--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Matt Viser: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Matt Viser, a reporter for The Washington Post, joins me today to discuss President Joe Biden's decision to pardon his son Hunter. Matt, let's start with the basics. What does this pardon mean for Hunter Biden?
--:-- Matt Viser: It basically absolves him from all the legal cloud that's been around him for the past several years. It's a pretty broad pardon that protects him from any legal prosecution over almost a decade-long period from 2014 up until Sunday night at midnight.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Can you remind us where the cases against Hunter Biden stood as of Saturday?
--:-- Matt Viser: There were two cases that were immediately before him. One of them, he had been convicted by a jury in Delaware over the summer. He was charged with two felonies of lying on a federal form required to purchase a firearm in 2018, and then a third charge, also a felony, for being in possession of a firearm while abusing or being addicted to drugs. He could now face up to 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $750,000.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there was another case involving his tax returns and not paying taxes. Can you walk us through that?
--:-- Matt Viser: Yes, in that case, Hunter pled guilty to not paying taxes in September. And that one was scheduled to be sentenced the week after.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, he faced over the next two weeks sentencing for two different crimes in two different jurisdictions. What was the pressure on President Biden to make this decision?
--:-- Matt Viser: There was a longer-term pressure that comes in January when Donald Trump takes office. And that's why the pardon was so sweeping, where Joe Biden is basically trying to protect Hunter from being investigated for any other crimes that could have occurred over that period.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Joe Biden said he wasn't going to do this. His chief press officer said he wasn't going to do this. Can you remind us what exactly everyone was saying Joe Biden wouldn't do?
--:-- Matt Viser: Right after Hunter Biden was found guilty in Wilmington, Delaware, Joe Biden got on a plane and went to Italy for the Group of Seven summit. He had a press conference there where he stood next to the Ukrainian president, Zelensky, and we asked him, "Mr. President, you might have a duty to the Sunset." And Joe Biden said no, adamantly. He trusts the jury. He trusts the court of law. He trusts the Justice Department to do its job. And so he would not pardon or commute the sentence of his son.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Since that time period, more has happened. There's been another case involving his taxes that he pled guilty to. There's been an election. You know, Donald Trump won that election. So we've repeatedly asked Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, has anything changed for the president? Does he still commit to not pardoning his son or does his mind change at all based on different facts before him?
--:-- Matt Viser: She said, "It's still a no. It will be a no. It is a no." And I don't have anything else to add. Will he pardon his son? No. Up until Sunday night, that was the talking point from the White House.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, people generally around Joe Biden kind of expected him to do this just because of the family loyalty that eventually he would pardon his son, but the White House was pretty adamant that he would not. And that only makes it look worse for Joe Biden. Do we know what changed his mind or is that all conjecture?
--:-- Matt Viser: I don't know that his mind was ever fully on board with not pardoning his son. I mean, I think there is a sense of personal and psychological drama around the Biden family and particularly between Joe and his son Hunter to where most people expected something like this would happen. And it was only surprising that he was so adamant that he wouldn't do it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He came to this decision, we're told, over the weekend. Over the weekend, by the way, he was in Nantucket with Hunter, you know, with his family for Thanksgiving. Every year they go to Nantucket to celebrate the holiday together. So that's where Joe Biden came to this decision.
--:-- Matt Viser: That's right. And it's interesting because, you know, he always goes somewhere when he makes a decision.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How are Democrats responding to this decision?
--:-- Matt Viser: We're speaking to you late Monday. There is a lot of criticism from a lot of members of his party. Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, tweeted, "Well, as a father, I certainly understand President Joe Biden's natural desire to help his son by pardoning him. I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country."
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People are pointing out that this goes against what he has said. Joe Biden has talked about the rule of law. He's talked about nobody is above the law. He's often said, "My word is a Biden." So this goes against his word.
--:-- Matt Viser: And it does seem to put Hunter in a different category from other Americans who don't have the connections, the familial connections to the president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, I mean, he's getting criticized by a lot of members of his own party who also, quite frankly, worry about the precedent that this sets and what Donald Trump may do with this. You know, Donald Trump has talked about pardoning the rioters from January 6th. This kind of gives Trump cover to do some of those things is the worry of like sort of what Trump does with his own Justice Department in less than two months.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And since you brought him up, what's Donald Trump saying about this?
--:-- Matt Viser: I think he has a fondness for Hunter Biden. I mean, so Trump, it's worth pointing out just how fixated Trump has been on Hunter Biden, you know, for years and years. And, you know, he had the "Where's Hunter" line during the 2020 campaign.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, Trump is predictably upset about this decision Biden made. But when we talk about the precedent Biden is setting, is Biden setting the precedent or have presidents previously pardoned beloved friends, family members?
--:-- Matt Viser: There's certainly a long history of presidents, you know, in the final weeks of their time in office, pardoning people who are close to them. Bill Clinton, on his final day in office, pardoned his stepbrother for crimes related to cocaine. And, you know, Donald Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, who's Jared Kushner's father.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why was this pardon so far-reaching, making it an even bigger deal?
--:-- Matt Viser: So it covers a time period that basically encapsulates all of Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings. In 2014 is a time period where people may remember the word Burisma or maybe not. But Burisma was this Ukrainian gas company that Hunter Biden sat on the board of while his father was vice president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, it's clear that was among his chief concerns from the far-reaching nature of this past that Hunter Biden is getting by coincidence on presidential pardon my son eve future president Donald Trump who knows a thing or two about being a convicted felon announced his pick to lead the FBI.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was one of his most loyal loyalists, a guy named Kash Patel. We're going to tell you about him when we're back on Today Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, Today Explained, y'all, in granting a pardon to Hunter, a lot of people think Joe Biden is trying to protect him from hardcore Trump loyalists like Cash Patel, Trump's pick to lead the FBI.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: Elena Plot Calabro profiled Cash this past summer in The Atlantic in a piece titled The Man Who Will Do Anything for Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And back when she wrote it this summer, Cash was doing a lot. At one point, I just had to kind of put in a list the various things he had been engaged in post-administration to see if there was any through line whatsoever.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: And I can't say I found one, but I would say that he mirrors a lot of MAGA world in his interest in making money off of his connections with Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Who was Kash Patel before he became a Trump loyalist?
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: You know, most people I profile, if I see somewhere where they say where they're born, I typically take that at good faith.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But Kash Patel was different, however. I had come across several podcasts that he had done, media appearances, where he would say things like, the reason that he and Donald Trump get along so well is that they're both just a couple of guys from Queens.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: Kash Patel is, in fact, from Garden City, which, for those unfamiliar, is a pretty tony suburb on Long Island.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that, I think, kind of set the tone for what the reporting journey would be like in terms of learning who was this person, before he became the person we know he is today.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: He started at Pace Law School. That I think was really the place where he sort of decided what his career ambitions, what he wanted them to look like.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that was to, you know, work at a white-collar firm.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: By his count, he was rejected from the various firms he applied to post-graduation, but happened to get an offer from the Miami-Dade Public Defender's Office, which is really the most prestigious public defender's office in the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So a huge deal for him to, you know, get a spot there.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: So for the next decade, he would sort of go from there to the federal defender's office in Miami.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think learning about that chapter of his life was really instructive for me because talking to colleagues from both the state defender and the federal defender's office there in Miami, They pretty unanimously said that, you know, he was a basically capable, competent attorney, not tremendously political by any means or certainly not overtly so.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: And somebody who was pretty good on his feet, very good in a trial setting, not especially good with document-based things, discovery and kind of diving into statutes and whatnot.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But when it came to getting in front of a judge, I mean, he was often quite charming.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: And having read a lot of those transcripts myself on PACER, I can attest that he really did seem to have a kind of magic with some judges, as one of his colleagues put it to me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So in 2014, he receives an offer to join the counterterrorism section of the National Security Division at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: So he moves to Washington and essentially becomes involved in various cases to do with terrorism.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then he was not there very long before, only a few years before he came in contact with Congressman Devin Nunes.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: And that was, of course, his bridge to the House Intelligence Committee, the Russia investigation and his report on it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then from there, we see him go to the White House.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: Before we talk about what he does or doesn't accomplish in the first Trump administration, you make a big deal in your profile of him about this one time he forgot to wear a tie to court.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you seem to suggest that this was like a foundational moment for him.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: That's right. It really was formative for him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: While he was working for the Department of Justice as a prosecutor in the National Security Division, he had gone to Tajikistan to interview witnesses in a terrorism case that he was working on.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: While he was there, a federal judge in Houston calls a surprise hearing for a case unrelated to the one he's currently working on in Tajikistan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But at any rate, he has to get to Texas within 24 hours or so.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: So he had only brought slacks and a button-down on his trip to Tajikistan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So as he's en route to Houston, he reaches out to the U.S. attorney's office there and he says, hey guys, I really need your help. Could somebody bring a tie for me?
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: And for reasons that remain in dispute, there was no tie when he arrived.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the judge there really unloads on him for that, takes him into chambers and berates him for not being dressed appropriately and then questioning why he's even there in the first place, what value he added to the case at all.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: And I mean, it was pretty withering.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And to the point that, you know, even those in the U.S. attorney's office looked on and just thought, OK, this is really over the top.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: I mean, it was really disproportionate to the fact that he just didn't have a tie.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But what really comes to infuriate Kash Patel and the thing that he comes to fixate on is not even the exchange with the judge itself.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: But the fact that when the Washington Post gets word of what happened and writes it up and reaches out to the Department of Justice for comment, they decline to comment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They don't engage with the reporter on the record to defend Kash Patel.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: And this enrages him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I was told by various of his colleagues from that time that he would thereafter just constantly, constantly for months go to his supervisor's office and say, what are you going to do about this U.S. attorney? You know, how are you going to punish them?
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: And these people at a certain point said, we really empathize with you. It was unfair what happened. But the U.S. attorney is a presidentially appointed position. We just don't know what you want us to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think that was a really defining moment for him in terms of deciding that this system that he had devoted all of his career to thus far pretty much all of his career to thus far was never going to have his back and was in fact actively out to get him.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: And so that I think is the premise of the kind of revenge-driven ideology that goes on to define him as he scales the ranks of the Trump administration.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And perhaps that revenge-driven ideology makes him a good match for the former and future president.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: What was his role in the first Trump administration?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As I recall, he wasn't a sort of front-facing figure.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: So after considerable lobbying by Congressman Devin Nunes, who Kash Patel had worked with on the House Intelligence Committee, Kash Patel is brought on to the National Security Council at a pretty low-level role.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, it's really breathtaking, the speed with which he rose from there.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: Within a few months, he was leading the counterterrorism division of the National Security Council.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I will often forget that he was only in the administration for a year and eight months or so.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: But in that time, he goes from this low-level position in the National Security Council to quite an important role in the National Security Council.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then from there to an assistant to the director of national intelligence.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: And then, you know, ultimately ending up as chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense in the final months of the Trump administration.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And since then, he's been selling merch and writing children's books.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: Have you read his children's books?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I have, yes. As part of my discovery process, you might say, in my profiling him, I did read this one, his first one, The Plot Against the King, which is Kash Patel writing the story of Russiagate from his perspective to a children's audience with very vivid illustrations.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: Classic children's entertainment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you have a favorite line from the children's book?
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: I'm so glad you asked. I am always ready with these.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Once upon a time in the land of the free, there lived a wizard called Cash, the distinguished discoverer.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: Cash was known far and wide as the one person who could discover anything about anything.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so then the plot goes on that Duke Devin, who's Devin Nunes, recruits him to avenge Donald Trump against the Shifty Knight, who is Adam Shiff, who claims that the King Donald had collaborated with the Russians to win his monarchy, I guess.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: There's another nice moment when Cash is pictured in his wizard garb at the top of a castle turret, and he stands up and addresses everybody and says, Everybody, I am Cash, the great wizard and the distinguished discoverer. I have discovered that the king, King Donald, is innocent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He did not work with the Rushionians, and he did not cheat.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: You chose him, so he became king fair and square.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think that's a good kind of encapsulation of that story.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: I don't even know where to begin with the king stuff, considering the origin story of this country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Between the Thai incident and this children's book, I have to ask, you know, what is it that scares so many people about Kash Patel? He doesn't seem like the most serious person.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: His inexperience is definitely a factor.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think more than anything, and this became clear from the moment he stepped foot on the National Security Council. This is someone who is motivated by very little else except for his devotion to Donald Trump and his loyalty to Donald Trump.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: We're blessed by God to have Donald Trump be our juggernaut of justice, to be our leader, to be our continued warrior in the arena.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But we have to fill that arena with Americans behind him who are going to take...
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: ...the fight to the finish.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The panic that set in, and again, this is among Trump appointees themselves, hardly members of the deep state who are lodging these objections to him.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: The concern was that he was just subject to Donald Trump's demands, whatever they might be from day to day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it was often said to me, it's not the fear of what he would do. It's more like what wouldn't he do in order to maintain Donald Trump's favor.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: That sort of sycophancy paired with a tremendous amount of power as he would necessarily have atop the FBI is, I think, what many people, former administration officials I talk to, you know, find alarming about the prospect of this nomination.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hmm. We'll probably never know the answer.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: But how much do you think people like Kash Patel weighed on Biden's decision over this holiday weekend to pardon his own son?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, if you look at the letter itself, it certainly seems that Joe Biden, the president just taking him at his word, was concerned about the fact that a number of the people that Donald Trump has announced as being staffers in his new administration, nominees for powerful positions in his administration, have certainly been among the chorus of those on the right who really despise Hunter Biden and really feel like he emblematizes the corruption of the left.
--:-- Elena Plot Calabro: And so, again, just taking President Biden at his word, that does seem to have influenced his decision to pardon Hunter Biden and kind of remove him from kind of the crosshairs, possibly, of people like Kash Patel.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Elena Plot Calabro. Read her at TheAtlantic.com. Emphasis on the V. TheAtlantic.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today's show was produced by Miles Bryan and Amanda Llewellyn.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was edited by Matthew Collette, fact-checked by Kim Eggleston and mixed by Patrick Boyd.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram. The program is Today Explained.
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