‘A Press Release Is Not a Pardon’: CA Judge Terminates Hunter’s Tax Case, Eviscerates Joe’s Rationale

The fallout from President Joe Biden’s pardon of his ne’er do well son Hunter continues as the loose ends of the two federal criminal cases against the First Son are tied up. 

As we reported Sunday, while acknowledging the president’s authority to issue the pardon, the Department of Justice, through Special Counsel David Weiss, objected to the cases being dismissed outright, arguing that the pardon doesn’t negate the indictment or the guilt; it merely calls for the case against the pardoned person to be “terminated.” In lodging the objection, Weiss pointed out that Biden’s contention that his was a politicized prosecution was found to be hogwash by multiple courts, noting, “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.” 

Monday morning, Judge Maryellen Noreika acceded to the DOJ’s point and, rather than dismissing the Delaware gun case outright, as requested by Hunter’s attorneys, simply terminated the case. 

Plot Twist: Special Counsel Opposes Hunter Biden’s Bid to Dismiss Gun and Tax Charges in Face of Pardon

Hunter’s Gun Case Terminated After Biden’s Pardon—but Judge Didn’t Take One Action She Could Have

That left the California tax case, and late Tuesday, Judge Mark Scarsi followed suit, but not without offering his observations as to the rationale put forth by Joe Biden in his statement regarding the pardon — in a word: Malarkey. 

The net effect of Scarsi’s order is that the California case against Hunter is now also terminated. But after first noting that Hunter’s team botched things by merely providing a hyperlink to the White House press release regarding the pardon rather than filing an accurate copy of the pardon, Scarsi included some delicious parting shots on the matter (emphasis added, citations omitted):

The President’s statement illustrates the reasons for the Court’s disapproval, as representations contained therein stand in tension with the case record.

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. 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. 

…

According to the President, “[n]o reasonable person who looks at the facts of [Mr. Biden’s] cases can reach any other conclusion than [Mr. Biden] was singled out only because he is [the President’s] son.” 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.

In short, a press release is not a pardon. The Constitution provides the President with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 1, but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history. 

Scarsi also notes that, while pardons are not to be prospective in nature, the Biden pardon purports to offer clemency to Hunter through December 1, 2024, even though it was signed by the president on December 1, i.e., with time still remaining on the clock for that date. Thus, in theory, the pardon also encompassed “conduct that had not yet occurred at the time of its execution, exceeding the scope of the pardon power.” Scarsi expressly declines to read it as such and concludes: “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.”

In a nutshell: Fine, Hunter — you’re off the hook. But your lawyers don’t know what they’re doing. And neither does your dad.