Speaker 1: We start today with what many Republicans thought, believed said was going to be the
smoking gun, the final nail in the coffin of the Joe Biden bribery, fraud, crime scandal.
This was going to lead to Joe Biden's impeachment and conviction removal from office.
Criminal charges.
Joe Biden was going to be in prison before you know it.
It all hinged on the closed door testimony of Devin Archer, a business associate of Hunter
Biden.
It is really important to understand as we go through this, that on the one hand, we
can look at whether certain allegations, if true, expose impropriety on behalf of Hunter
or Joe Biden.
Influence peddling, for example, using a position of power to impress individuals to try to
secure business deals or whatever.
That's one question we then go to.
Was there anything even allegedly criminal here?
And one of the extraordinary takeaways based on what we've been told by both Democrats
and Republicans about yesterday's Devin Archer testimony, is that we are no closer to any
allegations that are evidence based of criminal behavior by Joe Biden.
Now, let me tell you what exactly it is that happened.
Devin Archer is a business associate of Hunter Biden.
And Devin Archer gave closed door testimony yesterday.
There's an article by The Hill that summarizes it.
And the entire debate focuses on what is being described as the illusion of access.
The allegations that were made by Devin Archer were that Hunter Biden sometimes sought to
impress business associates or potential business associates, business partners with the illusion
of access to Joe Biden.
That is very different than access to Joe Biden, and it is certainly very different
than Joe Biden as vice president or former vice president or candidate or whatever the
case may be, working in any tangible way to give anything of value or of any kind to the
individuals that Hunter Biden is trying to do business with.
And what the incredible takeaway here seems to be, according to Congressman Dan Goldman,
a Democrat, is that the testimony of Devin Archer behind closed doors yesterday actually
seems to be exculpatory for Joe Biden, that even as Hunter Biden would sometimes allude
to this illusion of access to Joe Biden, that there was actually no such access.
Maybe there were.
He hopped on speaker phone and said hello, but there was not even testimony.
And remember, just because there's testimony doesn't mean it's true.
It doesn't mean it's immoral.
It doesn't mean it's criminal.
We're not even at that standard.
There wasn't even testimony that Joe Biden was involved in any of these business dealings.
Had there been such testimony, we would then be in a position to evaluate was there even
any possible crime?
We have none of that.
Now, you don't have to take my word for it.
We don't actually have the testimony because it was behind closed doors.
But you can go through and read the summaries of it.
The biggest indicator that this is not the smoking gun that Republicans hoped and maybe
to some degree believed it would be, is that James Comer, the Republican who is in charge
of the House Oversight Committee, went on Sean Hannity's propaganda Fox News show last
night.
And when HANNITY asked him and said, Do you think this is it?
Do you think this is the Biden ally, the Biden bribery bombshell that we've been waiting
for?
Do you think you can actually prove that James Comer is able to offer nothing other than.
I sure hope so, which is not exactly confidence inspiring legal bravado.
Take a listen to this.
You believe that this.
Speaker 2: Is now officially the Joe.
Speaker 1: Biden bribery allegation?
And do you believe that you will be able to prove that?
Speaker 2: Jim Colmer.
I sure hope so.
And I do believe that there's a lot of smoke.
And where there's smoke, there's fire.
We just heard testimony today that Joe Biden had lied to the American people.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Now, again, I am not someone to defend presidential candidates lying to the American people no
matter who is doing it.
I also am aware that the lie they claim was told has not even been proven to be a lie.
The lie was that Joe Biden publicly said during debates with Donald Trump, I don't have any
involvement with my son's business dealings, even if we accept as true the testimony of
Devin Archer.
It still doesn't even allege that Joe Biden was involved in business dealings with Hunter
Biden.
Even if it is true that Hunter Biden alluded to the illusion of access to his dad.
That is not Joe Biden being involved with Hunter Biden's business dealings.
Even if Joe Biden got on speaker phone with someone, Hunter Biden was talking to you to
say hello.
That is not actually being involved in the business dealings of Hunter Biden.
And then we go even if he were involved in the business dealings.
Number one, look at the Trump family.
So it's a lot of, you know, pointing fingers, throwing stones from glass houses.
But also, even if he were involved, that doesn't necessarily mean he did anything wrong either.
And it is not even necessarily a crime.
So this is not about me defending anything.
If Joe Biden did something immoral or improper or unethical or illegal, I'd be right here
to tell you.
But what is abundantly clear is that after years of investigating the same stuff over
and over again, they keep making the same allegations.
They are not very confident that this is actually going anywhere.
They lost their witness and that the papers were lost and the tapes don't say what they
supposedly said.
And now it's I, I hope that this gets us something we can use.
Now for a different perspective, here's Congressman Dan Goldman saying the testimony does not
implicate Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: He did describe that there were approximately 20 occasions over the course
of their nearly decade long business relationship where when one of them called the other that
Hunter Biden would ask his father to say hello to whomever he was at dinner, he said there
were some times when it was friends and sometimes when it was potential business partners or
business partners.
But the witness was unequivocal and stated very clearly that they never discussed any
business on that phone conversations.
There were niceties and there was a hello.
And there we talked about the weather or whatever it was, but it was never any business.
And I think it's really important to remember that during this time period that we're talking
about here, Beau Biden, Hunter Biden's brother and President Biden's son became very ill
with cancer and died.
That was in the spring of 2015.
And the witness described in vivid detail about how devastating that was to both Hunter
Biden and to Joe Biden and how their communications picked up dramatically in the aftermath because
Joe Biden was calling his son to check on him and Hunter Biden was calling his dad to
check on him.
It had nothing to do with business.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Also, interestingly, Dan Goldman saying that right now the only official action by President
Biden in any way related to Hunter Biden's business interests was actually bad for Hunter
Biden's business interests.
Speaker 2: There is not a shred of evidence of a single conflict of interest of President
Biden ever doing anything in connection or in relation to Hunter Biden's business ventures
other than advocating for the removal of a prosecutor general who was advantageous to
Burisma.
Speaker 1: The understand that the one action Biden got involved in as his in his official
capacity as directed by Barack Obama was something that wasn't good for Hunter Biden's business
interests.
This is the smoking gun they have claimed to have.
Not very impressive.
On the other hand, what is very impressive are the charges that may be ready to go in
Georgia against Donald Trump.
Let's talk about that.