A judge terminated Hunter Biden‘s tax case on Tuesday in response to President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, but not before harshly criticizing the president’s announcement about the clemency as misleading.
Judge Mark Scarsi wrote in a five-page order that “representations contained” in Joe Biden’s press release about the pardon “stand in tension with the case record.”
The judge said he also disapproved of the president’s announcement because it disparaged a wide range of public officials, and he said the pardon itself improperly covered hours’ worth of future conduct.
“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,” Scarsi wrote. “But he is not.”
Hunter Biden pleaded guilty in September to nine tax charges, and as part of his plea, the first son admitted that every accusation made by special counsel David Weiss in his indictment was true, including that he committed tax crimes while he was sober.
In the indictment and court filings, Hunter Biden vowed that he became sober by May 2019 but that he still evaded taxes and failed to pay his unpaid taxes from 2016, 2017, and 2018 until well into 2020. Hunter Biden admitted that in 2020, he was still spending “large sums to maintain his lifestyle” while neglecting his outstanding taxes.
Scarsi, who was an appointee of President-elect Donald Trump, also observed that Joe Biden’s claim that his son was “singled out” and “treated differently” implied that many employees in the legal system, including Scarsi and Joe Biden’s own DOJ employees, acted out of line.
“Two federal judges expressly rejected Mr. Biden’s arguments that the Government prosecuted Mr. Biden because of his familial relation to the President,” Scarsi 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.”
Lastly, Scarsi said that while his role is not to weigh in on the validity of Joe Biden’s pardon, the fact that the president signed it on Dec. 1 but included activity “through” that same day meant that the president was unconstitutionally pardoning future conduct.
“Because the period of pardoned conduct extends ‘through’ the date of execution, the warrant may be read to apply prospectively to conduct that had not yet occurred at the time of its execution, exceeding the scope of the pardon power,” Scarsi wrote.
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The judge’s scolding came in response to Hunter Biden using his father’s press release in court filings as evidence of the pardon. Scarsi said that was not the proper protocol and that the judge needed a true copy of the clemency warrant directly from the DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the White House for comment.
