Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) on New Hunter Gun Charges: Hunter Needs to be Treated Like “Any Other Person”
Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), Senator from Florida and Senate Homeland Security and Armed Services committee member, joined the Guy Benson Show to discuss DeSantis’ Florida response to the hurricanes, Scott’s disaster relief bill, and the brand-new charges brought against Hunter Biden. Watch the full interview below.
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Guy Benson: With us now is Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida. Senator, welcome back to the show.
Sen. Rick Scott: It’s great. It’s great to be with you, Guy. And be back in D.C, this place is continues to be dysfunctional.
Guy Benson: Yeah. I want to talk about some of that dysfunctionality in a second. We are just learning. It’s now been reported a number of different places that apparently the special counsel, the new special counsel, David Wise, the old investigator from Delaware, is now preparing to indict Hunter Biden on that gun charge that he was basically going to walk on under a previous deal. That whole thing blew up. And the reporting now is that special counsel’s office will, in fact, pursue those charges. We don’t know details. We don’t have all the specifics. I am very much eager to see the fine print, as I mentioned in the last hour. This is just breaking. I just wonder what your reaction is to that initially a some movement in the Hunter case.
Sen. Rick Scott: Well, you hate you hate that anybody anything bad happens to anybody. But if you violated the law, you need to be held accountable. And everything you everything you read, he violated the law and he should serve the same amount of time and be prosecute to the same extent as other people that violate the same law. And it’s you know, today we’ll see what happens here today. That does not appear to be what the Biden Department of Justice does. So we’ll see what happens here. But if he’s violated the law, he needs to be held accountable, just like everybody else who violates that law.
Guy Benson: I also want to ask you on this same related front I mentioned in the last hour that House Republicans and the Oversight Committee have issued half a dozen new subpoenas for Secretary Mayorkas and other administration officials about obstruction that they say was occurring in this investigation. The Hunter and Biden family investigation, for example, tipping off Hunter’s lawyers or Secret Service are that interviews were coming or searches were coming. We also learned today from the House Oversight Committee there’s now evidence that the Biden business associates around Hunter was feeding talking points to the Obama administration, to the vice president’s office, then Joe Biden back in 2015. And Burisma was the topic like, hey, here’s a comment that you can give on Burisma and Hunter Biden’s lucrative involvement with that Ukrainian company. The response back from the White House and Kate Bedingfield in the office of the vice president was, quote, VP signed off on this. So, Senator, it’s another nail in the coffin of this argument that Joe Biden had nothing to do with this family business at all. It’s just a huge growing mound, a pile of evidence. I wonder what you make of the argument that Republicans in the House I know that you’re in the other chamber, but as you look across Capitol Hill, do you think it’s appropriate for House Republicans to open an impeachment inquiry to try to get some of this information that they’re getting stonewalled on? Is that overdue? Is that premature? What do you think about that?
Sen. Rick Scott: Well, first off, we the American public, deserves the facts. I mean, Joe Biden served in the US Senate. He served as vice president. He now serves as president. We need to understand exactly what his family has been doing. If they’re doing nothing wrong, he ought to be very transparent and say this is exactly what we’ve done. And this is I can tell you we had no issue here. But this idea that they want to just constantly, constantly slow ball makes to make it very difficult to get information. What it makes you believe is there’s something here. He should be just he’s. Joe Biden should do just the opposite. He should say, I’m going to be I’m going to be the most transparent president ever and I’m going to all my emails. I’m going to make public all my you. You know, I did that when I was governor. I mean, I just made all the all the emails to the governor’s office. Every email was a public record and we put them out.
Guy Benson: Did you use any pseudonyms to Sagan? Did he use any pseudonyms the way. Vice President Biden?
Sen. Rick Scott: No, no, no, no, no. You know, that’s that’s what makes people mad about our government. We we are expected to live up to the highest standards. And so when you see people that try to, you know, block information for coming out, you assume the worst when you see people that have to use pseudonyms. You assume the worst. What he needs to come out and say is just like what I’ve said about the FBI and DOJ, how long do you guys have to be transparent? I mean, don’t don’t if you’re going to go raid Mar-A-Lago. All right, then explain why you didn’t raid, you know, Hillary Clinton’s house. Explain it. Maybe there’s a legitimate reason to do that. But when you when you don’t explain anything and you try to hide the ball, what do you think the American public thinks? They think the worst. They think you’re hiding things.
Guy Benson: Which is likely because, you know, they were this close to giving an unbelievable sweetheart deal to Hunter Biden until whistleblowers came forward and they scrambled it just like when they were going to get publicly embarrassed, they changed their decisions. That’s not transparency. That is politics. So I just want to quickly say we’re learning now from our colleague, David Spunt at the Justice Department that he’s now echoing the reporting that we’re seeing elsewhere and that prosecutors in this case from the special counsel’s office intend to seek an indictment of Hunter Biden by September 29th. So toward the end of this month. So stay tuned on that. Senator, I want to turn to you. You mentioned dysfunction in D.C. up against another potential government shutdown. Just the annual or biannual tradition here in D.C.. What do you make of this upcoming fight? How do you think this should be resolved?
Sen. Rick Scott: Well, first of all, it’s the exact same playbook. I’ve been up here for years. It’s the exact same playbook. Oh, we couldn’t get the budget done. So we’re going have to do a continuing resolution and spend money foolishly on things that we don’t really want to do anymore. That’s what’s going to happen then. Then they’re going to say, we’ll do it. We’ll all focus over the next two months. We’ll do it just before Christmas. Then we get to Christmas. Let’s say, Oh, we can’t shut down government. Oh, gosh, right before Christmas that the world would freeze. So, Oh, we have to go spend all this money that we have no idea what’s in it. This is the exact path we’re going down and get. This has got to stop. It looks like we’re going to have a $2 trillion deficit this year. Look at interest rates. Look at inflation. Look, if you look at the mortgages, it’s over seven one half percent. Look at your credit card. The highest interest rates ever. Look at car loans, the highest in, what, 20 some years, the interest rate. So this is caused because your government won’t do its job. I mean, we need to pass a budget and it needs to be balanced. And it makes me mad every day when I watch as I watch people get up and say, we’ve got to change. No, you did it. You’re in leadership. You allowed this to happen. So you don’t even try. And then you act like, Oh, we can’t do this again, and then you’ll do it again to us. This has got to change.
Guy Benson: Senator, I want to ask you about the hurricane that just battered your state. Of course, you dealt with natural disasters when you were governor down there. Now you’re a U.S. senator from that same state. Seems like the response in Florida has been exceptionally good. Governor DeSantis and his administration all over it. I know you’re trying to help with the federal piece and relief. What does that look like? You met with the president. I know the governor didn’t. You did. Just tell us about what Florida needs in your mind.
Sen. Rick Scott: So here’s the way hurricanes work. You are you the individual. You’re responsible. Then your city, your county, the state and the federal government. Everybody has a part to play. The federal government has a funding mechanism. They provide support. The federal government is not the lead agency. The state is the lead agency. So so. But the federal government has to have resources. Right now, FEMA, the disaster fund that is spent through FEMA, is getting low. So I’ve been trying all year to get funding for this. But but in the Senate, you know, because it didn’t happen to New York, Chuck Schumer doesn’t care. So I have a bill and I talked to President Biden about it when I met with him on Saturday. It’s it’s a to provide funding for disasters. Make sure our ag community gets the support it needs and also the people that have been impacted in Florida or other states get the same tax break they’ve gotten with other hurricanes and other disasters. These this is nothing new. Anything I’m trying to do. It’s just that what Chuck Schumer is trying to do is he’s trying to tie it to the Ukraine aid. That’s totally different. We ought to do Ukraine aid separately. Well, first of all, we do that. But this is for American citizens. And we ought to pass it this week to…
Guy Benson: Make sure we stand alone. I totally agree. Stand alone, up or down. Ukraine matters, too. But it’s a different a different issue altogether. We’re watching that closely. Senator Rick Scott of Florida on The Guy Benson Show. Thank you, sir. We’ll be right back.