The Megyn Kelly Show - 20240312_new-biden-memory-revelations-and-movie-set-shootin
Aired: 2024-03-12
Duration: 01:37:56


=== Biden's 2015 Presidency Dates (14:59) ===

[00:00:15]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at Meast.
[00:00:27]  Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
[00:00:28]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
[00:00:30]  We have a great program lined up for you today, including some Wild Kelly's court cases live again on day two from Montana.
[00:00:37]  I got my little ski sweater on for you today.
[00:00:39]  It's kind of fun where I will be going after we finish the show.
[00:00:44]  We're on spring breakout here.
[00:00:46]  But we begin today with the latest on the legal cases that will dominate the 2024 political landscape.
[00:00:51]  And there's breaking news this morning in a couple of them, including special counsel Robert Hurr.
[00:00:56]  This is the guy who was looking into Joe Biden's use of classified documents.
[00:00:59]  You remember Joe Biden's very, very angry at Robert Hurr for saying he's a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.
[00:01:06]  Well, Hurr testified this morning, still ongoing, before the House Judiciary Committee about the Biden classified documents report.
[00:01:13]  And this is in the public eye, so we're able to watch it and show you some clips.
[00:01:34]  Here to break it all down, two of our favorites: Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article 3 Project, and Dave Ehrenberg, state attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida.
[00:01:43]  Guys, welcome back to the show.
[00:01:44]  I also am going to get to a little bit of news we have on the Fannie Willis case involving this judge who's now actually spoken out in an interview.
[00:01:53]  So stand by for more on that.
[00:01:55]  All right, so Robert Hurr goes before HUR, you know how it bothers me, goes before the House Judiciary Committee and gets questioned about this report that we know Joe Biden did not much like.
[00:02:08]  Here's a little bit from his opening statement defending himself because, of course, the president was unhappy about the characterization characterizations on his memory in that report.
[00:02:17]  It's SOT1.
[00:02:18]  The evidence and the president himself put his memory squarely at issue.
[00:02:23]  We interviewed the president and asked him about his recorded statement: I just found all the classified stuff downstairs, end quote.
[00:02:31]  He told us that he didn't remember saying that to his ghostwriter.
[00:02:36]  He also said he didn't remember finding any classified material in his home after his vice presidency.
[00:02:42]  And he didn't remember anything about how classified documents about Afghanistan made their way into his garage.
[00:02:50]  My assessment in the report about the relevance of the president's memory was necessary and accurate and fair.
[00:02:58]  Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe.
[00:03:05]  I did not sanitize my explanation, nor did I disparage the president unfairly.
[00:03:12]  So, what do you make of that, Mike?
[00:03:14]  Because it did seem pretty uncontroversial to me that in prosecuting a case in which he had to prove willfulness, or at least that's the standard he was going with, holding himself to the most difficult standard possible.
[00:03:26]  There has been some criticism that he didn't need to do that.
[00:03:29]  It was a lower bar.
[00:03:30]  But in any event, he said my task was to determine whether the president retained or disclosed national defense information willfully, meaning knowingly, with the intent to do something the law forbids.
[00:03:38]  I couldn't make that determination without assessing his state of mind.
[00:03:41]  Yeah, so Robert Hur's investigative team found six stashes of Biden's stolen classified records from his time as vice president and even from his time as a senator.
[00:03:58]  I don't know how you explain that because that means you'd have to take the classified records out of the Senate skiff.
[00:04:04]  These records were moved several times.
[00:04:08]  They were unguarded for years.
[00:04:12]  They were accessible to a Chinese national employed by the Bidens.
[00:04:18]  And as Miranda Devine reported in the New York Post, they look like some of these classified records were used by Hunter Biden to draft a 23-point memo to secure barisma funding for the Bidens.
[00:04:35]  But then Robert Hurr, so we've established, it looks like that President Trump willfully took and kept, so he willfully retains these national security documents, these classified records, but Robert Hur declined to bring charges against Biden because Robert Hurr says he can't prove, there's doubt whether he can prove willfulness because of Biden's faulty memory.
[00:05:01]  I think that Robert Hur, to put it legally, saved Biden's ass here.
[00:05:06]  And the Democrats are furious because Robert Hurr stated what everyone already knows, which is Biden has a declining mental state.
[00:05:17]  Dave, what did you make of it?
[00:05:19]  Good to be back with you, Megan and Mike.
[00:05:21]  You know, I was expecting that the Democrats would go after Robert Hurr and I was surprised that the Republicans went after him more than the Democrats.
[00:05:29]  This is why we live in different bubbles.
[00:05:31]  And as a Democrat, people on my side have been outraged by the fact that Hurr included what seemed to be gratuitous comments about Joe Biden's memory.
[00:05:38]  And it looks like, according to the latest reports with the transcript that has come out, that Biden did know the exact date that his son died.
[00:05:46]  So her seemed to.
[00:05:48]  He didn't know the year.
[00:05:49]  Not, well, he knew the exact dates.
[00:05:53]  And then as far as the year, he said that the date requires a year.
[00:05:58]  When they say, Dave, when were you?
[00:05:59]  What is the date on which you were born?
[00:06:01]  You don't just get to say May 1st.
[00:06:04]  Well, then when Hur said 2015, I said, wow, was it 2015?
[00:06:08]  That could be taken different ways.
[00:06:09]  That could be taken as man as time.
[00:06:12]  I'm telling you.
[00:06:14]  But here's the thing.
[00:06:16]  I was surprised that the Republicans are going after him more because Democrats are displeased with him, which shows you that we're so divided that you can try to please everyone.
[00:06:24]  You'll please no one.
[00:06:25]  Merritt Garland, that's a lesson for you.
[00:06:27]  But so far, I just, the key thing here is that Robert Hur has emphasized that it's not the possession of the documents that'll get you charged.
[00:06:36]  It's the refusal to give them back.
[00:06:37]  And that's what separates Biden from Donald Trump.
[00:06:41]  All right.
[00:06:41]  You're going to make me go through the transcript, aren't you?
[00:06:43]  Because the transcript, we haven't actually seen it of Robert Hurr and Joe Biden, but apparently it's 250 pages.
[00:06:49]  The New York Times reviewed what they described as a lightly redacted copy of it.
[00:06:53]  So we're getting excerpts from them.
[00:06:55]  They published this section.
[00:06:56]  Biden, well, I don't know.
[00:07:00]  This is what, 2017, 2018, that area.
[00:07:03]  Where's the preceding question?
[00:07:05]  I had this written down someplace where they're getting into it.
[00:07:09]  And the question to him from Robert Hurr, I'll find it.
[00:07:14]  But in any event, he was asking Joe Biden.
[00:07:18]  Oh, here it is.
[00:07:19]  Hur press Joe Biden where he kept papers related to work he did after leaving the vice presidency in January 2017.
[00:07:27]  Okay, so that makes sense.
[00:07:29]  Biden leaves the vice presidency.
[00:07:33]  Of course, Obama left the presidency.
[00:07:35]  And in January 17, Trump was sworn in.
[00:07:38]  So Hur is asking him, where'd you keep your papers relating to the work you did after you left the vice presidency?
[00:07:43]  And Biden's response is, well, I don't know.
[00:07:46]  This is what?
[00:07:46]  2017, 2018, that area?
[00:07:49]  Hurr.
[00:07:49]  Yes, sir.
[00:07:50]  Biden.
[00:07:50]  Remember, in this timeframe, my son is either been deployed or is dying.
[00:07:57]  And so it was, and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the president.
[00:08:06]  I'm not, not a mean thing to say.
[00:08:09]  He just thought she had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did.
[00:08:13]  And so I hadn't, I hadn't at this point, even though I'm at Penn, I hadn't walked away from the idea that I may run for office again.
[00:08:19]  But if I ran again, I'd be running for president.
[00:08:22]  And so what was happening though, what month, what month did Bo die?
[00:08:28]  Oh, God, May 30th.
[00:08:30]  Interrupts here, May, Rachel Cotton, a White House lawyer, 2015, unidentified male speaker, 2015.
[00:08:39]  Biden, was it 2015 he had died?
[00:08:42]  Unidentified male speaker.
[00:08:44]  It was May of 2015.
[00:08:45]  Biden, it was 2015.
[00:08:48]  Robert Bauer, Biden's personal lawyer.
[00:08:50]  I'm not sure of the month, sir, but I think that was the year.
[00:08:53]  Mark Crickbaum, her deputy.
[00:08:56]  That's right, Mr. President.
[00:08:57]  It Biden.
[00:08:59]  And what's happened in the meantime is that as, and as Trump gets elected in 20, in November 2017, this is a question from Joe Biden.
[00:09:08]  Trump gets elected in November of 2017, unidentified male speaker.
[00:09:12]  2016, unidentified male speaker, 16.
[00:09:16]  Biden, 16, 2016.
[00:09:19]  All right.
[00:09:19]  So why do I have 2017 here?
[00:09:23]  That's when you left office, says Ed Siskel, his White House counsel, January of 2017.
[00:09:28]  Biden, yeah, okay.
[00:09:30]  But that's when Trump gets sworn in, January.
[00:09:32]  Siskel, right?
[00:09:33]  Bauer, right.
[00:09:33]  Biden, okay, yeah.
[00:09:35]  And in 2017, Bo had passed.
[00:09:38]  Okay, Dave.
[00:09:41]  There is nothing in that that suggests Biden is recalling anything.
[00:09:45]  I mean, you could see what month, first he doesn't know what month did Bo die.
[00:09:50]  Then he remembers May 30th.
[00:09:52]  Then two people have to remind him 2015.
[00:09:54]  Then he says, Was it 2015?
[00:09:56]  Then he was told, Yeah, it was May of 15.
[00:09:58]  Then Biden says, Okay, it was 2015.
[00:10:00]  Then they're still trying to help him.
[00:10:02]  I'm not sure the month, but I think it was that year.
[00:10:05]  Yes, that's right.
[00:10:06]  What happened in the meantime?
[00:10:07]  Trump gets elected in November of 2015.
[00:10:09]  He doesn't know when Trump got elected.
[00:10:10]  November of 2017?
[00:10:12]  Hello?
[00:10:13]  No, it wasn't November of 2017.
[00:10:16]  The whole world knows it was November of 16.
[00:10:18]  Dave.
[00:10:21]  Oh, is that a question?
[00:10:23]  That's my question.
[00:10:24]  That's right.
[00:10:25]  Dave, come on.
[00:10:27]  Well, like, as I said, when you, well, he knew May 30th, he got that date.
[00:10:31]  And then he, as far as wasn't sure about the year, and then he was surprised a little bit about the year.
[00:10:36]  Yes.
[00:10:37]  So you can get him for that.
[00:10:38]  But, you know, when we continue to harp on Joe Biden being seen out and all that stuff, what that does is lower the expectations so much so that when he gives a really strong State of the Union speech, all of a sudden he meets and exceeds those low expectations.
[00:10:51]  So you got to be careful what you ask for here.
[00:10:53]  And as far as what Robert Hurd did, yeah, I just think as a prosecutor, you focus on the issue of, did Joe Biden commit a crime?
[00:10:59]  He said, no, he did not.
[00:11:01]  And then you move on.
[00:11:02]  And instead, he came out with this hundreds of pages of stuff that was now being used politically.
[00:11:07]  And I think that oversteps his bounds.
[00:11:10]  Okay.
[00:11:10]  I understand your feeling, but I don't think that's what happened at all.
[00:11:14]  I think he did need to explain why he wasn't charging him.
[00:11:16]  I understand Republicans are mad about the standard.
[00:11:18]  They said, you know, you held him to too high a standard.
[00:11:21]  The burden of proof was lower.
[00:11:22]  But her is saying, I had, in my mind, my understanding was I had to prove willfulness and I can't do it with a doddering man who has a poor memory.
[00:11:30]  And it doesn't mean that you always forget everything.
[00:11:33]  It's just there's, oh, look, there's a doggy visiting Dave.
[00:11:36]  Who's that?
[00:11:37]  Oh, you can see Getty?
[00:11:38]  Oh, sorry.
[00:11:39]  Sorry.
[00:11:41]  Sweet dog.
[00:11:42]  See, there you go.
[00:11:45]  Let's talk about it.
[00:11:45]  I need a guest star appearance today.
[00:11:47]  Okay.
[00:11:48]  So anyway, here's the, here's the real shocker to me, Mike.
[00:11:52]  We'd heard something about this, but to see it actually, you know, come out.
[00:11:56]  Joe Biden came out there and misled us all.
[00:11:59]  He misled us all.
[00:12:00]  The day the Hurr report hit, Joe Biden came out and said, this is, you know, offensive, remember, because he was on his heels.
[00:12:07]  It said he was this like, you know, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.
[00:12:11]  So he held that impromptu press conference, tried to prove to us all that he still had it together.
[00:12:15]  And then he confused Al-Sisi as the president of Mexico and so on.
[00:12:20]  And in that press conference, he feigned indignation.
[00:12:25]  That's my characterization based on the news we've seen here about how it was allegedly Robert Hurr who brought up the death of his son.
[00:12:35]  That's what he said.
[00:12:36]  And the transcript I just read to you proves he, Joe Biden, brought up his son.
[00:12:41]  Robert Hurr didn't ask anything about him.
[00:12:44]  That's not what happened.
[00:12:46]  Here's Joe Biden on February 8th, the day this report came out and he had his impromptu press conference.
[00:12:51]  Listen, SOT 7.
[00:12:54]  I know there's some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events.
[00:12:59]  There's even reference that I don't remember when my son died.
[00:13:05]  How in the hell dare he raise that?
[00:13:08]  Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business.
[00:13:15]  When I was asked the question, and once again, just taking back to the beginning of that transcript, Hurst pressing him where he kept papers related to work he did after he left the vice presidency in January 17.
[00:13:24]  Biden, well, I don't know.
[00:13:26]  This is what, 17, 18, that area?
[00:13:28]  Her.
[00:13:29]  Yes, sir.
[00:13:30]  Biden.
[00:13:30]  Remember in this timeframe, my son is either been deployed or is dying.
[00:13:35]  And so blah, And finishes it with, what month did Bo die?
[00:13:40]  Oh, God, May 30th.
[00:13:42]  And then it goes from there.
[00:13:43]  Not a single question here from Robert Hurr about Bo Biden.
[00:13:48]  It was Joe Biden who brought that up.
[00:13:51]  Yeah, and think about how despicable that is that Joe Biden is using his deceased son as a life raft, as political cover for him when he's caught.
[00:14:05]  He's clearly caught with stolen classified records from his time as vice president as senator.
[00:14:11]  And when he's on his heels, he brings up his dead son.
[00:14:15]  And then when this report comes out, he blames Robert Hurr and says that Robert Hurr brought up his dead son, which is just not true.
[00:14:24]  But this is part of a pattern by Joe Biden.
[00:14:27]  Like, remember, this is the same Joe Biden who refused to acknowledge his five-year-old granddaughter for five years until he felt the political pressure.
[00:14:37]  He's just a terrible human being.
[00:14:39]  Oh, boy.
[00:14:40]  So I know Dave disagrees with that, but I do want to get on to the motivation here.
[00:14:45]  Look, it does look to me like Biden has significant memory problems on the one hand.
[00:14:49]  And on the other hand, I'm sure it is hard to remember exactly why one box got where it did.
[00:14:54]  You know, I think most of us would have trouble recalling exactly how the one box got into the garage, et cetera.
[00:15:01]  But, you know, that can be used as evidence of his sloppiness around classified documents, same way it's being used against Trump.
[00:15:07]  Here's Jim Jordan, though, positing another theory in the hearing this morning.
[00:15:11]  Dave, take a listen to SOT 2.

=== Trump's Document Obstruction Motives (15:21) ===

[00:15:15]  So Joe Biden knew the rules.
[00:15:17]  You know he knew the rules.
[00:15:18]  And Joe Biden told us he knew the rules.
[00:15:20]  So Mr. Hurr, why did he break them?
[00:15:23]  It's a confusion.
[00:15:25]  Congressman, the conclusion as to exactly why the president did what he did is not one that we explicitly address in the report.
[00:15:34]  The report explains my decision to the Attorney General that no criminal charges were warranted in this manner.
[00:15:41]  I think you did tell us.
[00:15:42]  I think you told us, Mr. Hur.
[00:15:44]  Page 231, you said this.
[00:15:47]  President Biden had strong motivations.
[00:15:50]  That's a key word.
[00:15:51]  We're getting to motive now.
[00:15:53]  President Biden had strong motivations to ignore the proper procedures for safeguarding the classified information in his notebooks.
[00:16:01]  Why did he have strong motivations?
[00:16:03]  Because, next word, because he decided months before leaving office to write a book.
[00:16:11]  Mr. Hur, how much did President Biden get paid for his book?
[00:16:14]  It may be $8 million.
[00:16:15]  $8 million.
[00:16:17]  Joe Biden had 8 million reasons to break the rules.
[00:16:22]  What do you make of that theory?
[00:16:25]  Jim George is going to Jordan.
[00:16:27]  I mean, I see cribbing things out of this many hundred-page document and ignoring the key issue here is it is the obstruction.
[00:16:35]  It is the refusal to give back the documents.
[00:16:38]  So if you want to blame Joe Biden for keeping documents just like Ronald Reagan did for similar reasons, then go ahead.
[00:16:47]  But it's not a crime, according to Robert Hur, based on what Joe Biden has done.
[00:16:53]  Now, I will admit that part of the reason that Robert Hurr said it is not a crime is because the intent part is not in there, because Joe Biden did not intend to commit a crime because, according to Robert Hurr, he has memory issues.
[00:17:05]  But I would go further and say that these cases are not prosecuted unless you do what Trump did, which is after getting asked repeatedly to turn back the documents, you refuse to do so.
[00:17:15]  And then you take active steps to obstruct.
[00:17:18]  And now we see a new witness, Witness 5, come forward on CNN, which subscribed more obstruction by the former president.
[00:17:24]  That's we're going to get to him.
[00:17:27]  Bad news for Trump in that documents case, which is in Dave's district, and we'll get to that in a minute.
[00:17:32]  But let's just finish up with Biden first.
[00:17:34]  So, Mike, Biden, Jim Jordan also was raising the fact that Biden, we know this from the original Hur report, sat down with a ghostwriter, you know, a guy who wrote the book for him, and that Biden realized in this exchange he wasn't allowed to show this guy the classified documents he had.
[00:17:51]  So he knew, he knew he had classified documents.
[00:17:54]  And unlike Trump, they aren't things that he could have declassified because he was never president.
[00:17:58]  And so he decided instead to read those classified documents aloud to the writer, which is, that doesn't save you.
[00:18:07]  That doesn't save you.
[00:18:10]  And that guy destroyed the tapes.
[00:18:14]  The writer destroyed the tapes, but did keep a transcript, which is how we know it all went down.
[00:18:20]  And this is Jim Jordan questioning that behavior today in SOP3.
[00:18:25]  Page 200.
[00:18:26]  Joe Biden, this is a quote, Joe Biden risked serious damage to America's national security when he shared information with his ghostwriter.
[00:18:37]  Shared it with his ghostwriter, the guy who was helping Joe Biden get $8 million.
[00:18:43]  And oh, by the way, Mr. Hur, what did that ghostwriter do with the information Joe Biden shared with him on his laptop?
[00:18:50]  What did he do after you were named special counsel?
[00:18:54]  Chairman, if you're referring to the audio recordings that Mr. Zwanitzer created of his conversations with those files into his recycled bin on his computer.
[00:19:10]  Tried to destroy the evidence, didn't he?
[00:19:12]  Correct.
[00:19:14]  Wow.
[00:19:15]  That just stinks to high heaven, Mike.
[00:19:18]  Yeah, I mean, that's obstruction of justice.
[00:19:20]  And you have to ask why wasn't this ghostwriter charged with obstruction of justice?
[00:19:26]  And why wasn't Biden charged with willfully disclosing classified information with his ghostwriter?
[00:19:33]  That doesn't go to his mental state on he doesn't remember how he got these documents into his house and into his office, six different stashes of stolen classified records.
[00:19:43]  And remember, this is part of a pattern of obstruction that we have with Biden here.
[00:19:48]  Remember when the Biden Justice Department was pursuing Trump for presidential records in the office of former president, which is allowed by the Presidential Records Act, which is passed by Congress, Office of former president, it's funded by Congress.
[00:20:02]  They have Secret Service protection.
[00:20:04]  During this time, the Biden, President Biden's personal lawyer was having secret discussions for several months with the Biden Justice Department, where the personal lawyers were doing searches. of the Biden's homes and offices and they turned over four stashes of classified records and they sort of they represent it to the FBI that they turned over everything.
[00:20:25]  And then this secret arrangement got discovered by the public.
[00:20:28]  It got reported.
[00:20:29]  Garland appointed her as special counsel, her sent in the FBI and they found a fifth set of stolen classified records.
[00:20:37]  How do they explain not turning over that fifth set of stolen classified records?
[00:20:42]  What steps did Biden's personal attorneys take to find these records?
[00:20:47]  How did they miss this fifth set?
[00:20:51]  I just keep thinking about the fact that here you have Biden reading aloud from documents he knows are classified that he shouldn't have to his ghostwriter.
[00:20:59]  And the ghostwriter doesn't get charged and Biden doesn't get charged.
[00:21:03]  But we've talked many times about Trump allegedly waving around that Millie attack plan on Iran to Mark Meadows in connection with his book, to his, you know, to people in connection with Mark Meadows' book.
[00:21:16]  And that winds up in the Jack Smith indictment.
[00:21:19]  But so he gets charged for that.
[00:21:22]  And Trump didn't actually even show that document to anybody.
[00:21:25]  He just waved it around, according to Jack Smith.
[00:21:27]  So you can, you know, look, I understand and I take your point, Dave, Trump went further than Joe Biden did in trying to stop those documents from getting turned over.
[00:21:36]  That seems very clear.
[00:21:37]  I realize he's got legal defenses to it, but just on the facts.
[00:21:40]  But there's no question that Biden also withheld classified documents, read aloud from them, and knew he shouldn't have had them.
[00:21:46]  And the people around him didn't get charged and he didn't get charged.
[00:21:49]  So the American people are seeing what feels like a double standard.
[00:21:53]  Well, Megan, when it comes to the document that Trump waved around, that may not have been the actual document.
[00:21:59]  And it doesn't matter.
[00:22:00]  It could have been, you know, baseball scores.
[00:22:02]  The key to that piece of evidence you mentioned is that Trump said, I shouldn't be showing you this.
[00:22:08]  I can't show you this because I didn't declassify it.
[00:22:10]  So that shows you obstruction.
[00:22:12]  That shows you the state of mind that he knew that the stuff he had could not be shown to people.
[00:22:17]  He knew he was not allowed to possess it and he still refused to give it back.
[00:22:22]  So that's the real problem.
[00:22:23]  Which is interesting because Trump claims the opposite.
[00:22:25]  Yes, because Trump is claiming the opposite, that he had declassified everything.
[00:22:28]  I got it.
[00:22:28]  So in that front, in his mind, on that front, you raised the issue of another, a Trump employee at Mar-a-Lago has come forward, previously known as employee five in the in the, I guess, in the indictment and the classified documents case.
[00:22:45]  In your case, I mean, you're not involved in it, but it's your jurisdiction, Mar-a-Lago and Palm Beach.
[00:22:50]  Anyway, his name is Brian Butler.
[00:22:52]  He's 41 years old.
[00:22:53]  He sat down with CNN.
[00:22:54]  He was employed at Mar-a-Lago for 20 years.
[00:22:57]  And he is trying to sort of fill in the story on how after Trump was under subpoena and had to turn over these documents and a fight had erupted on, you know, like the DOJ had said, give them to us.
[00:23:11]  And he had said, okay, I will, I will.
[00:23:13]  That instead of giving them to the feds, Trump offloaded them from Mar-a-Lago up to New Jersey and his golf course and home up there.
[00:23:23]  And that he used now indicted Mar-a-Lago and Trump employee Walt Natchua to do it, to move the boxes, get him on the plane so that they would not be reviewed by justice or known that he had them.
[00:23:36]  And this guy, Brian Butler, was employed at Mar-a-Lago for 20 years.
[00:23:39]  Sounds like he was a, I don't know.
[00:23:42]  I mean, they said in the interview, he was the guy responsible for loading bags on the plane, loading bags in the cars.
[00:23:47]  You know, so he doesn't sound like he was necessarily at the top of the power ring, but the reason he's relevant is he says that on this particular day that Walt Natchua came to him and said, can I get the keys to an escalade?
[00:24:00]  I need to do some box loading myself.
[00:24:03]  And this guy was like, yeah, that's weird because that's my job.
[00:24:07]  Why is he doing it?
[00:24:09]  And that he thought the whole thing was fishy.
[00:24:12]  And he believes, though I haven't seen him prove or explain how he knows that those boxes had classified information in them.
[00:24:20]  That's kind of where I see the weakness in his story.
[00:24:22]  But he sat down with CNN last night.
[00:24:24]  Do we have a clip of that?
[00:24:25]  I'm looking at here.
[00:24:26]  It is, Saadi.
[00:24:29]  I ended up loading all the luggage I had and he had a bunch of boxes.
[00:24:33]  You noticed that he had boxes.
[00:24:35]  Oh, yeah.
[00:24:35]  They were the boxes that were in the indictment.
[00:24:38]  And did you have any idea at the time that there was potentially U.S. national security secrets in those boxes?
[00:24:44]  No clue.
[00:24:45]  I had no clue.
[00:24:46]  I mean, we were just taking them out of the escalate, piling them up.
[00:24:49]  I remember they were all stacked on top of each other.
[00:24:52]  How secure would you say Mar-Lago is?
[00:24:55]  Well, I mean, there's been some very public instances of people sneaking on property.
[00:25:01]  Look, I think it's secure, but there were definitely a lot of gaps.
[00:25:07]  Do you view Trump as a national security risk?
[00:25:12]  I personally would just say I just don't believe that he should be a presidential candidate at this time.
[00:25:19]  I think it's time to move on.
[00:25:22]  Mike, what do you okay?
[00:25:24]  So I got to say, you know, having watched the whole interview with him, he seems like a nice guy and he doesn't, he seems like he's really torn.
[00:25:31]  He's got a lot of friendships and he feels bad about having to say this stuff.
[00:25:35]  But I don't, let me start with you on it, Dave.
[00:25:38]  Is there proof from this guy that he actually saw classified documents in those boxes?
[00:25:42]  No, he said he didn't know what was in the boxes.
[00:25:45]  It just is further proof of obstruction because this happened right at the time where the feds were coming down to take a look at the documents.
[00:25:53]  And here they are packing stuff up and sending them out like bank robbers trying to hide from the approaching cops.
[00:25:59]  You know, this is a bad look, but no, there's no proof that those documents were the classified documents, but there's some circumstantial evidence.
[00:26:07]  Mike, what do you make of Butler and his testimonial about the boxes?
[00:26:12]  Well, I mean, the fact that he's running to CNN to report this instead of going to investigators and talking about this makes his testimony very suspicious.
[00:26:22]  Maybe he has a political motive, maybe he has a financial motive.
[00:26:25]  And the fact that he doesn't know what was in those boxes, he has no idea if classified materials were in those boxes or not.
[00:26:32]  Yeah, I mean, that's the problem.
[00:26:33]  It is weird that he went to CNN.
[00:26:35]  I mean, he obviously did work with investigators because he's in the Jack Smith indictment.
[00:26:38]  Go ahead, Dave.
[00:26:40]  Megan, the problem that I have here is that the fact that he felt compelled to go to CNN because Judge Cannon was perhaps going to leak his information.
[00:26:49]  That was something that we have not discussed where Judge Cannon has been very close to leaking out all this information about witnesses that puts him at risk.
[00:26:58]  So he's saying, I'm going to get in front of it.
[00:26:59]  Wait, I didn't know about that.
[00:27:01]  Yeah.
[00:27:02]  Judge Cannon, the federal district judge is leaking information on the witnesses.
[00:27:07]  Well, I shouldn't, yeah, I shouldn't have used the word leaking, but she was going to release the information about the witnesses.
[00:27:11]  And that was against Jack Smith's objection.
[00:27:13]  Jack Smith saying, please do not do this.
[00:27:16]  And Judge Cannon was about to do it.
[00:27:18]  And she is reconsidering.
[00:27:19]  But this guy is now saying, hey, I don't trust what's going on there in that court.
[00:27:24]  So let me get in front of this.
[00:27:25]  And that's why I'm doing the interview now.
[00:27:28]  Mike, what do you make of that?
[00:27:31]  Well, I mean, we have this pesky constitutional right to public trials in America.
[00:27:36]  So that, you know, that pesky constitutional right requires the public to know what the evidence is, including the witnesses.
[00:27:43]  And so, you know, we don't have secret proceedings.
[00:27:45]  We're not North Korea.
[00:27:47]  So, you know, I know that that doesn't fit the political motivations of the Biden Justice Department, including Jack Smith, but you have to follow that pesky constitution.
[00:27:56]  It is annoying at times.
[00:27:58]  Okay, two other subjects quickly.
[00:28:00]  January 6th, there's a newly released interview transcript with the driver who had Trump in the beast, the presidential limo, on the day of J6.
[00:28:13]  And the reason this is interesting, it's not new testimony, it's old testimony, but we're just getting our first look at it now because the GOP controls the House and now they're releasing some transcripts that had previously been withheld.
[00:28:24]  This particular transcript was withheld, not because it looks like it looks like it was.
[00:28:29]  At first, I thought the Democrats just didn't want us to see it, but the more I read it, it appears that the committee had entered into an agreement with the Secret Service regarding 12 interviews to avoid disclosing private information.
[00:28:40]  The Secret Service was concerned about certain things coming out.
[00:28:42]  So I don't know what the truth is, but it sounds like there may have been more to this not coming out earlier than just Dems trying to hide, though one never knows.
[00:28:51]  Okay, so anyway, this is the driver who allegedly had the wheel grabbed according to Cassidy Hutchinson.
[00:28:59]  Trump reached over.
[00:29:00]  He grabbed the wheel.
[00:29:01]  We're going to January 6th.
[00:29:03]  I'm not going back to the White House.
[00:29:04]  Take me to my people.
[00:29:06]  And Cassidy Hutchinson was lauded as just this heroine.
[00:29:10]  You remember people were saying, remember the name Cassidy Hutchinson.
[00:29:15]  She will be up there with, you know, who knows, Marie Curie as people who have changed the world.
[00:29:22]  We knew this was bullshit.
[00:29:24]  It was obvious bullshit.
[00:29:25]  That piece of her testimony just smelled of inauthenticity from the moment.
[00:29:31]  And this is the reaction on our show.
[00:29:33]  We pulled just a sampling when it happened.
[00:29:36]  Actually, let me just set it up.
[00:29:37]  Here's Cassidy Hutchinson in SOT 9.
[00:29:41]  The president said something to the effect of, I'm the effing president.
[00:29:45]  Take me up to the Capitol now.
[00:29:48]  To which Bobby responded, sir, we have to go back to the West Wing.
[00:29:53]  The president reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel.
[00:30:00]  Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said, Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel.
[00:30:06]  We're going back to the West Wing.
[00:30:09]  We're not going to the Capitol.
[00:30:12]  Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel.
[00:30:16]  And when Mr. Renato had recounted this story to me, he had motioned towards his clavicles.
[00:30:23]  Okay.
[00:30:24]  So here, this is us reacting to this story in episode 347.
[00:30:30]  Does anyone really believe that Trump reached for the wheel of the beast and then tried to essentially strangle his security?

=== Capitol Hill Authenticity Debate (08:15) ===

[00:30:37]  I mean, please.
[00:30:39]  Here again, Ms. Hutchinson was not a party to the actual exchange.
[00:30:43]  If you listen to her full testimonial, she goes on and says, well, the president said something to the effect of, I'm the effing president.
[00:30:51]  Take me up to the Capitol.
[00:30:53]  What does that mean?
[00:30:54]  He said it or he didn't.
[00:30:55]  What does that mean?
[00:30:55]  Something to the effect of.
[00:30:56]  Which words are you insure of?
[00:30:58]  Effing, take me to the Capitol.
[00:31:00]  Why can't you remember?
[00:31:03]  She made it sound like that.
[00:31:05]  Your family can cover it.
[00:31:06]  See, as Trump was reaching forward to get the wheel to take them to J6, something like out of diehard, shown here, which we also played at the time.
[00:31:23]  Okay.
[00:31:24]  And by the way, not for nothing.
[00:31:26]  But Trump was in the back of the car.
[00:31:28]  Trump wasn't in the passenger seat.
[00:31:29]  So it's query how any of that could have happened.
[00:31:32]  All right.
[00:31:32]  So now we have testimonial from Robert Engel, the lead agent, saying, yeah, this didn't happen.
[00:31:43]  The president was insistent on going to the Capitol.
[00:31:47]  This is the driver, the driver testifying to this.
[00:31:50]  He was insistent on going to the Capitol.
[00:31:52]  So he did want to go to the driver or to the Capitol.
[00:31:54]  It was clear to me he wanted to go to the Capitol, but he was not screaming at Mr. Engel, the lead agent.
[00:32:00]  He was not screaming at me.
[00:32:03]  Certainly, his voice was raised, but it did not seem to me that he was irate.
[00:32:07]  Certainly not.
[00:32:08]  The driver said, Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel or physically accosted the agents.
[00:32:15]  I did not see him reach, the Secret Service driver told investigators.
[00:32:18]  He never grabbed the steering wheel.
[00:32:20]  I did not see him lunge to try to get into the front seat at all.
[00:32:24]  What stood out to me was the irritation in his voice.
[00:32:28]  So, Mike, as it turns out, Cassidy Hutchinson may not be the truth-telling heroine of our time.
[00:32:37]  Yeah, I mean, I loved Cassidy Hutchinson's poached, dramatic voice with the authenticity of a stripper.
[00:32:45]  I mean, I think she's right up there.
[00:32:47]  They're authentic.
[00:32:48]  What are they trying to say about the strippers?
[00:32:51]  Exactly.
[00:32:51]  So she's right up there with Gene Carroll and Christine Blasey Ford and all these brave lying women who are trying to get Trump.
[00:33:01]  All right, go ahead, Dave.
[00:33:03]  Sorry, I had to add Katie Britt's name in that.
[00:33:07]  There is a problem with authenticity and what we saw here.
[00:33:09]  That's fair.
[00:33:10]  Yes.
[00:33:10]  By the way, I loved your clip on that, Megan.
[00:33:12]  That was so great.
[00:33:13]  I was passing it around.
[00:33:16]  So as far as Cassidy Hutchinson, keep in mind that she was retelling a story.
[00:33:21]  This was hearsay would not be admitted into a court, but it is admitted into a January 6th hearing.
[00:33:26]  So whether or not she got the story right, she said it was told to her by someone else.
[00:33:30]  So I can see why, you know, she may have gotten it wrong if she did.
[00:33:34]  I don't blame her.
[00:33:34]  I don't think she's lying.
[00:33:35]  She's just retelling a story she heard.
[00:33:38]  Okay.
[00:33:39]  I think we can move on from Cassidy.
[00:33:40]  People get it.
[00:33:41]  There was no diehard moment.
[00:33:43]  Although, you know, it's interesting how badly he wanted to go back to the Capitol, but we knew that.
[00:33:47]  Okay, last but not least, Judge McAfee gave an interview to a radio station.
[00:33:52]  It's so fascinating when judges do this.
[00:33:55]  Like last week, you know, a couple of days ago.
[00:33:58]  And he was talking about, thanks, babe.
[00:34:03]  Duggar's bringing me a glass of water.
[00:34:05]  So he was talking about this case and whether he's going to possibly change his decision now that he has a primary challenger.
[00:34:15]  This is a heavily Democratic district, 173% for Joe Biden.
[00:34:20]  You know, Fannie Willis was elected as DA in the same place where he's now going to have to run for reelection because he looked like he was unopposed, but now he is opposed.
[00:34:28]  And so he sat down and gave an interview.
[00:34:33]  And I'm trying to get the name of the radio host that he gave it to.
[00:34:37]  I'll play it in a second.
[00:34:38]  But take a listen to him.
[00:34:39]  Oh, Shelly Winter, saying he is not, do not fear he will not be changing his opinion based on the new challenger.
[00:34:48]  Watch.
[00:34:49]  I've had a rough draft and an outline before I ever heard a rumor that someone wanted to run for this position.
[00:34:55]  So the result is not going to change because of politics.
[00:34:59]  I'm calling it as best I can in the law as I understand it.
[00:35:04]  Ooh.
[00:35:05]  So that's interesting, Mike, that he had a rough draft already, and he's reassuring everybody that the new challenger, who's considerably to the left, and he's more on the right, is not going to make him change anything.
[00:35:17]  Do you believe it?
[00:35:19]  No, I don't.
[00:35:20]  I'm very concerned about the politics here.
[00:35:23]  I think that this is a young Kemp judge.
[00:35:26]  He is in a very Democrat area in Fulton County.
[00:35:33]  And the fact that he said he was going to wait two weeks to make his decision during that two weeks was the filing deadline to figure out whether he was going to get a challenger.
[00:35:43]  And sure as hell, he got a Democrat challenger.
[00:35:46]  So I do think the politics are at play here.
[00:35:49]  And exhibit A of the politics being at play is he's on a radio show announcing what his decision is going to be and how it's not going to change.
[00:35:58]  Hmm.
[00:35:59]  What can we glean?
[00:36:00]  This is from an article in the New York Times, Dave, reporting on this interview he gave, but we've pulled the clips.
[00:36:05]  What can we glean from the following answer where he's talking about his children?
[00:36:10]  As Mike points out, he's only 34, young man.
[00:36:13]  He's younger than all of us.
[00:36:14]  I mean, he's a babe, but he's doing a good job.
[00:36:17]  So listen to what he says about his children.
[00:36:20]  You know, I've got two kids, five and three.
[00:36:22]  They're too young to have any idea of what's going on or what I do.
[00:36:26]  But what I'm looking forward to one day is maybe they will grow up a little bit and they ask me about it.
[00:36:31]  And I'm looking forward to looking him in the eye and telling them I played it straight and I did the best I could.
[00:36:38]  I like that.
[00:36:39]  What do you take away from those two soundbites?
[00:36:41]  I liked it too, Megan.
[00:36:42]  I read the article, saw the interview, and look, I take him at his word.
[00:36:46]  And it is funny that I'm the one defending the Federalist Society judge, whereas Mike doesn't have much faith in him.
[00:36:53]  I think he's played it straight.
[00:36:55]  I like what he's done.
[00:36:56]  And people on my side of the aisle have been critical of him saying he's allowed this to become a circus, but I don't blame him for that.
[00:37:02]  Remember, it was Nathan Wade who submitted the sworn affidavit saying that the relationship didn't begin until afterwards and I got repaid half.
[00:37:10]  And because they did that, that made the issue of lying important.
[00:37:14]  And that's why he had to do all these interviews and hearings.
[00:37:18]  And so I think he has done well.
[00:37:20]  He's got a lot of gravitas, even though he's only 34 years old.
[00:37:24]  Too young to be president himself, mind you.
[00:37:26]  But that's the one benefit of a receiving hairline.
[00:37:28]  He just looks a lot more serious.
[00:37:32]  It's true.
[00:37:32]  It does show his lack of vanity because you don't really have to have a receding hairline like that at age 34 in modern day America.
[00:37:38]  34 years old, went to Emory, led the college Republicans, an accomplished cellist, went to University of Georgia Law School, was in the Federalist Society, clerked or interned for two conservative judges on the Georgia Supreme Court.
[00:37:53]  But also, there's this line item.
[00:37:55]  You know, he gave $150 to Fanny.
[00:37:57]  We talked about that.
[00:37:58]  So did Dave.
[00:37:59]  Like, I don't, it wasn't that big a deal, but he worked for Fannie Willis.
[00:38:02]  Mike, he worked for her because he eventually spent some time in the DA's office and Fanny was above him on the totem pole, not in her current stint as the DA, but when she was, you know, more senior to him as an up and coming DA.
[00:38:13]  So it's interesting.
[00:38:15]  When she was on the stand, she said something like, and he worked with a body, the terrible lawyer, sorry, a body, who did that hearing the other day.
[00:38:23]  And she said something like, you know, when you two work for me, a body and you, Judge McAfee, in the DA's office.
[00:38:30]  And I don't know how that power structure may or may not play in his deference toward her, his, you know, coming up under her.
[00:38:38]  Yeah, I mean, he couldn't even look at her when he was trying to tell her to cool her jets and be an adult and be a lawyer and respect the court and respect the process.
[00:38:49]  Also, this judge was an appointee under Governor Kemp.

=== Alec Baldwin Dummy Round Defense (15:10) ===

[00:38:53]  He was the Georgia Inspector General for a couple of years before Governor Kemp appointed him as a judge.
[00:38:59]  And as everyone knows, Kemp and his people are not exactly fans of President Trump.
[00:39:05]  No, no, they're Republicans, but they are not MAGA Republicans.
[00:39:09]  And, you know, Trump's gone after Kemp pretty hard over these past few years.
[00:39:13]  Guys, such an interesting discussion.
[00:39:15]  We continue to await the decision.
[00:39:16]  McAfee said we'd have it within two weeks.
[00:39:18]  That would be sometime within the next four days.
[00:39:22]  So for sure, we'll be talking to Mike and Dave when and if we get it.
[00:39:25]  Thanks, guys.
[00:39:26]  Thank you.
[00:39:27]  Thank you, Megan.
[00:39:28]  Okay.
[00:39:29]  And more legal cases coming up.
[00:39:30]  Got an update in the Alec Baldwin case.
[00:39:32]  There was a guilty finding.
[00:39:34]  Alec Baldwin is next, and much, much more.
[00:39:37]  Stand by.
[00:39:56]  Now we turn to Kelly's court.
[00:39:57]  We've got some hot updates on the Rust trial, the one that just concluded, and the one that's coming up for Alec Baldwin.
[00:40:03]  The Michelle Traconis case out of Connecticut.
[00:40:06]  You remember this, where a photus duelist killed his wife, Jennifer, and then killed himself.
[00:40:11]  But his lover was left to stand trial, and more.
[00:40:15]  Joining me now, some of our favorites, founding attorney of Jonas Bilbor Law, Jonas Bilbo, and criminal defense attorney David Wool, also OGs of Kelly's court.
[00:40:25]  Guys, welcome back to the show.
[00:40:27]  Great to see you.
[00:40:28]  All right, so let's kick it off with Rust, the armorer.
[00:40:32]  The young woman, only in her like young 20s, who was responsible for firearms and ammo on set, was charged with involuntary manslaughter.
[00:40:42]  In addition to Alec Baldwin being charged, he comes next.
[00:40:45]  And in, you know, you'll tell me whether this is bad or good for Alec Baldwin, but it's some sort of a sign.
[00:40:51]  She was just found guilty.
[00:40:54]  Here's the jury rendering its verdict in SAT 13.
[00:40:56]  We find the defendant Anna Gutierrez guilty of involuntary manslaughter as charged in Count 1.
[00:41:03]  They find the defendant Anna Gutierrez not guilty of tampering with evidence.
[00:41:09]  I'm not going to lie, I feel bad for this young woman.
[00:41:12]  She's so young.
[00:41:14]  She seems to have been thrown onto a set where she had very little supervision.
[00:41:18]  I don't think she was ready for prime time.
[00:41:19]  That's pretty clear.
[00:41:21]  And I don't, I think she did screw up.
[00:41:24]  I don't know.
[00:41:24]  I mean, I don't know, you guys.
[00:41:27]  What do you think?
[00:41:28]  Is it?
[00:41:29]  Well, I'll play one other thing.
[00:41:30]  I'll play one other thing before I get you way in.
[00:41:31]  Here's the prosecution making the case that, you know, even though she's young and maybe earnest, a woman died.
[00:41:38]  Watch.
[00:41:40]  And folks, if she's not checking the dummy ammunition during the pendency of the filming to make sure that those rounds that are designed to look like live rounds are in fact dummy rounds, this was a game of Russian roulette every time an actor had a gun with dummies.
[00:42:05]  Sadly, for Ms. Hutchins, her camera crew walked off set that morning, and that required her to go into the church and operate the camera herself.
[00:42:20]  And that's what she was doing when the live round that Ms. Gutierrez put in Mr. Baldwin's gun was expelled from that firearm and went all the way through her body.
[00:42:38]  Not the most compelling lawyer I've ever seen in my life, but she got it done, Johanna.
[00:42:42]  Was it the right result?
[00:42:44]  You know, David and I were just talking a little bit off air.
[00:42:47]  I'm bothered by the guilty verdict in this case, not because I don't think this was a tragedy.
[00:42:53]  It absolutely was.
[00:42:55]  But I felt from the start, this case really, as far as this defendant, Hannah Gutierrez read, really blurs the line between civil and criminal liability.
[00:43:08]  And I get, look, you know, I listened to basically the entire trial.
[00:43:12]  I get that it was chaotic on the set.
[00:43:14]  And I get another thing that actually should have helped her.
[00:43:18]  It was chaotic in the place where these dummy bullets came from.
[00:43:22]  The supplier of these bullets looked like a tornado went through his warehouse.
[00:43:27]  Then we wonder how how somehow live rounds got on set when you can't it was it was a mess and she claims that she checked them and they look a lot alike and she didn't check them good enough and one thing led to another and this is a horribly perfect storm that resulted in death but is it criminal negligence megan or is it just plain old negligence given the totality this was a movie set this is what they were doing That's what bothers me.
[00:43:56]  And I, like you, I do feel a little sorry for her.
[00:43:59]  She was 24 at the time.
[00:44:00]  She's 26 or 27 now.
[00:44:03]  Her career is over.
[00:44:04]  You know, it just, it's a horrible mess.
[00:44:06]  I don't know if I agree with this verdict, though.
[00:44:09]  On the other hand, David, it's not like, you know, you or I being negligent in our jobs.
[00:44:16]  It's not like, you know, you or me being negligent, like me sitting here, I press the wrong button and we broadcast out to on the wrong Sirius XM channel.
[00:44:25]  She was negligent with bullets, you know, in a live round got into a gun and a woman died.
[00:44:32]  This is, you know, so because I was asking myself, is it only involuntary manslaughter and a crime because somebody died?
[00:44:39]  And I do think, no, you do have to start back earlier than that.
[00:44:42]  She was handling, she had a higher responsibility than the three of us do when we go to work each day.
[00:44:46]  Not to undermine especially what you guys do, but I'm just saying life or death really is on the line when you're dealing with bullets every day that are going to go into a gun.
[00:44:54]  Right, Megan.
[00:44:55]  And you know that everyone who handles the gun that you load is going to reasonably rely on the fact that these are dummy rounds or blanks, not real live ammunition.
[00:45:07]  You know that.
[00:45:08]  They're not going to open the cylinder and check individually each round like you should be doing.
[00:45:14]  Megan, very simple.
[00:45:15]  I don't know if you can see this very well.
[00:45:16]  That's a live round.
[00:45:18]  It's very distinguishable from a dummy round, which has the casing crimped where the bullet would otherwise be.
[00:45:26]  Easy to see.
[00:45:27]  She's loading these rounds one by one, looking at them.
[00:45:31]  I'm sure she didn't use a speed loader because that would be exceptionally negligent.
[00:45:35]  That's just when you take them all in one and you basically turn it upside down and load them all together.
[00:45:40]  She did it individually.
[00:45:42]  And that's what made it so negligent and rose to the level of criminality because you can't do that.
[00:45:50]  You can't fail to check each round when you know everybody out there is going to rely on it.
[00:45:54]  Alec Baldwin's a knucklehead.
[00:45:55]  He just grabbed the gun.
[00:45:57]  He probably figured, you know what?
[00:45:58]  I'm just going to pretend that I'm shooting at things and have a good time here.
[00:46:02]  And he fired a live round at somebody who I'm sure he aimed at thinking it would have no effect on her because it was a dummy round or a blank round.
[00:46:12]  So she ultimately was the one everybody relied on.
[00:46:17]  She ultimately was the one who I think harbors the most criminal negligence.
[00:46:23]  And I think although she was convicted, she'll probably end up doing 90 days in jail, get probation and probably have a record expunged in a year.
[00:46:32]  So that's very interesting because she could face up to 18 months in prison.
[00:46:36]  I mean, 90 days and suspended would be an amazing result.
[00:46:40]  Here's what's most interesting.
[00:46:41]  So her defense, John, was basically the whole set was a mess.
[00:46:44]  You know, I don't trust the guy who gave me the bullets.
[00:46:47]  And it wasn't my fault.
[00:46:49]  I kept getting distracted.
[00:46:51]  You know, the people above me didn't maintain order.
[00:46:54]  They put too much responsibility on me to handle things I shouldn't have been handling.
[00:46:58]  So you can't put this on me.
[00:47:00]  And then there were other people.
[00:47:02]  I mean, forgive me, but in the line of fire, there were.
[00:47:05]  Like the one guy took the stand and testified he was the one.
[00:47:08]  Normally the armorer is the one who's supposed to hand the actor the gun.
[00:47:12]  He or she's supposed to be responsible for the gun from start to finish, unless it's in an actor's hands.
[00:47:16]  And she wasn't here.
[00:47:18]  This first assistant director, David Halls, was the last one to handle it and hand it to Alec Baldwin.
[00:47:29]  I'm actually, I don't know if I have time.
[00:47:30]  I want to play his soundbite.
[00:47:31]  I'm going to play it real quickly and then I'm going to get your reaction to it on the opposite side of the break.
[00:47:35]  Stand by.
[00:47:35]  Here's David Halls in Sat 17.
[00:47:38]  I don't recall her fully rotating the cylinder.
[00:47:44]  Okay.
[00:47:48]  You don't recall her fully rotating it?
[00:47:50]  I do not.
[00:47:51]  Okay.
[00:47:53]  And even though the cylinder wasn't fully rotated, did you let that safety check sort of pass?
[00:48:03]  I did.
[00:48:03]  I was negligent in checking the gun properly.
[00:48:07]  Honestly, the idea that it was a live round of ammunition that went off was just, it wasn't computed.
[00:48:16]  Did you speak to Ms. Hutchins when you approached her?
[00:48:19]  I did.
[00:48:21]  What did you say?
[00:48:23]  Are you all right?
[00:48:25]  Did she respond?
[00:48:28]  Yes.
[00:48:29]  She said, I can't feel my legs.
[00:48:34]  All right, we got 40 seconds to break, John, but quick thoughts on what that portends for Alec Baldwin.
[00:48:40]  Yeah, this is interesting because the entire defense was, you know, the saying, crap rolls downhill.
[00:48:46]  Her defense is the crap rolled uphill to production and production is Alec Baldwin.
[00:48:51]  And there was a lot of evidence that really had nothing to do with this case that is not going to be good for Alec Baldwin when his time comes.
[00:49:01]  I think he should be nervous.
[00:49:03]  This verdict should make Alec Baldwin nervous.
[00:49:05]  All right.
[00:49:05]  And I want to hear, as somebody who watched it, I want to hear what that evidence is because I don't think that guy's testimony, David Hall's, it can cut both ways.
[00:49:13]  And we'll talk about how.
[00:49:14]  And there's another, so there's more to get to right after this, John and David.
[00:49:17]  Stay with us.
[00:49:21]  So we were talking about whether that testimony is helpful or harmful to Alec Baldwin.
[00:49:29]  And what's interesting, because he's up next, what's interesting about the armorer's case is Alec Baldwin's attorney sat there in like one of the front rows of the seating area the entire time, was paying very close attention.
[00:49:42]  And the reports are that the prosecution seemed at times, and you just mentioned this, Johnna, to be going very much after Alec Baldwin instead of the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reid.
[00:49:56]  Variety reporting as follows.
[00:49:58]  The prosecutor spent considerable court time rebutting Baldwin's claim that he did not pull the trigger, demonstrating that his gun must have been in working order when it fired, even though Gutierrez-Reed's defense did not dispute that.
[00:50:12]  So was that your impression?
[00:50:13]  And how do you think that sound bite that we just played of the first assistant director plays into this?
[00:50:20]  Because, I mean, what he was saying was, look, the idea that this was a live round, it just wasn't computing.
[00:50:26]  It was like nobody on the set, and I'm sure the evidence will be least of all Alec Baldwin, even considered that this gun had a live round in it.
[00:50:35]  Right.
[00:50:36]  Yeah, I agree with that.
[00:50:37]  And you would have thought from time to time that you were watching a trial where both Alec Baldwin and Hannah Gutierrez-Reid were co-defendants, but we weren't.
[00:50:47]  But at least Alec Baldwin's camp really now knows.
[00:50:50]  I mean, they've showed their cards.
[00:50:52]  The prosecution has showed their cards.
[00:50:53]  It's going to be the same prosecution team prosecuting him in July, if the case happens in July, that prosecuted Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.
[00:51:02]  And one of the critical components, I think, for Alec Baldwin, if we take a look at his cards that he's shown, is he's going to get, or whether he testifies or not, I'm not sure, but his position is he did not pull the trigger.
[00:51:16]  So when a jury is going to be tasked with deciding whether he used quote unquote due caution, which is the very nebulous language in the New Mexico involuntary manslaughter statute, I think they might hang their hats on whether or not he pulled the trigger, which is going to require expert testimony to determine whether or not that gun was even capable of going off without pulling the trigger.
[00:51:42]  In my opinion, I think that's what Alec Baldwin is going to hang the crux of his defense on.
[00:51:47]  Will it be effective?
[00:51:49]  No.
[00:51:50]  There was evidence on Alec Baldwin's, quote, due caution in this trial, Hannah Gutierrez reads, David, as follows, continuing to hear from Variety.
[00:51:59]  In the biggest revelation of the trial, the prosecutors played outtakes in which Baldwin could be seen rushing the crew to, quote, reload using his pistol as a pointer, firing blanks at the camera while in close proximity to it, and firing a blank punctuated by an expletive after cut had been yelled.
[00:52:21]  That is a problem.
[00:52:23]  If the standard for involuntary manslaughter is due caution and you've got him using that gun like it's a plastic orange child's toy, it's not helpful to him at all.
[00:52:42]  No, Megan.
[00:52:43]  And it was foolish for him to begin his defense, albeit before the case got to court, saying that he never pulled the trigger.
[00:52:51]  And the gun is not going to go off without pulling the trigger.
[00:52:53]  And I'll tell you one thing.
[00:52:55]  Even if a gun is loaded with blanks or dummy rounds, pulling the trigger can cause damage, severe damage if it's done recklessly.
[00:53:04]  But they know that the gun has to be, it has to be functioning so that when he pulls the trigger, the round will go off.
[00:53:11]  So that was all checked into.
[00:53:13]  A pistol revolver, no matter what it is, doesn't go off without that.
[00:53:17]  He should have very simply started from the very beginning.
[00:53:20]  I reasonably relied on the professionals who handled the gun before me, who cleared the gun, who made sure the gun was only loaded with dummy rounds with blank rounds.
[00:53:30]  And when I pulled the trigger, I assumed that they were all blank rounds and I was far enough away from Ms. Gutierrez that it would never have possibly caused her any harm.
[00:53:41]  That should have been the defense.
[00:53:42]  That would have been believable, unlike I never pulled the trigger defense because the jury simply is not going to believe that.
[00:53:48]  The reason he has to say he never pulled the trigger is because the standard of industry care appears to be everybody who touches the gun checks the gun.
[00:53:55]  And like, you know, we talked about this earlier.
[00:53:56]  There have been some A-list stars who came out and said, you always check the gun.
[00:54:00]  It doesn't matter how many people have checked the gun before it gets handed to you.

=== Pulling The Trigger Believability (06:30) ===

[00:54:03]  Now, look, could Alec Baldwin have detected a dummy round from a live round if the armorer failed to do so?
[00:54:12]  There's questions about that.
[00:54:13]  That's the prosecution's burden in this case.
[00:54:15]  But everybody at this case is going to testify, as they did in Hannah Gutierrez-Reids, that they just, everybody after Hannah, that they just never even considered that a live round could be in there.
[00:54:27]  That soundbite we played from David Hall's, he said, I just, I didn't even fully check it.
[00:54:31]  I didn't even consider, like, I didn't believe there could be a live round.
[00:54:35]  But now you have a guilty, a verdict from a jury saying Hannah Gutierrez-Reid is to blame for not discerning that there was a live round.
[00:54:42]  You got David Hall saying, I was negligent.
[00:54:45]  I did not fully check it.
[00:54:48]  So I would say that's all helpful, John, for Alec Baldwin, because he's going to get up there and say, you just, there's these other two people, if it's their responsibility and not mine.
[00:54:59]  Yeah, I agree that those two things could be very helpful to him, unless the prosecution is going to also, because they know they're going to also say Alec Baldwin put his finger on the trigger and pointed it at the Helena Hutchins and pulled the trigger.
[00:55:15]  And that in and of itself is so grossly negligent that he he too should be guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
[00:55:22]  And we know that he's going to say, no, I didn't.
[00:55:25]  And Carrie Morrissey, who incidentally did not like her style at all, she spent the entire trial looking like she had a rock in her shoe.
[00:55:33]  Like her face was always did not like that one bit, but it didn't matter because the jury bought her story.
[00:55:39]  So you know what she's going to say.
[00:55:41]  The prosecutor.
[00:55:43]  He pointed it and pulled the trigger and that was grossly negligent.
[00:55:45]  So you know what, Megan?
[00:55:46]  The problem with that.
[00:55:47]  I hate to be sexist, but I could have used just a little mascara on her, just like a little, just a little lip gloss.
[00:55:53]  I don't know.
[00:55:53]  You're going to be on the Nash.
[00:55:54]  Like, just sorry, just a hint going forward in the Balwick trial.
[00:55:58]  Go ahead, David.
[00:55:59]  No, Megan, I think when they insist that people check the cylinder for rounds, they check, they want them to check to make sure there are dummy rounds in there so that when they fire the weapon, it actually goes off.
[00:56:10]  But to ask somebody like Baldwin to check for live rounds when there's no conceivable possibility in his mind or anybody else in that set that there would be live rounds, I think is a little much.
[00:56:21]  And I think he can rely on that and say, look, I didn't check because it's never happened before, other than the Brandon Lee matter in 1993, but I didn't expect it to happen.
[00:56:32]  I was reasonably prudent in my approach to the gun, and therefore I'm not guilty.
[00:56:37]  The evidence on the other side is going to be you ran a crappy set as a producer.
[00:56:42]  It was sloppy.
[00:56:43]  You weren't careful about safety.
[00:56:45]  There's going to be a bunch of testimony that it wasn't a safe set.
[00:56:48]  And everything that the armorer did is kind of on you as the executive producer.
[00:56:53]  You didn't go for the training and take it seriously enough.
[00:56:57]  That's Hannah Gutierrez-Reed has said that, that he was distracted.
[00:57:00]  He was on his phone.
[00:57:01]  He wasn't paying attention as she was trying to train him.
[00:57:03]  And then you were playing with that gun on set the whole time, like it was a toy, like you were a kid at like one of those old Western saloon games where you shoot the plastic little pop-up animals.
[00:57:14]  And this wasn't a game.
[00:57:17]  And, you know, there's some, I think that's somewhat compelling, right?
[00:57:20]  Because a woman did die and he does look like a kid with respect to these decisions.
[00:57:24]  However, there's going to be testimonial even from the other guy who was shot.
[00:57:31]  So Helena Hutchins was shot and died.
[00:57:33]  And then there was another man who was shot by the same bullet, the director, Joel Souza.
[00:57:40]  And I do wonder how this will play.
[00:57:42]  I'm sure he'll give the same testimonial when he invariably appears at Alec Balden's case.
[00:57:47]  It's SAD 18.
[00:57:50]  There was an incredibly loud bang that was not like the half and quarter loads you hear on a set.
[00:57:58]  Those are sort of, they're loud poofs and pops.
[00:58:02]  This was deafening.
[00:58:04]  I remember initially thinking, had she been startled by it?
[00:58:08]  And they were sitting her down as a result.
[00:58:11]  And then I saw the blood on her back.
[00:58:16]  They kept saying, they kept talking about this bullet.
[00:58:18]  And I, it just, it could not compute for me.
[00:58:22]  I just kept saying, you don't understand.
[00:58:24]  No, no, no.
[00:58:25]  This was a movie set.
[00:58:26]  That's not possible.
[00:58:27]  You don't get it.
[00:58:27]  And they kept saying, no, no, no, it is.
[00:58:30]  And I just keep insisting, you don't understand because this is not possible.
[00:58:34]  It's just not possible that there's a live round.
[00:58:36]  It's not, it just can't.
[00:58:39]  And then they eventually maybe grew tired of my protesting about it because they showed me the x-ray of my back and there was a very large bullet in it.
[00:58:49]  Oh my God.
[00:58:50]  So awful.
[00:58:51]  David, that's the thing is that it's going to be, it was in the head of no one.
[00:58:56]  It should have been in Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's head that, you know, I deal with bullets.
[00:59:01]  I'm the last line of defense, really.
[00:59:03]  I mean, yes, technically there was another person who touched the gun before Alec, but like you're going to have this guy, the guy who had a bullet in him, say, it was so unfathomable.
[00:59:14]  I didn't even believe it when I had been shot.
[00:59:18]  And Alec Baldwin's lawyer is going to look at the jury and say, and yet he should have foreseen it.
[00:59:24]  You know, he should have known.
[00:59:26]  Don't trust the armorer.
[00:59:28]  Don't trust the first assistant director who gave it to you.
[00:59:30]  See something that even the guy who got shot didn't believe could have possibly happened.
[00:59:35]  I mean, it's a compelling case for him.
[00:59:37]  It is.
[00:59:38]  And Megan, you know, this is a big difference between I go to the range a lot.
[00:59:42]  And if I load one of my firearms, my revolver up, and fire it, I'm responsible for everything that happens after that.
[00:59:51]  I can't just say, oh, I thought it was unloaded when I fired that round that hit somebody.
[00:59:56]  There, it's presumptive that you have live rounds in your gun.
[00:59:59]  There, if you fire a weapon and you hit somebody, you're guilty of at a minimum involuntary manslaughter and maybe second degree murder.
[01:00:07]  On the set of a movie, Fantasyland, it's sanitized.
[01:00:11]  No one expects this to happen.
[01:00:13]  And if no one expects it to happen, there can't be a criminal conviction.
[01:00:17]  There can be civil liability, but I just can't believe there'd be a criminal conviction.
[01:00:22]  I do believe that Ms. Gutierrez's conviction will be overturned on appeal because it just, it's just not something that anyone would reasonably expect to happen.

=== Jennifer Dulos Conspiracy Evidence (15:19) ===

[01:00:33]  The whole thing is so disturbing.
[01:00:35]  My God, the day that happened, I can remember everybody was just stunned.
[01:00:38]  It just seemed absolutely impossible.
[01:00:40]  But we'll see.
[01:00:41]  He goes, supposedly, his trial starts in July.
[01:00:43]  So there are going to be a lot of legal things happening this summer from this case to the Trump cases.
[01:00:48]  All right, let's move on because I've been fascinated by this whole Jennifer Dulos, Photos Dulus, Michelle Traconis case.
[01:00:56]  Just quick line of background for those who haven't been following.
[01:00:58]  Jennifer Dulas was this absolutely beautiful mom.
[01:01:01]  She went to Brown.
[01:01:02]  She grew up in New York City from a family of privilege, but a very downhome kind of gal from what her friends say.
[01:01:09]  I encourage you to watch the dateline that came out on this two weeks ago.
[01:01:11]  It was very interesting.
[01:01:12]  Her friend described her as an intellectual Cindy Crawford looking kind of person.
[01:01:18]  She was a writer.
[01:01:19]  She was a mom.
[01:01:20]  She met Photos Dulus at Brown.
[01:01:22]  Then they lost touch and then they reconnected out at some skiing vacation years later, got married, had five kids.
[01:01:30]  And he was a builder slash realtor type.
[01:01:33]  You know, he sold houses and built houses.
[01:01:36]  And supposedly they were very wealthy and they had this amazingly huge mansion in Farmington, Connecticut.
[01:01:43]  And then things went south in the marriage.
[01:01:46]  And then one day she dropped her five kids off to school or daycare and was never seen again.
[01:01:52]  So they started to zero in on the husband from whom she was getting a divorce.
[01:01:56]  He had moved out.
[01:01:57]  She had moved out.
[01:01:58]  She had moved to a house in New Canaan, Connecticut.
[01:02:01]  They were divorcing.
[01:02:03]  He had a girlfriend named Michelle Traconis, whose trial we're about to discuss.
[01:02:08]  And so the marriage is ending.
[01:02:11]  She's got the five kids.
[01:02:13]  Michelle Traconis and her 12-year-old daughter move in with Fotus Dulis into the Farmington house that he once shared with Jennifer and their kids.
[01:02:21]  And wasn't too keen on the soon-to-be ex or the fact that these five children kept visiting and per the court order, Michelle had to leave every time they came.
[01:02:33]  Oh, it's so annoying to be the affair partner turned new prospective wife.
[01:02:38]  That's what I have to say to her.
[01:02:40]  So she was annoyed.
[01:02:41]  She was irritated.
[01:02:42]  She had to go every time.
[01:02:44]  And that's on camera, her complaining about it.
[01:02:47]  In any event, the cops did a very good job of, while they've never found Jennifer's body, proving she's dead.
[01:02:54]  And that Fotus did it.
[01:02:56]  That's never officially been proven in a court of law exactly because he killed himself while under investigation.
[01:03:03]  And despite sitting with Dateline and denying to Dennis Murphy on camera that he had anything to do with his wife's death, very sweet, good looking guy.
[01:03:10]  Never, oh, he never even fought.
[01:03:13]  He wound up taking his own life.
[01:03:15]  And the main evidence against Michelle to bring her into this was that the two of them were spotted in Hartford, Connecticut, the night of the alleged murder, disposing of all these garbage bags in random dumpsters up and down the road.
[01:03:34]  And the cops, in a great piece of police work, went back because they had sort of seen where his phone had gone.
[01:03:40]  They realized he went to Hartford.
[01:03:42]  He had turned it off during the morning or during that morning when the murders were taking place and started to pull surveillance cameras from the various car dealerships and so on.
[01:03:50]  And there he is with Michelle in the truck, though her lawyers claimed she couldn't tell if it was her.
[01:03:56]  Anyway, whatever.
[01:03:59]  And they got those bags of evidence, not all of them, but enough to find her bloody Jennifer Dulos's bloody shirt, Jennifer Dulos' bloody bra.
[01:04:07]  He killed her.
[01:04:08]  He definitely killed her.
[01:04:10]  The only question was whether this Michelle Jana knew, was involved, you know, how involved.
[01:04:18]  And here is a bit of the closing argument from the prosecutor, Michelle Manning, who was still having to argue to the jury that Jennifer is dead.
[01:04:26]  Because again, the trial of the actual murderer never took place because he took his own life.
[01:04:30]  Here's SOT 20.
[01:04:32]  The defense would have you believe she ran away from her kids, but she did not.
[01:04:38]  Jennifer is dead, and Fotis and Michelle Traconis intended that to happen.
[01:04:45]  This trial is very simple.
[01:04:48]  It's about a conspiracy and about a cover-up.
[01:04:51]  And every time those kids came around, Michelle Traconis had to leave her home.
[01:04:56]  She had to take her daughter somewhere else.
[01:04:59]  And we know she was sick of it.
[01:05:01]  The frustration turned to anger and hatred.
[01:05:04]  Listen to her own words in the interviews.
[01:05:08]  How she describes Jennifer, someone she has never met.
[01:05:12]  She describes her as manipulating, angry, toxic.
[01:05:17]  Each attorney tries to tell her there's a light at the end of the tunnel because we know what she thought about the two years of the custody case, about the two years of court hearings.
[01:05:27]  She described it as two years of torture.
[01:05:33]  So did the jury reach the right decision in finding Michelle Traconis guilty?
[01:05:38]  What was the exact charge?
[01:05:39]  I don't actually have it in front of me.
[01:05:41]  It was conspiracy to commit murder.
[01:05:43]  There we go.
[01:05:44]  Conspiracy to commit.
[01:05:45]  Yeah.
[01:05:45]  And yeah, and some other lesser charges.
[01:05:48]  Okay, keep going.
[01:05:49]  And tampering with evidence.
[01:05:51]  So this is another one of those cases where, look, I understand it's a tragedy and none of this ever should have happened.
[01:05:58]  But, you know, there's two sides of me.
[01:06:00]  One is the human being and the other is the lawyer.
[01:06:03]  And the lawyer parses out the proof.
[01:06:06]  And here I was struck from the beginning because in order to prove somebody conspired to commit a murder, you first have to prove there was a murder.
[01:06:15]  Is it a legal leap for this jury to figure out that Fotis Dulos killed his estranged wife?
[01:06:22]  No.
[01:06:23]  But was it going to be possible for the prosecution to prove that that killing was a murder as opposed to anything else, a manslaughter or even moly self-defense, right?
[01:06:34]  So, but so the prosecution, they did that.
[01:06:37]  So now the next question is: all right, what did Michelle Traconis know and when did she know it?
[01:06:43]  Because there's a big difference between being a co-conspirator and being an accomplice after the fact.
[01:06:49]  A lot of difference.
[01:06:50]  Was she just an accomplice after the fact?
[01:06:52]  And the prosecution didn't go there and the defense didn't do a good enough job in at least showing that.
[01:06:59]  I mean, they went for it.
[01:07:00]  And I think the defense did a really good job.
[01:07:02]  What sunk her were the three interviews she gave to police, Michelle Traconis, before she got charged, which is proof you should never hire your real estate lawyer to handle your murder charges.
[01:07:16]  But that's what she did.
[01:07:17]  And that's why she was found guilty, in my opinion.
[01:07:21]  One of the pieces of evidence against her, David, was that the day of the murder, she had this list in her house of all the things she and Fotis allegedly did.
[01:07:31]  That she woke up and that they took a shower together.
[01:07:34]  And then she did the following 10 things throughout the day, which is very weird because nobody does that.
[01:07:39]  Nobody writes a list of everything they did on some random day.
[01:07:43]  And the one thing that curiously was omitted from her very detailed list was her little trip to Hartford with Fotis disposing of bags of garbage in random dumpsters on the very day that Jennifer Dulos disappeared.
[01:07:58]  All of that was very telling.
[01:08:01]  And those interviews Jonna just referenced did show her eventually admitting she had lied to cops.
[01:08:07]  Fotis Dulus wasn't with her in the shower that morning.
[01:08:10]  She just didn't know where he was, but she just couldn't imagine that it would be off murdering his wife.
[01:08:17]  Yeah.
[01:08:17]  And I also thought the part where she said, yes, I was in the truck with Fotis while he was driving around getting rid of the body parts, but I was on Facebook or Instagram.
[01:08:28]  I was just on my phone.
[01:08:30]  I was just texting people.
[01:08:31]  I didn't see what was going on around me.
[01:08:33]  That I got a tough time dealing with if I'm a juror in this case.
[01:08:37]  That doesn't add up.
[01:08:39]  She knew what was going on.
[01:08:40]  As Jonna said, she's probably an accessory after the fact.
[01:08:43]  I think that when she's sentenced, her sentenced, I mean, it should reflect that.
[01:08:49]  But, you know, there was a DNA in the bags as well to show that she had handled the bags.
[01:08:56]  She was in and out.
[01:08:57]  I don't think she did anything to actually commit the murder, but I do think that she was involved enough that as an accessory or as basically aiding and abetting that she's criminally culpable for the murder and for the other charges that Fotis would have been guilty of.
[01:09:18]  Yeah, that's the thing.
[01:09:19]  I mean, I have absolutely no empathy for this woman.
[01:09:21]  I couldn't care less that she's crying here in this picture at a defense table.
[01:09:25]  But I do have the same questions about whether she helped plan it and knew it was going to happen or whether she was just happy it happened and was happy to cover it up.
[01:09:33]  Daitline ran a clip of her talking to, let me see, it was Fotis Dulus employee, former Fotis Dulus employee, Paul Gumeni, on what Michelle said to him about Jennifer Dulos.
[01:09:52]  I think after it turned out she was dead.
[01:09:54]  Listen here in SOC 23.
[01:09:56]  He described one time when he heard Michelle and Fotis discussing the family dog and that Jennifer refused to allow the kids to see their pet before it was put down.
[01:10:06]  What exactly did she say?
[01:10:08]  Can I use bad words?
[01:10:10]  Yes.
[01:10:11]  She said that bed should be buried right next to the...
[01:10:14]  Let's be very clear.
[01:10:16]  Talk of Jennifer being buried.
[01:10:18]  He added that Michelle said this a month before Jennifer disappeared.
[01:10:22]  There you go.
[01:10:24]  So now we're getting to the, it's not just after the fact, it's conspiracy to commit.
[01:10:30]  Well, and you're also getting the jury to really not like this defendant.
[01:10:35]  But I'll tell you something, you guys.
[01:10:37]  When I'm not in criminal court, I'm in family court.
[01:10:40]  And if I had a nickel for every new girlfriend that hated the soon-to-be ex-wife and vice versa, I mean, that part is kind of normal.
[01:10:47]  It's just fortunately, most estranged wives don't end up dead.
[01:10:50]  Or in this case, missing without a clue and declared dead days or just a couple of weeks before the trial.
[01:10:59]  So that gave the jury a reason to look askance at this defendant.
[01:11:02]  But keep in mind, too, this was a, I think this jury only had six people on it, which is so strange for a felony.
[01:11:09]  And they stayed out for a while.
[01:11:11]  So they did think about this before they came back with their verdict.
[01:11:16]  How long do you think she's going to jail for?
[01:11:19]  20 years.
[01:11:20]  Yeah, I don't see any reason.
[01:11:22]  20 years.
[01:11:23]  Why not?
[01:11:23]  But they won't run these consecutive because this is all part of the same scheme.
[01:11:27]  So 20 years, I think, is the max you could do on the conspiracy.
[01:11:30]  And that's what I think she'll get.
[01:11:32]  Good, good.
[01:11:33]  Now she's going to be separated from her child, the same as Jennifer Dulos.
[01:11:36]  We'll never see her five children grow up.
[01:11:38]  And now they've lost both parents because their dad turned out to be a murderer in a murder-suicide behavior.
[01:11:43]  And now I think they're being raised by Jennifer's mom.
[01:11:46]  It's just, it's such a tragedy all around divorce, cheating, affairs.
[01:11:52]  You're dealing with plutonium.
[01:11:54]  Okay, let's talk about...
[01:11:57]  That's right.
[01:11:58]  That's right.
[01:11:58]  And so little.
[01:12:00]  Okay, let's talk about Crumbly.
[01:12:02]  So this is the case in which there was a school shooter.
[01:12:06]  And we're not going to say his name, but he went in, he shot up a school.
[01:12:11]  And both of his parents in a first of its kind criminal prosecution are now on trial.
[01:12:17]  The wife and mother was found guilty.
[01:12:19]  This is out of Michigan.
[01:12:21]  This is a connection with the 2021 Oxford high school shooting.
[01:12:24]  Now, one month after his wife gets convicted, the husband, the father, is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter after his son killed four students and injured seven people back in November of 2021.
[01:12:37]  The case against the father seems to center around the fact that, like the mother, he was allegedly a negligent parent, didn't give a shit that his son was a mess, was not well mentally, and he allegedly knew it, but there's a dispute between the prosecution and the defense on that and did nothing about it.
[01:12:59]  And in his case, you guys tell me, but I think David, the best evidence is he bought him a gun four days before the shooting.
[01:13:07]  And then when the school called him up to say, we found some very disturbing drawings, he didn't say, oh, shit, I just bought him a gun.
[01:13:14]  We should get him out of here and get him some help.
[01:13:17]  Or confiscate the gun.
[01:13:19]  And the prosecution is essentially saying also that it was a straw purchase of the gun, meaning that you can't buy a gun and intending to hand it directly over to somebody who's not the purchaser.
[01:13:31]  He handed it over to his son three days after the purchase, saying that it was a gift, but he was aware of the psychological problems that his son had at the time.
[01:13:40]  No way would any responsible parent give their child a gun under those circumstances.
[01:13:46]  So that's what it boils down to.
[01:13:48]  It's just criminal negligence.
[01:13:50]  And I suspect that he will be convicted of this.
[01:13:53]  Should he receive a long sentence?
[01:13:55]  No, because I don't think either parent ever conceived of a possibility that this type of outcome, this horrible, horrific outcome would have happened based on their, you know, the way they parented their child or in the father's case, the way he gifted the firearm to his son.
[01:14:12]  I don't know about that because the prosecution is introducing evidence of the 911 call, Johnna, that the father.
[01:14:18]  So what happened was the father and the mother were called to the school the day of the shooting before it had happened.
[01:14:22]  And they had found disturbing drawings by the son where he said, please help me.
[01:14:28]  And it looked like he had a picture of the gun with blood dripping.
[01:14:32]  It seemed very much like this could be a potential school shooter.
[01:14:36]  And amazingly, one of the biggest mysteries of this case, the school did not insist that he leave and the parents did not insist that they take him home.
[01:14:45]  And the prosecution is already arguing.
[01:14:48]  He said he had to go do his work, but he was a DoorDash driver and hadn't even checked in yet.
[01:14:54]  So he didn't really have to go to work.
[01:14:56]  Just didn't give a shit.
[01:14:57]  didn't care about his son.
[01:14:59]  And they're going to introduce the 911 call from the dad that he made right after he got word that same day that a school shooting at his son's school was unfolding.
[01:15:12]  And use this as evidence that even though the father wants you to believe this was unforeseeable, could never have imagined my son.
[01:15:20]  Listen to what he said to the 911 operator that day, SAT 26.
[01:15:24]  I have a missing gun and my son at the school and we happened to meet with the counselor this morning to kind of something that he worked on my parents' company.
[01:15:38]  And then I took them down and I took a whole bunch of cops somewhere.
[01:15:44]  And I made sure that I wanted to get the I put this up on the iceberg and then someone told me that there was not the shooter.

=== Missing Gun School Counselor Testimony (06:06) ===

[01:15:53]  And then I went home and just put it back down.
[01:15:57]  And I took my son to get gun.
[01:16:00]  I just know I don't know what's going on.
[01:16:03]  Why you seem to be working out my end.
[01:16:06]  Okay, apologies to the serious XM audience, the audience and podcast because it's hard to hear.
[01:16:09]  But he says, I have a missing gun and my son is at the school.
[01:16:13]  I think my son took the gun.
[01:16:15]  So, I mean, that's pretty good evidence for the prosecutor that he did foresee his son as the shooter, Jonna.
[01:16:22]  Yeah, and that's, and that's very scary.
[01:16:24]  But I also know in this case that there's some contradictory evidence.
[01:16:30]  For example, the day that this happened, and what really bugs me about this case, really bugs me, you guys, is the fact that when the school alerted everybody that there was a problem with this child, and they didn't insist that he leave campus.
[01:16:44]  I don't care whether it was with his parents or in a police car, get him the hell off campus.
[01:16:49]  But they didn't do that.
[01:16:50]  But there's some contradictory evidence that even the guidance counselor who was, I don't know, alerting everybody or assessing the situation did not, he testified that he did not believe this, this kind of thing was going to happen.
[01:17:03]  So the defense is basically saying, all right, look, if a trained counselor isn't viewing this as an imminent threat, for lack of a better word, then how can we also say that the parents should have seen it the same way?
[01:17:18]  So it's, this is the kind of back and forth evidence.
[01:17:20]  And one of the things that this parent has going for him that the mother did not is I think there was a testimony or evidence in her case that she like gave him, like handed him, that she was the last person.
[01:17:33]  That's it.
[01:17:34]  She was the last person to touch the gun.
[01:17:36]  And then the next thing you know, the son has it.
[01:17:38]  So is that going to be enough?
[01:17:40]  Is that line fine enough that it's going to save the father?
[01:17:43]  I don't know.
[01:17:43]  This case stinks all the way around from the school to the parents and obviously to the shooter himself.
[01:17:50]  This is tough.
[01:17:51]  And I don't like it because it's unprecedented charging parents for this kind of crime.
[01:17:56]  I don't know, but I guess maybe we're there.
[01:17:58]  I guess we're there.
[01:18:00]  We're opening up a new chapter in responsibility for these mass shootings.
[01:18:06]  I don't know.
[01:18:07]  I mean, we talked about it on the show before.
[01:18:10]  Is it only going to be like, forgive me, but is it only going to be the white kids in Michigan whose parents get charged?
[01:18:17]  Are we going to do this in cases where there's other rampant violence in the inner cities, let's say, by parents who absolutely know they have a gangbanger living with them and some two-year-old gets shot?
[01:18:30]  Oh, I mean, are we going to do those cases too?
[01:18:32]  Like, I don't have any excuses to make for these parents whatsoever.
[01:18:35]  It's just how far are we going to go with it?
[01:18:37]  Here's a bit, David, from the opening argument against the father, James, SOT 24.
[01:18:43]  James Crumbley bought that gun that his son used to kill as a gift for his son four days before the attack.
[01:18:53]  James Crumble failed to secure that gun in a way to prevent his son from accessing it.
[01:18:59]  The decision that James Crumbley made to buy that gun as a gift for his son was made even though he knew that his son was in the midst of total and complete social isolation and had been in the downward spiral of distress that had been going on for some time.
[01:19:18]  You'll see evidence that as early as spring of 2021, the shooter had expressed to his one and only friend that he had asked his father for help and told him to suck it up.
[01:19:30]  That was in April 2021.
[01:19:34]  You learn that instead of receiving help or intervention of any kind, James Crumbly instead began to take his son to the shooting ring.
[01:19:44]  And David, I think that was a lock that could have been used on the gun, but wasn't.
[01:19:49]  Well, I mean, you could have used a gun safe as well.
[01:19:51]  I don't think the gun, the purpose of the gun was defending the family.
[01:19:55]  It didn't sound like that was in any event.
[01:19:57]  So the gun could have been stored in a safe.
[01:20:00]  Taking him to the shooting range certainly is a form of recreation a lot of families engage in.
[01:20:06]  And so I don't see that being a problem.
[01:20:07]  But I just think the mental health issue is a big one.
[01:20:10]  And Megan, like we said, like I said earlier, there are a lot of politics now to guns and gun prosecutions and the way they're selectively done.
[01:20:20]  And that is something that we got to deal with.
[01:20:23]  But, you know, look, the son is gone.
[01:20:26]  He's spending life in prison now.
[01:20:28]  And the question is, how much do you want to punish the parents as well?
[01:20:32]  A lot.
[01:20:33]  You know, you want to punish them because of what they knew, but they didn't kill anybody.
[01:20:38]  And I don't think, honestly, they don't have, they had no clue that he was reasonably likely to go kill.
[01:20:46]  Okay, but let's talk about that.
[01:20:47]  Let's talk about it.
[01:20:48]  So maybe, let's say, let's say they didn't, that they actually didn't.
[01:20:51]  In fact, they had no clue.
[01:20:55]  They should have, right?
[01:20:57]  That's the legal standard, knew or should have known.
[01:21:00]  They should have had a clue.
[01:21:01]  I mean, that's the thing, John.
[01:21:02]  Like in the trial of the mother, you grew to hate her.
[01:21:06]  It was like no matter how many problems arose with her son, she didn't seem to give a damn whether it was physical well-being or his mental well-being.
[01:21:15]  There were diary entries of him, you know, allegedly reaching out for help.
[01:21:18]  Again, we're going to, we have already heard that in this case about how he went to the dad.
[01:21:22]  You heard that in the opening statement and said, I need some help.
[01:21:24]  And the dad said, suck it up.
[01:21:25]  Now, look, that is a form of parenting.
[01:21:28]  You know, where you can make the argument we've leaned too far into, oh, sweetheart, you must have this syndrome or this anxiety disorder.
[01:21:36]  I'll get you immediately help from the school guidance counselor who has absolutely no credentials to help you whatsoever, right?
[01:21:42]  Like there is an argument to be made for you're fine, right?
[01:21:47]  But the net net on these two shows they were terrible parents.
[01:21:52]  And like this kid had all these cavities, like, I don't know, over a dozen, like they weren't taking care of him.

=== Idaho Death Penalty Case Timeline (05:22) ===

[01:21:59]  And so I, you know, four people are dead.
[01:22:03]  I can see why the jury went after the mother and the dad buying the gun is arguably even more culpable when he knew or had reason to that his son was not a well person.
[01:22:13]  Yeah.
[01:22:14]  And hey, perhaps these parents were in denial because, look, if there's something wrong with your kid, I think it follows that there's something wrong with you as a parent, right?
[01:22:24]  For whatever reason, either you caused it, you're not doing anything about it, you didn't cause it, you're not seeing it.
[01:22:29]  Okay, fine.
[01:22:30]  But if your child is in trouble and you're in denial, well, then at the very, very least, you do not give him access to a deadly weapon, right?
[01:22:41]  And I guess that's the underlying theory of this case.
[01:22:43]  Although I do again think it's a little bit of a legal leap between that and charging the parents criminally with the involuntary manslaughter, but we are there now.
[01:22:54]  And let this be a lesson.
[01:22:55]  Let this be a lesson.
[01:22:57]  Last but not least, quickly, Brian Kohlberger charged with the murder of those four Idaho college students.
[01:23:03]  His lawyer is now in court asking for a trial date of summer 2025, summer 2025.
[01:23:14]  And the prosecution isn't even asking for that much earlier.
[01:23:20]  They're agreeing to 2025.
[01:23:22]  David, I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous.
[01:23:25]  The families of at least two of the victims have come forward to say, let's go.
[01:23:30]  You know, we people are, their memories are going to fade.
[01:23:34]  We need this to be resolved.
[01:23:36]  One of the families has two other students who are still on this campus.
[01:23:39]  No resolution.
[01:23:40]  Like, this is absurd.
[01:23:42]  Have you ever seen a trial take this long, like to even get scheduled in a criminal case?
[01:23:48]  Yeah, Megan, in the last year alone, I had one murder case, triple murder, that took just about four years to get going.
[01:24:00]  And another one that was about three and a half.
[01:24:03]  And this is a death penalty case.
[01:24:05]  So this is-that's over COVID, too.
[01:24:07]  No, it's over.
[01:24:09]  Well, it was some COVID stuff.
[01:24:11]  Exactly.
[01:24:11]  That's true.
[01:24:12]  But death penalty cases are notorious in the length of time they take to actually pick a jury.
[01:24:18]  And five years is not uncommon.
[01:24:20]  So I think if they get it going by the summer of 2025, that would actually be pretty good.
[01:24:25]  Oh my God, this can't be, John.
[01:24:28]  They haven't even started picking a jury.
[01:24:29]  All they're doing is arguing over motion practice.
[01:24:32]  And the defense attorney, Ann Taylor, who's trying her case in front of a judge who's Judge Judge, his name is John Judge.
[01:24:43]  She's arguing for change of venue.
[01:24:45]  She's arguing that the whole grand jury indictment needs to be thrown out because they only indicted him with probable cause.
[01:24:51]  And she thinks under the Idaho rules, he needed to be indicted with proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
[01:24:57]  If the judge finds that way, and she's going up to the Idaho Supreme Court with this argument or trying to, every indictment in Idaho will be thrown out because they were all founded on something that was too low a legal standard, at least the ones that haven't been tried and convicted.
[01:25:13]  So in any event, she's throwing cockamame arguments up there to try to get as long of it.
[01:25:18]  Why?
[01:25:18]  So he can sit in prison and not wind up in the electric chair sooner.
[01:25:22]  I mean, is that the strategy?
[01:25:24]  Yeah, is she prolonging the agony?
[01:25:26]  I think part of it is: look, the person with the right to the speed and public trial is the defendant, right?
[01:25:31]  So if he's okay with it, he's locked up.
[01:25:33]  He's not going to be hurting anybody.
[01:25:35]  He's not going anywhere.
[01:25:36]  And I think they're really, and I'm a little bothered by it too, this whole notion of the genetic genealogy, and they really want to get their hands on all of that discovery.
[01:25:46]  They really, I'm sure they're going to try to prove somehow that that's junk science.
[01:25:50]  And that really is the thing, the thing that connected this defendant to those murders.
[01:25:55]  So if it takes them one year, five years, 10 years, what do they care?
[01:25:59]  He's locked up.
[01:26:00]  And I think that's why they are requesting as lengthy a time period as they can get.
[01:26:05]  It's amazing.
[01:26:07]  The OJ Simpson case took six months to go to trial.
[01:26:12]  Six months.
[01:26:13]  Megan, I'll tell you how you prevent this whole thing.
[01:26:16]  If you're the prosecution in this case, the Kohberger case, offer him life in prison without parole as an alternative.
[01:26:22]  Let him plead to that.
[01:26:23]  And you solve the whole thing.
[01:26:24]  Let the family have their peace.
[01:26:26]  And, you know, he's never getting out.
[01:26:28]  So it might be the way to handle it.
[01:26:31]  I don't know if he doesn't know if this guy's going to get convicted either.
[01:26:35]  I have to say, I've said to the audience before, I definitely think he did it.
[01:26:39]  But I am concerned about the evidence against him.
[01:26:44]  If all they have is that one spot of DNA on the knife sheath snap, plus this, you know, a white Hyundai that looked like his was around the area, plus the cell phone tower evidence showing he may have been around the area.
[01:26:58]  That's not going to do it.
[01:26:59]  You know, I realize it's very suspicious.
[01:27:01]  He was putting his garbage away in little Ziploc baggies when the police burst in there and found him back in the Poconos, Pennsylvania, a month later.
[01:27:09]  But like they need, they need more.
[01:27:12]  And I hope they have more.
[01:27:13]  They haven't released it.
[01:27:13]  We did a whole special about it, but I don't know.
[01:27:16]  Okay, guys, such a good discussion.
[01:27:18]  John and David, so great to see you both.
[01:27:21]  You too, Megan.
[01:27:21]  Thank you so much.

=== SiriusXM Journalism Coverage Review (03:37) ===

[01:27:22]  When we come back, the creator of a new show, Perfectly Time for the 2024 election cycle, focused on the state of journalism in America.
[01:27:31]  Guess what percentage of the Republican Party believes in journalists and trusts in journalists?
[01:27:36]  Last I looked, it was 11.
[01:27:39]  I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
[01:27:43]  It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today.
[01:27:51]  You can catch the Megan Kelly show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love.
[01:27:58]  Great people like Dr. Laura, Blan Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly.
[01:28:05]  You can stream the Megan Kelly show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are.
[01:28:10]  No car required.
[01:28:11]  I do it all the time.
[01:28:12]  I love the SiriusXM app.
[01:28:15]  It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast, and more.
[01:28:21]  Subscribe now, get your first three months for free.
[01:28:24]  Go to seriousxm.com slash MK Show to subscribe and get three months free.
[01:28:30]  That's seriousxm.com slash MK Show and get three months free.
[01:28:35]  Offer details apply.
[01:28:43]  Just in time for the heat of the 2024 presidential election cycle is a timely news show about politics and the reporters who cover it.
[01:28:52]  It's called Girls on the Bus, and it premieres Thursday on the streamer Max.
[01:28:57]  Here's some of the trailer.
[01:28:58]  I am the eyes and ears of my entire generation.
[01:29:00]  Hi, Thea.
[01:29:01]  How do you sleep at night?
[01:29:03]  As secure as a Reagan economy.
[01:29:05]  Grace, the legend.
[01:29:06]  I've been on the trails for three decades.
[01:29:08]  Sadie, my favorite reporter.
[01:29:10]  Do a piece on me.
[01:29:11]  My number one rule.
[01:29:12]  Don't fuck the flack.
[01:29:13]  I'm going to remain detached, objective, and mostly sober.
[01:29:19]  To be a journalist is to have a calling, but it's complicated.
[01:29:22]  Your network is racist and sexist and conservative, whereas you have made gotcha journalism your whole brand.
[01:29:29]  It's a fun deep dive into the state of journalism today, complete with TikTok influencers and questions about objectivity and liberal bias.
[01:29:38]  And it's loosely based on the book Chasing Hillary, which tracked the Hillary Clinton campaigns in 2008 and 2016.
[01:29:45]  The author of that book and co-creator and executive producer of Girls on the Bus is Amy Chozick.
[01:29:52]  She's a former New York Times reporter and she joins me now.
[01:29:55]  Amy, welcome to the show.
[01:29:56]  Thanks so much for having me.
[01:29:57]  Great to be here.
[01:29:58]  So you're not your everyday New York Times reporter because you grew up in Texas and actually went to the journal first and then went to the New York Times and then got put on the Hillary campaign.
[01:30:09]  Or did you start on the Hillary stuff back while you're still at the journal?
[01:30:13]  Yeah, I did start.
[01:30:14]  I was a foreign correspondent in Tokyo when my editor in Asia had become Washington Bureau Chief at the Wall Street Journal and said, how'd you like to go to Iowa and cover Hillary Clinton?
[01:30:21]  So I'd like hardly heard of this Obama guy, didn't really know what the caucuses were.
[01:30:25]  Years later, Clinton's people were like, we didn't really know what the caucuses were either.
[01:30:29]  So, but yeah, so I covered Hillary and then I covered Obama and then I moved to the New York Times, covered Hillary's 2016 campaign.
[01:30:36]  Right.
[01:30:37]  And you've got some good reporting in there about the night she realized she lost to Trump in 16 and how it was like, oh my God, first they saw Florida go.
[01:30:46]  Like the model might not be wrong, or might be wrong.
[01:30:49]  And if it's wrong in Florida, I remember the text I got from a Clinton source that said, we're fucked if we lose the Rust Belt.
[01:30:55]  And I was like, the Rust Belt?
[01:30:56]  Like, we hardly went, we were in Arizona.
[01:30:58]  Like, what?
[01:30:58]  So, yeah, I remember that night.

=== Media Trust And Caucuses Shifts (04:26) ===

[01:31:00]  You're bringing it back.
[01:31:01]  Yeah, right.
[01:31:02]  Right.
[01:31:02]  So, this is an interesting look at a life that you've actually led, which is girls on the bus following the campaign trail.
[01:31:08]  And it's happening right now.
[01:31:09]  It's going to happen in earnest over the next eight, nine months on both sides.
[01:31:13]  But it's not, and even though you were at the New York Times, it's, and I think still are, right?
[01:31:18]  No, I left it.
[01:31:20]  Okay, sorry.
[01:31:21]  I thought you still were doing contributing, but it's not about, oh, let's celebrate Hillary, let's celebrate leftism.
[01:31:27]  It actually gets into the nitty-gritty of what's happened to journalism today and how.
[01:31:33]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:31:34]  I mean, that was something that was so interesting.
[01:31:35]  For one, I wanted to play in a totally fictional world.
[01:31:37]  So there's no Hillary or Trump in our world, but the characters and the archetypes of these women definitely represent all sides of the political spectrum and journalism.
[01:31:45]  Like we decided that creating all of these different types of women allowed us to get into those debates that you talked about, this debate over objectivity versus authenticity, the debate over, you know, you just, you're just gotcha journalism versus you're judging me for having a clear opinion.
[01:32:00]  I love Kimberlyn's line in the first episode when she says when the when the kind of legacy media says, we're not liberal, we're objective.
[01:32:06]  And she says, keep telling yourselves that.
[01:32:08]  So we got to play.
[01:32:09]  I think through these fictional, through my imaginary friends' voices, we got to play in all these debates, which was fun to do.
[01:32:16]  Here's a bit of that in Sot 34.
[01:32:19]  New do realize that if Liberty had broken that story, it would have been dismissed as a partisan hit job.
[01:32:26]  But the liberal media gets it.
[01:32:30]  And it's all hail the scoop queen.
[01:32:32]  Hey, that's one.
[01:32:34]  We're not liberal.
[01:32:36]  We're objective.
[01:32:38]  Keep telling yourself that.
[01:32:40]  Her delivery is so good, Christine Elmore.
[01:32:43]  Yeah.
[01:32:44]  Well, I mean, I think the sort of hard look at behind the scenes with journalists is interesting.
[01:32:49]  People love to sort of look at the press and bash the press.
[01:32:52]  But as I mentioned in the tease, they do not like or trust the press.
[01:32:57]  The latest numbers on that show that 20 years ago in 2003, that's literally when I started in journalism, independents trusted the media, 53%.
[01:33:05]  The media, the GOP trusted the media, 44% of Republicans.
[01:33:10]  Wow, 44% of Republicans did.
[01:33:12]  Today, the GOP is at 11%.
[01:33:16]  Wow.
[01:33:16]  So what do you think happened?
[01:33:19]  Oh, this is a question I think about all the time: the erosion and trust in the media.
[01:33:22]  I think there were a lot of things.
[01:33:24]  I think, you know, certainly reporting on the lead up to the Iraq war diminished trust.
[01:33:30]  I think, you know, trust was diminished during the scandals of the Clinton years.
[01:33:34]  I think it's a slow.
[01:33:35]  And then I think that the, you know, the business, the pressures on the economics of journalism kind of changed the mission in a way that also eroded trust.
[01:33:45]  But it was very interesting to kind of write the story, especially this show about this character, the lead character who works for a fictional paper of record, very much romanticizes this period of journalism, the boys on the bus, back when people trusted the media.
[01:33:57]  It's like now she finally got her dream job and nobody reads what nobody believes what they read in your newspaper anymore.
[01:34:02]  So like grappling with that was very interesting.
[01:34:04]  There's a in the finale, she confronts this very confrontational source who says, like, grow up, Sadie.
[01:34:10]  The truth left the building a long time ago.
[01:34:12]  Yeah.
[01:34:13]  Yeah.
[01:34:13]  Sadly, I feel like I lived that whole thing.
[01:34:15]  I mean, you did.
[01:34:16]  We probably got that was the same sort of era that I started reporting.
[01:34:19]  And like, and I, and my dream was to write the front page story that would live in history.
[01:34:23]  And now it's like, by the time you get that opportunity, half the country, more than half the country isn't going to believe what you're writing anyway.
[01:34:29]  Yeah.
[01:34:30]  I mean, it's sort of like you date the young version of Elvis, and he's so cute and he's wonderful, and he's like, and then you turn around one day and suddenly he's a fat Elvis.
[01:34:38]  He's old Elvis.
[01:34:39]  He's drugged up, cooked up, Elvis.
[01:34:41]  I thought that's what's happened to media.
[01:34:44]  Same kind of thing.
[01:34:46]  Yeah, and I think you're seeing, I mean, you're also seeing the economics.
[01:34:49]  I mean, it's a dark time, not just for trust in the media, but for all of these newsrooms are closing and laying people off.
[01:34:54]  And that's just kind of further eroding coverage.
[01:34:57]  It's a scary time.
[01:34:58]  We have a very hopeful dramaty and idealistic look at the world.
[01:35:02]  Well, that leads me to this soundbite, which my team pulled, which is the future.
[01:35:07]  I do believe this is the future.
[01:35:09]  This is SOT 35.
[01:35:12]  35.
[01:35:14]  Kimberly, you could have your own media company like Ben Smith or Megan Kelly or those dudes at Puck.
[01:35:22]  Yay.
[01:35:23]  Yes.
[01:35:24]  Shout out.

=== Media Landscape Personality Blowback (02:29) ===

[01:35:26]  Yes, that was really fun.
[01:35:27]  And that was something that we wouldn't have even, you know, we've been writing the show for a few years.
[01:35:30]  And even like three years ago, I wouldn't have necessarily said, oh, this is Kimberlyn's storyline.
[01:35:34]  She's going to be frustrated with her outlet.
[01:35:36]  She's not going to be able to kind of speak to what's really important to her.
[01:35:39]  And she's going to find her new thing.
[01:35:41]  You know, she's going to, she's going to launch her own platform.
[01:35:43]  So I do think you're right.
[01:35:44]  This is a silver lining, right?
[01:35:46]  There is a silver lining in the media landscape in that more and more personalities are able to launch their own platforms, whether that's like Lola, the influencer, with her sub stack and her TikTok feed, or it's Kimberlyn who's going to like try to get funding and become a media personality.
[01:36:02]  I think it's Darwinism.
[01:36:03]  That's what's happening in our industry.
[01:36:05]  Last question.
[01:36:06]  You got some blowback from Hillary Clinton and her team after your book, Chasing Hillary, because you were pretty, you gave us the unvarnished take on that campaign and what went wrong.
[01:36:15]  How's that gone?
[01:36:16]  And how do you think the reaction from those folks will be to your new series?
[01:36:20]  It's a good question.
[01:36:20]  I sort of expunged them from my mind after the book came out.
[01:36:23]  I got blowback from, you know, the book, as the book details, I got blowback for like everything I wrote, even positive stories they would find a way to not like.
[01:36:31]  I had a sticky note on my laptop when I was writing the book that said, what would you write if you weren't afraid?
[01:36:35]  And, you know, it was the only way I knew how to do it was to be just like brutally honest about mistakes I made, mistakes the campaign made.
[01:36:41]  I was sort of brutally honest about all of it.
[01:36:43]  And so I'm actually not sure how they'll react.
[01:36:46]  I hadn't really thought of it because one of the great things was that there isn't a Hillary character in this.
[01:36:51]  I love that post-it note.
[01:36:53]  What would you write if you weren't afraid?
[01:36:55]  And that includes like, yeah, because also like people write things like, oh my God, what will Twitter think of this thing I wrote?
[01:37:00]  And, you know, I did contribute this big Elizabeth Holmes story to the New York Times recently.
[01:37:04]  You mentioned that.
[01:37:04]  And I knew I was going to get trolled for it.
[01:37:06]  But like, this was the way I saw things, you know?
[01:37:08]  So God bless you.
[01:37:09]  Thank you for doing it.
[01:37:11]  And everybody check out Girls on the Bus on Max.
[01:37:13]  All the best to you, Amy.
[01:37:14]  Thank you so much for having me.
[01:37:15]  Great talking to you.
[01:37:16]  I want to tell you tomorrow, Dan Wooten speaks out for the first time right here.
[01:37:23]  Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
[01:37:26]  No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
[01:37:50]  30 gigabytes for 200.
[01:37:53]  One call, it's not a good idea.