David C. Weiss, the special counsel who spent years investigating Hunter Biden, criticized President Biden for making “baseless accusations” about his inquiry that threatened “the integrity of the justice system as a whole” in a final report made public on Monday.
“The president’s characterizations are incorrect based on the facts in this case, and on a more fundamental level, they are wrong,” Mr. Weiss wrote.
His inquiry had been a subject of fierce debate until the president issued a broad pardon that ended the case against his son, saying that the prosecution was the result of “raw politics.”
A jury in Wilmington, Del., found Hunter Biden guilty of three felony counts last June for lying on a federal firearms application. He also pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in Los Angeles in September for falsifying records and failing to file returns. The time span of his tax crimes included both a period when he was addicted to crack cocaine and after he became sober.
In his report, Mr. Weiss pushed back against criticism, largely from Democrats, that the case against Mr. Biden was unwarranted or tainted by political motives.
The report acted as a pointed rejoinder to the president. Mr. Weiss, citing judicial rulings that found that the case had been fairly brought, used his final words on the long-running investigation to defend his work and denounce the president’s characterizations.
“Politicians who attack the decisions of career prosecutors as politically motivated when they disagree with the outcome of a case undermine the public’s confidence in our criminal justice system,” Mr. Weiss’s report said. “The president’s statements unfairly impugn the integrity not only of Department of Justice personnel, but all of the public servants making these difficult decisions in good faith.”
Past special counsels have issued thick reports running hundreds of pages. Technically, Mr. Weiss’s final document is more than 200 pages, but the vast majority of that is appendices containing previously public court documents. The actual findings of Mr. Weiss’s report are contained in a brief 27 pages.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Hunter Biden criticized the special counsel’s investigation.
“Like all his court filings, David Weiss’s 27-page report continues to ignore some of the major mysteries of his seven-year investigation,” said the lawyer, Abbe Lowell, adding that “what is clear from this report is that the investigation into Hunter Biden is a cautionary tale of the abuse of prosecutorial power.”
The release comes amid a much more contentious 11th-hour legal fight over the publication of a report by Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed two indictments against Donald J. Trump, only for both to collapse in part because of Mr. Trump’s 2024 election victory.
Mr. Weiss’s time as special counsel began after he had already investigated Hunter Biden for several years on tax, finance and foreign lobbying issues. The two sides briefly struck a plea deal, but the unusual nature of the agreement — in addition to the government’s unwillingness to promise that the investigation would end with the deal — resulted in its collapse in July 2023.
The failed plea led Mr. Weiss to seek and receive an appointment as special counsel, allowing him to file indictments against the president’s son in two jurisdictions — related to lying on a gun purchase form in Delaware, and the tax charges in Los Angeles.
Mr. Biden pardoned his son in December while he was awaiting sentencing in both cases. The president not only absolved him of the convictions, but also gave him a sweeping pardon for any potential crimes covering a period of more than 10 years.
In doing so, the president said his son’s case had been infected with politics, a claim that angered Mr. Weiss and the Justice Department, particularly because the president had for years asserted that the case had been handled independently.
Because the presidential pardon had effectively ruled out any such analysis, the report said, Mr. Weiss reached no conclusions about the possibility that Hunter Biden had committed other crimes.
The younger Mr. Biden’s legal team had long argued that criminal charges were unwarranted, in part because for some of the period at issue, he was in the throes of drug addiction. They also argued that similar conduct by other people had not generally led to federal charges, and that Hunter Biden became a target of opportunity for Republicans who strong-armed the Justice Department into pursuing criminal cases.
Mr. Weiss said his prosecutions were warranted based on the facts and the law.
“I considered his struggles with addiction and his choice to file false returns after he became sober,” the special counsel wrote. “And although Mr. Biden may have entered into a loan agreement with the personal friend who paid his taxes, there was no evidence that Mr. Biden repaid any of those funds.”
Mr. Weiss also indicted and won a guilty plea from another man, Alexander Smirnov, for lying to the F.B.I. during the 2020 election period by falsely claiming knowledge of corrupt payments to the father and son. Mr. Smirnov, a longtime F.B.I. informant, had claimed that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Hunter Biden $5 million each around 2015 — an accusation that was trumpeted by congressional Republicans.
