Andrew Clavin argues Democrats—from Keith Ellison to AOC—undermine U.S. stability by aligning with Putin’s chaos, citing socialist policies and election interference risks like Maria Buttina’s case. Congressman Matt Gates counters Mueller’s indictments as legally risky, exposing U.S. intel methods, while Peter Strzok’s testimony reveals the FBI’s reliance on the discredited Steele dossier via Fusion GPS ties. Clavin frames Mueller’s team as biased, with unanswered questions about pre-July 31 probes and potential Obama-era payments, warning a Democratic House could weaponize his report for impeachment. The episode ends by tying these failures to Putin’s long-term gains over U.S. division. [Automatically generated summary]
After a big news week, CNN has decided to hire a few more people in their latest attempt to make their staff as big as their audience.
One position that CNN is advertising is vice president in charge of Google-eyed hysteria.
This is an on-air spot, so it's available only to white women, homosexual men, and the relatives of major Democrats with IQs and low double digits.
The vice president in charge of Google-eyed hysteria has the responsibility of setting his hair on fire and running into camera shot, screaming like a lunatic every time Donald Trump says or does anything that involves Russia, immigration, the Supreme Court, or something that can be somehow construed to have an adverse effect on black people.
Qualifications for this position include the ability to make a high-pitched warbling sound while simultaneously turning his circles with flames shooting out of your head.
CNN hopes that hiring a vice president of Google-eyed hysteria will lessen the workload on Don Lemon, who now will only be expected to look solemnly into camera while saying, stop, please stop, over and over.
Please stop it.
Please stop.
Another position that CNN will soon fill is on-the-scene screamer of stupid questions at public officials.
Since White House correspondent Jim, look at me, I'm Jim Acosta, cannot physically be in two places at the same time.
In fact, he can't mentally be in even one place at the same time.
The new on-the-scene screamer of stupid questions at public officials will be tasked with drawing attention to himself for no apparent reason at locations which Acosta either can't reach or which he has reached and is now just standing there staring into space, wondering why no one gives a damn.
The on-the-scene screamer will also do occasional live spots on Wolf Blitzer's show, where he'll say something angry sounding while seeming to think someone is paying attention.
Finally, CNN will also be advertising for a new curvaceous and yet vaguely serious looking white woman.
Cohen's Borat Promo00:07:38
There are only three requirements for this position.
I forget the third one.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Birds are winging, also singing hunky-dunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped dipsy-topsy, no one does it bitty-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hooray, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, the last day of the Clavin week and the Clavenless weekend beckons to us like a dark pit filled with fire and disaster.
But hey, you got 45 more minutes.
We have a terrific interview with Congressman Matt Gates.
I really thought it was an interesting, substantive interview.
Maybe even newsmaking.
I don't know.
We'll see.
Really interesting.
We will stay on and let you listen to that, even if you're just on Facebook or YouTube.
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So there's been something I've been wanting to talk about all week, but it's been so crazy with all the news that I haven't really gotten around to it.
But I want to talk about it today because it actually is symbolic of what's been happening all week.
It is a good way to get into the theme of what's been happening all week, which is this new show from Sasha Baron Cohen.
Now, I don't like Cohen.
I think I have said this since Borat.
I wrote a piece for PJ Media about this when Borat came out.
And I said this on the conversation the other day.
He's a funny, talented man, and what he does is wrong.
And that is something that, you know, we really have to understand that that's possible.
Like Eminem, a talented writer of songs who writes songs that are ugly and disgusting and encourage people who don't know any better to have really bad attitudes toward women, the police, you know, it is possible to be incredibly cool and incredibly bad.
And you cannot succumb to the tyranny of cool.
When I wrote this piece about Cohen, about Borat for PJ Media, I got all this blowback from people saying, no, no, you don't understand.
He's funny.
I know he's funny.
I can see he's funny.
But when you take a camera crew to ordinary people and trick them into making fun of themselves, it is such an imbalance of power.
You have all that power of movie making, of audience, and they've got nothing, and it's easy to make fun of people.
I have seen him make fun of police trainers, guys who train police, making fun of them.
I've seen them make fun of a woman who taught people how to have good manners, you know, just ridiculing her and making her embarrassed on camera and then putting that on camera to make fun of her.
That is such an abuse of power.
I really believe it started with David Letterman.
I don't have any problem with a guy going out and asking questions of people and the people don't know the answers and that's kind of funny.
That's one thing.
They know what they're getting into.
They can walk away if they want to.
But to pretend you're somebody you're not and lead them into making fun of themselves is just wrong.
It is an abuse of the power of show business and show business has tremendous power.
So he's got a new show out.
And of course, it's called Who is America?
And he's British, by the way.
So this is this guy from overseas attacking us.
And it's always directed against middle America.
He just thinks Middle America is the stupidest thing ever and a lot of attacks on gun rights.
And so here's a cut of the promo.
This is Showtime.
The show did have its debut.
It didn't do very well in the immediate ratings, but I think with the streaming and all that stuff, it did fine.
I find this incredibly anti-Semitic, typical Jewish anti-Semitism.
He pretends to be a Israeli guy trying to sell to people the idea that children as young as three should be armed, which is funny, you know, and these guys are public officials, so maybe it's not quite as bad as doing ordinary people.
But still, I found this incredibly anti-Semitic.
Here it is.
Yes.
It's sugar.
It is.
We start a program in Israel for kindergartens.
Okay.
We train them from the age 16 down to the age 3.
Yeah, well, I think it would be a good idea.
We've been pushing something along this line for years, but really haven't gotten any traction with it.
We were thinking seventh or eighth grade.
You're talking much younger than that.
My son was in the very first program.
May he rest in peace.
He died doing what I love.
Yeah, they haven't quite developed what we call conscience, where you feel guilty about doing something wrong.
That's developing.
You're learning right and wrong.
If they haven't developed that yet, they could be very effective soldiers.
It's genuinely funny.
I'm not denying it.
He is a talented, funny guy.
He did get caught.
I just want to play this part just because I got a kick out of it.
Nora Sweden, a California gun owner, spotted him when he came in.
And here's a report on that.
He comes in off the bat.
You can see the video.
I'm looking.
I'm like, this guy does not look like a Hungarian immigrant.
Tight leather pants, a beard.
It just didn't fit.
But he says it's what Cohen said after that handshake that really blew his cover.
Like that, talking like that.
And I just kept looking at the guy and I was like, you're borat.
As soon as I said that, his eyes just looked at me like, and he did a B-turn right out the door.
Sweden says the video shows Cohen bailing on his crew after he gets called out.
So then he turns to question the producer.
We're talking to the people.
Brennan's Exit00:09:42
They don't want to give us that answer.
We basically told him, get the f ⁇ out.
You know, you guys are all full of.
Have a great day.
Get out.
That's also funny.
I said he was a California gun owner.
He's a gun store owner.
The guy came into the gun store.
I love the fact that he ditched his crew.
I would rob, I would never leave you by.
I put you in front of me, and so I wouldn't get hit, but I would never leave you by.
So here is the thing.
It's funny.
There are stupid Republicans, and you can get people to say stupid things on camera when they're trying to be nice to you.
They're trying to be polite.
You know, people are always trying to adjust to you so that it's easy to kind of lure them in to this thing.
And you can get people to say stupid things.
But you don't have to fool the Democrats to say stupid things.
See, this is the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.
You can find stupid Republicans.
A lot of times you find them online on the comment section and stuff like that.
But the Democrats, what they believe is stupid.
This is the party of, you know, it's a party of socialism.
It's the party of abortion.
It's the party that is supporting a corrupt, deep state attacking our elected officials.
This is the party who, where this, you know, the central premise, the central premise of this party is they're in charge.
The government is charged.
The government will take care of you, but they get to tell you what to do.
It is completely antithetical to America.
So my point about this is, yeah, yeah, you can make fun of us.
You can make fun of Donald Trump when he makes a mistake in Helsinki.
I think he did make a mistake in Helsinki.
But who is doing Putin's business?
Who is helping Putin out?
What does Putin want?
Putin, and he's been, you gotta say, Putin has been incredibly successful.
You want to talk about when Trump called Kim Jong-un a talented leader?
Vladimir Putin is a talented killer.
He is a talented gangster.
And we'll get to this in just a minute.
But first, we have to talk about software advice.
And the thing I love about software advice is you say, what does software advice does?
It gives advice about software.
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And the first question you want to ask him is, how do you spell Clavin?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
There are no E's in Clavin.
I just make it look that way.
All right.
So here's the thing.
Who is doing Putin's business?
Putin wants to divide us.
He wants our government mixed up and arguing and screaming at one another.
He wants to make hot button issues even hotter.
Who is doing that business?
Trump has now adjusted his message, right?
He did an interview with CBS and he's now saying, oh, yes, I get it.
You know, I trust the intelligence people.
And Putin did, in fact, hack our election.
So this is cut number 13.
You say you agree with U.S. intelligence that Russia meddled in the election in 2016.
Yeah, and I've said that before, Jeff.
I have said that numerous times before.
And I would say that that is true, yeah.
But you haven't condemned Putin specifically.
Do you hold him personally responsible?
Well, I would, because he's in charge of the country, just like I consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in this country.
So certainly, as the leader of a country, you would have to hold him responsible, yes.
What'd you say to him?
Very strong on the fact that we can't have meddling.
We can't have any of that now.
Look, we're also living in a grown-up world.
Will a strong statement, you know, President Obama supposedly made a strong statement.
Nobody heard it.
What they did hear is the statement he made to Putin's very close friend.
And that statement was not acceptable.
It didn't get very much play, relatively speaking, but that statement was not acceptable.
But I let him know we can't have this.
We're not going to have it.
And that's the way it's going to be.
So did he say that with Putin?
I have no idea whether he actually said that with Putin, but at least he's got the message right now, okay?
So who is doing Putin's business?
Is it Donald Trump for making the same mistake that Obama made?
And he referenced that thing with Dmitry Medvedev, where Obama said, oh, yeah, I'll have more flexibility after the election.
We can take out the missiles.
We won't have to put missiles into Europe, which he actually didn't do.
He actually followed up on that and came through.
That was considered a kind of momentary gaffe, a little bit of a blip in Obama's brilliance.
Trump essentially makes a momentary gaffe and it's Armageddon.
What serves Putin more?
Us deciding that every time Trump opens his mouth, it's Armageddon?
Or Trump saying this?
Now, Trump goes on in this interview to point out that his accusation that the deep state has been corrupted, the Department of Justice and our intelligence services have been corrupted by Barack Obama and just deep state arrogance to come after him.
It is a fair point, and he is still making it in this CBS interview.
That's the next cut.
Do you think any intelligence agencies, U.S. intelligence agencies, are out to get you?
Well, certainly in the past, it's been terrible.
You look at Brennan, you look at Clapper, you look at Hayden, you look at Comey, you look at McCabe, you look at Strzok and his lover, Lisa Page, you look at other people in the FBI that have been fired, that are no longer there.
Certainly, I can't have any confidence in the past, but I can have a lot of confidence in the present and the future because it's getting to be now where we're putting our people in.
But in the past, no, I have no confidence in a guy like Brennan.
I think he's a total lowlife.
I have no confidence in Clapper.
You know, Clapper wrote me a beautiful letter when I first went to office, and it was really nice.
And then all of a sudden he's gone haywire because they got to him and they probably got him to say things that maybe he doesn't even mean.
Well, he's talking about John Brennan, the former communist and CIA director and current pompous gas bag, who tweeted out that Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises and exceeds the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors.
It was nothing short of treasonous, which helps Putin more.
You know, Trump making a gaffe at Helsinki or tweeting that the president is committing treason, which makes Putin laugh.
You think about it for a minute.
Who is serving Putin more?
Certainly Clapper, when Clapper falsely claimed that there was no evidence that the NSA was spying on us, when he leaked the anti-Trump dossier to Jake Tapper and then convinced, what did he do?
He sent Comey in to talk to Trump and then leaked that to CNN.
What is causing more division?
What is causing more division?
Here is Rand Paul, who is no, he's no Trump slave by any stretch of the imagination.
Here's Rand Paul talking about John Brennan.
You know, John Brennan started out his adulthood by voting for the Communist Party presidential candidate.
He's now ending his career by showing himself to be the most biased, bigoted, over-the-top, hyperbolic, sort of unhinged director of the CIA we've ever had.
And really, it's an insult to everything about our government to have a former head of the CIA calling the president treasonous just because he doesn't like him.
But realize that Brennan, you know, I filibustered Brennan.
I tried to keep Brennan from ever being the leader of the CIA, but realize that Brennan and Clapper are known for wanting to expand the authority of the intelligence agencies to grab up everyone's information, including Americans.
And so I don't have a lot of respect for these people.
Even before they decided to go on hating the president, I disliked these people because they wanted to grab up so much power and use it against the American people.
And they have, and they've used it against the choice of the American people.
It was Donald Trump.
He was duly elected president of the United States, and they've done nothing but try to undercut and delegitimize his presidency.
And so has the media, and so have the Democrats.
And what serves Putin more?
What serves Putin more than that?
By the way, I have to mention, you know, I mentioned that I met this woman, Maria Buttina, who's now been arrested, charged with being a Russian spy.
And I mentioned that I met her at this David Horowitz event several years ago, and she was walking around in this very slinky dress, and later I saw her in a almost non-existent bikini.
And the guy who was leading her around, I'm not going to mention his name, but he was a guy, you know, who shows up at these things, a conservative guy.
And I'm such a naive, or let's put it this way, my mind is so much in the gutter that all I was thinking about is that she was trying to pick up a rich American husband.
It never occurred to me that she might be a spy.
And of course, I have no secrets to share except how to write a really effective action scene.
You know, I thought I'd have turned that secret over to her in a minute.
But what was really funny was she's charged that the guy who was with her, when I saw the guy who was with her, I thought, man, he thinks she's going to sleep with him.
Strzok Hearing Controversy00:15:11
That's why he's doing this.
And sure enough, they now charge that they were living together, which I think just makes me feel a little bit better about myself.
At least I wasn't a complete naive.
Anyway, you know, all of this stuff, the Democratic Party, what does it represent?
Who is in it?
You know, it's Keith Ellison.
Yesterday, you know, how that Arkasio Cortez came out with this stupid, every word out of her mouth is like stupider than the last word that came out.
If she stops talking, she would just get smarter, but every word she says is dumber than less.
So she wants to abolish ICE.
And the Democrats will now jump on anything, any stupid idea that somebody who has some popularity has.
They say, yeah, abolish ICE.
We got to abolish ICE.
So in the House, the Republicans said, okay, let's see, let's put your money where your mouth is.
They put a non-binding resolution to support ICE, to support the law enforcement work of ICE.
And I think 133 Democrats voted present.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
These guys, and then they were saying, well, that's not fair.
You're making us vote.
You're making us put our money where our mouth is.
We just wanted to scream without going on record.
And they screamed, but there's still children being separated at the border.
These are the people who hate the police.
They hate ICE.
They hate our borders.
Keith Ellison, one of them, their congressman, he is saying that borders themselves are, it's just not fair that we have borders.
This is cut number 11.
They allow capital to travel over borders.
And all capital is, is people who happen to own something we call a corporation, which is a legal arrangement which gives them special rights.
And labor, which is a regular person, cannot travel back and forth across the border.
And so corporations, certain people who get certain rights, can go back and forth across the border seeking out the lowest wages.
But people, regular people, cannot go back and forth across the border seeking out the highest wages.
So what it creates is an imbalance.
It creates an injustice.
I mean, why is that nonsense?
Because American corporations can go out across the border.
American workers can go somewhere else for better pay.
American workers can go to another country for better pay.
What we're saying is you can't come here and become an America.
In San Francisco, they began registering non-citizens, including illegal immigrants, to register to vote in the November election for the city school board after passage of a 2016 ballot measure by San Francisco.
I mean, this is a beautiful city now covered in homeless crap, and the crap from homeless people.
It's a lawless city.
It's a dangerous city.
It's an ugly city that used to be beautiful because of the left.
And now they're letting illegal aliens vote in school board meetings.
This is who they are.
You know, these are the dealers with Iran who sent them cash on pallets in the middle of the night.
These are the people who let Russia back into the Middle East in Syria.
Donald Trump made a mistake.
Who serves Putin's purposes most?
Who does it?
It is definitely the Democrats, and it is who they are.
You know, I got to play this clip.
This is an English clip, Channel 4.
Just ordinary voters.
I was on the BBC once.
These people only have me once, because once they hear what I'm saying, they only let me on one time.
And they had this thing where a BBC reporter went into Appalachia and interviewed a poor person about why she doesn't like Barack Obama with all the wonderful programs she does.
And the woman said to her, you know, honey, you can't spend your way out of debt.
I said to the BBC guy, that woman probably doesn't have a college education.
She is a better economist than your reporter.
You wonder why the BBC never had me back.
But that's why.
So here you can hear the shock in the British reporter as these Trump voters speak with perfect common sense in the light of the Democrats' craziness.
President Trump's being called a traitor.
I wonder how you feel about that.
Honestly, we laugh out loud when we hear it.
We're like, what?
What are we hearing?
We're on the brink of war?
No, you know, a President Trump's meeting.
The public expects nothing less from the swamp in D.C. and their cronies and the media.
It was a one-hour press conference after a two-hour private meeting.
We have no idea what happened in the private meeting.
It was a one-hour press conference and I'm supposed to change my opinion about a president that's doing all kinds of amazingly positive things because of a one-hour press conference.
It's the swamp screaming.
It's the swamping chicken little.
The sky's falling in.
And the American people are getting tired of it.
But you've got Republicans pedicizing presidents.
are never Trumpers.
And you know what?
We love when Trump is Trump because it exposes them and we love that.
We love seeing it.
We can focus on what Trump says in a press conference or we can focus on what he actually does.
And he's put people back to work.
Record low unemployment for Hispanics, for African Americans, record high employment for the whole country.
Look at what he does.
It's really, it speaks to middle America.
And the swamp may not like it, but they don't like it.
And that's why they're screaming pretty loud.
See, you know, I have not said that Trump was right.
I think that Trump not only is wrong in what he did in Helsinki, what he said in Helsinki, he is wrong in his attitude toward Putin.
There's no deal to be made with a gangster who wants to wipe you off the face of the earth.
You can make a deal with a gangster who wants something from you, who's like a leech who wants to suck blood out of you because the leech doesn't want to kill the host.
But if the gangster just wants to wipe you out, which is what Putin wants, he wants to be czar of Russia and he wants Russia to crush the competition, which is us.
I don't think there's a deal to be made there.
And I think Trump is wrong.
I think he is in the wrong in his approach, in his approach to Putin.
He's not wrong in his approach to Russia.
He's been very tough on Russia in terms of his deeds, but he's wrong in his approach to Putin.
But how can we even discuss, how can we even begin to discuss the right and wrong of what Trump is doing in a calm, rational manner if the opposition party is the party of socialism, the party of abortion, the party of madness, screaming at everything he says.
You know, the thing is, I did like the part in that where they said we like Donald Trump being Donald Trump.
I'm reminded always of a wonderful old Errol Flynn movie called The Adventures of Don Juan.
And you remember Don Juan, obviously, was the great lover.
And at the end of the movie, in one of those great moments in the 40s, 50s movies where the guy stepped essentially out of the screen, Errol Flynn turns to Alan Hale, I believe it is, and he says, there's a little bit of Don Juan in every man.
And since I am Don Juan, there must be more of it in me.
And that's what I think about Donald Trump when I see him.
You know, there's a little bit of Donald Trump in all every man.
And since he is Donald Trump, there's going to be more of it of him for good and ill.
But all I'm saying is the Democrats serve Putin's purposes more by keeping this hysteria going over Russian collusion, which I do not believe existed, and just keeping the hysteria level and the anti-Trump level at such a high pitch.
That is what Putin wants.
Putin doesn't care whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is president.
He doesn't give a rat which one of them is president as long as he can create the kind of chaos that the Democrats, more than Trump, are helping him create.
All right, we've got this wonderful interview with Matt Gates, and we will stay on, but that is a good reason for you to feel incredibly guilty and go over to thedailywire.com and subscribe.
Matt Gates, of course, is a member of the 115th Congress and serves on the Budget, Armed Services, and Judiciary Committees.
His work in Congress focuses on national security, tax reform, regulatory reform, and adherence to constitutional principles.
He has been a big Trump supporter and a big investigator of the investigation into collusion.
He speaks about it, I thought, with incredible candor and depth here.
And here is the interview.
Congressman, thanks so much for coming on.
I appreciate it.
Honored to be with you.
Well, let's begin with the Helsinki summit and especially the press conference.
Absolute hysteria and craziness.
What was your reaction to what you saw?
Well, I wish there would have been more focus on the positive interactions in the areas of nonproliferation and anti-terrorism.
I think that the United States and Russia have a variety of common interests there.
There is no mechanism by which we can sufficiently leverage North Korea and Iran in the absence of some semblance of cooperation with Russia.
That said, Russia is not our friend.
Russia is a competitor.
They engage in a malign influence campaign all over the world where they disrupt elections.
And I think that the president likely was better in the private context than in the public context on some of those questions.
I think that we've got to maintain better resiliency in our country.
I think at the state and local level, a lot of work is being done to ensure that we are more resilient with our election systems.
And I think we can anticipate further foreign attempts at influence going forward in 2018 and 2020 and beyond.
You're a very firm Trump supporter.
Are you confident that he understands who Vladimir Putin is?
I mean, the guy is pretty much a gangster, right?
Yeah, no, I mean, look, the seminal moment in Putin's life is when he's a KGB agent and he, you know, and in East Germany, the Berlin Wall falls.
Germans surround where he is, and he's afraid they're all going to kill him.
And so he walks out and says that there are 100 KGB agents inside with guns pointed at everyone.
And if they wanted to escape with their lives, they needed to go home.
And so that kind of frames Putin's fear of any sort of popular uprising and the brutal efforts he's willing to take, including killing journalists and killing political opponents in order to maintain power.
I think the president understands that.
I think the president was far more focused on some of the objectively measurable outcomes that we could get from broader cooperation on the proliferation space and in the anti-terrorism space.
Now, people are hammering the president over the fact that he disrespected our intelligence community over this Russian investigation.
And there are two investigations.
There's the Russian hacking investigation, and then there's this investigation into whether anybody in the Trump campaign colluded with this.
And they seem to get kind of smushed together, both in the media's mind and sometimes in the president's mind.
Were you upset at all at Mueller delivering these indictments, these new indictments, just before Helsinki?
Did that bother you at all?
I mean, I think that the timing was obvious to essentially troll the struck hearing that we were having in the Congress and also the president's visit.
But it wasn't, frankly, the timing wasn't my biggest concern about these indictments.
There's a reason why we don't do counterintelligence in Article III U.S. courts.
I'm far more concerned that one of these Russians will show up in the United States and stand on U.S. soil and say, I'm here to obtain the full complement of America's constitutional rights.
I want to engage in discovery.
I want to take depositions and I want a full trial on these questions.
I think that that could be more detrimental to our intelligence apparatus than Bob Mueller may suspect.
So in other words, by indicting them, they left them open to getting the kind of information they might want to get.
Right.
I mean, like, you know what we ought to do when people interfere with our elections and engage in this type of activity?
We ought to retaliate with force.
We should not invite them into an Article III court for an airing of grievances.
I think it's far too deferential to the Russians to give them constitutional rights in U.S. courts.
So let's talk about the strzok hearing.
It was certainly a lot of fireworks and hilarious fun.
I mean, I had a good time watching it.
Did you learn anything from this?
Did we learn anything from talking to Peter Strzok?
Definitely.
This was the first time that anyone associated with the FBI publicly admitted that the dossier was introduced into the intelligence bloodstream through Bruce Orr, who is the spouse of Nellie Orr, who was hired to work for Fusion GPS on the dossier.
That had been in the Nunes memo.
The FBI had issued broad statements that not everything in the Nunes memo was accurate.
And this was the first confession that that was the case.
So that's kind of at the outset of the investigation, or what I would call the first rotten bookend.
I think on the back end, the new revelation we learned is that when Robert Mueller brought Peter Strzzok in and dismissed him from the special counsel's probe, he did not ask a single question about a single text message, right?
Like he didn't say, well, when you said we'll stop him, you know, what did you mean by that?
What were you willing to do to stop him?
And I'm a lawyer, and perhaps one of the things that Bob Mueller was doing as an attorney was not asking a question he didn't want the answer to.
But it's really troubling to me that like when Mueller gets rid of Strzok, he has absolutely no curiosity as to the extent to which Strzzok's bias influenced investigative decisions up to that point.
Now, you know, those are two new facts.
And in terms of Strzzok's lover, Lisa Page, we're getting word that in a closed session, she was a little bit more, she cooperated a little bit more.
Were you in on that session?
Yeah, Lisa Page was definitely more forthcoming than Peter Strzzok.
Now, she also maintained that her bias didn't impact any of her decisions.
Bias affects the self-conscious, the subconscious, I should say.
Bias can affect you without you knowing it.
That's the reason why we don't let biased people sit on juries or serve as judges over cases or serve as prosecutors.
And so Strzz and Page say, yeah, you know, we held these views, but that didn't impact our investigation.
So in that sense, she was the same as Strzzok.
But there was one particular text message that Strzok wouldn't give answers regarding that she did.
It was the text message contemporaneous with James Comey's firing.
And Strzzok says, we've got to open up that case we've been waiting on while Andrew McCabe is the acting director.
And Page agrees that they've got to go ahead and do that.
Strzok would not answer what that matter was about.
Previously, Rosenstein had indicated behind closed doors to some of my colleagues that that had nothing to do with the Russia investigation.
That was some ancillary matter.
And we got information from Lisa Page that was inconsistent with what Rosenstein had said and far more illuminating than what Strzzok had offered.
You know, one of the things that always bothers me about bias, especially in the media, but this is a good example as well, is not that individual reporters or editors are biased, is that they're surrounded by people who only agree with them.
So there's nobody there to say, oh, you're being a little biased.
Let's find a more different way to say that.
Do you have any faith in the Mueller investigation at all?
I don't because you're right, it's become an echo chamber for the Never Trump movement.
I mean, it's hard to understand why Robert Mueller would hire as one of the attorneys on his team, someone who defended the Clinton Foundation.
It's hard to understand why he would hire the very person who defended the individual who ran Bleach Bit over the Hillary Clinton email servers.
It's hard to understand why he hired Weissman when Weissman had such an active role, literally attending Hillary Clinton's watch night party.
So when you look at the staffing decisions, it's really hard to have confidence.
Why Mueller's Staffing Decisions Matter00:07:44
Now, when it comes to the facts that are laid out in the indictments, I agree with those facts, not based on the fact that Robert Mueller presented them, but based on the fact that it's consistent with what intelligence officials have said to me all over the world.
You know, as a member of Congress, we travel a good amount.
And when I go to a country, I typically meet with the CIA station chief.
And I have heard a number of stories that I believe to be accurate about how Russia tries to influence and undermine democracies as institutions all over the world.
And that's entirely consistent with the facts laid out in these indictments.
But Mueller was appointed not to investigate the collusion aspect of this, wasn't he?
That was where he was supposed to go.
Not one of his indictments has touched on that.
Correct.
And one of the things that concerns me is that there don't really seem to be four corners to what we've asked Robert Mueller to do.
Rosenstein provides his initial direction to Mueller and gives that to the Congress.
But then there were subsequent memoranda to Mueller expanding his authority that was not shared with the Congress.
And that really ripens this question, right?
Like either at the end of the day, it's either elected people that make the final decisions or it's unelected people that make the final decisions.
In most cases, in the executive branch, the elected person is the president, and that's who's ultimately responsible in their conduct, and they're held accountable by the voters.
But here, since the president is a subject of the investigation, you know, you have these bureaucrats who believe that they are accountable to no one.
And whether you're a Republican, a Democrat, someone who believes in civil liberties like I do, that should concern all of us, that unelected people would have unchecked power to maintain an investigation regarding anything they'd like for as long as they'd like.
I think that's troubling.
It also does seem to me, as just an outside observer, it seems to me that they're stonewalling you guys and they're actually hostile toward congressional oversight.
Today, Bill McGurn in the Wall Street Journal suggested that President Trump should simply declassify all the documents that you're trying to get at so that they can't best redact them all the time or hold back on them.
What do you think of that idea?
We do need the president's assistance, particularly to declassify documents from before the 31st of July.
So the Department of Justice has maintained to congressional oversight members that this investigation began on the 31st of July.
But when I asked Rosenstein before our committee what investigative activity took place before that time, he said he would not answer the question.
Well, if there was no investigative activity, it would just be easy to say there wasn't anything that occurred before the 31st of July.
And so there are inconsistencies in the responses we're getting from DOGA, and particularly in those areas where they've said things that cannot be both accurate, the president needs to give us access to those foundational documents to understand those questions.
Because what I think happened is that I think that there were people that were paid to go and collect intelligence on the Trump campaign before the Papadopoulos discussion in London.
And if we got those documents, we would be able to prove whether that was the case or not.
Paid by whom?
By the United States government.
I mean, I believe that we're going to see six-figure payments to people who were then asked to go and run and collect intelligence on the Trump campaign.
You believe that the United States government was paying people to collect counterintelligence on the Trump campaign before there was any information from Papadopoulos or the Australians or anything.
Yeah, and my basis for that belief is that when we ask questions about it, they won't answer.
And if the answer was no, it'd be very clear.
It'd be very easy to just say no, right?
Now, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to say that I'm certain of that.
It's my suspicion, right?
And that's how you develop facts throughout a case.
And so if the president would declassify that information, we would see whether or not those payments were in fact made.
And I think they were, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.
If we get access to the documents, or even if we just got straight answers, I'd be willing to say that that was an unfounded suspicion.
But as long as they're stonewalling, it really raises the question.
Can you think of any reason why President Trump would not declassify these documents?
You know, I think the president really wants to have a hands-off approach to this.
I think he does understand that his excessive entanglement with the process functions would be really, you know, would be a downward pull on his presidency.
And so I think he's trying not to do that.
It's a very awkward dynamic, right?
Where he is the subject of the investigation, but at the same time, he is the elected, he's the only elected person in the executive branch.
I have to ask, if you think that the government was paying people to investigate what was essentially the opposing party at that point, do you think that this goes up to the White House?
Do you think Obama was involved in those decisions?
Well, we asked a lot of questions about what it meant when Strzok and Page were texting back and forth about the White House wanting to be up to date on information and wanting to be involved.
Again, I mean, I think that that would be a very serious charge, but we'll only know the answer if we get the document.
So I don't want to say that I'm certain of that.
I don't know if it was a lower level decision, but until we're able to really understand that decision tree, it really undermines the integrity and the independence of the Department of Justice and the FBI because we're left wondering whether or not they were used to obtain a political outcome rather than an investigative outcome.
Wow, that's really something.
You know, I have to ask you just one political question.
All this just seems like will go away if you lose the House, if the Republicans lose the House in the midterms.
How are you feeling about that right now?
Well, my concern is that there are people at the Department of Justice who know that.
And so time is their friend.
You know, the longer we say, okay, well, here's a deadline.
Well, now instead of meeting that deadline, we're going to have a meeting.
And then we're going to have an extension.
And then we're going to have redacted documents.
And then we're going to fight over those redactions.
And then we're going to set a new meeting and then a new deadline and have more meetings.
That seems to be the groundhog day cycle that we're in currently.
And if the Democrats take over, my suspicion is that Mueller will very soon thereafter issue a report to Congress that the Democrats will use as a basis for impeachment.
That's why the midterms are so important.
I do believe that if the Democrats take over, Adam Schiff will be elected their speaker and that the most fundamental question they'll have to manage is the impeachment question.
And it will be bad for the country.
Do you think, how are you feeling about your chances?
Well, you know, November is a long way away.
I feel great about the economy.
And I think that at the end of the day, regular folks just want to know whether or not they have a reason to be more optimistic about their future.
I think that's what every election is about.
If people feel like their hopes and dreams are more in their grasp as a consequence of what's going on in the country, I think they're likely to keep the current party in power.
If people feel like their dreams are diminished, that they don't have opportunity, they can't get that raise, that new job, their business can't grow, then I think they vote for a different group to come in and run the place.
Right now, I think, you know, all the data we see is that Americans are more optimistic about their economic circumstances than at any point, certainly since the early 2000s.
Yeah, no question about it.
Congressman Gates, thank you very much.
A really interesting interview.
I hope you get what you're looking for.
I'd like to find out myself.
I think most of America would.
Thank you.
If we get the documents, we could come back and chat about them on your podcast.
Please, please do come back.
I appreciate it.
All right.
Really interesting interview.
You know, it's really funny.
Whenever there's a Republican who's doing a good job, the minute they, he's either stupid or evil.
So they were saying this is a big meme on the left that Gates is stupid.
And I was sitting there talking to him and I thought, yeah, you can say something about him, but you can't say he's stupid.
All right.
Stuff I like.
Come Back With a New Story00:05:23
It's Andrew Clayman's stuff I like.
Woo!
Yeah!
That obviously was somebody who works here or used to work here or works here for the next, I'd say 20 seconds as long as it takes me to get down the hall.
That was Alex Zingaro.
All right, the center.
You know, I rarely, I rarely binge anything because I don't have time.
But the thing I like about the center is it started on USA Network and then moved over to Netflix.
And so it's 45 minutes an episode.
And I found myself binging it.
And I actually watched, I think, I'm embarrassed to say this, but one day when my wife went to bed early, I think I watched four episodes.
And it's only like eight episodes.
You know, it's a really entertaining crime drama.
It's based on a novel by Petra Hamasfar.
It's been a little bit, it's dark.
I got to tell you, it's a dark story.
It's apparently less dark than the novel, which I haven't read.
The novel takes place in Germany.
This takes place in upstate New York.
Jessica Beale does an excellent job.
She was the executive producer on it, and she's been trying to get, you know, these pretty girls as they get older, they have to work very hard to get good parts.
She's still very beautiful.
She turns in a terrific performance.
And the story is an ordinary wife and mom one day picks up a knife and just kills a guy, slaughters a guy at the beach and in plain sight in front of everybody.
And the question is not who did it, it's why she did it.
Here's the trailer.
Where did you stab him?
Castaz in his neck.
You had no interaction with him before today.
I've never met him before in my life.
Then why kill him?
That's an impulse killing.
It's emotional.
Whatever you have to do now, I won't blame you.
Now the mind plays tricks.
You see things that aren't there.
What are you remembering?
It looked like he recognized her.
She attacks him in public.
So you think she's lying?
This doesn't make any sense.
I think there's something wrong with me.
So the crown jewel of it is Bill Pullman's performance as this very, very neurotic cop who's kind of falling apart.
He's enslaved by this kind of dominatrix.
This is the new thing.
It used to be when they wanted to show that a guy was dark and had trouble.
He was a drunk.
But now he's got a dominatrix.
But he turns in a very, I couldn't decide for a lot of the show whether he was giving a mannered, overwrought performance or he was just playing a guy who had a lot of mannerisms.
He couldn't look at people in the eye.
But I ultimately decided that it was a really good, intense, complex performance.
There was also another woman in it, and I cannot find out.
I've had a hard time tracking down who she is.
If I get her name, I'll come back and say it.
But she plays a cop, a feminist cop, and she's a horrible, horrible human being.
And she gets this character just right.
And it is really good.
She's kind of the classic character who comes in from upstate and sort of tells the local cop what's what and doesn't know what she's talking about.
And she just really played this person so realistically.
Anyway, it's got good performances.
What I really liked, as I know crime fiction so well, what I really liked is as it got toward the end and as the explanation started to come clear, it got very original.
There's stuff in it I'd never seen before.
Some anti-religious stuff that I thought was silly, you know, kind of a depiction of Catholicism that isn't true in America anymore, may still be true in Germany or may just be an anti-Catholic nonsense.
But still, the plot was original.
The story was compelling.
The performances were excellent.
Really fun episode, really fun show.
And it's coming back with a new story.
I don't know who the cast will be in the new story, but it's coming back in August with a new story.
And I will definitely be watching it the center.
All right.
I've delayed as long as I can.
The Clavenless Weekend is here.
Disaster everywhere.
It's going to look like one of those movies where things, where Martians come and destroy the entire world.
Try to survive because we will be here on Monday for anyone who can crawl back into the light of day.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
We will see you then.
Mere alcohol doesn't true me at all.
So tell me, why should it be true?
I'd get a kick out of you.
Some get their kicks from cocaine.
I'm sure that if I took even one sniff, that would bore me terrifically too.
I get a kick out of you I get a kick Every time I see you Standing near before me I get a kick, though it's clear to me that you obviously do not adore me.
Production Team Revealed00:00:33
The Andrew Klavan Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Emily Jai.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
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The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production.