The prosecutor who led the long-running investigation into the son of US President Joe Biden defended his efforts in a report Monday, saying the charges against Hunter Biden were the result of a “thorough, impartial” job and “political impartiality.”
The report from special counsel David Weiss also criticized Biden for flouting the Justice Department when he pardoned his son in December. In a statement, the president said he believes his son was treated differently because of his surname.
“Some presidents have pardoned family members, but in doing so, no one has taken this incident as an opportunity to slander public servants at the Department of Justice because of false allegations,” said a report from Weiss on Monday.
“These baseless allegations are baseless and their repetition threatens the integrity of the justice system as a whole,” the prosecutor continued.
“The president’s characterizations are wrong based on the facts of this case and, to a very important degree, they are wrong.”
The document, as is customary for reports prepared by special counsel for the Department of Justice, provides details of the investigation’s findings. But it’s most notable for its steadfast defense of the party’s work and criticism of the president in a written statement he issued when he pardoned Hunter Biden last month.
Biden had repeatedly promised not to pardon his son but reversed course on December 1, saying such action was warranted because of what he called a “miscarriage of justice” and a special prosecution. He said he believed that his son was treated “differently” because of his surname and that “dirty politics” had infected the decision-making of the Department of Justice.
“No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s charges would come to any other conclusion than that Hunter was only elected because he’s my son — and that’s wrong,” Biden said.
‘The president’s letters are wrong’
Weiss served as Delaware’s U.S. attorney during the Trump administration and was retained by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland before being named special counsel in 2023.
He took Biden’s comments seriously and noted that the justices also rejected that assessment.
“The president’s characterizations are wrong based on the facts in this case, and, to a very important degree, they are wrong,” Weiss wrote. He also noted, “This prosecution was the result of a thorough, impartial investigation, not partisan politics.”
US President Joe Biden has pardoned his son Hunter, protecting him from prison time with a federal gun and tax evasion, despite earlier promises to refrain from using presidential power to benefit the family.
The investigation, which Hunter Biden himself revealed in 2020 when he disclosed that prosecutors were auditing his taxes, took a torture approach to the solution of all the leaders of the Department of Justice of both political parties.
He was to enter his plea in 2023 on a federal gun charge, but the deal collapsed in dramatic fashion after a last-minute disagreement between his lawyers and federal prosecutors.
He went to trial in Delaware last year and was convicted of three counts of lying on a mandatory gun purchase form that he was not an illegal or drug addict.
Describing the younger Biden as a “Yale-educated lawyer and businessman,” Weiss said he understood that he lied in 2018 when he filled out a federal form to buy his gun and noted that he was not a drug user.
“But he did it anyway, because he wanted to have a gun, even though he was using crack cocaine,” Weiss wrote.
Hunter Biden then filed a surprise plea last September in federal tax cases, avoiding a trial that would have produced unconvincing testimony over unsavory and unsavory details about his personal life that were aired during his trial in Delaware.
The president’s allegations that Hunter Biden was mistreated by the criminal justice system drew some criticism from Biden’s legal team, which said prosecutors bowed to political pressure to indict Hunter after the collapse of what Trump and other Republicans called a “sweetheart.” “ask for a deal.
Not so, Weiss said.
“Far from being selective, this prosecution was an expression 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 all the people of the United States,” Weiss said.
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