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

00:00:00.000 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.

00:00:11.000 Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party. He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.

00:00:17.000 So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.

00:00:20.000 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. You are in the right place. This is the movement for you.

00:00:33.000 You ever watch this guy on television? It's like a machine. Matt Gaetz.

00:00:38.000 I'm a canceled man in some corners of the Internet. Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.

00:00:46.000 They aren't really coming for me. They're coming for you. I'm just in the way.

00:00:56.000 First, I want to chat about the National Defense Authorization Act.

00:01:00.000 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.

00:01:13.000 We want to put an end to that. We love our military. We respect our service members.

00:01:18.000 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 CHAS, 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.

00:01:36.000 So to break that down, first, I thought I'd give you a context of just the broad scope of the cost of some of these DEI initiatives.

00:01:49.000 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.

00:01:58.000 In fact, DEI is the opposite of inclusion. It's very divisive and they're pushing it in the military.

00:02:04.000 My colleague Jim Banks got into a little debate with Democrat lead on the committee, Adam Smith.

00:02:12.000 It was pretty interesting to see the perspectives. I'm with Jim Banks. Take a listen.

00:02:17.000 Six million man hours of DEI training that has occurred in the military under the Biden administration.

00:02:26.000 First of all, that would be person hours, not necessarily man hours. We do we do have women serving in the military, 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.

00:02:42.000 Oh, my goodness. Understand a world, not your own. That's what Adam Smith thinks that the purpose of the military is.

00:02:52.000 And unfortunately, it's just this crazy virtue signal. Banks and I continue to make the point throughout the hearing that the time that we have from our service members is precious.

00:03:03.000 And that training has to be used for things like cyber and AI, not LGBTQ, AI plus. 0.53

00:03:11.000 But the woke ism did have its defenders representative to Kudo made arguments in favor of critical race theory.

00:03:19.000 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.

00:03:26.000 Play the clip. We have definitely made mistakes as a country.

00:03:32.000 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.

00:03:42.000 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.

00:03:49.000 So fortunately, that was not the prevailing thinking at the hearing.

00:03:56.000 Matter of fact, there was an amendment by Congressman Waltz of Florida and myself to completely eliminate critical race theory in the military.

00:04:05.000 And I am proud to report to you that the Waltz Gates Amendment to vanquish CRT in the DOD passed.

00:04:12.000 It passed out of committee. It's part of the bill.

00:04:15.000 That turned out to be a losing argument that was just made by Representative Takudo.

00:04:20.000 We also had discussion about this position, this chief diversity officer position.

00:04:25.000 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.

00:04:38.000 They're spending an insane amount of money on these DEI officers.

00:04:45.000 Some of them make as much as $183,500 a year.

00:04:49.000 That's more than a member of Congress makes.

00:04:51.000 And so we passed amendments in this bill to completely eliminate the position of the DEI officer at DOD.

00:05:00.000 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 we need to be on the razor's edge.

00:05:23.000 Salud Carbajal debated against – he's a congressman, a Democrat congressman from California.

00:05:29.000 He debated against these amendments to get rid of the chief DEI official.

00:05:33.000 The amendments passed.

00:05:34.000 But here was the bizarre response from the Democrats.

00:05:38.000 You know, there's some people that were born on third base and they think they hit a triple.

00:05:45.000 And they carry that bias with them that, hey, everybody else should have hit a triple.

00:05:49.000 But they were born on third base. 0.83

00:05:52.000 Born on third base.

00:05:56.000 And that's really what the left wants to convert the Department of Defense into, another moral shaming enterprise.

00:06:04.000 Because we do plenty of that at the Department of Education, at the EPA.

00:06:08.000 And it's really interesting.

00:06:10.000 When you look at every major institution that the left has consumed, they've functionally destroyed it.

00:06:16.000 And we can never allow that to happen to our military.

00:06:20.000 But there are still those in Congress who claim that the reason that we did not win in Afghanistan was because we didn't have enough DEI and critical race theory.

00:06:32.000 And this is an imposterous argument by my colleague, Democrat Congresswoman from California, Sarah Jacobs.

00:06:36.000 Play the clip.

00:06:38.000 Learning about systemic racism and cultural differences and bias.

00:06:45.000 It's not only about cohesion within our military.

00:06:48.000 It actually is about our military operations around the world.

00:06:52.000 Our failures in Afghanistan, the Sahel, Vietnam are due in part to our superficial understanding of history, society, culture.

00:07:04.000 More woke.

00:07:06.000 More woke is what they want.

00:07:08.000 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

00:07:14.000 We're against that.

00:07:15.000 You have Sarah Jacobs, Democrat Congresswoman, close ally of President Biden saying the quiet part out loud that this is their design.

00:07:25.000 This is their grand plan.

00:07:26.000 This is what they want.

00:07:27.000 And unfortunately, it may come at the expense of America's hegemony or safety and security.

00:07:34.000 We have to be able to hold the high ground.

00:07:37.000 And this is not what's going to get it done.

00:07:39.000 And there's another feature of this argument that played out in the hearing.

00:07:42.000 Democrat Congressman Horsford says that, well, we have to have all these DEI officers at DOD because they exist in corporate America.

00:07:53.000 They exist at the defense contractors.

00:07:55.000 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.

00:08:13.000 Take a listen.

00:08:14.000 I hear from my colleagues all the time on the other side of the aisle, government should work more like a business.

00:08:21.000 Well, is Northrop Grumman wrong for having a vice president of chief diversity?

00:08:28.000 Is Lockheed Martin wrong for having a director of enterprise operations and global diversity and inclusion?

00:08:35.000 Is Boeing wrong for having a president of global equity, diversity, and inclusion?

00:08:41.000 Is Raytheon wrong for having a chief diversity officer?

00:08:46.000 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:08:47.000 And much was made in the last discussion about the fact that major companies have DEI executives.

00:08:55.000 And the DOD requires DEI diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates of its contractors.

00:09:00.000 In 2020, the DOD issued a memorandum that requires all contractors to implement DEI training programs for their employees.

00:09:06.000 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.

00:09:16.000 The training must be provided within 60 days, the award of a contract, and must be recurring.

00:09:21.000 Additionally, the contractors must demonstrate that their compliance with DEI mandates through regular reporting.

00:09:27.000 So to say that these, you know, are they wrong or are they right, it's mandated by DOD.

00:09:33.000 Thank you, and I yield back.

00:09:34.000 What a face crush.

00:09:39.000 A terrific job by Carlos Jimenez to point out that so often these bad emergences of policy that exists in the private sector can actually be lashed back to too much government.

00:09:53.000 And the government making these demands of private entities in order to engage in government contracting.

00:09:59.000 Outstanding job.

00:10:00.000 It absolutely deflated the Horsford argument.

00:10:03.000 But here's the bad news.

00:10:05.000 While the NDAA does great legislative work to ban CRT completely.

00:10:12.000 To get rid of these chief diversity officers. 0.99

00:10:16.000 To stop the drain of resources away from our service members into these diversity programs.

00:10:21.000 We did not achieve what I think would have been the most meaningful amendment to push back against DEI.

00:10:28.000 And that is to totally defund it.

00:10:31.000 That's right.

00:10:32.000 I had an amendment in committee to say no more funding at all period.

00:10:37.000 Not one red cent for this DEI agenda that has been so misused and tortured.

00:10:43.000 And weaponized against people.

00:10:48.000 And unfortunately, two of my Republican colleagues on the committee joined with Democrats and blocked that amendments passage.

00:10:57.000 Now, I have great respect for these colleagues of mine, Don Bacon of Nebraska and Mike Turner of Ohio.

00:11:04.000 They voted in favor of the DEI funding that would have been entirely precluded by my amendment.

00:11:11.000 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.

00:11:19.000 Because they didn't really offer a lot of criticism during the time allotted for debate.

00:11:24.000 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.

00:11:31.000 And, of course, if people show up and are virulently racist, they would be in violation of many other standards that have existed.

00:11:40.000 Gosh, some of which in practice or in writing since the days of the Revolutionary War.

00:11:45.000 Certainly, since World War I, those standards have evolved and been developed.

00:11:50.000 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.

00:11:59.000 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.

00:12:12.000 But that argument wasn't enough for some Republicans, and it was not enough for Congresswoman Strickland. 0.85

00:12:18.000 Now, what she offered in debate was this theory that CRT just needs a rebrand because Republicans are weaponizing critical race theory.

00:12:30.000 Play the clip.

00:12:32.000 Listen to the lived experience of people who are part of minority groups.

00:12:37.000 Look at the stark difference between one side of this room and the other side of this room.

00:12:42.000 When you are taking time to listen, you make better decisions.

00:12:45.000 When you are taking time to learn from others, you're going to be more effective.

00:12:49.000 If we want a stronger military, we cannot run from CRT, and we must embrace DEI as a central part of how we lead.

00:12:57.000 I yield back, sir.

00:13:02.000 CRT has indeed been weaponized by the left, and that's one weapon we're not going to continue to fund in this National Defense Authorization Act.

00:13:10.000 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.

00:13:24.000 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 do do and which we should do, not just with new weapons 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.

00:13:45.000 So we'll keep you posted on that.

00:13:47.000 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.

00:13:59.000 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.

00:14:07.500 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.

00:14:25.160 And in Durham's report, indeed, he is critical of the FBI and DOJ.

00:14:31.780 But I don't think that is the whole story.

00:14:35.040 I think John Durham's part of the cover-up.

00:14:37.440 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.

00:14:50.840 It was to contain the damage.

00:14:52.760 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.

00:15:05.120 Sometimes a few people give in to their biases, as humans do.

00:15:09.420 But we never found out who gave the order to run this op.

00:15:15.300 And what we know is that the Russia hoax was not the manifestation of some incompetence or tomfoolery at the FBI.

00:15:24.000 It was an explicit operation to try to take the presidency away from Donald Trump after the voters had elected him.

00:15:33.280 And so here's what I'm going to do.

00:15:34.200 I'm going to play for you in just a moment the full exchange that I have with John Durham.

00:15:39.220 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?

00:15:50.700 Or was he just another person containing the damage and playing the part?

00:15:57.180 You watch.

00:15:58.140 You analyze.

00:15:58.860 I'm going to be eager to see everybody's reactions in the comments.

00:16:02.740 Play the clip.

00:16:05.860 Mr. Durham, this seems to all started with one person, but I don't see his name in your report.

00:16:11.940 I see it Mueller's report 89 times.

00:16:14.560 Who did Mr. Papadopoulos meet with that gave him this supposed Russian information?

00:16:20.740 When Mr. Papadopoulos was interviewed by the FBI, he had identified Joseph Mifsud as a person who had provided him that information.

00:16:30.560 Did you interview Joseph Mifsud?

00:16:32.960 We attempted to interview him.

00:16:36.120 We pursued every lead that we had.

00:16:39.180 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.

00:16:44.820 Do you think he's a Western source?

00:16:47.420 Is he associated with Western intelligence?

00:16:49.220 It's hard to say who Mr. Mifsud is associated with.

00:16:53.860 He was tied up with Link University, Mr. Scoti, who had involvement in the Italian government, and they were appointed.

00:17:04.840 It's hard to say who Mifsud is.

00:17:06.240 I'm going to yield the remainder of my time to Mr. Gates.

00:17:08.980 Hard to say who Mifsud is.

00:17:11.140 He's the guy who started the whole thing.

00:17:13.520 We've known it for years.

00:17:14.600 Go ahead and play the video.

00:17:15.380 Thank you.

00:17:19.220 When the special counsel's office interviewed Mifsud, did he lie to you guys, too?

00:17:24.760 Can't get into that.

00:17:25.760 Did you interview Mifsud?

00:17:26.720 Can't get into that.

00:17:28.200 Is Mifsud Western intelligence or Russian intelligence?

00:17:30.980 Can't get into that.

00:17:32.060 Well, I'm reading from your report.

00:17:33.860 Mifsud told Papadopoulos.

00:17:35.700 Papadopoulos tells the diplomat.

00:17:37.060 The diplomat tells the FBI.

00:17:38.560 The FBI opens the investigation July 31st, 2016.

00:17:41.600 And here we are three years later, July of 2019.

00:17:45.300 The country's been put through this.

00:17:47.020 And the central figure who launches it all lies to us.

00:17:51.320 And you guys don't hunt him down and interview him again.

00:17:54.220 And you don't charge him with a crime.

00:17:56.220 Maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusation started.

00:18:01.280 Maybe it's to go back and actually figure out why Joseph Mifsud was lying to the FBI.

00:18:05.560 And here's the good news.

00:18:07.500 Here's the good news.

00:18:08.920 That's exactly what Bill Barr is doing.

00:18:11.860 And thank goodness for that.

00:18:13.060 That's exactly what the Attorney General and John Durham are doing.

00:18:16.340 Well, Mr. Durham, was that what you were doing?

00:18:18.620 I'm sorry, is that what?

00:18:19.860 Was finding out who Mifsud was, what you were doing?

00:18:22.980 We pursued that avenue, yes.

00:18:25.060 Right, but was he...

00:18:26.760 This whole thing was an op, Mr. Durham.

00:18:29.400 This wasn't like a bumbling, fumbling FBI that, like, couldn't get FISA straight.

00:18:33.960 They ran an op.

00:18:35.000 So who put Mifsud in play? 0.54

00:18:37.640 You don't know, do you?

00:18:39.140 I do not know that.

00:18:40.180 I can't give you the answer.

00:18:40.780 For years, you had years to find out the answer to what Mr. Jordan said was the seminal question,

00:18:46.520 and you don't have it.

00:18:47.780 And it just begs the question whether or not you were really trying to find that out.

00:18:52.860 Because it's one thing to criticize the FBI for their FISA violations, to write a report.

00:18:59.100 They've been criticized in plenty of reports.

00:19:00.760 Some have referred to your work as just a repackaging and regurgitation of what the Inspector General already told us.

00:19:07.540 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,

00:19:15.140 what's this all been about?

00:19:16.220 Well, I'm not exactly sure of the import of your question.

00:19:21.360 If your question is, do we try to locate and interview Mr. Mifsud, the answer is yes.

00:19:27.560 Why didn't you subpoena him?

00:19:28.060 We expended.

00:19:28.940 Wait, why didn't you subpoena him to a grand jury?

00:19:31.180 I'm sorry, why that?

00:19:31.940 Why didn't you send him a grand jury subpoena?

00:19:33.740 Mr. Mifsud?

00:19:34.400 You'd have to find Mr. Mifsud before you could serve a grand jury subpoena on him.

00:19:37.520 You guys were out in Italy.

00:19:38.600 Was it you and Bill Barr looking for authentic pasta over there or Mifsud?

00:19:42.300 No, we not.

00:19:44.100 We were looking for information that might help us locate Mifsud.

00:19:47.720 But you know who I think could probably locate him?

00:19:50.660 The features of Western intelligence and possibly our own government that put him in play.

00:19:55.140 Like, your report seems to be less an indictment of the FBI and more of an inoculation, lowercase i, of course.

00:20:03.520 And like many inoculations, it may have worse consequences down the road.

00:20:07.520 We'll have some time to discuss this matter further, but it's just hard to, like, pretend as though this was a sincere effort

00:20:13.680 when you don't get to the fundamental thing that started the whole deal.

00:20:17.640 Yeah, I agree with Mr. Biggs.

00:20:20.000 You've given us testimony today that you're disappointed that the FBI didn't cooperate more, right?

00:20:26.320 That was your testimony.

00:20:27.540 I've said that.

00:20:27.940 Yeah, so we're disappointed too, but the difference is when regular folks do things that are wrong and unlawful,

00:20:35.880 there's typically greater effort to try to get those people before a grand jury to utilize criminal process where appropriate,

00:20:43.340 not for other purposes.

00:20:44.980 And it's just like, oh, well, Bill Priestep, the guy who might have set this whole op in motion,

00:20:49.320 he just didn't want to talk to you about certain things, and you were real accommodating to that.

00:20:53.100 And then Mifsud, the person who juices Papadopoulos to create this predicate that you find improper.

00:21:00.440 You guys, I mean, did you ever know who his lawyer was, Mifsud's lawyer?

00:21:04.680 He talked to his lawyer in Europe.

00:21:06.340 I don't know if he represented in the United States.

00:21:07.180 So you could find the guy's lawyer, but you couldn't find him?

00:21:10.180 We contacted somebody that we knew had represented him in a part of the effort to try to locate him.

00:21:16.820 And you got the lawyer.

00:21:19.560 And then now you're sitting here in front of the judiciary saying you could find the guy's lawyer,

00:21:23.640 but you couldn't effectuate the service of a subpoena because you couldn't find him? 0.85

00:21:26.780 Do you know how silly that sounds?

00:21:28.100 As you may or may not know, we wouldn't have the authority to serve a subpoena overseas. 0.50

00:21:32.900 The lawyer didn't know where Mifsud was.

00:21:35.140 He was in communication with him, but he claimed not to know where he was.

00:21:38.640 And we were trying to arrange an opportunity to talk to Mifsud.

00:21:43.260 Did you take possession of two BlackBerry phones from Mifsud in any way?

00:21:48.820 There were phones that were provided to us by the guy.

00:21:52.380 So you could find the phones with the guy.

00:21:53.500 Correct. 0.95

00:21:53.840 Do you see how silly this looks? 0.85

00:21:55.100 Like you found the lawyer, you found the phones, 0.59

00:21:57.060 but the actual dude who got ordered by Western intelligence to go start this thing you couldn't find?

00:22:03.240 It's kind of laughable.

00:22:04.800 It seems like more than disappointment.

00:22:07.120 It seems like you weren't really trying to expose the true core of the corruption,

00:22:11.540 that you were trying to go at it another way.

00:22:14.500 As we said in the report and as I said in my opening remarks,

00:22:18.640 we pursued the facts as best we could.

00:22:21.000 How about this fact, Mr. Durham?

00:22:23.700 The entire Mueller team does a hard reset on their Apple phone in synchronization to wipe away evidence.

00:22:30.500 Did you investigate that?

00:22:32.360 I've read that.

00:22:33.020 Well, why didn't, did you investigate it?

00:22:35.840 Who gave the order on the Mueller team to wipe the phones?

00:22:39.780 Yeah, that was not something that we were asked to look at and we didn't look at.

00:22:43.500 No, that's not true, Mr. Durham.

00:22:44.940 That is not true because I'm holding the document that authorizes your activity

00:22:49.460 and it specifically says the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller.

00:22:55.060 It's in pair, Mr. Jeremiah, I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record,

00:22:58.300 the order that says that you're supposed to investigate these things.

00:23:01.700 And so like whether it's the Mueller team, Mifsud, how about Azra Turk?

00:23:05.920 Azra Turk, what's Azra Turk's real name?

00:23:09.680 Do you know that?

00:23:11.100 I'm not going to be disclosing the names of FBI personnel that are otherwise unavailable.

00:23:15.180 Oh, but an FBI, so the FBI sends somebody to go honeypot George Papadopoulos.

00:23:20.440 Who gave the order to do that?

00:23:25.020 I think that's beyond the scope of what's in the report.

00:23:27.300 It's literally the scope of what your charging order is.

00:23:30.460 Who put it in motion?

00:23:31.900 We get after it was put in motion, the FBI did a bunch of wrong and corrupt things.

00:23:35.920 Totally understand.

00:23:36.960 We're trying to deal with that.

00:23:38.120 But when you are part of the cover up, Mr. Durham, then it makes our job harder.

00:23:43.360 Yeah, well, if that's your thought, I mean, there's no way of dissuading you from that.

00:23:48.340 I can tell you that it's offensive and that the people who worked on this investigation

00:23:52.320 have spent their lives trying to protect people in this country and pursue within the law.

00:23:57.800 What it is that we are authorized to do.

00:24:00.460 You tried two cases, lost both of them.

00:24:03.860 And then the one plea, guilty plea you got, Clinesmith.

00:24:08.220 Clinesmith is back to practicing law in Washington, D.C. today.

00:24:12.000 That's beyond my control.

00:24:13.460 Right.

00:24:13.760 But the fact that you allowed that plea to occur, right, and then the punishment was insufficient, 0.64

00:24:20.840 the fact that you didn't charge Andrew McCabe, you didn't convict the lying Democrats or the lying Russians,

00:24:26.580 you didn't investigate Mifsud or the Mueller probe, even though, as we sit here today in black letter,

00:24:32.060 that was your charge.

00:24:33.700 Have you ever heard of the Washington Generals?

00:24:36.260 The Washington Generals?

00:24:37.200 Yes.

00:24:37.680 Yeah.

00:24:37.840 And they're the team that basically gets paid to show up and lose, right?

00:24:43.080 Well, you know, I'm sure that the players who exert blood, sweat, and tears don't view it that way,

00:24:49.680 but you might.

00:24:50.100 I think they do.

00:24:50.920 I think they do because the job of the Washington Generals is to show up every night and to play the

00:24:56.200 Harlem Globetrotters.

00:24:58.000 And their job is to lose.

00:24:58.680 Oh, I'm thinking, I'm sorry, a bit different.

00:25:00.240 I was thinking of a different thing.

00:25:00.960 Yeah, yeah.

00:25:01.380 So their job is to lose.

00:25:02.560 And I'm kind of wondering, and it just seems so facially obvious that it's not what's in your

00:25:08.120 report that's telling.

00:25:09.640 It's the omission.

00:25:10.500 It's the lack of work you did.

00:25:11.860 And for the people like the chairman who put trust in you, I think you let them down.

00:25:16.000 I think you let the country down.

00:25:17.180 And you are one of the barriers to the true accountability that we need.

00:25:20.580 Do I get to respond to that or comment on that?

00:25:22.420 Yeah.

00:25:22.740 Well, I don't know if you've ever investigated a crime.

00:25:26.180 I don't know that you have.

00:25:27.020 You didn't investigate these, Mr. Durham.

00:25:29.380 How about Andy McCabe?

00:25:30.860 Did you charge him?

00:25:31.740 Did you investigate him?

00:25:32.760 Gentlemen, time has expired.

00:25:34.180 The witness can respond, and then we'll move on to our last.

00:25:36.280 I don't know, sir, whether or not you've ever had occasion to try to investigate crimes under

00:25:41.020 the rules and regulations and under the Constitution that we're bound by.

00:25:46.240 We can gather evidence in particularly lawful ways.

00:25:50.240 Can't charge people because we might think something.

00:25:52.500 You didn't charge.

00:25:53.320 You didn't investigate.

00:25:53.940 You didn't investigate the Mueller team wiping their phones, and you won't tell us who gave

00:25:58.600 the orders because you're protecting those people.

00:26:00.560 Gentlemen's time has expired.

00:26:05.400 We are back live.

00:26:07.100 So after watching that, what do you think?

00:26:10.680 Do you really think that that guy took this multi-year project and millions of dollars and

00:26:18.220 didn't ask those basic questions, didn't find out who gave the order to get the entire Russia

00:26:25.240 hoax going?

00:26:26.300 Leo on Twitter says at one point he had confidence in Durham, but now not so much.

00:26:32.020 And if you are watching this on Rumble, and we hope you are, we hope you're subscribed or

00:26:36.800 on YouTube or on Twitter.

00:26:37.660 One of the most interesting things is to watch my colleague Mike Johnson, who's sitting next

00:26:43.280 to me during that nine-minute exchange.

00:26:45.460 And I love Mike Johnson.

00:26:46.660 Great congressman from Louisiana. 1.00

00:26:48.700 And you could tell he's just slowly being convinced along the way that this is bullshit, 0.99

00:26:54.660 that the whole Durham thing was bullshit, that it was there to ensure that any flesh wounds 0.99

00:27:01.660 the deep state had to take would never really result in the structural change or the personal 0.95

00:27:07.660 accountability that was necessary.

00:27:09.840 And as I listen to that again, I'm thinking about like this Bill Barr, John Durham trip

00:27:15.040 to Italy.

00:27:16.180 So we're supposed to believe that these two guys, what, are they walking around like Sherlock

00:27:20.720 Holmes with their magnifying glass looking for clues to see if Mifsud's around? 1.00

00:27:25.960 They found the guy's phones.

00:27:28.240 They found the guy's lawyer.

00:27:29.400 The reason they didn't find Mifsud is that they didn't want to. 0.52

00:27:34.380 They didn't want to tell you who put intelligence assets in play overseas to try to create a false

00:27:42.220 predicate to use national security authorities for politics, to take political dirt and use

00:27:49.740 it to try to ruin the Trump presidency.

00:27:52.300 And here's the thing.

00:27:52.940 It's not backward looking.

00:27:54.120 Because if we don't now go do this work as the Judiciary Committee, then it will happen

00:27:59.280 again.

00:28:01.280 In a way, they got away with it.

00:28:03.520 We cannot let that occur.

00:28:05.280 We cannot put our faith in people like Bill Barr and John Durham.

00:28:08.980 I think we ought to haul Bill Barr before the Judiciary Committee and ask him these questions.

00:28:12.920 If John Durham can't answer them, maybe Bill Barr should be able to answer why this investigation

00:28:19.940 never produced any real storyline for what actually happened.

00:28:25.540 I don't think that is a bug of the system.

00:28:29.520 I think it's a feature.

00:28:31.400 And I think that that questioning pretty dispositively proved it.

00:28:35.340 I think Mike Johnson knew that.

00:28:36.740 I think everybody watching knew that.

00:28:38.620 I think John Durham knew that.

00:28:41.020 Before we get out of here, I want to give you an update on some spending matters that are very

00:28:46.660 much being hotly debated and contested in the halls of Congress here.

00:28:51.060 So on September 30th, the government funding bill that Pelosi and McConnell negotiated runs out.

00:28:58.920 So we have to have the new structure to fund the government.

00:29:01.280 I don't want to do continuing resolutions.

00:29:03.620 I don't want to ice in forever, cast in cement, if you will, the spending levels of the Biden era

00:29:11.980 and post-COVID.

00:29:13.980 So we thought the most modest thing we could do is say, you've got to have your budget at

00:29:18.840 2022 spending levels, not 2023, which is substantially higher.

00:29:26.420 That's what you should mark to.

00:29:27.780 Put some downward pressure on spending.

00:29:30.200 And we're working to get that done.

00:29:32.920 And we've got some great allies in that fight, one of whom is the budget chairman, Jody Arrington.

00:29:38.040 And I got this great note from Chairman Arrington.

00:29:41.560 And he starts the note with a quote from James Madison.

00:29:47.560 Here's what Madison says.

00:29:49.640 I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse and in a Republican government

00:29:55.880 more than any other.

00:29:58.440 So Madison's poignant quote captures the consequence of borrowing on the backs of our children and

00:30:04.460 bankrupting their future.

00:30:05.560 And to reverse the curse, remember, public debt is a public curse.

00:30:11.680 Mr. Arrington gave me a new nameplate.

00:30:15.880 And just to remind me what the charge is, he put on the back a reverse the curse.

00:30:21.120 So thank you to Jody Arrington for bringing us that, for reminding us of the words of Madison.

00:30:27.640 And we've got to do something to start tackling these major drivers of the debt.

00:30:31.260 But it's not going to be enough to just do pathetic incrementalism.

00:30:37.240 We need bold solutions.

00:30:38.460 The easy answers are in the past.

00:30:40.040 And we need leaders willing to make the tough choices.

00:30:42.800 I know our budget chairman, Jody Arrington, is one such leader.

00:30:46.820 So as you may have noticed, Firebrand, this was one of the first episodes we had in a while.

00:30:51.480 It's been a minute.

00:30:52.540 But we've been making arguments on the critical issues before the Congress on our Rumble channel,

00:30:57.900 on our YouTube channel.

00:30:59.280 Make sure you're subscribed.

00:31:00.320 If you hit the little bell, then your notifications will be turned on.

00:31:03.900 That way, when there's a spicy moment in committee or a big piece of news that we're sharing with

00:31:08.860 the country and the public, you will be the first to know.

00:31:11.920 You will be the most informed.

00:31:13.360 And you will have the straight facts right from Washington.

00:31:16.880 Thanks, everyone, for joining us.

00:31:18.640 Make sure that you share this episode, that you continue to be our digital warriors out there.

00:31:24.740 And let's go get them.

00:31:26.180 Roll the credits.

00:31:26.640 Roll the credits.

00:31:30.320 Roll the credits.

00:31:34.800 Roll the credits.

00:31:35.320 Roll the credits.

00:31:40.160 We'll be right back.

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - June 23, 2023

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

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