Judge rebukes Joe Biden for mis­lead­ing claims about Hunter’s tax case

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.