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Dec. 10, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

56:00

The Sham Impeachment Charges | Ep. 913

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	Democrats announce their impeachment charges.
	The Inspector General of the DOJ releases his report on the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.
	And Hillary still is not going away.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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	We're going to get to all the breaking news, and there is a lot of breaking news momentarily.
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	All right.
	So the Democrats have finally come forth and announced their impeachment charges.
	They've announced the impeachment charges.
	Wow.
	And they were very confident about announcing those impeachment charges.
	Nothing says you're going to fight corruption like standing at a podium being flanked by Maxine Waters, probably the most corrupt member of Congress in modern American history.
	Nothing says that you take the law seriously like putting next to you anti-Maxine.
	who has suggested from the very beginning that Donald Trump should be impeached literally the day of.
	Jerry Nadler of New York announced the impeachment charges today.
	He was flanked, as I say, by Maxine Waters and by Nancy Pelosi looking very serious and grimacing at the camera.
	This demonstrates how serious they are.
	They're not doing this gleefully.
	They're not doing this politically.
	They're just doing this because they love the Constitution.
	So here is Jerry Nadler announcing the charges.
	In service to our duty to the Constitution and to our country, the House Committee on the Judiciary is introducing two articles of impeachment, charging the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, with committing high crimes and misdemeanors.
	The first article is for abuse of power.
	It is an impeachable offense for the President to exercise the powers of his public office to obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest.
	This gives rise to the second article of impeachment for obstruction of Congress.
	Here, too, we see a familiar pattern in President Trump's misconduct.
	A president who declares himself above accountability, above the American people, and above Congress's power of impeachment, which is meant to protect against threats to our democratic institutions, is a president who sees himself as above the law. is a president who sees himself as above the law.
	Okay, this is an absurdity on its face.
	It's an absurdity.
	I mean, truly absurd.
	And the reason you can tell this is absurd is because they were originally thinking of three charges, right?
	Not two, three.
	The third charge was going to be bribery.
	Bribery is an actual federal crime, right?
	With elements that you have to fulfill.
	As a lawyer, if you're going to try and push impeachment charges, typically what you want is an actual crime, right?
	It says hide crimes and misdemeanors.
	Now, listen.
	Impeachment is inevitably a political affair.
	You can impeach for anything.
	Legally speaking, you don't actually have to convict somebody of a crime in order to impeach them.
	If you just don't like the president, you could theoretically impeach them, but the reason that the founders wrote high crimes and misdemeanors into the Constitution of the United States is specifically because they were suggesting that you might actually have to fulfill some elements of criminality.
	So, The Democrats had originally, their narrative was that Donald Trump had traded military aid to Ukraine in return for getting Joe Biden.
	Then they brought in that out to say he traded military aid and a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in return for getting Joe Biden.
	Then they brought that out to say, no, it was just Donald Trump trying to do something, not necessarily about Joe Biden, just something that we don't like in return for military aid from Ukraine.
	And at that point, at the point when it shifted, Then the crime element sort of went away.
	Because the fact is, the evidence did not support their original charges.
	The original charge was that Donald Trump tried to militarize military aid to Ukraine in order to push the Ukrainians to dig up dirt on Joe Biden in anticipation of the 2020 election.
	And Trump's best defense, always and forever, was that he did not have the requisite intent for that.
	Because bribery is an intent crime.
	The defense would have been, and remains, that President Trump was simply looking back at 2016, he was angry about 2016, he saw Ukraine as corrupt, he didn't like giving aid to Ukraine anyway because he tends to be isolationist when it comes to giving foreign aid.
	And, when he looks at Ukraine's interference in the 2016 election, which, yes, was it at the same level as the Russians?
	Of course not.
	Did it happen?
	Well, according to Politico and the New York Times, it did happen, and Trump knew that.
	And so, he sent Rudy Giuliani over there to dig up dirt on the Ukraine, right?
	On 2016, and all of the nefarious connections between the Obama administration and Ukraine, and to dig up dirt on corruption inside Ukraine, and all of the rest of this stuff.
	He did all of that with an eye toward 2016, not an eye toward 2020.
	Some of that is in the national interest.
	Some of that is not in the national interest.
	The only thing that would certainly not have been in the national interest, and here is where the Democrats run into trouble, the only thing that certainly would not have been in the national interest is Trump attempting to dig up corruption on Joe Biden for purposes of 2020, not for purposes of 2016, right?
	For purposes of 2020.
	That would have been Trump just seeking specific political benefit for himself in anticipation of an upcoming election by using a corrupt foreign government as his tool, as his cutout.
	That was the original accusation that Democrats were making.
	Remember, they haven't been making that accusation anymore.
	And the fact that they did not put bribery on the list of impeachable charges demonstrates they don't have anything remotely approaching actual convictable criminal conduct.
	Remember, a few weeks ago, the Democrats were suggesting that Trump could actually be prosecuted for this.
	Not just that he'd be impeached, but he could be prosecuted for violation of federal bribery statutes.
	They moved, remember, linguistically, from quid pro quo to bribery.
	Originally, they said it was quid pro quo.
	And then they said, well, the American people don't understand quid pro quo.
	Quid pro quo did happen, right?
	Mick Mulvaney, the OMB, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, he said that did happen.
	The question was, was it an improper quid pro quo, which amounts to bribery, or was it just kind of a yucky quid pro quo that wasn't criminal, but also was not great, which is the reality.
	But the Democrats are not charging bribery today.
	Why?
	Because again, you have to fulfill certain elements and the Democrats don't have it.
	What are the elements of federal bribery?
	The elements of federal bribery under 18 U.S.C.
	201, it describes several ways to violate its provisions.
	Criminalizing and bribing a public official provides whoever directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official to influence any official act, to influence such public official, to commit fraud, to induce such public official, shall be fined or imprisoned for not more than 15 years or both.
	So, if you want to bribe a public official, and it would work both ways, you need a public official, the defendant's corrupt intent, the intent matters, in other words, it's corrupt intent, specific corrupt intent, Something of value offered and information generally has not been deemed to be a thing of value.
	This came up earlier on in the campaign when there were earlier on in the in Trump's presidency when there was talk about whether if Trump had received information from foreign sources in the 2016 election whether that would have amounted to a campaign finance violation because the idea was that you're not allowed to get Donations from foreign sources for campaigns.
	Is it a donation if you find out from a foreign source information about your political opponent?
	And the best answer is typically not.
	Usually when information flows, information is information.
	It is not considered a thing of value.
	So there are two elements missing from the bribery statute that don't apply in this case.
	One is the anything of value, because here you'd be looking for presumably information.
	And two is the exact corrupt intent.
	Okay, so those elements are missing.
	The Democrats know that, which is why the impeachable offenses they put out today are not actual crimes.
	They are not actual crimes.
	In the end, the impeachable offenses the Democrats are putting forth today are almost entirely empty.
	The only reason I say almost as opposed to entirely empty is because, again, I don't buy the Trumpian notion that he did nothing wrong, it was a perfect phone call, everything was hunky-dory, it was all on the up-and-up.
	The Ukraine was the country that was actually interfering in the 2016 election.
	Crowd strike, bereavement.
	Like, I don't buy a lot of that stuff, but that's the only reason I'm saying almost.
	The fact is, Trump could have done a lot of stuff that you don't like, that I don't like, that I think is yucky, and it doesn't rise anywhere near the level of impeachable because it's not even a crime.
	You couldn't charge the guy in court for this kind of stuff.
	What are the two charges?
	Okay, so charge number one is abuse of power.
	Abuse of power.
	So Jerry Nadler announcing these charges said, it is an impeachable offense for the president to exercise the power of his public office to obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest.
	Okay, that last phrase is so vague as to be completely non-colorable.
	I mean, there's just no way to interpret that phrase with any limiting principle whatsoever.
	So Jerry Nadler says, it's an impeachable offense for the president to exercise the power of his public office to obtain improper personal benefit.
	So that's number one, improper personal benefit.
	So what's the improper personal benefit here?
	Presumably, it would have been Trump receiving some sort of announcement that Biden was going to be investigated.
	Is that improper or not?
	Well, it depends, again, because it goes back to the intent question.
	The only reason that would be improper is because Trump knew, presumably, maybe, that Biden is innocent and he wants Ukraine to announce an investigation into an innocent guy to damage him politically.
	But what if Trump actually believes that Biden's kind of guilty of stuff back in 2016?
	What if he believes that that requires more investigation?
	What if he believes, in other words, the bill of goods that Rudy Giuliani has been selling him and that he's been reading in John Solomon at the Hill?
	Is that now him receiving an improper personal benefit?
	Or is that Trump acting in the public interest?
	You don't know.
	And that is why the key to the Democrat charge here is the broadening out of the notion of intent.
	The broadening out of the notion of intent.
	Remember, bribery requires intent for me to get something from you for a corrupt purpose.
	I mean, bribery is not you and I make an exchange of goods, right?
	Every market transaction is a quid pro quo.
	It literally means this for that, right?
	So that last phrase, while ignoring or injuring the national interest is extraordinarily different from specific intent to commit a bribery offense.
	Because ignoring the national interest, I can charge Barack Obama with ignoring the national interest for like eight years.
	I think every single thing that Barack Obama did for pretty much eight years was ignoring or injuring the national interest.
	That's not an intent crime.
	That is not an intent crime.
	There is no intent there.
	Ignoring or injuring the national interest is not a standard of intent.
	Okay, so take another intent crime.
	Take another intent crime.
	So, let's say, let's say I punch you in the face.
	So there's a difference between I'm walking down the street and suddenly I'm scared by a dog and I lean back and I hit you in the face.
	You're standing right behind me, I hit you in the face.
	Hey, and there's a difference in that, criminally speaking, and me turning around and just clocking you directly in the face, right?
	One, I had the intent to clock you, and one is negligence.
	One is negligence, right?
	One is that I didn't know you were behind me, I didn't care that you were behind me, maybe, that would be reckless, but in one case, I would have specific intent to harm you, right?
	I'd turn around and I'd just punch you.
	The other would be, quote, ignoring or injuring you.
	I'm ignoring or injuring you.
	It's not the same thing as I turn around and punch you.
	I don't know you're there.
	I'm ignoring you.
	I injure you.
	I hurt you.
	Is that the same thing?
	Is that the same kind of activity?
	The answer, of course, is no.
	One of those I would go to jail for.
	One of them, at best, maybe I'd have to pay some sort of small tort settlement for.
	Those are not the same thing at all.
	That is why the Democrats are charging abuse of power and they are not charging bribery.
	They could not prove intent.
	So instead of saying, listen, we can't prove intent.
	We got no crime here.
	They're manufacturing a crime to fit the activity.
	They're manufacturing a charge to fit what they think Trump did.
	What they think they can get him for.
	That's an amazing thing, what they are doing right now.
	That's an abuse of power.
	That's an abuse of power.
	Imagine a prosecutor who doesn't like me, and so instead of the crime being me assaulting you, right, me performing a battery upon you, turning around and punching you in the face, the crime becomes, well, just for Shapiro, if he leaps back and accidentally hits you, that's ignoring or injuring you, so we're gonna charge him pretty much the same way we would as if he had turned around and just plopped you in the face.
	That is a prosecutorial misconduct case in a nutshell.
	And that is what Democrats are doing right here.
	I'll get to more of this in just one second.
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	Okay, so...
	That first charge is really the key charge.
	Abuse of power.
	But again, that is not the definition of a crime.
	It's not even close to a crime.
	In fact, as I say, it looks like they have now tailored the crime to fit the activity.
	When they launched this thing, they thought they were gonna come up with an actual overt bribe.
	Instead, they couldn't come up with anything remotely approaching it because again, they weren't, and they don't think they will either.
	Let's point that out because this shades into crime number two that they're talking about.
	They believed that they were going to get Trump on the bribery offense.
	The bribery offense did not materialize.
	There's only one witness that they even talked to in the House Intelligence Committee who had ever had a conversation, ever, with Donald Trump.
	Gordon Sondland.
	That's it.
	Not a single other person they had ever talked with had a conversation with Donald Trump.
	I believe at all, but certainly about Ukraine.
	And Gordon Sondland did not give them the intent.
	So, if you're the Democrats, you have two choices at that point.
	One is, you move forward with the bribery charge, but you wait to actually move forward with that until you talk to the people who have talked to Trump.
	So you subpoena, say, Rudy Giuliani.
	You subpoena Mick Mulvaney.
	You subpoena John Bolton.
	You subpoena Vice President Pence.
	You subpoena everybody who's around Donald Trump, who had a direct conversation with Donald Trump.
	Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.
	All of them.
	And then you wait for the courts to adjudicate the subpoenas and then you talk to them and maybe they give you the goods and maybe they don't and then you move forward from there.
	That would be the honest way to do this.
	Democrats didn't do this.
	Democrats knew they weren't going to get the intent crime from any of these people because they know that the actual charge is nonsense.
	They know that Trump did not engage in bribery here.
	He never had the intent for bribery.
	So instead, they just dropped the bribery charge entirely.
	And they tailored a charge that is not an actual crime.
	Now, listen, do they have the legal ability to do this?
	Of course, again, impeachment's a political process.
	They can do whatever they want.
	But when Jerry Nadler defines the crime, when he says it's an impeachable offense for the president to exercise the power of his public office to obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest, that is not an impeachable offense.
	The definition is not impeachable.
	I can name you a dozen items off the top of my head That President Bush, Clinton, Obama, every president does.
	That I believe, obtain an improper personal benefit for that person, while ignoring or injuring the national interest.
	Particularly if the improper personal benefit is election driven.
	Because let's be frank about this.
	The President of the United States in his first term is very much concerned with his re-election effort.
	And so he does things with an eye toward re-election efforts.
	Do you really think that Barack Obama didn't care about his re-election?
	Everything he did was for the good of the country.
	Never once did it cross Barack Obama's mind that what he was doing had some sort of ramifications for 2012 for Barack Obama.
	Let me just take the most obvious example.
	Barack Obama is sitting across a chair.
	There's a small table.
	He's sitting across the table from Dmitry Medvedev, who is a stand-in for Vladimir Putin.
	Putin's lackey.
	He's his lapdog.
	And Obama says on a hot mic to Dmitry Medvedev, I will give your man, Putin, I'll give him more flexibility.
	I have more flexibility after the election.
	So basically, cool your jets, please stop being aggressive until after the election, because then I'll have more flexibility.
	Okay, is that the president obtaining an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest?
	By this standard, 100% yes.
	Absolutely.
	Undoubtedly.
	And when Barack Obama was sending, deploying his campaign resources, I mean literally taking his chiefs of campaign and sending them to Israel in order to go after Benjamin Netanyahu and oust him from office.
	He actually had his campaign people go to Israel to try and defeat Netanyahu in an election in Israel.
	Was that Barack Obama attempting to obtain him proper personal benefit?
	He had personal animus for Netanyahu.
	Was he ignoring or injuring the national interest?
	I would say sure.
	Again, none of that was impeachable because all of that is well within the purview of presidential activity.
	We have now moved actually to a, this is almost a strict liability definition of a crime.
	Ignoring or injuring the national interest is not even an intent crime.
	You know, I'm seeing there's an article at Reason Magazine today talking about how they're trying to impeach Trump for corrupt intent.
	No, that's wrong.
	They're not even attempting to impeach Trump for corrupt intent.
	They're suggesting you don't even need corrupt intent.
	All you need is the mere presence of a situation where you can impute to the person corrupt intent.
	You don't have to prove corrupt intent.
	If you could prove corrupt intent, you'd have a bribery offense.
	You don't have to prove corrupt intent.
	That's the point.
	All you have to do is show that he is quote-unquote ignoring or injuring the national interest.
	Well, think about your own personal relationships.
	Think about your spouse.
	Think about your friends.
	How many times do they think that you are ignoring them or injuring their personal interest?
	And you're not.
	Right?
	You literally are not, you're not ignoring them.
	You just have been busy, for example.
	Like my daughter is five.
	That means that every time she wants me to do something, it has to be done in the next 15 seconds or I am ignoring or injuring her interest.
	Is that true?
	Or is that her perception?
	Well, the problem is they haven't even proved that he ignored or injured the national interest.
	Right?
	And by the way, injuring the national interest is a matter of perspective.
	Because I may even agree that Trump's perspective on Ukraine is wrong and bad and he should have given the military aid.
	But that's an opinion about foreign policy and that is subject to our elections.
	Elections are supposed to decide whether you agree with the candidates, or in this case the incumbent president, on whether he is indeed forwarding the national interest or injuring the national interest, ignoring the national interest, or pressing forward the national interest.
	Those are election questions.
	To seize an election question and criminalize an election question is an abuse of power.
	What Democrats are doing here is an abuse of power.
	They don't have the goods.
	If they had pushed censure, they'd be perfectly within their rights.
	To push this as an impeachable offense, this is not a high crime, it's not a misdemeanor, it ain't nothing.
	It ain't nothing.
	And that does not mean that Donald Trump did everything right here, as I've said before.
	I think he did lots of bad, wrong things here, but that is not the same thing as a high crime and misdemeanor that justifies impeachment.
	Okay, so that's charge number one, and it's just nonsense.
	It's just nonsense.
	Okay, then there is the obstruction of Congress charge.
	Okay, so this one is just absurdity on its face.
	So, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who, by the way, it's so funny, Republicans keep saying, let's get Schiff to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee.
	Let's get the guy who started this whole thing with the whistleblower, wrote the 300-page report, and let's have this guy testify.
	And Schiff and Nadler keep going, no.
	Is that obstruction of Congress?
	It's obstruction of Congress people, for sure.
	It's obstruction of the minority.
	So, are the way that we are supposed to believe that obstruction works is that if people want you to testify and you say no, this constitutes a crime?
	No.
	Like a high crime or misdemeanor?
	According to Schiff, he said, But they do have accountability.
	Every bit as strong that President Trump obstructed Congress fully and without precedent and without basis in law.
	If allowed to stand, it would decimate Congress's ability to conduct oversight of this president or any other in the future, leaving this president or those who follow free to be as corrupt and malfeasant and incompetent as they would like with no accountability.
	But they do have accountability.
	It's called an election.
	A president can be as incompetent as incompetence is not an impeachable offense.
	Incompetence is not an impeachable offense.
	And again, when it comes to corruption, you got to prove the corruption or the American people can vote on whether they think somebody is corrupt.
	This is no president.
	No president has ever been an impeachment in an impeachment hearing or trial or movement.
	No president, this is according to the Washington Post, has specifically and only been accused of obstructing Congress.
	Because typically, it's lumped in with an actual crime.
	Obstruction of justice.
	Obstruction of justice.
	So now, they're just saying, Trump isn't doing what we want him to do, so we're going to impeach him for that.
	Absolute garbage.
	Absolute nonsense.
	I mean, this is absurd.
	It's absurd!
	There is no legal grounds for this.
	This is the height of absurdity.
	As I've said, if the Democrats wanted to go after Trump for obstruction of justice, all they would have to do, presumably, is wait.
	Because let's say they subpoena Rudy Giuliani.
	They haven't even issued legal subpoenas to half the people they say Trump is obstructing.
	But let's say they issued a legal subpoena to Mike Pompeo.
	They issued a legal subpoena to John Bolton.
	Okay, and those guys then went to a court and said, you know what?
	We don't want to go appealing.
	And then the court said, you have to go.
	And then Trump said, you're not allowed to go.
	Now you have an obstruction of justice case.
	All Democrats have to do is wait like a month.
	They won't do it.
	Why?
	Because, one, they don't think they're gonna get anything from those witnesses, and two, they're manufacturing a charge.
	These are manufactured charges!
	These are made up from whole cloth.
	Made up from whole cloth.
	Obstruction of Congress is not a crime.
	That is called a check and balance.
	That is written into the Constitution.
	The executive branch does not have to listen to everything Congress says.
	Any more than the Congress has to listen to what the President has to say.
	All the time.
	That's not the way this works.
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	So this is, again, an absurdity. - I mean, There is no obstruction of Congress.
	No obstruction of Congress.
	Okay?
	Because obstruction of Congress is just called the president saying, no, I'm a separate branch.
	This happens all the time.
	Obstruction of justice is when you refuse a court order.
	There's a whole third branch of government, right?
	Jonathan Turley was pointing this out in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week.
	Democrats are mad.
	These are now two completely manufactured charges.
	They are creating charges out of whole cloth that have no precedent in history or law.
	None.
	There's no precedent.
	The Washington Post admits there is no precedent.
	In history or law, for the idea that you can impeach solely based on quote-unquote obstruction of Congress, doesn't exist.
	Because again, obstruction of Congress, put another way, is just called the executive branch is unitary.
	And the executive branch is not subject to all of the whims of Congress, unless the judiciary agrees that the executive branch's privileges are overruled by the ability of Congress to seek information.
	These sorts of battles happen every single day between the legislature and the executive.
	That is not obstruction of Congress.
	Any more than it was obstruction of Congress for Barack Obama to declare privilege over documents regarding Eric Holder and Fast and Furious.
	That was not obstruction of Congress.
	That was just called how this stuff works.
	And when it comes to the first charge, the abuse of power charge, again, weak T. You have now redefined the nature of bribery to avoid the troublesome pitfalls of having to fulfill the criminal elements.
	That's what the Democrats did here.
	They took bribery, the crime of bribery, they stripped it of the corrupt intent, and they stripped it of the requirement that there be a thing of value given in exchange.
	So they stripped the content of the law, they called it abusive power, and they said he's guilty of that.
	That's amazing stuff.
	If you're going to charge somebody with first-degree murder, you have to prove intent.
	That's one of the things you have to prove in a first-degree murder.
	Because first-degree murder is typically thought of as murder with malice aforethought.
	Malice and intent aforethought.
	That you planned it out and committed the murder.
	Let's say that you didn't want to do that.
	So instead of charging manslaughter, you just said, you know what?
	We're not going to have that as part of the crime anymore.
	Now, you kill somebody, strict liability crime.
	We're going to consider it first-degree murder.
	You've changed the nature of the law.
	The crime itself didn't change.
	You changed the nature of the criminal definition.
	That is what the Democrats are doing right here.
	I mean, you're not going to see a single Republican defection along these lines.
	Not one.
	Not one.
	And Democrats are going to say, well, it's an abuse of power.
	There's precedent for that.
	I mean, there were abuse of power charges against Nixon and Clinton.
	Against Clinton, there were actual criminal charges in the impeachment document.
	Against Nixon, there were actual criminal charges in the impeachment document.
	And by the way, the House actually voted down the abuse of power allegation against President Clinton.
	They voted for the crime, right?
	The perjury stuff and the obstruction of justice stuff.
	They voted down, the Republican House voted down the abuse of power allegation against Bill Clinton under Newt Gingrich.
	So this is just, it's a sham.
	Everybody understands it's a sham.
	And it's, man, if this doesn't blow back on Democrats, I'd be shocked because this is, they've gone so far over their skis at this point.
	I mean, they are so far beyond what the impeachment process was supposed to do.
	And this is coming from somebody who is perfectly willing to listen to all the evidence about Ukraine.
	Again, I'm not parroting the Trump administration line that everything is perfect.
	I don't believe that for a second.
	This is so far beyond the scope of what impeachment is supposed to achieve.
	It is so far beyond the scope of normal legality.
	That it falls directly into the category of abuse of power for Democrats.
	I mean, this is a serious abuse of power by Democrats.
	To use the impeachment process to redefine crimes and then use that as sufficient as a basis for impeachment is insane.
	Every president from here on out is getting impeached, basically, as long as there is a president of the opposite party in power.
	That is where this is going.
	Because again, I can promise you a half dozen things off the top of my head that Barack Obama did that fulfill the Democrats' definition of abuse of power.
	He received an improper personal benefit And ignored or injured American interest?
	How about his IRS going after his direct political opponents in 2012?
	How about that?
	That seems like kind of fulfilling those elements, doesn't it?
	And this is, this is, man, the utter, the utter blatantness of it is what's incredible.
	The partisan obviousness of it is what's amazing.
	I thought the Democrats were smarter than this.
	Apparently not.
	Apparently they're just idiots.
	And they decide, they've decided we have to go through with this.
	It doesn't matter whether we have the grounds.
	So we'll just make up the ground.
	Basically, we'll create a bill of attainder for Donald Trump, and then we'll craft the crime to meet the fact that we want Trump impeached.
	That's what we're talking about right here.
	Okay, we'll get into more of this in just one second.
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	Okay, we'll get back into impeachment stuff and also we'll review this DOJ Inspector General report.
	The media are downplaying it.
	The FBI was great.
	The FBI wasn't great.
	We'll get to that in just a second.
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	Okay, so the Democrats are trying to play this as though they're very solemn about it.
	Indeed, very, very, very, so much solemnity.
	So Nancy Pelosi stood at the Capitol.
	She called it a solemn act.
	A solemn act.
	President Trump, for his part, has said this is rank partisanship.
	Jerry Nadler is pushing forward the idea, and this is really what the Democrats are pushing.
	I mean, this is such dangerous stuff, seriously.
	It's dangerous for the country.
	It's dangerous for the country to push forward an impeachment on the basis of we don't like the guy, and we're not even going to attempt to mimic criminal charges in the impeachment.
	We're not even going to attempt it.
	We're just going to basically say, we don't like what he did.
	We can't find the crime, but it's yucky.
	We're impeaching him for yucky.
	You can't impeach people for yucky.
	We have elections for yucky.
	This is still a republic.
	You don't like Trump?
	Good news.
	He's up for election in a year.
	All you have to do is wait it out.
	And in the meantime, watch your stock market increase.
	I mean, seriously.
	But the Democrats are saying, not just, the impetus for this.
	Basically, Democrats are using As an excuse for pushing forward an impeachment effort that has no actual legal basis.
	They're pushing forward as an excuse for that, that if they leave Trump in place, he will cheat.
	And no matter what happens in 2020, if he wins, he will have cheated.
	This is supremely dangerous.
	I talked about this a little bit yesterday on the show.
	It's incredibly, incredibly dangerous.
	The Democrats in 2015-2016, they kept saying, if Donald Trump doesn't accept the results of this election, well, that would be bad for the country.
	I agreed, right?
	Donald Trump, in one of those debates, he said, I don't know.
	I have to see how it goes.
	I don't know.
	And I thought, what the hell?
	You can't do that.
	You can't do that.
	If there is a legal basis to challenge an election, then wait for the legal basis to challenge an election.
	But we cannot, a republic cannot survive the idea that every time your opponent loses, every time your opponent wins, it's because the system has been gamed.
	Otherwise, why live in a republic at all?
	I mean, seriously, if you don't trust the system of voting to work, then you ought to pick up a gun, because I thought that that was pretty much the basis for the revolution.
	The basis for the revolution was no taxation without representation, that the colonies were not being properly represented in British Parliament, and so the American people said, no, we're not up for this, we want our representation.
	Well, if you believe that the system is designed to exclude you electorally, and that no matter what Trump does, if he wins, that means that he has cheated, I mean, isn't that the impetus for chaos and violence moving forward?
	Seriously, like on a broader scale?
	And so that's providing the impetus for Democrats' impeachment efforts.
	Yeah, we don't have him on a crime, but we need to get him out because if we don't get him out, he's going to cheat again.
	Here's Jerry Nadler saying that over the weekend.
	We also are faced with a very direct threat that this president put himself repeatedly above the interest of the country and poses a threat to the integrity of the next election.
	That's not something we were talking about 20 years ago.
	He poses a threat to the integrity of the next election if he's allowed to continue to do what he's doing.
	Okay, so we don't have the grounds for impeachment, but we have to impeach him because if we don't impeach him, then the next election will be illegitimate.
	What do you think, by the way, that the other half of the American people who voted for Trump think about that?
	You know, 63 million Americans did vote for Trump.
	He is the president.
	He was duly elected via the electoral college.
	What do you think they think about the legitimacy of a system where you are misusing and abusing the power of your authority to get rid of a guy because you are preemptively suggesting he's going to cheat?
	Do you think that the people on the other side are going to trust the system?
	So we've now built a system where nobody trusts the system.
	Because now, if Trump is impeached in the House, which he will be, and Trump loses, what do you think Trump's going to say?
	Do you think Trump's going to sit there and he's going to be like, no, you know what?
	Everything was hunky dory.
	Everything's hunky dory.
	I legit lost the election.
	I'm a good sport.
	I'm going home.
	Who thinks Trump is going to do that?
	Or do you think that Trump is going to militate outside the government?
	That he is going to, that he's going to Mixed rate.
	And that he is going to stew in his own juices.
	And he's going to suggest that Democrats impeachment of him, illegitimate, drove his approval ratings down and caused him to lose.
	And thus he was jobbed.
	We are now moving toward a 2020 election where neither side is prepared to accept the result of the 2020 election.
	That is dangerous stuff.
	Really dangerous.
	And again, go back and listen to my podcast in 2016.
	I said it was dangerous, but Democrats since 2016 have done nothing but suggest that every election is illegitimate.
	Stacey Abrams is the legit governor of Georgia, despite losing to Brian Kemp by 55,000 votes.
	Donald Trump is not the legitimate president of the United... Jerry Nadler, the guy who is sitting there saying that 2020 will be illegitimate, he said that President Trump was legally elected, but he said in January of 2017, That Donald Trump was not a legitimate president of the United States.
	You can't have a republic when everybody believes that the system doesn't actually even go with what the people say.
	That every election is an act of theft.
	We are getting into seriously dangerous territory right here.
	And Democrats are embracing it, embracing it.
	And Nancy Pelosi, for her part, she says, She says she has not counted the votes in the House.
	Bullcrap.
	Bullcrap.
	You know what kind of consequences will be brought to bear for Democrats who do not vote along the lines of impeachment here?
	Pelosi says, on an issue like this, we don't count the votes.
	People will just make their voices known on it.
	I haven't counted votes nor will I. Yes, sure.
	Sure.
	I'm sure nobody's counted votes.
	At all.
	President Trump, for his part, went on Twitter and he said to impeach a president who has proven through results, including producing perhaps the strongest economy in our country's history.
	To have one of the most successful presidents he's ever and most importantly, who has done nothing wrong is sheer political madness.
	Hashtag 2020 election.
	And then he also spent a lot of Monday tweeting about all of this.
	Now, President Trump should say is that this is an abuse of power by Democrats.
	They are crafting the crime to meet what they think I did.
	But even they can't even, there's not a criminal charge, there's no criminal charges.
	Elliot Engel of New York, the Democratic Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he said, I think there's a lot of agreement.
	A lot of us believe that what happened with Ukraine especially is not something we can just close our eyes to.
	Notice the language again.
	What ha- I mean, this is deliberately vague language.
	What happened with Ukraine is something we can't close our eyes to.
	No one's asking you to close your eyes.
	You have a lot of things you can do.
	You can rip the president via censure.
	You can change his funding priorities via Congress.
	You do run the purse.
	But instead, you've decided to move forward with a process that typically requires at least some criminal conduct.
	Dan Goldman, the Director of Investigations at the House Intelligence Committee, said President Trump's persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security.
	Again, this is Goldman appealing to Democrats' perception of 2016 and the idea by Democrats that Trump stole the 2016 election to suggest that he will steal the 2020 election so we don't need grounds to impeach him.
	That alone is enough grounds to impeach him.
	Trump won.
	He didn't win legitimately, according to Democrats.
	Therefore, we have to stop him in 2020 from even being on the ballot.
	President Trump has been tweeting repeatedly, assailing the witch hunt and the do-nothing Democrats.
	Nadler said that President Trump put himself before country.
	And he said that Trump's conduct was clearly impeachable.
	I mean, again, the charges demonstrate just how empty these claims are.
	Amazing, amazing stuff.
	I'm really, when I say I'm amazed, I'm really amazed that the Democrats did not at least attempt to push forward with a more audacious charge, even if they couldn't back it.
	I am shocked that they went with the weakness of these charges that, again, do not rise to the level of criminal activity.
	Okay, meanwhile, the other big story of the day yesterday is that the Inspector General Michael Horowitz of the Department of Justice released his report on the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.
	And the media's take on the report is just completely wrong.
	I mean, just completely wrong.
	So, Team Trump was saying this demonstrated there was systemic problems inside the FBI.
	Here is what the report actually found.
	OK, so the media played this as Trump needs to apologize to the FBI because Trump had suggested the FBI was corrupt top to bottom and that Trump had ripped the intelligence community.
	Here is is the panel on CNN led by Chris Cuomo saying Trump needs to apologize to the FBI for all of his mean words about the FBI.
	Wait until you hear what the IG actually found about what the FBI did here.
	The only arguable deep state activity today was by this President's Attorney General attacking the findings of his own agency and having a hand-picked prosecutor to justify his feelings about spying, doing his own probe.
	And his prosecutor, Paul Dicomi, broke protocol, bad-mouthed the Inspector General's findings while talking about his own ongoing investigation.
	So, will those accused of treason, and worse, get an apology?
	Okay, so no, they won't get an apology.
	And also it turns out that what the standard used by the IG in this report is a very low bar.
	Okay, so all the IG was finding, he says this in the report, all he was assessing is whether people violated the law.
	He was not assessing whether they made good decisions or whether those decisions were justified by evidence on any real level.
	He was simply asking whether they met the baseline, very bare legal standard to not break the law.
	So in other words, the IG was using the proper standard when it comes to prosecution.
	The standard Democrats actually should be using when it comes to impeachment.
	But, he said, I'm not really assessing whether the decision making here was good.
	And when he says evidence of bias, he's not saying that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page weren't biased.
	He's saying that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were unable to cram through all of their priorities in this investigation because there were other people, thank God, who were part of the process.
	Okay, which is true!
	Aside from people who have been, you know, wildly overestimating, I don't know many conservatives who are suggesting that the entire FBI was corrupt.
	Now, I was saying, yeah, there are some bad apples inside the FBI who obviously didn't like Trump and were pushing against him, but the idea that the entire FBI was top-to-bottom corrupt, I mean, I know FBI agents, it's just nonsense.
	So, here is what the IG actually found.
	So the standard used, quote, Our role in this review was not to second-guess discretionary judgments by department personnel about whether to open an investigation or specific judgment calls made during the course of an investigation where those decisions complied with or were authorized by department rules, policies, or procedures.
	We do not criticize particular decisions merely because we might have recommended a different investigative strategy or tactic based on the facts learned during our investigation.
	So he's saying this should not be read to be an assessment of whether the right decisions were made.
	The only question is whether they broke the law.
	He said the question we considered Was not whether a particular investigative decision was ideal or could have been handled more effectively, but rather whether the department and the FBI complied with applicable legal requirements, policies, and procedures in taking the actions we reviewed.
	More alternatively, whether the circumstances surrounding the decision indicated it was based on inaccurate or incomplete information or considerations other than the merits of the investigation.
	If the explanations we were given for a particular decision were consistent with legal requirements, policies, procedures, and not unreasonable, we didn't conclude that the decision was based on improper considerations.
	So in other words, if you could give any excuse at all that avoided violating the law, they would buy it.
	That's what that standard is.
	And here is what they found.
	They found that the investigation was not initiated in bad faith.
	By the way, I tend to agree with that.
	Now, what you're seeing is that there are statements put out by Bill Barr and also John Durham, both of other members of the DOJ, right?
	Bill Barr is the Attorney General, John Durham...
	He's a US attorney who's doing his own investigation into the origins of Trump-Russia collusion investigation.
	Both of them came out and they said, well, we disagree with this assessment by the IG.
	Now remember the IG was only examining the FBI, was not examining the CIA, was not examining the other members of the intelligence community, not foreign countries, just the FBI.
	So according to this IG report, Crossfire Hurricane was opened as a full investigation.
	All of the senior FBI officials who participated in discussions about whether to open a case told us the information warranted opening it.
	So we concluded that under the AG guidelines and the Domestic Investigations Operation Guide, the FBI had an authorized purpose when it opened Crossfire Hurricane to obtain information about or protect against a national security threat or federal crime even though the investigation also had the potential to impact constitutionally protected activity.
	Additionally, given the low threshold for predication in the AG guidelines and the DIOG, we concluded that the friendly foreign government information provided by a government the U.S.
	intelligence community deems trustworthy, and describing a first-hand account from a foreign government of a conversation with George Papadopoulos, low-level Trump staffer, was sufficient to predicate the investigation.
	In other words, it's a very low standard for opening an investigation.
	There was a conversation that happened between George Papadopoulos, low-level Trump foreign policy aide, Who had a conversation with a member of the Australian government in which he bragged about having had a conversation with a guy named Joseph Mifsud, who was seen by the intelligence community as a Russian cutout, who had said that he had information that the Russians had access to Hillary Clinton's emails and would give them to the Trump campaign.
	And that was the predication for the opening of this investigation.
	Now, you combine that with Paul Manafort joining the campaign, and with the intelligence community being suspicious of Carter Page, and with Donald Trump's warm words toward Vladimir Putin, and this was apparently enough to open the investigation.
	Now, John Durham says no.
	Right, John Durham?
	So that sounds like there might be some different grounds for opening it.
	information from other persons and entities both in the U.S. and outside the U.S. based on the evidence collected to date and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the inspector general we do not agree with some of the report's conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was open.
	So that sounds like there might be some different grounds for opening it.
	Attorney General William Barr said the same thing.
	He says the inspector general's report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S.
	presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.
	It is also clear that from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory.
	Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump's administration.
	So people on the left are like, why are you ripping the IG?
	Stop ripping it!
	Well, maybe they have more information than the IG.
	We're gonna have to wait to see what Barr has.
	And people are saying Barr's a political hack, Durham's now a political hack.
	Okay, why don't we wait for the information they will present, and then we will determine where the political hackery occurred.
	Was it inside the IG's report, or was it here?
	Or is it possible that it's not political hackery on any side?
	That maybe the IG is just looking at the stuff inside the FBI and making the conclusion based on the bare legal requirement, and Barr and Durham have other information.
	Maybe that's the case.
	Maybe they disagree.
	All of these could be possible.
	There is one thing that is certain.
	One thing is certain here.
	The FBI blew it with regard to, for example, the Carter Page FISA warrant.
	The FBI was acting right at the margins of its authority in using confidential human sources to ferret out information from the Trump campaign.
	The report says, we found it concerning that department and FBI policy did not require the FBI to consult with any department official in advance of conducting confidential human source operations involving advisors to a major party's presidential campaign.
	We found no evidence the FBI consulted with any DOJ officials before conducting these operations.
	As we described, consultation at a minimum is required by Department and FBI policies.
	We include a recommendation to address the issue.
	So, even this report says, um, you guys were operating right at the boundaries of your authority, and in some cases beyond.
	There were some 17 inaccuracies and omissions in the Carter Page FISA warrant.
	According to the report, FBI personnel quote, fell far short of the requirements regarding the FISA warrant.
	The FBI, one lawyer, altered evidence that falsely cast Carter Page as a Russian spy.
	NBC's Pete Williams gets it right.
	He says, listen, there are basically scrups at every single level here.
	So while the media are proclaiming that the FBI is exonerated, everybody's good, no evidence of bias, there are scrups at every level and all of the scrups cut in one direction.
	Here is NBC's Pete Williams acknowledging as much.
	Nonetheless, it says it found no political bias in seeking the FISA warrant on Page.
	What it says is the FBI basically repeatedly screwed up at every level Failing to pay enough attention to potential problems with steel.
	Failing to tell the Justice Department.
	And it says at one point that the FBI decided to seek this FISA warrant, even at the risk of being criticized for doing it later, because the report says FBI officials said they had to get to the bottom of a potentially serious threat to national security.
	Okay, so, again, this report, it ain't good for the FBI and anybody in the media telling you that it is.
	That's just because Trump may have, you know, over-pitched what he thought would happen here, but we still have to wait for Barr and Durham.
	There may be more information forthcoming.
	Okay, time for a quick thing I like and a quick thing that I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	There is this bizarre notion in in anti-religious communities, that religious people never think about their religion at all, and that religious people spend all day walking around in sort of a blind stupor, thinking, oh, well, everything that happens is good, because God did it, and I don't suffer, and there is no suffering.
	And one of the examples they use is, oh, look at all those athletes who, every time they score a touchdown, they point to the sky, or they thank God after a game.
	Do they really think that God is making them win the game?
	That's so stupid.
	No, what's stupid is that you actually think that a lot of people believe that.
	What most people who are religious believe is that yes, God's hand is providential.
	God does have a will.
	We don't always understand what exactly God is doing.
	But we don't actually believe that if you are good and nice and good Christian that you're going to score a touchdown on every pass.
	Nick Foles is having a rough season for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
	He's a religious Christian.
	He was asked about a bad game and he preaches a basic religious message with regard to the impact of God in everyday events.
	I've been able still to get to know people, get to know these guys through an injury.
	Though I might not be playing, that is difficult from a fleshly perspective.
	But from the spiritual perspective, from my heart, I've been able to grow as a human being to where I feel like I'm at a better situation here as a person than I was before because of the trial I just went under.
	And I know that's a sermon in itself, but that's how I go through life.
	And the good Lord's been there to, you know, it's not always about prosperity.
	I don't believe in the prosperity gospel.
	I believe if you read the word of God and you understand it, There's trials along the way, but they equip your heart to be who you are.
	Okay, that is religion, right?
	The religious perspective is that not that everything you do is going to earn you wealth and happiness, and that if you're religious, that all good things come to you.
	Religious people suffer.
	I mean, in Christianity, the founder of the religion suffers a great deal, right?
	I mean, in Judaism, Moses doesn't go into the Promised Land.
	Suffering is not avoided simply by believing in God or doing the right thing.
	Nobody who's religious, truly religious, believes this.
	But we do believe that if you overcome those trials, if you engage in those trials, if you engage in that struggle with justice in the universe and God, that it makes you stronger, equipped, better equipped to handle those trials.
	Good for Nick Foles, good for Nick Foles, being a good messenger for a godly message.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	Okay, so, a marriage story.
	It's getting all sorts of plaudits.
	There are two movies that have gotten all sorts of plaudits.
	I already ripped one of them last week, The Irishman, a Martin Scorsese film, which is interminable.
	And listen, I've been a longtime critic of Scorsese.
	I think Scorsese is overrated as a director.
	I find all of his films to center in on people who are just disgusting, and I don't find any of his characters particularly interesting.
	I will acknowledge his style, but in The Irishman, he basically just... It's just three and a half hours of vomit.
	I mean, it's never-ending.
	Okay, so I ripped on Scorsese.
	He got all sorts of Golden Globe denominations last night.
	Now I'm gonna rip on A Marriage Story.
	So A Marriage Story is a Noah Baumbach production.
	He basically focuses in on obnoxious people on the Upper East Side.
	It's basically a bunch of Upper East Side artists who...
	Have no moral compass or moral code?
	And we're supposed to care deeply about them because they write literature?
	Which is like, it's so tired and it's so boring.
	In any case, he makes this movie a marriage story.
	Adam Driver is terrific in it.
	Scarlett Johansson is terrific in it.
	All the acting is great.
	Laura Dern, who I love, is terrific in it.
	All the acting is great.
	It is a movie about obnoxious people being obnoxious, not giving a crap about their child, being obnoxious to each other without caring about the kid, and predicating a divorce on essentially the basis that they want to have different career paths.
	I mean, you want to know why, like, the fact that people are finding this emotionally affecting, I think, is quite a problem for people's perception of morality.
	Here's a little bit of the preview.
	You know, most people in my business, you're just transactions to them.
	I like to think of you as people.
	Oh, okay, good.
	You remind me of myself on my second marriage.
	Part of what we're gonna do together is telling your story.
	Did you dye your hair again?
	No, this is me.
	You don't like it?
	Is it shorter?
	I prefer it longer, but...
	How are you doing?
	And so it's all about how they negotiate the divorce and all the problems that they're having with each other.
	And it's so emotional and so affecting.
	Except both these people are garbage!
	They're both garbage!
	He's cheating on her because he's a bad person.
	And she basically says that she is divorcing him because she never felt fulfilled.
	So it's like both characters are Meryl Streep in Kramer vs. Kramer.
	I've seen this compared to Kramer vs. Kramer.
	Yeah, the only difference is that in Kramer vs. Kramer, Dustin Hoffman's the good guy.
	There's no good guy here.
	Everybody sucks.
	Everybody's terrible.
	If either of them took 15 seconds to consider the fact that they have a child whose life will be devastated by the fact that they are getting divorced...
	Then maybe they might think about the fact that actually they share a lot in common, and if they could make themselves better, then they'd stay together for the kid.
	It's very angering because I think that it is a generalized perception on marriage, that marriage is just there for the good of the two people, as opposed to being about the creation and raising of the child.
	And it does demonstrate the stupidity of our divorce system, which is really quite garbage-y.
	But aside from that, the people in this movie are so obnoxious that I legitimately could not tell Whether the director is attempting to mock them.
	When you watch the trailer it's pretty obvious that it's meant to be sincere, but I... I watched the movie and I kept thinking to myself, is he making fun of the shallowness of these people?
	Because if he's not and he's being sincere about why we're supposed to care about these people, that doesn't say a lot of great things about the writer and director.
	And doesn't say a lot of great things about the people who find this movie supremely emotionally affecting.
	My goodness.
	Like, why don't any of these people ever, like, sit and have a think about the kind of life they want to create for their child, as opposed to themselves?
	The entire movie's about themselves.
	As a parent, I spend very little of my day thinking about the life I want to create for me.
	And I think a lot about the life I want to create for my children.
	So does my wife.
	It's one of the reasons we have a good marriage and one of the reasons I think that we, I hope, we're good parents.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content.
	We have some great guests.
	We're going to be analyzing everything impeachment related and all the rest.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Rebecca Davkowitz.
	Directed by Mike Joyner.
	Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.
	Senior Producer Jonathan Hay.
	Supervising Producers Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
	Technical Producer Austin Stevens.
	Associate Producer Colton Haas.
	Assistant Director Pavel Lydowsky.
	Edited by Adam Sajovic.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
	Hair and Makeup is by Jessua Olvera.
	Production Assistant Nick Sheehan.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
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