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tv   Americas Newsroom  FOX News  July 26, 2023 7:00am-8:00am PDT

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administration policies at the border. chairman jim jordan warning him to, quote, be prepared. and another house hearing on ufos. is the federal government withholding information that could impact our national security? we'll hear from a whistleblower ahead. back to our top story. hunter biden's court hearing happening any moment now where he will plead guilty to two tax misdemeanor charges. welcome to this new hour of in us news. i'm dana perino. are you ready? >> bill: i am. nice to see you. i'm bill hemmer, good morning. hunter biden will stand before a federal judge at this minute admitting he failed to pay income tax on more than 1.5 million. he was also facing a separate gun charge but reached a deal with the d.o.j. to get no jail time on that. now the judge is threatening to sanction hunter biden's legal team for the allegation of
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lying. >> very high stakes for hunter biden and for his father, joe biden. there has been a lot of shenanigans going into minimizing any penalty for many years of tax let's call them irregularities. alleged tax evasion. now it will come to a head this morning. >> dana: former federal prosecutor is here and james freeman from the "wall street journal" with reaction. we begin with jonathan turley, fox news contributor. a big moment we've been waiting to see what will happen. i think in the last few days people thought well the judge will accept this and move on. is that in question this morning? >> well, it can be because of the trouble last night where the court gave hunter biden's legal team a deadline over an alleged ethical violation. they were accused by the clerk apparently of misrepresenting
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who they represented in order to get material removed from public access. material damaging to hunter biden on the record. it's not clear how the court will react to that. it doesn't necessarily change the plea bargain but it could delay matters. in all likelihood, the court will today or later sign off on this plea bargain. even though there is ample evidence to suggest this was a fixed deal, that it was something of a sweetheart arrangement. they view it as outside their lane to bring additional charges. >> bill: she just has the final word as to whether she accepts the plea or not based on that answer, that's what i take from that. you write, however. >> yeah. >> bill: yes in a word, right? >> right. >> bill: i want to get your
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headline in the "new york post." media beg republicans to move on from hunter biden because they know scandal is serious. explain your point. >> what's fascinating about what has happened with the i.r.s. whistleblowers is that none of the members asked the whistleblowers any substantive questions except for one, that was congressman goldman, who tried to find some way to defuse this damaging evidence. it was a disaster. in less than five minutes goldman demolished biden's defense and showed the president has been lying for years to the american people. so the amount of maneuvering room for the members is virtually down to 0. so all the press and members can do is to say can we just move on? well, they are not moving on. it was weird in the hearing when they are sitting in front of two respected whistleblowers who are saying that this deal was fixed,
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and these members were saying he has taken responsibility. the investigation is over. they are sitting in front of two people saying there was political interference and that's why it's over. >> dana: stand by. andrew is here with us. take us inside the courtroom. you are a former federal prosecutor. what is happening right now if they are on time in that courtroom in delaware? >> they're gathering and then the judge will come out and there will be a discussion on the record about the nature of the plea agreement. there may be questions the judge asks of the attorneys about the nature of the plea. really any time you have a guilty plea the question that the judge is going to have is what is this guy getting away with? there is a benefit there. the judge will ask questions whether the charges are as serious as they should be and whether they are as wide as they should be in terms of whether there is additional crimes that were committed. >> michael goodwin writes the
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judge must nix hunter biden's plea deal. >> do you agree with professor turley at great risk or michael goodwin? >> an amicus brief filed by the heritage foundation asking the judge to put more time on the table and consider more of the issues that are out there. i think that's probably a wise decision here if there is as much outcry as there is now. if there is as much information that calls into question the nature of this plea agreement and whether it punishes hunter biden adequately for the crimes he committed. let's take more time and find out what's going on. i agree with that position. >> bill: despite what the judge does, should the claims on behalf -- should their testimony be included in this case? >> whose testimony? >> bill: the testimony of the whistleblowers? >> it should be considered as to whether or not there is more crime that is out there or whether the investigation and
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the plea deal that is being reached by the d.o.j. is truly in the public's best interest. that's ultimately what the judge is doing here to make sure the d.o.j. isn't cutting a deal that is a sweetheart deal within the executive branch. so the judge is the other branch of government here that is running a check on the executive branch, the department of justice. those questions need to be answered and the judge needs to be satisfied with that. >> dana: jonathan turley, another part of the michael goodwin piece he says what merrick garland should have tried to do was to get all of this wrapped up with hunter biden before the 2022 mid-terms because what changed then? republicans took back over. you now have republicans in charge of all these committees. they are the ones with subpoena documents and they can put pressure on and call witnesses like the whistleblower and all this additional information is come forward. merrick garland's role in this is exactly what, do you know?
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>> well, that is one of the major questions that we have. it is even more troubling to think he hasn't had a major role in this. there is a lot of evidence that merrick garland is not really actively involved in these issues. he says he handed over the questions to the special counsel. there is no evidence he has been directing much of the events in the justice department as attorney general. bill barr, for whatever critics may say about him, made his presence known. he was a micro manager. he was felt in every corner of that building. garland is not like that. and it is possible that he was not aware of some of these controversies but that itself is a problem. these are major questions that congress is looking at. you have discussions of impeachment. you have allegations of bribery. and garland has been largely
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absent without leave. to some extent the court may take time. the court may just grant this plea bargain, but in some ways it is no longer going to be a clear benefit for hunter biden. he is about to get the benefit of a sweetheart deal. it will make it more difficult down the road because this is basically the heart of the allegations that he was cut an incredibly generous deal despite evidence and despite the views of prosecutors and investigators. banking that deal is going to cost later as they go into what looks like an impeachment inquiry. >> bill: andy mccarthy joins the conversation now. welcome always we await what happens inside the courtrooms. trying to figure it out. there are no cameras inside there today. the last point that jonathan turley was making.
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>> i not only agree with what jonathan said. let me broaden this out a little bit. what we're hearing, at least what we're being told, there may be a big difference between those things, right? but we're being told there is a continuing investigation. devon archer is supposed to testify, that is hunter's partner in a lot of these business dealings, particularly the foreign business dealings. he is going to testify behind closed doors before the house oversight committee on monday. but what we're told is that he has probably already testified in front of a grand jury and the f.b.i. keeps saying there is information they can't share with the committee because there is an ongoing investigation. the u.s. attorney in delaware, when he was pressed important information said he couldn't give up information because there is still an ongoing investigation. we know that they've gotten this information from this informant
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that the i.r.s. agents weren't told about there was a $10 million bribe in connection with burisma. if there is a continuing investigation and we're talking about bribery of this nature and we're talking about millions and millions of dollars in foreign payments coming into the biden family coffers from people connected to regimes that are corrupt and anti-american, and all of this is still under investigation, why on earth would you give hunter biden a discount plea at this point in the investigation when the investigation is ongoing and he looks like he is one of the main culprits? >> bill: can you answer your own question, andy? >> it can only be answered by the fact that it is not an independent investigation. he is getting, because of political reasons, he is getting favorable treatment. you just spoke to jonathan about merrick garland's role. one of the things i point out,
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he doesn't have the luxury of sitting in the peanut gallery. he can't sit back and say like he is a spectator and these things are going on in the justice department beyond his control. the central problem with the hunter biden investigation and the broader biden family investigation, there is a profound conflict of interest that prevents the biden justice department or should prevent them ethically from investigating the president's son and conduct that the president himself is implicated in. so it's a screaming neon blinking situation where you would have a special counsel. under the justice department regulations, it is the attorney general who has the appoint the special counsel. he has to find there is something serious to be investigated and there is a conflict of interest that prevents the justice department from investigating it in the normal course. so again, where is merrick garland? >> dana: want to point out this is hunter biden walking into the
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courtroom about an hour ago, maybe not quite an hour ago, hunter biden, who is pleading guilty to these two tax misdemeanors. andrew, i wanted to ask you how demoralizing for a federal prosecutor to watch this and think you mean you can do all of this work, do all this investigative work and they end up with a misdemeanor deal for this guy who is well connected, the president's son. you know as eileen o'connor points out. used to be a d.o.j. division head under taxes saying in the "wall street journal" today that you, the viewer, would go to jail for the things that hunter biden is accused off. >> how demoralized the whistleblowers were who spoke before congress last week. demoralizing to go into a criminal investigation. these are good people coming in in an unbiased way and they're
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looking for the truth and looking for things to happen in a fair and even-handed manner. you start getting pressure from up top that things are going to go a certain direction and that's very difficult for these folks to go through. i think the big thing to talk more about what andy was saying, the big thing that is going to be talked about today is are the crimes he is pleading to today as serious as they are supposed to be? there is a huge category of other crimes, stuff that happened overseas, amount of money from burisma and china. those are big questions on the table. i think the judge will be focused on these tax crimes and whether there was additional criminal behavior within the tax questions and investigation as well as the gun aspect that the government is effectively undercharging or not asking for enough. >> bill: limited in scope. >> i think the judge will be focused more on what's on the charges. that's what double jeopardy would attach to. they can charge him for the things overseas if the statute of limitations don't run.
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the thing that double jeopardy attaches to is on the document today. >> bill: you are a formal federal prosecutor. why does this take five years? >> i don't know. the idea of prosecuting is to do so quickly. there is a constitutional idea of a speedy trial. it is statutory based. good practice. anything to take this long is a real question. we have to turn back to the election cycle in 2020, the investigation was put on pause for months and months. now we are pushing up against the next election cycle. these investigations that go on for so long, maybe it's a point of looking for the right people. maybe a point of looking for the right timing. any way you slice it and dice it, it doesn't feel like we got the answers for five years. >> bill: can you recall a case that took this long? >> yes, murder cases. that's the category i put this in. extraordinary felony cases,
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that's what takes this long. >> dana: jonathan turley you were about to say something a moment ago. let me turn back to you. >> i agree with what andrew said. i can't go wrong with the two andrews. but, you know, one of the things, if i was this judge, i would be most interested in one aspect of the whistleblower's testimony and it came out of nowhere. one of them said that they had an agreement to extend the statute of limitations on 2014 and 2015 crimes. those extensions of the statute of limitations, the time to bring a charge, are not uncommon. they are particularly common in tax cases. but what they testified to was that weiss didn't use that agreement. that the hunter biden team, according to the testimony, had agreed to that. but that weiss decided to let the crimes lapse. and the question is why?
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in what universe would a prosecutor not want two potential felonies on the table even if you are going to cut a plea agreement? that's one of those questions we don't have an answer to. the court might be inclined to ask it. but at the end of the day the court is in a bind. usually it is up to the discretion of the department of justice as to what charges to bring. it is part of the negotiation process and most judges in the end will sign off, even reluctantly, with an agreement. but once again, this is a week in which the speaker of the house of representatives has called for an inquiry into possible impeachment. the hunter team is about to bank this deal and that will have some immediate benefits but it may have some cost in the long run because this deal in the view of many of us is unwarranted and very concerning.
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you have evidence now that prosecutors and investigators agreed that hunter biden should have been charged with multiple felonies. there is a clear contradiction between what high-ranking d.o.j. officials have told congress and what these whistleblowers have said. >> bill: the stunning lack of curiosity on behalf of the media during the i.r.s. whistleblower that we sat through just amazing. i mean, if you weren't watching here, you have to look really hard to find it. i ask that, andy, because david weiss has been given four days, two days the end of september and two days in october where he can appear before this house committee. we'll pay attention to it then. i don't know if others will. what do you think is the greatest possibility that house investigators could reveal with david weiss as a witness at that point? >> well, this is fast moving, bill.
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we don't know what our state of information will be then. i find it very curious that they want to rush to get this hunter biden thing done before they make weiss available. one would think you might want to have a reverse of that situation. and i would just point out, you know, jonathan talks about the 2014 and 2015 years. i'm sure andrew must agree as well, there is no good reason on god's green earth for a prosecutor to agree to that. but my antenna are up about that for an additional reason, which is the 2014 and 2015 years, it's not just the point of the time lapse. that's the burisma deal. that's the period of time when we're now told on the basis of what this informant has said the money that hunter biden was paid on that board was part of a bribe by burisma to get favorable treatment from joe
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biden that in the end also included a $10 million bribe, five for hunter and five for joe. i have to be very suspicious that the reason they let those counts go, the reason they let them lapse is because if those counts are in the case and you explain those counts and you explain the background of them and you explain what the income was actually about, it's a very different case. >> dana: byron york is still with us as well. hugh hewitt wrote a piece, he appears on bret's shows. the hunter biden judge should blow the whistle and it is within her power this smells, it doesn't feel right. i am not going to accept this plea deal. we haven't touched on the gun charge yet, either. something that democrats usually are hot to talk about.
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in this case, he falsified records when he applied for this gun permit. didn't disclose he was on drugs at the time. throws the gun away in a trash can in an unsafe way, and he is not -- basically going to get to enter an agreement so he doesn't have to pay any consequences for that? >> yeah. we haven't talked too much about that gun deal. obviously a drug addict who has lied on his application to buy a gun, playing around with the loaded gun is precisely the sort of thing that some of our gun laws are designed to prevent. now as far as what the judge can and cannot do, we have lawyers here on the panel and i will leave it to them. i think she can do basically what she wants to. the important thing to remember is we're looking at a couple of different processes going on right now. there is one is what the justice
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system is doing. the judge is either going to accept, not accept this deal. two, is the process of the public learning what happened. and the only -- everything we know, everything we're talking about has come out, we know it because of the investigation that house republicans have done most recently involving the two i.r.s. whistleblowers. that is a process that has led us to know way more than we knew beforehand. it is something that the two chairmen, main chairmen involved here comer of the oversight committee and smith of the ways and means committee, are going to keep pressing. ultimately if they find out even more, that will create the pressure. it may even pressure those reluctant news organizations that bill was talking about into recognizing that this is a story. >> bill: stand by. andrew, with us here. to our viewers at home, we do
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have a producer inside the courtroom, jay gibson works at the department of justice. there is no cameras inside the courtroom. no electronics even allowed. therefore, there are no emails, no text messages. everything is pretty much in a vacuum inside that courtroom. so as we await a morsel of information i want to bring back andrew to weigh in on what, i guess, during this conversation what happens after today? let's assume that the judge takes the plea and hunter biden gets the two misdemeanors on the gun charge and tax evasion. is that the end of it or does it bounce back to house committees on capitol hill to keep driving away at this issue wherever they can? >> we have to remember double jeopardy is in play for the conduct related to the charges
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he pleads guilty to today if the judge accepts that plea. effectively anything directly related to the plea today would not be able to be future prosecution material but other things could be. now we have to deal with the statute of limitations. the judge is going to be particularly attune to that. so i think the questions that will be asked are largely going to be around the idea of this being a misdemeanor charge instead of a felony. around the idea no jail time recommended by the department of justice and going to be whether or not there is a greater number of charges that should have been at play for the conduct that took place with regard to the taxes and the gun charge. i don't want to understate that gun charge. most people go to jail for those types of gun charges. it is a felony. the idea this is a deferred charge is really the sweetheart deal that i think on the table hunter biden got away with. the idea of a tax negotiation
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that happens all the time but the gun charge is a felony with jail time in almost any case. >> dana: griff jenkins is our reporter on the scene this morning and there outside of the courtroom. what did you see this morning and what are you hearing as you await whatever is going to happen today? >> well, dana, you can't overstate how much things have changed in the last 24 hours. remember, as your guests have been alluding to, we expected it to be a fairly routine court hearing where we expected hunter biden to simply plead guilty to the two misdemeanor tax charges to avoid prosecution and felonies and avoid jail time. we saw him go in with his legal team into the courthouse. we're 24 minutes after it allegedly started and we don't have any communication with jake gibson, our producer inside. we do know in the last 24 hours so much has come to light to include the judge threatening
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sanctions against hunter biden's legal team who may have misrepresented themselves to try to get the amicus brief from the ways and means committee that wanted the testimony of the two i.r.s. whistleblowers to be considered by the judge to possibly not accept this plea deal. why does that matter to our viewers? it matters because the u.s. attorney, david weiss, who has now done this year's long investigation should have looked at this whistleblower testimony and now we expect devon archer, a former business partner and close friend of hunter biden, to possibly testify come monday on the business dealings of hunter and his father, president biden. all of this coming to light now. we simply don't know exactly how the judge is dealing with it. as soon as we get a morsel of information we'll bring it to you. one thing is very clear, this hearing this morning, this plea deal is taking a very different
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trajectory with the amount of information now coming in and the possible dealings on behalf of hunter's legal team calling the clerk's office yesterday saying that there may have been some misrepresentation. we don't know how that has transpired but bring it to you. we expect hunter biden to possibly speak to cameras when he comes out and members of the press will have a lot of questions for him, to include my question would simply be, is your former business partner, devon archer lying, when he says your father participated in phone calls with you on business dealings? that's a massively significant question to be answered. certainly not part of the information that was under consideration when the plea deal was reached. so that certainly would affect things. possibly change things. we'll wait and find out as soon as we learn what is happening in this courthouse behind us.
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>> dana: thank you so much. andy mccarthy, this is something i'm wondering about. since the plea deal and maybe before you have all these different people saying similar things about the bidens and their relationship. they are not all connected to one another and many of them are having to do interviews with lawyers that are under oath or they are under some even more dire consequences like devon archer. lying to federal investigators would be an additional crime. for example, if he had to deal with that. can all of these people be lying at the same time? >> dana, great point. the point that was at the front of my mind when i was reading that 1023 form that we talked so much about last week that was the summary of the interview with the confidential informant who the f.b.i. had into the burisma head who says he bribed
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the bidens. what i thought was very interesting about that is that this informant is told by the burisma guy that it would take ten years for them to unwind the money that he paid to the bidens because there was a labyrinth network of companies and bank accounts and payment channels that they used. they said it was so web-like that they would never be able to put it all together. it would take years to do that. there is no reason to think that this informant knew anything about what the senate, the two guys in the senate, grassley and johnson and the house investigation has been pursuing, which is proof of exactly the kind of thing that is described by the informant, this labyrinth network of llcs, limited liability companies, some nine members of the biden family who apparently got payments.
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20 different entities that were set up for the purpose of taking payments. this whole idea of giving big payments that then get cut into smaller payments so they'll attract less attention. so if you are a prosecutor or any kind of investigator, when you get two mirror image pieces of information like that and they come to you from people who have no reason to have informed each other or gotten together to get their story straight, that's when you start to believe that you have something in the way of corroborated evidence. >> bill: professor turley, i imagine the person who knows that answer is devon archer. long time businessman of hunter biden facing significant jail time. he appears behind closed doors on monday before a house committee on the hill. this is a picture of him playing golf with hunter and his father at a course on the east end of long island. devon archer knows these answers, doesn't he? >> he does and what is reported
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to be is expected testimony is devastating for the biden legal team. the president has been clear and categorical on one point, that is he has said over and over again, including during his campaign for the presidency, that he never spoke to his son about his business dealings and had no knowledge of his business dealings. that mantra has been repeated by white house staff during his presidency and with his knowledge. it appears that that is not true. and if what archer is saying is true, at least what is reported in the media, it is hard to imagine the president could ever believe that is true. he is saying that the president participated in multiple meetings, was put on speakerphone to discuss these deals. we also have witnesses like bobulinski who said he met with joe biden to discuss these
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deals. we have dozens of emails, photos, showing him interacting with these associates. we even have an audio tape of the president telling his son that he is in the clear on his deals. so this is going to seal that. the mosaic is being formed and it is damning. >> bill: to andrew in studio and andy james free man. dana, that's hunter biden walking in about an hour ago on video and now we wait to hear what the judge decides. so don't go anywhere. our coverage continues. just going to take a short break and we'll be back on all this in a moment. come on back after this. soul of north alabama, here on our family farm. then we partner with family owned mills from maine
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courtroom there in wilmington, delaware . we are awaiting to find out what's happening inside. he was set to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of tax evasion and resolve a federal firearm offense that is pretty egregious. if you were the one under the gun you might end up in jail. he probably will not. go to griff jenkins live outside the courthouse to reset everything for us. how much longer might we wait to find out what happens? >> that's a great question, dana. we don't know. 37 minutes into the 10:00 hour. we expected the plea deal to be pretty routine. it is worth noting for our viewers this was a historic plea deal. this is the son of the sitting president expected to walk into a federal courthouse and plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and avoid charges on the gun issue. however, a lot has transpired in that time and we don't know at
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this moment exactly what has transpired in the more than 30 minutes because of what has come to light in the last 24 hours. we do not have a camera, there are no cameras inside this courthouse. there are no electronics. our producer, jake gibson, is in there witnessing it but can't send us text messages. we're waiting with quite anticipation to see what happens and when hunter comes out, exactly what we'll learn. what has transpired in the last 24 hours to reset things for you is that what was going to be a fairly routine plea deal we have learned that the house republicans, chairman of the ways and means committee issued an amicus brief asking them to take note of the i.r.s. whistleblower testimony information that was not public at the time of the plea deal that was reached. of course, the developments
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about hunter's former business partner devon archer and his testimony next week that may have allegedly involved president biden himself. meanwhile, we got late information yesterday that there was a potential misrepresentation on hunter biden's legal team, a member of the law firm calling the clerk's office here asking the amicus brief not be considered and possibly misrepresenting herself. that individual issuing a statement to the court saying that they have no idea how this misrepresentation possibly could have occurred. we know from the judge's order she was possibly threatening sanctions that would have been dealt with from the beginning. one thing is for sure, this amicus brief now late in the 11th hour playing a possible part of it. we'll see. ultimately whether or not this judge accepts the plea deal,
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whether the president's son will plead guilty and where it happens and whether or not hunter biden will make public statements afterwards. we simply have to wait and watch right now. unable to give you an inside report because we cannot put electronics inside that courtroom, dana. >> dana: thank you. we'll be in touch any moment probably. >> bill: back with andy mccarthy and professor turley and byron york. andrew is a former federal prosecutor. he is in studio. you made a comment it should be a quick proceeding if things were normal, correct? it could be that what griff describes there is that at the last minute here the judge is trying to sort out what went down and who was telling the truth as of yesterday. bear in mind they want all the whistleblower testimony to be attached to this case and a request to take that away. the judge might be trying to get
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to the bottom of that now. is that a fair explanation for the length of time here? >> i think so. there are two issues going on now. the hunter biden plea deal, whether that will be accepted. but the judge is also going to be dealing with an ethics issue. an allegation that an attorney related to the biden team called the clerk's office in the judge's chambers and essentially demanded that certain filing be taken down. the question is, is it just a misunderstanding? i think from an attorney's perspective. these are sophisticated attorneys involved here. if it's your document and there was a mistake made you could call the clerk and say it needs to be taken down and there is a mistake. if you call about an opposing party's document you aren't calling with a demanding tone that something must be taken down. you are filing something and get the judge involved to deal with something that might have happened incorrectly. the allegation yesterday is that there was quite a demanding
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phone call made to the clerk's office saying this document needed to be taken off the internet. and that the representation was that this person was calling not on behalf of the hunter biden team but on the opposing side essentially with regard to the government. >> bill: the question is was this all a miscommunication or was it dirty legal pool? >> i'm struggling to understand how it is just a miscommunication. i think the judge will be struggling to understand that as well. there will be tough questions. >> dana: andy mccarthy, want to weigh in on that? >> i think it is a misunderstanding and here is why. first of all, there is an important clarification that has to be made, which is they were trying to keep this information off the public record. they were not trying to keep the information away from the judge. they can't keep information away from the judge. it is a settled principle of law, sentencing judge, judge in a plea situation can consider
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everything. and their position is there is information in the testimony by the i.r.s. agents that under law is non-public tax information that should not be public. now, apparently the hunter lawyers told the house lawyers they would make a motion to get that sealed so that it wouldn't be part of the public record. they initially asked them if they would volunteer to have it under seal. the house evidently said no. what i suspect happened is that the lawyer for the hunter people said that -- called the clerk's office and tried to inform them that they wanted to make an application to have part of the record sealed and i suspect the overworked court clerk may have misunderstood and probably it's the fault of the lawyer not for communicating -- not communicating it well enough, may have misunderstood who was making the application and why.
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but the reason i can't believe that this was scandalous is the woman -- the lawyer who called used her own name and her point was not to keep information away from the court, it was to keep it off the public record. that's not something that's important enough to lie about or to commit a big fraud about. this information is going to be in front of the court and as others have pointed out, it was already testified to publicly. so the question is should it be part of the public record in the court file or not, which is kind of a small potatoes thing in the greater scheme of thing. >> dana: we'll find out what happened. >> bill: whether or not this is the reason why it's taking this long. james freeman, welcome to the conversation and the brady bunch. what is your observation? >> i suppose the judge will decide whether any hunter biden lawyers need to be sanctioned. the story of this story for three years and more has been an aggressive biden effort to keep
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details of the family business from reaching the public. so in that sense i think this latest move by the lawyers, whether appropriate or not, is very consistent. and we go back to the underlying conduct. all of this foreign money coming from shady operators overseas and no reasonable explanation of why. the president told numerous falsehoods in 2020 to try to suppress this story. some of them were contradictory. he was saying he never talked to his son about business, which obviously there is a lot of evidence that he did. he also said his son never made any money in china. we see documents showing millions of dollars going to various entities related to hunter biden. those two things are contradictory. if he knew nothing about the business how would he know whether any money was made in
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china? as people focus on ukraine, very aggressive effort, including by the president to say it was all russian misinformation. we know the laptop information was real. so i think you have to ask, the extreme lengths that this group of people has gone to for years to prevent the full story of these enrichment schemes from reaching the public, why? >> dana: byron york, i'm wondering what you make of the politics you make on the democratic side when it comes to the presidential election. there are lots of questions in this regard but there are others as well. you look at approval ratings for the president, for example, the concern about the kamala harris piece, her unpopularity as well and the democrats knowing this is going to be a tough election for them. and how do you think they are managing this and thinking about this?
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are they succeeding? >> well, i think the short version is that the democrats would like to ignore it, pretend it is not there and if they can't do that, insist it is all about hunter biden while the republicans are saying no, it is about joe biden. that has been the focus of republicans ever since they took power in the house is finding that joe biden connection. and they've made a lot of progress and clearly this testimony that they might be about to receive from devon archer would suggest that there was even more joe biden involvement than they previously thought. so i think going into the campaign, if you just look at this as a political matter, you have the opposition party digging up lots of negative information about the president who we all think is going to seek re-election. so it's a very, very damaging thing. right now democrats are still
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hoping they can keep the lid on the pot. they have changed the story at the white house. remember now they're saying the president was never in business with his son. which is not what they said before. they said the president didn't ever talk about it with his son. didn't know anything about it. now they say he was never in business with his son. i think we've seen the white house trying to keep a lid on this but so far failing. >> dana: they got mad when you noticed that they had changed their language on that. professor turley, i have a question about devon archer. apparently he has delayed or postponed his deposition three times. is it possible that he was delaying that until after hunter biden could enter this plea? >> it's really hard to say. i have never seen so many delays. this is either the third or fourth delay in the last week. usually these demands concentrate the mind of
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witnesses and they show up. but this is not going to be an easy thing for him. he, according to reports, is about to totally demolish the president's denials. and essentially call the sitting president of the united states a liar. that's not something that most people want to encounter. i don't blame him if he wants that cup to pass from his lips but it is not going to. once he makes those statements, we find ourselves in a very changed game. this was what the speaker was talking about when he said what do you want me to do? you've got a 1023 saying that the president received a bribe. you have whistleblowers saying there was a sweetheart deal to avoid charging on the very counts dealing with some of these alleged transactions. now you have another close
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associate of hunter saying that the president not only knew but he actively participated in these conversations. you know, we talk about congress's powers but we rarely talk about their obligations. i think that's what speaker mccarthy was talking about yesterday when he said when he asked what are we supposed to do? the answer to that is you have to find some answers. it doesn't mean you have to impeach. it means you have to find the answers. >> bill: yes. that could take some time. to the lawyers, andy and andrew and professor turley, byron just referred to this about the change in language at the white house this past week, that was never in business. 20 years ago when we all watched the recorded deposition of bill clinton on the monica lewinsky matter. you remember that day. to the lay folks, you know, watching this who say it sounded pretty good and he answered all
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the questions and then boom the tape ends and we pop out to legal brains like yourselves and you say what was the tense of the word be he used in that interview? it was is was, was is. and i remember shaking my head thinking, come on. but now, you know, we have that as a frame for reference, andy. when karine jean-pierre said was never in business, do you believe that the story has shifted significantly within the white house for the president and his own counsel? >> oh, for certain the -- they wouldn't make a concession like that unless they realized there has been a crescendo of information and their story doesn't make sense anymore so they have to shift it. then also talk about insulting your intelligence. look you in the eye and say
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we've said this a thousand times as they completely change their story. but just to bring it back to today, bill, you know, yes, we are certainly in the parsing of words business, that's part of the gig. but i also like to think we're in the common sense business. we tell jury are supposed to evaluate what they hear. if the story is evolving because the investigation is proceeding, then how on earth are you taking a guilty plea today to two misdemeanor tax counts from somebody who is in the middle and central to this thing that is still under investigation and is very, very serious? >> dana: that's a great question because when the plea announcement was first coming forward from hunter's lawyers, there was a dispute. andrew, i will go to you on this. it was from david weiss, the
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attorney who said the investigation is continuing. hunter's lawyers says no, it is closed. do we actually know what's happening? >> i don't think we do know. in fact, mr. weiss has made contradictory statements throughout the month of june about the scope of his authority with regard to this investigation and essentially where it could go. i think the big question i've always had in terms of the ambiguity of mr. weiss's authority, what authority he had to investigate burisma and ukraine and hedge fund in china and whether president biden was involved in that as a vice president. we have to go back to the words of joe biden who said my son has done nothing wrong. we now know joe biden was wrong about that and we also know that he was at least present for many of the conversations that hunter biden was having with these i guess sketchy individuals overseas. i like to put it in those simple terms so that we understand
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what's going on. does joe biden understand what his son sitting right next to him is doing? we see even texts from hunter biden to his adult daughter saying at least i'm not having to give you half of -- you are not having to give me half like i have to give to essentially the big guy. so there is so much evidence that is piling up that joe biden would have obviously been aware of what was going on. >> bill: what about andy's point. you are still in the middle of this case and you take a plea deal today apparently. >> i think that's what we have to look at in terms of where the double jeopardy comes in. thankfully double jeopardy only attaches to the tax elements of this. if something really shocking comes out and we're within the statute of limitations there is an ability to charge on that. i think hunter biden is doing everything he can with his legal time to try to put a seal on this and at least leave the image it's done. >> dana: the other thing we're waiting for, congresswoman nancy mace has talked about this a
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lot, amongst others, her comments after leaving the treasury department building and saying you won't believe what we just saw in regards to payments to many different family members, are we ever going to see more of that? >> i think we should. that's what james comer, the chairman of the house oversight committee, has been talking about a lot. he said from the very beginning immediately after taking the oath of this congress he said we are going after the sars, these suspicious activity reports that banks issue after suspiciously large transactions and comer said there are a bunch of them involving hunter biden, james biden, and other members of the biden family. so i think we will see that laid out. the question that's always hanging over comer's discussion of these suspicious activity reports is do any of them
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involve joe biden? if you, representative comer, allege the money got to joe biden, how can you do that? as far as we know, i don't think when the president has denied knowing anything about his son's business dealings, i don't think he has done that in my legal setting. he just lied to the american people, which is done a lot. so i'm not sure how they investigate it from that point of view. but congress looking at these suspicious activity reports is trying to tie money that we know that hunter biden got from shady sources overseas. we know other members of the biden family got. and almost to the point that joe biden is the only guy who didn't get any money in the family from these overseas sources. >> bill: james, it is something else, because often you need a flow chart to follow all this. it's 2023 and we talk about things that go back to 2014 and
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prior to that perhaps. i am wondering if the laptop was never found in that same town where this court case is now convened in wilmington, delaware, would we be here at this moment? >> i think there would still be questions. even without the laptop. if the president, after all these years, is finally ready to admit he knew about hunter's business dealings, a bunch of questions flow from that. why did you then allow him to travel with you on air force two with his hand out if you knew what was going on, why did you pressure the firing or force the firing of that ukrainian prosecutor while he was investigating hunter's beneficiary at burisma? there are a lot of fact checkers in our industry who pretended that matter had been closed when the president -- now president joe biden forced the firing of the ukrainian prosecutor.
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that matter had not been closed. so i think there are a lot of questions. how did this ever get by the obama white house counsel's office? >> dana: it might not have. jonathan turley in the remaining 45 seconds we have, can you talk about that? they did raise questions at the obama white house. i would imagine it got blown off by the vice president's office at the time. >> that's part of this developing mosaic. it is coming together in a very disturbing way. that 1023 really does magnify these questions because it confirms what the i.r.s. whistleblowers said they were finding. in fact, they said they wanted to get this information. they wanted to be briefed about what was coming from pittsburgh and were prevented from being debriefed on it. when they finally saw it they said of course this would have
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helped us fill in these blanks. but in some ways it's more damaging because they developed from independent sources and describe the same system. the 1023 form says is that they were told not to give money directly to joe biden but to use this labyrinth of corporations and accounts to hide the payments. that's why this is all so serious. in some ways the bidens have been too successful because if they kept all of these things separate but they are all approaching the same descriptive conclusions as to what occurred. >> bill: thanks to all of you. we'll hand off to our colleague harris faulkner in a moment her, professor turley, andrew, andy, byron and james and anyone else we're forgetting. thanks for that. catch more on the ufo hearing happening on capitol hill. hunter biden is 53 years old. he reached a settlement with the
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mother of his child in arkansas and now he is trying to put these matters behind him. we're about to find out whether or not he is successful. >> dana: this hearing start evidence at 10:00 a.m. these are usually routine matters. we're now at 11:00 hour and harris faulkner will take you through to the next little bit of this and you are expected the hear from hunter biden when he comes out. here is harris. >> harris: we continue our breaking news coverage. as dana said we're at the 11:00 hour just like the saying the 11th hour for president biden's son, hunter. who is in federal court and he has been there since 10:00 a.m. eastern. we are at that point in the saga around hunter biden's criminal life when a judge will either ink his so-called sweetheart plea deal or reject it. that would be huge if she did that. hunter biden is there to plead guilty to tax charges and sl

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