A judge officially ended Hunter Biden’s tax case after President Joe Biden pardoned his son, but not before harshly criticizing the president’s announcement about the clemency as misleading.
In a five-page order, Judge Mark Scarsi said that “representations contained” in Joe Biden’s news release about the pardon “stand in tension with the case record.”
The judge also said he didn’t agree with the president’s statement because it was hurtful to many public officials. He said that the pardon itself covered hours of unacceptable behavior in the future without permission.
“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.”
Scarsi, who President-elect Donald Trump appointed, also said that President Biden’s claim that his son was “singled out” and “treated differently” made it sound like many people in the legal system, including Scarsi and Joe Biden’s own DOJ workers, did something wrong.
“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.”
Finally, Scarsi said that it wasn’t his job to say whether or not Joe Biden’s pardon was legal, but the fact that the president signed it on December 1 and included action “through” that same day meant that the president was breaking the Constitution by letting Biden get away with future crimes.
Scarsi wrote, “We may read the warrant to apply prospectively to conduct that had not yet occurred at the time of its execution, exceeding the scope of the pardon power, because the period of pardoned conduct extends ‘through’ the date of execution.”
The judge scolded Hunter Biden because he used his father’s press release as proof of the pardon in court documents.
Scarsi stated that the judge required a genuine copy of the pardon warrant from the PARA office at the DOJ and that this was not the proper procedure.
Following President Biden’s pardon of his son, which both Biden and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre have repeatedly stated would not occur, KJP confronted the media for the first time on Monday.
A reporter asked Jeane-Pierre if the American people “could be seen as lies” by those earlier remarks that denied a pardon.
“You have said repeatedly, yourself, since the election, and the president has said for months, no pardon was coming. I just — you know, I wanted to ask you, could those statements not be seen as lies from the American people? Is there really a credibility issue you’re giving now this announcement?” a reporter asked.
“No, no. First of all, one of the things that the president always believes is to be truthful to the American people,” Jean-Pierre began, immediately getting defensive.
“That is something that he always truly believes. And if you see the end of his — I — I assume that you’ve read his statement and you look at the end of that statement, and he actually says that in the first line in the last paragraph, and — and respects the thinking and how the American people will actually see this and his decision-making, and I would encourage everyone to read it full, the president’s statement. I think he lays out his thought process,” Jean-Pierre added.
She continued, “He lays out how he came to this decision. He came to this decision this weekend. So let’s be very clear about that. He says it himself. It’s in his voice. He said he came to this decision this weekend. And he said he wrestled with this and — because he believes in the justice system, but he also believes that the war politics infected the process and led to a — a — a miscarriage of justice.”