EDITORIAL: Judge takes down Biden pardon account

Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter was remarkable on a number of fronts: the vast scope, the president’s self-interest and repeated prevarications that he would trust the justice system, the pre-emptive broadside at a pending legal case. It’s no wonder Mr. Biden hightailed it out of the country after issuing his decree rather than face the fallout.

The latter included criticism from across the political spectrum, although a fair number of progressive toadies did indeed line up to defend the president’s actions. But the assessment of one critic in particular deserves special attention for exposing Mr. Biden’s delusional cynicism.

On Tuesday, federal Judge Mark Scarsi wrote a five-page order excoriating Mr. Biden for attempting to “rewrite history” through his feeble explanation for the pardon. Judge Scarsi oversaw Hunter’s tax case, in which the president’s son pleaded guilty to nine offenses related to $1.9 million he owed the IRS. A few months earlier, a jury had found Hunter guilty of illegally buying a gun while he was still using illicit drugs.

In issuing his pardon, Mr. Biden argued, “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.” He went on to say that “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice,” while claiming that people “who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties,” are rarely prosecuted criminally.

Judge Scarsi, an appointee of Donald Trump who was confirmed in 2020 by a bipartisan 83-12 vote in the Senate, didn’t hold back. He noted that the White House never even provided the court with the official pardon and instead offered “a hyperlink to a White House press release presenting a statement by the president regarding the pardon and the purported text of the pardon.”

The judge then sets his sights on Mr. Biden’s efforts to shade the facts of his son’s case.

Judge Scarsi makes short work of the fallacy that Hunter was in the throes of addiction when he was cheating on his taxes. “Upon pleading guilty to the charges in this case,” the judge wrote, Hunter “admitted that he engaged in tax evasion after this period of addiction by wrongfully deducting as business expenses items he knew were personal expenses, including luxury clothing, escort services and his daughter’s law school tuition.” In addition, Hunter “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 (spend) ‘large sums to maintain his lifestyle’ in 2020.”

As for the political persecution charge, Judge Scarsi points out that “two federal judges expressly rejected” the allegation that Hunter was singled out because of connections to the president. “And the president’s own attorney general and Department of Justice personnel oversaw the investigation leading to the charges,” he wrote.

Some shameless Democrats now advocate that Mr. Biden wield his pardon power in unprecedented fashion to shield a host of individuals and groups — various critics of Donald Trump, illegal immigrants and so on — that they imagine will be endangered by the next president. But Judge Scarsi’s take-down of Mr. Biden highlights that constitutional guardrails remain alive and well. Mr. Biden should quit while he’s behind.