On a historic day, Rep. George Santos of New York s Third District was expelled from the United States Congress by a more than two-thirds vote. We break down the arguments, who voted, and what it means for the House of Representatives.
00:05:25.000and send in the Firebrands. - Welcome back to Firebrand.
00:05:35.000We are broadcasting live out of room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building on the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. on a historic day when Congressman George Santos of New York's 3rd District was expelled from the United States Congress by a more than two-thirds vote.
00:05:50.000We're going to break down the arguments, who voted each way, and what it means for the House of Representatives.
00:05:55.000This effort was spearheaded by Anthony D'Esposito, someone who has not yet served his first full year in the United States Congress, but somehow felt the need to set new precedent by advancing this expulsion.
00:06:08.000And you had really quite the debate, high emotions, and for all the time that the United States Congress has existed, there's been pretty clear benchmarks as to what it takes to muster an expulsion and And Congressman D'Esposito, again, not having served his first full year here, believed it was upon him to set a new standard, the D'Esposito standard for due process.
00:06:40.000The American people expect us to do the right thing.
00:06:45.000The American people are watching for us to do the right thing.
00:06:49.000And if we have an opportunity in this great institution to start a new precedent, one, that means we hold members of the House of Representatives to a higher standard, Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm pretty confident that the American people would applaud that.
00:07:08.000I'm pretty confident that the American people expect that.
00:07:12.000And I hope that tomorrow, in this great chamber, we set that precedent, Mr. Speaker.
00:07:19.000We set a precedent that we, as members of America's oldest institution, are held to a higher standard.
00:07:30.000I guess we are all so fortunate that we have Anthony D'Esposito to set the higher standard for all of us.
00:07:37.000But is it a higher standard when you lower due process?
00:07:42.000I had debate in response to Congressman D'Esposito that I offered on the floor.
00:08:34.000Mr. Santos hasn't been convicted of anything, but we haven't even moved to expel the people who have.
00:08:40.000Mr. Bowman pled guilty to a misdemeanor for his little fire alarm stunt weeks ago.
00:08:47.000So like, while the Ethics Committee is marching to throw George Santos out of Congress, they take no action as to someone who actually pled guilty to a crime?
00:09:04.000But that belies the fact that he faces a trial and had Mr. Santos testified before the Ethics Committee, an argument could have been made that he waived any of his rights that he would have had at trial that any American would enjoy.
00:09:17.000So it was a procedural double bind that shouldn't be held against Mr. Santos as some sort of adverse inference.
00:09:28.000The fact pattern as to Mr. Santos is remarkably similar to the fact pattern of former Representative Duncan Hunter.
00:09:36.000Duncan Hunter used campaign money on girlfriends and trips and home improvements and all sorts of personal lavishes.
00:09:44.000He was indicted for those crimes and continued to serve in Congress.
00:09:48.000He pled guilty To a number of those crimes and continued to serve in Congress.
00:09:54.000He was in Congress for like an additional pay period after having pled guilty to the very same things that Mr. Santos has been indicted for.
00:10:04.000And so I think it's persuasive to me that Mr. Higgins and Mr. Nell's two law enforcement officials with sterling reputations are here Not necessarily to defend Mr. Santos, but to defend this precedent and this due process that is being shattered.
00:10:19.000And I was struck when the author of this resolution said the quiet part out loud.
00:10:24.000He didn't try to shoehorn the expulsion of George Santos into some existing construct or precedent.
00:10:32.000He said, yep, we're making a whole new precedent.
00:10:35.000We're making whole new rules right now, but he defends that by saying that the new rules are better, that it's a higher standard.
00:10:43.000So we should just throw away everything that's happened from the first Congress to the 118th because the new precedent is more robust.
00:10:50.000The problem is it's a lower standard for due process without merit.
00:10:56.000Mr. Speaker, whatever Mr. Santos did with Botox or OnlyFans is far less concerning to me than the indictment against Senator Menendez, who's holding gold bars inscribed with Arabic on them from Egypt while he is still getting classified briefings today.
00:11:18.000But he's not getting thrown out of the Senate.
00:11:20.000He's getting classified briefings under indictment for bribery.
00:11:25.000Because Santos was buying Botox and OnlyFans, we gotta throw him out?
00:11:31.000If George Santos is convicted, he ought to be expelled.
00:11:35.000But until then, it is an incredibly dangerous thing for people in Washington, D.C. to substitute their judgment for the judgment of voters.
00:11:47.000Winston Churchill said that, you know, in a democracy, people get the government that they deserve.
00:11:54.000Well, the people of Mr. Santos' district elected him.
00:11:57.000And like, this is not some district in rural Mississippi with like one newspaper.
00:12:05.000And George Santos rolls in there, wins, and you know what?
00:12:08.000It's between him and his voters, him and the justice system, and the fact that the Ethics Committee has done this incredible violation of precedent will do grave damage to this institution for many years to come, because now there's no requirement Of any conviction, there is a departure from the precedent from the Duncan-Hunter matter and many others, and I fear what that may indicate lies ahead for the future of due process in the House of Representatives.
00:13:21.000George Santos told lies, so we've got to throw them out.
00:13:24.000If we're throwing out every liar in Congress, we can get rid of a lot of the seats on the House floor.
00:13:29.000And by the way, on the live stream, you seem to take particular note of the fact that if we're throwing out liars, why don't we start with Adam Schiff, not George Santos?
00:13:40.000And what if it's just, we throw out people we don't like?
00:14:07.000It's important to note this is not on Mike Johnson.
00:14:10.000So some of you have asked me, well, if this was something that we shouldn't have done, if it was something Speaker Mike Johnson was against, then why did Mike Johnson allow the vote to come to the floor?
00:14:21.000And as we've discussed, kind of the intricacies of procedure on this program, when there are certain matters that By House rule that are privileged, which means they don't require the consent of either party's leadership or the floor managers or the leaders or the speaker to have a vote.
00:14:41.000Any member can force a vote on something that is privileged.
00:14:47.000And I gotta say, I don't disagree with that paradigm because I've used it quite frequently.
00:14:52.000I use the privilege of one member to force votes on where we ought to have U.S. troops.
00:14:59.000Marjorie Taylor Greene and I have used the privilege to try to advance impeachments that we think need to be voted on for people like Mayorkas.
00:15:09.000And I think perhaps considerably more folks within the Biden administration, Joe Biden himself, You also have privilege to remove a speaker.
00:15:22.000And so we don't disagree with the concept that any member should have privilege to bring certain things to the floor, but it's important when you're trying to assess who is accountable for this foolishness to not visit that on House Speaker Mike Johnson.
00:18:24.000Mr. Speaker, hypocrisy, as I mentioned.
00:18:31.000My colleague wants to come up here, call me a crook.
00:18:35.000Same colleague who's accused of being a woman-beater.
00:18:40.000Are we really going to ignore the facts that we all have passed and we all have the media coming out against us on a daily basis?
00:18:51.000We're back live and a lot of you are asking about Senator Menendez.
00:18:56.000You on the live stream are very very upset about the fact that Bob Menendez is caught with these gold bars from Egypt While he was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he's still in the Senate getting these classified briefings, and yet George Santos is expelled.
00:19:18.000And here's something quite rich, a tweet that we get from Olivia Beavers of Politico, who notes that Senator Menendez's son, who serves in the House of Representatives, actually voted to expel George Santos.
00:19:35.000So someone should ask, Representative Menendez if he believes that allegations alone justify removal.
00:20:40.000I'm going to leave them up so that you have an opportunity to see the 105 Republicans who think it's better to set a new precedent and diminish the important due process that our nation is founded on.
00:20:55.000And there are a few names here that are particularly interesting to me because four of the people who voted to expel George Santos from Congress stood in the way of impeachment of Mayorkas.
00:21:15.000Those representatives would be Cliff Benz of Oregon, Virginia Fox of North Carolina, Mr. Duarte of California, and Mr. Buck of Colorado.
00:21:25.000Those four members sought fit to expel Santos, but protect Mayorkas.
00:21:48.000There was also activity in the Senate that was bizarre and weird this week that I want you to be able to see.
00:21:55.000Now, the Senate, of course, has the advise and consent function in the Constitution for federal nominees to the bench, to Article III courts.
00:22:04.000So the Judiciary Committee spends a lot of time in the Senate going over who the president is nominated to serve on one bench or another.
00:24:40.000Mr. Chairman, is it you driving it, or is it your staff driving it, or is it the White House driving this?
00:24:47.000This is completely inappropriate not to let us be heard on these nominations, and you know that.
00:24:56.000Yeah, senators don't really like it when you cut them off and don't give them the opportunity to give remarks.
00:25:01.000But it begs the question, what about the debate from Lindsey Graham or Senator Cornyn or Senator Blackburn was like so concerning to Dick Durbin that he didn't want to hear it?
00:25:14.000I know one thing Dick Durbin didn't want to have happen.
00:25:18.000Marsha Blackburn was pretty sharp on this point.
00:25:22.000So you've got a real move in the Senate to try to discredit the Supreme Court right now.
00:25:27.000They don't like the decisions that have come out of the Supreme Court with Trump having fundamentally remade the court and decisions starting to align with originalism through the work that they're doing and the decisions that are coming out.
00:25:41.000So they want to discredit the court and they've really put a target on Clarence Thomas.
00:25:46.000We've talked about that a lot on the program.
00:25:50.000And so they're sending out all these subpoenas, all of these demands to try to just kind of rough up, smear, and imperil the court.
00:26:01.000And so Senator Blackburn, Marsha Blackburn out of Tennessee, she's really one of my favorites over there.
00:26:08.000And she thought, well, if we're sending out subpoenas, how about we send some out for the Epstein flight logs?
00:26:16.000How about get that information, Senator Durbin?
00:26:19.000How about the Judiciary Committee be more worried about who was flying around with Epstein rather than who was flying around with Clarence Thomas?
00:26:32.000And since we're in the business of issuing subpoenas now, here are a few more that I've filed.
00:26:40.000A subpoena to Jeffrey Epstein's estate to provide the flight logs for his private plane.
00:26:46.000Given the numerous allegations of human trafficking and sexual abuse surrounding Mr. Epstein, I think it is very important that we identify everybody that was on that plane and how many trips they took on that plane and the destinations to which they arrived.
00:27:11.000So Senator Blackburn made that request and Senator Durbin blocked it.
00:27:17.000Blocked the request to send a subpoena for the Epstein flight logs.
00:27:24.000You see, the Democrats don't like when Republicans like Senator Blackburn punch back, and she did effectively.
00:27:31.000And sometimes you really reveal more about how these folks are thinking by what they're willing to imperil rather than what they're willing to advance.
00:28:29.000I don't know who thought that was an appropriate action, but we're going to get to the bottom of it.
00:28:36.000I'm going to be speaking with the House Administration Committee, Chairman Stile, Speaker of the House if necessary.
00:28:42.000We're not going to have the House censoring our access to conservative news and to conservative analysis.
00:28:50.000Speaking of blocking access to information, that is the story of what's going on with unidentified aerial phenomenon right now.
00:28:59.000We've had Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee on the program before to talk about UAPs, UFOs, And right now we're in the process of negotiating the National Defense Authorization Act and we are trying to get provisions into that bill that require the DOD and the CIA and the FAA and the NSA and the FBI and state and local authorities to get this information available for review by members of Congress and ultimately the
00:30:32.000We are here today because all of the whistleblowers, the hearings, the investigations, the discussions, the work that we have done, have culminated in a negotiation that is happening in real time right now over the National Defense Authorization Act.
00:30:48.000A piece of legislation I care deeply about as a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
00:30:52.000And in that negotiation, we are fortunate that the amendment Congressman Burchett offered to the House version of the NDAA provides a beachhead for us to be able to get the answers and to be able to demand the transparency that is necessary.
00:31:09.000It is insufficient, though, to seek this transparency from the Department of Defense alone.
00:31:14.000We have to have cooperation so that Title 50 authorities through the intelligence community are also subject to review.
00:31:24.000That the FAA, the NSA, the FBI, even state and local authorities that have information are able to have that catalogued, assessed, and then put out before the public.
00:31:35.000It is my belief that the Burchett Amendment is the strongest position when coupled with the additional authorities and additional agencies that I've just mentioned in order to be able to get to that productive result.
00:31:50.000Unfortunately, we have members of the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee who right now are frustrating the effort that we are putting forward In order to be able to obtain the information and to move forward.
00:32:05.000I think it is productive that Senator Schumer has engaged on this issue.
00:32:10.000He's not an insignificant person in this town.
00:32:13.000But I am concerned about embracing a disclosure paradigm that mirrors the JFK assassination disclosure paradigm.
00:32:23.000I don't know that there are any Americans Who would view the JFK assassination disclosure paradigm as some sort of vaulted standard?
00:32:33.000Time and again, we've seen that system fail.
00:32:36.000I also don't believe that, pursuant to the Schumer language, we would have to wait 25 years in order to get this information.
00:32:44.00025 years is a long time when you consider what Mr. Burch had said about the lack of Of veracity that the government has provided to the people up until this point.
00:32:55.000And so we're here to call for the most inclusive, most robust provisions possible to be included in the NDAA. We don't want to see a lot of log jams created.
00:33:09.000In the event that there's any designation of a national security concern regarding disclosure, we believe that this information can no longer be siloed with the entities that have frustrated disclosure.
00:33:23.000That there should be broader briefings to members of Congress, that the Oversight Committee, which many of my colleagues here serve on, should be receiving those briefings, that the Armed Services Committee should be receiving those briefings, and it should not just be the fiefdom Of the Intelligence Committee and the Intelligence Community.
00:33:40.000And if we achieve that objective, I think we can start to restore some of the trust the public has.
00:33:46.000But as we work through the finer points of that legislation, we felt it was important today to come forward and express where the log jams exist, where the opportunities lay before us, and we will pursue those with great vigor.
00:33:58.000I also wanted to specifically thank House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers.
00:34:03.000He allowed the Burchett Amendment to go on the bill without objection, and I think he is to be commended for that.
00:34:10.000And also when my colleagues Ms. Luna and Mr. Burchett and I We're at an Air Force base and we're told by Air Force officials that we weren't allowed to see information that whistleblowers had expressed to us existed.
00:34:24.000It was, in fact, Chairman Rogers himself who personally engaged with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and gave us the opportunity to view the images that were taken by pilots of some of these unidentified aerial phenomenon.
00:34:40.000Work to be done, but we hope that this gives you clarity as to what our goals are, the scope and depth of the mission ahead.
00:34:50.000We are back live and that was Congresswoman Ana Paulina Luna standing behind me in retro on YouTube says she makes plaid look good.
00:35:03.000So we often share information with you about how the government works with private companies to go around your Fourth Amendment rights.
00:35:11.000And it's too often that I have to report to you time and time again of these egregious examples of federal government malfeasance.
00:35:19.000You are not going to believe what the federal government has been up to with AT&T. And this time, Senator Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, seems to have stumbled on a real big violation of civil liberties.
00:35:39.000Man, if that doesn't sound like the name of some sort of Bond Villains evil project, I do not know what does.
00:35:45.000So apparently the Hemisphere Project is a program where the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy pays AT&T to provide all Federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies with the ability to request searches of trillions of domestic phone records dating back to at least 1987?
00:36:10.000Plus the 4 billion call records that are added every single day.
00:36:15.000Senator Wyden thinks that these searches are usually occurring without warrants.
00:36:20.000That is awful but not entirely unbelievable when you look at the FISA abuses that our own government's engaged in.
00:36:26.000So AT&T, of course, claims that any of this information would have been compelled by a subpoena, warrant, or court order.
00:36:36.000The DEA, of course, can issue subpoenas even without the need of courts.
00:36:41.000What we do know is that Hemisphere is not subject to a federal privacy impact assessment due to how it's being funded.
00:36:49.000Apparently the White House provides a grant to the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, which is a partnership between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.
00:36:59.000And then this partnership in turn pays AT&T to operate its surveillance scheme, potentially outside of the bounds of the Constitution.
00:37:11.000Now, if Hemisphere were subject to a federal privacy impact assessment, that would mean the public would be able to see a report that includes how any analysis of personally identifiable information is handled.
00:37:25.000A federal privacy impact assessment is both an analysis and a document detailing the outcomes and the impacts, of course.
00:37:37.000But we'll never see such a document because the feds are trying to keep all of this very hush-hush.
00:37:42.000Hemisphere is also not subject to the Freedom of Information Act because the Justice Department has labeled the program and its documents all law enforcement sensitive.
00:37:54.000This designation prevents the documents from being publicly released.
00:37:58.000So they really don't want you to know what's going on behind the scenes.
00:38:03.000Senator Wyden's law enforcement source, a whistleblower, has called Hemisphere Google on steroids.
00:38:10.000And it appears that Hemisphere can pull in phone records of everyone who communicated with the target of an investigation.
00:38:20.000And AT&T is quite literally casting that net for the feds.
00:38:26.000The White House is dodging having to explain the ins and outs of the program, and my guess is that's because they'd have a hard time explaining it to the courts, to the American people.
00:38:37.000And as we continue to investigate, we'll learn more about this suspect program, and we'll see just what Big Brother is trying to hide from us.
00:38:46.000The federal intelligence apparatus has morphed into a complete and total police state.
00:38:52.000Instead of respecting the spirit of the Fourth Amendment, they're working overtime to try to go around it, undermine it, get private companies to do what they couldn't do directly, but then they pay those private companies.
00:39:06.000Congress has to put a stop to this and hold the government accountable to the people.
00:39:11.000That's exactly what I plan to do as we move forward with this investigation.
00:39:15.000And Senator Wyden should be commended for his work and his development of the whistleblower who has brought this forward.
00:39:22.000I also want to give you a key update regarding the border.
00:39:26.000We get this report from the Daily Caller.
00:39:28.000Texas border sector at 169% migrant capacity.
00:39:34.000The Border Patrol nationwide has about 20,000 migrants in their custody.
00:40:26.000Seth Rich's laptop to be turned over to the FBI. A judge has ordered the FBI to turn over the laptop of murdered Democrat staffer Seth Rich.
00:40:36.000Rich was killed on July 10th 2016 while making his way home in Washington DC and in this case it appears as though the records on that laptop have not yet been uncovered and They want to get to the bottom of it.
00:40:56.000Rich's death sparked a wave of conspiracy theories claiming he was responsible for publicly leaking thousands of DNC emails, this according to Newsweek.
00:41:11.000There's an interesting cycle in Washington, right?
00:41:14.000First it's a conspiracy theory, then it's Russian disinformation.
00:41:19.000Then it's true, but not that big a deal.
00:41:21.000And then it's a basis to go and target, prosecute, defame conservatives.
00:41:27.000Well, a lot of people have been trying to get to the bottom of the Seth Rich thing for a while.
00:41:30.000And I think that requiring this laptop to be turned over might give us more answers than we've received to date.
00:41:39.000Thank you so much for joining me today on Firebrand.
00:41:42.000Again, a historic day with the erosion of due process and precedent in the House of Representatives with the expulsion of George Santos.
00:41:51.000It was an act of self-mutilation by the House Republican Conference.
00:41:55.000105 Republicans voting for it, even including four who stood in the way of accountability for failed Homeland Security Secretary Ali Mayorkas.
00:42:06.000Make sure you're subscribed, that you've got notifications turned on, and it would be a big help if you gave us that five-star rating and left us a review.