TIME Senior Correspondent Brian Bennett explains the long-running investigations into President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.
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00:00 (gentle music)
00:02 Let's talk about Hunter Biden.
00:08 Joe Biden's son is at the center of a political storm
00:11 and is shaping up to be a major political liability
00:13 for Biden going into the 2024 election.
00:15 Ever since Joe Biden announced
00:17 he was running for president in 2019,
00:19 Republicans have scrutinized his son,
00:21 Hunter Biden's bouts with drug addiction
00:23 and his business dealings in Ukraine and China
00:26 with an eye toward weakening his dad politically.
00:29 Fast forward to now,
00:30 Republicans have taken the majority in the House
00:33 and control investigative committees
00:35 and the spotlight to Hunter Biden has gotten brighter.
00:38 Okay, let's start at the beginning.
00:40 Who is Hunter Biden?
00:42 Hunter Biden is President Joe Biden's second son.
00:44 His mom was Nelia Biden, Joe Biden's first wife.
00:48 Nelia died in a car crash in 1972
00:51 with her and Joe Biden's one-year-old daughter, Naomi.
00:53 Hunter's older brother, Beau,
00:55 was a former attorney general of Delaware
00:57 and Army JAG officer who died from brain cancer in 2015.
01:01 Okay, let's go to Hunter.
01:02 Hunter himself graduated from Yale Law School
01:05 and has worked as a lawyer, a lobbyist, and an investor.
01:09 Hunter Biden served on the board
01:10 of the Ukrainian natural gas company,
01:12 Burisma Holdings, from 2014 to 2019
01:16 and has worked on investments with Chinese companies.
01:19 He's currently selling paintings
01:20 through a New York art gallery.
01:22 Okay, let's look at who's investigating Hunter Biden and why.
01:25 First, you have the Republicans in the House.
01:28 House Speaker McCarthy launched a formal impeachment inquiry
01:31 into President Joe Biden on September 12th,
01:34 and Hunter Biden is at the center of it.
01:35 - These are allegations of abuse of power,
01:38 obstruction, and corruption,
01:40 and they warrant further investigation
01:44 by the House of Representatives.
01:47 That's why today I am directing our House committee
01:51 to open a formal impeachment inquiry
01:54 into President Joe Biden.
01:55 - But it's important to emphasize
01:56 that House Republicans have so far only found evidence
01:59 of Hunter trading on his family name
02:01 and not of wrongdoing by Joe Biden
02:03 or that Biden was involved in Hunter's business deals.
02:06 Okay, that's Congress.
02:09 Then there's the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden.
02:11 Hunter Biden's the subject
02:12 of a Justice Department investigation into his tax filings
02:15 and a statement he made on a form to purchase a handgun.
02:18 Department of Justice Special Counsel David Weiss
02:21 has charged Hunter Biden with illegally obtaining a firearm
02:24 while addicted to drugs
02:25 and two counts related to false statements
02:27 on the purchase form.
02:29 - I don't have no idea what took the Department of Justice
02:30 so long.
02:32 It's clear he violated the law.
02:34 So I think now there's gonna have to be a real deep dive
02:36 at Maine Justice about why there has been obstruction
02:38 to this degree that's protected the son
02:40 of the President of the United States.
02:42 - It will be the first of many indictments, I imagine.
02:45 - For Hunter. - Yeah.
02:48 - I think our Republican colleagues
02:49 would probably be demanding that the charges be dropped
02:52 if it were for almost any other American.
02:54 They don't believe in gun charges.
02:55 - Those charges stem from Hunter Biden's purchase
02:58 of a Colt Cobra 38 SPL revolver in October, 2018.
03:03 Why is that date important?
03:05 Because Hunter Biden was regularly using crack cocaine
03:08 during that period, according to his own memoir.
03:10 And when someone is purchasing a firearm,
03:12 they're asked if they are addicted to any drugs.
03:15 Hunter answered no.
03:16 Lying on a firearm transaction form is a felony
03:19 and a conviction could carry a prison sentence
03:21 of up to 10 years.
03:22 But legal experts say prosecutors rarely bring charges
03:25 on the infraction.
03:27 Now let's get back to Congress and the impeachment.
03:29 There's little public information, if any,
03:31 showing that Joe Biden was involved
03:33 in Hunter's business transactions.
03:34 James Comer, the Kentucky Republican
03:36 who chairs the House Oversight Committee
03:38 has repeatedly overstated what Republicans have found
03:41 and only had the evidence come up short.
03:44 - The Committee on Oversight and Accountability
03:45 has accelerated its investigation
03:47 of the Biden family's domestic
03:49 and international business practices
03:51 that we began last Congress.
03:53 - There's two aspects of Hunter's overseas work
03:55 that Republicans are focused on
03:57 that are worth digging into.
03:58 All right, there's the big guy email
04:00 and Hunter's work in Ukraine.
04:01 Now let's start with the big guy email.
04:04 Hunter says that his committee's investigation
04:06 is looking into a 2017 email allegedly found on a laptop
04:09 that belonged to Hunter Biden.
04:11 The email includes discussion of setting aside
04:13 a certain percentage of a deal for the big guy.
04:16 One line of that email asked the question,
04:17 "10 held for H by the big guy."
04:19 Now Hunter Biden's former business partner,
04:21 Tony Bobulinski, who was one of Donald Trump's guests
04:24 for a presidential debate in 2020,
04:26 told Fox News he believed H stood for Hunter
04:28 and the big guy was Joe Biden.
04:30 Now beyond that, Fox News has also reported
04:32 there was no evidence that any part of the business deals
04:35 with the Chinese entities went to Joe Biden.
04:37 It's still worth pointing out that when the email was sent,
04:39 Joe Biden wasn't in office.
04:41 It was 2017, he was no longer vice president
04:44 and was nearly two years away
04:45 from announcing his candidacy for president.
04:47 Now Comer claims the email text shows Joe Biden
04:50 was aware of Hunter's business dealings
04:52 with the Chinese company.
04:53 Comer also claims those business ties
04:55 influenced President Biden's policy choices toward China,
05:00 but it's unclear how.
05:01 Biden has kept the Trump era tariffs on China in place
05:05 and added new export controls on US chip-making technology
05:08 since taking office.
05:10 Now let's look at Hunter Biden and Ukraine.
05:12 Republicans in the House have gone back to a long running
05:14 and debunked conspiracy theory that Joe Biden,
05:17 when he was vice president,
05:18 demanded the Ukrainian government
05:20 fire the country's top prosecutor
05:22 to halt an investigation into a Ukrainian company
05:25 that had Hunter Biden on its board.
05:27 - Biden used his official office to coordinate
05:31 with Hunter Biden's business partners
05:34 about Hunter's role in Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.
05:39 Now this is the conspiracy theory
05:40 that Donald Trump was chasing
05:42 when he withheld military aid
05:44 and pressured Zelensky, Ukraine's president,
05:47 to open an investigation into the Bidens
05:49 during the famous 2019 presidential phone call.
05:52 But Joe Biden wasn't alone in encouraging
05:54 the Ukraine parliament to oust prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
05:56 Concerns that Shokin wasn't doing enough
05:58 to root out corruption were expressed
06:00 by European diplomats, international organizations
06:03 like the International Monetary Fund as well,
06:05 and Devin Archer, Hunter Biden's business partner
06:08 who served on the Burisma board with him,
06:10 told House Republicans that Burisma
06:12 didn't even support Shokin's removal.
06:14 And it made it even harder to understand
06:16 why Biden's position would have been
06:18 about helping that company.
06:20 Hunter Biden's business in Ukraine
06:21 while his father was vice president
06:24 did make American diplomatic efforts
06:26 in Ukraine more difficult.
06:28 A 2020 Senate investigation led by Republicans
06:31 found that Hunter Biden, his business partners
06:34 and their firms, made millions of dollars
06:36 doing business in Ukraine
06:37 while Joe Biden was vice president
06:39 and those financial connections
06:42 negatively impacted diplomatic work in the country.
06:45 But that same investigation uncovered no evidence
06:48 of wrongdoing by Joe Biden in the matter.
06:51 So what does Hunter Biden's drug use
06:53 have to do with all this?
06:54 During the years when Hunter Biden was working on deals
06:56 with Chinese companies and serving on the board
06:58 of the Ukraine Energy Company Burisma,
07:00 he was also in a cycle of drug addiction,
07:03 rehab and relapse that spanned 15 years.
07:06 In his 2021 memoir, "Beautiful Things,"
07:08 Hunter describes in detail his crack cocaine binges
07:11 which he called the crack-opalypse,
07:12 his confrontations with his family
07:14 about returning to rehab and his eventual sobriety
07:17 and escape from those troubles
07:19 when he married his current wife, Melissa, in May of 2019.
07:23 Anecdotes of Hunter Biden's drug use
07:25 and photos purportedly from his laptop
07:27 have been highlighted by Biden critics
07:29 to suggest that Joe Biden is compromised by Hunter's actions
07:32 but Joe Biden has spoken openly
07:34 about his son's struggles with drug addiction.
07:36 - He got hooked on, like many families have had happen,
07:41 hooked on drugs.
07:42 He's overcome that.
07:43 He's established a new life.
07:45 He is, I'm confident that he is,
07:49 what he says and does are consistent with what happens.
07:53 - Now has any of this implicated Joe Biden in wrongdoing?
07:57 It hasn't.
07:58 What's known about Hunter Biden's business deals
08:00 with Ukrainian and Chinese companies
08:01 creates an impression he was making a lot of money
08:03 off the prestige of being Joe Biden's son.
08:06 But there isn't evidence
08:07 that Hunter Biden's business transactions
08:09 have influenced decisions that Joe Biden made
08:12 as vice president or as president.
08:14 There's also no clear evidence
08:15 that money from Hunter Biden's business dealings
08:17 ever made their way to Joe Biden's accounts.
08:20 This is for sure.
08:21 The House impeachment inquiry
08:23 and the ongoing criminal case against Hunter Biden
08:25 both mean there will be a lot more scrutiny.
08:27 (silence)
08:29 (silence)
08:32 (silence)
08:34 [BLANK_AUDIO]