The Daily Signal - Why Hunter Biden Case Smells Strongly of 'Corruption'

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Hunter Biden has been found guilty on all three of the felony charges he faced, but the case, according to Mike Howell, smells of "corruption."  “What's happening with Hunter [Biden] is essentially they picked the lowest level thing that didn't connect to [President] Joe [Biden], the thing they could paint in the light of addiction, the most sympathetic light, as a means to absolve him for guilt in everything else,” says Howell, executive director for the Oversight Project at The Heritage Foundation.  “What the American people really care about, what I care about, is not that Hunter [Biden] was a crackhead,” Howell, also an investigative columnist for The Daily Signal, said, but “the corruption in the federal government, that Joe Biden and his family were running an international pay-to-play influence-peddling scheme in some of the most corrupt regions of the world, to include Ukraine and the [Chinese Communist Party].” Howell joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to argue why the guilty verdict in the Hunter Biden case is more complex than it may appear. Enjoy the show! 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 Wednesday, June 12th. I'm Virginia Allen. A Delaware jury has found Hunter Biden guilty on all three charges he faced in his federal gun case. The charges involve Hunter purchasing a gun while actively using cocaine. To purchase a gun, he had to fill out paperwork saying that he was not using drugs at the time. But the prosecution presented enough evidence to show that that was a lie. And the jury has found Hunter Biden guilty. Hunter was also found guilty on charges related to tax offenses. Mike Howell, the executive director for the Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation, says that Hunter has been found guilty on the most sympathetic crimes that he's committed.

So what exactly does Mike mean by that? Well, stay tuned for our conversation to find out. This is Mike Howell at the Heritage Foundation. I know how the left and the deep state operate because I've seen it from the inside. When I was working for the Trump administration, I learned how the left made our lives miserable and how they continued to think they could play by their own rules. Well, now we're taking all these tricks and tactics

that were deployed against the Trump administration and turning them against the Biden regime. Through the work of the Oversight Project, we're exposing the left for what they are and embarrassing some actors responsible. We're using strategic foias and fearless litigation to force these bureaucrats to deliver documents they'd prefer to never see the light of day.

But for our work to be successful, we need patriots like you to stand with us. You can take action now. Visit heritage.org slash oversight to learn more. There's no time to waste. We're joined now by Mike Hal, the executive director of the Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation. Mike, on Tuesday, the jury in the Hunter Biden's federal criminal case found Hunter guilty on all three of the charges that he faced. What was your initial reaction when you learned this guilty verdict?

Yeah, not surprised whatsoever. Born in night, wasn't born in last night, and the fix has been in for some time here. I mean, I really worry that the propaganda media is going to play this as the both sides thing. They're going to basically say at the high level, oh, my gosh, Hunter was held accountable, and that's what's happening to Trump. And then when they're categorically different things of degree and kind and implications, what's happening with Hunter is essentially they picked the lowest level thing that didn't connect to Joe, the thing they could paint in the light of addiction, the most sympathetic light,

as a means to absolve him for guilt and everything else. What the American people really care about, what I care about is, you know, not that Hunter was a crackhead, not that he was a crack head that got his dead brother's wife addicted to crack cocaine. She's one who found the gun and got rid of it. All of that's immaterial. What's material is the corruption in the federal government that Joe Biden and his family were running an international pay-to-play influence of peddling scheme in some of the most corrupt regions of the world to include Ukraine and the CCP, you know, our enemies in the CCP and other corrupt regions.

And what happened in this arc, starting from a year ago when we were in federal court, they were trying the same federal court, by the way, that he just got convicted in. David Weiss, the prosecutor, same prosecutor here, tried to give Hunter a plea deal, say, you know, accept liability for the gun and tax stuff, and we'll pardon you for all this other stuff that connects back to Joe and the corruption that the American people are upset with. We sniffed that out, got it blown up. And so here they are back of the drawing board today, convicting them of the gun charge. charge, but still no movement on the things that American people care about. And what this sets up for, not only is the misinformation that, like, the law is being applied evenly in this country, but for a pardon of Hunter. They pick the sympathetic thing that you can't, or you can wrap an addiction and all those things, and you cannot connect to Joe. And it sets up Joe for a pardon of

Hunter, a pardon that will not only be for this charge, but for all the things connecting not only back to Joe and his family, but the thing I'm even more concerned. about than the Bidens is the intelligence community and law enforcement who sat there and watched this corruption happening in plain sight not only did nothing but hit it and then used every tool to disposal of the awesome force of the U.S. government and even some other governments to go after President Trump, which are still doing today. And so this is not a both sides thing. This is corruption. Let's unpack this because there's a lot that you just went through there. You said, we sniff this out, we blew it up. You're talking about the oversight projects work last year. Take us back to last July

when the Justice Department and Hunter Biden's lawyers said, hey, we have a plea deal in this case. The oversight project was involved, like you said, in exposing, okay, wait a second, this isn't quite what it looks like. For those that weren't following this story, catch us up on that. Right. So a year ago, in court in Delaware, same court, Judge Noriega, same judge. It was a hearing about the plea deal that Hunter was offered. And so obviously the antennas go up.

It's what's going on here. and basically what they were doing was giving him a plea deal on the lower level offenses. And in this very unusual convoluted plea deal, they were going to absolve him and say, we will not prosecute you for anything else you did in this time period. And so we're sitting there and we have several ongoing lawsuits related to it, related to things he probably should be prosecuted in that time period, thinking what the heck is going on, the fix is in, they're trying to slip one, you know, past the court and, you know, just absolve Hunter. And not only Hunter, but Joe, and then by extension also, his family.

family and federal law enforcement, all the other corrupt actors in this. And so, you know, we quickly got our squad together and pulled a bunch of all-nighters and delivered a massive, you know, I think it was 750-page brief to the court outlining all these concerns, all the other things that were on the table. And ultimately, she agreed with our brief and threw the plea deal out. And so then they had to go back to the drawing board. The same David Wise said, okay, we couldn't get the plea deal, the corrupt plea deal that we offered him. And so the same guy who offered him the corrupt plea deal, by the way, is one prosecuting him here, which should raise some alarm bells. He's back at it.

And so they ultimately decided, and this is my read of like, all right, we got to prosecute him for something. Like there's just too much out there with all the IRS whistleblowers. Let's just give it a go and give the perception we're going hard against him on the lowest level thing. And then that is going to present a circumstance in which Joe will probably pardon Hunter, maybe after the election, maybe for election, don't know. Don't know. But in that pardon, it'll be for all the activity, not just the gun. gun form. Gun form set that aside.

It'll be for running an international influencing peddling scheme out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Joe Biden has said that he won't pardon his son, but you're saying, well, I think he might. Yeah, I think he absolutely will. Joe Biden is probably the most dramatic liar in American political history, and that's a crowded environment. I mean, of course, he takes no cost for promising not to do it, and he'll take the cost when he actually does it, which is why if there's an opportunity to, they'll do it after the

election. I don't know what sentencing looks like. And they'll frame it in the light of like, this is just MAGA Republicans going after a poor addict. And this is, you know, that you can imagine right now, the pitch that the media will run with and others on Capitol Hill and whatnot. This just sets up for that. And so, yeah, Biden's a liar. He'll lie again. Where does Hunter Biden's laptop play in all of this? And what are we going to hear? Are we going to hear more about that laptop in the coming days, weeks, months? Yeah. I mean, like, this is, one of the biggest scandals in American political history. It was on the back of that lie that Biden corruptly ended up in the White House when he and 51 intelligence officials and the mainstream

media and social media basically censored the laptop that came out prior to the election. That was a lie that had a lot of foreign entanglements in it too. We talk a lot about foreign influence in elections. A lot of these people, those 51, have significant foreign ties and their, you know, careers down what they're doing. A lot of them retained security clearances. And so the fact that, you know, there is yet another admission from the government that the laptop was real. And there have been several admissions along the way just shows the damage such lies of great magnitude can have on American, you know, not only the politics, but the consequences of this politics. And those consequences of those politics are what are, you know, people are really focused on right now. That's a runaway inflation.

That is a wide open border. It's the chaotic government, the sense of just turning to a very dark chapter in this country, one in which lawfare and political opponents are put in prison. Speak a little bit more, if you would, to your concerns that you mentioned about the foreign policy, the community, authorities at play, law enforcement corruption there. What needs to be exposed here, in your opinion? Right. So the biggest thing, the thing that should historians and people watch in the long arc of

American history should be most concerned about with regard to the Bidens, is that federal law enforcement in the intelligence community, people we vested with awesome powers, particularly since 9-11, have taken on a firmly partisan stance. Not only did they interfere in the last election, and many more before that, and they'll interfere in this one, but the fact that when presented with the biggest flashing red neon lights about corruption at the highest levels, and I'm talking about the influencing peddling schemes in Ukraine and the CCP particularly, that the intelligence community and law enforcement picked a partisan side. They opted to let this intelligence elite capture from China particularly continue and to capture the president of the United States if that meant

that Donald Trump was not the president. And so these people we vest through our constitution with the ability to arrest us, to shoot us if they must, are inherently partisan. And I guess I'll put it simply this way. You can believe one of two things. You can believe probably the silliest, most senile president of American history and his drug-addled crackhead son, managed to stay one step ahead of the awesome powers of the American intelligence community, military, and law enforcement, or they let it go. And I think the answer is pretty obvious there. What's going to happen with the sentencing? We know Hunter Biden could face up to 25 years in prison. That's unlikely because he's a first-time offender. What do you predict? We're going to hear from the judge in the

sentencing? Don't know. Judge Noreka has been very fair, you know, in our dealings with her. I don't know what she ultimately will decide. I don't know to what extent the things external to this case will play in. You say he has a first-time offender, but anybody can be a first-time offender if you're the entire federal law enforcement apparatus lets you run an international influence of pedaling scheme and all these other associated crimes. So I don't know to what extent it will play in. There might be a reason for us to go to Delaware. Does this place the president in an awkward position since he has been so clear on the need for further gun restrictions in the United States? And yet his son was just convicted on charges of purchasing a gun while actively using cocaine.

Yeah, absolutely it does. I mean, the fact pattern of this, the media hasn't really touched because it's so sorted. But, you know, I've taken no pleasure in saying this. But this was a crazy period in the Biden fan. family, and they've had a lot of crazy periods. This is Hunter, getting his dead brother's widow, who is sleeping with, addicted to crack cocaine, she found the gun. She dumped the gun in a dumpster outside of a public grocery store, a well-traffic grocery store, across the street from a school. It doesn't get much worse and crazy than that. And this is a president that, you know, is going

after law-abiding Second Amendment supporters, not only who, you know, own guns, but who vocalize support of it. And, you know, those people are being debanked. It's clearly at odds. But look, the left is, we on the right make so many appeals of like to their logical inconsistency. They know they're logically insistent. It's about inconsistent. It's about power. And so sure, we can sit there and say, hey, what about this? What about that? But the problem isn't, you know, proving to the American people that they're hypocrites. It's their weaponization of power that we need to take away. How do we do that? How did they do? Well, there. There's a lot of ways. We've been pretty vocal about it. Ultimately, you need to take power from them. So it comes down to the American people. But there are other things that could be done to defend against the worst abuses of the weaponization. Those are the things I'm most upset about because in the current structure, we aren't utilizing any of the tools on the table. So, of course, I'm always going to be mad at the crazy lips. But I'm more mad at the people who do nothing to stop them. The people who actually, rhetorically, will go on cable news and say they're on our side. But when it comes to, you know, their access.

to power, the power we give to them by voting, to give them that responsibility, they don't use it. And I'm talking primarily about the United States Congress here. Since the House flipped from Democrats or Republicans, the weaponization has gotten worse. Way worse. I mean, ask President Trump. He's looking at prison right now, along with a lot of other Americans that's stepped up. Congress has continued to fund this radical weaponization. They've continued to give it a veneer of legitimacy with token opposition, you know,

through their pen pal operation paper cut, we'll send Merrick Garland a letter that has her list of his naughtiness on it. And then we let the matter die there. And so it gives the American people the sense that there is kind of this conflict in a check when there's really no check. And so it's damaging to our republic. And that's why a lot of people are calling for a legislative special counsel now, which basically would be Congress admitting what they're doing isn't working

and then taking all their powers, investing in someone else, with the funds that they haven't even touched to do this, to go out and do the job. And I think, like, at this late stage Republic, moment we're in, it would be awful to leave those options unexplored and basically end this Congress by returning money to the Biden administration that was supposed to be used to hold them accountable. Along those lines at the Oversight Project, I mean, this is what you guys do day in and day out. You're looking at these issues. You're trying to bring things to light that are in darkness within the federal government, within state governments. Give us a little bit of a preview on what you guys

are working on this summer, if you would. Right, absolutely. So, you know, our MO is getting the facts and the docs out there, propelling litigation based on those things, getting the information directly to the American people and bypassing legacy gatekeepers. And we do it at a volume and speed, which I don't think anyone can keep up with. We're at almost 100 lawsuits now. We've had some of the biggest discoveries, if you will, over the past couple of years, the machine is humming. But I'll tell you where the machine is squarely pointed now. It's on the system levels attack on our election integrity and the lawfare. without those two things. If they remain unmolested and continuing to grow, they basically guarantee leftist's strangle grip on power. And then after that, it gets a lot harder. I don't want to say impossible to ever take power back. I'm talking about drastic changes to the election system and basically turning the legal

system into a pro forma draping of legality that's just used to achieve partisan ends. And so, look, I am, you know, rock ribs on all these other issues, these policies, issues, but right now, we never went on a policy issue if we don't solve those two things. And so we are really in the election integrity space. I think illegal aliens present a massive threat to the ability to have a certifiable election. I think that Biden using the federal government with far left nonprofits for the biggest get out the vote, government funded, directionally targeted, get out the vote effort is a huge problem that's gone unaddressed.

They're basically bragging that they could register three million people, only on one side. pointing the machine at, you know, their areas, not areas where they think a Republican might show up. And it's just a federal overreach into the elections, which has dramatic consequences. And everyone listening to this is paying for it right now with their taxpayer dollars. And then just the last thing is the continuing infrastructure of the illicit ballot harvesting network and the predatory ballot harvesters. I think they have allowed to operate with impunity. And we're trying to change that. We encourage all of our listeners follow the work of the oversight project on at Oversight PR, and you can also follow the work of Mike Howl himself at M. Howe tweets on X.

Mike, thanks so much for time. I really appreciate it. Hey, good to be with you. Thanks for having me on the Podsizzle. With that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Daily Signal podcast. Be sure to hit that subscribe button. You never miss out on shows from the Daily Signal, including our top news edition.

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