Sean Hannity Show - Gregg Jarrett - January 7th, Hour 3

Jan. 7, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show

31:49

Gregg Jarrett - January 7th, Hour 3

Gregg Jarrett, Fox News Legal Analyst and Best-selling author is here to discuss Judge Merchan and the news today on Special Counsel Jack Smith. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	This is an iHeart Podcast.
	Our final news roundup and information overload.
	All right, news roundup, information overload hour here.
	Here's our toll-free number.
	It's 800-941-Sean.
	If you want to be a part of the program, if you're just joining us, federal judge, and that would be Eileen Cannon, has now temporarily blocked Jack Smith's attempt at releasing a report relating to his investigations into Trump's alleged 2020 election interference case.
	I mean, it really is pretty unbelievable that even though these cases have fallen apart, even though he had a Supreme Court immunity decision, the fact that he wants to bludgeon Trump on his way out the door, just like Judge Mershawn wants to label Donald Trump a convicted felon is way out the door.
	I mean, it is lawfare at its worst.
	And Donald Trump laid into prosecutor Jack Smith earlier today at his press conference.
	Listen.
	I mean, Jack Smith had cases all over the place.
	People were being subpoenaed.
	Lives were being ruined.
	They were spending everything they had, money.
	We were helping them out.
	We had to.
	They were subpoenaing people that had no idea what they were even talking about.
	That's a sick group of people.
	And it was all to influence the election.
	It was all a fight against a political opponent.
	We've never had that in this country.
	We have had that in certain countries.
	We've had that in third-tier countries.
	We've had that in banana republics, but we've never had that in a place like the United States.
	I don't even know if it's been on a small level.
	I'm sure it has been on a small level, but this was the largest level ever.
	They brought this moron out of The Hague.
	He's a mean guy.
	He's a mean, nasty guy.
	His picture was perfect because you look at his picture, you say, that's a bad guy.
	Cannon said that Smith is temporarily enjoined from releasing, sharing, or transmitting the final report or any such drafts outside of the Department of Justice.
	The order remains in effect until three days after a resolution is announced in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
	This Friday, we know that the president on the 10th is scheduled to be sentenced.
	That in that ridiculous case in New York, even though the statute of limitations had run out, this novel legal theory, Alvin Bragg, as it relates to what was a legal non-disclosure agreement put together by a lawyer, labeled a legal expense.
	Again, statute of limitations run out.
	And then, of course, they stack the charges, 34, 38, whatever the number happened to be.
	And anyway, the dogmatic refusal last Friday to dismiss this ridiculous case against Donald Trump and proceed to sentencing is just, you know, another example of the weaponization of justice in the country.
	And it's got to stop.
	A lot of people have said, well, you know, Donald Trump's Department of Justice and his FBI and his intelligence communities, they should act the same way.
	I don't believe that's the case.
	I think we need equal justice under the law, equal application of our laws.
	He can't have a double standard.
	And they have done this now to Donald Trump for nearly nine consecutive years.
	And it didn't pay off.
	And in spite of all of these nefarious efforts.
	Anyway, our friend Greg Jarrett is with us, best-selling author, Fox News legal analyst, sir.
	Happy New Year.
	Great to have you.
	How are you, sir?
	I'm well.
	Thank you.
	And good to be with you.
	Let's start with Eileen Cannon blocking Jack Smith from releasing this report.
	The thing that sticks in my mind about this, he wants to be able to lay out his case with no defense at all by the Trump team.
	He wants to be able to put out all of the scurrilous information that he would like to have brought up at trial, that he wasn't allowed to bring up at trial, and just smear and slander Trump one last moment on the way out the door.
	Yeah, that's exactly it.
	But keep in mind, he already did it.
	He leaked a lot of allegedly incriminating information about Trump in court documents that were completely gratuitous right before the election.
	And, of course, it had no impact.
	Nobody really cared because they knew what Jack Smith was doing.
	You know, he was one of several components of the lawfare war waged against Donald Trump that backfired spectacularly.
	But we didn't know at the time that people were ignoring it.
	That's the scary part.
	They had hoped it would have an impact.
	They released it because they wanted an impact, didn't they?
	Yes, absolutely.
	I mean, Jack Smith wanted to interfere in the presidential election.
	He wanted to throw it in favor of Kamala Harris.
	By the way, isn't that against Justice Department policy to do such?
	Oh, it's totally against it.
	And, you know, Merrick Garland was all in.
	He didn't care.
	He, you know, let's do it.
	Let's help Kamala win.
	And, you know, it didn't work because people were wise by that time to the lawfare campaign, weaponizing the law, the law, contorting it, mangling evidence for, you know, political vengeance and electoral gain.
	And they didn't buy into it, and Trump won.
	The other point that I think, one of the reasons why Eileen Cannon, the federal judge in Florida, you know, told Smith you can't, you know, release this report is because, remember, he was illegally, unconstitutionally appointed.
	So why should an illegally appointed special counsel release a report?
	You know, that report is arguably illegal.
	And that's part of her reasoning here.
	What did you make over the holidays of this report that Joe Biden was most disappointed with Merrick Garland?
	I found that somewhat spectacular to me.
	And that he was angry that Garland didn't move faster in terms of getting a prosecutor to go after Trump and get him on trial before the election and was even angrier still that Garland, although the DOJ tried their level best to give him that sweetheart deal in Delaware and make this whole thing go away, they did try that.
	That his anger and fury against Garland was greater than any other appointment.
	Did you see that?
	Yeah, I did.
	And it's pretty laughable because Merrick Garland was doing Joe Biden's bidding at every turn, running a protection racket for Hunter Biden, interfering in the case, offering up a sweetheart deal, allowing statute of limitations of the most serious crimes to expire.
	So, you know, he was Hunter Biden's BFF.
	And at the same time, he did launch a special counsel at the behest of Joe Biden.
	Remember, Biden leaked to the New York Times that he wanted Trump to be prosecuted and lickety split.
	Garland named Jack Smith special counsel.
	And then, of course, he launched his two criminal cases in Washington and Florida.
	So, you know, Garland was doing everything that Joe Biden asked him.
	It's just that all of it failed to succeed, and so much of it backfired.
	In the case of Judge Marshawn and his desire to move forward with the sentencing, now he says he's not going to jail Donald Trump or in any way have him, you know, have any type of home confinement.
	But what I find so interesting about this, that entire case, starting with the novel legal theory, starting with the statute of limitations that passed, starting with the idea that a non-disclosure agreement, I bet if we got into the records of Alvin Bragg's office, there are probably numerous non-disclosure agreements that they've never talked about.
	Probably would have been good evidence to bring up if Trump was able to get it in the trial.
	But in that case, beyond the novel legal theory, which we've spent a lot of time analyzing, the judge held to this $18 million valuation in one case, and this is Ngoran of Mur-a-Lago.
	In this particular case, you know, we had testimony, for example, by Hope Hicks from the time she was in the White House.
	We subsequently had a Supreme Court decision on immunity, and that decision should have rendered her testimony, thus the verdict in that case, moot, and that whole verdict should have been thrown out.
	The judge refused to do that.
	If this sentencing goes forward on Friday, in a sense, is maybe there a silver lining in this in that without the sentencing, I'm not sure if President Trump would be able to get it out of this guy's courtroom off to the 11th Circuit that could weigh in on the immunity decision and on the witnesses that testified in the case, like Hope Hicks.
	Yeah, look, there is a benefit to being sentenced on Friday.
	It allows, under the law, the first opportunity to appeal all of the mistakes, the reversible errors made at trial in Mershon's case on the merits.
	You know, the law is kind of quirky here.
	You are not allowed to file an appeal until you've been sentenced.
	And so, you know, there's an advantage here to being sentenced.
	Now, you know, Trump wants to clear his name.
	He's not officially a convicted felon until sentencing.
	But does it really matter?
	I mean, the media already branded him a convicted felon the moment the jury verdict came in last May.
	So as a practical matter, I mean, who really cares?
	I think it's important to get this case overturned, and it will be, I think, easily overturned.
	It'll take time.
	But there were so many mistakes in this case.
	It was a sham trial, a convoluted, incoherent legal theory, utterly absurd, rife with reversible errors by the judge.
	You know, Trump's due process rights were shredded on almost a daily basis.
	This wasn't a fair trial.
	It was a farce.
	And I think higher courts will eventually make mincemeat out of the decision, and it'll get tossed out.
	Okay, would that be likely the 11th Circuit that I believe would have the first crack at it?
	You know, I'm not optimistic that the New York appellate system will reverse Mershon.
	They're liberal.
	They did reverse Ngoron quite a bit.
	Yeah, but not entirely.
	So we'll have to wait and see.
	I'm not terribly optimistic.
	I think eventually it'll be the federal courts because there were federal constitutional issues involved, not the least of which was immunity, but also due process violations.
	And I think the federal courts are more reliable.
	Once it gets to them, I think they'll give a spanking to Judge Juan Mershon.
	All right, quick break more with our friend Greg Jarrett, Fox News legal analyst, best-selling author.
	Your call's coming up on the other side, 800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program as we continue.
	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.
	To continue now, we're reacting to the possible sentencing that may take place on Friday in the case.
	Alvin Bragg, Judge Juan Mershon in New York, Eileen Cannon's ruling that Jack Smith cannot release his, quote, final report until it is reviewed by a higher court.
	Greg Jarrett, Fox News legal analyst, best-selling author, is with us.
	What do you think, Attorney, what's his name?
	Mike Davis gave an interview, and he said, I would say this to Judge Juan Mershon.
	You better lawyer up because what you're doing is a very serious civil rights felony under 18 U.S.C. 241.
	What's your reaction to that?
	He's absolutely correct.
	And I've mentioned this before on several occasions on your program.
	241 is very important.
	It makes it a crime to engage in a conspiracy to violate somebody's constitutional rights.
	And running for office, as Trump did, is certainly a constitutional right.
	So as I wrote in my column over the weekend, it's incumbent upon the incoming Department of Justice, Pam Bondi, if advised and consented by the U.S. Senate, to open a comprehensive investigation into the whole lawfare campaign that special counsel Jack Smith,
	Fonnie Willis in Georgia, D.A. Alvin Bragg, even Letitia James brought almost simultaneously and only after Trump announced his bid for election.
	That was not a coincidence, Sean.
	There is reason to believe and some evidence that there was coordination among all of them with President Joe Biden's White House and or with Attorney General Merrick Garland's DOJ, maybe both.
	Well, we saw a lot of trips by a lot of people involved in these cases from Georgia on down that were headed to the Biden White House during that time.
	And if laws were broken, prosecutors should be exposed and held accountable for weaponizing the justice system.
	And one of the ways to do it, as you appropriately point out, is, you know, 241 under the criminal codes, conspiracy to deprive Trump of his constitutional rights.
	Do you really see that as a possibility, a reality?
	Oh, I do.
	I absolutely do.
	And I'll be writing a column about it very soon.
	Yeah.
	Well, we appreciate your time.
	Happy New Year, my friend, Greg Jarrett.
	Thank you for being with us as always.
	Sure.
	Take care.
	Brandy, you're a fine girl.
	If you made any after your time off, by the way, how was your vacation?
	I haven't asked you yet.
	Oh, it was great.
	How was yours?
	It's all great.
	Any time off for me is a good time.
	Any time with family is a good time.
	Agreed.
	Did you do anything special or did you just have some, hopefully you had some downtime?
	I had a massive epiphany about the song Brandy, actually.
	So I would say it was actually a very special vacation.
	Well, please do share.
	I'm dying to hear it.
	I've been trying to convince you that your interpretation was wrong for a while.
	I tell you what, I have seen the light and I am now on the Hannity bandwagon.
	You are right.
	You've been right all along on this song, without a doubt.
	Is this your New Year's resolution?
	This was my New Year's resolution.
	I'm like, I need to do a deep dive.
	I need to put this bad boy to bed.
	Brandy, you're going to lay down.
	You're never getting back up again.
	This is it.
	The song is very clear.
	Brandy, you're a fine girl.
	She's a fine girl.
	That's why you would be.
	That's right.
	Fine girl.
	But my life, my love, and my lady is the sea, meaning not you.
	That's right.
	You are cool.
	But you thought originally that Brandy represented the C, which would have contradicted the lyrics.
	And then you thought that Brandy might have something to do with the liquor brandy.
	I did.
	You know, I think I was getting a little too deep in the weeds there.
	You know, I was having a little bit of a van go moment with this song.
	I don't think that's what it was at all.
	I think it just is what it is on face value.
	And I was like, you know what?
	I'm just going to take it for what it is.
	They're telling me what it is.
	This is what it is.
	And that's that.
	I think you might have spent a lot of time with your pastor over the holiday because this is a whole new Linda.
	Or I spent a lot of time with Brandy and realized it's just not that great.
	You probably looked up as we did Looking Glass that sings the song Brandy, and it was really about a woman named Randy.
	They just changed the name of the woman according to the author of the song.
	And anyway, it had to do with that relationship.
	Well, I'll tell you what, I had a little brandy.
	I had a little, like, I got a little drunk.
	I saw the light.
	I now know it's a lady, and we're moving on.
	At least you're not drinking the moonshine that people keep.
	Definitely not.
	I threw that out over the holiday.
	I was like, I can't do this anymore.
	You did not throw it out.
	My hands are God.
	I'm like, I can't look at it anymore.
	What about the replicas?
	I'm not sure if you're a person with the team.
	If you're having a moment, they did that.
	Moonshine.
	I rule the roost.
	I left the vodka.
	I got rid of the moonshine.
	Listen, one thing we do agree on is Strong Cell.
	If you're tired, you're exhausted, you're fighting the 3 p.m. crash, struggling with memory issues, or you have a hard time focusing, maybe just kind of sick and tired of being sick and tired all the time.
	Please pay attention to what we are about to tell you.
	Strong Cell, a revolutionary supplement.
	It is a game changer.
	I take it every single day.
	The longer I take it, the more I love it.
	It gives you more natural energy, gives you more focus all day, and it'll make you feel better every day.
	And Strong Cell is an American-made natural product.
	They utilize a proprietary method to get NADH to your cells.
	And Linda, it works.
	It does work, especially when you get drunk on brandy.
	You need to rejuvenate yourself.
	And thank God for Strong Cell.
	I had a ton of it over the break.
	You can't let it go.
	Anyway, just go to Hannity Strong.
	You're really going to like it.
	I like it over ice.
	Linda puts it in a refrigerator.
	Go to HannityStrong.com.
	Use the promo code Hannity.
	You'll get 20% off your order.
	And they believe so much in their product.
	They have a 60-day no-risk policy.
	Stay strong with strong cell, mind, and body.
	I was talking about this with Mark Halperin early in the program today, and the media is never going to learn.
	And I think as a result, Americans are going to continue to tune them out.
	I think Americans are fed up with being lied to.
	I mean, they lied about Joe's cognitive decline.
	They lied about the borders.
	They lied about the economy.
	They lie about Donald Trump.
	You know, nobody in the media ever had a critical thought as it relates to all the weaponization of our Justice Department, all of the lawfare used against Donald Trump.
	They never questioned a phony valuation of Mar-a-Lago at $18 million when it's worth a billion-plus dollars.
	And any realtor in Palm Beach, Florida will tell you that's the case.
	But of course, the judge in that case would not let the testimony of real estate experts to be brought into that civil case.
	And it's the same thing yesterday.
	I mean, Sonny Houston over at that hit, hard-hitting news show, The View, comparing January 6th to the Holocaust.
	You can't make it up.
	I say no.
	You don't move on because January 6th was an atrocity.
	It was one of the worst moments in American history.
	And when you think about the worst moments in American history, you know, like World War II, things that happened, you know, like the Holocaust, chattel slavery, we need to never forget because past becomes prologue if you forget any race.
	Can we remind people that the Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler in Europe, killed tens of millions of people, 6 million Jews, roughly 20 million military personnel, 40 million civilians dying during World War II?
	And is that the comparison?
	You're going to invoke Nazi mass murder of the Jewish people and others and compare that to January 6th and live in the past.
	If that's where they want to live, and that's where fake Jake Tapper was apparently yesterday too.
	And if they want to live on that, they ran on this.
	They ran on this.
	They lost on this.
	They ran hard on January 6th on insurrection.
	And Trump's a Nazi and a fascist and a racist and all the other clichés that they use every election season.
	It didn't work.
	One person more to the left, our old friend Geraldo, said it would be right for Trump to pardon most January 6ers.
	And then the question was, did these punishments of years and years in prison, was it appropriate for the crimes committed?
	You know, look at this guy that killed two people in the New York City subway system over the last weekend.
	I mean, this guy had 87 prior arrests and was still walking the streets.
	One other thing I want to get to that I think has a very profound impact.
	And some of you may think this is purely political, but there's a deeper history here that I want to go into.
	And that is the announcement of Mark Zuckerberg.
	First of all, that he brought in Dana White to be among three new board members of Meta, that platform, formerly known as Facebook.
	And I will tell you that there is no doubt that this has been a process.
	This is not about long before Donald Trump won the election, they had made a lot of changes at Meta.
	And I'm not saying all of them are perfect, and I'm not saying any, I'm not telling any of you to trust it.
	And I mean, I'm a trust but verify guy, but this is what he went into in great specificity and detail today, that they're changing their filters to reduce censorship.
	Now, there's certain things that they're going to have to censor.
	And in as much as you can't have people on any platform making threats of violence or physical harm to other people.
	I mean, it becomes a fine line if people are, you know, so outwardly virulently racist, anti-Semitic.
	And they're, you know, some people are more subtle and some people overt and each platform will have their own standards.
	But this is what Zuckerberg said will be the standard of Facebook by the fact checking will be ended and they'll be more inclusive in terms of content.
	And they're changing their filters to reduce the censorship.
	And they're bringing back civic content.
	And Facebook is moving trust and safety moderation teams out of California to Texas.
	And they're going to work with Trump to push back on government around the world going after him, after American companies and pushing for more censorship.
	In other words, it sounds like he's fighting for free speech, but listen.
	First, we're going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X starting in the US.
	After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy.
	We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth.
	But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US.
	So over the next couple of months, we're going to phase in a more comprehensive community notes system.
	Second, we're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.
	What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it's gone too far.
	So I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.
	Third, we're changing how we enforce our policies to reduce the mistakes that account for the vast majority of censorship on our platforms.
	We used to have filters that scanned for any policy violation.
	Now we're going to focus those filters on tackling illegal and high severity violations.
	And for lower severity violations, we're going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we take action.
	The problem is that the filters make mistakes and they take down a lot of content that they shouldn't.
	So by dialing them back, we're going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms.
	We're also going to tune our content filters to require much higher confidence before taking down content.
	The reality is that this is a trade-off.
	It means we're going to catch less bad stuff, but we'll also reduce the number of innocent people's posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.
	Fourth, we're bringing back civic content.
	For a while, the community asked to see less politics because it was making people stressed.
	So we stopped recommending these posts.
	But it feels like we're in a new era now, and we're starting to get feedback that people want to see this content again.
	So we're going to start phasing this back into Facebook, Instagram, and threads while working to keep the communities friendly and positive.
	Fifth, we're going to move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our U.S.-based content review is going to be based in Texas.
	As we work to promote free expression, I think that it will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams.
	Finally, we're going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more.
	The U.S. has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world.
	Europe has an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there.
	Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down.
	China has censored our apps from even working in the country.
	The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the U.S. government.
	And that's why it's been so difficult over the past four years when even the U.S. government has pushed for censorship.
	By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further.
	But now we have the opportunity to restore free expression, and I am excited to take it.
	Now, what's interesting about this, some of you are going to say, yeah, well, he's just afraid Donald Trump became president.
	And in Washington, they've been going after him, etc.
	Let me take you back to the letter that Zuckerberg wrote to Jim Jordan and the House Judiciary Committee.
	And I thought at the time it was very, very interesting.
	And this goes back, I don't know, a year, two years ago, whenever he sent this letter to Jim Jordan.
	And I talked to Jim Jordan about it.
	And Jim Jordan had multiple conversations with the top leaders at Meta about what had happened with the Biden administration.
	And in this letter by Zuckerberg himself, he admitted that his company was wrong.
	He said he regret that they were not more outspoken about the Biden administration pressuring Facebook at the time, that they were wrong, not more outspoken about it.
	Then they ended up giving into that pressure, making choices with the benefit of hindsight, new information that they wouldn't make today.
	I strongly think we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction.
	We're ready to push back if something like this ever happens again.
	And that goes to the 51.
	For example, I think the most underreported story is the Hunter Biden laptop story.
	You weren't even allowed to share it on most social media.
	Now, think about that.
	That was a very real laptop.
	And the FBI knew it was a very real laptop by March of 2020.
	And they were out there.
	They knew the story would break because Bob Costello, Rudy Giuliani's attorney at the time, had a copy of it.
	And they knew he had a copy of it.
	So they knew it would leak.
	And in the months leading up to the 2020 election, the FBI met with all the social media companies and warned them they may be victims of a Russian disinformation campaign.
	And it may be about Joe and Hunter and Burisma.
	The New York Post story breaks weeks before the 2020 election.
	Zuckerberg, Facebook, to their credit, Twitter to their credit at the time, asked the FBI, is this the Russian disinformation you were warning us about?
	And even though the FBI had validated the authenticity of that laptop, they refused to tell them the truth.
	And meanwhile, they had pre-bunked the laptop, knowing what was in it, knowing it would come out.
	Now, that is a manipulation and politicizing the premier law enforcement agency in the entire world.
	This is the type of thing that Kash Patel is going to have to clean out.
	This is what will have to be removed from our intelligence community.
	And it probably is going to mean, and this is why we have to get rid of weaponization.
	And this is where people are going to have to change their thinking and their mindset as it comes to all of these issues.
	But I give them credit because this is not, you know, what we heard today has been a long time coming.
	There's been a lead up to this, and there's a history to this.
	And my conversations with Jordan, Jim Jordan convinced me that this series is about being a free speech content platform.
	Let's see.
	Time will tell.
	That's going to wrap things up for today.
	Don Jr.
	back from Greenland.
	He'll tell us all about his trip.
	Steve Witkoff, who is the special envoy to the Middle East, will talk about Donald Trump saying, well, Hamas better release the hostages or there will be hell to pay.
	We'll get an update on that situation.
	The Jack Smith ruling by Eileen Cannon, he can't release a report.
	We'll check in with Dersh and Greg Jarrett.
	Also, Reince Prievis, Ronnie Jackson, and Tom Cotton.
	Nine Eastern, set you DBR.
	Hannity on Fox.
	See you then.
	Back here tomorrow.

▲