the face of the biden family scandal ever since the infamous laptop emerged at the end of the 2020 campaign. ignored by most in the media for a year and a half, his muckraking has been an embarrassment to his father and is now at the center of the impeachment inquiry into the president. hunter is under criminal indictment, more charges may be coming, but he's mounting a more aggressive counteroffensive. he sued rudy giuliani, sued the irs, he's published an op-ed accusing the gop of weaponizing his past drug addiction, painting himself as a victim. the house oversight committee has been demanding hunter's testimony for nearly a year. he's under subpoena, but the president's son -- in a move that has upset some in the white house -- said, sure, i'll tell, no problem. but it has to be in a public session. his lawyer, abby lowell, writing: a public proceeding prevents selective leaks, manipulated represents, documented exhibits or one-sided press statements. now committee chairman jim comer is rejecting the offer. >> hunter biden is not above the law. we will gladly have a public hearing with hunter biden a of he do -- after we do the deposition to go over the 101,000 plus pages of bank records and documents that we have $ -- 10,000, with countless questions about specific transactions. howard: shouldn't republicans take the offer, letting the world watch while they interrogate hunter biden on all the outstanding questions related to his father and questionable payments, or is that, as the chairman said, letting the president's son play by his own rules? i'm howard kurtz and this is "mediabuzz." ♪ ♪ howard: ahead, george santos, whose fabrications provided so much media ford, is expelled by the house, and hows israel actually obtained hamas' war plans in advance but did nothing. the media are sharply divided over hunter biden's offer to publicly testify before a house republican panel. >> this is an attempt, obviously, to turn this into the kind of capitol hill circus that we've seen in the past when it comes to these public hearing. >> never has the opening line of send in the clowns been so appropriate. when these republicans begging for hunter biden's testimony get it, and now they say they don't want it publicly. >> a congressional subpoena is not like an invitation to a debutante ball. you don't get to just debate when you're going to show up and how. you have to show up. >> every republican is going to take everything he says every single day and turn it into a commercial. when the numbers are that soft, do we really need this right now? >> the white house feels like it doesn't want the son to have current to get out and also add fuel to the fire away from the president of the united states. howard: joining us now to analyze the cover arkage ark mollie hemingway, fox news contributor, and in new york, ken walling, a joe biden surrogate. mollie, why given the hot and heavy pursuit of joe biden -- excuse me, of hunter biden -- doesn't the committee call his bluff and say, okay, we'll intergate you in front of a national audience? >> hunter biden saying i don't want to do a staff-lawyer-led deposition, i want to do this in public, that makes sense for hunter biden. if he can do it in public, he can have a bun of democrats -- bunch of democrats who will grandstand, republicans grandstanding, and it will keep him from being forced to answer the really tough questions that republicans want him the answer. so good work on him for trying that, but i'm not in any way surprised that republicans are saying, no thank you, we'd like to do this first and then later we can do the public thing. howard: kevin, you could argue that hunter biden has called the committee's bluff to bar the selective leaking, follow generally following these closed door depositions. >> exactly right. and we've seen a history of that with chairman comer where he's select ily released, you know, information from those transcripts from previous interviews. he's not an honest broker whatsoever when it comes to that, and hunter biden's lawyers are saying we want to testify in public, in the open. let both parties ask questions out in the open, transparency is key with all this and, unfortunately for james comer, you know, he's not interested in that because the facts certainly are not on his side at this point. they don't have the votes, you know, to pursue this impeachment inquiry, you know? tom emmer said just last week it's going if to to be a few weeks from even now to potentially move in that direction. so clearly, you know, the process is breaking down on the right, and they're not interested in actually getting to the bottom of this with hunter biden. howard: well, whether they have the votes remains to be seen. mollie, politico reports that some white house officials are irritated with hunter's more aggressive approach because it shines a bright spotlight on his past addiction, his legal problems and questions about his father's involvement in his business. >> they might be saying that in part to put things on hunter when really this investigation is about joe biden. the people are interested in this story not because hunter biden to or james biden were taking money from foreign oligarchs. they want to understand what was the biden family miss business. millions of dollars through eight family members, dozens of shell companies was sent from communist chinese-affiliated groups. hunter biden referred the one as the spay chief of china, the energy chief of china. this guy actually had been convicted of bribing i think it was the like eight other presidents of other countries, so people want the know what was going on with this biden family business. nobody, and i doubt kevin or anybody else can even come up with an explanation, what were they getting in response to the millions of dollars that went to biden family members? you'd like people in the media to press the biden administration and other people on what was it that people were getting in exchange for this money from these corrupt oligarchs, these energy officials, these communist chinese officials? what were they getting in response? why were they so keen to give money to people who weren't businessmen, who weren't criminal dee fence attorneys, but were getting money for those things? howard: you know, hunter biden has acknowledged in an e-mail that he was well aware part of what he was selling or much of what he was selling whether to ukraine or china was his haas name. he explicitly said that. kevin, i'll let you respond to mollie, but let me also give you the flipside which is some in the white house also said according to this politico report to be happy that munter is fighting back -- hunter is fighting back, feeling you can't let these allegations go unrebutted. but as he's swinging away and filing lawsuits, all that sort of thing, doesn't it add fuel to the house impeachment inquiry of president biden? >> well certainly, you know, i think, howie, the president's son has been subjected for years to this kind of awful, these awful attacks without any ability to defend himself. let's not forget james comer ran a committee hearing where marjorie taylor greene held up a naked photo of hunter biden in that committee hearing. hunter biden should have his day in court in the public sphere to clear his name. and mollie knows well as do you, howie, this is not the first son or daughter of a president, brother, sister of a president to use their last name in order to, you know, gain money, influence, what have you. but again at the end of the day, as we've seen, there is no direct link whatsoever back to president biden. they've failed to identify any direct link. any direct action a that the president or then-vice president or even senator biden took in reaction to any of these kind of conversations that hunter biden had in his business dealings. howard: let me just follow up briefly. you say that hunter biden until recently didn't have any ability to defend hardships? he's gone on tv and does interview, he issues statements, he is pretty prominent, so why do you say he can't -- wasn't able to defend himself? >> surely, he's provided interviews, he wrote an impactful memoir talking about his addiction in the past and how it destroyed his life, but certainly having the ability to come forward in this kind of setting, i think, would be critically important to talk about all these kind of accusations that james comer and others have thrown at a him. howard: mollie, there are a lot of unanswered questions, no yet about it, about hunter biden, including his dad as vp joining a whole bunch of business calls with hunter associates. a $20,000 check from the president's ooh brother, james biden, who's also been subpoenaed. but assuming we eventually get to some kind of public showdown, would the media root for hunter and praise his testimony? you're laughing. >> well, the one thing we know is that the media truly don't think their job here is to do anything other than to protecting the biden family. and, again, this was a family business. everyone admits they were trading on the name of joe biden and his position of privilege. to view this as an abuse of his position that the family was able to get so much money, and we do know now from some of the documents that have been released, like official government documents, official copies of checks that money died flow to joe biden himself from -- did flow to joe biden himself from some of these business dealings that were done to his name. this is something the media should be obsessed with, and instead they protect joe biden by even not asking questions like why was he using his son for this family business when his son clearly did have so many demons and so many problems in i think a lot of people look at that and say that son should have been protected from the family business of taking money from foreign oligarchs in exchange for millions of dollars instead of being exploited and if used in the way that he was. howard: i should add that the white house says that $20,000 from the president's brother was repayment -- >> but even that -- >> exactly right. howard: just giving the other side. >> again, if he benefited from this -- first of all, they've shown no evidence that a loan existed, but even if you say that, that still shows that he was benefiting financially from these financial arrangements with a chinese communist party which controls china, which has so much to do with american policy making, you know, foreign policy, domestic policy. we really, you know, when you think about what happened during the russia collusion scam where people invented stories of engagements with russians and said this meant that donald trump had stolen the 2016 election and here you have millions of dollars flowing from communist china to the biden family and we have a media that acts like it's no gig deal. howard: -- big deal. howard: well, tie thing it to any specific foreign policy is a whole different question -- >> there is no evidence at this -- >> we have a president when has not been very strong against china while this is all going on. howard: we can debate the level, but i also think it's true that the media cover this story when they have to, but they would sort of like it to go away. here's the thing, hunter's team, kevin, must believe that he would get a favorable public reaction if he has a chance to defend himself. in public, taking questions from both sides. but, and the ratings would be huge. but is he a sympathetic character? >> i think to many people, howie, the president is a -- or, i'm sorry, the president's son is a sympathetic character. listen, i mean, you think of hunter biden's first memory on this earth is losing his mother and his sister in that awful car accident. and then flash forward a new few decades, and he loses his best friend and brother. and, you know, i think he's been very open in that book and in interviews, howieing as you mentioned about his struggles with addiction, about his problems in his open marriage. and i think that he is a sympathetic character. we all have people that we know or in our families, our friends that have struggled with addiction and, again, i think he and his lawyers just want a fair shot to speak to the american people. howard: all right. we're clearly getting two different portraits right here today of the president's son. when we come back, "the new york times" reveals precisely what israel knew long before the brutal hamas attacks on october 7th. ♪ ♪ lactaid is 100% real milk, just without the lactose. delicious too. just ask my old friend, kevin. nothing like enjoying a cold one while watching the game. who's winning? 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"happening now" "the new york times" has the devastating details, israeli officials obtained the war plans for the attack on october 7th a year in advance and did nothing. >> this is the an intelligence failure on par with 9/11 or pearl harbor. >> that is just shocking israelis and, of course, people across the globe that actually netanyahu's government knew about this plan for a year. had the details of it. the specific details -- >> [inaudible] >> -- for a year. howard: this wasn't a rumor, it was a 40- page report code named jericho wall in which that a palace hate out exactly what it planned to do, and yet senior israeli officials believed the terror its were just incapable of pulling it off. >> yeah. people have been make comparisons between the october 7th terrorist attack on israel and the 9/11 terrorist attack on the united states, and that makes sense not just because both done by muslim terrorists, but also just the death toll in both countries was so intense. but it's always apt because of this issue. there were intelligence failures in both of those incidences that people should have been looking for warning sign, they should have been looking for -- they should have been having the imagination necessary to think this was such a possible thing. they shouldn't have been so in love with their own theories of what was going on in the world that they didn't ignore this and here this reporting does suggest that was what was happening. howard: kevin, nerve is invoked in my next question. this is not like president bush getting a cia briefing. bin laden determined the strike in u.s. but without any details. this would be like getting a briefing that said the terrorists of that time plan to hijack airplanes and doing nothing for a year. >> yeah or, howie, exactly right. i mean, there were specific, actionabling intelligence in that 40-page document. and to mollie's point, and it's spot on, it's a failure of imagination just as the 9/11 attacks were. there was confidence within the idf that hamas was not capable of achieving this kind of lightning strike attack with the rapid advance even to though there was the also evidence in that reporting in "the new york times," howie, that hamas a had staged some pre-invasion exercises nearly to the same level. so this is clearly a failure of imagination to system degree like 9/11, but then also too some element of hubris, some element of folks on the analyst level early on in that reporting not having the ability to get that information up the chain of command to serious, you know, the higher levels within the idf. so certainly, it's a breakdown. howard: well, you set up my next question. the times says that senior intelligence and military officials of israel did see that report. how high that went, we're not quite sure. mollie, after hamas practiced this attack in july in plain view, a female israeli analyst said the following: i utterly refute the scenario this is imagination -- imaginary. it has the content of jericho wall, the name of the report, and it is a plan designed to start a war. it's not just a raid on a village, but an israeli colonel brushed that off. whether bibi netanyahu saw this or not, it kind of looks bad either way, wasn't this a catastrophic failure? >> it was. i do think we need to remember that there are things like this happening all the time where people debate about what different intelligence means. i do think there's a media angle here too which is that we frequently see the media just uncreate critically accept whatever they hear from various intel sources, and this is a reminder that these people are not to be uncritically listened to, particularly sometimes at the highest levels. they might not know what's going on, they might not be thinking through things as well as they should. and we've seen in this country far too often a people take whatever they get from an intel source no matter how absurd, and we even saw that in the leadup to the iraq war -- howard: yeah, slam dunk intelligence. >> there was bad intelligence, but we had people in the media treat it like it was the word of god. howard: kevin, i don't know that we completely asked this questions -- question but, you know, what made these fairly senior israeli military intelligence officials so convinced hamas could never achieve this when it was their job to protect the country? obviously, there have been several wars with hamas, and 1200 israelis wound up being slaughtered. >> certainly. and the worst today of destruction in israel's history since 1948 in terms of the loss of life. you know, to mollie's point, and i think it's well said, you know, you have this chain of command issue to some degree, and you mentioned that lower level analyst that is immersed in that information saw what was happening over the summer, went -- with those exercises and the lack of ability to get that up the chain of command. and to moll mollenwelcome back ie's pointer as well, someone within the israeli government provided this report to the new york times that likely has an agenda in terms of shining a light on this massive intention failure. so we have to also -- intelligence failure. we have to understand what this leak represents and to also giver space to netanyahu, you know, cabinet, now war cabinet, to respond in time. howard: mollie, a lot of pundits questioning whether bibi netanyahu can survive at least after the war. record lower popularity because of this. >> well, rightly so. howard: yeah. >> this, ultimately, was his responsibility, whether or not he saw this. you're seeing that across the political spectrum, people are very concerned. they also understand this is probably not the time to change leadership while they are prosecuting this war against hamas. but i would be surprised if there weren't repercussions for him politically. howard: put diplomatically. and, no, it's not going to happen while the war's going on. the war may go on for months. mollie hemingway, kevin walling, thank you. up next, a mideast ceasefire is over. has it given hamas a military advantage against israel? 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