The federal judge who oversaw Hunter Biden’s tax case blasted President Joe Biden for trying to “rewrite history” in his justification for pardoning his son.
District Judge Mark Scarsi wrote in a five-page order Tuesday that some of the “representations contained” in the president’s Sunday statement announcing the pardon “stand in tension with the case record.” Scarsi specifically took issue with Biden’s rationale that his son’s tax problems were all caused by his struggle with alcohol and drug addiction.
“The Constitution provides the President with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States … but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history,” Scarsi wrote.
Hunter Biden pleaded guilty in September to nine tax offenses, stemming from $1.4 million in taxes that he didn’t pay. He was also convicted by a jury in June of illegally buying and possessing a gun as a drug user. The president’s pardon explicitly granted clemency for the tax and gun offenses from Hunter Biden’s existing cases, plus any potential federal crimes he may have committed “from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”
In the pardon announcement Sunday night, Joe Biden claimed his son was one of many Americans “who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions.”
But, as the judge pointed out, as part of Hunter Biden’s guilty plea, he admitted to not paying his tax debts even after regaining his sobriety, and even though he had the funds to pay.
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The judge also rebuked the president for claiming his son was “singled out” for prosecution because of political reasons. Earlier this year, Scarsi rejected this exact argument from Hunter Biden, who wanted the indictment tossed on those grounds. (The judge in Hunter Biden’s gun case also rejected the selective-prosecution theory.)
Joe Biden’s announcement claimed “no reasonable person” could conclude this wasn’t a politically motivated prosecution. But Scarsi noted plenty of Justice Department officials, including the attorney general, oversaw the case — and therefore, “in the President’s estimation, this legion of federal civil servants … are unreasonable people.”
Scarsi, who is a respected and no-nonsense jurist, was appointed by Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate in a bipartisan vote in 2020.
He said he will formally terminate the proceedings in the tax case once he is provided with an authorized copy of the pardon paperwork.
Meanwhile, the judge who oversaw Hunter Biden’s gun case said in an order Tuesday that “all proceedings in this case are hereby terminated.”
Hunter Biden’s attorneys had asked the judge, Maryellen Noreika, to formally dismiss the charges, instead of simply terminating or shutting down future proceedings.
Special counsel David Weiss, who brought the two federal cases, argued “termination” instead of “dismissal” was the appropriate way to end the case, saying that’s how cases for other pardoned defendants were handled. Prosecutors in Weiss’ office also wanted the indictments to survive as originally filed, instead of being formally dismissed.
CNN.com
