The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - July 12, 2023


Episode 112 LIVE： Wray Goes Awry – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Topics
MAGA Republicans and FBI efforts
Hosted by
Matt Gaetz
Mentioned
Donald Trump Hunter Biden Thomas Massey Steve Franson Christopher Wray Congresswoman Jayapal Chris Christie Chris Ray J. Edgar Hoover Stephen DeAntuono Pramila Jayapal Merrick Garland Tony Bobulinski George Hill Sino Hawk Ted Lieu McConnell Rayburn Ventile William and 4 more
Episode 111 LIVE： ATF Under Fire – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz Episode 113 LIVE： Trump Is The Target – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Episode Stats


Length

36 minutes

Words per minute

167.09

Word count

6,079

Sentence count

424

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before the House Judiciary Committee about the agency's surveillance of millions of Americans. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-GAetz, questions the FBI director about whether or not the agency is spying on its own citizens.

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 .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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,
00:00:27.000 then welcome, my fellow patriots. You are in the right place.
00:00:31.000 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.
00:00:51.000 Welcome back to Firebrand.
00:00:56.000 We are live broadcasting out of room 2021 of the House office building,
00:01:01.000 the Rayburn building here on the Capitol complex in Washington, D.C.
00:01:04.000 And what a day it was with the FBI director testifying before the House Judiciary Committee.
00:01:09.000 I've got all the highlights, all the reactions.
00:01:12.000 The live stream is fired up. You've seen a lot of this.
00:01:15.000 Bones Mama on Rumble wants to know if anything is going to happen with the revelations that we were able to glean from Director Ray's testimony today.
00:01:24.000 And Jeff on Facebook has a far more vulgar way of asking the very same question.
00:01:28.000 Here's the answer.
00:01:30.000 Two big fights are coming up.
00:01:31.000 The first is over the authorization to renew some of the spying authorities that the FBI had been abusing more than a million times.
00:01:41.000 You're going to see the questions about that, how Director Ray answered it, how foolishly, purposefully ignorant he was on the facts of the FBI's abuses.
00:01:50.000 We should not reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
00:01:54.000 Two days ago, I introduced legislation to call for the expiration of those authorities that you're about to see abused very, very frequently.
00:02:04.000 Now, there are some Republicans who do want to reauthorize those authorities.
00:02:08.000 We need to convince them. And you know what?
00:02:11.000 There are even Democrats making valid points about surveillance and privacy.
00:02:15.000 Democrats we typically don't agree with on a lot, but we're going to show you the points they made to see if maybe there's an opportunity for the populist right and the populist left to work against the abuses of our civil liberties and our constitutional rights.
00:02:28.000 Just maybe. And then, of course, there is the pipe bomber and all that went on around that. 0.65
00:02:35.000 Was it a diversion, a distraction of law enforcement away from the Capitol so there would be a higher level of criminal acuity?
00:02:41.000 Thomas Massey broke evidence on that that we're going to review.
00:02:46.000 But first, I'm going to start with my questioning of Christopher Wray.
00:02:49.000 If you missed it, I'm going to give you the whole five minutes.
00:02:52.000 Absorb it. We'll come back, talk about it on the other side.
00:02:55.000 Take a listen.
00:02:58.000 The American people need to understand what just happened.
00:03:01.000 My Democrat colleague just asked the director of the FBI whether or not they are buying information about our fellow Americans.
00:03:09.000 And the answer is, well, we'll just have to get back to you on that sounds really complicated, but I have other questions.
00:03:15.000 I'm sitting here with my father.
00:03:17.000 I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.
00:03:27.000 I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.
00:03:31.000 Sounds like a shakedown, doesn't it, director?
00:03:36.000 I'm not going to get into commenting on that.
00:03:39.000 You seem deeply uncurious about it, don't you?
00:03:43.000 Almost suspiciously uncurious.
00:03:44.000 Are you protecting the Bidens?
00:03:46.000 Absolutely not.
00:03:48.000 The FBI does not and has no interest in protecting anyone politically.
00:03:51.000 Hold on. You won't answer the question about whether or not that's a shakedown and everybody knows why you won't answer it.
00:03:55.000 Because to the millions of people who will see this, they know it is.
00:04:00.000 And your inability to acknowledge that is deeply revealing about you.
00:04:03.000 But let's go from the uncurious to the downright nosy.
00:04:08.000 How many illegal FISA queries have occurred under your leadership of the FBI?
00:04:15.000 Well, there are reports that have come out with different numbers about compliance incidents.
00:04:21.000 More than a million illegal ones?
00:04:24.000 Because that's what the Inspector General said.
00:04:26.000 The Inspector General said that in the 3.4 million of these queries, more than a million were in error.
00:04:32.000 Do you have any basis to disagree with that assessment by the Inspector General?
00:04:35.000 I'm not sure actually that's a correct characterization of the Inspector General's findings on that.
00:04:40.000 Well, the Internet will remind you of that in moments.
00:04:43.000 But let's now go to what the court said.
00:04:47.000 The court said it was over 200,000 that have occurred on your watch.
00:04:50.000 Do you have any basis to disagree with that assessment?
00:04:53.000 Again, I don't have the numbers I sit here right now.
00:04:55.000 What I can't tell you...
00:04:56.000 Seems like a number you should know.
00:04:57.000 How many times the FBI is breaking the law under your watch?
00:05:00.000 Especially if it's like over a million to not know that number.
00:05:04.000 And I'm worried about your veracity on the subject as well.
00:05:06.000 Play the video.
00:05:08.000 Are you using national security letters?
00:05:10.000 I don't believe in any instance we're using national security letters for investigation of the Capitol.
00:05:16.000 I don't believe FISA is remotely implicated in our investigation.
00:05:20.000 So there, Senator Lee's asking you whether or not FISA was in any other way involved in your January 6th investigation,
00:05:26.000 and you say no.
00:05:28.000 Was that truthful?
00:05:29.000 I said that I did not believe it was.
00:05:31.000 Okay, so now let's pull up what the court said, which was something a little different than what you said.
00:05:36.000 The government has reported additional significant violations of the querying standard,
00:05:40.000 including several relating to the January 6th, 2021 breach at the Capitol.
00:05:45.000 So I guess the question, Director A, is did you not know when you were answering these questions
00:05:50.000 that the FBI was engaging in these illegal searches, or did you perjure yourself to Senator Lee?
00:05:55.000 I certainly didn't perjure myself.
00:05:57.000 By the time that I testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I didn't have that piece of information.
00:06:03.000 I will add...
00:06:04.000 Well, that was a court order.
00:06:05.000 You didn't have that piece of information because the court hadn't yet rendered a judgment.
00:06:08.000 Did you not know when you gave the untruthful answer before Senator Lee that this was going on?
00:06:13.000 It was a truthful answer.
00:06:15.000 I did not believe FISA had been involved in the January 6th investigation.
00:06:17.000 But it was.
00:06:18.000 So you didn't...
00:06:19.000 The answer is, the FBI has broken so bad that people can go and engage in queries 0.99
00:06:25.000 that when you come before the Congress to answer questions, you're like blissfully ignorant. 0.98
00:06:30.000 You're blissfully ignorant as to the unlawful queries. 1.00
00:06:33.000 You're blissfully ignorant as to the Biden shakedown regime. 0.99
00:06:37.000 And it just seems like it gets into kind of a creepy place as well. 0.97
00:06:41.000 Go to our next image on what the court said.
00:06:44.000 Like, just so the American people realize, the court has smacked you down, alleging, or ruling,
00:06:50.000 FBI personnel apparently conducted queries for improper personal reasons.
00:06:56.000 People were looking themselves up.
00:06:58.000 They were looking their ex-lovers up.
00:07:00.000 Who has been held accountable or fired as a consequence of the FBI using the FISA process
00:07:08.000 as their, like, creepy personal snoop machine?
00:07:11.000 There have been instances in which individuals have had disciplinary action
00:07:16.000 and who are no longer with...
00:07:17.000 Amen.
00:07:18.000 I can't get into it here, but we can follow back up with you.
00:07:20.000 But don't you see...
00:07:21.000 Don't you see that that's kind of the thing, Director Ray,
00:07:23.000 you preside over the FBI that has the lowest level of trust in the FBI's history?
00:07:30.000 People trusted the FBI more when J. Edgar Hoover was running the place than when you are.
00:07:34.000 And the reason is because you don't give straight answers.
00:07:36.000 You give answers that later a court deems aren't true.
00:07:39.000 And then at the end of the day, you won't criticize an obvious shakedown
00:07:43.000 when it's directly in front of us.
00:07:44.000 And it appears as though you're whitewashing the conduct of corrupt people.
00:07:48.000 Respectfully, Congressman, in your home state of Florida,
00:07:51.000 the number of people applying to come work for us and devote their lives working for us
00:07:55.000 is up over a hundred percent.
00:07:58.000 We're deeply proud of them, and they deserve better than you.
00:08:00.000 It was quite something that Director Ray believed that a retort
00:08:08.000 to the extensive illegal behavior of the FBI was that people in the state of Florida
00:08:14.000 still want to join the FBI.
00:08:16.000 And maybe it's because people want to help save this institution
00:08:19.000 from the corrupt and irresponsible leaders who've been in charge of it for far too long.
00:08:24.000 So for those Floridians, for our fellow Americans who want to serve in the FBI,
00:08:28.000 we want you to do that.
00:08:29.000 We don't want to discourage your interest in this entity,
00:08:33.000 but we believe it ought to reflect the patriotism of those very people
00:08:37.000 who are stepping forward to serve.
00:08:40.000 I think of people like Steve Friend, an FBI former special agent from my state of Florida,
00:08:47.000 was working cases of online exploitation of children,
00:08:51.000 and he got moved off of that to go spy on parents at school board meetings.
00:08:57.000 We're going to get to that in a moment.
00:08:59.000 But I want to break down some other features of Chris Ray's testimony.
00:09:02.000 Oftentimes, when these folks come before Congress,
00:09:06.000 you learn more based on which questions they won't answer.
00:09:11.000 You see, they prepare for hours on how to obfuscate and dodge and avoid,
00:09:16.000 and sometimes they get lucky when a member of Congress will just read a four-minute speech at them
00:09:21.000 and then they don't have to really engage with a thoughtful response.
00:09:25.000 But in this case, I wanted to read him the obvious shakedown text message from Hunter Biden to the Chinese, 0.91
00:09:34.000 and I wanted to show you, the country, the viewer, my constituents,
00:09:39.000 I wanted to show you that these people are so wrapped up in bureaucratic BS,
00:09:45.000 they're so beholden to the swamp of Washington and the power structures that be in this town,
00:09:51.000 that no less than the head of the FBI couldn't look at a criminal shakedown and call it a criminal shakedown.
00:09:59.000 Now, if you'd have served up the question that I served up to Director Ray as like a basic entry-level test question at Quantico,
00:10:09.000 there would have only been one right answer, and that it was a shakedown.
00:10:14.000 And the fact that Christopher Ray could engage in basic law enforcement assessment regarding the Bidens,
00:10:21.000 but he's a very smart man.
00:10:22.000 He's not somebody who's lost his faculties like Biden.
00:10:27.000 He's a smart guy.
00:10:30.000 But I think that the silence spoke volumes, and I think you saw that,
00:10:34.000 and I think it's going to help inform how people in the coming weeks and months
00:10:39.000 evaluate this relationship between the FBI and the Biden that's become very corruptly symbiotic in a lot of ways.
00:10:48.000 The Bidens whitewash the corruption of the FBI.
00:10:52.000 The FBI whitewashes the corruption of the Bidens.
00:10:56.000 But it's not just partisan discourse that occurred at this hearing.
00:11:00.000 And I want to get into another issue, data brokers.
00:11:04.000 It is really, really strange how many entities collect information on all of you who are watching this program right now.
00:11:12.000 They follow you when you go to church.
00:11:14.000 They follow who goes to what type of school.
00:11:17.000 What type of place do you shop when you pick up groceries?
00:11:20.000 And then they go sell that data so people can exploit that access to information for profit.
00:11:28.000 And sometimes it's information that would put your physical security, your economic security, your family security at some level of risk.
00:11:37.000 And I particularly get offended when the FBI uses these data brokers to do an end run around our Constitution.
00:11:47.000 You see, if this government wants information on you, they have to go through a constitutional process.
00:11:53.000 They have to have probable cause.
00:11:55.000 They have to go get a warrant.
00:11:57.000 Unless the information has already been collected by a data broker.
00:12:02.000 Then sometimes they just do an end run around the Fourth Amendment, around the Constitution, and they go get the data.
00:12:10.000 My colleague from Washington State, Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat who chairs the House Progressive Conference, who I agree with on almost every issue, she made brilliant points on the FBI's abuses of the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment by using stuff from data brokers.
00:12:29.000 I'm going to let you listen to her testimony.
00:12:31.000 Take a listen.
00:12:34.000 I do want to focus on some areas of concern around American civil liberties that I have had longstanding concerns about.
00:12:42.000 In testimony to Senate Intelligence in March, you stated that the FBI had previously purchased commercial database information that includes location data derived from Internet advertising,
00:12:55.000 but that, to your knowledge, the FBI does not currently purchase data.
00:13:00.000 But just last month, the ODNI declassified a report revealing that the FBI and other agencies do purchase significant amounts of commercially available information about Americans from data brokers.
00:13:15.000 And the report notes that commercially available information, quote, has increasingly important risks and implications for U.S. persons' privacy and civil liberties as commercially available information can reveal sensitive and intimate information about individuals.
00:13:30.000 It is public information that the FBI uses Babel, Street, and Ventile and has a Lexus account.
00:13:38.000 All of these companies provide data for purchase.
00:13:41.000 Can you tell me how the FBI uses that data?
00:13:44.000 Respectfully, this is a topic that gets very involved to explain, and so what I would prefer to do is have our subject matter experts come back up and brief you,
00:13:55.000 and they can answer your questions in detail about it because there's a lot of confusion that can be unintentionally caused about this topic.
00:14:04.000 But does the FBI purchase data?
00:14:06.000 My testimony that you referred to before remains the same, and the story about the ODNI report doesn't change that.
00:14:15.000 But again, there's a lot of precision and technical dimensions to this.
00:14:19.000 Well, I do appreciate that, but I am looking at a report that is from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence saying that the FBI purchases data.
00:14:31.000 Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter this into the record.
00:14:34.000 Without objection.
00:14:36.000 Do you know if the contracts with data brokers like the ones I described provide location data?
00:14:44.000 My testimony about purchasing commercial database information that includes location data derived from Internet advertising remains the same, which is that we currently do not do that.
00:14:56.000 But the information that you have that has already been purchased, does it contain location information?
00:15:02.000 Well, just again, I'm not trying to be obtuse or difficult here.
00:15:05.000 I just know from experience that the more you drill into this whole issue of commercial data, geolocation data, et cetera, that it gets very involved.
00:15:17.000 In some cases, it involves pilot projects that are in the past.
00:15:21.000 In some cases, it involves national security information, et cetera.
00:15:25.000 So I just want to make sure that we get you the information you need.
00:15:27.000 Okay, that's great.
00:15:28.000 I will take that, but I do want to say that this is just an extremely important issue for the American people to understand how their data is being used.
00:15:35.000 That is location data.
00:15:37.000 That is biometric information.
00:15:39.000 It's medical and mental health information.
00:15:42.000 It's information related to individuals' communications.
00:15:45.000 It's information about people's Internet activity.
00:15:47.000 And while I understand that that's complicated, that is the reason that you come before us so that the American people can hear this.
00:15:54.000 Let me ask you this.
00:15:55.000 Does the FBI have a written policy outlining how it can purchase and use commercially available information?
00:16:03.000 There are a number of policies that bear on this topic.
00:16:06.000 Again, that could be part of the same briefing that we're happy to provide.
00:16:09.000 I don't dispute at all that this is an important topic.
00:16:12.000 I'm simply saying that precisely because it's such an important topic that a minute and 12 seconds counting down is not the best way for me to explain it.
00:16:19.000 No, I understand that.
00:16:20.000 That's all.
00:16:21.000 But I'm asking whether there is a policy.
00:16:22.000 It sounds like there is a policy.
00:16:24.000 When was that policy last updated?
00:16:26.000 That I can't.
00:16:27.000 As I sit here right now, I don't have the answer for you on that.
00:16:29.000 But, again, there are a number of policies that are relevant to this, and so that may affect the…
00:16:33.000 And you'll commit to providing those to us so that we can explore them?
00:16:37.000 I would commit to providing you a briefing that will provide, hopefully, very helpful information to help you understand better this whole topic.
00:16:44.000 What about a…
00:16:46.000 We're back live, so he'll provide the information.
00:16:50.000 And, really, if you want to know how the FBI is buying data on the open market to avoid having to go before a grand jury, a judge, to establish probable cause, that's very complicated stuff.
00:17:05.000 Christopher Wray can't explain that to you in a congressional hearing.
00:17:08.000 It's too complicated.
00:17:09.000 Well, they're either doing it or they're not.
00:17:13.000 It's pretty binary.
00:17:15.000 And if there is this unprecedented tool to suck up information from all of us, the fusion of big tech and big government in the national security state and the surveillance state becomes ever the more dangerous.
00:17:31.000 A few comments.
00:17:32.000 Penn Diggity on Rumble says,
00:17:34.000 The FBI does not want you watching congressional hearings.
00:17:37.000 CeCe on Rumble says that this makes Watergate look innocent.
00:17:41.000 I would agree with that.
00:17:42.000 And Gail on YouTube says that Congresswoman Jayapal surprised her and that she sounded like a Republican today.
00:17:48.000 Here's the reason I showed you Congresswoman Jayapal's remarks and her questions.
00:17:54.000 If we want enduring change to protect us from the excesses and the abuses of the national security state, we are going to have to work with progressive Democrats at times.
00:18:06.000 Because there are Republicans, some of whom, my colleagues, people I know well, they just believe the FBI is right every time.
00:18:15.000 They think the CIA, NSA, that all these groups are the good guys in every circumstance.
00:18:20.000 And the reality is if we want to still live in a free society where liberty is protected, we have to have tough questions and aggressive oversight.
00:18:28.000 And I welcome progressive Democrats to our cause if they see the light and don't want our fellow Americans living this way.
00:18:35.000 We don't deserve to live this way.
00:18:37.000 We are a free, proud people.
00:18:39.000 And we should be willing to work with everyone to vindicate that interest that we have.
00:18:43.000 Now, I also want to show you some breaking footage from Congressman Thomas Massey.
00:18:50.000 And this goes back to the pipe bomber.
00:18:52.000 And if you're one of our tens of thousands of listeners, this won't be as helpful to you because this is a very visual presentation from Congressman Massey.
00:19:02.000 He actually had a staffer go in and hunt down some videos that hadn't been seen by the public.
00:19:09.000 And it shows a very curious case about a pipe bomber.
00:19:14.000 Well, about someone who found the pipe bomb, I should say, in almost a perfect timing and sequence to distract from what was going on at the Capitol.
00:19:25.000 Thomas Massey with the video receipts.
00:19:28.000 Watch and listen.
00:19:32.000 Director Wray, in light of information provided to us about the FBI's investigation of the January 6th pipe bombs,
00:19:39.000 in an interview with Assistant Director Steven Duantuano, Chairman Jordan and I sent you a letter a month ago.
00:19:46.000 Some of the information that we found in that interview was that phone data that could have helped to identify the pipe bomber was corrupted, was unusable.
00:19:57.000 He also wasn't sure who found or how the second bomb was found at the DNC.
00:20:03.000 Do you know how the second bomb was found at the DNC?
00:20:06.000 And when do you plan on answering our letter?
00:20:09.000 Well, as to the letter, I will work with the department to make sure we can figure out what information we can provide.
00:20:16.000 As you know, this is a very active, ongoing investigation, and there are some restrictions on that, but we will do our best we want.
00:20:21.000 Yes, we can handle classified information, and we fund your department, and so you need to provide that.
00:20:26.000 It's not – respectfully, it's not an issue of classification.
00:20:30.000 It's an issue of commenting on ongoing criminal investigations, which is something that by longstanding department policy we are restricted in doing.
00:20:40.000 And in fact, the last administration actually strengthened those policies partly because –
00:20:44.000 That's not our policy, though, and we fund you, so let's move on.
00:20:47.000 I could –
00:20:48.000 Do you know how the second pipe bomb – do you – can you tell us how the second pipe bomb was found at the DNC?
00:20:53.000 Again, I'm not going to get into that here.
00:20:55.000 900 days ago is when this happened, and you said you had total confidence we'd apprehend the subject.
00:21:01.000 We've found video that looks like somebody, a passerby, miraculously found this pipe bomb at the DNC and then notified the police.
00:21:10.000 Miraculously, I say, because it was specifically the same – the precise time to cause the maximum distraction from the events going on at the Capitol.
00:21:19.000 Can you show this video that we have, please?
00:21:22.000 I'd like to know if the director has seen this.
00:21:25.000 This is somebody with a mask on, wearing a hat.
00:21:28.000 They're walking in front of the DNC, which is out of the view on the right-hand side.
00:21:32.000 You'll see him come into view.
00:21:34.000 He goes to one police car.
00:21:36.000 He goes to another police car.
00:21:37.000 He's holding a backpack.
00:21:38.000 He's got a mask on.
00:21:39.000 He's talking to the police.
00:21:41.000 And within a minute, they start scrambling.
00:21:43.000 You'll see the camera turn to the pipe bomb, the location of the pipe bomb.
00:21:48.000 By the way, that's – I believe the Metro police are now getting out of their car.
00:21:52.000 And that's Vice President-elect's detail in the black SUV, I believe.
00:21:58.000 Parked about 30 feet from the pipe bomb, eating lunch.
00:22:01.000 Okay, now we go over to the location of the pipe bomb.
00:22:04.000 The cameras are scrambling.
00:22:06.000 It appears to me that that's not a coincidence, that the person with the backpack who walked by that bench and then went up to the police and the detail didn't do that accidentally.
00:22:21.000 They had a purpose in mind and then what transpired after that was the result of information that person gave to them.
00:22:27.000 If that person found the pipe bomb, would they be a suspect?
00:22:32.000 Well, again, I don't want to speculate about specific individuals.
00:22:36.000 I will tell you that we have done thousands of interviews, reviewed something like 40,000 video files, of which this is one, assessed 500-something tips.
00:22:48.000 Have you interviewed that person?
00:22:51.000 We have conducted all logical investigative steps and interviewed all logical individuals at this point.
00:22:57.000 Then you need – it's 900 days.
00:22:59.000 Continuing –
00:23:00.000 You need to tell us what you found because we're finding stuff you haven't released into the public.
00:23:04.000 Well –
00:23:05.000 In my remaining minute, I want to turn to another issue.
00:23:09.000 George Hill, former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst in the Boston field office, told us that the Bank of America with no legal process was – gave to the FBI gun purchase records with no geographical boundaries for anybody that was a Bank of America customer.
00:23:30.000 Is that true?
00:23:32.000 Well, what I do know is that the – a number of business community partners all the time, including financial institutions, share information with us about possible criminal activity.
00:23:45.000 And my understanding is that that's fully lawful.
00:23:47.000 In the specific –
00:23:48.000 Did you ask for that information?
00:23:49.000 In the specific instance –
00:23:50.000 In the specific instance that you're asking about, my understanding is that that information was shared with field offices for information only, but then recalled to avoid even the appearance of any kind of overreach.
00:24:03.000 But my understanding is that that's a fully lawful process.
00:24:06.000 Was there a warrant involved?
00:24:08.000 Again, my understanding is that the institution in question shared information with us, as happens all the time.
00:24:16.000 Did you request the information?
00:24:17.000 I can't speak to the specifics.
00:24:19.000 Okay.
00:24:20.000 Well, we've got an email where it says the FBI did give the search queries to Bank of America, and Bank of America responded to the FBI and gave over this information without a search warrant.
00:24:31.000 Do you believe there's any limitation on your ability to obtain gun purchase data or purchase information from people that – for people who aren't suspects from banks without a warrant?
00:24:44.000 Well, now you're asking a legal question, which I would prefer to defer to the lawyers, since I'm not practicing as one right now, including the department.
00:24:52.000 But what I will tell you is that my understanding is that the process by which we receive information from business community partners across a wide variety of industries, including financial institutions, sharing information with us about possible criminal activity is something that is fully lawful under current federal law.
00:25:11.000 It may be lawful, but it's not constitutional.
00:25:13.000 I yield back.
00:25:16.000 We are back live.
00:25:17.000 Terrific questioning by Congressman Massey.
00:25:19.000 Lacy face on YouTube says this is why she is canceling her BOA accounts.
00:25:25.000 And William on YouTube is connecting the dots and wants everyone to know that it was indeed Chris Christie, none other than Chris Christie, who recommended Chris Ray for the position of FBI director.
00:25:37.000 So, what a tangled web we weave.
00:25:41.000 But one thing you didn't see from Republicans in a lot of these clips was excessive discussion about President Trump.
00:25:47.000 We've got Merrick Garland coming in in several weeks, and I think there are going to be appropriate questions to him about the way they've constructed the special counsel's office and the unfair targeting of President Trump and what that means for our civil liberties and how America looks to the world.
00:26:02.000 But in this hearing, there was only one group obsessed about President Trump, and it was the Democrats.
00:26:09.000 Every person you're about to hear in this supercut is a Democrat, and they are obsessed.
00:26:15.000 Take a listen.
00:26:17.000 This hearing is little more than performance art.
00:26:20.000 It is an elaborate show designed with only two purposes in mind.
00:26:24.000 To protect Donald Trump from the consequences of his actions and to return him to the White House in the next election.
00:26:31.000 We are here today because MAGA Republicans will do anything to protect Donald Trump, their savior, no matter how unfounded or dangerous it may be to do so.
00:26:43.000 Welcome to the legislative arm of the Trump re-election campaign.
00:26:48.000 Director Wray, would you disagree with the premise of this article that the FBI delayed in looking at Mr. Trump himself?
00:27:00.000 The January 6 committee, and I was a member, did find that the ex-president was the center of a wide-ranging conspiracy to overturn the election.
00:27:10.000 You are being attacked and vilified by some of the members of this committee and others outside this committee because the Justice Department and the FBI has had the audacity to investigate serious allegations of criminal conduct by a former president.
00:27:24.000 My Republican colleagues seem to believe that a former president similarly cannot be indicted.
00:27:29.000 That would effectively make a president above the law, beyond the reach of the law.
00:27:35.000 And in my view, there would probably only one thing the founders would find more politically precarious and dangerous to our Constitution than the indictment of a president or former president.
00:27:47.000 And that is the failure to indict a president or former president when they have engaged in criminal conduct.
00:27:52.000 It is not the fault of the FBI that Donald Trump surrounded himself with criminals.
00:27:59.000 Donald Trump brought that upon himself.
00:28:01.000 Thank you to the FBI for exposing the cesspool of corruption of these Trump associates.
00:28:08.000 Now, I'd like to talk about efforts by MAGA Republicans to defund the FBI.
00:28:13.000 Ted Lue's right if we don't bring the FBI to heel.
00:28:19.000 If we don't put that law enforcement agency on the side of law-abiding people, then, yeah, we should defund, dismantle, defang, deauthorize whatever it takes to save this country.
00:28:31.000 And make no mistake, the corrupt people at the FBI are a threat to the country.
00:28:36.000 Not the brave patriots like the whistleblowers who came forward, those who are working to protect us each and every day,
00:28:42.000 but the folks who believe that the principal obligation of the FBI is to expand its power by helping its friends and harming its enemies.
00:28:49.000 And we saw that play out really for regular Americans who had become engaged politically around the school board issue.
00:28:59.000 You've heard it talked about a great deal.
00:29:02.000 Parents started showing up at school board meetings complaining about mask mandates, vaccine mandates, critical race theory, radical gender ideology,
00:29:09.000 bizarre manifestations of highly sexualized content in curriculum and instructional materials.
00:29:16.000 And as a consequence of that, people showed up.
00:29:19.000 A good thing about local control over education is that there's not some faceless bureaucrat 4,000 miles away making decisions about your family.
00:29:28.000 You can go to a meeting.
00:29:30.000 You vote for the people who make the policy choices.
00:29:33.000 You could tell them that you plan to vote against them if they're not responsive.
00:29:37.000 That is what a representative republic looks like.
00:29:41.000 And it's healthy.
00:29:42.000 And it made our schools better.
00:29:44.000 But that's not how the FBI saw it.
00:29:47.000 They saw parents as threats, potentially domestic violent extremists.
00:29:51.000 They even created a tag in the FBI system specifically for parents who attended school board meetings.
00:29:59.000 Now, Director A was asked about this today.
00:30:02.000 What I'm going to do is I'm going to show you two clips back to back.
00:30:04.000 The first is what Director A said today.
00:30:07.000 And then the second half of the clip reveals the evidence that we got from an FBI whistleblower, Steve Friend, previously.
00:30:15.000 Take a listen and let me know if the FBI director was lying.
00:30:20.000 I will say to you the same thing that I said to all 56 of our field offices as soon as I read the memo,
00:30:28.000 which is that the FBI is not in the business of investigating or policing speech at school board meetings or anywhere else for that matter.
00:30:36.000 And we're not going to start now.
00:30:37.000 Mr. Friend, you ever been to a school board meeting?
00:30:40.000 Yes, I have.
00:30:41.000 FBI ever sent you to the parking lot of a school board meeting?
00:30:43.000 Yes, they have.
00:30:44.000 And in the parking lot of a school board meeting where the FBI sent you, you were taking down information regarding people's license plates.
00:30:51.000 That's correct.
00:30:52.000 Now, it wasn't the first time you'd been to a school board meeting, was it?
00:30:55.000 No, I went on my own as a private citizen.
00:30:57.000 As a parent.
00:30:58.000 Yes.
00:30:59.000 And so there you were.
00:31:00.000 It must have been quite an interesting perspective.
00:31:02.000 There you were taking down the information of people, parents attending school board meetings on behest of the FBI.
00:31:09.000 And you had been one of those parents at a school board meeting.
00:31:12.000 How did that feel?
00:31:13.000 Well, after I attended privately, my colleagues teased me that they were probably going to start investigating me.
00:31:20.000 You used to go after the worst of the worst, didn't you?
00:31:23.000 Yes, I believe so.
00:31:24.000 You went after people who looked at child porn.
00:31:27.000 Yes. 0.83
00:31:28.000 People who were sexually exploiting children.
00:31:30.000 Yes.
00:31:31.000 And then you were in the parking lot of a school board meeting, taking down the information of parents.
00:31:37.000 What happened to the cases that you were working to protect our communities from the worst predators that exist?
00:31:43.000 I was told they were not to be resourced.
00:31:46.000 And then after I was suspended, they were handed off to local law enforcement.
00:31:51.000 Wow.
00:31:52.000 So the FBI just decided it was more important to have you in that parking lot of that school board meeting than getting the worst of the worst away from people that they could harm.
00:32:01.000 That's correct.
00:32:02.000 Sure seems inconsistent for the FBI director to say we were never investigating speech at a school board meeting.
00:32:13.000 And then to have an FBI former special agent Steve Friend saying, yeah, we were there taking down license plate information at school board meetings for people who had showed up to speak.
00:32:24.000 Maybe a criminal referral for perjury is in Christopher Wray's future.
00:32:30.000 Maybe he deserves it on more than one count.
00:32:32.000 But we know this.
00:32:34.000 The fight is not over.
00:32:35.000 I have seen several of you comment that you think this is wasted time, that Congress is just asking questions that we don't get answers to.
00:32:42.000 But sometimes those lack of responses are revealing.
00:32:45.000 And in a world in which members of Congress are actually doing their job, a day like this would piss you off.
00:32:51.000 A day like this would show you that the FBI has completely come untethered from the Constitution and accountability and our due process rights.
00:33:02.000 They're using information to go around the Fourth Amendment that they acquire on the private market.
00:33:07.000 And then when they conduct illegal searches, the FBI director doesn't even understand the basics of the frequency of that problem.
00:33:19.000 And the big tell.
00:33:21.000 When you show them the shakedown, when you show them the conduct of the Biden family, they get all clammy. 0.83
00:33:28.000 More bureaucratic BS, more nonsense.
00:33:32.000 So we have to take this moment today.
00:33:35.000 And I need your help.
00:33:36.000 I need you to get out there and share this information with your senators, with your representatives.
00:33:41.000 We've got to get a Congress ready to fight to defund these entities and these authorities and these task forces that are cleaning up after the Biden family for all of their corruption.
00:33:55.000 We've got an IRS whistleblower.
00:33:57.000 We've got the whistleblowers that are talking about the bribes.
00:34:00.000 Tony Bobulinski, remember him?
00:34:02.000 Sino Hawk, CEFC, the Chinese energy entities that were using the Bidens to get cred to literally come in to our country and occupy part of the energy sector, which is pretty freaking important to our quality of life, our safety, our security, our military bases.
00:34:19.000 That's the big picture.
00:34:20.000 That's what's going on here.
00:34:21.000 And the first big original sin of the Republican Congress was passing the legislation that underwrit trillions of dollars in debt to allow all of this to exist.
00:34:32.000 I fought hard against that.
00:34:34.000 I worked against it.
00:34:35.000 Unfortunately, I was not able to unify my Republican colleagues around opposition to the debt limit bill.
00:34:41.000 But now there's the money and that financial decision has to be made commensurate with the government funding bill that McConnell and Pelosi agreed to running out.
00:34:54.000 And that's in September.
00:34:55.000 So these are critical, critical weeks.
00:34:57.000 There are times when you can take off, tune into sports, other things going on in your life.
00:35:02.000 But right now we are buckling down to prepare for a fight about whether or not this woke, weaponized, corrupt government will continue to see money printed to service its misadventures.
00:35:16.000 I do not think that should happen.
00:35:18.000 If you cut off the money, you cut off the blood flow.
00:35:22.000 Don't forget it.
00:35:23.000 Don't forget it.
00:35:24.000 Thank you so much for being a part of our report today.
00:35:27.000 We want to make sure that you're subscribed to our channels so that you get this up to date information straight from the source as frequently as possible.
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00:35:38.000 If you're listening on one of our podcast listening platforms, please make sure you give us that five star rating, write a review and join us again soon on Firebrand.
00:35:48.000 Roll the credits.
00:35:53.000 Fang, you may be hired if you like this. 0.80
00:35:54.000 W
00:36:04.940 Thank you so much.
00:36:05.940 готов!
00:36:07.940 Oh! 0.60
00:36:08.940 D
00:36:13.140 All right.
00:36:15.000 Collie
00:36:16.720 offices.
00:36:17.920 Yeah.