William Barr's interview with NBC News on the IG Report into the Trump/Russia investigation was so bad and so dangerous analysts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman had to break it down in a special, bonus episode. Barr plays unbelievable games with the truth, runs interference for Donald Trump, and hints at possible prosecutions of political enemies. This episode goes line-by-line and separates the truth from the absurd.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I'm Nick Hauselmann, and as always, I'm joined by Jared Yates Sexton.
And I'm going to start the podcast today because Jared is so upset and angry with what happened in the William Barr interview with Pete Williams at NBC that I needed to give him a couple extra seconds just to hopefully maybe chill out a little bit.
But I still want to tap into some of his anger because it was really, really unbelievable what we had to listen to the other day.
Jared?
Yeah, you know, we're going to do some emergency podcasts every now and then when times necessitate it.
And I think the United States Attorney General getting in front of a camera for a national mainstream outlet and lying, boldfaced and promoting authoritarian principles and basically trying to subjugate the entire rule of law while also throwing the Justice Department under the bus and just twisting reality to the point to help a criminal president.
I think that that qualifies as an emergency podcast topic, right?
And it's not like it's the first time he's done this.
So we're sort of embroiled in this repeated behavior, which is sort of the crucible that we're looking under Trump at.
Even though these impeachment proceedings are only two articles, this isn't in a vacuum.
And I think that's what the Republicans are getting so bogged down about.
It's not just two sentences in a call.
And this is not just William Barr talking about this one interview.
It's what he did with the Mueller report and by the way I thought what we could do here to make it really easy on us or easy for everyone to follow is I want to just sort of break down this interview bit by bit and we're gonna go through it and pull apart what he's saying and why it was so ridiculous.
That sounds great, but also infuriating.
So I guess I'm here for that, right?
All right.
Well, let's get into it.
What do you say?
Let's start here first because, you know, obviously he gets going right away with what feels like clear bias and what shouldn't happen.
And by the way, it's unprecedented that an attorney general would even go and have an interview like this in the midst of these investigations because even he says it's not finished.
Durham is still doing his.
So for him to weigh in like this at all is just like what they did with the Mueller report and it's infuriating.
So here's our first clip.
I think the heart of the IG's report really focused on how the investigation was conducted once it got going and that is especially the very serious abuses of Pfizer that occurred, much of which has been, in my view, not accurately reported by the press over in my view, not accurately reported by the press over the last day.
So Jared, is it anything in that Horowitz report that came out recently that indicates to you that his main focus was on the investigation after it started and not how it started? - Good.
No, and on top of that, let's just put this out there, and I'm already hot, just hearing this guy do this is just unbelievable.
This is not a legitimate Attorney General.
This is this weird mutation that has cropped up in Trump world.
He is a corrupt Attorney General, who is also somehow or another existing in the space of being the President's Personal attorney and also like a pseudo press secretary for Trump.
He's running interference right now from the very get-go in the middle of this interview.
He's misrepresenting every single thing that this entire report said, that Trump's Justice Department and the IG put together.
He's misrepresenting All of it.
And the way that they're maneuvering this around, the thought game that is being played out here with talking about this report.
Number one, they're saying that it's under phony auspices that it was started, which is not true, which we'll talk more about.
And on top of that, the idea of how it was carried out was wrong, which isn't true either.
This is a total and utter sham of a thing that he's saying.
It's just really disgusting.
I agree.
And, in fact, the main thing we can take out of this is that it was perfectly legitimate to start this investigation.
Like, that's one of the biggest takeaways you can get.
Now, we know that there's issues.
We can get to that, too.
But, if anything, that was what Horowitz was tasked with.
And here we have Barr concerned about how the press is now covering this.
And that's going to come up in a little bit, too, because that is so galling to me that he is that concerned about how the press is covering it, considering what we've known about him in the past.
Yeah, can we talk about the press?
Because I want to talk about that.
I want to talk about that now.
I want to talk about that later.
I want to talk about that forever, because this is one of the most frustrating things about all of it.
Bill Barr, who has continually misled the press, with Mueller, With this report, he gets out in front of a camera and he provides this alternate reality that has absolutely no relationship with what's actually happening or what any of these documents say.
And do you know what the really galling thing about this is?
He did this on NBC.
He got up in front of a camera on NBC and said this.
And you know what he received?
Not much in the way of pushback because he is still afforded the respectability of office that he doesn't deserve, that he has completely, should have lost.
And this is a person who goes up and complains about how the press treats it, and he's still being afforded the respectability of putting out this fake BS idea of what happened.
That is what frustrates me the most, is that these people are feeding off of the media still trying to maintain some sort of idea of status quo.
And that's what powers all of this.
All right, I'm going to make you even madder.
Let's go on the next clip here, because I want to keep breaking this stuff down.
In one area, I do disagree with the IG, and that was Whether there was sufficient predication to open a full-blown counterintelligence investigation, specifically using the techniques that they did to collect intelligence about the Trump campaign.
All right, I gotta go.
I gotta go off on this thing.
This is what pisses me off the most.
Okay, so let's go over some undisputed facts, okay?
These are things that, like, any rational human being living in—my god, Nick, I'm hot.
I'm so hot over this guy.
Okay, number one, Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
That is unvarnished truth.
They did.
Number two: Russia attempted to work with the Trump campaign on multiple occasions to try and affect the 2016 election.
That's another fact.
Fact number three: the Trump campaign was aware that Russia was trying to influence the 2016 campaign.
As a matter of fact, they met with people representing the Russian government on multiple occasions, and there were many occasions where these people—and by the way, just to put this out there, not—man, this stuff is aggravating.
These people are such professional criminals that the reason why they couldn't prove, quote unquote, collusion is because they knew how to step up to the line of the law and not trouble it to the point where it would be totally obvious.
So here's the thing.
While they're troubling the line of the law, there is a reason to investigate because they were obviously working along the same lines and there were plenty of people, and I'll tell you what, I was a journalist.
I'm covering this campaign in 2016, and people were reaching out to me to tell me that Russia and the Trump campaign were up to something.
So I'll tell you what, an investigation was completely prudent, and these people are lying when they say that there was no reason to run this investigation.
So whatever they found, whatever they didn't find, it doesn't matter.
They had every reason to investigate this because there was an allegation of treason.
Now, here's the thing.
You're already hot under the collar at this point, two little clips in.
It's going to get a whole lot worse and also speak to exactly what you're talking about even more.
I know how he's trying to even, I can't say subliminally because it's not, but it's certainly what he's trying to do to very subtly and not so subtly just diminish what we know as facts going up into the election.
So what you said is all right.
Let's get the next one because it continues the downhill slide.
I think probably from a civil liberties standpoint, the greatest danger to our free system is that the incumbent government use the apparatus of the state, principally the law enforcement agencies and the intelligence agencies, both to spy on political opponents, but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of the election.
Do you want to start so I can just sort of, I don't know, take a breath or two?
Well, you know, he's talking about civil liberties, and so obviously the watchword he was talking about was Carter Page.
And it's the hill that the Republicans want to die on here, that here's a guy who, you know, had already been known to be a target of Russian spies to turn him into a spy.
So again, we mentioned that there's all this context and all this information that we know beforehand, so it seems a bit reasonable that alarm bells would go off and they'd be really concerned about him and what he was doing.
Now, in all fairness, Jared, we have to acknowledge that there are, bubbling up around the surface, a little notion that maybe Carter Page was a CIA asset.
Now I can't really find it in many reputable sources of news but I watched the Chris Hayes interview again that was off the rails when he was on a couple years ago and trying to figure it out and I don't know I've been willing to even acknowledge that there is a possibility that he was actually you know somehow a CIA operative and he was a double agent trying to like reverse all the stuff on the Russians so I'm not quite ready to go there but even still there's a method in the process to how we do these surveillance things and they followed it
Okay.
Carter Page.
If you want to go even outside of the conspiracy theory and talk about just things that are objective, total fact, there is a possibility that Carter Page, and actually it's not a possibility because this is who he is, Carter Page wanted to be an asset, whether it was for the CIA or for Russia.
This is the type of person who watches spy movies and takes them as Bible truth as how the world works.
This is a person who went to Russia and tried so hard to get involved in this system that the Russians actually looked at him and said, man, this guy's an idiot.
And matter of fact, he's so much of an idiot that we can't even risk working with him.
He's that dangerous of an idiot.
So that's Carter Page in a nutshell.
The other thing that's happening here, and I just want to point out, this is what really pisses me off about William Barr.
William Barr is the type of person who wakes up in the morning and thinks that he's carrying out his duties and carrying out the law, and the reason is this.
It's the double standard of what he just said.
He's talking about, and it's amazing legal imagination, and I want to try and take people down this road.
The idea that an investigation of an alleged crime could go against someone's civil liberties and how we weigh those things.
Well, that's very rich coming from a person and a party that has continually run aground of people's civil liberties.
It's amazing who civil liberties were worried about going against, right?
Oh, we're very worried about going against wealthy white people's civil liberties and investigating, I don't know, potential treason.
But we're not worried about civil liberties of common criminals, right?
This is a classist thing.
This is a racial thing.
This is how these people are viewing it.
Because obviously, if you're, I don't know, accused of treason, investigating that would probably impugn on your civil liberties.
It's insane.
And the way that these people work case by case and to be hypocrites and how they carry out the law is one of the most dangerous things facing this country.
And it's been happening for so long.
It just so happens that it is mutated in this case.
Okay so here's my argument for William Barr being like more dangerous than Trump.
Sure.
And I think the argument can be that you know he speaks in a reasonable manner.
He sounds like he's intelligent and then he knows what he's talking about and you can almost be you know wooed into thinking this is right compared to Trump who just yells and is orange.
I just want to point out one thing real fast.
What you're saying is completely dead on.
To some reason, people, oh, Trump is just bluster or whatever.
William Barr, though, he looks like he's talking and reasonable, like what you'd want to hear.
And that's what I think is really, really concerning to me.
And this thing keeps going.
I mean, are you ready for another hit?
I just want to point out one thing real fast.
What you're saying is completely dead on.
I want to remind people that when Jonathan Turley, the law professor, came out and embarrassed himself being the GOP's witness during the scholar testimony, he said something at one point where he's like, I've known William Barr for a long time.
And though we have disagreed on how the presidency should be treated, that's what's happening here.
We're talking about a WASP-y white world where all of these elite guys are hanging out and they're basically drinking cocktails with each other.
And meanwhile, you know, every now and then one of them will say something kind of fascist, but guess what?
They're like a straight-laced person who's in the government and has a respectable job and title.
That's the difference between Bill Barr and Donald Trump.
He will get on TV and he will spout fascistic ideas and principles and basically tear at the idea of the law.
But because he doesn't scream, because he doesn't pick fights with other celebrities, oh, I don't know, picks fights with 16-year-old girls over Time person of the year covers, because he doesn't do that and because he doesn't use brusque language or fly around in private jets, Because he just happens to be a straight-laced fascistic personality, he gets the benefit of the doubt.
That's why he is possibly more dangerous than Donald Trump, because Donald Trump puts the incompetence and the cruelty out front.
The rest of these people have been hiding behind code words and encoded language.
and quiet appeals to fascism and racism for years.
That's the difference.
One of them is outright with it, and the rest of them have been hiding it in the law and hiding it behind rhetoric.
So yeah, you're absolutely right.
He is a dangerous, dangerous person.
Well, yeah, but your imagery of like wasps sipping cocktails is making me really ashamed that I'm so into Yacht Rock at this point.
But I guess we all have to have something we can share.
All right, let's get to the next clip.
As far as I'm aware, this is the first time in history that this has been done to a presidential campaign.
The use of these counterintelligence techniques against a presidential campaign.
Okay, I got to.
I gotta go right off the bat.
You know why it's the first time it's ever been done?
Because a presidential campaign has never colluded with a foreign adversary.
You know what?
I'm so glad.
And he did this!
Obviously, this isn't a video podcast.
The smarmy look on his face where he's just like, oh, this is a great point.
It's the only time it's ever happened.
Guess what?
We're dealing with a new and novel unprecedented threat.
There is a reason why they had to do a counterintelligence operation on the Trump campaign, because they more than welcomed foreign influence.
Maybe at the time, back in 1968, if they would have known that Nixon was monkeying around with the Vietnam peace talks, maybe at that point they should have done a Yes, and I'm glad you brought up Nixon, but we have to get to the point that he's really making here, and it's insidious because it's subtle.
first mainstream presidential candidate to collude openly and actively and excitedly with a foreign adversary.
I don't know.
Maybe we should investigate that.
Yes.
I'm glad you brought up Nixon.
We have to get to the point that he's really making here.
And it's insidious because it's subtle.
He's basically trying to insinuate that Obama ordered this.
This was like the Obama White House telling them to spy on a political campaign so they lose.
And that is really troubling because without saying it outright, he is going to stir that up and that's going to get connected to people who are on that side anyway.
And that's really dangerous.
Of course, we haven't maybe had specifically a presidential campaign being spied on, but if you want to look at what Nixon did in 72 and the whole Watergate thing, you could argue that that was the same exact thing, but with the White House consent.
The White House and Mitchell, the Attorney General at the time, they were all in cahoots to make this happen with the plumbers and breaking into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and then into the Watergate burglary.
That is exactly what this was, what he's describing.
So he's completely off and he should be ashamed because he lived through that and certainly knows that.
But again, there's a certain Nixon apologist take in the Republican Party as well that doesn't want to acknowledge that what Nixon did was wrong and that it was simply the cover-up that's what got him.
And that's really another that just leads us to the same kind of abuses like we're seeing now.
So let's talk about Obama very briefly and this part of the right-wing paranoid fantasy conspiracy theory land that Obama was trying to undermine Trump's campaign and spying on him.
Let's give a little bit of a historical check.
Barack Obama, and listen, I know you can make a lot of arguments for what he did well.
Other people can make arguments about what he didn't do well.
One of the most controversial decisions that he made was he looked at the 2016 election.
He saw what was happening.
He knew that Trump was engaging in this sort of stuff.
And he put his money on trusting the process and not wanting to interfere in the election.
He met with a bipartisan committee.
And by the way, the people on that committee, particularly the Republicans who decided not to do anything about it and decided that nothing should be said about this, they kept it quiet.
All of the rumors were out there.
All of the investigations were out there.
People were talking about this behind the scenes, but no one brought it up in public because all anyone was worried about was the appearance of impropriety.
There was an existential threat taking place in an American election that was being subverted by a foreign adversary, and Obama went above and beyond, and I would argue way too far in the direction of being careful and respectful.
That this thing happened, and it wasn't out in public.
So that entire paranoid conspiracy theory is ridiculous.
And the fact that that is what Barr is trying to allege, and he absolutely is, and what Trump is trying to allege all the time.
This was a moment where the people who were in charge knew that something was going on, and they tried to remain proper and neutral, even though it cost them a really, really bad situation.
And if you're wondering, when you mentioned how Pete Williams kind of gave him a pass on a lot of this stuff, that was the one big moment where he should have said, are you trying to say that Obama ordered wiretapping of a presidential campaign or whatever?
He didn't do that.
But now that you're bringing up foreigners, I got another clip for you.
We have to remember that in today's world, presidential campaigns are frequently in contact with foreign persons.
And indeed, in most campaigns there are signs of illegal foreign money coming in.
And we don't automatically assume that the campaigns are nefarious and traitors and acting in league with foreign powers.
There has to be some basis before we use these very potent powers in our core First Amendment activity.
And we have to remember in today's world, presidential campaigns are frequently in contact with foreign persons.
And indeed, in most campaigns there are signs of illegal foreign money coming in.
Really?
Really?
You're gonna go on television and try and tell people that that's true?
You're gonna sell that line of garbage?
I'm looking up where I was reading it.
I mean, I've seen so many tweets, so much information, and somebody who was on like, you know, five campaigns was saying they never had any interactions with foreign nationals or the government themselves at all during any of those campaigns.
It is completely unprecedented that that would happen.
And on the order of magnitude, we know, I think it was into the hundreds that they were able to at least confirm contacts they were having in this short period of time throughout 2016.
Well, and by the way, here's another thing coming from somebody who talked to a bunch of people on the Trump campaign.
So Trump was such a ridiculous candidate and such an unserious candidate that he couldn't attract the normal people who work on campaigns.
And that's what I don't think most people know is that there's like a group of people, core people, who usually go from one campaign to the next.
It's just sort of like a roving circus, right?
You rely on professionals who are tried and true and tested.
Donald Trump couldn't get those people.
He had to get—and by the way, that's how people like Paul Manafort end up coming in and bringing in Russian influence, right?
Nobody wanted to put Donald Trump on their resumes.
And there were a bunch of people—actually, most of the people that he got were people who couldn't get into other campaigns, and they thought, oh, he'll lose, and I'll have that on my resume, and I'll get out, and it will be fine, right?
These are the people who woke up one day, and they were like, oh my God, what is happening in this campaign, and what is happening with Russia?
So I'll tell you what, there is a possibility that people in the Trump campaign didn't know that you're supposed to be talking to foreign people or, I don't know, talking about, you know, foreign issues with foreign nationals.
Maybe that's a possibility, but the idea that this is just a widespread thing, that the Trump campaign acted like any other campaign out there, is ludicrous.
This is so far beyond the pale that it's so absurd to even have to talk about this.
I agree.
I mean, and so again, what we're talking about and how we're framing this in which you remember what it was like, I think we're both old enough to remember 2016 was that that was the alarms were sounding and it was perfectly reasonable again to launch this investigation and to do the techniques they did because it was unprecedented and alarming To the nth degree of what was going on.
And, you know, we discovered through the Mueller report that there was so much lying and destroying of evidence that he never, they never, the only reason why they really didn't prove like criminal conspiracy with this stuff is because of the destruction of evidence and lying.
And that was what they laid out the 10 things of obstruction of justice for that the Congress decided to, you know, wipe their butt with and then move on.
Yeah, and the Mueller Report.
I just have to throw this out there.
In the midst of all of this, I am just continually frustrated by how that was treated.
I read the Mueller Report from beginning to end.
I was really lucky that I was able to do so in a quick manner because I used to Teach first-year composition.
I, you know, have learned to speed read out of necessity.
So I went through that report, and if you read the Mueller Report and you think, number one, that no crimes were committed, and number two, that it's a way that a presidential campaign should operate, you have problems.
Like, you literally are too biased and quite frankly shouldn't be engaged in politics or engaged in campaigns.
The Mueller Report First of all, I'm still so upset that Robert Mueller, who is a lifelong Republican, had all of this out there and allowed Bill Barr to misrepresent it constantly and was such a paint-by-numbers person that he wouldn't He wouldn't confront the fast-moving crisis unfurling in front of him.
I think that is a major problem, is that he didn't.
And let's not forget, Mueller had to send two letters to Barr to explain to him that what he was doing was wildly misrepresenting the report, which is exactly what Barr is now doing, and under his fear of like, oh I don't want the report to be misrepresented, which is why we have to come out way early before Durham's report comes out, and I have to now weigh in on my own department's report and say it's wrong, is galling to me.
It's exactly what he's – it's his MO.
So if you can get yourself to wrap your head around who he is and how he operates, it makes perfect sense, but only in the sense that he is simply trying to push another narrative that's not what's in the report.
And that's why his credibility is so destroyed in this thing.
Yeah.
And I just have to throw one more thing out there because I think any discussion about the Mueller report or what Bill Barr is doing right now would not be complete if we didn't talk about the media's complicity in this situation.
What happened with Donald Trump and foreign influence in the 2016 election, a large part of the responsibility lays at the feet of mainstream media.
And here's the reason why.
All of us who were hearing about this And we're investigating it and talking to people about it, hearing from people in the Trump campaign and outside of it.
We were all labeled as conspiracy theorists because how could a presidential candidate ever work with Russia?
That's so crazy.
Now all of a sudden you're just looking at this, looking for, you know, you're, you're, you're putting things up on a, on a chalkboard and pointing at him.
You're Glenn Beck, right?
Like you are the French.
And they gave Donald Trump, Months and months and months to hide this operation and they gave him this story that it was normal and that nothing was out of the ordinary and then one day all of a sudden all of these things start coming out and they're like oh my god this might be the biggest scandal of all time and they've treated it for months upon months upon months as A conspiracy theory.
So they gave him a long lead.
They gave him the original narrative that nothing like this could ever happen and all the people talking about it are insane.
And then all of a sudden Bill Barr comes out and he starts going after the Mueller report that does show that there is a connection between Trump and Russia.
He goes out, he gives this report, and they allow Bill Barr to dominate the narrative, which is what he continually does.
And their job is to be careful about this stuff.
But guess what?
They can't keep up with Barr, they can't keep up with Trump, and they keep getting the story wrong.
Jared, they just now, in the last, whatever, few months, decided they can finally say that Trump is lying.
and that they can flat out say he's lying.
And it took them years to finally just say, OK, we're going to have to just sort of call this out what it is versus, well, disagreement in opinion or change whatever they would say to make it nice.
But speaking of lies, I got another one for you.
I think when you step back here and say, what was this all based on?
It's not sufficient.
Remember, there was and never has been any evidence of collusion.
And yet this campaign and the president's administration has been dominated by this investigation into what turns out to be completely baseless.
Do you believe that he believes that?
No.
No, I don't at all.
I think he's a lawyer who's making a case.
That's the other thing.
I think we have to take a look at all of the players in this and understand that they are not all of the same mind.
I think Donald Trump has a really hard time discerning reality from unreality.
I think he's a sick person who has lived his entire life living in a reality of his own design.
And he's gotten to the point where the lines between the two just blend together.
So when he lies, I don't even think he's necessarily lying.
I think that he has convinced himself of a lie.
With somebody like Bill Barr, he has made a decision that he is making an argument as a lawyer.
I mean, you can look at the idea of collusion and the way that we've used that word and what words mean, right?
And whether or not collusion means that you said, okay, you're going to release it this day, this day, this day.
There was cooperation, right?
That's what happened.
There was cooperation between Russia and the Trump campaign.
If you want to hang your hat on the idea of collusion, feel more than free, but you're full of shit.
Right.
I mean, here's the thing.
There was plenty of collusion.
There just wasn't criminal conspiracy.
And that's another thing that Mueller decided to fall into, which was not recommending an opinion on whether or not he was guilty or not, but also to sort of, you know, parse these words into making it, you know, give an opening to the Republicans to sort of, you know, make this thing completely go off the rails.
So, there were so many contacts with Russia, we have a lot of compelling evidence that there was collusion, and they certainly knew what was going on, and certainly even more recently with Oliver Stone, with Roger Stone's testimony, we're starting to realize that there was even more connection between him and
WikiLeaks and then we know that Stone was now telling the campaign so there there was a lot more and then I'm sure more will even come out as it goes forward so and then you have to remember the Attorney General knows everything he knows more than everybody else he's read in he's got access to every single piece of information from every intelligence agency and if he doesn't know then he's completely derelict in his duty so this is why it's so nefarious what he's doing because he knows what the real answer is yeah
And he is just spouting out lies.
Yeah, and framing it as if investigating this crime, and let's just not hedge it here, it's a really disgusting crime.
I mean, it really is.
It's putting aside the idea of free and fair sovereign elections and the interest of the country to the side in order to cover up the interference of a foreign adversary who does not have our best interest at heart.
To sit there and make your money like that and to live your life based on the idea that you're fine with hiding that terrible, terrible crime.
And it's destroying the norms of the separation between the attorney general and the White House, which those two, the Twain should never really meet.
They should never have any kind of collusion.
I guess that's the word, right?
They're supposed to be completely separate entities that don't have any connection to each other, really.
Exactly.
And then to, and this is the thing, this is what I'm really pissed off about.
This is what really gets me, Nick.
To then not only cover up that crime, but then to just, just wring your hands and basically say, I feel so bad.
The Trump has been bothered by this and the administration has been bothered by like the bad faith at the heart of that is just one of the most disgusting things I've heard from a public official in a really long time.
OK, well, let's dig into the next clip here, because it talks now a little bit about the Mueller report and actually what happened and how this whole thing started.
So in May 2016, apparently a 28 year old violent campaign volunteer says in a social setting, this is George Papadopoulos, this is George Papadopoulos.
And this was described by the foreign official who heard him, who couldn't remember exactly what was said, but it was characterized as a suggestion of a suggestion.
He suggested that there had been a suggestion from the Russians that they had some adverse information to Hillary, which they might dump in the campaign.
Well, what was going on in May?
You may recall that we were in the thick of the investigation of Hillary Clinton's secret server.
And the media was full of stories, and the blogosphere was full of stories, and political circles in Washington were full of stories and speculation that the Russians had, in 2014, two years before, hacked into her secret server and were therefore in a position to drop this stuff during the election.
Speechless.
It's unbelievable.
There's so much to go over.
I don't even want to know.
Secret server?
What secret server did Hillary Clinton have as she's emailing people from an email address that says at ClintonCampaign.com?
So this is, so far, what we've been dealing with, with these comments that you've picked out, is we've been dealing with a lawyer who is trying to get a shadow of a doubt, right?
That's what's happening.
It's the idea of having just the doubt in front of a jury, in this case, the American public.
What happens in that clip, the danger of this cannot be understated.
We are very, very slowly.
And these guys, especially people like Barr, and some of the congressional Republicans do this too, even though they're very untalented and they're not good at it.
What Bill Barr does here is he starts with a little bit of a doubt.
And then he takes us into really deep water, Nick.
By the end of that clip, we are in full-blown conspiracy land, right?
We are talking about all of a sudden we have characters on the board who maybe they're having a conversation because maybe the Russians are trying to help ferret out, you know, Corruption in terms of Hillary Clinton.
And then all of a sudden you're making like three moves, right?
Where it's like, well, maybe instead of betraying the country, they're actually trying to help the country.
And by the way, if you even start to believe that, I've got a great QAnon account that I need to turn you on to.
And you can spend the next five days trying to figure out how, you know, JFK Jr.
is still out there alive, like hidden somewhere helping Donald Trump.
So if you want to go down that route, and that's the Attorney General of the United States.
That is the top legal official in the country spouting that straight-up nonsense.
So the real interesting thing here is he's trying to minimize what, like, who Papadopoulos spoke to in a bar about this sort of hearsay about, you know, Russians having access to Hillary Clinton's emails and they're gonna have dirt and they're gonna release thousands of emails.
Well, this was said to Australia's top diplomat in Britain.
This is like the most serious guy you can find who's representing Australia in that country.
If he's going to suggest it to, or so far has suggested it to the FBI later on, then you have to take that seriously.
This is not just some sort of a one-handed, you know, off-handed notion.
Quick clarifying question, Nick.
When this happens, is George Papadopoulos a part of the Donald Trump campaign for the presidency of America?
Yes.
Oh, that's weird, because if he's out there saying that, maybe that is a reason to start an investigation.
Even if he's just out there talking absolute garbage, that might be a reason to look into it, so all of a sudden you have a reason for an investigation.
Yes.
Even if he's just blowing off steam.
God, it's such a dumb argument.
Well, wait, let's walk through the Australian's point of view, because remember, he hears this, he doesn't really think anything about it, doesn't tell anybody, until these emails start getting released by WikiLeaks, which I think at that point they had known was a Russian entity.
Wait, real fast, real fast, clarification.
Where did WikiLeaks get the information?
They got it from hackers.
Where were those hackers from?
Oh, Russia?
Oh, from Russia.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I'm just checking that out.
Also, did the Donald Trump campaign know that those hacked documents were going to be coming out?
Yes.
They did.
How do we know that?
How do we know that?
And who told them?
Someone who's already been arrested for this and is one of his closest confidants.
Oh, Roger Stone, who has been a close confidant of Donald Trump and is actually one of the people who convinced him to run for president and was one of his advisors during the campaign.
Okay, I'm just trying to wrap my head around because it's such a nuanced situation.
There's just Trump and Russia.
It's weird that they just keep combining in these ways.
I don't know, Nick.
I'm a simple man.
I'm an unfrozen caveman lawyer.
And Australia didn't even come out and say this right away.
They actually waited and was measured until more information came out that looked really incriminating.
Now, when Barr mentions that the day before.
In fact, the day before this comment was made in a bar, Fox News was reporting that their sources told them there was a debate going on in the Russian government as to whether or not to drop this Hillary Clinton's email. Fox News was reporting that their sources told them there between the intelligence agency and the foreign ministry But that related to Hillary's server.
On Fox News, which already is like mind-blowing to me, he's like referencing Fox News from the day before, they did a report and what the report was, I looked it up, was that Guccifer uh juicer goose gucifer whatever they want to call him uh it was you know he's the first one was arrested in virginia prison and then out of his prison they call him up and they do an interview where he starts saying yeah i hacked into hillary's email no problem i got all this stuff wasn't that interesting to me but i saw it all
and so suddenly in his mind he's trying to sort of uh conflate these two things i'm not even sure how that matters at all the why the timing of that in his mind now the only thing i can think about is maybe bar is trying to say well here And by the way, are you ready for QAnon and crazy conspiracy?
I kind of think what he's trying to connect is that, well, because we're hearing all this smoke about, you know, Hillary's, you know, Hillary's emails and how they're going to come out, they're going to really damage her campaign.
Hillary then says, well, we now need to go backwards and go to Russia and plant these stories so they can come all the way back around.
And then months later, hurt Donald Trump when they don't, when they come out, which they don't.
I think that's kind of what he's alluding to.
But she wouldn't go to Russia, Nick.
She would go to Ukraine.
Oh.
Because that's what's happening here.
Because that's the other thing that ends up, and I assume we'll talk about this, but Bill Barr is like, oh, I don't know if I'm in on all these Ukrainian conspiracy theories.
But guess what he does?
He leaves the back door open for them.
That's what's happening here.
It's the idea that, well, Donald Trump had to collude with Russia.
Donald Trump had to withhold Ukrainian aid, and the reason why he has to commit crimes, and this is something that the Republicans are now planting their flags in.
They're saying he had to break the law because other people were breaking the law, and guess what?
That means that that breaking of the law was justified, and the other one was actually breaking the law, which is authoritarian in nature, and it's what Bill Barr is doing.
What the FBI did is, later, after the DNC hack and the dumping through Wikipedia in July... Wikileaks.
Wikileaks, yeah.
Wikileaks.
In July, they get this information that this somewhat vague statement was made in a bar.
I just want to point this out.
to a full-scale investigation before they even went and talked to the foreign officials about exactly what was said.
They opened an investigation of the campaign and they used very intrusive techniques.
I just want to point this out.
The Attorney General of the United States of America, the top legal official in the country, has now gone on record saying that if law enforcement thinks that someone has broken a crime, before they has now gone on record saying that if law enforcement thinks that someone has broken a crime, before they investigate the crime, they should go and talk to the possible criminal about they should go and
This is a crime.
That's really what he went on the record saying.
And that is really kind of amazing.
Yeah, I'm not even sure we have to comment much more on that because that's basically, yeah, the Russians are trying to infiltrate the election and can you believe they wouldn't go talk to the Russians about it?
I don't even know where he's getting that, what any kind of law enforcement would ever feel like that's the appropriate matter and how that's a clear criticism of the Obama administration for not doing it.
Crazy!
Oh, that is the most Crazy thing the the idea that law enforcement and again, like let's talk about like the stratified way that the law is used I assume that law enforcement is knocking on the door people who are suspected of dealing drugs and or possessing stolen materials and they're just like Hey, we've had some words that there's been some drugs here.
There's been some stolen material.
What's going on?
No, I assume that they don't bust the door down, arrest the people and figure it out like that.
Like the idea that like because he's a because the presidential campaign, because it's an upstanding thing, right?
I mean, it was the Republican nominee.
How could they ever do something wrong?
The idea that they have reached a certain level means that the law should be different in how it is applied to them.
That is the essence of all this.
Well, that might have confused him and gotten his brain to warp a little bit because here's the next clip.
And what I find particularly inexplicable is that they talk to the Russians.
But not to the presidential campaign.
On August 4th, Brennan braced the head of Russian intelligence.
He calls the head of Russian intelligence and says, we know what you're up to, you better stop it.
He did it again later in August, and then President Obama talked to President Putin in September and said, we know what you're up to, you better cut it out.
So they go and confront the Russians, who clearly are the bad guys, and they won't go and talk to the campaign and say, you know, what is this about?
So, we went from, unless I'm wrong, you know, kind of wondering why they didn't go to Russia, then now he's saying, oh my God, they went to Russia and said, stop it, cut it out, which I don't know, it seems like the most reasonable, probably, you could probably criticize Obama for not doing more.
But I can't understand now what's going on because going back to our original point, okay, if you have a campaign that it looks like they are colluding with Russia, we have all this smoke going on, he wants them to then go to that campaign and let them know that they know what's happening, they're already listening in on this, and we already know the FBI and Comey was really concerned that if they did that they would stop doing what they were doing and they wouldn't be able to sort of unravel this whole problem.
Now, if they unravel it and there's nothing wrong, then that's just called an investigation, and it's nothing illegal or improper about it.
Yeah, you can investigate an alleged crime and find out that there's not a crime.
No.
That doesn't make the investigation a crime.
I know that's crazy.
I know I'm taking crazy pills here.
But let's also point out the fact that what all of these people are doing, and this is one of the things that Trump does every day, where he's like, read the transcript.
Well, it's not a transcript.
It's a memo about a transcript, right?
It's where they are making the bet that the people who support them will not look into things or that things are so complicated that they can muddy the water and get people not to care.
Well, guess what?
Russia didn't just interfere by helping the Trump campaign.
Russia also was like, Creating artificial movements in the country.
They were meddling with people on social media.
There were places where like two competing groups of people would end up together in the same town and it would be because of Russian fronts.
So guess what?
Even if Obama wasn't even addressing the Trump campaign working with Russia, He has every right as the president of the United States of America to tell a foreign adversary influencing not just the culture but also the election to not do it.
The idea that the president shouldn't do that and shouldn't stand up for the country.
I love these mind games they keep playing.
You're either too weak or you're too bold.
Or it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
It's complete and utter nonsense.
OK, well, now it's time to turn to the interview, part of the interview where he starts to talk a bit more about the method that Horowitz used.
I think you have to understand what the IG's methodology is.
And I think it's the appropriate methodology for an inspector general.
He starts with limited information.
He can only talk to people who are essentially there as employees, and he's limited to the information generally in the FBI.
But his approach is to say, if I get a explanation from the people I'm investigating that is not unreasonable on its face, then I will accept it as long as there's not contradictory testimonial or documentary evidence.
In other words, it's a very deferential standard.
And all he said is, people gave me an explanation and I didn't find anything to contradict it, so I don't have a basis for saying that there was improper motive.
I'm having a brain cramp here because he's describing every, every investigation of all time.
Because here's the thing.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Jared, but isn't he supposed to be investigating the FBI?
Yes.
So when you investigate the FBI, aren't you supposed to talk to people in the FBI?
Yes.
So he's complaining that he only can talk to people in the FBI about an investigation of how the FBI started this whole thing and he's saying that he has to be deferential because the only way he could dispute someone's response to a question is if they find evidence to the contrary.
What are we talking about?
That's exactly, that's the only way you're supposed to be able to do this.
How is it possible, I don't even get ahead of myself, that like, I guess he's expecting that there are all these foreigners out there that have much more insight into how they started this investigation?
He's talking about criminal investigations.
He's talking about taking the IG and turning it into a thing where they are going to actually investigate the people who are investigating the Trump campaign.
And basically, I mean, this is Stalinist stuff.
It really is.
It's nothing like the rule of law.
They're literally talking about a group of people who investigated a crime and At the end of the day, by the way, they end up releasing a report that say that they can't necessarily prove anything, which in some places you would think that that would show that they weren't trying to prove something.
But, you know, we're in crazy land at this point.
They're literally talking about going and looking at these people criminally.
That's what he's getting into.
And that's what these people would love to do.
I mean, if Trump and Barr had their way, they would be criminally investigating everybody in the country that they even thought for a second had anything against them.
And that's what purges are about.
That's what Stalinist regimes are about.
They go in and anytime that they even have a momentary notice where they think someone looks at them the wrong way, they're investigated or they're thrown in a gulag.
I mean, that's where these tendencies come from.
It's a part of the human nature that these people, they inhabit.
Well, let's burrow a little bit deeper into his brain because he elucidates a little bit more about what he means about what Durham can do in his investigation versus what Horowitz did.
Durham is not limited to the FBI.
He can talk to other agencies.
He can compel people to testify.
One of the problems in the IG's investigation, I think he would agree, is that Comey refused to sign back up for his security clearance and therefore couldn't be questioned about classified matters.
So someone like Durham can compel testimony.
He can talk to a whole range of people, private parties, foreign governments, and so forth.
And I think that is the point at which a decision has to be made about motivations.
And I think right now it would be premature to make any judgment one way or the other.
Hey Nick, is Durham the attorney?
Is he currently conducting an active investigation?
Yes.
Okay, follow-up question.
Is it proper for the Attorney General to be commenting on ongoing investigations and also giving weird directions on how that investigation should be conducted?
Well, I'm no Attorney General, but if you ask a whole bunch of them and anybody else in that business, they're going to tell you Hell no.
What if you talk to former Attorney General Eric Holder?
Do you have any idea what Eric Holder might think about this?
I think he might disagree pretty strongly.
Yeah, I think he would even probably write an op-ed that would say that Bill Barr is unfit to be Attorney General of the United States of America.
I think maybe he would write that letter.
Oh, that's right, he did publish that op-ed.
By the way, just for context, the other side will probably feel the same way about Holder that we do about Barr.
And that's just racist.
But still, I'm sure they're convinced that Holder did the same exact thing for Obama.
It's just, it's unbelievable.
I mean, the way that this man has just absolutely perverted the office of Attorney General.
I mean, it's not just unprecedented.
It is terrifying.
I mean, this is the type of person who, it's Trump's dream.
You know, not only is he loyal, but he's more than happy to be the public face of an administration that is corrupting the rule of law.
He's more than willing to add his legitimacy to it.
And to play these games, these semantic games, and also to be sending these bizarre signals on how these things should happen and meddling in other investigations.
I mean, Bill Barr is a really, really dangerous guy.
I just can't quite follow how – oh, and by the way, on our dime, he gets to trips across the world and staying in nice hotels in Italy and all this stuff.
It's, that's even more galling to me.
But how, how, you know, other agencies are going to, you know, give him any more insight into how an investigation from the FBI started is sort of beyond me.
Like that's, or that's going to end up giving them anything more conclusive versus, you know, what they, the actual people did that they talked to.
So, Again, that's what's really troubling to me.
What's the Italian government going to be able to tell him about why they started this?
I can't really follow that, and I'm waiting to see what's going to happen, because you know they're going to spin it either way.
But that's really where it gets troubling to me, because it's also this eroding of the confidence in our intelligence community, which is what Trump has been doing since day one.
And that's another nefarious version of what Barr is doing.
And by the way, he's not just like traveling across the ocean to like check out the sites.
He's carrying out a shadow government for Trump.
He is carrying out investigations to try and help the President of the United States of America, whom the Attorney General is not supposed to be in league with and is not supposed to assist.
He's going around the world to try and aid his own defense against impeachment, which is not what the office is supposed to be about.
And you're exactly right.
You and I have paid for this.
Everyone listening to this podcast has contributed well, except for, I'm sorry, the billionaires and the corporations that rely on people like Bill Barr to carry out the law of the land.
The rest of us, the ones who actually pay taxes and, you know, carry some responsibility and all this, We're the ones who have paid for Bill Barr to go around carrying out shadow investigations for a shadow government.
I mean, that's what's happened.
Jared, the hits keep coming.
From day one, remember, they say, OK, we're not going to go to talk to the campaign.
We're going to put people in there, wire them up, and have these conversations with people involved in the campaign.
Because that way, we'll get the truth.
From the very first day of this investigation, which was July 31st, 2016, all the way to its end in September 2017, there was not one incriminatory bit of evidence to come in.
It was all exculpatory.
The people that they were taping...
Denied any involvement with Russia.
Denied the very specific facts that the FBI was relying on.
So what happens?
The FBI ignores it, presses ahead, withholds that information from the court.
Withholds critical exculpatory information from the court while it gets an electronic surveillance warrant.
You know what, at this point I'm willing to even go on the record and just say, that's fine, there's some serious, 17 problems they did with the FISA and doing that, and you know, but here's again, the context is missing, is that here we have a president who continually battles against the intelligence community, sides with Putin, and his behavior continues to give more ammunition to why we might think that he's a Russian asset even, so I get why they felt like they wanted to continue to investigate him, but okay, fine.
They wired some people up for Papadopoulos and for, um, who else did they do?
Papadopoulos, Carter Page, and then maybe one other person in the campaign.
And those guys didn't say anything.
Alright, fine, so that sounds reasonable to me, whatever, but here we are.
Yeah, I mean, this is what you do when you're trying to take down a crime syndicate, which is what the Trump campaign was, what the Trump administration is.
I just want to put this out there.
I have done a lot of research recently on American history, and I'll tell you, the American intelligence community has engaged in some truly horrific abuses of power.
They have violated civil liberties.
They've traipsed around the world as a vehicle and tool of white supremacy.
They have undermined democratically elected leaders.
They have killed people.
They performed coups.
I don't ever like to be the type of person who is like standing up for these bodies because they are problematic.
But what is being alleged is that the FBI, which has always leaned right and has always carried out these right-leaning tendencies, somehow or another came together in a conspiracy to undermine somehow or another came together in a conspiracy to undermine Donald Trump.
Oh, and by the way, the CIA is not right either because they've been looking at Russian interference.
And even though every intelligence community says it.
Everybody who is a serious person says it.
They're all against them, which is the mindset, right?
And this is the paranoid mindset that's at play with Donald Trump is that everything that happens and everything that gets said that he doesn't believe, it's automatically a conspiracy against him.
The idea that the intelligence community has carried out some, and by the way, what a conspiracy it was.
The Mueller report didn't do anything.
He hasn't been charged with anything.
So what type of conspiracy was this?
Just a failed one?
And who all, how many people carried out this sinister conspiracy where nothing happened and he becomes president and hasn't been held accountable for anything?
All right.
Well, you know, you do also hear that this is J. Edgar Hoover's FBI kind of horrible stuff that we hear about, right?
Well, Jared, I got a question for you.
Who was in charge of the FBI when Watergate was breaking?
I believe that was the Republicans.
Yeah.
And J. Edgar Hoover.
I mean, he dies right around that time, but he's there.
And who was basically responsible for everyone finding out about Watergate?
I believe those were the Republicans.
Yeah.
Well, and then, you know, it's Mark Felt, the number two guy in the FBI who was deep throat.
So you might want to think that, oh, it's like this horrible, you know, agency, but you know what?
Back then they ended up being patriots who recognized what was going on and had to go above and beyond their duty to make sure that the truth got out.
Well, you know, when, when Trump goes out there and says that Putin, I have no reason to doubt Putin, you know, and basically I have a reason to doubt my intelligence community.
You're going to piss a lot of people off and, You know there's you know when you're playing baseball and the pitcher will you know you you stand a little too long after a home run and The next time you're up at they'll throw the ball at your head Like that's sort of what the FBI and the CIA kind of do there's sort of another level here of Balancing the playing field if you want to if you do that kind of stuff to them You know you run the risk of them, you know either leaking stuff or finding out but generally that stuff is true and
And so anyway, the point being is that, you know, without the FBI then and those kinds of tactics, we would never have found out about Watergate.
And I feel like we need to consider that when we're talking about who these people are now in the Bureau.
And I think it needs reminding that one of the things that happened before the election, and one of the things I think that contributed to Donald Trump winning, was this New York Times article that said that the FBI had found no proof of collusion with Russia whatsoever, or any evidence of malfeasance with Russia.
It was a BS report that had nothing to do with anything, and it helped clean up Trump's image before the election, and in many ways probably helped him win the presidency.
It wasn't like there was a mass exodus in the FBI to leak out to reporters that this hadn't happened.
It seems like most of the people involved with this were doing it properly and with respect and following the letter of the law.
The idea that this was a massive conspiracy is just absurd.
Well, with that in mind, you're going to absolutely love this clip.
It also withholds from the court clear-cut evidence that the dossier that they ultimately relied on to get the FISA warrant was a complete sham.
They, they, they, They hid information about the lack of reliability even when they went the first time for the war.
But in January, after the election, the entire case collapsed when the principal source says, I never told, I never told Steele this stuff.
And this was all speculation.
And I have zero information to support this stuff.
At that point, when their entire case collapsed, what did they do?
They kept on investigating the president and well into his administration. - So the Steele dossier has been confirmed in almost every single possible way.
I mean, okay, the pee-pee tape, all that stuff, whatever.
OK, we get it.
That's all you're saying.
Whatever.
Michael Cohen in Prague?
OK, fine.
He wasn't there.
And I'm not even sure Steele had ever really came out and said, this is all facts, right?
He was just saying, this is what I've learned, what I've heard, or whatever.
And this is what I'm reporting.
It's part of my thing.
Now, first of all, they've been doing this for a long time on Steele.
You have to remember who Steele was.
He was the guy who took down the Russians in the Olympic scandal with Sepp Blatt.
And was, you know, a rock-solid lead for the FBI for years.
And he was also a member of MI6.
So this is not some random fastball, leading up to the Iraq War, making up stuff.
That is crazy how they're gonna completely... By the way, it's almost the same kind of thing they're trying to do when they were trying to destroy Mueller.
You know, Mueller's another guy who's had, you know, the most stellar career Republican whole thing.
Steele has a similar side on the other way, on the other side of the pond.
So, that just makes me cringe to hear, like, this lack of reliability on his part.
And, of course, you know, they follow some stuff up and people might say, oh, I never told them that.
But, like, again, how that affects the FISA warrant really, because it was never a huge part of the warrant anyway, is crazy to me.
So they start with Papadopoulos.
You have the Steele dossier that comes in that is apparently looked at and has, again, been confirmed on almost every level.
So, like, let's even say theoretically, like, let's go ahead and grant them something.
Let's say that the Papadopoulos thing falls apart.
And let's say that the Steele dossier falls apart, which neither is true.
So, like, let's say that you're investigating those leads, which are actual leads.
And you start finding out that, I don't know, that Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr.
met with Russian nationals who were trafficking in stolen information.
Or Donald Trump Jr.
was having communications with a guy who was offering stolen information.
Or, I don't know, Paul Manafort was handing out polling materials to Russian intelligence.
So, when you're researching those things, and you're finding those things, Even if those other things start falling apart, you can go ahead and talk about the crimes that you're looking at on paper.
That's not crazy.
That's a way that things work.
So even if they want to stick with this idea that it was started on a sham, there was an alleged crime that on its face was an alleged crime.
They get into it and all of a sudden they find evidence of a crime.
That's not improper.
This is, it's just trying, it's like magic.
Look at this hand while this hand is doing another thing.
It's misdirection.
It doesn't make any sense whatsoever and there's no case here.
Yeah.
And again, just to reiterate, we know that a lot of the Steele dossier was confirmed and was reliable.
So it doesn't, craziness.
Now, here's another clip on the same subject.
They not only didn't tell the court that what they had been relying on was completely you know, rubbish, they actually started putting in things to bolster the Steele report by saying, well, we talked to the sources and they appeared to be truthful.
But they don't inform the court that what they're truthful about is that the dossier is false.
I'm not even sure where he's going with that.
They followed up with some of the sources and now he's saying the sources were truthful, which to me means what they said in the dossier is true.
But then Barr is trying to say that no, they were truthful in their denial of what was in the Steele dossier.
So I don't even know what he's talking about there, do you?
No, but I just want to point out, I cannot stand the way that he treated this interview.
The laughing, the smirks.
It's such a sport to this guy.
And he treats, we're talking about treason.
We're talking about violating sovereign elections.
And this guy just can't even keep a straight face during all of it because it's so much fun.
And it's so funny to talk about alleged treason and violation of sovereign elections.
It's just the funniest thing in the world.
And by the way, at the heart of all of this, we're talking about a foreign adversary that absolutely hacked an election.
And, and, and, and interfered in an election.
What's funny?
What is funny for anybody?
Like, it just pisses me off constantly.
There's nothing funny about this.
And there's nothing flippant about this.
And the way that these people treat it, like it's the biggest sport in the world.
I mean, I, it, I cannot tell you how frustrating that is.
All right, we're getting to the end of this thing.
I want to get another clip here.
It's all places.
It gets kind of worse.
He sort of finishes on a down, real problematic notes.
Here's the first one.
There could have been a lot of motivations involved and different motivations.
And there could have been motivations in the FBI and motivations outside the FBI by other players in this.
This thing focuses on the FBI.
There was a lot going on around this that is not the subject matter of Horowitz's report, but I think has a direct bearing So this is what he's trying to explain as far as why he's traipsing around the world trying to get other people to give him information about this.
Again, I don't really follow where he's going with this and I'm trying to get ahead of the game and figure out what Durham's gonna say, but I don't know.
I think, is this part of the conspiracy where The Clinton campaign goes to Russia and says, hey, we need you to make all this stuff up and tell it to Steele.
Steele then reports it back to them and then they don't ever use it and they lose the election because they don't use it.
Like, help me here.
This is about locking up political rivals.
This is about setting the case for prosecuting Hillary Clinton, possibly Barack Obama.
I mean, I could see them going that route.
I mean, it's about locking up people like Joe Biden.
And let's be clear, this is straight up authoritarian, fascist territory.
That's what this is about.
It's about everything that Trump has said at all of these rallies where he says, you know, where people chant, lock him up or lock her up.
And he cheers it on and he talks about investigating his rivals.
That's what this is.
And he's saying, you know, the FBI did this thing, but, you know, he didn't say the deep state, but he's talking about the deep state.
He's talking about this conspiracy theory that has absolutely nothing to do with reality.
And that's where this thing is going.
If people like Barr and Trump get their way, they're going to investigate political rivals, because if they're political rivals, then obviously they're evil and criminal.
There's no forbearance here whatsoever.
If you disagree with me, then you are obviously involved in a conspiracy and you should be locked up.
And this is a slippery slope.
It absolutely is.
This is where this goes.
You start investigating the people who disagree with you, you lock them up, and then there's not a whole lot of opposition.
And this is what's happened in Russia.
It's what's happened in every authoritarian country that comes to mind.
And this is how it starts.
It starts by saying something happened.
Maybe we should look into it.
Maybe these people are dangerous.
Yep.
Well, let's find out what he thinks about the appropriateness of Durham weighing in in the middle of his investigation, which isn't even finished.
Oh yeah, I think it was definitely appropriate because I think it was necessary to avoid public confusion.
I think it was sort of being reported by the press that the issue of predication was sort of done and over, even though it was a very limited look at that issue by the IG, given the narrowness of the evidence available to him.
And I think it was important for people to understand that Durham's work was not being preempted and that Durham was doing something different and he explains what he's doing different and that there are areas of disagreement.
I think it was perfectly appropriate so the public understood the relationship between the two exercises.
So, I mean, it's really that's rich coming from him.
But why do we even do the Horowitz report then?
If Durham is going to have this much more comprehensive thing with more information, whatever, then why would they even bother, you know, launching this, having the first one in the first place?
I don't get it.
I am so touched that William Barr, attorney general of the United States, is concerned about public confusion.
You know, I just I'm really glad he's looking out for us and, you know, that he has undermined every report that's been released and gotten out in front of it and given out propaganda and misinformation to mislead the press and the public.
I'm so glad that he's on the case.
I'm so glad that he's worried about public confusion.
He's heard the criticism.
He's, you know, he feels it so deep.
He's so concerned about that sweet, sweet public confusion.
What the only the only way to understand what he's doing here with Horowitz versus Durham is this is trench warfare, right?
If Horowitz's report would have come out and it would have had an actual effect that helped him or Trump, this would have been the biggest story in the world and you couldn't have picked up your phone without hearing Trump tweet about it and talk about it.
Now that Horowitz has all but destroyed their conspiracy theory, well, maybe Durham will take care of it.
Well, if Durham doesn't take care of it, there will always be something else.
If that doesn't take care of it, there will be something else.
It's trench warfare.
You give up one inch at a time, and if you lose that inch, you move back to the next inch.
And it's only a little bit.
You only do this.
You will never admit defeat, and you will never, ever admit that your case has been heard.
And that's what these people do.
I mean, they have decided that politics is going to be a war that's going to be fought in trenches and by the inches.
That's all they care about, and that's all they're doing here.
Yeah.
And how they win is, you know, they remember that most people will remember the last thing they heard.
So as he's wrapping up this interview, we get a nice little neat summary of everything we've been talking about.
I think our nation was turned on its head for three years, I think, based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by an irresponsible press.
And I think that there were gross abuses of FISA and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI. - So again, the authoritarian regimes are the ones who are able to subvert the press, the authoritarian regimes are the ones who are able to subvert And make all press like Fox News, like propaganda.
And, you know, his characterization of whether the press fanned this bogus hysteria for three and a half years is just frightening to me.
Yeah, so the press, which was reluctant every step along the way to even talk about the Russian collusion story and gave Trump the benefit of the doubt because he was the Republican nominee and didn't want to believe that a politician would behave in this way.
They would occasionally report that Donald Trump Jr.
met with the Russians and communicated with the Russians, and that Jared Kushner was looking for private communication with the Kremlin, that Paul Manafort was giving over polling data to Russian intelligence.
It's such bullshit.
There's no other way to put it.
They basically are spinning this yarn that says that it's just terrible that we even looked into this thing.
And I have to tell you that if I had a political candidate that I was supporting, And I found out that he or she had had communications with a foreign adversary.
If they had done a tenth, a fifth of what Donald Trump has done with Russia and the people in his orbit has done with Russia.
By the way, how many people have been convicted in this whole thing?
I've lost count.
It's a lot.
It's a lot of people who have been convicted.
And they're all principals.
And they're all principals.
They're all people in Trump's orbit.
So multiple people in the Trump campaign have have been Convicted and are in prison or on their way to prison.
If I had a candidate who committed a tenth or a fifth of any of these offenses that have been alleged, you know what I would do?
I would want that person investigated.
And that is the problem with American politics right now, is there's a group of people who not only do they not want to believe that maybe their candidate of choice has done this, but they won't even look at evidence, right?
They won't even actually think about the consequences of what would happen if they're not investigated.
For me, if my candidate was, I would look at it and I'd be like, oh, my God, I made the wrong choice with this.
And I hope this is investigated.
These people don't even want to think about it.
Like, I'm sorry, they shouldn't have even have investigated this.
You have people going to prison.
So the attorney general is the head of all the intelligence communities, right?
I don't know.
of all sort of funnel back up to him.
So you would think that he would understand and know, you know, have a hand in certainly the more important things that are popping up in his purview.
So let's finish this one off with the last quick clip and a quick response on his views on Ukraine.
Fortunately, I haven't gotten into the Ukraine thing yet.
I don't know.
I'm not even sure about the nature of these allegations.
He's not even sure about the nature of the allegations about Ukraine meddling in our elections, I think that also dips their toe into this notion of the conspiracy, the crowd strike, and the server there.
Can you believe with a straight face that he's going to wrap up this interview with Pete Williams throwing that bomb out there?
Yeah, of course.
You nod to your adoring public.
That's what they want to hear.
We have to say this.
It's the Attorney General of the United States not discrediting a conspiracy theory that everybody who is reasonable knows that Russian intelligence concocted to help themselves and to help Trump.
That's all it is.
That is a conspiracy theory that has absolutely no basis in reality, that is being used to try and protect Russian intelligence from being accused, rightfully, of interfering in the election, and it's also used to smokescreen Trump's crimes.
That's the Attorney General, the main law figure in the country, refusing to discredit a Russian conspiracy theory.
And, but on top of that, he's just pretending he doesn't know anything about it.
He hasn't looked into it.
He hasn't even thought about it, Nick.
I mean, you know, it's only been the main line of the Republican Party in these impeachment hearings and what his boss, the President of the United States, has been screaming about every day on Twitter as he's on the toilet.
He hasn't even thought about it, you know.
Maybe it's true.
That's what it's saying, right?
Maybe it's true.
Maybe Ukraine's behind this whole thing, you know?
Maybe it's not Russia.
I mean, it's the most Jaw-dropping bullshit thing this interview.
I you know what Nick?
I'm so angry that we did this.
I'm so mad We went through this and I've listened out of this interview a few times and it only gets worse.
I Know I'm sorry.
I thought we were gonna feel better about this, but it doesn't this one is a this one's a dark day.
I It's really dark.
And I mean, I think it was necessary to do an emergency podcast to talk about this because, I mean, moments like this are really frightening.
I mean, this is a guy, and I think everybody's heard it at this point, who basically went out and said the police will be respected or you won't have police.
And the willingness that he's had to shine Trump's shoes and just carry out every order while sitting there with a smirk on his face, acting as if everything is normal and nothing is wrong.
I mean, Bill Barr is an extraordinarily dangerous man.
Well, those are the most prescient words I've heard today, and let's hope we can somehow get out of this without him doing more damage.
Jared, thanks for doing this.
I really think this is a great way to cover his speech and properly debunk what he was saying.
Yeah, let's go into the weekend and hopefully not have to worry about the Attorney General subjugating the rule of law in the United States of America.
Sounds good to me.
In the meantime, we will be back next week at our regular time.
Until then, please let people know what we're doing.
Subscribe so you're gonna get these surprise emergency podcasts whenever, I don't know, the world is on fire.
Until then, I am at JY Sexton and Nick is at CanYouHearMeSMH.
Let people know.
We have absolutely appreciated all of the comments and the shares and the word of mouth.
This thing is picking up steam and we are really, really happy about that and so, so thankful.
