Federal judge accuses President Biden of trying to 'rewrite history' with pardon

The Los Angeles federal judge who presided over Hunter Biden's trial for tax evasion blasted President Joe Biden for the pardon of his son, accusing him of trying to "rewrite history."

U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi of Los Angeles, an appointee of President Donald Trump who took office in 2020, took aim at Joe Biden's press release announcing the pardon, in which he stated that the pursuit of his son was politically motivated.

"There has been an effort to break Hunter - who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution," the president wrote in Sunday's statement accompanying the pardon. "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."

Scarsi, however, said two federal judges - including him - rejected arguments by Hunter Biden's attorneys that he was being prosecuted because of his father. He also contested the facts in Biden's statement as well as what he said were attacks on the U.S. Department of Justice and prosecutors in his own administration.

"In the President's estimation, this legion of federal civil servants, the undersigned included, are unreasonable people," Scarsi wrote.

""The Constitution provides the President with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history," he wrote.

Scarsi also quibbled with the fact that the language of the pardon includes Sunday, Dec. 1 when it was signed that day and cannot include any prospective conduct.

The judge's attack on the president is an unusual move and unlikely, as Scarsi acknowledged, to affect the conclusion of the criminal case. U.S. v. Biden, 23-CR-00599 (C.D. Cal., filed Dec. 7, 2023).

A Biden spokesperson could not be reached for comment Tuesday night. In his Sunday statement, he wrote: "I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice - and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further."