00:00:35.200Well, the fallout from Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter Biden continues.
00:00:38.840One of the things we saw this week is the federal judge overseeing the criminal tax case against Hunter Biden slammed President Joe Biden for his incredibly dishonest press statement that accompanied the pardon and laid out that it is completely false and dishonest.
00:00:57.220We're going to talk about that, and then we're going to talk about what you just mentioned, that we are seeing a full-on lobbying effort by Democrats and by the corporate media.
00:01:06.960They want Joe Biden to pardon everyone.
00:01:10.960They want him to issue blanket pardons across the board.
00:01:14.180It is an incredibly open, brazen invitation for Joe Biden to abuse his power, for him to continue the weaponization of law enforcement.
00:01:26.080You know, there are two components to weaponization.
00:01:27.660One is targeting your enemies, but the other is protecting your friends.
00:01:32.860And the corporate media is being quite open that they want Joe Biden on his way out to protect all of his friends in a way that would be not only utterly corrupt, but without precedent in our nation's history.
00:01:45.260We're going to break that down in detail.
00:01:48.720And the list is one with some very, very interesting names on it.
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00:03:53.560All right, Senator, so this all manifested out of the Hunter Biden pardon.
00:04:00.460It was such a broad pardon over a decade for a multitude of sins.
00:04:06.920It started right when he started working for Burisma in Ukraine, if you want to time stamp this, all the way up until basically now.
00:04:16.460And Democrats and the media are saying, okay, that's not enough.
00:04:21.680They also seem to be wanting to give cover to Joe Biden to pardon everyone with the last name Biden and also give himself a pardon, which there's some issues with the law there.
00:04:35.280I want you to dive into that, obviously.
00:04:37.080But are you shocked by how quick they're throwing out names of who they're worried about?
00:05:42.740And Ben, we analyze this in depth in Monday's podcast.
00:05:46.440And by the way, if you didn't listen to Monday's podcast, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to it.
00:05:50.120It was it was one of our most downloaded podcasts we've ever done because it really it breaks down how this was an absolute abuse of power.
00:06:00.660And it was also completely predictable.
00:06:03.620When Joe Biden was saying, I'm not going to pardon Hunter, he was lying.
00:06:42.860But I mean, they were going on TV, including the media, which is state sponsored media when they're doing this, lying deliberately to the American people, knowing that they were already planning for this.
00:06:55.140Well, and it was in June of this year that I said on this podcast, the odds that Joe Biden will pardon Hunter Biden are 100 percent.
00:07:05.660It is absolutely certain he is lying and everyone knows he's lying.
00:07:19.820Number one, every dad would not lie to the American people for a year about it.
00:07:23.740If you were going to do it, then you shouldn't lie about it.
00:07:27.400But number two, this is about protecting Joe.
00:07:31.460This is about protecting his own corruption.
00:07:33.280And I got to say, all right, so the federal judge who's overseeing the criminal tax case, Judge Mark Scarcy in California, slammed Joe Biden for his statement on the pardon.
00:07:45.200And I got to say, the judge's comments.
00:07:48.140I've never seen anything like this in my 20 plus years of practicing law.
00:07:54.160I've never seen anything remotely like this.
00:07:56.680Let me read to you from the judge's opinion that was issued.
00:08:01.040For example, the president asserts Mr. Biden, quote, was treated differently from others, quote, who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, implying that Mr. Biden was among those individuals who untimely paid taxes due to addiction.
00:08:21.800In his pretrial filings, Mr. Biden represented that he, quote, was severely addicted to alcohol and drugs through May of 2019.
00:08:30.100Upon pleading guilty to the charges in this case, Mr. Biden admitted that he engaged in tax evasion after this period of addiction by wrongfully deducting his business expenses, items he knew were personal expenses, including luxury clothing, escort services and his daughter's law school tuition.
00:08:54.880And Mr. Biden admitted that he, quote, had sufficient funds available to pay some or all of his outstanding taxes when they were due, but that he did not make payments towards his tax liabilities even, quote, well after he had regained his sobriety.
00:09:12.800Instead, instead, electing to, quote, spend large sums to maintain his lifestyle in 2020, by the way, in 2020, that would be when his father, Joe Biden, was running for president.
00:09:25.820According to the president, this is going back to Joe Biden's press release that accompanied the pardon, quote, no reasonable person who looks at the facts of Mr. Biden's case can reach any other conclusion than Mr. Biden was singled out only because he is the president's son, end quote.
00:09:47.040But two federal judges expressly rejected Mr. Biden's arguments that the government prosecuted Mr. Biden because of his familial relation to the president and the president's own attorney general and Department of Justice personnel oversaw the investigation leading to the charges.
00:10:10.760In the president's case, in the president's case, in the president's case, this legion of civil servants, the undersigned included, are unreasonable people.
00:10:23.340In short, a press release is not a pardon.
00:10:27.540The Constitution provides the president with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States.
00:10:33.660But nowhere does the Constitution give the president the authority to rewrite history.
00:10:41.360I got to say, Ben, I've never seen a federal judge take the bark off the sitting president of the United States the way that judge did.
00:10:49.220He just said Joe Biden is flat out lying and he is dishonest.
00:10:53.720And I got to say, the judge is exactly right.
00:10:55.500Every word of that opinion is absolutely right.
00:10:58.600And Joe Biden, again, understand for a year when he said he wasn't going to pardon his son, he was lying.
00:11:04.960And understand today when he issued the pardon, Joe Biden is still lying.
00:11:10.760And that's what the federal judge just said unequivocally.
00:11:13.240And they seem to just be laughing in the face of justice and laughing in the face of Americans, by the way, that have been held accountable.
00:11:21.980There's been a lot of whistleblowers that have come forward saying how angry they are over this.
00:11:26.600There's people that have gone to jail for less than what Hunter Biden did on the tax issues.
00:11:32.200They're talking about how, why is it that they had to go to jail for years and this guy gets to walk.
00:11:38.960There seems to be a lot of, not just nepotism here, but anger from Americans that have had to face the music when they've committed many of the same crimes that he was accused of committing and had been convicted of.
00:11:54.080Yeah, and not only is the federal judge angry, but the IRS whistleblower reacted to Biden's claim.
00:12:01.280And Town Hall reported said, IRS whistleblower reacts to Biden's ludicrous claim justifying Hunter's pardon.
00:12:08.600On Sunday night, President Joe Biden issued a sweeping pardon for his son, Hunter Biden.
00:12:12.020It covers all potential crimes committed between 2014 and 2024.
00:12:17.320And the, the, it, and that goes through the quotes, but IRS investigator and whistleblower, Joseph Ziegler, who testified in 2023 about the special treatment being handed to Hunter by the Department of Justice, blasted Biden's claims as ludicrous.
00:12:37.200And here, here's the quote that Ziegler said, quote, I honestly think that's completely ludicrous.
00:12:45.240I'm a Democrat and I'm a person that believes in the rule of law.
00:12:49.620When you look at what he was charged with, criminal tax evasion and what he pled guilty to, there are thousands of taxpayers who honestly file their taxes.
00:14:05.640The alibi was that, well, my son was a drug addict, so therefore he shouldn't be held accountable for his actions while we were making money, while we were exploiting his addiction, which I also think is sick on so many different levels.
00:14:18.460That there was that many Biden family members taking these amounts of money in the tens of millions of dollars, knowing that they were putting Hunter Biden out there and enabling his addiction with the massive payments coming to him while they knew he was a drug addict.
00:14:34.920Yeah, and I got to say, it is reminiscent, what Joe Biden did with his son Hunter, is reminiscent of how criminals will sometimes use juveniles to commit crimes, because they know that juveniles, as a general matter, can't be held very accountable.
00:14:50.880They'll serve minimal prison sentences, so, you know, drug cartels will use teenagers as drug mules, because they know the juvenile can get off with a very light punishment.
00:15:01.800In this case, Joe Biden was willing to use his drug addict son as the bag man, as the one collecting all the cash.
00:15:10.640And to be clear, it wasn't just cash that went to Hunter.
00:15:57.440It's all about covering up Joe's misconduct.
00:16:00.940That's why this is an issue of public concern.
00:16:03.660If this were just some, you know, poor sad sack who was struggling with addiction, we wouldn't be talking about it.
00:16:09.700But it is because this is public corruption by the president of the United States and by previously the vice president of the United States, because much of this corruption happened while Joe Biden was a vice president.
00:16:21.160And I got to say, what's happening now, I've never seen anything like it, Democrats and the corporate media, they are openly urging Joe Biden issue more pardons.
00:16:32.060And we talked about in Monday's podcast how right now Hunter has essentially a carte blanche for all any and every crime he has committed, every federal crime he's committed for 11 years.
00:16:45.280And the pardon power is that broad that it can do exactly that.
00:16:49.560But we pointed out that Joe Biden's brother faces real exposure.
00:16:54.600Well, I guess this should have been predictable, although I will say I'm maybe I wasn't cynical enough because I didn't predict it on Monday's pod.
00:17:03.760Suddenly, the media is saying pardon Joe Biden's brother, pardon Joe Biden himself, pardon everyone involved in the corruption, pardon everyone involved in the FBI,
00:17:14.700pardon everyone who abused their power, pardon everyone who committed any criminal offense whatsoever.
00:17:20.260And I want you to listen to let's start with this is an excerpt from MSNBC this week, urging pardons across the board.
00:17:30.980I hope that President Biden will also issue preemptive pardons to all of those people threatened by the injustice of what will become the Department of Justice in the Trump administration.
00:17:44.700That, of course, includes Jack Smith and all of his staff, many Department of Justice lawyers.
00:17:49.860It includes President Biden himself, although we don't know that anyone can legally pardon themselves.
00:17:56.840He will need a pardon because he is going to be harassed and charged for no crimes whatsoever.
00:18:05.080If I'm reading this correctly, she just called for Joe Biden to pardon his entire administration because they believe that they the entire administration needs these pardons because of the activities they were involved in.
00:18:22.640They're literally admitting to criminal activity.
00:18:25.500Well, and unfortunately, this was the most lawless administration we have ever seen.
00:18:31.640And I talked about at the beginning of this podcast, there are at least two components of weaponizing law enforcement.
00:18:40.080One component and the most visible component is using law enforcement, using the DOJ, using the FBI, using the CIA, using the alphabet soup of the federal government to go after your political opponents.
00:18:52.460Most notably, to indict and prosecute Donald Trump four separate times, which which is what the Democrats have done both federally and at the state level.
00:19:02.080But but but but also using it to go after pro-life protesters, using it to go after people who engage in peaceful protest on January 6th, using it as an excuse, using it to refuse to prosecute people who were violating federal law, committing felonies by threatening and protesting outside of Supreme Court justices home.
00:19:25.240Merrick Garland refused to enforce the law and just said, no, we don't enforce that law.
00:19:29.080Why? Because he disagreed with the Supreme Court and he wanted those judges threatened.
00:19:34.160He wanted their families threatened. That's one component.
00:19:36.880But a second component is protecting the political allies of the president.
00:19:43.720And that weaponization has happened at great level.
00:19:46.360Look, the IRS whistleblower testified, for example, that that the special counsel, David Weiss, that was investigating Hunter Biden was repeatedly told there were boundaries.
00:20:05.860So, for example, the WhatsApp message that Hunter Biden texted to the Chinese businessman, the Chinese communist, saying, I'm sitting next to my father and you pay us millions of dollars right now or my father is going to retaliate against you.
00:20:20.380Well, the investigators said, listen, we would like to subpoena the GPS data for Hunter Biden's phone and Joe Biden's phone.
00:20:29.320You could determine were they in fact sitting next to each other or not.
00:20:38.800And yet the Biden Justice Department said, no, we don't want to know if Joe Biden was sitting next to Hunter while he was shaking down Chinese communists, threatening retribution from his father.
00:20:53.000We don't want to know if Joe Biden knew that.
00:20:56.000That's an example of protecting your political allies.
00:21:00.620Well, now the press is being even more brazen.
00:21:03.100The Democrats are being more brazen and saying, look, there are a whole bunch of people who committed lawless conduct.
00:21:08.660And we're about to have a Department of Justice and FBI who is willing to investigate and criminal conduct and willing to enforce the law, regardless of party.
00:21:19.380I don't want them to target these guys because they're Democrats.
00:21:48.740And I want to go through the list and some of the tweets out there and another piece of audio I want to play for you.
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00:27:22.640And he said more, but let's just let's break that down.
00:27:26.380Senator, he's saying it's personally perfectly reasonable for Biden to pardon any Trump critic and says, well, it's a cost issue because you'll have to get a lawyer.
00:27:50.780I'm not going to say their names who worked at the White House who were strapped with legal bills over a half a million dollars just having to answer questions in and around what happened on January the 6th, even though they weren't involved in it.
00:28:22.400I don't know him well, but I know him socially around D.C. lawyer circles.
00:28:26.500He wears a bow tie every day, and he was one of the like – he would run around Federalist Society events, and he was part of the sort of Republican lawyer cadre during the George W. Bush campaign.
00:28:42.240He is also someone who Donald Trump has broken his brain, and Trump derangement syndrome is a very real phenomenon, and he is now advocating that Biden pardon everybody, pardon every critic of Trump, pardon every member of the cabinet, pardon his entire family,
00:29:06.200pardon anyone who may have committed any crime, because he doesn't want anybody to be held account for breaking the law.
00:29:14.660Now, I'm going to tell you what the particular irony is.
00:29:18.560Paul Rosenweig is also one of the leaders of a group called the 65 Project.
00:30:14.420He chose to take on the role of lawyer and agreed to represent Mr. Trump and Pennsylvania Republicans in litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court.
00:30:24.060In doing so, Mr. Cruz moved beyond his position as United States senator and sought to use more than his Twitter account and media appearances to support Mr. Trump's anti-democratic mission.
00:30:36.540So understand, their complaint is that when I was asked, when the appeal in 2020 challenging Pennsylvania's violating the Pennsylvania Constitution and changing the law in Pennsylvania, when that was appealed to the Supreme Court, I was asked, if the court takes it, would you be willing to argue the case?
00:30:57.940And Donald Trump asked me that. And I said, yes, if the court takes it, if four justices decide they want to hear this case, and I believe they should have heard the Pennsylvania case, that I'll do the oral argument.
00:31:10.660But their argument, Paul Rosenweig's argument is, because I said, yes, I would represent a client before the Supreme Court, I should be disbarred.
00:31:21.220So he's talking about the cost of frivolous complaints and attacking people.
00:31:26.040Well, he was one of the point people doing it.
00:31:28.240And by the way, thankfully, the Texas bar is not an insane, woke nest of lunatics.
00:32:50.720And by the way, these are the same people that publicly said, if you work for Trump, we're going to do everything we can to make you unemployable, to pressure law firms.
00:32:59.580They shouldn't hire you to pressure companies.
00:33:10.360And at the same time, they're urging Joe Biden, pardon everybody, because people who actually committed felonies, we don't want them investigated.
00:33:19.820And we certainly don't want them prosecuted.
00:33:23.860And I want you to hear the second part of what he had to say as well, because this goes back to, I think, the broader theme here, which is everyone that we believe that may have done something wrong.
00:33:33.880We need to protect them now so that Republicans cannot look at the crimes that we committed and prosecute us.
00:33:43.860Yeah, I mean, it seems to you and I think to other folks as well, that the argument about institutional preservation in this moment is best relegated to academics and that in reality, it's time to play political hardball.
00:33:59.400And it sounds like you're extending that not just to the pardon power, but to other levers that the Democrats might be able to pull.
00:34:05.520I'll read an excerpt from your Atlantic piece.
00:34:07.360It has become painfully self-evident that Democratic self-restraint is a form of unilateral disarmament that neither persuades Trump to refrain from bad behavior nor wins points among the undecided.
00:34:18.320It is time, well past time, for responsible Democrats to use every tool in their toolkit.
00:34:24.260Does any part of that, I guess, worry you?
00:34:26.200You know, I mean, one could have said that the Democrats, when they were in control of the Senate, should have gotten rid of the filibuster and done stuff.
00:34:32.720Well, now it seems like the filibuster is the only thing that's actually going to stop Trump from enacting probably the broadest, most pernicious parts of his agenda.
00:34:40.620So how do you I mean, how do you think about the cost benefit analysis here?
00:34:48.060It has to worry any sensible thinking person to argue for breaching norms that have guided our country for 250 years.
00:34:57.820On the other hand, I don't think the Democratic self-restraint is what is going to stop Trump from acting.
00:35:04.200If in the end, Trump and the Republican majority think that the filibuster is a barrier to whatever it is that they want, for example, they're going to get rid of it anyway, whether or not the Democrats had done so in the in the prior Congress.
00:35:19.280And so it strikes me as essential to begin trying to take steps that can't be reversed or irreversible steps in defense of, say, voting rights, for example, expanding the franchise, guaranteeing federally against state interference.
00:35:38.100You know, we would still have to contend, obviously, with the Supreme Court.
00:35:41.660But for two years, the Democrats had a majority in both houses, and instead of doing transgressive normative things like changing the electoral rules to prevent Trump's cheating, they did normal Democratic things.
00:36:00.320They passed the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and all good things, I'm sure, from their perspective.
00:36:07.540But they thought that that would be how to reclaim America, and it turned out they were wrong.
00:36:15.460I mean, Senator, as you just listened to this, you want to talk about the threats to democracy. Holy crap.
00:36:21.980So, look, I got to admit, I don't know this bowtied clown.
00:36:28.140I've met him once or twice over the last 20 years, but I don't know him at any personal level.
00:36:33.560But he is either deliberately dishonest or profoundly ignorant.
00:36:37.780Because, like, one statement he made there that is just laughing, laughably false.
00:36:42.460He's like, well, if Trump wants to get rid of the filibuster, he just will.
00:36:46.000I'm going to quantify to you, so I said six months ago, the odds that Joe Biden will grant a pardon to Hunter Biden were 100%.
00:36:53.480I'm going to give you the odds that the filibuster will be ended in the next two years with a Republican majority in the Senate.
00:37:15.100There are not 10 votes to end the filibuster.
00:37:18.940And he's just, there's something about Trump derangement syndrome that it's bizarre and pathological, that all people afflicted with it can say, is orange man bad, orange man bad?
00:37:34.500And there's also, look, I got to say, Sigmund Freud has got to be spinning in his grave.
00:37:41.660Because the left and the never Trump, and unfortunately the never Trump Republicans is a really tiny sliver of kind of D.C. folks who've lost their minds.
00:37:51.860But they engage in a degree of Freudian projection that is amazing.
00:37:57.860So, for example, all of these people beat their chest and say we love democracy.
00:38:02.180But they also are saying, well, there are aspects of Trump's agenda that are horrific.
00:38:08.040Well, there was an election in November and the voters voted for Trump.