The News Roundup / Information Overload hour dives into explosive revelations that the DOJ secretly obtained phone records and data from conservative members of Congress and groups like Turning Point USA, allegedly treating them like flight risks and potential witness-tamperers. Former Texas Congressman and judge Louie Gohmert joins Sean to detail how he learned his records were swept up, why he believes this shatters constitutional protections and separation of powers, and how civil-rights lawsuits might be used to fight back. Sean and Gohmert warn that, without Trump’s election wins, this kind of lawfare could have cemented a de facto one-party state, and they lay out plans for a Judicial Accountability Project to expose rogue judges. The hour closes on a lighter note with extended coverage of President Trump’s Thanksgiving turkey pardon ceremony—complete with jokes about “MAGA turkeys,” Chuck and Nancy, and zero illegal border crossings—before Sean reminds listeners how much Americans still have to be thankful for. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
All right, news roundup information overload hour.
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If you want to be a part of the program, it's 800-941-Sean, if you want to join us.
If you missed the president and the pardoning of the turkey, we have that coming up at the bottom of the half hour.
Also, your calls coming up straight ahead.
So we've learned a lot, an awful lot, that so many Republican senators, mostly conservative, mostly MAGA, and congressmen, again, mostly MAGA, mostly conservative, have in fact been targeted in ways that nobody knew about.
And that includes conservative organizations like Turning Point USA.
These attacks against conservatives is so beyond the pale.
I mean, they knew that they went to phone companies.
They got their phone records.
They got their locations where phone calls were made.
They knew who they called, when they called, where the location of the call, the person they were calling was.
And anyway, it just, it just, it never ceases to amaze me.
All right, joining us now, Congressman, former Congressman Louis Gomert, 1st District of Texas.
Man, I have missed you.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
Thank you, Sean.
It's great talking to you.
And I really appreciate the emphasis you put on this.
And because you get it.
If they had been successful in keeping this covered up, then there would have been, and if Trump had not won the election, we'd be over.
I mean, this would have been a one-party country.
And you had Jonathan Turley on the other night, and he pointed out, look, you know, these are people that have oversight.
But it's even more than that.
I know Jim and I talked about this back around the time that they were getting our records.
We both had, and our Judiciary Committee had people calling us that were part of the FBI, part of DOJ, saying, you know, look, we know of law breaking going on within the FBI, within the DOJ.
We have whistleblowers contacting us.
That's why there's a congressional privilege that prevents the DOJ from just coming in and grabbing our material like they did here.
That makes it so dangerous.
Well, it really does.
How did you find out about this?
Now, by the way, for those that don't know, you're a former judge.
How many years did you spend in Congress?
18 years in Congress.
I was on the bench for a decade and the last part of that short time as a Chief Justice of a Court of Appeals.
But I found out when Grassley's lead investigators contacted me and said, look, we just found out you were part of this.
And I know Jim mentioned that he had the House Judiciary Committee do some digging and found out there was a non-disclosure order issued by the judge Bosberg.
But I learned that from the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Their investigators told me, look, they got these NDOs, the non-disclosure orders.
That means, Sean, that somebody had to swear that all of us listed were threats to flee the country, that we were threats to destroy everything as if we were Hillary Clinton and we had the bleach bit and all that.
Oh, they also said you would intimidate witnesses.
You're a former judge.
You're not intimidating witnesses.
You're not going to race off to Grenada and hide in the Caribbean somewhere.
Yeah, that's right.
I've only got one home.
But that's what they did.
And they had to have somebody swear that that was a risk.
And that is so egregious.
Now, having done it as a subpoena instead of a warrant, they didn't have to prove any probable cause.
They just got the grand jury to issue the subpoena.
But then to get that non-disclosure order, they had to get a judge to find these things based on somebody swearing to these things.
And that's really egregious.
And I just, all the way through finding out these things, I just keep saying, thank you, God, and thank you, Donald Trump, because if he hadn't won, we'd have a one-party country and there would have been nobody safe.
And I go back a few years when people were saying, you know, we just need a candidate without all Trump's baggage.
And I would say, do you not get it?
This DOJ is going to give baggage to whomever the Republican candidate is.
And we happen to have the only guy I know of in the country that could withstand the onslaught of the legal warfare, the financial warfare.
I mean, they were going after his friends, his family, and getting him debanked.
Holy cow.
So thank God for Trump.
And he stayed through and he got elected.
And now we're able to find out all these things.
And by the way, there's a lot we don't know, an awful lot we don't know.
So having consulted with Tom Fitton and one of their attorneys, Sean Dunnegan, Judicial Watch is going to be digging more for me and my former chief of staff.
We're going to get to the bottom of just how much information they got.
And I do appreciate, you know, AT ⁇ T being hesitant to turn anything over where Verizon just said, yeah, sure, you want here's everything.
That wasn't very helpful.
Well, my understanding is that I guess you had Verizon, did you not?
I did have Verizon.
And by the way, you know, you don't forget anything.
You remember William Jefferson and the $90,000 gold hard cash in his freezer.
I know, because you talked about it back in 05 and 06.
They had everything they needed to get a search warrant, probable cause for his home.
But then they did it.
Mueller got a warrant and searched his office.
And all hell broke loose.
And I was asked by Haster, because of my background, to sit in on the meeting.
So there was lawyers from the White House, the DOJ, the House Counsel.
And historically, as it was brought out in that meeting, anytime there was a warrant that was going to be run on a congressman's office, his files, documents, computers, anything like that, you take the warrant to the House Counsel.
It's not because congressmen are above the law or anything like that.
It's because there's privileged material in there from whistleblowers, from constituents, things like that, that the DOJ has no right to get.
And so you bring it to the House Counsel.
They gather everything from the office, and then they start going through it, and they provide to the DOJ the things that the warrant requires.
But the DOJ went to a judge there, and I don't remember who it was, and said, we don't need to go to House Counsel.
We're going to set up within the DOJ somebody to do all the screening, and we'll decide what the congressman can have back.
Well, Jefferson was guilty of sin, and that wasn't the issue.
The issue was you don't raid that.
There's a separation of powers.
The oversight authority, as Charlie pointed out, and that was a message from Mueller back then as director of the FBI.
We were upset at him, and it was a message to Congress: you better lay off, or we're coming after you.
And he made some comment: maybe I need to set up 400 agents looking into Congress now.
I mean, it was an in-your-face to Congress.
And this is much, much, much worse than Watergate ever was.
Let me ask you this because we do have a Constitution.
We do have a Bill of Rights.
We do have a Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure.
If this doesn't rise to that level, I don't know what does.
Do you agree with that legal analysis?
And then the next question I have is: is there any remedy for you?
Is there a possibility that you can sue for an invasion of privacy like this?
And, you know, what would the remedy be?
Well, you're exactly right in your analysis, legal analysis.
You point out too often.
You're not a lawyer, but boy, do you have good legal analysis?
Yes, you're dead on.
And yes, there is potential remedy if we find that, and we will find they vastly exceeded the scope of what they're allowed to do.
And so there is a potential suit for damages.
But I just want to get to the bottom of what.
Who would be the likely person to sue?
I mean, I would want to hold the people that ordered this accountable, but maybe these companies, you know, they have a responsibility to respect the privacy of their clients as well.
And unless they show real probable cause, I mean, you know, the rationale that some judge is going to claim the likes of you and Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz and Jim Jordan and I can run through the whole list and Kevin McCarthy are a flight risk is insane.
The idea that you would be out there intimidating witnesses, I don't even know if you would know what witness to intimidate because you don't know what the hell they're looking for anyway.
Oh, exactly.
Exactly.
So, yeah.
I mean, what is the underlying crime?
You're a judge.
Tell me, where is the crime here?
Where is the predicate to invade like this?
Well, there is no predicate.
There is no basis to invade like this, and we are protected.
But they just flew right by all the protections and did so under color of law.
So that's what they did.
And it was under color of law.
So it would be a civil rights lawsuit.
But we'll see.
We'll see.
Let me ask you this question because it's been a while since we spoke.
What years were you in Congress?
When did you retire?
Well, was sworn in first, January of 05, and left Congress in January of 23.
Okay.
Do you miss it?
Sometimes when I want to get after the people that are destroying my country, yes, absolutely.
But, and I miss talking to you as much as we used to.
You know, I do miss.
No, that's why it's that for me.
This is like, you know, Reunion Day, catching up with my old buddy Louis Gomert.
I remember doing events with you down in your district and having a great time in Texas.
But so what are you?
What are you doing now?
And why did you get out and what are you doing now?
Well, I'm senior fellow with the David Horwitz Freedom Center.
We lost David, and he'd been a friend for so many years, you know, a former communist.
And by the way, Whitaker Chambers had written, he was a communist, and he realized, you know, gee, I noticed in this communist system, when people change leadership, they just get rid of, they disappear people that disagree with them.
This isn't a good system.
And that's what we would have had right here, Sean, if they had been able to get rid of all these Republican leaders.
We would have had a one-party system.
It would have been Marxist, and there would have been nobody safe in the country.
But I was concerned as great as the lawsuits have been filed by our Attorney General.
He was not going after the really widespread election fraud around the Dallas area and our big cities.
And to me, the 2024 election was the be-all-end all.
Trump didn't win.
We were just toast.
And so I made a run.
I got in too late.
But so anyway, so it wasn't just, well, I'm going to sit back and retire.
I was still wanting to try to do what I could to save the country.
And President Trump had told me a couple of times last year, I need to take you with me to Washington.
But somebody up there is deciding they're not sure they need me.
But anyway.
Well, Louie, let's be honest.
I've known you a long time.
You can be a little bit of a handful.
I mean, it's not like you're a quiet wallflower.
You're right.
I mean, I mean that in the most complimentary way.
I mean, I don't think I'm any different than you are.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
You know, both of us can be a little tenacious, and I think that's what you need in some areas up there.
So anyway, you're exactly right.
But anyway, but being a senior fellow with Horowitz Foundation, oh, and you'll love this.
Daniel Greenfield says, you know, Louie, you've been talking about the need to expose these judges and go after them and try to hold them accountable.
So they're starting the judicial accountability project where we're going to do dossiers on the judges that are not conforming with the laws and propriety.
And then hopefully we'll get the House Judiciary Committee to call them in, hold them accountable and impeach them.
We got a whole list of stuff to do.
I'm just up on the clock, but we got to have you back more often.
I miss talking to you, my friend.
Have a great Thanksgiving with you and your beautiful family, and we wish you the best.
Louie Gomert, thank you, sir.
All right.
President was hilarious today pardoning the turkey and some other fun moments that he had.
I think it's worth playing as, you know, we now get ready to take our little holiday break here for Thanksgiving.
We have so much to be thankful for, but this was very entertaining during parts of today.
Let me play it for you.
Thank you very much.
And I hope you like our new beautiful patio with matching stone to the White House.
If this were grass today, you'd be sinking into the mud like they've done for many years.
And you would be very unhappy.
Please, thank you very much.
This is a big day.
It's a pardon day for a very important beast.
On behalf of the First Lady and the entire Trump family, I want to wish all Americans a very, very happy Thanksgiving.
It's a great time of the year, and our country is doing really well economically like we've never done before.
Today, we continue a time-honored American tradition Boy, that's a well-trained turkey.
See how happy he is?
In a few moments, I will grant a full, absolute, and unconditional presidential pardon to two handsome Thanksgiving turkeys, and this is their lucky day.
This is a lucky day for them.
But before going any further, I want to make an important announcement because you remember last year after a thorough and very rigorous investigation by Pam Bondi and all of the people at the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, the White House Counsel's Office, and the Department of Everything.
We have a Department of Everything.
You know what that is?
I think that's called the White House.
Into a terrible situation caused by a man named Sleepy Joe Biden.
He used an auto pen last year for the turkeys pardon.
So I have the official duty to determine, and I have determined that last year's turkey pardons are totally invalid, as are the pardons of about every other person that was pardoned other than where's Hunter?
No, Hunter's was good.
That was the one pardon, Pam, that was good, right?
The rest of them are all invalid.
I don't know what the hell you're going to do about that, but that's now we're going to take a little of the joke, and that is a mess.
But they're hereby null and void.
The turkeys known as Peach and Blossom last year have been located, and they were on their way to be processed.
In other words, to be killed.
But I have stopped that journey, and I am officially pardoning them.
And they will not be served for Thanksgiving dinner.
We saved them in the nick of time.
This one has plenty of time, but they were saved in the nick of time.
We're thrilled to be joined today by Vice President JD Vance, Second Lady Usha Vance, their daughter Mirabel, and along with Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretaries Marco Rubio, Scott Bessett, Pete Hegseth, Brooke Rollins, Howard Luttnick, Linda McMahon, Scott Turner, administrator, Lee Zeldon, who's done a great job.
A nuclear power plant gets approved in less than a week.
Okay?
I'm only kidding, but pretty close to that.
And we have more.
Where is Lee?
Stand up, Lee, one of my great superstars.
Thank you.
Used to take 20 years before you got rejected when you put in an application.
Now we're doing them in a matter of weeks, right?
And that's why we have the biggest plants anywhere in the world.
We're leading in AI.
We're leading in everything.
Our auto plants are pouring back into our country.
Way do you see the jobs coming with them?
But many of them are under construction, but Lee's done a great job in getting those approvals.
I appreciate it very much.
FBI Director Kash Patel, who's been very busy doing a great job.
Also, thank you, Cash.
Along with members of, see, you got a following, Cash.
Along with members of Congress, and in particular, I want to mention Jason Smith and David Rogier.
Where are those two guys?
Come on, stand up, fellas.
What good people?
Jason knows more about the tax code than any living human being.
He knows so much, we don't even want to hear about it, right?
Too complicated.
We're going to make it a simpler code.
But we did in the great big beautiful bill that was just passed, your imprints all over that, and it's amazing.
The biggest tax cuts in the history of our country for middle-income people.
The biggest tax cuts in the history of our country for middle-income people and the biggest jobs bill ever passed.
And nobody thought we could get that one done.
I'm glad.
We actually put four years, actually probably eight or ten years, but we put four years worth of material into one great big beautiful bill.
So that worked out very well, and I want to thank everybody for working on it, JD.
That was a great, that was a great will.
You know, we were going to do it in small bills.
We're going to have 18 bills and do it along the process.
I'm glad, Scott, that we got it done because dealing with these Democrats, I don't think, I think that was our one shot.
But we have it all in one great, big, beautiful bill.
Thanks as well to the chairman of the National Turkey Federation and the CEO of Butterball.
That's a big deal.
Jay Jandren.
Where's Jay?
Thank you.
Stand up, Jay.
Thank you very much.
Along with his wife, Leslie, and their three children, as well as the farmer who raised these two magnificent birds, Travis Pittman and Wayne County, North Carolina.
I won Wayne County by a lot.
That means you had to vote for Trump, I think.
I won by 92%.
I like Wayne County.
They're doing all right, right?
And this is like a record-setting turkey that's going to be saved.
The turkeys being pardoned today go by the names of Gobble and Waddle.
When I first saw their pictures, I thought we should send them, well, I shouldn't say this.
I was going to call them Chuck and Nancy.
But then I realized I wouldn't be pardoning them.
I would never pardon those two people.
I wouldn't pardon them.
I wouldn't care what Milania told me.
Darling, I think it would be a nice thing to do.
I won't do it, darling.
These are two of the largest turkeys ever presented to an American president, over 50 pounds each.
It's the largest we've ever had.
And those are big turkeys.
Are they as good as a normal-sized turkey?
Better or as good?
Do they tend to be a little fatty, maybe?
No, he said, no, he knows the turkey business.
Anyway, despite their size, Secretary Kennedy has formally certified that these are the first ever Maha turkeys.
I don't know if I agree with that.
These are Maha.
In other words, they could be fat, but they're still Maha.
They've been fattened on a steady diet of grass, beef, to allow the smoothies and all of the other things that they've been eating for this occasion.
This was a really big occasion.
But they've eaten every fattening food that you can eat.
We work like, we wanted to really make them special, and they really are.
They're like record-setting.
I've never seen a turkey that big before.
Are they violent at all?
Will they attack as I walk over?
Because if they were, I'll say right up here.
But as you know, we're tough on crime administration.
We are tough on crime.
You know, our border had zero people coming in for the last seven months, right?
Zero.
I mean, even I find that hard to believe to be.
They had millions and millions of people pour into our border from prisons, from mental institutions, gang members, drug dealers.
They poured in to our country like we were stupid people.
We're not stupid people anymore.
But nobody's ever seen anything.
The job that they've done on the Tom Holman, Christy Noam, the whole group, the job they've done on the board is almost like a miracle.
And the people that make these statistics that said zero, they've said zero for the last seven months.
I can't, it has to be like a few people got in, but they say zero.
And they're radical left Democrats to do the scoring.
So I can't imagine they did that for us.
The truth is, we have no people coming into our country illegally.
It's an amazing, it's an amazing statistic, and I'm very proud of it.
And we have the most people working in the United States today, by far, that we ever had in the history of our country.
So those are all good numbers.
But instead of pardon, some of my more enthusiastic staffers were already drafting the paperwork to ship gobble and waddle straight to the terrorist confinement center in El Salvador.
And even those birds don't want to be there.
You know what I mean.
It was a tough.
I'd like to thank the president of that country.
They do a rather efficient job.
It's got to be the largest prison in history.
I've never seen anything like it.
And a lot of people are behaving.
On a more serious note, as we gather around the dinner table, I'd like to lose a few pounds too, by the way.
And I'm not going to lose it on Thanksgiving, I can tell you that.
Because I'm going to have a turkey, but it's not going to be that one.
I hope all Americans will have the chance to enjoy the fellowship of family and friends and renew our faith in God's providence.
One year ago, we had a, we were a dead country one year ago.
The King of Saudi Arabia said it to me.
He said it to me actually four months ago when I was in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE.
He said, you know, one year ago, the United States was a dead country, and now you've got the hottest country anywhere in the world.
We're the hottest country.
We have $18 trillion being invested.
As of now, we're not even close to being one year.
The most ever was $2 trillion for a certain country I won't name.
During the last administration, in four years, they had less than a trillion dollars being invested in the country.
In nine months, we have over $18 trillion.
It's a number that nobody has ever even thought possible.
And that's in building plants and building so many things, investments in our country.
Nobody's ever seen anything like it.
But we have more people working.
We have more people praying.
The churches are coming back.
I don't know if you've been reading that story, but religion is coming back to America.
Some people say, oh, why would you mention that?
To me, that's a big deal.
And this Thanksgiving, we're also making incredible strides to make America affordable again.
Walmart announced that the cost of their standard Thanksgiving meal is 25% lower than just one year ago.
That's a big deal.
According to the USDA, the price of Thanksgiving turkey is down 33% from its bid-nero highs.
Potatoes are down 13%.
Ham is down 15% compared to last Thanksgiving.
So we are down to a level that we haven't seen in a long time.
Egg prices are down 86% since March, and gasoline will soon be hovering around $2 a gallon.
Under our leadership, we passed the largest tax cuts in history, the largest spending cuts in history, the largest regulation cuts in history, and we have fully secured our southern border.
I've also ended eight wars in nine months, and we're working on that final war.
It's not easy, but I don't know.
I think we're going to get there.
25,000 soldiers, Ukraine, Russia.
In the last month, 25,000 soldiers have died.
So I think we're getting very close to a deal.
We'll find out.
I thought that one would have been gone quicker.
We did eight.
I thought that would have been an easier one.
But I think we're making progress.
In less than one year, we've accomplished more than most other administrations have accomplished in eight years.
And this is a very special Thanksgiving.
We thank God for his many blessings and the great success that this country has seen in this short period of time.
We draw strength from the love of family and friends, and we express our undying gratitude for the men and the women of the United States Armed Forces.
We love them.
We pray that peace and prosperity will continue to bless our land, and together we'll really just keep this great drive going to make America great again.
MAGA, I think it's the greatest expression in the history of politics.
Make America great again.
So once again, Melania, thank you for doing such a great job and being such a great first lady.
And now let's go and give Gobel, Waddle.
Waddle, by the way, is missing in action, but that's okay.
We'll pretend Waddle is here.
The gift that they've been waiting for.
And I'll move over and I will just say very nicely, Gobble, your pardon.
Come on, let's say it in front of Gobble.
Thank you very much, everybody.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
Look, we're out for the week, and we will be back on Monday.
We'll also be in D.C. next week.
I'll let you know more about that coming up.
I want to wish you and your family members the greatest Thanksgiving.
We have so much to be grateful for.
We have an almighty God that has blessed us with the greatest, best single country God gave men.
And you know what?
We often take our blessings for granted, including our relatives, all of them, Linda's too included.
Now, in all seriousness, have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
