Why did the Biden administration release one of the most notorious Russian cyber criminals? Was it a good idea or a bad idea? And why did they do it? Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asks the Director of Cyber at the Department of Justice why.
00:05:31.500We are so desperate for an Iran deal right now because Joe Biden knows that these crushing gas prices are going to result in a wipeout for Democrats in the midterms.
00:05:44.440So they're so desperate to lower oil and gas prices, and they've posted up the way they have vis-a-vis Russia,
00:05:51.120that they've now backed themselves into a corner where they have to do a deal with Iran.
00:05:55.960They're dying to do the Iran nuclear deal.
00:05:58.160That very deal that floods Iran with money to be able to not just continue their nuclear program,
00:06:05.960which they definitely still would, but also to engage in other malign influence,
00:06:10.580not just throughout the Middle East, but even here in the Western Hemisphere, especially in South America.
00:06:16.760So while posting up on Russia over Ukraine, the Biden administration is giving the Russians their hacker back
00:06:23.180so that they can potentially get favorable treatment from Russia to try to back Iran into a nuclear deal because of those poor foreign policy choices.
00:06:32.480That is how Americans are at risk from these decisions.
00:06:36.480Like, it is not just that we have a person who you saw Andy Biggs yesterday call a degenerating human in the Oval Office.
00:06:43.460It's that the decision-making process puts our financial system at risk, our critical infrastructure at risk, our businesses.
00:06:52.000Everything that Americans hold dear is endangered by the cacophony of strategic failures from the Biden administration,
00:07:01.340giving back Alexei Burkoff, undeniably one of those failures.
00:07:04.740There is also breaking news regarding the 2016 election.
00:10:57.180It relates that the latest developments in the high-profile criminal probe by Special Counsel John Durham
00:11:04.140show the extent to which the world's Internet traffic is being monitored by a coterie of network researchers
00:11:10.020and security experts inside and outside of government.
00:11:14.560There are concerns, obviously, about the privacy implications of private cybersecurity companies being able to tap into the web traffic
00:11:20.940and then give that data to government at any particular level without warrants or court orders.
00:11:25.500In what ways does the FBI rely on this kind of data in their investigations?
00:11:33.000Sir, as I said earlier today, when you look at private sector broadly defined,
00:11:38.560but when you look at private sector a little bit more narrowly defined about who provides infrastructure for networks, servers, computers, et cetera,
00:11:46.040those network providers obviously see a lot of traffic.
00:12:10.080What this article relates is that a lot of that information can be accessed without warrant,
00:12:14.240and that's exactly the problem I'm talking about.
00:12:15.900You've spoken two times to the priority given to the FBI at the highest level to the imperative of protecting the rights of Americans,
00:12:22.240particularly First Amendment rights, Fourth Amendment rights.
00:12:24.920And I'm looking for some indication that those are more than empty words, more than just a platitude.
00:12:29.660I'm stunned that, above all the things we've talked about today,
00:12:33.980that you can't even speak to an abuse that is out in public based on allegations of the Department of Justice involving the use of cyber data.
00:12:44.120Is there anything that you can offer to the American people to improve their confidence that the FBI is indeed protecting their rights beyond just platitudes?
00:20:49.140That when they get lies, those lies get wrapped up and packaged up as truth.
00:20:54.320And that when we have the truth, that gets suppressed, deplatformed, and siloed away from the national conversation that we have about these important things.
00:21:05.880I filed legislation to strip those 51 people who made false claims about the Hunter Biden laptop of their security clearances.
00:21:14.460It's called the Spook Who Cried Wolf Act.
00:21:19.240I'm particularly glad that we got Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene with us on that legislation as well, in addition to a number of members of the House Judiciary Committee.
00:21:27.720I'm joined here by Vish Burra, former investigative journalist at The War Room podcast, producer there, used to direct this show, Firebrand, former member of our congressional staff.
00:21:38.240And Vish Burra plays a key role in this entire laptop saga.
00:21:42.940We're going to get to that, but I want to give you all the background.
00:21:45.320I want to make sure you understand what went down this week in the House Judiciary Committee that set up the biggest story in the world.
00:21:53.380At the risk of making some enemies on this committee, I'll draw a comparison between the FBI's role in the cyber ecosystem and an event I attended 30 years ago yesterday when Duke beat Kentucky in the 1992 NCAA Men's Eastern Regional Final.
00:22:08.360Sometimes we're Grant Hill throwing the pass, and sometimes we're Christian Layton taking the shot.
00:22:14.020Having said that, for the FBI to continue supporting our partners and executing successful operations ourselves, we need your support, even the Kentucky and North Carolina fans amongst you.
00:22:26.120As one of our key oversight committees and allies, your backing is crucial for our continued growth of authorities and resources.
00:22:55.920Has FBI cyber assessed whether or not Hunter Biden's laptop could be a point of vulnerability, allowing America's enemies to hurt our country?
00:23:06.120Sir, the FBI cyber program is based off of what's codified in Title 18, Title 18, Section 1030, a code which talks about computer intrusions, right?
00:23:27.440I'm holding the receipt from Max Computer Repair, where in December 2019, they turned over this laptop to the FBI.
00:23:36.160And what now you're telling me right here is that as the assistant director of FBI cyber, you don't know where this is after it was turned over to you three years ago.
00:23:47.620How are Americans supposed to trust that you can protect us from the next colonial pipeline if it seems that you can't locate a laptop that was given to you three years ago from the first family, potentially creating vulnerabilities for our country?
00:24:01.660Sir, it's not in the purview of my investigative responsibilities.
00:24:06.520But that is shocking that you wouldn't, as the assistant director of cyber, know whether or not there are international business deals, kickbacks, shakedowns that are on this laptop that would make the first family suspect to some sort of compromise.
00:24:24.080Mr. Assistant Director, have you assessed whether or not the first family is compromised as a result of the Hunter Biden laptop?
00:24:30.240Sir, as a representative of the FBI cyber program, it is not in the realm of my responsibilities to deal with the questions that you're asking me.
00:24:39.340Has anyone at FBI cyber been asked to make assessments whether or not the laptop creates a point of vulnerability?
00:24:47.380Sir, we have multiple lines of investigative responsibility in the FBI.
00:24:51.860They're all available in public source.
00:24:53.640Well, I would think you'd know this one.
00:24:55.180I mean, I would think that if the president's son, who does international business deals, referencing the now president with the Chinese, with Ukrainians.
00:25:05.400I mean, have you assessed whether or not the Hunter Biden laptop gives Russia the ability to harm our country?
00:25:10.960Sir, again, we can do this back and forth for the next couple of minutes.
00:25:16.540I don't have any information about the Hunter Biden laptop or the investment.
00:26:02.720You're going to have to give us briefings thanks to Mr. Lew and Mr. Massey's question about whether or not the FBI was taking a $5 million test drive on the Pegasus system that was being used to target people in politics, people in government, people in the media, people in American life.
00:26:16.880So will you commit to give us a briefing as the Assistant Director of FBI Cyber as to where the laptop is, whether or not it's a point of vulnerability, whether or not the American people should wonder whether or not the first family is compromised?
00:26:29.480Sir, I'd be happy to take your request back to our office.
00:26:33.760Gosh, I mean, will you advocate for that briefing?
00:27:06.460If there are passwords, if there are business deals, if there are references to things that could harm our country, like you can't even sit here right now and say that, you know, that there's not a point of vulnerability.
00:28:38.720After a consultation with majority staff, I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record of this committee content from, files from, and copies from the Hunter Biden laptop.
00:28:54.320And everybody started asking how in the world Hunter Biden's laptop contents on a disk drive ended up in the House Judiciary Committee and now has ended up as part of the permanent record of Congress.
00:29:07.700So we're going to get into what happens next with the laptop, how its contents are going to be probably utilized in other congressional hearings.
00:29:15.800But first, Vish, take us from that laptop getting dropped off by Hunter Biden to its contents showing up in the House Judiciary Committee.
00:29:56.420And this is standard practice in Delaware.
00:29:58.340And I think it's actually legally described in Delaware, but standard practice in this industry where the laptop repair shop owner will take the laptop and repair it.
00:30:13.640And then once once he tries to return it to the owner and seeks payment for the services, if that laptop repair shop owner tries to get paid and after 90 days doesn't hear back or doesn't get a response for the repair property, that property then becomes the laptop repair shop owners.
00:30:36.840So the ownership of the laptop actually changes, according to Delaware law, based on non-payment by Hunter Biden for the repairs and based on the duration of time between when that was dropped off and ultimately was in the ownership legally of McIsaac.
00:30:58.280Right. And if it wasn't the legal statute, there was a written, a form that Hunter filled out at the spot right there.
00:31:06.500Oh, OK. OK. So it may have been a function of his agreement to engage in that repair.
00:31:10.900Right. Exactly. There was documentation on that.
00:31:14.180So once now, once that happens and now the laptop legally belongs to McIsaac.
00:31:19.260After 90 days, Hunter doesn't return. He doesn't return the calls, doesn't pay for it. It becomes McIsaac's.
00:31:25.960Now, fast forward a few months later, impeachment one buzz starts and that is when McIsaac starts hearing on the news about impeachment one, Hunter Biden, Ukraine, Burisma.
00:31:37.400That's when he remembered, oh, wait, I do have a Hunter Biden laptop or something like that.
00:31:42.800Let me just go log in. So until the Democrats kick the hornet's nest with this phony Ukraine impeachment.
00:31:51.060Right. I mean, this laptop was just collecting dust in a repair shop.
00:31:55.320Exactly. And probably never would have been opened. Exactly.
00:31:58.440But because McIsaac is starting to hear this stuff as if it is like current, real, actionable news.
00:32:05.460Biggest story in the world, right? If you remember at that time, impeachment one was the biggest story in the world.
00:32:10.740We had Adam Schiff down there leaking out every day that, oh, there was some new damning thing.
00:32:15.140Exactly. All right. So so he goes and gets into it.
00:32:18.080And so he goes and gets into it, sees, you know, salacious pictures, bank stuff, Burisma documents, all that.
00:32:24.440And he says, oh, I am pretty sure this is pertinent to whatever's going on on my TV.
00:32:29.700Right. And so that's what it ain't exactly like Burisma is Coca-Cola.
00:32:33.560Exactly. Right. So so that's when he so he says, OK, you know what, I'm going to turn this over to the proper authorities.
00:32:41.280And he then decides he's going to turn it over to the FBI.
00:32:46.020But so he doesn't go to the press doesn't go to the press.
00:32:49.360This was not about partisanship or anything like that.
00:32:52.340He's just trying to do the right thing.
00:32:54.220And he's seeing that there might be, you know, trouble in the country around something called Burisma and a Hunter Biden or whatever here.
00:33:00.780If this laptop can clear up some things, when when does McIsaac give the laptop to the FBI in December 2019 is when.
00:33:09.880And that's what generates the receipt that people just saw in the House Judiciary Committee.
00:33:14.060Correct. And he gives them the original laptop, the one that he took from Hunter.
00:33:18.340But it's very important here. The faith in our institutions was already so detrimental at that time that John McIsaac isn't even sure if he turns over this laptop that it's going to be OK.
00:33:31.960So he makes a few copies, disk images of that laptop.
00:33:36.400By the way, if McIsaac doesn't make those copies, we we might still be hearing what you heard at the beginning of that question series.
00:33:43.820You know, hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
00:33:56.380So in December 2019, he turns over the original has the receipt that you held up during the committee hearing.
00:34:03.200And and, you know, he's and the FBI takes it, doesn't hear back from them again.
00:34:08.840And then he's still seeing the buzz going on.
00:34:11.160And not only that, he's seeing Rudy's getting slammed in the media of, you know, over this this this Ukraine stuff and Burisma stuff and Hunter stuff doesn't hear any words.
00:34:21.480Finally, he gets fed up. He says, well, if nobody's going to do anything about this and Rudy's still taking flack and all sorts of other stuff, you know what?
00:34:28.940I'm going to turn it over to I'm going to turn over a copy of this to Rudy himself.
00:34:32.480And that is when John John Paul MacIsaac reaches out to Rudy's lawyer, Rob Costello, hands it over to Rob Costello.
00:34:41.620One of the copies gives the proper documentation as well.
00:34:45.640The chain of custody documentation from Hunter, from the FBI, everything turns it over to Robert Costello, gives the consent to use it as they see fit.
00:34:57.460Then Rudy comes and seeks out Steve Bannon because Rudy's a great legal mind, but doesn't really understand the environment of the Chinese companies and the Chinese players and a lot of these other characters that pop up on the laptop.
00:35:09.820So he goes to Steve Bannon, who's doing the War Room at the time, and I'm the producer there for for Steve.
00:35:17.080And so that's the founding producer, the one of the one of the founding one of the founding producers of War Room Pandemic.
00:35:24.200And if you know, quick shout out, War Room started on impeachment, right?
00:35:28.400The impeachment once. So that all flowed in.
00:35:31.600And now it's part of the War Room journalism.
00:35:34.760So talk to me about how you and Bannon get a hold of this.
00:35:37.680So now, so we get a hold of it in conjunction with Rudy, and we're just, so Steve hands me the laptop and says, you know, I need you to go through this thing, make it your best friend, know how to, you know, where everything is.
00:35:53.080I start going through it. I find a bunch of things, and, you know, we're working with Steve and Rudy.
00:39:19.860And now people are looking for ways to make their own bones now, now that, you know, they don't have to worry about being the pariah.
00:39:27.340And so the interest level has gone up in the Hunter Biden laptop since.
00:39:31.560And I believe you will start seeing more mainstream outlets verifying this thing and coming out and saying that they're that, you know, this thing is real.
00:39:42.120And these are things that have to be addressed.
00:39:43.760You know, as being from New York, I kind of see, like, what's what what is happening with Biden could also could could sort of harken back to what happened with Cuomo,
00:39:55.720where at the right time you kind of needed to get rid of the guy and that these stories would now be deployed to put get somebody else in place.
00:40:02.800So they could be tools waiting in the wings.
00:40:23.180Well, look, I again, I saw this cover four months ago, but I think that now would seem like the right time.
00:40:31.240I totally believe that that the actions you took to enter it into the congressional record definitely raised the temperature up on on their on the necessity to do what they did,
00:40:42.600which is verify or authenticate the laptop through mainstream sources.
00:40:46.780But I also think that, you know, there's there's a lot of malaise through the country right now about Joe Biden and his poll numbers are the lowest of them, you know, in his presidency right now.
00:40:57.480And so I think that all these things, the confluence of all these events now have led to this laptop being verified.
00:41:07.340And if you know, wait a second, wait a second.
00:41:08.800Is it your statement that you believe that these things are coming to fruition now because there is a coordinated effort to take Joe Biden out?
00:41:28.340I believe that they are gaslighting their own protection of Joe and Hunter Biden.
00:41:34.400I don't think there's anybody at the DOJ or FBI thinking they're going to make their career out of convicting Hunter Biden of anything short of like some little slap on the wrist to sort of inoculate him.
00:41:49.840I mean, I think that also if you look closely at the Washington Post, Washington Post did two stories.
00:41:55.180One of them was a story just about how they authenticated the laptop and they in that story.
00:42:00.880They so they try to sell a lot of discord and confusion by saying that we can only authenticate some stuff can authenticate the other stuff.
00:42:09.000And what I think this is is an attempt to control the landing of Hunter, you know, of how this case goes and basically make sure that whatever is prosecuted or is whatever stories that they can that they're OK with having prosecuted.
00:42:32.240In Florida, Lake Okeechobee sometimes gets so many pollutants in it that the people around there decide to, like, release some water because the environment can sort of absorb and clean those pollutants.
00:42:42.820You're describing the Lake Okeechobee factor politically through the DOJ and FBI as it relates to the Biden.
00:42:52.400Because because the whole goal of that would be to preserve the Biden regime with with just some low level, maybe charges or investigations of the Biden crime family.
00:43:03.000When if you really go back and look at the Hunter Files episode that we did previously, you're going to see like gambling deals, deals with the Chinese.
00:43:10.820I mean, you're going to see all kind of stuff that I think rises way beyond what you're hearing about on mainstream media right now.
00:43:17.000And well, I honestly, I also think that this play that you're seeing now is an attempt to I think that at the end of this, Hunter Biden will be pardoned by Joe Biden.
00:43:28.060And I think that's what this is, is to get it into the I don't think it ever gets that far.
00:44:12.320Let this man run for president, you know, and and and and then want to say, oh, well, you know, after 20, we were started this investigation in 2018.
00:44:22.300But then all recently, it's picked up steam.
00:44:24.300You know, I think that I think the only reason that this is picking up any steam is because we introduced those contents into the congressional record and their authenticity is not going to be challenged.
00:44:35.360By the way, Eric Swalwell, Jerry Nadler, David Cicilline, Val Demings, Hank Johnson, none of these Democrats, you know, from the House Judiciary Committee even objected to me putting Hunter Biden's laptop into the congressional record.
00:44:49.160It went in under a unanimous consent of the Judiciary Committee.
00:44:53.940So we will not hear questions about the authenticity or viability.
00:44:58.060Now, the sole question is what criminal conduct, what disqualifying conduct, what points of vulnerability are exposed as we see the contents of this laptop?
00:45:09.020Now, the number one question I get is, how'd you get this laptop?
00:45:14.140The number two question I get is, so what next?
00:45:16.560When can the great sleuths that are out there watching this program and really just advancing the cause of transparency throughout the country going to be able to look at this data, analyze it?
00:45:28.860When are we going to be able to have the information from this laptop available to ask questions in every committee, really?
00:45:35.880I mean, it's hard to think of a committee in Congress that wouldn't benefit off of probing potentially corrupt connections that go directly to the first family, directly to the White House.
00:46:54.320You know, that's not just because, you know, Vish has a crystal ball.
00:46:57.440It's because I was the one who made the copy that ended up in the hands of Tom Hamburger over at the Washington Post.
00:47:06.260So that copy that he has, that he used to verify and the Washington Post used to authenticate the laptop is the same copy that you just entered into the congressional record.
00:47:22.980Well, if the democracy is in the Washington Post's hands, maybe.
00:47:26.260But, you know, but thank God we have brave patriots like you on the Hill who are ready to put your name to, you know, to your action and say, I'm going to put this in the congressional record.
00:47:37.580You're a brave patriot, too, for playing your role in this from an investigative journalism standpoint, from your service on our congressional staff, and certainly your efforts this week to get this information before the American people.
00:47:49.840And information is indeed the new domain of intelligence collection, warfare, so much of the conflict that we see.
00:48:00.280And so for a moment, just imagine a computer program that can hack into your phone requiring a single click on your end.
00:48:22.420Pegasus is the name of a Trojan horse spyware program created by the Israeli cybercrime company NSO Group.
00:48:30.460And as of 2022, Pegasus was capable of reading texts, tracking calls, collecting passwords, location tracking, accessing, targeting a device's microphone and camera, and harvesting information from apps.
00:50:45.280All you have to do is come to the attention of somebody with the money to pay any one of these companies for the tools to break into your phone.
00:50:52.960We know right off the bat that, unfortunately, we can't trust our own intelligence agencies.
00:51:01.860The FBI, NSA, CIA, ATF, and DEA have just a piss-poor track record when it comes to protecting individual liberties and respecting the Fourth Amendment that's supposed to bind them.
00:51:34.780And we can't really say for certain how the FBI has used this technology.
00:51:40.600But we know our allies and adversaries have used it.
00:51:45.180According to the Pegasus Project, which is an investigative initiative by Amnesty International, Forbidden Stories, and dozens of other news organizations,
00:51:53.180authoritarian governments have been using it, and we know, to surveil and kill anyone who doesn't fall in line.
00:52:00.060As many as 14 heads of state, countless government officials, journalists, they've all been targets of Pegasus.