May 15, 2024 - Bannon's War Room
54:52
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| They're expected to be down 10 is down 15.6 down 15.6 the weakest read since January. | ||
| Now, let's go to CPI. | ||
| Shall we? | ||
| These are the April reads of course headline up three tens a little cooler than the rearview mirror, which was up four tens. | ||
| I haven't seen revisions. | ||
| They were late yesterday and coming if we look at the X food and energy also up three tens and last month that was also up four tens. | ||
| So that definitely Cooling off as expected on that. | ||
| Now, let's look at the year-over-year numbers, probably the most important. | ||
| 3.4 is the year-over-year headline, and that is 1 tenth cooler than the rearview mirror, equal to expectations, and that is the lowest year-over-year since we're at Well, 3.2 in February. | ||
| See, last month was the pop. | ||
| And if we look at CPI-X food and energy year-over-year, this is 3.6. | ||
| That is definitely cooler than the 3.8 we had last time. | ||
| And the 3.8 last time, and along with the 3.6 this time, is now the lowest level of year-over-year core inflation since April of 21. | ||
| So these numbers are close to expectations in every way, and actually sequentially a bit better than last month, which spiked. | ||
| You see yields moving down. | ||
| Now, we're not done with the data yet. | ||
| I like to look at the CPI index, because I think the CPI index is very important to look at. | ||
| 13.54 is the non-seasonally adjusted, and guess what? | ||
| That's a new all-time high. | ||
| And if we look at the core at 317.62, that's also a new all-time high. | ||
| So here's what we really see. | ||
| The politicians are going to say, wow, it's a bit cooler than expected. | ||
| And in many ways, they're correct. | ||
| But it's still on the index as both non-seasonally adjusted, non-seasonally adjusted, the highest ever since record-keeping, the index that we figure all this on. | ||
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
| Pray for our enemies. | ||
|
unidentified
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Because we're going medieval on these people. | |
| President Trump got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people have had a belly full of it. | ||
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big lie? | ||
|
unidentified
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MAGA Media. | |
| I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
|
unidentified
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Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | |
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved! | ||
|
unidentified
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War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | |
| Wednesday, 15 May, in the year of our Lord, 2024. By the way, guys, we got some terrible | ||
| Let's get on it. | ||
| We just did a great sound check, and somehow the sound is wrong. | ||
| A print came out today on CPI. | ||
| We're going to get EJ and Tony up here in a second. | ||
| I want to read, though, Jason Trennert. | ||
| If Denver can put up the tweet on Jason Trennert. | ||
| Strategist Common Man CPI. | ||
| Remember, we've had him on to talk about the Common Man CPI, which is food, energy, shelter, clothing, utilities, and insurance. | ||
| Let me repeat that. | ||
| Food, energy, shelter, clothing, utilities and insurance. | ||
| 3.8 year over year and has exceeded official number for 9 consecutive months and in 34 of the last 40 months. | ||
| Gold moving higher. | ||
| Inflation as a campaign issue is over. | ||
| And Biden has lost. | ||
| Let me bring in now EJ and Tony. | ||
| EJ, I know you've got a bunch of charts. | ||
| The top line number, and of course Biden and these guys are saying, well, it didn't blow through expectations. | ||
| Walk me through what the real math is on the lived experience of the American people. | ||
| Well, Jason Trenner is absolutely right, Steve. | ||
| If you're looking at what Americans actually have to buy, as opposed to the theoretical basket of goods that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has come up with, you see that it is much worse than the headline number. | ||
| But on top of that, even how the Consumer Price Index measures things like housing, it grossly underestimates what Americans are actually paying. Look at how they measure the cost of | ||
| home ownership, for example. That's up only about 20 percent since Biden took office. And anyone | ||
| who's trying to buy a home today knows that that is absolutely ridiculous figure. In reality, | ||
| if you use real world data, so look at things like home prices, interest rates. You can even | ||
| pull in the cost to insure a home, property taxes, et cetera. What you find is that the cost | ||
| to own a home today is a hundred and 14.5 percent more than when Biden took office. I'm sorry, | ||
| but that is nowhere near the 20 percent increase that we are being told in these official numbers. | ||
| That's an absolutely ridiculous disparity. | ||
| And so the lived experience of Americans is much worse than what this economic data is telling us. | ||
| Okay, hang on for one second. | ||
| By the way, I want to announce the Weaponization Committee starts this morning. | ||
| The first witness is going to be Bob Costello, the lawyer. | ||
| We're going to cut to that for his opening statement, which is pretty powerful, about Michael Cohen. | ||
| We will go to that live as soon as it happens. | ||
| And Jason, or EJ is going to bear with us. | ||
| EJ hit rewind on that and just give me that one more time because it's very important to understand, | ||
| particularly in the number one for the economy and for your life, but as importantly | ||
| for the positioning on this campaign. | ||
| Well, Steve, it's very shocking to a lot of people, but when the BLS tries to estimate | ||
| the cost of home ownership, they don't look at the price of homes. | ||
| They don't look at interest rates. | ||
| And as a result, when you have these periods of very high inflation in the housing market, you will get incredibly skewed numbers coming out of the BLS. | ||
| And so because they rely exclusively on looking at rent prices and then from that try to figure out how home prices are changing their number is completely off today by by essentially a factor of five instead of the 20% increase which they allege over the last about three and a half years. | ||
| The actual number is up about 115%. | ||
| This is why Americans can't afford homes. | ||
| This is why Americans are essentially resigning themselves to having to rent forever. | ||
| This is why we are seeing young people move back in with their parents at rates not seen since the Great Depression. | ||
| That's not an exaggeration. | ||
| Young people cannot afford the American dream of home ownership. | ||
| In fact, for them, it's not even a dream anymore. | ||
| It's more of a nightmare. | ||
| Walk through, you've got some other analysis you want to talk about on these numbers to get behind them. | ||
| And by the way, this only reinforces, look, Jason Trennard over at Strategist is not a, he's not a fire breather. | ||
| He's like EJ. | ||
| These guys are very, and Scott Besant, these guys are some of the best guys on Wall Street, either major hedge fund managers or are retained by hedge fund managers to give them an independent assessment away from their own in-house economists and their own in-house analytics. | ||
| To make sure that they're getting a lot of different views. | ||
| This is where you want to get a range of opinions. | ||
| Jason Trennard, EJ, and you know his common man, CPI, where he adds in basically what you talk about. | ||
| He's got a chart up, and if Denver could put that chart back up again, you see the spread there, and he says, hey, Uh, inflation as a campaign issue is over for Biden and he lost because the number is going to be very difficult, not impossible to change, particularly with yesterday's PPI, the producer price. | ||
| Remember, that's the wholesale price that will roll through, that'll roll through the numbers in a month or two. | ||
| Your thoughts. | ||
| Steve, that's exactly right. | ||
| And by the way, that actually blows a hole below the waterline to this whole idea that inflation is somehow caused by corporate greed. | ||
| Nothing could be further from the truth. | ||
| If you look at the Producer Price Index, or wholesale inflation, that's essentially the cost that businesses are having to pay, versus the CPI, Consumer Price Index, that's the cost that you, I, and all your viewers are paying. | ||
| You find that those are both up essentially the same percentage Over Biden's presidency. | ||
| And as a result of that, the cost that businesses are paying are simply being passed on to consumers. | ||
| And so this whole idea that somehow businesses are being greedy and are causing inflation, it doesn't even pass the smell test. | ||
| Yeah, talk about that for a second, because this is Biden's new thing. | ||
| Biden's going to say, hey, it's not my massive spending, because we don't have a drop in aggregate demand anymore. | ||
| It's this infusion of one Keynesian stimulus after the other, whether it's the Green New Deal or Build Back Better, whatever. | ||
| They call it the Inflation Reduction Act. | ||
| Remember that? | ||
| Up in your face. | ||
| This massive spending is what's caused this. | ||
| He's trying to pivot, and look, hey, we have no truck with the corporations. | ||
| We're on these guys all the time. | ||
| I don't trust the big corporations as far as you can throw them, right, because they are total globalists. | ||
| However, in this case, for him to go back to the old saw, oh, it's greedy corporations, it's shrinkflation, it's all of that, that doesn't hold up when you look at the producer price index, correct? | ||
| That's exactly right, Steve, and you're right. | ||
| Corporations are not our friend, but they're not our enemy in this case either, because what's happening is that the value of the currency is declining. | ||
| This is why gold has been on an absolute tear this year. | ||
| People are waking up to the reality that it's simply the dollar which is losing value, and that's why prices are rising. | ||
| Hey, EJ, hang on for one second. | ||
| I want to go live to Capitol Hill, the Weaponization Committee. | ||
| We're going to come right back to you. | ||
| This is Bob Costello, opening statement. | ||
| The Department of Justice wouldn't. | ||
| That the Federal Elections Commission wouldn't bring. | ||
| That his predecessor, Cy Vance, wouldn't bring. | ||
| And as Alvin Bragg himself said, he wouldn't bring. | ||
| But then he did, after President Trump announced he was running for president. | ||
| Some might call this all election interference. | ||
| Think about it. | ||
| Mr. Bragg is charging President Trump with conspiracy to impact the 2016 election. | ||
| Ms. | ||
| Willis and Mr. Smith are charging President Trump with a conspiracy to interfere with the 2020 election. | ||
| Seems to me the conspiracy is between Bragg, Smith, and Willis working to interfere with the 2024 race. | ||
| Of course, none of this is new. | ||
| Government spied on President Trump's campaign. | ||
| You don't have to take my word for it. | ||
| You don't have to take this committee's word for it. | ||
| John Durham said it. | ||
| Clinton campaign paid the law firm Perkins Coie, who hired Fusion GPS, who hired Christopher Steele, a foreigner, who talked to other foreigners, who put together the fake dossier, which became the basis for the FBI to spy on President Trump's campaign. | ||
| The basis for a whole investigation where we saw text messages back and forth from folks on the investigation saying, we'll stop Trump. | ||
| Then, of course, it was the Mueller investigation. | ||
| 19 lawyers, 41 FBI agents, $30 million to find nothing. | ||
| No conspiracy, no coordination, none whatsoever. | ||
| Then it was impeachment. | ||
| Anonymous whistleblower with no first-hand knowledge. | ||
| He was biased against President Trump, who worked for Joe Biden. | ||
| Talks about a phone call and they impeached the President of the United States. | ||
| Then they raided his home. | ||
| Broke every protocol, every normal procedure. | ||
| Again, don't take our word for it. | ||
| Stephen D'Antuono, FBI Assistant Director of the Washington Field Office, told us this in his deposition. | ||
| Then, of course, they tried the 14th Amendment. | ||
| We'll just keep him off the ballot. | ||
| The easiest way to win is not to let your opponent play. | ||
| That's what they tried to do. | ||
| Thank goodness the Supreme Court said no to that. | ||
| Nine to zero, they said no to that. | ||
| And then, of course, after all that, after he's a candidate, as I said, we get all these cases. | ||
| In Georgia, Fannie Willis hires her boyfriend, travels to D.C. | ||
| on the taxpayer dime, meets with White House officials, January 6th committee, all in an effort to target President Trump. | ||
| In New York, gag order is placed on President Trump by a partisan judge whose daughter is a Democrat fundraiser, while Michael Cohen, convicted perjurer, is allowed to post anything he wants on social media, say whatever he wants. | ||
| Not to mention the guy who's the lead prosecutor for Alvin Bragg, Mr. Colangelo, who worked for Letitia James, then worked for the Justice Department, then went back to New York to work for Alvin Bragg. | ||
| And in Florida, in Florida, we learned that Jack Smith changed, altered the order of the classified documents he seized. | ||
| The physical documents don't match up with the scanned documents. | ||
| Jack Smith didn't properly handle the documents he said President Trump didn't properly handle. | ||
| Jack Smith mishandled classified information all while charging President Trump with, quote, mishandling classified information. | ||
| You can't make this up. | ||
| Some would call that tampering with evidence. | ||
| Today's hearing is about how the law is being used to target political opponents. | ||
| It's truly about the weaponization of government. | ||
| Truly about what this committee has been focused on for this Congress. | ||
| And obviously, President Trump is example number one. | ||
| It's about the double standard. | ||
| One set of rules for the politically connected, the other set for the people they want to target. | ||
| But maybe most important, it's about where does all this go? | ||
| Where does it all go? | ||
| Because if they can do it to a president, they can do it to anybody. | ||
| Any one of us, any of our constituents, any American they want to. | ||
| And that's what's frightening. | ||
| That's what's truly frightening. | ||
| I want to thank our witnesses for being here and talking about this most critical issue. | ||
| How the government, how the agencies, how the law is being turned on people that they politically disagree with. | ||
| With that, I yield to the gentlelady from Virgin Islands for her opening statement, the Ranking Member, Ms. | ||
| Plasky. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you very much. | |
| Good morning to everyone that is here with us. | ||
| Thank you for joining. | ||
| Back for a minute. | ||
| In the same room, we watched as the Republican majority attempted to use the congressional | ||
| hearing process to intervene in an ongoing Supreme Court case. | ||
| Republicans here did so by suggesting that they were concerned about how social media | ||
| companies are bullied by Republicans. | ||
| Okay, uh, Jim Jordan, a good opening. | ||
| It's like opening at the War Room, right? | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| Finally. | ||
| Okay, so we're gonna have this hearing today. | ||
| There are a number of lawyers. | ||
| Bob Costello is gonna be the first. | ||
| I think Costello, in his opening statement, is gonna lay into Michael Cohen on the off day up at the New York trial. | ||
| Of course, Jim Trustee, President Trump's lawyer, is one of President Trump's lawyers, is gonna join. | ||
| I think Gene Hamilton We're going to be dipping in as soon as Costello goes back. | ||
| Great opening table setter for Jim Jordan. | ||
| Look, I know. | ||
| We're in posse. | ||
| We want subpoenas, not hearings. | ||
| We don't want sharply worded letters. | ||
| But, hey, it's a process, as you know. | ||
| Just keep the bayonet to the back. | ||
| Do I still have E.J. | ||
| and Tony? | ||
| E.J., we've got a couple minutes here. | ||
| I know you've got to bounce. | ||
| I just want to put in perspective, because you're going to hear today, CNBC, you're going to have Biden come out and say inflation's over. | ||
| Jason Trennard has just notified us he is going to join us. | ||
| Tomorrow morning on the show to walk through this, and Scott Besson is going to be here Friday, so we're going to give you a double-barreled shotgun approach right after EJ. | ||
| EJ, I know you've been increasingly worried that this is not being dealt with. | ||
| The Fed and Treasury joined together in December To jump the shark, to try to prop up Biden's ability to win re-election by juicing, throwing too much liquidity into the economy. | ||
| And we're paying for it now, are we not, sir? | ||
| Absolutely, Steve. | ||
| And the numbers bear that out very, very clearly. | ||
| And if we look at where inflation is trending, you know, there's a chart there, I think Denver has. | ||
| It shows that there is absolutely zero evidence inflation is going back to 2%. | ||
| It has been trending towards over 3%. | ||
| We've arrived there. | ||
| There's no indication we're going any lower anytime soon. | ||
| And it's because of exactly what you just said, Steve. | ||
| The Treasury and the Fed are now working hand in glove To ensure that there is plenty of liquidity available for the Treasury. | ||
| But that means we're starving private markets of capital. | ||
| And it also means that we are fueling this inflationary fire. | ||
| And again, you're not gonna put that fire out until you stop what's causing it, which is all of this runaway, profligate government spending. | ||
| You know, EJ, we're going to go back in a second to this House Weaponization Committee, and this is on turning the Justice Department against President Trump and his followers and all of MAGA to drill down on the details. | ||
| But also the House has been part of this problem. | ||
| They've been a part of this problem on inflation. | ||
| We've had we've had Russ Vought and Chip Roy on, and I want to tell Warren Posse, I spent last night working on this, so we ain't going for any CR, trust me. | ||
| We're going to get to the bottom of what's happening here. | ||
| The Uniparty and Radical Democrats are trying to de-Trumpify President Trump's ability to have impact on a second term. | ||
| I found out last night, they're not close yet to give us a top line number. | ||
| for fiscal year 2025 budget, which has to be done theoretically by law by September 30th. | ||
| The budget done, the appropriations done, we start the new fiscal year as people know that watch | ||
| this show October 1st. They haven't agreed on a top line number, but I'm hearing rumors from | ||
| pretty well-placed sources that there's not really any cuts. | ||
| Any cuts will be completely optics, performative. | ||
| This is going to stay north of a $7 trillion spend. | ||
| It's going to stay north of a $1.5 to $2 trillion deficit predicated on McCarthy gave him two years, they're going to take a third year because the Republican House and the weapons makers don't want to step in here. | ||
| Your thoughts? | ||
| I mean, can we really get, unless we throw down hard, No, Steve, the House is the problem right now. | ||
| I mean, House leadership, let's be perfectly frank, has utterly failed the American people. | ||
| There's no way around that. | ||
| We can't really beat around the bush at this point. | ||
| They have utterly failed the American people, period. | ||
| The amount of spending has to come down. | ||
| It doesn't. | ||
| You're going to continue paying for it. | ||
| Look, the American people need to realize all government spending is paid for. | ||
| All of it. | ||
| You can pay for it through taxes. | ||
| You can pay for it through borrowing, which means future taxes. | ||
| You can pay for it through the hidden tax of inflation, which is what we're doing right now. | ||
| But at the end of the day, all government spending is paid for. | ||
| If you're wondering, why is my life getting so expensive? | ||
| It's because you're paying for all of these runaway government deficits. | ||
| And Mike Johnson and the rest of the so-called Republican leaders in the House are part of the problem, frankly. | ||
| By the way, two of the lords of easy money today, actually yesterday, came out, it broke today, Jamie Dimon, I think in Europe, addressing a central banker and big money center bank conference, said, finally, I think it was on German TV, hey, this deficit, these are problems, they have to be addressed, if we wait for it, if we wait to try to address them at 6% of GDP or 7% of GDP, these are too high, it's got to be much lower, unless we take on Fiscal responsibility we're gonna pay for it big time in the end Goldman Sachs CEO Solomon exact same thing at the exact same time Do you think the Lords of easy money are starting to awaken to this problem? | ||
| I mean they've made a fortune on this and they're gonna make a fortune in the future but do they understand that we're getting ready to drive over the cliff with the with the pedal to the metal and Not quite, Steve, but I think they're finally realizing that we're heading in the wrong direction. | ||
| You and I were sounding the alarm on this literally a year and a half ago, and now finally some of the people who are in on the charade are starting to realize that no, this cannot go on forever. | ||
| You know, the Treasury finally announced that Yeah. | ||
| annualized interest payments on the debt are up to 1.1 trillion dollars. | ||
| Again, that's something we predicted over a year ago was going to happen. | ||
| And sure enough, here we are. | ||
| And we are continuing, as you just said, Steve, to head towards that cliff with the pedal | ||
| to the metal. | ||
| And this is why it is so important, going back to your previous point, the House needs | ||
| to get its act together. | ||
| And we need to get a hold on this spending. | ||
| And I don't just mean slow the rate of increase. | ||
| I mean, we need to put a choke collar around this thing and seriously get these numbers | ||
| down or we are going to continue to see the impoverishment of the American middle class. | ||
| We're going to hollow out the middle class unless you see, not a change in the rate of growth, but unless you see, you E.J. | ||
| Antoni, a real plan of five or ten years to a balanced budget, but those cuts, big cuts, come in year one. | ||
| I mean, hundreds of billions of dollars, which some is going to have to come out of the defense. | ||
| I mean, Chip Roy yesterday trying to sell us the CR, and I love Chip. | ||
| I love Congressman Roy. | ||
| But, except for, you know, sometimes who he picks who want to be president. | ||
| Which I told him was dead wrong at the time and he just wouldn't listen. | ||
| That you can't do this by tapping it along and doing a CR and hoping for it to keep defense spending. | ||
| Defense spending is going to have to take a hit. | ||
| People got to wake up to this. | ||
| EJ, we'll let you go. | ||
| You've been incredible. | ||
| Thank you for jumping on this today. | ||
| Look forward to putting up. | ||
| I want everybody to know where they go get your constant. | ||
| You're putting stuff up on Twitter all the time. | ||
| Where do people go to follow you? | ||
| Best place to find me is going to be on Twitter and the handle there is at RealEJAntoni. | ||
| If Grace and Mo can get the charts from Denver, I want to push those out. | ||
| Carly Bonet, this is very important. | ||
| And Jason Trennert. | ||
| I want to make sure this audience is the cutting edge. | ||
| EJ and Tony, thank you very much. | ||
| We're going to go back to the Weaponization Committee. | ||
| I want to thank Real America's Voice for letting us blow the first break. | ||
| But now more than ever, by the way, Phillip Patrick is going to join me on Saturday. | ||
| So I've got Jason Trennert tomorrow. | ||
| We have Scott Besant on Friday. | ||
| We'll have Phillip Patrick On Saturday, talk to you about capital markets, because there's going to be even more turbulence, particularly with the decline of the U.S. | ||
| dollar, the purchasing power of the U.S. | ||
| dollar. | ||
| Don't get caught sideways. | ||
| Go talk to the experts at Birchgold. | ||
| Birchgold.com slash Bannon. | ||
| Get to Philip Patrick and the team. | ||
| Of course, you've got the end of the dollar empire that lays this all out. | ||
| If you read that, particularly free installment number three, which was the debt trap. | ||
| You understand exactly what we're talking about, and you understand the power of currency in your individual and personal life, your community's life, your nation's life. | ||
| Let's go back to the Weaponization Committee. | ||
| I think we're still doing opening statements, but Bob Cassell will be up in a minute. | ||
| Let's go back to weaponization right now. | ||
|
unidentified
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...by calling witnesses who have testified under oath that they literally are missing parts of their brain, and another who self-identified as a time traveler from Canada. | |
| That, my friends, is the select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government. | ||
| To be the party of law enforcement and be led by a man currently facing 100 serious charges. | ||
| We fail to understand that we are playing white knights for the most radical fringes of our society. | ||
| While making frequent references to Big Brother, no less, they themselves are a growing embodiment of George Orwell's 1984. | ||
| Now, I know I've said it before, and if people don't know, I've been a Republican. | ||
| I was a Republican appointee when some of my counterparts were still in high school. | ||
| I served a Republican president. | ||
| But this is not the Republican Party. | ||
| This is a cult of personality where Donald Trump exercises totalitarian control. | ||
| This is a subcommittee that intimidates witnesses who disagree with them, questioning Americans' loyalty to their country if they don't support Donald Trump's agenda. | ||
| This subcommittee is using its platform to bully American people into believing falsehoods. | ||
| Falsehoods which serve little purpose other than to scare everyday Americans. | ||
| Spread confusion and attempt to re-elect Donald Trump. | ||
| It's a subcommittee that is taking orders from a disgraced former president. | ||
| I see members rolling their eyes. | ||
| They're all upset. | ||
| You don't believe me? | ||
| Think I'm making up that Trump directs the actions of this select committee? | ||
| You think that everyone is not jumping through hoops to please Donald Trump? | ||
| Follow the facts. | ||
| Who was among the select few Donald Trump called on January 6 while encouraging thousands of rioters to overtake the Capitol and steal the election? | ||
| Individuals from this select committee. | ||
| Members here have refused to answer a subpoena related to that call from Trump and the attack on the Capitol. | ||
| Members of Congress said at rally after rally, I'm busting my tail to get Donald Trump re-elected We need to make sure Donald Trump wins. | ||
| It's so important that we stay engaged and help Donald Trump get back the White House. | ||
| Okay, I'm going to take it back for a minute. | ||
| There's only so much I can take of that. | ||
| And I have the patience of Jobe. | ||
| Not. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| She's going to drone on. | ||
| I think that's a representative from the Virgin Islands, I think. | ||
| I don't have my glasses on, so I can't really see. | ||
| Too vain to wear my glasses during the show. | ||
| We're going to get to Bob Costello's opening statement in a second. | ||
| Let me tell you what we've got today. | ||
| We've got A couple of big things have already happened. | ||
| Number one, the inflation print came out. | ||
| Jason Trennard said, hey, the war against inflation by Biden is over and inflation won. | ||
| You're going to try to see him spin it. | ||
| But here's the reality. | ||
| The lived experience of the American working class and middle class is not going to change. | ||
| In fact, it's only going to get worse. | ||
| That is going to lead to, I think, increased people are awakening every day. | ||
| Why are they awakening? | ||
| How are they awakening? | ||
| Because you, this audience. | ||
| You're putting out information, you're taking clips from the show, you're taking clips from another show. | ||
| I just understand we got a shout-out in the representative's opening statement. | ||
| I think War Room. | ||
| Actually got a shout out. | ||
| I think it was a clip with our own Natalie Winters, I think is the host, but we'll find it. | ||
| We're going to pull it here in a second and get it up. | ||
| The second part is that the Weaponization Committee, and this is not what we want, but hey, it's a start. | ||
| It can't be a finish. | ||
| And we're hearing behind the scenes big promises of judiciary weaponization, subpoenas, an organized effort. | ||
| What you need is an organized effort. | ||
| You had the front page of the New York Times This morning has, yesterday has all the Republicans, right there you see that? | ||
| All the Republicans standing there from Governor Burgum to to Byron Donalds, Vivek Ramaswamy, you've got Johnson and you've got Cory Mills. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| They're all there. | ||
| But what we need is people down in Washington DC. | ||
| We need Johnson and we need to organize this committee into a real committee like Democrats would do. | ||
| Like Democrats would do and have an organized effort to get out of the vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump. | ||
| It's more and more obvious every day. | ||
| Now, breaking news. | ||
| Right when we were coming on, Joe Biden's put out a video. | ||
| I don't know if we have that up yet. | ||
| I'm gonna try to slip that in. | ||
| Joe Biden's got a video, I think. | ||
| Where he throws down and challenges President Trump to a debate. | ||
| Now, don't be fooled. | ||
| This is not because he wants a debate. | ||
| This is because he has to get on a stage with Trump quickly because there's an effort behind the scenes to remove him. | ||
| Let's go ahead and play this clip while we wait for Bob Costello to come up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. | |
| And since then, he hasn't shown up for a debate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now he's acting like he wants to debate me again. | |
| Well, make my day, pal. | ||
| I'll even do it twice. | ||
| So let's pick the dates, Donald. | ||
| I hear you're free on Wednesdays. | ||
| Okay, he's babbling right there. | ||
| He's got to get on stage with Trump or they're going to... Michelle Obama's going to remove... He's going to replace him. | ||
| Let's go back to Jim Jordan in the hearing. | ||
| You're about to give us true and correct, to the best of your knowledge, information and belief. | ||
| So help you God. | ||
| Let the record reflect the witnesses I've answered in the affirmative. | ||
| You can be seated. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Please know that your written testimony will be entered into the record and it's entirely in court. | ||
| We ask you to summarize your testimony as best you can and we will just move right down the list. | ||
| We will start, or right in the line I should say, we will start with Mr. Costello. | ||
| fellow. Make sure you hit your mic and pull that, turn your mic on and make it pull it real close. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hit the button there. | |
| It should hit the button. | ||
| See the button there in front? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| There you go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| My name is Bob Costello. | ||
| I've been an attorney for 51 years, and I'm the former Assistant U.S. | ||
| Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where I was Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division. | ||
| I am not now, nor have I ever been, an attorney for Donald Trump, any of his family members, or any of his businesses. | ||
| I've represented quite a number of high-profile individuals, but never Donald Trump. | ||
| During the period April 2018 to July 2018, I represented Michael Cohn. | ||
| Today, I can talk to you about what Michael Cohn told my law partner and me because Michael Cohn waived the attorney-client privilege at the request of the U.S. | ||
| Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. | ||
| The reason was, Michael Cohn had pled guilty to eight felony counts in the Southern District and was seeking to lessen his sentence. | ||
| And he thought he could be clever by going into the U.S. | ||
| Attorney's Office and lying about cooperation. | ||
| Michael Cohn went to the U.S. | ||
| Attorney's Office and accused Rudy Giuliani and myself of conspiring to obstruct justice by tampering with a witness, namely Michael Cohn. | ||
| The story, which they were floating at the time and his lawyers put out in the various newspapers, was that we had dangled a pardon under Michael Cohen's nose in order to keep him quiet so that he wouldn't testify against Donald Trump. | ||
| When I received the call from the U.S. | ||
| Attorney's Office saying, Bob, we'd like to talk to you about your representation of Michael Cohen, I said to them, can I presume that you guys are sitting there with a copy of the waiver of the attorney-client privilege? | ||
| They said, you presume correctly. | ||
| I told them to scan it over to me, and once I received it, I'd be delighted to talk to them. | ||
| And I did. | ||
| I went down to one St. | ||
| Andrew's Plaza with a lawyer who had been the chief of the criminal division when I was deputy chief, Tom Fitzpatrick. | ||
| And on the way into the office, he said to me, Bob, aren't you nervous? | ||
| I said, what for? | ||
| I'm going to tell the truth, and I have documentary evidence that corroborates me six ways from Sunday. | ||
| I said, there's nothing to be nervous about. | ||
| In fact, I said, I'll bet you $10. | ||
| I'll have these people laughing within 15 minutes. | ||
| I won the bet. | ||
| I went up and I sat with two assistant U.S. | ||
| attorneys, Tom McKay and Nick Rose, as well as two FBI agents whose names, unfortunately, I don't remember. | ||
| We had a grand old time. | ||
| I explained our entire history with Michael Cohn through emails and text messages. | ||
| I explained the many, many lies that Michael Cohn told us. | ||
| Most especially, I told them that when we first met Michael Cohen in April of 2018, keeping in mind now that I read Michael Cohen's testimony from yesterday's trial in New York on the way down on the train, and virtually every statement he made about me was another lie. | ||
| A lie that can be proven not just by me denying it, but by myself, Jeff Citron, or Rudy Giuliani, or emails, or text messages. | ||
| Virtually every statement that he made. | ||
| What he tries to do is he picks out, cherry picks, certain emails or text messages and tries to make them look like something else. | ||
| The story he told yesterday was that Rudy Giuliani and I were somehow conspiring to try and keep him quiet, to try and keep him from flipping. | ||
| That's the term we use in the trade for cooperating. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| The first day that we met with Michael Cohen, At the Regency Hotel. | ||
| At his request. | ||
| And there's email correspondence that show this. | ||
| We went up there. | ||
| I had never met Michael Cohen before. | ||
| I didn't have any idea who he was or what sort of problem he was in. | ||
| I saw this guy in a conference room at the Regency Hotel marching back and forth like a tiger in a cage. | ||
| He was absolutely manic. | ||
| He looked like he hadn't slept in four or five days. | ||
| And he kept on... He knew my partner, Jeff Citron, for 10 years. | ||
| I didn't know the guy. | ||
| He kept on pounding on the table throughout his speeches that day. | ||
| Guys, I want you to know, I will do whatever the F I have to do. | ||
| I will never spend one day in jail. | ||
| He had to say that at least 10 times, maybe 20. | ||
| It was his constant litany as he walked back and forth. | ||
| So, I said, Michael, sit down. | ||
| We need to discuss what's going on here. | ||
| He told us about the raid, that his offices had been raided, his home had been raided, and he said, I didn't do anything wrong, guys. | ||
| I don't know what they're looking for. | ||
| I said, Michael, the people in the Southern District of New York are very smart people. | ||
| They got a search warrant for a lawyer's office. | ||
| You can't do that just by going to the U.S. | ||
| Attorney. | ||
| You need to go to Maine Justice and get approval from Maine Justice. | ||
| You need to show them that you have proof that a crime has been committed and that evidence of that crime is going to exist at the site to be examined. I said, so Michael, these people think that you | ||
| did something wrong. What is it? I said, this is protected by attorney-client privilege, | ||
| and it was until he waived the attorney-client privilege. I swear to God, Bob, I didn't do | ||
| anything wrong. In fact, I'm cooperating with the special counsel. I'm cooperating | ||
| with Congress. Of course, he forgot to tell us that he lied to Congress, but that was | ||
| part and parcel of the way Michael Cohen is. | ||
| So, I sat him down and I said, look, Michael, clearly here, you're not the target. | ||
| Nobody's ever heard of Michael Cohen. | ||
| But you are the lawyer for President Trump. | ||
| And clearly, that's their target. | ||
| And let me explain to you how things work. | ||
| When they get a search warrant, they're looking to gather evidence. | ||
| They already have evidence against you for something, but you haven't told us what it is. | ||
| And they are going to roll over you. | ||
| You're just a bump in the road. | ||
| Their target is Donald Trump. | ||
| So I want you to think carefully now. | ||
| And by the way, up to this point, he had told us, when he introduced himself to us, That two nights before, he was on the roof of the hotel, of the Regency Hotel, seriously considering jumping off, committing suicide, because he couldn't handle the pressure of the legal problems that he saw coming his way. | ||
| And what he wanted to find out from us that day was his escape route. | ||
| That's what he called it. | ||
| Guys, you have to tell me what my escape route is. | ||
| What can I do to get out of this? | ||
| And I did. | ||
| My obligation as a lawyer at that point in time was to explain to him what his options were. | ||
| Clearly, one of his options was to cooperate. | ||
| And I said to him, I said, Michael, the way this works is if you have truthful information about Donald Trump, that's clearly what they're looking for, I can have all your legal problems solved by the end of the week. | ||
| His response? | ||
| I swear to God, Bob, I don't have anything on Donald Trump. | ||
| I said, Michael, I want you to think carefully about this. | ||
| I probably came back to this subject 10 or 20 times during the two hour period. | ||
| Every time I brought it up, every time he answered, I swear to God, God, excuse me, Bob, I don't have anything on Donald Trump. | ||
| I said, Michael, whatever you have Has to be truthful. | ||
| If you think you can go in there and tell these people lies, you're crazy. | ||
| It's gonna backfire on you. | ||
| You can't do that. | ||
| So do you have anything on Donald Trump? | ||
| Probably the fifth or the sixth time I got around to doing that, he said, well, I know that money is missing from the Trump inaugural ball. | ||
| I said, is Donald Trump involved in that? | ||
| No. | ||
| Does Donald Trump know anything about that? | ||
| No. | ||
| I said, Michael, that's useless. | ||
| You're not going anywhere with that. | ||
| You asked me for your escape route. | ||
| I'm telling you your escape route. | ||
| All you have to do is be truthful if you have some real evidence on Donald Trump. | ||
| His litany was the same all the time. | ||
| I don't have anything on Donald Trump. | ||
| This is exactly the opposite to what I saw him say on TV. | ||
| He was telling the grand jury in Manhattan and the district attorney's office. | ||
| He said, I went in there, I believe if my memory is correct, 20 times, including two appearances in the grand jury, 18 times preparation sessions with the DA's office. | ||
| I was sitting at home listening to this and I said, that's nonsense. | ||
| That's not what he told Jeff Citron and myself. | ||
| And I decided at that point in time, I've got to make it known to both the defense and | ||
| the prosecution what the real story is, who this guy really is. | ||
| So I provided all this material to Donald Trump's lawyers, and I provided it to the | ||
| Manhattan DA's office. | ||
| And I asked for a meeting with District Attorney Bragg, because I wanted to go in there, let | ||
| him look me in the eye, and let me explain all of the stuff that we had on Michael Cohen | ||
| that showed that he's an inveterate liar. | ||
| The guy can't be trusted. | ||
| Bragg turned me down. | ||
| But what he did say was, I'll let you have a meeting with the assistant district attorneys. | ||
| Now, when the Trump people- Mr. Castile, we need you to just- | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| When the Trump people- Finish up quickly. | ||
| Heard about all this, they insisted, as was their right under the law, that the DA put | ||
| me before the grand jury. | ||
| So I was scheduled for a Monday. | ||
| On the Friday before, I gave the DA's office the courtesy of a Zoom conference for about an hour and a half. | ||
| Eight assistant district attorneys and me on the other end. | ||
| I explained. | ||
| They didn't really ask me any questions. | ||
| They just said, what do you want to say? | ||
| Nice warm greeting for somebody who's trying to show them the right path quietly and privately so that they could correct their error before they made it. | ||
| Here's what happened. | ||
| We're gonna, we're gonna, we'll stop there, Mr. Custom. | ||
| We'll get back to you during the questions. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did I run out of my time already? | |
| Yeah, a little bit. | ||
| Yeah, a little bit. | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I had eight minutes. | |
| This says I have 1.38 to go, or is 1.38 over? | ||
| 1.38 over. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| No, that's fine. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Excuse me, Mr. Chair, point of order. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Will the witnesses all be given seven, eight minutes? | ||
| What is that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's usually five, so we didn't know that in advance to be able to call a witness. | |
| We're gonna give a little extra time. | ||
| I gave you 14 minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But she didn't have time to prepare. | |
| Eight minutes of testimony, opening statement. | ||
| She's a smart lawyer, she can probably ad-lib for a few minutes if she'd like, but that's only up to her. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'd like it to be something more than ad-lib, as we just heard. | |
| Okay, they're already knowing Bob Costello very well. | ||
| Went a little over his time, but this is going to be quite interesting. | ||
| He dropped a couple of bombs right there on Michael Cohen. | ||
| While we took it back and finished up with inflation, guess what? | ||
| Your favorite show made a big star turn in the Democrats' opening statement. | ||
| Let's go ahead and play it. | ||
| If Denver can go ahead and let it rip, I'll play its entirety and come back for some commentary. | ||
| This is just moments ago by the Democratic congresswoman, I think from the Virgin Islands. | ||
| She let it rip on her opening statement and featured the war room. | ||
| Let's go ahead and see it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And even after the embarrassment of recent hearings today, Donald Trump and his cronies don't think that the chairman is doing enough. | |
| We're here today simply because Donald Trump's sycophants have been taunting the members of this committee on the GOP side and judiciary Republicans for not doing anything tangible to defend Trump against our judicial system. | ||
| Lackies like Natalie Winters, a Trump loyalist and an executive producer for Steve Bannon's show, have been mocking Chairman Jordan's leadership of the committee openly. | ||
| As you can see up there, when the House Judiciary tweeted, imagine actually believing Michael Cohen, she retweeted and said, imagine actually believing at GOP, at Judiciary GOP will do anything about it. | ||
| Just as one example, on Monday, she put that tweet up, and then Fox's Maria Bartiroma and Steve Bannon himself have gotten into the act. | ||
| And here they are. | ||
| Why aren't you being louder about this? | ||
| Why aren't I hearing anything from this committee? | ||
| I had to just ask you about it, okay? | ||
| Just let me be clear. | ||
| Viewers are sick and tired of hearings. | ||
| They're sick and tired of letters. | ||
| They're sick and tired of hearing complaints. | ||
| They want action. | ||
| President Trump is in a trial all day long, every day in New York City. | ||
| Where is this committee of weaponization and what are you doing about it? | ||
| I just spoke with Kevin Hassett, the former chairman of the White House Economics Council, and he said, Make no mistake, if we see President Trump go to jail because he violated this gag order, markets will react. | ||
| Okay, Congressman, we're losing the country. | ||
| So, with all due respect, I'm not blaming you specifically, but it's not enough to set up a committee that's called the Weaponization of Federal Government. | ||
| That's not doing it for anybody. | ||
| We want to hear more from you. | ||
| We want to hear action. | ||
| We want to know what the heck is going on in this New York trial where nobody can seem to come up with a crime. | ||
| Well, I'll tell you what I'm specifically doing. | ||
| Okay, okay, okay. | ||
| No, I don't need to hear a backbencher. | ||
| I'm sure you're a good guy and I'm sure you're trying to do a lot, but it's not, as Maria Bartiromo says, and man, she lit him up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We all heard her. | |
| It's not enough to set up a committee just called the weaponization of the federal government. | ||
| That's not doing it. | ||
| We want action. | ||
| And that's why we're here today. | ||
| We're here at the beck and call of Trump fanatics and talking heads on cable and internet talk shows in the MAGA world who, like Bartiroma and Bannon, have goaded this committee to act. | ||
| Because the purpose of this select committee is, in fact, to be an arm of the Trump campaign and take his orders. | ||
| And yes, we know, your mad things are not going your way. | ||
| Republicans are upset because the Justice Department has determined that it must prosecute Donald Trump. | ||
| Because the allegations against President Biden amount to nothing, both at the Justice Department and even in this chamber in the House, by the very committees Republicans created to investigate President Biden. | ||
| Okay, that's a throwdown right there, and ma'am, unfortunately, you would be 1000% incorrect. | ||
| There has not been enough done, and we don't call it goading, we call it demanding. | ||
| This audience of American patriots and citizens are demanding. | ||
| Demanding a formal criminal conspiracy investigation, not by weaponization, but by judiciary. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| You guys will have a ranking member, and you will have minority counsel, and you'll be able to get all the information. | ||
| You'll be able to cross-examine witnesses, as the American congressional system set up. | ||
| Something that didn't happen on J6, and the reason nobody pays attention to J6, and your whole big push for anti-democracy and all that cratered. | ||
| Because by an 11% differential, the proxy for the American people, the kind of independent, non-affiliated Republican or Democrat voters have told pollsters by 11%, wait for it, Donald Trump is a better guarantor of our democracy than the illegitimate guy occupying, the usurper occupying 1600 Pennsylvania | ||
| Avenue. | ||
| This weaponization, Jim Trustee, the president's lawyer, is going to be up next. | ||
| We are going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| I really want to thank Real America's Voice 1 for pulling the clips, also for juggling | ||
| back and forth, and for breaking a couple of, blowing a couple of breaks here. | ||
| We're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| We're going to be back in a moment. | ||
| We've got a lot of show to get to. | ||
| We're going to be going in and out of the Weaponization Committee. | ||
| It's already getting a little heated. | ||
| If you really had a chance to listen to Bob Costello's testimony under oath and his allegations, pretty, pretty, pretty powerful for this fiasco going up in New York. | ||
| Short commercial break. | ||
| We're going to turn on Real America's Voice in just a moment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
to foster the ideal conditions for individual liberty, human success, and societal flourishing. | |
| But the system was always predicated upon the continued existence of a just and moral society, where action in the pursuit of justice and morality would counteract the worst of human ambition. | ||
| It was also predicated upon the continued existence of a federal government strong enough to do what the governed had consented to, in the Constitution, but not so omnipotent as to be able to undermine the liberties of the individuals and the states. | ||
| It was also predicated upon a recognition that the concentration of power in the hands of a few was a recipe for tyranny. | ||
| And of course, the mere existence of words on paper alone does not guarantee any individual's rights. | ||
| Rather, it has been action taken by principled people that fulfills those guarantees and secures those individual liberties. | ||
| Put differently, in America, thanks to the wisdom and foresight of our founding fathers, our Davids have always had a chance against our Goliaths. | ||
| But sadly, we live in unprecedented times, where the concentration of power in the federal government, particularly in the executive branch under President Biden's leadership, has served as the fulcrum through which other powers in society oppress the individual and undermine the foundation upon which our national success resides. | ||
| The Biden administration, and most notably the Department of Justice, appears to have embarked on a journey of political persecution of those with whom it disagrees, with the end result being the total social, economic, and political domination of the populace. | ||
| Beyond its attempts to silence and imprison its political opposition, the Biden administration has engaged in an obsessive-compulsive campaign of division and spoliation of the public fisc based on the immutable characteristics of American citizens. | ||
| Its efforts are incessant and relentless. | ||
| We live in a time in which any attempt even to describe The current state of affairs gets labeled as disinformation, misinformation, malinformation, and worthy of censorship. | ||
| Or worse, content worthy of subjecting an individual to criminal prosecution. | ||
| Memes are prosecuted. | ||
| Business leaders are subjected to intrusive investigation solely because of their outspoken views. | ||
| Actual peaceful protesters are imprisoned. | ||
| And all the while, violent and repeat criminals run free in major cities across the United States. | ||
| In this new and unprecedented world, everyone, including a former president of the United States, is threatened by the federal Leviathan and private elites who seek total domination and control over every aspect of human life. | ||
| The political persecution of President Trump by the Biden administration is unlawful. | ||
| Unprecedented and un-American. | ||
| These prosecutions must end. | ||
| But make no mistake. | ||
| The American people must understand. | ||
| The intended impact of the administration's conspiracy extends far beyond any personal consequence to President Trump. | ||
| Instead, the intended result is to chill dissent, silence speech, and convince the American people that the weight of the federal government can be forcefully weaponized against anyone who stands in the way. | ||
| President Trump is in the administration's crosshairs to discourage anyone, now or in the future, from challenging the administration's agenda. | ||
| The Biden administration must not be allowed to indict and potentially imprison its political opposition with impunity. | ||
| My written statement highlights just three glaring problems, examples of lawfare that are being used against President Trump. | ||
| Number one, the Biden White House granted an illegal special access request to allow the Department of Justice to illegally obtain access to President Trump's records. | ||
| Two, the Biden administration is prosecuting President Trump based on an erroneous and faulty interpretation of the Presidential Records Act, and actually provides individual bureaucrats with greater control over their records than President Trump. | ||
| Three, the Biden administration has weaponized a white-collar criminal statute for the first time in history to attack President Trump and others. | ||
| But there are so many more examples. | ||
| The average American citizen residing outside of the Beltway Away from the isolated, elitist bubble, where ends justifying the means seem to be a mantra for many, is tired of watching institutions they once trusted violate the law and undermine the critical components of the constitutional and social constructs that made ours the greatest country in history. | ||
| The remaining issue, then, is what must be done. | ||
| The time is now. | ||
| For institutional ambition to counteract institutional ambition. | ||
| For Americans to stand up unafraid and unapologetic for the values that they hold dear. | ||
| And for our republic to reject the radical weaponization of the executive branch. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Hamilton. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ms. | |
| Weinbanks, you are recognized. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay, we've gotten through the three. | ||
| Major Costello, trustee, and that's Gene Hamilton, one of the smartest guys around from AFPI. | ||
| We're going to be going in and out of this for the remainder of the morning, but we've got some very special guests. | ||
| We're going to get to all of that. | ||
| Jack Posobiec is going to join us in the second hour. | ||
| very special guest and very close friend of Dr. Peter Navarro will be in studio following | ||
| on Sergio Gore and of course Don Jr. coming by after they saw Dr. Navarro in prison last | ||
| week. | ||
| So we'll get to all that. | ||
| Also a lot more. | ||
| I got to make a quick stop in Minnesota. | ||
| An Islamic flag now flies above the state capital of that magnificent state. | ||
| We're going to talk to somebody about exactly how that happened. | ||
| How do we get jacked up in the morning? | ||
| How do you get focused early in the morning in the pre-dawn hours of what we're putting together? | ||
| War room? | ||
| And you just saw the power of war room. | ||
| They're blaming this weaponization committee on this audience. | ||
| You out there, because you put pressure on people. | ||
| You notified people, said, hey, we got to be doing this. | ||
| How do you do that so early in the morning? | ||
| Warpath Coffee. | ||
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unidentified
|
Over 4,000. | |
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| 90 second break. |
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