Liberal Pundits Made Fools of Themselves Defending the Hunter Biden Pardon

The Hunter Biden pardon has been a political disaster for President Biden. You know it’s bad when you’re a Democratic president and the NY Times editorial board comes out against you:

…on Sunday, in direct violation of his own pledges not to do so, Mr. Biden pardoned his own son, Hunter. Though he claimed the decision was made out of fatherly love, his explanation also attacked the investigation of his son and, implicitly, his own Justice Department…

This week, in justifying his decision, he accused his own Justice Department of “selectively and unfairly” prosecuting his son. To use a word that Democrats have often used in warning of the dangers of overlooking Mr. Trump’s defiance of the norms and values of our democracy, Mr. Biden has now “normalized” the abnormal.

But there are always political hacks out there in the media who will say anything to defend a Democrat. Enter Ana Navarro from The View and Charles Pierce of Esquire both of whom relied on invented pardons to downplay Joe Biden’s actions. Let’s start with Navarro who posted this on X:

Woodrow Wilson pardoned his brother-in-law, Hunter deButts.

Bill Clinton pardoned his brother, Roger.

Donald Trump pardoned his daughter’s father-in-law, Charlie Kushner. And just appointed him Ambassador to France.

But tell me again how Joe Biden “is setting precedent”?

— Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) December 2, 2024

This post was retweeted 13,000 times and liked 56,000 times. As the old saying goes, two out of three ain’t bad. It’s true that Donald Trump did pardon Charles Kushner, his son-in-law’s father, back in 2020. And Bill Clinton does have a brother named Roger who he pardoned as he left office in 2001. However, the claim about Woodrow Wilson appears to be false in every way. In fact, Woodrow Wilson never had a brother-in-law named Hunter deButts.

A search of the Wilson biography by Stockton Axson revealed seven mentions of the term “brother-in-law” and none for “deButts.” Further, a genealogy site showed that while Wilson had a total of nine brothers-in-law in his lifetime (his two sisters’ husbands, the two brothers of his first wife and the five brothers of his second wife), none of them bore the name “deButts” or any variation thereof.

Navarro later clarified where she came up with this oddly specific claim. She told her critics to take it up with ChatGPT.

Hey Twitter sleuths, thanks for taking the time to provide context. Take it up with Chat GPT… https://t.co/4OfMtb09xL pic.twitter.com/TiM2CNkPDw

— Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) December 3, 2024

Hunter deButts, which sounds suspiciously like a gay porn name, isn’t the only fake presidential pardon getting attention lately. Over on Bluesky a Democratic podcaster claimed that Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush had both pardoned relatives:

Jimmy Carter pardoned his brother Billy Carter who took over $200,000 from Libya as its foreign agent. George H.W. Bush pardoned his son Neil Bush for his role in the S&L scandals of the 1980s. Nobody thinks those pardons defined either presidency. Joe Biden’s pardon of Hunter Biden won’t either.

— Grant Stern (@grantstern.bsky.social) December 2, 2024 at 11:37 AM

Both claims were false as he eventually admitted.

Looking closely at the genuine list of pardons and commutations for each of the two presidents on the website of the Department of Justice (DOJ), neither of the names Neil Bush or William Carter appear. A name search on the site for each of the two brought no results.

It’s not clear where the claims about Neil Bush and Billy Carter came from but another Democrat had posted a nearly identical tweet on Threads. I’m guessing one of them copied it from the other but I don’t really care so I’m not going to figure out who was first.

In any case, liberal blogger Charles Pierce got the same bad information (or maybe he was relying on the Bluesky/Threads tweet). He wrote an entire article about the pardon of Neil Bush for Esquire. After a long set up, Pierce eventually got to his point.

…the luckiest thing about this lucky American businessman is that his father and brother were both presidents of the United States. The president’s name was George H.W. Bush. The Lucky American Businessman was his son, Neil, whose brother, George, later became president of the United States himself.

The Moral: Shut the fck up about Hunter Biden, please.

Note that this comes from the Wayback Machine but the claim that Neil Bush was pardoned had already been removed by the time this was archived. We know this because a note had already been added at the top of the story.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated. An earlier version stated incorrectly that George H. W. Bush gave a presidential pardon to his son, Neil Bush. Esquire regrets the error.

The whole point of the story was that George H.w. Bush had done the same thing as Joe Biden and yet no one was holding that against him. As the subhead explained: “Nobody defines Poppy Bush’s presidency by his son’s struggles or the pardons he issued on his way out of the White House. The moral: Shut the fck up about Hunter Biden, please.” Of course the reason no one defined George H.W. Bush by a pardon of his son Neil is that it never happened. Not only was Neil Bush never pardoned, he was never charged.

In 1990, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sued Silverado Banking officers, including Neil Bush, accusing them of “gross negligence.” Separately, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision accused Neil Bush of conflicts of interest and ordered him not to violate conflict of interest regulations in the savings and loan industry in the future.

Neil Bush’s father, then serving as president, publicly pledged not to get involved.

”It’s easy for me as the president, because the system is going to work, and I will not intervene. I’ve not discussed this with any officials and suggested any outcome,” George H.W. Bush said in July 1990.

The FDIC lawsuit ended in a 1991 multimillion-dollar settlement. The Austin Chronicle reported that an unnamed “Republican fundraiser” paid Neil Bush’s settlement obligations.

PolitiFact found no evidence George H.W. Bush interfered during these proceedings or used his presidential powers to intervene after the fact.

In other words, George H.W. Bush actually did what Joe Biden promised to do: Stay out of it. Charles Pierce, author of Idiot America, didn’t know that. Sometime yesterday, Esquire removed the entire story except for the editor’s note.

ChatGPT aside, I think we’re likely to see a lot more of this now that progressives have isolated themselves on Threads and Bluesky. With no one around to correct them from jumping on claims they’d really like to believe, they are going to drift into partisan fantasy land a lot more often.