Andy McCarthyโs Theory on How the Bidens Could Skate
29 Apr 2022
BUCK: Our friend Andy McCarthy with us now. He is at National Review, also a Fox News contributor, and spent over 20 years as an assistant U.S. attorney at the Southern District, the mighty Southern District of New York. Andy, thanks for calling in. Andy?
MCCARTHY: Buck.
BUCK: There he is! Good to have you. So, tell me this. Iโll start with one of the big ones, then we can get into some of the details. Why shouldnโt there be a special counsel assigned to look into Hunter Biden and possible corruption and payment to Joe Biden, whether he was vice president or whatever? Whatโs the case for, whatโs the case against?
MCCARTHY: Well, the case against โ which Iโve made any number of times before I was radicalized by the intolerable double standard on this, and I say that, Buck, simply because we all that know if Biden were a Republican, there would have been a special counsel, like, three years ago, right? But the good reason not to have one is that the institution is a pernicious institution, that is the institution of the special counsel.
It doesnโt function like an ordinary prosecutor. It targets one target. Most prosecutors, if they donโt have time to make a case, they close the file and move to the next case. Special counsels notoriously, you know, spend too much money and too much time and they generate a lot of process crimes. Those are crimes that are caused by the investigation instead of the crime the investigation is meant for. So thereโs a lot of downsides to it.
And, you know, to the extent that people delude themselves into thinking that special counsels are independent, theyโre not. They report to the Justice Department because in our system, ultimately prosecution is a executive responsibility. So they have to report โ in order to be constitutional, they have to report โ to the attorney general and ultimately the president. So those are the downsides.
The upsides are thereโs a regulation that the Justice Department is bound by, and you can say itโs a good regulation or a bad regulation. The fact is itโs a regulation and theyโre supposed to follow it, and it says that anytime the Department of Justice has a conflict of interest in a case where it is in the public interests to have an investigation, youโre supposed to have a special counsel.
And weโre dealing with a situation in which the Biden Justice Department is investigating the Bidens. And I think one of the real downsides here is people should stop referring to this as โthe Hunter Biden investigation.โ Hunter Biden and his taxes are the least significant element of this investigation. And we already know that a number of the Bidens are involved in it.
Thatโs not saying that a number of the Bidens are guilty of felonies. I havenโt said that but certainly their conduct is obviously part of whatโs being investigated here, if the public reporting is accurate that what the Justice Department is looking into are these streams of payments from foreign sources, including regimes that are hostile to the United States, millions and millions of dollars that went into the Biden family coffers.
BUCK: Andy, what about this investigation โ โcause I think we can both assume safely that the Biden DOJ is not going to.. (chuckles) Itโs not going to assign a special prosecutor to look at Joe Bidenโs possible felony activity with regard to his son or any of that, right? Is it safe to say you think thereโs no chance of that?
MCCARTHY: Well, I think thereโs very little chance of that unless thereโs a significant change in the political climate, including if the Democrats decide that, you know, Bidenโs a lost cause and heโs not a hill worth dying on or something like this. But I agree with you, Buck, the chances of them appointing one when they havenโt up until now, and when their storyline is that the U.S. attorney in Delawareโฆ
And, by the way, I have no reason to question that the U.S. attorney Delaware seems like a fine guy. Everyone Iโve talked to tells me heโs a straight arrow. Heโs much more like Durham than Mueller, Iโm told. So this is not an indictment of him, and the other thing is, I donโt mean to go on about this, Buck, but โ
BUCK: Itโs all right. My next question was about that guy and whatโs happening there, but keep going. So โ
MCCARTHY: Yeah, well, what I was gonna say is, you know, Garland in his Senate testimony the other day got very indignant as if, โYou know, you donโt trust me to do the right thing here? How dare you!โ And as you and I know from law enforcement, we donโt rely, in our system, on the integrity of officials for investigations to function properly. We hope we get officials with integrity, but we enact regulations and rules in order to take that out of the hands of the people who are making decisions.
And the thing is not whether we trust Garland or not โ and, you know, look, I think the Justice Departmentโs been politicized enough under Biden that thereโs a lot of good reasons not to trust him. But, you know, Iโm willing to say, you know, that Garlandโs a reasonably honest guy. The point is we have a regulation because the Justice Department is supposed to strive for a standard of avoiding the appearance of impropriety.
So it doesnโt matter whether we trust Garland or not. What matters is, thereโs a regulation. Are they following it? And when Garland says, โThere isnโt going to be political interference,โ my answer to that is, โThereโs already political interference because thereโs a clear regulation, and heโs not following it โ and the only reason heโs not following it is politics.โ
BUCK: Yeah. Speaking to Andy McCarthy, everybody, NationalReview.com for his latest. Andy, do you think on this investigation that specifically Hunter Biden, if they really have multiple felonies that are provable and that the evidence is, you know, beyond a reasonable doubt that thereโs a problem here, do you think that thereโs a future in which they actually would bring charges against the sitting presidentโs son given all the factors at play?
MCCARTHY: Yes, and hereโs why, Buck. And this is actually a cynical answer even though Iโฆ So I want to make sure I let everybody down easy before I start, right? Hereโs the interesting thing. The most interesting thing about the Biden investigation is the streams of money from foreigners and people who are connected to these corrupt and hostile and anti-American regimes and the millions of dollars are going to the Bidens.
So theyโre looking at this as money laundering. Theyโre looking at it as, โDid the violate the legal obligation to register as a foreign agent if youโre doing business for foreign persons and entities and regimes and all that stuff?โ Thatโs the interesting stuff. But what I would caution people is they keep saying that this is an investigation into Hunter Bidenโs taxes.
And just to give a little inside baseball here: In almost every kind of investigation in the United States, the district United States attorney runs the investigation with very little interference from main Justice, which is the Justice Department in Washington. A big exception to that is tax investigation. Tax investigations are run by tax division at main Justice.
Regardless of whether, you know, the U.S. attorney is investigating other times that tax division doesnโt have authority over, because you have to get approval from main Justice tax division to bring charges. So I think that no matter what we think of Weiss in Delaware, the U.S. attorney, we ought to bear in mind the fact that thereโs an unusual amount of main Justice supervision over this, number one.
And number two, I could easily see a situation โ because no one in America cares about tax evasion. Everybody has known who cares about informing himself, that Hunter Biden has tax problems. They go back. He had liens on his properties in, you know, 2017, โ18, โ19, whenever they started. But this has been well known for a long time and itโs been reported that heโs paid some back taxes.
Because I think his counsel has advised him that, you know, the best way to try to avoid being prosecuted โ or if you are prosecuted to get a light sentence โ is to make sure you pay your back taxes back. I could easily see a situation where they drag this out โ tax investigations are notoriously slow โ and ultimately they take a guilty plea from him on a year or two of tax evasion, and they sew it up without doing any of the money laundering, without doing any of the foreign agent registration and without getting into the Biden family implications of it.
And this way the Justice Department can say, โSee? We prosecuted the presidentโs son.โ Biden, the president, can say, โSee? I didnโt interfere.โ And in the end, theyโll be able to say there was a prosecution, but it wonโt be about anything that anybody thinks is particularly important here.
BUCK: You think if that happens, Andy, you just get the president commuting the sentence of his son on the tax charge? Does he pardon? How would you see that playing out?
MCCARTHY: You know, I think Bidenโฆ Hunterโs not again get a big sentence for tax evasion, Buck, under circumstances where heโs paid the back taxes. I mean, the money items here in terms of prosecution are money laundering. Thatโs where the real penalties are. I think, you know, heโs gonna go before the court and theyโre gonna clean him up and heโs gonna say, โIโm a (crosstalk).โ
BUCK: So you think maybe he does a couple weeks at climb club fed or a halfway house or whatever, the Biden administration says, โYeah, look at us! Weโre so honorable,โ and then all the big stuff just fades away?
MCCARTHY: I do. I think thereโs a very real possibility of that, and Iโm not sure so sure, Buck, that even if there were a special prosecutor, that that doesnโt happen. Because, again, to say what I said at the beginning, there should be. If weโre gonna treat everybody equally, there should be a special prosecutor here because they have always have one in a Republican situation.
But its remember: Special counsels answer to the attorney general and ultimately to the president. And they have to follow Justice Department rules which would mean they presumably have to follow tax division guidance. So special counsel is hardly a perfect solution here period of time.
BUCK: Andy, just before we let you go, Iโm wondering: Do you hold out that thereโs any real possibility of big stuff coming in the Durham investigation or has it just dragged on so long, so far that itโs gonna go out with a whimper and not a bang? Where do you think thatโs likely to fall?
MCCARTHY: Buck, in the last couple of weeks in the lead-up to the Sussman trial, which is supposed to start, I think, May 16th, what Durham has said is he still has a pending, open investigation. He hasnโt decided whether to indict a case for fraud against the United States. He has theorized that there was a fraud against the United States which was basically driven by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
But he has said he hasnโt made up his mind about things like whether the information on this ALFA Bank stuff that they brought to the FBI and to the CIA, whether it was simply insufficient to predicate an investigation or whether it was actually fraudulent, that they fabricated stuff to make it look worse than it was. I donโt know why he hasnโt decided that up until now โ seems to me itโs been a long time โ but he does say heโs still looking at it.
BUCK: So itโs not over yet, Andy. Is that fair to say? I mean, in a meaningful way itโs not over yet.
MCCARTHY: According to Durham himself, heโs told the court that, you know, they wanted immunity for this tech executive who worked with Sussman โ the defense did โ because they want to call him as a witness. And Durham says, โIโm not immunizing him. Heโs still subject of investigation. We havenโt decided whether to charge him yet or not.โ
BUCK: All right. Andy, weโll have you back to talk more about it as it develops. Andy McCarthy, everybody. Andy, thanks so much.
MCCARTHY: Thank you, Buck.
Recent Stories

Karol Markowicz Shines Light on the Latest Leftist Attacks on Israel and Tesla
The C&B Podcast Network host weighs in on several of today's breaking news stories.

VIP Video: The Issue With Democrat Sanctuary Cities
Watch Buck break down Tom Homan's battle to deport illegal alien criminals, while Democrat politicians try to protect them.

Health & Wellness with Buck: Walking Works
Buck takes a short departure from the news of the day to discuss his recent 35-pound weight loss and one of the simple life changes that helped him.

VIP Video: Don't Let the Trump-Hating Media Panic Your Economic Outlook
President Trump is doing big things to fix the economy -- and inflation is already coming down.

Buck's Deep Dive Into the Trump Tariffs
Watch Buck clearly and simply explain how the Trump tariffs are designed to work and why they're necessary.