The federal judge who oversaw the criminal prosecution of first son Hunter Biden for evading taxes between 2016 and 2019 — crimes to which he pleaded guilty — is excoriating President Biden’s attempt to “rewrite history.” The judge further questioned the constitutionality of the pardon that the commander in chief issued for his only surviving son on Sunday night. 

Judge Mark Scarsi of the Central District of California presided over Mr. Biden Biden’s tax evasion case from December 2023 — when he was charged — until this past Sunday, when the president granted his son a sweeping, blanket pardon. Judge Scarsi viciously tore apart the president’s assertion that his son was the victim of a weaponized justice system. 

In a brief filing in response to a defense motion seeking dismissal of the case, the judge noted how he has, on several occasions, rejected motions to dismiss the tax charges on the grounds that Mr. Biden was the subject of unfair scrutiny, given that there is no evidence Special Counsel David Weiss did anything improper in his investigation or in his charging decision. An appointee of President Trump, Judge Scarsi, cites the president’s Sunday statement decrying the prosecution of his son as just another example of dishonesty by the Biden family. 

“The President’s statement illustrates the reasons for the Court’s disapproval, as representations contained therein stand in tension with the case record,” the jurist says, referring to the elder Mr. Biden’s statement. “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.”

Judge Scarsi then cites the younger Mr. Biden’s assertions that he got sober in May 2019, and the later disclosure that the first son was refusing to pay his taxes well past his sober date. Mr. Biden was accused of — and pled guilty to — charges that he’d written off personal expenditures such as luxury hotel stays, personal shopping excursions, and even his own daughter’s law school tuition as business expenses. 

“Mr. Biden admitted that he ‘had sufficient funds available to him to pay some or all of his outstanding taxes when they were due,’ but that he did not make payments toward his tax liabilities even ‘well after he had regained his sobriety,’ instead electing to ‘spen[d] large sums to maintain his lifestyle’ in 2020,” Judge Scarsi writes of the defendant’s admissions. 

“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,” the jurist added. 

“The Constitution provides the President with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States … but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history,” he says. 

In his decision, Judge Scarsi writes that he will terminate all further proceedings against Mr. Biden — which includes his sentencing hearing that was scheduled for later this month — though he will not dismiss the indictment for the time being. Similarly, the judge in Mr. Biden’s parallel firearms case — in which he was found guilty of lying about his drug use to buy a gun —  has also refused to dismiss the indictment, despite cancelling sentencing due to the pardon.

Judge Scarsi further questioned the constitutionality of the president’s grant of relief for his son, given that the elder Mr. Biden signed the pardon on Sunday afternoon, and extended the pardon for “any and all” crimes that were committed between January 1, 2014 and the end of the day on December 1, 2024. Judge Scarsi says that such a grant of clemency for crimes not yet committed may be “exceeding the scope of the pardon power.”

The judge writes, however, that “the Court declines to interpret the warrant in that manner and instead understands the warrant to pardon conduct through the time of execution on December 1.”