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March 15, 2023 - Sean Hannity Show
38:49
Reporting in War Zones - March 14th, Hour 3
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What 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?
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
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You know, one of the things Jim Jordan's committee, the judiciary committee is looking into is whether or not the FBI has been politicized and whether the DOJ is being weaponized.
Um, I know this this case we keep reading day after day after day that an indictment in New York against pre former President Donald Trump uh seems fairly imminent according to sources, left, right, sideways, the New York Times uh here, there, and everywhere.
Um, and this was a case that was dismissed pretty much on the federal level.
This was a case that even the the prior uh AG, uh Cyrus Vance passed on.
This is now seven years later.
You know, I uh like for example, Letitia James brought this case against the Trump Company, etc.
etc.
But remember what she said when she was running for office, because to me, justice should be blind.
I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate president when our fundamental rights are at stake.
I believe that the president of these United States can be indicted for criminal offenses.
Oh, we're gonna do we're gonna be a real pain of know my name personally.
That man in the White House.
Who can't go a day without threatening our fundamental rights?
Yes, we need to focus on Donald Trump and his abuses.
We need to follow his money.
We need to find out where he's laundered money.
We need to find out whether or not he's engaged in conspiracy.
And that that is somebody running to go against the one man, one family, one organization.
That scares me a little bit.
Scares me a lot.
Dan Abrams had a good piece uh on media today uh about this very issue.
He said it would be a big mistake, both legally and politically to indict former President Trump over the stormy Daniels, quote, hush money scandal.
This is what he said.
He said the law that Trump allegedly violated is quote a misdemeanor, potentially charging the former president for an incident that occurred almost seven years ago.
It's minor stuff, falsifying business records by claiming that the 130,000 dollar payoff to Daniels for keeping her quiet about their affair was actually legal expenses.
He said now the DA may try to elevate the crime to a felony by claiming the intent to defraud included an intent to commit or conceal a second crime, and that one being a violation of New York State election law.
They would argue that the payoff was done to protect the campaign and effectively became An improper donation.
He said, putting aside how long ago this happened, he said putting aside the fact that the Manhattan DA's office under a different DA examined the case in 2018 and decided not to move forward with it, putting aside the fact that the new DA, Alvin Bragg, was in office for over a year before he seemed to suddenly become interested in this old case, put aside that it would also be really hard, a really hard legal case.
The effort at making it a felony would be a novel legal theory and proving that the payment was made for the purposes of protecting the campaign as opposed to say protecting him from his wife Melania finding out would be difficult.
Joining us now is the president's attorney on this case, and that's Joe Tacopina is back with us.
Uh Joe, thank you for uh being with us.
Absolutely, Sean, and and you know, when I listen to what you just said, uh Abrams was right in a lot of things, but but there's one thing that needs to be made clear.
It's not a misdemeanor, it's not a crime.
You know, it's it's not like oh, it's a misdemeanor and they're trying to elevate it to a felony by by cobbling together a couple of misdemeanors.
There's no misdemeanor.
Um there's no crime.
And and that's what really makes this outrageous.
I mean, by pursuing this matter, this DA's office has once again weaponized this office to influence the next presidential election.
Period.
End of story.
Are you convinced that these reports are real that they are planning to go forward with an indictment of the former president?
You know we we talked about this last night.
I mean, as if the reports are are picking up steam.
Um it seems to be uh something that's becoming more realistic, but I still believe somebody in that office is going to say, like they have done before, like the United States Attorney's Office has done, the federal prosecutors have done, that this is a case that is un untriable.
You can't win this case, it won't survive motions because there is no crime.
There's no I mean false.
Expla explain exactly what you mean when you say there's no crime.
What does that mean?
Nothing was done wrong.
Let's put it this way.
Let's start out with the basic fact that first of all, campaign finance laws are murky to begin with, and all the underlying legal theories are untested, have never been utilized in this manner ever, Sean.
Legal scholars, most legal scholars, including a lot of former members of the Federal Election Committee, have publicly stated in the past that there is no campaign law violation.
Um any good prosecutor knows that you can't bring a criminal case when the law's unclear because you need to show intent to commit a crime, and you can't show intent even when legal scholars agree you can't agree on what the law is.
Now here's the thing.
Here's the the crucial distinction.
There's two in this case.
One, first of all, let's let's start out with this basic fact.
Donald Trump was an extortion victim.
Okay.
When someone says it doesn't have to be Donald Trump, when someone says, I'm gonna go forward now, he adamantly denies this affair ever happened.
I believe him.
I think the evidence is clear on that.
Okay.
But that being said, it's regardless of whether it did or didn't happen.
If someone says, You give me money, or I'm gonna go to the press and say these bad things about you, true or not true, it doesn't matter.
And that that was said by Stormy Daniels, you're saying this to him, and that's uh it was, and and that's you know, on the heels of the election, this happened.
So Donald Trump followed his advice as counsel's advice at the time, you know, Michael Cohen not knowing what uh what a really treacherous dog he was and what perjurer and a liar he was, but followed his lawyer's advice, which is just make this go away.
It's a nuisance settlement, it's you know, nothing to him, and then she'll shut up.
You know, that's what he did.
He followed his lawyer's advice, he did that, and and he was a victim of extortion, because that is black letter law ex when someone does that.
But he paid it off just to prevent, as Michael Cohen said in his plea allocution, embarrassment to himself and his family.
So the fact that it's embarrassment to himself and his family makes this not a crime, and here's what I mean.
So his own lawyer said that already, and he's on record as saying that.
He pled guilty when his lawyer pled guilty to something that wasn't even a crime, by the way, this idiot, when he pled guilty, Michael Cohen, he said that on the record.
The allocation was that he did it to influence the election and to prevent embarrassment to himself and to his family.
When you say that, those last words mean everything, because personal use funds, when spending money to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would here's the key word, exist irrespective of the campaign, it takes it out of the person.
So, this goes to the answer.
I watched you on George Stephanopoulos yesterday.
And he asked you three questions.
Did Trump authorize the payments to Stormy Daniel?
Two, was the payment properly recorded?
Three, was it connected to the election?
And you're saying that his own lawyer, which I assume would be the prime witness in this case.
He is that the lawyer himself acknowledges that it was to protect against embarrassment for the himself, his family.
They're on the record, Sean, on the record, which is why you cannot bring this case.
So then what is the law?
What is the law under which they're going to bring this case?
I'm trying to understand that.
Yeah, uh well, join the party, Sean John.
Join the party.
We're all trying to understand that.
It doesn't make sense.
They're gonna trump up maybe some false uh record keeping.
This unless it's tied to an election or a tax purpose or a campaign violation.
There's you could write what you want in your own personal checkbook.
You could buy a car and write I bought a horse in your personal checkbook.
It's not a fr that's not a crime.
You can write whatever you want to cover it up from your your your brother, your sister, your wife, it doesn't matter.
It's not a crime.
Or you could just write, you know uh something wrong in your personal ledger.
It doesn't make it a crime unless we're we're kicking into the you know election laws here, and and here the campaign finance laws make it very clear that if something was paid and and that obligation existed irrespective of the campaign, it is not a campaign law violation.
Period end of story.
This was paid with his personal funds, not campaign funds.
It clearly had nothing to do with anything other than protecting himself and his family and his young son Baron from embarrassment.
And that's what makes this even more sick, to be honest with you.
For three years, this DA's office has scoured every aspect of President Trump's personal life and business affairs, going back decades in hopes of finding some legal basis, however far-fetched, novel, or convoluted, to prosecute him.
Okay?
These actions constitute prosecutorial misconduct as I wrote in my letter to the Department of Investigation.
I've asked the Department of Investigation to investigate this DA and this DA's office.
It's an abuse of power, and Sean, it's purely un-American.
We do not do this in this country.
We never did this in this country.
I mean, government officials should not be stretching laws beyond their normal meaning to get people just because they don't like these people, or because they want to get a nice gap, or in this case, because they want to influence the next presidential election.
It's despicable, it shouldn't happen.
Is this where we are now?
Is this really where we're at now as a country?
All right, quick break.
More with President Trump's attorney, Joe Tacopina in the New York case.
Uh reports of widespread the possible indictment as it relates to the Stormy Daniels issue.
Uh we'll continue more with Joe on the other side, straight ahead.
Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Hammond.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
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You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
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.
It's almost a dirty word.
One that connotes conspiracy theory.
Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre?
Bad faith, political warfare, and frankly, bullshit.
We kill the ambassador just to cover something up.
You put two and two together.
Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy?
Benghazi is a rosetta stone for everything that's been going on for the last twenty years.
I'm Leon Mayfock from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries.
This is Fiasco Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Yeah, that's right.
Locker up.
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week we do our podcast, Verdict to a Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Hammond.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
What 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.
It's almost a dirty word.
One that connotes conspiracy theory.
Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre?
Bad faith, political warfare, and frankly, bullshit.
We kill the ambassador just to cover something up.
You put two and two together.
Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy?
Benghazi is a rosetta stone for everything that's been going on for the last 20 years.
I'm Leon Mayfock from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries.
This is Fiasco Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Yeah, that's right.
Locker up.
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict to a Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
At nine p.m., do you know where your president is?
I don't know.
Yep.
He's sound asleep in his bed.
With not a care in the world.
Must be nice, Joe.
The rest of us will keep working.
on the Sean Hannity Show.
We continue with President Trump's attorney.
All these reports that they're possibly in New York might be an indictment imminent against the former president as it relates to the Stormy Daniels case.
Let me read uh it was picked up by MSN and it originated in the Washington Post.
And the headline itself is interesting, but when you get into the meat of the article, it's even more interesting.
It says prosecuting Trump for Stormy Daniels' money would include hurdles, according to experts.
And at one point, it says that if Bragg seeks to charge the former president, a move that appears likely based on his recent invitation for Trump to appear before the grand jury, he will face several potential hurdles, according to legal analysts.
They said it would be unusual for a state prosecutor to use an alleged violation of a federal law rather than a state camp campaign finance law as grounds to elevate a a false paperwork case from a misdemeanor to a felony.
We're back to that part again, and I want to ask you about it.
But it would also be unusual to prosecute a presidential candidate for violating state as opposed to federal campaign finance laws.
So that argument sees keeps coming up that that's what their argument is going to be, but you're arguing what?
There's no state violation either.
There's no misdemeanor violation.
There's no crime.
He literally did.
I'm telling you, Sean, there was no violation of any criminal statute, misdemeanor felony, state, federal, you know, statutes from from I don't know, Jupiter.
There's no violation of any statute.
I have them all in front of me.
I've studied them all uh myself and and Susan Nicholas, who who's you know, been running lead on this case, and and speak with the DA's office.
There is nothing there is Well them w what are they indicating to you?
Because usually there are a lot of conversations that go back and forth between DAs and defense attorneys.
What are they indicating to you that they're looking the hardest at?
Or what or is there anything else that they're looking at?
They've been very vague, and again, this is with Susan, but they've been very vague, and it all has to do with hush money payments.
So it is only this.
You know, I mean, people like, oh, it has to be something more, it has to be no, it's not.
And the funny part about this is even Mark Palmerant, the guy who who violated every ethical consideration when he was appointed prosecutor and decided to resign because they weren't prosecuting Trump, and he decided he's gonna quit instead write a book.
Is this the guy that wrote a book?
Okay.
Okay, because any information received from the grand jury, which he signed the document, acknowledging that the information he was going to get was going to come from a grand jury investigation.
By the way, are you gonna are you gonna go after him on that allegation?
But the but but we've already I've already sent the letter to the the New York State Bar to this Gavin disbarred.
Um I've I've asked Alan Brake to if you know Alan Breggs always want to say there is one standard for all.
Well, if there's one standard for all, make it one standard for all, including Mark Pomrad's.
He should be prosecuting him.
He violated that officer's trust.
So it shouldn't be one standard for all, but one standard for all except for Donald Trump.
It should be one standard for all.
I've asked the DA to prosecute him.
I've asked the DOI to investigate the DA's office.
I've asked the the bar to disbar him.
Um and and we're going after him, but what is the law that he you think he violated?
Oh, it's it's not it's not even I think.
It's clear he violated, and I said to my left, there's a New York State uh penal code law.
That's a felony.
That is a what's called the grand jury secrecy laws.
In other words, if you reveal information gained from a grand jury subpoena or grand jury uh investigation, which this is, to a third party, you've committed a felony.
Okay?
And he's done it.
Because that grand jury is still sitting, it's still an open grand jury investigation.
It's Alan Bregg.
Alan Bregg went crazy and was complaining.
Now, you know, you would think that would give him pause to even think about going forward here, but apparently not.
Um, and I hope he's not stooping to that level.
But here's the thing about the the Stormy Daniels hush money case.
It was referred to even in this guy's book uh that as a zombie case because it kept coming back from the dead.
He said that they they were trying to find any legal theory to prosecute Trump.
Do you understand how sick that what I just said is?
They literally, this guy wrote in his book, admitted it, which was shocking.
That book was actually one of the best things that ever happened to President Trump.
But he admitted in his book that they took the person and they were trying to find a crime.
Not that they had information of criminality, a complaint made, and they were investigating the person because they had information about a crime.
They took the person that he despised.
This guy said not only did he tell his wife he wasn't gonna get paid for being the special prosecutor, leaving his big long job where he was getting money, he actually said I would pay to prosecute Donald Trump.
Do you believe I gotta I gotta leave it there, but um we're gonna be watching in the days and weeks ahead for sure and following the case closely, and uh as things develop, we'd love to have you back on.
We appreciate you uh joining us.
Uh Joe Takapina, uh President Donald Trump's attorney on this New York issue.
Uh thank you so much as always for being with us.
Appreciate it.
Of course, Sean.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
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And then they take out loans on your home with your equity, or they sell it to an unsuspecting buyer and they disappear, they're gone, your money's gone, your home's not in your name anymore, and now you have to hire, you know, an army of attorneys to try and help save your house that you never sold.
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So it was about a year ago.
I'm I'm honored to call this man a friend uh and a colleague that Benjamin Hall had been reporting the beginnings of the war in Ukraine.
Uh and this is not his first rodeo.
He had covered many conflicts, many wars around the world.
And then, of course, one day I got a call from a mutual friend of ours that it looked like something very bad has gone wrong, and that he that Benjamin Hall uh was hit.
Uh we didn't know the extent of the injuries at that time, and slowly over the days we began to understand the severity of the injuries.
Uh he lost a leg, he lost a foot, uh he severely damaged his his left hand, uh, partially or mostly blind in one eye now, had shrapnel all over the place.
Uh he was the uh only survivor.
Three missiles were fired at the car that he was in, and his story and of of heroism and courage, and more importantly, the most infectious positive attitude uh is beyond inspiring.
Uh Ben Hall, Benjamin Hall joins me now.
How are you, sir?
Sean, I'm doing really well, thank you.
It's uh, as you said, it's exactly one year to the day that this happened.
So it's a day where, you know, this morning I've had to really think about everything that happened and then get moving again.
Just get living again and make the most out of it.
So that's what we're doing.
You know, I I've met a lot of people over the years with similar injuries, especially uh men and women that have gone into battle and conflict and they lose legs or they lose their arms or they lose their sight, or they're burned over, you know, 60, 70, 80% of their body.
And I have met some people that have not taken it as well as you have.
Um, what do you attribute that to?
The fact that you were able to psychologically, spiritually, you know, sort of transcend what is the most difficult scenario, your entire life turned upside down and do it with such a positive attitude.
Yeah, I you know, I it's hard, Sean.
I I think it firstly I'm blessed with an optimistic spirit.
And I knew very early on, within, you know, when I woke up after those first initial operations, and I was still stuck in Kiev and uh had to find a way to get out of the country, um, that there were two ways to look at it.
One was to was to bury it, to uh to let it get the better of you, and the other one was to realize that every day from then was gonna be better than the last.
That if I could move a tiny little bit one day, I would move a little bit further than next, that I had something really amazing to fight for, and that was to get back to my family, to hold my children again.
That um I had been blessed to stay alive that day.
You know, I the other four died, and I was in the one middle seat of that car, the death seat, and somehow I came out of it with my mind intact.
My body might be badly injured, but my mind is intact.
So I think I was blessed that day.
And I put all of those things together and I realized that if I don't make the most of every single day, if I don't do it in the names of Pierre and Sasha who died that day, and what a waste life would be.
And so that's what I think every single morning, to this day, when I wake up, I think, let's channel that.
Let's make sure that today is a better day than yesterday.
Let's do more good today than we did yesterday.
And I'm very lucky to have done that.
And might I also say that I was blessed to be treated in military medicine.
I was down in San Antonio at Bamsi, and I was surrounded by other people who had had similar injuries.
And talking to them every single day, listening to the difficulties they had faced, talking about how they got through it, that helped me a lot as well.
So it was about the team who was around me.
It was talking to other people who had gone through something similar, and it was about fighting hard for what I believed in that got me to where I am today.
Let's talk about that day when this all went down, and Pierre happened to be a very close friend of yours.
You told the story when you were covering, and you've covered wars in Syria and Afghanistan and Iraq.
You mean you've you've been to a lot of war zones and uh one particular moment in Afghanistan, you were both, you know, watching the locals, you know, riding their horses, and you asked if you guys could ride them.
I mean, you you had a very close relationship, and you you talked about, you know, in the midst of you know, war there are places of peace.
And and that stuck with you.
Uh Pierre did lose his life that day.
Sasha did lose her life that day.
And what let tell everybody exactly what you remember in terms of you know, the first thing you heard was uh uh the whizzing of a missile uh about to rain down on you.
Yes, um we had just finished filming in an abandoned village, a demolished village, one that had been almost flattened.
We saw a church totally destroyed, schools all gone, and we were heading back into the capital city of Kyiv.
Uh we hadn't seen anyone in a long time.
Um it was abandoned.
We pulled up at this one empty checkpoint, and as we slowed down, out of nowhere, right out of the sky, came this missile, and we heard that whiz that Phew and then right in front of the car, maybe thirty feet, the first bomb hit, and one of the trees it not it hit started to fall over as well.
There was a a mad dash to try and reverse the car to get out of that situation, and a few seconds later the second one hit, right next to the car, right on the left of the car.
And that one was so close that it uh I I blacked out at that point.
I suffered all the facial injuries at that point, uh shrapnel in the eye, a big matchbox size in my throat, and I was at that point gone.
I mean, I was as close to death as you can imagine, and I was totally black in a dark place, and it was into that dark place, it was into that moment.
Then out of nowhere came my daughter, my eldest daughter called Honor, and she By the way, so people understand because you do have an accent.
Your daughter's name is Honor, which I love, I love that name.
Uh but so you're you when you say you you're like blacked out, uh were you conscious at all, or were you just unconscious?
Oh, I was unconscious.
I was uh uh I'd be knocked out and uh taking parts of my skull out as well, so I was badly injured.
But I saw my daughter and she came to me and she said to me, Daddy, you've got to get out of the car.
And somehow it it came back to me.
I came back to myself and my I opened my eyes and immediately just reached for the car door and I started to crawl towards the car door.
I got a couple of steps out of the car, and boom, the third one hit the car itself, the third missile.
So if the if if your daughter didn't come to you and sort of wake you out of the the darkness, the un state of unconsciousness, she's saying, Daddy, get out of the car, you got out of the car.
At that point had you did you ha had you lost your leg, had did you uh had you lost your foot, or did that happen with the third blast?
It happened with the third one.
So I'd taken two steps out of the car and the third one hit, and that threw me away.
And uh next thing I know I wake up and I'm on fire, the leg's gone, um, and that's when I was badly injured.
But you know, Sasha and the two Ukrainians hadn't got out of the car in the same way that I was in the car, and they died in the car.
So my daughter coming to me in that moment, my angel coming to me in that moment, that brought me back.
That saved my life.
Um Pierre had opened the car door and he had managed to get out as well.
So he also allowed me to save my life by giving me that path out.
So I think I looked back at that moment and I'd know that I was saved.
I was absolutely blessed, and that's one of the reasons I feel strong today.
But I woke up on fire.
I had to put all the flames out.
I was rolling around on the floor and trying to hit what was left of my legs, and um it then took about 40 minutes till we were found.
No cell phone reception in the area, no way of telling anyone we had been hit.
And uh sat there, just very badly injured, trying to think how am I gonna survive?
How will I get home?
And the way I thought it is that I would crawl if I had to.
I would crawl to get home to my family, no matter what it took.
And in the end I did crawl.
I crawled for a little bit to to reach up to a car that we had seen passing, and finally that car came back, and I was closer, and I threw rocks at it and dirt at it, and I uh waved as best as I could, and that was the moment that I was finally saved.
But those forty minutes were the forty minutes that changed my life, which I learned an awful lot about myself.
Uh and again, I used those everything I learned then every day to get through this.
Let me ask you this.
At at that moment when you're looking at the severity of of the injuries and a leg that I'm sure you knew at that point was gone and a foot that is likely gone and all the other injuries you sustained.
Um I uh psychologically, how do you deal with that?
How did you stop the bleeding?
How did you not bleed out in a situation like that?
You know, I'm uh I very lucky I wasn't feeling pain at the beginning.
Uh the adrenaline was rushing.
I was looking at my legs and uh I knew I was really badly injured, but I didn't feel it.
Um I was so hyped up and um it was towards the end that I knew I had to to be saved, I knew how badly injured I was.
I believe some of the veins had been quarterized as well, burnt shut, so that kept me going as well.
I mean, really lucky.
And it was only when I was finally found and the the soldier who found me grabbed hold of me and pulled me towards his van that I suddenly felt all the pain.
And I think that's where a lot of the skin that had been burnt badly burnt just kind of peeled off and so that was the first pain I felt.
Um then and then the next couple days when we were trying to evacuate from the country, um was w were the hardest parts.
Now uh it I can't go into all the details of all of this, uh, but a a series of events then were unfolding uh where you were able to get into uh you got into a hospital, uh the one doctor that saved your other leg, uh you told that story.
Uh but then the effort to get you out of Ukraine and into Poland uh was very, very difficult.
There was the Prime Minister of Poland, you know, was getting on a train.
They offered you a a spot on it.
You had to make a long journey to get there, uh, then a long journey on that train to get to Poland and where US officials met you.
I mean, everything had to work out perfectly and it did.
Yeah.
And um so many times that if uh something hadn't happened within a specific minute I wouldn't have made it.
This was, you know, US intelligence were let us know that the Polish Prime Minister was there.
Um Polish intelligence basically allowed us to get onto what their equivalent of Air Force One, you know, their the Prime Minister's train, uh Ukrainian intelligence, you know, uh helping us to try and get through all these checkpoints.
At which point every in this ambulance, every checkpoint they came out with their guns drawn, getting us out of the car, checking my wounds, because they thought we were a Russian team coming in to get Zelensky.
But then I finally, with minutes to spare, got onto the Polish Prime Minister's train.
He had been on a covert mission to visit Zelensky.
And those next ten hours without painkillers were when I had to really push on through, knowing that if I could make it to Poland, the Americans and the military would be there.
And as soon as we crossed the border, there was a black hawk waiting for me.
And I was amazingly lucky that the Secretary of Defense Austin had allowed me to be treated within the military medicine.
And so I was flown straight away to Launchstuhl in Germany, the US Airbase there.
And that is where so many hundreds of uh, you know, American servicemen have been treated after their injuries in Afghanistan and Iraq, and so I was with the people who knew these kind of injuries the best.
And that's when I knew that I was really saved when I was past.
Let me let me ask you this final question, only because of the constraints of time.
This all sounds like a God thing to me.
Has this impacted your life, your faith, your b your your belief system?
You know, I was someone pulled me over earlier today in the office.
She came up and she said, I had to stop you because God came to me last night and he wanted me to tell you that it wasn't your time, that you've got so much more good to do in this world, and that's what you're here for.
And it just struck me so much that this p lady came up to me, and the messages I'm getting online, people who say, you know, listening to your story has helped me pull through, has helped me get through difficult situations.
It has changed me.
It's changed me in a number of ways, and that's the most important.
Believe in what you believe in.
Fight for it every day, and it will get you through the hardest moments that you have to.
I believe that wholeheartedly, and I am the same person I used to be, but I'm a totally new person as well, and uh I I I continue to learn more about myself and my own faith every single day.
By the way, the book is called Saved, a war reporter's mission to make it home.
Uh in instantly became a number one bestseller, which was awesome.
Uh listen, Benjamin, it's uh it's an honor for me to be able to call you a friend and a colleague.
Uh your story is beyond inspiring to me and so many others, and and I s I see the trajectory of your life.
I agree with that woman, whoever you spoke to, that God is gonna use this this story of yours to help so many others.
It already is.
And uh I hope everyone gets a copy of the book.
It's on Hannity.com, Amazon.com, now owned bookstores all across the country, saved a war reporter's mission to make it home.
Uh my friend Benjamin Hall, thank God you got back.
Thank God you have the attitude you have.
You are a you're courageous, you're inspirational and a and a good friend.
And Sean, you've been talking to me and willing me on every day since this happened.
So I've got to thank you too for all your support.
It was that among many things that got me through.
So thank you two for being such a great friend, Sean.
And there's so many great people at Fox.
I can't forget Jennifer Griffin and Fox Management, and they were all involved to do everything within their means to help you too.
And uh thank God you're back with your family.
And uh we wish you the best and hope to see you again soon, my friend.
I'm looking forward to it, Sean.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right, that's gonna wrap things up for today.
We'll have the latest on the Biden billionaire bank bailout issue, uh, and how we, the people, end up paying for all of this.
Uh, we have Shark Tanks, Kevin O'Leary will join us tonight.
David Asman uh will check in with us.
That's nine Eastern set you DVR, Hannity tonight on the Vox News Channel.
Remember, if you want tickets for a show, uh, we have Connor Gregor in studio tomorrow.
Uh, just go to Hannity.com and uh tickets are absolutely free.
All right, thanks for being with us.
See you tonight, back here tomorrow.
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