Anthony Burnell faces potential jail time over the autopen scandal involving 8,000 pardons, raising questions about his de facto presidential power during Joe Biden's alleged incapacitation at the G7 and debates. While the 25th Amendment remains uninvoked, host Trish Regan contrasts this with media praise for Biden, noting Pete Hegseth's fierce defense against CNN's reporting on Iran strikes and Tim Burchett's probe into whether pardons were cash-sold. Ultimately, the episode suggests a deepening crisis of constitutional authority and media credibility surrounding the administration's recent controversies. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, Qwen/Qwen3-ForcedAligner-0.6B, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Biden Administration Owes Answers00:11:25
Well, it seems the day has come for the Biden administration to own up to what it may have done.
Why didn't it invoke the 25th Amendment?
Why did Anthony Burnell continue to act as Jill Biden's chief of staff, possibly okaying all of these auto pardons?
The chickens are coming home to roost, shall we say on that?
We're going to get to that story, everyone.
Plus, Pete Hegseth, my former colleague over at Fox, he's calling out the media big time, including.
Including people at Fox.
You're not going to believe the fireworks on this, as again, some of the intelligence on Iran is debated.
I will say this CNN's now caught scrambling, trying to apologize for one of its reports.
We'll show you that.
It's, well, typical CNN.
And guess what?
Letitia James, she's out of cash.
Oh boy, she's really, intrinsically up against it.
Ladies and gentlemen, big show here on the Trish Regan show today.
Big, big news coming for you.
Please make sure you subscribe, share, like, all that good stuff.
I will say this Anthony Burnell is finding himself in just a little bit of trouble.
This is the chief of staff, of course, for one.
Jill, I gotta be sure.
Jill, Dr. Jill, Dr. Jill Biden's chief of staff, Anthony Burnell, is now getting called up by Congress because he was supposed to testify.
They get some questions, fair questions, shall we say, in light of how Joe Biden seemed.
And they want these questions answered, but Burnell has no interest, apparently, in actually showing up.
For these questions.
And so Congress now is in a position where they have to subpoena him.
And this is exactly what we saw Comer do today, putting out this subpoena.
Do you see this?
I got a copy of it right here.
And along with a little tweet making sure that everybody knew just exactly how much trouble Anthony Brunel might actually be in.
Sign, seal, deliver Jill Biden's work husband.
Little dig there.
Anthony Brunel must appear before GOP oversight.
Let this subpoena send a clear message to Biden's inner circle.
We will stop at nothing, he writes, to expose the truth.
About Joe Biden's decline and unauthorized use of the autopen.
So, again, this is the guy that was kind of running the thing behind the scenes because, you know, if you're Dr. Jill's chief of staff, you got it going on.
I mean, Dr. Jill had access to the president, unlike anybody else, right?
So, if you have access to Dr. Jill, then you're the bomb.
And this was Anthony Burnell.
And so, the word on the street, and you don't even have to go to Project Veritas and their undercover cameras for this.
I had heard this.
Everybody had heard this.
In fact, even the New York Times, I think, put this one out.
Anthony Burnell.
Was running the show.
So if Anthony Brunel was running the show, what was he okaying all the time?
Was he actually Mr. Autopen himself?
Was he effectively acting like the president?
I don't think we elected one Anthony Brunel.
We didn't elect Dr. Jill.
We elected as a nation Joe Biden.
So, if Joe Biden was incapacitated and for whatever reason was not up to the task, why is it that they didn't come forward with some of this information sooner?
I mean, we knew it.
I knew it.
You knew it.
I mean, remember the where's Jackie?
Jackie upstairs knew it.
Okay.
Jackie, by the way.
God rest her soul, had passed away in a car accident months before.
This is a congressional representative that he tried to thank while on stage.
Where's Jackie?
I want to thank all of you here, including bipartisan elected officials like Representative Governor, Senator Braun, Senator Booker, Representative.
Jackie, are you here?
Where's Jackie?
I didn't think she was going to be here to help make this.
Yeah.
And then there was this moment.
This was actually pretty telling for me because he slowed down so significantly, right?
He slowed down when he was at G7.
He tried to wander off to look at the parachuters and Georgia Maloney.
She's amazing.
She like caught wind of it right out of the corner of her eye and she went over and she rounded him up and brought him back to the cameras.
And if you look at this, if you're listening to this on Spotify, thank you for that.
If you're watching on Spotify video, thank you for that.
If you're looking live here as we are on YouTube at this moment, you can see how slow he is to put those sunglasses on.
And that tells you something, guys.
I'll tell you, it actually tells you a lot.
Because it, and we've talked about this before.
If you've had a loved one that's been through that, you recognize some of those signs and symptoms.
But one of the most alarming ones was for me when he was doing this economic event and he seemed to be like falling asleep.
If you look at how slow he is and what he's doing there, he says, Oh, gosh, I shouldn't take questions.
I'm going to get in trouble if I take questions.
And then he doesn't quite seem to know what to do.
This to me was really, really telling.
You see him?
A lot of questions.
I better not start your questions.
I'll get in trouble.
What's your message for Super Tuesday voters?
Super Tuesday, say, do you have a message for voters?
Thank you so much.
Thank you all.
Unbelievable.
And he's just sort of staring off into space.
He actually looks ill.
He looks like he might actually pass out or that he might vomit in this particular moment.
I mean, this was just unbelievable to me.
So there were all of these things, okay, pointing to troubles all along.
And yet, For whatever reason, everybody was there encouraging him.
I mean, for goodness sakes, after that abomination of a debate, what did we hear from Dr. Jill?
Joe, you did such a great job.
You answered every question.
You knew all the facts.
And let me ask the crowd what did Trump do?
Why?
Unbelievable.
Yes.
Well, you know what?
Now her chief of staff is being subpoenaed, and he could actually find himself in jail.
I mean, this is serious stuff, you guys.
And the reason it's so serious is because do not forget Peter Navarro went to jail, Steve Bannon went to jail.
That's never the first option.
But, you know, when you get subpoenaed and you're supposed to testify, you know, and this is, you think what you want about Bannon or Navarro and taking one for the team.
I mean, the reality is they chose not to testify.
So when you choose not to testify, you go to jail.
Unless, of course, you know, you're Loretta, what's her name?
Remember the woman, the IRS?
Was it Lois?
Anyway, unless it was during the Obama administration and you have a split situation in the And the president can get you off, but you're looking at a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican president.
So that means, Mr. Brunel, if you choose to not testify, then you're actually going to find yourself in the slammer.
Okay?
Like, I'm sorry, but that's how it works.
It's pretty basic.
And, you know, if you have any questions about it, you can call Navarro, you can call Bannon, and they'll explain it.
So you're going to have to show up and you're going to have to answer these questions unless you want to actually be behind bars.
And so that perhaps is the option that he's now looking at.
I think it's really sort of just amazing that all this was going down and nobody was daring to ask the questions.
I mean, we did here on this show, right?
I've been telling you ever since 2020, you can't run that guy.
Hey, Dems, like, you know, if you had a couple brain cells, maybe you'd actually tune into the Trish Regan show and you'd find out what the one, the other side is saying, and two, what would actually be sensible.
Because for whatever reason, you had the Emperor has no clothes thing going on and you kept insisting he was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
In fact, I'm going to quote MSNBC, Jess Carborough, who told us he was the best. Biden ever.
Oh, yeah.
And the Brzezinskis have known him forever.
And I've known him forever.
And he's the best Biden ever, except that he can barely stand.
He can barely walk.
He can barely put his sunglasses on when he's at G7.
So I'm telling you, that's not the best Biden ever.
No way, Jose.
All right.
So stuff went down.
The guy could only be up, what, how many hours a day he only worked and how many vacation days?
I think he took the most vacation of any president.
So he wasn't all there.
And you got to ask yourself, what were they doing behind the scenes?
And how do we make sure that that doesn't happen again?
Both sides, right?
If Donald Trump suddenly came down with what seemed to be some form of significant mental decline, and by the way, the same exact team, they were always going on about how Trump had declined so badly when their own president, their own team member had declined so badly, they were refusing to recognize it.
If he was suffering from mental decline, obviously you would want JD Vance to step in.
I mean, hey, look, I get it.
Nobody wanted Kamala.
Believe me, nobody wanted Kamala.
So that was a tough, tough, tough lever to pull.
I get it, okay?
But who was this guy, Anthony Brunel, that we did not elect, who was Dr. Jill's chief of staff, calling all the shots, telling him to continue running when clearly he shouldn't have been running?
Meanwhile, here's another question what exactly was going down with all those pardons?
Because some people, including the representative from Tennessee, Tim Burchett, are asking whether or not there were any pardons for sale.
You know, they had a history of that in Tennessee, he knows it well.
And so, you know, maybe he's a little guarded because of that, but he wants to know whether or not there was any money going on.
Back and forth because you're talking about more than 8,000 pardons in one day.
I mean, that's a lot of signatures, right?
Well, Biden wasn't signing these things, guys.
So, how did these things get approved?
Was Burnell the guy that did it, or did you have low level staffers, as Tim Burchett is suggesting here on my friend Benny's show?
Let's take a listen.
He said this maybe about 10 days ago or so, but I think it's relevant in light of what we're learning.
Listen.
Got staffers.
I would look.
Tennessee has had a history of this.
We had a governor several governors ago.
He's since passed away, but he, um, He sold pardons.
You can look it up.
His name was Ray Blanton.
It made national news.
And I mean, they wrote songs, Pardon Me, Ray.
And it was a cash for clemency deal.
And that's exactly what I think you're going to find out.
You're going to find staffers that were able to take forms, get them, and run them through some sort of bogus legal system.
And then they auto pinned them.
And there's probably people out on the street that shouldn't be, but somebody got rich off that.
And I think those people, you'll.
I hate to say it, but you'll see something probably horrible happen to some of those people because it goes up the chain.
This is a very dangerous town to play games in.
I have no direct proof of that, but I know, but I'm just talking about history.
And you got somebody making $100,000 a year and somebody offers you a quarter of a meal in some safety deposit box.
So then you take it?
I don't know.
So, two kinds of things to think about here.
One, did you have low level staffers that were getting paid to push things through?
Two, was Anthony Brunel running the country?
The whole time we're like, who's in charge?
Like, really?
Who's in charge?
Because it clearly wasn't Joe.
He didn't seem to know what day it was, right?
In many, many situations.
Who Was Really In Charge00:09:18
And that was all brought forward in that now infamous debate.
And everybody had to sort of eat their words.
And even Jake Tapper, I mean, well, gosh, he's a commercial little enterprise if I ever saw one, right?
I mean, he was the guy who was like best Biden ever, along with Scarborough.
He tore Lara Trump to shreds because she dared to say that.
That Joe seemed to be declining and he accused her of making fun of people with a stutter.
She said, I didn't know Joe had a stutter.
I don't think that's a stutter.
I think that's mental decline.
And Jake went on and on.
We've played the sound bite here.
You've seen that, okay?
And then Jake turns around and says, Oh gosh, that debate was bad.
That debate was really, really bad.
And now he's going to go.
Of course, his buddy George Clooney must have told him.
And then fast forward, he writes a book about it, about how the media didn't know what they were doing.
Gee, we could have told you that, Jake.
So here's the question Who was in charge?
Was it Barack Obama behind the scenes?
I'm beginning to think not.
I'm beginning to think it was this guy, Dr. Jill, right?
She controlled access.
Think about that.
She was the access point to the president.
And if you need the president to kind of sign off on anything, okay, anything, even just a nod or a thumbs up, you would have had to go through her, which meant you had to go through him.
So there are a lot of really important questions that need to be answered right now.
Meanwhile, other questions circulating about just exactly what has happened here vis a vis.
Iran and the damage that was done.
So there's some different reports.
And what I would just remind you of is everybody has a bias in this, okay?
There are some people that want to say it's contained forever.
And we know that, you know, look, you can always rebuild, et cetera.
So it's not necessarily realistic to say that, but it's certainly not realistic to say, we got nothing, which is what the media has been saying.
I mean, unbelievable.
I do recall as recently as Sunday morning, They were flipping out saying the president did not have the authority to do this, number one.
And then, number two, they said, Well, there's nothing there, right?
I mean, there's nothing there.
Remember what Tulsi said a few months ago?
There's nothing there.
So, why on earth would we be doing this?
That was their MO.
And then, as soon as this leaked report came out of the likes of CNN, which incidentally, one of the writers on this thing also wrote the bit about Hunter Biden's laptop not being anything but Russian misinformation, disinformation.
Yeah.
One of those reporters, who's clearly hooked up with his deep state sources, decided to write this little number saying that really, you know, that not a lot of good was done here and they did not destroy the nuclear sites.
I have seen myself intelligence suggesting otherwise.
As has the president, as has the secretary of state, as has the secretary of defense.
So, why is it that the media gets so stuck on this?
I mean, keep in mind like the flawed logic, all right, guys?
Because hours before this report, they were saying, well, there was nothing there, right?
There was nothing there.
Why on earth would we be bombing?
Because there was really nothing there.
We didn't need to do this.
Let's question his authority to do this because he doesn't have any intel suggesting there was anything there.
And then they get this one and they said, oh, there was a whole lot there and they didn't get it.
It's like, guys, Make up your mind.
I'll tell you this, markets made up its mind.
Look at how it's been soaring the last four days.
We'll get to that in a second, but I'm only pointing out the inconsistencies that are really pretty darn spectacular that you're seeing in the media.
Well, Pete Hegseth noticed these too, along with the president, along with Marco Rubio.
Everyone's noticing this, okay?
And he just let them have it.
He totally let them have it.
He actually let his former colleague at Fox have it too.
We'll get to that.
But first up, Pete Hegseth.
Totally shredding the media over their inconsistent reporting, but not only their inconsistent reporting, their refusal to actually do any kind of, you know, maybe nice reporting.
Like, hey, think about these men and women that achieved this.
Like, why not actually celebrate them a little?
I mean, think about World War II days, back when we actually had war heroes, et cetera.
There's none of that.
It's all just immediately how do we take down Trump?
Because we have TDS on steroids.
Here is Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense.
How many stories have been written about how hard it is to, I don't know, fly a plane for 36 hours?
Has MSNBC done that story?
Has Fox?
Have we done the story how hard that is?
Have we done it two or three times so that American people understand how about how difficult it is to shoot a drone from an F 15 or 16 or F 22 or F 35?
Or what it's like to man a Patriot battery?
Or how hard it is to refuel midair?
Giving the American people an understanding of how complex and sophisticated this mission really was.
There are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did.
That because of the hatred of this press corps are undermined because people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn't successful.
It's irresponsible.
you And folks in this room are privy to that information because of the proximity here in the Pentagon.
It's an important responsibility.
And time and time again, classified information is leaked or peddled for political purposes to try to make the president look bad.
And what's really happening is you're undermining the success of incredible B 2 pilots, incredible F 35 pilots, incredible refuelers, and incredible air defenders who accomplished their mission, set back a nuclear program in ways that other presidents would have dreamed.
How about we celebrate that?
How about we talk about how special America is that we only have these capabilities?
I think it's too much to ask, unfortunately, for the fake news.
So we're used to that.
But we also have an opportunity to stand at the podium and read the truth of what's really happening.
And the reality is, you want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated.
Choose your word.
This was a historically successful attack.
We should celebrate it as Americans.
And it gives us a chance to have peace, a chance to have a deal, and an opportunity to prevent.
A nuclear Iran, which is something President Trump talked about for 20 years and no other presidents had the courage to actually do.
Right?
I mean, he's totally right.
And I keep going back to this.
Just look at what the market's telling you Dow, SP, Nasdaq, all flying.
I mean, this is amazing, you guys.
This is definitely being touted as a success, certainly by the international financial community that believes we're closer to peace.
And yet you get the media just going bonkers with their little stories in CNN first and then in, you know, New York Times and the rest of them all picking this up saying, Oh, we didn't get anything.
This was, you know, this was a lousy, lousy deal.
We didn't get anything.
I mean, come on.
This was really, really interesting.
So, Pete also directed some of his fury, understandable, justified fury, at one of his former colleagues from Fox, who is the Pentagon reporter.
Listen to her here as she's asking him questions, and he just levels her.
He's like, You're one of the worst, Jennifer.
One of the very worst.
Watch.
How many stories have been written about how hard it is to, I don't know, fly a plane for 36 hours?
As a misunderstanding.
We're going to do it again.
That all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Four Dome Mountain, or some of it, because there were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance.
Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?
Of course, we're watching every single aspect.
But, Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally.
What the president says.
I'm familiar.
I was the first to describe the B 2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy.
So I take issue with that.
I appreciate you acknowledging that this was the most successful mission based on operational security that this department has done since you've been here.
And I appreciate that.
So we're looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where.
Acknowledge the female pilots that also participated in this mission.
The early messages that you sent out only congratulated the boys.
So, when I say something like our boys and bombers, see, this is the kind of thing the press does, right?
Of course, the chairman mentioned a female bomber pilot.
That's fantastic.
She's fantastic.
She's a hero.
I want more female bomber pilots.
I hope the men and women of our country sign up to do such brave and audacious things.
But when you spin it as, because I say our boys and bombers as a common phrase, I'll keep saying things like that, whether they're men or women.
Very proud of that female pilot, just like I'm very proud of those male pilots.
And I don't care if it's a male or a female in that cockpit, and the American people don't care.
But it's the obsession with race and gender in this department that's changed priorities.
And we don't do that anymore.
We don't play your little games.
Yes, right there.
Good for him.
Press Bias and Deep State Games00:01:21
Because that is like taking you down a rabbit hole that's a complete waste of time.
I mean, for goodness sakes.
Anyway, he clearly has no use for her.
He knows her personally.
I know her as well.
And look, here's what I'm just going to say, and I have more to say on this.
As a reporter, you always have to be very, very aware because somebody's trying to spin you someplace, somehow.
So you have to have your own compass.
And I go in with a little bit of paranoia because I just assume somebody has an agenda.
And so until I understand all sides and I've read the documents myself, I'm not going to sit there and have an opinion that is just what somebody else wants me to have, should we say, in deep state.
You got a lot of lousy.
Lousy journalists out there.
You get a lot of lazy journalists too.
And so here they are, spoon fed stuff, right?
Spoon fed stuff by people with clear agendas.
Marco Rubio hit the nail on the head when he said this at NATO.
He's like, these people in deep state, they have a particular bias.
And by the way, let me be perfectly honest their bias might actually be towards having us in a bigger controversy.
They don't care, right?
Like maybe the bias is, oh, you didn't get it, also.
We got to do even more, And then they play that with the media because they know as long as it's anti Trump, the media will lap it up, right?
And they'll do it all day long, singing that chorus.