The judge presiding over the California tax fraud case against Hunter Biden called out the president for mischaracterizing and minimizing the charges against his son in announcing why he was pardoning him.
“The Constitution gives the President broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for crimes against the United States, but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the power to rewrite history,” U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi wrote in a letter late Tuesday. pronunciation.
An attorney for Hunter Biden had asked the judge to dismiss charges against his client in light of President Joe Biden’s pardon on Sunday evening, but did not initially submit a formal copy of the pardon, instead sending a link to the statement from the president stating that his son had been “selectively and unfairly prosecuted” and was the victim of a “miscarriage of justice”.
Scarsi said the president’s “statements” in the statement accompanying the pardon “are inconsistent with the record.”
“For example, the President claims that Mr. Biden was ‘treated differently’ than others ‘who paid their taxes late because of serious addictions,’ implying that Mr. Biden was among the individuals who paid taxes early because of addiction. But not him,” the judge wrote.
He noted that Hunter Biden had said he was “severely addicted to alcohol and drugs” through May 2019.
“When he pleaded guilty to the charges in this case, Mr. Biden admitted that after this period of addiction, he engaged in tax evasion by improperly deducting items such as business expenses that he knew were personal expenses , including luxury clothing, escort services and his daughter’s law. And Mr. Biden admitted that he had “sufficient money at his disposal to pay some or all of his outstanding taxes when they were due,” but that he failed to pay his tax debts even “long after he recovered his tax debts . his sobriety,’ instead choosing to ‘spend[d] large amounts of money to maintain his lifestyle in 2020,” the judge wrote.
Biden had pleaded guilty to all charges against him in the California case on the eve of the trial in September. Prosecutors said he “executed a four-year scheme to avoid paying at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019.” He then “filed false returns in February 2020” and claimed to have made false business deductions “to avoid tax bills and reduce significant tax liabilities”, which he has still not paid, despite driving a Porsche and driving a $17,500-a-year home. A one-month-rent house on a canal in Venice Beach, prosecutors said.
The taxes were eventually paid after federal investigators told Biden in December 2020 that they were looking into his finances.
Hunter Biden was set to be sentenced later this month for the three felonies and six misdemeanors, before his father granted him a “full and unconditional pardon” for “the crimes against the United States that he committed or may have committed or participated in during the period from January 1, 2014 to December 1, 2024.”
The pardon also concerns a gun-related case in Delaware. Biden was convicted on those charges by a jury earlier this year and was scheduled to be sentenced in that case this month. The cases were tried separately after a plea deal that would have seen both get away with no jail time fell apart when a judge questioned some details of the deal.
Hunter Biden had argued in both cases that he was the victim of selective prosecution, but those claims were rejected by Scarsi and the judge in the Delaware case, Maryellen Noreika. Both are Trump nominees.
‘According to the President'[n]o reasonable person who looks at the facts [Mr. Biden’s] cases may come to a different conclusion than [Mr. Biden] was only picked because he is [the President’s] son.” Scarsi wrote. “But two federal judges expressly rejected Mr. Biden’s arguments that the administration prosecuted Mr. Biden because of his familial relationship with the president. And staff from the attorney general’s office and the president’s Justice Department oversaw the investigation that led to the indictment. In the President’s estimation, this legion of federal officials, including the undersigned, are unreasonable people.”
David Weiss, the special counsel who brought the cases against Hunter Biden, made a similar point in a court filing earlier this week, noting that three appeals court panels had also rejected the selective prosecution claims.
There has “never been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution” in this case, according to his office’s filings. “A total of eleven (11) different Article III judges, appointed by six (6) different presidents, including his father, considered and dismissed defendant’s claims, including his claims for selective and vindictive prosecution.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the judge’s comments.
Despite his problems with the president’s statement, Scarsi canceled the sentencing hearing and indicated that he would officially end the case after receiving an authentication statement confirming the pardon.
Noreika ordered the case in Delaware to end on Tuesday.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
