Prosecutor who investigated Hunter Biden defends probes, denounces president's remarks in new report
WASHINGTON (AP) — The criminal charges against Hunter Biden “were the culmination of thorough, impartial investigations, not partisan politics,” the prosecutor who led the probes said in a report released Monday that sharply criticized President Joe Biden for having maligned the Justice Department when he pardoned his son.
“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,” said the report from special counsel David Weiss, whose team filed gun and tax charges against the younger Biden that resulted in felony convictions that were subsequently wiped away by a presidential pardon.
The report is the culmination of years-long investigations that predated the arrival of Attorney General Merrick Garland but became among the most politically explosive inquiries of his entire tenure, capturing Republican fascination on Capitol Hill and ultimately producing a fissure between the Justice Department and the White House over the treatment of the president's son.
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 defense of the team's work and for its open criticism of the president over a written statement he issued when pardoning his son 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.
Weiss, who served as U.S. attorney for Delaware during the Trump administration and was kept in his position by Garland before being named to the role of special counsel in 2023, took exception to those 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. Such remarks undermine the public's confidence in the justice system, Weiss said.
Calling judges' rulings "into question and injecting partisanship into the independent administration of the law undermines the very foundation of what makes America’s justice system fair and equitable," Weiss wrote. “It erodes public confidence in an institution that is essential to preserving the rule of law.”
Hunter Biden’s lawyer criticized the report, saying Weiss failed to explain why prosecutors “pursued wild — and debunked — conspiracies” about the president’s son that prolonged the investigation.
“What is clear from this report is that the investigation into Hunter Biden is a cautionary tale of the abuse of prosecutorial power,” defense attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement.
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.
Hunter Biden was supposed to plead guilty in 2023 to misdemeanor tax charges, but the deal fell apart in spectacular fashion among 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 the president's son understood that he was lying when he filled out the federal form when he bought his gun in 2018 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.
Weiss said Hunter “consciously and willfully chose” not to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes over four years.
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 Donald 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.
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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Colleen Long and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.
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