Hunter's Irony-Clad Case, Biden's Middle East Mess, Stealth F-35 Gone Missing

Join Jim and Greg as they consider the unintended consequences of Hunter Biden's suit against the IRS, alleging the whistleblowers on his case violated his privacy. He seems to be grasping for straws but could he actually end up strengthening protections for the rest of us against the IRS? They're also disgusted as Iran follows up last week's embarrassing Biden administration concessions by kicking a bunch of United Nations weapons inspectors out of the country and Saudi Arabia tells the U.S. is is ending consideration of normalizing relations with Israel. Finally, they're thankful the pilot is safe and have some fun with the U.S. military asking the public to find a missing stealth F-35.


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Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch grubsstool next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America
and Jim Garritty of National Review.Three Martini's coming up. Hey, really
glad you're with us for the Mondayedition of the Three Martini Lunch. We
trust you can all read NFL scoreboards, so we'll stop on that topic for
now and move right to our goodMartini and Jim. This is one of

(00:27):
those I of the Beholder Martini's.On the surface, it's not that great
because really this is about the doublestandard of whistleblowers and Hunter Biden is trying
to sue the two IRS whistleblowers whoare claim that the Justice Department was interfering
on his behalf. And it's quitethe contrast to what you see when whistle
blowers come forward against her Republican administrationsand so forth. But the Hunter Biden

(00:50):
lawsuit is thus, according to FoxNews, his attorneys have filed a lawsuit
against the IRS, alleging that agentshave targeted and sought to embarrass their words.
The President's son. The Monday Morningfiling sites two major examples and IRS
agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziggler twowhistleblowers who claimed the IRS mishandled aspects of

(01:10):
the investigation in du Biden. Biden'slawsuit seeks for the court to declare that
the IRS quote willfully, knowingly andor by gross negligence unlawfully disclosed mister Biden's
confidential tax information unquote. In addition, Biden is demanding a thousand dollars in
damages for quote, each and everyunauthorized disclosure of his tax returns, and
so jev I don't know exactly howmuch traction this will get. It seems

(01:34):
like a distraction in this particular instance. Although I don't consider myself an expert
on this law, but we've alsoseen tax information from people on the right
just happened to show up in thepress. I think of pro publica and
other things that have happened over theyears. So if we can actually get
a court ruling that really punishes theIRS, if there is illegal activity going

(01:59):
on here, ultimately that could endup helping quite a few people in the
long run. Yeah. The reasonI put this in Today's Good Martini is
partially, you know, irony isso thick you could choke on it,
but also just kind of the ideathat it looked for in the coming year.
Hunter Biden will be arguing that theInternal Revenue Service abuses its powers,
that it has no internal safeguards,that it picks on people that it and

(02:22):
just kind of exposes their information withoutregard for constitutional rights or rules or laws
or regulations or anything like that.At the exact same time, I presume
Joe Biden will be defending himself froma Republican opponent, probably Donald Trump that
remains to be seen, arguing thatyou know, Joe Biden is arguing that
the IRS needs those eighty thousand newmembers, and the IRS is good,

(02:45):
and the IRS deserves more fundering,and we need to we need to crack
down on tax sheets and all thatkind of stuff. Well, we'll wait
a second. You know, yourown son is saying the institution is corrupt
and abusive and doesn't you know,and reckless and negligent and all of these
things. And you can also kindof make an argument that you know,
at the same time, Joe Bidenwill be running effectively on gun control and

(03:05):
the idea of cracking down on illegalguns and things like that. And you
know, his son has been indictedon three different charges related to this,
So I kind of, you know, I was thinking about this in the
context of the should Biden be replaced? Will Biden be replaced? You hear
more Democrats getting nervous, the DavidIgnatius column, things like that. I
mean, what democrats are in areblind to, or in denial of,

(03:28):
or pretending they don't see, isthat Joe Biden. Yeah, he's got
the name, he's an incumbent president. Yeah he's got name recognition. Yes,
he's already won a presidential race.But he also has some really unique
weaknesses. And one of them ishis age. He turns eighty one in
November. And the other major,really unique weakness is his son, who
not only like you know, hasassociated with every conceivable scandal, you know,

(03:50):
pregnancy strippers, all that kind ofstuff, but also like he's got
this ongoing issue on two issues,guns and taxes, in which Hunter Biden
is effectively the position of the position. It's arguing the irs cannot be trusted
and the enforcement of these gun lawsviolated Second Amendment rights. I mean,
how ironic is that? You know, you take, you know, any

(04:11):
generic democratic governor of any swing state, they don't have these problems. They
have other problems, but they knowthis is Joe Biden is heading into this
general election with some giant glaring youknow, like when it's your own family
members, that that makes it ajuicy story. So we will see how
this shakes out over the you know, following year. But it just kind
of seems like it's particularly Hunter Bidenisn't just you know, in hot water

(04:34):
and facing trouble with the law.And also he's also making the defenses that
are about as damaging to the Bidenadministration's public policy arguments as he possibly could.
So what you're saying is, withina cycle or two, we could
be running Hunter Biden on a Republicanline for pro gun, he's anti taxes,
it's always up for a good timethe libertarian. Yeah, there's there's

(04:55):
a lews. Wait, there's anart to his his life a pretty penny.
Oh that's good. Here's the lessfunny takeaway here, though, obviously,
if it's the IRS, I assumeit's got to be a federal charge,
although I guess not he's privately suingthe IRS. But with the IRS
and the Justice Department and there Idon't know, inconsistent standards let's say sometimes

(05:16):
with what we see, could thisend up favoring Hunter Biden but not Joe
Public. Yeah. You know,my guess is at some point it's like
the temptation within the IRS or withinthese department doj will be quick, Let's
find some pleading. That's kind ofwhat we saw so far. You know,
let's get this off our desk.Let's get this out of the headlines
also. But that, of course, we just simply confirm people at the

(05:38):
Ultimately, the argument of Hunter Bidenis it, Yes, these institutions are
biased and they're biased against me,which is going to be a very tough
tough case to sell to the judge. All right, let's talk about our
bad martini now. And boy wasthere a long list of horrible options for
the bad martini today, from Trump'sabortion comments to the latest revelations from China

(05:58):
and so forth. But the onewe're going to jump on here today is
Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Bidenadministration. You might remember just last week
on nine to eleven, mind you, the Biden administration, through Secretary of
State Blinken unfroze six billion dollars inIranian assets as part of a prisoner swap,

(06:19):
and once again it certainly appears wegot the worst end of the deal.
These democratic administrations don't derive a veryhard bargain. But now we're already
seeing other consequences happening here, andthat is very frightening. First, let's
talk about Iran. Iran has nowinformed the IAEA, the UN's nuclear wing

(06:39):
International Atomic Energy Agency, that's withdrawingthe designation of several senior UN inspectors who
are working in the country. Thisis from Axios. The decision, they
say, is a significant escalation byIran that could hamper the IAEA's ability to
monitor Terron's nuclear program, which I'mpretty sure they're hiding from the i EA
anyway, since they can check militarysites and so forth. But nonetheless,

(07:02):
I don't think that comes as acoincidence. And if that weren't enough of
a punch in the gut, JimJerusalem Post reporting the US State Department's Bureau
of Near Eastern Affairs is denying reportsthat efforts to reach a normalization deal between
Saudi Arabia and Israel had been haltedon Monday. But that's not what Saudi
Arabia is saying. The Arab newsoutlet ILAF, according to The Jerusalem Post,

(07:26):
recently cited an unnamed Israeli official inthe Prime Minister's office as saying that
the saudiast had informed the Biden administrationof its decision to halt all talks of
normalizing ties with Israel on Monday andjim. While Saudi Arabia is not formally
part of the Abraham Accords, it'spretty obvious that they were more than fine
with Bahrain and UAE and some ofthe others re establishing ties with Israel.

(07:50):
Economics, travel, all sorts ofthings, and there was talk that eventually
the Saudias and the Israelis could getto that point. But apparently that's off
the table for now. So Jeffwith just within a week of this terrible
deal, they've got the Iranians kickingout the inspectors, and we've got the
Saudis saying, you know, what'sthe point? Talks are off here,
Greg, the idea of trading notjust six for six, but also throwing

(08:13):
in another six billion is such abad trade that my understanding is even Mike
Ditka has come out and said,Wow, that's a bad trade. Who
date Mike Ditka, who famously tradedall of his draft picks for Ricky Williams
and it did not work out wellfor the New Orleans Saints. Back then,
I would have used the herschel Walkertrade as a metaphor, except the
draft picks ended up helping the Cowboys, So maybe good So, you know,

(08:35):
bad trade metaphors. You know that, just putting it in there.
But does the Biden administration ever gettired of having sand kicked in its face?
Does it ever get tired of of, you know, making some significant
concession to the Iranian regime and thenthe regime turns around and then does something
else provocative like this, Like you'dthink, you know, okay, you
know we're gonna give you some We'regonna give you a six billion dollars and

(08:58):
then six of our guys, seeyour guys, but you can't pull a
stunt and then kick out the nuclearinspectors and ouran's gonna do it. We're
gonna do it anyway, We're gonnado it. We don't care. Clearly,
the Arainians don't fear crossing the Bidenadministration. They feel pretty good based
that, you know, if theyact more provocative they're going to get more
concessions, and that's based on history. That's a reasonable assumption. And now
regarding this, look, you know, I'm not gonna say getting peace between

(09:22):
the Israelis and the Saudiast was evergoing to be the easiest diplomatic initiative,
but it did seem like there wasa good progress headed in that direction as
the Trump administration came to a close. I'm reading the Franklin Fower book and
one of the interesting arguments, orone of the interesting aspects here was the
Biden administration apparently didn't want to touchthe Israeli Palestinian peace process with a ten

(09:43):
foot poll. And normally I'd sayokay, because we've seen lots of American
presidents try to make progress on thatfront. The American president cannot force peace
on these two sides. And whenI say these two sides, I really
mean the Palestinians. The Palestinians havehad one opportunity after another, one good
deal on the table after another,and they always turn it do because the
lesson of the Middle East is ifyou try to make peace with your enemies,

(10:03):
somebody on your side will shoot yousooner or later. So I could
applaud the Biden administration, saying,okay, we're not going to, you
know, make this the main focusof our foreign policy. But then,
having been said, the fact thatover the past two to three years,
all of that progress has evaporated,that nothing has gone right. You know,
this is an administration that went aroundand Biden was up on that stage
strutting and you know, boasting Americais back and you know all that.

(10:24):
You know, oh, things aregreat, well are they? Because you
know you're you're seeing backsliding. We'renow up to like four or five US
embassies that have been evacuated. It'snot a great foreign policy. Things aren't
going great. And you know,it just seems like you lo and behold
the old Obama habit of just makingbigger and bigger concessions to Iran and hoping
that this makes them act more reasonably. It's still in place. It's getting

(10:45):
the exact same lousier results. ButBiden doesn't want to change his mind.
No, I think it just boilsdown to whatever the last guy I did,
We're gonna undo. And that's nota real smart thing. I mean,
some policies if you strenuously disagree withit, sure. I mean,
we can presidents do that too.But it was working. It was working
in a way that we had notseen in generations, if ever, in

(11:09):
the Middle East. And because Bidenand kind of the old crowd on the
diplomatic side are just absolutely convinced thatPalestinian statehood or palest two state solution,
whatever they want to call it,is the Keita jumping off point to Middle
East piece, and you can't doit any other way. It's just I
just want to bang your head intothe desk. I mean, obviously that's

(11:30):
not working. And it looked likethe Abraham acchords were all right, Jim
onto our crazy Martini now. Andon one level, this is somewhat comical.
On another level, it's kind offrightening. We got a tweet yesterday
about little after five thirty from Jointbased Charleston, and it says we're working
with Marine Corps Airstation Beaufort, SouthCarolina to locate an F thirty five that

(11:54):
was involved in a mishap this afternoon. The pilot ejected, safely, if
you have any information that may helpour recovery teams locate the F thirty five,
please call the base. Defense OperationsCenter and then it gives the phone
number Jim. Obviously, we're thrilledat the pilot is going to be okay
and safely ejected. There should beways of tracking where this plane ended up,

(12:16):
because there's sensitive technology on this thingand we need to make sure we
get it before somebody else does.But apparently the homing pigeon here hasn't worked,
right, Greg, Greg, Greg, you have to understand that on
the F thirty five is very veryvery stealth, really stealth, really so

(12:37):
stealthy that even we can't keep trackof where it is. It's probably something
akin to Wonder Woman's invisible jet.You just can't see it. That's why
it's really hard when they say thisthing can't be found on rate, can't
be tracked on radar or anything else. It really can't be tracked in radar
or anything else. I just wishthat the person running the base was named
Yuri, so at some point USofficial could just gonna lower the glasses,

(13:03):
let out a sigh and say,Urie, have you lost another warplanep on
for Red October. I imagine thisthing must have gone out over the ocean,
and just because because like I lovethis announcement, as if like they're
gonna say, hey, could youcheck your backyard? Could could you?
Just everybody just gotta look around andsee. You know, it may have
sounded like a branch coming down froma tree, but it turns out it

(13:26):
was an F thirty five that wentdown like that. I have a sneaking
feeling that you know, you'd beif if it landed anywhere near you or
crashed anywhere near you, you'd hearit. Nonetheless, because it's beautiful,
not far from where mom and dadlive. I did call Dad yesterday to
see if he could check, andhe said, no, Jim, no
jets showed up anywhere yesterday. Verygood, very good, like some because

(13:48):
the other again, it's kind ofbe the ocean, because like, if
it crashed anywhere, we'd notice,right, I mean, yes, that's
what makes this say like in someways, like it's a very unfortunate story
to lose a very expensive warfighter.On the other hand, there's something kind
of hilarious that like, yeah,we lost it, and it's it's somewhere
we don't know. I guess wecame down. I get. The point

(14:11):
is that the other guys can't seeit, but shouldn't we be able to
see it on some level? Youknow they're now putting up lost and found
signs. Have you seen this stepthirty five? There sides of milk cartons?
Where's Waldo books? All? Youknow? The meme potential here is
fantastics. It is it is Iknow you know who this is, Jim.
Other folks who listen, hopefully theyneed too, Iowa Hawk blog on

(14:35):
Twitter. Always always fun for storieslike this. He says, gray with
white spots, approximately twenty four thousandpounds answers to the name stealthy. I
would also point out that apparently they'reoffering one hundred dollars for the return of
the jets. I don't even wantto know how much it costs to make
that thing, but anyway, hopefullywe find it soon before it's not funny

(14:58):
anyway. Je a good start tothe week. See tomorrow, See you
tomorrow, Greg, Jim Garretty,National Review. I'm Greg Corumbus of Radio
America. Thanks so much for beingwith us today. Do subscribe to the
podcast if you don't already, andtell some friends about us as well.
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(15:20):
on X He's at Jim Garretty,I'm at Dateline Underscore DC. Have a
terrific Monday, and join us againon Tuesday for the next three Martini Lunch