John Lott as we get over another attack in California, and one at the University of North Carolina, we take a look at the locations that have not had attacks. From 2000 to 2018, with teachers now carrying guns in twenty states, there have been no school shootings at schools that have let teachers carry guns. This figure is the proof that environments where attackers know that they will be met with return fire lowers the chance of an attack. As we look at 20 years since Columbine, we have to start trying new solutions.The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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All right.
Happy Friday.
We're glad you are with us.
Glad you made it.
Tough work.
And by the way, all of us have been saying all the every work week is a tough work week.
We don't like turn it off.
Maybe we'll turn it off when we do our Friday concert series later a little bit.
Although, you know, obviously we got TV tonight.
Glad you're with us.
800-941, Sean.
Toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program.
Glad you are with us as always.
We're going to get into a lot of serious stuff today.
We've got why Democrats desperately want to destroy the Attorney General Barr, and all he's done is his job.
That's it.
They cannot handle at all.
It's sort of like 2016 all over again.
They can't handle.
They lost.
They can never face the truth about their lies, the conspiracy theories they peddled, the hoax.
I don't even, I don't even believe it was a hoax that they fell for.
It was their deepest hope.
It was their deepest desire.
It was, and it literally their rage of Donald Trump, which is now a psychosis, a mass psychosis, you know, overrode any other systems in their, in their liberal brains that would have caused them to pause or stop, and that now it prevents any possible introspection or reflection.
You know, denial is a big human condition for everybody.
You know, all egos must protect themselves at all costs.
And whatever way you need to deny Barry detached from reality to get there, that's what you're going to do.
And it's a fairly common human condition.
We'll get into that.
I'm going to give you great details now that we're getting more information on the spying.
Do you remember when Donald Trump said that his campaign was being spied on and the reaction of the media, they went absolutely apoplectic.
Turns out he was true in more ways than we know.
I'm going to describe the Papadopoulos incident and then later Papadopoulos and his wife Simona will check in with us.
We're going to get an update on the great economy with Larry Kudlow coming up at the bottom of this hour.
And one of the funnier stories today is Bernie Sanders.
Did you see the picture of him?
There's actually a video, I guess, now of he kind of looks naked to me, you know, letting his hair down in his 1988 honeymoon trip to the Soviet Union.
This is not okay.
It's not okay.
And up until now, the headline on the trip was that Bernie to visit Russia after he got married to his wife.
And they made that their honeymoon.
And we learned that Bernie was so enthralled with the Soviet surroundings, he was partying naked and drinking vodka with his Russian comrades.
He had an official 10 days.
This is the strangest visit ever.
I mean, doesn't he seem like what is it about these people that are part of these naked communities?
What do you call those people?
You know, they live together.
What?
Nudists.
Yeah, they live in these naked.
And every time I see pictures of the people that are there, they're the least attractive people.
They just walk around free and happy.
And I'm like, put some clothes on.
Just put something, put anything on.
Go get, you know, go get a bunch of leaves and cover yourself.
It's just like people are so weird.
Human beings are the oddest things on earth.
Why do they think that this looks great?
I don't know what they're thinking.
They just think and they'll passionately defend it.
Oh, I feel free.
I feel free.
I'm like, okay, go feel free.
You want to live in your commune naked.
Who am I to say that's a bad idea?
But oh, I wouldn't want to even visit because I don't want to see it.
That's my response back.
But you know what?
You're free to do what you want.
You live in the freest, greatest country God gave man.
We now know in this updated book that which is pretty interesting.
It was written by Peter Baker of the New York Times, White House correspondent, about Obama, the call of history.
Apparently, after the election, we're getting some insight into these updates that Obama was livid and apoplectic and viewed his loss as a personal insult.
And Hillary Clinton, he describes as a failed, soulless campaigner.
And he could not believe that Donald Trump won, in spite of all of his efforts to spy all over the campaign.
And I'll tell you, you know, Mark Penn is trying to call out the sound for the Democrats.
They're not going to listen.
You know, he's saying Trump's not a dictator, but Nadler is.
Our political system is being weaponized against itself.
You know, good for Barr because not in 206 years has that committee ever allowed anyone else to ask questions during an investigative hearing.
Never.
And they're so insecure.
And I guess in terms of their ability to have the Attorney General answer questions, they can't do it.
They can't handle it.
And Kimberly Strossel is great today in the Wall Street Journal in her piece, Why Democrats Want to Do This, because the media is pretending Democrats are genuinely upset over the way that Barr has handled the Mueller report.
When Barr testified, number one, his letter of March 24th, well, he offered Robert Mueller the opportunity to make changes and corrections and wanted to make sure that he was characterizing it in the right way.
And Mueller declined.
Mueller didn't want to do it.
That was his opportunity.
Mueller works for Barr in the end.
And so he decided not to.
And he was, and when Barr called him about it and said, is there anything you disagree with?
No, nothing at all.
Anything I mischaracterized?
Nope, no mischaracterization or characterizing of it at all.
He was just upset at the media coverage of it.
And the fact that, well, it wasn't given out in its full context.
Barr couldn't release it in its full with its full content because of the legal need for redactions to protect sources and methods.
You can't legally release grand jury testimony that apparently was in there somehow.
And as of the beginning of this show, I still think only three people have dared to take the time to look at the unredacted version, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and Congressman Doug Collins.
So now Democrats, and of course, their extension, their media propaganda lying wing, the media mob, they're in this full-blown state of denial and cold sweat panic, not over anything Barr has done.
What's why they're wetting their pants now, collectively, all due respect, is what Barr is about to do.
The big story, I can't say it enough.
What's amazing to me is nobody gets it.
It's like you're not listening.
All you need to do is listen.
And Bob Barr, Bill Barr answered all the pertinent questions.
Are you happy with the Mueller have the resources?
Do you have faith in Mueller's report?
Do you feel that this is completely advisable warrant process?
Yes.
Do you share my concerns about the counterintelligence investigation, how it was opened and why it was opened?
Yes.
Do you share my concerns that the professional lack of professionalism in the Clinton email investigation is something we should all look at?
Yes.
Do you expect to change your mind about the bottom-line conclusions of the Mueller report?
No.
Do you think the president's campaign in 2016 was thoroughly looked at in terms of whether or not they colluded with the Russians?
Yes.
And the answer is no, according to Bob Mueller.
That's right.
He couldn't decide about obstruction.
You did.
Is that correct?
That's right.
You feel good about your decision?
Absolutely.
There is the full answer.
Mueller is over.
Anything you hear about Mueller, the Mueller report, Russian collusion, obstruction is now officially just a temper tantrum of noise.
It is not reality.
The reality, though, was just laid out as where the Attorney General, the Act II is now, the curtain is going up.
And that is everything we have been explaining for two years.
Now, all of the corroboration will be coming out in detail.
Catherine Herridge did a great interview last night with the president as it relates to the declassification, FISA applications, 302s, gang of eight, and on top of that, the Inspector General report.
Back to Kim Strossel in the Wall Street Journal.
The real news in the Senate, and the press didn't notice, the Attorney General said he'd already assigned people at the Justice Department to assist his investigations into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.
He's also going to investigate, yes, the Hillary-rigged investigation.
Yes, he's going to investigate FISA abuse.
He's getting into everything.
And the abuse of power, where this all began, how this became Operation Crossfire Hurricane.
And he said his review will be far-reaching.
He is obtaining details from congressional investigations, the ongoing probe by the Inspector General, Mueller's work himself.
Barr said the investigation wouldn't focus only on the fall 2016 justifications for secret surveillance warrants against the Trump team members that would go back for months.
He said he'd focus on the dossier, the op research firm Fusion GPS, what the New York Times now trying to desperately cover themselves.
It might have been Russian disinformation because that's probably what it was.
And Hillary sold it and used it.
Real collusion, bought and paid for.
Russian disinformation.
He also revealed that he had multiple criminal leak investigations underway.
We're going to get classified details about the investigation.
One thing that I am getting worried about is the amount of surveillance from people like yours truly that may have taken place and unmaskings that may have taken place for the few of us that were involved in exposing all of this.
I have been told to expect information, possibly 50-50, let's leave it there on that coming out one day.
Wouldn't that be interesting?
They don't like the people that actually expose them.
You know, former, current leaders of law enforcement, the intelligence communities, the Democratic Party, you know, they're in a meltdown because at some point they've got to understand how severe this is because they didn't hear it yet this week.
They're still making noise.
They're still clinging to their conspiracy theories and the hoax.
They're still clinging to the false narrative that somehow Jerry Nadler is going to save the day.
No, he's not.
There's nothing left to talk about.
It's over.
Doesn't matter what they say.
And Mueller is reportedly negotiating the terms of his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.
I will tell you right now, I don't even expect Mueller to want to ever show up.
You think he wants to answer?
When did you know when that collusion never happened?
What date?
At what point?
And why did you continue from there?
Why didn't you investigate FISA?
Why didn't you investigate Hillary's dirty Russian dossier?
You weren't limited in the scope because, you know, you ended up sending out indictments on taxi medallions and taxes and farah violations and loan application errors, etc.
And also, we have news that John Solomon, that Andrew McCabe, opened the Russia Gate probe the day after he was briefed by Hillary-funded anti-Trump researcher Nellie Orr.
Nellie Orr has now been referred for a criminal investigation.
We'll get to all of that too.
There's a lot of ground we've got to cover.
We're also going to go over in a few minutes.
We're going to give a couple of minutes to Larry Kudlow at the bottom of the hour, how great the economy is doing, and then we'll pick up from there.
I'm going to tell you about how deep they were spying on Papadopoulos.
You can't write this in a James Bond movie.
What's up, everybody?
Linda, executive producer from the Sean Hannity Show, here to talk to you about your money, your retirement.
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I can't believe you, how many of those Sherry's berries?
I guess you like the pink shimmer sugar ones for Mother's Day.
How many have you eaten today?
I mean, too many.
I've watched you eat six.
How many of those strawberries are you going to eat today?
It's actually seven.
All right.
They're the biggest, best, juiciest, hand-picked, and they got this special pink, shimmer, sugar for Mother's Day, right?
They're literally the most better than their usual Sherry's berries dipped in white milk and dark chocolatey goodness.
Is there a preference on your part?
I mean, from an aesthetic position, of course.
I like pink sugar.
Of course.
Okay, this is the problem.
Every time we have them as an advertiser, you get, well, I need to see them so Sean can see them.
That's what you say to me?
Absolutely.
I've heard you say it.
I see these things.
It's double boxes, you know, and you always get the $10 more box, which is double the berries.
I got it.
And you just, all you do is devour them.
And I noticed one of the girls from outside came in to get one and you wouldn't give it to her.
I'm very hungry.
You're hoarding them.
Incredibly hungry.
I'm a mother.
How many boxes of Sherry's berries did you get?
I intend to eat as many as possible before Mother's Day.
It's only $19.99.
Beautiful gift box.
Yes, mom's going to love it.
All the moms in your life.
$10 more, you double the berries.
Go to berries.com, B-E-R-R-I-E-S.com and devour them like Linda.
Use the promo code Hannity.
Click on the microphone.
Barry's.com.
Promo code Hannity.
I'm going to do something when we get back because this is important.
We have the best economic numbers we have had in decades.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time about it because I want to tell you we now have new developments on the depths of spying on Papadopoulos, even using a blonde bombshell right out of a James Bond book or novel or movie.
And as the details become available, we now have identified three separate ways that the Trump campaign was spied on illegally.
And yeah, when the Attorney General said spying, he was right.
We'll continue.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
All right, before I get to the details of the Papadopoulos, the depths of which they set this guy up, even it's like a James Bond movie.
You know, blonde bombshell, secret location, bar, coming on to him.
Everything is in it.
We'll get back to that in a second.
Look, nobody else in the media will do this.
This is news you won't hear anywhere else.
It is great news for the American people.
I've always said the 2016 election was about the forgotten man and the forgotten woman.
You remember eight years of Obama?
You know, we ended with 13 million more Americans on food stamps, 8 million more in poverty.
We had the lowest labor participation rate since the 70s, the worst recovery since the 40s, and the lowest homeownership rate in 51 years.
The only president never to reach 3% GDP for any one year of his presidency.
And Obama Biden accumulated more debt than all 43 presidents and vice presidents before them combined.
This is a headline on Drudge right now.
American flag, envy of the world.
Unemployment, 49-year low, wage hits 27.77 cents an hour.
Stock market, endless rally.
Now, there's more.
Hispanic unemployment in America.
Hispanic Americans, the lowest ever, the lowest unemployment for women since 1953.
Record jobs, even for high school dropouts.
It's all there.
Now, I told you another story this week, and that is for the first time in 75 years, America is energy independent.
And we are now a net exporter of energy.
And how we, because of the president's trade deals, we are now using these vast resources more than the entire world.
We've got it all.
More natural gas and oil than any country or the Mideast combined.
That's how rich in these resources we are.
Now, if we use those resources, gas and natural gas and oil, that is the lifeblood of every single economy in the world.
You want to bring Putin to his knees, the hostile actor that he is, and Russia to its knees?
Yeah, produce more oil and gas and outbid him in Western Europe.
It's better for everybody's national security.
Russia will be on its knees.
We will win the Cold War again, in a sense.
Now, between that potential, you know, look at the Gallup poll.
And financial optimism is now at an 18-year high.
56% of Americans now rate their current financial situation as excellent or good, the highest polling data since 2001.
69% Gallup saying they expect to be better off financially in a year.
Well, that's the highest finding in 16 years.
I told you about Europe the last two quarters.
Their growth, their GDP growth, 0.4%.
The quarter before, 0.2%.
Even with a government shutdown, yeah, our first quarter growth in America, GDP growth, 3.2%.
And they noted in Gallup, the strong economy, typically a huge benefit to everybody.
And everyone has been predicting.
ADP had a jobs report.
275,000 jobs created by U.S. private employers.
Anecdotally, you know, Biden couldn't get 1,000 people in Iowa yesterday, but when he goes to Pennsylvania, I've got to win Pennsylvania.
Okay, Pennsylvania is now so in need of jobs to be filled that you literally having job seminars in prison.
And you have all these companies going to prisons.
And what they're doing, when do you get out?
We want to hire you.
And they're talking to the prisoners.
That's how good this economy is.
Record low unemployment for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans.
I told you about women in the workforce, youth unemployment.
Every statistic shattered.
Larry Kudlow is the president's top economic advisor, head of the National Economic Council.
Yeah, you and I have both been preaching.
Yeah, it worked for JFK, it worked for Reagan, it's working now.
And that is lowering the tax cuts.
Well, I guess he's not coming then.
He's not here.
All right, whatever.
He's not here yet, boss, but he'll be here.
All right.
And anyway, and unemployment hits half a century low as the Trump boom continues.
In 49 years, the economy added 263 jobs in April.
Joblessness now, the unemployment rate is 3.6%.
We now have a million more jobs than we have people on unemployment.
The private sector, we're seeing solid wage gains, hourly earnings up 3.2%.
Now the president's on the verge of announcing a trade deal with China is going to be massive.
And that's intellectual property protection.
Also, fairness as it relates to China receiving American goods and cars and produce and meat and dairy and everything else.
I mean, this is this, it is spectacular.
You know, and the people that are benefiting the most are the people that got it the worst in the Obama-Biden years.
Kudlow's even saying the U.S. trade-Japanese trade deal is now possible also in a month.
You know, on top of the biggest tax cuts in American history, the president has eliminated more regulations than the last 15 to 20 presidents combined.
And he's done it in record time.
He promised trade deals with Canada and Mexico, done.
He wants more of, wants NATO to pay more of its fair share, done.
Better trade deals with our Western European partners, done.
China now is being negotiated.
We seem close to a deal.
That should get done.
Same with Japan.
That should get done.
They can't be putting barriers up for American cars and American products that we don't put on them.
And the way the president's been able to negotiate it, he's willing to pull out of any trade deal.
And once they believe it, then we get deals that nobody even thought to negotiate before.
And in every single case, we end up benefiting.
And then the American workers are protected.
You know, it's a joke that these union leaders, not rank and file, are supporting Biden.
What did Biden give you guys?
Nothing.
You know, the energy sector alone, you know, when we get these two pipelines online, the Keystone XL pipeline, the Dakota pipeline, when we really begin natural gas production, when these oil companies can get to Anwar in Alaska, one of the great untapped reserves, it's a vast wilderness.
I've actually sent planes to film it, and there's nothing there.
And, you know, it's only been environmental extremists that have prevented us from tapping this resource and making us dependent on the lifeblood of our economy from people that hate our guts.
This is now, we are on the verge of the potential that the standard of living for every American, especially, you know, those that have been left behind lower middle class is more profound than ever because of the vast gas and oil reserves we're now beginning to tap into.
All right, Larry Kudlow is apparently with us now.
Where were you before?
You're late.
How are you?
Sorry.
Couldn't get back from a meeting.
I'm fine, Sean.
Thank you for having me, as always.
I went through all the statistics.
I focused a lot on energy.
And I mean, and look at Europe, you know, their last two quarters, 0.4, 0.2% GDP growth.
Well, look, Europe's been on the cusp of recession, I guess, the last 18 months.
They ought to borrow a couple of pages from President Trump's plan to rebuild the American economy, which is succeeding very nicely as we've entered this tremendous prosperity era.
And you look at these numbers, 263,000 jobs reported today for April, way above what people have thought.
3.6% unemployment.
Sean, the last time unemployment was 3.6% was when I graduated college in 1969.
That's a long time ago.
1959 or 69?
69.
I'm not that raised.
You're such a rascal.
No, 69.
We put a man on the moon.
And 3.6% unemployment.
And here's the thing.
And you had 3.2% GDP about 10 days ago.
So look, I just want to make this key point.
A, we are in this tremendous prosperity cycle because of the POTIS's change in policies.
But Sean, B, there is no inflation.
So that old shibboleth that more people working and earning and higher wages and faster growth is inflationary is being disproven.
The inflation rate in the first quarter was 0.9.
And so I hope those people are going to be able to do that.
Is the Fed going to continue to raise interest rates, which they never did to Obama?
Well, that is true.
My view, they won't raise rates with the low inflation.
And I think they're looking at this.
With the low inflation, I think the Fed's next move will be a lower rate.
Wow.
I don't want to predict it.
They're into the business.
Well, it's good for business.
I mean, just like deregulation, good for business.
Listen, if we would tap the vast energy reserves, I know that the new Green Deal wants to eliminate oil and gas.
You want to bring Putin, who is a hostile actor on the world stage, to his knees.
You tell me if I'm wrong.
America outproduces Putin in the energy sector, and we find ways to get it to our European partners, Western European partners.
And number one, it's great for international security.
It's great for their security, not having to deal with Russia.
And we don't need the Middle East oil ever again.
That's our policy.
Thank God.
That's our policy.
By the way, that's the advice I've given on Iranian ending any waivers on Iran.
No, don't worry about the oil price.
In fact, this is very cool.
We're producing so much oil and gas now, let's focus on oil, that the traders are putting up their own capital to short, right, to sell oil.
So the oil price has come down on the Iranian.
I mean, it's a simple supply and demand issue.
You produce more, you have greater supply.
Demand, let's say, remains constant.
That'll dictate the price, which then means it'll be reduced.
And they've now, look, you got to give some of these companies a lot of credit.
They have figured out cheaper and cheaper ways to extract metal, sorry, oil and gas.
And as they do, when are we going to Anwar?
Because now that the president's opened that up for exploration.
Well, not even exploration.
They opened it up to extract because we know it's there.
And a judge stopped it.
A crazy judge.
It's insane.
But I want to add, you know, the president unveiled two weeks ago in Texas, I was with him, the executive order, which will open up permitting for pipelines and various terminals and so forth everywhere.
So locals will not be allowed to prevent pipelines.
And here's why that's key.
I mean, you were just talking about it a moment ago about Russia.
You're absolutely right.
So this is a low-cost energy plate to maybe lower the price in New York and New England.
But it will allow us, these pipelines, to get gas, LNG, to Europe and substitute for Russia.
That's the key.
And every European leader, we just had the people from Slovakia over here, the prime minister and his group, they all want our LNG to bypass Russia, which is a pretty bad actor, as you know.
So this is great for cheaper fuel.
It's also great for our frackers.
$60 a barrel is a good number.
It's good for consumers, low inflation, and it will help us against our foes in Europe or against Russia.
So I think it's a great story, and we're doing it.
We're committed to it.
Absolutely committed to it.
What is the biggest danger on the horizon that you see in terms of what could, well, you know, gum up the works, if you will?
You know, I didn't know about the Anawar court ruling.
I should have known, but we should win that in court because Anawar was actually purchased for energy production or designated for energy production.
It was done by Jimmy Carter.
Well, yeah, I'm with you, but I don't know how that's going to work.
But I think the biggest issue, look, we need...
No, but you know why energy is the key?
Because they're going to train Americans.
They're training truck drivers and then paying them 80 grand, 90 grand a year.
And then they pay them all the overtime they can take.
We now then raise the standard of living for every single person in this country.
And that means a nicer home, better schools, a brand new truck, Disney vacations, restaurants, college funds.
That's what every American can have.
We can be Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, except the people benefit, not the government.
Yeah, well, you're 100% right.
You know, these frackers, including some of the independents, I mean, they'll turn the spigot on and they'll turn it off really fast.
Let me tell you, these guys are great.
All right.
I got to roll.
Larry Kudlow, please send our thanks to the president for his successful policies.
We need this.
Of course, that's what we need to do, Sean.
Stay the same.
So were you talking to the president?
Is that why you were late?
Yes, I'm afraid I was.
There's a lot of things cooking here, and I apologize.
I really do apologize.
You don't have to apologize if you're talking to the president.
I don't think you're allowed to leave the room until he's finished.
Anyway, great news today for the American people, for the forgotten men and women in this country.
Thank God.
Isn't that great?
You know, imagine we could benefit so we could all be rich in that sense.
Everybody's standard of living would go up.
How awesome would that be?
Hey guys, this is Linda, executive producer for the Sean Hannity Show.
You might also know me as Sean's daily sparring partner now that he's a ninja, of course.
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On Thursday morning, I received, it probably was received at the department Wednesday night or evening, but on Thursday morning, I received a letter from Bob, the letter that's just been put into the record.
And I called Bob and said, you know, what's the issue here?
And I asked him if he was suggesting that the March 24th letter was inaccurate.
And he said, no, but that the press reporting had been inaccurate and that the press was reading too much into it.
And I asked him, you know, specifically what his concern was.
And he said that his concern focused on his explanation of why he did not reach a conclusion on obstruction.
And he wanted more put out on that issue.
He's burned through any credibility he had in that role, and he should resign.
He's supposed to be America's attorney, not Donald Trump's personal lawyer.
And I really hope that he gets that.
Otherwise, he should resign.
If a lawyer engaged in this kind of dishonesty, they would be disbarred.
Bill Barr needs to resign.
I think that Barr should resign.
And if he does not resign, he should be facing impeachment proceedings also.
Now, you know, I think in the interest of the department should step down, but I have no expectation that he will.
This attorney general has lost any remaining trust he may have had with the American people.
And the American people need to be able to trust the Attorney General to be the people's lawyer and not the president's spokesperson.
So he does need to resign.
And because Attorney General Barr wants to represent Donald Trump, I think he should resign.
A.G. Barr resigned.
Well, pardon me?
Should the Barr resign?
I think he's lost the confidence of the American people.
I think he should.
Well, I've had him testifying already for 30 hours.
So it's the answer in his mind.
Really?
So I don't think I can let him and then tell everybody else you can't, because especially him, because he was a counsel.
So they've testified for many hours, all of them.
Many, many, many times.
So as far as you're concerned, it's really one can and the others can't.
So is it done?
I would say it's done.
We've overthrown this.
Nobody has ever done what I've done.
I've given total transparency.
It's never happened before like this.
So Congress should be looking anymore.
This is all.
It's done.
All right.
That, of course, the president in his interview with Catherine Herridge of the Fox News Channel, 800-941-Sean, toll-free telephone number.
You see, if an attorney general actually follows the law and you don't like the law as it is written and does his job and even said he gave Mueller an opportunity to look over his March 24th letter and Mueller punted.
Mueller said, no, that was the time that Mueller could have added or subtracted anything he wanted.
But even after the case, Mueller was very clear.
Nothing in the Barr letter did he disagree with.
And then on top of it, the American people now got to see within the law, pretty much, you know, 95% of what was in the Mueller report.
And whether they like it or not, they lost.
The issue of Mueller is now officially over.
And that was confirmed in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings this week when Senator Lindsey Graham said, are you happy with your decision?
Did Mueller have the resources?
Do you think he's competent?
Did he do a good job?
And the answer is clear.
But on the issues of, okay, the investigation into Hillary and the abuse of power and the crossfire hurricane investigation and FISA abuse and abuse of other types of powers.
Well, now we know where we are.
Andy McCarthy's been phenomenal on this.
And, you know, as he said, the Democrats' recent criticisms of the Attorney General has gone beyond Washington, D.C.'s usual theater of the absurd.
And he also wrote a piece about Mueller's letter to Barr, a great trick by the Washington Post, before the hearings began.
And Andy McCarthy joins us.
He's a Fox News contributor, columnist for National Review, and former assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the ever-so-prestigious Southern District.
And by the way, was involved in high-profile cases like the Blind Shake and others.
How are you?
Sean, how are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Okay, so, you know, the Attorney General did everything right from what I can see.
He gave Robert Mueller an opportunity to see the March 24th letter and make any changes he wanted.
When they dropped this the night before the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, this letter of Mueller's is leaked.
I'm not even sure Mueller wrote the letter, to be honest.
I wonder if it's Andrew Weissman, but that's speculation on my part.
And then when subsequent phone calls happen, Mueller complaining about the initial report, Barr got on the phone and said, well, no, there's nothing substantive that he disagreed with at all.
He didn't mischaracterize what was in the report, and he was just unhappy with the media coverage of it.
And of course, Barr had already agreed to release the entire thing publicly.
Well, that's right, Sean.
I think what happened here is the report, Barr's letter outlining Mueller's conclusions went out on March 24th.
And what people were very surprised by, as Barr testified that he had been surprised by when he first talked to Mueller, was that Mueller didn't do the one thing he was arguably needed to do, which was to resolve the obstruction question.
So after two years of fawning publicity, he finally, for the first time, was catching a lot of heat, and he was catching a lot of darts, and he was getting a lot of criticism.
And I think the people on his staff who are probably still angry that he would not charge obstruction on the basis of this, I think, untenable legal theory that they were investigating under for two years got very angry at the negative press coverage.
And I think Mueller himself got irked enough about the negative press coverage that he was willing to sign a letter that I, like you, I think the staff wrote.
And this was all a reaction to the negative press coverage.
But I would want to just add one thing about this, Sean.
As Attorney General Barr said in his testimony, what happens under the regulations is the special counsel does a report, which is supposed to be a confidential report that gets turned into the Attorney General.
And then the special counsel is finished.
And it's up to the Attorney General to decide how much and what parts of the report go out.
So what I don't understand is if Mueller didn't do the one job that he was brought in to do, namely resolve this case, who is he to be telling anybody else how to do their job?
It was up to the Attorney General to decide how this went out and if it went out at all, because no one was entitled to get this report.
We can't put enough emphasis on this.
There was no legal obligation at all for the Attorney General to give any of the Mueller report out.
From what I understand, after we got rid of the Independent Counsel Act, after the Clinton impeachment, oh, and by the way, people like Jerry Nadler did not want the star report out that had 11 specific felonies committed by Bill Clinton at the time, and they were labeled and they were listed for everybody to see.
Great big distinction and difference.
They decided they'd move forward with the special counsel and put the powers in the hands of the Attorney General.
And the Attorney General had an obligation to make a decision here based on the findings of Mueller.
But, you know, even the so-called Big Ten findings, I'm saying, okay, so Donald Trump, he was very outspoken about his innocence regarding Russia collusion.
Mueller ended up agreeing with him.
That's the fourth investigation that corroborated such.
You have the FBI nine-month investigation.
You have the House Intel Committee investigation.
You have the bipartisan Senate Committee investigation.
And now the Mueller report itself says no coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia as it relates to attempts by Russia to disrupt or influence or create chaos in our 2016 election.
So the underlying crime is dead.
And as it relates to him saying publicly, maybe I should fire this one or that one and not doing it when he had the power even under Article II to do it legally, I don't see any possibility you can ever get to obstruction.
I don't think so either, Sean, and I've never thought so.
The only way that they were able to sustain this investigation is by a very novel theory of obstruction, which is that if a prosecutor decides after the fact that any act of the president, including the exercise of his Article II discretion, such as firing subordinate executive officials or weighing in on whether somebody should be prosecuted or issuing a pardon,
all the things the president has the power to do, if a prosecutor, an inferior executive officer, later on decides to second guess the chief executive and decides that the action was improperly motivated, that that can be reached by a federal prosecutor through an indictment.
And I just think that's always been an absurd legal theory.
And that doesn't mean, I always get this when I say this, Sean, I'm not saying the president's above the law.
I don't think anybody's saying that.
What I'm saying is in this system, as it was designed by the framers, the main check on alleged presidential abuse of power is Congress and the ability to impeach.
So if Congress thinks the president has abused his powers, then yes, Congress can impeach the president.
But it's not for a federal prosecutor who is an inferior executive officer to second-guess the president's legitimate exercise of his constitutional authority, which is why Attorney General Barr has said from the beginning, no one is saying that a president can never be cited for obstruction of justice.
But if you're going to do it, it's got to be traditional obstruction of justice, things like destroying evidence in a criminal investigation.
You can't get the president on obstruction of justice for firing the FBI director.
You know, you can't.
And number one, if you don't believe Andy McCarthy, who knows the law as well as anybody, and, you know, just listen to James Comey himself, he could be fired for any reason at all or no reason whatsoever.
He knows and knew he served at the pleasure of the president.
How much trouble do you think Jim Comey is, starting with him leaking information, as we now know, to create the atmosphere where a special counsel would be created?
That was his goal, but that was government information he was leaking out.
Number two, the fact that he signed the first FISA warrant, and we now know it's an unverifiable dossier, which was the bulk of information for that.
It also excluded, I think, the very important information to the FISA court judge in that first FISA warrant, which is that Hillary Clinton bought and paid for it, and they didn't tell the judge, the FISA judge in the application everything they needed to tell them, and they clearly committed a fraud on the court.
What would the penalty be for that?
What would the charge be for that?
Well, I don't think there'd be a criminal charge against the director of the FBI coming out of the FISA warrant.
I think, you know, I actually don't anticipate criminal charges.
And in a lot of ways, Sean, I think that if criminal charges are the price tag to getting to the bottom of this, then we're never going to get to the bottom of this.
I think the most important thing is that we find out what happened here.
And if it turns out people violated the law, then, you know, then that's on them and they've got to.
Do you have any doubt?
Let me run through the list that Hillary Clinton had a rigged investigation into her email server scandal.
If she had top secret classified information on that server, isn't that a violation of 18 U.S.C. 793, a clear violation?
Yeah, Sean, I spent three years saying that.
Yes.
Do you believe that when she deleted subpoenaed emails, had people do it for her, use BleachBit to acid wash the hard drive, beat up devices with hammers, remove SIM cards?
Do you believe that the intent was to destroy evidence for the underlying crime and obstruct justice?
I do believe that her intent was corrupt, yes.
Do you believe a prosecutor or a normal prosecutor would find that as something that is a chargeable offense?
Yeah, the reason I hesitated on your last question, Sean, is I've always thought that Mrs. Clinton's motive was to conceal the degree to which the State Department was put in the service of the Clinton Foundation when she was at the State Department.
But there was an intent to avoid to destroy evidence?
Yeah, I think there was an intent to destroy government records, which you're not allowed to do.
And besides obstruction to justice, it's a crime in and of itself standing alone to destroy government records, regardless of whether they're connected to a judicial proceeding.
All right.
And you also believe that FISA, there was likely a fraud committed on the court.
Yes, I do believe there was a fraud committed on the court with the FISA.
All right.
Andy McCarthy, National Review Online.
Always great to hear from you, Andy.
Thanks for being with us.
Thanks, Sean.
As he was discharging the rounds, I ran up to him and I yelled at him and he dropped his weapon and he ran out and I chased him out of the sanctuary.
Already, I'd already chased him to his vehicle.
At this point, the Border Patrol agent came out, said, clear back, I have a gun.
And then I moved back behind the vehicle and he discharged into the vehicle.
Yes, he was trying to shoot.
He was trying to shoot at the parked car, and he was shooting low.
I don't think he was aiming at the assailant.
He was aiming at the vehicle to disable the vehicle so we could get him out of there.
I was going to get him out of there.
I wanted to make sure this guy was caught.
All right, that was Oscar Stewart describing how he stopped this synagogue shooter last weekend.
Really a hero in what happened here.
The fact that so many shots did go off and there was only one person killed.
That woman's name is Lori Kay.
That woman saw that her rabbi, Rabbi Goldstein, was about to get shot, and she jumped in front and took the bullet literally for the rabbi.
I guess no greater love hath anybody than to lay down their lives for another human being.
And where these people of enormous courage come from unexpectedly in the moments that matter, it happens again and again.
You know, but of course you get the predictable gun arguments almost within seconds by a predictable news media that has an agenda as it relates to the right and rights of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves.
And from 2008 to 2018, with teachers now carrying guns in 20 states, there have been no school shootings at schools that let teachers protect their students and themselves.
And for all the times I have said there is an answer, we want to protect schools and municipal buildings.
Well, there's one answer.
I would hire retired police, retired military guys, and maybe even in the case of surrounding schools, if you donate X number of hours a week with your professional background, maybe you pay no state and federal income taxes.
That would be a huge benefit to retired police officers and retired military personnel.
But all these gun control debates are the same.
They all go down the same arguments.
And it's interesting because the people that are usually making them are people themselves that often have armed guards like Hollywood liberals or these politicians.
And by the way, I don't think that's a bad thing.
We've got to protect every politician.
We've got to protect any human being that might be a public figure of some time or subject to some type of attack or had threats to themselves or their families.
But what about the rest of us?
What about the rest of America?
What happens when there is a home invasion?
What happens if somebody does break into your house?
What happens if you do have young children?
Yeah, you can call the police, but by that time the incident, whatever it may be, is over.
John Lott joins us.
And John, of course, has many incarnations of his best-selling book, More Guns, Less Crimes, and here to discuss it.
How are you, sir?
Doing great.
Good to talk to you again, Sean.
You know, you take a lot of crap.
Every single time you point out, and you do this, your profession, you're a professor, correct?
I've been a professor at a lot of different schools.
Right now, I'm president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, but I've been at Yale, University of Chicago, Stanford, the Wharton Business School.
Yeah, serious.
You're a serious educator, and so your research, your background, your work is based on empirical data.
In other words, you look at those states that have the most restrictive, for example, carry permits or restrictive gun laws, and you compare them to states that don't have such restrictions, and the data tells you what?
Well, the data tells you is as you see a greater percentage of the population able to carry a permit-concealed handgun, you see greater drops in violent crime rates.
And it's particularly people who are relatively weaker physically, women and the elderly, and people who are most likely to be victims of violent crime, overwhelmingly poor blacks who live in high-crime urban areas, who benefit the most from being able to get a concealed carry permit.
And now, last year, we ended up seeing over 17.5 million Americans have a concealed carry permit.
And we also now have 16 states where it's not even necessary to have a permit to be able to carry.
So it's even a larger number than 17.5 million actually do carry.
You know, I've had a concealed carry permit in Rhode Island, California, Alabama, Georgia, and New York City for most of my adult life.
I don't even like to carry a weapon.
I've been trained.
I've been a pistol marksman since I'm 11 years old.
It is a great, huge responsibility.
I always tell people, you know, sometimes people will call in.
They know I'm pro-Second Amendment.
They know I believe in the right to carry.
They know that I agree with your analysis and your book because it's factual based.
And they'll say, well, what kind of gun do you think I should get?
And I said, well, whatever you decide to get trained in the use of.
Is that a good answer?
Right.
Well, I mean, different people have different size hands, and, you know, they should go out and test the guns to see which one they feel most comfortable with.
But sure, people need to get training.
And but what you find is that even when the government doesn't require that people get training, the type of person who's going to get a permit, a law-abiding individual, knows exactly what you're saying.
How much is at stake if they go and use a gun improperly?
And you see, even when there's no legal requirement to get training, people do on their own because they know so much is at risk.
And what you find is that concealed carry permit holders are incredibly law-abiding.
These people lose their permits for any type of firearms-related violation at thousands or tens of thousands of one percentage point, even lower, much lower rates than police.
Police rarely get convicted of firearms-related violations, less than one percent of the city.
You know, these stand-your-ground laws, like in Florida, allows you to be able to stand in your house and protect yourself.
And do you know New York has a you must retreat provision?
Right.
Well, about 30 states have stand-your-ground type provisions.
And the reason why they do is that there's a lot of uncertainty when they say retreat as far as possible.
And you have a number of cases where prosecutors have gone after people, and legislators have said, you know, the person made the right decision here, and you shouldn't be harassing them.
And so they've passed these stand-your-ground laws, or courts have imposed them in a number of states.
How many times, how many stories can you think of off the top of your head where if it was not for a person that was carrying a firearm, it would have been a catastrophe?
And you remember years ago there was the one school shooting and there was a state law that you couldn't have any weapon on school property and the shooting began and one of the teachers ran out to a parking lot that was off campus and brought the gun back.
Remember that story?
Yeah, it's Pearl, Mississippi.
It was an assistant principal there at the school.
Basically, he had to run about a half mile total to go and get his gun and bring it back.
And he was able to stop the shooter who was leaving the high school there to go to the middle school across the street in order to continue his attack.
Unfortunately, he was able to stop him at that point.
But on our website at crimeresearch.org, we have literally dozens of cases in just recent years where police have said that mass public shootings would have been stopped if it wasn't or were stopped because of the presence of a concealed carry permit holder.
And the amazing thing is these get maybe a few stories in local media and local media, but they almost never get national news coverage.
And the few times they get national news coverage, the media gets it wrong.
I mean, I can give you cases from this year, a dentist's office, where the police have said that one person was killed and the killer was starting to point his gun at other people in the office when a permit holder who was a patient stopped them.
You have cases last fall at a school event in Florida that was stopped by a vendor who just happened to be on the premises there and was able to use his permanent concealed handgun to stop somebody who was shooting at hundreds of students that were there.
If these permit holders weren't there and people had been killed, these would have gotten massive international news attention.
Let me give you, but what do you think of, I want to go back to New York's law for just a second.
Sure.
And New York's, their self-defense law is based on the CASEL doctrine, but it's considered so much weaker than similar castle doctrine laws enacted in other states.
For example, in New York, if you want to say compare it to Florida, a citizen has a duty to retreat from attackers if they feel they can safely do so.
And, you know, other states that have CASL doctrines only with the duty to retreat, that's Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island.
And, you know, I'm reading all this and I'm thinking, this is absolutely crazy because, you know, at that point, you know, if that happens, you know, look at all the people I've interviewed over the years.
Usually, whatever is going to unfold in a horrible situation, if there's a break-in, it's not that, oh, let me back up first.
The law requires I back up.
It is a, to me, it's such an unrealistic expectation, especially if somebody breaks into your own home and has a weapon, and I guess, and then you have to explain to the police that you, well, I tried to retreat.
Right.
Well, I mean, I can give you cases where people tried to retreat and the prosecutors said, well, I thought maybe you could have retreated even further, and they'll bring cases against before Oklahoma changed their law.
There was a case where a man had pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store.
A robber had attacked him, knocked him to the ground.
The 67-year-old man got up, tried to run away.
The robber knocked him down a second time.
The older man got up, tried to run away.
Again, the robber knocked him down a third time.
And at that point, the man pulled out his permanent concealed handgun and shot the robber.
The prosecutors brought a case against him saying that it was possible for him to stole retreat further.
But, you know, the thing is, this kind of uncertainty about exactly how far it's possible for you to retreat creates uncertainty in people's minds and can endanger their lives.
And the thing is, it's not like you have a license just to go and shoot somebody.
There's a reasonable person test that exists in these standard ground states where a reasonable person would have to believe under those circumstances that the individual was in serious risk of death or serious injury when they used their gun, and the force has to be commensurate to the risk.
So if somebody's yelling at you, you just can't pull out your gun and shoot them.
And you can't threaten them first.
If you threaten them first, then you lose any protection that you have under those types of laws.
The other person has to initiate the attack, and there's serious rules that you have to meet in terms of whether or not you're legally able to protect yourself under those circumstances.
I hear, we played the tape earlier of Oscar Stewart, and you always hear these examples of these people that, you know, in the midst of evil and horror, they just step up.
And because they're armed, they have the ability that empowers them to protect other people.
Now, Lori Kaye is a different story.
She just took a bullet for her rabbi in that case out of pure human love, which is, you know, unbelievable.
But this guy had the confidence because he was, thankfully, armed.
Yeah, I mean, I just cried when I heard the story of the woman who threw herself in front of the rabbi that was there in order to save his life.
I mean, it's so horrible that such wonderful people die.
I mean, somebody who has this courage and is willing to save another person's life, those are the types of people that we want to have more in this country, not less.
And the thing is, though, you know, I wouldn't recommend almost anybody to go after one of these people without having a weapon.
To go and cross open space is incredibly dangerous.
I mean, it's very heroic if somebody does something like that, but it's extremely risky.
And the thing is, the reason why we did this study, looking at all the public schools in the United schools in the United States from the beginning of 2000 through 2018, was just to check what happens when teachers are able to carry and staff are able to carry.
Are there risks?
Are there things that might go wrong?
Because there's so much in this debate about gun control debate generally about things that might possibly go wrong.
Well, we don't need to guess.
We have over a thousand school districts in the United States that have teachers and staff that carry guns now.
And also, can it be a deterrence?
Might it stop some people from attacking these schools?
And what we found is that all the things that are listed...
It does, but yep.
I'm just out of time, but John Lott, I urge everybody to get a hold of his books, bookstores everywhere, Amazon.com.
And, you know, facts are dangerous things for people that just have a political agenda.
John Lott, thanks for being with us.
Thank you very much.
All right, when we come back, George Pompadopoulos, yeah, the feds turned.
Yeah, they set up George Papadopoulos.
What does this mean for him going forward?
We'll take a quick break on this Friday news roundup, information overload coming up next.
Also, Hannity tonight, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
We got a great show.
Tell you about that in just seconds.
Coming up next, our final news roundup and information overload hour.
Let's hear a question, President Trump.
If you take Director Comey out of the equation and his actions in 2016 and 2017, would the country be where it is today?
I think that he did a terrible job.
I would say he probably led some kind of an effort.
The word spying has been used.
He probably was one of the people leading the effort on spying.
That's a very serious charge to make.
I know, and we'll find out whether or not it was true.
And I think it could very well be true, but we're going to find out pretty soon.
How was this not spying?
Well, I guess it depends on your definition of spying.
The Attorney General sort of saying the other day that he has an expansive view of spying, including legal spying, in the way that if the government actually has the right to be doing it, that spying is not illegal.
Others have a different connotation of it and see it more nefariously.
What this was, was the FBI felt that it needed to have eyes and ears on the ground as it used a confidential informant to speak to two Trump campaign officials.
And what they did was, is they installed a woman with this professor in England who made these attempts to talk to these individuals.
And the woman herself spoke to at least one of them.
What this showed to us was sort of how seriously the FBI was taking the problem, how the lengths they were willing to go to to put a trained investigator, someone that knew how to collect information, knew how to collect evidence, could testify at a trial, putting them on the ground to bear to make sure that this informant didn't go off the rails.
Now, if you're a Trump supporter, if you're Trump himself, you look at this and you say, aha, see, this shows that the Bureau was out to get the campaign.
But if you're the FBI, you would say, look, this is a good thing.
This prevented the operation from going awry and from going too far.
And what did they suspect of George Papadopoulos, a guy, Michael, obviously, who you know better than anyone, has been in the center of all this Russia talk over the last couple of years.
Why did they zero in on him?
They had learned from the Australians that Papadopoulos had had conversations with an intermediary about the Russians having dirt, having hacked emails on Hillary Clinton.
And there was a lot of concern at the time about what the Russians were doing in general during the election.
What was there hacking about?
Was there election interference?
And then they learn about this, that this campaign official may know something about what the Russians have against the Democrats.
And they're trying to figure out, are there connections here?
Are there ties here?
And it was in that environment that they took the steps that they did to try and find out using these confidential informants, using a super secret operation here to try and find out more about what was really going on.
Was the Trump campaign coordinating with the Russians?
Now, we know today, after Bob Mueller's investigation, that there was not direct coordination between the campaign and Russia.
But in the summer of 2016, the FBI did not know that.
They just knew that there was a lot of smoke and that they needed to dive in and try and figure out what was going on.
All right, that was Mike Schmidt.
He works for the New York Times.
Let me just back up and tell you what's going on there.
And that was first the president.
Yeah, of course they were spying on his campaign.
That is not even in doubt at this particular point.
They did it numerous ways.
And then you got this New York Times reporter, Michael Schmidt, literally spinning that the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign to learn about Russian interference.
Did they have warrants for these spies when they sent Stefan Halper to go after Carter Page and George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis?
Were there warrants involved in any of this?
Now, there were different ways that we now know they were spying on the campaign.
Of course, there's the phony FISA application that got into Carter Page's personal life and all things in terms of his relation to the campaign at the time.
And we now know that they committed a fraud on the FISA court.
Never told the court that Hillary Clinton paid for what the New York Times is now suspecting is Russian disinformation in the dirty Russian dossier.
Part one, they didn't tell the court that she paid for it, part two.
And when they got the FISA approval, it was all based on a fraud.
And if anyone else, if anybody listening to this program lies before a court, I promise you there will be real significant consequences.
That's not something that is ever taken lightly.
So those people that signed off on it, and remember too, they didn't verify it and they didn't corroborate it.
And we now know it's unverifiable in large part because, oh, that's right.
Even the author of the dirty Russian dossier Hillary paid for, Christopher Steele, he doesn't stand by his own document.
All right, now take it a step further because the New York Times and Michael Schmidt, who you heard there, trying to get ahead of this whole story, you know, and Red State pointed out today, he's been the lead author of 11 stories that seem to have come directly, as Red State says, from James Comey, as it relates to an amazing trail of Comey leaks to be cited.
But anyway, they team up to write this report.
And, you know, they're saying that one member of the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, targeted for spying yet in another way, but in a similar way, and maybe not duplicated.
But the conversation taking place at that London bar in September of 2016, you know, here it is.
George Papadopoulos is just sitting across the table from somebody, has no idea he's being set up.
Some blonde woman and is somebody saying a former Trump campaign advisor came on, came in there into the bar, and the FBI was there to literally set him up.
And the woman who used the name Ezra Turk was working for the feds when she posed as a research assistant wanting to discuss foreign policy with Papadopoulos.
And Turk, whose real name is unknown, traveled to London to work with the Cambridge professor, Stefan Halper, who we've talked a lot about, longtime FBI informant who the feds had told to set up a meeting with Papadopoulos, but the feds learned nothing of value when Papadopoulos and Turk had drinks or when Papadopoulos later met with Halper at a hotel in London and Turk returned to the U.S.
George Papadopoulos joins us now.
Remember, he's the author of the brand new book, Deep State Target, How I Got Caught Up in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump.
He's also here with his wife, Simona.
Remember, he spent two weeks in jail over all of this nonsense.
Welcome back, both of you.
Boy, it gets deeper and deeper, doesn't it?
Oh, thanks a lot for having us, Sean.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
You know, how much of this did you know as it relates to this blonde spy that they sent to set you up?
Sean, this whole thing, my entire case from beginning until end was pre-planned and orchestrated by the Western intelligence, the CIA and FBI.
Even the guy who told me about this nonsense that the Russians had Hillary Clinton's emails, Joseph Mipsud.
He's currently the professor in London.
So people keep forgetting who told me this information.
They act as if some Russian agent told me this information in London.
This man, Joseph Mipsud, has been outed just two weeks ago, living next to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, and he's on the payroll of a CIA school in Rome called Lean Campus.
So whoever this person was, he was an operative, but I guarantee you he was not working for the Russians, and that's why Lindsey Graham and Devin Nunes have gone public now and are suggesting that this professor was some sort of FBI asset that was used to dirty me up.
Now, then we go to this bizarre meeting I had with this Australian diplomat that you referenced.
Between the day that he told me this information, the overseas professor told me that the Russians had her emails, I was contacted by U.S. intelligence, British intelligence, and Australian intelligence even before the Alexander Downer meeting, which apparently triggered this whole thing.
So when I met with Alexander Downer, I thought he was spying on me, and I thought he was recording my conversation.
And I even reported him to the FBI and Bob Moeller, and I testified in front of Mark Meadows and John Ratcliffe, saying the same exact thing that this guy, Alexander Downer, the Australian, was no random diplomat and he was sent to make contact with me.
Now, that was in May 2016.
Fast forward to the Stefan Helper and Azra Turk meeting in September of 2016 in London.
Stefan Helper sends me an email unsolicited out of the blue.
I have no idea who this person is.
He wants to pay me $3,000 to hear about my thoughts on the energy business in Israel, which I was an expert on at the time, and fly me out to London and talk about foreign policy.
I go there to London, and before I even meet with him, he says, before I meet with you, you need to meet with my assistant, this girl, Azra Turk.
She meets with me at a bar in London.
She's very flirtatious.
She didn't even speak English properly.
So right away, I understood that this was no Cambridge assistant, and she wasn't even American.
She was Turkish.
So I don't buy the story that she was actually FBI.
I think she was CIA and might have actually been involved with some foreign intelligence.
She's the one that set up this quote meeting this date at the restaurant she had picked out for you.
And she sent you the text.
And you said from the get-go, even the text was somewhat suggestive, flirtatious.
Let's put it that way.
You know, a woman basically had a central casting for a spy movie, you know, young, blonde, 30s, not shy about showing how she looks.
And within five minutes, she's suggesting to you that she's available.
Basically, yes.
And that's why the whole thing was really bizarre.
It made no sense to me.
And I was laughing it off until the next day when she goes from this kind of flirty, you know, bubbly person to then more of a cold, calculated person with helper.
And I meet helper and her at this private member's lounge in London called the Traveler's Lounge.
It's like some private diplomat club that, you know, he was a member of.
And she's basically pouring us coffee and helper and then just looking at me and just, I think, taking notes of some nature and smiling.
And I look at helper, and you want me to tell you what I really thought initially?
This is going to be a funny story.
I thought they were dating.
I don't know what was going on.
But right away, I knew she wasn't an assistant, a proper assistant.
And Helper then, he's basically belligerent.
He's sweating.
His body language is very off.
He's castigating me for my policy positions on Turkey, which I was very hostile to.
And then it was very weird how that was a Turkish assistant with him.
I want this operation to not simply be viewed as a simple operation against me, but when Donald Trump tweeted last week that the British were involved in spying, let me explain to you exact evidence of how the British were spying.
During this operation in London, where I'm meeting Stefan Halper and Azra Turk, which have now been outed as at least some sort of U.S. Intel people.
By the way, I just want to be clear, you agreed with everything in the Mike Schmidt article, except that you don't think it was the FBI.
You think it was the CIA and Turkish intelligence, right?
Yes, yes.
I think CIA was working with MI6.
I'm listening to all of this, and you can't, you guys should literally write a movie script as it relates to this entire story.
And, you know, I guess one of the questions I have is now that it keeps coming out, what remedies do you have?
Like, for example, before you went to prison, and look, I'll be frank and honest with people.
I know you were considering challenging the two weeks you were going to go to prison, and I told you both I didn't think it was a good idea because you may end up with five years, and it might ruin your whole life, and I didn't want to see that happen to either one of you.
But that doesn't mean that this case cannot be overturned, and it does not mean you don't have some remedy in the courts for being spied on illegally.
That's absolutely right.
And that's, and that's why I've actually hired new counsel, and they're top, their tiller lawyers, basically, in New York.
And they basically told me that you were crazy for even pleading guilty to the nonsense charge they had against you.
But that's all.
Well, when I gave you the advice, that would all transpired.
I gave it to you whether you would pull back on that and then risk potentially greater legal jeopardy.
That's what they said.
They said, because you pled guilty, now you're in deep trouble.
Because if you try to withdraw, you're going to probably get five years like you told me as well.
So that's why we never got out of the plea agreement.
But what they suggest now is, and this is something that we're looking at.
Real quick, I'm burning it out.
It's actually waiting to see what happens when the president declassifies the FISA materials and to see actually how illicit the surveillance abuse was on me and if there was any illegal behavior done and committed on me and in my case.
And if there was, we're going to probably try and withdraw from that.
I got to let you go, but the good news is you both are going to be on Hannity tonight and tell your story tonight in further detail.
It really is, you know, we were.
All right, I'm in a better mood.
I love music.
Everyone knows I love music.
You know, it's so funny because I talk to like Scott Shannon and all my DJ buddies, all my music friends.
They always listen to talk radio.
When I'm in the car, I don't want to hear talk radio.
I want to listen to country music because there's not much.
I mean, because I'm always usually studying in the car.
Why are you laughing?
Because it's true.
I've been next to you where I'm getting papers thrown at me.
You're like, no, I don't need this.
Swipe, swipe.
I don't need this swipe.
I mean, there's just papers on the screen.
Well, the pile, I mean, when Sweet Baby James comes over every day, it is like an encyclopedia of information.
For the first job of my day every day is literally sorting through the pile.
Keep it, don't keep it, keep it, don't get it.
In other words, those things that I really, but I need to know what's going on and everything.
And then I do the deep dive reading preparation, and then I start preparing notes for the show.
And in the interim, I'm making phone calls and making contacts.
We actually have sources that we talk to on a regular basis, what they're working on, what information they may have.
And then as I'm gleaning information, I might have to make some more calls.
And then I'm saying to Linda and television at the same time, okay, I want this for tonight.
I want this for today.
I want that.
I want this.
I want that.
And that's pretty much how our day goes, isn't it?
Every day?
I always know when you're in the car because the emails come fast.
But you always know when I'm at home because I'm sending out the mass email.
I think it's just a stream, personally.
Yeah.
And all right, what is the oddest hour you've gotten the text or the email from me about what I need?
Is there an hour in the 24-hour day that you haven't received something?
That's a better question.
I've received emails and texts from between all of our staff members between all hours of the day.
I think the weirdest time I ever got something from you was probably like five in the morning because I kind of feel like you've been up all night.
You should be asleep at least from like three to six.
Why is he up at five?
How common is it?
With you?
Yeah.
Yeah, you're up all the time.
I know, but you know, that's when I get the best work done.
Yeah, because it's quiet.
No one can bother me.
And it may sound weird, but I like being.
Don't you like being alone?
I like being alone.
Yeah, I like being alone.
I'm never alone.
I like it.
Well, you're never alone when you have a three-year-old.
That's impossible.
This is very true.
You know, when you have teenagers, they sleep.
They actually like sleeping.
Well, supposedly, it's better for their brains.
No, no, no.
Listen, one thing I learned, listen, I'm not parent of the year, but I definitely have learned the more you got to let your kids sleep, you got to insist on it.
You know what's so interesting is that kids never want to sleep.
They just, you know, it's like they want to stay up.
I want to stay up.
And this is like insane because how many times do I so I shouldn't even say this.
Last night I was doing reading.
I was at the kitchen table and I'm doing reading, doing reading, doing reading.
And I literally fell asleep sitting on the chair about three in the morning.
And I woke up and it was light out.
So does that mean you slept the whole night sitting in a chair?
Well, I mean, I tried to go into bed after.
It didn't work.
But yeah, pretty much, that was my sleep in a chair.
Well, I mean, I fell asleep in a Singaporean airport.
So, you know, I mean, all bets are off.
Wait a minute.
That's your fault.
That is.
I don't want to talk about whose fault it is.
That is your fault because I told you to take the itinerary I laid out because you're willing to transfer planes here and there and somewhere else.
And you just, you don't listen.
You know, I got to meet one of those people.
You wouldn't listen to my plan.
You left 36 hours ahead of me and arrived an hour before me.
That's not my fault.
Yes, it is your fault because I told you not to do it.
No, you were stubborn and dumb.
No, it's not.
It's neither of those things.
First of all.
No, no, no.
It was all of those things.
You were stubborn.
Finally, I said, fine, do it your way.
You and Blair, you go do it your way, and I'll meet you in Singapore or Vietnam or wherever the hell we're going.
Yeah, Blair says I make him suffer.
Oh, because Blair knew I was right.
He's like, behind your back.
I told him.
Tell her.
No, that doesn't work that way.
We don't let it on the team travel alone, period.
Blair, did you talk behind my back to Sean?
Yes.
Yes, he did.
He sees us every day.
Every day.
And he's like, but he got you back good in Vietnam because he kept paying.
Oh, yeah, we know what happened in Vietnam.
Yeah.
Now, one of the things we learned in Vietnam was, and it actually made me feel really good on the one hand, but then really bad on the other hand.
And I met a bunch of, you know, service guys, Marines, intelligence people are the best people on earth.
And by the way, when you enter hotel restaurant in Vietnam and you see a bunch of guys that are jacked and tough and have short haircuts, you can pretty much figure out that they're on our, you know, they're Americans and they're there for whatever we were there for, obviously the summit.
And at some point, I just said hi and thank you to them for their service.
Then they saw me eating alone because everybody else was missing an action.
I think I ordered a terrible pizza or something because I'm very picky with what I eat.
And they invited me over and I started buying beers and we were all having a great, the table just grew.
Remember, we went from one table to two tables to three tables.
Then it was like five tables.
Anyway, I left and I gave the guy, you know, a really good tip.
And I didn't hear till afterwards when he came back and he was literally had tears in his eyes.
And that's when we realized, you know, that whatever, 200 bucks, whatever I gave the guy, was really that's like six months of money for them.
And then so we're like throwing out $20 bills to everybody.
And everybody's like, well, just, are you sure?
Are you sure?
And that kind of did make us feel good, but it just shows you how blessed we are on the one hand, but also how other people around the world struggle and how much $20 means to them.
It's kind of harsh their life.
What you're supposed to answer to that.
No, I'm just, you know, I was just thinking about all the things that I saw when I was there.
And, you know, it really was very sad.
Me, me on a scooter because I couldn't get to work.
That wasn't sad.
That was actually incredibly funny.
And I loved tweeting out that picture and letting America see what you were doing.
The funny thing is, is they offered me a helmet and I said, nope.
Of course not.
Who would wear a helmet in Vietnamese traffic?
It was that was some scary traffic.
I'm sorry.
Well, I would not have made it.
It was morning rush hour because TV's 9 a.m. in Vietnam.
And so literally, we're in a van.
It's not moving.
I mean, not moving for like.
No, it doesn't move.
That's the problem.
The traffic does not move.
Yeah.
So we had Fox had hired a guide.
The woman gets out of the truck.
Vaughn.
What's her name?
Vaughn.
She was so nice.
And she calls me out and she says, get, you know, here.
And I paid the guy $100 and I got on.
He couldn't believe it either.
He's like, I'll take you wherever you want to go.
It was really funny.
He said to Vaughn, is this for me?
Like, he knew what that was.
And she goes, yep.
And she goes, get him to wherever I had to go.
And I get on the back of it.
And then Vaughn got on one.
And then she's videotaping me on the back of the scooter.
It really was a sight to see.
I mean, I honestly, I just got the biggest kick out of it.
It was kind of cool.
I mean, it was great.
And people were staring at me.
And another sad thing is everybody's wearing masks because the air quality is so atrocious there.
No, it really is.
It's all over here.
It's really bad.
Oh, it's just, it was awful.
We're very blessed in this country.
We really are.
Yeah, we forget that.
I mean, you know, we talk about how, you know, Americans work hard and they play hard.
That's going to wrap things up for tonight.
We have an unbelievable program.
The latest, they're trying to attack bar.
They can't recognize truth.
Mueller's done.
Nor can they realize the avalanche that is coming.
We have Alan Dershowitz, Greg Jarrett, Kimberly Strossel, Devin Nunes.
We now have what is like a Bond movie, George Papadopoulos.
