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All right, glad you're with us.
800-941-Sean, toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program.
The DOJ is going to battle and war with the state of California over the issue of them being a sanctuary state.
We'll get into that in the course of the program today.
I want to address something.
I want to explain something to a lot of you that have expressed frustration to me about where are we?
Why don't we ever get the ball in the finish line?
Hannity, all these stories that you and Sarah Carter and John Solomon and the great analysis of attorneys like Greg Jarrett and Jay Seculo and Tom Fitton at Judicial Watch.
And yet we never get the ball across the finish line, and it's frustrating to you.
I just want to slow everybody down.
Everything in life, unfortunately, you know, because most of us are pretty impatient, is a process.
This is a process.
Now, I'll give you one example.
Today we have a poll out, believe it or not, and it's the latest morning consult survey, and it shows the American people are rapidly losing confidence in Robert Mueller's ability to handle the Russia Gate investigation in a fair and objective manner.
Now, it's taken all this time to get people aware.
Remember, oh, he is the most trusted, and he is deeply respected, and he's the swamp.
He is the swamp.
And little did people know about his relationship with Rod Rosenstein and James Comey.
And it's like their names show up in the same places everywhere.
And they've known each other for decades.
And the idea is, you know, at all costs, they don't want accountability at the FBI, at the Department of Justice.
They seemingly don't care about the abuse of the powerful tools that we give them of intelligence.
But it's all now coming to a head.
And I'll explain this in a second here.
But, you know, Mueller now has seen his unfavorable rating among Republicans.
They're figuring it out.
It's up 14 points since July when the poll first began to track his public standing.
You know, he now has a 41% unfavorable rating.
That's up from 27% this summer.
And if you look at his favorable rating, it's somewhat consistent.
But Mueller's approval rating, you know, is now below 50%.
There's changes happening.
People are beginning to slowly get and to understand all of this.
And it's the same with the media.
It's taken time.
Later in the program, I'll play for you two reports by Fake News CNN.
One, literally, they actually sent a reporter all the way to Thailand because they thought they were going to break open the Trump-Russia collusion case by interviewing a woman in jail who is a prostitute and a sex coach.
I still don't have a satisfactory answer as to what the sex coach actually does.
No, a little to the left.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, a little bit.
No, you're being a little impatient here.
No, but slow down.
I mean, what does the sex coach do?
And she's a hooker.
And how is the woman in Thailand in a prison going to blow open the Trump-Russia collusion case?
And if CNN is that desperate, it ought to tell you everything you know.
Or the fact that they sent another reporter out to St. Petersburg, Russia, to do a little bit of dumpster diving at one of these Russian troll farms in the hopes that maybe in the garbage, they'll get a clue that'll awaken them to some truth that they didn't know about.
I mean, it's actually bordering on absurd.
And if you got a guy like Sam Nunberg that's in the middle of a personal crisis meltdown, well, let's talk about him 75% of the time, as CNN did.
And let's put him on the air, let him contradict himself repeatedly, embarrass himself repeatedly.
And after all, it makes good TV because he says, I think Trump's in trouble.
I don't know how I have any evidence.
He sounds like Adam Schiff, who's made 275 television appearances only to culminate on the view last week saying, yeah, we really don't have any proof.
And just like Diane Feinstein, there's smoke, but there's no fire.
There's no proof, but we think there's smoke.
There's no fire.
But we do have a lot of evidence.
Now, let me just explain to you.
You're right, all of you, that it is taking way too long to get to the truth.
But it's a process.
You know, you don't become great at any job in five seconds.
Look, my life and career is evidence of that.
I'm not saying I'm great.
I'm just saying that I have gotten better.
If I played you my original radio tapes, it is God-awful embarrassing.
It is horrible.
And, you know, maybe for fun, one day I'll take out one of the tapes and just play it for you.
If you want to be good at anything, you got to work at what it is you want to be good at.
You want to be a good tennis player, good golfer, good football player, basketball player.
You're not going to be good.
It's a process.
You know, you're learning how to play basketball.
You got to learn how to dribble.
You want to play.
You can't just dribble on the right side.
You got to go to the left side.
You got to be able to hit from the inside.
You got to be able to hit from the outside.
If you really want to be a good all-round player, you got to play offense and defense.
And especially on defense, there's certain ways you got to move and keep up, you know, with especially people, you're playing opponents that are really fast, etc.
It's just a process.
All of you think about your individual career.
You weren't great at it on day one.
So the process now, this is where your heart should not be troubled.
We now know that the FBI at the highest levels, people in the DOJ at the highest levels, were involved with what can only be described as the biggest abuse of power scandal in the history of the country.
We now know with no ambiguity, no uncertainty, that the powerful tools of intelligence were used to spy on an opposition party candidate associate to get information about that candidate in the lead up to an election.
We now know that the fix was in as it relates to Hillary Clinton and her email server scandal.
We now know that they were writing an exoneration letter months before they ever talked to Hillary or 17 other key people involved in that investigation.
We now know for sure that Hillary committed multiple felonies when she had subpoenaed her emails and she deleted 33,000 of them and acid washed the hard drives with bleach pit and smashed up the devices with hammers, all of which mishandling information, destruction of classified information, that is all illegal.
And that's why what James Comey did with Peter Strzok, and then we learned that Peter Strzok actually knew that that server that Hillary had confidential, private, top secret, and special access program information on was actually hacked by, of all people, the Russians, and we believe other enemies of this country.
We now know that for a certainty.
So we're getting a lot of certainty here.
We know that when they went to, we know that the dossier, after a year, we finally found out who paid for it.
We didn't know a year ago that it was Hillary Clinton and her campaign.
We didn't know it was the DNC contributing.
We didn't know that she controlled, meaning Hillary, the DNC finances, until Donna Brazil wrote her book.
So there's a lot of things we didn't know here.
You know, if we see members of the FBI that are fixing a what is what are crimes that were committed because they favored that particular candidate, Hillary Clinton, if justice existed in this country, would have been indicted a long time ago in 2016.
But because she has friends in the FBI like Peter Strzzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, James Comey, and friendships with Loretta Lynch and the meeting on the tarmac, she would have otherwise been indicted.
These are all facts now that are no longer in dispute if you care about simple, basic, fundamental truth.
We now know the truth that Hillary bought and paid for that dossier filled with Russian and Russian government lies about Donald Trump.
We know Fusion GPS also working with Christopher Steele that they were shopping these phony unverified stories to members of the gullible left-wing destroy Trump media.
And they were successful in many cases.
We know that as truth.
We know that that phony dossier was then used as the bulk of information to go before a FISA court after the FISA court had previously rejected the application.
But once they added the dossier, as Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI, said, oh, no dossier, no application.
They wouldn't have even applied again.
But the dossier put it over the top.
And to get a FISA judge to issue the warrant, we know that, in fact, that they lied to the FISA judge, purposely withheld and omitted information that was pertinent to any judge, that is, being the opposition party candidate had paid for it, and that it also had not been verified.
And we know that FBI, their own protocols, were not dismissed, were not used in that particular case.
And then you've got, okay, how high up?
We know what happened in the Justice Department.
We know the State Department knew about it.
Well, what did the executive branch know about it?
And more and more, we're beginning to discover that the executive branch also similarly had knowledge of this dossier.
And that was in part my reading of it.
That's the reason why Susan Rice, 15 days after a meeting on January 20th, 2017, just moments after Donald Trump took the oath of office, she's writing note to self.
President Obama said, do it by the book.
President Obama said, do it by the book.
And they all knew about it.
We also know that Robert Mueller was the FBI director at the time where we had Putin and Russian operatives inside the United States that had committed crimes of bribery, extortion, and money laundering, kickbacks, and other racketeering crimes, because we had an FBI informant who has now testified before three congressional committees, and that Robert Mueller did nothing to stop Vladimir Putin.
His goal was from the beginning, through these operatives, to get a foothold in America's uranium market.
We don't have enough uranium as a country.
And lo and behold, he was successful.
18 months later, CFIS, nine committees, nine cabinet positions, including Hillary being Secretary of State, Eric Holder at the Justice Department, signed off and allowed Putin to successfully gain a foothold in our uranium market and 20% of uranium.
I mean, that all happened, and we knew every step of the way what Putin operatives were doing.
So we know all of this is factual.
Then you're going to say to me, I know, but it's taken so long.
When are the indictments coming?
All we hear about is Trump and Trump and Trump and Trump because your media is corrupt and they lie to you.
Robert Mueller never wanted real answers on whether there was Trump-Russia collusion or where the emails that WikiLeaks released, you know, where they originally came from.
He never made a phone call to Julian Assange.
We went there, we talked to him.
He's look, believe him or not, he's not been wrong in 11 years.
A better track record than the New York Times or the Washington Post or ABC, NBC, or CBS or fake news, CNN, or conspiracy TV, MSNBC.
You know, at least ask him.
He's the one guy on the face of the earth who would know where those emails came from.
So it's taken us a year to get all of that down and as fact.
Now we just have to finish the job.
And yeah, it's going to take patience.
It's going to take digging.
It's going to take battling a corrupt media.
It's going to be battling corrupt, you know, the Clinton machine, the Clinton cartel, and everybody else that's going to be impacted by this, including deep state operatives that hate the fact that they're being exposed as being as highly political as they are.
But we're going to do our job.
So you've got to be patient.
Let me explain what process means in all of this because it's important because I feel your impatience here.
But remember, it's been 14 months and we have an inspector general, Horowitz, now has been investigating it this entire time.
And honestly, it could be any day or week now when he is going to unveil his report.
If he does his job, I would expect that report to be devastating as it relates to the FBI not following protocol and even potentially lawbreaking and also what the Department of Justice has done or not done and how deep this goes.
Now, he doesn't have the prosecutorial powers that I'd like him to have, but I got to imagine immediately after that report that lawyers are going to be referred to it.
And then that goes to the point of what we've been saying.
I don't know why Jeff Sessions keeps waiting.
If we know that a FISA court was lied to, that they handed a FISA court, presented it as absolute truth, because that's what FBI protocols say they have their own responsibility at verification and corroboration, and they didn't do it, then they presented to a court materially false information.
There are people that go to jail for that kind of thing every single day.
And then beyond that, you thought the first Nunes memo was bad, but there's another four memos coming out besides that, as he keeps saying, all right, that was phase one.
Now we got phase two.
What did the State Department know and what did the Obama administration officials know?
Now, we have, he sent Friday was the deadline to get specific answers from Obama administration officials.
We haven't gotten word.
Some want extensions.
Others, I'm sure, gave flimsy, lawyered-up answers.
But eventually, they're going to have to answer all the dossier questions.
What did they know and when did they know it?
And then on top of that, Devin Nunes is even going further than that.
So while it's frustrating, we have in a year been able to ascertain all those facts that I explained to you about Uranium One.
We've been able to ascertain finally who bought and paid for the dossier, that nobody verified the dossier, that the dossier was falsely presented to the FISA court as truth, and they didn't tell who bought and paid for it.
And we also know that Hillary Clinton committed multiple crimes, and she was protected by James Comey and Peter Strzzok and Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe and likely Loretta Lynch.
So we've got a lot of people and a lot of facts and a lot of information here that we're all sorting through.
We're getting there.
Hang in there.
Be patient.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour, 800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
Here's what I want to understand.
You know, for all you people out in your sanctuary cities, your sanctuary state of California.
So the Justice Department and the Attorney General, who I wish he'd focus in on some of the things I just talked about in the last half hour, but that's a side note.
But anyway, he has this lawsuit against California Sanctuary City, Sanctuary City State and Sanctuary Cities.
And he's comparing efforts by state officials to defy federal immigration law to actually an attempt of southern states to secede from the union.
This is all a legal argument that he's making.
Let me play some of what Sessions said when he announced this yesterday.
Importantly, the laws are harmful to Californians, and they're especially harmful to our law enforcement, your law enforcement.
So that's why the department filed a suit against the state of California to invalidate these unjust laws and to immediately freeze their effect.
Federal agents must be able to do the job that Congress directed them to do.
Contrary to what you might hear from open borders radicals, we are not asking California, Oakland, or anyone else to actually effectively enforce immigration laws, although we would welcome the positive assistance the majority of jurisdictions in America provide to our federal offices.
We would certainly like that.
But ICE agents do incredible work every day.
They're not backing down.
They're not going to be deterred.
And we're not going to stop enforcing the law in Alabama or California either, for that matter.
We're simply asking the state and other sanctuary jurisdictions to stop actively obstructing federal law enforcement.
Stop treating immigration agents differently from everybody else for the purpose of eviscerating border and immigration laws and advancing an open borders philosophy shared by only a few, the most radical extremist.
Now, understand what people are arguing out there.
Now, California has their state law, but their state law contradicts federal law.
And now you've got people like the mayor of Oakland.
I'm going to give you the statistics in a minute, that are out there aiding and abetting.
Look, we're not even talking about DACA.
We're not talking about DREAMers.
We're talking about immigrants.
Not only did they not respect our laws and sovereignty when they came in here illegally, but then they're found guilty of crimes.
And then you have people like the Oakland Mayor tipping them off.
Now, if they commit more crimes and in some cases, violent crimes, is she going to bear the responsibility of whatever crimes are committed as she's tipping off, aiding, and abetting and assisting in lawbreaking?
It's unbelievable.
We'll get back to this in a second.
Joe Bastardi, Weatherbell.com.
What are we really getting 18 inches in New York or some absurd, obscene number like that?
Well, there are going to be spots up to 18 inches.
Yeah, in the city, you know, I get you this morning, 6 to 12 in the city and at your place at the Hannity Observatory.
I've renamed your house, the Hannity Observatory.
Is that what they call the Hannity Observatory?
That's what I call it, Hannity Intergalactic, just in case space aliens land in the city.
Yeah, exactly.
But what's happening over the next three or four hours in and around New York, right for the rush hour, it's going to be snowing two to three inches an hour.
And if you go within 25 miles of the city, you know, Morristown and some of these places may wind up with 18 inches of snow, palisades in there, and even out on Long Island in some places.
When you get these bands, Sean, you know, you heard the thunder going off a little bit earlier.
We had thunderstorms going off.
You get it snowing very intensely in one place and another place not as intensely.
So over the next three, four hours, snow rates of one, two, three inches an hour will be showing up.
And the ending time in the city, I think, the ending time around Philadelphia, let's take care of Philadelphia, where it is just really blasting away in there right now.
It should be around 6 p.m.
The back edge should come across New York City between 8 and 9 p.m.
At that time, all the rain that is falling in southeast New England, Boston, the Providence quarters, a lot of rain mixed in, that will turn over to snow.
And their worst part of the storm will be tonight, late tonight, 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. in the morning.
That's when they get 6 to 12, locally, 18.
And you say, well, how come there's so much variation?
And again, it's because of the banding.
You live outside the city, for instance.
It may be 31 degrees at your place in the city.
Where's the groundhog guy that announces whether we're going to have more spring or more winter?
Well, that's interesting because a lot of people two weeks ago had given up on winter.
As you know, I'm involved.
Punksatani Phil is the name.
Yeah, Pungsat.
You ever watch Groundhog Day?
It's irritating to watch that show.
I've watched it a bunch of times.
I was actually a keynote speaker out there a couple of times.
Why am I not surprised?
Here's the bottom line.
If you're on the road, drive slower and safer.
Let the plows, if you don't have to drive, don't drive.
Don't even waste your time going to the store because everybody that gets panicked every time already wiped out any milk and bread that was left in the store.
And, you know, find a local restaurant, get some pizza, order in, and enjoy the night and watch Hannity tonight.
It's a perfect night.
Yeah, well, I want everybody to watch Hannity, but, you know, we need power, and that's another problem that we're going to get some power outages because the wind is starting to pick up with all this.
You have six, seven inches of snow on these trees.
So hopefully, hopefully, you say a prayer so the power stays on.
And 9 o'clock tonight, you're watching Hannity, right?
And you won't have to see me on there, but I'm sure the storm will be coming to an end around New York City around 9 o'clock.
All right, so that all ends at 9 o'clock in New York, and then New England gets hit after us like they always get hit, right?
Yeah, and I will say, I want to say this, too.
This weather pattern you're seeing now is straight out of the 1950s and 1960s.
Marches used to be cold and wild across the United States, believe me.
And in Europe, it's something I analyze in my book, The Climate Crisis.
Whatever happened to In Like a Lion and Out Like a Lamb, that never happens either.
Well, you got to watch that old Belushi skit on Saturday Night Live.
Sometimes another car comes in like a gopher and goes out like a guinea pig, you know, in some places.
But look, we've got another storm coming Monday, so I need to join you today.
It's full of great news.
Fair warning.
All right.
The book is called The Climate Chronicles: Inconvenient Revelations that You're Not Going to Hear from Al Gore and others.
We have it up on Hannity.com.
It's on Amazon.com and in bookstores everywhere.
Joe Bastardi, the official weatherman, Sean Hannity Show.
Thank you so much, sir.
Appreciate it.
All right.
So, you know, this is now the president, the Department of Justice suing California over interference with immigration enforcement.
You know, now the question is, what is going to happen to those like, for example, this Oakland mayor when she is not only defying the law, but encouraging law breaking and assisting in law breaking?
You know, what do you do in that particular?
I just suspect that nobody wants to turn this woman into a martyr, and so they're just going to let her keep doing it, which is what we always do.
We don't hold people responsible in this country.
The only people that get held responsible as it relates to law are the people that get up every day, work hard, play by the rules, obey the laws, and pay their taxes.
They're the ones that get the book thrown at them.
You know, if you're in the upper echelons of the swamp in the political world, you seem to get a pass, unless, of course, you're a Republican or a conservative or your last name happens to be Trump, then it's, you know, it's a bare knuckle brawl and everything gets thrown at you.
Now, of the 11 million estimated unauthorized illegal immigrants in the U.S., well, about 820,000 of them are criminals, convicted criminals, according to the July 25th report by Migration Policy Institute, the MPI.
Illegal immigrants accounted for 13% of all non-immigration-related federal sentences in the year 2016, which is greater, obviously, than the 3.5% of the population that illegal immigrants are said to make up.
Now, 15 of the 84, if you're looking at actual numbers, you have a significant number of serious crimes, violent crimes being committed.
I went down to Texas and I sat in on that briefing with then-Governor Rick Perry, and what did I learn?
I learned that 640-some-odd thousand crimes had been committed against Texans just over a seven-year period.
And then you're talking about major crimes like homicides and assault charges and burglary charges and drug charges, but there's even kidnapping and theft and obstructing police and robbery charges, sexual assault charges, weapon charges.
It runs the gamut.
The number of criminal aliens in federal prisons in fiscal year 2010 was about 55,000, according to the Government Accountability Office.
ICE has conducted over 225,000 removals or deportations in fiscal year 2017, and 56% of those were removed by ICE.
And of that number, 226,127 were previously convicted of a crime.
So you got repeat offenders.
You know, if we're not going to be able to debate DACA, and if they don't like the wall that's going to be built, and they don't want to end chain migration or end the visa lottery, can we at least get the people that are committing violent crimes, drug offenses, out of the country?
Can we at least start there?
Because of the people that were going to be rounded up in Oakland and around the San Francisco area, we're able to find out the raid that did happen, and it wasn't anywhere near the success level it was supposed to be.
Well, it did lead to the arrest of 232 illegal immigrants in the Bay Area, 180 of which ICED were either convicted criminals, had been issued a final order of removal and failed to depart the U.S., or had been previously removed from the country and had come back illegally.
And by the way, the arrests included 115 who had prior felony convictions for serious or violent offenses, such as child sex crimes or weapons charges or assault charges, or had past convictions for significant multiple misdemeanors.
So these are the people that this mayor of Oakland is protecting.
That's part of the group of people she's protecting.
Unbelievable.
All right, let's get to our busy phone.
Say hi to Art is in Ohio.
Art, hi, how are you?
Glad you called.
Welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
Hi.
Thank you for taking my call.
Thank you.
My whole thing today was I was commenting to the lady about earlier.
You were commenting about how long it's taking.
I understand that.
I'm looking at how you have to fight to get every bit of information you get and how our government, how our elected officials all, to me, it's a high-end welfare system.
They all cover each other's ass.
They all look after each other.
They don't want all the truth out there.
And you need to stay diligent and keep going with it.
That's really all I've got to say.
I'm going to stay diligent, but I just want to remind people, we now know a lot more than we knew a year ago.
We now know the fix was in that Hillary should have been indicted well before she ever went to Cleveland or wherever they had the convention.
She should have been indicted.
Comey, Strzok, McCabe, Paige, and probably Loretta Lynch, too, with the meeting with, you know, and getting out of the way.
They all had a hand in this.
We know what she did with the email server.
We know how she acted.
We know everything that she did illegally.
But they kept her in the race because they wanted her to be the president, and they intervened.
They think they know better than the rule of law of the American people.
And that's why they did it.
They didn't think they, none of this would have come to light had she won ever.
And that's the point.
None of them thought Trump could win, but he did.
And now we're beginning to get to the bottom.
We didn't know a year ago about the dossier.
We didn't know until fairly recently that it was Clinton that paid for this thing and that she used her money from a campaign and the DNC money.
We knew it wasn't verified.
Now we know for sure it's not verified.
And then we found out all about, remember when we first reported, it was a year ago March, we broke on this show that Trump Tower was being surveilled and that a Pfizer warrant had been issued.
And then Trump tweeted out something similar.
He's being spied upon or whatever.
Everybody laughed at the notion.
And a lot of these people that knew actually testified that they didn't know.
We didn't know that a year ago.
You know, so we didn't know that it was used to get the FISA warrant.
We didn't know everything.
We didn't know what the informant in the Uranium One case was involved in.
Now we know.
So now it's a matter of just keep digging and digging and digging and getting into the truth.
Let's say hi to Alex in Ventura, California.
I know you guys had big fires out there a short time ago.
Hope everybody's okay.
Yes, thankfully.
We were fine.
We had to evacuate, but everything was great.
The law enforcement, the firefighters, they did such a wonderful job.
They really did.
Look, all those people that go into those fires, those wins are so, you know, those Santa Ana wins come in.
It's so harsh, those conditions.
I mean, people can die doing that.
And in the past, if I'm not mistaken, people have died fighting those fires.
Yeah, yeah, they have.
It's incredibly dangerous.
And, you know, they put their lines out there.
They put their lives out there on the line every day, and we're thankful for them.
Yeah, well, they're doing a good job.
What's on your mind today?
Well, Sean, I just wanted to say that, you know, I'm a biker for Trump.
I've got this big, beautiful Harley-Davidson motorcycle in East Harrison.
What Harley do you have?
Listen, I just want a little Harley.
I just want the Harley 1,200.
It's not going over well in my life when I say that, though.
Yeah.
You know, I have a 1200 actually, but unfortunately, I just wanted to let you know that you're not going to be able to do it.
By the way, it's like the safest bike out there, isn't it?
It is.
It really is.
But it's too bad that you can't have one.
I mean, I'm a 56-year-old man.
Why do I get told no?
Why do I even listen?
What's wrong with me?
I don't know.
I don't know, Sean.
What is wrong with you?
I don't know.
I'm just, you know, you're worth, you know what?
You're going to die on that thing.
Alex is the call of the day, by the way.
That was like a prime moment, Alex.
Well played.
Well, Linda has been encouraging me to get.
Linda says, Sean, just go get the bike.
Sean, just get the bike.
Get on the hally.
Get on the bottom.
Get on the hauly.
And to her credit, her and the team bought me this beautiful leather jacket that I'm all set to wear on my bike.
That sounds wonderful.
A biker's leather jacket.
It's a very cool black leather jacket.
Really love it.
But I can't get the bike.
You know, my family wants me to get it.
You should wear it around the house and pretend.
Oh, stop.
What, the pretend you want to get away from the sky?
Ride your shit.
You want me to sit on a Schwinn bicycle?
I couldn't even sit on the Vespa.
It's embarrassing.
I'm not driving a VESPA.
I've driven bikes my whole life.
What is wrong with that?
Nothing like leather and a VESPA.
A leather and a VESPA.
Okay.
Anyway, what was your point?
I'm sorry.
I'm interrupting.
Go ahead.
I don't have time for a point.
I am a bad host, bad time management.
Let's call Alex back tomorrow.
I want a picture of the bike he has.
Can you ask him to send a picture?
800-941 Sean Tolfrey telephone number.
Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett.
They're going to weigh in on all this when we get back.
And we have so much more coming today.
I was trying to figure out, so did he tell the truth or is he part of some conspiracy to work with Hillary Clinton to bring Trump down?
And the truth, he's really kind of a whistleblower who totally believed what he was saying.
And he kept trying to get people.
He was saying the Russians are coming.
The Russians are coming.
And contrary to the conspiracy theories, mostly no one listened.
Particularly, I mean, he went to the FBI and they kind of dragged their feet.
He went to the State Department.
Jane, his work has now obviously been completely politicized.
And you've even seen Republican senators, Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham, refer him for criminal prosecution to the Department of Justice, arguing that he committed a crime and lying to the FBI.
I'm curious, how does he feel about this now, having done what I assume he thought was kind of a service to the United States and trying to reveal what he knew about Donald Trump and connections to Russians?
What does he feel about now being accused of being a criminal by politicians here?
You know, the thing is, I did the first interview with anybody close to him, his partner, because Steele's not allowed to talk, but explained what he thinks, which is, you know, it's been shocking to him.
He feels he has tried to been a loyal ally to the United States for 30 years.
That's part of the interview, Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, and writing a piece on Christopher Steele.
He's like a whistleblower, and he kept saying the Russians are coming, and nobody would listen.
And she says that the person close to Steele says he's been shocked at being labeled a criminal, and he's trying to be a loyal ally to the U.S. for 30 years.
And people in the intelligence community say that much of the info in the dossier is looking stronger and says Obama and Comey believe that Steele and his sources were reliable and his findings were consistent.
Well, obviously, she has now taken a batch of poisoned drink and swallowed all of it.
Greg Jarrett and Sarah Carter are with us.
Greg Jarrett, Fox News legal analyst, Sarah Carter, investigative reporter.
Greg, how many times have you read this dossier?
It never gets old.
About 100 times, and I still laugh.
Why do you laugh every time you read it?
It's written by a really bad novelist who is trying to conjure up a story out of thin air that frankly makes no sense.
It's poorly written.
It just doesn't pass the laugh test.
And it's based on double, triple, and quadruple hearsay, none of which is even capable of being verified.
And look, it is a myth that Christopher Steele is some sort of a reliable patriot.
He's British, of course, but holds some dear allegiance to the United States.
It's not true.
This is a guy who's trained in deception and lying.
He has sources, allegedly, who are infamous for disinformation, the Russians.
And just, you know, read the ICA, the report by the DNI about how they're just notorious for infusing the West with all kinds of lies.
And that's what they did in this case.
I don't know if Steele was in on it and just made stuff up or whether he was fed a lot of malarkey by people in Moscow.
But he hated Trump, and so did Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS.
And two of them decided, let's run with this thing and ruin Trump.
It's really cool.
Isn't that at the end of the day, it defies any common sense whatsoever, Sarah, and that the only reason that they wanted to believe this is because it was anti-Trump.
And if it meant they're going to tell this outrageous story about hookers in the Ritz in Moscow urinating on Donald Trump's bed, and even though it's quadruple hearsay to get there and likely a Russian government source that has paid, It doesn't matter because it gets to the goal of creating a false narrative.
It's like former—it really is a book right out of, you know, Russian propaganda, misinformation, and lies to their own people.
Yeah, and it's a book, Sean, that the Russians have written over and over again since even before the wall came down, you know, before the Iron Curtain came down that the KGB was, they were experts at.
I mean, this is something they're well trained in.
You know, it wasn't as if it would be different if Christopher Steele was working, for example, on a completely different case and he had flipped based on, you know, he's a former intelligence officer.
He had accidentally flipped some Russian who had some information that said, hey, look, I have some documents I need to show you.
I want to expose it because I think there's some really sordid issues here, some corruption issues.
Here's some evidence.
No, Christopher Steele was paid basically by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign to go out and dig up dirt on President Trump through Fusion DPS.
And then he goes to his old cohorts, people who are also trained in deception, and reaches out to them looking for information on President Trump.
The very minute he opened his mouth and spoke to those Russian ex-spies, current spies with the FSB, they immediately went into gear and they figured out who was paying him.
There is no doubt in my mind, based on the people I've spoken with, that they knew right away that Christopher Steele, that this was an opposition type of investigation into President Trump and it fit right in with their plans, which is to sow chaos in the United States.
And they fed him a bunch of disinformation.
He didn't care because, as Greg said, and as we know now, based on actual facts, he opposed Trump.
From the beginning, he would do anything to see that Trump was not elected.
So from the very beginning, this was a failed intelligence operation by an ex-British spy, a foreign agent of another country, using basically a...
But fundamentally, the question is this.
How is it, because you can't write a spy novel like this?
How is it Hillary has the FBI, Department of Justice, cover for her when we know she violated laws with the email server with classified top secret special access program, you know, buried in a closet in a mom-and-pop shop, deleting subpoenaed emails, 33,000, acid-washing the hard drive, you know, banging up and beating up devices.
She gets exonerated without an investigation.
And then Hillary Clinton gets to fix a primary.
And then Hillary Clinton, you know, gets to literally purchases Russian lies, and we know it came from her, to manipulate the minds of the American people.
And then all her deep state friends get together and they go to the FISA court.
They put in an application.
The bulk of information is the bought and paid for lies.
They don't tell the court the truth.
They bury where the information came from, who paid for it.
They put a footnote that is meaningless rather than telling the truth.
And she seems to, up to this point, the focus in this country still remains Trump, Russia, Trump, Russia.
And meanwhile, we have all the evidence that I think would put everybody else in this country in jail but her.
She got away with it because Democrats were in power for eight years and the Obama administration dominated the FBI and the Department of Justice and they protected her.
They wanted to continue their own power and so the only way they could do that was to perpetuate another Democrat in the White House and that was Hillary Clinton.
They were banking on it.
We get to keep our jobs.
We keep our hold on power if Hillary Clinton is president.
So we're not going to indict her.
We're not even going to convene a grand jury.
We're going to cover up her crimes and protect her.
That's how she got away with it.
She got away with it because she was in, basically, if you look at the facts, the collusion was between Hillary Clinton and senior-level Obama officials.
And they were in collusion together.
And then you look at the facts and you see that the real collusion was the Russia collusion with this dossier and Fusion GPS and Hillary Clinton and spreading disinformation.
And then you go one step further and you say, well, the media fed into that.
A lot of people in the United States, media as well as lawmakers, fed in and bought into this dossier and helped spread unsubstantiated false research.
Okay, then why are we where we are today where Robert Mueller now gets to appoint a team of only Democratic donors to Obama Clinton and others?
He has a team of Trump haters and Clinton lovers on the team.
We have all of this evidence.
You never hear about anything happening with Hillary except through your investigation and analysis and my investigations and analysis.
Nobody else in the media is touching it.
And yet, you know, if Sam Nunberg is having a meltdown on national TV, that's what they're going to talk about because he's anti-Trump.
You know, it seems that we're in an environment where up is down, down is up, black is white, white is black, and the truth is a lie and the lie is truth.
And I just don't know.
Country seems to be spinning out of control based on a lie and truth falls by the wayside as the casualty in all this.
And meanwhile, Mueller's mandate, you know, expands every single day.
Now he's looking into financing of potential from the United Arab Emirates.
And, you know, he's expanding out as far as he possibly can go, considering there's no collusion he can prove.
Well, because the collection of Trump haters knows no end.
And Robert Mueller has been a longtime friend, ally, and partner with James Comey.
He was fired by President Trump justifiably for breaking the law.
And so Mueller has an agenda.
He has motivation.
It's called retribution.
And you just look at his team of partisans and you know what's going on here.
So we have now criminalized political differences where the guilty go free and the innocent get investigations that never end.
Well, it appears that way.
And it appears, if you want to go back to your original question, Sean, how did we get here?
Well, look, it was former FBI Director Comey who decided not to move forward with the Hillary Clinton investigation into her email server.
He shut that down.
And then it was FBI Direct Former.
Did he shut it down or did he rig it?
Rig the outcome and not have any fidelity to the law.
It wasn't even his decision to make.
It should have gone to Loretta Lynch.
Department of Justice, but he shut it down.
And then he opens up.
He basically said he leaked his memos, some of which were classified, in order to open a special counsel investigation into the president.
I will take a break.
Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett are with us.
And as we continue, Greg Jarrett and Sarah Carter with us.
Now, bringing up all of the issues, is there ever going to be justice as it relates to the FixbnN, the laws Hillary broke on the email server scandal?
Will there be justice on the corrupt Uranium One deal?
Will there be justice against those people that willingly lied to a FISA court judge, Greg Jarrett?
Not unless there's a second special counsel, because the Inspector General at the Department of Justice is toothless, has no power.
He can make some findings, but he can probably only get his hands on about 10% of the wrongdoing.
That's about it.
So if there's a second special counsel who takes his duties seriously, objectively, and does it in a neutral fashion, absolutely he'll be able to do it.
So then what does this say about Jeff Sessions?
Where is the Attorney General of the United States?
He's not the Attorney General.
That's his title, but he's not.
He is left out of all decisions.
He is kept out of meetings.
He doesn't have a clue as to what's going on, and he thinks everything's hunky-dory.
Does he not watch?
Does he not read?
Does he not aware of what is going on here and how dangerous this is for the rule of law, equal application of the law, Sarah?
I think he's very well aware of that.
I don't think that the Attorney General is completely blinded to what's happening here.
What's going on inside the Department of Justice is a mystery to a lot of people.
And I've spoken to senators and congressional members who are saying, look, I don't know which direction Attorney General Jeff Sessions is going to take.
But now there's a lot more people pushing for a special counsel.
Now, the DOJ and Attorney General Sessions says, please, let's stop this madness of special counsels.
Let's let Horowitz do his job.
But if you talk to others, they say, you know, Michael Howells.
Yeah, he has no prosecutorial powers.
None.
Zero.
And he doesn't have the resources that would require that he would need in order to do this extensive investigation.
But, Sean, look, I think that people will be brought to justice.
There's ongoing investigations right now, even within the Department of Justice.
There are federal prosecutors looking into a lot of these issues besides, you know, Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
So there will be evidence coming out.
And remember, Horowitz's report is due very soon, probably within the next few weeks.
And when that report comes out, he can refer for criminal prosecution.
Is it going to be in March or are they going to push it?
What is it, 14 months?
When do we finally get it?
I think it'll be this March.
I think it'll be this month.
The latest would be probably the first week of April.
That's what I've been told.
But March was their target date, so I think they're going to try to get it out by the target date.
And one final thought here, because I think this is really important.
If he does make a criminal referral, then we're going to see what action the Department of Justice takes under Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
If he recuses himself from that, if nothing moves forward, then I think we need to be really worried.
But if they decide to move forward with some type of prosecution of any of these players, then we may be able to say, okay, then maybe they are going to do their job.
But right now, we just don't know.
All right.
Thank you both.
800-941 Sean is our number.
Now, when we come back.
We'll check in.
I was pretty ticked off at what Cohn did with his high-profile removal over trade when he knew Donald Trump's position on trade for a long time.
We'll talk about the economy opportunities and what Gary Cohn actually did to the president.
Well, it's just like everybody else in D.C., just looking out for number one.
Larry, what does this mean in terms of trade?
Well, it's not great.
I can say that.
I mean, in recent days, I've talked to Gary.
I personally urged him to stay.
He didn't commit, and I've done it on the air.
You've heard me do it.
I think he did a great job.
I think he has a good staff.
I think he's been a powerful force.
So I'm quite sorry that this is true.
I mean, I'm reading the New York Times website, and the president has issued a statement, so I guess we know it's true.
You know, some of your colleagues are saying about the trade story.
You're asking, I think it's a turn for the worse, okay?
You know, the meeting, he was trying to set up a very, very good, it was a great idea to have the manufacturers who use steel come in and talk to the president and give him the other side of the story.
But I was told today, and I reported this on closing bell, that that meeting was not on the calendar and was never put on the calendar.
Now, what role that might play in Gary's decision, I cannot say.
But I think he did a great job.
I'm really sorry he's leaving.
And we'll see who the president appoints.
Are you still planning on going ahead with these tariffs?
There are some people in your party who have suggested it's not a good idea.
Well, the United States has been taken advantage of by other countries, both friendly and not so friendly, for many, many decades.
And we have a trade deficit of $800 billion a year.
And that's not going to happen with me.
We have been mistreated by many, sometimes fairly, but there are really very few instances where that's taken place.
And I don't blame the countries.
I blame our leadership for allowing it to happen.
When I was with President Xi in China, as an example, we lose $500 billion a year on trade.
We have a deficit of approximately $500 billion a year with China.
And we're doing things with China, which are very strong, but they understand it.
But I was with him and I said to him in public, I said, look, I'm not blaming you.
I blame our people for not doing a better job for allowing this to happen.
But it's like that with many countries other than smaller.
The European Union has been particularly tough on the United States.
They make it almost impossible for us to do business with them, and yet they send their cars and everything else back into the United States.
And they can do whatever they'd like.
But if they do that, then we put a big tax of 25% on their cars.
And believe me, they won't be doing it very long.
The European Union has not treated us well.
And it's been a very, very unfair trade situation.
I'm here to protect.
And one of the reasons I was elected is I'm protecting our workers.
I'm protecting our companies.
And I'm not going to let that happen.
So we're doing tariffs on steel.
We cannot lose our steel industry.
It's a fraction of what it once was.
And we can't lose our aluminum industry, also a fraction of what it once was.
We remain committed to immigration reform that protects our country, strengthens our economy, and lifts our workers from poverty to prosperity.
We want every American to know the dignity of work, the pride of a paycheck, and the satisfaction of a job well done.
All right, that's the president talking about the economy.
Now that Gary Cohn is out, a battle seems to be waging among some in the Republican Party on the issue of trade and the issue of tariffs that the president is thinking about putting on as it relates to other countries.
The president defending it yesterday with the Swedish prime minister joining us now to react to it all.
He's actually a friend of Gary Cohn, tried to encourage Cohn to actually stay in the position, is Larry Kudlow.
He's a CNBC host, former Reagan administration economist, author of the book JFK and the Reagan Revolution, a secret history of American prosperity.
Look, you said that it could be a turn for the worse in terms of the economy.
What part of Donald Trump's agenda on trade did Gary Cohn not understand ahead of time?
I mean, he's acting like he's all surprised, making a big deal.
And like so many people that go to Washington, Larry, seems to be making it all about him when he knew darn well where Donald Trump stood on the issue of trade.
Well, look, Sean, the clips you played regarding President Trump, I agree with every single thing.
Absolutely, every single thing.
And I think Gary Cohn did too.
It's a question of ways and means, Sean.
A lot of unfair trading practices around the world.
A lot of bad deals cut.
No question about it.
Don't get me wrong.
Changes must be made.
My problem is blanket tariffs, number one, covering all nations on steel and aluminum, may well do us and the others a lot of economic damage.
It's not catastrophic, but fact is whenever you raise tariffs, you're raising taxes, in this case, to protect steel, which already has 160 protections on it.
You might hurt the downstream people, the manufacturers and businesses that use steel, the consumers, the energy companies, the construction companies, the infrastructure companies, the car companies.
So I'm, you know, don't think we have to deal with the trade issue, Sean.
There may be better ways, more efficient ways that will be pro-growth.
I want everything to be pro-growth.
My worry about the steel tariffs is that they're anti-growth.
They could be a prosperity killer.
The president's goals are correct.
I don't think this is the most efficient way to program.
Before we get into the issue, I'm a free trader, but I'm also a believer in fair trade.
And the president makes a very compelling argument that this country has been taken advantage of, i.e. China, and the ability to get certain goods into certain markets that we offer free markets on their end, and there's no reciprocity.
I actually think the president is just negotiating more than anything else than this will actually materialize, but time will tell.
But here's the problem I have.
Gary Cohn.
Gary Cohn is showboating.
Gary Cohn makes a big deal as if it's about him.
Gary Cohn has always known.
He's a bit of a globalist.
I don't have a problem with what they did on the tax bill.
It could have been better, in my opinion.
But, you know, Gary Cohn, acting like he's the man of great principle, he knew the president's trade position when he went in.
That's what bothers me.
It's almost like everybody that goes in to serve in Washington, it's always about, well, how do they come out looking in this?
How do they feel about this?
And he has to go out with great fanfare, making it about him.
And that's what annoys me about him and a lot of other people that go to serve in D.C.
Well, look, you know, Sean, you have a point.
I'm merely, I asked, I thought Cohn should stay because he, too, was worried about the anti-growth and the tariffs and that there might be better ways to do this, okay?
I think you did a great job on tax reform.
I think you did a very good job in other areas, deregulation, energy.
Sometimes he disagreed with the president.
So I don't want to defend Gary personally.
I'm just saying on the other side.
But this was such a big part of the president's agenda.
This was no small part.
The president said it, you know, if not a thousand times, 10,000 times on the campaign trail.
And so that's what's frustrating to me.
Look, I'm not saying he didn't have contributions, but it's like, so the president announces, then he's got to go out with great fanfare.
He does it in the middle of the week.
It's sort of a middle finger to the president.
And to me, it's also his way of saying to all his liberal friends and all his globalist friends, well, see, I stood up for what's right.
And the showboating, if you ask me, I think we've seen way too much of it in the administration.
All right.
I think you're being tough on him, but that's your.
I don't think I'm being tough on him.
Tell me what part of his trade policies did he not understand when he took the job.
Trade, well, look, the president announced, kind of out of the blue, a 25% tariff, blanket tariff on steel and 10% on aluminum.
That was a sloppy process.
I don't think that was the president's fault.
I think the White House has had some departures, Rob Porter, for example, who had to go.
But I don't think the paperwork was done.
I don't think the meetings were done.
But that's really, I just want to move this ball, Sean.
Just hear me out.
The biggest trade, the biggest unfair trade offender, in my opinion, is China.
We must take strong steps against China for 100 reasons, including they steal our intellectual property rights.
Now, look, why not use targeted, selective tariffs regarding China and send them a message, which other administrations haven't.
Send them the message because they're the biggest offender pretty much across the board.
See, here's my issue: I don't like blanket tariffs because we have friends and allies that are going to get hurt.
I don't think they should.
On the other hand, I love targeted tariffs with a repeating offender, China.
China talks a good game.
They never follow through, Sean.
Never follow through.
I think you know this.
I would have gone there first.
That's only my only criticism.
I think the president is right to stand up.
I think.
But he's met with the Chinese president on numerous occasions.
He's talked to them at length about this.
It's not even a surprise to the Chinese.
But why didn't we do something?
Well, I mean, that's going to be up to them to do something.
I mean, just like it's up to them if they want to take a strategic role as it relates to North Korea, considering it's.
Yeah, but we can blast them.
Look, the spirit of what Trump is saying, I totally agree, Sean.
At the end of the day, you know Trump as I do.
Don't you think that this is the ultimate negotiation and he's waiting for these countries to blink?
Because that's how I view it.
And I think what you're going to see is you're going to see better, freer, fairer trade as a result.
Look, it was probably one part of his policy that I disagreed strongly with, but that's not the point.
I'm just a little tired of the showboating of people like Gary Cohn, you know, and the way that he pulled this off this week was to self-aggrandize himself.
And it's not about him.
And he can't act surprised at a policy that the president made known every day.
It's just a crock.
All right, I hear you.
I just don't want to argue, Gary Cohn.
It's the policies that I'm concerned about.
It's the economic growth.
Like I say, Sean, Trump's policies on tax cuts, and Steve Moore and I and others helped him in a campaign.
We're still helping them.
Tax cuts, deregulation, energy, go after the swamp.
I love that stuff, Sean.
And our economy is responding very rapidly, probably faster than any of us thought.
I love that stuff.
All I'm saying is with respect to trade, we should try to do things that will not harm our country.
That's all.
Tariffs are taxes and may do harm to the USA.
One other thought.
All right, hold that one other thought.
We'll take a break.
We'll come back.
Larry Kudlow is with us, 800-941.
Sean, is our toll-free telephone number if you want to be a part of the program?
All right, as we continue, Larry Kudlow is with us, author of the best-selling book, JFK and the Reagan Revolution, A Secret History of American Prosperity.
All right, so getting rid of burdensome regulation and the tax bill, albeit imperfect, I would have liked it better, and couple that with the president's energy policies, which now we are now on a path.
We're producing more energy than any other country on the planet now, which we could have been doing for decades.
But I would argue now we are on a path that we're going to create millions of jobs.
It's going to increase revenues to the government.
Americans now and corporations are going to be investing in factories, manufacturing centers.
Repatriated money should be coming back into the country.
It's all good.
How good will it get?
How fast?
Well, it's kind of cool because, you know, three out of 400 corporations responded within weeks when the tax bill was signed, the business tax bar.
They were crumbs, Larry, mere crumbs.
So I hear.
Well, they're not crumbs.
They amount to a lot.
We're on the front end of the best investment, business investment, CapEx, boom, Sean, in at least 20 years.
I've said that to the president in the last couple weeks.
You're seeing a fabulous response, fabulous response, including certain CEOs that don't like Trump, but they like him now because he's doing a lot for business and everybody's making money, and that's great.
See, I just totally support that.
Look, I worked hard on that and worked hard to sell this thing in Congress at the beginning of the year, end of last year.
So I'm with you.
I'm with you.
I'm with you.
I'm with the president on the trade issues.
We must stomp out on fair trading practices as best we can.
But let's be careful to do it in a manner discussion between people that want the best for the country.
What Gary Cohn polled this week was nothing but looking out for Gary Cohn.
And you could tell him I said that.
I'll leave it.
I mean, I'll leave it.
I was talking to my pal and your pal, Art Laffer, who was reminding me back in the Nixon days, George Schultz was OMB and Treasury, and Schultz had to do a lot of things.
Schultz would weigh in.
Nixon would hear him.
Nixon didn't follow it.
But Schultz didn't go out there and criticize the president.
So that's probably a better example of what you're talking about.
Look, I think you go into these jobs, all right?
I was the deputy OMB for Reagan.
You go into these jobs, Sean.
You hope, as long as you have an opportunity to express your view, agree or disagree, that's a big plus.
But when the decision is made, you have to fall into line or else you just resign.
But I'm just saying.
Okay, he could have resigned on a Friday on a holiday weekend like most people in Washington, but he had to make a big deal about it.
And that was just for, that was all about Gary.
He made an all-about Gary Cohn move, and anybody that tells you different is just not being honest.
No, I'm being honest because he has no excuse.
He knew from day one where he stood on trade, and for him to act like, oh, this came out of nowhere is ridiculous.
All right, but we still love you.
Larry Kudlow, thanks for being with us, 800-941-Sean, toll-free telephone number.
All right, the immigration debate.
It's the DOJ versus the state of California and this crazy Oakland mayor that's next.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
In the final hour of the Sean Hannity Show, my administration submitted a balanced and responsible immigration reform plan to Congress.
Our plan fully secures the border, provides a permanent solution to DACA, which we're really working on, and modernizes our immigration system by ending extended family migration and the lottery system so we can eventually have a merit-based system where people can come in and work for your companies, work for you, and do a phenomenal job, a phenomenal job.
People that love our country and that want to love our country and our people.
These reforms are supported by the vast majority of Latino voters.
In fact, more than eight in ten Latino voters think immigration to our country should be based on skill, not just a relationship with people you don't even know.
This is the mainstream view of all Americans, including Latinos.
Yet, the Senate Democrats filibustered our plan because they don't care about the immigration system of reform, and they don't want to solve the problem.
They would rather use it to get elected.
Importantly, the laws are harmful to Californians, and they are especially harmful to our law enforcement, your law enforcement.
So that's why the department filed a suit against the state of California to invalidate these unjust laws and to immediately freeze their effect.
Federal agents must be able to do the job that Congress directed them to do.
Contrary to what you might hear from open borders radicals, we are not asking California, Oakland, or anyone else to actually effectively enforce immigration laws, although we would welcome the positive assistance the majority of jurisdictions in America provide to our federal offices.
We would certainly like that.
But ICE agents do incredible work every day.
They're not backing down.
They're not going to be deterred.
And we're not going to stop enforcing the law in Alabama or California either, for that matter.
We're simply asking the state and other sanctuary jurisdictions to stop actively obstructing federal law enforcement.
Stop treating immigration agents differently from everybody else for the purpose of eviscerating border and immigration laws.
All right, that was the Attorney General Jeff Sessions announcing his lawsuit against California for sanctuary cities.
Glad you're with us.
News Roundup Information Overload Hour here on the Sean Hannity Show.
He further went on to say a refusal to apprehend and deport those, especially the criminal element, effectively rejects all immigration law and creates an open border system.
And he said open borders is a radical, irrational idea that cannot be accepted.
In a pretty strongly worded comment in his announcement yesterday that he intends to sue California over interference with immigration enforcement, if you look at some of the numbers that we have available, I mean, it's pretty staggering.
All right, so the estimate is about 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States.
820,000 of those are estimated to be convicted criminals.
That's a lot of people.
Now, illegal immigrants account for 13% of all non-immigration-related federal sentences in fiscal year 2016.
That's greater than 3.5% of the population that illegal immigrants are said to make up.
It includes all sorts of crimes all across the board from murder, drug trafficking sentences, assault, drug possession, and other issues.
You have 243,000 criminal aliens that have been booked into local Texas jails between June 1st, 2011, January 31st, 2018.
I sat through that border hearing where 642,000 crimes were committed against Texans alone over a seven-year period.
And then you have the issue in the case of this mayor out in Oakland, California, you know, warning illegal immigrants of an upcoming ICE raid in Northern California that would have led to a number of illegal immigrants with violence and, in some cases, sex-related convictions, evading now capture and deportation.
When the mayor tweeted out an impending warning of the four-day raid last week, alerting targeted individuals to imminent arrest and obviously infuriating the Attorney General, well, the raid led to the arrest of 232 illegal immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area, 180 of which I said, quote, were either convicted criminals who had been issued a final order of removal or failed to deport, depart the United States,
or had been previously removed from the country and came back again illegally.
And the arrest included 115 that had prior felony convictions for serious or violent offenses, such as child sex crimes, weapons charges, assault, or had past convictions for significant or multiple misdemeanors.
Well, that happened in spite of the warning.
Who knows who was able to get free and all of that?
Anyway, as we continue our debate discussion here, Jessica Vaughan is the director of policy studies, the Center for Immigration Studies, Francisco Hernandez, criminal law specialist.
And welcome both of you back to the program.
You know, you believe we're a nation of laws, right?
Well, of course we are.
Okay, and when people enter this country without getting our permission, they don't do it the legal way, then they're here illegally, correct?
Well, but you and I have discussed this.
No, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
We're not.
This isn't a discussion.
If you come into this country and you don't apply and you sneak across the border, you are entering America, the United States of America, illegally, right?
You are entering the promised land.
You're right.
The question I thought we were talking about.
You're entering the promised land illegally.
Can you say the word illegal?
Pardon me?
Can you say that they're entering the promised land illegally?
Well, it depends what they're well.
Look, if you don't have permission of the U.S. government and you come into this country, you have broken the law.
Yes or no?
But it's an administrative.
If you and I swim across the river, it's the same office.
Okay, we're not going to get to first base if you can't just acknowledge a simple, fundamental, basic truth.
If you enter the United States and you don't have the permission of the United States and you're not a citizen, then you are entering illegally and breaking the law.
Yes or no?
You are correct.
You do not have permission.
Okay, so that is a crime.
Now, when the mayor of Oakland ended up tweeting out the warning that this was going to be happening, when that happened, okay, the raid still led to the arrest of 232 illegal immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area.
180 of those 232 were, quote, either convicted criminals or had been issued final orders of removal and failed to depart the U.S.
And those arrests included 115 people who had prior felony convictions for serious or violent offenses, including sex crimes with children, weapons charges, and assault.
You gotta be aware of that.
Is it in the American people's best interest to assure that those people are out of the country, especially those criminals that we know had committed prior crimes like that?
You are 100% correct.
And how did the mayor find out who leaked that information?
That's my concern.
Where's the leak in ICE that they laid out an operation to arrest all of these serious criminals that it gets out in the public domain?
Instead, we don't worry about the mayor.
The mayor can't do anything.
Let's worry about who let the word out.
Okay, let me go to Jessica.
It's very hard to have a discussion with my friend Francisco here because Francisco knows what he's answering is true.
He can't say what is really honest and straightforward and truthful.
Oh, now, come on.
Now, hang on.
If you have a hard time saying that if you enter this country without permission and you're not a citizen, I have to spend five minutes pulling out of you that it was illegal.
And then when we have all these people being warned by a politician, Jessica, is that mayor of Oakland aiding and abetting and assisting in the commission of crimes?
And if one of these people that otherwise would have been deported does something really bad to somebody, does she bear responsibility?
Absolutely, yes.
Of course.
Sanctuary policies benefit criminal aliens.
They do not protect the community at large.
They enable people who have been identified by ICE by fingerprints that they know are deportable, that they notify the law enforcement agency about, and the law enforcement agency is forced to release them because of these political sanctuary policies.
That means these criminals go back to the streets and reoffend.
And we know that probably about half of them do reoffend.
There have been 10,000 of them who've reoffended just since 2014.
This is not somebody's imagination.
And that's who she was warning.
These people who've been convicted of crimes and been deported before, they know who they are.
And they know that ICE is coming for them now.
ICE has made that very clear under the Trump administration.
And they almost certainly went and scattered so as not to be caught up in the future.
All right, let's put the DREAMer debate aside, DACA aside for a minute, Francisco.
Is it the right thing for the president to do, especially with criminal, illegal immigrants, and that is to deport them for the safety and security of the American people, those that we know are convicts, committed felonies, violent crimes?
Do you have any problem going out there, finding them, and sending them back to where they came from at all?
Even if I had a problem, I wouldn't have an argument.
No, there is no problem with that.
And President Obama did it too.
He had the most criminal deportations of any president in the history of the United States.
So what should happen to the Oakland mayor who's aiding and abetting and assisting people in their criminal behavior?
Well, but the problem is, is the federal government can pick up anybody that's in any jail, any city, any state, any county.
They don't need the city's permission.
There is no such thing as a sanctuary policy or ordinance.
It's a political phantom.
The Department of Homeland Security can pick up anybody anytime they want.
The problem comes in when immigration doesn't pick them up within 48 hours.
Department of Homeland Security regulations, their own rules dictate that they cannot hold them more than 48 hours.
If they're there 48 hours after they're released under state charges by law, by federal law, they have to release them.
It's not like sanctuary policy.
That's no such thing.
No, because if ICE has put in a request under a sanctuary law, sanctuary policy, what they are doing, well, what they've done is they've legalized law breaking.
So, I mean, it's a cute way of saying, well, because the law says we can't release them to immigration officials, we've got to follow the law.
But the law also says that you're not allowed to enter the country illegally.
The law also says that if you committed other crimes and you're felons, you're supposed to be deported.
So you're just basically cherry-picking which law you want these individuals to follow.
I agreed with you, deporting criminal aliens.
But you can't cherry pay.
But the Oakland mayor, the Oakland mayor's tipping them off.
That means some of these people that had been convicted of violent crimes, that means they'll stay out on the streets of America.
What happens when they commit another crime, Francisco?
Is she guilty in aiding and abetting?
Does she bear some of the responsibility if we otherwise would have been able to deport that person?
Then prosecute her.
If she's an aid and abetted, then prosecute her.
But aren't you more concerned about how she found out?
Do you admit that she's aiding and abetting by tipping off these people?
No, there's not aid and abetting.
That's not aiding and abetting by helping criminals escape the justice that's coming their way and telling them a raid's coming.
You know, I have a very good ICE agent friend who just says, we'll get them another day, another way.
And if in the meantime, they go out and they commit a violent crime.
If she committed an office, then prosecute her.
Jessica?
Well, that may be what happens.
And there are other cases of other officials doing equally egregious things.
And if it can be shown that her actions prevented ICE from apprehending somebody who goes on to cause harm, she should be prosecuted.
And this is a problem.
You know, ICE, the sanctuary proponents say that they have the best interests of the community in mind.
But what they end up doing is forcing, instead of arresting criminal aliens at the jail, ICE has to go out into the community and arrest people at their home or their workplace.
And that's a lot riskier for ICE officers and also the public.
And that's not acceptable.
Why don't you try and tell Francisco the statistics that you and your group have put together that makes the case that we've got to enforce the law?
Well, sanctuary policies inevitably result in criminal aliens being released.
And according to ICE, since 2014, there have been 10,000 criminal aliens who've been released by sanctuary policies who subsequently committed another crime after they were released.
So this is creating needless victims.
And these are people who primarily are serious criminals.
That's what puts them onto ICE's priority list, or they've been deported before, or they've had their due process in immigration court and been sent home, you know, said they need to go home by a judge.
So these, you know, ICE is not going after grandmothers on their way to church.
Their priority is these criminals.
And when they, the sanctuary policies are very real.
They force a sheriff's officer or a police officer to release individuals that ICE has said that they want to arrest and deport, and that's how they get out.
And that's what makes the California policy unconstitutional.
And, you know, it's also bad policy on its face.
What do you do when you have contradicting law, though, Jessica?
When we have laws against illegal immigrants, laws and crimes that they've committed, other crimes while they're here, and then the protection that they put up, the wall they put up, cherry-picking laws, they say, well, but we got the sanctuary city law, and we have to follow that one while ignoring all the other ones.
Well, this is a problem for law enforcement agencies and now employers in California, which is why it's one reason why it's so important for the Department of Justice to be suing the state of California.
Most law enforcement agencies and most employers want very much to cooperate with the feds on immigration enforcement, and the public very much wants immigration laws to be enforced.
And so you've got the Attorney General of California, Xavier Becerra, going around saying that he's going to prosecute anyone that follows federal law.
So the federal government has to step in to prevent employees.
Maybe California just wants to secede from the Union.
I'm guessing that they don't want to be a part of, you know, America anymore because they just are going to bypass and pick and choose the laws they want to enforce and then go after people that do enforce the laws.
And how can anybody win?
You're damned if you do, damned if you don't under those circumstances.
But all right, thank you both for being with us.
800-941-Sean, toll-free telephone number.
We'll hit the phones when we get back.
Hannity tonight, 9 Eastern, Fox News.
Hope you'll join us.
So, Sam, I have to ask you one other thing.
Yes, ma'am.
And it's an awkward question to ask, but you know, I've been here before.
You're sitting very close to me.
We talked earlier about what people in the White House were saying about you.
Yeah.
Talking about whether you were drinking or on drugs or whatever had happened today.
Talking to you, I have smelled alcohol on your breath.
Well, I have not had a drink.
You haven't had a drink, so that's not.
No.
So I just, because it is the talk out there, again, I know it's awkward.
Let me just give you the questions you can categorize.
No, you haven't had a drink.
My answer is no.
I have not.
Anything else?
No.
Besides my meds.
Okay.
Antidepressants.
Is that okay?
No, I mean, I'm not, I'm just trying to understand.
Well, look, look, they can say they can say whatever they want.
I don't really care.
Once again, they're pathetic.
You know what?
You know what?
If Sarah Huckabee wanted the ones to start debasing me, she's a joke.
Okay, fine.
Yeah, she's unattractive.
She's a fat slob.
Fine.
Who else have you talked to about their FBI interviews?
Have you talked to other people about their grand jury testimony?
I don't want to go into it.
Okay.
There's one person I talked to.
I'm not going into that.
And have you talked to them about the general direction, without naming names then, about the general direction that you think Mueller is going in?
Yes, Mueller thinks that Trump is the Manchurian candidate.
He thinks he's.
I'm sorry.
He thinks he's what?
He thinks Trump is the Manchurian candidate.
And I will tell you I disagree with that.
She describes herself as a seductress, a relentlessly self-promoting 21-year-old named Anastasia Vashukevich.
With the social media stage name Nastya Rypka, this Belarus-born woman claims to have evidence of Russian meddling in the U.S. election.
The question is this a desperate ploy to get out of jail, or as her friend claims, is this young woman truly in danger because she knows too much.
First, they are in danger.
Second, they have the information.
And third, we are afraid of their lives.
Really afraid of their lives.
We don't know what's going to happen.
For days, Vashukiewicz and several Russian friends have been held at this jail in the capital of Thailand, where visitors are not allowed to bring cameras.
I just came out of this detention center where I spoke with Anastasia Vashukhevich.
It was loud and hot and chaotic.
And talking through the bars, she says that she witnessed meetings between the Russian billionaire Aleg Deripaska and at least three Americans who she refused to name.
She claims they discussed plans to affect the U.S. elections, but she wouldn't give any further information because she fears she could be deported back to Russia.
And here's where the story gets really weird.
Last month, Vashukevich was in Thailand with a Russian sex coach named Alexander Kirillov, running a week-long sex training course that teaches, among other things, tips for dating.
On the last day, Thai police burst into the hotel, arresting Vashukiewicz, Kirillov, and eight others for working without a permit.
Ukrainian-American Pavlo Yunko traveled from New York to attend the course.
How was that?
Have just a good time.
And then the police showed up.
And just blew hisselves up.
In the days that followed, Yunko says he hand-delivered this letter from the sex teacher to the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok.
Requesting asylum in exchange for recordings Vashukevich says she made of alleged Russian government crimes.
An embassy spokesperson says, since Vashukevich is not a U.S. citizen, this is a matter for the Thai authorities.
Supporters now deliver food to their friends in jail, where Vashukevich's offers to help U.S. investigators have apparently gone unheard.
The jailed seductress and the sex teacher recognize soon they may be deported back to Mother Russia.
All right, well, this is the very secretive internet research agency building on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.
It's very difficult to get an idea of what exactly goes on in there, but you know, sometimes you can learn a lot about an organization from the rubbish it throws out.
And we saw a few hours ago these bin bags being taken around the back here to the bin.
So we thought we'd come and take a look.
And it looks like it's polystyrene wrappers for some sort of computer or electronic stuff that's been delivered there recently.
In fact, we saw them taking out the boxes from what looked like new computers that have been delivered there.
That's interesting because this place is said to have been closed down.
There's a big sign on the front of the door that says the building is for rent.
But there are still people coming and going all day.
And clearly, it's still operating.
Now, whether it's operating as a troll factory or not is unclear.
This is CNN.
All right, glad you're with us.
23 now till the top of the hour.
All right, why did we go through the arduous task of playing all that for you?
They were both CNN reports, and they literally sent one of their correspondents to Thailand.
Now, why would they send a correspondent to Thailand?
To interview a prostitute and a sex coach.
Maybe one of you guys in there can tell me what a sex coach is, who claimed to have proof of Russian meddling in the U.S. election.
So let me get this straight.
So we, CNN, spent all of their resources and time to interview a woman in prison, a prostitute sex coach, because she herself has the information that's going to blow wide open what Adam Schiff admits they don't have any evidence into Trump-Russia collusion.
Wow.
And the second report, they have another reporter who sent to St. Petersburg, Russia.
Why?
For the very purpose of going trash and dumpster diving in the areas of one of these Russian troll farms to see if he can find anything.
You just, you have to be kidding me.
You can't make this up.
The media is that desperate that their narrative, their lie, be proven true.
And they ignore real truth in front of them, which they never report on.
You know, like a phony Russian dossier bought and paid for by Hillary, then, of course, lying to a FISA court to obtain a warrant to spy on a Trump campaign associate and backdoor into all of the campaign's emails as best they can.
Yeah, that would be Russian meddling.
Hillary paid for it.
Or the Uranium One deal and the money that got kicked back to the Clinton Foundation and the money for speeches.
It's like the biggest news story is right there, right on their lap, but they'll ignore that and they'll go to dumpster diving in St. Petersburg and talk to hookers and sex coaches in prison in Thailand, thinking that that's the answer.
By the way, anyone want to take a stab in there at what the sex coach's job is?
Anybody?
We'll let the host go first.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm asking you.
I told you yesterday.
She's trying to get him from checkers to chess.
Checkers to chess.
Anyone else want to weigh in on that?
Sean, a coach's job is to bring out the best.
So just follow the bouncing ball.
Unbelievable.
But I would like to know why we're not asked to troll through trash because, I mean, I think that that's a real, it's a real supreme job to be sent to St. Petersburg to have to go into a dumpster dive.
Yeah, that's pretty bad.
All right, let's get to our busy phones here.
You can't make this stuff up.
All right, Karen is in Atlanta in Georgia on News Talk WSP.
Karen, hi, how are you?
What's going on?
Hi, Sean.
I haven't spoken to you in a long time.
Well, it's good.
Oh, it's my liberal friend, Karen.
Yes.
Your liberal friend Karen from Atlanta.
Yes.
Did you miss me?
Now, when I was there, have I changed much over the years?
No, you're still the same, unfortunately.
I'm still the same.
Isn't that a good thing that I'm consistent?
I think I've just gotten better.
I think I can give out.
I've got as well.
Don't you think I've gotten better at my job?
I watch you.
Believe it or not, I do watch you on television.
It drives my husband crazy, as well as my friends.
And so you like, do you watch because you love to hate me?
Is that what it is?
I watched.
I think everybody should listen to both sides of the spectrum to get, you know, an idea of what's going on on both sides.
All right.
So are there any times ever you say, you know, Hannon?
He's got a good point.
For example, Hillary paying for Russian lies through that phony dossier that's not verified, and the FBI and the DOJ knew it, and yet they go to a FISA court to spy on an American in a campaign, and they don't tell the judge, even though they knew it, that Hillary paid for it.
I would think that's something we can agree on.
Everybody should agree on, right?
I agree on that, but I also agree on this.
Listen to this, Sean, and don't cut me off.
Okay.
What I agree on is this.
I'm in Walmart.
Anyway, what I agree on is this, Sean, that nobody knows what Papadopoulos nor Slann has said in order to save Flann's son.
I'm telling you, it is not over.
It is not finished.
That investigation will continue.
I'm just trying to understand.
Can you give me after all this time, do you have any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion?
Any?
Well, something happened.
There's no reason to say that.
Okay, no, no, no.
Something is not a good answer.
Give me the specific something that happened.
Nobody knows what Michael Flynn is saying because he's trying to save his son.
Well, Michael Flynn, okay, but you're not giving me, do you have any evidence at all that there's Trump-Russia collusion that took place in 2016?
We will see.
Let's put it that way.
We will see.
So 20 months later, and we're still waiting.
Okay.
Now, do you think it was wrong of Hillary to hire a company that hires a guy that buys and purchases unverified, salacious Russian details that now prove to be false?
The vast majority of things in there are false.
And then it's used to get a warrant to spy on the other campaign.
Wouldn't that be a kind of collusion also?
The Russians came and said they had some information about Hillary, and Don Jr. went to it.
Okay, and we know from that meeting that nothing happened.
But we also know that Hillary bought and paid for Russian government lies.
Well, we know Hillary paid for Russian government lies.
We know the dossier exists.
Take a look at it.
We know it exists, but we don't know she paid for it.
No, no, no.
We do know her campaign paid Fusion GPS.
I don't like Hillary.
We all know that.
You make that loud and clear.
You just called to frustrate me today, didn't you?
You just called me.
I know that, Sean.
You called to get under my skin, didn't you?
No, I dare not call you because I love you, Sean.
Thank you for your support.
I'll say that.
Sherry is in New Jersey.
Sherry, how are you?
Glad you called.
Hey, Sean, how are you?
I'm good.
Thank you.
I just got to say, I talked to you before, but I just want to say thank you so much for everything that you bring out every single day and every single night on your show.
Well, I appreciate it.
You know, look, I wish it would come to a conclusion faster, but it's just not the way a story like this unfolds.
It takes time.
You got to go through all the evidence.
We're still in the gathering of evidence stage.
I know.
It's so exhausting.
And with everything, every one new thing you bring out, I think, okay, this is it.
This is going to be the thing that's going to do it for Hillary.
And they're going to grab her.
And this will be done.
And it'll be done and over with.
And it just doesn't, nothing happens.
And that's what's so frustrating and exhausting.
Listen, but understand this.
But think about this.
We now know that Hillary paid for Russian lies to influence, to lie to the, and they were pushing it to the American people.
And they all knew it was full of lies.
They didn't care about the truth.
So we got that.
That is now incontrovertible.
It's incontrovertible that the DOJ and the FBI used FISA, you know, used that phony dossier unverified against their own protocols and lied to FISA judges not once, but four times and used the dossier as the bulk of information.
Then we also know that the fix was in on Hillary's email server.
And we also know that the Inspector General report is coming out.
And if he does his job, it's going to open a lot of other people's eyes about how badly and how political the Department of Justice and the FBI and how they use the powerful tools of intelligence to spy on Americans they disagree with politically.
It's a huge scandal.
It is the biggest abuse of power scandal in our lifetime.
So it's important that we stay on it because the rest of the media wants to, all they care about is destroying Trump.
Absolutely.
And I guess patience is what is needed here from us.
Yeah, well, eventually something's going to, something has to happen at some point.
There's a great book.
It says, through patience, possess ye your soul.
Obviously, I'm not in possession of my soul yet because I'm not the most patient person in the world.
So listen, I share in your impatience, but I know every day we're getting closer to the truth.
I know that it's all unraveling.
And guess what?
They know it too.
And many people can't sleep at night, whether they have my pillow or not, because of the things they know that's coming out.
All right, Hannity, tonight, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel, Hannity 1-on-1, Jorge Ramas, will join us as it relates to the Department of Justice now taking on the state of California.
Also, Michelle Malkin and Sebastian Corka, Greg Jarrett joins us, and Jason Chavis and Tom Fitton.
