Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - June 23, 2023


Episode 109 LIVE: John Durham's Cover-Up – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Topics
DEI in military training DEI mandates in DOD DEI funding and amendments spending debate in Congress
Hosted by
Matt Gaetz
Mentioned
Bill Barr John Durham Joseph Mifsud Robert Mueller George Papadopoulos Jody Arrington Biden James Madison Mike Johnson Jordan Carlos Jimenez Donald Trump Adam Smith Jim Banks Don Bacon Azra Turk Kleinsmith Horsford Lockheed Martin Joseph Nibseth William Luther Pierce and 13 more
Episode 108 LIVE: Lying Lloyd Austin – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz Episode 110 LIVE: Don't Haiti My Florida – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Episode Stats


Length

37 minutes

Words per minute

141.46

Word count

5,274

Sentence count

339

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this episode of Firebrand, we continue our series on the National Defense Authorization Act of 2018, which was passed on a party-line vote by the House Armed Services Committee. In this episode, we discuss the impact of the bill, the debate over diversity and equity in the military, and the defense department's response to the growing need for diversity in the ranks. We also hear from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GAetz) and Rep. Jim Banks (D-GA) who testified on behalf of the defense authorization bill, which would ban the use of critical race theory in the United States military, as well as a new position called Chief of Staff to the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), which would eliminate the role of a diversity officer at the Department of Defense (DOD). Firebrand is a production of the Firebrand Podcast. Copyright 2019 Firebrand Media. All rights reserved. This episode was produced and edited by Firebrand. The opinions stated here are our own, not those of our companies, unless otherwise specified. We do not own any of the rights to any music used in this episode. If you enjoyed this episode please leave us a rating and review in the comments section below. Thank you for any amount you can manage to afford our sound quality and support our efforts to make sure we can keep bringing quality episodes like this to you in the future. We strive to make every episode better than the best possible listening experience possible. Thank you, and we appreciate the support we can get. - thank you for listening and supporting us in the process! - Tom Bell, Matt, Jim Banks, and Jim Banks Matt, Jeff Perla, and James Banks - Thank you so much for your support and support, and all the work you do to make this podcast possible. Tom Bell and all your support is so much appreciated! - Matt Gates -- Thank you. -- Tom Bell is a very special thanks to the late, very much appreciated, and much more! and the rest of the crew out there in the world, Matt Gates and the crew at the War Room for making this podcast. and . , Matt Gates, for his support is . Thank you! ( ) & , and , of the podcast, thanks to , Jim Banks and (

Transcript

Transcripts from "Firebrand - Matt Gaetz" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Thank you.
00:04:41.000 In battle, Congressman Matt Gates.
00:04:43.000 Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
00:04:50.000 Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem for the Democratic Party.
00:04:53.000 He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
00:04:56.000 So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.
00:05:00.000 If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!
00:05:09.000 You are in the right place!
00:05:10.000 This is the movement for you!
00:05:12.000 You ever watch this guy on television?
00:05:15.000 It's like a machine.
00:05:16.000 Matt Gaetz.
00:05:17.000 I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet.
00:05:21.000 Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.
00:05:25.000 They aren't really coming for me.
00:05:27.000 They're coming for you.
00:05:29.000 I'm just in the way.
00:05:30.000 I'm just in the way.
00:06:00.000 I'm just in the way.
00:06:30.000 I'm just in the way.
00:06:43.000 So I'm going to give you an update as to where all of that stands in this episode as well.
00:06:47.000 But first, I want to chat about the National Defense Authorization Act.
00:06:52.000 If you're a regular viewer of Firebrand, You have gone on this journey with us, exposing the grifter generals and the woke military, the radical gender ideology, the divisive racial ideology.
00:07:05.000 We want to put an end to that.
00:07:06.000 We love our military.
00:07:08.000 We respect our service members.
00:07:10.000 We understand that for America to be strong and free, our military has to reflect the values of the country and not the values of the CHAZ, which unfortunately we've seen from a small but unfortunately far too influential group of people at the Pentagon as part of the Biden administration.
00:07:28.000 So to break that down, first, I thought I'd give you a context.
00:07:35.000 Of just the broad scope of the cost of some of these DEI initiatives.
00:07:41.000 It's called diversity, equity, and inclusion, but that's a misnomer like so many things that we observe in Washington and in corporate culture.
00:07:50.000 In fact, DEI is the opposite of inclusion.
00:07:52.000 It's very divisive, and they're pushing it in the military.
00:07:56.000 My colleague, Jim Banks, Got into a little debate with Democrat lead on the committee, Adam Smith.
00:08:04.000 It was pretty interesting to see the perspectives.
00:08:07.000 I'm with Jim Banks.
00:08:08.000 Take a listen.
00:08:11.000 Six million man hours of DEI training that has occurred in the military under the Biden administration.
00:08:19.000 First of all, that would be person hours, not necessarily man hours.
00:08:22.000 We do have women serving in the military. 1.00
00:08:26.000 Which oddly kind of drives home the point of why it might be worth it to think about a world that isn't just your own world.
00:08:37.000 Oh my goodness, understand a world not your own.
00:08:41.000 That's what Adam Smith thinks that the purpose of the military is and unfortunately it's just this crazy virtue signal.
00:08:48.000 Banks and I continue to make the point throughout the hearing That the time that we have from our service members is precious.
00:08:55.000 And that training has to be used for things like cyber and AI, not LGBTQAI+. But the wokeism did have its defenders. 0.61
00:09:06.000 Representative Takudo made arguments in favor of critical race theory.
00:09:11.000 She said, we need it in the military because we can't possibly win battles in the absence of understanding how racist we all are.
00:09:18.000 Play the clip.
00:09:21.000 We have definitely made mistakes as a country.
00:09:24.000 And as I listen to the kinds of rhetoric I hear here and the amendments that I see today that we will be voting on, I am terrified for my children and more so I am saddened for our country that it looks very clearly we have not made any progress in learning from the mistakes of our past.
00:09:45.000 So fortunately, that was not the prevailing thinking at the hearing.
00:09:48.000 Matter of fact, there was an amendment by Congressman Waltz of Florida and myself to completely eliminate critical race theory in the military.
00:09:57.000 And I am proud to report to you that the Waltz-Gates amendment to vanquish CRT and the DOD passed.
00:10:04.000 It passed out of committee.
00:10:05.000 It's part of the bill.
00:10:07.000 That turned out to be a losing argument.
00:10:10.000 That was just made by Representative Takuto.
00:10:12.000 We also had discussion about this position, this chief diversity officer position.
00:10:17.000 Now, of all the officers we need, of all the special operators we need, of all the special warfare and irregular warfare that we have to prepare for, the pilots, the maintainers, the PJs, the load masters, they're spending an insane amount of money on these DEI officers.
00:10:37.000 Some of them make as much as $183,500 a year.
00:10:41.000 That's more than a member of Congress makes.
00:10:43.000 And so we passed amendments in this bill to completely eliminate the position of the DEI officer at DOD. And we capped the amount of salary that can be made for anyone that's working in this field At like around $50,000 so that it wouldn't be this place for people to go to make more money at the expense of some of the very important skills stacks and readiness capabilities that
00:11:13.000 we need to be on the razor's edge.
00:11:15.000 Salud Carbajal debated against, he's a congressman, a Democrat congressman from California, He debated against these amendments to get rid of the chief DEI official.
00:11:25.000 The amendments passed.
00:11:26.000 But here was the bizarre response from the Democrats.
00:11:31.000 You know, there's some people that were born on third base and they think they hit a triple.
00:11:37.000 And they carry that bias with them that, hey, everybody else should have hit a triple.
00:11:41.000 But they were born on third base. 0.83
00:11:46.000 Born on third base.
00:11:48.000 And that's really...
00:11:49.000 What the left wants to convert the Department of Defense into.
00:11:53.000 Another moral shaming enterprise.
00:11:56.000 Because we do plenty of that at the Department of Education, at the EPA. And it's really interesting.
00:12:02.000 When you look at every major institution that the left has consumed, they've functionally destroyed it.
00:12:08.000 And we can never allow that to happen to our military.
00:12:11.000 But there are still those in Congress who claim that the reason that we did not win in Afghanistan...
00:12:19.000 It was because we didn't have enough DEI and critical race theory.
00:12:22.000 This is that preposterous argument by my colleague, Democrat Congresswoman from California, Sareb Jacobs.
00:12:29.000 Play the clip.
00:12:31.000 Learning about systemic racism and cultural differences and bias, it's not only about cohesion within our military, it actually is about our military operations around the world.
00:12:44.000 Our failures in Afghanistan, the Sahel, Vietnam, are due in part to our superficial understanding of history, society, culture.
00:12:57.000 More woke is what they want.
00:12:59.000 So when you see people from the Biden administration come forward and say, oh, no, we don't want any of the wokeness in our military. 0.89
00:13:05.000 We're against that.
00:13:07.000 You have Sarah Jacobs, Democrat Congresswoman, close ally of President Biden, saying the quiet part out loud that this is their design.
00:13:16.000 This is their grand plan.
00:13:18.000 This is what they want.
00:13:19.000 And unfortunately, it may come at the expense of America's hegemony or safety and security.
00:13:27.000 We have to be able to hold the high ground, and this is not what's going to get it done.
00:13:31.000 Now, there's another feature of this argument that played out in the hearing.
00:13:34.000 Democrat Congressman Horsford says that, well, we have to have all these DEI officers at DOD because they exist in corporate America.
00:13:45.000 They exist at the defense contractors.
00:13:47.000 And amazingly, my Florida colleague, Carlos Jimenez, Republican, you're going to see him respond to Horsford by pointing out That a lot of these defense contractors only have the DEI obsession and the DEI officials because we require them to, by law.
00:14:05.000 Take a listen.
00:14:08.000 I hear from my colleagues all the time on the other side of the aisle, government should work more like a business.
00:14:13.000 Well, is Northrop Grumman wrong for having a Vice President of Chief Diversity?
00:14:19.000 Is Lockheed Martin wrong for having a Director of Enterprise Operations and Global Diversity and Inclusion?
00:14:27.000 Is Boeing wrong for having a President of Global Equity, Diversity and Inclusion?
00:14:33.000 Is Raytheon wrong for having a Chief Diversity Officer?
00:14:38.000 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:14:39.000 And much was made in the last discussion about the fact that major companies have DEI executives and the DOD requires DEI diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates of its contractors.
00:14:52.000 In 2020, the DOD issued a memorandum that requires all contractors to implement DEI training programs for their employees.
00:14:58.000 The memorandum states that the contractors must provide training on systemic racism, unconscious bias, and other cultural competencies to their employees who work on DOD contracts.
00:15:08.000 The training must be provided within 60 days of the award of a contract and must be recurring.
00:15:13.000 Additionally, the contractors must demonstrate that their compliance with DEI mandates through regular reporting.
00:15:19.000 So to say that these, you know, are they wrong or are they right, it's mandated by DOD. Thank you and I yield back.
00:15:30.000 What a face crush.
00:15:31.000 A terrific job by Carlos Jimenez to point out that so often these bad emergences of policy that exist in the private sector can actually be lashed back to too much government.
00:15:44.000 And the government making these demands of private entities in order to engage in government contracting.
00:15:50.000 Outstanding job.
00:15:52.000 It absolutely deflated the Horsford argument.
00:15:55.000 But here's the bad news.
00:15:57.000 While the NDAA does great legislative work to ban CRT completely, to get rid of these chief diversity officers, to stop the drain of resources away from our service members into these diversity programs, we did not achieve what I think would have been the most meaningful amendment to push back against DEI, and that is to totally defund it.
00:16:23.000 That's right.
00:16:23.000 I had an amendment in committee To say, no more funding at all, period.
00:16:29.000 Not one red cent for this DEI agenda that has been so misused and tortured and weaponized against people.
00:16:40.000 And unfortunately, two of my Republican colleagues on the committee joined with Democrats and blocked that amendment's passage.
00:16:49.000 Now, I have great respect for these colleagues of mine, Don Bacon of Nebraska and Mike Turner of of Ohio.
00:16:56.000 They voted in favor of the DEI funding that would have been entirely precluded by my amendment.
00:17:03.000 But I look forward to working with them to try to see if when this legislation gets to the floor, I can understand their concerns better because they didn't really offer a lot of criticism during the time allotted for debate.
00:17:15.000 General Bacon has put out a statement that he didn't want any amendment to be misconstrued that you couldn't kick racists out of the military.
00:17:23.000 And of course, if people show up and are virulently racist, they would be in violation of many other standards that have existed, gosh, some of which in practice or in writing since the days of the Revolutionary War.
00:17:36.000 Certainly since World War I, those standards have evolved and been developed, and they don't have to lean into DEI to ensure that we have the right protection and the right environment to keep our service members safe and focused on the mission.
00:17:51.000 And that ought to be our objective, not to try to tell people that they are somehow bad or oppressors or oppressed by virtue of their immutable traits, like the color of their skin.
00:18:04.000 But that argument wasn't enough for some Republicans, and it was not enough for Congresswoman Strickland. 0.85
00:18:10.000 Now, what she offered in debate was this theory that CRT just needs a rebrand because Republicans are weaponizing critical race theory.
00:18:21.000 Play the clip.
00:18:24.000 Listen to the lived experience of people who are part of minority groups.
00:18:29.000 Look at the stark difference between one side of this room and the other side of this room.
00:18:34.000 When you are taking time to listen, you make better decisions.
00:18:37.000 When you are taking time to learn from others, you're going to be more effective.
00:18:41.000 If we want a stronger military, we cannot run from CRT and we must embrace DEI as a central part of how we lead.
00:18:49.000 I yield back, sir.
00:18:53.000 CRT has indeed been weaponized by the left, and that's one weapon.
00:18:58.000 We're not going to continue to fund in this National Defense Authorization Act.
00:19:02.000 I'm going to continue to update you regarding how the work we have exposed on firebrand and in committees will, I think, really give fuel to the NDAA this year and give a lot of Republicans a reason to vote for it, a reason to support our troops, and to support really give fuel to the NDAA this year and give a lot of Republicans a reason to vote for it, a reason to support our troops, and to support them not just with pay increases, which we
00:19:24.000 do, not just with new weapon systems, which we do do and we should do, but also with the support they need so that they are not mistreated by some of this wokeism that they've complained to our office and many others about.
00:19:37.000 So we'll keep you posted on that.
00:19:38.000 But now I want to get to another important activity that occurred in the House of Representatives this past week, and that was the examination in person of John Durham, Special Counsel John Durham.
00:19:51.000 So I'm going to lay out for you right now where I have a perspective that is different from that of some of my Republican colleagues.
00:19:59.000 What Chairman Jordan and many of my Republican colleagues rightly, justly, virtuously want to do is use the Durham report as a basis to get rid of some of these illegal spying authorities and the illegal political activity that emerges out of the FBI and DOJ. And in Durham's report, indeed, he is critical of the FBI and DOJ. But I don't think that is the whole story.
00:20:26.000 I think John Durham's part of the cover-up.
00:20:29.000 I think that John Durham's report, his flimsy, lame, unsuccessful prosecutions, the purpose of all of that was not to expose the true bad actors in the deep state.
00:20:42.000 It was to contain the damage.
00:20:45.000 It was to ensure that, yeah, you can make kind of broad, sweeping criticisms of the FBI and the bureaucracy, and yeah, it's this clunky thing and needs to change, and sometimes they don't follow all the rules they're supposed to follow.
00:20:56.000 Sometimes a few people...
00:20:58.000 Give in to their biases as humans do.
00:21:02.000 But we never found out who gave the order to run this op.
00:21:07.000 And what we know is that the Russia hoax was not the manifestation of some incompetence or tomfoolery at the FBI. It was an explicit operation to try to take the presidency away from Donald Trump after the voters had elected him.
00:21:24.000 And so here's what I'm going to do.
00:21:26.000 I'm going to play for you in just a moment.
00:21:27.000 The full exchange that I have with John Durham.
00:21:31.000 And what I want you to ask yourself as you're watching, do you agree with my Republican colleagues that John Durham is a do-gooder who really did everything he could to get to the bottom of this?
00:21:42.000 Or was he just another person containing the damage and playing the part?
00:21:49.000 You watch.
00:21:50.000 You analyze.
00:21:51.000 I'm going to be eager to see everybody's reactions in the comments.
00:21:54.000 Play the clip.
00:21:57.000 Mr. Durham, this seems to all started with one person, but I don't see his name in your report.
00:22:03.000 I see it in Mueller's report 89 times.
00:22:06.000 Who did Mr. Papadopoulos meet with that gave him this supposed Russian information?
00:22:13.000 When Mr. Papadopoulos was interviewed by the FBI, he had identified Joseph Mifsud as a person who had provided him that information.
00:22:22.000 Did you interview Joseph Mifsud?
00:22:24.000 We attempted to interview him.
00:22:27.000 We pursued every lead that we had.
00:22:31.000 We talked to a lawyer that he had in Europe, but we never were able to actually make contact with him so we could interview him.
00:22:36.000 Do you think he's a Western source?
00:22:39.000 Is he associated with Western intelligence?
00:22:42.000 It's hard to say who Mr. Mifsud is associated with.
00:22:45.000 He was tied up with Link University, Mr. Scoti, who had involvement in the Italian government, and they were appointed.
00:22:56.000 It's hard to say who Mifsud is.
00:22:58.000 I'm going to yield the remainder of my time to Mr. Gates.
00:23:00.000 Hard to say who Mifsud is.
00:23:02.000 He's the guy who started the whole thing.
00:23:05.000 We've known it for years.
00:23:06.000 Go ahead and play the video.
00:23:12.000 When the special counsel's office interviewed Mifsud, did he lie to you guys too?
00:23:16.000 Can't get into that.
00:23:17.000 Did you interview Mifsud?
00:23:18.000 Can't get into that.
00:23:19.000 Is Mifsud Western intelligence or Russian intelligence?
00:23:22.000 Can't get into that.
00:23:23.000 Well, I'm reading from your report.
00:23:25.000 Mifsud told Papadopoulos, Papadopoulos tells the diplomat, the diplomat tells the FBI, the FBI opens the investigation July 31, 2016, and here we are three years later, July of 2019, the country's been put through this, and the central figure who launches it all, Lies to us, and you guys don't hunt him down and interview him again, and you don't charge him with a crime.
00:23:48.000 Maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusation started.
00:23:53.000 Maybe it's to go back and actually figure out why Joseph Nipset was lying to the FBI. And here's the good news.
00:23:59.000 Here's the good news.
00:24:00.000 That's exactly what Bill Barr's doing.
00:24:03.000 And thank goodness for that.
00:24:05.000 That's exactly what the Attorney General and John Durham are doing.
00:24:08.000 Mr. Durham, was that what you were doing?
00:24:10.000 I'm sorry, is that what?
00:24:11.000 Was finding out who Mifsud was, what you were doing?
00:24:14.000 We pursued them that avenue, yes.
00:24:16.000 Right, but was he...
00:24:18.000 This whole thing was an op, Mr. Durham.
00:24:21.000 This wasn't like a bumbling, fumbling FBI that, like, couldn't get FISA straight.
00:24:25.000 They ran an op.
00:24:27.000 So who put Mifsud in play? 0.54
00:24:29.000 You don't know, do you?
00:24:31.000 I do not know that.
00:24:32.000 I can't give you the answer.
00:24:33.000 For years, you had years to find out the answer to what Mr. Jordan said was the seminal question and you don't have it.
00:24:39.000 And it just begs the question whether or not you were really trying to find that out.
00:24:44.000 Because it's one thing to criticize the FBI for their FISA violations, to write a report.
00:24:50.000 They've been criticized in plenty of reports.
00:24:52.000 Some have referred to your work as just a repackaging and regurgitation of what the Inspector General already told us.
00:24:59.000 So if you weren't going to do what Mr. Jordan said you were going to do in that video and give us the basis for all of it, what's this all been about?
00:25:10.000 Well, I'm not exactly sure the import of your question.
00:25:13.000 If your question is, did we try to locate and interview Mr. Mifsud, the answer is yes.
00:25:19.000 Why didn't you subpoena him to a grand jury? 0.93
00:25:22.000 I'm sorry, why not?
00:25:23.000 Why didn't you send him a grand jury subpoena?
00:25:25.000 Mr. Mifsud?
00:25:26.000 You'd have to find Mr. Mifsud before you could serve a grand jury subpoena on it.
00:25:29.000 You guys were out in Italy.
00:25:30.000 Was it you and Bill Barr looking for authentic pasta over there or Mifsud?
00:25:34.000 No, we not.
00:25:35.000 We were looking for information that might help us locate Mifsud.
00:25:39.000 But you know who I think could probably locate him?
00:25:42.000 The features of Western intelligence and possibly our own government that put him in play.
00:25:47.000 Like, your report seems to be less an indictment of the FBI and more of an inoculation, lowercase i, of course.
00:25:55.000 And like many inoculations, it may have worse consequences down the road.
00:25:59.000 We'll have some time to discuss this matter further, but it's just hard to pretend as though this was a sincere effort when you don't get to the fundamental thing that started the whole deal.
00:26:09.000 Yeah, I agree with Mr. Biggs.
00:26:11.000 You've given us testimony today that you're disappointed that the FBI didn't cooperate more, right?
00:26:18.000 That was your testimony.
00:26:19.000 I've said that.
00:26:21.000 We're disappointed too, but the difference is when regular folks do things that are wrong and unlawful, there's typically greater effort to try to get those people before a grand jury to utilize criminal process where appropriate, not for other purposes.
00:26:36.000 And it's just like, oh, well, Bill Priestep, the guy who might have set this whole op in motion, he just didn't want to talk to you about certain things, and you were real accommodating to that.
00:26:44.000 And then Mifsud, the person who juices Papadopoulos to create this Predicate that you find improper.
00:26:52.000 You guys, I mean, did you ever know who his lawyer was, Mifsud's lawyer?
00:26:56.000 We talked to his lawyer in Europe.
00:26:58.000 I don't know if he represented him.
00:26:59.000 You could find the guy's lawyer, but you couldn't find him?
00:27:02.000 We contacted somebody that we knew had represented him in a part of the effort to try to locate him.
00:27:09.000 And you got the lawyer?
00:27:11.000 And then now you're sitting here in front of the judiciary saying you could find the guy's lawyer, but you couldn't effectuate the service of a subpoena because you couldn't find him?
00:27:18.000 First of all, as you may or may not know, we wouldn't have the authority to serve a subpoena overseas.
00:27:24.000 The lawyer didn't know where Mifsud was.
00:27:27.000 He was in communication with him, but he claimed not to know where he was.
00:27:30.000 And we were trying to arrange an opportunity to talk to Mifsud.
00:27:35.000 Did you take possession of two Blackberry phones from Mifsud in any way?
00:27:40.000 There were phones that were provided to us by the guy. 0.93
00:27:45.000 Do you see how silly this looks?
00:27:47.000 Like you found the lawyer, you found the phones, but the actual dude who got ordered by Western intelligence to go start this thing you couldn't find? 0.86
00:27:55.000 It's kind of laughable.
00:27:56.000 It seems like more than disappointment.
00:27:58.000 It seems like you weren't really trying to expose the true core of the corruption, that you were trying to go at it another way.
00:28:06.000 As we said in the report and as I said in my opening remarks, we pursued the facts as best we could.
00:28:12.000 How about this fact, Mr. Durham?
00:28:15.000 The entire Mueller team does a hard reset on their Apple phone in synchronization to wipe away evidence.
00:28:22.000 Did you investigate that?
00:28:24.000 I've read that.
00:28:25.000 Why did you investigate it?
00:28:27.000 Who gave the order on the Mueller team to wipe the phones?
00:28:31.000 Yeah, that was not something that we were That's not true, Mr. Durham.
00:28:37.000 That is not true, because I'm holding the document that authorizes your activity, and it specifically says the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller.
00:28:47.000 Mr. Chairman, I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record the order that says that you're supposed to investigate these things.
00:28:53.000 Whether it's the Mueller team, Mifsud, how about Azra Turk?
00:28:58.000 What's Azra Turk's real name?
00:29:01.000 Do you know that?
00:29:03.000 I'm not going to be disclosing the names of FBI personnel that are otherwise unavailable.
00:29:07.000 So the FBI sends somebody to go honeypot George Papadopoulos.
00:29:12.000 Who gave the order to do that?
00:29:17.000 I think that's beyond the scope of what's in the report.
00:29:19.000 It's literally the scope of what your charging order is.
00:29:22.000 Who put it in motion?
00:29:23.000 We get, after it was put in motion, the FBI did a bunch of wrong and corrupt things.
00:29:27.000 Totally understand.
00:29:28.000 We're trying to deal with that.
00:29:29.000 But when you are part of the cover-up, Mr. Durham, then it makes our job harder.
00:29:36.000 Yeah, well, if that's your thought, I mean, there's no way of dissuading you from that.
00:29:40.000 I can tell you that it's offensive and that the people who worked on this investigation have spent their lives trying to protect people in this country and pursue within the law what it is that we are authorized to do.
00:29:52.000 You tried two cases, lost both of them, and then the one plea, guilty plea you got, Kleinsmith?
00:30:00.000 Kleinsmith is back to practicing law in Washington, D.C. today.
00:30:04.000 That's beyond my control.
00:30:05.000 Right, but the fact that you allowed that plea to occur, right, and then the punishment was insufficient, the fact that you didn't charge Andrew McCabe, you didn't convict the lying Democrats or the lying Russians, you didn't investigate Mifsud or the Mueller probe, even though, as we sit here today in black letter, that was your charge.
00:30:25.000 Have you ever heard of the Washington Generals?
00:30:28.000 The Washington Generals?
00:30:29.000 Yes.
00:30:29.000 Yeah, and they're the team that basically gets paid to show up and lose, right?
00:30:34.000 Well, you know, I'm sure that the players who exert blood, sweat, and tears don't view it that way, but you might...
00:30:42.000 I think they do.
00:30:42.000 I think they do, because the job of the Washington Generals is to show up every night and to play the Harlem Globetrotters.
00:30:49.000 And their job is to lose.
00:30:53.000 So their job is to lose.
00:30:54.000 And I'm kind of wondering, and it just seems so facially obvious, that it's not what's in your report that's telling, it's the omission, it's the lack of work you did.
00:31:03.000 And for the people, like the chairman, who put trust in you, I think you let them down, I think you let the country down, and you are one of the barriers to the true accountability that we need.
00:31:12.000 Do I get to respond to that or comment on that?
00:31:14.000 Yeah.
00:31:14.000 Well, I don't know if you've ever investigated a crime.
00:31:17.000 I don't know that you have.
00:31:19.000 You didn't investigate these, Mr. Durham.
00:31:21.000 How about Andy McCabe?
00:31:22.000 Did you charge him?
00:31:23.000 Did you investigate him?
00:31:24.000 Gentlemen, time has expired.
00:31:26.000 The witness can respond and then we'll move on to our last...
00:31:28.000 I don't know, sir, whether or not you've ever had occasion to try to investigate crimes under the rules and regulations and under the Constitution that we're bound by.
00:31:38.000 We can gather evidence in particularly lawful ways.
00:31:41.000 Can't charge people because we might think something we can charge people.
00:31:45.000 You didn't investigate the Mueller team wiping their phones, and you won't tell us who gave the orders because you're protecting those people.
00:31:52.000 Gentleman's time has expired.
00:31:53.000 We are back live.
00:31:58.000 So after watching that, what do you think?
00:32:02.000 Do you really think that that guy took this multi-year project and millions of dollars And didn't ask those basic questions.
00:32:13.000 Didn't find out who gave the order to get the entire Russia hoax going.
00:32:18.000 Leo on Twitter says at one point he had confidence in Durham, but now not so much.
00:32:24.000 And if you are watching this on Rumble, and we hope you are, we hope you're subscribed, or on YouTube, or on Twitter, one of the most interesting things is to watch my colleague Mike Johnson, who's sitting next to me during that nine-minute exchange, And I love Mike Johnson, great congressman from Louisiana. 0.66
00:32:40.000 And you could tell he's just slowly being convinced along the way that this is bullshit, that the whole Durham thing was bullshit, that it was there to ensure that any flesh wounds the deep state had to take would never really result in the structural change or the personal accountability that was necessary.
00:33:01.000 And as I listen to that again, I'm thinking about this Bill Barr John Durham trip to Italy. 0.97
00:33:08.000 So we're supposed to believe that these two guys, what, are they walking around like Sherlock Holmes with their magnifying glass looking for clues to see if Mifsud's around?
00:33:17.000 They found the guy's phones.
00:33:19.000 They found the guy's lawyer.
00:33:22.000 The reason they didn't find Mifsud is that they didn't want to. 0.52
00:33:26.000 They didn't want to tell you Who put intelligence assets in play overseas to try to create a false predicate to use national security authorities for politics.
00:33:39.000 To take political dirt and use it to try to ruin the Trump presidency.
00:33:44.000 And here's the thing.
00:33:44.000 It's not backward looking.
00:33:46.000 Because if we don't now go do this work as the Judiciary Committee, then it will happen again.
00:33:53.000 In a way, they got away with it.
00:33:55.000 We cannot let that occur.
00:33:57.000 We cannot put our faith in people like Bill Barr and John Durham.
00:34:00.000 I think we ought to haul Bill Barr before the Judiciary Committee and ask him these questions.
00:34:04.000 If John Durham can't answer them, maybe Bill Barr should be able to answer why this investigation never produced any real storyline for what actually happened.
00:34:18.000 I don't think that is a bug of the system.
00:34:21.000 I think it's a feature.
00:34:22.000 And I think that that questioning Pretty dispositively proved it.
00:34:26.000 I think Mike Johnson knew that.
00:34:28.000 I think everybody watching knew that.
00:34:30.000 I think John Durham knew that.
00:34:32.000 Before we get out of here, I want to give you an update on some spending matters that are very much being hotly debated and contested in the halls of Congress here.
00:34:43.000 So on September 30th, the government funding bill that Pelosi and McConnell negotiated runs out.
00:34:50.000 So we have to have the new structure to fund the government.
00:34:53.000 I don't want to do continuing resolutions.
00:34:55.000 I don't want to ice in forever, cast in cement, if you will, the spending levels of the Biden era and post-COVID. So we thought the most modest thing we could do is say you've got to have your budget at 2022 spending levels, not 2023, which is substantially higher.
00:35:18.000 That's what you should mark to.
00:35:19.000 Put some downward pressure on spending.
00:35:22.000 We're working to get that done, and we've got some great allies in that fight, one of whom is the budget chairman, Jody Arrington.
00:35:30.000 And I got this great note from Chairman Arrington, and he starts the note with a quote from James Madison.
00:35:39.000 Here's what Madison says.
00:35:41.000 I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican government, more than any other.
00:35:50.000 So Madison's poignant quote captures the consequence of borrowing on the backs of our children and bankrupting their future.
00:35:58.000 And to reverse the curse, remember, public debt is a public curse.
00:36:03.000 Mr. Arrington gave me a new nameplate.
00:36:07.000 And just to remind me what the charge is, he put on the back a reverse the curse.
00:36:12.000 So thank you to Jody Arrington for bringing us that, for reminding us of the words of Madison.
00:36:19.000 And we've got to do something to start tackling these major drivers of the debt.
00:36:23.000 It's not going to be enough to just do pathetic incrementalism.
00:36:28.000 We need bold solutions.
00:36:30.000 The easy answers are in the past.
00:36:31.000 And we need leaders willing to make the tough choices.
00:36:34.000 I know our budget chairman, Jody Arrington, is one such leader.
00:36:38.000 So as you may have noticed, Firebrand, this was one of the first episodes we had in a while.
00:36:43.000 It's been a minute.
00:36:44.000 But we've been making arguments on the critical issues before the Congress on our Rumble channel, on our YouTube channel.
00:36:51.000 Make sure you're subscribed.
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00:37:03.000 You will be the most informed.
00:37:05.000 And you will have the straight facts right from Washington.
00:37:08.000 Thanks, everyone, for joining us.
00:37:10.000 Make sure that you share this episode, that you...
00:37:14.000 Continue to be our digital warriors out there, and let's go get them.