WASHINGTON (AP) — The criminal charges against Hunter Biden "were the culmination of thorough, impartial investigations, not partisan politics," the prosecutor who led the probes said in a report released Monday that criticized President Joe Biden for having maligned the Justice Department when he pardoned his son.
"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," said the report from David Weiss, whose team filed gun and tax charges against the younger Biden that resulted in felony convictions that were subsequently wiped away by a presidential pardon.
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The report is the culmination of years-long investigations into Hunter Biden that predated the arrival of Attorney General Merrick Garland but became among the most politically explosive inquiries of his entire tenure, capturing Republican fascination on Capitol Hill and ultimately producing a fissure between the Justice Department and the White House.
Weiss defended his team's work in the report and scolded Biden for questioning the integrity of the criminal cases in a November statement in which the president announced the pardon, when he said he believed his son had been treated "differently" on account of his last name.
"These baseless accusations have no merit and repeating them threatens the integrity of the justice system as a whole," Weiss said.
He also noted, "The president's characterizations are incorrect based on the facts in this case, and, on a more fundamental level, they are wrong."
Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Colleen Long and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.