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July 29, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show
34:46
A Must-Hear on the Victor Bout Case - July 29th, Hour 2

Sean is joined by former DEA Special Operations agent Derek Maltz on the Victor Bout case.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It's something else.
How is that not redefining recession?
Because that's not the definition.
Two negative quarters of GDP growth is not the technical definition of recession.
It's not the definition that economists have traditionally relied on.
It's not a game.
There's a technical thing called a recession, and its definition is as I've described it.
That doesn't sound like a recession to me.
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America Trapped Behind Enemy Lines.
Day number 349.
At our two Sean Hannity show, toll-free, it's 800-941.
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You know, we've talked about the humiliating, embarrassing phone call Joe Biden had with President Xi yesterday, basically threatening the United States.
You know, why we don't have a president aware enough, strong enough, cognitively strong, or even aware enough on the issues that would have mattered.
What are the real origins of COVID-19?
Are you planning on compensating the million-plus Americans that in fact themselves died from COVID-19 because of the Wuhan Virology Lab?
Why was it you took on a policy in China that if you were in Wuhan, you were not allowed to travel to any other part of China.
And if you were in any other part of China, you couldn't travel to Wuhan province.
But if you were in Wuhan, you could travel from Wuhan, you could travel all the way around the world.
And they allowed that kind of travel.
Is that not all the evidence one would need that they knew exactly what was going on here?
Now we see, I've been talking about this new axis of evil, and that is Russia and China and Iran, a new alliance that has formed.
And you know what?
Anybody that has any sense in the world would be concerned about it.
We saw that just today the Kremlin offered strong support for China over the issues involving Taiwan.
Now the question is, what's Nancy Pelosi going to do?
It's still unclear as she makes her trip abroad throughout Asia whether or not she will stop by our ally after the warning that you'll reap what you sow, you'll get burned, whatever the comment of President Xi was yesterday.
You know, is she going to stop in Taiwan or is she going to capitulate to the threats of the communist Chinese?
Is Joe going to try and kiss their ass and give them more of our strategic petroleum reserves like he did, a million barrels of our oil at a point where we have the highest price per gasoline per gallon that we've ever had in history?
Why is he talking about eliminating tariffs that Donald Trump put on China, especially with their territorial ambitions on full display?
None of it makes any sense.
Now, with all these hostile regimes, we have a lot of big issues that come into play.
And one of them has to do, and I have talked about this before, with a prisoner, a WNBA player by the name of Brittany Greiner, who happens to be a phenomenal player.
And now they've talked about whether or not they would do a prisoner swap in terms of this guy that has a reputation, a known reputation, of being involved in the worst activities here.
Victor Bout is his name.
And, you know, is the administration hell-bent on trading somebody that has a minor offense that's been sentenced, what, up to 10 years in jail, you know, for somebody that we know is involved in espionage and is a clear and present danger, not only to the U.S., but to the world.
Anyway, joining us now is Derek Maltz.
He's a former agent in charge of the DEA Special Operations Division.
He went to the White House with the DEA's chief of operations and an agent who worked for him when President Bush's terrorism advisor challenged the DEA to see what they could do about this significant national security threat, Victor Bout.
And with the power of the DEA around the world, you know, they were able to take him down, put him in jail for seven months, working with their counterparts and high-level sources.
And they set up a sting operation and arrested Bout in Thailand.
Anyway, he was then convicted on four terror charges in federal court.
And he joins us now to tell us about this guy and who we're dealing with here.
Anyway, Derek, thank you for being with us.
Thank you, Sean, very much.
I appreciate you bringing up this very important story.
It's really an unbelievable comment that was made by several people.
Victor Boot is a known international arms trafficker.
He's been around since the 90s.
He bought all these aircraft and weapons from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
He fueled brutal wars around the world in Africa and other places.
The DEA was asked to go after this guy, and seven months after we were passed by the White House terrorism advisor for President Bush, we took him down.
But Sean, he was negotiating with our informant to sell us 800 surface-to-air missiles, 30,000 AK-47s, 10 million rounds of ammunition, five tons of C4 plastic explosives.
He was going to give us also some aircraft to attack U.S. forces in Colombia because the whole sting operation involved informants that represented themselves as members of the FARC in Colombia.
And that Victor Bout bragged about how America was the enemy, and it was his enemy as well.
But the thing that really gets me crazy, Sean, is asking.
By the way, let me ask you, though, when he was going to sell you the 800 surface-to-air missiles, who did he think he was selling it to?
So he thought our informants were representatives of the FARC, a narco-terrorist organization in Colombia, and he wanted to use those weapons against U.S. personnel.
That's what he was charged and convicted with, you know, conspiracy to kill Americans and using surface-to-air missiles.
So he was a very big global national security threat, not only to America, but to the world.
And what's really sad, Sean, is after the initial proceedings in Thailand, when the lower court ruled against his extradition to America, all of a sudden, the apparatus of the Obama administration, including Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, they all got involved.
They basically touted this guy as one of the most prolific arms dealers in the world, needs to be held accountable for his actions.
They talked about, it was a letter from Congress, a bipartisan signed letter from members of Congress that talked about that Victor Boot was one of the worst terrorists in the world.
So it's like amazing, like they forget that this guy, you know, it was a multiple, you know, year, you know, effort by not only the DEA, but by the U.S. government apparatus to put this guy in jail to face the rule of law and put him where he belongs, in prison.
And now the thought of letting him go for some marijuana user, whatever it was, cannabis oil.
She was over in Russia.
She had the equivalent of a pod that had THC in it, which is the active ingredient that gets people high when they smoke weed.
So they're willing to take this guy and exchange this guy for Brittany Griner.
Now, let me be clear.
I want Brittany Griner home.
She's a fellow U.S. citizen.
This is a minor offense.
This is Vladimir Putin humiliating Joe Biden.
So it goes on a much deeper level than this just being about Victor Boot.
But, you know, describing who Victor Boot is and what he's been involved in and what he would likely go back to, I think is very critical in terms of is this the right guy to make a prisoner swap with for Brittany Greiner.
I want her home as much as anybody.
I've been saying it as long as anybody.
Right.
I agree, Sean, 100% that she should come home.
That's not the issue.
We have to uphold the rule of law.
This guy is a global terrorist.
He's one of the biggest arms trappers.
The White House asked the DEA to go after him.
These are really important concepts that President Biden needs to understand.
He was the vice president when all this was going on.
I went to the White House Situation Room with all the leaders of these agencies to discuss how are we going to get this guy back after the Thai court ruled against the extradition.
And it was a top priority meeting for multiple agencies in the government, the intelligence community, the State Department, and law enforcement agencies.
And we worked closely with the Thai counterparts to get this guy back.
And now to send him is just a complete slap in the face of law enforcement around the world.
And, you know, Victor Boot has been, he's been a target of multiple agencies, the intelligence community, other agencies for years.
After 9-11, he was selling weapons to the Taliban, and he was a huge threat.
The Treasury Department had him as a top-tier threat.
So it's not like he's just your local arms guy.
He was one of the biggest in the world.
If you get these surface-to-air missiles into the United States and literally they're here and you have a terror cell that gets a hold of those weapons, the danger is beyond comprehension.
If you have 800 of them, And you have 30, 100 terrorists in a cell that can make their way across the border anytime they want at this point because we have open borders under Joe Biden.
But if they had the weapons, were able to get them, smuggle them into the U.S., and you have the terrorists that are willing to use them.
I mean, we could wake up one morning and you'd have one commercial aircraft after another taken out of the sky.
Am I wrong on that?
No, you're 100% right.
But now it's even worse because with the wide open border, we have terrorists in the country already.
I mean, look at the statistics at the border.
I mean, we could go on all day.
All the gotaways that are in America, we have no idea who they are.
They could be Iranian, Hezbollah terrorists.
They could be Hezbollah terrorists.
They could be Iranians, Chinese.
It's unknown because we don't know who these people are.
So it's very...
We reported on this.
We know specifically, you know, there was a short period where they caught over 45 known terror members from different organizations crossing our southern border.
I mean, the latest numbers Sean was about 54, according to CPP.
And those are the only ones that they reported on from the terror watch list.
But we have so many more in the country, and hopefully they're not plotting the next terror act.
But guys like Victor Boot get out.
They're going to want revenge against America.
He was sitting in jail for the last since 2000, I think, 12.
You know, he's been sitting in jail.
He was convicted in like six hours in Southern District of New York.
Even Eric Holder came out after the conviction and bragged about the amazing work done around the world, three continents.
One of the most prolific arms traffickers is being held accountable.
So it's like so ironic that now they're talking about, because of politics, to get Brittany Griner back, Victor Bout should even be in the conversation.
We'll take a quick break.
We'll come back more on this potential prisoner exchange.
Not a fair one, obviously, more with Derek Maltz, former agent in charge of the DEA's Special Operations Division.
He helped put this guy in jail.
It's amazing that this deal is even being considered by Joe Biden, but you'd expect that.
Victor Bout, you know, this guy was a known arms trafficker, terrorist, and we put him in jail for a long period of time.
That's not the same.
There's no equivalency with what Brittany Greiner was, quote, convicted of.
All right, we continue with Derek Maltz as we discuss this proposed prisoner exchange with Vladimir Putin.
As unfair and unreasonable as it seems on the surface, it's even worse, as we've been discussing.
You're bringing up so many good points, Derek.
Look at it this way.
You know, here, and to me, you've got to examine deeply the connection between Hunter Biden, the Biden family, the Biden family syndicate, the monies that they got from countries like Russia, meaning Hunter with no experience from a Russian oligarch, former first lady of Moscow, and the connection.
Why would Joe Biden give a waiver from Vladimir Putin's Nord Stream 2 pipeline at this exact same time he's canceling the Keystone exile pipeline?
You know, why is he talking about here?
You have saber-rattling by China.
You know, we're getting lectured and threatened by President Xi yesterday.
Those who play with fire will get burned.
We're getting threatened yesterday, and Joe Biden is offering to lift tariffs from China.
We're getting lectures on whether our speaker of the house can go visit an allied country of the United States, and we're warned that we better not do it.
And Joe sat there and took it.
He didn't say a word about COVID.
He didn't say a word about intellectual property theft.
He didn't say a word about unfair trade practices.
He did nothing except get lectured.
And it seems, you know, we have a $1.5 billion bank a deal China with Hunter.
He had no experience for that.
They get a million barrels of our strategic petroleum reserves.
There's no need to give those emergency reserves to China.
And it just seems every country that Hunter made money in, we seem to be compromised.
Yeah, so Sean, can I just make a comment?
Because you did a great story with Sarah Carter this past week on the billions of real estate transactions in America by the Chinese.
One thing the people of America are missing is that the drug money that is being circulating around America is being picked up by Chinese students and being laundered by the Chinese.
I guarantee you, a lot of these cash purchases that have been made in America by the Chinese Communist Party and other businessmen is from drug cartel proceeds and the fentanyl deaths that are happening in America at record levels.
It's really the perfect storm for our country in regards to these foreign actors like China and their relationships now that they have with the Mexican cartels.
It's off the charts, dangerous, and it's happening in our backyards.
No one's paying attention to the fact that the Chinese have taken over the money laundering operations for the Mexican cartels as our kids are dying at historic levels.
It's pretty frightening.
Listen, we appreciate you reminding everybody of this.
I do want Brittany Griner home.
Letting this guy out and having such an unequal, unfair exchange, I don't think is the right answer.
And it's another example of Joe showing nothing but weakness on the world stage.
I think you agree with that.
100%, Sean.
Thank you very much for having me today.
All right, Derek.
Always appreciate you being with us.
800-941-SHAWN if you want to be a part of the program.
But Thermo may assault the fake news.
Hannity's on right now.
All right, 25 now to the top of the hour, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, we'll get to your calls here in a second.
My favorite, maybe one of my favorite cuts of the week is Muriel Bowser.
Now, this is the woman that, in writing, rejected the National Guard on January 6th.
You know, we now have evidence that all five people in the room heard, including Donald Trump himself and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and the Secretary of Defense saying to me absolutely that Donald Trump ordered guard troops in spite of what you might have heard edited this week and released.
And Kash Patel, they all said the same thing.
And then in the IG report, this is the Biden Inspector General analyzing January 6th and the Department of Defense's response to it.
Quoted General Milley hearing that, but it was Muriel Bowser, the mayor of D.C., in writing, that actually said, no, she's not going to, she doesn't want the guard troops called up.
And once a president authorizes their use, then it becomes the jurisdiction.
In this case, of the DC mayor, in the case of the Capitol, that would be Nancy Pelosi.
Nobody has asked her any questions.
Anyway, putting all that aside, but now she wants the National Guard.
And why does she want the National Guard?
Because Greg Abbott has been sending busloads of illegal immigrants to her city, her sanctuary city of Washington, D.C. How ironic.
Listen.
Can you update us on your efforts with the migrant buses that are coming from Texas and Arkansas that we see seemingly on an increasing basis down near Union Station?
Sure.
So we are very focused and we continue to be very focused on having the federal government do its part and take the lead in addressing what we see as a growing humanitarian crisis with people who are seeking asylum coming across the country to get onto their final destinations.
And we're going to continue to pursue federal involvement.
What does that mean to me that elector suitable?
Oh, well, Mark, I think you know we've had a number of discussions.
We facilitated FEMA's involvement with a million-dollar grant that has now been increased to work with our elite nonprofit agency.
We facilitated using those grant funds to set up respite center in a neighboring jurisdiction.
And I've also asked the Secretary of the Army to deploy the D.C. National Guard to help lead that effort.
Oh, okay.
Now all of a sudden it's important.
Now, this is very important for every Republican governor in every state, all 50 states, they've got to understand something here.
When Joe Biden is aiding and abetting law breaking and he's assisting people, he's just basically not enforcing the laws of the land and he's even giving illegal immigrants preferential treatment.
They don't need COVID tests.
They don't have vaccine mandates.
They get free Biden cell phones and then they get transported to any one of the 48 states in the continental United States.
So now that Greg Abbott has shown us the way and now that they're beginning to realize what states like Arizona, Nevada, states like Texas and other states have had to deal with, every state, when they find illegal immigrants, needs to put them on a bus and send them to Muriel Bowser and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and let them deal with the problem that they created.
They're the ones that have aided and abetted law breaking.
They're not enforcing the law.
They're not respecting our borders, our sovereignty.
Let them handle it.
It's apparently very annoying to them.
How?
What a shock.
What hypocrisy.
What did you want to say, Linda?
I see you waving your hand.
I've been very, you know, welcome back, Cotter.
Yeah, this issue.
I love that, Joe.
This issue is actually very annoying to me.
So in 2017, when President Trump informed cities like D.C. that if they continued to allow themselves to be sanctuary cities, that he would be taking back federal funding and grants for things that they did.
He's like, I'm not going to support it.
And she said that she was going to maintain her sanctuary city status.
She said, I will not let the residents of D.C. live in fear.
The district is and will continue to be a sanctuary city, end quote.
So now that she's actually, you know, her chickens have come home to roost, if you will, she is literally the antithesis of what she said herself in 2017.
It's like, okay, well, you wanted this.
You just didn't want it when it was your problem.
Now it's actually your problem and you don't like it.
Back in, not just not, it's not in my backyard syndrome.
100%.
Well said.
Yes.
All right.
Let's go to North Carolina.
David is standing by this Friday.
David, hi, how are you?
Glad you called.
Thank you for being with us.
Hey, Sean, you're a great American.
We appreciate what you do.
Well, thank you for making the show possible.
We appreciate it.
Can't do it without you.
What's on your mind this Friday?
So now that all this evidence is starting to come out showing that there was definitely defamation of character against Donald Trump, and I'm sure he's going to probably bring up some lawsuits.
Wouldn't it be an advantage for the Republican Party, the conservative movement, to help support him and try to take down a lot of these media liars?
You know, my answer may surprise you.
I watched the president's last few speeches, and when the president's on substance, when the president's focused on the forgotten men and women, that's what brought him to the dance, I think, more than anything.
I don't think he's any better than when he's talking about fighting for we, the American people, to make this country stronger, to make this country more prosperous, to control our borders, to be energy dominant, not just energy independence,
to have a tough foreign policy stature in the world that the world knows we mean what we say and we say what we mean, and they have a genuinely healthy fear of him, unlike Joe Biden.
Now, maybe I'm wrong.
I have to deal with this in my own personal life.
As a public figure, it is a very high standard to go around and start suing news organizations.
Now, a lot was made, for example, earlier this week, Nicholas Sandman, five of the news outlets that he is suing was thrown out in summary judgment.
Now, there were three, Washington Post, CNN, and one other, oh, NBC News.
They had previously settled with Nicholas Sandman.
And by the way, in the CNN case, that was thrown out on summary judgment, but he won on appeal.
I think if he goes back, he'll win on appeal.
The difference being is he's not a public figure.
Now, Times v.
Sullivan, landmark Supreme Court case, says that to prove actual libel, you have to show an absence of malice.
In other words, that you didn't intend to inflict harm.
So the standard, though, historically has been so high that as a public figure, you can pretty much say anything you want about me and get away with it.
You know, I contemplated, I was really teetering on the brink of suing the New York Times after they pretty much accused me of giving advice that would have killed old people over COVID.
And meanwhile, in the end, I give better advice than they ever did, which was listen to your doctor and don't necessarily listen to anybody in media or in government.
And I turned out to be right because they were wrong 90% of the time.
So it's tempting to do.
It just takes too much time.
It's too expensive.
And I don't want him losing focus in terms of getting this nation to understand that there are policies that fail and there are principles and policies that work.
I'd rather him stay focused on saving the country and making America great again.
That's my preference.
Listen to you for this final advice.
You know, so I mean, listen, I love to pick a fight as much as anybody, but sometimes you got to pick your fights.
If I was Donald Trump and I'm running the second time, I wouldn't do a single mob, media mob, mainstream media interview the entire time.
If he becomes president again, I would ignore them the entire presidency and focus on the American people and getting our economy back up to speed, bringing our place in the world to where it should be again, and getting people out of the ditch that Biden has dug pretty much everywhere.
Anyway, David, appreciate the call.
Don, Florida, what's going on in Paradise, sir?
Glad you called.
Hey, I'm just trying to find out.
What is with this Inflation Reduction Act of adding more money?
Was it $400 billion to start with?
You know, when you got to keep printing money, how is this going to reduce inflation?
And what did they do with how did they get Joe Manchin to flip on this?
Was this the pipeline in West Virginia that has been stopped building for natural gas?
There's a lot of things I try to talk to you about.
And even like when you're talking about buying oil from here, there, and every place else, even countries of Saudi Arabia.
How many people in the U.S. already know that Saudi Arabia owns our largest refinery in Port Arthur, Texas?
They own it.
600,000 barrels a day.
Listen, they shut it down or Houston gets hit with a big hurricane and it's shut down because of damage.
We're in trouble.
You know, the reality is dealing with the world's hostile regimes when we have all the energy we could ever use for hundreds of years is there's a form of madness behind this.
You know, if your argument is, well, we can't drill and we can't frack and we can't mine for coal because it hurts Mother Earth, but we don't have alternatives.
So we'll stop all domestic production where we would do it cheaper and we do it faster and we do it cleaner and then go to these countries that hate our guts on our hands and knees and kiss the ass of pariah nations and murdering dictators doesn't make sense to me.
And it doesn't make sense to the American people either.
And the games that they play by releasing the strategic petroleum reserves, that is a band-aid fix.
You're still going to have to replenish them, number one.
Number two, it's only a temporary drop in gas prices.
And that temporary drop is still twice what you were paying than when Donald Trump was president.
You know, there's one thing that Donald Trump did that no other president had done that was amazing.
He got us to energy independence.
That was the first time in 75 years.
Now I would say take it to the next level.
Energy dominance.
And energy dominance is defined that we're energy independent for this country, but we produce so much more energy, you know, oil, natural gas, that we sell it abroad to our allies so they're not dependent on hostile regimes like Vladimir Putin's.
And then guess what happens?
It's good for national security.
We have high-paying career jobs in the energy sector.
We pay low rates in terms of our own gasoline, our own diesel, and America gets rich really, really fast.
That, to me, would be smart.
The only reason Saudi Arabia is so filthy rich is because they sell their resources.
They sell their oil.
Same with OPEC nations.
You know what?
They have billions of dollars to throw around only because the world buys their oil.
The reason that Putin is making a billion dollars a day that can fund his war against the sovereign nation Ukraine is because he's getting a billion dollars a day profit.
This is insanity.
Anyway, appreciate it.
All right, quick break, right back.
We'll get right back to our busy phones.
800-941-SHAWN, our number if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, let's get back to our busy phones.
Bill is in New York, stuck where in hell where we are.
What's up, Bill?
How are you?
Hey, Sean, thanks for taking my call.
So we have this smoking gun email that proves that Biden is the big man, the big guy, okay?
Correct.
Yes, sir.
So, which is a good thing.
But I'm just curious as to, you know, Rudy Giuliani has had this laptop for like close to two years now.
And I'm just curious, it's funny to me that they haven't taken this laptop apart.
And we would know that already, you know, a year and a half ago.
It just slow down.
I could take you back even further than that.
Now, when they raided Rudy Giuliani's apartment, they took every bit of electronics except for the one that had Hunter Biden's laptop on it.
Now, how insane is that?
But we know from the computer repair guy, what is his name?
John Paul Mack, great guy.
I interviewed him a number of times.
Really nice man.
And sadly, his life has been upended because of all this.
He handed it to the FBI three, four years ago, whatever it happens to be by now.
They've had it forever.
Matt Gates called it out yesterday.
I mean, he pounded these people at the Department of Justice yesterday.
The point that I would like to make is that if Juliani, if this had been exposed a year and a half ago, that would have created pressure on the FBI to take some action anyway, rather than being able to do what they've done and bury the damn thing, the darn thing.
Yep.
Well, it keeps dripping and drabbing out.
Don't worry about it.
You're okay.
It keeps coming out slowly but surely.
But I'm just not confident.
I mean, the fact that nobody was held accountable for lying to FISA courts four separate occasions with unverified and unverifiable information.
And even when they knew 100%, they were 100% certain it was not true, they kept verifying that it was true and accurate and they made the application anyway.
Nobody was held accountable for that.
So it leads me to think we don't have equal justice or application of our laws anymore.
Anyway, have a good weekend, my friend.
God bless you.
800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, John Andrassic will join us next.
He just got back from Ukraine himself.
Quick break, right back.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
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I'm Carol Markowitz, and I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media, and we're doing things differently.
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Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
When I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi, nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
From Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco, Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
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