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July 28, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

53:16

MORE Trump Charges?!

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	Well, another day, another set of charges against the former president of the United States.
	There are a bunch of charges looming in separate cases from the classified documents case.
	We have the Fannie Willis case in Georgia that presumably will be about January 6th and electoral pressure.
	There's the Jack Smith case looming about January 6th and electoral pressure.
	But there are new charges that were filed yesterday by Jack Smith.
	These new charges are in the classified documents case, and they really carry two major revelations.
	The first major revelation that is carried by the actual filing is that the prosecutors know full well that the famous tape now of Donald Trump waving around a document and saying to people, here is a classified document.
	I could have declassified this document, but I decided not to declassify the document.
	It's very classified.
	Trump had claimed that this classified document was in fact maps of a golf course or something.
	And apparently, according to the prosecutors, they know full well it was not maps of a golf course.
	It was actually attack plans with regard to Iran.
	And so, we now know what the prosecutors know.
	And so, presumably, that will be the centerpiece of their case.
	When you have the person on tape admitting to the criming, it usually is a very bad indicator for them, legally speaking.
	So that is number one piece of information, is that the tape, where Trump is talking, he made various excuses about it.
	It appears that the prosecution is ready to blow up those excuses.
	The second piece of revelatory information here is that Donald Trump apparently told one of his aides de camp, a maintenance worker at Trump's South Florida resort named Carlos de Oliveira, Apparently, he told this fellow to wipe the security tape.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump and his aides sought to have surveillance footage from his Mar-a-Lago club deleted so it could not be turned over to a grand jury, according to Jack Smith, in these new charges.
	The new indictment charges Carlos de Oliveira, the maintenance worker, as well, making him the third defendant in the case.
	Remember, the second defendant in the case was Walt Nauda, who was another Trump aide who was apparently tasked with moving boxes around and then told the prosecution he had not moved boxes around Now, as I've said all along, there are two separate issues here.
	One is, is Trump guilty of the crimes for which he is charged?
	held on to sensitive military secrets he knew he shouldn't have retained access to,
	shared them with others, and directed his staff to help him evade authorities' efforts to get them back.
	They come as Trump braces for separate federal charges over efforts to undo his 2020 election loss.
	Now, as I've said all along, there are two separate issues here.
	One is, is Trump guilty of the crimes for which he is charged?
	And the second is, should the charges be brought even if Trump is guilty of the charges, facially speaking?
	So, with regard to the first question, whether Trump is actually guilty of some of these charges,
	Again, the evidence seems pretty clear that Trump violated the law here.
	And we'll get to the second question in just a second, which is going to obviate the first question.
	But the first question, which is whether Trump violated the law, if Jack Smith has actual testimony that the document that Trump was waving around on that tape, where he's talking about how he could have declassified the document, but he didn't declassify the document, so it's still technically classified, but here it is, and he's showing it to people who don't have any sort of classification status, If that's what happened, and if Jack Smith can prove that, if he has the evidence to prove it beyond the actual tape, then presumably that will be an element of guilt.
	When it comes to evidence that this maintenance worker was actively wiping security footage in order to prevent Donald Trump from being indicted on precisely these sorts of charges, wipe the evidence of, for example, Donald Trump moving the documents around.
	Now, here's the thing about this whole case.
	All of this was easily avoidable.
	The reason to be angry at Trump here is not really his behavior so much as it is the insanity of knowing that he's got the world's biggest target on his back.
	He's likely to run for re-election again.
	And he decides that he is going to do all of this under the assumption that no one is going to come after him.
	The assumption of impunity here is just foolish.
	Again, as a person who's prominent in politics, I overpay my taxes because the last thing that I want is to be put under the scrutiny of Joe Biden's IRS.
	Well, Donald Trump is way more of a target than I am personally.
	So why in the world would he be so careless and so clumsy as to do all of these things and then do them on tape also?
	That's why you should be upset at Trump.
	The crimes themselves, like messing with the classified documents, not turning them back in.
	He wasn't turning them over to Russia.
	As I said from the very beginning, the entire case is Donald Trump likes things and then he keeps them.
	Donald Trump is like, here's the thing.
	It's a really nice thing.
	It's a good thing.
	I want it.
	It's mine.
	They call it a thing.
	It's a thing.
	That's Donald Trump.
	He does this all the time.
	He literally just had to give a bunch of antiquities back to the Israeli consulate because he had kept the antiquities.
	It was like a bunch of 2,000-year-old artifacts, and Trump had handed them at the White House, and then he decided he was going to keep them.
	Why?
	Was he going to hand those over to the Russians as spy material?
	No!
	He likes things, he keeps them, he's kind of a hoarder.
	So the notion that he was actively a sort of spy for China or Russia, or that these classified documents, he was keeping them on hand so he could do something nefarious and terrible with them, that's not true.
	And so what you end up with is he mishandled classified documents because Donald Trump is clumsy and doesn't care about Okay, so with all of that in mind, this brings us to the second question, which is whether Donald Trump should have been charged on this stuff at all.
	Because this is the most perilous political prosecution in American history.
	You have the current president of the United States, his DOJ, and make no mistake, it is still his DOJ, his DOJ prosecuting the guy he just ran against and his probable future opponent in the 2024 race.
	That's kind of astonishing stuff.
	And again, put aside for just one moment the actual elements of the crime, because when you actually read the charges here, when you read what Trump did, I think that it's fairly clear that Trump did many of the things that he is accused of.
	But that's not really the question.
	The question is why he's being charged with it at all.
	Again, I'm looking at the actual charges here, and the charges openly discuss what exactly he was doing with the documents, how he was sort of messing around with the documents.
	So according to this actual document, this is the indictment document, quote, With classification markings from Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 3, the agents observed there were several surveillance cameras located near the storage room.
	On June 22, 2022, the DOJ emailed an attorney for Trump's business organization a draft grand jury subpoena requiring production of certain security camera footage from Mar-a-Lago, including footage from cameras on ground basement where the storage room was located.
	The next day, Trump called to Oliveira and they spoke for approximately 24 minutes.
	On Friday, June 24th, the DOJ emailed the attorney for Trump's business organization the final grand jury subpoena requiring the production of all surveillance records.
	That same day, Trump attorney one spoke with Trump by phone regarding the subpoena for security camera footage.
	At 3.44 p.m.
	that day, Walt Nowda received a text message from a co-worker, Trump employee number three, indicating Trump wanted to see Nowda.
	A couple of hours later, he changed his travel schedule and began to make arrangements to go to Palm Beach, Florida instead.
	Nauta then provided inconsistent explanations to colleagues for his sudden travel to Florida.
	He texted one person he would not be traveling with Trump the next day, and then he used shushing emojis.
	At 9.48 that night, he texted a Secret Service agent he had to check on a family member in Florida.
	After he arrived in Florida June 25th, he texted the same Secret Service agent he was in Florida working.
	Around the same time, June 24th, Nauta was making his travel plans.
	Nauta and de Oliveira contacted another Trump employee, who's Director of Information Technology at Mar-a-Lago, as follows.
	At 5.02, Nauta sent text messages to Trump's employee asking, hey bro, you around this weekend?
	About three minutes later, Nauta texted de Oliveira saying, hey brother, you working today?
	De Oliveira responded, yes, I just left.
	Nauta then called de Oliveira, they spoke for a couple of minutes.
	At 5.09, Trump employee 4 texted a response to Nauta, I'm local, entertaining, some family that came to visit, what's up?
	Okay, cool.
	No biggie.
	Just wanted to see if you were around.
	Enjoy, bro.
	I guess he's coming down tomorrow.
	Trump employee number four, hey buddy, how are you?
	Walter called me early today saying he was trying to get in touch.
	I guess he's coming down tomorrow.
	I guess he needs you for something.
	Trump employee four said I don't know what it's about.
	that night, Trump employee 4 texted Nauta, bro, if you need me, I can get away for a few, just let me know.
	Nauta responded, sounds good, thank you.
	The next day, Nauta traveled from Bedminster to Palm Beach.
	De Oliveira told of LA at Mar-a-Lago that Nauta was coming down.
	De Oliveira asked Trump employee 5 not to tell anyone Nauta was coming down because Nauta wanted the trip to remain secret.
	Delavera then told Trump employee number five that Dinauda wanted Delavera to talk to Trump employee four to see how long camera footage was stored.
	Dinauda went to Mar-a-Lago, met with Delavera, this is on June 25th.
	At the Mar-a-Lago club, apparently Dinauda and Delavera went to a security guard booth where surveillance videos displayed on monitors, walked to the flashlight through the tunnel where the storage room was located, and observed and pointed out their surveillance cameras.
	On Monday, de Oliveira walked to the IT office and requested that the Trump employee step away from the office so de Oliveira and the Trump employee could talk.
	At 9.49am, apparently that Trump employee and de Oliveira left the area of the IT office together and walked through a basement tunnel.
	De Oliveira took Trump employee 4 to a small room known as an audio closet and then they had an exchange in which de Oliveira asked how many days the server retained footage.
	De Oliveira then told Trump employee 4 the boss wanted the server deleted.
	And then, de la Vera texted Nauta, are you working today?
	And they're going back and forth.
	And finally, apparently, the footage ends up essentially being erased.
	There's an attempt to erase the footage.
	Okay, so, that is what the actual indictment suggests.
	Now, second question.
	Should Trump be indicted for this stuff at all?
	Well, let's look at the timeline.
	Literally yesterday, The Hunter Biden plea deal collapses.
	And it collapses because the Hunter Biden plea deal is garbage, and the DOJ knows it's garbage, and the DOJ is lying to the judge about it being garbage, and the judge discovers that, and then she blows up the deal.
	And one day later, the special counsel, Jack Smith, dumps a bunch of additional charges on Donald Trump.
	Does that seem suspicious to you?
	It should seem particularly suspicious given, once again, that Hillary Clinton is the standard by which all of this must be judged.
	Hillary Clinton did the exact same thing as Donald Trump in this case.
	She was not prosecuted.
	James Comey went out of his way not to prosecute Hillary Clinton despite the fact that she, too, violated the obvious letter of the law and the spirit of the law, by the way.
	And she was let off the hook.
	We'll get to that momentarily first.
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	Okay, so.
	We get to the second question now.
	So the first question, did Trump fulfill the elements of the crime?
	And did he do the criming on tape?
	I mean, it appears that, yeah, I mean, by the available evidence, if Jack Smith's got the goods, he's got the goods.
	But that is a separate question from whether the prosecution of Donald Trump should move forward.
	Because I remind you, James Comey let Hillary Clinton off the hook for the same exact stuff.
	Like, the same exact stuff.
	Flashback, 2016, November 6th.
	Paul Sperry reports for the New York Post that Hillary Clinton directed her maid to print out classified materials.
	So the idea here is that Donald Trump exposed classified materials that he knew were classified to people who were not within classification status, right?
	He's over at Bedminster and he's waving around a document saying, these are classified!
	I know you're not!
	Okay, but here's the problem.
	Hillary Clinton routinely As Secretary of State, while serving in the government without the power of declassification, asked her maid to print out sensitive government emails and documents, including ones containing classified info, from her house in Washington, D.C., according to both emails and FBI memos.
	The housekeeper had no security clearance to handle such material.
	In fact, Marina Santos was called on so frequently to receive emails, she may hold the secrets to emailgate if only the FBI and Congress would subpoena her and the equipment that she used.
	Clinton apparently expected this Filipino immigrant to handle state secrets, further opening the Democratic presidential nominee to criticism she played fast and loose with national security.
	She requested that Santos print out drafts of her speech, confidential memos, and call sheets, those would be background information and talking points prepared for the Secretary of State in advance of a phone call with the foreign head of state.
	Please ask Marina to print for me in AM.
	Clinton emailed top aide Huma Abedin regarding a redacted 2011 message marked sensitive but unclassified.
	In a classified 2012 email dealing with the new president of Malawi, another Clinton aide, Monica Hanley, advised Clinton, we can ask Marina to print this.
	Revisions to the Iran point was the subject of a classified April 2012 email to Clinton from Hanley.
	In it, the text reads, Marina is trying to print for you.
	Both classified emails were marked confidential.
	Santos also had access to a SCIF, the Sensitive Compartment Information Facility that diplomatic agents set up at Whitehaven, according to FBI notes from an interview with Huma Abedin.
	From within the SCIF, Santos would collect documents from the secure facsimile machine for Clinton.
	She'd walk into the SCIF, get the classified faxes, and then hand them to Hillary Clinton.
	Apparently, the FBI noted that Clinton periodically received the presidential daily brief via the secure fax.
	It is a top-secret document that is created by the CIA and other U.S.
	intelligence agencies.
	Okay, so Hillary Clinton was having her Filipino maid pick up the stuff and hand it to her.
	and print it out for her. Is that mishandling classified?
	According to James Comey, it is not criminal mishandling of classified information. Well, what
	about Donald Trump telling employees to wipe the server? Well, I think you know where this is
	going. I think you know where this is going. You'll recall that all the way back in 2016,
	September of 2016, the FBI released documents from its investigation into whether former Secretary of
	State Hillary Clinton improperly stored or transmitted classified email.
	This is according to the Denver Post.
	Included were notes from interviews with employees of Platte River Networks, that is the Denver firm the Clinton family hired to host their personal emails over four months after she left office.
	According to the FBI documents, in December 2014, former Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills told a Platte River employee Clinton no longer needed access to emails older than 60 days.
	She also instructed the person modify the email retention policy on Clinton's server to reflect this change.
	An unknown Clinton staff member said she did not want the PST file after the export and wanted it removed from the server.
	The Platte River employee did not delete the files or make the retention policy change until four months later, after a March 2, 2015 New York Times story about Hillary's secret server Mills sent an email to Platte River Network referencing the preservation request from the committee on Benghazi.
	Then, sometime between March 25th and March 31st, 2015, the Platte River employee had an oblique moment that the files weren't deleted.
	He then told the FBI he deleted the Clinton Archive mailbox from the PRN server and used BleachBit to delete the exported PST files he had created on the server system containing Clinton's emails, according to that FBI report.
	BleachBit scrubs a file out of existence to prevent recovery.
	The employee told the FBI in a May 3rd, 2016 interview he was aware of the existence of the preservation request, the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clinton's email data on the PRN server.
	Clinton told the FBI she never deleted, nor did she instruct anyone to delete emails,
	and was unaware of Platte River's deletions from March 2015.
	So in other words, Clinton's defense to all this is, we told them months ago
	they should delete it.
	And then they just didn't do it on time. But the Platte River employee knew about it. So what?
	You think that he actually was like, well, you know, now that I have an FBI request for the
	information and I made a boo-boo, probably I should violate the law and delete all the emails.
	You'll recall that Hillary Clinton was then asked about this, and she famously joked about wiping
	an email server with a cloth. Here we go. Now, all I can tell you is, in retrospect,
	if I'd used a government account and I had said, you know, let's release everything,
	let's let everybody in America see what I did for four years, we would have the same arguments.
	So, that's all I could say.
	I'm not, you know, I don't, I have no idea.
	That's why we turned it over.
	You said you were in charge of it.
	You were the official in charge.
	Did you wipe the surface?
	What, like with a cloth or something?
	No.
	Well, no.
	I don't know how it works digitally at all.
	I do not have any...
	Like with a cloth.
	You remember this.
	And the entire media were like, ah ha ha ha ha, like with a cloth, like with a cloth.
	No, like with bleach bit, where you wipe the servers.
	She was not prosecuted.
	So, if she does the same stuff as Donald Trump, and she does not get prosecuted, and is explicitly let off the hook because she's running for president, and Donald Trump is being prosecuted for all of that, that does look like the double standard of justice that Donald Trump is complaining about.
	And it doesn't stop there.
	In just a second, we're going to get to more indictments looming over President Trump, which ironically helped him in the primaries and hurt him in the general.
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	Okay, so this is not the only Criminal charge facing Trump down.
	Apparently, yesterday, according to the New York Daily News, barriers were actually erected outside a Fulton County courthouse in anticipation of possible indictments involving interference in the 2020 presidential election.
	Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis, who wants to make a name for herself, plans to charge twice-indicted former President Donald Trump with crimes, including witness tampering, according to the UK Guardian.
	Willis asked a Georgia Superior Court Chief Judge in May to keep the courthouse free at the start of August, leading to speculation Trump and his surrogates might be charged in connection with attempts to overturn the electoral laws he still refuses to accept.
	Trump was recorded in January 2021 pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to keep him in the White House following his defeat.
	So if that's all they have, that's not going to be sufficient because you have to show intent to actually fraudulently create votes or throw out votes.
	Trump saying, I know that there's enough votes for me to win and all you have to do is find me the votes that I know exist.
	That goes to intent.
	As I've said a thousand times with regard to Trump, intent is a real problem in proving crimes against Donald Trump because he's uniquely capable Of convincing himself of things.
	He does this all the time.
	What Donald Trump thinks in the moment is precisely what Donald Trump thinks in the moment.
	This is the thing people love about him.
	It's also the thing people hate about him.
	Trump is fully authentic.
	The thing he thinks right now is exactly the thing he thinks.
	Five seconds later it may change, but in the moment he may actually believe that he won the election and so it's impossible to say he actually knew he lost the election and therefore he was trying to fraudulently find votes.
	You can't do that, because he may very well have thought he won the election, the votes existed, and he was just encouraging people, like, I know it's there, I know my car keys are somewhere in the house, just find the car keys.
	Right?
	That is not the same thing as I know the car keys are not anywhere in the house, and now I'm making you search for the car keys, fraudulently, until you steal the neighbor's car keys.
	Not quite the same thing.
	The grand jury was sworn in on July 11th to hear evidence against Trump and his allies.
	They may have also included other communications with state officials and the selection of fake electors.
	Former attorney Rudy Giuliani confessed in a court filing this week he lied about Georgia election workers he'd accused of trying to sabotage Trump's reelect efforts.
	But the question is, did Giuliani lie about that to Trump also?
	So if Giuliani admits, yeah, I knew the election was lost.
	I was lying when I accused X, Y, and Z of doing these things.
	If Giuliani said that, if he lied to Trump also, then Trump would have been under the misimpression that stuff was true.
	So when Trump repeated that, then presumably Trump would not have the intent requisite to actually charge him with a crime.
	So we still have that case looming over Trump.
	And then we also have a second case looming over Trump.
	That looming case is the January 6th indictments that Jack Smith is likely to bring.
	So this would make four ongoing federal cases and one state, well, three ongoing federal cases and one state case against Donald Trump.
	The state case would be the ridiculous Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg bringing a case against Trump for campaign finance violations in New York, which is absolute garbage and Seriously trumped up.
	The second is the classified documents case, where Trump may very well have committed the crime, but it's very clear that Hillary Clinton was not charged for the exact same crime.
	The third case would be this Fannie Willis case in Georgia, where again, it's going to be very difficult to prove the intent necessary to convict Trump of a crime unless they can actually show some sort of obstruction of justice, threats to witnesses, or something like that.
	And fourth would be the January 6th case that Jack Smith presumably is about to bring against Donald Trump.
	We'll get to all of that in just one second, but first!
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	Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter, again, In anticipation of that case arising, apparently, according to the Associated Press, lawyers for Trump met Thursday with members of Jack Smith's team ahead of a potential indictment over the former president's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
	Trump himself confirmed the meeting in a post on his Truth Social Network, writing, quote, My attorneys had a productive meeting with the DOJ this morning, explaining in detail I did nothing wrong, was advised by many lawyers, and that an indictment of me would only further destroy our country.
	He added no indication of notice was given during the meeting.
	So there's a lot of talk this week that there would be an indictment of Trump on January 6th charges coming down.
	It may well be that a lot of that information was about the new charges that were actually brought by Jack Smith in the classified documents case that the January 6th indictment is actually not right around the corner here.
	It was not immediately clear what was discussed at the meeting, though similar sit down with lawyers occurred in the days before Trump was indicted last month on the classified documents case.
	Thursday's meeting included Trump attorney John Lauro.
	said the person familiar with the case who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity to describe a private gathering.
	Loro said in a Fox television interview this week his client had done nothing wrong.
	The status of that secretive grand jury proceeding remained unclear despite building speculation the criminal case could be near.
	So it's unclear when that is going to come down.
	It's also unclear what exactly the charges are going to be.
	They've been talking about using a fraud charge, which seems really, really weak to me.
	I don't see how legally they charge him with defrauding the government.
	Usually when that's done, it's because you faked votes or because you stole votes or something, not because you made a bad legal request for the overturning of state certified votes.
	That would presumably fall under free speech as much as is untrue.
	Theoretically, they could go after him for obstruction, but they'd actually have to show that he pressured witnesses, which again, is a pretty high bar.
	And then they've been using like Civil War era civil rights violations.
	I don't see how any of these apply.
	It's gonna be a very, very big stretch if that's all Jack Smith has to charge on.
	So, to sum up, Of the four cases, only one of them appears to have serious legal merit at this point.
	Again, we don't know about the Georgia case because the indictment hasn't come down yet, so we can't actually adjudicate what they've got or what they're charging him with.
	But just from the speculate, so we have two that have not yet been filed and we have two that have been filed.
	Of the two that have been filed, the Manhattan DA's case is absolute crap.
	The case that has been filed in Florida with regard to classified documents, It appears that Trump may be dead to rights evidentiarily speaking, but politically speaking, which may make a difference with the jury, Hillary did like the exact same thing.
	I mean, so much so that Donald Trump in that case apparently told his lawyers he loved what Hillary's lawyers did and he'd love to do it also.
	So, I mean, again, if the idea here is the DOJ does not charge Hillary, but they definitely charge Trump, that double standard of justice may be during nullification play, particularly in the state of Florida, where Trump remains very, very popular.
	So there is that, which has led to speculation that Jack Smith will file very similar charges in New Jersey, where Trump will get a much less favorable jury.
	But all it takes is one juror to actually say no, to basically scuttle the case.
	So that's the one with merit, but the one with merit becomes non-meritorious once you add in Hillary Clinton to the mix.
	Then you have the Georgia case.
	That Georgia case can be very hard to prove.
	We haven't seen the charges and Fannie Willis appears to be a very politically motivated prosecutor.
	And finally, you have the January 6th case that Jack Smith is thinking of charging apparently.
	We don't know what the charges are there, but those appear to be a stretch as well.
	So, how does this break down politically?
	Well, obviously, it benefits Trump in the Republican primaries.
	Because, right now, the argument against Trump would be that these indictments hurt him against Joe Biden.
	But, Joe Biden is running super duper weak right now.
	Ironically, the greatest enemy of Ron DeSantis' campaign is Joe Biden's weak polling numbers.
	Because the fact is, That the chief appeal of Ron DeSantis is that he runs better against Biden in the swing states than Trump does by every available poll.
	But if Biden is running at 40%, well, that doesn't matter too much.
	I mean, right now, the spread on the Biden-Trump race, it has them both in the low 40s.
	I mean, right now, I mean, I'm looking at the latest RCP polling average has Biden up 0.9 percentage points on Trump.
	And the last four polls are Trump plus five, Biden plus two, Trump plus four, Biden plus four.
	So everything is within margin of error.
	Meanwhile, the RealClearPolitics polling average on Biden versus DeSantis has Biden up 1.9 points.
	In other words, he's not running all that much ahead of Trump in the general elect efforts right now because Biden is running so low.
	So what that means is that a lot of Republicans are likely to think that Trump can beat Joe Biden.
	So it's not actually hurting him with Republican voters, these indictments.
	Also, it's adding fuel to the fire because the fact is that pretty much all Republicans, me included, think that Donald Trump is being targeted unfairly over a lot of these cases.
	That put aside his bad behavior, it's very obvious there's a double standard of justice here that is obviously being applied.
	And so because of that, it's likely to boost him in the primaries, which is the reason he has incredibly durable numbers.
	Everybody right now is focusing in on Ron DeSantis and DeSantis' underperformance in the Republican primaries thus far in the Republican primary polling.
	But the reality is that the story is not DeSantis underperforming.
	The story is Trump's absolute durability in this polling.
	Trump has not dropped in any significant way below like a 10 point lead for months and months and months.
	And right now, his current lead on the rest of the field, because remember, DeSantis ain't the only competitor.
	His lead on the rest of the field is 34 points.
	So he's locked and loaded.
	I mean, that dude is just cruising to the nomination right now unless something changes.
	And that thing is not going to be the indictment.
	So ironically, the indictments helped Trump in the primaries.
	Now, will he get convicted?
	I mean, it's pretty obvious he could be.
	I mean, sure, he's got a Manhattan jury in the Alvin Bragg case.
	The Florida case, as I said before, is pretty legally airtight, but there's a double standard, so that one's up in the air.
	We don't know what's going to happen.
	Is Trump actually going to be even indicted in Georgia?
	If he is, does that trial take place in Fulton County, Georgia, like in Atlanta?
	That'd be very bad for him, obviously.
	Is there gonna be another case in New Jersey?
	Like, we don't know what the actual outcome of all of this is going to be.
	With that said, is it likely to hurt Trump politically inside the Republican Party?
	Really, the answer is no.
	Because a lot of Republicans right now...
	Would rather basically use Trump as their instrument of revenge.
	And Trump knows this.
	Again, Trump has an inerrant skill.
	This is his true instinctive skill.
	Trump has an inerrant skill of knowing.
	He has like a really emotionally visceral connection to his base.
	He knows that his people want him to be the revenge.
	In 2016, he was a pulsating middle finger.
	Well, right now, he says, I am your revenge.
	I am your vengeance.
	You know, there may be a bunch of people in the country who are like, I don't want to be anybody's vengeance.
	Like, I don't know.
	I don't I don't want vengeance.
	What I really want is just good governance and, you know, maybe some good policies.
	But increasingly in the United States, that is a minority of people or at least it is a it is a silent majority.
	And the silence makes a rather large difference.
	And meanwhile, again, the double standard of justice is being Very obviously applied because at the same exact time that all of this pressure is being brought to bear on Trump, Hunter Biden, the DOJ went out of its way.
	I mean, truly went out of its way to try to cut a sweetheart deal with Hunter.
	There is just no question about this.
	I mean, so much so that as we discussed yesterday on the program, Hunter's plea bargain was so lenient that the judge in the case was like, are you guys even willing to publicly say the plea bargain this way?
	And the DOJ was like, no, that's really what happened.
	What apparently happened, as I said yesterday, is the prosecutors tried to hide their blanket immunity clause in a crazy and unprecedented tactic, but then were exposed by the judge.
	The Biden DOJ tried to let Hunter off the hook, but they tried to do so quietly.
	So in the actual publicly available plea bargain, it said nothing about immunizing Biden, Hunter, from all of these charges, like Foreign Agents Registration Act violations or investigations into foreign Formed cashing of checks, right?
	All that kind of stuff was not included in the plea bargain.
	It was included in the agreement for diversion on the gun charge.
	So the idea was it said in the diversion agreement that as part of the diversion agreement, he's immunized from the gun charges and anything else that was investigated in this plea bargain over here on the tax charges.
	And then the tax charges, it didn't say anything about that.
	It just said he's immune from the tax charges.
	So the judge was like, well, I can't do that.
	You don't even have an agreement publicly on what it is that he's immunized from.
	And the DOJ was like, well, this is kind of embarrassing.
	We can't be publicly exposed to be handing Hunter Biden goodies while his father is president of the United States.
	So we're just going to blow up the plea bargain.
	And at that point, Hunter Biden's attorneys basically pulled out.
	So that is the actual story here.
	But because this plea bargain was blown up by the judge, now this is going to reopen a bunch of cans of worms for the Biden administration and the Biden White House.
	According to Sarah Bedford, investigative reporter for the Washington Examiner, for example, Hunter Biden worked closely with multiple people who disclosed their lobbying for foreign companies under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, raising questions about whether he broke the law by not registering himself for doing the same work.
	He lobbied U.S.
	officials alongside many others who did not register under FERA for work that clearly involved advocacy that would trigger FERA requirements.
	The focus on Hunter Biden's foreign lobbying grew more intense this week when a judge in Delaware pressed prosecutors about whether they were still investigating the president's son for alleged FERA violations.
	A day in court that was supposed to mark the end of Hunter Biden's legal troubles may have been the start of even more because the judge rejected that plea and now the federal prosecutors are like, yeah, we may look into FARA.
	So some of the individuals who are actually working with Hunter in advocating for Burisma, where Hunter is being paid 83 grand a month to do nothing except have the last name Biden and call his daddy on the phone sometimes, they registered their work under FARA after prodding from the Justice Department.
	So many of the people working directly with Hunter and lobbying on behalf of Burisma
	were forced to register under the FARA Act, under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
	And the DOJ forced them to do that, Hunter did not.
	I mean, that's kind of amazing.
	I mean, that's pretty obviously a FARA violation by Hunter Biden.
	Blue Star Strategies apparently was a firm that was associated with Burisma.
	It was under investigation by the DOJ.
	Why they were permitted to file foreign lobbying disclosures years after the work took place
	rather than face penalties for their future, their failure to do so remains unclear.
	Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano, the Blue Star Strategies consultants, whose emails reflect a close working relationship with Hunter on Burisma, registered as foreign lobbyists representing Burisma's chief, Mykola Zlochevsky, in 2022.
	Tramontano and Painter disclosed to the government they helped set up meetings between Slavchevsky's attorney and State Department officials, according to FARA documents.
	Those meetings occurred in 2016, while Joe Biden was still vice president.
	Blue Star Strategies, Hunter, and Hunter's business partners worked closely to boost Burisma's image across many fronts.
	Blue Star Strategies did not register under FARA in real time.
	The consultants' work with Burisma had come to the attention of investigators on that Hunter Biden case, according to the IRS whistleblower, Gary Shapley.
	So it is very obvious that presumably Hunter should have registered as a foreign agent.
	And he didn't.
	Star Strategies emails in 2020 and that Leslie Wolf, prosecutor in the Delaware U.S. Attorney's
	Office accused of misconduct, told investigators it would likely not get approved. But the FARA
	documents Painter and Tramontano did eventually file suggest specific meetings and contacts
	in which Hunter Biden was involved met the DOJ's definition of foreign lobbying. So it is very
	obvious that presumably Hunter should have registered as a foreign agent and he didn't.
	And now he's exposed because again, the DOJ had to kill this deal. So it may very well be that
	that there is more to drop on Hunter Biden.
	But meanwhile, while all this is happening with Hunter Biden and DOJ is trying to pass him cookies and create sweetheart deals for him, while all of this is happening, they're going after Donald Trump.
	Representative James Comer, Republican of Kentucky, he pointed out yesterday on the verdict with Ted Cruz that six major banks flagged 170 suspicious activity reports about the Bidens to the Treasury Department.
	A suspicious activity report is when the bank files notice with the treasury cabinet that they suspect their client has committed a crime.
	Doesn't mean they committed a crime.
	They have a strong suspicion that a crime was committed, so it's to protect the bank as well.
	So how frequently do these things happen?
	Very seldom, despite what the Washington Post or in their defense of the Biden, they say, well, everybody has a suspicious activity report.
	That is baloney.
	I was on a bank board for 10 years.
	I think we issued two Over the course of 10 years.
	And how many were issued concerning Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and the Biden family?
	Over 170.
	They were direct... Wait, you were at a bank and they issued two in 10 years?
	In how many years?
	If you had two SARS, they're called SARS in the banking industry, if you had two SARS against you, it would be hard for you to open an account somewhere.
	I mean, it's amazing stuff.
	So have the media treated all of this?
	They've treated this by pretending that nothing bad is happening at all.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	Okay, meanwhile, the media, the White House, they're treating the Hunter stuff like it is not only no big deal, but they're offended if you ask questions about it.
	So yesterday, Corine Jean-Pierre, world's worst White House press secretary, she suggested that Hunter is a private citizen.
	Why are you all, why are you so concerned with Hunter?
	I mean, how dare you?
	Hunter is not a private citizen.
	He's at the White House.
	He's squired along on every trip by Joe Biden.
	And again, he has texts to his own daughter talking about paying his daddy's bills.
	Come on, come on.
	How stupid do they think you are?
	Again, the answer is really, really stupid.
	Here's Corine Jean-Pierre.
	I've said this before, this is a personal matter.
	Hunter Biden, as you know, is a private citizen, and this was done in an independent way.
	This investigation is being led by a Trump-appointed prosecutor.
	Hmm.
	Well, I mean, clearly there's nothing to see here.
	The White House was asked about pardoning Hunter, and they're like, no, no, no, we would never do that.
	Now, here's the thing.
	Whenever the White House denies they're going to do a thing, there's like a 75% shot that eventually they'll end up doing it.
	I know you said not a lot has changed since yesterday and that it's a personal matter, but from a presidential perspective, is there any possibility that the president would end up pardoning his son?
	No.
	I just said no.
	I just answered.
	Go ahead.
	Okay, she just answered.
	There's no possibility.
	Well, I mean, there's a little possibility, is there not?
	They think a plea deal is going to get worked, is what this really means.
	And meanwhile, the media doing their best to make sure that no serious questions are asked.
	So ABC News, NBC News, they were very worried about the GOP focus on Hunter.
	Again, so much Republican pouncing.
	That's always the story.
	The story is not the possible deep and abiding years-long corruption between Hunter and Joe, while Joe was vice president.
	No, the story here is so much Republican pouncing.
	They're purring and they're pouncing like the color kittens over here.
	It's a moment that's the culmination of a years-long federal investigation, a painful reminder of a dark chapter in the Biden family, and the latest scene in a lurid national scandal the Republicans promise is far from over.
	to stand by his son.
	He has repeatedly said that he is proud of him, even saying that he has done nothing
	wrong. Republicans are making it clear they are not satisfied.
	They are calling on the judge to block that plea deal, insisting they will continue on
	with their investigations into claims that the president has used his political career
	to personally benefit and rich and protect his family.
	Republicans not ready to move on.
	They are still aggressively pursuing an investigation into the younger Biden's business
	practices.
	They're not right.
	Why can't they just move on?
	Why can't they move on?
	Well, maybe because he's getting sweetheart deals from his daddy's DOJ after presumably funneling millions of dollars to the benefit of his dad.
	Maybe it's that.
	Maybe it's that.
	NBC's Andrea Mitchell did the same thing.
	She actually apologized to Joe Biden's campaign co-chair, Chris Coons, for mentioning Hunter and Donald Trump in the same sentence.
	No, we could never do that.
	So, let's just be clear.
	One is about the conduct of a former president in office, and the other is about a private citizen, the son of the current president.
	There's a stark difference.
	No, you are absolutely correct, and I should not have analogized those two things together in my haste.
	There's no question that they are of very, very different proportions.
	There's no comparison.
	There's no comparison.
	None.
	There's no comparison between Donald Trump post-presidency misusing classified documents, just like Hillary Clinton did, by the way, while she was Secretary of State.
	None.
	No similarity between that and Hunter Biden's years-long corruption scheme with his daddy.
	No similarity, according to the media.
	Just let it go.
	Okay, meanwhile, again, the Republicans are trying to figure out who they need to run against Joe Biden.
	Right now, Donald Trump is far and away the frontrunner.
	But I have to say, some of the attacks on DeSantis at this point are truly scurrilous.
	The most scurrilous attack that we're seeing right now is this absurd and ridiculous attack on the Florida educational standards.
	There's this notion promulgated by Kamala Harris and the rest of the liars in the media that the Florida educational standards talk about the wonders and greatness of slavery, which is a lie.
	It is not true.
	You will recall that the original criticism is that the Florida State Curriculum includes standards that teach, quote, which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit.
	Which meant, as is true, that slaves being incredibly resilient and being very often people who had to undergo severe hardship, like always severe hardship, that they used that opportunity to develop skills that could benefit them personally.
	That is not an upholding of the virtue of slavery.
	It's the opposite.
	Okay, but Kamala Harris then went out and lied about, oh my gosh, they're talking about the magical benefits of slavery.
	There's only one problem.
	Here's what the AP, African American Studies Official Course Framework, says.
	This year, quote, in addition to agricultural work, enslaved people learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers in the North and South.
	Once free, African Americans used these skills to provide for themselves and others.
	That is the exact same thing!
	The Associated Press says the exact same thing as the guidelines for the state of Florida.
	And yet, Ron DeSantis is getting ripped up and down over all this.
	Here's DeSantis' response to a reporter who tried to come after him on this particular issue.
	Were there beneficial aspects to slavery?
	That's not what the curriculum says.
	What do you think?
	No, it's not.
	And the curriculum is very clear.
	You have, I think it's like 200 plus pages of all kinds of stuff that you can't read that.
	Have you read it?
	So what's your opinion?
	Have you read it?
	I'm asking your opinion.
	But you haven't read it, so I'm just making that clear.
	That makes it very clear about the injustices of slavery in vivid detail.
	So anyone that actually read that and then listens to Kamala would know That she's lying.
	And that particular provision about the skills, that was in spite of slavery, not because of.
	The AP course has made that same point.
	Other courses have made that same point.
	Nobody said anything about that.
	And Dr. Allen and those people will say, look, this is what was used post bellum when these folks were doing stuff.
	So that was very, very clear.
	And I would just say, you know, people can read it.
	Of course, DeSantis is exactly right, but that's not stopping the lies from being promulgated.
	This is why the Congressional Black Caucus is now pushing the White House, according to the AP.
	They're pushing the White House, the Justice Department, and the DOE to adopt an aggressive legal strategy to scrutinize recent changes to Florida's black history curriculum.
	It's an absurdity.
	So, at the very least, you would expect that the same Republicans who are so defensive of Donald Trump and his classified documents mishandling, they might be defensive of DeSantis when the media lie about them.
	Like, at the very least, Republicans should defend each other when they're being lied about by the media.
	This is why I'm very disappointed in Tim Scott today.
	Tim Scott was asked about this and he promptly sided with Kamala Harris and he sided with the Congressional Black Caucus.
	Here's Tim Scott.
	As a country founded upon freedom, the greatest deprivation of freedom was slavery.
	There's no silver lining in freedom, in slavery.
	The truth is that anything you can learn, any benefits that people suggest you had during slavery, you would have had as a free person.
	What slavery was, was really about separating families, about mutilating humans, and even raping their wives.
	It was just devastating, so I would hope that every person Okay, that's ridiculous.
	I mean, that's Scott being disingenuous because he fully well knows what the story is with Florida's education curriculum.
	I understand it's a presidential race.
	But, you know, it would behoove Republicans to actually, at some point, defend people who are not actually doing the wrong thing.
	I mean, it's particularly true that Republicans should not be backing attacks on other Republicans on the basis of false racial nonsense, especially because, again, Democrats are doing that enough.
	So Cori Bush yesterday decided to shout at House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, suggesting, like, openly yelling on the floor that Steve Scalise's bills are racist.
	It's such a joke.
	I mean, the Democrats playing the race card on literally every element is so pathetic.
	It's really bad.
	If both sides won't, we still will do that work.
	And I would yield one more time to the gentlelady.
	Be in order.
	Mr. Speaker, the House is not in order.
	The House will be in order.
	Okay, I mean, ridiculous stuff there from Cori Bush, but that's who she is.
	Meanwhile, Ilhan Omar, another member of the ex-Gribble squad, she actually went on Al Jazeera to explain that Americans should be afraid of white men.
	She's a member of the tolerant and diverse squad, is this terrible human being.
	I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country.
	Man, she should be paying royalties to vocal grind.
	Everything is down here.
	In any case, Ilhan Omar doing this routine that you should be very fearful of white men.
	Imagine if the race is reversed.
	You wouldn't have to.
	You know exactly what would happen.
	Statistically speaking, of course, if she is talking about violent crime, What she's saying is not true, but it doesn't matter whether it's true or not.
	She's a very diverse person and she's speaking on Al Jazeera, which of course is a place filled with diversity and wonder.
	Meanwhile, we now have breaking news over from the Facebook files.
	So Jim Jordan has now revealed a bunch of documents.
	that have been discovered by Congress about the White House's activities vis-a-vis Facebook.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook removed content related to COVID-19 in response to pressure from the Biden administration, including posts claiming the virus was man-made.
	According to internal company communications viewed by the Wall Street Journal, the emails show Facebook executives discussed how they managed users' posts about the origins of the pandemic the administration was seeking to control.
	Nick Clegg, company's president of global affairs, wrote, quote,
	Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing, rather than demoting or labeling claims that COVID is man-made?
	And he says, we are under pressure from the administration and others to do more.
	This is a Facebook VP in charge of content policy.
	We shouldn't have done it.
	That is in July, 2021.
	That email and a number of other such internal company communications were obtained by the Judiciary Committee which has been investigating what GOP lawmakers say is the Biden administration's improper efforts to censor American speech on social media about COVID and other topics.
	The White House says its discussions were aimed at promoting the adoption of vaccines and other public health goals.
	White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre then said, Yeah, I know.
	This is censorship by proxy.
	That's exactly what this was.
	The emails viewed by the Wall Street Journal, which had not been previously reported, date to the spring and summer of 2021 when the White House was putting explicit pressure on Americans not only to get vaccinated, but not to disseminate information the White House disagreed with.
	Apparently, after Joe Biden said that Facebook was killing people because of the quote-unquote false information they saw on Facebook, the tongue-lashing caused Facebook to re-evaluate its policies about COVID-19 content.
	Discussions that involved high-level company officials including Nick Clegg and then-COO Sheryl Sandberg.
	Following the president's killing people comment, the Facebook VP circulated a memo assessing the difference between Facebook's content policies and the Biden administration's demands.
	The Facebook VP said, quote, there's a likely gap between what the White House would like us to remove and what we are comfortable removing.
	As one example, the executive listed the White House's desire the company take action against humorous or satirical content that suggested the vaccines aren't safe.
	The vice president wrote, quote, the White House has previously indicated it thinks humor should be removed if it is premised on the vaccine having side effects.
	So we expect it would similarly want to see humor about vaccine hesitancy removed.
	Clegg then wrote, I can't see Mark in a million years being comfortable with removing that.
	I wouldn't recommend it.
	That is amazing.
	So the White House was literally writing to Facebook and being like, stop the jokes about the vaccine.
	No jokes.
	Joking will be forbidden.
	There'll be no joking about the regime.
	Amazing, amazing stuff.
	But again, this is in fact a First Amendment violation.
	When the government uses private companies as proxies to perform censorship, that is a violation of the First Amendment pretty damned clearly.
	Okay, time for a quick thing I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	So there's a good series on Apple TV.
	It is called Hijack, stars Idris Elba, who's excellent.
	Love Idris Elba in pretty much everything.
	And the entire series is about the hijacking of a passenger aircraft From the Middle East to London and Idris Elba plays sort of a negotiator.
	He's sort of the lead passenger on board who's attempting to figure out what exactly is going on.
	It's a little more complex than it seems because I don't want to spoil anything, but some of the hijackers have ulterior motives which are not clear from the beginning.
	It's well-filmed.
	It's very tense.
	It's pretty clever.
	Definitely an enjoyable series that is worth watching if you have the time.
	Hijack on Apple TV.
	Worth the watch.
	Okay, one more thing that I like.
	So, I hate it for the employees, but I like it for the fact that there has to be pushback, and pushback has consequences.
	Apparently, Anheuser-Busch has announced it would be laying off 350 corporate employees on Thursday after months of poor sales fueled by conservatives boycotting Bud Light.
	The firm said the layoffs would affect less than 2% of its 18,000 employees.
	It wouldn't affect blue-collar workers like warehouse staff and drivers.
	In a statement, is Mediaite reporting, CEO Brendan Whitworth explained the company's leadership, quote, never take these decisions lightly.
	They were also resolved to ensure our organization continues to be set for future long-term success.
	Solid stuff there.
	And again, good job for Conservatives.
	You gotta pick examples, you gotta polarize and make examples of them.
	This is a Saul Alinsky tactic the left has been using literally for decades.
	And if they refuse to stop using it, then we also have to use it.
	I mean, there really is no other choice.
	Okay, time for a couple of quick things that I hate.
	So, things that I hate today.
	Just an amazing, amazing sequence of events when the 90-year-old Senator Dianne Feinstein started launching into an unprompted speech.
	She was called upon to vote.
	It was a voice vote.
	And she didn't know what was going on, so she just started giving a speech.
	Because she is no longer with us.
	And everyone knows that Dianne Feinstein is no longer with us, which means that she is just one of many.
	John Fetterman cannot speak properly.
	Mitch McConnell froze up and we got the apple spinning wheel of death the other day from Mitch McConnell.
	Nancy Pelosi has not been functional for quite a while.
	We got a president of the United States who appears to want to keel over every five seconds.
	So things are going great.
	Nothing says healthy body politic like a bunch of octogenarians who do not have proper brain function leading the country.
	It's like clearly everything is going well.
	We are a healthy country with young, vibrant leadership.
	Obviously.
	Senator Patty Murray actually turned to Dianne Feinstein and said to her, just say aye.
	She had to literally tell her what to do.
	When her name was called to vote on the defense appropriations bill, Dianne Feinstein began reading from her prepared remarks, leading to an awkward moment.
	She actually started saying, I'd like to support a guess vote on this.
	It provides $823 billion.
	That's an increase of $26 billion for the defense department, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Murray jumped in and told Feinstein, just say aye.
	And Feinstein said, okay, aye.
	Which is like, We may as well just have robot Congress people at this point.
	Like, if you're a Democrat, you're just gonna vote Democrat anyway, so we don't need most of you.
	Like, seriously, we could just cut the salaries by 100%.
	We could put a bunch of AI over there, and they're just gonna vote the same way as the Senators are gonna vote.
	Save ourselves a bunch of headache around here.
	Meanwhile, I will admit that I enjoyed the, uh, this maybe should have gone in Things I Like because it's just frankly hilarious.
	Representative Derek Van Orden, Republican of Wisconsin, apparently ended up screaming obscenities at high school Senate pages who were resting in the Capitol rotunda early Thursday morning.
	He accused the teens of treating the space like a frat house common room.
	A page transcribed from Van Orden's words shortly after he berated the group around midnight.
	Apparently, the congressman screamed, wake the F up, you little bleeps.
	What the F are you all doing?
	Get the F out of here.
	You're defiling the space, you pieces of bleep.
	Who the F are you?
	When the teens answered they were Senate Pages, Van Orden reportedly retorted, I don't give an F who you are, get out, you jackasses, get out.
	Apparently, alcohol was indeed a factor.
	Per a source, here's a photo from last night of a bunch of alcohol in Van Orden's office.
	Apparently, Van Orden and staff were heard partying loudly before he cursed out a group of teenage Senate Pages.
	He then issued a statement saying, quote, the Capitol Rotunda served as a field hospital and countless Union soldiers died fighting to free men in the Civil War.
	I've long said our nation's Capitol is a symbol of the sacrifice our servicemen and women have made for the country and should never be treated like a frat house common room.
	Threatening a congressman with bad press to excuse poor behavior is a reminder of everything that's wrong with Washington.
	Luckily, bad press has never bothered me.
	If it's the price I pay for standing up for what's right, then so be it.
	Apparently, some of the members of the upper chamber were very, very upset.
	Very, very upset, yes, because they are all, you know, big on the decorum.
	So, you know, more of this.
	In fact, that's the last thing that Dianne Feinstein did that I think was worthy of note, is that time that a bunch of, like, 13-year-old kids were brought in by an interest group to jabber at her about global warming, and they're like, well, our votes count.
	She's like, you can't vote.
	It was pretty fantastic.
	Alrighty, guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
	We'll be talking about the global boiling that apparently is happening, plus more scientific discoveries from the left.
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