From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Nick Pope

President Joe Biden pardoned his brothers and other family members on Monday just moments before President-elect Donald Trump’s swearing-in

Biden pardoned his brother Frank, his other brother James, James’ wife Sara Biden, his sister Valerie Owens and her husband, John Owens in one of his last acts as president. James was connected to Hunter Biden’s business dealings with overseas partners, while Frank Biden used Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration to promote his Florida law firm in connection with a lawsuit against sugar farmers and reportedly interrupted business meetings to speak on the phone with “the big guy” while working for a manufacturing company based in Illinois.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attempted to spin President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter after months of claiming that he would not do so. pic.twitter.com/FpxQJ5m9gE

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 2, 2024

Monday’s last-minute pardons followed Joe Biden’s December 2024 decision to pardon his son Hunter — convicted on federal gun and tax charges in 2024 — for all crimes he may have committed going back to 2014. The pardons for the five other family members will also span back to 2014.

Despite the fact that Joe Biden’s Justice Department oversaw the investigations into Hunter Biden and congressional investigators proved that Biden family members and business associates profited from business deals with overseas oligarchs, Joe Biden said that his family was the victim of “the worst kind of partisan politics.”

“I believe in the rule of law, and I am optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail over politics,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House. “But baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety, and financial security of targeted individuals and their families. Even when individuals have done nothing wrong and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage their reputations and finances.”

“That is why I am exercising my power under the Constitution to pardon James B. Biden, Sara Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John T. Owens, and Francis W. Biden,” the statement continues. “The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that they engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.”

James Biden, along with Hunter Biden, were paid millions of dollars by a Chinese energy firm called CEFC to look to secure energy deals in the U.S., though those ventures never materialized, according to a former CEFC associate who testified to congressional investigators in January 2024.

Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer, who spearheaded the House impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden, slammed the pardons in a Monday statement, saying that he believes the move indicates the Biden family is likely guilty of the corrupt and unsavory activity of which they have been accused.

“President Biden’s preemptive pardons for the Biden Crime Family serve as a confession of their corruption as they sold out the American people to enrich themselves. Our investigation revealed that at least ten members of the Biden Crime Family and their associates raked in over $30 million by selling Joe Biden’s influence to corrupt foreign entities and individuals in China, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and Kazakhstan,” Comer said. “The legacy media should be ashamed of themselves for covering up Joe Biden and his family’s abuse of power, corruption, and obstruction. The American people have seen through the legacy media’s coverup and the Bidens’ lies, and they know the truth: President Biden abused his public office to create a slush fund for his family.”

Prior to stepping in to protect his family members at the very end of his one term in office, Joe Biden also pardoned Anthony Fauci and other controversial figures before Trump was sworn in as president.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Cohen

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told podcast host Joe Rogan on Friday that officials in President Joe Biden’s administration would yell and hurl profanities at his company’s employees over content censorship.

The Biden administration pushed Facebook to censor posts about COVID-19 that it deemed misinformation, according to documents published by House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan in July 2023. Zuckerberg, on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” revealed that also Meta faced investigations and backlash after Biden accused Facebook of “killing people” in July 2021 for not censoring so-called COVID-19 misinformation.

WATCH:

“Basically, these people from the Biden Administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse,” Zuckerberg said. “And it’s like these documents are — it’s all kind of out there.”

Rogan asked if Meta had recorded any of the calls, but Zuckerberg said he did not believe so.

“I mean, there are emails. The emails are published. It’s all kind of out there …. And basically, it just got to this point where we were like, ‘No, we’re not going to — we’re not going to take down things that are true. That’s ridiculous,’” Zuckerberh said. “They wanted us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV, talking about how ten years from now or something, you’re going to see an ad that says, ‘Okay, if you took a COVID vaccine, you’re eligible, like for this kind of payment,’ like this sort of like class-action lawsuit-type meme. And they’re like, ‘No, you have to take that down.’”

“We just said, ‘No, we’re not going to take down humor and satire. We’re not going to take down things that are true.’ And then at some point, I guess — I don’t know — it flipped a bit,” he added. “I mean, Biden, when he was — he gave some statement at some point, I don’t know if it was a press conference or to some journalist, where he basically was like, ‘These guys are killing people.’ And I don’t know. Then like all these different agencies and branches of government basically just like started investigating and coming after our company. It was brutal.”

Facebook executives believed they were engaged in a “knife fight” with Biden’s White House on COVID-19 censorship, according to a House Judiciary Committee report published in May.

Zuckerberg in August expressed remorse that Facebook caved to pressure from the Biden administration to censor content in a letter to Jordan. He wrote that senior Biden administration officials “repeatedly pressured” Facebook teams to censor COVID-19 content that the platform otherwise would not have suppressed, and voiced frustration when Facebook disagreed.

“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”

Zuckerberg also alleged in 2022 on “The Joe Rogan Experience” that the FBI warned Facebook of a “Russian propaganda” dump just before the Hunter Biden laptop story broke.

“The FBI basically came to us and some folks on our team and said, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert, we thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election and we have noticed that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that, so be vigilant,’” he said.

The Meta CEO said he could not recall whether the FBI specifically mentioned the Hunter Biden laptop story, but asserted it fit “the pattern.”

The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Meta referred the DCNF to documents released by the House Judiciary Committee and Jordan.