired Gen. Mark Milley, former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, Sen.-elect Adam Schiff and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Washington Post columnist Jenifer Rubin says there’s a reasonable fear that a weaponized FBI directed by a vengeful president will carry out threats to pursue his enemies.

• Pardons for any conduct related to Trump or his associates since 2015 (when Trump entered the presidential race) could be included. The individuals to be protected could include anyone who has testified against Trump in any forum (e.g., former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified before the Jan. 6 committee); anyone who has worked on or advocated for the criminal prosecution of Trump and his associates (e.g., state prosecutors, former Justice Department lawyers who have supported prosecution or filed friend-of-the-court briefs); journalists whom Trump and his minions have accused of conspiring against them; election officials (including those he claimed rigged the 2020 election); and a catchall category of those Trump and his planned nominees have threatened.

• If the categories are unusually broad, it is because Trump has threatened so many people.

It’s not like the people cited in those account are making something up out of thin air. Patel published an “enemies list” with sixty names that he’s promised to go after in an appendix to his 2022 book Government Gangsters; he calls the list “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State.”

“We will go out and find the conspirators,” Patel said last year on Steve Bannon’s podcast, “not just in government, but in the media.… Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

Candidate Trump called for legal retribution against dozens of people in campaign speeches this fall.

Here’s Josh Gerston at Politico in an article posted the day after the election:

• Many Trump supporters dismissed the threats as campaign rhetoric aimed at whipping up his base. They noted that his exhortations against his enemies only rarely led to action during his first four years in office.

• But others — including some of Trump’s closest advisers — have warned ominously that he’s far more likely to follow through in a second term. He won’t be inhibited by the need to run for reelection. He will be emboldened by a Supreme Court ruling that grants presidents broad immunity from criminal accountability after they leave office. And he is expected to be surrounded by aides more willing to dispense with norms to carry out his wishes.

I have no doubt that the New York Times or Wall Street Journal will publish a blistering rebuttal to those concerns, written by a prestigious white male who will harrumph at the notion of targeted retributions while leaving a back door open by saying he, too, has questions about some of those people.

Patel has already started pushback with a letter to Olivia Troye (the former Republican national security official advisor to Vice President Pence who has become an outspoken critic of President Trump. He is demanding she retract comments made on MSNBC on Patel’s unfitness to serve as FBI Director. Troye says she stands by her previous statements.

I have no doubt that one or another pundit will point to the legal system as an impediment to overreaching Trump administration actions targeting individuals. That’s all fine and dandy, I suppose, for the people with deep pockets willing to put up a fight.

Regardless of whether legal actions against opponents and/or witnesses are civil or criminal, mounting a challenge will cost untold thousands of dollars. Should the discovery process find any embarrassing stuff, you can be assured it will leak to the jackals waiting near the courtroom doors. And, because we’re looking at individuals versus the government, the time suck involved will keep defendants out of political involvement.

Major media are already taking no chances. MSNBC had a morning show host apologize after columnist David Frum dared to make flippant remarks about Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth’s well-documented issues with alcohol. Not only that, Frum was escorted from the stage shortly thereafter.

In an Atlantic article, the columnist detailed the incident, ending his essay saying:

• I write these words very aware that I’m probably saying goodbye forever to a television platform that I enjoy and from which I have benefited as both viewer and guest. I have been the recipient of personal kindnesses from the hosts that I have not forgotten.

• I do not write to scold anyone; I write because fear is infectious. Let it spread, and it will paralyze us all.

• The only antidote is courage. And that’s infectious, too.

Here on the left coast there’s disturbing news about the publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Besides recasting the paper’s editorial board with Trump toadies, all feature articles need to be cleared by owner Patrick Soon-Shiong prior to publication, and he’s proudly introducing an AI powered “bias meter” to be appended to stories.

This leads to the obvious questions about what these entities will do in the wake of actual persecutions and harassment of Trump’s perceived opponents. Will Joe & Mika give a tour of detention facilities? Will MSNBC copy Fox News and simply not report on items that might displease the president? Will Jeff Bezos try to persuade the President that revenge is not helpful?

There’s good reason to assume bad things are about to happen. Joe Biden ought to go on a pardoning spree, kinda like Oprah used to do with her giveaways… there’s one for you... one for you ….

Objective truth doesn’t matter to them; it’s their truth against yours, and if you don’t accept their truth, you’re an infidel. And infidels can be sacrificed. – Ross Rosenfeld at The New Republic

People's Reactions to a Health Insurance CEO Getting Assassinated Are Incredibly Dark by Victor Tangermann at Futurism

• UnitedHealth's role shouldn't be underestimated. The group is one of the largest health insurance companies in the world in terms of revenue, and the eighth largest corporation by market capitalization.

• In short, seeing the CEO of a notorious health insurance company — which is currently facing a class action lawsuit for using an algorithm to deny rehabilitation care to seriously ill patients — meet a violent end doesn't seem to have caused an outpouring of mourning.

• "Thank you for choosing UnitedHealthcare for your healthcare needs," one Reddit user wrote in a facetious post, imitating the style of a letter from a health insurer denying coverage. "After a careful review of the claim submitted for emergency services on December 4, 2024, we regret to inform you that your request for coverage has been denied."

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Better trains are coming. Will America get aboard? By Alex Fitzpatrick at Axios

• Reality check: The great rail line of history is littered with ambitious train projects that never saw the light of day, or emerged as a shadow of their proposed selves.

• Building major new train lines is expensive, time-consuming and arduous — requiring not just big bucks, but buy-in from local communities, lawmakers, etc..

• Convincing car- and plane-loving Americans to give trains a shot is another problem entirely — though fast, reliable and comfortable intercity service could make its own case, as it seems to be doing in Florida.

• The bottom line: All aboard — if all goes well, that is.

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Fearful of crime, the tech elite transform their homes into military bunkers by Nitasha Tiku at The Washington Post

• Cameras and sensors surveil the perimeter, scanning bystanders’ faces for potential threats. Drones from a “deterrence pod” scare off trespassers by projecting a searchlight over any suspicious movements. A virtual view of the home is rendered in 3D and updated in real time, just like a Tesla’s digital display. And private security agents monitor alerts from a central hub.

• This is the vision of home security pitched by Sauron, a Silicon Valley start-up boasting a waiting list of tech CEOs and venture capitalists.

• Co-founder Kevin Hartz, a tech entrepreneur and former partner at Peter Thiel’s venture firm Founders Fund, named the company after the villain in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” a disembodied evil spirit depicted as a fiery, all-seeing eye in the sky.