Hunter indictment could put Joe in a Clintonian box: Turley
GWU Law Professor Jonathan Turley tells 'The Ingraham Angle' the president's protestations sound a lot like Lewinsky denials.
After a California grand jury handed down an indictment of first son Hunter Biden, political analysts predicted the bombshell would put President Biden in a self-constructed "trap" after he again claimed allegations he was in influence-peddling cahoots with his brother and son were "lies."
A grand jury empaneled in the Central District of California — which comprises Los Angeles — handed down an indictment against Hunter Biden.
"I think a lot of people felt… that David Weiss was going to let these charges skate and Hunter Biden would never be held accountable for making millions of dollars overseas. And a lot of people will say that was inappropriate," former Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., said.
READ IT: FULL INDICTMENT AGAINST HUNTER BIDEN
An excerpt from the indictment obtained by Fox News said "the defendant engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019."
Duffy also surmised that if legal conditions worsen for the Bidens in this Los Angeles case, Democrats are going to seek an "off ramp [and] look to the hair-gel governor" there in 2024.
George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News the indictment may rhetorically box in President Biden, due to his long-held denials of knowledge or participation in his son's foreign business dealings.
Turley riffed that there's some similarity between Biden's denials and former President Clinton's famed attestation, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," during the 1998 Whitewater-Lewinsky scandal.
HUNTER BIDEN FACES NEW INDICTMENT IN CALIFORNIA
President Biden's denial of knowledge of his son's dealings sounded like former President Clinton's denials of relations with intern Monica Lewinsky, George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley said. (Harry Hamburg/NY Daily News via Getty)
"I mean, basically [Biden is] saying, ‘I did not have interactions with those people,'" Turley said.
"It didn't work for Clinton. And it's even more insulting here," he added, pointing to polling showing a majority of Americans, including a swath of Democrats, don't believe Biden on this front.
Turley contrasted that with his own prediction that no Democrats would support the GOP's impeachment inquiry.
"But what the president is facing is a trap of his own making. He ran for office promising, assuring, the American people that he had no knowledge of these transactions," he said. "That has been directly contradicted. Hunter Biden himself contradicted his father on that. But you have Hunter's close associate saying that that's absolute nonsense, that, of course, he knew."
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"So, [Joe is] in this, this sort of frozen-in-amber with a story that he cannot possibly maintain," he added.
Turley later added that the Justice Department has let the statute of limitation run out on the "most serious" potential charges against Hunter Biden.
At the same time, he proffered that Republicans may actually suffer a political loss in one way from the indictment announcement, because the younger Biden may choose to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, and potentially therefore stymie Congress' ability to question him under oath.
Washington Times opinion editor Charles Hurt added to Fox News that the indictment must be "like a nuclear bomb going off for the Biden family," saying that it must terrify President Biden as he approaches his re-election contest to have his son indicted for something he may or may not be connected to.
"The other part of this is regardless [of whether] Joe Biden is completely untainted by any of this in any sort of legal sense or in any sort of business sense, which I would be highly skeptical of — but even if that were the case, he still has lied to the American people about it over and over and over again," Hurt said.
Harvard Law Professor-Emeritus Alan Dershowitz also reacted to the Hunter Biden indictment, telling Fox News the person who is ultimately responsible for the case not being whisked under the rug is Delaware Judge Maryellen Noreika, who previously rejected a plea deal between the Biden Justice Department and Hunter Biden's attorneys.
"Judge Noreika made sure that this was not all covered up by a deal that made no sense," he said on "Hannity."
"I predicted on your show and other shows that Judge Noriega would not accept the deal. I was trashed for it by many academics, by CNN, by many other media. But she did the right thing. She sent it back. And the result has been now much more information coming out to the American public."
Dershowitz said the next step for the Justice Department should be the appointment of a "real" special counsel who is independent of the DOJ.
Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett has said in the past federal regulation 28 CFR 600.3 contends a special counsel shall be selected from outside the United States government, in a previous argument against Weiss' ultimate validity.
Dershowitz argued this person should replace Weiss, who is also the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware.
"Because if it becomes just an impeachment concern, then half the country won't believe it; half the country will. The same thing happened with [former President] Trump. But if there's a special counsel who's credible and who can get to the bottom of this and either clear President Biden or accuse President Biden, I think the American public will," Dershowitz concluded.
Fox News' David Spunt and William Mears contributed to this report.