Hunter Biden prosecutor says president ‘maligned’ Justice Department

US President Joe Biden was charged on Monday by the special counsel who brought Hunter Biden’s case that his criticism of the investigation into his son had damaged public trust in the legal system.

Hunter Biden, 54, was pardoned by his father in December after being found guilty of tax and firearm offenses in proceedings prosecuted by special counsel David Weiss.

In his concluding report on the case, which was made public on Monday, Weiss pointed out that the president had denounced the prosecution of his son as “selective,” “unfair,” “infected” by “raw politics,” and a “miscarriage of justice” when he announced the pardon.

“This statement is gratuitous and wrong,” Weiss said. “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.”

The special counsel said the prosecutions of Hunter Biden were “the culmination of thorough, impartial investigations, not partisan politics.

“Calling those 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,” he said. “It erodes public confidence in an institution that is essential to preserving the rule of law.”

Biden pardoned his son prior to his sentencing in the two criminal cases.

“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,” the president said at the time.

Weiss’s report was released just before another special counsel report, this one from Jack Smith, who filed two criminal charges against former and now-future President Donald Trump, is anticipated to be released this week.

Smith charged that Trump mishandled top-secret data after leaving the White House and attempted to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden.

Following Trump’s victory in the November presidential election, Smith dropped the charges in accordance with the Justice Department’s policy of not prosecuting a sitting president, and neither case went to trial.