The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - October 14, 2021


Episode 11： FBI Abuses (feat. Don Gaetz) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz


Episode Stats


Length

42 minutes

Words per minute

162.803

Word count

6,873

Sentence count

408

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The FBI is investigating a local school board meeting because parents are showing up to ask questions about their children s education. Is this a good or bad thing? And why is the FBI trying to prevent parents from attending school board meetings?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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 .
00:00:01.000 The embattled Congressman Matt Gaetz.
00:00:03.000 Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress
00:00:06.000 who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
00:00:10.000 Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem for the Democratic Party.
00:00:13.000 He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing of laws.
00:00:16.000 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,
00:00:23.000 if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground,
00:00:26.000 then welcome, my fellow patriots.
00:00:29.000 You are in the right place. This is the movement for you.
00:00:33.000 You ever watch this guy on television?
00:00:35.000 It's like a machine. Matt Gaetz.
00:00:38.000 I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet.
00:00:41.000 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.
00:00:49.000 I'm just in the way.
00:00:53.000 Ms. Monaco, I want to come back to this extraordinary letter and memorandum
00:00:58.000 that the Attorney General of the United States issued yesterday.
00:01:02.000 Practically every day brings new reports about this administration weaponizing the federal bureaucracy to go after political opponents.
00:01:08.000 Frankly, I don't think we've ever seen anything like it in American history.
00:01:12.000 Is parents waiting sometimes for hours to speak at a local school board meeting to express concerns about critical race theory or the masking of their students, particularly young children?
00:01:24.000 Is that, in and of itself, is that harassment and intimidation?
00:01:28.000 Is waiting to express one's view at a school board meeting harassment and intimidation?
00:01:33.000 As the Attorney General's memorandum made quite clear, spirited debate is welcome, is a hallmark of this country.
00:01:40.000 It's something we all should engage in.
00:01:42.000 I don't think so, Ms. Monaco.
00:01:44.000 With all due respect, it didn't make it quite clear.
00:01:46.000 It doesn't define those terms, nor does it define harassment or intimidation.
00:01:50.000 It talks about violence.
00:01:52.000 I think we can agree that violence shouldn't be condoned or looked aside from in any way swept under the rug at all.
00:01:58.000 But harassment and intimidation, what did those terms mean in the context of a local school board meeting?
00:02:04.000 I mean, this seems to, in the First Amendment context, we talk about the chill, the chill to speech.
00:02:10.000 If this isn't a deliberate attempt to chill parents from showing up at school board meetings for their elected school boards, I don't know what is.
00:02:20.000 I mean, I'm not aware of anything like this in American history.
00:02:24.000 We're talking about the FBI.
00:02:26.000 You're using the FBI to intervene in school board meetings.
00:02:31.000 That's extraordinary.
00:02:32.000 Senator, I have to respectfully disagree.
00:02:34.000 That is not what...
00:02:35.000 Point me to an instance.
00:02:36.000 The Attorney General's memorandum made quite clear that violence is not appropriate.
00:02:43.000 Spirited public debate on a whole range of issues is absolutely what this country is all about.
00:02:49.000 Then why is it being investigated by the FBI?
00:02:52.000 It is not.
00:02:53.000 You know, all I can say is this is truly extraordinary.
00:02:56.000 I think you know it is.
00:02:57.000 It's unprecedented.
00:02:58.000 You can't point to a single instance where anything like this has happened before.
00:03:01.000 And I think parents across this country are going to be stunned to learn.
00:03:05.000 Stunned.
00:03:06.000 That if they show up at a local school board meeting, by the way, where they have the right to appear and be heard.
00:03:11.000 Where they have the right to say something about their children's education.
00:03:14.000 Where they have the right to vote.
00:03:16.000 And you are attempting to intimidate them.
00:03:19.000 You are attempting to silence them.
00:03:22.000 You are attempting to interfere with their rights as parents.
00:03:25.000 And yes, with their rights as voters.
00:03:27.000 This is wrong.
00:03:28.000 This is dangerous.
00:03:30.000 And I cannot believe that an attorney general of the United States is engaging in this kind of conduct.
00:03:35.000 And frankly, I can't believe that you are sitting here today defending it.
00:03:40.000 That's firebrand Missouri United States Senator Josh Hawley going after the Department of Justice and the FBI for weaponizing federal law enforcement against parents who love their kids and show up to school board meetings.
00:03:55.000 I've got an interview with a former school board member I know pretty well later in the show.
00:04:00.000 But it begs the question.
00:04:02.000 Where is federal law enforcement gone astray?
00:04:05.000 Where have there been abuses?
00:04:07.000 And are there particular abuses that are getting worse?
00:04:10.000 FISA.
00:04:12.000 The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
00:04:15.000 It creates foreign intelligence surveillance courts.
00:04:19.000 And they operate in secret.
00:04:22.000 Why do we have secret courts anyway?
00:04:26.000 And why would U.S. citizens be at risk from intelligence work being done in a foreign country?
00:04:34.000 And are they even following their own rules and procedures as they operate a secret spy court?
00:04:41.000 Spoiler alert.
00:04:42.000 They are not.
00:04:44.000 The greatest threat we face abroad is a rising, ambitious Chinese Communist Party. 0.95
00:04:50.000 And we'll have upcoming episodes and segments about that in the very near future.
00:04:55.000 Their hooks into our political, tech, and corporate elite will be exposed.
00:05:00.000 But today, we will focus on the greatest domestic threat to America. 0.54
00:05:06.000 And that is the weaponization of the national security state that has been directed inward against our American citizens.
00:05:16.000 Often for the preservation of corrupt institutions or the acquisition of political power.
00:05:23.000 I made this point on Steve Bannon's War Room recently.
00:05:27.000 Take a listen.
00:05:28.000 I believe that there are people who under almost any other circumstance would be out on their own recognizance.
00:05:33.000 But to make a political point are behind bars right now because the Biden administration, the intelligence community,
00:05:39.000 they want to turn these exquisite authorities in the national security apparatus inward to the American people to hunt our people.
00:05:47.000 Spying, lying, smearing, electioneering, melding the worlds of intelligence collection, criminal targeting, and domestic political ambition.
00:05:59.000 I grew up my entire life thinking the FBI were the good guys.
00:06:03.000 Always, top to bottom.
00:06:04.000 They wanted justice, not success or failure for political movements.
00:06:09.000 Frankly, the FBI was too cool for politics, I figured.
00:06:14.000 That perspective informed my worldview until I was seated on the House Judiciary Committee in 2017.
00:06:20.000 The Russia hoax was already in full swing by then. 0.96
00:06:23.000 Trump, prostitutes, pee tapes. 1.00
00:06:26.000 He was a Russian agent, they told us, coordinating campaigning with Putin. 0.99
00:06:31.000 I saw clearly what was happening at a politicized FBI during this December 2017 interview with Fox News' Ed Henry.
00:06:40.000 The problem is, in the swamp of Washington, D.C., the biggest alligator is a politicized FBI and Department of Justice.
00:06:47.000 And that's why we're fighting hard to make sure that we've got a fair and equal opportunity for all sides to be heard,
00:06:53.000 and that you don't have this pro-Hillary Clinton bias, anti-Donald Trump bias continue to infect our institutions and our systems that all Americans should be able to rely on.
00:07:02.000 I hate fewer carbs now.
00:07:04.000 Even some Republicans we looked up to and trusted at the time, like Paul Ryan and Trey Gowdy, said we should trust the FBI and Robert Mueller.
00:07:14.000 I told people at the time that Gowdy was wrong.
00:07:19.000 The FBI was putting their thumb on the scale to try to nail Trump because the deep state despised him, even if our voters elected him.
00:07:28.000 I made the case that Gowdy and Ryan blew it in this appearance on Sean Hannity.
00:07:33.000 I'm glad you went through Trey Gowdy's exquisite questions in 2017 to these corrupt officials.
00:07:38.000 I guess my question, Sean, would be why was it then in late May of 2018 that Trey Gowdy went on Martha McCallum's show and said that the FBI did exactly what all of our fellow Americans would have wanted them to do and that it had nothing to do with Donald Trump?
00:07:53.000 Both of those things have now been proven to be not true, and it seems that Gowdy's brilliant lawyering back in 2017 that we're only able to see now proves those two statements untrue.
00:08:03.000 The number one question I get asked from Americans is why no one has gone to jail and been held accountable.
00:08:08.000 Unfortunately, when Nunes and Meadows and Jordan and I wanted subpoena power, it was Paul Ryan and Trey Gowdy that wouldn't give us that subpoena power.
00:08:16.000 Democrats sent out hundreds of subpoenas when we had control and could have run this to ground in 2017.
00:08:22.000 We didn't send out a single subpoena, not one, and that's a failure of our Republican leadership.
00:08:27.000 Jim Jordan, Ron DeSantis, Mark Meadows, Devin Nunes, we were all not deterred.
00:08:33.000 We continued to push for investigations.
00:08:36.000 Then we got a bombshell report from the inspector general.
00:08:41.000 In secret courts, our own government officials were doctoring evidence, lying on certifications, not supporting factual claims with required evidence, and violating the very procedures intended to preserve our delicate liberties.
00:08:58.000 Paul Ryan and Trey Gowdy were wrong.
00:09:01.000 We should have been attacking the credibility of these corrupt investigations into Trump from the start.
00:09:07.000 We should not have indulged them even for one moment.
00:09:10.000 But here is Gowdy in May of 2018 when we were in power.
00:09:16.000 We could have actually done something.
00:09:18.000 But Gowdy was just simping for the FBI.
00:09:22.000 I am, I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump.
00:09:33.000 After Gowdy made these statements, House Judiciary held a joint hearing with the Oversight and Government Reform and Accountability Committees, which Gowdy actually chairs OGR.
00:09:44.000 And this happened.
00:09:45.000 There is no member of Congress who holds the department and the bureau in higher esteem than I do.
00:09:52.000 There are others who hold you in high esteem, but I would take second place to no one.
00:09:58.000 I would have defended the department and the bureau when, frankly, it was pretty damn lonely to do so.
00:10:03.000 When my Democrat friends were asking that Jim Comey be prosecuted for a Hatch Act violation about this time last year, they now want him canonized.
00:10:13.000 But this time last year, they wanted him prosecuted for a Hatch Act violation.
00:10:18.000 When your predecessor sat right where you're sitting and was embroiled in a fight with this little tiny startup company called Apple,
00:10:27.000 I was on the side of the bureau.
00:10:29.000 When there are calls for special counsel, even today, I reject them because I trust the women and men of the Department of Justice and the bureau, the professionals that we hired to do their job.
00:10:42.000 Gowdy was spectacularly wrong about the FBI in the Russia investigation.
00:10:47.000 To his credit, he admitted as much to Tucker Carlson after he left office and became a Fox News personality.
00:10:54.000 I made a lot of mistakes in life, relying on briefings and not insisting on the documents.
00:11:00.000 Yes, my mistake was relying on the word of the FBI and the DOJ and not insisting on the documents.
00:11:06.000 Right.
00:11:07.000 It turns out Fox News Gowdy had the perspective that oversight chairman Trey Gowdy lacked.
00:11:13.000 A lot of good that does us now.
00:11:16.000 Pundits like Trey Gowdy should get credit for admitting when they make a bad read.
00:11:22.000 But we must learn and improve.
00:11:25.000 Jim Jordan put it best if they can do it to the president of the United States.
00:11:30.000 Just imagine.
00:11:32.000 And most importantly, this bill is an improvement over what currently exists, over the status quo.
00:11:37.000 The legislation begins to address the problems that we saw with the FBI's illegal surveillance of Trump campaign associate Carter Page.
00:11:44.000 On December 9th, 2019, the nonpartisan Justice Department inspector general released a 400-page report detailing the FBI's misconduct and the failures and its warrantless surveillance of Mr. Page.
00:11:57.000 Congressman Meadows and I urged our Democrat chairman to hold hearings on this report, but they were not interested.
00:12:02.000 Still, I hope all of my colleagues had a chance to read the inspector general's report because it should concern every single American.
00:12:10.000 Remember, if our law enforcement agencies can do this to a president, imagine what they can do to you and I.
00:12:16.000 They did it to President Trump.
00:12:18.000 We caught them red handed, so we demanded a broader review.
00:12:22.000 Now we have those results and they are truly terrifying.
00:12:26.000 The failures that fueled the corruption of the Trump-Russia hoax are still happening today.
00:12:32.000 Secret courts are operating in the United States, giving the FBI incredible powers to spy on U.S. citizens.
00:12:39.000 Here's the critical background.
00:12:41.000 In 1978, the 95th Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and that they were able to get done with overwhelming support from a majority of the United States Senate, including then-Senator Joe Biden.
00:12:57.000 Now, this provided a statutory framework for government agencies to obtain authorization for gathering foreign intelligence.
00:13:06.000 And they did so through electronic surveillance, physical searches, pen registers, trap and trace devices, and the production of certain business records.
00:13:14.000 The innocent intention of FISA was to create a check on the executive branch's authority to surveil anyone it deems a threat.
00:13:23.000 FISA established the Independent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and they claim that the FISC was supposed to protect liberty over this notion of an aggressive, nosy executive branch.
00:13:37.000 In America, when law enforcement conducts a search, the Fourth Amendment requires that the search warrant is approved by a neutral magistrate, typically a federal judge.
00:13:49.000 When the NSA and FBI want to eavesdrop on you, they obtain a secret warrant.
00:13:56.000 FISC, an entirely separate court of 11 judges, reviews FISA surveillance orders outside of the public eye.
00:14:04.000 The FISA orders are kept secret, and the court's opinions and transcripts of the proceedings are automatically classified.
00:14:13.000 I can hear George Washington gasping from the grave.
00:14:17.000 Today's data shows that the FISC is little more than a rubber stamp.
00:14:22.000 They approve over 75% of the warrants without any modification, and 99% of all requested warrants approved.
00:14:33.000 The FISC has morphed from a neutral arbiter, separate from the executive branch, into a partisan court, which directly threatens your civil liberties.
00:14:43.000 They aren't partisan for Republicans or Democrats as much as they are partisan toward the government and against the rest of us.
00:14:52.000 But the left has been pacified.
00:14:55.000 The days of Occupy, Wall Street, and anti-establishment are over in favor of allegiance to the state and big, woke corporations.
00:15:03.000 All the powers that B had to do was cloak their regime in rainbow flags and BLM shirts, and the emotionally vulnerable and manipulatable left bent the knee.
00:15:14.000 The left no longer serves as any type of threat to the regime, but the right is more objective, more aware, and less easily fooled.
00:15:23.000 Excluding Paul Ryan and Trey Gowdy, of course.
00:15:26.000 That means the only people fighting this corruption.
00:15:31.000 It's you and me, America First conservatives.
00:15:34.000 It's why we feel the deep state is typically targeting us, because they are.
00:15:39.000 In the early 2000s, as a direct response to 9-11, we had the Bush administration enacting the Patriot Act,
00:15:46.000 which presided over enhanced investigative tools justified by the notion of preventing future terrorist attacks.
00:15:54.000 You wonder why they want to call everyone associated with January 6 a terrorist.
00:15:59.000 It's because they want to use these tools.
00:16:01.000 Even though some people pose no threat to the regime or the government, it's a basis to target a political movement.
00:16:08.000 Now, Section 215 of the Patriot Act augmented FISA's ability to access business records,
00:16:14.000 and that's what sparked the metadata collection debate of the 2000s.
00:16:20.000 Remember the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, testifying before Congress that there wasn't bulk collection of data?
00:16:27.000 Turns out, there was bulk collection of data.
00:16:29.000 I never understood why he wasn't arrested and charged for lying to Congress, like others might be.
00:16:35.000 Now, after the extreme criminal abuses of the FISA process during the Russia hoax,
00:16:42.000 the Inspector General at the Department of Justice decided to audit a few cases at random.
00:16:47.000 Take a look under the hood. Peel back the layers of the onion.
00:16:50.000 Choose your metaphor. They were taking a closer look.
00:16:53.000 In the words of the Inspector General, quote,
00:16:56.000 Physical search and or electric surveillance, pursuant to FISA, is one of the DOJ's most intrusive investigative authorities.
00:17:06.000 The IG looked at 29 cases.
00:17:09.000 Keep in mind, the standards for these applications is one of, and I'm quoting directly from the regs here,
00:17:16.000 scrupulous accuracy.
00:17:19.000 Guess how many of those 29 files were non-compliant?
00:17:23.000 All of them.
00:17:25.000 All 29.
00:17:27.000 You're going to see references to the Woods procedures.
00:17:30.000 That's important.
00:17:31.000 Those are the procedures that require documentation and evidence for the claims that are being made by the government.
00:17:38.000 In the 29 cases reviewed previously, four of the files didn't even have the Woods documents attached at all.
00:17:47.000 They were totally lost.
00:17:49.000 Four out of 29.
00:17:51.000 And the full review contained 209 errors.
00:17:55.000 Some of them the Department of Justice deemed material errors.
00:17:58.000 And in all 29 cases, a judge in a secret court authorized the spying, often without the required legally supporting documentation.
00:18:11.000 So, the inspector general looked at even more cases.
00:18:15.000 And now, we have a fresh new report from the IG.
00:18:20.000 September of this year, we found the same failures that allowed the Russia hoax to continue.
00:18:26.000 Well, they're still failing today.
00:18:29.000 Those problems exist in huge numbers.
00:18:32.000 Quoting from the report now.
00:18:34.000 Quote,
00:18:35.000 Based on FBI documentation, we determined that there were at least 183 instances where the required Woods file was missing, destroyed, or incomplete at the time of the FBI's inventory.
00:18:47.000 Given the FBI's reliance on Wood procedures to help ensure the accuracy of its FISA applications, we believe the missing Woods files represents a significant lapse in the FBI's management of its FISA program.
00:19:03.000 It sure looks like the FBI and DOJ are getting the procedures wrong more than they are getting them right.
00:19:12.000 But you wouldn't know that if you listened to the sworn under oath testimony of FBI Director Christopher Wray in March of this year.
00:19:21.000 We accepted all of the findings and recommendations in the inspector general's report.
00:19:26.000 I ordered, at the time, over 40 corrective actions to go above and beyond the recommendations of the inspector general's report.
00:19:34.000 And those have been implemented.
00:19:36.000 Those include everything from strengthening our procedures to ensure accuracy and completeness to make sure the court gets all the information it's supposed to.
00:19:46.000 Changes in our protocols for CHS's, Confidential Human Sources, training changes.
00:19:52.000 I created a new office of internal audit that's specifically focused on FISA auditing.
00:19:59.000 But according to the IG, what Wray says and what the FBI does are quite different.
00:20:05.000 The report indicts Wray directly.
00:20:08.000 Quote,
00:20:09.000 The FBI Director publicly acknowledged the seriousness of the identified problems and announced numerous steps the FBI was undertaking to address them.
00:20:17.000 However, we believe certain statements from the FBI failed to recognize the significant risks posed by systemic noncompliance with the Woods procedures.
00:20:28.000 And during our audit, some FBI personnel minimalized the significance of Woods procedures noncompliance.
00:20:36.000 In the words of the IG, these chronic failures, quote, can lead to faulty probable cause determinations and infringement of U.S. persons' civil liberties.
00:20:51.000 This is not a small deal.
00:20:53.000 Even though the FBI apparently diminishes their violation of our American rights, these abuses and tortured interpretations of FISA over the past 43 years exemplifies well-intentioned policy morphing into a monster.
00:21:09.000 Section 215 enabled the FBI to ask the FISA court to compel the sharing of books and business documents, tax records, library checkout lists, any other tangible thing as a part of a foreign intelligence or international terrorism investigation.
00:21:26.000 The required material can include purely domestic records.
00:21:31.000 Kind of makes you wonder why they're trying to label the political movement they don't like a terrorist movement when there are these tools that even though they exist under something called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act can result in the production of so many records so long as they just append a label of terrorism, whether it's appropriate or not.
00:21:50.000 And so what do we say to those who claim that FISA's errors are unintentional, in good faith, for the greater good?
00:21:58.000 I'm not buying the BS.
00:22:00.000 These errors were egregious and systemic and, I believe, possibly intentional.
00:22:07.000 How do you prove intent?
00:22:09.000 Easy.
00:22:10.000 Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being tripped over.
00:22:15.000 And folks, we have been getting roundhoused.
00:22:18.000 After the Bush abuses of FISA came the Obama expansions and abuses of FISA.
00:22:25.000 Can't say that I'm surprised.
00:22:26.000 In fact, in 2008, Senator Obama voted for the Bush-sponsored Protect America Act, which extended the government's expanding spying powers for an additional four years.
00:22:39.000 Bush, Cheney, Obama, Biden, they all hate your civil liberties.
00:22:45.000 Trump was different precisely because he was targeted.
00:22:48.000 He knew what it was like.
00:22:50.000 He may have also been targeted because he is different.
00:22:54.000 I'm different, too.
00:22:56.000 Barack Obama spent a surprising amount of his presidency extending the Bush-era Patriot Act.
00:23:04.000 In fact, in May of 2011, the Patriot Act was set to expire and Obama was abroad.
00:23:10.000 He cared so much about the government's wiretapping abilities, he became the first U.S. president in history to sign a bill into law using the auto pen.
00:23:19.000 It wasn't even in the Oval Office.
00:23:22.000 Now that the FISA framework has been established and preserved by Congress, it's not very surprising to hear of its abusive nature.
00:23:30.000 Advocates for the defense state say things like, we need these tools to stop the terrorists.
00:23:35.000 My response?
00:23:38.000 On a day-to-day basis, I'm not sure terrorists are as capable and dangerous to the American way of life as our own government.
00:23:48.000 We must amend FISA.
00:23:49.000 We must put a check on the NSA and FBI's ability to summon uncontested warrants through rubber-stamped secret courts.
00:23:58.000 We can't stand by and watch as the deep state obfuscates the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, so many of the rights enshrined in our Constitution.
00:24:08.000 And they're just picking who they're going to go after next.
00:24:11.000 The only crime greater than international terrorism is enabling, promoting, and abusing a system where your fellow countrymen is blatantly surveilled by an oppressive government without the due process of law.
00:24:27.000 Currently, the system is in direct contrast to the principles that the United States of America was founded on. Period.
00:24:35.000 Don't get me wrong, FISA can still be used for its original purpose, to fight terrorism, to detect threats before they occur.
00:24:42.000 That said, metadata collection is misaligned.
00:24:47.000 And the current process that enables political witch hunts and law enforcement should be reformed.
00:24:53.000 So let's look at a few of the ideas for reform.
00:24:55.000 In 2019, Mark Meadows introduced H.R. 4046, the FISA Reform Act.
00:25:01.000 That would have required periodic reports to Congress about FISA surveillance to include the identity of any individual who is targeted and associated with a presidential candidate of a major party.
00:25:13.000 The Democrat Congress did nothing with this.
00:25:16.000 In that same Congress, Representative Justin Amash introduced the FISA Oversight Correction Act, which would have authorized a court to disclose to a person information related to evidence collected about that person using certain foreign intelligence surveillance powers,
00:25:34.000 if that disclosure would likely promote a more accurate determination of the legality of the surveillance.
00:25:40.000 Tulsi Gabbard, another firebrand, she introduced the Protect Our Civil Liberties Act. 0.59
00:25:45.000 Now, that bill would have repealed the Patriot Act and certain FISA provisions.
00:25:50.000 The legislation would have also prohibited the acquisition of information regarding U.S. persons if they were using foreign intelligence tools to get that information without a warrant.
00:26:02.000 That would have reset the balance of liberties that would have been effective from a law enforcement standpoint, and it wouldn't have created just an ecosystem allowing incredible fraud that was identified during the Russia hoax and which still has not been cured.
00:26:19.000 Here's the big news.
00:26:21.000 Even Adam Schiff introduced legislation that would have cleaned up some of the abuses of FISA.
00:26:28.000 Here's the catch.
00:26:29.000 He did it when Obama was president.
00:26:32.000 So I figured, if Schiff supported reforms to FISA under Obama, why wouldn't he support those same reforms under Trump?
00:26:40.000 Consistency.
00:26:41.000 What's good for the goose is good for the gander, after all.
00:26:44.000 So last Congress, I introduced the same bill Schiff had previously introduced, and he wouldn't co-sponsor his own bill.
00:26:53.000 I made the pitch and pointed out his hypocrisy on Tucker Carlson's show.
00:26:58.000 I hope you like the name of the bill.
00:27:00.000 I think there's a bigger problem in the Congress.
00:27:02.000 We have to be able to rely on the Intelligence Committee and the leadership of that committee,
00:27:07.000 because, as the American people know, every member of Congress does not see every piece of intelligence.
00:27:12.000 Right.
00:27:13.000 I have filed legislation today sent to the House that Adam Schiff needs to be removed from the Intelligence Committee,
00:27:18.000 because how are the rest of us supposed to be able to rely on a man who you just showed lied to the American people
00:27:24.000 when he said that there wasn't spying or when he lied and said there was actual evidence of collusion or clear evidence of collusion?
00:27:29.000 If Adam Schiff is able to review covert operations and intelligence, and if we have to be able to rely on his representations, our whole system is broken.
00:27:38.000 I mean, it would be like putting Lori Loughlin in charge of the College Board.
00:27:42.000 It would be like putting Jussie Smollett in charge of the Hate Crime Division of the FBI.
00:27:46.000 We have got to remove Adam Schiff from the Intelligence Committee.
00:27:49.000 In 35 years of watching Congress, I have never seen a member of Congress with lower personal integrity than Adam Schiff.
00:27:55.000 And it's shocking to me that he chairs that committee.
00:27:58.000 Is there any hope of unseating him from that?
00:28:00.000 I think that Nancy Pelosi and just your rank-and-file Democrats have to feel the pressure from this.
00:28:05.000 Their constituents have to ask them, how are you going to be able to make decisions in the best interest of our country and our district
00:28:11.000 if it's Adam Schiff that you're listening to to get characterizations and representations on the quality of the intelligence
00:28:17.000 and whether or not it should justify congressional action?
00:28:19.000 I want to just explain to our viewers we have on the screen the name of this act,
00:28:22.000 the Pencil Act, Preventing Extreme Negligence with Classified Information Licenses.
00:28:26.000 For our favorite pencil, Tucker.
00:28:28.000 That's exact.
00:28:29.000 Congress must rein in FISA.
00:28:32.000 And I'll work with anyone who believes in our Constitution and has the courage to stand up and fight back against the deep state.
00:28:41.000 As I mentioned earlier, the Attorney General's recent memo weaponizes the FBI against parents who show up to school board meetings.
00:28:51.000 Here's my interview with former Florida Senate President, former Florida Superintendent of Schools in Okaloosa County,
00:28:59.000 and former school board member, my dad, Don Gates.
00:29:03.000 Hope you enjoy.
00:29:04.000 Grabbing coffee here with my dad in our hometown in Iceville, Florida.
00:29:08.000 And as I mentioned, my dad was an educational leader in this community for about 12 years,
00:29:13.000 six years on the school board, six years as school superintendent.
00:29:16.000 And I want to get your reaction to the melding of a school board mission and the FBI mission in just a moment.
00:29:23.000 But Dad, I got to tell you, something special is going on this year with people's interest in the school board.
00:29:30.000 Usually when I travel the country, I meet people who are running for Congress or Senate or governor.
00:29:36.000 But overwhelmingly, the people I meet who are interested in politics now view the school board as the front line of the culture war.
00:29:44.000 And I always give them advice kind of through the lens of your experience, which is if you run for school board,
00:29:51.000 there's no time at night when your phone isn't going to be ringing because if people are contacting you about their kids,
00:29:58.000 there is an intimacy and a passion and a devotion to that cause that is different than other parts of politics,
00:30:07.000 like our service in the legislature and my service in Congress.
00:30:10.000 So before we get to the FBI injection into school board operations,
00:30:15.000 what advice would you give to people who are out there who are interested in running for the school board?
00:30:22.000 Well, I think it was Ronald Reagan who said that the future of our country will depend as much on who's on the school board as who's in Congress.
00:30:31.000 And that's because at school board level, you're dealing with people's kids,
00:30:36.000 you're dealing with their schools and the greatest share of their local tax dollars.
00:30:40.000 And that gets people worked up and gets some concern, particularly when it's involving your kids.
00:30:46.000 So I would say to people who have any interest in their children, their children's education, their community,
00:30:54.000 the direction of this country, that the culture wars are being fought on the front lines of your local school board.
00:31:00.000 That's where the 1619 project is being discussed.
00:31:03.000 That's where critical race theory is being discussed and in some cases pushed.
00:31:09.000 That's where COVID mandates are really meeting the road.
00:31:13.000 And if you want to be involved, be on the school board.
00:31:16.000 And it's the greatest job you can ever have because you're involved in trying to help make things better for kids.
00:31:22.000 Now, you interact with other education leaders around the country.
00:31:25.000 And typically, your school board members are former teachers, former school administrators.
00:31:31.000 You were different.
00:31:32.000 You took a business background onto the school board.
00:31:34.000 And now what I see, a lot of the parents that want to run for school board across America,
00:31:39.000 they didn't necessarily have that classroom experience, but they have the parenting experience,
00:31:44.000 which oftentimes is, I think, diminished.
00:31:47.000 Is it a good thing or a bad thing if in the whole matrix of school board service in America,
00:31:53.000 you actually have fewer educators and more parents with kids in the schools?
00:31:58.000 That's an essential thing.
00:31:59.000 I mean, any teacher will tell you that things are better for a child in the classroom
00:32:05.000 if their parents are involved in what's going on in school.
00:32:09.000 Well, scale that out.
00:32:10.000 Anything is better in a school district or in a community when parents are involved in what's going on in schools.
00:32:17.000 And therefore, it's the right thing to do for activist parents, parents who care, parents who are concerned.
00:32:24.000 I got on the school board and ran for the school board, as you might remember, because I was an angry parent.
00:32:29.000 I couldn't understand why some things were going on that were going on.
00:32:32.000 So I ran for the school board to fix it and then ultimately wound up being elected superintendent.
00:32:37.000 Simpler times.
00:32:38.000 The stuff you are angry about, you are angry that the bus routes were inefficient,
00:32:43.000 that the purchasing of supplies didn't make sense,
00:32:46.000 that the teachers weren't being compensated to the same degree as administrators.
00:32:51.000 And I mean, that stuff looks like a pretty easy circle to square compared to the mandates, the COVID restrictions,
00:32:59.000 and the critical race theory that seems to have animated so many parents today.
00:33:02.000 But, you know, you brought this district.
00:33:04.000 I mean, we're sitting here across the street from my high school.
00:33:07.000 And you brought this district from, you know, 36th out of 67 counties to number one.
00:33:14.000 And it seemed to me as an observer that parental involvement was the number one thing that brought a school from a C or a D school to an A or a B school.
00:33:24.000 Do you observe what's happening now with school board meetings being filled with parents who at times are angry and constant?
00:33:32.000 Is that on balance a positive or a negative?
00:33:36.000 I think that things start to get really better.
00:33:39.000 And by better, I mean more responsive to the community, better for kids in schools,
00:33:45.000 when parents hit a pain threshold and say, you know, I don't understand why my kid can't read.
00:33:50.000 I don't understand why my kid doesn't understand American history.
00:33:53.000 I don't understand why my kid, you know, is not doing well in competition with other kids around the country, around the world.
00:34:00.000 I don't understand why there are rules coming from the school or the school board that don't seem to make sense.
00:34:07.000 When parents begin to question and even get angry like I did, then I think things get better because school board members,
00:34:16.000 and I was one, then have to be accountable and respond and dig down inside themselves and say, well,
00:34:22.000 the reason we're doing this is because we've looked at the evidence and we're making the right decision.
00:34:27.000 But you don't get that kind of interaction until you get people, citizens, saying, why are you doing this?
00:34:34.000 We disagree. We've done our own research.
00:34:36.000 And that means better schools and better communities.
00:34:39.000 We see more and more parents who are in medicine, in science, who I think are unwilling to just, you know,
00:34:50.000 accept what is put before them in the absence of analysis and rigor and the scientific method and a review of data.
00:34:57.000 And as a consequence of that, we've seen this really chilling reaction from federal law enforcement.
00:35:05.000 What was your reaction when you saw that the attorney general had directed the head of the FBI to start analyzing the conduct of angry parents at school board meetings?
00:35:14.000 Well, I have to tell you that, you know, you can certainly find some humor in that.
00:35:18.000 But at the same time, it was it was reminiscent of some really bad things that have happened in history when people from the federal government start showing up, folding their hands, standing in the back of public meetings and keeping track of who is saying what or going back over the list of people who showed up at a meeting and who said what.
00:35:39.000 You know, you know, parents have to be really concerned to take time away from their jobs, from what goes on at home, from, you know, making dinner and everything else to go to a school board meeting anyway.
00:35:51.000 And sometimes parents are afraid of retaliation on their kids if they go to a school board meeting.
00:35:58.000 When you throw on top of that, the FBI is maybe watching.
00:36:02.000 That has a chilling effect on parental involvement in their children's schools and the issues that are involving their children.
00:36:11.000 But it also has a chilling effect on free speech.
00:36:14.000 You can't have people from the government standing in the back of a public meeting with their arms folded, keeping track of who's saying what.
00:36:22.000 That that's the kind of thing that that our fathers and our grandfathers and our grandmothers and grandfathers fought against in two world wars.
00:36:31.000 The National School Board Association requested this action.
00:36:37.000 Did you have a perspective on that group when you were a school board member?
00:36:41.000 Yeah, I refuse to belong.
00:36:43.000 I absolutely refuse to belong.
00:36:45.000 I refuse to pay dues and I refuse to have dues paid on my behalf.
00:36:49.000 I mean, again, you know, I think it's good that we have people who have been in education who want to serve on a school board and want to continue to help.
00:36:58.000 But if you have people who are basically a pair of chicks of the union and they just continue to want to keep things the way they are, 0.95
00:37:05.000 that's creates a culture in the school board and it creates a culture in school board associations.
00:37:12.000 And I'm afraid that too many state and national school board associations are populated by people who don't want to make change,
00:37:21.000 who don't want things to be better, who want things to be the same, and they want less time with kids and they want more money.
00:37:27.000 I don't know that, you know, parents are going to be arrested as domestic terrorists by the FBI for showing up and sharing their thoughts.
00:37:36.000 I certainly hope that's not the case.
00:37:38.000 But I do have concern about the chilling effect you mentioned.
00:37:43.000 If the intent of this action was to discourage participation based on your experience being on the front lines of a lot of these battles, do you think it'll work?
00:37:53.000 Because I almost think it could backfire.
00:37:55.000 I think as parents are really, you know, backed down by the federal government, they will become even more strident and even more active.
00:38:05.000 So, you know, it remains to be seen in the weeks and months ahead are the school board meetings going to go back to a dynamic with the tumbleweed rolling through
00:38:13.000 or are these parents going to keep showing up?
00:38:15.000 And I just don't think that the FBI wants to pick a fight with tiger moms and tiger dads who love their kids.
00:38:23.000 You know, if the intent here is to chill participation, do you think it'll work?
00:38:30.000 Well, I think that at the school board level and many other levels, fierce debate, even angry debate at public meetings is kind of the steam release valve in a democracy.
00:38:44.000 And if you tell people directly or implicitly that they shouldn't show up, they can't show up, they have to be careful what they say,
00:38:52.000 they have to be careful who they sit next to, they have to be careful what kind of sign they bring to the meeting.
00:38:57.000 If you keep saying that, that's not going to stop Americans from being angry or being concerned or wanting to change things.
00:39:06.000 What it does is it promotes some other way that there can be an explosion, God forbid, of people's concerns.
00:39:15.000 So that's why our forefathers said, you know, we're going to have free speech.
00:39:19.000 We're going to have the public square be a place where even crazy people can shake their fists at each other and make speeches about things that don't matter.
00:39:26.000 Because that's the safety valve in a democracy.
00:39:29.000 And I've been on both sides of the school board table.
00:39:32.000 I've been the angry parent shaking his fist at the school board.
00:39:35.000 And I've been a school board member who've had people shake their fists at me.
00:39:39.000 And I can tell you, that's what democracy looks like.
00:39:42.000 That is what democracy looks like.
00:39:44.000 And when you take away the town meeting, when you take away the dynamic of people caring about things enough to show up and speak fiercely, even angrily at each other,
00:39:56.000 but then maybe afterwards go out and have a beer together, then if you take that away, then you've really chilled democracy.
00:40:02.000 In Florida, we actually passed a law, you voted for it, you were one of the big supporters of it, called the right to speak law.
00:40:09.000 Because we had some school boards and some others in Florida who were saying, well, you don't need to speak.
00:40:15.000 Or we're only going to have one minute to speak.
00:40:17.000 Or you can speak at the end of the meeting, but not before we vote on this.
00:40:21.000 So now, before every single policy decision or appropriation decision is made at a public meeting in Florida, whether it's the mosquito control board or the school board or any place else,
00:40:33.000 if people want to speak, they have a right to stand up and speak their truth to the power that's in front of them.
00:40:40.000 If we do that in Florida, we ought to do that in America. 0.96
00:40:43.000 Yeah, Florida man does not abide being shut down from the opportunity to speak.
00:40:48.000 And in a way, that is democracy's karaoke.
00:40:52.000 Everybody gets to kind of get up and sing their own song.
00:40:54.000 And sometimes they're off tune or off pitch.
00:40:57.000 And sometimes it's the kind of magical lyric that can bring people together or can lead to better solutions.
00:41:04.000 I don't think our schools are going to be better if we drive parents out of them.
00:41:09.000 I don't believe that education is best as a government run monopoly.
00:41:13.000 But with so many regular folks, we do need public schools to help people move up in the world.
00:41:19.000 I mean, that's how mom became so successful.
00:41:22.000 Sure.
00:41:23.000 The great public schools here in our community.
00:41:25.000 And I just have all the best well wishes to the great patriots around our country who love America and their families and their kids enough to step up and make their voices known to school board members to run for school board.
00:41:38.000 And my friend Jim Jordan often says that this is actually the bench we're building to take the country back and to take power back in 2024.
00:41:46.000 That these moms and dads who are winning school board races now are going to be leaders in their community and they're going to be future leaders for the country.
00:41:52.000 And I sure hope that's the case.
00:41:54.000 So thanks for joining me on the podcast, Dan.
00:41:56.000 Good to see you, man.
00:41:57.000 Congratulations on a great podcast.
00:41:59.000 Thanks.
00:42:00.000 Thanks so much for tuning in to Firebrand.
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00:42:10.000 Tune in next Thursday for more Firebrand.