In 2006, a stripper accused a group of white, male Duke lacrosse players of sexually assaulting her at a team party off-campus. The charges against the three accused players were dismissed. Now, 18 years later, that same stripper is admitting that she fabricated the rape allegation.
00:00:00.000Folks, one of the things that's sort of amazing about the industry that I inhabit, the news industry, the news commentary industry, is that so many stories that have an outsized national impact turn out to be completely the other way upon further review.
00:00:12.000And one of the sort of incentive structures for the news business is being firstest with the mostest.
00:00:18.000Get to the story fast, report it incredibly quickly.
00:00:20.000And then it turns out that much of the reporting ends up being false.
00:00:23.000And then in retrospect, it has done significant damage.
00:00:26.000This is true with a lot of the reporting about, say, COVID or Black Lives Matter.
00:00:30.000One of the signal examples of this is now being exposed for all the world to see.
00:00:35.000If you remember all the way back to 2006, this is 18 years ago, so a lot of my listeners or younger people don't remember this case.
00:00:41.000This case, the Duke Lacrosse rape case, was actually the inciting event for a wide variety of movements that would come into full flower over the course of the subsequent 10 years, particularly over the course of the Obama era.
00:00:53.000The Duke Lacrosse case was an inciting incident for things like Black Lives Matter.
00:00:57.000This idea that black people in America had a boot on their throat from a justice system that did not care about it.
00:01:04.000That white privileged people were beating up on underprivileged black people.
00:01:09.000This was the source of an enormous amount of the Me Too movement, this idea that a stripper who accused a series of rich, white Duke lacrosse players of having sexually assaulted her, that she had not been given a fair shake, the sort of Believe All Women movement.
00:01:25.000This is one of the biggest cases in American criminal justice history, specifically because of all of its ripple effect.
00:01:32.000Well now, the stripper at the center of that case, a woman named Crystal Mangum, Is admitting that she lied back in 2006. She had never publicly admitted that she fabricated the rape allegation before the revelation now, which again is 18 years after the original allegations.
00:01:52.000There were three men who were actually arrested and then put on trial briefly before the case was dismissed.
00:01:57.000Their names were David Evans, Colin Finnerty, and Reed Seligman.
00:02:01.000Well, this woman obviously had tons of holes in her story.
00:02:08.000So her original allegation was that she had been performing at a team party off campus in March of 2006 and that she had then been sexually assaulted, raped by a series of white Duke lacrosse players.
00:02:22.000And it turns out that the facts were not there for any of this.
00:02:25.000She was indeed at this party, but apparently she engaged in none of her sort of Career activity, shall we say, because she was apparently high on drugs or on alcohol or on prescription medications.
00:02:55.000Other problems included the fact that she could not identify any of the Duke lacrosse players except for one in a photo array, and that one ended up not having been there.
00:03:03.000So there are tons of problems with this entire process, but that did not stop everyone, everyone in elite media, everyone on the university campuses from jumping to conclusions.
00:03:15.000The attorney, the district attorney from Durham County, a man named Mike Nyfong, said in a March 2006 interview with CBS News, quote, there's no doubt a sexual assault took place and that the assault was racially motivated.
00:03:27.000Here was Mike Nyfong, the Durham County district attorney back in 2006. I am not going to allow Durham's view and the mind of the world to be a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl in Durham.
00:03:46.000Nifeng obviously had other political motivations.
00:03:48.000He wanted to possibly run for higher office at some point.
00:03:52.000At this time, Nifeng said, quote, the circumstances of the rape indicated a deep racial motivation for some of the things that were done.
00:03:57.000It makes it a crime that is by nature one of the most offensive and invasive, even more so.
00:04:07.000The former Duke University president, a person named Richard Broadhead, actually took immediate action against the team following just the allegations.
00:04:16.000He accepted the resignation of the men's lacrosse coach, a man named Mike Pressler.
00:04:21.000He canceled the remainder of their season.
00:04:23.000He suspended the three players from school after they were indicted for rape, according to the New York Post, despite having asked the public not to prejudge the criminal case.
00:04:42.000I'm absolutely innocent of all the charges that have been brought against me today that Reed Seligman and Colin Farney are innocent of all the charges that were brought against them.
00:04:54.000Now again, that did not stop the New York Times from running a hundred pieces about the Duke Lacrosse allegations.
00:05:00.000Many of them were think pieces about the deep embedded nature of American racism and sexism.
00:05:06.000A tremendous number of Duke faculty actually paid for an ad that was put in the Duke Chronicle talking about this particular case.
00:05:16.000The following departments at Duke University signed on to this paid advertisement.
00:05:22.000The African and African American Studies Department, Romance Studies, Psychology, Social and Health Sciences, Franklin Humanities Institute, Critical U.S. Studies, Art, Art History, Visual Studies, Classical Studies, Asian and African Languages and Literature, Women's Studies, Latina Studies, Latin American and Caribbean.
00:05:36.000Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, European Studies, Center for Democracy Studies.
00:05:41.000Almost 100 professors at Duke University signed on to this statement.
00:05:49.000We're also listening to the Durham community, to Duke staff, and to each other.
00:05:52.000Regardless of the results of the police investigation, what is apparent every day now is the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism, who see illuminated in this moment's extraordinary spotlight what they live with every day.
00:06:03.000They know it isn't just Duke, it isn't everybody, and it isn't individuals making this disaster.
00:07:12.000Again, you can see here the seedbed for the entire DEI woke movement that would reach its full flower in 2020 with the Black Lives Matter riots.
00:07:23.000The staff at Duke University took out this ad.
00:07:26.000They put out this ad, again, signed by dozens and dozens and dozens of members of the faculty, I'm sure many of whom are still working at Duke University.
00:07:34.000The ad says, what does a social disaster sound like?
00:07:37.000The students know that disaster didn't begin on March 13th and won't end with what the police say or the court decides.
00:07:45.000Like all disasters, this one has a history.
00:07:46.000And what lies beneath what we're hearing from our students are questions about the future.
00:07:50.000This ad printed in the most easily seen venue on campus is just one way for us to say that we're hearing what our students are saying.
00:07:57.000We are turning up the volume in a moment when some of the most vulnerable among us are being asked to quiet down while we wait.
00:08:02.000To the students speaking individually and to the protesters making collective noise, thank you for not waiting and for making yourselves heard.
00:08:16.000Eventually, the North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper would announce that the charges had in fact been dropped.
00:08:22.000Roy Cooper would go on to become the governor of the state of North Carolina.
00:08:27.000Our attorneys and SBI agents have interviewed numerous people who were at the party, DNA and other experts, the Durham County District Attorney, Durham police officers, defense attorneys, and the accusing witness on several occasions.
00:08:45.000We have reviewed statements given over the year, photographs, records, and other evidence.
00:08:55.000The result of our review and investigation shows clearly that there is insufficient evidence to proceed on any of the charges.
00:09:06.000Today, we are filing notices of dismissal for all charges against Reed Seligman, Colin Finnerty, and David Evans.
00:09:18.000The result is that these cases are over.
00:09:22.000And no more criminal proceedings will occur.
00:09:26.000The problem is, where do you go to get your life back?
00:09:29.000Philip Seligman, who is the father of one of the Duke La Crosse students, spoke about this, spoke about what happens when false allegations are lodged and they become national news stories.
00:09:37.000And again, this is the way the left-wing media run with pretty much every allegation.
00:09:41.000Now, here is Philip Seligman talking about this, about his son Reed, who is falsely accused.
00:09:46.000If you had a chance to say something to Mr. Nifong today, what would it be?
00:09:54.000What he did and the fraud, which he perpetuated for nearly a year, was it all that important to be the district attorney of Durham, North Carolina, to throw three kids to the wolves, ruin their lives, ruin their families' lives, all for what?
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00:12:34.000The president of Duke University, who again had involved himself in the hamstringing of these players, in the rounding up of these players, in the targeting of these players, he would later come out and offer an apology.
00:12:47.000First and foremost, I regret our failure to reach out to the lacrosse players and their families in a time of extraordinary peril.
00:12:55.000Given the complexities of this case, getting the communication right would never have been easy.
00:13:01.000But the fact is that we did not get it right, causing the families to feel abandoned when they were most in need of support.
00:13:21.000Was the fallout about the rush to judgment by a media deeply desperate for a race case that they could actually magnify?
00:13:29.000Of course not, because we've had dozens of those since then.
00:13:33.000The actual fallout in terms of policy was that in 2011, the Obama administration changed Title IX regulations that basically made it so that you could not actually defend yourself against a sexual harassment or sexual assault allegation on campus.
00:13:49.000In 2011, the Obama administration had outlined guidelines for schools on how to handle sexual assault allegations in a Dear Colleague letter.
00:13:56.000It's from CNN. The letter reminded schools of their legal obligations to address sexual violence amid concern.
00:14:01.000Schools were not taking the issue seriously enough and called on schools to step up investigations of reports.
00:14:06.000It also provided guidelines for investigations and hearings.
00:14:09.000And it gave the actual accused no due process.
00:14:14.000It made it so that you didn't actually have a right to face down the person who was accusing you.
00:14:19.000That was the actual legal implication that was drawn from the false allegations of the Duke Lacrosse case.
00:14:25.000And again, this would repeat itself later with similar allegations that were made about the University of Virginia frat members in 2014 accused by Rolling Stone of engaging in a gang rape.
00:14:38.000And it turns out that that was completely false as well.
00:14:40.000But that didn't stop the momentum of the MeToo movement.
00:14:44.000See, false allegations are unfortunately the lifeblood of movements that require gas when there is no gas in the tank.
00:14:54.000So, as I say, yesterday, why is this in the news?
00:14:56.000Because yesterday, the accuser in that Duke Lacrosse case, who again is serving time for murder right now, and who has serious mental health problems, she came out, Crystal Mangum, and finally admitted nearly 20 years later that it was all made up and it was all a lie.
00:15:22.000And I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me and made up a story that wasn't true because I wanted validation from people and not from God.
00:15:49.000Again, the fact that it was false and everyone knew it was false at the time.
00:15:53.000And yet it led to another string of these sorts of cases, ranging from, yes, the University of Virginia false rape allegations to the false allegations regarding Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri, which led to riots in 2014, to the case of George Floyd, which is, in fact, a false case.
00:16:13.000This idea that Derek Chauvin, in racist fashion, attempted to murder George Floyd.
00:16:45.000You see this in pretty much every aspect of how the news media covers stories.
00:16:50.000So to take another example that's seemingly unrelated, this case of the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter.
00:16:58.000So this person, it now turns out, Luigi Mangione, 26 years old.
00:17:03.000The original allegation was that this person had had an unsuccessful back surgery and maybe was covered by UnitedHealthcare and got denied.
00:17:10.000Turns out this person never had UnitedHealthcare coverage.
00:17:12.000It also turns out that this person may have had successful back surgery.
00:17:16.000According to his social media posts, at this time, it was not about pain in his back.
00:17:29.000It has spurred a broader conversation about the healthcare system.
00:17:32.000Now, that's precisely what terrorists want.
00:17:34.000What terrorists would like is to quote-unquote start a conversation about the topic that they think is important by killing people.
00:17:41.000And the media are perfectly willing to jump into that particular conversation.
00:17:46.000However, there are conversations the media are not willing to jump into.
00:17:50.000If there is, for example, a false allegation of rape after Duke Lacrosse, was there a widespread Was there a full-scale media blitz on the question of race hoaxes, which is what happened at Duke Lacrosse?
00:18:09.000The way that the mainstream media work, their way of deciding whether something is a national story or not, is not based on the truth or falsity of the statement or the good or bad action of the people in question.
00:18:18.000They have a preset narrative, and then they look for a hook for that narrative.
00:18:23.000And that is how you end up spinning movements up out of nothing, out of a lack of evidence.
00:18:28.000This is how you end up polarizing the American body politic.
00:18:31.000You want to know why Americans are sick and tired of the national legacy media?
00:18:35.000Because going back for decades at this point, the national media have a preset narrative agenda, and then they look for a news hook for that agenda that allows them to spin it up into a national story.
00:18:46.000And you can see that pattern everywhere.
00:18:48.000That, by the way, is precisely how, for example, Russiagate happened.
00:18:51.000If you recall, the so-called Steele dossier, this compendium of absolute sheer garbage nonsense that was put together by Fusion GPS at the behest of the Hillary Clinton campaign and then laundered through America's law enforcement mechanisms, that only became a national story and became public.
00:19:08.000Because James Comey, then the head of the FBI, went to Donald Trump to present him with the allegations, and then that was used as a news hook by BuzzFeed in order to print the full Steele dossier, and that became the subject of a four-year investigation.
00:19:23.000Now, if there are false allegations that were made in a compendium about Joe Biden, do you think that would become a national news story for four years?
00:19:38.000But this is, again, the goal here is take an incident, regardless of who's guilty or who's innocent, who's lying or who's telling the truth, and spin it into a broader narrative that you want to talk about.
00:19:49.000So again, with regards to this United Healthcare CEO, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, for example, she's speaking the way that left-wingers speak when it comes to these questions.
00:19:59.000She says, sure, murder is never justified, but now we can finally have those crucial conversations about nationalizing American healthcare.
00:20:06.000Here's Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez effectively justifying murder because, after all, our healthcare system is so flawed that it's just predictable if people decide to go kill people.
00:20:15.000It's really important that we take a step back.
00:20:18.000This is not to comment and this is not to say that an act of violence is justified.
00:20:25.000But I think for anyone who is confused or shocked or appalled, they need to understand that people interpret and feel and experience denied claims as an act of violence against them.
00:20:44.000Over the financial devastation of a diagnosis that doesn't get addressed or, you know, the amount that they're going to have to cover with a surprise bill and things like that.
00:20:55.000And when we kind of talk about how systems are violent in this country in this passive way, our privatized healthcare system is like that for a huge amount of Americans.
00:21:10.000Okay, first of all, it's psychotic to suggest that there's no denial of care in nationalized healthcare countries.
00:21:15.000These are very complex issues, as we've been discussing for the last several days, but that's not the point.
00:21:18.000The point is, she's using the murder of an innocent man, regardless of what you think about how he ran his business.
00:21:24.000This guy did not commit a criminal offense.
00:21:26.000You're talking about the murder on the street by a person who was a very upper-class, very rich, white Ivy League graduate on the streets.
00:21:35.000You're using that as a lever to talk about the issue you want to talk about.
00:21:40.000This is the way the left wing uses issues like Duke Lacrosse.
00:21:44.000Again, the normal outcome of a Duke Lacrosse case, when you have a person who is presumably psychotic, who commits a false rape allegation, the conversation should then be about due process.
00:21:58.000Maybe we need to strengthen due process so we actually don't have cases like this again.
00:22:01.000That's never the conversation that takes place.
00:22:03.000It is always the preset narrative that takes place.
00:22:07.000And I think all of that is going to change.
00:22:09.000I think it's all going to change because I think that the American people are tired of this.
00:22:12.000They're tired of being told that left-wing priorities are always the priorities no matter what happens.
00:22:19.000That no matter what the antecedent, the conclusion is the same.
00:22:23.000No matter what happens, we now have to have a conversation about what the left wants to have a conversation about.
00:22:27.000So if a left-winger shoots a right-winger, then the conversation is about how the left-winger is somehow victimized by the system.
00:22:35.000If a right-winger shoots a left-winger, then the conversation is about how right-wing ideas are wrong and terrible.
00:22:40.000If you have a false rape allegation, then the conversation is about why America is over-sexualized and why we need to take claims of rape more seriously if they are cross-racial.
00:22:51.000And if the rape allegation is true, then the conversation is exactly the same.
00:22:56.000Now, that is the lesson from what happened here.
00:22:59.000That for the media, individual victims don't matter whatsoever.
00:23:13.000But the bottom line is for literally the rest of their life, they will be linked to that false allegation.
00:23:18.000And meanwhile, people who make false allegations, they go on to fame and fortune as well.
00:23:23.000Al Sharpton still has a show on MSNBC. He is visited by presidential candidates after leading the greatest race rape hoax of the latter half of the 20th century in the Tawana-Browley case.
00:23:33.000That dude is still a well-respected public figure who receives donations from Kamala Harris right before he interviews her on national TV. That entire infrastructure needs to be destroyed.
00:23:44.000That entire media democratic human centipede needs to be destroyed full scale.
00:23:48.000And this is just another example of why.
00:23:50.000Well, this entire corrupt system needs to be destroyed.
00:23:53.000But I'll tell you what else needs to be changed.
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00:26:09.000That, of course, makes perfect sense since he led the greatest political comeback literally of all time.
00:26:14.000If you lose a presidential race and then you are basically cast out into the nether regions and then you somehow make a comeback all the way back to the presidency, that's pretty incredible.
00:26:22.000The interview that he did with Time Magazine is kind of fascinating.
00:26:25.000Again, the thing to notice about how Donald Trump is actually approaching the issues is that he's being quite moderate about it.
00:26:31.000Donald Trump is not interested in promoting what the media would term an extremist agenda.
00:26:36.000He's interested in metrics of success.
00:26:38.000And so that means that much of what he says in this interview seems more moderate than many of the stuff, many, many of the things that his opponents are saying about him.
00:26:47.000So, for example, when it comes to immigration, he says the country was angry because of immigration, because of the people, you know, millions and millions of people.
00:27:48.000He said, well, I mean, if you're talking about family separations and you're talking about kids who could stay here and their families are going to be deported, I'd rather just keep the family together.
00:27:57.000He said, we have 325,000 children here during Democrats, but right now, sex slaves dead, they were allowed.
00:28:02.000What he's talking about there is the fact that the Department of Homeland Security and ICE basically put children into the system and now they don't know where the kids are.
00:28:11.000Many of those people are with family, but some of those people, we have no idea where they are.
00:28:15.000When it came to inflation, one of the things that he talked about is that the grocery prices, he's going to bring those down.
00:28:24.000The left is trying to claim that he lied about inflation because he says that inflation is difficult to reduce.
00:28:32.000But he does say that that is his goal, is reducing inflation.
00:28:38.000He says energy prices were going through the roof, and now people just want to go back to Trump's policy.
00:28:45.000He says tax reductions are going to reduce inflation as well because people will have more competition in the marketplace.
00:28:51.000Again, this interview with Time Magazine is fascinating mainly because of the moderation of the interview.
00:28:57.000He is taking a very pro-markets stance, for example.
00:29:00.000So President Trump says, for example, that he's going to lower the corporate tax rates if you build in the United States, which seems like a pretty sensible proposal.
00:29:07.000We're going to do things, I think, that haven't been really done before.
00:29:09.000We're going to be cutting taxes still further.
00:29:12.000You know, we got it down to 21 percent.
00:29:14.000We're going to bring it down even below that.
00:29:16.000You pay 21 if you don't build here and meaning your product or whatever it is you're building.
00:29:21.000And if you do, we're going to try getting it down to 15 percent.
00:29:24.000But you have to build your product, make your product in the USA. Again, this seems fairly commonsensical.
00:29:32.000Right now, Donald Trump is enjoying a polling honeymoon like he has never seen before in his entire political career.
00:29:39.000He's even seeing Democrats who are starting to come around to his side on some of these issues, particularly immigration.
00:29:44.000Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, he says, listen, there are 500,000 migrant children in this country we cannot find.
00:29:52.000We have 500,000 children who have sponsors in this country that we can't find.
00:30:11.000There's a level of hypocrisy that everyone in the States, they want to protect everyone, but innocent individuals who are victims of crimes and children.
00:30:18.000I want to support and protect children and innocent people that are victims of crime.
00:30:23.000And those who don't understand that, it's not up to me to try to convince them.
00:30:28.000I know where my job is, my goal is, and I was clear of that while running and when I became mayor.
00:30:36.000500,000 children, we don't know where they are right now in this country.
00:30:43.000Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to pursue an insane policy that is utterly disconnected from reality.
00:30:50.000So, for example, yesterday, Joe Biden launched the greatest wave of commutations in American history.
00:30:55.000According to the Wall Street Journal, President Biden is commuting the sentences around 1,500 people while he considers more clemency actions before he leaves office, including possible preemptive pardons of officials who have clashed with President-elect Donald Trump.
00:31:08.000The White House said the commutations were for people who were released from prison and placed in home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic.
00:31:15.000He pardoned 39 Americans convicted of non-violent crimes, but we're talking here about drug offenses, which means that they are now considering drug distribution a non-violent crime, which is kind of an amazing thing.
00:31:24.000Some of the people who are having their sentences commuted are pretty controversial.
00:31:31.000I mean, you have people who are connected with terrorism, people who are convicted of connections with, for example, the Holy Land Foundation, a front group for Hamas.
00:31:43.000People who have completely robbed, I mean legitimately robbed, entire municipalities of money who are now being given commutations by the Biden administration.
00:31:55.000I don't even know what the logic here is.
00:31:57.000It makes zero sense at all why Joe Biden would do this.
00:32:01.000He, for example, has now commuted the sentence of the notorious Kids for Cash judge convicted of imprisoning juveniles for $2.1 million in kickbacks.
00:32:09.000This would be former Luzerne County Judge Michael Conahan That was, again, among the 1,500 commutations.
00:32:17.000He had pled guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges for his role in the scheme.
00:32:21.000He was sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison in 2011, and he was released to home confinement.
00:32:26.000So Biden is now commuting the rest of his sentence.
00:32:29.000Again, I don't know if Joe Biden's desire here is to actually destroy the entire credibility of the party that threw him out of office, but if not, he's doing an amazing job of it.
00:32:39.000Karine Jean-Pierre is cheering the fact that Biden has issued more commutations than anyone.
00:32:44.000So today, President Biden announced that he is granting clemency to approximately 1,500 Americans, the largest act in a single day, who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, as well as a strong commitment to making their communities The president is commuting the sentences of 1,500 individuals who were placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and who have successfully reintegrated into
00:34:38.000I mean, the logic can only be to hamstring the Trump administration's efforts to actually, you know, build the wall.
00:34:43.000According to one Border Patrol agent, they're taking it from three stations, Nogales, Tucson, and Three Points.
00:34:47.000The goal is to move it all off the border before Christmas.
00:34:51.000The government contractor, DP Trucking LLC, is transporting the pieces of the wall north on Interstate 19 to Penal Air Park in Mariana, Arizona, where it is being auctioned through Government Planet, a surplus government equipment auction marketplace.
00:35:02.000The agent said, quote, they just started taking all that wall that was not used, which is still totally good and usable, and they started taking it northbound.
00:35:08.000They're pulling it all off the border.
00:35:10.000Harold Lambeth, the owner of the trucking company, confirmed to the Daily Wire in a phone call his company is transporting the unused border wall sections north away from the construction sites.
00:35:19.000The auction website shows that sales occurred as recently as December 4th for precisely the types of material being pulled off the border.
00:35:25.000The bidding for each section of wall panels is set to begin at $5, according to the website.
00:35:30.000Representative Eli Crane, whose congressional district borders the penal air park where the material is being sold, said the Biden administration is purposefully hamstringing Trump before he takes office.
00:35:39.000He said they're well aware they shouldn't have reversed the construction of the border wall.
00:35:42.000If it's true, they're purposefully hamstringing an incoming president.
00:35:51.000Trump is expected to use an executive order to unlock the funds to restart construction of the border wall pretty much immediately.
00:35:57.000So it appears that the Biden administration is actively attempting to prevent the building of the border wall as sort of a final FU to Donald Trump as he enters office.
00:36:05.000Absolutely unbelievable stuff, but just another indicator of how badly Joe Biden has screwed up the country.
00:36:10.000In just a second, we'll get to Joe Biden's foreign policy, which continues to be absolute trash.
00:37:26.000John Kirby, who is his national security spokesperson...
00:37:30.000He says, guys, you know what the thing is?
00:37:32.000We're handing over a better world to Donald Trump.
00:37:33.000That's weird because the world is getting better as soon as people know Trump is coming into office.
00:37:37.000Here is Kirby suggesting that we're handing over a great relationship with China.
00:37:41.000We believe that as we get ready to turn over things to the Trump team, that we're turning over a U.S.-China relationship that is in better shape than the one we founded in.
00:37:52.000That doesn't mean that we don't have disagreements.
00:37:54.000We do, and we will, and I'm sure they will too.
00:37:57.000But we're working hard on this relationship, and we'll do that right to the end.
00:38:02.000Well, with that said, Donald Trump has invited Xi Jinping to the actual inauguration.
00:38:08.000It's an attempt, presumably, to get other world leaders to come and recognize that he is, in fact, the most powerful man on Earth.
00:38:16.000And again, the world is reshaping itself because Donald Trump is coming.
00:38:20.000So, for example, the chief of NATO, he is now saying something that is obviously true, which is that Europe needs to start taking the lead on its own continent.
00:38:29.000Here, for example, is the NATO chief, Mark Rudy, saying, you know, it's about time for us to shift to a wartime mindset.
00:39:36.000It's because Donald Trump is coming into office.
00:39:38.000In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, the outlines of President-elect Donald Trump's initial efforts to end the war in Ukraine last week are starting to emerge for the first time.
00:39:46.000Europe would have to shoulder most of the burden of supporting Kiev with troops to oversee a ceasefire and weapons to deter Russia.
00:39:52.000Which makes perfect sense since Europe is actually quite a rich continent.
00:39:54.000It turns out the GDP of all of Europe combined is about that of the United States.
00:39:59.000At a meeting in Paris on December 7th, Trump told Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron he doesn't support Ukrainian membership in NATO, but he wants to see a strong, well-armed Ukraine emerge from any cessation of fighting.
00:40:44.000And Europe is immediately responding as well they should.
00:40:48.000Okay, meanwhile, a piece of breaking news courtesy of the Department of Justice.
00:40:53.000So there are two ways to read a report that was put out by the Department of Justice yesterday.
00:40:57.000This would be an Inspector General report from Michael Horowitz, who's done some interesting work before at the DOJ. There are two ways to read the report.
00:41:05.000It's all about FBI understanding and oversight with regard to January 6th.
00:41:11.000One way to read the report is the way that some people in the Twitterverse are reading the report Which is the idea that there are lots and lots of FBI, quote unquote, sources in the crowd.
00:41:20.000So a lot of this comes down to the definition of what a confidential human source is.
00:41:24.000A confidential human source is CHS. According to the Justice Department, that is a person believed to be providing useful and credible information to the FBI and whose identity, information, or relationship with the FBI warrants confidential handling.
00:41:36.000So the claim has been made by a lot of people on the right side of the aisle that January 6th was essentially a put-up job, that it was either entrapment or that there were people who were working with or for the FBI who were encouraging people to commit criminal activity.
00:41:48.000So this DOJ report says this, quote, We also determined the FBI did not take a step that could have helped the FBI and its law enforcement partners with their preparations in advance of January 6th.
00:42:07.000Specifically, the FBI did not canvas its field offices in advance of January 6th, 2021, to identify any intelligence, including CHS, that's Confidential Human Source, reporting, about potential threats to the January 6th electoral certification.
00:42:20.000Several FBI officials told the OIG, the Office of Inspector General, it is common practice for the FBI to ask field offices to canvas their sources for information in advance of a large event, such as the inauguration, Super Bowl, or other events with significant attendance, and to report that information to the requesting field office.
00:42:35.000FBI Deputy Director Paul Abaddy, who was the Associate Deputy Director at the time, described the lack of a canvas prior to January 6th as a basic step that was missed and told the OIG he would have expected a formal canvassing of sources to have occurred through the issue of an intelligence collection product because it would have been the most thorough approach to understanding the threat picture prior to January 6th.
00:42:53.000So, in other words, the FBI did not go to its field offices and ask them to canvas their confidential human sources, people who, say, were members of the crowd on January 6th, or were going to be, About what they thought was going to happen on January 6th.
00:43:06.000At the same time, quote, we found no evidence in the materials reviewed or the testimony received showing or suggesting the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds or at the Capitol on January 6th.
00:43:16.000And so that's been the accusations that you actually had members of the FBI, like hired members of the FBI in the crowd, spurring people to go into the Capitol.
00:43:25.000The OIG says we have no evidence of that.
00:43:27.000We reviewed the documented CHS reporting the FBI had prior to the riot and breach of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. We determined that three confidential human sources had been tasked by FBI field officials in the days leading up to the January 6th electoral certification with the required approval of the WFO to travel to D.C. for the events of January 6th to report on domestic terrorism subjects who were possibly attending the event.
00:43:48.000So they had people who were effectively informers in the crowd, who they had told at least three of them to go there and monitor people who were in the crowd.
00:43:55.000Specifically, one FBI field office tasked a confidential human source to travel to D.C. to report on the activities of a predicated domestic terrorism subject who is separately planning to travel to D.C. for the January 6th electoral certification.
00:44:06.000A second FBI field office tasked a confidential human source to travel to D.C. to potentially report on two domestic terrorism subjects from another FBI field office who are planning to travel to D.C. for the events of January 6th.
00:44:17.000And a third confidential human source who had informed their handling agent that they intended to travel to D.C. on their own initiative for the events of January 6th was similarly tasked by their field office to potentially report on two domestic terrorism subjects.
00:44:29.000Our review concluded none of these three FBI confidential human sources were authorized to enter the Capitol or a restricted area or to otherwise break the law on January 6th, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6th.
00:44:41.000In addition to those three confidential human sources, again, this is the Inspector General report, we found that 23 other FBI confidential human sources were in D.C. on January 6th in connection with the events planned for January 6th.
00:44:53.000None of these confidential human sources were authorized to enter the Capitol or a restricted area or to otherwise break the law on January 6th.
00:44:59.000Apparently, 13 entered the restricted area around the Capitol.
00:45:04.000Nine did not enter a restricted area or enter the Capitol or otherwise engage in illegal activity.
00:45:41.000And whatever speculation you draw from that, that is your own opinion.
00:45:44.000That is the thing that we know from the OIG report, unless you think that they're just plain lying and there actually were paid agents in the crowd.
00:46:25.000These confidential human sources were apparently getting people to go into the Capitol.
00:46:28.000This is why Ray Epps has come up so much, right?
00:46:30.000Ray Epps was suspected by many people of being a confidential human source working with the FBI, which they say is the reason he wasn't prosecuted.
00:46:38.000He says he was not a confidential human source.
00:46:39.000People say that he wasn't a member of the FBI. And I'm just giving you what we know from the report.
00:46:45.000Meanwhile, the FBI is about to be taken over by President Trump.
00:46:50.000He's going to put Kash Patel in position.
00:46:53.000As you can see, there are lots of questions about the FBI. The biggest question that emerges just directly from the text of that FBI report, the report about the FBI from the Office of Inspector General, Is that they made a huge signal error, at the very least, in not canvassing their confidential human sources on what they thought was going to happen on January 6th.
00:47:09.000And I can say they overlooked it deliberately.
00:47:10.000They didn't make that obvious step, if you're going to speculate, because they knew something bad was going to happen and they were fine with that bad thing happening.
00:47:17.000You can also say that, just like everything else, they effed it up.
00:47:27.000He announced that he is going to avoid the fray for the FBI by leaving.
00:47:32.000After weeks of careful thought, I've decided the right thing for the Bureau is for me to serve until the end of the current administration in January and then step down.
00:47:44.000My goal is to keep the focus on our mission, on the indispensable work each of you is doing every single day.
00:47:53.000And in my view, this is the best way to avoid dragging the Bureau deeper into the fray while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important in how we do our work.
00:48:09.000One of the big problems here is that really he should stick around until he's fired.
00:48:12.000Actually, what you could see here is something very much akin to what happened with Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Sally Yates.
00:48:18.000So if you recall, after Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 20th, 2017, The Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, resigned specifically so that a deputy could take over briefly and then do a bunch of dirty work.
00:49:20.000Faith in the FBI is at all-time lows and for pretty good reason.
00:49:23.000Meanwhile, we do bid a fond farewell to Cori Bush.
00:49:26.000Cori Bush is the St. Louis congressperson who is a Black Lives Matter congressperson.
00:49:32.000She was elected on the back of that movement.
00:49:34.000No one showed up for her finale speech.
00:49:37.000Literally, the entire chamber was empty except for Rashida Tlaib, Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, and friends.
00:49:42.000And here's Cori Bush paying homage to Hamas in her farewell speech.
00:49:48.000From St. Louis to Gaza and everywhere beyond and in between, always remember this congresswoman loves you and will always have your back, even if it means I lose something.
00:50:04.000So until we rise again, St. Louis, I love you.