BUCK: The Hunter Biden laptop story is getting bigger and bigger because suddenly there’s a shift. The media isn’t all circling the wagons and saying, “It’s not real. It’s a conspiracy theory.” They can’t anymore because the New York Times, Washington Post — the high temples of left-wing journo-ism — have decided that this is actually real. Here’s just a taste, a smattering, if you will, of corporate Democrat media waking up to the story.

MICHAEL STRAHAN: Intensifying investigation! The probe into the tax affairs and financial dealings of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, is heating up.

TONY DOKOUPIL: New information this morning about an ongoing investigation into President Biden’s son, Hunter.

CATHERINE HERRIDGE: The federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s business practices is broader than previously known.

PIERRE THOMAS: A grand jury in Wilmington has heard from a parade of witnesses about payments Hunter Biden received while on the board of the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma.

WHIT JOHNSON: Testifying before a grand jury about the president’s son and his business dealings in Ukraine and elsewhere.

JOHN BERMAN: Talking about the investigation — the federal investigation — into Hunter Biden, which is real.

STEVE DOOCY: The walls around Hunter Biden closing in as investigations carry on. The mainstream media starting to take notice.

BUCK: “Starting to take notice,” Clay. Let’s start with this. Why?

CLAY: Why, indeed. Let’s start with this, Buck Sexton. Are you nervous? Every day, you’re getting a little bit more nervous. I can taste the sizzling wagyu, maybe even higher… What’s higher end than wagyu steak?

BUCK: I don’t think there is. When they price it by the ounce, you know your steak is gonna be really expensive. That’s how they get you, ’cause no one does the math.

CLAY: We’re gonna price it by the ounce — that’s right — and I’m gonna have a lot of ounces. But let me just say, the reason why this story’s coming out, Buck, this is where I started reading this —

BUCK: The third prosecution doesn’t count, Clay, ’cause that’s what I think they’ll do, meaning they don’t actually bring charges. They keep the opening there to do charges at a later date if he messes up again. Just want to be clear on that ’cause that’s how I think they have an out.

CLAY: As soon as this story came out in the New York Times, I came on and I said, the New York Times is trying to get ahead of this. ‘Cause here’s what these news organizations — that are already embarrassed by the way they’ve covered this — don’t want to happen, Buck. They don’t want to tell all their audience, “There’s nothing to the Hunter Biden story!

“There’s nothing to it. There’s nothing to it,” and then, boom! What if an indictment happened? Then they’ve got to explain how they claimed that there was nothing to any of the Hunter Biden laptop, how it was all fake, how it was all “Russian disinformation,” and then they suddenly have to drop a bombshell on their audiences, which is embarrassing.

But worse than the embarrassment, Buck, it makes them look dumb and it makes them look out of touch. So what you often see in stories like these is a slow tiptoe up to, “Oh! By the way, this is kind of a significant story. Oh! Let’s all find a way to work our way back into covering this,” and even the clips we just played it’s, “Oh! Yeah, by the way, there’s a grand jury investigating this dude.”

And what you’re seeing at the Washington Post, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, New York Times, all of these places are suddenly acknowledging — and I’m looking forward to talking with Miranda Devine about this, ’cause she was part of the group that broke this story and she wrote the book Laptop from Hell. I’m interested what she thinks on this.

But it seems quite clear that after 18 months of stonewalling and pretending there was nothing to this, they now are letting their audience know there is something to this and more is going to come of it. I think it also ties in with Joe Biden’s 40% approval rating. I’m not sure, Buck, they’d be covering it aggressively if his approval rating was 65%.

BUCK: So, here’s what I’m trying to line up as we do our analysis of this, Clay, because something has changed. Nothing changed in terms of events.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: News stories came out that have essentially said, “Yeah,” and now I do think that it’s the federal investigation of Hunter Biden that is still ongoing and is looking like it is serious. When you accept millions… I just want to establish this for everybody, ’cause it was the same… I’m worried we’re gonna have — what is it, Yogi Berra said — “deja vu all over again”?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I’m worried that’s what we’re heading for. That’s a sports guy, right?

CLAY: Yeah, yeah. Great catcher for the New York Yankees.

BUCK: Thank you. I appreciate it. So I’m worried that it’s gonna be like the Hillary situation. I had a TS, top secret clearance. I had to go through all the training and all the stuff about being the classified information handler. What Hillary Clinton did fell clearly under the statute for mishandling classified information with recklessness, because it was over a hundred times she had sent — on an open server — classified information.

They just pretended like the statute didn’t really matter, and that was because Hillary was so important to them. What I’m trying to see here is — or what I want everyone to understand here is — that Hunter Biden accepting money and not declaring it, millions of dollars and not declaring it is bright red letter, “You go to jail,” right? This is “you have violated the law” stuff.

So they’re gonna have to find some way around it, and I’m just… I’m trying to think of what it is. With Hillary they basically said there was no criminal state of mind, there was no “mens rea,” and Comey basically made it up as he went along. Clay, how do you think, assuming that I’m right and the millions of dollars now…? And I know you think that prosecutors actually are gonna bring charges.

Of course. We have our bet. We’ll keep talking about that. But is there a legal way they could get it? How do you get millions of dollars from a corrupt Chinese company that’s trying to buy you off and buy access, not declare it, and not face criminal charges from the IRS? You know what I mean? What is the possible explanation?

CLAY: Well, first of all, remember they get Al Capone for tax evasion.

BUCK: Yes!

CLAY: Which is a great line, but for people out there who remember: Al Capone was into all sorts shady, gangland activities; they managed to catch him through tax evasion. So they have Hunter Biden dead to rights on tax evasion. Dead to rights. And the fact that he has repaid, allegedly, a million dollars in back taxes that he owed doesn’t mean that he did not violate the law.

Here’s what I think they’re gonna do, Buck. I think what we’re already starting to see: They are going to “iso” Hunter Biden off and argue that he’s not an American politician, not an employee, not involved in government at all, and they’re going to take out Hunter in some way. I don’t think he’s gonna go to jail for 50 years or anything like that.

BUCK: No. By the way, and he wouldn’t for tax evasion. Tax evasion is usually a few years.

CLAY: There’s other elements there. I think what they will do is they will argue, “Well, Hunter, while he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol, was not taking great control of his finances.”

BUCK: That’s right.

CLAY: “Money was rolling in.”

BUCK: It was an accident.

CLAY: “He was a mess. He inadvertently failed to pay his taxes.”

BUCK: That’s right.

CLAY: I do think that there will be some minor charges, right, that he will plead guilty to. I think they’ll indict him, and I think they’ll ultimately end up agreeing to some sort of minor charges. I do believe he’ll be indicted. But what they’re gonna try to do, Buck, is wall off Joe Biden.

And so that’s what I think the media is already starting to do. Hunter Biden, right — maybe even Jim Biden, his brother — but they’re gonna try to avoid the president. “There’s no connection to Joe Biden impropriety.” I think that’s what they’re going to say.

BUCK: The thing they’re worried about — we’ll save this ’cause I want to get to this with Miranda Devine of the New York Post in the next hour — when we come back to this. But the “10% for The Big Guy.” That’s not you; that’s not me.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: We know who The Big Guy is. So we should come back to that, because you’re right. They’ll wall that off. But, Clay, this is the president’s son.

CLAY: I agree.

BUCK: So I’m just gonna say, my contention here is that he broke the law and that they’ll do something. But if he does not face prison time for what he did, he is getting special treatment as the president’s son. If he doesn’t face real criminal charges and plead to a felony of some kind, right — a misdemeanor or something — this is a joke.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: That means that he’s getting special treatment. If he did face a real federal criminal charge, let’s say, and had to plead guilty, Joe Biden pardons him, in my — and we’re playing this out now. Joe Biden pardons him. He’s a father, and this is the son, and he’s the president.

CLAY: Yeah, and he’s probably not gonna run for reelection. That would be a sign. He’s not gonna pardon him if he’s running for reelection.

BUCK: If he pardons him, he’s politically wounded, no question about it, because now all the stuff about, “Oh, Biden will bring back normalcy and won’t be corrupt!” The media will try, but it will be pathetic. And, remember, we’re trying to get sane people, independents, persuadables to vote Republican. We’re never gonna… There’s 20 or 30% of the country that are still triple masking outside alone. We’re never gonna reach them.

But is there a possibility your mind that he lets Hunter do six months, and then actually gets sympathy as the president who is so letter of the law that he would let his own son go to a halfway house or something for six months? Remember, Wesley Snipes, I think, didn’t pay $40 million. He had $40 million he didn’t pay money on. I was a Wesley Snipes fan back in the nineties. Great movies. Major League. I thought Blade was very underrated.

CLAY: Blade was really good.

BUCK: I think he got three years in federal prison or four years in federal prison, something like that. Hunter will probably be facing six months. Do you think there’s a possibility he would let him serve his time?

CLAY: The way it would play out, I think it’s unlikely to be resolved before Joe Biden’s term as president was basically over. In other words, if they bring charges against him, it’s going to get dragged out, right? One of the top strategies would immediately be of a defense attorney, “Let’s drag this on as long as we possibly can,” probably, and especially if you knew that the president was your dad and he was going to be stepping down in January of 2025, I guess, right?

This is presuming that Biden is not going to run for reelection in 2024, and that he would be able to offer some form of leniency that he would give him a pardon. But here’s the deal. What becomes even more fascinating about the pardon idea is, if they don’t wall off Joe Biden, then you could make the strong argument that the reason he’s pardoning his son is to avoid criminal charges, potentially, himself. And then he’s trying to pardon himself, which becomes this really kind of fascinating Rubik’s Cube of legal analysis.

BUCK: And we would be full circle, and everybody should remember this, to where the Democrats were under Trump.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They accused Trump of what their candidate and now the Democrat president has actually done or is in the midst of right now, I shouldn’t say.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: The Biden family really is corrupt.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Hunter really is corrupt and there does seem to be an influence-peddling scheme meant to not just to enrich the Biden family in general but perhaps even the 10% for The Big Guy, Joe Biden himself. They’re gonna fight tooth and nail, by the way, in the media to prevent people from coming to that conclusion no matter what the evidence is.