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It is unusual for judges to respond to political attacks or to correct the public record in controversial cases. Judge Mark Scarsi has now done so with a blistering response to the big lies of President Biden in the statement that preceded Biden’s pardon of Hunter Biden. The White House has posted the text of the statement and pardon online.

Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to the charges against him in the criminal tax evasion case before Judge Scarsi. Last night Judge Scarsi entered a Notice Re: Order of pardon. At pages 2-3 of the order, Judge Scarsi corrects President Biden’s account of the facts underlying the pardon (citations omitted):

[T]he President asserts that Mr. Biden “was treated differently” from others “who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions,” implying that Mr. Biden was among those individuals who untimely paid taxes due to addiction. But he is not. In his pretrial filings, Mr. Biden represented that he “was severely addicted to alcohol and drugs” “through May 2019.” Upon pleading guilty to the charges in this case, Mr. Biden 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. And Mr. Biden 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 “spen[d] large sums to maintain his lifestyle” in 2020. According to the President, “[n]o reasonable person who looks at the facts of [Mr. Biden’s] cases can reach any other conclusion than [Mr. Biden] was singled out only because he is [the President’s] son.” But two federal judges expressly rejected Mr. Biden’s arguments that the Government prosecuted Mr. Biden because of his familial relation to the President. And the President’s own Attorney General and Department of Justice personnel oversaw the investigation leading to the charges. In the President’s estimation, this legion of federal civil servants, the undersigned included, are unreasonable people.

Judge Scarsi is not amused by Biden’s submission of a press release in lieu of the pardon itself:

In short, a press release is not a pardon. The Constitution provides the President with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 1, but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history.

James Lynch has more here at NR. Judge Scarsi’s conclusion on the limitation of Biden’s power deserves to be memorialized in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.