Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is exonerated by the Justice Department. Democrats insist on a continued lockdown with no alternative plan. And Tara Reid speaks out. Ben Shapiro's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Don't like the government spying on you? Well, visit ExpressVPN to stay anonymous. And don't forget to use the promo code "ELISSA" to receive $10 and contribute $10 to The Green New Deal, a pro-choice organization that fights for equal rights for women and their equal pay. Click here to find out more about your ad choices. And if you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and also, consider leaving us a five star rating and a review of our podcast on Apple Podcasts and wherever else you get your shows. Thanks for listening and Good Luck Out There! Your continued support is so appreciated, we'll make sure to keep bringing you high quality, high-quality episodes throughout the rest of our week. Thank you so much for all the support you've shown us throughout the year, and we'll keep on coming back for more episodes, you're the greatest support we can all get in the next few months. -Ben Shapiro's Weekly newsletter, The Ben Shapiro Show, The Six Figures Project, and Good Morning America. Thank you, Tara Reid, and Thank you for being a Friend of The FiveThirtyEight and Good Ol Ol Ol' - Thank you to all the people who've given us a chance to help us make this podcast a little bit more of a better place to grow and grow a bigger, more of this place, and thank you for supporting us, and thanks to all of you'll get a bigger chance to come out, and more of your support, and it's a bigger place, Good Morning Out, and a chance out, Good Day Out, Thanks, Good Night Out, Thank You, Good Blessings, and Thanks, Thank Good Night, Good Review, Good Effie, Thank Day, Good Rest, Good R SUPPORT, etc., and Good Day, Thank & Good Bless, Thank Bless, Good G Review, etc. -- etc., etc., Good Morning, Good Luck, Good N Night, Bless, & Much Bless, Goodbye, Good EGGS, Good M Effie & Good G Night, Thank Or Good R R R SUPPORTED, Good PR SUPPORT, Good KEEPS, Good P SUPPORT, AND Good G CHE CHEET AND FOTTERTER, MAGTERRY, MAGIC AND KELLY AND FOG DAYTERTER AND KEPTER, AND KEEP CHEERTER, GOOD R SUPPORTING CHEOTTER AND GOOD NECK, AND FALLY AND GOTTER CHELLER AND KETTER AND FANTER AND RALLY AND SUPPORTED AND SUPPORTING ME AND A MAG AND A CHOTTER & FOTCH AND A SUPPORTED COLL AND A FOT CHERTER AND A PODCAST AND A LOT AND A LOT MORE AND SO MUCH SO MUCH SUPPORT AND A FRIENDS AND A GOOD NOUGTER AND GALLY AND A QOT HEET AND A RALLYING OUT AND A PLOT AND APOTHE AND A TOT AND G AND A REALLY AND A S NOT QOT AND CHOT AND AND SO AND AND AND A SO AND A ME AND F AND A AND A NA CHOT CHE AND A M AND A ... AND A MA AND A THOT AND Q AND A THAT AND A FINALLY AND AND T AND A ORALLY AND S AND A NOT THAT AND AN AND A TO AND A BUT NOT AND A MOVIE AND A PAQ AND A BALLY AND APOLOGY AND A SPOT AND ME AND APET THAT AND AND ALL AND AND OTHER AND A FEED AND A COURTER AND APHER TO THAT AND FINALLY A LOT AND A LIKE THAT AND F OUT AND APELL AND AP AND A......) )
00:00:10.000This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.com.
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00:00:24.000Okay, so we will get to everything coronavirus related because the new economic reports are just as stunning and shocking as people thought they would be.
00:00:29.000We now have Great Depression level unemployment in this country.
00:00:32.000We went over the course of six weeks from 3.5% unemployment to 14.7% unemployment, which are levels not recorded since the Great Depression.
00:00:40.000Are we allowed to talk about ending this lockdown yet?
00:00:48.000But the big story of the day yesterday is that the Department of Justice dropped the case against Michael Flynn, President Trump's former National Security Advisor, to recap what happened with Michael Flynn.
00:00:59.000Basically, Michael Flynn had been put in place as the National Security Advisor, the incoming National Security Advisor for President Trump.
00:01:07.000Fairly significant questions about whether that was a good pick, considering that Michael Flynn was very friendly with Russia today.
00:01:12.000He was very friendly with the government of Turkey.
00:01:14.000There were questions about those sorts of associations.
00:01:16.000But aside from that, he had a call with Sergey Kislyak, who was the Russian ambassador.
00:01:21.000He was the incoming Trump National Security Advisor.
00:01:23.000Not illegal for him to talk to to Sergei Kislyak.
00:01:26.000Apparently, he was talking with Kislyak about sanctions with regard to Israel or UN UN sanctions with regard to Israel, UN resolutions with regard to Israel.
00:01:34.000That was happening simultaneous with the Obama administration attempting at the very last minute to basically pull the rug out from under Israel.
00:01:40.000So he was calling up Kislyak and they were having a negotiation about all of this.
00:01:47.000And when they visited with him, they said, don't worry, we're not investigating you or anybody close to you.
00:01:51.000We're just here for like a friendly chat.
00:01:53.000And in the middle of that chat, they asked him whether he'd had a conversation with Kislyak.
00:01:56.000This is in the middle of the entire Trump is Russian cat's paw.
00:02:00.000Obviously, this election only went the way it did because of Russian interference.
00:02:03.000And they asked him if he had talked with Kislyak.
00:02:05.000And he said he had not talked with Kislyak.
00:02:07.000And that meantime, by the way, they had been basically threatening him that if he had talked of Kislyak, he might have violated the Logan Act.
00:02:14.000The Logan Act is a century and a half old piece of legislation that is overwhelmingly believed to be by legal scholars unconstitutional.
00:02:21.000It basically says that if you're an American citizen, you can't carry out your own foreign policy.
00:02:25.000Not only is he an American citizen, though, he was the incoming national security advisor.
00:02:28.000There's nothing remotely illegal about him talking with the Russian ambassador.
00:02:33.000That is the part that is undisputed, is he fibbed to the FBI.
00:02:35.000Then it comes out that there are all sorts of documents that make it look like the FBI is attempting to get him to fib to the FBI simply so that they can then turn him against other members of the Trump administration and maybe start moving up the food chain toward President Trump in their quixotic quest to get Trump on Trump-Russia collusion.
00:02:53.000Well, it turns out that after three years of this, basically bankrupting Michael Flynn, after three years of him being in danger of having to go to jail for violation of fibbing to the FBI, and I say fibbing as opposed to lying because it's sort of a fib when you lie about something non-material, right?
00:03:09.000It's a lie when you lie about something material, like there's an underlying crime.
00:03:23.000That's why I'm using the term fibbing as opposed to lying.
00:03:26.000I am deliberately downplaying the extent of the lie because I do not think that this was a material lie and neither did the DOJ.
00:03:32.000According to National Review, the Justice Department yesterday moved to withdraw its case against the former Trump National Security Advisor, citing newly discovered and disclosed information according to a new court filing.
00:03:41.000The move was first reported by the Associated Press.
00:03:43.000It came less than an hour after the top prosecutor on the case, a guy named Brandon Van Graak, submitted his withdrawal from the case.
00:03:49.000It's pretty obvious he knew what was coming down the pike, and he decided he was going to withdraw as a sign of protest.
00:03:53.000The decision said that the White House interview Flynn gave to the FBI, which ultimately led to his guilty plea, was conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.
00:04:00.000In other words, even before the FBI went and talked with Flynn, there had been recommendations to shut down any investigation of Flynn.
00:04:06.000And then they reopened it specifically because they thought that perhaps they could sort of bully Flynn into either lying or into turning on people inside the Trump administration.
00:04:14.000We'll get to more of this in just one second because this is leading to accusations of politicization of the DOJ.
00:04:20.000The only thing I can say to that is, have you heard of Janet Reno?
00:04:23.000A former Attorney General under Bill Clinton.
00:04:28.000It's just to point out that if this DOJ is politicized, which I think, frankly, this is a less politicized DOJ than anything coming out of the Obama administration.
00:04:36.000If you're talking about the dangers of a politicized DOJ, you might want to start a little bit earlier than the last five minutes.
00:04:42.000Anyway, we'll get to all that in just one second.
00:04:44.000First, let us talk about the fact that now, with this level of economic uncertainty, You need to be on top of your business.
00:04:49.000You just cannot afford to not approach your business in granular fashion, particularly when it comes to your data.
00:04:54.000You need to know everything there is to know about your business.
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00:05:58.000The DOJ puts out a decision letter, and the decision letter says that Flynn entered a guilty plea, which he has since sought to withdraw, to a single count of making false statements, in a January 24, 2017 interview with investigators of the FBI.
00:06:12.000This crime, however, requires the statement to not be simply false, but materially false, with respect to a matter under investigation.
00:06:19.000Again, it has to be false with respect to a matter under investigation.
00:06:22.000The government has determined, pursuant to the principles of federal prosecution based on extensive review, that continued prosecution of this case would not serve the interests of justice.
00:06:30.000Materiality, said the DOJ, is an essential element of the offense.
00:06:34.000Materiality, moreover, requires more than mere relevance or relatedness to the matter being investigated.
00:06:38.000It requires probative weight, whereby the statement is reasonably likely to influence the tribunal in making a determination required to be made.
00:06:46.000And they're saying that this is not something that happened.
00:06:48.000They say, after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information appended to the defendant's supplemental pleadings, and basically it was only in the last couple of weeks that the government finally turned over to the defense all of these relevant documents, the government has concluded that the interview of Flynn was untethered to and unjustified by the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn, a no longer justifiably predicated investigation that the FBI had, in the Bureau's own words, prepared to close.
00:07:15.000Because it had yielded in absence of any derogatory information.
00:07:20.000In early January, the FBI had said, we're going to close this thing.
00:07:22.000The government is not persuaded that the January 24th, 2017 interview was conducted with a legitimate investigative basis and therefore does not believe Mr. Flynn's statements were material, even if untrue.
00:07:31.000Moreover, we do not believe that the government can prove either the relevant false statements or their materiality beyond a reasonable doubt.
00:07:39.000So here is the background as the DOJ lays it out.
00:07:43.000The FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Flynn on August 16th, 2016, as part of the larger Crossfire Hurricane Umbrella investigation into the presidential campaign of President Trump and its coordination with Russian officials.
00:07:54.000Codenamed Crossfire Razor, the investigation's stated goal was to determine whether Flynn was directed and controlled by and or coordinated activities with the Russian Federation in a manner which is a threat to the national security or possible violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
00:08:07.000In addition to the predication for opening Crossfire Hurricane, which didn't identify Flynn, The FBI predicated the counterintelligence investigation of him on an articulable factual basis that consisted of three facts.
00:08:18.000Flynn's service as a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, his publicly documented connection to state-affiliated Russian entities, and the fact that he traveled to Russia in December 2015.
00:08:26.000Now, after four months of investigation, the FBI came up with nothing.
00:08:29.000And they found that he was no longer a viable candidate as part of the larger crossfire hurricane umbrella case they prepared to close the investigation.
00:08:36.000At some point prior to January 4th, 2017, the FBI even crafted a closing communication to affect the termination of the case.
00:08:44.000The document noted the specific goal and predication for the investigation.
00:08:47.000It laid out the numerous searches of holdings and investigative steps that yielded no derogatory information on Flynn.
00:08:52.000It stated that the investigation had failed to produce any information on which to predicate further investigative efforts.
00:08:58.000It noted no interview of Flynn was required as part of the case closing procedure.
00:09:02.000And then they said the FBI is closing the investigation.
00:09:05.000Before the intended case closing actually took effect, the FBI learned that Flynn had talked to Kislyak in December 2016.
00:09:11.000By this time, of course, Flynn had already been named by Trump the incoming National Security Advisor.
00:09:16.000The FBI had the transcripts of the relevant calls.
00:09:19.000Believing that the counterintelligence of Flynn was to be closed, the FBI leadership determined to continue its investigation of Flynn on the basis of the calls and considered opening a new criminal investigation based solely on the Logan Act.
00:09:30.000And this is where you get into complete BS.
00:09:31.000Again, the Logan Act has not been prosecuted successfully in a hundred years.
00:09:35.000Like really, it's never been prosecuted successfully, not once.
00:09:38.000On January 4th, 2017, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok learned that the closure had not been timely executed, the counterintelligence investigation into Flynn was formally still open.
00:09:49.000Strzok immediately relayed the serendipitously good news to Lisa Page, the special counsel to FBI Director Andrew McCabe, remarking, Page reacted with surprise and relief.
00:09:59.000Strzok instructed agents to keep it open for now at the behest of the seventh floor.
00:10:03.000Strzok indicated there was a need to decide what to do with him.
00:10:05.000Other internal FBI messages from that afternoon reflect apparently related conversations about a potential interview.
00:10:11.000As of January 4th, the FBI kept its counterintelligence investigation into Flynn open, based solely on his calls with Kislyak.
00:10:19.000On January 12th, the Washington Post reported those communications between Flynn and Kislyak.
00:10:24.000The next day, Sean Spicer, spokesperson for the Trump transition, clarified the communications had involved only logistics that seemed to contradict the nature of the calls.
00:10:31.000And then VP Pence stated in a news interview that Flynn had suggested his conversation with Kislyak did not relate to sanctions.
00:10:37.000Around that time, FBI Director Comey advised DOJ leadership of its investigation into Flynn, and senior officials at the FBI and DOJ had concerns that the incumbent White House official's descriptions of Flynn's calls with Kislyak were not accurate.
00:10:48.000Comey took the position the FBI would not notify the incoming Trump administration of the Flynn-Kislyak communications.
00:10:54.000Okay, so now what we have is they think that Flynn lied to members of the administration, but they have the transcripts of the calls.
00:11:00.000They know that he didn't do anything that actually violated the Logan Act or broke the law, but they're seeing daylight between the Trump administration and Flynn.
00:11:06.000And this is when you get into, do we want to get Flynn fired so that we can get him to testify against other members of the Trump administration?
00:11:11.000Or do we want to catch him in a lie so that he's consistent with what he has told other members of the Trump administration?
00:11:17.000And then we can catch him in a lie and we can threaten him so that he'll turn on members of the Trump administration.
00:11:22.000Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and other DOJ officials believed that the incoming administration should be notified, but Comey said no.
00:11:31.000Yates and another senior DOJ official became frustrated when Comey's justification for withholding the information from the Trump administration repeatedly morphed, vacillating from a potential compromise of a counterintelligence investigation to the protection of a purported criminal investigation.
00:11:45.000The Deputy Attorney General, DNI, and Director of Central Intelligence Agency all agreed the FBI should notify the incoming Trump administration of what had actually been said on the calls.
00:11:53.000Comey refused to brief the White House.
00:11:55.000Because Comey apparently was just thoroughly convinced that the Russians were playing the Trump administration and he didn't want to tip them off to the fact that an investigation was going on.
00:12:04.000Comey should have been fired like forthwith.
00:12:07.000This is ridiculous stuff from James Comey, who's busy posturing presumably in the woods right now.
00:12:11.000Matters came to a head January 24, 2017.
00:12:15.000That morning, Yates contacted Director Comey to demand the FBI notify the White House of the communication.
00:12:19.000So, Yates has been sort of dragged through the mud by the Trump administration to a certain extent.
00:12:23.000Yates actually wanted the FBI to notify the White House.
00:12:26.000Director Comey didn't return the call.
00:12:28.000When Comey called her back later that day, he advised her FBI agents were already on their way to the White House to interview Flynn.
00:12:33.000Yates was flabbergasted and dumbfounded.
00:12:35.000Other senior DOJ officials hit the roof upon learning of that development, saying an interview of Flynn should have been coordinated with the DOJ.
00:12:41.000In fact, senior officials at the FBI had been engaged in discussions of how to approach Flynn and whom to notify.
00:12:47.000On January 21st, 2017, Strzok proposed to Bill Priestap, the FBI's counterintelligence chief, that Flynn should be given a defensive briefing about an investigation under the Crossfire Hurricane umbrella, or alternatively, an interview under light defensive briefing pretext.
00:13:00.000Strzok noted that the DOJ might direct us to inform the Vice President or somebody else, and they didn't want to do that.
00:13:05.000And they wouldn't explain why they didn't want to tell the Trump administration.
00:13:08.000On January 22nd, an FBI attorney emailed Strzok and Page that if we usually tell the White House, I think we ought to do what we normally do.
00:13:15.000Though the official noted that they could be told not to debrief or interview Flynn.
00:13:20.000In advance of the interview, Comey determined they would go interview Flynn the following day without notifying either the DOJ or the White House.
00:13:25.000In a December 2018 interview, he said that this was something I probably wouldn't have done or gotten away with in a more organized administration.
00:13:33.000Okay, then messages between Strzok and Page indicated that Prestep had conducted several conversations with Andy McCabe because he wanted to know why we had to go aggressively doing these things openly.
00:13:42.000On the morning of January 24th, follow-up messages between Strzok and Page indicated that Prestep brought it up again in front of Comey, and McCabe was frustrated and cut him off.
00:13:50.000In any event, McCabe called Flynn to arrange the interview.
00:13:53.000He explained that recent media statements about his contacts with Kislyak merited a sit-down, and they said that they wanted to do this quickly, quietly, discreetly as possible.
00:14:05.000When interviewing Flynn, Strzok and the other agents didn't show him the transcripts of the calls, nor did the agents give at any point warnings that making false statements would be a crime.
00:14:12.000Now normally, in these sorts of situations, you want to give the person fair warning that they're about to lie, specifically because you already know that they have lied in the past, so you sort of want to put all that out there.
00:14:23.000The basic idea here was that they were going to essentially catch Flynn out, and then they were going to use him.
00:14:29.000According to the FBI agent's recollections, when asked if Flynn recalled any conversation in which he encouraged Kislyak not to escalate the situation in response to American sanctions, Flynn responded uncertainly, stating, not really, I don't remember, it wasn't don't do anything.
00:14:42.000Flynn also stated, although it was possible, he didn't recall any conversation in which the ambassador stated that Russia would moderate its response due to Flynn's request.
00:14:50.000Meanwhile, when asked if he recalled asking countries to take certain actions on that UN vote on Israeli settlements, Flynn explained the conversations were along the lines of where do you stand and what's your position.
00:14:58.000After the interview, the FBI agents expressed uncertainty as to whether Flynn had actually lied.
00:15:03.000FBI agents reported to their leadership that Flynn exhibited a very sure demeanor and didn't give any indicators of deception.
00:15:08.000Both of the agents had the impression Flynn wasn't lying or didn't think he was lying.
00:15:11.000When Comey was asked, do you believe Flynn lied?
00:15:18.000On November 30th, 2017, the special counsel's office filed a criminal information against Flynn, charging him with that single count of making false statements Flynn pled guilty to the offense.
00:15:28.000Okay, so the question as to the law is whether there is materiality here.
00:15:32.000They say that it is not just that you have to tell a lie, you have to show that there is materiality to the underlying investigation.
00:15:39.000In the case of Mr. Flynn, says the DOJ, the evidence shows his statements were not material to any viable counterintelligence investigation, or any investigation for that matter, initiated by the FBI.
00:15:47.000The FBI had recognized it lacked sufficient basis to sustain its initial counterintelligence investigation.
00:15:52.000They found no derogatory information on Flynn.
00:15:55.000The communications between Flynn and Kislyak did not warrant either continuing that existing counterintelligence investigation or opening a new criminal investigation.
00:16:03.000The calls were entirely appropriate on their face.
00:16:05.000Flynn never disputed the calls were made.
00:16:07.000Indeed, Flynn, as former DIA, because he was director of Defense Intelligence Agency, would have readily expected the FBI had known of the calls.
00:16:14.000In the words of one senior DOJ official, it seemed logical there may be some communication between an incoming administration and their foreign partners.
00:16:20.000And there was nothing said on the calls to indicate anything inappropriate going on.
00:16:24.000Also, the FBI knew the content of the calls.
00:16:27.000With no dispute as to what was said, there was no factual basis for the predication of a new counterintelligence investigation.
00:16:33.000And they didn't open a criminal investigation based on Flynn's calls with Kislyak predicated on the Logan Act.
00:16:37.000In fact, they never attempted to open a Logan Act investigation on these grounds.
00:16:41.000Flynn's communications implicated no crime.
00:16:43.000So they decide that they're going to let this thing go.
00:16:46.000And the reason they're going to let this thing go is because, again, there was really no criminal activity here.
00:16:50.000This has set off an absolute firestorm.
00:16:52.000The idea here is that Flynn presumably should have been prosecuted because it's unusual for the DOJ, after a guilty plea, to actually just release the person.
00:17:02.000First, let us talk about the fact that if you are not actively protecting your data online right now, you are doing something wrong.
00:17:07.000The fact is that You're used to working at work and you have IT departments that help you protect your data when you're at work, but now you're working from home and you're online 24 hours a day.
00:18:14.000Go check them out right now, expressvpn.com/ben.
00:18:16.000Okay, so the Flynn release has basically set off a firestorm.
00:18:20.000The idea here is that Bill Barr, the Attorney General, is doing something deeply, deeply terrible because he's going back on the DOJ's initial prosecution of Flynn or threat of prosecution of Flynn to get him to bargain to a plea deal.
00:18:34.000He originally pled guilty back in 2017, and now they're abdicating basically that They're just getting rid of the case.
00:18:50.000The case against Flynn was originally brought about by the office of the former special counsel, Robert Mueller.
00:18:55.000It had become a political cause for Trump and his supporters.
00:18:58.000Barr instead short-circuited the case.
00:19:00.000On Thursday, Timothy Shea, the interim U.S.
00:19:02.000attorney in the District of Columbia, told the judge overseeing the case the prosecutors were withdrawing it.
00:19:07.000That's because the department could not prove to a jury that Flynn's admitted lies to the FBI were material.
00:19:12.000The move essentially erases Flynn's guilty plea because he was never sentenced and the government is not willing to pursue the matter further.
00:19:17.000The prosecution is virtually certain to end, although the judge could still decide whether to grant the department's request to dismiss it with prejudice.
00:19:24.000It could theoretically be refiled in the future if the judge decides differently.
00:19:28.000A pardon would have been a lot more honest had Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Duke University, Bill says the law regarding what counts as material is extremely forgiving to the government.
00:19:38.000The idea is that law enforcement is permitted to pursue criminal theories of criminality and to interview people without having firmly established there was a crime first.
00:19:45.000Yeah, but if you just like five seconds ago said you were dismissing the entire investigation against somebody and then you are just relieved that it's still technically open so you can try to... I mean, basically they're trying to flip...
00:19:56.000Flynn against other people in the Trump administration.
00:20:00.000It looks like there were people, including Comey, inside the DOJ and the FBI at the time, who were firmly convinced that Trump-Russia collusion had happened.
00:20:08.000And now it's just a matter of raising the evidence so as to go get Trump.
00:20:14.000He was just a way of going after Trump and or removing Flynn from the process because as the national security advisor, he would be overseeing the investigation itself in some ways that would be able to protect Trump against some of the investigation.
00:20:28.000That's the theory of Andrew McCarthy over at National Review.
00:20:32.000So, the DOJ saying, listen, we're not going forward with this.
00:20:35.000Yes, it's unusual for the DOJ to do this.
00:20:48.000And the idea that the Logan Act was supposedly the predicate for going and getting him to lie so that you could go after him and get him out of the chain of command is really incredible.
00:20:58.000It does undermine faith in the institution in the first place.
00:21:00.000I mean, the fact that they went forward with something like this on the basis of your incoming national security advisor talked with the Russians and then didn't tell everything in the call to Vice President Pence, and that this is a material lie in a criminal case.
00:21:13.000Good luck with that in court, number one.
00:21:15.000But beyond that, The fact that this was being carried out by holdovers from the Obama administration does not exactly create a level of trust.
00:21:24.000And this is particularly true when we find out from Fox News that President Obama was aware of the details of then-incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's intercepted December 2016 phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, apparently surprising Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, according to documents released on Thursday.
00:21:40.000Apparently, Obama had an intimate knowledge of the details of Flynn's call.
00:21:44.000Obama personally had warned the Trump administration against hiring Flynn, made clear he was not a fan.
00:21:48.000Obama had fired Flynn as head of the DIA in 2014.
00:21:53.000Flynn said that he was pushed out because of his aggressive stance on combating Islamic extremism.
00:21:58.000On January 5th, 2017, Yates attended an Oval Office meeting with Comey and Biden and Brennan and DNI James Clapper.
00:22:06.000They were discussing Russian election interference.
00:22:08.000After the briefing, Obama asked Yates and Comey to stay behind.
00:22:11.000He said he had learned the information about Flynn and his conversation with Russia's ambassador about sanctions.
00:22:15.000This would have been the day after the request to end the case, right?
00:22:18.000Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information.
00:22:26.000So there are two ways of reading that.
00:22:27.000One is, should the White House be shutting Flynn off to information because you guys think he's a criminal?
00:22:31.000The other is, so I've been hearing through the grapevine that basically this case is coming to an end, but I see that there's this call out there.
00:22:36.000Maybe you shouldn't let this case come to an end.
00:23:10.000So this whole case was thinly predicated in the very first place, and all the objections that somehow this is really a destruction of the legitimacy of the DOJ to drop a case that was thin to begin with, and that really was dedicated to removing all obstacles between the Mueller investigation and Trump in a case that was poorly predicated itself, that's a mistake.
00:23:31.000All right, coming up, we're going to get to everything coronavirus-related.
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00:24:45.000Meanwhile, the coronavirus situation continues to develop in incredibly, incredibly foolish ways.
00:24:53.000And when I say that it's developing in incredibly foolish ways, what I mean is, it is now clear that we have flattened the curve as much as we are going to flatten the curve with these lockdowns.
00:25:01.000So you've been hearing all sorts of basically media lies about the elevation of cases.
00:25:09.000Oh, we're not locking this thing down.
00:25:10.000New York's starting to decline, but everywhere else is not starting to decline.
00:25:14.000You can't do it the way the media is doing it.
00:25:15.000They're doing an absolute number of cases rising outside of New York.
00:25:18.000Here's an actual chart showing the number of daily positives declining as a percentage of the actual test.
00:25:27.000If you take a look at the daily positives declining chart from Scott Gottlieb, that's the one I want.
00:25:33.000Daily positivity rate over time is declining.
00:25:35.000So what you see here is that there was a sharp rise between basically March 13th and April 10th or so.
00:25:43.000Which makes sense because those are the two weeks following lockdown.
00:25:46.000So the infection is still running rampant and you're starting to see the testing increases and you're starting to see people testing positive more often.
00:25:52.000And now you're starting to see a fairly sharp decline to the point where we are now in terms of daily positivity test rate.
00:27:30.000As long as they're staying away from each other, there's no evidence of outdoor transmission.
00:27:33.000We have virtually no evidence of any outdoor transmissions leading to outbreaks, be it a beach, be it a golf course, be it fishing, anything that Florida is known for.
00:27:44.000The transmission has typically occurred in enclosed environments when you have repeated contact with someone, such as in the home.
00:27:52.000And so our policy was never to try to drive people indoors.
00:27:57.000It does show the incredible power of the media that DeSantis is down in the mid-fifties while dumbass Governor Andrew Cuomo, who's been awful, awful.
00:28:03.000I mean, the fact that he gets on TV and he tells you the bad news, he only has the luxury of telling you the bad news because he can blame Trump at the top of the government.
00:28:10.000But I mean, when he says stuff like, he's such a demagogue, when he says stuff like, you know, every life is priceless, again, every life is priceless in terms of its moral worth.
00:28:19.000When it comes to actually calculating public policy, nobody suggests that we have to mitigate all risks down to zero.
00:28:25.000And this seems to be the newfangled thought here is that we're going to mitigate all risks down to zero.
00:28:37.000Joe Biden tweeted out that it's not worth one life.
00:28:40.000It's not worth one life to raise the Dow Jones Industrial Average one point.
00:28:43.000Okay, well then I suppose that we should probably just all abandon our jobs and then we can sit in our homes and we can farm dirt in our backyard.
00:29:02.000Whenever people suggest in politics that a choice is a false choice, typically they mean that it's just a choice they don't actually want to talk about.
00:29:09.000Here's Andrew Cuomo avoiding responsibility for making choices that he's going to have to make.
00:29:13.000If it's about money, we'll figure it out.
00:30:15.000And by the way, I don't want to hear from Andrew Cuomo about how dedicated he is to protecting the elderly when he wouldn't even protect the damn nursing homes.
00:30:21.000Let me show you some stats from these nursing homes, because they're insane.
00:30:25.000Let me tell you some stats from the nursing homes.
00:30:27.000So, by country, here are the percentage of COVID-19 deaths taking place in nursing homes.
00:31:30.000New York, we don't know, because New York refuses to report these statistics.
00:31:34.000Why does New York refuse to report the statistics?
00:31:36.000Because then Andrew Cuomo might be forced to recognize that his dumbass policy of, we are going to force nursing homes to take back in people with COVID-19, killed a lot of people.
00:31:46.000Here was Andrew Cuomo being asked about his state handling of the nursing homes and completely, you know, just botching it.
00:31:51.000We knew the nursing homes were going to be a target.
00:31:54.000And whatever we do, they will be a target.
00:31:57.000Our people are doing everything they can do.
00:32:00.000We have the equipment, we have the staff.
00:32:15.000That is task number one, is protect the nursing homes.
00:32:18.000And then we need to tranche people back into work and we need to do it forthwith.
00:32:22.000And there's nothing more lazy than this idea that if you loosen lockdown, if you let people go back to work, That it's going to be like 9-11 every day.
00:32:52.000When the University of Washington made these adjustments, they said within a month we're going to see 3,000 deaths per day, 200,000 new infections each day.
00:34:17.000We're going to get to how people won't even discuss the policy in just one second.
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00:35:31.000All right, we're gonna get back into the politics of lockdown in just one second because it is fairly obvious that there are a lot of people who are basically comfortable with lockdown because what they would like more than anything else is to completely recraft American life.
00:35:44.000You're starting to see this from members of the Democratic Party.
00:35:48.000Ayanna Pressley and Rashad Robinson have a piece over at USA Today basically suggesting just this.
00:35:52.000San Francisco has a few measures of its own.
00:36:03.000In this picture, Linda's husband is diligently helping their happy son with his schoolwork while holding the world's greatest beverage vessel in one hand and a second glorious Tumblr resting on the computer desk.
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00:37:36.000So these lockdowns, of course, come along with the disadvantage of having to enforce the lockdowns.
00:37:46.000And the general rule is, if you don't want to enforce a rule, then don't put the rule in place in the first place.
00:37:51.000If you want to hand people a ticket for a fine, hand people a ticket for a fine.
00:37:53.000But if you don't feel like tackling people in the middle of New York, or tackling people on the streets of New Jersey, well then probably you shouldn't tell people in the police force that they need to do exactly that.
00:38:19.000And he was handing children, the least vulnerable members of our population, pre-packaged frozen treats.
00:38:25.000I mean, unbelievable, the level of viciousness of this human being.
00:38:29.000Clearly, he should be featured on local media, and we should make him an outlaw.
00:38:31.000Probably, we should put him on the FBI 10 Most Wanted.
00:38:34.000Because when I think of, like, severe dangers, handing people ice cream outside with, you know, distance between you, that's naturally created by, you know, being inside a truck and handling stuff to people outside.
00:38:45.000Clearly, this guy is just, what a terrible person.
00:38:47.000Here was the local CBS Chicago report on this.
00:38:51.000You think it's a good idea to be doing this with the stay-at-home order?
00:39:27.000Meanwhile, over in Texas, Shelly Luther, who is the salon owner, who was engaged in, you know, social distancing and responsibly opening her business like a few days early, and a judge tried to throw her in jail for a week and fine her $7,000.
00:39:38.000She walked out of jail to loud applause yesterday, which is good news.
00:39:42.000But here's the thing, the pedal is gonna, the rubber meat is gonna meet the road here.
00:39:45.000Okay, there is just no way for you to enforce these sorts of things without actual, without actual Police enforcement.
00:39:55.000And are you willing to throw people in jail for not wearing a mask in public areas while providing cannabis to the homeless in San Francisco?
00:40:02.000This is a thing they're actually doing.
00:40:04.000According to the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco's health department confirmed on Wednesday that the city was administering alcohol, tobacco, medical cannabis, and other substances in an effort to prevent a handful of people quarantined or isolating in city-leased hotels from going outside to get the substances themselves.
00:40:44.000So yesterday, I briefly discussed the fact that there is no actual plan here.
00:40:47.000That we were told to go into lockdown, and don't worry guys, there would be a plan.
00:40:50.000And then it turns out, the plan doesn't exist.
00:40:53.000And the reason the plan doesn't exist is because we don't actually know what's going to happen over the course of the next year.
00:40:58.000We have a series of models and they tell us what's going to happen one month out, but this is basically irrelevant.
00:41:03.000It's basically irrelevant what's going to happen one month out because we know that if people leave lockdown, there will be an additional number of infections.
00:41:09.000That is just the thing that is going to happen.
00:41:11.000So yesterday, I actually put together in colorful fashion the chart of what I'm talking about so you can see exactly to what I am referring.
00:41:21.000The basic idea here is that there are three curves for folks who cannot see.
00:41:24.000There's a pink curve, there is a blue curve, and there is a green curve.
00:41:29.000Okay, and then there is a red line across the middle of the page that shows medical capacity.
00:41:35.000The three curves represent three different strategies of how to handle this thing.
00:41:39.000The pink curve was uncontrolled spread, right?
00:41:41.000The uncontrolled spread was basically just let everybody go about willy-nilly.
00:41:46.000There's gonna be huge spike in cases, and everybody's gonna get infected, and then a lot of people are going to die because you're going to rise above the medical capacity, right?
00:41:53.000And you don't want that because all the people above the medical capacity might have been able to survive if you had not overwhelmed the medical capacity.
00:42:01.000So now we're arguing about which curve we want.
00:42:03.000Do we want this blue curve or do we want the green curve?
00:42:05.000The blue curve rises faster and declines faster.
00:42:08.000It doesn't overwhelm medical capacity.
00:42:10.000It rises faster and it declines faster.
00:42:12.000And then there's the green curve, which rises slower and declines slower over time.
00:42:16.000The number of infections, and thus the number of deaths, under both the blue curve and the green curve, because they do not overwhelm medical capacity, the number of infections, and as a percentage of the infections, the number of deaths, should be the same.
00:42:29.000So here's what the media are doing so they can lie to you about how lockdowns are the only available solution, and if you don't lock down, you want to kill grandma.
00:42:37.000What they're doing is they're showing you models that cut off in June 2020.
00:42:40.000It is the vertical line that you see on the left-hand side of the screen.
00:42:43.000And that vertical line says June 2020.
00:42:45.000Now, if you cut off the screen in June 2020, what you would see is a huge number of cases and therefore deaths under the blue strategy, right?
00:42:53.000Which is make sure that people in nursing homes are taken care of.
00:42:56.000Make sure that elderly people stay home.
00:42:58.000Make sure that there is some form of social distancing specifically for people who are most vulnerable, but everybody else.
00:43:05.000You know, if you want to go to a ball game with a bunch of 20-year-olds and then there some infections, in all likelihood, you will be fine because the odds of you getting really sick are really low, right?
00:43:12.000That is pursuing herd immunity in faster fashion.
00:43:16.000So if you front-load the herd immunity, you're also front-loading the infections.
00:43:19.000So if you cut off the model at June 2020, what you see is that there would be a lot fewer people infected and a lot fewer people dead by the beginning of June 2020 under the Heavy lockdown, heavy social distancing model than under the controlled avalanche model.
00:43:36.000What you see is that the number of infections and the number of dead are basically the same in the blue model and the green model.
00:43:43.000It's just that it was spread out longer over the green model, right?
00:43:45.000The area under the two curves is the same, meaning the number of infections and the number of dead is basically the same, so long as you don't overwhelm the medical capacity.
00:43:53.000The difference between the blue model and the green model is that the blue model involves reopening the economy in heavier fashion, right?
00:43:59.000Not destroying the entire world economy.
00:44:01.000And the green model involves continuing to destroy the entire world economy.
00:44:05.000Same number of people dead over the course of the next year.
00:44:08.000You may save a few months for people, but essentially same number of people infected and same number of people dead over the course of the next year, but front loaded.
00:44:14.000So the pain is now versus Spread out over time so that instead of 2,000 deaths today, you get 1,000 deaths today.
00:44:21.000And then six months from now, you're still getting 1,000 deaths today.
00:44:24.000And in the other model, you're now getting 200 deaths today because you went up and then you went down.
00:44:28.000And in one case, you didn't kill the economy.
00:44:30.000And in one case, you did kill the economy.
00:44:32.000These are the sorts of choices that have to be made right now.
00:44:34.000Now, what the left will say is that the blue curve does not actually exist.
00:44:38.000That it is only a choice between full lockdown and full release.
00:44:44.000Now the other counter argument that I've seen here is that it's very difficult to do anything like the sort of controlled avalanche strategy that I've been talking about because you get what you call epidemic overshoot.
00:44:55.000What that means is that, let's say that herd immunity happens at 60%, but let's say that the thing spreads faster, then you can actually control it.
00:45:03.000So you may end up with 80% of the population infected when you only needed 60% of the population infected to achieve herd immunity.
00:45:09.000So if you did it slowly, you'd gradually ease up to 60%, herd immunity would be achieved, and then the other 40% of people are protected.
00:45:15.000But if you allow people to go out willy-nilly, then you might achieve herd immunity, but because the thing is spreading so fast, you get people who are infected who wouldn't have been infected if you had done this slowly.
00:45:24.000That's true, but if you involve yourself in social distancing the way that Sweden has, and you approach it more slowly, then you're probably not going to get tremendous levels of epidemic overshoot.
00:45:33.000The key is, how do you get to herd immunity without that tremendous epidemic overshoot?
00:45:39.000And this is sort of the unspoken assumption that the green curve is better than the blue curve if there's a therapeutic or a vaccine developed.
00:45:46.000Now, people are way too sanguine about the possibility of a very effective vaccine here.
00:45:50.000Even Bill Gates, who's been pushing vaccination, he says that the chances of developing a super effective vaccine over the course of the next 12 months are not supremely high.
00:45:58.000The flu vaccine is used by about half of Americans.
00:46:00.000It's only 45% effective for those who use it.
00:46:03.000Even well-known vaccines, like Pertussis vaccine, Those create a certain level of herd immunity, and that's important, but they're only about 80% effective for people who actually take the vaccine.
00:46:14.000So you're assuming that there will be a therapeutic treatment or that there will be a vaccine that fix everything.
00:46:19.000If you're not assuming that, then you have to start thinking about what you can do to get past the pain of the health situation in order to ensure that we have a functioning economy.
00:47:05.000Because the testing and tracing procedures are supposed to prevent the overwhelming of the healthcare system, which again, was the presupposition of the blue curve in the chart that I just showed you.
00:47:14.000The presupposition of the blue curve is that it doesn't overwhelm medical capacity.
00:47:19.000So that's what you need the testing and tracing for.
00:47:21.000You don't need it to get the rate down to zero.
00:47:23.000There is no world in which we get the rate down to zero.
00:47:41.000And I'm talking about people like Ayanna Pressley, apparently, from Massachusetts.
00:47:44.000She has a piece in USA Today called, Congresswoman, called, In Post-Coronavirus World Politics Has to Change.
00:47:51.000She says the question is how we'll respond.
00:47:53.000Will we once again let fear and worry take over and drive us toward choices that take us backward?
00:47:57.000Or will we rise to the calling of this moment?
00:47:59.000Demand that we replace the principles that define our society today like inequality with the principles of humanity and justice that will help us all succeed.
00:48:05.000In other words, if we continue the lockdown, guess what?
00:48:08.000There's going to be inordinate pressure for massive government interventionism, universal basic income, government subsidization of everybody at extraordinary levels.
00:48:16.000There are some people who are very comfortable with lockdown because they actually like the consequences of the full-scale lockdown.
00:48:22.000That is not something that is acceptable.
00:48:30.000It is one thing to stay in lockdown based on expert advice as to how many lives this is going to save over the course of the next year, not over the course of the next two weeks.
00:50:18.000Those cutouts there, that's not our technical fault.
00:50:20.000That is his technical fault, and the thing was glitching, and he didn't know whether he was on, and he's somehow like sitting in the back of the room, and then he sort of randomly approaches the camera.
00:52:26.000Okay, so the reality is she should say, sure, I'm happy to take a polygraph, right?
00:52:30.000I have serious doubts as to Tara Reade's credibility here.
00:52:33.000I've been saying this for a while, but I had serious doubts as to Christine Blasey Ford's credibility.
00:52:37.000Like, I think serious questions should be asked of anybody who alleges something as serious as a full-on sexual assault.
00:52:42.000The difference is Democrats don't feel the same way.
00:52:43.000There is certainly more contemporaneous evidence that Tara Reade actually even worked for Joe Biden and made complaints about Joe Biden than there was with Christine Blasey Ford.
00:52:52.000According to the Merced Sun-Star, Taking this apparently from the Washington Post.
00:52:59.000A court document from 1996 shows former Senate staffer Tara Reade told her ex-husband she was sexually harassed while working for Joe Biden in 1993.
00:53:05.000The declaration, I guess it was exclusively obtained by the Tribune in San Luis Obispo, California, does not say that Biden committed the harassment.
00:53:13.000It doesn't mention Reade's more recent allegations of sexual assault.
00:53:16.000But the divorce records do say that there was a, quote, problem she was having at work regarding sexual harassment in U.S.
00:53:24.000So obviously she was making allegations of something having happened in Joe Biden's office way back when.
00:53:31.000Now what's hilarious is the reaction by Democrats to all of this totally hypocritical and absurd.
00:53:36.000Dianne Feinstein, the senator who five seconds ago was saying that Brett Kavanaugh should withdraw his nomination because of questions from Christine Blasey Ford.
00:53:44.000Now she says that the Kavanaugh situation is totally different.
00:53:47.000She says Kavanaugh is under the harshest inspection we give people over a substantial period of time.
00:54:07.000That's unbelievable from Dianne Feinstein.
00:54:09.000Remember, during the Kavanaugh hearings, if you so much as mentioned that Brett Kavanaugh had been on the D.C.
00:54:13.000Circuit Court of Appeals, that he'd been a very prominent person in public life for a long time, and that these allegations were four decades old, so where was Christine Blasey for all this time?
00:54:21.000Then you were considered not to be taking women seriously.
00:54:23.000Dianne Feinstein says the exact same stuff about Tara Reade, and it's, well, she's taking women seriously.
00:54:29.000She says, why didn't she say something, you know, when he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, or after that?
00:54:33.000She said this is incomparable to Kavanaugh.
00:54:36.000And then meanwhile, Senator Amy Klobuchar was asked about this.
00:54:38.000She says about Biden, he's been forthright.
00:54:40.000He's answered the questions respectfully.
00:54:44.000She said, I think he's answered all the questions.
00:54:45.000He's made clear he supports her right to come forward.
00:54:48.000Asked about criticism Democrats to have a double standard.
00:54:50.000Klobuchar didn't answer and walked into an awaiting car, which of course is exactly what you would expect from the Democratic Party.
00:54:57.000I mean, just astonishing, astonishing stuff.
00:54:59.000So the Biden campaign has problems of its own.
00:55:02.000Which is why the Democrats are basically pinning their hopes on the notion that Trump completely botched the handling of coronavirus.
00:55:10.000They're hoping that the economy does not, the economy isn't going to recover very fast.
00:55:14.000Do they have a, I'm not going to say they hope for people to lose their jobs, because I don't think that all Democrats want people to lose their jobs.
00:55:20.000What I will say is that they're in a very comfortable political situation where if the economy continues to tank, they can just point to Trump.
00:55:26.000It's very comfortable politically to be in a position where you can say, if you release us from lockdown, then if one life is lost, it's on you.
00:55:32.000And also lockdown is killing the economy, that's Trump's fault.
00:55:35.000And the same exact people who are saying that this new Great Depression is brought on by Trump are saying that if we relieve the depression by letting people go back to work, then Trump will be killing people.
00:55:43.000So they've set up an absolute catch-22 for anybody who actually wants to mitigate risk to life while also ensuring that the economy doesn't full-on die.
00:55:52.000That's gonna have to be the tent peg upon which they build their entire superstructure here, because Joe Biden does not have a campaign that is worthy of note.
00:56:00.000I mean, it's just a terrible, terrible campaign.
00:56:02.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I like.
00:57:03.000The fact that for two months, no arrest was made is an indictment of the criminal justice system in Georgia, which seems to me, people are saying it's based on race.
00:57:10.000I think it's just quite as possible it was based on chumminess between the people who committed the shooting, Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael, and local law enforcement.
00:57:21.000The the this, of course, has has generated all sorts of national in intensity.
00:57:27.000It should generate national intensity.
00:57:28.000And it's a good thing that this is going to go before a grand jury.
00:57:31.000It should have gone before a grand jury long ago.
00:57:34.000So we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
00:57:37.000Otherwise, have yourself try to have a relaxing weekend as one day bleeds into the next endlessly as weekdays and weekends become one long period of miasmatic waiting.
00:57:46.000Otherwise, we'll see you here on Monday.