Hunter Biden charges were 'thorough and impartial,' prosecutor says in report

WASHINGTON - There's more insight into the legal trouble that plagued Hunter Biden after the special counsel who prosecuted the case released a new report. 

What they're saying:

The criminal charges against Hunter Biden "were the culmination of thorough, impartial investigations, not partisan politics," the prosecutor who led the probes said in a report released Monday that criticized President Joe Biden for having maligned the Justice Department when he pardoned his son.

"Other presidents have pardoned family members, but in doing so, none have taken the occasion as an opportunity to malign the public servants at the Department of Justice based solely on false accusations," said the report from David Weiss, whose team filed gun and tax charges against the younger Biden that resulted in felony convictions that were subsequently wiped away by a presidential pardon.

"These baseless accusations have no merit and repeating them threatens the integrity of the justice system as a whole," Weiss said.

RELATED: Biden pardons son Hunter’s gun, tax charges

He also noted, "The president’s characterizations are incorrect based on the facts in this case, and, on a more fundamental level, they are wrong."

Dig deeper:

The report is the culmination of years-long investigations into Hunter Biden that predated the arrival of Attorney General Merrick Garland but became among the most politically explosive inquiries of his entire tenure, capturing Republican fascination on Capitol Hill and ultimately producing a fissure between the Justice Department and the White House.

Weiss defended his team's work in the report and scolded Biden for questioning the integrity of the criminal cases in a November statement in which the president announced the pardon, when he said he believed his son had been treated "differently" on account of his last name.

The backstory:

 President Joe Biden had pardoned his son, sparing the younger Biden a possible prison sentence for federal felony gun and tax convictions and reversing his past promises not to use the extraordinary powers of the presidency for the benefit of his family.

Hunter Biden was convicted in June in Delaware federal court of three felonies for purchasing a gun in 2018 when, prosecutors said, he lied on a federal form by claiming he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.

He had been set to stand trial in September in the California case accusing him of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. But he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges in a surprise move hours after jury selection was set to begin.

Hunter Biden said he was pleading guilty in that case to spare his family more pain and embarrassment after the gun trial aired salacious details about his struggles with a crack cocaine addiction.

The tax charges carry up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible he would have avoided prison time entirely.

Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced this month in the two federal cases, which the special counsel brought after a plea deal with prosecutors that likely would have spared him prison time fell apart under scrutiny by a judge.