PBS’s Washington Week Panel Showers Hunter and Presidential Dad With Sympathy

PBS NewsHour
June 24, 2023
8:14 p.m. (ET)

William Brangham:  And although Prime Minister Modi was the official guest of honor this Thursday night, it was President Biden’s son, Hunter, who also turned heads. He mingled in the crowd just days after news of his plea agreement with the DOJ set off a political firestorm. He is expected to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and will admit to illegally owning a gun. If a judge accepts the terms, Biden will likely avoid prison time.

But outraged House Republicans blasted that agreement and vowed to continue investigating the president and his family.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA): It continues to show the two-tier system in America. If you are the president’s son, you get a sweetheart deal. Now, this does nothing to our investigation. It actually should enhance our investigation.

William Brangham: But Attorney General Merrick Garland has rejected accusations that Biden received any special treatment.

Merrick Garland, Attorney General: Some have chosen to attack the integrity of the Justice Department by claiming that we do not treat like cases alike. Nothing could be further from the truth.

William Brangham: This also comes as two IRS whistleblowers have alleged that the investigation into Hunter Biden was repeatedly interfered with to favor the president’s son. So, a lot of political intrigue going on here right now. Weijia, were you surprised that Hunter Biden was brought to this state dinner the same week that he had this plea deal announced that they didn’t hide him away, he was welcomed with full fanfare?

Weijia Jiang: No, I wasn’t surprised. And, you know, the White House’s response to this was that, you know, this is still the son of a president. And I don’t think that the strategy right now is to run away from it. I think they want to show that he is a real person, that he is, unlike some of his Republican counterparts, who the Republicans have been trying to compare him to, he fesses up. He admits wrongdoing.

And there is a clear separation between the White House and the DOJ. At least that is what the Biden team is trying to portray. And so I think it made sense to me that they didn’t want to hide him because they didn’t want to have an appearance that he had done something even further wrong because they wanted to move on from this. They wanted to show that he is, in fact, trying to rebuild his life after years of addiction, which is also something that they are very willing to talk about.

Mary Bruce: And I think also Joe Biden is in this position of having to respond to this personally and politically. And I think Joe Biden, the father, is always going to take first bidding over Joe Biden, the politician. And when he looks back at this, this is incredibly painful for the president. And I think him showing to his son, to the world, come to dinner at the White House —

William Brangham: You still have my embrace

Mary Bruce: Exactly. It’s not just sending a message to the world, to his political opponents who are clearly going to do their best to try and keep this in the conversation. They think there’s a lot here left to be investigated politically, even if criminally. The Republicans charges have not been substantiated at all by this agreement, right? They’re not bringing any criminal charges linked to Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

But the President, I think, is responding first and foremost as a devoted father who has stood by his son through struggles with addiction and has always said that he supports him. So, he’s not distancing himself from Hunter Biden but he is distancing himself from this investigation so as not to fuel the political fire.

Carl Hulse: I thought if you had written a movie script that had that state dinner with the president, the president’s son, who just admitted to wrongdoing the two House Republican leaders who are pursuing him, and the president, and the attorney general who is trying to avoid the whole mess all at the same dinner, somebody would say that could never happen.

But the Republicans, no matter what Hunter Biden agreed to and admitted to, the Republicans were always going to say that this is a two-tiered justice system, that Trump is being treated differently than Hunter Biden. And with these whistleblowers now, they’ve finally made a little headway. This is really sort of the first time that they’ve had seemed to have some credible — we’ll see how credible —

William Brangham: these are two whistleblowers who have come forward who have said that the investigation was hampered, that there were delays, they slow walked it, they gave Biden’s lawyers heads-up when they shouldn’t have.

Carl Hulse: And that they finally have a little something to grab onto, that there was some unequal treatment and that Hunter Biden wasn’t treated the way a normal person being investigated for tax fraud was. However, it’s still about Hunter Biden. It’s not Joe Biden. They’re trying to drag Joe Biden in that, as you saw Lauren Boebert there say. So, there’s this new transcript of — I think it’s a text message that he is supposedly have been talking about his father. Hunter Biden’s lawyer came out today and said that Hunter Biden is speaking only for himself, no one else in the family.

So, we’ll see where they can go with this but it’s obviously not going away. They’re going to continue this all the way through the election but they still haven’t really made the direct link to the president, but they’re going to try very hard to do that.

William Brangham: Mary, this text message that Carl is talking about is a text message where Hunter Biden is speaking to, we believe, a Chinese official. And he’s basically saying, I’m sitting next to my father. This was when Biden was no longer vice president and was not president yet. But he’s saying, I’m sitting next to my dad. And if you don’t do this deal with me, in essence, there’s going to be hell to pay. Do you think that that adds to the Republicans’ case that there really is more here?

Mary Bruce: They certainly are trying to make that point right. This is this alleged WhatsApp message between Hunter Biden and someone that he was doing business dealings with in China, frustrated obviously that they weren’t moving ahead with some energy deal that he was hoping that he would be able to close. And to Carl’s point, Hunter Biden’s lawyers, the White House have all said the president knows nothing about this. There was no connection to the president, then former vice president who wasn’t in office at the time.

This also was a time when Hunter Biden was heavily addicted to drugs, through his own admission. But I do think Republicans are certainly going to try very hard to do whatever they can to keep this in the conversation.

What will be interesting to see is whether we learn any more from the Trump-appointed prosecutor, David Weiss, who I think there are many questions about. Obviously, he looked into all of these things. Did he know about this WhatsApp message? Was this something that he was looked at? Why didn’t he bring any criminal charges linked to Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings? And the attorney general, Merrick Garland, was asked about this today and he said he would support David Weiss testifying at some point or commenting about this when it was appropriate.

So, I do wonder if at some point we may get more transparency that may answer some Republicans’ questions, just clear things up in an attempt just to hear it out…