I think when the transcript comes out,
it's going to read. It's going to read well for
them because they did a great job prepping for a
read.
But that's. But the reality is,
yeah, yeah. But when it when you get down to
it and you start parsing the words,
you start realizing Oh yeah,
yeah, that's that's very interesting.
What so quote When the transcript comes out,
it's going to read well for him.
That was Republican member of the Oversight and Judiciary Committee
Andy Biggs of Arizona with that assessment of the transcript
of the Hunter Biden closed door deposition to which he
received. Interesting. Yesterday the House Oversight and Judiciary committees publicly
released the full
229 page transcript of hunters testimony as part of their
impeachment inquiry into his father,
President Biden. The document, with some redactions,
addressed numerous topics, including Hunter's laptop,
laptop
addiction, Joe Biden, and Donald
Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner was mentioned.
Hunter attempted to draw a contrast with the scrutiny he's
received from the
committee's and questioned why they were not probing Jared Kushner
for his own foreign business dealings.
When a lawmaker asked Hunter whether he worked with foreign
governments,
he responded. I never worked for a country.
I am not Jared Kushner.
Hunter also pushed back on Republicans for not investigating the
money
Kushner's firm received after he left the White House in
2021. When Jared Kushner flies to Saudi Arabia,
picks up $2 billion, comes back and puts it in
his pocket,
OK, and Trump is running for president of United States.
You guys have any problem with that?
Hunter Biden also testified. He never crossed very bright lines
of asking his father to help his business partners and
was always sensitive
at keeping his father at arms length.
One thing that we that I was fully aware of
my entire life is that my dad was an official
of the United States government,
he said. And there were very bright lines that I
abided to and that I was very,
very cognizant of and made certain that I never engaged
with my father in asking him to do anything on
my behalf
or on behalf of any client of mine.
Joining us now, a Democratic member of the House Oversight
Committee,
Congressman Dan Goldman of New York.
So what did they find?
I mean, what happened here?
I hear there was even chuckling at times at the
stupidity of it all.
I mean, this is a lot of time being spent
trying to, I guess, impeach the president at some point
here.
Is there anything?
Zero. There's absolutely nothing. And the remarkable thing about this
229 page transcript when you read it is how little
of it relates to Joe Biden,
which is the ostensible purpose of this investigation,
which has now moved into
an impeachment investigation after with 14 months in the in
the books here.
There are a couple things you read that I think
were are very important.
When Hunter Biden asked the Republican members of Congress,
do you have any problem with that?
There were a couple who said yes,
it's not in the transcript,
but they said yes. And others were nodding
because he did a a very good job of confronting
them with the difference between what he did,
which was dealing in international business with non government officials,
non government entities, versus Jared Kushner who received $2 billion
from the Saudi Arabian government
right after he was the point person
on Middle East policy for the Trump administration and after
the Advisory Board of the Saudi
government's investment arm recommended not investing in him because he
had never done what he was starting to do.
And the contrast is so stark because it is so
obvious that what Jared Kushner did deserves investigation.
And what Hunter Biden did at this point is just
pure,
purely punitive and purely attacking someone who has made mistakes
and admitted to them but who's not a public official
and never has been.
And it's purely being done right now just to provide
election fodder for Donald Trump.
Congressman, good morning. It's good to have you back with
us.
Yeah. You kind of led me to my question which
is that Jared Kushner and his name came up several
times in that interview that deposition yesterday.
Jared Kushner received $2 billion from the Saudis.
And James Comer, chairman, Comer and others want to talk
about the
$1300 car payments for a Ford pickup truck that
he that Hunter Biden received from his father and then
reimbursed later.
Is. Is it your sense that there are any Republicans
who believe that this has just gone on too long,
that it is a farce that all of their star
witnesses have now become
either fugitives or indicted by the Justice Department,
that they come out of these meetings and they tweet
breaking news?
Hunter Biden says this or that,
and it never amounts to anything that the chairman of
the committee,
James Comer, continues to say,
well, there's a lot of smoke here.
We're going to find that fire pretty soon.
Or if they just concede that this is something that
maybe on the margins hurts Joe Biden among a certain
subset of voters.
So they're just going to keep this ball in the
air through the election.
Well, I think there are many Republicans and Congressman Biggs
comment about how the transcript is going to read.
Well, for him, he's one of the staunchest supporters of
impeachment.
And if he's saying that,
that indicates that there are many,
many others who really question this.
Even Matt Gaetz has gone on and
the air and said there's not enough to impeach him
here and that his member,
the other members of the Republican Party,
will not vote. They don't have the votes for impeachment.
They cannot bring this to the floor.
And what you have is Hunter Biden putting the nail
in the coffin on any allegations which were bogus and
unsupported to begin with,
about foreign influence peddling on the one hand.
And on the other hand you have these these bogus
Barisma allegations which have been debunked over and over.
And now it comes out that the
source that they were relying on,
the only evidence they had was a confidential human sources
reporting to the FBI that was uncorroborated and unverified in
the face of so much evidence to the contrary.
And now we know not only was that source lying,
but that the source was working with Russian intelligence to
plant this story in order to interfere in the election.
And so it's not just,
oh, this investigation has blown up and it's over.
It's now at the point,
Willie, where if the Republicans continue to go down this
impeachment investigation,
they are knowingly doing it to assist Vladimir Putin in
interfering in our upcoming election.
So it's far more serious than just,
oh, James Comer at this point is an embarrassment and
should be embarrassed with such a terrible investigation.
It's now much more serious that these House Republicans are
going to be complicit in Russia's effort to install Donald
Trump as president.
Again, Congressman, I'm, I'm trying to understand the politics here.
Steve Ratner was up here before showing the kind of
the growing independence and the swing voters,
tell me the one voter
that actually would give a crap about this.
That's what I don't understand.
Forget the moral issue and as as the points that
you're picking from the politics of it,
it's it's an 8. Well,
the politics are interesting because you obviously have the far
right and the ecosphere of Newsmax and Fox News,
Sean Hannity peddling this. But they're already,
they already have those voters,
but they're already locked in.
And I think it's it's going to backfire.
And I've said this for a while because
it was very clear through all of these depositions,
most of which I sat in on,
that these witnesses that were their witnesses,
they brought them in because they were the ones that
were going to prove their case.
Every single one of them essentially said no,
I have no evidence connecting Joe Biden to anything that
Hunter's doing.
And so they've overreached here.
They have clearly overreached, and they have not corrected course.
And what that is telling the American people,
especially when you compare the ineptitude of this Congress,
that we continue to not be able to get anything
done because the Republicans can't get their house in order.
And so you have the dichotomy of them pushing this
Hunter Biden bogus story that at this point is just
harassment of Hunter Biden
versus doing nothing for the American people.
Got getting absolutely nothing done,
not solving the border crisis,
not bringing national security funding to the floor,
not funding our government. And it's so clear that all
these Republicans can do is politics.
And those independent voters who are tired of the partisanship
and want to get something done see Joe Biden compromising
on immigration legislation in the Senate.
They see Joe Biden for the first two years of
his presidency,
passing historic legislation that would boost manufacturing and semiconductor and
brings jobs back to America,
raises wages. And on the other hand,
when the Republicans have been governing,
they literally cannot pass any bills amongst themselves in the
House.
And you have the Senate working in a bipartisan way.
And the House Republicans are the block,
are the obstacle to solving America's problems.
And partly because they're spending so much time on these
absolutely absurd investigations of Hunter Biden and Secretary Mayorkas.
You know, it's just, I mean,
I'm still stuck on the sound bite that we came
into this whole segment with
Dan. I mean, I think it was Andy Biggs,
Republican congressman, saying, you know,
it's this, this transcript is going to read well for
him,
you know, kind of like you had to be there
to really see the crime.
Well, then make it public.
He showed up. He wanted to do this publicly and
they wouldn't let him.
I mean, at every turn there has been nothing
and a lot of work needs to be done in
Congress that is actually serious to the future of this
country.
So it's, it's frustrating on many levels.
Democratic member of the House Oversight and Homeland Security Committees,
Congressman Dan Goldman, thank you very much for coming on
the show this morning.
Thanks for having me. We appreciate it.