Congressional Republicans are claiming vindication after Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to nine federal tax-related charges on Thursday – and warning President Biden not to pardon his son.

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, told Fox News Digital that he believes the plea “absolutely” affirms the accusations and findings GOP lawmakers have levied against the First Family since before President Biden took office.

“It’s also vindication for the whistleblowers,” he added, accusing Hunter Biden’s defenders of trying to “wreck their careers.”

He said of the president potentially pardoning him, “I think it would be an abuse of that power for the President to do that, but I think a lot of people will be surprised if Joe Biden doesn’t.”

HUNTER BIDEN FOUND GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS IN GUN TRIAL

The White House has said multiple times that the president will not pardon his son, but that has not stopped Republican-led skepticism from pouring in.

It comes after a bombshell House GOP report, which the White House has pushed back on, that accused the president of committing “impeachable offenses” by allegedly helping enrich himself and his family through foreign deals.

Meanwhile, House Ways & Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., whose committee is one of three that was investigating Biden via impeachment inquiry, similarly said the guilty plea upheld the testimony of whistleblowers who came to his panel.

HUNTER BIDEN TRIAL ENTERS DAY 5 AFTER TESTIMONY FROM SISTER-IN-LAW-TURNED-GIRLFRIEND: ‘PANICKED’

“Hunter Biden’s decision to plead guilty once again affirms the integrity of the IRS whistleblowers who recommended these exact charges over two years ago before being stonewalled by the Biden-Harris Justice Department. Had Joseph Ziegler and Gary Shapley not come forward, putting their reputations and careers at great risk in the process, Hunter Biden would have received a sweetheart plea deal for merely two misdemeanors,” Smith told Fox News Digital.

Smith added as a veiled warning, “It remains to be seen whether President Biden will abuse the power of his office to ensure his son avoids the consequences of his felony tax crimes.”

A court sketch depicts Hunter Biden as he appears in federal court in Los Angeles, California on Thursday, September 5, 2024.  (Bill Robles)

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., who also co-led the probe, said, “Hunter Biden is finally admitting the obvious: he didn’t pay taxes on income he received by selling access to his father, Joe Biden.”

A member of that committee, Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital, “We also can’t let Hunter Biden’s plea deal distract from the fact that he was the bag man in the Biden family’s influence peddling scheme that saw them amass some $27 million by selling political access to ‘the big guy,’ Joe Biden.”

“For more than a decade, Hunter and his associates enriched themselves at the expense of the American people. By all means, Hunter needs to be held to account, but this is by no means the end when it comes to equal justice under the law,” Fallon said.

DOJ REVEALS IT HAS BIDEN TRANSCRIPTS AT ISSUE IN CLASSIFIED DOCS CASE AFTER INITIAL DENIAL

Biden and his allies have consistently pushed back on accusations levied by House Republicans, dismissing them as misrepresentations and political attacks.

But that has not convinced GOP lawmakers like Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who warned Biden not to pardon his son.

House Republicans have been investigating President Biden for years. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

“Hunter Biden’s bait-and-switch stunt is a clear effort to avoid a messy trial that would reveal his father’s role in the family’s corrupt business dealings. Americans will once again witness the Bidens’ corruption go unpunished as President Biden will likely pardon his son on his way out of the Oval Office,” Biggs said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday that “no,” Hunter Biden would not get a presidential pardon from his father, hours before he entered his guilty plea.

Biden himself said in June that he would “abide by the jury’s decision” when asked if he would pardon his son.

FIRST ON FOX: The super PAC of former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler has launched a six-figure ad campaign that the PAC said is aimed at exposing the “failures” of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis ahead of the election in November. 

The $100,000 ad campaign, launched by Greater Georgia on Thursday, will include digital ads, direct mail and text messages – all of which will run over the next nine weeks, reaching Atlanta-area voters ahead of the election on Nov. 5, the group said. 

The ad titled, “Failed,” will run on streaming services and programmatic media including Fox News, CNN, WSB-TV, Hulu, Roku and Fubo.

“On Fani Willis’ watch, dangerous crime is everywhere in Fulton County – murders, rapes, burglaries are all on the rise,” the ad narrates. 

FANI WILLIS NOTCHES LEGAL WIN IN TRUMP CASE AFTER MONTHS OF SETBACKS

“She’s focused on herself, her political ambitions, high profile prosecutions and profiting off partisan lawfare, all at the expense of families living in fear and innocent lives lost. We deserve a district attorney who will do the job to keep us safe,” the ad says. 

The campaign alleges rising homicides in Fulton County under Willis, and her “wasting” of taxpayer funds “and profiting off prosecutions,” and “pursuing personal ambition over public safety to advance her political career and celebrity.”

Willis did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

Willis, who will face a Republican contender for office in November, rose to national prominence after she indicted former President Donald Trump last year with sweeping racketeering charges. 

Early this year, Trump and co-defendants alleged that Willis should be disqualified from the case after it was revealed that she was having an “improper” affair with Nathan Wade, whom she hired as special counsel. 

FANI WILLIS FACES NOTHING BUT SETBACKS IN CASE AGAINST TRUMP, THE LATEST PENDING WITH SUPREME COURT

Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., gestures as she speaks during a campaign rally on Monday, Dec. 21, 2020 in Milton, Georgia. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

The case to disqualify Willis is set to be heard in December in the Georgia Court of Appeals. 

Greater Georgia said that since Willis was elected, homicides increased by 8% in Fulton County from 2021 to 2022, and since 2023, homicides have increased by 13% in Atlanta. In 2023, 13,787 people were arrested for felonies but never indicted. At the end of 2023, the DA still had a backlog of 11,700 unindicted cases, the group said. 

Greater Georgia also claimed that of the felons that have been indicted, many have gone on to commit more crimes while awaiting trial.

GEORGIA COURT PUTS PAUSE ON FANI WILLIS’ SWEEPING ELECTION CASE AGAINST TRUMP

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis celebrates after winning the Democratic primary on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 in Buckhead, Georgia. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

The group noted that in 2021, Willis was accused of misappropriating $488,000 in grant funds from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and was later subpoenaed over the allegations by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

Separately, members of the U.S. Senate launched an investigation into Willis related to accusations that she misused $2,000,000 in DOJ funds earmarked for clearing sexual assault cases.

“Fani Willis had one job when voters took a chance on her in 2020: put criminals behind bars and protect the families of Fulton County. Instead, she’s spent the last four years focused only on chasing vanity cases instead of criminals in an attempt to grow her celebrity, line her pockets, and fuel her political ambitions,” said Loeffler.

“On her watch, prosecutions are down, crime is up, and more citizens have become victims – denied justice because she is too distracted and too incompetent to deliver it. Fani Willis is a profound embarrassment to the state of Georgia, a threat to public safety, and the number one local official who must be ousted this November in order to get Georgia’s safety back in line,” she said.

As someone who has covered way too many presidential campaign rallies, I can attest that popular music at political gatherings is a powerful mood enhancer.

I will never forget one of then-President Obama’s last campaign rallies of 2012, in a crowded University of Cincinnati gym on election eve. The already pumped-up crowd erupted when they realized that “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)” wasn’t being piped in; it was being sung live by Stevie Wonder himself. The song was something of a premature victory lap: Obama appeared to be in a tight race against Mitt Romney, though he ended up beating the former Massachusetts governor decisively.

Ever since our first baby boomer president, Bill Clinton, adopted Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” as his campaign theme song in 1992 — even inspiring the band to regroup for his inauguration — candidates have increasingly used popular music to send a message.

Some songs are less subtle than others. During her 2016 bid to make history as the first female president, Hillary Clinton adopted Katy Perry’s “Roar” and Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song.”

Former President Trump, whose performative patriotism can be boiled down to a single four-letter acronym, MAGA, chose Lee Greenwood’s signature song, “God Bless the U.S.A.,” as his jingle.

And Vice President Kamala Harris has famously made Beyoncé’s “Freedom” her campaign anthem.

While the music playing at political rallies has never struck me as signifying the artist’s endorsement of a particular candidate, musicians can be furious when their music is used without permission. Either they don’t want their work associated with politics at all, or they loathe the candidate who is playing it.

Which brings us back to Trump.

The list of artists who have demanded that he stop using their songs is long, ranging from ABBA and Adele to the Village People and the White Stripes.

I counted at least 41 artists who have tried to forbid him from using their tunes, including the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Queen, Elton John, Guns N’ Roses, the Foo Fighters, and Bruce Springsteen, who endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 after calling on Trump to stop playing “Born in the U.S.A.”

Celine Dion condemned Trump’s campaign for playing her mega-hit “My Heart Will Go On” last month during a rally with his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. It was a peculiar choice of music because, as everyone knows, the song was the theme for a movie about a giant passenger liner that famously hit an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic.

“In no way is this use authorized,” said a post on Dion’s official X feed. “… And really, THAT song?”

Also last month, the family of the late R&B singer, songwriter and producer Isaac Hayes filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit against Trump, his campaign and the Republican National Committee for using the 1966 Sam & Dave hit “Hold On, I’m Coming” at rallies all over the country. Hayes co-wrote the song with David Porter.

On Tuesday, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction forbidding Trump from using the song.

Trump’s attorneys claim the Hayes family no longer owns the rights to the song and that, in any case, something called a “political campaign license agreement” allows the music rights management organization BMI, which has more than 22 million songs in its catalog, to use music for political events.

There is a clause in the agreement, however, that allows BMI to exclude certain music if a songwriter or publisher asks the organization to withhold it. For example, the Rolling Stones were unhappy that Trump used “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” as his walk-off music in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. They sent cease-and-desist letters to no avail and then turned to BMI for help and explicitly threatened to sue. “If Donald Trump disregards the exclusion and persists,” the Stones said in a June 2020 statement, “then he would face a lawsuit for breaking the embargo and playing music that has not been licensed.”

Trump has not played the song since.

The current flap over “Hold On” is not the first. In 2008, the Obama campaign stopped using “Hold On” after Sam Moore of Sam & Dave objected. “No one called me, no one sent a telegraph, no one did anything,” Moore told the Associated Press. “They just did it, and I think that’s rather rude.”

Arizona Sen. John McCain, who ran for president against Obama in 2008, wryly turned a band’s potential rejection into a joke. Trying to woo conservative Republicans who disliked his moderate stances on some issues, he thought about using ABBA’s 1978 hit “Take a Chance on Me,” but worried about being unable to secure the Swedish band’s permission.

“If you’re not careful, you can alienate some Swedes,” McCain told reporters during one of the many off-the-cuff conversations he had with his traveling press corps. “If word gets out to Stockholm that we’re using ABBA music, then there’ll be a worsening in U.S.-Swedish relations.”

If only Trump were so considerate.

@robinkabcarian