Biden’s pardon of Hunter defended by White House as Trump taps in-laws amid presidential transition: Live
President-elect suggested freeing January 6 Capitol rioters after Biden’s announcement he was pardoning son Hunter
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump has suggested he will free the January 6 Capitol rioters as he slammed President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter Biden as a “miscarriage of Justice.”
On Sunday, Biden announced he had pardoned his son following his federal gun conviction, saying Hunter had been “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted” by the Justice Department.
Biden previously insisted he would not pardon his son. The White House has defended his decision.
Trump blasted his rival on Truth Social: “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”
Biden’s decision has divided critics. Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis said he was “disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country” while Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks said Hunter “would not ever be prosecuted for the gun crime but for his last name.”
In other news, Trump looks set to fire the head of the FBI after tipping MAGA loyalist Kash Patel for the role. He also nominated people in his family’s orbit to join his administration including Tiffany’s father-in-law Massad Boulos as senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs and Charles Kushner as ambassador to France.
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Kash Patel's determination to upend the FBI
Though he may be running the FBI in a matter of months, Kash Patel has previously signaled through interviews and public statements a determination to upend the agency and radically reshape its mission.
He’s called for dramatically reducing its footprint and limiting its authority, as well as going after government officials who disclose information to reporters.
In an interview earlier this year on the “Shawn Ryan Show,” Patel vowed to sever the FBI’s intelligence-gathering activities from the rest of its mission and said he would “shut down” the bureau’s headquarters building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state.’”
“And I’d take the seven thousand employees that work in that building and send them across America to go chase down criminals,” he added.
In a separate interview with conservative strategist Steve Bannon, Patel said he and others “will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media.”
”We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said, referring to the 2020 presidential election in which Biden, the Democratic challenger, defeated Trump. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”
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