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Branky News Now, glad you're with us.
The president is meeting with Republicans and Democrats to discuss school safety and gun laws in America.
Let's dip in to hear what he is saying.
Period.
And we've experienced we have to do something about it.
We now have to do so.
We have to act.
We can't wait and play games and nothing gets done.
And I really believe that the people, this is bipartisan, it's a bipartisan meeting.
And we're going to discuss safe schools and we can really get there, but we have to do it.
We don't want to wait two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, and people sort of forget.
And then we go back on and then we have another problem.
We want to stop the problems from having.
So as we continue to mourn the loss of so many precious young lives in Parkland, Florida, we're determined to turn our grief into action.
I really believe that.
I think that the people at this table want it.
I mean, I see some folks that don't say nice things about me, and that's okay.
Because if you turn that into this energy, I'll love you.
I don't care.
We're going to be able to do it.
Sadly, these horrible mass shootings are nothing new.
I asked for just a list of, I mean, you look at Columbine, Colorado, Bill Clinton, Wisprest, Virginia Tech, George Bush, Fort Hood, Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Pulse Nightclub, and so many more.
It's ridiculous.
So today we're here in a bipartisan fashion to show leadership in an effort to end this senseless violence.
It can be ended and it will be ended.
First, we must harden our schools against attack.
These include allowing people with a certified training, very talented people, to carry firearms.
Now, some people are going to disagree with that, and I understand that.
I fully understand that.
And if you do, I want you to speak up today and we'll listen.
But 98% of all mass shootings in the United States since 1950 have taken place in gun-free zones, where guns were not inside the school.
Or as an example, you take Pulse Nightclub.
If you had one person in that room that could carry a gun and knew how to use it, it wouldn't have happened, or certainly not to the extent it did, where he was just in there shooting and shooting and shooting, and they were defenseless.
So just remember that.
98% of all mass public shootings in the United States since 1950 have taken place in gun-free zones.
It's terrible.
You've got to have defense, too.
You can't just be sitting ducks.
And that's exactly what we've allowed people in these buildings and schools to be.
Second, we have to confront mental health.
There's never been a case that I've ever seen, I'm sure everybody would feel the same, where mental health was so obviously 39 different red flags.
I mean, everybody was seeing them.
The local police, the state police, the FBI, everybody was seeing that this guy was sick and nothing happened.
Third, we have to ensure that when students, educators, family, neighbors, that when they warn authorities, that the authorities act quickly and decisively, unlike what took place in Florida, which was horrible.
Fourth, we have to pursue common sense measures that protect the rights of law-abiding Americans while keeping guns.
And we have to keep the guns out of the hands of those that pose the threat.
And this really includes background checks.
And I know, Senator, that you're working on things.
Joe, I know you're working.
And I mean, I'm looking at a number of the folks around the table.
You're working on different bills.
We have to get them done.
We have to get them done.
And they have to be strong.
The background checks.
Hey, look, I'm the biggest fan of the Second Amendment.
Many of you are.
I'm a big fan of the NRA, but I had lunch with them, with Wayne and Chris and David, on Sunday and said, it's time.
We've got to stop this nonsense.
It's time.
So we've made suggestions to many of you, and I think you're going to put a lot of those suggestions in.
Plus, you're going to have your own ideas.
Certain ideas sound good, but they're not good.
You know, you can harden the site to a level that nobody can get in.
The problem is if the shooter's inside, if he gets in the door and closes the door, we can't get people in.
It's going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars all over the country, and we'll have nice hard sites.
The door closes, and now we can't get in.
Have to send a tractor through the walls.
So we have to be careful of that.
And we have to create a culture that cherishes life and human dignity.
So we're going to all sit around.
We're going to come up with some ideas.
Hopefully we can put those ideas in a very bipartisan bill.
It would be so beautiful to have one bill that everybody could support, as opposed to, you know, 15 bills, everybody's got their own bill.
But if we could have one terrific bill that everybody started by the people around this table, special people, these are the people that seem to be just most interested, very interested in this problem, and it's a big problem.
So with that, I think I'd like to start.
Maybe I'll ask John, you can start off, and then we'll go back and forth.
We'll leave the media for a little while and they can hear some thought.
But it's something that can be done.
There's no reason for this.
But again, I really believe that those people, it's idealistic, it's wonderful, it's a beautiful thing.
But if you think that somebody's going to be able to walk into a school, if they feel that they're not going to have bullets coming at them from the other direction, you're never going to solve the problem.
I feel that.
I feel that.
But I'm certainly open to suggestions.
So, John, why don't you start?
You've put in your fixed nicks and let's see how it is.
And go ahead.
Well, thank you, Mr. President, for getting us together and for expressing your sincere concern about this and trying to get us to a solution.
I agree with you that leaving this town and going home empty-handed is not acceptable.
The public demands that we act.
We know how hard it is to get people together on a bipartisan basis, but believe it or not, at least in one case, Senator Murphy and I, and we have 46 co-sponsors to the Fixed NICS bill in the Senate.
The House has passed its version of it, and I believe this is a good place for us to start.
As you know, Sutherland Springs, we lost 26 people when a guy who fell in the Air Force was a convicted felon.
He was convicted of domestic violence, and he was less than honorably discharged from the military, none of which was uploaded into the background check system maintained by the FBI.
And that's only as good as the data that's put into it.
So Senator Murphy and I and 46 Senate colleagues on a bipartisan basis have what we think is a start.
It's not the end-all-be-all.
There's other things that people want to add to it.
You've talked about the bump stock issue that Senator Feinstein, I know, cares passionately about.
And I'm going to write that out.
We can do that with an executive order.
I'm going to write the bump stock, essentially, write it out.
So you won't have to worry about bump stock.
Shortly, that'll be gone.
We can focus on other things.
Frankly, I don't even know if it would be good in this bill.
It's nicer to have a separate piece of paper where it's gone.
And we'll have that done pretty quickly.
They're working on it right now.
The lawyers, go ahead.
But we need to get started on things that only we can do, which would be this background check system.
People have other ideas.
They ought to offer those ideas.
I'm not sure all of them will pass, but in the past, we've acquiesced to failure and have not done things that we know were within our power to accomplish, like the Fixed NICS bill.
So I would just like to recommend to you and to colleagues here that we get that done and we build on it.
We don't stop there.
We build on it.
And because none of us want to look these families in the face in the wake of another mass shooting and say we failed to do everything within our power to stop it.
And John, FixedNix has some really good things in it, but it would be nice if we could add everything onto it.
And maybe you change the title, all right?
The U.S. Background Check Bill or whatever.
But your bill is really good and really important, having to do with a certain aspect.
But maybe we could make it much more comprehensive and have one bill instead of 15 different bills that nobody knows what's happening.
If we can get 60 votes for it, Mr. President.
I think you can.
Honestly, I think, look, I really believe this is one of the things where you can actually get the 60 votes and maybe easily.
Diane, do you have something?
Well, I do, Mr. President.
You probably know this, but I became mayor of San Francisco as a product of assassination.
I've been the victim of terrorist groups.
The department gave me a weapon.
They taught me how to shoot it.
And we proceeded through the 1970s that way.
What I've watched and seen is the development of weapons that I never thought would leave the battlefield that are out on our streets.
And the latest and newest, Mr. Chairman, is the AR-15.
It's got a lot of assets to it, and it's misused, and it tears apart a human body with a velocity.
And I've watched the school shootings in particular, which you pointed out.
And I thought Sandy Hook, and I'm delighted that Senator Murphy is here today, we thought Sandy Hook would be the end, and he and I introduced another assault weapons bill after the first one.
We didn't succeed with it, but the killings have gone on.
The number of incidents have gone up.
And I put my case in writing, which I will give you, if I may, in letter form.
Good.
And secondly, the assault weapons legislation, this is the number of incidents before and of incidents and of deaths.
This is when the 10-year assault weapon ban was in, how incidents and deaths dropped.
When it ended, you see it going up.
So Senator Murphy and 26 of us have co-sponsored a new bill.
I would be most honored if you would take a look at it.
I will.
I will.
And we will get it to you and let us know what you think of it.
I will.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Chris, go ahead.
Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, thank you very much.
Thank you for taking this seriously.
Our hearts go out to Parkland.
We know, having gone through this in Sandy Hook, that that community will never, ever be the same.
And I want to bring us back to this issue of background checks, if I could, because I think there's real opportunity.
I agree.
There is no other issue out there in the American public today like background checks.
97% of Americans want universal background checks.
In states that have universal background checks, there are 35% less gun murders than in states that don't have them, and yet we can't get it done.
There's nothing else like that, where it works, people want it, and we can't do it.
But you have a different president now.
Well, listen.
I mean, you went through a lot of presidents and you didn't get it done.
Do you have a different president?
And I think maybe you have a different attitude, too.
I think people want to get it done.
Well, listen, in the end, Mr. President, the reason that nothing has gotten done here is because the gun lobby has had a veto power over any legislation that comes before Congress.
I wish that wasn't the case, but that is.
And if all we end up doing is the stuff that the gun industry supports, all right, let me step in here.
This is a president meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers on school safety, guns, and everything pretty much is on the table.
You heard the president lay out his case.
98% of shootings since 1950, if you can believe it, have been in gun-free zones.
And the president talked at length about how the public, how defense is important, how, in fact, people need defense, and you can't be sitting ducks.
And he talked about confronting the mental health issues.
Then he talked about how the warning signs were missed in this case down in Florida, and how do we balance protecting Second Amendment rights, background checks, and so on and so forth.
You heard Donnie Ann Feinstein and Chris Murphy.
They were going into another aspect of this, obviously with a pretty left-wing liberal agenda, but I guess that's what hearing all sides is all about.
I'm not so sure that you get agreement.
Obviously, I disagree with what the Democratic senator from Connecticut was just saying.
All right, we'll get back to some of this.
We'll also get to our other agendas here today.
We've got a lot coming up, including the signs that were missed, including the 39 trips to the home of Nicholas Cruz, including the two calls to the FBI.
We have Hillary and her audacity on display today in a way we've never talked about.
And also, we have, how are the FISA judge, FISA judges that were lied to feeling about being lied to?
We're going to update you on that.
All this coming up this afternoon here on the Sean Hannity show.
All right, glad you're with us, 800-941.
Sean, how did you miss all of the signs?
39 particular individual stops at Nicholas Cruz's house.
He's thrown out of school.
He wasn't allowed to bring a backpack to school.
Two FBI direct warnings about this guy wanting to be a school shooter.
How do you miss all of that?
Bernie Kerrig, who was the NYPD police commissioner, he's going to join us later.
He says this guy down at this Israel sheriff in Broward County, he's got to go.
I don't think I've ever seen this type of arrogance on display my entire life.
Yeah, the deputy never went in.
Yeah, I didn't look at the video for a week.
It wasn't my job.
Yeah, it's not my fault when my deputies fail.
Oh, and I've given amazing leadership as Broward Sheriff.
I'd have been the first person in.
Well, it turns out there were four people that didn't go in, and they actually said to the EMTs, you can't go in.
There are people bleeding.
I mean, seconds matter in a moment like that.
That's the difference between life and death.
Israel, I don't know anything about a standdown order.
Well, we know the EMTs were told not to go in.
We know Carl Gables police have now gone on the record saying, yeah, we were told that they're waiting for the SWAT team to get there.
Meanwhile, they ran into the building.
And I don't understand somebody sitting outside in the middle of a shooting, and it was his job to protect the school.
I don't know cops like that.
I don't know law enforcement like that.
As a matter of fact, we saw the difference.
How many times have we seen any of these incidents?
You see what happens.
You see how those brave men and women in uniform, how they risked their lives.
Think back to the Steve Scalise shooting.
You know, what about those two officers that ran in an open field going up against a rifle?
You're not going to win.
But they did it anyway.
Or the people that went up as people were coming down the trade center buildings.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
I want to go to Beezy.
That's the name, Deerfield Beach, Florida.
Apparently was a former deputy from Broward County.
Did you work under Scott Israel?
No, sir, I did not.
I was there between.
They took our city over in 99, and I retired at 11.
But I tell you one thing about the Broward Sheriff's Authority is very, very political.
And you don't step on other people's toes.
And the three men, the three BSO deputies that everybody says stayed outside, I would have no doubt that somebody, either a lieutenant, a captain, sergeant, let them boys know to stand down and wait for SWAT because everybody wants to be the first one to be the hero in this department.
And unfortunately, my money is on that.
That sounds like, you know, I don't doubt it.
And I'll tell you why I don't doubt it.
And maybe this is different from this guy, Scott Peterson, who was, that was his job.
He was on duty.
He was at the school.
I can't fathom why he stayed outside during the whole incident.
Well, Mr. Henny, just like any company, you have guys that do 100%, and you have people that do 10%.
And the men and women that I worked with, there's 8,000 people in this department, but the men and women that I've worked with, they all gave 100%.
But like I said, but I got to be honest, when it comes to cops, first responders, FBI, firemen, all these guys that I know, they're all 99.9%.
They're all going in.
There's not one that's not.
That's what makes this such an anomaly because I've never seen this before.
It just, it makes no sense.
So your theory that there was protocol is the only thing that makes sense because everybody that decides to become a cop or an FBI guy or Secret Service, everybody, they do, you've got to be called to do that job or you're not going to make it very long.
There's got to be a calling.
And then you go through your training.
And then after your training, mentally, you're always imagining how you're going to react to this situation, that situation, and you're just prepared.
It's almost like there's no thinking involved.
You know, what makes a really great athlete is those that can literally put all stress out of their mind.
And we call it getting in the zone, no think at all.
And they just do what they're trained to do, whatever their athletic ability happens to be.
It's the same thing.
You know, if you're a golfer and you're lost in your head, well, I got to put my golf club down.
I've got to swing back this far.
I've got to twist my body.
You know, you get into those contortions rather than just getting up to the ball, knowing and having the confidence that you train to hit it and doing it like you've done on the range 50 million times before.
You know, if you're not thinking, then you're in a better place.
It's the same with police work, the same with trauma surgeons, the same with anybody.
It just, the only thing, the only explanation that makes sense, Beasy, is yours, that they were told not to go in.
This department micromanages everything.
And I'm telling you what, sometimes the guys, they're afraid to step forward because this lieutenant or that captain or whatever.
And I was in that situation many times when I worked for them.
Of course.
So I just want to kind of let you know.
This is not a reflection.
I want to be very clear about this on police officers, law enforcement, first responders.
EMT guys wanted to go in, and they were told no.
It's crazy.
I've never heard anything like it.
Anyway, Beasy, thank you for what you've done.
800-941-Sean is the toll-free telephone number.
Sean, we just want to make a quick announcement because we're getting bombarded with phone calls.
And we just want to say we know that the Coral Springs Police Department.
What did I say, Coral Gables?
Yeah, so we know it's Coral Springs, America, and we thank you so much.
We got it right yesterday.
For letting us know, and occasionally we mix up the Gables and the Springs, but we realize it's very important to our Florida listeners, and we understand.
So we know it's Coral Springs.
By the way, I hate that.
You don't need to call us anymore.
Thank you so much.
In a way, I resent the hell out of everybody in Florida because they're living in great weather and we're living up here in freezing cold, you know, New York.
And apparently, Joe Bastardi is telling me we're getting six to nine inches this weekend.
That's what I heard.
Where is that?
That would be in Coral Gables or Coral Springs.
That's good.
I'm glad we cleared that up.
Yeah, but that's the point.
And they don't pay any state income taxes because we're stupid and we stay here and we do pay.
But we want to thank the Coral Springs Police Department.
No, they were amazing.
They did.
They were amazing.
Okay, I've said it 10 times.
We're not misattributing.
No, no, no.
And when that sheriff released that press release, I'm like, okay, there's something going on here.
All right, back to the phones.
Jim is in North Carolina.
Jim, how are you?
Glad you called.
Hey, Sean, how you doing?
I'm good, sir.
Keep up the good work and the good fight.
Hey, noticing that sheriff at the CNN town hall, I was trying to rack my brain going, you know, when have I ever seen this before of a sheriff acting the way that he did?
And let me tell you something.
Well, by the way, one important point.
We know now he knew that his sheriff stayed outside the entire time and was there from the get-go.
He knew, but he didn't say it.
If we can get a community organizer in the White House, then we can have a community organizer with a batch.
And that's what that man is.
Period.
I'll tell you the statements that he's made.
I have, listen, I'm friends with so many different people in law enforcement.
I got it.
I know so many people in every level.
I've never heard of a police sheriff that had his picture literally put on at least five of the police cars.
You know, I got a friend of mine, a sheriff down in Lee County, Sheriff Scott down there, who's a great guy.
I'm actually an honorary deputy in the county.
And I just gotten to know the guy, support his team.
They've got him and his buddy Carmine.
All these guys.
I haven't talked to them about it yet, but I am sure they're aghast.
Remember the last hurricane that was down there?
I mean, these guys were calling me.
They were out in the middle of the hurricane, making sure everybody's safe.
And this was a category five straight hit right at Naples, Florida.
And, you know, when you're in a category five and you're out in the wind and the rain, and the same with reporters that, you know, report for the Fox News channel, at any moment, a stop sign or a poll may be coming right down on your head.
It's dangerous, but they know the danger and they do it anyway, which is the definition of courage.
And this was the moment that these cops train the most for.
I tell everybody, and my team in there makes fun of me, but I train five days a week now.
Nobody makes fun of you.
Oh, Jason does.
Absolutely, he does.
Jason makes fun of me all the time about this.
I mean, maybe a little he does.
No, no, no.
No, but I train five days a week, and you guys are, oh, you're silly ninja.
It's not ninja.
It's mixed martial arts.
It's an eclectic blend of arts, crab magaw, Kempo, jiu-jitsu.
We do stick, blade, and firearm training.
We do boxing and grappling and everything in between.
And being trained, I'm trained for pretty much any situation, and that's what I do.
I train for that.
You know, where he will put, obviously not a real gun to my forehead, a little plastic yellow one, and put it right on my forehead, right on my chest, right at my back.
And we practice over and over and over again how to deal with it.
And the same thing, it's hard to disarm somebody with a blade, but we practice that also.
And we practice all the other self-defense efforts that you might need in a pinch.
But I know everybody that I know, in law enforcement in particular, first responders, firemen, EMT, they run towards trouble.
They don't run away from trouble.
Go ahead.
Just get it out, whatever you want to say.
I don't know why you're getting all sensitive.
You're a tough guy.
Bask in it.
Why do you care what I think?
Why do you make fun of it for years?
Because I enjoy watching you suffer sometimes.
So I'm sorry.
It's just if you ever threw a punch at me, you'd be the one suffering.
Oh, here we go.
The six seconds thing.
Oh, yeah.
I wonder why I make fun of you then.
Jeez.
Oh, yeah.
Like, I'm really going to lift a finger to Jason.
Maybe Jason can train with your sensei.
Listen, if he wants to come out, we'll videotape it.
We'll put it up on our website.
Maybe we'll do a Facebook Live of Jason huffing and puffing and stuff.
Why get your kind of abs.
Well, you want to do 150 sit-ups and 150 push-ups in the session because that's what we do.
Can you do that?
Oh, my God.
Do you serve like Twinkies in between the sessions?
No, you don't have Twinkies in Kinks.
You can't go for that.
I don't think you probably couldn't survive 15, 20 minutes.
And it's an hour and 15 minutes.
I'm sure I couldn't.
I stopped doing crunches three, four years ago.
I couldn't deal with them.
I used to do 100 of them before.
By the way, I got up in the morning.
None of us are surprised at that statement.
Hey!
First two body shaming.
What's the pack?
Now you're body shaming Jason.
Not body shaming.
He said, I haven't done them in four years.
And I said, we're not surprised to hear you say that.
We isn't.
You aren't surprised.
Nobody else was saying it.
You said it.
I said it, but everybody else is thinking it.
I can tell you that.
Oh, your day's coming, okay?
You threw down.
Now you're going to go back in the gym for all of 10 minutes.
I love everybody, you know, New Year's resolution.
They all get these gym memberships, and they show up for the first week.
They're there every day, every other day.
And then the next week they miss two of the days.
And then the week after they miss all, they only get to go one day, and then the gym membership's over.
They never go back again.
True or false?
You're going to start Mr. Big Tito.
I've slowed down the bench pressing a lot.
I was doing it since 2003.
I could bench press.
It was 130.
Okay, you slowed it down.
You don't do it at all.
What are you talking about?
Why are you lying to the audience?
Don't lie to the audience.
You don't do it.
Wow, you are really, you're really attacking me.
I really got under your skin, I guess.
When's the last time you did a bench press of 230?
How many years ago?
How many years ago?
Like, I did it a couple of weeks ago.
You did your absolutely lying.
I'm not lying.
I will give you 500 bucks.
If you go into a gym tonight, you bench 230 one time, up and down.
You're going to get 500.
I don't have to go to a gym.
I have the weights of my house.
Okay.
Take a picture of you doing 230 one time, up and down.
You can do it more than one time, okay?
How many times can you do it?
I had been doing it about 15, 15 reps.
All right, I'll tell you what.
You do it 10 times.
I'll give you 500 bucks.
Videotape it.
We'll put it on the website tomorrow.
Alrighty then.
All right, so we'll have that video.
Anyone want to take bets he can't do it 10 times?
Anyway, what just what are the parameters here, though?
Are we talking about like good form?
No, if he takes it down, I assume you just have an old-style bench, right?
Yeah.
You got it, and you're laying.
Yeah, I'm laying flat on my back.
So you have to take 230, bring it down to your chest, and up 10 times.
Yes.
I think he can do it.
All right, let's see.
I've got a lot of stuff.
What do you think, Ethan?
I think you could do it.
All right, good.
We'll have the video up tomorrow.
You'll be $500 richer tomorrow, and I'll be happy to give you the money.
Happy.
No, you won't.
Well, what video are you going to put up?
I've put videos of me up of doing ninja.
And, you know, listen, if you want to see me do a ninja, Google me and Chuck Liddell.
That was from a couple of years ago.
We've gotten a lot better since then.
All right, back to our phones.
Larry in Davey, Florida.
How are you, Larry?
What's up?
What's going on?
Hey, Sean, how you doing?
I'm good, sir.
I'm a retired officer from Broward County.
And I contend that they were doing what they were trained to do.
The Broward Sheriff's Office is a huge agency, okay?
And what they do is all the fresh meat that comes out of the academy goes to the rough sections like Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach.
And then the older folks get retired and put out to pasture in Weston and Parkland where there's no crime.
So back in the day in the academy, we were trained when you're responding to a shooter in a building, you get there, you take up a position, and you wait for backup.
And now the current active shooter training is because active shooters now happens within two to four minutes, you have to rush right in.
So perhaps they didn't have current training because of their ages, and they were just out there waiting to retire.
The only thing that makes sense is that their training was, as you said.
That's the only, because I don't know cops that would do this.
I don't know any.
That's the point.
And, you know, maybe the one guy, okay, that's the anomaly, not four.
Four tells me that it was some type of protocol.
Paul, real quick in Missouri.
Hey, Paul, how are you?
I'm fine, Sean.
Thanks for taking my call.
I enjoy your show.
Sean, I live in central Missouri.
We're in a small town, but our schools are locked down.
In fact, in all of the county, they are locked down.
And the only way you can get into our schools is you have to push the intercom, identify yourself, and then inside the school, we do have teachers, faculties that do carry.
We also have what we call Grandparent Day and a Daddy's Day.
And most of the dads that go to their kids, some of them are off-duty officers, and of course they're carrying.
And the biggest thing that I could think of, one of the big things that schools could do, is go to the lockdown and the intercom system.
You have to identify yourself.
If you have anything you're carrying, you have to leave it out of the way.
I think we can't count on people to identify it, though.
Look, I think it's simple.
Secure the perimeter.
You've got to have a full threat assessment.
There's got to be concealed carry retired military police in every floor of every building.
And it's immediately whatever it is that happens contained, and metal detectors, and IDs.
And I think you solved the problem.
You know, people don't want solutions, I guess.
All right, let's get to some of the other news when we get back.
We've got the arrogance of Hillary Clinton.
What are the FISA court judges?
What do they think about being lied to and being told and fed phony information and not told it's political?
We'll get to that.
Also, we'll check in with the Florida House of Representatives speaker and former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerrig all coming up.
Director Comey, you're a good lawyer.
Can you make out a great case that President Obama wiretapped Mr. Trump's phones just prior to the election in light of the fact you have said there's no evidence of that?
All I can say is what I said before, that we don't have any information that supports those tweets.
Did you seek the names of people involved in, to unmask the names of people involved in the Trump transition, the Trump campaign, people surrounding the president-elect?
Let me begin.
In order to spy on them, absolutely not for any political purposes to spy, expose anything.
But let me leak the name of Mike Flynn.
I leaked nothing to nobody and never have and never would.
But let me explain this.
First of all, Andrea, to talk about the contents of a classified report, to talk about the individuals on the foreign side who were the targets of the report itself or any Americans who may have been collected upon incidentally is to disclose classified information.
I'm not going to do that.
And those people who are putting these stories out are doing just that.
I can't describe any particular report I saw.
And by the way, I have no idea what reports allegedly are being described by those who are putting out this story.
I don't know what timeframe they were from.
I don't know the subject matter.
And I don't know who they think was collected upon.
The allegation is that in one case, they are alleging in the Daily Caller that there was a spreadsheet that you put out of all of these names and circulated.
No spreadsheet, nothing of the sort.
All right, there you have James Comey admitting that he won't comment about FISA, but we do know that in January 2017, he did say, oh, the dossier is salacious, but it is not verified.
The opposite of what they said three months earlier when they made their application to the FISA court, used the bought and paid for dossier, didn't tell the FISA court judge anything.
And of course, Susan Rice on what she has been saying from the very beginning, admitting the unmasking aspects of Americans, which we still need to get to the bottom of.
Here is a fascinating question that nobody is digging deep into.
Now that we know FISA court judges, there were four of them because you had the original application, and then you had the three subsequent renewals that took place.
Who were these FISA judges that approved the dossier warrant?
The people that were lied to, the people that were given incomplete information on purpose, the people that only got a footnote that had said, well, it may be political in nature.
Who are the people?
Who are these people?
Now we're beginning to know, because there's been a lot of speculation regarding all of this.
Remember in the case of Michael Flynn, that you had a D.C. federal district court judge in that particular case that literally recused himself, Rudolph Contrais is his name, and he was recused from the Flynn case because he also sits on the FISA court.
And one theory had been that, in fact, the judge in this case might have approved one or more of the FISA surveillance applications.
But now we have some emails.
One is to Congressman Bob Goodlatt, he's the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the other one to Devin Nunes, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
And the letter, both of these letters, are from a judge, Rosemary Collin, is her name.
And she writes them.
I'll read one of them.
I write in response to your letter dated in the case of Goodlatt, January 16, 2018.
In the case of Nunes, February 7th, 2018, and the request that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court confirm whether transcripts or of relevant FISA hearings associated with matters described in the letter exist, and if so, provide copies to the committee.
As you know, any such transcripts would be classified.
It may also be helpful for me to observe that in a typical process of considering an application, we make no systemic record of questions that we ask or responses that the government gives.
The court appreciates the interest, et cetera, that the varying committees have in terms of its operations and public confidence therein.
And as we have discussed with your staff, notwithstanding the existence of Rule 62C2, the court has never previously received a request from Congress for the contents of any specific FISA application or order, nor has the court provided any to Congress.
Thus, your request and others I have received from Congress present novel and significant questions.
Notice what she said here: novel and significant questions.
Now, that to me is an interesting response.
The considerations involve not only prerogatives of the legislative branch, but also the interest of the executive branch, including its responsibility for national security and its need to maintain the integrity of any ongoing law enforcement investigations.
Thank you for your courtesy, copying me on your blank date letter to the Department of Justice and FBI, which you made request information similar to the letter to us.
Those agencies possess most, if not all, the responsive materials the court might possess.
And we have previously made clear to the department, both formally and formally, we don't object to any decision by the executive branch to release any such FISA materials to Congress.
Okay, I expect that their handling of your request will inform the court as to how the executive branch perceives its interest and will assist us in our consideration of the full range of issues.
Therefore, we ask the Department of Justice to keep us informed regarding this particular letter.
Now, I read this as that this judge is pissed.
Now, Hannity, why do you say the judge is pissed?
Because the judge is saying this is interesting.
You know, this presents a novel and significant question, and that they would conform to whatever the executive branch tried to do here.
Anyway, David Schoen is an attorney, and we welcome him back to the program.
He's actually involved in this case in numerous different ways.
Sarah Carter, Fox News contributor, investigative reporter.
David, let me begin with you.
David, you have read these letters.
Do you suspect that what I'm suspecting is accurate, that the judges have to be pissed?
These judges were lied to, systematically lied to, four separate occasions.
Yes, I do, Mr. Hannity.
I'll tell you this: Judge Collier is a no-nonsense judge.
And she makes very clear here.
I think it's an institutional anger or frustration.
That is, you're presenting us with new questions here.
The Justice Department has all of the information at its hand.
It's for them to turn over this information to you as a matter of first course, rather than having the court be put in that position, which does really raise the separation of powers question, as she suggests.
But I have to digress for one second.
Following today's stories, look at how we've come full circle.
Today, we have Secretary Clinton openly criticizing the administration for not doing enough with the Russia, protecting against Russian intrusions and that sort of thing.
Is this now sort of a campaign of covering every base?
That is, we didn't do anything wrong with the surveillance efforts, which we now know a good bit about and need to know a lot more about.
But now it's that not only didn't we do anything wrong then, but now you're doing nothing to protect against the things that we failed to protect against.
It's almost laughable if it weren't such a serious subject.
I know, but let me go back into this FISA judge and these letters that she sent to both Goodlack and Newness, and they're identical.
I want to know: do you interpret this, that this judge is saying, yeah, this is novel and this is new and there are significant questions.
Is that the judge kind of acknowledging that she's following, in her particular case, current events and new disclosures, and that she has figured out pretty quickly that she's been manipulated and lied to?
I think so, to some degree.
It's a remarkable letter.
Listen, you know, the way the court operates, as you know, is there's a duty judge assigned in Washington every week.
One of the 11 judges is assigned to it.
There are certain matters that the duty judge handles him or herself, and there are other matters that have to be taken up with the court.
When the duty judge handles the matters by herself or himself, they have the assistance of the attorneys who are assigned to the court and the clerks.
To now put this judge in the position of determining, first of all, you know, the first question is whether there were transcripts taken.
And she sort of answers that by saying, as a matter of course, we don't usually keep transcripts.
But the other is, if there are transcripts, disclose them.
She says, then, as you pointed out, they would be classified.
But I think one of the keys is what you focused on at the end.
When she says at the end, we have previously made clear to the department, both formally and informally, that we do not object to any decision by the executive branch to convey to Congress any such information.
That's remarkable.
Well, then we get Sarah Carter into the whole conversation that went on earlier today between the president on Twitter going after Jeff Sessions and saying, hello, it's not the IDG's job.
He doesn't have jurisdiction to legally go after the FISA abuses, but you do.
And Jeff Sessions responding that we have initiated the appropriate process to ensure that the complaints against the department will be fully and fairly acted upon if necessary and pushing back on his end.
Well, yes, and I think I want to go back to that because it's very important.
I mean, what Horowitz can do is that he can investigate this.
But look how long the investigation has already taken into the use of a private server, an email system by Hillary Clinton.
I mean, this has been a year-long process.
We're expecting Horowitz's report on the FBI's handling of that to be coming out this March, but it probably might be extended until April.
So we could be looking at another year.
And I think what the president is saying is this is very serious allegations of abuse by the FBI with the Fifth Court.
It's a violation of Fourth Amendment rights if it's proven true that they did violate the court and how they presented the evidence to the court.
And so it's going to go nowhere.
So his frustration, obviously, on Twitter, is that here you are, you're the AG.
Can't you put a prosecutor in front of this?
And I think it's really interesting, Sean, because we're seeing them battle publicly.
You know, you would think that he would just pick up the phone and call Attorney General Jeff Sessions and talk to him about this.
But he obviously there is a great wall there, a great divide between the two.
He's extraordinarily frustrated with the Attorney General and feels that the Attorney General isn't taking action on this the way he needs to be, and he's calling him out on it.
And I think the American people should be very concerned because without this moving forward, without an activity, active investigation into this, I think people are really concerned.
I know people within the intelligence community are, and I've been speaking to them this week, that this will be buried and swept under the rug, that there will not be justice in this, and that they will not be able to fix the problems that have like sprung out over the last eight years, particularly with the FBI and the seventh floor and other people within the intelligence community that may have been weaponizing what is considered a very significant tool in our system to tackle foreign threats and terrorism.
Instead, as someone told me today, it would be used against us.
And that is something that is totally unacceptable.
If these judges believe that they've been lied to and they were lied to, I've got to believe that they are fuming.
And the question is, what options do they have from this point?
And what do these letters telegraph to us?
We'll get to that more with David Schoen, more with Sarah Carter.
That's coming up in mere moments, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, also we have Bernie Carrick who's going to check in with us.
He thinks the Sheriff Israel down in Broward County needs to go and he'll explain why.
And as we continue with David Schoen and Sarah Carter, a fascinating exchange between Bob Goodlatt and Devin Nunes with one of the FISA court judges and the FISA court judges saying, yeah, this is a novel and significant questions you are raising.
And then gets into the issue of what the executive branch can do.
And, you know, if the executive branch perceives its interests will assist us in our consideration of the full range of issues, we have asked the Department of Justice to keep us informed, which tells me that this particular FISA court judge wants this information out yesterday because this FISA court judge, like the other three, were lied to.
So what is the recourse now for the judges?
Wouldn't they have the ability to bring these people back into their courtroom and say, why didn't you tell us that you knew Hillary bought and paid for this?
Why didn't you tell us you didn't verify this?
Absolutely.
Look, each member of the Justice Department who's appeared before this court is considered an officer of the court.
They are subject at all times to being directed by the court to come in.
And let me say this, I mean, without commenting on it politically from a political point of view, the fact of the matter is this most recent memo that we saw from the Democrats that splits hairs between whether Chris Rosiel was authorized, have payment made or payment was actually made, is really quite irrelevant.
Sure, we would like to know whether payment was made or not, or anyone interested in this would like to know.
But the court, for the representation made to the court, must be completely accurate.
It cannot be misleading.
Sarah, give you the last word.
Agree.
They need to be completely forthright with the courts.
It appeared that they were not.
The judge asks a very important question, and in the letter to both Goodlot and Nunez.
And Sean, I, you know, stress again what she said is that the Department of Justice has these documents.
They are able to turn these documents over to the congressional committees.
And she made that very, very clear in her letter.
And so far, as far as I know, I've spoken to sources.
They have not.
And that is the big problem.
And now the court has to review the request, and it is going to take the court quite some time to review this request because they've never been asked this before.
All right, we're going to continue this on Hannity tonight, and of course, the battle between the president and the attorney general's office and the president's Twitter account and Attorney General Sessions' response.
And we'll cover what this judge is saying in this letter to Good Ladd and Newness.
That's 9 Eastern tonight on Hannity, Fox News Channel.
When we come back, we'll hit the phones, 800-941-Sean, toll-free telephone number.
And we'll also check in with Bernie Carrick, who's going to join us, and Richard Corcoran, who is the Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.
That's all coming up in our news roundup hour.
All right, glad you're with us.
25 till the top of the hour.
So there was the first service.
I know the funeral is going to be on Friday.
If you'll indulge me for a few minutes on the issue of the Reverend Billy Graham, I had one of the last interviews with him.
I was in awe of what he did as he packed stadiums and Madison Square Garden and millions of people in every part of the globe.
This man went out and preached the gospel and fought passionately for people to get to their higher selves in life.
And he just had a profound impact on me.
And the last time that he publicly went out in New York was a pretty amazing experience.
And I was there to cover for the Fox News Channel.
And his funeral will be on Friday.
I was invited to the funeral, and I was very honored.
I'm a good friend of Franklin Graham, and I just never know with my schedule and news whether I could ever get away.
And if I committed to go down, then last minute I have to pull out, it would have been a slot for somebody else that I know would definitely be going.
So I had to send my regrets that I wouldn't be able to commit to it.
Anyway, so they had a service today, and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and the president's indulge me here because the president I thought captured who this man was.
And when we get back on the other side of this, we'll take your calls.
But I want to play a few minutes of the president at Billy Graham's service today.
In the spring of 1934, Billy Graham's father allowed a group of Charlotte businessmen to use a portion of the family's dairy farm to gather for a day of prayer.
On that day, the men prayed for the city.
They prayed that out of Charlotte, the Lord would raise up someone to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth.
We are here today, more than 80 years later, because that prayer was truly answered.
Billy Graham was 15 years old at the time.
Just a few months later, he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
That choice didn't just change Billy's life, it changed our lives, it changed our country, and it changed, in fact, the entire world.
The North Carolina farm boy walked out of those fields into a great and beautiful history.
Starting at a small Bible school in Florida, he soon led a nationwide revival from a large tent in Los Angeles to 100,000 people in a single day at Yankee Stadium to more than 2 million people at Madison Square Garden over 16 weeks in 1957.
And I remember that because my father said to me, Come on, son.
And by the way, he said, Come on, mom, let's go see Billy Graham at Yankee Stadium.
And it was something very special.
But Americans came in droves to hear that great young preacher.
Fred Trump was a big fan.
Fred Trump was my father.
In London, Tokyo, Seoul, Bogota, Moscow, New Delhi, Saigon, Johannesburg, and scores of other places, all over the world, Reverend Graham shared the power of God's word with more than 200 million people in person and countless others through television and radio where people loved to watch and listen.
In 1978, with the support of the Catholic bishop who would soon become Pope John Paul II, Reverend Graham went to Poland and spoke of the meaning of the cross to a people suffering under the soulless oppression of communism.
Billy Graham carried his message around the world, but his heart, as Franklin will tell you, was always in America.
He took his message to the poorest places, to the downtrodden and to the brokenhearted, to inmates in prison and to the overlooked and the neglected.
He felt a great passion for those that were neglected.
Everywhere he went, Reverend Graham delivered the same beautiful message.
God loves you.
That was his message.
God loves you.
We can only imagine the number of lives touched by the preaching and the prayers of Billy Graham.
The hearts he changed, the sorrows he eased, and the joy he brought to so many.
The testimony is endless.
Today we give thanks for this extraordinary life, and it's very fitting that we do so right here in the rotunda of the United States Capitol, where the memory of the American people is enshrined.
Here in this room, we are reminded that America is a nation sustained by prayer.
The painting to my left is of the pilgrims as they embarked for America, holding fast to the Bible and bowing their heads in prayer.
Along these walls, we see the faces of Americans who prayed as they stood on the Lexington Green, who prayed as they headed west, prayed as they headed into battle, and prayed as they marched for justice and always marched for victory.
Around us stand the statues of heroes who led the nation in prayer during the great and difficult times.
From Washington to Lincoln to Eisenhower to King.
And today, in the center of this great chamber lies legendary Billy Graham, an ambassador for Christ who reminded the world of the power of prayer and the gift of God's grace.
Today we honor him as only three private citizens before him have been so honored.
And like the faithful of Charlotte once did, today we say a prayer for our country that all across this land, the Lord will raise up men and women like Billy Graham to spread a message of love and hope to every precious child of God.
Thank you.
God bless you.
And God bless America.
Thank you very much.
All right, 800-941-Sean, our toll-free telephone number.
There's a guy that's going to be missed.
You know, people make fun of Mike Pence, and remember the comments that Joy Behar made about him and his faith and his Christianity.
And it's unbelievable what people say.
You know, here's a guy, you know, in this day and age, the Me Too movement.
Never again, all this stuff.
Here's a guy that wouldn't get in an elevator with a woman alone ever because he never wanted to be the subject of any type of rumor innuendo, which goes on everywhere, nor did he want to subject himself to any type of temptation of any kind.
And he was that committed to his bride of many, many years.
He was 99 years old.
You know, welcome home, good and faithful servant.
There's the guy that gets into heaven.
Not me.
Not Linda either, by the way.
Just for the record.
Speak for yourself.
You're going to heaven for sure?
I mean, I think that Jesus and I could have a lot of good laughs about this world.
A lot of good laughs about this world.
Absolutely.
And you're going to talk, first of all, Jesus, let me ask you about my cat.
Why do you say that?
I say my prayers every night, and Jesus loves me in my New York accent.
Oh, I know.
And then that's why he came to earth.
The whole story of Jesus is he sacrificed himself as a he took the sins of the world upon himself.
And he suffered, was beaten, humiliated, died on a cross.
And what were the last words he said?
Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.
And I'm not that good.
I wouldn't be on.
I think you're pretty forgiving, actually.
It's actually pretty annoying most of the time.
Yeah, you don't like it because you actually have a better memory than mine.
Well, my memory serves me to not repeat the same mistakes.
And then you're like, I don't even remember what that guy did anymore.
It's totally fine.
No, it's actually not.
Missenberg could talk about their contempt list.
That's right.
No, a contempt list and a hate list of the same thing, which you.
He's going to help me toss the tables.
No, tossing the tables in the temple.
Right.
There was not supposed to be commerce in his father's house.
It was supposed to be a house of worship.
And that is righteous indignation, which is very different than anger.
I just want to toss the table.
Can I just toss the table?
In the church, you want to toss the table?
I want to toss the table.
Well, you're not Jesus.
So first of all, you don't have the right to cross the table.
When I get to heaven.
When you get to heaven, you're going to toss over a table when you're in paradise.
You know, it says, you know, let not your heart be troubled.
And the verse goes on, in my father's house are many mansions, and I go to prepare a place for you.
You lost me at let not your heart be troubled.
Oh, good grief.
All right, let's get to our phones.
Shannon is in Michigan next Sean Hannity show.
Hey, Shannon, how are you?
Great.
How are you, Sean?
I'm good.
What's happening?
Thank you for speaking with me.
I'm a school teacher in Michigan, and I am very tired of legislators, my union, other teachers speaking for me.
I've held a CPL for 11 years.
I'm an avid hunter for over 20 years.
And I would love the opportunity to be able to protect my students in my classroom.
They deserve that.
My students deserve that.
I deserve that.
Every morning I have to walk into my building and look at the sign on the wall that says country zone.
And it's just putting a target on all of our backs.
Absolutely.
Look at all the incidents that take place in gun-free zones.
I'm not focused on the teacher carry aspect for a couple of reasons.
Number one, I think teachers, if they want to do it, absolutely, people like you that are trained and understand the nature of a firearm or are professional in its use, et cetera, that's fine with me.
But I've always thought that, okay, for those teachers that might be uncomfortable, I have no problem with that.
Their job is to teach, but we should have full security assessments, threat assessments.
You should have the perimeter covered.
You should have no entry point of anybody that doesn't belong in the school.
You need an ID system.
You definitely need metal detectors.
And then you need enough concealed carry, retired military and police on every floor of every school that they're right there.
If something happens, it's contained to that one area, one hall or one room.
That's it.
Yep.
And my school has all of that except for the metal detectors and anyone, you know, carrying other than a police officer that would come into the building for other reasons.
So, you know, we have a very, very up-to-date system, and we receive training, updated training every single year with a crisis management officer for the entire county where we're at.
Listen, you're not going to protect against an armed shooter with a slingshot.
You're just not.
As well trained as I am in mixed martial arts, and I'm not going to be able to fight back at any distance with anybody with a gun.
I'm a dead duck.
They got me.
There's nothing you can do.
That's what was so amazing in the Steve Scalise shooting, you know, when those cops literally going up against a rifle in an open field.
I never saw such bravery.
And they saved the day.
It was amazing.
And as we continue, 800-941, Sean Tolfrey telephone number.
Let's get back to the phones.
Shelly is in Colorado next.
Sean Hannity Show.
What's up, Shelly?
How are you?
Hey, Sean.
Hey, I got to say, I have to agree with Ethan yesterday.
I thought you said one armed deputy.
And I thought the same thing as Ethan.
And so, oh my God, I was laughing so hard.
And I was so happy that somebody else thought the same thing.
I didn't feel so.
I said there was only one armed deputy.
I know.
You know, I didn't mean one armed deputy.
There was only one deputy on duty that was armed in a school that had 3,200 kids.
Absolutely.
You know, I can't win as a talk show host.
It was awesome, though.
I needed a laugh.
I lost a loved one to the Aurora Theater shooting.
It was my son's best friend, Alex Sullivan.
And after that shooting, we all gathered at the makeshift and we created the makeshift memorial across the street from the theater.
And as soon as we showed up, there was mainstream media there.
They were just on us like vultures.
We had no time to mourn, no time to converse with others who had lost loved ones as well or who were survivors.
And our privacy was invaded.
And it was also every town.
Every town was there in full force.
But I did speak to some of the media, and they did take down some of my quotes, but nothing that I stated when I expressed that I was still a strong supporter of the Second Amendment.
And I was an NRA member, made it into print or online or in any of the interviews.
And then, you know, over time, I was still there, and they didn't even want to talk to me anymore.
They were cherry-picking people who were calling for more gun control laws.
And so, yeah, I just got to say, when I saw that happening over in Florida, I was like, here we go again.
Absolutely, here we go again.
You know what the problem is?
We're not learning.
We're not learning from these experiences.
And I am a strong believer that if we decide that every school in America is going to get the proper threat assessment, security, we're going to protect the kids.
And at the very minimum, I honestly think we can create a foolproof system.
I believe that strongly in the ability of military and police and trained individuals that would know exactly how to secure any school in the country.
And are we going to say that money is the reason we can't afford to have concealed carry, retired police and military there?
That's not an excuse for me.
All right.
Thank you for a good call, Shelly, and I appreciate it.
One armed police officer, meaning there was only one with a concealed carry permit.
Quick break, right back.
We'll continue.
We're not going to disclose the video at this time, and we may never disclose the video, depending on the prosecution and the criminal case.
But what I saw was a deputy arrive at the west side of Building 12, take up a position, and he never went in.
When did you find out that Deputy Peterson had not gone into the building?
How soon after the shooting did you know that?
Not for days.
We had to investigators looked.
I'm not sure.
Because you spent much of the Wednesday Night Town Hall on CNN with the entire Stoneman Douglas community, students and teachers and parents, attacking the NRA, saying that police need more powers, more money to prevent future tragedies.
You didn't disclose any of this to the crowd then, the Stoneman Douglas high school community.
Did you know it then?
Did you know it Wednesday night?
It was spoken about earlier during that day.
I'm not on a timeline for TV or any news show.
We need to get it right.
We need to get it accurate.
We're talking about people's lives.
We're talking about a community.
We need to corroborate.
We need to verify.
And once we did the next day, and I looked at the tape and I was 100% certain that it happened the way I was told about the investigators initially told about.
Now we know as many as four deputies never went in, including the one that was on site when the shooting began, that was armed, concealed carry, and even had a bulletproof vest.
And there's Sheriff Scott Israel saying that, yeah, the deputy never went in.
Now, the EMTs also were not allowed in.
And Sheriff Israel saying, you know, well, I haven't looked at the video.
That wasn't my job.
It's not my fault when my deputies fail.
I've given amazing leadership as the Broward Sheriff.
Then the saying the promise program, I'll explain that in a minute, wasn't responsible.
And here we are.
I mean, it just takes my breath away.
Now, former New York City police commissioner, he was the commissioner during 9-11.
Bernie Carrick, you know, feels the way I do.
He said it's outrageous about these reports.
I've never heard anything like this before.
And these deputies are constitutionally bound to engage the shooter and protect the students.
And he has called on the Broward County Sheriff, Scott Israel, to step down following all these revelations and all these reports.
Then you have the House Speaker of Florida, Richard Corcoran, said the Obama-era no arrest policy may have shielded the Florida shooter.
Remember, there were 39 visits to this guy's house in seven years.
39.
We should have just set up a coffee shop in there for crying out loud.
How many times do you have to be warned about one particular person?
We had two FBI, very specific warnings.
One, you know, of a posting of this guy, you know, that goes out there, Nicholas Cruz saying that, well, I want to be a professional school shooter.
Who would ever post that on social media?
Another one, a woman calling in, giving a tip, he's going to go shoot up a school, and that nobody ever went to check it out.
How did we have so many of these failures happen?
Anyway, joining us now, the two people I just mentioned, and that's the Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Richard Corcoran, and also former NYPD commissioner.
He was on the job on 9-11, 2001, Bernie Kerrig.
Welcome both of you back to the program.
And Bernie, I know cops.
My whole family was cops.
My mother worked in corrections.
My father worked in family court probation.
I had so many cousins that were NYPD.
I almost became NYPD, as did so many other people in my family in the FBI.
I've never heard of a single incident where one person wouldn't engage in a situation like this, never mind four, and never mind telling EMTs they can't go in and help the people that are injured.
I got to be honest, Sean, I've never heard anything like it.
I have, you know, I commanded 55,000 people in the NYPD, 41,000 uniforms, and I have to tell you, I've never in my career, in my 30-year career, heard of anything like this.
The men and women that work for me and cops all around this country, they would be dying to get into that building to engage the shooter.
So I have no conception of what these guys were doing.
This is what they trained for.
This is why they commit to serve their communities.
They know that these moments may come and they're ready for them.
And they're supposed to be ready.
And the sheriff is responsible.
He's responsible for their training, for their resources, for their actions.
He's responsible for what they do and don't do.
And for him to sit on national television on CNN and say, I bear no responsibility for what they didn't do is absolutely outrageous.
It's ludicrous, really.
I've never heard anything like that before.
And I'm doing a great job.
I'll pat myself on the back.
You know, I go back to 9-11, 2001, and this is why we call them heroes, because you were the police commissioner.
And when the second building came down, you were about a block away with the mayor, Rudy Giuliani, and you took cover in a local store, and it took a while for you to even get out of there because of all the smoke and dust and everything that had come out of those buildings.
Your guys were going in one direction while all the people that worked in the building were going in another.
And they knew the firemen, the policemen, the first responders, they knew what they were headed into.
They knew that that might be their last day.
Keep in mind when the second building come down, yes, we were there.
When Tower 1 imploded, that was the second building to drop.
Men and women had already gone back into one.
Even after the evacuation notices, they still went back into those buildings, knowing the perils inherent.
I worked for one of the best leaders I could imagine in my time, Rudy Giuliani, President Bush, George Pataki, but not once, ever, have I ever heard one of those guys say, I showed amazing leadership during 9-11.
I just think it's outrageous listening to this guy.
You know, that is a really good point.
I don't think anybody did.
And everybody wishes they could have done more, which is amazing.
Let me bring in the Florida Speaker of the House down there in Tallahassee, Richard Corcoran.
What about these numerous reports of a standdown order of deputies during the school shooting in Parkland?
No, now we're hearing that, too, is that not only was it a failing on the officer's part to not go in, but now they're claiming that there were standdown orders that would have come from the highest level.
And I think the commissioner's right.
I mean, for him to say that he had amazing leadership when the only thing amazing about what he's exhibited so far is his arrogance.
That's why 74 of us, Sean, 74 legislators represent almost 13 million people.
Under the Constitution, the governor can remove somebody and suspend them for incompetence, malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, of which he scores high on all of the above.
And so we sent that letter.
The governor has sent down our state law enforcement to take over the investigation.
We know we're being misled.
Nobody believes he didn't know for eight days that this guy didn't go in.
And he needs to be suspended and ultimately removed by the Senate.
Did you read Sarah Carter's piece about what, some 66 investigations going on into this particular sheriff's department?
I couldn't believe it when I read that yesterday.
Well, what's amazing is by his own admissions, this is the chief law enforcement officer, the head of safety for the entire county, number one, the buck stuffs with him.
By his own words, he investigated the school resource officer who didn't go in.
He's investigating the three outside who didn't go in.
He's investigating that once they did go in, after the shooter was long gone, after they did go in, did they deny access to first responders?
He's investigating the voluntary contract that he entered into with the superintendent, which we call a no arrest policy.
They call it, you know, the fancy words like promise program.
The no arrest policy that allowed the kid to bring in bullets and knives that should have been felonies and he should have been under arrest.
And then they bragged that crime was down in schools by over 60%.
And that's the no arrest policy that they had, the guidelines for school discipline.
You're saying that that hindered the ability of authorities to prevent this?
Yes.
He basically said, just, you know, don't ask, don't tell.
You know, so he basically said, don't tell me, you know, you guys handle it.
And then they bragged how many crimes and acts of violence in the schools had plummeted.
Well, it plummeted because in 08, they put in this no arrest policy.
And people like this murderer, who would have been arrested numerous times for felonies, including bringing bullets to school, bringing knives to school, was just passed along the system.
By the way, it also, in one sense, had they done that numerous times, maybe he would have woken up one morning in a prison cell and said, you know what, I need this, like I need a hole in the head, and turned around.
And I know that has happened to many people.
And Bernie, I know you know because of the years you ran the correction department.
But let me ask you, Bernie Kerrig, about this.
All of, you know, if you're going to go and visit a family's home 39 times, if the kid's thrown out of school, the kid can't bring a backpack to the school.
Then the FBI was warned specifically about the dangers of this kid.
You get a screenshot saying, I want to be a professional school shooter.
I mean, this is such a massive, spectacular fail, epic fail.
I don't even know.
I can't even explain it away.
And everyone wants to talk about guns.
We knew.
Honestly, Sean, there's no explanation.
There's just so many of these.
But there's one thing that hasn't been picked up on.
And I think the speaker and the governor, I think this is something they should look at.
They went to this guy's house over a period of time, depending on who you talk to, between 23 and 45 times, let's say.
There's a law in the state of Florida called the Baker Act.
The Baker Act gives the police, a judge, a mental health authority, and a physician the authority, the constitutional authority by Florida to basically involuntarily commit someone for mental observation for a period of time and take their weapons if they have any.
I find it unfathomable that all the calls that we've heard about where they went to this guy's house, that sheriff and that sheriff's department, and nobody took his weapons.
Let me ask you about New York City.
If you're the police commissioner and your guys go to one particular house for one particular individual 39 times, are you telling me this kid's not going to be put away?
Because if I jaywalk in New York, I'm going to be put in jail.
I'll be over at Rikers.
Listen, forget the 39 times.
I can tell you right now, if you had a weapons carry permit or you had a permit to purchase a gun and possess a gun in New York City, and they get one job to your house, one, and they go there and there's a domestic or there's violence or threats of violence, I can promise you, just the call, just the call, somebody will be there from the NYPD to pick up your guns until it's sorted out.
Yep.
By the way, I know that's true.
And I've had a pistol carry permit for the city for 18 years.
I know absolutely that's true, and that's happened to people.
And it's just an allegation.
It doesn't even have to be proven.
You're 100% right.
It doesn't have to be proven.
It just has to be a call.
They will take the guns until it's figured out.
All right, as we continue, former NYPD commissioner during 9-11, 2001, Bernie Carrick is with us, Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Richard Corcoran, and we're talking about this incompetent sheriff, Israel, down in Broward County and what should happen next.
From the state level, Richard, what's going to happen?
I mean, the governor now has taken over the investigation, or state officials are.
And from there, is there a review process?
Can he be suspended immediately?
What do you make all these public comments he's making?
Well, it's not my job.
I did a great job.
Oh, I think the governor, by sending down FDLE, he's probably told him, expedite this.
I need answers fast.
And the second he's comfortable with where they're at, I think he'll suspend.
My inclination is he would probably suspend him right away.
Today, we're in session right now, Sean.
We just issued nine subpoenas where he says we're not releasing the videos under the authority of the House.
We sent down subpoenas today.
We want every video, every radio, every document, all incidents relating to this kid.
I think his days are numbered.
There's no question about it.
The question is just how soon is it?
You know, I just, again, it's unfathomable.
I know there's been a lot of discussion, Bernie, about the FBI and the deep state and the DOJ, and they didn't inform the Pfizer court.
Now we have all the missed signs down here in Florida.
I just want to be very clear.
These are not the FBI guys.
This is not the police people.
This is not the sheriff people that I know in my life.
You know, the people that I know were with you on 9-11, you know, running up the towers and ultimately giving their lives to save people.
Those are the police first responders, firemen that I know.
Yeah, but you know what, Sean, they're still out there.
You know, listen, I know plenty of line duty FBI agents and cops all over this country.
I have an enormous amount of respect and admiration for all of them.
They do a job that nobody really has the courage to do.
They actually put their lives on the line for people.
I think the things that we have seen over the last several months with regard to the FBI and the Pfizer court, honestly, that stuff is at the top of the chain, which the president's going to have to deal with.
The attorney general is going to have to deal with.
But the line agents, you know, for the most part, they're the best.
They are the best investigative service in the world.
In this case, were there things missed?
Yes, but they're going to have to learn from it.
They're going to have to fix it.
And they're going to have to get back out there and show people they're credible.
I've got to run.
You're going to take away their reputation.
I don't want to, listen, I don't sweep with a broad brush on this program, and I still maintain the 99.9% are the people that, thank God, do these jobs that keep us safe and protect us.
So, Bernie, good to talk to you.
Richard, good luck.
Thank you for being with us, and we appreciate what you're doing down there.
And our thoughts and prayers are with everybody.
This could have been prevented.
That's a sad reality we now know.
All right, when we come back, we're going to check in with my buddies from the Black Rifle Coffee Company.
What an amazing story.
Great guys.
A lot of fun.
You've got to look at some of their videos.
They're off the hook, and the left hates them.
You have an alternative to Starbucks.
I'll explain when we get back.
25 now, till the top of the hour, 800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
So we have a new sponsor of the program, and they happen to come by.
They're in New York today, and I've become really good friends with these guys.
You've heard me talk about Black Rifle Coffee Company, but the story that they have to tell is just phenomenal, and it's amazing.
And I think about all the times in my life that I've had a crappy cup of coffee at a Dunkin' Donuts, or I really don't feel like going into liberal land into a Starbucks, knowing that everybody that works there, most likely, and the company management definitely hates everything that I stand for.
You know, simple things like God, faith, family, country, like those things.
Anyway, so the Black Rifle Company, the CEO is a guy by the name of Evan Hafner is with us.
And he served his country for 20 years.
He's been working in covert operations, special forces, military career, started as an infantryman in the Army, graduated to special forces, eventually worked as a CIA contractor from 006 to 2014.
And between deployments, he spent all of his free time actually researching coffee trends and studying the art of roasting.
And during his deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, he made it a point to start every day with quality coffee.
And then he started bringing his boutique, small batch roasts, with him as he went overseas and wired gun trucks so they could grind coffee for him.
And after finishing the military service, he returned home and he decided to start his own business.
And in December 2014, Black Rifle Coffee was born.
And today the company has now seen annual growth of over 750%.
And that's about over 1 million pounds of coffee roasted every year.
It can be found now in over 500 retailers internationally.
And 65% of the employees they have are veterans.
Now, also joining us is Matt Best.
And Matt, he joined the Army at the age of 17.
He deployed five times to Iraq and Afghanistan, 2nd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment.
And after leaving military service, he deployed to a variety of areas overseas as a contractor over the course of five years with the CIA.
So now everybody that I know, I'm saying you can have the best coffee you've ever had in your life and you're supporting veterans and you're no longer supporting liberal Starbucks.
And I'm tired of liberal Starbucks.
I literally walk into Starbucks and I get daggers out of the eyes of everybody sitting there reading the New York Times with their lofte.
And I'm a little tired of it.
And when you compare the coffee, the product, black rifle coffee is a thousand times better.
Anyway, so we were just talking and I said, guys, come in the studio.
And Evan Hafner, thank you for being with us.
Matt Best, thank you for being with us.
Now, Matt is responsible for the crazy videos on your website, the off-the-hook videos with all these good-looking girls that you're firing big rifles, right?
You do all that.
Allegedly.
Is that allegedly?
Have you gotten into trouble with any of them?
You know, some feedback isn't the best, but, you know, we have fun and I like being reverent and being myself and supporting the values that I believe in.
Well, we're honored to have you on the program.
And, Evan, I just want to ask you, all right, so how did you get so into coffee?
Because, by the way, it's the most important drink in my day.
If I don't have it, you're in trouble.
Just like every good story, it starts with a girl.
Yeah.
In 1995, I was taking some classes at a community college.
I met this barista, and she got me to come in.
And, well, I don't know if she got me to come in.
I started coming into the coffee shop a little bit more frequently.
I started drinking espresso, and I loved it.
Like, I fell in love with espresso to the point where, you know, I would take short trips when I was in college over to Seattle, and I was diving into these little boutique coffee shops.
And at that time, you know, coffee wasn't so pervasive everywhere, right?
You had to go search this stuff out.
And I started searching this stuff out, and I really dove into the nitty-gritty and the details of coffee really early.
It's over 20 years ago now.
It's kind of hard to believe.
And then as a soldier deploying back and forth, you couldn't find good coffee anywhere.
It was instant coming out of an MRE, or it was really bad coffee that you're getting in what's called a dining facility.
Yeah.
So, I really went down the rabbit hole on roasting because I was trying to find the perfect cup of drip and the perfect espresso.
So, in 2007, I got my first roaster and I really started pouring my heart into this.
Plus, it was something completely different.
You know, a lot of guys said, I wanted to come home and do RR, right?
Well, what I called it was the three Rs.
It was like reading, running, and roasting coffee.
Kind of gave me a little bit of a break from what I was doing overseas.
And it allowed me to take something with me, and I could replicate that same cup of coffee that I was having, you know, in the mountains of Idaho or on the coastal lines of Oregon.
I could take that overseas to Afghanistan or Iraq, and I could replicate the perfect cup of coffee anywhere I was.
So, I could start my day knowing at least this is what I could control.
So, you found this interest, but I really, and I'm not saying this because you're an advertiser, when I, the coffee is distinctly better and different.
What I tried to go after was the perfect cup of drip.
I just wanted to find the perfect cup of drip, and then I started adding espresso's and a few of these other things.
Drip coffee, when you say that, it's like a Mr. Coffee Machine.
Yeah, yeah.
Because, and that's where Just Black, one of my blends, came from, every time I ordered coffee, I don't order it with cream or sugar.
I say just black, right?
And I wanted the coffee.
By the way, that's my favorite.
That's all I always, for my whole life, just black.
I put nothing in it.
That's the only way to drink coffee, in my opinion.
Yeah.
And because if you've got to put sweeteners and milk and a bunch of other things in your coffee, that means the coffee isn't very good.
And that's what coffee is.
So that's how Starbucks has gotten so successful by making crappy coffee and putting caramel and Frappuccinos and whipped cream all over it to disguise the taste.
Well, and sugar is a highly addictive substance, too.
So you're adding two different addictive substances into a drink.
And ultimately, you do.
Your roasting is inferior if you have to add sugar and milk into it.
And I'm not, you know, people take their coffee the way they take it.
I don't judge them.
I just make the coffee.
I just try to make the best of stuff.
But talk about, so this is a veteran company.
You hire mostly vets and you built this thing out, and America's responded.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I don't know many companies that grow, what, 750% in a year.
Yeah, and that's that's a little off the hook.
Yeah.
Well, I think people wanted this just as much as I did.
And I was tired of walking into coffee shops because you've been to Starbucks.
What do you think of Starbucks?
Because every time I go in there, it's the same scene.
It's a bunch of hippies, long hair, Hillary supporters, Bernie supporters.
They look at me like I have 15 heads reading the New York Times and out with their computer.
It just the whole scene is not my scene.
That's the premium coffee scene, just in general.
What you just described is what I started Black Rifle Coffee for Americans.
The people that put the lights on around here, the guys that are carrying rifles overseas, the construction workers that are counting on the colours.
Forgotten men and women.
But somebody hasn't forgotten about those because that's my dad.
That's my grandpa.
That's my uncle.
These are the people that I know have served the country and not only that continue to serve the country and they deserve a higher quality product and they shouldn't have to deal with the BS going to these progressive wingnut institutions.
I want my dollars.
I want to vote with my dollars and I want my dollars that go to help vets in future careers, in their businesses and I'll just throw Starbucks out there again.
Their values are not my values.
And I know they're big and I know they're rich, but I frankly think that once people understand what Black Rifle Coffee is about, how good the product is, you know, if you start building out stores around the country, I think people will flock to them because there's half the country that listens to the Starbucks CEO and they roll their eyes and they're like, oh, why do I have to go to that store?
Because they pretty much have had a monopoly now for a lot of years.
Well, and I think that's the premise of Black Rifle Coffee.
It's a coffee company that supports what we believe is the true American value system.
And it is America's coffee.
And that's where.
All right, let me get to Matt.
So how did you hire Matt?
And how did these videos, because they all go so viral, and then I read comments, then you get in trouble, and I'm like, because you're shooting guns, but you did serve your country.
You were in the military.
They did train you to shoot guns.
You put yourself in harm's way for your country, both of you, and many of the people that work for you.
And then people get mad that you're showing your skills on a video.
You know, it's a satirical representation of my hobbies and my values.
And I enjoy shooting guns.
And if you look at anything, we're probably some of the most safe firearms handlers you'll ever see.
And when I was contracting back for the agency, I had some downtime once in a while.
And that's when I just started writing these kind of crazy skits to entertain my immediate friends and family.
And they took off very quickly.
And then we kind of figured out a way to monetize them.
I had started an apparel company.
And then, you know, Evan had brought coffee to the table.
And it was just a great thing.
I wake up every morning, have my cup of Joe, and being able to.
See, I would like to go to a Black Rifle coffee shop.
This is my dream for you guys.
I'd like to go with my town, and I know all across America, all that big red mass that is America.
I think every small town and every city that had a Starbucks, if a black rifle coffee company store opened, I guarantee you everybody would choose that.
At least the people that I know that listen to this audience on this show and on TV, we'd go there.
And I'd like to meet other veterans.
I'd like to meet people that share my values, people that aren't sitting there with the New York Times believing that's gospel and understand that it's fake news.
And for me, that would be, I would love that experience.
And that's coming.
Yeah, it's coming.
That is coming.
Yeah, that's coming over the next three years.
We're going to see over 50 retail locations for awesome.
That's beautiful coffee.
And, you know, somewhere near my house, that would be fair, right?
You put one in your house.
You put it in your house.
Now, here's the thing.
Now, you have all the people that support you, though, because you get a lot of feedback from the people that buy your coffee.
You know, it was funny because one of my best friends said to me the other day, he heard me doing the ad for your coffee, and he said, it's the only coffee I've ever bought.
You know, I bought it since they've gotten in business.
Once people buy it, try it, they like it.
I'm assuming you're getting the same feedback.
And also the feedback is like, I'm not giving it to these big companies that don't care about our veterans.
I mean, you're doing two things at once here.
You're getting a great product and you're supporting American vets.
We're building a community.
It's coffee with a cause.
We want to have the ability to actually directly engage with their customer base, whereas, you know, larger corporate entities, they don't care.
It's just, it's how do I shave margins to make the most profit where we want to make a difference and we want to give back to the community that put us where we are today and have supported our company and put us in a position where we can actually do what we love every morning.
And people need to understand that the majority, and when I say the majority, the big coffee companies are all owned by a German holding company.
Right.
And they don't have a soul.
They're not looking out for the American values.
They're looking out for profit.
That's what they're looking out for.
So when we go to work every day, our subculture is directly interfaced with the veteran subculture.
That's who we're working with.
That's who we're going to work for.
There are over 250,000 vets because of multiple deployments, Iraq and Afghanistan.
I'm sure both of you know people that suffer from this.
PTSD.
It's not, this is real.
The VA scandal was real.
Right.
And there are people, I can't tell you how many vets somebody's friend of a friend of a friend would call me.
Oh, my God, you know people.
Can you help us?
And the person I always go to in those moments has been Ollie North.
And Ollie North will spend 15 hours on the phone to talk to that guy that's in trouble.
And we do have organizations that we know of where we do help people and get them the help that they need.
You know, Rivers of Recovery, Building Homes for Heroes.
There's so many different organizations that do so much good work.
So let me ask you this.
So you both were CIA contractors.
You both have been serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.
That's a tough life.
I mean, and you both spent years of your life doing it.
Looking back, is it a choice you'd make again, Matt?
Absolutely 100% certain my country was.
I think about it to this day.
And I mean, I think that's what it's so engraved in our DNA that we're still trying to serve our country just in a different capacity in business these days.
But it was the best experience of my whole entire life.
It's kind of, I love win-win.
I mean, you're doing something you love.
You're doing something, making a product that people love, and you're helping vets in the meantime, right?
I mean, and did you like your time?
Oh, absolutely.
And I'll second what Matt just said, which is it was outside of the birth of my first and second child, it was the finest.
Be careful because your youngest is eight months old, and don't teach these children how to talk because they will talk better.
They will.
They will.
And they'll do it effectively, annoyingly so.
I loved every, and when I say not every minute, but I loved the entire evolution and service that I had from 18 to just three years ago.
I was serving pretty much every day of my life.
And I love this country.
I think that's what people need to understand more.
It's not necessarily about the service, it's about love of country.
It's, I love my family, I love my community, I love my country, and I'm proud of it, and I want to defend it.
All right, so I want everybody that's listening, listen, make the switch.
The coffee, I promise you, is better.
And you're also supporting a vet-run company that is only going to get bigger and bigger and bigger because of the quality and the great support that everybody has for veterans.
It's Black Rifle Coffee.
What is it, Black Rifle Coffee?
Black Rifle Coffee Company.
What's the website?
BlackRifleCoffee.com.
It is the finest coffee in America.
Absolutely.
I can testify to that.
All right.
Well, guys, good to see you guys.
Thank you very much.
Thank you both.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
Hannity, tonight, we have an investigative report on many different levels.
What do the FISA court judges think about being lied to?
We have new developments, and that's Sarah Carter, David Schoen, also Greg Jarrett, Michelle Malkin, The Mooch, Anthony Scaramucci tonight, Larry Elder, Congressman Matt Gates, and Tom Fitton.
All coming up.
Hannity, set your DVR, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
All right, we'll see you tonight at 9 back here tomorrow.
