Kash’s Corner: Trump’s 3rd Indictment and the Criminalization of Thought and Free Speech
“You can’t help but notice the coincidence that it was literally immediately following the Devon Archer testimony,” says Kash Patel.In this episode of Kash’s Corner, we discuss the third indictment of former President Donald Trump, the precedent it sets, and why he believes the judge should recuse herself.“Look past the Trump cycle of 2024. Go to ’28. Go to ’32. Are we going to say that any president or anybody running for president who decides to say they won the election, but didn’t, is going to be prosecuted for that? I mean, how are we going to get people to run for elected office if the fear is you can’t say you won anymore?” says Kash Patel.“We don’t live in the Soviet Union. We live in the United States of America, where the Constitution dictates our freedom of speech. And if they’re going to criminalize that, which they have done here, it is a very dangerous slope,” says Kash Patel.Also an announcement from Kash Patel: “With the campaign for the presidency in full swing, we’re going to take a time-out on Kash’s Corner’s weekly publication. But fear not, Jan and I are going to come back regularly and me specifically on Epoch Times, EpochTV, and NTD to do weekly, regular hits and interviews when our schedules permit. And we will return to Kash’s Corner after the 2024 election cycle. So fear not. You’ll have more of me and Jan than you know what to do with. But we appreciate the audience’s understanding, especially with the scheduling in the pending 2024 election cycle.”
We're finally back, Jan and I, and we're excited to be with you.
Of course, we're gonna dive into the latest Trump indictment by the Department of Justice.
But before we get there, an important announcement from both Jan and I. With the campaign for the presidency in full swing, we're gonna take a timeout on Cash's Corner's weekly publication, but fear not, Jan and I are gonna come back regularly, and me specifically on Epoch Times, Epoch TV, and NTD to do weekly regular hits and interviews when our schedules permit.
And we will return to Cash's Corner after the 2024 election cycle.
So fear not, you'll have more of me and Jan than you want to know what to do with.
But we appreciate the audience's understanding, especially with the scheduling in the pending 2024 election cycle.
Jan, I know uh it's not easy to break our team up on a weekly basis, but I think we'll be able to cover it down and keep giving our audience the news they deserve and the truth they deserve to hear.
Well, 100% cash, and I really look forward to having you on on American Thought Leaders and American Thought Leaders Now, which of course we'll all be continuing as normal, and we'll also have you on other shows like Crossroads and many others, Facts Matter, another one.
So, you know, Cash, it's a very unusual day to be doing this in a way and another and another way.
It's a very, I guess, expected day because I think most of us knew that something like this was definitely coming down the pipe.
Certainly, President Trump has been talking about it for some time.
There's this third indictment that's happened.
And I mean, there's so much to talk about, but let's just actually start with the substance of the indictment.
I mean, where this what what exactly is he being indicted for here?
Well, that I think is what is turning heads across the media and American landscape.
As a former federal prosecutor and public defender, I look at this and I look for the criminal conduct.
That's what an indictment is supposed to lay out, the legal basis to charge someone.
And now what the Department of Justice has done is issued a speaking indictment.
And we've talked about this on past shows, but what that means is they've put out so much information because they wanted a narrative to be out there, but it's supposed to be underridden by a legal basis.
Okay, so what are they saying happened?
They're saying President Trump conspired and obstructed congressional hearings, basically, to have the vote count conducted on January 6th.
But that to me strikes a cord of freedom of speech and constitutional due process.
If President Trump wants to say from now until the end of time, he won the 2020 election, young.
That's his constitutional right to say so.
If you disagree with him, that is a political decision for the American public to adjudicate on election day or at the polls on any other election.
For anybody else that's saying Donald Trump won the 2020 presidency.
He has every right on their constitution to say that.
And Americans have every right to disagree with him.
Where we are in troubled waters here is the criminalization of thought and free speech, in my opinion.
And an interesting point on this indictment, remember, we had heard for months, you know, Jack Smith, the special counsel is looking into the Trump conduct of January 6th, the treasonous, seditious conspiracy, insurrection, riots to overthrow the United States government.
Well, when it came time to it, and Jack Smith had the opportunity to issue those indictments and charges, he didn't.
So by DOJ's own admission, they have now shot their shot and said President Trump did not incite a riot, did not commit insurrection, was not seditious, was not treasonous, didn't conspire with others to conduct those illegal activities.
It's akin to what they did on the classified docs case, and we talked about this on the last episode of Cash's Corner, where they, the government, the DOJ had the opportunity to charge President Trump with the statute from 1951 of unlawfully possessing classified material.
They didn't.
They charged him with a 1917 Espionage Act that predates the classification system.
And when they superseded on that indictment just uh last week or or the week before, they again did not charge him with the unlawful possession of any classified document.
So, Mr. DOJ, which is it?
Is he an insurrectionist and a seditionist and a treasonist?
Is he an unlawful possessor of classified information or is he not?
And by their own two indictments that they chose to brought, they have answered affirmatively that Donald Trump is not either of those.
And so it's just very interesting to me and curious at the same time that these charges are coming so fast and furiously without a legal basis, in my opinion.
And you can't help but notice the coincidence that it was literally immediately following the Devin Archer testimony, which all but destroyed President Biden's credibility about his conduct and his communications with his son and their involvement with Barisma, the Ukraine and Chinese affiliated entities in receiving millions of dollars.
Jon, we've said it before, there are no coincidences in government.
This DOJ brought this indictment and chose the timing of when to do it for a specific reason.
And I think the American public deserves to know the context behind that.
Well, Cash, so let's talk about what the indictment does say.
It's very interesting what it doesn't say, of course.
What it does say, I mean, to me, it's talking about it's talking about lying and it's talking about conspiracies.
And I think that's that's that's the substance of it.
Are you telling me?
Yeah, that I think is what the crux of their allegations are in the new Trump indictment.
But if I can hit pause for a second, Jan.
I remember when I was running the Russiagate investigation for then Chairman Nunes, and we actually referred criminally all of the people that were involved with Russiagate at the FBI, James Comey, Andy McCabe, Lisa Page, Peter Strack, Bill Priestaff, and so many other individuals.
For what?
For the very same charges that Jack Smith is now utilizing to charge President Donald Trump.
And when we made that referral to DOJ, and we're gonna put the letter up uh for our audience so they can see the actual criminal referral that we made and the actual statutes and charges we alleged, the DOJ laughed us out of the halls of justice.
And they said we don't use these statutes to prosecute that kind of conduct.
It's political.
Oh, really?
Well, that's interesting that if you fast forward five years later, and now Jack Smith is allowed to use the statutes of lying and conspiring to commit a conspiracy.
And the reason I'm using quote marks is because it's a 371 conspiracy.
That's what we call a dry conspiracy.
It means the DOJ has no other ammunition, and oh, by the way, it's a felony only punishable by five years.
You know, they wanted President Trump in prison for forever on crimes because they were deserving of life sentences.
This conspiracy is an all-encompassing catch-all.
And what it means is, oh, we don't have the substantive charges of treason and sedition and whatnot.
So we're just gonna say you did a bunch of bad stuff and talked to a bunch of bad people, and then we're gonna add in a lying and obstruction charge.
Because here's the thing you cannot have the obstruction charge and the lying charge without the underlying conspiracy.
But read the indictment, Jan.
What is the actual illegality of the conspiracy?
That you disagree with Donald Trump's decision on the 2020 election?
Again, that's a political decision.
I want to remind our audience in 2001, in 2005, and in 2017, the Democrats objected formally to those elections.
Barbara Boxer went out so much as to demand Ohio reverse their adjudication of the election cycle.
Hakeem Jeffries, the current leader of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives, objected to the 2016 presidential election, as did then Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
That's their right, Jan.
Under our Constitution, you have the right to fully challenge any election if you disagree with it.
And it's not as if Donald Trump came in on January 21st and said, no, no, I'm not leaving the White House.
He he had said he would leave if the election was adjudicated In a manner according to the Constitution.
But he's also allowed to continue the conversation past that date and say, no, I still think I won.
You can disagree with him.
Americans can disagree with him.
But that decision should be made at the polls and not in a grand jury room.
I mean, the slippery slope we're on for me from a political perspective is look past the Trump cycle of 2024.
Go to 28, go to 32.
Are we going to say that any president or anybody running for president who decides to say they won the election but didn't is going to be prosecuted for that?
I mean, how are we going to get people to run for elected office if the fear is you can't say you won anymore?
If we the government say you lost, that's it.
We, the government, we we don't live in the Soviet Union.
We live in the United States of America where the Constitution dictates our freedom of speech.
And if they're going to criminalize that, which they have done here, it is a very dangerous slope, and it exemplifies the two-tier system of justice because it's never been applied before, and they could have used substantive criminal statutes, but since in my opinion, Donald Trump didn't commit those acts, Jack Smith and company went after a very, I would call thin legal justification to prosecute Donald Trump.
And now everybody knows whether you're Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green Party, what have you, what I've heard around the country since the indictment from people is what are they charging him for?
I don't understand it.
He's just saying he won.
I disagree.
Um some people are saying I disagree.
And they're saying, why is that a crime?
I think that's the question that's going to be asked for a long time now.
Well, and there's these other unnamed co-conspirators as they're described in the indictment, which were kind of on his team and doing that, basically.
But so let me ask one quick question before we continue.
So why is it that you, you know, you're saying you used the same approach to try to do those criminal referrals to DOG then?
You believed you had a case when you were doing that.
They disagreed, and now they're using them to uh take on President Trump.
But what why why do you think that it was appropriate then and isn't appropriate now?
Just to be clear.
No, that's a great question.
So the reason we made the referrals was as we now know, and this is this is the one cool thing about talking about it retrospectively five years later, after the Durham report, after the IG report, after the Hipsey report, after the Nunes Memo and everything.
We know definitively that the FBI had no lawful basis to launch an investigation of then President Trump.
We know definitively that the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaigns paid for the steel dossier, the vehicle that the FBI used to lie to a federal court to obtain a surveillance warrant.
We also now know that those surveillance warrants were completely nullified and rescinded by the Department of Justice.
It's an extremely rare maneuver after all these investigations were completed to say what?
There was no lawful basis to ever conduct this kind of surveillance and this kind of warrant.
And we've caught the guys at the time, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, lying to congressional officials about the credibility of the Steele dossier, hiding Brady evidence, and going into a federal court, Jan, And lying to a judge knowingly.
It's not they didn't make a mistake.
That's why we made those referrals because if these individuals in government can do that, then they did conspire to defraud the United States and the American people.
And they conspired at a time when they wanted to upend a presidential election for one party versus the other.
And for the DOJ to come back to us then and say, oh, there's nothing here, we're not gonna prosecute you guys are crazy, I think shows that the two-tier system of justice was alive long before President Trump was elected, the first time in 2016.
And the reason I don't think it applies now, I think we've covered it.
What is the substance of President Trump defrauding the United States?
Did he go into a FISA court and demand a surveillance warrant on his opponents?
He continuously said he won.
Okay.
Agree or disagree, political question.
Oh, he called six people, lawyers and supervisors and other people to say, hey, I won.
I want You to look into this.
And the lawyers were telling him, sir, I think there's a way for you to constitute the challenges.
Okay, let's do that.
I don't know what part of that is criminal.
You can you can have a robust disagreement.
You can even call them dumb.
But that's a far line from calling it criminal.
I mean, so to me, the speaking indictment, you know, you you highlighted a good bit that we haven't talked about.
Oh, six conspirators.
What are they what crime?
What is the underlying substantive conspiracy?
That's why I brought up the 371 thing.
It's not like they got together and conspired to kill someone.
It's not like they got together and conspired to commit a bank robbery.
It's not like they got together and conspired to defraud the United States by going into a federal court and lying to a federal judge.
You see, that's the difference.
There's a conspiracy that has substance and legal statutes underpinning it.
And then there's this conspiracy about chatter, which the DOJ has said they don't like, and they didn't like President Trump saying he had won the 2020 election.
So now they're taking him and six people and criminalizing it.
Here's the other interesting thing, Jan.
How many names are on that indictment?
Just one.
But there's six conspirators to it.
I don't, it doesn't add up for me.
Maybe they'll charge them later, but if they start charging lawyers and government officials and political advisors for advising a president they worked for whether or not they thought they won the election and whether or not there was a vehicle to challenge it.
Are we going to start prosecuting Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and everybody else that challenged elections before?
And what about all the elections to come after 2024?
For me, well, I know we have to live in the now, and the significance is, oh, it's all 2024.
I'm I'm more worried about 28, 32, 36, 40, 44.
Every election that comes after that.
This is a precedent, as we say, a legal precedent that the DOJ is putting out a marker, and unless it's stopped by the judicial system, um, it's going to be very dangerous for Americans.
Well, you know, something just interesting that struck me as you were talking is, you know, when you made those criminal referrals back in the day around Russia Gate, um, then later there was, of course, this deep investigation into the substance of what the validity of that investigation in the first place, right?
So it it strikes me that you know, here's an opportunity to uh similarly, there's this criminal uh referral that has been made, obviously, indictment.
So, you know, perhaps there should be a fine-toothed comb examination of the 2020 election and what actually happened in in intricate detail.
Well, look, you raise a good political issue, which is not something we you know talk about much on Canister's Corner because we want to give the people the facts and the law and let them make the decision.
But I think it's appropriate in this context because what the DOJ has now forced is a relitigation of January 6th and everything surrounding it and the 2020 election.
They have now welcomed that back into the American public by indicting Donald Trump for whatever the conduct is they indicted him for.
And so the kicker is um are they prepared to have it relitigated in the American public and in the court of law, and oh, by the way, Donald Trump is a charged criminal defendant, not civilly, criminal defendant.
He has due process, he gets to subpoena any witness he wants to justify his defense, and any witness he thinks antagonized him and attacked him personally.
Guess who might be on the list, Jan?
Merrick Garland, Christopher Ray, Jack Smith, all of his co-counsels.
Some has we've talked about in past episodes, have committed egregious malpractice prosecuting individuals and have been reversed by the United States Supreme Court and other districts.
Those are all open.
That's fair hunting season.
And he gets to go in to court and say why he thinks he won the 2020 election.
If politically people wanted that story to end, Jack Smith is the reason it has now just been reopened.
And if I were Donald Trump's attorneys, I would be telling them to take a very expansive view of the defense in this case because they're saying, oh, you committed a conspiracy against the United States of America.
It's a very broad crime.
He can come in and have dozens of former and current government officials testify.
Many who probably don't want to be in a federal courtroom testifying in Donald Trump's defense.
So you can't have it both ways.
Jack Smith made the decision to prosecute, Merrick Garland authorized it, and now they're gonna have to live with the political consequence of relitigating that uh in the court of law.
And of course, Jan, as you know, this is gonna be the most watched case in United States criminal court history.
So, Cash, with these other indictments, we've seen that they've kind of actually made the indictments in different places.
Now, this one is being done in Washington, D.C., so it'll be a Washington, D.C. uh court that will be looking at it.
What do you make of that?
Well, I think it's jurisdictional venue shopping.
They brought the other case in Miami because that's where jurisdiction lay, and now they uh are bringing this indictment in Washington, D.C. And we know what happened to Special Counsel John Durham's cases in Washington against Sussman and Denchenko, right?
The jury pools are very different, and the judges are very different.
And the judges are worthy of scrutiny in these cases, and we'll get to that in a second.
But the reason I think DOJ brought this case here is because they politically thought it was advantageous to them with a better chance at a judge that saw from their political advantage point.
And look, it's clear now.
I know we we say we don't mix politics and the law and everything, but it's abundantly clear now that Jack Smith, Merrick Garland, and their entire team are anti-Trump.
They've shown their hand.
And so now for them to bring this case in DC shows their hand even more based on the charges or the weakness of the charges that I think they have brought.
And uh I think it gets more and more interesting when you talk about the judge specifically.
Well, so what about the judge?
I'm actually not familiar with those circumstances.
So Judge Chutkin is a Obama appointee, but that doesn't matter.
That's never uh grounds for recusal.
Here's what does matter.
Back in 2017 and 2018, Jan, Epoch Times was brilliantly covering the Russia Gate scandal that the House Intelligence Committee was undertaking under then Chairman Devon Nunes.
And I was the chief investigator.
And during that process, you'll recall we actually set out to acquire the bank records of Fusion GPS, because during our investigation, we had uncovered that the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign and Perkins Couillet law firm had all got together to funnel money to Fusion GPS and create the steel dossier, which was the unverified vehicle that the FBI knowingly used to lie to a federal court.
So they took us to court.
We issued a congressional subpoena.
It was their right to challenge it.
They took us to federal court.
Do you know where that case landed?
Judge Chutkin.
Do you know what happened in that case?
We were adjudicating the matter.
We were on the eve of victory because we knew we had a lawful right as a congressional committee to acquire financial records of people who are under investigation by us, and we had a basis to justify it.
Judge Chutkin recused herself from that case.
Not on a motion from me, not on a motion from the congressional Republican majority.
She recused herself because we had figured out that she was an attorney at Boy Schiller at the same time as Hunter Biden, story for another day.
The law firm that had represented half of the Democratic entrenchment.
The DNC, um, the uh and fusion GPS.
And everyone tied to fusion GPS, and people on the Hillary Clinton campaign.
So, in my opinion, Jan, if this judge recused herself without us soliciting it, in that instance, how can she possibly be the fair, neutral and detached arbiter of justice and the facts that the Constitution requires in the Trump indictment involving Many of the same individuals, many of the same possible witnesses, many of the same relationships from the Boyce Schiller law firm.
She should recuse herself from these proceedings based on her own past precedent that she set.
And that's that that is a righteous question, in my opinion, for the defense team in this case to call for.
It's actually incumbent upon the prosecutors to make that of the judge because they know of this.
And they are obligated under the canons of ethics and the rule of law to say, Judge, maybe you're not the best for this based on past conduct, because above anything else, your impartiality and the appearance of impartiality is enough to set aside a recusal matter.
And so let's see where this goes.
But I think it's going to be litigated heavily in the in the weeks to come.
Absolutely fascinating, Cash, as always.
And I have to say, I'm gonna miss having this show with you every week.
Um, although we are gonna see each other, you know, from time to time.
Absolutely.
I'm gonna demand that.
Um no, so we should finish up.
We actually, this is a very timely episode.
We want to get this up tonight.
So we're gonna actually publish this on Wednesday because you know, who what who knows what else is going to happen over the next uh couple of days, right?
The news cycle is just spinning up like crazy.
And class so um if I could jump in, the advantage, yeah, I'm gonna miss dearly Cash's Corner with you.
But the advantage of putting it up tonight is I can come back tomorrow Friday on another show and be interviewed on breaking news.
So, you know, there is a give and take to it, and um I'm tremendously gonna miss our weeklies.
I think our audience will too, but I think we'll keep them occupied.
No, absolutely.
And Cash, um, I guess it's time for our shout out.
So, with the last Cash's Corner shout out and a reminder to the audience though Cash's Corner is off until after the 2024 election, Jan and I and me will be staying with many different epoch shows, including American Thought Leaders, and also contributing to NTD, the 24-7 news platform, and Epoch Times as well.
So I look forward to more engagements spread out through the course of the week as news breaks.
And um, I guess it's not a guess.
You know, if we're signing off of Cash's Corner, uh, the last shout-out has to go to Miss Irene.
Um, she has led the production and she has been the leader of this show for years.
And without her, we could never have done it.
Um, she's probably gonna yell at me for calling her out, but sorry, Irene, I'm calling you out.
Um, you and your team are absolutely fantastic.
Um, everyone there, and people, just so you know, it's not like they've got like 50 people working behind the scenes.
There's like three people who make this come together for Jan and I every week.
And not just this show, many other shows at the same time.
So thank you to all the staff there.
Thank you, Irene, for your commitment to making the show what it is.
I think we have built something very special here at Cash's Corner.
And Jan, thank you for having the audacity to tell me you belong on TV.
Um, and here we are, six, seven seasons later, and I can't wait for what the future holds at Epoch Times, Epoch TV, and NTD.
I'm really looking forward to the engagements.
Cash, those are some amazing words, and I'm I'm absolutely certain Irene is just completely thrilled on the other end.
Um we'll see you.
Well, we'll see you next time on uh on uh American Thought Leaders, American Thought Leaders Now, or another Epoch Times and NTD show.
