Joe Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter Biden. If this news shocked you, the election results were also shocking. The only thing less surprising than Joe Biden pardoning Hunter is that the White House has no press conferences set on this news. Joe Biden himself is leaving the country to avoid the press. But while that's unsurprising, the sheer scope of the pardon is astonishing and worth dwelling on.

The pardon covers everything, both in time and scope. Newsweek sums it up, "The pardon is full and unconditional, pertaining to offenses committed between January 1, 2014 and December 1, 2024, "including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted (including any that have resulted in convictions) by Special Counsel David C. Weiss," followed by the specific cases brought against Hunter Biden in Delaware and California."

What does this mean? It covers the basics that you know from the steady drumbeat of Hunter Biden news over the years. That includes the gun and tax charges Hunter Biden already faces. Based on previous cases, Hunter Biden already faced the prospect of several decades in prison for tax evasion and gun charges.

However, Biden did not limit the pardon to include only these offenses. The pardon covers any possible offenses between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024 - nearly 11 years. Why go back that far? On May 12, 2014, Ukraine's Burisma Holdings announced that Hunter Biden was joining its board of directors. At the time, Joe Biden was still Vice President and Putin's annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine began a few months early that same year.

CNBC noted in its reporting at the time, "The arrangement raised questions about the propriety of his appointment, given the tense political standoff between Russia and the West over the future status of Ukraine, where fighting has resulted in the deaths of dozens of soldiers and civilians. Natural gas has factored heavily in tensions between Russia and Ukraine, both of which have political leadership that's intertwined with their respective energy industries."

At the heart of this pardon is not Hunter Biden's drug and tax charges—those were the low-hanging fruit. This pardon is about blocking the next line of investigations into the Biden family: Hunter Biden's influence peddling in Ukraine going back to the Obama administration. The pardon is even broader, covering anything that investigation could uncover.

This won't be the end, either. On MSNBC, Jill Wine-Banks, a former assistant Watergate Special Prosecutor, lauded Biden for the pardon, taking the White House line that this is a father's love for his son. She then went further and said Biden needed to pardon everyone involved with investigating Donald Trump and then end things with a pardon of himself.

Stew on that a moment: MSNBC liberals believe everyone in the DOJ needs a pardon to avoid any accountability for their actions. These are the ideas of anti-democracy forces, aiming to do anything they want without accountability. They claim the election of Donald Trump would be the end of democracy, but when the democratic forces running this country demand these same people provide accountability for their decisions, they demand a pardon.

Blanket pardons are not the solution for people who believe Joe Biden's actions are above board. We need to let the disinfectant of pure light wash over the federal government. Bureaucrats do not get to announce that their actions are beyond reproach. That's not how this country is designed to work, and if Democrats believe that, they should be corrected now.

The interesting note about Biden's pardon is that it's coming this early. This is something you'd typically do when leaving the office. It's a January 19 at 11:59 pm pardon, not a December pardon. That suggests more of these things are on the way. What drove the Biden White House to do this now?

We'll find out soon enough, while the rats start fleeing the Biden administration's ship. Meanwhile, Biden is leaving for Africa without asking any questions. In the original House investigation, James Comer and House Republicans called Joe and Hunter Biden's scheme a "pay-to-play" situation that demanded even more investigation.

Biden's DOJ refused to touch any of it. Joe Biden claimed in 2014 and in every intervening year, including the 2019 Democratic Primaries, that everything was above board. In one of his final acts as President, Joe Biden pardoned his son for anything that may have happened in these roles in Ukraine and anywhere else.

Under the Fifth Amendment, when a defendant claims the right to remain silent, you can't take that as evidence of guilt. That's not true with a pardon—we can and should assume that Hunter Biden is guilty of far more than what we know so far. Additionally, we should assume the same thing of people demanding blanket pardons for working in the Biden administration.

In his official statement, Joe Biden only addresses the gun and tax charges, which he claims are unfair. The problem with that statement is that he conveniently leaves out the pay-to-play accusations that his pardon covers. Trump's decision to call it the "Biden Crime Family" is going to stick after this pardon, for good reason.