Bill O’Reilly, media personality and author of "Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals In History," joins Hannity to discuss the news of the day including the latest on Nick Sandmann's suit against CNN. Plus, the latest on the mass hysteria over the college acceptance scandal and a big announcement from Bill!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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It's 800, it's 941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, we are having literally the biggest fight here in the studio over this whole biggest admission scam scandal, getting kids into college thing that's going on.
It's pretty amazing the way this thing worked, but you got 50 people charged, 33 parents, as well as some college coaches and associates and mastermind of Rick Singer, and 25 million in total bribes and bribe money paid out by the parents to get their kids into these schools when they didn't either have the grades or any athletic ability whatsoever.
They get athletic admission, but that takes away a slot of a kid that maybe has been playing that sport since they're eight, which is what it pretty much takes.
It's so different if you play sports today than in the past.
Like when I played sports, it was hockey, football, basketball, baseball, stick ball, street hockey.
We played it all, and it wasn't one sport specialized.
But the kids that did specialize in a sport, you know, usually ended up with some type of maybe not even a scholarship, but an admission to a better school than they otherwise would have gotten into.
And I'm telling my team here, I'm like, well, that's the way it should be because they're bringing a special talent and experience that they worked so hard over the years for, and which, by the way, the school should verify.
You can go back and look at the records of any kid, you know, from when they're nine years old.
And they didn't do it.
They didn't keep an eye on that just to make sure that this is a verified athlete.
And, you know, and on terms, I don't know what you do if somebody's bribing to help with the test scores.
You just got to have better rules in place, I guess, to prevent that from happening.
But it would go something like this, which is, you know, and everyone I know is mad except for everyone that works for me in there.
They're saying, oh, I'm naive that this happens all the time.
Now, I know when people hear about legacy admissions, now that legacy admission would be old time, usually in Ivy League or prestigious school, been around 100 years.
That would be your mother, your father, their sisters and brothers, and everybody else, you know, maybe grandma and grandpa had gone to the school.
And usually over the years, with that, quote, legacy, then monies are contributed because all of these schools have a.
They're all.
They all build up these.
What do you call them these?
Not a trust, a?
Um, they build up these war chests of donated money like i'm.
I mean, I think I read, Harvard has billions, billions of dollars that has been donated over the years.
So a kid whose mother father brothers sisters cousins, everybody went to Harvard, maybe wouldn't meet today's standard, is going to have a massive leg up.
Because you know there are 10 buildings in the name of so-and-so at the at the place.
Um, is it fair?
No, but is it?
Is it for the?
Can you make an argument?
It's for the enrichment of the school and and the betterment of the university, because all that money can build buildings and athletic facilities and all of that.
And where we're kind of going sideways here is and again we're putting the Satac part of it aside is you know that just has to be monitored by some type of proctoring system that they can't let that happen.
Um, but if you know, in the case of, what's the girl's name from FULL House, Lori Laughlin, and you know they're, they're altering or photoshopping pictures of the kids playing a sport that they never played, or a kid that never played soccer but is admitted to the school based on soccer ability or crew ability or whatever.
Now, the thing is, the kids that really do play row crew, or the kids that really do play soccer, or the kids that you know play football, and the kids that you know play basketball baseball tennis, whatever it happens to be, you can look at them and know in 30 seconds if they can play.
It's it's not hard to ascertain, and you can spend maybe three minutes on google to see if they ever played competitively in in their youth.
Um, I know in.
You know the sports my kids played.
You know you could go back to their record when they're eight years old.
It's ridiculous.
So, and the amazing thing though, is is that, if you choose to focus on sports and school, is that and I watch this it's.
My daughter's Is kind of going through all of this now, and she's really experienced massive recruiting for her sport.
And it's been a great feeling for her that the schools really want it.
And the academic standards, though, for athletes who have devoted literally thousands of hours of their time and travel the country are lower than those of other students.
Now, take the case of football or basketball.
Look at what football does for the University of Alabama or Clemson.
Now, it enriches the entire experience for every single other kid that gets in for their academic abilities.
You know, the fact that you factor in the whole person and their life experience, which is individual, and if they bring something extra to the table that, okay, well, they devoted 12 years of their life fighting, training, competing, and now they're going to compete for this school, this team, but maybe their grades aren't as high as the kids that just spent every hour of every day in their rooms locked up studying.
It doesn't mean one is better than the other.
They both offer an enrichment of the school academically for the really smart kids that have spent their time doing that.
Athletically, the school spirit.
I mean, have you ever been to a real college football game?
You know, go on, go to Alabama-Auburn.
Go to Florida, Florida State game.
Go to, you know, Army-Navy.
Go to Notre Dame.
Go any of these schools.
Michigan, the biggest football stadium in the country.
And you see that this makes the experience so much better for all these other kids.
Now, maybe some of the athletes that they're admitting would never, ever get into the school anyway because of their grades.
But you got to look at the whole kid and you got to look at the life experience and say, okay, well, this kid brings something else to the school.
But that's not the case here because most sports, they're limited in terms of the number of slots they have available.
Scholarships are usually put aside only for the top, top kids.
Other kids are picked to be on the teams.
They don't get scholarships.
But they're wanted on the team for other reasons.
Sometimes it's potential.
There are more kids in Long Island that are signing that are committing to college based on their ability to play lacrosse in ninth grade.
They're committing to big colleges.
It's a deal.
It's a commitment.
And why?
Because the athletic experience enriches the prestige of the school and the athletic experience, especially the big sports.
I mean, but they offer other sports as well.
I mean, when Title IX comes into play, which offers more athletic scholarships for girls in college than does boys, because usually the boys' scholarships, if they have an equal number of them, a lot of them are taken up in football.
I don't know many colleges that have all-girl football teams.
But I don't want to open up that can of worms or get into a different sidetracked issue here.
You just cannot, you're like literally chomping at the bit.
Why are you so worked up over this?
Listen, we just agree to disagree on this.
You know, I just think that if you don't care if that the parents paid for the SATs.
That's what I'm talking about.
What are you talking about?
You know, this whole paying to get yourself into college is not a new idea.
I mean, it happens in all different ways all the time.
I mean, you're talking about how excited these schools are to go out and rah-rah-rah for these football games.
But those kids are getting a free ride because they're making everybody else super excited, but they're not passing their classes and they're getting pushed along to keep up that school spirit.
That's where you're wrong.
Oh, am I?
Oh, so there's not money going into putting those kids through tutors and special programming and law business times.
Yeah, well, first of all, it's bringing in a fortune.
These athletic programs.
Who benefits from that fortune?
The school.
Where does that money go?
Well, usually it goes into better sporting facilities.
It usually goes into better academic.
Hang on, better academic facilities.
No, it's what they're what they're trying to do is, you know, human beings are not robots.
And some people have a natural interest in law.
Some people have a natural interest in, that's why they have varying majors, biology, chemistry, communications, journalism, whatever it happens to be.
Right, but those kids are interested in sports.
But the sports kids are held to a different standard.
And usually money is put into those kids to push them along.
No, it all, there's so much.
They're not getting tutors.
They're not getting special kids.
Just answer that one question.
Are they?
All right, stop using my techniques against me.
It's sucks when that happens, right?
It does.
But the money is so vast in terms of college football.
I'll just take that one sport.
That the school, yeah, they can afford to pay for tutors for kids that don't have the same academic standards.
They can also afford to build more classrooms, better dorm rooms, better facilities, safer facilities for the entire school as a result.
And that's, and you look at something of a school like Harvard, they have billions.
Google, Ethan, how much Harvard has in endowments.
That's the word I was looking for.
Google how much they have.
So the fact that you have kids that are individuals and some devoted, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of hours to their sport and competed at a pretty high level and a coach is interested in them for that reason.
Now comes along a kid and you're photoshopping pictures of the kid doing crew or photoshopping pictures of the kid doing playing soccer.
There's some crew kid that might have gotten that spot.
That's where, that's where, you know, the rub is here.
But the fact that the school would help the kids, you know, think of this, a kid that is naturally talented athletically and a great football player and trained hard so he would be recruited for football and gets recruited goes to Alabama and Nick Saban says, we're going to all to the parents, we're going to help your son or son academically and we're going to make sure that he gets the education that you want him to get as well as the athletic experience that he wants.
What's wrong with that when the school is literally making a fortune?
Now, the other thing is, all these kids have all this school spirit.
Now, I didn't have this college experience like everybody else.
I was working full-time when I went to college and paid every penny myself.
So I wish I did because when I hear people talk about their experience in college and the pride associated with whatever school that they had, it's like they love those schools for the rest of their lives.
And all those parents, when they get older and start making money, they all give money back because they have the fondest memories and they want that experience to go to other kids.
It's pretty cool, actually.
All right.
I'm never going to convince.
We'll get to this.
Harvard, by the way, has $37.1 billion in endowments as of 2017.
Wow.
30, what billion?
37.1 billion.
Okay.
Now that money can be used to make Harvard better.
Better than what?
It's a liberal bastion of nonsense.
I'm just saying.
I wouldn't send my child there.
Neither would I.
No freaking way.
I don't think they'd accept any kid with the last name Hannity.
Trust me.
It's not going to be a problem.
If all of these colleges are making this much money, too, why don't they use that money to give everyone free college rather than pouring it back into these students?
Well, they actually do in a lot of cases.
There's so much academic financial help available out there.
It's crazy.
All right, Matt.
I've got a school spirit with free college.
Oh, God.
You people, you know, you've been working.
You've got all cynical now.
You're just way, you've lost it.
All of you.
You're like the only four people in the country that think I'm wrong on this.
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And as we roll along, Sean Hannity show.
All right, Paul Manafort got his second sentence.
This was the DC case.
Wait, Sean, can I interrupt you for a minute?
Yes, ma'am.
So the audience hates me and they love you.
They're on your side.
So I just want you to know that.
I want you to feel better about your team spirit.
No, it's looking.
This is not okay.
Here's the thing.
I don't want to get, we'll get back into this later in the show.
I just want to finish this.
The thing is, is everybody that I know that had a college, real college experience, and, you know, when I went to Adelphi and NYU for a year each, I worked the whole time.
And then I dropped out because I ran out of money.
And then I went back to school in Rhode Island.
Then I ran out of money and I was paying it myself.
But when people tell me they went to Penn State or Dartmouth or, you know, an Ivy League school or Notre Dame, every, oh my gosh, you talk about Notre Dame or Michigan or UVA or, you know, just whatever the school happens to be, they love it.
They stay with that school for the rest of their lives.
They donate to that school for the rest of their lives.
It is an enrichment.
And then when you build a big football team, you know, kids that have gone a different way, they're offering something else to the school.
And yeah, the schools make a ton of money off of sports, but they're using a lot of it, throwing it back into the kids to bring up their academic ability.
And yeah, they can build better facilities, which makes it an even better experience for future kids.
What's so bad about that?
But this is different.
I mean, if, you know, your kid never, you know, kicked the ball and you say gets a spot on the soccer team, that's a problem or, you know, whatever it is.
That's fascinating.
Conceded that there was absolutely no evidence of any Russian collusion in this case.
So that makes two courts.
Two courts have ruled no evidence of any collusion.
Liar rushes.
That's my wife.
Part number two.
Very sad.
What's she sad?
Very sad.
What's she sad?
You're such a callous lawyer.
Sentence that is totally unnecessary.
Looks like this.
You guys are lawyers, man.
You're not lawyers.
You're liars.
There is your radical extreme hate Trump deranged resistance.
I mean, it's actually pretty scary.
That was the attorney for Paul Manafort, Kevin Downey, protesters, yelling and screaming and shouting.
Said the judges conceded in both cases no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
The same conclusion of the House Intelligence Committee.
The same conclusion of Senator Burr's intelligence committee.
The same conclusion most are expecting from Robert Mueller.
And I'm going to tell you who's partly responsible for getting these people whipped up into a frenzy.
The media.
Every second minute, hour, every day, they have been promising.
They have been hyperventilating, breathless reporting every day.
Hey, we got him.
It's not true, but we'll get them next time.
Here, we got him.
What the media has done in this particular instance is so beyond the pale.
It is turned.
They have given nothing but lies, conspiracy theories, and false hope for two years to every Trump hater in the country.
Nancy Pelosi, you know, saying impeachment's not going to happen.
Backed by Stenny Hoyer, backed by others.
They're not stupid.
Now, either they're playing a game and they'll say, oh, the evidence was so compelling.
But in spite of it, then you got Adam Schipp, who's now under investigation himself for ethics complaints, which I told you would happen.
I'm dying for him to come on the show.
And then I get to hit him with all the misinformation.
Let's be nice today, that he's been selling.
Anyway, the judge sentenced Manafort five years on the first conspiracy count.
30 months of that would be served concurrently with the last sentence in the judge in T.S. Ellis in that case.
That is the overlap between the two cases, which involved obstruction of justice.
She sentenced him to 13 months, saying that his efforts to influence witnesses had been nipped in the bud.
And Judge Jackson tends to be relatively lenient on convicted criminals that appear before her.
In the five years that ended in 2017, she handed down an average prison sentence of just 32 months below both the Washington District's 46-month average and the nationwide average of 47 months, according to data from Syracuse University.
I promise we'll get back to the thing later.
My staff is in the middle of the biggest fight over this college admissions thing.
It's hilarious to me.
But there you have this mob outside, you know, screaming at Kevin Downing.
And it's sad.
You know, the fact that they only want Manafort to die in jail.
That was the only acceptable outcome.
And it may actually end up happening.
And what was an act of stunning vindictiveness?
This should not be allowed either, by the way, in my opinion.
You know, and we see it happen all the time.
Well, we're going to charge somebody with a crime.
You get a not guilty verdict.
Well, now we're going to go after them on the same crime, but we'll call it a civil rights violation.
It's double jeopardy.
Anyway, in an attempt to prevent Manafort from escaping punishment, if the president ever decided to pardon him, the announcement was made literally while the U.S. judge Amy Berman Jackson was sentencing Manafort, 70 years old.
He's got the 7.5 years, you know, some of it concurrent, but I mean, it's pretty much assured that he's going to be a very old man if he ever gets out of jail.
But just to make doubly sure that, you know, now that we have New York prosecutors filing new indictments today at the same time, why?
Because they don't want him.
What if the president ever pardoned him?
Now we got a backup because you can't pardon him based on a state crime.
Unbelievable.
As Devin Nunes on this program yesterday reports, criminal referrals against Obama officials.
Now, this bombshell that we got yesterday, thank goodness for Congressman Doug Collins, you know, join him with Meadows and Jordan and, you know, all these great congressmen that have been doing wonderful things.
Anyway, Devin Nunes' criminal referrals against Obama officials are coming within the next month.
And I told you there's a lot about to happen.
Just stay tuned.
We didn't work in vain for two years uncovering all of this abuse of power and all of this corruption.
And the evidence now is overwhelming and incontrovertible.
There's a part of me that wonders.
It's funny because people that, you know, special counsel's office is not going to take my call, but people that have been in touch with the special counsel.
Now, I have been very critical, very suspicious, dubious based on how things, the people that were chosen.
Why did Mueller pick only Democrats?
Why did Mueller pick Hillary Clinton's attorney for the Clinton Foundation, Genie Ray?
Why would anyone ever pick as your main guy his pit bull, according to the New York Times, Andrew Weissman after what he did with Enron Accounting?
Tens of thousands of Americans lost their jobs.
Cases overturned 9-0 in the Supreme Court.
Those are real people that lost their jobs.
Once excoriated, as Sidney Powell has in her book, License to Lie, withholding exculpatory evidence.
Why did he get on Mueller's team?
Why did Struck and Page get on Mueller's team?
Well, actually, we do have an answer to that question.
And if you believe Lisa Page, the DOJ was ordering the FBI not to prosecute Hillary Clinton.
Well, that brings it now right into the Attorney General Loretta Lynch's office, but we'll get to that in a second.
But these people and their track records are atrocious.
They're political.
Weissman is at the victory party of Hillary on election night.
They are not objective fair prosecutors.
But I'm beginning to wonder because people that say they know Mueller, he has an incredible life background and experience, Marine, sent for Phi, served his country, you know, went into private practice, hated it, went back to being like a DA again because he loves it.
I love law enforcement people.
I wonder if there's some people that tell me I'm wrong about him.
Well, I don't think I am.
I wonder if he has paid attention to all of this abuse of power.
I wonder if his fidelity to the law is real.
We'll know soon enough.
Nunes saying that criminal referrals are coming.
He says, I'd guess we'd see referrals in the next two to three or four weeks.
He said he would like to see what is in the special counsel Mueller's report.
And in February, Nunes said that the GOP minority and the House Intelligence Committee offered up the names of a dozen people they want to subpoena.
The Democrats, as the Democrats revitalize the panel's Russia investigation, doubtful the majority will cooperate.
Instead, Nunes will go to the new Attorney General, Bill Barr, which to make headway towards completing this.
And we also have in the Senate, we know that Lindsey Graham is all over this.
Lisa Page, this was interesting in part of this reveal.
Now, there's so much material yet to come that we haven't seen.
We learned so much about the Bruce Orr testimony.
You know, everybody was warned the dossier was Clinton bought and paid for, that Steele was invested in hating Trump and Trump losing.
And we learned that Steele's getting paid from a Russian oligarch, the FBI, Hillary's campaign, and the DNC.
Wow.
And there's even now questions about whether, by Devin Nunes, he wants to know who actually wrote the dossier.
He has questions about who did.
But, you know, anyone that says they verified it, Lisa Page said that there was some verification file on the dossier.
You cannot verify something whose own author can't stand by it.
You can't.
There's no, you wanted it to be true.
And when the top DOJ officials and FBI officials were warned by Bruce or, as he said in his testimony released last week, Lisa Page yesterday, that means they all knew it was corrupt and not verified and bought and paid for and political.
And that adds even more urgency to the FISA abuse, which is committing a fraud on a FISA court, a conspiracy to deny an American citizen his constitutional rights, and even more importantly, allowing false Russian lies paid for to influence the American people leading up to the election.
We know that happened.
There's no question this all happened.
It's irrefutable.
It is incontrovertible.
Just like Adam Schiff on tape colluding with the Russians to impact America's electoral system.
Lisa Page, in this new testimony we got to read yesterday, Strzok went to work for Mueller to build a case for Trump's impeachment.
Well, that was the whole purpose.
The same guy that authored the exoneration letter that took out gross negligence, put in extreme carelessness with James Comey in May.
Comey denied it, but we know it's true.
And then, of course, he was the only person to interview on July 2nd, 2016, him and another guy, Hillary Clinton.
And then three days later, Comey's in there.
And, oh, you know, no prosecutor would ever do it.
Well, you know, we also know that's true because that's not true because James Baker, who was the number one lawyer, chief general counsel at the FBI under Comey, wanted to indict her under the violations of the Espionage Act.
That's what we also learned.
Now what we also learn is from Lisa Page, oh, it was Loretta Lynch, Tarmac Loretta, and Tarmac Bill who met just days before the final decision.
Oh, it's a matter.
It's not an investigation, Jim, when it was an investigation.
Well, apparently, Lisa Page said every step of the way, the Obama Department of Justice, unlike any other case, so out of the ordinary, they were involved in every decision and ordered the FBI not to prosecute Hillary.
Unbelievable.
And the FBI, by the way, had zero evidence of collusion when they first started this investigation in July of 2016.
They had the dossier by August of 2016.
And, you know, now we've got Loretta Lynch needs to go under oath.
And by the way, was she reporting any of this to Obama?
What did he know?
When did he know it?
There's so much to come.
There will be criminal referrals, and we still haven't heard from the Inspector General or John Hoober.
Inspector General specifically looking into the question of FISA abuse.
All those people that signed that FISA abuse, bulk of information being the paid-for dossier, Russian lies.
Yeah, how are they going to justify saying that they thought that was truthful?
By the way, all of these 2020 candidates are having trouble.
Now we have Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Gillibrand all facing a Me Too backlash and defending their commitment to the idea of Me Too against a series of accusations that they themselves mismanaged sexual misconduct claims against their subordinates.
Well, how did they get away with that?
How come, you know, and Kirsten Gilliber, we did a professional thorough investigation, not according to the person that was the victim, says just the opposite.
She's a hypocrite.
And the same with Bernie Sanders.
Now Bernie is also being rocked by anti-Semitism charges.
And a spokesperson for Bernie actually said that the presidential campaign apologized after questioning whether the American Jewish community has a dual allegiance.
By the way, that dual allegiance thing is, it is, talk about, it's a classic anti-Semitism.
Anyway, a comment condemned by Jewish leaders from across the political spectrum, it's a well-known anti-Semitic overtone.
Not something anybody would have any issue about.
By the way, Ocasio-Cortez now accusing Wells Fargo, CEO, of financing the caging of children, which didn't happen.
Mr. Sloan, why was the bank involved in the caging of children and financing the caging of children to begin with?
I don't know how to answer that question because we weren't.
So in finance, you were financing and involved in debt financing of Corsican Geo Group, correct?
For sure.
Let me jump in here.
I want to add one other thing.
There is a state representative in the Georgia State House drafting a blunt response to legislation that would dictate when a woman could or couldn't get an abortion.
It's called the testicular Bill of Rights.
And she said it's a package about turning the tables on male counterparts.
This comes as the Georgia House.
Anyway, after they have the heartbeat bill, once the heartbeat is there, anyway, it would literally outlaw abortion after a fetus' heartbeat.
She has her Bill of Rights and includes, among many male-focused proposals, legislation requiring men obtain permission from their sex partners before they get a prescription for any erectile dysfunction medication, allowing men who have sex without a condom to be charged with aggravated assault, 24-hour waiting period for men who want to purchase pornography or some sex toy in the state of Georgia.
You can't make that, you cannot make this insanity up.
Oh, and Pelosi revoked Vice President Pence's House office space.
Really nice, Nancy.
Washington Post writes, Nancy Pelosi just blew it on impeachment.
There's a big fight brewing.
It's all going to come out.
All right, 800, 941, Sean is a toll free telephone number.
Quick break, right back.
We'll continue.
There was absolutely no evidence of any Russian collusion in this case.
So that makes two courts.
Two courts have ruled no evidence of any collusion.
Liar Russia.
That's my favorite.
Very sad about what she said.
Very sad.
For such a callous sentence that is totally unnecessary.
Much like this.
You guys are lawyers, man.
God, lawyers are liars.
Wow, that was out of the courthouse.
Protesters screaming at Paul Manafort's attorney, Kevin Downing, saying, yeah, two judges conceded no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
And now Paul Manafort sentenced in a second case.
And unless this guy dies in jail, it's going to be so dissatisfying for people on the left.
Before that, Richard Blumenthal, pardoning Paul Manafort would be obstruction of justice.
No, that is a power of the presidency, a constitutional power of the U.S. president to be used at his or her discretion.
It is not a power that is even in question.
Anyway, joining us to talk about the very latest on this, we have John Solomon of The Hill.
And we're going to talk about the release yesterday of Lisa Page's testimony.
Is now this whole two years, a culmination of unpeeling an onion is now reaping some benefit.
And we see that the end of the tunnel here, there are going to be indictments, and all names you're going to be familiar with are in deep trouble.
Greg Jarrett, author of the number one bestseller, The Russian Hoax.
Let me ask from a legal standpoint, Greg, you first.
Let's talk about the sentencing, but more importantly, I want to talk about what happened immediately thereafter with the Manhattan District Attorney because Bernie Carrick had a great tweet about this.
This is the greatest demonstration yet of a politically motivated corrupt at Manhattan DA who pre-announced his intent, then coordinated with Mueller's team to ensure that Manafort dies in prison because immediately after this, he was charged with 16 new charges, not federal, in Manhattan.
Can you let you explain it from the legal perspective?
Well, this is redundant.
It's overkill.
It should be double jeopardy, but the law doesn't favor that, unfortunately.
So, yeah, I mean, they're still going after Paul Manafort with a vengeance, even though two judges have now said in their respective cases involving him that there's no evidence of collusion.
That on top of the House, that on top of the Senate.
And I suspect that if Robert Mueller, the special counsel, had evidence of collusion, somebody would have been charged by now, but so far it hasn't happened.
But this seems like it was all planned out.
Why?
The second after he's sentenced.
Oh, sure.
Of course it was.
So it's a total of seven years.
How many years would he have to spend in prison?
Well, he'll probably, I mean, you get a 15% reduction for good behavior.
So that's the knockoff.
Not like state courts where you get a lot more for good behavior.
So he's probably going to have to do at least six and a half years.
Yeah, I mean, it's seven and a half years total.
So I guess some of this must have been concurrent, correct?
Yeah, I think 37 months is concurrent or somewhere around there.
So, but, you know, he's going to have to do some years behind bars.
And Dick Blumenthal is wrong.
It's not obstruction of justice to exercise your constitutional duty as president to pardon somebody.
But, you know, every time Blumenthal opens his mouth, he demonstrates his ignorance of the law.
Well, he was also leading the I believe, I believe, haven't heard him say I believe about the Democratic lieutenant governor in Virginia in the Commonwealth there.
Let me get your reaction, John Solomon, to today's, you know, sentencing hearing.
The reaction you hear outside of the courtroom is just, you know, it's sort of like the left is triggered.
One of the things now that we have two judges conceding there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion in these cases, we're expecting any day now the Mueller report is going to be at least handed over to the AGA.
I don't think we'll know for some time whether part of that or any of that is going to be released.
But you have pretty good authority, and your sources are telling you pretty confidently that there is no Trump-Russia collusion that was found by Mueller.
Certainly, that's what people are telling me, and no one will know for sure until the moment.
The only guy that matters hits the send button, and that's Bob Mueller, right?
And when he hits that send button, he transmits that report to the Justice Department.
We'll finally know the answer.
But I think in every public setting we have seen in the last couple of years, from the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunez, to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burm, to two judges in the Manafort case, to every other sentencing involving a defendant in the Mueller prosecutions and in Mueller's own statements and indictments.
There has not been a single allegation of collusion between the presidential campaign and Russia.
And I think that what we know from the body of evidence is that it didn't exist.
And another big, important piece of that evidence came out yesterday.
As you know, earlier on your show, we broke the stories about what was in Lisa Page's testimony, but the official transcript came out yesterday.
What did Lisa Page tell us?
After nine months of using the most awesome powers that the FBI had, FISA, surveillance, interrogation, monitoring, in May of 2017, they still had no evidence to prove anything of collusion, as Christopher Steele had alleged in his dossier.
If all of that investigation couldn't turn it up and all two years of turning and indicting defendants hasn't turned anything up, I think it's highly unlikely.
And I think today, when you watch what happens today, the protesters outside, the immediate reindictment in New York by Cy Vance, a very political prosecutor in Manhattan, you see a lot more politics in the court of law than I think most of us would like to see.
These legal cases should stand on their own merit, and yet you see in the form of protests, in the form of a sudden reindictment timed to the end of the sentencing, a lot of political shenanigans going on in the legal system.
You know, I agree with that completely.
I mean, you just sit there, oh, they're just waiting.
Oh, just in case you think Donald Trump's going to pardon you, we're going to make sure you die in prison.
And that's how I took it with this today.
And yeah, there is overkill at some particular point with all of this.
When you go, though, we look back at the, you know, we now have had two weeks of release.
Let's just assume for a moment John's sources are right.
I've been hearing the same thing.
Democrats seem to be telegraphing that they know that there's not going to be what they want in the Mueller report in terms of a pathway to impeaching the president over collusion because there wasn't any.
I expect it'll be sternly written and there'll be innuendo in there because I guess they'll feel compelled to do so to justify their existence, Greg.
But beyond that, it's the law that matters.
But what is now beginning to build are the things that we wanted for a long time.
Yesterday we got Lisa Page's testimony.
Lisa Page basically affirming everything we believe that the Department of Justice, that would be Obama's Justice Department, that would be Attorney General Lynch, were up to their eyeballs in helping to protect and prevent Hillary Clinton from being charged as any other American would have been charged.
And even Lisa Page acknowledged all protocols were put aside.
We also know Comey and Strzok wrote the exoneration and purposely withdrew those magical words that met the legal standard, gross negligence.
They added a new standard called intent that is not part of the law.
So the fix was in.
Hillary was never going to get indicted, even though even James Baker, the chief counsel under Comey at the FBI, thought she should be indicted.
Absolutely.
A couple of things jump out with her testimony.
The first one is she said, quote, every person on the team knew no charges would be brought.
Fast forward about 70 pages, and she admits the Department of Justice actually ordered that Clinton not be charged for gross negligence.
She was pressed about that.
Well, what was the rationale?
She said, well, there was some discussion that she didn't have the intent.
But as you just pointed out, intent's not required under the gross negligence provision.
But she could have been charged under the intent provision because Page, fast forward another 50 pages, admits that intent is not intent to break the law, but the legal standard is intent to commit an act that has the effect of breaking the law.
And it's abundantly clear by Clinton's own admission, she intended to set up a private server, intended to use it exclusively for all of her emails, including classified documents.
That's an intent crime.
She should have been charged under both intent and gross negligence, but the fix was in.
Wow.
I want to get your take on it.
Now, John, you talk, I want you to explain the five buckets because the testimony that we're getting, thanks to Doug Collins, a Republican from Georgia, Congressman, he gave us last week or testimony.
Now he gave us Lisa Page's testimony, and he says he's going to give us all of it.
But we have the information you want and I want.
302s, the FISA application.
We want the gang of eight information.
And you can explain what all of this will bring to light.
Yeah, Greg did such a great job, as he always does, in analyzing all the legally significant things that Lisa Page said about the Clinton case.
There's one thing that jumped out at me on the Russia case, and that is, you know, the question has always lingered over this, how much did politics play in a role in making the decisions the FBI did?
And by her own admission, Lisa Page testifies that they were weighing the fact that they didn't think Donald Trump would win the presidency as one of the weights in how much they should investigate the Russia allegations.
And I think that that is such an extraordinary admission.
I have never in all my life, covering 32 years of the FBI, ever heard an employee of the FBI claim that the winning or losing of election was going to affect the tactics or the intent of an investigation.
And it explains something that happens the day after, something you and I reported on your show a long time ago.
The day after Donald Trump wins, they escalate their efforts by a major proportion, which shows that politics was involved.
If this was any other case, he would investigate it because the allegation is serious and the security is at risk.
Here, it's not serious if he's going to win, but if he is going to win, it's going to be serious.
It shows the raw political nature and that politics did infect decisions, certainly in the Russia investigation.
Now, how much did they affect it?
I think the big story that's going to come out in 2019 is not the fact, the absence of evidence of criminality, because we now have that pretty well established, that there wasn't a criminal scheme between the president and Russia to hijack the election.
What I think the big story is going to be is the abundance of evidence of innocence that the FBI collected, intercepts or informant contacts with Carter Page and George Papadopas that are going to show the FBI not only knew there wasn't evidence of a crime, they had admissions of innocence and they kept that from the court.
Those five buckets of documents we're talking about is the key evidence.
There are the documents that were turned over to Congress in a briefing in June of 2018 to the Gang of Eight, known as the Gang of Eight documents.
They're among the most important documents that could show how bad the FBI acted in this investigation.
There is a spreadsheet that shows how many things were wrong in the Steele dossier, and yet they proceeded with it.
There are the 302 interviews of Bruce Orr and his contacts with Steele and the Justice Department, his facilitating role.
And then there are the original FISA documents.
When we get all of those things, we're going to see not only how politics affected it, we're going to see how illegally the FBI withheld evidence from the court that would show the men they were targeting actually were making statements of innocence and it was not being informed to the court.
I think that's going to be the big story of the second half of 2019.
John just went through a litany, Greg, of what is to come.
With the time we have left, what does that mean for the names that we have all, all of us and so many others?
I don't want to list everybody's name.
I'll forget someone.
What does it mean for the people that abused power and were corrupt at the highest levels of the DOJ and the FBI?
And now we're learning the Lisa Page testimony shows Loretta Lynch and maybe Obama in some way.
What did he know?
What was he informed of?
And when did he know it?
Where is this going to go?
Well, it means trouble with a capital T for those people at the FBI and the Department of Justice who were involved in this cesspool of corruption.
And I was glad John Solomon just mentioned his reporting has been so instrumental.
But that Lisa Page revealed that it was all a political calculation.
She was pressed, what's the insurance policy?
She said, well, I don't really remember that.
But then she went on to explain that it was a political calculation that we're going to assume Trump doesn't get elected president, but our insurance policy will be this hoax of collusion.
And if he wins, we'll go after him with a vengeance, and that happened.
And John, your take on that?
Yeah, he's exactly right.
It is a hoax, and they know it's a hoax, and they're only going to execute the hoax if Donald Trump wins the presidency.
It's extraordinary.
And how we're going to know how big a hoax it was beyond all the great reporting in Greg's book and about all the things that other people have reported, when we see how much evidence the FBI had that showed what they were pursuing was wrong-headed, that Carter Page.
Well, we know they were warned.
All right, I got to let you both go.
Great work, all of you.
It's been two years, and we're getting to the finish line.
I can see the landing strip in sight.
All right, 25 now to the top of the hour.
Glad you're with us.
This is now a $275 million lawsuit.
Lynn Wood, the attorney, I got to know him in 1996.
I was a local radio host in Atlanta for four years.
And after the Olympic bombing, the guy who it turns out was a hero that saved lives.
His name is Richard Jewell.
And since then, there is no more, there's no more compelling, no more unyielding attorney as it relates to media malpractice, libel, slander than Lynn Wood.
And I've gotten to know him, stayed in touch with him.
The lessons I learned being on the right side, the only person in media that didn't rush to judgment on Richard Jewell and the narrative, well, he fits the profile of the lone bomber because he lives with his mother, was me.
And Richard Jewell heard me say that the first day.
Didn't know it at the time.
And now he's representing Nicholas Sandman.
He's a 16-year-old kid, did everything perfectly, it turns out.
And this despicable media mob, they never did anything to check a single fact in the case.
And as a result, well, now fake news CNN is being hit with a $275 million lawsuit on the heels of a $250 million lawsuit against the Washington Post and many more to come.
Listen to this.
Last January, 16-year-old Nicholas Sandman was falsely targeted, attacked, vilified, and threatened.
The Washington Post, owned by the richest man in the world, led the print media's false attacks against Nicholas's reputation.
CNN led the broadcast media's charge against Nicholas.
Both recklessly spread lies about a minor to advance their own financial and political agendas.
Despite raw video debunking the false narrative, the Post and CNN double down on their reckless lies.
He clearly doesn't blame himself.
He puts the blame on the adults.
Lies that will forever haunt and endanger the life of an innocent young man.
I blame that f ⁇ ing kid.
What a little f ⁇ ing.
Lies that further divided our nation.
How long will we allow these media giants to tear the fabric of our lives to further their own agendas?
Will they ever be held accountable?
Lawyers representing Nicholas Sandman have just filed a bombshell defamation suit.
Yes, they will.
Nicholas Sandman has taken a stand for himself and for you by filing major lawsuits against CNN and the Washington Post.
Nicholas and his legal team will not be stopped until these Goliath corporations are held accountable for their lack of journalistic integrity.
Until then, no one's reputation is safe.
If you took the time to look at the full context of what happened that day, Nicholas Sandman did absolutely nothing wrong.
If they can get away with this against a 16-year-old boy, then we're all at risk.
There has to be change.
Let's make America Great Again.
A bunch of child molested down here in the middle of a Native rally with their dirty head on.
You got all these dirty ass behind you with a red, with a red Make America Great head again on.
And you're cool.
You want to fight your brother.
A bunch of incense babies.
A bunch of babies made out of hats.
A racist played out in Washington yesterday on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Some students harassing an older Native American man, a Vietnam vet.
The situation came to a head when that young man there, wearing a Make America Great Again hat, got right in his face and didn't move.
The video appears to show dozens of youths wearing Make America Great Again hats, mocking Native American elder and Vietnam veteran Nathan Phillips.
Yesterday, a Native American man was confronted by young people with Make America Great hats on.
There's something wrong with that.
Outrage over this now viral video showing high school teenagers harassing a Native American elder.
When you have the kind of anger that we saw at the Indigenous Peoples March where a veteran, a Native American man, was, you know, had a standoff with students who were mocking him.
A crowd of teenagers surrounding a Native American elder and other activists as one smirking high school student blocks the elder's path.
We feel that President Trump is giving license to some of this behavior.
Another man of peace stands face to face with bigotry.
The elder says the encounter with the group, an intense stare down with the one teen in particular, leaves him fearful of the future.
This kid in the front thinks it's somehow acceptable to stand in the face of this Native American man.
It's not just him that disturbs me.
It's the others.
It's his schoolmates there that are having fun with it.
They think it's funny.
It interests me that we're at a day and age where we see things like this occur.
Those protesters who were on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the Native American man who was beating the drum, Nathan Phillips, and those kids in the Make America Great Again hats that were kind of smirking at him and kind of looking down their noses at him.
We only hope that they're in the minority, hopefully, that kind of action.
You're selling CNN Monday or Tuesday.
Yes.
As for how much?
Well, I expect because of the way they went after Nicholas so viciously that the claim for his reputational damage will be higher than it was against the Washington Post.
The Post was $50 million to the reputational damage, and we can discuss why, that figure.
$200 million in punitive damages.
Punitive damages are designed to punish and to deter.
Change conduct.
Don't ever do this again.
Yes.
I would think the punitive damage award against CNN that we'll seek will be at least the same $200 million as it was against the Washington Post.
But the compensatory damage to Nicholas's reputation, that number, I expect, will be higher.
All right, pretty unbelievable.
Joining us now, he knows a thing or two about media.
Bill O'Reilly is with us, author of the bestseller, Killing the SS, The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History.
And by the way, I understand Bill has a little bit of an announcement to make.
But before we get to that, you just heard this tape of Lynn and the vile assaults that went on for days at CNN without a single bit of fact gathering, Bill.
Not one.
Well, I'm shocked.
You are not shocked at all.
I'm shocked.
You know, look, there's a survey out yesterday that shows 80% of the American public, 80%, including 50% of Democrats, do not believe they're getting the truth from the American media.
And that says everything.
And the reason is, because, and you and I have discussed this both on and off the air, six companies now control 90% of the national news flow.
That's vital for your listeners to understand.
It used to be 50 companies 30 years ago.
50 companies controlled 90%.
Now it's down to six.
So when you have that kind of power in the hands of corporate executives who are under pressure to maximize profits, then the mandate of journalists, which is find the truth.
When I paid all that money to Boston University to get my master's degree in broadcast journalism, the theme was, you are to go out in the marketplace and find the truth, O'Reilly.
By the way, you're revealing your age because it's been so many decades now that that's not happened.
And that was the Watergate time.
Yeah.
So CNN is in colossal trouble.
Everybody should understand that.
It's not because of Lynn Wood.
It's not because of even the Sandman family, which that family is going to become extremely wealthy in the next year or two.
All right.
But CNN is in trouble because they've just been acquired by ATT.
ATT is not going to do what Tom Warner did and allow CNN to be in business to promote liberal causes.
That's what the CNN is in business to promote liberal causes.
Started under its founder, Ted Turner, and has continued on a hyper agenda now that President Trump's in the White House.
AT ⁇ T is not going to continue that.
So what Linwood wants to do is put the network on trial.
It's not about Nick Sandman, who obviously was wrong, not only by CNN, but the Washington Post also being sued.
They're a little bit less.
There are going to be, by the end of this, 100 to sued.
10 of them.
Oh, no, no.
There's going to be more.
Yes, it's all coming.
Right.
So when CNN goes on trial, and believe me, AT ⁇ T will try to settle this.
They don't want to go in and have Zucker and all his merry men be deposed.
Because if they were, they could prove that these orders came from the top.
The kid had to make America Great Again hat, he's got to go down.
That's it.
We don't care what happened.
We're not going to look at the full videotape.
We're only going to look at the kid with the hat.
As soon as the hat was there, then CNN swung into action.
Can I add a bigger point to this or another additional point?
Is, Bill, the kid is 16 years old.
Of course.
I don't care.
You know, and here's the amazing thing once we got to the truth is you see the black Hebrew Israelites and the vile, vicious, horrible things they were screaming at their kids and getting in the kids' face, all of those kids.
And it was Nicholas Sandman that actually said to his friends, don't respond.
The kid was so good.
He was perfect.
You and I would never have survived that test.
Never.
He'd never be in prison.
16-year-old O'Reilly and Levitt had done that.
Oh, forget it.
It'd still be in prison, Hannibal.
No, I'd send you a cake with a file.
I'd get you a cake with a file.
It'll work.
So what you're looking at, though, is such a serious lawsuit because Wood knows he can destroy that whole operation.
Now, he can also harm the Washington Post, but it doesn't matter as much because the Post is a niche media outlet.
It has a circulation.
It makes money off Washington, D.C., but that's it.
CNN's a worldwide operation.
And the damage that CNN now does to the United States by portraying this country as a racist operation, which it does every day, is incalculable.
I said that last night on TV.
It's so much of the world, because of, quote, CNN International, they have such a perverted, distorted, unrealistic, and frankly impressions of America that are just flat out wrong because of CNN International.
I mean, I was in Vietnam.
Fox News wasn't on in Vietnam.
You know, fake news, CNN was the only shot you got.
And I had to watch the Cone hearing that morning, and you see the bias all over that place.
It's been the domestic.
Right.
Their foreign operation is worse than the domestic operation.
But there are no standards, okay, at CNN.
So the guy who runs it, Jeff Zucker is an entertainment guy, and he used to be Trump's best friend.
You know, I'm writing a Trump book, and the relationship between Zucker and Donald Trump when they did The Apprentice is like they were pals.
And now Donald Trump helped to get him that job at NBC.
You know that.
Yeah.
So when Wood goes in, the attorney for the Salmon family goes in and he starts to depose people why you did what you did against Nicholas.
And can you imagine a jury in Kentucky sitting there listening to this?
Not going to be $250 million.
It's going to be $500 million.
And by the way, rightly so.
Bill, they didn't pick up a telephone.
They didn't bother to do any fact checking.
They don't do that.
They don't.
And the narrative of Trump for two years, similarly, they don't do any work.
Headline from whatever publication, BuzzFeed, let's run with it.
Listen, really quick, because I don't have a lot of time and I want you to make your announcement.
Yes, I'm going to come back to national radio.
Not going to tell you now because we'll lay it out for you next time I talk to you, maybe next week.
But O'Reilly's coming back to national radio.
But I want you to give this hint.
It's going to fill a void.
I can't tell you right now.
You're not going to let me tell you.
I already know the answer, so I'm not allowed to say it.
But don't say it because they're wording it because we want to be respectful to the franchise we're taking over.
And that's the hint.
Okay.
It's going to be newsy.
It's going to be every day.
And good day.
It's coming up.
By the way, that was the biggest hint so far.
All right.
Bill O'Reilly, thank you.
We appreciate you being with us as always.
Enjoy talking to you, Sean.
Thank you.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload in the final hour of the Sean Hannity show.
There can be no separate college admissions system for the wealthy.
And I'll add that there will not be a separate criminal justice system either.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of hardworking, talented students strive for admission to elite schools.
As every parent knows, these students work harder and harder every year in a system that appears to grow more and more competitive every year.
And that system is a zero-sum game.
For every student admitted through fraud, an honest, genuinely talented student was rejected.
The parents charged today, despite already being able to give their children every legitimate advantage in the college admissions game, instead chose to corrupt and illegally manipulate the system for their benefit.
We're not talking about donating a building so that a school's more likely to take your son or daughter.
We're talking about deception and fraud.
Fake test scores, fake athletic credentials, fake photographs, bribed college officials.
Wow.
The biggest example of admissions fraud to some of the country's most elite colleges, pretty unbelievable.
This is basically how this thing worked.
It was, so you have this guy named William Rick Singer.
And that, by the way, was the Attorney General of Massachusetts.
His name is Andrew Lelling.
And what happened is Singer would tell these parents, well, first, he helped these wealthy clients illegally boost the scores of their kids and cheat on the ACT SATs, et cetera, et cetera, in varying ways and told the parents to seek, quote, extra time for the kids to take the SAT ACT test, including by faking learning disabilities.
Now, I know a little bit about this because I have my older sister is a school counselor, and there are real issues with kids that are that, for example, if you have ADHD or ADD or something like that, they sometimes you can apply for more time to take the test because your ability to focus is not at the same level and it's a real thing for these kids.
Okay.
So he's telling them to lie about that, I guess, to a doctor.
And once the kids get the extra time, then Singer would tell the parents, change the exam location from the kids' high schools, where I guess they're known, to one of the test centers that he knew controlled in either, say, West Hollywood or Houston.
You know, as an excuse for changing the location, he suggested saying the kids would be out of town attending a wedding or a bar mitzvah.
And then Singer would bribe the administrators.
So he's picking specific test sites where I guess he had relationships with the administrators of the tests and let a co-conspirator, usually a Harvard grad student, help the kids cheat on the exam.
And then, you know, either he or others would take the tests for the kids.
In other words, either the Harvard grad student would take the test or just give the kids the answers they needed or correct the wrong answer after the kids turned in the test.
And the test center administrators then sent the exams back to the college board, SAT and ACT for official grading, which then raised scores significantly.
And schools listened.
I'm living through, been living through this now for a long time because my, you know, if you have a kid that's in 11th grade like I do, it's front and center in everybody's mind.
And 11th grade is like the hardest grade for kids all the time.
And then, of course, you know, the idea in the other case, Laurie Lochvin's case, you know, they actually took, the daughter was not an athlete at all.
And they photoshopped a picture of the daughter onto the body of an athlete and started posting it all over social media as if she was a crew player in the case that the U.S. attorney made, or they do it with the soccer player.
Linda is shaking her head the whole time.
You think I've gotten this all wrong.
I haven't even given my opinion yet.
You think I have this all wrong?
Why?
You know, I just, I think it's a bunch of baloney.
I really do.
I mean, the feigned indignance and the shock over this.
Give me a break.
This crap's been going on for years.
Well, hang on a second.
You know about legacy admissions.
I mean, if your mother and father and mother or father and your grandfather and your uncle all went to one school, the advantage you have is massive over any other applicant.
It's called, you know, legacy admissions goes on all the time.
Usually it is tied to how much money the family donated over the years.
That's, I mean, the endowments at these schools are sometimes in the billions and billions of dollars, right?
Yeah.
And well, then those kids, because of their name, their family, they have an advantage.
Listen, at the end of the day, everybody gets an advantage.
At the end of the day, at the end of the day.
End of the day.
Everybody's going to get over because of something.
So I can throw a basketball.
I can throw a football.
I can play the YOBO.
I know how to do lacrosse.
I need more time on my test because I got ADHD.
I got ADD.
I feel sad today.
My dog died.
My cat didn't eat her food.
Whatever the freaking reason is, this is what these people do.
To me, this is not worthy of our time.
So you know that I have been, my kids have been athletes since they were seven years old.
I mean, I've been all over the country.
You know, my son's been all over the world to play in his sport.
And I could tell you that.
But let's just interrupt you for one moment.
Your kids play tennis.
What do people play?
I wasn't going to say that, but that's fine.
First of all, you talk about tennis all the time.
This is not a surprise.
Okay.
Second of all, when people play tennis, one thing comes to mind, money.
How do I know this?
Because I'm from Philadelphia and they have the Arthur Ashe, they have the Arthur Ashe Center.
And they used to take all us poor kids down to play tennis so we could see how the other side lived.
Learn a little bit of tennis, yada, yada, yada.
Just so you know, I've actually donated a pretty good amount of money over the years.
Right, but that's not my point.
My point is to two separate charities to actually make tennis available for everybody.
My point is, is that that's, there's nothing wrong with that.
You know, if you have more money and you can do more for your children, I'm not saying do criminal activities like kids, knuckleheads.
But so much of that.
But what's the difference?
What's the difference?
You give school money.
You're not going to let me talk.
You asked for my opinion.
But this is the difference.
You're missing so much here.
Look, for example, my daughter is in 11th grade and my son, it was the same thing.
Every single one of the kids she grew up playing this sport with, every one of them has been recruited.
Not one wasn't.
They all were recruited.
They all got, you know, picked for their athletic ability.
Now, if you add other sports to it, you add baseball, basketball, football.
You know, first of all, sports enhance the university experience.
If you go to the University of Alabama, you go to Clemson, you go to Notre Dame.
Let me tell you something.
Those sports not only financially enrich the institutions, but they make the experience of the other kids that are there because of academic merit so much better because they all love going to the games and cheering on their team.
So here's the thing.
So here's the thing.
They lower the admission standards academically for the athletes.
Now, but there's a give and take to that.
Do you know what I mean?
No, I think it's a bunch of crap.
Like I said at the beginning of this argument.
So you're like, when I went to school, right?
How many master's degrees do you have?
I have two, but I'm the first person in my family to go to college.
My mother went to college after me.
Now, having said that, I had to go at night.
I had to work all day.
I had a very different college experience than a lot of other people because of my financial background.
I paid my own way and I had to.
I'm not going to kill you.
I feel you.
Totally get it.
But the long and the short of it is we all try to do more for our children, right?
We don't want our kids to have the same struggles that we had, yada, yada, yada.
So a lot of these kids who are very, very good at sports that come from affluent families, they don't go to regular school.
They have private tutors.
They have private tennis instructors.
They spend X amount of hours a day playing tennis, X amount of hours a day doing math, history, yada, yada.
And listen, if you can afford it and you can do it, more power to you.
I would do it for my kid too.
You know, you can't hate on people doing well.
At least I don't.
The problem that I have is a sudden indignation, like, oh my God, I can't believe they paid for this.
It's horrible.
I'm like, dude, that is no difference.
But there's a very big difference.
What's the difference?
Okay, because let's take the case of the kids that on their own get the great SAT score.
Like me.
Uh-huh.
Okay, so there is a zero-sum game here.
In other words, there is a certain number of slots available for kids that are academically hardworking and gifted.
Okay.
And even then, you don't have to.
Wait a minute.
So hang on.
Then at least the playing field is more fair if you take out the whole legacy admission part of it, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, on the athletic side, you know, if these, there's only X number of slots for every sport in every school.
So no, there's not.
Here's why.
Let me tell you why.
No, you're wrong.
I'm not wrong.
They're only, for example, you're only allowed X number of signings, NCAA rules for any sport in any year.
Right.
So what they'll do is they'll bring in another kid and they'll say, well, we'll take him earlier.
We'll bench him for this year.
Oh, he'll go into this and then we'll bring him onto here.
There's always a workaround.
Okay, I'm just telling you.
But that would mean that that year, one less person that was deserving, they get their spot taken away.
Yeah, you know what that's called?
That's called life.
Life is not fair.
Life is not fair and things are difficult.
And at the end of the day, you have to know.
Let me give you an example.
If you're playing baseball, basketball, tennis crew, which is, I actually think I've never played.
I played the clarinet.
Okay.
And let me tell you how it works to become a recruited athlete.
You know, you can go back to when your kids, these kids are eight, nine, and 10 years old and see that they've been playing the whole time.
Whatever sport it is, anybody that looks at you throwing a baseball, shooting a basketball, hitting a tennis ball, they're going to know in five seconds whether you're a real player.
Let me sum this up for you so that you understand from where I come, okay?
I'm not understanding.
I don't care how you want to look at this.
At the end of the day, which is where I started, that's my opening line.
I'm going to finish with it.
There are all sorts of inaccuracies and discrepancies that come with applying to college.
Now, what these people did was wrong.
I'm not saying what they did was right.
So when we look at this and we take a close look at what's happening here, we also need to take a close look at all the other inequities.
And then we can have an honest and real conversation about the overpriced experience we call college.
You don't see, well, I actually think there's a bigger problem with the legacy issue, if you want my opinion.
You know, the only thing I can say in response to it.
Like I said, all the inequities.
Hold on.
Hold on.
The only thing I can say, and, you know, I have one good friend of mine whose son plays at UVA.
You know, we've been tennis acquaintances the entire time.
We had sons the same age.
We had daughters the same age.
They competed all throughout juniors.
And, you know, every time I see him, I hate this sport.
I hate this.
I would tell him because it's torture watching your kids play.
I hate it.
And, you know, he laughs at me all the time.
And, you know, we were just, you know, it was kind of became just a long joke.
It's, I am, the amount of effort, time, money, everything, traveling that goes into the years.
You can't be a, you have to decide if you want your kids to go, unless they're so off the hook naturally talented.
If you want them to go to college on some athletic scholarship or admissions, you have to start when you're seven or eight and focus pretty much now on one sport.
Everything is specialized.
Or you could have just saved all your money those years and put it into a 529 college fly and paid for college.
Okay, but you're not going to get into the college maybe that you want.
That's the point.
I don't know how much money are you saving.
Well, the way it works is this, that you for, you know, because of Title IX, there are more scholarships for women in sports.
Because of Title IX, those scholarships are more available.
Usually colleges for men's tennis have very few because in that case, you know, the scholarships are often deemed for the football team, which would be mostly males that are playing.
Usually most schools have a male and female basketball program, so that's equal, but they got to make up for it some way by putting 60 kids on a football.
You're making my argument.
No, I'm not.
Yes, you are.
You have to look at all of the inequities.
So we can take a look at Lori Laughlin and Felicity.
What's her name?
Hoffman?
Whatever.
I mean, the bottom line is these two people are just two people of the 50 that they quote right now.
But there's all sorts of discrepancies and inequities that have been going on for a very long time in this college debate, and they're going to keep on going.
And this is just one example of the kind of nonsense that people do to get into a liberal indoctrination that you have to work yourself out of after four years.
And then if you decide to go to grad school, another two and two after that.
Look, you know, look, you're making some valid points.
I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you.
Something worked in that college education.
But the amount of effort and fraud that went into this, I mean, to literally photoshop a picture of your kid playing a sport they never played, and then they get chosen and there are limited amounts of slots available for those particular sports, crew and soccer in this particular case, volleyball in another particular case, then that does mean that someone else that maybe was, you know, on the edge.
The great thing is for all of these kids, and I would advise this to any parent, it didn't matter if you were ranked one through 100 in your section.
All those 100 kids for the most part, at least the top 60 in every section, is going to get into a college, a better college because of whatever sport they're playing.
Because I've seen it over and over again.
You know, if you have a kid that's ranked in the top five in your division and is a nationally ranked player, then the odds are even better.
But every year, they have tennisrecruising.com.
You can literally, you know, follow a kid's career.
Maybe he had a bad year, but that year that kid had an injury.
As interesting as it is for us to try to save the world and all of the college problems, we had to go to break.
That's so annoying.
All right, take a quick break.
We'll come back.
Your call's on the other side.
We're here today to announce charges in the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice.
We've charged 50 people nationwide with participating in a conspiracy that involves, first, cheating on college entrance exams, meaning the SAT and the ACT, and second, securing admission to elite colleges by bribing coaches at those schools to accept certain students under false pretenses.
In return for bribes, these coaches agreed to pretend that certain applicants were recruited competitive athletes, when in fact the applicants were not.
As the coaches knew, the students' athletic credentials had been fabricated.
Overall, today we have charged three people who organized these scams, two SAT or ACT exam administrators, one exam proctor, one college administrator, nine coaches at elite schools, and 33 parents who paid enormous sums to guarantee their children's admission to certain schools through the use of bribes and fake academic and athletic credentials.
A central defendant in the scheme, William Singer, will plead guilty today to charges of racketeering conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and obstruction of justice.
Singer allegedly ran a college counseling service and something called the Key Worldwide Foundation.
Between roughly 2011 and 2018, wealthy parents paid Singer about $25 million in total to guarantee their children's admission to elite schools, including Yale, Georgetown, Stanford, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, UCLA, and Wake Forest.
Beyond the SAT and ACT scam, parents also paid Singer money that he then used to bribe coaches and administrators to designate their children as recruited athletes for various schools.
In return for bribes, coaches would use slots that their schools had allocated to them for the recruitment of athletes, instead to take the applicants Singer had identified.
Singer worked with the parents to fabricate impressive athletic profiles for their kids, including fake athletic credentials or honors, or fake participation in elite club teams.
In many instances, Singer helped parents take staged photographs of their children engaged in particular sports.
Other times, Singer and his associates used stock photos that they pulled off the internet, sometimes photoshopping the face of the child onto the picture of the athlete and submitting it in support of the applications for these children to elite schools.
In one example, the head women's soccer coach at Yale, in exchange for $400,000, accepted an applicant as a recruit for the Yale women's team, despite knowing that the applicant did not even play competitive soccer.
The student was in fact admitted, and afterward, the student's family paid Singer $1.2 million for that service.
In addition to the standardized test scam and the college admission scam, Singer also arranged for someone to take online high school classes in place of certain students so that those students could submit higher grades as part of their overall college application packages.
All right, so there's, again, we're playing the Andrew Lelling is his name.
He's a U.S. attorney of Massachusetts.
And, you know, this scheme, this college admission scheme, the worst in history, you got 50 people charged in this.
33 parents, including, well, Lori Laughlin and what's her name, Felicity Huffman, charge Aunt Laughlin, Lawful.
Yeah, like some people say, my name, Linda McLaughlin, Linda McLaughlin.
The second would be wrong with regard to me, but it's correct with regard to her.
Okay.
And so 33 parents, college sports coaches, associates of this guy, this mastermind of this whole scam, Rick Singer, $25 million in total bribes paid out by the parents.
Individual payments range from $200,000 to $6.5 million.
And, you know, we're talking about, you know, Stanford, Yale, Georgetown, a lot of big schools involved here.
And after a 10-month investigation, and faking, you know, SAT tests or whatever they're doing, it's just pretty outrageous.
But more importantly, then on the athletic side, you know, taking pictures and photoshopping of kids that never played a sport ever.
And then kids, you know, getting into the school based on an athletic scholarship or athletic or being on an athletic team when the kid never played the sport.
And that would take away a slot from a kid that would otherwise have made it.
You know, the only thing I'd say, because I've lived this, and, you know, I'll be honest, over time, I got to know you see all the same parents most of the weekends, you know, except when you're traveling nationally, you don't know maybe some of them.
How do you know they're their parents?
Maybe they're stand-ins.
Maybe they got paid to be there.
We stop at the distractions, please.
Everybody knows everybody.
And the amazing thing is, is that the kids that have gone through that journey, starting at seven or eight, they all end up being recruited, every one of them.
The ones that stick with it all throughout, you know, junior high school, for example.
And they all find a good school, which is, you know, because it becomes such a grind.
You know, the kids got to practice every day.
The kids doesn't want to practice every day.
The kid doesn't want to put on sunscreen when they're in Florida, et cetera.
I mean, it's just, it becomes a real grind.
At the end of the day, you pay a price early, but the payoff is huge.
Now, most recently, I'm not going to sit here and talk about what I've been going through with my daughter, but you know the schools that have been recruiting her, right?
I mean, and you know where she decided.
I mean, she had felt so good about every letter, every call, every visit, that it just, it was a huge payoff for her, you know, for her hard work.
And I've watched this happen with kid after kid after kid.
You know, my daughter, my son, and all their friends have had that experience.
And it's very cool to see, you know, even though you're competitive maybe when you're in juniors together, but when you get older and a little more mature and you realize this is not Wimbledon, you begin to realize, you know, that these are all really good kids that have been through a very similar hard experience and you like them all.
I mean, I kind of like all these kids that I've gotten to know.
And so they, and all of that work is chronicled.
And Alan Dershowitz brought up a point last night that, you know, the schools kind of have a little bit of an obligation to say, okay, well, let's look at the history.
Did this person really play this sport?
Because there's going to be a history of the kid playing the sport, usually going back before they're 10.
And because that's what it takes to get to that level.
There are kids, it's amazing how things change.
When I was growing up, I played ice hockey.
I was a pitcher in baseball.
I played basketball.
They made me play soccer in high school.
I didn't want to play soccer.
I hated soccer.
And then I ended up being a center halfback and I hated it because that's more running than anyone else on the team.
And I just hated running for the sake of running, but they made me the center halfback.
I'd rather be the goalie and just stand there.
But we played all sports.
It's not how it is.
You specialize.
You know, once a kid is identified in high school as, say, a good baseball player or a good football player or junior high school, even that kid then is told usually by some smart mentor who's watched the, knows the whole experience and being told, okay, this is what you can do.
And you're going to get into a great college because you're talented.
You know, if you put the work in, you're going to get there.
So it's pretty amazing, actually, the whole process.
And, you know, look, am I asking that they put these people in jail for 20 years?
No.
But I think that there's such outrage because most people feel this is the, you know, this is a rigged system.
And there's angst and there's anger about it.
And a lot of it's justifiable.
But I would say that the bigger scandal is, you know, the whole legacy issue.
And we know in some cases where, you know, if a kid's mother, father, grandma, grandpa went to some big school, the odds of that, their kid getting in are phenomenally greater.
And that's probably the odds go up even more if the family, you know, has donated millions and millions of dollars to the school.
And people do that because they love the school.
I, you know, I didn't have the college experience that we're talking about in this case.
And Linda, you didn't have it either.
When I went to college, I was working full time.
I was tending bars some nights till 4:30 in the morning, and I had an eight o'clock Monday morning writing class, for example.
I remember that particular class at Adelphi.
And then I went to NYU.
I was still tending bar on the weekends to pay my bills because I didn't have scholarships.
I didn't take a penny from my parents.
I paid it all myself.
You know, people write, Hannah, your college dropout.
Well, Hannity couldn't afford it.
He went back to school on three separate occasions.
And I think all told, I have a little over three years finished.
And I just, I didn't have the money.
I didn't have the money to pay for it.
And I didn't want to ask anybody for it.
So I don't regret my decision.
And I study more now, to be honest, than I ever studied in my life, as you know, and you've seen and you watch every day and with every show we do.
You want to add one last phrase I can sell before we get to the question?
No, no, listen.
You know, I'm arguing with people in our office about this right now and here in the studio.
I mean, Ethan's on my side.
Kylie's on my side.
I don't know where Jason is on this.
I'm so surprised.
Jason, I really am.
Are you on my side with this or are you on Sean's side?
Well, I mean, the whole thing about people being outraged, I've been watching college sports forever and the stuff that athletes get away with.
I see it all the time.
But if you commit fraud, you should be.
But hang on, but I'm going to get a good person for it.
Jason, a lot of kids that get in on their sportability, sports adds to and enriches the entire school experience for the kids that get in academically.
But we're talking about fraud.
I mean, how many schools are there?
No, I'm not talking about fraud.
I'm talking about athletics in general.
Yeah, but we're talking about faith.
So if they lower the standards for, you know, tennis, baseball, basketball, football, or whatever, whatever they do, I know in many cases that the schools don't sacrifice the education.
They invest in the athletes' education, knowing that they're not at the same academic level as some of their fellow students.
They offer two.
Two.
Academic standards.
Do you agree with that?
Do you know how much money football brings to the University of Alabama?
I'm absolutely talking about that.
Notre Dame didn't want to hire Urban Meyer because Urban Meyer wanted to lower their academic standards, so he went to Florida.
Yeah, because Nick Saban doesn't really give a rip about what a kid's score is.
What he's going to tell the parents is we're going to get him the help he needs to academically.
So he can stay on the team and let us win.
Yeah, but honestly, Sean, how many people are there?
But what about football basketball?
How many go to class?
Look at what this is.
But every other kid that gets to go to the football game and cheer their school on, it creates school spirit and unity.
It's huge.
It really helps their betterment when they have to go to the job market because they have a good school spirit.
It doesn't do anything.
This is the best.
But the whole idea is to, at college, you know how everybody I know that's ever graduated from whatever school it is, and again, I didn't have that experience, they're so proud of that school.
They love that school, whatever it is.
It could be, I agree with this part of it.
So I love, like anybody who listens to the show knows, I can't tell you a single thing about sports.
I don't know what's happening.
I don't know what season it is.
Say sports again.
Sports.
I don't know anything.
However, I love all of the fun stuff that goes with sports.
I love how people get really excited.
I like the parties.
I like to make the dips and the food and have the drinks.
It's fun.
But I don't know what's happening.
I have no idea why we're there.
I'm just happy we're all together.
Anything that brings people together in a fun environment, I'm down.
Okay, you know what it does?
It takes the college experience.
Any college that has any successful athletic program, it takes that experience for every student, almost universally.
It might be five kids in their dorm that night, that day and that night that are, you know, not going to the game.
But everybody loves me.
They like me.
Don't know what points.
And they're proud of their team.
They're proud to say, I go to Alabama because we got the best football team in the country, or Clemson, because we got the best football team in the country.
They love it.
Now, so some of the athletes, they're not meeting the same academic standards, but they're bringing something else to the school, a talent that they have developed throughout their youth.
Listen, we don't have a lot of time here.
I think what the team is saying here, and I did not pay them to get on my side, I just want to say that for the record.
There's no fraud happening in the studio.
However, I think what we're saying is we just don't agree that this one moment, as corrupt as it is, there are so many others that's been going on for so long.
This is one highlighted incident.
You know, there's a lot of people who are.
I think they're really, legacy is one of them.
I got it.
Right.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
Big Hannity tonight.
We have an update on this college admissions story scam and the biggest in the country.
Apparently, Laurie Laughlin in court today will have the latest on that.
The president taking a strong leadership role on the issue of the Boeing 3737.
We have more deep state information we got on Lisa Page today.
We'll break that tonight.
Oh, yeah, Cowardly Schiff vows more investigations.
