With so many new movies coming out, it’s nice to see more fails based on faith and family. One such film is Breakthrough, released April 17, this story is based on the true life experience of teen John Smith, who fell through the ice of a Missouri lake and spent 15 minutes under the frigid waters before first responders recovered his lifeless body. His mother never left his side, and relied on prayer to bring her son back. And it worked. 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.
And as you know, Sean and I never promote the stock market or investing in it.
But now we've discovered Dr. Richard Smith and his incredible financial software tools.
It's trusted by thousands to track over $20 billion of investments.
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All right, glad you're with us.
And write down this Thursday our toll-free telephone number.
It's 800-941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of this extravaganza, we'll have some big breaking news in about an hour.
I've been giving a heads up on it.
Thanks to our friend John Solomon, he's got more breaking news that everybody knew.
Everybody was warned.
Everybody was told before the first FISA application ever went in that, in fact, it was a dirty dossier.
That was not even something that was verifiable, if you can believe it, because that's true.
And it gets even worse than that when we get to the bottom of it.
And it is basically the Steele story falling apart.
Now we have real hard evidence to prove that it fell apart yesterday.
We told you the story yesterday that an admission, if ever there was one, tainting the FBI's attempt to get the warrant to surveil the Trump campaign.
Remember, there were multiple ways now they're spying on the Trump campaign.
You've got the empowerment of Stefan Halper to go and sort of try and entrap Papadopoulos, Carter Page, and Sam Clovis.
Then we get more details about the blonde bombshell agent, the 30-something blonde that was flirting with, being suggestive to, and pretty much offering services in exchange for information Papadopoulos might have as it relates to, well, what is Trump working with Russia on?
Are they working to get out the Hillary Clinton emails?
Well, it is a little ironic that three days ago that Hillary Clinton is saying to China, I hope you can release this information about tax returns on Trump and out come the tax returns, which, by the way, are a big dud.
And so anyway, we told you some of the story yesterday.
We now have new information, but yesterday's story was about the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Kathleen Kavlak's written account of her October 11th, 2016 meeting with Christopher Steele, who put together the dossier and more importantly, the confession.
This is 10 days out of the first FISA application being put in and before Steele's now discredited dossier that was used to justify the FISA application and the bulk of information to surveil Trump campaign advisor and thus backdoor the Trump campaign, you know, showing their ties to Russia.
Well, anyway, Steele's client is keen to use this information to come to light November the 8th, the date of the 2016 election.
He wanted to get it out for political reasons.
And I won't step on what I know about John Solomon's breaking news, but we've got these newly unearthed memos of high-ranking government officials meeting with Steele again in October 2016.
He being determined that he wants to get dirt on Donald Trump out because that's what Hillary Clinton and the DNC with funneled money through Perkins Cooey paying Fusion GPS.
That's what she wants.
She wants dirt on Trump out as quickly as possible.
And that that was basically given to him, But that was all flagged and put in a tight memo and handwritten notes by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, this woman, Kathleen Kavalak.
Now, that's October 11, 2016, 10 days before the FBI used Steele and his infamous dirty Russian dossier, even the New York Times suggesting it might have been from the get-go Russian disinformation.
By the way, Robert Mueller, I know you had time to look into Farah violations and business dealings from the 80s and 90s with Ukraine and Paul Manafort and taxi medallions and loan applications.
Here you have a dirty Russian dossier, and everybody in the FBI and Department of Justice knew about it.
Even your top deputy, Andrew Weissman, was warned about it when Bruce Orr, in closed-door testimony, revealed that he warned everybody it was dirty, that Steele hated Donald Trump.
Hillary paid for all of this.
Again, they hid that fact from the FISA court in their application.
Remember, every FISA application has on top verified and true.
I didn't know that till Jason Chaffetz told me that he had interviewed John Ratcliffe, and I had no idea what FISA warrant looked like.
Anyway, so nothing was verified.
This is now an unverifiable document.
But anyway, the FBI swore on October 21st, 2016 to FISA judges that Steele's reporting had been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings.
And the FBI determined Steele to be reliable.
And then they were unaware of any derogatory information pertaining to their informant who was working simultaneously.
By the way, being paid by the FBI, being paid by Fusion GPS vis-a-vis the funneled money from Hillary and the money she ran from the DNC, and apparently some oligarch, he's got four people paying for the same information and a pretty remarkable declaration.
You got a footnote five, page 15 of the FISA application, considering it took Kavlak a single encounter with Steele to find one of his claims about the Trump-Russian collusion to be blatantly false.
And actually, it pointed it all out.
Everybody knew.
I'll let John tell that story himself coming up at the top of the next hour, but everybody knew.
Everybody was warned.
And they did it anyway.
They were willing to commit a conspiracy and fraud on the FISA court with unverified Russian lies that now have been debunked.
You know, there's a lot of talk about, well, Donald Trump is now he is using executive privilege.
Well, it's the same topic.
It's the same nonsense.
We've had four separate occasions now where Donald Trump and the Trump campaign have been cleared of any conspiracy to work with Russia and collude on creating chaos and supporting the Trump campaign.
But nobody cares.
It doesn't matter.
Let's have the fifth investigation.
And the fact that the Attorney General, now they've invoked executive privilege on the Mueller.
The Mueller report was out there.
Now you can't, as a matter of law, release grand jury material.
You literally have an FBI that blatantly lied to spy on an opposition party candidate.
So happens they're lying for the campaign where if there was real justice, Hillary would have been indicted for the Espionage Act and for also obstruction of justice.
You know, on this contempt vote as to, you know, forcing the full unredacted version, well, Jerry Nadler can drag his, you know, backside over and see the entire thing with only 0.1% redacted.
It's illegal to release grand jury information.
It's illegal to give up sources and methods.
As a matter of fact, the Department of Justice now pushing back against this stupid circus that took place yesterday.
I mean, it's frankly embarrassing if you ask me, a contempt.
Oh, we want the full report.
You know, that's after trying to get the Attorney General Barr to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, but they don't want to be the ones asking the questions.
They'd rather put their lawyers in place of them, which never happened in the 206-year history of the House Judiciary Committee.
I mean, so now they want, what, the Attorney General to just allow 206 years of precedence in history to go by the wayside because Jerry Nadler and his band of Trump haters can't come up with their own questions or can't respond to the legal answers they're going to get from a highly intelligent Attorney General that knows the law inside and out, upwards and down, and he knows it better than all of them.
Now, they're free to have their lawyers write the questions for them, but they've got to ask them themselves.
And as it relates to the vote circus yesterday in the Judiciary Committee to recommend the Attorney General be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to release the full unredacted report of the special counsel investigation, the Department of Justice rightly was defiant because what they're asking them to do is break the law.
Their statements said the Attorney General could not comply with the House Judiciary Committee subpoena without violating the law.
And Chairman Nadler's actions have prematurely terminated the accommodation process and forced the president to assert executive privilege to preserve the status quo.
No one, including Chairman Nadler and his committee, will force the Department of Justice to break the law.
You have 24 Democrats trying to get the Attorney General to break the law.
And if he did, they'd be the first people to say, lock him up.
They almost tried that.
Well, we may have to if he doesn't testify before our lawyers.
Well, the lawyers aren't elected.
The lawyers aren't accountable to their constituents.
They are.
They're supposed to ask the question.
That would be their job.
I actually had a funny moment once in my career.
We had a new person working on the TV show.
And I don't remember what other shows apparently the person worked on.
He came in my office and said, oh, by the way, Mr. Hannity, I just wanted to give these to you.
I'm like, what is it?
They're questions for tonight's show.
Really?
Let me look at them.
Look at the questions.
They're all nice blue cards written clearly.
And I'm like, that's very nice.
Have you done this in the past for other people?
Oh, yeah.
No, I did it every day.
And I was like, that's my job.
I'm the host.
I've got to do something here.
And I said, but I thought it was very actually interesting.
Interesting.
Interesting.
But Barr, you know, for the Department of Justice, you know, the subpoena was premature.
The Attorney General could not legally release the sections of the report that Nadler's asking for, but Nadler has access to it.
He hasn't apparently taken the time to go walk over and see it.
That's his problem.
And Republicans supported the Attorney General.
You have Republican Ken Buck of Colorado reading Nadler, his own quotes from the 1990s.
I'll get into these later in the program today.
You have top Democrats.
They have access to all but two full and seven partial lines as it relates to the Mueller report.
That's it.
They can have access to everything else.
And, you know, so you can hold them in contempt, but it's worth remembering that he made available to the top Democrats the entirety of the Mueller report, save for two full lines and seven partial lines redacted to protect grand jury secrecy in keeping with federal law.
Last I checked, the only people to go look were Mitch McConnell, Doug Collins of Georgia, and Lindsey Graham.
I mean, it's really outrageous.
But the bigger story here is, and I know Comey's not going to take my advice, but Comey really needs to start paying attention.
Comey signed the first FISA application.
Now, Rod Rosenstein reminds us that means a career law enforcement, well, that is an affidavit.
And to the best of their ability, they are swearing that what is in that is verified and true.
And they were warned that none of it's true.
And they did it anyway.
Well, that would be a fraud on the court.
But don't worry, they want to go after Todd Jr. again.
Let's rehash everything again.
This is now harassment.
This is abuse of power.
How many more times are people going to have to pay lawyers up to $1,000 an hour to answer the same questions some of them have answered three, four times?
Why?
Because they're going to give one inconsistent answer.
There you go.
Now you got another perjury trap.
It's so disgusting.
A whole bunch of them.
What's up, everybody?
Linda, executive producer from the Sean Hannity Show here to talk to you about your money, your retirement.
Your money is like your health.
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Well, because some of his customers say he's created lightning in the bottle.
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Go to Hannity.com, retirement.
That's Hannity.com forward slash retirement.
I'm just actually enjoying the show that is actually unfolding, and that is all things Democrat are just imploding.
I mean, Nancy Pelosi's statement, Donald Trump is becoming self-impeachable.
What does that even mean, self-impeachable?
I mean, it makes no sense.
And then, you know, if this is, they want to double down on dumb and stupid, let them do it.
You know, the idea that they're asking the Attorney General to break the law and hold him in contempt because he won't break the law shows how dumb they are.
Now, Pelosi has been signaling left and right.
She's scared to death that her lunatic nut jobs in the House are going to keep pushing this idea of impeaching Trump.
So she's trying to come up with some alternative that she hopes will pacify.
Nothing is going to work for her.
And suggesting the House could pursue contempt charges against multiple people in Trump's orbit, not just the Attorney General.
Okay, for what?
You know, she couldn't give a timeline for when the House would vote to hold Barr in contempt for failing to provide the unredacted Mueller report, which would be illegal.
I mean, do they not, they want their lawyers on the House judiciary to be the ones to question Barr because they're too weak and not smart enough to do it themselves.
It hasn't happened in 206 years.
And Barr will tear them to shreds and they know it.
And he'll do it looking half-bored while he's, you know, literally ripping them to shreds intellectually and on the law.
When we're ready to come to the floor, Pelosi said.
And we'll just see because there may be some other contempt of Congress issues we may want to deal with at the same time.
Okay.
Who else do you want to hold in contempt because they refuse your order to break the law?
I mean, it's, you know, go right ahead.
And at the same time, you know, I'm watching the whole party collapse.
We're going to update you on the 2020 candidates.
I'm going to tell you why the president is winning this battle with China and America just seized a cargo ship of North Korea.
We'll tell you about that breaking news as well as we continue.
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.
Well, today I'm here to tell you about how to fight for your retirement, and that's right, fight.
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All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
Thanks for being with us.
Our toll-free number is 800-941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, Breaking News with John Solomon, it'll break it right here coming up at the top of the next hour.
By the way, another blockbuster film, not Hollywood produced.
This is this, this, Hollywood's dead.
They don't get it yet that there's so many options and so many content providers looking for good material that the monopoly they once had is over.
And their formulaic movie making, I mean, they've gotten so dull and uncreative that all these other movies, you know, look at the faith-based movies, for example.
Look at, you know, our little movie, Let There Be Light, that did so well.
Pull up, I can only imagine, Jason, if you get a minute.
You know, here's the two things I've learned as a communicator in radio and TV.
Radio and TV are not the most powerful forms of communication.
I'd like to say that they are, but in reality, they're not.
You know, I don't make, well, maybe I do.
I don't know.
Maybe we should take a vote on this.
I generally don't think I make people cry and touch their heart, their mind, their soul when I'm doing a radio and TV show.
But if you watch a movie, you know what?
How many times, you know, if you watch the Passion of the Christ, watch the last scene of Braveheart, Frida, Freedom.
You know, watch Gladiator.
I love Gladiator.
Marcus Aurelius saying to Maximus, Maximus, when I die, I will pass my powers onto you.
And you will make Rome a republic.
And will you not accept this great honor?
Maximus says, with all my heart, no.
That is why it must be you.
You know, my son Commodus is not a moral man.
You've known this since your youth.
That's pretty good, right?
The worst part is if you watch these movies with me, I'm throwing out the lines before they happen.
That's how many times I've watched it.
Exactly.
How many times, though?
Movies just.
And the other thing is music.
I mean, we all have our favorite go-to music that kind of touches your heart and, you know, you really love it and you can play it over and over again and you can relate to it.
That's why, you know, I can't get into heavy, to most heavy metal music.
I mean, I can listen to Sandman.
That's great guitar playing.
Who does that?
Metallica, right?
I mean, that's pretty, that's probably one of the best opening guitar solos ever in the history of music and a lot of fun.
But I can't understand like 90% of the words in most of their songs.
And it's just a lot of headbanging and got, you know, kids in the audience thrashing their heads back and forth like crazy people.
I don't particularly like most rap.
Some of it I can stand, but I'm not a big fan of the genre.
I do like old soul music for sure and 70s and even some of the 80s stuff.
I can tolerate Bruce Springsteen and Mun Jovi.
The fact that they're so liberal makes it hard.
It really does at this point.
But country is probably my favorite.
Even some Christian contemporary music, I like that too because it's inspiring and uplifting.
But it's not, you know, like, pull up to I can only imagine.
They take a song and they turn this.
This is an anthem song.
All right, play a little bit of it here.
Like when I walk by your side, I can only imagine what my eyes will see when your face is before me.
I can only imagine.
Just play a little more here.
Surrounded by your glory, what will my heart feel?
Will I dance for you, Jesus?
Or in all of you, be still will I stand in your presence.
But to my knees, will I fall?
Will I sing?
Hallelujah.
Will I be able to speak at all?
I can only imagine.
I can only imagine.
All right, that's the group Mercy Me.
So they turned that into a movie about the song, where it came from, and it did so well, and it didn't need Hollywood.
Let There Be Light Now on DVD if you haven't seen it one day.
There's another one out called Breakthrough.
And it's a true life story, or Heaven Can Be Real was another one.
You know, a kid fell through the ice in Missouri in a Missouri lake 15 minutes under the frigid waters before first responders recovered his lifeless body.
His mother never left this kid's side.
You know, she prayed that he'd come back, and he did.
It was number three.
It came out April 17th, I think.
And even this week, it's holding strong against all the Hollywood blockbusters just this past weekend, 33.5 million.
Well, it's not Hollywood that's producing these films.
And now content producers have, let's see, Amazon Prime.
They have Netflix, Hulu, and many more.
I mean, they're looking for content.
So they don't have a monopoly in Hollywood anymore.
I mean, how many more cartoon movies or comic book movies are we going to see?
I mean, maybe I know people like them.
I like Star War movies, but I'm kind of sick of them at this point.
And, but the Jennifer Anniston formula, I call it.
No, no dig on Jennifer Anniston.
She's a pretty woman and is good in the movies.
It has nothing to do with her, but how many times are we going to have a movie of Jennifer Anniston falling in love, falling out of love, getting married, getting divorced, getting remarried again?
I mean, it's pretty much formulaic.
Same with the cartoon movies or the comic book version of whatever, superheroes.
They want superheroes.
I mean, there's a place for it, but that's their main formula.
Now you're seeing that people are putting together faith-based films and patriotic films and films that don't insult those of us that are smelly Walmart voters, irredeemable, deplorable voters that like Donald Trump, you know, people like us that cling to God, guns, our Bibles, and our religion.
And Hollywood, like Washington, has contempt for we, the people.
All right, so we'll see.
You know, it's so fun.
Look, I'll give you an example.
So a friend of mine tipped me off to this, and I hate giving it away on radio because, you know, we don't watch or listen to other shows.
We just don't.
I don't have time, radio and TV.
I know the people that I do like, like Rush and Mark.
I wish I did have time to listen.
And when I do, it's, you know, like on a day off, I'll listen to them, but I won't listen to me on replay or guest host.
I just refuse.
Otherwise, why am I off work?
Anyway, so they thought they have this big blockbuster.
Now, all right, we get, well, there's no more collusion.
They know, by the way, they know it's over.
When the Attorney General said he's done with the Mueller report, it's over.
There's not going to be any indictments.
It's not going to be, there's no collusion.
There's no obstruction.
It's done.
The decision has been made.
And all this talk and they can't let it go.
And four separate, all they're doing is committing political suicide, which I guess we should just let them do.
So then when they get the next, rather than ever admit that this phony media mob is wrong, no, they're just going to double down on new lies, more breathless reporting, more hysteria.
If anything, they're more angry than they've ever been because they've been exposed as fake news liars and conspiracy theorists, those that have advanced hoaxes now for two plus years.
God forbid they have a moment of introspection and say, you know, maybe we screwed up here.
But, you know, here we go again.
New York Times blockbuster report that they got some of Trump's tax returns from like 30 years ago, 35 years ago, and a bombshell.
Oh my gosh, he lost a trillion, $1 trillion, no, sorry, $1.17 billion between 1985 and 1994.
I don't want to hear Don Lemon.
That's what they say.
That was their big headline.
They've done breathlessly reporting.
He's ah, what a crappy bismuth.
But that's not the story.
And it's a story Trump has told himself.
And a friend of mine said, go back and look at the first Apprentice.
The Apprentice debuted January 8th, 2004.
At the top of the show, the very first episode, Donald Trump himself laid out a summarized version of the same story blockbuster that the Times so proudly ran on Tuesday.
Trump in 2004 on the Apprentice.
It wasn't always so easy.
About 13 years ago, I was seriously in trouble.
I was billions of dollars in debt.
Oh, he said it himself.
New York Times in their blockbuster report this week, the numbers show that in 1985, Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses, largely casinos, hotels, retail space, et cetera, apartment buildings.
And then the Apprentice Open continues.
But I fought back and I won big league.
I used my brain.
I used my negotiating skills and I worked it all out.
Mr. Trump's 2005 returns, the Times says, show that by then he had significant sources of income and was paying taxes.
So where's the blockbuster?
Now Trump goes on.
Again, opening episode.
I'm going to show you this tonight on Hannity.
Now my company's bigger than it ever was, stronger than it ever was, and I'm having more fun than I've ever had.
I've mastered the art of the deal, and I've turned the name Trump into the highest quality brand.
And then the New York Times Tuesday, Mr. Trump built a business licensing his name, became a television celebrity and ran for the White House by branding himself a self-made billionaire.
Okay, so end of the story is he's still a billionaire.
Now, everybody in Atlantic City with the casino business, they all went belly up.
The whole thing.
I've got the tape.
So consider the breathless coverage and just listen to Trump in his own words.
All they're doing is repeating his story that he's told many times.
Listen.
Hit it.
But it wasn't always so easy.
About 13 years ago, I was seriously in trouble.
I was billions of dollars in debt.
But I fought back and I won big league.
I used my brain.
I used my negotiating skills and I worked it all out.
Now my company's bigger than it ever was.
It's stronger than it ever was.
And I'm having more fun than I ever had.
Okay, where's the blockbuster?
You look at these 2020 candidates.
You know, if they're going to run on the New Green Deal and hating and raging Trump, I don't think they're going to win.
You got to, you know, I know every poll you read is broken down demographically.
Here's a question.
African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, women in the workforce, youth unemployment, all record lows.
Survey now out shows that a significant percentage of African American voters are likely to abandon their support for Biden once they find out he favored keeping public schools segregated in the 70s rather than support, forced busing.
Biden's mixed record on civil rights dents his support with the Democratic Party's most loyal constituency.
Now, who was most disproportionately impacted by the horrific failed economic policies of Biden Obama?
Yeah, minorities, Hispanic Americans, black Americans.
Yeah, they were hurt the most.
Who has now disproportionately been impacted positively?
Well, that would be even people that don't have high school diplomas and people that have no college.
They are by far the biggest beneficiaries of the economic boom under Trump.
By the way, Bernie's numbers are imploding.
Could spell doom for him.
A month ago, he had the Hill found Biden had 36% of support and Bernie 19.
Now Biden is at 46, Sandro's 14.
What's happening to Birdie?
And of course, now Biden has big problems with the Ukraine and firing the prosecutor that was investigating his son and leveraging American tax dollars to do it.
I'm leaving in six hours, he said.
You either fire that guy that's investigating my son or I'm not giving you the billion.
Okay, then he has other problems with his son flying on Air Force 2 to China.
And while Biden is in China, guess what's happening?
Biden's son is making a fortune.
And Biden's recent China gaffe is now creating difficulty for him.
As he says about, China is not America's competition.
Well, that's dumb, number one, like everything else he says.
You know, foreign leaders, Trump says, want Biden to win so they can rip off America again.
There's some truth to that.
Then you got the president last night.
I think the best line is, what happened to Beto?
Where's Beto?
They're all hypocrites.
They're all, none of them, they want the new Green Deal and they want to run on hating Donald Trump.
Listen, people, at the end of the day, they're going to vote their pocketbooks, peace, and prosperity.
That's it.
And what's happening, and the Democrats can't figure this out yet, is people now have adjusted to the new, unique, disruptive, iconoclastic style of Donald Trump.
You get it.
He's going to tweet.
Nobody's going to stop him.
But he's going to fight like hell to keep his promises.
And the economy is working thanks to him.
The way we operate in the Department of Justice, if we're going to accuse somebody of wrongdoing, we have to have admissible evidence and credible witnesses.
We need to prepare to prove our case in court.
And we have to affix our signature to the charging document.
That's something that not everybody appreciates.
There's a lot of talk about FISA applications.
And many people that I see talking about it seem not to recognize what a FISA application is.
A FISA application is actually a warrant, just like a search warrant.
In order to get a FISA search warrant, you need an affidavit signed by a career federal law enforcement officer who swears that the information in the affidavit is true and correct to the best of his knowledge and belief.
And that's the way we operate.
And if it's wrong, sometimes it is, if you find out there's anything incorrect in there, that person is going to face consequences.
All right, there, of course, Rod Rosenstein saying once again, oh, there should be consequences.
Korea law enforcement put their name and their reputation that what they are signing in a FISA warrant is true to the best of their ability.
And if they get it wrong, there are consequences.
Well, we've been following the stories of John Solomon, and now we're learning a lot.
We're also learning the testimony behind closed doors of Bruce Hoare, and he's telling everybody he warned everyone at the DOJ, the FBI, the upper echelon, and even Andrew Weissman of Mueller's team that, in fact, the dossier was unverified.
Christopher Steele hated Trump, and it was paid for by Hillary.
Now we have for the first time direct evidence thanks to John Solomon's great reporting earlier in the week, and that is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalek's written account of an October 11th, 2016 meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele and the Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence operative admitting his research was in fact political with an election day deadline.
Now that was said 10 days before the FBI, according to the Grassley Graham Nunes memos, used a FISA application with the bulk of that information being the Russian disinformation, according to the New York Times, but discredited dossier.
Well, now it takes an even deeper turn, just breaking now.
By the way, hour two, Sean Hannity show, 800-941-Sean is a toll-free number.
Literally, just in the last minute, the updated column by John Solomon, investigative reporter with The Hill, the FBI Steele story is now falling apart completely because of the intelligence being false.
Media contacts that were flagged before the FISA application in October that in spite of what Comey says there was no spying, spied on Carter Page and spied on the Trump campaign, and he should know because he signed that first warrant.
And we have newly unearthed memos show that, in fact, a high-ranking government official who met with Steele in October 2016 determined some of Donald Trump's dirt was simultaneously digging up for both the FBI and Clinton's campaign was inaccurate.
They knew it was inaccurate.
And remember, Steele was getting paid by the FBI even at this time and by a Russian oligarchs and by Hillary Clinton and by the DNC.
Great gig for one piece of information if he can get it.
John Solomon gives us the details.
He joins us now.
How are you?
I'm doing well, Sean.
Yeah, you got this one right.
This is a very big revelation.
And let me tell you what's happened.
Since the last story broke, the State Department has released more documents about Steele's contact with Kathleen Kavalik, that deputy assistant secretary you mentioned.
It's all on this October 11th meeting.
So it turns out she also had a set of handwritten notes.
And they originally gave us a type memo and they redacted most of the information out of it.
That's now been unredacted, so we can see what she wrote.
And what she wrote is very significant to the question of FISA abuses.
Let me set it up just quickly.
Let's remind everybody that in the first application for the FISA on October 21st, 2016, the FBI said that they considered Steele reliable, accurate, and they had no derogatory information on him.
Now I'm going to take you to Kathleen Kavlik's notes, which, by the way, she distributed to the intelligence community right after she met with Steele.
She writes that she detected he was inaccurate or erroneous with one of his allegations involving Donald Trump and alleged Russia collusion.
Let me tell you what the allegation was.
There was somehow Manafort and Carter Page and all those Trump people who've now been shown not to have colluded with Russia.
They were working with the Russians on a hacking operation, and the people who were doing the hacking were getting paid out of the Russian consulate in Miami.
And immediately after Kathleen Kavalik hears it, she writes in her notes, boy, that doesn't add up.
There is no such thing as a Russian consulate in Miami.
They don't even have a consulate in Miami.
So the very allegation that Steele was making in real time, she debunked in her notes and in her memo immediately.
That's very important.
That's considered derogatory information, inaccurate information from an FBI source.
The second thing she detected that would be a real problem is that she wrote down, he told her on two occasions during her meeting that he was leaking to the Washington Post and the New York Times.
An FBI confidential informant may not leak to the news media while he's working for the FBI unless instructed by the FBI.
These revelations occurred 10 days before the FISA.
She sends this email up the chain.
It is improbable that the FBI didn't know it.
It means that there was substantial evidence, not only that Christopher Steele was admitted.
He was partisan and had an election day deadline.
It was determined he was giving the government false and inaccurate information, and he was leaking to the news media.
All three things are derogatory information under the standard.
And it ended up getting him fired, I believe it was November.
Am I wrong on that?
Yeah, okay.
And then the interesting thing is we know from closed-door testimony, he stayed in contact with Bruce Orr, then the fourth highest ranking member of the Department of Justice.
And we know from notes of Bruce Orr that Christopher Steele was desperately trying to get information, even though he'd been fired for lying and leaking to the special counsel.
And we know that Andrew Weissman, Mueller's number one, had been briefed by Bruce Orr about the contents being false and questionable and put together by a Trump hater and paid for by Hillary.
And, of course, Weissman was the guy that was at Hillary's victory party the night of the election.
Didn't turn out to be one, but he was there.
And Genie Ray, of course, was an attorney for the Clintons on the foundation.
So what you're really saying here is there is no excuse.
There is now direct evidence that shows that all of these people that signed off on that FISA application, the first one, that they were told, and they were told directly that this is unverified.
We now know it's, by the way, John, we know it's unverifiable because Steele doesn't stand behind it.
Yep.
And that Hillary paid for it and that Steele hated Trump and had an agenda.
Yeah, and keep in mind that the timing of his firing was after they had already used him to secure the dossier, right?
They used Steele and then they dump him a few weeks later.
There is now incontrovertible evidence that the FBI should have known and had grounds for firing Christopher Steele before the FISA warrant was issued, meaning they should not have used him to get this warrant, and here's why.
Well, they were paying him, John.
They were actually giving him money for the same thing that Hillary and the DNC, which she controlled the finances of.
Yeah, they were planning to pay him, but they ended up not paying him because they fired him.
But this is very important.
He's a responsible.
But didn't he get paid beforehand?
For other work, prior work.
That's correct.
But not related to the Russia Trump investigation.
He never got paid for the Russia Trump investigation by the FBI.
He was going to be paid, but then he got fired before he could get his paycheck.
But here is the important thing.
It doesn't matter whether he's paid or not.
As soon as he has an informant agreement with the FBI, he breaks protocol, goes to State Department.
That's a violation.
He gives inaccurate information to the government.
That's a violation.
He acknowledges he's leaking to the news media.
That's a violation.
All of those things were established by October 10th, 10 days before they used him for the FISA warrant.
This is the most incontrovertible evidence that the FBI should have and almost certainly did know Christopher Steele did have derogatory information.
He was rogue.
He was political.
He was inaccurate.
He was in violation of his agreement.
And yet they continued to use his information until they got their FISA warrant, and then they threw him under the bus after the fact.
So the question then remains that if there's no way, there's no way they could have verified the dossier, correct?
Right.
Right.
Okay.
I've been making the point.
Now, we know James Comey signed the first FISA application.
And again, I can replay Rod Rosenstein's words again, but Rod Rosenstein says, no, in a FISA application, you need a career law enforcement officer to the best of the knowledge and ability that what they're signing off to is accurate and true and been verified.
And if that's not the case, there are major consequences.
There's no way that Comey or anyone in the FBI could have verified something that is unverifiable because the dossier author Christopher Steele in an interrogatory says, I don't have any idea if any of it's true.
New York Times is now suggesting it was Russian disinformation.
I'd like to ask this question because I know there's issues about whether Mueller will testify.
I want to know when he knew that there was no, quote, collusion or conspiracy with Russia.
Number two, why didn't he tell the American people and the president?
Number three, I want to know about Robert Mueller if he's investigating Russia influence in our elections and the chaos that ensued.
Well, we know that this dossier was leaked to the media.
Korn and Isakoff, the Washington Post, to name a few.
You're also reporting that Steele was passing out information of the dossier to others, correct?
And the New York Times and Washington Post are specifically cited.
In fact, he says in the notes, he's quoted in the notes as saying they had the information almost as soon as he started his work in June and July.
So how does Mueller justify doing an investigation on Russian interference, know all about this, and not even blink an eye and go into it?
You said something before that's really important.
The FBI has not been able to verify, but let's say something it could have done.
It was able to debunk very specific information very quickly.
I found five things in these notes that within one hour I was able to debunk by making a couple phone calls and a couple Google searches.
Go through the five things.
Yeah, I'm going to give him to you a second.
The State Department woman during the meeting detected something that was overtly false by Steele, right?
There's no such thing as a Russian consulate in Miami.
That allegation can't be true.
Well, I was able to confirm that one of the allegations is that Carter Page met with the head of Gazprom.
We know that's not true.
Then he met with a senior intelligence officer.
We know that's not true.
How did I know that?
I called him and I called the Russians and they both said, no, we never met with each other.
They said the notes say Paul Manafort had a $100 million debt he owed Russia.
There's no record of a debt in Russia in the United States.
It was never found by Mueller.
That was overtly, it could be checked in five, ten minutes and determined if it's true or not.
And here's the big one: in these notes, just like in the dossier, it said Michael Cohen went to Prague.
We now know from Mueller's report there's no visa record of Michael Cohen in Prague.
In less than a half hour or hour of diligence, the FBI could have found five factually false things in the information Steele was providing him.
So what you're saying then is they absolutely did zero due diligence in what they ended up presenting to the FISA court and the possibilities.
Okay, and then, but more importantly, they knew, which means that they were willing to commit a fraud on the court, and they did commit a conspiracy to commit a fraud on the court.
Because at the top of, I just found this out, John Ratcliffe has said, verified is actually at the top of the actual.
It says the word verified application.
It does that on every one of the four.
And there's no evidence that the allegations are verified as we now know them.
In fact, there were many things that could have been debunked on a few hours' notice.
There's only two possibilities.
How did Mueller not even ask a single question about this then?
Well, we don't listen.
We don't know what he asked behind closed doors.
He certainly doesn't make any mention of the report except.
Well, but hang on a second.
He had time for taxi medallions, Farah violations from the 80s.
He had time for loan applications and time for taxes that were not paid, but he didn't have time for real Russia collusion.
And his mandate was so broad it sent him out in a thousand other directions.
One of the things that I think we should look for if Special Counsel Mueller finally testifies next week if he's allowed to testify is the question of did he communicate concerns to the Justice Department and to the IG.
There is a strong possibility from the reporting I've done that Director Mueller very quickly dismissed the dossier as a piece of garbage and may have reported his concerns to the Justice Department and possibly to the IG.
That would be a very significant revelation if Mueller did that.
It would suggest he understood the origins of this case were flawed from the beginning.
That would be a very, if he didn't, then he ignored the pretty clear willful evidence that this was a bad investigation at the beginning.
Either one is not a good scenario for the people who ran this investigation.
Everything we're talking about here that went on, ignorance, political involvement.
I got to commit to what FBI agents are trained to do when they do counterintelligence investigations.
This is the antithesis of a traditional counterintelligence investigation.
All right.
Great work, John Solomon.
We'll have more reporting on this blockbuster breaking news tonight as the layers of the onion now begin to get unpealed more quickly.
John Solomon, great work.
Thanks for being with us.
We'll see you tonight on Hannity.
Okay, sounds good.
All right, 800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of this program, we'll get to your calls, some of your reaction to this straight ahead.
All right, 25 now to the top of the hour.
We'll get to your calls here in a second.
I want to go back last night.
The president was on fire last night.
I mean, he was in Panama City in Florida in the panhandle.
I mean, he was just letting it rip.
You know, going after the Democrats, their radical positions, going over his record, which, by the way, is so uniquely better, distinctly better than Biden Obama.
Then he actually made fun of the Democrats and Biden and Sanders and Buddha Judge.
And at one point, he goes, what happened to Beto?
You know, and etc.
So let me play a little of this, then we'll get your reaction.
We'll go right to the phones out of this.
But this is the president from last night in Panama City in the Panhandle in Florida.
On issue after issue, the Democrat Party has never been further outside the American mainstream.
It's never been.
I've never heard of anything like what's going on.
I want to run so badly.
I want this race to start immediately.
Now, Democrats are pushing a $100 trillion takeover of the U.S. economy known as the Green New Deal.
That was written up by real genius.
The new Democrat Party believes in socialism.
Take a look at Venezuela.
And Democrats are aggressively pushing late-term abortion, allowing children to be ripped from their mother's womb right up until the moment of birth, prohibiting extreme late-term abortion.
Democrats are now the party of high taxes, high crime, open borders, late-term abortion, witch hunts, and delusions.
The Republican Party is the party for all Americans.
We want to make America great again.
That's what we're doing.
And our policy can be summed up in three very simple words: jobs, jobs, jobs.
The United States economy created another 260,000 jobs last month, way, way, way above what people thought.
They were making predictions much lower.
Then the big one, they were thinking about 1%, 1.2%, maybe 1.5.
And our growth number came in for the first quarter, which is almost always the lowest quarter of the year, historically.
3.2%, crushing expectations.
A lot of surprised people.
I wasn't surprised.
Since the election, we've created nearly 6 million new jobs, including more than half a million manufacturing jobs and nearly 700,000 new construction jobs.
Unemployment just reached the lowest rate in more than 50 years.
The women's unemployment rate is the lowest in more than 65 years, and soon will be a record number.
Women, women.
Remember last election?
Oh, he's going to do so bad with women.
I degrade with women.
Instead of wasting time, energy, taxpayer dollars on partisan stunts and hoaxes and witch hunts, Democrats should be focused on building up our country.
Did you see what just happened, by the way?
No collusion.
No obstruction.
No anything.
Two years on a witch hunt.
I could have gotten anybody in this audience.
I could have found something on you.
Two years.
Almost $40 million.
20 Trump haters, Democrats, and call them angry Democrats.
After two years, nothing.
No collusion.
And now the Democrats, we have a great attorney general.
Now the Democrats are saying, we want more.
You know, it was going to be like, we want the Mueller Report.
Now they say, Mueller Report?
No, we want to start all over again.
It is a disgrace.
We've got to focus on infrastructure.
We have to focus on lowering medical prices and medicine.
Always focus on our military and our vets, which we've done.
And the Democrats really should be focused now on restoring and helping the Emerald Coast of Florida, because that's what it is.
It's time to come together for the people of Panama City, for the people of Florida, for the people of our country.
It's time to stop this nonsense.
America is thriving again.
America is winning again.
And America is being respected again.
We're respected.
In fact, one of the Democrats today said that he, he, sleepy person, said that he heard from a lot of foreign leaders, and they want him to be president.
Of course they do.
So they can continue to rip off the United States.
Of course they do.
Of course.
I think if I heard that, I'd never vote for him.
And then you have Bernie.
Bernie.
And you have Bernie.
He got some real beauties.
Crazy Bernie.
He got a choice between Sleepy Joe and Crazy Bernie.
And I'll take anyone.
Let's just pick somebody, please, and let's start this thing.
Let's start it.
Pick somebody.
Got a young man.
Boot edge edge.
Boot edge edge.
They say edge edge.
He's got a great chance, doesn't he?
He'll be great.
He'll be great.
Representing us against President Xi of China.
That'll be great.
That'll be great.
I want to be in that room.
I want to watch that one.
I went to Texas and I made a speech.
And Beto, Beto.
Boy, is he falling like a rock.
What the hell happened to Beto?
So we went to El Paso and I made a speech and we had an arena that holds 8,000 or 9,000 people.
The arena was packed.
We had 35,000 people outside.
We had these massive movie screens outside so those people that couldn't get in could see.
He had 502 people.
The next day in the news, the New York Times guy actually wrote a story that he thinks that he had more people than me.
Can you believe this?
No, no, can you believe it?
No, so dishonest.
And most of them just said two massive crowds were in it.
Well, his crowd was not massive.
He had like 502 people according to the people that count crowds.
So we get a very bum press, but that's okay because we're here and they're not, right?
By the way, you see the tariffs we're doing?
Because they broke the deal.
They broke the deal.
So they're flying in.
The vice premiere tomorrow is flying in.
Good man.
But they broke the deal.
They can't do that.
So they'll be paying.
We don't make the deal.
Nothing wrong with taking in over $100 billion a year.
$100 billion.
We never did that before.
And we have that happening.
A lot of good things happening with a lot of countries.
So I just announced it will increase tariffs in China.
And we won't back down until China stops cheating our workers and stealing our jobs.
And that's what's going to happen.
Otherwise, we don't have to do business with them.
We don't have to do business.
We can make the product right here if we have to, like we used to.
Remember?
Like we used to.
By the way, what did happen to Beto?
What happened to him?
Where is Beto?
Where did he go?
Last I heard, he had 35 people show up at an event.
You know, last night, we actually did something that nobody else in the media does.
We panned the crowd.
You know, we literally are panning the crowd.
And it's massive.
It's 12,500 strong in a packed arena.
And people outside.
And Joe Biden couldn't get 1,000 people in Iowa.
Unbelievable.
All right, let's get to our phones.
Let's go to Jeffy's listening to the all-new AM710, W-O-R, Talk of New York, New Jersey, Long Island.
What's up?
How are you, Jeff?
Glad you called, sir.
Thank you for taking my call.
Basically, I listen to you all the time.
Love everything you say.
But one thing I haven't heard you say yet, and it's been bugging me, I have to say.
I was thinking about Pelosi and how the Democrats continue to weaken the country on purpose.
They try to weaken the prestige of the president, which then weakens our country.
They want to give up the borders.
Remember the country, Kuwait?
When they all of a sudden didn't have a border, they became part of Iraq.
People seem to forget the number one job of the president is to maintain the country.
Without a border, you don't have a country.
And when I see them working so hard to diminish the power and prestige of the president, the office of the presidency, the United States itself, all of a sudden we have missiles going off again.
They're having an effect.
They're weakening us.
I'd call them traitors.
They're not patriots.
Everything we do is to improve the country.
Why are they tearing it down?
I don't go as far as you.
I don't know what people's motivations are.
I can't.
It's sort of like hate crimes.
You know, okay, it's, you know, whatever's in the person's mind, unless they're really openly expressing it.
I think you punish people for the crimes.
Look, these are people, some sincere.
There are people that really, really, truly, honestly believe.
Well, I'll put in my share and you put in your share and we'll all have it equal.
Everything is equal.
It's never worked.
It's never going to work.
There's never been a greater system, economic and otherwise, or country that has accumulated more power and wealth and used it for good than the United States.
We're not perfect.
It's never been a country that has created more power and wealth, used it for the advancement of the human condition and abused it less than the United States, acknowledging imperfections.
And what I think is, you know, the greatest thing about capitalism and working is every one of us is born with talent and ability, I believe, from God.
And I think you can't really live your life, fulfill your life, unless you tap into and find what it is that you are best designed to do.
You know, people have very special and unique talents.
And, you know, whenever you work, you're serving other people.
You're either in the service business or you're producing goods and services that people want, need, or desire or services they want, need or desire.
And in the process, well, okay, you get money to buy a house, rent a house, buy a car, new or used.
It doesn't matter.
But so it is, it's a system where it is, it works with the human condition, which is to, I think we are at our best when we do that which we were born to do to the extent possible.
I mean, without getting too esoteric or philosophical here, but I do believe God created every man, woman, and child on this earth, and many are inclined to good.
Some people, you know, give in to the dark side.
Some people buy sick, evil, ugly, twisted ideologies.
And unfortunately, good people have to risk their lives to defeat evil in their time.
We've dealt with it in the last hundred years.
I've talked about it often.
And governments and governmental systems and wars have killed over 100 million people in the last century.
I do think there's another group of people that see dependency as a path for their own power base.
And there's a far more sinister side to their motives while they'll claim that they want to help people.
Their real interest is in helping themselves.
To focus only on Russia, Russia with four investigations clearing the president at this point is an abuse of the system, an abuse of power, and frankly, a disservice to the American people.
I think that'll all get sorted out in the next election.
American people are pretty smart.
I think they'll figure it all out.
All right, as we continue, back to our busy phones.
Les Miami, what's up, Les?
W-I-O-D.
What's going on, sir?
Yeah, I agree with you.
I think the American people will figure it out.
I just want to say I'm a Democrat, but I'm a reasonable, rational Democrat.
So I look at this Wall Street, this New York Times article about Trump's tax returns, and I would say to myself, okay, here's a guy.
In order to lose that much, he had to make that much.
He didn't get it from the government.
He made it himself.
If there was anybody that I wanted to run this country from an economic perspective, somebody who could actually take us from where we are to where we need to be, it would be a guy like that.
We are, I mean, for the New York Times to ignore the fact that the Congress, which is the most, the least popular of any entity in the country, has put us $22 trillion in debt.
And they're talking about Donald Trump losing $1 billion or $2 billion.
That's not even pocket change when you're talking about trillions of dollars.
It's so insignificant that it's not even on the scale anywhere.
So for them to take the position for the people on the crazy media to make fun of Donald Trump and giggle about it is just, it's so, to me, it's so much a lot of people.
It's a story he has told himself.
Yeah.
I'm going to actually do this tonight on TV.
It's another boomerang.
It's another boomerang.
Yeah, I mean, everybody knows Atlantic City casinos collapsed.
Everybody knows that the stock, that the real estate market took a nosedive in 2007 and 2008.
Everybody knows there's cycles economically.
The story to me is, and one that he tells himself, is that he was able to climb his way out of being a billion dollars in debt.
And he was able to build back his empire.
And, you know, that, you know, he still is a billionaire.
He still has a 757.
He still became president.
You know, part of life, I think I've learned more from my failures than any of my successes.
Everyone has both.
And if you're introspective enough, you should learn from your failures as well.
I got to take a quick break here when we come back.
Danielle McLaughlin and Jonathan Gillum on the issue of, yeah, Nadler's lying and they want now a fifth investigation into so-called Russia collusion.
They can't let it go.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload in the final hour of the Sean Hannity Show.
It is the culmination of nearly three months of requests, discussions, and negotiations with the Department of Justice for the complete unredacted report by Special Counsel Mueller.
Somebody, the staff of the Judiciary Committee, perhaps the chairman and ranking minority members of the Judiciary Committee, is going to have to go over this material, at least the 400 or 500 pages in the report, to determine what is fit for release and what is, as a matter of decency and protecting people's privacy rights, people who may be totally innocent third parties, what must not be released at all.
Do you think the president obstructed justice?
Yes, I do.
It's very clear that the president obstructed justice.
We must not overturn an election and remove a president from office, except to defend our system of government or our constitutional liberties against the dire threat.
We have to protect the rule of law, and that means we have to investigate and hold hearings and lay out to the American people if the administration is involved in abuses of power or obstruction of justice.
The American people have heard the allegations against the president, and they overwhelmingly oppose impeaching him.
They elected President Clinton.
They still support him.
We have no right to overturn the considered judgment of the American people.
If this truly is a constitutional crisis, how can that not change your thinking of the calculus regarding impeachment?
Well, we have investigations that will give us the facts and the truth.
This is not about Congress or any committee of Congress.
It's about the American people and their right to know and their election that is at stake and that a foreign government intervened in our election and the president thinks it is a laughing matter.
It's appalling that this administration would not even pretend to want to protect our elections and in fact be an obstacle to our finding out more about how it happened so we can prevent it from happening again.
As I said yesterday, the president is almost self-impeaching because he is every day demonstrating more obstruction of justice and disrespect for Congress's legitimate role to subpoena.
So we'll, again, this is very methodical.
It's very constitution-based.
It's very law-based.
It's very factually based.
It's not about pressure.
It's about patriotism.
Do you agree with Chairman Adler that the country is currently in a constitutional crisis?
Yes, I do agree with Chairman Nadler because the administration has decided that they are not going to honor their oath of office.
Now, he's staked out because he has seen so much in the committee work.
I'm very proud of the Judiciary Committee and the work that they have done.
In terms of timing, when we're ready, we'll come to the floor.
And we'll just see because there may be some other contempt of Congress issues that we want to deal with at the same time.
And he wants to do it as soon as possible, and so do we.
All right, there it is with Nancy Pelosi.
First, Jerry Nadler, what a hypocrite.
He didn't even want the Star Report.
The Star Report had 11 specific felonies that had been committed by Bill Clinton.
Now, that was under the old independent counsel statute.
Then people like Jerry Nadler, now they want everything public, but it was people like Jerry Nadler that got rid of the independent counsel statute because they didn't like the report being released.
Now they're trying to hold the attorney general in contempt when the attorney general, he won't give us the full report, he's giving you everything that he legally can.
And there's only 0.1% that he's had to redact for members of Congress, and that's it.
And then everything else, he didn't have to give one word to the American people, and he did it all.
The new statute, the Attorney General does not have to give a single thing to the public or anybody, period.
But he did it to be transparent.
And the president gave 1.5 million documents over to the Mueller partisans.
And, you know, think beyond that.
Then they encouraged every person in the White House to testify before Congress, before Mueller's team.
They also allowed Don McGahn, the White House counsel.
I'm flabbergasted that they let that happen.
Don McGahn, the White House counsel, is allowed to give Mueller 30 hours.
It's ridiculous.
Unprecedented.
Not one time, unlike every past president in a case not even close to this, invoking executive privilege.
Well, now the president, after two plus years, now the fourth determination of no collusion, no obstruction.
The Democrats cannot accept the results, just like they couldn't accept the 2016 results.
And they can't let it go, so they're not going to let it go.
And you know what?
The president's saying enough is enough.
I don't blame him.
News Roundup Information Overload Hour, 800-941 Sean is our toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program.
We are joined by Danielle McLaughlin, attorney and constitutional expert, Jonathan Gillum, former FBI agent, federal air marshal, author of Sheep No More.
Welcome both of you to the program.
They're a bunch of hypocrites on every level, but I'm sure you're going to find a way to give some excuse to them somehow, some way.
You'll thread that needle, Danielle McLaughlin.
I'm just guessing.
Hey, Sean.
Hey, Jonathan.
So good to be with you.
Of course I am, Sean.
Isn't that what I come on every week to do?
Look, yes, they're hypocrites.
I have seen all the clips where Nadler was talking about the Star Report.
I've also seen the clips of Republicans talking about Eric Holder and his obstruction of justice and the fast and the furious and the Obama administration and the fight over those documents.
So both sides are doing this.
It just happens to be the Democrats going after the Republicans at this point in time.
So the people that are most hypocritical would be the Democrats.
And you acknowledge that the Democrats changed the law.
Nadler, who didn't want the Star Report.
One big difference, Danielle.
The Star Report had 11 specific felonies that they found Bill Clinton had committed and could be indicted for. 11.
And he was impeached, and he paid nearly $1 million to Paula Jones.
And he also lost his law license, his license to practice law because of his behavior.
So we have very distinct differences here, Jonathan Gillum.
I mean, listen, I am going to agree with Danielle on one thing.
I think that there is a lack of leadership constantly in Congress.
Every time there's a president elected, they go to doing impeachments.
I looked over, somebody sent out a meme that was talking about how the Democrats have impeached every president that was Republican all the way back to Eisenhower or somebody.
I can't remember the meme, but once you start researching that, you see that it's happening on both sides.
And I don't really agree with that because I look at that more of tactics than anything.
I do agree with you, though, Sean, when it comes to Bill Clinton and the difference there versus this is that he was making a mockery of the White House.
And when you talk to people who worked in the White House back in those days, it was kind of a madhouse and it was Bill Clinton's one world tour.
And so I do agree with the way the prosecution handled Bill Clinton, but I frankly see no leadership in Congress on the left or the right.
I just see two different parties that are using the presidency every four or eight years to be prepared for the next presidential election.
That's it.
I mean, and the way that these special prosecutors handle these things and spend millions and millions of dollars.
I mean, now, I think what separates President Trump's investigation from all these others is that we know that it was built on false evidence.
And I don't think we could ever have said that before.
This was literally false evidence.
And now they're trying to go after this guy.
One good thing about driving across the country is you get to listen on Sirius and all this different testimony that's going on.
And it's really not testimony.
It's really congressmen spouting off.
And I got to tell you, Jerry Nadler, that is the most, he is the weirdest person I've ever heard when he runs this committee.
There is zero leadership and 100% of favoritism for the Democrat Party versus the Republican Party.
Every Republican that spoke said exactly what they needed to say to prove the reality of what was happening in that committee.
And then they would just go right back over and repeat their lie every time.
It was the craziest thing I've heard.
You know, I'm just trying to understand.
Now with John Solomon's big breaking news report, Danielle, and, you know, we've got a lot of breaking news reports from John Solomon, but not the least of which is every single person, we had documented evidence that the Russian dossier of Hillary Clinton was known to everyone before they put in the first FISA warrant.
Everybody had a full, complete heads up that it was unverified.
Hillary paid for it.
It was tainted with bias because of Steele's rage and hatred towards all things Trump.
And it was political because he was demanding to get this out by election day, before election day.
So that would mean, as a matter of law, that they presented false, unverified information to a FISA court judge in their application.
And remember, it was McCabe that said there would be no FISA without the dossier.
And they purposely lied to the FISA court judges.
Well, wouldn't that be committing fraud on a court?
What's the penalty for that, Danielle?
You're the constitutional expert.
A couple of things.
Number one, it was a dossier.
It was intelligence collected.
And, Jonathan, you know as well as anybody that FBI, MI6, you collect information.
You can't necessarily verify it.
You don't come to an investigative conclusion, but you collect information.
That's the nature of the dossier.
And as for the Pfizer courts, there was a footnote in that application that made it very clear that this was information that was collected on behalf of a political opponent.
The judge is the person that makes the determination about what weight to give what evidence.
And we have those judges, and they have lifetime.
Excuse me.
It has when the FBI and James Comey, who signed the first FISA application, he is testifying that everything in that FISA application is, it says at the top, verified and true.
None of it was verified because it's unverifiable.
Because the author of the dossier, in an interrogatory, himself said he has no idea if it's true, any of it.
Well, because he was collecting information, and the FBI did.
But they use.
No, no, no.
No, no, no.
Look, play Rod Rosenstein.
This is what Rod Rosenstein says about a FISA warrant when you present it to a FISA court.
Let's listen to his own words.
The way we operate in the Department of Justice, if we're going to accuse somebody of wrongdoing, we have to have admissible evidence and credible witnesses.
We need to prepare to prove our case in court.
And we have to affix our signature to the charging document.
That's something that not everybody appreciates.
There's a lot of talk about FISA applications.
And many people that I see talking about it seem not to recognize what a FISA application is.
A FISA application is actually a warrant, just like a search warrant.
In order to get a FISA search warrant, you need an affidavit signed by a career federal law enforcement officer who swears that the information in the affidavit is true and correct to the best of his knowledge and belief.
And that's the way we operate.
And if it's wrong, sometimes it is, if you find out there's anything incorrect in there, that person is going to face consequences.
Okay.
That's absolutely true.
Absolutely true.
The FISA.
What are the consequences except they're testifying that they know it's true to the best of their ability, but we now know they were warned that it's an illegitimate document, warned it was political.
We now know it was unverifiable.
So the fact is that was a conscious effort, premeditated effort to commit a fraud on a FISA court to demolish the civil liberties of one American citizen and frankly, the entire Trump campaign because through which Carter Page's FISA warrant, they got into all things Trump campaign.
So why did they include if they were trying to defraud the court?
But Daniel, I got to say this.
There's a big difference.
They said it's true.
That's the point, Jonathan.
There's a big difference between collecting information and creating the information that will be collected.
See, that's the thing that's being left out of Danielle's statements, is that they did collect information, but they also hired somebody to create that information.
And so you can see with Peter Strzok and the Democratic Party and even some Republicans that hate Trump, there was coordination between them and the people that created this dossier.
And the way the dossier was passed over the top into the FBI and the DOJ and straight to a FISA court, there was none of that checking that Rod Rosenstein was talking about.
It was just approval, approval, approval, approval.
There was no research, make sure it's verified.
I can't see where there was any of that.
It was just approval, approval, approval, FISA.
And basically what they did was they swore to an affidavit illegally saying it was real.
It wasn't real, saying it was truthful.
It wasn't truthful.
Those were lies under oath.
And then they went and got a federal warrant to spy on a president, all based on things that were created, not verified, but they were approved.
No, you swear an affidavit to the best of your knowledge that the things contained within that application for a warrant are true.
There were news reports in that Pfizer application.
You're not suggesting that the people had to go and use the same thing.
We don't use news reports.
We don't use news reports as facts.
We go out and the reason there were.
Let me explain.
There's a reason that news reports were in the FIVE application, and they were to contradict things that Carter Page had said privately.
So they used news reports to show that Carter Page was being inconsistent with his statements that were pertinent to the nature.
So it was a public statement used to show that he was lying.
Okay, that they believed that he was lying.
We don't use those when we go to get a warrant.
You don't use public opinion.
You don't use hearsay.
And you certainly don't use news reports.
I mean, that is the way the reason they did that is so they could verify the things that they were lying about.
Say checkmate today.
It is Jonathan checkmate.
He's dead on accurate.
All right, 800-941, Sean.
Thank you, Jonathan.
Thank you, Danielle.
Boys!
Get off the ice!
We're training for the Olympics, sir!
Cindy!
He's been underwater for more than 15 minutes.
It's going to be a recovery.
I'm going to rescue him.
I got something.
I got him.
They've done everything medically possible.
There's nothing more we can do.
Please, God, send your Holy Spirit to save my son.
I was ready to give up, but then I hear this voice telling me, come back.
Either I'm nuts or God's talking to you.
All right, glad you're with us.
24 now till the top of the hour.
You know, one of the things that's happening is Hollywood is losing its grip, their monopoly on their formulaic movies that, you know, oh, how many more cartoon movies or Spider-Man movies or Batman movies or Superman movies or Captain whatever America movies are they going to make?
Or Jennifer Anniston falls in love again and then out of love, then gets married, then gets divorced, then gets married again type of movies, which we see all the time.
And a lot of movies out, what's happening is you're seeing movies literally break through, pun intended.
And one of them is a new film.
It's called Breakthrough, which is released, was released April 17th.
It's based on the true life experience of a teenager, John Smith.
He fell through the ice of a Missouri lake, spent 15 minutes under frigid waters before first responders ended up recovering his then lifeless body.
Mother never left his side, you know, praying and fasting that her son would come back, and it actually worked.
It was number three in the nation this past weekend, holding strong against a lot of huge blockbusters, bringing in 33.5 million, which is huge for an independent film.
And joining us now is the producer and author, Devon Franklin, Joyce Smith, John's mother, and John Smith.
John was 14 when he drowned and was without a pulse for over an hour.
He's now 18 and headed to college.
John, where are you headed to college?
I will be going up to North Central University to study to become a pastor this fall.
Wow.
Now, what do you remember about that day?
You know, I really remember the ice cracking and, you know, that fight or flight moment and our minds just, you know, switching to, you know, we're either going to die or we're going to live.
And it did not look like we were going to live.
We were trying to break the ice to get back to the dock.
We were 25 to 50 feet out.
There was no way we could get back because there was so much ice in between us.
I remember that shock of how just cold the water was and just trying to fight the waterline of my head going above and below water as well as just the ice.
Every time we would break a piece to try and float on, that would eventually break and the sharp edges of the ice could just pierce our skin.
And then that's honestly what I remember.
Did you have any of the afterlife?
A lot of people have learned 90 Minutes in Heaven and what's the name?
Heaven is Real.
And I've read a lot of books about people and dying.
And there's a lot of similar experiences.
For example, people, their whole lives flash before their eyes.
There's a tunnel.
They're drawn to a light.
Many often talk about choirs of angels, multiple choirs of angels singing simultaneously, but you have an understanding of all that is being sung, even though on earth it would be impossible to comprehend.
Pearlie Gates meeting relatives that have passed.
Did any of that happen?
No, we truly believe that if I would have seen heaven, then the story would just be about me.
And breakthrough, the story, it's about a family.
You know, it's about St. Louis coming together and praying for the needs that needed to be met.
And God just showed up and provided a way for all of them.
And we truly believe that it's everybody's own encounter with this story rather than just my own personal encounter.
Oh, pretty amazing.
Mom, I'm just assuming here for a minute that that was not a fun time in your life.
No.
When you get a telephone call telling you that they just pulled your son out of the water and he has no heartbeat, that's a telephone call no adult, no parent ever wants.
Why were you so, why did you have the faith that others maybe didn't have?
I mean, what was because you apparently, you know, you would not give up.
You would not not believe, in spite, look, a lot of medical data saying, no way this is going to happen.
This kid's done.
He's, you know, it's too long.
The odds of recovery are so high, it's probably not going to happen.
And you heard all of that.
We were doing a Bible study at church by Beth Moore called Believing God.
And we've been about three weeks into it.
She did the Soul Fast one, if I remember right.
Didn't she do that?
Pardon me?
Didn't she also do one called the Soul Fast?
Yes, yes.
And it's just powerful.
And every morning we would repeat when we do our homework, I believe God is who he says he is.
I believe that God can do what he says it can do, and I'm believing God.
And so it was one of those moments.
Either you believe what you're studying and going into, or you don't.
And I had always seen that God had always been faithful all through my life.
And so we were going to put him to his test at that point in time.
You didn't need to test him.
He was going to do it.
And let's talk to you.
I mean, Devon Franklin, I mean, you really wanted this movie from everything I've read that you wanted this movie to be as close and as reflective of the real experience as possible.
Yes, yes, absolutely.
I mean, you know, for me, this is what I live to do, you know, to be a part of Hollywood and bring true stories of faith to the big screen that can play all around the world.
With the breakthrough story, for me, it's a movie, but for Joyce and John, it's their life.
So it was really important to make sure that it was authentic and that this is something that they said, yes, you got it right.
And I'm so thankful that they did.
And when audiences all around the world are seeing this movie, they're being inspired.
They're being uplifted, you know, by Joyce and John's story.
And the fact that it is authentic just adds another level to the experience.
You know, it's really interesting as I dip my toe into the movie-making business.
I had a film that we put out called Let There Be Light that did very, very well.
And I was, you know, particularly proud of it, and I thought I'd love the product.
But I'd go to and watch screenings, and I'd see all these people cry.
And, you know, I've always said, and I don't know if you've seen the Christian film.
I can only imagine.
I've watched it like five times based on that anthem Christian song.
I thought it was a phenomenal movie.
Oh, yeah.
And something has happened.
How long have you been in Hollywood, Devon?
I've been in Hollywood since I was 18 years old, and I just turned 41.
So I've been in Hollywood.
I started as an intern for Will Smith while I was going to college to USC.
Seems like a really cool guy.
Am I right about that?
You are absolutely right.
He's even better in person than he is in the public.
He's an incredible dude.
Blessed to know him and be one of his mentees and all that.
And so, yeah, I've been in Hollywood for 23 years and definitely have seen a lot of change happen in the business where audiences are saying, we want more inspiration, we want more faith, we want more God, we want more hope.
But why is Hollywood so resistant?
I don't want to focus that much on this, but it's almost like I think they've run themselves out of business.
And because there's now so many content providers that are looking for good content from Netflix to Amazon, Hulu, and everything else that the monopoly Hollywood once had, which rejected a lot of, you know, either faith-based movies or movies that were pro-America in a sense, that didn't have a political component to it.
I think they had a belief that, well, people don't like those movies because these movies are kicking, you know what?
And they missed the boat, in my opinion.
Well, you know, a lot of it has to truly do with people in the business that have a passion for this type of content.
You know, Hollywood, in my experience, you know, really does respond to that.
So, for example, you know, on the horror side, like Jason Blum is passionate about horror films.
So he really goes to the studios and says, I've got to make these movies.
And they give him the money to do it.
You know, I'm passionate about films of faith.
And I go to the studios.
And to be honest, I've had no resistance.
I mean, that's been the amazing thing.
I've had no resistance to studios wanting to be in business.
It's just a lot of times they don't understand how to do it.
Lionsgate is a, they did, I can only imagine.
Lionsgate seems to understand this phenomenon.
I don't know who did your film, but Fox did, 20th Century Fox, and then now Fox Disney.
With the Lionsgate situation, they actually acquired I Can Only Imagine after it was done independently.
So Roadside Attraction was really the studio behind it.
And then Lionsgate distributed it.
And then now, since the movie was so successful, they made a big overall deal with the Irwin Brothers, my good friends, who made I Can Only Imagine.
And so now they have a big deal with Lionsgate.
Lionsgate's going to be making two faith-based films a year through the Irwin Brothers imprint called Kingdom Films.
And so we are seeing definitely the needle being moved in Hollywood around this content.
And it really requires people like Bart, people like Joyce and John, who are opening up their lives for us to be able to touch the world because both of these movies are true stories.
And that's why I think you're seeing such an impact at the box office.
What was it like, John, because this is your life when you see the movie and the cut of the movie?
What are you thinking?
Because I can only imagine from my vantage point, if it was me, I mean, did you relive the experience?
On a scale of 1 to 100, how accurate do you think the movie portrayal is of what really happened to you in life?
I'd give it 100%.
Like Devon and Roxanne, their main goal is to keep this real.
And I think that was me and my mom's main mission as well, is that we want people to see something that is real and that is honest and that is true.
And you were there for a lot of this in terms of you consulted on the movie, basically, right?
I mean, that was one thing that was great about Devon is we were always on the phone, making sure that everything was 100% honest and true.
And that's what I really appreciated with him and Roxanne is that we just wanted to give the world something real.
And, you know, the actors they chose and the portrayal of the film was just amazing.
And everything that Marcel Ruiz, who played me in the film, went through, I went through in real life.
And he captured me perfectly.
So there's nothing I would redo.
I think this film is amazing, and I'm excited that it is being shared with the world.
When he finally woke up, oh, first, let me ask John, then I'll ask your mom.
What do you first remember when you woke up?
You know, I remember, you know, seeing the hospital ceiling.
I knew that I was in the hospital.
I knew that I had fallen in the ice, but I didn't know the extent of the miracle.
I didn't know I was dead for an hour.
I didn't know, you know, I was underwater for 15 minutes.
I didn't know any of the details of how severe the miracle was.
And you just remembered, maybe not even right away, that you had fallen in the ice.
That's it.
Yes.
It's really just ice blackout waking up in the hospital.
And so the only thing I really knew is I'd fallen on the ice and that I lost a lot of weight, but I didn't know until even we had the first responder service, which is months later.
I didn't understand the extent of everything that was wrong with me.
Yeah.
And when did you first realize that this miracle occurred, Joyce, on your end?
And that, you know, sometimes people wake up and they have some, they're incapacitated in some way, maybe lifelong challenges that they'd face.
And look how, you know, your son basically wakes up and said, can I have dinner?
Can I have lunch?
I'm hungry.
Like any kid would do, right?
Yes.
When he woke up, I thought it was interesting.
He woke up on the third day, which I think is the timeline on this.
He woke up on the third day.
They took the vent on the seventh day.
He was moved to another unit on the other seventh day, walked out.
And 40 days after he woke up, he was released from all doctors.
But when he woke up, we'd been told that he was brain dead and that he would be a vegetable.
When he woke up, we did an interesting little thing with Dr. Garrett asking him about basketball because that's his passion.
And he was able to answer all the questions correctly and recognize people in the room.
And it was, everyone in the room was just in tears when it happened because we were just in awe of the miracle that had taken place.
How has this changed your life, John?
What do you want to do with your life now?
How old are you?
I'm 18 years old.
You're ready to turn 19 in about 10 years.
You just start in college and congratulations.
What do you want to do with this experience now that you've made this movie, et cetera?
You know, I really just want to share to the world that God still does the impossible and that God is still alive.
You want to be a minister?
Yes.
Yes.
There are a lot of great men that have come to my life that have had significant impact and are continuing to walk with me now.
And, you know, I just take the time that I spent working on this film, getting to watch Devon do his interviews, getting to watch Devon preach, watching, you know, the executive producer, Samuel Rodriguez, you know, him take me under his wing and just show me the ropes and show me what I need to learn.
You know, that really puts a fire in my heart to continue to share the word of God with the world.
And so with this platform of breakthrough, I really just want to go.
And one day when God calls me to heaven, I really just want to know how many people I took to heaven with me.
And I want to know that my time on earth was spent trying to bring as many people together.
If you ever get my sorry butt there, you'd be performing a bigger miracle than what happened in your life.
I'm only kidding.
Yeah, I hear you laughing there, Devon.
Thanks a lot.
Hey, you made the joke.
Listen, I'm just, I'm just, I'm speaking the truth, brother.
The truth will make you free.
I know who I am.
Well, listen, it really warms my heart, to be honest.
This is a great story.
It's now in movie theaters all over.
It's called Breakthrough.
And I really, you should be so proud of this kid.
I'm sure you are, Joyce, and proud of people like Devon that got it right and that people are being inspired by it.
I don't think there's any greater calling.
And I want to wish you all the best and thanks for being with us.
Hannity tonight, 9 Eastern, big breaking news, John Solomon.
Yeah, they all knew about Christopher Steele before the first FISA application was submitted.
They knew it was garbage before it was submitted, and they did it anyway.
The great one, Mark Levin, John Solomon, Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, will stop by.
And Dan Bongino and Mike Huckabee.
9 Eastern.
Hope you'll join us tonight, Hannity, on the Fox News channel.
