Tangle - The Biden investigation findings.

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

The Biden investigation. Last week, the House Oversight Committee released an interim report saying it had unearthed evidence that Biden's family members, associates, and their related companies received more than $10 million from foreign entities. The alleged payments were made between 2015 and 2017, during and after President Biden's term as vice president.You can read today's podcast ⁠here⁠, today’s “Under the Radar” story ⁠here⁠, and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠. You can also view last Friday’s newsletter breaking down some of our editorial policy decisions and announcing a few changes to our language use here, and our latest YouTube video on the debt ceiling here.Today’s clickables: Quick hits (1:22), Today’s story (3:33), Right’s take (6:29), Left’s take (10:14), Isaac’s take (13:53), Listener Question (18:21), Under the Radar (21:15), Numbers (21:54), Have a nice day (22:41)You can⁠ subscribe to Tangle by clicking here⁠ or drop something⁠ in our tip jar by clicking here.⁠Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and I hope you had a great weekend. It was my birthday yesterday and is my dad's birthday today, actually. And, you know, if you want to give me a birthday present, you should spread the word about Tangle.

Share the podcast. Go subscribe. Read Tangle.com slash membership. That's all I want for my birthday this year, but had a great weekend with some family and friends. And I hope those of you in the Northeast are enjoying some of that nice spring weather rolling in. Today, we have a story about the Republicans' investigation into Joe Biden and some of the details of that investigation that they revealed last week. Before we jump in, though, as always, we'll start off with some quick hits. First up, Turkey's general election appears headed for a May 28th runoff. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who began serving as prime minister in 2003 and president

in 2014, is one of Turkey's most powerful leaders ever. He's being challenged by Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Number two, the expiration of Title 42 last week was followed by a surprise drop in border crossings, with official data showing encounters fell by about 50 percent. Number three, Daniel Penny, the man who was seen on video putting Jordan Neely in a chokehold on a New York City subway, was charged with manslaughter. Penny was arrested and released on $100,000 bail. Number four, Elon Musk confirmed the hiring of Linda Iaccarino as Twitter's new CEO. Iaccarino is the former chief of advertising at NBCUniversal. Number five, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona

said a student loan repayment pause will end no later than June 30th. Yes. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are digging deeper into President Biden and his family's business practices. Now, this comes as part of a probe into the family's financial dealings ahead of the 2020 election. The committee's chairman, Representative James Comer, released the latest accusations earlier today. Now, he accuses President Biden's son, Hunter, and several other family members of engaging in business

with foreign nationals. House Republicans say that they have evidence that members of the Biden family received millions of dollars in payments from foreign entities in China and Romania. The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer,

releasing some of these details just moments ago. This committee is investigating President Biden and his family's shady business deals that capitalized on Joe Biden's public office and risked our country's national security. This committee has a duty to ask questions and pursue the facts no matter where they take us. Last week, the House Oversight Committee released an interim report saying it unearthed evidence that Biden's family members, associates, and their related companies received more than $10 million from foreign entities. The alleged payments were made between

2015 and 2017 during and after President Biden's term as vice president. Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, the Republican from Kentucky, released the 36-page interim report, which was written by Republicans on the committee, and accused Biden family members of using a complicated network of more than 20 companies and incremental payments over time to conceal large financial transactions. Hunter Biden in particular received millions from those foreign companies, including some with criminal ties. During a press conference on Wednesday, Comer spoke at length about payments from individuals in China and Romania. I don't think anyone in America who's watching C-SPAN

or any other network covering this would think that it's just a coincidence that nine Biden family members have received money for this influence peddling scheme, Comer said. We believe that the president has been involved in this from the very beginning. Obviously, we're going to continue to look. Comer did not identify any direct or indirect payments to President Biden himself. Comer did not identify any direct or indirect payments to President Biden himself. He told reporters that they've gathered records subpoenaed from four banks so far, but believe transactions were passed through as many as 12. He said this was just the start of their investigation.

House Republicans say the investigation will help them identify flaws in ethics and disclosure laws, allowing them to strengthen reporting requirements for elected official family members. On Twitter, White House spokesman Ian Sam says Comer offered no evidence of any wrongdoing by President Biden and countered that Republicans did not show any evidence his policy decisions were influenced by anything other than U.S. national interests. Sam's accused Republicans of microwaving old debunked stuff. Comer and Republicans are also investigating the origins of the letter signed by 51 intelligence officials that cast doubt on news reports about Hunter Biden's laptop. House Republicans say they have interviewed a whistleblower from the IRS who's reporting preferential treatment of Hunter Biden in the investigation. Hunter Biden is

currently being investigated by federal prosecutors for tax crimes and his business dealings overseas. being investigated by federal prosecutors for tax crimes and his business dealings overseas. Instead of redoing old investigations that found no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Biden, Representative Comer should do the same examination of the many entities of former President Trump and his family members, Abbie Lowell, who represents Hunter Biden, said in a statement. Today, we're going to examine some arguments from the right and the left about the 36-page report released by House Republicans on the transaction of foreign cash to the Biden family. Then I'll give you my take. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying.

Many on the right insist this story has legs and that the Biden family is being exposed for profiting off his time in office. Some say the current lack of direct link to the president doesn't mean these revelations aren't damning. Others criticize the media for its lack of curiosity or coverage of this story. In Fox News, David N. Bose said the walls are closing in on the Biden family corruption. Comer and his dogged Republican colleagues just came forward with factual evidence against President Biden and his extended family that make President Richard Nixon's Watergate investigation and President Bill Clinton's Whitewater investigation look like traffic infractions by comparison, he said. Comer showed how Biden's family members and business associates set up a tangled web of corporations to receive more than $10 million

from foreign nationals and companies in China and Romania. The explosive allegations made public Wednesday aren't just claims or opinions. The Comer Committee is simply reporting to the American people what official bank records are indicating took place, he said. The Oversight Committee's mantra that bank records don't lie is an inconvenient fact that President Biden can't explain away by simply denying these transactions ever took place. By insinuating these records are false, Biden is, in essence, accusing reputable financial institutions of keeping phony records. The Washington Examiner editorial board said Biden thinks it's just fine that his family monetized his time in office. Although the liberal media have largely tiptoed around the story until now, they will not be able to do so much longer,

the board said. Comer is found a lot more than anyone expected in such a short time, and there's just too much there to ignore. These payments, including a 3.16-carat diamond, were made to Biden family members, whose ability to earn money from such sources legitimately is not immediately obvious. Comer did not present any records indicating the president himself personally received any money, nor was aware of the transactions, but even his staunchest offenders can't expect anyone to believe he didn't know about them. A classic form of corruption is to hire politicians' family members to lucrative do-nothing jobs for which they are unqualified, and that's what this looks like. While the left is running an orchestrated campaign to persecute Clarence Thomas for receiving a few baubles from

a close friend of many decades, the Biden family are literally pocketing millions in cash derived from foreign companies, including a hostile government with which Joe Biden must deal with as president. In The Hill, Jonathan Turley criticized the media blackout of the story. Despite showing nine Biden family members allegedly receiving funds from corrupt figures in Romania, China and other countries, the New Republic quickly ran a story headlined Republicans finally admit they have no incriminating evidence on Joe Biden. For many of us, it was otherworldly, he said. A decade ago, when then Vice President Joe Biden was denouncing corruption in Romania and Ukraine and promising action by the United States, Romania and Ukraine and promising action by the United States, massive payments were flowing to his son, Hunter Biden, and a variety of family members, including Biden grandchildren. First,

Turley wrote, the media ignored the Hunter Biden laptop story, then dismissed it as Russian disinformation. Now that the House has released corroboration and actual money transfers linking many in the Biden family, the media is insisting that this is no scandal because this is not direct proof of any payments to Biden. Putting aside that this is only the fourth month of an investigation, the media's demand of a direct payment to President Biden is laughably absurd. The payments were going to his family, but he was the object of the influence peddling. All right, that is it for the rightist saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. Many on the left say the claims are still a lot of hot air and Republicans can't seem to pin anything on Biden. Some argue there is no evidence the president did anything illegal,

and this amounts to a lot of innuendo and hypocrisy. Others say these payments deserve investigation, and just because they aren't illegal doesn't mean there isn't a story here. In the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson said the GOP has a whole lot of nothing on Joe Biden. Republicans who have been trying for years to prove that President Biden is somehow corrupt, made a big show Wednesday of revealing their smear campaign to be a shameless, empty exercise in rumor and innuendo, Robinson said. You can just listen to Fox News host Steve Doocy explain it. You don't actually have any facts to that point, Doocy said Thursday to Comer, who was trying to sell the idea that the president, his brother James, and his son Hunter were part of some shadowy influence peddling scheme. And the other thing is, all of those names, the one person who didn't profit,

there's no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegally. It wasn't the reaction Comer had hoped for since he's been promising to dig up some kind of dirt on Biden, Robinson added. Comer produced zero evidence for the central influence peddling allegation that he makes yet, as Fox News host Doocy pointed out, cannot cite facts to support that Biden, while serving as vice president, took action to enrich his family members or associates. In the Daily Beast, Matt Lewis said to investigate the Biden family corruption allegations wherever they may lead. We have long known that Hunter Biden, as well as Joe's brothers, Frank and James, cashed in on their famous father and brother, Lewis said. But this report ups the ante because it indicates that, one,

the scope of family who profited is larger, including even Hallie Biden, Beau Biden's widow, who was also linked to Hunter Biden. Two, the money came from foreign entities, including Chinese nationals and Romanian businessmen. And three, some of the payments occurred while Joe Biden was serving as vice president. Familiar payoffs are all too common and typically legal in today's politics. Despite the ubiquity of this corruption, you might think that such charges would arouse the interests of my fellow journalists, particularly considering these allegations involve the sitting president of the United States,

Lewis said. And mostly, you'd be wrong. It's unknown if Biden ever actually used his position as vice president to repay the favors, but focusing on that rather than the very sketchy circumstantial evidence is itself a form of bias. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on

Disney+. cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. In MSNBC, Hayes Brown said the GOP has to keep pretending its Biden investigations are legit. Comer promised repeatedly to be this close to proving Biden and his family have secretly enriched themselves during his time in government, Brown said. While they threw around plenty of insinuations and accusations, they offered little in the way of evidence to back up their claims. If you take Comer at face value, maybe he really is concerned about the national security implications of immediate family members receiving millions of dollars from foreign nationals, foreign companies,

or foreign governments without any oversight. But when you think about it for more than two seconds, you can see why there will be little appetite among the GOP to actually make these legislative changes, Brown said. Even if they could make any new tweaks to the law retroactive to any point in time when Biden was in office and Hunter was operating his businesses that are under scrutiny, those changes would then also cover the Trump administration. That would be too embarrassing given how the Trump organization operated as a funnel for foreign money to pour into the family's bank accounts during those years. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So there is clearly a lot of damning information here. Let's be clear about what we know so far. The House Oversight Committee is saying it has uncovered a labyrinth of bank transfers and

wires that amount to more than $10 million going to the Biden family from foreign sources. Based on the structure of the transactions and the accounts receiving them, it's clear the recipients were trying to conceal their existence. It is also clear, based on the accounts the money was sent from, which were also complex layers of corporate entities, that the senders were likewise trying to conceal their existence. So, foreign entities in China and Romania were sending a lot of money to members of the Biden family, and there was very little public understanding of why. In other words, we can't say, oh, this transaction was sent because Beau Biden's widow was working as a consultant for company X. There is no clear or obvious explanation.

We know that Hunter Biden was at least attempting to rope his father into foreign cash flow from China. Included in the emails from his laptop were references to the big guy getting a 10% cut of one Chinese deal Hunter was trying to orchestrate. It appears that the deal fell apart, but paired with the fact that this newly revealed money was coming from Chinese entities, it certainly raises some questions. Joe Biden also lied. He claimed in the 2020 presidential debate that his son has never made money from China. He also claimed it was not true that family members received more than $1 million from a Chinese firm. Both of those statements were false. When called out on these lies,

aides to Biden told the New York Times that he was, quote, speaking colloquially and pushing back generally on claims he had been corrupted by Chinese money, which is one hell of a euphemism for falsely denying something or lying. All of this deserves investigating. As Matt Lewis said under what the left is saying, the fact that this is common doesn't change that, and it definitely doesn't mean this won't become a giant scandal. The ridiculous bar being set by outlets like the New York Times or the New Republic, who apparently won't be convinced something shady is going on unless someone directly deposits money into Joe Biden's account, is laughable. A wire transfer to Biden labeled bribery is not the bar this story needs to

clearly matter. What the president does have going for him is twofold. First, there's not yet any indication his policy efforts as president or vice president were influenced. Based on what we know right now, that story just doesn't add up. Generally speaking, Biden was criticizing Romania and China and Ukraine as corrupt regimes during his time in office, not making it easier for corruption to occur. What Republicans haven't done yet is show he was giving favor to those companies or countries while they showered his family in cash. The second thing he has going for him is that his press team can keep pointing to the political hypocrisy. It is classic whataboutism, but President Biden and his allies

are right to note that the Saudis invested $2 billion in the startup hedge fund launched by Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. And they did that after Trump treated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with kid gloves following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Comer, who claims to be interested in ushering in more oversight of family members, which I support for the record, has said he has no interest in investigating Kushner or Trump's conduct. This would be curious if it weren't so obvious why. So yes, families profiting off a president or a well-known politician is common, but just because this is not novel doesn't make it any less scandalous. And what is novel is just

how many family members appear to have been taking some of this foreign cash, especially given how early we are into this investigation. Comer should keep digging. I wish I could believe he was on a genuine push to introduce more legislative oversight for this kind of corruption, but obviously I'm skeptical. However political his motivations, though, this is a real story. As Representative Byron Donalds, the Republican from Florida, noted, the real question for all of this is why. Why would foreign entities be giving millions to Biden's family members if they weren't getting something in return or didn't think they were? And why would Biden's family members try so hard to conceal these transfers?

The answer to those questions is key to the investigation, and there are answers I am very curious to hear. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from an anonymous reader in Corona, California, who said, Why do you say a wall won't work when it works everywhere else? It sure works in Israel. We need everything we can to keep our borders safe. It is so sad to see this administration destroying this great country. I am 85 years old and I never thought I would live to see the USA being destroyed by our government. You say you try to walk the line on political stuff. While you are not a real lefty, you certainly favor the left point of view. Okay, so I'll respond to the accusation of bias the way I always do. The same newsletter you are

saying revealed my favoritism for the lefty point of view drew a ton of criticism from people on the left saying I was parroting conservative talking points on immigration. Also, my positions are issue-dependent, not party or tribe-dependent. I find myself on both sides of the aisle every hour of every day, including today, when my position is much more aligned with the right than the left. As for the wall, first, I push back on the idea that Israel's walls are working. Israel is now a country completely surrounded with walls and fencing, and while they work in some places to deter illegal immigration, they also don't work in others. I would not trade the current situation Israel has with its neighbors for hours.

Obviously, the roots of Israel's border violence are much deeper than immigration issues, but I'm not going to sit here and pretend erecting walls has somehow helped bring stability to their country. Second, it is also not true that walls around the world have worked. In fact, the effects of border walls around the world are perhaps the best evidence that building one here would be a colossal waste of time and money. Globally, border walls have rerouted migrants, not stopped them. And along the way, they've pushed migrants to smugglers who circumvent detection and make it harder to catch them. Third, Trump completed 450 miles of border barrier,

18 to 30 foot steel barriers. We have 700 miles of border barrier on our border now. If that border wall were effective, then we should have seen illegal immigration and crossings go down as it was erected. But the opposite happened. And now it's worse than ever, all while Trump's barriers are still up. Immigrants use cheap ladders to get over, they free climb it, they cut through it, or they just make tunnels underneath it.

Some just walk up to the wall and ask to be arrested so they can claim asylum, which was the most predictable part of the whole thing. As I've written before, constructing a border wall also means destroying some of the most beautiful parts of the southwestern United States, allowing the government to seize privately owned land from people, and spending lots and lots of money to construct and upkeep such barriers. Simply put, our money would be much more effectively spent on more agents, technology, and enforcement. All right, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under the radar section. A former executive of ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, said the Chinese government maintains supreme access to data stored in the United States. The claim was made in a lawsuit filed on Friday and comes as federal officials are weighing whether

to ban TikTok from the U.S. over security concerns and data privacy. Yintao Yu, the former executive, said ByteDance has served as a useful propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party. Axios has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The percentage of Americans who approve of the job President Biden is doing, according to a new Reuters Ipsos poll, is 40 percent. The percentage of voters who approve of Biden's handling of immigration is just 26 percent. The percentage of registered voters who said they preferred Congress focus on rising costs in health care rather than investigating the Biden administration is 63%, according to the public policy polling.

The percentage of U.S. workers who are satisfied with their job, according to a new survey from the conference board, is 62.3%. It's the highest share since the survey began in 1987. The number of Ukrainians who have moved back to Ukraine after fleeing in the beginning of the war is now over 5 million. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day section. The world's oldest dog just celebrated his 31st birthday. A few weeks ago, the Guinness Book of World Records awarded a 23-year-old chihuahua living in Ohio

recognition for being the oldest living dog in the world. But shortly after, a Portuguese family came forward with evidence that their dog, Bobi, was much older, having a birthday of May 11th, 1992. Not only did Bobi get crowned the oldest living dog, he got crowned the oldest dog ever on record, beating out a 29-year-old Australian cattle dog who died in 1939. Bobi is a purebred, and I'm going to butcher this, Rofiro do Elentejo, which is a kind of Portuguese livestock guardian dog. The secret, according to his family, Bobby eats human food and drinks a half liter of water a day.

He's never been on a leash and spent his entire life far from the cities. Euronews has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com and consider becoming a member. And don't forget, it was just my birthday. So that'd be a great birthday present for me is a Tangle membership. We'll be right back here at same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Long. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bukova,

who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. award-winning book. Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases.

What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.