I am going to speculate based on this column and this scandal. Many objective observers were surprised by how corrupt the Biden Crime Syndicate has acted over the last decade. Many of them wondered how Joe Biden thought he was going to get away with this obvious graft.
Here is what I believe Joe Biden was thinking (and yes, he was thinking – the pardons peg the scandalous activity as beginning in 2014, which would be before Joe Biden’s full senility began).
In 2008, Barack Obama had barely beaten Hillary Clinton for the Democrat nomination for president. Both candidates had their own factions supporting them, and there could have been a lot of tension between them, which might have derailed the Obama candidacy in 2008. Democrats were especially worried that some Clinton Democrats might be so angered as to vote for Republican John McCain.
And it was not an idle threat; my mother did just that.
So, I believe Barack Obama made a deal with the Clintons. The Clintons would unite around his 2008 candidacy, and he, in return, would appoint Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State, and, at the end of his tenure in the White House, he would back her when she ran again for president in 2016.