Special Counsel in Hunter Biden Investigation Defends Findings, Criticizes Pardon

Hunter Biden steps into a vehicle as he leaves federal court in Los Angeles after pleading guilty to federal tax charges on Sept. 5, 2024. Eric Thayer/AP Photo

The special counsel assigned to investigate Hunter Biden defended his work and criticized President Joe Biden’s pardon for his son in a final report made public days before the president is slated to leave office.

David C. Weiss rejected the president’s claims that politics had compromised the probe. Weiss said the cases he brought against Hunter Biden resulted from “thorough, impartial investigations, not partisan politics,” noting that multiple judges’ findings aligned with that assessment.

Weiss wrote that the accusations “unfairly impugn the integrity not only of Department of Justice personnel, but all of the public servants making these difficult decisions in good faith.”

“These baseless accusations have no merit and repeating them threatens the integrity of the justice system as a whole,” Weiss wrote.

Weiss was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2023 after a plea deal with the younger Biden broke down.

Weiss, a Republican, was named U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware by President-elect Donald Trump in 2017. His initial investigation into Hunter Biden overlapped with the 2020 presidential election. Weiss did not disclose the investigation during the election. In December 2020, the younger Biden revealed he was under investigation.

Amid mass firings of Trump-appointed U.S. attorneys, Weiss—his probe by then public—was retained by Biden.

Weiss’s criticism in the report, which was released on Jan. 13, focused on claims made by the outgoing president in the full, unconditional pardon he issued his son for felony tax and firearm convictions on Dec. 1, 2024. That pardon extended to crimes that the younger Biden committed, or allegedly committed, as far back as Jan. 1, 2014.

At the time he was pardoned, the president’s son was on pace to be sentenced.

Special counsel David Weiss walks out of the closed-door testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington on Nov. 7, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

“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’s pardon states.

“In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me—and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough,” Biden continued, later stating that “raw politics” led to an unjust outcome.

Weiss’s report notes that the president had previously vowed not to pardon his son.

“Only after Mr. Biden’s guilt had been fully and fairly adjudicated did the President claim that this prosecution was the result of ‘raw politics,’” the report states.

“Politicians who attack the decisions of career prosecutors as politically motivated when they disagree with the outcome of a case undermine the public’s confidence in our criminal justice system.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.