Hunter Biden’s Conviction and Trump’s Risk to the Justice Department in 2024 36:49

Do you think, I mean, maybe we should start with like a birthday tribute to Donald Trump. I believe he's 78. Happy birthday, Donald Trump. You really have to be careful on the golf course. Do you think he gets to use like a closer tee or something? We know he already cheats. I mean, there's the famous, famous revelations regarding that. Did you guys pay attention to his insane shark electrocution boat rant the other day?

Unbelievable. This may be the most famous ever Donald Trump extemporaneous riff in a campaign rally. I went to a boat company in South Carolina. The boat.

I said, how is it? He said, it's a problem, sir. They want us to make all electric boats. I say, what would happen if the boat sank from its weight and the battery is now underwater and there's a shark that's approximately 10 yards over there? A hypothetical electric boat?

And a hypothetical shark attack while the hypothetical boat is sinking. He's trying to decide which way he would rather die. And he decides that he'd rather be electrocuted than eaten by sharks. And he has kind of a thing about sharks, really. Right? Didn't he watch shark attacks? One of the women with whom he had a fling described that they would go to, I think, the Beverly Hills Hotel and watch shark attacks on television. Oh, how romantic. Yeah.

Welcome to The Political Scene, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Jane Mayer, and I'm joined by my colleagues Susan Glasser and Evan Osnos. Hey, Susan. Hey there. So great to be with you guys. Hi, Evan. Hi, Jane. Hi, Susan. Great to be back with you guys.

So this week, in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, Hunter Biden, the youngest and only living son of President Joe Biden, was convicted of three felony gun charges. While Hunter Biden is not the first relative of a U.S. president to break the law or be arrested...

In fact, both Jimmy Carter's daughter, Amy, and Trump's son, Don Jr., were arrested in the past. And Carter's son, Chip, easily could have been because it came out not long ago that he actually smoked weed with Willie Nelson on the roof of the White House. But this...

is the first time the child of a sitting U.S. president has been convicted of a crime, which may be why the Republicans have been so eager to press charges against Hunter Biden. Right-wing forces have targeted him for years. They've tried, but so far failed, to find any evidence that the president himself has committed wrongdoing. So...

What are we to make of the news of Hunter's conviction, especially on the heels of former President Donald Trump's own felony conviction in New York? Evan, you're our Bidenologist. I wanted to start with you. What was this case against Hunter Biden about and what struck you? It's

Yeah, I think it's worth paying a moment of attention to it because I think for a lot of Americans, people have just kind of tuned it out. They just sort of say –

Hunter Biden thing. I don't really want to pay attention to it. And I can certainly understand that. But it's actually pretty revealing about the Biden family and about the presidency and, of course, about our politics. Very specifically, this case centered on a period in 2018 when Hunter Biden, who had struggled with addiction on and off in his life, had gone into a tailspin after the death of his brother, Beau, in 2015. And

One of the things this case told us was the degree to which the family was really in crisis, even to an extent I think that people who follow it closely didn't know. He had...

bought a gun in October of 2018. And in the course of buying a gun, he had filled out a federal form in which you have to indicate whether you are an addict. And interestingly, his defense, Abby Lowell, his lawyer, had presented the idea that, well, asking if somebody is an addict in the present tense is an odd question because, you know, are you an addict if you've successfully kicked a habit or are you an addict forever and ever? But it came out in the course of the trial that it was still pretty clear that he was in the grip of an addiction. And as

As people know, the jury came back relatively fast and returned three guilty verdicts. And

One other thing, which is that these kinds of charges are almost always brought in the course of some larger case when somebody has committed a violent crime or they've done something else. As a former federal prosecutor said to me the other day, usually it's so far down in the charging sheet, I don't even get to it. I don't even see it when I'm really thinking about the case. So it was odd. And, you know, I think Joe Biden knew on some level that, you

And Republicans have said, actually, in some cases, that this probably would never have been brought if his name was Hunter Smith.

And yet, at the same time, Joe Biden has never come out and said, I don't acknowledge the legitimacy of this verdict. He said, actually, I accept it and I won't pardon or commute the sentence. Quite a contrast to Trump. So, Susan, the trial also thrust several other members of the Biden family onto the witness stand and into the court. What were you thinking as you watched the Biden family in Circle Hunter?

Yeah, I mean, that's right. In the end, it is both Hunter Biden's tragic story and also very much this story around this kind of disintegration of a family or a family under stress and trying not to disintegrate, I should say. You know, in many ways, it was kind of incredible to see the closing of the ranks of the Bidens around Hunter. Jill Biden, the first lady, literally flew back and forth to

to Europe in the midst of the trial to be both at Hunter's side during this and also at her husband's side when he's being feted by the president of France in a grand state dinner in Paris when he is in Normandy to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. And she traversed the Atlantic twice. She was there holding Hunter Biden's hand as they walked out of court after the guilty verdict.

President Biden himself flew by helicopter up to Wilmington, was photographed on the tarmac embracing his son. And yet it's also this, we have to say, right, it's this kind of sordid,

awful, awkward portrait, not only of Hunter's addiction that emerged, but also just after the tragic death of Biden's only other son, Beau Biden, really just what happened to the family. It sort of spiraled apart. And it's, you know, I mean, it's the stuff of grotesque kind of tabloidry, right? You had Hunter then taking up with Beau's

widow. And Hunter had been married, right? That's right. And there were, you know, family members testifying for the prosecution and for the defense in this trial. It's this spectacle that unfortunately, right, has been the perceived political vulnerability for Joe Biden, that the way to get to this man Republicans have identified, Donald Trump has identified for many years, was to go through the weak spot of

his, you know, well-known love and devotion to his family, but also this very, very troubled member of it. And, you know, Evan's right. The context here is obviously inescapably politicized and political. It defies imagination to think that this is a case that would have existed in any other context than the context of Biden being in the White House. But it's still, I wonder, Evan, as you've talked to so many people

kind of in the Biden inner circle, to what extent you buy this notion that this is actually going to affect Joe Biden's performance in the debate, on the campaign trail? Like, how much is this

A tragedy is something he's been bracing for for a long time, and he'll just deal with it. I mean, it seems almost designed, I mean, to try to destabilize him. But maybe, you know, but you tell me, what do you think? Is he able to sort of compartmentalize this? Yeah, look, this has been...

in some sense, visible from afar beginning a year ago when the plea deal collapsed in July of 2023. Anybody who understood... Something I still don't entirely understand how that happened. But to this question of how I think Biden experiences it, there's a really fascinating moment back in 2015 when Beau Biden was really sick. He was before he died, but it was in the period when he was just...

It was really clear that this was the end. And at one point, Joe Biden called in. He was in the vice presidency at the time. He called in his chief of staff, Steve Ruschetti, and he said, I want you to schedule me as much as possible. I want you to overschedule me. Just fill every moment that you can, he said, because I know from experience, meaning the death of his wife and his daughter,

That the only way I'm going to get through this is by keeping my mind as busy as possible. So he's kind of allergic to rumination and to isolation. And I think you saw the way in which he kind of – you saw him go to Delaware and spend the night there with the family, with his son, and then immediately go off and hurl himself into the sort of usual cascade of events of the G7 was his form of –

sadly well-practiced management of this kind of agony, I think. Well, I mean, he was not physically present, obviously, in the courtroom. And he also, I mean, there were images of Hunter Biden shirtless, holding crack pipes. There were, you know, all kinds of salacious details. But the picture of Biden himself was kind of

painting a picture of where was he during this period when his son was spiraling into this incredible addiction and buying a gun and taking up with...

the widow of his deceased son? Where was Biden during this period? That was one of the most interesting things about this, I think. I mean, as somebody who's interested in the lives of the presidents and obviously of this president, we suddenly became aware of this period and got real texture on a couple of interesting things. I mean, one is actually there are these

artifacts of that time that are quite revealing. I mean, there was a voicemail message that was released initially kind of in with malicious intent, frankly, by Fox News and so on. But anybody else who listens to it, who's not looking at it for a political valence, you hear the reality of what was going on in that family. It's Joe Biden leaving a voicemail message for his son Hunter, where he says, I guess I don't know what to do. I know you don't either. But

I'm here no matter what you need. You know, there's just something, whatever you think of this guy's policies, just the level of pain that has been visited upon this family is really something that stands apart in the way we think about presidential families and is worth sort of documenting. And the other thing was they had these interventions along the way. And it was Jill Biden, interestingly, to Susan's point, she and Hunter Biden had this special connection in some ways. And

She was the one, for instance, and this is kind of an interesting detail, that when they did have this intervention where he was in the depths of his addiction, she was the one who invited him to dinner at the house, at Joe Biden and Jill Biden's house. And when he got there, it was, you know, counselors and family and an attempt to try to get him to break out of this. And he stormed out and they followed him out of the house and had a kind of moment of encounter where they're trying to get him to leave.

Trying to get him to go into therapy. And he didn't, actually. He just flew out to California and eventually did get clean. But all of this, amazingly, is going on in that period when Donald Trump is in the presidency, Joe Biden has left the vice presidency, and it's before he is run for president. So there was just this concentrated...

family drama that was going on just off stage of public life that I think we're only now beginning to understand. It was during this period or a little bit earlier, actually, when Biden was vice president, I actually went to Hunter's house because he was a parent in the same school that we were parents in and he was with his wife still. You know, I have to say he pulled off seeming

capable and normal. You would not have known. I mean, I was shocked to learn when all this came out that he was a crack addict. What time frame was that? This would have been around 2011. So it was earlier. His daughter was on the crew team with my daughter. They rode together.

But anyway, it was interesting, though, because you would not have known from the outside that he was, I mean, he was still an alcoholic at that point. Apparently, he's dealt with that for forever. But this was, I mean, it's an interesting period. There's, I think, that fascinating piece in the Washington Post by Matt Visor that suggests that after Beau dies in 2015 and Bob

And Biden has said he's not running for president. Biden himself goes into kind of a wilderness of not knowing where he fits into the world. A sort of listlessness. Right? Yeah. What was going on then? Yeah. It's an incredibly interesting thing, which is that, you know, for the first time in his really sort of adult life, he didn't have politics. He didn't have that world view.

to organize himself in. And he leaves and he tries to figure it out. So he goes out and he says, OK, maybe I'm going to give some speeches for money. You know, you've got Louis Freeh, the former director of the FBI, who's calling him up and saying, oh, well, let's form a law firm together or something. And the truth is, none of it really makes it was none of it makes a whole lot of sense to Joe Biden, you know, that he can kind of understand politics, but he didn't understand life outside. And

And there was a moment when he gave a speech in the spring of 2016, right, as he's preparing to leave office. And he says to the crowd, look, I actually have no idea what I'm going to do next. I don't know. And they think it's a laugh line. I've never been gainfully employed in my life. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do. You know, I mean, you know, I've never cashed a paycheck in my entire life. You think I'm joking. I'm not. Susan, what did you make of that with this kind of filling in this period of blank spot in his biography? Yeah.

Yeah, well, he obviously understood on some level that the family drama and trauma was going to be a part of the narrative of his campaign against Trump. And yet he went for it anyways. And that's what's so remarkable about this testimony in the trial is that it's right in this period of time, as you pointed out, in 2018, when these dramatic events are occurring. And yet he's also making the decision now.

to expose his family to national scrutiny once again. He's, you know, it's the only profession he's ever known. He was first elected to the Senate in 1972. I mean, it's, it's,

There's no other identity for Joe Biden other than this. And of course, the Hunter story is also a story about a man who never found an identity. And it's interesting because this trial has exposed the kind of family dynamics. It's exposed the tragedy of Hunter.

Hunter as an addict, something that many American families, unfortunately, can relate to. But at the same time, it wasn't a trial about some of the allegations they kept more directly at the heart of the Biden family. And certainly the Republican obsession with Hunter is not because he was a gun-owning crack addict.

Unfortunately, right, you know, the Republican obsession with Hunter Biden is because earlier in that period of time when Jane encountered him, he was essentially...

making money off the family last name. And that is unsavory. And the question that Republicans have pursued largely unsuccessfully for the last few years is whether he crossed the line from merely unsavory in trading off his father's name when Biden was vice president into outright, you know, influence peddling and doing business in countries like Ukraine and China. And that was not at all, you know, at the heart of the trial. So interestingly,

you know, a more tragic but also sympathetic conversation ensues, I think, as a result of this. And look, I keep coming back to the idea that this guy was just convicted of a felony for possessing a gun for 11 days that was never used. And, you know, I have to say, like in this environment where America is fused in gun violence, it's it's

It's hard to imagine, right? Somehow we allow all these people to get guns legally who are shooting up schools and the like. I mean, the culture championed by the right wing in this country is not sympathetic to the idea of taking guns out of the hands of people like Hunter Biden. At the same time, I got to say, I agree with you that he would not have been prosecuted if his last name was Smith. But it is...

One of the few regulations on guns that exists is that people who are addicts are not supposed to be able to buy guns. And it's a good thing. But can I ask a question that's been sort of occurring to me periodically over the last few months? What is going on, Jane, in the culture of—

are prosecutors where you have somebody like David Weiss, the prosecutor in this case, or Robert Herr, the special counsel, where it feels as if there is this incentive, this desire, this structural requirement to go as far as they possibly can, whether or not it holds up, whether it makes common sense. It's odd to me. I can't figure out. I mean, this goes back to Ken Starr, too, I suppose. But

But what is it about the system of these special councils that allows them to go –

beyond the realm of what most people would imagine is required. I mean, it's the really rare special counsel that doesn't prosecute, that doesn't press charges. I mean, it takes a certain kind of person to say, I don't see that there's really a serious crime here. I mean, if you look at the history of them, only a couple of them have done that. And they were, I think, in some ways, the outstanding ones. Prosecutors, you know, it's an incredible amount of unaccountable power.

to be able to prosecute. The thing is, both of these prosecutors were appointed by Republican president before Biden in order to try to show that he is not

The attorney general, Merrick Garland, Biden's attorney general, said, I'm going to keep these prosecutors on who are appointed by Republicans. And they went and they made a beeline for the president. I have to say, I find this kind of baffling, too. And, you know, Susan, you've been very clear in your criticisms of Merrick Garland. I find it kind of amazing and baffling, frankly, that.

Merrick Garland would pursue this as far as he would. What's going on there? How do you understand his motives? Well, it's particularly interesting to ask that question on this particular week when the Republicans in Congress have actually held Merrick Garland, voted to hold Merrick Garland in contempt.

of the House of Representatives for refusing to turn over the audio tape of Biden's interview with one of those special prosecutors that Jane is talking about, Robert Herr, who actually declined to press charges against Biden, but issued that scathing report in which he said essentially that Biden was a well-meaning old man. The Republicans are convinced that there are some, you know, secret, terrible,

Sounding tapes there that will be useful in election related attacks on the president. Garland has said, we've given you the transcripts of those and where, you know, Biden invoked executive privilege there.

And they're not sending over the audio tape. So to me, this is a classic example of Garland trapped in the middle, right? He's disappointed many Democrats, many allies of the president by not moving more quickly to go up against Trump to

take on Trump directly after January 6th. It was only very belatedly when he appointed a special counsel of his own, Jack Smith, that the cases against Trump moved forward. And then they did so pretty rapidly. So he's caught on the one hand with many Democrats feeling like he's not been a zealous

prosecutor looking to hold Trump and his people accountable. And on the other hand, he's literally being an attorney general held in contempt of the Republican Congress. So I think it's kind of a classic 2024 story.

Yeah, I mean, he's an old school kind of character who believes in high mindedness in politics, who happens to be trying to function in one of the dirtiest and most unhinged moments in American politics. And, you know, the old school is getting whacked from all sides. But listen, why don't we take a break right here for a moment? We'll be right back. We want to talk about how the conviction of President Biden's younger son may or may not

impact the presidential race. Hi, I'm Nicholas Bleckman, The New Yorker's creative director. We've designed a collection of stylish and fun products for all seasons and ages, from beach towels and umbrellas to t-shirts and baby onesies. These and other items, including limited edition tote bags, are available only in The New Yorker store, carefully crafted and featuring work by the magazine's celebrated artists.

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Finally, after years of trying to go after Hunter Biden, Trump and his allies actually have a conviction of Hunter Biden. It could be their trophy. Are they satisfied? What have you seen in way of reaction from Trump and his allies at this point? Are they satisfied? Easy answer, Jane. Check out this tweet from the Trump advisor, Stephen Miller, in the immediate aftermath

aftermath of the conviction. He tweeted, the gun charges are a giant misdirection, an easy op for DOJ to sell to a pliant media that is all too willing to be duped. Don't be gaslit. This is all about protecting Joe Biden and only Joe Biden.

Wow. What a conspiracy theory. It's interesting to watch, in fact, the creation of a new conspiracy theory in real time. I think, Evan, it's probably fair to say that Joe Biden didn't feel very protected to see his only surviving son's

convicted of a federal felony charge. But it speaks to this moment in the kind of Republican fever swamp surrounding Donald Trump that, you know, they are in the middle of attacking the justice system. Their own guy is now the only former president ever to bear the label of convicted felon. And therefore, this

inconvenient gun conviction of Hunter Biden needs to be wrapped into their very elaborate pre-existing edifice of conspiracy theories and lies around the politicization and weaponization of the DOJ against Donald Trump. And I don't know, it's hard to even understand at times to me where these theories come up with and whether anyone buys them. Yeah.

I mean, they had to, didn't they, argue that this doesn't prove that justice is blind, that the Justice Department's not political, that Biden's not using it just to help his friends. They had to find some way around that. But this one's pretty far out, don't you think, Evan? Yeah. I mean, this reminds me of that great concept in the study of conspiracy theories, which is that they are self-sealing, that if they get

punctured that they have a way of being able to seal themselves again. And so here we are, you know, Stephen Miller finding this kind of contortion that allows him to still say that the Justice Department is weaponized. The argument there, right, on the self-sealing is this is, you know, when the apocalypse doesn't come on the appointed date and then...

You know, and then the leader says, oh, well, no, actually, that's all part of the plan. That's right. I was going to say, I mean, this wasn't really the case that the right wing wanted, was it? And actually, I read a piece that I thought was really good that said that the problem with this trial in this case is it's

It was too sad to make political hay out of. The circumstances that start with Hunter Biden losing his mother as a three-year-old in a horrible car accident and his little sister who's killed, too. It's just all too sad. You can't really –

juice it into the right kind of nasty thing that they were looking for. So they're hoping for a better case. Try as they might. I will say something interesting. It was noticeable in the way that Biden has been asked repeatedly whether he would pardon his son or commute the sentence. He's been now pretty emphatic that he will not.

And I think people sort of express bewilderment. How could you not use this power that you have? It's legal. It must be incredibly tempting. And I think there's two things going on. One is he does have this sort of old world flinty sense of, look, this was a purgatory.

period of great trouble in his life, my son's life. And as he says, I have boundless love for him, but he's not going to let him off the hook. But I think the larger fact is, can you imagine if he did do it, it would have just immediate explosive consequences politically. I mean, I think it would make it really hard to draw what should be an easy contrast between the way these two candidates think about the justice system. Well, if there is such a thing as a sort of modest

Yeah.

the extent to which what Trump and his allies are doing in tearing down and attacking the verdict against Trump in New York, it's not just that they're railing against a particular case against the president, but they have gone full out against the justice system of the United States. And that is really a norm that we have seen shattered here by Trump and his allies. And so this trial beginning almost...

the minute that the Trump verdict came in, then the Hunter Biden trial begins. I think that it is a juxtaposition that is an important one for the Biden campaign. And so far it looks like they have navigated this moment, you know, from a political standpoint well, but you know, I do think the Stephen Miller thing also suggests like that they're spinning their wheels a bit to Jane's point that,

This isn't the case that they were looking for. They would much rather have Hunter Biden on trial as an influence peddler, you know, as, you know, doing dirty deals overseas than exposing the sad wreckage of a man. Then there's also the gun thing. I saw a lot of the kind of fervent Second Amendment NRA type saying, you know,

What the heck? You know, we're not actually in favor of prosecuting people. We're fine with having, you know, addicts be gun owners. Yeah, I mean, we've seen almost a parade of Republicans who are close and big backers of Trump coming out saying things like J.D. Vance said, you know,

He called it effectively a slap on the wrist to distract from the fact that their family is corrupt. I mean, they want a bigger case, something that's juicier that they're going to try to turn it into, even though they have so far been unable in all of their investigations of what they call the Biden crime family to really demonstrate.

implicate President Biden in anything. Anything. Anything. I mean, that's really, I think it's worth underscoring the end of the sentence. Anything. They haven't been able to do it. They've tried over and over and over in these ridiculous committee hearings. The impeachment inquiry is moribund, and they're going to keep it going as long as they can. The political scene from The New Yorker will be back in just a moment.

If you've been enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and review on the podcast platform of your choice. And while you're there, don't forget to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. Thanks so much for listening.

Every single aspect of a conflict...

has some kind of rationale behind it. You might not agree with it. You might not agree with the methods. You might not agree with the means, but you have to look at it as like a rational actor and make your analysis that way. And Pod Save America's Jon Favreau and Tommy Vitor. I don't think we're going to fact check our way to victory. Follow Wired Politics Lab for in-depth conversations and analysis to help you navigate the upcoming election.

Going back to what Susan's saying, I think it's really an important point to take a look at what Trump and his allies are saying and doing, though, about the Justice Department right now. They are not only attacking it rhetorically, but if you take a look at

Project 2025 has been doing, which is the sort of blueprint for a second Trump term. It's being drawn up by the Heritage Foundation and a bunch of Trump allies. What they're doing is drawing up plans for a completely different kind of Justice Department than we've seen in modern America. What they want to do is remove it as an independent agency.

neutral law enforcement agency that is supposed to be fair-minded and above politics and instead turn it into an instrument of the president where he can go after his enemies with it. So I think this attack on the Justice Department is not just a

to try to minimize Trump's own conviction, but it's also laying the groundwork for a kind of a process of revenge if he gets into power and can utilize the Justice Department to go after the people who convicted him. Well, and in fact, to the extent there's a through line from Trump's

initial term in the White House to what he wants to do in a second term, you see pretty clearly it's not even an outlier that throughout his presidency, he was constantly demanding of his attorney general, Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions before him to use the machinery of the FBI and of the Justice Department to get back

In fact, they created an entire special counsel investigation to investigate the initial Mueller investigation. That was because of Donald Trump. That was his demand during the 2020 campaign. People have forgotten this. Donald Trump tweeted and said publicly he demanded of Bill Barr in the fall of 2020, where are the indictments? Where are the indictments?

And he was talking at the time not only about Joe Biden, but he also at various times has demanded that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama be indicted. The entire first...

Impeachment of Donald Trump in 2019 was related to his efforts to essentially use, commandeer the machinery of the American government, military assistance appropriated by Congress, to use that as blackmail, his personal blackmail money, which he wouldn't give to Ukraine unless Vladimir Zelensky investigated Hunter Biden and Joe Biden's dealings in Ukraine. So it's not like

speculation, right, Jane? It's not just like dry documents in a Heritage Foundation folder somewhere. Like, this is a plan that is very much in keeping with Donald Trump's own approach to the Justice Department. And I think it's one that needs to be taken very seriously.

I agree. And it's exactly the opposite of what we just saw, which is the idea that a president's own son could be tried and convicted and that a president won't interfere because he thinks no one's above the law, not even his kid. I remember when Trump first began to flick at the idea of impugning the Justice Department. I remember talking to a serious financial advisor.

big wheel who said, you know, how do you not go from that to eventually impugning the sanctity of contracts? And now you see one billionaire after another lining up to support Trump. And somehow they've managed to find their way to imagining that this would not be bad for the very foundation of the market economy. I think it's an example of the way in which people are

Willfully blinding themselves to the implications of what it is that he's saying. The corruption, basically, of all the institutions, the justice system. Absolutely. Well, remember that he has a particular animus toward the Justice Department because they stopped him from carrying out his post-corruption.

2020 election coup. And I think one of the most dramatic moments that there really was in the entire run-up to January 6th was when Donald Trump sought to install his own acting attorney general, who was going to go along with his effort to rig the election system by claiming that there was an investigation of fraudulent

fraud in the election that there wasn't. And he was stopped only by the threat of all of the senior political appointees, the Justice Department saying they would quit en masse in

in early January 2021. And this, for Trump, is really a signal moment of betrayal. And he doesn't want to have a Justice Department again or an FBI director again who would operate as a constraint upon him. And I think that's, you know, really for him, it's the most personal aspect of revenge is that he understands he needs to take much more full control of this department. And that's what's going on here.

As I listen to you guys, it really drives home the point to me that paying attention to the Hunter Biden legal drama has really nothing to do with the tabloid qualities of it. It's not about that. It's about the fact that it is this incredibly eloquent testimony really about the risks posed to the Justice Department by this choice that voters are going to make in November. It's just a profoundly different path for the United States.

I'm glad you said that, Evan, because this is also just a profoundly different election as a result of it. We never had a trial of a former president, a trial of a president's kid in the middle of an election season. And when people go back and look at the history of this election, those are two of the things that are going to stand out. It's put this issue of the independents

and integrity of our justice system right in the foreground for voters in a way that literally has no precedent. I mean, so really what we're saying is, in some ways, the conviction of Hunter Biden is something that Biden and the campaign can really make a point of. It's a strong point, which is we believe in the fairness of the justice system and we're going to support it wherever it comes out. And that's a huge contrast to Trump's

You know, that's a painful, painful argument for a father to make about his son. So I don't know if they'll grab it, but it's certainly an incredible contrast. So anyway, guys, thank you so much for being here this week and talking us through this. It's so great to be with you always.

This has been The Political Scene from The New Yorker, and I'm Jane Mayer. And we had research assistants today from Alex D'Elia. Our producer is Julia Nutter, and our editor is Gianna Palmer. Mixing by Mike Kutchman. Stephen Valentino is our executive producer. Condé Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. And our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown.

We will be back next week. And thanks so much for listening.

It's Madeline Barron from In the Dark. I've spent the past four years investigating a crime. Believe it or not, sooner or later, we will kill some of these folks who need to be killed. A crime that for almost 20 years has gone unpunished. I heard an M-16. They went into the room and they were just taking shots. Me and Noor, we were under the bed. He get his rifle in the bed and start shooting at us.

I remember I opened a Humvee and I just see bodies stacked up. How did they not perceive that these were children? A four-year investigation, hundreds of interviews, thousands of documents, all in an effort to see what the U.S. military has kept from the public for years. You know, I don't know what's to be gained by this investigative journalism. Season three of In the Dark is available now.

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