New Transcript Blows Up James Comer’s Entire Hunter Biden Argument

The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday released the transcript of the testimony of Kevin Morris, a friend of and attorney for Hunter Biden, and his statements undercut everything Republicans have said about the embattled first son.

Morris is a high-powered entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles who met Hunter at a 2019 presidential fundraiser for his father, Joe Biden. Morris has loaned Hunter nearly $5 million in the years since. He testified about his relationship with Hunter in a closed-door committee hearing last week.

Initially, Oversight Chair James Comer just released a list of paraphrased highlights from Morris’s testimony. Comer claimed that Morris informally loaned Hunter the money and does not expect to be repaid until after the 2024 election—or possibly ever. But the transcript shows this couldn’t be further from the truth.

In reality, Morris never once mentioned the possibility of forgiving the loans. Instead, he said he has a “100 percent” expectation that Hunter will repay him, and repeatedly states that he and Hunter have a series of promissory notes agreeing the younger Biden will pay back the money.

What’s more, Morris testified that there is a “balloon” on the loans set for after the election. This means that Hunter is currently making low or even no payments but will start making lump repayments in 2025.

The only person who mentions loan forgiveness in the entire interview is Representative Andy Biggs. The Arizona Republican has been a vocal critic of the Biden family, accusing them of criminal wrongdoing. Biggs asked what consequences Hunter would face if he defaulted on these loans.

Morris joked that, hypothetically, a lender could ask the borrower to “come over and wash your car for the rest of their life.”

Biggs replied, “Or you can forgive. You can forgive it.”

Morris agreed that was an option, but he never said he would.

Morris also repeatedly stated that Hunter never asked him for the money. Morris would voluntarily send money through his lawyers to Hunter’s, but the younger Biden did not ask him to do so. Morris only gave Hunter cash directly once, when he bought two paintings on their second meeting in 2019. And again, he wants the rest of the money he loaned paid back with interest.

Ultimately, the whole interview takes much of the bite out of Comer’s accusations. Comer has repeatedly accused Hunter of influence peddling and accepting bribes, which implies Hunter can be bought—and so can his father in the White House.

Instead, Morris describes Hunter as “a guy getting the crap beat out of him” by addiction, money troubles, grief, and paparazzi obsession—but who still won’t ask for help.

Morris’s lawyer accused Comer last week of grossly misrepresenting what Morris actually said during his deposition. Bryan Sullivan slammed Comer’s “cherry‐picked, out of context and totally misleading” press release and demanded the representative release the full transcript.

Oversight Committee Democrats have previously accused Comer of misrepresenting witness testimony in his quest to prove the Biden family is guilty of criminal wrongdoing. Comer has for months accused the president of corruption and influence peddling, but he has yet to produce any actual evidence.

A day after Ron DeSantis exhausted his bid for the White House and endorsed Donald Trump for the presidency, the Florida governor nixed a Republican effort to line Trump’s legal fund from within his state.

On Monday evening, DeSantis shared a link to a Politico article titled, “Some Florida Republicans want taxpayers to pay Trump’s legal bills,” referring to a bill introduced by state Senator Ileana Garcia, who proposed that Florida taxpayers should foot $5 million in legal aid to the former president.

“But not the Florida Republican who wields the veto pen,” DeSantis posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Garcia’s proposal garnered initial support within the state, getting an endorsement from Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis. The “Florida Freedom Fighters Fund” bill argued that Trump qualified for legal aid from a designated state fund, because he is a presidential candidate and Florida resident “subject to political discrimination.” That coffer comes from fees paid by candidates running for political office within the state but would be replenished by voluntary donations made by residents when renewing their driver’s licenses, according to Florida Politics.

“Having a Floridian in the White House is good for our state,” Garcia said in a statement issued on Monday, referring to the former president who was born and raised among New York City’s social elite. “And anything we can do to support Florida Presidential candidates, like President Trump, will not only benefit our state, but our nation.”

But that support quickly died down after DeSantis came out in opposition to the bill, with Garcia almost immediately rescinding the proposal and backtracking in incredible fashion by claiming online that Trump actually didn’t need the financial help anymore.

“This bill was filed on January 5th amidst a crowded primary, including two Florida residents. My concern was the political weaponization against conservative candidates, and while (Patronis) brought me this bill at a time when all candidates were committing to campaign through the primary, one frontrunner now remains, and he can handle himself. I will be withdrawing the bill,” Garcia said, reposting DeSantis’s comments.

Trump is currently facing 91 charges across four criminal cases and potentially steep civil penalties for the continuous defamation of Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll and for the Trump Organization’s bank fraud in New York, which may result in a fine as high as $370 million.

Donald Trump didn’t shy away from several Qanon chants that erupted throughout the last leg of his New Hampshire campaign on Monday.

During a quiet moment of the rally, attendees engaged in a bit of call-and-response with the GOP front-runner, shouting things at Trump for his reactions.

“Where we go one, we go all,” erupted the crowd in a QAnon chant that’s frequently abbreviated to WWG1WGA in online messaging boards like 4chan, where the cult began.

Trump then smiled and nodded, scanning his audience.

“Free the January 6-ers,” shouted one of the attendees.

“We will,” Trump responded, pointing back at her.

In the three years since Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol Building in an attempt to thwart Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s presidential win, the Justice Department has convicted hundreds of the rioters, including former police officers, active duty U.S. Marines, and many members of far-right extremist groups. QAnon supporters comprise a good chunk of those convictions, with the self-proclaimed QAnon Shaman, Jacob Chansley, emerging as one of the central figures of the revolt.

Trump has held messiah-like status within QAnon’s conspiratorial circle for years thanks to their principal belief that, despite being named and photographed as an associate of sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and despite being found liable by a jury for sexually abusing Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll, Trump will rid the world of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run the government and media.

And Trump has readily welcomed the cockeyed adoration. In 2020, Trump offered the movement plausible deniability at an executive level—claiming that while he didn’t know much about QAnon, he couldn’t disprove its theories. Just two years later, Trump was regularly circulating bits of the conspiracy on TruthSocial, reposting images of himself wearing Q pins subtitled with the cult’s messaging, “A Storm is Coming,” referring to Trump’s final victory when QAnon supporters expect him to mass-execute his opponents.

Barbie was conspicuously absent from certain Oscar categories when the award nominations were announced Tuesday, and people are furious.

The record-setting film received a nomination for best picture, and Ryan Gosling is up for best actor in a supporting role for his admittedly iconic portrayal of Ken. But titular star Margot Robbie was nowhere to be seen in the list of best leading actress nominations, and director Greta Gerwig is not up for best director.

America Ferrera did receive a nomination for best actress in a supporting role. But still, the fact that a movie about the patriarchy does not acknowledge the leading women feels a little on the nose.

Meanwhile, Oppenheimer—the other half of the massive cultural phenomenon that was “Barbenheimer”—dominated the categories with a total of 13 nominations.

Never shy about sharing their opinions, users on X (formerly Twitter) let loose on the deep irony of Ken, but not Barbie, getting an Oscar nomination about the challenges of womanhood and the dangers of toxic masculinity.

Elon Musk, who has used social media to spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, is now arguing that had social media existed at the time of the Holocaust, it could have prevented the tragedy.

Musk visited the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau on Monday, as part of an apparent apology tour for his blatant antisemitism. Later that day, he participated in a conference on antisemitism organized in Krakow by the European Jewish Association.

Musk admitted he had been “somewhat naive” about the dangers of antisemitism. But he revealed how little he actually cares by sitting down for an interview with Ben Shapiro, a far-right commentator and conspiracy theorist. The two men then insisted that social media could have prevented the Holocaust from happening.

To prove their argument, Musk showed fake tweets he created of people sharing photos of Nazi attacks on synagogues, supporting Jewish resistance fighters, and pushing back against Holocaust deniers. There was even a tweet from the “official” Auschwitz account claiming Jews there were “thriving”—only to have a community note debunk that claim.

This claim holds very little water, for many reasons. A major one, as journalist Aaron Gordon pointed out, was that Nazi Germany revoked Jews’ right to free movement long before the death camps were built. So all those tweets from people urging Jews to leave Germany would have been meaningless.

Another reason is that many civilians were well aware of what Nazis were doing, or at least aware that Jewish people were being removed and never seen again. And they were perfectly content to let it happen.

In fact, if the current state of X (formerly Twitter) is anything to go by, social media could have actually made the Holocaust happen faster.

Since Musk took over the social media platform, X has been rife with hate speech. Musk himself is a major source of disinformation and hate speech, particularly antisemitism. He has also let multiple neo-Nazis back onto X, after previous leadership banned them.

In November, Musk backed a vile antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are getting what they deserve because they harbor “diabolical hatred against whites.” That, combined with the revelation that X was placing ads next to pro-Hitler and pro-Nazi content, sent advertisers fleeing the platform in droves (again).

Musk said Monday that his November post was “literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done,” which is saying something if you look at his X feed. He claimed he hadn’t understood the dangers of anti-Jewish sentiment because “in the circles I move in, I see no antisemitism.”

He said that “two-thirds of my friends are Jewish,” which actually undercuts his previous claim. Surely at least one of those Jewish friends would have been able to tell Musk about antisemitism.

Musk then claimed that thanks to all his information-hoarding friends, he is “Jewish by association.”

“I’m aspirationally Jewish,” he said, which holds all the gravity of someone calling themself “Jew-ish.”