The special prosecutor who investigated Hunter Biden defends the investigations and criticizes statements by his father, President Joe Biden. “The president's characterizations are incorrect and at a more fundamental level, they are wrong,” he said.
The criminal charges against Hunter Biden “were the result of thorough and impartial investigations, not partisan politics,” said the prosecutor who led the investigations in a report that harshly criticized President Joe Biden for having defamed the Department of Justice when he pardoned his son.
“Other presidents have pardoned members of their family, but in doing so, none have taken the opportunity to defame public servants at the Justice Department based solely on false accusations,” special counsel David Weiss' Monday report said.
His team brought gun and prosecutor charges against Biden's youngest son that resulted in felony convictions that were later overturned by a presidential pardon.
The report is the result of years-long investigations that preceded Attorney General Merrick Garland's arrival but became some of the most politically explosive probes of his entire tenure, capturing Republican fascination on Capitol Hill and ultimately producing a rift between the Justice Department and the White House over the treatment of the president's son.
The document, as is typical in reports prepared by Justice Department special prosecutors, provides a summary of the investigation's findings. But he is most notable for his staunch defense of the team's work and for his outspoken criticism of the president for a written statement he issued pardoning his son last month.
Biden had repeatedly promised that he would not pardon his son, but changed his mind on December 1, saying such action was justified due to what he called a “miscarriage of justice” and targeted persecution.
He insisted that he believed his son had been treated “differently” because of his last name and that “sheer politics” had infected the Justice Department's decision-making.
“No reasonable person looking at the facts of the Hunter cases can come to any conclusion other than that Hunter was singled out just because he is my son, and that is wrong,” Biden said.
Weiss, who served as prosecutor for Delaware during Donald Trump's administration and was retained by Garland before being appointed as special counsel in 2023, objected to those comments and noted that the justices had also rejected that assessment.
“The president's characterizations are incorrect and at a more fundamental level, they are wrong,” Weiss wrote. Such comments undermine public confidence in the justice system, he added.
“Questioning judges' decisions and injecting partisanship into the independent administration of the law undermines the very foundation of what makes the United States justice system fair and equitable,” Weiss wrote.
“It erodes public trust in an institution that is essential to preserving the rule of law,” he added.
Hunter Biden's lawyer criticized the report, noting that Weiss did not explain why prosecutors “pursued wild, debunked conspiracies” about the president's son that prolonged the investigation.
“What is clear from this report is that the investigation into Hunter Biden is an exemplary case of abuse of power,” defense attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement.
The investigations, which Hunter Biden himself revealed in 2020 when he disclosed that prosecutors were examining his taxes, took a circuitous path to resolution through Justice Department leaders from both political parties.
Hunter Biden was set to plead guilty in 2023 to lesser tax charges, but the deal fell apart amid a last-minute disagreement between his lawyers and federal prosecutors. He went on trial in Delaware last year and was convicted of three federal crimes accusing him of lying on a required gun purchase form by saying he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.
Describing Biden's youngest son as a “Yale-educated lawyer and businessman,” Weiss claimed the president's son knew he was lying when he filled out the federal form when he bought his gun in 2018 and marked that he was not a drug user.
“But he did it anyway, because he wanted to possess a gun, even though he was actively using crack cocaine,” Weiss wrote.
Hunter Biden subsequently pleaded guilty last September to federal tax charges, avoiding a trial that would have revealed potentially sordid evidence on top of the unfavorable and sensational details about his personal life aired during his previous trial in Delaware.
Weiss noted that Hunter “consciously and voluntarily chose” not to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes over four years.
The president's claims that Hunter Biden was mistreated by the criminal justice system resonated in some ways with arguments from the youngest son's legal team, who had claimed that prosecutors bowed to political pressure to charge Hunter after the collapse of the case. which Donald Trump and other Republicans called a “favorable” plea deal.
Not so, Weiss insisted. “Far from being selective, these accusations were the embodiment of the equal application of justice: no matter who you are or what your last name is, you are subject to the same laws as everyone else in the United States,” he maintained.