The Justice Department on Monday released the final report of special counsel David Weiss, the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor elevated to special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of President Biden.
In the report, which Garland submitted to Congress on Monday, Weiss wrote that he stood by his decisions to prosecute the president’s son on tax and gun charges after agreements with Hunter’s legal team collapsed. And Weiss pushed back on Mr. Biden’s criticism of the probe.
Weiss led a yearslong investigation into Hunter Biden that ultimately led to a jury conviction on felony gun charges in Delaware federal court and a guilty plea to tax evasion charges in California. In December, the president pardoned his son and claimed the charges against Hunter Biden were “raw politics,” a comment that was met with bipartisan criticism.
“The President’s statements unfairly impugn the integrity not only of Department of Justice personnel, but all of the public servants making these difficult decisions in good faith,” Weiss wrote in his report. “The President’s characterizations are incorrect based on the facts in this case, and, on a more fundamental level, they are wrong.”
“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,” Weiss wrote. “It erodes public confidence in an institution that is essential to preserving the rule of law.”
In the report, Weiss defended his charging decisions, which many Republicans in Congress alleged favored the president’s son.
“I concluded that the Principles of Federal Prosecution were satisfied as to both the tax offenses and the gun offenses,” Weiss wrote.
In 2023, Hunter Biden was charged with lying on a gun application about his drug use and in a separate case, he faced three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor offenses, including failure to file and pay his taxes, tax evasion and filing a false return.
Prosecutors alleged he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes while living an “extravagant lifestyle.”
“Not only were both cases proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but they resulted in a verdict lawfully rendered by a jury and an admission of guilt. In making my decisions, I remained impervious to political influence at all times,” Weiss wrote.
During the special counsel’s probe, IRS agents who worked on the Hunter Biden tax case with Weiss’ team came forward in an interview with CBS News to raise questions about what they alleged was special treatment in the probe of the president’s son. The said that dating back to the Trump administration, they had repeatedly been prevented from taking steps in the IRS investigation that would have been considered routine in other cases.
“We have to make sure as a special agent for IRS Criminal Investigation that we treat every single person exactly the same,” Gary Shapley, a 14-year veteran of the agency, told CBS News at the time. “And that just simply didn’t happen here.”
The Justice Department and Weiss denied that Hunter Biden received favorable treatment.
In a letter to Garland included in the report, Hunter Biden’s legal team pointed out its criticism of the probe and told the attorney general, “you likely are aware of the arguments we have made about the initiation and conduct of the prosecutions against our client.”
“These are not ‘inconsequential’ or ‘technical’ tax code violations,” Weiss wrote. “The prosecution of Mr. Biden was warranted given the nature and seriousness of his tax crimes.”
Answering criticism of the gun charges, Weiss argued, “An analysis of Justice Department data from 2008 to 2017 shows that these charges are brought more frequently than over 90 percent of the other available firearm offenses.”
According to Garland’s letter to Congress, Weiss submitted the report a few days ago, on Friday. The attorney general noted there had been no instances during the probe when Garland had to intervene because of policy violations.
The report also detailed Weiss’ investigation into a former FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to lying to FBI agents and providing them a fake story about the Bidens. Smirnov was sentenced to six years in prison earlier this month.