America's Talking - Joe Biden’s Brother Defends President as Impeachment Inquiry Continues

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

James Biden, the president’s brother, testified before lawmakers Wednesday in the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The testimony comes as the indictment of a key witness in the inquiry has left Republicans playing defense and Democrats calling for the inquiry to end. Several media outlets reported Wednesday that during his opening statement, James defended his brother, President Biden, saying the president was not involved in his dealings and did not financially benefit from those deals. House Republicans on the Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means Committees are leading the inquiry, alleging that the Biden family and associates, with the president’s knowledge, raked in more than $20 million from entities in adversarial nations, including Russia and China. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, February 23rd. James Biden, the brother of President Joe Biden, testified behind closed doors this week before a congressional committee in the ongoing impeachment inquiry into the president over the Biden family's business dealings overseas. joining me today to talk about this latest news is the Center Squares Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief, Casey Harper. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well, thank you. So I know the testimony was not open to the public, Casey,

but what did we learn after the fact? Sure, me, so there were some leaks of, for instance, James Biden's opening testimony that came to the media and were widely reported on. The top line takeaways are, as you may have expected, James Biden, wholeheartedly defended his brother, President Joe Biden, and said that, you know, the president didn't have anything to do with this. He didn't know what was going on. He did not benefit financially from any overseas deals. And of course, just to catch our listeners up, the allegations are that, you know, spearheaded by Hunter Biden and also helped by James Biden, who testified the president's

brother and the president's son, they went all around the world overseas using the Biden brand when, you know, president, now President Joe Biden was vice president and after he left the White House. And they went around the country. They went to adversarial nations, rather than a world, rather, and nations like China, Russia, Ukraine, and others and made deals. Got big deals, raked in, you know, the figures change, but more than $20 million to about 20 bank accounts. And, you know, House Oversight Chair, Representative James Comer, Republican of Kentucky, says that, you know, there's kind of this scheme to get the money in these bank accounts, shuffle all the money around, so it was impossible to track it, and then have the money come

out to a family member who then would give the money to President Biden. We do have two checks for $240,000, totally $240,000 that did go to the president. Those checks were called loan repayments in the memo lines, but Republicans say that, you know, that there's a lot of fischiness going on right there. So, you know, there are other things we can get into the details of, you know, we have a testimony of a witness who says that the president called into business meetings. Many times called Hunter Biden, his son, and business meetings was put on speaker phone before a lot of potential, you know, business partners, you could say. There was also meetings that the timing is very interesting. There was also, you know, President Biden's role

in affecting a Ukraine prosecution against an energy company that his son sat on the board of. So, you know, there's more details here, but overall, these allegations have been building, evidence has been building, but the president's brother came in this week and did his best to exonerate the sitting president. James Biden, the president's brother, his testimony also came after revelations that a former FBI informant who had provided some testimony against the Biden's, that he was indicted, the Department of Justice charged. Jim was saying he lied to the FBI and worked with Russian intelligence. That's sort of a curveball

for the Republicans who are investigating the Bidens. Definitely. I mean, this definitely put Republican lawmakers on their heels. This impeachment inquiry, which centers around these allegations, is led mostly by Comer, whoever referenced, and Jim Jordan, the House Oversight Chairman. The Ways and Means Committee is also involved. But this indictment in question was, again, a, an FBI informant who had, for the most part, been kept secret. His name is Alexander Smyranov. He had worked for the FBI. It seems like for over a decade he was paid by the FBI to be an informant.

And he filed this informant document essentially saying that, you know, Biden and the president and Hunter Biden received millions of dollars in payments. And now the DOJ is indicted him basically for relying to the FBI. And so, you know, it's definitely, politically, it's a bad look for Republicans when one of your best witnesses is indicted, of course. But Republicans were really defiant and said, hey, obviously, you know, if this isn't true, then we want to get to the truth, and that's fine. But there's plenty of other evidence corroborating this case. So, and I think that is true. I think, you know, the Democrats were immediately saying this all needs to be thrown out.

See, this is the smoking gun showing that this whole thing is Russian disinformation, which has really been the line for. from the beginning, Dan, if you remember, when Hunter Biden's laptop first came out, the mainstream media, New York Times and others, and even Twitter, at the behest of the FBI, said that this whole story was Russian disinformation and the laptop did not exist. Of course, now we know the laptop did exist, and the media and Twitter was really wrong, whether they knew it or not. But whether it was intentionally lying or just inaccurate, they were wrong about that. So that's been the story from the beginning, though, that this is Russian disinformation. So that narrative is popping up here again. But Comer in particular and Jordan defended the investigation. They said, you know, the facts of the case are the same, even without this witness to corroborate them. We know that Biden, Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma. We know that the president interfered in Ukrainian affairs on behalf of an energy company. This son was connected with. He said, you know, we know that Hunter Biden wasn't qualified for that board, which you can debate that a little bit. We know that we have these checks, copies of these checks. We know that we have this millions of dollars coming in. So it's definitely a bad look for Republicans. It's definitely, you know, it hurts the credibility of the impeachment inquiry. But there's still a lot of evidence that was not relying on that particular FBI informant. And the ongoing inquiry, impeachment inquiry into the president, of course, comes as the U.S. House has already impeached Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the border crisis. Mayork is now awaits trial in the Senate where Democrats have control. There has been no information about when the Senate will conduct its hearings on the House impeachment of him. And of course, all of this is happening during a presidential election year with President Biden, Joe Biden,

pretty much the guaranteed nominee unless he decides to step aside because of concerns over his memory law. in his mental condition. And President Donald Trump, or excuse me, former President Donald Trump, who there's a primary in South Carolina this weekend, is the almost a sure nominee on the Republican side. So how does this impeachment inquiry briefly, Casey, how is it going to impact the overall presidential election? Right. I mean, this is interesting times.

Two impeachments currently underway. one actually, you know, across the finish line and Biden's, it's underway. Trump faced his own impeachment proceedings and now faces nearly 100 criminal charges. So I think in some sense, these things can kind of wash out and cancel each other out in voters' minds because it's hard for either candidate to say the other is corrupt. I mean, it's hard for Trump to go after Biden's corruption, although he does when he faces so many of his own charges. And the same for Biden. I mean, a Biden can't attack Trump too much for any corruption because he faces so many. allegations of his own. And so I think they'd rather talk about other things. Trump would rather talk

about the border and Biden would rather talk about abortion and defending democracy. And they're both going to try to hammer those messages. I think Trump hasn't his favor right now that the Roe v. Wade case is becoming increasingly in distant memory, although it is very important to some voters. Meanwhile, the border crisis seems to only be getting worse every day heading into November. That's what he's going to try to talk about. And if he can avoid some kind of conviction, And I think he'll be able to have some of these legal proceedings against him be a non-issue. As long as a conviction doesn't come in. Well, thank you for your insight.

As always, Casey, listeners can keep up with this ongoing story and more at the center square.com. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKalib. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening. Some people would call him a loser. He ran for state office. He was beaten. He started a business.

He failed. He ran for a business. Congress, he lost. He was nominated for Vice President. He lost again. But he knew only those who never tried are the real losers. And Abraham Lincoln was no loser. Persistence. Pass it on. From the Foundation for a Better Life and Values.com.