TBORA President John Pudner recently concluded his radio tour across America discussing the Penn-Biden Center scandal by returning to Birmingham, Alabama to analyze the facts behind the controversy, the apparent quid-pro-quo between Biden and the University of Pennsylvania, and how prosecutors and the new Republican majority in the House can shed light on the secret and elusive nature behind the scandal.
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The following transcript from this interview is presented in its entirety with minor edits:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Biden, classified documents, UPenn, China, concerned, special prosecutor.
SPEAKERS
John Pudner and J.T.
J.T. 00:00
Joining us now to talk a little bit more about this is John Pudner, who is the president of Take Back Action Fund. He was also a Bush 2000 aide. John, welcome back and thanks for being here.
John Pudner 00:09
Thanks and quick shout-out to the SEC for another dominant championship since you got the headquarters there.
J.T. 00:16
I tell you what, the dominance was the understatement of the year, right? I mean, incredible beat down by the Georgia Bulldogs no doubt, and being an Alabama fan, I was kind of pulling for TCU, but then there's a side of me, "Come on, SEC, let's go," but clearly, the wrong team was in there against Georgia. I know they earned in their way in, blah, blah, blah, but anyway, that's another discussion. Let's talk Biden here. They got these documents. He's playing nice. "I'm cooperating, I'm giving everything over. I don't know what's in there. My attorney said don't ask, just let's go through the process." He's coming off, like, you know, "Oops, you know, I don't know how that happened." But, you've been inside the ropes there in DC as a Bush aide. What is protocol when it comes to the classified documents? Because, it just happened with President Trump, It's happened now, and I'm sure it's happened before, maybe even times where we haven't heard much about it, but when it comes to classified documents, they're always floating around with people that have clearance, and presidents, and directors of this, and directors of that, the Pentagon, whatever, there's a bunch of that happening all the time. Is this common? What's the protocol and responsible thing to be doing when it comes to classified documents?
John Pudner 01:39
Yeah, I am concerned on this one, particularly because of where they were found at this UPenn-Biden aide. Bush's ethics czar Richard Painter and I formally requested that the Pennsylvania Attorney General examine the connection between Biden and UPenn, particularly because the president of UPenn had gotten tens of millions of dollars from China, then she offers Biden a no-show job as part of this UPenn Center for $911,000 a year, I mean, not a bad gig if you can get it, he never teaches a class, so it looks like this is purely a payment, and with the kind of money China's moving around, to then have these documents at that center that we already had big concerns about, and then on top of that, Biden actually then nominated the president of UPenn who had given him the sweet job and brought this Chinese money, into being the ambassador to Germany. I'm just really concerned about where it is, as opposed to behind lock and key and Mar-A-Lago, no comment on what's in the docs, I don't know enough to know that, but just really concerned about where the documents were and who had access to them.
J.T. 02:48
Yeah, interesting that they would be there, in his, I guess they call it his think tank office over there at UPenn, and the fact that the job was maintained and given to him through those channels, and China involved in it, once again, what the heck's China got to do with Biden at Penn University?
John Pudner 03:09
That's right, and our focus at Take Back Our Republic Action has been more on money going into elections to influence who gets elected, so we've been concerned on the money China puts in, and are they putting it through ActBlue, etc. But, I think for your average American, the even bigger issue is what's their influence once they're in and if there's compromising information here that just looks scary. We already knew Peter Schweitzer, who has been our advisory chair in the past, he exposed the billion-dollar deal Hunter cut in China while the Chinese president was meeting with Joe Biden in DC. The concern is with the connections already, and then to see that they're classified documents there, and this could be one of the best things about Republicans winning the house is they do have investigative authority, because, believe it or not, the Democratic Attorney General of Pennsylvania did not take us up on our request to investigate this two years ago.
J.T. 04:08
Will this completely be made public? Will the American people ever become aware of what was in these documents? Will there be some sort of situation where Biden's people have power over what should happen and they just kind of put a blanket on it and made it go away?
John Pudner 04:31
Well, this is always where you get a special prosecutor. Merrick Garland appointed one, and that's where some news has come, news that there were documents on Ukraine, on Iran, it's starting to trickle out. I mean, even CNN has reported on some basic things, and of course, Breitbart and some others went much further. It is starting to come out, but I think the balance of power is key here. If Republicans didn't have the House, and the House we're just kind of continuing on the January 6th investigation but nothing else, that would not have probably led to much investigation of this. I think the House will dig, and hey, maybe they'll come back and say not much there, but at least you'll have a group of people who want to investigate and want to make sure that Biden is not doing something wrong here, nothing deliberate or people around him weren't compromised.
J.T. 05:24
All right, John Pudner, always good to talk with you, the president of Take Back Action Fund.