Director of National Intelligence James Clapper speaks to CNN's Maria Cardone about the recent declassification of over 100 documents released by the DOJ and declassified by the Department of Justice on Friday, detailing the treasonous plot to overthrow President Trump.
00:00:00.000Maria, the implications of this are, frankly, nothing short of historic.
00:00:04.900Over 100 documents that we released on Friday really detail and provide evidence of how this treasonous conspiracy was directed by President Obama just weeks before he was due to leave office, after President Trump had already gotten elected.
00:00:23.660This is not a Democrat or Republican issue.
00:00:26.540This is an issue that is so serious it should concern every single American because it has to do with the integrity of our Democratic Republic.
00:00:35.080What we saw occur here, as the documents we released detailed, was that we had a sitting President of the United States and his cabinet and leadership team, quite frankly, who were not happy with the fact that President Trump had won the election, that the American people had chosen Donald J.
00:00:50.280Trump to be the next President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States.
00:00:53.740And so they decided that they would do everything possible to try to undermine his ability to do what voters tasked President Trump to do.
00:01:03.440So creating this piece of manufactured intelligence that claims that Russia had helped Donald Trump get elected contradicted every other assessment that had been made previously in the months leading up to the election that said exactly the opposite, that Russia neither had neither the intent nor the capability to try to, quote unquote, hack the United States election for the presidency of the United States.
00:01:28.060So the effect of what President Obama and his senior national security team did was subvert the will of the American people, undermining our Democratic Republic and enacting what would be essentially a years long coup against President Trump, who was duly elected by the American people.
00:01:49.260We have a lot to run on and you have a lot to run against, given the other party.
00:01:52.980But I will tell you this, we better be united. We better be strong. We better be focused. We better be articulate.
00:01:58.660We can't waste our time on Epstein and other stuff that are going on here that some people want us to focus on.
00:02:04.980I'm about had it with all that stuff. We better focus on who we are, what we're doing, where we want to take the country and what they want to do to the country.
00:02:12.860What happened? How did they actually get the public to believe and have the public believed that actually Trump did collude?
00:02:22.580Well, this is the thing, Maria, when you look at the assessments that were made, not just by one element of the intelligence community, but in my role as the director of national intelligence, I oversee 18 different intelligence community elements.
00:02:36.680And in the months leading up to the November 2016 election, the intelligence community agreed that there was no intelligence that reflected that Russia was trying to hack the election in favor of either candidate.
00:02:53.100The evidence showed, the intelligence showed that, again, Russia did not have either the intent nor the capability to be able to impact the outcome of the United States election.
00:03:04.460So it was very striking when we look back again at the documents that I declassified and released that shows there was a shift in early December, the first week of December.
00:03:16.500Again, another document was produced by the intelligence community, a president's daily brief that was consistent with every other assessment that was done previously leading up to the election.
00:03:25.720Russia was not did not this is after the election now did not attempt to affect the outcome of the American election that was never published hours before it would have gone into President Obama's president's daily brief.
00:03:42.660It was pulled by a senior level intelligence official saying that they had to pull it because they had received new guidance.
00:03:51.260The very next day, this meeting was called a National Security Council meeting, bringing all together all of the senior leaders of President Obama's cabinet.
00:04:00.340And the topic that was put forward was a sensitive matter.
00:04:04.940The tasks that came out of that meeting was coming from President Obama directing the intelligence community, then Obama's ODNI director, Clapper, to produce a document, to produce an intelligence assessment that detailed not if,
00:04:22.300but how Moscow affected the outcome of the outcome of the outcome of the election that had already occurred, electing Donald Trump to the presidency.
00:04:30.300This document that they published in January of 2017 was the foundational groundwork that they continued to reference over and over and over again to enact this years long coup against President Trump.
00:04:44.300And in it, Ben writes this, there's obviously great fun in watching the world's dumbest media revolution.
00:04:53.460The social media Epstein detectives lied by led by podcasters turned Keystone cops devoured children.
00:05:01.160There are political incentives for Democrats to join MAGA and stoking wild theories.
00:05:06.780And there are good non-conspiratorial questions about how Epstein linked business, social climbing and sex.
00:05:14.300Maybe investigative documents, perhaps including the files Trump ordered released, can answer some of those questions.
00:05:22.060But those of us trying to stay sane ought to keep in mind the distinction between evidence and speculation, fantasy and reality.
00:05:31.820And I understand that there is more, perhaps, that you are going to come out with next week.
00:05:36.920And I was told that that's why they raided Mar-a-Lago, that they wanted to find the Trump-Russia documents that indicated there was absolutely no collusion and that there was no evidence to even start such an investigation.
00:05:52.340But Trump didn't have it there in Mar-a-Lago.
00:05:54.620But that's why they raided his house in 2022.
00:05:58.340I don't have the details on the specifics of the Mar-a-Lago raid itself.
00:06:06.420Those are within the possession of the FBI.
00:06:09.540But there's no question in my mind that this intelligence community assessment that President Obama ordered be published, which contained a manufactured intelligence document.
00:06:21.300It's worse than even politicization of intelligence, it was manufactured intelligence that sought to achieve President Obama and his team's objective, which was undermining President Trump's presidency and subverting the will of the American people.
00:06:34.700So, yes, next week we will be releasing more detailed information about how exactly this took place and the extent to which this information was sought to be hidden from the American people, hidden from officials who would be in a position to do something about it.
00:06:53.300And that's really the point here that I think is most important, Maria, and you said it in your opening.
00:06:57.940Accountability is essential for the future of our country, for the American people to have any sense of trust in the integrity of our democratic republic.
00:07:08.340Accountability, action, prosecution, indictments for those who are responsible for trying to steal our democracy is essential for us to make sure that this never happens to our country again.
00:07:27.940Accountability is essential for the future of our country.
00:07:57.940And I'm sure you will find many ways to have a good time.
00:08:07.540This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
00:08:12.460Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people.
00:08:17.760I got a free shot on all these networks lying about the people.
00:08:22.020The people have had a belly full of it.
00:09:28.540President Trump last night on his Truth Social, he bombarded Truth Social and the media with a number of just explosive truth.
00:09:38.140You know, I guess these postings he puts up about Tulsi Gabbard, about the deep state, about – you can tell his rising anger about what happened.
00:09:49.380I think as he gets into more of the details.
00:10:16.660Also under assault, everything President Trump does, and this is why the Justice Department is under siege with the almost 200 lawsuits against President Trump's Article II powers.
00:10:26.780Now, Alina Habab, one of President Trump's closest lawyers in confidence, has been doing a great job as the acting – or I guess the interim U.S.
00:10:45.780Mike, explain to the audience what's going on because this is quite a confusing situation.
00:10:50.360She's there on an interim basis, I guess an acting basis, been doing a great job.
00:10:54.340How is she being removed by these kind of radical neo-Marxist judges, federal judges in New Jersey working with Hakeem Jeffries, sir?
00:11:02.520Yes, U.S. attorneys are generally nominated by the president in consultation with the home state senators through the blue slips where the home state senators have a veto over the U.S. attorney nomination because they want to be able to hand select the prosecutor who would prosecute their corruption case, the district court judge who would oversee their corruption case, and the U.S. marshal that would escort them to prison.
00:11:35.640But regardless, the president, through his attorney general, can appoint a U.S. attorney for 120 days.
00:11:43.400We saw this with Judge Jeanine Pirro in D.C.
00:11:47.260We saw this with Alina Hoppe in New Jersey.
00:11:50.680We saw this with other U.S. attorneys around the country.
00:11:53.760And then after that 120-day appointment, if the U.S. attorney is not nominated and confirmed by the Senate, there's a statute, I think it's unconstitutional, but there's a statute that lets the district court judges in the district where the U.S. attorney rules, they get a pick.
00:12:14.620They get a vote to pick whether the U.S. attorney stays or goes.
00:12:18.220Because in the past, these judges have generally been very deferential to the attorney general and the president because this is a U.S. attorney.
00:12:27.560It's the chief law enforcement officer of that district.
00:12:30.620Well, we're seeing a precedent set in this Trump 47 administration where these Democrat activist judges, whether they're in New York or now New Jersey, are trying to fire these U.S. attorneys.
00:12:49.220In New Jersey, there are 17 district court judges.
00:12:54.080Fifteen of them are appointed by Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
00:12:59.020So at 10 o'clock this morning, right now, they're meeting to decide to vote whether to get rid of Alina Haba.
00:13:05.560And this is after House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries posted a post on X a couple days ago calling for these 17 New Jersey district court judges to get rid of Alina Haba.
00:13:20.860And the reason, because Alina Haba indicted a House Democrat member who allegedly assaulted federal immigration officers.
00:13:32.660So this is purely political by Hakeem Jeffries.
00:13:36.280So I just last night filed a House ethics complaint from the Article 3 project against Hakeem Jeffries because he is trying to get these 17 New Jersey federal judges to violate their judicial ethics.
00:13:53.860Canons 2, 3, and 5 of the Code of Conduct for United States judges makes it illegal for judges to make the political considerations that Hakeem Jeffries has urged them to make by firing U.S. Attorney Alina Haba because she brought an indictment against a Democrat House member for allegedly assaulting a federal ICE agent.
00:14:17.100So we'll see what happens today. That ethics complaint is going to go against Hakeem Jeffries. That's in the process.
00:14:24.400And I would say to these 17 district court judges in New Jersey, if they follow Hakeem Jeffries' recommendation and fire U.S. Attorney Alina Haba today, they will also face judicial misconduct complaints, 17 of them, from the Article 3 project.
00:14:41.200But part of this is that we haven't called in the district judges in D.C. to be deposed openly in front of the American people.
00:14:53.740Anyway, Mike, stick around. We've got to get to the bottom of this. Short break. Back in a moment.
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00:17:31.960So Mike Davis, over the weekend with Tulsi Gabbard, what's happening on the Epstein situation.
00:17:37.500You had a coup. This, quite frankly, is about who governs us.
00:17:41.860Is when someone's elected to the office of the president with the powers of the presidency,
00:17:47.500that you've done such an incredible job at Article III,
00:17:51.120buttressing and saying in that interregnum we had for those number of years,
00:17:54.660working with Project 2025 and Russ Vogt and others,
00:17:59.260to say, hey, he's chief executive officer of the United States.
00:19:59.760They control New York and New York City.
00:20:02.560And you're not going to deport 10 to 20 million illegal alien invaders.
00:20:06.760Hell, you just had a guy get shot in the face, right?
00:20:09.320You're not going to do that unless you have hammers as U.S. attorneys going against these corrupt Marxist, neo-Marxist Democratic politicians.
00:20:17.840Sir, so I thought we actually – the blue slip thing was something we kind of waved off a couple of years ago.
00:20:22.740So when I was the chief counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I was able to push very hard for then-chairman and now-chairman Chuck Grassley to not give blue slip vetoes for federal circuit judge nominees because they touch more than one state.
00:20:41.600But for U.S. attorney, U.S. marshal, district court judges, like I say, there would be 100 senator revolts if these home state senators lost the ability to hand-select the prosecutor who would prosecute their corruption trial, the judge who would oversee the corruption trial, and the U.S. marshal who would escort them to prison.
00:21:02.340So blue slips for district court, U.S. attorney, and U.S. marshal are not going away probably ever.
00:21:08.560But for circuit court judges, they lost the veto power.
00:21:13.520You still have to do consultation with the home state senators before you nominate a federal appellate judge nominee.
00:21:22.700But that's the reason we confirmed a near record number of judges, including federal appellate judges, and President Trump's first term is because we got rid of the blue slip veto for federal circuit judges.
00:21:42.800What is the call to action this morning?
00:21:44.560Is there anything that posse should do to assist this?
00:21:46.960This is occurring right now with these 15 of these 17 judges making a decision whether they want to get rid of her or not.
00:21:54.840Is there anything for the war and posse to do in coordination with Article 3?
00:21:59.500Well, unfortunately, you can't call these judges because – and that makes – this is even more weird.
00:22:04.620You have 17 judges deciding whether the president gets to keep his U.S. attorney in New Jersey, Alina Hoppe, and there's nothing we can do about it.
00:22:13.960This is – it shows you how unconstitutional this is.
00:22:17.840Usually when the president picks someone, you can call the White House switchboard or the Senate confirms someone.
00:22:23.500You can call your home state senators, but you can't really call these judges.
00:22:42.280Or is this something technical you can jam him up that he can't use his powers as minority leader?
00:22:47.120It is a clear violation of the House ethics rules for a House member, particularly the top House Democrat, to strong arm 17 federal judges to fire a United States attorney because that United States attorney brought a federal indictment through a grand jury against a Democrat House member for allegedly assaulting federal immigration officers.
00:23:17.120That is a clear-cut House ethics violation.
00:23:23.260Mike, thank you so much for joining us.
00:23:30.560And by the way, President Trump's done this a lot to have these acting U.S. attorneys, and she's done a fantastic job in New Jersey, which you can imagine, no easy area.
00:23:40.500This is where Scott Pressler in the persistence movement is up there right now.
00:23:44.700They believe that New Jersey is going to be the next Pennsylvania as Pennsylvania becomes the next Ohio as far as registrations and get out the vote.
00:23:58.020And I understand that there is more, perhaps, that you are going to come out with next week.
00:24:04.280And I was told that that's why they raided Mar-a-Lago, that they wanted to find the Trump-Russia documents that indicated there was absolutely no collusion and that there was no evidence to even start such an investigation.
00:24:18.920But Trump didn't have it there in Mar-a-Lago, but that's why they raided his house in 2022.
00:24:27.520I don't have the details on the specifics of the Mar-a-Lago raid itself.
00:24:33.280Those are within the possession of the FBI.
00:24:35.620But there's no question in my mind that this intelligence community assessment that President Obama ordered be published, which contained a manufactured intelligence document.
00:24:48.300It's worse than even politicization of intelligence.
00:24:51.180It was manufactured intelligence that sought to achieve President Obama and his team's objective, which was undermining President Trump's presidency and subverting the will of the American people.
00:25:01.580So, yes, next week we will be releasing more detailed information about how exactly this took place and the extent to which this information was sought to be hidden from the American people, hidden from officials who would be in a position to do something about it.
00:25:20.160And that's really the point here that I think is most important, Maria.
00:25:23.260And you said it in your opening, accountability is essential for the future of our country, for the American people to have any sense of trust in the integrity of our democratic republic.
00:25:35.460Accountability, action, prosecution, indictments for those who are responsible for trying to steal our democracy is essential for us to make sure that this never happens to our country again.
00:25:47.920I mean, the president last night on true social went all in, including that far be it for me to say it's over the top, over the top artificial intelligence on Obama.
00:26:05.780Jim, we're going to talk about Ukraine.
00:26:07.260We've got many geopolitical issues to talk to you about, but a lot of them get back to this whole situation in 15 and 16 with the intelligence apparatus.
00:26:17.200Listen, unbelievably understand they didn't stop Trump from winning, so they had to come about it a different way.
00:27:00.860One of my favorite Tulsi clips is she's doing, she was in a live fire exercise.
00:27:04.220You know, she's active duty military, and she changed the clip on an MR4 in the obstacle course while she was, you know, rolling and so forth.
00:27:14.820And they've done this, I say they, this is obviously coming from the intelligence community.
00:27:19.120She's the head of the intelligence community.
00:27:20.900These were not just loose accusations.
00:27:22.700This was not just, oh, maybe we're going to take a closer look at this.
00:27:25.640She had, you know, I hate to use cliches, but she had the receipts.
00:27:28.060She had intelligence community documents that were released and other descriptions, et cetera, that point directly at this conspiracy.
00:27:35.700Now, the thing that, now, by the way, after 10 years of this, you know, special counsel, Robert Mueller, you know, inspector general, you know, Jim Jordan seems like a nice guy, but, you know, 10 years of talk is enough.
00:28:03.020You could be, you could have a very tangential role, but if you're part of a conspiracy, you can get dragged in and charged with some of the highest charges that will be applied to the conspiracy itself.
00:30:17.260We've got a massive conspiracy as a coup to remove President Trump from office after he legitimately won in 2017, 16 and 17, and it continued on.
00:30:40.800The voters, the will of the people, or this apparatus we call the deep state, which is the interconnection of the intelligence services, law enforcement, national security, and the military, and finance.
00:30:53.400Jim Rickards, I want to just hit rewind for a second.
00:30:59.120Folks, this is the reason Tulsi Gabbard's been getting lit up in the press, in the Langley Bugle, right?
00:31:05.460This is the reason that the Langley Bugle, what we call the Washington Post, right?
00:31:10.920David Ignatius and that crowd have been lighting her up and saying how great the CIA is and how tremendous the CIA is and what a great job they did in Israel.
00:31:17.900This weekend, folks, the Times of Israel, okay?
00:31:24.500The Times of Israel, Axios, and Mediate all did huge stories of how the White House has had a belly full of Netanyahu, that he's out of control, not just pushing for a continuation of regime change war with the Persians, but he's out of control everywhere from shelling Catholic churches to what's going on.
00:31:43.840Instead of being focused in Gaza, just kind of random violence in Gaza all over.
00:31:48.240And the description from the White House is he's a madman, okay?
00:31:53.540Tulsi Gabbard has been getting lit up because the CIA, in conjunction with the Mossad, came up with the urgent, the urgency that we had to get into with the Persians.
00:32:03.300Jim Rickards, we know she's a serious person.
00:32:09.480She can take in coming, as she has over the last couple months, and then delivered a bombshell, a bombshell that President Trump got on board early.
00:32:16.820But last night, he went next level of his enthusiasm for this, including having this little film put together with Obama being actually incarcerated.
00:32:26.760I want to go back to your – you're saying they're smart in the way they're doing this, given your knowledge of the intelligence community, and particularly going directly to a conspiracy into RICO, using the RICO statutes to go over this.
00:32:40.220Can you continue on your analysis, sir?
00:32:43.940So the first point we made is conspiracy widens the net, so people tangentially involved can be kind of hauled in to the core of the conspiracy and face those charges because they contributed to it.
00:32:54.620But more importantly, it extends the statute of limitations because the immediate reaction to some of this was, yeah, maybe, but it was 2016.
00:33:02.220In 2016, that was nine years ago, the statute's five years or seven years, depending on the offense.
00:33:08.180That's not how it works in a conspiracy.
00:33:10.120You start the statute of limitations from the last act, and that would be at least the rate of Mar-a-Lago.
00:33:15.360If I were a lawyer – I happen to be a lawyer – if I were a lawyer to any of these potential defendants, I would say, keep off the phone and don't talk to any of the other people.
00:34:11.720So my point is they've really thought this through, anticipated all the objections or all the potential defenses, and structured it in such a way that those defenses fall down.
00:34:21.520And the last point, I encourage the war-run posse, read what Tulsi Gabbard actually released.
00:34:28.420It was kind of a one-pager, tons of documents behind it.
00:34:32.280But what she actually released, again, serious person.
00:34:56.480They've knocked them down before they can even be raised.
00:34:59.120I would expect in due course, but maybe sooner than later, grand juries, indictments, trials, and some convictions.
00:35:06.580Jim, given you know that community very well and you know geopolitics very well, when someone as serious as Tulsi Gabbard, DNI, who has 17 or 18 of these massive intelligence apparatuses report to her,
00:35:24.360when she uses the word coup and she uses the word treasonous conspiracy, how serious should the intelligence community and those that perpetrated these crimes take this, sir?
00:35:40.080I mean, unless you're pulling a trigger somewhere, you know, coup and treason, that's as bad as it gets.
00:35:45.980And again, that's one of the few crimes mentioned in the Constitution.
00:35:49.100So, which means that you could be looking at very long prison sentences at a minimum.
00:35:54.700By the way, the conspiracy went on for years.
00:35:56.660I talked about the statute of limitations, but, you know, through the special counsel, through Mueller, through the Mar-a-Lago raid, behind the scenes, people were still planning these things.
00:36:07.080Like I said, the SWAT team, the FBI SWAT team didn't just show up in Mar-a-Lago.
00:36:12.200So there were more conversations related to that.
00:36:14.720And Obama, not only is Obama not off the hook, he appears to be at the center of it.
00:36:19.420You go through the chronology that Tulsi Gabbard laid out, it was very clear, where the intelligence community said the Russians had nothing to do with interference with the 2016 election.
00:36:30.860Either, you know, kind of hacking voting machines or, but anything really, you know, internet, social media agents, it had nothing to do with it.
00:36:41.300That's what they said, in two assessments, there was one from the CIA and one from the FBI.
00:36:46.600And then the White House, with Obama in the room, said, no, change it.
00:36:52.780They introduced the Steele dossier, Christopher Steele, the MI6, well, he wasn't the Moscow station chief.
00:37:01.300He ran the Russian desk in London, but the head MI6 agent on the Russian file made it up.
00:37:09.580By the way, the history of intelligence operators making things up is as long as the history of intelligence.
00:37:14.460So some intelligence is solid and good, but, you know, they make things up for propaganda reasons, sort of steer you in the wrong direction, et cetera.
00:37:21.280It's, you know, what Angleton, I actually met a company, Shakespeare, originally called the wilderness of mirrors.
00:37:27.040I mean, when you're in it, you get it is a wilderness of mirrors.
00:38:08.400What's obvious in the audience and Grace and Moe, I think we did it over the weekend, but I want to do it again to make sure the war room posse gets every opportunity and availability to read the documents as they come out.
00:38:19.320Tulsi's kind of cover letter or cover post and then all the different documents.
00:38:24.180You should read them, and we're going to be putting up, and I'll be putting up on Getter, all types of analysis.
00:38:28.940Like I said, General Flynn is going to join us.
00:38:37.640What comes out in these emails, the hatred of Trump is – you can almost taste it, their hatred of Trump.
00:38:46.620But their hatred of Russia is at the same level.
00:38:50.540If this changed the arc of history, if this had not happened, and because what they wanted to do to make sure there could never be a rapprochement, that we could do a reverse niction.
00:38:59.860They could never be a rapprochement between the Trump administration, the United States, and the Russian people that could take them out of the sphere with the Chinese Communist Party so that together we could figure out how to deal with the existential threat to the United States, which is the CCP.
00:39:17.100We know that, and people that watch your show know that.
00:39:22.400There wouldn't be two million dead people, dead – and that is Russian troops, Ukrainian troops, and Ukrainian civilians if this had not been allowed to happen, if we had broken this, if this had been made visible immediately.
00:39:38.020And today, you know, the president on I think the day after Labor Day, as we continue right now, secondary sanctions are going to come in against the Chinese Communist Party, full economic warfare against Russia, and this Ukraine situation only gets worse and worse and worse.
00:39:54.280We played in the cold open Lindsey Graham last night so offensively.
00:39:58.660He's tying what President Trump is trying to do to Scotty Scheffler's huge victory in the Open Championship yesterday saying, hey, Trump's giving them my ass-whooping.
00:40:10.220You've got Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham.
00:40:35.380And this kind of points at people like Vindman, Fiona Hill, a lot of the so-called Russia experts who were witnesses at Trump's first impeachment trial or impeachment proceeding, which was based on a phone call to Zelensky.
00:40:49.740So we're all kind of creatures of our academic training, at least if you're at that expert level and you went through a certain period.
00:40:58.900You know, I was in graduate school in international relations in the 70s before I went to law school.
00:41:42.820We were telling them how to run a central bank, how to set up a stock exchange, how to do basically IPOs of all the wealth in Russia so that we could acquire it ourselves, break up Russia into separate republics.
00:41:54.560This was the heyday of the Russia haters.
00:42:29.660One of the most interesting things I've ever heard from a Russian was he said, you know, the problem with you Americans, you think we're like you because we're white.
00:42:39.560But Russia is a completely different civilization, different religion, different history, et cetera.
00:42:44.920But so when Putin came along, the Vindmans and the Fiona Hills of the world hated him because he upset the apple cart.
00:43:42.180They meaning, you know, basically the neocons, the Victoria Newlands, the Fiona Hills, George Kent, basically the entire foreign policy establishment.