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Aug. 10, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
27:25
Two tier Justice: The FBI raid on Mar a Lago: With former Acting Atty Gen Matt Whitaker
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By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, it's Doug Collins.
We got a really breaking news episode today.
This is a special episode that we're going to be discussing what just happened yesterday at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, the raid or the investigation with the FBI into Donald Trump's Classified information that came from the White House, a lot going on with this, but could not think of a better person to sit down and talk with than my friend Matt Whitker, former Acting Attorney General, U.S. Attorney.
Going to get a lot of answers today.
So, Matt, let's just go straight into this.
Let's give people what they need.
Matt, it's glad to have you back on the podcast.
Doug, I'm always enjoying the time we spend together, and I look forward to having you on my show, Liberty and Justice, soon.
Looking forward to it.
Liberty and Justice, folks, if you've not seen Liberty and Justice, you've got to get on it.
I mean, Matt is killing it with guests and the topics they're discussing.
Great stuff as we go.
Matt, let's just go ahead and dive into it.
There's no way around this.
If you look at this, I mean, and we're still fresh into this, a lot of hot takes going on here, but, you know...
This timing, think about this.
When you were an attorney general, because number one, there's no way this could have gotten done without Chris Wray or Merrick Garland knowing about it.
What do you think the internal dynamics were that you could imagine inside DOJ with this?
Well, I think the internal dynamics are pretty clear.
There was a letter that was sent from the National Archives that there was concern about President Trump's handling of presidential records after he moved out of the White House.
And there was an attempt to, you know, resolve that with the National Archives.
And at some point in time, this letter was sent to the FBI asking to open up a criminal investigation.
And that's exactly what the FBI did.
You know, Doug, there's a lot of decisions, as you know, that were made...
In this situation, but I think the most concerning decision that was made was, and I'm sure it was approved by Chris Wray and approved by Merrick Garland as Attorney General, and that was the execution of a search warrant instead of sending a subpoena or instead of continuing to negotiate on this issue.
You know, things don't happen Unintentionally at the Department of Justice.
And so the question that is really interesting to me is why did they do it now?
What was so special about the second week in August?
I don't think that this is a situation where these documents are at risk of being destroyed.
We'll get a clearer picture when we see the warrant and what the particular documents or artifacts they're looking for.
There's some suggestion that maybe his correspondence with Kim Jong-un could be the topic of this, but we'll just have to, to some extent, wait and see.
I mean, you're right.
There's a lot of people going on TV, wildly speculating.
You know, my, I guess, you know, if I'm given a moment to wildly speculate, I guess my biggest concern is the inherent conflict that, you know, Biden administration has Is going after Donald Trump,
the former president and possibly the future president, with a statute that if convicted would prevent Donald Trump from running in 2024. I think that is the most concerning.
I think there's a lot of questions actually as to the constitutionality of that.
You know that as well as I. But I think that is, to me, an inherent conflict in this whole situation.
Well, it is.
And I think one of the things, Matt, that we look at here, and again, taking a step back here, because I mean, we're still within the first, you know, 24 hours of this thing.
And of course, a lot of things going on, a lot of people making comments.
But the interesting issue here is, you know, taking something like this investigation.
What I think a lot of people are now looking at over the past few years anyway is the difference, and you sort of touched on this a minute ago, the difference in the way these are handled.
And I think, you know, instead of this, you know, going in with 30 or 40 FBI agents at Mar-a-Lago while the, you know, former president's in New York, um, And then you compare that also to, you know, the arrest of Peter Navarro on a contempt charge, taking him out of the airport in handcuffs and taking him to a jail cell.
You go, remember the raid on Roger Stone's house.
You go to the fact that then you look at the alternative, and I believe there's a parallel here.
I'm not going to say it's an exact.
I think there's actually some more problems with this one.
And that is the handling of Hillary Clinton's emails on an unsecured server while she was Secretary of State.
And no raids, no busting into her and Bill's places.
It was all negotiated.
This is, I think, festering a possibility.
And I think the field agents and probably us attorneys are feeling this as well.
And I've heard this more than 500 times.
There's two tiers of justice going on here.
And I think that's a concern when you look at this.
It's like nobody's paying attention to that.
Yeah, Doug, and this is something that I have mentioned several times as I've spoken about this topic, is the two-tiered system of justice.
But it's also, I think, more insidious than that.
The perception and the examples that you lay out is the reality.
You know, Peter Navarro being pulled off a plane and handcuffed and arrested for a misdemeanor when he could have just been given a notice to appear.
You know, the mishandling and ultimately, you know, kind of the non-case that was Hillary Clinton's email server, which, I mean, was still underplayed, I think, for the gravity of what she was actually doing and conducting official for the gravity of what she was actually doing and conducting official business on her own, you know, email server for the sole purpose of avoiding the very act that they just executed a
at Mar-a-Lago for, you know, All of these things lead to this perception And, you know, most recently is the idea that, you know, these whistleblowers have come to Chuck Grassley and, you know, our friend Jim Jordan and said the FBI is politicizing these cases.
They downplayed, somebody described it as rat holing the, you know, Hunter Biden laptop that ultimately proved not to be Russian disinformation, like we were led to believe by not only the FBI and these secret conversations with the press, but also like we were led to believe by not only the FBI and these secret conversations with the press, but It wasn't Russian disinformation.
As you and I both know, it was Hunter Biden's laptop that contained all sorts of things, including pictures of him committing federal crimes.
And yet we now have a search warrant and a criminal investigation once again into Donald Trump.
I mean, this is, at some point in time, Donald Trump needs to be able to live his life without all of these nonsense criminal investigations that are continuing to dog him.
I agree.
This is one of the things, and you being a former U.S. attorney, former acting attorney, I mean, the crime side, this is where people are really getting frustrated, and you brought it up.
How can Hunter, and I'm just going to go straight to it, how can Hunter Biden, the pictures that have never been refuted, I think this is the interesting part, never been refuted, Of him, naked, half-naked, with prostitutes, drugs, a gun that he's not supposed to have, and yet there's, to my knowledge, I'll say that, but to most any knowledge, there's never been a raid on any of his properties, never been taken in, and never, you know...
This is, again, going back to this whole setup.
And then you brought up the very interesting point, I'm glad you did, that the very thing that Hillary Clinton was sort of, with Jim Comey, her sort of buddy there in this thing, was very much intentionally avoiding is the very thing they're trying to use to justify what they're doing to Donald Trump.
Yeah, and there's a real crisis at the Department of Justice.
Not only with their fixation in being willing to open any case against Donald Trump or anyone associated with him, but also their desire to optically...
Remember, this is an optics thing as much as anything.
There were other ways to get this information, to resolve this dispute, whatever the dispute is.
It's a little unclear as we sit here today, but there were other ways to resolve this.
So to go in with a show of force with We're good to go.
The Politico playbook this morning quoted an anonymous source saying, essentially, this is going to empower and embolden and make President Donald Trump even stronger because those that believe he is persecuted, this is an obvious and factual basis to support their belief in that.
It goes to something I've been saying for a while, and I think maybe you and I have even talked about this before.
For a conservative right now, I've said this many times, that if you're a conservative right now and you can't make the case on why you should be elected or why conservative values matter, then you just need to quit and get off the stage.
Because right now, we used to have it a long time ago, we would say Democrats wanted to take your guns, but Democrats would always skirt around it and never say it.
Now you've got Beto O'Rourke and everybody else, we're going to take your guns.
Healthcare.
Then you had Obamacare.
You know, look, you have, you know, Sanders.
You have others where they actually just say the unspoken stuff out loud now.
And this is where you're getting it, that this is just becoming when you have an agency that's perceived.
As again, going back, and I don't think we can not tie this, and you were there through this, you cannot go back and not tie this whole four-year, five-year mess together.
I mean, and it comes back to the same agency.
And how can Chris Wray say with a straight face that he's cleaned up this politicization?
It just doesn't make sense, does it?
Yeah, it doesn't.
And I, you know, read very carefully your former colleague Kevin McCarthy's statement, which essentially promised oversight hearings into this situation.
And I just thought to myself, you know, you and I first met at an oversight hearing.
In fact, it was the very first one of a new Congress.
The shoe was on the other foot at the time.
And I just want to make sure that when it happens and whoever the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, whether it's Jim Jordan or Or whether it's somebody else, how they're going to effectively get answers to these questions that we're raising right now.
Because it is going to be a crucial moment in American history.
More so than even my appearance in 2019 was.
Because this has reached, I think, a moment of crisis.
And not only a crisis for the rule of law, but really the Department of Justice generally.
Again, I... We've talked about before how much I care about the Department of Justice.
And this most recent step in the decision that was made to execute a search warrant in this moment in American history, I think our founding fathers would be rightfully very concerned about the future of our republic.
And you just made an interesting statement, Matt.
I want to take it just a step further.
And that is, you know, being a ranking member, being on these committees and understanding oversight, there is, you know, it's sort of limited, especially if you have what we'll call, unfortunately, has become adversarial positions with a Democratic, you know, administration with the DOJ and what would be a Republican Congress.
For the American people out there, and you know this as well as I do, the vast majority of FBI, DOJ is 99%.
I mean, they're tired of this.
I've talked to them, and I know you have as well.
They're just tired of this.
You're right.
How do we go back?
Because you were sitting at the top of the ladder there.
You saw some of this play out.
You've known some of these players.
Is it time just for, I mean, down to some deputy level, it's time for a refresh at the FBI, probably at DOJ as well.
And how can we encourage that to happen?
Because this has gotten seen ingrained.
Yeah, it is.
I think it's also time for Congress, quite frankly, to exert its really one lever that it has, and that is funding.
The FBI has, I think, maybe 30 agents dedicated to lobbying Congress.
They're very effective at building these relationships.
Explaining their mission, explaining how important their mission is and how they do their mission.
But when your priorities are taking people off of violent crime, international terrorism, you know, listen, we've had 50 people on terrorist watch list try to enter our country in the last year on the southern border, you know, all of these issues, Doug.
I think it's time to start having a conversation, a legitimate conversation, about funding for the FBI and their priorities.
Because, you know, they always come and then they ask for more money.
I supported, for example, them, you know, plussing up their cyber capabilities.
Seemed important.
Seems sort of, you know, forward-leaning.
But, you know, what I think they're using those resources for instead of doing the issues I just described and so many other important issues, you know, child sex trafficking and, you know, just there's a million issues, as you know, that the FBI investigates.
I think they're spending way too much time on these political cases.
For example, this one against Donald Trump, where it could have obviously been handled.
And should be being handled in a different manner.
And I think this is, you know, going back to this issue with the politicization, when we've seen it with, you know, just recently with, and this is one I didn't understand.
I hadn't had a chance to ask you about this, with the internal Chris Wright said that the gentleman had been moved for the politicization, talking about symbols and things like that.
What does it actually take to get fired?
That's become another issue here.
The American people in their normal jobs, they do something that is outside the realm or outside the world.
They're not talking about getting moved to another office down the hall.
They're talking about getting fired.
This has just gotten ingrained now, and I feel for the law enforcement officials out there, the FBI's and others, who are trying to, you know, do those investigations that you talked about.
Money probably is the issue that is the string that's going to have to be pulled here.
But on just a sort of a blunt note, Did it strike you, did it catch you off guard as much as it did with me, just the brazenness of this?
I mean, given the fact what you and I both know, I mean, I've had people who were accused of felonies that we've arranged for them to turn themselves in at the jail, okay?
The brazenness of this was kind of breathtaking, wasn't it?
It was.
It was a noise and an event that was heard around the world.
I'm really concerned that this decision that was ultimately made under the supervision of Merrick Garland That this was the way they decided to have it go down.
And so to me, not only was it intentional, but it was meant to send a message.
And the message is very loud and clear.
And that is that they're going to continue to pursue Donald Trump and try to prosecute him, even though they failed with the Russian collusion hoax.
They failed with two impeachments.
The January 6th investigation is going nowhere.
Even though both Congress and the FBI and DOJ are trying to coordinate now on that front.
And so now we have another vein.
It is a little bit of just trying to...
To dog the president, the former president, with all these investigations.
And he said it best out in Wyoming.
If I didn't have the option and the opportunity to run again in 2024, these would all go away.
This is all an intentional act to try to prevent him or make it hard for him to run in 24.
And I think that's where people are starting to see through this.
I mean, you come through everything we've been through.
There couldn't be, I mean, there's been more tumultuous times in our country, but from an institutional perspective, Matt, and I know you're a history person as well.
I was thinking about this the other day.
I'm not sure that there's been this much institutional distrust that is building.
Among many people in an organization such as DOJ, such as the FBI and others, the general public is looking at this and saying, they don't have my best interest at heart and if they can do that to him, what can they do to me?
And I think that's the concern that I'm having, you know, in looking at this.
And it's just, you know, again, when do we actually move forward with all the things that they are moving in this process?
Where do you see it going from here?
Well, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, obviously, we need to know a little bit more about what this case is and what this case isn't.
You know, as you were talking there, it just struck me, you know, sort of with, you know, ultimately, this is a handling of classified information case or a mishandling case, I guess, you know, and then a presidential archives kind of issue and a presidential records act case.
I think about all the leak investigations we had at the Department of Justice, where classified information was leaked to the media, especially the New York Times and the Washington Post, and just the lack of enthusiasm and interest that the FBI showed in those cases, and the throwing up their hands, like, oh, we narrowed it down to 100 people that had this information, so we'll just never be able to prove the case.
And at the same time, you know, obviously it was all to the detriment of the Trump administration and what we were trying to accomplish.
And, you know, this is the shoes on the other foot.
And you see with what great enthusiasm and putting 30 FBI agents on, you know, on this execution of the warrant.
And my understanding is they pulled about 30 boxes of documents out of Mar-a-Lago.
So that's one box per agent.
It's like a knife cracker, too.
Yeah, exactly.
A safe cracker that my understanding is there was nothing in the safe, even though they were very, you know, obviously they had already prepared for that.
I don't know.
I mean, some of this, I don't, you know, I just, I don't want to lampoon the...
I mean, I do believe in their mission, but they got to pull this out of the ditch and just see their own reflection in the mirror and see what message they're communicating to the American people.
Because it's going to take...
I mean, you think that the FISA controversies and the Strzok and Page and Andy McCabe and all the damage that those folks did to the FBI, I think this event...
Is even more damaging.
Well, I mean, you go back to the infamous, you know, in my mind, and I'll be a little more blunt with the gentleman who thinks he was Superman, Jim Comey.
I mean, he basically admitted to his leaking.
I mean, it was there, and yet...
You know, it's a collective, oh, who cares?
It's a shrug.
And this is the part that, you know, you can't play the moral superiority card and say, well, he did something wrong and we need to investigate.
When you're sitting there with obvious issues, and again, classified information for me, who's been in the military for 20 plus years, it's a non-intent crime.
You either did it or you didn't do it.
It's not a matter of did you intend to many times.
And this one is, you know, this one they're actually negotiating.
But with Hillary Clinton, nothing.
The Hunter Biden is the, if I was Joe Biden, I would want something done with Hunter, one way or the other, because even if it wasn't, it's, I mean, everything comes back.
How can, last question for you, the PR perception, you talk about there are 30 people on the Hill, I've talked to many of them, just like you, you know, that they sell the FBI and they sell the DOJ. Is there anybody there that could give a look and say, hey, here's the mirror.
The people are looking at you and seeing complete hypocrisy.
You've got to get this straight because we need the FBI to be the FBI. Obviously, it's got to start from the top.
It's got to be Chris Wray, and he's got to inculcate that into the organization.
From outside looking in, it doesn't seem like he's accomplished that at all.
I want to go back, Doug, and one other thing that we all should know is Bill Clinton took $300,000 worth of furniture out of the White House and moved it when he left the White House.
And who knows what documents?
There was a negotiation, obviously, for that that ended up being returned two-plus years later.
George Bush, obviously, when he left the White House, there was an ongoing negotiation about his papers and documents and what was and what wasn't.
A presidential record under the act.
And I see, again, you talk about the two-tiered system of justice.
I see that there is an inconsistency here with how Donald Trump's being treated versus other presidents.
And quite frankly, it's disgusting.
I agree.
Matt, thanks for being a part.
We're always going to be together.
We're going to keep talking about these things.
I look forward to being on with you.
And folks, if you've not checked out Matt's podcast, Matt, tell them where they can get all the information on your podcast.
Yeah, everything I'm doing is at Whitaker.tv.
Otherwise, just search for Liberty and Justice with Matt Whitaker, and you'll find it anywhere that fine podcasts are distributed, including this one that Doug has.
We got it.
Matt, thanks for the...
We're going to keep following up on this.
We'll probably talk more about it, but thanks for the real, you know, right up to the minute hot take.
You don't get any higher than where you were in understanding this, and I appreciate your insights this morning.
Folks, Matt Whitaker joining us on this really important day.
Sort of a horrendous day.
It's disgusting in many ways what has happened over the past 48 hours.
Wanted to get you the best information possible.
And that's what we do here on the Doug Collins Podcast.
Thanks.
We'll see you again soon.
Thanks, sir.
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