President Trump made headlines with his tweet today, "“This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further,” Trump tweeted. “Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!” Sean reacts to the Mueller investigation. "This is not the trial of the century," explained Sean, "The charges against Mueller have nothing to do with Donald Trump or Russia." Sean continued, "The media wants to hurt the President, that's the only reason they care." 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.
Wow, what a news day we've got going on.
I'm telling you, the Manafort trial is not the trial of the century.
Never was, never will be.
And the fascination and the interest in a 2005 to 7 tax case as it deals with the Ukraine and the developments in the courtroom and the media's obsession about it.
Judge Ellis nailed it.
It is not about Manafort and Mueller and company.
They don't even care about Manafort.
What they really care about is what the judge said, and that is that they want to put the screws to Manafort to make them sing or compose so that they can either prosecute or impeach Donald Trump.
The word Russia will never ever be used in this trial.
Now, apparently, the word oligarch is not going to be used in this trial.
I'll explain that as well in the course of the program.
We've got also 97 days to election day, the most important election in our lifetime.
We've got a battle over the funding of the border wall that is beginning.
And it looks like the establishment is trying to convince the president that, well, we can fight this fight after the midterm elections, which I don't think we should.
I think we should be fighting for it now.
And I think it's a 70-30 issue at worst.
And most Americans want the border wall built.
I want to do start.
I want to say a word about somebody in this industry.
And, you know, radio and TV can be very, very competitive and people are very, very myopic sometimes.
And even people that I know hate me and hate this show and say horrible things about me, it doesn't matter to me because I feel blessed to be behind this microphone every day.
And it's an honor to be with you every day.
And it's an honor to be on television every night.
And I know that I don't have this job, but for you listening and for those of you that watch, it's just the truth.
And we're going to do something special a little bit on TV tonight.
And Rush Limbaugh now celebrated his 30th year on radio.
And, you know, I wrote him, I said, well, we want to do something on TV.
And Rush is so much more humble than people really know in real life because he always says, talent on loan from God.
If you really listen and pay attention to the statement, it's a humble statement.
Yet it's God's talent.
He's just lending it to me.
And, you know, I'm at his mercy in terms of whatever I'm able to do in terms of radio.
The theme of what we're putting together a little bit tonight is what would it be like the last 30 years without Rush on the radio, having first syndicated in 1988 after spending years in Sacramento and years even in Kansas City, et cetera.
If you think about every election since then, look at it maybe through the chapters of the presidential election process.
And obviously, 88 was the year that Reagan, the great eight years of Reagan, into George Herbert Walker Bush, and then the Clinton years.
What would those years have been like if Rush didn't create this huge path that people like myself and Mark and Laura and so many others, local hosts, Joe Paggs, and, you know, just so many different people at so many different levels.
If I don't mention everybody, I'm going to get Lars Larson and all my friends on radio.
And even the people that don't, we owe him a gratitude.
What a lot of people may not know that in 1988, there were only a couple of hundred talk radio stations.
The AM band was literally on its deathbed.
There wasn't a lot of programming available for AM radio.
And for all of these years, talk radio, in large part because Rush is the anchor show for most stations, has been held up and it's created a business that this country needs, I would argue, because we've had an information crisis going back way till then.
And I would even argue that it was a precursor of, you know, something like the Fox News channel coming on there where other opinions were at least allowed to be expressed.
And Fox is like a newspaper.
Fox has a news department.
They have local, national, international news, sports, editorial, opinion programs like mine, talk hosts like me and Laura and Tucker.
But, you know, you take all those years, you go through all the Clinton years, then you go through all the challenges of the Bush years post-9-11 and the lead up to the war in Iraq and the difficulties that ensued post that, the difficulty in the Obama years, there were very few of us that were willing to go out and vet Barack Obama.
Very few were willing.
And I would argue, but for talk radio and then later Fox News, and of course, the Drudge Report is a big part of this equation as well.
We don't have these alternative sources.
I don't know what the people in this country do to get the information that they need that, frankly, is far more rooted in truth and certainly another opinion that is offered that it seems that is underserved in the marketplace.
But the bottom line is for 30 years, Rush paved the way.
He took all the hits.
It wasn't easy.
He was like an island unto himself for a long time.
And for those of us that followed in that wake in the aftermath of that, yours truly, among them, we benefited from the fact that he courageously forged that path and dared to say things that the mainstream media didn't like to hear and politicians didn't want to hear and hold these people accountable on a daily basis and the country's better off for it.
There's a reason why all of these groups are spending these millions of dollars every day monitoring every single talk radio show that's conservative, every hour of the Fox News channel, every minute of every day of every conservative in the hopes that that conservative says one thing, one word, one phrase, one sentence, something they don't like, something they deem politically incorrect, because they desperately want these voices silenced.
But just to, you know, I just couldn't imagine, you know, this country without that booming voice of Rush and that daily dose of common sense conservatism.
And one of the most amazing things to me about Rush is that he's really never changed or wavered his fundamental philosophy, his conservative ideology in all of those years.
And he's been a source of inspiration leading up to the Tea Party in 2010, leading straight through to the election of Donald Trump.
And he gives you, you know, some of the most incredible insights.
He was born to do, I think, what he's doing.
And it has played a pivotal role in the history of this country.
And for those of us that have the honor of sharing and benefiting from the hard work that he did over all these years, we all owe him a debt of gratitude.
And I just, on his 30th anniversary, wanted to take time.
We'll do this on TV tonight as well.
I just want to acknowledge with great humility and appreciation.
It was much harder for him than it has been for any of us that have followed because him going on the stage nationally from day one, they couldn't believe a conservative dared to say these things.
And so for the rest of us that followed, they're like, oh, there's another conservative.
And while we all have our individual strengths and styles, et cetera, I don't think there's anybody more insightful in terms of giving monologues than Rush.
And he's playing a pivotal role even today as we head into the midterms, dealing with the issues of the deep state, the efforts to delegitimize our current president, the battle over taxes and the bureaucracy and regulation and immigration and national security and peace through strength and all these important issues that we deal with.
He's at the forefront of this every day.
So I just want to say, give a shout out, a happy anniversary to him.
We have a nice little tribute, I think, to Rush we're putting together for TV tonight.
And on a personal note, I benefited personally from the courage that he showed by forging that path.
You know, it's a little easier somebody goes ahead of you and chops down the trees and there might be some overgrowth, but you don't have to chop down the trees.
Chopping down the trees was really hard work.
And basically, almost preparing the American mindset that there are alternative viewpoints out here.
Because the media is what it is.
They're just corrupt.
They're just abusively biased.
They are, it's groupthink among every major news network in this country.
And it's now gotten to the point where their hatred of this president and desire to take him down is now their programming every single minute of every single hour of every single day.
And it's been that way for three years.
And they still to this day can't understand why there are others of us out here that applaud and appreciate the agenda that he's fighting for every day.
He is governing as a strong conservative would govern.
This isn't nationalism.
This isn't populism.
This is common sense conservatism.
The biggest tax cuts we've had in the country's history, eliminating more bureaucracy and burdensome regulation in history.
You know, the success, the desire to keep promises made.
Jerusalem is now the capital of Israel.
How many others promised and never delivered?
The bad Iranian deal.
He's not dropping cargo planes of cash and other currencies on a tarmac in Tehran for the mullahs that threatened to destroy America, destroy Israel, and chant death to America and death to Israel and burn our flags.
That's not his ideology or philosophy.
And we learned a lot with little Rocket Man and Fire and Fury, and my button's bigger than yours, and my button works.
We're similarly learning, I think, the same thing with Vladimir Putin in Russia.
All this talk, I mean, people on NBC actually suggesting Trump is probably an agent with Russia.
That's how off-track NBC news has now become.
But yet, when you compare and you contrast this president's policies with the eight years under Obama, including Hillary Clinton and their Russian reset, and I'll have more flexibility after the election, it's this president that has taken the position of tough sanctions.
And on the basis, all these horrible things in Syria with Russia happened on Obama's watch.
Crimea, Ukraine on Obama's watch.
Nothing happened with Syria in the red line.
And all of his foreign policy, of all of it, he's not bribing dictators, which seems to be the go-to strategy of anybody on the left that is dealing with some type of hostile regime.
And the president telling the Iranians, we will rock your world.
Stop threatening the United States.
I think now, finally, when you start from a position of strength, they begin to believe it.
We wouldn't have gotten concessions with NATO if the president didn't demand that other countries pay their fair share.
The idea that he called out Angela Merkel on her dependence on Russian energy, 70% of their energy coming from Russia, is insanity because it even undermines the very purpose of NATO and they don't pay their fair share.
We do.
Or the fact that the president is willing to take on trade doesn't want, in spite of what people write and say, he doesn't want a trade war.
He's not a protectionist, but he wants a better deal.
You can't get a better deal unless you convince the other side that you're willing to take it as far as having a trade war and doing to them what they have been doing to us, which is taking advantage of the United States.
Anyway, so it's, we're very fortunate.
And, you know, they always want to take down the great patriots in this country that we have people like Rush and Mark and Laura and Lars and Joe and all these great local hosts around the country, other nationally syndicated hosts.
I can't mention everybody, even people that I disagree with.
It doesn't matter.
Because but for talk radio and the path that Rush forged, we wouldn't have this opportunity today.
Anyway, happy anniversary, Rush.
All right, as we roll along, Sean Hannity Show, 800-941-Sean Tolfre telephone number.
I got so much to get to on this Manafort trial today, and we're actually going to get a play-by-play.
The judges' beatdowns today were just absolutely amazing.
Other interesting side notes before I get into it in the next half hour, we now know the special counsel has been referring cases on a group of prominent American lobbyists, including Democrat-connected super lobbyist Tony Podesta, John Podesta's brother, to federal prosecutors in New York as part of an inquiry into whether operatives worked as unregistered foreign agents.
By the way, this has not been a law that has been enforced very often, but in the case of Manafort, they brought that up.
He's also referred former White House general counsel Greg Craig.
Remember him from the Clinton years and former Minnesota Republican Representative Vin Weber to the New York office as part of the inquiry.
The president is, you know, the president has basically had enough.
None of this would have happened if his attorney general didn't on day one recuse himself from all things involving Clinton.
But sadly, inciting the wrong law in the process, which is even more mind-numbing.
But Jeff Sessions does have the ability to step in and see the corruption here and stop it.
You know, the broad mandate that allowed Rod Rosenstein to allow them to go after Manafort on a 2005 case that has nothing to do with Russia.
He said, well, that was the whole purpose of what the appointment of the special counsel was about.
No, it wasn't.
It's now evolved into a phishing expedition.
And in this particular case, anybody that is around or near and supports the president in any way, the idea is to put maximum pressure on them.
In this case, drag up a 2005 tax case, put the screws to them, hoping they sing or compose.
Compose means I'll say, what do you want me to say?
So I don't have to go to jail.
Most people usually give in to that pressure.
Sammy the Bull Gravano kills 19 people, but as long as he sings, he doesn't go to jail.
He gets in the witness protection program and he gets a brand new house out in Arizona with government protection.
We're also going to deal with the media and Jim Acosta being shouted at last night.
And we'll talk about, well, what about the threats to this president?
All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
All right, so I'm going to get to the details of the Manafort case and everything that's been going on today, but I think it's important.
The president addressed all of this in a series of tweets today.
And first talking about FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was on the Mueller team, who was the one that was writing the exoneration of Hillary along with James Comey in May of 2016, before Peter Strzok interviewed Hillary in July of 2016, three days after which his writing partner in crime, James Comey, exonerated her.
No prosecutor would ever.
I love Greg Jarrett's new book.
He'll join us at the top of the next hour because he has six separate cases of people that did far less than Hillary.
Yeah, that were prosecuted and spend time in jail.
It's pretty scary.
So in the sense that you have now, because of the findings of Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch, we now know that Strzok was looking to keep all of his clearances while he was working for Mueller raises a lot of other questions.
But at the heart of all of this, this is where gross negligence, that was taken out, extreme carelessness replaced it, moving it away from the legal standard.
The original draft talking about the likelihood of foreign entities having hacked into Hillary's server.
You know, that would, I would assume, be Russia, Iran, and North Korea and China and whatever the other countries are that would have probably had easy access to that.
We know there was top secret classified information in there.
That compromises American sources and methods.
But then you've got the improper goals by first fixing the election to preserve the candidate of choice because you're going to stop the other candidate, Donald Trump, and you fix the crimes of the other person and you rig an investigation and you write an exoneration before you even really begin to investigate or interview the key players, Hillary and 17 others.
That in and of itself doesn't happen to the rest of us.
That's why we talk about the need for equal justice under the law and equal applications of our laws, because I don't think any of you would get away with what Hillary Clinton got away with and her team and the idea, where is the server?
Where are the deleted subpoenaed emails?
How do you get away with bleach-bitting the entire hard drive and busting up your devices?
That's why there was such an outrage when I said, if I had said that somebody should do that to Mueller, it would end up badly.
But people didn't hear exactly what I said.
I was careful with my words because I wouldn't recommend it because as I said then, it's a bad idea.
But the left is saying, Hannity is trying to obstruct justice.
He's telling people to destroy evidence.
No, I'm telling him just the opposite.
Don't do what Hillary did because you'll go to jail.
Why is Hillary not on trial today?
You know, what about these people that lied to FISA court judges and signed off on unverified Russian lies that Hillary paid for?
Why didn't they tell the judge she paid for it?
The four judges and the four applications for FISA warrants to literally shred the Constitution, shred the Fourth Amendment, and spy on American citizens.
Because that's what happened here.
You know, Mueller has an interest in creating this illusion of objectivity around this investigation.
It is not about Russia.
The Russian bot indictments is going very badly for Team Mueller because they never thought that they would respond.
Now, Mueller is actually trying to argue in court that they can't offer discovery to the people that were indicted.
Well, sorry, that's not going to fly under any system of justice.
If you didn't think they were going to respond and they respond, now he's probably in a position he's going to have to drop those indictments.
But it helps create an image that he's involved in something to do with Russia.
And the same thing with, you know, the equivalent of their CIA.
Those people are never coming here to face trial in America, ever.
But it gets the word Russia into it.
I wish the Attorney General would do something about it.
And that brings us then to the Paul Manafort case.
And here we are.
We've got, you know, the judge in this case is the very same guy that said, you guys don't care about Paul Manafort's taxes and tax issues involved in 2005.
Let's just be honest.
Imagine your team Mueller.
In this case, it was Andrew Weissman leading the investigative effort here.
And he says to the prosecution, says to the Mueller team, says to Andrew Weissman and company, we know what this is about.
Let's just be clear.
You don't care about Manafort at all.
Your purpose is to put the screws to Manafort in the hopes that he sings, singing meaning say something bad against Trump or compose, make up something bad against Trump, and that he would do that so he would save his ass from being in jail for whatever many years, potentially life in prison.
For the very purpose, the judge says, to prosecute Trump and impeach Trump.
That's what this case is about.
That's the only reason it's here.
And as he started delivering his opening statement, the Mueller prosecutor in this particular case, a guy by the name of Asone, earned a rebuke immediately from Judge Ellis, who told him not to tell jurors that, quote, the evidence will show that the allegations against Manafort are true.
Ellis, you know, we had a potential pool of 65 jurors and overview of what the charges against Manafort were, though he reminded the group the indictment is not evidence of guilt whatsoever.
And they picked the 12 jurors, six men, six women yesterday.
Ellis said he did not plan to offer decisions on all the documents Manafort's team wants to keep out of the trial.
They hope to prevent jurors from seeing some of the documents and photos of Manafort's lobbying work in Ukraine.
The one word that's not going to be mentioned here, as I keep saying, is Russia.
Then earlier today, you know, we barely get this trial underway, and the judge tells the jury, being rich in America is not a crime.
Let me stop you all there.
And then he goes on, the special counsel's prosecutors lectured by the judge again this morning.
for language that they were using in the courtroom.
And Judge Ellis specifically told prosecutors to stop using the word oligarch to describe wealthy Ukrainians whose dealings with Manafort are at the heart of these tax charges against him.
And the judge said the term has a pejorative meaning and is not relevant in this case.
And he cautioned that using it could suggest that Manafort is associated with bad people and guilt by association.
He said it's not the American way.
He noted wealthy donors like George Soros or the Koch brothers could also be considered oligarchs.
And Ellis then scolded members of Mueller's team before asserting back in May that the team was really interested in targeting Trump.
Now, a not guilty verdict in this case, now, the odds are not with Manafort.
And I honestly don't, I have no idea what the details of his business dealings were back in 2005 or 7.
I have no knowledge at all, zero.
But the Destroy Trump media is so increasingly worried that if Mueller's prosecution team fails to secure a guilty verdict in this case against Manafort, it would derail Mueller's entire investigation.
You got Judge Ellis making it clear he thinks Mueller's decision is politically motivated.
And the only reason that it went forward is because the mandate of Rod Rosenstein, the deputy AG, because, of course, Jeff Sessions recused himself was so broad.
And Manafort's trial is only one part of Robert Mueller's probe as it relates to Russia, but it has nothing to do with Russia.
And a lot of people think and believe it could have a big impact on where this trial could ultimately be headed.
Manafort's trial is just one part of the whole thing, but a conviction against Paul Manafort for one thing.
He's fighting bank and tax fraud charges from 2005 that had nothing to do with Russia.
Mark Corallo said the din of the verdict will be deafening.
Manafort's acquitted, it'll be the pro-Trump side blasting the special counsel, blasting the whole process, urging for the dismissal of the office.
Yeah, that's all going to true.
That's all predictable.
And then it's, you know, but we have to see what happens.
It looks like if Paul Manafort's found guilty, I think the conviction rate in federal court's 95, 8%.
It's high.
Anyway, according to other reports today, Ellis, who already made it known, he thinks it's completely baseless, he will have the final say about whether Manafort goes to jail or walks away scot-free.
Judge Ellis' presence will continue greatly to the tone and the pace of the trial.
He'll have ample opportunity to keep the lawyers in check.
He's going to decide upon legal questions as they arise.
He took the lead in questioning potential jurors about their impartiality before they were chosen.
If the jury reaches a guilty verdict, Ellis would be the sole decider of Manafort's sentence and have virtually free reigns to set how he chooses.
That might be the only blessing that Manafort now has because this is a political case.
And it is interesting.
Looks like Mueller's not nearly as interested in going after Tony Podesta as he is in Manafort.
And I guess that's understandable, at least from Mueller's point of view.
Indicting Tony Podesta might put pressure on him as well as his brother John, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, to tell what they know about Hillary's collusion with Russia.
Then he wouldn't be so easily swayed, and maybe it would be somewhat fair-minded in this particular case.
You know, but I want to just focus on one really important thing as we get going in all of this, because I think this is important.
And I think this really matters.
This is not the trial of the century, but the media is so desperate to hurt and delegitimize Trump, they're taking a 2005 tax case with a guy that worked for the president less than 100 days, and they are making it the defining story.
It's about tax evasion, potential money laundering dating back between the years 2005 and 2007.
Here's what the media is not telling you: none of these charges have nothing to do with Donald Trump.
They have nothing to do with Russian collusion.
They have nothing at all to do with Russia.
Why is the media on such high alert?
DEF COM 45 because they want to delegitimize and hurt the president.
So they're obsessing over this trial only because Paul Manafort worked for the president 100 days.
That's the only reason they care.
They won't talk about the president's successes.
They will smear every tweet.
They will obsess and feign outrage every day.
But what you're witnessing here is the weaponization of our justice system by a corrupt media and people that have agendas.
And this is the same in the case like Manafort, like Lieutenant General Flynn.
Nobody thought he lied to the FBI, but he did have to sell his house because he couldn't afford lawyers.
And I'm pretty sure, I'm guessing on this part, that they said, well, we'll just go after your business.
And that means your son, too, unless you say you're guilty of something you didn't do, which is lie to the FBI.
It'd be interesting how that all turns out.
And I think you could say that, you know, the same thing would be said about Michael Cohn and others.
People being targeted because of their association with Donald Trump.
I don't know what Manafort did or didn't do.
I did not know Manafort until this campaign.
I don't know.
But let me be clear.
I do know the special counsel investigation is throwing the book at him, as Judge Ellis pointed out, to extract any negative information about the president.
And because it seems he's not playing ball and didn't want to cut a deal, which I'm sure was offered.
In other words, if he started singing or started composing, he wouldn't be on trial today.
Probably would have been offered, like Rick Gates, some type of sweetheart deal.
And from their perspective, all of this would have gone away.
That's just the reality of how things work.
Oh, by the way, there's a political report out today.
Mark Caputo mocked attendees at Trump's rally Tuesday night, referring to them as toothless garbage people.
Toothless garbage people, smelly Walmart people, irredeemable deplorables, people that cling to their god guns and Bibles and religion.
Okay, I'm with them.
I'm one of the smelly, toothless people, I guess.
It's kind of true in reality.
I busted all my teeth when I fell three stories off a roof.
So there's some truth to that.
I have a lot of fake teeth in there as a result of that accident, but whatever.
But I think this is all very important.
Because at the end of the day, you know, look, one of the 14 FBI agents who was dispatched by Mueller and Weissman to raid the condo where Paul Manafort and his wife were sleeping, that pre-dawn raid, testified at the trial today.
Agent confirmed that he and his colleagues were indeed armed, but he refused to say whether they were wearing bulletproof vests.
FBI knocked three times at Manafort's door.
They didn't get an answer before the early morning raid in his Alexandria, Virginia condominium.
One of the lead agents who conducted the search testified that explained that the agents announced themselves in their search warrant, didn't get an answer.
They entered Manafort's unit shortly after 6 a.m. with a key they'd have already obtained.
He works on counterintelligence issues, said he did not know how the FBI got the key.
Counterintelligence.
Wait a minute.
When I heard that, I said, who is the FBI head of counterintelligence?
That was Peter Strzok.
He's involved in everything.
Anyway, during the cross-examination, said the FBI team of about 14 agents, other bureau officials were armed, wearing jeans, khakis, FBI coats, da-da-da-da.
They're doing their job.
I don't really hold them accountable.
That's what they're told to do.
Warrant was issued.
Anyway, Manafort's lawyer tried to ask whether the FBI agents were wearing bulletproof vests.
Ellis sustained an objection.
Anyway, Manafort's wife was present.
The agent testified.
He didn't appear to be making any effort to hide anything as the federal agents came into the property.
None at all.
But I'm just going to tell you something here.
And the judge got this right.
And I will tell you that if we're not going to go after the people like Clinton, equal justice under the law in America is dead.
Equal application of our laws is dead.
Why isn't Hillary on trial tonight?
Why aren't those that lied to judges to get warrants against innocent Americans?
What about Strzok and Page?
What about Clapper and Brennan?
What about Comey and McCabe?
And the list goes on.
Because we can't have a two-tier justice system.
And by the way, all these investigations die if the Democrats get the House in November.
How authority right now does Jeff Sessions have if he were so inclined to clean house?
Could Sessions end it today?
He's the Attorney General.
And the president could fire Jeff Sessions and he's not going to.
Right.
Well, if he's this upset.
He's not going to fire Jeff Sessions because the fix is in in Washington and he would not be able to get anybody approved.
The Senate would go crazy.
About a third of the Republicans would go crazy.
And you'd be back in a kind of Watergate-like environment.
So I think President Trump's far better off to endure this, publicly be angry, but endure it.
But on the other hand, if Jeff Sessions wanted to, as Attorney General, he has absolute authority to fire the entire Mueller team.
All right, that was Newt Gingrich talking about this whole issue and the president tweeting out today about Jeff Sessions and doing his job finally and stepping up to the plate, which isn't happening.
800-941-Sean is our toll-free number.
You want to be a part of the program.
We welcome our good friend, Greg Jarrett, back to the program.
He is following the Manafort case, which is not the case of the century, although the media would like to convince you it is.
And I go through my earlier comments as we introduce this segment.
Is this case, these charges against Paul Manafort have to do with financial dealings back in 2005 to 2007?
They have nothing to do with Donald Trump.
Donald Trump didn't know Paul Manafort then.
These charges have nothing to do with Russia or Russian collusion at all.
The mainstream media is trying to create a perception that this is about Russia.
It is not.
It is about trying to guilt by associate the president to a guy that worked for him for less, what, less than 100 days as his campaign manager.
And that's why the media is obsessing over this, a 2005 tax case and whether or not taxes were paid on monies earned abroad.
That's what it comes down to.
The judge in this case has been extraordinary, as I explained in the last segment, that the whole case is not about Manafort guys, is it?
Let's not play games here.
We know it's not about Manafort.
We know it's about putting the screws to Manafort, dragging up an old case that had pretty much been resolved in 2005 for the purpose of putting the screws on Manafort so he sings, meaning says stuff about Trump or composes, makes up stuff about Trump so he is not at risk of going to jail.
What do you want me to say?
For the purpose of prosecuting or impeaching the president.
That was at the beginning of the trial.
Now, right out of the box, the judge, Judge Ellis, reprimanding the Mueller prosecution team when he said the evidence will show that the allegations against Manafort are true.
And Ellis said, well, he reminded the group that the indictment is not evidence of any guilt whatsoever.
And then Judge Ellis rebukes them as well for using the term oligarch about the Ukrainians who Paul Manafort was working for, which is at the heart of the charges on taxes and fraud in this courtroom.
And the judge says, well, that's a pejorative.
And then he further cautioned that using it could be suggested Manafort is guilty by association.
He said that's not the American way.
He noted that there are plenty of wealthy donors like George Soros, the Koch brothers.
They could be considered oligarchs.
I don't think we're going to hear Greg Jarrett, author of, well, the number one book on Amazon for the last week.
Poor Judge Piro got mad at me because she, last week, was number one on the New York Times list.
And I love Judge Pirro, and I love you.
And I'm just, you guys have been battling it out for this week's position of number one, which is a good thing from my perspective for two of my friends.
Well, the book's doing very well thanks to you.
And, you know, you've supported it all along.
So I'm very grateful.
But, you know, it was very interesting.
The judge today once again spanked the prosecutors, Robert Mueller's prosecutorial team of partisans.
They were, once again today, trying to smear Manafort by describing and showing photos of his lavish lifestyle.
They tried to introduce a photograph of Manafort's closet where he's got a lot of expensive.
No, no, no, no.
He had an ostrich coat that cost 15 grand.
So the judge told him, you know, essentially.
Well, wait a minute, but he is guilty in one sense.
He's guilty of really bad taste.
Oh, God, ostrich coat?
Like, who would wear that?
Yeah, who would wear that?
Yeah, that's a felony right there.
But the judge told Mueller's team, knock it off.
You know, he repeated once again, it's not a crime to have a lot of money.
We don't convict people just because they're wealthy.
And, you know, it's clear that prosecutors may be short on facts and long on smear photos and smear evidence.
And the judge will have none of it.
And it was interesting, you know, not only is the judge told these guys, you know, don't mention Russia, don't mention collusion, don't mention Trump or the campaign, because that's inflammatory and utterly irrelevant.
This has nothing to do with Trump and collusion.
This is a tax fraud case, a bank fraud case.
You know how much time you usually get for something like that?
Maybe a year and a half behind bars.
But Mueller wants to send Manafort behind bars for 305 years, which just underscores how unscrupulous and unprincipled Mueller is.
And there's a serious question about the legitimacy of this case.
As you point out, this didn't arise from Mueller's investigation, which is what he's only authorized to bring.
This is an old case dug out of the tax division of the DOJ, which declined to prosecute Manafort eight years ago for lack of evidence.
Let me go.
You've been following this, and you're going to be our eyes and ears on the case every day because you're watching and listening to every minute of this.
And so tell us what else is going on because yesterday seemed to go very fast.
The jurors were picked.
Opening arguments were made.
The first witness was up on the up testifying.
Tell us what's going on and bring us in the courtroom.
Well, this is the so-called rocket docket.
And, you know, that means that the case comes to trial quickly, and it generally moves along, and it is going at a very fast pace.
You know, opening statements were not that long.
And then they started presenting a lot of the evidence.
And, you know, the judge is in a hurry.
He keeps prompting Mueller's team.
Would you please present the evidence of tax and bank fraud and stop showing photographs and talking about how rich Manafort was?
Again, that's really irrelevant.
Mueller's team tries to say, but, Your Honor, we have to show motive why he would cheat on his taxes and bank fraud.
The truth of the matter is, you know, motive is not needed to prove the case.
You can actually prove a tax and bank fraud case just on paper alone.
The defense claim is Manafort's not the one who is funneling money to these foreign accounts.
It was Rick Gates, his partner, who has cut a deal with prosecutors to flip against Manafort in exchange for leniency.
And in my experience, people who do that have a tendency to lie to say themselves.
Well, to me, it's like they're offering a bribe to the witness.
Now, hear me out, and we discussed this yesterday, and some people on the left apparently didn't like my characterization.
But I'll use the high-profile case of Sammy the Bull Gravano, who prosecutors could prove they thought that he had committed 19 murders.
And Sammy the Bull didn't go to jail for those 19 murders because they used Sammy the Bull to go for a bigger fish.
The bigger fish in that particular case was John Gotti Jr., known then as the Teflon Don.
And so, and then not only did he not spend any time in jail for the 19 murders, then he got in a witness protection program and he got a new house out in Arizona.
Now, to me, if I'm facing the rest of my life in jail, and Manafort may be, there is an incentive to say whatever they want you to say, isn't there?
Absolutely.
Overzealous prosecutors who care more about gaining a conviction than upholding the rule of law and justice have been known time and again to suborn perjury from witnesses, pressuring them to lie about someone else in order to bring charges against that other person.
Here, the other person is arguably Trump.
But you are absolutely right, and I'm glad you used the word, Sean, bribery.
That's exactly what it means.
Well, aren't they getting something in exchange for something?
I mean, he'll give you this if you do this.
And don't some people do on cross-explaination.
How much credibility, though?
If I'm being, let's say it's Sammy the Bull.
Let's use that example.
Sammy the Bull doesn't want to go to jail for the murders that he can go to jail for.
He's going to basically say whatever he needs to say.
Now, even though in that particular case, there was a witness that contradicted him.
They still used him.
Now, we know today that the lead prosecutor for Mueller in this case announced that he might not decide to call a star witness to testify.
Now, this is getting interesting.
And it was a pretty shocking admission.
Federal prosecutor saying Rick Gates may not testify in the trial of Paul Manafort because what the Manafort team is saying, well, he controlled the money.
He did this, and you guys cut some deal with him.
What's the deal they cut with him?
Well, I mean, it's a shrewd move by Kevin Downing and the defense team here because on cross-examination, a snitch like Rick Gates is always vulnerable.
One of the tactics I used to use was you've lied in the past, haven't you?
And snitches always lie, and you have the proof that they've lied.
And so they have to say yes.
And so then you pose the ultimate question, well, you know, when you were lying to these people, were you also lying to prosecutors?
And are you lying now in front of the jurors?
And it puts the witness in an impossible situation.
But there is a conviction rate.
The odds are not good for Paul Manafort.
We've got to be clear, right?
What is the conviction rate in federal court?
Oh, it's always, it's like 90, 95%.
I mean, it's very high.
The feds, you know, generally don't like to try a case unless they can absolutely win it.
But, you know, here, it's a little bit different.
Mueller never thought he'd actually have to prosecute a case.
I think he thought that Gates flipped, so we'll get Manafort to flip and we'll implicate Trump.
And when Manafort didn't do that, probably because he has nothing to say, and he may be a principled guy who will not lie the way Mueller probably wants him to, you know, Mueller was forced to actually try the case.
There's a reason why the tax division at DOJ never brought a case eight years ago because they didn't have good enough evidence to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt.
So they didn't bring the case.
That tells me that this is the same case, and Mueller may not have as strong a case as it may look in the indictment.
Well, I don't understand the law, so maybe you can help me.
I mean, if he's doing business with Ukraine and he has, I guess, foreign business accounts to do business in other countries, it's not something I've ever done, so I don't have any personal first-hand knowledge with, but I'm assuming you have the equivalent of a business, LLC, or a corporation in another country and bank accounts in that country, correct?
Yeah, of course.
And then you put the money in those bank accounts, and I would assume, based on what these charges are, that you're responsible for the taxes.
Yeah, generally speaking, you are.
And you have to file as a registered foreign agent, you know, working for a foreign company, which he didn't do.
But that's generally a civil penalty.
And many of these, you know, tax evasion cases are also civil penalties.
You know, to prove a crime instead of a civil penalty, Mueller has to show intent and knowledge.
So if the defense here is, wait a minute, you know, I didn't know I was breaking tax laws.
I relied on other individuals to advise me.
And the guy who was managing these foreign accounts was my partner, Rick Gates, and I trusted him.
All right, so you can't get a conviction based on knowledge and intent.
Well, I got to take a break here.
We'll come back.
Congrats on the book, by the way.
You've been doing very well.
And by the way, so is our mutual friend, Judge Janine.
My book's out, too, you know, and I'm like, yeah, but your book came out four weeks ago.
I know you're number one of the New York Times list.
I mentioned that.
Yours just came out a week ago.
And as we continue, Greg Jarrett is with us.
This is not the biggest case.
Why is the media trying to make a 2005 tax case on a guy that worked for the president less than 100 days into the trial of the century?
And you know about the trial of the century.
You covered O.J. from Los Angeles every day at the time.
That's right.
Well, the media is desperate for anything that is even something that isn't connected to collusion and Donald Trump.
And, you know, this is the nearest thing, Sean, that they've got to it.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with Trump or collusion, but the media is trying to spin it that way.
You know, he's being prosecuted, Paul Manafort, for simply being connected to Donald Trump.
But if you're connected to Hillary Clinton, you get a free pass, get out of jail, free car, you get immunity.
Look at all the five people that were surrounded, were surrounding Hillary and got immunity in exchange for nothing.
Tony Podesta, who is one of the partners of Paul Manafort, he's not being prosecuted because he's a friend of Hill and Bill.
What about Tony Podesta and what Mueller did today recommending?
I guess he's throwing that up to the Southern District of New York.
What's going on there?
Well, we just don't know yet, and it'll be interesting to see what happens.
It had been reported earlier that Podesta was being granted immunity, but we don't really know that for sure.
The only one that gets immunity is all the—well, forget it.
But you get my point.
I mean, if I'm sitting on a jury and they're telling me, well, did you get a deal to say what you're saying?
I'm not thinking you're very credible, but apparently it works all the time.
I guess I'm the exception.
And especially when Mueller has just now learned that Manafort is going to blame Rick Gates, the snitch, for everything.
So they may have reconsidered and decided, you know what, we're going to have to make this case without Gates.
Can't the defense call Gates?
They could.
And in fact, he's on their witness list.
All right, Greg Jarrett, congrats on the book and the Russia hoax.
And thanks for being with us.
We'll come back on the other side.
Also, a lot of your calls coming up as the Sean Hannity show continues.
You also made big news last week that you were considering impeaching the Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Where do you stand now?
How do you feel about that?
You know, we should.
If they don't give us the documents, if they don't give us the information that we as a separate and equal branch of government are entitled to have in order to get answers for the American people, then we will actually call the vote for impeachment of Rod Rosenstein.
And the House has a constitutional duty to do oversight.
If the executive branch isn't going to do that, people should be held in contempt.
People should be impeached.
That's how it works.
Those are the tools that the founders gave us when they drafted this amazing document and started this greatest country in history.
That's what we're supposed to do, and we're not doing it.
And it is frustrating not only me, more importantly, it's frustrating the American people.
That's why, if they don't give us the information, Mr. Meadows and myself and others are going to force an impeachment vote at some point.
Why is it always delayed?
Why is there always some reason why we don't get the full compliance that has been requested now, in some cases, over a year?
Now, Congress will lose all authority as it relates to subpoena, all of it, if they don't demand that their subpoenas be recognized.
That's just a fact.
Anyway, joining us now, he's got a book coming out in September called The Deep State.
I know some in Washington doubt that a deep state even exists, but it does.
We've seen it.
We've exposed it.
We know who's in it, and we know what they're trying to do.
Former congressman, now a Fox News colleague of mine, Jason Chaffetz, is with us.
How are you, sir?
Doing great.
Glad to be with you, Sean.
So you even had requested before you left, how long have you been out of Congress now?
Just over a year, but I issued a subpoena on the Department of Justice after they closed the Hillary Clinton case.
I issued that in 2016.
It was a closed case.
Nobody was charged.
No grand jury material, no executive privilege.
We issued a subpoena and never got the document.
Well, I mean, how do they get away with just ignoring your subpoenas, congressional subpoenas?
Maybe my mind is just wired a different way, Congressman, but I think that I ignore a congressional subpoena, that there's going to be real severe consequences for me and my life.
And the idea that just because somebody happens to be part of the Department of Justice, well, to me, it should be even more compelling that they cooperate.
They're in the government, and we're talking about another branch here.
And we do have checks and balances and supposedly co-equal branches.
Oversight is a big role that Congress plays as it relates to government function and constitutional function.
So I would think it's even worse when they don't cooperate.
The Department of Justice acts as if it's above the law.
I mean, there are a number of times where I issued a subpoena.
I could as the oversight chairman, but they just ignore it.
And the problem is Congress back in the 1800s gave up the ability to actually enforce the subpoena.
The only way to enforce a subpoena is to have the Department of Justice enforce the subpoena.
And you can see the problem.
When you have people like Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy and the leadership say, well, this really isn't that serious, then you don't have their backing.
You don't have the backing of the body as a whole.
And you're left looking around at a few dozen people who believe in, you know, do believe that there is a separation of powers.
And there's a concept called inherent contempt.
It's backed up by the Supreme Court.
It says that each branch can stand up for itself.
But until they actually do that, Sean, they're just going to thumb their nose at it.
That's why Judicial Watch is, quite frankly, more potent than Congress, because they can actually get to the courts and enforce it.
Just without getting too deep into your book, what is a deep state?
What is the deep state?
There are an army of bureaucrats out there.
They are brazen in their approach.
They delay.
They embarrass.
They don't want to be uncovered.
They don't want to be held accountable.
And then you have a transformative person like Donald Trump come in, want to look under the hood, want to hold people accountable, and they fight back.
They do everything they can to embarrass people.
And some of it is right there within the intelligence community.
Some of it's within the Department of Justice.
But as I outline in the book, The Deep State, we talk about how they do it in pretty much every department and agency.
They spy on members of Congress.
They don't give them the documents that they want and need.
They know they can outlast them and wait for the next Congress to come and go.
And I didn't know anything about it when I went into Congress.
But by the time I left, I knew it was real.
And I was there for eight and a half years, and I took eight and a half months to write a book about my personal experiences.
And then more importantly, what we can do to actually stand up and fix it.
That's what we got to be able to do.
You know, you watch the coverage of the Manafort trial, which I've been talking about the last two days here.
And, you know, this is a 2005 to 2007 tax case that has nothing to do with Russia.
And I do believe that the judge reluctantly took on the case because the mandate of Rod Rosenstein was so wide, he really didn't have any out, which is in and of itself a problem because you can just cast a wide net and whatever you feel, you know, this is what we call a phishing expedition.
But the only reason they brought up this old tax case that apparently had been resolved is really for what the judge said it was.
It was to put the screws to Manafort in the hopes that he sings or composes so that they can really get information on Trump.
That's who they really are going after, that they don't really care about Manafort at all in the hopes that they can use information to prosecute or impeach him.
That is a damning statement if I've ever heard from a judge, from a bench, to a prosecutor about a case that is now before him.
The word Russia is not going to be mentioned in this case.
And the judge today even said, stop mentioning the word oligarch.
And by the way, just because somebody has money does not make it a crime in America because they started talking about whatever Paul Manafort's spending habits happen to be.
I really like this, Judge Ellis.
I mean, appointed during the Reagan administration.
This guy, I think, has put the prosecution on its heels.
I don't even know why this is a story, let alone a case.
As you mentioned, it supposedly was at the Department of Justice.
They decided not to prosecute it.
You have Alan Dersowitz saying, hey, you know, the only reason they're prosecuting you is because he's a friend of Donald Trump.
But why is this even news?
It's a tax case that has absolutely nothing to do with Russia.
Yeah, well, I mean, that's the point.
And, you know, so how did we get so afar here?
I mean, because the judge did have to look at the original mandate and say, well, it fits within the guidelines of what Rod Rosenstein put out.
But basically, it's so broad.
It is so over the top.
I mean, this is now a problem.
This is where you get into where you can indict a ham sandwich territory to me.
And, you know, this should not be the trial of the century.
He worked about 100 days, less than 100 days for Donald Trump.
He worked in other administrations.
The fact that they're so interested in news on the Manafort case is because of one reason.
How can they get Trump?
How can they smear Trump?
How can they besmirch Trump?
I doubt Trump knew Manafort in 2005 to 2007.
And again, it's Ukraine.
It's not even Russia.
It's exactly right.
You know, one of the things I wish Senator Grassley, as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Bob Goodlatt, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, would do, I really do believe there is a place to bring in Rod Rosenstein and Director Mueller and probe their conflicts of interest.
That's not going to slow down anything that's going on in the so-called investigation, this witch hunt that Donald Trump talks about.
But talk about the conflicts of interest.
That is a legitimate thing that Congress should be asking and probing about.
They don't have to wait till the end of the investigation.
They should be doing that right now.
All right.
Let me ask this as we now move forward here.
And the president tweeting out earlier today that this does need to come to an end and that this has, you know, it's been distracting for the entire country.
How does this come to an end at this point if you can't even, you know, Congress can't even do their official oversight here?
And how is it possible that we do know about lying to FISA court judges?
Nobody's been indicted.
How do we know about real Russia collusion?
That's Hillary paying for the Russian dossier that was phony.
That's all designed for misinformation purposes of the American people to win an election.
Does anyone care that Bernie Sanders had an election stolen from him?
Does anybody care that they rigged the investigation into Hillary?
I can't think of a worse obstruction of justice case than hers.
If I did any of the things that she did to subpoena emails and deletes, deletions and bleach bid and hammers, why do I think I'd be in jail right now?
And every American listening right now would be in jail.
There's so much that's wrong here from top to bottom.
I'm glad it's being exposed.
You know what a fan I personally am of Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General.
It's very quiet, but what is happening is he is probing the bringing up forth of this FISA document and how it was manipulated.
I got a lot of faith that that will actually come about.
But the other part of this, Sean, is when you have Director Comey literally going out and advocating the election of Democrats, what he's saying is, I need to make sure that nobody holds me accountable.
I need to make sure that nobody else, like Strzok and Paige and everybody else, doesn't continue to, you know, they get, don't get closer to the truth.
And they can only do that by giving the gavel to Adam Schiff and some of these other characters and Yahoos.
That's why they're praying and hoping and pushing and literally going to Twitter advocating the election of Democrats so that the Republicans in the House and the Senate will stop probing.
And that's a real scary thing, Sean.
Well, Obama's now ratcheting up his input into the 2018 midterms.
I think it comes down to this.
I think Democrats, they've all been told to be quiet, but their real goal, we know, is to impeach the president.
They want to rescind the tax cuts.
They want their crumbs back.
We know they want to eliminate ICE.
They want to open borders.
We know that they want these investigations to stop, and they want us to keep Obama care, which is beyond any understanding that I have.
So my question is.
So then it's an important midterm.
Do people understand what's at stake here?
We're 97 days away.
This will be a definitive moment for the presidency of Donald Trump.
I don't think the Senate's in jeopardy, but I do think the House could be in jeopardy.
Mark my word here this day because I really do believe those members in the House that are waffling on their support of Donald Trump and his agenda, those will be the ones that ultimately lose come November.
If they don't embrace the agenda, if they don't get in line and advocate for the reduction in taxes and all the things that the president is fighting for, those are going to be the people in the squishy middle that get their butts kicked in November and could cost us the House.
Can the president, do you think if he's traveling and makes, if this becomes an election, a referendum election on his performance, I think they would do better.
But there are the squishy congressmen that frankly didn't want to support him.
No, and then you have the speaker going up and saying, well, no, you know, we shouldn't hold anybody accountable.
And, you know, it's really not anything against the law to withhold and ignore a subpoena.
I mean, what a conflicting message for what the Congress is trying to do and just executing the law and holding people accountable.
That is but one thing.
But then you go from the border, immigration, tariff fight that he's got going on, foreign policy.
There's so much going on that's going the right direction.
I don't see why anybody is hesitant about supporting the president if you're a Republican in this election.
All right, Congressman, I got to let you go here.
Always great to have you.
The Deep State coming in September.
Cheryl Atkinson, investigative reporter.
Remember, she was spied on herself, and we'll get into what she's had to go through.
Also, we've got our news roundup information overload hour coming.
Let's get to our busy phones as we roll along.
Evelyn is in North Carolina, Greensboro.
Hey, Evelyn, how are you?
Glad you called.
Oh, I'm doing great, Sean.
Thanks for having me.
You sound like a New Yorker who moved to North Carolina in 1986.
I answer that.
I thought New York did me.
By the way, everybody says that to you in North Carolina, right?
Oh, yeah.
They tell me you have an accent.
And I just tell them, well, so do you.
Then they stop.
They don't know what to say.
Oh, that's funny.
You know, Sean, I am so aggravated with this Rosenstein and, you know, some of those Republicans that aren't siding with, you know, President Trump and the people.
They don't want to do anything to him.
I think Sessions is also part of the deep state.
Those two, they have to go.
That's it.
And how are we going to do that?
If you have Republicans that are not really, you know, sticking with their president, I don't know.
You know, you raised, I don't know how this is all going to play out, but it's going to play out.
The idea that Paul Manafort on trial, and again, I say I have no idea what he did in 2005 or 2007.
I didn't know him then.
I have no idea what the case is about.
But we know this, Evelyn.
We know it's not about Russia.
We also know that it has nothing to do with the Trump campaign.
We also know that it has nothing to do with alleged election collusion.
And I think the American people are watching all of this, watching what this judge in this case is saying every day, and they're asking themselves, how is it, are we, are people like Hannity right that we have a two-tier justice system, one that would allow Hillary to have her investigation fixed so she can remain the favored candidate?
One that allows people to get away with literally disseminating false information, Russian lies in an election, but we're going to blame the other side for Russia collusion or lying to FISA court judges to get warrants to spy on Americans.
If we don't fix these things and we don't have equal application of the laws, equal justice under the law, and we allow these deep state actors basically to try and rip off a presidential election, we're not going to have a country.
It's still an unfolding story by a long shot.
Anyway, Evelyn, God bless you.
You are a great American.
800-941-Sean is on number.
We'll take a quick break.
We'll come back.
And our news roundup information overload is next.
I know nothing about this.
I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Yunes on that count today.
I mean, let's back up and recall where we have been.
The President of the United States accused his predecessor, President Obama, of wiretapping Trump Tower during the campaign.
Nothing of the sort occurred.
Did you seek the names of people involved in to unmask the names of people involved in the Trump transition, the Trump campaign, people surrounding the president-elect?
Let me begin.
In order to spy on them, absolutely not for any political purposes to spy, expose anything.
I really don't know to what Chairman Nunes was referring, but he said that whatever he was referring to was illegal, lawful surveillance and that it was potentially incidental collection on American citizens.
And I think it's important for people to understand what incidental means.
That means that the target was either a foreign entity or somebody under criminal investigation.
But the fact is that the president did request back in December that the intelligence community compile all of the information that it had on what had transpired during the campaign with respect to the Russians involving themselves in the presidential campaign.
And that report was provided to the American people in unclassified form and to Congress in classified form in early January.
Did the pace accelerate during the transition?
Perhaps in early December?
Perhaps when the president ordered an investigation into the hacking, the Russian hacking.
Did the pace of unmasking requests, of your unmasking requests, accelerate toward the end of the White House tenure?
And I can't say the pace of unmasking requests would accelerate, but if you're asking, were there more reports provided to senior U.S. officials after the president requested the compilation of the intelligence, which was ultimately provided in January, yes, what happened was as the IC went about the business, the intelligence community, the intelligence business of following up on the president's order, fulfilling the president's request for such a report, they went back and scrubbed more reports.
They began to provide more such reports to American officials, including myself.
This is not anything political has been alleged.
The allegation is that somehow Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes.
That's absolutely false.
All right, there you have it.
I mean, the most stunning thing that we just heard there, Susan Wright, oh, there's no illegal unmasking of citizens and so on and so forth.
We know that the rate of unmaskings went up some 350 percent in the final year of the Obama administration.
And then, of course, the executive order of the president allowing the sharing of intelligence among 17 agencies, something they didn't have during their presidency at the end of the Obama presidency.
If you remember, Cheryl Atkinson, now with Sinclair Media, and prior to that, was with CBS and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Smear, and Stonewalled.
She has a show of her own.
It's called Full Measure.
She put out a piece in the Hill, and it's asking a lot of tough questions.
Well, whatever happened to the unmasking of the unmaskers with so many people unlawfully being unmasked in Washington.
And by the way, people like Dennis Kucinich having to, you know, our computers tapped like Atkinson did herself.
What exactly is being done to find out who in the government is guilty of abusing the intelligence system?
Now, last October, Ambassador Powers, remember, why would a UN ambassador be unmasking a person a day?
And then she said and told congressional investigators that many of the hundreds of unmasking requests in her name in 2016 were not made by her.
Okay, if that's true, well, that implies something even more problematic.
You know, someone else in the government was using her name to unmask Americans.
Now, the good news would seem to be that there is now documentary evidence of all of this, and there are names of who questioned what and when and information as to the unmasking that the intelligence agencies were sent, and names of those who searched the NSA database and under what auspices they were searched.
And unlike a lot of facets of the Trump-Russia Intel controversy, this should be something that's very easily traceable.
But I guess everybody's just too busy, you know, pointing us in other directions that we left this a little bit behind.
But Cheryl Atkinson did not.
Cheryl Atkinson joins us now.
How are you?
I'm great.
Thanks, Sean.
Yeah, by the way, you're not a conservative.
You're not a liberal.
You're a reporter, right?
Yes.
I mean, I would like to say I usually don't follow the crowd.
I follow the facts.
And a lot of people, when it happens to come down on a side liberals don't like, they like to claim or put out propaganda that it's because I'm conservative to try to make people not listen to the reporting.
But clearly, the record shows that most of my reporting is non-political.
And then to the extent it is, I've reported on both sides.
Okay.
And then when you were at CBS and you wanted to do some big reports on Benghazi and some other issues, you basically were told, no, we're not doing that.
It's a little more complicated than that, but the upshot is yes, that after wanting those reports and assigning me to cover that, the more I uncovered at some point, those reports got blocked by certain people, I would say middle management.
And I don't know what the role upper management may have had, but yes, they got blocked.
Okay, and then so that leads to your departure and brings us to where you are now.
Let's talk about this piece.
How many Americans do you think were unmasked?
Both John Solomon and Sarah Carter, they estimate the increase in unmaskings went up 350% against American citizens in 2016.
What is your estimate?
Well, I go with John Solomon's estimate because he's got excellent sources and some of these stats are reported out.
We know that it's gone up by an incredible factor, but I want to step back and remind people or tell them if they don't know, unmasking to begin with is supposed to be incredibly rare if it ever happens.
It was a promise to the intelligence community that, hey, we may sweep up U.S. citizens and our surveillance, which may seem unconstitutional, but we won't save the information.
And then they decided, well, we will save the information, but we'll mask the names so they can't be seen and used even internally.
And now we see these unmaskings weren't rare at all, especially during the election year.
They were so common that one official alone, as you mentioned, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., was asking for one a day, or at least somebody in her name was doing so.
We also know that Susan Rice, James Clapper, and Sally Yates, three other officials, were also reviewing unmasked material and requesting unmasking.
So this seemed to be a huge operation of something that should be super rare.
Yeah, and what we're talking about, we have a process and laws that govern unmasking.
For example, if they're, and by the way, I'm glad that our intelligence agencies, let me be very clear, have the ability to keep an eye on America's friends and enemies in the sense that if, say, you're talking to somebody from Russia or China, they would check in.
But if you're an American citizen, they don't have a warrant.
And we have a constitutional amendment, the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure.
It would be illegal for the government to ever listen in on your conversation.
And if, in fact, you are picked up incidentally in a conversation with somebody, some foreign entity, some foreign source, and you're an American citizen, then they must practice something known as minimization.
And that is that they would minimize your part of the conversation and just dip in and out to see if there was anything nefarious going on.
And if not, you have a right to privacy and a right to have a private phone call, even though you're talking to somebody that maybe lives abroad.
If in fact they write a report and talk about the other person that you were discussing something with, who they were surveilling, and you were picked up incidentally, they wouldn't even in their report normally mention who the American is.
They would just say talking to an American.
Isn't that correct?
That's right.
And there's good reason for that.
And, you know, an even bigger possible problem here is we know from cases that have been leaked to the press, another issue, that when a foreign leader, such as Israeli's prime minister, is speaking with a member of Congress here.
In this case, it happened to at least one Democrat and maybe a group of other members of Congress.
They're not supposed to listen to that.
At least the intelligence people I talk to say that's when you dip out because our members of Congress have a right to talk to friendly foreign leaders and believe that they're not being surveilled by our own government.
But we know they were because Jane Harmon, Congresswoman Jane Harmon's conversation, was leaked to the press after it had been recorded and picked up by our own intel agency.
She was a Democrat.
Dennis Kucinich was speaking to a Libyan official and that was leaked to the press, the actual recording.
And there are other instances of this that have happened over the years.
And I suggest, based on what I've seen, the reason the Intel community is so out of its mind in some respects about a Trump presidency is Hillary Clinton nor Jeb Bush would have dug into this.
But they worry and worried that a Trump presidency or a Trump administration would dig into these acts that have been happening over the past 10, 20 years, not just in 2016.
And there could be people, according to Intel sources I have, that deserve to go to prison over this.
So this is a big deal.
This is a big deal.
Listen, at different times, I've been told that I've been unmasked by people.
I don't know if that's true.
I've never been able to confirm it.
But people have looked at me and said, really?
Are you kidding?
You really don't know.
You don't understand what's going on?
And I'm like, well, I suspect, but I don't know, but that would be illegal in most cases.
But putting all of that aside, why is this the most dangerous thing?
Why is weaponizing the tools of intelligence and not abiding by these very stringent, strict laws, why is that so important?
And what do the American people need to know about it, especially in the case of Ambassador Powers unmasking a person a day and denying she ever asked to unmask them?
Because if our intelligence community, at least some of the bad actors in it and our top law enforcement agencies in the federal government, have pointed themselves somehow outside the Constitution, outside the oversight of Congress, which some seem to think they are, and outside serving the people who elected the members who appointed them, then you have basically a government running itself with no accountability that can do anything to make itself survive, to go against its political or corporate enemies,
to do all kinds of dirty deeds to collect political blackmail, to plant evidence on somebody.
I mean, the possibilities are endless, and that's what this whole country was supposed to be about, not letting government do that, avoiding the perils and the pitfalls that have happened in other countries.
You know, and that again goes to our protections, Fourth Amendment protections.
You know, we give the intelligence community, and tell me if you think my gut is right or wrong on this.
I've been telling people that I think the way this whole story is going to end is there are a bunch of members of our intelligence community that do good work every day.
And there are members of the FBI and people in the Department of Justice that do good at work every day.
And they see the actions of some of the highest echelon in their departments acting in inappropriate ways that would get them fired.
And they can't talk until they get subpoenaed by Congress.
Congress, I am told, has about at least 30, maybe 40, maybe even 50 people on standby ready to testify about the nefarious deeds of those in the Intel community, those bad actors in the FBI and in the DOJ.
In other words, the heroes are going to be the rank and file in these departments.
Here's the problem with the scenario you outlined from sources I have.
Number one, some of the Republicans, and I won't name names, but this is the word inside the FBI.
Some Republicans who are hearing from whistleblowers are then turning in the names of the whistleblowers to the Department of Justice under the auspices of, hey, we're just reporting properly to you.
So that's leading to a chilling effect.
Number two, there are some in Republican leadership as well as Democratic leadership who don't want hearings like you're talking about and for a lot of different reasons.
And the arguments they've started to make, now that there seems to be really good evidence and reason to have them is, well, we don't want to ruin public faith in our institutions.
It's very important to American public faith.
It'll have just the opposite effect, right?
We've got to take a break more with investigative reporter Cheryl Atkinson on the other side.
800-941-Sean is our toll-free number.
And as we continue, Cheryl Atkinson, investigative reporter, also the host of Full Measure, her Sunday morning talk show, we were talking about whistleblowers and rank and file that want to tell the truth.
And you're saying that those people that want to tell the truth are being intimidated into not telling it.
Why?
Well, you have to wonder.
I mean, I don't know the reasons or the motivations by people at higher levels in, say, the Republican Party or in government that don't want to hear these stories.
But an argument they're making that I don't think rings true for the reason you said is, well, now that we know what we know, if we really go too far down this path, it'll just destroy public confidence in our institutions.
But I say like you do, that faith is already being shaken.
And if these people aren't held to account or we don't research and investigate it, it's going to be worse.
But I think that's not the reason they really don't want these investigations.
I think there are other motives and reasons that, you know, maybe we're not privy to that they don't want a lot of this to come out.
Well, it seems to me that especially if you look at Comey and McCabe and Strzok and Paige and some others, and then you look at those that signed off on a phony FISA application and phony FISA application renewals, we all know these things, nefarious things have happened and laws were broken, starting with Hillary.
Why isn't she on trial today?
Well, and I also know people who have tried to speak of different things that have happened, and they've gone to staffers of prominent members of Congress that you know who are well aware of it, who the staffers just say, oh my gosh, you know, this is huge.
And then all of a sudden, it goes away.
Nobody wants to meet with them after all.
Nobody wants to talk to them after all.
So this is what we're up against in any of these questions.
It's a very complex and frustrating situation.
All right, Cheryl Atkinson, thanks for being with us, award-winning, Emmy, award-winning investigative journalists.
And thank you so much for being with us.
We appreciate it.
All right, 800-941, Sean, toll free telephone number.
We'll do phone calls for the last half hour of the program.
That's coming up straight ahead.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
You know, one of the things that is really just standing out in my mind and what I'm watching unfold today, and Paul Manafort's rich.
They mentioned oligarchs.
They can't talk about what with anything to do with Russia.
Not a single thing can they talk about.
You know, the president was out there tweeting earlier today and everyone gets all worked up.
Oh, the president's tweeting.
Oh, the president is telling America what actually happened.
That's a case for obstruction.
It's not.
Because the president rightly points out that Peter Strzok was on the Mueller team and he should have recused himself on day one.
This guy is in the heart of all of this corruption.
Remember, he wanted, we'll stop him.
We've got an insurance policy.
You know, everything that he was involved in here is illegal and improper, trying to steal an election, influence an election.
The entire dossier that was paid for with Russian lies was to misinform, purposefully misinform the American people so that they would buy into lies and vote for the candidate that paid for them.
We haven't gotten to the bottom of that.
You know, the real issue here is who is involved in all of these nefarious activities to influence the election?
Who lies to FISA court judges?
I mean, and Jeff Sessions, he does.
I don't know what Jeff Sessions is doing.
I really have nothing.
I don't know what's going on there.
But he can and should stop this witch hunt.
It's putting a big strain on the country.
The president tweeted out today, and he's right.
Yeah, and Bob Mueller does have 17 angry Democrats, including Andrew Weissman and all these other people.
You know, the president pointed out, you know, how many days did Paul Manafort work for him?
A short time, three months?
But he worked for Reagan and Bob Dole.
And what we're dealing with in this court case that they're trying to turn into on cable news, the trial of the century, is a tax case from 2005.
You know, this is not, well, I was talking yesterday.
This is Sammy the Bull Gravano.
They'll make deals with everybody because they so desperately want anybody close to the president to be tarnished.
And, you know, to spend 23 hours in jail over a tax case in 2005, I mean, are you afraid he's going to kill 19 people like Sammy the Bull, who the government let free because he was a cooperating witness, even given the witness protection program and given a new house and new life in Arizona?
You know, there was paid-for Russian dirt in this campaign, and it was done for by Hillary Clinton.
You know, I'm watching this, and before the jury was seated, you know, Judge T.S. Ellis had a message for Mueller's team, stop using the word oligarch.
Quote, using the term oligarch seems to mean criminals, and there will be no examples of them.
Examples of oligarchs are high school principals.
Only difference about these is they have a lot of money.
So George Soros and the Koch brothers would also be considered oligarchs.
It's a bejarited meeting.
No role for that in this trial.
And then he told Greg Andrus, the prosecutor, to find another term, like people who finance campaigns.
We're not going to say he associated with despicable people, and that makes him despicable.
It's not the American way.
And Judge Ellis reprimanding Mueller's team right out of the box was pretty amazing.
You know, delivering his opening statement, Mueller's prosecutor got a rebuke from the judge who told him not to tell the jurors, quote, the evidence will show that the allegations against Manafort are true.
Now, he said, you know, reminded the group that the indictment is not evidence of any guilt whatsoever.
And before jury selection got underway, Ellis said he didn't plan to offer decisions on Tuesday about all the documents, et cetera.
Then on day two, you have, you know, the special counsel's prosecutors lectured by the judge Wednesday morning for the language that they use in the courtroom.
It's a pretty amazing turn of tails here.
But you never know with a jury.
Good luck.
It's a crapshoot.
98% conviction rate in a federal court.
It's not good.
Although the overturn rate changes that, you know, but let me tell you something.
They desperately want a guilty verdict in this Manafort case that has to do with a tax issue in 2005 to 2007.
Anyway, 800-941-Sean is a toll-free telephone number.
Let's get to our busy telephones here.
Susan is in Texas.
Susan, hi, how are you?
Glad you called.
Hi, Sean.
I just want to tell you, thank you.
And also that Manafort doesn't have a chance in this circus.
Like this whole thing is about using threat and intimidation to stop anyone from supporting our President Trump in 2020.
And it's just like the IRS scandal against the T Park.
And another thing I'd like to ask you, because you're smart about these things, why hasn't Stormy and her lawyer been charged and arrested for blackmail and extortion?
Well, what would the blackmail have been?
You mean the fact that they got a payout or that there was an agreed payment agreement?
Yeah, that they even sought one.
Like if they thought it while he, after he had made his pronouncement that he was going to be running for president, then they picked that opportune time to do that.
And to me, just being a regular person, that just sounds like blackmail.
Well, when you think of how many years ago, look, I can tell you that in boardrooms all across America, every single day, there are decisions that are made.
People make allegations.
Some are true and some are not true.
And sometimes it's hard to determine or ascertain what is the truth and what's not the truth.
But oftentimes they just make a decision based on what's in the best interest of the company.
If they go to trial, if they fight it, it's going to go on for years.
It's going to cost X number of dollars.
We can make it go away for $50, you know, for $100 instead of $1,000.
Those decisions are made all the time.
And it doesn't, you know, imply or mean guilt.
Oftentimes, it is strictly a business decision, nothing more.
And then people say, well, that must mean you're guilty.
Not necessarily.
And I know cases where there, you know, there wasn't guilt, but people decided it was in their best interest to make it go away.
You're absolutely right about the Manafort trial.
Just take a quick listen to this.
Trial day one for President Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, the man now facing a slew of charges.
The case against Manafort is also the first high-profile test of special counsel Robert Mueller.
If, for example, Mr. Manafort is found guilty, that makes it a real problem for the president of the United States.
Could Manafort, is there still time for him to cut a deal?
Paul Manafort.
The president's former campaign chair is accused of hiding at least $30 million.
We're going to learn the nitty-gritty details about Paul Manafort's financial situation.
Your jury has just been seated in U.S. versus Paul J. Manafort.
Did you see what color tie Paul Manafort was wearing?
He did not either because he's sat with his back to us.
Paul Manafort, the president's campaign manager, went on trial in a federal court across the Potomac River from here.
Mark, it is a day in history.
The man who was once Donald Trump's top kick is now facing years in a U.S. prison.
The prelude, the political foreplay, whatever you choose to call it, is passed.
For a year and a half, our country's been contorted into a reality TV show.
Mark, this is the day we discovered that reality bites.
Good evening.
I'm Chris Mannis down in Washington.
We're heading into round one now of what could be the dismantling of the Trump administration.
Let's say hi to Tim in California.
Tim, hi, how are you?
Glad you called.
Good afternoon, Sean.
How are you doing today?
What's going on, my friend?
Glad you called.
Hey, yesterday you were talking about what clothes to wear.
Yeah.
Hey, wear whatever you want to wear.
Forget the ties.
Jesus wore a robe and sandals.
The American people are in shorts, flip-flops, pink top t-shirts.
And one more thing, sir.
I love it when you and Linda get into it and you got a great staff.
Don't give them a hard time.
Be safe out there.
Wait a minute.
Why do you think I give them a hard time?
How about they give me a hard time?
So you're the boss.
You can take it.
Oh, so it's all right.
Life is too short out here.
Life is way too short.
That I agree with.
The fires that are going on, it's crazy out here.
I know.
I feel bad.
I feel bad for everybody out there.
I've been there.
I've seen it.
I've seen the aftermath of these fires in the past.
It's horrible.
And the firefighters are risking their lives.
You watch this every day.
People's homes going up in flames.
It's, you know, we've got to get away to kind of figure out more preventative measures, knowing that this happens a lot.
And I know there's so much acreage there that maybe it's an impossibility, but we've got to figure out a way to prevent these fires.
We've got to create some type of firewall around each area that has the potential to burn, you know, thousands of acres.
And in the process, that means people's lives are going up in smoke.
It's so scary.
And then people's lives are at risk fighting them.
Anyway, thank you, Tim.
You know, my staff could have.
Yeah, thank you, Tim.
Are you done?
Most welcome, Linda.
Take care.
Yeah.
See you, my brother.
Thank you, Tim.
See you, my brother.
See you, pal.
Thanks, buddy.
You know, I just, you know, you guys get to talk to these people off the air first.
I just talk to them live on the air.
And they're just lovely.
I mean, honestly, Tim was on your team.
He was telling me you could wear whatever you wanted.
And I said, fine.
If you want them to look like crap, I'll tell them.
Okay.
And you think you didn't say it yesterday, but you think I dress like crap.
Say it.
I just think that.
Why don't you just be the honest person?
I'm totally, no one will be more real than me.
I'll tell you exactly what you're doing.
When you wear your button-downs.
Button-downs.
That's a nice upgrade from the golf shirts that have been worn to infinity and look warranted.
What about my t-shirts that I had on yesterday and today?
Is that okay?
If they're under a button down, yes, it's lovely.
No, not under a, well, it's a plain open t-shirt.
That's all I'm wearing.
A Nike t-shirt.
Are you working out?
Are you cleaning the gutters?
Like, what's happening?
No, I'm doing my radio show in my T-shirt and my baseball hat and my jeans, like usual.
Understand that TV gets the fancy show on and we get the cast off.
It's fine.
It's got to be something better than those t-shirts.
Good God.
I like t-shirts.
They're comfortable.
Sweat socks.
Oh, sweat socks.
Oh, they're not sweat socks.
They're black Nike socks.
They're sweat socks.
They're just so.
I like Nike products.
What can I say?
Just do it.
You know, Nike makes dress socks.
Did you know that?
Yeah, well, go ahead.
Go buy yourself a pair.
Hope you enjoy them.
All right.
Tom and Howard Beach, New York, the all-new AM710WOR.
What's going on, sir?
Hey, good afternoon, Sean.
I just wanted to share two things that I think a lot of people are missing about our president.
The first thing is the man is a top-notch negotiator, so timing is very, very key to him.
And I think that a question that's perplexed a lot of people has been, why hasn't he released these documents from the DOJ and the FBI showing what really happened with this Russia investigation?
And my feeling on the matter is that these papers are ready to be released when he's ready to pull the trigger, which would be exactly a week or two before the midterm elections.
What better way of pushing back on any momentum that the media is giving the Democrats in this situation?
And on top of that, you would enrage the base to get out and vote for Donald Trump's endorsed candidates.
Look, I do think that there's going to come a moment, a tipping point, between now and 97 days from now when people are going to understand how high the stakes are in this election.
Look, I think they're high in every election, but, you know, we get the government we deserve.
We suffer the consequences when we elect bad people to office.
And right now, there is a strong push and a lot of money being spent to ensure that Nancy Pelosi becomes the speaker again.
And if she wins that position, we know the agenda.
You know, those people in the party, which now has moved solidly left, there's no such thing as a more conservative Democrat in this Democratic House of Representatives.
They don't exist.
There's no moderates in the Democratic Party.
And they want to impeach Trump.
They want Obamacare to stay, as awful as it's been.
They want their crumbs back.
They want open borders.
They even want illegal immigrants voting, as we've been reporting now for a couple of days.
And they want these investigations to stop because it's not going to do any good for Hillary Clinton and a lot of other Democrats if they stop.
And their shenanigans, you know, similarly would be stopped in future elections.
So that's the agenda.
That's what's at stake here.
Now, we have the president who's, you know, done a lot of things to make this country put it in a much better position than that which he inherited it and inherited it from.
So, you know, do we want to keep going?
My hope is people understand the stakes here because the stakes are really high.
And I don't know any other way to really explain it.
Well, I think if he reveals these documents, it basically takes the momentum away from anything that the Democrats have.
It also reveals what the cabal and the people in the DOJ that have been working to hide this stuff.
It just gives them time over these months to develop the profile of these people so they can see who they can trust and who they can't.
Yeah.
All right.
I appreciate the call, Tom.
Thank you.
800-941-Sean is a number you want to be a part of the program.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
All right.
We have all the latest developments.
The media's obsession with Paul Manafort's 2005 tax case.
Joe Degenova, Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett, Russia's 30 years in radio.
