John Cardillo’s April 13, 2018 episode features Donald Trump slamming James Comey as a "leaker and liar," hinting at pardoning Scooter Libby, and criticizing selective prosecutions of allies like Flynn. Retired NYPD detective Rob O’Donnell exposes Thomas Lentanowicz’s 111 arrests—including heroin trafficking, firearm charges, and assault—yet his $35K bail was slashed to $50K by Judge Gary Nickerson despite failing a THC test. Lentanowicz killed Officer Sean Gannon and his K9 partner in 2016, evading consequences due to lenient judges, exposing systemic failures where violent criminals thrive while law enforcement suffers. [Automatically generated summary]
Today on Off the Cuff Declassified, Kurt Schlichter joins me to discuss all things Comey Mueller Rosenstein.
And we're really going to dig into what looks like Donald Trump's opening shots against those who are trying to take him down.
Looks like he's going on offense, and we love it.
Also, Rob O'Donnell joins me.
Rob is a good friend of mine in a New York City, well, a retired New York City homicide detective.
He's going to bring us very, very disturbing details about the savage who murdered 32-year-old police officer Sean Gannon in Massachusetts last night.
Also shot his canine partner in the face and neck.
When you hear the rap sheet on this bad guy, it's going to turn your stomach.
President Trump has told us he's going to pardon Scooter Libby, something George W. Bush wouldn't do.
I think this is a big slap in the face to Mueller, Comey, and well, the Bush family joining me now to analyze this and so much more because it's Friday is Kurt Schlichter.
How are you, Kurt?
Hey, I'm doing great.
How about you?
You're out there in California.
It's a glorious day.
Paul Ryan's leaving the Congress.
Jerry Brown is letting the National Guard work on the, you know, help our border operations.
Boys, my guys.
Your guys.
You're guys.
You're going to be doing a great job.
So real quick.
This is a job we've done for years.
So what is the California Guard, before we get into everything about Mueller, Comey, Trump, what's the California Guard going to be doing exactly?
You left as a colonel.
You spent 27 years.
You know quite a bit about this.
Well, 23 of them, I was in California as a guardsman.
Wow.
And we've been doing this mission supporting border operations, counter drug stuff for decades.
Our guys know this back and forth.
This is just basically ramping up what we already do.
And what's interesting is California actually came back to the president and said, look, you want us down the border.
We have other issues.
We have the coast because they'll come around the border and come up the coast.
Sure, come in boats.
Yeah, and they'll go into Northern California and you've got a lot of illegal aliens up there growing, essentially growing pot.
But that's a problem.
Up in the Mendocino County area, that whole area.
Yep.
Right.
Now, our guys are only providing support to law enforcement.
They're not actually going out and doing stuff, which is right because you don't want soldiers going out and doing police work if you can help it.
And if you can, yeah, if you can free up the Border Patrol, you know, by drive the trucks, analyzing the info monitors.
So the guard, are they going to be a presence or are they going to be support in the patrol?
Which is how we've been doing for years.
We did that for Bush.
We did that for Obama.
We know this mission inside out.
Our guys are very, very good at it.
We'll probably have more, they'll probably, there's like room for 400 and there'll probably be more volunteers.
That's good.
You essentially go on active duty for a year or two.
Look, 400 to supplement the Border Patrol.
That's large.
I mean, that's a substantial thing.
When you get the guys, you know, they're driving the trucks, they're operating the equipment, and the Border Patrol's out there doing border patrols.
So California actually, you know, I hate giving credit to Jerry Brown, but you've got to.
He's always been pretty good about the guard, too.
He's not.
I mean, I mean, I say a lot of things about Jerry Brown, but you can't call him a dummy.
And he takes very good care of the guard.
And they went back to Washington and said, hey, we can do even more if you give us the flexibility not just to be within like five miles of the border.
The Pentagon, in a rare burst of competence, said, oh, well, that sounds like a good idea.
Let's do that.
So California is, you know, going to use the guard in a smart way.
So I'm very happy.
That's encouraging.
I mean, 400 bodies.
I mean, in law enforcement terms, a large law enforcement agency is considered 200 or better.
So this is a large force going in there to supplement border patrol.
Oh, yeah.
This is a significant help, and it's a mission the guard's very, very good at doing.
I would always have because the unit, the guys still drill with your unit.
Right.
So their full-time job is go work border mission and then their part-time job.
So I would always have, you know, 30 or 40 of guys in my battalion would be on the border mission.
Right.
And, you know, when we got together on weekends or for annual training, they'd be coming out with us.
I think this is encouraging, and it sends, it just sends a good message to people trying to come over that when Jerry Brown cooperates, he's also giving liberal governors around the country zero cover now for not cooperating.
That is true.
I mean, he could have been a real jerk about it, but he understands that there really are problems from the border.
That's right.
And, you know, they've got to be solved, and the guard's a good way to do it.
General Kelly's Honor00:15:22
Could not agree more.
We've got to give credit where due to Jerry Brown for once.
That might be the first time.
Might be the first and last time that'll ever happen.
Yeah, there's a lot of things about Jerry Brown.
He's not a dumb guy.
He's not a dumb guy.
Broken clocks.
From my vice cop friend.
Broken clocks are right twice a day.
All right, let's go over.
Offline.
Trump has, I think, posted what is the most glorious tweet I've ever read.
I'm going to read it for the audience.
James Comey is a proven leaker and liar.
This is, by the way, this is a two-part tweet.
James Comey is a proven leaker and liar.
Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did hyphen until he was comma, in fact, comma, fired, period.
He leaked classified information for which he should be prosecuted.
He lied to Congress under oath.
He is a weak and untruthful slime ball who was, at the time, who was, as time has proven, a terrible director of the FBI.
His handling of the crooked Hillary Clinton case and the events surrounding it will go down as one of the worst quote-unquote botch jobs of history, not in history, of history.
It was my great honor to fire James Comey explanation point.
God, I love this president.
It's so funny.
He doesn't take any guff from these dirt bags.
And Comey, and this tour of James Comey's is glorious.
It's incredible.
Even Stephanopoulos, or yeah, Stephanopoulos scoring off this turd.
He's like, well, did you know when you were talking to the president about this PP dossier?
Did you mention it was the result of Democrat Oppo research?
And he's like, well, no.
Well, shouldn't you have?
Well, you know, that's a good question.
You dumbass.
Oh, he's six.
Just a six foot seven.
That's great.
Six foot seven whiny baby.
Now, did you read the crying part?
Yes.
Where he's like, you know, Obama said I did a good job.
I wanted to cry.
You simpering what?
You know, God, man, you ought to headline a weekly standard cruise, you femboy leader.
He could be getting looming geek.
He could be doing dirty dancing with Bill Crystal on the lead up.
Nobody puts Comey in a corner.
Nobody puts Comey in a corner.
Oh, what a sad, man.
And you've seen the polls where people are just sick of Mueller after this Cohen thing.
Oh, it's ridiculous.
And he's going in for an injunction today.
And I, you know, if I were a federal judge and somebody came, I don't care if you were raiding Hillary's lawyer's office.
Oh, absolutely.
I'd be like, why are you raiding a lawyer's office?
Well, you know, crime fraud exception.
So you're good.
Take all this stuff.
Look through it in case you find a crime fraud.
I was going to ask you.
I was going to ask you about that because you've been tweeting quite a bit about the crime fraud, about the crime fraud exception.
I'm glad you are because most people don't understand what it is.
People in law enforcement who worked in the legal profession do.
Yeah, it doesn't mean with military client privilege unless you prove there's no crime fraud.
It's the other way around.
Right.
Right.
It's when the lawyer gets up on, you call a lawyer to a grand jury.
Did so-and-so, you know, did so-and-so ask you to help commit this fraud?
And he goes, I can't answer attorney-client privilege.
No, you can because there'd be no protection for it.
Correct.
And then you either say yes or you take the fifth.
You say no or take the fifth.
Because the lawyer would have been part of a criminal conspiracy.
Exactly.
So if they said, Kurt, did he ever ask you to help participate in this crime?
I would either have to answer or take the fifth because there's no privilege for that.
But you don't get to go, all right, Kurt, we're taking all the files in your office.
We're going to go through them.
We're going to have people who are known to be your political enemies and who leak stuff go through everything and decide if any of it might potentially be crime fraud.
I don't know.
Kurt, just go through it.
Let me try to.
I mean, you'll remember this.
And I think many in the audience will.
John Gotti's attorney, Bruce Cutler, was ultimately disbarred because there was a hint that he knew about crimes Gotti and the Gambinos were committing before they were committed.
He was disbarred.
The FBI never raided three locations and seized Bruce Cutler, a mob lawyer's records, when he was seeing John Gotti acquitted time after time.
And we now know it was jury tampering.
And Cutler probably knew all about it.
Probably knew all about it.
This is over the freaking Access Hollywood tape.
This is beyond insane.
And people know it.
And that's why I wrote my article yesterday, which basically encouraged Trump not to fire Comey, but to talk about him and Mueller, too.
And that's because people will understand.
You don't need a fancy law degree to understand when Mueller goes out and picks 13 Democrats.
That's right.
You know, in a country that elected Donald Trump, he can't find one prosecutor.
Not one.
Not a single prosecutor or agent who gave a dime to Donald Trump, but he manages to find all ones that go to Hillary.
Okay, everybody knows the fix is in.
Look, I try to explain to people, and we'll go into Scooter Libby in a second.
Robert Mueller put four innocent people in prison in Boston.
Two died in jail.
The other two had their convictions overturned so he could protect now imprisoned, filthy, dirty FBI agent John Connolly and his chief CI, one of the most murderous gangsters in history, Whitey Bulger.
And Bulger went on the lamb for 17 years from 94 to 2011.
Andrew Weissman, Andrew Weissman, his chief prosecutor, who's in love with Sally Yates, who refused, of course, to carry out legal orders from the president.
Andrew Weissman gave the same cover, a lesser-known case, to a really dirty FBI agent, Lynn DeVecchio, Lindley DeVecchio.
Now, DeVecchio lives down here in Florida, reached out to me a few years ago, wanted to sit down with me because I excoriated him on air, wanted to sit down with me and have dinner over in the Tampa area to tell his side of the story.
I reached out to now deceased, and most of the audience know, you might know him, Joe Coffey.
Whenever you watch a show about the mob, he was an old school New York detective.
Joe, he took down Gotti.
He was also one of the lead detectives on the Son of Sam case.
He was a legend in the NYPD.
He was a legend in the NYPD.
I got to know Joe when he was in his older years.
And a month before Joe passed away, this is probably 2015, 2016, Joe got very sick, and I called him to see how he was doing, and we got to talking.
And a month before he passed away, and I consider this deathbed truth because he knew he didn't have long left.
I asked him about DeVecchio because DeVecchio had called me a couple of weeks earlier.
And he said to me, back then, he said, that guy was filthy.
That guy was never a cop.
That guy is a wise guy, a gangster.
And he said, everybody in DOJ who protected him is as well.
Now, I didn't know at the time that it was Andrew Weissman.
And who Weissman was protecting was Lynn DeVechio and one of the most vicious mobsters in history, Colombo Capo, Greg Scarpa.
I mean, Scarpa was a killer.
That's how he came up and made his bones in the mob.
These are the two top guys, Mueller and Weissman on this investigation, who had a history of protecting murderous mobsters who were FBI CIs and both agents.
Connolly went to prison.
DeVecchio was shamed out of law enforcement.
Disgraceful, Kurt.
Disgraceful.
Yeah, these guys are, look, the FBI and the Department of Justice have defecated on their reputations.
The Ephraim Zimbalus Jr. FBI, the one I used to watch, remember, I used to watch every single day.
I remember being a little kid watching my grandfather.
I love that show.
I'd watch the real show.
Yeah, I love that show.
I was like, man, these guys are great.
Well, that's not who they are now.
The guys down in the doing the actual job, most of them are okay.
Some of them are dirtbags, like you pointed out.
But, you know, this, you know, Robert Hanson, John Connolly, all these guys, it's just a continuous drip, drip, drip of failure.
And it starts at the top.
Comey didn't do anything about it.
He was too busy peacocking around, you know, enjoying his Mr. Integrity reputation when he is the most corrupt, dirty scumbag there is.
He's just a swine ball.
I spoke to him.
And the president's absolutely right.
I spoke to Robin Gritz yesterday, the woman who McCabe forced out of the FBI that General Flynn went to bat for.
Yeah.
And she filed complaints against McCabe.
And Robin speaks to me on the record pretty much every other day.
And she said, Comey was a useful idiot.
McCabe and his band of cronies ran the FBI, knew Comey was a useful idiot, and used him to their benefit.
And I said to her, hey, Robin, do you mind if I reference that on here?
She said, absolutely not.
Scream it far and wide.
So she said, Comey was a useful idiot inside the FBI, did whatever McCabe told him to do, did whatever Holder told him to do, whatever Lynch and Obama told him to do.
And he just kind of sat there like a big moron.
Okay, okay, okay.
Looming doofus.
Looming doofus, like a mope, you know.
And now we're seeing it.
I mean, sitting there with Stephanopoulos.
To be serious for a second, one of the fundamental flaws, you know, we've got that trailer of the interview Sunday night, and there's a fundamental flaw in one of Stephanopoulos' questions when he says, I'll paraphrase him.
Do you think you should have brought Hillary Clinton before a grand jury?
Well, it wasn't Comey's job to make that decision.
It was Comey's job to send the recommendation over to DOJ.
And so I feel like Stephanopoulos were setting this up.
We know what the answer would have been.
Any cop, the answer would have been, send it over to the prosecutors.
And, you know, if it were you and me being prosecuted, you know what Comey's answering.
We'd be in jail right now.
You and I would be sitting in federal prison right now.
Because these people, Mr. Integrity and his pack of guys with integrity, actively support and engage in a dual-track legal system where some people get special treatment and other people stop.
It's just a fact.
It is.
And it's profoundly dangerous to our country.
Well, you can see it.
He's already been slapped down by Chief of Staff General Kelly, who, look, people can disagree with General Kelly's authoritarian style in the White House, a little heavy-handed with staffers, thank God, because it was a bit chaotic.
But General Kelly is an honorable man.
I believe every word he says.
I don't think he has.
You know, General Kelly doesn't have a single lie in the record.
Comey does, because he won't be prosecuted for it because he's special.
I think General Kelly is an honorable man who's doing his job the right way.
And I think there's a respect between him and the president.
So Comey comes out and he says that, oh my God, General Kelly was basically inconsolable.
And he called Comey and he told him.
No, he's calling him a wuss, too.
Right.
And General Kelly.
General Kelly.
General Kelly's response was, that didn't happen.
The call was about a minute.
Comey called me.
I said, I don't know why you're fired.
Good luck.
And he hung up the phone.
Yeah, so he's already, General Kelly's already thrown Comey.
Yeah, General Kelly was inconsolable.
Yeah, oh, the losing doofus was getting shown the door.
He was devastated that Comey was fired.
The gold star dad who lost his Marine son in combat.
I'm sure that Comey being fired was top of mind.
Yeah, that freaking weighed on him.
Yes, yes.
He can't even.
Loosening doofus.
So I love what Trump did today, though.
He was pardoning Scooter Libby.
Oh, good.
Thank God.
You know, the last few years, the great thing about the Trump era is how it really reveals people.
And when Bush left office, I had some beefs with him.
I thought, you know, generally honorable guy, when he wouldn't attack Obama, he wouldn't defend himself or Republicans.
And he wouldn't attack Obama.
And that kind of annoyed me.
But I understood, well, you know, that's his version of honor and he's trying to do it.
Right.
Well, when Trump gets, when his fat brother got booted and humiliated.
Hey, he lost weight.
All this honor went away.
Kurt, he did the paleo diet, Jeb.
He lost weight.
I say that because if you lived in Florida, you'd understand the joke.
Jeb Bush's paleo diet was in the local media like every other week.
That's all he would talk about.
And he would actually do a PR campaign around his paleo diet because he was chubby, low energy Jeb.
Yeah, that is a true story, by the way.
Yeah, fat, him and Anna Navara sitting around going, like this.
They are like, they're neighbors.
They both live down at Coral Gables.
I think she used to.
Or she was with the guy from the Biltmore.
Jeb lives like four blocks away from her boyfriend's office, where she's frequently seen.
And three blocks away from a golden corral.
But, you know, when Bush suddenly discovered that it's okay to attack a president and the people who voted for him for Bush, who stood by him when he wouldn't defend himself like that.
That's right.
But, you know, the thing that always grabbed me is I didn't understand.
You know, it was obvious Scooter Libby had been railroaded.
Yeah, he commuted it, but he didn't pardon him.
And I thought that was always a little bit weak.
I thought there might be more at play.
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, but no.
It's that Bush family deep sense.
For people who don't remember, Scooter Libby was then Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.
There's a popular false narrative out there that Scooter Libby leaked Valerie Plain's name.
It wasn't Scooter Libby, it was Richard Armitage.
Now, Valerie was never prosecuted.
Who was never prosecuted?
Now, Valerie Plain was a mid-club.
Yeah, she was a mid-level CIA analyst.
She wasn't a deep cover operative.
Oh, yeah.
She was James freaking Bond.
Exactly.
She was super secret.
That's how you know she, because she cooperated with a movie about herself.
Exactly.
And I have, you know, I have a mutual friend of ours on the show all the time, Scott Eulinger, tells the whole world.
I'm CIA.
Like one of my best friends that I grew up with is a very senior guy at CIA, moved to another agency now.
You know, when he went in to buy a house and buy a car, where do you work?
Central Intelligence Agency.
I mean, unless you're a deep cover operative embedded with Al-Qaeda, posing as one of them, you can pretty much tell people where you work.
It's not a closely held national secret.
So no crime was really committed.
Scooter Libby was jammed up on the same bogus process crime of misstatements to federal investigators.
Which probably weren't even misstatements.
They probably weren't even misstatements, right?
But here's the thing: this to me signals a shot across the bowel.
Maybe an opening salvo because by positive.
I love it.
Pardoning Scooter Libby.
Think about it.
Mueller was the FBI director at the time.
Comey was a senior DOJ official who ran the prosecution.
And Trump slaps the Bushes in the face for backing Hillary.
I think this also sends a message very quietly that Libby did exactly what General Flynn did.
That pardon is coming as well.
And I don't think it's that quiet.
And, you know, far be it, You know, the president shouldn't talk about it anymore and he should do it.
But I think anybody I can't imagine that Trump is going to show the lack of character George Bush did and allow the people who are obviously being railroaded to end up with these bogus prosecutions continuing after he leaves office.
Manafort's 56 Days00:05:14
I agree.
I imagine that I imagine that Flynn's going to be pardoned.
His plea might be vacated by the judge.
Well, I'd like to see that first.
I'd let it play out.
But I would make it clear if the thing wasn't vacated, you know, if Andrew McCabe's not indicted within the next few months.
That's right.
I'm pardoning Flynn.
For fairness, I'm going to, I will pardon Michael Flynn.
Or if Andrew McCabe and James Comey, who both lied under oath, aren't prosecuted, Michael Flynn is going to be pardoned.
We're no longer justice game.
That's right.
I'm going to use my power.
I will pardon Michael Flynn if those guys aren't, if I see that there's unequal justice.
And one indicator is what happens with Flynn and Comey or with McCabe and Comey.
That is absolutely.
It's a message to Manafort.
Now, Manafort looks like a gangster.
Manafort.
I don't see him rolling.
Nah, Manafort was a moron.
Manafort, but at the end of the day, Manafort's issues go back to financial crimes in 2006.
But unrelated.
I still, you know, he's probably dirty.
Like I said, he looks like a gangster, but I admit, or I expect he's not going to, you know, because Mueller doesn't care whether Manafort tells the truth or not.
You know, if Manafort comes in and goes, I'm willing to testify that President Trump told me, go out and get with the Russians and give them whatever information you need to.
Let's work with them to defeat Hillary.
Is that what you want to hear?
Because that's what I'll say.
You got to get rid of my, you know, these things.
I don't see Manafort doing that.
Manafort's not going to do it because Manafort was only on the campaign for about 60 days.
You're right, though.
He does look like a gangster.
Like his street name would be Paulie Cufflinks or something like that.
Yeah.
He's got that look to him.
He really does.
But yeah, he was on the campaign.
I think Manafort was with the Trump campaign 56 days.
He wasn't even around.
He was wrangling delegates.
Look, it doesn't matter if he actually knows anything.
Mueller would be perfectly happy to use perjured information.
No, I believe that.
No doubt.
And I believe Mueller and Weissman would contort statements to make them fit into a criminal context.
Oh, I have no doubt they would manufacture evidence.
None.
So you ask you wrote, am I crazy?
Ask Ted Stevens.
Ask Cliff and Bundy.
That's right.
Ask the 32 guys on death row because FBI agents came in from the lab and testified falsely about lab findings.
Ask them if the FBI would frame someone.
You are so good, I'm just pointing out what's been reported in open media.
You are so good because I wanted to segue into your most recent town hall piece, and you just did it for me.
Give us the overall theme of the piece.
It's basically that Trump needs to start going on offense and fighting back because of those cases you just mentioned where the government has fabricated information that led to wrongful convictions that was subsequently overturned.
Look, the simple fact is the president is under assault in a legal coup attempting to overturn the results of the election.
And you can tell, and he needs to go to the people and explain why it's true.
Talk about Mueller and his history.
Talk about, we've done it here.
Talk about Mueller and his team.
We've done that too.
Talk about the track record of the FBI in manufacturing prosecutions like Ted Stevens, like Cliv and Bundy, against people they politically oppose.
Go out there and take it to the people.
And we're seeing the, he's doing that.
And we're seeing the results.
The polls are showing that people do not buy the Mueller thing.
This is a political process.
It is all designed to support impeachment, to get enough specialty Republicans in the Senate to go along with a House that they, you know, assuming the Democrats take the House, which I'm not sure they will do.
I'm not sure either.
I've had conversations about this with a couple of guys we both know who hate their names being mentioned on air.
One was a senior person with the Trump campaign.
Another is a very well-known communications person who works quite a bit with the White House.
I had dinner with them a couple of weeks ago down here in South Florida.
The former administration guy says, well, the campaign guy, we're definitely losing the House.
The other guy was 50-50.
I don't think we're losing the House, especially if Trump goes on offense.
If he doesn't and he allows Mueller to drop an opposition research report, which is all this is about, you're 100% right, then we're in jeopardy.
But if he goes on the offense, see, I think Trump should appoint his own special counsel today to investigate Mueller and Comey and the Cage.
Don't rely on the OIG.
Appoint his own guy and have that guy drop Warwoman.
I'd love to see Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and have them drop the report like the third week of October, which indicts Democrats, both literally and figuratively.
Well, remember, there are a lot of Republicans who are terrified about this, too, because there's a lot of dirty hands trying to trash Trump.
Oh, yeah.
And I said that yesterday on Twitter.
I think you retweeted it.
I said that exactly that, that this bill being introduced in Congress, this bipartisan bill to protect the special counsel, is being introduced because the Never Trump establishment Republicans don't want it revealed that they were complicit in pushing the dossier and trying to unseat this president.
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
McCain.
Judges and Bail Decisions00:14:33
Mario.
Marco Rubio.
Foamy.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Jeff Flake.
The list goes on.
Even Evan McMullen popped out of his little groundhog hole the other day.
Yeah, he's working with Romney in Utah.
Really?
Any big weekend plans there, Schlichter?
More work on my third novel.
Get that done.
I thought in a couple months.
I thought we could go ride horses on the beach, go to a ball game, spray mustard and ketchup on each other.
Like, you know, one of those really fun days.
Lots of hugging.
Go ski.
I got a lot of hugging, go skiing, do like a ski jump, then like join a parade.
Oh, there's so many things.
It's like Ferris Bueller's Day off.
You're a joy killer.
That's all you are.
You're my weekend joy killer.
As always, Kurt Schlichter.
Thank you very much.
Very informative, by the way.
And I don't say it enough.
Thank you for your nearly three decades of service.
That was a colonel.
I didn't do any of that.
You did.
You did.
Don't underplay it.
Thanks, Kurt.
Have a great weekend.
Alright.
Another police officer killed.
I really hate bringing you these stories, but this one is incredibly necessary because of the details surrounding his killer.
The officer's name was Sean Gannon from the Yarmouth, Massachusetts Police Department.
He was a canine officer.
His canine partner was also shot in the face and neck.
Officer Gannon tragically passed away.
His canine partner is going to surgery today.
The murderer is a guy, and I want to get this name correct, Thomas Lantanowicz.
And this guy's criminal history tells any logical, rational person that he should have been locked in a cage for the rest of his life.
But no, the liberal criminal justice system in a state like Massachusetts had him out on the streets, a predator, able to kill a police officer.
Joining me now is someone you've met on the show before, my very good friend, Rob O'Donnell.
Rob's been a career of well over 20 years at the New York City Police Department, homicide detective in Queens, truly one of the most talented investigators I know, and behind the scenes, helps me quite a bit with content on stories for the show.
He's, when Rob digs in, he does not miss a detail.
So I wanted to bring him on because it's so critically important that we don't miss anything with regards to this story.
When you hear this, you're going to realize just how bad it is.
Rob, thanks for being here.
So as I mentioned, Officer Gannon, who was killed and his canine partner were part of a multi-agency task force.
Explain what the task force was doing and how they encountered Lentanowicz.
Well, the area they were is in the beginning of the horn of Cape Cod.
It's Barnstable, Massachusetts.
Officer Gannon was a member of the Yardsmouth Police Department and his canine Miro.
He was as part of a multi-agency warrant apprehension team that was out that day to apprehend people with active warrants.
Now, were they looking specifically for this Thomas Lentanovich?
Yes, they were.
They were.
So what happened when they encountered him?
Did he just open fire?
Was it a chase?
How did the gunfire start?
It appears he fled to the attic because Officer Sean Gannon was shot while in pursuit of the subject up into the attic and his canine Miro was also shot head on again in the head and then neck.
Wow.
I mean, absolutely tragic.
And people need to understand this is what the 600 and some odd thousand law enforcement officers who work in this country, close to 700,000, are doing right now.
As Rob and I bring you the show, we used to work in that world.
As we bring you the show, as you're watching the show, they're out there doing this every single minute of every single day.
And every door they kick could be their last.
And people need to understand that when they bash law enforcement.
It is a thankless, underpaid, very, very dangerous job.
Now, Rob, the most infuriating part of this story is not that a good cop is dead, not that his canine partner is shot and might not make it.
The tragedy, the second tragedy in this story is the way the criminal justice system treated this savage murderer and gave him pass upon pass upon pass.
What'd you find out about his background?
Absolutely, John.
I'm pissed off.
Sean Gannon would be alive.
32 years old, 10 years on the job would be alive today if judges and prosecutors did their job with the laws that are on the books that they have to work with.
This savage was arrested 111 times, mostly felony, mostly violent felonies.
111 times, 111 arrests, many of them felonies.
Rob, when we were in the academy, they would teach us two felonies.
You're probably in jail for the rest of your life.
What the hell happened?
What happened to the three-strike rule?
You're out.
111 arrests.
Oh, keep going.
This is just too important.
Keep going.
And it's not just the amount of the arrests, it's the type of the arrests.
This was a violent, gun-toting, narcotic trafficking savage who in the past has put guns to peoples he lived with head.
He stabbed people in the background.
For instance, in the most egregious arrests and court laws in Massachusetts are not public documents, so it's hard to get a grasp on things.
But the bits and pieces that I could get together from media reports and contacts up there, a little before January of 2010, this savage was arrested for 27 counts of possession of a firearm.
Oh my God.
One of trafficking heroin, 14 grams, one count of assault with a weapon where he placed a handgun to a woman he lives with head and threatened her, and seven counts receiving stolen property.
And he was released on $35,000.
Bam.
What?
That's true.
Do we have a name of the judge who did that?
I don't have the district court judge because that was the district court judge.
On January 15th, he did go before a grand jury and was indicted.
Rob, let's you and I, after the show, dig into that judge's name because I want to get that judge's name and photo out there.
Superior court.
Yeah.
Name.
And it's just as egregious.
This is just step after step of judicial misconduct, judicial negligence.
This officer would be alive if they did their job.
Now, okay, so keep it.
So this guy was arrested 111 times, 27 counts of weapon possession, heroin dealing, threatening, menacing his girlfriend with a firearm, putting it to her head.
But that's not all.
His criminal record goes far beyond that.
Well, when he was, let's get more into the judicial part.
In January 15th, when he's indicted by the grand jury, his lawyer asks for the same $35,000 bail that he was out on.
The judge wants $100,000 bail.
The judge at this point at the Superior Court hearing the grand jury, Gary Nickerson was that judge's name, Superior Court judge in Massachusetts, reduces it to $50,000 bail if he takes a drug test, which he failed hitting positive for THC.
What the hell is going on?
He was trafficking.
They released him.
Why was bail even considered?
I mean, that's a rhetorical question.
What in the world is going on?
I mean, if this doesn't, if this case doesn't demand a remand, a remand without bail, what the hell case does?
Why he's in the original district court?
And then again, when the grand jury indicts him, saying, yes, there's enough evidence to bring this 27 counts of firearms, he puts a gun to his per girl he lives with's head.
I don't even have words for this.
I mean, this is, you're right.
I mean, the blood of this police officer and of his canine partner, and I canine partners are every bit as much a partner as a human partner.
They face down the same dangers and they have saved many, many lives.
Dogs have alerted law enforcement officers in our military to danger, often long before a human partner can, and they've saved many, many lives.
This is just one of the most egregious cases I've ever heard.
Now, how far back does this guy's criminal record go?
Well, the earliest arrest that I could find record of was 2010.
There's another record in 2016 where he followed behind a vehicle, opened up the passenger door, and stabbed the passenger several times, which he was arrested for and released on bail again.
How old is this guy?
Right now, he's 28.
He's 28.
So 2010, eight years.
So he started his criminal career that we can find on the record at 20.
He probably had a long juvenile career.
This guy is, he was always going to wind up a killer, and the judges just put him through.
They just put him through.
Well known to all the local departments up there and the community.
Not only itself.
Judges, prosecutors keep releasing individuals with this type of record into the public to walk amongst our children, to walk amongst our parents.
This is just ridiculous.
This is a 32-year-old hero police officer who spent 10 years, his entire adult life, serving that community up there.
And he was gunned down by a savage who the court systems just let walk time and time again.
You know what's infuriating to me?
These guys were a couple of years apart.
So while Officer Gannon was out there living his life the right way, serving the community, protecting people, Lentanowicz is out there stabbing, dealing heroin, murdering now.
I'm just an all-around scumbag, low-life skell savage.
And the criminal justice system, at the end of the day, treated the killer better than the cop.
They treated the killer better than the cop by allowing him to walk around, made a mockery of the criminal justice system, put no fear in this guy whatsoever.
Now, are we seeing any blowback on this judge from law enforcement up in the area?
Is there any indication that there's going to be a protest against this guy or any politicians calling this judge out, or is he just getting a pass on it?
Is it business as usual?
Not that I'm seeing yet.
Just the fact that this officer was gunned down yesterday.
Again, I was just able to dig into some of the background because the records in the state and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are hard to get.
He is named now.
Judge Gary Nickerson of the Superior Court Judge of Massachusetts, he's got a lot of explanation.
No, no, Rob, go ahead.
Just making a note of that.
This is just beyond bad.
I'm wondering if we shouldn't draw a little media attention to Judge Nickerson and maybe go back through his performance on the bench and see how many other savages he's given bail to who are out there.
I mean, families are at risk.
Now, why was there a warrant on Lentanowicz?
Did he abscond?
Did he not show up for a hearing?
What was the nature of the warrant that was open on him?
The only thing the media is saying at this time, and what I can get from local authorities, is he had pending charges.
Even while he was out on bail, he was committing more crime.
He was committing more crime.
And you know what bothers me?
They'd have brought this guy in on these additional charges, and these same liberal moron judges would have probably increased his bail by five grand or 10 grand and sent him right back out as if he taking a drug test, which he failed, as you note, would mean anything to somebody who stabs someone multiple times.
I mean, I don't even know where to begin with this story, except to be absolutely infuriated, Rob, because it's going to happen again.
This is going to happen again.
There are going to be more innocent people killed, more cops killed.
People are going to suffer because these judges refuse to do their jobs.
Because they sit in their bench in a secured environment and make decisions that are life and death situations that they don't have to deal with.
I have to tell you, rarely do things blow my mind.
111 arrests.
I don't care if three of them were felonies.
Like you know, three strikes, you're out.
But I have to guess that dozens of those 111 were felonies now.
27 counts of possession of a firearm.
27.
Putting a firearm to someone you lives with's head, stabbing someone, pulling someone out of their car and stabbing them in 2016.
So literally, literally about three dozen that we know of, that we know of, three dozen of the charges this guy has faced in his life were not just felonies, but violent felonies and heroin dealing with the overdose rates we have in this nation.
I put heroin dealing now up there in a category of violent felony because the OBIO kids are such a problem because of judges like this.
Right, right.
I mean, Rob, this should infuriate.
This should infuriate everybody, every American, but it should infuriate people around the world.
What do we do?
What do we do?
You spent a lot of years in the criminal justice system.
I did.
You know, we've seen from the law enforcement side how bad judges can be.
We've seen these judges, especially the really liberal ones in New York City, find it funny when they release a violent criminal and the prosecutor's frustrated and the family's crying of the victim.
And these judges were almost hostile to the victims.
You've seen that because I know I've seen it.
I know you've seen that.
What do we do?
What do we do here?
Do we put pressure on the politicians?
I think that's a step.
Do we shine a light on the judge?
But I don't, does it even matter in a town like this where these judges are politically connected, probably to the Massachusetts, Massachusetts Democratic machine?
I feel like this judge will be able to continue to do this unless there's a very bright spotlight on him.
You know what's sad, John, is this is right in the beginning of the Cape Cod area.
If this savage would have killed a tourist, it would be on the front page of every newspaper in the world.
It would be on the leading news story of everything.
But because it was a cop doing his job, taking a bad guy in for the 111th time, you know, it's just a part of the job, right?
Right.
You're right.
These judges can be held accountable on a judicial level, on a licensing level.
If they can be removed by the governor, they should be removed.
They need to be held to the judicial conduct standards that they swore to uphold.
I mean, if a law enforcement agency had dropped the ball this many times, look, the FBI has, and we are criticizing the FBI every minute of every day.
We've got to do the same to judges like this.
We have got to start shining the light on these judges, publicly shaming them, putting their faces up there, and letting the world know the blood of these innocents are on their hands.
They make these decisions with immunity and without a care.
They need to be made to care.
You know what?
Yep.
These judges have bloods on their hands.
I'm a little sick of the phrase judicial discretion, Rob.
I really am.
Thank you so much for bringing this information to me.
We're going to follow up on this.
I think you and I need to dig into this judge a little bit.
We need to dig into the initial judge who gave him the $35,000 bond.
And I'm going to bring you back on next week and we'll report those updates.