The Chris Cuomo Project - Hunter Biden Controversy: Is It Worth It?

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

Chris Cuomo analyzes the controversies surrounding Hunter Biden and Donald Trump. Arguing that while there may be legitimate questions surrounding the business dealings and ethics of both men, Chris emphasizes that partisan political prosecutions are ultimately a distraction from the real issues voters care about. Chris makes the case for applying consistent standards, not just prosecuting the opposition, and advocates to let the voters make their own determinations. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are two ways to go with Hunter Biden and anyone in his family related up and including his father, President Biden. Prosecute everybody because that's what the law demands and that's what the system deserves. Or I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome very much to a special edition of the Chris Cuomo Project podcast. Free agent, that's what you need to be these days. You got to get away from the parties. They are poisonous and dragging us to the bottom. And what we're going to discuss today is a perfect example of the disconnect of the mangled notion of truth and justice and how everything is getting forced like bad meat

through a grinder to make a sausage of our political discontent, okay? So I want you to be a critical thinker and independent, okay, and this issue will frame exactly what happens when you become a lemming, when you become a member of the sheeple instead of an independent thinking person, okay? So thank you for subscribing, following,

giving us a chance here to give you some perspective on something that matters. And then you decide how to feel, how to choose with your vote, how to choose with your attention, all right? Don't forget, you can check me out on News Nation, eight o'clock, 11 o'clock, PM Eastern, every weeknight. And here's what I have for you on this, okay? There are two ways to look at it. One, just like you and me,

if the crime is there, the investigation should go and the prosecution should follow. That is the basic premise that gives people a sense of high ground. All right. Now, there are two big butts in this situation that are legit and legit within the legal system, the philosophy of prosecutions. The first one is not all crimes are the same. Okay. Not all crimes are the same. Now, of course, you have different gradations of the administration of justice, meaning how people decide to treat the people before them. Where are you? A small town?

A big city? Are you dealing with minorities? Are you dealing with the poor? In general, minorities, poor minorities are going to get a harsher deal from the system. That's why there's some irony in Trump supporters saying, what about this two-tier justice system? How Trump is getting prosecuted. Now there's a two-tier justice system. That's why there's some irony in Trump supporters saying, what about this two-tier justice system? How Trump is getting prosecuted. Now there's a two-tier justice system. Wow. So all the other cases that we've brought to you over the years about people who are poor and or black or a minority and how they get just rushed through the system and left languishing in jail, which is why you needed bail reform in the first place.

Did they get it right in a lot of places? No. Why? They took discretion away from the judges. New York State is one of those places. It is a problem on top of a problem. Not everybody should have to rot in jail waiting for due process on charges they may not have committed or may not even get any sentence

or may get a sentence that's less than the time that they have to wait. That's why you needed bail reform. Legit need. Not letting judges have discretion so just everybody gets to get back out no matter what they did, no matter what risk they pose. That's stupid. That is a typical American political overcorrection. Everything's pendular.

We saw it with Me Too. Me Too is legit. The concerns are legit. But just going after bold-faced names, not creating systemic change, doesn't really change things. You just wind up going after everybody with any accusation, no matter what the proof, no matter what the corroboration, just a crowdsourced consequence, overcorrection. You see it with bail reform, overcorrection. And now that's where we are with the idea of looking at the facts, investigating where due, with due discretion. Now, many of you believe that discretion is bullshit. No, no, the man on the street doesn't get any discretion. Okay, sometimes that's true.

And that's proof of the problem, not of the way it should be. Prosecutorial discretion is a real thing. And not all crimes are equal, meaning not just jaywalking versus murder, but prosecutors make decisions about what warrants prosecutions all the time. Now, on what basis? Okay. They reasonably believe they can make the case beyond a reasonable doubt, and it's a criminal situation, then they bring it. No, not that simple.

Why? Well, who are we talking about? What did they learn about them through the course of the investigation? What do the facts show them? What is the public policy involved? All of these things should be taken into consideration in terms of what cases get made. Now, we see another overcorrection, right? You have jurisdictions all over the country who've decided that petty larcenies, all right,

shoplifting, low-level threats of robberies and such don't warrant prosecution because they're over-criminalizing a certain segment of the population that is driven to crime more by poverty than anything approaching true criminality. Okay? That's a political argument. People voted on it. Now you get that. And what do you have? Shoplifters running amok in too many places and private businesses either being given too much responsibility for the security in their places or punished for having any sense of security in their places and just passing along all their losses to us, the people not shoplifting, as price increases. Overcorrection. Overcorrection.

That's a mistake. Yeah, but these people are really just poor, and that's why they're stealing. Listen, there have been a lot of poor people in America's history who did not turn to crime. Yes, some poor people out of desperation commit crimes and maybe there are better ways to deal with those people. And I think we've seen that in the course of our history. But what are you dealing with? Prosecutorial discretion.

Now, I get that you may not like the discretion, but don't say that there is none. See what I'm saying? Not all crimes are the same. Prosecutorial discretion is real. So now that we have this little bit of warm up, okay, to just like what these issues are and how we're dealing with them, because we're not dealing with them in a vacuum just when it comes to our politicians. Okay? Okay? This is part of an overall dynamic going on in our society that I believe is proof of this battle to the bottom that is foisted upon us by the political parties. And that everything has to be extreme because it's all about who's worse and just gaining advantage over another side. And I'm seeing it more and more different things happening in our society. And before I break it down with my side and what can counter it, how about getting a little love for the people that allow all this to happen? We don't fake the funk here, and here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo, it's embarrassing, but it shouldn't be. Thankfully, we now have HIMS,

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It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. So we get to the big enchilada. Beau Biden, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden. OK, Beau Biden, too many people mix up in this situation. He's dead. He passed away. So stop talking about Beau Biden.

OK, he's gone. Hunter Biden, we all know he's an addict. Stop looking at him as an addict as if that is proof that he did whatever he's accused of because he's got a crack pipe in his mouth. He is a junkie, okay? Junkies can be unstable, erratic in their behavior, and practice bad discretion, be self-destructive, reckless in general. He may check some or all of those boxes or none.

destructive, reckless in general. He may check some or all of those boxes or none. But the fact that he's a junkie shouldn't mean that that picture is proof that he probably stole this or used undue influence here or did this or did that. I don't like it. It is demonizing addiction, and we have enough trouble with that already. Now you get to the next level of analysis. Do you spend big time political capital, resources, investigators, congressional time and your money to look into these allegations? One argument, of course, you did it with Trump. look at how bad these things are it looks like he was really abusing his father's office when he was senator vice president who knows about while he's president okay what is the counter to that two things one if it's there let the department of justice deal with it there is a reason that people in politics have been trying to turn you against the institutions of our democracy because if there is no truth if there no justice, if there is no proxy for your interests

except them, then they have more power than all there is to believe is them. There's nothing true unless they tell you it's true. There's tremendous power in that. And that's why now it's the Republican Party is bashing as deep state all the institutions that they have always defined and defended. Why? Because it's working for their brand of politics right now. That's all that's changed. I suggest to you that if they did not have a Donald Trump as the face of their organization, and it was, I don't know, Mitt Romney or really just anybody else, they wouldn't be bashing the DOJ and all these other instruments of investigation and administration of justice the way they are. No way. Why? Wouldn't be to their advantage. Being a real American, defending justice and defending the Department of Justice,

the government is..., blah, blah. That's what they've always done. That's what they would be doing again, if not for Trump and a bunch of other screwballs in their ranks that ran afoul of investigators and rules and norms. All right. So they're attacking all of those institutions, but now they want to use those institutions. They were attacking the idea of Congress investigating Donald Trump, Russia hoax, Russia hoax, not a hoax, Russia involved, Trump, Russia

spy, no, dossier, proof of why to investigate, not really, but it was the entire basis of why they investigated, not true, But you guys all believe whatever's convenient to you. Okay? On one side, you say he was a spy and he should have gone to the end. He was obviously working with Russia. And look, he wanted them to be even more involved and more mischievous within our election. The other side says he did nothing wrong, just like January 6th. It's all going through the lens of advantage. I see two problems with that for us. One, if everything passes through the lens of politics and the only wrongs that you care about, the only justice that you want is not about fairness under law. It's not justice. It's just us. Just us. Not justice. Meaning this

only is what is good for us in our party and our cabal and our group. The second problem with it is my problem with it. This is a distraction from your interests. Okay? And I'll give you the counter argument to this in a second. But this is not about your taxes, new jobs for the economy, figuring out how to give us the workers we need for the STEM positions and the software positions and the new service industries of this economy and the retraining that's necessary and the partnerships between private concerns and public entities and communities that need to be formed to figure out how we deal with different commodity prices and, just to throw it in, the level of leadership we

have in this country and what matters to us and why, let alone all the cultural issues that we're dealing with. All of these things, some of which I think are more meritorious, more worthy than others, are all put on the side in the interest of these political prosecutions. I don't think Congress in its current composition, can be trusted in the name of oversight, which is absolutely a constitutional duty, to be prosecuting political opponents all the time. This is why the founding fathers came up with the standard for impeachment of high crimes and misdemeanors. It's so nebulous. It doesn't mean anything in the law. Why did they do it? Because they weren't thinking about law. They were thinking about politics and they wanted to avoid what they saw in the motherland of the United Kingdom, where they were just prosecuting everybody they didn't like and using power when they had it and

wielding it against their political opponents in the name of truth and justice. And now we're doing the same goddamn thing. And that's why they came up with that standard. High crimes and misdemeanors like bribery or corruption, they left it like that so you wouldn't be doing what we're doing right now. Look, I'm not saying that Trump didn't do anything wrong. 91 counts, who knows? Maybe he did just about all of it.

Okay, are these crimes that we see prosecuted all the time? No, not really. Do we see them prosecuted against somebody with his kind of power? Never. Well, it should matter. No one's above the law. I don't accept that as an operative notion.

Yes, conceptually, nobody's above the law. We're all equal. But there is prosecutorial discretion. You do have to look at what it means to go after a former president who is now the leading nominee for things that may not be blow-away felonies. I feel the same way about the Biden investigation. And look, I get that the Democrats were like loaded for bear on the Trump allegations, and they have no apparent interest in the Biden allegations.

It's not lost on me. It's wrong and proof of my argument, which is you can't have politicians be in the business of looking for criminal matters in their opposition and in their support base. Because look, just flip it. The same Republicans who said, this is for the voters to decide, and we shouldn't be prosecuting our opponents, and we shouldn't be using these institutions, and it shouldn't be in Congress, and this is all a witch hunt, now want to do the same thing. They're talking about impeaching Biden. Oh, but we have to because this shit's real. It's all advantage. It is all a distraction from your interests. Now what's the counter? What's the counter? I'm about truth. I'm about

justice. I'm about truth and justice. Those are my high values. That's why we must look at Hunter Biden and see if Joe Biden knew. Now, I'm not saying there aren't real questions. I'm not even saying don't look at him. One, I think you got to think about who looks at him. And then second, I think that there should be a really strong emphasis on letting the voters, you decide. I really do. Why? Because this is not shoplifters. This is not drug dealers. It's not fentanyl. It's not murder for hire. It's not gang violence. This is rare air that we're talking. And I don't think it's wrong to look at them in the context of who's involved and what kinds of activities we're talking about. And I do think many of them, even if they do have legal implications,

could be seen as political questions that you should decide. I'm not saying don't investigate them. I think there are a lot of questions surrounding how Hunter Biden made his money, maybe Joe Biden's, President Biden's brother, maybe the president. I think it's real. But here's the problem with it, all you truth and justice people. You did not give a rat's patootie about the same degree of allegations against Trump. How many people who want to go after Biden were going after Trump? Come on. I mean, I think if you do like the two layers of it that go over, all you're going to find is us, you know, the media, because we'll go after anybody. That's our job. Okay. Now, are we going after the Biden stuff the way they were the Trump stuff? No. Why? Well,

Trump came first. All right. So there was a newness and an urgency. Two, there was a lot more organized energy behind it in Congress. Made it easier for us to cover. And there are a lot of media who wanted to go after Trump. Why? Because he asked for it with his mouth. I don't think it's people's politics. I think it was personal for a lot of professionals because of how he lied and how reckless he was and how he basically tells you you can get away with anything. He basically says he can go shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

He means it. He may be right, by the way. So I don't see consistency in the virtue here that it's truth and justice when it's Biden, but it's a witch hunt when it was Trump. And then flip it when you trip the R and the D. And that's why I hate the parties. That's why I see it as a battle at the bottom. And many of you on each side will say, no, but it's worse

on their side. I'm telling you, you're being played for a sucker and that they're getting you to feel that way and focus on that instead of your own interests. And I don't like it. I want you to be a free agent. Look, no shame in my game. I've been using AG1 for over five years. Why? It works, it's easier, and it's less expensive. That's why. Since 2010, they've been getting their formulations right and tweaking their formulas. Why? Because the science changes, okay?

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Now, so if you go to CozyEarth.com and you enter the code, enter the code CHRIS, and you can get up to 35% off your first order. CozyEarth.com, and the code is CHRIS. Hunter Biden. Are the questions that different than what could have been looked at with Jared Kushner? Guy gets billions of dollars with a really so-so business pedigree. That even the Saudi people who are dying to dump money into our power structure

thought twice about it and had to be overridden by Mohammed bin Salman, who's probably implicated in at least one murder that we know about. The Saudis who are now cutting back on oil supply

until the end of the year just to mess with the gasoline markets and home heating oil. What about those questions? What about Ivanka Trump representing the US government and getting these China patents that are hard to get? Allegedly.

Ah, well, that was different. That was different. Of course it was different. Those are your people, right? Biden's not your people. Flip it, vice versa. Oh, Joe Biden just loves his son Hunter and that's so sweet.

And that's what the real story is. And all these other things should just not be looked at because this is about a father who loves his addict son. Please, please. Okay. Nobody's saying that you don't have to have sympathy and empathy for what they've dealt with in that family in terms of loss and how Joe Biden has forged his character through pain and loss to a large degree. I've seen that myself firsthand when my father died and how the president responded to it. I'm still asking these questions because that's the job. And I think there's some stink on them, but I am very, very worried and slow to want to see the wheels of justice grinding up these issues when they

are a distraction to you. These are not the most high value crimes. I'm not saying they don't matter. I'm just saying they're not murder. And you should look at how serious they are when you're talking about how much damage may be done to the social fabric because of them. And that should matter. There is prosecutorial discretion and they exercise it in other ways, good and bad. To say that they couldn't have any here because everybody's the same and no one's above the law and everything has to be prosecuted is not true and not necessarily in your best interest. And most of all, you just have too many people who are about advantage and not truth and not justice.

It's just the rules for just us. When it's our guy, it's on them. When it's their guy, it's about truth and justice. I'm not saying there aren't legitimate questions. There are. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be asked. I'm not saying that Biden hasn't made a huge mistake at a minimum in not driving his own narrative. I think these questions persist because of his incapacity in answering them and the people around him as well. I feel that on a number of levels about what matters. And I think this will matter going into the election. And it should, just as all Trump stuff. I mean, do I have to go through it again?

Four different indictments, 91 counts, all kinds of behavior, his own people around him going bad on him. Because now it's about going to prison for this guy. And it's a little different proposition than just lying for him on my TV show. Lawyers getting disbarred, Rudy getting charged, Rudy making stuff up about being spied on. His girlfriend gave him the goods on Rudy. They didn't spy on him and break into his cloud. She had all this stuff. She gave it to the authorities. He's making stuff up to make himself look like a victim. You've got to see this for what it is. I'm not saying they're not legitimate questions, certainly on Trump's side and on Biden's side. I don't know that they're not political matters instead of matters for the criminal justice system. Do I see a straight line

analysis of where they could be prosecuted? Of course, we're seeing it right now in real time, state and federal level. But I also see that the people who are supposed to be playing it straight are only playing it to an advantage. And they're bashing special counsels. They're bashing congressional oversight. They're bashing the DOJ. They're bashing local prosecutors. They're bashing everything that doesn't work for them. It's ugly and obvious.

And you need to be aware. You need to see it for what it is. So look, don't play the game and say Cuomo doesn't believe that any laws should be enforced anymore that's not it i'm telling you bail reform was the right idea that was wrongly instituted in too many places and is now way too lenient and is adding to the problem not just the solution okay and what we see with decriminalizing shoplifting and things like that i don't know that there's a social policy involved there where you're going to help those people as opposed to just letting them get away with crimes. And I think there's a lot of bad that's coming out of

it. Okay. So it's not what it is. This ain't shoplifting. Okay. This ain't homeless in the streets of San Francisco or other places. This is a sitting president, a former president who's now the head, the most likely to get the nomination. There's lots of bad stuff, but the idea that we can prosecute our way out of it doesn't make sense. Hunter Biden raises real questions about how he was making the money and on what basis. I see the same thing with Jared Kushner.

Same thing. Why did he warrant billions of dollars from the Saudi investment fund? Why? See, you don't want to ask that question because it doesn't bother you because you don't see advantage in it. That's what we need to deal with. That's what being a free agent is about. You got to see it everywhere in the same ways. And you will when you pull away from the party structure. It's not like being a football fan. Okay? I watched Hard Knocks. I got jazzed up about the Jets again. I'd gone bad on them a couple of years ago after a lifetime of failure. Why?

Because I thought that if I only backed the Bills, and who doesn't like the Bills? They're the only real New York team, by the way, the only ones who play in New York, that they would spite me and get good. And then I would jump back on the bandwagon like every other fan. And I watched Hard Knocks. And for a second, I was like, man, they seem like they're coming together. I really like this. I think the Jets have something this year. Maybe the defense is as good as they're saying. And look at all the pieces. And Aaron Rogers, maybe he did find a fountain of youth. And then when they start losing, you know what I'll start telling myself? Oh, well, but this week it's going to be the rally. But I really saw something. Why? Because I need the Jets to be good because they're my team. Politics shouldn't

be that way. Politics should be selfish to your interest, your family's interest, your community's interest, and what you care about on a macro level about who we are as a nation. Not sectarian, not regional, not about factions, not about parties. George Washington said it. President Monroe said it. President Teddy Roosevelt said it. Alexander Hamilton said it. James Madison said it. The Federalist Papers put it in there about avoiding parties. They are poisoning us and making us sick. And I'm telling you, two things can be true at once. Hunter Biden raises real questions about his own behavior and the behavior of people in his family.

And maybe the different branches of government and IRS or whatever went easy because he was Biden's kid and they didn't look at it the same way they would have otherwise. Not because they're all lefties. I got to tell you, you got to get that out of your system. The idea that the FBI or all these people are made up of lefties. I've been working on them for over 20 years until Trump. I was in the business of attacking these institutions full time. Now we were forced to kind of defend them because we had the president of the United States just trying to destroy everything that got in his way.

But these people, in my experience, are not a bunch of lefties, okay? And I wouldn't care if they are, but that's not the excuse. Just keep it straight in your head. All the questions matter. But how you deal with those questions is a distraction to your own interests with laws that don't necessarily require this level of scrutiny with outcomes that may not put the country in a better place. Those considerations matter too.

Now, look, I could argue the easy argument, which is, no, you got to prosecute it. You got to do it. That's what the law says. That's not what prosecutors do. to. Okay, that's my food for thought on this. What do you think? Because the Biden questions are going to be real in this election. The Trump problems are going to be really real and existential to him. Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, makes a good point that you may not like on the right, but it's a good point, which is, what do you want to be talking about a year from now? Whether or not he's going to lose a trial, whether or not

he's going to prison, or your interest in how you beat Joe Biden? It's a legitimate question. Legitimate question. What do you think? Are you a free agent? Are you a critical thinker? Are you independent? Or are you just playing for one side? You tell me. Thank you very much for following, subscribing, giving me a chance, hearing at News Nation, and 11p Eastern every weeknight. So comment, bring it, let's get after it, and we'll respond in kind. I'll see you next time.