Prosecutor who investigated Hunter Biden criticizes presidential pardon
Special counsel David Weiss defends his work in new report
The prosecutor who led lengthy investigations into U.S. President Joe Biden's son defended his efforts in a report on Monday, saying the criminal charges against Hunter Biden were the culmination of "thorough, impartial" work and "not partisan politics."
The report from special counsel David Weiss also criticized the senior Biden for having maligned the Justice Department when he pardoned his son in December. In a statement, the president said he believed his son had been treated "differently" on account of his last name.
"Other presidents have pardoned family members, but in doing so, none have taken the occasion as an opportunity to malign the public servants at the Department of Justice based solely on false accusations," the report from Weiss read Monday.
"These baseless accusations have no merit and repeating them threatens the integrity of the justice system as a whole," the prosecutor continued.
"The president's characterizations are incorrect based on the facts in this case and, on a more fundamental level, they are wrong."
The document, as is customary for reports prepared by Justice Department special counsels, provides a recap of the investigative findings. But it is most notable for its steadfast defence of the team's work and for its open criticism of the president over the written statement he issued when pardoning Hunter Biden last month.
Biden had repeatedly pledged that he would not pardon his son but reversed course on Dec. 1, saying that such an action was warranted because of what he called a "miscarriage of justice" and a selective prosecution. He said he believed that his son had been treated "differently" on account of his last name and that "raw politics" had infected the decision-making of the Justice Department.
"No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter's cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong," Biden said.
'The president's characterizations are incorrect'
Weiss served as U.S. attorney for Delaware during the Trump administration and was kept in his position by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland before being named to the role of special counsel in 2023.
He took exception to Biden's comments and noted that judges had rejected that assessment as well.
"The president's characterizations are incorrect based on the facts in this case, and, on a more fundamental level, they are wrong," Weiss wrote. He also noted, "These prosecutions were the culmination of thorough, impartial investigations, not partisan politics."
The investigations, which Hunter Biden himself revealed in 2020 when he disclosed that prosecutors were examining his taxes, took a tortured path toward resolution across Justice Department leaders of both political parties.
He was to have entered a plea in 2023 to a federal gun charge, but the deal fell apart in spectacular 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 federal felonies that accused him of having lied on a mandatory gun-purchase form by saying he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.
Describing the younger Biden as a "Yale-educated lawyer and businessperson," Weiss said he understood that he was lying in 2018 when he filled out the federal form to buy his gun and marked that he wasn't a drug user.
"But he did it anyway, because he wanted to own a gun, even though he was actively using crack cocaine," Weiss wrote.
Hunter Biden subsequently entered a surprise guilty plea last September to federal tax charges, averting a trial that would have showcased potentially lurid evidence on top of the salacious and unflattering details about his personal life aired during his earlier trial in Delaware.
The president's claims that Hunter Biden was mistreated by the criminal justice system echoed in some ways arguments from the younger Biden's legal team, who had asserted that prosecutors bowed to political pressure to indict Hunter after the collapse of what Trump and other Republicans called a "sweetheart" plea deal.
Not so, said Weiss.
"Far from selective, these prosecutions 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," Weiss said.