Under Article II of the United States Constitution, the President of the United States has the “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States.” The presumption behind that language is that the person pardoned will have been wrongfully charged or convicted of an “offence” against the United States. Otherwise, the power effectively turns the president from a court of last resort for existing miscarriages of justice into a potentate or monarch who makes up the law as he goes along.

Joe Biden clearly likes that potentate possibility. We saw this when he pardoned Hunter for every federal offense he might have committed over the last decade, including offenses he may still commit in December.

That was bad. What many see as worse is the fact that Biden is apparently contemplating a wholesale pardon for people who have not yet been charged, and may never be charged, with federal crimes. There are many problems with this, but there’s also an upside worth contemplating.

Here’s the story from NBC News:

President Joe Biden and his senior aides are discussing the idea of issuing pre-emptive pardons for people President-elect Donald Trump has scorned in recent years as he has hinted about plans for retribution, two sources familiar with the discussions confirmed.

While the discussions have included certain names, including Senator-elect Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Dr. Anthony Fauci and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the process hasn’t progressed to the point of consensus on an actual list, sources said.

Some Democrats and “Never Trump” Republicans have supported the notion of pre-emptive pardons to protect people under a new Trump presidency.

The first problem, of course, is the same problem associated with the Hunter pardon: This is a level of presidential power that the Founders, who were seeking to escape from what they saw as a despotic monarchy, would never have authorized.

The second problem is that Biden is effectively saying that these Democrat party favorites may, in fact, have committed crimes. After all, as noted above, before Biden, people were pardoned only for crimes with which they were charged or convicted. The implications of a pardon are pretty obvious.

Generally, the whole thing smells.

But let me give you another way to look at what could happen if Biden hands out pardons. It involves two threads. The first is that the Democrats have weaponized the federal government. This previously occurred only in third-world or totalitarian countries, which routinely used the criminal justice system to persecute political enemies.

If Republicans let them get away with this tactic without pushing back (although Republicans, at least, would have actual frauds and crimes to hang around the necks of politicians and political operatives, not frauds and hoaxes), Democrats will destroy Republicans the next time they have power. After all, Republicans will have shown themselves to be weak.

Game theory, after all, says that when someone unilaterally changes the rules of the game to favor themselves, you must fight them back and win on their own terms. If you push back brutally enough, they’ll cry “uncle” and go back to the old rules.

However, in real life, it’s not that easy. The Democrat party owns the administrative state, which means the DOJ and all the three-letter agencies. Even with new management, the foot soldiers are unreliable. The Democrat party also owns a large part of the federal judiciary. The Trump administration can bring indictments, but it’s questionable whether it can effectively prosecute the cases—and Democrats know this.

Nor is this statist weaponization of democracies only an American problem. Ben Shapiro explains in the first segment of his show that this is a problem across the free world. In country after country, permanent bureaucracies (including the judiciaries) are using their power to overthrow democratically elected leaders or to imprison political opponents who dare question election outcomes. (This most recently happened in Romania.)

Shapiro also explains that this trend is incredibly destabilizing because it creates either an endless tit-for-tat or delivers permanent power to the bureaucracy, bypassing the voters entirely:

However, I’d like you to imagine a different scenario—a better one for America—if Joe Biden does give blanket pardons.

In that case, Congress must immediately convene hearings and call in these pardoned people to testify about everything—that is, what they knew and when they knew it. Subjects would include, but not be limited to, the Russia Hoax, including the Steele Dossier; the fake Ukraine impeachment; what happened before, during, and after January 6; every single thing about COVID; and, depending on who gets pardoned, about Epstein and Diddy.

If the pardoned insiders are under oath, they must answer because they can no longer hide behind the Fifth Amendment’s protection from self-incrimination. Moreover, the “I don’t remember” tactic must be viewed with incredible suspicion. After all, everyone understands that it’s just a backdoor way to avoid self-incrimination. The pardoned must confess all. Failing that, into prison they go for contempt of Congress.

What we’ll end up having if Congress stays strong and the Attorney General takes contempt seriously is the equivalent of South Africa’s “truth and reconciliation” hearings. While we won’t have the satisfaction of seeing people who engaged in criminal acts go to prison, something more important might happen: Americans will finally learn the full story of Democrat party corruption. That could (and should) end the Democrat party for a generation, and that’s a much more satisfying outcome than having political fighting about fair or unfair prosecutions.

Image: YouTube screen grab (edited).