The Ben Shapiro Show - The Sham Impeachment Charges | Ep. 913

00:00:00.000 Democrats announce their impeachment charges.

00:00:02.000 The Inspector General of the DOJ releases his report on the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.

00:00:06.000 And Hillary still is not going away. 0.96

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:09.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:15.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:00:18.000 Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.

00:00:22.000 We're going to get to all the breaking news, and there is a lot of breaking news momentarily.

00:00:26.000 First, let me just tell you, does it feel chaotic out there?

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00:01:42.000 All right.

00:01:43.000 So the Democrats have finally come forth and announced their impeachment charges.

00:01:48.000 They've announced the impeachment charges.

00:01:50.000 Wow.

00:01:50.000 And they were very confident about announcing those impeachment charges.

00:01:55.000 Nothing says you're going to fight corruption like standing at a podium being flanked by Maxine Waters, probably the most corrupt member of Congress in modern American history.

00:02:03.000 Nothing says that you take the law seriously like putting next to you anti-Maxine.

00:02:07.000 who has suggested from the very beginning that Donald Trump should be impeached literally the day of.

00:02:12.000 Jerry Nadler of New York announced the impeachment charges today.

00:02:16.000 He was flanked, as I say, by Maxine Waters and by Nancy Pelosi looking very serious and grimacing at the camera.

00:02:22.000 This demonstrates how serious they are.

00:02:23.000 They're not doing this gleefully.

00:02:24.000 They're not doing this politically.

00:02:25.000 They're just doing this because they love the Constitution.

00:02:28.000 So here is Jerry Nadler announcing the charges.

00:02:31.000 In service to our duty to the Constitution and to our country, the House Committee on the Judiciary is introducing two articles of impeachment, charging the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, with committing high crimes and misdemeanors.

00:02:50.000 The first article is for abuse of power.

00:02:54.000 It is an impeachable offense for the President to exercise the powers of his public office to obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest.

00:03:08.000 This gives rise to the second article of impeachment for obstruction of Congress.

00:03:13.000 Here, too, we see a familiar pattern in President Trump's misconduct.

00:03:18.000 A president who declares himself above accountability, above the American people, and above Congress's power of impeachment, which is meant to protect against threats to our democratic institutions, is a president who sees himself as above the law. is a president who sees himself as above the law.

00:03:37.000 Okay, this is an absurdity on its face.

00:03:39.000 It's an absurdity.

00:03:41.000 I mean, truly absurd.

00:03:42.000 And the reason you can tell this is absurd is because they were originally thinking of three charges, right?

00:03:46.000 Not two, three.

00:03:48.000 The third charge was going to be bribery.

00:03:49.000 Bribery is an actual federal crime, right?

00:03:52.000 With elements that you have to fulfill.

00:03:54.000 As a lawyer, if you're going to try and push impeachment charges, typically what you want is an actual crime, right?

00:03:58.000 It says hide crimes and misdemeanors.

00:04:00.000 Now, listen.

00:04:01.000 Impeachment is inevitably a political affair.

00:04:04.000 You can impeach for anything.

00:04:05.000 Legally speaking, you don't actually have to convict somebody of a crime in order to impeach them.

00:04:09.000 If you just don't like the president, you could theoretically impeach them, but the reason that the founders wrote high crimes and misdemeanors into the Constitution of the United States is specifically because they were suggesting that you might actually have to fulfill some elements of criminality.

00:04:21.000 So, The Democrats had originally, their narrative was that Donald Trump had traded military aid to Ukraine in return for getting Joe Biden.

00:04:31.000 Then they brought in that out to say he traded military aid and a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in return for getting Joe Biden.

00:04:38.000 Then they brought that out to say, no, it was just Donald Trump trying to do something, not necessarily about Joe Biden, just something that we don't like in return for military aid from Ukraine.

00:04:49.000 And at that point, at the point when it shifted, Then the crime element sort of went away.

00:04:54.000 Because the fact is, the evidence did not support their original charges.

00:04:57.000 The original charge was that Donald Trump tried to militarize military aid to Ukraine in order to push the Ukrainians to dig up dirt on Joe Biden in anticipation of the 2020 election.

00:05:06.000 And Trump's best defense, always and forever, was that he did not have the requisite intent for that.

00:05:10.000 Because bribery is an intent crime.

00:05:13.000 The defense would have been, and remains, that President Trump was simply looking back at 2016, he was angry about 2016, he saw Ukraine as corrupt, he didn't like giving aid to Ukraine anyway because he tends to be isolationist when it comes to giving foreign aid.

00:05:26.000 And, when he looks at Ukraine's interference in the 2016 election, which, yes, was it at the same level as the Russians?

00:05:32.000 Of course not.

00:05:32.000 Did it happen?

00:05:33.000 Well, according to Politico and the New York Times, it did happen, and Trump knew that.

00:05:37.000 And so, he sent Rudy Giuliani over there to dig up dirt on the Ukraine, right?

00:05:41.000 On 2016, and all of the nefarious connections between the Obama administration and Ukraine, and to dig up dirt on corruption inside Ukraine, and all of the rest of this stuff.

00:05:51.000 He did all of that with an eye toward 2016, not an eye toward 2020.

00:05:54.000 Some of that is in the national interest.

00:05:56.000 Some of that is not in the national interest.

00:05:58.000 The only thing that would certainly not have been in the national interest, and here is where the Democrats run into trouble, the only thing that certainly would not have been in the national interest is Trump attempting to dig up corruption on Joe Biden for purposes of 2020, not for purposes of 2016, right?

00:06:13.000 For purposes of 2020.

00:06:14.000 That would have been Trump just seeking specific political benefit for himself in anticipation of an upcoming election by using a corrupt foreign government as his tool, as his cutout.

00:06:25.000 That was the original accusation that Democrats were making.

00:06:28.000 Remember, they haven't been making that accusation anymore.

00:06:30.000 And the fact that they did not put bribery on the list of impeachable charges demonstrates they don't have anything remotely approaching actual convictable criminal conduct.

00:06:40.000 Remember, a few weeks ago, the Democrats were suggesting that Trump could actually be prosecuted for this.

00:06:44.000 Not just that he'd be impeached, but he could be prosecuted for violation of federal bribery statutes.

00:06:48.000 They moved, remember, linguistically, from quid pro quo to bribery.

00:06:52.000 Originally, they said it was quid pro quo.

00:06:54.000 And then they said, well, the American people don't understand quid pro quo.

00:06:57.000 Quid pro quo did happen, right?

00:06:59.000 Mick Mulvaney, the OMB, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, he said that did happen.

00:07:03.000 The question was, was it an improper quid pro quo, which amounts to bribery, or was it just kind of a yucky quid pro quo that wasn't criminal, but also was not great, which is the reality.

00:07:14.000 But the Democrats are not charging bribery today.

00:07:17.000 Why?

00:07:17.000 Because again, you have to fulfill certain elements and the Democrats don't have it.

00:07:19.000 What are the elements of federal bribery?

00:07:21.000 The elements of federal bribery under 18 U.S.C.

00:07:24.000 201, it describes several ways to violate its provisions.

00:07:29.000 Criminalizing and bribing a public official provides whoever directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official to influence any official act, to influence such public official, to commit fraud, to induce such public official, shall be fined or imprisoned for not more than 15 years or both.

00:07:47.000 So, if you want to bribe a public official, and it would work both ways, you need a public official, the defendant's corrupt intent, the intent matters, in other words, it's corrupt intent, specific corrupt intent, Something of value offered and information generally has not been deemed to be a thing of value.

00:08:06.000 This came up earlier on in the campaign when there were earlier on in the in Trump's presidency when there was talk about whether if Trump had received information from foreign sources in the 2016 election whether that would have amounted to a campaign finance violation because the idea was that you're not allowed to get Donations from foreign sources for campaigns.

00:08:25.000 Is it a donation if you find out from a foreign source information about your political opponent?

00:08:29.000 And the best answer is typically not.

00:08:30.000 Usually when information flows, information is information.

00:08:33.000 It is not considered a thing of value.

00:08:34.000 So there are two elements missing from the bribery statute that don't apply in this case.

00:08:38.000 One is the anything of value, because here you'd be looking for presumably information.

00:08:42.000 And two is the exact corrupt intent.

00:08:47.000 Okay, so those elements are missing.

00:08:49.000 The Democrats know that, which is why the impeachable offenses they put out today are not actual crimes.

00:08:53.000 They are not actual crimes.

00:08:55.000 In the end, the impeachable offenses the Democrats are putting forth today are almost entirely empty.

00:09:01.000 The only reason I say almost as opposed to entirely empty is because, again, I don't buy the Trumpian notion that he did nothing wrong, it was a perfect phone call, everything was hunky-dory, it was all on the up-and-up.

00:09:10.000 The Ukraine was the country that was actually interfering in the 2016 election.

00:09:14.000 Crowd strike, bereavement.

00:09:15.000 Like, I don't buy a lot of that stuff, but that's the only reason I'm saying almost.

00:09:20.000 The fact is, Trump could have done a lot of stuff that you don't like, that I don't like, that I think is yucky, and it doesn't rise anywhere near the level of impeachable because it's not even a crime.

00:09:28.000 You couldn't charge the guy in court for this kind of stuff.

00:09:32.000 What are the two charges?

00:09:33.000 Okay, so charge number one is abuse of power.

00:09:37.000 Abuse of power.

00:09:38.000 So Jerry Nadler announcing these charges said, it is an impeachable offense for the president to exercise the power of his public office to obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest.

00:09:50.000 Okay, that last phrase is so vague as to be completely non-colorable.

00:09:56.000 I mean, there's just no way to interpret that phrase with any limiting principle whatsoever.

00:10:01.000 So Jerry Nadler says, it's an impeachable offense for the president to exercise the power of his public office to obtain improper personal benefit.

00:10:08.000 So that's number one, improper personal benefit.

00:10:10.000 So what's the improper personal benefit here?

00:10:12.000 Presumably, it would have been Trump receiving some sort of announcement that Biden was going to be investigated.

00:10:19.000 Is that improper or not?

00:10:20.000 Well, it depends, again, because it goes back to the intent question.

00:10:23.000 The only reason that would be improper is because Trump knew, presumably, maybe, that Biden is innocent and he wants Ukraine to announce an investigation into an innocent guy to damage him politically.

00:10:31.000 But what if Trump actually believes that Biden's kind of guilty of stuff back in 2016?

00:10:36.000 What if he believes that that requires more investigation?

00:10:39.000 What if he believes, in other words, the bill of goods that Rudy Giuliani has been selling him and that he's been reading in John Solomon at the Hill?

00:10:45.000 Is that now him receiving an improper personal benefit?

00:10:48.000 Or is that Trump acting in the public interest?

00:10:50.000 You don't know.

00:10:51.000 And that is why the key to the Democrat charge here is the broadening out of the notion of intent.

00:10:57.000 The broadening out of the notion of intent.

00:10:59.000 Remember, bribery requires intent for me to get something from you for a corrupt purpose.

00:11:06.000 I mean, bribery is not you and I make an exchange of goods, right?

00:11:10.000 Every market transaction is a quid pro quo.

00:11:12.000 It literally means this for that, right?

00:11:15.000 So that last phrase, while ignoring or injuring the national interest is extraordinarily different from specific intent to commit a bribery offense.

00:11:23.000 Because ignoring the national interest, I can charge Barack Obama with ignoring the national interest for like eight years.

00:11:28.000 I think every single thing that Barack Obama did for pretty much eight years was ignoring or injuring the national interest.

00:11:35.000 That's not an intent crime.

00:11:37.000 That is not an intent crime.

00:11:38.000 There is no intent there.

00:11:39.000 Ignoring or injuring the national interest is not a standard of intent.

00:11:43.000 Okay, so take another intent crime.

00:11:46.000 Take another intent crime. 1.00

00:11:47.000 So, let's say, let's say I punch you in the face. 0.99

00:11:52.000 So there's a difference between I'm walking down the street and suddenly I'm scared by a dog and I lean back and I hit you in the face. 1.00

00:11:59.000 You're standing right behind me, I hit you in the face.

00:12:01.000 Hey, and there's a difference in that, criminally speaking, and me turning around and just clocking you directly in the face, right?

00:12:06.000 One, I had the intent to clock you, and one is negligence.

00:12:10.000 One is negligence, right?

00:12:11.000 One is that I didn't know you were behind me, I didn't care that you were behind me, maybe, that would be reckless, but in one case, I would have specific intent to harm you, right? 0.99

00:12:20.000 I'd turn around and I'd just punch you.

00:12:22.000 The other would be, quote, ignoring or injuring you. 1.00

00:12:26.000 I'm ignoring or injuring you. 0.93

00:12:27.000 It's not the same thing as I turn around and punch you.

00:12:29.000 I don't know you're there.

00:12:30.000 I'm ignoring you. 0.97

00:12:31.000 I injure you. 0.99

00:12:32.000 I hurt you. 0.92

00:12:33.000 Is that the same thing?

00:12:35.000 Is that the same kind of activity?

00:12:37.000 The answer, of course, is no.

00:12:38.000 One of those I would go to jail for.

00:12:40.000 One of them, at best, maybe I'd have to pay some sort of small tort settlement for.

00:12:44.000 Those are not the same thing at all.

00:12:47.000 That is why the Democrats are charging abuse of power and they are not charging bribery.

00:12:50.000 They could not prove intent.

00:12:52.000 So instead of saying, listen, we can't prove intent.

00:12:54.000 We got no crime here.

00:12:54.000 They're manufacturing a crime to fit the activity.

00:12:58.000 They're manufacturing a charge to fit what they think Trump did.

00:13:02.000 What they think they can get him for.

00:13:04.000 That's an amazing thing, what they are doing right now.

00:13:06.000 That's an abuse of power.

00:13:08.000 Imagine a prosecutor who doesn't like me, and so instead of the crime being me assaulting you, right, me performing a battery upon you, turning around and punching you in the face, the crime becomes, well, just for Shapiro, if he leaps back and accidentally hits you, that's ignoring or injuring you, so we're gonna charge him pretty much the same way we would as if he had turned around and just plopped you in the face.

00:13:08.000 That's an abuse of power.

00:13:30.000 That is a prosecutorial misconduct case in a nutshell.

00:13:34.000 And that is what Democrats are doing right here.

00:13:36.000 I'll get to more of this in just one second.

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00:15:00.000 Okay, so...

00:15:01.000 That first charge is really the key charge.

00:15:03.000 Abuse of power.

00:15:04.000 But again, that is not the definition of a crime.

00:15:07.000 It's not even close to a crime.

00:15:09.000 In fact, as I say, it looks like they have now tailored the crime to fit the activity.

00:15:14.000 When they launched this thing, they thought they were gonna come up with an actual overt bribe.

00:15:18.000 Instead, they couldn't come up with anything remotely approaching it because again, they weren't, and they don't think they will either.

00:15:23.000 Let's point that out because this shades into crime number two that they're talking about.

00:15:28.000 They believed that they were going to get Trump on the bribery offense.

00:15:31.000 The bribery offense did not materialize.

00:15:33.000 There's only one witness that they even talked to in the House Intelligence Committee who had ever had a conversation, ever, with Donald Trump.

00:15:41.000 Gordon Sondland.

00:15:42.000 That's it.

00:15:42.000 Not a single other person they had ever talked with had a conversation with Donald Trump.

00:15:47.000 I believe at all, but certainly about Ukraine.

00:15:49.000 And Gordon Sondland did not give them the intent.

00:15:52.000 So, if you're the Democrats, you have two choices at that point.

00:15:54.000 One is, you move forward with the bribery charge, but you wait to actually move forward with that until you talk to the people who have talked to Trump.

00:16:01.000 So you subpoena, say, Rudy Giuliani.

00:16:03.000 You subpoena Mick Mulvaney.

00:16:04.000 You subpoena John Bolton.

00:16:05.000 You subpoena Vice President Pence.

00:16:07.000 You subpoena everybody who's around Donald Trump, who had a direct conversation with Donald Trump.

00:16:12.000 Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.

00:16:14.000 All of them.

00:16:15.000 And then you wait for the courts to adjudicate the subpoenas and then you talk to them and maybe they give you the goods and maybe they don't and then you move forward from there.

00:16:22.000 That would be the honest way to do this.

00:16:23.000 Democrats didn't do this.

00:16:24.000 Democrats knew they weren't going to get the intent crime from any of these people because they know that the actual charge is nonsense.

00:16:29.000 They know that Trump did not engage in bribery here.

00:16:32.000 He never had the intent for bribery.

00:16:34.000 So instead, they just dropped the bribery charge entirely.

00:16:37.000 And they tailored a charge that is not an actual crime.

00:16:41.000 Now, listen, do they have the legal ability to do this?

00:16:43.000 Of course, again, impeachment's a political process.

00:16:45.000 They can do whatever they want.

00:16:47.000 But when Jerry Nadler defines the crime, when he says it's an impeachable offense for the president to exercise the power of his public office to obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest, that is not an impeachable offense.

00:17:01.000 The definition is not impeachable.

00:17:03.000 I can name you a dozen items off the top of my head That President Bush, Clinton, Obama, every president does.

00:17:10.000 That I believe, obtain an improper personal benefit for that person, while ignoring or injuring the national interest.

00:17:16.000 Particularly if the improper personal benefit is election driven.

00:17:18.000 Because let's be frank about this.

00:17:20.000 The President of the United States in his first term is very much concerned with his re-election effort.

00:17:24.000 And so he does things with an eye toward re-election efforts.

00:17:28.000 Do you really think that Barack Obama didn't care about his re-election?

00:17:30.000 Everything he did was for the good of the country.

00:17:32.000 Never once did it cross Barack Obama's mind that what he was doing had some sort of ramifications for 2012 for Barack Obama.

00:17:39.000 Let me just take the most obvious example.

00:17:41.000 Barack Obama is sitting across a chair.

00:17:44.000 There's a small table.

00:17:45.000 He's sitting across the table from Dmitry Medvedev, who is a stand-in for Vladimir Putin.

00:17:50.000 Putin's lackey. 0.99

00:17:51.000 He's his lapdog. 0.97

00:17:52.000 And Obama says on a hot mic to Dmitry Medvedev, I will give your man, Putin, I'll give him more flexibility. 0.95

00:18:00.000 I have more flexibility after the election.

00:18:02.000 So basically, cool your jets, please stop being aggressive until after the election, because then I'll have more flexibility.

00:18:09.000 Okay, is that the president obtaining an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest?

00:18:14.000 By this standard, 100% yes.

00:18:17.000 Absolutely.

00:18:18.000 Undoubtedly.

00:18:19.000 And when Barack Obama was sending, deploying his campaign resources, I mean literally taking his chiefs of campaign and sending them to Israel in order to go after Benjamin Netanyahu and oust him from office.

00:18:32.000 He actually had his campaign people go to Israel to try and defeat Netanyahu in an election in Israel.

00:18:39.000 Was that Barack Obama attempting to obtain him proper personal benefit?

00:18:42.000 He had personal animus for Netanyahu.

00:18:44.000 Was he ignoring or injuring the national interest?

00:18:46.000 I would say sure.

00:18:48.000 Again, none of that was impeachable because all of that is well within the purview of presidential activity.

00:18:54.000 We have now moved actually to a, this is almost a strict liability definition of a crime.

00:18:59.000 Ignoring or injuring the national interest is not even an intent crime.

00:19:02.000 You know, I'm seeing there's an article at Reason Magazine today talking about how they're trying to impeach Trump for corrupt intent.

00:19:07.000 No, that's wrong.

00:19:08.000 They're not even attempting to impeach Trump for corrupt intent.

00:19:11.000 They're suggesting you don't even need corrupt intent.

00:19:14.000 All you need is the mere presence of a situation where you can impute to the person corrupt intent.

00:19:21.000 You don't have to prove corrupt intent.

00:19:22.000 If you could prove corrupt intent, you'd have a bribery offense.

00:19:25.000 You don't have to prove corrupt intent.

00:19:26.000 That's the point.

00:19:28.000 All you have to do is show that he is quote-unquote ignoring or injuring the national interest.

00:19:32.000 Well, think about your own personal relationships.

00:19:34.000 Think about your spouse.

00:19:35.000 Think about your friends.

00:19:37.000 How many times do they think that you are ignoring them or injuring their personal interest?

00:19:41.000 And you're not.

00:19:42.000 Right?

00:19:42.000 You literally are not, you're not ignoring them.

00:19:44.000 You just have been busy, for example.

00:19:46.000 Like my daughter is five.

00:19:47.000 That means that every time she wants me to do something, it has to be done in the next 15 seconds or I am ignoring or injuring her interest.

00:19:55.000 Is that true?

00:19:56.000 Or is that her perception?

00:19:57.000 Well, the problem is they haven't even proved that he ignored or injured the national interest.

00:20:02.000 Right?

00:20:02.000 And by the way, injuring the national interest is a matter of perspective.

00:20:06.000 Because I may even agree that Trump's perspective on Ukraine is wrong and bad and he should have given the military aid.

00:20:13.000 But that's an opinion about foreign policy and that is subject to our elections.

00:20:16.000 Elections are supposed to decide whether you agree with the candidates, or in this case the incumbent president, on whether he is indeed forwarding the national interest or injuring the national interest, ignoring the national interest, or pressing forward the national interest.

00:20:30.000 Those are election questions.

00:20:32.000 To seize an election question and criminalize an election question is an abuse of power.

00:20:36.000 What Democrats are doing here is an abuse of power.

00:20:38.000 They don't have the goods.

00:20:39.000 If they had pushed censure, they'd be perfectly within their rights.

00:20:42.000 To push this as an impeachable offense, this is not a high crime, it's not a misdemeanor, it ain't nothing.

00:20:46.000 It ain't nothing.

00:20:47.000 And that does not mean that Donald Trump did everything right here, as I've said before.

00:20:51.000 I think he did lots of bad, wrong things here, but that is not the same thing as a high crime and misdemeanor that justifies impeachment.

00:20:57.000 Okay, so that's charge number one, and it's just nonsense.

00:21:00.000 It's just nonsense.

00:21:03.000 Okay, then there is the obstruction of Congress charge. 0.65

00:21:08.000 Okay, so this one is just absurdity on its face.

00:21:11.000 So, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who, by the way, it's so funny, Republicans keep saying, let's get Schiff to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee.

00:21:20.000 Let's get the guy who started this whole thing with the whistleblower, wrote the 300-page report, and let's have this guy testify.

00:21:25.000 And Schiff and Nadler keep going, no.

00:21:27.000 Is that obstruction of Congress?

00:21:29.000 It's obstruction of Congress people, for sure.

00:21:31.000 It's obstruction of the minority. 0.61

00:21:33.000 So, are the way that we are supposed to believe that obstruction works is that if people want you to testify and you say no, this constitutes a crime?

00:21:39.000 No.

00:21:40.000 Like a high crime or misdemeanor?

00:21:42.000 According to Schiff, he said, But they do have accountability.

00:21:44.000 Every bit as strong that President Trump obstructed Congress fully and without precedent and without basis in law.

00:21:49.000 If allowed to stand, it would decimate Congress's ability to conduct oversight of this president or any other in the future, leaving this president or those who follow free to be as corrupt and malfeasant and incompetent as they would like with no accountability.

00:22:00.000 But they do have accountability.

00:22:03.000 It's called an election.

00:22:04.000 A president can be as incompetent as incompetence is not an impeachable offense.

00:22:10.000 Incompetence is not an impeachable offense.

00:22:13.000 And again, when it comes to corruption, you got to prove the corruption or the American people can vote on whether they think somebody is corrupt.

00:22:19.000 This is no president.

00:22:21.000 No president has ever been an impeachment in an impeachment hearing or trial or movement.

00:22:28.000 No president, this is according to the Washington Post, has specifically and only been accused of obstructing Congress.

00:22:33.000 Because typically, it's lumped in with an actual crime.

00:22:36.000 Obstruction of justice.

00:22:37.000 Obstruction of justice.

00:22:38.000 So now, they're just saying, Trump isn't doing what we want him to do, so we're going to impeach him for that. 0.99

00:22:43.000 Absolute garbage. 1.00

00:22:44.000 Absolute nonsense. 1.00

00:22:46.000 I mean, this is absurd. 0.89

00:22:48.000 It's absurd!

00:22:49.000 There is no legal grounds for this.

00:22:51.000 This is the height of absurdity.

00:22:52.000 As I've said, if the Democrats wanted to go after Trump for obstruction of justice, all they would have to do, presumably, is wait.

00:22:59.000 Because let's say they subpoena Rudy Giuliani.

00:23:01.000 They haven't even issued legal subpoenas to half the people they say Trump is obstructing.

00:23:05.000 But let's say they issued a legal subpoena to Mike Pompeo.

00:23:08.000 They issued a legal subpoena to John Bolton.

00:23:10.000 Okay, and those guys then went to a court and said, you know what?

00:23:13.000 We don't want to go appealing.

00:23:15.000 And then the court said, you have to go.

00:23:16.000 And then Trump said, you're not allowed to go.

00:23:18.000 Now you have an obstruction of justice case.

00:23:20.000 All Democrats have to do is wait like a month.

00:23:22.000 They won't do it.

00:23:23.000 Why?

00:23:24.000 Because, one, they don't think they're gonna get anything from those witnesses, and two, they're manufacturing a charge.

00:23:29.000 These are manufactured charges!

00:23:32.000 These are made up from whole cloth.

00:23:34.000 Made up from whole cloth.

00:23:35.000 Obstruction of Congress is not a crime.

00:23:38.000 That is called a check and balance.

00:23:40.000 That is written into the Constitution.

00:23:41.000 The executive branch does not have to listen to everything Congress says.

00:23:46.000 Any more than the Congress has to listen to what the President has to say.

00:23:49.000 All the time.

00:23:50.000 That's not the way this works.

00:23:51.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

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00:24:59.000 So this is, again, an absurdity. - I mean, There is no obstruction of Congress.

00:25:07.000 No obstruction of Congress.

00:25:09.000 Because obstruction of Congress is just called the president saying, no, I'm a separate branch.

00:25:09.000 Okay?

00:25:14.000 This happens all the time.

00:25:15.000 Obstruction of justice is when you refuse a court order.

00:25:18.000 There's a whole third branch of government, right?

00:25:20.000 Jonathan Turley was pointing this out in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week.

00:25:25.000 Democrats are mad.

00:25:26.000 These are now two completely manufactured charges.

00:25:29.000 They are creating charges out of whole cloth that have no precedent in history or law.

00:25:35.000 None.

00:25:37.000 There's no precedent.

00:25:38.000 The Washington Post admits there is no precedent.

00:25:41.000 In history or law, for the idea that you can impeach solely based on quote-unquote obstruction of Congress, doesn't exist.

00:25:46.000 Because again, obstruction of Congress, put another way, is just called the executive branch is unitary.

00:25:53.000 And the executive branch is not subject to all of the whims of Congress, unless the judiciary agrees that the executive branch's privileges are overruled by the ability of Congress to seek information.

00:26:05.000 These sorts of battles happen every single day between the legislature and the executive.

00:26:08.000 That is not obstruction of Congress.

00:26:11.000 Any more than it was obstruction of Congress for Barack Obama to declare privilege over documents regarding Eric Holder and Fast and Furious.

00:26:18.000 That was not obstruction of Congress.

00:26:19.000 That was just called how this stuff works.

00:26:22.000 And when it comes to the first charge, the abuse of power charge, again, weak T. You have now redefined the nature of bribery to avoid the troublesome pitfalls of having to fulfill the criminal elements.

00:26:34.000 That's what the Democrats did here. 0.92

00:26:35.000 They took bribery, the crime of bribery, they stripped it of the corrupt intent, and they stripped it of the requirement that there be a thing of value given in exchange.

00:26:43.000 So they stripped the content of the law, they called it abusive power, and they said he's guilty of that.

00:26:48.000 That's amazing stuff.

00:26:50.000 If you're going to charge somebody with first-degree murder, you have to prove intent.

00:26:53.000 That's one of the things you have to prove in a first-degree murder.

00:26:56.000 Because first-degree murder is typically thought of as murder with malice aforethought.

00:27:02.000 Malice and intent aforethought.

00:27:03.000 That you planned it out and committed the murder.

00:27:05.000 Let's say that you didn't want to do that.

00:27:07.000 So instead of charging manslaughter, you just said, you know what?

00:27:10.000 We're not going to have that as part of the crime anymore.

00:27:12.000 Now, you kill somebody, strict liability crime.

00:27:15.000 We're going to consider it first-degree murder.

00:27:17.000 You've changed the nature of the law.

00:27:19.000 The crime itself didn't change.

00:27:20.000 You changed the nature of the criminal definition.

00:27:23.000 That is what the Democrats are doing right here.

00:27:25.000 I mean, you're not going to see a single Republican defection along these lines.

00:27:30.000 Not one.

00:27:31.000 Not one.

00:27:33.000 And Democrats are going to say, well, it's an abuse of power.

00:27:36.000 There's precedent for that.

00:27:37.000 I mean, there were abuse of power charges against Nixon and Clinton.

00:27:41.000 Against Clinton, there were actual criminal charges in the impeachment document.

00:27:45.000 Against Nixon, there were actual criminal charges in the impeachment document.

00:27:49.000 And by the way, the House actually voted down the abuse of power allegation against President Clinton.

00:27:54.000 They voted for the crime, right?

00:27:56.000 The perjury stuff and the obstruction of justice stuff.

00:27:59.000 They voted down, the Republican House voted down the abuse of power allegation against Bill Clinton under Newt Gingrich.

00:28:06.000 So this is just, it's a sham.

00:28:08.000 Everybody understands it's a sham.

00:28:11.000 And it's, man, if this doesn't blow back on Democrats, I'd be shocked because this is, they've gone so far over their skis at this point.

00:28:18.000 I mean, they are so far beyond what the impeachment process was supposed to do.

00:28:24.000 And this is coming from somebody who is perfectly willing to listen to all the evidence about Ukraine.

00:28:29.000 Again, I'm not parroting the Trump administration line that everything is perfect.

00:28:32.000 I don't believe that for a second.

00:28:34.000 This is so far beyond the scope of what impeachment is supposed to achieve.

00:28:39.000 It is so far beyond the scope of normal legality.

00:28:42.000 That it falls directly into the category of abuse of power for Democrats.

00:28:46.000 I mean, this is a serious abuse of power by Democrats.

00:28:48.000 To use the impeachment process to redefine crimes and then use that as sufficient as a basis for impeachment is insane.

00:28:53.000 Every president from here on out is getting impeached, basically, as long as there is a president of the opposite party in power.

00:28:58.000 That is where this is going.

00:28:59.000 Because again, I can promise you a half dozen things off the top of my head that Barack Obama did that fulfill the Democrats' definition of abuse of power.

00:29:09.000 He received an improper personal benefit And ignored or injured American interest?

00:29:15.000 How about his IRS going after his direct political opponents in 2012?

00:29:19.000 How about that?

00:29:20.000 That seems like kind of fulfilling those elements, doesn't it?

00:29:24.000 And this is, this is, man, the utter, the utter blatantness of it is what's incredible.

00:29:29.000 The partisan obviousness of it is what's amazing.

00:29:33.000 I thought the Democrats were smarter than this.

00:29:34.000 Apparently not. 1.00

00:29:35.000 Apparently they're just idiots. 1.00

00:29:36.000 And they decide, they've decided we have to go through with this. 1.00

00:29:38.000 It doesn't matter whether we have the grounds.

00:29:40.000 So we'll just make up the ground.

00:29:42.000 Basically, we'll create a bill of attainder for Donald Trump, and then we'll craft the crime to meet the fact that we want Trump impeached.

00:29:49.000 That's what we're talking about right here.

00:29:50.000 Okay, we'll get into more of this in just one second.

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00:31:03.000 Okay, we'll get back into impeachment stuff and also we'll review this DOJ Inspector General report.

00:31:07.000 The media are downplaying it.

00:31:09.000 The FBI was great.

00:31:10.000 We'll get to that in just a second.

00:31:10.000 The FBI wasn't great.

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00:32:10.000 Okay, so the Democrats are trying to play this as though they're very solemn about it.

00:32:19.000 Indeed, very, very, very, so much solemnity.

00:32:22.000 So Nancy Pelosi stood at the Capitol. 0.86

00:32:24.000 She called it a solemn act.

00:32:25.000 A solemn act.

00:32:27.000 President Trump, for his part, has said this is rank partisanship.

00:32:30.000 Jerry Nadler is pushing forward the idea, and this is really what the Democrats are pushing.

00:32:34.000 I mean, this is such dangerous stuff, seriously.

00:32:36.000 It's dangerous for the country.

00:32:37.000 It's dangerous for the country to push forward an impeachment on the basis of we don't like the guy, and we're not even going to attempt to mimic criminal charges in the impeachment.

00:32:46.000 We're not even going to attempt it.

00:32:47.000 We're just going to basically say, we don't like what he did.

00:32:49.000 We can't find the crime, but it's yucky.

00:32:51.000 We're impeaching him for yucky.

00:32:53.000 You can't impeach people for yucky.

00:32:54.000 We have elections for yucky.

00:32:55.000 This is still a republic.

00:32:57.000 You don't like Trump?

00:32:58.000 Good news.

00:32:59.000 He's up for election in a year.

00:33:00.000 All you have to do is wait it out.

00:33:02.000 And in the meantime, watch your stock market increase.

00:33:05.000 I mean, seriously.

00:33:06.000 But the Democrats are saying, not just, the impetus for this.

00:33:10.000 Basically, Democrats are using As an excuse for pushing forward an impeachment effort that has no actual legal basis.

00:33:17.000 They're pushing forward as an excuse for that, that if they leave Trump in place, he will cheat.

00:33:22.000 And no matter what happens in 2020, if he wins, he will have cheated.

00:33:26.000 This is supremely dangerous.

00:33:27.000 I talked about this a little bit yesterday on the show.

00:33:29.000 It's incredibly, incredibly dangerous.

00:33:32.000 The Democrats in 2015-2016, they kept saying, if Donald Trump doesn't accept the results of this election, well, that would be bad for the country.

00:33:39.000 I agreed, right?

00:33:40.000 Donald Trump, in one of those debates, he said, I don't know.

00:33:42.000 I have to see how it goes.

00:33:44.000 I don't know.

00:33:44.000 And I thought, what the hell?

00:33:46.000 You can't do that. 0.98

00:33:48.000 If there is a legal basis to challenge an election, then wait for the legal basis to challenge an election.

00:33:52.000 But we cannot, a republic cannot survive the idea that every time your opponent loses, every time your opponent wins, it's because the system has been gamed.

00:34:02.000 Otherwise, why live in a republic at all?

00:34:03.000 I mean, seriously, if you don't trust the system of voting to work, then you ought to pick up a gun, because I thought that that was pretty much the basis for the revolution.

00:34:11.000 The basis for the revolution was no taxation without representation, that the colonies were not being properly represented in British Parliament, and so the American people said, no, we're not up for this, we want our representation.

00:34:21.000 Well, if you believe that the system is designed to exclude you electorally, and that no matter what Trump does, if he wins, that means that he has cheated, I mean, isn't that the impetus for chaos and violence moving forward?

00:34:36.000 Seriously, like on a broader scale?

00:34:38.000 And so that's providing the impetus for Democrats' impeachment efforts.

00:34:42.000 Yeah, we don't have him on a crime, but we need to get him out because if we don't get him out, he's going to cheat again.

00:34:46.000 Here's Jerry Nadler saying that over the weekend.

00:34:48.000 We also are faced with a very direct threat that this president put himself repeatedly above the interest of the country and poses a threat to the integrity of the next election.

00:34:58.000 That's not something we were talking about 20 years ago.

00:35:01.000 He poses a threat to the integrity of the next election if he's allowed to continue to do what he's doing.

00:35:07.000 Okay, so we don't have the grounds for impeachment, but we have to impeach him because if we don't impeach him, then the next election will be illegitimate.

00:35:12.000 What do you think, by the way, that the other half of the American people who voted for Trump think about that?

00:35:17.000 You know, 63 million Americans did vote for Trump.

00:35:20.000 He is the president.

00:35:21.000 He was duly elected via the electoral college.

00:35:24.000 What do you think they think about the legitimacy of a system where you are misusing and abusing the power of your authority to get rid of a guy because you are preemptively suggesting he's going to cheat?

00:35:34.000 Do you think that the people on the other side are going to trust the system?

00:35:37.000 So we've now built a system where nobody trusts the system.

00:35:40.000 Because now, if Trump is impeached in the House, which he will be, and Trump loses, what do you think Trump's going to say?

00:35:45.000 Do you think Trump's going to sit there and he's going to be like, no, you know what?

00:35:48.000 Everything was hunky dory.

00:35:49.000 Everything's hunky dory.

00:35:49.000 I legit lost the election.

00:35:51.000 I'm a good sport.

00:35:52.000 I'm going home.

00:35:53.000 Who thinks Trump is going to do that?

00:35:54.000 Or do you think that Trump is going to militate outside the government?

00:35:59.000 That he is going to, that he's going to Mixed rate. 1.00

00:36:02.000 And that he is going to stew in his own juices.

00:36:05.000 And he's going to suggest that Democrats impeachment of him, illegitimate, drove his approval ratings down and caused him to lose.

00:36:12.000 And thus he was jobbed.

00:36:13.000 We are now moving toward a 2020 election where neither side is prepared to accept the result of the 2020 election.

00:36:19.000 That is dangerous stuff.

00:36:23.000 Really dangerous.

00:36:24.000 And again, go back and listen to my podcast in 2016.

00:36:26.000 I said it was dangerous, but Democrats since 2016 have done nothing but suggest that every election is illegitimate.

00:36:31.000 Stacey Abrams is the legit governor of Georgia, despite losing to Brian Kemp by 55,000 votes.

00:36:36.000 Donald Trump is not the legitimate president of the United... Jerry Nadler, the guy who is sitting there saying that 2020 will be illegitimate, he said that President Trump was legally elected, but he said in January of 2017, That Donald Trump was not a legitimate president of the United States.

00:36:54.000 You can't have a republic when everybody believes that the system doesn't actually even go with what the people say.

00:37:01.000 That every election is an act of theft.

00:37:06.000 We are getting into seriously dangerous territory right here.

00:37:09.000 And Democrats are embracing it, embracing it.

00:37:11.000 And Nancy Pelosi, for her part, she says, She says she has not counted the votes in the House. 0.91

00:37:15.000 Bullcrap. 0.98

00:37:16.000 Bullcrap. 0.93

00:37:17.000 You know what kind of consequences will be brought to bear for Democrats who do not vote along the lines of impeachment here?

00:37:24.000 Pelosi says, on an issue like this, we don't count the votes.

00:37:27.000 People will just make their voices known on it.

00:37:30.000 I haven't counted votes nor will I. Yes, sure.

00:37:32.000 Sure.

00:37:32.000 I'm sure nobody's counted votes.

00:37:33.000 At all.

00:37:34.000 President Trump, for his part, went on Twitter and he said to impeach a president who has proven through results, including producing perhaps the strongest economy in our country's history.

00:37:41.000 To have one of the most successful presidents he's ever and most importantly, who has done nothing wrong is sheer political madness.

00:37:47.000 Hashtag 2020 election.

00:37:49.000 And then he also spent a lot of Monday tweeting about all of this.

00:37:53.000 Now, President Trump should say is that this is an abuse of power by Democrats.

00:37:59.000 They are crafting the crime to meet what they think I did.

00:38:02.000 But even they can't even, there's not a criminal charge, there's no criminal charges.

00:38:06.000 Elliot Engel of New York, the Democratic Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he said, I think there's a lot of agreement.

00:38:11.000 A lot of us believe that what happened with Ukraine especially is not something we can just close our eyes to.

00:38:15.000 Notice the language again.

00:38:16.000 What ha- I mean, this is deliberately vague language.

00:38:18.000 What happened with Ukraine is something we can't close our eyes to.

00:38:22.000 No one's asking you to close your eyes.

00:38:23.000 You have a lot of things you can do.

00:38:24.000 You can rip the president via censure.

00:38:27.000 You can change his funding priorities via Congress.

00:38:29.000 You do run the purse.

00:38:31.000 But instead, you've decided to move forward with a process that typically requires at least some criminal conduct.

00:38:37.000 Dan Goldman, the Director of Investigations at the House Intelligence Committee, said President Trump's persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security.

00:38:48.000 Again, this is Goldman appealing to Democrats' perception of 2016 and the idea by Democrats that Trump stole the 2016 election to suggest that he will steal the 2020 election so we don't need grounds to impeach him.

00:38:58.000 That alone is enough grounds to impeach him.

00:39:01.000 Trump won.

00:39:02.000 He didn't win legitimately, according to Democrats.

00:39:04.000 Therefore, we have to stop him in 2020 from even being on the ballot.

00:39:10.000 President Trump has been tweeting repeatedly, assailing the witch hunt and the do-nothing Democrats.

00:39:16.000 Nadler said that President Trump put himself before country.

00:39:21.000 And he said that Trump's conduct was clearly impeachable.

00:39:24.000 I mean, again, the charges demonstrate just how empty these claims are.

00:39:30.000 Amazing, amazing stuff.

00:39:32.000 I'm really, when I say I'm amazed, I'm really amazed that the Democrats did not at least attempt to push forward with a more audacious charge, even if they couldn't back it.

00:39:40.000 I am shocked that they went with the weakness of these charges that, again, do not rise to the level of criminal activity.

00:39:45.000 Okay, meanwhile, the other big story of the day yesterday is that the Inspector General Michael Horowitz of the Department of Justice released his report on the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.

00:39:54.000 And the media's take on the report is just completely wrong.

00:39:59.000 I mean, just completely wrong.

00:40:00.000 So, Team Trump was saying this demonstrated there was systemic problems inside the FBI.

00:40:07.000 Here is what the report actually found.

00:40:08.000 OK, so the media played this as Trump needs to apologize to the FBI because Trump had suggested the FBI was corrupt top to bottom and that Trump had ripped the intelligence community.

00:40:18.000 Here is is the panel on CNN led by Chris Cuomo saying Trump needs to apologize to the FBI for all of his mean words about the FBI.

00:40:26.000 Wait until you hear what the IG actually found about what the FBI did here.

00:40:29.000 The only arguable deep state activity today was by this President's Attorney General attacking the findings of his own agency and having a hand-picked prosecutor to justify his feelings about spying, doing his own probe.

00:40:46.000 And his prosecutor, Paul Dicomi, broke protocol, bad-mouthed the Inspector General's findings while talking about his own ongoing investigation.

00:40:55.000 So, will those accused of treason, and worse, get an apology?

00:41:01.000 Okay, so no, they won't get an apology.

00:41:03.000 And also it turns out that what the standard used by the IG in this report is a very low bar.

00:41:09.000 Okay, so all the IG was finding, he says this in the report, all he was assessing is whether people violated the law.

00:41:16.000 He was not assessing whether they made good decisions or whether those decisions were justified by evidence on any real level.

00:41:21.000 He was simply asking whether they met the baseline, very bare legal standard to not break the law.

00:41:28.000 So in other words, the IG was using the proper standard when it comes to prosecution.

00:41:33.000 The standard Democrats actually should be using when it comes to impeachment.

00:41:37.000 But, he said, I'm not really assessing whether the decision making here was good.

00:41:40.000 And when he says evidence of bias, he's not saying that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page weren't biased.

00:41:45.000 He's saying that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were unable to cram through all of their priorities in this investigation because there were other people, thank God, who were part of the process.

00:41:53.000 Okay, which is true!

00:41:55.000 Aside from people who have been, you know, wildly overestimating, I don't know many conservatives who are suggesting that the entire FBI was corrupt.

00:42:02.000 Now, I was saying, yeah, there are some bad apples inside the FBI who obviously didn't like Trump and were pushing against him, but the idea that the entire FBI was top-to-bottom corrupt, I mean, I know FBI agents, it's just nonsense.

00:42:12.000 So, here is what the IG actually found.

00:42:14.000 So the standard used, quote, Our role in this review was not to second-guess discretionary judgments by department personnel about whether to open an investigation or specific judgment calls made during the course of an investigation where those decisions complied with or were authorized by department rules, policies, or procedures.

00:42:31.000 We do not criticize particular decisions merely because we might have recommended a different investigative strategy or tactic based on the facts learned during our investigation.

00:42:38.000 So he's saying this should not be read to be an assessment of whether the right decisions were made.

00:42:43.000 The only question is whether they broke the law.

00:42:45.000 He said the question we considered Was not whether a particular investigative decision was ideal or could have been handled more effectively, but rather whether the department and the FBI complied with applicable legal requirements, policies, and procedures in taking the actions we reviewed.

00:42:59.000 More alternatively, whether the circumstances surrounding the decision indicated it was based on inaccurate or incomplete information or considerations other than the merits of the investigation.

00:43:08.000 If the explanations we were given for a particular decision were consistent with legal requirements, policies, procedures, and not unreasonable, we didn't conclude that the decision was based on improper considerations.

00:43:17.000 So in other words, if you could give any excuse at all that avoided violating the law, they would buy it.

00:43:22.000 That's what that standard is.

00:43:24.000 And here is what they found.

00:43:25.000 They found that the investigation was not initiated in bad faith.

00:43:29.000 By the way, I tend to agree with that.

00:43:31.000 Now, what you're seeing is that there are statements put out by Bill Barr and also John Durham, both of other members of the DOJ, right?

00:43:37.000 Bill Barr is the Attorney General, John Durham...

00:43:40.000 He's a US attorney who's doing his own investigation into the origins of Trump-Russia collusion investigation.

00:43:45.000 Both of them came out and they said, well, we disagree with this assessment by the IG.

00:43:48.000 Now remember the IG was only examining the FBI, was not examining the CIA, was not examining the other members of the intelligence community, not foreign countries, just the FBI.

00:43:59.000 So according to this IG report, Crossfire Hurricane was opened as a full investigation.

00:44:04.000 All of the senior FBI officials who participated in discussions about whether to open a case told us the information warranted opening it.

00:44:11.000 So we concluded that under the AG guidelines and the Domestic Investigations Operation Guide, the FBI had an authorized purpose when it opened Crossfire Hurricane to obtain information about or protect against a national security threat or federal crime even though the investigation also had the potential to impact constitutionally protected activity.

00:44:28.000 Additionally, given the low threshold for predication in the AG guidelines and the DIOG, we concluded that the friendly foreign government information provided by a government the U.S.

00:44:38.000 intelligence community deems trustworthy, and describing a first-hand account from a foreign government of a conversation with George Papadopoulos, low-level Trump staffer, was sufficient to predicate the investigation.

00:44:48.000 In other words, it's a very low standard for opening an investigation.

00:44:51.000 There was a conversation that happened between George Papadopoulos, low-level Trump foreign policy aide, Who had a conversation with a member of the Australian government in which he bragged about having had a conversation with a guy named Joseph Mifsud, who was seen by the intelligence community as a Russian cutout, who had said that he had information that the Russians had access to Hillary Clinton's emails and would give them to the Trump campaign.

00:45:14.000 And that was the predication for the opening of this investigation.

00:45:17.000 Now, you combine that with Paul Manafort joining the campaign, and with the intelligence community being suspicious of Carter Page, and with Donald Trump's warm words toward Vladimir Putin, and this was apparently enough to open the investigation.

00:45:28.000 Now, John Durham says no.

00:45:30.000 Right, John Durham?

00:45:31.000 So that sounds like there might be some different grounds for opening it.

00:45:34.000 information from other persons and entities both in the U.S. and outside the U.S. based on the evidence collected to date and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the inspector general we do not agree with some of the report's conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was open.

00:45:47.000 So that sounds like there might be some different grounds for opening it.

00:45:51.000 Attorney General William Barr said the same thing.

00:45:53.000 He says the inspector general's report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S.

00:45:58.000 presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.

00:46:04.000 It is also clear that from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory.

00:46:10.000 Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump's administration.

00:46:17.000 So people on the left are like, why are you ripping the IG?

00:46:19.000 Stop ripping it!

00:46:19.000 Well, maybe they have more information than the IG.

00:46:22.000 We're gonna have to wait to see what Barr has.

00:46:24.000 And people are saying Barr's a political hack, Durham's now a political hack.

00:46:27.000 Okay, why don't we wait for the information they will present, and then we will determine where the political hackery occurred.

00:46:32.000 Was it inside the IG's report, or was it here?

00:46:34.000 Or is it possible that it's not political hackery on any side?

00:46:38.000 That maybe the IG is just looking at the stuff inside the FBI and making the conclusion based on the bare legal requirement, and Barr and Durham have other information.

00:46:48.000 Maybe that's the case.

00:46:49.000 Maybe they disagree.

00:46:50.000 All of these could be possible.

00:46:51.000 There is one thing that is certain.

00:46:53.000 One thing is certain here.

00:46:54.000 The FBI blew it with regard to, for example, the Carter Page FISA warrant.

00:47:00.000 The FBI was acting right at the margins of its authority in using confidential human sources to ferret out information from the Trump campaign.

00:47:08.000 The report says, we found it concerning that department and FBI policy did not require the FBI to consult with any department official in advance of conducting confidential human source operations involving advisors to a major party's presidential campaign.

00:47:21.000 We found no evidence the FBI consulted with any DOJ officials before conducting these operations.

00:47:26.000 As we described, consultation at a minimum is required by Department and FBI policies.

00:47:30.000 We include a recommendation to address the issue.

00:47:32.000 So, even this report says, um, you guys were operating right at the boundaries of your authority, and in some cases beyond.

00:47:38.000 There were some 17 inaccuracies and omissions in the Carter Page FISA warrant.

00:47:42.000 According to the report, FBI personnel quote, fell far short of the requirements regarding the FISA warrant.

00:47:49.000 The FBI, one lawyer, altered evidence that falsely cast Carter Page as a Russian spy.

00:47:55.000 NBC's Pete Williams gets it right.

00:47:56.000 He says, listen, there are basically scrups at every single level here.

00:47:58.000 So while the media are proclaiming that the FBI is exonerated, everybody's good, no evidence of bias, there are scrups at every level and all of the scrups cut in one direction.

00:48:06.000 Here is NBC's Pete Williams acknowledging as much.

00:48:08.000 Nonetheless, it says it found no political bias in seeking the FISA warrant on Page.

00:48:13.000 What it says is the FBI basically repeatedly screwed up at every level Failing to pay enough attention to potential problems with steel.

00:48:22.000 Failing to tell the Justice Department.

00:48:24.000 And it says at one point that the FBI decided to seek this FISA warrant, even at the risk of being criticized for doing it later, because the report says FBI officials said they had to get to the bottom of a potentially serious threat to national security.

00:48:41.000 Okay, so, again, this report, it ain't good for the FBI and anybody in the media telling you that it is.

00:48:46.000 That's just because Trump may have, you know, over-pitched what he thought would happen here, but we still have to wait for Barr and Durham.

00:48:52.000 There may be more information forthcoming.

00:48:54.000 Okay, time for a quick thing I like and a quick thing that I hate.

00:48:56.000 So, things that I like.

00:48:58.000 There is this bizarre notion in in anti-religious communities, that religious people never think about their religion at all, and that religious people spend all day walking around in sort of a blind stupor, thinking, oh, well, everything that happens is good, because God did it, and I don't suffer, and there is no suffering.

00:49:14.000 And one of the examples they use is, oh, look at all those athletes who, every time they score a touchdown, they point to the sky, or they thank God after a game.

00:49:21.000 Do they really think that God is making them win the game? 1.00

00:49:24.000 That's so stupid. 1.00

00:49:25.000 No, what's stupid is that you actually think that a lot of people believe that. 1.00

00:49:29.000 What most people who are religious believe is that yes, God's hand is providential. 0.99

00:49:32.000 God does have a will.

00:49:34.000 We don't always understand what exactly God is doing.

00:49:37.000 But we don't actually believe that if you are good and nice and good Christian that you're going to score a touchdown on every pass.

00:49:44.000 Nick Foles is having a rough season for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

00:49:46.000 He's a religious Christian.

00:49:47.000 He was asked about a bad game and he preaches a basic religious message with regard to the impact of God in everyday events.

00:49:59.000 I've been able still to get to know people, get to know these guys through an injury.

00:50:02.000 Though I might not be playing, that is difficult from a fleshly perspective.

00:50:06.000 But from the spiritual perspective, from my heart, I've been able to grow as a human being to where I feel like I'm at a better situation here as a person than I was before because of the trial I just went under.

00:50:16.000 And I know that's a sermon in itself, but that's how I go through life.

00:50:19.000 And the good Lord's been there to, you know, it's not always about prosperity.

00:50:22.000 I don't believe in the prosperity gospel.

00:50:24.000 I believe if you read the word of God and you understand it, There's trials along the way, but they equip your heart to be who you are.

00:50:30.000 Okay, that is religion, right?

00:50:32.000 The religious perspective is that not that everything you do is going to earn you wealth and happiness, and that if you're religious, that all good things come to you.

00:50:40.000 Religious people suffer. 1.00

00:50:42.000 I mean, in Christianity, the founder of the religion suffers a great deal, right?

00:50:46.000 I mean, in Judaism, Moses doesn't go into the Promised Land.

00:50:50.000 Suffering is not avoided simply by believing in God or doing the right thing.

00:50:55.000 Nobody who's religious, truly religious, believes this.

00:50:57.000 But we do believe that if you overcome those trials, if you engage in those trials, if you engage in that struggle with justice in the universe and God, that it makes you stronger, equipped, better equipped to handle those trials.

00:51:08.000 Good for Nick Foles, good for Nick Foles, being a good messenger for a godly message.

00:51:11.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:51:14.000 Okay, so, a marriage story.

00:51:22.000 It's getting all sorts of plaudits.

00:51:24.000 There are two movies that have gotten all sorts of plaudits.

00:51:26.000 I already ripped one of them last week, The Irishman, a Martin Scorsese film, which is interminable.

00:51:30.000 And listen, I've been a longtime critic of Scorsese.

00:51:33.000 I think Scorsese is overrated as a director.

00:51:35.000 I find all of his films to center in on people who are just disgusting, and I don't find any of his characters particularly interesting.

00:51:43.000 I will acknowledge his style, but in The Irishman, he basically just... It's just three and a half hours of vomit.

00:51:51.000 I mean, it's never-ending.

00:51:52.000 Okay, so I ripped on Scorsese.

00:51:53.000 He got all sorts of Golden Globe denominations last night.

00:51:55.000 Now I'm gonna rip on A Marriage Story. 0.89

00:51:57.000 So A Marriage Story is a Noah Baumbach production.

00:52:00.000 He basically focuses in on obnoxious people on the Upper East Side.

00:52:04.000 It's basically a bunch of Upper East Side artists who...

00:52:09.000 Have no moral compass or moral code?

00:52:11.000 And we're supposed to care deeply about them because they write literature?

00:52:15.000 Which is like, it's so tired and it's so boring.

00:52:17.000 In any case, he makes this movie a marriage story.

00:52:19.000 Adam Driver is terrific in it.

00:52:21.000 Scarlett Johansson is terrific in it.

00:52:22.000 All the acting is great.

00:52:23.000 Laura Dern, who I love, is terrific in it.

00:52:25.000 All the acting is great.

00:52:26.000 It is a movie about obnoxious people being obnoxious, not giving a crap about their child, being obnoxious to each other without caring about the kid, and predicating a divorce on essentially the basis that they want to have different career paths.

00:52:40.000 I mean, you want to know why, like, the fact that people are finding this emotionally affecting, I think, is quite a problem for people's perception of morality. 0.80

00:52:48.000 Here's a little bit of the preview.

00:52:51.000 You know, most people in my business, you're just transactions to them.

00:52:54.000 I like to think of you as people.

00:52:55.000 Oh, okay, good.

00:52:58.000 You remind me of myself on my second marriage.

00:53:05.000 Part of what we're gonna do together is telling your story.

00:53:08.000 Did you dye your hair again?

00:53:10.000 No, this is me.

00:53:10.000 You don't like it?

00:53:11.000 Is it shorter?

00:53:12.000 I prefer it longer, but...

00:53:14.000 How are you doing?

00:53:15.000 And so it's all about how they negotiate the divorce and all the problems that they're having with each other.

00:53:26.000 And it's so emotional and so affecting. 1.00

00:53:28.000 Except both these people are garbage! 1.00

00:53:30.000 They're both garbage! 1.00

00:53:31.000 He's cheating on her because he's a bad person. 1.00

00:53:34.000 And she basically says that she is divorcing him because she never felt fulfilled.

00:53:39.000 So it's like both characters are Meryl Streep in Kramer vs. Kramer.

00:53:42.000 I've seen this compared to Kramer vs. Kramer.

00:53:44.000 Yeah, the only difference is that in Kramer vs. Kramer, Dustin Hoffman's the good guy.

00:53:47.000 There's no good guy here. 0.99

00:53:48.000 Everybody sucks. 1.00

00:53:49.000 Everybody's terrible. 1.00

00:53:50.000 If either of them took 15 seconds to consider the fact that they have a child whose life will be devastated by the fact that they are getting divorced...

00:53:57.000 Then maybe they might think about the fact that actually they share a lot in common, and if they could make themselves better, then they'd stay together for the kid.

00:54:04.000 It's very angering because I think that it is a generalized perception on marriage, that marriage is just there for the good of the two people, as opposed to being about the creation and raising of the child. 0.99

00:54:13.000 And it does demonstrate the stupidity of our divorce system, which is really quite garbage-y. 0.98

00:54:17.000 But aside from that, the people in this movie are so obnoxious that I legitimately could not tell Whether the director is attempting to mock them. 0.99

00:54:27.000 When you watch the trailer it's pretty obvious that it's meant to be sincere, but I... I watched the movie and I kept thinking to myself, is he making fun of the shallowness of these people?

00:54:34.000 Because if he's not and he's being sincere about why we're supposed to care about these people, that doesn't say a lot of great things about the writer and director.

00:54:40.000 And doesn't say a lot of great things about the people who find this movie supremely emotionally affecting.

00:54:45.000 My goodness.

00:54:46.000 Like, why don't any of these people ever, like, sit and have a think about the kind of life they want to create for their child, as opposed to themselves?

00:54:53.000 The entire movie's about themselves.

00:54:56.000 As a parent, I spend very little of my day thinking about the life I want to create for me.

00:55:00.000 And I think a lot about the life I want to create for my children.

00:55:03.000 So does my wife.

00:55:04.000 It's one of the reasons we have a good marriage and one of the reasons I think that we, I hope, we're good parents.

00:55:08.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content.

00:55:11.000 We have some great guests.

00:55:11.000 We're going to be analyzing everything impeachment related and all the rest.

00:55:14.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:55:15.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:55:16.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Rebecca Davkowitz.

00:55:25.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:55:26.000 Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.

00:55:28.000 Senior Producer Jonathan Hay.

00:55:29.000 Supervising Producers Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

00:55:32.000 Technical Producer Austin Stevens.

00:55:34.000 Associate Producer Colton Haas.

00:55:35.000 Assistant Director Pavel Lydowsky.

00:55:37.000 Edited by Adam Sajovic.

00:55:38.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:55:40.000 Hair and Makeup is by Jessua Olvera.

00:55:42.000 Production Assistant Nick Sheehan.

00:55:44.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:55:46.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

00:55:48.000 Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.

00:55:51.000 You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.

00:55:57.000 But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 10, 2019

The Sham Impeachment Charges | Ep. 913

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