Sean Hannity Show - Sessions Didn't Lie - 3.2

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March 3, 2017 - Sean Hannity Show

01:37:42

Sessions Didn't Lie - 3.2

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	There's breathlessness, hysteria that has broken out in the country.
	It's a blessing to see you, Mr. President.
	Thank you for taking time out of your day.
	Oh, gracious God, thank you so much.
	If you read the media, if you listen to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, you think the country is facing the crisis of the century.
	Jeff Sessions, as a senator, met with an ambassador.
	That's not what he told Al Frankie.
	Well, actually, Al Franken didn't ask that question.
	And we'll get into that in all its details.
	You know, compare this.
	You've got a great column, Victor Davis Hansen, today.
	You know, outraged New York Times columnist Tom Friedman comparing Trump's victory to the disaster 9-11 and Pearl Harbor.
	The new republic theorizing Trump could be mentally unstable, you know, and talk of removing the president through impeachment.
	You listen to Nancy Pelosi.
	Chuck Schumer has a pit in his own stomach over the disaster that Jeff Sessions may have said hello to an ambassador, which was his part of his job.
	And I have the list of ambassadors he's talked to.
	There is nothing at all, zero information to prove in any way, shape, manner, or form at all that there's any evidence that the Russians, in fact, influenced our elections.
	As a matter of fact, the House Intelligence Committee chair, Devin Nunez, was asked repeatedly about evidence.
	I know that Democrats often, you know, this is all selective moral outrage.
	Where was the outrage over Loretta Lynch?
	Where was the outrage over her meeting with Bill Clinton just before she's to make a decision on whether or not we know Hillary broke a million laws and she got off scot-free.
	We know that she put her server inside of a mom-and-pop bathroom closet as a means of avoiding congressional oversight.
	We know that five foreign intelligence agencies with a 99.9% accuracy rate, in fact, were able to hack into her computer and get not only top secret information, but even higher security information as well.
	We know that the Clintons were up to their eyeballs in selling access to anybody and everybody that had a million dollars in checks, and nobody was outraged.
	None, zero outrage.
	We know that President Obama, irrefutable evidence existing, that in fact he himself was actively trying to unseat the prime minister of one of our closest allies, Prime Minister Netanyahu.
	The media, breathless hysteria has broken out in the country.
	It is not real.
	There's no evidence.
	Here's Devin Nunez last week.
	We still have not seen any evidence of anyone from the Trump campaign or any other campaign for that matter that's communicated with the Russian government.
	Here at the committee, we still don't have any evidence of them talking to Russians.
	As of right now, the initial inquiries I've made to the appropriate agencies, I don't have any evidence.
	I don't have any evidence of any phone calls.
	What I've been told is by many folks is that there's nothing there.
	We don't have any evidence, right?
	The way it sounds like to me is it's been looked into, and there's no evidence of anything there.
	There is no evidence that I've been presented of regular contact.
	If you all have American citizens that you know we're talking to Russian agents, if you want to come to our committee, be a whistleblower yourselves and bring me those names, I'd be very interested in having them.
	I'm interested in having it.
	Can anybody send them to me?
	Where is the proof?
	Where is the evidence?
	All right, so now this is where the hysterio goes.
	We got Senator the lunatic Al Frankenstein, whatever his name is from Minnesota.
	What's wrong with you people in Minnesota?
	Seriously, Al Franken, he's probably the dumbest human being on earth.
	Anyway, let's go to the question where they claim that Jeff Sessions lied and he did not lie.
	And you'll hear it in both the question and the answer.
	Now, first thing you've got to be aware of, the CNN, he comes out breathlessly with new information, CNN, fake news.
	Here comes information, a story that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect last week that included information that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal financial information about Mr. Trump.
	Where is it?
	Anyway, listen.
	These documents also allegedly say, quote, there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.
	If it's true, it's obviously extremely serious.
	And if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?
	Senator Franken, I'm not aware of any of those activities.
	I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I didn't not have communications with the Russians.
	And I'm unable to comment on it.
	There was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump's surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.
	Well, he's asking the question, did the Russians, did you conspire?
	Did you collude with the Russian government?
	No, but we know the news media colluded with Hillary's campaign.
	That's been proven.
	But the media never ever mentions their culpability.
	No, they're just worried about the collusion that has never been proven in any way, shape, matter, or form.
	And again, I'm telling you this coming out, but if it's true, it's obviously extremely serious.
	If it's true that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect that included information that, quote, Russian operatives claim to have compromising information, that there was a continuing exchange of information.
	You know, is that true?
	That's what he's asking.
	Well, he's not aware of those activities, he said.
	I'm not aware of compromising personal and financial information that they may have had about Donald Trump.
	I'm not aware that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump's surrogates and intermediaries.
	Do you see how the questions asked?
	There's none such thing.
	He said, I'm not aware of those activities.
	I have been called a surrogate a time or two in that campaign, but I didn't have communications with the Russians.
	He's saying, I was not one of those people doing those things.
	It is so obvious, and this is blown out into such a lie with a level of smear, slander, besmirchment, and personal ad hominem attacks.
	It is almost, it's so difficult to see the leap that these people take because they want to stay on this Russian narrative.
	They're obsessed with it.
	A narrative that was based on the fact that the Clinton campaign was angry, that John Podesta fell for a phishing campaign and his emails were leaked.
	And Hillary Clinton broke every law imaginable, special access programming intelligence.
	The highest level of intelligence was stolen by five foreign intelligence agencies because she wanted to avoid congressional oversight and she put her server in the mom and pop bathroom closet.
	So they say, well, the Russians did it.
	All right, so as far as I know, I'm the only one in the media that in the middle of all this actually took the time and I flew to London and I asked Julian Assange.
	Oh, some of you say, well, why should we trust Assange?
	Well, he has a 10-year track record of being proven right.
	Wikileaks hasn't gotten one thing wrong information-wise in 10 years.
	Where's the evidence of this collusion that they're talking about?
	What part of this answer is a lie?
	And where is the media comparing and contrasting the selective moral outrage here?
	Because nobody seemed to care when Obama spent taxpayer money trying to influence the Israeli elections.
	Nobody seemed to care that Loretta Lynch is having a private meeting with former president Bill Clinton in a plane on a tarmac just before she makes her decision to exonerate her when we know she broke multiple laws.
	It's not even in dispute.
	There's no intelligent lawyer that looks at the law, looks at what she did, looks at what we discovered, and can conclude anything else.
	The evidence is incontrovertible in her particular case.
	Anyway, regarding visits of ambassadors, that's what senators do.
	Just look at 2016, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Hungary, Korea, Italy, India, Australia, Poland, former U.S. ambassadors, Japan, Singapore, Great Britain, Montenegro, Latvia, Canada, Colombia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Russia, Czech Republic, Great Britain, Jordan, China, more Great Britain, more Great Britain, Germany, India.
	I mean, you want to talk about it, talk about hypocrisy.
	You know, the same senators now so outraged and getting nuts in their stomach like Chucky Schumer.
	You know, with all due respect, you know, Joe Manchin said, we meet with, I've met with the Russian ambassador.
	We meet with all the ambassadors.
	That's what they do.
	Have you met with the Russian ambassador in your capacity?
	I have.
	I've met with the Russian ambassador with a group in my capacity with a group of other senators.
	Yes, that happens.
	We meet with all the ambassadors or try to anyway to build the relationships that you can to have some document whatsoever and that we can basically talk.
	That's what their job is.
	That's not what Franken was asking.
	He was asking about a published story that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect that included information that Russian operatives had compromising information.
	These documents say that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.
	I'm not aware of those activities.
	He's responding directly and honestly to the question.
	I've been called the surrogate a time or two, but I didn't have those communications with the Russians.
	He told the truth.
	Now, Claire McCaskill didn't tell the truth.
	Now she's dealing with her lie over meeting with the Russian ambassador.
	She claimed she never met Russia's ambassador, but unfortunately, they found a tweet that says just the opposite where she did meet with the Russian ambassador.
	So she told a lie there herself.
	You know, and then Chuck Schumer, you know, the same, he called Attorney Lynch, Attorney General Lynch, an honorable person, and he didn't believe she was lying and not discussing anything related to the investigation into Hillary Clinton.
	So for 40 minutes, 45 minutes on a tarmac, no, that never came up.
	I don't believe that at all.
	You got Claire McCaskill lying.
	She met with him.
	Joe Manchin met with him.
	Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut met with the Russian ambassador.
	Dickie Durbin met with him.
	Senator Feinstein, Brad Sherman.
	They all met with him.
	Mary Landrew, Maria Cantwell, Bob Casey, Claire McCaskill, Jack Reed, Sheldon Whitehouse.
	You know, many were in the meetings with him.
	That's what senators do.
	That's what they're supposed to do.
	Gene Shaheen participated in a panel with the guy.
	You know, I mean, it goes on and on.
	And I'm just trying to understand here.
	You know, I really am because the tweet by Claire McCaskill, I've been on the Armed Services Committee for 10 years.
	No call or meeting with Russian ambassador ever.
	Ambassadors call members of the Foreign Relations Committee.
	But yeah, we have another tweet from Claire McCaskill.
	I'm off to a meeting with the Russian ambassador.
	Whoopsie-daisy, upset about the arbitrary, cruel decision and all U.S. adoptions, even those in the process.
	Today, calls with British, Russian, and German ambassadors on the Iranian deal.
	Oh, so she did lie to us.
	You get the point here.
	This is the biggest.
	This is the most corrupt, dishonest, biggest lie conspiracy you've ever been fed.
	And the media is breathless, hysterical, and shameless.
	They are lazy, they're overpaid, and they are ideological, and they're driving an agenda.
	And the agenda is to hurt Trump any way they can.
	Still waiting to fly out all those libs who promised to leave if Trump were elected.
	The jet is ready.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	Hey, Sean Hannity here with a very important message for you.
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	wrote never had it so good well we can now announce jeff sessions expected at the top of the next hour hold the repressor give a statement and uh all of this is just nonsense And I got to tell you something.
	I've been waiting all day for a full-throttled defense.
	And the only person that has spoken out on Jeff Sessions' behalf for the most part has been the president himself.
	Yeah, full confidence in Jeff Sessions because there's nothing here.
	Nothing at all.
	And I go back to, you know, is American, is the American elite really elite?
	The public no longer believes that privilege and influence should be predicated on titles, brands, and buzz.
	And, you know, he goes into all of these things that have been said in the media about Donald Trump, Victor Davis Hansen does.
	And he talks about this virtual war with the mainstream global media and this so-called deep state, the Democratic Party establishment, progressives, the Republican Party.
	I'd add to that the intelligence community, the deep state Obama operatives that are leaking like sieves to try and hurt Trump every single week now.
	It's so obvious what's happening.
	And yeah, okay, Trump's undisciplined, but who makes up this elite class?
	You know, who are these people?
	They're not, if you look at most of the people, they're not the people that vetted Obama.
	They're the ones that cheered Obama.
	They're not the people that told you the truth about how Obama's rigid, radical, leftist ideology of statism failed.
	They didn't tell you that either.
	They're not the people that told you the profound nature and danger of Hillary Clinton's private server.
	Or did they explain to you the laws that were broken by her and how she compromised national security?
	And there's a 99.9% certainty five at least foreign government intelligence services hacked into all of her emails, probably the Russians too, on top of everybody else.
	They didn't tell you, you know, all that they've been telling you about Donald Trump is mostly made up.
	There's no facts, no evidence.
	And it's like the New York Times reporting about Russia, and their big headline is: oh, more evidence, Russian colluding with the Trump campaign.
	And paragraph seven of the article, well, we don't have actual evidence that it actually proves what we're saying is true.
	Well, that's all fake news.
	And if you watch the breathlessness, hysteria that is emerging in the country over the presidency of Donald Trump, that's not the person you saw the other night.
	And of course, they didn't like the good reviews that he got.
	So, of course, they got to come out with something.
	And the New York Times, it's not a newspaper anymore.
	It is a propaganda outlet for leftists.
	That's all it is.
	It's nothing.
	It's not worth the paper it's printed on.
	We'll continue.
	Sean gets the answers no one else does.
	America deserves to know the truth about Congress.
	All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
	Now, a good friend of mine is Rowan Scarborough, who's just a terrific reporter and has been for many years.
	And he sent me about today's story, pointed out a number of things to me.
	And he said, you know, one, the suspicion among many in the Obama White House, this was, remember, this didn't come to fruition.
	The president ignored it, ignored it.
	And then all of a sudden, you know, they said, well, maybe this narrative that Hillary has been advancing, maybe we can get this to stick is all part of an undermining campaign of the incoming administration.
	Now, remember, there's some 500 people that need to be confirmed by the Senate.
	Today, Jamie Dupree sent me his notes today, and finally, Ben Carson has been confirmed.
	Finally, Rick Perry has been confirmed.
	It's only taking forever.
	But there are holdovers, a ton of holdovers from the administration of Barack Obama that are both in the intelligence community and in the State Department that keep leaking, that keep putting out information that they know that they're friends that they collude with in the media.
	You know, the funny thing about collusion is there was collusion with Obama and his operatives to defeat Netanyahu.
	That's a fact.
	There was collusion with the media to help elect Hillary Clinton.
	That's a fact.
	They also colluded to help Barack Obama twice to win because that's where their political ideology lies.
	It's just now WikiLeaks have proved it in this election cycle.
	That's why they never talk about their own collusion.
	But yet there's been no evidence presented of this collusion.
	Remember, Al Franken is asking here very specific questions.
	Let's go back.
	I'm going to tear this apart.
	CNN just published a story, and I'm telling you, this is about a news story that's just been published.
	I'm not expecting you to know whether or whether or not it's true or not, but CNN just published a story alleging that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect last week that included information of, quote, Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.
	Okay, he's asking Jeff Sessions.
	This is the lead up.
	This is the background to the question.
	Those documents that CNN is referring to about Russian operatives having compromising information, personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.
	Remember, it turned out that the information was about Donald Trump and the Ritz Carlton in Moscow with a bunch of hookers that were urinating on the bed that he's in.
	So the biggest germphobe in the history of mankind is allowing women in his bed in Russia where he knows that he's being spied on to urinate all over the bed.
	That was a story that turned out not to be true.
	So the question is predicated on a story that's not even true in the end.
	Anyway, these documents allegedly say, quote, there was a continuing exchange of information, continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries from the Russian government.
	Now, let's go to the answer of Jess.
	I'm not aware of those activities.
	I'm not aware of the continuing exchange of information.
	I have been called the surrogate a time or two in that campaign, but I didn't have communications with the Russians.
	That's what he said.
	Well, he's talking about the very question that that idiot Frankenstein is asking.
	He's answering the specific question in charge.
	So it goes on.
	Now, I'm telling you this is, you know, as it's coming out, so you know, but if it's true, let's go to a hypothetical.
	It's obviously extremely serious.
	And if there's any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of the campaign, well, what would you do?
	Now, again, he just said up that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries.
	So that's what he said.
	I'm not aware of it.
	I've been called the surrogate, but I'm not the person that communicated with the Russians this way.
	He answered truthfully.
	And this is what the media is now run with.
	They are so horrifically dishonest.
	This is an abuse of the trust that the American people have given these broadcasters.
	It is such propaganda.
	It is such a lie.
	It's built on such insinuations.
	There's never any facts whatsoever that any of these things happen.
	I doubt Donald Trump, who's a smart man, knowing he's in the Ritz-Carlton in Russia, that he's likely being spied on, which he has said himself he always assumed he was, would bring two hookers into his room to urinate on the bed.
	I mean, that's how insane that story got.
	And Sessions is like, I don't know about these communications.
	I have no idea what you're talking about.
	But in his capacity as a senator, yes, he met with all the ambassadors.
	Like Joe Manchin said, that's their job.
	Like Claire McCaskill claims she never did, but she did.
	And I just, I can't believe this is where we are.
	This is now, I've been saying journalism's dead.
	We have an information crisis in the country.
	And I watched last night with the breathlessness of coverage and the hysteria emerging.
	Now, in 20 minutes, the Attorney General is expected to hold the press conference.
	I just can't believe that we've waited this long to answer this because it's so obvious what is going on here.
	And there needs to now be an understanding by all Republicans, this is not just about Jeff Sessions, because it was also about General Flynn.
	General Flynn, the information was gotten in illegal means.
	It was a violation of law.
	Nobody ever follows up when people break the law anymore.
	I bet if I break the law, they'd follow up.
	I bet if I was on video in Ferguson, Missouri, robbing and burning and looting and carrying on, I bet if they saw Sean Hannity's face, I would have been prosecuted.
	I bet I'm just betting.
	We have all that videotape today.
	Nobody ever gets prosecuted.
	You know, the same thing happened where else in Baltimore.
	We had pictures, images, faces, people stealing, robbing, looting, carrying on, burning.
	We didn't arrest them.
	Same thing with Hillary Clinton.
	Hillary Clinton breaks the law.
	She violated so many different laws, it's ridiculous, both with the Clinton Foundation.
	And, of course, we know that she, with her servers, it was all done to avoid oversight, congressional oversight, with no respect for separation of powers, co-equal branches of government, her being in the executive branch as a member of the cabinet, as Secretary of State.
	She violated a ton of laws.
	And as a result, our national security was deeply and severely compromised.
	She failed.
	And she did it in an unlawful way.
	Well, we got Christian Saussier sitting in prison right now.
	Same violation, same laws apply.
	He took six pictures inside a submarine.
	It's unbelievable, the double standard.
	I guarantee you, why do you think I pay my taxes the way I do?
	I've always said I end up overpaying.
	Because I have a big, fat ex target on my back.
	And yeah, I've been audited by the IRS.
	Yep.
	I got one recently.
	Another one.
	Unbelievable.
	You know, and I'll pay the money, and they'll come up with nothing like they usually do because the percentage of my income that goes to government is astronomical.
	Be glad to take that case public one day, too, if they keep up their harassment.
	It's unbelievable.
	It's ridiculous how much we all pay.
	You know, anyway, Claire McCaskill's caught lying.
	Are we going to go after Claire McCaskill?
	I am saying that this is bigger than anything that you know.
	You have Obama operatives, Obama supporters, Obama sycophants that now are deep within the Trump administration.
	And their effort, their goal is to compromise and really undermine.
	We're a Democratic republic.
	So for all the talk about, well, Hillary got all the votes more than Donald Trump, you take New York and California out of the equation, she loses by 3 million.
	But putting that aside, that's not how our presidents are elected.
	We have an electoral college.
	We're a Democratic republic.
	That's how we elect presidents.
	That's why he campaigned in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and all the swing states that matter, North Carolina, Virginia.
	That's why Donald Trump went to those states and didn't even show up in California.
	Because if he wanted the popular vote, he would have run the campaign an entirely different way.
	But this is all to undermine an election, undermine the will of the people.
	And so when they go after Melania Trump and they go after Baron Trump, you know, I think that's the lowest of low.
	We're going to pick on a woman, well, multiple women, because they pick on Kelly Ann.
	You have a congressman, what's his name?
	Cedric Richmond.
	Quote, joking, Conway looked very familiar in that position on the couch in the White House on her knees.
	Wow.
	How disgusting and despicable a human being is he?
	Do you imagine if anyone, which God forbid, would ever say that about Hillary or Bichelle Obama?
	What would the reaction be?
	They're attacking a 10-year-old kid because he's fidgety at 3 in the morning.
	I'm fidgety and I'm 55 years old.
	Leave the kid alone.
	Nobody picked on Malia and Sasha.
	No conservative that I know of.
	Nobody picked on Michelle Obama except for the stupid statements.
	For the first time in my adult life, I'm proud of my country.
	She inserted herself into the campaign.
	And she's going to say something like that, she deserves to be criticized.
	But we go after Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Reince Prievis, Steve Bannon, Steve Miller, Kellyanne Conway, General Flynn.
	Now it's Jeff Sessions' turn.
	And the purpose here is that that's not who they're really trying to get.
	Their goal is to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump.
	And they're doing it without a shred of evidence, trying to concoct a justification and a rationale and a narrative that is false that somehow it was the collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign that caused Hillary to lose.
	Not that Hillary Clinton compromised herself by violating a lot of laws and putting her email server in a mom-and-pop shop bathroom closet, which we know was hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies.
	And we know that John Podesta fell for a phishing scam.
	Unfortunate.
	And there's no evidence that the Russians passed this on to WikiLeaks.
	And as far as I know, I'm the only one that took the time to fly to London and sit down with Julian Assange and ask him.
	And really, it shouldn't, Julian Assange, you know, the media loves to say they love free speech and freedom of the press.
	Well, what did Julian Assange do?
	Julian Assange got information and he published it.
	And the New York Times published Julian Assange's information.
	So, I mean, they don't have this high and mighty horse.
	I mean, he did the work of what a journalist would do.
	And in his case, he lives in an embassy for now, what, five, six years?
	And supposedly, the charges against him, the women involved in that aren't even willing to testify against him.
	Why?
	Because he put out information on the American government, information that exposed collusion between the media, so corrupt that they were in bed with the Hillary Clinton campaign, even feeding her questions as CNN did, letting the Killery campaign edit stories like the New York Times and Politico did.
	All of those things.
	It's pretty amazing times we're living in.
	It exposed how corrupt our government is.
	Pretty sad.
	And now there is just order after order, attempt after attempt to basically smear, slander, besmirch, use character assassination techniques, and go after and get as much collateral damage that surrounds Donald Trump, the president, as possible.
	And if it means going after women and children, then so be it, according to the media.
	And then the liberal snowflakes, and then the Democratic hypocrites that didn't give a rip about Hillary's server scandal or the Clinton Foundation scandal or Hillary's lies or the collusion with Bill and Loretta Lynch on the tarmac in an airplane before she's about to make her decision.
	None of that seemed to matter.
	None of this is real.
	This is the biggest non-story I've ever seen in my life.
	And you could see from the question what Jeff Sessions was answering.
	And they've turned it into something that it never was and never will be.
	That won't stop them.
	All the breaking news for the analysis to help you make sense of it all.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	By the way, once again, we see the judiciary prioritizing the rights of foreign-born terrorists over the safety of Americans.
	The widow of Orlando mass killer Omar Mateen, member of the Pulse nightclub shooting, should be released from jail until she's tried on charges of allegedly helping her murderous husband.
	A judge ruled today, or yesterday, rather.
	I apologize.
	She's now been in custody since January 16th.
	She was arrested in Northern California on federal charges that include obstruction of justice, aiding and abetting her husband's material support to ISIS.
	Well, really, we're going to let her go.
	Maybe not a good idea.
	Just a thought.
	All right, Senator Jeff Sessions will respond to the hysterical interpretation, the obscene, absurd interpretation of his answer to Senator Frankenstein.
	We'll get to that.
	We'll get to your calls.
	Also, Jay Seculo, Joe Jennifer, weigh in as well.
	straight ahead.
	At any minute now, we are going to have Senator Jeff Sessions coming out and answering these preposterous selective moral outrage, this Russian conspiracy theory that has emerged.
	You know, this is all predicated on this belief in the media.
	It's all predicated on this notion that somehow the Trump campaign might have colluded with Russia on the email, election email hacks.
	Well, WikiLeaks denied it, and there's no evidence to prove it.
	But the main point is it's a suspicion that American officials, our own government, has said they have never been able to confirm because there's no evidence.
	Then you've got former Obama administration officials saying that none of the efforts were directed by Mr. Obama.
	I'm like, really?
	I'm not so sure I believe that, knowing that you have these Obama leftovers, holdovers that are there, and who knows what these people are up to or involved in.
	But the suspicion right now, you know, this is taken right out of Ben Rhodes and Edward Price's conspiracies with no details, no evidence, no proof.
	Now, there was proof about Hillary Clinton.
	There's a lot of proof about her.
	And Hillary Clinton being bought and paid for by every country in the world and even these countries that treat women, gays, and lesbians horribly.
	Although she has a monopoly of compassion on them until they buy her silence on their atrocious behavior.
	You have American intelligence agencies, quote, intercepting Russian communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts within Trump, with Trump associates.
	Yeah, what contacts?
	Who are the contacts?
	That's a seven-month-old story.
	If it's true, if the FBI had the evidence, why didn't they say it?
	By the way, Jeff Sessions will announce a recusal, by the way, in any of these issues, which is fine, whatever, of anything involving him.
	But I guess what we're learning is, but that's all we're hearing of to now.
	He's expected to come to the podium anytime.
	You have American allies, the British, the Dutch, providing information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials and others close to Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, and associates about President-elect Trump.
	Associates, whose associates?
	Who, when, where?
	Here's Senator Sessions.
	Jody, thank you for being with me.
	He is my chief of staff, and Jody has been almost 20 years in the Department of Justice.
	Let me share a few thoughts.
	First, about the comments that I made to the committee that have been said to be incorrect and false.
	Let me be clear.
	I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign.
	And the idea that I was part of a, quote, continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government is totally false.
	That is the question that Senator Franken asked me at the hearing.
	And that's what got my attention as he noted it was the first just breaking news.
	And it got my attention and that is the question I responded to.
	I did not respond by referring to the two meetings, one very brief after a speech, and one with two of my senior staffers, professional staffers, with the Russian ambassador in Washington, where no such things were discussed.
	In my reply to the question, my reply to the question of Senator Franken was honest and correct as I understood it at the time.
	I appreciate that some have taken the view that this was a false comment.
	That is not my intent.
	That is not correct.
	I will write the Judiciary Committee soon, today or tomorrow, to explain this testimony for the record.
	Secondly, at my confirmation hearing, I promised that I would do this.
	If a specific matter arose where I believed my impartiality might reasonably be questioned, I would consult with the department ethics officials regarding the most appropriate way to proceed, close quote.
	That's what I told them at the confirmation here.
	I have been here just three weeks today.
	A lot has been happening in this three-week period.
	I wish I'd had more of my staff on board, but we're still waiting for confirmation for them.
	Much has been done.
	Much needs to be done, but I did and have done as I promised.
	I have met with senior officials shortly after arriving here.
	We evaluated the rules of ethics and recusal.
	I have considered the issues at stake.
	In fact, on Monday of this week, we set a meeting with an eye to a final decision on this question.
	And on Monday, we set that meeting today.
	So this was the day that we planned to have a final discussion about handling.
	I asked for their candid and honest opinion about what I should do about investigations, certain investigations.
	And my staff recommended recusal.
	They said that since I had involvement with the campaign, I should not be involved in any campaign investigation.
	I have studied the rules and considered their comments and evaluation.
	I believe those recommendations are right and just.
	Therefore, I have recused myself in the matters that deal with the Trump campaign.
	The exact language of that recusal is in the press release that we will give to you.
	I've said this, quote, I have now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States.
	I went on to say this announcement should not be interpreted as confirmation of the existence of any investigation or suggestive of the scope of any such investigation because we in the Department of Justice resist confirming or denying the very existence of investigation.
	So, in the end, I have followed the right procedure just as I promised the committee I would, just as I believe any good Attorney General should do.
	And a proper decision, I believe, has been reached.
	So I thank you for the opportunity to make those comments and would be pleased to take a few questions.
	Okay?
	Just to clear up any confusion over this, could you just explain a little bit about the September 8th meeting, who and your staff was there, and what was discussed with the Russian ambassador?
	The Russian ambassador apparently sent a staffer to my office.
	I did not see him, and asked for a meeting, as so many of the ambassadors were doing.
	And we set up a time, as we did, as we normally did.
	And we met with him.
	Two of my senior staffers were there, and maybe a younger staffer or two.
	And they both retired Army colonels and not politicians.
	And we had a, we listened to the ambassador and to what his concerns might be.
	Well, just normal things, such as I started off by saying I don't remember a lot of it, but I do remember saying I had gone to Russia with a church group in 1991, and he said he was not a believer himself, but he was glad to have church people come there.
	Indeed, I thought he was pretty much of an old-style Soviet type ambassador.
	And so we talked about a little bit about terrorism, as I recall, and somehow the subject of the Ukraine came up.
	I had had the Ukrainian ambassador in my office the day before, and to listen to him, nothing, Russia had done nothing that was wrong in any area, and everybody else was wrong with regard to the Ukraine.
	It got to be a little bit of a testy conversation at that point.
	It wrapped up.
	He said something about inviting me to have lunch.
	I did not accept that, and that never occurred.
	I don't recall, but most of these ambassadors are pretty gossipy, and they liked, this was in the campaign season, but I don't recall any specific political discussions.
	All right.
	Do you recall meeting with Ambassador Kislyak any other times?
	I don't recall having met him.
	I mean, it's possible.
	I'm on Armed Services Committee and things happen, but I don't recall having met him before those two meetings.
	Tabison, you're on the question of sanctions.
	So do you think, why do you think he sought the meeting with you?
	Do you consider you a representative for the Trump Committee?
	I think ambassadors are always out trying to find out things and advance their agenda.
	Most of the countries that ambassadors I met with, they would lay out the case for Ukraine would lay out its case, Poland laid out its case, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Japan, Canada, Australia.
	I met with all of those ambassadors over the year and so I think that's why I relate.
	Did you consult with the White House about your decision?
	And just to follow on the last question, with hindsight, do you believe that this is a coincidence that the Russians asked you for a meeting?
	Or do you believe you were targeted because it came at the height of Russia's interference?
	And at the same time, then-candidate Trump was giving an interview to RT saying that he didn't believe there was anything to the reported interference.
	I don't recall and don't have a sense of any connection whatsoever about that.
	I'm not sure I even knew when we set up the meeting what was going to be going on in the world at the time.
	So I can't speak for what the Russian ambassador may have had in his mind.
	Have you met with any other Russian officials or folks connected to the Russian government since you endorsed Attletto?
	I don't believe so.
	You know, we meet a lot of people.
	Effort from those two meetings you discussed with the ambassador?
	I don't believe so.
	The White House press secretary and the president himself both said today that they think you should not recuse yourself from these investigations.
	I did share with White House counsel on my staff hands that I intend to recuse myself this afternoon.
	All right, what you're hearing is Senator Jeff Sessions saying he'll recuse himself, but not even acknowledging that any investigation is going on, but as it relates to the campaign and the Russians, and absolutely was answering, as I pointed out, Al Frankenstein's question.
	We'll continue with this press conference.
	Then we'll have reaction from Jay Seculo and Joe DeGenova for the affiliates along the Sean Hannity Show Network.
	Please know we're going to stay with this.
	If you decide to break away for your local break, we understand, but we're staying live with this coverage.
	Senator Franken's question.
	Were you just not thinking of the meeting with the Russian ambassador, or did you not consider it relevant?
	I was taken aback a little bit about this brand new information, this allegation that surrogates, and I had been called a surrogate for Donald Trump, had been meeting continuously with Russian officials.
	And that's what it struck me very hard, and that's what I focused my answer on.
	And in retrospect, if I should have slowed down and said, but I did meet one Russian official a couple of times, that would be the ambassador.
	Thank you all.
	Take care.
	All right, Senator Jeff Sessions, wrapping up a QA there.
	You know what?
	Now that we are where we are, we will keep our break schedule as it is.
	We'll have full, complete reaction to Senator Sessions.
	The only real news out of this is he was answering, as I had pointed out, Al Franken's question, recused himself from anything with the Trump campaign investigation with Russia.
	And so if that goes anywhere up to now, as I've been pointing out, there's no evidence.
	Stay up to date with the latest news and expert opinions as Donald Trump takes office.
	Well, I don't know why they didn't do this at 8 o'clock this morning or 9 o'clock this morning because it was a simple answer.
	We just heard from the Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and it was everything that I've been telling you all afternoon.
	Al Frankenstein asked this question.
	Oh, CNN just published a story.
	This was during the confirmation hearings of then Senator, now Attorney General Sessions.
	I'm telling you about this news story that has just been published, he asked them.
	I'm not expecting you to know whether or not it's true or not, but CNN has just published a story alleging the intelligence community, by the way, this story was debunked, provided documents to the president-elect last week that included information that, quote, Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.
	Hookers urinating on beds.
	These documents also allegedly say, quote, there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump's surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.
	The documents say, quote, there was a continuing exchange of information between Trump's surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.
	Now, I'm telling you this as it's coming out, but if it's true, it's obviously serious.
	And if there's any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of the campaign, what will you do?
	His answer, I'm not aware of these activities.
	I'm not aware of compromising information.
	I'm not aware that there was a continuing exchange of information.
	I've been called a surrogate, but I didn't have those communications with the Russians.
	But as a senator, he met with a Russian ambassador like he met with dozens of ambassadors last year.
	Really?
	This is actually so pathetic that the Democrats and the news media have taken it to this disgustingly low level.
	We'll get reaction of the presser with Jay Sekulow and Joe DiGenova when we come back.
	Sean gets the answers no one else does.
	America deserves to know the truth about Congress.
	So this was a day that we planned to have a final discussion about handling.
	I asked for their candid and honest opinion about what I should do about investigations, certain investigations.
	And my staff recommended recusal.
	They said that since I had involvement with the campaign, I should not be involved in any campaign investigation.
	I have studied the rules and considered their comments and evaluation.
	I believe those recommendations are right and just.
	Therefore, I have recused myself in the matters that deal with the Trump campaign.
	The exact language of that recusal is in the press release that we will give to you.
	All right, moments ago, the Attorney General Jeff Sessions, 25 now, told the top of the hour in a press conference saying exactly what I've been telling you all day.
	He was responding to a very different question.
	The question was very specific.
	It had to do with, quote, breaking news that turned out to be not so breaking.
	More fake news from CNN.
	But putting that aside, that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal financial information about Trump.
	And the documents allege that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump's surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.
	I'm not aware of those activities.
	I've been called a surrogate a time or two, but I didn't have those communications with the Russians.
	Yeah, but now we found out he had met the Russian ambassador.
	That's part of his job.
	He met ambassadors, as I've been pointing out, from so many countries.
	It's too numerous to name now.
	Let's play the original exchange.
	Listen to what Sessions was actually responding to.
	These documents also allegedly say, quote, there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.
	If it's true, it's obviously extremely serious.
	And if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?
	Senator Franken, I'm not aware of any of those activities.
	I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I didn't not have communications with the Russians.
	And I'm unable to comment on it.
	He didn't have those communications.
	Exactly what he was responding to.
	Told the truth completely.
	As we've been saying, I don't know why they didn't say this at 8 o'clock this morning, put an end to this ridiculousness.
	Joe DeGenova is a founding partner of DeGenova and Tunsing.
	What is your response?
	I'm like, you've listened to that question and answer.
	He's answering a very specific question about new and breaking news, which, by the way, turned out to be false.
	Yeah, well, I don't think there's any question that he answered the question that was asked.
	And when you're talking of these allegations of perjury and misleading the committee, these are very precise statutes, and they require a precise reading of the question asked and the answer given.
	He answered the question that was asked.
	It was about these wild allegations in the memo, which he knew nothing about, and about continuing communication between surrogates and representatives of the campaign and Russian officials.
	And he knew nothing about that and never engaged in that as a member of the campaign.
	He did meet twice with the Russian ambassador, which is completely different and unrelated to anything involving the campaign.
	So this notion that he somehow committed perjury is absolutely ludicrous.
	This matter would be thrown out by career prosecutors in about five minutes after looking at it.
	They probably wouldn't even look at it.
	I guess the next question then, Joe, is which is, I think, very critical to the entire discussion here: is how the Democrats and media run with something like this, acting as though this was a big lie, when if you listen to the question and answer, it was an obvious response to a very specific question.
	And no, he wasn't part of a conspiracy to meet and communicate with the Russians on behalf of the Trump campaign.
	It's so non-it's such a non-story.
	Well, Sean, you know better than anybody else observing this fast-moving street scene is that the Democrats have created a narrative since the election, which is designed to delegitimize the president and his presidency, to deny him his lieutenants by holding up the confirmations, and to try to destroy the people that are eventually confirmed so that he has no one around him to serve him.
	And they do that by creating the stories that are non-stories that the mainstream media loves to push because if a Schumer gets up and says something, they're going to cover it.
	This is why the media, as we know it today, is in such disrepute, because the American people are not stupid.
	They see what's going on here.
	They listen to a Chuck Schumer and a Nancy Pelosi make inane statements in front of the cameras with no supporting data.
	And the American people know what's going on here.
	What to me is important is that Jeff Sessions held a good news conference.
	He did the right thing.
	He recused himself from any investigations involving the campaign.
	That will not be enough for Schumer and for Pelosi.
	They will say that since he didn't recuse himself right away, he should resign.
	This is why it's important for the administration to defend their people, to stand up for them, and to call out people like Schumer and Pelosi as frauds, the frauds that they are, people trying to undercut the results of an American election, and they are doing a grave disservice to the American people, who I think day after day are becoming more disenchanted with the Democrats and completely outraged at the press.
	Are you as shocked as I am as how Republicans just eat their owner?
	I'm appalled at the way Republicans have not stood up to defend him.
	I'm appalled at the way the White House hasn't stood up to defend him.
	Well, the President, in fairness, did make comments earlier today that he has his full confidence.
	Okay, I was unaware of that, and I'm glad to hear that the President said that, that the President said he has his full confidence.
	That's good, because that's the minimum what they should do.
	But also, the press secretary and all those other people should be full-throated in support of him.
	But this is how this is ⁇ the Democrats have a guerrilla warfare going on against the President, and this is part of it.
	And all you can do is fight back.
	And it's very important that the senators and representatives in Congress do exactly that, that they don't allow this to get out of control.
	You have been very outspoken in pointing out where a lot of these leaks are coming from.
	Yes.
	And I want to get to the heart of this because if we were to believe that CNN story that Al Frankenstein was reporting on in that confirmation hearing, wasn't that the one that had the notion that then Donald Trump as a private citizen had hired hookers that were urinating on his bed?
	Yes, yes, that was the famous memorandum done by the former MI6 official who passed it along.
	By the way, wasn't he being paid by the FBI?
	I read a report.
	Yes, he was going to be paid by the FBI in a continuing relationship, but once the big story came out about him, they couldn't use him.
	And he has gone underground since then for, quote unquote, his own reasons.
	I don't think there's any doubt that that piece of information that the Bureau briefed members on during their intelligence briefings was something, according to a lot of people, that should never have been included in the briefing.
	It was irrelevant.
	It didn't have any substance whatsoever.
	It was completely unproven allegations.
	And there was no reason to include that in any intelligence briefing.
	But the point is, as we know from reports in the New York Times, as late as today, that the Obama administration officials were doing everything they could to make sure that all of this intelligence was distributed sufficiently around that it wouldn't get lost during the transition.
	So anybody who thinks that John Brennan and Ben Rhodes and the former acting attorney general had nothing to do with the spreading of this information, they are people who should all be in front of a grand jury, issued subpoenas, and testify about what they did with the classified information they got and with whom they spoke about it with.
	Well, I want to know because these intelligent leaks are quite meaningful.
	And just before the president left, he allowed, for example, we had discussed the whole General Flynn issue.
	And when they discover if our intelligence community is monitoring one of our either monitoring any foreign entity, if they discover that an American is on the call, they're supposed to minimize what it is that the information that an American is giving.
	And they didn't do that in the case of General Flynn.
	Then they leaked it.
	But Obama allowed such information, even though it didn't happen during his eight years just before he left, to that information to be shared with 16 other intelligence agencies.
	Why would he do that?
	Well, I think the reason that President Obama expanded the universe of people who get access to the intercepted telephone calls was that he wanted to make sure that it got leaked.
	I don't think there's any doubt in my mind that Ben Rhodes and John Brennan were part of a cabal that had decided that Donald Trump should be harmed.
	And I think that they did that by increasing the number of people who had access to the information so that that would increase the likelihood that it would be leaked by someone.
	And of course it was.
	But whoever leaked it committed a very serious federal crime.
	And I trust and we never go after them because we never get to the bottom of it.
	I can tell you something.
	If it's not being investigated, then the folks at the Justice Department should really close up shop.
	Okay.
	Do we know that it's being investigated?
	We don't.
	We don't even know if this whole Russia issue is being investigated.
	By the way, Jay Seculo, the American Center for Law and Justice, joins us.
	Jay.
	Oh, great.
	Jay, are you there?
	Yes, sir.
	All right.
	Give me your reaction to the presser.
	I think that the Attorney General did the honorable thing and did the right thing by recusing himself.
	I don't think he was legally obligated to, but unlike his predecessor, Lou Retta Lynch, he seeks to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, and I think he did the right thing.
	What do you think about that?
	I suspect, Joe, you disagree with that.
	Well, no, I actually agree with everything that Jay just said.
	I mean, he didn't have to technically recuse himself, but he read the rules.
	He met with the ethics staff at the Justice Department, and they recommended that he do so.
	I think it's a smart thing to do.
	It removes an irritant from the public discourse on this issue.
	It also makes it more likely that Republicans will be able to be more full-throated in their criticism of the Democrats who are claiming that crimes have been committed when there are no crimes.
	I think it's laughable to hear Chuck Schumer request that we have a new independent counsel statute enacted when the Democrats went ballistic every time Janet Reno used it in the Clinton administration.
	I mean, this is nonsense.
	We've already been down this road about independent counsel statute.
	It warps the criminal law.
	It makes crimes out of political arguments.
	This is the worst.
	First of all, it's not going to happen.
	No Republicans are going to enact an independent counsel statute.
	So, I mean, all this is more political hackery by Schumer and Pelosi.
	Oh, I agree with that, too.
	And it can't go anywhere because the American people are very fair-minded, and they're going to look at the question and the answer, and they're going to come to the same obvious conclusion we all have is that he was responding to Al Franken's specific questions, his specific points about whether or not there was a continuing exchange of information between the Trump campaign and his surrogates and intermediaries.
	He even says, I've been called the surrogate, but I didn't have those communications with the Russians.
	How is that tied in any way to his job as senator meeting with ambassadors from almost every country?
	Well, that's what they do.
	I mean, senators, especially senators on armed services committee and other committees, meet with ambassadors.
	And what General Sessions did in responding to Senator Franken was what I tell every client to do, only answer the question you're being asked.
	And he answered the question he was being asked.
	They didn't say, the question was not, have you ever had a conversation with the Russian ambassador, which I'm sure Senator Franklin would have to say the answer to that would be for himself, yes.
	That wasn't the question.
	So when you put the question, not just in context, when you read the question and then you see the answer, he answered it correctly.
	But again, I think he took the high road here.
	He didn't have to do this.
	He wasn't legally obligated to do it, but it avoids even the slightest appearance of impropriety.
	So I think this should end the debate.
	Do I think it will?
	Who knows?
	But it should.
	You agree with that, Joe?
	And what should happen next, especially as it relates to these leaks that keep coming out day after day?
	Well, the problem is that the Trump administration has been very slow to fill these sub-cabinet slots, which are vital to running a federal agency.
	It's how you control the bureaucracy with people in the Under Secretary, Deputy Secretary, Assistant Secretary slots.
	They're not filling those quickly.
	Sometimes they select someone, and then the person gets cut out of the job because of something they said or did about Trump early on in the campaign.
	The only way the leaks are going to be investigated is if there is a sufficient cadre of Trump appointees in the Justice Department so that they can take actual control of the department and not rely on career people.
	Yeah, well, I understand there's some 500-plus people that need to be confirmed.
	Yes.
	And, you know, only today that Governor Rick Perry and Dr. Ben Carson get confirmed.
	So in the interim, we have career bureaucrats and holdovers from Obama's administration.
	Right.
	I call it the shadow government.
	I mean, you've got these operatives that are entrenched inside these agencies.
	They were locked up with the Obama administration until they're rooted out and the president gets his people in.
	They are going to continue to do these kinds of things.
	And I think that if the FBI wants to do an investigation, that's the investigation.
	Who leaked this?
	Which, bottom line again, Sean, the biggest takeaway from this whole situation with General Sessions is who leaked out this information once again?
	Either the FBI or the DOJ.
	And I'd sure like to, I'm going to send a FOIA in on this, Freedom of Information Act, of course.
	I'd like to know what communications took place, maybe, between DOJ people or FBI folks and Senator Franklin.
	Is there any evidence whatsoever that Russia, that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to impact this election?
	Because I've never seen it.
	And Devin Nunez, the head of the Intelligence Committee, said last week repeatedly, there is no evidence that he's seen.
	None.
	No, there is no evidence, Sean, that I have seen.
	There's been no published reports of it.
	There have been these innuendos in the New York Times articles and the Washington Post and even in the Wall Street Journal.
	And NNCNN and all over the newscast.
	There's no evidence.
	Every time you ask someone to give me the specifics, they can't do it.
	And that is what this is a gossamer, webby thing that the Democrats are.
	And they've been looking for months now.
	I've got a role, but I appreciate both of you.
	Very important that we hear from you.
	It really is.
	Sean Hannity.
	The plan is to repeal and replace this law.
	Like we said, we ran on a plan to repeal and replace it.
	Tom Price helped write that plan.
	He is now Donald Trump's Secretary of State.
	It is a consensus plan that's now being scored by the CBO.
	Correct.
	He said there's a plan currently being scored by the CBO that was a consensus plan.
	That's what he told me.
	Well, I understand that.
	And it is not a consensus plan.
	I haven't seen it.
	Maybe Dave Bratt's seen it, but I haven't seen any plan at this point that has been rolled out.
	Dave Brad, I was asking him specifically, where's the consensus plan?
	Well, in healthcare, I don't think there is one because we haven't seen it, right?
	We have been running on repealing and replacing Obamacare since 2010.
	In 2016, the House, in a bottom-up way, set a working group together, the Commerce Committee, the Ways and Means Committee, the Education Workforce Committee, and then any other member of Congress who cares about this issue participated in a working group to come up with a plan for what we would replace Obamacare with.
	Much of it was modeled off the Tom Price legislation, which we as conservatives have always seen as sort of the gold standard for replacing Obamacare.
	He's now the Secretary of HHS.
	That is the bill, the plan that we ran on in 2016.
	We told America, here is our vision for how we replace Obamacare after we repeal Obamacare.
	That's the bill we're working on right now.
	That's the bill we're working on with the Trump administration.
	We're all working off the same piece of paper, the same plan.
	So we are in sync, the House, the Senate, and the Trump administration, because this law is collapsing.
	And you can't just repeal it.
	You have to repeal it and replace it with a system that actually works.
	And that is exactly what we're doing.
	And I am perfectly confident that when it's all said and done, we're going to unify because we all, every Republican, ran on repealing and replacing, and we're going to keep our promises.
	I want to see the bill.
	We have many objections.
	There are many parts of what they're proposing.
	And of course, we have not gotten any of this in writing.
	I got it from Bruno.
	All right?
	I haven't gotten anything in writing from anyone.
	So you're asking for a written copy of this because this should be an open and transparent process.
	All right, that was lastly, Senator Ram Paul, part of my interview with the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.
	And as you know, this is part of our holding them, meaning Republicans, accountable for the promises that they made.
	Now I have spoken with Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Louis Gohmert.
	We also had Dave Bratt on the program, and Ram Paul is partnering with the Freedom Caucus in the House as a senator, and they have put out a repeal-replace bill themselves.
	And Senator Paul is saying that he's been told that the House Obamacare bill is under lock and key in a secure location, not available for him or the public to view.
	I'm not sure why that's the case because I thought Republicans were upset about the lack of transparency over the last bill.
	Anyway, joining us now is Senator Ram Paul.
	How are you?
	Very good, Sean.
	Thanks for having me.
	All right.
	So I've been asking the question of all of these congressmen: you know, is there a consensus bill?
	Because when I interviewed the Speaker, he said there was, and it was being scored.
	And after it was scored, he said, of course, there's going to be amendments to it.
	But why the secrecy at this point?
	Well, there is a consensus of ideas and a consensus bill, but it's not the leadership bill.
	The leadership bill is Obamacare light, and they're embarrassed about it, so they keep it in secret because they don't want any of us to point out the Obamacare-lite features.
	And I'll give you a couple of them.
	They keep the Cadillac tax, they just rename it.
	They keep the individual mandate, but instead of you paying a penalty to the government, you're now going to pay a penalty to the insurance company.
	And then they also keep and add an entitlement program, which is the same as subsidies.
	They just rename it refundable tax credits.
	But essentially, it's an entitlement program.
	You get money that you did not pay in taxes.
	You get someone else's money.
	That's an entitlement program.
	So three features of this are not part of anything we've ever run on.
	We've run on complete repeal of Obamacare.
	A year ago, we voted on that.
	And I think where you will see that we are unified is the conservatives and everybody else voted for complete repeal about a year ago.
	I think that's what they should do.
	Put up the bill we all voted on.
	And let's don't put out things that actually divide us, like the Cadillac tax, the individual mandate, and a new entitlement program.
	That will divide us.
	Well, why is there a lack of transparency here?
	I mean, the fact is that I've got to believe that in the Senate, if you and Ted Cruz and Mark Orrubio and Mike Lee all join forces, they can't pass the Senate anyway.
	So what's the point?
	Last week, Senators Cruz and Lee and I tweeted out the same thing, that the floor, the minimum, should be the 2015 bill, the bill we voted on a little over a year ago, which was about as complete a repeal as we thought we could get under the laws and the arcane rules.
	And we have all said that that's what we want, and that's the floor of what we're going to support.
	If we stick together, if conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus stick together, hopefully they will not put forward a Binal Care Light.
	But the bill they're keeping under lock and key that they won't let us see, they would not let me have a copy of this morning, that bill is Obamacare light, and that's why they don't want conservatives across the country to see it.
	I want to ask this question.
	When I talked to Paul Ryan, he said, yes, it's going to be repealed.
	He said, yes, it's going to have all of the things that we've all talked about, including health savings accounts, portability, pre-existing conditions, as the President mentioned in his speech to a joint session of Congress the other night.
	So you're saying that they're keeping the Cadillac tax and what else?
	They're keeping the Cadillac tax.
	They just changed the name, and it'll be applied slightly different.
	But essentially, anybody that has really good insurance will get taxed on it.
	And then they're also keeping the individual mandate.
	You'll remember under Obamacare, if you didn't buy insurance, you got a penalty on your tax bill.
	Why would they ever do that when every Republican said they'd never do that?
	Because they're keeping a federal program.
	They're keeping a program that won't work.
	They're keeping a program where in the individual market, the insurance companies will continue to lose money.
	And here's what every CEO of the insurance companies told us.
	If you keep in the idea that you can buy insurance anytime when you're sick, and then you keep in the idea that we're not going to have the individual mandate, they go bankrupt.
	They want subsidies.
	Every one of the insurance companies says, oh, yeah, we want guaranteed issue, but we want subsidies because it doesn't work in the marketplace.
	And none of them are advocates of actually lowering the cost of insurance because that's not in their best interest.
	What I want is a plan, and this is in my replacement plan, that empowers every consumer, every consumer in our country, every individual will be able to join an association, and we will force the insurance companies to come on bended knee to the consumer.
	Right now, every consumer is at the behest of these behemoth insurance companies that have all the power, and they say take it or leave it.
	Under my plan, every farmer in the country through the Farm Bureau could join an association.
	There'd be a million farmers in that association, and what insurance company is not going to come to them on bended knee with a product instead of each individual farmer.
	Right now, we have a million farmers buying their insurance individually.
	We put them all in, allow them to join an association.
	One person negotiates with the big insurance companies, and guess what?
	We completely transform insurance from something where you're stuck with a crummy, expensive product to we will force them to be competitive.
	Well, it's so funny you say that.
	There's this guy that we've interviewed many times on this program, and his name is Josh Umber, and he's in Wichita, Kansas, and he created such an association where every one of the people in this association of his, they get free care.
	They pay a yearly rate.
	They get all the care they need.
	He also personally negotiates with the drug companies, and he gets such a low price on common medicines that literally all of his patients benefit at the low cost that he gets and the discounted prices that he gets.
	It makes perfect sense.
	And I'm just frustrated.
	Now, I do understand on the other side.
	And interestingly, what he talks about, I'm talking about making it even bigger, making it a constant times, making it national.
	And what I'm talking about isn't my original idea.
	A lot of this came from Tom Price's legislation.
	So when people like Jim Jordan are saying we're not that far a place and Mark Matoes, they're exactly right.
	What we've put forward in our replacement bill are the ideas of Tom Price.
	The only real difference of opinion is we don't want a new entitlement program, and we don't want a new tax to pay for that entitlement program.
	All right, so that seems that's certainly within the parameters of negotiation, because I would argue without you and Senator Cruz and Mike Lee and some others that this can't pass.
	And in the House, I think it's going to have trouble, especially if you lose the entire Freedom Caucus and every conservative member.
	I don't think it's going to pass.
	So it seems to me that, you know, Newt Gingrich made a good point the other night.
	He said, well, it's going to come down to it.
	It'll come out of the CBO.
	Now, there are some difficulties.
	In fairness to the Speaker, because this was passed as a reconciliation bill back in 2009, there are complications.
	Nothing that is life-ending here, but it's more complicated because you've got to have, as he explained it, revenue-neutral numbers.
	Why we use CBO in the first place is ridiculous because they're off by trillions constantly.
	But here's the interesting thing, Sean.
	We voted on something that the parliamentary said was okay under reconciliation a year ago.
	Perfect.
	It was a repeal.
	Repeal bill.
	It was a repeal Obamacare package.
	The problem is not in the repeal.
	We are 100% unified in repeal.
	The problem is in some of these Republicans want Obamacare Light as a replacement.
	They want an entitlement program and a new tax to pay for it, and they want to keep the individual mandate, but just have you pay an insurance company instead of the government.
	That's ridiculous because that's the same thing that you and I talked about the last time you were on when you informed me, and I hadn't even known this as much as I discussed Obamacare, that if you wanted a catastrophic plan, which is perfect for young people, you know, which incentivizes one checkup a year, where if you have a heart attack or an accident or get cancer, God forbid, you're taken care of, and maybe you pay a high deductible.
	But the bottom line is you're covered, but you get such a low rate because you're not likely to need that type of care.
	The odds are very much against it.
	Imagine a world where you could get your insurance through the Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Businesses, NRA, ARP, AARP, any of these big groups would give you purchasing power.
	And guess what?
	The company is never going to be able to kick you off because once you get group insurance, you're protected from preexisting conditions and you get a better price.
	Our goal should be to allow everybody in the individual market to get a group plan, and our replacement plan does this if they'll just let it go forward.
	It seems to me that maybe it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be.
	I don't think it should be under lock and key.
	I think it should be transparent.
	It seems like you agree on the fundamentals, and then you just have these couple of issues that need to be pushed aside.
	And I tend to agree with you that it doesn't make any sense for them to keep the Cadillac tax or keep an individual mandate or anything else that they're talking about.
	Let me move on and ask you about Senator Sessions.
	Have you seen any evidence at all that there is any Russian influence in our elections that impacted our elections?
	Well, I'm not privy to anything other than what I see in the press, and I haven't seen any information that indicates.
	I'm sure they're always trying to eavesdrop.
	They're trying to plant fake stories.
	They're trying to do all kinds of things.
	But I see no evidence that they doctored a voting machine or changed an outcome in any way.
	And when I go home in eastern Kentucky, where Trump got 70, 75% of the vote, they voted for him because he was for allowing the coal industry to survive and revive itself by reducing government regulations.
	They didn't vote for him because they thought he was somehow related to anything to do with Russia.
	And I would say that when you look at it, it is the job of U.S. senators.
	Every U.S. senator up here has met with an ambassador before.
	And the interesting thing is the one senator up here who said she had never met with anybody for 10 years now admits that she did meet with this ambassador.
	She just forgot about it.
	Yeah.
	Hang on.
	We'll continue more with Senator Ram Paul.
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	I've never seen this breathless hysteria to the extent we're now seeing it.
	Based on zero facts, zero evidence, zero truth, nothing.
	And yet the media, we got him, we got him, we got him.
	We got him.
	No, you don't have him.
	He didn't do anything.
	They clearly don't have a capacity to read simple, basic English.
	Because if they did, they would look at, you know, Senator Frankenstein and his idiotic, imbecile question based on false reporting even at the time.
	CNN published a story alleging the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect last week, including information Russian operatives claim to have compromising power.
	Remember that story?
	Compromising information on the president.
	Nothing came of it.
	Nothing.
	And Sessions just answers, I'm not aware this information.
	I've been called a surrogate a time or two, but in the campaign, I not had communications with the Russians.
	And, oh, okay.
	Now, visits, yeah, he did meet with ambassadors because he was a senator on the Armed Services Committee.
	And yeah, he did discuss, let's see, he met with the ambassador of Bulgaria, Lithuania, Hungary, Korea, Italy, India, Australia, Poland, let's see, Japan, Singapore, former U.S. ambassadors, Montenegro, Latvia, Canada, Colombia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Russia, Czech Republic, Great Britain, Jordan, China, Great Britain, Great Britain, Germany, India, and I can keep going.
	That's his job.
	That's what he's supposed to do.
	Well, okay, now what evidence is there that, in fact, the Russians influenced the election?
	Well, actually, the only evidence that has come out is that there's no evidence, as we heard from the House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunez last week.
	How many times do you need to hear no evidence, no evidence, no evidence, no evidence, no evidence before you stop reporting information that is clearly, factually not provable?
	I'm open to hearing if it happened.
	I'm fascinated that the media is so obsessed with this because what they're really trying to do here is undermine President Trump.
	It always comes back to him when they go after Kelly Ann.
	I don't know if you saw the story, this vicious, horrific story about a congressman on being on her knees.
	Pretty despicable.
	Cedric Richmond and what he said about Kelly Ann, they go after her.
	They go after Bannon.
	They go after Reince.
	They go after Ivanka.
	They go after Jared.
	They've even gone after Melania and they go on after a 10-year-old kid.
	And now they went after General Flynn.
	They got their blood in the water.
	Now they're going to try and pick them off one by one.
	And this phony outrage by Chucky Schumer is just, it's total nonsense, all politics.
	This is about undermining a freely elected president.
	And we've been told over and over again, there's no evidence of any impact of any votes.
	No evidence of any collusion.
	None.
	I'm open to seeing it.
	Show it to me.
	It is so out of control.
	The media is so abusively biased, lazy, and agenda-driven, where smear, slander, besmirchment is just the appetizer of the day for them.
	It's what gets them up in the morning.
	Anyway, what's going to happen to Cedric Richmond?
	Talks about Kellyanne Conway.
	Oh, she looked familiar in a position on her knees.
	Wow.
	I wonder if somebody ever said that about Hillary or Michelle Obama, what the reaction would be.
	So offensive to talk about any woman this way.
	No conservative would do it.
	800-941, Sean is a toll-free telephone number.
	It's disgusting.
	Nobody went after the children of Barack and Michelle Obama, nor should they ever.
	Barron Trump, 10 years old, fidgety at 3 in the morning.
	Wow.
	That's a big headline.
	And we're getting diagnosis from twisted, sick, demented people like Rosie O'Donnell.
	I mean, I just am flabbergasted, and it gets picked up everywhere.
	Let's get to our busy phones here.
	Cody is in Pittsburgh, PA.
	What's up, Cody?
	How are you?
	Glad you called.
	Hey, Sean, thanks for taking my call.
	Yeah, you know, I mean, you just have to ask yourself, is this really going to last four years?
	I mean, it felt like the world stood still yesterday when there wasn't a negative headline for the most part.
	But, I mean, it's just, it's nuts.
	I mean, when there's an overwhelming evidence against the left, you know, in terms of Hillary Clinton or anything, you know, they act dumb.
	But when there's zero evidence against Trump, it's a problem.
	I mean, it's a political witch hunt.
	And if it's going to last four years, it's going to be a long four years for the media because they're just so out of touch.
	The left is just so out of touch with the American people.
	And I got to say, you know, we see through it.
	The left, the left, they have nothing, and they're going to push it.
	They're going to push it.
	But when you look close, there's nothing there.
	And it's insane.
	I'm open to hearing the evidence, seeing the evidence.
	But you know what?
	It's not going to exist.
	And this conspiracy was hatched by the Clintons themselves.
	You know, it's not Trump's fault that she put a server and compromised national security and should be prosecuted in a bathroom, mom-and-pop shop, and a bathroom closet, no less.
	It's not Trump's fault that John Podesta was so stupid to fall for a phishing expedition on his email.
	If you fall for it, you fall for it.
	And there's no evidence of any collusion whatsoever.
	And the fact that Senator Sessions does his job and was specifically asked a different question, and they turned it into, oh, this is a lie.
	It was not a lie.
	Sessions shouldn't recuse himself on Russia.
	Thank God Donald Trump stuck up for him today.
	At least he has courage.
	At least somebody's now doing it.
	Anyway, 800-941, Sean.
	And let's say hi to Carl in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
	What's up, Carl?
	How are you, sir?
	I'm doing great, Sean.
	Thanks for taking my call.
	You know, what the Democrats don't realize is that every attack against Trump and his cabinet is an attack against the American voter.
	You know, we voted Trump in because we're sick of these scums ripping our tax dollars off and ruining our country.
	So now we finally got somebody in there that's making a difference, that's, you know, making changes.
	And, you know, you got them crying.
	They're crying, oh, this, that.
	Well, the reality of it is, is the Democratic Party is probably one of the most corrupt parties ever in political history.
	So they need to take a close look at themselves and realize that the American people were onto you.
	It's true.
	Where are these leaks from the intelligence agencies coming from?
	You know, and if there's not an investigation into this Russia issue, don't the American people need to know?
	And if there's not one, if there is one, tell us about it.
	Give us some information here.
	Not that would compromise an investigation, but can we put the lies, the innuendos, the propaganda, the leaks, you know, and the outright lying by the media to rest.
	Can somebody just please do their job?
	Because we have a country to run and fix here.
	Meanwhile, nobody showed any outrage over Obama.
	Nobody.
	Nobody showed that Obama has been proven to try to influence the Israeli election and defeat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he hated.
	I don't care what anybody says.
	The Prime Minister is far too gracious to admit a truth.
	And the truth is, Obama undermined him every single day and every step of the way and hated Prime Minister Netanyahu because Prime Minister Netanyahu was the only adult on the world stage that understands evil in our time.
	The only one.
	Michelle is in Cary, North Carolina, next on the Sean Hannity show.
	What's up, Michelle?
	How are you?
	Hey, I'm doing great.
	Thank you so much for taking my call, Sean.
	Thank you.
	I wanted to say, I wanted to say logically, it makes no sense for Putin to want to support the candidate who wants a stronger United States.
	Why would he want to support someone who was campaigning for firm borders and a stronger military and a growing economy and energy independence if he wants to affect our nation and have a negative impact on our nation?
	Why wouldn't he have chosen Hillary Clinton, who didn't want us to have our own country anymore, who wanted to be a part of the global, you know, the global economy?
	You know, you want to talk about colluding with the Russians.
	We actually have it on tape.
	We have President Obama telling Medvedev, listen, listen.
	Tell me my last election.
	My last election.
	I tell Valmir, I tell Valmir.
	I tell Vladimir for you.
	Okay, my last election.
	I tell Vladimir I take care of him after.
	Well, the crazy thing is, what we have to see is the left never even had a platform.
	That is the reason why she lost.
	And if Trump had ever lost the election, we would have been upset with him for not, you know, doing things in a different way.
	Nobody has ever expressed any concern over Hillary Clinton never even having a platform.
	She never even stood for anything.
	And you talk about not standing.
	What about none of the Democrats that stand up during the speech the other night when you're talking about a safe America and better jobs for women and health care that's affordable?
	And it's like they all kept their seats.
	Oh, really?
	Like, we thought that that's what you guys were all for.
	So you really are just proud.
	If I'm Putin, I want Obama eight more years because he rolled Obama the entire time.
	Just rolled him.
	That's exactly right.
	You don't want someone who's strong and who already has a world renown and is respected by world leaders and who says, I'm not here to run the entire nation, the entire world.
	I'm here to run the United States of America and to make it strong again.
	I thought that was one of the best lines he had.
	Of course, he had wonderful lines, but that was one of the best ones.
	Is all you people who claim that I'm going to be a dictator, I don't have any interest in the rest of the world.
	I want to make the United States great.
	Yeah, and we will.
	You know what?
	Because there's no there there.
	And unless there's a there there that appears, this is just the media hyperventilating.
	We got what again.
	Same people that ignored Loretta Lynch.
	The same people that ignored Bill Clinton meeting Loretta Lynch.
	The same people that ignored Eric Holder, contempt of Congress, the same people that ignored Hillary Clinton.
	Five intelligence agencies got into her computer because she was bypassing Congress.
	She broke multiple laws and the Clinton Foundation and the money back to the Clintons.
	They're phony.
	They're transparent.
	They're lazy.
	They're liberal.
	They're overpaid.
	And they are, you know, the president said they're an enemy of the American people.
	What they are do, they're nothing but propagandists.
	They're liars, paid liars at this point.
	And they are creating false hype and hysteria in the process, smearing good people.
	That's what they do.
	We don't have an honest media in America anymore.
	Except I'll argue talk radio is a million times more honest.
	So is Fox News.
	Just more honest, more truthful.
	Anyway, let's get back to our busy phones.
	Let's say hi to Chad in Texas.
	What's up, Chad?
	How are you?
	Hey, John, thank you so much for taking my call.
	It's always good to talk with you.
	Yes, sir.
	What's amazing is, you know, what does the left think that they're going to get out of something that doesn't hold any water?
	I mean, there's already, there was no, obviously we're saying something that has already been said and that you know and that your listeners know and so on and so forth about that he did not meet on Russian officials or what have you on the election.
	And anything that has to do with the Russian, that the left that thinks that anything has to do with the Russians getting into the election, hacking it, they are still going to do it.
	Even they could be talked blue in the face that, well, it was the FBI reported there's no evidence, but they're still wanting to stick up for the person that lost for them.
	They don't get nothing out of losing, but they get something out of this because it's never going to go away for them.
	The vulnerability we've known about the vulnerability, I mean, Julian Assange was so revealing.
	You know, he was 16 years old.
	He broke into NASA's computers, our Department of Defense computers, 16.
	And you know what?
	I'm sorry.
	We've known about cybersecurity issues in government all the years Obama was president.
	And you know what he did to fix it?
	Nothing.
	I blame them.
	They knew there was a problem.
	They never fixed it.
	They never defended these things.
	And for that, their responsibility is on their shoulders.
	It's not on Donald Trump's shoulders that they're stupid and that they created this vulnerability and they didn't fix the problem that they knew existed.
	Such a good point.
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