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Sept. 2, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
33:01
Politics and the Intelligence Community - September 1st, Hour 2
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This is an iHeart podcast.
Now, back to the best of Sean Hannity.
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.
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Coming up next, our final news roundup and information overload hour.
All right, news roundup and information overload hour.
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If you want to be a part of the program, we welcome back Senator Tom Cotton.
He released a statement on the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard's announcement.
He said, Congress created the Office of Director of National Intelligence to be a lean organization that used small staffs to coordinate across the intelligence community, execute specific important tasks.
And today's announcement, remember earlier in the week, she was on Hannity and they took away 37 security clearances, number one.
And number two, they're cutting back the size and scope of what the organization is because they've gotten away from their original intent.
He said it will make the DNI stronger, more effective for national security for the president.
I look forward to working with Director Gabbard to implement these reforms and provide the ODNI with legislative relief necessary to ensure our intelligence community can focus on its core mission, and that is stealing secrets from our adversaries.
Anyway, Senator Cotton, great to have you back.
Thank you for being with us.
There's a lot of news that is unfolding as it relates to the deep state.
John Solomon will be with us at the bottom of the hour.
And his report on James Comey is very breathtaking in terms of they have smoking gun evidence, according to John, that in fact there were purposeful leaks of classified information to reporters coming from Comey directly himself.
He's going to lay out the case.
He's got all the documents.
He put them up on his website.
And then, of course, we have James Comer today finding out that with the most informative interview of his probe so far into this conspiracy that he only met twice, meaning Ian Sams, who testified today, only met twice with Biden, but he was saying, oh, it's a conspiracy theory if you dare talk about his cognitive state.
And Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, is pointing out that Biden's own Justice Department was warning directly that these last-minute pardons and commutations were not going to be legal.
And he lists four specific reasons why, and nobody paid attention to them.
And on top of that, the FBI Director Cash Patel said there was no constitutional basis, no lawful predicate for Biden's Justice Department and FBI to carry out the raid at Mar-a-Lago.
There's a lot going on.
There's a lot going on.
Everything that we had been reporting on seems to be, you know, more and more evidence is coming out every day that it was all true.
Your reaction, all of it.
Sean, there certainly is a lot going on in this front, and I think it's important that the Democratic politicians and the bureaucrats who perpetuated the Russia collusion hoax are being exposed and will be held accountable.
Some of them, it seems like from what I've learned, may be held criminally accountable in certain cases.
But we also have the important reforms that Tulsi Gabbard announced this week.
The DNI has grown bloated and bureaucratic from its original intent of Congress 20 years ago.
This is something she and I discussed in our first conversation after President Trump nominated her.
We both addressed in her confirmation hearings.
And at my committee, the Intelligence Committee passed legislation to help implement a couple months ago that I expect to pass Congress later this year.
I mean, the DNI does not collect intelligence.
They don't have agents running around the world.
They don't have satellites.
They're supposed to be a coordinating function.
They're not supposed to be involved in politicizing intelligence, really giving directives on how agencies use their own internal assets.
But when you have as many people as the DNI has had in recent years, it does open up the possibility of mischief making.
When people don't have legitimate intelligence functions and responsibilities on the plate, then they start cooking up the kind of things that justify their jobs and their budgets and so forth.
So what Director Gabbard announced this week is an important first step.
We've been working with her closely.
Some of the problems for the DNI, I'll confess, Sean, is the problems of Congress over the last 20 years, imposing new mandates on them, creating centers that are superfluous or not related to intelligence at all.
And it's going to take our legislation to eliminate those offices and those centers so the DNI can get back to its original focus of ensuring that intelligence is coordinated across all the agencies while letting those agencies do their primary job.
What do you make of Tulsi's declassification and what we learned as it relates to the 2016 election?
And I asked her the other night on TV, I said, so is it your assessment that what happened in 2016 is that deep state actors tried to use phony information about Russia connection to Donald Trump that they knew didn't exist so that it would help Hillary win the election.
And do you believe that after they lost the election and senior career intelligence officials ascertained with their intelligence analysis that there was no Trump-Russia collusion and that Obama and his top lieutenants didn't like that assessment and they came up with a new assessment that said just the opposite and then they used the dirty Russian disinformation dossier that was bought and paid for by Hillary to write a new assessment to make Donald Trump look bad.
What do you make of all of that?
Is that criminal to you?
Sean, from what Tulsi Gabbard has released and as well what John Ratcliffe at the CIA has released, and that comes from senior career intelligence officials at the CIA, it appears that this rot came from the Democratic political appointees.
In fact, one of the batches of releases from the DNI about a month ago showed that you had career officials who were pushing back against Jim Clapper and against John Brennan and against Jim Comey saying they shouldn't proceed.
So in some ways it's the intelligence officials that were trying to protect the reputation and integrity of their own work and their agencies against these Democratic political appointees.
I think that's what took a lot of people or what struck a lot of people is that it really started at the top.
And it seems that, Sean, have frankly gone all the way up to the very top with Barack Obama in the transition period of 2016 and 2017.
And if it's proven out by FBI investigation and with Department of Justice prosecutors that any of these people were involved in violating the law, then certainly if the statute of limitations has not run, then they would face criminal liability, as they should for engaging in criminal misconduct.
Well, I mean, when you think of all of that, and then you factor in if in fact we have deep state, powerful actors that are using the intelligence community and what should be the greatest law enforcement agency in the entire world, the FBI, and they're putting cinder blocks on the scales of elections.
I would argue they did the same thing in 2020 because the FBI knew that Rudy Giuliani's attorney, Bob Costello, had a copy of Hunter Biden's laptop.
They knew that story would break.
They verified the authenticity of the laptop in March of 2020.
They went about the process in the summer of 2020 of meeting with big tech companies every single week, warning them they may be victims of a disinformation campaign.
It may be about Hunter.
It may be about Joe Biden.
And then sure enough, the story breaks.
And Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, then Facebook, and Jack Dorsey of then Twitter, you know, call and say, is this what you were warning us about?
And they would not tell them what they knew to be true, that it was authentic, that it was real, that they had verified such.
Is that putting cinder blocks on the scale of an election?
It certainly sounds like it, Sean, and it is really important that we get to the bottom of all this, that all appropriate material is declassified and released.
Because it's not enough just to have people like Pam Bondi and Cash Patel in charge now and be confident that this is not going to happen again, at least for the next three and a half years.
It really is necessary to expose what happened and hold those people to account.
Even if, let's say, a statute of limitations has exposed, hold them publicly to account so it never happens again.
So no unelected bureaucrat or no Democratic appointee in the future thinks that they can use law enforcement or intelligence agencies to influence domestic politics here in America.
It's pretty unbelievable.
And, you know, now that we're learning from Cash Patel that the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, literally, he determined that it was illegal.
And he said, now's the time for accountability.
He said there was no constitutional basis, no lawful predicate for it.
And then, of course, one of the top stories of the day, the president now celebrating his victory over Letitia James in this ridiculous settlement of $515 million as it relates to a mortgage case,
which is unprecedented, and a judge that stood by a valuation of Mar-a-Lago of $18 million when it's a billion to a billion and a half dollars, and they got away with all of that and all of the other lawfare, the novel legal theory of Alvin Bragg, the raid of Mar-a-Lago, all of these things combined.
I mean, to me, that's more election interference.
Their job then was to bloody up Donald Trump to make him to render him not a viable candidate for president, in my view.
Sean, to borrow a phrase from our Democratic friend, it sounds to me like a threat to democracy.
And it's so funny that they always levy that charge against President Trump and against us when they're the ones who, again, over the last 10 years have repeatedly used law enforcement and litigation to try to tar Donald Trump, to try to convict him and imprison him for the rest of his life, or in the case that was just overturned today to fine him a half billion dollars for what, Sean?
Taking out loans that he repaid.
I remember when that judgment first came down last year.
I was talking to a farmer in Arkansas, and he's like, what are they even talking about up there?
You take out a loan, you repay it all.
Who's the victim?
I bet the banks are happy.
And they were happy.
Of course.
Well, that was the case.
I mean, it was in the case of the non-disclosure agreement.
It was a legal non-disclosure agreement.
It was put together by a lawyer.
It was labeled a legal expense.
The statute of limitations had run out.
It was a misdemeanor to begin with in the state of New York, even though the statute of limitations had run out.
And then to come up with this novel legal theory and then send the third highest ranking DOJ official from the Biden Justice Department to help out Alvin Bragg tells me they wanted that conviction badly, again, to bloody up Trump and render him unelectable.
Yeah, now, fortunately, Sean, it backfired on them.
But again, it's just an example of how they need to be exposed so this never happens again.
They say, you know, they had a legal theory that gussied up what was a misdemeanor into a felony.
They never even adequately explained the legal theory.
The liberal judge that presided over this case and allowed the conviction to go forward or allowed the case to go to a jury at all never explained the legal theory, period.
They were willing to break any rule, any procedure, any custom, all in an effort to get Trump to bankrupt him, to convict him, to imprison him.
Thank goodness the American people saw through it all and did not allow it to influence their choice in the election last year.
All right, quick break.
We'll come back more with Senator Tom Cotton, great state of Arkansas, as we continue with him.
And then John Solomon has breaking news regarding James Comey and the leaking of intelligence and information, classified information.
He feels he has smoking gun evidence.
He'll share that with us at the bottom of the hour.
We'll have full coverage of all of this on Hannity tonight on the Fox News channel.
Quick break, right back.
We'll continue.
Mainstream meter is asleep at the wheel.
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Sean Hannity.
Continuing now with Senator Tom Cotton.
Great state of Arkansas is with us.
You know, a lot of people listening to this show will think back and they'll remember investigations that we've had.
You know, Hillary Clinton's dirty, bought, and paid for dossier, James Comey protecting Hillary with, you know, no reasonable prosecutor would prosecute.
But then, of course, a double standard occurred when Mar-a-Lago got raided and she did not have the protections that Donald Trump did with the Presidential Authorization Act, where he had access to these papers.
She never had the ability to take them with her.
The same with Joe Biden.
Again, a double standard, a dual justice system.
And I just wonder, you know, and I know my audience is wondering, because everybody I talk to says, do you think something's going to happen this time?
Are people really going to be held accountable for what they've done here?
Sean, I am, because I have confidence in Cash Patel and Pam Bondi to follow the law and to not break the rules that the Democrats did while being aggressive within the law.
And Sean, I predict that if charges are brought against any of these dirty Democratic players and they happen to be, happen to involve the charges that are so often brought against Republicans over the past several decades.
Lying to Congress, lying to federal investigators, obstruction of justice.
You're going to hear wailing and crying from Democrats and from liberals in the media about how this happens all the time and these are not serious actions and they're engaged in legal warfare when it's A-OK against Donald Trump or for that matter, against Ronald Reagan's appointees or against George W. Bush's appointees.
It was all fine and dandy back then and it was a matter of high principle.
When the shoe's on the other foot and Democrats are being held accountable for things like lying to federal investigators or obstruction of justice or conspiracy against civil rights, then all of a sudden those charges are not going to be serious at all in the case where everyone does it.
And Donald Trump's DOJ under Pam Mondi and Cash Patel is engaging in outrageous misconduct conduct.
Just mark my words, Sean, when you hear that.
But I'm confident that Pam and Cash, if there are a legal case to be made, and it's colorable under the law and under precedent, will move forward to hold these people accountable.
It is amazing that these, you know, all this information that they didn't get rid of it, these burn bags, they left them there.
This information, this paper trail, they left it there.
They're supposed to be so clever and so smart.
You would think they would have covered their own tracks.
But the discoveries that they're making every day, frankly, take my breath away.
And as somebody who reported on all of these issues, I spent four years of my life reporting on Russia, Russia, Russia, and it even extends beyond that.
It is kind of breathtaking.
But Senator Tom Cotton, we always appreciate you being with us.
Thank you, sir.
800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
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I-25 till the top of the hour, 800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
You know, we talk a lot about law and order and safety and security.
We've talked a lot about, you know, thanks to Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, and all these Democrats and a complicit media lying.
Now we have known terrorists and murderers and rapists and cartel members and gang members in the country on top of Americans that are murderers and rapists and drug dealers and violent criminals and gang members, etc.
I mean, I wish that evil didn't exist.
Evil does exist.
Deliver us, you know, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
I actually wrote a whole book about it called Deliver Us from Evil.
And there are people that would, you know, wouldn't think twice about killing you and killing your family and killing you and killing your employees.
And so the president, to his credit, is out there, went on patrol yesterday and is feeding the agents, the National Guard troops that have been out there on patrol.
And lo and behold, we've had a successful week in the nation's capital.
Now, before President Trump got involved, Washington, D.C. is the number one capital city in terms of homicides, 41 per 100,000 people.
The next highest homicide rate is 16.
I mean, that's how bad it's gotten in Washington, D.C.
And on top of that, what did we learn?
We learned that officers are now speaking out.
Whistleblowers are speaking out.
The police union is speaking out.
And they're saying, yeah, those numbers are inaccurate because they have been purposely cooking the books and lying to the country and lying to the people in D.C. Washington, D.C. averaged 3.6 murders a week in 2024 compared to zero murders since Donald Trump deployed the National Guard.
The message has gone out.
Pam Bondi is updating the arrest statistics.
They've got over 656 arrests at this point, including, by the way, 86 illegal guns.
They are making incredible progress.
Here's the president.
He was out on patrol yesterday.
He was handing out pizza and burgers and thanking people, the guards and law enforcement for doing the great job they're doing to keep the people in D.C. safe and secure.
We've had some incredible results and results have come out.
And it's like a different place.
It's like a different city.
It's the capital.
It's going to be the best in the world.
We're going to do what you're doing with law enforcement.
And very importantly, also, we're going to physically do it.
We're going back to Congress for some money, and we're going to redo a lot of the pavement, a lot of the medians, a lot of the graffiti is all coming off real fast.
It's going to come down real fast.
And we're going to be not so much building, it's cleaning and fixing and redoing and putting brand new surfaces down on your roads and streets.
And when people come in from the airport all the way to the Capitol, the White House, or any place else, they're going to say, Boy, this place is spotless.
You do the job on safety, and I'll get this place fixed up physically.
And we're going to be so proud of it at the end of six months.
But let's say at the end of a year, this place will be maxed out in terms of beauty.
I talk all the time on this program that I have a personal safety security strategy for every situation that I know that I'm going to find myself in when I go out, at my home, when I'm at work.
You have to.
I've had too many threats over the course of my career, and I don't talk about them often, but I've had plenty of them.
And, you know, it was especially tough when you have young kids and you're getting real threats, including a fatwa on my head.
That was not a pleasant time in my life.
But I am urging everybody, you must have a personal safety security plan for you and your family.
There are bad, evil people in this world.
I wish they didn't exist.
And I said this when I wrote Deliver Us from Evil, is that it's very hard for good people to wrap their minds around the concept that evil does exist and evil doesn't think twice.
You know, an evil human being, how evil do you have to be to harm a child, to rape a child?
Those pedophiles exist.
That is evil.
The lowest scum of the earth or people that wouldn't blink and take your life or take the life of your spouse or your children.
They don't care.
So, you know, we have, you know, there is the lethal option, and I carry a pistol.
I've been a believer in the Second Amendment my entire life.
I usually carry the Six Hour P365 in case you're interested.
But I also have my burner CL, which is a non-lethal option.
And I've been urging all of you.
There are advertisers on this program, but that's not why I'm having them on today.
This is not an infomercial.
This is about how to protect yourself, your family, if that God forbid moment ever comes.
And you see this in small towns and big cities all across the country.
This idiocy of defund, dismantle, no bail laws.
Look at this.
You know, look at the recent criminal that got out, what, and killed somebody had been in jail, you know, for less than 24 hours before and four separate arrests.
How many more people are going to have to die?
And what are you going to do if the God forbid moment comes in your life?
I care too much about all of you in this audience.
The life I live, which is my dream that has come true, is only because of all of you.
And if I don't share with you, you know, my passionate belief that everybody needs a security and safety strategy, regardless of who you are, where you live, what your age is, what your sex is, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if you're trained in situational self-defense as I am, because you may not have that opportunity.
I just urge everyone.
I think one way, and there are people that are afraid of firearm, for example, but I don't think you'll be afraid of the non-lethal option.
It's legal in all 50 states.
You don't need a permit.
You don't need a background check.
It fires very powerful projectiles, and that's tear gas, pepper spray, kinetic rounds, and you can incapacitate any perpetrator.
You can hit a target 40, 50, 60 feet away with incredible accuracy.
I know because I practice with my burner.
And I can shoot that more than I can my pistol because of the hearing loss I've had with all these years that I've been on radio.
Anyway, we have Josh Sherard with us.
He is director of law enforcement for Burner and Brian Gann, CEO of Burner.
And anyway, they both join us today.
You know, now that the nation's kind of dialed in and focusing their attention on safety and security, I can't tell you how many advertisers, and Linda can back me up on this.
People, I'll give you an example.
Gambling companies.
They want betting sites.
They have offered us millions and millions and millions of dollars to be advertisers on the program.
I did at one early point when they first started, but I had no idea it becomes such a nationwide epidemic in terms of gambling addiction, and I don't really want to be a part of it.
The only advertisers I take and that I will give my endorsement to are products that I truly believe in.
And your product, Brian, when we first met, I knew right away that this had the potential to really become big.
Now you've become bigger than ever.
500-plus government agencies support this technology.
They're using your products, police departments, private security firms.
I would just urge everybody, please look at their videos, educate yourself, and then decide for yourself if this technology is good for you.
Anyway, Brian, good to have you back.
And same with you, Josh.
Great to have you back.
Well, it's great to be on the show with you, Sean.
Thank you very much.
I remember the first time I came down to your house and we're out in the backyard and we're shooting.
And I said, look, I've been a gun owner my whole life, but I don't know how quick I'd be to pull the trigger.
And then I worry if I hesitate, is that a fatal hesitation for me?
And I said, what do you think?
Do I represent 5% or 10% of gun owners?
And I'll never forget this, Sean.
You said to me, he says, Brian, I'm a gun owner too, been a gun owner my whole life.
He said, but 90% of gun owners live in mortal fear of having to pull the trigger and take a life because the consequences of doing that, particularly in the society we live in today, are overwhelming.
I mean, legally, financially, and with the Burno, we give people the opportunity to stop an assailant without the risk of taking a life or causing permanent injury.
And, you know, it's been very important to me, and I know it's been very important to you.
All right, quick break more with Josh Gerard and Brian Gans on the other side from Burner, B-Y-R-N-A.com, by the way.
They're not just advertisers, they're friends, and they want to keep you and your family safe and secure.
Then your calls coming up.
Look, ever since I was able to start saving money, which, by the way, was not until my late 20s in my life.
I mean, I was living paycheck to paycheck for a lot of years there, but somebody, I wish I remembered who, told me I should invest a part of my savings in gold and silver.
And I've done that ever since.
And now I'm so glad that I did.
It's been of great value.
Also gives me peace of mind.
And if you want to help, you know, balance and safeguard your money, gold, precious metals, has been a hedge against inflation and other economic fluctuations over the many, many years and decades.
But I have a partner now, and it's a precious metals company, and I'm a customer like many of you are.
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Josh Sherard is with us and Brian Gans with us.
They are with Burner, B-Y-R-N-A.com.
Yeah, they're an advertiser, but they're also friends, and they also have something that can keep you and your family safe and secure.
When I first saw the technology and I was training when I first met you, and my sensei, Glenn Rubin, was there, and we were both blown away by the technology.
Immediately, I liked it.
I couldn't believe it.
And by the way, when people hear, oh, you're shooting in your backyard.
Okay.
I had many, many acres of land, and it was very wooded, and it was not a problem.
Because I know people critical.
They may think I lived on a 50 by 100 lot that I grew up in.
But the reality is this evil is real.
And the reality is people have to defend themselves.
And Josh, you know, maybe for people that are reluctant to go with a firearm and lethal force, at the very least, I think you need a burner in your household.
I have numerous burners that are strategically located all throughout my house.
To be very honest, I'm not giving away my personal security strategy.
I'm telling you, stay away from my house.
It's not going to end well for you.
Yeah, absolutely.
I've been a cop for over 20 years and carried a gun for that long as well.
But I also am a stats guy.
I'm data-driven.
And I want to know, not only do I want to prepare for the worst case scenario, I want to be able to be prepared for what's most likely to happen.
And when we look at stats historically, the chance of you having to use deadly force in the course of your life is astronomically low.
We're talking in 2023, there were 471 justifiable homicides in the United States.
So 471 people had to utilize a gun to defend themselves and kill another individual.
That's one in 700,000 chance of you having to do that.
Now, when we look at the victimization of just violent crime in general of a lesser degree, your chances of being a victim of some sort of violent crime are about one in 260.
One in 260.
So your chance of having to use some sort of self-defense that's less than lethal self-defense is so much greater.
Why wouldn't you have some sort of plan?
Why wouldn't you have some sort of tool, some sort of device to be able to make sure that you can defend yourself amongst so many different circumstances?
Because you're not going to be taking someone's life.
The chance of you having to pull the trigger and kill someone and end someone's life just is so, so very low.
This is really just so applicable to so many situations and so many different people.
You know, Sean, it's interesting.
I was on a podcast the other day with John Locke, and I don't know how many of your audience know him, but he's the guy that wrote the book, More Guns, Less Crime.
And in his study, he came up with a statistic that if you use a gun to stop a crime, 95% of the time, you don't need to pull the trigger.
Why?
Because most of these criminals are cowards.
If they see that you're prepared to fight back in whatever way, they're going to turn and they're going to find an easier mark, an easier victim.
So when you're carrying the burner, which, as you know, looks very, very much like a real firearm, we see this even more.
Well, no, well, it does look like a firearm if you get the color I get, which is black, which looks like a firearm.
Linda has pink, orange, and yellow.
It looks like a toy.
Well, you know, there's some people that want it to look like a firearm, and there's some people that want it to look less lethal.
But if you pull out this launcher and you point it at somebody, the vast majority of people are going to turn on their heel and turn away.
And, you know, there's something interesting with what's going on in D.C.
I mean, you pointed out a very, very important statistic.
This is the murder capital of the world.
As soon as the president put troops on every corner, federalized the police, there have been no murders.
Why?
Because people see that there's cops out there and they're afraid.
If you're prepared to stand up, if you're prepared to defend yourself, you can get people to back off.
And I think that, you know, for most people, you are your own first responder.
I mean, what is it normally?
The police seven minutes to get to you?
The quickest response team, whatever's going to happen will have happened.
The quickest response team.
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