Leo Terrell, American civil rights attorney and talk radio host, find him at @TheLeoTerrell on Twitter, David Schoen, Civil Liberties Attorney and former Board Member of the Alabama Civil Liberties Union and Gregg Jarrett, Fox News Legal Analyst and best selling author of the Russia Hoax and Witch Hunt, talk about yesterday’s press conference with the Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney, Paul Howard. The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
And to all the fathers out there, happy Father's Day this weekend.
I was telling Linda we were all big joke.
We were joking about it.
That's the funny thing about Father's Day.
I always say, well, fathers always get shortchanged.
Mother's Day is the bigger holiday by far.
And I actually argue, rightly so.
And she took issue with that.
And I just, you know, that's.
I wouldn't say that you took issue with that.
I think, you know, you just.
But I'm a dad.
I don't really care.
You know, first of all, you so care.
I don't, I honestly don't.
No, you do.
Not me, but you want to be recognized.
You want like a minute.
All right.
A minute is Mother's Day is different.
Mother's Day, you got to go all out.
Mother's Day, it's got to be flowers.
It's got to be a handwritten note.
It's got to be emotional.
It's the same thing for my dad.
I would get my mom flowers and like her favorite, you know, dessert or whatever.
And I would always get my dad a card and like lobster tails or something.
Yeah.
Like that's the stuff he likes.
Listen, I guess everybody's different.
You know me and people giving me gifts.
I hate it.
I'm like, Christmas time, I get here.
I get super pieces.
Yeah.
And I'm just like slipping them to sweet baby James here.
You take this.
You take this.
Okay, first of all, don't say that.
That's not everybody already knows that.
They know it.
They know it.
And they're like, they just gave up.
Most of them have now given up.
They think, you know, I'm like a type of guy, when you need something, whatever you need, I'll get it for you now.
I want to give, I like to give things away.
It's not a cliche.
It's better to give than receive.
It's not a cliche.
No, it's true.
It is.
I love to give to you.
I hear you.
I got to give you props, though, because on Hannity.com, you're putting up send us stories about your dad this Father's Day.
Just go to Hannity.com.
And we also are going to do something really cool on the website that we've never done before.
Go ahead.
It's actually on your Facebook page and we'll repost it on Twitter.
But go ahead, keep going.
Okay.
And that is, well, John Rich is involved.
Should I give it all away now or do we tell people later?
I mean, we're going to talk about it tomorrow.
But I mean, the crux of what we're doing right now is, you know, we are going to have this concert.
It's free.
You go on Sean's Facebook page.
We're going to Facebook live it tomorrow after the radio broadcast.
And John is just an awesome dude and he's going to play some great songs.
And it's going to be a dedication to all the dads out there.
And what we'd love to do is intermix in between songs, reading the stories about all these great dads and fathers around the country that listen to the show, you know, from their kids, their grandkids, or family members to tell us, you know, sentimental or funny, heartfelt, whatever.
And we can read them during the online concert.
It would be fun.
You know, look, my dad died.
I'm now in my 25th year at Fox.
He died.
I started in October of 96.
He died in March of 97.
Actually, I was recently at the gravesite.
I can tell you that.
And he served in the military four years, Navy, grew up in a depression.
I mean, I remember saying to him at the end of his life, your life was brutal.
And he goes to me, no, not at all.
And I said, I was a horrible son because I was never there.
I was independent since I was, you know, eight.
And I left for 16 years before I ever got back to New York.
Five years, Rhode Island, five years, California, two years, Alabama, four years, Georgia, which is a great life experience, but I didn't have the money nor the time.
And I don't mean this, and I said I couldn't find time.
I didn't have the money, time to actually stop working because I was gulping water every day.
My life hasn't really changed much, but I do gulp it every day now.
But it's been all that time, and I still miss him every day.
And I, to this day, just know what a great, you know, he had a hard life, but he loved his life.
And, you know, that's why I say about this election in 138 days, the America he grew up in and our grandparents grew up in and where he grew up in.
It's all, to me, it's all on the line in 138 days.
And we'll get into it later.
We have a special, by the way, boxed first edition of the book that will be out now.
We've announced the date.
It's going to be August 4th.
But you get a beautiful gift certificate.
You can even print it out Sunday if you procrastinate.
Give it to dad.
First edition, special bound edition.
There's only a certain number of them for dad as a gift.
Yeah, and it's really nice.
It looks like it's just like the Mother's Day set that we did.
It's just as lovely.
It's just as well put together, you know, and it's something that you can give your dad on Father's Day morning.
You could literally buy it that morning and give him this gift card, and then you'll get it in August 4th when the book comes out.
Oh, the week it comes out.
All right, let me start with, oh, we have a lot of news on Rayshard Brooks.
Now, we had the prosecutor, what's his Paul Howard, yesterday going out Fulton County DA and makes this case.
And, oh, we have new developments we're going to get to.
I can't wait to tell you about those.
We'll look at the legal side of this.
Remember, when you indict somebody, okay, you can indict a ham sandwich.
We've been over that aspect of the law many, many times on this show.
And we've talked a lot about prosecutors, prosecutorial abuse, obviously, the last three years, overcharging.
You raise expectations, and then the result doesn't come out the way people were told it was going to come out.
And we've seen what the results can often be, and that's terrible, like in Ferguson or in Baltimore.
And I'll explain all that in a minute.
I'm just going to, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on John Bolton and John Bolton's book.
I've known John Bolton for many, many years.
There's a personal aspect of this to me that is, you know, maybe I'm just so cynical now.
I kind of, it just rolls off me like water off a duck's back.
I can tell you John Bolton lobbied everybody, everybody, to get the job as working for the president.
And I had one specific conversation with him.
I said, John, your foreign policy views are the direct opposite of this president's.
He goes, I said to her, I said these words.
Are you going to serve your agenda there or are you there to serve the president's agenda?
And he swore the president's agenda.
During his time there, I had numerous calls.
I think they were meant to be private, but I could just tell you what I am hearing in this book, whatever this book is that he's put out, is not what I was told by him at all in any way, shape, manner, or form.
And so that's troubling to me, but it is what it is.
You know, and then, you know, it's an interesting thing that we have the ability to now go back and look at people's comments and compare what they said before to what they're saying now.
You know, and, you know, John Bolton, for example, you know, is, you know, he praised the president's policy on China and Russia.
President gets criticized for being soft on Russia.
I'm still waiting to see any evidence of that.
President Trump has time and time again taking a strong stand against Russia's malign activities.
He said that.
Then, for example, John Bolton, you know, we got a little problem because when you go in and you take these jobs where you have access to highly classified information, you sign a waiver that you're not going to do what John Bolton just did here.
And now we're learning in these affidavits filed last night that, in fact, what he's releasing is classified and would be damaging to national security.
So that now that, now we're in the middle of a lawsuit about that.
What is he trying to hide?
Nothing.
He leaked the whole book to the New York Times.
And there's not one thing I've read in it that impressed me at all in any way and is contradicted by his own words that are numerous on every single topic we're talking about.
You know, Dorothy, National Security Advisor, he's entrusted with classified information.
During the review, the NSC identified significant quantities of classified information in Bolton's book, which they asked him to remove while he made changes.
The process was still not over.
Whoopsie-daisy.
Now they leak it.
Administration seeks to protect our national security, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Bolton's attempt to publish this book containing classified information is a clear breach of trust with the federal government.
And that's why this may not end well for John Bolton in the end.
And it makes you wonder.
I think he was embarrassed the way he was fired and he just wanted revenge.
By the way, he also did the same thing.
I forgot about it.
Dana Perino had said something on, I think it was Tucker's show last night about that.
You know, as it relates to, for example, the president's leadership, he praised the president's foreign policy on China, Iran, and Russia, NATO.
And he, you know, likened President Trump's peace through strength policy.
His exact quote was, I think the president believes in Reagan's approach of peace through strength.
I think that's what he's carrying out.
Well, that's not what's in the book at all.
He highlighted the president's willingness to stand up to China.
Wow, that doesn't sound like what's in the book either.
The pressure now is on the president.
He responded in a way that has the Chinese confused.
They've never seen an American president this tough before.
But the president feels very strongly that China's taken advantage of international order for far too long.
Not enough Americans have stood up to it, and he's doing it.
I think the president has done something no previous American president has been willing to do.
He called China out on their behavior.
He praised the president and his efforts in North Korea.
He credited the president's maximum pressure campaign on Iran.
On NATO, Bolton publicly plays the president in the effort to highlight the importance of, you know, the fair burden sharing.
I mean, it just instant after instant after instant, John Bolton, his own words, contradicting his own words now.
And by the way, Democrats don't even trust him.
You know, when all of this came up with him getting this job, you know, the New York Times are charging with that John Bolton was not truthful in answering questions about his record.
They called him a liar.
Democratic staff, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it's the judgment of the Democratic staff that four distinct patterns of conduct disqualify Bolton for the post of UN ambassador.
He's repeatedly sought the removal of intelligence analysts who disagreed with him in preparing speeches and testimony.
He's repeatedly tried to stretch intelligence to fit his views in his relations with colleagues and subordinates in and out of government.
He has exhibited repeatedly abusive behavior and intolerance of different views.
He's repeatedly made misleading, disingenuous, non-responsive statements to the committee.
Even Adam Schiff accused him of lacking credibility and politicizing intelligence.
So there's not really, you know, look, I know it's the media, you know, now they'll love him for a minute, but they still hate him.
And the book will not have any impact.
So that's why I'm not going to spend any time on it.
I mean, it's, you know, Adam Schiff saying, you're no patriot.
And, you know, I just read it and then I compare it to all of his past comments and I'm like, this is just stupid at this point to even spend any time on it.
Now, we had the prosecutor come out yesterday in Fulton County, Paul Howard, and we've often talked about how you can indict a ham sandwich.
And by the way, you can.
You only got one side of the issue.
Now, tape has emerged, and I'll play it on the other side of our first break, where just two weeks ago, different case, not the shooting in the Wendy's parking lot, in the case of Rayshard Brooks, where he actually said that a taser is considered as a deadly weapon under Georgia law.
Now, police officers under Georgia law are allowed to use force if, in fact, they believe that person presents a threat with a deadly weapon.
Whoopsie daisy.
You know, and they rushed to judge.
We also found out that one of the officers was tased in this and the other officer suffered a concussion.
All right, 800-941 Sean is on number.
Got a lot coming up today.
We have our legal panel on these very issues.
Jeron Smith is with us, deputy assistant to the president.
We'll get to that today, and we have so much more to get to.
You've heard the phrase, you can indict a ham sandwich.
Well, you can.
Remember, when the prosecutor, Fulton County DA, came out, Paul Howard yesterday, he laid out his case.
Now, there's certain things that he kept out of it, and I know I had the same exact observation of him.
41 minutes, whatever many seconds.
Everybody was professional, was courteous.
I thought the officers were kind.
They did their job.
And I would also argue that Rayshard Brooks, the same thing, courtesy, respect, until the moment where we get to, okay, they were trying to cuff him.
And then he's the one that initiated a conflict and resisting arrest.
And a struggle ensued and a fight on the ground.
Stop fighting, stop fighting.
I'm going to have to tase you.
I'm going to have you taser.
Don't touch my taser.
He ends up being, I wouldn't say victorious, but he hit the cops, stood up, starts running with a taser in his hand.
Now, what we've learned today, which we didn't know, at least according to the lawyer for one of the officers in this case, and that would be Devin Brosson, before he was fatally shot, that in fact, while they were fighting over that taser, that in fact, Mr. Brooks grabbed the taser from him and actually shot this officer.
Devin got shot with the taser.
The lawyer added, he also then fell over and landed on his head and the pavement and got a concussion.
And what's really interesting, the lawyer, again, for this officer, Bratson, is saying that his actions were exemplary.
He was the one that was saying, I'm so sorry about your mom.
We got to do this.
I know you're doing your job, Mr. Brooks said.
Okay.
Now, he rejected outright any violation of any law leveled against his client, although his client quote is going to say that turn state witness of some kind.
That's what the prosecutor said.
He said that the concussion, he didn't even realize that Brooks had been shot when he put his foot on the arm to make sure that he didn't have access to another weapon as he lay on the ground.
He said it's not an assault.
It's actually a man suffering from a concussion.
Well, that takes on a whole different, entirely different feel to things when, you know, when you, that's the new situation that's involved here.
So anyway, I'll take a quick break here.
When we come back, we'll give you more details of all of this as we continue.
It's the Sean Hannity show.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
Thank you, Scott Shannon.
800-941.
Sean, you want to be a part of this extravaganza?
You know, Dave is in Pennsylvania.
I'm interested in this call.
Apparently, an attorney doesn't believe these police can get a fair trial.
How are you, sir?
Why do you believe that?
Hi, Sean.
Well, there's jury intimidation.
Every member of that jury knows or should know they have to vote guilty.
They have to find him guilty or the whole country is going to be in a riot and their lives might be in danger.
Normally, an attorney would ask the judge for a change of venue to have it somewhere else in the state.
But anywhere in the country, this trial will be held.
It can't be a fair trial because no matter what the burden of proof is, whether he's guilty or not, the jury is going to be thinking, what's going to happen to me or the country if I vote not guilty in this case?
So he can't get a fair trial, in my opinion.
Listen, there might be a move for a change in venue.
None of that would shock or surprise me in any way, shape, matter, or form.
But I'll tell you, you know, I saw this coming in Ferguson, Missouri.
Why?
Because we do something very few people in the mob and the media do.
We actually call people and we get sources.
And I had so many police sources out of Ferguson, Missouri that told me there were many African-American witnesses that were going to corroborate the story of Officer Darren Wilson, that the initial conflict started while Darren Wilson was in the car and Michael Brown in that case tried to wrestle his gun away from him.
And that's where a shot was fired.
Nobody got hit.
And then Michael Brown ran away.
And then Michael Brown started charging at Officer Darren Wilson, who repeatedly said, stop charging, stop charging, stop charging.
Okay.
They backed up his story completely.
Now, we don't think about the fact that this guy's dream of being a police officer, because most guys that I know that become police officers, they've dreamed about that their whole life.
I have members of my family in every aspect of law enforcement, starting with my mother, my dad in some way, capacity, or form, and family members and the two people that were deity made it to the FBI.
And let me tell you something.
They're still deity compared to the stupid talk show host who just, you know, defied everybody and never listened to anyone to get into either medicine or to get into police work.
Now, knowing, again, you only hear from a prosecutor what he wants you to hear.
And I'm not questioning the motives, the intent of the prosecutor here.
But at the end of the day, getting an indictment before a grand jury, there's no defense making the case for the officers.
Everybody's entitled to a defense.
Everybody, I guess with the exception of Roger Stone, because we had a jury four person in that case that actually was prejudiced against him and stated it all publicly before she was chosen to be on that jury.
We usually have a questionnaire process to weed such people out.
Didn't happen there.
That case should have been thrown out immediately.
Or the horrific things that happened to General Michael Flynn, they didn't think he was lying.
They didn't think he was lying.
They threatened to put his son in jail, which has to stop, I think, as a process.
And he's like, you mean if you want me to lie, even though you didn't think I'm lying, so that you won't go after my son and try to put my son in jail.
Okay, good soldier.
What did he do?
He impaled himself and he dove on the sword for his family.
That makes me like General Flynn a lot more, to be honest.
Shows what character he has.
There will be justice.
I am convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt.
Now, in this case, what are we learning here today?
Well, finally, the attorney for one of the officers involved, not the officer involved in the shooting, Officer Brossens, his name is Dan Samuel, has actually given us new information today.
And he said that in the conflict, again, everybody was professional, courteous by the book, up until the moment they tried to put handcuffs on him.
And you might say, why didn't they just let the guy go?
He wasn't that drunk.
That's not an option for police.
Let's say they said, all right, we're going to let you walk home.
And let's say the cops leave and he goes back, he has another set of keys at home, and he opens that car, drives the car and kills a kid.
Guess who's responsible at that point?
The officers that didn't follow through and do their job and arrest the guy.
I mean, look, nobody wants a DUI.
The simple answer is, I would argue, uber.
The simple answer is don't do it.
But at the end of the day, a DUI is probably going to end up in you taking alcohol addiction classes, community service, and maybe have a suspended license for a while.
It's not a jail term unless maybe it's a second, third offense.
So he initiated the conflict.
Okay.
Now we learn from the attorney of the one officer that was not involved in the shooting aspect of this that not only, remember, he was saying, stop fighting, stop fighting.
I'm going to have to tase you.
Well, tase you, I have to stop.
Get your hands off my taser.
Well, then we saw that Rashard Brooks stole the taser.
And his attorney now is saying that he got tased, that he grabbed the taser and he literally used it on that officer.
And then the lawyer added, then he fell over, landed on his head on the pavement and gets a concussion.
Well, all of a sudden now, we're not in a grand jury room with only one side of the case being presented.
We believe in a fair and impartial jury and evidence gets to be presented here.
I would say that's going to be pretty compelling evidence for a jury for that particular officer.
Now you add to that, well, okay, under the law, I went through it in great specificity and detail yesterday on the show and last night on TV, and I'll get into more detail maybe later today and on the program tonight.
But under Georgia law, it's pretty simple.
You're allowed to use deadly force if somebody has a deadly weapon that is either a threat to themselves or others.
Well, it just so happens, unrelated case two weeks ago, that the DA Paul Howard said this about tasers.
Listen.
And charge with aggravated assault of Ms. Pilgrim.
And this is for pointing a taser at Mrs. Pilgrim.
And as many of you all know, under Georgia law, a taser is considered as a deadly weapon under Georgia law.
As you know, under Georgia law, a taser is considered as a deadly weapon under Georgia law.
Whoopsie Daisy, now that brings in the whole issue of Professor of the Police Officer Rolf.
It's not as cut and dry.
Now, George Floyd, no-brainer.
It's not police procedure, excuse me, to ever put your knee on the neck, the most sensitive part of the human anatomy.
I won't repeat all the arguments we've made there for, oh, we watched seven minutes and 55 seconds.
It went on for over eight minutes, nearly nine minutes.
It's going to end every time in death, you know, and watching people saying, stop, look at what's, he's not even conscious.
What are you doing?
Take your knee off the neck.
Why don't you tell him, help this guy?
It shocked the conscience and soul of a nation.
It absolutely did.
And I would argue rightly so.
We have something else that is now unfolding before our eyes.
For example, CNN Fake News, Washington Post, WRBL, people.com, People Magazine, I guess.
Quote, a blue flu now has spread across Atlanta's police ranks with officers insisting that Wednesday evening they're too sick for their night shift.
In other words, they called in sick.
And you go to your doctor, I have this terrible cough.
I may need a COVID test.
My back is out.
I wrenched my back.
It's called, it has a name.
It's called Blue Flu.
And this is what I was getting into in great detail yesterday.
And this is now a clear and present danger for this country because, you know, everyone can talk about defunding the police all you want.
You can talk about dismantling the police all that you want.
Now you've got some questions.
Who are you going to call?
What are you going to do?
Know what's happening?
We're seeing a run on the country and it's been building and it happens a lot in terms of people feeling the need for their own personal self-defense.
You know, this is now a serious problem.
This could now, especially in these big cities where all of these liberal mayors and governors that keep denying the president who keeps begging them for help, okay, they're not restoring order.
You know, this is the absolute sin and shame of Chicago and New York and Seattle and Washington.
The president's offering to help where the president involved himself, it stopped.
It stopped in Minneapolis, stopped in D.C., stopped in Minneapolis.
So, and now we're at the point where police, you know, I know I've talked about the 1%, the deep state, the abuse of power, the corruption, but I always made a delineation.
I don't talk badly about the 99% of America and the world's premier law enforcement agency.
I don't do that.
I've often talked about why was I right on Ferguson?
Because I did what the mob and the media didn't do, and I had sources telling me this is going to happen.
The same thing with Freddie Gray in Baltimore.
Everybody, even then President Obama, weighs in on all of these high-profile cases.
They raise expectations that a certain result is going to happen.
They rush to judgment.
And now we've got, you know, these broad sweeping generalizations about cops.
Well, I don't know those cops.
And those that we identify as such, they need to go.
I don't hear a lot of people in the media talking about over 800 cops now that have been injured.
Ricks, bricks, and rocks and bottles and Molotov cocktails and knives in their necks or the cops that have died.
We now have a whole litany of what's happening here and a never-ending smear campaign against the 99% of good, decent, brave police officers.
If we don't end this, nobody will ever take this job.
And if they're ever on the job, they're going to make a right turn because they think there's trouble if they make a left turn.
They're not going to involve themselves if they feel that there'll be no support if they, in fact, have to use some kind of force in a dangerous situation.
That's not good for the safety of any American.
You know, you see, for example, hundreds of cops in New York with all the, and there were peaceful protesters.
I make a distinction, but there were a lot of rioters too, and a lot of people that had agendas.
And there was a lot of arson and a lot of looting and a lot of bricks thrown and a lot of rocks thrown and Molotov cocktails thrown.
You know, we saw the cops being pelted with these objects.
One incident, officer has a head injury after getting mauled with a metal fire extinguisher.
Another cop in New York stabbed in the neck, as I said.
And police, we all saw the video of a police mowed down by a guy driving a car.
Over 800 cops to date now have been injured.
Others have been killed.
And others now, in the case of this officer shot in the head in Vegas, he's now paralyzed from the neck down.
He's not an old guy.
That's the rest of his life.
And his life will probably be in jeopardy for the rest of his life.
And the amount of medical care, you know, it's incalculable.
And it's all unnecessary.
You got a sheriff's deputy murdered in the line of duty in Mississippi.
Over the weekend, a cop shot in Baltimore in the torso.
You know, if you want some real numbers, I'll give you real numbers because we've got them.
You know, 89 police officers in the year 2019 were killed in the line of duty.
That's a lot of officers.
And they have families they want to go home and see too every day.
But they put the uniform on, they go into the tough areas.
They go where the crime is.
They try to protect and serve their community.
And they don't even get the benefit of the doubt.
They don't get the presumption of innocence.
And then they get called racist by everybody.
And, you know, ironically, in a lot of these big cities, these police departments are majority minority.
I think 60%, for example, in Los Angeles happen to be Hispanic Americans.
And they're out there every day doing a very tough job.
You know, you want, you know, other, you know, instances, we can give it to you.
Because in 2018, police in this country arrested nearly 12,000 people for murder and for manslaughter and 25,000 people for rape and nearly a million five for assault.
And the overwhelming majority of law enforcement community, you know, they perform their duties, they protect and they serve and they do it with integrity and honor and decency.
And this is the thanks that they get.
The cops that were climbing up those tower stairs along with their fireman brethren and their EMT brethren while everybody else is racing down the stairs to get the hell out of what was eventually, you know, the mass murder of nearly 3,000 of our fellow citizens.
They were going up bravely, knowing they may not come down that day to protect other people.
How do we forget the two officers?
Remember the shooting in the softball field where Steve Scalise got shot?
You know, you got a guy with a rifle hidden.
And the two officers, as the shooting breaks out, Capitol Police, well, they walked in the middle of an open baseball field.
You want to define heroism?
Because let me tell you, as somebody, well, I have a lot of firearms.
I've been trained since I'm 10.
A rifle with some cover versus two police officers with a pistol.
It's no contest.
The guy with the rifle, if he has any level of skill, will win 99.9% of the time.
But they did it anyway.
They took the risk anyway for other people.
But they're all racist, right?
They deserve to get bricks thrown at them.
Bottles, rocks, Molotov cocktails?
No.
You know what?
Who is going to ever want to do this job?
Now you have talks about sick outs, the blue flu.
You know, I can't support it because if it happens, I know it's going to end badly.
But there's another part of me that says, you know what?
These people deserve better.
We owe it to them because they do it for us.
It's unbelievable.
These are the 11 charges against Officer Roth.
The first charge is felony murder.
This is the death that is as a result of an underlying felony.
And in this case, the underlying felony is aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
And the possible sentences for a felony murder conviction would be life, life without parole, or the death penalty.
We are asking Officer Roth and Officer Bresnan to surrender themselves by 6 p.m. on the morrow.
We are because Officer Brosnan is now becoming a cooperating witness for the state.
We are asking the court to grant a bond of $50,000 and to allow Mr. Officer Brosnan to sign that bond.
As I indicated, that he would become one of the first police officers to actually indicate that he is willing to testify against someone in his own department.
All right.
That was the announcement yesterday about the charges that were brought up in the case in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks.
I did not know this, nor did he mention it yesterday when he was announcing the charges that were made.
According to Officer Bronson's lawyer, who apparently is turning state witness, according to the prosecutor, his lawyer said that Devin ends up taking out his taser and yelling at him, stop fighting, stop fighting.
Mr. Brooks grabbed the taser from him and shot this one other officer, not the one involved in the shooting aspect of this incident.
The lawyer added, he then falls over, lands on his head of the payment, gets a concussion.
And by the way, the lawyer then said he called Bronson's actions exemplary, claimed prosecutors didn't bother looking at the officer's medical records, also rejected the aggravated assault charge levied against his client, who prosecutors said stood on Brooks' shoulder after he was shot.
And Samuel said the concussion, Bronson didn't even realize that Brooks had been shot when he put his foot on the arm to make sure that he didn't have access to a weapon as he lay on the ground.
He said it's not an assault.
It's a man suffering from a concussion.
You know, it's interesting.
We always say these words.
You can indict a ham sandwich, which is true in a lot of ways.
There's a lot of truth to that statement.
Because remember, when a case is presented before a grand jury, there are no, you don't get the other side.
The bar to indict is extraordinarily low versus what will be very high in a courtroom where you have real, hopefully impartial jurors, fair and impartial jurors, the opposite of, oh, let's say the trial of Roger Stone, which we had a jury four person that had written previously about how much they hate Roger Stone, Trump supporters, Trump and everybody else in between.
How that case didn't get thrown out is beyond any comprehension.
I have.
It is a travesty of justice.
So as we get down deeper into all of this, now you know why cops are now saying, you know what, enough is enough.
And, you know, you get all these lengthy, liberal comments about, well, what will life look like without police?
What will life look like when we defund the police?
Okay, you don't need to go to Harvard and get a degree in psychology or criminal justice to figure out it's not going to end very well at all.
That's your answer.
The danger, too, is that, you know, what we're seeing play out around the country, the 800 officers now injured with rocks and bricks and bottles and Molotov cocktails.
Some have died.
We have the one officer paralyzed from the waist down now.
I think actually from the neck down.
You know, look at this.
New York City, you have one officer stabbed in the neck as a result of this.
800 officers total now have been hurt.
You have another officer with a head injury after getting mauled with a metal fire extinguisher.
New York City, hundreds of police officers injured after being pelted with bricks and other objects.
All told, this is happening around the country.
So it is, and by the way, if you want numbers, statistics, the year 2019, 89 officers killed in the line of duty.
Now, the 99%, and I said this even when I was exposing a lot of abuse of power and corruption on the deep state with my ensemble cast, which was amazing, I always said not the 99, not the 99%, the 1%.
I always make the distinction, nor on this show do we rush to judgment.
We saw what happened.
Obama, Barack, and Joe, they rushed to judgment on Ferguson.
They rushed to judgment in Baltimore.
So many rush to judgment, UVA.
So many rush to judgment, Duke La Crosse, a lot of Richard Jewell.
I've been right on all of those cases when everyone else is wrong.
They haven't heard from the defense.
The defense now is going to make their case known.
And now the big question is, okay, even if you don't defund the police, will the police even bother, you know, staying on that job or seek other careers that probably will even pay more and put them at far less risk in their lives.
All right, we have a lot to sort out here.
Leo Terrell, American Civil Liberties Attorney, talk show host at the Leo Terrell.
David Schoen, Civil Liberties Attorney, Greg Jarrett, Fox News legal analyst, author of the two bestsellers, Russia Hoax and the Witch Hunt.
Leo, I start with you again.
I mean, we seem in alignment here.
Okay, the first 41 minutes and whatever seconds, everything went perfectly.
Professional, courtesy.
You know, on both sides, everybody was being nice.
It was turning into just, sorry, you blew 1.10, whatever it is above the legal limit.
They don't have the option to not arrest you at that point.
They have to arrest you.
Okay, please put your hands behind your back and all hell breaks loose.
The cops I saw got hit.
We see what we now know that one officer, according to his attorney, has a concussion.
The taser was stolen.
The other officer is in pursuit as the guy has the weapon.
He turns around seemingly to fire that weapon at the officer.
It ends with two shots in the back.
Thoughts?
I'll take Sean.
You laid it out perfectly.
I learned more now about some of the defense that's going to be used by these officers.
A concussion?
You didn't hear that prosecutor at all during this carnival show that he gave mention anything.
Oh, by the way, he never asked.
That's even worse.
You know, they laid out their whole case yesterday.
If you're a defense lawyer, you know where they're going.
You know exactly where they're going.
And they put the emphasis on what happened after the shooting.
But the fact that one of these officers had a concussion, that's the type of evidence that reaps an affirmative defense and the basis for his conduct.
Look, that district attorney should recuse himself if he wants to be fair.
Those officers have a legitimate right for a change of venue.
Again, I want everyone to understand this is not the George Floyd case.
And there's definitely overcharging in this case.
I will submit to you that a lot of these charges are going to be dropped if this case ever goes to trial.
And any good attorney, defense attorney, civil rights attorney, is going to tell you that this is a tough, if not impossible case to get a conviction.
Why?
Because what's the state of that mind of that officer who shot has to be evaluated by a reasonably objective standard.
And he's going to have great police experts from throughout this country who's going to testify that his conduct was reasonable.
And final point, you're dead on about the state of affairs of police officers in this country.
I just left the unions from the L.A. County Sheriff Department.
And these guys are being blamed like throughout this country for the mistakes of a few bad officers.
These individuals, these police officers are the people who protect us at 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning.
You know, as you look at this, all right, so we have 11 charges in all, Greg Jarrett, as it relates to this case against the officer that fired the weapon.
11 charges.
First one being a death penalty potential charge of murder.
Then all the other charges.
Now, my question is, did they just load up the charges?
If we can't get A, we'll take B. If we can't get B, we'll take C. If we can't get C, we'll take D?
No, I agree with Leo.
This is completely overcharged.
And it's a classic case of self-defense.
The standard jury instruction in Georgia says you are allowed to use deadly force if you are facing deadly force.
So the question is, is a taser a deadly weapon?
And according to this district attorney, Paul Howard, two weeks ago, in an unrelated case, he stood in front of television cameras and said, under Georgia law, a taser is a deadly weapon.
And there is a Supreme Court decision in Georgia that supports that.
A taser can cause serious bodily injury or death.
And so this is a DA who I think is acceding to an angry mob.
He's overcharged the case, and he's undermined his own case with his own words by saying that a taser is a deadly weapon under Georgia law.
And charged with aggravated assault of Ms. Pilgrim.
And this is for pointing a taser at Mrs. Pilgrim.
And as many of you all know, under Georgia law, a taser is considered as a deadly weapon under Georgia law.
Wow.
So two weeks ago, Georgia law says you're allowed to use deadly force if you're facing deadly force, correct?
Yes.
Yes.
And he himself said a taser is a deadly force weapon.
David Schoen.
Yeah.
Look, you said it, the rush to judgment.
That rush to judgment badly serves everybody here.
Any defense lawyer worth his or her assault now will use that to attack the integrity of the case.
They missed it as to Brosnan.
They missed the most relevant facts as to Brosnan.
And Rolf's lawyer will use that too.
It looks like, on the face of it, a self-defense case.
Those are the cases you have to take particular care with in presenting the grand jury.
The forensics here may be subject to a different point of view.
You know, Mr. Rolf's lawyer already has said it's wrong.
Mr. Brooks was not running away from him.
I assume he intends to get a forensic expert who's going to say, while the two shots are in the back, they were at a trajectory such that indicating Mr. Brooks was turning.
So it's going to, it's going to, the case will turn on that.
It's a classic self-defense case.
However, even if, and Greg is 100% right, in fact, there's a case in the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals right now in which a guy grabbed an officer's taser.
I was then shot.
And the officer is entitled to qualified immunity, according to what the lower court said from that.
But, you know, we have, there are a lot of facts here that really have to be sorted out.
As to the police union and the walkout of the job, it's understandable.
We've said it before.
The cops are our heroes, period.
However, many of these unions have abused their power.
We have that.
I've said it before.
The Jermaine McMean case in Broward County, Florida, the evidence was clear, but the prosecution took their time.
This was the 168th killing by police officers in the 30-year period.
They took two years to have the grand jury review it.
They finally indicted an officer, and then the police union intervened, and a crooked judge threw it out on stand your ground.
The public won't stand for that.
The evidence was clear in that case.
So the unions have overstepped their bounds to some degree.
But on the other hand, the solidarity is understandable.
We're going to have to see how this plays out with the self-defense.
The shooting in the back looks bad, but the rush to judgment was a political decision that is always a mistake.
You know what?
I just looked at this and I'm dying.
I'm like, oh, so much that was not said yesterday is pretty amazing.
And in this case, a taser is considered a deadly weapon under Georgia law.
Now, the prosecutor laid out his case yesterday before everybody as it relates to what happened in Atlanta.
He didn't mention that yesterday, Leo.
Maybe I missed it, but I was watching it.
I don't think I missed it.
No, I saw the whole press conference, and he didn't mention that at all.
Listen, let me tell you right now, that press conference was a sidesh where he went well beyond what a prosecutor does when he presents charges for the public consumption by allowing these civil attorneys to come on board and basically plead their case.
But I want to make sure this is clear, coming from me as a civil rights attorney, as an African-American.
Those officers did not take action because Brooks is black and they're white.
There is no racial issue here.
If anyone has any question about that, watch the first 40 minutes of the tape, okay?
Because there was a very good relationship among the three of them.
And then they got ugly when Brooks assaulted the officers and became a fleeing felon.
But I'll make news for you.
If what Greg said is true, that tape, which I hope you play tonight on Hannity regarding the taser, the deadly weapon, game over.
Just game is over.
Look, I don't like to say game over.
You know, Greg, one of the reasons, forget that we were all of us here, right, as it relates to the deep state, Pfizer abuse, premeditated fraud, dirty dossiers.
You know, the amazing thing is I've also been right.
I was right on Ferguson because I had my sources that told me that these witnesses were there.
I was right about Richard Jewell, my gut instinct.
I was right about Baltimore, Maryland.
I said, nobody's going to get convicted there.
And everybody's expectations were, you know, through the roof.
We know what happened there.
And then you have, you know, Barack and Joe, they always would rush to judgment anyway, and it ends up terribly.
You know, what about those that are rushing to judgment again here?
Well, it's a rush to misjudgment under the law.
I mean, the law is basically clear in most jurisdictions and certainly in Georgia, that if a police officer reasonably believes he is facing imminent death or serious bodily injury, he's allowed to use lethal force.
I mean, that's standard.
It obviously turns to the question of did he reasonably believe that.
All right, I'm going to pick it up on that point, though, on the other side of this break.
We're going to hold our guests over.
Leo Terrell, David Shoan, Greg Jarrett, 800-941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
Let's go back to what we were discussing in the last half hour with Leo Terrell, David Schoen, Greg Jarrett.
And so we heard from the prosecutor, Fulton County, yesterday about the charges that were now laid out for the officer involved in the shooting at the Wendy's.
Anyway, two weeks ago, this is what we've been talking about.
What he said.
Now, remember, in Georgia, you're allowed as a police officer to use deadly force if you believe a deadly force weapon could be used against you or someone else to hurt somebody.
And just so happens, unrelated matter, the DA actually said the following about a taser.
And charged with aggravated assault of Ms. Pilgrim.
And this is for pointing a taser at Mrs. Pilgrim.
And as many of you all know, under Georgia law, a taser is considered as a deadly weapon under Georgia law.
A taser is considered a deadly weapon under Georgia law.
Okay.
David Schoen, okay.
Is it now based on the tape that we have?
Now we're in a legal realm.
It's not just the prosecutor laying out charges that they're going to have.
There are people like yourself and like Leo and like Greg that are great defense attorneys.
They have yet to make their case.
We don't know where they're going.
We didn't know until today, and I saw it in the New York Post that one of the officers ended up getting a concussion and had apparently been tased in the process of struggling with this man, Rayshot Brooks.
So the question is, what an impact does that have?
Because I got to imagine that those comments are going to be brought up in that courtroom should we get to that point.
Absolutely.
I mean, you should lead with that tape, probably.
This is what we were discussing yesterday.
It was talked about Tennessee versus Garner.
And I mentioned yesterday that the question is, the law is a police officer has the right to use deadly force to shoot at a fleeing felon or fleeing person if he has reason to believe that person is armed and poses an imminent threat of danger to either the police officer or to any other third party.
That's why, as we said yesterday, it's relevant that a taser is considered a deadly weapon.
In this case, it's even more than that.
Nobody has to guess.
Mr. Brooks had already shot the taser, possibly twice, we're told.
So that's the way the defense of this case goes.
I have to tell you, by the way, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is as livid as our guests are that District Attorney Howard did this.
They were supposed to be conducting an investigation in this case, an independent investigation, and they had no idea that District Attorney Howard was going to have this press conference or return these charges.
So they're also livid about this rush to judgment.
It's against everybody's best interests.
You know, again, I see this.
Let's say they can't get the murder, you know, death penalty charge that they're seeking here, Greg Jarrett.
Let's assume that.
And then they go to the other charges, the other 10 charges in this case, based on what we know, what we see, the evidence we have at this moment, and that's always changing.
You know, we learned two big new things today.
How do you see this playing out?
David Schoen made the point that they might even try now for a change of venue, which would be interesting.
Do you think that's valid?
And based on what we know now, where do you see this case, especially when you look at it against the charges that have been brought against the two officers and the one in particular?
Self-defense applies to all of the charges.
So, you know, that defense, which appears to be a valid defense under the law, can result in an acquittal on all of those charges.
I agree that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation may come back with a different result.
And I think this is a DA who, since he's undermined his own case, has to now disqualify himself on top of that because of his outrageous comments of condemnation against the accused, which are presumed innocent.
This demands a change of venue.
He has ruined his own case by his own words two weeks ago and by his words yesterday at the news conference.
And your take, Leo, based on all of this new information?
Well, I'll just say, I mean, at the end of my opening statement was change of venue and this guy should be recused.
It just proves once that part because people got caught up in the George Floyd case.
And all this tells you, what bothers me, Sean, is that it's all politically motivated.
It's almost like the mayor of Atlanta and the DA got together and said, we got to do this.
And there was no legitimate legal basis to file these over charges.
But they did it anyway for the wrong reasons to satisfy a vigilante group.
We are a nation of laws.
Those officers deserve due process.
And what happened yesterday was a denial of due process and the overcharging of two officers who were only trying to do their job.
It is a disaster and an embarrassment to the legal system.
All right.
Amazing analysis, all three of you.
Leo Terrell, David Schoen, Greg Jarrett, thank you all for being with us.
We really appreciate it.
800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of this program.
All right, let's get to some phone calls here.
One thing I haven't talked a lot about, this is sad.
It seems, I think it was Tom Cotton that tweeted out, well, if you want to be a lawmaker or you want to be like an opinion person, maybe Justice Roberts found the wrong profession.
His ruling on DACA defies any logic today, ruling against the president's administration and effort to end the DACA program.
Remember, we went through this long period of time when Barack Obama was president.
And he says, I'd like to do it by executive fiat, but I just don't have the power to do it.
Said it maybe 15, 20 times, and then he ended up doing it anyway.
So this now controversial 5-4 decision with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the liberal members to author the opinion.
You know, the court said that the Department of Homeland Security's effort to move to eliminate the program was done in an arbitrary and capricious manner, although they did not rule on the merits of the program themselves.
We do not decide whether DACA or its, we're sending this are sound policies.
The wisdom of those decisions is none of our concern, Roberts writes in his opinion.
We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provided a reasoned explanation for the action.
The president's pretty annoyed about this.
This comes after days after an opinion from his own appointee, Neil Gorsuch, that said employment discrimination, et cetera, et cetera.
But these horrible and politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are literally shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans and conservatives.
The president suggesting that the Second Amendment could be at risk if he doesn't get re-elected.
And I don't really disagree with him because that's not the job of the U.S. Supreme Court.
You know, we have enumerated separation of powers and co-equal branches of government.
You know, Obama hails the decision, even though he himself at the time spoke out many times thinking he didn't have the power to do this.
And Roberts in the opinion writing that the administration failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance, referring to the non-enforcement of immigration laws to remove those with DACA protection.
You know, it's like they're trying to thread every needle and avoid any real decisions because it seems to me that we've politicized, in many ways, the judiciary in this country now, too.
Another reason in 138 days that your vote matters a lot.
All right, let's get to our phones.
Let's say hi to Bernie, Louisiana, next.
Sean Hannity Show.
How are you, Bernie?
Hey, Sean, glad to be on your show.
You're a great American.
Thank you, sir.
You're a great American.
What's going on?
I listened to this DA talk yesterday, and there was a few contradictory statements that he made referring to the taser.
He used it a couple weeks ago in an NBC News article that was written on June 10th saying that the Taser was a deadly weapon.
And now, during this incident, it's not.
I mean, Greg, I think, nailed it by saying he now probably has to recuse himself in many ways.
And Doug, I'm sorry, David Schoen saying, I would play that right at the beginning of the trial because once they know that the prosecutor in the case said those very words that a taser is considered a deadly weapon under Georgia law, okay, now the law matters.
This is what I was saying yesterday.
You know, you watch a lot of these high-profile cases, and almost every time they always overcharge.
And what happens when they do it is extraordinarily dangerous.
And that is they raise the expectations of a particular result that when you get into what the law is, is not going to ever work the way they want it.
Now, I'm not, I'm not, I have no idea how this is going to end here, but I do believe in our system of laws.
It's not perfect.
We're always trying to become a more perfect union.
But I would say that, you know, you only got one side of the story yesterday.
You know, they kept talking about the tape and, you know, the 41 seconds.
And that, in fact, in the case, Rayshard Brooks was being peaceful, and he was.
He was courteous and professional.
The cops were courteous and professional.
And then it was only at the moment of the beginning of the arrest that it was a decision of Rayshard Brooks to resist, fight the cops, hit the cops, steal the weapon, run away, and turn and fire the weapon, which, according to the prosecutor, is considered a deadly weapon under Georgia law.
It makes a difference.
A good defense lawyer is going to make a very compelling case is the most obvious thing that we know will happen here.
Sean, when I was in law enforcement, I was issued a taser.
It was the X-26.
It's an old model.
I think they discontinued it.
But even after it fires the prong, you can still use it as a stun gun if you hold it or press it up against the body and pull the trigger.
You will send 50,000 volts of electricity through whatever clothing or whatever the person has on.
I've actually experienced it in training, and it will drop you to the ground.
Yeah, well, apparently, Devin gets shot with his own taser, the other officer, Devin Bronson.
And then we find out he has a concussion.
Okay, that adds a whole new, that adds so much context to this whole case.
None of that was brought out yesterday.
And that's, you know, this is exactly what happened in Ferguson.
You know, people say, we're wondering, scratching their heads, how come Sean Hannity got it right and we all got it wrong.
And if you remember, Barack Obama weighed in.
He rushed to judgment.
So many others rushed to judgment in the media mob.
The same thing in Baltimore, the rush to judgment.
Well, in the case of Ferguson, I had my sources and they all confirmed to me that, in fact, there were eyewitnesses, numerous eyewitnesses, that were going to testify that Darren Wilson's behavior is, and his testimony was exactly accurate.
That Michael Brown was told to stop and continue to charge against Darren Wilson, and that the initial altercation where the first gunshot happened, it was, in fact, Michael Brown reaching in the car, trying to grab the police officer's gun, and there was a struggle there.
In the case of Freddie Gray, everybody said, oh, slam dunk, these six officers are going to jail.
They were wrong again, and they had raised expectations, and the results were not good.
You know, look, and then in other cases, Richard Jewell, Duke LaCrosse, we were right too.
We don't rush to judgment.
Now, very different from George Floyd.
There's no eight minutes, you know, seven minutes and 55 seconds and eight minutes and 46 seconds total.
Yeah, there's no ambiguity here.
Some cases of you slam the door shut, you believe your eyes.
All right, got time for a quick call.
Let us say hello to Jay in Brooklyn, New York.
Jay, hi, how are you?
And you've got the next minute and 10 seconds.
It's all yours, sir.
My brother, Sean Hannity, big fan of yours, patriot here, unashamed of believing in God and his son, Jesus Christ.
Amen, sir.
And I just wanted to point out the fact that, you know, regarding the death of George Floyd, it was tragic and came to peaceful protesting.
And at times, it's been hijacked here of what we've been seeing.
But through all of that, we've been seeing the Pandocratic Party.
and the Republicans not literally voicing the protection of religious freedom of religion.
And I've been seeing how certain faith-based groups in New York have been mistreated even under a pandemic crisis, like locking down parks and chaining them up and up, but allowing the peaceful protesting through pandemic crisis has been justified.
Could you expand a little on that and how this must be rectified?
Because according to a First Amendment right.
Let me give you the quick answer because I don't have a lot of time.
The quick answer is every American.
We're one glorious nation.
You said it under God, one American family.
We're failing.
We're failing miserably.
The first thing children need are kids, our grandkids, every kid in this country.
They need a safe, secure environment where they can grow up.
They deserve that.
We can do it with the United States.
We're not doing it.
They need an education.
It is the ladder to success and more liberty and freedom in everyone's life.
We failed them miserably there.
There's only one way to fix it.
Don't vote for these radical, extreme socialists.
They're phony promises that will literally destroy the America that we grew up in.
138 days.
You're the ultimate jury.
All right, got a break.
We'll come back.
Other side.
Jeron Smith, deputy assistant to the president, deputy director of the Office of America Innovation.
That's next of an amazing Hannity 9 Eastern.
And your calls next hour, 800-941 Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
Can't really fix the heart of people, but you can fix the individual pieces that deal with the real problem, which is access, opportunity.
If you talk about the police force, you know, it's about having a police force that represents the community.
When you talk about education, it's about access to education.
When we talk about access to capital, it's about access to capital.
And those are the things that we're really dealing with.
That was Jeron Smith.
He's the deputy assistant to the president, deputy director of the Office of American Innovation.
We'll introduce him in a minute.
You know, it's an amazing time that we're living in here.
You know, you watch, for example, look at coronavirus and, you know, pretty amazing job by the president in terms of the fastest and the largest medical mobilization in the history of mankind.
And, you know, he basically had to do the job of every state for them because even a state like New York that should anticipate events like this, they were prepared for nothing.
And they were telling people, go out on the town in early March.
They had no ventilators.
They never listened to their health care task force.
Donald Trump built the hospitals, manned the hospitals, converted the hospitals, COVID-19, all the PPE.
It's amazing how they fell.
But he bailed them out.
And then our entire food supply chain, they bailed out New York and other states as well, as did the people that never shut down working, that were producing the medical equipment for everybody in record time, an incredible job that they did.
They're not talking about reopening because they never shut down.
They worked harder than ever to help other Americans at a time of need.
You know, you see the same thing here.
Now, as I've been mentioning, especially in the last hour, you know, we have many cops now reconsidering their entire careers, and I can't blame them.
You know, the 99% that risk their lives every day, they don't get paid a whole lot of money.
They can make a lot more money, probably doing outside work and many other things with less aggravation, and certainly not the abuse that many cops have been getting, 800 injured rocks and bricks and Molotov cocktails and bottles, some dead, some permanently forever, you know, paralyzed.
It's horrible.
Nobody seems to want to talk about it.
There were peaceful protesters, but there were others within that group that wanted anything other than peace.
Then you got the madness in New York and the madness in Seattle, et cetera, et cetera.
But, you know, for eight long years, Barack and Joe, they had an opportunity after Ferguson, after Cambridge, after Baltimore, after a whole series of incidences to make some fundamental changes.
But it always comes down to there are those that talk and those that do.
And in this case, the changes, getting rid of the chokehold unless there is extreme danger, imminent danger to the life of any officer, that happened under Donald Trump, all the other reforms that the president mentioned.
And I'll also point out criminal justice reform, opportunity zones, a long-term commitment to historically black colleges, record low unemployment for every demographic group in the country, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, women in the workplace, youth unemployment, and African-American youth unemployment.
None of this resurgence happened in the Joe and Barack days.
Didn't happen.
They didn't get the job done, just the opposite.
We had 13 million more Americans on food stamps, 8 million more in poverty, lowest labor participation rate since the 70s.
So, you know, there's a lot to talk about in the next 138 days, and especially now that we're seeing every indication the economy will bounce back quicker.
Well, we don't know what the deciding factors will even be by the time we get to October.
Anyway, to talk about a lot of the reforms, Jeron Smith is with us, deputy assistant to the president, deputy director of the Office of American Innovation.
You've been watching, sir, you know, all of this go on around the country.
I watch the president daily.
He did it last night on my own television show.
He's offering cities like Seattle and cities like New York and Chicago all the help they need to restore order.
They keep rejecting it.
He is offering the governors of those states similarly, Washington State, Illinois, New York, other places, the help.
When in fact the president did help in Minneapolis, well, he put an end to what was going on.
And the same thing in Washington, D.C. Why do you think these governors and mayors steadfastly refuse to accept the help that the president is pleading to give them?
I just don't think it makes any sense.
You know, so many of the people that these elected individuals were elected for was to help revitalize and strengthen their communities.
And what they're doing now is quite the opposite.
But again, the president stands ready and willing to work with any local leader to do what's right by their community.
But it starts with public safety first.
If you don't have public safety, it's hard to get to other things like access to capital or revitalizing the neighborhood.
And so to me, I think more leaders need to do the right thing and keep their communities safe.
Well, I think it's, to me, you know, I know we have the Insurrection Act.
I know what the Attorney General has said about it constitutionally.
The language is clear.
There's no ambiguity.
The president can go in and restore the order if he wants to.
It may come to that.
I pray it never comes to that.
But he's obviously ready to do it if needed to do it.
It's really, though, the jobs of the mayors.
Now, the mayor, for example, in Seattle is talking about an entire summer of love where anarchists get to take over streets of a particular city.
I know they're negotiating, we'll give you these blocks back, but we'll keep these blocks.
I mean, it's madness to me.
There are homes in the area.
There are businesses in the area.
And there's absolute lawlessness.
And she's talking, no, it's a festive atmosphere, and there are potluck spaghetti dinners going on everywhere.
And it's like one big, you know, summer of love festival and all the other nonsense we heard.
I don't see that as beneficial to anybody when literally the mayor of the city is aiding and abetting the anarchists.
That's exactly right.
I mean, here we are trying to recover from the pandemic and get many of these vulnerable communities back to work and being a part of the American dream.
And with these actions, it's just holding up progress.
And in many cases, they don't even represent the people who've had the disparity when it relates to justice.
And it's unfortunate that people with these worldviews are taking advantage of a situation to make an ideological point that doesn't even focus on the issue at hand, which is creating better police and community relationships.
I think what the president did was show us a way we can bring the country together.
We were able to have law enforcement here in the families.
And through the executive order, we heard not only the law enforcement voice on how we can create safer communities and bring the communities together, but also the families who were affected through shootings and the loss of life with the police officers.
And so that's a moment to heal.
And I think more local leaders should talk about the way to heal instead of creating more divisiveness throughout the country.
Well, I'd like to see that.
I'd like to see it happen.
I am beginning to fear, and apparently a lot of police, and then we talked about other cities as well, are calling in sick all of a sudden, a much higher percentage than usual.
Well, there's actually a term for that.
It's called the blue flu.
We hear these broad-sweeping generalizations that the police are racist.
Many of the big cities, though, that we talk about, the police force is majority, minority police forces.
So I guess that application would be false, number one, on the surface.
But more importantly, you know, I always talk about the 99% that risk their lives every day.
89 cops were killed in the line of duty last year.
In 2018, police arrested 12,000 people for murder and manslaughter, 25,000 people for rape, and 1.5 million people for assault.
Now, if we defund the police or we dismantle the police, which is a constant refrain we're hearing every day, and we allow people to burn down police precincts or take them over completely and push the police out of the way, I don't see that ending well at all.
That's exactly right.
But see, they're not really trying to solve for the problem.
You know, how can we invest in these communities and promote and retain or recruit people from the community to serve on the police department?
How can we invest more so that the wages are competitive?
And so a law enforcement officer doesn't have a choice with just working there or some, you know, a job that has terrible wages but doesn't have near as many risks.
And that's the problem that we're dealing with with law enforcement departments is that they have to go far and wide to find more people who want to police.
And so it's definitely a noble profession, and we need to create more community policing and recruit people from the community.
And that's what the executive order is calling for, the recruitment and retention of law enforcement officers and the best quality law enforcement officers.
We're pushing to create great standards.
There are standards that exist.
And many of these liberal cities, like Minneapolis, have old standards for use of force and old standards for de-escalation training.
There's a way to do this, and it doesn't involve defunding the police because doing that only hurts the most vulnerable populations.
The places that are affluent can afford police departments.
They can afford the best police.
It's the vulnerable communities that, if you defund, will be hit the hardest and be more at risk of being victimized by those individuals in society to which we want police to protect us from.
And that's how we create safe communities.
And that's what the president is focused on: making sure that police and community relation is there and that trust is built, but also making sure that public safety is the first and most important thing that's always taken care of.
You know, it's very important.
You know, I'm all for a lot of the changes.
One of the things I've been asking for and really wanting, and the president addressed this as part of his reforms, I know most police departments have their officers.
They have to go through firearm certification usually every six months, every year, whatever the police, the city police demand, whatever it happens to be.
I don't see a lot of ongoing continuing education.
I just happen to love martial arts.
I'm a student of martial arts.
I train four or five days a week.
I know a lot about Japanese, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Krab Maga and Kempo and situational street fighting.
And I don't see that the cops have even the most basic level of training.
For example, in the case of George Floyd, he was already handcuffed.
You're in full control.
The conflict, for the most part, is then over.
If he's giving you more of a problem, there's more that you can do with his wrist and fingers, very, very specific pressure point moves that will guarantee compliance.
Not 90%, 100%.
It will guarantee all the compliance you want.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And I think that's what the president is pushing for.
There's certainly a better way to incentivize more police departments to get accredited.
And that's what we're doing in this executive order.
We have conditioned grants where individuals are more competitive for DOJ resources if they're accredited.
And being accredited makes sure you have the updated standards on use of force, that you have the updated de-escalation strategy and continuing education that you need.
And also make sure that you're using the best strategies to create better community and police relationships.
And another piece that we're really focused on is co-responders.
Many police departments work with social workers.
Those social workers deal with issues where people have mental health issues or are dealing with addiction or homelessness.
Many times police are overwhelmed with those type of issues.
And it may not even, many times that doesn't even include any violence at all.
It's just someone who needs maybe a social worker.
And we're going to invest in that with a joint partnership between DOJ and HHS.
But there's common sense ways to get there.
And we've seen some of those examples on the ground.
And we have many law enforcement agencies that really want to support something like that because no person hates a bad cop more than a good law enforcement officer.
All right.
We really appreciate your time.
Thanks for shedding some light on that.
Jeron Smith, Deputy Assistant to the President, Deputy Director, the Office of American Innovation.
You know what?
When we want to improve things, we're the United States of America.
We can make the changes.
And that, for me, also includes non-lethal alternatives for police, which I've discussed a lot.
Sir, thank you for being with us.
Appreciate your time today.
All right, we got time for a quick call here.
We'll take calls for the next half hour, final half hour of the program today, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be with us today, Zeke, Florida, next, Sean Hannity Show.
How are you, Zeke?
We'll be watching your state in 138 days.
Help us out, okay, my friend.
Well, yes, sir.
The thing that I would like to talk with you about is a term that you never hear called prosecutorial reform.
What you said was an aberration a little bit ago in the overcharging in Atlanta is quite commonplace and quite usual.
And it's what a lot of people is calling racial injustice and stuff like that or systematic racism.
It's quite honestly socioeconomic disparities because the same thing that they're doing to this police officer over here with the overcharging happens routinely.
And what they do is these prosecutors like Kamala Harris per se, okay, they will routinely overcharge to get the person in the jail system, okay, one.
But what happens is this person has to take a plea bargain, and they're thought that a lot of times they're sitting in jail.
They're losing their homes, they're losing their families and everything like that.
They overcharge them to coerce them to take a plea bargain.
And then what happens is they can stand there on election day and say, oh, I got a 98%.
Let me tell you something.
I don't have a lot of time this segment.
We'll take more calls on the other side.
But let me tell you something.
You're 100% right.
And a lot of prosecutors build their political career on prosecutorial overcharging and abuse.
And often it blows up in their face and we don't learn from it.
It's got to stop.
Anyway, good point.
Appreciate it.
Right to the phones.
When we get back, Hannity tonight, 9 Eastern Fox News.
Hope you'll set your DVR and we'll continue.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza, you know, I just, I just don't have any interest.
As I said earlier in the program on John Bolton, I just, you know, his statements that he has made again and again.
Oh, the president, there's no evidence he's soft on Russia.
You know what?
There isn't any evidence.
Book comes out.
Even now, impeachment Democrats blasting Bolton's book after it turns out to be a nothing burger.
You know, even the corrupt, compromised, congenital liar shifts, he's no patriot.
He's no pay.
Okay.
Well, whatever.
I don't really care.
John Bolton, you know, look at what they're saying.
You can't, you sign a paper, you make an agreement that you're not going to divulge secrets that are of national security importance.
And as I pointed out, is, yeah, he didn't go through the process that he himself had agreed to.
And that he's attempting in this book to contain classified information is clear.
Now, I'm just saying, I'm not going to go into the details.
I really don't care about what John Bolton has to say because I now know that he wasn't telling me the truth on a number of occasions.
Are my feelings hurt?
No.
Do I trust anything he does and says?
Nope, not at all.
Because I know better.
And he knows I know better.
Anyway, all right, let's get to our phones.
800-941, Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
Ed and Charlotte, you're on the Sean Hannity show.
Glad you called, sir.
Hello, Sean.
Great to be on your show.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
What's happening?
I have an answer for the Seattle Zone in the six-block area.
And if you can remember, back in January when Roger Stone was 66 years old and his wife was 74, they were hit by the FBI heavily armed guys that raided their home.
29 guys, tactical gear on a process crime.
Red dot lights, battering ram, handcuffs.
They got Roger Stone barefoot, handcuffed him.
They came on a boat, front of the house, in the back of the house.
Well, where is Christopher Ready to send out an elite, incredibly powerful FBI squad and go into the Seattle zone at five o'clock in the morning?
Most of them will be a Heisak outsleeping and take it over and get them out and get it straightened out.
What's the problem with that?
They can do all of that.
That's not an issue at all.
The problem here is the way I see it, and I think the president is handling it perfectly because I think there's a bit of a trap here.
And I think a look, this is not the job of the president of the United States.
It is not his job to micromanage the states.
That's why people elect mayors.
That's why people elect governors.
For the president to usurp the power and authority of these states when they are steadfastly rejecting his help is basically pleading with them.
I'll help you.
I've already done it here in D.C. We've done it in Minneapolis.
We can help you in New York.
We can help you in Illinois.
We can help you in Seattle.
You know, look, if it comes to that moment, I just happen to know the president well enough that he's prepared and they're going to be ready to go and they will restore order.
It might not be pretty, but I think the trap has said, I just, I would rather, while it's not that out of hand, let the governors and the mayors let them do their job.
Give them the resources.
If they don't want to ask for them, at some point, you may have to do it all for them.
We'll know when that moment comes.
That moment is not here yet.
And there's something else that happens as a result.
You want to know what the new Green Deal, socialist, radical, extreme, Democratic America will look like if they win, if Democrats and the ever-confused Joe Biden ever wins in a 138 days is going to look like.
I'll give you some examples.
It'll look like New York.
It'll look like Illinois.
It'll look like California.
It'll look like New Jersey.
And it will be a mess.
You'll get your sanctuary cities.
You'll get your sanctuary states.
You'll get your open borders.
You'll get more money and cargo planes dropped on the tarmac in Iran to appease mullahs.
You will get higher taxes, confiscation, false promises of everything is free.
You'll eliminate the lifeblood of the world's economy.
And America, as we know it, will look very differently by the time they're done in four years.
And I don't know if that's ever done, if that's ever implemented, if we'd ever recover.
My guess is it's impossible.
I think the damage will be done and irreparable harm will exist.
That's what I believe.
That's why I have a sense of urgency.
And I'm kind of an urgent person by nature, but it's like a five-alarm fire, all the sirens blaring in my brain.
This is not going to end well.
And we can, you know, look, let me add it to one other thing.
You raised great questions in a good call.
I'm going to go off on a different tangent here.
So I want to thank you for your call.
You make a lot of great points.
You know, there is a Wall Street Journal article today.
Well, actually, I'm looking at two of them, but one is by this guy, Daniel Henninger, a great writer.
And, you know, as part of their coverage at the Wall Street Journal, they're pointing out San Francisco's apartment market has now gone in reverse.
The apartment vacancy rate in San Francisco is now up 6.2%.
They point out the most expensive apartment market in the U.S.
Well, rents are tumbling.
The tech sector jobs are shedding.
People are leaving in droves.
Anecdotally, it was Mike Huckabee that first pointed out to me that if you take a U-Haul from California, Los Angeles or San Francisco to Texas, you know, you'll pay anywhere between $2,000, $2,500.
But if you take that same U-Haul from that same location in Texas back to those areas, you'll get it for 400 bucks or less.
Why?
Because you're doing U-Haul a favor because the business of leaving California is a lot better and bigger than the business of leaving Texas.
People are moving into Texas.
New York is the number one state where people are leaving.
You know what the biggest growth industry in New York is New York government following people that move out of state and become residents of other states and hassling and harassing them to prove that they're really residents of these other states.
And they've got entire departments set up.
You move out, you declare your residency, you follow the law 181 days to be a resident of Florida.
Huh, New York.
Why does Sean Hannity know that?
Makes you wonder.
Because I pay a lot of taxes in New York.
Mostly my business or the job of television and radio has kept me here.
But people are leaving.
Now, if people are going to leave these blue states that tax you through the roof, that mismanage all of your money, that are incapable of fundamental safety, that can't in a state like New York with the highest concentration of people in the smallest geographic area, don't prepare for pandemics and listen to their health task force.
If they're not prepared, obviously, for any big kind of medical emergency, if there's, God forbid, another terrorist attack, but we are a terror target in New York City, especially.
And you're wasting money, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars on, you know, microchip companies and, you know, all sorts of other green industries and light bulb companies.
People have had it and they're going to leave.
And they're going to leave in droves.
And people know enough is enough.
All right, let's go back to our phones.
Let's say hi to Grace in California.
Hey, Grace, how are you?
Glad you called.
Hi, Sean.
It's an honor to speak with you.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
I'm calling to discuss the app.
Thank you.
I'm calling to discuss the absolute hypocrisy and double standards that we, the American people, have endured over the last three months in light of what we've seen in recent weeks with the protests and specifically the George Floyd Memorial Service in Minneapolis.
The consequences of COVID-19, as you're well aware, are still going on.
Many Americans are still stuck in this kind of holding pattern while the world is going crazy, especially in blue states like where I am.
I'm a Christian, patriotic American millennial, and for going on three months, the American people have been told how and when we can gather and meet together, specifically in houses of worship for church services, funerals, and weddings, completely undermining the First Amendment.
And yet, during the George Floyd Memorial services, Americans watched a church funeral service setting televised nationally, showing attendees sitting shoulder to shoulder, some masked, but some weren't.
Al Sharpton preached unmasked.
Singers were unmasked, which I found kind of comical after churches have been advised to refrain from singing to help stop the COVID-19 spread.
And the point I want to make is that they had the right to hold this service exactly in the manner in which they did.
But even as we speak, there are Americans who have not been able to worship or gather in their churches like that.
The COVID-19 patients have died apart from their families and their loved ones were forced to grieve in isolation, not to mention all of the other deaths from various other causes in the last three months.
Recently, we have seen innocent, heroic police officers murdered in anti-American violence, and no memorial services are being held for them that I can see right now being televised across the country.
We are seeing a full display of liberal socialist ideology that gives freedom for some, these liberal socialist elites, but not for us, the American people.
And it simply cannot be overstated, in my opinion, how much heartache the American people have been through in recent months.
And these protests, again, are just another example of this liberal socialist ideology that gives freedom to come diesel.
Hey, Grace, let me sum it up for you, okay?
It is utter hypocrisy.
You heard nothing, not a word, not a peep out of Democrats about no social distancing, not wearing masks during the protest.
And there were peaceful protesters, but also there were rioters.
There were looters.
There were people that were arsonists.
There were people attacking the police, assaulting the police.
Not a word.
Donald Trump, all of a sudden, he's going to have a rally.
He's going to do temperature checks.
He's going to have sanitizers.
He's going to give everyone's going to have to wear a mask.
It's all going to be happening the way the protesters didn't.
Now, the only reason they're bringing this up as an issue is simple, because it's Donald Trump.
And maybe he just needs to say, well, it's no longer a rally, but a protest.
But in 138 days, let not your heart be troubled, Grace, because you have the ability to decide.
You and your fellow Americans will be the ultimate jury.
You get to decide.
You know, I am now about to embark in early August on a book tour about live free or die.
I go through the founding of this country, the rise of radicalism in this country.
I have a chapter on how insane the Democrats' 2020 agenda is.
I give a case in point that this has all been tried and failed before, socialism and their history of failure.
I go through their lies and conspiracy theories and what they've dragged this country through with their Russia collusion hoax.
I go through their attempt to undo a presidency because they didn't like the results with this phony impeachment.
I go through their allies and the media mob, the hate Trump media mob, and their assault on conservatism and freedoms in this country.
And then, of course, the president's success.
Why?
Because in 138 days, you, we, the people, this is a monumental choice.
This is a crucial, pivotal moment for the country.
And I don't, this is not hyperbole.
I shudder to think I think America will be unrecognizable if, in fact, they are successful.
Now, by the way, you can still get a copy, first edition, beautiful bound edition for your dad on Hannity.com.
Linda, I see she's raising her hand for once.
Linda from the Linda from Philly, the streets of Philly, but sounds like a New Yorker.
It's a combo.
It's a combo.
But listen, I just want to give everybody a heads up.
Not only do we have this awesome book by you, but we're doing a little concert on your Facebook page, which I know we talked about earlier, but for people that are just going to be a little bit more than a month.
Thanks for reminding me.
Yeah.
And, you know, what we'd really love you to do, everybody, is go on Sean's Twitter, go on Sean's Facebook page and tell us about your dad and your stories and just great memories that you have.
And John Rich is going to be having this concert and he could talk about some of the stories that we get.
You know, it's, so I lost my dad six months before, after I started at Fox.
And I think about him every day.
You know, if you have your dads around, listen, just a phone call.
You don't have to do much more than that.
Just tell them you love him.
You know what?
You think of how hard your parents work every day.
I mean, I didn't understand this when I was young.
I was too stupid.
But now I understand.
Grew up in the Depression, fought four years in the Pacific, World War II.
They're amazing people.
You know, now that as a parent, I can tell you the only one thing I worry about are my kids.
That's the only thing.
I don't care what happens to me.
I don't.
Linda, do I care?
I don't care.
You know, I'm not, but I care about my kids.
We all care about our kids.
And in honor of fathers like you, we're going to say, go out, get Sean's awesome book for your dad, and tune in for this awesome concert that we're going to put online with John Rich.
It's going to be tomorrow night at 6.15.
He'll be on tomorrow to talk about it, but send your stories in today so we can read them.
Awesome.
Can't wait.
I'm going to be watching too.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
All right.
We have full, complete coverage, new developments, huge developments on the indictment that took place yesterday in Atlanta.
One of the cops was tased, had a concussion, and new information coming out, including the DA himself saying, oh, a taser is considered a deadly weapon under Georgia law.
