Sean Hannity Show - Illegal Pardons - August 21st, Hour 2

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Aug. 22, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show

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Illegal Pardons - August 21st, Hour 2

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	And it is a big day.
	I think either way it's a big day.
	But if we get this solved, it's a really big day because we're going to save a lot of lives.
	Do you then decide, okay, we're going to use mustard gas on civilians?
	What Trump ordered Abbott to do in Texas is mustard gas on our democracy.
	And the perception of the Biden presidency is just a weak and ineffective presidency.
	But the fact of the matter is his legacy is Donald Trump came back.
	Freedom is back in style.
	Welcome to the revolution.
	Yeah, we're coming to your city.
	Gonna play our guitars and sing you a country song.
	Sean Hannity, the new Sean Hannity show.
	More behind the scenes information on breaking news and more bold, inspired solutions for America.
	All right, thanks, Scott Shannon.
	Hour to Sean Hannity Show, 800-941-Sean is on number.
	If you want to be a part of the program, we have a lot of news that we're going to be breaking in the course of this show today.
	One, we're going to update you on the Autopen issue and the Joe cognitive decline issue.
	We'll get to that in a second.
	John Solomon has some huge breaking news, pretty much smoking gun breaking news regarding James Comey.
	We'll get to that today.
	Also, Senator Tom Cotton on what's going on in D.C. and Ukraine and Russia and Leo 2.0 Terrell, the president going out following on the heels of the trip by Pete Hagseth, Stephen Miller, and J.D. Vance yesterday in the streets of D.C.
	We do have an update on that.
	Sure, the liberal media won't report too much on it.
	D.C. has had a murder-free week and 77 more arrests in the federal takeover and the National Guard protecting the people in our nation's capital.
	It's unbelievably shocking to imagine that if all the capitals of every country in the world, we have the highest homicide rate per capita for 100,000 by more than double, nearly triple the next highest country.
	And we're talking about Baghdad and El Salvador and, you know, Mexico City.
	I mean, you would think America's capital would be the safest, not even close.
	So they're trying to restore law and order and safety and security for people there.
	This is getting fascinating and more fascinating by the day.
	One of President Biden's staunchest defenders in the last year of his presidency has been this guy, Ian Sams.
	And James Comer is now saying after an interview that took place with Mr. Sams today that he thinks that this might be the most informative interview in this probe so far.
	And Comer's taken the lead in terms of these closed-door transcribed interviews.
	And today it was Ian Sam's turn, who served as the top spokesperson on matters related to congressional investigations and other probes during the latter two years of the Biden administration.
	He said, quote, that was probably the most informative transcribed interview slash deposition we have had thus far.
	Let me play Comer in his own words and what he has to say.
	Listen.
	I mean, I can't say this enough.
	I want to say this one more time so everyone understands.
	Ian Sams, who was the White House spokesperson for a significant amount of Joe Biden's time as president, interacted with him two times.
	Two times.
	So, you know, we're going to continue to bring people in.
	And again, this person, Ian Sams, is the one that would counter everything Robert Hurr or anytime anyone would suggest that Joe Biden wasn't mentally fit.
	He would say, no, he's at the top of his game.
	He tweeted out several times.
	He gave interviews on MSNBC.
	Every time I've interacted with the president, he was sharp.
	He asked great questions.
	In there, under oath, he interacted with the president two times the entire time.
	The entire time he worked in the White House.
	That's astonishing.
	It really is stunning, and it does bring into focus the level of cover-up in terms of nobody really got to see Biden except that very small group of people that I would argue knew damn well that he was in a full, significant, serious cognitive decline.
	That raises the issue, as the New York Times had pointed out, okay, Joe Biden set down criteria, standards for commutations and pardons, but then they used the AutoPen, but we don't know who authorized the use of the AutoPen.
	And we don't believe that Joe Biden authorized every commutation and every pardon.
	Anyway, Mike Howell's with us, president of the Oversight Project, leading figure in uncovering the AutoPenn scandal.
	He has more information on this as well, because a top Justice Department official warned the Biden administration that thousands of last-minute pardons signed by Autopen were legally flawed and went against President Biden's intentions of granting clemency to violent offenders who killed children and police officers.
	All right, what are we learning?
	Mike Howell, welcome back.
	Hey, thanks for having me on.
	So it's a bombshell document.
	It's an email in black and white.
	So we've got to take it back to January 17th, the final days of the Biden administration.
	And the White House announces a record-setting pardoning and commutation of nonviolent drug offenders.
	That's how they styled it.
	And there's a press release that, you know, says it's from Biden, but as we're hearing from Ian Sam said, who knows who wrote the press release or who it really came from, but bragging about the scale of what they did.
	So fast forward, just one day on Saturday morning, the top lawyer at DOJ for office, Merrick Garland's right-hand career official, writes a highly unusual and emphatic email to the White House saying, these are not legal.
	We cannot effectuate and execute these as it currently stands.
	And he lists out all of the reasons.
	One of the biggest ones is on the face of these, what's called a warrant, which is, you know, the documents that effectuates the commutation, it doesn't even describe what they need to do.
	And if they were to take it at its word, it necessarily would apply to guess what?
	Violent criminals.
	And it did.
	And they were released from jail.
	I'm talking about people who killed cops, who killed children, who killed witnesses, the worst of the worst.
	And so for the first time, we have evidence of Biden officials in writing saying this autofence strategy is illegal and not working in its practice and implementation.
	All right, let's go through some of what you found here.
	Four specific points.
	The language offenses described to the Department of Justice in the warrant is highly problematic.
	And in order to resolve its meaning appropriately and consistent with the president's intent, we will need a statement or direction from the president on how to interpret the language.
	And let's go through the four possibilities that they lay out in this piece, starting with the commutation applying to all federal offenses, and explain why it's problematic in your mind.
	It's problematic because the document that effectuates it, the warrant, needs to actually describe the offenses and the people.
	Keep in mind how ahistorical this was, and that's what Biden was bragging about, just the scale of the whole thing.
	But for it to actually legally work, you have to name the people and the offenses that they committed.
	And the warrant did not do that.
	And so here you have DOJ saying, we can't interpret this with how you've done it.
	And to do it in its logical kind of construction would apply to basically this wide universe of people that I don't think the president wants out, who in their right mind would want these violent criminals and gangbangers out.
	They don't match the rhetoric of even the furthest left advocacy groups.
	And so that's what he's basically saying.
	And the other examples there are basically his best attempt from DOJ of, we're going to need to fix this.
	It's badly broken now.
	Here are four ways to fix it.
	And those are the other examples that he walks through.
	But they all revolve around one thing, Sean, clarification from guess who?
	The president of the United States, because that's what doing this needs.
	To do part in the commutations, it's a special power in our Constitution reserved to one person, one person alone.
	And that is the president of the United States.
	And so DOJ is screaming, basically, if you read this email, we need that one guy to tell us what he actually means.
	Because this auto pen strategy cannot hold up.
	Well, remember when the New York Times wrote that he was setting down criteria and standards, and it heavily implied and pretty much outright said that he didn't approve each one himself.
	And we still to this day don't know who authorized the use of the auto pen.
	And then we have this whole issue of was Joe even cognitively aware enough and mentally strong enough to even make the decision.
	That's absolutely right.
	And so that New York Times article, keep in mind, the Oversight Project in March went public with our Autopen investigation.
	And the New York Times covered it, but they called it a conspiracy theory, Sean.
	And their reporters, that was their narrative on it in March.
	Well, you passed forward a month ago.
	Enough damage had been done that finally the Biden camp decided they needed to do something.
	His legacy will be defined by the Autopen.
	And whether he likes it or not, that's where it's at.
	And so they went to the New York Times, gave a 10-minute interview in which the New York Times has not released the audio of the Biden interview, by the way, in which Biden basically, if you're to believe the New York Times, made the limited disclosure of admitting, yeah, okay, I didn't do this stuff.
	But hey, I did enough.
	I said broad categories.
	And his admission there is enough for all of these things to fall.
	Because as we just outlined.
	When you say fall, that would invalidate them, correct?
	Correct.
	And may I remind everyone, President Trump already has.
	He said it over and over again.
	He put it on True Social in May that all of these are null and void.
	And here's where things get really interesting, Sean.
	Some of the commutations, which for your viewers is a little different than a pardon.
	It's a shortening of the sentence.
	Guess what?
	Some of those people are still in jail.
	And so President Trump could refuse to release them.
	One of the guys, a crack cocaine kingpin, is being released today.
	And he's got one of these no-good pardon commutations.
	And so this is a case in which we hope, and we've called on A.G. Bondi and others, let's get the ball moving and start knocking some of these out.
	And the easiest way to do it, and we'll get to ship and everyone else later, is to do no more harm and to release none of these people that are still in jail back into the street.
	And frankly, I'd like to see those that have already been released rearrested and put back in prison because they don't belong on our streets.
	Quick break.
	More with Mike Howell.
	He's the president of the Oversight Project, leading figure in uncovering the AutoPenn scandal.
	And what a hearing today with Ian Sams, who admitted he only talked to Biden, saw Biden two times, and this guy has been saying it's a conspiracy theory.
	Anybody that says that Joe is a cognitive mess.
	Also, new details on how Biden's own Justice Department absolutely warned Biden that the process they were using for these last-minute pardons were not going to hold muster, that they weren't legal.
	We'll break all that down and more as we continue.
	All right, we continue.
	Mike Howell is with us, president of the Oversight Project.
	We're now discovering that the number two at the DOJ of Joe Biden warning these last-minute pardons and commutations were not going to hold up legally, especially by the president not making the selection himself and the Autopen issue coming into real focus now, and all of them will be invalidated, in my view, over time.
	Let me put a little more emphasis on items three and four in the letter that you're describing.
	Again, this is Merrick Garland's number two, his right-hand man, if you will.
	Point three, because no offensive offenses have been described to the department from the president.
	The commutations do not take effect.
	Now, this is Biden's Justice Department just in the final hours of his administration.
	It goes on, in essence, describing offenses to the department as a condition precedent to the commutations being effective.
	And without a description, they do not take effect.
	I have no idea what interpretation the incoming administration will give to the warrant, but they may find the interpretation attractive as it gives effect to the language, but does not go beyond the four corners of the warrant.
	Last point, there is yet to come clear direction from the president, giving meaning to the language for the offenses described to the DOJ.
	Ideally, this would be a list of each inmate listing the offenses that are covered by the commutation.
	By far, this is the clearest and least problematic alternative.
	Given the above, I think the best that we receive is a statement of direction from the president as to the meaning of the warrant language.
	This will then allow us to give the full effect of the commutation warrant in the manner intended by the president.
	They didn't do any of this.
	I mean, this is their top lawyer, one of the number two lawyer at justice saying, guys, wake up.
	This ain't going to take effect.
	That's exactly right.
	He's begging for direction.
	He's saying, help me clean up your mess.
	Give me something that we can use to actually put these into motion because they just are not a vehicle to do whatever the Autopen thought they would achieve.
	And so that's what that email is absolutely screaming.
	And if you read between the lines, the top lawyer keeps saying, I need to hear from the president.
	He's not putting in writing, you know, hey, I'm not going to talk to an Autopen or a staffer about this.
	And I think that's the bogus reason.
	But implicit in everything he's saying is we need this from the top.
	And he's not getting it.
	Wow.
	Pretty amazing story.
	How do you think this ends?
	Does this go to the courts?
	Does the Trump administration invalidate it and then it will be challenged in the courts?
	What do you think?
	So I'll start by saying, and I know I'm beating a dead horse on this, but President Trump has already invalidated it.
	He's said so multiple times.
	He's the chief executive.
	He's put it in writing.
	He's issued an executive order.
	He's opened the White House Council investigation.
	He's called them null and void.
	So it's about time for the government to start getting in line with what the president says and treating these things as null and void.
	And there's several things that can do to start that process.
	The first is not releasing these guys from jail.
	And I think that's an easy, clear-cut legal case because you have Biden's DOJ agreeing.
	The second, I think, more controversial one that'll end up in the Supreme Court is charging people like Schiff, Milley, the January 6th Committee, et cetera, all those people who received the funky pardons.
	And that's what I think Comer's team is getting at.
	And Chairman Comers and his team, who we work with very closely, is developing that fundamental record set so the Trump administration can charge those people who have invalid pardons, which, of course, they will take all the way out to the Supreme Court.
	But for these violent drug offenders still in prison, that's a laugh.
	I don't even think that gets to the Supreme Court, Sean.
	Wow.
	I really appreciate your time.
	That's a great update.
	Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project.
	Thank you, sir.
	We appreciate you being with us.
	800-941 showing us a number.
	Remember yesterday, I mean, this is now, if the Democratic Party wants to know why in the last four years that there's been a decline in Democratic Party registrations and a massive increase in Republican Party registrations, nearly 5 million voters swing in very critical states, by the way.
	And it's only going to get bigger as Donald Trump gets more successful.
	In part, you could look at Washington, D.C.
	I mean, how is it that this great country of ours, the United States of America, has by far the highest homicide rate in our nation's capital of any country in the entire world at 41 per 100,000.
	The next lowest, I'm sorry, the next highest is 16 per 100,000.
	And this is worldwide data in terms of capital cities around the world.
	You can't have any more spectacular of a failure.
	Now, we do have some good news to report, and I think it's important that we do.
	D.C. has had a murder-free week as the Attorney General Pam Bondi now is touting 77 more arrests.
	The danger to the public safety, D.C. police misclassified.
	We're finding out many, many deaths.
	So the 41 out of per 100,000 is much higher, according to reports.
	A veteran Metropolitan Police Department official officer alleged in an ongoing lawsuit that law enforcement officials in D.C. purposefully were told to misclassify apparent murders in an effort to artificially deflate the district's real homicide numbers, according to documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
	And we have been commenting on that.
	By the way, Judge Piro, our friend and colleague, says people who carry rifles and shotguns in Washington, D.C. will no longer face felony charges.
	And that's got people up in arms.
	We expect, by the way, the president is going to be out meeting with people, which I think actually is a great idea.
	The president in the next hour, maybe later, depends, not always on time.
	But the president announced that he will go out on patrol with the Metropolitan Police Department and National Guard troops around D.C., just like Pete Hagseth and Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance did yesterday.
	But you remember, Democrats, you know, they care more about the so-called rights of illegals over law and order, respecting our borders of sovereignty, the laws of this land.
	They care more about the abrego Garcia's of the world.
	They never, ever, ever mentioned the victims of violent crime by unvetted Harris Biden illegals, somewhere between 12 and 20 million of them.
	They don't mention that we have known terrorists, murderers, rapists, gang members, cartel members.
	We stay on this all the time.
	They lied to us for four years that the border was closed and the border was secure.
	You know, this is the party of defund, dismantle, no bail laws.
	This is the party that champions the rights of men to play women's sports.
	And the list goes on and on.
	And this is the party that voted against the largest tax cut in American history, and yet they claim to be the party of working men and women.
	Go back to yesterday.
	Here is a congressman from California, Garcia, you know, excoriating President Trump for daring to try to make our nation's capital safe.
	But do you think that your colleagues in the Senate, Senate Democrats, should refuse to fund the government?
	That deadline is coming up at the end of September.
	Should they refuse to vote on these spending bills using that leverage until they see President Trump reverse deploying troops in the streets of D.C.?
	Yes.
	I mean, first, that should be on the table.
	I think we should be ruling that out.
	I think that Democrats and the Senate, the House, I mean, all of us should be united and using everything that we can do and all of our power to stop what Trump is doing right now, not just in D.C., but across the country.
	So absolutely, that should be on the table.
	Absolutely.
	That should be on the table.
	Let's listen to Washington, D.C. residents supporting Trump and the federalization and the use of National Guard troops to keep D.C. residents safe.
	We need all the protection that we can get in the city because the city is really getting dangerous.
	A person like me at this age, I has to make sure to come home before sundown.
	I enjoy having extra security.
	I think it's a good thing.
	I mean, you want to feel safe when you're out and about, especially females.
	It's a good thing because it actually reinforces the fact that America is secure, safe, stable.
	Elliot Reed says he supports the federal involvement.
	As a moderate, as a centrist, I think something needs to be done.
	I feel safer.
	I do.
	It doesn't bother me at all.
	I just feel more military.
	Police presidents there are.
	I just feel like I'm more inclined to be downtown more often than I usually am, especially in the evenings.
	And if you take me.
	I came all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue this morning.
	So peaceful here.
	I don't smell no weed, you know.
	I don't see no homeless people.
	I mean, I came all the way through the southeast side, all the way down here.
	It's a shame that it takes somebody to have to sit in your classroom in order for you to be in order, yeah?
	Because that's what it feeled like, man.
	Welcome back to the program.
	Very dear friend of ours, Leo 2.0 Terrell, now the senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.
	He's heading up a new Justice Department task force to combat anti-Semitism.
	He's living in the D.C. metro area, which I'm very sorry to hear, coming from L.A.
	We got to find you a better city, Leo.
	I saw that your ex-post, the mayor of D.C., is a failure.
	Remember, she was the one responsible for BLM Boulevard.
	I live in D.C. I'm sick of the homelessness.
	I'm sick of the crime.
	President Trump, please take complete control of our nation's capital city.
	Good for you.
	Well, Sean, let me first of all give you some news, some breaking news.
	President Trump is going to be in the D.C. area.
	I will be there with him tonight because he's invited me to join him and I have accepted that.
	I've been in the D.C. area, Sean, and I can tell you right now, those citizens that you just played, this city has changed dramatically.
	There has been over 630 arrests since President Trump and General Bondi.
	And I cannot stress, Pam Bonne is working on this 24-7.
	This city is cleaner.
	It's safer.
	You don't have to have your head on a swivel, Sean.
	And guess what?
	Pam Bonney has been able to have ICE arrest 251 individuals.
	D.C. is no longer a sanctuary city, Sean.
	It's no longer.
	It's a blueprint on what you can do to make a city safe.
	Washington, D.C., President Trump has made Washington, D.C. safe again and is driving the Democrats crazy because the Democrats are more in love and more concerned with criminals than they are with the citizens of this city and this country.
	And I'll tell you one other thing, Sean.
	President Trump doesn't care if you're a Democrat or Republican.
	Every American deserves to be safe, to be able to walk down the street.
	And that's what he's doing.
	He's making the entire country safe.
	You hear me, Chicago?
	You hear me, Los Angeles?
	You hear me, New York.
	Stop playing politics with people's safety.
	What did you make of the Democrats and Chuck Schumer and this Congressman Garcia, but really most Democrats, they're lashing out at Donald Trump for wanting to save people's lives and make a city or a town more safe and secure and restore law and order.
	What's the problem?
	Well, Sean, let me tell you right now, you know better than you know what I'm about to say.
	Five and a half years ago, I left the Democrat Party for two reasons.
	That idiotic statement Joe Biden said, if you don't vote for me, you ain't black.
	And the idea of defunding the police, that defunding the police is the albatross around the Democrats' neck.
	And to my, I can't figure it out.
	They embrace it because President Trump supports law and order.
	Pam Bondi supports law and order.
	The Democrats support criminals.
	I don't get it.
	And listen, Sean, like I said again, Washington, D.C. is safe.
	I went to Union Station.
	I saw the National Guard.
	I said, thank you.
	The citizens are happy.
	You don't have to worry about someone robbing you, someone cardjacking you, because there's safety in the city.
	And I want to make this prediction.
	I hope I'm wrong.
	Keep these officers, keep these National Guard FBI agents in the city.
	You take them away, the criminals return.
	Law and order has to be in place.
	You need the deterrent.
	The deterrent is the National Guard, the FBI, DEA, Pam Bondi, and President Trump.
	Well, we're going to be watching in the next hour, hour and a half when you go out with the president, and we'll have full coverage of it tonight on Hannity, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
	You forgot one reason what else happened five years ago, and that is you've been hennotized.
	That means that I finally got to you after all these years of arguing with you.
	Well, let me tell you right now, Sean, I am glad to say you were right and I'm wrong.
	Because let me tell you right now, when I left five years ago, I left the Democratic Party.
	I don't even know what that party is right now.
	Is it the socialist Mandami in New York?
	It's so extreme.
	It's ridiculous and insulting.
	And, you know, you know, I am in charge of the task force to combat anti-Semitism.
	That party has a problem with Jewish Americans.
	So I am glad I'm hennotized.
	I'm glad I'm supporting President Trump and Pam Bondi.
	And I can tell the citizens of this country listening to your radio show, Washington, D.C. is safe because of Pam Bondi and the greatest president of my lifetime, Donald J. Trump.
	All right, quick break.
	Right back more with Leo 2.0 Terrell.
	He'll be out in the next hour, hour and a half or so with the president and Pam Bondi going through the streets of D.C. with the Metropolitan Police Department.
	We'll have full coverage of this tonight on Hannity.
	He's the senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.
	More with Leo on the other side.
	All right, we continue.
	Leo 2.0 Terrell, Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights is us can you explain this rise of anti-semitism it's worldwide it's in the halls of congress it's on college campuses even even some people that you know claim to be conservative i i'm having a hard time understanding having been to israel as often as i have been having been in the terror tunnels having been having been to border cities having seen underground bunker playgrounds
	that kids play in because those cities in 10 years have been hit with tens of thousands of rockets.
	Having seen video that very few people were able to see that I was able to see thanks to the IDF about murder and rape and kidnapping and torture and beheading and and Israel fighting for its very survival against radical Islamic terrorists like the ones that attacked us on 9 1101.
	Why are people having a hard time understanding that Israel and just like America has a right to defend itself?
	I mean what happened October 7th based on their population size versus ours that's the equivalent of 40,000 dead Americans in a day.
	Where is this coming from?
	Well thank you for that question Sean because I've been spending again I have to thank President Trump and Pam Bondi because they have given me the tools to work on combating anti-Semitism.
	Let me answer your question.
	In my entire lifetime I've never seen anti-Semitic behavior as rampant as it is right now.
	Why?
	Because you have a well-financed organization outside this country inside this country.
	20 years of indoctrinating our young people at colleges and universities.
	Now they want K-12.
	I'm not going to mention their names.
	You've got media, media lying on Israel protecting, justifying what happened on October 7th.
	I don't want to mention their names.
	CNN, MSNBC, New York Times.
	They're trying to put Israel in the most unfavorable light.
	And this college what I call outrageous conduct where they're attacking Jewish Americans.
	It's been made popular Sean.
	And I'm telling you thank God for President Trump.
	The Jewish Americans should be happy that Trump is president.
	Why?
	Because he's been putting up the guardrails to stop.
	And I'll tell you right now, we got three and a half years to get these guardrails up to protect Jewish Americans.
	If we don't protect Jewish Americans, we're next, Sean.
	And I want to tell you as a African-American, I'm proud of being head of the task force.
	Why?
	Because I know that Jewish Americans stood by black Americans in the 60s, walked with Dr. King, funded the NAACP.
	So I want people to understand this is not a Jewish issue.
	This is an American issue.
	This is a Western civilization issue.
	And thank goodness for Pam Bondi and Donald J. Trump.
	You're loving your job.
	I can hear it in your voice.
	I've known you a long time.
	I love it.
	And I'm proud.
	You don't understand.
	I'm in a historic moment of time to make a change for this country.
	Thank you, President Trump.
	Thank you, Pam Bonnie.
	Thank you, Sean Hannity, for helping me see the light and giving me this airtime for Americans to understand my commitment to eradicate anti-Semitism and to clean up these cities like Washington, D.C. Thank you for this airtime.
	Thank you, Leo, because you know what?
	You make us proud and you're making a difference.
	And all of you are making a difference.
	And we're very grateful.
	And saving lives is a very noble cause.
	The great Leo 2.0 Terrell Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.
	Leo, appreciate you, man.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Love you, John.
	Sean, bye-bye.
	Love you back.
	800-941-Sean, our number.

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