Prosecutor in the Hunter Biden case criticizes presidential pardon: “It undermines confidence in the judicial system”

WASHINGTON — The special prosecutor of the Department of Justice David Weiss, who investigated Hunter Biden, son of the president of the United States, Joe Biden, for illegal possession of weapons, criticized this Monday in his final report the presidential pardon announced at the end of 2024, alleging that This decision “undermines” the confidence of the American population in the judicial system.

“Far from being selective, these processes 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 America. Politicians who attack the decisions of prosecutors by considering them politically motivated when they disagree with the outcome of a case undermine public confidence in our criminal justice system,” reads the nearly 300-page report.

Weiss indicates in the report that the president’s statements, in reference to allegations that his son has been politically targeted repeatedly in recent years, “unfairly call into question the integrity not only of the Department of Justice personnel, but of all public officials who make these difficult decisions in good faith.

In this sense, he rebuked Biden for making “gratuitous and erroneous” accusations that his investigation into his son was unfair and politicized. “Other presidents have pardoned family members, but in doing so none took the opportunity to defame public Justice officials based solely on false accusations,” he added.

Thus, he assured that he did not take into account anything more than the elements necessary to secure a criminal conviction: “I never considered whether my decisions would be viewed favorably or unfavorably by politicians. And, when politicians expressed opinions about my conduct, I ignored them. because they were irrelevant. Simply put, my decisions were based on the facts and the law, and nothing else,” he stressed.

He broke the law

The special prosecutor stressed that he prosecuted Hunter Biden because he violated the law, as demonstrated by a unanimous jury, which found him guilty of weapons-related charges, and with the statement of the defendant himself, who pleaded guilty to tax crimes. “As I have done for twenty years, I applied the principles of the federal process and determined that the process was justified,” he added.

Biden became the first president of the United States to use a pardon to free an immediate family member from his convictions, in this case his son Hunter for weapons possession and tax crimes, despite promising that he would not do so, with criticism of the judicial system involved, which he has criticized for allowing itself to be “infected” by political pressures.

Hunter was found guilty in June 2024 on three counts in a case related to the illegal purchase of a firearm in 2018 after acquiring it when he was a known drug user. In September, the US president’s son pleaded guilty to nine charges, three of them serious, related to the non-payment of $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019, as well as trying to declare as business expenses payments he made to prostitutes, a subscription to a pornographic website, and his daughter’s college.