Eric Swalwell Expertly Roasts Donald Trump In Inquiry Exchange With Hunter Biden

James Comer -

Hunter Biden gives House Republicans the rebuttal they didn’t want (msn.com)

Hunter Biden's appearance in front of investigators and members of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees unfolded a bit like a Bruce Lee movie.

Republican legislators and interviewers challenging the president's son on the House majority's behalf would throw out an allegation, often one that's been worn smooth after tumbling around in the right-wing media universe for the past year or two. And Biden would invariably swat it away, stripping off the layers of innuendo that had been applied by Donald Trump and Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) or Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) or any of myriad Fox News commentators.

This included epic battles against well-known foes, like an exchange between Hunter Biden and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), or repeated, extended back-and-forth with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). But at no point was a question left unanswered — including through an invocation of the Fifth Amendment — or, to an objective observer, left answered with obvious incompletion.

The discussion was centered on the Republican effort in the ongoing impeachment inquiry to demonstrate that President Biden had benefited financially from Hunter Biden's business endeavors — and, they hoped, that the elder Biden had used his position as vice president to that end. They were unsuccessful in making that case from the hearing's first moments.

"I did not involve my father in my business," Hunter Biden said in his opening comments, "not while I was a practicing lawyer, not in my investments or transactions, domestic or international, not as a board member, and not as an artist, never." His position did not diverge from that at any point; instead, he frequently invoked this same claim over and over again as a means of cutting off one of the familiar lines of inquiry with which he was presented.

The effect, in reading a transcript of Wednesday's hours-long interaction, is of a man repeatedly trying to get his accusers to see a forest instead of a smattering of trees.

Hunter Biden's testimony centered heavily on two themes. First, the closeness of his family, having been drawn together by the tragic deaths of his mother and, later, his brother. This is why he always took his father's calls, he said, and why he would always welcome his father to join him at dinners.

"I can't count the number of times my dad stopped to have dinner with me and my family," he testified — including at a cafe that was situated between the White House and the vice-presidential residence.

The other was that Joe Biden was a career politician.

"My dad has been a United States Senator since I was 2 years old," Biden said at one point. "My whole life has been this."

His point? That glad-handing strangers and dropping into events was part of his father's daily life — and therefore his own.

At one point, a questioner pressed Biden to admit that there was a suspicious pattern in his father having met people with whom Hunter Biden or his partners ended up doing business. Biden rejected that framing.

"The pattern I see is that you literally have no evidence whatsoever of any corruption on the part of my father," he said. "And therefore what you're trying to do is you're trying to make every single thing in business that I was ever involved in somehow corrupt."

Gaetz, during his lengthy inquisition of Biden, attempted to portray several occasions in which Joe Biden called his son during a meeting or stopped by a dinner as implicating the president in his son's business. Hunter Biden turned the question around.

"If my father was to sit down here today and he was to call me right now and I was in and I put him on the speakerphone, does that mean that he had a meeting with you, Mr. Gaetz?" he asked.

"Yeah," Gaetz replied.

Gaetz later tried to suggest that since Hunter Biden sometimes covered his father's tab, that his and his father's finances "were pretty interwoven." ("Will the record show that we're all laughing?" Biden attorney Abbe Lowell interjected.)

"No, our finances aren't interwoven," Hunter Biden said in response. "What are interwoven is that we're a family."

Over and over, interlocutors presented Hunter Biden with the sorts of suspicious-sounding tidbits that have been the crux of the Republican argument for months. And, over and over, he offered credible responses.

Biden was asked, for example, whether he was aware that money he'd transferred to his uncle James Biden might have been reused by his uncle to repay a loan to his father.

"This is the most ridiculous thing that — I mean, so far," Biden replied. "Are you saying to me, do I understand the fungibility of dollars? Do I understand that there is a — I mean, what is it?   Post hoc ergo propter hoc ? It's all based upon a fallacy?"

He noted that the deal at issue was centered on building a liquefied natural gas terminal in Louisiana that, according to him, would have created 17,000 jobs.

Mentioning this had a different purpose: to bolster his credentials and, by extension, the validity of his having been hired to participate in these agreements in the first place. He fleshed out the specifics of several of them in a similar way, including offering details of his relationships with prospective partners, both close and contentious.

"I'd put my résumé up against any one of you, in terms of my responsibility," he challenged the lawmakers at one point.

Those deeply immersed in the lore of Joe Biden's putative corruption will find any number of the allegations dismissed in Hunter Biden's testimony, not that they will believe his (sworn) testimony if they were to read the transcript at all. They would also note two particular targets of Hunter Biden's ire: Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Hunter Biden's former associate Tony Bobulinski.

Kushner served as a repeated point of comparison for Biden: Republicans were quizzing him on his father stopping by a dinner one evening when Kushner pulled in $2 billion after leaving the White House?

A legislator asked him whether he'd worked for foreign governments.

"I never worked for a country," he replied. "I am not Jared Kushner."

Bobulinski, whose testimony has been repeatedly cited by Republicans as their probe has progressed, was dismissed by Hunter Biden as only briefly involved in his endeavors — and as having been bounced for being unreliable. Among the transgressions, he said, was that Bobulinski had hoped to gain leverage over the Biden family name, something that Hunter Biden found particularly offensive.

He had "no faith in this person that I had just met, Tony Bobulinski," he said, "who was presented to me as some Wall Street whiz kid that was going around, throwing around my name, and throwing around my family's name."

"It's not their name to screw up," he added at one point. "It's mine."

This relates to where Hunter Biden's testimony was the shakiest. He indicated that, thanks to those decades of being immersed in his father's world, he was sensitive to keeping his father at arm's 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."

That may be, but it has also been demonstrated that he at times specifically sought to invoke his father, including in a text message in which he falsely implied that his father was sitting beside him. (He said he was probably intoxicated when it was sent and that he was "more embarrassed of this text message, if it actually did come from me, than any text message I've ever sent.")

Toward the end of his deposition, Biden deflected one of Gaetz's questions about the specifics of his picking up a bill for his father by noting how deep his questioners were having to dive to find things that looked suspicious.

"It's not incumbent upon me to point to you to something that doesn't exist," Biden said. "It's incumbent upon you to create something, to come up with something based upon the voluminous evidence that you've collected, which shows no involvement."

The forest remains uninteresting to those trying to build a case for impeaching President Biden. In his testimony, Hunter Biden did an effective job of also explaining why the trees Republicans had focused on weren't that important either.

So Trump is on trial even in someone else’s impeachment inquiry?

More TDS ….. nothing more.

Of course. Swalwell can't defend Joe or Hunter so he must deflect to Trump. Expect much more of the same in a public hearing as the lemmings must defend their grand poohbah. 

"If my father was to sit down here today and he was to call me right now and I was in and I put him on the speakerphone, does that mean that he had a meeting with you, Mr. Gaetz?" he asked. "Yeah," Gaetz replied.

You can't invent stupidity like that

Thinking that Hunter didn’t use his last name to his advantage in his business ventures is simple obtuse.    I mean some of the places he got paid from he had ZERO experience.     ZERO!

Same goes for any allusion that Joe didn’t somehow profit from it.   C’mon man!

Too bad the DOJ only has eyes for Trump. 

g that Hunter didn’t use his last name to his advantage in his business ventures is simple obtuse.

You mean drug addicts who get thrown out of the military aren't routinely handed spots on corporate boards?   

I do like Biden claiming he earned his jobs based on his accomplishments at the same he was bizarrely trying to excusing  his text demanding millions from  a Chinese businessman and threatening him with father as a drunken mistake.  

It’s funny watching the same people here who regularly hammer on Trumps kids, defending Hunter.

Crazy!

Too bad the DOJ only has eyes for Trump.

I'm sure we are going to see the indictments any day now for all the politicians, (Waves to Bill Clinton) that raped kids on Epstein's plane and everywhere else he pimped out minors........Right?

Eventual they have to run out of trump charges and actually get justice for Epstein's victims.

It’s funny watching the same people here who regularly hammer on Trumps kids, defending Hunter. Crazy!

Hunter has already admitted that the elder Biden was sitting beside him, as he threatened the Chinese person on the phone. He has already committed perjury.

This was another day of utter embarrassment and failure by the republican committee, but I guess if they wanna keep banging their head against the wall who are we to stop them?

When the corrupt Biden's are under investigation, democrats make speeches about Trump.  This one came from one who slept with a Chinese spy and was on an intelligence committee.

What is it with democrats and communists spy’s? 

Birds of a feather …..

Takeaways from  Hunter   Biden 's combative deposition with Republican lawmakers

WASHINGTON (AP) — The transcript of the congressional deposition of   Hunter Biden   was released late Thursday, providing a full view of the contentious testimony that took place behind closed doors Wednesday as Republicans aggressively questioned the central figure in their impeachment inquiry.

The nearly 230 pages of questioning laid bare the deep-seated hostility between President   Joe Biden 's son and the GOP lawmakers who have been investigating his family for the past several years. Arguments were frequent and tempers short, providing a preview of what is sure to come when Republicans hold a public hearing with Hunter Biden in the next several weeks.

He was defiant through the deposition as Republicans flooded him with questions about his former business affairs and his life, his answers veering from heated to emotional as he talked of his long battle with addiction and turmoil in his personal life.

Throughout the nearly seven-hour deposition, Hunter Biden remained adamant on one point, vehemently and repeatedly denying under oath that his father ever financially benefited or participated in any of his business work.

Takeaways from the transcript:

‘You always pick up the phone’

The 14-month Republican investigation into the Biden family has centered on Hunter Biden and his overseas work for clients in Ukraine, China, Romania and other countries. Republicans have long questioned whether those business dealings involved corruption and influence peddling by President Biden, particularly in the years when he was vice president.

Republican investigators zeroed in on a series of dinners and meetings that took place after Joe Biden left the vice presidency in which the younger Biden put his father on speakerphone while in the company of business partners.

“And why would you place your dad on speakerphone?” an unidentified Republican staffer asked.

“I’m surprised my dad hasn’t called me right now, and if he did, I would put him on speakerphone to say hi to you and to Congressman Raskin and everybody else in the room,” Hunter Biden replied. “It is nothing nefarious literally.”

He said that after the tragedies his family has suffered — including the death of his mother and two siblings — calls in his family are always answered, no matter what.

“You always pick up the phone. It’s something that we always do. And you can ask anybody that I know,” Hunter Biden added.

Hunter Biden's ‘darkest days’

Large portions of the testimony Wednesday diverged into Hunter Biden's well-documented battle with drug and alcohol addiction.

In one particularly harsh exchange, Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Florida, questioned whether the president’s son’s business dealings, particularly with the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, were legitimate. Gaetz asked, “Were you on drugs when you were on the Burisma board?”

Hunter responded: “Mr. Gaetz, look me in the eye. You really think that’s appropriate to ask me?”

“Absolutely,” Gaetz said.

Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, intervened, telling his client he didn't need to respond.

“I will answer it this way: I have been absolutely transparent about my drug use,” Hunter Biden said. “I’m sorry; I’m an addict. I was an addict.”

He told the panel he has been in recovery for more than four years and works “really, really hard at it” under what he called an enormous amount of pressure.

“Was I an addict? Yes, I was an addict,” he said. “What does that have to do with whether or not you’re going to go forward with an impeachment of my father other than to simply try to embarrass me?”

Gaetz tried to interrupt, but Hunter Biden kept talking: “Why? Why?"

What was the ‘Biden brand’?

Another point of interest for House Republicans' investigation is what they describe as Hunter Biden and associates selling the Biden “brand” to clients overseas.

One of their purported key witnesses, Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter Biden, testified to the House Oversight Committee last year that the president's family sold “the illusion of access” to the corridors of power in Washington. Republicans questioned whether Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm, wanted Hunter Biden on   its board in 2014   "because your dad was the Vice President?”

“No, I don’t think that it’s fair,” Hunter Biden responded.

When asked about what value he brought to Burisma, Hunter Biden talked about the breadth of his resume and defended his family.

“Primarily, the name ‘Biden’ is my dad’s legacy. And he passed it down to me and, when my brother was alive, my brother, my sister, now to my children. It’s our responsibility to not screw that up."

He added, "If other people saw the brand as something that they could market, it’s not -- it was not with my -- without going through me first. And if they did so, they didn’t go through me first."

Rather than probe the Bidens, Democrats turn to the Trumps

Democrats at one point tried to turn the deposition back toward Donald Trump, contrasting the Bidens' business dealings with the former Republican president’s family and its business operations.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, the Democrat from California, led one particularly pointed exchange intended to draw out the differences between President Biden and Trump, the Republican front-runner to challenge him for the White House.

“Did your father ever employ in the Oval Office any direct family member to also work in the Oval Office?” Swalwell asked.

“My father has never employed any direct family members, to my knowledge,” Hunter Biden testified.

Swalwell went on to ask questions referring to the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., Trump’s legal case in New York City, his daughter-in-law’s recent bid to lead the Republican National Committee and his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s business dealings with Saudi Arabia.

“As President and the leader of the party, has your father ever tried to install as the chairperson of the party a daughter-in-law or anyone else in the family?” Swalwell probed.

“No. And I don’t think that anyone in my family would be crazy enough to want to be the chairperson of the DNC” — the Democratic National Committee.

Had his father ever been fined $355 million? “No, he has not, thank God,” Hunter Biden testified.

Emails, text messages and the laptop

The impeachment inquiry has focused on several pieces of evidence as Republicans try to build their case, including emails, text messages and a now-in-dispute laptop.

One email from a Hunter Biden business associate proposes a 10% equity stake in their firm to be held for “the big” guy, who Republicans say is Joe Biden. It's a message that has become central to the GOP claims of influence peddling, but one that another business associate Rob Walker has testified was all “bull-—-.”

Hunter Biden testified that he does not recall ever responding to the email. “I’m not even sure whether I ever fully read this.”

Further emails exhibited to the committee showed that any equity split would be made equally among the five partners, including Hunter Biden and his longtime business partner Jim Biden, who is the president’s brother and his uncle. The business deal with a Chinese energy company never happened, and no one was paid.

“There’s no secret big guy anywhere in this email?” asked a Democratic questioner.

“No, there’s not,” Hunter Biden replied.

“Joe Biden is not anywhere in this agreement?” he asked.

“No, he is not.”

As for Hunter Biden’s laptop that was allegedly dropped off at a Delaware repair shop and the source for many allegations against the Biden family, he testified that he does not recall bringing it in.

If his computer needed repairs, Hunter Biden testified, “I would have gone to the Apple store.”

We all have our own takeaways.

The public hearing with Hunter will tell the tale.

The public hearing with be an uber-partisan affair. Between the partisan rhetoric and the individuals doing their best to get their face on TV (it is afterall an election year) I doubt there will be much that comes out. I would like to think it is important to get the information out to the voting public but I am afraid that the voters are to set in their beliefs for this to make a huge change in the outcome. 

Yada yada yada there's always something new that's gonna tell the tale to you guys

up until yesterday it was the deposition that was gonna tell the tale now it's gonna be the public hearing after that who knows what it will be

this only reminds us of the Benghazi hearings where the Republicans did it seven or eight times to Clinton in in the end they came up with basically nothing

this is all about the election.  they want to have a continuing fountain of "scandal" around Joe Biden in order to deflect from the criminal behavior of Donald Trump

there's always something new that's gonna tell the tale to you guys

Reminiscent of "we've got him THIS time" bullshit we've heard ad nauseum since 2015?

will tell the tale.

John Durham wants his dream back

Congressman Robert Garcia demands a congressional investigation of Jared Kushner

video

x

Sawell, who slept with a  chinese spy and is the type of guy who uses campaign funds for Super bowl tickets, defends Hunter Biden.

It's a contest to see which is  the scummiest person in politics. 

A bit surprising that a member of congress would use the but but but Trump line of questioning to deflect from the purpose of the inquiry.

More surprised he was allowed to do  so.

Maybe the Republicans should only allow people they want on the committee ala Pelosi for the Jan 6th head hunt.