GOP Investigator Doubts Biden’s Preemptive Pardons For Family Would ‘Hold Up In Court’

On Sunday, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said he did not think the preemptive pardons that President Joe Biden issued to members of his family in the final moments of his administration would “hold up in court.”

Just minutes before Donald Trump was sworn into office for a second presidential term last week, Biden announced pardons for his brother, James B. Biden; James Biden’s wife, Sara Jones Biden; his sister, Valerie Biden Owens; Valerie Owens’ husband, John T. Owens; and his brother, Francis W. Biden, citing the prospect of “politically motivated investigations.” Biden previously had pardoned his son, Hunter, who had been convicted of tax evasion and gun crimes.

Comer, who led a corruption-focused impeachment investigation into Biden and wrote a book about his inquiry, said the preemptive pardons were an “admission of guilt” and then suggested to Fox News anchor Maria Bartirtomo on “Sunday Morning Futures” that scrutiny of the prior administration may continue when she asked if her viewers should expect that the Bidens “got away with it.”

Comer replied, “I certainly hope not,” before referring to Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee to become U.S. Attorney General; Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to become FBI director; and new CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

“The ball is going to be in Pam Bondi’s court. We’re communicating with her people right now. I have had a good meeting with Kash Patel. One thing I’m confident is going to happen — and you saw that with John Ratcliffe — we’re going to hold people in the government accountable that were involved in the cover-up,” Comer said.

“He’s already held the 51 intelligence officials that lied to the American people when they said the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, when most of them in fact knew that it was not Russian disinformation,” Comer added. “Now we want to get the people that were involved in the cover-ups, because what we found in our investigation — and I write about it extensively in my book — is that there were four different agencies investigating the Bidens, the IRS, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

Comer went on to say, “And, obviously, they wanted to get to Joe Biden, because none of this money would be coming into the president’s son or brother were it not for Joe Biden. Every time they got ready to ask Joe Biden, they were told to stand down by a deep state actor. I want those people held accountable. And then, with respect to the Bidens, I don’t think these preemptive pardons would hold up in court. I would like to see a jury that would be sympathetic to what he said, ‘We’re pardoning you for anything you may have done over the past decade pertaining to influence peddling.’ That’s baloney, and no jury in America would buy that, in my opinion.”

Before ending the interview Bartiromo asked Comer if he believed the preemptive pardons were not legitimate, to which the chairman replied: “I don’t. But there are a lot better legal minds than mine, I’m sure. But the — I don’t think the average person that works hard and pays taxes has much sympathy for a president that, in his last act in office, pardoned his entire family for financial public corruption and didn’t have the guts to tell anybody why he did it.”

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