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You are listening to the Sean Hannity radio show podcast.
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And happy Wednesday.
Glad you're with us.
Yeah, we are still in Singapore.
3 a.m. local time.
I'm actually getting used to the time.
And of course, 3 p.m. on the east coast of the United States, where we can't wait to get back, a lot of us anyway.
In spite of the great Southern cooking we actually found here in Singapore, which was fun.
Glad you're with us.
800 941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
IG Report is coming out tomorrow.
We're going to have full complete analysis coverage.
I think we've got at least a dozen people that are literally working on your behalf so that we can tear this four or five hundred page document apart.
And uh by the time we get on the air, we should be pretty prepared to tomorrow.
Uh we'll have a preview of all that.
There is a war that is breaking out now, and it's it can't be contained.
We'll get to that between the DOJ and those members of Congress that are trying to do congressional oversight.
And Rod Rosenstein is literally freaking out, flipping out, and and turning now on the very people that are just trying to do their job.
We'll get to that.
Uh we're gonna get to the 2018 all important midterm elections.
We got more fallout from the summit here in Singapore.
Oh, and California wants to uh break into three.
It's gonna be on a ballot measure that takes place out in California.
I love these referendums and referendum states.
So you'll have Northern California, you'll have Southern California, and then you'll have the rest of California.
Um so that's gonna be interesting.
I would not be shocked at any point to see some part of California wanting us to see get out of the we're done with the United States.
I could just see it happening.
Um and the uh that would be three California states.
You'd break the state into three.
And we'll explain all of that what it means.
Let me just preview a little bit of what we expect with the IG report tomorrow.
Sarah Carter, Doug Sean, they'll be here today, and we'll be discussing it.
Sarah Carter, David Schoen will be here.
Newt Gingrich will also be uh joining us.
Uh we'll have the more fallout.
You know, the president said today he said um our country's biggest enemy is the fake news.
That's exactly when Newt Gingrich breaks his book into two parts.
The second part of the book are the challenges that the president faces, and challenge number one is dealing with fake news every day.
Um, but that's after the first part, which goes through all the amazing accomplishments that the media, of course, never wants to give him any credit for because that makes them look bad because they've been basically creating a caricature and an image of Donald Trump that's never been accurate, never been fair, never been true, and they it doesn't fit their agenda.
So as they advance this false narrative caricature agenda, um, and every time Donald Trump does something that actually works, it makes them look stupid.
And they don't want to have to admit they're stupid.
What's the hardest thing for the human ego to ever do?
It's admit wrong.
Say you're sorry.
It's the hardest thing to do in life.
Linda's laugh.
Why are you laughing?
Linda has a new nickname here in Singapore.
It's called the Force of Nature.
I Thought that was my name in America.
I just brought it with me.
No, you well, well, they thought it was my name.
Where are we again?
What's what what country are we in?
We're in Singapore.
Singapore.
We're in Singapore.
Listen, they get a kick out of my accent, especially.
Oh, I've noticed.
Oh, they get a kick out of it.
But the problem is you walk any time you walk into a room, it's like Hurricane Linda comes flying in.
It's a tornado.
Is it a tornado or a hurricane?
Depends.
It seems more sustained.
Sometimes tornadoes just touch down and go.
This is a hurricane that kind of stays in one place and never leaves.
I linger, I flood.
Exactly.
That's actually a pretty good analysis.
That's a problem.
All right.
So the IG report comes out tomorrow.
And now remember there this has been 18 months in the making.
The IG report, the inspector general of the Department of Justice, it is supposed to be independent.
It's supposed to be separate.
It's supposed to be a part from the Department of Justice.
And Michael Horrit Horowitz was tasked with the job of looking into the handling of Clinton's email server scandal and how it all led to the decision to exonerate her, even though every single person knows there are crimes committed.
And this, I guess, is the challenge.
He's had what, 500 people working all of this time.
Now it's been three weeks, the Department of Justice has had the document.
And in that period of time, they have been lobbying behind the scenes to try and get Michael Horowitz to make changes to the document, to put in redactions to the document, to add their own commentary to the document, which they have according to IG rules, regulations, laws they have the ability to do.
Are we ever going to get the original document and have an opportunity to see what the Department of Justice would be able to have persuaded Michael Horowitz to shift or alter or change or redact?
Well, that's a pretty big question.
The problem here is for Michael Horowitz is there is no ambiguity about what happened.
We don't have any doubt what happened.
And if you don't believe me, we could we could go back and just start playing the July 5th press conference, and we're told that insubordination, that word is going to be used about James Comey when James Comey circumvents Loretta Lynch, who was compromised because she met just before the decision is being made with Bill Clinton.
Remember, this was an investigation into his wife on the tarmac in Arizona for some what 45 minutes.
They claim they're talking about their grandkids for 45 minutes, and nobody believed it.
And they tried to hide it.
So then she says, Well, I'll just go along whatever the recommendation of the FBI is, or the and and we'll go with them.
But it's still her call.
She doesn't get to, it could have easily been handed off to one of her deputies.
Well, that didn't happen.
And James Comey decided to take it upon himself.
And we all know that James Comey in his own way, like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, are very anti-Trump.
So in that sense, it's compromised.
But here's what we know, and this is going to be interesting if if the IG is gonna tell the truth.
It is not in dispute.
In other words, nobody is saying this never happened.
That Hillary Clinton, because it's factual, it's it's incontrovertible.
It's not something to debate.
Hillary Clinton made a decision against State Department rules, regulations to set up a private email server.
It Platts River Network, a mom and pop shop server company that put the server in a bathroom closet.
Then now she did it for obvious reasons.
Because if it was done the traditional way, if it was she was following protocol because she even had sent out at one point a letter to those that work in the State Department.
You can you cannot, you you cannot bring the classified top secret information off-site.
I mean, the idea is you want to protect American secrets.
You want to protect.
We we've got to have intelligence protected in this country.
And it didn't happen in this case.
And then she went through the long arduous, painful Clinton-esque parsing of words.
Well, they weren't marked classified at the time.
They weren't marked top secret at the time.
That is the highest level of secrets our government has.
And it turns out that, in spite of her claims that such information never made it to that server in that bathroom closet.
In fact, it did.
It's not in dispute.
And her claims that in fact she never had classified information were all proven false.
Her claims there was no top secret information.
That was proven false.
The claim that that special access programming information was not on it.
That too was proven false.
And she said, well, it wasn't marked at the time.
Baloney.
It was marked at the time.
Now we have laws.
We've identified 17 of them.
I won't go through them all again, but but most of them predicated on the Espionage Act.
18 USC 793, the Espionage Act, the Espionage Act.
It is a crime to mishandle classified information.
That is a felony.
Now, if you don't think it's real, well, tell that to Christian Saucier.
He's the one that we advocated for in this program, and we put his family on in this program.
And he spent a year in jail away from his mother, away from his wife, away from his his young daughter, because he took six pictures in a submarine.
That was the act under which he was prosecuted.
Similarly, all of this information, Congress began to subpoena.
As soon as the information was subpoenaed, Hillary Clinton made the decision and her team, we're gonna delete 33,000 emails because they're personal, because they're about yoga, and they're about a wedding of Chelsea.
They're about the funeral of her mother.
Uh and emails to Bill Clinton, my husband, personal emails.
One problem there, 25% of that argument is a lie right off the top because Bill Clinton doesn't email.
There were no emails with Bill Clinton.
And the idea that you could have 33,000 emails about yoga, a wedding, and a funeral just doesn't meet the smell test.
I don't care how big the wedding is and how elaborate the funeral plans happen to be.
So after they're subpoenaed, Hillary Clinton decides to delete them.
And then a new word entered the American lexicon, and that is bleach bit.
I don't think anybody listening to this program today, anybody, had heard of bleach bit before Hillary Clinton.
Because after she deleted the subpoenaed emails, well, her and her team, thinking that they'd be ever so clever, well, they decided to acid wash the hard drive with a product that is called bleach bit.
And after she used bleach bit, the idea was everything was wiped clean.
Ed Henry infamously now asks her, did you wipe the server clean?
And her answer, you mean like Ed with a cloth?
You mean to say.
You tried to wipe the whole server.
I'm, you know, I don't, I have no idea.
That's why we turned it over.
You were in charge of it.
You were the official in charge.
Did you wipe the server?
What, like with a cloth or something?
No.
Well no.
I don't know how it works digitally at all.
Like with a cloth or something?
That I that I wipe the server?
Okay, who's ever seen a server?
I don't know what a server looks like.
You mean that I go in and dust it with pledge?
I mean, what are you talking about?
No, she she was trying to acid wash the hard drive.
And then she had the issue with the devices.
And the devices were blackberries and and other handheld devices because the emails that were on the server that shouldn't have been there and the classified top secret special access program information were all sent to the blackberries from the server.
So if you're gonna acid wash the hard drive, you better get rid of all the other evidence too.
All of which is a crime.
Having this having that information there violates the espionage act, mishandling classified information as a felony, destroying classified top secret special access programming information as a felony, and it's not in dispute.
So now that should be the predicate of everything Michael Horowitz tells us tomorrow.
And the cynical part of me that has no faith in equal justice under the law any longer, I think she gets away with it.
And the idea that when I last week suggested after Robert Muller said, Oh, if you have a phone and I'm investigating you, I want you to turn your phone over.
And I said, if I didn't say if I said to people that were told to turn over their phone to do exactly what Hillary Clinton did and asset wash the hard drive and and delete the emails and break their devices into ity bitsy pieces.
By the way, bad advice I said, uh ha ha, kidding, not gonna work out for you very well.
Then the left, you know, they're more concerned that I said it rather than the fact that she did it, which I wasn't even saying because I said if and I would never recommend, people break the law.
Anyway, so these are all incontrovertible issues.
The evidence is not in dispute.
Now, what is what is the inspector general gonna do?
Because if it's 500 pages, there's plenty of room to lay out everything that I just said happened here.
Because the next phase of this is why Hillary Clinton wasn't treated like Christian Saucier.
And I'll explain that on the other side of the break.
All right, we'll take a break, we'll come back.
We're in Singapore, we'll get a preview of this IG report.
Also the intramural fighting with the DOJ and members of Congress that are trying to do their job of oversight.
David Schoen, Sarah Carter, Newt Gainrich is going to weigh in on all of this.
We'll have more fallout from the summit here in Singapore.
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All right, as we continue, we're in uh Singapore.
Glad you're with us.
IG report out tomorrow.
So I want to just reiterate a very important point here, and that is that the evidence that Hillary committed crimes is not in dispute.
Now the IG should set that foundation when they come out with their report tomorrow.
If they ignore it, they're not doing the American people a service because the American people aren't gonna come, you know, be able to cite 18 USC 793, the Espionage Act.
They're not gonna know what it means.
I bet you most people don't even understand what special access programming information is about.
Or I think they understand classified top secret and the lying of the Clintons probably obfuscated.
Well, it wasn't marked at the time.
We well, that was a lie, too.
Now the issue, and we'll get to this when we get back in our preview, is did they rig the investigation?
The short answer is next.
The details, the short answer is absolutely yes, the details are coming up next.
Finally, with respect to our recommendation to the Department of Justice.
In our system, the prosecutors make the decisions about whether charges are appropriate based on evidence that the FBI helps collect.
Although we don't normally make public our recommendations to the prosecutors, we frequently make recommendations and engage in productive conversations with prosecutors about what resolution may be appropriate given the evidence.
In this case, given the importance of the matter, I think unusual transparency is in order.
Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.
Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before deciding whether to bring charges.
They're obvious considerations like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent, responsible decisions Also consider the context of a person's actions and how similar situations have been handled in the past.
In looking back at our investigations into the mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts.
All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information or vast quantities of information exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct or indications of disloyalty to the United States or efforts to obstruct justice.
We do not see those things here.
All right, that was James Comey on the 5th of July 2016, usurping the power of the attorney general and making his big announcement.
That was after a 13 and a half minute lead up of him laying out the case of every single crime Hillary committed.
Well, intent.
How can you argue that she didn't purposefully put the email server where she put it?
By design, it it evades all sense of logic.
Oh, well, the intent and the context and looking at other cases, nobody in the original draft of James Comey and Peter Struck, they talked about six foreign intelligence agencies hacking into that mom and pop shop server.
You want to know where the Clinton emails came from?
Just put names in a hat and maybe pick one because you have your chances would be at least one in six.
You know, like North Korea, Iran, Russia, China, who knows whoever else might have gotten access to that server, because the foreign intelligence, they all knew that was her private email server, all of them, and they all got a hold of it.
That's why these emails, they're out there floating around somewhere.
I know the FBI has been able to get some of them back, and this is now what the IG has to investigate.
How did we get to that conversation?
Now they only interviewed Hillary Clinton two or three days before, and she was allowed to have her lawyers in the room, people themselves that were implicated in all this, with their computers, which is highly inappropriate.
The other issue, why was this case taken away from field agents and brought to what is known as the seventh floor?
In other words, where Andrew McCabe and Jim Comey and Bruce Orr, you know, and and all of these people that we have now discovered are involved in a in a series of issues here in terms of abuse of power, etc.
And this is where the IG now is going to have to make a decision.
You know, you can't find a case.
Well, let's just stay with one.
Christian Saucier.
Six pictures on a submarine.
He's working in the Navy, and he's proud of where he works, and those pictures he put on his phone, never put on social media, never never shared with anybody else, and he got a year in jail.
The information Hillary Clinton had was far worse because, yeah, in that same press conference, Jim Comey goes through a list of, yeah, classified, top secret, special access programming information.
And remember, the original draft met reckless disregard, you know, reckless handling of information, and they watered it down because that would have met the legal standard.
And in the same exact case, you know, Hillary Clinton, it's well uh they weren't Mark classified at the time.
He pointed out, yeah, they were.
They were more classified at the time.
And some were more classified ever, but her claims were not true.
And if you're not going to say there's willful intention, when somebody deletes subpoenaed emails, acid washes the hard drive, introduces new words to the American lexicon, bleach bit.
I wish I had known ahead of time.
We could have all invested in bleach bit, you know, now that it is the I guess the most well-known, if you're an acid hard drive washer out there, and you want to it's just obscene, which is why it was so effective last week when I said, well, if Robert Muller is asking for your e your cell phones and your personal devices, if he's asking for it, well, you can do what Hillary did if I advised people to do that, it would work it wouldn't Work out well for you.
It wouldn't, nothing good would come of it.
You would not get the same treatment that Hillary got.
And all of this comes down to very fundamental principles as a society as it relates to the rule of law.
Do we have a dual justice system?
Do we have one system of justice for Hillary?
One system of justice for her aides, one system of justice for Christian Saucier, one system of justice for the rest of us.
What happened to equal application under the law?
What happened to equal justice under the law?
What happened to the idea that you're not treated differently just because of what your last name happens to be?
You know, I did look, this has happened throughout history.
Think of think of the Chapaquitic case, which comes to mind.
You know, Ted Kennedy, out late at night, Mary Joe Capecti drives off a bridge into the water.
He rescues himself.
There is a woman, and you know, forensics that had taken place over there showed she was alive for quite a long period of time because there was a there was a air bubble within the car.
It didn't flood with all water immediately.
It took a lot of time.
He gets out of the water, says he tried, tried, tried again to find her.
But he gets out of Chappaquittock Bay or whatever they call it, and there is a home right across from where this car went in the water.
The home had its light on.
And he didn't go to the home.
He went home.
He went to wherever he was staying and didn't show up until the next morning telling nobody but his political operative friends.
Nobody went to save the woman's life.
And of course, Ted Kennedy got a slap on the wrist.
You think that would happen to anybody else?
I don't think so.
You have a responsibility to try and save somebody's life here.
Especially he was driving the car.
So the IG report now is it's it's done.
What changes have been made?
What suggested changes were put forward?
The difficulty and the problem of any IG is, you know, do you allow them to investigate themselves?
Do you allow the department?
This is a Department of Justice Inspector General.
Now you can argue right off the top that, well, he was pretty tough on Andrew McCabe.
Andrew McCabe had lied.
Okay, now he's got a criminal referral.
Does James Comey and Peter Strzok who put this together and started writing the exoneration in May before the investigation had taken place?
Does that not show intent that they wanted Hillary Clinton to get off?
And the fact that they waited until July to interview Hillary and 17 other key witnesses, and three days later they were all done.
Finished, whitewash, okay, she remains the candidate.
Peter Strzok, who's saying, God, we can't have Donald Trump as president ever.
We need an insurance policy.
God forbid he's not gonna win, but God forbid he wins.
It's like having a heart attack and dying when you're 40.
We need an insurance policy, as we talked about with Andrew McCabe.
So it's gonna be interesting.
I I do not, I don't have the confidence.
I'm not gonna lie.
I think it's gonna use some tough words, tough language.
We'll see.
If there's not criminal referrals here, at the end of the day, I would say that they're giving others a pass that most of us would never get.
Um, you know, and that brings us to all the other investigation.
You know, people keep saying on the left, well, why does Hannity mention Hillary Clinton?
Because it all matters.
Because it's the entire justice system.
It's because if we're applying laws in one case and not another case, then we don't have equal justice under the law.
We're no longer really a constitutional republic.
And and that's why it's so key and so important.
For example, look at the Russia investigation.
The very people that are involved in rigging, as far as I'm concerned, the investigation into Hillary are also the very people that have been pushing and pushing and pushing this Trump Russia collusion narrative.
Now you can look at all of the indictments, you say, Well, there's five people.
Some pled guilty.
They didn't plead guilty to anything involving Trump campaign Russia collusion at all.
You know, Michael Flynn lying to the FBI had nothing to do about conversations with his soon-to-be counterpart.
And when he That they had illegally surveilled, and he didn't give the exact answer when they questioned him, so therefore they said he's lying to the FBI.
Or in the case of Paul Manafort.
Well, I think Judge Ellis III got that right.
If they're looking at tax fraud issues back to 2005 through 2007 that have to do with work that he did for the Ukraine and not Russia and whether or not money was funneled or whether or not there's tax fraud of some kind, that has nothing to do with Russia.
It has nothing to do with the campaign.
It has to do with Paul Manafort.
But I think, as Judge Ellis said, I think they brought that case back up for one reason to put the screws to Manafort to make him sing, although he may compose, because when somebody's facing a lot of years in jail, and you say, Well, if you give up this person, we'll just make it six months probation or house arrest.
30 years in jail, six months house probation.
What do you want me to say?
What are you looking for?
That happens all the time.
And by the way, that should not happen.
You cannot incentivize somebody literally holding out freedom to somebody that's facing jail time and anticipate and expect that they're gonna tell the truth on all occasions.
It's a flawed part of our criminal justice system.
So Judge Ellis says they're gonna put the screws to him and they're gonna try and make him sing, or he's gonna compose, and the whole purpose is to get information so that they could use to prosecute or impeach Donald Trump.
And that's why this is all happening.
All right, so back to my point.
Back to where we are here.
You know, look at the fight that is going on with the, you know, we we have all these congressional committees.
We have Goodlatts Committee, Gowdy's committee, we have Devin Nunes, House Intel Committee.
And apparently back in January, the deputy attorney general, who I've been told by numerous people, has a vicious, horrible, angry temper, threatened to subpoena the emails, phone records, other documents from lawmakers and staff of the Republican House-led committee during a tense exchange earlier this week.
So he's gonna use the Department of Justice subpoena powers to basically intimidate members that are so are tasked constitutionally with doing oversight and looking into any potential corruption that might have taken place at the Department of Justice.
It is outrageous.
It is, and this is only just getting known that he criticized the committee for sending our requests in writing and further critical that the committee's request to have the DOJ FBI do the same when responding, etc.
etc.
Going as far as to say that if the committee likes being litigators, then we, the DOJ, we too are litigators, litigators.
And guess what?
We'll subpoena your records, we'll subpoena your emails, referring to the House government reform and uh, I'm sorry, the House Intel Committee, the permanent select committee on intelligence, and Congress overall.
Well, okay, that's basically saying we're gonna use our power to stop you from doing what is constitutionally your job, and that is in a system of checks and balances and co-equal branches of government to find out if there is corruption that has been taking place.
Remember, Rod Rosenstein is the guy that never wanted to hand over what became the Nunez memo that described all the FISA abuse and the lying that went on to four separate Pfizer judges, and it was Rod Rosenstein that signed the fourth Pfizer warrant against Carter Page, Trump campaign associate.
And he was also the guy that wrote the letter recommending the firing of Comey.
So it's the same Rod Rosenstein that has no business being the person that picks Robert Mueller to be the special prosecutor to investigate Trump on Trump Russia collusion.
And if we're speaking of collusion of any kind, well, we do know there was collusion in this sense is that Hillary Clinton, her campaign, and the DNC and the finances that she controlled, funneled money to a law firm, Perkins Kuey, for the purpose of hiring a op research firm, uh, which we know Fusion GPS, which then hires a foreign national.
I thought that was bad, Christopher Steele.
Christopher Steele uses Russian and Russian government sources to create a dossier, and the dossier, according to his own words and interrogatories, as he's facing the possibility of perjury, said, Well, it's probably, you know, 50-50.
I'd never, this is just raw intelligence.
Well, that 50-50 became the basis of a Pfizer warrant to spy on an American citizen that happened to be a member of a of the opposition party campaign during a presidential election.
Anyway, we'll have the latest on this, David Schoen and Sarah Carter.
As we continue from Singapore, 800 941 Sean is our number.
New Gingrich is going to check in with us today.
Daniel Hoffman on the Fallout from North Korea in the summit.
All right, news roundup information overload as we continue from Singapore today, 5 a.m. local time, 5 o'clock Eastern time, uh PM, Eastern and DC, New York, and of course 2 o'clock Pacific.
Uh 800 941 Sean is on number.
We're gonna have my interview with the president coming at the bottom of this half hour.
Uh, but we do continue a lot of news being made and fallout from the summit here in Singapore.
Kim Jong-un now, according to the UK independent, has now accepted Donald Trump's invitation to visit the United States.
North Korea media is also reporting that.
And what could be further evidence of his commitment to engage in the peace process?
I do agree with Newt said, the more they see the United States, the more they're gonna like it.
And you know, the more they see places like Singapore, right here in their region of the world, a vibrant city, um, as beautiful as any you've been to.
You know, tall buildings.
I mean, we'll throw pictures up for you if you're interested, just go online and take a look.
It is a a clean, vibrant uh city with prosperity and a lot of people doing well, not exactly my former government, but certainly a lot better than what they have with thirty-five dollars a month, the average amount of money that is earned in North Korea, not exactly living high on the hog.
Um, I want to just make a comparison here.
You know, the president saying he wants to de-nuke the entire Korean peninsula.
Um, and then you got the media coverage of all of this.
You know, their focus is on the menu and ripping the menu from the Kim Jong un lunch.
I guess we should have served caveat and Champagne.
Uh what what do you what is the proper menu?
Maybe they requested certain things, maybe we did offer them other options here.
Or the media criticizing, you know, the summit just goes on and on in spite of all of the things that happened before the summit that incentivized this country, meaning the United States, our country, you know, that this is a good thing to do.
We can make progress.
We don't have missiles being fired over Japan.
We have hostages that are now home.
We have a nuclear test site that has been dismantled, crossing of the DMZ, and a promise to to look at and and negotiate through the denuclearization of the entire peninsula.
Let's play it.
Let's just, I think most people like me want to know what was going on in that room one-on-one.
Well, the big thing is this is now my twenty-fifth hour of being up and negotiating, and we've been negotiating very hard.
This is about the complete verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of the entire peninsula.
So without that, we uh could not have had a deal.
I mean, one thing I've we want to denude the entire peninsula.
We want to denuke that whole situation.
A summit is not an accomplishment for the American president, Brian.
Uh it is a major accomplishment for Kim Jong-un.
And in fact, the spectacle of seeing the American flags along with the DPRK flags as a backs up for that handshake is really jarring, actually, to see to witness.
In fact, I would say it's somewhat disgusting.
It is actually a debasement of the American flag.
This is a despotic regime that murders its own citizens.
And so we're putting him on the same stage as the American president.
I don't think we should discount the idea.
It's not a coincidence that this is precisely what Putin desires.
He places an overemphasis on personal chemistry and not realizing that countries have interests.
They represent their interests.
He, Kim Jong-un, did a very good job of representing the interests of his nation and his own personal interests, and he snookered Donald Trump.
It may be okay in the real estate business, but it's odious and disgusting when he is fawning over one of the most vicious dictators on the planet.
You look at the polls, uh, it's really interesting because the more we're talking about North Korea, um, you know, the like the less we're talking about Russia, right?
The less we're talking about um issues at home.
Yeah, well, why would we not spend another year and a half talking about Russia with no evidence ever in a year and a half?
Yeah, well, why why would it matter if we're talking about a regime that was firing missiles six months ago uh over Japan and threatening the entire region and threatening to marry their nuclear weapons to intercontinental ballistic weapons that could meet the continental United States or reach the continental United States,
why talk about that when we can spend another, you know, 24 hours a day for weeks on end talking to Michael Avanati and about Stormy Daniels.
I mean, why would we ever do that?
I mean, the pri our priorities are skewed.
Why would I spend 22 hours in the air and come to Singapore when I could have stayed home and talked about Mueller and phony Russia investigations and and of course uh Stormy Daniels.
Anyway, you can't even begin to make this stuff up joining us now, uh, and we're glad to have him.
He's been here the entire time with us, Daniel Hoffman, Fox News contributor, by the way, 30 plus years CIA operations officer, and you know a lot about this region of the world.
One of your closest friends in the CIA actually was brought in to consult on this particular case, right?
Yeah, that's right.
Uh that's Andrew Kim.
You know, one of the one of the really important steps that uh Secretary Pompeo made when shortly after he was sworn in as director of of CIA, he created the Korean mission center, uh, so that we would focus exclusively on the Korean peninsula and the challenge we faced.
And then he brought back a recently retired senior clandestine services officer, Andy Kim, to run it.
Andy's a native uh Korean speaker.
He served in the region.
He's in my view, our best subject matter expert on the region.
But I do want to just quickly comment on your last point about the hypocrisy in the media.
It was just a little while ago when during his campaign, uh then candidate Obama suggested meeting with dictators from Iran and from North Korea without preconditions.
And that was applauded.
And you know, a lot of I just don't get that hypocrisy.
You know, uh a lot of people, and I'm just gonna be I said it during the Obama years.
When you have somebody that apologizes for America, and somebody, I mean, Sarah Carter was the one that broke the story about the rules of engagement that Obama had put on our brave men and women in the military, right?
Which literally is basically putting handcuffs on them and their ability to defend themselves.
We've we send them to fight, risk their lives, risk losing their limbs, and many of them have, and then we tell them, but you can't fire unless you're a hundred percent sure.
Now, that type of rule of engagement results in people dying, because you cannot second guess those people that are on the battlefield, and the fact that we did do that is a form of insanity to me.
And I said at the time, I would not want anybody that I loved and cared about serving under that commander-in-chief because he's weak.
And the same thing we we saw how weak he was with the mules of Iran.
I wouldn't want him negotiating with Kim Jong-un, because he'd probably be doing the same thing Clinton did, or the same thing he did with the Mullers, bribing them and kissing their ring and saying, Well, if I give you billions of dollars, you promise to be nice, and it's a mentality I don't understand.
And the idea that you'd have a different philosophy under a different president that has this the same same approach to foreign policy as, say, Reagan, which is trust but verify in peace through strength, i it's not hypocritical.
It's not inconsistent.
It's called, you know what?
It's called using common sense judgment based on the current reality or the situation of who's the commander in chief.
I have I do have one standard for Obama and I have another standard for Trump.
Because I trust that Trump is going to be strong with these guys and be willing to walk away any second.
Yeah, I just don't understand how uh on when the on the one hand, for the op for the folks criticizing President Trump, they were applauding President Obama for suggesting what even wasn't as effective as what President Trump is doing.
And to a point about your rules of engagement, I witnessed that firsthand.
We were hamstrung by um just odious uh rules of engagement that were overly bureaucratic and absolutely impacted our ability to take the fight to the enemy and defend ourselves.
Yeah.
I mean, and we saw what happened.
I mean, I don't know if you know the case of Clint Lorance.
I mean, the guy's got what 20 years in jail, and he became a platoon commander, and because he didn't quote follow every specific rule of engagement.
I'd like to see the president pardon him at some point uh sooner rather than later.
You so you know the region, you see what happened, you see the media's coverage of it, and now Kim Jong-un wants to come to the United States.
How should we interpret that?
You've been one that has been very serious about the idea you gotta manage expectations.
We know what he did before the president got here in Singapore.
How do you read that?
So, a couple of points about that.
First of all, we are deeply diplomatically engaged with North Korea right now.
Tension is down.
So those who are criticizing the president for his rhetoric in the past and now criticizing him for current steps to bring diplomacy to the fold.
I just again uh that's inconsistent.
I'm not quite sure I understand that.
But I would also highlight for historians, uh we all remember the Reagan years and the multiple summits with Mikhail Gorbachev.
It took two or three summits before we actually got to where we needed in 1987.
The more contact we have, we build muscle memory inside that Hermit Kingdom, North Korea bureaucracy where the guys on Kim Jong-un's team get used to traveling and meeting our folks and talking about areas of common concern.
I think that's all a very good thing for us.
Uh there's no question that there will be a lot of steps that that we'll have to get through before that White House visit, but the discussion already I think is very positive.
Here's one of the big questions, and your years as an intelligence officer with the CIA.
Um, I think you'd know better than anybody.
Do the Chinese want this to happen?
After all, this is their region of the world.
They have the greater amount of influence with North Korea.
Uh or do they want instability in the region?
Because it may be their territorial ambitions.
Right.
So the first thing they want is stability.
They're very concerned about an unstable North Korea, the potential for uh a real crisis if that regime imploded.
But they're also concerned about U.S. influence in the region.
They'd like to get our troops out.
They would prefer that we not conduct military exercises.
Those are okay.
Those are points of leverage for us that we can use against the Chinese for sure.
Uh they don't have our best interests at heart.
We know that.
But this president, this administration can, I think definitely manage.
The Chinese are out for the Chinese.
Absolutely.
The Chinese president is looking out for his country.
And really, almost for the first time, we got an American president saying, uh, I'm looking out for America first.
And that's why, for example, the negotiation on trade deals is so important.
Um, and so I mean, in that sense, you can't fault them.
The question is, do the Chinese do they want peace?
Do they want a safer world and a better society?
I I think they do.
I think the question that I'd be asking our intelligence community is does China is China prepared to go as far as they need to go to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, or would they prefer that North Korea maybe look a little bit more like China, where they open up economically, retain political control and repression over their own citizens, reduce their nuclear profile, reduce the maybe stop the testing, um, stop the testing of the ICBMs, and and bring some stability to the region.
That might be where China's headed, and that might be where we have more discussion with them.
All right, Daniel Hoffman is with us uh thirty plus years in the CIA as an operative 800 941 Sean is our number.
We'll come back we'll have more with him.
My interview with President Trump coming up.
And as we continue our final moments, Daniel Hoffman, CIA operative.
You know, uh I told everybody, and we were discussing it the other day when you stopped by how you literally scare the crap out of everybody when you sit and we you know, we've had lunches and dinners together, and everybody's like, oh, all of this is happening, and most people don't know, meaning spying.
It's that bad.
Yeah, I mean, under the surface, there's a lot going on in Singapore.
You talked about Singapore, it's the prototype for this economically vibrant region where North Korea is the outlier.
But uh, yeah, there's you know, the Russians and the Chinese were not here officially, but they were Here with their espionage teams trying to collect intelligence on what was going on at the summit and on those uh senior U.S. officials and others who were involved.
Yeah.
And but the fact is, the you said it's a lot more likely we'd get spied on in Singapore.
Because, you know, obviously because of the events that were here.
What about in the United States?
How vulnerable are people?
Because, you know, if you look online and you read Apple, they say, well, your iPhone is encrypted and uh it's safe, and the FBI had a problem opening an iPhone.
You don't think that's a problem for foreign services?
Well, let me start with the human element.
Uh the Russians and the Chinese flood the zone inside the United States.
They have a tremendous number of intelligence officers.
You might remember the uh case of the Russian illegals operating in the United States.
We arrested them in uh 2010 and traded them for four guys who were gonna take their last breaths in Siberian death camps, who had been some of them, one of them in particular been spying on our behalf.
Uh so they're out to collect intelligence from human sources, both the Chinese and the Russians inside the United States.
You can be sure at this upcoming White House summit that they'll be mounting a full court press to collect intelligence on the summit.
And do we have the ability to stop them?
You know, I often wonder whether the FBI has the resources to counter Russia, China, and the President.
But in that environment, wouldn't that be a CIA operation within the United States because it deals with foreign entities?
No, it's actually an FBI operation domestically.
We would the CIA will be collecting intelligence in on them, but inside uh Russia and China and other places.
No, there comes a point where you know you can't blame them.
At some point, we've got to defend ourselves.
And if we don't do that, you know, I we really will have no one else to blame.
Daniel Hoppe will see on TV tonight.
Hannity from Singapore, nine Eastern, don't miss it.
We'll preview the IG report, latest fallout from this summit, and the battle that's going on.
Devin Nunes and others will be joining us tonight.
Uh and we hope you'll join us.
Uh quick break, right back.
My interview with the president is next.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
It's well, let's see here, 25 to 6 a.m. here, top of the hour a.m. in Singapore.
Anyway, um, we're still in Singapore.
We have to stay so we can get the IG report to you tomorrow and full and comprehensive coverage of all of that, uh, which we will be bringing you on radio and TV.
We will have Hannity tonight, uh, live, nine Eastern on the Fox News Channel.
And I had the interview and the opportunity to sit down with the president after he had this historic meeting with Kim Jong-un.
We now have an update.
Kim Jong-un, according to North Korean press, has accepted the president's invitation.
He will be coming to the United States, uh, which is a good sign.
And so uh I want to play the interview that I had in the exact room where they first sat down and met.
And this is me talking to the president right after this all took place.
Great to see you.
Thank you very much.
Historic day.
Well it's just I think most people like me want to know what was going on in that room one-on-one.
Well, the big thing is this is now my twenty-fifth hour of being up and negotiating, and we've been negotiating very hard.
This is about the complete verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of the entire peninsula.
So without that, we uh could not have had a deal.
I mean, one thing we want to denuke the entire peninsula, we want to denuke that whole situation that is a hotbed, and you know what's been happening for years, and nobody did anything about it, and you have to.
We have no choice.
We had to.
And the relationship was really good.
The you know, it built.
And I talked about early on in the relationship and the feeling, well, we had a very good feel right from the beginning.
And we were able to get something very important done.
Uh and actually some things happened after that was signed, Sean, where we're getting rid of certain missile research areas, certain missile testing sites.
They're getting rid of a lot.
You know, in the lead up to this, this was pretty amazing because obviously I'm a pretty strong critic of uh our news media in the country.
But a lot had happened.
He had dismantled the nuclear test site.
He crossed over the DMZ.
Three hostages were released.
The missile stopped being fired.
He was willing, he you wouldn't have come here if he did not, if he was not willing to talk about denuclearization.
That's right.
So all of that happened before you walked in, and I don't remember that you sent cargo planes in cash.
Or gave anything really before the lead up.
Why do you think he why do you think he's interested in doing this after spending that time with them?
I'm not even knocking him because honestly they've been treating me very good on the subject.
What's to treat badly?
But some of the press would say he's meeting with them, and therefore he has a major loss.
I said, since when?
And you know, others wanted to, it never worked out.
It probably never could have worked out.
But uh we really have gotten a lot.
You you haven't seen missiles going up in seven or eight months.
You haven't seen research, you haven't seen nuclear tests very importantly.
Japan is very happy because they were being encircled.
I mean, there was a period of time when they were going right over the middle of Japan, and we got our hostages back, and you're right, we didn't pay for that.
But but I think I don't say that in a braggadocious way at all because he did such a smart thing, because that was such a good a good thing to do, and and I feel so badly about Otto Warmbeer.
That was the one thing, and Otto did not die in vain.
I actually believe, and I've gotten very friendly with Otto's parents, they're incredible people, devastated, as they, you know, as you would think, great parents, he's he was a great young man.
But I think without Otto, this whole thing wouldn't have happened because it crystallized when he came back in the condition, it crystallized so much to so many people, maybe even to the other side, frankly.
But I think that Otto truly did not die in vain.
Yeah, I've known you for a lot of years, and I think one trait that I could say is brutal honesty in the room alone, and then the subsequent talks with your team versus and their team.
How honest, how brutal, what was said?
Bring it try and bring people into the room.
So we got along very well.
We got along from the beginning.
We started off he and myself and two interpreters, and uh from the beginning we got along.
You know, I made the statement, and I've said it before, I've said it about a lot of different kinds of relationships.
You can almost tell right at the beginning.
There are a lot of people, critics quickly saying when you said little rocket man or fire and fury, or you know, uh when he said, Oh, I've got a red button on my desk, he said, Well, mine's bigger and it works better than yours.
How did we how did it evolve from that to this?
Because he did say at the very beginning, we're gonna basically start over, and but that has been building behind the scenes.
Well, I think without the rhetoric, we wouldn't have been here.
I really believe that, you know, we did sanctions and all of the things that you would do, but I think without the rhetoric, you know, other administrations, I don't want to get specific on that, but they had a a policy of silence.
If they said something very bad, very threatening and horrible, just don't answer.
That's not the answer.
That's not what you have to do.
So I think the rhetoric, I hated to do it.
Sometimes I felt foolish doing it, but we had no choice.
So strategically you were doing it.
Well, yeah, I mean, but I and I think he gained respect.
You know, he's a strong guy.
Hey, people were saying, what's he like?
He he's got a very good personality, he's funny, and he's very, very smart.
He's a great negotiator.
And he's a very strategic kind of a guy.
One of the points that I think surprised everybody, and I think um every American should be very happy about this, is the Korean war, which has gone on for so long, but more importantly, there are still American remains there, and they will be repatriated.
The remains are coming back.
Yeah, and we got that at the end.
In fact, we have some things that you don't even have in the report.
We put out the teleporting you could tell us what we signed.
Yeah, uh missile sites that uh they use for the launching of missiles and missile research areas.
Uh that's going to be gone.
We made a lot of progress, tremendous amount of progress.
One of the things that I'm very happy about, we're not going to play the war games anymore, which you know how expensive that is.
We're flying this massive bombers in for practice from Guam.
I said, how far is Guam?
Six and a half hours, sir.
I said, that's a long way for a big bomber times, you know, 20.
Yeah.
And lots of other planes coming in.
So we're not going to be doing the war games as long as we're negotiating in good faith.
Uh so that's good for a number of reasons, in addition to which we save a tremendous amount of money.
You know, those things they cost.
I I hate to sound like a pure businessman, but I kept saying, what's this costing?
I would look at them coming in from the sea and bombs exploding everything.
I said, what does this cost?
I don't even want to tell you, but it's a lot.
So we're not going to be doing that.
As long as we're negotiating in good faith, which I think we will be.
You managed expectations, I think, pretty well.
You didn't think coming in here you were going to sign an agreement, and you said maybe it takes two, three, four, five meetings.
But you were open to going as fast or as slow as he wanted.
We got along better than I would have assumed right from the beginning.
We got a lot more done today than I ever thought possible.
And he's going back.
He's now headed back.
And he I think he's going back to get this done.
He wants to get it done.
You know, you hear the whole thing about his father and other administrations or his grandfather.
The fact is that he and he brings that up.
But they weren't dealing with me.
They were dealing with different people.
Nobody's ever come close to the case.
Did he talk about the difference between past administrations and yours?
Yes, but I can't say that because I don't want to be the one saying it.
At some point I'm sure he'll say it.
Yeah.
But they never got it done.
And they were never this close either.
I mean, it was never to a point where they were like we are.
Is is there a s is there a history lesson to learn here?
And I I think in one sense we could talk about past administrations.
Reagan, evil empire, Mr. Gorbachev teared down this wall.
His own advisors did wanted to take those words out of that speech.
And you compare Bill Clinton gave Kim Jong-un's father three billion dollars in energy subsidies.
Tremendous amount of money.
The Moes in Iran, you have said the worst deal in the history of mankind.
That's the one.
Worse than NAFTA, and I think NAFTA is pretty bad, worse than the WTO, the World Trade Organization, which frankly built China in addition to the money that we gave them all the time.
You know, I mean, uh, these were terrible deals, but I would say that the Iran deal was one of the worst I've ever seen.
I I will say, uh, speaking of the Iran deal, since we got out of that deal, and we could do it very easily because they never had it approved by Congress.
It was just perfect.
This must be approved by Congress.
I wanted to be approved by Congress, because otherwise it's really doesn't mean very much.
I wanted, I I would think anybody would want it approved by Congress.
But since we took out of that deal, we got out of that deal.
I think Iran is a much different place.
I don't think they're looking so much to the Mediterranean and Syria and Yemen.
Uh they're starting to pull people out of Yemen, they're starting to pull people out of Syria.
They, you know, it's a whole different thing.
Now, I did it for nuclear.
But one of the side benefits is you take a look, a serious look, and Iran is not the country that it was three or four months ago when they were much more emboldened.
Well, certainly sanctions played a big part.
Big part.
The strike forces that you sent into the region off the coast.
And I think at a certain point, honestly, I know the Iranian people, I know many people from Iran.
These are great people.
I really believe at some point they're gonna come back and want to negotiate a deal.
Did reunification come up?
Did humanitarian issues come up in the meeting?
Yes, it did.
And one of the things I will tell you that I'm most happy about, and that as you know, is a big sticking point, is bringing back the remains of thousands of soldiers that were killed.
This came up last minute.
This wasn't this was sort of last minute, yeah.
I said would it be possible?
Because I get letters all the time from families who lost a son, lost a brother, lost a father in Korea.
That was a rough fight.
Right.
And they were buried along the roadways, they were buried as you know, soldiers going back and forth into battle, and they were burying them along roadways.
And they're saying, please, please, could you do it?
I get so many letters from people who lost a loved one in in North Korea, essentially, in North Korea.
Right.
And I would say, uh, I'm gonna try.
And I brought it up, and I'll tell you what, it was almost immediate.
Now, in the past, there was you couldn't even talk about it, but it was really a nice uh response.
How quickly?
Um did you talk about a trip to the United States?
Did you talk about I think at the right time uh he'll be absolutely be coming to the White House?
Yeah.
Look, uh we've been very it's been a very intense relationship.
It's been short and very intense, and of course, before that it was pretty rhetorical.
It was uh, you know, not a pretty thing.
People were very worried, but without that, I don't think we would have been here today.
He wants to get something done.
I want to get something done.
I think we'll get it done.
And we started off by really a very strong document.
I think people are surprised to see it.
They're shocked to see it.
And then add some more things that we got after that was signed.
And so it can you give us maybe a glimpse into what you keep sort of referring a little bit to things that will be coming that.
So I I just think that we are now going to start the process of denuclearization of North Korea.
And I believe that he's going back and will start it virtually immediately.
And he's already indicated that.
And you look at what he's done.
So we got our hostages back, but they've blown up one of their sites, one of their testing sites, their primary testing site.
In fact, some people say their only testing site.
They're getting rid of a missile, which isn't in the document that was done afterwards.
They're getting rid of a missile testing site.
They're doing so much now.
So it's a process, and it's good, it's really moving rapidly.
Last question, because I know you have a lot to do.
Um obviously he wants something on his end.
Certainly wants the world community, wants sanctions lifted.
He wants economic opportunity, and his people need it desperately.
There are people starving there.
What he wants is security, and I understand that, and he'll get that.
And he wants to see if they can make that incredible location.
Because it's incredible.
It's between China and South Korea.
Think of it.
I'm in the real estate business.
Think of that.
Yeah, it's prosperous.
How good a location is that?
You have China, and you have South Korea.
He's got right in the middle of both of them, surrounded by water, okay?
Those are that's called like there be anything better than that.
And it's also beautiful land.
It's incredible land.
I know you have a lot to do.
Mr. President, thanks for being so generous with your time.
Thank you.
Congratulations.
Thank you very much, sir.
Appreciate it.
All right, that was the president right after his historic summit with Kim Jong-un and Kim Jong-un, according to North Korea media, has now, in fact, accepted the president's invitation now to go to the United States.
And uh obviously this continues.
The president said it will be a process.
And we got a lot more out of this summit than anybody had anticipated.
And even the president himself said, Well, don't expect us to sign anything.
They did.
And it was more comprehensive than anyone anticipated.
And the president telling me in that interview that uh, yeah, we even agreed to more.
We just couldn't get it in to the document fast enough because they at that point were on a time crunch.
All right, uh Hannity tonight, nine Eastern Fox News.
We will give you a preview of the IG report, the fallout from this summit, and now the new news that the uh chairman is going to be visiting the U.S. and much more.
All right, that's gonna wrap things up for today, and let not your heart be troubled.
Hannity tight, we're still in Singapore.
We want to be here for the IG report, and the 24-hour flight time didn't allow for me to get home and do radio and do television.
So we are gonna stay committed to on this busy news week bringing you the best and most comprehensive news coverage of everything.
And we've got a whole team breaking this down.
We literally are assigning pages to individuals so that we'll have all the information you need.
