Miranda Devine Answers the “Why Now?” Question

CLAY: Miranda, thanks for joining us. Right off the top, I’m gonna suck up a little bit.

DEVINE: (chuckles)

CLAY: I think you and your Post colleagues deserve, like, 10 years of retroactive Pulitzer Prizes, since the Pulitzer was rewarded for all those Russian collusion stories that didn’t have any basis in reality and your story is suddenly being confirmed everywhere. What do you attribute the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, ABC, CNN, NBC, to suddenly deciding after 18 months, “Oh, this story’s kind of a big deal and the laptop is real?” Why is it happening now?

DEVINE: Hi, Clay and Buck. Look, I think it’s pretty clear that the U.S. attorney in Delaware which has been investigating Hunter Biden for tax evasion and money laundering and violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act — pretty hefty crimes if they were committed, those are pretty hefty allegations — and they’ve been investigating him since 2018, and it looks as if it may be coming to fruition fairly soon.

We know now that Hunter Biden’s business partners have gone and have been subpoenaed and appeared. We know Devon Archer, one of his former business partners, testified and handed over documents. And we know that his baby mama and another ex-girlfriend also appeared. So all of that put together, I think, is making the rest of the media that ignored our story for the last 18 months realize that they don’t (chuckles) want to blind side their audiences, that they need to actually soften them up and prepare them for what may be coming down the pike.

And that’s the only reason. They’re still running interference for Joe Biden. You know, both CNN and the Washington Post have almost identical sort of disclaimers in their stories in the last few days saying, “There’s no evidence that Joe Biden was involved,” which is ridiculous because we know the Washington Post has the laptop — it has possession of the laptop — and there’s plenty of evidence there.

BUCK: Miranda, I wanted to ask you specifically about that. You know, we mentioned the last hour when we brought you on, we posed to you, to put it in shorthand, the “10% for The Big Guy” line — a lot of people know that one from Hunter’s communications about kicking money off to Joe Biden. What is… I mean, to the extent that we have information, evidence already, what is there at least pointing in the direction of a real financial connection, not just to Hunter Biden, we know about that, but to Joe Biden himself?

DEVINE: Well, let’s just start very basically. Joe Biden lied to the American people — that is a fact and is proven by the evidence — because he said before the election, several times to the media, he said, “I know nothing about my son Hunter’s business dealings.” He hadn’t met with any of the Hunter’s partners, so-called. Yet there is so much evidence of all the partners that he met from all over the world. He met them in Beijing; he met them in Washington D.C.

So that’s a lie. Then you come to the financial entanglements. We know — and it’s circumstantial. We know that Hunter Biden complained, basically complained that he had to give half his salary to his father. We know that there are emails there showing that part of one Chinese deal where 10% was going to The Big Guy. We know from Tony Bobulinski, who is one of Hunter’s former business partners, who gave a press conference before the election campaign that was ignored by that section of the media.

We know that he has said that Joe Biden is The Big Guy. That was the way Hunter described his father. They sort of spoke in code about Joe Biden, but he was The Big Guy, he was “my chairman,” Hunter called him. And Joe was told about all these deals. He knew about them. Hunter was in contact with him every day. And so that’s that. And then we also know that there was some mingling of finances.

So, you know, a shared debited card, shared bank account — this is from Hunter’s own words on the laptop — and also there is an email from one of Hunter’s business partners, a guy who used to run all the details of his life, basically, ’cause Hunter was a crack addict. And this guy, Eric Schwerin, talks about taking money out of an account — like a special account of Hunter’s — to pay for, you know, Joe Biden’s maintenance and upkeep and renovations on his house.

This was, you know, $10,000 here, $2,000 there. Not huge amounts of money, but also paying an AT&T phone bill every month. Hunter was paying one of Joe’s phone bills. So that’s the tip of the iceberg. I think that’s all the evidence that we have. But it’s enough. It shows that there is money going from Hunter to Joe, that Joe was being talked about as getting cuts of deals, and that they had commingled finances. I mean, what more do you need?

CLAY: Miranda, all this detail is great, and I know you’ve been covering this story now for a long time. A couple of questions: Do we know if Tony Bobulinski has been called by the grand jury to testify in the Hunter Biden investigation? Second part of this question —

DEVINE: I can’t answer that.

CLAY: Do you know the answer to that one?

DEVINE: I do.

CLAY: Has he testified?

DEVINE: I can’t answer that.

CLAY: Ah. Well, that is intriguing. So second part of this: If Tony Bobulinski is testifying, and even if he does not, what you mentioned as it pertains to Joe Biden is he’s lied. He’s certainly lied to the American public.

DEVINE: Yes.

CLAY: Lying to the American public is not a crime, right?

DEVINE: No.

CLAY: But if Joe Biden were called to testify as a witness in this Hunter Biden grand jury investigation, he would be put under oath, and he would be asked about all of these emails, The Big Guy emails, the commingling of the finances, potentially meeting some of these business partners with Chinese interests and Ukrainian interests. Do we think that Joe Biden might be subpoenaed himself as a witness in the Hunter Biden investigation? Have you heard any intimation that that might occur?

DEVINE: No, I haven’t. All I know is that the Republicans are talking about investigating this and using the laptop as a road map.

CLAY: Yes.

DEVINE: And I know I spoke to Ron Johnson yesterday. You know, he talks about — he and Chuck Grassley did incredible work, but the laptop’s not enough. You need also the information that Tony Bobulinski had given to the FBI, his testimony, but also what Ron Johnson, Chuck Grassley did.

CLAY: Yes.

DEVINE: Now, that’s what the Republicans will do. They will build on already an immense amout of very useful financial information, tracking the money for some of these deals. And as Ron Johnson tells the story — he told me yesterday — that the obstruction from the Democrats was one thing. You know, calling it Russian disinformation, accusing him and Grassley of being Kremlin stooges, organizing these fake FBI briefings and leaking them to the press.

That’s bad enough. But really what stymied their investigation when the Republicans had control was their own Republican senators who got squeamish, thought that the investigation into Hunter Biden was too political. Who knows what relationships they had? Maybe they felt sorry for Joe Biden, their family member used to be a senator.

But Mitt Romney and Rob Portman, both Republican senators, just refused to go along with some of these subpoenas that Ron Johnson wanted to give.

Ron Johnson wanted to subpoena Hunter Biden and Devon Archer and these people. So, if the Republicans themselves do not hold together as a team after the midterms, then forget about it.

This is the problem. You have Republicans who are squeamish, in that party and for whatever reason are helping to protect Joe Biden. And it’s just not right. And if they hadn’t obstructed their own comrade in Ron Johnson, then these stories about Joe Biden would have already come on the public record and history would have been changed. Joe Biden probably wouldn’t be president today.

BUCK: Miranda, first of all, everyone should go get the book, Laptop From Hell — Miranda Devine’s book that’s out now, been out for a while. Where do you see all this going? What can you tell us about what you’re expecting in the weeks ahead? ‘Cause I know some people who saw the laptop hard drive mirror in the early days who are telling me now, “There’s a lot more coming.”

DEVINE: Yeah. Well, I’m not sure there’s a lot more in the laptop.

BUCK: No, no. (chuckles) I mean about the Hunter Biden case in general.

DEVINE: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Hunter Biden… (sigh) You know, I guess the most likely thing is that there will be indictments coming out of that grand jury of Hunter Biden. Also, I’m told that half the focus of the questioning from that grand jury has been on Blue Star Strategies, which is that Democratic lobbying firm which was basically dragged in by Hunter and Devon Archer into their Burisma dealings, that corrupt Ukrainian energy company.

Blue Star Strategies was doing some lobbying on behalf of Burisma, allegedly, and that would put them in violation of the FARA act, which is FARA, which is, you know, Foreign Agent Registration Act. You’re supposed to register as a foreign agent if you’re doing lobbying for overseas companies. And this is a little-used crime until the Trump World. It started being weaponized against Trump World.

And you had Paul Manafort who was part of Trump’s campaign who went to jail over it, and Oregon, Tom Barack, there are some allegations there he is being caught up in investigation to do with FARA. And FARA is being weaponized against Rudy Giuliani. So, this is now regarded as a serious crime with serious penalties. So Blue Star Strategies, there are allegations about that. So I think something momentous will come out of that grand jury. Who knows when, but certainly they’ve been hearing testimony from Hunter’s partners since at least last summer.

CLAY: Miranda, Buck and I have a steak bet on this.

BUCK: No. She already weighed in!

CLAY: He’s getting increasingly nervous.

BUCK: She thinks he’s happening. She’s already… She’s gonna be sitting here across the table.

CLAY: I just want to make this clear. I’m betting a steak that he will get indicted. Buck doesn’t think he will. Would you take my side or Buck’s side in the bet here?

DEVINE: Well, I would take your side, only because I think the evidence is pretty overwhelmingly, and I think there’s so much people looking at this story that it would be such a terrible blow to the kind of reputation of the U.S. attorney in Delaware that I’m not sure that they’re gonna let Hunter off the hook. But what I think might happen is that Blue Star Strategies might take precedence and take up a lot of the media time, and maybe Hunter will get lesser charges. I mean, there’s talk of — in the New York Times in fact where they’ve rehearsed his defense. There was talk of downgrading criminal charges for FARA to civil charges registered retroactively.

BUCK: Just to be clear our bet is that it has to be criminal charges there, Miranda. We’ll see. I don’t think so.

DEVINE: Ah! Ah! Okay.

CLAY: (chuckles)

DEVINE: Well, I’m sitting on the fence here, then, in that case. I mean, other people, he’s paid a million… He borrowed a million dollars from some generous benefactor to pay his taxes, but he did it after the investigation had started. And with mere mortals like you and me if we do that, it doesn’t get us off the hook.

BUCK: Does not indeed. That’s true. All right, Miranda, thanks so much. Laptop from Hell is the book, everybody. Go check it out. Thanks, Miranda.

DEVINE: Thank you, Buck.

CLAY: You and your compatriots. You guys deserve 10 Pulitzers.