The NPR Politics Podcast - With No Evidence Of Wrongdoing, House GOP Continues Biden Probes

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

There are a number of Republican investigations looking into President Biden and his son, Hunter, ongoing in the House of Representatives. Lawmakers say that they are under pressure from their base.This episode: national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, and national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. 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

Hi, this is Tim and Kelsey. We're in Amsterdam and we just finished getting tattoos for our five-year anniversary. This podcast was recorded at 2.06 p.m. on Thursday, July 6, 2023. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but we'll still be riding bicycles and sipping rosé along the canals. Okay, here's the show. Ah, rosé. Happy anniversary. Yeah. That's a memorable way to spend one i want to be where they are do you guys have any tattoos or should we not go there i'm taking the fifth hey there it's the npr politics podcast i'm sarah mccammon i cover politics i'm deirdre i cover congress i'm carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department.

In a divided Congress, neither the president nor Republicans will get much legislating done. Instead, Republicans in the House have been spending their time on investigations. And so far, the probe that's gained the most traction has to do with the president's son, Hunter Biden. There are actually several investigations going on. Deirdre, you're here to talk us through some of those. What are House Republicans trying to find out here? Well, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has said a big part of their charge in running the House is oversight. And they are investigating a lot of things. They multiple committees are looking at is the president's son, Hunter Biden. One has to do with a recent plea deal regarding Hunter Biden's legal issues regarding his taxes. business dealings and his role in Burisma, which is a Ukrainian company he was on the board of, that he got payments of. There are other business dealings related to Chinese interests that they want to look at. What they're really trying to do is trying to raise questions

and suggest that potentially the president, when he was vice president or after he was vice president, had some links to some of his son's business dealings. And they don't have any evidence right now to show any improper links, any improper payments. But they are moving forward and, I guess, sort of have a newfound focus following the plea deal of Hunter Biden. So that's the overview, Deirdre. There's a lot there. I want to zero in on something you mentioned, the plea deal that both you and Carrie have been reporting on in recent weeks. That's the Department of Justice investigation by a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, which ended with federal charges against Hunter Biden. Carrie, just remind us what that's about and where that stands. Sure. So Hunter Biden had been under investigation at least since 2018 by David Weiss, who was appointed by Donald Trump to be the U.S. attorney for Delaware. And Weiss, a few weeks ago,

announced a plea deal with Hunter Biden, a tentative plea deal, where Hunter Biden would plead guilty to two charges related to the failure to pay taxes for a couple of years. Those are misdemeanor charges. They carry a potential like a one year in prison type sentence. But from what we understand, the government is going to recommend probation. The judge doesn't have to abide by that, but that's the recommendation. And that Hunter Biden is going to enter a diversion program for a separate charge that has to do with him possessing a weapon, a firearm, while he was addicted to a controlled

substance when he was very heavily into crack cocaine. And that diversion program, basically the parameters there are, if he stays clean for a couple of years and follows the rules, that will be expunged from his record. But all of that has to be approved by a federal judge in Delaware right now. The plea hearing is set for July 26th. And until that time, we've been hearing a lot of things in the political sphere about what's happening in the legal sphere. One of the House Republicans I talked to just in terms of the timing was suggesting that they're talking about whether or not they decide to try to insert themselves into this legal process that Kerry talked about at the end of July. kind of pause or delay in following through with the legal steps to finalize a plea deal or a sentence, etc., because they're arguing that they have some new information that a whistleblower who was involved in the IRS investigation of Hunter Biden's taxes has brought to Congress, and they

believe that should have been a factor in the prosecution. And they want, and you know, they've asked for a dozen witnesses related to this investigation from the Justice Department, the Secret Service, the IRS, to come in and talk to the committee, including David Weiss. I want to understand more about what's happening, what the Republicans are alleging happened here. And so let's start with these whistleblowers. Who are they? And what are they saying? A lot of what Republicans are alleging is based on what the whistleblowers have told one House committee, the House Ways and Means Committee. There's one whistleblower named Gary Shapley, who is a 14-year IRS investigator who was part of the team investigating Hunter Biden. He and another whistleblower who's unnamed both appeared in closed-door depositions before the House Ways and Means Committee.

And Shapley describes the process over years investigating Hunter Biden and basically alleges that the IRS higher-ups, the DOJ folks involved in prosecuting the case slow-walked the case and that Hunter Biden received preferential political treatment. He claims that his investigation found that Hunter Biden failed to pay more than $2 million in taxes. And some of those tax years, you know, starting in 2014, 2015, the evidence amounted to what would be could have been charged in his view and his recommendation, and he's just an investigator, he's not a prosecutor, would be felony tax evasion, which would be a more serious charge than the misdemeanor two charges that were part of the plea deal. So what Republicans are saying is, hold on here, who made these decisions about what would be prosecuted? We think that, you know,

maybe the attorney general had something to do with this. There's a lot of allegations about their contention that there was political interference and that Hunter Biden got special treatment. The evidence they hold up is the whistleblower testimony. So that's what the Republicans are saying. I mean, Carrie, put this in context for us. How typical is this deal that the president's son is receiving? Okay, so this is a little complicated, like Deirdre said. What the Republicans are saying is that this is a sweetheart deal. But based on the facts that we now see, Hunter Biden or somebody close to Hunter Biden paid back his tax debts, okay, which usually counts in terms of the kind of prosecution the government would bring against you. And as for the weapons charge,

ever since last year when the Supreme Court basically upended the system for regulating guns, there's an open question about the constitutionality of some of these gun-related charges against Hunter Biden. And his very good and very expensive lawyers have been raising those questions with the Justice Department all along. Typically, if you want to throw the book at somebody for one of these weapons charges, it's somebody who has a record, a long criminal record engaged in violence or something else very serious has happened. And Hunter Biden doesn't have that kind of thing on his record. Where the whistleblowers may have a point is that this investigation took a really long time. Okay, it took five years, which is an extraordinarily long

time. And the whistleblowers also say that David Weiss, who's the holdover U.S. attorney from the Trump years, that David Weiss told them that he tried to bring this case in California, he tried to bring it in D.C. and he was rejected. And that he allegedly told these whistleblowers that he asked for more authority from the Justice Department and he was rejected. Well, here's where Merrick Garland, the current attorney general, comes in. Merrick Garland has forcefully denied ever rejecting any effort to give this prosecutor more power. And it turns out, after all this back and forth among Republican committee chairmen and the lawyers for these whistleblowers, that David Weiss came out late last week and said, I did not ask for additional authority. I had all the authority

I needed. So eventually, this judge is going to have to sort this out in a courtroom in Delaware at the end of this month. All right, it's time for a quick break. We'll have more in just a second. Hey, don't miss our latest bonus episode. It's a conversation about covering the trial of former President Trump and what that looks like behind the scenes. A friend of mine who worked at the Associated Press came into the courtroom and said, Carrie, step to it. Michael Cohen has flipped on Trump. Wow. That's the kind of world we live in now. You know, so many legal stories are happening all at the same time. It's hard to keep track of everything. It's all in our latest bonus episode for NPR Politics Podcast plus listeners, whose support helps make this show possible.

And we're back. So Deirdre, stepping back just a little bit here. I mean, what is Republicans objective? It appears to be that they're trying to damage President Biden, but does this work for them? Is there a group of swing voters, for example, that are ready to change their vote over another Hunter Biden news cycle? Or is this about something else, maybe? I don't think we know the answer yet to whether or not this issue is going to break through with swing voters and whether or not they're going to say, oh, maybe we shouldn't have put Republicans in charge of the House. I don't think we're there yet. I do think the big factor driving the House Republicans' decision to move forward aggressively in these investigations of Hunter Biden is the Republican base. The Republican base that helped elect

Republicans to control the House and flip control of the House from the Democrats is focused on going after Hunter Biden. The base is very ginned up and excited about the chance to investigate the Biden family business. There's a lot of conservative media out there that has been making these allegations for years, and they want action. And I think that a lot of House Republicans have told more swing districts. And what they say is they think it's appropriate to investigate. But there is an element of their base that really wants, you know, action, wants a vote, wants an impeachment vote, wants to impeach the president or the attorney general or the secretary of Homeland Security. But what these moderates are saying is we should investigate. We should build a case. I talked to California Republican Mike Garcia, and he sort of described the dynamic that he's been seeing about impeachment at home. It's a very emotional thing. Some people want the instant gratification of a pound of flesh, but there's a process through which we go by. It protects them as much as it protects the people they don't like. So that's what we're trying to do. I do think over the next few months, this is going to continue to play out and there will be a tension inside the Republican conference where some moderates are like, we need to show we can govern. We need to show we can fund the government. It's fine if we investigate, but like that's not everything we should be doing. Hey, Carrie, as Deirdre just mentioned, this isn't just about efforts to impeach President Biden. I mean, Attorney General Merrick Garland is also a target of some of these House Republicans.

Do you see that going anywhere? Yeah, I'm not sure where they're going to take things. What I do know is that the attorney general has basically said he was not involved in this Hunter Biden plea deal. He didn't intervene at all in this case, and that he left matters entirely to the Trump holdover, David Weiss, whom he left in place specifically to avoid these attacks about partisanship and to demonstrate in Merrick Garland's view that this is an independent Justice Department that acts within arm's length of the White House. That whole picture got complicated, though, when Merrick Garland showed up for a state dinner recently, and who else was there but Hunter Biden? It was not the best look for that argument.

So whether or not the Justice Department can make that case forcefully on Capitol Hill, there are people on Capitol Hill, allies of former President Donald Trump, who explicitly want to attack the DOJ right now and the FBI. And one of the reasons is because Trump is asking them to. OK, Donald Trump wants to defund the FBI. He wants to defund the special prosecutor, Jack Smith, who's been investigating him and has already charged him with over 30 felonies with respect to the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago and the refusal to return them. And Jack Smith is continuing to investigate the attempts to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021. So Donald Trump and some of Trump's allies on Capitol Hill have a real motivation to try to tear down this Justice Department. It's unhealthy for the

country, but I think there's going to be a motivation through the summer and into next year, no matter what this judge in Delaware does with this Hunter Biden plea deal. Well, the rhetoric from Republicans often and allies of the president seems to be whenever the president is indicted or faced with another question or accusation, it's sort of what about Hunter Biden, right? And this seems to be part of that playbook. Yes. And I think over the next couple of months, we're going to see things like Carrie mentioned. I think that there are already efforts by some House conservatives to put riders in appropriations bills, spending bills to defund the FBI. There is an effort to build a new FBI headquarters. They're going to try to defund that effort. I think there'll be efforts to defund potentially the special counsel's office. Those debates will happen in spending bills. That few months to have hearings and potentially build a

case to impeach one or more cabinet members. I do think that with such a small margin, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is going to feel intense pressure from the far right of his conference to hold some kind of floor vote on impeaching someone. So I mean, I think I'm not going to predict who it will be, but I think that that pressure will continue to be there. And I think it could continue to build because of the kinds of things that Carrie mentioned in terms of the backlash from the base at the Justice Department, who they view as being politically motivated. All right, we'll leave it there for today. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress.

And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.