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June 9, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

53:29

BREAKING: TRUMP INDICTED…AGAIN!

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	Well, obviously, insane amount of news today.
	President Trump apparently has now been indicted on seven criminal charges in this classified documents case.
	Now, you will recall that this classified documents case actually began in like 2021 because it turned out that President Trump in 2021 had a bunch of documents Over at Mar-a-Lago, and those documents were actually requested by the National Archives in May 6, 2021.
	They alerted Trump that it was seeking approximately two dozen boxes of records be returned to it as required by the Presidential Records Act, according to Ryan Saavedra of Daily Wire.
	The National Archives warned Trump in late 2021.
	They could escalate the issue to prosecutors or Congress if he continued to refuse to hand over the documents.
	He was also then warned by former Trump White House lawyer, Eric Hirschman, he could face serious legal jeopardy if he did not comply.
	In January 2022, about 15 of those boxes were returned, at which time officials discovered there were hundreds of pages of classified material in the boxes.
	And then federal law enforcement was notified of the discovery, and then they came to believe there were more materials that had not been returned.
	And then in May 2022, A federal grand jury issued a subpoena seeking additional classified documents.
	A few weeks later, the DOJ decided to raid Mar-a-Lago.
	Trump's legal team signed a written statement claiming that all the classified material had then been returned.
	On August 8th, the FBI executed a search warrant on the property and recovered more classified material.
	Okay, so that is the sequence of events leading up to all of this.
	Now, let it be stated up front that the treatment of classified material by various public officials is extremely messy.
	So among the public officials that we know have had classified material in a place they weren't supposed to have that classified material, that'd be like Hillary Clinton.
	Joe Biden.
	Mike Pence.
	Donald Trump.
	The only one of those four people who had the power to summarily declassify if he had gone through any sort of procedure with regard to declassification was President Trump.
	The president can summarily declassify anything.
	He's the head of the executive branch.
	None of those other characters were able to declassify anything.
	So that's number one.
	Number two, why exactly was Trump holding these classified materials in the first place?
	So all the theories at the time when this news broke back in 2022 is that it must have been because Trump was seeking to pass them off to the Russians.
	He was seeking to pass them off to the Chinese.
	There was some sort of nefarious evil plan by Donald Trump to do something with the documents.
	He was going to hand the nuclear codes over to Xi Jinping.
	He was going to make sure that Vladimir Putin knew exactly where our nuclear submarines were or something like that.
	And then, as it turns out, according to pretty much everybody who has testified in this case, apparently, Donald Trump just decided to hold on to documents because, wait for it, Donald Trump just wanted to hold on to documents, which only fits with everything we know about him.
	Anyway, whatever you say about Trump, Trump is a willful human being who likes to do the things that he likes to do.
	And this is true in literally every area of his life.
	So the likely thing that happened is he left the White House and he's like, hey, look, it's a letter.
	Kim Jong-un!
	Kim signed it.
	I'm going to bring it.
	And so he brought it.
	And that was the end of the story.
	And then the National Archives was like, can we have the letter?
	He's like, I don't know who it is.
	Who knows?
	And that's pretty much the extent of it.
	Now, is that a national security threat to the extent that the former president of the United States and the current Republican front runner for the nomination ought to be indicted on criminal charges?
	Uh, no.
	The answer is no.
	And the reason the answer is no is because we have the disparate treatment of those other public officials, including, most egregiously, Hillary Clinton.
	Well, look at what Hillary Clinton actually did because it's actually relevant in this context that the FBI and the DOJ decided not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her activities surrounding taking home classified documents and loading them up onto an unclassified server, a secret private server that she kept in her bathroom.
	And then she actually ended up using bleach bit to clean the documents when it became clear that she was suspected of holding those documents.
	And then those classified documents ended up on the very not classified computer of a pervert named Anthony Weiner, who is Huma Abedin's husband.
	Hillary and Huma were very close.
	She was her top aide.
	And those documents ended up on Anthony Weiner's computer where he was 16, 15 year old.
	And she still didn't get prosecuted.
	I mean, it's hard to think of looser use of classified material than it ends up on Anthony Weiner's computer next to Anthony's Weiner.
	That is very difficult to think of Donald Trump doing anything that is remotely as sloppy as that.
	Okay, but here is what we know right now about the indictment.
	Trump himself disclosed the indictment, according to CNBC, in a series of posts on his Truth Social media site on Thursday evening.
	He also said he was summoned to appear in court in Miami next week on Tuesday.
	NBC News soon after confirmed the indictment, it's the second time in recent months that Trump has been criminally charged.
	Of course, he's still under criminal investigation by the DOJ and a Georgia State prosecutor.
	For his efforts to reverse his loss to President Biden in the 2020 election in the state of Georgia.
	So that is the third case that is outstanding against Trump.
	That one has yet to be decided by a Georgia grand jury.
	Unclear exactly what's going to happen in that particular case.
	That's the one about him calling up Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State of Georgia, and saying, I just need 12,000 votes.
	That routine.
	Okay, so we have three cases.
	We have the Alvin Bragg case in Manhattan, which is clearly a put-up job.
	That is the DA of Manhattan trying to make a name for himself.
	He wouldn't know Alvin Bragg's name, other than he lets criminals out of prison, except that he decided to prosecute President Trump on the basis of some sort of bizarre campaign finance case that is such a stretch that even the New York Times is like, uh, that probably is not prosecutable.
	Then you have this case.
	And this one, we are being told, is serious as a heart attack.
	This is a super duper serious case.
	So what exactly does this case constitute?
	Well, right now, the indictment is sealed, so the charges are not fully public.
	But Trump's attorney, James Trustee, said that the charges include false statements, conspiracy to obstruct, and willfully retaining documents in violation of the Espionage Act.
	Now, suggesting that he is violating the Espionage Act does not mean that they suspect that Donald Trump is actually, like, a traitor and that he's going to be hanged or something.
	What that means is that there are provisions of the Espionage Act that relate to the treatment of classified materials and obstruction of justice.
	The charges carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison if Trump is convicted, though the actual sentence would likely be lower because of federal sentencing guidelines.
	Trump, of course, is the only U.S.
	president ever to be criminally charged under any circumstances.
	Okay, so we're going to go through the details of the charges in just one second, what we actually know.
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	Okay.
	So again, the classified document charges.
	They range from obstruction of justice, which that would presumably be Trump telling his team to take the documents and move them from one room into another room when the FBI originally came to search.
	It might include statements that his lawyers made to the authorities suggesting that he'd already turned over all of the classified documents.
	And then it turns out he had not actually turned over all of the classified documents.
	According to ABC News, federal investigators have seized more than 100 documents with classified markings during the search, according to an unsealed detailed inventory list.
	From Trump's office alone, there were 43 empty folders seized that had classified banners on them.
	You remember the FBI did the wonderfully classified thing of then taking pictures of all of those folders on the floor and then revealing that to the public.
	Which definitely leads to the impression that they are not political in any way, is when you take some of the evidence and you spread it out on the floor and then you take photos of it and release it to the media.
	The property inventory list also showed that agents gathered more than 11,000 documents or photographs without classification markings, all of which were described as property of the United States government.
	Andy McCarthy over at National Review has a good rundown on what he thinks the charges are at this point.
	He says, the most notable thing I've seen is that in charging Trump with an Espionage Act offense, prosecutors are relying on a provision that criminalizes willful violation of the rules that government officials are required to follow in handling national defense intelligence.
	And as McCarthy says, the reason that they are doing this is because if they say that he accidentally mishandled classified information, then we're all going to ask the obvious question.
	Why isn't Joe Biden being prosecuted?
	Why wasn't Mike Pence prosecuted?
	Why isn't Hillary Clinton prosecuted?
	And so they're going out of their way to say that unlike these others, We're just sort of in the dark.
	Oopsie-daisy.
	A classified document was in Joe Biden's Corvette.
	Donald Trump was willfully and maliciously hiding this material.
	That's why they're going after the intent.
	Now, intent for Trump, as I've said before, is the hardest thing to prove in any criminal case about President Trump because Trump does not have intent beyond the next 0.5 seconds.
	That may be an overstatement of the amount of time that he has intent for.
	It may be 0.2 seconds.
	Donald Trump intends to do the thing that is right in front of him, and then as soon as it is not in front of him, he no longer intends to do it, which is why he shifts political positions pretty easily, and he will attack a person who he was best friends with five seconds ago.
	So proving willful intent on the part of Trump in any of these cases is very, very difficult, like just as a prosecutorial matter.
	But, as McCarthy says, this seems like an obvious effort to distinguish Trump's alleged crime from President Biden's mishandling of classified documents, which the White House and the media-democratic complex have described as inadvertent, the result of sloppy staff work, not willfulness.
	What intrigues me about the allegation is that it takes too to detangle when it comes to the obstruction of justice charge, because they're charging him not with just obstruction, but conspiracy to obstruct justice, which means there has to be more than one person who obstructed justice, right?
	Conspiracy by its very nature requires more than one person.
	Unclear, because we don't have the indictment in front of us.
	What exactly is in the charges?
	Again, we are only operating off of the leaked info at this point, which could turn out to be largely true, or it could turn out to be that there's more evidence than stated.
	However, I will say that in the past, whenever we have said, well, maybe there'll be more evidence to come, It seems like it doesn't generally happen.
	The Mueller report was like, oh my gosh, the other shoe is going to drop.
	And it turns out there were no shoes to drop.
	Seal dossier.
	Oh, maybe there's other shoes.
	Nope, nope, there are no shoes.
	Alvin Bragg in Manhattan.
	Maybe he has lots of... Nope, there are no shoes.
	Fresh out of shoes.
	Trump is also said to be charged, according to Andy McCarthy, with making false statements.
	One theory the special counsel appears to be pressing is that Trump is responsible for a false sworn statement his lawyers conveyed to the FBI on June 3rd, 2022.
	At that time, the lawyers represented that a thorough search of Mar-a-Lago had been conducted already, and that the 38 documents bearing classification markings that they were surrendering were the only ones in Trump's possession.
	After that point, the government continued to investigate and developed evidence that Trump was still hoarding documents that were marked classified.
	As a result, prosecutors sought and obtained that search warrant that we talked about, and that is when they raided Mar-a-Lago in August of 2022.
	Under the federal aiding and abetting statute, a principal is responsible for the criminal acts of his agents, including false statements.
	If he told his lawyers, go lie to the FBI about the classified documents, tell them we turned everything over, even if we didn't, then Theoretically, he could be charged with that, right?
	That is one of the things that they're talking about charging him with.
	Now, it is also unclear whether the documents that were found were quote-unquote marked classified or maybe he thought he had already declassified them.
	It's unclear.
	Trump has said before that by the very nature of me taking them home, they were declassified.
	Now, again, on a legal level, is that enough?
	Is it sort of like Michael Scott running into the middle of the office and shouting, I declare bankruptcy!
	And bankruptcy has been declared.
	Is that how you declassify things?
	Typically not.
	But that has to be litigated out, presumably.
	Most interesting are reports that Trump is charged with willfully retaining national defense information.
	We can't be sure until we've seen the indictments, says Andy McCarthy.
	This appears to refer to subsection D of the Espionage Act.
	In pertinent part, that section says, quote, whoever lawfully having possession of access to control over or being entrusted with any document relating to the national defense or information relating to the national defense, which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully retains the same.
	And fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it, is guilty of a crime punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment.
	Subsection D sets forth a more serious offense than the provision that usually applies to government officials who mishandle classified information.
	The problem, of course, is that subsection F, which is one of the other subsections that they are considering, which is substantially broader and easier to convict, would also convict President Biden.
	As McCarthy says, the strategy of the Biden administration and its special counsel seems to be one, alleged Trump committed a willful offense that puts him in a different, more egregious category from Biden's conduct, and two, pretend in connection with Biden that it is not a felony for government officials to be grossly negligent in mishandling classified information.
	Now, again, the line between grossly negligent in mishandling classified information and, like, full-scale willful in mishandling classified information, that's a really dicey line, as we're going to talk about when we get to Hillary Clinton and the fact that these cases are very, very comparable.
	Hillary Clinton was overtly not prosecuted in 2016 by the Comey FBI and the Eric Holder DOJ, or the Loretta Lynch DOJ at the time.
	And yet, Trump is now apparently being prosecuted.
	Trump, for his part, has released a statement.
	He says, the corrupt Biden administration has informed my attorneys I've been indicted,
	seemingly over the boxes hoax, even though Joe Biden has 1850 boxes at the University of Delaware,
	additional boxes in Chinatown, D.C., with even more boxes at the University of Pennsylvania,
	and documents strewn all over his garage floor where he parks his Corvette,
	and which is secured only by a garage door that is paper thin and open much of the time.
	I've been summoned to appear at the federal courthouse in Miami Tuesday, 3 p.m.
	I never thought it could be possible that such a thing could happen to a former president of the United States, who received far more votes than any sitting president in the history of our country, and is currently leading by far all candidates, both Democrat and Republican, in the polls of the 2024 presidential election.
	I am an innocent man.
	All capital letters.
	Elon Musk, for his part, responded immediately to this, saying, Well, yeah, I mean, that is the understatement of the century.
	So we'll get to President Trump's video statement in just a second.
	We'll compare this to Hillary Clinton's case, which, again, the notion that the DOJ is operating on the basis of some sort of objective determination of the law here is pretty absurd.
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	Okay, so, President Trump then responded on video, and here is what he said.
	We were doing so well.
	We were respected all over the world.
	Got the biggest tax cuts in history.
	Biggest regulation cuts in history.
	And what do you do?
	You have a president where an election was taken.
	Got more votes than any sitting president in history by far.
	Never anything even close.
	And they come after me.
	Cause now we're leading in the polls again by a lot against Biden and against the Republicans by a lot, but we're leading against Biden by a lot, a tremendous amount.
	And we went up to a level that they figured the way they're going to stop us is by using what's called warfare.
	And that's what it is.
	This is warfare for the law and we can't let it happen.
	We can't let it happen.
	Our country is going to hell and they come after.
	Donald Trump weaponizing the Justice Department, weaponizing the FBI.
	We can't let this continue to go on because it's ripping our country to shreds.
	He's not wrong about this.
	He is not.
	The fact that we have had a long history in this country of not prosecuting the party of the president of the former party when he was in when he's not in power anymore.
	That's a good thing.
	And if you look at countries where people are routinely prosecuted after leaving office, these are not really great places to live.
	And Joe Biden, he better get his ass ready, because here's the reality.
	Now that this glass has been broken, this is going to be the rule from here on out.
	Joe Biden will end up being prosecuted after he leaves office by Republican DAs somewhere if this sort of stuff continues.
	It's really bad.
	It truly is.
	Now, Trump basically has two backup cases.
	His defense is going to rely on a couple of things.
	Defense number one is going to be, I actually declassified everything, right?
	You've heard him say this before.
	I declassified and the power to declassify.
	Okay, now, that's a pretty weak case in the first place.
	Apparently, that's been blown up CNN has apparently obtained a transcript of an audio recording in which Trump acknowledged on tape in a 2020-21 meeting that he had retained, quote-unquote, secret military information that he had not declassified.
	Apparently, according to the transcript, Trump says, quote, as president, I could have declassified, but now I can't.
	And he's waving around a document supposedly in this tape.
	Now, again, it's CNN.
	It's anonymous sources.
	You have to take everything, not just with a grain of salt, but with a giant block of salt, like an iceberg-sized block of salt.
	But if that's the case, it kind of blows up the idea That Trump summarily declassified everything simply by taking it home.
	The transcript of the audio recording suggests that Trump is showing the document he's discussing to those in the room.
	Several sources have told CNN the recording captures the sound of paper rustling.
	And he apparently says, secret, this is secret information.
	Look, look at this.
	This was done by the military and given to me.
	Apparently he was complaining in the meeting about the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley.
	He says, well, with Milley, let me see.
	I'll show you an example.
	He said, I wanted to attack Iran.
	Isn't that amazing?
	I have a big pile of papers.
	This thing just came up.
	Look, this was him.
	They presented me this.
	This is off the record, but they presented me this.
	This was him.
	This was the Department of Defense and him.
	We looked at some.
	This was him.
	It wasn't done by me.
	It was him.
	And then he says, wait a minute, let's see here.
	I just found, isn't that amazing?
	This totally wins my case, you know, except it is like highly confidential, secret.
	This is secret information.
	Look, look at this.
	And then he says, I could have declassified it while I was president, but I didn't.
	So the argument that he was making all along that he declassified this stuff, not true.
	But is that his real defense?
	Is his real defense that it was declassified or is the defense basically, listen, this is differential prosecution.
	We can all tell this is differential prosecution.
	Everyone can see this is differential prosecution.
	I mean, let's be real about this.
	Again, Hillary Clinton stored thousands of documents, like tens of thousands of documents, on a private server in her home while she was Secretary of State.
	Many of those documents were classified.
	Those documents were then bleach-bitted from her server.
	She used a code called bleach-bit in order to wipe them from her server when she realized that this might fall under investigation.
	And then those classified emails turned up.
	Not in her home.
	They turned up on the computer of Anthony Weiner, the husband, the pervert husband of her aide, Huma Abedin.
	Which is why, of course, we have this bizarre two-step wherein James Comey originally announced he was not going to prosecute her, and then right before the election, he was like, oh, by the way, we just found a bunch of classified emails, so we're not sure what that means.
	And then a few days later, he said, well, it's probably okay.
	You remember this.
	Here was James Comey circa 2016 announcing why he was not going to prosecute Hillary Clinton.
	And listen to the language he uses.
	Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.
	Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before deciding whether to bring charges.
	There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent.
	Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person's actions and how similar situations have been handled in the past.
	Oh, how similar situations have been handled in the past.
	And he says, sure, there's evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding how Hillary actually handled the documents.
	In fact, Comey admitted in that presser, he said that there is a high likelihood that foreign eyes ended up on classified material because of Hillary Clinton.
	Is there a high likelihood that foreign materials ended up being seen by the Chinese or Russians because Donald Trump hid this stuff in like a closet at Mar-a-Lago?
	Is that a high likelihood?
	How exactly would you stack up the treatment of classified materials by Trump as opposed to by Hillary Clinton, where she specifically was not indicted by James Comey and the same people who are spending millions of dollars and thousands of man hours investigating nonsense like the Steele dossier going after Trump?
	If it seems like animus, that's because it is animus.
	In a second, we'll get to the fact that Joe Biden is still in the middle of an ongoing investigation with regard to classified documents.
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	is America's coffee. Okay, so here again is the thing.
	When it comes to Hillary Clinton, Hillary, like, deliberately wiped her server.
	Now, if you're talking about covering up obstruction of justice, preventing the knowledge by law enforcement that you are covering up classified material, Hillary Clinton did all that, and Trey Gowdy said as much.
	Back in 2016, August of 2016, Trey Gowdy said that Hillary Clinton used a special tool called BleachBit to prevent recovery of files.
	He said she and her lawyers had those emails deleted.
	They didn't just push the delete button, they had them deleted where even God can't read them.
	They used something called BleachBit.
	You don't use BleachBit for yoga emails or bridesmaids emails.
	When you're using BleachBit, it's something you really don't want the world to see.
	That obviously is true.
	Meanwhile, there is still an investigation into Joe Biden keeping thousands of classified documents apparently all over the place.
	Joe Biden leaves classified documents around the nation like Hunter Biden leaves illegitimate children.
	Classified material next to your Corvette?
	these documents lying around in his garage next to his Corvette and
	then pretends that he handled this right.
	You'll recall just a few months ago, when Joe Biden was defending his handling of
	classified documents, well, I did keep them in a locked garage.
	Okay, I'm going to need an explanation as to why your locked garage in Wilmington,
	Delaware is significantly safer than Donald Trump's locked closet at Mar-a-Lago.
	Classified material next to your Corvette, what were you thinking?
	Let me, I'm going to get a chance to speak on all this, God willing, soon.
	But as I said earlier this week, people, and by the way, my Corvette's in a locked garage.
	Okay?
	So it's not like you're sitting out in the street.
	But at any rate, yes, as well as my Corvette.
	Oh, well, that obviously is a great defense there by Joe Biden.
	By the way, the case is still ongoing.
	According to NBC News, the federal investigation into President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents shows few signs of an imminent conclusion, even as the probes into former VP Mike Pence and former President Donald Trump have reached or appear to be reaching the end, according to three people familiar with the matter.
	Biden's advisors have determined he would provide an interview to the special counsel investigating his handling of the classified documents once Biden's legal team and the DOJ agree on the conditions.
	But Biden has yet to be interviewed, suggesting that the investigation is not yet nearing a close.
	Interviewing the person at the center of an investigation is typically among the final actions before a probe is completed.
	A spokesperson for Biden's personal attorney, Bob Bauer, declined to comment at this point.
	So, again, Joe Biden was hiding documents, or at least he had these documents that were all over the damn place.
	So, is Donald Trump being prosecuted on the basis of doing something extraordinary?
	Like, extraordinarily different from Hillary Clinton, for example?
	The answer, of course, is no.
	He's doing something very similar to what Hillary Clinton did, it sounds like, except he didn't actually wipe the documents.
	The way that Hillary Clinton did.
	And he is a presidential candidate, the same way that Hillary Clinton was a presidential candidate.
	And they decided they didn't want to intervene with Hillary because she was a presidential candidate, but they are perfectly willing to intervene with Donald Trump.
	Now, politically speaking, does it help Trump?
	Every time Trump is targeted, it helps Trump.
	In a Republican primary.
	Now again, two things can be true at once.
	One, Trump is being unfairly targeted.
	This is a malign use of law enforcement.
	There is no way in hell that they would be doing this if Donald Trump were a Democrat.
	Just no way in hell, and we all know it.
	And that's perverse.
	And it undermines the credibility of law enforcement, the DOJ, the FBI.
	These institutions are at low ebb in terms of credibility among Americans.
	And there is a reason for this.
	It's incredibly dangerous what they're doing right here.
	They've now broken the glass.
	The Manhattan DA broke it on the state level.
	Breaking it on the federal level is a completely different ball of wax.
	Breaking it on the state level is bad enough, but there are lots of states with various political opinions, and so, you know, you take it always with like, eh, you know, okay fine, so Alvin Bragg's a Democrat and he's prosecuting Trump in New York, whatever.
	When the federal government does it, and the federal government can reach you in your home, and the Manhattan D.A.
	can't reach you in Alabama, really.
	Manhattan D.A.
	What's he going to do?
	Come to Alabama and grab you?
	Theoretically, he could try to extradite you or something, but let's be real about this.
	We all understand what a politically motivated prosecution by a liberal prosecutor looks like in Manhattan.
	That is not the same thing as an institution that requires all... I don't have a lot of trust in the New York government, but you have to have a certain baseline level of trust in the American government since you pay taxes to it and you are subject to its legal requirements on a day-to-day level.
	When the DOJ and the FBI are obviously weaponizing themselves against Trump in this way, it's a serious problem for American democracy.
	And that means that Republicans are rushing to Trump's defense.
	And they should rush to Trump's defense on this, because obviously this is weaponization against Trump.
	To turn that, however, into a referendum on his electability is, you know, another question.
	And what I'm seeing right now is a conflation on the right side of the aisle between, well, we're really pissed about this, which means we should nominate him.
	Well, I mean, really pissed about it, yes.
	We should nominate him.
	You might want to think about whether independents are more likely to vote for him because he was just indicted by the DOJ.
	Is that something that is more likely to win him the election?
	I'm seeing a lot of analysis today from people on the right, like, well, this is going to drive him back to the presidency.
	Well, no, it's going to drive him back to the Republican nomination, but the chances that it's going to flip, like, Five, six, seven million voters back to Trump because the DOJ is going after him on the classified documents matter ignores all of the polling data showing that independents by and large are fine with the prosecution, not because they care about the prosecution per se, because they don't like Trump very much.
	That is a problem.
	So two things can be true at once.
	One, we should all defend Trump on a legal level.
	We should all say that what the DOJ is doing is gross abuse of power because it clearly is.
	What the FBI is doing here is gross abuse of power because it clearly is.
	And then we should seek to elect a person who's going to clean that out.
	And to elect that person, they have to win.
	And so the question becomes, who is most likely to win?
	Again, just because your passion is up for Trump, I get it.
	My passion is up for Trump, too.
	I get the emotional appeal.
	Does that mean that Trump is likely to win a general election?
	More likely now than he was yesterday?
	I don't really see the reason why.
	Again, I think this notion that the American public is going to react in absolute outrage against Joe Biden, and therefore going to throw Biden out of office in favor of Trump, I think we're a very polarized political climate here in the United States, and independents don't really like either of those people, but by polling data, they actually have more of a problem with Trump than they do with Biden at this point.
	And so unless that radically shifts, that is something that Republican voters should take into their calculation when it comes to voting.
	for the Republican nominee.
	But again, that's a separate question than the really deeper issue here, which is, this is banana republic kind of crap.
	I mean, it really is.
	The DOJ going after Trump for precisely the thing Hillary Clinton did is supremely corrupt.
	Really corrupt.
	Now, it's so corrupt that Joe Biden actually yesterday had to disavow having any involvement.
	He said, I never suggested what the DOJ should do.
	Well, nobody said that you suggested what the DOJ should do, but it's your attorney general, Merrick Garland, who's presiding over all of this, and Jack Smith, his appointed special counsel, Because you notice, I have never once, not one single time, suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do, whether to bring in a charge or not bring in a charge.
	I'm honest.
	Oh, he's honest, guys.
	He assures you that he's honest.
	Now, let's talk about Joe Biden's honesty.
	The same day this indictment came down for Trump, there are now pretty significant accusations that Joe Biden was actually paid bribe money by a Burisma executive as part of a bribery scheme, according to an FBI document.
	Fox News is now reporting that Biden was allegedly paid $5 million by an executive of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, where his son Hunter sat on the board, a confidential human source told the FBI during a June 2020 interview, according to sources familiar.
	The sources brief Fox News Digital on the contents of the FBI-generated FD1023 form alleging a criminal bribery scheme between then-VP Joe Biden and a foreign national that involves influence over U.S.
	policy decisions.
	That form, dated June 30th, 2020, is the FBI's interview with a highly credible confidential source who detailed multiple meetings and conversations he or she had with a top Burisma executive over the course of several years starting in 2015.
	Fox News Digital has not seen the form.
	It was described by several sources who are aware of its contents.
	An FD1023 is a form used by FBI agents to record unverified reporting from confidential human sources.
	So it's good enough for the sealed dossier, obviously.
	The form is used to document information as told to an FBI agent.
	That doesn't mean that it's been validated or that it's been fully weighed at this point, but The accusation in the FD23 says that the Burisma executive discussed Hunter Biden's role on the board.
	You'll remember that Hunter Biden was being paid an extraordinary amount of money, like $50,000 a month or something, in order to be a consultant for Burisma, given Hunter Biden's extensive expertise in natural gas and Ukraine.
	That's a joke.
	He has no expertise in either of those things.
	He has expertise in crack cocaine and nailing hookers.
	That is his actual area of expertise, Hunter Biden.
	But, Apparently that was good enough to get on the Burisma board.
	Why?
	Well, because Daddy was the VP at the time.
	And there have been accusations going on.
	I mean, this is what underlay, you'll recall, the first impeachment of President Trump.
	President Trump went to Vladimir Zelensky, the head of Ukraine.
	This is well before the Russian invasion, obviously.
	And he asked him, essentially, to look into accusations that Burisma was attempting a payoff to Joe Biden.
	And that in return for the payoff, Joe Biden was going to fire some prosecutor who was looking at Burisma, or pressure a prosecutor to be fired in Ukraine who was looking into Burisma.
	That's been the long-standing accusation against Joe Biden.
	The Confidential Human Source questioned why the Burisma executive needed his or her advice in acquiring access to U.S.
	oil if he had Hunter Biden on the board.
	The Burisma executive answered by referring to Hunter Biden as dumb.
	Well, I mean, so far we know that 1023 is accurate.
	Hunter Biden is one of the stupider humans walking the earth at this point, despite apparently his massive artistic talent.
	For money laundering, perhaps.
	The Burisma executive explained to the Confidential Source that Burisma, quote, had to pay the Bidens because Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma and explained how difficult it would be to enter the U.S.
	market in the midst of that investigation.
	The Confidential Source further detailed the conversation, suggesting to the Burisma executive that he pay the Bidens 50 grand each, to which the Burisma executive replied, it's not 50 grand, it's $5 million.
	$5 million for one Biden, $5 million for the other Biden.
	Apparently, the document makes reference to the big guy, which is said to be a reference to Joe Biden.
	Burisma executive told the confidential source he didn't, quote, pay the big guy directly.
	Now, you'll recall that language is highly reminiscent of language that was used in documents between Hunter Biden and Chinese investors talking about the split of money to the big guy in another investment.
	And the question always was, who was the big guy?
	Is that big guy Joe Biden?
	You'll recall that, also, Joe Biden openly bragged about getting Viktor Shokin fired.
	At the time Shokin was investigating Burisma, Hunter had a highly lucrative role on the board.
	The then-VP threatened to withhold a billion dollars of critical U.S.
	aid if Shokin was not fired.
	Remember, Donald Trump was impeached for attaching, supposedly attaching strings to Ukrainian aid based on their investigation of Burisma, and now it appears that Joe Biden, according to his allegations, basically did the same thing but was taking actual bribery money in coordination with it.
	So, will this be real?
	Will it end up being real?
	Unclear at this point, but those allegations are now out there openly in the public.
	Representative Byron Donalds, who has actually seen the document, he's a Republican from Florida, he says money was being moved through accounts to get to Joe Biden.
	This document also stipulates that, according to the confidential human source, that money was being moved through several accounts, multiple accounts, to get to Joe Biden.
	I'm going to say it again.
	Money was moved on purpose through multiple accounts to get to Joe Biden.
	Well, if that's true, then that guy's going to get impeached.
	Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has seen the same document.
	She makes similar accusations.
	Back in 2015, 2016, Burisma was looking to buy a US-based oil and gas company.
	And this came from being advised by Hunter Biden and his partners.
	Biden had told, Biden said Shoken, Was corrupt.
	That was around the time of this meeting was when Joe Biden as vice president had said that the prosecutor Shogun was corrupt.
	They hired Hunter on the board to make the problems go away.
	That's what they specifically said.
	The owner of Burisma said that Hunter was stupid and that his other business partner was smart.
	He also said that he paid 5 million to one Biden.
	And he paid $5 million to another Biden.
	And it was all a bribery to get Shoken fired and end the investigation into Burisma.
	Now, that is what the Ukrainian source apparently said.
	Fox News has another report from one of its reporters saying that the document doesn't actually say that Biden received any money.
	They just tried to pay the money.
	So it's unclear whether the money was actually received or how it was actually passed.
	Joe Biden was asked about this and he's like, well, I'm not going to answer any questions except to just say, where's the money?
	So here's Fox News reporting that the money, the document doesn't suggest that it actually passed hands or anything.
	Here's Fox News.
	Members of the House Oversight Committee were able to view the FBI 1023 document.
	Republicans contend the document points to a legal problem for the president.
	There is no doubt in my mind that Joe Biden is guilty of bribery, 100%.
	I mean, there was two separate transactions, one that went to Joe Biden for $5 million and one that went to Hunter Biden for $5 million.
	So, I mean, if that's not grounds for criminal activity, I don't know what is.
	About a dozen GOP members viewed the document in a classified setting at the Capitol, but a source familiar with the document tells Fox, quote, the document does not say Joe Biden received any payments.
	That was Biden's response as well.
	He says, where's the money?
	Here he was responding.
	Congresswoman Nancy May says there's damning evidence in that FBI file that you sold out the country.
	Do you have a response to congressional Republicans?
	Where's the money?
	I'm joking.
	Weird response, dude.
	Where's the money?
	That is a weird response.
	Normally, when somebody accuses me of bribery, I get pissed because it's not true.
	I don't go like, where's the money?
	I mean, maybe the money is in all of those houses you now own and your massive income.
	Or maybe you specifically structured many, many companies, which is the allegation, in order to pass the money.
	I mean, I assume that we will find out.
	Will we not?
	In just one second.
	We'll get to Joe Biden's attempt to push forward radical policy in the middle of a corruption investigation into him first.
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	Also, folks, it's not too late to show your appreciation and gratitude for your dad, making the bold choice to remain, you know, your dad and not your mom.
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	Also, this Sunday, we have another Sunday special starring James Lindsay.
	James Lindsay is, of course, the anti-woke warrior, originally responsible for a series of fake papers that were placed in a bunch of peer-reviewed publications about fat-positive bodybuilding and whether dog park culture was rapey.
	Well, then James went on to expose pretty much all of academia in a series of books.
	He's now exposing the Marxification of American education.
	It's a fascinating episode of the Sunday special.
	Here's a little bit of what it sounds like.
	Critical theory is not a bunch of ideas.
	It is a cult.
	Critical pedagogy is cult indoctrination.
	There's no other way to see it.
	We're worried about K-12.
	This is a very different situation.
	These are children.
	Children do not think the same way as adults.
	You may forget that when you get older, but they don't.
	They have an authority figure telling them these things.
	We're not operating in a field of open debate.
	The marketplace of ideas doesn't exist for seven-year-olds.
	It just doesn't.
	Go check it out on Sunday.
	It will be available.
	Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe to see the whole thing.
	You'll also be able to listen to it over at our normal feed.
	Well, meanwhile, there are new polls showing that social conservatism is at an all time high.
	That, of course, is because the left has pushed far too fast and far too hard on the LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign radical gender agenda.
	Social conservatism in the United States is now at the highest level that it has been since 2012.
	So social conservatism is actually on the rise, a very significant rise.
	In 2021, only about 30% of Americans said that they were socially conservative.
	That number is now up to 38%, which is a very statistically significant increase.
	I wonder why.
	Could it be that you guys have pushed too far and you're crazy?
	In fact, there is a new poll from Axios that surveyed people of different religions, share of U.S.
	adults who say they would be comfortable learning that a friend uses gender-neutral pronouns by select religion.
	So first of all, let me point out, there's not a single religious denomination in America where a majority of people say they would be comfortable learning that a friend is using gender-neutral pronouns.
	Not one.
	But it does vary widely according to religion.
	The people who are apparently most okay with a friend using gender-neutral pronouns are people who say they are Jewish.
	I find this particularly galling because whenever there's a poll of quote-unquote Jewish people, what they mean are people who are ethnically Jewish but have never been inside a synagogue or attend once a year so they can hear a guitar and see a pride progress flag and then leave for brunch on Yom Kippur.
	If you survey Orthodox Jews, they're going to be the most conservative of any of these groups.
	It's going to be 0%, 2%, 3%, right?
	Very, very small numbers.
	Other religious denominations, only 20% of white evangelical Protestants say they'd be comfortable learning a friend uses gender-neutral pronouns.
	Only 26% of Hispanic Protestants overall say they'd be comfortable with this.
	Only 35% of black Protestants say they would be comfortable with this.
	Only 34% of Hispanic Catholics say they would be comfortable with this.
	And the left pushed too far, too fast on all of this stuff.
	And they're going to continue pushing, and the backlash is going to come.
	By the way, it's going to completely undermine us, not just in terms of domestic comedy, but also in terms of foreign policy.
	The dumbest tweet maybe I have ever seen came courtesy of the morons at the social media team of the CIA.
	Remember, the CIA, they're just supposed to be, according to the TVs, the all-powerful, all-knowing geniuses who keep us safe.
	They put out a tweet.
	It's hard to describe how stupid this tweet is.
	It's a picture of the CIA headquarters, and it has the word, it's colored rainbow,
	and it says pride, but the I in pride is then used as sort of a crossword puzzle, CIA.
	So CIA is vertical and pride is horizontal here.
	Okay, because the CIA is all about pride.
	CIA's 2020 theme for Pride Month.
	First of all, they have themes for Pride Month.
	I thought that was the theme.
	But apparently they have, like, special themes.
	Is welcome me.
	Oh my go- It's because the CIA is all about welcoming you.
	To a black site where we torture- Is welcome me.
	Nothing says individualism like the CIA.
	It's where you come to express your gender identity, is the CIA.
	It's where you come- Like, you're capturing terrorists and torturing them.
	In sights in Morocco.
	That's also a great place to express your gender identity.
	What is their theme?
	Wellness, equity, LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign, community, openness, me.
	So first of all, I love that our culture celebrates me openly.
	Like as in like the individual.
	What a self-centered, narcissistic, idiotic culture and government we have.
	Pride Month is an occasion for all of us at the agency to pay tribute to the rich history, community, and mission contributions of our LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign officers.
	Ah, is it?
	Yes, let's look into the history of this at the CIA.
	It's been glorious, guys.
	Gone amazing.
	Also, is there a better way to undermine our ability to gather intelligence in lands abroad than pushing this crap?
	Seriously.
	Just wondering.
	You want to get a Pakistani source, a confidential Pakistani source, to tell you about an upcoming terror attack or a plan to secure some sort of territory against the allies of the United States.
	So you go to that Pakistani Muslim and you're like, here I am.
	My name is Sam Britton.
	And I work for the CIA.
	And sure, I'm a dude wearing a dress.
	Tell me all about your terrorist friend.
	Again, this is all for domestic consumption.
	The CIA doesn't promote this abroad, and if they did, it would completely undermine our ability to gather intelligence under all auspices, because that's how stupid we are.
	This is not the CIA's job.
	In fact, this isn't the government's job at all.
	But, you know, our government doesn't know its job.
	Our government is not even good at its job.
	Our government's job is apparently to prosecute President Trump, like, full brunt of the law, and to promote Pride progress flags with the CIA abroad.
	Man, we're in great shape over here.
	Okay, in just one second.
	We are going to get to a Supreme Court ruling that was a win for the left.
	Because as it turns out, some of these justices are not, in fact, supremely on the right.
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	the Supreme Court is good again, guys. This is how it works.
	When the left gets a win, then the Supreme Court becomes good. When the left loses it,
	the Supreme Court, then it's an evil right wing outlet filled with evil people. Well, the left
	got a win when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of black Alabama voters in a defense of the Voting
	Rights Act.
	That's the way the AP puts it.
	It's not a defense of the Voting Rights Act, essentially.
	It is just a misreading of the Voting Rights Act.
	So basically the case was that there was a congressional redistricting in Alabama.
	And black voters in Alabama suggested there should have been two majority black districts in the state of Alabama as opposed to one.
	Now, gerrymandering, how you draw these districts, it's really questionable.
	It's very difficult to draw districts that are quote-unquote objectively fair.
	Because after all, you have houses on the same street that are divided by like congressional lines.
	And if you look at how New York tried to draw its maps, It kind of snaked around certain areas.
	People have been making fun of the design of congressional districts for literally years.
	And the corrective to that is that you elect different people to the state legislature and they shift the gerrymander.
	This happens literally all the time.
	In Alabama, there is no evidence that there was racial animus at work when the state of Alabama actually drew its lines.
	And in fact, the only way to come to the conclusion that the state of Alabama did something illegal is to suggest that the proportion of a population Well, that's strange.
	That's a weird case to make.
	First of all, it's racially discriminatory because you're not supposed to divide people by race.
	No one would ever make the argument that because about 30%, 35%, 40% of Californians vote for Republicans, 40% of all representatives from California have to be Republican.
	Nobody's ever made that case.
	Nobody's ever argued that the congressional representation from Massachusetts needs to represent the NRA members.
	There are a few hundred thousand NRA members in Massachusetts.
	Well, they have to have their own congressional seat.
	No one actually thinks about congressional districts this way.
	It's a simple game of political power.
	It always has been.
	Unless you are blatantly preventing people from voting, you are not in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
	But, essentially, it was argued that because there was one congressional district that was majority black and there should have been two congressional districts that were majority black, then this must have been a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
	And the Supreme Court decided in favor of that proposition, which is really weird and strange.
	So the voting majority was John Roberts, of course, of course.
	Again, I'm the only conservative in America who opposed John Roberts for the Supreme Court when he was first selected.
	And Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
	And again, I was very lukewarm on Kavanaugh.
	Even before the left attacked him over... Honestly, once the left attacked him on bullcrap rape charges, it became clear that he had to be confirmed just to stop the left from winning on trumping up nonsense.
	But I was never a big fan of Kavanaugh.
	I never thought that Kavanaugh was going to be like the great shakes on the Supreme Court.
	But both of them voted, along with the three members of the left, to overturn the gerrymandering in the state of Alabama.
	The other four conservative justices dissented on Thursday.
	Justice Clarence Thomas had a pretty brilliant dissent.
	Again, I'm a huge Justice Thomas fan.
	I think that Justice Thomas is the best justice on the Supreme Court, and he even was when Justice Scalia was alive.
	He's the most consistent.
	He's the person who's the most clear in his analysis.
	So he says, In other words, they didn't stop black people from voting.
	They didn't attempt to abridge black people from voting.
	plan imposes or applies any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting
	or standard practice or procedure that affects a denial or abridgment of the
	right to vote on account of race or color. In other words, they didn't stop
	black people from voting. They didn't attempt to abridge black people from voting.
	Nor did they prove that Alabama's congressional districts are not equally
	open to participation by black Alabamians. The plaintiffs did not even prove it's
	possible to achieve two majority black districts without resorting to a racial
	In other words, he's saying you actually have to purely gerrymander on the basis of race, which is illegal under the 14th Amendment.
	In order to get to the conclusion the court came to here, that the Voting Rights Act requires two black congresspeople, essentially?
	You actually have to look at race, which is illegal.
	So if the Voting Rights Act means that you now have to look at the racial composition of a particular state and decide that a state that is 11% Hispanic has to have 11% majority Hispanic district, that's illegal.
	You're not allowed to do that under the 14th Amendment.
	It would make the Voting Rights Act illegal itself if that's the way you interpreted it.
	The most they can be said to have shown is that sophisticated mapmakers can proportionally allocate Alabama's congressional districts based on race in a way that exceeds the federal judiciary's ability to recognize as a racial gerrymander with the naked eye, says Justice Thomas.
	The district court held that this showing, plus racially polarized voting and its gestalt view of Alabama's racial climate, was enough to require the state's redistricting plan on the basis of race.
	If that is the benchmark for vote dilution under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Section 2 is nothing more than a racial entitlement to roughly proportional control of elected offices limited only by feasibility, wherever different racial groups consistently prefer different candidates.
	If that is what Section 2 means, the Court should hold it's unconstitutional.
	If that's not what it means, but Section 2 applies to districting, the Court should hold that vote dilution challenges require a race-neutral benchmark that bears no resemblance to unconstitutional racial registers.
	In other words, you have to come up with another way of drawing districts that is not reliant on racial representation.
	You have to say, for example, that this is specifically drawn to only maximize Republican districts at the expense of Democratic districts, right?
	It's politically drawn and therefore prevents equal protection of the laws or some such.
	But the attempt to draw this on racial lines actually violates the Constitution of the United States.
	He cites a case that he wrote a dissent in back in back 29 years ago, quote, in my view, our current practice
	should not continue, not for another term, not until the next case, not for another
	day.
	The disastrous implications of the policies we have adopted under the act are too
	grave, that assembling in our approach to the act too damaging to the credibility of
	the federal judiciary. The inherent tension, indeed, I'd call it an irreconcilable
	conflict between the standards we have adopted for evaluating vote dilution claims
	and the text of the Voting Rights Act would itself be sufficient in my view to warrant
	the interpretation of Section 2 set out in another case called Gingell's.
	When that obvious conflict is combined with the destructive effects our expansive reading
	of the act has had in involving the federal judiciary in the project of dividing the nation
	into racially segregated electoral districts, I can see no reasonable alternative to abandoning
	our current unfortunate understanding of the act.
	And of course, Justice Thomas is exactly correct about this.
	The predictable result of all of this is that the congressional districts at issue will
	be redrawn and a bunch of probable Republican districts end up in the Democratic line, or
	at least end up as toss-ups.
	And of course, Democrats are immediately claiming that it was because of the gerrymandering that Republicans won the congressional majority.
	No, it's because Republicans won a majority of the vote in the last electoral cycle.
	That is the reason.
	It's not actually because of gerrymandering.
	The amount of time that we spend in this country worrying about gerrymandering is wildly disproportionate to the amount of evil actually done by gerrymandering in the United States as a whole.
	Any gerrymandering that's attempted in New York is generally cancelled out by gerrymandering in Alabama and vice versa.
	Okay, time for a thing that I like.
	Okay, so the thing that I like today is we are now finding out some facts about what exactly happened.
	With regard to this Canadian fire.
	So we were told that it was global warming.
	Global warming is responsible for everything.
	Global warming just lights fires in random places and generates enormous clouds of smoke that hover over New York City.
	Well, now it turns out that probably it was arson.
	According to the Toronto Sun, they've learned that Quebec police are investigating the possibility that the smoke creating poor air quality in southern Ontario and making downtown skylines disappear may have been the result of arson.
	I'm gonna screw that name up.
	suspect, said Certe de Quebec media officer Hugues Bielio.
	I'm going to screw that name up.
	This narrative has not made as many headlines.
	It's polar opposite to what members of the left have been saying, which is, of course,
	that it is all about climate change and climate crisis and all of the rest.
	Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's close friend and former And now it turns out that some dude probably just set the fire on purpose.
	because of the conditions in the forest.
	The conditions are caused by climate change.
	Well, actually, the conditions are caused by the fact that you didn't clear any of the brush.
	And now it turns out that some dude probably just set the fire on purpose.
	So, there is that, which we have seen before in places like California.
	But again, never let the facts get in the way of a good story if you are on the left.
	Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
	We'll be joined on the line by Jim Caviezel and Tim Ballard.
	Tim spent more than a decade working as a special agent for DHS.
	It was his job to police child sex tourism and stop it.
	Jim plays him in a new movie called Sound of Freedom.
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