Miranda Devine on the Twitter Takeover and Hunter Latest
CLAY: Miranda Devine, who deserves multiple different Pulitzer Prizes for her work with the New York Post, in particular on the Hunter Biden investigation. And, Miranda, appreciate you joining us. Always fantastic. I want to start with this question: What do you think the situation will be with Twitter now with Elon Musk?
Do you have any indication, for instance, what his thoughts were on Twitter banning the sharing of your New York Post story from October of 2020 about Hunter Biden and the laptop, the implications for Joe Biden? Any sense of whether he at that time recognized that as being something that was the wrong choice by Twitter? Any idea, from your perspective, what this might mean going forward for stories such as yours?
DEVINE: Hi, Clay and Buck. Look. Nothing direct. But what we do know is that, A, Elon Musk is for free speech, so therefore would automatically be against the censoring of the New York Post story. And, B, we know that he has been talking and is friendly with Jack Dorsey, the founder and originator of Twitter, who has said in recent times that the biggest dysfunction at the company was the board.
And the board is the one that was implacably opposed to Elon Musk buying in and was talking about a poison pill, et cetera. They’ve now buckled and realized the reality, and I think it’s all good. You just see the meltdown there from Twitter employees, from lefties, from Democrats just screeching about the idea that somehow if Elon Musk comes on board that he’s going to censor people.
Do exactly what Twitter has been doing! so they’re just projecting. They’ve treated — and it’s so obvious now — they have treated Twitter and to some extent Facebook and Google and all the other sort of tech platforms as their own personal playthings, as their way to censor their ideological opponents and promote their own lies.
BUCK: Miranda, thanks for joining us as always. Did anyone after that incident, which I think very much led… the same mentality that had the suppression of the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, then led to the actual ejection from Twitter of a sitting president of the United States. It should be noted, Facebook also went along with the suppression.
It wasn’t just Twitter right before the election. Just wondering if that company, if Twitter specifically or Facebook, actually, decided to reach out and try to… You know, this is pre-Elon buying it. I just want to know, did they ever apologize, did they ever say, “Hey, we’re sorry that you guys broke a big story and we crushed it because we didn’t like what it was telling the voting public”?
DEVINE: Not even the slightest. At least Jack Dorsey, when he was hauled before one of those stupid Zoom Senate inquiries, said, “Well, look, it was a mistake. We shouldn’t have locked the New York Post account for two weeks before the election.” Nothing from Facebook. And if anything, I think Facebook was the instigator of that censorship because you had a former Democrat employee who was in a very senior role at Facebook who announced — was the first to announce — this throttling of the story just a few hours after it went live in October 2020.
And so you feel like behind the scenes there was some really desperate coordination going on, coordinated by the Democrats with their pals in Big Tech. And they did it very quickly. And then of course it went on to their pals in the intelligence community where you saw John Brennan and the rest — you know, Leon Panetta and so on. Those 51 former intelligence officials came out five days after our story with that completely bogus letter saying that the laptop was “Russian disinformation.” But that serving as a fig leaf for the rest of the media to ignore the story before the election.
CLAY: We’re talking to Miranda Devine who deserves multiple Pulitzers for the work she did about the Hunter Biden laptop and its connection to Joe Biden. And I’m curious. We now know from your reporting that at least one of Hunter Biden’s business associates visited the White House. I believe the number was 19 times. What can you tell us about that relationship, those visits and what it might mean about Joe Biden’s knowledge and relationship with at least one of Hunter’s business associates?
DEVINE: Well, we’ve counted now, I think it’s up to two dozen of those visits. And, you know, one of them was specifically with Joe Biden, but the others are probably he met Joe Biden because they were with his senior officials or basically clerical assistance, often people signed in by someone other than the person that they’re meeting.
And we know that twice he went to visit Steve Ricchetti, who was Joe Biden’s chief of staff. He also had one meeting with Jill Biden’s staff. What it tells you is that Hunter Biden’s business was a family business. It was a Biden family business, and that was during the influence peddling overseas and raking in tens of millions of dollars from China and Russia and Romania and Ukraine and Kazakhstan, you name it.
And that money was flushing through the Hunter accounts, and Joe Biden was not only having some of his bills paid by his son Hunter but also Hunter’s senior business partner Eric Schwerin was visiting Joe at the White House also was doing Joe’s tax returns. He was involved in Joe’s mortgage. He also had signature privileges on one of the accounts that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden shared.
There was a tax check that Eric Schwerin told Hunter he was going to deposit that belonged to Joe, deposit into their shared account and then he was going to write another check for Hunter about that account. So there… It’s a very incestuous situation. This is an adult 52 years old. He and his father had a lot of business in common.
And Joe Biden also met multiple of Hunter’s overseas business partners. He met them overseas, like in Beijing. He also met them in Washington, invited them to his home at the Naval Observatory, the vice-presidential residence, and he went to at least one — I believe two — dinners at Cafe Milano, which is a Georgetown institution.
BUCK: Speaking to Miranda Devine, author of Laptop from Hell, which Clay and I highly recommend to all of you listening. Miranda, we know there’s this federal investigation of Hunter Biden underway by the U.S. attorney in Delaware. Do we have some sense…? I know there’s a lot of secrecy and grand jury proceedings, things like that aren’t able to be readily reported on.
But do we have some sense of what are they still looking for? I mean, one of the questions that I have going through all this is, we know there is a lot of money that was slushing around. We know that apparently Hunter Biden didn’t declare some of it in terms of IRS and the laws around that. We know he didn’t register as a foreign agent. What are we still trying…? What do we think they’re trying to find and what are you still trying to find out on used as a journalist?
DEVINE: You’re right. This is not a static story. There’s a lot going on as grand jury conditions its deliberations. You also have people’s lips are starting to be loosened. Those people… There are a lot of people thou that knew what Hunter was up to, how it was a family business and how Joe was involved. So far really online Tony Bobulinski, one of the former partners, has spoken.
But there are many others who know a lot, and we know that some of them have already talked to the grand, that testified there. We know that at least two of Hunter’s former lovers including his baby mama, London Roberts, have testified. And we know that the grand jury is asking questions like, ‘Who is the Big Guy,” and the Big Guy being Joe Biden.
That’s what Tony Bobulinski tells us and that’s what you can tell from reading the laptop and Bobulinski’s WhatsApp messages with Hunter and Jim Biden, the Big Guy is one of the names that they all used as sort of a code for Joe Biden. Also, Hunter also called him “my chairman.” So there’s a lot of involvement there as Joe Biden…
This family influence-pedaling scheme was orchestrated by Joe. Joe was intimately involved with it. He had been doing this since his earliest days in Delaware, and he just internationalized it and industrialized it when he became vice president. The money just got so much more because you had countries like China and Russia and Ukraine lining up at the door wanting to put money into the pockets of Joe Biden family members in the hope of a quid pro quo.
CLAY: We’re talking to Miranda Devine with the New York Post. Time frame-wise, do we have any sense, Miranda, based on this grand jury investigation…? The reason why I raise it is, obviously as we get close to the midterms, generally speaking they try not to bring out October Surprises.
I would be surprised if they did something in September or October. So if they’re going to bring charges in 2022, it would be either after the midterms I would think or it would be sometime a ways out, May or June. Do we have any sense if this grand jury is close to wrapping up, is close to making any decisions? It’s been going on for a while now.
DEVINE: Yeah. I think the best estimate would be May-June, even as early as later this month. They seem to have a lot of information. They don’t need everything. They just enough for indictment, and I guess that would be rest on the desk of Merrick Garland — or probably, more likely, one of his deputies, perhaps Lisa Monaco. And, you know, I think that it would be unwise of Merrick Garland to hold it up.
Because he’s already been burned last year with that story about the Department of Justice siccing the FBI on to parents at school board meetings; so I would expect that he will just allow, you know, the investigation to run its course and the chips fall where they may. Interesting that we just had Joe Biden issue his first pardons quite early on in his presidency. So maybe he’s just getting his pardon muscles limber before Hunter comes up.
BUCK: Clay loves hearing about the pardon muscle —
CLAY: Oh, yeah, love it.
BUCK: — ’cause he knows he’s got a bet with a certain Mr. Buck Sexton on whether Hunter’s actually gonna face charges. But, Miranda, great work as always, and people should go check out not only your latest at the New York Post, but also Laptop from Hell, the book. Thanks so much, Miranda.
DEVINE: Thanks a lot, guys!
CLAY: Well, you know, Buck, we’re gonna do our event in New York City in June for the one-year anniversary of the show. What if Miranda’s right and the charges could have already come down? I need to start doing my research on New York City steakhouess.
BUCK: Now you’re doing end zone dances before you even caught the touchdown pass, sir.
CLAY: (laughing)
BUCK: Okay? Let’s calm down a little bit.
CLAY: There’s no harm with a little bit of a high step as you come close to the goal line.
