America's Dad, Bill Cosby, was found guilty of 3 counts of sexual assault. While his legal team has vowed to appeal, Bill Cosby could face up to ten years for each account! Sean brings in Jonathan Gilliam and attorney Danielle McLaughlin, to discuss the results of the case and how Cosby was found guilty. Plus, Sean spends some time discussing how women can protect themselves from sexual predators. The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
You are listening to the Sean Hannity Radio Show podcast.
I feel like my faith in humanity is restored.
This is a victory not just for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, not just for the victim in the case, Andrea Constant, not just for the 62 of us publicly known survivors of Bill Cosby's drug-facilitated sexual crimes against women, but it's also a victory for all sexual assault survivors, female and male.
It's a victory for womanhood.
I thank the jury so much for positioning themselves on the right side of history.
I just want to hug them.
I just want to hug them.
One way for your mind whenever you're guilty.
I wasn't disbelief.
I was like, it was not the verdict that I was expecting.
We are very disappointed by the verdict.
We don't think Mr. Cosby's guilty of anything, and the fight is not over.
Thank you.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes, very strongly.
All right, that was the attorney, Thomas Messero, who is the attorney for Bill Cosby.
And before that, Lily Bernard, there's differing, varying numbers between 57 and 62 women that have made these allegations over the years against Bill Cosby.
If you're just joining us and you haven't heard yet, buckle up.
Bill Cosby has now been convicted on all three counts of aggravated, indecent assault and now faces the possibility of life imprisonment in his particular place because the next step in all this is going to be an appeal, as we heard from the defense attorney.
But assuming the conviction is upheld, then you would have victim impact statements.
Then you would have the decision by the judge.
Is it, sir, do you serve it up to 10 years per count?
There were three counts he was found guilty of.
Do you do it consecutively for 30 years?
In other words, 30 years?
Or do you do it concurrently, all at the same time?
I mean, this is an unbelievable.
If you go back, there was a hung jury the last time he faced sexual assault charges.
That was last June.
Jurors couldn't reach a unanimous decision after 52 hours of deliberation.
Judge in that case declared a mistrial.
And this time around, seven men, five women on the panel sat in the jury box, Montgomery County Courthouse, listened to more than two weeks of testimony, 25 different witnesses.
Many cried on the stand, recounting how Cosby attacked them while they were in these drug-induced stupors that he put them in.
And, you know, I actually, I'll tell you when I became aware of this, it was in the Fox Green Room, and I remember interviewing one of the women.
Not an interview, I just was talking to her.
And I listened to her tell her story.
I'm looking at her right in the eye.
And she convinced me right then and there that this had all happened.
Now, when you think of Bill Cosby, here is, you know, the Cosby show in the 80s was massive worldwide.
Well known as a comedian.
If you're, you know, a baby boomer, you first met Bill Cosby probably with the cartoon, the Fat Albert show, and all those years.
Now, what's going to be very interesting.
He now faces, well, hang on.
The DA in this case is about to speak.
Let's just dip in and see what he has to say.
This is in Pennsylvania.
You can hear the cameras in the background.
You can see a lot of the news networks, the helicopter following the Cosby car.
Okay, there he is.
He's about to speak.
Thank you all for being here in our grand jury room.
Andrea Constan came here to Narstown for justice.
And that's what 12 jurors from Montgomery County provided her.
And I would be remiss if I did not thank first those 12 jurors for their diligence, the sacrifices that they made, as well as the sacrifices of their families so that they could serve in this important duty that they did.
So today we're finally in a place to say that justice was done.
As prosecutors, we have a responsibility to seek justice, and we have to go wherever and to whomever it takes us.
And to begin, I want to step back to a point that was pretty decisive in this case, and that's when Judge Robreno released a civil case deposition and indicated, in his opinion,
that the defendant's deposition showed the stark contrast between Bill Cosby, the public moralist, and Bill Cosby, the subject of serious allegations concerning improper and perhaps criminal conduct.
At that point, the prosecutors who are here to do the right thing, and specifically my predecessor, Reese Vetri Fuhrman, opened up and reopened this investigation.
So that's a duty, but that duty took courage because she had to open up a case against a powerful man.
But I can say definitively that that's one of the things that is done over and over again in the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office.
We have shown from our record that money and power or who you are will not stop us from a criminal investigation or prosecuting a case.
All right, that's the DA with his team, and they are going through the specific trial.
Just before the verdict, we were all watching this together, my whole team here, and all of us thought that there was going to be a guilty verdict because there were too many women that had come forward and spoken at this trial.
And when you get up to the numbers, one account has 57, one has 62 women making the same allegation that they were drugged, that they became immobile, and that he sexually assaulted them.
How do you not believe it at that point?
And when I met that one woman, I remember looking in her eyes.
There's something so dark about what was perpetrated on these women.
It's almost, to me, incomprehensible that somebody would, he's a cyst, it's like a predator that does it again and again and again and again to innocent people.
It's almost the same line, oh, come, I can help you with your career, meet me in the hotel, my house.
And then it becomes the same story.
You know, feeding women Kwaludes, I don't know all the specific drugs.
I don't know a whole lot about them.
And in some of the cases, the women were physically, they were not able to move.
They were immobile.
But mentally, they were there and remembered it.
And in each instance, I mean, Bill Cosby was America's dad, the world's dad.
But there's something, this is this, this is about some deep, I don't even know what the right term, it's obviously about some power and some control.
It goes much deeper.
I mean, I just don't know how any human being could do this to any other human being.
You know, you were talking about this earlier.
Ethan, you were the only one that thought he would get a non-guilty verdict.
I thought there was a chance only because, you know, there's been other cases like Casey Anthony and Robert Blake, O.J. Simpson, where the public and us as a whole, I feel like as Americans have seen the case, seen the evidence and said, you know, this person is obviously guilty, but then somehow the jury doesn't get convinced.
And, you know, and it always happens to be powerful, you know, and popular people.
And he was so, like you said, he was America's dad.
So I didn't know.
I don't know what the impact of these drugs are.
We go to our drug expert on the program, Linda.
No, I'm teasing.
You never have used drugs, but you grew up in a neighborhood around a lot of drugs, and you've talked about that a lot.
Well, yeah, plus I worked in the music business.
But I mean, I can speak from personal experience.
I don't mind sharing that with the audience.
I mean, I was roofied when I was in my 20s, and it was horrible.
And, you know, I was completely incapacitated.
Roofie is a drug that people slip in somebody's drink and— But this was someone I had been dating.
Like a date rape situation.
We were on an actual date, and he had put the pill into my glass when I was in the bathroom.
And I came back from the bathroom in the restaurant, and I took a sip for my drink, and I couldn't move, and I didn't know what was happening.
Right away, you felt the effect of it.
Right away.
You become completely paralyzed, but you're totally, I was completely and totally aware of it.
I no longer couldn't speak.
I couldn't move my mouth.
I couldn't move my body.
He actually physically carried me out of the restaurant and said he was taking me to the emergency room, but he didn't.
He took me back to his house.
And that's where he would have raped me.
But fortunately for me, his parents came home and his parents found him about to do this to me and stopped him and put me in another room.
And I was able to come too.
And then I left there and I went home.
There's something so evil about what you're describing.
And you didn't report it.
And I look, in this case, it's America's dad.
I think that's Barbara Bowman.
You interviewed Barbara Bowman back in 2014.
And here's a woman who talked about her career and she was very young and her mom was bringing her and Bill Cosby said, I'm going to be here in studio and talking to us.
And, you know, even then talking about it, she was like, I was ostracized for even trying to bring it up.
No.
There's something that is, I don't understand what the, there's a dark nature that I just can't put my finger on and say what it is.
It's something so sinister.
No human being with a soul could do this.
But I think too.
And it's so contrary to the public image.
think too it's also one of those things that when some of these women though they said that they were drugs and that they blacked out so that's a little bit different because then you have the problem that they knew they were assaulted and they But they didn't know what happened.
So they have no recollection of it.
And they wake up and all of a sudden they were naked and they weren't naked before.
And you're like, what's going on?
Now, how do I defend myself?
Isn't that one of the side effects of some of those drugs is that it knocks out your memory?
Exactly.
So scary.
You know, you think about, I mean, I think for everybody, you've got to know that there is evil in this world.
I remember when I went on the book tour for Deliver Us from Evil, big part of the speech was, you know, in the last hundred years of human history, last century, you know, over 100 million souls were murdered and slaughtered.
You know, Stalin, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, fascism, Nazism, communism, you know, the killing fields in Cambodia.
You can just go through it.
And I said it's very hard, and I think liberals have a hard time with this, to wrap your arms around good people that would never, ever, that don't have this dark soul, the darkness of soul that we're describing here.
It's hard for people to wrap their arms around the fact that there's evil.
You know, radical Islamists that can walk into a pizza parlor and kill innocent men, women, and children.
There's evil there.
You know, anybody that does this to a woman, this is evil.
And there's no other word to describe it.
All right, 800-941-Sean, our toll-free telephone number.
We'll get back to this later in the program.
We do have a lot of other news that we're going to get to today, including about Robert Mueller.
And, wow, James Comey last night said some unbelievable things.
Wait till you find out.
Rudy Giuliani, by the way, meeting with Mueller, is actually saying after the meeting, he calls this investigation a disgrace.
And Victor Davis Hanson, if Mueller's investigation was unbiased, here's a list of prosecutions we'd be seeing by now.
There's amazing things happening.
And we'll get to all of that.
And Ainslie was on the other day, and she didn't, literally, we ran out of time.
And so she's going to check in with us.
We'll get her thoughts.
She interviewed the president also this morning and much more.
All right, this is a massive development as it relates to the Mueller investigation.
The Attorney General Jeff Sessions is now publicly urging the special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, to wrap up his Russia Gate investigation, saying it's become a distraction and far more important matters need to be addressed.
Anyway, he also said he expects the Justice Department Inspector General to finish his investigation into the FBI's handling of Hillary Clinton's email investigation and all of that in a few weeks, saying that that will provide more information for decisions on whether or not there was wrongdoing.
Now, Sessions was testifying on the House at the House today, and the Attorney General was pressed by a lawmaker who said he saw a double standard in comparing the ongoing special counsel probe into Trump.
Well, Mr. Sessions has declined to name a special counsel to review the way the Department of Justice and the FBI handled Mrs. Clinton.
Anyway, the guy's name is Representative Evan Jenkins, West Virginia.
I think the American people are concerned, and the president is concerned.
He's dealing with France and North Korea and Syria and taxes and regulations and border and crime every day.
And I wish this thing needs to conclude.
So I understand his frustrations and I understand the American people's frustrations.
I understand at the root of this, he says constituents are frustrated and angry.
By the way, I'm one of them.
And they see a double standard.
Yeah, I'm one of those too.
They want justice.
I'm one of those too.
And he also went on to tick off a number of red flags that he was saying, and I agree, deserve heightened powers that a special counsel should, in fact, be looking at.
Now, Sessions said he didn't want to appoint one, willy-nilly, but said the department is taking deliberative steps.
Now, we got that.
We also have Rudy Giuliani walks out of a meeting with Mueller and called the investigation a disgrace.
Victor Davis Hansen has an incredible article out today.
If Mueller's investigation was so unbiased, here's a list of prosecutions we'd be seeing by now.
We'll get to all of that, much more.
We got our team coming up.
Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett, David Schoen, Ainsley.
I know we left everybody hanging the other day.
Ainslie Earhart was upset on the program, and we're going to get an update from her straight ahead.
Your opinion on what Mr. Comey is doing on his book tour and the fact that he had a special friend at Columbia University with an FBI badge.
Look, Comey is a leaker and he's a liar.
And not only on this stuff, he's been leaking for years.
He's probably been using his friend, the so-called professor, who now turns out to have FBI at clearance, which he never said.
He even lied about that because he never said that in Congress.
He said he gave it to a friend.
And he gave it to a friend to leak classified information.
It's all classified.
It was totally classified.
So he illegally, he did an illegal act, and he said it himself in order to get a special counsel against me.
Well, Comey, what he did, Brian, was terrible.
He leaked classified information in order to try and get a special counsel.
He says it wasn't classified, Mr. President.
He says it wasn't classified.
Oh, well, it's totally classified.
And he also leaked the memos, which are classified.
Nobody unclassified them.
And those memos were about me, and they're phony memos.
He didn't write those memos accurately.
He put a lot of phony stuff.
So Comey leaked.
And by the way, also, what he did with CNN in order to placate them, you saw that whole scenario.
This is a big mistake, this book.
He is guilty of crimes.
And if we had a Justice Department that was doing their job, I answer this all the time.
Because of the fact that they have this witch hunt going on with people in the Justice Department that shouldn't be there, they have a witch hunt against the President of the United States going on.
I've taken the position, and I don't have to take this position, and maybe I'll change, that I will not be involved with the Justice Department.
I will wait till this is over.
It's a total, it's all lies, and it's a horrible thing that's going on, a horrible thing.
Nobody's done what we've done, what I've done, despite what's going on.
So I'm very disappointed in my Justice Department.
But because of the fact that it's going on, and I think you'll understand this, I have decided that I won't be involved.
I may change my mind at some point because what's going on is a disgrace.
It's an absolute disgrace.
All right, that was a very passionate Donald Trump on Fox and Friends earlier this morning.
We have other news breaking on this.
The Attorney General now, Jeff Sessions, is urging Robert Mueller to wrap up this phony Russia gate probe, that there's too many other pressing issues in the country.
Rudy Giuliani, after a meeting with Mueller, he literally called this investigation a disgrace.
Victor Davis Hansen has a great column out today.
If Mueller's investigation was unbiased, here's a list of prosecutions we'd be seeing by now.
We're going to get into all of this throughout the program today.
Also, if you're just joining us, Bill Cosby is guilty on all three counts and could be facing, if he serves them consecutively, 30 years in jail.
He's 80 years old, meaning spend the rest of his life in prison in all likelihood.
Before we do that, so Ainsley Earhart, who is part of the Fox and Friends team that was interviewing the president earlier this morning, he doesn't come on my show, which is very annoying.
But we had had her on earlier in the week.
And Ainsley has written an incredible new memoir.
It is very, very, well, let's just say open, honest, revealing.
I mean, very real.
Talks about her faith and also the difficult time she had in her life.
So we were coming up on the end of the show.
And Ainsley, frankly, it was breaking everybody's heart here.
Linda was literally crying.
Tears were flowing down her face.
And we're literally like 10, 9, 8.
And she was in the middle of this story about how she lost a child.
And she told the whole story.
And that's how personal the book is.
And she was upset.
Linda was upset.
And people were then mad at me thinking that I cut Ainsley off.
The book is called, by the way, The Light Within Me.
I had an opportunity to blurb this book.
And a lot of people, Ainsley Earhart joins us now.
A, were writing us, are you okay?
Because that was, you knew we were up against the clock.
You know what a heartbreak is.
Yes, yes.
And I do humbly apologize for that.
Oh, gosh.
For anyone listening, do not ever be mad at Sean Hannity.
He is the most wonderful man, and everyone at Fox loves him and adores him.
Linda loves him.
Your whole staff on radio.
Not everybody loves me.
A lot of people that hate me.
Okay, let me clarify then.
A lot of people don't because they don't know you.
Everyone who knows you, there are a lot of Democrats and Republicans that work at Fox News, and they all love you because you're an amazing person.
Take the politics aside.
You give the shirt off your back for anyone.
And I always say that, Sean.
You buy pizza for your staff.
You take us all out to dinner all the time.
You are an amazing person.
So you can put it in.
Ainsley, he's blushing.
I'm telling you, I'm sitting in front of him.
He's blushing.
Well, here's the thing.
So I'm literally, you were telling this very deeply personal story about a very hard time in your life.
And Linda had had the same experience.
And I'm looking at Linda.
You're crying on the air.
She's crying on, I'm looking at her crying.
And I mean, everybody's upset.
And I know the audience probably thought I was horrible because I had no time to say how sorry we felt that you had gone through that or that Linda had gone through that.
And I know everybody was writing and telling us, you know, are you okay?
Is Linda okay?
And I just wanted to let everybody know that you guys were okay.
We are great, and we are going to persevere, and God is going to make us stronger because of the situations we've been through.
Linda and I have talked about this, and we were both in tears after that interview because you grieve as a mother.
Everyone wants a family.
You look at a picture of a family and everyone says, oh, they're so great.
They're so beautiful.
Everyone wants family.
Well, you both have young children, so I just got to warn you, those kids get older, and then I would urge you both not to teach them.
Listen, we've already decided we're going to get together.
It's going to be great prom day pictures.
I'm urging, don't teach your kids how to talk because then they'll talk back.
I promise you.
That day's coming.
The point is, Linda, we're okay, aren't we?
I mean, God.
Yes, we are, my friend.
And we trust in him.
Yeah, I mean, it's sad.
You grieve it.
You have a miscarriage.
A lot of women go through this.
And that's why Linda and I are boldly telling our stories because we don't want other women to be alone.
It's a hard thing to go through.
And both of you, it happened late in the pregnancy.
It happened.
It was, you know, pretty far along.
And that makes it triply tough.
I mean, I've talked to some ladies who have had it nine months, eight months.
That's really late.
I mean, for me, it was 10 weeks.
For Linda, it was 10 weeks too, right, Linda?
Eight or ten weeks.
Was it eight or ten weeks, Linda?
How many weeks?
It was about four months.
Yeah.
Four months.
Oh, you were four months.
Wow.
Wow.
God.
Yeah, that's the hard part is that you go through it after you tell everyone because you wait the three-month window.
But on to happier and more positive things.
By the way, can I ask how come you, Brian, and Steve?
And I've been friends with all of you now for all these years.
How is it that you guys end up getting the president?
I can't get the president on my show.
What's up with that?
It's really unfair.
I'm mad at the president.
Yeah, yeah.
It's such a struggle for you, isn't it, Sean?
I'm working really hard.
I'm really trying hard.
I'm taking a lot of incoming.
I'm sure he will come on your show.
All you have to do is ask.
Probably don't ask him because I know you're too gracious to ask.
I don't ask him a lot, but I really liked the interview.
He was so passionate today.
He was.
30 minutes.
We blew out all of our breaks.
We had him for 30 minutes from 8 to 8:30.
And we would have kept going, but his producers were saying, all right, we got to go.
We got to go wrap because, you know, we'd love to have him on more than well.
He did before he ran for president.
He did once a week, Fox and Friends, every week.
I mean, it was a big feature on your show.
He's been a friend of our show for a long time.
That's right.
People say, why is he a friend of your show?
You know, they want to give you grief for that.
But he's been on our show every Monday, was on our show every Monday before he even announced he was running for president.
So he's been a friend of Fox and Friends for a long time.
And for, you know, the reason is he's great on camera.
I mean, his soundbites are amazing.
He's, you know, maybe not all of them, but the majority of them our viewers love.
And so he's just, he's very colorful.
You might not agree with him all the time, but he's very colorful and he gives a good interview.
You know, you made a lot of news today because not only did he talk about Comey in such a passionate way, he talked about Kanye West.
He talked about African Americans coming back to the party of Lincoln.
He talked about everything involving Iran and North Korea.
I mean, you guys covered a lot of territory.
Ronnie Jackson covered a lot of territory today.
I know, we did.
We talked at length about the grade that he gave himself and A plus.
He said no one's done it better.
No one's done more.
He wished his wife a happy birthday.
We talked about Kanye and he said they really get along and he appreciates Kanye supporting him.
He talks about Pompeo and he said that he is going to meet with Kim Jong-un.
And I asked him about a date and he said probably there are three or four dates that are on the table, five different locations they're discussing, the mutual ground.
And we asked him about Comey and he says that he has many attorneys that I'm sorry, we asked him about Cohen, Michael Cohen, and he says he has many attorneys and that's a tiny fraction of his legal work.
Yeah, yeah.
We asked him about Diamond and Silk and he said they're warriors and they're stars.
Ronnie Jackson.
You know, I invited them to my radio Christmas party.
It really wasn't my party, though.
Linda took over the whole thing.
I didn't even have a say at the party.
Diamond and Silk came to my Christmas party because I'm disclosing everything now.
You know, because if I don't have full disclosure of it.
Well, yeah, apparently, I didn't know I had to disclose like two-word meetings, apparently.
But anyway, that's a separate issue.
Let me ask you one last question because you're on this book tour.
By the way, I would love it if the book beat Comey.
That would be great and became number one.
I think I saw the other day you were like number three on Amazon, which is a tribute to you.
But now I guess you're going on tour.
Where are you going on this tour?
So, yeah, I'm back home.
You can probably hear the noise in the background.
I just flew into South Carolina.
We're going to be live here at the University of South Carolina tomorrow, which is my alma mater.
And I'm at the stadium right now.
We're about to do.
Is the whole team going or is Steven?
No, no.
So I think we're going to try to each go to our universities.
We wanted to start with South Carolina because we have a big following here, and my whole family is going to be on.
Well, my dad, my brother will be on tomorrow.
My first co-anchor, Curtis Wilson, who's a CBS affiliate, we both work as a CPS affiliate here.
He is going to be on a fee tomorrow with the marching band, and we're going to have Tim Scott and Congressman Trey Gowdy.
I never had a marching band, and Dre Gowdy hates me now.
He doesn't come on my show either.
John, this school is awesome.
Have you ever been to a southern football game?
No, I've actually been down for the Florida-Florida State game in Tallahassee.
You have?
Okay, that counts.
That's a big game.
You're huge rivals.
Oh, yeah.
I had a great time.
So we're at the stadium right now.
I have so many memories here.
But tomorrow night, after we do the show live tomorrow, tomorrow night, I'm going to be driving to Spartanburg, which is about two hours away, to Boiling Springs.
And I'm going to be at Boiling Springs Baptist Church at 5.30.
So if you live in that area, please come see me.
Don't just leave me hanging.
I need some people to show up.
And then Saturday, I'll be back in my hometown, Columbia, where I am now, at the Barnes ⁇ Noble at Richland Fashion Mall at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.
All right, so we'll put that up on Hannity.com, and the book is called The Light Within Me.
The Light Within Me.
I'm sorry, The Light Within Me.
I sent you a copy.
No, no, no.
Well, remember, I read it before because I gave a blurb for the book.
I'll be honest.
This is just really blunt.
I admire you were willing to reveal so much about yourself.
I could never do that.
And I admire you for it because I think people reveal a lot.
Look at how it impacted Linda.
I mean, I really never had a moment like that on the program.
Well, first of all, Linda doesn't cry.
She curses a lot more than she cries.
She's a big-time cursor.
But obviously, it's touching people, which is, I guess, what a good book wants to do.
I will say this.
You did write about an experience that you had at a frat party, and that's when you had your, when you changed your life.
I come to Jesus moment.
You'll come to Jesus moment.
And it's actually a beautiful story.
Isn't that crazy?
I mean, people put down fraternities and sororities, but I'm telling you, most of my sorority sisters here at the University of South Carolina were really strong Christians.
And we were known as the Sorati.
We had good grades.
And one guy told me, I remember I was trying to decide between two Sororities.
He said, choose 80 pie.
Those are the marrying types.
And so I always wanted to be that kind of girl.
But, you know, I lived.
I wanted to be the marrying type.
I wanted to be that kind of girl.
But I also wanted to be fun and dance in the middle of the floor.
I just love to have fun.
And that's the misconception.
When you become a Christian, you can't be fun.
I was the one that got in trouble.
So I was the one that got taken home by the cops in first grade.
You're the best Christians because you appreciate what God's done in your life.
I actually do.
I do.
I believe that God has.
I didn't want God to come.
What?
I think God has.
I don't think.
I think God has blessed me beyond anything I could have ever imagined for myself.
He has.
He has.
I mean, look at us, Sean.
You're much more successful than I am.
But can you believe that?
I didn't have the president on my show today.
Well, I just can't believe we've, if you grew up like I did, you know, you had to, we were worried about bills.
We were.
I grew up with my father kicking my ass with a belt every day.
That's how I grew up.
Me too.
Me too.
I mean, that's how.
Your dad, I met your dad once.
He hit you.
I got the crap beat out of me.
Well, I was pretty good.
I mean, I wasn't really bad, so I didn't, I did get thanks for that a lot.
My brother, my brother was like you.
My mother would say, don't leave that out.
And I'd say, seriously, and I'd walk right out the door.
I'm a horrible child.
But, all right, I got to let you go.
The book is called The Light Within Me of.
The Light Within Me.
And we'll put up the.
And she's in South Carolina, Ainsley Earhart, this weekend.
When we come back, we have a lot of news to get to.
Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett, and David Schoen will be with us.
The memos are actually two pieces, and the details matter because the facts matter and should matter even to the president.
I sent one memo unclassified then, still unclassified, and it's recounted in my book, to my friend Dan Richman and asked him to get the substance of it, but not the memo, out to the media.
Separately, I wrote a bunch of memos about my interactions with President Trump, and I was what was called an original classification authority at the FBI, meaning I had the training and the authority to make decisions about what should be classified, what shouldn't.
Some of those memos I decided should be classified.
Four others, I wrote them and was highly confident they should not be classified.
Those four, I kept a copy at the FBI and a copy in my personal safe at home.
After I was fired, I put together a legal team of three people, one of whom was Professor Dan Richman at Columbia University.
After I had asked him to give this information to the media, I separately gave my legal team four memos, which were unclassified.
They included the one that he had gotten to give the substance of it to the New York Times.
The bottom line is, I see no credible claim by any serious person that that violated the law.
But as somebody who has the authority to classify documents, you know that stuff is sometimes retroactively classified.
And I believe one of the documents was retroactively classified, lowest level classification, wasn't it?
Sure.
So if you're releasing memos which may later on be classified, which happened to Hillary Clinton as well, aren't you taking a risk that you think you know, oh, this is not going to be classified, but it turns out one of them was retroactively.
I don't think if it is a risk, you're making an educated judgment based on your training and your experience as to what's classified and what's not.
But you did leak, you did leak memos.
I mean, is it okay for somebody at the FBI to leak something, an internal document, even if it's not classified?
Isn't that leaking?
Well, there's a whole lot wrong with your question, Anderson.
First, I didn't leak memos.
I asked a friend to communicate the substance of one unclassified memo.
Whether you leaked the link to the leaf.
Can I finish for a second?
Sure.
Okay.
One unclassified memo to the media.
And I was really important.
I was a private citizen.
I was not an FBI employee at that point.
But it was an internal document.
It was a document you had written while you were FBI director.
That is a leak.
I mean, if you tell somebody, don't give them the document, but tell them what's in the document, that's still a leak, no?
Well, not to get tangled up in it, I think of a leak as an unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
Really?
I did.
That's how I thought about it as FBI director.
We investigated leaks, so unauthorized disclosures.
My question is, can you give a clear example of what would constitute collusion between a presidential candidate and a foreign government, and specifically, what law would that violate?
That's a good question.
I can't give a specific example because collusion is actually not a thing that exists under the federal laws of the United States.
I had never heard the term until it appeared in the media.
The question that we would look at as a counterintelligence agency is, are any Americans conspiring, which is a crime defined by the U.S. Code, with a foreign government to commit any offenses against the United States or to defraud the United States, or is any American aiding and abetting, that is, assisting their activities with knowledge of their unlawful nature?
All right, glad you're with us.
Hour two, Sean Hannity show, write down our toll free telephone number.
It's 800-941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, a lot of breaking news today.
I mean, actually, a ton of it, not the least of which is Bill Cosby guilty on all three charges as it relates to this trial that went on, three counts of aggravated, indecent assault.
And if they were served consecutively, he could face up to 30 years in jail.
He's 80 years old, which means he would die in prison.
We're waiting for information as to when the sentencing might be coming down on that.
I will give credit.
I know I've been hard on Anderson Cooper when he did that ridiculous interview, interviews with Stormy and Karen McDougall, but I do think he asked some pretty pertinent questions last night.
I know Brett Baer has Comey on tonight.
That's going to be interesting to watch.
We'll have all the details of this.
The other breaking news that we have today is the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, is now urging Robert Mueller to wrap up Russia Gate and this probe.
He was up in Congress testifying earlier today, and he said the ongoing probe into the president needs to conclude in order to let him focus on North Korea, the U.S.-Mexico border, and other world negotiations.
Finally, Jeff Sessions may be speaking up, also addressed the issue that there is a possibility of the appointment of a second special counsel, and we'll get into that in just a second.
Also, after meeting with Robert Mueller, this is in the Daily Mail in the Washington Post.
Brudy Giuliani, who just joined the president's legal team a week ago, literally said that he called the investigation a disgrace.
Anyway, he's one of the new attorneys working with Jay Seculo and some other people.
Anyway, playing a role in this for the president.
I can guarantee you this: when Mueller's finished, no matter whatever he does, he's not going to have a stitch of evidence that he concluded with the Russians, Giuliani said in an interview.
This isn't the first person in the world who thinks he's guilty of collusion with the Russians.
Anyway, so that's some pretty interesting breaking news.
This is literally crossing the wires as we now speak, and we have now been waiting, you know, for a little while.
Anyway, you may remember there's a huge batch of text messages between FBI lovebirds, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, that were missing.
Now, these texts from December 2016 to June 2017, we understand there may be as many as 50,000 of them.
We're expecting any minute that some of the new texts are going to be released.
We certainly have heard again and again that we will have them by 9 p.m. tonight on Hannity.
Anyway, Sarah Carter joins us, investigative reporter, Fox News contributor, David Schoen, civil liberties and criminal defense attorney, Greg Jarrett, Fox News analyst.
Welcome all of you to the program.
Let's start with, if I can, with you, Greg, Jeff Sessions, now urging Mueller to wrap up this investigation.
It's about time.
Oh, it's totally about time.
There was never a scintilla of evidence that anybody in the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to fix the election, to win it for Donald Trump.
There was never a legal basis justified under the federal regulations to launch the investigation, including now we know there was no evidence of intelligence to justify the counterintelligence process.
Hang on one second.
So I've just confirmed that the text messages, the latest batch of struck page messages, have now been delivered to the congressional committees.
All right.
So that means whatever redactions that needed to take place have taken place, and that would mean we'll probably get them certainly by Hannity tonight at 9.
Sorry about that.
Well, you know, these text messages will probably reveal even more evidence that people at the FBI were politically motivated to clear Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump.
That's the story of the hoax.
Let me go to David.
Dave, you have been very strong in your opinions about the president ever talking to Robert Mueller.
Juliani, apparently, it was reported earlier in the week that he had opened the door in terms of new negotiations with Robert Mueller and his team.
What do you make of that Daily Mail article?
I'm not sure what to make.
I don't know how much is posturing and how much is the truth.
I reiterate exactly what you said.
That is, any criminal defense lawyer worth his or her assault would never permit the president to sit down with Robert Mueller because of Mueller's agenda.
But he called the investigation a disgrace, quote unquote.
And why dignify it then with the president of the United States sitting down with him?
Listen, there's a mechanism through the special counsel regulations in which Mueller is to be giving regular notification, regular reports to the Justice Department.
In this case, Mr. Rosenstein, we don't know if that's happening.
We don't know, but any significant event is to be reported.
As you've said many, many times, where's the evidence?
We certainly haven't seen anything.
But it is past time to wrap it up.
We need to get on with the business of the country.
There are pressing events around the world.
There really are.
And we have the opportunity nobody thought possible.
The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Then, of course, this emerging alliance between the United States, Israel, the Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, the Emirates.
Sarah, you've been pretty much parked out at Congress waiting for these new text messages.
They have now finally been delivered to the congressional committees.
I'm assuming we will see them shortly.
Yes, this was news that we have heard all morning that they were going to be delivered.
Of course, we expected them to be delivered yesterday, and they weren't.
So now that they are delivered to Congress, remember these text messages are redacted.
The unredacted version, I am told, can be viewed in camera.
That means at the DOJ by congressional investigators.
So that's going to be a back and forth, back and forth.
If the congressional investigators want to view the full text messages without any redactions, they will have to go over to the DOJ in order to view those.
But right now, they did deliver the redacted version.
Do we know how many that they delivered now?
Because, and this is the sad part, the DOJ is slow walking again because they had them last week and didn't tell anybody.
That's right.
So Congressman Mark Meadows, as well as Chairman Devin Nunez, Ron DeSantis, and Trey Gowdy, among others, were very upset about the fact that the Department of Justice did have these text messages, which were delivered by Michael Horowitz with the DOJ and his investigation to them last week.
They were very angry that they did not have those text messages and really have been battling behind the scenes to get them.
And so it appears that there'll be thousands of text messages.
I'm not quite sure how many of those.
You mentioned 50,000.
That is a number that Attorney General Jeff Sessions threw out in January.
So how many of those they delivered?
We're not sure yet.
I'm assuming it's all of the text messages that were missing from December 2016 until May 2017.
And remember, Sean, it was the FBI and the DOJ that said they couldn't get those messages, that there was a technical glitch and they had disappeared.
They would never get them back.
And then the Inspector General sent out his investigators.
They got a hold of the Samsung phones and they were able to retrieve what some intelligence officials told me were ghost texts.
So they were able to pull them directly from the phones.
That's what their IT personnel did.
So this is going to be very interesting because this is the most important time of the investigations.
Let's go to all the criminal referrals to our two lawyer friends here.
And Greg, we'll start with you.
We had the congressional criminal referrals to the Justice Department last week, and that included everybody, Hillary, Strzok, Paige, Orr, Comey, Mueller, not Mueller, not Rosenstein, or maybe Rosenstein.
I don't remember.
Definitely McCabe.
Then you had McCabe also getting an IG criminal referral.
Now we've got an investigation into the former FBI director, James Comey.
Are all of these people, are all of them in potentially in legal jeopardy today?
They all are, and I would put James Comey at the top.
Obstruction of justice, theft of government property, mishandling classified documents under the Espionage Act, and now, most recently, you know, false and misleading statements to Congress because we're just now learning that it wasn't just Richmond that he gave classified information to, but Patrick Fitzgerald.
He didn't disclose that to Congress.
And maybe even one more person.
We're here.
Yes.
And look, when you are testifying before Congress, if you conceal information, that's considered a material omission.
That's a false statement.
It's a crime.
And I think there's the Director General is looking at that.
Because you don't give specific information, you only gave selective information.
I only leaked to this one guy when he leaked to at least two, maybe three people.
It's sort of like the omission, you know, putting an asterisk in the FISA application.
Well, it may have political implications when you know darn well it was Hillary who put it together.
Exactly.
And for example, when he identified Richmond as his friend, a professor, he did not disclose that he was actually a special employee of the FBI.
That is a material omission.
That's a crime.
All right.
We're going to keep all of you now for the full hour, and we may even get a few calls in here as well if people have questions or comments.
We'll have more on the Cosby verdict, guilty on all charges.
800-941-Sean is on number.
All right, as we roll along, Sean Hannity's shall we continue.
Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett, and David Schoen are with us.
Last night, Anderson Cooper was grilling Comey.
Got to give him some credit on leaking the memos.
Comey is saying he didn't leak the memos, David.
And he said, I didn't break the law when I leaked the memos.
And then he goes on, you know, Cooper says, well, you know, asked whether he shouldn't be nailed to a door for leaking.
And he said, I intentionally gave information to a friend intending that it get to the media.
Did he leak?
Sure, sure.
That's a leak.
A rose by any other name smells as sweet.
That's a leak.
But think about it.
I mean, Anderson Cooper made a good point.
Even if it were not illegal, can you imagine, would anyone suggest that a person is fit to be the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who would take a document, give it to a friend, and ask the friend to give that information to the press?
Is that really working through the channel?
Do you think the rank and file of the FBI respect that?
I don't.
My father was an FBI agent.
I don't think he would have put up with that kind of thing or would have wanted his director.
I mean, I did that kind of thing.
I think we're losing Sarah at the bottom of the hour.
Greg and David are going to stay with us.
Sarah.
Yes.
I was very interested in what he had to say.
And I do think Anderson Cooper asked really significant questions right there because he kind of caught Comey off guard.
I don't think he was expecting Anderson to be so tough on him.
And Anderson, you know, and Comey conflicted when he was making these statements.
I think one of the really important questions here, and we have to ask ourselves, why didn't Comey, and I would have liked him to have asked this, why didn't you just tell Congress, if you were so concerned about President Trump and you wrote these memos and apparently you didn't write any memos on Obama or Hillary, you know, you were so concerned when Congress asked you these questions about, oh, were you ever, did you ever feel pressured or anything like of that nature?
Why didn't he just come out and say it?
Why the runaround?
Why did he go ahead and leak these memos to his, because it was a leak, leak them to his friend, Dr. Richmond, and then have him deliver it to the New York Times.
I mean, he didn't have to do that.
He should have just come forward.
All right.
Sarah's now going to go get a hold of those struck page memos.
We'll have them tonight on Hannity.
Thank you, Sarah, David Schoen, and Greg Jarrett.
Stay with us.
And your calls, 800-941-Sean.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941-Sean, our toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program.
The guilty verdict all across all three charges as three counts as it relates to Bill Cosby.
And if, in fact, the sentencing happens, he could face, if it's consecutively, 30 years in jail.
He's 80 years old, meaning he would die in prison.
Concurrently, well, even then, it depends how many years he ultimately serves.
Of course, his defense is saying that they are going to appeal that verdict.
But we continue a lot of big news happening as it relates to after a meeting with Mueller Giuliani in a WMR, WR interview called Mueller's Investigation a Disgrace.
Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General now, is literally asking Mueller's time to wrap up this investigation.
Really good piece by Victor Davis Hans that I haven't gotten to yet, but we continue with attorneys, David Schoen, criminal and civil liberties attorney, and Greg Jarrett, Fox News legal analyst.
What's the name of your book again?
Because I always forget.
It's called The Russia Hoax, the illicit scheme to clear Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump.
And when is this book coming out?
Because Greg's office is two doors down from mine at Fox, and I see you've been pounding away on that computer for a long time now.
Well, it's now in the hands of the publisher.
It's completely written.
They're going through editing.
And it can be pre-ordered on Barnes ⁇ Noble or Amazon.
Just go to their websites.
It comes out in a couple of months.
Yeah, we're looking forward to it.
What happened today as it relates to in court that went on earlier today, where a special master was appointed.
And in other words, the federal judge handed down this ruling in this case involving Michael Cohen.
What does that mean?
A special master.
Go ahead.
A special master is what we've called for on this show since the start of that case, at least I have, because it's vitally important.
This has been put in place in the Southern District of New York in the past.
Nothing special for Michael Cohen.
It's a vitally important step so that a third party, a neutral third party from the outside, not the government team, not a tank team, not a privileged team from the government, reviews all of the records that were seized from Michael Cohen so that a neutral person can take input from the lawyer himself as to what would be privileged and what should be turned over, that sort of thing.
It's vitally important.
And that's the process that the judge first balked at.
It should have been in place from the start.
And for example, in another case in the Southern District, in the Lynn Stewart case, the judge prohibited any government lawyer from looking at any document that was seized.
And by the way, the agents who go in can't be involved with the investigation.
They prohibited anyone from looking at it.
They had to be sealed in a vault, and only the defense lawyer whose records were seized and the third party special master could have access to them.
Does that mean only things that would be relevant to a case that are not attorney client would be used then?
Only non-attorney client privileged documents should be seen by anybody other than the attorney and now the special master.
And it's a long culling process to go through.
And frankly, you know, clients need to have input into that also, which is, you know, the other reason I said from the start, that President Trump needed to have a representative in there, which he has now, to protect his privileges.
It's got nothing to do with holding lawyers, giving lawyers more say in the process.
It's about protecting clients' rights, and everyone in this country is a potential client at some time.
The right is a cherished one.
What does that mean to you, Greg?
And what does it mean for things that are not connected in any way to whatever they're looking into?
Well, my concern is that government officials have already looked at the documents, and to some extent they had to, in order to be responsive to the search warrant and seize relevant material.
They had to eyeball some stuff, including material on computers.
And this is why there should have been a special master that went along on the search and seizure.
Would that be the normal procedure that the person would go along when it actually happens?
Well, it has certainly been done on many occasions, especially when you're talking about breaching the attorney-client privilege.
That's right.
Right.
Well, what does it mean that this recommendation actually came from Mueller with the approval of Rosenstein to the Southern District of New York, which has a reputation of being a very, well, very tough, if you will, office?
Well, it certainly looks like it has nothing whatsoever to do with collusion or obstruction of justice because otherwise Mueller would have handled it himself.
They saw something else that they thought was suspicious that has nothing to do with the current special counsel probe, and so they referred it to the U.S. Attorney.
What's your take, David?
I think it's also the process not working.
Remember, the only way Mueller can venture into an area is if the Deputy AG, in this case, Rosenstein, authorizes it.
This thing can go on forever and ever.
And remember, one of the main dangers of the regulations under the special counsel statute is that Mueller is able to charge people with crimes all along the way.
If he thinks someone didn't tell him the truth and is getting in his way, he can charge that person unilaterally with a crime.
It's in a very abusive set of regulations if one wants to abuse them.
Yeah.
Let's walk through, for example, what does it mean, if anything, that, in fact, Jeff Sessions is urging Mueller to wrap this up?
Greg.
It probably means that he knows, as Rosenstein probably knows, that there's no there.
That there's no crime called collusion.
Comey tried to spin it last night, collaborating with a foreign author.
Well, actually, he actually said there is no crime as collusion.
We just played that.
Yes, but then he said, but it could be conspiracy with the foreign government to defraud the United States.
If you look closely at that statute, it is inapplicable to the facts of this case because I've studied it.
And so, you know, there's no evidence of collusion, ever was.
And you cannot question the President of the United States about his constitutional power to fire somebody in the case of James Comey.
And finally, as to Michael Flynn hoping and wishing that he's cleared, take a look at the presidential memos, the March memo in particular, in which the president asks Comey to continue to investigate as to whether anybody colluded with Russia.
Well, he said even people associated with him that we need to keep going.
Right.
So he wanted to continue all investigations until he got to the bottom of it.
Amazing because I thought that was the single, that's the smoking gun in terms of exculpatory evidence against any case of obstruction.
Is it not, David?
Yes, it is.
And I want to say, though, talking about Mr. Comey, he emphasized the word you mentioned the second ago.
He said, no crime like collusion, but there is conspiracy.
That's the government's favorite tool.
It's very broad.
I think he better be careful because depending on what happens with these memos, some of his friends may well be dragged into what he might call a conspiracy.
But I have to get back to your point about wrapping up the investigation.
You know, you have Mr. Giuliani, who's a fan of Mr. Mueller's, saying it's a disgrace.
Now, that's each person who's encountered someone with this investigation that it's a disgrace.
It should be stopped.
What about the irony, though, of Congress now trying to pass this Mueller protection bill?
And what's driving me crazy is senators like Senator Grassley, Senator Graham, talking about a constitutional crisis if the president were to fire Mr. Mueller.
How many times does the president have to say he has no intention of firing Mueller?
But either way, it's simply not a constitutional crisis.
It's the Constitution working.
But the president, wouldn't the president under Article 2 have the authority to do that?
Absolutely.
And it's built into the regulations, which, by the way, were promulgated in the Clinton administration in 1999 and sold to Congress by Eric Holder and Janet Reno, Neil Cadiell, on the idea that the president will have the ultimate authority.
While the member of the Justice Department has to do the firing itself, the president has the authority under Article II to make that decision.
That's working.
Congress has the ability to make their own investigation to bring impeachment proceedings if that's what they think is appropriate.
But this is the Constitution working if he fires Mueller or Rosenstein.
It's built in, and it was intentionally built into the regulations by President Clinton.
Is there any legal culpability, Greg Jarrett, for Patrick Fitzgerald or this Professor Richmond over at Columbia University?
Or maybe I keep hearing there is perhaps a third person that got a hold of these Comey memos.
Are they on the receiving end of this in any trouble?
They could be, depending upon the content of the information and documents they retained.
Now, remember, the FBI went to Daniel Richmond's office and seized material there to contain the leak of classified information.
Now, you said this on TV last night.
I did not recall that ever happening or making big news.
Why didn't that make big news?
Well, it was in the New York Times.
I can tell you that much over the weekend.
Okay, that's why I missed it.
Because they buried it on a back page at the bottom of the story, which is classic New York Times.
Wow.
Bury the lead.
If it was any Republican, it would have been splashed top folds of the front page.
Absolutely.
And a source who's very reliable tells me the FBI went to Fitzgerald's office to do the same thing.
It's called spillage cleanup.
And if you think that classified information is getting out, you try to contain it.
Who would have made that?
Who would have ordered that?
Well, that's a very good question.
The FBI has advised Senator Grassley that they believe that classified information made its way into the hands of unauthorized individual.
I assume that's Daniel Richmond and perhaps Patrick Fitzgerald.
Is Comey being too cute by half hiring the two people that he leaked to?
No.
He's totally doing it to hide behind the attorney-client privilege.
It's a Machiavellian move by Comey.
And it's, you know, it's classic Comey.
As I said on your program last night, Comey makes Jerry Hoover look like a Boy Scout.
That's how manipulative and exploitive Comey is.
There's a very specific problem with if Mr. I don't know that he is if Mr. Comey is going to claim attorney client privilege with Daniel Richmond, he's got a big problem.
We have a lot of unanswered questions about Daniel Richmond's special governmental employee status.
When was it?
Did it meet the parameters, etc.
But if he were a special governmental employee, he was the employee of the agency or the department, the executive branch, not Mr. Comey's.
He doesn't share privilege with Mr. Comey, and the regulations then would prevent him from appearing in the matter as a private lawyer in a matter that he was involved with as a special governmental employee.
Now, Comey has said, apparently, that he gave him the documents in his role as a special government employee to advise him, although he told him to leak it.
He can't be both.
The guideline is prohibited.
It's actually a crime if a lawyer, for example, were to try to get into a matter, enter a matter that he had been involved with as a government employee, or in this case, even as a special governmental employee.
That's 18 U.S.C. 202 and 205.
Let me ask both of you a quick question, changing gears here.
Bill Cosby convicted on all three counts of aggravated indecent assault.
Each count carries with it a potential for a $25,000 fine and 10 years in prison.
And if they were served consecutively, he's 80 years old, he would certainly die in prison.
Greg?
Well, they'll do a pre-sentencing report.
It's going to take a couple of months, and then there'll be a sentencing hearing.
I suspect at the time that Tom Mesero, who's Cosby's attorney, who I went to law school with, he will make the case that instead of sentencing, it ought to be held in abeyance while Mesero appeals.
Cosby will probably be confined to his home.
And if, in fact, I mean, if there's a victim impact statement, I would imagine that's going to be compelling.
David Schoen.
Sure, and that's where the judge came down this case.
Listen, they had a mistrial the last time around.
The judge made some evidentiary decisions.
They're going to be a subject of the appeal.
But the two biggest ones were he let five other victims, purported victims, come in and testify.
They'll be in the victim impact statement also.
And he allowed in his evidence.
Was that the right decision, considering the statute of limitations that passed?
It's a very tough call.
I mean, the general rule is prior bad acts don't come in unless they're independently relevant.
He found that they were independently relevant.
But what about the settlement?
The idea that Bill Cosby paid over $3 million, that was probably the death knell in this case, you know, on a gut level for most jurors.
So the judge put a pretty heavy hand on this thing the second time around.
All right.
Thank you both.
We'll be the basis of the appeal right there.
All right, we'll have a lot more on this.
And we're waiting struck and paid memorandum.
The text message is coming out.
Thank you, David Schoen.
Thank you, Greg Jarrett.
800-941 Sean.
More on this Cosby verdict when we get back.
All right, as we roll along, Sean Hannity Show.
All right, final hour free-for-all.
We're still awaiting the latest Lovebird memos struck and paige.
We do think we'll have them by TV time tonight.
When we come back, though, the Pennsylvania jury has come back in the Bill Cosby case.
Bill Cosby guilty on three counts of aggravated, indecent assault.
Anywhere between 57 and 62 women accuse this man of the same thing, drugging them and assaulting them sexually.
It's an unbelievable number.
Anyway, we'll have that and your calls coming up: 800-941 Sean as we continue.
Final hour free-for-all straight ahead.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
We are very disappointed by the verdict.
We don't think Mr. Cosby's guilty of anything, and the fight is not over.
Thank you.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes, very strongly.
I feel like my faith in humanity is restored.
This is a victory not just for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, not just for the victim in the case, Andrea Constant, not just for the 62 of us publicly known as survivors of Bill Cosby's drug-facilitated sexual crimes against women, but it's also a victory for all sexual assault survivors, female and male.
It's a victory for womanhood.
And I thank the jury so much for positioning themselves on the right side of history.
I just want to hug them.
I just want to hug them.
What went through your mind?
It was not the verdict that I was expecting.
All right, that was Lily Bernard.
She was one of the many women that had accused Bill Cosby of doing these horrific things to all of these women.
I think ultimately, what were there, 50 or 60 in total?
Anyway, the jury was comprised of five men.
I'm sorry, five women, seven men.
And the Pennsylvania jury found Bill Cosby guilty on all three counts of aggravated, indecent assault, which now sets him up with a possibility of years' imprisonment for drugging and then sexually violating, in this case, a woman 14 years ago on a couch in his home in Pennsylvania.
And this is the same story that has been told over and over and over and over again by dozens of women.
Now, Cosby initially faced sexual assault charges in court last June, but jurors couldn't reach unanimous decision after 52 hours of deliberation.
The judge then declared it a mistrial.
This time around, the panel, literally, this is in Montgomery County in the courthouse, listened to more than two weeks of testimony, 25 witnesses, many crying on the stand, recounting how Bill Cosby attacked them while they were in drug-induced stupors, and others attempted to discredit the main accuser, Andrea Constan, by detailing instances of supposed deceit and inconsistencies.
I didn't think, I read the closing arguments in the paper yesterday.
I said, I did not think the defense attorneys did a good job.
I mean, the things that they said were so over the top.
It's almost unfathomable to me that because when there's that many women saying the same thing, I just believe that this happened, this pattern of behavior.
It's almost incomprehensible.
Maybe because I grew up with Bill Cosby.
I watched Bill Cosby's comedy routines.
I watched The Huckstables, obviously, the Cosby show.
Remember Fat Albert when I was a kid, I used to, an amazing, extraordinary talent.
And then there's this dark, evil side.
And person after person after person describing this dark, evil side.
Anyway, news roundup information overload, 800-941 Sean is on number.
Jonathan Gillum, his best-selling book, Is Sheep No More.
She co-wrote the Federalist Society, How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals.
Welcome both of you to the program.
On a legal side, watching this, I would have been shocked if there was a hung jury again, or if, in fact, there was a not guilty verdict.
The numbers of people that have basically reiterated the same exact story, the same pattern of behavior.
At some point, it's not just smoke, there's fire here.
And clearly, the jury saw it the same way.
Sean High, you know, I agree.
As you said in your intro, I think 50 or 60 women had the same story.
Unfortunately, for most of them, the statute of limitations on their claims had run out, so they didn't have an opportunity to join the prosecution.
One thing that was different between this trial and last trial was that I think there was only one other witness talking about her own experiences, and this time there were five other witnesses telling basically the same story as the plaintiff here.
And I think that was pretty much that was it.
It's called private act evidence.
It's used to show a jury that this person, the defendant, has done this before, and it was clearly effective.
And it clearly went true with the men and women who made the decision ultimately.
Jonathan Gillam, your initial thoughts on this.
Well, you know, I mean, this is justice served here.
And this is a case where somebody who is powerful and famous doesn't get away with it, which is a rare thing.
But I'll tell you something, Sean, that intrigues me from an investigative standpoint is that quite often when you have somebody who does something this far off the norm, whether he's drugging somebody over a consistent basis through years and years and having sex with them, I just can't help but not speculate that there's been other types of violent things that Bill Cosby may have done that we don't know about.
Either the person is deceased or, and there could be many more of these women that don't that haven't come out with this stuff.
But I just want to throw this out there for everybody is that, and I've said this before on your program, if somebody has a sexual assault and you're in a position where a lot of these women were in a position in their careers where they were afraid to come out and say anything, I would suggest that you write it down and send it to yourself in an envelope so that you at least have a dated envelope that says, this is when this happened.
So that years later, if it comes down to it, you are credible yourself.
You're your own credible witness.
Because we can't judge women on how they're going to react to these things when it happens because there's so many circumstances at play with somebody like Bill Cosby, who's famous, he's putting pressure on people for their careers and drug them.
That I would just suggest that women do this.
And overall, that they just avoid people like Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein.
Take your agent with him if you're going to go meet with them.
But don't buy into this whole thing that somebody who's big and famous is going to get you more because it's like everything else.
If it's too good to be true, it probably is.
They want something else.
This goes, Danielle, this is not sex.
This is violence to me.
This is literally taking over somebody's mind and body and brutalizing a person here.
I don't even know what the right word or description is for it.
But it seems to me that there's something very, very psychologically now speaking, something so dark and so evil that he would do this again and again and again.
There's, what, 57 women that have gone public about this?
What is your interpretation of this?
Do you know what I mean?
I mean, I guess there's a sexual act, but this is bigger than that, drugging them, incapacitating them.
The way it is a power.
Jonathan is exactly right.
Sexual assaults are crimes of power.
It's not necessarily even about the act.
And what's curious about this is Bill Cosby was a guy with so much power already.
You talk about, you know, the Cosby show, Fat Albert.
He was extraordinarily wealthy.
He was known around the world.
Like, I grew up in New Zealand watching his shows.
This is not just a man who was famous here.
He was famous across the world.
And this is about power, incapacitating these women, doing what he wanted to do.
And it's so typical of violent sexual crime is that it really is about power and not about the sex.
Yeah.
What were you going to say, Jonathan?
No, it's all about power is just like she was saying.
And, you know, there's a darker, there's something about power and money.
And Sean, I got to, I'm not just saying this because I host your so sometimes and I'm on there, but there's individuals like you.
There's other individuals that gain money and they have a position of prominence in the field that they're in.
And they, you know, they walk straight and narrow.
When people veer off down this road where the power becomes the draw, where the power and the money becomes the intoxicating desire, it is a dark road that these people go down.
And it happens to CEOs.
It happens to celebrities.
It happens to, and that's another reason why a lot of celebrities end up drug-induced and they commit suicide because they go down this path of power and money and self-indulgence.
And it's a dark path.
And when you go down that, you just don't know where it's going to lead.
And I've seen this when I was in the FBI.
You see this with people who rise to a certain level.
It is something that you really have to guard yourself against.
And the public image was so vastly different.
I mean, this was America's dad.
This was, I can't even describe in terms of ratings because you don't get the kind of numbers for one TV show now with the onslaught of cable and choices that people have that and all the other networks and pay-per-view channels, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, you know, HBO and Showtime, et cetera, you just don't see it.
And I mean, to think that that person that had that public reputation could be the exact opposite and hide it all of those years.
And I guess because probably any woman that was a victim of this, I'm guessing here, Danielle is like, I got to go up against America's dad.
Nobody's going to believe me.
That's exactly right.
And this is what happens so often with victims of sexual assault.
They're victimized twice.
You know, they're victimized by the act, and then they are victimized because of the huge amount of shame that they often feel.
And because they often feel exactly to your point, how am I going to tell the world that America's dad did this to me?
Nobody's going to believe me.
And that's part of the reasons why so few sexual assaults are reported.
You know, I think something like 6% is estimated, is the estimated figure.
It's an unusual kind of a crime in the sense that the, and it's not, it shouldn't be this way, but the shame that the victims feel is a huge barrier to these things being reported.
And obviously, you know, the perpetrator's been built up.
All right, got to take a break.
We'll come back more on this Cosby issue.
Bill Cosby found guilty by a jury in Pennsylvania on all three counts, aggravated, indecent assault, and he could face 10 years in prison for each individual guilty verdict.
We'll have a follow-up with all of this, Jonathan Gillum and Danielle McLaughlin on the other side.
And as we continue with Danielle McLaughlin and Jonathan Gillum, a jury today convicting Bill Cosby on all three counts of aggravated indecent assault, now facing 10-year sentences on each individual guilty count.
How do women protect themselves against this?
You know, I know if you're at a party, if you put your drink down, don't go back to that drink, for example, advice that is always given out.
But how do women protect themselves from these kinds of predators?
Well, I'll tell you, Sean, one of the reasons why I wrote the book, Sheep No More, was for this specific thing, that women can actually forward think a lot of these things so that they're not victimized by these predators.
What they have to realize is that, and I talk about this in the book sheet no more, is that women or anybody that could be a prey for these predators?
It's no different than the plains of Africa where you have the gazelles and things at the watering hole.
They're the prey, but they understand where the predators are at in the times that are most dangerous.
Women have to realize this, and they have to realize that there's alternatives.
You don't have to just walk through life at the behest of these absolutely evil people.
So you have to forward think it, think where you could be a target by these predators, whether it's at work or in a club.
And sometimes something as simple as changing the way you do things, like when you hold your drink, I just set it down, but if you hold your drink, that you have your hand over the top of the drink.
I mean, that is something that will keep people from putting a pill in there.
Just modeling.
How common was this when you were in the FBI?
I know I've read about this many times in the past.
In this particular case, in other cases, apparently it was about Qualudes, which was, I guess, a drug more frequently used back in the 80s, 90s.
But I guess there are versions of it that exist today.
But then you hear the term roofy.
Explain how often you saw this and what were the situations you saw.
Well, most of the cases that you're going to get where this happens, it's not going to be an FBI case.
It's going to be a state or local case.
But let me tell you, Sean, it happens every day.
Every day in any city in the world, not just in the United States, in the world.
Small towns, it happens.
Drugs are so prevalent now that back in the day, you know, when it was Qualuds or whatever, people were doing things, the manufacturing process was not as technically advanced as it is.
I don't even know what these drugs are.
What is a Qualud?
I know, I've heard the name a million times.
I don't even know what it is.
Well, you know, there's different, all that people really have to understand is there's uppers and there's downers.
And there are certain drugs that will stimulate you, and there's certain drugs that will absolutely make your judgment.
But doesn't this have the effect of sort of such a hypnotic effect that it paralyzes you?
Yeah, and that's the scary part about this is the where it's come forward now.
The stuff that Bill Cosby was using then, women would actually, a lot of the times, would be paralyzed and they would see what was happening.
They have the drugs now where you're just completely out.
You don't even understand.
I know I did talk to a woman who was sexually assaulted by a person that she worked with in the educational sector.
And she went out with this guy because he had had a divorce.
You know, he's in his 50s, was not in good shape.
She said, you're my, you know, my fellow teacher.
I'll go out with you and have a drink.
She woke up later on that night being raped by this individual.
Doesn't have any recollection of what happened.
And so the drugs have advanced a little bit and the ease at which they're manufactured, that's the real dangerous part.
All right.
Thank you both for being with us.
Danielle McLaughlin and Jonathan Gillum, 800-941 Sean is on number.
You want to be a part of the program.
Bill Cosby now, guilty on all counts, all three counts, aggravated indecent assault, and now setting him up for imprisonment.
As attorneys came out and said, this is not over.
Obviously, they're going to work on an appeal.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour.
800-941 Sean, toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program.
We'll get to your calls in a few minutes here.
Cosby guilty, obviously struck page emails and so much more.
You know, there are sometimes Congress is doing some great things.
The media will never talk about the president's accomplishments abroad.
You got, you know, just look at North Korea, the possibility of denuclearization of the entire Korean peninsula, the relationship forged with the prime minister of Japan, the president of China.
Look at the president put a coalition together, striking Syria.
And then you got, what, at home, 3 million jobs created.
America is now on a path to energy independence.
14 states with record low unemployment, record low, the lowest levels ever of unemployment in the African-American community, the Hispanic community.
You know, nobody ever talks about it.
The tax cuts are working.
As you see, recent numbers and estimates show that revenues and projected deficits are down significantly.
And one of the other successes, all right, what do we do about, and I always talked about this in 2016, the forgotten men, the forgotten women.
You know, under Obama, there were 13 million more Americans on food stamps, 8 million more in poverty, lowest labor participation rate since the 70s, all being turned around.
Now, one of the big, there's a new SNAP program proposal to get millions of people off of welfare and back to work.
Now, these are conservative ideas and principles.
Like, I was so angry during the health care debate because for 20 years we have talked about health care cooperatives with people like our friend Dr. Josh Humber, or we were talking about health savings accounts, and we talked about patient care, a book about, you know, Goodwin and Musgrave from the Cato Institute, and nobody ever talked about it during that entire debate, which really made me mad.
Anyway, there is a proposal now to help people get back into the workforce and focus on reforms, which would be smart and good for everybody.
Anyway, we want to give a few minutes here to Chairman Mike Conway.
He's with the House Agricultural Committee out of Texas, and he's here to bring us up to speed on this new SNAP welfare program.
How are you, sir?
Well, hi, Sean.
Thanks for having me on today.
Look, I love solutions.
I love innovative ideas.
I love when government is run more efficiently.
So tell us what's going on here.
Sean, we're trying to not forget those men and women who have yet to be helped by this growing economy, and we want to get them into that ladder of success.
SNAP reforms that we're talking about just make a lot of sense.
You did a great job of highlighting some of the abuses before when you had your surfer on who loved to serve, didn't want to work, but liked getting food stamps.
So thank you for that, highlighting that.
We're asking folks, if you want to be a part of the SNAP program, to work 20 hours a week, work as hard as you can in that regard, and if you're not making above the 130% of poverty, then we're going to help you.
For the other folks, we're going to ask states who know their work-capable cadre of folks who are 18 to 59.
They also know where the jobs that they've got that aren't being filled and what skills are needed.
We're going to ask states to put that bridge in place between that group and those jobs.
We're going to give them federal taxpayer dollars to make that happen, but we're going to require it to be a part of this program.
So we're also updating assets.
We're doing some really good work here after three years of study of the SNAP program that's really important to its beneficiaries.
But quite frankly, it's also important to the taxpayers.
We need to be getting the best bang for our buck with 6.2 million jobs out there already unfilled with Foundation for Governmental Accounting saying there are 12 million men and women who are in this spot that are the bulk of them, majority of them are unemployed right now.
This is a target-rich environment.
It's coming at a point where the Trump recovery, the Trump tax reforms are all beginning to hit and take off.
And we think this is a great time to have this conversation with the American people.
So tell us how that happens, and have you talked to the president about it, and is he on board?
Well, it happens through the farm bill that we put up every five years.
As chairman of that committee, that's my signature piece of legislation right now to get done.
So it includes the safety net for production, our producers, the farmers and ranchers out there who, quite frankly, have experienced a 50% drop in net income in the last five years, the worst since the depression.
So we've got to keep that safety net in place for them.
But it also includes the SNAP program that we've looked at for three years now as a committee.
So that's the vehicle by which we will do this, try to get it across.
We took it out of committee last week.
My Democrat colleagues who were involved throughout the entire process up until about mid-March were there.
It's always been a bipartisan before, but beginning in March, they decided they didn't want to do anything to SNAP, that they believe SNAP is perfect as is.
And so we went out of committee last week, withstood five hours of bellyache, griping, and complaining, but not one amendment offered to fix it or change it or even strip it out and start over.
They cared so little about the legislative process that they just sat and bellyached for five hours, and we listened to it, gave them all the time they needed to whine and bellyache, but not come to the table with any kind of a solution.
We've got a solution that begins to address those men and women who I guarantee you lifelong dependence on the American taxpayer on government programs is not a part of the American dream that we need to be promoting.
And so this moves us in that direction.
And I'm excited about getting it across the floor.
The Senate will have to pass a similar bill at some point this summer, and then we'll get it to go to conference on it.
I've got scheduling a meeting to meet with the president the first week back in May to have a conversation with him about what we're trying to do to see if we can garner his support for what we're doing.
Well, I got to give you a lot of applause.
Is there any particular bill number that people can tell their congressmen to support?
It's HR 2.
HR 2.
Okay, House.
All right, got it.
Well, listen.
Historian 1 was the tax bill.
Got it.
H.R. 2 is this bill.
That's how important we think this initiative is.
This will be our one bite at getting folks back into the workforce, getting folks off of welfare back into that workforce.
This will be actually a bill that has to get to the president's desk.
And so it's an opportunity for us to have it.
Sean, the work requirements on SNAP is a 70% approved issue among Democrat voters.
It's a 90% approved issue under a Republican vote.
So a blend of about 80% of Americans think it's the right thing to do that if you're going to give somebody a helping hand up, that they work to help themselves during that process.
We had a great story from a young woman who stood in front of our public listening sessions.
She said, I'm the reason SNAP should stay in place.
She said, I was an 18-year-old single mom of a three-year-old, and I didn't like my future.
And I wanted to go to college, and I wanted to do better.
And so SNAP, the other programs we had, her sweat, equity, and hard effort, got her a degree, became a teacher, got an advanced degree.
She's now an administrator.
And for her and her daughter, public assistance is defined by what they do for other people versus what's done for them.
That's the success we want to drive with these STAP changes.
All right, Congressman Mike Conway from Texas, sir.
I think it's a great bill.
We support it.
And we want to help the forgotten men and women because as soon as we do that, the country's better off.
Everybody's better off.
So thank you for your good work, your innovative thinking.
I wish more people in Congress did that type of thing.
And I think we can hopefully get the country on the right path and limit the size, the scope, the influence, government in people's lives.
Anyway, let's get to our busy phones here as we check in.
Let's see.
Anthony is in Annapolis in Maryland.
Anthony, hi, how are you?
Welcome to the program.
Hey, thanks, Sean.
Doing great.
I wanted to chime in on Comey and his current situation.
I'm a former Intel analyst as well as I filled security positions within the IC.
And there's a couple of things here that people are not discussing.
So number one, this law professor worked at the FBI, had a clearance, but that's only one part of being able to gain access to classified information.
You also have to have a need to know the information as a part of your job duties.
So Comey is going to have to show where this individual, even though he worked at the FBI as a consultant per se, had a need to have that information available to him as part of his duties.
The other thing is this.
Comey, when he was terminated, his termination was effective immediately.
At that point, his access to classified information was cut off.
Anything that he did with classified information beyond that point, other than an authorized meeting with a governmental agency, is 100% illegal.
Anything he had in his possession at that point would have had to have been turned over to the government and accounted for, and he would have had to sign a non-disclosure agreement saying, I won't talk about anything that I had that was classified.
So there's a lot of stuff here that people are just not discussing that he's in real jeopardy over.
Well, as all of our legal analysts have been saying both on radio and TV, that's all true.
You know, what I'm amazed about, and maybe it's just a certain degree of arrogance that Comey had and others had.
You know, Patrick Fitzgerald is not a stupid person.
I assume the Columbia professor is not a dumb guy.
The idea that these people that here we were pounding away every night, predicting that this book was going to end up being a disaster and put him in serious legal jeopardy, and that they still allowed him to do it and then allowed him to go do these interviews.
It's everything we said would happen.
All of these deep state actors, I love last night, there's a town hall, Anderson Cooper.
There's no such thing as the deep state, just people committed to the law.
Well, you guys, a lot of you guys in the upper echelon of the Department of Justice and the FBI now have are facing criminal referrals and a lot of legal jeopardy.
So it looks like we were right the whole time.
And unfortunately, there is a deep state, and we've been exposing it and doing it regularly.
Anyway, appreciate the call, Anthony.
800-941-Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
Let's see, Rich is in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Mitch, hi, how are you?
And welcome to the program.
Thank you, Sean.
I believe Lindsey Graham is part of the elite deep state now, too.
I called every one of his offices today when I heard that he has joined with Grassley and the Democrats to put forth some kind of bull to protect a bill to protect Muller.
And I called all his offices.
You know, they can't keep a secret what they had for lunch down in Washington.
And now I think he's part of the deep state, and I want Lindsey Graham primaried.
And I asked every one of his offices, how come he never goes on Sean Hannity or Laura Ingram?
He's always on CNN.
You know, look, me and Lindsey Graham have had our falling out on occasion.
When he's right, you know, he's right on some important issues.
But when he's wrong, it is so frustrating.
And it seems like he cannot make up his mind on a lot of issues.
One thing that I think is fairly consistent on is the issue of national security.
I think obviously he supported the move the president made in Syria.
Look, I think the people of South Carolina, they'll make that decision.
And I think that at the end of the day, that Lindsey Graham, well, he just recently got reelected.
It's so frustrating because certain senators, certain congressmen, they always become really super conservative just before the election.
And then they go back to being the moderates that they always were.
And that's frustrating.
But, you know, that's going to be ultimately up to the great people of South Carolina, one of the great states in the country.
Let's go back to our phones as we say hi to Melanie is in Washington state.
Hey, Melanie, how are you?
Glad you called.
Hi, Sean.
My question is about Rod Rosenstein.
I love your guest and how you and they both articulate what has taken place.
He's the one who wrote the report for Trump saying fire Comey.
Trump fires them.
Ben Rosenstein.
Or the FBI will never be able to get it act together, that they'd never be able to recover as the prestige agency that they are.
Yes.
Yes.
And then he appoints a special counsel for Trump doing what he recommended.
How is this even a thing?
And why aren't more people, especially in Congress or whatever, grilling Rosenstein about how this actually works?
And then I also wonder about Jeff Sessions.
He's such a man of honor, according to his own words.
That's why he recused himself, because it's his honor.
And yet he's allowing this charade to go on, which doesn't seem honorable at all.
And why isn't he being asked about that?
I think you raise really good questions.
Look, if James Comey ever came on the program, I could give a list of questions that would go on in perpetuity.
And that's why he'll never come on this program.
Questions he cannot answer about the FISA court application, about the exoneration before investigation, about why allowing a Trump hater like Peter Strzok to interview Hillary, about the release of classified and privileged information the way he did.
So, you know, at the end of the day, you know, us beating this drum has now gotten us to this point where people now, even Jeffrey Toobin, as I pointed out yesterday on CNN, Jeffrey Toobin recognizes he's in legal jeopardy.
You know, it's so funny.
Nobody wants to talk about the Cosby verdict.
So just before the verdict came in, we had a pool, and there was only one of us that assumed, that thought he would be not guilty.
That was you.
That's right.
Why?
I just, I've lost a lot of faith in the justice system of late.
So I thought it was possible that they didn't find him guilty because there have been many other people in our recent history who have been obviously guilty and the jury just comes back and goes, uh, no.
Yeah.
It's very, apparently at this moment where he shouted it out at the DA when they said that, what, I take away the bail or whatever.
And wow, it's pretty amazing.
Gloria Allward went out there afterwards with the women that were part of a team, I guess, about five or six women, you know, accusing Cosby.
We'll have more on this tonight on Hannity, Nine Eastern on the Fox News channel.
All right, Hannity, tonight, Nine Eastern on the Fox News channel.
We expect the struck page text messages.
The next big batch to be released will have all the details.
Also, guilty on all charges regarding Bill Cosby in the Cosby case and Rudy Giuliani saying this investigation is a disgrace and more importantly, Jeff Sessions saying it's time to end it, Mr. Mueller.
