Sean Hannity Show - A Supreme Decision - 7.9

July 9, 2018 - Sean Hannity Show

01:33:20

A Supreme Decision - 7.9

With President Trump's big decision looming, Sean spends some time breaking down just how important the upcoming nomination process will be to replace SCOTUS Justice Anthony Kennedy. There is definitely a battle brewing in the Senate. Sean has the latest... The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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	All right, glad you're with us.
	It is great to be back.
	And what an incredible news week this is going to be.
	Anyway, write down our toll-free telephone number.
	It's 800-941-Sean.
	If you want to be a part of the program, let me just break down where the week is headed and some of the things that we know are coming up and some of the things that we will be active and involved in that I think you're going to want to be following.
	First of all, at 9:01:30 Eastern Standard Time tonight, the president will announce his decision to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court.
	In other words, right as we kick off Hannity tonight, we will have full, complete coverage analysis of the president's comments.
	And of course, the Democrats predictable.
	It does not matter who the president picks.
	It just doesn't matter.
	If the president cured cancer now, I am certain if he was able to find a cure, if he was willing to give a million dollars to every man, woman, and child in this country, I am convinced the left would hate him.
	I'm just, there's nothing he can do in their eyes that they're not going to oppose.
	And the media, of course, is right there with them.
	But that's going to happen 6:01:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on the West Coast tonight.
	We're going to have that.
	That's on Hannity.
	Let me tell you the other things that are happening this week.
	So, Lisa Page will be testifying on Wednesday.
	That will be behind closed doors.
	But I'm pretty certain that there's going to be a lot of information.
	From what I'm hearing, she probably is scared to death about her involvement as the lead counsel for Andrew McCabe and the boyfriend of Peter Strzok.
	And I'm just assuming she's going to have an awful lot to say because there's a lot on the line as it relates to her life and her future here.
	So then the other half of this dynamic Trump hating duo, Peter Strzok, he will be testifying publicly on Thursday of this week, and we will have that coverage as well.
	And my sources in DC are telling me that he's getting very nervous at the idea of the jeopardy he now finds himself in, which is, you know, the heart of this is all very simple.
	Greg Jarrett will join us later.
	His book is out in two weeks, The Russia Hoax, The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.
	And at the heart of all of this is Peter Strzok.
	He's the one that changed.
	Remember, he was writing the exoneration of Hillary Clinton in May, early May, with James Comey.
	He's the one that changed the original draft from gross negligence, which is the legal standard that would have mandated that Hillary be charged with the Espionage Act because, well, she did commit felonies, to extreme carelessness.
	And that was all in an effort to help preserve her candidacy with the belief that she had to beat Donald Trump because Donald Trump, you know, we need to, was loathsome to them.
	And they needed an insurance policy.
	And they even said they would stop him.
	So they've got a lot of questions to be answered, and that's all coming up this week.
	Also, the president will be taking on NATO this week.
	In other words, we can't, as Americans, be the piggy bank for the entire world.
	And that goes for the UN, that goes for NATO, and that our NATO allies are going to have to now begin the process of paying their fair share, which a lot of it is a little overlapping as it relates to these trade deals,
	which to me is just the president negotiating with our allies, saying, I'm sorry, but the idea that you're charging tariffs on our steel, on our dairy, our farmers, and on our automobiles, which basically you charge so much in tariffs, we can't even import vehicles to other countries because it becomes so cost-prohibitive to the people, they're never going to buy them.
	And he's saying, no, we believe in free trade, but fair trade.
	And I'm pretty certain that there are going to be some significant developments in terms of these countries realizing how much and how badly they need the United States and every United States consumer and access to our markets.
	That I think there will be better deals that will be struck over time.
	I don't think this is about launching a trade war because that wouldn't be good for anybody in the process.
	But fighting for free and fair trade, I think, is a battle worth having.
	Just like I think it's not unreasonable to ask the rest of the world to step up and pay their fair share of the United Nations and pay their fair share of the billions and billions of dollars we spend on protecting our friends and our allies.
	We have no problem helping.
	We have no problem defending.
	We have already proven to the world that we are willing to shed American blood, American treasure, spend American billions to help keep the world a better and safer place.
	And in the end, we're not looking to conquer anybody, although we might ask for a little plot of land, vis-à-vis Normandy, to bury our dead.
	We might request that.
	But short of that, America should not bear the burden of defending the entire world when these countries do have the means and the ability to step up to a much greater extent than they have been.
	Also, later this week, well, the president will be discussing and talking with his NATO allies.
	That's happening in Brussels.
	And then he's headed to London, where we will be later in the week.
	And we are expected there to have massive protests, anti-Trump protests.
	The left is going to love this.
	The left is, oh, they're absolutely going to, they're going to, this is like manna from heaven for them to have leftists in Europe protesting, socialists in Europe protesting, open borders people in Europe protesting Donald Trump's agenda and policies that have only proven to be a great success for the people of the United States of America.
	In many ways, to me, it's somewhat laughable.
	But let me begin.
	So we're less now, less than six hours away from the president's announcement.
	I'm not going to spend the rest of the show speculating who it might be.
	I don't know who it's going to be.
	I believe it's probably down likely to four people, maybe a fifth, whose name has kind of just been thrown in the mix a little bit.
	The president is notorious for keeping people guessing.
	I mean, he loves to troll, and I would have no doubt at all that he's doing so in this case.
	Giving you the short bio and names of everybody, you have, I think she's probably the most interesting of all the candidates, and it is fascinating how the left is just, they almost melt at the thought that Amy Coney Barrett is her name of Indiana would in fact be picked.
	She was a recent choice for the U.S. Court of Appeals in the 7th District, and she's 46 years old.
	And, of course, she previously clerked for Antonin Scalia.
	She was appointed by Trump and confirmed for the 7th District Court of Appeals in October 2017, had a big showdown.
	I'll get to more details in this in October 2017 with Diane Feinstein.
	Barrett is, she seems to be a top contender.
	If I were to put them in order, I'd probably say that Brett Kavanaugh is probably one.
	I'm guessing, based on what I'm hearing, and probably Barrett right there next to him, and Thomas Hardeman not far away, and Raymond Kethlich is there as well.
	And Hardeman is an interesting choice.
	I know that Senator Rick Santorum happens to be a big fan of him.
	He's out of Pennsylvania.
	He's on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
	He's 52 years old.
	By the way, that's the same circuit that the president's sister works on and happens to be a fan of Hardiman.
	So that's interesting in terms of what the president might be thinking about in terms of his decision.
	He spent now about three years as a federal judge in Pittsburgh before being nominated for the Third Circuit.
	And that was back in 2006.
	So he has a lot of judicial experience.
	He graduated as well, Notre Dame, and went to law school at Georgetown.
	There's a 2007 ruling Hardiman wrote that upheld the constitutionality of strip searches of jail prisoners, regardless of how minor an offense they might have been accused of.
	And the Supreme Court upheld that and endorsed his decision.
	That was a 5-4 decision.
	Then there's Brett Kavanaugh.
	I would say probably through the end of last week was the leading contender.
	If you're watching the news, not sure if that is a head fake or not.
	I honestly don't know.
	And the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, he has probably the most experience in terms of judicial writings.
	And I know that there are some senators that are probably, oh, the amount of work we have to read 12 years of opinions, how difficult.
	Which could be done very expeditiously and quickly if they really cared.
	He was appointed to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006 by George W. Bush, for whom he had previously served as assistant to the president and staff secretary, a graduate of Yale Law School, clerk for Justice Kennedy, and part of the 1998, he was an associate counsel for Ken Starr that investigated Clinton.
	And that became a big issue last week as it results for him.
	And his choice and his belief that Clinton could have obstructed justice by sending out surrogates to defend him, knowing that the surrogates were lying.
	And then he made a big deal in 2009, about nine years later, in a law review.
	I believe it was a speech in Michigan, if my memory serves me right.
	I read it over the weekend, where he just basically said, no, I was wrong in what I was saying back in 1998.
	Probably he was in his 20s at the time.
	He had to be in his 20s or late 20s.
	So that is interesting.
	At least it was at one point thought of, wow, that he believed this, this is a problem.
	And then it was discovered that he had said, no, I don't believe that at all.
	Raymond Kethlich, a little bit about him.
	He's from Michigan, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
	And Kethlich, who joined the Sixth Circuit in 2008, again, pretty long history, long resume.
	Something rarely seen on the president Supreme Court list.
	Now, one of the things you've got to keep in mind, the president has given us this list and has expanded this list since before he was running.
	There's nobody on this list or any of the names we're hearing that the president hasn't foretold of before he ever got elected.
	In other words, he just, he's been very forthright about the type of justices he's looking for and that these are the type of people he would be examining.
	Anyway, Kethlich wrote an opinion rejecting the EEOC and a case seeking to limit private employers' use of credit checks for job applicants.
	And the EEOC arguing that the practice amounted to racial discrimination, Kethlich accused the agency of hypocrisy.
	And Kethlich also issued a politically charged ruling blasting the Obama administration for continuous resistance to efforts to discover what actions the IRS took against Tea Party groups, nonprofit groups.
	Then another name that's come up pretty last minute is Joan Larson.
	Judge Larson, confirmed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, previously served on the Michigan Supreme Court from 2015 until earlier this year.
	And before serving as a judge, was on the University of Michigan Law School faculty for more than a decade.
	Well, you know, one of the things you've got to remember, why is this not, why is it that Democrats always get the judicial activists that they want, and sometimes Republican presidents, how come sometimes they get it wrong?
	Well, it's because Judge Ginsburg once said that, you know, I'm not going to comment on a particular case, and that's sort of like the standard that they now use for every judge.
	Or Anthony and Scalia saying that I have to maybe make decisions that the law demands that I personally don't even like.
	So the big battle here is over judicial philosophy.
	And that is, and again, they're all intellectuals.
	They're all constitutional scholars.
	And so it's sometimes far more complicated and nuanced than anybody really knows.
	And I don't know if there's anybody of certainty, but there's been a lot of time for everybody to look to the background of these individuals.
	I'm just going to give you the information.
	I don't know who the president's deciding.
	And, you know, I just, it's going to be interesting.
	But I do believe the president has been very clear and believes in originalism, constitutionalism, and he is against judicial activism.
	So he was not going to be looking for somebody who wants to legislate from the bench or use foreign law as a basis in a decision like some of our liberal justices have done in the past.
	You cannot get, if you like interesting times, you can't get better than this.
	I was explaining to a liberal over my 4th of July vacation.
	I was trying to explain to them, okay, Donald Trump leaves.
	What are you going to do every day?
	I said, it's never going to get that interesting for you.
	But because liberals wake up every day and they just, how do I hate him?
	How do I hate Donald Trump today?
	The latest tweet, the latest, latest, latest tweet, the biggest outrage.
	And I keep telling people, if they listen, if you go on Twitter, all you have to do is follow one liberal journalist, just one.
	And what they do is they live in this little bubble world.
	It's sort of like the liberal Joe Mika, you know, Humpty Dumpty world and the Nicole Wallace world, where they try to feign moral outrage, more moral outrage than the other one.
	If they say, no, Donald Trump's a liar, liar, the next one will say, no, you're wrong.
	He's a liar, liar, liar, pants on fire.
	And then the next one's going to say, no, liar, liar, liar, pants on fire, and he's stupid.
	He's dumb.
	He's this, whatever.
	And it's like, if you take Alka-Seltzer, I've used this analogy many times.
	You ever have Alka-Seltzer?
	Alka-Seltzer plus cold medicine, which I use when I get a cold.
	You just go plop, plop, fizz-fizz, and they bubble and fizz predictably, and out comes the venom, the vitriol, the hatred.
	If you don't believe it, just watch what happens the second that Donald Trump announces either Barrett or who else?
	Hardeman or Kavanaugh or Kethridge or anybody.
	It doesn't matter.
	The borking will begin instantaneously and it'll be universal stupidity.
	Quick break, right back.
	All right, as we roll along, Sean Hannity Show 800-941, Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
	All right.
	About five and a half hours now, the president, five hours, 25 minutes, will be announcing his choice to replace Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court.
	It comes down to, it looks like five people, Amy Barrett, Indiana, Thomas Hardeman of Pennsylvania, Brett Kavanaugh, who seemingly was the frontrunner all last week of Maryland.
	Not sure if his stock has risen or fallen or remains the same.
	Raymond Cethridge of Michigan and Judge Larson, who I mentioned just only in the last day or two, seems her name has come up a little bit.
	Not sure where that's going or if that means anything.
	Let me just back up here a second, and I just want to tell you what's going to happen.
	The president will make the announcement tonight.
	This is about the, and the president tweeted this.
	President said, I have long heard the most important decision that a U.S. president can make is the selection of a Supreme Court justice.
	He's right.
	We'll be announced tonight at 9 p.m.
	I kind of like it.
	It's right during the start of Hannity.
	Perfect.
	And then we get to talk about it first.
	And it is the most important decision.
	This is a lifelong appointment.
	Now, remember, this was a massive issue during the campaign.
	You know, what's a little frustrating to me is that all of the never Trumpers, all the people that have really just have done everything they could do short of, you know, going out there with Hillary signs at a Trump rally, most of them, and how all of them were told, wait a minute, this is about the Supreme Court.
	Look at who the president, then candidate Trump was saying that he would like to put on the Supreme Court.
	People like Antonin Scalia, who recently passed away, like Clarence Thomas, like Sam Alito, who has been a very strong conservative, originalist, constitutional voice on the Supreme Court.
	And that is the type of justice that the president will be looking for.
	And that list is who he would choose from, which, by the way, gives the opposition plenty of time to do their op research.
	There's not going to be a single person that the left is going to say, great choice, Mr. President, because they lost the election.
	They only want people like Judge Soda Mayor or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, et cetera, on the court.
	That's the type of justice they're looking for.
	People that are, and I guess it comes down to a battle between originalism and a judicial activist.
	They are looking for judicial activists.
	What is a judicial activist?
	That is somebody that believes that they can legislate from the bench.
	In other words, they don't really strongly believe in the Constitution.
	They don't seem to believe in co-equal branches of government.
	They don't seem to believe in separation of powers.
	They're perfectly comfortable with judges on the bench writing laws, which is their job.
	And the reason they want to punt these, especially these controversial decisions to the court is there's no political retribution for a judge.
	This is a lifetime appointment.
	So the things that they cannot get done at the ballot box, the things that they could never pass legislatively, that you, the people, would stop, or that there would be a huge political price if they ever did try to pass a lot of the legislation.
	They would prefer to use a left-wing judicial activist, even if that justice would cite foreign law as a basis for a decision, which has actually happened, which kind of blows my mind because we are a constitutional republic.
	And that judges, and as the great Antoninscalia once said, a good judge will do and must consider what the law demands, and that is the judicial philosophy of the original intent.
	In other words, it has deep respect for the fact that we have an executive branch, a judicial branch, but also a legislative branch.
	And why Congress would want to cede their authority or allow a judiciary to usurp their authority is because they know that that's what they really want America to be and America to turn into, but they wouldn't dare ever say it because they know politically that they would never survive.
	So this is a big, big battle.
	It now seems with Neil Gorsuch firmly placed in the Supreme Court, it looks like that this could be a turning point because Justice Kennedy was a very unpredictable vote.
	He was the swing vote on the Supreme Court.
	That's why this choice matters so much.
	One of the things that I've been watching, I really have not, I've not gone to Twitter.
	I have not been commenting on it, but I've been reading a lot.
	And the reason is there's so much lobbying going on behind the scenes.
	It actually is somewhat nauseating.
	It seems that if someone's friends with has known or is an acquaintance of a particular candidate, that, hey, they would, they want to tell everybody, no, this is the choice.
	And maybe they're making valid arguments.
	Maybe they really believe that the people that they know or have known for a long time would live up to the philosophy.
	Again, this is judicial philosophy that we're really looking at here that they believe is important for the court.
	I shouldn't question their motives in any way.
	I know that Mike Lee, I think he got a call from the president.
	He was interviewed.
	I think one of the first things the left would do, and I think Mike Lee would be an incredible originalist and constitutionalist.
	And I believe that he would do a great job on the Supreme Court.
	I put him on my list in a heartbeat.
	I find the most interesting person on the list that seems to be hated the most is Amy Barrett of Indiana because she happens to be Catholic and she happens to be very religious and she happens to have written about originalism.
	And the left, for whatever reason, has kind of glommed on to this that, I mean, it's almost like they feel this is a battle of religion.
	You know, I would argue that the left's war against women continues.
	Remember before I went on vacation, there were the attacks on Sarah Sanders, the attacks on Pam Bondi, the attacks on Secretary Nielsen, the attacks on Ivanka, the attacks on Melania, the attacks on Baron Trump, the attacks on Chloe Trump, the four-year-old daughter of Donald Trump Jr., the granddaughter of the president.
	I mean, we've watched all of this unfold.
	The reason you might ask, well, why is this always a mystery?
	Why don't we know?
	Well, there's a couple of good answers.
	I'm not sure you'll like them.
	But as Justice Ginsburg answered when she was in the process, she was going through the confirmation process, she won't comment on any particular case that she might have to rule on in the future, which, by the way, every nominee will probably say the exact same things.
	I know the left wants to whip everybody's mind into a frenzy that somehow Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned.
	The intellectual side of a lot of judges is that Roe v. Wade is horrible law and that it ought to be the states that make that decision.
	And I'll be perfectly blunt and brutally honest here.
	There is no way in the next number of decades, perhaps even 100 years, that a state like New York or California or New Jersey or Illinois or probably at least 46 states would ever outlaw abortion.
	I don't think that's going to happen.
	There might be a couple of states, but that would be a couple.
	So I think it is a fear tactic.
	I think as of 901, well, well, let's say by 903 or 904, when the president gets to the point where he mentions the name of his choice or when the person actually walks out with the president tonight, they are going to begin the process of smearing, besmirching, and attempting to destroy the character, the name, and the background of whoever the president picks.
	It doesn't matter, for example, that this president has literally, in 500 plus days, has created record low unemployment in 14 states in this country, record low unemployment for women in this country, record low unemployment for African Americans and Hispanic Americans in this country.
	We have a record number of people in terms of labor force participation.
	In other words, the numbers that we looked at closely in the Obama years, nobody seems, you know, Reagan once infamously said, you know, stay the course.
	And I will argue that probably starting next week, the importance of 2018 is going to be in the forefront of everybody's mind.
	By the way, Mitch McConnell now is speaking ahead of the president's Supreme Court announcement.
	It's very interesting from all that I've heard, Mitch McConnell has been lobbying for the easiest confirmation process.
	That shouldn't be what it is.
	There's a reality that I have to talk about.
	And the reality is, is that there is not a big margin in the Senate.
	In other words, the president has a balancing act here.
	Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, if there was somebody they believe strongly would, quote, overturn Roe, and as I explained, it would go back to the states, they would oppose that nominee.
	Then again, you've got strict constructionists and originalists that believe in the judicial philosophy that I believe in, like Scalia, like Thomas.
	People like Ted Cruz and Ram Paul, they too could be peeled off if the president doesn't make the right choice.
	John McCain has been very ill, so I'm not sure he will factor in here, but nor has he been a particularly reliable vote for the president.
	So the bottom line is there's no wiggle room here.
	And then on the other hand, politically, you've got all these red state Democrats, Claire McCaskill, Bill Nelson, Heidi Heitkamp, and others.
	Well, these are Democratic senators that live in very red states that like Donald Trump.
	They're going to be feeling the pressure to support the president's nominee.
	There's also the intellectualism that will be, means that people that are jurists or people that literally immerse themselves in constitutional thought and constitutional precedent and constitutional writings in the cases that you bring up, you can only glean so much because there's so much nuance and specifics in the particular cases that they might have ruled on.
	And that becomes an issue.
	For example, in the case I can tell you right now of one justice, but what, 12 years on the court?
	I mean, that's a long time.
	That's a lot of Justice Kavanaugh, for example.
	That's a long time.
	A lot of decisions to pour over.
	And he was, I think, the frontrunner leading up to this week.
	And although things seem, who knows?
	I mean, I don't even want to speculate.
	Everybody else is speculating.
	But here's what they want to do.
	This is what Senator Kennedy did to Robert Bork, who was probably one of the smartest, most brilliant judicial minds.
	Again, that means intellectual, nuanced, constitutionalist.
	And that's where, and he never believed in legislating from the bench.
	This is what happened to him when he was announced.
	Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions.
	Blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters.
	Rogue police could break down citizens' doors and midnight raids.
	And schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution.
	Writers and artists would be censured at the whim of government.
	Okay, really?
	All of that was a lie, but it ended up and resulted in Judge Bork's name being withdrawn.
	And then, of course, we watch Clarence Thomas, who's turned out to be, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest justices in history.
	And if you've never read My Grandfather's Son, which is Judge Thomas' book, I urge you to read it.
	It is such a good book.
	And it talks about his grandfather and how his grandfather raised him in poverty under difficult, difficult, horrible circumstances at times.
	Remember him having to defend himself against the attacks of the left.
	This is a circus.
	It's a national disgrace.
	It is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.
	And it is a message that unless you cow town to an old order, you will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.
	I mean, that became a national disgrace.
	But I can tell you the second the president announces his decision, it doesn't matter who it is.
	It's not Hillary's choice, and that will send them reeling.
	That's why elections matter.
	That's why 2018 matters.
	That's why 2020 will matter.
	The left in this country is more unhinged than they have ever been.
	Led by, by the way, a lot of so-called never-Trumpers that once said they were conservative and just lie.
	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, in less than five hours, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, will announce his Supreme Court choice to replace Justice Kennedy.
	We have about, well, four real people, I think, that are on the list.
	That's Amy Barrett of Indiana, Thomas Hardeman of Pennsylvania, Brett Kavanaugh, who seemed last week to be the frontrunner of Maryland, Raymond Kethledge of Michigan.
	And we just heard a little bit of rumblings about Judge Joan Larson.
	Not sure if this is a head fake from the president or not.
	He's been known alike to keep his choices and his decisions close to the vest.
	And joining us now for some insight into all of this.
	And by the way, he's the author of the New York Times bestseller, his second biggest selling book, Trump's America, The Truth About Our Nation's Great Comeback.
	Congratulations.
	It seems like everybody wants your insight into the mind of Donald Trump.
	No, in this way, because you get to filter it through the prism of you being a professor at heart.
	I've said that many times in my life, and that your knowledge of history is second to none.
	And you're looking at his presidency as transformative.
	And I totally agree with you.
	And tonight's choice will be important for what ultimately becomes Donald Trump's legacy.
	Yeah, and I think it's important to put this in context for a second.
	Donald Trump tonight is going to keep his work.
	And it's important for people to remember this after all the griping in the liberal media, that the fact is Trump campaigned on appointing conservative judges.
	He has consistently now, for almost two years, appointed conservative judges.
	He had a list that was developed with the help of the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo of really solid jurists who would make great Supreme Court nominees.
	He picked Neil Gorsuch off that particular list.
	I'm confident that whoever he picks, this is an important thing to remember, there'll be all sorts of griping.
	Is it the right person?
	Is it the perfect person?
	Are there three things that somebody doesn't like about him?
	But the key is this is going to be a solid conservative.
	It's going to be one more step towards our returning the courts to interpreting the Constitution instead of rewriting it.
	And that's an amazing achievement.
	This is one of the great achievements of the Trump presidency.
	And tonight, you know, I agree with you.
	He personally loves the idea that he wants to tease everybody so that we all tune in at 9 o'clock to see what he did.
	And candidly, I'm going to tune in at 9 o'clock.
	Oh, I think the president, it is absolutely within him.
	And I think he's done it many times.
	And you can back me up on this.
	Oh, he has no problem trolling people, knowing and building anticipation for what will be a historic decision.
	But there's also the predictable attacks.
	It doesn't matter, Mr. Speaker, who he chooses.
	The borking begins the second after America.
	The left will go after anybody he puts up there.
	Look, they actually had one interview of students who hated Trump's nominee, even though he hadn't been named yet.
	Oh, by the way, they hate the nominee.
	I have the tape.
	I'd play it, but it's three minutes.
	It's hilarious.
	I don't want to take the time away from you, but you're right.
	They all hated it, but it's not been picked yet.
	Right.
	And I think we just have to recognize that on the left, and they're right.
	I mean, if you want a radical judge who rewrites the Constitution to replace America with a radical society, you aren't going to like who I don't care who he picks.
	You're not going to like him because he's going to pick somebody who actually thinks that the Constitution matters and that it was a contract with the American people and that we have an obligation to stick to the contract.
	Yeah, well, I mean, that's the amazing part that I don't think many people will focus on.
	Let me ask you specifically, do you know these candidates or have you just been like the rest of us reading about?
	Well, okay, so I've been reading a lot about the decision, and I find all of them very, very interesting in different ways.
	You know, Raymond Kethlich, I mean, he was involved in a lot of noteworthy cases, one on free speech, where he joined a majority holding the First Amendment protected the right of Christians to preach at a particular Arab American festival.
	I mean, these are all nuanced cases.
	There's all different variations, which makes it very hard to get a firm grasp on any one person.
	And I think that's why maybe there's been disappointments like David Souter, for example, in the past.
	And all of these are great intellectuals that have spent their entire lives, for the most part, adult lives, studying the Constitution.
	Yeah, I mean, I think in that sense, you have to really look at Souter as an example of the opposite of what Trump is doing.
	Trump has consciously turned to great conservative scholars and asked their advice in building the list.
	He's then interviewed a wide range of people now.
	Remember, this is his second round of doing this.
	And he's given a lot of thought.
	I know because I was with him back in the transition to Trump Tower.
	And he was talking about the nature of shaping the Supreme Court, the burden, particularly if he gets more than two choices, of doing the right thing with the right kind of scholars, because once you appoint them, they're beyond your control.
	So you'd better have some deep gut instinct of who they are.
	And I think that Souter was the classic example of being too clever and appointing somebody who had no track record.
	And then it turned out he really did have no track record.
	There was no base to who he was.
	And so he drifted into the liberal majority because that's what the Georgetown cocktail party said wanted.
	But Trump's not going to pick a person of that kind.
	And I think any conservative, this is my other point, I guess, if I can just say it for a second.
	Every conservative in the country tonight at 9 o'clock, close your eyes for 30 seconds before the president starts to talk and imagine it was Hillary Clinton with her second radical nominee.
	And then tell me why you're going to be upset with Donald Trump about anything.
	He is so much better than what we were faced with in 2008.
	But there's also a political reality that I think has to factor into any in this president's decision, and that is the close nature of the Senate.
	And that is, you know, 5149, John McCain is ill.
	He's got a threaded needle where you don't, where people like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski don't oppose the nominee, and people like Ram Paul and Ted Cruz on the other side don't oppose the nominee.
	So either that or we're going to go through a process where it's extraordinarily painful, and meaning that it's going to be one nominee withdraw the nomination, the nominee withdraws, then the next one, then the next one, and it's never going to end.
	So there are political realities to the president's decision that probably nobody wants to discuss publicly.
	Well, but I also think, and he said a little bit himself, he's gotten much smarter about the legislative branch.
	I thought it was very noteworthy that he began consulting with senators immediately upon the announcement of the retirement.
	And I think that he is very, you know, he's trying to parse out two things.
	One, are there a couple of Democrats who are in such trouble for reelection that they probably can get their vote?
	And two, is there a way to find a person who will satisfy Collins and Murkowski, who I think are probably the bigger challenges?
	I think in the end, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are going to vote for the president's nominee.
	I'd particularly be shocked if Cruz didn't, just because he is himself a great lawyer.
	He understands what this is all about.
	Rand is a little less predictable, but in the end, this is a chance to move the court back to the Constitution.
	And certainly everything that Rand Paul and his father have stood for has been talking about getting back to a constitutional framework.
	And this choice, I believe, whichever of the four that it is, or even if he drops in a fifth one off, who's also on the list, by the way, you know, I think that these will be people that in the end they can say, you know, I really respect them.
	Now, the other part of this is whoever they pick is going to have to go through a set of hearings and be prepared to stand up to a knockdown, drag out fight with left-wing Democrats.
	But I think that'll be good for the country.
	That will be very educational for the American people.
	I actually agree with that.
	One of the most interesting things, if anybody's ever taken the time to actually, you can't see them.
	We don't allow cameras inside the Supreme Court, but you can hear specific arguments before the Supreme Court.
	I think it's one of the most fascinating things in the world to listen to.
	I mean, you might have a person for or against a particular case.
	They get out two words and immediately the justices begin grilling them.
	I mean, Scalia was, you know, so well known for his humor and his temperament and his tough questioning.
	And on the other hand, Clarence Thomas usually just remains quiet and he takes it all in and out comes his decision.
	And he's become one of the great Supreme Court justices in our time, in my opinion.
	Why is there so much anger and it seems that the greater amount of hostility is towards Judge Barrett, Amy Barrett?
	And, you know, for example, they quoted a speech she gave in 2006 to Notre Dame graduates that your legal career is but a means to an end in the end is building the kingdom of God.
	And she had a big knockdown drag out fight with Diane Feinstein last year when she was appointed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and Feinstein pressing her on whether she would be able to render judicial rulings faithful to the law given her deeply held religious beliefs.
	I mean, it seems like they almost want a religious lipus test.
	And in her case, she was a strong Catholic.
	And you do realize, of course, if exactly the same phrase had been said by a Muslim, then anybody who criticized it would be, of course, described as Islamophobic.
	But we don't have in our current political language anything for Christian folks, which is what we're talking about.
	We're talking about people who are deeply resistant to the role of God in American life, which, as you know, I've written, Clista and I wrote a book on, did a movie about.
	I mean, you can't describe America without understanding that we claim from the very beginning that our rights come from our Creator.
	And of course, on the left, this is forbidden language.
	She was, by the way, in that particular debate, she did a great job defending herself and educating the country, if not the senator.
	But I think the deeper point here is if you are a left-wing secular woman who is rapidly pro-abortion, then she is your worst nightmare.
	She's a mother.
	I think she has seven children.
	She is a Notre Dame graduate.
	She's a devout Catholic.
	She's overtly pro-life.
	And so she violates every single requirement of the new modern left-wing secular socialists who are actually taking control.
	It's about judicial philosophy.
	We believe in the Constitution as the basis for all rule of law, and that is what is known as an originalist, versus the, if Hillary were president, which I think is a very important thing to remember.
	This would be her second choice.
	And they believe in judicial activism, the things that they would never pass legislatively, the things that would never get them elected at the ballot box.
	And they're even willing to cite foreign law, believe it or not, not our Constitution, as the basis to make radical decisions.
	And remember, it's not just judicial activism in a random sense.
	These are left-wingers who have a secular vision of a particular American future, which requires that they crush and drive out of the public square anybody who believes in the classical vision of America.
	And so that's why you get this sort of totalitarian bullying and the hostility and the things you're seeing in the streets.
	I mean, these are people who are desperate to impose their will on the rest of us, and they're watching it start to slip away, and it's driving them crazy.
	You know, that is the point.
	The president is going to be in Europe this week, in Brussels.
	He's going to ask NATO to step up and pay their fair share, just like I think the U.N. should pay their fair share.
	And everybody's up in arms about that.
	Then there are going to be European left-wing socialist protests against him.
	I'm sure the left-wing media will love that in this country.
	And meanwhile, we have record-low unemployment in 14 states, record-low unemployment for women, for Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and the highest labor participation rate that we've ever had in history.
	And the president is making progress with North Korea, and he wants peace with Putin.
	He doesn't want to have a war with Vladimir Putin, as if that's a bad thing.
	You know, you ought to, for your TV show, have somebody go back to the archives and pull up the size of the anti-Reagan demonstrations in 81 and 82 and 83, particularly in Germany, but also in London.
	Because it's easy to forget, every time you get a strong American conservative as president who actually stands up for the United States and actually represents freedom, the European left goes crazy.
	But this puts Trump, in my judgment, in pretty good company.
	I mean, if you, you know, and I think you'll probably have smaller crowds than Reagan got, because in the old days, the Soviet Union actually financed this stuff.
	And the KGB used to pay for a lot of the anti-war demonstrations who were in effect pro-Soviet demonstrations.
	But they were huge demonstrations in the early 80s.
	Yeah, they were.
	All right, what do you think of Kavanaugh?
	Kavanaugh, the only thing people seem to be mad at are comments he made in 98 that he said he was wrong about in 2009 as it related to Clinton and impeachment and possible obstruction.
	And the other thing is his view and a decision that he was involved in as it relates to Obamacare and justifying the law as a tax, which, by the way, was sold as not being a tax.
	But he seems to have been the front-runner up until at least this weekend.
	Well, I mean, look, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm certainly not a scholar on these things.
	You know what?
	You're right.
	You're not really that smart.
	You're right.
	Why did I ask you that question?
	No, no, no.
	My other point is going to be, I have enormous trust in Leonard Leo and in the team he has built at the Federalist Society.
	They all believe that any of these four, any of them, will be a tremendous improvement over Justice Kennedy and will help solidify a constitutionalist Supreme Court for the next 25 or 30 years.
	All right, New Newt Gingrich, I got to let you go.
	We will see you on TV later this week.
	Trump's America, the truth about our nation's great comeback.
	24 now till the top of the hour, 800-941-Sean is our number.
	The president at 9:01.30 p.m. tonight Eastern Time, 601.30 on the West Coast, will be announcing his pick to replace Judge Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court, the leading candidates.
	I'm not going with the speculation of everybody.
	Look, you never know when you make a choice like this because you don't ask specific questions.
	You can't ask anybody that might be a potential choice where they stand on particular issues.
	That is not particularly ethical.
	There are five candidates as of now.
	One being, of course, Amy Coney Barrett of Indiana, Thomas Hardeman of Pennsylvania, Brett Kavanaugh, who seemed to have been the frontrunner up until the end of last week.
	Ray Kethlich is also from Michigan.
	Kavanaugh, by the way, the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia.
	And another name that has been thrown out recently, Judge Joan Larson, also recently confirmed, Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
	And Jay Seculo is with the American Center for Law and Justice.
	He's their chief counsel.
	He's also the counsel to the president.
	And, yeah, he's even had little old me as a client.
	Listen, let me ask you.
	So I'm looking at this list.
	I have no idea who the president is going to pick.
	All I know is this.
	I want somebody in the vein of a Justice Scalia or Justice Thomas, who is what we call a constitutionalist or an originalist.
	I don't believe in judicial activism like the left does.
	I don't believe that they should cite foreign law like the left does.
	I don't think they should legislate from the bench, separation of powers, co-equal branches of government, et cetera.
	But I do believe whoever gets picked, they're going to try to bork them and destroy them and do what they did to not only Robert Bork, but also Clarence Thomas.
	I think that is inevitable in this atmosphere.
	I think that's right.
	But look, you hit the key issue, Sean, and that is the most important question is not how a judge rules on a particular case.
	Judge Ginsburg then, ultimately, Justice Ginsburg, made a statement, and I think she was absolutely correct on this, when she said she's not going to discuss how she might rule on a particular case that could come before her.
	So that's the right answer.
	But you want to know what their judicial philosophy is.
	How do they view their role as judge?
	Scalia famously said that, you know, a good judge is going to sometimes come to a conclusion that they don't personally like, but it's what the law demands.
	So you want that kind of, you know, direct, I would call it, a direct sense of their judicial philosophy as it relates to their role as a judge.
	How do they view themselves in our constitutional framework?
	In our Constitutional Republic, they're an Article III branch of government.
	How do they view that role?
	And that goes to separation of powers.
	It goes to issues of judicial restraint.
	It goes to judicial philosophy, how they view the role.
	So that to me is always the key.
	And I don't think we've ever had, I'm trying to think, have we ever had in our history a president that pre-announced people on a list while he was running for president and then updated the list while he was president and kept that list out there so people could do all the kind of opposition research they wanted to do.
	But this president did that and he said he's going to take someone from the list.
	And I suspect that's what it'll be in a couple hours.
	So the main thing here is to me is that the president, you know, one of the things that is why this is an imperfect science.
	People were asking me this weekend, why is it that Republican presidents often think or tell us that they're going to pick an originalist, a constitutionalist, somebody that believes, as Judge Scalia once said, as you rightly point out, that he may actually have to rule a certain way that is against his own personal views, but what the law demands.
	Why is it sometimes Republicans get it wrong, but it seems Democratic presidents never get it wrong.
	They always get the judicial activist that they've wanted.
	Because do you ever have to question with someone that's being nominated by a Democrat whether, in fact, they're where they stand on the life issue, for instance?
	I mean, does anybody seriously question, will that person uphold Roe versus Wade?
	But if you take a contrary view, there are people that view that as a disqualifier from public service on the Supreme Court.
	I think that's sad and tragic.
	And look, elections have consequences.
	Presidents get to nominate.
	That's what the Article I power, Article 2 power of the president is.
	They get to nominate.
	The Senate gets advice and consent to separate functions.
	They can weigh in, and then they can vote yes or no.
	And then if that nominee is successful in getting confirmed, they get their authority from Article 3.
	So when you have a Supreme Court pick, it puts into place all three branches of our government and all three articles of our United States Constitution.
	There are certain political considerations that I don't think a lot of people are really factoring in here.
	I mean, with John McCain being sick, nor is he a particularly reliable vote for the president at this point in his career, that the president must also recognize that he needs Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
	He needs Susan Collins of Maine.
	He needs Rand Paul of Kentucky on the other side and Ted Cruz of Texas.
	So it's a fine line and a razor's edge here politically that the president is walking because whoever he does pick, he doesn't want to have to either withdraw their nomination or have this voted down in the Senate.
	And so that becomes somewhat problematic for him as you look at these top four, maybe five names that we're hearing.
	Is there any one person that you think threads that needle?
	And the other big issue, Jay, that I'd love you to address is, you know, a lot of these judges, they're great intellectuals.
	They're writing about the greatest document ever created, our Constitution.
	And there's a lot of nuance.
	There's a lot of intellectualism.
	There's a big judicial philosophy disagreement on originalism versus judicial activism.
	Right.
	Now, look, Sean, you're hitting the issues that are key.
	I mean, I'm going to be with you tonight, and we'll know then who the nominee is.
	But I will tell you this.
	All of the people on the list, but the names that you've raised, every one of those would meet the criteria of conservative judicial philosophy, respect for the rule of law, understanding the role that the Supreme Court plays under our Constitution.
	And I think without question would support the proposition that judges do not make laws.
	Now, having said that, let me just, this is the politics of it.
	Is it easier for some than others?
	It probably is.
	And that political calculation has to be made by the president because you want the nominee to be confirmed.
	Can that person be confirmed to that high office?
	So you can't ignore that reality, especially, you know, gone are the days when Justice Scalia received, I think, 98 votes and Justice Ginsburg 98 votes.
	Those days are gone.
	Everything's now very partisan.
	But having said that, I think, again, that's part of the calculation.
	You can't ignore it because you ignore it at your own peril.
	We don't want a situation, actually, that the late Judge Bork faced.
	We don't want a situation that Justice Thomas had to go through to be confirmed.
	You want a straightforward, tough process.
	No one doubts that.
	That should be thorough.
	But look, the president's let these people be out there for vetting purposes for over a year, some of them for over a year and a half.
	And so there's no real surprises there.
	At this point, they've read everything there is to read about them.
	But you'll hear noises.
	There's going to be a lot of noise.
	Look, at 901, we'll know the announcement.
	At 902, the other side, well, both sides will go to work on either defending the nominee or whatever the next role would be.
	I mean, that's just kind of the nature of what happens.
	Having said that, again, what we're looking for is someone that has a conservative judicial philosophy, and I'm convinced that's what we're going to receive tonight.
	Why is it, and I've been watching and reading everything about every one of these judges, which I spent a lot of time earlier in the program talking about.
	I think the person that interests me the most is Judge Amy Barrett, and yet she seems to be the most hated and the most liked by conservatives at this particular point.
	And, you know, she's a Catholic.
	She has seven kids.
	She's adopted a number of kids.
	She only recently was put on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th District.
	Right.
	She had a big showdown and confrontation with Senator Diane Feinstein.
	Yeah, I mean, it seems that the fact her religious views seem to be in play big time.
	And I think there's a certain level of just vitriol and intensity against her.
	Why?
	Well, because of what you said, because of her faith.
	I mean, she's someone that takes her faith seriously.
	She's a devout Catholic.
	She is a person that has, while she doesn't have extensive judicial opinions because she's only been on the court for seven months, she has extensive academic writings.
	I mean, she was a very well-respected law professor at Notre Dame Law School.
	She trained under the great Charlie Rice, late Professor Charlie Rice, who was on our legal advisory board at the ACLJ for decades.
	And she's brilliant.
	The calculus will be, and the president makes that calculus with his immediate advisors, and they make a calculus as to confirmability and issues like that.
	And if she's the nominee, they're convinced that they can get her confirmed.
	By the way, if she's not the nominee, it doesn't mean that she's not going to be confirmed.
	It just means that there were other considerations and maybe it was length of time on the bench.
	I don't know.
	We'll see who the nominee is and we'll be able to know.
	But she is certainly somebody that galvanizes a lot of support in part because of the way she was so vehemently attacked and kept her composure and her dignity during the process.
	It seems that the frontrunner, at least leading up to today, had been Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
	And he's got some very interesting cases.
	I mean, he was involved in the Heller versus District of Columbia case in 2011, and he ended up being on the right side of that case.
	He dissented Kavanaugh's words.
	The Supreme Court left, quote, little doubt the courts are to assess gun bans and regulations based on text, history, tradition, not by a balancing test, such as a strict intermediate scrutiny.
	But then again, there was some criticism over his decisions.
	There were two of them as it relates to Obamacare.
	Yeah, and one of them was mine.
	I mean, it was the case that I've known Brett for a long time.
	We've helped on the confirmation to the D.C. Court of Appeals.
	I've worked with him in private practice.
	A couple of our religious liberty cases, he worked on as a lawyer.
	So he's got, I mean, I think on the religious liberty issues, there's great judicial philosophy on that.
	I understand the free exercise, free speech clauses.
	What about the decision in, I believe, it was the CISO.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, well, in the 2015 case, he would have held that the ACA complied with the clause of the Constitution that requires all bills for raising revenue to originate in the House of Representatives because the statute...
	Yeah, but what was interesting about that, it actually held up Obamacare and the argument that it was a tax, but we were sold that it was not a tax.
	Yeah, so, I mean, this was an issue that, look, that was in my case that I had, we had in front of him.
	And he did not redress the merits of the constitutionality of Obamacare.
	That's been misreported.
	What he addressed was whether the Anti-Injunction Act passed in 1898 prohibited a proceeding where it was a pre-enforcement, in other words, a preliminary injunction, an injunction to stop the enforcement of a tax.
	And the statute on that, I raised this with our team early on because, as you know, Sean, my background is I came out of Chief Counsel's Office for Treasury, for the IRS.
	I was a trial lawyer for chief counsel's office.
	And I was concerned about the issue of the tax and the Anti-Injunction Act, and that's ultimately where he went.
	So I don't think it was, I mean, I don't think it was a way it's being portrayed is accurate.
	And, well, look, you always want to win your case.
	It wasn't an inconceivable conclusion that he came up with.
	I don't think that speaks.
	And actually, some could argue that's a conservative decision because you don't overreach when you don't have statutory authority.
	We'll take a quick break.
	We'll come back more with Jay Seculo on the other side.
	800-941-Sean is our toll-free telephone number.
	Then at the top of the hour, we have the latest breaking news on the Deep State Gate and Paige and Strzok testifying later this week.
	And apparently, there's going to be two big bombshell news reports coming.
	So my sources tell me, and much more.
	All right, as we continue with Jay Seculo, Chief Counsel, American Center for Law and Justice, also counseled to the president.
	Let me ask, this is an imperfect science in large part.
	And I want you to address this side of it because by and large, if you're being considered for the Supreme Court, you're an intellectual.
	You're deep in the weeds as it relates to constitutional law.
	And when you read decisions, you know, on the surface, maybe the outcome is based on an entirely different way of thinking than most Americans would understand.
	But again, we're looking towards judicial philosophy.
	There are nuances to some decisions.
	Sure.
	To most decisions.
	To most decisions, yeah.
	Yeah.
	So, and part of that, and part of that nuance, as you call it, I think that's a good term, is that they're courts of limited jurisdiction in one sense, and that they don't reach to issues that they're not supposed to hit if they've got a conservative judicial philosophy, so they don't overstretch.
	And part of that process is an understanding that when you're looking at this, that what you're dealing with is a how what you want to know is how does the judge view their job?
	How do they view their role as a judge?
	And that really becomes the critical aspect of all of this.
	How do they view their role as a judge?
	They call in balls and strikes.
	Were they coming up with policy that they like?
	If they're policy-oriented, then they should be running for legislature for the presidency.
	They shouldn't be running, they should not be nominated as a judge.
	That's not their role.
	So that's where it becomes very, very important.
	Okay.
	And so I guess at the end of the day, as we look at the names, and again, I think you're rightly pointing out a very important point.
	There's never been a president that has actually given a specific list of names and sticks to the list of names that he's been telegraphing now since before he got elected.
	So in that sense, there won't be any surprises.
	Are you confident at the end of the day that we're going to get somebody like an Alito, like a Clarence Thomas or Scalia on the Supreme Court in this choice?
	I think on that entire list are individuals of impeccable credentials with conservative judicial philosophies.
	And I think we should be comfortable with anybody on that list.
	And I expect that tonight we'll be very pleased with who the nominee is.
	Again, it's ultimately, there's one thing that's very clear about Article II.
	This is the president's choice.
	It's not the Federalist Society.
	It's not Leonard Leo.
	It's not the Heritage Foundation.
	Kay James.
	It's not the American Center for Law and Justice.
	And Jay Secula.
	This is the president's choice.
	All right, Jay Seculo, thank you for being with us.
	When we come back, we have a lot of breaking news as it relates coming this week with the Deep State.
	Greg Jarrett, Sarah Carter, are next.
	If they don't give you that information, what can you do to the FBI and DOJ?
	Given them more deadlines.
	Now we had yesterday they were supposed to give us stuff.
	Now, maybe Monday or Tuesday.
	This investigation's been going on for a year.
	At some point, don't you guys feel impotent?
	Well, look, there's a couple, couple things here.
	So, before July 31st, for a couple months now, we've been really zeroing in on that.
	And the FBI and DOJ have had plenty of opportunities to tell us what happened before July 31st.
	But they have.
	They have not.
	Now, ultimately, here, the president of the United States, it's his DOJ and his FBI.
	And at some point here, he needs to get involved.
	You know, I don't know.
	The FISA is very frustrating to me because I think that pieces of the FISA that was got on Carter Page, right?
	That we've had an ongoing feud about this for many, many months.
	I think the FISA is totally fraudulent, 100% fraudulent.
	You have James Comey and others currently at the FBI and DOJ who are defending the FISA, which is unbelievable to me.
	So why not?
	The president ought to just solve this once and for all, declassify, you don't have to expose sources and methods, but most of that FISA, the pertinent parts of it, could be declassified.
	And he could help answer for all of us who was telling the truth.
	Were they justified to get a FISA warrant on Carter Page or not?
	I don't think they were, and I think the American people have a right to know, and the president should declassify.
	All right, news roundup and information overload hour 800-941 Sean.
	That was Devin Nunes of the House Intel Committee on with Judge Janine on Saturday night saying, Yeah, 42 people now involved with the Russia probe.
	Yeah, they should be interviewed in public.
	Also, at some point, the president's gonna have to get involved and demand that the DOJ, which he has full authority to do, release all of these documents.
	And once he puts that deadline out, they will not have an option at that point, or they will be literally defying the president who has authority.
	We're talking about the executive branch now.
	And lastly, it's Nunes talking about the president needing to declassify the FISA documents, which would give us great insight as to how they justified an unverified, uncorroborated political document using Russian sources that was paid for.
	Even the person that put it together says was 50-50 at best, ended up being the basis or the bulk of information to get a warrant to spy on an opposition party candidate in the lead up to an election.
	It all matters.
	All right, glad you're with us.
	800-941-Sean is our number.
	We're still following the president at 9:01.30 tonight, right?
	When Hannity gets on the air, we'll announce his Supreme Court justice to replace Anthony Kennedy.
	I'm not going to go with all the speculation with all the people that's chosen that because the president had diverted the last time.
	And I think it still comes down to the five candidates that I've been talking about, well, pretty much all day.
	And that's Amy Coney Barrett and Thomas Hardeman, Brett Kavanaugh, Raymond Kethlich, and Judge Joan Larson.
	But first, we continue.
	The deep state issue is going to hit a lot of new ground this week as both Lisa Page and Peter Strzok testify, yeah, publicly.
	Well, in the case of Lisa Page, behind closed doors, but struck publicly for the first time.
	And then, of course, we have the president with NATO, as I mentioned, and we're going to be doing the show from Europe later in the week and the expected protests there.
	We have a busy news week.
	Joining us, Greg Jarrett.
	We are now two weeks away from the release of the Russia hoax, the illicit scheme to clear Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump.
	By the way, available for pre-sale on Amazon.com.
	This will become the definitive book on what is the biggest corruption abuse of power scandal in history.
	Sarah Carter is an investigative reporter, Fox News contributor.
	All right, so we have a new poll that shows a majority of Americans, Sarah, no longer support the Mueller probe.
	We have new FBI MO suggesting that Mueller may have illegally leaked grand jury material.
	That's in reference to the Manafort case.
	We have Giuliani saying he suspects Mueller is covering up anti-Trump text messages that have been sent by his prosecution team.
	And Juliani calling the Mueller probe the most corrupt investigation he's ever seen.
	And now we have 42 people, as we just heard from Devin Nunes, that need to go before the public and make some explanations.
	This case is just beginning.
	It is.
	And remember, this has been going on for more than a year.
	This is incredible, Sean.
	I think one of the biggest things that we're going to be looking for this week is certainly Peter Strzok testifying publicly.
	He may not say anything.
	He may say very little, but I think it's very important to have him out there.
	I also think that Devin Nunes is doing the right thing.
	He's putting out the names out there that he says need to go public.
	The American people are so tired of this because I think based on just the last year, based on the information that has come out, Americans are smart.
	We understand what's going on here.
	And that's the reason why we haven't stopped going after these stories, the reason we haven't stopped exposing what we see as blatant corruption and evidence that they were actually working against an incoming president and then a duly elected president of the United States.
	It's actually quite incredible.
	And I think what Nunes is doing is saying, look, put everybody out there, let them speak publicly.
	And if they're not going to abide by our demands, get the FISA.
	Go ahead, Mr. President, release all the documents.
	Let's get that out there so the American public knows once and for all what's going on.
	This has been going on too long.
	And like Devin Nunes said, this is the president's job.
	He is oversight over the DOJ.
	And if the DOJ is not going to comply, if Rod Rosenstein, if Robert Mueller, if all of these people, if Attorney General Jeff Sessions does not comply with the oversight demands of Congress, then the president has the authority to declassify that, and we have the right to see it.
	Let me go to Greg Jarrett.
	By the way, you're two weeks away.
	I've read the book now in total.
	It is the defining read on, and the title captures everything, the Russia hoax, the illicit scheme to clear Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump.
	There is so much coming out with the testimony now, at least a page behind closed doors.
	Peter struck publicly, although I hear there's maybe some wavering going on behind the scenes, but the title captures exactly what happened.
	It's true.
	You know, top officials, the highest levels of government, the Department of Justice and the FBI, worked together.
	They colluded to twist the law and make up facts and exonerate Hillary Clinton, even though she clearly violated multiple federal statutes.
	And then on the very same day they cleared her, the FBI is meeting in London for the first time with the author of the dossier.
	And the FBI and the DOJ were off to the races to try to frame Donald Trump for things he did not do.
	And the dossier was the lynchpin.
	It was phony.
	It was fabricated from the beginning.
	On page 100 to 103, I think this is going to turn out to be key.
	Did Brennan at the CIA, again, they never verified or corroborated this and used it as the bulk of information for the dossier.
	But was Brennan passing this out to be used as political fodder in his role as a CIA director at the time and the summer leading up to, of course, the FISA warrant?
	Yes, you're absolutely correct.
	You write about it in the book.
	Page 100, it begins.
	Brennan is the instigator.
	He gets his hands early on on this phony dossier, and he decides this is what we can use to destroy Trump.
	So he's running all over Capitol Hill.
	And in particular, he goes over to Harry Reed's office on August 25th.
	And I believe he shows Reed this document and convinces Reed.
	We've heard that we have the exact proof on it because we've been hearing about this from the beginning.
	We know Reed leaked to the media a letter he sent to Comey on August 27th, 2016.
	And in it, he alleges Trump is colluding with Russia.
	And he's asking Comey to investigate Trump.
	Now, look, Reed already knew that the FBI had launched an investigation of Trump, but he wanted it to get leaked out to the media to destroy Trump before the election.
	So let's go through the details of this, Sarah.
	This is the Clinton and the DNC money, which Donna Brazil said that Hillary controls.
	Hillary campaign, DNC money she controls, funneled through Perkins Cooey, a law firm, onto Fusion GPS, an op research firm, which, by the way, is fine.
	OP research is something that we see every day in politics.
	And then they hire Christopher Steele.
	I didn't think foreign agents were supposed to be involved in the political process.
	Well, so much for that.
	And he uses his Russian sources and, we believe, Russian government sources to create a phony dossier that even he in an interrogatory in Great Britain, under the threat of perjury, said was.
	Well, it's not confirmed, I mean, it's kind of 50-50.
	I don't know if it's true.
	That became the basis of the FISA warrant and we had the CIA director literally feeding this to Harry Reid for political purposes.
	It's so dangerous Sean, it is so dangerous to even imagine that this was happening in the United States, that a director of the CIA, which is not supposed to be involved whatsoever by edict in the political process of U.S.
	Politics, basically shopping out a disinformation document by a foreign agent against an incoming president of the United States or a presidential candidate at the time, and then a duly elected incoming president of the United States.
	It's really unheard of.
	Is this any different than what the former Soviet Union would do when they propagandized and lied?
	Remember we always would talk about Pravda, you know?
	State-run television, state-run networks, all designed to brainwash indoctrinate disinform, whatever tactics.
	Well, let's put it another way, purposefully, the government and government spies lying to the American people.
	Is that what happened in America?
	Sarah Carter?
	That's exactly what it.
	What it is, I mean, when you look at the facts on their face, that the director of the CIA which, by the way, he you know, this former director Brennan, has not stopped.
	We've seen his allegations and his disinformation on Twitter throughout the months, throughout the recent months, how he is constantly badmouthing and going after President Trump and alluding to some kind of secret information that's out there that we've never seen, no proof whatsoever.
	But think of the power that this person had.
	They were the director of the premier intelligence agency in the world.
	And instead of dealing with overseas threats, instead of dealing with national security issues overseas, they were basically colluding with Russian agents and a foreign British agent to take out the President of the United States.
	Stay right there.
	How incredible is this story?
	Because that's really what it was.
	Oh, and the evidence is there.
	And this is what everybody's not getting.
	And that's why Greg's book is going to be a blockbuster bestseller.
	And this is why your reporting should get you a Pulitzer.
	Meanwhile, all I get is trashed every day in the media.
	So, you know, I've got everything I deserve.
	It's fine.
	You two now take the glory.
	It's about the truth, though.
	And this is the biggest abuse of power scandal in American history.
	And the smoking gun evidence does exist.
	We continue with Greg Jarrett.
	His new book coming out just two weeks from today.
	And it is The Russian Hoax, The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.
	And also Fox News investigative reporter Sarah Carter.
	They've agreed to actually hang out through the next half hour as we're going to go deeper into this because we're only beginning to touch the surface.
	So when Paige testifies, she's going to be behind closed doors, but Strzok is going in front of the camera.
	And we'll see him for the first time.
	And from what I understand, he's in even more trouble than we suspected.
	Sarah Carter.
	Yeah, Strzok is in so much trouble.
	And it's incredible.
	At first, his attorney was openly saying, you know, he wants to testify publicly.
	He wants to talk to Congress.
	He'll be forthcoming.
	And then we know he went behind closed doors and they were having a difficult time with him.
	I don't suspect, and I don't know what Greg's assumption is on this, that he is going to be as forthcoming in front of the public.
	It's going to be very difficult for him because we have seen too much evidence.
	There's too much out there.
	How can he explain this away?
	Those text messages were very straightforward.
	I'm sure Greg goes into great detail in his book about them because they're explosive.
	I mean, he worked directly under former deputy director Andrew McCabe and Comey.
	He was in London.
	He was a central figure in the Hillary Clinton server investigation and the top figure in the Russia investigation.
	His connections were wide and deep, and he was working in collusion with, you know, Lisa Page, his paramour and lover that he was having an affair with, and she was an attorney at the FBI.
	And we also know that he had very well connected lots of connections in London, and he was able to make things happen.
	So there's going to be so much more information, so many questions that Congress has of him.
	And before the public, I think it's going to be really difficult for him to answer those, at least with a straight face.
	All right, we'll take a break.
	We'll continue.
	Greg and Sarah have agreed to stay with us.
	Sarah Carter, investigative reporter, Fox News contributor.
	Greg's book out in two weeks, The Russia Hoax, The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton, Frame Donald Trump.
	Now available online, Hannity.com, Amazon.com, bookstores in two weeks.
	Also, we'll get Greg's preview of tonight's big announcement.
	The president selects his replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court.
	Quick break, right back.
	We'll get to your calls also.
	Final half hour straight ahead.
	All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941 Sean is our toll-free telephone number.
	We continue with Greg Jarrett.
	New book is coming out two weeks now from today on Hannity.com, bookstores everywhere, Amazon.com, and it's called The Russian Hoax, The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton, frame Donald Trump, Sarah Carter, investigative reporter, Fox News contributor.
	All right, let me just change topics briefly, and then we're going to get back to Peter Strzok here in just a second.
	So the president at 90130 Eastern, 60130 Pacific, will announce his choice who he wants to replace on the Supreme Court, replace Anthony Kennedy.
	What are your thoughts on the names we keep hearing, Greg Jarrett?
	Well, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Hardiman, Larson, Cethledge, those are the contenders reportedly.
	And you cannot go wrong if you're Donald Trump or ardent conservative with any of them.
	They're all young, age 45 is the youngest, Barrett, all the way to 53, Kavanaugh and Hardiman.
	So they'll be on the court for a long time.
	And they're all either proven originalists or textualists.
	And that is what conservatives want and need to replace Anthony Kennedy on the court.
	So you could put all five names up on a dartboard and throw darts, and it doesn't matter where it lands, you're a winner if you're Donald Trump.
	And they're all conservative, confirmable people, which is important.
	Now, having said that, some are more easily confirmed than others.
	For example, Hardiman was confirmed for the appellate court 95 to zero.
	So he is probably, in my judgment, the most confirmable, the easiest confirmed.
	But who got 95?
	Hardeman?
	Hardiman, 95 to 0.
	Not a single vote against Hardiman.
	And it's very hard for the U.S. Senate, although the composition is now different.
	It's very hard.
	Why did you support him then and not now?
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	Which is why, you know, if I'm going for the easiest pick, it's Hardeman.
	And he's also Pennsylvania, and he's also, and by the way, serves on the same court, I believe, as the president's sister.
	Yeah, she recommended him.
	And, you know, look, I look up to my sister, and, you know, I think he looks up to his big sister.
	I know that former Senator Santorum is a big supporter of Hardiman, which speaks volumes of, you know, I think he goes a long way.
	Let me ask Sarah one Supreme Court question because you're roaming the halls of Capitol Hill constantly.
	What are you hearing in terms of is there any one name that keeps popping up?
	It had been all Kavanaugh most of last week, and now things seem to be up in the air, and nobody seems to know which way the president's going to go.
	Well, Kavanaugh was certainly being talked about and being discussed, but I think Hardiman is a name that I'm hearing over and over again.
	So I think Greg is right on the money there.
	Look, Greg is 100% right.
	Wherever they throw this dart, it's going to be a win for the president.
	And the bigger win is his legacy.
	You know, call it fate.
	Call it what, you know, Justice Kennedy did, you know, by stepping off the bench and allowing the president to pick a new Supreme Court justice.
	But he is actually building his legacy.
	And this is a huge legacy to build.
	It's a huge thing to leave behind, particularly for the Republican, for the conservatives.
	And this is something that I think people have been waiting for for some time.
	So I think tonight, when he makes this decision, if he picks Hardeman, he'll have a much easier time getting him confirmed.
	But whoever he picks, he has definitely solidified his legacy, at least with the Supreme Court.
	Agree with that.
	Okay, now let me move on back to our other topic.
	There's going to be a lot of news this week.
	I mean, a lot of news.
	I know of at least two, probably three big stories that will be broken this week as it relates to Deep State Gate.
	And then we've got senior Justice Department prosecutor that it was Andrew Weissman, Mueller's pit bull, that in fact met with the Associated Press in April of 2016 to discuss so-called circumstances surrounding Paul Manafort's case, which he is the lead counsel on, and that in fact, and then was appointed by Robert Mueller after, but in fact may have been involved in leaking grand jury information and the fact that a grand jury had been convened in the Manafort case.
	What do we know about this, Sarah?
	It's your latest column today.
	Oh, well, this is big developments.
	Now, you remember in January, Sean, we first broke the story that Andrew Weissman had actually met with the Associated Press, that he had this secret meeting with the Associated Press reporters.
	It was on April 11th, 2016.
	And the day after he met with them, the Associated Press broke their big explosive expose on Manafort talking about his dealings with Ukraine.
	What was really fascinating about this, remember, at the time, Andrew Weissman wasn't a part of the special counsel.
	He was the top prosecutor over at the Justice Department.
	And now we find, based on the document submitted by Manafort's attorneys, that it was Weissman himself who called for that meeting.
	And during that time, there was a grand jury that had convened about Paul Manafort.
	So this is really a big deal for them.
	And they really are making huge strides that they were able to expose this because now it's going to be up to the judge at the Eastern District here in Virginia.
	They're going to make the decision.
	And this judge has tended to be very lenient towards them when it comes to these issues because he does not want exculpatory evidence withheld.
	And that was a big deal with Weissman in the past.
	Remember, Weissman has been criticized.
	Well, the judges actually said straight up that the judge will decide in this case what is exculpatory and what is not.
	Absolutely.
	And he's going to stick to it.
	But now we have all this new evidence that is surfacing.
	And this is important evidence because Andrew Weissman, according to the FBI agents that were in attendance at this meeting, according to them, Andrew Weissman did assist these reporters, allegedly, headed them in the right direction, talked about Manafort's case.
	This is something that should not be done.
	And I'm sure Greg can talk about the legal issues surrounding this.
	But you cannot, this is a grand jury.
	This is secretive.
	This is supposed to be secretive.
	And this is the reason why the FBI, after this meeting, they weren't expecting this meeting to take place.
	They actually believed that the meeting was set up by the Associated Press.
	And this is according to my sources.
	And that the Associated Press was going to actually give them information.
	And when they got into the meeting, it was none of that.
	The Associated Press, apparently, according to the sources that I spoke with, were like, we're not here to give you information.
	We're here to get information.
	And now we know that Weissman was the one that set it up.
	That meeting, I have been told, lasted more than 30 minutes.
	There were a number of questions being asked by the Associated Press.
	And apparently and allegedly, Weissman was aiding them and kind of nudging them on in the direction he wanted them to go.
	And there's a reason why Weissman is no longer at the prosecution's table in the Paul Manafort cases anymore.
	Well, he's been kicked off.
	He was kicked off.
	Who kicked him off?
	I suspect that Robert Mueller has kicked him off the case because of this and other things.
	You'll no longer see Weissman.
	Weissman was leading the charge when Judge Ellis III beat them.
	I never saw a bigger beatdown.
	And that is Judge Ellis saying, oh, we all know what you're doing here.
	We know you're putting the screws to Manafort in the hopes that he's going to sing or compose, compose I interpret to be subordinate perjury, say anything you need to get out of a potential jail sentence.
	And by the way, how many days now has Paul Manafort been 23 hours a day confined, never convicted of a thing?
	And by the way, Manafort apparently reached out to a, quote, potential witness that he never even talked to, as I understand it.
	And what might have been an attempt to get in touch with the person.
	But putting all of that aside, I mean, Weissman was the lead guy.
	And they said the reason they want to put the screws to Manafort to make him sing or compose is because they want to either prosecute or get information to impeach Donald Trump.
	Early on, T.S. Ellis, the judge said, well, wait a minute.
	Where did you get this case?
	Did this case arise from the special counsel investigation?
	And during courtroom testimony, the prosecutors had to confess, no, it didn't.
	We dug it out of the dusty archives in the IRS division of the 2005.
	That's right, the tax department division.
	So the judge said, well, where do you get the authority?
	You only have authority if something arises out of your assignment as special counsel.
	Now, in the end, the judge has said, I'm going to let it go forward, but I still have reservations about this.
	And, you know, Paul Manafort is in solitary confinement behind bars.
	He's not a violent offender.
	And this was the decision of the D.C. judge, by the way, not Ellis.
	It's confine him.
	Listen, if 23 hours in a jail cell and you're not, all you are is charged.
	You're not convicted of anything.
	They dug back to 2005 for the very reasons Judge Ellis courageously spoke out about Sarah.
	I've got to be honest, they are trying to break him.
	Hard, they're trying to break him.
	And they're doing a job of it because right now he's sitting in Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia, and he has only had 23 hours a day of 23 hours a day of solitary confinement and only one hour outside of that solitary confinement.
	That's one hour a day.
	That's it.
	One hour a day.
	He's restricted.
	He can't even receive electronic communications.
	His phone calls are restricted to 10 minutes each.
	This is really an incredible amount of pressure being put on one person who I have been told by sources is not going to cooperate because he has nothing to cooperate on.
	Right.
	Well, this is why the judge said not just sing.
	Singing would be obviously a tune that you know.
	Composing would be, what do you want me to say so I can get out of this disastrous situation of 23 hours a day?
	Prosecutors know that if you apply enough pressure on somebody financially, on their family, or on them personally, solitary confinement 23 hours a day.
	That person has a very good likelihood of cracking and signing anything, even a composed statement that is nothing more than a lie.
	Sounds a lot like a movie where we watch Americans held abroad or former POWs.
	I have always said that if a POW being tortured signs a document, they do not deserve to get judged by the American people because of the circumstances under which none of us have ever lived.
	They have over 2 million documents that Robert Moeller has produced to his attorneys.
	On Friday, apparently 50,000 more documents were handed over.
	This is only weeks before he's supposed to go to trial.
	And he can't even sit with his attorneys to go over these documents before the trial date.
	I mean, it's really incredible what they're doing to him.
	They didn't have to throw him in solitary confinement behind bars.
	The judge, the D.C. judge in this particular case, said, Well, what am I saying?
	I can't take away his cell phone.
	Yes, Your Honor, you can take away his cell phone.
	You can confine him to his home with an ankle bracelet, disconnect his computer and his telephones, and take away his cell phones.
	That would have been the proper thing to do.
	But this judge did not want to do justice.
	Why is it that this stands?
	At some point, you know, it's almost like this is now, I thought there was the presumption of innocence.
	In what way is Paul Manafort a threat to others in society?
	We're not talking about a mob murderer here.
	We're not talking about a big-time drug dealer here.
	We're not talking about somebody, you know, a gang member that is seeking vengeance in some way.
	We're talking about a 2005 tax case.
	Right.
	It's a tax fraud case.
	And it's absurd and outrageous that he be thrown in jail pending trial for this.
	There were other ways to handle it.
	But this just underscores that Manafort cannot get a fair trial in D.C. in front of that particular judge or in front of a D.C. jury.
	And in fact, the other case in Alexandria, Virginia, he can't get a fair trial there.
	He gets a fair judge, T.S. Ellis, but they ought to move it to Roanoke, Virginia, where he can get a fair trial.
	Now, let me go.
	This trial starts July 25th, the first of two trials, and the second one is apparently scheduled for September 17th, and this in Washington, D.C.
	So you're absolutely right, Greg.
	There have been a lot of people talking about that needing to be moved.
	Yeah.
	Well, let me ask this, because I think this is very, very important.
	I just want to know what are the options that Manafort has at this time.
	Well, he's exercising one of them, actually two of them.
	He is appealing his confinement, and he has a very solid legal basis for doing that, because this is way over the top abusive by the special counsel and the judge in D.C.
	And second of all, he is making a motion for moving the venue to, as I said, Roanoke, Virginia, where he can get a fair shot at justice there.
	Because in D.C. and Alexandria that are so pro-Hillary Clinton, they voted that way.
	They're anti-Donald Trump.
	I mean, and this is a political case, whether you like it or not.
	He cannot get a fair trial.
	So those are his two options right now.
	All right, I'm going to have to let you both go, but we'll be following all of this 9.01.30 tonight Eastern Time on Hannity.
	The president makes his choice on the United States Supreme Court.
	Also, we have a lot of big news with the Deep State that is breaking.
	We'll have an update on Manafort.
	We're expecting protests all over Europe coming up later this week.
	We'll be broadcasting from there.
	Thank you, Greg.
	Thank you, Sarah.
	Quick break, right back.
	Hannity tonight at 9.
	Breaking news.
	The president announced his Supreme Court justice.
	All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
	All right, we're almost three hours away now.
	90130 Eastern, 60130 Pacific.
	Just as Hannity comes on the air on the Fox News channel, the president will announce his choice for the U.S. Supreme Court.
	Jay Seculo, we have Judge Janine Pirow.
	We have Greg Jarrett, Andy McCarthy.
	We have Ed Henry in Washington.
	Shannon Bream is in Washington.
	She's our expert in the Supreme Court.
	Also, we'll check in with Sarah Carter, John Solomon, and much more.
	That's 9 Eastern.
	Don't miss the action tonight on Hannity on the Fox News channel.

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