Kash's Corner - Kash’s Corner: How the Jan. 6 Committee Buried Crucial Evidence; Twitter Files Expose Extensive Government Censorship Pressure

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Jan. 16, 2023 - Kash's Corner

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Kash’s Corner: How the Jan. 6 Committee Buried Crucial Evidence; Twitter Files Expose Extensive Government Censorship Pressure

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	Hey everybody and welcome back to Cash's Corner.
	Jan, I know we've got a myriad of topics to talk about today, but where do you want to start?
	Well, we've got three.
	I think we need to put to bed the January 6th Select Committee, which actually did in the end publish your testimony, which was the first deposition that was given in the last last possible final moments.
	And I think we want to just kind of look over that a little bit and pull out some of the things that you weren't able to talk about earlier.
	We also need to look at, you know, these the next batch of the Twitter files that Matt Taibe just published as we're filming.
	And uh, you know, they focus on Russia Gate, so we I think we have to do that.
	And finally, you know, we're in the throes.
	We've got the Capitol behind you there.
	And we're, I think uh we're in the throes of the fifth vote for speaker of the House right now.
	And that is something that hasn't happened in quite some time.
	So yeah, that's quite the slate.
	Um, you know, reminder audience as we are literally taping this show while they are voting behind us for the next speaker of the house.
	And we are also going to be airing the show on January 6th, 2023.
	So it seems only appropriate that we cover those topics, and of course, we always cover everything that leads to Russia Gate.
	Let's jump in on the Jan 6th stuff to start.
	Okay.
	And I, you know, you have uh about 160 pages of depositions.
	It's finally out, Jan.
	Well, so now the number one thing I noticed is that there really isn't any substantive use of your deposition in the 845-page report, at least that I'm aware of.
	I'm a welcome our viewers to point out otherwise.
	Um, what are your thoughts?
	Yeah, so look, I was the first guy subpoenaed by the January 6th committee.
	That deposition was completed a year ago, and me and my team have been demanding that transcripts release for that entire year on a monthly, weekly, daily, multi-time, daily basis.
	And it was the last transcript released at the 11th hour, literally before the lights went out in the 117th Congress.
	So they had to put it out, otherwise they would have broken their own rules, but I think they violated their own rules anyway.
	In the transcript itself, in the communications my lawyers have with the January 6th committee, they promised in writing, pursuant to the House rules, that these transcripts would be released.
	And not just them, but the important evidentiary exhibits that were attached to the transcript.
	And for those viewers that don't know, what's an exhibit?
	It's just a piece of evidence.
	When you go into a deposition, all it is is a QA.
	But sometimes you want to hold up, hey, what about this deposition?
	What about this article?
	How about this timeline from the government, from the FBI, from the Capitol Police?
	Do you want to talk about that?
	So instead of talking about it in the abstract, you can enter the exhibits like you do in a courtroom into the tr into the record in the transcript.
	So we entered about nine exhibits, give or take in the rules of the House and the committee and the Congress and the Democrats and how it's always been done, say either side can enter anything they want into the record, and it automatically becomes part of the record and is released when the transcripts actually released.
	No surprise, the January 6th Unselect Committee broke its rules, broke the House rules, broke its commitment and commitment, not just orally, but in writing to my legal team by saying the exhibits would be included.
	They excluded every single exhibit.
	So now you have to ask, why did they exclude exhibits that I didn't create?
	It's not like I was saying, here's a summary of my mind, put that into the record.
	I asked for the DOD timeline, the long version, the short version.
	I asked for the Capitol Police timeline.
	I asked for Mayor Bowser's letter.
	I asked for relevant media articles that they were citing about me to be included into the record.
	They excluded all of it.
	And the whole point is many of our viewers know that throughout the Cash's Corner episodes that they've seen throughout the last year or so.
	The whole point of that is everybody should be asking why.
	Why is it a select committee with the mandate to investigate January 6th excluded directly relevant evidence to the very question questions they were looking to answer?
	Why was there a security failure.
	Did DOD act properly?
	What was your role in that?
	Who did you speak with?
	Is there proof of it?
	All those questions and more are answered.
	And also, shockingly, the committee failed to include my what I think is the primary exhibit, the DOD Biden Inspector General report, not the Trump IG report on DoD.
	The Biden Inspector General for the Department of Defense issued a lengthy report on our DOD's actions leading up to and on January 6th.
	But basically, in summit said, you, me, the Secretary of Defense, did not delay, acted swiftly and appropriately in the events leading up to and on January 6th in regards to security and the deployment and authorization of the National Guard.
	That's it.
	That is the result of their investigation.
	We now know why my transcript was excluded.
	Because I gave them the hard truths that they didn't want the answers to because it didn't fit their political narrative.
	We told them on this show and in there in the committee that Donald Trump did authorize 20,000 National Guard two days before, and that Nancy Pelosi and Mayor Bowser refused that authorization, that the law requires a presidential authorization and a request by the governing authority, Bowser Pelosi in DC, to deploy National Guard.
	The Supreme Court and the law is crystal clear, and I agree with it 100%.
	It's so that the military can't be unilaterally deployed in the United States of America.
	You never want that.
	That's the whole point.
	And you know, when you have these politicians get in the way of providing actual oversight to the American people, because I've always said, and I think you have too, January 6th is an event we should examine.
	What happened?
	Why did it happen?
	Were there failures?
	Can we prevent it?
	Who failed to act?
	Who acted appropriately?
	And we got answers to almost none of it.
	All we got were empty headlines and political rhetoric.
	And uh so to me, it's not shocking, that the House Select Committee on January 6th violated the rules of the House, their own rules, their own written promises to me and my team in writing about my transcript, about the exhibits.
	But the only thing I ask our audience to do is question why.
	And then pick up a few pages of it and read it and ask yourself how much of that six-hour interrogation that I withstood was actually about January 6th.
	Well, so we're gonna touch on that in a moment, but there were is something to the just over 300 National Guardsmen which were requested by Mayor Bowser, right?
	That's a great point.
	And that's one that I we talked about, and it's in her letter.
	Mayor Bowser requested a few hundred National Guardsmen and women as is customary leading up to a presidential transition.
	What we went back with her and said was, ma'am, there seems to be intelligence domestically available that there could be a large number of people here, tens of thousands of people, and the president has authorized up to 20,000 National Guard, which you as the governor, the mayor of since it's DC, uh like more assistance, more security posture, more traffic assistance.
	And she flat out in her letter, which is available said no.
	And so that's the that's the difference.
	And and if anyone out there in the mainstream media is going to be like, well, Mayor Bowser did request that's it's a false narrative, requesting a few hundred troops weeks before January 6th has nothing to do with the president's authorization of 20,000 National Guardsmen that you turned down.
	Well, and there's a couple of things that I can think of right now as as we're saying this.
	Number one, um there was apparently some intelligence from the FBI that in this deposition you say you never received, right?
	Yeah, and this is a so this is why I think these committees could serve a valuable oversight function, right?
	We at the Department of Defense do not have a domestic intelligence mandate.
	We are the no-fail national security mission in the United States of America, protect the border and everything going on overseas.
	Similarly, the CIA and NSA don't collect domestically, traditionally by law, but the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, that is their job to collect domestic intelligence.
	And what was shocking for me to learn was that the director of the FBI, Chris Ray, had a specific report, which is now public, but that document was never shared, to the best of my knowledge, with the Secretary of Defense or me as a chief of staff For the Department of Defense, which means it wasn't shared to anyone at DOD.
	Which would have, and I don't think I've said this, but had that document entered our offices, it would have monumentally changed the tactical operations we would have recommended going forward to say, now look, we actually have domestic intelligence from our domestic intelligence agency that says X,
	we now need to go back or overcome somehow by negotiations with Speaker Pelosi at the time and Mayor Bowser that we can install a no-climb fence, which they refused, that we could have FBI personnel in uniform surrounding the Capitol.
	We could have done a plethora of things, but none of those options were considered because this report from the FBI was withheld.
	And that's a question Chris Surrey needs to answer.
	I mean, how is it?
	It's kind of unimaginable almost that such a report would be withheld given I don't know, just basic normal functioning of these agencies.
	Yeah, you would think the heads of agencies, the Secretary of Defense, the director of the FBI, and all these other agencies would talk to each other, because I know from my time there we did on high-level situations.
	And for some reason, this report never made it from even A.G. Barr or whoever the attorney general was at the time, didn't make it from the DOJ over to the SecDef's office.
	Because at the end of the day, the FBI director reports to the DOJ.
	But that shouldn't subvert or bury the total intelligence failure around the street from the FBI and DHS.
	How did they not have the intelligence that Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks did to board up their windows a week before January 6th?
	Are we to believe as the United States of America that a coffee shop and a donut shop has a better intelligence apparatus than the United States FBI and DHS?
	And what they base those decisions on, this is what we found out later, was social media.
	So why wasn't the FBI scouring social media?
	And as we've seen in so many of the January 6th prosecutions, the FBI and DOJ are now using social media against defendants charged with crimes on January 6th to say we have been planning this event for X, Y, and Z. This is who we planned it with, this is who we talked to.
	Why is it that they waited till afterwards to utilize the right readily, freely available data to go in and secure the complex for January 6th?
	These are questions that the January 6th committee should have answered.
	And they didn't, because they knew the answers would not fit their political narrative.
	You know, I'm also thinking, well, two things.
	First of all, you know, President Trump authorized 10,000 to 20,000.
	This is referenced in your deposition National Guard, if requested, um, for a reason, though.
	So it there was some kind of sense that something was happening, or at least I think you said a lot of people, right?
	Yeah.
	At the very least.
	So there was some kind of intelligence, even if it wasn't from the FBI, that that there was a big event happening and that it should be secured.
	Right, you're right.
	It's it's two separate things.
	One, I think that that merits an investigation as to why that report was not widely shared in a timely fashion.
	And two, it's not like that there wasn't other intelligence available to those folks around them.
	And one of the things I give President Trump credit for in terms of these national security situations has been his instincts.
	And I've been around him.
	I was in the situation room when we did the Baghdad raid.
	I've seen him conduct some of the most sensitive hostage rescue operations we've ever done.
	I've seen his instincts in play.
	And this was just another example of him.
	He had been getting the presidential daily briefings and talking to his cabinet, and of course, President Trump was a voracious reader of consumer of social media.
	So wherever he was seeing whatever he was seeing, he said, hey, just so you don't have to come back to me, and in case this happens, I don't want to delay.
	I, as a commander-in-chief, am authorizing up to 10 to 20,000 National Guardsmen and Women.
	And that is the one thing that you will recall in our audience will call was like a huge fight.
	When I first said that before my deposition, because I was saying it publicly in the media and in my deposition and thereafter, it was billed as billed it as fake news.
	But we now know it was the absolute truth that the January 6th committee wanted to bury because the narrative helped President Trump.
	That is the truth.
	But the narrative they wanted to depict him as a usurper or somehow somebody was engaged in a coup, which we've talked about extensively, how that's factually impossible, wasn't Advanced.
	They just had a predetermined outcome.
	This is the conclusion we want.
	And if you answer something that doesn't advance that, we are going to ignore it and exclude it.
	And we are going to deny the American public the ability to learn the truth, which is the very failure of congressional constitutional oversight.
	I just want to flag a few things that I noticed in there.
	You know what?
	At one point you say something like one of the biggest take-homes was that there was a need to have no arms or no equipment on any of the National Guards that were actually deployed.
	So why why was this such an important thing to mention in here?
	So Jan, that's a great point, right?
	People just think military and they think armed personnel because they think of our our guys and gals deployed overseas in the fashion that you see them on or see them in TV movies.
	What happens in a domestic situation, Jan, is our law enforcement is the domestic protection service.
	Not our military.
	But because there are instances, the Super Bowl, a marathon, a large-scale parade, or a peaceful protest that require more security than the local police department or the state police are able to handle.
	So in con in thinking of ways to provide for that gap, the United States, the Supreme Court has has allowed the military an exception.
	They said domestically, you can use the military for security augmentation of local law enforcement cops, if requested by the local governor or mayor and the president authorized it.
	But the specific underlying connotation there was we're not going to send you in armed.
	We're going to put you in uniform and we're going to put most of the time you see these folks, if anyone's been to a large sporting event or a large parade, they see military and they're wearing the bright traffic visors because they're helping direct traffic, and that's the mandate.
	And we didn't want to give off an image in downtown DC or wherever we deploy National Guards men and women, that it was an active war zone.
	That's not the purpose of the National Guard.
	Their mission is wholly separate and different from the men and women who engage in warfare overseas.
	And that's the distinction that the Supreme Court laid out in Posse Comitatis.
	And so it's a great point.
	And it's one that, well, why should most Americans know it?
	But now as a result, I was hoping that as a result of January 6th, a lot of people would know it and understand why we didn't have tanks rolling down the street.
	That would have been probably unlawful, but also insane for lack of a better word, to turn downtown DC into downtown Kandahar.
	Okay, so how did that play out when the request did come in?
	So pursuant to the timeline, um, the request for Mayor Bowser and Pelosi finally came in later in the afternoon on January 6th.
	But you have to remember, Jan, we have to find the National Guardsmen and Women don't work at the Pentagon 24-7.
	They are doctors, they are lawyers, they have wholly other jobs all over the United States of America.
	We have to go get them.
	We have to train them, we have to fly them in, then we have to what we call kitem up and deploy them pursuant to the rules that have been agreed upon between the mayor here, Bowser and Pelosi, the and the president and the sectaf.
	And in this specific instance, you know, there was a negotiations went on, and and I think the right decision was made that we would not arm our National Guardsmen and Women.
	That that was law enforcement's priority and that they should be armed.
	They, federal law enforcement and state police should be armed, not us.
	Now the shocking thing that came out was that, you know, to hear Speaker Pelosi and others scream through the telephone, you know, we want tanks, we're the tanks, we're the crew served weapons.
	What's a cruise-served weapon?
	If you've ever watched a military movie, it means that it takes multiple members of a crew to operate it, i.e.
	a machine gun on top of a car, a belt-fed machine gun, as we call it.
	And our response was simply, Madam Secretary, Madam Speaker, we are not bringing tanks to the to the District of Columbia, and we are not bringing crew served weapons down the streets.
	It's wholly unnecessary.
	At that point, we knew what their political motivation was to have a uh Either pictures or whatever to advance a narrative that this was somehow a war zone which we were not going to participate in.
	So we finally got them to agree that there would be a place, a central node where we would have certain armaments if it went totally sideways and bad that we could go and get, but that our men and women who were dressed as National Guardsmen would not be armed.
	And I think, and I still do to this day that was a right decision.
	There was no need for it.
	And a show of force like that is not necessary, in my opinion, and that's why there has to be an agreement between, you know, the Office Secretary of Defense and the requesting agency as to how the National Guard is supposed to be deployed.
	And in my recollection, the prime purpose was to assist with traffic control and crowd control.
	And you don't need weapons for that.
	You know, the other thing that just comes to my mind right now is this, you know, you in this deposition, there's actually you spent quite a bit of time on this.
	You're pushing back.
	They're interested in this memo that I think you described may or may not have existed.
	Um and the they're very interested in the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and you're basically saying, well, this isn't the jurisdiction, I'm not using the right language here of this committee, this isn't what it was set for, and there's a whole big long discussion.
	They're very interested in that.
	So what what is this all about?
	Why was this discussion even had in the first place?
	So I think my take on it, Jan, is it's pretty simple.
	If this committee wanted to find out the truth about January 6th, it would have spent six hours interrogating me about January 6th.
	Um but if you look at the deposition and you go by the page volume, I would say maybe 40% was on January 6th related matters and 60% was on Afghanistan memos that had nothing to do with January 6th, something with President Trump, or some other matter from my past relating to, I don't know if it was Russia Gate or what have you.
	And that just showed me that all they cared about, this committee was setting up perjury traps and looking for political ammunition, not the facts, because the facts could have been got by me to them very quickly, in a very cordial fashion.
	And I told them flat out, I'm here to help you get the facts out on how the Department of Defense and our men and women acted in the days leading up to it on January 6th.
	I think it's an important narrative that has to not only be scrutinized but be provided to your committee to scrutinize and ult and ultimately the inspector general.
	And when you start asking me about memorandums about Afghanistan and our withdrawal, I know the January 6th Select Committee was way off its mandate because they didn't want to hear the truth about our actions and President Trump's authorization.
	I think at this point maybe you have a few other thoughts to share.
	I think we want to put to bed the James Rearysic Select Committee, the commentary, and just with a view of what this new Congress, assuming it elects a speaker sometime in the not-too-distant future.
	Um should do with uh you know the results and frankly a lot of the intel that was gathered and which I understand is being somehow redacted right now.
	And so I'm gonna take those in order.
	I want to talk about one thing that I've actually never talked about before.
	Um, you know, if you've ever been in and around DC, you've seen these black fences, we call them no climb fences.
	That's sort of our stand-up perimeters around buildings, the White House, Congress at times.
	Many, many people have seen them.
	The holes are very small in the linkage of the chains, so they're literally no climb.
	And they're done for security posture reasons for setback purposes.
	One of the things that I thought the January 6th committee would have wanted to know is why the FBI and DHS failed to put up a perimeter fence in the days leading up to January 6th around the United States Capitol.
	We've talked about how 10,000 men and women in uniform would have deterred a large crowd force.
	What about a standing no-climb fence that you literally cannot climb over?
	Um it's the very basic and security posture setback approach.
	And somebody needs to ask Chris Ray, why didn't you set that up?
	Nancy Pelosi, why don't you ask for Capitol Police?
	You have the ability to call someone and get that.
	And what ended up happening, Jan was, you know, we, the DoD, were asking on January 6th when the request finally came in for the National Guard, where is your perimeter?
	Because our job, again, was not to go inside the Capitol building and clear, as we say.
	That's the job of the Capitol Police and FBI.
	We were to secure and establish a perimeter, and which is what our expertise is, and assist local law enforcement along the way.
	Well, you can't establish a perimeter without a fence.
	So when we said when I started asking these questions, I got nowhere.
	People had no idea why it hadn't been done.
	There wasn't one around.
	So, long story short, I actually, as a chief of staff of DOD that night, bought a no-climb fence from a company we found a couple states away, had it driven in and had the National Guardsmen and women put that up in the late hours of January 6th ourselves.
	And if we could do it that fast, why wasn't it done before?
	What are they gonna say?
	Optics?
	They didn't have the intelligence?
	This committee never bothered to examine that question.
	And I haven't seen anything in the recommendations saying as simply as this, always have a no-climb fence installed when the security threat surpasses a certain level.
	It's so simple.
	And it's not even that expensive, and it doesn't require a lot of manpower.
	And this town does it all the time.
	And so that's one of the most frustrating things about this committee and a highlight of its failure during its investigation.
	Now, what should this Congress do going forward?
	But just and just before you jump in, we're all familiar with this fence, right?
	I mean, but it it did basically create this kind of feeling of militarization subsequently.
	It was it stayed up for a very, very long time, if I recall.
	Well, that's a great point, right?
	So I agree with you.
	When you put it up, it does feel sort of militaristic and standoffish and sort of takes away from the glamour of you know, DC or whatever town you're using it in.
	So we went back to Speaker Pelosi and the incoming administration and the Biden administration and said, okay, we're prepared to take this down, and they said, No, you have to keep it up until we tell you not to.
	So now they wanted the optical appearance of this no-climb fence and a heavy security footprint.
	That's what I believe that this partisan political charade was about.
	They wanted the optics before January 6th with no security, and they wanted the optics with January 6th with after January 6th with heavy security to show that their political narrative was the one that was right.
	But when you look at the underlying facts, their narrative is defeated, and it's widely known that they are the ones that required the fencing be kept up and the National Guardsmen and Women.
	Now they wanted thousands of National Guardsmen and women to stay for weeks on end.
	I remember I had to look at the orders and sign off on them.
	And so now you wanted DMtown DC to look like a militarized zone.
	And they being the Democrats who were in charge, and they being Mayor Bowser, who's the Democratic mayor in charge of D.C. So those are those are great questions that to my understanding were never asked to Pelosi, to Bowser, and everyone else as to why the one optic before and the separate optic after.
	And it completely contradicts their narrative and the facts.
	So that's why, in my opinion, it was never, it was never discussed.
	Well, so then let's let's jump into the sort of what what what should happen now?
	Yeah, so I do think there needs to be all the questions I've said, why weren't they asked during by the January 6th committee?
	Need to be answered now.
	You know, of Chris Ray, of Nancy Pelosi, of Mayor Bowser, etc.
	and other officials, and need to dive into why was there an intelligence failure, what happened to that intelligence report, why wasn't it shared widely with the cabinet secretaries, why wasn't there a meeting called?
	You know, all those questions need to be asked.
	And they should also be bringing these people forth for testimony under Hill in pu under oath, excuse me, in public.
	And the other thing that no one has really touched right now, are the actual actions, not just of the people who were arrested on January 6th, but the actions of the FBI's confidential human sources.
	That, in my opinion, needs to be the perennial investigation.
	Maybe I'm biased because of my law enforcement national security background.
	But as to questions like why did we have the equivalent of Christopher Steele running around the compound of the United States Capitol on January 6th on behalf of the FBI?
	Ray Epps literally said, I orchestrated it when he was talking about the activities surrounding the Capitol building on January 6th.
	What do you mean he orchestrated it?
	Where is he?
	This guy was on the FBI's most wanted list one day and gone the next.
	And then when FBI leadership was asked under oath in the United States Senate about Ray Epps, they refused to answer.
	We need to know where, not just our tax dollars went, but why was a domestic law enforcement agency allowed to implement informants multiple throughout uh the area on January 6th, how long ago did they start because they couldn't just drop them in that day.
	We covered that extensively in a prior episode.
	And who authorized that?
	Who gave that order?
	And then how much were they paid?
	All of these documents are at the FBI.
	All of this material, all this information needs to be subpoenaed immediately by this Congress.
	And then at the end, we need to get people like Chris Ray under oath, Nancy Pelosi under oath, Mayor Bowser under oath to answer the tough questions that this committee never bothered to ask.
	And it's sho it's I guess I shouldn't say it's shocking, but it's funny and ironic and tragic at the same time that Adam Kinzinger, the former congressman, who on his way out, when asked about Ray Epp, said, oh, he saw no evidence that Ray Epps was responsible for anything or the FBI had to do with anything.
	That's because he didn't ask the question, he didn't care to get the documentation, and it didn't advance the political narrative that he wanted advanced.
	And that seems to be the only theme and takeaway from this January 6th committee's reporting.
	And that's why the new Congress going forward has a lot of work to do.
	But I would caution the new Congress going forward that it shouldn't focus solely on the events of January 6th.
	It should be a wider investigation, say of DOJ and FBI activity overall.
	Obviously, there's all the stuff from the Twitter files, there's the ongoing Russia Gate stuff, there's the Durham stuff, then there's the problems with the intelligence community, then there's the problem with the CCP, Hunter Biden's laptop.
	There's so many investigations, we've talked about it extensively that need to happen once a speaker's elected, but um I do think uh a large portion of that can be folded into other investigations.
	It's just so bizarre to me that we still don't know what Ray Epp's role in all of this was.
	If there was no role, then you know it would just be very, very easy to put.
	You nailed it or not.
	Look, as a former federal prosecutor who ran sources and informants, if the answer is this guy is not on our payroll and we don't know him, and he did absolutely nothing for the United States government, you come out hard and fast out of your press off and say those things.
	And those things have never been said by this DOJ or FBI about Ray Epps.
	So let's jump into the next Twitter file drop.
	Matt Taibe, uh, just last night as we're filming, um, came up with uh most Russia gate focused, I think by a significant margin, uh, Twitter files drop yet.
	And I mean, there's some amazing stuff in here.
	We have, you know, Senate Intel basically leaning on Twitter, basically saying there's all this Russian disinformation activity, Twitter investigating, and it's like Russia becomes this code word for getting stuff taken down.
	I mean, the whole thing is really disturbing to me.
	Yeah, disturbing, I think you're being nice.
	To me, it's just more like unlawful.
	You know, it's disturbing for a piece of the government to maybe censor one person's specific threat about one specific subject one time.
	To me, it's conspiratorial and unlawful for it members of the Senate intelligence committee that work here that are supposed to provide constitutional oversight of our intelligence community and its apparatus and say, no, you as a group are not to participate in the unlawful censoring of free speech,
	and you as a group are not to conspire and get together and say we need a certain political narrative advanced, so make sure the others are deafened and make sure this specific narrative is advanced and do whatever it takes to get that done.
	To me, as a former federal prosecutor, that is conspiratorial.
	And look, I've always said I'm always I'm I'm glad these things are coming out, but this is just this is just another example of what the new Congress needs to look at.
	It's not to excuse Twitter here necessarily, but I mean it's it seems to be like, you know, that they're being basically told if you don't do as we say, you're gonna be hurt.
	I mean, this nudge nudge wink wink, right?
	And that's and look, Twitter and and it's no surprise now.
	We've been saying it forever, but we know Twitter, pre-Eon Musk, was basically in bed with the Democratic Party In advancing anything counter to Trump and anything that they wanted out there.
	We know the FBI met with Twitter.
	Uh we now know the Senate Intel Committee was sending messages to Twitter.
	We're gonna talk about our friend Adam Schiff and others sending similar messages to Twitter.
	So there was a group coordinated effort by multiple branches in the United States government telling Twitter what to do as a free speech company.
	How is that not the most alarming thing that any American is talking about right now?
	And as we keep peeling the onion back and getting a little more at a time and a little more at a time, we're getting more and more into it.
	But my question remains this, and this is maybe something this Congress can answer.
	Why did Twitter acquiesce?
	Well, we know part of the reason.
	They had people like Vijay Agatta and Joel Roth and company who hated Donald Trump and wanted to be uh famous with the likes of Adam Schiff and company, so they just said yes, yes, yes, and we had James Baker calling the balls and strikes over there, the guy who authored basically the Russia Gate narrative.
	And so we know part of the reason.
	But as I've always said from you know my days as a public defender, just follow the money.
	Are you telling me that Twitter didn't have multi-million, if not billion dollar contracts with agencies and departments in the United States government?
	If not, what role do the Senate Intelligence Committee have in executing a oversight role of a free speech media platform?
	It's completely outside their mandate.
	There's a wholly separate committees in Congress that look at institutions like Twitter.
	So the question to me, and I still will bet my bottom dollar, that you will see not just this one three million dollar contract that came out a couple weeks ago between the FBI and Twitter.
	You will see scores of contracts between the intelligence community and Twitter and Facebook and YouTube.
	You will see scores of contracts, taxpayer dollars going to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube from the likes of FBI, from likes of DHS, and so on.
	So we need to get to the bottom of that.
	That documentation exists.
	You can't hide money, and this Congress needs to go pull the bank records of Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and the other companies, and then demand the testimony of the people involved on both sides.
	You know, you mentioned you alluded to the uh basically this messages being sent from Adam Schiff's office to Twitter where they're looking to take down Paul Sperry's account.
	Um and actually, you know, Twitter responds back, and they basically say, we don't do that.
	Now, however, down the line, indeed, Paul Sperry's account is taking acquiesced.
	Yes.
	I mean, just think of it, Jan.
	But there is coercion, I mean, listen, I I have to say this, right?
	These are the most powerful legislative bodies in the country.
	I mean, there's a level of kind of, isn't there a level of coercion here?
	No, that's why that's exactly why I use the word conspiratorial when you said this was disturbing.
	No, this is conspiratorial.
	And it's not just that it's the most powerful legislative bodies.
	It's one of the most powerful people in government.
	The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, a member of the gang of eight, who is responsible for us to entrust with the most secret affairs of the United States of America and overseeing and funding our intelligence apparatus, is literally taking the time to email Twitter and say, we, me, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee doesn't want that out on your platform.
	do as I say.
	It's nothing short of conspiratorial.
	The arrogance is what may be disturbing.
	The arrogance of these people to say, we can do this, we're never gonna get caught.
	It's like the FBI and Russiagate.
	But we'll write it down ourselves and we'll send the emails, just like I've been saying the whole time.
	These people's arrogance are what gets them caught, and it's the best evidence of their corruption and criminality, which is why I'm still waiting for the rest of the documentation to come out.
	But the Adam Schiff example, I mean, just think of it.
	You had the Senate Intel Committee doing it, you had the House Intelligence Committee doing it, engaging with Twitter on the same issue, the one issue that we're talking about now, that's the one we've caught them on.
	What about all the rest?
	And like you said, remember, at first Twitter was like did the right thing and said no, but then they acquiesced.
	They gave in.
	Why do they do that?
	It's not Like they had new information.
	They were originally on and have always been on the same mind path and same political mindset as these people.
	And they basically became an arm of the intelligence company.
	Well, one of the things that Taibbe basically seems to trace in here is this sort of the interesting timing between requests to Twitter and then bad publicity for Twitter coming out in corporate media.
	Yeah.
	So there's this, you know, again, not to excuse Twitter entirely here, but there is this kind of pressure being applied.
	It appears to be this kind of pressure being applied to them.
	And yes, and and they acquiesce in the end, and yes, there's obviously ideological alignment, and we've seen that in some of the other drops, but they they didn't roll over.
	I I I I that's not what I see in this material.
	I feel like there was something more happening.
	So I think because we're looking at one instance, that is an approach that you can take based on your analysis of this one instance.
	I think when you start stacking the Twitter files together and the things that we know and the things that we don't know, you'll see that this was more just of a game.
	Oh, we said yes to your eight other things, so on this one we're gonna say no for now.
	And you know, we've seen James Baker, even James Baker had to be shut down on one occasion by Yoel Roth, as we talked about on our prior show about censoring some material.
	But they said yes to the other 99 things that we know James Baker was involved with when it came to censoring Hunter Biden's laptop and anything about Russia Gate and anything that was anti-Donald Trump.
	We've seen their engagements.
	We've seen the FBI and DOJ stood up an election task force of 80 agents that met with Twitter and Facebook on a weekly basis to talk about election censorship.
	So we know this documentation exists, and so I will not let Twitter off the hook for one instance where they may have gotten it right for a second and a half when the other 99 fall flat on their face.
	You know, to your point on the election side of things, I'll just I pulled this quote.
	You know, this is one of the last tweets in the thread.
	Uh Matt basically says, by the weeks before the election of in 2020, Twitter was so confused by the various streams of incoming requests, staffers had to ask the FBI which was which.
	So, no, my the point was that you know we're like, right around the election time, right?
	There's just this, you know, Twitter had trouble dealing with the volume of requests for just think of it.
	Just think of that, Jan.
	And I know I laughed because at this point we're so far past corruption and criminality that the only thing you can do is almost laugh.
	They didn't have the manpower to digest and analyze everything that was incoming.
	That is maybe one of the most shocking things I've heard to come out of the Twitter files because it shows you the volume that we're talking about.
	And that's what I was I into what's it's what I intimated at earlier.
	But if the company themselves is admitting that this happened on such a massive scale, then where's the massive documentation supporting that?
	Aaron Powell The really difficult thing for me here is you know, these you know, the countries that are enemies of the United States, most notably Communist China, which also appears in this thread, they do run active disinformation campaigns.
	And Twitter is charged with taking down one of these.
	And the the problem I see is that you end up in this situation where, you know, it there's legitimate reason to take down these bot nets, to take down these, you know, inauthentic activities designed to influence Americans or seed chaos and so forth.
	But when that and then but that is mixed together with you know political intent here, you know, stateside, and it just creates this terrible mess.
	Well, it's more than just a mess, Jan, you're right.
	There is only limited bandwidth.
	There's only limited manpower, right?
	You can't do everything.
	And algorithms can't solve what men and women looking at a problem set can do in terms of everything, right?
	So it's like I'll analogize to the following.
	We talked about this before.
	When Chris Ray went to Congress and I believe lied by saying domestic violent extremism is on the rise because his agency, the FBI, had falsely padded statistics and pulled agents off the field to specifically take their investigations and call them domestic violent extremist investigations so that statistics would go up to support Chris Ray's bogus testimony.
	What happened was FBI field agents were taken off street crimes, taken off looking at people who were hurting children, taking off people who are robbing banks, taking off people who are committing wire fraud and things like that.
	It's the same thing here.
	With all this incoming, Twitter, as you said, had a department or a group of people responsible for flagging the CCP and their incursions.
	What about Russia?
	What about Iran?
	What about North Korea?
	All these folks are coming and attacking America.
	That's what they want to do.
	That's their job.
	And what our law enforcement should have made a priority one is working in concert with Twitter and having a set of law enforcement agents, be it at the FBI or where have you, working together to defeat that national security priority.
	Instead, what do we find out?
	They had pulled agents off of that beat, stacked them into an election task force, and had them work with Twitter on a weekly basis and Facebook and other companies and pull them off the critical mandate that you've actually I don't think I've heard anyone else say it, Jan, about the infiltrations that we know go on from the CCP, from Russia, from Iran, and interfere in not just our election matters, but other matters too, other policy shifting shaping matters in a in a large-scale way.
	And when you're looking right and focus right, these guys just walked in on the left.
	In this recent Twitter space where Matt uh Taibi was in there with uh Hans Monkey, you know, one of our uh columnists and kind of Russia, I'll call it Russia Gates scholars.
	Great reporter.
	Um basically he talks about how he can access these things.
	He has to go to San Francisco, he has full access, but he can only do kind of keyword queries.
	So the bottom line is I I'm gonna go back to what we've been saying every time.
	Why not unleash hashtag unleash the sleuths?
	Why not let all these people actually a lot of these folks were in this Twitter space with Matt last night?
	These are the people that would love to be able to get the entirety of the files and kind of dig through there and figure out all sorts of things that you know none of us even kind of fully imagine yet.
	Um But I'll analgize it for you.
	You know, look, it's it's not a knock on Taibbi or anyone else there.
	But if the way he's accessing this information is sitting in front of a computer and he has to, he has to input what he wants to look for, which means he has to be the expert on FBI corruption, on confidential human source networks, on following the money, on banking transactions, on where to look in emails or memos on where to look on the FBI side.
	And he, Matt Taibbi, is not an expert in those things.
	It's like sitting me in front of the FTX computer and saying, Cash, I need you to go investigate uh blank Friedman.
	Well, I would need to bring in like 10 people to tell me I could do the investigation, but I need 10 experts to tell me, okay, how does the banking work?
	How does the wire transfer system work?
	I've run fraud cases.
	That doesn't make me the expert.
	And that's the best like analogy I can give to sort of showcase for our audience why I think there are so many shortcomings in what we're seeing.
	Because this is a limited access and it's a limited distribution.
	And it's just a behemoth of an investigation for one, two, three, four people to take on sitting in front of a computer punching in keywords.
	You cannot uncode the Twitter conspiracy with the FBI by doing a Google keyword search.
	It is just ridiculous.
	And so I've said it before, I've called on Elon, I don't know the guy, but open it up.
	Allow other people who are pros to assist in the matter.
	If you want full transparency, stop giving us limited access.
	So let's jump into what's happening in the building behind you there.
	I don't know if we have enough time in the day for that one, Jan.
	Well, no, I mean, we don't know.
	There may be a speaker by the time we premiere on Friday.
	Um, but I mean, this is, I think, unprecedented.
	I think there's been five votes now.
	Um, and so, so how do you view this?
	Yeah, so it hasn't happened in a hundred years, but let's put some window dressing on all this.
	Um, uh anyone in America who's a United States citizen can become Speaker of the House.
	You do not have to be a sitting member of Congress to become Speaker of the House.
	Which is just frankly something that a lot of people, maybe that aren't Americans Wouldn't necessarily know.
	So thank you for clarifying.
	And if you weren't a Canadian citizen, Jan, I would be nominating you right now and we'd be walking across the street.
	No, but in all seriousness, I think you've seen on social media and a lot of other, you know, banter out there.
	Why doesn't Trump become the Speaker of the House?
	Why doesn't so-and-so become Speaker of the House?
	Um, it's not a question of they procedurally cannot.
	That's that's not the question.
	It's just would they do it?
	Anyone can become Speaker of the House.
	And so what you have going on over there is you need to get to 218, is the long and short of it.
	You need the majority to get the speakership.
	And Kevin McCarthy is coming up around 201 votes every time there's a vote for speaker, and there's been five over the last few days.
	And as you said, we are literally filming this while the sixth maybe vote is going down, and there may be a decision by Friday, there may not be.
	So what happens going forward?
	Math has never been my strong suit.
	But as of right now, there are five hardcore GOP holdouts that say they will not vote for Kevin McCarthy to be speaker.
	Okay, let's do the simple math.
	222 seats are how many seats the Republicans in this new Congress hold.
	Five is two seventeen.
	That's not 218.
	So somebody's gonna have to blink.
	Now, you can watch the political talking heads, you can watch whatever show or podcast or whatever you want to listen to, and they'll say, Oh, it's their fault, no, it's their fault.
	At the end of the day, the reason it hasn't gotten to this level before, and you know, I always go to my friend Devin Nunes for some political, I would call it education, because it's not my forte politics.
	And he said, the reason we live in a representative democracy is because we the people get to elect our representatives.
	Then our representatives come to DC and do the work under the rules of the House.
	And the rules of the House say once the newly elected Republican majority gets together before their term begins, they have this thing called a conference.
	And in that conference, Kevin McCarthy was elected the speaker, basically by a majority vote.
	Not by the 218, but that's not what those rules require.
	Now we're really getting into the nitty-gritty of the rules.
	But what Devin was trying to tell me was the process has worked for the last hundred years, and it should be working today because that conference's decision should be the one that stands.
	Now, whether, and I'm not saying Devin's advocating for that or not, and I'm saying I'm not saying I'm advocating for that or not.
	What I'm saying is for our audience is this is how it has worked in the past, and this is why we are here where we are today talking about it, and there is no speaker of the house.
	How's it gonna go, Jan?
	I don't know.
	Your bet your bet is it could have mine.
	Could they bring in another candidate, another member of the House to be Speaker?
	Yes.
	Could the Republicans overplay their hand?
	And that's to say, could they say the majority say we're going Kevin McCarthy or we're going bust?
	And by bust they mean they could float another moderate Democratic candidate.
	So Jan, there's let's not let's not forget, there's 222 Republicans, but there's 213 Democrats.
	That makes up the 435 members of the House.
	That's the total number of House members.
	That doesn't change.
	But what changes is the division.
	And so the Democrats aren't really far off from getting to 222 either.
	They need nine votes.
	You know, the Republicans need less, they just need four.
	So there could be this crazy thing that happens where a consensus candidate, a coalition government comes to pass, and somebody that nobody thought was going to be put up for speakers put up for speaker.
	These are what people say could happen if the Republicans overplay their hand.
	Now you'll hear from strong factions in the Republican Party.
	Those are certain folks who are voting against Kevin McCarthy to say, no, we want more concessions, we want more chairmanship, whatever they, whatever that is they want.
	They right now have said publicly that they are not changing their vote.
	And Kevin McCarthy has publicly said that he is not going to stop running for Speaker of the House.
	So we're kind of at an impasse.
	Something's gonna have to happen.
	But here's the scary part, Jan, right?
	During the Civil War, there was 130-some votes for Speaker of the House.
	Now, granted, we were in a time of war and there was a lot of other things going on that took precedence over this, and we are currently on the fifth voting cycle.
	There's no rule in Congress that says there can only be X amount.
	The problem is with whoever you want to be speaker or whoever you don't want to Be speaker, putting that aside, the work of the United States Congress does not start until a speaker is elected.
	That means none of the investigations you and I talked about can start.
	None of the subpoenas that we want to go out can be sent out.
	None of the budgeting process can start.
	None of the financial commitments that the departments and agencies need to be held to so this Congress can hold them accountable can begin.
	Because there's no speaker, there's no chairman or women.
	There's no heads of committees.
	There's no Congress as we know it operating.
	And so that's the loss.
	And I think that's why you saw President Trump come out and say, take the win.
	Let the Congress begin doing its work.
	Kevin has, in his truth, said earned or will do a good job as speaker.
	And so he's saying, we've retired Nancy Pelosi, we the Republicans.
	Let's put our mandate forward and show the American people what we can do, what oversight investigations we can do, how we can get the budget under control.
	What can we do about the border?
	We haven't even talked about Fauci and COVID and China and COVID origins and things like that.
	What about the CCP?
	There's supposedly a new committee to take on China, which you and I and almost everyone we know are massively in for in favor of.
	But none of that can start until there's a speaker of the House.
	So I don't know how it's going to play out.
	I I guess when we play this episode on Friday, maybe we'll have a speaker, maybe we won't.
	Maybe another candidate will be uh dropped in that's not currently a member of the House of Representatives.
	Which has never happened before, as I understand it.
	At the best, and I am not the congressional expert, but having worked there, I have I asked around and I couldn't find anyone that knew that that had ever actually occurred before.
	Let's see what happens.
	And it's time for our shout out.
	Indeed, Jan.
	And this week's shout-out goes to my old friend Adelaida Carantes in Miami, Florida.
	I'd miss our times together, having dinner with my godparents and you down in South Florida.
	And I hope you and Ray and the kids are doing really well.
	I'm told you are a huge fan of Cash's Corner, which is so cool to hear these many years down the road.
	I wish you guys a very happy new year.
	And thanks to everybody who participated in our live chats on a weekly basis.

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