Sean Hannity Show - The Government Will Keep Running - 12.21

Dec. 21, 2018 - Sean Hannity Show

01:36:58

The Government Will Keep Running - 12.21

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	This is an iHeart podcast.
	You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
	We got you.
	I'm Carol Markowitz.
	And I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
	We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
	Normally is about real conversations.
	Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
	We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
	Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
	Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
	Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
	Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
	And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
	We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
	So down with Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
	My friends at MyPillow, my buddy Mike Lundell told me he was coming out with a brand new product.
	It's called the New Mattress Topper.
	So I got the new mattress topper immediately and I've been sleeping on it now for a couple of months.
	It's the best thing you've ever felt in your life.
	Now, you literally have MyPillow foam for support.
	It's a transitional foam that helps relieve pressure points and it's ultra-soft, patented temperature regulating cover.
	And I got to tell you, it has a 10-year warranty, a cover that's washable and dryable.
	It's made in the USA, backed by the 60-day unconditional money-back guarantee.
	Once you try this new mattress topper, you put it right over your mattress, you will never sleep better.
	And right now, you, my radio listeners, are going to save 30% off when you go to mypillow.com and use the promo code TOPPER.
	And by the way, Mike will also give you two standard MyPillows absolutely free.
	All right, so try mypillow.com promo code Topper.
	Promo code Topper for this great deal and the best night's sleep you ever had.
	And welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	I'm Greg Jarrett filling in over the next three hours for Sean, who is enjoying an early Christmas vacation.
	We're just four days away from Christmas.
	Merry Christmas.
	Happy Hanukkah.
	Happy Kwanzaa.
	Festivus for the rest of us.
	George Costanza Kramer talking to you.
	For those of you who may not know who I am, I'm a Fox News legal analyst, former trial lawyer, spent about 15 years anchoring various programs on Fox News, author of the number one New York Times best-selling book, if I do say so myself, The Russia Hoax, The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.
	You can still order it on Barnes ⁇ Noble and amazon.com or go down to your local bookstore and pick it up.
	It is the, I think, desk reference for all of the corruption at the FBI and the Department of Justice in clearing Hillary Clinton and then setting up Donald Trump, trying to frame him for the things he didn't do.
	So here we are, just four days away from Christmas, and the government is supposed to shut down at midnight.
	So I'm going to talk about that over the course of the next hour.
	Love to hear your opinion.
	I happen to be of the opinion, let's shut down the government.
	What do you think?
	Give us a call at 1-800-941-Sean.
	That's 1-800-941-7326.
	All right.
	So here's a novel concept.
	I am all for shutting down the U.S. government at midnight.
	Let's do it.
	Why not?
	I mean, after all, it doesn't really mean that the entire U.S. government and all of its operations will actually close.
	So pay no attention to the media and liberal hysteria, you know, that lives will be lost, the sun won't rise, the world will stop spinning on its axis.
	Nonsense.
	None of that's going to happen because the term government shutdown is one of the classic Washington canards that people love to peddle to scare Americans.
	The truth is, the government keeps on running after midnight.
	When the funding runs out, less than 20% of the government actually comes to a temporary halt.
	Non-essential workers will go home.
	They get an early vacation.
	They do get paid, not right then and there, but after the fact.
	That's the law.
	So they're all for it.
	Great, let's go home.
	I don't have to work.
	I get paid for it.
	So here's the logical and inexorable question.
	Why do we even have non-essential workers?
	Why would the government be hiring non-essential people, people who are not doing important and essential work on behalf of Americans who are paying their salaries?
	What's with the tens of thousands of people who don't do anything essential as they work for the government?
	Why are we paying them to do nothing vital or significant?
	Think about this.
	What American business could ever operate that way?
	Corporations and small businesses all over America only hire people that they actually need to work and perform services.
	This is a fundamental principle of a free market economy where the goal is to make a profit.
	I mean, if a business operated the way the federal government does, hiring loads of people they don't really need, how long would that business last in a competitive marketplace?
	It would not.
	But the U.S. government, as you well know, is the single most inefficient and abysmally run disorganization in the world.
	It squanders your hard-earned taxpayer dollars on stupid stuff and salaries for people that it doesn't actually need.
	It is idiotic, which I realize is redundant when you're talking about the federal government.
	Here's another question.
	Do the vast majority of Americans even care if the government shut down?
	No.
	Because 80% of all services will continue.
	Your social security checks, they keep on coming.
	Medicare, Medicaid, uninterrupted.
	Postal service, doors open.
	TSA agents at the nation's airports, still there, still frisking your crotch in your butt.
	Border agents, they're on the job trying to keep us safe.
	VA hospitals, nobody is pulling the plug on the veterans to whom we owe so much.
	Unfortunately, the federal courts stay open, and given how so many judges have become so politicized, and some of them like Emmett Sullivan, oblivious to the laws we learned this week, giving all of them a pink slip would be my idea of a very Merry Christmas.
	Sure, some parks across America might close for a while.
	Not all of them.
	Your FHA loan might get slowed a bit.
	Getting a passport renewed might take a bit longer.
	All right, we can live with that.
	But back to my principal question, do Americans really care?
	They do not.
	Government shutdowns have become routine.
	There have been 18 government shutdowns since 1976 when the modern budgetary process underwent a major makeover.
	We have them all the time.
	Last one was just 11 months ago.
	Did the world come to an end?
	No.
	Most Americans simply yawned and moved on with their busy lives.
	They didn't care then.
	And trust me, they don't care beginning at midnight tonight.
	The only people who seem to have a conniption fit are the usual suspects, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, apoplectic that President Trump would allow the government to shut down over a measly $5 billion appropriation to build a wall.
	Measly because our annual budget is $4.4 trillion, so $5 billion is a drop in the bucket.
	But, you know, Pelosi and Schumer predict that the sky will fall.
	They are the classic chicken littles of Capitol Hill.
	A couple of hours ago, Schumer was on the floor of the Senate ranting, turmoil, chaos.
	I'll let you in on a little secret.
	Pelosi and Schumer, career politicians, couldn't competently manage a dairy queen.
	That is why they are politicians.
	They couldn't cut it in the real world.
	So frankly, pay no attention to their constant, incessant blather about impending doom over a government shutdown.
	Ain't going to happen.
	And here's an idea for you.
	Let's permanently fire all non-essential government workers.
	Not right away.
	I don't want to be a Grinch at Christmas.
	But let's phase those jobs out in the next year.
	If they're not essential, they shouldn't be getting a free ride on your taxpayer dime.
	Go out there in the real world, folks, and get an essential job.
	And here's another idea.
	I stole this one from an excellent column penned by former Representative Jason Chaffetz.
	You can read it on the Fox News website, but his point is this.
	As I mentioned, our current annual budget, $4.4 trillion, $1 trillion of that is what's called discretionary spending.
	In other words, Congress is supposed to authorize programs and appropriate funds from this $1 trillion.
	But here's the deal.
	They don't really do that.
	Some of their authorizations in that $1 trillion are undefined and broad.
	So Trump should grab a mere $5 billion of that and spend it to construct the wall.
	Perfectly legal.
	And after all, members of Congress do something similar.
	They insert all kinds of funding for pet projects into bills.
	It's called pork.
	In reality, it's, you know, payola to the people who support them.
	Or they earmark funds for constituent interests that are not fully authorized.
	So President Trump should simply fund the wall by just spending a fraction of the $1 trillion in discretionary funds.
	He would be using his discretion to do so.
	Now, of course, one of the great ironies in all of this is that Pelosi and Schumer have long advocated building a wall or a barrier or a fence.
	Pretty much the same stuff.
	A mere five years ago, the entire Senate Democratic caucus voted for hundreds of miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border.
	Yet now many of those same Democrats are blasting Trump because guess what?
	He wants the same thing.
	So why are they flip-flopping on it?
	You know the reason.
	Because Trump wants it.
	The Democrats want it too, but they won't tell you that.
	They just want to oppose anything Trump advocates, even if it's the same thing they want.
	They don't want to give the president a victory on one of the main promises he made to the American people when they elected him.
	You know, that would hurt the Democrats politically.
	So, as you know, folks, it's all politics.
	Democrats pretend to care about you.
	They pretend to be acting on principle.
	They wouldn't know principle if it smacked them upside the head.
	You can go back even further, 2006, Democrats in the Senate wanted a barrier on the southern border.
	Hillary Clinton, then-Senator Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, all voted in favor of what was called the Secure Fence Act, which would add, and I'll quote here from the bill, two layers of reinforced fencing installation of additional physical barriers.
	Now, of course, those same Democrats suddenly have an acute case of amnesia.
	It's a wonder they can remember their own names.
	But for now, it looks like the Senate will not pass what the House passed, which is funding for the wall.
	How can that be inasmuch as Republicans control the U.S. Senate?
	And the answer is one word: filibuster.
	A year and a half ago, I wrote a column entitled, Time to Say Goodbye to the Senate Filibuster Forever and Forevery.
	And I say it again: get rid of the filibuster.
	It is tyranny by the minority.
	It is destructive, not constructive.
	It's nowhere in the Constitution.
	It is a rule contrived by the feckless Senate.
	It is undemocratic.
	It has done more to obstruct needed legislation in America than any other artificial device that Congress has ever conjured.
	So what do you think?
	Do you agree or disagree?
	I'm all for letting the government shut down at midnight tonight, and let's get rid of all of these non-essential employees.
	Give us a call.
	Our number is 1-800-941-7326.
	That's 1-800-941-Sean.
	I'm Greg Jarrett, sitting in for Sean on the Sean Hannity Show.
	One thing that is not political, it's smoking.
	That's about people.
	And there are 34 million Americans now that smoke.
	But for many, there's not been a clear alternative.
	Juul, for me, has been a game changer.
	I watch people all the time.
	They go outside in the middle of the freezing winter just to have their smoke.
	You don't have to do that anymore because of Juul.
	Now, people don't have to worry about the smell on your hands.
	Juul was specifically designed by smokers for smokers to be a satisfying alternative.
	It's a clean technology.
	Juul has no ash, no odor, no mess.
	If you're one of those 34 million adults who do smoke, you now know there's an alternative to cigarettes and cigars.
	Just go to jewel, j-u-u-l.com/slash switchamerica.
	That's j-u-u-l.com/slash switchamerica.
	Now, this product does contain nicotine, and nicotine is an addictive chemical.
	But just go to jewel, j-u-ul-l.com/slash switchamerica.
	And welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
	I'm Greg Jarrett sitting in for Sean Hannity today.
	All right, you heard my statement, I hope, that the government shutdown is frankly no big deal.
	And let's go ahead and shut down the government.
	The president wants the wall.
	60% of Americans want the wall.
	The Democrats want the wall, or at least they have over the last decade.
	But now they oppose the wall because Donald Trump wants it.
	So let's shut down the government.
	Why not?
	Our first caller is Mike in Ohio.
	Mike, what do you think?
	Absolutely shut down the government.
	We have 6.8 million children under the age of 18 on assistance in this country estimated.
	If you think that they are only using $5,000 each in assistance, which wouldn't even cover their health insurance, $5,000 a year, that's $340 billion a year that they're taking away from our money.
	$340 billion.
	What is $5 billion?
	What is $20?
	$25 billion.
	It's nothing.
	It's absolutely minute, and that will last forever.
	The Pew Research Center said that they estimate nine, the wall might only deflect 9 to 12% of people trying to cross the border illegally.
	Who cares how many it is?
	9 to 12%?
	That's still a lot of people.
	All right.
	Mike, Ohio, good points.
	Good stats.
	Thanks very much.
	Let's go to Don in Indiana.
	Hey, Don, government shutdown?
	Yay or nay?
	Oh, yes.
	I think we ought to shut it down.
	I don't see where it'll hurt a thing.
	Right.
	I mean, you know, it's actually largely dysfunctional to begin with.
	And what aggravates me is that we've got tens of thousands of non-essential employees.
	Like, what's up with that?
	Non-essential.
	So what do they do?
	I worked a government job for 30 years.
	I never noticed it when they shut it down.
	You're right.
	There have been 18 government shutdowns.
	Like, who cares?
	Yeah.
	All right.
	I don't see where it's a big deal.
	Don, Indiana.
	Don, thanks very much.
	Let's go to Corey in Oklahoma.
	Hey, Corey, what do you think about my argument that, you know, who cares?
	Let's just shut down the government.
	It's only 20% less than that.
	And non-essential people will get an early furlough for Christmas.
	What do you think?
	Yeah, I agree with the government shutdown.
	I mean, I also agree with the fact that the government's incredibly dysfunctional in the way that they operate things.
	But I also want to say I work for the government and I'm also a veteran.
	And I'm classified in a job that's classified as non-essential.
	But I think that maybe some of those jobs are potentially misclassified.
	I mean, we support production for aircraft engines for the warfighter.
	Right.
	And I just don't feel like that should be classified as non-essential.
	Right.
	I agree.
	That sounds like something that is quite essential.
	Thank you for your service, Corey, in Oklahoma.
	Thanks for the good point you just made.
	Let's go to George in New York.
	George, welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	What do you think?
	George?
	Yeah, we lost.
	A little less government as it is.
	There we got you, George.
	Less government.
	I agree with you.
	Let's not just shut down the government.
	Let's shrink the government down to a usable functional size.
	When we come back, General Tom McInerney will join us about the resignation of James Mattis.
	Welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
	I'm Greg Jarrett, filling in for Sean Hannity.
	One of the big news stories of the week was the president's decision announced to withdraw roughly 2,000 American troops from Syria.
	The president said ISIS has been defeated.
	It's time to send our people in uniform home.
	James Mattis, Secretary of Defense, clearly disagreed with it.
	He submitted his letter of resignation as Defense Secretary.
	Now, the first thing that should be said is that James Mattis is a brilliant general who deserves our nation's gratitude and respect for his exemplary service and professionalism.
	So the question is, is Mattis doing the right thing?
	Let's turn now to General Thomas McInerney, who is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General, served in top military positions under the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President of the United States.
	General McInerney, always great talking to you.
	Thanks for taking the time to speak with us.
	Thanks for having me, Greg.
	What is your reaction to all of this?
	Well, I was quite surprised when the president announced it, and I was really surprised when Secretary of Defense Mattis submitted his resignation.
	And although there had been rumors, Greg, that he might be leaving, the fact was, I was surprised at this time.
	Now, let's examine what happened.
	The president is pulling out of Syria.
	We have 2,2,200 people in there, primarily on the border and up in the north.
	And it was initial purpose was to take out ISIS.
	ISIS has been largely defeated.
	And for those people that say, well, it's going to resurrect itself, I don't think it will.
	But what I do hope is that President Trump will use air power, along with our other allies over in the region, to keep and suppress ISIS.
	Do we have, we have air power in the region, correct?
	Correct.
	And readily available to do it with precision, and we have the intelligence.
	So we can do it.
	You know, Greg, we've been at this 17 and a half years now, and we've had a ground presence.
	And really, we haven't done what needed to be done.
	We did World War II, completed it in three and a half years.
	Now, we cannot be there perpetually.
	They must solve the problem.
	There are two problems in the Middle East.
	It's radical Islam led by Iran and others.
	And then there's the emerging, expanding Iranian, the Shia crescent that is sweeping across the Arabian Peninsula.
	Two related adversaries.
	But the fact is, Iran is the nation state that is fomenting radical Islam in the region, as well as its version of Shia ascendancy in the region.
	We clearly must put that at rest.
	Now, if we go back and see how we got in Syria and the conditions, et cetera, it becomes obvious that this president, after two years, has finally not gotten the rationale from his generals to keep the large ground forces over there.
	And so I think it's reasonable.
	Now, he may not have worked it hard enough across with our allies and others.
	He made a decision.
	Right.
	And I support that decision.
	Well, what about Mattis's decision to say, I'm quitting over this?
	Well, I was disappointed, but I'm a great fan of General Mattis, but he has been part of the ground-centric strategy over there, ground-centric.
	Our advantage is not man-for-man on the ground.
	Our advantage is with our technology and air power.
	And that's how we basically knocked ISIS out, isn't it?
	We didn't put in five divisions.
	We used air power in going after them.
	And if the president continues to use that to keep ISIS suppressed, but also let's switch quickly over to the issue on, and I'll get back on General Mattis, on how do we take Iran out of the expansionary mode, particularly after the Obama administration gave them so much money for the nuclear agreement and enabled them so much,
	but now their economy is faltering.
	Now, here's where my problem with General Mattis.
	He may have seen something coming, but the fact is this is not the time that he should have submitted his resignation, in my opinion.
	Why?
	Well, because I think when the president has made a decision like this, it is up to the Secretary of Defense to help explain it to our allies and to our own population, the American people.
	It is not general, it's not uncommon that a cabinet official will disagree with a decision of the president who is his boss.
	And, you know, if everybody's going to quit because they disagree with a decision by the commander-in-chief, then we're in a sorry state here.
	I mean, look, it should have been no surprise to Mattis that the president, after defeating ISIS, wanted to pull out of Syria.
	He campaigned on that pledge.
	And yet, you know, Mattis is resigning over this.
	It just strikes me that Mattis should not have accepted the job if he so vehemently disagreed with the president and the policies that he laid out on the campaign trail.
	He said several things.
	He said, first of all, we can't be the world's policemen.
	We can't engage anymore in nation building.
	That didn't work.
	We really cannot change the power balance in the Middle East.
	We need to rip up the Iran nuclear deal.
	We need to make NATO allies actually pay their fair share.
	And we need to, again, defeat ISIS and get out of Syria.
	So Mattis knew all of this.
	So did he think he was going to persuade the president otherwise as Secretary of Defense?
	Well, that's the question.
	And I think you and I are the same mindset that he knew what he was getting into.
	More than anyone else because he'd been a combatant commander, division commander, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, a great military leader.
	His political instincts were a little bit maybe more balanced, more in between Republican and Democrat and a strong Republican.
	And I say that because some of the people he tried to nominate, and I won't give you the names, but they were solid Democratic Party leaders, and they wanted him in important positions in the building.
	And I think that was bothering the president a little bit.
	But look, he had a great reputation.
	Having a nickname by the name of was worth a wing of nuclear B-52s, if you will, for deterrence.
	But he clearly was not that bent.
	But he was very measured and important person.
	If I may, let me ask you another question.
	The position of Secretary of Defense is authorized by statute passed by Congress, and they were very deliberate.
	They wanted a civilian control of the government, and especially with respect to whomever presided over the Pentagon and American military.
	And so it's actually written in the law that the Secretary of Defense, appointed by the President, may not have held a position in the previous seven years in active military.
	Now, Congress gave a waiver to Mattis at the President's request.
	But does this underscore that perhaps this country is better served with somebody who is not and having immediately been a general or a military commander serving as Secretary of Defense?
	Well, it was certainly they put a lot of thought behind it.
	In this particular case, I don't think General Mattis' experience had anything.
	They gave him a waiver, and there was only one other person in our history, and that was George Marshall.
	Right.
	So we're putting General Mattis in the same category of George Marshall.
	Even Colin Powell, who became Secretary of State, didn't reach that stature.
	And so the fact is, for whatever his reason, he made it.
	It's just that the timing was not good because it is saying he doesn't agree with the Syrian policy.
	Now, the Syria and also Afghanistan looking at drawing down 7,000 in Afghanistan.
	But let's look at each one of them.
	Were those 2,000 Americans in Syria that were helping the YPG, the Kurdish people's protection units, was that what drove him out?
	Look, those 2,000 people were not the balance of power.
	No, they weren't.
	They were training the Kurdish forces.
	Correct.
	And so we can still do things.
	But here's the underlying thing that I've just found out, Greg, and I'm not sure of it.
	But it was after a call with President Trump and President Erdogan of Turkey.
	And the rumor is, you know, the Turks were going to buy the S-400 missile from the Russians.
	Right.
	And now there's a rumor that they're going to spend $3.5 billion on Patriot missiles, buying U.S. instead, as well as the multi-billion dollars that they're doing for the F-35, which the Congress had put on a delay.
	And I think what's behind this is that President Trump saw the opportunity to keep Turkey in our orbit rather than switching over to the Russian orbit by buying U.S. equipment.
	And some may say, well, he saw the jobs issue, that was it.
	But I think it's Erdogan.
	It makes sense.
	Now, I believe if General Mattis understood that and was part of that, that he would not have done what he would not have retired or resigned.
	But I haven't confirmed that yet.
	I'm putting a number of issues together, which it does make sense because they are a southern flank on NATO.
	They're important to us.
	Although Erdogan, in all honesty, is an Islamist.
	We've got to be very careful.
	He wants to reinstitute the Ottoman Empire.
	He's got a great fight going against Saudi Arabia because he wants to be the caliphate and be the leader, and he doesn't want Saudi Arabia, even though they're the protector of the holy cities.
	He doesn't want them to be the dominant force.
	So those are the complexities.
	But if he did it to keep Turkey in the U.S. orbit, that's a justifiable reason.
	So just to, General, just to button this up, we're with General Tom McInerney, retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General.
	To button this up, as you pointed out, we have air power in the region.
	We can, on a moment's notice, undertake a, you know, a strategic, a tactical strike if necessary.
	We also have, General, 5,200 troops nearby in Iraq.
	So, you know, those troops could be mobilized as well in the event something takes place in Syria that merits our presence there.
	But, you know, the president deserves to have people, as General Mattis pointed out in his resignation letter, whose views are better aligned with the president's.
	And Mattis' views just weren't.
	And, you know, we don't elect presidents to have their subordinates stop them from implementing their policies, especially policies that the president ran on.
	And so, you know, this thing has taken its course.
	Mattis served with the distinction for two years.
	And I suppose it's time to get somebody else in.
	I've got about 40 seconds left, General.
	Who might be good to replace Mattis?
	Well, there are a number of people.
	And I think there's some people in the Senate.
	There's some people that were previous.
	I did like the idea that he had the way he brought in both Kelly and General Mattis.
	Right.
	I don't want to throw out a name, but the fact is, is they're there, and they're ones that will support this president completely.
	General Mattis did, but the fact is, as he elected, he wanted to go.
	All right.
	General Tom McInerney, always great talking to you, sir.
	Thank you very, very much for being with us.
	I'm Greg Jarrett, filling in for Sean Hannity.
	We'll pause and take a quick break.
	More on the other side.
	And welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show, The Second Hour.
	I'm Greg Jarrett, filling in for Sean.
	I wrote a book called The Russia Hoax, The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump.
	By the way, it might make a nice little Christmas gift all wrapped up under the Christmas tree.
	You can still get it in your bookstore nearby or order it on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com.
	But it lays out, as the subtitle indicates, that corrupt people at the FBI, including James Comey and his Confederates, ignored compelling evidence that Hillary Clinton violated the law and committed crimes in her email scandal.
	They contorted the law and twisted the facts to clear her.
	And on the very same day that Comey stood in front of television cameras, July 5th, 2016, absolving Hillary Clinton, his FBI was meeting secretly with the author of the phony fabricated dossier in London at a building, a secret meeting, and that was the beginning of the Russia hoax.
	Armed with a completely unverified, uncorroborated, fabricated document, which the FBI knew was phony, they launched an investigation of Donald Trump to destroy his candidacy.
	When that didn't work, they doubled down and tried to remove him from office by using that particular document.
	In the process, of course, they lied to a FISA court to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.
	It's all in the book, but more keeps happening.
	I recommended long ago that Jeff Sessions be fired, the most useless Attorney General in modern American history, and sure enough, he was fired.
	The nominee to replace him is William Barr, who has impeccable credentials, highly regarded lawyer, who has already served as Attorney General from 1991 to 1993.
	And there's no question but that he'll be confirmed, but that didn't stop Chuck Schumer, Chuck, I'd walk a mile for a camera Schumer, from standing on the Senate floor yesterday and holding up a 19-page document that was penned by Barr saying, this disqualifies William Barr from being Attorney General.
	The 19 pages, by the way, is a meticulously correct analysis of the law and obstruction of justice.
	Let's talk about it now with David Schones, Civil Liberties Attorney and one of the finest lawyers in America that I know.
	David, thanks for being with us.
	I would argue that far from being a reason to disqualify Barr, those 19 pages, which are brilliantly written and well-researched and well-reasoned, are a reason to confirm William Barr.
	What do you think?
	I think, Your Honor, I think everything you've just said is 100% right.
	I don't think you need me to say anything, frankly.
	And I happen to have your book in my hand right now, and I'm waiting for the sequel, so you better get that written.
	Thank you.
	But my answer directly to what you said is, of course, that's right.
	Mr. Barr wrote a scholarly piece, a piece that is correct.
	And, you know, as I've said before, we don't want an attorney general who has been disengaged from the serious issues of the day.
	We want someone who's given thought to these issues.
	We want someone who has a view, a reasoned, well-thought-out view.
	And in his memo that you refer to, he correctly makes the argument that we don't consider or interrogate or threaten the president of the United States for exercising and properly exercising those duties which are given to his discretion, like firing a Jim Comey, which is the appropriate thing to do, of course, those kinds of regular course-of-the-day executive branch Article II issues that are delegated to the president under the Constitution.
	And so it's inappropriate, as Mr. Barr wrote, to threaten or interrogate the president for obstruction of justice for exercising those duties in the way the Constitution gives them to the president to exercise.
	So he's right.
	And by the way, the very idea that writing a memo on one issue related possibly to the Mueller investigation could be a disqualifying factor is not a matter of principle at all for these folks.
	It happens that Mr. Barr's position is something inconvenient for Chuck Schumer or Jerry Nadler or Nancy Pelosi and these kind of folks.
	But that's not a principled position.
	They disagree with it.
	Therefore, he should be disqualified.
	It's absurd and it's offensive.
	If you read the recusal regulations and the Code of Federal Regulations, it doesn't say that you're disqualified or you must recuse yourself because you happen to have commented on a case either publicly or privately.
	My goodness, if that were the legal standard, nobody would be able to hold any position because we all comment about prevailing issues and cases of the day, sometimes privately, sometimes publicly.
	This was a private memo he thought would be useful, so he sent it over to the Department of Justice for their consideration.
	The recusal statute is very specific.
	It says if the official has a personal or political relationship with anybody involved in the case, he or she must recuse themselves.
	Commenting on a case is not, David, grounds for recusal.
	That's right.
	Their fallback position is this provides the, presents the appearance of partiality or the appearance of a lack of impartiality and a bias.
	They're just dead wrong.
	And if he hadn't written the memo and it came out later that this was his view on the executive branch, they would have said, oh, he concealed his true views and that was wrong.
	Listen, this is exactly the kind of thing that will come under his bailiwick, and it's good that we know how he stands, and the Senate can vote one way or the other based on that.
	But I'll say this very specifically.
	Under the special counsel regulation, Section 600.7, the Attorney General has the obligation to demand that the special counsel provide an explanation for any investigative or prosecutorial step that the Attorney General thinks is questionable or possibly wrong.
	And so he will have the obligation, as Mr. Whitaker has it now, to call in Mueller and demand an explanation if they're pursuing obstruction of justice charges or if they're interrogating people without counsel present or doing any sort of sordid things that this team with an agenda has done.
	It's time for the Attorney General to take control.
	Sure, the counsel regulations don't provide for day-to-day control.
	They do provide that ultimately the buck stops at the Attorney General and that he has this supervisory obligation.
	You know, the guy who has been presiding over the case, speaking of disqualification and recusal, is Rod Rosenstein, who's the Deputy Attorney General, acting Attorney General for the Trump-Russia collusion and the Mueller probe.
	Talk about a conflict of interest.
	This is a guy who is a key witness in the case who's been interviewed by Mueller, and yet Rosenstein presides over the case and is Mueller's boss.
	I mean, this is a textbook example of a mandatory recusal, and yet Rosenstein refuses to do so.
	Greg, you've said this from day one.
	You've said it as eloquently on day one as you have now, and it applies with just as much force.
	It's absurd, but it just points out the hypocrisy of a Schumer or Nadler or Pelosi and fill-in-the-blanks to focus on something like the bar factor, the bar memo, as a recusal basis and overlook the direct involvement as a fact witness of Rod Rosenstein.
	This is really the fox guarding the hen house.
	It's a clear, clear conflict.
	Let me switch over, if I may, to the other event of the week, and that was the sentencing hearing of Michael Flynn, who was briefly the National Security Advisor to President Trump.
	He was fired from the job for deceiving the vice president about a telephone call he had with the Russian ambassador, which, by the way, was perfectly legal and normal and permissible.
	So at the hearing, the federal judge presiding, Emmett Sullivan, who frankly thought highly of by virtue of his handling of the Ted Stevens case in which he called out prosecutors for falsifying evidence and concealing exculpatory evidence.
	So I thought that this was a judge who would look closely at the conduct of the FBI and the conduct of Robert Mueller.
	Instead, after begging Flynn to withdraw his guilty plea for making a false and misleading statement, suddenly the judge turns and accuses Flynn of treason.
	You know, which is confounding because we're not at war with Turkey, and the judge was talking about Flynn's lobbying efforts with Turkey.
	Were you bewildered by that?
	Sure, I was bewildered.
	I think it plays out something like this.
	I do think Emmett Sullivan is a great judge generally.
	I think, however, that he has made pretty clear his anti-Trump sentiments.
	He wrote very, very strong, scathing decisions in two immigration cases requiring radical relief, returning immigrants who've been deported and stopping a plane.
	He feels very strongly about these issues.
	However, he also, I believe, genuinely felt strongly about the strong arm and inappropriate tactics the FBI used in this case.
	But I think that, frankly, at the end of the day, Mr. Flynn's lawyers made a sort of an amateurish mistake.
	I hate to say that, pass judgment on other lawyers' views, but it's impossible to understand their agenda.
	A lawyer, a criminal defense lawyer, always approaches every setting in the process with a theory of the case.
	The theory of the case that Flynn had resolved in this case, because of the pressure brought to bear on his family and so on, was to capitulate.
	He joined the government's team.
	And once you join that team, you're all in.
	And so I don't understand what the end game was for the lawyers to write this sentencing memo about how great his cooperation has been, begging for the mercy of the court and asking the court to agree with the government he should get no incarceration.
	And at the end, talking about the government's misconduct, as if that should be a factor.
	Well, it can be a factor in sentencing, but in this case, when you already have a recommendation for non-incarceration, what's the point in throwing this in, mudding the waters there?
	If you want to come clean about the government's strong-arm tactics, get your sentence in place for us.
	Get that non-incarceration sentence and then move on.
	But he put the judge in a very awkward and difficult position.
	And then the natural consequence of what happened with the interrogation tactics would be to withdraw his guilty plea.
	But when the judge offered that opportunity, he said no, he's not interested in that.
	And again, he reaffirmed his supposed guilt in the case, again, under pressure.
	So that's where I think things went wrong here, and the judge was in a very difficult position.
	David, can you stick around for just a second?
	We're going to squeeze in a quick break.
	I've got a couple of more questions coming up about the conduct of the FBI.
	They had no legal basis to even speak with Michael Flynn.
	Instead, they set him up.
	They trapped him.
	They ambushed him.
	We'll get David Shoan's comments on the other side.
	I'm Greg Jarrett, filling in for Sean Hannity on the Sean Hannity Show.
	Welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
	I'm Greg Jarrett, filling in for Sean Hannity.
	I want to give you our number because over the next half hour, I'll take your calls, want to get your thoughts on the Mueller investigation, the sentencing of Michael Flynn and James Comey.
	Our number is 1-800-941-Sean.
	That's 800-941-7326.
	Still with us is David Schoen, Civil Liberties Attorney.
	David, Comey and his FBI never had any legal basis to even interview Michael Flynn.
	It's pretty clear to me they were setting him up to damage Trump.
	They used the Logan Act, which is dead letter law, as a pretext to trap Flynn.
	What do you think?
	I think that's 100% right.
	But I'm most worried, I suppose, about the methodology they used.
	I thought it was one of the biggest and most disgraceful moments when Comey testified before Congress, in essence, that he got away with slimily cheating everybody, the American public, in tricking General Flynn into an interview without counsel present.
	And during the course of his testimony, he said that he believed that Mr. McCabe had told Flynn, General Flynn, that he could have White House counsel there if he wanted.
	But the McCabe memo says nothing of the kind.
	In fact, it says something like, if he had counsel present, then they'd have to involve the Justice Department.
	It would get a lot more complicated.
	And so clearly, their purpose was encouraging Flynn to meet with them without lawyers, without a lawyer present for Flynn, and to use that setting to ask Flynn questions the FBI knew the answers to already, and then tried to trick him into some variance from what they knew the correct answer to be.
	And then he's charged with crimes.
	It's just outrageous.
	It's not a way to treat certainly a war hero and a veteran, but any member of the American public.
	That's not the way we do things in this country.
	Here Comey say he got away with it.
	It's disgusting.
	Oh, it is disgusting.
	And Comey doesn't care.
	You know, I mean, he, you know, he is so self-righteous.
	And, you know, he views himself as this noble and heroic figure.
	He is filled with self-righteousness and a sense of inflated rectitude.
	You know, it really is quite nauseating to listen to him.
	But when you read the court documents, Andrew McCabe, who is Comey's top deputy, lied to Flynn about the reason for the interview.
	As you say, pointed out, he encouraged Flynn not to have a lawyer present, conspired with the bureau agents to deceive Flynn by not telling him they actually had a transcript of his perfectly legal conversation with Ambassador Kisliak.
	And then, of course, Comey brags that he broke FBI protocols.
	It's unconscionable and wrong behavior.
	Absolutely right.
	And, you know, Comey, by the way, his testimony for Congress, what I think many people commented on, including you and other experts, is the number of times that he said, I don't know, I don't recall, the man was the director of the FBI and he doesn't know some of the most fundamental procedures and substantive information going on at the FBI under his watch.
	And I think that to cover his bets, in a sense, on this recollection issue, I noticed on page 76 of the transcript, he said, well, you know, something like he may recollect things better in the future.
	I wouldn't be surprised to hear Comey testify before a friendly crowd and remember details all of a sudden.
	Remember them, not necessarily the way they actually happened.
	He is the master of deception and evasion and prevarication.
	David Sean, Civil Liberties Attorney, thank you so much for being with us.
	We'll be right back with more of the Sean Hannity Show.
	I'm Greg Jarrett filling in for Sean.
	Welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
	I'm Greg Jarrett filling in today for Sean Hannity.
	You know, only an audacious and arrogant man will accuse others of lying when he is guilty of the same.
	I'm talking, of course, about fired FBI Director James Comey, who this week stood in front of television cameras and accused President Trump of ruining the reputation of the FBI.
	You know, the temerity of Comey is really quite breathtaking.
	This is from the man who was fired for abusing his authority, usurping the power of the Attorney General in the infamous Hillary Clinton email scandal.
	And I wrote about it in great detail in my book, The Russia Hoax.
	And I'll quote from that: Comey's lack of integrity and defiance of rules and principles of law were his downfall.
	His unchecked ambition and desire to thrust himself into the public limelight only exacerbated his mistakes of judgment and deed.
	But you know, folks, don't take my word for it.
	Read the 500-page plus report by the Department of Justice Inspector General, who called Comey biased, guilty of insubordination and unprofessionalism.
	Or in fact, read the Department of Justice scathing critique of Comey that was endorsed by six former attorneys general and deputies attorney general from both political parties.
	It is a damning indictment of how Comey committed multiple acts of misconduct and refused to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was wrong, that he was mistaken, that he engaged in constant acts of malfeasance.
	And you know what?
	To this very day, Comey refuses to accept responsibility for his misdeeds.
	Instead, he sort of shifts blame to others or he just tries to cover it up.
	When confronted with evidence of his own wrongdoing, he pretends, as he did on December 7th before his congressional testimony, I don't know.
	I don't remember.
	He said that 245 times.
	I don't think I've said that in the course of 10 years, 245 times.
	Comey's amnesia is quite literally unbelievable.
	And here he is gleefully bragging on television about his misconduct.
	And, you know, this is a guy who's out there hawking his book, you know, making millions of dollars off of his own wrongdoing.
	Let's get some of your thoughts about Comey, Flynn, Mueller, the Russia hoax.
	Let's turn to Jay now, who joins us from Arizona.
	Hey, Jay.
	Hey, I appreciate you taking my call.
	Sure.
	Got a question.
	You know, I play attorney in my mind sometimes.
	I maybe wish I was, but I'm not.
	That's dangerous.
	Don't do it.
	Yeah.
	You know, I've got to thinking about this whole thing, and this whole investigation has been predicated, first of all, on a false dossier, lies.
	Second of all, the appointment of Mueller was done by an illegal act, I guess, by James Comey leaking classified information.
	And then you've got the Justice Department itself not following its own guidelines with regards to conflicts of interest and with regards to appointing a special counsel without a definite crime.
	My question is this.
	Why doesn't the president's counsel just simply tell the public and Mueller himself?
	We will in no way cooperate with you.
	You are an unethical and an illegal special counsel.
	Well, you know, there's a part of me as a lawyer that says, you know, I'd be tempted to do that.
	You know, I think that the president has tried to be cooperative, you know, answered written questions that were composed by Mueller and his team of partisans.
	And now Mueller apparently, as reported, wants to question the president personally.
	He has no authority to do that.
	He can go to a grand jury and try to force it.
	But if I were the president, then I'd take it to the courts.
	But you're right about the president playing along and his counsel playing along with the narrative that the special counsel is trying to set.
	And that's what bothers me and answering questions and trying to cooperate.
	Right.
	Well, you're right.
	One could take the position, if I were defending the president, that the appointment of the special counsel was illegitimate.
	And in fact, I devote an entire chapter of my book, The Russia Hoax, to that very premise.
	That's the title of the chapter.
	The appointment of the special counsel was illegitimate.
	Because the special counsel regulations are very specific.
	You may only appoint a special counsel if you have evidence of a crime.
	But they never had that.
	And how do we know that?
	Because Lisa Page, the top lawyer on the case for the FBI, two months ago testified in deposition that the entire time the FBI had the case, they never found a scintilla of evidence of a crime called collusion or any conspiracy between Trump and Russia.
	And so, you know, this was always an investigation in search of a crime, which is in violation of the regulations.
	So Mueller should never have been appointed, but he was appointed due to the theft of government documents by James Comey, which is a crime for which he should be prosecuted.
	And interestingly, he's really refusing to answer the question as to whether or not he also leaked classified information.
	I can tell you this much.
	He gave documents to two, if not three, of his friends/slash counsel, and the FBI had to raid their offices in what's known as a spillage raid to clean up any classified documents that Comey gave them.
	And yet Comey really dodges and weaves when asked the question, did you leak classified information?
	Chuck Grassley, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, believes that four of the seven docs, well, we know four of the seven documents that Comey stole were classified, and at least one of them was leaked by Comey.
	And so I hope that the new Judiciary Chairman, Lindsey Graham, will get to the bottom of this because it seems to me that if that's true, Comey should be the subject of a grand jury investigation.
	And if it's true, it would seem inevitable that he would be indicted for leaking classified information.
	Let's go to our next caller.
	Don joins us.
	Don, you're in Texas.
	I love Texas.
	My wife's from Texas.
	What do you think about all of this?
	Well, I'd like to say that Sean really, Sean Henry gets some fantastic guest hosts.
	You've been one of my favorites for years.
	James Comey's already admitted that he leaked.
	And what you're saying is perfectly spot on.
	When are they going to start investigating him?
	With this amnesia, he wrote a book about it.
	I mean, I just don't understand why he's not been indicted yet.
	This is, I mean, I'm not an attorney.
	You are, and you give great insight.
	I'm going to hang up and listen to your response.
	Thank you for taking my call.
	Thank you, Don.
	Yeah, I mean, Comey's amnesia is either a clever feint, i.e. a lie, or he is the most clueless and incompetent director in the history of the FBI.
	Or he's corrupt.
	You know, I'm betting that he's lying and corrupt.
	Comey has become the master of deception and prevarication.
	I mean, who can actually forget his admission of lying while he was hawking his book on the television show The View?
	He said, quote, good people lie.
	I lay out, I think I'm a good person, where I have lied.
	So here he is admitting that he's a liar.
	And in truth, his book only scratches the surface of the many lies that he's been peddling.
	Assuming you can wade through the self-adoration, the vainglorious book, as I've called it, where Comey loves to sermonize about lies and lying people, he should be looking in the mirror.
	It's perversely ironic, coming from a man who more than anybody else is responsible for the most notorious hoax in modern American history.
	There was no credible evidence and no legal basis to justify the Trump-Russia investigation.
	But Comey opened it anyway in July of 2016.
	And, you know, he didn't have evidence of a crime, but that didn't stop him from stealing presidential memos and delivering them to a friend who leaked them to the media for the sole purpose of triggering the appointment of a special counsel who just happened to be, ladies and gentlemen, his longtime friend, partner, and ally, Robert Mueller.
	And then Comey had the audacity to say in an interview with Brett Baer on Fox News, oh, that wasn't a leak.
	Seriously, he said that, quote, not a leak.
	Really, James?
	Then what the hell was it?
	And in the same interview, he insisted he never told Congress that the FBI agents who interviewed former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn determined that Flynn was not lying.
	Well, guess what?
	Documents show that Comey did tell lawmakers that agents concluded Flynn was telling the truth and did not lie.
	So Comey's all over the place.
	And this is the problem with liars.
	They can't get their stories straight.
	They tell so many different lies and stories that, you know, it's really hard for them to keep track of it.
	And, you know, that's James Comey.
	And to be sure, Congress has been investigating the numerous statements made by Comey that are beyond credulity.
	He was asked under oath, for example, by the House Judiciary Committee if he decided to clear Hillary Clinton before or after she was interviewed by the FBI, and he testified after.
	Well, documents uncovered by the Senate Judiciary Committee utterly belie that testimony.
	A full two months before the FBI ever interviewed Clinton, Comey began drafting her exoneration statement.
	And, you know, as I recount in the book, I have yet to run across a former top official at the FBI or a prosecutor who has ever penned an exoneration statement of a potential defendant before that defendant has been interviewed, much less 16 other key witnesses to the case.
	But that's what Comey did.
	And what's interesting in the Inspector General report is the IG confronts Comey with that exoneration statement because in it, Comey originally found that Clinton committed crimes.
	He wrote down not once, but twice that she was grossly negligent.
	But then he had Strzok sanitize that language.
	So the IG says, well, what about this language?
	And Comey said, oh, yeah, I wrote this statement, but I don't remember using the words gross negligent.
	Right.
	So we're supposed to believe that the director of the FBI, in one of the most important decisions of his life, determines that the leading candidate to be the next president of the United States is a criminal.
	But gee, you know, I don't really recall that.
	Unbelievable, but that is the corrupt James Comey.
	We're going to pause, take a quick break.
	I'm Greg Jarrett, filling in for Sean Hannity.
	More calls on the other side.
	Welcome back to the Sean Hannity show.
	I'm Greg Jarrett.
	We're talking about the Russia hoax, which just happens to be the title of my book.
	Let's get right to the next caller.
	Bob joins us from North Carolina.
	Hi, Bob.
	Hi, Greg.
	It's a pleasure to talk to you.
	Really enjoyed the Russia hoax, a must-read for anybody who wants chapter and verse on the legal issues that happened in the attacks against Donald Trump.
	Here's my point.
	You go over in great detail the specifics of what was done to Donald Trump.
	I think there's a general purpose to these attacks as well.
	It's not just to take down Trump and everybody who supports them.
	It's to discourage the next Donald Trump and anybody who wants to support him.
	The sports truth policy is all you can expect if you come here and you're not a swamp dweller.
	I'll take your answer over the air.
	Thanks, Greg.
	It's a real pleasure to talk to you.
	Thank you, Bob.
	You're absolutely right.
	I mean, even before the president was sworn into office, James Comey and his confederates at the FBI, together with James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence under Obama, John Bremen, the CIA director, these were the instigators and the propagators of the Russia hoax.
	And they were going to, by hell or high water, depose President Trump and undo the election results.
	There's no question about it.
	And Robert Mueller and his team of partisans have taken up the baton and they're running with it.
	Thank you for the phone calls.
	On the other side, we're going to be talking with John Solomon of The Hill and his latest article about the most recent developments and former FBI director James Comey in just a moment.
	And welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
	I'm Greg Jarrett, filling in for Sean Hannity.
	My Twitter handle is at Greg Jarrett.
	That's G-R-E-G-G, J-A-R-R-E-T-T.
	I wrote a book called The Russia Hoax, The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.
	I hope you'll get it.
	And more importantly, even if you don't get it or you borrow somebody's copy, I hope you read it because it is soup to nuts, the story of how the FBI,
	corrupt as it was under the leadership of James Comey, cleared Hillary Clinton of crimes she obviously committed and then launched an investigation of Donald Trump to frame him for things he didn't do.
	And I lay it all out, beginning to end.
	And one of the principal players, of course, in all of this was James Comey, who testified this week for the second time.
	He did it first on December 7th and then Monday of this week.
	And I've read the transcript of Monday's Comey deposition.
	And he is snarky and sarcastic, or as my grandmother used to say, a smart aleck.
	So when he isn't giving those kinds of responses in a holier-than-thou tone, he is evasive.
	I don't recall.
	I don't remember.
	I don't know.
	I can't answer that.
	I won't answer that.
	It is classic evasion and prevarication, or if you will, lying by James Comey, who's an admitted liar, as I mentioned in the last hour.
	So John Solomon of The Hill, who has broken a lot of stories on the Russia hoax and is in the book, has come out with another column talking about James Comey's testimony of this week.
	It's entitled Comey's Who Cares reply recalls what difference retort.
	What difference, of course, is, you know, classically, Hillary Clinton, when she was questioned by Congress about the Menghazi attack, said, What difference at this point does it make?
	She was being asked whether, you know, it was a spontaneous protest over an anti-Muslim video.
	With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans.
	Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans?
	What difference at this point does it make?
	It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.
	It made a difference, Hillary, because you were lying about it and you were incompetent as Secretary of State.
	You had been warned that there might be a terrorist attack on the Benghazi compound and you took nothing, no steps whatsoever.
	You did nothing to prevent it and Americans lost their lives.
	And then you tried to pretend, oh, it was just a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Muslim video when, in fact, you knew that it was a planned terrorist attack.
	And so let's turn now to John Solomon of The Hill.
	John, another great column.
	And it is reminiscent, isn't it, of James Comey's statement this week?
	Yeah, there's no doubt.
	I talked to Republicans and Democrats alike who had the same impression, which is Comey misstepped or certainly said something that no lawmaker really appreciated and sort of showed a larger disdain for congressional oversight.
	But it's because of that congressional oversight that we now know that the steel dossier was used unverified, as Comey himself testified 10 days ago, to support an extraordinary FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign in the final weeks of the 2016 election.
	It's because of that oversight we know that the FBI deputy director lied about leaking to the media.
	It's because of that oversight we know that Pete Stroke and Lisa Page were having an affair and were expressing bias in their investigation of Donald Trump and even contemplated using their official powers to quote unquote stop Donald Trump from being president.
	I think the thing that most lawmakers walked away from that session was James Comey doesn't seem to take any responsibility for the failures on his watch at the FBI.
	And these failures are no longer in dispute.
	They're irrefutable failures.
	The IG has found them.
	Congress has found them.
	And I think his who cares comment came off as rather flipped to lawmakers.
	Yeah, I mean, flips an understatement.
	And, you know, I think it was Mark Meadows who tried to explain to him how it matters, didn't he?
	Yeah, he did.
	No, Mark Meadows was the one that asked the question that elicited it, and he challenged Comey coming out of that.
	And, you know, let's think about something that's amazing.
	He says who cares, right?
	But then a few minutes later, he immediately acknowledges in the cross-examination from Mark Meadows that there was potential bias in using the steel dossier.
	So I don't care about the steel dossier, but I knew it was biased, and I used it even though it was unverified.
	And the rules say you shouldn't use unverified evidence for a FISA warrant.
	I mean, it's an extraordinary two- or three-minute exchange that I think really highlights what was wrong with the James Comey era at the FBI.
	People who talked there, senior officials who worked for him, senior officials that left during his tenure, senior officials who stayed there after his tenure, have all said this to me.
	He was so haughty, so in love with his own opinion of himself that he was oblivious to some of the bad things that were going on, some of the preventable self-inflicted errors that were going on in the FBI.
	There's a lot of good people in the FBI.
	There was a lot about the Russia case that is important, right?
	The Russians hacked into accounts.
	They did certain things.
	They didn't do it in collusion with Trump.
	They did it on their own as part of a foreign policy objective for their country.
	Those are the things we should have focused on.
	And instead, James Comey allowed us to be focusing on an investigation that's gone two years and gone nowhere except where we started, which was there was no collusion.
	I think the FBI is better off without him today.
	There's no doubt about it.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, he has done more damage to the FBI than anyone since J. Edgar Hoover.
	And that's just not my opinion.
	That is the opinion of top former FBI officials that I interviewed for my book.
	And they all said that.
	They're the same person.
	I mean, they said it will take decades to restore the credibility and integrity of the FBI.
	That's how much damage James Comey did.
	Yeah, and I think another thing is how partisan he's become since he left the office.
	And, you know, I've always, I interviewed many former FBI directors, Louis Free, William Webster.
	I interviewed Bob Mueller when he was FBI director.
	I never have heard a current or former FBI director talk the way that James Comey has talked, particularly since he left.
	The overt politicalization, the almost disdain for oversight, the sort of nonsensical excuses for what went on on his watch.
	It's very unusual.
	And I think that people who work in the Bureau and are proud of it and all the good work it does do every day, they're a little bit ashamed by his performance, not only when he was in leadership, but since he left.
	I think many people feel he's dishonored the reputation of the FBI by his overt politicalization since he left the office.
	And another aspect of your column, and again, people should read it.
	It's on the Hill by John Solomon.
	It's a great, great column.
	But, you know, after he finishes testifying, he stands in front of television cameras and he's asked if he shares some responsibility for the FBI's diminished.
	And he says no.
	And he blames the president and his acolytes for the bad reputation of the FBI.
	I mean, that is astonishing.
	You know, there used to be a time in Washington where people took ownership and the buck stopped at the top of a hill.
	But it appears today that we don't have that culture in our government anymore.
	The IG, the Inspector General, doesn't have a political bone in their body.
	A nonpartisan watchdog interview has concluded the following.
	The dossier was politically motivated.
	It was funded by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and the judges were kept in the dark about it.
	It was not verified before it was submitted to the FISA court.
	That's Comey's own testimony.
	In addition, we know that there was leaking going on.
	We know there was politicalization going on.
	All of these things are corroborated now.
	They're facts that sit in an IG report and a House intelligence report.
	And he doesn't seem to take ownership of any of them.
	It's almost like he wasn't in charge when all this happened.
	And I think that really frustrates people because the first road to recovery for an agency like the FBI is acknowledging what's wrong and then you fix it.
	We did it after 9-11, right?
	They failed to connect the dots, even though they knew so much, the Phoenix memo, all those things.
	And the way the FBI fixed itself and became a great counterterrorism organization is by acknowledging what went wrong and then fixing it.
	But we have a current and former, or at least certainly a former leader, who doesn't want to acknowledge what was wrong there.
	And I think that hurts the Bureau's ability to recover from the mistakes it made.
	You know, for a while, Comey was trying to pretend that he thought, well, first of all, on December 7th, he, you know, sort of said, oh, I don't know.
	I didn't know much about who had paid for the dossier.
	Right.
	And then at one point in time, he was saying, well, I think Republicans paid for it.
	Yes, that's not quite accurate.
	No, I mean, it's completely ridiculous.
	Yeah, they hired the firm that did the work, but it wasn't Russian dossier work.
	It was other political opposition research.
	The Russian dossier was a clear and compelling product of the Clinton campaign and the DNC, even though it was disguised on campaign finance reports as legal bills.
	It was a political opposition research report done and then turned into the FBI.
	And I think, you know, I don't know if I talked about this on air much, but Greg, one time, shortly after I started working on these stories with Sarah, a couple of people showed up in my house about 11 o'clock at night.
	They'd just gotten off Hannity's TV show.
	And they showed up.
	They were sitting at my mailbox when they pulled into my driveway.
	They came out.
	They've never identified themselves.
	To this day, I don't know who they are, but this is what they told me.
	We've watched some of your early reporting on FISA abuses and unmasking.
	We want to tell you something.
	And this is way before we knew anything.
	This is long before we even heard Christopher Steele's name.
	The U.S. intelligence community was used for political opposition research, and you need to get to the bottom of it.
	That's all they told me.
	And just keep digging and you'll find out.
	And when I look back at that moment now and how much we've learned because of people like Devin Nunez and Mark Meadows and Chuck Grassley and Jim Jordan, there was a major corruption of our career intelligence apparatus for political purposes.
	And it's only because of oversight, the same oversight that Comey wrinkles his nose at now, that we learn at least some of the truth.
	I feel like there's a lot more truth that we don't know yet.
	And I think your book has laid out the best roadmap of anyone to looking at what else we might learn in the future about what went wrong in this investigation.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate it.
	Well, you're quoted quite often in the book because you uncovered a lot of it.
	Sarah Carter did as well.
	And actually, Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal is a great, great reporter, is quoted a couple of times in the book show.
	She's done remarkable work.
	Oh, she has a column out that's entitled, What's Next in FBI Oversight?
	Let me just read one line.
	Great.
	Because it dovetails with something that you just said about the House and Senate investigators.
	She says, House and Senate investigators get pride of place for unraveling one of the greatest dirty tricks of our political times in which a Democratic administration, party, and presidential campaign either co-opted or fooled the FBI into investigating the Republican campaign.
	You know, in one sentence, she has put it quite nicely.
	She nailed it.
	No, she did.
	She's obviously a great writer and a great reporter.
	And she's right.
	This was a dirty trick.
	And unlike past dirty tricks where outsiders and third parties were used, the FBI and the intelligence community was used to carry it out.
	And I feel like that's the part that most Americans are still learning about.
	And I think if the president gets to that point, and I think he will, because he said so in my interview with him, where he declassifies the Gang of Eight documents, declassifies the rest of the FISA warrant, declassifies some stuff about Mike Flynn that I've talked about a little bit, we're going to see that the dirty trick might have even been more extensive and even uglier than we know today.
	And I think that's a moment of transparency that we need in our country.
	Absolutely.
	And in fact, Kimberly Strassel also talks about the importance of declassifying these documents.
	If you were just sitting around shooting the bull, what do you think we will find out from these documents if and when they're declassified?
	Yeah, I think there's a lot of things.
	One thing that I've been working on the last few weeks, and I think is becoming more and more clear, when General Flynn, Mike Flynn, went to Russia for the RT meeting in 2015.
	Remember, that's an event that people have called treasonous, right, on the Democratic side and in journalism.
	He most likely was doing so in concert with the DIA as part of a clandestine program.
	And I think that there are documents that show he briefed the DIA when he came back.
	Think about how much that changes the whole narrative about Mike Flynn in Russia.
	If you find out that the first interaction with the Russians was actually to help our country, not to harm our country, I think that's one of the things we're definitely going to find out.
	Yeah, I wrote a column more than a year ago that said that's what he did.
	He came home and he briefed the DIA.
	And I think he went there with tasking orders.
	I think it's highly probable, given what I've learned, that before and after there was coordination on what was going on.
	I think, and as your book has pointed out so well, and I think also the things you've done on television really laid the roadmap out.
	There's going to be exculpatory evidence that we still don't know about, transcripts of conversations that show very early on the FBI and the intelligence community had every reason to doubt collusion.
	You know, we've heard a couple lawmakers, Mark Meadows among them, occasionally referring to transcripts.
	I want to know what's in those transcripts.
	One of the great mysteries is we started the investigation on Papadopoulos, and then a few weeks later, we immediately flipped to the dossier, right?
	Like Papadopoulos didn't exist anymore.
	There has to be a reason.
	I bet you the original evidence that came in on Papadopoulos was contradicted by intercepts or other things that came on afterwards.
	And rather than shut down the investigation, call it a false start, we just pivoted to the next best thing the FBI had, which was a dirty tricks document produced and paid for by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
	I think there are going to be other errors and omissions that the FISA court had no idea.
	And had they known about it, they might have ruled differently in renewing the third or fourth war.
	I heard just the other day saying that that's going to be a big issue.
	Okay, John, the great John Solomon, terrific reporter.
	Thank you very much for being with us.
	Quick break.
	We'll be right back.
	Welcome back to the Sean Hannity show.
	I'm Greg Jarrett.
	Filling in for Sean Hannity, we've been talking about James Comey because he was front and center this week when he testified yet again before Congress behind closed doors, but a transcript was released the next day, and I guarantee you it is worth reading because it speaks volumes about the lack of integrity and credibility of Comey.
	James Comey is not the heroic and noble figure that he imagines.
	He twisted the facts and contorted the law to clear Hillary Clinton.
	He launched an investigation of Donald Trump without legally sufficient evidence.
	He deceived the FISA court by withholding evidence in order to wiretap a Trump campaign associate whose life he ruined.
	He then misappropriated government documents.
	In other words, he stole them and leaked them to the media to precipitate an illegitimate special counsel investigation.
	And he has repeatedly given false or misleading statements to both Congress and the media.
	James Comey, as FBI director, betrayed the public's trust.
	And I'm reminded of what Thomas Jefferson once wrote.
	He who permits himself to tell a lie once finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time until at length it becomes habitual.
	Jefferson had a guy like Comey in mind.
	And James Comey, still out there peddling his book and would walk a mile for a camera, may be the only one in America who truly believes the stories that he is selling.
	I write about Comey in my book, The Russia Hoax, because he is the central figure in it all.
	He, more than anyone else, engineered the greatest hoax in modern American history, the Russia hoax.
	Let's turn now to some of our listeners who've been calling in.
	Let's go to Jim in Jacksonville.
	Jim, how are you?
	Doing well today, Greg.
	Hey, I love the book.
	I've read it twice already.
	One thing that really irritates me about Comey is that he's currently teaching at the College of William and Mary, among other things, as an ethical leadership professor.
	I'm also a grad from there, and I've been emailing with the current president about what he's still doing there.
	And I'm withholding my contributions from the school.
	Well, you know, you can't make this up.
	James Comey, who has shot holes through the word ethics, is teaching a class on ethics.
	And we double-checked a few moments ago.
	He taught a class this year on ethics at William M. Mary.
	He's scheduled to teach another class on ethics at William and Mary this next year.
	I mean, that's like O.J. Simpson teaching a class on cutlery, right?
	I mean, it's just, it's absurd.
	Unless, of course, Comey confesses to his students, here's how I was unethical, and here is how you should not be like me.
	I mean, that would be the only value if James Comey is your professor teaching ethics.
	Jim, thanks for the comment.
	It's a great one.
	Thanks for pointing it out.
	Dennis joins us from Orlando, Florida.
	Hey, Dennis.
	Greg, if an office of the court withholds information as they've done with the Steele Dossier, isn't that considered fraud on the court?
	And if it is fraud on the court, then why hasn't the judge or any of the defendants' lawyers brought those charges?
	Well, you're absolutely right.
	It's a fraud on the court.
	And in fact, the federal regulations that govern what you can and cannot submit to a FISA court specifically state that you may never submit anything that has not first been verified.
	And Comey admitted again this week that the dossier, which was used exclusively to spy on the Trump campaign, was unverified.
	And so it's not just a fraud on the court.
	That is a false and misleading statement by Comey because he affixed his signature to it, but he did so under penalty of perjury.
	So it's perjury.
	It's obstruction of justice.
	And it's also a statute that's known as abuse of power, deprivation of rights under color of law.
	He was interfering in the constitutional rights, not only of Carter Page, but of Donald Trump.
	So the problem is that the FISA court is a secret star chamber, which I am vigorously opposed to.
	I mean, this was, you know, the old English star chambers in which judges could do anything to you because it was secret.
	And that's what we've got with the FISA court.
	It's secret.
	One last question.
	If a judge, knowing that he has been presented false information, does not respond to that, doesn't that basically negate the due process clause of the Constitution?
	Oh, it totally does.
	They violated the due process rights of Carter Page.
	There's no question about it.
	And Carter Page should sue the government and the FBI and James Comey and Sally Yates and Andrew McCabe and Rod Rosenstein, who all signed off on this unverified document for all they're worth.
	You know, and the government should pay Carter Page.
	I mean, Carter Page can't really make a living anymore.
	His life has been ruined.
	His reputation destroyed.
	And it's a tragedy.
	And James Comey and all of the others that I just mentioned don't have an ounce of remorse about it.
	They don't care because they're the all-powerful law enforcement arm of the U.S. government, and they can do anything they want to do because they can.
	And Americans should be frightened of our government, the FBI, and people like Robert Mueller and his team of partisans.
	Want to thank you for your call, Dennis.
	Let's go to our next caller, Denise in Chicago.
	Hi, Denise.
	Yes.
	Hi, Greg.
	Thanks for taking my call.
	Sure.
	I often wondered why James Comey reopened the investigation on Hillary Clinton right before the election.
	And I guess I got my answer this week with his interview on MSNBC when he was touting how, you know, if it was more of an organized administration, he probably wouldn't have been able to get away with it.
	And there's your answer right there is that I think he got wind of the fact that Donald Trump might win.
	And he was so methodical, he went in and reopened that because he wanted to make it look like he was on Donald Trump's side.
	And he wanted to be able to stay there because he wanted to be able to do what he did, which his first casualty was Michael Flynn.
	And that is how he started picking the people off.
	And, you know, because it wasn't, he wasn't going to, he wasn't there to open up the investigation again to maintain the integrity of his investigation.
	I actually think it probably hurt her a little with early voters.
	But I really think that he did that to stay in the administration so he was able to infiltrate his plan.
	That's one possibility.
	I think the more likely scenario is what is laid out by the Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report.
	And to put it in a nutshell, it's like this.
	Comey and McCabe and Strzok did not want to reopen the Hillary Clinton case on the eve of the election.
	But they were forced to do it because prosecutors in New York were going to rat them out.
	So they were forced to do it.
	Prosecutors in New York, who were handling the Anthony Weiner laptop fiasco, discovered all of these classified documents on Uma Abaden and Anthony Weiner's laptop involving Hillary Clinton.
	They notify headquarters in Washington and James Comey and Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok and say, you got to look at this.
	So they, so the Washington office headquarters says, oh, yeah, okay, we'll take a look at this.
	And a week goes by and nothing happens.
	Two weeks go by, nothing happens.
	New York calls up Washington and said, what are you doing about?
	Oh, yeah, we're all over it.
	And they say, no, you're not.
	You haven't even received the documents.
	We keep waiting for you to ask for their delivery.
	Oh, yeah, deliver them to us.
	Another week goes by.
	What are you doing about that?
	Nothing.
	And finally, in the fourth week, you know, there must have been a meeting with Comey and McCabe and Strzok in which they say these guys in New York are going to rat us out for doing nothing and sitting on this.
	And so they had to reopen the case.
	But when they did reopen the case, under pressure, they immediately closed it, claiming that they had reviewed all of the emails.
	That was Comey's testimony, when in fact they reviewed just a fraction of them.
	So it was nothing more than window dressing, and they shut down the case.
	Let's go to our next caller, Jim joins us in New York.
	Hey, Jim.
	Hey, how's it going?
	Yeah, I think everything you're saying about Comey is correct, but the thing we have to remember is the dirtiest cop in America is Robert Mueller.
	He is the cop who sat there when it came to Uranium One.
	He squelched the inside informant.
	He squelched the entire investigation.
	And the whole reason he's there, if Trump wins in 2020, he'll be there for four more years.
	If Pence wins in 2024, he'll be there for four more years.
	He's going to be there because he's protecting two presidents.
	He's protecting two attorney generals.
	He's protecting two FBI directors, one Secretary of State, possibly two, and a plethora of others from those nine other departments that all approved Uranium One.
	But we know there was bribery and quid pro quo.
	Definitely done.
	Well, you're right.
	That's why it's a total travesty.
	Mueller was involved in the Uranium One investigation.
	What became of that?
	OG nothing.
	Comey was involved.
	Andrew Weissman was involved.
	His name and signature are on some of the documents.
	And Rod Rosenstein was also involved.
	So, you know, the coincidence is lost on nobody there.
	The fact of the matter is that that investigation of Hillary Clinton and pay-to-play corruption quietly vanished under the Obama administration and Hillary and Bill's longtime friend and political ally, Loretta Lynch, who was the attorney general.
	But you're, you know, you're right about it.
	That was another whitewash, and Mueller is at the helm.
	Let's go to our next caller.
	Chris joins us from Cleveland.
	Hey, Chris.
	Hi, Greg.
	How are you today?
	Good, good.
	I want to tell you, great job, you and Sarah Carter for all that you've done.
	Thank you.
	I work as an auditor for a government agency.
	I don't want to say who.
	It's not at the federal level, but I've been auditing a long time.
	And anytime that fraud is involved, there's irregularities, omissions, reckless disregard for the truth.
	I mean, they've hit on every one of these.
	My question is: if these are criminal acts that have been committed, why can't anything be done about it?
	And what are we going to do about the FBI?
	Because if they've been compromised, it bleeds through the entire agency.
	Well, I agree with you completely.
	And frankly, I'm hoping that the new Attorney General, William Barr, will launch a full-fledged, legitimate, sincere investigation of the misconduct by the FBI and some members of the Department of Justice.
	And that would mean not just giving it to a guy named John Huber that nobody has ever heard of or heard from since, which I suspect is just window dressing, but, you know, put a team of legitimate investigators together, prosecutors, present it to a grand jury.
	Let the grand jury decide whether there's sufficient evidence that crimes were committed.
	Absent that, let's appoint a special counsel.
	The law enforcers became the lawbreakers and they should be held accountable.
	We're going to take a quick break.
	We'll be right back with more.
	Welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
	I'm Greg Jarrett, author of the book, The Russia Hoax, The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.
	So here we are, two and a half years into all of this.
	The FBI, the U.S. intelligence apparatus, the mainstream media, Democrats, and who can forget, special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of partisans have been searching every obscure corner and crevice for some proof that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election.
	They seem to believe that Trump could not possibly have won absent some treasonous conspiracy that was hatched by him in the bowels of the Kremlin.
	They were convinced he was an illegitimate president.
	And besides, Comey and his minions just didn't like Trump.
	He threatened to drain the swamp.
	They were the swamp.
	They didn't want to be drained.
	And so they went after him with a vengeance.
	And here we are two and a half years later.
	Is there any evidence of collusion with Russia to win the election?
	The answer is no.
	But the investigation by Robert Mueller will continue.
	You can bet on that.
	I hope you'll buy my book and read it, The Russia Hoax, The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.
	My Twitter handle is at Greg Jarrett.
	Thank you for being with us.
	I'm Greg Jarrett, in for Sean Hannity on the Sean Hannity Show.
	Merry Christmas.
	Happy holidays.
	Bye-bye.
	You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
	We got you.
	I'm Carol Markowitz, and I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
	We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
	Normally is about real conversations.
	Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
	We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
	Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
	Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
	Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
	Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
	And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
	We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
	So down a Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.

▲