The Department of Justice has released the latest report from special counsel David Weiss outlining his research That included President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, which led to the younger Biden’s felony convictions on tax and gun charges that were thrown out after the president granted a sweeping pardon last month.
The report, more than 200 pages long, encapsulates a years-long and politically astute probe that remains a seemingly endless source of fodder for President Biden’s political opponents in Congress and elsewhere. Weiss’ prosecutors looked into Hunter Biden’s years of drug and alcohol abuse, controversial foreign business dealings and his acquisition of a gun in 2018.
Weiss’ work culminated in the two criminal convictions of Hunter Biden, who cleared his father. broad apology in early December, a few weeks after Election Day. In July 2024, Weiss’s office obtained a guilty verdict from a Delaware jury on three felony weapons charges, and a month later, on the eve of trial, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to numerous tax crimes, including six felonies.
Federal investigators began looking into the younger Biden’s taxes in 2018, before his father’s successful bid for the presidency. That probe included an examination of foreign businesses in China, Ukraine and elsewhere, ABC News previously reported.
In the summer of 2023, prosecutors in Weiss’ office struck a deal with Hunter Biden that allowed him to plead guilty to a pair of tax-related offenses and avoid prosecution for a weapons charge.
But that deal fell apart under questioning by a federal judge — and within months, Weiss secured a special counsel from Attorney General Merrick Garland and filed charges in both cases.
During his research, Weiss was one of those rare political figures who attracted scrutiny from across the political spectrum. Republicans loyal to Donald Trump accused him of not bringing serious and more prominent charges against the Biden family, while Democrats alleged that a GOP-led pressure campaign influenced Weiss’ prosecution decisions.
Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, arrives for his arraignment at the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building in Wilmington, Del., June 7, 2024.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
When President Biden pardoned Hunter Biden in early December, he said the investigation into his son has been “tainted by gross politics.”
“No reasonable person looking at Hunter’s cases can come to the conclusion that Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” Biden wrote.
Sentencing in both cases was scheduled to take place within weeks of President Biden’s pardon, with Hunter Biden facing years in prison and more than $1 million in fines.
Weiss also filed a third successful case against a former FBI informant who pleaded guilty to lying about Biden’s business dealings. A federal judge last week sentenced former whistleblower Alexander Smirnov to six years in prison.
