Today, Explained - The Hunter becomes the pardoned

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

On Saturday, future President Donald Trump announced Kash Patel would lead the FBI. On Sunday, current President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter. Coincidence? The Washington Post’s Matt Viser and The Atlantic’s Elaina Plott Calabro explain. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Amanda Lewellyn, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Kim Eggleston, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Rob Byers, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members President Joe Biden hugs son Hunter Biden after ending his run for a second term this summer. Photo by Evan Vucci-Pool/Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Distinguished guests, please welcome the President of the United States, accompanied by National Turkey Federation Chairman John Zimmerman and his son, Grant. President Biden kicked off the week of Thanksgiving with the ceremony on the south lawn of the White House. He came out in his aviators. It was a sunny day in D.C. Everyone knew what he was about to do and what he was about to say. He was out in his aviators. It was a sunny day in D.C. Everyone knew what he was about to do and what he's about to say. He was going to pardon a turkey. Good morning. Tell me there's twenty five hundred people here today looking for a pardon. President Biden closed out Thanksgiving week with a written statement and took a lot of people by surprise because he did something he promised he would not do over and over again.

He said he would not pardon his son Hunter. And then he did. We're going to try and figure out why on Today Explained. Bet MGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with Bet MGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about Bet MGM.

Download the app today and discover why bet MGM is your basketball home for the season raise your game to the next level this year with bet MGM a sports book worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA bet MGM.com for terms and conditions must be 19 years of age or older to wager Ontario only please play responsibly if you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you please contact connex ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with i gaming ontario Matt Visor, you report on the White House for The Washington Post. Joe Biden pardoned his son on Sunday. What does that mean exactly?

It basically absolves Hunter from all of the legal cloud that has been around him for the past several years. But it's even bigger than that. I mean, it's more sweeping. This pardon basically protects Hunter from any legal prosecution over almost a decade-long period, from 2014 up until Sunday night at midnight. So anything that Hunter did during that time period, he cannot be federally prosecuted for. It's pretty broad. Can you remind us where the cases against Hunter Biden stood as of Saturday? There were two cases that were like immediately before him. One of them, he had been convicted by a jury in Delaware over the summer.

Hunter Biden hasn't even been convicted of gun charges by a jury in a Delaware trial. President's only surviving son was charged with two felonies of lying on a federal form required to purchase a firearm in 2018, and then a third charge, also a felony, for being in possession of a firearm while abusing or being addicted to drugs. ...office, Hunter Biden could now face up to 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $750,000. Our investigative reporter... And that one was scheduled to go to sentencing in about a week. There was another case involving his tax returns and not paying taxes.

And in that case, Hunter pled guilty to in September. And that one was scheduled to be sentenced the week after. So he faced over the next two weeks sentencing for two different crimes in two different jurisdictions. So that was the most immediate pressure on trying to do something from the president's perspective. There's a longer term pressure that comes in January when Donald Trump takes office. And that's why the pardon was so sweeping, where Joe Biden is basically trying to protect Hunter from being investigated for any other crimes that could have occurred over that period. Joe Biden said he wasn't going to do this. Joe Biden's chief press officer said he wasn't going to do this. Can you remind us what exactly everyone was saying Joe Biden wouldn't do? So right after Hunter Biden was found guilty in Wilmington, Delaware, Joe Biden got on a plane and went to Italy for the Group of Seven summit.

He had a press conference there where he stood next to the Ukrainian president, Zelensky, where we asked him. Joe Biden said no adamantly. Like he trusts the jury. He trusts the court of law. He trusts the Justice Department to do its job. And so he would not pardon or commute the sentence of his son. Since that time period, more has happened. There's been another case involving his taxes that he pled guilty to.

There's been an election. Donald Trump won that election. So we've repeatedly asked Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, has anything changed for the president? Does he still commit to not pardoning his son or does his mind changed at all based on, you know, different facts before him? She said, still a no, it will be a no, it is a no. And I don't have anything else to add. Will he pardon his son? No. Up until Sunday night, that was the talking point from the White House. Now, people generally around Joe Biden kind of expected him to do this just because of the family loyalty that eventually he would pardon his son. But the

White House was pretty adamant that he would not. And that only makes it look worse for Joe Biden. Do we know what changed his mind or is that all conjecture? I don't know that his mind was ever fully on board with not pardoning his son. I mean, I think there is a sense of, you know, personal and psychological drama around the Biden family and particularly between Joe and his son, Hunter, to where most people expected something like this would happen. And it was only surprising that he was so adamant that he wouldn't do it. That was more the surprise than the fact that he actually did pardon him. He came to this decision, we're told, over the weekend. Over the weekend, by the way, he was in Nantucket with Hunter, you know, with his family for Thanksgiving. Every year they go to Nantucket to celebrate the holiday together. So that's where Joe Biden came to this decision.

He always goes somewhere when he's making a decision. That's so interesting. How are Democrats responding? We're speaking to you, what, late Monday. There is a lot of criticism from a lot of members of his party. Jared Polis, governor of Colorado, tweeted, well, as a father, I certainly understand President Joe Biden's natural desire to help his son by pardoning him. I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country. This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation. People are pointing out that this goes against what he has said. You know, Joe Biden has talked about the rule of law. He's talked about nobody is above the law. He's often said my word is a Biden, you know, when making commitments.

So this goes against his word. And it does seem to put Hunter in a different category from other Americans who don't have the connections, the familial connections to the president. So I mean, he's getting criticized by a lot of members of his own party, who also, quite frankly, worry about the precedent that this sets and what Donald Trump may do with this. You know, Donald Trump has talked about pardoning the rioters from January 6th. This kind of gives Trump cover to do some of those things is the worry, you know, of like sort of what Trump does with his own Justice Department in less than two months. And since you brought him up, what's Donald Trump saying about this?

I think he has a fondness for Hunter Biden. I mean, so Trump, it's worth pointing out just how fixated Trump has been on Hunter Biden, you know, for years and years. And, you know, he had the where's Hunter line during the 2020 campaign. It was the focal point for the impeachment with Trump asking Zelensky to investigate Hunter in Ukraine. You know, there's been a long fixation between Trump and Hunter Biden. And that is one reason that that has led Joe Biden to pardon him is this fixation. But Trump has been sort of focused quite heavily on Hunter for some time. Now, Trump is predictably upset about this decision Biden made. But when we

talk about the precedent Biden is setting, is Biden setting the precedent or have presidents previously pardoned beloved friends, family members? There's certainly a long history of presidents, you know, in the final weeks of their time in office, pardoning people who are close to them. Bill Clinton on his final day in office pardoned his stepbrother for crimes related to cocaine. And, you know, Donald Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, you know, who's Jared Kushner's father. The next ambassador to France. So there is a history of something like this. I think what is unusual is sort of how far reaching this particular pardon is. Past pardons are usually for one specific crime, one specific time period. This one is pretty for anything that may or may not

have been prosecuted for a 10-year period. So Hunter gets a more far-reaching pardon, but pardons are not unusual, especially in the last, you know, sort of couple weeks of a presidency. Why was this pardon so far-reaching, making it an even bigger deal? So it covers a time period that basically encapsulates all of Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings. In 2014 is a time period where people may remember the word Burisma, or maybe not. But Burisma was this Ukrainian gas company that Hunter Biden sat on the board of while his father was vice president. This is a time period where Hunter's pursuing business deals in Mexico, in Romania, in Ukraine. So he's sort of all around the world doing these various business efforts in ways that Republicans have tried to tie Joe Biden directly to.

And so it covers a time period that I think there's been concern that a Trump-appointed attorney general, Trump overseeing a new justice department may choose to go after Hunter for crimes during that time period when he was quite active in his foreign business dealings. Matt Visor, WashingtonPost.com. Biden didn't say much about future prosecutions in his statement pardoning his son, but it's clear that was among his chief concerns from the far reaching nature of this past that Hunter Biden is getting. By coincidence, on presidential pardon my son Eve, future president Donald Trump, who knows a thing or two about being a convicted felon, announced his pick to lead the FBI. It was one of his most loyal loyalists, a guy named Kash Patel.

We're going to tell you about him when we're back on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Indeed. What if you didn't have to search for the right candidate at all, but Indeed could just match you with the correct person? Indeed is a matching and hiring platform that might be able to help you find your next hire. It's a comprehensive hiring platform that they say is visited by over 350 million people around the world every month. It doesn't just help you hire faster. A recent Indeed survey showed that 93% of employers agree that Indeed delivers the highest quality matches

compared to other job sites. Indeed's platform allows you to efficiently manage the entire hiring process, interviews, screening, messaging, all from within the platform. Listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Today Explained. You can go to Indeed.com slash Today Explained right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this particular podcast. Indeed.com slash Today Explained. Terms and conditions do apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed.

Support for Today Explained comes from Shopify. If you're ready to start growing your company, you might want to check out Shopify. What is it? It's an all-in-one digital commerce platform that's ready to be your perfect sales partner. It doesn't matter if your customers spend their time scrolling through your feed or strolling past your storefront. Shopify says they can help you convert browsers into buyers and sell more over time. And their Shop Pay feature can boost conversions by 50%. There's a reason why companies such as Allbirds turn to Shopify to sell more products. Want to upgrade your business and get the same checkout that Allbirds uses?

You can sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash explained, all lowercase. That's Shopify.com slash explained to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash explained. Support for this show comes from the ACLU. The ACLU knows exactly what threats a second Donald Trump term presents. And they are ready with a battle-tested playbook. The ACLU took legal action against the first Trump administration 434 times. And they will do it again to protect immigrants' rights, defend reproductive freedom,

fight discrimination, and fight for all of our fundamental rights and freedoms. This Giving Tuesday, you can support the ACLU. With your help, they can stop the extreme Project 2025 agenda. Join the ACLU at aclu.org today. Today, today explained, y'all, in granting a pardon to Hunter, a lot of people think Joe Biden is trying to protect him from hardcore Trump loyalists

like Kash Patel, Trump's pick to lead the FBI. Elena Plot Calabro profiled Cash this past summer in The Atlantic in a piece titled The Man Who Will Do Anything for Trump. And back when she wrote it this summer, Cash was doing a lot. At one point, I just had to kind of put in a list the various things he had been engaged in post-administration to see if there was any through line whatsoever. And I can't say I found one, but I would say that he mirrors a lot of MAGA world in his interest in making money off of his connections with Trump. But he is one of the few that has managed to maintain, you know,

good standing with Trump in spite of doing that. Huh. Who was Kash Patel before he became a Trump loyalist? You know, most people I profile, if I see somewhere where they say where they're born, I typically take that at good faith. You know, obviously our fact checker later will confirm that that's true, but it's not something where I think, okay, well, I need to spend the next two hours like strenuously checking that. Kash Patel was different, however. I had come across several podcasts that he had done, media appearances where he would say things like, the reason that he and Donald Trump get along so well is that they're both just a couple of guys from Queens. Kash Patel is in fact from Garden

City, which for those unfamiliar is a pretty tony suburb on Long Island. So that, I think, kind of set the tone for what the reporting journey would be like in terms of learning who was this person before he became the person we know he is today. He started at Pace Law School. That, I think, was really the place where he sort of decided what his career ambitions, what he wanted them to look like. And that was to, you know, work at a white collar firm. By his count, he was rejected from the various firms he applied to post-graduation, but happened to get an offer from the Miami-Dade Public Defender's Office, which is really the most prestigious public defender's office in the country. So

a huge deal for him to, you know, get a spot there. So for the next decade, he would sort of go from there to the federal defender's office in Miami. I think learning about that chapter of his life was really instructive for me because talking to colleagues from both the state defender and the federal defender's office there in Miami, they pretty unanimously said that, you know, he was a basically capable, competent attorney, not tremendously political by any means, or certainly not overtly so. And somebody who was pretty good on his feet, very good in a trial setting, not especially good with document-based things, discovery and kind of diving into statutes and whatnot. But when it came to getting in front of a judge, I mean, he was often quite charming. And having read a lot of those transcripts myself on PACER,

I can attest that he really did seem to have a kind of magic with some judges, as one of his colleagues put it to me. So in 2014, he receives an offer to join the counterterrorism section at the National Security Division at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. So he moves to Washington and essentially becomes involved in, you know, various cases to do with terrorism. And then he was not there very long before, only a few years before he came in contact

with Congressman Devin Nunes. And that was, of course, his bridge to the House Intelligence Committee, the Russia investigation and his report on it. And then from there, we see him go to the White House. Before we talk about what he does or doesn't accomplish in the first Trump administration, you make a big deal in your profile of him about this one time he forgot to wear a tie to court. And you seem to suggest that this was like a foundational moment for him.

That's right. It really was formative for him. While he was working for the Department of Justice as a prosecutor in the National Security Division, he had gone to Tajikistan to interview witnesses in a terrorism case that he was working on. While he was there, a federal judge in Houston calls a surprise hearing for a case unrelated to the one he's currently working on in Tajikistan. But at any rate, he has to get to Texas within 24 hours or so. So he had only brought slacks and, you know, a button down on his trip to Tajikistan. So as he's en route to Houston, he reaches out to the U.S. attorney's office there and he says, hey, guys, says, hey guys, I really need your help. Could somebody bring a tie for me? And for reasons that remain in dispute, there was no tie when he arrived. And the judge there really unloads on him for that, takes him into chambers and berates him

for not being dressed appropriately and then questioning why he's even there in the first place, what value he added to the case at all. And I mean, it was pretty withering and to the point that, you know, even those in the U.S. attorney's office looked on and just thought, okay, this is really over the top. I mean, it was really disproportionate to the fact that he just didn't have a tie. But what really comes to infuriate Kash Patel and the thing that he just didn't have a tie. But what really comes to infuriate Kash Patel and the thing that he comes to fixate on is not even the exchange with the judge itself, but the fact that when the Washington Post gets word of what happened and writes it up and reaches out to the Department of Justice for comment, they declined to comment. They don't engage with the reporter on the record to defend Kash Patel. And this enrages him. And I was told by various of his colleagues from that time

that he would thereafter just constantly, constantly for months go to his supervisor's office and say, what are you going to do about this U.S. attorney? You know, how are you going to punish them? And these people at a certain point said, we really empathize with you. It was unfair what happened. But the U.S. attorney is a presidentially appointed position. We just don't know what you want us to do. I think that was a really defining moment for him in terms of deciding that this system that he had devoted all of his career to thus far, pretty much all of his career to thus far, was never going to have his back and was in fact actively out to get him. And so that I think is the premise of the kind of revenge driven ideology that goes on to define him as he scales the ranks of the Trump administration. And perhaps that revenge-driven ideology makes him a good match for the former and future president. What was his role in the first Trump administration? As I recall, he wasn't a sort of

front-facing figure. So after considerable lobbying by Congressman Devin Nunes, who Kash Patel had worked with on the House Intelligence Committee, Kash Patel is brought on to the National Security Council at a pretty low-level role. But, you know, it's really breathtaking the speed with which he rose from there. Within a few months, he was leading the counterterrorism division of the National Security Council. I will often forget that he was only in the administration for a year and eight months or so. But in that time, he goes from this low level position in the National Security Council to quite an important role in the National Security Council. And then from there to

an assistant to the Director of National Intelligence, and then from there to an assistant to the Director of National Intelligence, and then, you know, ultimately ending up as Chief of Staff to the Acting Secretary of Defense in the final months of the Trump administration. And since then, he's been selling merch and writing children's books. Have you read his children's books? I have, yes. As part of my discovery process, you might say, in my profiling him. I did read this one, his first one, The Plot Against the King, which is Kash Patel writing the story of Russiagate from his perspective to a children's audience with very vivid illustrations. Classic children's entertainment. Do you have a favorite line from the children's book? I'm so glad you asked. I am always ready with these.

Once upon a time in the land of the free, there lived a wizard called Cash, the Distinguished Discoverer. Cash was known far and wide as the one person who could discover anything about anything. And so then the plot goes on that Duke Devon, who's Devon Nunes, recruits him to avenge Donald Trump against the shifty knight, who is Adam Schiff, who claims that the King Donald had collaborated with the Russians to win his

monarchy, I guess. There's another nice moment when Cash is pictured in his wizard garb at the top of a castle turret, and he stands up and addresses everybody and says, Everybody, I am Cash, the great wizard and the distinguished discoverer. I have discovered that the king, King Donald, is innocent. He did not work with the Russianians, and he did not cheat. You chose him, so he became king, fair and square. So I think that's a good kind of encapsulation of that story. I don't even know where to begin with the king stuff,

considering the origin story of this story. I don't even know where to begin with the King stuff, considering the origin story of this country. But between the Thai incident and this children's book, I have to ask, you know, what is it that scares so many people about Kash Patel? He doesn't seem like the most serious person. Is that what scares people? So his inexperience is definitely a factor. But I think more than anything, and this became clear from the moment he stepped foot on the National Security Council, this is someone who is motivated by very little else except for his devotion to Donald Trump and his loyalty to Donald Trump. We're blessed by God to have Donald Trump be our juggernaut of justice, to be our leader, to be our continued warrior in the arena. But we have to fill that arena with Americans behind him who are going to take...

As I would talk to people throughout the administration who were utterly alarmed that, you know, at one point he almost became deputy FBI director. He almost became deputy director of the CIA. The panic that set in, and again, this is among Trump appointees themselves, you know, hardly members of the deep state who are, you know, lodging these objections to him. The concern was that he was just subject to Donald Trump's demands, whatever they might be from day to day. So it was often said to me, you know, it's not the fear of what he would do. It's more like, what wouldn't he do in order to maintain Donald Trump's favor? That sort of sycophancy paired with a tremendous amount of power, as he would necessarily have atop the FBI, is, I think, what many people, former administration officials I talked to, you know, find alarming about the prospect of this nomination.

We'll probably never know the answer, but how much do you think people like Kash Patel weighed on Biden's decision over this holiday weekend to pardon his own son? I mean, if you look at the letter itself, it certainly seems that Joe Biden, the president just taking him at his word, was concerned about certainly seems that Joe Biden, the president just taking him at his word, was concerned about the fact that a number of the people that Donald Trump has announced as being staffers in his new administration, nominees for powerful positions in his administration, have certainly been among the chorus of those on the right who really despise Hunter Biden and really feel like he emblematizes the corruption of the left. So again, just taking President Biden at his word, that does

seem to have influenced his decision to pardon Hunter Biden and kind of remove him from kind of the crosshairs, possibly, of people like Kash Patel. Elena Plot Calabro, read her at TheAtlantic.com. Emphasis on the V, TheAtlantic.com. Today's show was produced by Miles Bryan and Amanda Llewellyn. It was edited by Matthew Collette. Fact-checked by Kim Eggleston and mixed by Patrick Boyd. I'm Sean Ramos from The Program is Today Explained. you