Tom Fitton, President and CEO of Judicial Watch, has been following the documents that have been released to the public, and has been asking for so many more that have not been with relation to the corruption largely ignored by the Democrat party and the mainstream media. The Clinton and Obama regimes left behind them a trail of untied ends following their many back room deals. Fitton and Judicial Watch have done everything they can to get the information to the people to expose and display the truth for the American people.The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
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Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ben Ferguson.
And I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down with Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
And welcome to the Sean Hennity Show.
I'm Greg Jarrett, filling in for Sean Hannity.
I'm a Fox News legal analyst.
You can check out my Twitter at Greg Jarrett.
And by the way, Greg is with two G's at the end of Greg, J-A-R-R-E-T-T.
And check out my website, thegregjarrett.com.
I hope you picked up my new book.
And if you haven't, it would make a great Christmas present.
You can go to amazon.com, barnsandnoble.com, or just go to your nearest bookstore everywhere.
It's called Witch Hunt, the story of the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
And it details the acts of lawlessness and corruption first in launching the FBI's Trump-Russia collusion hoax investigation in July of 2016, and then lying and spying to gain a warrant from the FISA court to surveil and spy on the Trump campaign.
And the reason I bring that up now is because in two weeks on December 9th, we will learn what the Inspector General at the Department of Justice has determined after an exhaustive investigation over the course of more than a year, interviewing hundreds of witnesses, examining millions of pages of documents.
And the question, the central question is, was the spying on the Trump campaign lawless?
Was it illegal?
Or as some of the early reports are suggesting, leaked to the friendly media mob?
Well, it was unprofessional.
It was reckless.
It was sloppy.
But was it intentional deception and lies to the FISA court?
Maybe not with the exception of one or two individuals.
We don't know the truth, and we won't know the truth till the report comes out on December 9th.
And two days later, the Inspector General Michael Horowitz will be testifying before the Judiciary Committee in the United States Senate, chaired by Lindsey Graham.
Well, we heard from the Attorney General William Barr several months ago when he said, I think spying did occur.
And then he went on to say in another interview, I haven't gotten answers that are satisfactory.
Some of the facts I've learned don't hang together with the official explanation of what happened.
Things are not jiving.
Well, the Attorney General knew then that something was wrong.
The FBI had secured a FISA warrant to wiretap Carter Page, who had served for several months on the Trump campaign as an unpaid campaign foreign policy advisor.
And it was FBI Director James Comey who signed the first warrant, asserting without reservation or equivocation that Carter Page was a Russian agent and therefore he committed a treasonous conspiracy with the enemy of the United States, Russia.
And of course, it was completely untrue.
And now that we look back on it, Comey knew it was untrue.
He knew it was a lie.
But the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that signed off on that first warrant trusted that James Comey was telling the truth and that the evidence he submitted was verified according to the rules of the FISA court, according to the rules of the FBI.
You know, it's a crime to lie to a judge, depending upon the case and circumstances.
It could constitute numerous felonies.
They include perjury, false and misleading statements, obstruction of justice, fraud, conspiracy to defraud, deprivation of rights under color of law, electronic surveillance under color of law, contempt of court.
Four judges signed off on four successive warrants approving Comey's surveillance of Carter Page.
But under the law, if the government lied to those judges, it means the lawful warrants were obtained by unlawful means.
And let me tell you, I don't care what Horowitz finds.
Read my book, Witch Hunt, Chapter 4, Lying and Spying.
The evidence is compelling that Comey and the FBI and the Department of Justice deceived the FISA court to spy on Donald Trump's campaign.
They were lied to in six material ways.
Judges were not told that the Clinton campaign had paid for information used in their spy warrant.
Judges were not told that the FBI source, the maladroit ex-British spy Christopher Steele, more like Inspector Clouzeau, not James Bond, had lied to the FBI.
And the FBI knew that he'd lied to them.
They didn't care.
Judges were not told that Steele had a known virulent bias against Donald Trump.
Judges were not told that the FBI's evidence in Steele's dossier was utterly unverified.
Judges were not told of exculpatory evidence suggesting the innocence of Carter Page.
And finally, judges were not told that the wife of a senior Department of Justice official had cultivated some of the Clinton-funded opposition research used by the FBI.
So this first application was signed by James Comey, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.
They vouched for the veracity of what it was they were presenting to the court, the authenticity of the documents, the credibility of their sources, and they knew it was all a hoax.
They knew it was phony.
And Comey and Yates on that first application swore under penalty of perjury that the information was true and correct.
And they knew it wasn't.
And of course, believing that the FBI director and the Attorney General Sal Yates were being honest and forced the right, a FISA judge issued the first warrant, October 21st, 2016 to wiretap Carter Page.
And when he sought that warrant, Comey's FBI was still desperately trying to confirm the allegations in the Steele dossier upon which the FISA warrant was obtained.
And under FISA and FBI regulations, confirmation is required before you go to the court to get the warrant, not afterwards.
Comey and the FBI did not do that.
That rendered their warrant application defective and their actions lawless, if not criminal.
You know, one of the amazing things if you read the FISA warrant application, and we received a redacted version of it a year ago, page after page of the application repeats Christopher Steele's dossier allegations against Trump and the Trump campaign and Carter Page almost word for word.
It's nearly identical to what the FBI, the ex-spy had written in his dossier.
And at roughly the same time, Bureau agents learned that Steele had in fact been talking to the media about his dossier, leaking it to them.
And they lied to the court about that.
You know, the agency was forced to fire Christopher Steele for leaking him lying.
Did they tell the FISA court about that?
They did not.
Knowing that Steele had been lying, they knew he was no longer reliable and credible.
So what did they do?
They told the court he was reliable and credible over and over again.
They told the court, oh, our source, Christopher Steele, is credible.
Think about this.
He's not even a source.
He was a purveyor of information from anonymous Russian sources that was likely nothing more than disinformation.
Christopher Steele had been hired by Fusion GPS, operated by the founder of it, Glenn Simpson.
And within two weeks of being hired, he comes up with a phony dossier.
I mean, think about that.
Within two weeks?
I mean, that would be impossible.
Read the first memo in June of 2016.
And you will say to yourself, my lord, it would take months, if not a year, of working intel on the ground, confidential, undercover, Russian sources to come up with this kind of information.
Steele came up with it in the course of two weeks.
I mean, it's as if he picked up the telephone, called the Kremlin, and somebody at the Kremlin, covering the receiver of the phone and laughing, said, let's feed him a bunch of baloney information, disinformation.
And they did.
You know, this kind of behavior by the FBI to rely on a guy who's got no credible track record, who you know has lied to you, who hates the subject of your spy warrant.
This should never happen in America.
And one of the most egregious defects in the spy application was how the FBI and the DOJ deliberately hid from the court that the Hillary Clinton campaign had paid for it and the Democratic National Cavini.
The FBI knew this, but they didn't tell the judges that.
They camouflaged that vital fact that it was a shady political document composed by malignant anti-Trump forces who commissioned it.
I mean, that is unconscionable behavior on the part of the FBI.
So I don't care, frankly, what Michael Horowitz determines in his FISA abuse report when it comes out on December 9th.
If you want the truth, buy my book, Witch Hunt, the story of the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
I'm Greg Jarrett, filling in for Sean Hannity on the Sean Hannity Show.
Give us a call.
Let us know what you think.
Our number is 800-941-7326.
Again, the number is 800-941 Sean.
We'll be right back.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Ham, 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 Podcast, 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.
And welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
I'm Greg Jarrett filling in for Sean Hannity.
Want to hear what you think about the upcoming Inspector General report about potential lying and spying that occurred on the Trump campaign.
Give us a call at 800-941-7326.
Again, the number is 800-941-Sean.
So there's no question but that evidence was concealed and judges on the FISA court were deceived.
The FISA warrant was secured and spying on Carter Page began.
And it gave the FBI and James Comey this backdoor entry into the Trump campaign through electronic communications and documents.
And of course, nothing was ever found.
There was no conspiracy by Trump to steal the 2016 election that was hatched with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.
It was all a hoax.
And of course, the ensuing witch hunt.
The application to spy declared with absolute confidence that Carter Page was an agent of Russia.
He was no such thing.
And Comey and the FBI knew it.
They didn't care.
And if there's any doubt about how the FBI and the Department of Justice engaged in shameless deceptions, consider some of Comey's testimony and statements.
While promoting his book, you know, back in the spring of 2018, Comey claimed he had no idea who funded Christopher Steele's dossier.
Well, guess what?
That's not what Comey told Congress in private sessions before joint House committees, testimony of which was later revealed to the public.
In fact, Comey testified he knew before the FISA warrant application that Democrats had paid for the dossier.
So Comey, at the very least, was lying to the American public.
But then in a statement that defies all common sense and belief, he claimed he did not know that the dossier was used for the application to spy on Carter Page.
Really?
I mean, the bulk of the application was based on the phony dossier.
Think about what Comey was saying.
He conceded that he read the application that he signed to spy on the Trump campaign, but he would have us believe that he did not know where the information came from.
That's just not comprehensible.
All right, give us a call.
Want to hear from you what you expect from the Inspector General's report coming up on December 9th.
Give us a call, 800-941-7326-800-941-Sean.
I'm Greg Jarrett, filling in on the Sean Hannity Show.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Ham, 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 Podcast, 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.
Welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
I'm Greg Jarrett at Fox News Channel, filling in for Sean Hannity, who richly deserves a day off.
Hardest working guy I know.
But before he left, he and his staff put together, and I hope you have it already.
If you don't, you need to go to Hannity.com, get it in your newsletter.
It's called Surviving the Holidays with Your Liberal Relatives.
Let me say it again.
Surviving the holidays with your liberal relatives.
All right.
So, you know, you're sitting down at the dinner table over Turkey and, you know, your crazy Uncle Fester starts talking his usual liberal nonsense about the whole Trump-Russia collusion hoax and how Trump is a Russian asset and, you know, how wonderful James Comey is.
And you know that he's just talking out of his hat.
I cleaned that up, don't you know?
And you want to be able, sir.
Thank you very much.
There are kids listening.
And you know you really want to counter him with the truth.
Even Uncle Fester, when faced with the truth, will have to eventually concede, right?
But you need the truth.
So this surviving the holidays with your liberal relatives on Hannity.com will allow you, it's a cheat sheet, folks.
It'll allow you to be able to counter Uncle Fester and, you know, all of his crazy relatives sitting around the Thanksgiving table with facts.
And, you know, there's something incontrovertible, incontrovertible about facts.
You know, there's just no getting around them.
And so I have another idea also, in addition to getting your surviving the holidays cheat sheet on Hannity.com, just buy my book, Witch Hunt, the story of the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
And you can say to Uncle Fester, well, read chapter two of Greg Jarrett's book entitled Clinton Collusion.
And he details how Hillary Clinton created the hoax by paying for phony Russian disinformation that was fed to the FBI and the Department of Justice.
Or turn to, Uncle Fester, you should read chapter three, Lying and Spying, how Comey and McCabe and the whole gang lied to the FISA court to spy on the Trump campaign.
Or read chapter four, the attempted coup, how the malicious and nefarious Rod Rosenstein, together with Andrew McCabe, conspired to wear a wire and obtain incriminating information and solicit cabinet members to evict the president under a tortured interpretation of the 25th Amendment.
Or better yet, Uncle Fester, turn to chapter five, the folly of Robert Mueller's witch hunt, his magnum opus.
Or better yet, turn to chapter six, the media witch hunt, the lies day after day that they perpetrated on the American people.
It's an effective way for you to counter crazy Uncle Fester.
And better yet, buy the book, wrap it up, put a bow on top, slip it under the tree for Uncle Fester and his crazy liberal relatives, and then have your camera out when he opens up the present on Christmas Day.
Ah, yes.
You know, I have a friend of mine who read the book and he said, I gave it to my crazy liberal cousin.
And he took a snapshot of the cousin in the kitchen reading the book.
And afterwards, he sent me a text message and he said, my cousin finished the book and now he believes it really was a witch hunt.
Amazing what facts and evidence will do.
Let's go to our phones.
Jackie calls us from Washington.
Hey, Jackie.
Hi, Mr. Jared.
Thanks for taking my call.
First, I want to say that I have, I really enjoy when you guess on Sean Hannity, because the way that you explain the law, it's really clear.
And not being a lawyer, to me, law is very confusing.
So I do appreciate that.
Thank you.
So my question is, thinking about Hillary Clinton, you know how she destroyed the emails after receiving the subpoena?
And you know, the pay-for-play, the corruption while she was Secretary of State, and all of those things.
Is there a statute of limitations that, or could charges still be brought forward on any of those things?
It's a terrific question, and the short answer is yes, charges could still be brought.
It depends on the potential charge.
There are a variety of charges, obstruction of justice, as you mentioned.
Another could be lying, perjury, or false and misleading statements.
Another could be under the Espionage Act for keeping classified documents in an unsecure location intentionally or recklessly.
And so it depends on the statute.
Now, some of them are five-year statute limitations, which means that some of the offenses the statute of limitations has run.
However, there are exceptions to the statute of limitations called tolling.
And to the extent that evidence was hidden or destroyed, that would toll the statute of limitations so that five years wouldn't be applicable.
Others have 10-year statute limitations.
So some of the charges would be well within the 10-year statute of limitations.
So terrific question, Jackie.
And in fact, in my book, I describe in great detail not just Clinton collusion with an ex-British spy to obtain Russian disinformation to influence the 2016 elections,
but the pay-for-play, the corrupt acts using the Clinton Foundation as a personal piggy bank in massive acts of quid pro quo that would make what Joe Biden did seem tame by comparison.
Hillary Clinton all but put on the door of her office as Secretary of State a for sale sign.
And so charges, in my judgment, are long overdue.
Susan joins us from Texas.
Hey, Susan, how are you?
Putting a lot.
Oh, so let me go to Samuel in Wisconsin.
Hey, Samuel, how are you?
Good afternoon, Greg.
Good afternoon.
I was wondering, I didn't listen to Mr. Comey's testimony when he did this in the past year or months.
And he used the word when he was describing the actions.
It was like a mosaic.
And both of my antennas went off when I heard that.
Yeah.
I was just, and I was just curious, would any of this people involved in this, anybody stand up and be a true patriot and tell the absolute truth and take the sword?
Is that possible, Greg, with all these characters?
Well, it's possible, but in Washington, the truth seems to be an allergy that everybody has.
And, you know, I open my book, Witch Hunt, by saying that, you know, inventing a lie is easy.
Spreading the lie is even easier.
Uncovering the truth is hard because the truth always has its enemies.
And that is so true in Washington, D.C., where people are engaged in corrupt acts and the cover-up of those corrupt acts on almost a daily basis.
Truth is anathema to their constitutions.
And so, you know, it's very difficult to uncover the truth.
It takes a long, long time to do it.
It's interesting you brought up what Comey said about Mosaic.
It was actually not his testimony, but an interview that he gave with Brett Baer on Fox News Channel right after his book came out.
And Brett said to him, well, this FISA warrant application to spy on the Trump campaign was based on a dossier unverified composed by an ex-British spy.
And Comey said, well, it was actually a broader mosaic of information, which was untrue.
I mean, all you have to do is look at the redacted version of the FISA warrant application, and there's nothing else in it but what Christopher Steele alleged in his phony dossier.
Let's go to Brian in South Carolina who joins us.
Hey, Brian, I have a home in South Carolina.
So I'm, you know, I'm talking to a fellow resident.
Outstanding.
I have a question and I have a report answer or a speculative answer.
Anyway, the question is, why has there not been an irate FISA court judge coming forward demanding an investigation and charges pressed because he was lied to?
And my response to that is because they had everybody else in their pocket and the Private Court judge is probably one of them.
Anyway.
Yeah, you know, it's one of the great mysteries that may be answered on December 9th when the Inspector General's report comes out.
The problem with knowing what the FISA judges did or didn't do is complicated by the fact that everything they do is in secret.
So let's say, for example, one of the FISA judges, and remember, it's not a panel of judges.
There are 12 FISA court judges, but they rotate on a singular basis every week.
So there's only one judge per week who comes in, meets in a secret building.
And as I explained in the book, on average, there are 28 FISA warrant applications every week.
They can't hold 28 hearings every week.
So what they do is they invariably take it upon paper submission, which is a recipe for corruption.
Because the FBI and James Comey and Andrew McKay, I mean, they know that the FISA court without a hearing is simply going to trust what they're presenting on paper, that they're telling the truth, when we know historically and anecdotally that they don't tell the truth, that they shade the truth, and sometimes they engage in outright deceptions, as they did in this case,
in the FISA Warrant application to spy on the Trump campaign.
And so it may very well be that one of the judges became irate or the presiding judge Collier became irate over this and held a show cause why you should not be found in contempt hearing.
But we just don't know about it because, of course, the FISA court is a secret court.
It is a star chamber.
And I write in great detail in my book, Witch Hunt, about how star chambers are the antithesis of what the framers intended in the Constitution when they chose to make judicial proceedings public.
And they would be angry and chagrined that there is a star chamber with so much power.
in America.
So maybe in the Inspector General report, we will find out whether the IG actually spoke with or interviewed any of the FISA court judges.
So we just don't know, but maybe we'll find out.
But great question.
Thanks for sharing.
Scudder, our next caller, Don in Minnesota, joins us.
Hey, Don, how are you?
Yeah.
Hey, Greg.
Thanks for taking my call.
First of all, happy, happy Thanksgiving.
If I can even say, you know, I'm not a Christian, and I still find that official that people couldn't say Merry Christmas, happy Thanksgiving.
But anyway, my main question is, by the way, I guess I really enjoy your appearances on Sean Hannity.
Thank you.
I teach for a living and the way you explain it, even the dumbest of people can understand the implications of illegal.
No, I'm serious because, I mean, you take your time to kind of lay it out there.
I mean, I just concur with the previous lady that called and said you explained very well, and that's very true.
Thank you.
Just wanted to get that out there.
Thank you.
I guess my question is, you know, I'm wondering if this Joe Biden thing with Hunter Biden is, what if Lit leads all the way right up to the top and you know who I'm talking about in the investigation and stuff like that and Trump wins the second term?
Right.
What happens?
The short answer is that does it lead all the way to Barack Obama?
My hunch is that Obama certainly knew what was going on and was concerned about it.
More of your phone calls on the other side.
I'm Greg Jarrett, filling in for Sean Hannity on the Sean Hannity Show.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Ham.
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 Podcast, 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 with Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
I'm Greg Jarrett of the Fox News Channel filling in for Sean, who has the day off.
We're going to be talking to my friend and colleague John Solomon in just a moment.
He's got a news story out that is really blockbuster and important for everyone to read.
So John's going to share that with us in just a moment.
Very quickly, though, I do want to go to our phone lines because Jim has been hanging on from Binghamton, New York with a very good question.
Hey, Jim, how are you?
Very good.
How are you doing, Greg?
I'm well.
Thanks.
Hey, thank you so much for taking my call.
What I wanted to discuss was the board of Burisma and Hunter Biden's involvement in there.
Everyone's talked about, okay, we know he's making anywhere between $50,000 to $80 some thousand dollars per month.
Okay, let's go easy math at $50,000 a month.
That's $600,000.
That might not be what I want to know is he wasn't the only board member.
So my question is, what did every other board member make?
And the point there is, let's say everyone did make $50,000 a month.
Well, then they're paying, there's about 10 board members probably on there.
Then they're paying about $6 million for board governance.
But what if every other board member that can speak Ukraine and has experience, they're actually only making $5,000 or $10,000 a month?
Yeah, good question.
We don't know yet how much the other Burisma board members were paid, but Mark Hemingway of Real Clear Investigations reported on a study from a watchdog research group that reveals that Hunter Biden was paid 12 times the amount expected at a similarly sized company whose board members are typically paid about $55,000 to $83,000.
for an entire year.
So in other words, Hunter Biden was getting in one month what any other person would typically be making in a year.
And then if you go to the Federalists, they've got a great story by Tristan Justice there who explains that among S ⁇ P 500 companies in the energy industry, board members make a median of about $213,000 a year.
So if you do the calculations on Hunter Biden, you know, he's making twice as much.
So, you know, it's amazing to me that Hunter Biden can sit there and suggest that he didn't engage any wrongdoing.
Maybe it wasn't illegal to be a grifter using your father's name.
And it's abundantly clear that Burisma was buying protection.
If we put the vice president of the United States son on our board, that may protect us from criminal investigations.
We can leverage that relationship to protect ourselves from Ukrainian corruption investigations.
And gee, what happened?
You know, the vice president threatened to withhold a billion dollars in American aid if Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor, didn't shut down his investigation into Burisma.
So a lot more ahead on that, but I want to turn now to John Sullivan, who is my colleague and friend.
He is a great investigative journalist.
And his latest story is entitled Steele, is in Christopher Steele, distributed other dossier reports, including one to an oligarch's lawyer.
John joins us now.
John, thanks for being with us and appreciate you taking the time.
The amazing thing in this story is that, you know, Christopher Steele, this maladroid ex-British spy, is not only in the business of selling intelligence to private clients, including an oligarch, but at the same time, you know, he's informing for the FBI.
Talk to us about it.
Yeah, it's one of the challenges.
We've spent a lot of time talking about the political problem with Christopher Fischio, right?
He had a bias against Trump that he expressed.
He was being paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign to do the dirt digging on Trump that he then turns over to the FBI.
But there's a third element, right?
A funny thing which will come out in the Pfizer report and in the Price hearings with Senator Graham.
And that is at the same time he's providing intelligence to the FBI, he's in the business of selling intelligence to private clients.
And what you see in this report that I put out yesterday is I got a hold of one of these intelligence reports he did for a private client.
It was in December of 2015, right around the time when he's ramping up a new conversation with Bruce Horde at the Justice Department.
So he's in contact with U.S. officials and the U.S. can lose.
And he's telling this lawyer for a Ukrainian oligarch what U.S. officials are telling him and thinking about the state of Ukraine and about this oligarch specifically and about other oligarchs who might be able to get the business in Ukraine.
And it's a reminder of the inherent conflict of interest or potential conflict of interest that the FBI was facing when Christopher Steele is getting information to them, but also he might be getting information from the FBI or from other officials that he's sending back to his private clients.
And I'm not sure the human source informant rules that the FBI used to govern a relationship like this consume this sort of problem.
And I think it's a real challenge.
And we don't know what Christopher Steele was getting from the FBI.
Several senators have raised questions of never getting classified information.
But I think the hearing in the FISA report might delve a little bit more into Christopher Steele and the sort of dual relationship he had.
You know, and you point out in your column that Fiona Hill, who recently testified in the impeachment mania madness, she was wise to Christopher Steele in his dual role as a government insider, an informer, an intelligence provider.
She said he was constantly trying to drum up business, and she was convinced that he was fed Russian disinformation in his dossier against Donald Trump.
Our story has evolved from three years ago when everybody said Christopher Steele was gospel, MI6 gospel, to now he was the victim of Russian disinformation.
That is what Fiona Hill testified.
She said, listen, I looked at the Steele dossier when it came out in January of 2017, and I instantly thought, oh my God, he was played by the Russians.
Why?
Because I knew he was soliciting me and everyone else for business.
The Russians probably figured out he was doing this work for somebody, and they used that channel to feed this information.
And she went on to say the consequence of that is that Donald Trump's presidency was harmed by this misinformation in this investigation.
So she thought, and I think that that's going to be a big issue for the FBI going forward.
How do we prevent issues like this from occurring in the future?
I mean, they must have been howling with laughter in the Kremlin, right?
I mean, they feed this disinformation to the gullible Christopher Steele.
And I say gullible because I have to think he knew it was phony information, but he put it in his dossier anyway.
You know, so he was either gullible or malicious, one of the two.
I'm not sure which.
Yeah, or maybe not caring, right?
Not caring just if he could get what he needed for the FBI and make them happy and give them what he wanted.
The real question when we look back at this is remember what the intelligence community's current assessment is, the one that was done at the very end of the Barack Obama administration.
And that is when the Russians intervened in our election, which there's no doubt they did, they were trying to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.
If the Russians were using Steele to harm Trump at the same time they were hacking Hillary Clinton to harm Hillary Clinton, then maybe the intelligence community's assessment's wrong.
Maybe what was really going on was Russia was meddling in our elections and just sow chaos on both sides of the political aisle.
I thought Fiona Hill's testimony on that point is very, very important.
It makes us wonder, did we get the assessment totally right?
Yeah, and, you know, I mean, I went back recently and read the intelligence community assessment report.
And it, you know, it kind of tries to have it both ways.
It says that, you know, Putin preferred Trump, and yet there was evidence that sowing discord was their primary objective and any way they could do it was good by them.
And so, I mean, help Trump, hurt Trump, help Hillary, hurt Hillary, didn't matter as long as we can create chaos.
And by God, they did.
They did.
They succeeded.
There's no doubt about it.
For three years now, we're still talking about this, and that keeps our country distracted from so many other important things that are going on, including what the president is doing today.
So it is a great challenge.
And I think at the end of the day, is what will the FBI learn from this?
How do we make the FBI better so that these sort of mirages and charades aren't carried out again in another election against another candidate?
And I think that that's what the next few weeks are going to be about, the release of the FISA report and the Senator Graham hearings that follow.
Well, the FBI has already been improved immensely by canning, you know, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzzok.
I mean, you know, almost overnight, the FBI is substantially improved by getting rid of those nefarious characters.
John, hang on the line for just a bit.
We're going to squeeze in a quick commercial break and back with John Solomon in just a moment.
I'm Greg Jarrett, filling in for Sean Hannity on the Sean Hannity Show.
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 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 with Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back to the Sean Hennity Show.
I'm Greg Jarrett.
We're joined with my colleague and friend and a terrific investigative reporter, John Solomon, who's really been all over the witch hunt and the Russia hoax from the very beginning.
John, I want to get your reaction.
There are a variety of early reports out, secondhand information from people who were briefed on the Inspector General's report.
And in particular, they're saying, well, the FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign weren't necessarily unlawful.
There wasn't a criminal conspiracy driven by politics, but that the FBI and others who signed off on the FISA warrant were careless.
They were unprofessional.
There were mistakes, errors, omissions, sloppiness.
If it comes out that that is the bottom line conclusion of the Inspector General's report when we read it on December 9th, what would be your reaction to that?
Well, first off, I see some early red flags about these reports of people purporting to know.
And one of them is they describe one of the agents who is now under criminal investigation as a low-level FBI lawyer.
I knew that man.
He was pretty senior, and he would not have been on the Russia collusion or Hillary Clinton cases like he was if he was a junior employee.
He was a senior lawyer.
And so when you see that mischaracterized or downplayed, you have to call into question the actual reports.
I think we should wait and see what the Inspector General comes out and reports.
I don't think he's a guy that leaks himself.
And the people who are leaking are probably people who saw parts of the report and have an interest in spinning their own image for their own reputations.
But I think at the end of the day, we know from the body of evidence that your great book did, my reporting, all the things that we have out in public, that there were serious, serious flaws with the approach to the FISA, the withholding of exculpatory information, perhaps the withholding of derogatory information about Christopher Steele.
I think we should wait and see what the report says.
I'm not as confident that these early reports in the New York Times and elsewhere are as accurate as what the final report will show.
You know, you mentioned no derogatory information.
That's literally in the FISA warrant application, the redacted version.
And that's just totally false.
The judges were not told that Christopher Steele had lied.
That's withholding derogatory information.
They weren't told that Steele had a known bias against Trump.
They weren't told that the FBI's evidence was unverified.
And of course, we already know from the private testimony of two top FBI officials that they had not verified the information, most of the information in the Steele dossier, which was the bulk of the FISA warrant.
That's right.
No, I think that that's it.
And, you know, we've heard other important things, such as when did the FBI know that Christopher Steele was leaking?
There's a real question of that.
They claim it was after the first FISA was filed.
But we see evidence, certainly in those State Department documents where he met with Kathleen Kavillock.
He was telling people he was talking to the media before the first FISA.
If the FBI knew before they submitted that FISA that he was a leaker, that he was violating FBI human sources rules, that will be yet another red flag that wasn't mentioned.
And I want to mention one thing.
Last week, the IG put out another report, a very damning hard-hitting report that the FBI was not managing human sources like Christopher Steele properly.
One of the red flags that they said in that report was that the FBI had a culture of trying to hide derogatory information about their informants, not put it in the official files so that the courts wouldn't know.
That culture of secrecy, that culture of misleading may explain how he ended up with Christopher Steele.
Not only that, but the payments to FBI undercover informants like Stefan Halper, who insinuated himself into the Trump campaign in order to collect incriminating information, which he never collected.
He only got exculvatory information.
I mean, those payments are a mystery, and one wonders, you know, was it laundered through the Department of Defense?
That's certainly a question that Senator Grassy and other people have raised, and we don't have an answer yet.
But we do know one thing from this report that came out a couple of weeks ago from the Inspector General, Michael Horowitz.
The FBI spends $42 million a year paying informants.
That's a lot of movie on the ground to get information.
That needs to be managed properly so that we protect people's civil rights, that we pay the right type of people.
And the warnings that were in this report, I think, are a precursor to what we're going to see in the FISA report.
The FBI was not managing its informants properly.
John Solomon, Fox News contributor, investigative journalist.
Thank you very much for taking the time.
We really appreciate it.
Coming up next, the inimitable Peter Schweitzer.
He's written a couple of best-selling books.
We're going to be talking to him about Hunter and Joe Biden.
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 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 with Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
I'm Greg Jarrett of the Fox News channel filling in for Sean today.
You know, one of the amazing things about the Joe and Hunter Biden story as it connects to Bereism and Biden's quid pro quo demand.
Fire the prosecutor investigating the company where my son sits on the board of directors or you're not going to get a billion dollars in American aid.
Sean loves to call him quid pro quo Joe, and that is quite apropos.
The fact that the average board member in a similarly sized company gets paid about $55,000 to $83,000 for an entire year.
Hunter Biden was paid 12 times that amount.
He was making anywhere from $50,000 to $83,000 a month to sit on this corrupt Ukrainian energy company's board.
Now, did they put Hunter Biden on the board because he has a swell haircut?
No.
First of all, he doesn't have a swell haircut.
So he doesn't have that going for him.
But he was the vice president of the United States son.
And to the extent that the United States, the most powerful country in the world that does business with Ukraine and can exert enormous influence, to the extent that, you know, you've got the vice president's son on your board, gee, maybe that's protection.
Joining us now is Peter Schweitzer, who is a president of the Government Accountability Institute.
He's author of two of my favorite books, Clinton Cash and Secret Empires.
Peter, great to have you with us.
You were talking to The Hill the other day, and you said Hunter Biden needs to testify before the U.S. Senate about his business dealings with Ukraine as well as China.
We'll get to China in a minute, but explain why he needs to testify about this sweetheart deal with Ukraine.
Well, Greg, I think you set it up well.
I would add just a couple of other details.
First of all, Hunter Biden is certainly not qualified to be on an energy corporation board, has no background in Ukraine.
But the timing of the whole arrangement is highly suspicious.
Remember, in February of 2014, that's when Russia moves into Crimea, and you have the political crisis that occurs in Ukraine.
Barack Obama publicly puts Joe Biden, then vice president, in charge as the point person for the Western response in Ukraine.
So in other words, Joe Biden's not only speaking for the White House, he's also speaking allegedly for the entire Western Alliance.
That all happens in February and early March of 2014.
Within four weeks, Hunter Biden is on the payroll and being paid by Burisma for a job he's not qualified for by a company that is owned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch.
And as you pointed out quite rightly, the amount of the payments are astronomical.
Hunter Biden, according to financial records that we obtain from his business partner's criminal trial, was getting $83,333 a month.
His partner, Devin Archer, was also put on the Burisma board.
So together, the two of them were pulling in $166,000 a month for a job that neither one was qualified for.
And the problem is, Greg, I mean, you can certainly talk about this with greater authority than I can, but, you know, law enforcement looks at patterns of behavior.
And if it was just Ukraine, we might say, okay, this is kind of, you know, strange.
Maybe it's a bizarre coincidence.
But you see this pattern replicated in China, in Kazakhstan, in places all around the world.
And my point in asking for Hunter Biden to testify for the Senate is he needs to be put under oath and explain how is it a guy who was a lobbyist for the online gambling industry in 2008, suddenly in 2009, when his father's elected vice president becomes this international finance man of mystery who's cutting deals around the world that he never had before, deals that involve skills he doesn't have,
working in countries that he's often never even been to before.
And it's not just Ukraine and China, but three other countries that you've identified, I believe, right?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And then there's, you know, you have Kazakhstan, for example, you have Romania, and then you have this entity.
We've been talking about Rosemont Seneca Partners, which is this private entity that the private equity firm that they set up.
He and Devin Archer with capital from John Kerry's stepson, who financed the creation of Rosemont Capital and Rosemont Seneca Partners.
But they also set up this other entity called Burnham Asset Management, where Hunter Biden was vice chairman.
And what's interesting about Burnham Asset Management is, again, Devin Archer, Hunter Biden's longtime business partner, went on a criminal trial in 2016 in an unrelated case.
But as a result of that case, prosecutors released a lot of financial records and documents that shows money sort of flowing in to this account that Hunter Biden and Devin Archer shared.
Well, one of the things that also came out of the trial is Devin Archer explaining to other investors that this company they set up had received $200 million of money to manage from a Russian oligarch named Yelena Badarina, who if you spend 10 minutes on Google looking at legitimate news sources, you realize that this is a woman who is centrally tied up with Russian organized crime.
So again, how is it that a Russian oligarch reportedly, according to Hunter Biden's business partner, is putting $200 million for them to manage that they're clearly not qualified to manage at a time when Joe Biden is vice president?
Does he really want to, in a straight face, say that this is all coincidence and there's nothing to see here?
You know, you have been on this for a long time, and people should read your book, Secret Empires.
But I recall reading six months ago a column that you wrote entitled The Troubling Reason Why Biden is So Soft on China, in which you point out that Joe Biden travels aboard Air Force 2 in 2013 with his son in tow on board.
Less than two weeks later, Hunter Biden gets a $1 billion private equity deal with a subsidiary of a Chinese government bank of China.
So here is Hunter Biden flying with his dad to China.
A couple of weeks later, he's getting this wonderful deal that's later expanded to $1.5 billion.
What was the Chinese government's interest?
Well, that's a great question.
And I think it's obvious for anybody that why this deal was done.
I mean, not only, think about this for a second, Greg.
Not only did the Bank of China decide that we're going to give Chinese government money, this is not private money, this is pension money run by the Chinese government.
Not only are we going to put this into an entity and put Hunter Biden on the board of directors and make his business partner the vice chairman of the finance committee, sorry, of the investment committee, we're going to make it such a special deal that nobody else in international finance has this deal.
So this small finance firm headed by Hunter Biden gets a deal in China that Goldman Sachs doesn't have, Deutsche Bank doesn't have, nobody has.
I mean, it stretches credulity for anybody to think that there's any reason that this deal came down other than the fact that Joel Biden, as in Ukraine, had been appointed point person on U.S. foreign policy to China at the same time.
And again, that's the reason why I think he needs to sit under oath and explain why he got these deals and why it should not be something that's troubling.
Remember, Greg, probably about two months ago, Elizabeth Warren, when the Trump administration was putting up for a new Secretary of Defense, Elizabeth Warren made this sort of grand statement where she was grilling the Trump appointee saying, you know, now are you going to be the Secretary of Defense and then are you going to leave and go work for a defense contractor and cash in?
You know, the old revolving door.
And she made a big display of it.
And by the way, revolving door is a problem in Washington.
Everybody acknowledges that.
But they made a big deal out of this.
Well, my question is, what is worse?
That arrangement or a situation where a politician's family is getting paid is cashing in at the time that they are still in office.
I say look at the revolving door, but liberal Democrats who are concerned about the influence of money in politics, who are concerned about foreign influences in American politics, why are they so radio silent when it comes to what amounts to in the Biden case, essentially a united nations of corrupt deals around the world that benefited this family?
And nobody is standing up and saying that Hunter Biden had any reason to be getting these deals other than the fact that his father was vice president, steering foreign policy at the time.
You know, what's amazing to me is I hear journalist after journalist, especially on TV, saying, oh, it's all been debunked.
There's no evidence.
You know, and with respect to Ukraine, the evidence was actually delivered in the form of an interview from the Ukrainian fired prosecutor Victor Shokin to the Washington Post, published on July 22nd.
And Shokin says, I was fired because of Joe Biden's threat and because my investigators were closing in on Hunter Biden.
Now, either these journalists who claim, oh, there's no evidence of any wrongdoing, or, you know, they can't read.
It's amazing to me that they continue to peddle that canard that it's been debunked.
Well, you're right.
And the point is, Greg, they seem to have zero curiosity, zero curiosity to even look in this story.
I mean, there's some exceptions to it.
There's been some good reporting in the New York Times, not all of it, but some of this has been very, very good.
And even today, a Times reporter tweeted out that, look, when Shokin was fired, it did benefit Burisma initially.
But the argument that there is no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, that is precisely why you should investigate it.
I mean, if you look at what we have in compared to so many other things that are the subject of congressional hearings, we have the transference of money.
We have money going to a politician's family member who's not qualified for what he's being paid for.
He's being paid astronomical sums that are completely inconsistent with the standards.
It's being done in secret, and it's being done at a time when the person's father, that would be the vice president Joe Biden, is making material decisions that are either going to help or hurt these various countries.
Now, if you're not going to investigate that, you're not going to investigate anything.
And the purpose of the media should not be to take the talking points of Hunter Biden's lawyer and say, well, there's no evidence here.
Their entire purpose should be to investigate instances like this involving Joe Biden or involving another politician, but in this particular case, Joe Biden.
And it's remarkable to me when this started coming out, when President Trump started tweeting about it and the media started taking interest.
You know, Hunter Biden's lawyer just flat out lied.
He said, for example, he has no connection to this Chinese fund.
He's merely on an advisory board.
Even though you could look at the company documents and even you could look at the company's website in Chinese, where they clearly listed Hunter Biden as a member of the board of directors, not as an advisor.
But they just regurgitated and repeated what the attorney said.
And then they said that the whole China thing was a conspiracy theory, that Hunter Biden didn't have these deals in China.
And then, of course, when that didn't hold water, the media reported it and repeated it anyway.
When that didn't hold water, eventually Hunter Biden resigned for the conspiracy theory.
In other words, he ended up resigning from the board of directors of this company, even though he has not given up his equity stake.
So to me, that's what's frustrating, the lack of curiosity and interest from the media in looking and doing some good gumshoe research on this topic.
And of course, Hunter Biden says, I didn't do anything wrong, but from now on, I'll stop doing it.
Peter Schweitzer, if you can hang on for just a minute, a quick break.
Back with Peter Schweitzer, who is author of Secret Empires.
You got to read it.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show on Greg Jarrett.
Just want to give you a holiday tip that if you're sitting over a turkey dinner with your liberal relative, I call him Uncle Fester, crazy Uncle Fester, and he starts spewing all kinds of nonsense based on no factual knowledge whatsoever.
Buy my book for Uncle Fester.
It's called Witch Hunt, the story of the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
Wrap it up for him for Christmas.
Put it under the Christmas tree with a bow.
And then get your camera out and get a look at his face when he sees the cover and make him read it.
I'm Greg Jarrett.
We'll be right back with the Sean Hannity Show.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
And welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
I'm Greg Jarrett, filling in for Sean Hannity today as the day off just before Turkey Day.
And what is going to happen next in this impeachment insanity by the circus master himself?
I think Bozo the clown, not pennywise, Adam Schiff, because now he's handed it off, his forthcoming report, to Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who has decided he's going to hold his first impeachment hearing next week.
We're not exactly sure who is going to testify, but I would predict a handful of pinheaded constitutional scholars who will talk about the Federalist Papers and what the framers intended in the impeachment clause in the Constitution and so forth.
It will be a tepid bore.
And what they have to say is largely irrelevant and immaterial anyway, because it is abundantly clear that Democrats and the complicit media want to remove Trump from office through the impeachment process because he dared in a conversation with the Ukrainian president to ask Ukraine to please look into Joe Biden's quid pro quo, withholding a billion dollars unless a Ukrainian prosecutor is fired.
That prosecutor happened to be investigating the company, Barisma, that Hunter Biden sat on the board of directors.
And you should also read, by the way, a column penned by Jeff Landry, who's the Attorney General of Louisiana, and he makes a very important point.
And he said, the president's subjective motivation in making that request of the Ukrainians is irrelevant.
What matters is, was there a legitimate objective reason to believe that criminal conduct might have occurred at the hands of the former Vice President, Joe Biden?
Back with us now to react to that is Peter Schweitzer, an investigative journalist and a terrific author of a couple of books that are my favorites, Clinton Cash and more recently, Secret Empires.
The media seems to think, and so do Democrats, Peter, that because you're running for President of the United States, Joe Biden, you ought to get immunity and amnesty from any corrupt acts.
But that, you know, I've searched the criminal codes and I can't find that immunity anywhere in any law.
How about you?
Well, you're exactly right.
No.
I mean, the only case where you find instances where people get immunity for either being in office or running for office is in corrupt third world countries, which is the reason that a lot of, you know, rich oligarchs will run for political office to get immunity.
And you're quite right.
I mean, the bottom line is, you know, what Donald Trump asked for in that phone call, he didn't say, give me dirt on Joe Biden.
He didn't say make stuff up about Joe Biden.
He didn't say, you know, go out there and make a lot of noise about this.
He said, investigate it and share your results or cooperate with my attorney general.
And I think that's entirely appropriate.
And, you know, look, here's the bottom line, Greg, is, you know, when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, after that, people said she's no longer running for office anymore.
There's no reason she should be subject to a criminal investigation.
Now people are saying Joe Biden is running for office.
He should not be the subject of any kind of criminal investigation.
So the question is, when are you supposed to investigate the political elites?
In this particular case, we're talking about actions that Joe Biden took, not while a private citizen, not after he left the vice presidency, while he was the second most powerful person in the United States, while he was vice president and while his son had these commercial ties in Ukraine.
So, you know, the bottom line is it's entirely appropriate to ask that to be investigated.
And I think that, you know, we need to get to the bottom of what happened.
And the only way it's going to happen is if you have a high-level request from the United States government official.
Ukraine is one of the most corrupt places in the world.
They're not going to investigate it themselves.
Certainly not when it involves a powerful official like Joe Biden, who theoretically in their mind could be president of the United States again one time.
It's only going to happen when the full force of the federal government says you need to get to the bottom of this and we're going to help you do it through our Department of Justice.
You know, if the standard were otherwise, I mean, I'm going to go out and rob a 7-Eleven tomorrow and then I immediately announce my candidacy for President of the United States because, you know, gee, under the Joe Biden standard, you know, I get immunity automatically.
Nobody can investigate me because I'm running for president of the United States.
It's absurd.
Peter Schweitzer, I want to thank you not only for joining us today, but your terrific work.
And people who haven't picked it up, pick up secret empires and you will know what you need to know about Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and a whole lot more.
And not just Democrats, but Republicans as well who engage in potentially corrupt acts.
So Peter Schweitzer, thanks very much.
Thanks, Greg, and a happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Absolutely.
You too.
All right.
I want to switch gears now and talk a little bit about the Clinton-Obama regimes and the backroom deals that have occurred.
And joining us now to talk about is Tom Fitton, who is president and CEO of Judicial Watch.
And more than any other organization that I can point to, Judicial Watch Has had the legal wherewithal to obtain what we're entitled to obtain under the Freedom of Information Act, documents, government records.
Those are our records.
They're not the FBI secret records of the Department of Justice secret or the State Department secret.
Those are our records.
We are entitled to have them.
But when we ask for those records under the Freedom of Information Act, automatically it's denied.
And it takes a group like Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch to force them by filing lawsuits to produce those documents.
Tom, thanks for being with us today.
I noticed one of your tweets, and I'll just read it really quickly here.
The coup attack on Donald Trump is about protecting the Obama-Clinton operation from criminal prosecution for the real scandal, the spygate abuses targeting President Trump.
Talk to us more about that.
Well, I think they, by alleging all this misconduct by President Trump, are seeking to freeze law enforcement at the federal level from doing what it ought to be doing, which is investigating the illicit spying on Trump, reopening the Clinton email investigation.
We know during the Mueller operation, the Justice Department was virtually frozen in investigating anything related to the issues that we've been talking about, Biden, Spygate.
In fact, they were actually part of the problem because they were employing people like Peter Strzzok and Lisa Page to target the president and then hiding the fact they had to fire them for misconduct for four months.
So now that that was over, they needed something else to try to freeze Washington from looking at these corruption issues that we've been talking about.
And Ukraine was the latest iteration of and a kissing cousin to the Russia collusion hoax that they had been pushing through the Mueller and prior to that, through the spy hate operation.
You've pointed out that the Hillary Clinton team had advocates at the top of Obama's FBI.
And I write about it in my new book, Witch Hunt, the story of the greatest mass delusion in American political history, that the fix was in.
You know, when Comey stood before television cameras and announced that there would be no prosecution of Hillary Clinton, he said, and the Department of Justice doesn't know what I'm about to say, that it was all his decision.
As I point out in the book, testimony from others at the FBI revealed that no, they received their marching orders from Obama's Department of Justice that literally told them, you will not prosecute Hillary Clinton under the Espionage Act.
So the fix was in, wasn't it?
Oh, it's even worse than that.
They were actively colluding with the Clinton campaign to target Trump.
We just had documents come out, Greg, that show that the general counsel for the FBI was meeting with one of the Clinton team lawyers and basically eating out of the palm of her hand on how to make sure her witnesses, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, the deleters for Hillary Clinton, the ones who deleted the emails for her, wouldn't be questioned in a way that the public could get wind of it.
You know, you've been involved in law enforcement.
How easy do you think it is to get a phone call back from the FBI general counsel as to how to get your witness, how to get your favorite favors for your clients in a federal criminal investigation like this?
It's extraordinary.
Yeah, it just doesn't happen.
And not only that, but five individuals in Hillary Clinton's orbit who were involved in all of this that was being investigated for violations of the Espionage Act, her secret secured, unsecured server in the basement of her home.
Five of them got immunity in exchange for nothing, Tom.
You know, and you highlight the other issues to why Clinton is thus far skated.
The scandal isn't just about her.
It's about these other people as well, the State Department, the FBI, the Justice Department.
We had a State Department report just confirmed a few weeks ago 600 national security violations, some of which were purposeful related to her email server.
And they all weren't her, obviously.
They were people in the State Department who were knowingly putting classified information to an unclassified setting in violation of federal law that would get anyone else put in jail for.
So Attorney General Barr has got to at least make a statement as to why the Justice Department continues to allow this corruption from Clinton, the Clinton era and the FBI's cover-up of that, Justice Department cover up that, to continue to fester.
Why haven't they done anything on it?
Are they endorsing what Comey did?
You know, one of the great lies that was perpetrated by Comey and others is that, well, under the Espionage Act, the behavior dealing with classified information has to be intentional.
No, that is not true.
Originally, under the Espionage Act, passed around 1917, that was true.
But after World War II, when it was discovered that there was so much sloppiness and recklessness associated with the handling of classified documents, Congress amended the Espionage Act and created a new category of criminality involving grossly negligent handling of classified documents.
And Comey just glosses over that.
And when confronted by that, about that by the inspector general, he said, well, I think there's still some measure of intent required.
He just made that up.
It doesn't exist.
The whole purpose was to eliminate intent as a requisite and to create this new class of gross negligence.
And so Comey is simply misstating and contorting the law when he cleared Hillary Clinton.
And that's why I think Attorney General Barr has got to clarify what the law is here.
And he may decide that, look, it's water under the bridge.
It sounds like that would be an acceptable answer, but he can't let it slide because otherwise you have 4.5 million people with security clearances who don't have proper guidance to the law.
And it puts all of the material that they have access to at risk.
And even if that were the standard, there was plenty to proceed to trial or prosecution with.
We have testimony coming out from our own independent discovery we've been granted by a federal court that show that Hillary Clinton was warned a half a dozen times, either through her staff directly or indirectly, about the use of her email system.
And then someone else said they warned her twice directly about the use of her email system.
So there was plenty of early warning to Hillary Clinton about what she was doing.
So she has no excuses.
Even if it is an intent standard, they more than met the threshold to get an indictment.
Well, they absolutely did.
There should have been 110 felony counts against Hillary Clinton representing the 110 classified documents that she placed in an unsecured location.
That's a clear violation of the law.
I want to say thanks to Tom Fitton for being with us, president and CEO of Judicial Watch.
I'm Greg Jarrett.
You're listening to the Sean Hannity Show.
And by the way, if you want to learn more about Hillary Clinton's corrupt, felonious acts, read my book, Witch Hunt, the story of the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
Buy it for the holidays.
Put it under the Christmas tree.
I'll be right back with the Sean Hannity Show.
Back with the Sean Hannity Show.
I'm Greg Jarrett.
Let's go right to our phone lines.
Don is standing by from Lake Ronconkama.
Hey, Don, how are you?
Hey, Greg.
Great to talk to you.
And happy Thanksgiving to you.
I always welcome your visits to Hannity's radio and television show and Fox News in general.
I have a question for you, Greg.
As you researched your first book, The Russian Hoax and Witch Hunt, were you overwhelmed by the amount of felony violations at the highest levels against president-elect?
I was, Don.
It's a great question.
And which is why my latest book, Witch Hunt, which everybody should pick up, is about 500 pages.
But each of the chapters are self-sustaining.
So you can pick it up and just read what you want.
We're going to pause and take a quick break.
My thanks to Ron.
We'll be or Don, excuse me, we'll be right back with more of the Sean Hannity Show.
I'm Greg Jarrett.
Welcome back to the Sean Hennity Show.
I'm Greg Jarrett.
You know, Americans have suffered through two agonizing weeks of the House Intelligence Committee, Chairman Adam Schiff's misbegotten impeachment obsession.
And the hearings, in truth, have revealed a common consistent thread.
None of the witnesses provided any direct evidence that President Trump committed an impeachable act.
Instead, they offered an endless stream of hearsay and opinion and speculation.
I mean, the accusation that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Zelensky into a quid pro quo in which the U.S. military aid was contingent on an investigation of the former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hudder Biden is utterly unsupported by the evidence presented.
It is found nowhere in the transcript of the July 25th telephone conversation between Trump and Zelensky, nor was it presented by any of the witnesses called by the chief clown himself, Adam Schiff.
But the circus, the carnival continues.
And it's all about quid pro quo, which leads me to my next guest, David Schoen, who's a civil rights attorney and one of the best lawyers I know, who has penned a column which will be out shortly on Hennity.com entitled The Fallacy of Quid Pro quo.
And David, it's great to have you with us.
Thanks very much for being with us.
And one of the things that you point out is that American foreign aid is and always has been based on quid pro quo.
I mean, that is true.
Yeah, and that's right.
And most commentators would argue that it should be.
That is, you know, we're giving a tremendous amount of money.
We should be giving that money, and we do give that money to serve American interests.
But specifically, you know, as we say in the piece, American aid must be conditioned on corruption reform.
And so sort of the theme of this discussion is, even if they had proven a quid pro quo, and as you said, they didn't, that's completely beside the point.
There should be a quid pro quo.
And I go so far as to say this, Greg, quite frankly, and I mean it.
I believe that given the evidence that the president knew from media reports that have been going on for years about the relationship between the Bidens and this barisma company and influence peddling and that sort of thing, the president was obligated to demand a corruption investigation, an effort to fight corruption, and specifically an investigation into this thing to clear the air one way or another.
In fact, as I say in the piece, I believe that Vice President Biden should have demanded an investigation because he's got a cloud over him.
If you look back, as I did in writing this piece, the Wall Street Journal reported five years ago how terrible this relationship appeared to be by Hunter Biden.
And it wasn't just Hunter Biden, by the way.
Hunter Biden was joined by a fellow named Devin Archer on the board.
Devin Archer was the founding business partner of Chris Hines, John Kerry's stepson.
Now, John Kerry's stepson, Chris Hines, according to the media reports, thought that this setup with Biden and Archer joining the board of Barisma, for which they were not qualified in any way, stunk.
And so he distanced himself from him.
And there's one report, at least, that Hines then wrote a couple of emails to the State Department about the situation.
But the point here is what the president knew about an example of corruption in the Ukraine was this Biden relationship.
All he demanded, if he demanded anything, and what he should have demanded, in my view, was an investigation, not a prejudgment, not an accusation against Vice President Biden, a full and fair investigation, not even a Mueller-like partisan, agenda-driven investigation, a full and fair investigation.
That's what every American voter should want.
You want to find out the facts, clear the cloud from Mr. Biden before the election, not find out some bad facts after the election.
You know, immediately when the story broke, I wrote a couple of columns.
The first was that the whistleblower is not a whistleblower under the law.
And the second column I wrote was that the president had every right, and indeed, I would argue, a duty to request Ukraine to investigate and hand over information if the president has a reasonable belief that a former vice president might have committed a corrupt act.
Isn't that what Americans want their government to do?
Absolutely, Greg.
I would say to you, I think it's Congress members who call this an impeachable offense have an obligation to explain to the American people why, given the evidence that we have, one way or the other, the evidence that has an appearance that stinks, why is it that there shouldn't be an investigation of Mr. Biden?
Simply an investigation.
Why shouldn't there be an investigation about this to clear up this cloud that's been hanging for years?
Because as reports show, foreign countries' interests are harmed.
Our American interests are harmed in the Ukraine and every other country to which we give aid if they think that we abide corruption.
There's very little question that Hunter Biden was put on the board of Burisma, of which he had no qualifications, to try to influence and get access to the Obama administration.
That happens all the time with companies.
But, you know, have an investigation here.
Again, Congress should explain why not.
And the why not they've offered so far is, well, Joe Biden could be a presidential candidate, and so the president was trying to eliminate him as a candidate by this.
Again, he asked for an investigation.
The president could have said, hey, listen, guys, I want you to bring charges against Joe Biden if he had some corrupt purpose.
And he wouldn't have had other people listening in on the telephone if he had a corrupt purpose.
But the only answer here is, well, he's a presidential candidate.
We don't give license to people because they run for office to now escape all scrutiny.
He's going to, you know, all of a sudden, there can be no investigation because Joe Biden's running for president.
Joe Biden wouldn't suggest that that's appropriate.
And by the way, ironically, Joe Biden boasts, you know, on a video widely circulated now available on YouTube that he withheld $1 billion in loan guarantees aid to the Ukraine to try to force them to fight corruption, in his view, which included firing a prosecutor.
There's a lot of controversy surrounding that, as you well know, Greg, and have reported on on this show and elsewhere.
There's a question about that prosecutor because among the things being prosecuted had been Burisma.
There's a question, the company Hunter Biden joined.
There's a question whether that investigation had concluded with a settlement by Burisma or not.
But again, this is why we have an investigation.
Yeah, no, you're totally right.
And to play devil's advocate, the reason that the media and Democrats would cite for not investigating Joe Biden and Hunter Biden is, oh, and we hear this constant refrain.
It is a pervasive canard.
Well, there's no evidence of any wrongdoing.
That would ignore the public statements of Viktor Shoka, the fired Ukrainian prosecutor, is on record saying repeatedly, including to the Washington Post, I was fired because my investigators were closing in on Hunter Biden and his role at Burisma.
That alone should be reason to investigate.
Yeah, you're right.
I would say what alone also should be reason to investigate is simply the appearance of impropriety.
Why was the vice president who was made the appointment for the Ukraine by President Obama, why was his son and his crony placed on the board of a company for which he had no qualifications whatsoever and paid a salary, apparently?
So why did that happen?
That's all it's simple investigation.
It's certainly, I hate to say it, but it's certainly, there's certainly as much evidence there demanding a corruption investigation as there was for the appointment of Mr. Mueller as special counsel.
And it's the exorbitant amount of money that also merits an investigation.
There was a study by the Watchdog Research Group that revealed that Hunter Biden was paid 12 times the amount expected at a similarly sized company.
Board members there are paid roughly $55,000 to $83,000 for an entire year.
Hunter Biden was getting $83,000 a month.
So that is a huge red flag that would merit an investigation.
And, you know, I think the central point here, Greg, also is this is all information the president was given.
He got it from media reports.
He was briefed on these things.
That's the example he knew about in the Ukraine.
And again, what he asked for was an investigation, period.
He could have asked for a lot more than that if he had a corrupt purpose.
He wanted this thing investigated, and Vice President Biden should have joined him in that call, as should every Democratic member of Congress.
If this is a viable candidate for president in this coming election, then they should want every cloud cleared.
Right now, he's damaged goods, and it's going to get worse because if they impeach, there will be a full Senate trial.
They will have to call the Bidens.
Their conduct is directly issued because there's an allegation the president acted against national interest.
Let's show what the evidence was that required an investigation in the American interests in this case.
I think you're going to see John Kerry as a witness.
I think you're going to see Chris Hines, his stepson.
A lot of people, if a lawyer handles this thing properly.
You know, and which brings me to the next point that we can explore here.
And that is that I don't think Democrats have put into their calculations over impeachment that the roles will be completely reversed in a Senate trial.
The authority will be completely reversed.
No longer will it be, you know, Adam Schiff who is shutting down cross-examination or preventing Republicans from calling witnesses.
No, it'll be Republicans who will be in the catbird seat here calling the witnesses and dictating the rules of evidence.
And this will not be so much a trial of Donald Trump as it will be a trial of Joe and Hunter Biden, of the fake whistleblower who is not entitled to anonymity, and put on the top of your witness list, Adam Schiff, who lied about his conduct.
You make a vitally important point.
I agree with you.
It was a miscalculation.
I think part of it is Pelosi and others were really pushed into this by what we call, what I call at least the hate squad.
Others call the squad, who kind of got the momentum going.
And then, you know, Schiff and Nadler lost all semblance of objectivity a long time ago.
They're just filled with hatred and ego, etc.
So I think they badly miscalculated why on earth would they look I used to represent the Democratic Party.
I represented them at trial when they were sued before.
Why on earth would any reasonable Democrat want to see the presidential candidate, possibly the leading presidential candidate, pulled through this now?
You know how much baggage there is out there?
I mean, it's all got to come out because if I were representing the president, I would demand a full panoply of due process, including the right to call witnesses fully, the right to confrontation.
A lawyer should handle this as a real trial.
Right.
Yeah.
You know, you're talking like a thoughtful, reasonable, intelligent person, which you are.
That is not what Democrats are now.
They are blinded by their hatred of Donald Trump, and it has obliterated their judgment.
David Sean, thanks for being with us.
We're going to pause, take a quick break.
I'm Greg Jarrett sitting in for Sean Hannity on the Sean Hennity Show.
A couple of your calls on the other side.
And welcome back to the Sean Hennity Show.
I'm Greg Jarrett.
Well, we are just hours away from Thanksgiving.
And it's really an important moment in America for all of us to gather together and to express in our own ways the many thanks that we have for our blessings, our good fortunes.
And we gather with our friends and our families to celebrate those blessings.
And I want to give a shout out to my wife, Kate Jarrett, who has sacrificed a great deal over the last two years as I've written two books, and my two daughters, who have also been so encouraging and supportive.
You know, they've given up a lot over two years so that I could write these two books.
No vacations with dad, no weekends with dad.
They held down the homestead as I labored over these two books.
And I just want to say thanks for all of what they have done for me.
And I know that you feel that way out there toward your family members as well.
Let's pause on Thanksgiving and think of how fortunate we are to be in this great country of ours in America.
And yes, we have disagreements.
We certainly have seen that over the course of this last year, but on this moment of Thanksgiving, you know, Let's pause and take a moment and say thank you to those around us, to our families and our friends.
And if you have the crazy Uncle Fester sitting at the dinner table over Thanksgiving and he is telling you all kinds of things that you know just are not true about the Russia hoax and the witch hunt, you know, maybe you can think about giving Uncle Fester the book, my book.
Witch Hunt, the story of the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
Maybe you could buy it, wrap it up, put it under the Christmas tree with a bow on top, and be sure to have your camera out.
Here's what I want you to do.
When Uncle Fest or crazy liberal Uncle Fester opens the book, snap a picture of it and send it to me.
Tweet it to me.
My Twitter handle is at GregJarrett.
Also, while you're at it, jot down my website, thegregjarrett.com.
So thanks, everybody.
I appreciate you letting me fill in for Sean Hannity today on the Sean Hannity show.
I hope you have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving.
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