The Ben Shapiro Show - April 18, 2019


It’s Mueller Time | Ep. 762

Topics
Mueller report findings We The People holsters obstruction of justice Mueller report obstruction intent
Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Robert Mueller Donald Trump Jr. Bill Barr Jeff Sessions Michael Flynn Corey Lewandowski Hillary Clinton Don McGahn Christy James Comey Michael Cohen Steele Ring Sergey Kislyak Richard Spencer Carter Page George Papadopoulos Stephen Douglas Chris Christie Archibald Cox and 35 more
Media Matters’ Burro | Ep. 761 Fallout Day | Ep. 763

Episode Stats


Length

54 minutes

Words per minute

203.97

Word count

11,062

Sentence count

734

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

39

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The Mueller Report is out, and it's a doozy! Ben Shapiro breaks it all down in just one hour, and gives his thoughts on the key takeaways from the report and the press conference by Attorney General William Barr. He also explains why the President should not have been given the chance to read the report before it was released. And he argues that the President is not hiding anything from the public, but is simply using his own emotions as a means to determine whether or not the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in order to obstruct justice in the investigation of the Trump administration and the Russia investigation, and why he should not be held responsible for anything that comes out of it. Ben also provides his analysis of the report, and explains why he thinks there's no evidence of collusion between the Trump Campaign and the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (F.B.I.) in the report. And, of course, he gives his own thoughts on why the report should be released and why it should be declassified before it is made public. You won't want to miss it! Watch the entire thing on The Ben Shapiro Show, wherever you get your news and information from around the world. Go check it out! Go listen to the full episode now! Subscribe to the show and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and subscribe to our podcast wherever you re listening to podcasts. Subscribe and review the show! If you like what you're listening, share the show on your social media, share it with your friends, and tell a friend! and tell us what you think about what you thought of it's value and how much you think it means to you'll be impacted by the show. and what you'd like to do in the comments section! Thank you for listening and share it on your friends! Be sure to tell a fellow podcasting and we'll be listening to Ben Shapiro! on your Insta- if it helps us spread the word to your friends about Ben Shapiro's work and what he's listening out there about it's great! Thanks Ben Shapiro is awesome, Ben Shapiro, right? or tweet him on it's awesome, right he's amazing, right on the next episode! or on Insta: linktr. or Insta= & so on and so and so on & so forth! - Ben Shapiro -

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
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.
00:00:00.000 It's Mueller time.
00:00:01.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:00:01.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:03.000 The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:18.000 He's sitting right here.
00:00:19.000 You're listening to the sound of his voice right at this moment.
00:00:22.000 We're going to go through as much of this as humanly possible over the course of the next hour.
00:00:26.000 You're going to know much more than you did when you first started.
00:00:29.000 I will give you my conclusions.
00:00:30.000 I will give you the analysis.
00:00:31.000 I'll give you the text.
00:00:32.000 Everything you could possibly want, but first, Admit it, you think that cybercrime is something that happens to other people.
00:00:37.000 You might think nobody wants your data or that hackers can't grab your passwords or credit card details.
00:00:41.000 You would be wrong.
00:00:43.000 Stealing data from unsuspecting people on public Wi-Fi, it's one of the simplest and cheapest ways for hackers to make money.
00:00:48.000 When you leave your internet connection unencrypted, you might as well be writing your passwords and credit card numbers on a giant billboard for the rest of the world to see.
00:00:54.000 That's why I decided to take action.
00:00:56.000 To protect myself from cybercriminals, I use ExpressVPN.
00:01:00.000 ExpressVPN secures and anonymizes your internet browsing by encrypting your data and hiding your public IP address.
00:01:06.000 ExpressVPN has easy-to-use apps that run seamlessly in the background of your computer, phone, and tablet.
00:01:11.000 Turning on ExpressVPN protection, that only takes one click.
00:01:13.000 Using ExpressVPN, I can safely surf on public Wi-Fi without being snooped on or having my personal data stolen.
00:01:18.000 For less than $7 a month, you can get the same ExpressVPN protection that I have.
00:01:23.000 ExpressVPN is rated the number one VPN service by TechRadar.
00:01:26.000 It comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
00:01:28.000 So go protect your online activity today.
00:01:30.000 Find out how you can get three months for free at expressvpn.com slash ben.
00:01:34.000 That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-v-p-n.com slash ben for three months free with a one-year package.
00:01:38.000 Visit expressvpn.com slash ben to learn more.
00:01:41.000 Go check it out right now.
00:01:42.000 Okay, so the Mueller Report is out and we will get to all of the content of that in just one second.
00:01:47.000 I will break the entire thing down for you as best I can inside of one hour.
00:01:52.000 It's going to be magnificent.
00:01:53.000 But we have to start with the Attorney General of the United States who held a really random press conference at the beginning of the day.
00:02:00.000 Now, this is a weird thing to do.
00:02:01.000 The reason that it's a weird thing to do is because we already have Attorney General Barr's letter, which is his summation of his findings regarding the bottom line of the Mueller report.
00:02:10.000 I think the reason that he actually held the press conference was to push two particular points.
00:02:17.000 One point was that he was being as transparent as humanly possible.
00:02:20.000 And the second point was that he was using President Trump's emotional state as his basis for adjudicating whether or not the president was guilty of obstruction of justice.
00:02:32.000 Those were, I think, the two key takeaways.
00:02:35.000 So, obviously, he's already said that the Trump campaign did not collude.
00:02:39.000 He's already said that this is, that he's redacting as little as humanly possible.
00:02:45.000 He was also pointing out, I think, that the president had already seen the report, but that that was not illegal.
00:02:50.000 That's clip five, him talking about the president's counsel being given the opportunity to read the report before release.
00:02:55.000 In addition, earlier this week, the President's personal counsel requested and was given the opportunity to read a final version of the redacted report before it was publicly released.
00:03:08.000 That request was consistent with the practice followed under the Ethics in Government Act, which permitted individuals named in a report prepared by an independent counsel the opportunity to read the report before publication.
00:03:23.000 Okay, so that was Barr's take, and I think that's important, him saying that the President is not here to hide the information that's in the report.
00:03:33.000 And it is obvious, by the way, that the President could have asserted executive privilege at any point in the middle of this report, as we'll see.
00:03:39.000 There's plenty of information in the report that definitely falls under the rubric of executive privilege if the President of the United States wanted to assert it.
00:03:46.000 So Barr is pointing out that the President was not really hiding a lot, which is true.
00:03:50.000 Also, Barr points out that we have to bear in mind the context of Trump's actions, particularly with regard to obstruction of justice.
00:03:57.000 Now, the report breaks down, the Mueller report breaks down into two sections.
00:04:00.000 Section one is about Trump-Russia collusion.
00:04:02.000 As I suggested before, I didn't think there was going to be a lot of enormous new information about Trump-Russia collusion, and there really isn't.
00:04:09.000 It really is a rehash of stuff we already knew, the most important stuff being that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was a lawyer who was acting as sort of a Russian front to supposedly pass information about Hillary Clinton to the Trump campaign.
00:04:25.000 There are also a bunch of Roger Stone references, but not a lot of revelations in the first half of the report.
00:04:30.000 The stuff that was revelatory, I think to everybody, was the stuff in the second half of the report, the obstruction of justice stuff.
00:04:36.000 And there the question becomes, did the president obstruct justice when he repeatedly sounded off about wanting to get rid of Jeff Sessions, or when he repeatedly sounded off about wanting to fire Robert Mueller, or when he repeatedly reached out to members of his team and sort of patted them on the back when they did things that he wanted, and then offered them the stick when they did not.
00:04:54.000 Now, the standard of obstruction of justice, as laid out in the actual Mueller report, is under 28 CFR 600.4A, federal crimes committed in the course of and with intent to interfere with the special counsel's investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses.
00:05:14.000 So they break down several basic elements of the crime in this Mueller report, and some of the elements of the crime include intent to commit obstruction of justice.
00:05:24.000 So according to the Mueller report itself, obstruction of justice law reaches all corrupt conduct capable of producing an effect that prevents justice from being duly administered regardless of the means employed.
00:05:34.000 An effort to influence a proceeding can qualify as an endeavor to obstruct justice, even if the effort was subtle or circuitous and however cleverly or with whatever cloaking of purpose it was made.
00:05:44.000 An improper motive can render an actor's conduct criminal, even when the conduct would otherwise be lawful and within the actor's authorities.
00:05:51.000 So if President Trump was trying to assert some sort of obstruction against, he was trying to get people in his team to corruptly impact the Mueller report, then this would serve as obstruction of justice according to this interpretation of the law.
00:06:05.000 But you do have to have intent.
00:06:08.000 You do have to have intent.
00:06:09.000 So, there has to be a nexus with the current investigation.
00:06:12.000 And this is where things get dicey.
00:06:13.000 There has to be a nexus with the Mueller investigation.
00:06:15.000 So, in other words, if Trump just decided, I'm firing Robert Mueller because I don't like the way his tie looks today, that's not obstruction of justice.
00:06:22.000 If Trump fires Robert Mueller because he wants to obstruct the investigation, that's obstruction of justice.
00:06:27.000 Maybe, although he still has the authority to fire Robert Mueller for any reasons, probably more impeachable than even obstruction of justice.
00:06:34.000 According to the Mueller report, there must be a nexus within a current investigation.
00:06:39.000 That nexus showing has both subjective and objective components.
00:06:42.000 As an objective matter, a defendant must act in a manner that is likely to obstruct justice, such that the statute excludes defendants who have an evil purpose but use means that would only unnaturally and improbably be successful.
00:06:53.000 In other words, you have to be effective in your attempts to obstruct justice, or at least the attempt must be Somehow within the boundaries of reason.
00:07:00.000 As a subjective matter, the actor must have contemplated a particular foreseeable proceeding.
00:07:05.000 In other words, again, Trump must have wanted to shut down the Mueller report because he thought that its result would be bad for him.
00:07:13.000 It can't just be that he wants to shut down the Mueller report because he thinks that the Mueller report is just a waste of government money, for example.
00:07:21.000 That's why there is the element of corruptly In the obstruction of justice law.
00:07:25.000 The word corruptly provides the intent element for obstruction of justice.
00:07:28.000 It means acting knowingly and dishonestly or with an improper motive.
00:07:32.000 The requisite showing is made when a person acted with an intent to obtain an improper advantage for himself or someone else inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others.
00:07:40.000 That last phrase is the one that matters.
00:07:42.000 Inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others.
00:07:44.000 As we will see, President Trump continually tried to interfere with players surrounding the Mueller investigation without in any underlying way Forcing people to lie.
00:07:54.000 And he did so not because he wanted, in my opinion, and in the opinion of Attorney General Barr, not because he wanted to shut down or obstruct the Mueller investigation, but because he found the entire thing embarrassing and he was attempting to avoid press embarrassment for the most part.
00:08:08.000 The most damaging section of the obstruction statute is witness tampering.
00:08:13.000 A more specific provision in section 1512, according to the Mueller report, prohibits tampering with a witness.
00:08:18.000 That would make it a crime to knowingly use intimidation or corruptly persuade another person or engage in misleading conduct toward another person with intents to influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding to hinder, delay, or prevent the communication to a law enforcement officer.
00:08:32.000 As we will see, there's behavior that verges on this but doesn't actually cross over Into that boundary.
00:08:37.000 And finally, there's the question of the attempt.
00:08:39.000 Is there attempted obstruction of justice?
00:08:41.000 Mueller says yes.
00:08:42.000 He says that the section includes attempt.
00:08:45.000 So if you try to obstruct justice, but you fail, then that could theoretically be obstruction of justice.
00:08:50.000 Now, the reason that he lays out this interpretation of the law is because Trump's activity here could legitimately be interpreted in a couple of different ways.
00:08:58.000 On the one hand, it could be interpreted as President Trump trying to actively obstruct the Mueller investigation because he didn't want criminal activity to be uncovered by the Mueller investigation.
00:09:08.000 Possibility number two is that Trump is a very frustrated guy.
00:09:11.000 Who spends a lot of time doing immoral, bad things, and then does more immoral, bad, but non-criminal things in order to cover up the original things that he did.
00:09:19.000 So it looks sort of like the Stormy Daniels scandal, in other words. 0.88
00:09:21.000 Strips a porn star. 0.99
00:09:22.000 It's embarrassing and immoral. 0.91
00:09:23.000 It is not criminal.
00:09:24.000 And then he does something even more embarrassing and immoral, but not criminal.
00:09:27.000 He then pays her off to keep her silent just before an election.
00:09:30.000 This is the pattern for Trump.
00:09:32.000 So, you can interpret his activities in one of two ways.
00:09:34.000 Attorney General Barr, I think properly, interprets Trump's activities in the second way that I named, and he especially does that in light of the fact that if he had attempted to prosecute Trump under obstruction of justice, he would have to prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt.
00:09:47.000 That would not have happened here.
00:09:49.000 Whether you're on the left or the right, you can think the president did something criminal.
00:09:53.000 There is no prosecutor who would have taken up this case.
00:09:56.000 Here's the difference between the Hillary Clinton case and the Donald Trump case.
00:09:59.000 In the Hillary Clinton case, intent was not an element of the crime.
00:10:03.000 If you expose classified information to public scrutiny by creating a server and putting classified documents on it, that is in and of itself a crime.
00:10:11.000 There is no intent necessary.
00:10:13.000 That's why it was ridiculous when James Comey, the head of the FBI, said that Hillary had not committed a criminal act because she lacked the requisite intent.
00:10:20.000 There is no requisite intent.
00:10:22.000 It's a strict liability crime.
00:10:23.000 There is no requisite intent in that section of the law.
00:10:26.000 There is requisite intent when it comes to obstruction of justice.
00:10:30.000 So the reason I'm laying all this forth is because that's where Attorney General Barr is going.
00:10:34.000 When he says that the president and the president's emotion matter, he says the reason he invoked that is because that stuff is in the report, because it is relevant to determining whether he had the requisite intent to commit obstruction of justice.
00:10:47.000 Well, actually, the statements about his sincere beliefs are recognized in the report that there was substantial evidence for that.
00:10:52.000 Okay, so people are treating Barr so people are treating Barr as though Barr is a deeply partisan figure here.
00:11:15.000 Now, there's a case to be made that Barr is partisan insofar as he works for the President of the United States, but I don't see how an objective prosecutor could bring an obstruction of justice case Or a collusion case on the basis of the evidence that's actually in the Mueller report.
00:11:29.000 So in a second, we're going to get to all of that.
00:11:31.000 We'll also show you that the media were attempting to preemptively spin this report even before it was out.
00:11:36.000 Again, I think it was a mistake to hold this press conference in the first place, but I think the reasons that I laid forth are the reasons that Barr did it.
00:11:42.000 One, he wanted to show that he was transparent and Trump was transparent.
00:11:45.000 And two, he wanted to point out that obstruction of justice is an intent crime.
00:11:49.000 OK, we'll get to more of this in just one second.
00:11:51.000 First, you've heard me talk about how Ring is reinventing home security with doorbells, cameras, even an alarm you can install yourself.
00:11:57.000 Now they've reinvented the Neighborhood Watch with a new app they created called Neighbors by Ring.
00:12:01.000 You remember the Neighborhood Watch.
00:12:02.000 It's been around for a while.
00:12:03.000 I remember it from growing up.
00:12:04.000 It's still a big thing.
00:12:05.000 People care about making their neighborhood safer.
00:12:06.000 I know I do.
00:12:07.000 So Ring, a company synonymous with reinventing home security, reinvented the Neighborhood Watch.
00:12:12.000 The Neighbors app is like a new Neighborhood Watch.
00:12:14.000 On your phone.
00:12:14.000 People taking stuff off porches, trying doorknobs late at night, missing dogs.
00:12:19.000 The Neighbors app sends real-time notifications to your phone whenever one of your neighbors posts a heads-up about something that's going on, which keeps you informed and allows you to keep yourself safer.
00:12:26.000 The Neighbors app by Ring is completely free.
00:12:28.000 Anyone can join, even if they don't own a Ring device.
00:12:30.000 So I downloaded it myself from the App Store.
00:12:32.000 I put in my address.
00:12:33.000 I set the area around my home for two miles, because I really only want to know what's going on within two miles.
00:12:37.000 It's hyper-local like that.
00:12:39.000 That's it.
00:12:39.000 It's easy.
00:12:40.000 And sure enough, there's a guy who is siphoning, like, natural gas from somebody's house.
00:12:44.000 It's wild.
00:12:45.000 You gotta check out the Neighbors app yourself.
00:12:47.000 The easiest way to get it going is ring.com forward slash Shapiro.
00:12:51.000 Make your neighborhood safer today with the Neighbors app by Ring at ring.com forward slash Shapiro.
00:12:55.000 So as I say, Attorney General Barr does this presentation, and the media naturally have to set their side, which is that Barr is a political partisan hack.
00:13:03.000 Again, even though the President of the United States did not assert executive privilege, even though the redactions Are minimal.
00:13:08.000 I've looked at the report.
00:13:09.000 They really only apply in the Roger Stone investigation, which is ongoing.
00:13:14.000 The media still were claiming that this was some sort of cover-up by Attorney General Barr, which I fail to see how it's a cover-up when I can read the document and you can read the document and everybody can read the document. 0.71
00:13:24.000 Still, you saw all the legal analysts saying ridiculous, silly things. 0.68
00:13:27.000 Neal Katyal is a legal analyst over on CNN. 0.66
00:13:30.000 He suggested, or MSNBC rather, he suggested that Barr sounded like a spokesperson rather than the Attorney General.
00:13:36.000 Yeah, I mean, I agree with you.
00:13:37.000 The rhetoric here was extraordinary.
00:13:39.000 It sounded like a spokesman, not an attorney general.
00:13:43.000 And the word collusion, I mean, a lawyer doesn't use that term because there is no crime of collusion.
00:13:48.000 Only Trump uses that term.
00:13:49.000 And so you have the attorney general parroting that.
00:13:51.000 But to me, there was one bigger thing that I saw, which was what Barr didn't tell us.
00:13:55.000 We know there's one sentence in the Mueller report which says, do not, this does not exonerate Trump.
00:14:01.000 Did we hear a word of that in Barr's, whatever, 15-10 minute summary?
00:14:06.000 There's nothing I heard about that. 0.97
00:14:08.000 Okay, well, that is very silly.
00:14:10.000 When he says that Barr using the word collusion is some sort of manipulation, everyone in the media has been using the word collusion to describe this for two odd years.
00:14:19.000 Let's not pretend that Barr invented the word collusion.
00:14:22.000 It really is an absurdity.
00:14:24.000 Now, with all of that said, the case can be made that Barr was coming out to preemptively spin this thing in favor of his own take on the issue.
00:14:33.000 As I say, maybe that's true, maybe that's not, but the Mueller report was revealed like an hour and a half later, and it says exactly what it says.
00:14:41.000 So, let's get to the actual Mueller report.
00:14:43.000 Here we go, guys.
00:14:44.000 It's an exploration.
00:14:45.000 Let's have a party.
00:14:46.000 So, The Mueller report starts off with about 190 pages, 220 pages, something like that, on the Trump-Russia collusion stuff.
00:14:56.000 And the effective findings are that Trump-Russia collusion did not occur, that members of the Trump campaign were giving shout-outs to WikiLeaks, that there were certain members of the Trump campaign who were unwittingly acting as kind of near-pawns of the Russians, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, for example, but that there was no high-level collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
00:15:16.000 And there really isn't that much more that we didn't know in the Trump-Russia collusion part.
00:15:20.000 Now, I will say this.
00:15:22.000 The information that is clear, there are two conclusions that are pretty obvious and should be stated right at the outside here.
00:15:28.000 One is that with the number of Trump-Russia contacts that were happening during the election, For all the talk about how this investigation, the Trump-Russia investigation, was begun under corrupt auspices, I don't see the evidence of that. 0.97
00:15:39.000 I see evidence that the Trump-Russia investigation became more corrupt as time went on, particularly with them using the Steele dossier, which turns out to be a bunch of crap.
00:15:48.000 The Steele dossier is only mentioned in this document a couple of times, and that is because The Mueller report found virtually nothing that corroborated any section of the Steele dossier.
00:15:57.000 So the fact that the FBI was using the Steele dossier as the basis for large swaths of the investigation, including a FISA warrant against Carter Page, is just an absurdity on its face.
00:16:06.000 That does not mean, as I've said all along, that the investigation was initiated under improper auspices.
00:16:12.000 It means that it became improper over time, if anything.
00:16:15.000 It also doesn't look like Mueller is a political partisan hack here.
00:16:18.000 Who's simply attempting to do the nefarious work of a fusion GPS or something like that.
00:16:23.000 So that is a conclusion that is worthwhile noting here.
00:16:27.000 The second conclusion that is worthwhile noting is that, again, there is nothing in the actual report that suggests that President Trump had any deep abiding deal going with the Russian government.
00:16:39.000 Basically, as with all things Trump, as I've said again and again, Trump does something embarrassing and then he doesn't want to be embarrassed so he does something else embarrassing.
00:16:46.000 That is the nature of the Trump-Russia collusion stuff.
00:16:48.000 Okay, so let's jump in.
00:16:49.000 So, the report begins by talking about the social media campaign in the GRU, which is the newfangled KGB of Russia, hacking operations.
00:16:57.000 They say that those coincided with a series of contacts between Trump campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government.
00:17:03.000 The office investigated whether those contacts reflected or resulted in the campaign conspiring or coordinating with Russia in its election interference activities.
00:17:11.000 Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
00:17:30.000 In other words, Trump was happy that WikiLeaks was doing what it was doing.
00:17:33.000 Trump was perfectly happy that the Russian government seemed to hate Hillary Clinton.
00:17:37.000 But that was about it.
00:17:39.000 That's the bottom line takeaway.
00:17:40.000 And again, I'm reading directly from the Mueller report.
00:17:45.000 The Mueller report also says, while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges.
00:17:56.000 Now, that is not to say that no criminal behavior happened.
00:18:00.000 Maybe criminal behavior happened, but there was not enough evidence to support criminal charges.
00:18:05.000 Among other things, the evidence was not sufficient to charge any campaign officials as an unregistered agent of the Russian government or other Russian principal.
00:18:12.000 Our evidence about the June 9, 2016 meeting and WikiLeaks releases of hacked materials was not sufficient to charge a criminal campaign finance violation.
00:18:20.000 Further, the evidence was not sufficient to charge that any member of the Trump campaign conspired with representatives of the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election.
00:18:28.000 So notice that language.
00:18:30.000 Was not sufficient to charge.
00:18:31.000 Not sufficient to charge.
00:18:32.000 Over and over.
00:18:33.000 Not sufficient to charge.
00:18:34.000 That suggests that Mueller still suspects that something nefarious might have been going on, but there is no evidence to actually fulfill that expectation.
00:18:43.000 And I think that when you read the report, there's fairly good, good feeling that the Trump campaign was happy about all this stuff.
00:18:49.000 But again, there is no evidence to support the idea that they were actively involved with Russian collusion or conspiracy under any criminal statute.
00:18:58.000 So, the Mueller report talks about a variety of matters that investigated.
00:19:03.000 They say, for example, the investigation established the interactions between Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and Trump campaign officials, both of the candidates' April 2016 foreign policy speech in Washington, D.C., and during the week of the RNC, were brief, public, and non-substantive.
00:19:16.000 You remember, these were treated as bombshells.
00:19:18.000 The fact that Sergey Kislyak met with people during RNC week, this was treated as a bombshell by the New York Times.
00:19:23.000 The investigation did not establish that one campaign official's efforts to dilute a portion of the Republican Party platform on providing assistance to Ukraine were undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia.
00:19:33.000 So in other words, there was one campaign official who wanted to have better relations with the Russians and the campaign platform was changed on Ukraine to reflect that, but that was not a reflection of Trump imposing that from above or Russia seeking it.
00:19:47.000 The investigation also did not establish that a meeting between Sergey Kislyak and Jeff Sessions in September 2016 at Sessions' Senate office included any more than a passing mention of the presidential campaign.
00:19:56.000 Now, you'll recall that that meeting was the basis of Sessions recusing himself from the Mueller investigation, well, from the Trump-Russia investigation, because it was before Mueller, from the Trump-Russia investigation in the first place.
00:20:09.000 According to the Mueller report, the office learned that some of the individuals we interviewed or whose conduct we investigated, including some associated with the Trump campaign, deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature encryption or that do not provide for long-term retention of data or communications records.
00:20:26.000 In such cases, the office was not able to fully corroborate witness statements through comparison to contemporaneous communications or fully question witnesses about statements that appeared inconsistent with other known facts.
00:20:36.000 Accordingly, Says the Mueller Report.
00:20:38.000 In other words, there are holes in the evidentiary record here.
00:20:40.000 And that's not particularly shocking.
00:20:41.000 to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible.
00:20:44.000 Given these identified gaps, the office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light or cast in a new light the events described in the report.
00:20:52.000 In other words, there are holes in the evidentiary record here.
00:20:56.000 And that's not particularly shocking.
00:20:57.000 People in public life use encrypted communications I use encrypted communications all the time because I don't like being hacked.
00:21:04.000 So that doesn't necessarily mean corruption.
00:21:06.000 It does mean that there are holes in the evidentiary record.
00:21:10.000 And then the Mueller report goes through all of the supposed connections between the Trump campaign and Russia.
00:21:17.000 And most of it, as I say, is about the Trump campaign being very excited that Russia is stumping in its favor, but no actual collusion.
00:21:25.000 No actual collusion.
00:21:26.000 It's when we get to the obstruction that things get truly interesting.
00:21:29.000 And so I'm going to fast forward to the obstruction in just one second.
00:21:31.000 I think that's where the important stuff in the report lies, as I suggested it would.
00:21:35.000 Before the report even came out, because I'm just great that way.
00:21:37.000 We'll get to that in just one second.
00:21:38.000 First, We The People Holsters offers custom-made holsters all produced in the United States of America. 0.82
00:21:43.000 They design their own holsters in-house.
00:21:45.000 That means they don't use any third-party molds for their holsters.
00:21:47.000 Instead, they design every unique mold in Las Vegas in order to best fit each and every firearm perfectly.
00:21:52.000 They constantly update designs, adding new designs every month.
00:21:55.000 That lets them stay up to date on the newest models that come out.
00:21:58.000 We The People holsters even have their own 3D design team who measures every micromillimeter of their guns to ensure the perfect fit.
00:22:04.000 They're really awesome.
00:22:04.000 I've got one myself.
00:22:05.000 Their unique and intuitive clip design allows for you to easily adjust both the cant and the right of your holster so that it will fit comfortably and securely at all times.
00:22:13.000 Every holster also has an adjustable retention, which is signaled with a click sound.
00:22:16.000 That lets you know that that firearm is securely in place.
00:22:18.000 If you ever want more tension, you tighten one screw, you're done.
00:22:21.000 Custom printed designs in-house.
00:22:23.000 Thin blue line, thin red line, constitution, camo, American flag.
00:22:26.000 More coming out each month.
00:22:27.000 And, We The People holsters, they start at just 37 bucks a piece, which is a great price for a holster that comes with a lifetime guarantee.
00:22:33.000 Every holster ships free.
00:22:35.000 It is not a perfect fit?
00:22:36.000 Send it back for a refund.
00:22:37.000 Right now, listeners of The Ben Shapiro Show can go to wethepeopleholsters.com slash ben.
00:22:41.000 Enter promo code Ben at checkout to get $10 off your first holster.
00:22:44.000 That is as low as $37.
00:22:45.000 Shipping is free with an additional $10 off using my promo code.
00:22:49.000 Again, that's wethepeopleholsters.com slash Ben.
00:22:52.000 Promo code Ben at checkout for $10 off.
00:22:54.000 Go check them out right now.
00:22:55.000 Great American company and they make amazing product.
00:22:58.000 Okay, so...
00:22:59.000 As I say, the Mueller Report has two halves.
00:23:01.000 Half number one, about Trump-Russia collusion.
00:23:03.000 Not much there that we didn't already know.
00:23:05.000 Just a lot of talk about George Papadopoulos and his weird relationship with a guy named Joseph Mifsud, who is maybe a Russian front, and Carter Page, who's a weirdo who kept traveling to Moscow, but...
00:23:15.000 He would file his reports up the chain and nobody seemed to take advantage of those reports or care about his reports.
00:23:19.000 So there's not a lot on the Trump-Russia collusion front that we didn't already know.
00:23:23.000 But as I say, the investigation I don't think from this report was begun under evil auspices, although we will find that out when the Inspector General of the DOJ, Michael Horowitz, releases his own report on Trump-Russia.
00:23:33.000 Now, we get to the heart of the report.
00:23:35.000 The heart of the report is the stuff on obstruction of justice.
00:23:39.000 So the stuff on obstruction of justice is the most dangerous for President Trump.
00:23:43.000 Now, I will say, leading up to this, Attorney General Barr said, listen, if there's no underlying collusion, there's nothing to obstruct.
00:23:50.000 That is true.
00:23:51.000 It is also true that if you order people to lie to the government, that still constitutes obstruction of justice.
00:23:56.000 So that is sort of where the controversy lies.
00:24:00.000 Did Trump order anyone to lie or did he just sort of imply that he would like people to lie to the press?
00:24:04.000 Was he telling people to lie to the government?
00:24:06.000 Was he trying to shut down the Mueller investigation to avoid some sort of criminal charge?
00:24:11.000 Or was he just saying stuff because he was angry?
00:24:15.000 You know, my solution for all of this for President Trump is the dude says a lot of stuff because he's angry.
00:24:20.000 And he's angry in large part because he feels like his election victory is being taken away from him by a media that was determined to suggest that he did not, in fact, win the election on his own merits, but only because of Russian interference.
00:24:33.000 In any case, the Mueller report says, first, a traditional prosecution or declination decision entails a binary determination to initiate or decline a prosecution.
00:24:41.000 But we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment.
00:24:44.000 Remember, the Mueller report did not recommend that Trump be prosecuted or not prosecuted.
00:24:48.000 Instead, they just presented the evidence to Barr and Barr, the attorney general said, I'm not going to prosecute.
00:24:52.000 The Office of Legal Counsel has issued an opinion finding that the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting president would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.
00:25:04.000 They disagree.
00:25:05.000 They say a federal criminal accusation against a sitting president would place burdens on the president's capacity to govern.
00:25:11.000 But, in their later analysis, they say, well, we would still not allow that to prevent us from recommending a prosecution.
00:25:17.000 They say, while the OLC opinion concludes a sitting president may not be prosecuted, it recognizes that a criminal investigation during the president's term is permissible.
00:25:25.000 The OLC opinion also recognizes that the president does not have immunity after he leaves office, and if individuals other than the president committed an obstruction offense, they may be prosecuted at this time.
00:25:35.000 And then they say, we considered whether to evaluate the conduct we investigated under the justice manual standards governing prosecution and declination decisions.
00:25:42.000 We determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the president committed crimes.
00:25:47.000 So in other words, maybe he committed crime, maybe he didn't, but we're not willing to go there.
00:25:52.000 That's basically what Mueller found.
00:25:54.000 They said, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.
00:26:00.000 Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment.
00:26:04.000 In other words, this is a judgment call.
00:26:06.000 This is a question as to whether the president was safe at home or whether he was out at home.
00:26:11.000 And we are not going to play ump.
00:26:12.000 We are instead going to leave that up to the attorney general.
00:26:14.000 And what Barr says is that there is not evidence sufficient to establish a prosecution for obstruction of justice, which after reading the report, I think is probably the fair way to come down on this.
00:26:25.000 Okay, then we get into the actual meat of the matter.
00:26:29.000 So the report suggests, during the 2016 presidential campaign, questions arose about the Russian government's apparent support for candidate Trump.
00:26:36.000 After WikiLeaks released politically damaging Democratic Party emails that were reported to have been hacked by Russia, Trump publicly expressed criticism that Russia was responsible for the hacks.
00:26:44.000 Trump also denied having any business in or connections to Russia, even though as late as 2016, the Trump Organization was in fact pursuing the Trump Tower in Moscow.
00:26:52.000 After the election, the president expressed concerns to advisors that reports of Russia's election interference might lead the public to question the legitimacy of his election.
00:27:00.000 Okay, none of that is obstruction of justice.
00:27:02.000 That's all public-facing Trump being embarrassed.
00:27:06.000 The report says that there was conduct involving FBI Director Comey and Michael Flynn.
00:27:11.000 They talk about how in mid-January 2017, Michael Flynn, the national security advisor, falsely denied to the vice president, other administration officials, and FBI agents that he had talked to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
00:27:23.000 And then the day after the president requested Flynn's resignation, the president told an outside advisor, now that we fired Flynn, the Russia thing is over.
00:27:31.000 That is not obstruction of justice.
00:27:32.000 He did not tell Flynn to lie to the FBI.
00:27:36.000 Later that afternoon, the president cleared the Oval Office.
00:27:38.000 We know this already from what James Comey has said, and then asked if Comey could see his way clear to letting this go.
00:27:45.000 But he did not actually do anything about that.
00:27:46.000 He didn't fire Comey when Comey decided not to let the thing go, so that's really not obstruction of justice either.
00:27:51.000 Saying a thing is not obstruction.
00:27:53.000 And then they talk in the report about the president's reaction to the continuing Russia investigation.
00:27:58.000 In February 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions began to assess whether he had to recuse himself from campaign-related investigations because of his role in the Trump campaign.
00:28:06.000 In early March, the president told White House counsel Don McGahn to stop Sessions from recusing.
00:28:11.000 After Sessions announced his recusal on March 2nd, the president expressed anger at the decision and told advisers that he should have an attorney general who would protect him.
00:28:20.000 The president also took sessions aside at an event and urged him to unrecuse.
00:28:24.000 Later in March, James Comey disclosed at a congressional hearing that the FBI was investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, including any links or coordination between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.
00:28:37.000 In the following days, the president reached out to the DNI Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, and the leaders of the CIA and the National Security Agency Again, does that constitute obstruction of justice?
00:28:45.000 The answer is no.
00:28:46.000 The president did not obstruct justice by asking people to tell the truth, which is that he was not involved in Trump-Russia collusion.
00:28:51.000 Comey twice directly, notwithstanding guidance from his own White House counsel, Don McGahn, to avoid direct contact with the Department of Justice.
00:28:58.000 Again, does that constitute obstruction of justice?
00:29:00.000 The answer is no.
00:29:01.000 The president did not obstruct justice by asking people to tell the truth, which is that he was not involved in Trump-Russia collusion.
00:29:08.000 And then the Mello Report discusses the termination of Comey.
00:29:12.000 And they say that within days of Comey testifying in a congressional hearing about whether the the president was personally under investigation, the president decided to terminate Comey The president fired Comey, and then he told Russian officials he had faced great pressure because of Russia, and that had been taken off by Comey's firing.
00:29:30.000 But that is not the same thing as the president of the United States saying that he fired Comey so Comey would not find dirty material about Russia.
00:29:36.000 He was just frustrated with Comey, which we already know because he said that on national TV.
00:29:41.000 The really dicey material for Trump is all the stuff once we get to the appointment of Robert Mueller.
00:29:45.000 It seems that once Robert Mueller was actually appointed, then the president's attitude became even more belligerent.
00:29:50.000 And his activity included activity that looks more akin to obstruction of justice than his other activity.
00:29:56.000 Now, does it shade over into a provable obstruction of justice?
00:29:59.000 The answer is no, but Is it bad, immoral behavior?
00:30:04.000 Yes.
00:30:04.000 And was he stopped from doing stuff that certainly could have been construed as obstruction of justice by the people around him?
00:30:09.000 Yeah, he definitely was.
00:30:11.000 It's not a great thing to work for the president because if you save him from himself, he ends up hating you for it.
00:30:16.000 But that is, from this report, what probably happened here.
00:30:19.000 Okay, we'll get to more of this in just a second.
00:30:22.000 Trying to be as objective about the report as possible, give you all the information, and then opinion.
00:30:26.000 But first, You need to go check out ZipRecruiter.
00:30:29.000 So, hiring is important.
00:30:31.000 And that's why ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire is your place to improve your business.
00:30:35.000 ZipRecruiter sends your job to over 100 of the web's leading job boards.
00:30:39.000 We use ZipRecruiter here at the DailyWire offices.
00:30:41.000 It makes our hiring fast and simple.
00:30:43.000 They don't just stop with posting your job.
00:30:45.000 With their powerful matching technology, ZipRecruiter scans thousands of resumes to find people with the right experience and then invites them to apply to your job.
00:30:51.000 As applications come in, ZipRecruiter analyzes each one and spotlights the top candidates so you never miss a great match.
00:30:57.000 ZipRecruiter is so effective that 4 out of 5 employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site within the very first day.
00:31:03.000 Right now, my listeners can try ZipRecruiter for free at this exclusive web address.
00:31:08.000 ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
00:31:10.000 That is ZipRecruiter.com slash D-A-I-L-Y-W-I-R-E.
00:31:15.000 ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
00:31:17.000 It is indeed the smartest way to hire.
00:31:18.000 Go check out ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
00:31:21.000 Try them out for free right now.
00:31:22.000 It is the easiest and best way to improve your business.
00:31:25.000 No need to put up that job on a hundred job boards and then have to sift through all those resumes.
00:31:29.000 ZipRecruiter helps you out with all that.
00:31:30.000 ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
00:31:32.000 Go check them out right now.
00:31:33.000 ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
00:31:35.000 Okay, so in a second we'll get back to The Muller Report.
00:31:39.000 First, you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
00:31:41.000 We have so much great material for you.
00:31:43.000 Two additional hours of this show a day.
00:31:45.000 Maybe three today.
00:31:46.000 We have lots of stuff there.
00:31:48.000 Plus, we've got the Sunday special, which you get on Saturdays.
00:31:51.000 This week's Sunday special guest is the incomparable Dennis Muller, who stopped by for the full hour, as Larry King used to say.
00:31:59.000 Here's a little bit of what that sounded like.
00:32:03.000 I look at people in Hollywood and I think they're a little haunted by their good fortune.
00:32:06.000 So they're trying to legitimize themselves now by being, you know, professorial.
00:32:12.000 And I've got some wisdom here.
00:32:14.000 And you think you're the fifth lead on Full House.
00:32:16.000 So go check that out.
00:32:23.000 You get that on Saturdays, as opposed to Sundays, when you are a subscriber.
00:32:28.000 Also, so much good stuff.
00:32:29.000 Andrew Klavan's book, Another Kingdom, is out right now, receiving rave reviews.
00:32:32.000 If you haven't picked up your copy yet, you can head on over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, grab one while supplies last.
00:32:37.000 And today only, you can catch Drew doing a live book signing on today's episode of The Conversation at 7 p.m.
00:32:42.000 Eastern.
00:32:42.000 To get a signed copy and a chance to have your question answered, Head on over to PremiereCollectibles.com slash Another Kingdom.
00:32:48.000 That is Premiere with an E. PremiereCollectibles.com slash Another Kingdom.
00:32:52.000 Tune in.
00:32:52.000 Should be a blast.
00:32:53.000 Go check that out.
00:32:54.000 So much good stuff.
00:32:55.000 Also, make sure you subscribe over at iTunes and YouTube.
00:32:57.000 Leave us a review.
00:32:58.000 We always appreciate it.
00:32:58.000 We are the largest, fastest-growing conservative podcast and radio show in America.
00:33:02.000 Okay, so...
00:33:10.000 At the point at which Comey was fired and the special counsel, Robert Mueller, was appointed, the president's attitude turned and it got even more angry.
00:33:17.000 And that anger manifested itself in a bunch of directives to his immediate aides to do stuff that could theoretically be construed as obstruction of justice if they had actually carried it out and would probably be prevented from an obstruction of justice charge only because the president's Intent in saying all this stuff was to prevent public embarrassment, not criminal indictment.
00:33:38.000 That's why you hear Barr keep coming back to the point.
00:33:39.000 There was no collusion here for the president to protect himself against.
00:33:43.000 This was all him being embarrassed by press reports.
00:33:45.000 And so it was him telling people, hey, maybe you should just go out there and lie to the press.
00:33:49.000 Which, by the way, is also not obstruction of justice.
00:33:51.000 Lying to the press is not obstruction of justice.
00:33:53.000 So here's what the Mueller report says.
00:33:55.000 They say on May 17th, 2017, the acting attorney general for the Russia investigation appointed a special counsel to conduct the investigation and related matters.
00:34:03.000 The president reacted to that news by telling advisers it was the quote-unquote end of his presidency and demanding that Jeff Sessions resign because he wanted to put in a new attorney general, presumably who would rein in Mueller.
00:34:13.000 Sessions submitted his resignation.
00:34:15.000 The president ultimately did not accept it.
00:34:17.000 The president told aides that the special counsel had conflicts of interest and suggested that the special counsel therefore could not serve.
00:34:23.000 The president's advisers told him the asserted conflicts were meritless and had already been considered by the DOJ.
00:34:29.000 On June 17, 2017, the president called Don McGahn, his White House counsel, and directed him to call the acting Attorney General and say that the special counsel had conflicts of interest and must be removed.
00:34:38.000 McGahn did not carry out the direction, however, deciding he would rather resign than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre.
00:34:46.000 That's an invocation of the Nixon firing of Attorney General Archibald Cox, or the special prosecutor Archibald Cox.
00:34:52.000 So, you know, all of this Is not necessarily obstruction of justice, but verges on it from the point of view that says that Trump was doing all of this stuff out of frustration that people were going to uncover his crimes.
00:35:05.000 Again, intent is an element of the crime.
00:35:06.000 I keep coming back to that because intent is an element of the crime.
00:35:09.000 If this were a strict liability crime, Trump would be guilty.
00:35:12.000 It is not a strict liability crime.
00:35:14.000 You have to show that he had intent to corruptly impede official proceedings.
00:35:19.000 That is not proved here.
00:35:24.000 Two days after directing McGahn to have the special counsel removed, the president made another attempt to affect the course of the Russia investigation.
00:35:30.000 On June 19th, 2017, the president met one-on-one in the Oval Office with former campaign manager and dope, Corey Lewandowski.
00:35:38.000 And dictated a message for Lewandowski to deliver to Sessions.
00:35:41.000 The message said that Sessions should publicly announce, notwithstanding his recusal from the Russia investigation, that the investigation was very unfair to the president, that the president had done nothing wrong, and that Sessions planned to meet with the special counsel and let him move forward with investigating election meddling for future elections.
00:35:56.000 Lewandowski said he understood what the president wanted Sessions to do.
00:35:59.000 This is the thing that comes closest to obstruction.
00:36:01.000 It is the president trying to tell Jeff Sessions that he was going to change the nature of the special counsel's purview.
00:36:08.000 Now, even that is not necessarily obstruction in the sense that the president does have authority over the special counsel.
00:36:14.000 This is the case that Alan Dershowitz has made, is that the special counsel does work for the executive branch.
00:36:19.000 Trump can fire him for whatever reason he wants.
00:36:20.000 That's not obstruction.
00:36:22.000 That may be the grounds for an impeachment.
00:36:24.000 But that is not necessarily criminal obstruction.
00:36:27.000 One month later, in another private meeting for Lewandowski, on July 19th, 2017, the president asked about the status of his message for Sessions to limit the special counsel investigation to future election interference.
00:36:37.000 Lewandowski told the president the message would be delivered soon.
00:36:40.000 After that meeting, the president publicly criticized Sessions in an interview with the New York Times and then issued a series of tweets making it clear that Sessions' job was in jeopardy.
00:36:48.000 Lewandowski did not want to deliver the president's message personally, so he asked senior White House official Rick Dearborn to deliver it to Sessions.
00:36:54.000 Dearborn was uncomfortable with the task and did not end up following through.
00:36:57.000 So Sessions never received this message.
00:36:59.000 His advisors prevented what could have been construed as obstruction of justice right there.
00:37:05.000 And then there are a bunch of accusations that the president made efforts to prevent public disclosure of evidence, but public disclosure of evidence is not in fact a criminal offense.
00:37:15.000 If I tell somebody to lie to the press, that is not criminal.
00:37:18.000 It may be bad, but Trump lies to the press all the time.
00:37:21.000 So, again, baked into the cake.
00:37:23.000 So when the Mueller investigation says that in summer 2017, the president instructed Donald Trump Jr.
00:37:29.000 to delete a line from his statement about the Trump Tower meeting to the press, that is not actually obstruction of justice.
00:37:36.000 That's just him being bad.
00:37:37.000 And when Michael Cohen repeatedly denied that the president had played any role in Trump Jr.' 's statement, that was lying to the public.
00:37:42.000 That's bad.
00:37:42.000 That is not criminal.
00:37:44.000 Finally, the Mueller investigation says, in early summer 2017, the president called Sessions at home and again asked him to reverse his recusal from the Russia investigation.
00:37:52.000 Sessions did not reverse his recusal.
00:37:54.000 On October 2017, the president met privately with Sessions in the Oval Office and asked him to take a look at investigating Clinton.
00:38:00.000 In December 2017, shortly after Flynn pled guilty pursuant to a cooperation agreement, the president met with Sessions in the Oval Office and suggested, according to notes taken by a senior advisor, that if Sessions unrecused and took back supervision of the Russia investigation, he would be a hero.
00:38:15.000 well.
00:38:16.000 Sessions, of course, did not unrecuse.
00:38:18.000 And the Mueller investigation went forward as stated.
00:38:22.000 See, as we say, the question as to whether the president did stuff that was quote-unquote criminal here is not provable.
00:38:28.000 It's not a provable question, which is probably the reason that Mueller left it up in the air.
00:38:31.000 And I think Attorney General Barr looked at this and said, there's no way that I can prove this beyond a reasonable doubt.
00:38:36.000 Him going to various advisors and fuming about Jeff Sessions and then not doing anything, especially when he has the full authority to just fire whomever he wants.
00:38:43.000 If he wants to fire Jeff Sessions, he can fire Jeff Sessions.
00:38:45.000 If he wants to fire Robert Mueller, he can fire Robert Mueller.
00:38:48.000 If he wants to order an end to an investigation, the president can even do that, right?
00:38:54.000 He can even order the end to an investigation without that necessarily being criminal obstruction of justice since he is, in fact, the president of the United States.
00:39:01.000 That may be impeachable.
00:39:02.000 It is not necessarily criminal.
00:39:04.000 In a second, we'll get to more on the Mueller report.
00:39:08.000 So the Mueller report continues by talking about whether the president ordered people to lie.
00:39:13.000 So apparently in early 2018, the press reported that President Trump had directed Don McGahn to have the special counsel removed in June 2017 and that McGahn had threatened to resign rather than carry out the order.
00:39:23.000 The president reacted to the news stories by directing White House officials to tell McGahn to dispute the story and create a rector stating that he had not been ordered to have the special counsel removed.
00:39:33.000 Megan told those officials that the media reports were accurate in stating that the president had directed Megan to have the special counsel removed.
00:39:42.000 So again, this is The president telling his friends to tell McGahn to publicly dispute the story.
00:39:50.000 That is not necessarily the president telling people to lie to legal investigators.
00:39:54.000 Now, if you want to broadly read the statute, and a lot of this relies on sort of legalese, if you want to broadly read the statute to suggest that the president was corruptly intending to interfere with a pending investigation by publicly tweeting things, I don't think that that actually works.
00:40:07.000 Legally speaking, if the president tweets something publicly, and he says, like, I hate Robert Mueller, and then the charge is you tried to corruptly impede the investigation, that doesn't work.
00:40:15.000 And if he told Don McGahn, go out and lie to the press, that is also a terrible thing to do.
00:40:20.000 It is not a criminal thing to do.
00:40:23.000 The same thing holds true with regard to Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort.
00:40:28.000 The suggestion that the president was publicly going around saying about Flynn and Manafort and Michael Cohen, where he was praising them and then he was criticizing them based on whether they were talking to the government.
00:40:37.000 He was doing all of that in public, right?
00:40:39.000 He was calling Michael Cohen a rat.
00:40:41.000 Is that obstruction of justice?
00:40:43.000 I mean, probably not, given that the president can sound off on his opinion as much as he wants. 0.51
00:40:48.000 You could run into serious First Amendment issues, if you called it obstruction of justice, for the president to issue his opinion that Michael Cohen was a rat.
00:40:57.000 So here's what the Mueller Report says.
00:40:58.000 They say, Although the series of events we investigated involve discrete acts, the overall pattern of the President's conduct toward the investigations can shed light on the nature of the President's acts and the inferences that can be drawn about his intent.
00:41:09.000 In particular, the actions we investigated can be divided into two phases, reflecting a possible shift in the President's motives.
00:41:15.000 The first phase covered the period from the President's first interactions with Comey through the President's firing of Comey.
00:41:20.000 During that time, The president had been repeatedly told he was not personally under investigation.
00:41:25.000 Soon after the firing of Comey and the appointment of the special counsel, however, the president became aware that his own conduct was being investigated in an obstruction of justice inquiry.
00:41:35.000 At that point, the president engaged in a second phase of conduct involving public attacks on the investigations, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation.
00:41:45.000 Now, here's the thing.
00:41:46.000 You would think that that sentence alone Under the, under the broadest standard of obstruction would fall under obstruction, right?
00:41:52.000 I mean, they are accusing him, point blank, of non-public efforts to control the nature of the investigation.
00:41:57.000 But that doesn't, again, actually mean obstruction of justice, unless he's doing so with corrupt intent.
00:42:04.000 And that's Trump's best argument.
00:42:06.000 I'm angry.
00:42:07.000 I'm mad that this investigation was going forward.
00:42:09.000 I'm pissed off in general.
00:42:10.000 And so I was sounding off to my people saying, you know what, let's shut this thing down because I'm angry that I'm not being exonerated.
00:42:17.000 Just exonerate me already.
00:42:18.000 What the hell is this stuff?
00:42:20.000 That is Trump's best defense.
00:42:22.000 It always was Trump's best defense.
00:42:24.000 Judgments about the nature of the president's motives during each phase would be informed by the totality of the evidence.
00:42:29.000 Now, what that sentence is basically saying is that Mueller suspects that Trump actually wanted to shut down the investigation, but there is not enough evidence to prove that the president wanted to shut down the investigation for corrupt purposes.
00:42:40.000 They said, because we ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw conclusions about the president's conduct.
00:42:47.000 The evidence we obtained about the president's actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment.
00:42:56.000 At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the fact that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.
00:43:03.000 Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment.
00:43:08.000 Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.
00:43:14.000 Bottom line is, this is all about intent.
00:43:16.000 How do you read the President's intent?
00:43:17.000 So people who don't like the President are going to read it as though the President's intent was to quash the investigation out of guilt?
00:43:23.000 Again, there's no underlying crime.
00:43:25.000 And people who are more fond of the president, and frankly people I think who are more objective, look at this and they say, there is no underlying crime.
00:43:31.000 The president is a temperamental person at best. 1.00
00:43:34.000 The president says a lot of dumb crap to his advisors. 1.00
00:43:37.000 Those advisors shut him down on a regular basis and stopped him from doing things that would border on the criminal or veer into the criminal. 1.00
00:43:43.000 And thus, while he has done bad immoral things here, while he has exerted pressure in certain areas, that does not amount to obstruction of justice with corrupt intent.
00:43:53.000 And that seems to be the nature of a lot of this stuff.
00:43:57.000 So, for example, when the president was upset about Mike Flynn's firing, he had lunch with Chris Christie.
00:44:04.000 According to Christie, at one point during the lunch, Trump said, now that we've fired Flynn, the Russia thing is over.
00:44:09.000 And Christie laughed and responded, no way.
00:44:11.000 The president asked Christie what he meant, and Christie told the president not to talk about the investigation, even if he was frustrated at times.
00:44:19.000 Toward the end of the lunch, the president brought up James Comey, who was then FBI director, asked if Christy was still friendly with him.
00:44:24.000 Christy said he was.
00:44:25.000 The president told Christy to call Comey and tell him that the president really likes him.
00:44:28.000 Tell him he's part of the team.
00:44:30.000 At the end of the lunch, the president repeated his request that Christy reach out to Comey.
00:44:33.000 Christy had no intention of complying with the president's request that he contact Comey.
00:44:37.000 He thought the president's request was nonsensical.
00:44:39.000 Christy did not want to put Comey in a position of having to receive such a phone call.
00:44:44.000 So again, this is Trump lashing out, being mad at the investigation, saying, why don't you call up James Comey and say that we're best friends? 0.95
00:44:51.000 And Chris Christie going, no, that's dumb. 0.97
00:44:52.000 And that's the end of it. 0.99
00:44:53.000 Is that obstruction?
00:44:54.000 I don't think that amounts to obstruction.
00:44:56.000 And most of the cases in here are just like that.
00:44:59.000 Most of the cases in here are very much akin to something like that.
00:45:04.000 Again, when it comes to Jeff Sessions.
00:45:06.000 On March 3rd, the day after Sessions recused, Don McGahn was called into the Oval Office.
00:45:10.000 Other advisors were there, including Reince Priebus, then the chief of staff, and Steve Bannon.
00:45:14.000 The president opened the conversation by saying, I don't have a lawyer.
00:45:17.000 He expressed anger at McGahn about the recusal.
00:45:19.000 He brought up Roy Cohn, saying he wished Cohn was his attorney.
00:45:22.000 He suggested that Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Eric Holder would not have allowed this sort of thing.
00:45:28.000 And then he pushed back on policy suggesting that he should not make contact with Jeff Sessions or with anyone else in the DOJ.
00:45:37.000 That weekend, Sessions and McGahn flew to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the President.
00:45:40.000 Sessions recalled the President pulled him aside to speak to him alone, suggested that Sessions should unrecuse from the Russia investigation, which he did not do, and Trump did not fire him. 0.78
00:45:48.000 So again, is that obstruction of justice or is that Trump just being a dummy?
00:45:51.000 So much of this falls under Trump was frustrated and I think justifiably frustrated about the nature of the investigation, the intrusiveness of the investigation.
00:45:59.000 Does this count as obstructive activity?
00:46:02.000 It's sort of a matter of art rather than law.
00:46:04.000 But is it provable obstruction?
00:46:05.000 I think under no circumstances could you call this stuff provable obstruction.
00:46:09.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I like and then a thing that I hate.
00:46:13.000 So, Things that I like.
00:46:15.000 You know, I like to recall times in American politics that were a little bit higher-minded, when people had discussions about ideas.
00:46:21.000 Well, if you're interested in that sort of stuff, go pick up a copy of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.
00:46:24.000 The best version of this comes from the Lincoln Studies Center.
00:46:27.000 It is edited by Rodney Davis and Douglas Wilson.
00:46:30.000 It's a revision of the original text, because there are several original texts.
00:46:34.000 They sort of compile what they think is the best version, and it really does raise issues, not only about the nature of the American Constitution and founding principles.
00:46:42.000 Douglas basically claimed that slavery Was at least protected by the Constitution.
00:46:45.000 Lincoln said that the Constitution and the Declaration installed immutable principles that cut against slavery itself.
00:46:52.000 And thus, you could not create laws that would effectuate the addition of slavery to additional territories.
00:46:58.000 It has stuff to say about the nature of the American founding, about the nature of America when we were getting rid of slavery, about the nature of questions like abortion, where people very often take the Stephen Douglas position.
00:47:08.000 Ah, just leave it to each individual state.
00:47:10.000 The Lincoln position would be protection of human life is a universal absolute.
00:47:15.000 And there's just a lot there, and it's deep, and it's meaty, and it's great reading.
00:47:19.000 Go check out the Lincoln-Douglas debate.
00:47:20.000 Totally worthwhile.
00:47:22.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:47:29.000 Okay, so the big thing that I hate today, we'll stick to one thing that I hate today.
00:47:32.000 So, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has put out an astonishing video.
00:47:36.000 I didn't even know whether to put this in things I like or things that I hate, because they're, it's just amazing.
00:47:42.000 So, she put out a video that was supposed to be her new take on the Green New Deal.
00:47:46.000 Suffice it to say, this video is the most arrogant thing that has ever been produced on the internet.
00:47:50.000 It is AOC speaking about how she saved the world.
00:47:53.000 No joke.
00:47:54.000 About how she in the future is going to talk to us now.
00:47:58.000 This is a video of AOC in the future talking about how she and her friends saved the world thanks to the Green New Deal.
00:48:05.000 It's pretty incredible.
00:48:06.000 We'll play a little bit of it.
00:48:07.000 Ah, the bullet train from New York to D.C.
00:48:15.000 It always brings me back to when I first started making this commute.
00:48:20.000 In 2019, I was a freshman in the most diverse Congress in history, up to that point.
00:48:25.000 It was a critical time.
00:48:27.000 I'll never forget the children in our community.
00:48:29.000 They were so inspired to see this new class of politicians They were so inspired by me, guys.
00:48:35.000 So super duper inspired by me.
00:48:38.000 It's often said, you can't be what you can't see.
00:48:40.000 And for the first time, they saw themselves.
00:48:43.000 Wow.
00:48:44.000 I think there was something similar with the Green New Deal. 0.70
00:48:47.000 We knew that we needed to save the planet, and that we had all the technology to do it.
00:48:52.000 It's so good.
00:48:52.000 But people were scared.
00:48:54.000 They said it was too big, too fast, not practical.
00:48:57.000 I think that's because they just couldn't picture it yet.
00:49:00.000 They couldn't picture it, and then L.C.
00:49:02.000 came along.
00:49:03.000 Then AOC came along.
00:49:04.000 She's amazing.
00:49:05.000 And then we fast forward to the end, okay?
00:49:07.000 And she actually makes the case that the Green New Deal saved the world. 0.93
00:49:11.000 That it created magical new jobs.
00:49:13.000 That the biggest problem after creating Medicare for All, she says this in the video, Medicare for All and a federal jobs guarantee, the biggest problem is we couldn't find enough workers.
00:49:21.000 We needed more workers.
00:49:22.000 There was too much prosperity.
00:49:24.000 Things were too awesome.
00:49:25.000 Thanks to AOC and her band of friends.
00:49:28.000 And this is her in the future talking about the present.
00:49:31.000 So she has created a fictional future in which she was awesome and saved the world.
00:49:36.000 I am so convinced.
00:49:37.000 ...the federal jobs guarantee, a public option, including dignified living wages for work. Funnily enough, the biggest problem in those early years was a labor shortage. We were building a national smart grid, retrofitting every building in America, putting trains like this one all across the country. We needed more workers. That group of kids from my neighborhood were right in the middle of it all.
00:50:00.000 Especially this one girl, Ileana.
00:50:01.000 It's so absurd.
00:50:02.000 Her first job out of college was with AmeriCorps Climate, restoring wetlands and bayous in coastal Louisiana.
00:50:10.000 Most of her friends were in her union, including some oil workers in transition.
00:50:14.000 Oh, all the oil workers are now restoring bayous, guys.
00:50:16.000 Exciting stuff.
00:50:17.000 They got to work planting mangroves with the same salary and benefits.
00:50:21.000 Oh, man.
00:50:21.000 Of course, when it came to healing the land, we had huge gaps in our knowledge.
00:50:26.000 Luckily, indigenous communities offer generational expertise.
00:50:30.000 I love this.
00:50:31.000 Just random Native Americans show up to explain how to fix the bayous. 1.00
00:50:35.000 And then, by the way, this girl goes on from working in the bayous to working at a solar plant, and then she decides she wants to be a preschool teacher making $150,000 a year.
00:50:43.000 In AOC's magical—it must be nice to be in AOC's brain, really.
00:50:46.000 Like, it must be a nice, happy place.
00:50:47.000 Like, there's not a lot going on in there.
00:50:49.000 It seems pretty calm.
00:50:50.000 Seems like things are—she has a really, like, optimistic vision of what the future is going to be if you just give her complete and utter control over the entire United States economy. 0.99
00:50:57.000 Must be a wonderful place in there, so.
00:50:59.000 Go check out that video because it is beyond parody.
00:51:01.000 Okay, other things that I hate today.
00:51:03.000 So for the second time in two days, the Washington Post has suggested that I am a white supremacist. 1.00
00:51:08.000 Damn it, guys! 1.00
00:51:09.000 Why don't you read a book? 1.00
00:51:11.000 A book!
00:51:11.000 Okay, a column.
00:51:12.000 I wrote a piece for the Washington Post in 2015 talking about how evil white supremacism is. 0.95
00:51:18.000 What the hell are you talking about? 0.92
00:51:20.000 There's a piece in the Washington Post today. 0.96
00:51:22.000 Remember, just two days ago, they printed a piece in which they suggested that I had evoked the specter of a war between Islam and the West by saying that Notre Dame Cathedral was an homage to Western civilization and Judeo-Christian heritage.
00:51:34.000 Well, today they published another piece saying, quote, Ben Shapiro, an influential American right wing pundit with a huge following on social media, lamented a magnificent monument to Western civilization collapsing and then followed up with tweets that insisted upon the Judeo-Christian heritage embodied by Notre Dame and a duty of all to refamiliarize ourselves with the philosophy and religious lamented a magnificent monument to Western civilization collapsing and then followed up with tweets Critics quickly noted the brutal treatment meted out on French Jews for centuries while the cathedral stood.
00:51:59.000 You're right, guys.
00:51:59.000 I totally missed it.
00:52:00.000 I totally missed, you know, how Christian anti-Semitism has been a thing.
00:52:03.000 You know, as an Orthodox Jew, I can't... No familiarity with it.
00:52:07.000 Wow.
00:52:07.000 Breaking news.
00:52:08.000 Others suggested... I love this.
00:52:10.000 This is the Washington Post reporting.
00:52:11.000 Others suggested Shapiro's invocation of Judeo-Christian values were, in this instance, simply a euphemism for white. 0.98
00:52:19.000 F you, man. 1.00
00:52:20.000 I wrote an entire book devoted to why that is a stupid, idiotic notion. 1.00
00:52:26.000 And then they go further. 1.00
00:52:26.000 They say Richard Spencer, an American neo-fascist credited with coining the term alt-right for the online ecosystem of far-right voices in the West, spoke more plainly. 1.00
00:52:34.000 You see, I am covert where Richard Spencer is overt.
00:52:37.000 Again, double down on the F you. 0.57
00:52:40.000 That is astonishing.
00:52:42.000 Astonishing language from the Washington Post.
00:52:44.000 My book is entirely about the Judeo-Christian heritage and Greek teleology that undergird the West. 0.99
00:52:50.000 I have suggested throughout my entire career that Western civilization is not unique to any particular race, and to construe it that way is to reduce Western civilization to mere tribalism, which is idiocy. 0.92
00:53:02.000 In my book, I specifically mention Richard Spencer. 0.98
00:53:06.000 I call him a racist cretin on page 22 of the introduction, an excreble on page 208, and yet apparently I'm just secret. 0.94
00:53:15.000 I'm just secret alt-right. 0.99
00:53:17.000 I'm just a secret white supremacist. 1.00
00:53:19.000 What absolute hackish garbage. 1.00
00:53:22.000 The Washington Post. 1.00
00:53:22.000 Democracy dies in darkness. 1.00
00:53:24.000 The truth dies in stupidity over at the Washington Post. 1.00
00:53:27.000 Okay. 0.99
00:53:27.000 Well, we will be back here a little bit later for much, much more breakdown on the Mueller report and the fallout. 0.99
00:53:33.000 Join us then.
00:53:33.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:53:34.000 Spiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:53:35.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:53:42.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
00:53:44.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
00:53:45.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
00:53:47.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
00:53:49.000 Edited by Adam Sajovic.
00:53:51.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Karamina.
00:53:52.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
00:53:54.000 Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.
00:53:55.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
00:53:57.000 Copyright, Daily Wire 2019.
00:54:00.000 I'm Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Knowles Show.
00:54:02.000 Attorney General William Barr has released the Mueller Report with relatively few redactions.
00:54:07.000 He gives a highly entertaining press conference on the details of its release.
00:54:11.000 We will analyze all the relevant sections, the good, the bad, and the ugly.