Morning Wire - Biden’s Unprecedented Pardon | Saturday Extra

Episode Date: December 7, 2024

An in-depth look at President Biden's sweeping pardon of his son, Hunter, and its implications for ongoing investigations, legal precedent, and the political landscape. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I said I applied by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him. After months of vowing not to pardon his son Hunter on tax evasion and gun charges, President Biden reversed course issuing a sweeping pardon that covers any federal crimes Hunter may have committed over the past decade. In this episode, we sit down with an expert to break down the scope of the pardon and its implications for potential future prosecutions of the Biden family. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley.

It's December 7th, and this is a Saturday edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now is Eric Eggers, Vice President at the Government Accountability Institute and co-host of the Drilled Down podcast with Peter Schweitzer. Eric, thanks so much for coming on. Hey, it's my pleasure, John. It's an important story. Look, we witnessed this week something we were told repeatedly would not happen by the White House, by President Biden himself again and again.

He issued a full and unconditional pardon to his son, Hunter. I want to ask you first about the nature of that part. pardon, what exactly has the president given his son immunity from? I think the president has given his son immunity from any and all federal charges spanning for a decade, which is in a much larger context than the actual charges Hunter Biden was facing. He was facing sentencing over three different charges related to a purchase of a gun and tax evasion allegations. But what Joe Biden has effectively done is given his son a full pardon for any allegations of which there are many that he has been an unwitting or witting

for an agent. All the international business dealings that Hunter Biden has done over the last decade, and it's very specific. It starts in January of 2014 that's three months before Hunter Biden's business relationships with the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma began. And that's when a lot of the legal issues may have emerged. So what Joe Biden has done is not just said Hunter Biden will not face any charges from what he's actually been accused of, but what many people suspect he's actually guilty of. And what's the context for this? There are some investigations ongoing about Hunter and Biden family corruption. Can you give us a breakdown of what's taking place right now on Capitol Hill that may be impacted by this? There's been an ongoing

House oversight investigation led by the committee of Representative Comer. And thanks to whistleblower testimony, thanks to tax records, thanks to bank records. They've been able to get. They were starting to put together, I think, a very comprehensive puzzle that showed not just what Hunter Biden was doing, but how Joe Biden and other Biden family members may have personally profited from it. That, I think, actually is the biggest takeaway from this. By giving Hunter Biden a full pardon, what Joe Biden effectively sets up is the removal of any pressure or leverage they might have used, they being federal authorities, to try to implicate Joe Biden because as you noted, this is something that we were told would never happen. We were told

that Hunter Biden would never be pardoned. But what else have we been told consistently? We've been told that Joe Biden was nowhere near any of Hunter Biden's business dealings. It began with he didn't even know anything about Hunter Biden's business dealings. Then it was, well, we had no actual conversation about it. Then it was no, I never actually spoke to any of his business people. And then it was no, Joe Biden never personally profited off of Hunter Biden's business dealings. That's what the committee was investigating. That's what the committee was investigating. That's what the bank records may have revealed. And that, in some sense, is what this pardon may have eliminated any actual eventual prosecution

for Hunter Biden and then eventually Joe Biden. And I would say many people are predicting that this will not be the last Biden to see a pardon. Yeah, let's get into that. I wanted to bring that up because limiting how much action can be taken against Hunter doesn't mean an investigation into alleged Biden family corruption has to end. What are we seeing in terms of Biden's brother, Jim Biden, and the allegations swirling around him? So legal scholars have pointed out a couple of interesting things. Number one, the elimination of the federal tax charges doesn't necessarily preclude state tax charges from being filed because oftentimes they are joined because you submit your state taxes at the same time as submitting federal taxes. But the second piece of this is that Jim Biden has been adjacent to or a part of many of the business dealings that Hunter Biden did with Joe Biden. And so if what's actually being concerned is these fair violations, these foreign agent registrations, these foreign agent registrations,

Act violations of which, by the way, Hunter Biden admitted in an email that, hey, we should probably register for this. Jim Biden is right there with them. And so when you have phone calls with business people from China, when you have business dealings in Ukraine and you have business dealings in some of the darkest corners of the developed world in terms of the lack of transparency and very questionable business practices, you know, many of Hunter Biden's business associates have been accused of bribery in other contexts. So I think that, That's very much what the committee was looking into. And I think if Hunter Biden was potentially guilty of that, there's no reason to think

Jim Biden wasn't guilty of it as well. What kind of response have we seen from the committee, Comer and others? Have they given us any signals about their next actions? They have expressed some disappointment. And in the fact that Joe Biden has gone against what he and many people of its administration have repeatedly signaled that they would do, which is not give Hunter Biden a pardon. But there's also some suggestion that now that Hunter Biden doesn't face any actual charges. He can't plead the fifth, so he may now actually be forced and compelled to testify

if he does get called into the committee hearing and if they can ask harder questions because Hunter Biden no longer faces the threat of incriminating himself. Yeah, that's an interesting wrinkle for sure. Now, President Biden said that his son has been politically targeted. That's why he's pardoning him. But he's also glossing over a major piece of this, which was the extremely problematic plea deal that Hunter originally got. Can you walk us through what happened with that, which really opened this can of worms for Hunter on these felony charges? I think you raised an excellent point, and that is to say if not only Hunter Biden's personal attorney, but the attorneys for the Biden administration's Department of Justice had gotten their way,

this would have gone away if not for the questioning and ultimate refusal of a judge who said, wait a minute, you're telling me I don't have jurisdiction over this. What would the appropriate remedy be? And the lawyers, again, a Department of Justice attorney and Hunter Biden's personal. attorney said, well, that would be the political process. So that would have been, I think, an insane miscarriage of justice, maybe greater, I think definitely greater than the one we're currently seeing. At least this is a legal move the president can pardon anyone he wants, although people are saying this is by far the most sweeping and biggest pardon in American

history per some legal analysis. But exactly. So this would be the latest, you know, remember this. Some would argue that the 2020 election, Joe Biden wouldn't even been in position to be president to then pardon Hunter had it not been for the work of Department of Justice officials and FBI officials telling Big Tech to censor any story about Hunter Biden's laptop and the business dealings details that that laptop contained. That may have in some analysis swung the election. So you go from the Department of Justice officials working with Big Tech to censor the story four years ago that kept it from being politically influential to then you had the desire to move and get rid of these charges based on an effort to kind of strong arm this judge. And then you had, when it looked like

Joe Biden was politically vulnerable, the unprecedented move of telling the most powerful person in the world that is President Joe Biden that he's not allowed to run for re-election anymore despite every indication that he wanted to because they were trying to find somebody that would be more politically viable. That didn't work either. And so the only tool Joe Biden had left in his Arsenal was to do the thing he said for years he would not do, which is pardon Hunter. A remarkable sequence of events to say the least. Final question, there are some Democrats that are really expressing disappointment, even shock at President Biden's actions here. And part of that reason is they say, look, this gives Trump license to issue his own

pardons. January 6 defendants are often cited. What does this do in terms of Democrats' arguments about Trump's power as the president? Yeah, I think what it undermines more than anything, John, is Joe Biden's argument that he was the sole protector of democracy and American ideals. And that is now gone between Democrats saying that, you know, you couldn't vote for Trump because democracy was on the ballot and yet they ran a candidate who received zero primary votes. And now them saying that Donald Trump was the one that would weaponize the Department of Justice and go after political opponents. In fact, now you see that justice is being upended by Joe Biden's own actions because Hunter Biden pled guilty himself. And at every turn, the Justice Department said, no, this is something

that's a serious charge. So I think what Joe Biden has done, unfortunately, is erode any semblance of credibility he might have had that he was, quote unquote, adult in the room and the one that protect American democratic norms because he clearly did not do that. Sure seems like political capital permanently lost here. Eric, thanks so much for joining us. Mr. Bickley, always a pleasure. That was Eric Eggers, Vice President at the Government Account. Accountability Institute and co-host of the Drill Down podcast with Peter Schweitzer. And this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.