• Prosecutor who investigated Hunter Biden defends probes, denounces pres

    From Leroy N. Soetoro@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jan 17 00:16:27 2025
    XPost: law.court.federal, alt.law-enforcement.corruption, alt.politics.usa.republican
    XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics

    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.

    https://ktla.com/news/politics/ap-politics/ap-prosecutor-who-investigated- hunter-biden-defends-probes-denounces-presidents-remarks-in-new-report/


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