Andy McCarthy, Fox News Contributor, former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and author of "Ball of Collusion - THE PLOT TO RIG AN ELECTION AND DESTROY A PRESIDENCY," Matt Towery, Attorney and Pollster and Gregg Jarrett, Fox News Legal Analyst and Author of the Upcoming bestseller, "Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History," discuss the true legal basis for impeachment and what the Dems are claiming. It's pretty clear, impeachment has always been the goal.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.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
And I'm Carol Markovich.
And I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
Normally is about real conversations.
Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday.
Normally on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
I'm Ben Ferguson.
And I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So Down a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
But I don't think it's part of the president's job to shake down leaders of other countries using taxpayer dollars to have them do something that isn't his political benefit.
It is wrong for any foreign government to interfere in our elections.
And here you have the president of the United States asking for that.
So it is again they now we're engaged engaged in a cover-up of that, but the cover-up of the cover-up, two wrongs do not make a right.
And the president's going to have to answer that.
And they know how how wrong it is.
So it's wrong for a con, as we saw with Russian interference.
And by the way, I think Russia has a hand in this, by the way.
But we saw with the Russian disruption of our election last time, their interference, 100% confidence of the intelligence community, high confidence of the intelligence community that the Russians disrupted our election.
That was wrong.
The integrity of our elections is central to our democracy.
So what the president did in inviting outside intervention into our election is uh it goes beyond the pale.
All right, Nancy Pelosi on with liberal Joe and Mika this morning.
Now, if you really break this down, it is beyond ironic.
This is a shakedown using taxpayer dollars.
Okay.
The exact opposite of anything that Donald Trump ever did.
There's one person that was involved in a shakedown using taxpayer dollars.
And that would be Joe 30330.
I said, I'm not gonna we're not gonna give you the billion dollars.
I said, you have no authority.
You're not the president.
The president said I should call him.
I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars.
I said, you're not getting a billion.
I'm gonna be leaving here.
I think it was what, six hours.
I looked at me leaving six hours.
If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money.
Oh, son of a bot fired.
You know, son of a bee, he got fired.
Taxpayer dollars, shakedown and every other thing associated with this.
Look, I want to walk through this very, very slowly and carefully with you with news and information that I promise you're not gonna get anywhere else.
Because this is who this media mob is, this is who the Democrats are.
This is who the mob is.
They are not gonna spend another three years and put their fate or the fate of Donald Trump in the hands of of another special counsel only to, in the end, after four separate investigations, be stymied and stopped and and proven to be liars, conspiracy theorists, and everything else in between.
I mean, the media is so corrupt.
I've always known their bias.
I I we've always known their abusively biased.
We've always known a lot of things.
I as much as I've known it, as often as I've talked about it, I never thought it would be this bad.
So I want to take you down a trip down memory lane here.
I'm gonna start with the phone call.
You know, the idea that a whistleblower that's not a whistleblower that is getting, you know, hearsay, second, third, fourth hand information, as and the fixation and focus on that when we actually have a transcript of the real conversation.
And And that should be where the focus is, not somebody's interpretation as likely, and I'd pretty much bet everything I had that there's a group of lawyers that put that whole whistleblower thing together.
Um, I'm just betting it wasn't a whistleblower.
This was a political hit.
And nobody seems to want to even ask the question well, why are we spying on a president?
Why is why can't a president of the United States, why this president in particular can't have a conversation with the prime minister of Australia, or the president of Mexico, or the new president in Ukraine.
And by the way, even the Russians said, uh, hope you're not leaking our conversations, because it is a breach of confidence.
Now, I know that President Zelensky said, sure, whatever you want, but we weren't pressured.
Foreign minister of Ukraine's, we're not being pressured.
We never felt pressured.
So, what did the president say that they think was was so egregious?
I would like you to do us a favor, because our country has been through a lot, and Ukraine knows a lot about it.
Okay, I'll get to that in a second.
I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine.
They say crowd strike.
Hold on to crowd strike and put that in the back of your head.
I'll get back to it.
Because that's the president saying that.
Now, the the first clue of this you need to know is CrowdStrike was the group when the DNC and the hacking took place.
That CrowdStrike was the one that actually got the DNC servers.
It was not the FBI.
How they ever pulled that one off is a miracle.
And anyway, the president goes on.
I guess you have, you know, one of your wealthy people, the server, they say the whole situation, and I think you're you know, surrounding yourself with some of the same people.
So then President Trump goes on.
I would like to have the attorney general call you or your people.
And I would like to get to the bottom of all of this.
And as you saw yesterday, the whole nonsense ended.
What is it about?
Election interference.
What was it about?
Robert Mueller with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started in with Ukraine.
Whatever you do, it's very important.
You do it if it's possible.
Now, the president, there's no quid pro quo here.
There's no pressure here.
President's not saying, you know, do this or I'll do this.
None of that is going on in any way, shape, manner, or form.
None of it.
You got another Ukrainian official saying Kiev was not made aware of the U.S. uh uh funds that the president was before the phone call until a month after the president's call with the Ukrainian counterpart, which calls into question the whistleblower's account and Democrats' arguments that there was a quid pro quo.
In other words, the unnamed Ukrainian officials said they had no idea that the U.S. suspended security funds, and the president delayed it because the president feels that the money we're giving foreign countries is leverage, and he's trying to get the best deal.
This was done before any phone call with Zelensky.
And this Ukrainian official told the New York Times Zelensky's government was unaware that there was any aid issue until long after the call with the president, meaning the president wasn't using it as any quid pro quo.
And the whistleblower complaint, citing U.S. officials claim that officials in Kiev knew the military aid would be in jeopardy.
Oh, no, that's speculation on their part.
The whistleblower whistleblower that's not a whistleblower admitted to not knowing how or when they learned of it.
Republicans, yeah, that timeline inconsistency is gonna matter a lot.
Pay close attention to this.
Now we get to the really interesting stuff as far as I'm concerned.
Now, why a why a why um was the president saying, you know, looks, you know, a lot of this, the whole situation with Ukraine and crowd strike and you know, I guess the server and everything surrounding yourself.
What is the president talking about?
It's talking about the 2016 election interference.
Now, let's take all conservative commentary out of this, and let's just go straight to the liberal publication known as Politico.
Hardly known for any conservatism.
Let's go back to January 11th, 2017.
Here's the headline.
Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire.
Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect.
Trump isn't president yet.
After quietly working to boost Clinton.
Hang on a second.
A foreign country was trying to influence our elections and they're admitting it.
And how many times have we told you that they were offering us the evidence?
This goes to the selective moral outrage.
Do they care about election interference?
Well, no, only if they can bludgeon Trump with it.
Do they care about violations of law, the espionage act?
No, only if it can be Trump.
Do they care about obstruction?
No, not Hillary's obstruction, only if it's Trump.
Do they care about Russian interference?
Only if it's Trump.
They don't care about the dirty dossier.
They don't care about that at all.
So when you look at the heart of this long article, again, January 11, 2017.
Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire.
Kiev officials are scrambling.
I'm reading from the piece to make amends with President elect Trump after quietly working to boost Clinton.
That means influence our elections.
And President Poroshenko's administration, along with Ukrainian embassy in Washington, insist that Ukraine stayed neutral.
But it goes on.
Donald Trump wasn't the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.
Remember the narrative had only started like a month before in December, November.
This was the insurance policy.
Now, back to the piece.
Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermined Donald Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office.
They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aid in corruption.
And they suggested they were investigating the matter only to back away after the election.
They helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisors, according to a political investigation.
Now it goes further.
A Ukrainian American operative consulting for the Democratic National Committee.
Sounds like collusion with the foreign government to me to influence the 2016 elections.
Oh, that's pretty big, isn't it?
Well, it used to be big, but it's only if it's Trump.
You bludgeon Trump with it.
Anyway, so the Ukrainian American operative consulting for the DNC met with top officials in the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, D.C., quote, in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort, and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort's resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump's campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine's foe to the East, Russia.
That is collusion on a very, very high level.
But they were far less uh concerted or centrally directed, et cetera, et cetera.
What is all of this mean?
Well, it means one thing.
That once again, the very thing that Democrats claim, just like with Biden and Biden, you know, what did he say?
What did Nancy Blow say?
A shakedown with taxpayer dollars.
What do you think this is?
A shakedown with taxpayer dollars.
You don't get the money, fire the guy in six hours, and a vice president of the United States cared about firing a Ukrainian prosecutor.
It sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous, except the money that his son was making and his son had no experience in Ukraine, energy, oil, gas ever.
Millions of dollars.
And the prosecutor, who was now signed an affidavit, according to John Solomon, that very guy has said now under oath.
In fact, that he was fired and told he was fired because Biden insisted on it.
And it was done in six hours.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
I'm Ben Ferguson.
And I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
This is, these are very, very insane, dangerous times that we're really living in here.
And I know it's frustrating all of you.
Um the only thing that I can tell you, um, and I listen, if your heart's troubled, I understand there's a lot at stake here.
For political purposes, there is nothing that some won't do to win elections.
That's unfortunately a fact of the times that we live in here.
And if it means that they're gonna smear, slander, besmirch, destroy, well, it's it's kind of the MO.
You know, so I mentioned CrowdStrike, which the president mentioned in his call with President Zelensky.
Now, Crowd Strike, you would think the Democrats cared about.
Because CrowdStrike designated two groups that gained access to the DNC's information.
One codenamed Cozy Bear broke into the DNC last summer, had been monitoring the committee's emails and chats, the other CrowdStrike dubbed Fancy Bear, hacked into the DNC in April, aiming to get op research files.
That breach was tipped off, uh, was what tipped off DNC officials.
Anyway, so this is what they're saying, and I would think that they care about the 2016 election.
So how did we get to the point they're pressuring the Ukrainians with money?
You you don't.
You have to make a leap of faith that it that and and suspend all common sense that you're born with here.
Now, also remember that the Justice Department, you know, they've been very clear in revealing that John Durham, the U.S. attorney picked by General Barr, Attorney General Barr to look into the origins of the Trump Russia investigation.
They're investigating whether Ukraine was involved in any 2016 election efforts.
Well, Politico won 11 2017 answer that question for us, didn't they?
And a Department of Justice team led by Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.
Well, while the Attorney General's yet to contact Ukraine in connection with anything else or that investigation, Ukrainians who are not members of the government, they have been volunteering this information to Mr. Durham, because if we have been reporting for probably a year now, they have been trying to give us the information about their election interference, but nobody in the corrupt mob in the media cared.
They never cared about election interference.
They cared about bludgeoning Trump.
That's their mission every second minute hour of every 24-hour day.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional tasks.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
I want to congratulate the Democrats on the rollout of their latest information warfare operation against the president.
And their extraordinary ability to once again enlist the mainstream media in their campaign.
This operation began with media reports from the prime instigators of the Russia collusion hoax.
That a whistleblower is claiming President Trump made nefarious promise to a foreign leader.
The release transcript of that call has already debunked that central assertion.
But that didn't matter.
The Democrats simply moved the goalposts.
So Nunes is explaining how the Ukraine call hysteria was pushed by the yeah, the same people in the Russia collusion hoax.
All right.
The pr the person the reason the president really doesn't need a spokesperson.
Now he has a press office, a press secretary, but it's a little different is nobody speaks better on these issues about him than him.
And so he was going to Air Force One.
He gave about a little less than three minutes of comments.
I want to play it in its entirety because it captures the whole thing.
Hello, everybody.
I just watched a little bit of this on television.
It's a disgrace to our country.
It's another witch hunt.
Here we go again.
It's uh Adam Schiff and his crew making up stories and sitting there like pious, whatever you want to call them.
It's just a really disgrace.
It's a terrible thing for our country.
Uh they can't do any work, they're frozen to Democrats, they're gonna lose the election, they know it.
That's why they're doing it.
And it should never be allowed what's happened to this president.
And despite that, I think I've done just about more than any president in his first two and a half years in office.
If you look, I think you'll see very few could compete with the things we've done for our military for the economy.
We have the best economy anywhere in the world by far.
We've rebuilt our military, we've done so many things that are so incredible with tax cuts and regulation, and I have to put up with Adam Schiff on a per on an absolutely perfect phone call to the new president of Ukraine.
That was a perfect call.
But Adam Shift doesn't talk about Joe Biden and his son walking away with millions of dollars from Ukraine and then millions of dollars from China, walking away in a quick meeting, walking away with millions of dollars.
He doesn't talk about Joe Biden firing a prosecutor.
And if that prosecutor's not fired, he's not gonna give them money from the United States of America.
They don't talk about that.
My call was perfect.
The president yesterday of Ukraine said there was no pressure put on him whatsoever.
None whatsoever.
And he said it loud and clear for the press.
What these guys are doing, Democrats are doing to this country, is a disgrace.
And it shouldn't be allowed.
There should be a way of stopping it, maybe legally through the courts, but they're gonna tie up our country.
We can't talk about gun regulation.
We can't talk about anything.
Because frankly, they're so tied up, they're so screwed up, nothing gets done except when I do it.
I'm using Mexico to protect our border because the Democrats won't change loopholes in asylum.
When you think of that, And I want to I tell you, I want to thank Mexico.
27,000 soldiers they have.
But think of how bad that is.
Think of it.
Well, we use Mexico because the Democrats won't fix our broken immigration system.
We need their votes.
If we don't get their votes, we can't do it.
And the Republicans are all on board.
They want to fix it, but the Democrats won't do it.
They don't want to talk about infrastructure.
They don't want to talk about lowering drug prices.
They don't want to talk about anything because they're fixated in this.
And Nancy Pelosi has been hijacked by the radical left, and everybody knows it.
Thank you.
It's more, it is the new Democratic Extreme Radical Socialist Party.
Now look, John Solomon, what's so amazing about this is the utter hypocrisy because you got Biden on tape.
Everything they're accusing the president of, they themselves are guilty of a shakedown, taxpayer dollars.
And the other side of it is massive enrichment.
You know, imagine if this were any of the kids of Donald Trump and what the reaction would be.
Um, this is where John Solomon's report is so explosive, because Biden locked in to his story about the controversy in Ukraine.
He's insisting in the spring of 2016 that he strong-armed Ukraine to fire their chief prosecutor only because Biden believed that that official, that prosecutor, the vice president of the United States, fire him in six hours.
I'm taking my money home.
He said I only did it because he was corrupt and he was inept, not because the Ukrainian Ukraine was uh Ukrainian was investigating uh the natural gas company that is paying massive amounts of money to his son Hunter, who has no experience in any of that.
Pretty lucrative job.
Here's the problem.
Hundreds of pages now of never released memos, documents, many from inside the American team, in other words, American lawyers that were helping stave off their legal troubles, conflict with the truth of Biden's lie.
And that's a problem for Joe Biden.
He locked into his narrative.
He was corrupt.
That's why I got rid of him.
Now, what these new documents that Solomon has uncovered, it shows the prospect that U.S. officials painted a false picture in Ukraine that helped ease Barisma Holdings legal troubles, stop the prosecutors, and by stopping the investigation into Barisma Holdings, well, that means that Hunter Biden's lucrative deal uh gets to continue.
And that also stopped the prosecutors because remember the timeline.
New York Times, they warned Biden that in fact the prosecutor in Ukraine was investigating his son.
And he said the campaign they were saying at the time, no, that's that's his problem, that's not our problem.
That has nothing to do with the vice president's office.
So Barisma's America legal representative met with Ukrainian officials only days after being Biden forced the firing of the country's chief prosecutor and offered an apology for the dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures about Ukrainian prosecutors, according to the Ukraine's government official memo of the meeting.
The effort to secure that meeting began the very day the prosecutor's firing was announced.
In addition, Barisma's American team offered to introduce Ukrainian prosecutors to Obama administration officials to make amends.
They offer to say, look, let us introduce prosecutors to the Obama administration.
We want to make amends on this whole thing, according to the memo and the American legal team's internal emails, which we now have, but the media is ignoring.
Now, just a few of the many troubling questions and even the in John Solomon's piece captures it all.
If Ukraine's prosecutors firing involved only the allegation that he was corrupt and inept.
Well, why did Burisma America's legal team refer to those allegations as false information?
If the firing of the prosecutor had nothing to do with the Burisma case, as Biden is, you know, adamantly claimed, why would Burisma Holdings American lawyers be contacting the Republicans?
replacement prosecutor within hours of the termination of the other prosecutor seeking a meeting in Ukraine to discuss the case?
Ukrainian prosecutors say they have tried to get this information now to the U.S. Department of Justice since the summer of 2018.
Hence 11, 2017.
Kiev officials, they wanted to make amends for helping Hillary Clinton and their involvement in election interference in 2016.
So Ukrainian prosecutors say they tried to get this information to our Department of Justice, and fearing it might be evidence of possible violations of U.S. ethic laws, by the way, slight little discovery that we now have is about 21, two or three years ago.
We now know that we signed a you know criminal cooperation agreement with Ukraine.
Anyway, first they hired a former federal prosecutor to bring the information to U a U.S. attorney in New York who showed no interest.
Then Ukrainians reached out to President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Oh, maybe Rudy was telling the truth.
Maybe the State Department sent him.
Maybe he was brought in by other people.
Um now, the other thing that we have today that Fox News broke is that an unnamed Ukrainian official said Kiev was not made aware that the U.S. uh had suspended any monies that was going to Ukraine until a month after President Trump's call.
That's a big problem.
The New York Times, yeah, was told by an official that Zelensky's government had no clue that the aid might be delayed until about a month after the phone call that we now have the transcript of that got the whistleblower all worked up, and the whistleblower's interpretation was more important than the actual words used by the president to a corrupt media mob.
I mean, you you just you can't make this up.
I've never seen a world where truth no longer matters.
Objective truth, facts don't matter.
The double standard, glaring.
It is, it has never been this corrupt as it is now.
And the main reason that I can come up with on all of this is, you know, the only reason they're doing this is because, yeah, Trump's draining the swamp.
They don't like it, and he is being successful.
Now, the timeline inconsistency is gonna work well for the president.
And as these nutty Democrats rate, they're like racing into impeachment.
They they literally are all over the place.
But I will tell you, you know, Nancy Pelosi warning, I think Russia had a hand in the Trump Ukraine controversy.
Okay, really, Nancy?
Said that on Morning Joe when she started talking about, well, we can't have government, we can have shakedowns with taxpayer dollars.
Okay, well, maybe you should bring in Joe Biden then, because he's bragging about a shakedown with tax dollars uh to save his own kid.
It's unbelievable.
I think Russia has a hand in all of this.
They're still Russia mad.
They can't believe how wrong they were on Russia still.
And then Pelosi targeting the attorney general.
The attorney general never heard from President Trump about Ukraine, not one time.
And nor did the attorney general ever talk to Ukrainian authorities.
But we do know that the investigation does continue, and that is John Durham's investigation.
So we're gonna get to the bottom of it.
And I do believe that that January 11th, 2017 political piece is going to bite them.
Yes, that was about interference.
They don't care about Russian interference if it's a Russian dossier paid for by their side.
They don't care if there is a rigged investigation as long as it protects their candidate.
They don't care about obstruction of justice unless, of course, they can bludgeon Trump with a false charge, not the one about deleting emails and bleach bit and everything else.
They don't care about women's rights, me too.
I believe, you know, no I believers if it's a Democrat.
So Pence uh and Biden, by the way, is top 2020 Democratic rivals, they're they're not rushing to defend him either.
Because let me tell you who absolutely will be a casualty in all of this.
The only one that we have any real evidence of a shakedown using taxpayer dollars would be, you know, sleepy creepy crazy Joe 3033.
So Trump, by the way, is is rightly, and we're gonna also have on uh Congressman, oh, what's his name?
Andy Biggs of the Freedom Caucus, and the president rightly, you know, Adam Schiff yesterday.
I'd never seen anything like this.
He just makes up his own words.
He starts acting like this, he's reading from the transcript.
No, no, no, it's parody.
The essence of what he says.
The president communicates.
We've been very good to your country, very good.
No other country has done as much as we have.
But you know what?
I don't see much reciprocity here.
I hear what you want.
I have a favor I want from you, though.
And I'm gonna say this only seven times, so you better listen good.
I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand lots of it.
On this and on that, I'm gonna put you in touch with people, and not just any people.
I'm gonna put you in touch with attorney general of the United States, my attorney general Bill Barr.
He's got the whole weight of the American law enforcement behind him.
And I'm gonna put you in touch with Rudy.
You're gonna love him, trust me.
You know what I'm asking, and so I'm only gonna say this a few more times in a few more ways.
And by the way, don't call me again.
I'll call you when you've done what I asked.
This is in sum in character what the president was trying to communicate with the president of Ukraine.
It would be funny if it wasn't such a graphic portrayal of the president's oath of office.
All right, the same liar.
Three consecutive years, and kind of ironically, um spot.
Uh kind of ironically, uh, yeah, Adam Schiff is the one that was caught on tape thinking he's speaking to a Russian.
Yeah, he's the one.
Oh my gosh, what was what is the compromising materials?
Uh the they depict the naked Trump, the naked Trump picture.
The yeah, the Vladimir see them.
Yeah, but of course, Vladimir see the naked Burrissima's and the naked pictures of the Trump, of course.
Of course.
Can I get them?
What is that?
That is trying to dig up dirt and on and to impact the election of 2016 with what?
Russian interference.
Can't make this up.
Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
I'm Ben Ferguson.
And I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week we do our podcast, Verdic with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
Sir Dow, verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
I don't think it's part of the president's job to shake down leaders of other countries using taxpayer dollars to have them do something that isn't his political benefit.
Uh the i it is wrong uh for any foreign government to interfere in our elections.
And here you have the president of the United States asking for that.
So it is again uh they now we're engaged engaged in a cover-up of that, but the cover-up of the cover-up, two wrongs do not make a right.
And the president's gonna have to answer that, and they know how how wrong it is.
So it's wrong for a con as we saw with Russian interference, and by the way, I think Russia has a hand in this, by the way.
Uh but uh we saw with the Russian and uh disruption of our election last time, their interference.
Uh 100% confidence of the intelligence community, high uh confidence of the intelligence committee that the Russians disrupted our election.
That was wrong.
The integrity of our elections is central to our democracy.
So what the president did in inviting outside intervention into our election is uh it it goes beyond the pale to have a Justice Department go so rogue.
Well, they have been for a while.
Right.
And now it just makes matters worse.
That the attorney general was mentioned, that the president was mentioned, and yet the Justice Department uh directed the uh uh the the uh director of national intelligence to take this to the White House.
Which he said yesterday was unprecedented.
Welcome to the monkey.
Welcome to the monkey house.
All right, that's enough of that.
All right, hour two, Sean Hannity show.
Yeah, that's the So that was uh uh I guess Joe and Mika, the the liberal Joe show.
All right, that was where Nancy Pelosi was.
The great irony when you listen to her and she says we can't have a p person in a position of power shaking down other countries with taxpayer dollars.
And and I'm listening to this.
I'm like, uh the only person that did that was Joe 30330.
I said, I'm not gonna give we're not gonna give you the billion dollars.
They said, You have no authority, you're not the president.
The president said I said call him.
I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars.
I said, You're not getting a billion.
I'm gonna be leaving here.
I think it was what, six hours.
I looked at I said, I'm leaving six hours.
If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money.
Oh, son of a bot fired.
Six hours, fire the prosecutor, or you're not getting the money.
Uh, oh my God, son of a bee, he got fired.
That's a shakedown.
That's taxpayer money.
That is exactly what Nancy Pelosi's claiming Donald Trump did.
Donald Trump, when you look and read the actual conversation, said zero, nothing of the sort.
I'd like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.
I'd like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, and they said crowd strike.
Crowd strike.
All right, now immediately we're talking about the 2016 election.
I thought everybody wanted to get to the bottom of election interference.
I thought that was the we've known this now for a long time, and I won't even quote anybody in the conservative media or anyone that says they're a conservative.
I'll quote politico.
Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire.
Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.
This 25-minute read was written on January sev 11, 2017.
Then it goes on to say how officials in Ukraine were scrambling to make amends with then president-elect Trump after quietly working and interfering in our elections to boost Hillary Clinton.
Quote, the piece says Ukrainian officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermined Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office.
They disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aiding corruption.
They suggested they were investigating the matter only to back away after the election.
They helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisors.
And then it goes on a Ukrainian American operative who is consulting for the Democratic National Committee, met with top officials in the Ukrainian embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, Manafort, Russia, according to people with direct knowledge.
The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort's resignation, advancing the narrative that Trump's campaign was connected to Ukraine's foe to the East, Russia.
This is in January, January 11th, 2017.
That is from Politico.
So the president says, you know, the situation, I need a favor.
We'd like you to find out what what happened.
Well, the president's clearly talking about 2016.
He's not in any way, shape, manner, or form at that point talking about the Bidens, although all of that was public information because the tape of Joe Biden, Sleepy Creepy, had already been released by that time.
He says, I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people.
And hey, I'd like to have the attorney general call you and your people, and I'd like you to get to the bottom of it.
And he then went on to talk about Mueller.
So the bottom line is he's talking about 2016 election interference.
Anyway, here to weigh in on all this, Andy McCarthy, Fox News contributor and former assistant U.S. attorney for the prestigious Southern District of New York and author of the book, Ball of Collusion, uh, the plot to rig an election and destroy a presidency, Matt Towery, attorney polster, semi-retired, so he says, I don't believe it.
Greg Jarrett, his new book is out, what in about a week and a half, I guess.
Yeah, about a week and a half.
And it's called Witch Hunt, the story of the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
Uh okay.
Uh the very thing, this is how I hear it.
Let me start with Andy.
The very thing I hear Nancy Pelosi accusing President Trump of a shakedown using taxpayer dollars and election interference, that happened for the Democrats.
Do you see it?
Go ahead, I I absolutely see it that way.
Uh I I also think Attorney General Barr is quite correct that you know, we have to do what we can do to end this business of criminalizing our political elections, especially since it seems to be a one-way street.
Uh exactly what they are accusing Trump of, uh, the Obama administration committed.
They actually, in 2016, uh the Obama administration's law enforcement agencies leaned on the Ukrainian authorities, which were very beholden to them under the circumstances.
That's the reason Joe Biden was able to demand the firing of that prosecutor.
Uh, just as all that stuff we heard yesterday about how beholden Ukraine is to the United States, that started to be really true in 2014, uh, when Yanukovych fled to Moscow and a regime took power in Ukraine uh that was uh much more uh ideologically disposed toward Obama's way of thinking in the world.
Uh the Obama administration became its most important ally.
It was very dependent on it.
Uh and for that reason, they were able to lean on the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and get them to investigate a key part of the Trump campaign, namely Paul Manafort, uh, who was not only uh arrested or uh investigated and information about him conveyed from the Ukrainian authorities to the American authorities,
someone who was a Ukrainian official that was tied to the Clinton campaign was involved in the leaking of investigative information from Ukraine into the American media that resulted in Manafort being ousted from his position as campaign chairman of the Trump campaign, and that became the backbone for the collusion narrative that didn't start after the election.
It was up and running in the fall of 2016.
Greg Jarrett, um, we've seen this movie before that the only Russian interference in the election that I can tell that had it, you know, obviously if the New York Times was right, that the dirty Clinton bought and paid for Russian dossier with funneled money uh to an op research firm to a foreign national who's not supposed to be involved in our campaign,
but anyway, put our elections, um, and then became the basis to spy on a president, a transition team, and at the time a uh a candidate.
Let me ask you this.
Um, it seems like everything, once again, that the Democrats are accusing the president of, they themselves are way more guilty of.
And there's no evidence that the president did anything wrong here.
Nothing.
The the great irony, which the media continues to ignore as well as Democrats, is the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democrats colluded with Russia to accuse Trump of colluding with Russia.
So Clinton colluded with Russia, which is the title of one of the chapters in my new book.
And but Trump didn't, and the Mueller report proved it, which is why the Attorney General William Barr has launched an investigation into the origins.
So on the transcript between the two presidents, Zelensky and Trump, the president is asking Zelensky to provide any information or evidence that would be relevant to that existing U.S. investigation by the attorney general.
And they're actually bound to do it.
21 years ago, the United States and Ukraine signed an agreement.
It's called the mutual legal assistance in criminal matters agreement.
And they are obligated, if they have any information relevant to a criminal investigation the U.S. is interested in to provide us with that information.
And vice versa.
We give them information.
So when you look at it from the legal standpoint, the president is simply asking Ukraine's assistance in a U.S. criminal investigation.
Now they should do it out of goodwill, and also because we we provide them with substantial assistance, but they must do it under the agreement again, as I said, you know, that was established 21 years ago.
But if you listen to the crazy media and Nancy Pelosi, I mean I'll just give you an example.
There's an op-ed in the Washington Post today, Michael Gerson, and he writes, the president has pleaded guilty to an impeachable offense.
Dick Blumenthal, the U.S. Senator from my state, Connecticut, um, said of Trump, this is premeditated criminal conduct.
It is none of that.
This is a sensible, logical, reasonable conversation in which we're asking Ukraine for help.
And by the way, at the end of the conversation, Biden's name is brought up, and obviously his quid pro quo, which could be uh criminal.
Um, you know, he doesn't get immunity from criminal prosecution or investigation simply because he's running for president of the United States.
So uh, you know, Hillary Clinton obviously got immunity uh thanks to Loretta Lynch and James Comey.
That shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't happen with Joe Biden.
Uh Matt, let's get your political take on this, because what we're seeing is a they want to race through this impeachment.
They don't even want to stop and pass go and collect 200.
They want to do this yesterday.
Um, what are the political ramifications, especially because we actually have their top candidate on tape doing the very thing Trump didn't do, which is shake down uh another country with taxpayer dollars for the purpose in this case of protecting uh a corrupt deal with his son, which probably broke every and violated every ethics rule around, but and laws as well.
How does this play out politically?
Well, I mean, obviously Andy and Greg know all the details of this and they're experts on it.
Uh the American people are not.
And you know, I don't live in Washington.
I'm I'm out of all this business, and I can tell you no one's talking about this thing.
They don't care.
We're not all glued to the TV set to find out what the next uh statement is from Adam Schiff or from the speaker.
I think you're gonna find some things that will start to happen.
First of all, did you hear Speaker Pelosi say she thinks Russia has something to do with this?
You can imagine if the public heard this, they would roll their eyes eight times over again because they've had enough of the it's Russia, it's Russia, they don't believe that anymore.
The other thing that's going to happen is the public has a pretty good sense of fairness.
So the shift today was uh away from the from the actual transcript because that didn't score any points.
So now they've gone to, well, it's a cover-up because it's a move to a more secure server.
Well, excuse me, didn't we hear that it was it was okay for a Secretary of State to move classified information to an unsecure server and in the end delete a lot of those messages and actually have some of the equipment destroyed?
That was okay.
But in a White House where there's been all kinds of leaks that they that allegedly a conversation with a foreign uh president moves to a more secure server, which I would assume is not going to be destroyed and can be recovered.
I mean, that's just a joke.
So where you're headed for this is sort of the what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
And you've got Biden situation with Biden gate and the Ukraine that was going on.
It was ended.
You've got now a shift to uh some issue about how they store the conversation that took place.
The public is going to see this and they're going to tire of it very, very quickly.
Uh the polling numbers aren't moving that much.
The president, for whatever reason, has some of the highest numbers he's ever had.
I don't quite understand that, but I think it's good for him.
And I think quite frankly, the best thing that could happen to the man, nobody wants to hear it, is for them to take this flimsy case, at least it's flimsy at the moment, move as fast as they can, impeach the man, and see what happens.
Because as you recall, Sean, I was Newt Gingrich's chairman back when he was speaker.
And we wrestled with this entire issue of impeachment.
And it did not play well at home in Newt's own district.
Take a break.
We'll come back.
That's Matt Towery.
We have Andy McCarthy, Greg Jarrett, more on the other side.
We've got Rudy Giuliani, Jay Seculo, and an audience edition of Hannity tonight at nine.
We'll continue.
Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country.
Without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional SAS.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
I'm Ben Ferguson.
And I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
Sir Dow, verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcast.
I said, You have no authority.
You're not the president.
The president said I said call him.
I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars.
I said, You're not getting a billion.
I'm going to be leaving here.
I think it was what six hours.
I looked at I said, I'm leaving in six hours.
If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money.
Oh, son of a bot fired.
Son of a bee, got fired.
Well, he did that, and he had been trying to do that because he was warned by the New York Times and others that his son was being investigated by that prosecutor.
Why else would a sitting vice president of the United States of America demand a Ukrainian prosecutor be fired, leverage our tax money to do it, shake them down the way he did, uh, and not disclose the massive conflict of interest, putting aside the fact that his son made millions of dollars with no seeming expertise at all in Ukraine, energy, oil, or gas.
And then it even got worse when he partnered with uh John Kerry's stepson and Whitey Bulger's nephew.
Uh, yeah, that Whitey Bulger, the murderer Whitey Bolger's nephew, and well, the Bank of China, yes, with ties to the government, gave them a billion-dollar contract and another half a billion dollar contract on the issue of private equity, another area of quote, expertise that they had no experience in.
Anyway, Greg Jarrett, Andy McCarthy, and uh Matt Towery remain with us.
Um, Andy, you know, I'm watching this.
You've read this.
I've read it again.
I read the transcript again.
And you know, to me, the whistleblower complaint is just it's it's not even a whistleblower.
It's somebody would as a prosecutor, I doubt you ever relied on hearsay from individuals.
Um, and it certainly wouldn't hold up in court.
But the idea that the whistleblower, uh, who obviously in my view had a lot of help putting that together, seemed very lawyered up to me, that somehow that would be more important than the actual transcript because you went when you read the transcript, do you see anything in that transcript that concerns you?
No, Sean, and I I'd like to, because you just played that clip.
If I if I could, I'd like to sort of pile on a point that Greg made a couple of minutes ago.
Um you know, it's a common place.
It was throughout the 20 years that uh or close to 20 years I was a prosecutor uh in the in New York for the uh for the government of the United States to request assistance from foreign governments when they have evidence that's relevant to Justice Department and FBI investigations.
That happens all the time.
And, you know, considering the part of the conversation that people are between Trump and Zelensky that people are zeroed in on is obviously the Biden portion.
As I think you're pointing out, the Biden portion comes after the main ask that President Trump sought, which was assistance in Attorney General Barr's investigation of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, which, whether Democrats like it or not, is a legitimate investigation of the Department of Justice that the United States has every right.
And again, it's a common point.
Wouldn't it actually be a responsibility knowing that?
now let's go back.
We this has now been confirmed even again this week that John Durham has been continues to be looking into the Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 elections when the president refers to CrowdStrike and the investigation he's like well I hope you can help my attorney general out because we're actually looking into the truth about election interference um I would think that that's the right thing to do for the country.
So now the question is if if if somebody like you who worked at the prestigious Southern district of New York and you you are the one first World Trade Center bombings the conviction of the blind shake that was all you worked on very big cases and you see what's happening with Joe Biden and his shakedown and his son's shady business deals.
I don't care how you shake it there's no way you can look at that and say that looks good on paper.
And then what they're accusing the president is no there.
So then how are we at this point?
What happened?
Yeah well Sean this is why I I wanted to raise something new or at least I that I don't think has been discussed discussed enough.
I I completely agree that there's a relevance tie-in to the Biden's activities with what was going on in Ukraine that is germane to Durham's investigation.
But here's what I don't understand as a totally separate matter whether it's germane to the genesis of of the Trump Rush investigation or not why can't the Justice Department open a foreign corrupt practices act investigation on the Biden.
As we saw from the Mueller investigation, you don't need a whole lot to open an investigation.
You don't even need a crime on the basis of the way they conducted that thing.
And since we've been talking for a couple of days, I mean, on one day I see Bill Weld says the president should be getting the death penalty.
And then, you know, we spend two days talking about, you know, talk about the angels dancing on the head of a pin, whether we can make a campaign finance violation out of the conversation between Trump and Zelensky seems to me that there's at least as much evidence that.
cries out for a foreign corrupt practices act investigation of the Bidens as there is a uh campaign finance investigation of the Trumps.
When you hear Biden do you hear what I hear I hear a shakedown.
Yeah of course I do but I don't I'm not offended by shakedowns in the context of foreign policy Sean I think that's okay but what about the personal enrichment of somebody that has zero qualifications apparently I haven't seen any and that being his son.
I'm I'm all for I'm all for investigating that that's what I'm just saying.
I don't even think it needs to be tied into into Durham's investigation.
I think there's an independent basis to investigate it.
You know I go back to political again this is a different article Greg Jarrett this was in uh June of 2016 the headline Russian government hackers broke into the DNC servers and stole the Trump op uh Oppo research and the hackers had access to the information for approximately a year uh in the contents of that article it says CrowdStrike designated two groups that gained access to the DNC's information.
Right.
One codename Cozy Bear broke into the DNC last summer and had been monitoring the committee's emails and chats the other group CrowdStrike dubbed Fancy Bear it hacked into the DNC in April, aiming to get op research files.
The fancy bear breach is what tipped off DNC officials, and they were able to gain access to all DNC research staff computers.
Now, when Trump mentions CrowdStrike and all this stuff, he's talking about the 2016 election, which I thought I I would actually argue that he has a constitutional duty under the take care clause.
Correct.
And that the president of the United States sees to it that all laws are faithfully executed.
Yeah, no, CrowdStrike, one of the great mysteries and and really outrageous acts, is that uh the DNC would not give their server to the FBI, and they would only allow CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm to analyze uh the DNC server.
And there are serious questions about the legitimacy of CrowdStrike.
So the president is bringing it up in the context of uh, you know, the origins of the Trump Russia investigation and hacking and and so forth.
This is a legitimate uh official Department of Justice investigation.
And as Andy was pointing out just a moment ago, um you know there is a long history of the United States sharing information with foreign nations about criminal investigations, and and they also share with the United States.
So the president is simply asking very reasonably to do this.
And you know what one of the most outrageous acts uh of the media occurred yesterday, the big bold headline all across the top of the New York Times uh is Trump asks for favor.
And uh you know, most everybody who didn't actually dig deep into the article would be in the impression that Trump was asking for the favor of investigating Biden, um and and provide evidence against his uh potential political opponent.
That's not what the conversation was about at all.
As you point out, Sean, it was about a completely different matter, uh, the official Department of Justice investigation.
So the media deliberately did that.
The New York Times headline, you know, was a knowing, willful lie, a misrepresentation to the American public.
But this is now rampant in the media.
Uh and again, I come back to my statement earlier, and and you know, Bill Bennett uh said this earlier today on Fox News.
There is nothing in the Ukraine call transcript that is an impeachable offense.
It was a normal, logical, sensible, smart conversation for the president of the United States to have.
If you have evidence of a crime uh involving the United States, please give it to us.
Conduct your investigation if you produce evidence, hand it over to us.
We, you know, the president, as I wrote in my column a couple of days ago, has a constitutional duty under the take care clause to enforce all laws, whether it be emigration laws, finance laws, or yes, criminal statutes.
If people, you know, and I I quote George Washington, who was the first to say, really, this is my most important duty.
I cannot let people violate the law with impunity.
That's George Washington.
And every president swears on on a Bible and raises their right hand to faithfully execute the laws and to enforce the Constitution.
And in that context, this context, this is precisely what the president was doing.
All right, let me go now to the political side of all of this and ask you know, Matt Towery.
Uh uh, I don't think the country is gonna look favorably upon this.
We can already see, you know, the divide is only getting deeper.
Um, there's a lot at stake here.
Democrats now spend three years, comes out that they were lying.
Adam Schiff, the biggest liar of all.
Adam Schiff does a little parody thing yesterday.
I mean, it was embarrassing.
Um, now we see what?
How does this go?
Where does this go from here?
Well, first of all, uh let's talk for a minute about what you're gonna see over the weekend.
Um, as I said, they've now shifted to there's a cover-up with a cover-up, and we just we talked about that ad nauseum and what a what a phenomenal goose for gander irony that is, given what took place with Hillary Clinton.
But you're gonna see polls, they will be network polls, they will be other polls.
Many of them, by the way, the way that the data's collected, the way they're weighted, and with some of the questions that lead you into the answer, I'm sure you're going to see polls where people will say, Oh, the president should be impeached.
Don't pay any attention to those polls.
They won't mean anything.
They didn't mean anything in Russia Gay.
They won't mean anything in this case either.
What will happen is this if the if the Democrats rush, as some press reports are saying today, move very quickly to move these articles of impeachment through.
And if in fact there is a vote, it will go to the Senate.
There's what these two gentlemen have just given a perfect case for why there's not anything to it.
He'll be acquitted and it's over.
You know what happens then.
Then you have a Donald Trump who has been made a Teflon president, and he will get re-elected, probably an overwhelming level.
If they don't go to impeachment, try to drag this thing out, the country's just going to become wary of it.
Because mark my words, at some point, Sean, something tangible and important in this country, not this nonsense.
Something big will happen.
And everyone will sit there and say, why in the world was Congress asleep at the switch and not doing anything?
Because the country's getting tired.
They're really getting weary of this.
And I tell you, I live out, I live in Florida.
I just live in the normal man's land and I just live the normal man's life.
But I can tell you, here, nobody gives a you know what about this stuff.
It's interesting to watch.
It keeps us entertained, but it hasn't changed one opinion.
And uh Andy, you're a pretty smart political observer.
How do you see this politically taking the legal side out of it for now?
I Sean, I think that um when you when uh and Matt knows a million times more about this than I do, but it just seems to me that you know you say what you say, but you vote with your feet.
And when the Democrats are ready to get on the floor of the House and take a vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry, we'll know that they actually think they might be getting somewhere.
It seems to me that for all the talk this week, nothing actually changed.
Pelosi's announcement from the podium didn't change a single thing they were already doing.
If you listen to Jerry Nadler, uh they've already been doing an impeachment inquiry for you know a couple of months.
So she didn't do a committee, no vote, no nothing.
I don't see it.
Stay right there.
We'll come back.
Uh final thoughts, uh, Greg Jarrett and uh Andy McCarthy and Matt Towery.
Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Hammond.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sas.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
All right.
Final uh thoughts here.
Greg Jarrett, uh, okay, where are we going?
And then we'll ask uh Andy McCarthy and Matt Towery 30 seconds each.
Go.
If Democrats are foolish enough, they'll proceed with impeachment.
The moderate uh Democrats are really going to be on the fence.
The freshman Democrats from uh the the red districts uh that flipped blue.
Uh I don't think they're gonna vote for impeachment.
But uh we've seen the show before.
If you go down the road to impeachment, it will backfire on the impeaching uh party.
So, you know, i great.
Go ahead, Nancy Pelosi, go towards impeachment.
Um you may, as New Gingrich has pointed out, lose your job as speaker.
And Matt Towery predictions.
Oh, I agree totally what Greg is saying.
I think that let's see what happens this weekend.
It's uh with the shift to the quote cover-up, see if they can make anything out of that, which I don't think they will be able to.
And I agree, these Democrats who are in these marginal districts are going to start to become very worried about their future.
And last word, Andy McCarthy.
Sean, a smart friend of mine uh told me while this was unfolding that the problem with impeachment is that there's nobody who's really in charge of it.
And then once the machinery gets rolling, even if they think it's a bad idea, it's hard to stop it.
And I doubted it at the time, but I'm beginning to believe it's true.
All right.
Thank you all for being with us.
When we come back, news roundup information overload.
Hannity tonight, Jay Secular, Rudy Giuliani, and a studio audience on this entire democratic hypocrisy mess, flagrant double standard.
We will give you the news you won't get elsewhere.
Fox, Hannity, Nine Eastern.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
There's that whole constellation of issues in which you've got Rudy Giuliani revolving that constellation and laying the groundwork for that call and doing who knows what else.
You've got Bill Bar whose role is still undetermined.
Uh the same Bill Barr, who is evidently on a mission to try to give credence to this counter investigation theory, this conspiracy theory that no, it was really Ukraine that was interfering in our election, not Russia.
And by the way, that theory that the attorney general has been promoting with his investigative resources, uh, and the president was interested in getting Ukraine to promote with its investigative resources.
That narrative comes from Russia.
Um, and that makes it all the more insidious.
All right, that was the uh cowardly shif himself.
Um now what's fascinating is by the way, glad you're with us.
News Roundup Information uh overload hour, Sean Hannity Show.
And uh oh, the conspiracy theory that Ukraine is interfering in our election is a Russian narrative.
Really?
Let me read for you from Politico.
Now, politico has been called a lot of things over the years.
One thing it's never been associated with as being anything conservative.
The headline on January 11th, 2017.
Now, you know how when you look up stories online, it gives you about how many minutes it's going to take to read the article.
Yeah, this one was a you oh, 22 or 32 minute read.
And the rest of the headline is Kiev officials scrambling to make amends with the president elect after quietly working to boost Hillary.
And it goes on in the article to say Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president elect after quietly working with working to boost uh Hillary Clinton.
Whoopsie Daisy, the President Poranchenko's administration, along with the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, insist that Ukraine stay neutral.
Okay.
But Ukrainian government officials, it goes on, tried to help Hillary Clinton undermine Donald Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office.
They disseminated documents implicating a tr a top aid in corruption and suggested that they were investigating the matter only to back away after the election.
And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisors.
A politico investigation found.
A Ukrainian American operative who is consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign at aid Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The Ukrainian efforts to impact the race, helping to force Manafort's resignation, advancing the narrative Trump's campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine's foe to the East Russia.
But they were far less less concerted or centrally directed than Russia's alleged hack and dissemination of democratic emails.
So they try to downplay it.
But the reality is this is a story now that has been out there and that we have been telling you for some period of time.
All right, let's go back.
Let's fast forward to the conversation.
Now, and you know, a whistleblower's complaint when we have the exact conversation is meaningless, especially when the whistleblower is not a whistleblower.
I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot, and Ukraine knows a lot about it.
Oh, now how did the president know it?
Was it Fox News?
No, it was politico.
January 11th, 2017.
And then he goes on to say, what is the favor he Wants.
I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine.
They say crowd strike.
Oh, now we're now we're delving into the Russia conspiracy.
In other words, election interference.
All right.
So the president is saying right after he said the favor.
I guess you have one of your wealthy people, the server, they say Ukraine has it, a lot of things that went on, the whole situation.
I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people, and I'd like to have the attorney general call you or your people, or I'd like you to get to the bottom of it.
As you saw yesterday, the whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine.
So what's the favor the president's asking for?
Information about election interference in the 2016 election that Ukrainian government officials have been trying to give us and want to give us that shows that they helped Hillary Clinton.
This has been out there, oh, since Donald Trump was president elect, and it was not widely reported, but it was reported.
And then you get into the whole issue of the prosecutor that was fired by Joe Biden.
There's no comparison in any of this.
Uh the brand new Freedom Caucus chairman, he's got big shoes to fill after Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona, Representative Tom McClintock of California.
Uh, I understand, Congressman, that uh Congressman Biggs that you just went forward with a a censure move on Adam Schiff, who I think is the biggest liar in Congress, and I've invited him on the air for four hours.
I'm giving him three hours of radio, one hour of TV.
The biggest audience he can get ever in his lifetime.
Uh for some reason he doesn't return our calls.
I don't know why.
Tell tell us about what you're involved in today.
Well, uh I uh introduced a motion to censure Mr. Schiff um, not just for his performance yesterday, because I worked on the presentation.
Oh, you mean when it w when he when he didn't read the actual words and made up a story as he went along?
Exactly right.
I mean, uh if you look at that, it is one of the most uh horrific performances um we've ever seen in Congress.
I mean, look at that thing, and it was designed so that in the first few minutes anybody would be watching it, and and that's when most people watch.
Just be the first few minutes.
They would make it would make it look like President Trump was the biggest um uh basically corrupt president in the history of this country.
And none of it was true.
It was made up whole cloth.
And so, but but see, he's done more than that over the last year.
I mean, everything from the Russia investigation and his comments about that, uh, and his efforts on that.
So what we did is I worked with uh Congressman Nunes, the chairman of the or excuse me, the ranking member of the House Intel Committee.
Um, and uh and we put this together with you know, and we've got everybody, Mark Jordan, uh, Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan.
We've got uh please come on to this and all right, hang on, Congressman Biggs, we're losing you.
Tom McClintock, I'll let you pick it up from there.
Well, I I just uh suggest that there's a uh story of Harry Truman on the back of a campaign train in 1948, and uh somebody out in the crowd shouts, give them hell, Harry, and Truman says, son, I don't give them hell, I just tell the truth on what I think it's hell.
Uh it is very clear that that uh uh Schiff understood that there was nothing objectionable in what the president said in the actual transcript, so he had to make something out.
Uh uh, I don't think we ought to censure him for that.
I think we ought to tell the truth on him, and uh, he'll think it's hell.
Uh uh, I think we we we need to be making it very clear in every form we can find that that what Schiff said was made up out of whole cloth.
And if we actually look at the transcript, uh you can see there is nothing objectionable what the president said.
The Constitution commands the president to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
It gives him wide latitude over our relations with foreign governments.
There is strong evidence that when he was vice president, Joe Biden threatened the Ukrainian government with the loss of more than a billion dollars of federal loan guarantees if they didn't fire the prosecutor who was investigating Biden's son for corruption and John Solomon's article in the Hill today.
Uh confirms all that once again.
Um all the president was doing was asking the new Ukrainian president to look into it.
Um that is entirely within the president's authority and responsibility, and he'd be derelict in his duties if he didn't.
I mean, that's the whole thing.
I mean, and this is what I don't understand, because what I just read is what the media is fixated, focused on.
Oh my gosh, the president is asking the people of Ukraine uh for for information, and and Biden's son and his name came up.
These are all public reports.
Well, not only that, but I I thought well, but but Tom, I thought the media cared.
I thought they cared a lot about election interference.
Oh, you're you're talking about the twentieth century.
We are in the twenty first century where the media has become intensely partisan.
They pick sides and they stick to those sides.
That's not unusual in American history.
It's just unusual in the last century.
But the point I was gonna make is that is exactly by the way, what three Democratic U.S. senators, leading U.S. senators, including Dick Durbin, who's part of the Democratic leadership, asked in a letter to the Ukraine last year, they asked the uh uh prosecutor of uh for full cooperation in the probe of Donald Trump.
Well, Donald Trump is simply saying we want your full cooperation in all of these issues.
Why would any vice president, and I assume we have Andy Biggs back, ever fire, demand a firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor, or they're not gonna get the aid money that he's in charge uh of because uh that to me, right there, ding ding ding, that's a warning sign.
And then when you find out that prosecutor was investigating the very company that's paying his son who has zero experience, massive amounts of money, now you know we've got a story.
But the media as as the lying corrupt, abusively biased uh media, uh just they they don't even they don't even pay any attention to it.
It's it takes my breath away how abusively biased they are.
Well, the the reality is that act is the criminal act.
If that is the criminal act right there, is trying to leverage the power and position and the uh that he held at the time to protect his son um and the taxpayer funds.
But the media is not going to cover that because it doesn't fit their narrative.
And you're exactly right.
Their narrative is one where they're uh basically just so viscerally uh hateful of hatred against this president that it doesn't matter what anybody else does, they are fixated on trying to remove this president from office.
And and they should they should be investigating Biden.
What is the process?
I know you want to censure as it relates to Adam Schiff, but it is, you know, Nancy.
Well, it's really Ocasio Cortez's house.
Let's be honest here.
Nancy Pelosi's speaker in name only, and I think that you know we never saw greater evidence than this week.
Um, do you really believe the Democrats are that stupid politically, Tom McClintock, that they're gonna they're gonna go forward with this impeachment farce of theirs?
Because if they do, um we could see the the reaction in the country now.
President's never raised more money at a at a faster clip than he is at this moment.
And I think after three years of lies and conspiracy theories, the public's patience for this crap is done, and they're showing themselves to be a party of no ideas, no vision, no service to their constituents.
Well, the Air Force has a term called target fixation.
They use it to describe a situation where a uh pilot becomes so fixated on a target that he forgets to fly his airplane and ends crashing into a mountain.
And I think that's where the Democrats are.
They simply can't help themselves.
Uh and I agree with you.
I I think that this actually may be a huge service uh to the nation because in this process, I think it's gonna bring out all of the corruption uh that was involved with this whole uh Russian collusia occlusion hoax uh that's been going on for the last three years and all of the corrupt dealings of the Bidens and the Clintons uh during the Obama administration.
And uh the the prosecutor that Biden had fired uh was interviewed by John Solomon in this very excellent article he rewrote in the Hill uh uh yesterday or today.
Um and he says a show, and it was the um uh the uh prosecutor told me he was making plans to question Hunter Biden about three million dollars in fees that Biden and his partner collected from Barisma through their American firm.
Documents seized by the FBI in an unrelated case confirmed the payments, which in many months total more than 166,000 dollars.
Well, this is part and part.
This is what this this is the information that the president was asking for the uh cooperation of the Ukrainian government to uh uh uh to bring forward.
Um uh, and that is perfectly legitimate.
And and in fact, was exactly what three Democratic senators were asking the Ukrainians to do when they thought the the uh information might be harmful to Trump.
All right, guys, we've got to take a break.
We'll come back.
Uh Congressman Andy Biggs, now chairman of the Freedom Caucus, Tom McClintock, uh, as we continue our analysis at the bottom of the hour, we're gonna take calls, our Friday concert series, much more.
Uh amazing audience edition of Hannity, Rudy Julian.
We got we're loaded tonight.
You don't want to miss it.
Nine Eastern, Jay Seculo, much more on the Fox News channel.
We'll continue.
All right, as we continue with Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Biggs, Congressman uh Tom McClintock of California also with us.
Uh all right, so final thoughts.
Where do we end here?
Uh what happens next is Nancy Pelosi that dumb Andy Biggs.
Um yeah, I think what's gonna happen is Jerry Nadler's gonna lose the opportunity.
Normally this would be a judiciary committee deal.
I think they're gonna go with a pe try to go ahead with impeachment.
I think she's gonna want to get Adam Schiff to be the chair of a specialist elect committee.
And you know, there's nobody that's probably that would that should not have that uh role more than Adam Schiff, but she's not gonna entrust that with Jerry Nadler because I just don't think that I think we've demonstrated very clearly that that's not a committee that can handle that kind of uh uh important thing.
But I think she's gonna go forward with it.
Yes, I do.
Tom, do you agree with that?
And if you do agree with that, what is the fallout?
Because I would argue the boomerang is gonna be massive and the public outrage is gonna be palpable, and I think it impacts 2020 in a major way.
Oh, I agree with you.
I did the the truth will come out.
And the adversarial system that we have in Congress uh is pretty good at bringing out the truth.
You put two sides together, you crash them together, and you you you you uh are then able to compare uh uh uh fact from fiction.
Uh and that's gonna happen in this process, and I think that that is gonna be very bad news for the Democrats because I think it will lay out a lot of uh the corruption that was going on in the Obama administration how this administration uh under Trump is really trying to drain the swamp of uh it longfellow said it best though the wheels of the gods grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine.
All right, thank you both for being with us.
When we come back, wide open telephones on this Friday and our Friday concert series as we continue a major Hannity tonight, Jay Seculo, Rudy Giuliani, uh a studio audience and more.
Nine Eastern Hannity Fox.
Hey, uh ladies and gentlemen, is sick, and it's getting sicker.
Now, back to the Sean Hannity show.
Oh boy, is it getting sick, no doubt about it.
Uh all right, it's Friday, and we're not gonna stop having fun because the Democrats just have now doubled down on what is a psychotic mental illness of theirs and rage that is out of control.
And that means it's time.
I know it's been a busy week politically, you're worried.
Let not your heart be troubled.
I promise this will work out.
Uh anyway, 800 941 Sean is our number on this Friday if you want to be a part of the program.
By the way, I have uh, you know, we have as part of this show, we have a great group of well, to me they're young.
Uh and a friend of mine's uh son who what you're 26 or 7 now.
26.
26.
And you do you know what I did not know what I wanted to do with 26.
I at 27 I got behind a radio microphone for the first time.
I know that was only five 49 years ago.
Yeah, no idea.
No idea.
But you went to school, you got your education, you're doing well, right?
Yeah, trying.
All right.
So I dat your dad who I love and I've spent a lot of time with, uh, I was hanging out with him this weekend, and he said that you have the best arguments.
For example, we have these shootings that take place all over the place on guns and other issues.
Because especially you grew up in New York, New Yorkers usually are not as pro-second amendment as the rest of the country.
So, what's your argument?
And you had no idea I was gonna do this.
No, not at all.
I thought we were gonna talk about this whole Trump impeachment.
Um, what do you want to talk about?
Do you want to talk about what the second amendment stands for?
Right.
Well, I mean, for example, when you watch the arguments, background checks wouldn't have helped in El Paso or background checks exist.
They do, correct.
Every time you buy a gun, FBI background check.
And so the yeah, the argument, you know, they they bring up these solutions that sound good and feel good, but they're not backed by any facts or numbers.
Um, you know, and if we if we really looked at the numbers, uh Gun-free zones are where shootings happen.
I think those should be abolished.
Um, you know, people made a big stink about Trump saying arm teachers.
He wasn't saying let's arm every teacher.
He was saying if a teacher chooses to carry a gun concealed, nobody knows he has it, you know, say he's an ex-military guy or somebody who trains often.
Why shouldn't he carry it to protect his students?
Um, it it's a great point.
So I came up with this idea, and I'm not particularly loved among my esteemed media colleagues.
I think because our ratings are higher.
I don't think they like that part of it either.
Um, but I came up with an idea said, okay, well, don't we protect politicians with armed guards, right?
Mayor De Blasio comes into the TV studio the other night, and he has five armed New York City police officers with him.
And I'm like, okay, well, does every New Yorker, should every New Yorker in the privacy of their home have the right to protect themselves the way you are protected, or the way rich Hollywood stars are protected, they hire arm guards.
And he says, every New Yorker, every American has the right to be safe.
I said, okay, I didn't ask you that.
Do they have a right to have a firearm?
And this one back and forth, you know, like seven, eight times.
They have a right to be safe.
I didn't ask you if they have a right to be safe.
What do what do people do if you don't have something to protect yourself?
I mean, it, you know, it's typical liberal hypocrisy at its finest.
Right.
You know, we deserve to be protected by the best weapons money can buy, but ordinary civilians don't.
When in reality, we're at a greater risk of being attacked.
You know, we don't live in the bubble of Secret Service.
Uh, we are the ones at the malls, we're at movie theaters, we're at schools.
Scary.
It's scary.
Yeah, no, I mean, even, you know, when I go to the movies, it's always in the back of my head of, you know, these shootings.
Um, and granted, we live in a state where guns are not a common thing.
I lived in Florida for five years.
There are gun stores on every street, and the gun culture is, you know, it's a family culture in Florida.
Um, and it you you do feel safer just with the idea that you know the people at the store could be carrying concealed.
Because, you know, a guy comes out trying to shoot people, you've got backup.
Um, you know, you're not gonna sit hide and wait for the police.
It's it the by the time, even the best response time.
So it's like two to five minutes.
It's shooting's done.
It's over.
Yeah.
The whole thing.
So I wanted to surround the perimeter schools with retired police, retired military.
You know, they're not gonna be having AK-47s, but they'll be armed.
I don't care if kids have to go through a metal detector.
You know, some school districts has a lot of violence.
Then have retired police and military inside on every floor.
So if it happens, you don't have any response time you have to wait for.
And people thought I was nuts.
Sean, it it's it's crazy.
I mean, you go to a bank, you go to an airport, there's armed guards, there's metal detectors.
Why wouldn't we protect our kids the same way we protect our money?
It wow.
It makes no sense to me.
Did you just hear uh now what we I gotta run, but where do you stand on the political spectrum?
I think I'm pretty libertarian on a lot of stuff too.
I on personal issues, it's none of my business.
I don't care.
Leave me alone.
No, I mean, I'm environmentally liberal, I'd say.
I'm that I have to fix that.
Uh well, I'm I mean, I'm more open, I guess, to hearing facts and hearing numbers.
I'm not, I wouldn't say liberal in the sense of, you know.
You're not like a new green deal, get rid of oil and gas, the lifeblood of our economy.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Not by any means.
Um, I knew your grandfather.
You did.
And he was a great man.
He was and that's how I got to know uh your dad and your mom.
And uh anyway, you having fun today so far?
Yeah, this is a blast.
A little nerve-wracking at first, but is this getting used to it?
Well, being on the we're only on 620 stations, that's all.
Yeah, I know.
25.
Okay.
I just hate hearing my voice, you know.
I hate hearing mine, but I don't blame you.
All right, Jack, good to see you, my friend.
Uh 800 941 Shauna's a number.
All right, that's gonna wrap things up for today.
All right, we've got a big, big show tonight.
Jay Seculah, Rudy Giuliani, uh, Greg, Sarah, Fitton, Pam Bondi, uh, Charlie Hurt, Doug Schoen, Emily Campagno, Jenna Ellis, Nine Eastern, Hannity, Fox News.
You don't want to miss this audience show.
Hope you'll join us.
See you tomorrow.
See you tonight back here on Monday.
Have a great, great, great weekend.
Have a great, great, great weekend.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
And I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
Normally is about real conversations.
Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday.
Normally on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ben Ferguson.
And I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
