Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s biggest mistake was fleeing to Moscow and not to Washington.

Had he gone to Joe Biden’s White House rather than Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, he might have gotten a pardon like everybody else.

All Assad had to do was get some Biden aide or a high-powered lobbyist to slip his name into the pile of 1,500 pardons and commutations that Biden signed off on last week.

Everybody knows the ailing and forgetful 82-year-old outgoing president does not read the documents he signs.

He doesn’t know what he’s signing. He just signs what’s put in front of him. And as far as the pardons went, there were just too many of them to read or to put on a teleprompter.

You can picture Biden squinting up from his desk in the Oval Office asking Jeff Zients, his chief of staff, “Jeff, what am I signing?”

And Zients saying, “Just sign here, Mr. President.”

You can also picture Biden asking, “Do these pardons include one for my press secretary– you know, the girl with three names — for all the lies I told her to tell?”

“No, but not to worry. We’ll be getting her a job at CNN.”

Not that Assad would need a pardon from Biden for the horrendous crimes he committed against his own people. There are no pardons for that, only hanging or a firing squad.

But it would look good on his resume if the generally unemployable murderous weirdo sought employment at the United Nations, for instance.

Trained and practicing as an ophthalmologist (eye doctor) working in London before becoming a dictator back in his home country, Assad could open a shop at the UN where he would see eye to eye with many kindred spirits.

Assad aside, Joe Biden’s pardons and commutations, including the all-encompassing pardon of his deadbeat son Hunter, went over like a Kamala  Harris speech.

Even Anita Dunn, an elitist former loyal senior advisor to Joe Biden, before jumping ship, took issue with, if not for the outright Hunter pardon, then at least the timing of it.

Hunter Biden, the Biden family bagman, faced prison time after he was convicted on gun charges and after pleading guilty to tax evasion.

His blanket pardon also includes alleged crimes he may have committed for the past 10 years.

“I do not agree with the way it was done,” Dunn said. “I don’t agree with the timing, and I don’t agree, frankly, with the attack on our judicial system.” Biden should have waited until the end of his term, she said.

Biden, who ran for president promising to restore and defend the rule of law, ended up saying, “Well, maybe not right now,” she said.

More criticism of the pardons came from Democrat Pennsylvania Gov.  Josh Shapiro, who was on Harris’ shortlist as her vice-presidential running mate.

Shapiro took sharp issue with the commutation of the 17-year prison sentence meted out to former Pennsylvania Judge Michael Conahan in the infamous 2008 “Kids for cash scandal” that rocked the state.

Conahan, along with Judge Mark Ciavarella, were convicted of shutting down a county-run juvenile detention center to send children to two privately run lockups in return for some $2.8 million in illegal payments, according to the Associated Press.

The scandal prompted the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to throw out some 4,000 juvenile convictions involving more than 2,300 children.

Conahan was released to home confinement during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 with six years left on his sentence. Ciavarella is serving a 28-year sentence.

Of Biden’s commutation, Shapiro said, “I do feel strongly that President Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain in northeastern Pennsylvania.”

“Some children took their lives because of this. Families were torn apart. There was all kinds of mental health issues and anguish that came as a result of these corrupt judges deciding they wanted to make a buck off a kid’s back.”

He said Conahan “should have been in prison for at least the 17 years he was sentenced to by a jury of his peers. He deserves to be behind bars not walking as a free man.”

That’s what people say about Hunter Biden.

Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter. Email him at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com

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Hunter Biden is also pardoned. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer, File)