Transcript
Ben Shapiro (0:00)
Well, folks, Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter late last night. We'll get into everything that means, what it shows about Joe Biden, about Democrats, about the state of American politics. First, your reminder. Cyber Monday is now here. Our best deal of the year continues. Get 50% off New DailyWire, plus annual memberships, including all access, where you can join me live for exclusive weekly Q and A's. Head on over to DailyWire.com cyber Monday. Become a member today. All righty. So last night, Joe Biden decided that now was the moment. Yes, of course, he had promised he was not going to pardon his son Hunter on gun and tax charges. But hell, that dude is leaving office. Ain't no reason for him to lie anymore. And so last night, he released a statement announcing that he was going to pardon his son Hunter on all charges, not just grant commutation of the sentence. Right, you can actually grant commutation if you're president. Meaning that he could have left all the guilty pleas on the books for his son, he could have left all the convictions on the books for his son, and still his son could have not gone to jail. Instead, he decided to issue a full pardon, meaning that his record is wiped clean. And he didn't just issue a full pardon for the things for which Hunter was convicted or to which he pled guilty. He issued a full pardon going all the way back to January 1, 2014, a nearly 11 year period. Anything he did, blanket pardon for everything. In fact, this led to the rather hilarious spectacle of last night. Joe Biden issues this pardon, and there were still like three or four hours to go on December 1st. And so theoretically, Hunter Biden could have done the funniest thing and like gone on a murder spree or something. The pardon still would have applied, actually, at least with regard to federal crimes. So he issues this pardon. The pardon states, quote, a full and unconditional pardon for those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including, but not limited to, all offenses charged or prosecuted, including any that have resulted in convictions by special counsel David C. Weiss, as well as any other charges in testimony whereof I have here unto signed my name and caused the pardon to be recorded with the Department of Justice. Hey, that is, that is the executive grant of a pardon by Joe Biden for his son. Now, why would he do that? Why would he go back an 11 year period? The answer, of course, is because Hunter Biden was the bag Man. As we all know, as we've discussed repeatedly on the show, Joe Biden has spent his entire political career enriching his family, his entire political career since the time he was in the Senate in Delaware. He used his position to enrich his brothers Frank and James. He used his position to enrich his sister Val. He used his position in order to deploy Hunter Biden, his derelict, drug addled son, all over the world to pick up sacks of cash on behalf of the family from China to Ukraine. And much of that was apparently being held in trust for, quote, unquote, the Big Guy, according to contemporaneous email messages and texts that were sent by Hunter Biden on that famous Hunter Biden laptop. So why is he issuing a pardon on all of this stuff? Because he is afraid that it's not just the charges that Hunter Biden was caught up in that will be the subject of further investigation. He's trying to clear the decks so that Hunter Biden is now off the hook for literally everything, including his time at Burisma. It is not a coincidence that this pardon begins January 1, 2014. When exactly did Hunter Biden join Burisma? The answer, April 2014. So he's clearly attempting to wipe the books of Hunter Biden's Foreign Agents Registration act violations of his corruption of any possible investigation into the money that passed hands between foreign countries and Hunter Biden and then was held by Hunter Biden for the Big Guy. That is the goal here. This is full scale obvious political corruption of the most unseemly sword. And Joe Biden put out a statement on this. And here is what the statement says. Quote, today I signed a pardon for my son, Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department's decision making. And I kept my word, even as I have watched my son being selectively and unfairly prosecuted. Okay, so first of all, if you say that you're not going to interfere with the Justice Department's decision making, and then you full on pardon your son after claiming that the Justice Department selectively prosecuted your son, that would be technically the largest scale interference with the Department of Justice. Sure, you let them waste millions of dollars prosecuting your son, only to pardon him later, but you are openly suggesting that they were corrupt, that they did something wrong, which they didn't. President Biden says, quote, without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled Out a gun form. Now, the reality, of course, is that Joe Biden's son filled out a gun form claiming that he was not a drug addict while he was in fact in full scale drug addiction mode, snorting parmesan cheese off carpets, thinking that perhaps it was meth or cocaine. That is according to his own memoir. According to Joe Biden, however, this was all unfair. Now, if you lie on a gun registration form by being a drug addict, the punishment is up to 10 years in jail or $250,000 in fines. And very often those sorts of charges are brought specifically so you can then plea bargain the person so that they'll flip on somebody else. But with regard to Hunter Biden, the notion that he was selectively prosecuted in this case, if he were some poor kid from Appalachia, the chances that this kid would not have been prosecuted under the statute are very, very low. But according to Joe Biden, it was all corrupt. That's the real reason. It's not because he's trying to cover up what he did with his son Hunter. It not that Hunter was the bag man. The real issue here is that the selective enforcement Justice Department was going after his poor, innocent, 51 year old, totally derelict son who happened to be picking up sacks of cash for him, according to President Biden, quote, those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties are typically given non criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently. The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then a carefully negotiated plea deal agreed to by the Department of Justice unraveled in the courtroom, with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter's cases. Now, if you recall, actually what happened in this case is that the Justice Department tried to cut an unprecedented sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden. The nature of that deal is that there were essentially two sets of plea agreements. One was a plea agreement with regard to the gun charge, and the other added onto the tax charges all the other stuff that Hunter Biden might have done. So there was the plea deal on the gun charge, and that was out and in the open. And then there was a secret agreement on the tax charges that included an addendum that covered any other crimes that Hunter Biden may have committed during this period. And the judge in that case looked at the plea agreement and said, what the hell is this? What the hell is this? Now again, there are IRS whistleblowers. One's name was Gary Shapley, and one's name was Joseph Ziggler, who pointed out that the DOJ and IRS were preventing any sort of serious investigation into the connections between Hunter Biden financially and Joe Biden. The plea agreement itself was obviously a setup. As the Heritage Foundation's John Malcolm, who's the vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government, as he writes, this plea agreement was anything but straightforward. The government actually entered two agreements with Biden, one which would normally require judicial approval and one which wouldn't. The parties hid material terms that should have been included in the one requiring judicial approval by putting them in the one that didn't. So the first agreement which required judicial approval was Biden's agreement to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of tax evasion in return for the government's agreement to recommend a sentence of probation. Okay? Now, that plea agreement set forth all the rights Biden would be waiving and including as Exhibit 1, a recitation of the factual predicate for the plea, including a synopsis for the millions of dollars he's paid over the course of several years. Okay? But there was no worried about any agreement by the government not to prosecute additional crimes in that plea agreement because this was only supposed to apply to the tax charges. But there was a separate agreement on the gun charges, which was a diversion agreement. You remember this. It basically said that he was going to go to some sort of drug correctional program and would have permitted him to agree to a recommended two year term of probation subject to certain standard conditions in return for an agreement by the government not to prosecute him for a separate gun charge. But under the terms of that agreement, if Biden were to complete probation successfully, the government would agree to drop that charge. The problem, of course, is that the diversion agreement also required that if the government ever came to believe that Biden had materially breached the agreement, it would first have to ask the judge to make a final determination that he had done so before bringing charges. And second, the agreement said that if Biden complied with the terms of the agreement, the the government would not prosecute him for any federal crimes encompassed by the attached statement of fact, which of course is everything regarding the Foreign Agents Registration act stuff. So it was a super corrupt deal. And the judge in that particular case saw that it was a super corrupt deal and openly said, I can't do this. I can't greenlight this deal. But according to Joe Biden, the plea agreement was great. Now, again, it was a sweetheart deal that the DOJ cut with Joe Biden's son in the middle of the election cycle to serve a couple of purposes. One, to get Hunter Biden off the hook, and two, as we will see, to make it look as though the DOJ was being fair. A lot of this Hunter Biden schtick was all about the idea that they were going after Donald Trump for everything under the sun. There are multiple federal cases being brought against Donald Trump, ranging from classified documents cases. By the way, the DOJ also failed to bring a classified documents violation case against President Biden himself, openly acknowledging, as Robert Herr, the special prosecutor said, that Joe Biden had clearly violated federal law. It was just that he was senile. And so if you put him in the seat, he would likely be acquitted because everyone would see that he was senile. So just to assess the DOJ's performance here, absolutely abysmal all the way through. Joe Biden violates classified documents law. No prosecution because he's senile. Donald Trump allegedly violates classified documents law. Prosecution prosecute Donald Trump on specious charges with regard to January 6th or electoral interference. Also prosecute Hunter Biden, but cut a sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden so there's no possibility he will ever go to jail. And then when you are caught, just wait for Joe Biden to pardon Hunter again. All of that was set up in order to say, well, listen, the DOJ is being even handed. They're going after Donald Trump on the one hand, they're going after Joe Biden and Hunter Biden on the other. But they were never going after the Bidens. That was the entire point. They were only forced to prosecute Hunter Biden after the judge stepped in and said no. But back to Joseph Biden's entirely dishonest statement. Quote, no reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter's cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son. And that is wrong. There's been an effort to break Hunter, who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me. And there's no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough. So he's suggesting here that if he doesn't pardon Hunter, there will be further charges that are brought against Hunter Biden on the Foreign Agents Registration act violations, for example, or possible corruption with Joe. Now, there's One problem here. Once Joe Biden has pardoned Hunter, Hunter can no longer plead the Fifth. He can. So if, for example, the DOJ under, say, Pam Bondi under Trump administration decides that Joe Biden ought to be prosecuted for violation of bribery statute. To take an example, let's say that the DOJ investigates and what they find is that Hunter Biden was likely picking up sacks of cash on behalf of his dad in foreign countries while his dad was vice president of the United States. For example, Hunter can no longer plead the Fifth because to plead the Fifth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment is designed to prevent you from incriminating yourself. Well, if you've been pardoned for the possible crimes, then you literally have no grounds for citing the Fifth Amendment. You can't do it. It's just gonna be a lot of, I don't recall, I would imagine Joe Biden continues quote from My entire career, I have followed a simple principle. Just tell the American people the truth. One of the great liars in American history, Joe Biden. Just tell the American people the truth. Says the man who ran on the presumption that he was not senile for full on two years while everyone knew it was untrue. They'll be fair minded, says Joe Biden. Here's the truth. I believe in the justice system. But as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice. And once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision. Okay, wildly dishonest. Hey, how dishonest was Joe Biden? He was so dishonest that he Openly said in July 2024 he would not pardon Hunter under any circumstances. Here is Joe Biden circa 2024, July. With regard to the question regarding the family, I'm extremely proud of my son Hunter. He has overcome an addiction. He is, he's one of the brightest, most decent men I know and I am satisfied that I'm not going to do anything. I said I abide by the jury decision and I will do that and I will not pardon him. Okay, so he was lying. So is Corinne Jean Pierre, the White House press secretary. She said the same thing at the time. Here she was July 2024 saying, no, no, no, no. Why would you even say that he'd pardon his son? He was obviously going to pardon his son.
