The House Oversight Committee releases the transcript of its closed-door session with Hunter Biden’s former business associate.
Happy Friday! Public service announcement: All national parks are free to enter today in commemoration of the passage of the Great American Outdoors Act. Go enjoy some nature!
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- Former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty in federal court Thursday to four charges related to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump was released pending a trial and the next hearing in the case is set for later this month.
- The Justice Department unsealed a federal indictment on Thursday of two U.S. Navy servicemembers accused of taking bribes in exchange for passing sensitive national security information to China through contact with a Chinese spy. The two sailors, both of whom have been placed under arrest, were charged in separate cases. It is unclear whether they were in contact with the same Chinese intelligence officer. The sailors were stationed at two different naval bases in California.
- Mohamed Bazoum—the democratically elected president of Niger, imprisoned in his country since the military staged a coup there late last month—pleaded with world leaders to intervene and restore his rule in an op-ed for the Washington Post Thursday, predicting the West African nation will descend into a staging ground for terrorism. “In our hour of need, I call on the U.S. government and the entire international community to help us restore our constitutional order,” he wrote. “Fighting for our shared values, including democratic pluralism and respect for the rule of law, is the only way to make sustainable progress against poverty and terrorism.” The U.S. has not formally called the events in Niger a coup, since doing so would mean withdrawing security aid being used to fight terrorism, but Biden Thursday called for Bazoum’s release in a statement marking the 63rd anniversary of Niger’s independence.
- In a 2-1 decision on Thursday, a federal appeals court ruled the Biden administration’s asylum restrictions can remain in place as the legal battle over the policy works its way through the courts. Last week, a district judge in California set the policy’s end date for Monday, ruling that the administration’s policy preference in granting asylum claims for migrants who registered with the CBP One app and applied for asylum in any third country they traveled through to reach the U.S. violated congressional statutes. The appeals court promised an accelerated timeline to review the case.
- The Islamic State on Thursday named a new leader, Abu Hafs al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi, replacing the former leader who Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claims was killed in Syria by Turkish intelligence in April. ISIS had long denied its leader’s death, but finally conceded yesterday he had been killed in clashes with a rival al Qaeda-linked group—without specifying when.
- At least 14 people were injured Thursday near Seoul, South Korea, when an attacker rammed a car into pedestrians and then got out of the vehicle to stab several people. Police took the driver into custody, and the local police commissioner said the incident was being considered “in effect, an act of terrorism.”
- GOP Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina said on local North Carolina radio Thursday he will not seek reelection and will instead—as Dispatch Politics reported last week—run to be the state’s attorney general. Current North Carolina attorney general Josh Stein is not running for reelection, setting up a tough contest for the open position. Bishop will face former North Carolina legislator Tom Murray in a GOP primary for the statewide office.
- The Department of Labor reported Thursday that initial jobless claims—a proxy for layoffs—increased by 6,000 week-over-week to a seasonally adjusted 227,000 claims last week, suggesting the labor market is reacting to the Federal Reserve’s rate-hike campaign.
The Biden Brand and the ‘Illusion of Access’
On Monday, a former business associate of Hunter Biden’s named Devon Archer sat down with a House Oversight Committee panel behind closed doors for nearly five hours to discuss Hunter’s business dealings and any connections to his father. Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman declared after the session that Archer’s testimony “completely absolves Joe Biden of any involvement in Hunter Biden’s business world.” GOP Rep. James Comer claimed it made the Joe Biden “bribery scandal” even more credible. When the actual transcript of the interview was released yesterday, however, it quickly became clear that Archer’s testimony—under oath—was more nuanced than either side would’ve liked.
The broad contours of the Hunter Biden story are well-known. The president’s son is a longtime addict whose various failings—from the titillating photos of drug and sex exploits to serious financial misdeeds—have been the subject of controversy for years. He recently settled a child support paternity case with the mother of his 4-year old daughter after asking the judge to lower his monthly payment on claims of financial hardship, despite a high-flying lifestyle documented by the tabloids. Last Wednesday saw the collapse of a plea deal that had the younger Biden pleading guilty to tax misdemeanors and entering a pretrial diversion agreement to address a felony gun charge. Biden’s lawyers had sought to provide their client with immunity from prosecution for crimes beyond the tax and gun charges, with what appeared to be the agreement of the lawyers for the government, but that deal fell apart under scrutiny from the judge presiding in the case, raising questions about the bizarre handling of the case by the Department of Justice. And Hunter Biden’s long and ugly practice of trading aggressively on his family name in his business dealings is the subject of multiple investigations, with whistleblowers claiming that the president’s son is getting special treatment because of his father. The House Republicans leading those investigations are determined to answer the many questions about the Biden family finances with proof of corruption—or at least keep the stories alive while Joe Biden runs for reelection.
Worth Your Time
- What if Trumpism was inevitable not because of the behavior of his supporters, but because of the behavior of his detractors? “I ask you to try on a vantage point in which we anti-Trumpers are not the eternal good guys,” David Brooks writes for the New York Times, including himself in his critique. “In fact, we’re the bad guys. We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement. It’s easy to understand why people in less-educated classes would conclude that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault—and why they’ve rallied around Trump as their best warrior against the educated class. He understood that it’s not the entrepreneurs who seem most threatening to workers; it’s the professional class. Trump understood that there was great demand for a leader who would stick his thumb in our eyes on a daily basis and reject the whole epistemic regime that we rode in on. If distrustful populism is your basic worldview, the Trump indictments seem like just another skirmish in the class war between the professionals and the workers, another assault by a bunch of coastal lawyers who want to take down the man who most aggressively stands up to them.”
- America’s aging infrastructure isn’t just roads and bridges. Dams across the country are getting older and at risk of failing, often without an obvious way to pay for their repair. “On a sunny May morning four years ago, J Harmon was rousted out of bed by an emergency call: A 90-year-old dam near his home had failed, sending a torrent of water downstream and emptying the lake where he lived,” Joe Barrett reports for the Wall Street Journal. “That afternoon, he got a second shock when he learned there was no money to fix it. The state entity that oversaw six aging dams on the Guadalupe River couldn’t afford to rebuild them.” So, the lake’s homeowners cooked up a scheme to do it themselves, something more lake-side residents may be facing soon. “‘It’s not just a bunch of hillbilly bumpkins’ that made this happen, Harmon, a retired 66-year-old home builder, said on a recent day as he stood below the newly rebuilt dam, which is expected to begin refilling Lake Dunlap later this month. ‘Although when we first started, we did not know what we were doing—I’ll be the first to admit that.’”
Presented Without Comment
New York Post: Dianne Feinstein, 90, Cedes Power of Attorney to Daughter—But Still Serves in Congress
Also Presented Without Comment
Government Executive: DeSantis Vows to ‘Start Slitting Throats’ of Federal Workers on Day One of Presidency
Also Also Presented Without Comment
CBS Sports: Yankees’ Anthony Rizzo on [Injured List] With ‘Likely’ Concussion, Injury Traced to Collision Two Months Earlier
Toeing the Company Line
- In the newsletters: Nick welcomes (🔒) the prospect of a DeSantis vs. Newsom debate, arguing it will be a boon for DeSantis’ flagging campaign.
- On the podcasts: On the Dispatch Podcast, Sarah, Steve, and Jonah discuss the latest Trump indictment and the U.S. credit downgrade, plus an extended edition of (Not?) Worth Your Time.
- On the site: Charlotte explains that the suicide bombing that killed 60 people Pakistan was part of an ongoing conflict between ISIS-K and the Taliban’s Pakistani offshoot.
Please note that we at The Dispatch hold ourselves, our work, and our commenters to a higher standard than other places on the internet. We welcome comments that foster genuine debate or discussion—including comments critical of us or our work—but responses that include ad hominem attacks on fellow Dispatch members or are intended to stoke fear and anger may be moderated.
With your membership, you only have the ability to comment on The Morning Dispatch articles. Consider upgrading to join the conversation everywhere.