The fact that Joe Biden lied, saying he wouldn’t pardon his crackhead son Hunter, and then did exactly that, isn’t the end of the pardons our president will grant or the controversies they will result in. There are forty-two more days Biden will be president, so there’s more damage to be done. The Constitution doesn’t limit a president’s power to pardon. Only common sense and good judgment do. Biden has neither. The presidential power to pardon extends only to federal crimes excepting impeachment. That power is subjected to no check or balance in our system of government. It is the president’s alone. As Andy McCarthy has written, wrongful pardons are simply another form of “lawfare,” a term that is loosely defined. It includes abusing the justice system by indicting and trying people who shouldn’t be indicted — such as President-elect Trump — and pardoning undeserving people such as Hunter Biden. To be at least a bit fair, Biden was going to pardon his son regardless of what he said. Anyone who was paying attention to the lies Biden has repeated on a wide variety of subjects couldn’t have been surprised. The White House has said that Biden is thinking about pardoning others which means other pardons have already been decided and will be granted before Biden leaves the presidency. Who may be the beneficiaries? The Wall Street Journal postulates that Biden could pardon former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Milley and Dr, Anthony Fauci for his role in concealing the origins of COVID (and lying about it to congress) as well as others.  Gen. Milley was certainly culpable in the debacle that Biden created in withdrawing from Afghanistan, but timidity and stupidity aren’t punishable under criminal law. But his calls to Chinese leaders — during which he allegedly told them that he wouldn’t order a strike on China regardless of a presidential order — are definitely punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Whatever Dr. Fauci may have been guilty of, the statute of limitations — usually two, but not more than five years, under the U.S. Code — has already run out. It’s a rarity for an offense to have a statute of limitations longer than five years. The WSJ and other publications overlook several more likely candidates. For starters, Biden will almost certainly pardon his brother James. James Biden has been involved in most of Hunter’s influence peddling and his involvement probably continues. We know, thanks to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, that James Biden — on a joint account with his wife Sara, wrote a check to Joe, dated September 17, 2017, in the amount of $40,000 which probably was part of Joe’s fee for influence peddling in China. That’s probably not within the statute of limitations, but there may be further acts at later dates. Joe will probably pardon James preemptively for that and any other crimes — e.g., the Burisma scam that Hunter perpetrated — that James was involved in. Biden could even pardon himself. Another possible pardon Biden may give is to Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks, who pled guilty to one count under the Espionage Act and is now in Australia. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, when he was CIA director, said that Wikileaks acted as a hostile foreign intelligence agency. It leaked hundreds of classified U.S. documents to the media and conspired with an Army enlisted man Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning to do it. Assange is a favorite of the left and Biden may pardon him and welcome his return to the U.S. to continue his past practices. (He can do that anyway, having been sentenced to time he already served in a UK jail.) While he’s at it, Biden could also pardon Edward Snowden, a contractor working for the National Security Agency, for his leaking of thousands of highly-classified NSA and CIA papers. Snowden’s leaks almost certainly endangered U.S. spies in the field and caused disruption in several NSA and CIA programs that were monitoring terrorists and other nations. It’s relatively unlikely that Snowden would receive a pardon, but given Biden’s fealty to the hard left, we cannot rule it out. Biden and the Next President Biden should, but won’t, pardon Trump for the crimes he’s alleged to have committed in the January 6, 2021 mess and his mishandling of classified documents. Special Counsel Jack Smith is dismissing these cases without prejudice which means they could be brought again in 2029 when Trump is no longer president. The Biden pardons raise the specter of other politically-motivated pardons in the future. Remember the “Fast and Furious” ATF program that ran guns to Mexico? When Congress tried to investigate it, Obama claimed executive privilege thus protecting his attorney general, Eric Holder, from having to testify, basically quashing the investigation. Had Holder been compelled to testify, Obama could then have pardoned Holder from any criminal liability. That brings up the question of whether cabinet officials and others (not just a president’s family) would be pardoned for various criminal acts. It won’t happen but if, for example, a cabinet member committed fraud or received a bribe, that official could rely on a president to give him (or her) a  pardon. The Constitution doesn’t limit a president’s power to pardon. Only common sense and good judgment do. Biden has neither. The left’s lawfare will continue at least for the entirety of Donald Trump’s second term. Politically-motivated litigation will try to create bars to everything Trump does, from cutting back on Biden’s regulatory spree to reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy. Moreover, people like Assange, Snowden, and their ilk will leak highly classified information and there will be litigation to protect them and what they publish. Nevertheless, during the next forty-two days we can count on Biden granting more pardons to some of the least-deserving people imaginable. READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Opening CAIR’s Books Hegseth and Ratcliffe Face Big Challenges The post The President Isn’t Done With Pardons appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.