so far it seems like China is on the same page. William: Thank you. President Biden's son hunter turned heads. He mingled in the crowd just days after new of the his plea agreement with the D.O.J. Set off a political firestorm. He's expected to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and illegal leoning a gun. Outraged house Republicans vowed to continue investigating the president and his family. >> As it continues to show a two-tier system in America. If you are the president's son, you get a sweetheart deal. Now, this does nothing to our investigation. It actually should enhance it. William: But attorney general maybe gashedden has rejected accusations that Biden received any special treatment. >> Some claim that we do not like -- treat like cases alike. Nothing could be further from the truth. William: Two I.R.S. Whistleblowers claim that the investigation was interfered with to favor the president's son. A lot of political intrigue going on right now. Weijia, are you surprised that hunter Biden was brought to this state dinner? The same week this plea deal was announced, he was welcomed with full fanfare. Weijia: No, I wasn't surprised and the white house's response was, you know, this is still the son of a president and I don't think that the strategy right now is to run away from it. I think they want to show that he is a real person. That he is unlike some of his Republican counterparts, who the Republicans have been trying to compare him too, he fesses up. He admits wrongdoing and there is a clear separation between the white house and the dog -- doj. What ha of that is what the Biden team is trying to portray. It made sense to me that they didn't try to hide him. They didn't want to have an appearance that he had done something even further wrong. They wanted to show he is, in fact, trying to rebuild his life after years of addiction, which is something they're very willing to talk about. Mary: Joe Biden is in a position of having to respond personally and politically and I think Joe Biden the father is always going to take first bidding over Joe Biden the politician. This is incredibly painful for the president and him showing to his son, to the world, come to dinner at the white house. William: You still have my embrace. Mary: Exactly. Not just showing a message to the world, to his political opponents. They think there's a lot left to be investigated here pol politically, even criminally. They're not bringing any criminal charges linked to hunter Biden's business dealings but perspective Biden is a devoted father who has stood by his son through struggles with addiction. He is not distancing himself from hunter but he is distancing himself from this investigation. Carl: I thought if I happened written a movie script that had that state dinner with the president, the president's son, the two howls Republican leaders who are pursuing him and the president and the attorney general, who is trying to avoid the whole mess all at the same dinner somebody would say that could never happen. [Laughter] But the Republicans, no matter what hunter Biden agreed to and admitted to, the Republicans were always going to say that this is a two-tiered justice system, that trump is being treated differently than hunter Biden and with these whistleblowers now, they finally made a little headway. This is really the first time they've seemed so have some credible -- William: These are two whistleblowers who have come forward and said the investigation was delayed, they gave Biden's lawyers heads up when they shouldn't have. Carl: Right. They finally have a little something to grab on to. That there was some unequal equal treatment and hunter wasn't investigated the way a normal personal would be for tax fraud. However, it's still hunter Biden. St not Joe Biden. They're trying to drag Joe Biden into it. So there's this new transcript of a -- I think it's a text message that he supposedly -- talking about his father. Hunter Biden's lawyer came of the and, hunter Biden is speaking only for himself, no one else in the family. We'll see where they can go with this but it's obviously not going away. They're going to continue this all the way through the election but they still haven't really made the direct link to the president but they're going to try very hard to do that that. William: This text message Carl is talking about is a text message where hunter is speaking to, we believe a Chinese official. He's saying I'm sitting next to my father. This was when Biden was not president yet. He essentially said I'm sitting next to my dad and if you don't do this deal with me there's going to be hell to pay. Do you think this adds to the Republicans' case there is more here? >> It certainly looks that way. Frippetted they weren't moving ahead with some energy deep and to Carl's points, hunter Biden's lawyers, the white house have all said the president knows nothing about this. There was no connection to the president, then former vice president, who wasn't in office at the time. This also was a time when hunter was heavily addicted through drugs. But I do think the Republicans are going to try very hard to do whatever they can to keep this in the conversation. Whether we learn anymore from the trump-appointed prosecutor, david-wise. There are many questions. Obviously he looked into all of these things. Why didn't he bring any criminal charges linked to hunter Biden's overseas' doings? I do won'ter if at some point we may get more transparency that may clear things up in an attempt to ferret it all out. Carl: He had written a letter to Jim Jordan? Congress saying I had full discretion to make the decisions here. Now, there's some question whether that is true but he put it in writing. There's a lot to disentangle but I think the Republicans are going to keep at it and move slightly towards impeaching the president. >> The other thing you're seeing from Republicans is trying to chip away at president Biden's credibility because he has said so adamantly that he knew nothing about his son's business dealings and this particular text message would show otherwise after the president said he didn't know and the white house officially said that the president didn't know. To so they're trying to paint this picture of he actually did know and lied about it. William: Right, and there's no evidence that Joe Biden was accepting next to hunters when that text was written. Maybe that's another line of investigation. The other point the Republicans keep making is that this is the we havization of the D.O.J. And president Biden directing maybe Garland and the D.O.J. For his rivals. But we saw a report showing how the D.O.J. Was very reluctant to open an investigation about January 6 and then-president trump and any of his colleagues were involved in all of that. So do you think that that argument will continue? Carl Hulse: Yes, they will continue but maybe Garland was a very conservative person and a lot of people think he was way too reluctant to do several investigations and moved way too slowly but both sides are moving to their bails. They want to show that Donald Trump is being treated unfairly no matter what's going on in the courts. They're going to stick with that. William: Do you have a sense of what the next step in the investigation of the Republicans is. Is there more a pulling of these threads or more things they're going to pursue? Mary: I think they're going to pull at all the threads they can find. Just simply to keep it in the conversation because -- and to weijia's points, just because something may be inappropriate or a moral even, doesn't mean that he's criminal behavior and also doesn't necessarily link it to the president, and, of course, hunter Biden was not in the administration, knot running for president, not only any ballot but it doesn't matter I think in the optics of it and trying to keep it in the conversation because as long as Donald Trump is having the legal challenges he's having, if sympathetic keep that conversation with hunter Biden up, I think they think there's a lot of opportunities here. William: -- Carl: Remember, Kevin Mccarthy got in trouble for talking about how the Benghazi investigation was a benefit because it served its benefit of lowering Hillary Clinton's poll numbers. >> I think you'll see the white house try too distance themselves as much as possible. Also with Garland there doing everything they can to try and underscore the fact they believe in the Independence of the justice department but you have two very different conversations going on where the president is doing everything he can to look presidential. While all of this is playing out to try and make it look like the Republicans are being chaotic. That's their strategy. William: Do you have a sense of inside the white house with the Bidens themselves how this plea deal with that hunter took sits with them? Is it a moment of relief? How are they seeing it? Weijia: I think that there are certainly reports that the president was relieved and I think that overall the bottom line is these are federal charges and it is remarkable that a president's some is pleading guilty to them but they -- to Mary's earlier point, are not what the Republicans had wanted or expected to come out of this investigation. So I do think that there is relief because it shows in their mind that there is no their there. Of course, the Republicans would say the D.O.J. Is just covering it up. William: Excuse me, I'm sorry. We have to suddenly wrap.
