Special counsel says no 'evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution' in Hunter Biden case
David Weiss, the justice department special counsel who successfully prosecuted Hunter Biden on fraud and gun charges, hit back at Joe Biden’s assertion that his son has been unfairly prosecuted.
In a filing opposing the dismissal of Hunter Biden’s tax fraud case in California, Weiss said:
The defendant filed eight (8) motions to dismiss the indictment, making every conceivable argument for why it should be dismissed, all of which were determined to be meritless. Of note, the defendant argued that the indictment was a product of vindictive and selective prosecution. The Court rejected that claim finding that “[a]s the Court stated at the hearing, Defendant filed his motion without any evidence. And there was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case.
Biden pleaded guilty to the tax charges, after a jury in Delaware earlier this year found him guilty of lying about his drug use on a background check form he filled out to purchase a firearm.
In the filing, Weiss argued against dismissing the tax case, saying that it should instead be closed, with no further action taken against Biden. Here’s more from Weiss:
The defendant did not docket the pardon nor has the government seen it. If media reports are accurate, the Government does not challenge that the defendant has been the recipient of an act of mercy. But that does not mean the grand jury’s decision to charge him, based on a finding of probable cause, should be wiped away as if it never occurred. It also does not mean that his charges should be wiped away because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of some improper motive. No court has agreed with the defendant on these baseless claims, and his request to dismiss the indictment finds no support in the law or the practice of this district.
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The day so far
Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden, who pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges and was convicted of firearms charges, has been met with both condemnation and support. Critics and allies have weighed in on political implications, precedents set, and how the move might impact the outgoing president’s legacy.
Here’s what else has happened today:
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Donald Trump has named the billionaire investment banker Warren A Stephens – who poured millions of dollars into GOP coffers during the last election cycle – as his nomination as ambassador to Britain.
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A “previously undisclosed whistleblower report” on Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, highlighted allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct, which forced him to step down from two non-profits he ran.
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American-Israeli soldier Omer Neutra, who was thought to have been a hostage in Gaza, is now feared to have died in the Hamas terrorist attack on 7 October 2023.
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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden will announce more pardons and grants of clemency in the final weeks before he leaves office.
Trump names billionaire investment banker as US ambassador to the UK
Trump has named the billionaire investment banker Warren A Stephens as his nomination as ambassador to Britain. Making the announcement on Truth Social, Trump called Stephens the “one of the most successful businessmen in the Country”, and said he had always dreamed of serving the United States full-time.
Stephens is the chair, president and CEO of Stephens Inc, a privately owned financial services firm headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, but he’s also a big political spender with a history of throwing millions behind the candidates and causes he favors.
He hasn’t always been on team Trump, even donating against him in the early years, but Stephens poured millions of dollars into GOP coffers during the last election cycle – including at least $3m donated to the Super Pac Make America Great Again Inc.
Once called the “king of Little Rock, Arkansas”, the NYT wrote of Stephens’s wealth, and his tactics for hiding it, in 2017, reporting:
Mr Stephens used an opaque holding company to own an approximately 40 percent stake in a loan business accused by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of cheating working-class and poor Americans. While earning millions from the investment, Mr Stephens helped finance a political onslaught against the bureau, never mentioning his personal connection to the fight.
Trump highlighted in his announcement post that Stephens “has built a wonderful financial services firm, while selflessly giving back to his community as a philanthropist”.
Speaking on CNN, the congressman Dan Goldman voiced support for the pardon, citing how the incoming administration may double down with politically motivated actions.
“I find it pretty ironic and hypocritical that so many Republicans have seemed to find the rule of law when it comes to Joe Biden’s pardoning of Hunter, and are happily ignorant of the rule of law when it comes to Donald Trump and everything he has done,” he said.
Goldman pointed to Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to head the FBI, as a danger “who is out for revenge”.
“It is yet another example of how Donald Trump is a danger to our rule of law.”
As reported by the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington, Patel is a “deep state” conspiracy theorist and Trump loyalist who has long denigrated the FBI as a pillar of the “corrupt ruling class”. He has threatened to fire its top echelons and shut down the agency’s headquarters, and has publicly pledged to prosecute political opponents and members of the media who he considers enemies of the Administration.
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin said he understood the president’s pardon, telling CNN’s Manu Raju that he wasn’t going to “cast stones”, but that Biden would better protect his legacy if he also pardoned Trump.
“The bottom line is this, Joe Biden is still a father and that paternal it kicked in and that’s what it is,” Manchin said, adding that it would be balanced by “throwing everything out on Trump”:
What I would have done differently and my recommendation as the council would have been, why don’t you go ahead and pardon Donald Trump for all his charges and make it you know, it would have gone down a lot more balanced, if you will … Rather than going through all these court cases and getting, you know, the president has to be the president for the next four years, fighting all these criminal and all this other stuff’s coming after him, just clean that slate up. Let’s get this behind us and move forward. That’s what I – that would have been my recommendation.
Despite the worrying allegations leveled against him, Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, continues to make the rounds of Republican senators whose votes will be vital to his confirmation.
He was on Capitol Hill today, meeting with the Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville:
Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son after months of saying he would do no such thing amounts to a brazen broken promise by the outgoing president. It also resembles just the sort of thing Donald Trump would do, the Guardian’s David Smith reports:
A loving act of mercy by a father who has already known much sorrow? Or a hypocritical political manoeuvre reminiscent of his great foe? Maybe both can be true.
Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he had pardoned his son Hunter, who is facing sentencing in two criminal cases, is likely to have been the product of a Shakespearean struggle between head and heart.
On the one hand, Biden is one of the last great institutionalists in Washington. “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making,” he said in an unusually direct and personal statement on Sunday. To undermine the separation of powers goes against every fibre of his political being.
On the other hand, Biden is nothing without family. His speeches are peppered with references to his parents. As a senator, he once took a train from Washington to Wilmington, Delaware, so he could see his daughter Ashley blow out the candles on a cake made for her eighth birthday, then cross the platform and take the next train back to work.
Jill Biden backs pardon for Hunter Biden
At a White House holiday season event earlier today with families of National Guard members, reporters asked first lady Jill Biden about Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter.
“Of course I support the pardon of my son,” Jill Biden replied.
Hunter Biden is the son of Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, who died in a crash crash in 1972 along with the president’s daughter, Naomi. Joe and Jill Biden have been married since 1977.
Special counsel says no 'evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution' in Hunter Biden case
David Weiss, the justice department special counsel who successfully prosecuted Hunter Biden on fraud and gun charges, hit back at Joe Biden’s assertion that his son has been unfairly prosecuted.
In a filing opposing the dismissal of Hunter Biden’s tax fraud case in California, Weiss said:
The defendant filed eight (8) motions to dismiss the indictment, making every conceivable argument for why it should be dismissed, all of which were determined to be meritless. Of note, the defendant argued that the indictment was a product of vindictive and selective prosecution. The Court rejected that claim finding that “[a]s the Court stated at the hearing, Defendant filed his motion without any evidence. And there was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case.
Biden pleaded guilty to the tax charges, after a jury in Delaware earlier this year found him guilty of lying about his drug use on a background check form he filled out to purchase a firearm.
In the filing, Weiss argued against dismissing the tax case, saying that it should instead be closed, with no further action taken against Biden. Here’s more from Weiss:
The defendant did not docket the pardon nor has the government seen it. If media reports are accurate, the Government does not challenge that the defendant has been the recipient of an act of mercy. But that does not mean the grand jury’s decision to charge him, based on a finding of probable cause, should be wiped away as if it never occurred. It also does not mean that his charges should be wiped away because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of some improper motive. No court has agreed with the defendant on these baseless claims, and his request to dismiss the indictment finds no support in the law or the practice of this district.
More Democrats signal discomfort with pardon of Hunter Biden
An increasing number of Democrats is voicing their objections to Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, who was expected to soon be sentenced on federal tax and gun charges.
In a statement released last night, the president said he had opted to pardon Hunter because he believed he was a victim of “selective prosecution” that was intended to undermine his sobriety. In the hours since, several Democrats have said they disagreed with its decision, because it undermined Biden’s stated commitment to the rule of law.
Among those newly speaking out are Vermont senator Peter Welch, who wrote on X:
President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter is, as the action of a loving father, understandable—but as the action of our nation’s Chief Executive, unwise.
And Colorado congressman Jason Crow:
The Hunter Biden pardon was a mistake. I sympathize with a father’s love, especially in a family that has experienced so much personal tragedy. I also understand the legal arguments in favor of a pardon. But Presidential pardons are never judged solely on the merits of the case, particularly when it involves a family member. Presidents hold enormous power and responsibility and must be held to a higher standard. They must instill trust and promote the American people’s faith in their democracy. And right now, upholding the fabric of our democracy is one of our most important tasks.
We have yet to hear from the top Democrats in Congress, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who remains influential in the party, also has not commented publicly.
While Donald Trump did not mention Hamas specifically, the group is plainly aware that he will soon be the next US president, and in a recently released video, an Israeli-American hostage appealed to Trump to make a deal for his release. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Edward Helmore:
The White House has condemned a Hamas-issued propaganda video of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander urging president-elect Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a deal to free remaining hostages in Gaza, calling it “a cruel reminder of Hamas’s terror against citizens of multiple countries, including our own”.
In the video, titled “Soon … Time is running out” and posted on Saturday on the Telegram channel of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, Alexander calls on Trump to use his “influence and the full power of the United States to negotiate for our freedom”.
Alexander, who has been held by Hamas since 7 October 2023, appears to be under duress as he states that he has been held captive for more than 420 days.
“Please do not make the mistake Biden has been doing,” he says, adding that he does not want to “end up dead like my fellow USA citizen, Hersh”, a reference to American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg Polin, who was killed while being held by Hamas in August.
Alexander’s family authorized the release of the video, which includes footage of the young captive covering his face with his hands and crying.
Trump demands release of Middle East hostages before he takes office, or 'there will be ALL HELL TO PAY'
Donald Trump has issued a vague threat to groups who have taken hostages in the Middle East, telling them, to release their captives before his inauguration or else “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY”.
The message, posted on Truth Social, follows news that Omer Neutra, a US-Israeli citizen believed to be taken captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, has been dead since the 7 October attack. Dozens of other hostages, a small number of whom have US citizenship, are believed to remain the group’s captivity.
Here’s what Trump wrote, on Truth:
Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East - But it’s all talk, and no action! Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!
Raskin seeks judiciary committee leadership role
Jamie Raskin, the Maryland congressman and long-time critic of Donald Trump, is seeking to become the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, CNN reports.
The network said it obtained a letter from Raskin declaring his intention to challenge New York representative Jerry Nadler for the role as ranking member, setting up what it calls an “intraparty fight”.
Raskin wrote that he had spent a week consulting colleagues and “engaging in serious introspection” about running for the senior committee role:
This is where we will wage our front-line defense of the freedoms and rights of the people, the integrity of the Department of Justice and the FBI, and the security of our most precious birthright possessions: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the rule of law, and democracy itself.
The New Yorker has published details from a “previously undisclosed whistleblower report” that allegedly led to the departure of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, from two veterans’ advocacy groups.
The Fox News host faced “serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct” that saw him forced to step down from Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), two nonprofits he ran.
A “trail of documents” includes claims Hegseth was “repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity – to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events”, during his 2013-2016 presidency of the CVA, the New Yorker reported.
Under Hegseth’s leadership, the seven-page report alleges, the organization became a “hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her” at a Louisiana strip club.
Tim Parlatore, an attorney for Hegseth, told the magazine the claims were “outlandish” and fueled by a “petty and jealous disgruntled former associate”.
Read my colleague Jessica Glenza’s story here:
Biden arrives in Angola to tout US investments
Joe Biden, aboard Air Force One, has landed in Luanda for a two-day visit to Angola, Reuters reports. It is his first and only trip to the African continent as US president.
He will deliver remarks at the National Slavery Museum in Luanda and travel to the port city of Lobito to highlight US investments in the region, the news agency said.
Joe and Jill Biden say they are “devastated and outraged” by the reported death of American-Israeli soldier Omer Neutra, who was thought to have been a hostage in Gaza but who is now feared to have died in the Hamas terrorist attack on 7 October 2023.
In a White House statement Monday, the president and first lady said Neutra, a Long Island native and Israeli Defense Forces tank commander who was 21 on the day of the attack, had planned to return to the US for college, and was dedicated “to building peace”:
Less than a month ago, Omer’s mother and father joined me at the White House to share the pain they’ve endured as they prayed for the safe return of their son – pain no parent should ever know. They told me how Omer’s grandparents were Holocaust survivors and how their family’s strength and resilience has been carried through the generations.
During this dark hour – as our nation joins Omer’s parents, brother, and family in grieving this tragic loss – we pray to find strength and resilience. And to all the families of those still held hostage: We see you. We are with you. And I will not stop working to bring your loved ones back home where they belong.
The day so far
Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden, who pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges and was convicted of firearms charges, has attracted condemnation from his Republican adversaries and even from some Democrats. The White House defended the move, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying “it was not an easy decision to make”, and that Biden still has confidence in the justice department even after he said his son was a victim of “selective prosecution”. The president is en route to Angola as he makes the first visit by a US president to sub-Saharan Africa since 2015.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
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Jean-Pierre said Biden will announce more pardons and grants of clemency in the final weeks before he leaves office.
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Some Democrats have defended Biden’s pardon of his son, including New Jersey congressman Josh Gottheimer.
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Legal experts said the Biden’s pardon of his son was unusual in its scope, and comparable only to the pardon former president Gerald Ford gave to his predecessor, Richard Nixon.
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