The NPR Politics Podcast - Hunter Biden Indicted On Gun Charges

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

The president's son faces three felony charges related to a weapon he purchased in 2018. The charges come after a plea deal fell apart earlier in the summer, and may cause headaches for the Biden campaign — not to mention become fodder for the House's impending impeachment inquiry into the president. This episode: political correspondents Susan Davis & Kelsey Snell, and senior White House correspondent Tamara KeithThis episode was produced by Casey Morell and Elena Moore. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hi, this is Rhiannon and Wiley in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I'm sitting here with my 17-year-old Siamese, listening to him sing the song of his people, or something like that. This podcast was recorded at 321 p.m. on Thursday, September 14th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this.

Okay, enjoy the show. I literally got a tickle in my nose hearing that. That absolutely sounded like a baby. I was about to sneeze. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover politics. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And we are coming to you a little bit later than usual today because there was some late breaking news. President Biden's son Hunter was indicted on three federal felony gun charges. Two counts are related to false statements he made while purchasing a firearm and one count of possession of a firearm while addicted to a controlled substance.

The charges were brought by special counsel David Weiss, who was appointed last month by Attorney General Merrick Garland, but who had been already investigating Hunter Biden for years at this point. The charges come after a plea deal for Hunter Biden fell apart earlier this summer. Tam, these charges are not directly related to House Republicans' new impeachment inquiry of President Biden, but they do seem to undercut one of the core claims outlined by Speaker McCarthy, alleging that the Justice Department has given Hunter Biden special treatment in their investigation of him. Yeah, I don't think that this is going to change the argument of House Republicans, because they want the Justice Department to go even harder on Hunter Biden. They obviously thought that the plea agreement, which has now gone away, that that was too lenient. But they're

still going to make arguments that the investigation moved too slowly, for instance. And to be clear, it has been going on for a very long time. The White House is not making this argument because they are being very quiet about this whole thing. But the fact that the son of the president of the United States has now been indicted on three felony gun-related charges is certainly an indication that the Justice Department is operating freely or must be operating pretty freely of what the president clearly would have wanted. Sure. I mean, that's what I say, Kelsey, when I say it does kind of undercut one of the core claims of Republicans here. Sons and daughters of presidents don't tend to get indicted. If anything, it looks like Hunter Biden right now is being treated harshly, if not fairly,

by the Justice Department, like you or I might be. I think that's a fair point, though. I will say that the allegations that House Republicans are making around impeachment are pretty wide ranging. They allege that President Biden was involved in his son's business dealings as well. And I think it's important when we're thinking about impeachment to remember that Republicans are making a lot of claims that they have not yet substantiated. And they claim that they're moving forward on impeachment in order to get the White House to be more responsive to requests they have for information about President Biden and his son

Hunter. The White House has, as you noted, Tam, has been very reluctant to talk about this. The White House continues to say this is a private matter, legal matter for their son to resolve. It doesn't involve the president. But it is all caught up now in between the Biden family and the microscope they're being put under by Republicans in Congress. And do you think that the White House can continue to have that be their line? At some point, does the president have to start talking more candidly about his son? It seems quite unlikely that he would do that. This is his only surviving son. His other son, Beau Biden, died from cancer. Hunter Biden is someone who, even as he has gone through addiction and other very serious problems, President Biden has kept him close. So, for instance, after this plea deal was announced,

the one that has blown up and now there are charges, President Biden traveled to Ireland with Hunter Biden. He invited him to a state dinner where the attorney general was also attending. He brought him to the White House for the Fourth of July. They went on a family vacation. Hunter Biden is a regular presence at this White House with the president. He is his son. And the president is very sensitive about Hunter Biden. In the past, the White House has said that the president and first lady love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life. That's the only

comment that they've given. The president had said that he's very proud of his son, presumably for rebuilding his life after this period of addiction. And the White House is also very careful to maintain that the president has never discussed this case with the Department of Justice or kept the Justice Department from appointing U.S. Attorney Weiss, now the special counsel. You know, Tam, you're hitting on something that I think is important to think about with this broadly, which is that Republicans, when they talk about the connection, they brought some people in, like Devin Archer, who was a former business associate of Hunter Biden, to kind of talk to a House committee about then Vice President Biden's relationship with his son. You note that they're together, they spend time together. And what he told the committee was that, you know, Biden sent greetings when Hunter hosted conference calls and things like that, but that he didn't have any evidence that the president received any direct financial benefit

as the result of those interactions. So those are two different things, right? Spending time with your son and greeting their, you know, their business partners or whatever, it's really different than benefiting from the business your son is doing. Or participating in the business that your son is doing. And here's what I know about President Biden. He answers the phone whenever his children or his grandchildren call. That's just like one of the Joe Biden rules that he talks about. Kelsey, Republicans have launched an impeachment inquiry, but they don't seem to know exactly where they're going just yet. They seem that they've already

decided that President Biden has done any number of impeachable things, and they're going to set out to find them. But this does certainly seem to at least add more smoke to this situation that they're creating that the Biden family has criminal intent, has criminal actions, and we need to look into this. Well, yeah. And that's also a rhetorical thing that they do. They talk about the Biden crime family. That's a phrase that we hear a lot from Republicans in the House. And so there is as much a, as with other impeachments, there is as much a case being made to the public as is a case being made to House committees and investigators who might actually move down the formal impeachment path. This is something that former President Trump attacked Joe Biden about in the 2020 election. And I'm skeptical, or at least it's an open question to see how much traction this does get with voters who also can be pretty sympathetic to families that have dealt with addiction and drug issues and crime issues in their own families.

Right. And this charge dates back to 2018 when Hunter Biden purchased this weapon. So it was during a period when President Biden wasn't in office. Also, it's been known about since, as you say, the last campaign. And I will say, though, that Hunter Biden is an adult. The public is very sensitive when they go after the president's minor child. But Hunter Biden is an adult. You know, this is one of those things where Republicans have seen an opportunity. They have been working this, you know, obviously, former President Trump's first impeachment was about trying to tie Joe Biden and Hunter Biden to shady figures in Ukraine. This goes back a very long time. And it is this effort to say, hey, there's shady stuff

out there. You should consider him corrupt. But this is going to be part of the background music of this campaign, which is exactly what Donald Trump and House Republicans want. Especially as we might now also have a trial for Hunter Biden to cover next year. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk more about this when we get back. And we're back. And Kelsey, one of the questions that we are awaiting an answer for, but you know, as much as Republicans have already spent months and months investigating the Biden family, they haven't actually gone directly at them. It now seems that Republicans are faced with some serious decisions to make about how hard they want to go at the President and his family. For instance, are they going to subpoena Hunter Biden? Are they

going to subpoena the president's brother, who also was involved in the influence industry? And do we have a sense of basically how far they want to take this? Not really, because they aren't saying so far. That is, I think, the open question that we're going to try to get some commitments from House Republicans on. They say they want to be aggressive. They talk about the idea of subpoenas, but nothing specific has come out. To be fair, this impeachment inquiry was just announced this week, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has a lot of things on his plate, including the potential that members of his own party want to strip him of his speakership. So the specifics may not be coming imminently. House investigators have already, though, gotten their hands on

financial records related to the Biden family. They've made a lot of noise and hay about getting to get their hands on those records. But they, after that, did not say, and look, we have the smoking gun evidence that we need to prove that anything happened. This is a very unique impeachment inquiry because it is starting without any hard evidence that says, here is something that was done that was wrong. Here is the moment it happened. And here's the link to the president of the United States. But you know, we do have two impeachments now to look back recently on and also, you know, House Democrats who ran, you know, plenty of investigations into the Trump administration. But what I think is interesting is even Democrats and with all the polarization and how many members of their party did not like the President Trump, they were very careful about going after the

president's children, Don Jr., Eric Ivanka, who Ivanka in particular was involved in the administration. I mean, Democrats would talk about how politically risky it could be to try to connect family members to the president. And they didn't do that. You know, they really did not go after the Trump children the way many in the party wanted them to because they felt like there was issues there, including business dealings that they could have looked at. And they didn't. And now Republicans seem to be faced with the very same question. And we don't know what the answer is going to be. But we do know that other people have thought about it and backed away from it because the political risk could seem too great. Do either of you have a sense of how much all of this is getting

traction with voters? You know, when we talk all the time about what matters to people, they're not saying this, they're saying the economy, they're saying inflation, they're saying jobs, they're saying gas prices. But if we're about to enter into a period of time where we're now faced with impeachment hearings again, not to mention any number of trials against the former president, at some point, this sort of is everybody all corrupt environment we're living in does seem like it's going to have to have some effect on the electorate. One thing I know we have seen in the past is that it does, as you say, is everybody all corrupt, that that feeling of everything is a mess can make voters just angry

and disconnected more than it can make them have a feeling in one direction or another. We have seen that drive people away from political participation at all. It's possible that we wind up in that place again. But like you said, it's a situation where we could have an impeachment trial happening at the same time as former President Trump is in court and at the same time as potentially Hunter Biden is in court. So it will be kind of a split screen, but it may happen far enough ahead of an election that we could have some other thing that pops up before people actually cast votes that changes their minds. I do think that you point to something that is important to mention as perspective. We're talking about an indictment against the

president's adult son. The former president who is running, who is the front runner on the Republican side, has been indicted four times over and is very likely to be in court as this election season heats up, which, you know, as we've said a million times is unprecedented. But, you know, these are these two things are not the same. Tim, do you get a sense that Biden and this certainly seems to have been his posture for now is like, act like none of this is happening. You know, be the president, talk about the economy, don't talk about any of the Washington investigations or scandals. Yeah, I mean, like literally, while we were taping this podcast, the president was in a televised address, talking about the economy and making a contrast between Bidenomics and Maganomics, as he's now calling it. And he was joking and having fun at the beginning of the remarks. doing everything he can, his White House is doing everything they can to send the signal

that President Biden is busy doing the work of the American people, being president and not allowing himself to be distracted by this impeachment thing or the situation with his son. All right. I think that's it for us today. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow with the Weekly Roundup. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover politics. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.