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Today, US President Joe Biden pardons his son Hunter on multiple convictions. Russia and Syria attack rebels in Aleppo. And pro-EU protesters clash with police for a fourth consecutive night in Georgia. From TLDR News, this is your daily briefing for Monday, the 2nd of December, 2024.
US President Joe Biden has issued official pardons to his son Hunter over convictions on gun and tax charges less than two months before leaving office, despite having promised not to do so. In a statement on Sunday night, Biden said that Hunter was "singled out only because he is my son" and accused political adversaries in Congress of instigating the charges against Hunter to harm Biden's reputation.
For context, in June this year, Hunter Biden was convicted on three felony counts of lying on a federal background check when purchasing a handgun. Then last month, he pleaded guilty to evading $1.4 million in taxes, allegedly spending much of the money on cars, drugs, hotels, and prostitutes while addicted to crack cocaine. He was due to be sentenced on the 12th of December in Delaware for the gun charges and on the 16th of December in California for the tax charges.
But now, President Biden's pardon, which applies to all offenses committed between the 1st of January 2014 and the 1st of December 2024, means that the sentencing won't happen. His decision has caused controversy on all sides of the political aisle, with Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, writing on X, this is a bad precedent that could be abused by later presidents and will sadly tarnish Joe Biden's reputation.
Meanwhile, Stephen Chung, Trump's spokesperson, said Biden's move supported Trump's claims that the U.S. justice system is politically rigged. He said the failed witch hunts against President-elect Trump have proven that the Democrat-controlled DOJ and other radical prosecutors are guilty of weaponizing the justice system.
For his part, Hunter Biden has expressed remorse for his past behavior, saying in a statement that he had "admitted and taken responsibility for mistakes made during the darkest days of my addiction, mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport." He also pledged "to never take the clemency I've been given today for granted" and that he would devote his life to helping those who are still sick and suffering.
There's more on the way, but remember to subscribe and ring the bell for more Daily Briefing on Wednesday. Plus, if you want to support the channel like Jorge S. Mendes de Jesus, then consider joining the TLDR daily membership program for just $1.99. Now we bring you the latest development in Syria, where Russian and Syrian warplanes have intensified their attacks on the rebels who have run over most of Aleppo in a lightning assault last week.
This new rebel offensive marks a restarting of the Syrian civil war and an end to a ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey in 2020. Last week, anti-Assad rebels staged a shockingly successful offensive into the outskirts of Aleppo and are now posing the biggest challenge in years to Bashar al-Assad's regime. The group advanced quickly and although their progress seemed to have slowed by yesterday, the fighters seized nearly all of the city from the government on Sunday, except for the neighbourhoods controlled by the Kurdish forces.
Meanwhile, Russia carried out a series of airstrikes over the weekend, marking the first time Aleppo has been hit by Russian strikes since 2016. Twelve people were killed in a strike on a hospital in Aleppo, Syria's second biggest city. According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 300 people, including at least 20 civilians, have been killed so far, and the fighting has displaced more than 48,500 people in recent days.
Next up, we've got an update on the Irish general election, which took place on Friday. At the time of writing, 12 seats are still to be declared, with counting having taken place over two days at the weekend. The results suggest that the incumbent centre-right coalition of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will continue comfortably as the two parties are together expected to secure close to the 88 seats required to form a government in the 174-seat lower house of parliament.
However, it was a disappointing night for the left-wing opposition party Sinn Fein, whose vote share fell for the first time in 35 years, representing the biggest drop in support for any party at this election. Still, the party managed to win slightly less than a fifth of votes, close behind each of the two main parties, which the party's leaders insist shows it has successfully broken Ireland's traditional two-party system.
Analysing the results, former Fine Gael Europe minister Lucinda Creighton told the Financial Times that parties that once accounted for 80% of the electorate are now pretty much stagnant on 40%. And that's with the economy firing and full employment and unprecedented corporation taxes.
By coalescing, the two parties have resigned themselves to limping along together and hoping the opposition don't get its act together. It's governing by default. Finally, the election also had a turnout of just 59.7%, which was a record low for the country.
Over to Georgia now, where pro-EU protesters rallied in Tbilisi for a fourth consecutive night on Sunday, and where early this morning, police arrested prominent opposition leader of the Coalition for Change Alliance, Zurab Japaridze. The protests were sparked following the Georgian government's decision to suspend the negotiations to join the EU. The government's announcement came hours after the European Parliament adopted a resolution, saying the general election in Georgia was not free or fair.
Critics view the decision as a confirmation of a Russian-influenced shift away from pro-Western policies, which the ruling Georgian Dream Party denies. Georgia's pro-Western president, Salomza Rabichvili, called for pressure to be brought on the Constitutional Court to annul October's elections won by the Georgian Dream.
Both the opposition and Zora Bichvili say the poll was rigged. In total, 224 people have been arrested during the rallies, where police have been using water cannons and tear gas to scatter the group. Georgia's Interior Minister said on Sunday that 44 people had been taken to hospital after Saturday's protests, including 27 protesters, 16 police officers and one media worker.
Beyond the capital, demonstrators have blocked an access road into the country's main commercial port in the Black Sea city of Poti. At least eight cities and towns across the country have reported protests.
And finally, in some uplifting news, it's been reported that two weeks ago the US returned over 1,400 looted artefacts valued at $10 million to India as part of a concerted effort to repatriate stolen art from South and Southeast Asia. Among the recovered items is a sandstone sculpture of a celestial dancer, which was smuggled from central India to London before being illegally sold to a Metropolitan Museum of Art patron and later donated to the museum.
Another significant artifact, the Tanizhar Mother Goddess statue, was illicitly taken from Rajasthan in the 1960s and also displayed at the Met. These repatriations stemmed from ongoing investigations into trafficking networks linked to notorious art dealers, including Subhash Kapoor, who is serving a 10-year sentence for running a multi-million dollar looting operation.
William Walker, a special agent with Federal Homeland Security Investigations, hailed the repatriation as a victory in combating antiquities trafficking. The items were officially returned at a ceremony held at the Indian Consulate in New York last month.
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