Morning Wire XX
[0] Republicans took a major step forward this week in their impeachment investigation into President Biden, passing a formal resolution to officially pursue the inquiry.
[1] The move comes amid continued pushback from the White House and Democrats, who say there's nothing to see here.
[2] In this episode, we talk with House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan about Republicans push to impeach the president.
[3] I'm Daily Wire, editor -in -chief John Bickley, with Georgia Howe.
[4] It's Sunday, December 17th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.
[5] Joining us to discuss the latest on the Republicans' impeachment effort is Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio.
[6] Congressman, welcome.
[7] Now, the House Oversight Committee released a video this week, detailing what Republicans are calling the four key facts of the impeachment case.
[8] First, can you lay out those four claims?
[9] Oh, yeah.
[10] I think the easy way to tell this story is through this Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, and there are just, again, as you said, four fundamental facts.
[11] Hunter Biden one, fact number one, gets put on the board of Burisma.
[12] Fact number two, he's not qualified to be on the board.
[13] not my words he said it himself fact number three the executives of this ukrainian energy company asked hunter biden to weigh in with dc to help them with the pressure they are under from the prosecutor and from the government in ukraine fact number four joe biden does just that he gets the prosecutor fired but more importantly he goes against state department policy and leverages a billion dollars of american tax money to say you're not getting the money unless you take this specific action.
[14] And this prosecutor was looking into this company, Burisma.
[15] So those are sort of the four fundamental effect.
[16] I always tell people in the bigger picture.
[17] The story is you got a politician who does certain things.
[18] Those actions benefit his family financially.
[19] And then there's an effort to conceal it and sweep it under the rug, which is exactly what we think happened with the David Weiss investigation of Hunter Biden over the last five years.
[20] Right.
[21] Now, has the Biden administration been cooperating?
[22] We've heard some Republicans say that part of the reason they support, report and impeachment inquiries because the Biden administration has been stonewalling the investigation.
[23] Can you tell us about that?
[24] Well, I would point to the Department of Justice, specifically one of things we're dealing with is there are two DOJ tax attorneys we've been trying to get in for an interview, for a deposition, and the Department of Justice says, no, we're not sending them in.
[25] We think this impeachment inquiry vote where the full House goes on record, a majority of the House of Representatives supports an impeachment inquiry as part of our oversight duty.
[26] We think that will help us get these two guys in.
[27] And the reason it's so important is the fact pattern is these two guys felt it was critical to charge the 2014 -2015 tax years when Hunter Biden got the bulk of the income from this Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.
[28] And then later in the investigation, they changed their position.
[29] And we want to ask, why did you change your position?
[30] More importantly, we want to ask, why did you let the statute of limitations run for those particular tax years?
[31] I think it's because they dealt with Burisma, Burisma actually takes you right to the White House, right to Joe Biden, where the other charges don't do that.
[32] So we want to ask those two guys, we think this vote.
[33] We think it helps us get those two lawyers in and a host of other issues as well.
[34] Do you believe the evidence is compelling enough to take these next steps and that you'll have enough support to move forward?
[35] I do.
[36] I think the evidence is pretty compelling already.
[37] You know, those four facts we talked about earlier, that scenario is buttressed by the 1023 form where we had the confidential human tell the FBI about Zolachevsky, about Pizarsky, about these guys who ran Burisma.
[38] And that all jives with what I just described.
[39] And, of course, they recorded it in this 1023 form.
[40] The same form, by the way, that Chris Ray didn't want to let us see.
[41] We ultimately got to see it.
[42] We had to threaten contempt for him to turn that document over to Congress.
[43] But it's all supported there.
[44] And there's other evidence, too, that I think is compelling.
[45] So I do think we'll proceed just as quickly as we can.
[46] Has there been any support of this effort from any Democrats at all?
[47] No, no, not one bit.
[48] So what are the next steps?
[49] There are key people we need to talk to.
[50] We're already in conversations with their lawyers.
[51] We think they're coming in, but we think this makes it happen quicker.
[52] So we want to talk to Tony Bob Alinsky.
[53] We want to talk to Eric Schwerin.
[54] We want to talk to Rob Walker.
[55] We want to talk to Jim Biden, all who did business with Hunter Biden.
[56] We want to talk to Kevin Morris, the guy who stepped forward sort of out of nowhere and paid, you know, several million dollars of Hunter Biden's tax liability.
[57] We think it's important to talk to those folks and these two lawyers that I talked about, all those are important people for us to interview.
[58] Do you think the pressure that you've put on the Biden administration and the president's son has impacted the special counsel investigation into Hunter?
[59] Well, I think what impacted that investigation was the two whistleblowers.
[60] When Mr. Shapley and Mr. Ziegler came forward, suddenly you saw the speed of that plea deal that they tried to run through, that sweetheart plea deal.
[61] It just picked up this past summer.
[62] And I would say, but for those whistleblowers, they'd have got away with it.
[63] And, of course, you had the judge in Delaware who said she'd never see anything.
[64] like this, this was unprecedented and stopped it.
[65] But I really think that's what pushed this whole investigation, which has now been going on for five years.
[66] And that's what actually, I think, pushed the Justice Department to name David Weiss as a special counsel, special prosecutor, and we now have the latest thing that they filed, which again, I think sort of reinforces what the whistleblower said, because the filings that happened, the charges that happened with Hunter Biden this past week, they're consistent with what the whistleblower said should have happened a long time ago, with the one notable exception, which is not the tax years 2014, 2015, the felony charges there because they let the statute of limitations lapse.
[67] And to me, that's the big glaring thing that jumps out from the whistleblower's testimony and the actions of the Justice Department.
[68] Do you foresee these new charges against Hunter impacting your ability to conduct your investigation in the House?
[69] No, again, I think it reinforces what the whistleblowers have told us.
[70] Now, if and when we get Hunter Biden for a deposition and for an interview, will the fact that these charges are pending, will that impact what he says to us?
[71] Will he exercise his Fifth Amendment rights?
[72] I don't know.
[73] We'll just have to wait and see when we get in front of the committee for an interview.
[74] Is there any element of these latest developments that you feel is not being emphasized enough in most media outlets coverage?
[75] Well, they always say that there's no evidence of any wrongdoing other than Joe Biden's changed his story multiple times.
[76] The justice departments changed their story multiple times.
[77] We have the actions that took place in Burisma that is supported by what the confidential human source come for.
[78] So the mainstream press always says, oh, there's nothing that gets you to Joe Biden.
[79] I think there's all kinds of evidence that Joe Biden, not to mention the bank records and everything else that Chairman Comer and his committee have unveiled.
[80] And I do think one of the big takeaways, as I mentioned before, is the testimony of the two whistleblowers has not changed.
[81] The White House's story has changed multiple times.
[82] Joe Biden's story has changed.
[83] He said he never had any contact.
[84] Well, there's multiple dinners, meetings, phone calls he had with business associates and business partners of Hunter Biden.
[85] The Justice Department story has changed them all the times.
[86] Those two whistleblowers, their testimony has stood up.
[87] Everyone we've deposed, no one has refuted what they've said.
[88] We've deposed eight people associated with David Weiss's investigation.
[89] So they have stood up and they face cross -examination for four hours in the Oversight Committee where the Democrats were coming at them and their testimony stood up there as well.
[90] So I think that just shows that they've been telling the truth all along.
[91] And then finally, of course, with the five and the charges by the special counsel, Weiss, against Hunter Biden.
[92] I think that confirms what the whistleblowers have been telling us all along also.
[93] Congressman, thank you so much for talking with us.
[94] You bet.
[95] Thank you, guys.
[96] That was Congressman Jim Jordan, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.