Morning Wire XX
[0] Hunter Biden's former business partner testified before the House Oversight Committee on Monday, refuting Joe Biden's claims he wasn't involved in his son's business dealings.
[1] I think this is shaping up to be one of the greatest corruption scandals in the history of Washington, and that is saying a lot.
[2] What came out of the hearing and how did Hunter allegedly use his father's influence to make the family millions?
[3] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor -in -chief John Bickley.
[4] It's Tuesday, August 1st, and this is Morning Wire.
[5] Democrats are calling on President Biden to declare a climate emergency that would affect travel, energy use, and even agriculture.
[6] He has an ambitious agenda to deal with climate change, and he's going to continue to move forward with that agenda.
[7] And the president may slowly be losing a key voting demographic as we head into the 2024 election.
[8] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[9] Stay tuned.
[10] We have the news you need to know.
[11] On Monday, Devin Archer, the former business partner of Hunter Biden, appeared before the House Oversight Committee, answering questions from lawmakers on President Biden's role in his son's overseas business dealings.
[12] Here with more is Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips.
[13] Hey, Cabot, so we finally had Archer's testimony yesterday.
[14] Before we get to that, give us a quick overview of the investigation into the Biden family.
[15] So the heart of the investigation centers on allegations that Hunter Biden leveraged access to his father to help secure millions of dollars' worth of overseas business deals in places like Ukraine, Romania, and China.
[16] To this point, Republican investigators in Congress have attempted to prove that President Biden was not only aware of the scheme, but actively participating and benefiting from it.
[17] And over the last month, they presented a growing body of evidence to back up those claims.
[18] Bank records, for example, showed that the Biden family and their business associates received over $10 million in payments from foreign nationals and their companies just while Biden was VP.
[19] Once the money came in, records showed that they went to extreme lengths to conceal where that money came from, using over a dozen LLCs to disperse the payments incrementally to varying bank accounts in a way that made it difficult to track.
[20] TOP investigators say that's just the tip of the iceberg, though, and have long argued that President Biden was aware and involved in the operation that helped enrich his family.
[21] And that's where Devin Archer comes in.
[22] Exactly.
[23] So Archer is a close friend of hunters and his former business partner.
[24] On Monday, he appeared before the House Oversight Committee to offer closed -door testimony, and it was explosive.
[25] Archer not only testified that Hunter was added to the board of Brezma because it helped legitimize the venture, but that the business would have gone bankrupt if not for the Biden Family Connection.
[26] Archer also testified that Hunter put his father on speakerphone with his business associates more than 20 times to help sell what he called, quote, the brand and bolster the business.
[27] Remember, a number of those calls came as Brezma executives as were under investigation for corruption in Ukraine, Archer says the company's higher -ups urged Hunter to get help, quote, from D .C. Shortly after those calls took place, then Vice President Biden famously threatened to withhold a billion dollars in aid to Ukraine unless the country's government fired the prosecutors investigating Brezma.
[28] Right, that detail is incontrovertible.
[29] So this testimony under oath appears to contradict President Biden's past statements that he had no involvement with his son's business.
[30] Yeah, it certainly appears that way.
[31] Biden has routinely denied that he had any role.
[32] in his son's overseas deals and has gone so far as saying that he didn't even know Hunter was on the board of Bresma until after he had stepped down.
[33] In fact, Biden has even said that he did not know what his son did for work, period.
[34] Republicans say that's ridiculous and that Archer's testimony clearly proves he was involved in Hunter's business and played at least some role in helping him make millions of dollars.
[35] As committee chair James Comer put it, Archer's testimony proved the president lied and confirmed that, quote, Joe Biden was the brand that Hunter Biden sold around the world.
[36] All right, so a key testimony here that really struck at the heart of President Biden's denials.
[37] How did Democrats respond to the news?
[38] Well, they say that Archer's testimony does not prove anything and still insist that President Biden did nothing more than exchange pleasantries with Hunter's business associates.
[39] According to Democrat Congressman Dan Goldman, who sits on the House Oversight Committee, President Biden only talked about, quote, the weather and other casual topics whenever he was on those 20 -plus calls.
[40] Is he supposed to say, hi, son, no, I'm not going to say hello to the other people.
[41] people at the table or the other people on the phone, it's kind of a preposterous premise to think that a father should not say hello to people that the son is at dinner with.
[42] And that is literally all the evidences.
[43] But the implication here is that no matter what he said, his very presence on these calls, sent all the message Hunter needed.
[44] Yeah, that's what Republicans say.
[45] Now, Republicans also alleged this week that the DOJ attempted to intimidate Archer ahead of this testimony.
[46] Tell us about that claim.
[47] Yeah, this is an interesting wrinkle here.
[48] So it is worth noting, Archer is embroiled in a separate legal scandal of his own.
[49] In 2018, he was convicted of securities fraud after swindling a Native American tribe out of $60 million worth of bonds.
[50] Archer was originally given a year in prison, but has still not been told when that sentence will commence.
[51] But on Saturday, just 48 hours before he was set to testify about Hunter Biden, the DOJ issued a letter requesting that a judge in his case set a date for his sentence to begin.
[52] Republican lawmakers say the timing of that letter is not a coincidence, and is actually a clear attempt to intimidate him before his testimony.
[53] Now, for his part, Archer and his lawyers did deny publicly that he felt intimidated by the letter, but that has not stopped Republicans from denouncing what they see as further weaponization of the Justice Department.
[54] Right, an important theme that the Republicans have really focused on.
[55] Cabot, thanks for reporting.
[56] Anytime.
[57] Coming up, calls for declaring a climate emergency heat up.
[58] In the face of high summer temperatures, Democrats are calling for President Biden to declare a climate.
[59] climate emergency.
[60] Everything from air travel to agriculture could be affected.
[61] Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham, joins us now to tell us what a climate emergency declaration would entail.
[62] So, Megan, we just came through COVID, which saw the use of sweeping government emergency powers.
[63] Are we expecting to see a similarly sweeping effort around climate?
[64] And if so, what would that look like?
[65] Yeah, that's the big question, because making a formal declaration like that would certainly unlock some powers that Democrats haven't been able to pass legislatively.
[66] Biden could enact a ban on fossil fuel imports and exports.
[67] He could call a halt to some oil and gas drilling, limit air travel.
[68] And then a big one is slashing farm emissions.
[69] We've seen what that's looked like in Europe with new regulations to reduce livestock emissions.
[70] So U .S. climate envoy, John Kerry, has been calling for aggressive farming restrictions like that here.
[71] He said this at an international climate summit in May. Agriculture contributes about 33 % of all the emissions of the world.
[72] And we can't get to net zero unless agriculture is front and center is part of the solution.
[73] And of course, we'll remember that when the COVID emergency declaration came, you saw a sort of immediate response from big social media platforms and search engines shutting down debate over what science is showing.
[74] So there are some concerns that we could see that too.
[75] Now, so far, the Biden and administration has been resistant to declaring a climate emergency, even though there are those widespread calls calling from Democrats in Congress.
[76] But there are signs that it could be softening.
[77] Secretary of State, Anthony Blanken, is in Australia.
[78] And here's what he said on their version of 60 Minutes.
[79] There's no doubt that climate represents an existential challenge to all of us.
[80] So we have to multitask.
[81] Basically, we're for better or worse, in a growth industry right now.
[82] We've got a multiplicity of challenges.
[83] Now, what about the science?
[84] What do we know for sure or with a pretty significant degree of certainty about this?
[85] Well, there's agreement that the Earth has been warming.
[86] Roughly 1 .5 to 2 degrees over the last 150 years, depending on what source you're using.
[87] So the debate is really over what's causing it and whether it represents an existential risk.
[88] Obviously, climate change activists say that the warming is primarily the result of human -caused carbon emissions.
[89] And the more alarmist of them paint a fairly dire picture of what's ahead.
[90] But then you have other scientists who do disagree with that.
[91] Dr. Roy Spencer is a NASA climate scientist.
[92] He said this warming will have, and I'm quoting, moderate and mixed, not only harmful, but also helpful, not catastrophic consequences.
[93] And then Morning Wire spoke to energy expert Alex Epstein.
[94] He's the author of the book Fossil Future, and he agrees with Spencer.
[95] There's no dire phenomenon.
[96] on.
[97] We were in a warming period before we impacted things, and then I do believe that we impact things with rising CO2 levels, but it's a slow warming, and it's a warming that we're very, very good at dealing with.
[98] Not only does warming have some benefits in a world where far more people die of cold than of heat, but if you look at the overall deaths from climate -related disasters like extreme temperatures and storms and floods, et cetera, those are down 98 % over the last century.
[99] So we're safer than ever from climate.
[100] So it's not a dire situation.
[101] Well, I think there's a lot of trepidation about another full -scale emergency declaration after COVID particularly.
[102] Megan, thanks for reporting.
[103] Anytime.
[104] Some Democrats are expressing concern about support from a key voting demographic heading into the 2024 presidential election.
[105] Black voters have been an essential element, not just of the Democratic Party coalition, but they have specifically been President Biden in recent elections.
[106] So why are some in his party fretting that this support could be diminished?
[107] Here to discuss this Daily Wire contributor, David Marcus.
[108] Hi, Dave.
[109] So what are Democrats seeing that has them so concerned?
[110] Morning.
[111] According to the Washington Post, black voter turnout in last year's midterm election was down 10 % compared to 2018.
[112] That's the largest drop of any racial or ethnic group.
[113] And given that the black vote in recent history has flowed overwhelmingly to Democrats, this adds up to a lot of votes that just aren't materializing, especially in some key battleground states like Georgia or Pennsylvania, with large urban areas that Democrats count on to offset redder, more rural voters.
[114] If the trend of dwindling black turnout continues, it could portend a lot of trouble for Democrats.
[115] Do we have an explanation for why black voters in particular have been showing up to the polls or mailing in their ballots less often than other Americans?
[116] Some black Democrat leaders cited a lack of outreach to the black community on the part of the party with W. Mondale Robinson, the founder of the black male voter project, specifically saying that Democrats spend too much time worrying about swaying white women voters in the suburbs to the detriment of a more vital base of voters in the cities.
[117] In essence, that these voters are being taken for granted.
[118] He argues that the party of Jefferson and Jackson should treat black voters, and specifically black male voters, as a swing vote, not based so much on how they might vote, but on whether they vote.
[119] vote at all.
[120] Do we know why the focus here is on black men?
[121] And could Republicans see an opening there?
[122] Absolutely.
[123] Many of these voters are more conservative leaning on cultural war issues like men and women's sports or school choice than white Democrats who are consistently polled as by far the most progressive cohort in the party, especially those with high educational attainment.
[124] How badly could this hurt Biden, given that he has historically done well with black voters?
[125] It's big.
[126] Remember, this is the guy.
[127] who once said that if you don't vote for him, you ain't black.
[128] In the 2020 primary, black voters saved his candidacy in South Carolina after the much whiter states of Iowa and New Hampshire had shown Biden the door with very poor performances.
[129] And he did well with black voters in the general election.
[130] These are voters who he badly needs.
[131] And you can be certain that the campaign is looking into any way possible to get them motivated to go vote for Joe.
[132] And by the way, for all the down -ballot candidates for Congress as well.
[133] Right.
[134] In recent days, we've seen Kamala Harris take on a more leading role by going to Florida to criticize their new history curriculum on slavery.
[135] Is part of this an outreach to black voters?
[136] In the case of the curriculum issue, it may well be.
[137] This is a controversy over a part of the course that establishes that some slaves acquired skills during slavery, which, and this is the key word, they used to their, quote, benefit, unquote, afterwards.
[138] It's a true statement, but as Morning Wire has reported Democrats and even a few Republicans have swiped at the Santis over it.
[139] As to Harris herself, it's not clear that she's much more appealing to black voters than Biden is, but to the extent she can highlight issues that these voters care about, then I guess every little bit helps.
[140] Right.
[141] In the 2024 election may end up coming down to a small margin of votes here and there.
[142] Dave, thanks for reporting.
[143] Thanks for having me. That's all the time we've got this morning.
[144] Thanks for for waking up with us.
[145] We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.