The Charlie Kirk Show - Durham Zeroes In on Hillary — An Update with Fmr. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe
Aired: 2022-04-19
Duration: 33:38


=== Mask Mandate Overreach (08:07) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk show, John Radcliffe, head of the Director of National Intelligence, former head of director of National Intelligence, I should say, joins us to unpack the latest Durham news and make some news on our program as well about some looming indictments.
[00:00:12]  We also talk about the mask mandate that is now repealed, that and so much more.
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[00:00:54]  We go.
[00:00:55]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:00:57]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:00:59]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:01:02]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:01:06]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:01:07]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:01:08]  His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:01:16]  We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
[00:01:25]  That's why we are here.
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[00:01:40]  Great news, everybody.
[00:01:41]  We mentioned this yesterday.
[00:01:43]  The federal mask mandate on airplanes has been overturned.
[00:01:49]  Catherine Kimball Mizel, a 35-year-old former Clarence Thomas clerk, appointed by Trump and confirmed by the Senate before the lame duck session ended, has come in and has overturned and repealed the mask mandate.
[00:02:06]  Now, the mask mandate on planes and on trains could be best described as almost like a hangover effect, if you will, a hangover effect from tyranny.
[00:02:16]  Some restrictions have been lifted, but for whatever reason, the Biden regime was still very focused that they need to have mask mandates on travel between New York and Los Angeles.
[00:02:29]  It's always been the great hypocrisy has been within airlines.
[00:02:33]  It started with a different type of hypocrisy, actually.
[00:02:36]  And not just a hypocrisy, but a double standard and an inexplicable rule that was put forward.
[00:02:42]  And it was very simple.
[00:02:43]  It was that, why could I fly from Boston to Phoenix and sit next to somebody and remove my mask and be able to have a snack next to that somebody, but the restaurants are closed in Boston and Phoenix, the two places I'm flying from?
[00:02:57]  It started in that sense, and now it's kind of changed to something even worse.
[00:03:00]  Why is it that Boston and Phoenix has in rune dining and you can eat in these places without a mask on?
[00:03:07]  You can't, you have to wear a mask on the airplane between going to those two places.
[00:03:11]  And so the airplane has always kind of been a place of controversy throughout this entire saga, if you will.
[00:03:17]  The lockdown vaccine mandate, mask mandate, the entire kind of Fauci virus, Chinese coronavirus saga.
[00:03:25]  The airplane is a place where a lot of people have, let's say, gotten very heated fights.
[00:03:30]  And they do so probably for good reason because of the double standard of enforcement of the mask mandates.
[00:03:36]  And I do have to say, I had a couple of pretty angry flight attendants throughout the last two years, but generally I have to say, flight attendants were so sweet.
[00:03:45]  They were so understanding.
[00:03:47]  They were very forgiving of even kind of jerks that were trying to defy the rule.
[00:03:52]  And I'm not saying that defying the rule makes you a jerk, but it's a dumb rule.
[00:03:57]  Okay, but if you're now going to create a set of circumstances where, you know, you're going to, what's the best way I put this?
[00:04:06]  Where you're going to try to make the entire plane have to land because of your own decision.
[00:04:11]  That's very selfish.
[00:04:12]  That's not looking out for other people.
[00:04:13]  I don't like it.
[00:04:14]  That almost happened on a plane that I was in, and thankfully it got fixed and it got kind of sorted out so the plane didn't have to get rescheduled.
[00:04:23]  Mask mandate went on for far too long.
[00:04:25]  It never should have happened in the first place.
[00:04:27]  And this is not just a win for passengers.
[00:04:31]  This is also a win for flight attendants as well.
[00:04:34]  To think about the set of circumstances that they have to live under.
[00:04:37]  Just think about the set of circumstances that they have to work under every single day.
[00:04:43]  And now they are able to work without having to basically breathe on themselves all day long.
[00:04:49]  Now, the response from the passengers have been amazing.
[00:04:53]  Let's go to Cut 33.
[00:04:54]  A pilot announces the removal of the mask mandate mid-flight play cut 33.
[00:04:59]  April 18th, the Biden administration announced that the Transportation Security Administration will no longer enforce the federal mandate requiring masks in all U.S. airports and on foreign aircraft.
[00:05:15]  Finally!
[00:05:16]  Effective immediately immediately.
[00:05:17]  Masks are optional for all airport athletes, crew members, and customers inside U.S. airports and on board aircraft.
[00:05:24]  Now, look, this is what's important, though, is that they need to at least have the physical costume, if you will, that an emergency is continuing.
[00:05:34]  90% of passengers clapped and screamed in these videos.
[00:05:37]  We can keep playing them, which really shows the pulse of the population.
[00:05:42]  Now, if the planes were filled with mask proponents, these people would have been crying.
[00:05:46]  They would have been really upset.
[00:05:47]  Now, I don't know if you know this, but you know, you could still wear a mask, even though it's not mandated.
[00:05:53]  I know that's a shocking thing for people to hear.
[00:05:55]  Do you think they work?
[00:05:56]  Then keep wearing a mask.
[00:05:58]  But look, this now shows that the emergency is over.
[00:06:01]  And to this wonderful judge, Catherine Kimball Mizel, to her great credit, she has made a decision.
[00:06:09]  And the decision was that the rule was not written correctly.
[00:06:12]  This is an overreach of the fourth branch of government.
[00:06:14]  The unelected, unchecked, unknown branch of government, the CDC, these powers must be done through the legislative branch.
[00:06:21]  It was a pure constitutional decision.
[00:06:25]  And God bless her.
[00:06:26]  She's making America a happier place.
[00:06:29]  More people are now going to enjoy their travel, suffer travel, time with their families.
[00:06:34]  I believe it will lead to, in some ways, less depressing moments when you're traveling across the country, certainly more enjoyable.
[00:06:40]  When I'm traveling now, it's going to be a lot nicer.
[00:06:42]  I'm going to Ohio next week, yeah, in a week and a half, and flying into Cincinnati from Phoenix and not going to have to wear a mask.
[00:06:50]  And I'm actually looking forward to that.
[00:06:52]  It's going to be great.
[00:06:55]  But it's less about the enjoyment.
[00:06:57]  It's less about all this.
[00:06:58]  It's more about whether or not the structure of the Constitution was actually honored, whether or not the checks and balances, the independent judiciary, is allowed to be upheld.
[00:07:08]  And right now, you are seeing the Madisonian vision still play out hundreds of years later, which is who is going to check the people that are supposed to check us?
[00:07:20]  And that's where the independent judiciary comes in.
[00:07:23]  Now, a judiciary can be easily corrupted.
[00:07:25]  There can be plenty of bad decisions that occur.
[00:07:27]  A judiciary can be misguided.
[00:07:31]  I mean, go through some of the worst decisions in American history.
[00:07:36]  I mean, Dred Scott being one of them.
[00:07:39]  One of the worst decisions ever made in American history.
[00:07:42]  So judges aren't always right.
[00:07:44]  But generally, hopefully, judges that are rooted and anchored in the Constitution, There is a possibility and an opportunity for the rule of law, for sovereignty, for individual initiative and liberty to be protected.
[00:07:59]  Here's another tape here: Cut 38, plain applause as the stewardess announces the end of the mandate.
[00:08:05]  Play Cut 38.

=== Dirty Voter Rolls Chaos (08:56) ===

[00:08:07]  And on board aircraft, if you'd like to continue wearing your mask, please feel free to do that.
[00:08:12]  We do have extras.
[00:08:12]  If you like one, first time in July, if you want to keep wearing a mask, go ahead, keep wearing one.
[00:08:23]  But for everybody else, you can do what you want.
[00:08:26]  That should have been the decision, of course, very early on.
[00:08:29]  That should not have been a controversial statement.
[00:08:33]  No, instead, we had a regime that wanted to keep the emergency use authorization going.
[00:08:41]  If there's no emergency use authorization, then vaccine companies lose their liability protection.
[00:08:48]  The good news is this: if the COVID vaccine mandates end up ending, which they are ending, not just the vaccine mandates, we'll see, but mask mandates, is that it almost makes you suspect that maybe the Democrats will try to find a new emergency before the midterms.
[00:09:04]  A very good friend of mine, I was catching up with him recently, and he asked a great question.
[00:09:09]  He said, What is going to be the emergency for the Democrats heading into November?
[00:09:12]  And I thought to myself, that's a really good question.
[00:09:14]  And they're probably going to try to create conditions for mass mail and voting again.
[00:09:19]  They're going to try to create a set of circumstances where ballots will be flying all over the place, and there will be very little to any regulation around that, which actually is a, and we're going to talk about that in the next segment.
[00:09:32]  What is the Democrats' surprise that they're going to try and deploy on the American people heading into November?
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[00:10:29]  I want to kind of speculate with you, and this is a topic that we're going to build out in the coming weeks and months, which is what are the Democrats going to try to do heading into November?
[00:10:40]  You know, as I travel the country, I get asked the question, Charlie, how do you feel about November?
[00:10:44]  And I always say, I feel fine.
[00:10:45]  Things look good as they are now.
[00:10:47]  But it would be a mistake to believe that things are going to remain the same way going into November.
[00:10:55]  It would be a mistake to believe that the Democrats are just going to give up power and kind of go into the distance and think nothing of it.
[00:11:01]  It would be a big mistake.
[00:11:03]  Instead, we need to think about what are they going to try to do?
[00:11:06]  What are they going to try to deploy that might not just change the political environment, but actually change the structure of how voting itself is done.
[00:11:17]  Now, one of those, of course, is the dependence and the surplus and the widespread distribution of mail in ballots.
[00:11:25]  Now, mail-in ballots are a catastrophe.
[00:11:28]  We, as conservatives, never should have supported mass mail and voting.
[00:11:32]  It should have always been very limited, if not at all, limited to people that cannot leave the home, to veterans, or to people that are overseas that are working overseas.
[00:11:40]  That's about it.
[00:11:41]  Instead, mass mail and voting has been part of the destruction of fair and free elections in our country.
[00:11:46]  It incentivizes mules, which we just talked about, criminals to go scoop up ballots, get paid for it, and then drop them at drop boxes or other ballot distribution areas.
[00:11:56]  Mail-in ballots really are bad not just because of mail-in ballots themselves, but because of dirty voter rolls.
[00:12:02]  When you have dirty voter rolls or voter rolls that have people that have moved or have passed away, and then they still send ballots to those people regardless of them asking for it, well, then by definition, you're going to have not just dirty voting rolls, but you're going to have the dirty distribution of ballots, and you're going to then have the prerequisite, the foundation for people then to scoop up those ballots and then do some funny business with them.
[00:12:27]  And so we need to ask ourselves the question: what are Democrats going to try to do coming into November to try and, let's say, lessen the upcoming loss?
[00:12:38]  I think they know they're going to lose.
[00:12:40]  I think they know the American people are not with them, but that doesn't mean they're just going to accept it.
[00:12:45]  And one of the things I believe they're going to try to do, and this is something to keep your eye on, is not that they're going to try to actually, you know, they're not going to, let's say, unleash something or release it, but they're going to change their messaging, I think, specifically around COVID.
[00:13:02]  I would not be surprised around July or August that you start to see Democrats start to get back into a COVID hysteria posture.
[00:13:12]  And it very well could be that they want April, May, and June and most of July to kind of be going back to how things were: a return to nostalgia, a mask-free indoor dining, let's say, malls are open-type America.
[00:13:30]  But if I were the Democrats and if I was sinister, if I was cruel, if I only cared about power and I was a naked Machiavellian, what I would do then in late July and early August is I would, as soon as a certain date hits, let's say July 20th or July 25th, when the news cycle gets very slow, I would push a button and all of a sudden I would get people fearful again.
[00:13:53]  COVID cases are on the rise.
[00:13:55]  Here's the total amount of deaths or whatever sort of metric.
[00:13:59]  Because of the abundance of metrics of the ways that we measure COVID, whether it be deaths or whether it be cases or whether it be all these things, they can find a specific number that might be accelerating, even though the general trend might be tapering, focus on that trend and make a big deal out of it.
[00:14:22]  Now, summer is usually a hyper-social time.
[00:14:26]  Summers also in the South, interestingly enough, and I can say this in particular in my now home state of Arizona, is actually where more people get sick than in the winter.
[00:14:37]  I know that might be unusual.
[00:14:38]  You say, why?
[00:14:38]  Well, you actually stay inside more because it's 125 degrees, and therefore there's more viruses that are transmitted than in February.
[00:14:46]  It's the weather's super nice and you're outside.
[00:14:48]  But if I were the Democrats around late July and August, I would try to get people really angry, not angry, I'd get them really fearful about a COVID surge.
[00:14:58]  Why?
[00:14:59]  That would give you a window to try to say, it's too dangerous to vote in person.
[00:15:03]  We need a renewal of more mass mail-in ballots.
[00:15:07]  It worked in 2020.
[00:15:09]  Why wouldn't they try it again in 2022?
[00:15:12]  I've thought long and hard about this and all the things that they could possibly try to do going into November.
[00:15:18]  Some people say, oh, they're going to try to do food shortages.
[00:15:20]  I don't think that's going to help them.
[00:15:22]  They're going to try to have mass chaos.
[00:15:24]  I don't think that's going to help them.
[00:15:26]  The only thing that could potentially help them is ballots going in every single direction, uncontrolled, in states where they do not have the infrastructure to be able to ensure integrity of those elections.
[00:15:37]  And the prerequisite for that would be a round three of COVID hysteria.
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=== Russian Campaign Effort (15:17) ===

[00:17:03]  John Ratcliffe, former head of the Director of National Intelligence.
[00:17:08]  Welcome to the program.
[00:17:09]  Charlie, great to be with you.
[00:17:11]  Great.
[00:17:11]  Well, so I want to start with this news out of Durham.
[00:17:13]  It could be a little bit confusing for people, and it can be a little bit unclear, but I want to dive right into it.
[00:17:20]  So some of the latest news shows that there's this back and forth between Sussman and Durham.
[00:17:28]  And it seems as if that Durham is trying to either grant immunity to certain people and build a case around someone that is not yet clear.
[00:17:40]  Who do we speculate that might be?
[00:17:43]  Who is Durham eventually trying to get towards?
[00:17:46]  Well, you know, based on, I guess maybe, Charlie, for your viewers and listeners, you know, sort of the backdrop to the whole Durham investigation is your folks know that, you know, before becoming the director of national intelligence, I served, you know, for six years, almost six years in the House of Representatives.
[00:18:07]  And so it was really at the tip of the spear about, you know, all of the Russia gate or Russian collusion allegations by Democrats and Adam Schiff and the media and all of that.
[00:18:20]  And then when I became DNI in early 2020, one of the first things that I did was I said, listen, now that I'm the head of the intelligence committee, I mean, the intelligence community, I want to see everything that we've got on this so-called Russian collusion.
[00:18:38]  And, you know, really, that's kind of where all of this starts.
[00:18:41]  And my relationship with John Durham, who had already been appointed special counsel there.
[00:18:46]  And, you know, I had a number of documents in the intelligence community that showed that there was no Russian collusion, but that there was fake Russian collusion.
[00:18:56]  And to remind folks what I mean by that is, you know, we had intelligence that showed that the, be careful how I say this.
[00:19:10]  We had collected good intelligence indicating who was involved in the origins of the Russiagate hoax, if you will.
[00:19:24]  And that, in fact, it was the Hillary Clinton campaign that had started these fake Russian allegations.
[00:19:32]  And that was incorporated in the CIA director John Brennan's notes.
[00:19:37]  And so one of the first things that I did, as you recall, Charlie, was I declassified those notes.
[00:19:41]  And really, I shared that intelligence and other intelligence with John Durham to allow him to get to the truth of how did this all start?
[00:19:53]  How did this investigation that became Crossfire Hurricane that then became the Mueller investigation and continued on really not just in an effort to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, but carried on throughout the Trump presidency?
[00:20:08]  You know, who was responsible for all of that?
[00:20:10]  So I know I took the long way to get there, Charlie, but I guess what I want to communicate there is I always felt that there were a lot of people responsible for what was, you know, a hoax perpetrated on the American public, intending to mislead them about Donald Trump and relations with Russians that didn't exist.
[00:20:31]  And Michael Sussman is just one of many people, you know, all the way from other folks involved with the Clinton campaign to the DNC, to independent folks like Christopher Steele, to even folks within the FBI that perpetuated what they knew to be a false narrative for some period of time.
[00:20:52]  And so, you know, I've said this before.
[00:20:54]  I expect there to be a lot of lot more indictments to be forthcoming from John Durham besides the ones that have trickled out so far.
[00:21:01]  And that's based upon documents, some of which, many of which are still not yet declassified.
[00:21:08]  That's really helpful.
[00:21:09]  I'm glad you took the longer way to set that up.
[00:21:12]  And so I want to just, I want to ask you your thoughts here about the five people involved with the Clinton campaign taking the fifth.
[00:21:20]  Now, taking the fifth does not mean that you are guilty.
[00:21:23]  We're not going to do that on the show where the media acts as if that you're automatically guilty.
[00:21:28]  But when five people who take the fifth, first of all, the media, if that was anything around Trump's orbit, they would lose their mind.
[00:21:35]  What do you think the motivation is behind that?
[00:21:38]  What do you think that speaks to?
[00:21:40]  Is there anything to that?
[00:21:41]  Or are they just being extra careful to try to stay away from the prosecutor's snare, if you will?
[00:21:49]  Well, cases like this are difficult to prove.
[00:21:52]  And so, I'm sure in some instances, someone would exercise the fifth because, you know, why help the prosecutor?
[00:22:01]  These are the elements that he or she's going to have to prove.
[00:22:05]  And when it comes to me, there's nothing there.
[00:22:08]  So, you know, the more I talk, the more trouble I get into.
[00:22:14]  That may be the approach of some of the folks that John Durham wants to speak with.
[00:22:20]  But there are other folks, Charlie, that very clearly have exercised their Fifth Amendment rights because their prior testimony jeopardizes them.
[00:22:30]  So let me give you a specific example.
[00:22:33]  When I was in the House as a member of the Judiciary Committee, one of the folks that I interviewed was Bruce Orr, number four at the Department of Justice at the time, who was meeting with Christopher Steele and who testified under oath to me that he met with Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS in August of 2016.
[00:22:56]  Now, think about the timeframe.
[00:22:57]  Several months before the election, he said, I met with Glenn Simpson and Glenn Simpson handed me a thumb drive and on that was aspects of the Steele dossier.
[00:23:08]  So that's his sworn testimony.
[00:23:09]  That's public testimony.
[00:23:10]  So now I can talk about that.
[00:23:12]  The problem for Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS, who was hired by the Clinton campaign or by the Perkins-Cooey law firm, is he had testified previously to the House Intelligence Committee that he never met Glenn, that he never met Bruce Orr until sometime after the election in November of 2016.
[00:23:32]  So very clearly, two people are giving different testimony under oath.
[00:23:37]  One of them, only one of them, can be telling the truth about that.
[00:23:40]  And one of them obviously has misled federal investigators and committed a crime.
[00:23:45]  So that's a specific example of why some folks are exercising their Fifth Amendment rights is because they are in real legal jeopardy based on the facts that have come out.
[00:23:56]  And I think it's important for our audience to realize.
[00:23:58]  By the way.
[00:23:59]  This was an unprecedented.
[00:24:01]  Yes, please.
[00:24:02]  All I was going to say about this, Charlie, was, you know, that was one of the conversations that I had with John Durham when I was the DNI as I shared intelligence community documents that he didn't have and the information that I had to, again, bring about accountability.
[00:24:21]  And so we talked about the kinds of folks and the kinds of things that not only did I have suspicions from when I was in Congress and testimony, but then based on actual documents that I had and I was able to provide to him, said, look, this just doesn't add up.
[00:24:36]  And you need to find out the answers.
[00:24:39]  And so that's what I expect.
[00:24:41]  And that's why I've been hopeful that ultimately John Durham will get to those truths.
[00:24:47]  And so we know that insiders with top secret security clearances accessed the White House computers looking for dirt on Trump and then distributed that information amongst Hillary Clinton surrogates.
[00:25:01]  These surrogates did not have a security clearance.
[00:25:04]  I don't want to jump to any conclusions here, but what crimes could potentially be violated in that sense?
[00:25:09]  And have we ever seen anything like this before, where a private contractor who's been given a secret security clearance is then spying on web activity of the executive branch of the United States?
[00:25:22]  No, not that I'm aware of.
[00:25:24]  And to the answer to the crimes, I mean, just the disclosure of highly sensitive, classified information is a crime in and of itself.
[00:25:36]  It's one of the things that's really at the foundation of why we have clearances and what the intelligence community is supposed to be about, why you only have access to documents that are supposed to be in secure places, to be viewed in SCIFs, because they contain national security secrets, if you will, or things that could cause grave or exceptional harm to our national security posture.
[00:26:01]  And that's why there are those crimes that are structured around both the access to or the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
[00:26:11]  And the people have gone through the appropriate backgrounds and clearances to have access to that.
[00:26:16]  And as you've described accurately, Charlie, very clearly, that didn't happen in this case.
[00:26:23]  And there are folks that had access to classified information that didn't have the clearances to see that and saw it in places that were not secure.
[00:26:32]  So again, those are things that I would expect that John Durham's investigation ultimately, as he looks at Mr. Jaffe and others and that activity surrounding Michael Sussman and others.
[00:26:48]  But it's much larger than just those few things, Charlie.
[00:26:52]  I mean, I think that the, you know, for lack of a better term, the coordinated effort here that took place in 2016 was wide and broad.
[00:27:06]  I think it involved folks in the Clinton campaign, in the Democratic National Party, elected officials, media officials, folks that coordinated intelligence community officials and on down the line.
[00:27:20]  I'm not saying that every single one of those folks have criminal liability or exposure.
[00:27:27]  I'm just saying this was a very coordinated effort.
[00:27:30]  And the more and more the public finds out about some of the things that I've seen that remain classified, they'll be more and more appalled by those efforts in 2016.
[00:27:41]  I just want to reinforce this.
[00:27:43]  You said that you expect many more indictments based on documents not yet declassified.
[00:27:48]  What I have so much respect for is that you're not one of these people that is trying to leak and get ahead of it.
[00:27:54]  You have a heart for justice, and you say, let the process play out.
[00:27:58]  And you very easily could tell us more.
[00:28:00]  But I want to try to push back against even some of the conservative skeptics where they say, Charlie, move on from this story.
[00:28:06]  It's not a big deal.
[00:28:07]  I want to talk about how if we do not hold people accountable and expose this, then the structure of our government as we know it no longer exists.
[00:28:15]  That this is a fight for the structure of the Constitution, for the promise of citizen government, for the consent of the governed and checks and balances.
[00:28:23]  That if we don't get this right, then a political candidate will be able to use any sort of law enforcement apparatus in the future to be able to get their wishes.
[00:28:31]  Thankfully, it didn't work.
[00:28:32]  So let me ask you this.
[00:28:34]  Based on what you're saying, and you're leaving some crumbs here, and I know you have to be careful because you take your classified briefings very seriously.
[00:28:43]  Is it possible that we're talking about the word coup could be used, or the big T word is sometimes used to take down a duly elected president?
[00:28:56]  I know that this is going to take some speculation, but just help us out here.
[00:29:00]  How big of an operation, how serious of an operation are we talking about here?
[00:29:04]  This is beyond just paperwork or lying to federal agents.
[00:29:07]  Am I right?
[00:29:09]  Right.
[00:29:10]  Well, the best way I would describe it is it was a coordinated political effort.
[00:29:14]  And I think different people involved had different motivations.
[00:29:17]  But at the end of the day, it was to influence the outcome of a presidential election.
[00:29:25]  And in 2016, they were unsuccessful in ultimately changing the will of the people and the outcome of that election.
[00:29:36]  But to your point before, Charlie, and your question about why does it matter, is if there isn't accountability, it happens again.
[00:29:42]  And that's exactly what happened in 2020.
[00:29:45]  So some of the same people that we've talked about, let me just, example, Adam Schiff, the head of the, you know, the Democratic head of the intelligence committee in the House.
[00:29:57]  In 2016, he was one of the ones advocating that there couldn't possibly have been FISA abuse to spy on the Trump campaign that was wrong.
[00:30:05]  He was one of the folks that said, I have evidence of more than circumstantial evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
[00:30:14]  Of course, none of that was true.
[00:30:16]  So fast forward to 2020, he's one of the folks that perpetrated, when we talk about election influence, it was the Hunter Biden laptop.
[00:30:27]  So to remind folks, the story there, the New York Post breaks the Hunter Biden laptop story on October 15th.
[00:30:34]  The very next day, October 16th, Adam Schiff is out saying, this is a smear campaign by the Kremlin.
[00:30:41]  I have intelligence that this is a Russian disinformation campaign.
[00:30:44]  Now, Charlie, as I heard that on October 16, 2020, as the head of the intelligence community, I knew that that wasn't true.
[00:30:51]  I knew that Adam Schiff couldn't have any intelligence because the only intelligence he would get would be intelligence I would share with him as the head of the intelligence community, and none existed.
[00:31:01]  So I came out on October 18th on Fox and did an interview and said, this isn't Russian disinformation.
[00:31:09]  And that was backed up by the Department of Justice and the FBI who came out the next day and said, we concur with Director Redcliffe.
[00:31:14]  This isn't Russian disinformation.
[00:31:16]  The problem is, as you know, Charlie, instead, what happened was a coordinated effort by 50 former national security officials who, notwithstanding the head of the intelligence community, the head of the Department of Justice, and the head of the FBI all said this is not Russian disinformation, put out a letter that said, we think this is Russian disinformation, and the media ran with it.
[00:31:39]  So, you know, you've probably seen some recent interviews with Bill Barr as he's taking his book tour.
[00:31:44]  And he's talked about this saying, look, I was dumbfounded that the media didn't cover this.
[00:31:48]  And absolutely, it had an impact on the election.
[00:31:50]  Now, none of us can say how many votes and in what states, but that was a concerted political effort to mislead the American people and influence the outcome.
[00:32:01]  And it's by some of the same folks that tried to do that in 2016.
[00:32:04]  So, you know, that is, you know, that's sort of the big picture and why it's important.
[00:32:11]  Back to your seminal question about why it's important that there'll be accountability.
[00:32:15]  Why is it important that we hold people and get justice in the end?

=== Restoring Institutional Trust (01:17) ===

[00:32:20]  Because Americans' faith and trust in these institutions that we grew up admiring.
[00:32:26]  We grew up admiring FBI agents and thinking they were the good guys.
[00:32:30]  And so many Americans have now had their viewpoints turned on its head because of what they've seen and the lack of accountability.
[00:32:37]  And if we don't get back to that, those institutions that are there for, that were there supposedly to protect values like fidelity and bravery and integrity, no one buys that if these things go unaccounted for.
[00:32:54]  That's really well said.
[00:32:56]  I don't trust anything that these institutions do anymore.
[00:32:58]  In fact, it's the opposite of trust.
[00:33:00]  I distrust them.
[00:33:01]  And that's sad.
[00:33:02]  I wish I did trust them because that's not good for the country.
[00:33:05]  And their willingness to cover it up and to smear and to slander is reprehensible.
[00:33:12]  John Ratcliffe, former head of the Director of National Intelligence, a great patriot.
[00:33:16]  Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:33:17]  Terrific.
[00:33:17]  You bet, Charlie.
[00:33:18]  Anytime.
[00:33:19]  Thanks.
[00:33:19]  Thanks for having me.
[00:33:20]  Thank you.
[00:33:21]  Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
[00:33:23]  Email us your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:33:26]  And if you want to support our show, go to charliekirk.com slash support.
[00:33:29]  Thank you so much for listening.
[00:33:30]  God bless.
[00:33:34]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.