GOP congressman struggles to answer questions about Biden allegations
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00:00 means committee voted along party lines to release 700 pages of documents from IRS whistleblowers
00:08 regarding Hunter Biden's business dealings. Republican Committee Chair Jason Smith of
00:13 Missouri pointed to a June 6th, 2017 WhatsApp message in which Hunter Biden wrote to a business
00:22 associate that he was not willing to, quote, sign over my family's brand. Smith cited the
00:28 message as, quote, evidence of corruption and misconduct. NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent
00:34 Ryan Nobles followed up on that, seeking clarification and explanation about the
00:40 timing of that message leading to this exchange with the Republican congressman.
00:45 And then the WhatsApp message you have, I believe, is dated June 6th, 2017. Joe Biden is not vice
00:53 president or even a candidate for president at that time. So where is the direct connection to
00:58 some sort of criminal malfeasance within these two pieces of evidence? Well, I think the facts speak
01:03 for themselves. There's over 700 pages of examples of where people should be very concerned. Can you
01:09 explain the timing then of the August 6th WhatsApp message? Why is that evidence of some wrongdoing?
01:14 I'm not an expert on the timeline. I would love to have President Biden and his family to tell
01:20 us about all the timelines, because it's really, really unfortunate that we see so many meetings
01:27 and so many phone calls that involved around official activity that the vice president has
01:34 been participating in. And then big sums of money follows later. But if he's not the president or
01:40 the vice president at that time, where's the wrongdoing? He wasn't even a candidate for
01:45 president at that time. He was a candidate. In August 6th of 2017. So apparently, what source
01:55 are you with? I'm with NBC. So apparently you'll never believe us. I'm not saying I don't believe
01:59 you. I'm asking you a very direct question. You presented a piece of evidence that you say came
02:06 on August 6th, 2017, that demonstrates that Joe Biden was using political influence to help his
02:12 son. If he wasn't a political figure at that time, the first WhatsApp message you put up,
02:16 where you talk about the brand. And I'm here, I'm completely open-minded about this. I'm asking you
02:24 specifically, how does that demonstrate that there's some sort of political influence being
02:29 put over him if at that time he is not a political, he's not an elected official?
02:34 I'm definitely not going to pinpoint one item. I think we've outlined-
02:37 You presented it. It was your first thing that you brought up.
02:40 So apparently you don't agree with it. So report-
02:42 It's not that I don't agree with it. I'm asking you to explain it.
02:44 I'll take the next question.
02:45 And the man you just heard running circles around that member of Congress, NBC News Capitol Hill
02:51 correspondent Ryan Nobles joins us now live. Ryan, good morning. So tell us about the backstory of
02:58 this WhatsApp message, because you are clearly just asking a fact-based question that the
03:03 member of Congress had not considered the date that Joe Biden held no power at the time of that
03:08 message. So just for our viewers, what is the story? What is the backstory?
03:12 Well, Willie, I've been particularly obsessed with this idea of timeline when it comes to
03:17 the information and the evidence that the Oversight, Ways and Means, and Judiciary
03:21 Committee has put out as it relates to Hunter Biden. Because over time and time again,
03:25 they keep attempting to establish this connection between Joe Biden and his son. And a lot of the
03:31 information that they presented comes during that period of time where Joe Biden is not the
03:35 president or vice president of the United States. He's not the president of the United States. And
03:39 in the case of this WhatsApp message, he isn't even a candidate for president. And so they
03:44 demonstrate this, though, as a way to show that Hunter Biden was trading on his father's name
03:50 around the country and that somewhere along the line that there was then this extension of this
03:56 financial benefit that Joe Biden himself benefited from. So what I was simply asking there is,
04:01 you know, if you think that this is an example of the unfair use of an office, of political,
04:08 of a political office being used at the benefit of someone in your family,
04:12 what does this timeline tell us about that? And, you know, they really didn't have an answer for
04:17 that. And I think in certain aspects, it's just kind of throwing stuff at the wall, making it
04:24 look as though there's a real problem here. But then when you actually drill down on the timeline
04:29 of all of it and how it's connected to both the stuff that Hunter Biden has done, what Joe Biden
04:34 was doing at that time, there isn't really that specific connection that would demonstrate a high
04:38 crime or misdemeanor, because keep in mind, that would be the bar that they have to cross in terms
04:44 of an impeachment inquiry if they move to articles of impeachment. And the other point I should point
04:48 out to Willie is that the other piece of evidence that they provided yesterday was an email from a
04:54 career prosecutor in the Department of Justice that came from these IRS whistleblowers that
05:00 suggested that Joe Biden should not be a part of the investigation. That political figure one
05:05 should be removed from the conversation of a search warrant that they were looking for at that
05:09 time. That particular piece of that email was dated on August, in August of 2020. They were
05:16 suggesting that the Department of Justice was somehow giving Hunter Biden preferential treatment
05:21 on behalf of Joe Biden. Well, in August of 2020, Bill Barr was the attorney general. Donald Trump
05:27 was the president. So they keep talking off over and over again about these two tiered systems of
05:31 justice. But then they're providing evidence that comes from a period of time where the
05:36 the Trump Justice Department was in charge. And so and again, I am open minded to this. If they
05:40 are able to provide that direct piece of evidence that would explain to us why they believe that
05:46 Joe Biden was benefiting from the work of his son presented at this point. At least I haven't seen
05:52 that specific smoking gun. Well, you sort of answered my next question for you, Ryan, which
05:56 is in a couple of hours in that building behind you, the Oversight Committee is going to hold
05:59 an impeachment hearing led by Chairman James Comer, who famously said, well, there's a lot
06:04 of smoke here. We don't have fire yet, but we believe there's a lot of smoke. That seems to be
06:08 sort of the theme of this investigation. Have you and your reporting as an excellent reporter,
06:15 have you found anything that shows you a connection between Hunter Biden's business
06:19 dealings and the president of the United States? There isn't that hard piece of evidence that if
06:26 you presented it in a court of law would convict someone. And I think that that's the important
06:31 part of this. And I do believe that there are two different conversations to be having here.
06:35 There's an ethical, moral and political conversation. And then there's a legal question.
06:40 And when you're talking about moving to articles of impeachment, you know, I think we're all
06:44 not naive to the fact that impeachment is a political exercise, but you really do need the
06:50 legal evidence to try and nail that down in a way that would really allow you to use the force of
06:56 the government to potentially remove a president from office. And, you know, I think there are a
07:01 lot of questions about what Hunter Biden was doing around the world and perhaps doing it in the name
07:06 of his father or at least under the banner of the Biden family. But there has to be more than just
07:13 Joe Biden was on a speakerphone when Hunter Biden called him. I'm sorry, Hunter Biden was
07:18 on a speakerphone when he called his father when he was around his business associates.
07:22 You need more than that to establish a direct connection. And so one of the things that this
07:27 impeachment inquiry is going to do is that they're going to collect bank records from many of the
07:31 Biden family associates, James Biden, the president's brother and Hunter Biden. Perhaps
07:37 there is where we're going to be able to find that smoking gun piece of evidence.
07:41 There's a bank transfer that goes into a bank that's specifically controlled
07:44 by the president. Perhaps then we would have that answer. But again,
07:49 and this is why I say I'm obsessed with this. We go back to the timeline. Even if something
07:52 like that is established, if Joe Biden isn't the president or the vice president at that time,
07:57 is that illegal? So, you know, there's going to be a lot of things that they bring up here today
08:01 during this hearing. But I think we do need to drill down on the specifics of it and how all
08:05 those things connect in this web that they're trying to build here. NBC's Ryan Noble is doing
08:10 a great job explaining all this for us. Ryan, thanks so much. We really appreciate it.
08:14 [Music]