Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show, on WNYC. Good Monday morning, everyone. Two big news headlines from the last few days that we'll begin with today. Number one, Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel, yes, same title as Jack Smith, who's charging Donald Trump with trying to fake being elected. Merrick Garland has named another special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden.

Even though these are in no way equivalent in terms of the future of our democracy, casual consumers of news might be tempted to think, "Well, there's a Trump special counsel and a Biden special counsel." Whatever about those two, we'll discuss. Story number two, the Democrats who run New York City, New York State, and the White House are at odds with each other in additional ways, in the last few days, over all the asylum seekers coming to New York.

State Attorney General Letitia James, have you heard this, announced she is refusing to represent Governor Kathy Hochul, both Democrats obviously, in a lawsuit seeking more migrant services from the state government. Typically, the attorney general does represent the governor's office when it is sued. Mayor Eric Adams demanded that the Biden administration do more to help with Adams' new estimate of a $12 billion price tag for the city over the next two years, for asylum seeker services.

With me now, though, is the Washington bureau chief for The Economist magazine Idrees Kahloon, with a data-driven view of those numbers. He had an article in The New Yorker recently, titled, "Economists love immigration. Why do so many Americans hate it?" We'll try to get at some of the real and complicated economics of the asylum seekers' arrival, and yes, talk about the Hunter Biden special counsel too.

Maybe even look back at an Economist article Idrees wrote late last year, called, "American politics will be on a knife edge in 2023." We'll see if this year is turning out as he expected. Again, Idrees Kahloon is the Washington bureau chief for The Economist, as well as sometimes New Yorker magazine contributor. He began at The Economist, his bio page says, as a data journalist in London, graduated from Harvard with a degree in applied mathematics and economics.

Not your usual majors for journalists, so he's one of those journalists who is not afraid of math, which is a good thing. He was last on this show in February, to discuss President Biden's approach to the economy. Idrees, good to have you on again. Welcome back to WNYC.

Idrees Kahloon: Well, thank you so much for having me back. I'm looking forward to it.

Brian Lehrer: Your article about economists loving immigration begins by recalling a play that opened in New York, right about 100 years ago, and about a New York Times editorial that basically said, "Ellis Island immigrants were giving the city a bad smell." They actually used the word reek. Can you give us the radio version of both of those things from the century past?

Idrees Kahloon: Yes, absolutely. The article starts with this play called The Melting Pot. The play has been forgotten, although we've all adopted the phrase, and we've understood it. It's not the best play in the world. It hits you over the top of the head with its image, which is basically that America is this beautiful crucible in which all previous backgrounds are forged together in this alchemical way. It's a bit violent in its expression, but in the end, we forge this American spirit, and how great that is.

Teddy Roosevelt, writing the piece, absolutely adored it. He thought it was amazing, and the metaphor really took off. What is interesting that I came across in the writing of the piece was, in a lot of ways, America resembles in its debates and some of its attributes, what it was going through 100 years ago. If you read, for example, the USA trilogy by John Dos Passos, it's actually a very scary, eerie feeling where you see that there's agony over immigration, there's agony over inequality.

At the time, America was in 1910. When Zangwill was writing this play, America was incredibly open. This was the Ellis Island days, were never as big as it was before. Then 10 years later, the borders were really about to close shut, and they stayed shut from the 1920s until the 1960s. It wasn't really until then that they were opened again, and then we saw the present wave of immigration, one we're living through.

One thing that I note is that the foreign-born population share of this country is about one in six. That's right where it was 100 years ago, when the tenor of the immigration debate turned, so I think there's some attribute [unintelligible 00:05:10].

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] Turned to be dark, the way it is today.

Idrees Kahloon: Exactly. There's this element of return. The fractious politics were the same. There was actually a pandemic at the time, the Spanish Flu, about 100 years ago. If you read that book-- Obviously, they don't have the technology that we did, but they're going through the very same debates that we did today.

Brian Lehrer: We're actually already planning a series for the show, for next year, on the 100th anniversary of that 1924 immigration law, which basically ended the Ellis Island era. We'll look at a 100-year view of immigration since, which I think is going to be interesting, because you can have a nice round number, you can frame a media series, you know what I mean, and people will take a close look, but shut down immigration for the next 40 years, as you say.

Looking back on that, and relevant to your article, how much of the argument for that was economic as opposed to racial or ethnic?

Idrees Kahloon: The two are always tied in tandem. I think the core argument, the one that holds the most weight today, and I think held the most weight then, was the idea that the immigrants who were coming into America constituted a threat to the polity, that there was a difference in orientation, a difference in view that would mean that what it meant to be American was going to change. You see those fears today. The economic arguments, I think, have always been there.

The idea that more immigration meant more competition for jobs, and therefore lowered wages, and then nativism was a necessary solution, protectionism, other things, but at the core, I think that the debate has always been one of our identity. I'm very interested in your American Century of Immigration project, because initially, it was that Italians were thought of as a threat to the American polity, the Irish were thought of as a threat, then what they call the Slavic people, from Russia and other places.

Those folks have all been integrated, I think, fairly easily into what we now conceive of as white Americans. Before, that wasn't the case. I lived in England for a year. There, you see an eerie reproduction of this, where people are, I'd say, maybe, if not racist, at least quite biased towards those who come from Poland. It's a very similar dynamic, this idea that people from other countries share a different view, and over time, of course, they become integrated.

Their children are especially good at becoming integrated into those societies. The societies change a bit, but those fears, I think, just take generations to dissipate.

Brian Lehrer: I want to get to the generational economic question in a little more detail since you write about that, but do the economists you spoke to-- I didn't see this in the article, but I wonder if you have anything on it, if any economist you know, or from your study of economic history and political history, make a case that closing the borders in 1924 hurt the country economically.

Just a few years later, the US went into the Great Depression for a decade, and we don't usually hear the closed borders as a contributor to that. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard it connected. Do economists argue that it was?

Idrees Kahloon: I haven't come across that for the 1920 law in particular. I think that, in general, the consensus view among economists is that having open borders is good for growth, so therefore, I think that they would draw the conclusion that that law had a negative effect on the economy. The data back in the 1920s is not particularly good, so a lot of the studies focus on that 1960 turn point when the borders reopened, and they can observe what happened then, or they look at guest worker programs that were around in the 60s.

A lot of the time, actually, immigration wasn't as closely regulated, wasn't as closely monitored, so the data was harder to find. The constraint on immigrating back then used to be technology. It used to take months to come over. Now, even the planes are expensive, they're fairly trivial, in terms of costs for a salary.

Brian Lehrer: People have said JFK Airport is the new Ellis Island, right?

Idrees Kahloon: Yes, absolutely. It's interesting when you mentioned JFK also, because so much of our debate currently is this very emotional debate about undocumented immigrants. Republicans largely don't focus on legal immigrants. I was talking to someone who works for USCIS, which regulates this stuff. He was saying the majority of undocumented immigrants in this country don't come via the southern border.

They come through airports like JFK, they overstay their visas, and that it does not have the same imagery, the emotional salience that the images of people going over the border does, so it occupies this huge space in the American political mind. Arguably, it's not even a majority of the problem.

Brian Lehrer: It also probably relates to who's coming in via the airports versus who's coming in across the border. We'll get to that. Listeners, I know some of you New Yorkers, especially, are saying, "Wait, 100,000 asylum seekers in one year is still too much for the city to absorb." Eric Adams says $12 billion of cost just in the next two years, that's such a percentage of New York City's overall budget. We will get to that.

We'll continue on the big picture for a few more questions first, setting some context with Idrees Kahloon, the Washington Bureau Chief for The Economist and New Yorker Magazine contributor on this topic. Listeners, we will open the phones. Your call is welcome on the economics of immigration in New York and nationally, short term and long term, and also the appointment of a special council now, to investigate Hunter Biden, which we will get to as we go. For Idrees Kahloon Washington Bureau Chief for The Economist, 212-433-WNYC, as ever.

Our phones are open at 212-433-9692. You know we take text messages to that number as well these days. 212-433-9692. You can still tweet, @BrianLehrer. Idrees, in terms of the economics of immigration today, you have all kinds of citations in that New Yorker article. One is immigration economist Michael Clemens, who says, "Government immigration restrictions around the world are so self-defeating, they're analogous to leaving trillions of dollars on the sidewalk." Can you flesh that out for us a little bit?

Idrees Kahloon: Yes, of course. There's this joke in economics that I think he's referring to, which is this idea that markets are efficient, and basically, that means that you won't be able to get free money for nothing. There's a joke that two economists are walking along the road and one says to the other, "There's a $20 bill on the road." The other one says, "No, there's not, if there was, someone would've already picked it up."

There's this idea that everything's efficient and works properly, so I think Clemens is referring to that, but the idea is that governments are leaving trillions of dollars on the table. Why does he say that? Well, there are folks who want to move to rich countries, like America, with opportunity. They want to work, they want to generate money, and that is a tremendous benefit to them. It also has tremendous benefits to the economy as a whole.

Restricting the number of people who can move is not only a restriction of welfare in the economist sense of limiting people's opportunity choice, but also limits the tax benefits that you could generate. The innovation that folks who are immigrants tend to bring. If you look at the CEOs of most of America's most valuable companies, quite a lot of them are immigrants. You're missing out on all of that. He makes this point rather well.

Clemens is probably the most prominent pro-immigration economist that's out there, but the general consensus view is that by restricting migration, you end up limiting the growth of the economy. That's not only in the high-skilled fields, like doctors, nurses, and engineers that everyone says that they need, but also what economists would call low-skilled workers, folks who are able to help with childcare and other things.

Those also help grow the economy, because they enable high skilled work to grow as well. I would say the consensus view among economists is that migration is basically a good thing. In the same way that economists generally are opposed to restrictions on trade of goods across borders, they're also, I think, generally skeptical of restrictions of trade or movement of people across borders.

Brian Lehrer: Right. That's the classic Wall Street Journal editorial page view, which is for open markets, free markets across borders, but also immigration across borders. Then that gets mixed up with left and right politics generally, because there are racial and ethnic equity, or anti-diversity things that come into it. On the one side, also, labor things that come into it. On the other side, the left traditionally would say that more immigration depresses wages, because it creates more competition in the labor pool for the same jobs.

Left and right get mixed up. What you cited was the sort of Wall Street Journal editorial page position. We'll get back to that, but you also quote a book called Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigration Success, by a Princeton and a Stanford economist, saying you have to measure the economics of immigration at the pace of generations, not years. That even if migrants arrive poor, one generation later, their children more than pay for their parents' debts.

That's a quote from the book, but the news hook here is Eric Adams, as Mayor of New York, saying the recurrent influx of asylum seekers is economically untenable for the city, $12 billion, if he's estimating accurately, over the next two years. Now, the annual city budget is about a hundred billion a year, so it's adding on another 6% that the city would have to tax, borrow, or cut from other services, and that's a lot all at once.

Would you, or would the authors of the book argue that both things can be true, short-term economic pain, but that this is in the long-term interest of the city to keep these doors wide open?

Idrees Kahloon: Yes. I think New York is a city that prides itself on its openness to immigrants' past, but the entire difficulty of this debate is that we tend to lionize past ways of immigration and tend to fear present and future ones without realizing that they're probably indicative of the same phenomena. I think in the Eric Adams case, which is very interesting, the southern states along the border basically said that New Yorkers would be selfish if they were meant to confront the problems that they were.

They've largely been proven right on that call, in the reaction from Eric Adams and others. I think there are a few things that are interacting here, at the policy level, that make this possibly more painful. One is that asylum seekers are often barred from working when they arrive in the country. I think that's written into statute for at least a few months. Asylum seekers, by the way, I'll just clarify, have a legal right to be in the country and seek asylum. They're different from folks who cross the border illegally. I just want to make that clear.

Brian Lehrer: I think it's six months before they can get work authorization. Go ahead.

Idrees Kahloon: Yes, that's exactly right. It's six months. You interact that with-- New York has a very generous right to shelter, and it's unusual among cities in doing that. That's why, even though New York has many more homeless folk than in San Francisco, you notice it a lot more in San Francisco than you do in New York, but the two are interacting in a way that is fairly unhelpful, and it's something that people are noticing.

I don't think it's illegitimate basically to worry about the cost per se, but the reaction is probably one of policy. The asylum system as a whole needs to be more expeditious in sorting out claims. The majority of those who do seek asylum don't actually get it once they have a trial, but that process needs to be speedier. The work permits could arrive quicker, and New York maybe ought to reconsider its right to shelter, which was premised on homelessness, but these are the solutions that I think one needs to look at.

I think that just hoping that the problem goes somewhere else, which is, I think, what Mayor Adams' approach is. He wants to bus folks upstate and elsewhere. That redistributes the problem, but it doesn't really address it.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Rita, in Somerset, in Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rita.

Rita: Hi, Brian. Well, I'm a medical provider. I work in a community health center, and we treat a lot of uninsured, underinsured people, as well as immigrants, migrants also come. There is a [unintelligible 00:19:23] need for people. Even from this country, there are so many people. You have homeless reps, you have a lot of people who are displaced African-Americans, who need the services.

I think the previous administration, the Bill de Blasio, when Trump was there, they shot themselves in the foot by claiming that [unintelligible 00:19:40] asylum city, so now it's rebounding back on them. I think it's unfair, because I'm an immigrant myself, but I stood in line and I came into this country, and I think that that's a basic thing. We are paying taxes and we hope that the community that we have currently is going to be helped, instead of people who have just crossed the border and are getting a lot of benefits. That is unfair.

I think that if the Democratic administration doesn't realize that, they are going to suffer huge losses, because a lot of people are upset about it, including myself. I did vote Democratic all this time, but I'm a little upset of the way money is being wasted. I have a lot of sympathy for people who have crossed the borders, who have untold horrors, but the thing is, we have to have a firm hand and a firm grasp of the situation, and try to see how best resources are being spent, instead of paying $200 for a night in a hotel. That is unfair.

Brian Lehrer: Does it feel wrong to you, Rita, the premise of the economist we've been discussing, who are covered in Idrees' article in The New Yorker, their premise that over the course of a generation, these families are going to pay for themselves, more so than what they're costing?

Rita: I think that's the basic thing. These are people who are elitists, who are writing these articles. They don't have an idea of how ordinary people are suffering. I see a lot of people in this country who have been here for generations, who are unable to afford basic health care care. Even veterans, homeless veterans, how are we going to divert our resources? You only have $10 in your pocket, how are you going to spend it? I think that's what they should realize, that you have to--

I know, we have to make hard choices. I think that they have to follow through. Also, in this country, we are a system of laws. If you allow a few people to just break the law, because it suits you politically, which is what the whole thing has been blown politically, I think that's wrong, you're also playing with a lot of people's lives, which is also unfair.

Brian Lehrer: Rita, thank you very much for your call. Idrees, what were you thinking, listening to Rita?

Idrees Kahloon: No, I think that that summarizes how a lot of people feel about this debate, particularly, my parents immigrated here from Pakistan, they also went through a legal process to do so. It's incredibly common to hear among immigrants and their children the idea that I waited in line, so others should. I think also that a country does need borders, and it does need laws to police and enforce the sanctity of its borders.

I do think that it's important, again, to differentiate between those who illegally cross the borders, for which there is one set of policies, and actually, President Biden has maintained, in keeping Title 42, the public health restriction in place, and trying to restart the Remain in Mexico program. He's actually exhibited a lot of continuity with the prior administration, in how he deals with the Southern border.

Brian Lehrer: Immigration advocates are as angry at Biden as immigration restrictionists, they call his policies Trump light, Trump with a smiling face, that kind of thing, right?

Idrees Kahloon: Yes. I don't think that the family separation part, that drew the most ire last time, I think that it's not continuing, but in a lot of the most important ways, they are keeping a firm hand, as was said. I do think it's important that it differentiate between those people and those who are in the country legally as asylum seekers. I think that you could make the point that perhaps the rules for asylum are too broad, you could say that the judicial system that adjudicates these cases moves too slowly, and that's definitely true.

They don't have enough judges and all of that, but the folks who arrive at the border and seek asylum do have a legal right to be in a country under the laws as they are written today.

Brian Lehrer: Right. I think what some skeptics about that say, though, is that people are abusing the asylum system, and that right to seek asylum law that you just quoted, because so many of them are not really asylum seekers, the skeptics would say, they're like any other people who want to jump the line. They just know about this asylum-seeking provision in the law, so they come to the border without a real valid asylum claim, many of them, but say, "I'm here to seek asylum," because then they're given legal status.

They're allowed to stay while their claims, or work through the system, but we see in recent years, 90% of asylum seekers, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but this is what I've read in a few places, 90% of these asylum seeker cases get rejected, is not actually qualifying for political asylum, is actually being economic migrants claiming political asylum because they can't show evidence of their actual fear of persecution or death if they go back to their countries of origin.

Idrees Kahloon: Yes. You can claim asylum for things like domestic violence, exposure to gang violence, and these sorts of things. I think that, even to me, stretches my pre-existing perception of what asylum is, which is fear of persecution from a government. I think there is legitimate debate on whether or not the asylum rules as written are overly broad.

I think that the Biden administration has also put in place a program, or at least try to, there's some judicial review on it, where people would have to remain in Mexico and apply, I think, through an app, before they arrived in the country. They have to pre-register why they were seeking asylum, and the processing might occur before they arrive in the country. I think it's legitimate to think about those questions, but for people who are in the country already, you do have to come up with a way of addressing their needs.

The alternatives are some sort of mass deportation, which I guess some people might think--

Brian Lehrer: Very ugly.

Idrees Kahloon: Very ugly, or acknowledge the fact that people will have health needs, their children will need to go to school, and all the rest. I think that it's certainly a tough debate, but it's one where I don't think that there's an easy, "Well, what if we just closed the border and deported everyone? Wouldn't that make everything easier?" I just don't think that's a realistic solution, either.

Brian Lehrer: One more call on this before we go to the much shorter Hunter Biden part of this Monday morning politics conversation. Annie, in Manhattan, you're on WNYC, with Idrees Kahloon, Washington bureau chief for The Economist. Hi, Annie.

Annie: Hi, Brian. Hi, Idrees. I have a comment, basically, on your opening question. That was whether immigration today is economics or a racial issue. Idrees failed to mention the Chinese history. In America, we had the Chinese Exclusion Act, in 1882, that specifically targeted a group of people. It lasted until 1965, and there was actual laws that were, for the first and, I think, only time, where a specific group was targeted, legally not allowed to come into America.

It all started with the transcontinental railroad building, where all these Chinese came, and helped build this railroad that built the US economy, they tried to stay here and build villages and towns, and they were burned down, and laws were made, and said, "Hey, we don't want you here. Your job is done, now you go back." Nobody seems to talk about this, very key, important part of American history.

I'm a Chinese American, my great-grandfather was a transcontinental railroad builder. He couldn't stay in America, he had to go back to China, and then he was killed by the Japanese during the war, because he was there and not in the US. These are the consequences a lot of Chinese Americans have to live with, their ancestors, because our ancestors were victims of the Chinese Exclusion Act in America.

Nobody ever really talks about that when we talk about immigration and economics, and the benefits that immigrants do for America, and once the immigrants contribute to American economy, then you're like, "Okay, we don't really consider you Americans anymore, but you can help build this country and make it great." [crosstalk] I think people would talk more about this part of history.

Brian Lehrer: Definitely, an important piece of immigration restrictive history in this country, that Chinese Exclusion Act, no question. Do you have any opinion, Annie, of what seems to be a somewhat prevailing white American view these days, that Chinese immigrants are fairly desirable compared to immigrants from south of the border?

Annie: We are getting a double message right now. As a Chinese American who had to live through the pandemic, with the whole-

Brian Lehrer: And all of that hate. [crosstalk]

Annie: -anti-Asian Chinese Act, that's all started with, "Oh, the Chinese were blamed specifically for this pandemic." That was Trump, as with the Kung Fu virus, and whatever. I thought, "Okay, with Biden, things are going to change." We weren't going to be specifically targeted for it. Then it's like-- It didn't change. From now, with this administration, it's like everything under the sun that's wrong with America or the world is China's fault somehow.

What politicians and people don't understand is that when you keep blaming a specific group of people for every little wrong thing, rather than whatever the specific issue is, it makes everybody a target. Every Chinese American is a target. Every time there's a bad China story, or whatever, because unfortunately, a lot of people don't see Chinese Americans as American. They look at our face, and it's like, "Oh, you're Chinese, and you're China." Anytime there's anything bad with China, they look at you all funny. Like, "Yes, it's your fault."

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Maybe you are really allied with Xi Jinping. Annie, thank you so much for that important call. Idrees, in the book that you reviewed, Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success, do they try to show in the book, that it's almost universally true, that the second generation more than pays for whatever expenses the first generation incurs, no matter the concentration of a particular surge like New York is experiencing now or who the people are?

I think many white Americans at least think for whatever reason, East Asian immigrants, and South Asian immigrants, like you write about in your family story, tend to become economic contributors, rather than takers, more quickly, or more consistently than those from Latin America and the Caribbean. I think that's been a line of thought in southern-border American politics for many decades now. Do the authors argue against that premise on economic terms?

Idrees Kahloon: Yes, they do. They collected data from ancestry.com, genealogical records that link migrants to subsequent generations, and examine, basically, exactly this question. What they find is that although there is variation in terms of economic contribution, that basically folks who descend from any ethnic group, more than make up in the second generation, for the initial cost of the first generation coming in. There's a chart somewhere in the book, I think, that has this explicitly.

If you're especially curious, you can dig it out and look at it. Yes, that is definitely their finding. Also, it's important to note that that is from a time when immigration was less selected than it is today. America doesn't have a skills-based system like Canada, the UK, or Australia does, but there's still some amount of selection that goes into it for someone who's applying for, say, an H-1B visa, or other types of visas.

In the generations they're examining, this is a pretty open, pretty unselected for population, except for the fact that they're the kinds of people who would choose to emigrate, and maybe there's something about who those kinds of people are, their means, their outcomes are generally fairly good in the country.

Brian Lehrer: Which is a really big thing in the history of immigration, not to gloss over it. That those from a country who tend to emigrate tend to be the most ambitious people, the biggest risk takers, who I think, presumably, economists would say are the most likely to be economic contributors, wherever they are.

Idrees Kahloon: Yes, exactly. Exactly. It's a huge decision point that people have to cross.

Brian Lehrer: We will continue in a minute with Idrees Kahloon, Washington bureau chief for The Economist. Stay with us.

[music]

Brian Lehrer, on WNYC, as we talk Monday Morning Politics with Idrees Kahloon, Washington bureau chief for The Economist. Hunter Biden, first, there was a plea agreement. Now there's a special counsel that just got announced by Attorney General Merrick Garland, after our show on Friday. Let's touch on this, how quickly things change. Remind us what the plea agreement was, and why a judge then rejected it.

Idrees Kahloon: Right. Hunter Biden, the president's son, who's had a checkered personal life many of you are familiar with, had been under investigation by federal prosecutors for several years. It was announced by David Weiss, who is a federal prosecutor in Delaware, who had been leading the case, that he had struck a plea agreement with Hunter Biden for two tax misdemeanor offenses and one gun charge, which they would agree to.

That went before a judge. This was struck, I think, on July 20th. They went before a federal judge on July 26th, who was fairly hostile to the plea agreement. It came apart in a very contentious three-hour hearing for something that is normally quite routine. In particular, the point that Hunter might be liable for future tax offenses seem to be something that the prosecution and the defense team were in disagreement about.

Now the plea deal has unraveled, and Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, just announced that David Weiss, who was the prosecutor overseeing this case, will now be the Special Counsel, examining the case which, in addition to giving him more prosecutorial powers and resources, means that he will also be able to charge Hunter and other jurisdictions other than Delaware, if he finds that there's evidence of a crime.

Brian Lehrer: Do we know the nature of the ongoing investigation, what they're looking at, or what Hunter Biden is suspected of, potentially, that he wasn't already acknowledging with his plea on those tax and gun charges?

Idrees Kahloon: We can imagine that they will continue from that base. The Prosecutors allege that in two years that they examined, Hunter Biden made well over a million dollars and paid no federal income tax. Hunter has since said that he has paid them back, but the IRS doesn't really take that so lightly. Then the gun charge was that Hunter had possessed a gun while he was addicted to a substance.

He basically attested on a form that he wasn't in order to obtain that gun, and that that was a crime. We don't know-- Special counsel investigations have a tendency to get quite large and go down any rabbit hole that they choose, that's the nature of them, but we do--

Brian Lehrer: We remember, for example, that once upon a time, they didn't call it Special Counsel, then they called it something else, but a similar position was investigating a land deal involving President Bill Clinton, and wound up with his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Idrees Kahloon: Yes. I think five or six years later, or something. What we do know is that Republicans in Congress really want an investigation into Hunter Biden's overseas dealings. In particular, they've raised their own investigative powers. They've been looking into deals and arrangements that Hunter had with Ukrainian companies, and one other Chinese company. Their aim is fairly clear. They're hoping that they can link what they see as Hunter's misdoings to the President himself.

In fact, several of them have leapfrogged the investigative process and said that they think that the President is complicit in bribe-taking, and that he should be impeached. The evidence, I guess, they hope will manifest itself, but that's the hope that they have. [unintelligible 00:38:21]--

Brian Lehrer: That sounds like what Rudy Giuliani told the Arizona state legislature when he wanted them to flip the 2020 election results. They asked him for evidence, and he said, "Well, I don't have evidence, but we have lots of theories." [chuckles] That's in the indictment of Trump, with Giuliani named as an unindicted co-conspirator. Is that all they have, with respect to trying to link Hunter Biden's business dealings, especially if they were dirty, in any way, to Joe Biden, or is this as fake as the fake electors?

Idrees Kahloon: Look, they haven't publicly shown very much of their hand, if they have a hand. There's an email that was on that laptop they refer to, in which Hunter cryptically refers to someone as the big guy. The idea is that the big guy was Joe himself. Again, I think [unintelligible 00:39:21] expression that--

Brian Lehrer: Doing what?

Idrees Kahloon: Again, unclear. They have lots of theories, but I think the evidence is forthcoming. There's very clear aim at trying to find something here. It's reminiscent of the Benghazi hearings, in that way. There was the whiff of scandal about it, and so they were going to investigate it thoroughly, the Republicans were, in order to make an electorally advantageous point.

In this case, you already see that there is a lot of what aboutism on the Republican side, with the Hunter Biden investigation, particularly this deal that would've avoided jail time, that they saw as a sweetheart deal compared with all the indictments that are showering upon Donald Trump. I think we're due for another one tomorrow as well.

Brian Lehrer: Tomorrow--? Do you think the Georgia indictment is coming down tomorrow?

Idrees Kahloon: That's what I've read. That it's supposed to come out this week, and court watchers who know this stuff better than me said that they thought that it might come out tomorrow, but these days, it's a twice-a-month occurrence, so it might not make so much of a splash. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: All right, but there's a scoop. All right. Producers, take note. We may have a Wednesday morning segment to produce. Before we leave the Hunter Biden special counsel, Republicans who said the plea deal was a coverup are now saying appointing David Weiss as special counsel to continue the investigation and cancel the plea deal is another coverup, even though David Weiss was appointed by Donald Trump as US Attorney and he's been the one that's Trump appointee investigating Hunter Biden.

Now he's the special counsel investigating Hunter Biden. How can they claim that David Weiss, of all people, is in the tank for the Bidens?

Idrees Kahloon: Look, it doesn't need to make sense. There are folks-- Maybe many of the same folks thought that there was a-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: This is what Washington political analysis has come to, when you're being truthful, when you're the Washington bureau chief for The Economist. It doesn't need to make sense. I'm sorry. Continue.

Idrees Kahloon: No, I mean, a lot of these people were the same folks who thought that there was a vast conspiracy to overturn the election, that not only succeeded, but succeeded under the noses of several Republican governors, like Brian Kemp, in Georgia, and Doug Ducey, in Arizona. [laughs] These are outcome-determined theories, not internally consistent ones, I would say.

Brian Lehrer: To close, let me ask you to put on your political analyst hat, as Washington bureau chief for The Economist, because there's a striking false equivalence, or nonequivalence, to all this, that I think should be said out loud. The public now has a Biden Special Council and a Trump Special Council. Both in the headlines, but as far as we know, one guy was the offspring of a president, and he had a gun possession and a tax problem.

The other was a president of the United States, allegedly trying to subvert 250 years of electoral democracy. How do you play these stories relatively at The Economist, while taking the Hunter Biden stuff as seriously as it should be taken, but without leaving the false impression that, "Oh, there are Biden and Trump special counsel, so let's throw up our hands. It's a wash."

Idrees Kahloon: We don't treat them symmetrically. Trump's indictments and Trump's actions on January 6th have been cover stories many times over, and I suspect they might be as well. We've covered the Hunter Biden case fairly, and I think thoroughly. We've examined the personal failings of the President's son, but the president's son is the president's son, and the former president was president of the United States.

The crimes that he's accused of, particularly with the Jack Smith indictment over his actions on January 6th, really go to the core of what the American Republic is about. It is the most consequential indictment of the lot. It's more consequential than the storage of classified materials, than Mar-a-Lago, or the campaign finance violations that Alvin Bragg is trying to prosecute the former president over. That's a core.

It's just a remarkable fact that America, for the first time in its history, did not have a peaceful transfer of power, arguably, I guess, since the Civil War, maybe. That is an astonishing, astonishing thing, so the idea that there is a single Biden Council, a single Trump Council, I think it doesn't pass any muster at all.

Brian Lehrer: Idrees Kahloon, Washington Bureau Chief for The Economist. Thanks a lot, Idrees. We really appreciate it.

Idrees Kahloon: Great. Thanks for having me on.

 

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