What Biden Left Out of Pardon Statement
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On Dec. 1, President Joe Biden provided a blanket pardon for his son, Hunter, for any potential crimes committed over a 10-year period. In the statement Biden provided to justify his reversal of position, he left out a few inconvenient facts:
- He claimed Hunter Biden was “singled out” and “unfairly” prosecuted “only because he is my son,” blaming his “political opponents in Congress” for the “selective prosecution.” But multiple judges rejected that argument, saying there was no clear evidence of it.
- He said others “who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions,” arguing that “Hunter was treated differently.” But prosecutors say Hunter Biden continued to commit tax crimes even after he was sober.
The Department of Justice announced on Dec. 7, 2023, that a grand jury returned a nine-count indictment against Hunter Biden, alleging that he “engaged in a four-year scheme in which he chose not to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019 and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018 when he filed false returns.”
According to the indictment, despite making more than $7 million in income between 2016 and 2020, Hunter Biden “spent this money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes.”
Biden greets his son, Hunter Biden, at the end of the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 19. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images.On Sept. 5, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty in federal court to all nine counts, including three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses. His sentencing was scheduled for Dec. 16.
On Dec. 1, the president signed a “full and unconditional pardon” for his son for “those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted (including any that have resulted in convictions) by Special Counsel David C. Weiss.”
Weiss began his investigation of Hunter Biden during Donald Trump’s presidency, and he requested and received the appointment of special counsel by the Justice Department in 2023.
Claims of ‘Selective and Vindictive Prosecution’The president’s claim of a “selective prosecution” echoes a failed argument made by lawyers for Hunter Biden. On Feb. 20, the lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the indictment against Hunter Biden due to “selective and vindictive prosecution.”
“Since its inception in 2018, the investigation of Mr. Biden has been compromised by politics,” the motion stated. “This case follows a nearly six-year record of DOJ changing its charging decisions and upping the ante on Mr. Biden in direct response to political pressure and its own self-interests.”
“After opening an investigation at former President Trump’s behest in 2018, DOJ and IRS did nothing until 2021, when Congressmen demanded investigative records,” the motion continued. “DOJ then proposed deferred charges (after initially suggesting a non-prosecution agreement), only to change its tune and demand Mr. Biden plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges when IRS whistleblowers went public with accusations of misconduct. This led to a carefully negotiated Plea Agreement and Diversion Agreement that would have resolved all the charges in this case, but when that deal went public, was widely condemned by extremist Republicans as too lenient, and Congress decided to open an inquiry, DOJ tried to back out (even of the validly executed Diversion Agreement) and indicted Mr. Biden on the gun charges.”
Hunter Biden was convicted in June for lying on a federal form about his drug use when purchasing a firearm in 2018. The case was formally dismissed after the pardon was issued.
The motion argued that after Special Counsel Weiss “caved to outside pressure and brought the three felony gun charges, he was summoned to testify before Congress and berated for not being even more punitive. A month later, he responded by indicting Mr. Biden on the tax charges in this Court, including felonies, when just weeks earlier he had deemed two misdemeanor charges sufficient.”
As we have written, Weiss is a registered Republican who was nominated by Trump, but Sens. Tom Carper and Chris Coons, both Democrats, played a part in selecting Weiss, because of a longstanding Senate policy that allows home-state senators to sign off on presidential appointments of U.S. attorneys.
“This case follows years of public officials targeting Mr. Biden because of his political and familial affiliations and DOJ yielding to their pressure,” the Hunter Biden motion argued. “This record should raise more than judicial misgivings. Politicians are not just wooing and wheedling, but openly interfering with this case. It is incumbent on the Court to intercede.”
In a court filing opposing the motion, Weiss called Hunter Biden’s claims of selective and vindictive prosecution “a fictitious narrative” and a baseless “conspiracy theory.”
Weiss, March 8: The defendant’s conspiratorial “upped the ante” claim is nothing more than a house of cards. The defendant fails to refute two facts that completely undermine his theory. First, on July 26, 2023, the government appeared before the court in Delaware for a hearing and at the beginning of that hearing signed the agreements the parties had negotiated. If the statements by politicians prior to the hearing truly influenced the prosecution in the way the defendant claims they did, why did the government sign the agreements and present them at the hearing? Second, to state an obvious fact that the defendant continues to ignore, former President Trump is not the President of the United States. The defendant fails to explain how President Biden or the Attorney General, to whom the Special Counsel reports, or the Special Counsel himself, or his team of prosecutors, are acting at the direction of former President Trump or Congressional Republicans, or how this current Executive Branch approved allegedly discriminatory charges against the President’s son at the direction of former President Trump and Congressional Republicans.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark S. Scarsi didn’t buy Hunter Biden’s argument. On April 1, Scarsi rejected the motion to have the indictments dismissed due to selective and vindictive prosecution.
“As the Court stated at the hearing, Defendant filed his motion without any evidence,” Scarsi wrote.
Hunter Biden’s attorneys cited “portions of various Internet news sources, social media posts, and legal blogs” but those “are not evidence,” Scarsi wrote. “For many of the same reasons discussed in connection with the claim of selective prosecution, the vindictive prosecution claim fails for lack of objective direct or circumstantial evidence of vindictiveness.”
Scarsi was nominated by Trump to serve as U.S. District judge for the Central District of California, and he was confirmed by the Senate with an 83-12 vote in September 2020. In a questionnaire for judicial nominees, Scarsi noted that he was a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association and the conservative Federalist Society.
The same line of argument about selective and vindictive prosecution of Hunter Biden was also rejected by the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware related to federal gun charges against him.
In an April 12 order rejecting that argument, District Judge Maryellen Noreika wrote that while “the pressure campaign from Congressional Republicans may have occurred around the time that the Special Counsel decided to move forward with indictment instead of pretrial diversion” there was no credible evidence presented “to suggest that the conduct of those lawmakers (or anyone else) had any impact whatsoever on the Special Counsel. It is all speculation.”
(A pretrial diversion program is an alternative to criminal prosecution in which a person enters into alternative systems of supervision and services.)
“To the extent that Defendant’s claim that he is being selectively prosecuted rests solely on him being the son of the sitting President, that claim is belied by the facts,” Noreika wrote. “The Executive Branch that charged Defendant is headed by that sitting President – Defendant’s father. The Attorney General heading the DOJ was appointed by and reports to Defendant’s father. And that Attorney General appointed the Special Counsel who made the challenged charging decision in this case – while Defendant’s father was still the sitting President. Defendant’s claim is effectively that his own father targeted him for being his son, a claim that is nonsensical under the facts here. Regardless of whether Congressional Republicans attempted to influence the Executive Branch, there is no evidence that they were successful in doing so and, in any event, the Executive Branch prosecuting Defendant was at all relevant times (and still is) headed by Defendant’s father.”
Noreika was nominated by Trump in 2018 to serve as a judge of the U.S. District Court for Delaware, though she was part of a bipartisan slate of nominees and was supported by the state’s two Democratic senators. In January 2021, Law360 identified Noreika as among those then President-elect Biden was likely to consider for federal circuit judge.
Noreika further wrote that no evidence had been provided that any Republicans had “successfully influenced Special Counsel Weiss or his team in the decision to indict Defendant in this case.”
Noreika, April 12: Yet, as was the case with selective prosecution, the relevant point in time is when the prosecutor decided to no longer pursue pretrial diversion and instead indict Defendant. Whether former administration officials harbored actual animus towards Defendant at some point in the past is therefore irrelevant. This is especially true where, as here, the Court has been given no evidence or indication that any of these individuals (whether filled with animus or not) have successfully influenced Special Counsel Weiss or his team in the decision to indict Defendant in this case. At best, Defendant has generically alleged that individuals from the prior administration were or are targeting him (or his father) and therefore his prosecution here must be vindictive. The problem with this argument is that the charging decision at issue was made during this administration – by Special Counsel Weiss – at a time when the head of the Executive Branch prosecuting Defendant is Defendant’s father. Defendant has offered nothing credible to support a finding that anyone who played a role in the decision to abandon pretrial diversion and move forward with indictment here harbored any animus towards Defendant. Any claim of vindictive prosecution based on actual vindictiveness must fail.
Noreika rejected the motion.
After President Biden issued his pardon, attorneys for Hunter Biden filed a motion to have his indictment dismissed. In a motion opposing that effort, Weiss wrote, “there was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case.”
Weiss noted that Hunter Biden’s attorneys appealed the dismissals of the motions alleging selective and vindictive prosecutions, and those appeals also failed.
Claims Hunter Was ‘Treated Differently’In making the argument that Hunter was “treated differently,” President Biden said: “Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions.”
Tax law expert Keith Fogg, emeritus clinical professor at Harvard Law School, told us the plea deal that unraveled in Hunter Biden’s case “reflected a relatively typical resolution of this tax crime.”
“I agree with President Biden that most people, the vast majority, who fail to file their tax returns timely [but ultimately pay them back] face civil not criminal penalties,” Fogg told us via email. “The fact that the taxes were paid back when the IRS showed up can influence the decision to prosecute though it is not determinative. It plays a bigger role at the sentencing phase.”
What President Biden did not mention, however, is “that while the IRS rarely prosecutes the crime of failure to file and pay, the persons most likely to be prosecuted for this crime are high profile individuals like his son,” Fogg said. “Criminal prosecution is a high cost endeavor for the IRS. It generally, though not exclusively, seeks to prosecute individuals who will give it the biggest bang for the buck because of the publicity resulting from the prosecution. A movie star or other high profile individual provides a good target for prosecution because of the publicity that such a prosecution generates. The IRS uses its criminal tax program to promote compliance by showing what happens to people who fail to comply with the tax laws. … From that perspective, it’s not so surprising to see someone like Hunter Biden prosecuted where most people who commit this crime are not.”
President Biden’s description of his son as someone who was simply late paying taxes because of serious addictions “but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties,” also glosses over some claims in the indictment to which he pleaded guilty.
As Weiss detailed in his legal filing opposing Hunter Biden’s attempt to have the indictments withdrawn because of the pardon, some of Hunter Biden’s illegal activity continued after he had regained sobriety.
Weiss, March 8: Even well after the defendant had regained his sobriety, he chose not to pay his tax liabilities in 2020. Despite receiving $1.2 million in financial support from a friend [from January through October 15, 2020, according to the indictment] to maintain his lifestyle, the defendant did not make payments towards his tax obligations. Instead, he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on personal expenses, including renting a lavish house on a canal in Venice Beach, California, his Porsche, and media relations services.
The defendant also chose to lie to his accountants in 2020, again, after he had regained his sobriety. For example, the defendant falsely claimed extensive business travel in 2018 during a period in which he later described his crack cocaine use as “twenty-four hours a day, smoking every fifteen minutes, seven days a week.” The defendant lied to his accountants by claiming as business expenses $43,696 in stays at the Chateau Marmont with his “merry band of crooks, creeps, and outcasts.” He falsely claimed that payments for his daughter’s apartment rental in New York were business expenses. He falsely claimed other business expenses, including a $1,500 payment to an exotic dancer, $11,500 in payments to an escort, and a $30,000 payment for his daughter’s tuition. He falsely claimed that monies paid to women with whom he had personal relationships were wages, reducing his tax burden. The defendant falsely identified business deductions, including for a Lamborghini rental and hotel stays that he subsequently described as the locations of his months-long drug binge. He falsely represented to his accountants that a $10,000 payment to a sex club was a business expense. He falsely represented to his accountants that his business line of credit had been used for business expenses, when in fact he used it to make payments to a strip club and exotic dancer. Thus, even after he regained his sobriety, the defendant lied to his accountants in many ways so he could continue to cheat the system and attempt to evade taxes.
According to Weiss, in 2020 — after he had become sober — Hunter Biden “then chose to file a false 2018 Form 1120 that falsely categorized personal expenses as business expenses and a false 2018 Form 1040 that underreported his income.”
IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler, one of the whistleblowers in the Hunter Biden case, highlighted those facts in an interview on Fox News on Dec. 2.
“And I want to be clear on something, criminal tax evasion, what he pled guilty to, is not the fact that he didn’t timely pay or file his tax returns,” Ziegler said. “He filed false tax returns willfully when he was sober after he wrote his memoir, which he profited off of. And that’s what I want to be so clear on, is that this was conduct after he became sober. This was felony conduct after he was sober. And it was clever. And the president’s letter didn’t bring up any of that conduct.”
Hunter Biden’s attorneys said in a court motion that he ultimately paid all his taxes and penalties in 2021.
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