Joe and Hunter Biden by is licensed under Fox News Screenshot LOS ANGELES, CA - Federal District Judge Mark C. Scarsi, an appointee of Presi...
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| Joe and Hunter Biden by is licensed under Fox News Screenshot |
LOS ANGELES, CA - Federal District Judge Mark C. Scarsi, an appointee of President-elect Donald Trump, is not too happy with Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, calling Joe Biden out for his mischaracterization of the charges against his son, NBC News reports.
In a ruling late Tuesday, Scarsi slammed the soon-to-be ex-president for mischaracterizing and minimizing the charges Hunter Biden was facing as justification for pardoning him not only of those charges but any possible crimes dating back to 2014 when he started working for corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Blistering response by Judge Scarsi saying "..nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history"! Even President Biden.
— Jan Brauner (@JaniceBrauner) December 4, 2024
As for the fact-challenged🤥 [esp media] promoting the lie that HB was only prosecuted due to his dad...it's farcical!
🧵 pic.twitter.com/SF6PRUosPF
“The Constitution provides the President with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history,” Scarsi wrote in a scathing ruling.
Hunter Biden’s attorney asked Scarsi to dismiss the indictment against him in light of Joe Biden’s pardon that came late Sunday night as he prepared to flee the country to Angola. However, the attorney did not submit a formal copy of the pardon but sent a link to Joe Biden’s statement whereby he claimed Hunter Biden had been “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted and was the victim of a “miscarriage of justice.”
Scarsi disputed the president’s characterization of the case, saying his “representations” in the statement accompanying the pardon “stand in tension with the case record,” NBC reported.
“For example, 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. But he is not,” Scarsi wrote.
Scarsi noted that Hunter Biden said he “was severely addicted to alcohol and drugs” through “May 2019.”
“Upon pleading guilty to the charges in this case, Mr. Biden admitted that he engaged in tax evasion after this period of addiction by wrongfully deducting as business expenses items he knew were personal expenses, including luxury clothing, escort services, and his daughter’s law school tuition. And Mr. Biden admitted that he ‘had sufficient funds available to him to pay some or all of his outstanding taxes when they were due,’ but that he did not make payments toward his tax liabilities even ‘well after he had regained sobriety’ instead electing to ‘spen[d] large sums to maintain his lifestyle’ in 2020,” the judge wrote.
Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to all the charges against him in the California case just the day before the trial in September. Prosecutors alleged he had “engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2017 through 2019.” Biden then “filed false returns in February of 2020,” where he claimed bogus business deductions “to evade assessment of taxes to reduce the substantial tax liabiliti8es,” which he still did not pay, despite driving a Porsche and living in a $17,500 per month rental home in Venice Beach, prosecutors said.
It wasn’t until federal investigators told the younger Biden that he was under investigation that he decided to pay the taxes in December 2020, the month after his father was elected president. Of course, a wealthy Hollywood lawyer, Kevin Morris, gave Hunter Biden a "loan" to pay off the overdue tax bill.
Besides the tax charges, Hunter Biden was also convicted by a jury in a gun-related case in Delaware earlier this year and was poised to be sentenced in that case later this month. The cases were separated after a sweetheart plea deal that would have disposed of both cases without jail time was questioned by a judge.
Hunter Biden, echoing his father, claimed he was the victim of selective prosecution, a claim dismissed by Scarsi and Judge Maryellen Noreika in the Delaware case.
“According to the President, ‘[n]o reasonable person who looks at the facts of [Mr. Biden’s] cases can reach any other conclusion that [Mr. Biden] was singled out only because he is [the President’s] son,’” Scarsi wrote. “But two federal judges expressly rejected Mr. Biden’s arguments that the Government prosecuted Mr. Biden because of his familial relation to the President. 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.”
Special Counsel David Weiss, who brought the cases against Hunter Biden, echoed Scarsi’s feelings in a court filing last week, noting that three appeals court panels rejected the selective prosecution claim.
Weiss’s office’s filing said there was never “any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecutions in this case.”
“In total, eleven (11) different Article III judges appointed by six (6) different presidents, including his father, considered and rejected the defendant’s claims, including his claims for selective and vindictive prosecution.”
NBC News reached out to the White House for comment, but no response was received.
Scarsi, despite his issues with Joe Biden’s interference and mischaracterization of the cases, vacated the sentencing hearing and said he would officially terminate the case after receipt of authenticating declaration(s) confirming the pardon.
Meanwhile, Noreika ordered the Delaware gun case terminated on Tuesday.
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