President Biden was adamant that his son “Hunter was treated differently” when he broke his public pledge and issued a rare sweeping pardon spanning almost 11 years for his troubled son late Sunday.
But the 54-year-old is far from the only one to have been charged with similar firearm and tax evasion crimes.
Several legal experts believe that he already received favorable treatment than others who have committed comparable transgressions.
Here are other cases where famous defendants served prison time for their offenses.
Darryl De Sousa
Former Baltimore police commissioner Darryl De Sousa spent 10 months in jail after being accused of skipping out on some $67,000 in taxes.
Hunter, by contrast, admitted to failing to pay $1.4 million to the IRS.
De Sousa, who had grown up in a poor household in Queens, New York, decried the pardon as a slap in the face.
“It’s unfair. It’s unfortunate,” he lamented to The Post. “The first thing that came to my mind is this two-tiered justice system that exists. It has always existed, and I don’t think it’s ever going to go away.”
“Those who are in power and privilege, that come from established communities., vs. those who come from historically underserved communities, are going to be at the opposite end of that.”
De Sousa recounted experiencing that “two-tiered” system firsthand while patrolling the streets of Baltimore for almost three decades.
“The message that I really would like everyone to know is that the criminal justice system is in dire need of reform,” he added before shifting gears to Hunter Biden’s situation and expressing some sympathy.
“[The two cases] should be treated differently. But I have never walked heel to toe in Hunter Biden’s shoes, with his addiction,” he added. “The pardon, I don’t agree to that. There needs to be some consequences.”
As for his own tax evasion, De Sousa says there is “no excuse” and he takes “full responsibility” and pinned the blame on negligence.
“I put my job first and that was it,” he reflected. “I neglected myself. I neglected my personal responsibilities in life, almost to the point of forgetting about my health.”
Notably, prosecutors Leo Wise and Derek Hines, who argued the firearm case against Hunter Biden in June, also prosecuted the case against De Sousa.
De Sousa’s charges stemmed from 2013 through 2015. Ultimately, he was forced to resign as Baltimore police commissioner following the 2019 indictment.
Rapper Kodak Black
Roughly five years ago, Rapper Kodak Black was sentenced to 46 months behind bars at the age of 22 for writing down a wrong Social Security number in his application to purchase three guns.
Prosecutors alleged the “Bodak Yellow” rapper was trying to hide his criminal record, which made it illegal for him to own firearms.
Hunter Biden was similarly precluded from purchasing the .38-caliber revolver he bought on Oct. 12, 2018, but lied a form to purchase it anyway, a jury concluded back in June.
Black’s attorney had previously railed against a plea agreement the first son was set to receive last year, which ultimately imploded.
“2 tiers of justice? Kodak was charged for the same crime. Got over three years. Mr. Biden will not serve a day. Feels right? Do FBI agents and federal authorities take cases personally?” Black’s attorney Bradford Cohen vented last year when the Biden scion appeared poised to get off on a plea deal.
“After 26 years, I have yet to have a plea in a case with an illegal possession of a weapon and tax evasion, that did not come with some kind of prison sentence. Indigents charged the same way would be getting jail time,” Cohen wrote in a post on X.
“Even in the case of paying off coaches to get their kids into college came with a prison sentence. One even got 2 weeks, even though she was scoring no jail time. The system was so petty that they made her surrender to a federal prison for 2 weeks! But in this case nothing,” he added.
Ultimately, President-elect Donald Trump pardoned Black on the last day of his first term.
Wesley Snipes
Actor Wesley Snipes, famous for roles such in flicks like “Blade” and “Demolition” was convicted on three counts of tax evasion in 2008 for bilking Uncle Sam on taxes of up to $15 million.
Snipes was later sentenced to three years in prison, though he had been acquitted of felony charges of filing a false claim conspiracy to defraud the government.
The actor had claimed that he was “a non-resident alien” of the US despite being a citizen by birth and the IRS said he owed taxes between 1999 through 2004. Ultimately, he served 28 months in federal prison and the rest on house arrest.
Hunter Biden’s defense team has stressed that he ultimately “fully paid his past-due taxes with interest and penalties in 2021.” The Biden scion managed to pay back those taxes with assistance from his so-called “sugar brother” Kevin Morris.
“As a criminal tax lawyer for a near quarter-century, I confirm how rare & extraordinary the #HunterBiden plea deal is. Indeed, the deal violates DOJ tax official policy, where Biden’s DOJ prohibit prosecutors from even offering this deal to people who did far less than Hunter,” Snipes’ attorney Robert Barnes previously wrote on X last year around the time of the Biden scion’s doomed plea deal.
Mike ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino
Gym, Tan, Laundry and … Prison.
Five years ago, “Jersey Shore” star Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino served out an eight-month sentence for skirting $2.3 million in taxes over a five-year stretch.
His older brother, Marc, was similarly forced to serve out a 24-month prison stint for skimping on $8.9 million in taxes.
Despite the similarities between the two cases, Sorrentino refrained from comparing himself to the Biden scion when asked by Fox News last year.
“I’ll be honest with you, I really can’t compare us; we live two different lives,” the reality star told the network. “I wouldn’t be the man I am today if I didn’t make those mistakes. But again, I can’t compare myself to another man.”
Sorrentino claimed that he was “very high” when pressed about taxes after seeing a sudden rise in his wealth.
“That one decision haunted me for 15 years,” he reflected.
Conservatives agree Hunter was treated differently…
Conservative critics contend that President Biden, 82, was correct in saying that “Hunter was treated differently,” but they split sharply from him in their assessment of why.
“During his campaign for president, President-elect Trump frequently spoke about the two-tiered justice system in America. Highlighting this unequal system has been a central focus of my work as a United States Congressman and as a member of the House Judiciary Committee,” Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) told The Post.
“Joe Biden claimed that no one is above the law. We now know that not only is this statement untrue, but that no one is more above the law than those with the last name Biden.”
Mike Davis, the founder of the Article III Project, a conservative legal group that targets what it describes as “lawfare,” estimated that about 97% of cases involving the gun charges Hunter Biden faced result in prison time.
“Hunter Biden was certainly treated differently. Almost all other defendants charged with these gun crimes go to prison,” Davis told The Post.
Defense attorneys for Hunter Biden have argued that many of those cases involved individuals with prior convictions or who purchases multiple weapons. The 54-year-old budding artist had that Colt Cobra handgun for about 11 days before his sister-in-law-turned-lover threw it in a public trash can.
“Moreover, the Biden Justice Department protected Hunter Biden from much more serious foreign corruption charges for years because those charges would implicate Joe Biden,” Davis added.
Republican lawmakers in Congress had wanted more scrutiny over Hunter Biden’s dealings in foreign countries amid concerns that he failed to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which could implicate his father.
“They prosecuted him on the least that they could have, and he’s complaining about that,” Judicial Watch chief Tom Fitton told The Post. “There was money laundering, the Foreign Agents Registration Act and they came up with the most narrow set of charges.”
Others have faced prison time for FARA violations. Former Trump 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort, 75, was sentenced to 60 months for failure to register with the Justice Department about his work for a Ukrainian political party. Last year, Gul Luft was slapped with federal charges for working as an unregistered lobbyist for China, among other infractions.
Luft had been a witness in Republicans’ probe of the Biden family business dealings.
Ironically, President Biden had echoed some of Trump’s grievances with the justice system and issued a defacto rebuke of the DOJ under his Attorney General Merrick Garland in his statement on the pardon.
“It is clear that Hunter was treated differently,” the lame duck president said. “The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election.”
“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. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me,” he added. “Enough is enough.”
The pardon came after the Biden family huddled in Nantucket for Thanksgiving.
