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Dec. 14, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
49:15
Poor, Poor Hunter Biden
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Yesterday, Hunter Biden announced that he would be avoiding a subpoena by the House Oversight Committee.
The Republicans on that committee wanted to ask Hunter about his business relationships with Dad Joe.
Hunter is currently under indictment for nine charges related to tax evasion, all based on unreported income and spending from his lucrative years as his dad's alleged bagman.
Republicans voted last night to formally open an impeachment inquiry, which presumably gives them some sort of greater subpoena power.
So yesterday, Hunter showed up in Washington, D.C.
to grandstand.
He began by announcing that Hunter Biden was the real victim, a victim of Republican MAGA cruelty.
Hunter Biden, according to his father, the media, and wait for it, Hunter Biden, is the victim.
In fact, Hunter Biden is the greatest victim.
Were it not for Hunter Biden's last name, he wouldn't be prosecuted for gun charges and tax evasion of over a million dollars.
Were it not for his last name, he wouldn't be dragged before Congress to talk about his business.
Here he was yesterday.
For six years, MAGA Republicans, including members of the House committees who are in a closed-door session right now, have impugned my character, invaded my privacy, attacked my wife, My children, my family, and my friends.
They have ridiculed my struggle with addiction, they have belittled my recovery, and they have tried to dehumanize me, all to embarrass and damage my father, who has devoted his entire public life to service.
So, um, we impugned his character.
He didn't impugn his own character by spending, you know, $800,000 on sex workers.
We impugned his character.
We impugned his children.
I mean, other than the child that he refuses to support with child support and refuses to give his last name.
We made fun of his addiction, you know, because he put pictures of himself on his computer and then wrote in his memoir about how he snorted Parmesan cheese off a carpet, which is inherently hilarious.
We dehumanized his recovery because, of course, he finger paints for recovery and then sells those paintings for half a million dollars to his dad's business donors.
And we've dehumanized him.
I mean, that's the worst thing of all.
Of course, were it not for Hunter Biden's last name, he would also likely be a homeless drug addict without a penny to his name, unpaid child support, and no life prospects at all.
As Hunter once admitted, his last name was gold to foreign investors.
His word, gold.
Hunter once said his father's job, quote, opened doors that wouldn't be opened up to other people.
Hunter, by the way, is not the only member of the Biden family who feels that way.
Jim Biden, Joe's brother, told potential business partners, quote, we've got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.
Frank, Joe's other brother, called the Biden name a, quote, tremendous asset for business.
Val, his sister, says, quote, I had a better seat at the table because my brother is at the head of the table.
Hunter Biden is not a victim.
He is anything but a victim.
But according to Hunter, a man who, again, tried to disown his own daughter, fathered while he was a drug-addled derelict, and who urged his father to do the same to his granddaughter, all while he spent nearly a million dollars on prostitutes and drugs, the whole debacle surrounding Hunter and his dad, according to Hunter Biden, is a winch hunt.
Here we go.
There is no fairness or decency in what these Republicans are doing.
They have lied, over and over, about every aspect of my personal and professional life.
So much so, that their lies have become the false facts believed by too many people.
No matter how many times it is debunked, they continue to insist that my father's support of Ukraine against Russia is the result of a non-existent bribe.
They displayed naked photos of me during an oversight hearing.
And they have taken the light of my dad's love.
The light of my dad's love for me and presented it as darkness.
So a few things on that one.
First, he suggests that Republicans are saying that Joe Biden is supporting Ukraine against Russia because of Burisma or something.
No, that's actually not even the accusation.
Then he suggests that Republicans showed a photo of him nude.
He'd be talking there about Marjorie Taylor Greene in a House hearing where she was talking about the fact that Hunter and his daddy lied about the provenance of the laptop on which Hunter Biden had placed such photos.
But here's the bigger point.
When he says that Republicans have turned his dad's love for him into darkness, sometimes love can turn into darkness.
Like, say, when your powerful father uses his power in order to clear millions of dollars for his family, using you as the family bag man, even knowing that giving you access to the family credit card allows you to fund your sex and drug addictions.
Putting aside the seamy personal situation of the Biden family, however, what we really have here is a pretty cut and dried corruption case.
Yesterday, Hunter claimed that his father was not financially involved in his business.
Note the words, financially involved in his business.
Let me state as clearly as I can.
My father was not financially involved in my business, not as a practicing lawyer.
Not as a board member of Burisma.
Not in my partnership with a Chinese private businessman.
Not in my investments at home nor abroad.
And certainly not as an artist.
Well, that is some pretty careful wording right there.
Financially involved.
Not totally involved.
Not involved in my business at all.
Financially involved.
As in, didn't sign checks on behalf of the business.
Wasn't an executive.
Didn't fund it himself.
Wasn't doing the 1040s.
But how about whether Joe was involved at all in Hunter's business?
Well, obviously, Joe was.
He always has been.
In reality, Hunter Biden has never in his life held a job unconnected to his father or to his dad's corruption.
As a Delaware Senator, Joe is very close with the Vice President of MBNA, which just happens to be the biggest bank in Delaware.
MBNA hired Hunter to a management training post.
After Hunter left MBNA, Hunter got a job with the Clinton Department of Commerce.
Then he went to work as a lobbyist for a former Biden campaign staffer named William Oldaker.
During that time, MBNA paid Hunter $100,000 a year.
MBNA, for what it's worth, made bank.
While they pushed Hunter's career, according to the American Spectator, by 1998, that bank had become, quote, the second largest issuer of Visa and MasterCards in the country.
Some analysts believed it would eventually overtake Citicorp to become the nation's biggest credit card bank.
How convenient.
Hunter's lobbying work earned him huge bucks.
As per the New Yorker, quote, an informal arrangement was established.
Biden wouldn't ask Hunter about his lobbying clients, and Hunter wouldn't tell his father about them.
It wasn't like we all sat down and agreed on it.
It came naturally, Hunter said.
Hunter has been clearing family money for years on the back of Joe Biden's position.
As he texted his own daughter in January 2019, quote, I hope you can all do what I did and pay for everything for
this entire family for 30 years.
It's really hard, but don't worry.
Unlike pop, I won't make you give me half your salary.
In just a second, we'll continue detailing exactly why people are so suspicious of the Hunter
Joe connection.
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Okay, back to why exactly people are so suspicious of Hunter and Joe.
Why impeachment inquiry has been opened here?
Why Hunter's not a victim?
Well, in 2013, Hunter Biden joined with Chinese investors to create a company called Bohai Harvest RST, Equity Investment Management Company Limited.
Very long name.
BHR for short.
That investment fund was controlled by the Bank of China.
The very next month, Joe Biden brought Hunter with him on Air Force Two to Beijing, where Hunter and Joe met the CEO of BHR, one Jonathan Lee.
The business license in China for the new corporation was quickly approved, and Hunter joined the board.
In May 2014, Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas and oil company, announced that Hunter Biden would join its board of directors.
Joe Biden was overseeing Ukrainian policy for the White House at the time.
In March 2015, Hunter organized a business dinner in Washington, D.C., and Joe stopped by to meet a high-level Burisma official, Fadim Persharsky.
Later that year, in November, Persharsky suggested U.S.
officials should visit Ukraine and talk with Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, as well as President Petro Poroshenko, about Shokin's investigations into the CEO of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky.
Very same month, Amos Hochstein, Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs in the Obama White House, met with Hunter to talk about Burisma.
Five days after that, he met with Joe in the West Wing.
The next day, he called Hunter again.
The month after that, Joe hosted a party attended by both Hochstein and Hunter.
In December 2015, Joe Biden went to Ukraine, where he demanded that Viktor Shokin be fired and threatened to withdraw $1 billion in IMF loans if he was not.
Two days later, Poroshenko acquiesced and committed to firing Shokin.
During this very time, a confidential human source later told the FBI, Burisma CFO Vadim Porzharsky said he had hired Hunter Biden to, quote, protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.
A month or two later, the source said, Zlochevsky dismissed any threats from Shokin as easily solved, saying, quote, don't worry, Hunter will take care of all those issues through his dad.
According to that confidential human source, Zlochevsky also said it cost $5 million to pay one Biden and $5 million to, quote, pay another Biden.
Who could these Bidens be?
In February, Zlochevsky would give Hunter extravagant birthday gifts.
A couple of weeks later, Shokin was fired, and Biden called Poroshenko to personally thank him.
Also during this time, Joe Biden was apparently using a pseudonymous private email address, Robert L. Peters, to email his son Hunter with regards to Ukraine.
Joe was also, according to Hunter's business partner, Devin Archer, routinely called into meetings on the phone, so Hunter could exhibit his ties with Daddy.
Democrats have defended Joe by claiming he called only to talk about the weather, which is exactly what a racketeering head would do in order to demonstrate the viability of connection with power.
I get the mafia boss on the phone.
I'm in a bar.
I say, you need to pay your dues.
I need your fees on the bar right now.
And then I get the mafia.
You want to talk to Joe?
Here's Joe.
Joe says, how's the weather?
Hang up.
That's all you need.
In December 2015, Hunter Biden and CEFC chairman, Yi Zhongming, began communicating regarding a possible U.S.
partnership.
In January 2017, Yi gave Hunter a diamond worth 80 grand.
I don't know about you, the only people that I would ever think about giving a diamond worth that kind of money to, like my wife, maybe.
In March 2017, Yi's company wired $3 million to Robinson Walker, a company owned by a Biden associate, Rob Walker.
That same day, Joe Biden attended a CEFC meeting at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles.
But don't worry, Joe wasn't financially involved in Hunter's business.
Was he involved in Hunter's business?
Yeah, a little.
In May 2017, Hunter's business associates infamously emailed each other about creating a CEFC deal that would include, quote, 10 held by H for the big guy.
It's worth noting that other documentation from a confidential human source also referred to Joe Biden as the big guy with regard to Burisma.
Former Hunter business partner Tony Bobulinski similarly says the big guy referred to Joe.
By July 2017, Hunter was writing to the head of a Chinese company, quote,
I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made
has not been fulfilled. I am very concerned that the chairman has either changed his mind or broken
our deal without telling me or that he is unaware of the promises and assurances that have been made
and have not been kept. Tell the director I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of
hand. And now, said Hunter, means tonight.
And Z gets a call, or text, from anyone involved in this other than Zhang or the chairman.
I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me, that would be Joe, and every person he knows, and my ability to forever hold a grudge, that you will regret not following my direction.
All too often, people mistake kindness for weakness.
And all too often, I am standing over the top of them saying, I warned you.
From this moment until whenever he reaches me.
Okay, my friend, I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.
I sure hope whatever it is you are doing is very, very, very important.
On August 2nd, 2017, Hunter wrote an email explaining that the chairman, presumably Xi Jinping, had now cut a, quote, much more lasting and lucrative arrangement, all caps.
That arrangement was the creation of HudsonWest3, an entity owned 50% by CEFC agent Gong Wendong and 50% by Hunter.
The next day, Hunter told Gong Wendong via WhatsApp, quote, the Bidens are the best I know at doing exactly what the chairman wants from this partnership.
In January of 2019, Hunter's assistant Katie Dodge wrote an email to Biden aide Richard Ruffner saying that Joe had elected to pay Hunter's legal bills, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and including his legal fees for restructuring his JV with the Bank of China.
We know all of this only because Hunter isn't just a bag man for his dad.
He is, as we should all remember, a drug-addled derelict.
We'll get to how we know all of this in just one second and the scandal involved in that.
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Okay, so how do we know about all of this scandalous material?
Well, if you recall, the story broke wide open in mid-October 2020, just before the election, when Hunter's laptop, Hunter, while high as a kite, had left his laptop in a repair shop in Delaware and then never shown up again.
That laptop came into public view.
It contained not just pictures and video of drug use and prostitution, but the contents of those emails and WhatsApp messages.
The whole Biden criminal corruption story was emerging just before the election.
So Biden lied.
And so did members of the Deep State.
And so did the media.
On October 22, 2020, Biden lied right out in open debate.
Joe said, quote, I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.
My son has not made money in terms of the thing about what are you talking about, China?
The only guy who made money in China is Trump.
The American public never got the full story before the election.
That was because the FBI vaguely warned America's largest social media services that the laptop might just be Russian disinformation.
So the social media services actively shut down dissemination of the New York Post's blockbuster story.
Then, hundreds of former pseudo-experts on intelligence signed another letter, false, attesting that the laptop had the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.
Then Joe's campaign suggested it was Russian disinformation too.
All this time, Joe and Hunter and everybody else knew the laptop was real, including the FBI.
All this time, Hunter was also under active criminal investigation by the FBI.
He had been since 2019.
That investigation covered two separate matters.
Hunter's years-long tax evasion and Hunter's false attestation on a gun form that he was not a drug addict.
In 2023, U.S.
Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, a man who'd worked with Beau Biden and had long connections with all the power players in the state of Delaware, announced a deal with Hunter.
It was a sweetheart deal.
Hunter would get no jail time for the tax charges.
He would receive a diversion on the gun charge.
The deal also included a cleverly created proviso to immunize Hunter from all further investigation on his foreign dealings, including possible and obvious violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
That proviso was included in the diversion charge, not the tax charge.
All of this blew up in public view because two IRS whistleblowers came forward saying that the DOJ had attempted to cram through the sweetheart deal in order to avoid implicating Joe.
Not only that, they claimed that Joe Biden's DOJ under Merrick Garland had actually stopped the investigation by refusing Weiss' special counsel status and that the DOJ had pushed through the deal.
The whistleblowers, as it turns out, were right.
According to the New York Times, quote, Mr. Weiss appeared willing to forego any prosecution of Mr. Biden at all.
His office came close to agreeing to end the investigation without requiring a guilty plea on any charges.
But the correspondence reveals that his position, relayed through his staff, changed in the spring, around the time a pair of IRS officials on the case accused the DOJ of hamstringing the investigation.
Now Mr. Weiss suddenly demanded that Biden plead guilty to committing tax offenses.
The deal finally blew up when the judge in Hunter's case refused the plea deal she noted.
It was totally unprecedented.
Then to cover up that debacle, Merrick Garland announced that Weiss would be a special counsel.
You know, just in time to avoid Weiss having to testify before Congress about the sweetheart deal.
Well, now Weiss has finally charged Hunter on nine tax charges.
Hunter will likely go to jail.
But just remember, He's not going to jail because he's a victim.
And there is no way in hell that Joe Biden was ignorant of all of this.
That is why the impeachment inquiry has now been voted on and is gaining steam.
Hunter says it's all about politics, of course.
And as with any political act, politics are, of course, part of the game.
But Hunter also says the impeachment inquiry itself is scurrilous.
Here is Hunter.
And in the depths of my addiction, I was extremely irresponsible with my finances.
But to suggest that as grounds for an impeachment inquiry is beyond the absurd.
It's shameless.
There is no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen.
Well, no, actually.
The only shameless person here is the guy who sells $500,000 finger paintings to his dad's donors, then refuses to pay child support and insists that any settlement involved denying his daughter the right to use the only actual asset the Biden family has.
Joe Biden's family name.
Hunter should be hit with contempt, and he will be hit with contempt.
The only question is how much more information is going to drip out that debunks every last argument Joe Biden has ever made about the innocence of his son and his own ignorance about his son's business arrangements.
Again, the notion that Joe and Hunter were totally disconnected is a lie.
It's obviously untrue.
There's evidence to that effect.
And despite what the media will tell you about how there's no there there, that is not true whatsoever.
It turns out that Joe has nothing to say about any of this.
Here was Joe Biden on all of this.
Ask the press to step out so we can begin our briefing.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And Joe's out.
He will catch you later.
In just one second, we'll get to a weird aspect of Hunter Biden's big announcement that he wasn't going to, you know, walk 10 feet into the building and testify yesterday first.
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So there was a weird moment at the White House yesterday after all of this news broke and Hunter had done his, you're out of order.
Everyone's out of order.
This whole court is out of order.
Al Pacino routine from And Justice For All.
Corinne Jean-Pierre was asked about the fact that Joe Biden had apparently known that Hunter was going to do this.
So that looks an awful lot like obstruction.
If you are subpoenaed, you now have a duty to appear before Congress.
If somebody helps you not appear before Congress, that's kind of obstruction-y.
Here's Corinne Jean-Pierre trying to speak to that.
Did he spend any time watching what his son had to say outside the Capitol?
So a couple of, just a couple of things on that, and I want to be really clear.
Look, Uh, as you know, Hunter Biden is a private citizen.
And so I certainly would refer you to his representatives.
Um, look, you know, um, the president was certainly familiar with what his son was going to say.
And I think what you saw was from the heart.
Again, the attempt to turn what is a corruption scandal into, they're just proud of their son, is really weak.
You've heard me say this.
You've heard the president say this.
When it comes to the president, the first lady, they are proud of him continuing to
rebuild his life.
They are proud of their son.
Again, the attempt to turn what is a corruption scandal into they're just proud of their son
is really weak.
Not only that, she just said out loud that Joe Biden knew full well that Hunter was going
to avoid the subpoena.
So why didn't he just tell him not to avoid the subpoena?
Kind of obstruction-y, is it not?
Apparently, it was not just Joe involved in the sort of obstruction-y behavior.
According to Politico, Hunter Biden pulled off his surprise appearance at the Capitol on Wednesday with the help of a fellow California resident.
Eric Swalwell, yes!
The farting congressman.
The man who was schtipping a Chinese spy.
The Democratic lawmaker confirmed to Politico that he reserved the Senate swamp, a spot mere feet from the Capitol that often hosts press conferences, for Hunter Biden's dramatic remarks.
TV cameras spotted Swalwell beside the president's son as Hunter sought to go on offense against the House GOP.
But apparently, it's not just that he helped set this whole thing up.
Apparently, he also helped coordinate with the White House on this.
One person who knew about the sudden appearance, the President himself.
Two people familiar with Wednesday's morning events told Politico that Hunter Biden notified Joe of his plans.
Again, kind of obstruction-y, I'm noticing.
Weirdly obstruction-y.
The Republicans, of course, are fighting mad about it.
Representative Chip Roy of Texas went after Hunter Biden yesterday.
He said an important word.
He said his dad didn't have any involvement financially.
That's right.
Right?
He didn't say it was a blanket, you know, that he wasn't involved.
That's really important.
Hunter Biden is basically an ongoing domino fall of stupid decisions and stupid statements.
And we're seeing that right here, going to the Capitol and saying his dad wasn't involved in financial dealings.
We'll see if that's true, but that is a big tell to me.
We all know that his dad was involved in enriching Hunter.
We all know that foreign entities were sending millions of dollars to them.
We know from whistleblower testimony that they were slow walking the IRS from being able to go after the investigation in 2014 and 2015.
We know these things to be true, so we're going to have an inquiry today.
We'll seek the truth.
We've been having to do all of the work the Department of Justice refuses to do.
And look, we can also hold him in contempt, if that's what we need to do in the House of Representatives, and then see where this process goes.
Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, who's been leading this entire investigation, he says we do expect Hunter Biden to comply.
That we expect him to come in and be deposed.
This is a normal process in an investigation.
This has been a serious, credible, transparent investigation from day one.
We've published four bank memorandums.
We've had countless press conferences.
This is an investigation about public corruption at the highest level.
We have accumulated mountains of evidence that's concerning to an overwhelming majority of Americans.
We have specific questions in there, and I think we're going to allow you in there to see the piles and piles of documents, of bank statements, of emails, of text messages that we've worked very hard on in this committee over the last eight or nine months.
We expect to depose the President's son, and then we will be more than happy to have a public hearing with him.
Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who's on both the Judiciary and the Oversight Committees, he says, listen, if he's not going to show up, we'll hold him in contempt.
What we want is the facts.
And the way you get the facts in every single investigation I've been involved in is you bring people in for an interview behind closed doors where you can get those facts.
And then, as the chairman said, we'd love for him to come public.
Finally, I would say this.
Mr. Biden's counsel and the White House have both argued that the reason he couldn't come for a deposition was because there wasn't a formal vote for an impeachment inquiry.
Well, that's going to happen in a few hours.
We think it's going to pass.
We think the House of Representatives will go on record with the power that solely resides in the House to say we are in an official impeachment inquiry phase of our oversight.
And when that happens, we'll see what their excuse is then.
They should have been here today, but once we take that vote, we expect him to come in for his interview, for his deposition.
And frankly, we'll also, I think, look at contempt proceedings as we move forward.
So just for the facts, the reality is that contempt of Congress doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot.
You have criminal contempt, where you actually have to file charges with the DOJ.
The DOJ has to decide whether to go forward with those charges.
You have civil contempt, in which you can ask the judicial branch to enforce a congressional subpoena, but that takes a while.
And then you have inherent contempt, which is where you actually send the House or Senate sergeants-at-arms to detain and imprison somebody, which has really never been used.
So it's sort of an empty threat.
But again, this is the game.
And let's be real about this.
There are two aspects.
One is the actual corruption of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and the fact that a lot of this stuff was taking place.
These relationships were being formed, promises were being made while Hunter Biden's dad was vice president of the United States under Barack Obama.
And a lot of the manipulative cover-up was happening while his dad was actually president.
And it was the DOJ doing that manipulative cover-up with those sweetheart deals.
But there's another aspect to this too.
And that is the Democrats opened this can.
They opened this can.
And now the can is open.
Democrats impeached Donald Trump not once, but twice.
And they did it on the basis of no criminality.
They did not even allege criminality in their impeachment proceedings.
They opened inquiries over a phone call that he had with Vladimir Zelensky with regard, actually specifically and weirdly, to an investigation by the Ukrainians into the corruption of Burisma.
Turns out that corruption, fairly obviously, is real.
So that is number one.
And then number two was over January 6th, where no criminal charges were actually alleged by the members of the House Impeachment Committee.
And so, once that can was open, the notion that Republicans were not going to use that against Joe Biden is insane.
When you impeach somebody not once, but twice, and when you threaten to impeach them on day one, which is what Democrats did the minute that Donald Trump entered office, it was only a matter of time until Republicans opened an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
And one of two things will happen.
Either mutually assured destruction will be restored, in which case both parties go, listen, we can't keep impeaching each other's presidents.
We really can't.
Or it'll be like this all the way until the end of time.
And if it's like this, I suppose it's like this.
Doesn't seem like the end of the world to me, frankly.
Investigations, subpoenas, presidents being held under the gun.
All right, I mean, if this is the world the Democrats chose for all of us to live in, I guess I can live with that.
Don't threaten me with a good dime.
Meanwhile, Democrats are really upset about all of this.
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, she has her lines to read, and she reads them with passion and lots of hand motions.
She says the Biden impeachment inquiry is an exercise in futility.
I'm certainly glad that someone informed her what that phrase means.
Their own witness, their own Republican witness said that there are, from what he has seen, there are not grounds for an impeachment inquiry or rather frankly impeachment in general of President Biden.
But that has not deterred the Republican side from continuing to try to force through a completely groundless and unsubstantiated, I won't even call it an investigation, I'll just call it an exercise in futility.
Wow, she's very upset, and she's a very serious legal scholar.
Wow.
I'm so impressed.
I'm so impressed.
It would only be better if she were wearing her smart people glasses that she sometimes puts on in committee hearings to look like not an idiot.
Meanwhile, Representative Dan Goldman, he's doing the same routine.
They just don't have the facts.
They don't have the facts.
I don't know why they decided to do a joint appearance, Dan Goldman and Jared Moskowitz, on MSNBC, but this looks like an outtake from Waiting for Godot, but like a really bad production.
I mean, this is weird gasping.
Here we go.
This is a bogus sham impeachment with no evidence whatsoever.
And the notion that they're going to move forward for some sort of procedural reason is completely bunk.
The Biden administration has been way more cooperative than they need to be and certainly far more cooperative than Donald Trump was when he provided zero documents to the congressional impeachment inquiry in 2019.
The administration has provided witnesses, 100,000 and more documents.
The problem here is not that they don't have the materials.
The problem here is that they don't have any facts to support their allegations of
any wrongdoing by President Biden.
Remember, Dan Goldman was one of the lead lawyers in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump.
Turnabout is fair play.
Democrats, naturally, are now suggesting that any attempt to impeach Biden is insurrection-y.
It's an insurrection.
So what was it when you did it twice with Donald Trump and claimed that he was a tool of the Russians?
Here was Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts doing this routine.
This inquiry has nothing to do with Joe Biden.
It's about the Republican Party and how radicalized and extreme they've become.
They are allergic to truth and transparency.
Republicans say this is not about a preordained outcome.
It is!
They are going to try to impeach President Biden despite the fact that there's no evidence against him at all.
Trump sent a violent MAGA mob here to the Capitol to reverse the election results and certify that he won even though he lost.
What they couldn't do on January 6th, they want to do with this extreme political stunt.
They have contempt for our democracy.
They want to finish the job.
They have contempt for the democracy because they want an impeachment inquiry into- I mean, that's part of the actual system.
It's part of the actual system.
Again, Democrats used it twice.
Meanwhile, Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Democrat, she's going even further.
She says Republicans are domestic enemies.
If you launch an impeachment inquiry into the president, you're a domestic enemy.
I wonder what that what does that mean when Democrats do it to Trump twice?
And right now, we know that they are continually trying to tear us down from within.
When we swore our oath, we swore our oath to protect against enemies, foreign and domestic.
And let me tell you something, those of us that serve on oversight, especially those of us that are specifically Democrats, I feel like we are constantly fighting domestic enemies and no one should feel that way.
The American people should be outraged right now.
Outraged!
Domestic enemies.
Anybody who opposes them is a traitor!
They're traitors!
We're gonna fight tyranny by calling all of our opponents traitors and domestic enemies!
That's going to go amazingly well.
Again, it's very hard to make the case also that your guy, Joe Biden, is being unfairly targeted by the House Republicans when I kind of noticed that Jack Smith is unfairly targeting Donald Trump in extraordinary ways.
There's an excellent article by Jason Willick over at the Washington Post talking about Jack Smith's prosecution of Trump and more about the timeline of Jack Smith's prosecution of Trump.
In other words, he's accelerating the timeline.
Why does that timeline have to be accelerated?
Why?
The answer is, he wants Donald Trump convicted before the election.
Why would he want to do that?
Because he wants Joe Biden to be re-elected.
We'll get to that momentarily.
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Okay, meanwhile, as we are talking about, Democrats are claiming that it's totally unfair, wrong, horrifying for Republicans to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
Jack Smith is doing whatever he can to get Donald Trump arrested and put in jail before the election.
Jason Willick has a really good piece over at the Washington Post about this.
He says, There are real legal problems with special counsel Jack Smith's election interference case against Donald Trump.
The former president's effort to overturn the 2020 election was despicable, but political lying isn't generally a crime.
Smith's case thus must rely on some of the vaguest laws in the federal penal code applying them in untested ways.
But let's say you disagree.
You think Trump's post-election behavior was clearly criminal, and President Biden's DOJ had no choice as a matter of law but to indict him for it.
Two recent developments in the case should nonetheless undermine the fiction that Smith is an apolitical prosecutor.
Smith sought a pretrial gag order against Trump that would have limited so much of the candidate's political speech that it had to be successively narrowed by two courts.
Now, in a filing at the Supreme Court, Smith has all but announced that his prosecutorial timeline is controlled by the 2024 general election where Trump is likely to be a candidate.
Start with the gag order litigation.
In September, Smith asked for startling restrictions on Trump's right to object to his own prosecution.
He demanded that Trump be barred from disparaging and inflammatory statements about Smith or the judicial system.
Most astonishing, the special counsel suggested Trump should be barred from blaming Biden for the prosecution, essentially muzzling a major line of criticism against the administration Trump wants to unseat.
Judge Tanya Chetkan, appointed by Obama, clearly leans toward the prosecution in this case, but the gag order was significantly narrower than the one Smith sought.
Then, last Friday, a three-judge appellate panel composed entirely of Obama and Biden appointees had to even narrow that gag order.
Again, what Smith wanted was a dramatic violation of free speech principles against Donald Trump.
But that brings us to point number two, which is the fast track.
So, Smith filed a motion on Monday to bypass the normal appellate process and fast track the Trump trial based on what can only be described as a political timetable, says Willick.
Trump claims he has immunity from prosecution because he was performing official presidential duties.
When he tried to overturn the 2020 election, and because the Senate acquitted him in his 2021 impeachment trial.
The claims are likely wrong, but they do raise novel legal issues.
But the problem for Smith is that the trial can't be completed until you actually solve the issues.
Chudkin denied Trump's immunity claims.
Trump has now appealed to the D.C.
Circuit.
But Smith is going directly to the Supreme Court.
Why exactly is he doing that?
What is the compelling reason that this thing has to be done right this very instant?
Here is what Smith says, quote, vindicating the public interest in this case requires
immediate resolution of the immunity question to permit the trial to occur on an appropriate timetable.
If appellate review of the decision below were to proceed through the ordinary
process in the Court of Appeals, the pace of review may not result in a final decision for
many months. Even if the decision arrives sooner, the timing of such a decision might prevent
this court from hearing and deciding the case this term. So as Willak points out, the
argument is totally circular.
At no point does Smith explain why this thing has to be decided right now.
Who cares?
Who cares?
Let's say it goes to the appellate court, and let's say it takes months.
Then let's say it goes to the Supreme Court, and takes months.
And now it's 2025.
What is Smith's big rush?
Smith doesn't say what he means.
If the justices don't take the case now, the chances of completing a trial before the 2024 election will go down.
If Trump is not tried and convicted by the election, the chances of Biden winning will take a hit.
That's the whole point, and everyone can see it.
When Trump complains that his case has been politicized, there's a lot more evidence to that effect than to the claim that there is a political motivation behind investigating the Biden corruption scandal.
Okay, meanwhile, the latest on Claudine Gay, the president, the apparently invulnerable president of Harvard University.
So the Harvard Crimson has now come out and suggested that she did, in fact, violate academic integrity.
Good for the Harvard Crimson.
That's a shocker.
Now, once Harvard Law, the Crimson is a very left-wing newspaper.
According to Mediaite, in an article detailing the allegations against Gay, the Crimson noted it independently reviewed the published allegations and concluded that Gay's work appeared to, quote, violate Harvard's current policies around plagiarism and academic integrity.
The newspaper has been generally defensive of Claudine Gay.
But the Crimson details the allegations and says that she pretty obviously violates standards that students would be bound by.
Meanwhile, this brings about, again, what we talked about yesterday on the show, the final argument against getting rid of Clouding Gay, which is she's a black lady, and so any criticism of her is racist.
The person best positioned to articulate this criticism is another mediocre but highly placed person who has been elevated because of her race and because of her intersectional status, Nikole Hannah-Jones, somehow touted as some sort of valuable historian, despite the fact that her histories are entirely wrong, biased, and quite disgusting, actually, morally.
Here she was yesterday explaining, this is a racist campaign against Cloudy and Gay.
Of course, of course.
Everything is a racist campaign.
She is being singled out as someone who is only surviving because of her race.
What did you make of that?
Well, it's racist.
I mean, we have no one has produced a shred of evidence that shows that the sole qualification that President Gay had was that she is a black woman.
That's insulting.
It defies logic.
And the fact that of those presidents who all came under intense scrutiny,
that only one has been called out as a so-called diversity or affirmative action hire, just
speaks to what black women in this country have gone through historically and continue to go through
every day. She's clearly qualified.
She's clearly qualified.
Nikole Hannah-Jones is one of the least qualified historians ever, and yet she was offered like a tenured position at a university in North Carolina.
Then she turned it down, and she went to a historically black college and university.
She's been made sort of the face of the New York Times by the fact she's not done a work for them for a couple of years.
It's pretty astonishing.
By the way, it's worth noting that if Claudine Gay had been fired, she would not be the first Harvard president to be fired.
Lawrence Summers, you'll recall, was ousted from his position as president of Harvard University.
This happened while I was actually at Harvard.
He was ousted from that position for the great crime of suggesting that perhaps underrepresentation of women in the hard sciences was due to both underperformance on testing and also lack of interest.
Ooh, no!
That was so discriminatory that he had to be fired for it.
Meanwhile, Claudine Gay's like, genocide against Jews?
Depends on the context.
And everybody's like, well, she is a black lady.
I guess we have to keep her.
It really is truly amazing stuff and continues to be truly amazing stuff.
But again, Clouding Gay cannot go for the same reason that DEI cannot go.
It is the entire reason for a higher education now.
The perversity of higher education has never been at a higher pitch.
And frankly, I'm kind of pleased that they're keeping Clouding Gay because I would prefer that they don't, again, have the fig leaf of firing the president.
Like over at UPenn, donors can now feel assuaged that maybe their concerns have been heard.
They can't feel that way at Harvard.
So hopefully people continue to pull their money from Harvard University and other major universities that mirror that same DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion nonsense, that have become part and parcel of the indoctrination course at all of our top-level institutions.
Alrighty, in one second, we'll get to the update on Ukraine.
It looks like the Biden administration may be starting to finally cave on some border-related measures.
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Meanwhile, as we've been discussing for at least a couple of weeks at this point, the Biden administration wants this giant check signed to Ukraine and Israel and Taiwan.
And a little bit for the border, but no actual changes in policy at the border.
Well, they've been trying this line for a while here that if Republicans don't just sign off on a clean Ukraine bill, it's because they love Putin and it isn't working.
They continue to push the line, but again, that dog is not hunting.
Here's Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader.
If an agreement is reached, do you believe the Speaker will put it on the floor?
That remains to be seen because the pro-Putin caucus of the House Republican Conference is extreme, it's loud, and it's growing.
It's led by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan on the inside, and on the outside it's led by Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson.
And it seems increasingly clear that this pro-Putin caucus would like to see Vladimir Putin win in Ukraine, which would be bad for America's national security, which is why it's an open question as to whether House Republicans are serious at all about funding the Ukrainian war effort.
Okay, again, that dog isn't gonna hunt because Republicans are already like, sure, we just want you to actually secure the border.
Well now, Senate negotiators, according to the Wall Street Journal, have moved closer to striking a broad deal on changes to U.S.
border policy after the White House offered significant concessions to win Republican support for separate legislation further funding Ukraine in the war against Russia.
The deal would mark a breakthrough on an issue that has roiled Washington for decades,
with the current talks driven by the record number of migrants crossing the southern border
and GOP lawmakers' decision to tie new aid to Kiev to changes in immigration policy.
While Democrats are criticizing that linkage, many are signaling in recent days
they would be willing to make such a trade-off.
That White House offer includes creating a new expulsion power at the border
that would allow the government to turn away asylum seekers without letting them claim asylum.
Democrats have proposed allowing that new expulsion authority to be used
only if certain thresholds are hit, like daily illegal border crossings.
Democrats have also offered to create a requirement that some asylum seekers be held in immigration detention
for the duration of their hearings.
That wasn't know whether the new requirement would apply to migrant families or only single adults.
It would also raise the initial threshold asylum seekers must meet in a screening interview and expand the government's rapid deportation authority to be used nationwide rather than just at the border.
Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma said, we're going to have to hustle, but it's still possible there's still days in the calendar.
Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, he said we're close to an agreement.
Not sure we're there totally, but close.
Now again, these are major concessions from Joe Biden over the border.
And frankly, we should continue to fund Ukraine so that they don't actually collapse under the weight of a new Russian invasion, for example.
And we should fund Israel in its battle against Hamas.
And we should fund Taiwan so that they are armed like a porcupine against China.
All that stuff is good stuff.
Getting a bunch of border concessions from the Biden administration is a big Republican win.
And that again can only be had if a deal gets cut here.
So again, kudos to the Republicans for standing strong on this particular provision.
And Democrats, they're seeing the light at least a little bit.
Meanwhile, on the economy, The Federal Reserve is sending some kind of strange mixed signals.
They're leaving interest rates steady.
They're not changing the interest rates.
We expected that because the inflation rate has been coming down and the economy has been slowing.
But they're also signaling that they may start to lower the interest rates as early as next year and they might do it as much as three times.
So that is obviously causing the stock market to jump because people are now assuming that that means when the new money flows in the stock prices are going to go up because what are you going to do with new money flowing into the system if you don't know what to do with it?
You shove it in the stock market.
So get in now and get in early would be sort of the idea.
Now Warren Buffett is thinking the opposite.
Warren Buffett is thinking there are no new business starts.
Tossing money at the American economy has not in fact generated massive growth.
It's not a question of the fluidity of cash in the American economy right now.
It's a question of who's willing to invest in a long-term growth project in the United States when the political situation is so rife with chaos, when it feels as though the entire working community is shot through with bad employees.
Like, it's harder to start a business now than it has been at any time in the recent past.
Now, without people starting new businesses and coming up with new products and new services, that's the stuff that generates economic growth, not government spending.
And so, the stock market may continue to rise because, again, where are you going to put your money if there's more money in the system?
But that does not necessarily spell economic health.
So, the Dow Jones Industrial hit an all-time high because they were cheering progress on inflation and they're seeing the possibility that, again, monetary policy is going to get looser next year.
Whether that soft landing is going to now materialize in a way that does not mean economic stagnation is anybody's guess.
The definition of soft landing is going to be what's in question.
A soft landing, presumably according to the Biden administration, would mean just avoiding a formal recession.
But if they mean they're going to avoid stagnation, I have serious doubts.
According to founder of Sam Consulting and former Fed Economist, the soft landing is in the bag.
Inflation has come down for several months.
Recession calls are coming off the table.
Barring any other catastrophe, the economy has done the impossible.
Joseph Laborna, Chief Economist at SMBC and Ecosecurity said, recent history suggests a March 2024 rate cut is happening.
The futures market agrees.
Investors are betting on a 75% chance the federal slash rates in the first three months of next year.
Presumably, that would also be political.
An attempt to inject new liquidity into the economy in advance of the election so as to increase a feeling of economic health going into election 2024.
And then Biden gets to brag about his economic record or something.
Again, I remain highly suspicious of the idea that you can have stagnating wages for full-on two years, that you can inject this much money into the economy, and then have overall inflation that in terms of, for example, mortgages is up 90% since 2020.
And that you can somehow come out of the other end with a healthy economy.
I just think that's a very, very difficult thing to actually expect at this point.
Okay, in just one second, we'll bring you the latest from the Israel-Hamas war.
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