All Episodes
July 19, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
33:11
Bye Colbert - July 18th, Hour 2
|

Time Text
This is an iHeart podcast.
All right, thanks, Scott Shannon.
Hour two, Sean Hannity Show, 800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
So John Solomon, justthenews.com, founder, editor-in-chief, investigative reporter, put in a FOIA request as it relates to the Obama administration.
And as this all is related to, quote, the Russia collusion, election interference narrative.
And wow, a treasure trove has come back.
Now I see that the DNI and Tulsi Gabbard apparently declassified these documents, showing overwhelming evidence of how President Donald Trump did indeed win the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, and that then President Barack Obama himself and his national security team laid the groundwork for what would be the years-long Trump-Russia collusion probe.
We covered this issue for like three years on this program.
John Solomon, Greg Jarrett, Sarah Carter, Catherine Herridge, and there were others.
You know, they give examples.
December 7th, 2016, Director of National Intelligence at the time, James Clapper, foreign adversaries did not use cyber attacks on election infrastructure to alter the presidential election outcome.
Then we have the presidential daily briefing, which was prepared by the Department of Homeland Security, reporting that the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, FBI, NSA, Department of Homeland Security, State Department, open sources, et cetera, for Obama, quote, we assessed that Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent U.S. election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.
Russian government-affiliated actors most likely compromised an Illinois voter registration database and unsuccessfully attempted the same in other states.
And they also said it's highly unlikely the effort would have resulted in the altering of any state's official vote result.
Criminal activity also failed to reach the scale and sophistication necessary to change the election outcomes.
Now, when you look at all of this, there's a whole other narrative if you listened to this show or watched Hannity the TV show.
And that is the communications from the FBI stating that it should not go forward with the FBI.
They had their concerns.
Now, what was going on behind the scenes?
Well, we know that the Russian dirty disinformation dossier was bought and paid for by Hillary.
We know that James Comey was warned multiple times not to use it.
It was political.
We know that it became the basis, the bulk of information for not one but four FISA applications.
And this reveals that the brief, it just takes you off in so many different directions.
A meeting including top security officials, Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, then Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, among them all of them to discuss Russia.
That declassified meeting revealed that principles agreed to recommend sanctioning of certain members of the Russian military intelligence, foreign intelligence chains of command responsible for cyber operations.
How did we get to that point?
Anyway, John Solomon has a lot more to add to this.
And, well, first of all, this was your FOIA request.
When did you put in this request?
2019.
So let me tell you the story.
It's an amazing story.
The most important document in the batch of stuff that the DNI is declassifying is a conversation that's begun right after my FOIA comes in from the Southeastern Legal Foundation.
That was our law firm that we were using.
And it asked for any steel dossier materials that might have been used in the intelligence community assessment that claimed Russia was trying to help Trump win the election.
And at that point, the officers who had worked on the intelligence community assessment, the career officers, had no idea that the steel dossier had been included and used to make conclusions about the Russia's intentions during the 26th election.
In fact, most of those intelligence officers had written an earlier intelligence community assessment in September 2016 saying Trump, that Putin wasn't trying to pick a winner.
He was just trying to sow chaos.
But then John Brennan takes over the process and it switches the conclusions to Putin is directly trying to help Donald Trump win the election.
In 2019, when our FOIA request comes in, Sean, all of a sudden the career officers find out, wait a second, you didn't use the steel dossier in this, did you?
Because we didn't and we didn't consider it credible.
We have a problem.
That's one of the lines in his emails.
The career people found out in 2019 that they had been hoodwinked, that in the closed doors where James Clapper and James Comey and John Brennan were working, they had decided to hijack the intelligence community's work and pollute it with the steel dossier, something that we now know from John Durham's report and from the FBI's own analysis.
Nothing was credible in it.
It wasn't actionable intelligence.
It was bogus intelligence paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign.
This moment of self-discovery by the intelligence community where they realized their bosses did something after they finished their work to hijack the conclusions of the report, polluting it with the dirty dossier that we now know as the steel dossier.
It is a remarkable moment.
Now, there's another very important document in these releases that Celsi Gabbard has made.
They're very important.
In September, there's an earlier intelligence community assessment.
What year are we talking about now?
2016, going into the 2016 election.
So the famous intelligence assessment, which is released by Obama, as he's going out the door, is December 16.
And that's the one that says Vladimir Putin infringed on the election and specifically was trying to help Donald Trump win the election.
But just two months earlier, just two months earlier, the intelligence community came to a different conclusion.
He wasn't, yes, he was trying to sow discord in the election, but he wasn't trying to swing the election to either Hillary or Donald Trump.
It means that the intelligence community believed that until John Brennan and James Comey could get involved and try to hijack this with the Steele dossier and some secret source that Brennan has that we still don't know who it is.
I want to point out one other thing.
In this release today, there is a more declassified version of the 2019, excuse me, the December 2016 ICA.
So that's the one that Brennan takes over, right?
He keeps it just for the FBI, CIA, and NSA.
In the newly declassified section, there is a new revelation that we never knew about.
It said that Russia stopped trying to influence the election in October.
Now, I want to think about that for a second.
October is when most Americans make up their mind in an election, right?
Most Americans are busy.
They don't start thinking about voting until October.
If Russia was truly trying to swing the election to Donald Trump, why would they stop that effort?
Why would they stop dropping damaging information on Hillary Clinton right around the time that the election was coming to a crisp and the American public were starting to decide who they were going to pick?
That would be the time you would spend the most time trying to harm Hillary Clinton.
That conclusion, which had been masked from us, we couldn't see it until Tulsi Gabbard released it today, completely undercuts the entire notion of the report.
Anyone who knows anything about politics, including Vladimir Putin, knows most people would want to know the dirt in October when they're making up their mind.
If you're trying to knock out Hillary, you drop the dirt in October.
Oddly, Russia stopped that before October.
These are extraordinary things, and they really show that the intelligence community wasn't making assessments based on real intel.
It was making it on a predetermined political conclusion to save Hillary Clinton's reputation because she had lost the election.
In December, the intelligence community assessment is a damage assessment to protect Hillary Clinton, to give her a plausible reason why she lost to the American public and to sow doubt about the beginning of the Trump presidency.
Because in September, just before the Russians stopped their measures, according to this report, the intelligence community didn't think Vladimir Putin was trying to pick one candidate over the other.
The only change, Hillary Clinton loses, the dossier comes in, and they have to change the narrative in America.
That is an extraordinarily dark moment in the history of our spy agencies.
Let me see if I can sum this up a little bit and put emphasis on what you just laid out for us here because this is spectacularly corrupt.
And what you're saying is that our intelligence community, and that we're talking about rank and file, the career people that do a good job every day that are not political.
And we have very specific comments.
I read some of them, that they assessed that Russian and criminal actors did not impact the presidential election.
And that was all over presidential daily briefings, et cetera, all over the place, both before and they didn't assess that it wasn't happening before.
They assessed it didn't happen after.
Then it ends up in the hands of these Trump-hating deep state operatives like Brennan and Clapper and Comey.
And even it went as high as Obama, and that they decided, I'll use your words, to pollute and politicize and hijack what the real findings were and to basically flip it on its head and deceive the American people purposefully.
Yeah, that's exactly what happened.
And remember, Barack Obama is told in late July 2016 that they have intercepted information that Hillary is going to pull off a dirty trick on Donald Trump, try to pretend that he and Vladimir Putin are working together to hijack the election.
That is the steel dossier's origin.
The government knew that's what Hillary Clinton was doing before the FBI opened up Crossfire Hurricanes.
Who tells that to the president?
John Brennan.
At the end of the election, when Donald Trump does the impossible and still beats Hillary Clinton, who is guiding the intelligence community assessment to make it look like Hillary Clinton was a victim and Donald Trump was the beneficiary of a Russian collusion thing, John Brennan.
He's the one character that carries this all the way through that six-month period.
If you know Hillary Clinton is planting a false story, why would you let your FBI continue to investigate it?
Why would you accept the dirty dossier?
Why would you accept the information from Sussman, the lawyer from Hillary Clinton's law firm?
All of that stuff we now know turned out to be false, bogus, bad intel.
There was a warning to President Obama and to John Brennan that this was going to happen, and they let it happen.
Then when it did happen, they continue to keep the ruse going by using an official intelligence community assessment to mislead the American people and cast out on the beginning of the Trump presidency.
And meanwhile, it was actually contradicted by the real intelligence that they had access to also.
That's what makes us even more spectacular.
All right, quick break.
Right back more with editor-in-chief, founder, and investigator reporter from JustTheNews.com.
John Solomon is with us.
Well, more on the other side.
Tulsi Gabbard will comment on this as well tonight on television 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel as we continue.
All right, we continue now.
John Solomon is with us, founder, editor-in-chief, and chief investigative reporter, justthenews.com.
We now, you broke the story about how the FBI has opened in the last number of weeks a grand conspiracy investigation covering the 10 years going back to just before the 2016 election.
That would include everything that we're getting here from your FOIA request that was released today and all the way through Jack Smith.
Tell us where you think this is going here because it sounds to me like you have some of the most powerful people within our government at the highest levels taking the good work of career people in our government, perverting it for political purposes, and propagandizing and even using it as a weapon to try and criminalize behavior that they know did not take place.
And meanwhile, they knew the entire time that the person that really had Russian disinformation and bought and paid for it was their friend and their candidate.
That's right.
They did.
In fact, remember, the CIA learned at some point that Christopher Steele's been penetrated by Russian intelligence, and they send a warning to the FBI.
Of course, the FBI doesn't pay attention to that because they weren't interested in the facts or the intelligence.
They were interested in creating the narrative that Donald Trump was a Russian stooge when he wasn't.
The Grand Conspiracy is a case that's been opened by the FBI under Cash Patel.
It treats the period from 2016 to 2024 as one ongoing conspiracy.
One effort by government actors to void the civil liberties of people like Donald Trump and Carter Page and some of the people in the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
And it also, and so because it treats it as an ongoing conspiracy, the statute of limitations become a little bit different.
You can charge something that happened in the last five years and say that's one act of a conspiracy that began all the way back when Crossfire Hurricane was begun.
It was a get-Trump conspiracy, and it misused the powers of government to achieve the outcome.
We've known each other a long time, John, and you're one of the hardest working investigative reporters I know, and you do a phenomenal job.
This is vindication at its highest level.
I mean, this really shows that this deep state is not some conspiracy theory, that the reporting that you did, that we did, that others, you know, there were a few of us, there weren't very many, and you led the way, were dead on accurate.
And I'm hoping now that this gets fixed immediately.
And I hope that Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, I have every belief she probably will follow your advice and follow through on this.
This is spectacularly scary to me.
It just shows that the weaponization story was real the whole time.
The Russia conspiracy hoax was real the whole time.
It was a hoax.
That the Get Trump movement among the most powerful people in Washington and the swamp was real too.
Great work.
John Solomon, justthenews.com, editor-in-chief, founder, investigative reporter.
We'll have you back next week, I'm sure, to follow up on this.
Thank you, sir.
Sounds great.
Thank you.
800-941-Sean, our number, if you want to be a part of the program.
Listen, right now, the situation in Israel is dire.
It is fragile.
Things are urgent.
You have entire neighborhoods destroyed.
You have tens and tens of thousands of Israelis.
Their homes are gone.
They've been displaced.
They need every bit of humanitarian assistance we can provide.
They need food.
They need water.
They need clothing.
They need shelter.
They need everything.
And thank goodness we have partnered with the IFCJ, International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, whether peacetime or at war, the people of Israel have been literally fighting for their very survival every single day.
And they also know that at any moment, more ballistic missiles could be fired.
And those siren sounds, sometimes you have as little as 15 seconds to reach a bomb shelter.
Now, not only do they provide the great humanitarian assistance, the IFCJ has been working around the clock to place hundreds of concrete reinforced bomb shelters.
We saw that there was a greater need than they ever knew in Tel Aviv when the Iranians were pounding them with 2,000-pound ballistic missiles.
Anyway, they're working now to deploy 60 new bomb shelters.
They're also providing the humanitarian assistance, and they need your help.
Please go online, ifcj.org.
Please be as generous as possible and help Israel in their hour of need.
Driving liberals crazy.
Three hours a day, every day.
The Sean Hannity Show is back on the air.
25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941-Sean, our number this Friday.
If you want to be a part of the program, we'd love to hear from you.
All right, look, let's talk about the timeshare nightmare.
Linda once found herself locked into this mess.
If you are stuck paying endless maintenance fees and they keep going up every year and you get these special assessments, oh, it's going to be another $10,000 and you never even use it anymore.
You've got to call my friends at Lone Star Transfer.
They have been shaping the timeshare exit industry now for over a decade, and they are still leading the way with their exclusive solutions.
Now, Lone Star Transfer makes getting out of your timeshare faster and easier than ever before.
They will guarantee in writing when they can get this done for you.
Lone Star Transfer, we know them well.
They've been with us 10 years.
It's a family-owned business.
They have helped tens and tens of thousands of owners break free of these incredible timeshare financial burdens over the last 15 years.
They have an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau, thousands and thousands of five-star reviews.
Look, they've been on this show for 10 years, and they have helped so many of our listeners.
The only company that I trust that will deliver results for you.
Don't pay all this money in perpetuity.
No, get out of it now while you can.
Let the professionals handle it, the great people on top of it.
Get a free consultation: 833-594-0075, 833-594-0075 online.
It's lone startransfer.com.
All right, we have Mamdani fever pretty much everywhere.
And this is now the biggest problem of the Democratic Party.
Their leadership post-November 5th, 24 has emerged.
And the loudest voices are Mamdani, AOC, the squad, Grandpa Bernie fighting the oligarch by traveling around the country in a private jet and justifying all the carbon pollution that he's leaving behind.
Meanwhile, talking about the Green New Deal and the need to tell you what refrigerators, freezers, and stoves you can use and what cars to put in your driveway.
Anyway, so it's a little insane.
No Democrat has the willingness to take on these radicals at all.
What's really depressing for them, it should be if they had any brains, is they have embraced the most radical people in their party.
You know, the latest, of course, is Marxist Mamdani.
I mean, you look at this guy.
This guy, first of all, has done nothing of value in his life.
He's advocated for a government ban to private property.
As a matter of fact, we've got a list of mamdani craziness.
Let's play it.
Does that just make you uncomfortable?
Like the phrase globalize intifada from the river to the sea.
Does that make you uncomfortable?
I know people for whom those things mean very different things.
And to me, ultimately, what I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.
I am in favor of defunding the police.
As mayor, New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu.
And then it comes to making buses free and universal child care.
Increasing the top corporate tax rate of New York to match that of New Jersey.
That raises $5 billion.
And increasing income taxes on the top 1% of New Yorkers who make a million dollars or more a year by 2%.
City-run grocery stores, I've proposed a pilot program of one store in each borough.
These are five stores in total.
The total cost of this is $60 million.
Do you like capitalism?
No, I have many critiques of capitalism.
You're a proud Democratic socialist.
Do you think that is a platform that would work for other candidates running in other parts of the country?
Absolutely.
So violence is an artificial construction.
We have to be very clear what is happening here with these district attorneys.
That is violence.
Do you think that billionaires have a right to exist?
I don't think that we should have billionaires because frankly, it is so much money.
We have to continue to elect more socialists and we have to ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism.
But then there are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it's BDS, right, or whether it's the end goal of seizing the means of production.
Do you condemn that phrase, globalize the intifada?
That's not language that I use.
If we want to end the housing crisis, the solution has to be moving toward the full decommodification of housing.
We have a budget of close to $6 billion for the New York City Police Department.
And that is an astronomical figure.
I think in this first year, we need to take a billion dollars out of that budget.
And I think that we need to reinvest that money into social services.
Would life be better if we just abolished private property and transformed our society into a more collective, egalitarian one?
I think it probably would be better.
Are prisons obsolete?
What purpose do they serve?
I mean, this guy, I mean, think about this.
Oh, we're going to tax especially the whiter neighborhoods.
Oh, okay.
Nobody should own property.
We should not have billionaires.
Oh, we're going to tax you to death, but you're not going to leave New York.
You're all going to leave New York.
Are you out of your mind?
Now, the latest, somebody got a hold of him because go back just a couple of weeks ago.
He was on Meet the Press, not once, not twice, but three times he was asked to condemn, and on other occasions as well, the use of the term global antifada.
Here's his answer.
Do you condemn that phrase, globalize the intifada?
That's not language that I use.
Do you condemn that phase, globalize the intifada, which a lot of people hear is a call to violence against Jews?
I've heard from many Jewish New Yorkers who have shared their concerns with me.
Quickly, for the people who care about the language and who feel really concerned by that phrase, why not just condemn it?
My concern is to start to walk down the line of language and making clear what language I believe is permissible or impermissible takes me into a place similar to that of the president who is looking to do those very kinds of things.
And now this is Mom Donnie today.
Obviously, somebody said to him, you better finally condemn global antifada, even though you're not sincere and authentic and you really don't believe it.
Listen.
For some New Yorkers, this phrase is one that refers to civil disobedience and protests.
I was sitting with a rabbi not too long ago who told me how the same phrase is heard very differently by her.
And it's heard as a reference to bus bombings and Haifa.
That distance between what some intend and what others hear is a bridge that is too far.
And it is why I have not used the phrase, and it is why I discourage its use.
Why didn't you condemn it the 50 other occasions that you were asked about it and you just flat out refused to?
Anyway, Betsy McCoy is with us, former lieutenant governor of the state of New York.
Has a lot to say about Marxist Mondami.
And anyway, we appreciate you being with us.
How do you assess the race, first of all?
It's great to have you back.
Well, thank you, Sean.
And I'm glad to be with you today because so many New Yorkers are panicking.
You've even got that billboard in Times Square that humorously Dave Ramaswamy put up saying, hey, forget Palm Beach.
Come to Cleveland, right?
Well, New Yorkers don't have to go to Cleveland.
We can beat Momdani in this race, Sean, even with all the candidates who are currently in the race.
That is so important to underscore, but I crunch the numbers.
I have a piece up in the New York Post that shows how we can do this, and it's really quite easy to understand.
Mom Dani won with 462,000 votes in the primary.
That's the number of people who picked him first time around, right?
462,000.
Well, if the turnout in the general election is low, like 21% as it was in 2021, the last mayor's race, well, then Mom Dhani will win because 462,000, that'll be a winning number.
But if we push turnout out, it won't be a winning number.
And when I say push turnout up, I'm not in La Ma land here.
Giuliani here, he won with 57% turnout.
Dinkins won with 60% turnout.
Lindsay won with 80% turnout.
And in most presidential years, there's over 60% turnout right here in New York City.
So Mondami can win if nobody bothers to vote.
But if New Yorkers decide they're going to come out and vote because the future of the city, their own right to own a home, own a business, send their kids to a decent school, all that's on the line, if they turn out, he won't win.
I'm going to show you why.
He's up against 11% of the electorate who are Republicans, 20% who are Independent.
And here's the critical number.
Listen to this number.
573,618 persuadable purples.
Those are registered Democrats who voted for Biden in 2020, but did not follow the leftward lurch of their party to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024.
They won't vote for a progressive.
They won't vote for a radical.
And they outnumber the 462,000 Mondani got in the primary.
So if we get all these people out, we can beat.
But you've got something else to factor in that you've not addressed yet.
And that is you've got not one, not two, not three, but you've got four people on the left running, and two are very well known, one being Andrew Cuomo, the former governor, the other being Eric Adams, the current mayor, and then some obscure radical leftist.
But then you got one Republican that's running on a Rudy Giuliani Donald Trump platform.
That's Curtis Sleewa.
I mean, could the four Democrats split the vote enough and create a path that Curtis could actually sneak in there?
Well, the fact is, any one of those opponents of Mom Dani could sneak in there because what I did is I took the electorate In New York, I divided it in half, 50% turnout, right?
Then I divided it in four, and I got $582,000.
That's what's needed to win, not the $462,000 that Mom Donnie collected.
Now, will he do better than he did in the primary?
That is not a given, and I'll tell you why.
The young voters who turned out for him, they are fickle voters.
They are kiss me today, goodbye tomorrow, voters.
In 2021, over half of the young people, 19 to 29, who voted in the primary never showed up for the general election.
Over half.
Okay.
Let's go.
I still think he is the odds-on favorite.
Am I wrong?
He is.
He's the favorite.
It's not a done deal, and it will depend on turnout in New York.
If all of us listening, Sean, everybody listening to you today to your great show, if they turn out and we have 60% turnout like we do in a presidential year, take it to the bank.
Mom Donnie loses.
Then who wins?
One of the other three.
I cannot predict which one, but you know, getting those guys out of the race, look, they're politicians.
Would it be better?
Andrew Cuomo proposed, and I don't think, I don't think, I think he's doing it for his own political purposes that in September that there should be some credible poll and that whoever's number two should get the nod and the other people should bow out willingly and that make a pledge to do so to save New York City from Mom Donnie.
Now, I don't think, I know Curtis is not going to do it.
I don't think Eric Adams is going to do it.
You know what politicians are, Sean?
They're a legend in their own mind.
Not one of these guys is going to do it.
But what I'm saying is the numbers show if we take the initiative and get New Yorkers to come to the polls as they do in a presidential year, 60% and Mom Donnie loses.
Quick break more with former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCoy on the other side.
Then we'll get to your calls coming up.
800-941.
sean if you want to be a part of the program as we continue the sean hannity show is up next Hang on for Sean's conservative solutions.
Great state of New York, which is deteriorating by the hour.
Okay, so Kathy Hochul speaks to New Yorkers and says, I will be your therapist and tries to reassure people in New York City that if this guy is elected, that she will be a check and balance against him without quite saying it as strongly as I did.
It was very tempered, not very convincing, and I don't believe it to be true.
It is not true.
The next governor of New York will have the authority under Section 9 of the state constitution to remove this mayor.
It's never going to happen, Betsy.
It's never going to happen.
Look, it could happen if Elise Defana got in.
It could happen.
Or another Republican got in, fair enough.
But it's not going to happen under Hochul.
And if he wants to raise taxes, New York City taxes, he's got a radical, extreme left-wing city council to help him.
Have another Democratic governor in this state.
We must elect a Republican.
I'm telling you, Betsy, here's the problem.
People like me left.
People like, you know, every big Wall Street firm is now also based in Florida.
And what they're going to do is they're going to pull the plug on New York City once and for all.
They're not going to put up with it.
Am I wrong?
Tell me I'm wrong.
Let me give you a ray of hope.
It's not a ray of hope for me.
I have plenty of sunshine down here.
I'm happy with my decision.
You do.
But Ray Kelly and I have launched savenyc.org.
Please come to savenyc sevenletters.org.
We have launched an independent expenditure committee.
We are going to spend the money to get the turnout in New York needed to defeat Mom Donnie.
And I want our listeners here to either donate or come be volunteers.
The website is there.
This is your opportunity for the taking to be part of the solution.
If you don't want Mom Donnie and you don't want to leave New York, join us, savenyc.org.
You don't have to just complain.
Now you have a chance to do something.
For the sake of my friends in New York, I don't wish this upon them, but it will be great for the state of Florida, where I live, if in fact people pick up their steaks and just pull up their stakes and leave.
But you know what?
I don't wish that.
It was once the greatest city in the world.
It's now one of the worst cities in the world.
It's awful.
And we used to have an empire state, and now it's the evacuation state.
That's what it is.
But it can be trying to a Republican governor.
Okay.
And if it doesn't happen, are you moving to Florida?
No, I'm going to stay invited, Sean, but I love being on your radio show.
It's a public service.
Appreciate you being with us.
Betsy McCoy, 800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
Export Selection