WILLIAMS COLUMN: Good Samaritans on Trial
Published 9:00 am Wednesday, December 11, 2024
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
In a move that caught everyone by surprise, and yet no one by surprise, Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden. A sweeping exoneration of all that has occurred in the past decade, whether known or unknown, accused or imagined, guilty or alleged.
The same Hunter Biden who was kicked out of the Navy in 2014 for failing a drug test. The one who pleaded guilty to massive tax evasion and was convicted on felony gun crimes. The actual Hunter Biden whose image has visually assaulted our senses in picture after weird picture of him posing in his grippy underwear while doing crack with hookers.
Meanwhile, honorably discharged USMC veteran Daniel Penny is fighting for his legal life in New York City after daring to intervene when a violent drug-addled schizophrenic threatened innocent travelers on the subway. Inexplicably the prosecutor in Penny’s trial just dismissed the greater charge of manslaughter when the jury was deadlocked and asked that the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide be pursued. It was a way for the prosecution to save face. It has nothing to do with actual justice.
America sees all of this. America has questions.
The public trust is being trashed by the progressive left. Americans understand and expect accountability. We get it. Consequences can still accompany forgiveness. Accountability and absolution are not the same thing. Hunter Biden is not a little boy whose daddy intervened. He was a grown man who made a decade of illegal choices that will now walk away as he always has.
While at the same time the left has a good Samaritan on trial for daring to keep people safe. Do we want to live in a world where good people decline to help others for fear of prosecution? Is there no room for good Samaritans in the modern world?
A President can commute a sentence, absolve a record, and issue a pardon as if the person never committed a wrong. After the Civil War Abraham Lincoln pardoned his own sister-in-law for supporting her Confederate General husband. Bill Clinton pardoned his own brother, sixteen years after he served time for drug charges. Donald Trump pardoned his son-in-law’s father for tax evasion, ten years after he had completed his 2-year prison term. Hunter Biden’s pardon is not at all the same, and may be one of the most sweeping presidential pardons ever seen.
When Richard Nixon resigned from office due to the Watergate scandal President Gerald Ford issued a full pardon of Nixon to avoid sending a US President to jail. The Nixon pardon covered a period of several years of his presidency. Hunter Biden has been pardoned for a full decade for crimes of which he already pleaded guilty, and potentially even crimes that we haven’t heard about.
Let that sink in. The drug addict tax evading Navy reject was given a more expansive pardon than former President Richard Nixon.
All of Hunter Biden’s woes – his addictions, his crimes, his dereliction of military duty, all of it – were described by his father Joe as political prosecutions. The same Joe Biden who sanctimoniously said “no one is above the law” in direct reference to his political opponent Donald Trump. Biden just affirmed that no one is above the law unless they run in Joe Biden’s sphere of influence. But aw shucks…..he’s just a daddy who loves his boy.
But the good guys? They stand trial. They are vilified in the liberal media.
Army sergeant Daniel Perry found himself surrounded by protestors on a dark Texas street with a gun in his face. He shot the gun-wielding thug and saved his own life. He defended himself and he was tried for murder.
Kyle Rittenhouse went to a place where there were riots. He should not have gone there but a lack of wisdom does not create illegal intent. He was attacked. He was struck in the head. He was chased by a rioter with a gun. He defended himself and he was tried for murder.
The American people have been abused in this process. The public trust in the legal system is what is really on trial. The rule of law is at stake.
Good honest hard-working salt-of-the-earth folks at the grassroots level see a crackhead who sold out his own country for a buck and got kicked out of the Navy for pissing hot on a drug test making bank on amateurish fingerpainting receive a pardon from his dad.
No one is issuing a pardon for Daniel Penny in New York. Kyle Rittenhouse lost a year of his life standing trial like a thug while he was knowingly innocent. Army sergeant Daniel Perry stood his ground, lost his career, and was tried for murder. The Governor finally intervened for Perry. BLM can burn down city blocks with impunity and the left will name streets after them. A transgender mass murderer shoots up a Nashville school and her manifesto is hidden from the public eye. While we’re talking here, what’s the latest on the multiple attempts to assassinate President Trump?
The American people want accountability. We also want to live in a world where we are allowed to say “no” and stand our ground in the face of criminality. We want to know that bad guys get trial and good guys get medals.
What we’ve learned from the left is that accountability is on hold for now. The left sees accountability as a byword, an archaic symbol of something that common folk expect but elitists avoid. Unless of course you are a good guy standing up for your right to live in a peaceable world.
It’s time to stop putting good Samaritans on trial.