Best of Hannity: David Perdue - April 15th, Hour 1
In this "Best of Sean Hannity" episode, Georgia's race for governor is heating up. David Perdue stops by to share his perspective on this important competitive race. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
And would the U.S. or NATO respond with military action if he did use chemical weapons?
We would respond.
We would respond if he uses it.
The nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use.
Joe Biden is a great president.
He is a gift.
He's perfect.
He's perfect for now.
How high do you think oil prices can get at the bump?
You know, it's conceivable that they could move higher.
Freedom is back in style.
Welcome.
Sean Hennedy to the new Sean Hennity show.
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America Trapped Behind Enemy Lines.
Day number 244.
All right, our two Sean Hannity show on this Friday, 800-941 Sean.
On number, you want to be a part of the program.
So the story breaks about Project Veritas, and we find out they found out through Microsoft and legal documents, and it got deeper than we ever thought.
Now, remember the FBI raid on Project Veritas journalists' homes.
But anyway, the story that broke earlier in the week, we covered it on television.
We have more time to go into the details here on radio.
But on Tuesday, a new video from Project Veritas revealed legal documents obtained from the Microsoft Corporation showing that the Biden Department of Justice has been spying on Project Veritas journalists leading up to the November raids of their homes.
Project Veritas obtained the documents that show that apparently, I guess, DOJ met people spying on Project Veritas journalists, well, before the FBI raided the homes of their journalists.
Obviously, this brings in a huge First Amendment issue.
Very interestingly, the statement given by the ACLU, no fan of anything conservative or anything Project Veritas, they even said we deplore Project Veritas.
It says, but we're concerned that the precedent set by this case could have serious consequences for press freedom.
We're deeply troubled by the reports.
The Department of Justice obtained secret electronic surveillance orders requiring sweeping disclosure of all content of communications associated with Project Veritas email accounts, including attorney-client communications.
Compounding these concerns, all government-suppressed information about the existence of the electronic surveillance orders, even after the investigation became public knowledge and the district court appointed a special master to supervise prosecutors' access to Project Veritas' sensitive materials.
By the way, it's a fairly common thing where you have somebody whose only job would be to delineate that which is private and personal or protected by the First Amendment, for example.
And that would be then other materials that might be relevant to some said investigation.
But anyway, the government must immediately suspend its review of materials obtained pursuant to its electronic surveillance orders and fully disclose the extent of its action so that the court can consider appropriate relief.
Now, let's go back, Project Veritas and James O'Keefe announcing all of this, discussing what has happened.
In November 2021, the FBI raids our homes and seizes 47 electronic devices, including cell phones, laptops, and thumb drives.
Within five days, U.S. District Court Judge Annalisa Torres ordered the Southern District of New York to pause its review of my devices, and within a month, ordered the SDNY to turn our seized materials over to a special master who would supervise the SDNY's review to protect our First Amendment and journalistic privileges.
Recently obtained legal documents from Microsoft Corporation reveal that despite Judge Torres's orders, between November 2020 and April 2021, the Department of Justice went to six magistrates and obtained a series of secret warrants, orders, and a subpoena to surreptitiously collect privileged communications and contacts of eight American journalists, myself included, from Microsoft.
The DOJ even sought and obtained numerous secrecy orders preventing Microsoft from disclosing the surveillance to anyone.
The SDNY also went around Judge Torres and the Special Master and obtained two secrecy orders after the Special Master had been appointed.
Project Veritas is immediately filing a motion demanding that the federal government disclose if it engaged in covert spying of our journalists by secretly demanding production of our protected materials from any other businesses like Microsoft.
The SDNY's surveillance of Project Veritas journalists was done as part of the DOJ's unprecedented investigation into Ashley Biden's diary.
As far as we know, federal law enforcement has never before investigated an abandoned diary.
The documents collected from these email accounts date back as far as January 2020, eight months before we even knew the diary existed.
As Project Veritas' motion says, the fact that the government secretly obtained emails from three different Project Veritas journalists dating back from eight months prior to the news gathering conduct that the government is scrutinizing shocks the conscience.
While the special master litigation proceeded, the government apparently misled the court by omission by not disclosing that it had already obtained other privileged materials.
The SDNY was ordered to turn over all materials to the special master.
They didn't.
The SDNY was ordered to stop reviewing our materials.
They didn't.
The SDNY has an obligation to be honest with the court.
They weren't.
All right, John, CEO, founder of Project Veritas, James O'Keefe, is with us now.
We got to, I think, go back to the beginning so people fully, completely comprehend and understand.
My understanding is someone approached you and Project Veritas with information, a diary, that they said was that of Joe Biden's daughter, correct?
That's correct, Sean.
We had tipsters approach us and they said that they had this diary.
This diary was apparently abandoned in a house in Florida where she was staying.
And we came across it.
We paid for the rights for this document.
And then we went about trying to corroborate it.
At the time, I thought I failed to authenticate the diary, Sean.
And now it turns out it has been authenticated by the FBI and the New York Times.
So we did a better job than we thought we did.
But we decided not to publish it, Sean.
And that's when a couple weeks after this, this is in November of 2020, right before the presidential election.
It turns out we found out in the last 10 days that the Department of Justice sought secret warrants.
These are called sneak and peek warrants against Microsoft Corporation.
We use Microsoft for our emails.
And they got magistrate judges to sign them.
And they listed various crimes on these, probably cause being blackmail and stalking and other strange crimes that vanished when the FBI raided my home in November of this past year.
So a lot to unpack here, but this does involve the president's daughter's diary.
Now, let me go to this.
So you had it.
You did your due diligence.
You couldn't get to the point where you had the corroboration that met the standard for you to publish it.
My understanding from other sources, not from you, is that there are very, very controversial accusations against prominent people in this diary.
Can you confirm that?
I am not willing, Sean, to discuss the substance in the diary.
I think that I could, but I'm choosing not to do that with 20 million people listening.
I think there are some things that public eyes should not see.
And I think that even if I can with 100% certainty authenticate the document, I can't verify if what is attested in the document actually occurred.
So I haven't been able to corroborate whether the things discussed therein happened.
Can I ask this question?
Are things discussed therein beyond troubling to anybody that has a conscience and a soul?
Yes, there are some unclear but potentially disturbing things discussed, and some of them are very personal.
I won't push you any further because I have very good sources like that.
And I think the government would love for me to make this political, and that's certainly what they're projecting onto me.
But we have to- Well, it's interesting because just the opposite.
Based on what I said, it would be more than political.
It would be explosive.
And that goes into your ethics and decision-making.
And interestingly, I thought about myself in the same dilemma.
I don't really know what I do.
I don't have as much detail as you do, so it's hard.
Let me go now to the issue of the FBI raid.
Tell us about who got raided, when that happened, and then we'll get to Microsoft.
Well, my colleagues, Spencer Meads, and Eric Cochran, Project Veritas colleagues, got raided November 3rd.
They took their hard drives, cell phones, laptops, thumbnail, cell phones.
And then I issued a statement, and then they came to my apartment in Westchester, New York, and raided me.
And Sean, you aired video this week of my colleague Eric Cochrane being raided.
It's very disturbing.
There were guns, there were flashlights.
They took all of us.
They put us in handcuffs.
It's very rare for the Department of Justice to ever issue search warrants against journalists.
Obviously, the Attorney General expressly forbids such things unless he himself gives permission.
It's unclear whether Merrick Garland actually did that.
We assume he did not.
We assume the secret warrants were not approved by William Barr in November of 2020 because there were only two weeks or so that passed between Ashley Biden knowing about, reached out to her and her father for comment, and when this actually occurred.
So it's probably done through the Southern District of New York, made a decision there in New York City in federal court.
I get raided, and on my warrant that I'm holding in my hand, it lists various crimes.
I haven't been charged with these crimes.
They were just listed on the search warrant as things like transporting material across state lines, accessory after the fact.
I mean, these are absurd things to throw at a journalist, which journalists get sent documents all the time that may or may not be stolen.
We didn't know.
The source approached us with the document.
The Supreme Court protects the rights of journalists to print documents that sources send them.
See, this is a very important point here because if you are a conservative, you've got a very different standard than any liberal.
Look at the case of the Hunter Biden laptop issue.
I was offered it many times, but based on what my sources told me were on it, my lawyer was adamant that you can't accept it for reasons you're describing.
Even though I am a member of the press, I am a talk show host.
I do straight news.
I do investigative reporting.
I give my opinion.
We talk about every issue, culture, sports, you name it.
I'm like an entire newspaper.
So that's why when people, you don't call yourself a journalist.
No, I'm not a journalist, but journalism is part of what I do.
And frankly, I'm more right than the so-called journalists in this country are, and I've been proven right again and again.
But putting that aside, even though I should have those very protections you're talking about, this standard would never apply to the New York Times or the Washington Post.
We even have a court precedent involving both those papers.
They call the Pentagon Papers case stolen material that they ended up printing.
Yeah, you'd have a right as a talk show host and or a journalist or even a citizen to publish that which someone transmits to you.
It's a Supreme Court case beyond the public.
But my lawyer, looking out for my best interest, said, here's the problem.
You're not even allowed to have it in your possession as a citizen, as a member of the press, I am.
But he said, they're not going to care in your case.
Your Hannity, they'll throw the book at you.
Well, I think that's a fair point.
The New York Times and CNN, this would never happen to them.
And Project Geritas is a news organization, and the federal judge in this case, Judge Torres in New York, in November after the raid, five days after the raid, ordered the FBI to stop and assign what's called a special master, which is very rare to get that appointed.
And the federal judge said James of Keith, Project Geritas, are entitled to journalistic privilege.
So the judge explained.
The judge made the right call here.
The judge was 100% right.
Keep going.
Things take a crazy turn.
After that happened, the FBI, Department of Justice, Southern District of New York, went to Microsoft and got a gag order on Microsoft.
We use Microsoft for our emails, and a magistrate judge, that's a different judge, signed it.
They went behind that judge's back and they gagged Microsoft.
Microsoft filed a motion opposing this.
And the moment Microsoft put it on paper and sent it to the Southern District, the Southern District backed down.
This was 10 days ago.
We found out about this.
They didn't file the motion, but Microsoft tipped us off about it, and the gag order was lifted, Sean.
And now we found out that they were trying to stop people from knowing they should be secret.
They're called sneak and peek warrants.
This is like CIA-level stuff they were doing to a journalism organization in the United States of America.
And the probable cause for the sneak and peek warrants going back to January 2020, well, guess what?
They weren't even on the warrants they raided my home with.
So this is a scandal.
This is probably, I said on your show on Wednesday, the biggest infringement of freedom of the press in the history of the United States.
So we have one minute left.
What is your recourse?
What is your next move?
We filed a motion with the judge, and we said we want to know the names of the people who did this.
We obviously want to know what companies, what other vendors they went to.
We found out Uber they did this to Uber.
Did they do this to Apple, Verizon?
I mean, we filed a motion.
We want relief, and we want to know the names of U.S. attorneys are out of control in New York.
And they're obviously trying to cover their tracks because they tried to gag people from speaking about it.
So we want relief.
And it seems like Microsoft did the right thing.
Am I wrong on that?
I think Microsoft actually did the right thing.
I actually think that they, I have to give them a lot of credit, Sean, because they picked me off.
And they care about their clients as a vendor.
They don't want their clients being spied on.
And what is the government?
The government had access to all of our emails.
And then they leak it to the New York Times for a year.
Let me tell you, special master or not, they already made their copies.
I would bet my life on it.
Speculation, but I bet my life on it.
That's why this is such a grave case.
And we're carrying the rights of so many other people because if they could do it to me, they will do it to you.
And the ACLU thinks it's outrageous.
And the New York Times also thought it was outrageous this week.
All right.
Big news.
We'll continue to follow it.
James O'Keefe, founder, CEO, Project Veritas.
Unbelievable times we're living in.
Thanks for being with us.
What an incredible, what an incredible story that is.
Unreal.
Scary.
You know, freedom of the speech, freedom of the press.
Not anymore.
You are listening to the best of The Sean Hannity Show.
You won't hear the mainstream press talking about this stuff.
Sean Hannity is on the radio.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour on this Friday, 800-94-1 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, you know, two pollsters, friends of this program that you know are on regularly, Matt Towery, Insider Advantage, and Robert Cahaley, Trafalgar, two of the most accurate pollsters that I know.
They've been polling the race in terms of Herschel Walker running for Senate down in Georgia.
They've been polling the governor's primary between Kemp and David Perdue.
I've endorsed David Perdue in this race.
I want him to win.
I think he'd be a far better candidate to defeat Stacey Abrams.
But anyway, what's fascinating about this is in both these guys' polls.
Now, remember, they nailed 2016.
They nailed 2020.
And they also nailed the 2016, I'm sorry, the 2020 Senate runoff because a lot of people down in Georgia, Republicans, were pissed off and angry, especially at the governor and the Secretary of State.
Long story short, what they both show in the current poll is that the majority of Republican primary voters do not know that Donald Trump is enthusiastically supporting David Perdue.
He's going down there a week from tomorrow.
That's not this Saturday, but next Saturday.
And he's holding a rally for David Perdue.
But the fact that people didn't know that blew me away.
Like half the people, half are Republican primary voters.
Here's Donald Trump at his last rally speaking on issues pertinent to everything.
One of the most important lessons of the past two years is that to be a strong nation, America must also be a manufacturing nation.
We have to bring back our manufacturing.
We cannot count on China or any other country to give us our critical products.
And we cannot have our vital supply chains.
Whoever heard of this?
You can't get anything.
The stores are half empty.
We have a supply chain.
Nobody ever even talked about this.
And this all came out of the stench of the Biden administration.
Stretches all over the globe.
Under a Republican Congress, we should pass historic legislation and powerful tariffs to bring our essential industries back home.
The Biden energy crisis and the Ukraine crisis are glaring reminders that America cannot be strong abroad if we are not first strong at home.
All right, joining us now is gubernatorial candidate, Republican candidate David Perdue is with us.
How are you, sir?
I'm great, Sean.
Thanks for having me, man.
Yeah, a great segment just now, and that relates back to Georgia as well.
President Trump is being vindicated on every front now, including, you know, the Hunter-Biden debacle and the Durham report now is vindicating what President Trump said about Hillary Clinton all along with Russia.
And now we see evidence of election fraud here in Georgia beginning to creep its way into the public domain.
So he's being vindicated all the way around.
I'm excited about his endorsement.
I'm not too surprised, though.
You know, we haven't in this race, not a lot of money's been spent.
Kemp spent about a couple million dollars on negative advertising, and it really didn't have much impact.
But we're working hard to get that known out there.
That's why this rally is important.
That's why Trump is coming to Georgia next weekend.
I was just down there this week with him in an event for us.
So he's all in.
This is going to be at the Banks County Dragway in Commerce, Georgia.
It'll be a great venue.
Many people have been to these before, and he's going to make them know what's at stake here.
If you want a president, a Republican, conservative president in 24, and you want to get the Senate majority back in 22, we've got to win this governor's race.
This governor's race is critical.
That Senate race with Herschel, also equally pivotal.
And I've endorsed Herschel as well.
And I think he'll be a great senator from Georgia.
This race is important.
And you're right.
Donald Trump is proven right again and again and again.
I mean, I've been playing tapes of him warning the country that, yeah, elect Joe Biden, you're going to be paying four, five, six, maybe seven dollars a gallon for gasoline.
We keep hitting record high after record high.
I played tapes of him lecturing NATO allies and the head of NATO himself at a table saying how stupid they are.
Number one, they don't pay their fair share.
We pay the most in terms of dollar amount, but we're also paying the most as a percentage of GDP, and Europe is not in our backyard.
We're paying that money to protect our NATO allies from Russia.
And then they're turning around countries like Germany.
And, you know, 40, 50% of their energy needs are imported from Russia.
So they're making Putin and Russia rich again, which enables him to get involved in this invasion of Ukraine.
It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen.
And Trump's been warning about it for years, and here it is.
You know, Sean, you've called this out before, but losing my seat in the United States Senate gave the Democrats that 50-50 with the vice president majority.
Had we won my Senate seat, and this is where the voting fraud issue becomes really a national issue.
If we had kept that seat, we could have stopped this nonsense.
We could have stopped Anwar from being shut down or the Keystone Pipeline from being shut down or the sanctions coming off of Russia.
And those 13 soldiers would most probably still be alive.
I just think this is what's so important about Trump's potential second term is that we had Putin on the run.
I mean, those sanctions were really biting him.
And what did Biden do?
He let oil prices go up.
And the biggest benefactor of that was Vladimir Putin.
Well, let me ask you this, and I think this is really, really important.
Why is it that with all the talk of solutions, the one thing that's not even discussed or on the table is America was energy independent when Joe Biden took office?
We have all the oil, natural gas, coal we would ever need, and we could supply all of our allies, and it's good for national security, and it's good for job creation, and it would lower inflation, and we'd be able to supply our allies with the energy they need so they're not beholden to Russia.
Well, that was the Trump doctrine: let's take advantage of what God has blessed us with here in the United States.
We were truly energy independent.
Not only that, we had enough natural gas that we could have met all of Europe's needs with regard to natural gas.
Now, what Biden wants to do is send U.S. dollars to Venezuela and Iran instead of North Dakota and Alaska.
This is nuts.
And this is all, you could see it coming in the election in 2016.
Remember the Green New Deal?
They don't say much about that anymore, but this is the hypocrisy of the Democratic platform.
Don Jr.
Here last week.
And he called it, this is not just Biden.
This is the entire Democratic platform, our Democrat platform.
And that's what we have at stake here in Georgia.
If Stacey Abrams, and you call this out all the time, Sean, if she's governor here, they'll expand Medicaid.
They'll take away insurance from people who have it at their employer now and very happy with it.
This illegal invasion we have going on will only be exacerbated.
She'll have a big haven here.
And they have another word for these illegal immigrants coming in, Sean.
They call them voters.
And she wants no voter ID anywhere in sight.
And that's probably, I mean, that's part of what she perpetrated here in Georgia, actually, in 2020, from my view.
Okay, so they did this stupid agreement.
I believe it was Rasenberger, this consent agreement with the Democratic Party, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
And they make this deal, and they had two separate standards for signature verification.
All right.
So more recently in the latest Georgia legislative session, they've tightened up their voter integrity measures except for signature verification.
And I'm trying to figure out why did they not put that in when it's so critical to make sure if we're going to have elections, you've got to have integrity so people have confidence in the outcome.
What's so hard about that?
It's not, Sean.
It's just they're not paying attention to the details.
And honestly, we've not had voting law enforcement here in Georgia under Republicans now for a decade or so.
I mean, when Brian Kemp was Secretary of State, we had the same level of rejections of bad signature matches on absentee ballots as we had in 2020.
As an example, in DeKalb County, only nine absentee ballots were rejected out of 136,000 absentee ballots.
In Fulton County, only 10 out of 147,000.
And the only reason that people didn't get upset back when Kemp was Secretary of State is that absentee ballots were only about 4 or 5% of the vote.
In 2020, it was 30%.
And you can see that's where Stacey Abrams directed all of her energy was toward drop boxes, how voting buses could be used to collect votes and all the things of the Zuckerberg money that could go straight to election boards, if you can believe that.
I mean, our four top leading elected officials are all Republicans were all asleep at the switch when this was happening and then have been in total denial since then.
That's why I think the vindication of President Trump is so important here.
It's being vindicated across a lot of different fronts.
And this is one you see a movie being publicized a little bit right now.
It's going to come out in April.
D'Souza is talking about that.
But you see this voter ballot harvesting, ballot trafficking videos that are showing up on social media.
I've seen that evidence in May of last year.
It's compelling, Sean.
You know who else saw it in May of last year?
Our governor.
And they buried it.
They have not done anything to investigate it.
Well, you would think that's the first order of business.
All right.
I just want to reinforce for people that you are going to be with Donald Trump.
You have a big rally coming up, and it's a week from this Saturday, which I think is pretty exciting.
I know you've been out on the campaign trail with Don Jr., but it's going to be on the 26th.
And Donald Trump is visiting the state of Georgia on your behalf.
And where can people sign up if they want to go, if they have to sign up, or write down on the calendar?
Very simple.
Go to votepurdue.com, and they can get access to information about how to get a ticket and show up.
So it's going to be a big night.
I encourage everybody to come out.
And the main message is that President Trump is going to say is we've got to overwhelm the system.
It's not perfect, but we need to do what the people in Virginia did.
We elected a Republican governor in Yonkin up there.
All right, David Perdue, we're following this.
You have my support, and I hope the people of the Republican Party of Georgia understand how high the stakes are here.
Appreciate you being with us.
We're following your campaign.
We'll have you back on soon.
Good luck at the rally in a week from tomorrow.
Thank you, sir.
Sir, your endorsement means the world, man.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
You bet.
800-941, Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
Jeff is in Maryland.
Jeff, you're on the Sean Hannity show.
Thanks for checking in.
Happy Friday.
Happy Friday.
Thanks for taking my call, Sean.
Following up on David Perdue and a conversation from earlier you had this week about the bogus sanctions kind of going back and forth between Russia and the U.S., I view those differently.
I view those as nothing more than Trump-Russia collusion 2.0.
And let me explain.
The left and Putin, they're masters at projection.
Okay.
And so let's face it, in 2020 and in 2016, the collusion was between the Democrats and Russia.
And so now what's happening is that they're going to say, well, why didn't Putin sanction Trump?
He only sanctioned Biden, and he only sanctioned other Dems and Clinton.
And so I see this as sort of, you know, a seed that's going to be planted leading up to 2024.
Because you're talking about the sanctioned list of Vladimir Putin.
It had on zero experience, Hunter, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, but not Donald Trump.
But add one thing to the equation.
Now, the annex Crimea, Putin did in 2014, that was Obama and Biden.
The four years of Trump, he didn't lift a finger to annex anything.
He didn't invade Ukraine when Donald Trump was president.
Donald Trump isn't on the list, maybe because he was sending a message that he has compromising materials, to quote the great call of Adam Schiff, against these other people.
And maybe that was the message he was sending.
You know, Hillary said, oh, it's a lifetime achievement award.
If anybody's been friendly and colluding, if you will, with Russia, she paid for the Russian disinformation dossier that is totally debunked, that literally hurt this country for nearly four years.
Absolutely.
And yes, so that's the nail on the head.
They are masters of projection and deception.
This is what they do.
The left and murderous dictators are perfect at this.
They're in bed together.
They're propagandists.
They're liars.
And the sad reality is, is when we have weak presidents, and it doesn't get any weaker than Joe Biden, by far, in the modern era, and that would include Jimmy Carter, America's never had a weaker president.
We've never had a more unqualified vice president in Kamala Harris.
And third in line for the presidency would be Nancy Pelosi.
And she's got her own cognitive issues.
I don't even think she knows today's Friday, like Joe.
So what do we see happening around the world when we're not projecting strength like Donald Trump projected strength when he defeated the caliphate, killed Soleimani, took out Baghdadi, took out the al-Qaeda leader in Yemen, when he told the Taliban, I will bomb you into a lost age if you dare kill a single American.
Nobody got killed the last 18 months that he was president.
You know what?
Strength works.
They're all weak.
Reagan was strong.
Trump was strong.
Biden is pathetically weak, frail, and a cognitive mess.
And it's embarrassing.
It's humiliating for this country.
And it's dangerous for the world.
Anyway, I hope you have a good weekend, my friend.
On that happy note.
Anyway, Hannity tonight at 9.
Going to wrap things up for today, but let not your heart be troubled.
Hannity tonight, usual time, 9 Eastern.
Please set your DVR.
Never miss an episode.
Uh, loaded up.
We have uh General Jack Keene.
We'll get the latest on the ground from Greg Palcott in Ukraine.
Uh, we have Kellyanne Conway, Reines Prievis, Greg Jarrett, Jason Chaffetz, Rand Paul.
Uh, and if you didn't hear the story about Leah Thomas winning the NCAA Women's Swimming Championship, a lot of controversy surrounding it: Caitlin Jenner and Tammy Bruce.