lamborghini. that's what prosecutors say the president's son spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on instead of paying his taxes. his lawyers and his father's campaign say this is all about politics. taking the stand -- donald trump is prepared to testify in his civil fraud trial. why does he keep choosing the courthouse over the campaign trail? and, i'm sorry, the president of harvard is apologizing for saying calling the genocide of jews harassment. why is it so hard for so many to call out jew hate? i'm dana bash. let's go behind the headlines and inside politics. we start with hunter biden facing nine new charges in a federal tax case that, if convicted, could put the first son in prison. the 56-page indictment filed in california alleges that he schemed to av eevade at least $ in federal taxes. he's facing federal gun charges and is at the heart of a republican-led impeachment inquiry into his father, the president. this morning, we heard from hunter biden himself in a prerecorded podcast interview with the singer moby. hunter biden rarely speaks publicly, and here he is talking about the attacks on him and his family. >> they are trying to, in their most illegitimate way but rational way, they're trying to destroy a presidency. and so, it's not about me. in their most base way, what they're trying to do is they're trying to kill me, knowing that it will be a pain greater than my father could be able to handle. >> cnn's priscilla alvarez joins -- a very delicate issue for president, which means it's a very delicate issue for the white house and for his re-election campaign. >> reporter: exactly right, dana. when asked about this, they decline to comment, which has been their approach over the last few months. instead, the white house and the campaign have pointed to hunter biden's attorneys' statement. in that statement yesterday, the attorney said, if hunter's last name was anything other than biden, the charges in delaware and now california would not have been brought. now, these charges, these counts include, for example, failure to file and pay taxes, evasion of assessment, and filing a false, fraudulent tax return. now, president biden, when he's approached the issue of hunter biden, has been quite personal in saying that his son has his love and support. he's also kept him close. we have seen hunter at events at the white house as well as in family events. but the thinking inside of the campaign is really that this issue, this of hunter biden and these ongoing cases, doesn't resonate with voters, that they see it for the politics that it is. that's the campaign speaking on this. instead, voters are focused on issues like the economy. that is what they continue to speak to as we continue to see these cases unfold. but there is no doubt here, dana, that the president here is campaigning and going into this presidential election and facing not only these charges against his son but also the impeachment inquiry by republicans, automatic of this as his son tries to fight to avoid prison time for these criminal cases. so, it is complicated. it is delicate here within the white house and the campaign. but where they want to keep their focus is on the voter issues like the economy and declining to comment specifically as this unfolds. >> priscilla, thank you so much for that reporting. appreciate it. let's talk about all this with our panel. cnn's gloria borger, the a.p.'s sun min kim, marianna sotomayor. happy friday. we got the green memo, obviously. we'll talk about the specifics of the actual case in a moment, but let's talk about not just the politics of this but how personal this is. covered joe bn for quite some time, his family for quite some time. when you heard hunter biden in that podcast saying what they're trying to do, republicans, is kill me, knowing it would be a pain greater than my father could handle, i mean, wow. >> right. he's effectively saying this all will kill my father. and, you know, i know how personally damaging this is and more so after beau died, his other son. and he's been very open about hunter's problems with drugs and everything else. and hunter has written a book about it. but, you know, now this is a situation where the president facing a possible impeachment of his own has a son on trial for felonies. so, the political, the personal, and the legal worlds all collide. you know, i don't think you can underestimate what a tough situation this is for the president and his family. >> right, right. i think this is so much of his biography. he had a beautiful recounting of his grief, his life with anderson cooper. that was released earlier this week. and what the president has -- it's been tricky, you know, politically for the president because this is his son. he is showing as a father just how much, you know, he cares for his son. hunter and his family are always with him when, you know, the president travels to nantucket or elsewhere for vacation. he was asked about the impeachment proceedings earlier this week, said they were a bunch of lies. so, obviously, this is very tough for him. >> we have a sound bite from anderson's fantastic interview. we'll take a very quick break. i think we have some audio issues we want to fix. live television, folks. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back. welcome back to "inside politics." we are going to continue our discussion that we began before the break about the indictment of hunter biden on tax issues and the politics of how joe biden himself, the biden campaign, are responding, and also, of course, hunter biden's legal team. and, you know, we heard before the break this new podcast about -- from hunter biden. it was taped earlier, but him talking -- initially, what we played was him talking about fact they're trying to kill me. we were talking during the break, and it's important to underscore what he means is trying to get me back on drugs to the point where i will, you know, sort of destroy myself, and that will do the same to my father. let's listen to a little bit more of what hunter biden said in this podcast with the musician moby. >> the one way in which they would be able to certainly just undermine my dad's confidence and ability to continue the campaign and move forward, particularly after the death of my brother, to think that he could lose his son that he just had regained from an almost death through addiction. >> i mean, this is the kind of split screen we're going to see next year, right? we'll see donald trump in court and also hunter biden in court. this has always been something that biden's orbit has been cognizant of. yes, they know hunter has had his problems, but their biggest worry has always been how does the president actually deal with that. it's not something they necessarily go and talk to him about because it is so personal. and it's going to be those moments, you know, whether hunter is on trial, what is the president doing that day? how is he going to temper being able to see his son under so much scrutiny? which is already happening now, and hunter is making that clear in this podcast. he's not wrong to say this is something that hurts his father so much. >> i'm hearing between the lines of what he's saying an acknowledgment about the vulnerability or volatility of his own emotional state these last few years. part of the reason he's saying that is because he's acknowledging i have struggled mentally with what this is doing to my father's ability to govern, with the knowledge and the heaviness of kind of the agony this has brought on the family. so, it is a real glimpse into the more private conversations inside parts of the biden household. and i think to some extent his assessment is endenundeniable. the republicans are going after him because they see it as a way to get in president biden's head. >> yeah. get in his head but also have what they call a split screen. it is different, and i'm sure you would agree with this, to have a trial with the president's son on tax issues versus four trials-plus against the actual candidate himself on very different democratic existential issue. >> republicans complaining this indictment wasn't enough. >> right. >> because it didn't involve joe biden. >> right. let's goat to this. we were going to talk to some legal experts. let's get to it now, what we're talking about here. we are talking about six counts of failure to pay taxes, two counts false and fraudulent tax return, one count of evasion of assessment. and, gloria, you have this, and then you have the hunter biden legal team, abbe lowell in particular, his lawyer, saying u.s. attorney weiss bowed to republican pressure to file unprecedented, unconstitutional gun charges to renege on a nonprosecution resolution. now, after five years of investigating with no new evidence, two years after hunter paid his taxes in full, the u.s. attorney has piled on nine new charges, which he wanted to resolve months ago. the argument is we had this sweet deal, it fell apart. effectively, i'm paraphrasing here, the reason they're going after him legally right now is because of political pressure from republicans. and nothing has actually changed in the interim. >> the history of this, as abbe lowell points out, is con convoluted. there was a deal, and then it fell apart. the judge questioned it. it fell apart. and then the prosecutor said, well, make me special counsel, because i've have broader jurisdiction. he gets to be a special counsel, and suddenly you have charges in delaware, the gun charge, and suddenly you have the tax charges, even though, you know, hunter biden did repay these taxes. but it's a way also to reveal his dissolute lifestyle which he's written about, but it is an embarrassment. and these are serious felony charges, which could involve jail time. >> yeah. it could. you mentioned, gloria, the fact that republicans are upset about this, and they think that the whole reason -- not think -- they argue that the whole reason that this indictment has come on taxes and mentioned and the gun charges in delaware, is to protect the president. listen to james comer, the chairman of the oversight committee. he said, "hunter biden's corporate entities funnelled foreign cash that landed in joe biden's bank account. indianapolis u.s. attorney weiss investigates everyone involved in the bidens' broad schemes and influence peddling, it will be clear president biden's doj is protecting hunter biden and the big guy." >> yeah. he's essentially saying, like, look, doj, do the work that we house republicans are trying to do and find the connection, saying there's these connections. prooichtly, house republicans admit there is no "there" there. that won't preclude them from voting to open a formal impeachment inquiry. you remember kevin mccarthy kind of unilaterally did this. a number of house republicans say if we want to actually subpoena people and that holds in the court of law, we need to have a vote, so we should expect to see that next week. even so, a lot of these more vulnerable republicans do not want to be talking about impeachment of anyone because it will be consequential politically. a lot of people don't think that, as much as they're going to go out and there say there's a "there" there, the evidence is not there that biden has done anything. >> there are two ways to look at this. one is, as an american citizen, as a voter, one is to say, if the justice department and the prosecutors have taken this much scrutiny to go through all of hunter biden's dealings and this is what they have come up with and there are not additional charges in the foreign influence peddling -- >> there's no indication there will be, right? >> right. then it isn't there. and that can satisfy people that there's been a thorough investigation. i think the other way to look at it is they're going to try to use this politically for all they can. we've heard a lot of attorneys over the course of the last day say this sounds like a lot of money in the unpaid tax cases, but in the big picture, cases with more money than this on the line get settled all the time. but if you're an average american, this is a lot of money, and the money it was spent on is kind of over the top. >> i just want to briefly, because i said we would before the break, come back around to where we started this conversation and listen to what the president told anderson cooper in his podcast about grief. >> look, beau and hunter were as close as they could possibly be. and i think the loss of beau was a profound, profound impact on hunter. but when jill and i gat got married, she was totally embraced by them. everything we've done, we've always done as a really close-knit family. >> and the writer of president biden's biography said specifically he is constantly waiting for the phone to ring and say that hunter is dead. he's so concerned that his son, his remaining son, will fall off the wagon, effectively. very complicated, and very important political story and personal story. everybody, stay right there. we'll be right back after a break. welcome back to "inside politics." our legal experts and of course our great reporters on all things of legal matters. evan perez is with us as well as elliot williams. thapg yo thank you both for coming on. evan, i want to start with you with the hunter biden situation. you heard in the last block we were talking about the indictment, how lengthy it is, and the fact that we do hear hunter biden's legal team saying it's a big indictment but, like, nothing has changed with regard to either the charges or the tax law that he is alleged to have broken. the only thing that's different is that the plea deal went away and now there's a special counsel. what are you hearing from your sources? >> well, look, dana, this is a big legal problem for hunter biden. the justice department says that he could face up to 17 years in prison. no one really thinks that that's what is going to happen here. but that's what the general guidelines are. but, you know, the critics are right, that the facts really haven't changed. they haven't changed since we first broke the story back in december of 2020 that this investigation was ongoing and that it was a real thing, that it was a real problem. so one of the questions at the justice department i think is going to struggle to answer is why has it taken this long to really end up at the same place they've been since then. and you can see what republicans are saying, that you haven't really turned over any stone. so that's going to be the political part of this going forward. but you do have the problem that the president's son is going to be facing these court dates. this is going to come back up in the headlines. and we'll see whether a jury in los angeles is going to buy this case that is being brought by prosecutors, because after all, hunter biden paid these taxes. they're going to make the point that most people who pay their -- who end up paying, even if they paid late and had these problems, don't get charged criminally. >> elliott, talk about that from the point of view of having served in doj and prosecuting cases. >> sure. picking up on the kinds of details that are coming out that evan pointed to, i think a challenge here for prosecutors in court is going to be which of these details are actually even going to make it into court. they are salacious and -- i guess salacious is the word for the kind of details you're talking about here. there's a chance a judge could keep some of this out, because if you're establishing a that an individual, one, didn't file his taxes, two, tried to evade his taxes, it probably isn't relevant that he was doing so in order to pay off sex workers or buy drugs or whatever else. now, maybe prosecutors can say that you have to know why -- where the money was going in order to establish sort of his intent to not pay his taxes burk it creates this little bit of a legal quagmire over is this just designed to embarrass this defendant or is it relevant information. a judge is going to have to sort out every little bit and piece here. it's a valid question, back to what you were talking about, a valid question as to what took so long. look, a prosecutor can bring a case wherever there are facts that suggest that crime took place. we should note los angeles as opposed to delaware, there are some factual differences between the two cases, but that's not presented to the jury. it's not for them to decide why a case is brought when it was. so, i think there are political questions surrounding it. but, you know, this is not going to end with someone going to jail for 17 years. i will say that. he might go to jail. it's not going to be for 17 years on account of all the things we're talking about. let's switch gears, evan, and talk about what we'll likely see, what we think we're going to see on monday, and that is the former president back in a courtroom and not just in a courtroom but actually on the witness stand in the case that he is battling that has to do with his company and whether or not his company can exist in the state of new york. >> right. i mean, talk about having huge legal consequences for the former president, because obviously the idea that his company might get essentially dissolved in the state of new york and he can't do business there is a huge thing consequentially for donald trump. but one of the things he's going to try to do on monday when he appe appears is try to button this up saying, real estate is one of those thing, there's always bravado and marketing, and who's to know how much things are worth until someone decides to pay for it, right? that will be a strong case he'll try to make to wrap up that case on monday. >> elliott, quickly, the idea of him taking the stand, his attorney, donald trump's attorney says that her advice was not to take the stand. but he wanted to. >> yeah. it is almost never in a defendant's interest to take the stand, to be perfectly candid, because of the risks. one, you can contradict yourself. two, you could get even more under the judge's skin than you already are. as is the case as we've seen here, the trump organization seems to have rankled the judge a little bit. so, there is a very narrow path here. they've already found fraud in this case, so it's kind of their last best chance. the court has found fraud. it's the trump team's last best chance to stop the bleeding and perhaps putting the defendant on the stand is the way to do that. absolutely. i would be with that attorney 100%. it's always risky to make the defendant take the stand. >> especially this defendant. >> yeah. all right. we'll be back here on monday talking about that very thing. thanks to you both. up next, the president of harvard apologizes after bipartisan backlash to her capitol hill testimony this week. we'll talk about that and the strange political bedfellows this is creating. i'm sorry. words matter. harvard president claudine gay is apologizing for failing to say calls for the general side of jews violates harvard's policies. it comes as the second gentleman is joining the growing outrage against university presidents and other who is can't or won't unequivocally denounce jew hate. here's what doug emhoff said at the national menorah lighting last night. >> seeing the presidents of some of our most elite universities literally unable to denounce calling iffer the genocide of jews as anti-semitic, that lack of moral clarity is simply unacceptable. >> our great reporters are back. i neglected to say that doug em h hoff is the first second gentleman but the first jewish person in any of those roles. >> it wasn't surprising to hear him talk about it, but when you say there's a lack of moral clarity, that's tough stuff. and i think these university presidents are suffering as a result because they couldn't 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