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May 6, 2020 - Rudy Giuliani
48:32
Anatomy of General Flynn's FRAME-UP with Andrew McCarthy | Ep. 34
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It's our purpose to bring to bear the principle of common sense and rational discussion to the issues of our day.
America was created at a time of great turmoil, tremendous disagreements, anger, hatred.
There was a book written in 1776 that guided much of the discipline of thinking that brought us to the discovery of our freedoms, of our God-given freedoms.
It was Thomas Paine's Common Sense, written in 1776, one of the first American bestsellers in which Thomas Paine explained by rational principles the reason why these small colonies felt the necessity to separate from the powerful Kingdom of England and the King of England.
He explained their inherent desire for liberty, freedom, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and he explained it in ways that were understandable to the people, to all of the people.
A great deal of the reason for America's constant ability to self-improve is because we are able to reason, we're able to talk to each other, we're able to listen to each other, and we're able to analyze.
We are able to apply our God-given common sense.
So let's do it.
♪♪ Hello, this is Rudy Giuliani,
and I'm back with Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
And today I have the great pleasure of interviewing Andrew McCarthy, former assistant U.S.
attorney who prosecuted the Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman case, one of many, probably the most famous.
And I remember early in his career, he was part of the Pizza Connection case.
Andy has one of the most distinguished records of anyone in the United States Attorney's Office, and since then he's become one of the principal writers, philosophers, thinkers.
He does—works for the National Review.
You see him on Fox all the time, and has written several books, and probably is one of the— One of the more sought-after guests to comment on legal matters.
He's just a great lawyer, has a great deal of common sense, which is why we have him on the show, and also very often has his own very unique take on things.
He spent a lot of time in working in these areas that we're going to talk to him about.
We're going to talk about the Flynn case, and we're going to talk to him about some of the legal ramifications of the shutdown.
So, Andy, it's great to have you on.
Rudy, it's great to see you and I appreciate you mentioning all those things.
The proudest day is still the day you swore me in.
Oh, gosh, yeah.
Well, you're—you've done terrific.
So, shall we start with Flynn?
Yes, sir.
I mean, aside from his lawyers, I don't know anyone that knows the case better than you.
And can you take us—I mean, can you summarize for us?
Because there's been so much confusion about how it started and what the problems are with it right now.
I mean, everyone knows somehow He was charged with lying.
He pled guilty to lying.
There was a point at which the FBI thought he didn't lie.
So his advocates say he pled guilty because he was forced to do it because of his son.
And the people who are his adversaries say, well, he lied to the FBI and therefore he's got to take his consequences.
Yeah, I think the easiest way to understand Flynn's case is to understand why I think they brought Flynn's case.
Which is that he was an obstacle to what the main objective of both the Obama administration working in conjunction with the FBI at the time was.
And that was, once Mrs. Clinton lost to the President in the November election, the goal was to continue the investigation that the FBI called Crossfire Hurricane, which was really, I think, always trained on President Trump.
And what they wanted to do was continue it, despite the fact that he was president, which is a tough uphill battle,
you would think, because the president, of course, has the ability to shut down investigations, including counterintelligence,
which was the guys under which they were doing this.
When they began the investigation, the counterintelligence investigation, he was the one who was in charge.
He was still he was running.
Correct.
Yes, they began it.
I believe, Rudy, that the the investigation probably goes back to 2015.
Wow.
And that the CIA and the intelligence community overseas, as opposed to the FBI domestically, were the main players at the beginning.
I think the FBI got more active as you got deeper into 2016.
They formally opened the investigation at the end of July of 2016, but I think there was a lot they were doing before that.
And they opened an investigation they called Crossfire Hurricane.
Which was a counterintelligence investigation.
Right.
Not a criminal investigation.
Explain the difference.
Yep.
A counterintelligence investigation is not done as a criminal investigation is to vindicate the rule of law in court proceedings.
It's done to collect Foreign intelligence to support the president's mission to protect the United States against foreign threats to national security.
And in order to use laws like FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which we now know they used in this investigation, you basically have to allege that the person you want to surveil or the group you want to surveil are conducting themselves as clandestine foreign agents or clandestine agents of a foreign power.
So here, The they had this crossfire hurricane is the overarching or what they call the umbrella investigation, and it has a number of subset investigations to it, one of which was called Crossfire Razor, which was the investigation of General Flynn.
And I would I would just conclude in a conclusory way, say that there was no basis.
In fact, to believe that Michael Flynn Who is a 33 year old decorated combat commander of the United States was a agent of the Kremlin, which is essentially what the what the allegation was.
So that was his investigation was handled as part of this crossfire hurricane.
And I think if Mrs. Clinton had won, the whole thing would have gone away and you'd never have heard another word about it.
But once she lost, Then they realized that two things.
Number one.
Now they, they, they is Comey struck.
Who, who, who, who, who, who are the masterminds of this?
Who are thinking it up?
It's the, it's the intelligence community hierarchy of the Obama administration and the Obama White House.
So for example, right in the middle of all this on January 5th of 2017, which is a day before then president elect Trump, gets briefed on the Russia investigation.
There is a meeting in the Oval Office between President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Susan Rice from the White House side, and Jim Comey, who was then the Director of the FBI, and Sally Yates, who was the Acting Attorney General of the United States.
And I believe also in on that meeting were some of the other intelligence chiefs But they did not stay for the follow-on meeting because that was limited to people who were going to continue on in the Trump administration, namely Comey and Yates.
So this was after he was president-elect.
He was elected.
Correct.
Right.
But before he took office.
Right.
So sometime in November?
No, this is January 5th.
It's the day before.
January 5th.
Oh, OK.
This is the January 5th meeting.
OK.
Right.
Day before Trump gets briefed on the Russia investigation and right before they orchestrate what turns out to be the leak of the infamous
Steele dossier.
But in that meeting, what they talk about is holding back information about Russia from
the incoming team.
That was clearly a goal that they had.
And I believe the reason that General Flynn needed to be removed, as far as they were
concerned, is unlike a number of the people who the new president brought in with him,
Flynn was a veteran intelligence actor and officer who had run the Defense Intelligence
Agency and was a very savvy and experienced intelligence actor.
There's no way they would have been able to keep from him the fact that both the Obama administration had investigated the Trump campaign and unbelievably they were continuing to investigate the Trump campaign and ultimately administration as the administration began.
They were even then, Rudy, in the FISA court getting warrants.
Right.
And making representations to the FISA court that they believed there was a conspiracy of cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
This is after the famous intercept where doesn't Strzok say there's no there there or?
Yes.
They couldn't find anything.
Yeah.
At a certain point they knew and I think it's a certain a point early on that they knew they did not have a case on
President Trump.
And they continued the FISA surveillance of Carter Page for almost a year, which allowed
them to do a lot of collection of intelligence on people who were connected to the Trump
campaign.
But there was no there there ever as far as showing a conspiracy between the Trump campaign
and the Trump campaign.
So, so, so they make a decision around January 5.
We can't have Flynn around because if we do, we're not going to be able to continue this
investigation.
I believe that's what happened.
And it's ironic that it happens then, Rudy, because we now know that on January 4, the day before, they actually closed the case on Flynn because they had nothing.
But by a ministerial error, evidently, that Strzok ends up calling the FBI's utter
incompetence, which he regards as serendipitous.
They do not officially close the case in the system, even though they have a memo to the
file that Comey has approved saying that they're closing the case on Flynn, because basically
they don't have any—it's ridiculous to ever think he was an agent of Russia to begin
with.
So they close that investigation, but they don't close it.
And as a result, they— This is like the Keystone Cops, if it wasn't so serious.
It's remarkable.
But what they decide to do, I think, is a perjury trap.
And they're led to that conclusion because they think of a few other alternatives that they might try, like doing a defensive briefing or using a defensive briefing as a pretext to get in and grill them.
They have a bunch of proposals and they decide none of this is going to work.
Now, they meaning?
The agents.
McCabe, Strzok, Comey.
Lisa Page.
Lisa Page, of course.
And Joe Pientka.
Okay, those are the main five people?
Right.
So Comey has conceded that he, outside of protocol, decided to send two agents, Strzok and Pientka, to go interview Flynn on January 24th.
And this is completely out of protocol, because you're supposed to go to the Attorney General, who goes to the White House Counsel, so that both the President's interest and the- By this time, Flynn is now on the job.
Correct.
In an acting capacity, right?
The President, well, he, I think- Oh, was he named?
He's White House staff, so- Right, of course, yeah.
So he was just appointed by the President, straight up.
Right.
So the President's inaugurated on January 20th.
And Flynn is interviewed on January 24. And there's a weekend in between those two things
where they talk about different plans for approaching Flynn.
Ultimately, I think they settle on the perjury trap. And I think the idea of that
was they needed to try to get Flynn to say something that wasn't true so that they could go to
the White House and try to get him removed. There's a famous, there's a quote from Page in one
of the texts, I think, about get him off guard to get. Yeah, well, that was about what
were they going to advise him.
You and I know that when the FBI interviews somebody, even if it's like a drug dealer or a gangbanger or whoever it is, they always advise him of his rights up front and they tell him, here's where you stand.
They tell him if you lie to us, we can prosecute you for that.
They decide they're not going to tell Flynn any of that.
And McCabe calls him before the two agents toodle over there.
And this all gets kind of described by Comey as he wouldn't have gotten away with this if it were a more mature or an older administration.
the White House chief of staff know that they're coming, and they basically show up at his door,
and Flynn agrees to speak to them. And this gets, this all gets kind of described by Comey as he
wouldn't have gotten away with this if it were a more mature or an older administration. Yes,
he knows that he's supposed to go to the Attorney General, who was supposed to go to the White House
counsel to get all this approved before you just show up and talk to the president's staff. And
And the other thing, Rudy, I think that's crucial to realize that they did here was they actually have a recording of the conversation between Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak of Russia that they want to ask him about.
Now, in a normal investigation, as we know, if you're really searching for the truth and you're trying to get to the bottom of something, you play the tape for the guy and then you ask him, what did this mean?
What did that mean?
They agree before they go in.
They're not going to play the tape for him.
They're just going to ask him about a conversation he had a month ago with Kislyak.
This is a busy government official who's had hundreds of such conversations in the ensuing weeks, and they're basically going to hope that he trips up.
So this is sort of a credibility test.
I mean, they walk in, they know you had the conversation, they got proof of the conversation, and they want to see, are you going to say yes or no?
Right.
And they're going to hope that he lies, because then The controversy going on at the time was whether he mentioned sanctions in the conversation with Kislyak, and they have reason to know because they have the recording that he did, even though publicly he said he didn't.
There's a variety of reasons that may have happened, but suffice it to say, they think they have him, and what they're hoping to do is that he'll basically lie about it.
And they're also, at that time, talking about the preposterous possibility of indicting him
for the Logan Act, which is a more abundant unconstitutional provision that the Justice
Department hasn't even tried to use since 1852 and has never successfully prosecuted against
anyone.
And he would have had the additional defense that he was the incoming
national security advisor and therefore was gathering information to do his job rather than
presently setting policy, thinking about setting policy in the future,
which was only a month away or a couple of weeks away.
I've been a really- Totally ridiculous prosecution.
Completely.
And I don't think the Justice Department would ever have actually pulled the trigger and done it.
But to make a long, sad story short, basically Flynn has the interview.
The agents are not convinced that he lied.
In fact, they think that he didn't lie to them.
And they report that to their superiors who reluctantly tell Congress that the reason they didn't charge him at the time was the agents who interviewed him didn't think he lied.
And then, flash forward... And this includes Peter Strzok.
Yeah, Strzok and Pienta.
The agents are Strzok and Pienta?
They are the agents.
So they come to the conclusion that he didn't lie, that it was a failure of recollection or confusion, and there is some confusion about was he discussing it with him or was Kislyak discussing it with Flint?
Right.
Who raised it, how did it come up, and some other details about other conversations that they had.
So basically, the agents don't think he lied.
They not only tell that to their superiors, their superiors, Comey and McCabe, tell it
to Congress when they get asked about it.
And what happens in, we go forward to May of 2017, the president fires Comey.
The president had fired Flynn basically for, because of what they said, lying to the vice
Yeah, I think Flynn conceded that.
I don't know if either Flynn or the vice president would say that Flynn lied.
I think what they would say is that he gave him inaccurate information, which embarrassed the vice president when he spoke about publicly.
So Flynn's continuing, given the press frenzy that was going on at the time, was untenable that he would hang on any longer.
The president dismisses him.
And then if we flash forward to May, Which is about three months later.
The president fires Director Comey.
The next day or the day after that, acting director Andy McCabe opens a criminal investigation on the president for obstruction of justice on the theory that a president firing the FBI director is obstruction.
This is the first criminal investigation, actually, right?
That's the first time they openly acknowledged- Open a criminal investigation of the president.
Yes.
So the criminal investigation is the president exercising his authority to fire an FBI director, but he did it for a reason that they objected.
Correct.
And that's obstruction of justice.
Yeah, and because their theory is that the president is interfering with their Russia investigation, and they don't mention the inconvenience that because the Russia investigation is counterintelligence, It's actually done for the president.
So it's not their investigation.
It's the president's investigation that the president is allegedly obstructing.
I mean, it's hard to explain this.
It's so incoherent.
But they opened that investigation.
The next day, Comey leaks his memo to The Times of the meeting he had with President Trump about Flynn back in February.
And that, of course, fuels the claim that there's an obstruction going on.
And then the next day, Mueller is appointed.
And I think Mueller was basically looking at this as an obstruction case from the start.
So the obstruction facts against Trump are that he fired Comey, the FBI director, that
he had a right to fire anytime he wanted.
And he allegedly had this conversation with Comey three months earlier in which he told
Comey to go easy on Flynn or be nice to Flynn or something like that, which Comey doesn't
think is obstruction until he gets fired, because he never did anything about it.
Bye.
I mean, if you or I—if you or I were—felt we were being obstructed, I mean, by anyone, you would report it right away, wouldn't you?
He would have been obliged to do it, and he was asked, Rudy, about a week before he was fired, he gave congressional testimony where he was asked about whether he'd ever been pressured to bring a case for political reasons, and he said no, that hadn't happened.
So he wasn't obstructed for about three months, and then all of a sudden, after he was fired, he felt that he was obstructed.
Correct.
He got this sudden feeling that he was obstructed.
Yeah.
Came on him like a wave.
Now, we should tell people that we both know him, right?
Yes, we know Jim for many years.
I have to plead guilty to hiring him, and in your case... I had a very good relationship with him for a very long time.
I haven't talked to him for many years, but I've always had a good relationship with him when we had a relationship.
So now, after we get finished with all this, how does this become an indictment?
Yeah, this is amazing.
So after Comey is fired, we should note for the benefit of all these FBI guys, they did a lot of things I think that were wrong to General Flynn, because this investigation should never have been investigated.
But they never charged him.
The whole time that Comey was running the FBI and McCabe was there and all these, you know, Strock, Page, the rest of them, they never charged General Flynn.
Yeah, and also, I guess we should make the point, which we both know, there's a very small group of FBI agents, out of the total number of FBI agents, and they're kind of politicized FBI agents, wouldn't you say?
I sure think so.
When they're in Washington, unless you take steps to stop it, that's just going to happen, and I think it was the opposite here.
I think these people, I mean, Strzok had been conducting political investigations For almost two years now.
I mean, he did the crazy investigation on Hillary.
And then he did the investigation on Trump that yielded nothing.
So now he's doing yet another one.
Right.
But he gets blown out of there in the summer of 2017.
They remove him once they discover these text messages between him and Page.
So this is a long-winded way of saying Flynn doesn't get charged until December 1st of 2017.
And by the time That's by Mueller's team.
By the time that happens, all these other agents are out of there.
And who makes that decision to... Again, I don't think Mueller made the decision or was capable of it.
Who makes the decision to fire him?
Well, Mueller's deputy is Andrew Wiseman, and the prosecutor who handles Flynn's case is a guy named Brandon Van Grack.
So they make the decision to... All of a sudden, after the FBI agents who interviewed him Yeah, and I really think, Rudy, that if you look at what was going on at the time, once they took the case in May of 2017, I think they looked at it as an obstruction case.
They're trying to make a case on Trump.
And the two things that they really do are they try to squeeze Flynn and they squeeze Manafort.
And they really play hardball.
With those two guys.
We're now seeing some disclosures come out with respect to Flynn, and his camp has said this all along, that he pled guilty because they threatened to prosecute his son for a violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
Which is also rarely prosecuted.
Almost as rarely, up until recently, almost as rarely as the Logan Act.
That's right.
I think six times in half a century before Mueller came along.
So they basically bankrupted him.
I mean, Flynn, when he makes the decision to plead guilty, basically can't afford a lawyer anymore.
Right.
As I understand it.
His son is being threatened.
Right.
And maybe someday we'll find out what Weissman was doing, but I know for a fact that Weissman was mentally pretty close to torturing Manafort for a long period of time.
And has a history of doing this kind of thing.
Yeah.
So they were pressuring him, they were pressuring him and he pled guilty to end it.
Right.
And then, so where we're at now is he's trying to get his guilty plea back and his lawyer is trying to get the case dismissed on the grounds of outrageous government misconduct.
A lot of that has to do with what appears to be lying and manipulation in connection with the 302, which is the report of the interview that they did with Flynn, which has some really funky aspects to it.
And we'll have to see what the judge does.
And what do you think?
I think the judge will give General Flynn his plea back, which would put the ball in the Justice Department's court to say, you know, do you dare come into federal court to try to try this case?
I think he'll still, I guess, press the issue.
As I understand it, by May 18th, all the papers have to be filed on the motion he's made to
get the case thrown out on the grounds of outrageous government misconduct.
But I'm not sure the Justice Department may not step up to the plate at a certain point
and just say they don't want to go forward with this.
And just to complete the whole thing, Attorney General Barr has appointed, as he has done in a number of these situations, a U.S.
attorney, a sitting U.S.
attorney.
Correct.
And he's kind of like an independent counsel or special counsel.
A guy named Jeff Jensen, it looks like he appointed him probably early this year, 2020.
He is the United States attorney for St.
Louis.
I think that's the Eastern District of Missouri.
Well, that's about as good a description as I think anybody has had of the Flynn case, and it really is a disgraceful chapter.
that we're now seeing a lot of disclosure that should have been made a long time ago
that we hadn't seen up until now.
Well, that's about as good a description as I think anybody has had of the Flynn case,
and it really is a disgraceful chapter.
Whatever you think of whether Flynn lied or didn't lie, and whether it was a failure of
recollection or a deliberate attempt to conceal something maybe he thought was embarrassing
or harmful or whatever, what they did to him—I mean, they did a lot more plotting and plotting,
and surreptitious behavior than he did.
Yeah, and we know on the basis of a lot of experience that even if you had a really terrible bad guy, whether it was a mafia guy or a terrorist, if you treated a guy like this, As the prosecutor, you'd be fried.
Yeah, yeah.
And I can't imagine, in my experience in the Justice Department, that anybody would do this.
That you'd go kind of just test a guy's credibility.
I mean, maybe if you're going after John Gotti.
Even then, I'm not sure you'd do it.
I just think a perjury trap's a tough thing to justify, particularly under these circumstances.
And to do it in a way that you're hiding from the White House and the Justice Department that you want to go in to interview him is just inexplicable to me.
Well, I can tell you that's one of the reasons that we didn't want the president to testify.
Right.
Not because we were afraid of what he was going to say, but we were afraid of what kind of tricks they were going to—they're going to try to use.
So I'm just going to ask you quickly, because we don't have much more time, about what is growing and growing and growing, which are these—the orders that were entered, these special emergency—let's call them dictates by governors and also by the president originally.
That you can't go out, and you have to be six foot apart, and you have to wear a mask, and you can't go to church, and you can't have an assembly to peacefully protest as the First Amendment guarantees.
These are all things that are guaranteed in the First Amendment almost in exact language, right?
The right of free exercise of religion, the right of assembly to petition your government, they're all suspended.
questionable where in the Constitution, what you say in your article is there's no pandemic
exception to the Constitution. Yeah, I wish I could say I came up with that myself, but that was the
Attorney General Barr and the Civil Rights Division.
Well, it's excellent.
I mean, there's no emergency exception.
There's—there's no exception.
I have it here.
There's no exception in the—there's no asterisk.
There's no exception.
I'm glad you brought yours.
I have mine here, too.
It just says, no law respecting, and then it goes on to mention all the rights.
Okay, so sort of there's been—there's been sort of developed over the centuries, really, a sort of Exceptional power that the president has.
Abraham Lincoln exercised it, and Roosevelt exercised it.
We had martial law in New Orleans in the War of 1812, toward the end of it.
And it was Andrew Jackson who was the general, and when a judge tried to issue an order on habeas corpus on someone he had locked up, he had the soldiers march the judge out of the city limits.
But now we're out of the emergency, whether it was exaggerated or not, and some of the numbers would suggest it is, but even the numbers that ended up being are pretty high, so you've got a good argument on either side of whether it was justified at the time that it was done.
Now in many of these cases, the situation is flattened, the curve is flattened, The hospital systems are not overrun.
That was one of the main reasons given in the first place, that it had to be done to save our hospital system from being overwhelmed.
Well, they're empty beds now.
So, how can the governor of Virginia tell people they can't worship?
And more than that, the case that you're specifically talking about, it was like 12 people in a 255-person church that were going to Palm Sunday services, and the minister
has a criminal citation.
Doesn't sound like America. No, it doesn't.
Seems like some other country, Poland maybe 30 years ago.
Yeah. The Justice Department says, and I think this is really hits the nail on the head.
The question is not whether some, in this case, I'm adding this in, it's not whether some
democratic governor decides that your job is essential or not, or that your rights are
essential or not. The burden is on the government to demonstrate that your job or your essential
or your fundamental rights cannot be exercised in any safe way, other than the way that they want to
restrict you. And it is true that the president has these emergency powers. There's no doubt that
Preventing infectious disease.
The Supreme Court has said since 1905 that that's an important government interest.
But when you're dealing with fundamental rights, the government can only restrict them with the least restrictive means that will work that will allow them to do the thing that they have to responsibly do.
And the critical thing the Justice Department keeps saying, Rudy, is that you can't discriminate against a person's either religion or fundamental rights.
In other words, If you allow drive-thru commercial arrangements so that you could go to McDonald's to a drive-thru to get a hamburger, you can't tell people they can't go to a drive-thru religious service because you don't think it's essential.
Right, or they can't go to a drive-thru confession or drive-thru blessing or drive-thru prayer.
Right, and the other thing the Justice Department says here is, look, if you're a business or a law firm, They're allowing you to operate.
Your law firm can have meetings in your conference room where the people are a lot closer together than they are in that church.
You can't say that the law firm can engage in its commercial activities, but that people can't go to church under circumstances where they're actually social distancing in a way that's safer than what goes on in our commercial arrangements.
So they're saying you can't discriminate against people's fundamental rights.
Now, would that be any different?
So we have the church situations, and then we have peaceful assembly, like the situation a weekend ago when a bunch of people were engaging in a peaceful protest.
They seem like pretty normal people with American flags.
And then you look a little further, and they have police officers in riot gear in California guarding the Newsom's Mansion or maybe the State House, I can't remember.
But that seems riot gear.
What kind of picture is that? That looks like what the Chinese were doing in Hong Kong.
As somebody who ran the largest city in America for a long time, you know, I think better than
virtually anybody, that political legitimacy in a lot of ways of what you want to do is more
important than the niceties of the law. And what I mean by that is in a country of 330 million
people, you can't enforce social distancing unless you get buy-in and cooperation from the public.
We simply don't have the resources that we could Possibly do it, and no one would want to live in a country that functioned that way.
No, you're absolutely right.
You're absolutely right.
Because, you know, there's that old distinction in the law about things that are intrinsically criminal, mala in se, and then mala prohibitum.
So this is mala—it's not intrinsically wrong to shake hands with somebody, right?
And it's not intrinsically wrong to say a prayer together with somebody.
So now there's a re—now there's a reason And it has to be dealt with delicately, and people are used to shaking hands.
People are used to going to mass and church on Palm Sunday and to start using criminal remedies for this and to start using the police with riot gear to enforce it.
So the NYPD union has said that it will not enforce social distancing, which—that's a heck of a confrontation.
The police won't do it.
And there's a rationale they could develop for that, which is if it is unconstitutional for the mayor at this point to order it, because the emergency is not at that stage anymore, then it's unconstitutional for the police officer to do it.
Yep.
And it's, it's arbitrary.
And everybody took an oath.
Yep.
To the same, took an oath to the same constitution.
I think the worst part of it is they are putting the police in situations where You're going to get the public to do the thing that in New York you tried so hard not to allow happen, which is that the police lose the influence and legitimacy and prestige that they have out on the street, which is essential to their ability to uphold the rule of law.
And once you lose that, you have chaos.
So I think a lot of these governments don't realize the fire they're playing with, but they're putting the police in a very, Well, let's hope that the pushback through these court cases will kind of regulate this a bit, and also make certain it doesn't happen again too easily, because there is a slippery slope.
We let this happen once, and everybody, like sheep, went into their house, didn't go to church, didn't do the things we normally would do, and we let it happen.
But, you know, okay, enough's enough.
And this is a place where these rights are guaranteed by God, not government.
Certainly, if you don't believe in God, by nature.
But they're beyond government.
Government doesn't have the right to interfere with these.
Right.
Our Constitution's there to preserve them.
Well, thank you, Andy.
This was a really illuminating conversation, and I hope we can call on you in the future for going through these things, because I feel like in the next couple of months, we're going to have a lot of this.
Thanks so much, Rudy.
It was great to talk to you.
Thank you.
Great to see you.
Thank you very much.
That was Andrew McCarthy, as we pointed out, a former assistant U.S.
attorney, one of the better and one of the very best assistant U.S.
attorneys that I work with, with a great career of prosecuting all kinds of crimes, in particular terrorism.
Here where I live in New York City, you see people wearing these more and more as they commute.
on legal issues that intersect with political and other issues.
So thank you.
Thank you very much for participating.
And we'll be back shortly.
Here where I live in New York City, you see people wearing these more and more as they commute.
They're earbuds from Raycon.
When commuting, you'll see them all over the city.
But they're great to wear right now, from home, on video conference calls, or when you're exercising, or you're watching this video podcast, or if you want to listen to music.
You just put them in, hit the music, and I'm listening to Bocelli's Conte Partero.
You can listen to your favorite music.
Raycon earbuds are really comfortable to wear.
Because they connect by Bluetooth seamlessly, and you're not having to untangle all these headphone wires.
The first time you listen to your favorite music, whether it's opera or something else, you're going to be amazed at how good the sound comes from this little thing.
What Raycon has done is truly amazing.
You get six hours of playing time between charges.
And when you pop them back into the box, it charges efficiently and very, very quickly.
And they're not that expensive.
You're gonna save a lot of money on these.
You buy these online.
Buy Raycon.com slash Rudy G. That's Raycon.com slash Rudy G. Get them now.
You're gonna really enjoy them.
Thank you.
Well, I think you all found that to be a very interesting interview of Andrew McCarthy.
The Flynn case has been talked about now for several years, a lot of controversy about it, a lot of opinions about it, and I think Andrew, probably more than anyone, could put it in a simpler context than most.
Let me see if I can just make it even simpler.
Here's the problem with the case against First of all, it's premised on an interview done on January 24, 2017, nearly three days after he assumed his role as National Security Advisor to the President of the United States.
It was set up by the Director of the FBI, Jim Comey, and it was set up for the purpose of I don't think there's any doubt about it, of testing his credibility, because they were going to interview him about a tape recording they already had.
They already knew from the tape recording that he had discussed sanctions with Kislyak, the ambassador from Russia, and they were going to ask him, did you or did you not have conversations about sanctions?
And they had no intention of showing him the tape in order to refresh his recollection or find out what further information he would have about it, which is what you would do if you were seeking information.
You would go and say, General, did you meet with him?
Did you talk to Kislyak?
And did you talk about sanctions?
If the General says, no, I didn't, or I don't recall, you would play the tape for him and say, General, you did.
So why did you do it?
And give me more details about it.
That's if he wanted to.
Obtain information.
Instead, Mr. Comey, Peter Strzok, an agent by the name of Joe Pienta, who accompanied Strzok, and I believe McCabe, who was the assistant director, I don't know if others were involved in that conversation, I think Lisa Page probably was, came to the conclusion that they would sort of catch him off guard.
would be a good way to put it, and not follow the procedures that they knew were the proper procedures to follow.
So Comey knew that in order to do an interview with the White House staffer, and certainly of that level, but of any level, you had to go through the White House counsel's office so that the White House counsel could determine, should the person be represented by counsel?
Shouldn't they?
You had to have a discussion about that.
Comey bypassed that procedure.
He knew it was wrong to do it because afterwards he bragged about it as if it was a really—he said, and Comey said later, that he knew he was supposed to do this, and if the administration had been in office a little bit longer, he probably would have been prohibited from doing it.
But he knew that they were new, and therefore he could take advantage of them, and he laughed about it, and the whole audience laughed about how he violated these procedures that are intended to protect people's rights.
Rights are important, even for White House personnel, but they were treated—they were treated with great disrespect, particularly with Comey laughing at them.
But in any event, he calls—they set up the meeting with Flynn, and they tell him basically he doesn't need a lawyer, certainly discourage him from having a lawyer, discourage him from telling the White House counsel about it.
The two agents, Pienta and Strzok, come in and interview him.
They have in their possession the tape recording of the conversation with Kislyak.
They ask him about the conversation with Kislyak.
In essence, in the answer, he says that he didn't discuss sanctions, and he didn't discuss sanctions with Kislyak, or didn't remember discussing sanctions with Kislyak.
They leave the conversation.
They go back to the FBI headquarters, and this is January now, January 24th of 2020.
17.
And the agents, the two agents, conclude that Flynn wasn't lying.
They conclude from basically an observation of his demeanor, which Comey goes to great lengths to explain when he testifies before Congress.
So the case remains dormant.
about his expertise and being able to determine whether someone's telling the truth or not,
that in assessing his demeanor, they had concluded that he wasn't lying, that he was—that he wasn't deliberately
lying.
So the case remains dormant.
Subsequently, on January—I'm sorry, on May 5th, I believe, Comey is fired.
Thereafter—thereafter, a criminal investigation begins for the first time.
McCabe starts it.
And Flynn isn't prosecuted.
A criminal investigation of then-President Trump for obstruction of justice in firing Comey.
And all of a sudden, it's revealed through a leak—a leak by Comey, which is a violation of rules and pretty close to a violation of the law, Comey leaks this memo in which he says that President Trump, or President-elect Trump, told him to go easy on Flint.
Actually, it would have been President Trump at that point.
And that this is more or less evidence of an obstruction.
Of course, it had happened way back in January, and for all those months it wasn't an obstruction.
He never raised it.
He never told other agents about it.
He never reported it.
He never said or felt that he was obstructed.
And all of a sudden, after he's fired, he suddenly feels he's obstructed, and McCabe seizes on that as another thing to investigate for corruption.
But still, it has no effect on the Flynn case.
Last thing we heard of Flynn was the agents didn't think he was lying.
And all of a sudden, in December of 2017, they prosecute him for lying.
How they changed their mind about it is a very interesting thing.
How did they come from... We didn't think he was lying until he was lying.
We've never had an explanation of.
And then he eventually pleads guilty, but only after he becomes pretty close to bankrupt, has no money, and they threaten him with prosecuting his son for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is rarely, if ever, prosecuted except by Mueller, who used it also against Manafort, although I think in its history there had only been six prosecutions.
So what does this all add up to?
To me, I think Andrew McCarthy is right.
If it weren't such a politically sensitive case, I think it would just be dismissed.
I think any judge would throw this case out as a piece of junk.
I mean, no crime existed until the FBI dream went up in its mind.
Meaning, let's go see—let's go test this guy's credibility.
I mean, suppose the FBI could do that.
They could just, you know, pick 10 people and test credibility and just ask you a question, they have you recorded, and you don't remember it, and then they prosecute you for perjury.
I mean, this is ridiculous.
You don't go create crimes.
The FBI doesn't exist to go create crimes.
It exists to investigate crimes.
It's a complete misuse of the FBI, completely—completely in disregard of any of the rules that existed.
And finally, a real question as to the materiality of all this.
the FBI to Mueller.
In other words, the FBI concluded he wasn't lying, and Mueller concluded that he was in order to prosecute him.
And finally, a real question is to the materiality of all this.
I mean, ask him whether he talked about—whether he talked about sanctions with Kislyak, and you know that he did.
What's the materiality of it?
You already have that information, which is part of a perjury prosecution.
So, I mean, there are many, many reasons why this case should be dismissed by the judge.
If for no other reason but to tell the FBI and the Justice Department and independent prosecutors, you can't do this in our system of justice.
You're not tricksters.
And just because somebody is a political opponent and you want to get rid of them, you can't just kind of trick them into a crime.
Short of that, there's a good chance the judge may allow the general to withdraw his guilty plea and to go to trial, in which case there's a very good chance that the New U.S.
attorney from St.
Louis who's been put in charge of this case would come to the conclusion that this case is just an outrage and an embarrassment to the FBI, the Justice Department, and really what would be necessary is a full investigation of the people who did it for whether they had violated his civil rights, as well as the civil rights of the President of the United States.
Well, that's at least my opinion, and we'll see what the judge decides, and we'll see if the judge allows it to go forward, which is always possible, dismisses it outright, or allows the plea to be withdrawn so the Justice Department has to make a decision with regard to a trial.
But in any event, it's a very, very sad chapter in our history, and it's something that needs to be fully investigated one way or another so that it doesn't happen to another administration and another unsuspecting staff member who stands in the way of people who basically want to overthrow the president.
Well, thank you very much.
This is Rudy Giuliani with Common Sense.
Today we interviewed Andrew McCarthy, and we'll be back with further comments and interviews very, very shortly.
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