Hunter’s Congressional Chaos & Final Iowa Debate | 1.11.24

00:03
Speaker 1
Chaos on Capitol Hill after Hunter Biden crashes a committee hearing on holding him in contempt.

00:09
Speaker 2
Any other American will be held in contempt by Congress. This is Democrat privilege of the highest order. Let's do our jobs.

00:16
Speaker 3
How did the vote turn out? And what's next for the president's scandal plagued son?

00:20
Speaker 1
I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor in chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, January 11, and this is Morningwire. Just days from the first republican primary vote in Iowa, the top two challengers to Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, face off in the Hawkeye state. What we're going to do is rather than have him go and tell you all these lies, you can go to desantislies.com.

00:48
Speaker 4
She's got this problem with ballistic podiatry shooting herself in the foot every other day, saying things that now she doesn't even take questions from people.

00:57
Speaker 3
And outrage in New York after students are forced to go remote to shelter illegal immigrants at their schools.

01:03
Speaker 1
Our kids going to be remote for how long? A day? Two days? Three weeks? It's not fair. Thanks for waking up with Morningwire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

01:20
Speaker 2
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01:55
Speaker 1
Hunter Biden appeared at a House oversight committee hearing on Wednesday that was deciding whether to hold the first son in contempt of Congress. But he wasn't there to testify.

02:06
Speaker 3
Hunter, flanked by his attorney Abby Lowell and longtime associate Kevin Morris, surprised lawmakers by briefly entering the hearing room, sitting in the front row and causing no shortage of congressional chaos. Here to discuss the move by the beleaguered Biden scion is daily wire contributor David Marcus. Hey, Dave. So briefly, can you tell us what happened there? There was a lot of yelling and posturing going on.

02:27
Speaker 5
Morning, John. I'll do my best. So this was a hearing to determine whether to hold Hunter in contempt for refusing a subpoena to testify behind closed doors in regard to allegations of influence peddling. Hunter crashed the party with his lawyer. And Morris, who, it's worth noting, is the person who paid many of Hunter's taxes and purchased much of his art. Republicans tore into Hunter for this display with Representative Nancy Mace accusing him of engaging in a political stunt, of being the epitome of white privilege, and calling for him to be immediately arrested, which did not happen, though it could have.

03:04
Speaker 1
What are you afraid of? You have no balls to come up here.

03:09
Speaker 2
Mr. Chairman.

03:09
Speaker 1
Point of inquiry, Mr. Chairman, if the gentle lady wants to hear from Hunter Biden, we can hear from him right now. Mr. Chairman, let's take a vote and hear from Hunter Biden. What are you afraid of?

03:20
Speaker 4
Hold on. Order.

03:21
Speaker 5
Order.

03:22
Speaker 1
I believe that Hunter Biden should be held completely in contempt. I think he should be hauled off to jail right now.

03:28
Speaker 3
Well, pretty wild exchange there. So to Mace's question, why wasn't Hunter Biden detained by the sergeant at arms of the house for defying the subpoena? There had been calls for that.

03:38
Speaker 5
So I spoke to some sources on this, and for one thing, it wouldn't have advanced the ball and could have distracted from the point of the hearing and the committee, which is to investigate potential influence peddling involving Hunter's dad. But there were also practical concerns. Hunter has secret service protection, for example. So how would that work? In any event, at one point, Republicans said, okay, do you want to testify in public now? And shortly thereafter, Hunter and his entourage exited the hearing room to take a few questions in the hallway, which saw its own share of chaos.

04:12
Speaker 1
If he had nothing to do with your business partners, why did you do that?

04:20
Speaker 3
Did we learn anything from those reporter questions, given that we did not hear from Hunter Biden in official sworn testimony?

04:27
Speaker 5
Well, yeah, he was asked about why he took the phone calls from Joe Biden during business meetings and replied, arguably a bit smugly, by basically asking the reporter, wouldn't you answer if your dad called you? Which obviously ignores testimony by his associate Devin Archer, who said the calls were meant to give the appearance of influence. One intrepid newsman managed to shout out the question, what kind of crack do you smoke? Which did not receive a reply from Hunter or his attorney, but did seem to sum up the general circus like atmosphere that prevailed in our nation's halls of power on Wednesday.

05:01
Speaker 3
Now, Hunter and Democrats on the committee have balked at having him deposed without cameras before giving public testimony. Why is this an issue for them? And will Republicans back down from that demand?

05:13
Speaker 5
Democrats claim that if Biden testifies behind closed doors, then Republicans will misrepresent the testimony, even though there would be transcripts. Deposing a witness under oath is pretty standard. It gives a baseline for eventual public testimony. And at the end of the day, the subpoena was issued whether Democrats like it or not. So no, Republicans will not back down and, in fact, did find Hunter in contempt later in the day.

05:36
Speaker 3
This particular episode of drama comes just a week after we learned that Hunter is filming a top secret documentary depicting his challenges with addiction and the law. Could this have effectively been a scripted stunt?

05:49
Speaker 5
For that, I would like to tell you that this is ridiculous, that this is a very serious matter. So, of course, it's not just pantomime for documentary cameras, but whether it was for documentary or news cameras, Hunter was ready for his close up Wednesday. And we seem far from the final act of this particular political drama.

06:08
Speaker 3
Yeah, sequels in the works, no doubt.

06:09
Speaker 5
Great.

06:10
Speaker 3
Dave, thanks for joining us.

06:11
Speaker 5
Thanks for having me.

06:19
Speaker 3
On the eve of the crucial Iowa caucus, GOP candidates are making their final pitch to voters, blanketing the state for debates in town halls.

06:28
Speaker 1
Here with the latest is daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. So, Cabot, we've entered the home stretch. The big news last night was the CNN debate, which featured a much smaller crowd than usual. Tell us about that. Yeah.

06:40
Speaker 6
Last night's debate stage featured just two people, Florida's Ron DeSantis and South Carolina's Nikki Haley. Now, despite saying that he would join the debate stage once the field narrowed, which it now has, former President Donald Trump was once again absent, saying that his massive lead makes it unnecessary for him to debate. For their part, Vivek Ramaswami and Christie each failed to reach the polling threshold and were also absent from the stage, though we should note that just ahead of the debate, Christie announced that he was officially dropping out. So that left Haley and DeSantis more than enough time to duke it out.

07:13
Speaker 1
So we saw Haley versus DeSantis with very high stakes. Give us some of the highlights. Yeah.

07:19
Speaker 6
At this point, both candidates are really just desperate to become the clear alternative in the race to Donald Trump. And with that in mind, the knives were definitely out. To give you an idea of the tone of the evening, Haley's campaign bought the website desantislies.com. And she mentioned that site over and over dozens of times throughout the evening.

07:39
Speaker 1
The best way to tell about a candidate is to see how they've run their campaign. He has blown through $150,000,000. I don't even know how you do that. Through his campaign, he has nothing to show for it. He spent more money on private planes than he has on commercials trying to get Iowans to vote for him. If you can't manage a campaign, how are you going to manage a country?

08:01
Speaker 6
And it's worth noting DeSantis had more than a few barbs of his.

08:04
Speaker 4
Know, I debated the governor of Newsom. You know, I thought he lied a lot, man. Nikki Haley may gives him a run for his money, and she may even be more liberal than Gavin Newsom is.

08:14
Speaker 6
Later on, during an exchange on Ukraine, DeSantis went after Haley for her promise to continue funding the war there, referencing her time as ambassador to the UN.

08:24
Speaker 4
This is the UN way of thinking that we're somehow globalists and we have unlimited resources to know. I think here's the problem. You can take the ambassador out of the United nations, but you can't take the United nations out of the ambassador.

08:38
Speaker 6
For her part, Haley accused DeSantis of flip flopping on the issue of Ukraine spending.

08:43
Speaker 1
Nobody knows what he believes because when President Obama was in office, he supported foreign aid to Ukraine. Now he's copying Trump and trying to act like he doesn't want to support Ukraine.

08:52
Speaker 6
And it's worth noting, throughout the evening, these CNN acres who were hosting the debate were definitely proding the two on stage to go after Donald Trump. Something that both candidates were more than willing to do than in debates past.

09:04
Speaker 4
He said he was going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. He did not deliver that. He said he was going to drain the swamp. He did not deliver that. He said he was going to hold Hillary accountable and he let her off the. It's fine to criticize Donald Trump. And I know the media brings it up a lot, but you know who else deserves to be criticized? The people that violated the constitution during COVID to lock people out of schools, to destroy businesses, to force mass on people, to try to force vaccines. I'm going to bring a reckoning to all these agencies, the CDC, the NIH, the FDA.

09:32
Speaker 1
He needs to be defending his record right now. He's not defending the fact that he allowed us to have $8 trillion in debt over four years that our kids are never going to forgive us for. Now, you mentioned President Trump, who was absent from the debate stage, but not actually from the airwaves, correct? Yeah.

09:51
Speaker 6
As usual, Trump was not about to let his opponents soak up the limelight all for themselves. He opted to take part in a town hall from Des Moines that aired on Fox News and, of course, began at the exact same time as the debate. The former president devoted much of his time to illegal immigration. Here he is on that front.

10:09
Speaker 7
We have millions and millions of people here. It is not sustainable. Did you see in New York City where they're getting the regular students out and they're putting migrants in their place? We are going to have the largest deportation effort in the history of our country.

10:26
Speaker 1
So closing arguments there in Iowa, we'll see if that moved the needle for Republicans. Cabot, thanks for reporting.

10:31
Speaker 6
Anytime.

10:36
Speaker 1
New York City Mayor Eric Adams ordered a high school to shelter nearly 2000 migrants this week. The move forced hundreds of students to attend classes online and sparked outrage among parents and local leaders.

10:49
Speaker 3
Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to discuss what happened at James Madison High School and the fallout. Hi, Tim. First, what was Mayor Adams trying to accomplish here?

10:59
Speaker 8
The intent was to protect the welfare of the immigrants. About 1900 of them live in a tent shelter set up at Floyd Bennett Field. And when bad weather began to hit the city on Tuesday, Adams ordered that they be relocated to James Madison High School out of an abundance of caution. So 1900 immigrants were moved into the school that night and a notice was sent to parents that students would be going to class remotely the next day. For his part, Adams visited the temporary migrant shelter and stood for photos. The immigrants only stayed in the school a day before they were moved back to Floyd Bennett Field. This, of course, comes as Adams has complained about migrants in the city for months.

11:36
Speaker 8
He says that the large number coming from the southern border are causing the city's welfare system to buckle, and he's repeatedly called on President Biden to provide aid. White House press secretary Kareem Jean Pierre was asked about the New York high school controversy yesterday and didn't have much to say.

11:51
Speaker 1
That is something that New York City needs to answers to. That is a process that they took, so they have to answer to that.

11:57
Speaker 3
So the immigrants only stayed in the high school overnight, but the situation still upset many people, right?

12:04
Speaker 8
Parents and local leaders were furious with the mayor over this. A few parents went to James Madison on Tuesday night to watch the immigrants move in and share complaints with anyone who would listen.

12:28
Speaker 3
To school.

12:29
Speaker 8
And lawmakers were upset as well. Here's part of a video statement that was posted by a Republican, New York City council member, Ina Vernikov, after the mayor's announcement.

12:39
Speaker 1
We warned about this. Floyd Benefield is susceptible to flooding, storms, winds, and et cetera. It's not an acceptable place to house people, but neither are our public schools. Every time there's a flood, are they going to find a new school to move the migrants to. This is not the last storm or flood. It's winter. Our schools are not migrant homeless shelters.

13:02
Speaker 8
Parents and lawmakers also rallied in front of James Madison on Wednesday. Here's New York State Assemblymember Alec Brooke Krasney speaking at the event.

13:11
Speaker 1
They want to bring more and more people who would rely on the government and vote for them, let's say the way it is. Why still at Floyd Bennett park? Because Floyd Bennett park is located in the conservative area of New York City.

13:28
Speaker 8
Now, the migrants took over the school's gymnasium for just one night, but some parents say they will keep their children out of the school over hygiene concerns.

13:35
Speaker 3
Now Adams has tried to crack down on the flow of migrants into the city. How is that effort going?

13:41
Speaker 8
Not well. Many of the immigrants in the city were passengers on buses charted by Texas and El Paso and some other communities. Adams recently tried to block migrant buses from entering the city, but Texas Governor Greg Abbot then rerouted them to a train station in New Jersey that ran a line into the heart of New York. Adams has filed a 700 million dollar lawsuit against Texas over the busing program. Here's how Abbott responded.

14:05
Speaker 4
I know the law and Eric Adams does not know the law. Once the Biden administration has authorized these migrants to be in the United States, they have the constitutional right to travel to New York City. So what Eric Adams is doing is filing a baseless lawsuit denying these migrants of their right to travel to New York City. He's going to lose and lose badly, and I hope he's forced to pay.

14:28
Speaker 3
Attorneys'Fees, just another consequence of the ongoing crisis at the border. Tim, thanks for reporting.

14:34
Speaker 8
Good to be on, but that's all.

14:39
Speaker 1
The time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news. You need to know.