The federal judge overseeing Hunter Biden’s tax crimes case is accusing President Joe Biden of “rewriting history” and unconstitutional behavior.
On Sunday, Biden shocked the political world when he announced a “full and unconditional pardon” for Hunter Biden. The pardon was not only shocking because Biden repeatedly promised that he would not pardon his son, but it raised eyebrows because of its comprehensiveness: Biden pardoned his son for any crime he committed or may have committed from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024.
To justify the pardon, Biden claimed Hunter was “selectively” and “unfairly” prosecuted, asserting that Hunter “was treated differently” and is a victim of “selective prosecution.” The only reason the prosecution was brought, the president claimed, is because Hunter is his son.
But U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi said Tuesday none of what President Biden claimed is true.
In a five-page opinion, Scarsi condemned Hunter Biden’s lawyers for not submitting to the court a “true and correct copy of the pardon” in its motion to dismiss the charges against their client. Instead of the pardon, Hunter’s attorneys simply provided the court a link to President Biden’s statement about the pardon.
That statement was the central issue in the judge’s order because, according to Scarsi, the “representations” in Biden’s statement “stand in tension with the case record.”
‘Nowhere does the Constitution give the president the authority to rewrite history.’
In other words, Scarsi believes Biden is lying — and he used Hunter’s own admissions to prove it.
First, Scarsi addressed Biden’s insinuation that Hunter is “among those individuals who untimely paid taxes due to addiction.”
“He is not,” the judge declared. “In his pretrial filings, Mr. Biden represented that 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 his sobriety,’ instead electing to ‘spen[d] large sums to maintain his lifestyle‘ in 2020,” Scarsi explained.
Second, Scarsi obliterated Biden’s claim that “no reasonable person” would have brought criminal charges against Hunter, noting that multiple federal judges already rejected that argument and that Biden’s own Justice Department initiated the prosecution.
“In the president’s estimation, this legion of federal civil servants, the undersigned included, are unreasonable people,” Scarsi wrote.
Finally, Scarsi ripped into Biden and the pardon itself.
While noting the Constitution does vest the president with “broad authority” to grant pardons, Scarsi explained that “nowhere does the Constitution give the president the authority to rewrite history.”
The chief problem with the pardon, Scarsi explained, is that Biden pardoned Hunter for all conduct “through” Dec. 1, 2024.
“The president signed the pardon on December 1, 2024. 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.
In the end, Scarsi said he would comply with the presidential intent of the pardon, its constitutional problems notwithstanding.
“To the extent the pardon encompasses prospective conduct, the Court deems the prospective component of the pardon severable from the component that demands the termination of this proceeding,” he wrote. “The warrant explicitly brings the charges in this action within the ambit of the pardon, indicating presidential intent for the pardon to apply to this case even if it is unconstitutional in other respects.”
