Speaker 1: This is breaking new use from Bemberg.
Speaker 2: Hunter Biden has been convicted of gun charges by a
Speaker 2: jury in the Delaware trial. The jury took three hours
Speaker 2: to reach the verdict against the President's son, Junius. Now
Speaker 2: is June Grasso, Bloomberg's legal analyst, June, what do you
Speaker 2: make of this ruling today?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm surprised he came in so fast, But there
Speaker 1: was a lot of evidence that the prosecution presented that
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden was addicted to drugs around the time at
Speaker 1: least that he filled out that form. The only hope
Speaker 1: I think that the defense had was jury nullification, the
Speaker 1: jury saying that, you know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: jurors about four I think it is, who have family
Speaker 1: members who are addicted, and they heard for a week
Speaker 1: about Hunter Biden's you know, descent into addiction and how
Speaker 1: it took him and members of some of the members
Speaker 1: of his family down. So, if those jurors had felt
Speaker 1: some sympathy for Hunter Biden and decided that they didn't
Speaker 1: want to follow the strict instructions, the defense had given
Speaker 1: them some outs to say that he didn't knowingly check
Speaker 1: the box that said I'm not a drug addict. I'm
Speaker 1: not addicted to drugs. I'm not using drugs. And there
Speaker 1: were some technical arguments they could have, you know, clung to,
Speaker 1: but the prosecution just presented a mountain of evidence, including
Speaker 1: hunter Biden's own words in his memoir, including testimony from
Speaker 1: his ex wife and ex lovers. And it turned out
Speaker 1: that the daughter's testimony, which the defense presented, sort of
Speaker 1: backfired on them because on cross examination they presented her
Speaker 1: with some text messages that showed that around the time
Speaker 1: that the gun was purchased, Hunter Biden was not available.
Speaker 1: He wanted to get his car at two am. It
Speaker 1: was very suspicious sounding, sort of sounding like what a
Speaker 1: drug addict would do. So I think, you know, the
Speaker 1: prosecution had a mountain of evidence. What are next steps here?
Speaker 1: I guess sentencing, sentencing, There'll be a probation report, sentencing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's anyone's guess with the sentencing, because
Speaker 1: I don't think, you know, he could get I believe
Speaker 1: it's twenty five years, but I don't, you know, think
Speaker 1: the judge would give him that. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a crime where no one was injured at all. There's
Speaker 1: no victim in this crime. He's the only victim really
Speaker 1: of his drug addiction, and then there'll be a pellet issues.
Speaker 1: Then there are some very strong appellate issues because the
Speaker 1: Fifth Circuit, which is a conservative circuit, since the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court's landmark decision in the New York gun case, has
Speaker 1: said that this law is unconstitutional. The law that makes
Speaker 1: it that doesn't allow someone who is a felon or
Speaker 1: you know, addicted to drugs to have a weapon. So
Speaker 1: there's that.
Speaker 3: Do we know what the timetable is for sentencing?
Speaker 1: No, the judge will announce the sentencing timetable. It depends.
Speaker 1: I don't know about Delaware, I mean New York. It's
Speaker 1: usually within a month or so.
Speaker 3: But do we know when the judge would announce that
Speaker 3: or is that to be determined at this point?
Speaker 1: The judge usually when he takes the or she this
Speaker 1: case takes the jury vertic will announce the sentencing date.
Speaker 1: But again, you know, I'm not sure what's going to
Speaker 1: happen in this case. Why was this case braud who
Speaker 1: brought this case? Well, that is a big question.
Speaker 2: Or two.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a this is a special council,
Speaker 1: And what happened was he was investigating this for quite
Speaker 1: some time they had reached a deal. Hunter Biden and
Speaker 1: the Special UH Counsel's office weiss they'd reached a deal
Speaker 1: in which he wouldn't serve any jail time and he
Speaker 1: would also settle the California tax case. When it came
Speaker 1: to this judge, they went to court. They expected the
Speaker 1: deal to you know, be announced and informalized, and the
Speaker 1: judge found some problems with the way the deal was structured,
Speaker 1: and it just blew up there in the courtroom. The
Speaker 1: judge said that, you know, there's something wrong, and then
Speaker 1: the defense said, well, we're not going to plead guilty
Speaker 1: if this, that, and the other. It just blew up,
Speaker 1: and so at that point they decided to go to trial.
Speaker 1: But it's all about a special counsel who has been
Speaker 1: appointed to oversee the Hunter Biden cases. And I think
Speaker 1: we've seen that special counsel often feel that if they
Speaker 1: don't bring cases, if they don't win cases, then what
Speaker 1: are they there for.
Speaker 3: Do you expect that the Biden administration would make any
Speaker 3: sort of comment on this.
Speaker 1: The President has already said that he will not He
Speaker 1: could pardon his son, but he has said that he
Speaker 1: will not pardon his son. That he'll accept the jury's verdict.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if you're gonna hear anything more
Speaker 1: than that. The first lady has been at the trial
Speaker 1: almost every day. She flew to France to be with
Speaker 1: her husband and then she came back, and so they've
Speaker 1: had an incredibly large family gatherings there and apparently, you know,
Speaker 1: crowding the courtroom to the point where the Secret Service
Speaker 1: didn't know where to sit. So and they've had prayers,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of prayer gather rings in the mornings.
Speaker 2: All right, Joe, to stay right there. For political reaction,
Speaker 2: we can bring in Jeannie Shane Zeno, Bloomer Politics contributor
Speaker 2: and senior democracy fellow with the Center for the Study
Speaker 2: of the Presidency and Congress. Jennie, thanks so much for
Speaker 2: joining us here. What's the political repercussions here for President Biden.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, the easy answer is, we really don't know,
Speaker 4: because this is the first time we have had a
Speaker 4: president's child who, while they are sitting as president, has
Speaker 4: faced criminal charges and of course now been found guilty.
Speaker 1: So that is one thing. But we have seen some
Speaker 1: polling on this.
Speaker 4: For instance, Emerson did a poll and they found similar
Speaker 4: to the reaction to Trump's conviction that about six or
Speaker 4: seven out of ten American voters said it wouldn't impact
Speaker 4: their vote whatsoever. But that left about a quarter of
Speaker 4: Americans saying it might impact them. And in this case,
Speaker 4: about eleven percent of those were Democrats. And in an
Speaker 4: election this tight, if you see drop off of eleven percent,
Speaker 4: potentially that can have an impact. So there is an
Speaker 4: electoral impact that we're going to see how that sort
Speaker 4: of comes out in the wash by the time we
Speaker 4: get to November. The other part of this, though, is,
Speaker 4: as June knows, Hunter Biden is facing other charges this fall,
Speaker 4: potentially before the election in California that could have an impact.
Speaker 4: And of course there's a very personal impact on the
Speaker 4: President and the first Lady. I think we undercount how
Speaker 4: much of a toll this takes on a father or
Speaker 4: a mother, a parent in this case, and how that
Speaker 4: can impact a candidate running for office on top of
Speaker 4: trying to serve as president of the United States. So
Speaker 4: all of those are real repercussions.
Speaker 3: Here all right.
Speaker 2: Also on right now, I want to bring in Joe Matthew,
Speaker 2: co host a Balance of Power from Washington, DC. Joe,
Speaker 2: what's the feeling within DC about this hold, the legal
Speaker 2: issues facing the president's son here and how they're being pursued.
Speaker 2: What's the feeling in Washington.
Speaker 5: Well, it depends who you ask, just like anything else.
Speaker 5: If you talk to the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee,
Speaker 5: Jim Jordan, the chair of the Oversight Committee, James Comer,
Speaker 5: they will tell you this is part of the narrative
Speaker 5: that brings you to understand the what they like to
Speaker 5: refer to as the Biden crime family. But every hearing
Speaker 5: that's been held and every attempt to get the president
Speaker 5: involved here has so far fallen flat by this Republican conference,
Speaker 5: And so you know, people are kind of watching this
Speaker 5: from the sidelines. If you ask Democrats, they're outraged, and
Speaker 5: they'll say Donald Trump complains about the weaponization of government
Speaker 5: and the judicial system, and this is it on full display.
Speaker 5: How many people have been tried and convicted on these
Speaker 5: crimes before. But look, you know, it's just another brick
Speaker 5: in the wall. To be honest with you here, it
Speaker 5: kind of depends on what you are looking at, who
Speaker 5: you support, and what the roar shack test is here.
Speaker 5: If you were already upset with Joe Biden, then this
Speaker 5: helps your argument. And if you see a double standard
Speaker 5: with Donald Trump, that's another question here. We have to
Speaker 5: remind ourselves that Hunter Biden is not running for president.
Speaker 3: I want to bring June Grasso back into this conversation.
Speaker 3: What other potential legal issues might Hunter be facing if
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 1: Well, he's facing a trial in California over his taxes
Speaker 1: and what he filed on his taxes. That's considered a
Speaker 1: much more substantial case than this one was, because that's
Speaker 1: a case that has been brought before this case over
Speaker 1: the gun charges. It's very rare. No one I've talked
Speaker 1: to knows anyone who's been tried or has represented anyone
Speaker 1: who's been tried on charges like this where you were
Speaker 1: a drug addict, I would say allegedly, But now I
Speaker 1: guess the jury confirmed that you were a drug addict.
Speaker 1: You lied on the form and bought a gun, but
Speaker 1: there was no crime associated with that gun. The gun
Speaker 1: stayed locked away. So it's unusual to bring a federal
Speaker 1: case over something like that. Normally that would be something
Speaker 1: to be pleted out and which, as I explained before,
Speaker 1: what they tried to plead it out here. So and
Speaker 1: he's facing you know, it's three felonies here, so and
Speaker 1: they're all related to this one transaction checking this box.
Speaker 1: It's very unusual to have even people, even some Republicans,
Speaker 1: have come out and said that this is a really
Speaker 1: unusual case.
Speaker 2: Jennie, how do you think the Biden administration and the
Speaker 2: Biden campaign will in fact address this issue going forward
Speaker 2: during the campaign.
Speaker 4: I think they will continue to say that this is
Speaker 4: a very personal and tough issue for the president. He
Speaker 4: loves his son, but he has let the Justice Department
Speaker 4: do its work, obviously unimpeded by the president. And this
Speaker 4: is further proof of the fact that when Donald Trump
Speaker 4: says there is a political persecution of him, that is
Speaker 4: not the case. Because here you have the president's owned
Speaker 4: DOJ prosecuting his son, and now that jury finding him guilty,
Speaker 4: facing potent twenty five years in jail. All of that's
Speaker 4: unlikely obviously, So I think they're going to just make
Speaker 4: that case, and the President has promised not to do
Speaker 4: what he could do, which is pardon his son, although
Speaker 4: I believe that that will be increasingly tough for the
Speaker 4: President as he faces sort of a choice nobody wants
Speaker 4: between their role as a parent and their job as
Speaker 4: leader of the free world. This is very, very tough
Speaker 4: for him.
Speaker 3: Joe Matthew, Let's bring you back into this conversation because
Speaker 3: when you have an instance here with what's happening with
Speaker 3: President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden here facing this and
Speaker 3: then Juxta positioned that against what Trump when he was
Speaker 3: just found guilty on all thirty four counts of falcifying
Speaker 3: those business records, At what point, Because you've covered so
Speaker 3: many different election cycles, have you seen a dynamic something
Speaker 3: like this when you have two different nominees facing different
Speaker 3: issues such as the ease that would be never right.
Speaker 5: I figured we are repeatedly and uncharted waters here, and
Speaker 5: I would look back to what June was pointing to.
Speaker 1: There's going to be another trial.
Speaker 5: This is going to be something that involves a subject
Speaker 5: matter when it comes to taxes that will resonate with people.
Speaker 5: He's accused of not paying a million dollars in taxes.
Speaker 5: It's going to bring back to the Barismas story, the
Speaker 5: so called, like I said, Biden crime family that Marjorie
Speaker 5: Taylor Green and others who tried to impeach the president
Speaker 5: like to talk about. And it's going to happen much
Speaker 5: closer to the election day itself. This is going to
Speaker 5: be something that likely takes place in the fall. June
Speaker 5: can probably speak to any efforts to delay that trial,
Speaker 5: But look, people have short memories. Are they going to
Speaker 5: be talking about this when we're in the middle of that?
Speaker 5: So I would point you to the fall, and I
Speaker 5: would also remind you that we don't have a sentencing
Speaker 5: date yet, and it's going to be interesting to see
Speaker 5: the way that lands. Whether this is incarceratory or if
Speaker 5: he faces a fine. That's still a question of course
Speaker 5: for Donald Trump as well.
Speaker 2: So June, I mean, I know we're kind of an
Speaker 2: uncharted territory here as it relates to this type of
Speaker 2: crime followed through to conviction. Are sentencing guidelines any useful
Speaker 2: to observers or how do we think about a potential
Speaker 2: sentence here?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: As Genie said, twenty five years is a possible sentence,
Speaker 1: but I can't imagine that the judge would sentenced him
Speaker 1: to that. There's going to be a pre sentence report.
Speaker 1: Of course. The pre sentence report will show that he's
Speaker 1: still facing another trial, and that part of the pre
Speaker 1: sentence report is whether you're addicted to drugs or you
Speaker 1: have any physical limitations. So it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: say to guess what the what the judge will do here.
Speaker 1: I mean, she knows all the facts in the case.
Speaker 1: She knows that there was a deal that collapsed, and
Speaker 1: so you know, it's just hard to just say, I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: What this judge will do Genie when it comes to
Speaker 3: because you had mentioned pulling before, obviously there's been a
Speaker 3: number of election cycles in the last decade where the
Speaker 3: pulling has been quite off and also tends to be
Speaker 3: delayed in some ways. How does this potentially complicate some
Speaker 3: things in your mind.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great question, because this is very complicated.
Speaker 4: You're asking people what they may do in November if
Speaker 4: a hypothetical child of a president gets convicted, which has
Speaker 4: now happened in the last few minutes. So it's it's
Speaker 4: hard to know if people will, to Joe's point, remember
Speaker 4: all of this come November, and it will truly impact
Speaker 4: what they do in the polls. Certainly the Biden team
Speaker 4: is hoping it does not, but the fact that he
Speaker 4: is coming up with his other trial, which is obviously
Speaker 4: much more damaging if it goes forward in California would
Speaker 4: potentially make the numbers we're seeing worse. But what we've
Speaker 4: seen so far is Emerson saying about eleven percent of
Speaker 4: Democrats say they will not vote for Joe Biden as
Speaker 4: a result of this. So I don't know if we
Speaker 4: could take that to the polls as they will, but
Speaker 4: you know, that's what the numbers are saying. And you know,
Speaker 4: one interesting thing to note is that Donald Trump, he
Speaker 4: has not been talking about this as a you might expect,
Speaker 4: like as he would make maybe the Barisma case or
Speaker 4: the tax case. He's been talking about it sort of empathetically,
Speaker 4: talking about his brother who was an alcoholic and died.
Speaker 4: I suspect when we get to the next trial, the
Speaker 4: rhetoric from Trump and the right will be much more
Speaker 4: difficult and tough on Joe Biden and much more reminiscent
Speaker 4: of what they were saying and using Hunter Biden as
Speaker 4: a lightning rod, but on this because it involves addiction,
Speaker 4: they haven't been quite.
Speaker 1: As tough Joe.
Speaker 2: Is this the new normal in Washington, DC? Where past
Speaker 2: presidents relatives of current presidents are being sued and taken
Speaker 2: a court?
Speaker 3: And is this the new normal?
Speaker 1: It feels like it.
Speaker 5: I thought impeachment was the new normal, but I guess
Speaker 5: we're just doing this in criminal court now. I think
Speaker 5: you just have to think about it, though, and say, like,
Speaker 5: which battle are we talking about? We keep focusing on
Speaker 5: November here for good reason. We're in the throes of
Speaker 5: an historic election cycle. But let's talk about the way
Speaker 5: the campaigns might hear who won the day. Donald Trump
Speaker 5: probably did, because otherwise we'd be talking about his first
Speaker 5: meeting ever with a.
Speaker 1: Pro bation officer yesterday. He had to sit for that virtual.
Speaker 5: Interview for half an hour, and it will not really
Speaker 5: be talked about now because of Joe Biden's son. But
Speaker 5: when you talk about who's going to win the month
Speaker 5: or the season, we have to factor in a lot
Speaker 5: of other things here, including Donald Trump's own sentencing, the
Speaker 5: debate that's coming up just a couple of weeks away,
Speaker 5: never mind the conventions that are going to follow it.
Speaker 5: So we do want to take it one step at
Speaker 5: a time here, and you could probably say pretty easily
Speaker 5: that this is a win for Trump. Be curious to
Speaker 5: see what he says. To Genie's point, He's been a
Speaker 5: little bit careful with this one because of the personal
Speaker 5: nature of this trial and that will look a lot
Speaker 5: different in the next one.
Speaker 1: This is breaking you whose from Lumberg