The Daily Signal - Indictment of Hunter Biden Is ‘A Smokescreen,’ Oversight Project Director Says

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

Special counsel David Weiss’ indictment of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, is “a smokescreen,” according to Mike Howell, director of the Oversight Project, the watchdog arm of The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of Heritage.)  Howell says the three drug-related gun charges against the younger Biden “are the smallest things that Hunter Biden should be facing in any fair and impartial investigation. It would be like charging the Unabomber with mail fraud or stamp fraud or something.” “I mean there are serious things like running an international pay-to-play, influencing-peddling scheme involving Chinese intelligence officers in some of the most corrupt corners of the world in Ukraine, and having your father fire a prosecutor over it,” says Howell, who is also an investigative columnist for The Daily Signal, adding:  So, those are the big things that should be focused on, but instead, they’re trying to get him on the small stuff here to give some appearance of the law actually being enforced.Howell joins today’s episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the three charges, what’s next for the younger Biden’s indictment, and some of the other work the Oversight Project is doing. Link to Dr. Patrick Ho memo: https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2023/Oversite_Project/OP_The%20Investigation%20and%20Trial%20of%20Dr.%20Patrick%20Ho.pdf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, September 19th. I'm Samantha Sherris, and joining today's show is Mike Howell, director of the Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation. As the Daily Signals, Fred Lucas recently reported, special counsel David Weiss indicted the president's son, Hunter Biden, on September 14th for three drug-related gun charges. Mike Howell joins today's show to break down the three charges, the most important takeaway for the audience to know about the indictment,

a recent memo from the Oversight Project, and much more. We'll get to my conversation with Mike Howell of the Oversight Project right after this. As conservatives, sometimes it feels like we're constantly on defense against bad ideas. Bad philosophy, revisionist history, junk science, and divisive politics. But here's something I've come to understand. When faced with bad ideas, it's not enough to just defend. If we want to save this country, then it's time to go on offense. Conservative principles are ideas that work, individual responsibility, strong local communities, and belief in the American dream.

As a former college professor and current president of the Heritage Foundation, my life's mission is to learn, educate, and take action. My podcast, The Kevin Roberts Show, is my opportunity to share that journey with you. I'll be diving into the critical issues that plague our nation, having deep conversations with high-profile guests, some of whom may surprise you, and I want to ensure freedom for the next generation. Find the Kevin Roberts Show wherever you get your podcast. Joining today's episode of The Daily Signal podcast is Mike Howell, director of the Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation. Mike, thanks so much for joining us.

Hey, thanks for having me. Now, before we get into today's topics, can you tell us a little bit more about the oversight project? Right. So we launched this about a year and a half ago. It is a recognition that we're living in perhaps the most corrupt time in American history. And so the institutional right and the American people deserve entities that are able to go out there and investigate and litigate on their behalf. And so traditionally the Heritage Foundation has, you know, been a real policy engine for the right. But we wanted to add a new tool

to our, you know, toolkit. And so recognizing also that Congress hasn't been able to get much in the way out of information of the executive branch or any accountability, by the way, we're stepping in and filling that void through an all-star team of investigators and litigators. So we go out and all these major issues, you hear Congressman X or YZ sends a letter, they get nothing back. Well, we sue for that same stuff and we get stuff back because we're in federal court. And then you pair that up with some real exciting investigative tools and you're really cooking with gas applying this to the major policy issues of the day. And I think really given the American people, well, they've been missing for a long time,

especially with the media just being completely co-opted. And that's the straight honest truth and the documents to back it up. That's great. You have all been doing such great work, and I want to talk more about what kind of work you've been doing. But first, let's talk about Hunter Biden. Just last week on September 14th, the president's son was indicted. As Fred Lucas reports, the three-count indictment accuses Hunter Biden of lying on a form to purchase a cold cobra revolver by not revealing his addiction to crack cocaine.

Conviction on the three charges could bring Biden up to 25 years in prison. First and foremost, can you tell us a little bit more about these three charges? Yeah, absolutely. But at the outset, let me just say that these are the smallest things that Hunter Biden should be facing in any fair and impartial investigation. It would be like charging the unibomber with mail fraud or stamp fraud or something. I mean, there are serious things like running an international pay-to-play, influencing peddling scheme involving Chinese intelligence officers and some of the most corrupt

corners of the world in Ukraine and having your father fire a prosecutor over it. So those are the big things that should be focused on. But instead, they're trying to, you know, get them on the small stuff here to give some appearance of the law actually being enforced. So on this gun thing, it's important to recognize what actually happened. So after Hunter's brother, Bo Biden, you know, unfortunately passed away, Hunter began a romantic relationship with his brother's widow. And it was his brother's widow who discovered a gun in Hunter Biden's car when he was, you know, openly and notoriously addicted to drugs and all sorts of trouble. She then took that gun and threw it away in a grocery store dumpster. The gun was 100 found out the gun was missing, and she did that.

He asked her to go get it. She went to go get it. It was missing. She alerted the grocery store manager, who then reviewed the tapes and saw that a man who dug through trash found it. The police recall there is concern because the dumpster was across the street from high school. So this is a horrendous fact pattern. Absolutely just disgusting behavior all the way around. And so that's what he was charged with is lying on his form to about.

being a drug user, and so he was a legal and possession of a gun. That in addition to some tax crimes, or what's at play here? And so initially, when DOJ, after five years of investigating that crime, which that fact pattern has been known for a long time, so what took five years? I think you can answer that. It was political interference into the case. Attorney Weiss, who's out of Delaware, cooked up a plea deal between Hunter and in the government, which basically said, okay, we are going to forgive you for every crime under the... this son, including this international business peddling, but we're going to give you diversion, you know, pre-child diversion for the gun charge. And so that's when we got involved

to the Heritage Oversight Project. We were already suing DOJ and a lot of matters related to this, but we basically wrote a monster of a brief and we were the first ones to do so, and I think only one of two at the end of the day, that walked through all these issues with the judge overseeing it, saying there is a sweetheart giveaway, get out of jail-free card hidden in this plea deal, and that's what blew up the plea deal, this recognition that this is not the way you absolve someone who's essentially a pardon from Merrick Garland and President Biden to the first son over this diversionary deal. And so then that got scrapped and Weiss became special counsel, which is an abomination because he's the one who should be under investigation himself, and actually took it to a grand jury who then decided to charge him.

And so that's where it's at now. Obviously, you went over the range of punishment that can be dulled out. see what ends up happening. The Bidens are going to fight this. We obviously know how weaponized the Department of Justice is. I would encourage the listeners not to buy into the appearance that they're trying to sell that this is justice working. It's not. It's a big distraction. And just speaking of our listeners, my next question was, what is the most important takeaway that our audience, our listeners need to know about the indictment? It's not the indictment itself. They should need to know the indictments of smokescreen.

that unfortunately we're living in a highly, highly corrupt time in American history. Never in this course of this nation's history have we had a president that's so clearly implicated in wrongdoing. We're talking over the course of, you know, a decade, a lot of money. Well over 20 million that's been identified going into tons of Biden family members who set up all sorts of different LLCs, which certainly appears to be for the purposes of money laundering. You have official actions that have been tied to this in the firing of a Ukraine prosecutor that was investigating hunting.

You have Joe being intricately involved in the business, whether that's in meetings, whether it's on emails using a pseudonym, whether it's Hunter's business partner basically testifying that Joe was the product and the entire brand. And so I think it's really sad and unfortunate, but we need to be really clear-eyed about the fact that this is unacceptable. We cannot have this. Our country lived through variations of this in the Clintons when they were running the Clinton Global Foundation and obviously a lot of corruption there. Obama didn't have to work too hard to make his money because big corporations like Netflix and just basically backed up the Brinks Trucks for him. But this is a really, really poorly structured corruption scheme that we're looking at. And we just can't tolerate it.

And it's unacceptable. What are the next steps for the indictment? What happens next? So it depends if Weiss is actually investigating this, which if you're a betting person, I would bet no. Are they going to proceed with the real charges? And that's the international pay-to-play kind of scheme that's apparent to everybody with any activity between their ears. And so that's what I'm looking for. As it relates to the gun charge, we'll see.

The Hunter Biden team has taken the offensive against the House. So, you know, last week they announced an impeachment inquiry. The first two major pieces of legal action were from the Biden team. So the Biden team is suing the IRS whistleblowers. They're saying they didn't comply with the law. It's outrageous because they certainly did. They went through this long process with the Ways and Means Committee to release and information, and that's exactly what they did legally and ethically. And they're also suing

Marco Polo, which is the entity that put out the report on the Hunter Biden laptop. And so they're basically tying up the Biden team is tying up the key sources of information for the House in federal court. And the House hasn't taken any steps in furtherance of their impeachment inquiry. So the table's been flipped a bit. It's very frustrating, especially someone who believes that whistleblowers deserve every last protection regardless of policies or politics. And I would like to see them protected more. Now, in addition to Hunter Biden's indictment, I also wanted to ask you more about the work that oversight has been doing. Just recently, you issued a memo on the investigation and trial of Dr. Patrick Ho. First and foremost, who is Dr. Patrick Ho? So Patrick Coe is currently in federal

jail. He was a business partner of Hunter and by extension, Joe. He was referred to by Hunter as the bleeping spy chief of China. Okay. This is somebody with connections. to CCP intelligence. He was operating a group called CFC, which was like a Chinese energy conglomerate that was in business with Hunter. He got tied up in a, guess what, international bribery scheme. That's kind of the pattern we're seeing here, actually related to things in Africa. And so he went to jail for that. Make matters more interesting. Guess who his lawyer was? His lawyer was Hunter Biden for his case. He paid Hunter Biden a million dollars for quote-unquote legal services, which clearly to me appears to be a way to just like,

get some political help by giving the president's son a million dollars, or, you know, tie things up with, you know, this fake attorney, client privilege or someone who's probably not even doing any real legal work. All sorts of questions about the DOJ's handling of this case. Patrick Coe, I think, was subject to some surveillance. There's tons of emails and communications to which DOJ would have had awareness of Hunter Biden's involvement in this. Obviously, no investigations or prosecutions emanated from that. So you have to wonder why DOJ, faced with what looks like a mound of evidence, did nothing. Also, in the court filings, you see this redaction of Hunter Biden and the Biden's from the records. And so that certainly appears as they're trying to protect the Biden's from political fallout.

And so these are the people that if the House was doing a thorough, thorough job would be center in the public campaign to let people know about how this corruption actually worked. So to that end, we stepped into the void and we put out about a 20-page memo that lays us all out. Check us out at Oversight PR at Oversight PR on, I guess we call it X now. And we'll walk you through every last part of this. I will definitely make sure to include a link to the memo in the show notes so people can easily access it. In addition to, you know, this memo that you put out, what other work is the oversight project doing? So we're all over the board. All the major issues of the day, we're there.

We are very aggressive in that we have, I think, about 35 hours. of lawsuits right now for every policy topic under the sun. Some of the recent high-profile successes on the pro-life front, what's happening with the Supreme Court justices where basically the Biden administration of Merrick Garland made it a policy to allow the breaking of the law to intimidate them by protests over their house. That's a retaliation for overturning Roe v. Wade, and it's completely lawless that the president is, you know, indirectly allowing intimidation of the Supreme Court he doesn't like. So we have been putting out document after document that basically shows how that has been working in practice. We saw that the U.S. Marshals were directed

not to arrest anybody who was engaged in this illegal activity under USC 1507, and instead, guess to do this, take notes. Their job is to document it. And this is happening around the context and the time of an assassination attempt on Brett Kavanaugh. And you have the U.S. Marshalls saying, hey, we have seen no threats, no credible threats. And so putting out a lot of information to further that on the border, and I'm a little biased here because I'm a former DHS guy from the Trump administration. We've been all over them. One of the big things that we uncovered was May Yorkists, you know, after this fake whipping incident at the border, where a bunch of liberals saw a horse and then just assumed that it was like a whipping incident, we found out that

May Yorkis knew there was no whipping. He was told by his staff and then he went to the White House podium and basically said it was a very racist thing he saw at the border. And they just drug these guys through the mud and they tried to refer him for criminal prosecution. They wanted to lock up Border Patrol agents for securing the border. And then guess what? When they figured out they couldn't prosecute them out of everybody in the world, the first person they wanted to break the bad news to was none other than Al Sharpton. This is how the Libs work. It's often these caricatures you see out there, they're accurate. You know, DOJ is like, we got bad news. Somebody call Uncle Owl. It is just outrageous. But we could pick any different policy area that's top of mind.

We got a case there and documents that we're putting out. Any final thoughts on any of the topics that we discussed today? Stay vigilant. I think one of the biggest problems with us on the right is we let these things go. You know, it's a news cycle type environment. It's a social media type environment. We need to see the connective thread between all of this, and that's one of corruption. And that's corruption in its classic sense of, you know, financial corruption.

We're certainly seeing that at the highest levels. We're also seeing that via policy with the, you know, veneer of legitimacy, whether it's this COVID-My, or this transportation money that didn't really go to transportation and infrastructure, or if it's the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which was just another boondoggle. We're getting ripped off. There's power that is being illegitimately weaponized against us and has legitimately awful consequences. And so don't take it, you know, one bite at a time. Realize it's the whole thing.

And our mission, not only as, you know, conservatives, but this is cross-party lines and political persuasions, we just need to get some legitimacy back in government. And we don't have that now, and it's okay to say we don't have that now because that's the only way we get it back. Well, Mike Howell, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. All right. Thanks for having me. And that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to my interview with Mike Howell, director of the oversight project at the Heritage Foundation.

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