California Judge Ends Hunter’s Tax Case and Criticizes Joe’s Justification for it

The repercussions of President Joe Biden pardoning his troubled son Hunter persist as the final details of the two federal legal proceedings involving the First Son are wrapped 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. 

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. 

🚨 This opinion from the judge overseeing the tax prosecution of Hunter Biden is worth reading every word… https://t.co/7EM3GsCO3O

— Tristan Leavitt (@tristanleavitt) December 4, 2024

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.

…

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. 

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.