Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller released indictments against 13 Russian's who were campaigning for and against President Trump. Sean breaks down the news on these actions including the interesting news that nobody in the Trump White House was involved. Will the media cover that aspect? Not likely... The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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The FBI, I can't even believe this.
They actually dropped the ball not once but twice in failing to follow up on specific tips that would have stopped this Parkland shooter.
And the second screw-up was so bad that the FBI director, Christopher Wray, has now personally apologized to the victims' families because the FBI revealed on Friday they got a tip from last month about Nicholas Cruz and you know that he wanted to kill people, be a professional killer.
Remember, this guy saw this thing on Facebook.
That was issue number one.
And anyway, he went on to say that they got another tip that he wanted to go out and kill people.
They published a statement on January 5th.
A person close to Cruz contacted the FBI through their public access line tip line to express concerns about Cruz's erratic behavior and disturbing social media postings.
And under established protocols, the information that was provided by the caller, Christopher Ray said, should have been assessed as a potential threat to life.
We have determined that these protocols were not followed for the information received on that line on January 5th.
The call's information was not forwarded to the Miami FBI field office, and no further investigation was conducted at the time.
Christopher Ray said the Bureau would review what had happened.
He said, We've spoken to the families, the victims, and deeply regret the additional pain this causes all those affected by this horrible tragedy.
And all the men and women of the FBI are dedicated to keeping the American people safe and are relentlessly committed to improving all of that and how we do it, etc.
Governor Rick Scott is so angry he now is saying that he needs to resign over this.
He said the FBI's failure to take action against this killer is unacceptable.
And the FBI has admitted that they were contacted last month by a person who called to inform them of Cruz's desire to kill people and the potential of him conducting a school shooting.
I understand the anger.
I don't know what's happened here, but we've got to get a hold of this.
You know, you say, see something, say something, people saw it and said it, and we still it happened.
But I still think what we were saying yesterday is paramount.
We've got to now do a threat assessment on every single school and absolutely protect our kids the way they should be.
Now, the bigger story is to me is Robert Mueller, the special counsel, has now indicted 13 Russian trolls of 2016.
This is an incredible development and indictment here.
I have spent the better part of the last, well, hour, hour and a half.
Let me play some of Rod Rosenstein and what he says here.
Just to tell you what this is about.
You literally had a bunch of Russian trolls that were spending millions of dollars all over social media.
To sum it up here, that this has nothing to do with the Trump campaign.
There are no allegations of collusion in this in any way, shape, matter, or form.
This is completely separate.
Rod Rosenstein, you'll hear it in a second, said no Americans had any knowledge of what the Russians were doing.
And we had a bunch of Russians masquerading as Americans, deceiving everyone with whom they had contact.
The defendants devised what, you know, as you read this thing, is the most elaborate scheme to sow as much discord in this 2016 election.
And what's even more interesting about all of this, you have, and Rod Rosenstein says this, that the Russians were campaigning for and against Trump and organizing rallies in the same city in the same day, both for and against him.
So, you know, for those that will spin it in the media, they will, I'm sure, omit one of the main followings or conclusions of all of this, because they have to make this fit into their phony narrative.
And after a year, we still have no evidence of this, but it's a sophisticated operations.
They said no American willingly participated in this, although posing as Americans, these Russians were communicating with unwitting Americans, mostly online.
And so let me play Rosenstein to let you hear what he had to say.
The indictment charges 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies for committing federal crimes while seeking to interfere in the United States political system, including the 2016 presidential election.
The defendants allegedly conducted what they called information warfare against the United States with the stated goal of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.
According to the allegations in the indictment, 12 of the individual defendants worked at various times for a company called Internet Research Agency LLC, a Russian company based in St. Petersburg.
The other individual defendant, Yevgeny Viktorovich Brogozin, funded the conspiracy through companies known as Concord Management and Consulting LLC, Concord Catering, and many affiliates and subsidiaries.
The conspiracy was part of a larger operation called Project Lakta.
Project Lakta included multiple components, some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation, and others targeting foreign audiences in multiple countries.
Internet Research Agency allegedly operated through Russian shell companies.
It employed hundreds of people in its online operations, ranging from creators of fictitious personas to technical and administrative support personnel with an annual budget of millions of dollars.
Internet Research Agency was a structured organization headed by a management group and arranged into departments, including graphics, search engine optimization, information technology, and finance departments.
In 2014, the company established a translator project focused on the United States.
In July of 2016, more than 80 employees were assigned to the translator project.
Count two charges conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud by Internet Research Agency and two of the individual defendants.
And counts three through eight charge aggravated identity theft by internet research agency and four individuals.
Now, there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity.
There is no allegation in the indictment that the charge conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.
I want to caution you that everyone charged with a crime is presumed innocent and less and until proven guilty in court.
All right, no American willingly.
Now, let's go to the QA part of this.
And a lot of interesting things come up here.
Again, no American had any knowledge of what these Russians were doing.
You know, there's one point in the indictment where actually he says at the same exact time, defendants and their co-conspirators through an organization control group, the same people, organized a rally in New York called Trump is Not My President.
That was held on or about November 12, 2016.
Similarly, defendants and co-conspirators organized a rally entitled Charlotte Against Trump, held on about the 19th.
And they had them even apparently simultaneously going on at the same time.
All right, let's go to some of the questions because this is very informative.
And I'll be happy to take a few questions.
Jack.
Is there a concern that this indictment will be mine after the election?
What I identified for you are the allegations in the indictment.
There's no allegation in the indictment of any effect on the outcome of the election.
Jessica.
On page four of the indictment, paragraph six, it specifically talks about the Trump campaign, saying that defendants communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign.
My question is: later in the indictment, campaign officials are referenced, not by their name, by campaign officials one or two or three.
Were campaign officials cooperative or were they duped?
What was their relationship with this?
Then there's no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge.
And the nature of the scheme was that the defendants took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists, even going so far as to base their activities on a virtual private network here in the United States.
So if anybody traced it back to that first jump, they'd appear to be American scaffolders.
One more question.
Have you had any assurances from the Russians that they will provide these individuals for prosecution?
There's been no communication with the Russians about this.
We'll follow the ordinary process of seeking cooperation and extradition.
All right, so what you have, again, no allegations of any collusion and no Americans had any knowledge.
What is so amazing to me is this, is that there's anybody at this point that could be surprised about all of this.
That's what shocks me.
Now think back in 2009, we had within Putin's network in the United States, Putin had a network inside of this country.
And over the course of the last year, as we have been doing our job on Uranium-1 and other stories, well, we found out that this is particularly involving Uranium-1, that Vladimir Putin had a network and that we had an informant inside of Putin's network at the time.
This is 18 months before Scipius goes forward with the nine separate agencies in the approval of Uranium One.
And within the network, our informant who testified in the last couple of weeks before three congressional committees, he was aware of Putin's people involved in bribery and extortion and money laundering and kickbacks and other types of racketeering.
And this was all designed, and the whole motive was to get a foothold in the uranium market in America.
A full 18 months before the approval process, we knew Putin's network was committing crimes in this country.
The FBI director at the time, interestingly enough, is Robert Mueller.
So, the question is: knowing all of this, having an informant inside of this network of Putin, this is 2009, knowing that we don't have enough uranium ourselves, why would CFIA allow a foreign entity to take control of what is up to 20% of America's uranium, the foundational material for nuclear weapons?
We've been telling you about Russian interference, Russian influence in this country now for a long time.
As a matter of fact, you could trace it back to the Cold War and their desire to impact elections.
And by the way, I think America has tried to impact elections itself over the years.
Let's see, BB running prime minister.
Oh, that's right.
We had State Department dollars under Barack Obama going in an effort to defeat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This is what, I'm sorry, what are you saying?
V-15, Victory 15.
V-15 was the name of the group.
That's where the money went.
Thank you for reminding me, Linda.
And so this is not a shock or surprise that foreign entities are involved in all of this.
We've had knowledge of Vladimir Putin, a hostile regime, a hostile actor, going back to 2009.
And stupidly, with all the crimes we knew they were committing in America, we let them do it anyway.
So the fact that they had organized, spent millions of dollars to create discord and so discord in the lead up to the 2016 election.
Well, we already kind of knew it.
Now we just know who the actual actors are involved in this.
And we'll probably never get our hands on them.
That's the sad part of it.
All right, two big stories.
Marco Rubio, by the way, has just weighed in, and he is calling for an investigation.
The FBI bungling the Parkland shooter case.
And with new information for the second time, a very specific tip was given to the FBI on January 5th about this guy, Nicholas Cruz, and his erratic behavior and his disturbing social media posts, and it was missed.
And the FBI director apologizing for that later earlier today.
Let me get back to the Mueller indictment of 13 Russians.
And before we give you any more details, let me tell you what it doesn't say.
It doesn't say that Donald Trump or anybody in his campaign colluded with the Russians.
Doesn't say Donald Trump colluded with the Russians.
It doesn't say anybody on his campaign colluded with the Russians.
It does in say, does not say, in fact, that any American colluded with the Russians.
As a matter of fact, they took elaborate, they spent an elaborate amount of money and went to extraordinary lengths to prevent any American from knowing who they are, presenting themselves as activists all the time.
So it doesn't say anybody on the campaign colluded with the Russians.
It doesn't say an American colluded with the Russians.
It doesn't say that anybody obstructed justice.
It doesn't say that Donald Trump Jr. attempted to collude with the Russians.
It doesn't say General Flynn or Jeff Sessions did anything wrong in their dealings with the Russian ambassador before the election.
What it does say is that 13 Russians were using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
We already know Google and Facebook, but to help a then candidate, Donald Trump.
But it also says the same Russians were trying to help Bernie Sanders, and it says the same Russians were organizing rallies against Donald Trump.
So it seems to be pretty much a wash anyway you look at this thing, which I think the media is going to have a hard time accepting in all of this.
But they were pretending to be American activists, and they spent an awful lot of money trying to deceive an awful lot of people.
My big issue in all of this is the shock and the surprise of many people.
I mean, we've been following this more closely, I think, than anyone else in the media.
We have told you every intimate detail about Russian hostile interference in getting a foothold in the Iranian market in America.
We have told you we've missed all of the indicators.
We had an informant on the ground that had penetrated Putin's network.
So there was influence of Russians then.
Nobody cared because it didn't involve Donald Trump.
And this doesn't involve Donald Trump.
And on top of that, in the process of all of this, interestingly, we find that the biggest Russian influence in the election was a Hillary Clinton bought and paid for dossier full of Russian government lies that she paid for after she funneled it through a law firm and the DNC funneled it through a law firm, hiring Fusion GPS and then hiring a British spy named Christopher Steele.
All right, 25 now total.
Sorry, every time I move this microphone, it makes a ton of noise.
I apologize, but I have to move from one site to another to do everything I possibly can.
Oh, I clicked on the wrong site.
I hate that.
Yes.
All right, I'll pull it up here in a minute.
Anyway, glad you're with us.
Information coming in fast and furious.
Two big stories we're following for you today: that one, and this is scary, the FBI missing a second more specific tip on the Florida shooter that came into the FBI.
And this came in vis-a-vis their public access line tip line to express concerns about Cruz's erratic behavior and disturbing social media postings.
And they didn't follow up.
The FBI director Ray has apologized for this.
Remember, we had the first guy that went to the FBI and actually took a screenshot of this guy saying, yeah, my goal is to be a school shooter, professional school shooter.
Now you have Rick Scott, the governor of Florida, wanting the resignation of the FBI director.
Mark Orubio wants an investigation into that.
We'll continue to follow all of that.
And the most amazing development: 13 Russians now have been indicted.
And in this indictment, it says the Russians campaigned both for and against Donald Trump.
And the whole purpose of this was to sow discord in the country and that no American had any knowledge of any of what was going on.
Nobody from any campaign, nothing to do with Trump, the Trump campaign.
Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians.
It doesn't say that.
It doesn't say anybody in his campaign did.
Doesn't say that any American colluded with the Russians.
Doesn't say the president obstructed justice.
Doesn't say that Donald Trump Jr. did anything.
Doesn't say General Flynn or Jeff Sessions did anything.
What it says is 13 Russians spent an awful lot of money, use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to help then-candidate Trump at different points and then also campaign against him.
It actually goes on in the indictment to say, while the effort was launched in 2014, oh, Donald Trump didn't run for president until 20, what, 15 or 16, the 2016 elections.
Anyway, that they were supporting and then points disparaging Hillary Clinton, supporting Donald Trump.
And it even goes on to say that the defendants used fake personas to organize, coordinate political rallies in support of Trump while also doing the same to create rallies protesting the results of the election.
And on one particular day, November 12th, 2016, the defendants organized a rally in New York to show your support for President-elect Trump, while at the same time organizing a Trump is not my rally, not my president rally, also held in New York.
And Rosenstein said there's no allegation in the indictment that any American was a knowing participant in the scheme, nor is there any allegation that the scheme was affected in any way the outcome of the election.
All important points.
And I go back to my last point I'm making in the last half hour.
Why anybody would be surprised?
I don't know, except that the media in this country has done such a disservice as it relates to digging for truth as it relates to not only this election, but involving, you know, they act all upset about the unsavory actor that is Vladimir Putin.
They act all upset at the idea of Russian meddling in any affairs of the United States.
But yet they completely ignore that we had an informant inside of Putin's network that was established to tap into America's uranium market so that they can gain a foothold into American uranium's market.
And that we know and chronicled the informant did crimes of bribery, extortion, money laundering, and kickbacks.
We did nothing.
And in the course of the last year, what have we learned?
We learned, oh, there was a bought and paid for dossier by Hillary Clinton that used Russian government sources to lie about Donald Trump.
That was used in the election, all in an attempt to lie to the American people.
And more significantly, even though we knew it was bought and paid for by Hillary, they never told the FISA court judge.
And the bulk of information that was used was massive.
That was that phony Russian dossier was used to get a warrant, a FISA warrant, to spy on the Trump campaign.
Oh, excuse me.
So the Russians are all active in all of this.
This is the stuff that we have just known about and that most of the media has ignored.
Now, let me move on because there's other information I want to get to.
Byron York had a great column in the Washington Examiner raising the question: well, why does the special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, still refuse to release the notorious memos that were written by James Comey?
Yeah, the same James Comey that wrote the exoneration with Trump hater, Peter Strzok.
I don't know what's worse if you have Russians that are lobbying for and against you or have high level, the highest level in the FBI and DOJ manipulating and fighting against you and you're a presidential candidate and they're exonerating the person you're supposed to run against.
I'm not sure which is worse.
But anyway, these notorious memos written by Comey, which Comey gave to the friend to leak to the New York Times, the Columbia Professor, which was the basis for the whole appointment of Robert Mueller.
Where are these memos?
Now, the question that Byron York is raising: could it be because these memos would actually help Trump?
Now, Trey Gowdy, who's one of a handful of congressmen who's actually been able to view the Comey memos, say they completely exonerate President Trump.
And what we hear, what the rumors say, what the mainstream media keeps telling us is an obstruction of justice charge that is being built by Robert Mueller and his merry band of Trump haters and Clinton Obama DNC donors.
Anyway, Byron York writes, finally, in 2017, in July, the FBI allowed lawmakers to see the memos.
But the Bureau made sure that the information in the memo was severely restricted.
And that's when, on the House side, Trey Gowdy, among a few others, were allowed to read the memos with an FBI minder present.
No copying, no note-taking.
Gowdy said on Fox News on Monday on special report with Brett Baer, I've read the memos.
They would be defense exhibit A in an obstruction of justice case, not a prosecutorial prosecution exhibit, a defense exhibit A.
And then Gowdy continued, if Comey felt obstructed, he did a masterful job of keeping it out of the memos.
All right, so that kills that whole case right there.
Now, that raises a lot of questions about, well, what is the actual purpose?
Purpose number one of the special counsel was to do what they did today, and that was to look into any potential foreign meddling into our campaigns.
Okay, now we've got 13 people.
If there's more, let's find them all.
And maybe while we're at it, maybe we can go after the bad actors that were committing crimes of bribery, extortion, money laundering, and kickbacks.
Robert Mueller was the FBI director at that point.
Anyway, we also have information, and this is pretty phenomenal, that in fact, the judge that is involved in the case of General Flynn, that this judge is now demanding that the special counsel hand over any and all evidence.
He will decide himself whether or not this plea is going to be accepted and whether or not there's any exculpatory evidence specifically asking for it as it relates to General Flynn.
Now, this is the same judge that was involved in the case of Senator Ted Stevens, which got all thrown out.
And then, you know, that was back in the Bush years, and he did nothing wrong, apparently, in that particular case.
Now, there's other developments that we're following.
Sarah Carter is going to join us later in the program today.
She has a devastating piece out about Mueller's, you know, what the New York Times called Mueller's Pit Bull, his number one choice to be on the special counsel.
Remember, we've broken down all the people that Mueller has appointed, some $50,000 in donations that they have given to Hillary and Obama and the Democrats, and no donors to Donald Trump at all in that mix.
Anyway, we have more information about Andrew Weissman.
He was actually reprimanded in a case.
This is where he gained his notoriety in the Eastern District of New York for withholding evidence.
This is not the only time he's been accused of withholding evidence.
Weissman was reported to the Department of Justice Inspector General and the Senate Judiciary Committee for alleged corrupt legal practices.
You have a formal letter from the U.S. Eastern Attorney, I'm sorry, U.S. Attorney, Eastern District of New York Zachary Carter, requesting to remove Weissman's name according to court documents.
You have a civil rights and criminal defense attorney who's not political, a guy by the name of Doug Schoen, no relation to the one we have on TV, who said Weissman needs to be, I'm sorry, David Schoen said Weissman needs to be investigated for alleged past misconduct in court cases.
Now, the top attorney in Robert Mueller's counsel's office is what the New York Times calls Mueller's pit bull, Andrew Weissman.
Now, we already have told you about this guy's history as it relates to the Arthur, I'm sorry, Anderson accounting issue in the Enron case.
Here's a case where tens of thousands of people lost their jobs because of his investigation that was then overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court 9-0.
And then you had four Merrill executives put in jail for a year, a year of their lives.
Only that was overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
And in one of these cases, he was excoriated again for withholding evidence.
Why he was picked to run the Department of Justice in the criminal fraud selection is beyond anything that I'll ever understand.
Anyway, he had a case that was targeting the Colombo crime family in the New York Eastern District Court, first of many that would draw criticism from judges.
Anyway, the civil rights attorney I just mentioned, David Schoen, was the 2015 whistleblower.
He then met with Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General.
He's the guy that's going to put out the IG report sometime next month.
And several FBI officials discussing Weissman in 2015.
He says he's never been a member of any political party.
It's not political for him.
Told Sarah Carter that his concerns about Weissman don't stem from politics, but Weissman's quote egregious actions in previous cases.
And he was involved in the cases years ago, adding that he decided to revisit them based on new witness information and recent evidence that has come to light in several months.
He said the issue with Weissman both predates and transcends any of these current political issues.
And he said, I've met with Grassley, the DOJ, Horowitz, the IG, and these other issues.
And he said all he cares about is the truth in this particular case and his chosen profession.
Well, anyway, he briefed the Inspector General on the full scope of allegations.
But anyway, the case against the Colombo crime family was in the 90s and involved Theodore Proseco was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, loan sharking, racketeering, firearms charges.
And this guy was the brother of the Colombo crime family boss Carmine Proseco Jr.
And New York was one of the major five families in New York.
And Weissman was a young assistant DA with the Eastern District of New York, was the lead attorney in this case, described by those who knew him at the time, they called him ambitious.
The case wasn't a slam dunk, but it did reveal how he would do anything for a conviction, Shoan says.
Anyway, this one defendant and other defendants successfully appealed their case in 97, arguing that there were egregious Brady violations by Weissman and the prosecution during their trial.
Brady refers to the U.S. Supreme Court Brady v. Brady v. Maryland, in which the court held prosecutors are required to give the defendants evidence favorable to the defense.
Oh, he's withholding evidence.
Goes on to say a court memorandum and order, which has never been made public before it was obtained by Sarah Carter, reveals the judge in this case, the chief judge, Charles Sifton, who presided over the case, reprimanded special counsel Mueller's pit bull, Andrew Weissman, for failing to disclose that Gregory Scarpa Jr., a witness on behalf of the prosecution, was also working for years as an FBI informant.
And his moniker in the mafia underworld was the Grim Reaper in Hannibal.
And he was accused of being connected to more than 100 gruesome murders related to his work for the Columbia Mafia crime family, according to reports.
Anyway, the memorandum and the order were reversed.
Now, how many times are they going to knowingly withhold information from the court?
Now, this is the guy that was, you know, now at the top of this investigation working for the special counsel.
So all of this now comes into question.
Robert Mueller was the FBI director at the time that we had an FBI informant that was telling him about Putin's network inside the U.S. or Russia's network inside the U.S. trying to get a hold, a foothold into the uranium market in America.
We have to import uranium.
We don't have enough uranium in this country.
Never made sense.
And then still, nothing was done in spite of all the crimes that we knew the informant was telling the Department of Justice, the FBI, about.
Nothing was done to stop that whole deal from going down.
And then, of course, then you have the money aspect of it.
And that comes in later as Hillary Clinton's, you know, the charity gets all this money from all the people involved in the deal.
Although we now know that there's an investigation into that.
You can't make this stuff up.
All right, we've got to take a break.
We'll have more on this.
Our other top story of the day.
FBI makes a major another blunder as it relates to the shooter down in Parkland.
Unbelievable.
An apology from the FBI director today.
We'll get into that next.
It's a sad part today that we have to get into when we get back.
FBI missed a very specific tip.
Now, this is the second one that they missed on the Florida shooter.
And apparently, they had received a phone call on January 5th to their tip line, their public access line tip line, expressing concerns about Cruz's erratic behavior, disturbing social media postings.
And the FBI director apologized under established protocols.
The information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life.
We have determined that these protocols were not followed for the information that was received.
The caller's information was not forwarded to the Miami field office.
No further investigation was conducted.
And he went on to apologize to the families.
Now, Jeff Sessions has ordered an immediate review of this.
We'll get to that and the indictment of 13 Russians straight ahead.
September 24th, 2017, I sent a screenshot of a comment on one of my videos.
Now, people keep asking me which video was it.
I don't know.
I don't remember what video it was.
When I saw the comment come through on my studio app on my iPhone, I screenshotted the comment.
I hit the report button, reported it to YouTube.
Of course, they removed the comment.
And then I tried to email it to the FBI.
I found an email address, tips at FBI.gov, sent it to that email address.
I immediately got back a domain error.
Basically, that email address didn't exist.
So I looked up the number for our local field office, and I called and I left a message.
Well, the next day, I had two FBI agents standing in my office taking down the information, taking copies of the screenshot and asking me questions that, of course, I couldn't answer.
You know, all it was on my channel was a comment.
You know, people leave pretty heinous comments on a pretty regular basis on this channel.
And I really didn't think anything of it.
But what I did think was, you know, this comment said, I'm going to be a professional school shooter.
And I knew that I couldn't just ignore that.
In 2017, the FBI received information about a comment made on a YouTube channel.
The comment simply said, I'm going to be a professional school shooter.
No other information was included with that comment, which would indicate a time, location, or the true identity of the person who made the comment.
The FBI conducted database reviews, checks, but was unable to further identify the person who actually made the comment.
Again, as a native South Floridian, my heart goes out to the victims, the families, and friends, and the entire community.
Thank you.
All right, that is now the FBI Director Ray actually going off saying he's apologizing.
What you heard first was the first warning that the FBI had gotten, you know, see something, say something.
And that was a guy on social media.
I want to be a professional school shooter.
And he got it to the FBI.
The FBI did follow up and interview the guy that sent them that screenshot and told them about that the next day.
What we have found out today that looks like the FBI dropped the ball not once, but twice in this case in Parkland.
And the second screw-up is so bad that the FBI director had to personally apologize to the victims and families.
But they got a tip last month on this one issue that we told you about.
But then we find out now that there was a second one.
The agency admitted that they received a call January 5th, 2018 from a person close to Cruz who contacted the FBI through their public access line tip line to express concerns about Cruz's erratic behavior and disturbing social media postings.
Quote, under established protocols, the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life, the statement said.
And we have determined that these protocols were not followed for the information received on January 5th.
Now, the caller's information was not forwarded to the Miami FBI field office.
Quote, no further investigation was conducted at the time.
The FBI director said he would review what has happened.
He said, quote, we have spoken with the victims and families.
We deeply regret the additional pain this causes all of those affected by this horrific tragedy.
He said, all the men and women of the FBI are dedicated to keeping the American people safe, are relentlessly committed to improving all that we do and how that we do it.
How we do it.
Marco Rubio has weighed in.
He's now calling for an investigation into how this got so bungled in this particular case.
Governor Rick Scott has actually gone a step further.
He said the FBI's failure to take action against this killer is unacceptable.
The FBI admitted they were contacted last month by a person who called to inform them of Cruz's desire to kill people and the potential harm of him conducting harm at a school in a school shooting.
And he wants the FBI director to resign over this.
Jeff Sessions similarly has weighed in, and he is now calling for an immediate review of what has happened in this Parkland shooter case.
But don't worry, your friends over at NBC News, they're just worried the FBI blunders in Parkland will somehow hurt the Russian probe.
I just saw this up on the Washington Pre-Beacon, Andrea Mitchell fretting that the FBI's acknowledged error is not following up on a credible tip that Nicholas Cruz might have served as fodder for critics of the investigation.
Anyway, she was there.
The former executive FBI assistant Sean Henry said Friday that it was unacceptable.
Mitchell said this news came at a time when the FBI is very vulnerable because of the attacks from President Trump over its handling of the Russia investigation.
It's completely unrelated to what they're doing on the Russian probe, but this could feed the public animus that has already been ginned up by critics of the Russian investigation, including the president.
Let me just be clear here.
It looks like the FBI made a very serious mistake.
I have every confidence in every FBI officer that puts their life on the line for us every day.
Yeah, it's unacceptable, and I have every belief that they're going to fix it.
This is not what they do every day.
But on the other hand, you know, to take that and to turn it into politics is unbelievable.
By the way, I just got this before we get into the indictment of these 13 Russians.
Devin Nunes, who's the head of the House Intel Committee, released a statement today about these indictments.
He said, the Putin regime represents a pressing threat to American interests, including through Moscow's long-running influence operations against the United States.
The House Intel Committee has been investigating these threats for many years.
In 2014, the year the Russians began their operation targeting the 2016 elections, I warned about Russia's worldwide influence operations.
In April 2016, I stated that the United States and their failure to predict Putin's plans and intentions is the biggest intelligence failure that we've had since 9-11.
Although the Obama administration failed to act on the committee's warnings, it's gratifying to see that Russian agents involved in these operations are now being identified and indicted.
Anyway, here to weigh in on all these big-breaking news stories, Jonathan Gillum, don't forget his new book, Sheep No More, Dan Bonginos, former Secret Service agent, former NYPD, and also retired FBI agent Michael B. Jacker with us.
Thank you all for being here.
Dan, what's your take on all of this today?
Well, I'll say on the FBI screw-up here, you know, when I got into the Secret Service, Sean, they always gave this cautionary tale and training about what happened during the Gerald Ford years when they missed some signs with Squeaky Fromm and Sarah Jane Moore.
Basically, we interviewed them.
Some of the agents said probably not a threat.
And of course, as you know from history, they were a threat.
They tried to attack Jerry Ford.
The Secret Service changed everything after that.
And they made it pretty much a standardized form on how to go out and interview and conduct these threat cases.
Long story short, I think it's about time somebody, whether FBI in conjunction with local law enforcement, gets together some kind of standardized form based on research on how to interview potential school attackers and targeted school violence.
It's the only way.
Yeah, look, I understand that mistakes are going to be made by all sorts of people here.
You know, in this particular case, they had two really important warnings that were missed, Jonathan Gillum.
And this isn't the first time that they've missed it.
You know, they kind of bungled the whole Boston bomber Sarnath brother interview when they talked to those guys as well.
Sean, as Dan can tell you, as Michael Jack will tell you, and even yourself in being in radio for 30 years, complacency kills.
If you become complacent, it doesn't matter how good your policies are, if you're too complacent to take things seriously, it's like having a cancer.
It's going to kill everything you do.
The second thing is, if you make these things too complicated, then like this used to be where somebody would call a field office, it would go straight there.
Now they have a number that you call, and then that gets assigned to a field office, and there's a breakdown in that situation.
We've taken the power away from just the agents, get a complaint, and go do the job.
And that's where I think we need to get back to with the FBI is we just need to give the power back to the agents to do their job.
Michael, what's your take on all of this?
You're a retired FBI.
I have nothing but respect for law enforcement.
I have nothing but respect for the Secret Service, for the FBI, for our Intel community, the CIA, but I'm not happy with the higher echelon and an exoneration before investigation with Hillary.
We'll see in the IG report.
I'm not happy at a lot of things that we've learned that, you know, they never moved on Uranium One.
And we knew we had an American informant inside of Putin's network in America.
That's 2009.
You know, Sean, you're in really good company because there are thousands of agents, both current agents and retired agents all across the country that are just as upset as you are.
Talking about the thing in Florida, Jonathan is absolutely right.
They've taken a lot of these procedures and they've kind of centralized them in Washington, D.C. or wherever, and then they leave probably non-agents the responsibility of going through these tips and then figuring out what they're going to do with them.
And the agents should be listening to those.
These kinds of tips should be going to the local field offices so that they can make the decision.
They can gather their intel, their local intel, talk to the local police and find out about this guy.
And it could possibly have, they could possibly have grabbed him before he did anything.
Yeah, I mean, I actually think as you do, my suspicion was: all right, somebody answers the tip line.
That's not a special agent that's answering that line.
And it's somebody else, and they just missed it.
And I think you have to have somebody that has the wherewithal to understand, hey, okay, this is serious.
We've got to take this seriously.
And, you know, I would assume that we're going to put new procedures in place that prevent this from ever happening.
But that does not give comfort to the people that just lost their loved ones.
You know, it used to be back when I was like in the LA Division or some of the other divisions, you had on the phones at nighttime, during the day, whatever, you had agents that were there that were answering the phone at nighttime.
And you got all kinds of crazy people that would call in.
But every once in a while, somebody would be calling in, and it'd be good, credible information.
And that agent who's trained to listen, to ask the right questions, gets that information to the right place.
I don't know exactly how this system works now, but I wouldn't even be surprised if it was a recorded message and not a person actually answering the phone.
What's your take, Dan?
What is your experience?
Well, you know, again, I hate to keep going back to the Secret Service because I'm certainly not trying to do this.
You know, we did it better than the FBI nonsense, right?
This is very serious stuff.
It's not a competition.
But they did screw up on that in the 80s with the Ford thing, and they implemented some procedures to change.
And one of the things they did, Sean, in addition to creating a template for interviewing potential assassins based on research and what they found out was they started running the case through headquarters.
Now, that's not always the best idea, but I think as you've seen, sometimes you never know who's answering the phone.
If it's been a bad day, some of this stuff may get swept under the rug, you know, for all kinds of reasons that are not malicious.
Maybe they're just, you know, they think someone's a little kooky or what, and they don't want to.
All right, Dan, hang on one second.
I want to get back to this.
And that's a good point that they learned a lot after the attempted assassination against President Ford at the time.
Roward County, today was another tough day.
Two of the students had lost their lives, were laid to rest today.
Parkland continues, as you know, to mourn, to try and heal, to try and take something, to try and give some comfort to these families.
I wanted to kind of give you an update on the case.
You'll hear from special agent in charge at the FBI in Miami, Rob Lasky, and then we'll take some questions.
We continue to follow up leads.
Our investigators, working feverishly and fervently, have spoken to or contacted almost 3,200 students and 200 staff and faculty.
We do have seven people that still remain in the hospital.
Thank the Lord that we have not added to our list of casualties.
I wanted to clear up some rumors, innuendos, misinformation that might be out there.
The killer never was in possession of a gas mask or any type of smoke grenades.
We did recover a bella clava, which for those of you who might not know is just a face mask with eye slits.
Again, there was no gas mask or no gas grenades at any time.
We heard that there were questions that the media had about where our school resource deputy was.
Our school resource deputy, Deputy Peterson, was on campus.
He is armed.
And I believe the campus at Stoneman Douglas is approximately 45 acres.
He never encountered the gunman.
He never encountered the killer.
Every day we're learning something more and more about the killer.
Through search warrants, we've uncovered electronic devices and cell phones that tell us a little bit more about him.
I will not be speaking specifically about either of these devices as the investigation continues.
We have uncovered at the Broward Sheriff's Office that we've had approximately 20 calls for service over the last few years regarding the killer.
We will continue to follow up as we do with any investigation.
We want to try and find out why this killer did what he did, what we could learn for it, and how we could keep our kids safe moving forward.
So every one of these calls for service will be looked at and scrutinized.
If we find out, like in any investigation, that one of our deputies or call takers could have done something better or was remiss, I'll handle it accordingly.
At this time, I'd like to bring up Rob Lasky, Special Agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Good afternoon.
Have you seen earlier today the FBI released a statement regarding information provided to our public access line on January 5th of this year?
The caller provided information about Nicholas Cruz and the potential of him becoming a school shooter.
Under normal protocol, this information should have been provided to the Miami Field Office.
There, appropriate investigative steps would have been taken.
The FBI has determined that protocol was not followed.
The information was not provided to the Miami Field Office, and no further investigation was conducted at that time.
The FBI is still investigating the facts of the situation.
We will conduct an in-depth review of our internal procedures for responding to information that's provided by the public.
The FBI remains dedicated to keeping the American people safe.
On behalf of myself and over 1,000 employees of the Miami Field Office, we truly regret any additional pain that this has caused.
The men and women who work in the Miami Field Office are part of this community.
We walk the same streets.
Our children attend the same schools to include Stoneman Douglas.
We worship in the same places.
We are part of this community.
As this community hurts, so do we.
I want to thank you for your time, and God bless.
Can you take questions about that?
Before we take questions, I did want to acknowledge I am so blessed to be able to sit here right now, stand here right now, and tell you that the son of one of our deputies was released from the hospital.
He is on the men.
He will heal.
And I pray one day he will be going back to Stoneman Douglas.
Behind me is our Under Sheriff Steve Kinsey, our Major Nicole Anderson, and our Colonel Jack Dale, who provided exemplary leadership, incredible leadership as we continue to work through this tragic event.
To my right is former mayor of Parkland, current county commissioner from Parkland, Michael Udeen.
And another group of people that I want to thank enormously for what they've done for Broward County during this is our staff at our public information staff.
They have worked through some trying times.
They've had request after request, and they stood tall and they've been amazing.
So I want to thank them as well.
any questions?
Assorted different, assorted calls for service.
I don't.
Some of the calls for service we did not go out on.
Some of the people that called in were from other states.
And by a call for service, and that's a great question.
A call for service simply means that our dispatch center received a call.
It doesn't necessarily mean that we went out on something.
It could have been a telephonic contact with a deputy from a person in another state, or we might have gone out there.
But we are going to dissect each and every one of you.
I don't know if I'm sure it talked about the psyche of the killer.
It was how to be related to the killer, but if it was actually a breaking of the law or a crime, that I can't tell you.
Was there a related share or an address where people stay?
My hypothesis at this time is probably both, but my hypothesis would be it would be more the killer than the address.
So what do you tell these families when they hear this information about the FBI?
Do you believe that this would have been averted had that call been acted on?
I don't think anybody could say that.
We still want to encourage our community to see something, say something.
We want to learn.
That's what these things are for.
We were so much more proficient at this tragedy than we were at the airport.
We took the things away.
We learned.
We train.
And at the end of the day, make no mistake about it, America.
The only one to blame for this incident is the killer himself.
Special agent, if we ask the special agent, just one question.
I mean, how does the Miami Field Office, I guess, wrap its head around that you guys would have been talking about this call, just to follow up on what my colleague here asked?
It's difficult, but we're professionals.
Like I said, I have over a thousand agents or a thousand employees who come to work every day and do the best to protect America.
Almost all of them, to a person, would be making more money in the public service, in the private service.
But they come to do this job because they love this job.
They believe in the mission.
They believe the FBI.
And they believe in law enforcement.
How did you notify families?
Someone would have called in as a commander.
Who would have been on the receiving end specifically at this point with the FBI?
Here would be the leading college that nominally did not believe in the mission.
That's all under investigation.
Normally, if a tip comes in and involves a credible threat against life or limb, it's immediately elevated to a supervisor and then provided out to the field office, the appropriate field office.
How did the FBI today notify the 17 families?
Did the agents go to each of the phone calls?
Did you phone them?
How were they notified?
And what were those meetings like if they happened?
From what I understand, the phone conversation or phone bridge was made to those families, given the fact that they were spread out all over, and we attempted to provide them the news prior to it hitting the public.
What would you say expecting would we believe the FBI missed a chance to prevent this tragedy?
The FBI, the potential of the FBI is something that's always there.
We do our best.
We have good formal protocols to prevent these things.
We will be looking into where and how, if something the protocol broke down, and we will come back stronger than we ever were before.
What is this, Arizona?
Before I take the next question, you don't have to.
Let me jump in here.
That was we're listening to a press conference down in Parkland.
The FBI, again, apologizing, having missed a number of tips that were sent their way.
We continue with Jonathan Gillum, Dan Bongino, retired FBI agent Michael Jack is with us.
What's your reaction to that, Jonathan?
Well, you know, I got to tell you, Sean, there's a couple of things in there.
You know, I hosted David Webb's show earlier today, and one of the things I saw right when I got on, I turned on FoxNews.com like I always do.
I look up there, and this sheriff is already making comments about gun control.
Now he's saying that the only person that we should blame is the shooter.
I personally, personally, if you want to lay blame on people, let's put some of the blame on the fact that we are not securing these schools, which you and I have talked about.
That's one of the things that we're not seeing.
We're not seeing any assessments here.
We're seeing the ball is being dropped everywhere.
If it's not dropped by the FBI doing these interviews, it's being dropped by local authorities and school administrators where they're not doing the proper assessments.
And I'll just say one other thing about what we were talking about before.
FBI agents should lead the FBI.
And these investigations that the Congress and all these different senators and people are saying that they need to have, the only people that need to be investigating the FBI is the DOJ and their internal OPR.
And they need to get this stuff straight because these words.
Well, you also need congressional oversight.
I mean, that's part of their job, too.
But nothing ever comes of it, Sean.
I would say, yes, you're correct, if anything ever came from it.
But like Benghazi, nothing comes of these things.
A waste of money and a waste of time.
What's your take, Dan Bongino?
Well, listen, these are really serious situations, and I think it's going to require a certain area of expertise, Sean.
I mean, we have counterintelligence people, terrorism experts.
You know, in my case with the Secret Service, we had an expertise in protection.
It's going to be time that whether in the FBI, whether it's led by the FBI or I or not, excuse me, that someone takes on targeted school violence and puts together again some form of an interview and some kind of a process so that they can track these incoming calls so they're not missed again.
I said before the break that Secret Service has a way to track their threat cases through headquarters.
That's not always the best idea.
It may not be a great fit for the FBI, but it's a way to follow up in one central location.
Hey, what's happening with this?
What's happening with this threat we saw?
And then the way to keep track of it so these things don't get lost.
And I think we're obviously going to have to do things different going forward.
And Michael, what's your assessment of what you heard?
Well, I think that, you know, I'm going to break from what the other guys have said just a little bit.
This comes from the top down.
There has to be people in leadership positions, whether it's the FBI or Secret Service, that are cut from the same mold that Louis Free was when he was my director through the 90s.
And he came from the bottom up.
He was a street agent.
He understood how agents think and how it should run.
And Louis Merletti, who was director of the Secret Service at that time, I had the honor of being his neighbor when I was at headquarters.
And, you know, people like that need to be running organizations like the FBI and the Secret Service and Homeland Security, not political hacks that are coming out of DOJ.
They don't understand the importance of the mission like somebody who's actually done the mission.
And that kind of leadership going downwards will help keep things like this from happening.
Let me move on to our other news of the day, the indictment of these 13 Russians and this coordinated effort, well-funded effort to influence the elections.
Now, again, I'm bouncing around a little bit here, but when you actually go through the indictment and listen to Rod Rosenstein, we're learning a lot of things that people never knew before for all the talk.
I think the most important thing is that we learned, okay, it doesn't say Donald Trump colluded with the Russians.
It doesn't say anybody on the campaign colluded with the Russians.
It doesn't say any American colluded with the Russians.
And it doesn't say that Trump obstructed justice.
What it does say is it basically had nothing to do with the Trump campaign, allegations of collusion.
No Americans had any knowledge of what these Russians were doing, but they devised a scheme, an elaborate one and well-funded one to sow discord in the 2016 election.
And, you know, even simultaneously, they're running pro-Trump and anti-Trump rallies in the same city in the same day, Dan Bongino.
Sean, none of it matters.
You know what?
I'm sorry, but you and I both know this.
None of this matters.
The liberals are going to lie about it no matter what.
You heard a press conference from the Deputy Attorney General today saying there were no Americans involved in this.
And yet I still get toolboxes on Twitter, liberals from the Huffington Post coming after me going, well, they unwittingly colluded.
How the hell do you unwittingly collude, you idiots?
Wait a minute.
Didn't we know?
Yeah, that's a good point, actually.
Didn't we know in 2009, we knew that Vladimir Putin had operators in America, and these operators we knew because of an informant were committing crimes, bribery, extortion, kickbacks, money laundering, and we still allowed them to get the 20% of uranium.
I mean, this goes back to the Cold War, the Russians trying to influence our elections and sow discord in this country, Jonathan.
You said there a second ago about oversight.
Is this really a special prosecutor's job to determine this?
I thought this is what the CIA did and what the intelligence division of the FBI did.
Well, that was the mandate that was given by Rod Rosenstein.
That was part one of it.
And there's no evidence of collusion at this point.
And yeah, the media is going to run rampant and wild with speculation.
But at the end of the day, they didn't care when the Russians were caught red-handed trying to get America's uranium.
And we allowed it to happen knowing because we had an informant within this network.
Right.
Sean, all this stuff is an intelligence mission.
And we have several agencies.
This is what they do.
But evidently, they're dropping the ball as well because, you know, when I got my in-doc into the FBI, now I can't say a lot of what I learned, but I can tell you this.
Everybody spies on everybody.
And it's no secret.
Excuse me.
Barack Obama tried to influence the Israeli elections.
And they're our closest ally.
And they even used taxpayer dollars.
Let me give the last word today to FBI agent retired Michael Lajak.
Well, Jonathan is right.
Everybody spies on everybody else.
The Israelis spy on us, big time.
But this is nothing new.
You go back and you look at what they got from when the wall fell and the Stazi headquarters came under the control of the CIA and the Brits.
They found all kinds of documentation about the KGB being involved in the racial riots in the 60s and the peace movement and on and on and on.
This has been going on forever.
It's just turned into something that is a lot more sophisticated now because of the electronics we have involved, like the internet and so on.
All right.
Thank you all for being with us.
Thanks for your patience.
When we come back on this very issue, we have Sarah Carter.
She's breaking some new news about what they call, the New York Times called, Special Counsel Mueller's pit bull, and that's Andrew Weissman.
And we have other new developments as it relates to everything that's going on today.
13 indictments of Russians trying to influence the election.
No connection at all to Trump.
I'm sure that's disappointing to fake news, CNN, and MSNBC.
All right, as we roll along busy breaking news day, in case you're just joining us.
All right, when we get back, we've got the latest on these developments that 13 Russians that tried to influence the election have now, in fact, been arrested.
The new Russian indictment says Russians campaigned both for and against Donald Trump.
So we'll get to all of that.
But the media, of course, won't get that straight.
Also, the FBI acknowledging that they had more information that they missed as it related to the shooter down in Parkland.
And they have now apologized, and it's resulting in a lot of ramifications.
Marco Rubio asking for an investigation.
Jeff Session saying there will be one.
And Governor Rick Scott saying that, in fact, he should be fired, meaning Christopher Ray.
So we'll get to all that.
800-941-Sean is a toll-free telephone number.
When we come back, Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett, will break down this new development, the 13 indictments, Russians trying to influence the election.
Nothing to do with Trump.
Nothing to do with collusion.
Coming up next, our final news roundup, an information overload hour.
The indictment charges 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies for committing federal crimes while seeking to interfere in the United States political system, including the 2016 presidential election.
The defendants allegedly conducted what they called information warfare against the United States with the stated goal of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.
According to the allegations in the indictment, 12 of the individual defendants worked at various times for a company called Internet Research Agency LLC, a Russian company based in St. Petersburg.
The other individual defendant, Yevgeny Viktorovich Brogozin, funded the conspiracy through companies known as Concord Management and Consulting LLC, Concord Catering, and many affiliates and subsidiaries.
The conspiracy was part of a larger operation called Project Lakta.
Project Lakta included multiple components, some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation, and others targeting foreign audiences in multiple countries.
Internet Research Agency allegedly operated through Russian shell companies.
It employed hundreds of people in its online operations, ranging from creators of fictitious personas to technical and administrative support personnel with an annual budget of millions of dollars.
Internet Research Agency was a structured organization headed by a management group and arranged into departments, including graphics, search engine optimization, information technology, and finance departments.
In 2014, the company established a translator project focused on the United States.
In July of 2016, more than 80 employees were assigned to the translator project.
Count two charges conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud by Internet Research Agency and two of the individual defendants.
Counts three through eight charge aggravated identity theft by Internet Research Agency and four individuals.
Now, there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity.
There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.
I want to caution you that everyone charged with the crime is presumed innocent and less and until proven guilty in court.
All right, that was Rod Rosenstein announcing, yeah, Mueller indicting 13 Russian trolls that had tried to impact the 2016 election.
It's not really new news, but now having some specificity does certainly help a lot.
What has the whole Uranium-1 deal been about that we knew 18 months before 2010 when they finally CIFIA signed off on the Uranium-1 deal that gave Putin and the Russians 20% of our uranium?
What did we discover in the course of the last year that nobody else wanted to report?
That there was bribery, extortion, kickbacks, money laundering, all committed on U.S. soil, and that we had a spy within the organization, now known as the informant, that has now testified before three congressional committees, telling our own government what Putin and Russia were up to.
When I was 2009, and now this is 2016, and the only shock I have is that everybody's acting so shocked.
I'm not shocked.
You know, we knew about the Google and Facebook ads, but simultaneously, you know, Rod Rosenstein describing they're running a pro-Trump, an anti-Trump rally in the same city in the same day for crying out loud.
The one thing that didn't come out of these indictments today, it has nothing to do with the Trump campaign, frankly, nothing to do with any one American willingly working with the Russians in any way.
This was an elaborate scheme.
They wanted to sow as much discord in this country as they possibly could, and they did everything imaginable and paid any amount of money to do it.
Joining us now with Reaction, we have Greg Jarrett, Fox News legal analyst, Sarah Carter, investigative reporter and Fox News analyst as well.
Thank you both for being with us.
Let's start with you from the legal side, Greg Jarrett.
I don't see any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion again.
Absolutely.
You're right.
This has, as you stated, nothing to do with the Trump campaign and allegations of collusion.
However, it would be a mistake for anybody to think that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is now suddenly shifted away from Donald Trump.
All you have to do is look at the dozens and dozens of people at the White House and elsewhere that he has interviewed, and he has been talking to them about the president's conduct and the campaign's conduct before the election.
And, you know, Mueller is a very important thing.
And you would think, I mean, when he said that no American had any knowledge of what the Russians were doing, and he goes through the big announcement today, you're right.
This is completely separate and apart.
And we've been at this now.
There's never been any evidence presented up to this point at all that I know of of Trump-Russia collusion, is there?
No, but this was a way for Mueller to say, see, look, my special investigation is legitimate.
I'm finding evidence of wrongdoing related to the election.
And, you know, I have here in front of me the appointment of special counsel signed by Rod Rosenstein when he named Mueller.
And there's two parts to it.
You know, investigate Russia's efforts to interfere in the election.
But the second part, any collaboration or coordination between the Russians and President Donald Trump's campaign.
So the second part of the investigation is completely unrelated to what happened today, which honestly is just small potatoes.
Sarah Carter, your thoughts?
I think Greg brought up several really important points.
But my thoughts, I wasn't surprised either, Sean, on this indictment.
I think the only part that surprised me is how they listed the number of people, all of them, of course, outside of the United States now.
They're going to possibly try to get some kind of extradition and have these people face justice.
I don't think that's going to happen.
You got to think of it this way.
This was an operation run by the Russian government by the FSB, which is their new KGB, right?
And this was an operation to sow discord.
And I think the important part here for most Americans to understand is that Russia had no game in this as far as like as far as Trump was concerned, President Trump.
I know that a lot of people in the media tried to play up and they did this collusion between President Trump and the Russians, and they were looking for some kind of evidence to prove this.
And we saw a number of false, fake stories out in the news media, some stories which had to be retracted immediately, others which were proven false as the months progressed.
And I think this indictment stipulates that, that there was no evidence there that there was anybody knowingly working with the Russians on this.
Another important point here, Sean, is that the Russians were just, and this is according to a number of people that were working during that time in the campaigns, both in the Hillary Clinton campaign and in the Trump campaign, the Russians were very concerned about incoming candidate President Trump because they couldn't gauge him.
They couldn't figure him out.
He was an oddity to them.
They were constantly trying to garner how this man was going to operate with them if he became president.
And even when he did become president, the Russians wanted to sow discord.
And guess what?
Guess who helped the Russians?
It was the media to a large extent and our own political partisan fighting.
And this was what they intended to do.
This is what people aided them with.
And now we've spent the last year of the first year of President Trump's presidency basically battling out in the media, in the U.S. public, this idea that somehow President Trump and his campaign were colluding with the Russians.
And what we have discovered is that on its face, there is absolutely no evidence showing that.
It is a lie.
And in the end, the people that pushed that forward and pushed that disinformation forward basically made the last year an impossibility and gave the Russians what they wanted.
This is how up to their eyeballs they were in terms of their use of social media and platforms.
And the indictment goes into all of this today.
But, you know, they created thematic group pages all over social media sites.
And I'm reading directly from the indictment, particularly on social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram.
And organization control pages addressed a range of issues, including immigration, where groups like Secured Borders, the Black Lives Matters movement, quote, blacktivists, religion with groups including United Muslims of America, the Army of Jesus, or Southern United and Heart of Texas.
And what they were doing was really trying to sway the minds of the American people.
One interesting thing is they conclude there was no impact on the 2016 election that they can discern at all, though, Greg.
You're right.
And look, part of the problem is that our social media websites and platforms are so open.
Anybody can conjure a fake name in an account.
And so it's ripe for abuse.
That needs to be corrected because, frankly, that was the only way the Russians could see that they could try to sow discord and influence the election.
But it wasn't enough.
You know, they had, what, 80 or so people working in this particular office.
And so they were spreading false information apparently on both sides of the aisle.
And whether it had any measurable impact, I doubt very much.
It was a small operation.
I mean, we have 325 million Americans.
Most of them are adults.
A lot of them vote.
You can't reach all of those people with an operation of less than 100 people and fake identities.
Well, they did have some impact.
I mean, now we go back to the investigators themselves.
And you have an unbelievable piece out, Sarah, about Andrew Weissman that you've broken.
Oh, yes.
I didn't know if you were going to go in that direction, Sean.
But I do want to make one point before we go to Andrew Weissman.
I really believe that, you know, if you just look at the indictment itself and know how the Russians operate, they weren't trying to, in essence, affect the election to get any particular candidate to win.
I don't believe that whatsoever.
I think they were just trying to sow that discord and chaos and kind of throw our country into this tumultuous, well, what we're in right now, a special counsel investigating the president, all of these lies spewed across the media, stories coming left and right from everywhere and confusing the American public.
So I think if anything, that's where they succeeded.
Andrew Weissman, it's really fascinating.
You know, we look at the special counsel and we see all the different players, and there's been a lot of stories out there that we know that at least half of the special counsel were Democratic donors.
And Andrew Weissman is somebody who's come up in the media several times.
He had a lot of support for, apparently, for Hillary Clinton.
Apparently, he attended her victory party.
But there was a lot about his past that we didn't know.
And one of the interesting things about Andrew Weissman that I discovered was that he was actually reported to the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz a year before the presidential elections.
And he was actually reported by a lawyer for whistleblowers who believed that Andrew Weissman's actions in the court in the past showed egregious criminal, what he believed to be with actions, corrupt legal practices.
I want to get to the whole list here, including withholding evidence, but not just in one case, but in multiple cases.
All right.
In multiple cases.
All right.
We're going to hit all of this tonight, Hannity, Nine Eastern, on the Fox News channel.
Also, we have the Daily Caller report and new information emerging about Michael Flynn and his judge that I find fascinating.
And as we continue with Sarah Carter and Greg Jarrett, we'll have a lot more on all of this.
The breaking news story, Mueller indicting 13 Russians.
No evidence that any American willingly participated in this.
And the idea apparently was to just sow as much discord as possible in the United States for the 2016 elections.
And also we have the other news about Andrew Weissman, Sarah's column.
So he was caught, Andrew Weissman, the top deputy of Robert Mueller, on multiple occasions, trying to withhold exculpatory evidence in very important, high-profile cases.
Explain what happened and why would Mueller appoint this guy?
Well, this is what Mueller would appoint him Because he came up the ranks with Robert Mueller.
Remember, he was the general counsel for Robert Mueller and the FBI and was very close and still is obviously very close to Mueller.
You know, the nickname he got was a pit bull, you know, Mueller's pit bull.
And the New York Times addressed that in a story, an expose they did on Weissman.
But what's really fascinating about Weissman is that he's described by a lot of attorneys that I've spoken with as somebody who's willing to do anything, cut corners, do whatever it takes to try to win a case.
And one of the attorneys that went on the record to speak about Andrew Weissman and who did blow the whistle with his clients to the IG and as well as to the Senate Judiciary Committee even a decade ago is a man by the name of David Schoen.
And here's somebody who has no political leanings.
He doesn't belong to any political party.
In fact, he worked with the ACLU in Alabama, has been awarded all kinds of things for his liberal activism, and he's a criminal defense attorney.
And what's fascinating, he says, is that during a lot of the cases that Weissman handled while he was in New York, in the Eastern District of New York, there were immeasurable complaints about Weissman and how he did.
All right, I want to pick this up.
Stay right there.
Sarah Carter, her blockbuster report, just how unbelievably disturbing the track record of Andrew Weissman happens to be.
Also, more in our top story, Mueller indicting 13 Russians.
No evidence of collusion.
That is the big takeaway of all of it, that Russians trying to promote discord after all our reporting on Uranium One.
Why anybody would be surprised is beyond me.
And we'll get to your calls in the next half hour as well.
Straight ahead as we continue.
Hannity tonight at nine.
Full details on the Fox News channel.
News and information I promise you won't get from the mainstream media.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
If you're just joining us, two big stories we're really following today.
Well, full coverage on Hannity tonight at nine, the indictment of 13 Russians.
The biggest takeaway from the indictment here is that the scheme that was elaborate, well-organized, and funded, was designed to sow discord in the 2016 election.
It seemed that it didn't matter.
They even had simultaneous rallies, pro-Trump, anti-Trump, going on the same day.
And it was fairly sophisticated.
Does this mean the Mueller investigation is over?
As our own Greg Jarrett is saying, absolutely not.
And the other story we're following is the FBI missed a second, even more specific tip on this Florida shooter.
And we have Sarah Carter.
She has a website, sarahacarter.com, and she has an incredible column about Andrew Weissman, the lead prosecutor appointed by Robert Mueller.
And Greg Jarrett is with us, Fox News legal analyst, and he knows an awful lot about Weissman and Mueller as well.
I'm going to let Sarah finish her story.
So Andrew Weissman has this track record of withholding exculpatory information.
He's the guy that lost tens of thousands of jobs for people that were working at Anderson Accounting.
He was overturned in the U.S. Supreme Court 9-0.
He put Merrill executives away for a year, four of them, only to be overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
But I think the judges' excoriating of Weissman speaks volumes.
And the question is, Sarah, why was he appointed by the special counsel?
I guess that's a question that the special counsel would have to answer.
And I believe it's because, you know, he's deemed by those closest to him the guy that's going to do anything to get anything to get an indictment.
And that's kind of a terrible, if that is the case, that's a really terrible reason.
And it's the reason why he was reported.
I think in the story, what makes this story so significant is for the first time we were able to get our hands on this document that actually a judge chides.
He goes right after Weissman and basically reprimands him.
He says, Weissman's conduct in a case that happened in 1997, this is the case that made Weissman Weissman, right?
This is the one that launched his career.
Judge Sifton, Judge Charles Sipton in the Eastern District of New York, specifically state that Weissman's conduct and his myopic withholding of information is reprehensible and subject perhaps to appropriate disciplinary measures.
At that point in time, they wanted to report Weissman to the bar.
He withheld information that the judge and that the defendants believed was necessary, exculpatory information from the courts.
And this is what's so incredible that despite that, he had enough allies behind him, Sean, to basically get them to write a letter to the judge according.
Now, this is allegedly according to the attorneys that I spoke with, was able to strong-arm this judge into withdrawing his name from this complaint.
And then they reissued a new complaint.
But we've seen both of the complaints.
I have, it's actually on my website, the original complaint against Weissman.
By the way, it's SarahACarter.com.
He might have told.
If that original complaint stayed, he might have been reported to the bar.
All right.
Greg, you also have looked hard at the special counsel and the appointments by Robert Mueller.
I think you're equally disturbed at the appointment of Andrew Weissman as well.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, Weissman is a notorious lawyer.
He's known for abusive tactics.
He weaponizes the law.
He's ruthless and unprincipled.
And there are, you could fill volumes with the complaints that have been filed to judges and the bar and the Department of Justice.
He's been accused of hiding evidence, threatening witnesses.
Innocent people have been victimized by this guy.
And as you've pointed out on your show, his biggest cases have been reversed by higher courts.
He drove Arthur Anderson out of business only to have the case smacked down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
By the way, tens of thousands of people, real people, lost their jobs there.
That's right.
But Weissman was undeterred.
Then he goes after Merrill Lynch executives, putting them behind bars, destroying their lives.
That case also reversed by the Fifth Circuit.
So why did Mueller pick him?
Because he knew what he was getting.
He wanted partisans with a history of political bias who would be equally determined as Mueller was to undo the results of the presidential election and drive Trump from office.
And, you know, Robert Mueller sabotaged his own investigation by picking these partisans.
Unbelievable.
All right.
Now, I started and we never got into it, and I tweeted it out earlier today.
I know there might be, you know, I'm watching some of our media colleagues, those that have ignored Uranium One, and this was part of the investigation that has now gone on a year when we when Sarah John Solomon, Greg, you've been a part of it for the year as well.
When it was first discovered that there was surveillance, a lack of minimization, there was unmasking of American citizens and even the leaking of raw intelligence, General Flynn, all of which was happening.
But we also, a big part of the story was the Uranium One story.
And that, you know, Sarah, you broke this story with John Solomon, that we literally had Putin's thugs, a network within the United States, Putin operatives in the U.S.
We knew because of the informant that you know that testified just in the last two weeks before three congressional committees that the Putin operatives were involved in bribery and extortion and money laundering and kickbacks.
And we had an informant that was telling the FBI and then FBI Director Robert Mueller the whole time.
So just to ask the question, my point is, how can anybody be surprised today, especially when this indictment talks about this effort beginning in 2014?
Well, we can take back Putin operatives to 2009 and how they successfully were able to get a foothold in the uranium market in America.
That's right.
It appears that even in the Obama administration, because they were so intent on resetting their operation, remember, the Obama administration didn't get up in arms about the Russians until the election.
You know, until the election, we didn't hear a peep out of them.
In fact, President Obama actually laughed at Mitt Romney at one point when he said Russia was our biggest threat.
Well, we've known for a long time the Russian involvement in the United States, particularly with our not just our uranium industry, but the spy networks globally, their involvement in the Middle East, their involvement in South Asia.
I mean, we've known this forever.
We've known this since the fall of the Soviet Union and before that.
We've known all of this.
It all depends on the politicking.
And at that time, even though this informant gave such valuable counterintelligence information to the FBI and to the CIA and to other U.S. agencies like the Department of Energy, they chose to ignore that because it didn't fit their narrative.
They wanted to reset with Russia.
They wanted a reset to move forward with an Iran deal eventually.
And this is what happened.
And we saw that going all the way back, even into the Clinton administration.
There was this need to reset.
And we also saw the amount of money.
I mean, could you imagine?
I mean, Bill Clinton got paid half a million dollars.
Like, people don't think about this.
That same year that Uranium One deal was set through, he was paid half a million dollars by Renaissance Bank, a Russian bank that was touting the Uranium One deal that wanted to push that deal forward.
They pay Bill Clinton this half a million dollars, not even a peep.
And then later in October, they pass the Uranium One.
You know, the CFIS board goes ahead and approves it, despite all this insurmountable evidence that there was real national security risk with this deal.
Greg Jarrett, we have talked at length about this, and now you see like shock and surprise in the hearts of our fellow media people.
And I've got to laugh because they have ignored this and ignored this and ignored this.
It seems to me just the natural culmination.
You know, I've got in trouble once, a number of times, Greg.
I've interviewed, unlike others in our industry, I actually took the time, I went to London, I've interviewed on television Julian Assange, and I've interviewed him multiple times on this radio program.
And here's a guy that hacked into NASA when he was 16 years old.
He hacked into the DOD when he was 16 years old.
He's now in his 40s.
At some point, do we not have to look within and say, well, if he did it when he's 16 and he's doing it in his 40s, at what point do we have to look within and say, why are we allowing anybody to have the capability to hack into any system we have?
Well, it is a real and legitimate problem.
And, you know, the United States government needs to put a stop to it.
And there are several ways they can do it.
But to pick up on your argument about, you know, Clinton greed and Uranium One, there is strong circumstantial evidence that Hillary Clinton, together with her husband, engaged in an elaborate but well-disguised scheme to peddle influence on a global scale.
And Uranium One, you know, was their golden child.
I mean, all told, $145 million is estimated to have made its way from shareholders in Russian companies to the Clinton Foundation.
And as Sarah pointed out, you know, Bill Clinton made out like a bandit personally after Rossettum announced its takeover of Uranium One.
That's the Russian company.
And Hillary Clinton, head of CFIAS, approved the deal.
Bill goes to Moscow.
He meets with Putin and he gets a nice check for a half a million dollars to deliver an hour-long speech paid for, as Sarah mentioned, by a bank with close ties to the Kremlin and Uranium One and the bank that was involved to the Uranium One Bank.
You know, I just, this to me is what we've all been saying.
Now, the only thing that I don't know what happens from here is if there's zero evidence of Trump-Russia collusion to this point, but we do have evidence of Hillary Clinton, A, she bought and paid for Russian government lies through her campaign, funneled through a law firm, through the DNC whose money she was controlling.
And then we have, you know, she is one of nine agencies and Sifi is signing off on the Uranium One deal.
Then all the money flooded back to the Clinton Foundation with people involved in it.
It seems to me that we have an awful lot of Russian influence in this country.
And it seems that most of it related to the election, Sarah, was with the Clintons, not with the Trump campaign.
Yeah, Sean, I mean, if you're just looking at the facts on their face, I think there's three separate investigations here from just what you brought up.
One, there needs to be a thorough, thorough investigation, and we know those are ongoing, into the relationship between people associated with the Clintons, possibly Hillary Clinton herself, APS, Christopher Steele, the entire Russian dossier scenario, because that appears to have been part of this FSB disinformation campaign.
And secondly, we know now that there is an ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation, which appeared to have never been shut down completely.
It appears to have resurfaced again.
We know they've interviewed a witness out of Little Rock.
That's actually ongoing right now.
And then thirdly, we have to look at the extent of Uranium One and how this past deal with the Russians, how it affected us, who was involved in that, who were the players.
Now, I think with Uranium One, it's going to be very interesting because it's going to take a lot of historical, deep dives.
And we know right now the Department of Justice is actually looking into that.
And I think the Uranium One story can crisscross with the Foundation story, but they may be like two separate things that have the same crossroads, if you get what I'm saying.
So the Clinton Foundation investigation could reveal something new.
Oh, and fourth, of course, the investigation right now by Inspector General Michael Horowitz into the FBI's handling of the Clinton server investigation.
And that's going to be so important.
Remember, it comes out in the next few weeks.
At least that's what we've been told.
Unbelievable.
And we're going to be watching and waiting.
Greg, did you get an opportunity to read all this new information about the judge in the case of Michael Flynn, General Flynn, and how the judge is asking Mueller for specific any evidence he might have at all that might be exculpatory for General Flynn?
And this is the same judge that was involved in the Ted Stevens case?
I think the judge knows there's exculpatory evidence and wants to see it.
This is actually a very, very discerning and skeptical judge, as all judges should be, but aren't.
And this judge has a lot of questions for Mueller.
And my question would also be: wait a minute, on what legal basis did the FBI even have the right or authority to question Michael Flynn?
He had committed no crimes.
It's not a crime to talk to the Russian ambassador in the transition.
Happens all the time in previous transitions.
They had already, through surveillance, listened in on one of Michael Flynn's conversations.
So they knew everything.
And that was illegal.
Right that they knew all about.
We're going to have full coverage of this tonight, and the media is so clueless in their coverage.
I promise you, we're going to break it down.
Great work today and all along in this whole year so far.
Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett, you guys have been phenomenal.
And we'll see you both tonight on Hannity, 9 Eastern on Fox.
Thank you both.
But this is the most unbelievable story and the biggest shock in all of this is why anybody's shocked.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for tonight.
All right, we have two big breaking stories and actually like five big breaking stories tonight on Hannity.
Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Judge Janine Pierrow, Tom Fitton, also Sean Spicer, and Representative Matt Gates.
Now, we'll get into the 13 indictments.
How anybody in the media is surprised is a huge shock to me.
The FBI acknowledging they blew it as it relates to the Parkland shooting and the apology and so much more.
And I'm going to piece all this together for you tonight in our opening monologue, 9 Eastern.
