December 5, 2024 • 54 mins
In this episode, Lisa and Andy McCarthy delve into the trial of Daniel Penny, a Marine charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely. Neely, with a history of arrests, reportedly threatened subway passengers, prompting Penny to intervene. Lisa provides context, while Andy critiques the charges, arguing they reflect prosecutorial overreach influenced by political and racial dynamics. The discussion also touches on broader implications for the justice system, emphasizing the need for context in legal actions and questioning the use of the justice system for political purposes. The Truth with Lisa Boothe is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Daniel Penny is now twenty six years old.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
He is a marine who left class on May first,
twenty twenty three, boarded an uptown f train in Manhattan
to head to the gym.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
And what did he see?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Jordan Neely, a guy with forty two prior arrests, including
four from alleged assault, who got on the same subway
train that day and said somebody is going to die today.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
He said he was ready to go to rikers.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Witnesses described him as insanely threatening, sickening, a satanic bent.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
They thought they were going to die that day.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
They also saw a fight ensue between Daniel Penny, who
said that he had to stand up for the women
and children on that train who we had to protect.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yet, Daniel Penny.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Is facing charges of second degree manslaughter and criminally negligent
homicide in the death of Jordaneely, the man who stepped
on the train that day and said somebody is going
to die. Yet, Daniel Penny, the marine, is the one
who's on trial right now.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
So we're going to get into that case.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
What do you need to know, what's happening with it,
what does it mean, and where is it going. We're
also going to get into this extremely broad pardon of
Joe Biden, this pardon of his son dating well beyond
the gun charges and the tax charges that Hunter faces.
Also going back to January first, twenty fourteen, one Hunter
joined the board of Brisma. So is Joe Biden Is
(01:21):
this just an act of fatherly love or is it
an act of self preservation.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
We're going to get into all these.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Topics with Andy McCarthy, who know from Fox News. He's
a Fox News contributor. He's also a former Chief Assistant
US Attorney, a best selling author, and a contributing editor
National Review and a fellow at the National Review Institute.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
We've had him on the show a bunch.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
She always does a great job explaining complicated matters in
ways that we can understand, so important topics. Stay tuned
for Andy McCarthy. Well, Andy, it's great to have you
on the show. I love having you on because I
always learn from you. And then you also have a
great job. You great job of sort of breaking down,
(02:02):
you know, complicated legal matters into a way that we
can digest as non lawyers. So I appreciate you taking
the time to come on the show.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
It's always a pleasure, Lisa, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
So I wanted to start with this Daniel Penny trial.
He's twenty six now facing charges of second degree manslaughter
and criminally negligent homicide and the death of Jordan Neely.
You know, first of all, I guess you know big picture,
you know, what do you make of the charges? And
then where do you think this thing is heading at
(02:34):
this point in the trial for Daniel Penny.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Well, I think as an old prosecutor, I recognize here
a prosecutor's trick with respect to the charges, and that
is brag I think, Lisa, this case is obviously one
that should never have been brought. And in terms of
(03:02):
prosecutorial discretion and the things that should weigh on whether
you would bring charges in a case like this, you know,
the old saying is, of course that when every second counts,
the police are only minutes away. Right in a place
like New York where you have a lot of crime,
it's going to be a much more dangerous city and
(03:26):
there'll be many more people fleeing from it if someone
like Daniel Penny, who is you know, capable and courageous,
is discouraged from intervening under circumstances where you have this
crazed lunatic who actually was just that of Rikers Island
after belting some old woman in the face and breaking
(03:47):
a bunch of bones in her face. She had done
I think he had done close to two years at
Rikers over that. So this isn't somebody I mean, Penny
obviously wouldn't have known that, but this is someone that
we have to speculate about whether this was a dangerous
person who's obviously a dangerous person and the people on
(04:08):
the subway were scared to death of them. And what
really galls me about the case. I know you asked
me about the charges, and I'll get back to them,
but there's not any indication at all in a common
sense way that this was a racial incident. A number
of the best witnesses for Penny in the case were
(04:29):
black people who were scared of what Neely was doing
on the subway and the threats that he was making
on the subway. And Penny was not the only one
who intervened. There were two other men who intervened in
helping Penny restrain this guy, and they were neither one
of them was white. And yet when you hear the
(04:52):
prosecutors from Bragg's office. Now, Bragg is the paragon progressive prosecutor,
right where everything in life is like race is their
full field explanation for every phenomenon on the planet. And
they've turned this thing into you know, the prosecuted keeps
calling Penny the white defendant, as if like race entered
(05:15):
into this under circumstances where it didn't. But the whole
reason for bringing the case is because Bragg's political base
are these woke progressives, and he's white and the guy
who died was black, and they don't need any other
explanation the oppressed, the oppressor lives, and the oppressed died.
(05:38):
That's their whole explanation for what happened here. So that's
the reason the case got brought, even though it doesn't
have anything to do with the reality of what happened
that day. The two charges, one is basically negligent homicide.
And if you're going to talk like common sense here,
(05:58):
the only real legal issue to me in the case.
And I say this having prefaced this, that I don't
think this case should have been brought at all. But
if you want to indulge a legal issue, the question
is once he had Once Penny had this nearly in
the chokehold, did he hold on for too long? And
(06:22):
there's no evidence that there was any cruelty about this
or anything like that. So it's strictly a question of negligence.
Would a reasonable person under the same circumstances have released
the hold out of appreciation that nearly could be in
(06:42):
a near death situation And that's really the issue. But
what Brad did here was he added a reckless homicide charge.
That's the second degree manslaughter, and I don't think there's
any evidence for recklessness in this case. To prove recklessness,
what you have to show is that the defendant fully
(07:05):
appreciated a risk of death and basically, with an evil purpose,
completely recklessly disregarded something that he appreciated might result in
the death of the person. That's not the evidence in
this case. And in fact, there's video of Penny speaking
(07:28):
with the police afterwards. He doesn't even know at that
point that Neely died. The police didn't tell him that,
and he's explaining himself in terms of I'm not trying
to hurt the guy, I'm just trying to protect the
people all around. There's no evidence of recklessness. But what
I think very cynically and callously Bragg did here was
(07:50):
he added the recklessness count, figuring that you might get
some people on the jury who basically feel like something
needs to be done to Penny because Neely died. And
I think if it was just a one count negligent
homicide case where you had to vote up or down, uh,
(08:11):
that ends up in an acquittal. But what Bragg is
hoping is that by adding the second count, if you
have some people on the jury who say something has
to be done here because Neely died, you'd have other
people on the jury who say, well, you know, we'll
equit him on recklessness, and then we can feel good
(08:32):
about convicting them on negligence because we parsed this carefully
and we were very fair and in the me you know,
that's what the that's what he did here. He took
a count Bragg did where I don't think there's any
evidence for it, but he threw it in there in
the hope that maybe it would induce the jury to
compromise into convicting him on the negligence. And I don't
(08:54):
know if it's going to work. It's you know, there's
there's been three days of jury deliberations. It's not a
complicated case, as you pointed out, it's two counts. I'm
not saying there aren't complications underlying it, but you know,
you can only talk so long about something that's only
two counts. And yet we're in the third day of deliberation.
So I fear that we're headed to hung jury.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well, you know, and I think he could try him again,
but before we get to that, or he could bring.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Well I'll get to that in a second. I'll get
your take on that.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
But you know, you had mentioned that this hinges on
if he held him a choke hold too long. But
what's interesting is when I was reading through some of
the witness accounts, one woman said it didn't look like
Daniel Penny really had control of the situation. Should mention
that there was a fight back and forth. And then also,
if you're Daniel Penny, would be led to believe that
(09:45):
Neelie was still alive because he was he still had
a pulse, and Lee had admitted that they didn't administer
mouth to mouth to him because they were worried because
Neelie was so you know, he was homeless, they knew
he was on drugs, they he probably had diseases, and
the police to not have the proper equipment for breath
to bread or mouth to mouth, and so they didn't
(10:07):
do that. And so if you're Daniel Penny, you know, one,
you'd had every right to believe that he's still alive
because he was. And then secondly, how do you determine
if the choke hold was too long? If there was
a fight that ensued and you have someone with drugs
in a system, which also leads to you know, other
behavioral issues, right, and so it's like, you know, how
do you that's such a subjective thing to say he
(10:28):
held him too long if there was a fight between them,
and witnesses didn't even feel like Penny had.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Controlled the situation.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Yeah, and Penny is still alive and if you release
the hold, he could recover and start fighting again, which
is always what the police are worried about in these
kinds of situations. I think the other thing you hit
on with that, Lisa, that's very important here is the
case is probably going to come down to whether whether
the jury concludes that what Penny did was justified or not.
(10:58):
But I think this is a very important issue of
causation lead to an acquittal, but it may be part
of the reason why at least some members of the
jury are like, there's no way that they're going to
vote to convict Penny. And that is, as you mentioned,
there were drugs in this guy's system. And it turns
(11:21):
out that the medical examiner did not do a toxicology
report and when she testified, and evidently the jury asked
for this testimony and it was read back to them
or that it was submitted to them for their deliberations,
but they're obviously there's some members of the jury that
are very curious about this. What the medical examiner said
(11:43):
was that even if there was enough fentanyl or whatever,
okay to it was that was in this guy's system
to put down an elephant, she saw enough from the
video to determine that it was to choke hold that
caused death and that's why she listed it as a homicide.
And my belief and I thought this was the case
in there's a different angle on this, but in the
(12:07):
George Floyd case, this was a big to do as well.
I think she didn't do the toxicology report because she
didn't want to create a reasonable doubt issue that it
wasn't the chokehold that caused death here. It was all
of the drugs that this guy had ingested, coupled with
(12:29):
the high tension situation that he caused on the subway
by carrying on the way that he did. And I
think there's some members of the jury who are apt
to say, it's not even an issue of whether the
choke did it or didn't do it, because this guy
had so much drugs in his system that we can't
(12:49):
say for sure that the choke hold is the reason
for his death. And they may be fortified in that
conclusion by the fact that the state went out of
its way not to give them that evidence.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
We've got more with Andy, But.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
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(14:04):
Is it a homicide? If you know? And I'm not
putting the blame on the police. I don't blame them,
you know, I'm not saying that they should have put
their their potential lives at risk and contracting diseases from
newly But is it a homicide if the police didn't
do everything they could to keep someone alive? Is there
not knowligence on behalf of the police in that instance?
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah, I shouldn't lapse into these terms that actually have
legal right, because there's there's there's like the rhetorical way
that we talk about homicide, right, and then there's the
technical legal what it what it means?
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Right? Well, and I'm like legally blonde using uh, you
know these.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I'd love to I'd love to have something up there
that I could turn blonde or something, you know. But
but but homicide simply means that the determination was made
that the death was caused by another person. It doesn't
(15:05):
mean murder, it doesn't mean criminal homicide. All it means
is that the person didn't commit suicide that you know,
and that and the death was not an accident, although
it could have been an accident. All homicide means is
that an outside agent caused death. That is not a
(15:26):
way of reading into anybody's mind or reading into anybody's actions.
It's just a medical determination that's something other than the
person's own hand caused death. So what the medical examiner
determines is that an outside agent caused death, and she
(15:48):
drew the conclusion that it was the choke hold. Even
that is not an assignment of murder or criminal culpability. Because,
as we've been discussing, there's a lot of things that
went too that determination. Right, you can't have murder without intent,
although there's some I don't want to take us for
afield by talking about felony murder and all that other stuff,
(16:09):
which is simply stated, murder has to be an intentional homicide,
and then you get into these gradations of non intentional homicide.
So if you have reckless disregard for an obvious threat
of death, that's usually charged, as it was here, second
(16:31):
degree manslaughter. And the usual example for that that they
give in law school is like the person who shoots
a gun into a crowd. He's not aiming at any
particular person, he's not trying to kill any particular person,
but he's obviously caused a significant risk of death with
a very callous action, and for that you can you
(16:55):
can get a homicide a reckless homicide charge. And then
there are situations where people die because of some action
that you took. Nobody thinks that you intended to cause death,
no one thinks that you were reckless, that you had
a cavalier disregard for human life, but the judgment is
(17:18):
made that you did not exhibit the standard of care
that the average person would have exhibited under the circumstances,
and that's negligent homicide. So when we say something's a homicide,
wouldn't say it's necessarily a crime.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Well, because even if you go through this series of
events like so, you know, the duration of the troke
holding question, I feel like is negated by the sequence
of events, you know, particularly the fact that there was
a fight that ensued, because if you're fighting with someone,
you might hold them in a choke hold longer than
you would have if they're not fighting back.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
So that's one, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Secondly, you've got a farmer marine who's leaving class and
heading to the gym, who's you know, doing the right
things in his day, trying to better his a.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Life, gets on a train. You've got this.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Lunatic who said, you know, we know who has forty
two prior arrests. Obviously he didn't know that that day,
but he knows that. This guy gets on says someone
is going to die this day, or someone's going to
die today.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
He's ready to go to rikers.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
He's described as insanely threatening, sickening, a satanic bent. A
mother hid behind a stroller with her child. They thought
they were going to die that day. Your penny looking
around as a former marine worrying about women and children.
This is someone who signed up to serve her country,
feels like this is his duty to protect the people
on his train. And then you know, a fight ensues
(18:32):
with the guy who's got drugs in a system who
said that he is, you know, which.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Is probably clearly he was pretty obvious.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
He was probably on something or mentally ill, saying someone's
going to die today, I'm ready to go to rikers.
So like, at that point, you know, I think feel
like the duration of the choke hold is sort of
negated to that point because at this point it's his
duty to protect the fellow train riders. And then also
after a fight being ensued, it would be his duty
to try to keep the guy subdued until you know,
(19:00):
some sort of other authority shows up, like the police,
to arrest him.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Yeah. I think what you just marshaled is what should
go into a determination in terms of exercising prosecutorial discretion
about whether to bring the charge in the first place,
and what you just laid out about all the things
that would go into you know, whether it nullified the
(19:25):
duration of the of the choke hold, or you know,
balanced it on some scale of the different equities here,
the bottom line is, if a prosecutor can't confidently say, uh, yet,
this guy caused the death and it was done in
a way that was sufficiently culpable that we really need
(19:45):
to charge it and let a jury decided. That's not
what's supposed to happen at this at the at the
point where a decision like this, which could ruin Penny's life,
right at the point that that decision has to be made,
that's supposed to be when the prosecutor decides whether to
bring the charge in the first place, not you know,
(20:06):
not whether you dump into the jury's lap something that
you as reasonably couldn't have decided yourself. And I think
an interesting thing, Lisa, that that I saw in looking
at the reporting today is that uh Neely's parent or
I guess his father has now has now sued Penny
(20:29):
for wrongful death.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And by the way, he has been totally out of
his life, Like clearly, you know, oh terrible father doesn't
care about your kid. Now you care about him when
there's money to make and you know, you get attention.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Yeah, but and I think that's all true. My point
just as someone who was in the criminal justice system
for a long time, you know, I prosecuted terrorists. I
prosecuted mafia guys and fraudsters and drug uh you know,
organizations and all that stuff. And I really, after twenty years,
(21:05):
I came away with a real conviction. Pardon the punt
that the criminal justice system is for intentional wrongs and
we shouldn't bring cases in the system where you don't
have intentional wrongs. I understand that those laws are on
the books, and I'm not saying that prosecutors should exercise
(21:27):
their discretion in a way that basically negates laws that
the legislatures have put on the books. But you know,
in New York in particular, we have lots of crime,
and we have a progressive prosecutor who's better known for
pleading felonies down to misdemeanors if he charges them at all.
(21:49):
We have very limited police resources, court resources, prosecutorial resources.
I think what we have or to be directed at
the people who commit crimes intentionally and prey on people intentionally.
And you, as this lawsuit that we just discussed shows,
(22:09):
you have this whole civil justice system where you can
resolve if the father here really thinks that what Penny
did was was caused death here in an actionable way.
Let him sue him civilly and let's see how that goes.
But to bring somebody in the criminal justice system when
it wasn't an intentional act and there was no recklessness
(22:34):
of the kind that it's right for the for the
law to prosecute, like you know, my example about shooting
a gun into a into a crowd or something like that.
These cases don't belong in the criminal justice system. And
that's that's not a I'm not making a political statement
about this. The last time I had the occasion to
make this argument was in connection with Alec Baldwin, right,
(22:56):
who I wouldn't you know, I probably wouldn't agree with
Alick ball went about what time it is, But that's good.
You know, politics has nothing to do with it. There
was nothing in that case against him that indicated that
he did anything intentional to harm anyone. It was just
a tragic, tra tragic accident. And you know, I don't
have a lot of sympathy for Neely in this situation.
(23:19):
I'm always said.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
To have I don't have died. I mean, yeah, but
I died.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
You know, I mean, look, I'll give you he died,
you know, and we care about it. But no, but no, Yeah, But.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Alternatively, you know, I don't have a lot of sympathy
for someone who you know, goes out and you know, intentionally,
Like I don't have it for a you know, mass
killer who goes out and kills people if he gets
the death penalty, I don't, you know. So same with Neely,
Like I don't have a lot of sympathy for a
guy who gets on a train who knows what he
would have done if Daniel Penny hadn't have protected the
forty two prior arrests. You tell people you want to die,
(23:48):
you don't care about going to rikers. You're you're clearly
threatening the lives of others on the train. So like, yeah,
I don't know my you know, my empathy factor, you know,
gets greatly reduced like that.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
You know, I'm with you on that. And when I
say that we have a whole civil justice system for that,
I'm not saying that that Penny should have been found
liable in the civil justice system. I think if I'm
majority on the civil case, I acquit or I find
him not liable for all the reasons that you just
laid out, because I think if you're going to judge Faultier,
(24:22):
you know Neely was much more in the wrong obviously
than Penny was. All I'm saying is these cases just
don't belong in the criminal justice system. And Penny doesn't.
You know, whatever you think of what he did, he
doesn't deserve to be in a situation where he could
be sent to jail over this. Well.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
I said this on Fox the other day, and you
had mentioned how the fact that Daniel Penny's white is
being brought up during the trial. I said, this wasn't
a racially motivated killing, but these charges are racially motivated.
Even in the news coverage, you know, the Fox five
referring to him as the killing of a black man,
Penny a white man.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
You've I've got someone.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Like Alvin Bragg, a black man who has made it
his mission to let criminals roam the streets of New
York City, who you know, by the way, they're killing
innocent black people, but he doesn't seem to care about that.
You have a cross secutor, a Manhattan prosecutor, Daphnut Yurin,
who's throwing the book at Penny, who reduced a sentence
for a black man who murdered an Asian college professor
(25:21):
as he was a drawing cash from inn atm. She
said that it was under the guise of restorative justice
ended up giving him only ten years for manslaughter when
he was originally charged with murder. So you've got, you know,
a woke prosecutor here who clearly has an animus, you know,
for anyone who's not black. So for me, you know,
Daniel Penny, if he weren't white, he wouldn't be facing
these charges. If Daniel Penny was black and jordan Neely
(25:44):
is black, no charges. If Daniel Penny white and Jordaneelly
was white, no charges. Literally, the only reason Daniel Penny
is being punished, in my opinion, is because these two
things that democrats hate. He's white and he's a patriot,
and if it was anything other, he would not be
facing charges in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
You don't have to agree with me on that, but
that's where I am. Well.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
The only thing I even potentially disagree with you on
is that I'm not sure that Bragg wouldn't charge him
if the victim was white, just because that's who Bragg is.
But it all is a racial morality play for these guys,
and I just think, you know, I think we need
(26:23):
to be mindful of the fact. Like I often talk
about how, you know, we have conservatives and progressives who
are like ships passing in the night, because you have
we on the conservative side who are saying they're using
the procedures of the justice system in a punitive way
against their political enemies, and everything's about race, race, race,
(26:44):
and it's like we expect them to say, no, that
you don't understand, and instead what they're saying is, you're
damn right, that's what we're doing. So I think we
need to understand and this is the reason why these
people have to be defeated and not allowed to power.
We're dealing with a movement of people who don't feel
(27:04):
like they have to hide anymore because they believe philosophically
that it's proper to use the the levers of power
in the system against their political enemies for no other
reason than that their political enemies. And it has an
interrorum effect on you know, people who were similarly minded,
(27:26):
and when they say, you know, like this prosecutor that
that has this case that you just mentioned, you know,
when she brags about taking somebody who committed a brutal
crime and getting it pled down to something else strictly
because of what the guy's race was. That's who these
(27:47):
guys are. They want us to understand and assimilate life
as if it were a Howard's Enn textbook, and there
are oppressors and oppressed and the way things are supposed
to come out has nothing to do with objective fault
or objective facts. It's all it's got to line up
to what their little morality play is.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I guess for me, you know, I feel very conflicted
about what Republicans should do moving forward. You know, I
know that there's a notion of you know, not responding
in kind and not doing to them what they've done
to us. And I understand that perspective. But then alternatively,
it's like, you know, you look at terrorists, right, they
(28:32):
only respond to power and strength, and to some degree,
will these people ever stop until they are on the
receiving end of what they've done to others?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
So I don't know. This is a mental dance.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
I go back and forth in my head constantly about
sort of what the right direction is moving forward for
Republicans after all this weaponization of the law, particularly against Trump.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, look, I agree with that. You know, I feel
the same tension myself, having been in the system. I
feel strongly that it shouldn't be used as a political
weapon by anyone. But the only silver lining I see
in trying to work that out, Lisa, is that the
voters didn't like it. I mean, I think in the end,
part of the reason that Trump became president wasn't so
(29:16):
much that, you know, there was an outbreak of great
admiration for Trump that changed the public's mind. I think
there has been some of that. I mean, I was
totally wrong in thinking that he had a hard ceiling
of like forty six forty seven percent that he could
never get past. And he obviously got, you know closer.
Whether he gets slightly over or slightly under fifty, we
(29:39):
won't know for a while yet. But he obviously had
an upsurge in popularity. He still got a lot of
people who don't like him, but even reasonable people who
are not Trump fans or fans of people who are
fans of Trump, saw what progressive Democrats we're doing in
(30:02):
exploiting the apparatus of law enforcement to go after their
political enemies, and the more sensible among those people realized
that if they could do it to Trump, they can
do it. They not only can do it to anyone,
they do do it to others. So the uh. I
don't think that progressives are going to have a change
(30:22):
of heart in terms of, you know, gee, we just
need to do the right thing here. I think if
they see that this hurts them, they'll modify their behavior.
And I think the only silver lining I see in
this is that it hurt them. You know. I think
Trump may be president because they did this.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Well, you know, before we get to I want to
get to your take on the Biden pardon for Hunter.
I also just don't even know how he endured all this,
to be honest, it's like he's not even human, like
I personally, Like I had multiple federal charges, you know,
being pointed to my direction, and then after going through
the civils stuff in New York, the criminal stuff in
New York, and then also being shot at once and
(31:05):
then almost twice. I think I would be I think
I would be in the corner of a room crying somewhere.
So I don't know how the man has been able
to withstand all that and then go on to win.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
It's it's it's truly uh remarkable.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
I just I don't even know how anyone does that,
to be perfectly honest, It's uh, it's truly remarkable.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
He's a different kind of cat, for sure.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
It's a different kind of cat. I think that is
all right. So now let's get to Joe Biden and Hunter.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
You know, obviously, what makes this pardon so strange is
how broad it is and the fact that it goes
way beyond the tax charges and the gun charges that
he faced and or we're convicted of in terms of
the gun charge or yet if he could reach the
plea deal deal and the tax charges. But what's interesting
(31:57):
is it does start I believe it's on January first, fourteen,
when Hunter joined the board of Bresma that year.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
So, I guess what do you make.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Of the long parden, the broad pardon, and then what
do you think that is really about?
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Well, I think here's the obvious thing. Although I think
you know you have to you have to go back
in time in the story to appreciate this. They tried
to do the sweetheart deal for a hunter in it
was a jew. I think it was June July twenty
twenty three was when they went into It was July
(32:33):
when they were in Judge Norika's corporate Now, why did
the plea break down? It broke down because they did
something that was very funky that the judge caught, which
is that in a plea agreement, one of the most
important term obviously is what the guy is pleading guilty to.
(32:54):
The second most important term is what is the immunity
bath that he's getting. In other words, in exchange for
pleading guilty, as I the defendant am about to do.
The government lays out explicitly in the plea agreement, these
are the things we can no longer charge you with
(33:16):
in return for your pleading guilty to satisfy the indictment.
In this case. That's every single plea agreement, so it's
always explicitly laid out, this is what we can't do
to you anymore, and everybody has to have their eyes
open about that. Otherwise the court is not supposed to
take the plea. Because a plea agreement is just a contract.
(33:37):
There has to be a meeting of the minds about
what the fundamental terms are. So in Hunter's plea agreement,
weis the Delaware District attorney later Foe special counsel. What
they did was there was a plea agreement to two
(33:58):
puny tax misdemeanors charges, which were supposed to make all
of the tax charges, including the felonies, go away. And
then what I think is against Justice Department rules, they
took the gun charges and they put it in a
diversion program, meaning that you keep your nose clean for
(34:19):
X number of months and then that disappears. Two. You're
not supposed to do that with gun charges in the
Justice Department. But here's the thing, even though he was
pleading to the tax charges, they tried to hide the
immunity term in the diversion agreement, which is what got
the judge a little bit taken aback at the beginning
(34:39):
when she looked at all us then when you look
at the immunity term. They hooked that up to a
narrative of what happened from twenty fourteen going forward, which
was obviously written by Hunter's lawyers, and the objective here
without coming out and saying it, was to say that
(35:00):
anything that was within the framework of the narrative that
was attached to the diversion agreement was no longer going
to be available for prosecution against Hunter. So that was
so elliptical that the judge said, whoa, whoa, whoa, Wait
a minute, that doesn't tell me anything. What are you
(35:22):
saying he can't be charged with anymore? And what the
Biden lawyers wanted was for Weiss to get up in
court and say, any conceivable federal crime going back to
twenty fourteen to the present day is off the table.
Hunter can no longer be charged. And Weiss would not
(35:44):
get up in open court and say that why because
Biden was seeking reelection, and the whole point of this
was to not articulate what the immunity bath was because
that would be so scandalous it would hurt Biden's reelection effort.
So what they were trying to do was do the
(36:06):
least they could do to write an elliptical, confusing, vague
agreement in the expectation that the judge would just like rollerize,
they would slam it past her and that would be
the end. And instead she wouldn't take the plea because
she asked what is he getting immunity for? And Weiss
wouldn't get up in court and say what he was
(36:28):
getting immunity. For the reason I lay that out, Lisa,
is if you look at the sweep of the pardon,
it's exactly what Weiss wouldn't get up in court and
say it's totally the same. It's the mirror image. The
only difference is the immunity in the pardon now goes
(36:49):
up to December first, twenty twenty four, because that's when
the pardon was signed. The plea was July of twenty
twenty three, so you know it was going to take
it from twenty fourteen to July twenty twenty three. Now
it goes to December first, twenty twenty four. But it's
the same thing. So what's the difference here. The difference
(37:10):
is now the election is over. So prior to the election,
knowing how scandalous it would be, they wouldn't say what
the immunity was, and now we're seeing what the immunity was.
But that was the reason the plea broke up blew
up in the first place. So that's what this is
all about. And what makes me insane is to hear
(37:32):
things like Biden says he now changed his mind. He
repeatedly said he would not pardon Hunter but then last
weekend he had a change of heart. That's nonsense. This
is like the same exact understanding that was on the
table at the time of the plea. And as somebody
(37:52):
who carefully watched both litigations, the gun case and the
tax case, Hunter's litigation strategy in both those cases can
only be understood if he knew he was getting a pardon.
So on the gun case he basically won't admit fault.
The evidence is overwhelming, and the jury convicts him in
(38:14):
like two seconds of all three charges. He never tries
to negotiate a plea, he never acknowledges any wrongdoing. He
just lets himself get convicted on three charges. The tax
case is even worse the tax cases September. September fifth
was the day they were picking the jury, which is
like eight weeks before the election, and Hunter would have
(38:38):
gone to trial in that case too and done the
same thing that he did in the gun case, except
the Democrats, even with Biden by then replaced by Harris,
they could not afford to have a six week trial,
which would be about the income that Hunter earned and
didn't pay taxes on that he derived from the Biden
family influence. Peddling scheme. So that was the reason he
(39:01):
was desperate not to go to trial in that case.
But if you remember, there was a highly unusual plea
where he agreed to eat the whole indictment. He agreed
to plead guilty to all nine charges. He never tried
to negotiate a plea. He never did whether a normal
defendant does and says, you know, I'll plead guilty to
one count with just three years of exposure to prison,
(39:23):
and you dismiss everything else. That's the usual kind of
plea negotiation. Hunter doesn't get into those niceties. Yeah, I'll
plead guilty to every count. The one thing I won't
do is admit guilt. And the judge let him get away.
This is a it's called an Alfred plea. It's an
unusual plea proceeding. But the judge and I kind of understand.
I didn't agree with what the judge did here. I
(39:44):
think he should have told Hunter, you either plead guilty
like everyone does and admit wrongdoing, or else we go
to trial. But the judges, figuring everybody knows Hunter's going
to get a pardon at the end of this, so
why should I consume the court's reason horses and make
a jury sit here for five or six weeks when
the guy is willing to plead guilty, and you know
(40:08):
we would otherwise have to have this this long trial.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
And you're the first lady attending.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Yeah, well that was just unbelievable. Unbelievable, and not only
attending the trial. I've seen that a million times. I
was a prosecutor for a long time, but attending jury selection.
Nobody goes to jury selection, but she was there for
jury selection just to look at the people who were
being brought into decide the case.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
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(41:40):
eight two four safe to protect what matters most. I've
already said this on TV buns, So if it's wrong,
just like, be gentle.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Don't make me feel a complete idiot. But already out
there on this.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
But to my perspective is this isn't an act of
fatherly love. It's an act of self preserve because, as
you pointed out, part of why Hunter are pled on
the tax charges is because Biden and the Department of
Justice on every angle they've tried to cut off any
avenue to Joe. Biden and his culpability with the Sun's
business dealings. We know that he's long lied about his
son's built business dealings ten percent for the big Guy.
(42:17):
He's been involved in phone calls, meetings, flying a Sun
on air force to greasing the wheels for these business dealings.
Hunter as a result, has brought in millions of dollars
from all these different countries, particularly Hunter. The date of
the pardon goes back to when Hunter first joined the
board of Barizma. We've already seen Joe Biden on camera
prag about threatening to withhold a one billion dollar US
(42:39):
loan guarantee to get the Ukrainian Prosecutor General fired, who
by the way, is investigating Barreizema holdings. And then you
have these irs whistle blowers come forward and say one
FBI officials prevented them from accessing Hunter Biden's laptop, which
of course had relevant information for Hunter. Biden and David
Weiss in the Department of just has allowed the statute
(43:01):
of limitations to lapse on the Bresma money. So to me,
this all points to Joe Biden not pretending this isn't
about his son, because he's already used his son as
a pawn to go and make him money and putting
him son in his son in you know, potential legal
jeopardy as a result. So clearly he doesn't care about
his son. This is all about the big guy and
(43:21):
an act of self preservation. That's my argument.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
No, I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
These I would have felt.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
Really no, I think no, I'll get but I'll give
you I'll give you more ammunition. Okay, yeah, yeah, you
know what the case what what this was about the
way that Weiss handled the investigation under uh, you know,
the the guidance of Merrick Garland. Uh. The most egregious,
(43:50):
not just barisma, the most egregious misconduct in the Biden
influence peddling scheme is the period between twenty fourteen to
the end of twenty sixteen. And that's because that's when
Joe Biden's influence during the course of the scheme, which
runs to twenty nineteen. You could arguably say it went
into twenty twenty, but it's during during that six year period.
(44:15):
The time when he's most influential, which means when his
influence is most saleable, when it's most valuable, is that
period from twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen, and in that
period we not only see the Barisma stuff. We see
the million that comes in from the Romanian guy. We
see the three and a half million that comes in
(44:35):
from the Russian billionaire who is the widow of the
Putin crony who was mayor rot Moscow. The Chinese payments,
you know, the two Chinese schemes, they both arise out of. Remember,
on the Bohai scheme, Hunter actually goes with Joe Biden
on Air Force two to Beijing to meet with the
guy to nail the agreement down. And on the CEFC stuff,
(44:59):
the pay meant start as a result of things that
go on twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. I think
it's really twenty fifteen twenty sixteen. So all of the
most egregious conduct is in that window when he's most valuable.
And one of the reasons we know that Lisa is
what happened the minute he was out of office. As
(45:20):
soon as he left office in twenty seventeen, Barisma slashed
Hunter's salary in half. I mean, it couldn't be more
crass that, Like, what they're paying for is access to
Biden and his influence. So all of this was always
done in a way to protect Biden. I've always said
that in the Justice Department's handling of what they call
(45:42):
the Hunter case, but was really the Biden investigation at
LEAs should have been. Hunter is the ancillary benefit, beneficiary
of the favorable treatment that the Justice Department wouldn't have
given anybody else. But their main mission at the Justice
Department was to protect the president. It so happened that like,
(46:04):
if they could protect the president and help Hunter at
the same time, they'd help Hunter. But the main thing
was to protect the president. So all of this was
about protecting Biden. All of it was about not ruining
the reelection effort. And the thing I think is so
precious for him to be coming out now talking about
(46:24):
the you know, the father's love for his son. You know,
I have sons, and I would probably be inclined if
I was the only person on the planet who had
the power to make criminal charges go away so that
my sons wouldn't go to jail. Would I use that power? Yes,
I think that, you know, the honorable thing to do
would be to resign after you do it, because it's
a terrible abuse of power and it's a violation of
(46:47):
your oath of office. But I think humanly we can
all understand this. Here's what you can understand if that's
the way Biden feels, If this is all about fatherly love,
how do you let your kid get indicted? How do
you let him go to trial not once but twice?
How do you put him through all of this public humiliation?
(47:08):
If that's what you're concerned about? But what did Hunter?
What did Biden prioritize here? He didn't prioritize Hunter. He
prioritized the twenty twenty four election campaign, and had if
it looked like they were giving Hunter the kind of
break that he ultimately gave Hunter, it would have been
(47:28):
catastrophic for the reelection campaign. So that's what he was
concerned about. It's always been about his own exposure, and
it's always been about the election campaign. And I'm not
saying he doesn't love the son. I mean, I'm sure
on some level he does, but this is a bunch
of crap. How like you know, the last you know,
the last weekend, it finally dawned on him that a
(47:50):
father's love compelled him to pardon. I mean, you're kidding me?
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Well, and then before we go also, I love how
he says he was selectively an unfairly prostate it when
you look at just on federal firearm convictions alone in
twenty twenty two, ninety four point two percent involved some
prison time. The median sentence was thirty nine months. He
had three convicted on three federal firearm charges. And then
that doesn't even include the tax charges. That doesn't include
(48:16):
things he wasn't charged with, like fair of violations where
he was accused of sex trafficking as well off for
communicating with prostitutes and coordinating their travel across state lines.
So that's like and that doesn't include the breathe right,
so that that's even like a gentle.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
This is a gentle. But before we go on.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Lisa can I yeah, yeah, but I just want to
say about your time, So yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
It's not.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
The gun thing makes me not. So I just want
to explain this one more time because his people are
out there again saying nobody gets prosecuted for this. And
I think even the Wall Street Journal suggested that in
its editorial there's a category of plight cases that by
the way, Joe Biden with his gun fanaticism when he
(49:01):
was in Congress. He was always a big critic of this.
But there's a category of cases in the Justice Department
which are called lied and tried cases or lieon try cases,
And what it involves is you fill out the form
that Hunter filled out. You make a false statement, but
(49:22):
in the interim between the time you fill out the
form and the time that you're supposed to get the gun,
they find out that you've lied. So they find out
that you're not eligible because you're a prior felon, or
you have a protective order, or there's been some other
disability that's been lodged on the public record that would
make it illegal for you to have a gun. If
(49:43):
you find those things out in the interim between filling
out the form and getting the gun, the person doesn't
get the gun. And that's why we call them lion
try cases. And the Justice Department is always rationalized, oh, well,
you know, look, we have limited prosecutorial resources and the
guy didn't get the gun anyway, so we're not going
to indict that case. Hunter's case is not a lie
(50:06):
in try case. Hunter's cases a lie get the gun
and then lose it. Across the street from a school case,
that kind of thing that gets prosecuted every single time.
And the only other thing I would say about it
is indications to me have always been I've never gotten
a satisfactory answer about this. I think there's two guns.
(50:26):
I don't think there's one. The gun that they do
the plea deal to is the revolver. But the gun
that you see in the salacious pictures that the like,
for example, ran in the New York Post, which were
in the same timeframe, that's a glock. That's not a revolver.
So unless that was a phony gun, which I don't
have any reason to think it was, there were two
guns here.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
Interesting, good point, great observation.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
I mean, he's probably guilty for like millions of crimes,
but to an exaggeration, but probably hundreds. But all right,
so before we go, last question, does Joe Biden pardon himself?
Speaker 3 (51:01):
Yeah, so, I don't think so. But I think the
logic of the pardon is you have to pardon everybody
else who's a principal player in the influence peddling scheme,
meaning Jim and the you know, the associates who took
in the money from the foreigners and then whacked it
up into smaller amounts to sluice him through the Biden accounts.
The reason I don't think Biden has to pardon himself.
(51:25):
And by the way, Biden has had a meeting with Trump, right,
we don't have any idea what they discussed in any
of that stuff, so they who knows, they could even
there could be an understanding between them for all we know.
But Trump said many times that no former prosecutor, no
former president, should ever have to go through what he
had to go through. And it would have been very
(51:48):
messy for Trump coming into office if the Biden Justice
Department had decided to leave the two federal prosecutions against
Trump open, only for the Trump administration and the Trump
Justice Department to try to have to convince Judge chuck
In to let them dismiss the case. That would be
a messy litigation. I hes Trump won, and especially given
(52:14):
the depth of the breath of the win and the
fact that the Republicans are going to control both houses
of Congress, there was no upside to continuing with that case.
But it could have been messy and politically difficult for
Trump to have to dismiss the charges himself. Biden has
caused them to be dismissed. Those two cases are gone,
and I'm sure Trump appreciates that. And the other thing is,
(52:35):
you know, you have a situation here where in connection
with the classified documents, a federal prosecutor examined that and
found that Biden was too mentally compromised at this point
to be worth prosecuting, that it would be difficult to
take them to trial. I just think with that combination
(52:56):
of stuff, I don't see I don't see the Trump
Justice Department going after former President Biden at that point.
But I think the other guys. The only logic, the
only thing that makes sense to me after Hunter's pardon
is you have to pardon those other guys because Hunter's
pardon is so sweeping that he now has no Fifth
(53:19):
Amendment privilege. So if they're really worried about the Trump
Justice Department, they could throw Hunter into the grand jury
and ask him about all of the potential crimes in
the Biden influence peddling stuff that the Biden Justice Department
averted their eyes from, and they can ask about all
(53:39):
the people who never got charged with anything. So he's
got no basis to say I refuse to testify because
I'm worried about incriminating myself. His Fifth Amendment is gone,
so I don't see how you just pardon him and
not the other guys.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Interesting, I think we can all agree that Joe Biden
will not be getting a data the ear mug for
Annie McCarthy, prief of your time. I always learned so
much from you. It's always such an interesting conversation. So
love having you on and just really appreciate your time.
Speaker 3 (54:11):
Thanks so much, Lisea. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (54:13):
That was any McCarthy. Appreciate him for giving us his time.
Always so interesting. I always learn a lot. Appreciate you
guys at home for listening every Monday and Thursday, but
you can listen throughout the week. Don't think John Cassio
and my producer for putting the show together.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Until next time.
Daniel Penny is now twenty six years old.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
He is a marine who left class on May first,
twenty twenty three, boarded an uptown f train in Manhattan
to head to the gym.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
And what did he see?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Jordan Neely, a guy with forty two prior arrests, including
four from alleged assault, who got on the same subway
train that day and said somebody is going to die today.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
He said he was ready to go to rikers.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Witnesses described him as insanely threatening, sickening, a satanic bent.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
They thought they were going to die that day.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
They also saw a fight ensue between Daniel Penny, who
said that he had to stand up for the women
and children on that train who we had to protect.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yet, Daniel Penny.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Is facing charges of second degree manslaughter and criminally negligent
homicide in the death of Jordaneely, the man who stepped
on the train that day and said somebody is going
to die. Yet, Daniel Penny, the marine, is the one
who's on trial right now.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
So we're going to get into that case.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
What do you need to know, what's happening with it,
what does it mean, and where is it going. We're
also going to get into this extremely broad pardon of
Joe Biden, this pardon of his son dating well beyond
the gun charges and the tax charges that Hunter faces.
Also going back to January first, twenty fourteen, one Hunter
joined the board of Brisma. So is Joe Biden Is
(01:21):
this just an act of fatherly love or is it
an act of self preservation.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
We're going to get into all these.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Topics with Andy McCarthy, who know from Fox News. He's
a Fox News contributor. He's also a former Chief Assistant
US Attorney, a best selling author, and a contributing editor
National Review and a fellow at the National Review Institute.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
We've had him on the show a bunch.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
She always does a great job explaining complicated matters in
ways that we can understand, so important topics. Stay tuned
for Andy McCarthy. Well, Andy, it's great to have you
on the show. I love having you on because I
always learn from you. And then you also have a
great job. You great job of sort of breaking down,
(02:02):
you know, complicated legal matters into a way that we
can digest as non lawyers. So I appreciate you taking
the time to come on the show.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
It's always a pleasure, Lisa, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
So I wanted to start with this Daniel Penny trial.
He's twenty six now facing charges of second degree manslaughter
and criminally negligent homicide and the death of Jordan Neely.
You know, first of all, I guess you know big picture,
you know, what do you make of the charges? And
then where do you think this thing is heading at
(02:34):
this point in the trial for Daniel Penny.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Well, I think as an old prosecutor, I recognize here
a prosecutor's trick with respect to the charges, and that
is brag I think, Lisa, this case is obviously one
that should never have been brought. And in terms of
(03:02):
prosecutorial discretion and the things that should weigh on whether
you would bring charges in a case like this, you know,
the old saying is, of course that when every second counts,
the police are only minutes away. Right in a place
like New York where you have a lot of crime,
it's going to be a much more dangerous city and
(03:26):
there'll be many more people fleeing from it if someone
like Daniel Penny, who is you know, capable and courageous,
is discouraged from intervening under circumstances where you have this
crazed lunatic who actually was just that of Rikers Island
after belting some old woman in the face and breaking
(03:47):
a bunch of bones in her face. She had done
I think he had done close to two years at
Rikers over that. So this isn't somebody I mean, Penny
obviously wouldn't have known that, but this is someone that
we have to speculate about whether this was a dangerous
person who's obviously a dangerous person and the people on
(04:08):
the subway were scared to death of them. And what
really galls me about the case. I know you asked
me about the charges, and I'll get back to them,
but there's not any indication at all in a common
sense way that this was a racial incident. A number
of the best witnesses for Penny in the case were
(04:29):
black people who were scared of what Neely was doing
on the subway and the threats that he was making
on the subway. And Penny was not the only one
who intervened. There were two other men who intervened in
helping Penny restrain this guy, and they were neither one
of them was white. And yet when you hear the
(04:52):
prosecutors from Bragg's office. Now, Bragg is the paragon progressive prosecutor,
right where everything in life is like race is their
full field explanation for every phenomenon on the planet. And
they've turned this thing into you know, the prosecuted keeps
calling Penny the white defendant, as if like race entered
(05:15):
into this under circumstances where it didn't. But the whole
reason for bringing the case is because Bragg's political base
are these woke progressives, and he's white and the guy
who died was black, and they don't need any other
explanation the oppressed, the oppressor lives, and the oppressed died.
(05:38):
That's their whole explanation for what happened here. So that's
the reason the case got brought, even though it doesn't
have anything to do with the reality of what happened
that day. The two charges, one is basically negligent homicide.
And if you're going to talk like common sense here,
(05:58):
the only real legal issue to me in the case.
And I say this having prefaced this, that I don't
think this case should have been brought at all. But
if you want to indulge a legal issue, the question
is once he had Once Penny had this nearly in
the chokehold, did he hold on for too long? And
(06:22):
there's no evidence that there was any cruelty about this
or anything like that. So it's strictly a question of negligence.
Would a reasonable person under the same circumstances have released
the hold out of appreciation that nearly could be in
(06:42):
a near death situation And that's really the issue. But
what Brad did here was he added a reckless homicide charge.
That's the second degree manslaughter, and I don't think there's
any evidence for recklessness in this case. To prove recklessness,
what you have to show is that the defendant fully
(07:05):
appreciated a risk of death and basically, with an evil purpose,
completely recklessly disregarded something that he appreciated might result in
the death of the person. That's not the evidence in
this case. And in fact, there's video of Penny speaking
(07:28):
with the police afterwards. He doesn't even know at that
point that Neely died. The police didn't tell him that,
and he's explaining himself in terms of I'm not trying
to hurt the guy, I'm just trying to protect the
people all around. There's no evidence of recklessness. But what
I think very cynically and callously Bragg did here was
(07:50):
he added the recklessness count, figuring that you might get
some people on the jury who basically feel like something
needs to be done to Penny because Neely died. And
I think if it was just a one count negligent
homicide case where you had to vote up or down, uh,
(08:11):
that ends up in an acquittal. But what Bragg is
hoping is that by adding the second count, if you
have some people on the jury who say something has
to be done here because Neely died, you'd have other
people on the jury who say, well, you know, we'll
equit him on recklessness, and then we can feel good
(08:32):
about convicting them on negligence because we parsed this carefully
and we were very fair and in the me you know,
that's what the that's what he did here. He took
a count Bragg did where I don't think there's any
evidence for it, but he threw it in there in
the hope that maybe it would induce the jury to
compromise into convicting him on the negligence. And I don't
(08:54):
know if it's going to work. It's you know, there's
there's been three days of jury deliberations. It's not a
complicated case, as you pointed out, it's two counts. I'm
not saying there aren't complications underlying it, but you know,
you can only talk so long about something that's only
two counts. And yet we're in the third day of deliberation.
So I fear that we're headed to hung jury.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well, you know, and I think he could try him again,
but before we get to that, or he could bring.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Well I'll get to that in a second. I'll get
your take on that.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
But you know, you had mentioned that this hinges on
if he held him a choke hold too long. But
what's interesting is when I was reading through some of
the witness accounts, one woman said it didn't look like
Daniel Penny really had control of the situation. Should mention
that there was a fight back and forth. And then also,
if you're Daniel Penny, would be led to believe that
(09:45):
Neelie was still alive because he was he still had
a pulse, and Lee had admitted that they didn't administer
mouth to mouth to him because they were worried because
Neelie was so you know, he was homeless, they knew
he was on drugs, they he probably had diseases, and
the police to not have the proper equipment for breath
to bread or mouth to mouth, and so they didn't
(10:07):
do that. And so if you're Daniel Penny, you know, one,
you'd had every right to believe that he's still alive
because he was. And then secondly, how do you determine
if the choke hold was too long? If there was
a fight that ensued and you have someone with drugs
in a system, which also leads to you know, other
behavioral issues, right, and so it's like, you know, how
do you that's such a subjective thing to say he
(10:28):
held him too long if there was a fight between them,
and witnesses didn't even feel like Penny had.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Controlled the situation.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Yeah, and Penny is still alive and if you release
the hold, he could recover and start fighting again, which
is always what the police are worried about in these
kinds of situations. I think the other thing you hit
on with that, Lisa, that's very important here is the
case is probably going to come down to whether whether
the jury concludes that what Penny did was justified or not.
(10:58):
But I think this is a very important issue of
causation lead to an acquittal, but it may be part
of the reason why at least some members of the
jury are like, there's no way that they're going to
vote to convict Penny. And that is, as you mentioned,
there were drugs in this guy's system. And it turns
(11:21):
out that the medical examiner did not do a toxicology
report and when she testified, and evidently the jury asked
for this testimony and it was read back to them
or that it was submitted to them for their deliberations,
but they're obviously there's some members of the jury that
are very curious about this. What the medical examiner said
(11:43):
was that even if there was enough fentanyl or whatever,
okay to it was that was in this guy's system
to put down an elephant, she saw enough from the
video to determine that it was to choke hold that
caused death and that's why she listed it as a homicide.
And my belief and I thought this was the case
in there's a different angle on this, but in the
(12:07):
George Floyd case, this was a big to do as well.
I think she didn't do the toxicology report because she
didn't want to create a reasonable doubt issue that it
wasn't the chokehold that caused death here. It was all
of the drugs that this guy had ingested, coupled with
(12:29):
the high tension situation that he caused on the subway
by carrying on the way that he did. And I
think there's some members of the jury who are apt
to say, it's not even an issue of whether the
choke did it or didn't do it, because this guy
had so much drugs in his system that we can't
(12:49):
say for sure that the choke hold is the reason
for his death. And they may be fortified in that
conclusion by the fact that the state went out of
its way not to give them that evidence.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
We've got more with Andy, But.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
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(14:04):
Is it a homicide? If you know? And I'm not
putting the blame on the police. I don't blame them,
you know, I'm not saying that they should have put
their their potential lives at risk and contracting diseases from
newly But is it a homicide if the police didn't
do everything they could to keep someone alive? Is there
not knowligence on behalf of the police in that instance?
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah, I shouldn't lapse into these terms that actually have
legal right, because there's there's there's like the rhetorical way
that we talk about homicide, right, and then there's the
technical legal what it what it means?
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Right? Well, and I'm like legally blonde using uh, you
know these.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I'd love to I'd love to have something up there
that I could turn blonde or something, you know. But
but but homicide simply means that the determination was made
that the death was caused by another person. It doesn't
(15:05):
mean murder, it doesn't mean criminal homicide. All it means
is that the person didn't commit suicide that you know,
and that and the death was not an accident, although
it could have been an accident. All homicide means is
that an outside agent caused death. That is not a
(15:26):
way of reading into anybody's mind or reading into anybody's actions.
It's just a medical determination that's something other than the
person's own hand caused death. So what the medical examiner
determines is that an outside agent caused death, and she
(15:48):
drew the conclusion that it was the choke hold. Even
that is not an assignment of murder or criminal culpability. Because,
as we've been discussing, there's a lot of things that
went too that determination. Right, you can't have murder without intent,
although there's some I don't want to take us for
afield by talking about felony murder and all that other stuff,
(16:09):
which is simply stated, murder has to be an intentional homicide,
and then you get into these gradations of non intentional homicide.
So if you have reckless disregard for an obvious threat
of death, that's usually charged, as it was here, second
(16:31):
degree manslaughter. And the usual example for that that they
give in law school is like the person who shoots
a gun into a crowd. He's not aiming at any
particular person, he's not trying to kill any particular person,
but he's obviously caused a significant risk of death with
a very callous action, and for that you can you
(16:55):
can get a homicide a reckless homicide charge. And then
there are situations where people die because of some action
that you took. Nobody thinks that you intended to cause death,
no one thinks that you were reckless, that you had
a cavalier disregard for human life, but the judgment is
(17:18):
made that you did not exhibit the standard of care
that the average person would have exhibited under the circumstances,
and that's negligent homicide. So when we say something's a homicide,
wouldn't say it's necessarily a crime.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Well, because even if you go through this series of
events like so, you know, the duration of the troke
holding question, I feel like is negated by the sequence
of events, you know, particularly the fact that there was
a fight that ensued, because if you're fighting with someone,
you might hold them in a choke hold longer than
you would have if they're not fighting back.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
So that's one, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Secondly, you've got a farmer marine who's leaving class and
heading to the gym, who's you know, doing the right
things in his day, trying to better his a.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Life, gets on a train. You've got this.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Lunatic who said, you know, we know who has forty
two prior arrests. Obviously he didn't know that that day,
but he knows that. This guy gets on says someone
is going to die this day, or someone's going to
die today.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
He's ready to go to rikers.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
He's described as insanely threatening, sickening, a satanic bent. A
mother hid behind a stroller with her child. They thought
they were going to die that day. Your penny looking
around as a former marine worrying about women and children.
This is someone who signed up to serve her country,
feels like this is his duty to protect the people
on his train. And then you know, a fight ensues
(18:32):
with the guy who's got drugs in a system who
said that he is, you know, which.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Is probably clearly he was pretty obvious.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
He was probably on something or mentally ill, saying someone's
going to die today, I'm ready to go to rikers.
So like, at that point, you know, I think feel
like the duration of the choke hold is sort of
negated to that point because at this point it's his
duty to protect the fellow train riders. And then also
after a fight being ensued, it would be his duty
to try to keep the guy subdued until you know,
(19:00):
some sort of other authority shows up, like the police,
to arrest him.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Yeah. I think what you just marshaled is what should
go into a determination in terms of exercising prosecutorial discretion
about whether to bring the charge in the first place,
and what you just laid out about all the things
that would go into you know, whether it nullified the
(19:25):
duration of the of the choke hold, or you know,
balanced it on some scale of the different equities here,
the bottom line is, if a prosecutor can't confidently say, uh, yet,
this guy caused the death and it was done in
a way that was sufficiently culpable that we really need
(19:45):
to charge it and let a jury decided. That's not
what's supposed to happen at this at the at the
point where a decision like this, which could ruin Penny's life,
right at the point that that decision has to be made,
that's supposed to be when the prosecutor decides whether to
bring the charge in the first place, not you know,
(20:06):
not whether you dump into the jury's lap something that
you as reasonably couldn't have decided yourself. And I think
an interesting thing, Lisa, that that I saw in looking
at the reporting today is that uh Neely's parent or
I guess his father has now has now sued Penny
(20:29):
for wrongful death.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And by the way, he has been totally out of
his life, Like clearly, you know, oh terrible father doesn't
care about your kid. Now you care about him when
there's money to make and you know, you get attention.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Yeah, but and I think that's all true. My point
just as someone who was in the criminal justice system
for a long time, you know, I prosecuted terrorists. I
prosecuted mafia guys and fraudsters and drug uh you know,
organizations and all that stuff. And I really, after twenty years,
(21:05):
I came away with a real conviction. Pardon the punt
that the criminal justice system is for intentional wrongs and
we shouldn't bring cases in the system where you don't
have intentional wrongs. I understand that those laws are on
the books, and I'm not saying that prosecutors should exercise
(21:27):
their discretion in a way that basically negates laws that
the legislatures have put on the books. But you know,
in New York in particular, we have lots of crime,
and we have a progressive prosecutor who's better known for
pleading felonies down to misdemeanors if he charges them at all.
(21:49):
We have very limited police resources, court resources, prosecutorial resources.
I think what we have or to be directed at
the people who commit crimes intentionally and prey on people intentionally.
And you, as this lawsuit that we just discussed shows,
(22:09):
you have this whole civil justice system where you can
resolve if the father here really thinks that what Penny
did was was caused death here in an actionable way.
Let him sue him civilly and let's see how that goes.
But to bring somebody in the criminal justice system when
it wasn't an intentional act and there was no recklessness
(22:34):
of the kind that it's right for the for the
law to prosecute, like you know, my example about shooting
a gun into a into a crowd or something like that.
These cases don't belong in the criminal justice system. And
that's that's not a I'm not making a political statement
about this. The last time I had the occasion to
make this argument was in connection with Alec Baldwin, right,
(22:56):
who I wouldn't you know, I probably wouldn't agree with
Alick ball went about what time it is, But that's good.
You know, politics has nothing to do with it. There
was nothing in that case against him that indicated that
he did anything intentional to harm anyone. It was just
a tragic, tra tragic accident. And you know, I don't
have a lot of sympathy for Neely in this situation.
(23:19):
I'm always said.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
To have I don't have died. I mean, yeah, but
I died.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
You know, I mean, look, I'll give you he died,
you know, and we care about it. But no, but no, Yeah, But.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Alternatively, you know, I don't have a lot of sympathy
for someone who you know, goes out and you know, intentionally,
Like I don't have it for a you know, mass
killer who goes out and kills people if he gets
the death penalty, I don't, you know. So same with Neely,
Like I don't have a lot of sympathy for a
guy who gets on a train who knows what he
would have done if Daniel Penny hadn't have protected the
forty two prior arrests. You tell people you want to die,
(23:48):
you don't care about going to rikers. You're you're clearly
threatening the lives of others on the train. So like, yeah,
I don't know my you know, my empathy factor, you know,
gets greatly reduced like that.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
You know, I'm with you on that. And when I
say that we have a whole civil justice system for that,
I'm not saying that that Penny should have been found
liable in the civil justice system. I think if I'm
majority on the civil case, I acquit or I find
him not liable for all the reasons that you just
laid out, because I think if you're going to judge Faultier,
(24:22):
you know Neely was much more in the wrong obviously
than Penny was. All I'm saying is these cases just
don't belong in the criminal justice system. And Penny doesn't.
You know, whatever you think of what he did, he
doesn't deserve to be in a situation where he could
be sent to jail over this. Well.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
I said this on Fox the other day, and you
had mentioned how the fact that Daniel Penny's white is
being brought up during the trial. I said, this wasn't
a racially motivated killing, but these charges are racially motivated.
Even in the news coverage, you know, the Fox five
referring to him as the killing of a black man,
Penny a white man.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
You've I've got someone.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Like Alvin Bragg, a black man who has made it
his mission to let criminals roam the streets of New
York City, who you know, by the way, they're killing
innocent black people, but he doesn't seem to care about that.
You have a cross secutor, a Manhattan prosecutor, Daphnut Yurin,
who's throwing the book at Penny, who reduced a sentence
for a black man who murdered an Asian college professor
(25:21):
as he was a drawing cash from inn atm. She
said that it was under the guise of restorative justice
ended up giving him only ten years for manslaughter when
he was originally charged with murder. So you've got, you know,
a woke prosecutor here who clearly has an animus, you know,
for anyone who's not black. So for me, you know,
Daniel Penny, if he weren't white, he wouldn't be facing
these charges. If Daniel Penny was black and jordan Neely
(25:44):
is black, no charges. If Daniel Penny white and Jordaneelly
was white, no charges. Literally, the only reason Daniel Penny
is being punished, in my opinion, is because these two
things that democrats hate. He's white and he's a patriot,
and if it was anything other, he would not be
facing charges in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
You don't have to agree with me on that, but
that's where I am. Well.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
The only thing I even potentially disagree with you on
is that I'm not sure that Bragg wouldn't charge him
if the victim was white, just because that's who Bragg is.
But it all is a racial morality play for these guys,
and I just think, you know, I think we need
(26:23):
to be mindful of the fact. Like I often talk
about how, you know, we have conservatives and progressives who
are like ships passing in the night, because you have
we on the conservative side who are saying they're using
the procedures of the justice system in a punitive way
against their political enemies, and everything's about race, race, race,
(26:44):
and it's like we expect them to say, no, that
you don't understand, and instead what they're saying is, you're
damn right, that's what we're doing. So I think we
need to understand and this is the reason why these
people have to be defeated and not allowed to power.
We're dealing with a movement of people who don't feel
(27:04):
like they have to hide anymore because they believe philosophically
that it's proper to use the the levers of power
in the system against their political enemies for no other
reason than that their political enemies. And it has an
interrorum effect on you know, people who were similarly minded,
(27:26):
and when they say, you know, like this prosecutor that
that has this case that you just mentioned, you know,
when she brags about taking somebody who committed a brutal
crime and getting it pled down to something else strictly
because of what the guy's race was. That's who these
(27:47):
guys are. They want us to understand and assimilate life
as if it were a Howard's Enn textbook, and there
are oppressors and oppressed and the way things are supposed
to come out has nothing to do with objective fault
or objective facts. It's all it's got to line up
to what their little morality play is.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I guess for me, you know, I feel very conflicted
about what Republicans should do moving forward. You know, I
know that there's a notion of you know, not responding
in kind and not doing to them what they've done
to us. And I understand that perspective. But then alternatively,
it's like, you know, you look at terrorists, right, they
(28:32):
only respond to power and strength, and to some degree,
will these people ever stop until they are on the
receiving end of what they've done to others?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
So I don't know. This is a mental dance.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
I go back and forth in my head constantly about
sort of what the right direction is moving forward for
Republicans after all this weaponization of the law, particularly against Trump.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, look, I agree with that. You know, I feel
the same tension myself, having been in the system. I
feel strongly that it shouldn't be used as a political
weapon by anyone. But the only silver lining I see
in trying to work that out, Lisa, is that the
voters didn't like it. I mean, I think in the end,
part of the reason that Trump became president wasn't so
(29:16):
much that, you know, there was an outbreak of great
admiration for Trump that changed the public's mind. I think
there has been some of that. I mean, I was
totally wrong in thinking that he had a hard ceiling
of like forty six forty seven percent that he could
never get past. And he obviously got, you know closer.
Whether he gets slightly over or slightly under fifty, we
(29:39):
won't know for a while yet. But he obviously had
an upsurge in popularity. He still got a lot of
people who don't like him, but even reasonable people who
are not Trump fans or fans of people who are
fans of Trump, saw what progressive Democrats we're doing in
(30:02):
exploiting the apparatus of law enforcement to go after their
political enemies, and the more sensible among those people realized
that if they could do it to Trump, they can
do it. They not only can do it to anyone,
they do do it to others. So the uh. I
don't think that progressives are going to have a change
(30:22):
of heart in terms of, you know, gee, we just
need to do the right thing here. I think if
they see that this hurts them, they'll modify their behavior.
And I think the only silver lining I see in
this is that it hurt them. You know. I think
Trump may be president because they did this.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Well, you know, before we get to I want to
get to your take on the Biden pardon for Hunter.
I also just don't even know how he endured all this,
to be honest, it's like he's not even human, like
I personally, Like I had multiple federal charges, you know,
being pointed to my direction, and then after going through
the civils stuff in New York, the criminal stuff in
New York, and then also being shot at once and
(31:05):
then almost twice. I think I would be I think
I would be in the corner of a room crying somewhere.
So I don't know how the man has been able
to withstand all that and then go on to win.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
It's it's it's truly uh remarkable.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
I just I don't even know how anyone does that,
to be perfectly honest, It's uh, it's truly remarkable.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
He's a different kind of cat, for sure.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
It's a different kind of cat. I think that is
all right. So now let's get to Joe Biden and Hunter.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
You know, obviously, what makes this pardon so strange is
how broad it is and the fact that it goes
way beyond the tax charges and the gun charges that
he faced and or we're convicted of in terms of
the gun charge or yet if he could reach the
plea deal deal and the tax charges. But what's interesting
(31:57):
is it does start I believe it's on January first, fourteen,
when Hunter joined the board of Bresma that year.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
So, I guess what do you make.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Of the long parden, the broad pardon, and then what
do you think that is really about?
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Well, I think here's the obvious thing. Although I think
you know you have to you have to go back
in time in the story to appreciate this. They tried
to do the sweetheart deal for a hunter in it
was a jew. I think it was June July twenty
twenty three was when they went into It was July
(32:33):
when they were in Judge Norika's corporate Now, why did
the plea break down? It broke down because they did
something that was very funky that the judge caught, which
is that in a plea agreement, one of the most
important term obviously is what the guy is pleading guilty to.
(32:54):
The second most important term is what is the immunity
bath that he's getting. In other words, in exchange for
pleading guilty, as I the defendant am about to do.
The government lays out explicitly in the plea agreement, these
are the things we can no longer charge you with
(33:16):
in return for your pleading guilty to satisfy the indictment.
In this case. That's every single plea agreement, so it's
always explicitly laid out, this is what we can't do
to you anymore, and everybody has to have their eyes
open about that. Otherwise the court is not supposed to
take the plea. Because a plea agreement is just a contract.
(33:37):
There has to be a meeting of the minds about
what the fundamental terms are. So in Hunter's plea agreement,
weis the Delaware District attorney later Foe special counsel. What
they did was there was a plea agreement to two
(33:58):
puny tax misdemeanors charges, which were supposed to make all
of the tax charges, including the felonies, go away. And
then what I think is against Justice Department rules, they
took the gun charges and they put it in a
diversion program, meaning that you keep your nose clean for
(34:19):
X number of months and then that disappears. Two. You're
not supposed to do that with gun charges in the
Justice Department. But here's the thing, even though he was
pleading to the tax charges, they tried to hide the
immunity term in the diversion agreement, which is what got
the judge a little bit taken aback at the beginning
(34:39):
when she looked at all us then when you look
at the immunity term. They hooked that up to a
narrative of what happened from twenty fourteen going forward, which
was obviously written by Hunter's lawyers, and the objective here
without coming out and saying it, was to say that
(35:00):
anything that was within the framework of the narrative that
was attached to the diversion agreement was no longer going
to be available for prosecution against Hunter. So that was
so elliptical that the judge said, whoa, whoa, whoa, Wait
a minute, that doesn't tell me anything. What are you
(35:22):
saying he can't be charged with anymore? And what the
Biden lawyers wanted was for Weiss to get up in
court and say, any conceivable federal crime going back to
twenty fourteen to the present day is off the table.
Hunter can no longer be charged. And Weiss would not
(35:44):
get up in open court and say that why because
Biden was seeking reelection, and the whole point of this
was to not articulate what the immunity bath was because
that would be so scandalous it would hurt Biden's reelection effort.
So what they were trying to do was do the
(36:06):
least they could do to write an elliptical, confusing, vague
agreement in the expectation that the judge would just like rollerize,
they would slam it past her and that would be
the end. And instead she wouldn't take the plea because
she asked what is he getting immunity for? And Weiss
wouldn't get up in court and say what he was
(36:28):
getting immunity. For the reason I lay that out, Lisa,
is if you look at the sweep of the pardon,
it's exactly what Weiss wouldn't get up in court and
say it's totally the same. It's the mirror image. The
only difference is the immunity in the pardon now goes
(36:49):
up to December first, twenty twenty four, because that's when
the pardon was signed. The plea was July of twenty
twenty three, so you know it was going to take
it from twenty fourteen to July twenty twenty three. Now
it goes to December first, twenty twenty four. But it's
the same thing. So what's the difference here. The difference
(37:10):
is now the election is over. So prior to the election,
knowing how scandalous it would be, they wouldn't say what
the immunity was, and now we're seeing what the immunity was.
But that was the reason the plea broke up blew
up in the first place. So that's what this is
all about. And what makes me insane is to hear
(37:32):
things like Biden says he now changed his mind. He
repeatedly said he would not pardon Hunter but then last
weekend he had a change of heart. That's nonsense. This
is like the same exact understanding that was on the
table at the time of the plea. And as somebody
(37:52):
who carefully watched both litigations, the gun case and the
tax case, Hunter's litigation strategy in both those cases can
only be understood if he knew he was getting a pardon.
So on the gun case he basically won't admit fault.
The evidence is overwhelming, and the jury convicts him in
(38:14):
like two seconds of all three charges. He never tries
to negotiate a plea, he never acknowledges any wrongdoing. He
just lets himself get convicted on three charges. The tax
case is even worse the tax cases September. September fifth
was the day they were picking the jury, which is
like eight weeks before the election, and Hunter would have
(38:38):
gone to trial in that case too and done the
same thing that he did in the gun case, except
the Democrats, even with Biden by then replaced by Harris,
they could not afford to have a six week trial,
which would be about the income that Hunter earned and
didn't pay taxes on that he derived from the Biden
family influence. Peddling scheme. So that was the reason he
(39:01):
was desperate not to go to trial in that case.
But if you remember, there was a highly unusual plea
where he agreed to eat the whole indictment. He agreed
to plead guilty to all nine charges. He never tried
to negotiate a plea. He never did whether a normal
defendant does and says, you know, I'll plead guilty to
one count with just three years of exposure to prison,
(39:23):
and you dismiss everything else. That's the usual kind of
plea negotiation. Hunter doesn't get into those niceties. Yeah, I'll
plead guilty to every count. The one thing I won't
do is admit guilt. And the judge let him get away.
This is a it's called an Alfred plea. It's an
unusual plea proceeding. But the judge and I kind of understand.
I didn't agree with what the judge did here. I
(39:44):
think he should have told Hunter, you either plead guilty
like everyone does and admit wrongdoing, or else we go
to trial. But the judges, figuring everybody knows Hunter's going
to get a pardon at the end of this, so
why should I consume the court's reason horses and make
a jury sit here for five or six weeks when
the guy is willing to plead guilty, and you know
(40:08):
we would otherwise have to have this this long trial.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
And you're the first lady attending.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Yeah, well that was just unbelievable. Unbelievable, and not only
attending the trial. I've seen that a million times. I
was a prosecutor for a long time, but attending jury selection.
Nobody goes to jury selection, but she was there for
jury selection just to look at the people who were
being brought into decide the case.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
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(41:40):
eight two four safe to protect what matters most. I've
already said this on TV buns, So if it's wrong,
just like, be gentle.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Don't make me feel a complete idiot. But already out
there on this.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
But to my perspective is this isn't an act of
fatherly love. It's an act of self preserve because, as
you pointed out, part of why Hunter are pled on
the tax charges is because Biden and the Department of
Justice on every angle they've tried to cut off any
avenue to Joe. Biden and his culpability with the Sun's
business dealings. We know that he's long lied about his
son's built business dealings ten percent for the big Guy.
(42:17):
He's been involved in phone calls, meetings, flying a Sun
on air force to greasing the wheels for these business dealings.
Hunter as a result, has brought in millions of dollars
from all these different countries, particularly Hunter. The date of
the pardon goes back to when Hunter first joined the
board of Barizma. We've already seen Joe Biden on camera
prag about threatening to withhold a one billion dollar US
(42:39):
loan guarantee to get the Ukrainian Prosecutor General fired, who
by the way, is investigating Barreizema holdings. And then you
have these irs whistle blowers come forward and say one
FBI officials prevented them from accessing Hunter Biden's laptop, which
of course had relevant information for Hunter. Biden and David
Weiss in the Department of just has allowed the statute
(43:01):
of limitations to lapse on the Bresma money. So to me,
this all points to Joe Biden not pretending this isn't
about his son, because he's already used his son as
a pawn to go and make him money and putting
him son in his son in you know, potential legal
jeopardy as a result. So clearly he doesn't care about
his son. This is all about the big guy and
(43:21):
an act of self preservation. That's my argument.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
No, I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
These I would have felt.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
Really no, I think no, I'll get but I'll give
you I'll give you more ammunition. Okay, yeah, yeah, you
know what the case what what this was about the
way that Weiss handled the investigation under uh, you know,
the the guidance of Merrick Garland. Uh. The most egregious,
(43:50):
not just barisma, the most egregious misconduct in the Biden
influence peddling scheme is the period between twenty fourteen to
the end of twenty sixteen. And that's because that's when
Joe Biden's influence during the course of the scheme, which
runs to twenty nineteen. You could arguably say it went
into twenty twenty, but it's during during that six year period.
(44:15):
The time when he's most influential, which means when his
influence is most saleable, when it's most valuable, is that
period from twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen, and in that
period we not only see the Barisma stuff. We see
the million that comes in from the Romanian guy. We
see the three and a half million that comes in
(44:35):
from the Russian billionaire who is the widow of the
Putin crony who was mayor rot Moscow. The Chinese payments,
you know, the two Chinese schemes, they both arise out of. Remember,
on the Bohai scheme, Hunter actually goes with Joe Biden
on Air Force two to Beijing to meet with the
guy to nail the agreement down. And on the CEFC stuff,
(44:59):
the pay meant start as a result of things that
go on twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. I think
it's really twenty fifteen twenty sixteen. So all of the
most egregious conduct is in that window when he's most valuable.
And one of the reasons we know that Lisa is
what happened the minute he was out of office. As
(45:20):
soon as he left office in twenty seventeen, Barisma slashed
Hunter's salary in half. I mean, it couldn't be more
crass that, Like, what they're paying for is access to
Biden and his influence. So all of this was always
done in a way to protect Biden. I've always said
that in the Justice Department's handling of what they call
(45:42):
the Hunter case, but was really the Biden investigation at
LEAs should have been. Hunter is the ancillary benefit, beneficiary
of the favorable treatment that the Justice Department wouldn't have
given anybody else. But their main mission at the Justice
Department was to protect the president. It so happened that like,
(46:04):
if they could protect the president and help Hunter at
the same time, they'd help Hunter. But the main thing
was to protect the president. So all of this was
about protecting Biden. All of it was about not ruining
the reelection effort. And the thing I think is so
precious for him to be coming out now talking about
(46:24):
the you know, the father's love for his son. You know,
I have sons, and I would probably be inclined if
I was the only person on the planet who had
the power to make criminal charges go away so that
my sons wouldn't go to jail. Would I use that power? Yes,
I think that, you know, the honorable thing to do
would be to resign after you do it, because it's
a terrible abuse of power and it's a violation of
(46:47):
your oath of office. But I think humanly we can
all understand this. Here's what you can understand if that's
the way Biden feels, If this is all about fatherly love,
how do you let your kid get indicted? How do
you let him go to trial not once but twice?
How do you put him through all of this public humiliation?
(47:08):
If that's what you're concerned about? But what did Hunter?
What did Biden prioritize here? He didn't prioritize Hunter. He
prioritized the twenty twenty four election campaign, and had if
it looked like they were giving Hunter the kind of
break that he ultimately gave Hunter, it would have been
(47:28):
catastrophic for the reelection campaign. So that's what he was
concerned about. It's always been about his own exposure, and
it's always been about the election campaign. And I'm not
saying he doesn't love the son. I mean, I'm sure
on some level he does, but this is a bunch
of crap. How like you know, the last you know,
the last weekend, it finally dawned on him that a
(47:50):
father's love compelled him to pardon. I mean, you're kidding me?
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Well, and then before we go also, I love how
he says he was selectively an unfairly prostate it when
you look at just on federal firearm convictions alone in
twenty twenty two, ninety four point two percent involved some
prison time. The median sentence was thirty nine months. He
had three convicted on three federal firearm charges. And then
that doesn't even include the tax charges. That doesn't include
(48:16):
things he wasn't charged with, like fair of violations where
he was accused of sex trafficking as well off for
communicating with prostitutes and coordinating their travel across state lines.
So that's like and that doesn't include the breathe right,
so that that's even like a gentle.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
This is a gentle. But before we go on.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Lisa can I yeah, yeah, but I just want to
say about your time, So yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
It's not.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
The gun thing makes me not. So I just want
to explain this one more time because his people are
out there again saying nobody gets prosecuted for this. And
I think even the Wall Street Journal suggested that in
its editorial there's a category of plight cases that by
the way, Joe Biden with his gun fanaticism when he
(49:01):
was in Congress. He was always a big critic of this.
But there's a category of cases in the Justice Department
which are called lied and tried cases or lieon try cases,
And what it involves is you fill out the form
that Hunter filled out. You make a false statement, but
(49:22):
in the interim between the time you fill out the
form and the time that you're supposed to get the gun,
they find out that you've lied. So they find out
that you're not eligible because you're a prior felon, or
you have a protective order, or there's been some other
disability that's been lodged on the public record that would
make it illegal for you to have a gun. If
(49:43):
you find those things out in the interim between filling
out the form and getting the gun, the person doesn't
get the gun. And that's why we call them lion
try cases. And the Justice Department is always rationalized, oh, well,
you know, look, we have limited prosecutorial resources and the
guy didn't get the gun anyway, so we're not going
to indict that case. Hunter's case is not a lie
(50:06):
in try case. Hunter's cases a lie get the gun
and then lose it. Across the street from a school case,
that kind of thing that gets prosecuted every single time.
And the only other thing I would say about it
is indications to me have always been I've never gotten
a satisfactory answer about this. I think there's two guns.
(50:26):
I don't think there's one. The gun that they do
the plea deal to is the revolver. But the gun
that you see in the salacious pictures that the like,
for example, ran in the New York Post, which were
in the same timeframe, that's a glock. That's not a revolver.
So unless that was a phony gun, which I don't
have any reason to think it was, there were two
guns here.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
Interesting, good point, great observation.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
I mean, he's probably guilty for like millions of crimes,
but to an exaggeration, but probably hundreds. But all right,
so before we go, last question, does Joe Biden pardon himself?
Speaker 3 (51:01):
Yeah, so, I don't think so. But I think the
logic of the pardon is you have to pardon everybody
else who's a principal player in the influence peddling scheme,
meaning Jim and the you know, the associates who took
in the money from the foreigners and then whacked it
up into smaller amounts to sluice him through the Biden accounts.
The reason I don't think Biden has to pardon himself.
(51:25):
And by the way, Biden has had a meeting with Trump, right,
we don't have any idea what they discussed in any
of that stuff, so they who knows, they could even
there could be an understanding between them for all we know.
But Trump said many times that no former prosecutor, no
former president, should ever have to go through what he
had to go through. And it would have been very
(51:48):
messy for Trump coming into office if the Biden Justice
Department had decided to leave the two federal prosecutions against
Trump open, only for the Trump administration and the Trump
Justice Department to try to have to convince Judge chuck
In to let them dismiss the case. That would be
a messy litigation. I hes Trump won, and especially given
(52:14):
the depth of the breath of the win and the
fact that the Republicans are going to control both houses
of Congress, there was no upside to continuing with that case.
But it could have been messy and politically difficult for
Trump to have to dismiss the charges himself. Biden has
caused them to be dismissed. Those two cases are gone,
and I'm sure Trump appreciates that. And the other thing is,
(52:35):
you know, you have a situation here where in connection
with the classified documents, a federal prosecutor examined that and
found that Biden was too mentally compromised at this point
to be worth prosecuting, that it would be difficult to
take them to trial. I just think with that combination
(52:56):
of stuff, I don't see I don't see the Trump
Justice Department going after former President Biden at that point.
But I think the other guys. The only logic, the
only thing that makes sense to me after Hunter's pardon
is you have to pardon those other guys because Hunter's
pardon is so sweeping that he now has no Fifth
(53:19):
Amendment privilege. So if they're really worried about the Trump
Justice Department, they could throw Hunter into the grand jury
and ask him about all of the potential crimes in
the Biden influence peddling stuff that the Biden Justice Department
averted their eyes from, and they can ask about all
(53:39):
the people who never got charged with anything. So he's
got no basis to say I refuse to testify because
I'm worried about incriminating myself. His Fifth Amendment is gone,
so I don't see how you just pardon him and
not the other guys.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Interesting, I think we can all agree that Joe Biden
will not be getting a data the ear mug for
Annie McCarthy, prief of your time. I always learned so
much from you. It's always such an interesting conversation. So
love having you on and just really appreciate your time.
Speaker 3 (54:11):
Thanks so much, Lisea. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (54:13):
That was any McCarthy. Appreciate him for giving us his time.
Always so interesting. I always learn a lot. Appreciate you
guys at home for listening every Monday and Thursday, but
you can listen throughout the week. Don't think John Cassio
and my producer for putting the show together.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Until next time.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show News
Hosts And Creators
Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
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