Hunter Judge Blasts President For Making False Statements In Pardon

The California federal judge overseeing Hunter Biden’s tax charges issued a scathing five-page ruling in response to President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, saying that the president justified his pardon with reasons that are false and offensive.

Judge Mark C. Scarsi wrote Tuesday of the White House press release explaining why the president thought a pardon was warranted: “The President’s statement illustrates the reasons for the Court’s disapproval, as representations contained therein stand in tension with the case record.”

“The President asserts that Mr. Biden ‘was treated differently’ from others ‘who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions,’ implying that Mr. Biden was among those individuals who untimely paid taxes due to addiction. But he is not… Mr. Biden admitted that he engaged in tax evasion after this period of addiction.”

“According to the President, ‘[n]o reasonable person who looks at the facts of [Mr. Biden’s] cases can reach any other conclusion than [Mr. Biden] was singled out only because he is [the President’s] son.’ But two federal judges expressly rejected Mr. Biden’s arguments that the Government prosecuted Mr. Biden because of his familial relation to the President,” he wrote. “And the President’s own Attorney General and Department of Justice personnel oversaw the investigation leading to the charges. In the President’s estimation, this legion of federal civil servants, the undersigned included, are unreasonable people.”

He excoriated Hunter for filing a motion demanding that the indictment be dismissed because he was pardoned, when no government agency had even notified the court of it, and Hunter did not include a copy, instead attaching only the press release describing the president’s reasons for the pardon. “In short, a press release is not a pardon,” he wrote.

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The judge also was surprised at the extent of the president’s pardon of his son, which covered all acts through December 1, the day it was signed—seemingly giving Hunter a free pass to commit crimes later in that day. The judge said the president cannot pardon people for future acts, but to avoid a constitutional issue, he would not interpret it that way.

Special prosecutor David Weiss had a similar response to Hunter’s demands that the indictment be dismissed, with Weiss underscoring that a long record of evidence showed that Hunter was, in fact, properly indicted by a grand jury, and was not unfairly targeted. He argued for the pardon to be included in the case file in a way that showed that it was an act of mercy, not an erasure of fact, noting that the Biden administration did the same thin after Trump pardoned Steve Bannon.

President Biden had repeatedly claimed he would not pardon his son, who was convicted of gun charges in Delaware and pleaded guilty to tax charges on the eve of trial in California.