Steve Kamb is joined by Josh Hawley and Dave Bratwright to discuss the latest in the Trump/Russia scandal and why the FBI should be held accountable for their conduct in the matter. Also, the War Room is back with a new cold open featuring Josh and Dave!
00:01:24.000I think this could be one of the greatest civil liberty violations in American history under the color of government authority.
00:01:29.000You've got a predicate that's open that, according to the FBI agents I showed to the experts, the prosecutors, it doesn't meet the standard.
00:01:39.000The evidence is, oh, Steve, you were on CNN.
00:01:41.000That was the evidence for literally opening the investigation.
00:01:44.000They're trying to criminalize in this memo when they open it up in April of 2022, 15 months after January 6th, in just four days after Donald Trump is announced, he's going to run for reelection.
00:01:58.000This investigation, if you thought what happened on January 6th with the electors was bad, you could have done it on the 7th or the 8th or 9th of 2021.
00:02:05.000They wait a whole year until Donald Trump raises his hand and says, I'm getting back in the arena.
00:03:42.000I just got off of the phone with some senior law enforcement officials.
00:03:46.000The FBI is internally now investigating some of its own personnel for their conduct in Arctic Frost, meaning they're looking at the possibility their own agents engaged in criminality by opening up this investigation or conducting or doing things in the investigation.
00:04:01.000The entire unit that ran this has been dismantled.
00:04:05.000Most every agent that played a role in this has been fired.
00:04:09.000This is unlike the FBI in the past, which would just sweep things under the rug and say nothing to look here.
00:04:14.000There is accountability internally going on.
00:04:17.000And if the FBI refers people for prosecution, Pam Bondi will be able to do to maybe people who committed crimes here, which he's now done for James Comey and John Bolton and Letitia James.
00:04:30.000And I suspect with the referral that happened earlier this week, John Brennan could be someone who's facing an indictment soon as well.
00:04:37.000So you're getting an accountability lens, which never happened in the first Trump administration.
00:04:42.000People got away with all sorts of crimes in the first Trump administration.
00:04:45.000No one really got anything more than a slap on the wrist.
00:04:48.000This time you're starting to see real accountability, firings, criminal investigations, prosecution.
00:04:54.000So this looks a little different than the frustrated storyline you and I have covered for the last 10 years.
00:05:48.000In the interview I did with Cash Patel 10 days ago, he said, listen, we are stamping out the notion that the FBI settles political scores or that they go after their political enemies.
00:05:57.000You only see the crime and the evidence.
00:05:59.000You don't look at the person or the political affiliation.
00:06:01.000And we are reorienting a large organization.
00:06:04.000Now, I want to give you a little timetable on this.
00:06:06.000I know Grassi mentioned the whistleblowers.
00:06:08.000It makes it look like Chuck Grassi broke this whole story.
00:06:10.000Cash Patel first found these documents back in March.
00:06:13.000They're part of the grand conspiracy case.
00:06:15.000Remember, you and I have been talking about that.
00:06:17.000The documents that just made were made public because they go through a review process and that process is always really slow with the Justice Department.
00:06:23.000They were in the Justice Department's hands in spring and summer.
00:06:27.000So the Justice Department has been looking at this for some time.
00:06:30.000We just didn't know about it until it became public.
00:07:01.000And, you know, one FBI official I talked to today said what they did, they took a boat into the ocean and they were towing to find any license plate they could tag on Donald Trump's car.
00:07:10.000They were simply looking for anything.
00:07:12.000You don't do criminal investigations that way.
00:07:15.000You have to have a reason to look at Americans.
00:07:17.000That didn't happen here, according to the people who've reviewed this evidence.
00:07:20.000You've been on top of this more than others.
00:07:25.000Directionally, because they put out another 2,000 pages, I think, last night or the night before.
00:07:31.000Where is this investigation going to go and what are the next, you believe, major reveals we're going to see?
00:07:37.000I think some of the people who were part of Arctic Frost are going to get both congressional and grand jury subpoenas.
00:07:44.000People will be hauled before the court and forced to answer.
00:07:47.000And I want to remind people something that Jim Jordan said on our show last night.
00:07:50.000Jack Smith's two top deputies have taken the Fifth Amendment, have taken the Fifth Amendment, prosecutors have taken the Fifth Amendment about what they did in this case.
00:08:19.000There was about 20 or 30 that have gone out in the last couple of weeks.
00:08:22.000The big conspiracy is now being put together.
00:08:24.000Now, whether a grand jury indicts, whether you get convictions, we'll see.
00:08:28.000But they're looking at a decade as one criminal machine, that the Comey, McGarland, Jack Smith era was an ongoing criminal enterprise like a mob or mafia or drug kingpin.
00:08:41.000And the crimes were violating innocent American civil liberties to try to score a political score in politics.
00:10:42.000But is there at Maine Justice a problem that we still don't have just enough senior level bodies that are senior prosecutors?
00:10:51.000Because this case is going to have enormous complexity.
00:10:53.000It's going to have to have a massive team.
00:10:54.000Do you think we've got the manpower because we are burning daylight?
00:10:58.000Do you feel that we're making strides in the manpower issue?
00:11:02.000You and I talked candidly about this three weeks ago.
00:11:06.000I think we got the Justice Department's attention.
00:11:08.000I heard a lot after I made that appearance on your show, which shows how many people watch your show every day.
00:11:13.000There is a ramping up of hiring and of really skilled people.
00:11:17.000They're bringing some retired FBI agents back to come back, you know, on contracts.
00:11:21.000They're bringing former prosecutors back.
00:11:23.000They are staffing up, and I think they're actually now ready for that process.
00:11:27.000And I think when they hit that January grand, by the way, there are grand juries right now gathering the evidence that will get shifted to Florida in January.
00:11:34.000But there is a lot of activity that wasn't going on three, four weeks ago.
00:11:37.000And I actually think the conversation you and I had on your show had a profound effect.
00:11:42.000And that's why we do these things, what we do.
00:12:02.000Because you and the Just the News team were putting out updates and articles and analysis, breaking news and analysis and observations all the time.
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00:17:45.160It'll be announced, sir, Mr. President.
00:17:46.420I thought it was an amazing meeting. He's a great leader.
00:17:52.000A great leader of a very powerful, very strong country, China.
00:17:56.300And we, what can I say? We have, it was an outstanding group of decisions, I think, that was made.
00:18:08.080A lot of decisions were made. There wasn't too much left out there.
00:18:11.900And we've come to conclusion on many very important points, and we'll be handing that to you in a little while.
00:18:18.560And, you know, we're having, because there was a lot of, a lot of different things, many of them very important.
00:18:24.400We're, we're in agreement on so many elements, large amounts, tremendous amounts of the soybeans and other farm products are going to be purchased immediately, starting immediately.
00:18:41.840And if you notice, President Xi authorized yesterday for China to start, did you know that, right, China to start buying in very large quantities of soybeans and other things, which I appreciated.
00:19:32.440I think what we've done throughout this trade war is we've basically gone back to the status quo ante, right?
00:19:37.040And I think from Beijing's perspective, that's a win.
00:19:39.080I think part of what's troubling about the approach to these trade negotiations is that we are not focusing on the big strategic trade and macroeconomic issues that ostensibly animated this trade war in the first place.
00:19:51.480Instead, I think what Beijing has done successfully.
00:19:54.040I think things that are longstanding concerns, China's non-market unfair trade practices, the trade imbalances that President Trump in particular seemed quite concerned about, we are not really addressing those.
00:20:05.200I think instead what Beijing has done has orchestrated a game of whack-a-mole for the Trump administration, where we are focused on relatively narrow issues like soybeans, like TikTok, that are either sector-specific or firm-specific.
00:20:17.780The other thing that I think is missing in this approach, too, is that their approach to China is suffering from what I call trade myopia, right, or trade and tech myopia.
00:20:25.560These are the two issues that we are really focused on in these discussions.
00:20:28.320And what's omitted from these discussions, then, are some of the bigger strategic issues that are at play in the relationship, such as China's coercive activities in the South China Sea, or it's striking that the president mentioned that Taiwan didn't come up at all.
00:20:51.880Because it's not that you don't want the two sides to talk about this issue.
00:20:54.540It's that you want the U.S. to send a signal of consistency and reaffirm our longstanding policies on Taiwan.
00:21:00.320Now, going into this meeting, of course, there was a lot of concern that Taiwan, if it's not that they could be part of the negotiations and that President Trump could change our longstanding policy.
00:21:08.980So it's good that that didn't happen, but you don't necessarily want to omit it altogether from the conversation.
00:21:14.160So I think you're going to see a big difference.
00:21:16.600We have, we've had discussions on many of the elements that you're talking about all the time here.
00:21:23.360You're asking me questions, and most of those things were, I think, agreed to, for the most part.
00:21:33.320I think we agreed to almost, almost everything in a very acceptable form.
00:21:38.540I wouldn't say everything was discussed because of the things that probably, in retrospect, we could have discussed, and we didn't, for some reason, didn't come up.
00:21:47.000But if you have any questions, let me know.
00:24:21.320I think we have it pretty well locked up.
00:24:24.760But, you know, we have more than anybody.
00:24:26.980When I see them testing, I say, well, if they're going to test, I guess we have to test.
00:24:31.820I'd like to see a denuclearization, because we have so many, and Russia is second, and China is third, and China will catch up within four or five years.
00:24:44.700I think de-escalation would be, they would call it denuclearization, would be a tremendous thing, and it's something.
00:24:52.400We are actually talking to Russia about that, and China would be added to that if we do something.
00:25:05.160Look, I think one thing about Trump that we all have learned is that the highs are never as high as the highs, and the lows are never as low as the lows.
00:25:11.980He makes huge threats, and then he backs off them.
00:25:13.860He makes huge claims of progress, and then it turns out not so much.
00:25:18.060For example, in the first Trump administration, the Chinese also agreed to buy a lot of soybeans, but then they never bought the soybeans.
00:25:24.180And so you have to see how this all unfolds in real time.
00:25:27.940But what was important to Trump was getting this rare-earth mineral thing resolved, because that is a huge problem for us, because we just need those.
00:25:36.500Those are critical ingredients in so many electronics, particularly, that we make.
00:25:41.200So it was definitely a good meeting, no doubt about that.
00:25:45.000The question is, is it really going to amount to much when the dust settles?
00:25:48.020What I worry about in the short term right now is that I think the approach that we have from the administration is basically friction without competition, right?
00:25:54.480That we are still not organizing ourselves in a disciplined and methodical way for the competition with China.
00:25:59.360What concerns me, I would say, throughout my career, our strategic position vis-a-vis China has just steadily eroded over time, right?
00:26:06.380I think that's true if you look at the technology domain.
00:26:08.520And one of the areas that really concerns me is the military domain, right?
00:26:11.600And there's a lot of talk right now about the administration's forthcoming national defense strategy.
00:26:16.200China has been considered the pacing threat for the last two national defense strategies.
00:26:20.020But a bipartisan commission looked at this last year, and they said China continues to outpace us in a growing number of domains and has negated our advantages.
00:26:37.180I mean, they have the largest Navy in the world, right?
00:26:39.980They have considerable Air Force prowess.
00:26:42.000They're going through a dramatic expansion of their nuclear capabilities.
00:26:44.760So it's a comprehensive, dramatic military modernization program that's the most dramatic since World War II, right?
00:26:51.360And unlike the United States that has global responsibilities, we have to deal with Ukraine and the Middle East, China can just focus on us.
00:26:57.780From their perspective, when they think about military contingencies, we are priority number one, two, and three, right?
00:27:03.160So there's a level of focus that allows them to then reverse engineer what do they need to do to catch up to the United States.
00:27:08.100And their focus remains China and the neighborhood.
00:27:11.600This is talking about Bridge Colby, this new national security plan that focuses on China, but just China, not as a global threat, really as a threat to East Asia.
00:27:29.480The questions like we had last night, the rare earths, unless I'm misreading it, looks like a massive win.
00:27:35.820Where they're going to renew or immediately start to ship the magnets and the heavy rare earths, which allows our production lines to continue on, that'll at least be for a year.
00:30:57.480Also, there was no discussion of Taiwan, which we were told in advance that Xi was adamant about,
00:31:03.220particularly since he just purged the military, that he's got to have a framework for us backing off the defense of Taiwan.
00:31:08.760And then, I guess most importantly, this situation where they kind of had us because the globalists sold all of our processing capability a decade ago,
00:31:19.100that they're going to continue to ship us rare earths, and particularly the magnets and the other things we need
00:31:25.740for full production lines up in Detroit and other places.
00:35:59.640Because they have a phrase, circumstances change.
00:36:02.420If you negotiate a deal—this is why Trump took two years with Lighthizer and Navarro and negotiated the finest deal you're ever going to see.
00:36:11.080Fair to everybody, but incorporated China into kind of the world's economy.
00:36:14.840You know, no more state-owned industries.
00:36:17.620No more using it to drive down prices.
00:36:20.140Just a brilliant—you know, it's the only Lighthizer and Navarro can do.
00:36:23.340After two years, and I mean of daily in the trenches of negotiation, they tore it up in front of our face.
00:36:29.780And they've never—whether it's Obama or Biden or President Trump, they've never lived by a—like the guy said on the package, which was magnificent.
00:38:35.380We're talking deals and how you actually—Donald Trump is muscle, right?
00:38:40.280So he knows because he's done so many real estate deals all over the world, but particularly New York City where they're always trying to bait and switch it, right?
00:38:46.640So he knows about the execution of this thing.
00:38:48.900But on the surface of it, it's kind of breathtaking how he went in there with so much stacked against us.
00:38:56.260And he really looks like he's come out, particularly with chips, depending on what that is, particularly with chips and particularly with Taiwan, sir.
00:39:16.460But we only do it on behalf of the richest 10 percent for the artificial intelligence guys, the big money guys, and the Wall Street guys.
00:39:24.860And so right now the message has to be to them when it comes to this rare earth kind of thing, the piece we're missing here is a command economy for the U.S. people and for our defense needs going forward.
00:39:36.720No one's moving the chips at that level in our favor, right?
00:39:40.400In World War II, when you needed to get something done, the Russians moved 15,000 large firms to the east, thousands more small firms, a million workers and scientists, and they moved it all 1,000 miles.
00:40:01.120It's just a matter of when you take it.
00:40:02.640So I think Trump also has to announce the forward expectations for the modern capitalist that your time's up, right?
00:40:11.820You better get independent of China right now because I'm not – the left commentator on MSNBC gave it away a little bit in terms of we have some huge wins here.
00:40:23.200But the big pieces are still on the chessboard, and that game is coming up, and that's the brutal game, and that's going to require sacrifice.
00:40:30.780I don't – I don't think that's the strategy.
00:40:56.880But the United States is a Pacific power.
00:41:01.800The giants of the late 19th century – remember, these guys like Secretary Hay, et cetera, they had been – he had been Lincoln's secretary.
00:41:11.860Back in the day, women were not secretaries.
00:41:13.600He was the – actually, I think he was 20, 21 years old.
00:41:16.060He was the secretary to Lincoln and saw up close and personal Lincoln like nobody else saw him in the Civil War.
00:41:24.100The young captains, lieutenants and captains that fought in the Civil War as they came to have real power in the late 19th century, these men and women were giants, almost as gigantic as the Civil War generation and the revolutionary and founding.
00:41:47.040They understood something, that we weren't just going to be a continental power.
00:41:54.400When they said manifest destiny, they looked across the Pacific to Asia.
00:42:00.340They looked at those three island chains.
00:42:02.980We actually went to a war with the Spanish about this.
00:42:07.180They saw that the Pacific was – as the Mediterranean was to the Roman Empire, the vast Pacific – not the Atlantic – the vast Pacific was going to be our Mediterranean, that we, quite frankly, were going to move away from the old world and that a new world existed, the one that Columbus had originally gone looking for.
00:42:34.580And what they did, the manifest destiny, went across the Pacific to the island chains.
00:42:40.860It is they understood that the central power of the United States was not simply to be a continental power but to be a global power.
00:42:50.640And the way that you're a global power is you must become a Pacific power.
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00:44:31.580Of course, the tariffs are helping a lot.
00:44:33.760But the IRS, if they think that the bid in the ass between what they think you owe and what you think you owe is probably a gap, you're not going to close that gap.
00:44:43.840And, you know, the tie goes to the runner, which is the IRS.
00:44:47.880So if you fail to file, if you're late filing, or if you got a letter from them that they're kind of saying, hey, you know, here's the dough you owe us, don't think, unless you get somebody in the middle of that, that can help you kind of negotiate.
00:46:03.660It was a physical thing that manifested itself.
00:46:07.740That's why it's called Manifest Destiny.
00:46:09.880But the Manifest Destiny did not end at the shores of Washington State, Oregon, and California.
00:46:16.200They had a vision that it went across the Pacific and that vast Pacific, which is bigger than the Eurasian landmass, would become like the Mediterranean was to the Roman Empire.
00:46:38.420And also, it's not just about expansion of trade, but it's also about defense.
00:46:42.880So if you look at what McKinley was saying about the Spanish-American War, which is how the Philippines and Guam became part of the United States in 1898,
00:46:52.220he specifically said if the Dons, which is what he called the Spanish, had control over that area, they could hit Oregon.
00:46:59.560They could hit the mainland United States.
00:47:01.540It was very much the center of the Pacific being the point of vulnerability for the U.S.
00:47:05.840And so after, and that's exactly what happened.
00:47:08.580The Japanese got control over the center of the Pacific, and that put them in a position to hit Pearl Harbor.
00:47:14.700And the 100,000 Americans died fighting their way, island by island, beach by beach,
00:47:19.620getting back across the Pacific to try to create this zone of peace so that there could be prosperity
00:47:24.560and that the U.S. could just continue to be the U.S.
00:47:31.220This is purely the way to create peace and prosperity across the Pacific.
00:47:35.680It's the base of the free and open Indo-Pacific that we talk about now.
00:47:39.700And the outcome was after the war, the people of Saipan, Tinian, what's now the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands,
00:47:46.580voted to join the United States of America.
00:47:49.400They became the newest part of the United States in 1986, and they believe in America.
00:47:55.820But they've got, China knows how important it is to the U.S.
00:47:59.700And so they've been systematically, through political warfare, trying to undermine the U.S.'s position in Guam and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana's.
00:48:07.060And still today, Chinese can arrive without a visa in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands because of their influence over the local leadership.
00:48:15.320And I'm just very concerned that the national defense strategy, which talks about, you know, sort of, if it is as reported,
00:48:23.300leaving kind of West Asia being not that important.
00:48:27.280There are Americans eight-hour flight west of Hawaii.
00:48:31.700And from what I've seen of things like hospital facilities, they do not have the capabilities to keep the U.S. military at that station.
00:48:41.540They're healthy in case of a fight, let alone the civilians.
00:48:44.120I think Bridge Colby's, I think it is, I don't think it includes that.
00:48:50.220I think they're saying that the threat of the Chinese Communist Party is really a, to become a hegemon in, you know, in East Asia, in the, you know, the Straits of Taiwan, in the South China Sea, and even in that part of the Pacific.
00:49:06.780It just doesn't look at them as, I think, a global threat to the United States of America, which I would disagree, given Latin America, the Caribbean, all of it.
00:49:14.760You're going to stick around for the second hour.
00:49:20.220The vision of these individuals and collectively this group that really led America, and you can see President Trump, like he was with Jackson in the first term, he's quite a taken with McKinley and actually the muscle that was put in to manifest destiny, right?
00:49:48.300What really, I would say, Dave Bratz, the beginning decades of really the Industrial Revolution, they already had a vision of what America was going to be.
00:50:07.900And they understood for the United States to be protected that Asia would be the dominant, you know, would dominate the 20th and 21st century.
00:50:21.000That's the giants whose shoulders we stand on.
00:50:23.840And we have an obligation to everyone that came before us.
00:50:28.180This is what Burke's dictum that we have, you know, because everybody talks about the children and grandchildren, obviously very important in America, and particularly the working class and middle class, have always sacrificed of themselves in the current time to make sure that prosperity and peace were there for future generations.
00:50:47.080That's why so many American generations have eventually, let's say, okay, we got to get on with this.
00:50:52.760We can't allow this to fester, and we can't let it get kicked down the road to our children and grandchildren.
00:52:33.300A former CIA, Pentagon, and White House advisor with an unmatched grasp of geopolitics and capital markets.
00:52:39.940Jim predicted Trump's Electoral College victory exactly 312 to 226, down to the actual number itself.
00:52:48.640Now he's issuing a dire warning about April 11th, a moment that could define Trump's presidency in your financial future.
00:52:56.840His latest book, Money GPT, exposes how AI is setting the stage for financial chaos, bank runs at lightning speeds, algorithm driven crashes, and even threats to national security.
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00:53:15.180This is Jim's flagship financial newsletter, Strategic Intelligence.