The Ben Shapiro Show - U Can’t Impeach This! | Ep. 896

00:00:03.000 Impeachment time!

00:00:05.000 That's right.

00:00:05.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:06.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:12.000 Now, you may get the sense that I'm not taking this super seriously.

00:00:14.000 That's because I'm kind of not.

00:00:16.000 This show, The Ben Shapiro Show, is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:00:18.000 Stop putting your online data at risk.

00:00:20.000 Get protected at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.

00:00:24.000 OK, so the reason I'm not taking this supremely seriously is because everybody knows where this is going.

00:00:28.000 The Democrats are going to vote to impeach President Trump in the House, and then the Republicans are going to vote to acquit in the Senate.

00:00:33.000 It's that simple.

00:00:34.000 That's where this is going.

00:00:35.000 The only question is whether there is some sort of new bombshell that is dropped.

00:00:39.000 And given the witness testimony that we expect, the answer is probably not.

00:00:42.000 The answer is probably not.

00:00:43.000 The only other question here is whether Democrats are going to be capable of sinking President Trump's sort of public relations stance.

00:00:50.000 Are you going to see the support for impeachment rise just because there is so much bad press surrounding impeachment and because President Trump continues to insist against pretty much all the evidence that The phone call with Ukraine was absolutely perfect.

00:01:03.000 Nothing wrong with it.

00:01:04.000 Absolutely 100% what Abraham Lincoln would have done.

00:01:07.000 The reason that's not a smart strategy, honestly, in terms of public relations, in terms of impeachment, doesn't really matter what his strategy is.

00:01:13.000 What's going to be is what's going to be.

00:01:15.000 But in terms of public relations, the reason that's not a smart strategy is the same reason it is not a brilliant idea to go out at the beginning of your presidency and say, we are going to have 5% growth every year for the rest of my tenure.

00:01:25.000 The reason it's not smart to say that is because if you come in at 4%, which is great, then everybody goes, oh, well, you said 5, and you completely missed the boat.

00:01:32.000 Well, if you say that everything with Ukraine was absolutely 100% perfect, unbelievable. 1.00

00:01:37.000 And then people like, well, doesn't look that perfect to me.

00:01:40.000 It makes them more suspicious of your entire claim.

00:01:42.000 That's why it is a bad public relations strategy.

00:01:44.000 As I've been saying from the beginning, the president is not his own best lawyer.

00:01:47.000 But of course, today is when the public impeachment hearings begin.

00:01:50.000 Ooh, public impeachment hearings.

00:01:52.000 And all of these hearings are basically going to repeat the testimony that we saw behind closed doors.

00:01:56.000 There are no real surprise witnesses here.

00:01:58.000 Democrats have not approved many of the witnesses the Republicans want.

00:02:01.000 Yesterday, I talked a little bit about the witnesses that Republicans wanted.

00:02:04.000 President Trump had put out a list compiled by Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who is currently sitting with the House Intelligence Committee.

00:02:11.000 He's sort of been swapped in.

00:02:12.000 He's sort of a ringer brought in to do some of the questioning because he's good at this sort of thing. 1.00

00:02:16.000 And Jordan had released a list of the witnesses that Republicans would like to see.

00:02:20.000 On that list were people like Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, because Jordan wanted to ask, OK, well, was there something nefarious going on in Ukraine?

00:02:26.000 And if there was something nefarious going on in Ukraine or suspicious with Hunter Biden, why is it illegitimate of Trump to ask the Ukrainian government to investigate all of that?

00:02:35.000 Apparently, they also wanted to bring in the whistleblower.

00:02:36.000 Democrats have been quite reticent to bring forward the whistleblower.

00:02:39.000 Why?

00:02:40.000 Well, because they understand that there is pretty good information that the whistleblower is a Democratic operative, that the whistleblower is somebody who's a lifelong Democrat, who works from the Obama administration, who is good, or at least close, relatively speaking, with Vice President Joe Biden, who is close with James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence.

00:02:59.000 And because of that, the Democrats are concerned that if this person is brought forward in question, it's going to turn out this person was coordinating with the head of the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, and that this whole thing was put together behind closed doors.

00:03:10.000 Now, that would not in and of itself debunk the claims made about Trump and Ukraine, but it would go to motive.

00:03:16.000 And Democrats understand that would be a bad public relations move for them to allow that testimony, because the first thing that would happen is that Trump would say, which end?

00:03:24.000 And most Americans would say, yeah, kind of.

00:03:26.000 Because unless the crime is serious enough that we actually believe that it was not a partisan thing, it was actually just a, this is a danger to the country thing, that's going to be the Republican play.

00:03:38.000 So it's kind of weird.

00:03:39.000 It's sort of parallel.

00:03:40.000 On the one side, the Republicans are going to claim, and this is really what it's going to come down to, Senator John Kennedy finally coming around to adopting the only real defense to Trump's activity, which is that it comes down to intent.

00:03:52.000 And on the Democratic side, the American people are going to have to decide Democrats' intent.

00:03:57.000 Here's what I mean by this.

00:03:58.000 So John Kennedy made clear that when the question is, what was Trump intending to do in Ukraine?

00:04:04.000 Was he attempting to quote unquote, get Joe Biden?

00:04:07.000 Was the goal here to get Joe Biden in advance of the 2020 election in order to sink His perceived strongest opponents in the Democratic primaries or to or to knock him out in a general election.

00:04:16.000 Or was this more what I have suggested, which is Donald Trump has a bunch of weird ideas floating around in his head about Ukraine.

00:04:22.000 He knows that there is something going on in Ukraine with regard to the 2016 election.

00:04:25.000 He realizes that the Ukrainian embassy was coordinating with Alexander Chalupa, who was an operative for the DNC, and they were coordinating with the Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up dirt about Paul Manafort and presumably about President Trump.

00:04:36.000 He recognizes all that.

00:04:38.000 He also recognizes Ukraine has a long history of corruption.

00:04:40.000 And he's suspicious that some conspiracy theories are true, that Hillary Clinton's server is somewhere in Ukraine, buried in a forest or something.

00:04:48.000 And that he is suspicious that Joe and Hunter Biden were coordinating in order to get Hunter Biden a nice salary from a very corrupt company allegedly called Burisma.

00:04:56.000 And that all of this was wrapped up in his head.

00:04:57.000 And so when people said to him, do you want to give the aid to Ukraine?

00:05:00.000 He said, no, I want all those things investigated, all of them.

00:05:03.000 And so it really wasn't about 2020 or getting Joe Biden specifically.

00:05:06.000 It was about he had a bunch of weird ideas floating around in his head.

00:05:08.000 So it's not a good thing that he mentioned Joe Biden in this context.

00:05:12.000 It leads people to believe that he is that he is manipulating the international system and American taxpayer dollars for personal political gain.

00:05:20.000 But that's not actually what's going on.

00:05:21.000 Right.

00:05:21.000 So that's a question of intent.

00:05:23.000 Senator John Kennedy explained this just the other day.

00:05:25.000 He said, yeah, I mean, in the end, this is going to come down to a question of intent and a question of motive.

00:05:32.000 Here are the two possible scenarios.

00:05:34.000 Number one, the president asked for an investigation of a political rival.

00:05:41.000 Number two, the president asked for an investigation of possible corruption by someone who happens to be a political rival.

00:05:52.000 The latter would be in the national interest.

00:05:54.000 The former would be in the president's parochial interest and would be over the line.

00:06:00.000 I think this case is going to come down to the president's intent, his motive.

00:06:07.000 Did he have a culpable state of mind?

00:06:10.000 OK, I'm glad to hear that John Kennedy, the senator from Louisiana, is finally coming around to the case I've been making with regard to this thing for literally months at this point.

00:06:18.000 And I think this is the case that Republicans are going to end up coming around to.

00:06:22.000 Now, there's a question of intent on the right side of the aisle.

00:06:25.000 We're going to get to the question of intent on the left side of the aisle in just one second.

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00:07:40.000 Okay, so as I say, there's a question of intent on the Trump side of the aisle, and then there is, in terms of public relations, the question of intent on the Democratic side of the aisle.

00:07:48.000 And this is the case that Trump is going to make.

00:07:49.000 Do you really believe that Democrats are All fired, upset about Ukraine, or is this just part of a long campaign of Democrats wanting to get rid of Trump?

00:07:59.000 Is this really about a sincere effort to protect the presidency and the Constitution, or is this they hate me, they've wanted me out since literally the day I was elected, and before that, they wanted insurance policies against me according to texts from Lisa Page and Peter Strzok?

00:08:14.000 Right.

00:08:14.000 And that's exactly why the Democrats are hiding this whistleblower, because I think that the whistleblower is probably going to make it pretty apparent that Democrats were, in fact, motivated by partisan animus.

00:08:23.000 They were not motivated by some desire to protect the country.

00:08:27.000 So that is how these impeachment hearings open.

00:08:30.000 According to the Associated Press, the closed doors of the Trump impeachment investigation are swinging wide open.

00:08:36.000 The hearings are already underway.

00:08:38.000 When the gavel strikes at the start of the House hearing Wednesday morning, America and the rest of the world will have a chance to see and hear for themselves for the first time about President Donald Trump's actions toward Ukraine and consider whether they are, in fact, impeachable offenses.

00:08:49.000 It's a remarkable moment, even for a White House full of them, says the AP.

00:08:52.000 All on TV, committee leaders will set the stage.

00:08:54.000 Then comes the main feature.

00:08:55.000 Two seasoned diplomats, William Taylor, the graying former infantry officer now charged affair in Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary in Washington, telling the striking, if sometimes complicated, story of a president using allegedly foreign policy for personal and political gain ahead of the 2020 election.

00:09:14.000 Now, we have to examine exactly what these people are going to be testifying to.

00:09:19.000 The Democrats are laying out their bar, okay?

00:09:22.000 And their bar is no longer that Trump was simply trying to influence American elections, that this was overt bribery.

00:09:28.000 That President Trump was trying to bribe the Ukrainians with American military aid in order to foster his 2020 ambitions.

00:09:33.000 Now, they can't name the statute that Trump has violated here, because he hasn't violated any statute.

00:09:37.000 It's the dirty little secret of all of this, and Democrats basically acknowledge this.

00:09:41.000 But, at least colloquially, they're now accusing Trump of bribery.

00:09:43.000 So Adam Schiff, the House Intel Chairman, who spent the last several years pitching a pup tent outside of the CNN green room in order so that he could be there at the drop of a hat, Adam Schiff says the impeachable offenses will include bribery.

00:09:56.000 This will be the central, obviously, claim of the Democrats is that Trump was attempting to bribe the Ukrainians.

00:10:00.000 And in return, the Ukrainians were attempting to bribe Trump. 0.98

00:10:03.000 Here is Schiff.

00:10:04.000 I don't think any decision has been made on the ultimate question about whether articles impeachment should be brought.

00:10:12.000 But on the basis of what the witnesses have had to say so far, there are any number of potentially impeachable offenses, including bribery, including high crimes and misdemeanors.

00:10:22.000 The basic allegations against the president are that he sought foreign interference in a U.S.

00:10:29.000 election, that he conditioned official acts on the performance of these political favors.

00:10:37.000 OK, so Schiff is going to be pushing bribery.

00:10:40.000 Jackie Speier, another one of these Democrats, by the way, the best part of that clip is Schiff saying that he doesn't know whether impeachment charges are going to be brought.

00:10:48.000 Yeah, sure.

00:10:49.000 Okay, Jackie Speier is saying the same thing, so this is becoming a Democrat talking point.

00:10:52.000 So if the Republican talking point is going to be motive, the Democratic talking point is going to be bribery, and the media are dutifully repeating this, right?

00:10:58.000 They've decided they are no longer going to use the language quid pro quo, which is more accurate, right?

00:11:03.000 Because the question is not whether a quid pro quo happened, right?

00:11:06.000 That part is factually established, that there was some sort of quid pro quo that was attempted, right?

00:11:10.000 Trump was exchanging military aid for something, right?

00:11:13.000 He was holding back military aid in exchange for something.

00:11:16.000 The White House is claiming no.

00:11:18.000 In reality, he wasn't really because they ended up releasing the aid without getting the something.

00:11:21.000 Yeah, that's backfilling the story.

00:11:23.000 The question is why the aid was delayed in the first place.

00:11:26.000 What has been pretty well established is that Trump was holding back the aid for a reason.

00:11:29.000 That is a quid pro quo.

00:11:30.000 The question is whether it's a decent quid pro quo or an illegal quid pro quo.

00:11:34.000 So Democrats are saying bribery and the media are dutifully repeating the idea that bribery has been established when in fact that is in fact the entire question.

00:11:41.000 Here's Jackie Speier again repeating the word bribery.

00:11:42.000 You're going to hear bribery a lot.

00:11:43.000 You're going to hear extortion a lot.

00:11:45.000 These are the two terms that Democrats have decided on.

00:11:48.000 Also, because it sounds a lot more serious than quid pro quo, because many Americans don't understand what quid pro quo means.

00:11:54.000 Speaking out about the potentiality of it being bribery for some time.

00:11:58.000 The elements of bribery are there.

00:12:00.000 You have a president using his official office, using taxpayer money to demand from a foreign government that they are bribed to do an investigation to dig up dirt on the president's opponent in the upcoming election.

00:12:17.000 The corrupt intent is there as well in many ways.

00:12:20.000 Probably the most obvious is that they put the transcript or the summary of that phone call on July 25th into a special server.

00:12:31.000 Okay, there are a few holes in what she is saying here.

00:12:33.000 Hole number one is that Giuliani was already in Ukraine attempting to dig up dirt presumably on the Bidens.

00:12:38.000 Number two, when she says that the evidence of guilt is that they hid the transcript on the private server or on the sort of protected electronic server, Yeah, except that the New York Times has reported that Trump has been doing that with documents since basically the beginning, since everybody in his administration worked for Obama and then wanted to leak all that information.

00:12:54.000 So that is actually not dispositive.

00:12:56.000 OK, so in a second, we're going to discuss who exactly are the witnesses for today, because there are eight witnesses who are expected to testify within the next week in the House impeachment inquiry.

00:13:05.000 We'll tell you who those are and who are the people you're going to hear from today.

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00:13:10.000 I'm not.

00:13:10.000 We'll get to all of that in just one second.

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00:14:25.000 OK, so the witnesses who are expected to be called over the course of the next week include Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who was a member of the National Security Council.

00:14:35.000 He is an advisor to the National Security Council, and he was on the Ukraine call, so he can testify as to what he heard.

00:14:40.000 Gordon Sondland, who is the U.S. ambassador to the EU, who's an actual important witness because Gordon Sondland is the only person of whom I'm aware in this entire shebang, except for Rudy Giuliani, who is coordinating directly with President Trump.

00:14:51.000 So he may have more of a window into what Trump was thinking than anybody else who's been involved in these conversations.

00:14:56.000 Basically, Sondland was talking to Trump, but Bill Taylor wasn't talking to Trump Kurt Volker wasn't talking to Trump.

00:15:02.000 Marie Yovanovitch wasn't talking to Trump.

00:15:04.000 So if you are trying to pin intent on Trump, you have to talk to somebody who talked to Trump, right?

00:15:09.000 You can't talk to somebody who talked to somebody who talked to somebody who talked to somebody who talked to Trump.

00:15:13.000 That's not going to establish motive.

00:15:14.000 There's no real way to do that.

00:15:15.000 So Sondland will be a key witness.

00:15:17.000 Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine, who was involved in a lot of these negotiations, but again, was not having direct negotiations with Trump himself.

00:15:25.000 It was all filed through Mick Mulvaney or through Gordon Sondland.

00:15:28.000 There will be two State Department officials who are the first witnesses to testify publicly.

00:15:32.000 These are the guys who are testifying today.

00:15:33.000 Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent and Acting Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor.

00:15:39.000 And each one of them, they have an account to tell, but their account is in fact somewhat secondhand.

00:15:46.000 So, begin with George Kent.

00:15:48.000 So the Washington Post has a pretty good rundown on this.

00:15:50.000 They say he's a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the State Department overseeing European and Eurasian affairs.

00:15:55.000 Like Bill Taylor, the acting U.S.

00:15:57.000 ambassador in Ukraine, Kent appears to have been privy to how Trump's point people were trying to get Ukraine to do his bidding and how those efforts were viewed by other administration officials.

00:16:05.000 He was regularly talking to Taylor, and he heard about Trump's phone call with Ukraine's president from the person who set it up, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman.

00:16:13.000 Here's the problem.

00:16:14.000 George Kent has never talked to Trump.

00:16:16.000 He was not on the original phone call.

00:16:18.000 The only thing that George Kent really has to say is how people outside of Trump's very, very core inner circle perceived Trump's actions.

00:16:25.000 But as I've said before, that doesn't establish motive.

00:16:28.000 That's like we're trying to establish motive in a murder, right?

00:16:31.000 And I watch it on the news.

00:16:32.000 I see that there's news about the murder on the news.

00:16:36.000 I have an opinion about the motive of the person who committed the murder or committed the homicide.

00:16:40.000 Was it self-defense or was it an actual murder?

00:16:42.000 We don't know.

00:16:43.000 Okay, well, the only way you're gonna know that is by talking to the person who actually committed the crime.

00:16:47.000 You can't talk to somebody who talked to somebody who talked to somebody who talked to somebody who may have talked to the person who committed the alleged crime.

00:16:53.000 And so when you're talking about George Kent, Here's what he's testified so far, because all these people, remember, have already testified behind closed doors.

00:17:00.000 He testified, according to the Washington Post, that Trump wanted Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to publicly and explicitly announce he'd be investigating matters involving Democrats and wanted him to use the words Biden and Clinton.

00:17:11.000 But here's the problem.

00:17:12.000 Kent did not hear this directly from Trump, but rather from other officials who talked to people who talked to Trump.

00:17:17.000 Not even other officials who talked to Trump.

00:17:19.000 Other officials who talked to people who talked to Trump.

00:17:22.000 So we are now hearing this fourth-hand, fourth-hand from George Kent.

00:17:27.000 I love how the Washington Post couches this.

00:17:29.000 In the absence of people who talked directly to Trump testifying reliably, Kent made the starkest claim yet that the White House's effort to get Ukraine to root out corruption was actually an attempt to make them dig up dirt on Trump's 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton and a potential 2020 opponent, former VP Joe Biden.

00:17:44.000 But the key part of that sentence is, in the absence of people who talked directly to Trump, so what exactly is George Kent going to say that you and I don't already know?

00:17:53.000 Ken testified about how corrupt Ukrainians recruited Trump's personal lawyer to attack U.S. 0.92

00:17:57.000 officials with a campaign of lies about then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, which eventually made its way to the President.

00:18:03.000 And I guess that that lends some color to the idea that Rudy Giuliani was feeding bad information to the President of the United States via some of his Ukrainian colleagues.

00:18:11.000 But again, there's nothing illegal about Rudy Giuliani feeding bad information to the president of the United States unless he was acting as an actual foreign lobbyist, in which case that's a criminal problem for Giuliani.

00:18:19.000 But being fed bad information and acting on that bad information by President Trump is not illegal or impeachable.

00:18:24.000 It's bad judgment.

00:18:25.000 It's not illegal or impeachable.

00:18:29.000 From Ken's private testimony, Kent said POTUS wanted nothing less than President Zelensky to go to the microphone and say, investigation Biden and Clinton.

00:18:37.000 That's what Kent said he heard in a text from Taylor.

00:18:40.000 Okay, but again, Taylor was not talking to Trump, nor was he privy to the conversations between Trump and Zelensky.

00:18:47.000 So what exactly does Kent have to do with anything?

00:18:50.000 Basically, they're now bringing in MSNBC commentators, and it could be Fox News commentator, right?

00:18:55.000 Cable News commentators to talk about what they think of Trump's actions.

00:18:59.000 That is not impeachable stuff.

00:19:00.000 It's not impeachable stuff.

00:19:02.000 Now, the truth is that George Kent has said a couple of things that are actually kind of helpful to Republicans.

00:19:08.000 He testified in his close testimony that if Hunter Biden was on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma, well, Joe Biden was VP, that that was a conflict of interest.

00:19:17.000 He also testified that he raised those concerns with the Obama White House and was rebuffed and told, quote, there was no further bandwidth to deal with Hunter.

00:19:24.000 So that's testimony from George Kent that could in fact actually be damaging to the Democratic push.

00:19:31.000 So that is witness number one who's being brought forth today.

00:19:33.000 Then there's witness number two who's being brought forth today, and that is Bill Taylor.

00:19:36.000 Bill Taylor is the guy who is texting with Gordon Sondland, the EU ambassador, as well as Kurt Volker, the special envoy to Ukraine.

00:19:43.000 And the three of them appear to be sort of trying to navigate the thickets of Trump's thoughts, trying to navigate the thickets of what exactly does Trump want in order to restore this aid.

00:19:53.000 Now, again, the problem with the charged affair with Bill Taylor is that he's not the one who is actually talking to Trump.

00:19:59.000 And the reality is, there's only one chain of command that matters in this whole story.

00:20:04.000 And that chain of command is Trump's real inner circle.

00:20:07.000 The people who actually were talking with Trump about this thing.

00:20:10.000 See, I've been saying this about impeachable offenses for a while.

00:20:13.000 And criminal conduct or political scandals for a while.

00:20:17.000 The only political scandals that in the end tend to stick to politicians are the ones that are inherently personal.

00:20:22.000 Which is why sex scandals tend to be very sticky, no pun intended, for politicians.

00:20:27.000 The fact is that a lot of politicians, right, if you have a financial scandal, you can always blame it on somebody else.

00:20:32.000 If you're Barack Obama and your IRS starts targeting conservatives randomly, then you can always say, well, listen, I didn't tell anybody to do that.

00:20:39.000 They just kind of went and did that without my permission and then we policed it.

00:20:42.000 It's very difficult to pin down a scandal on a politician that is not directly connected to the politician.

00:20:47.000 Sex always is directly connected to the politician, literally, physically.

00:20:50.000 So it's very easy to get a politician caught in a sex scandal because who are they going to blame it on?

00:20:55.000 Their aide?

00:20:56.000 There's no way to blame it on a chief of staff or something.

00:20:56.000 Right?

00:20:59.000 But when it comes to a crime, an alleged crime like this, you need to establish, as John Kennedy said, the requisite intent.

00:21:05.000 Right?

00:21:05.000 You have to establish motive on the part of the President of the United States.

00:21:08.000 The only people who can do that are the people talking directly to the President.

00:21:10.000 So all of this testimony, From people who apparently have never talked to President Trump.

00:21:14.000 Like, Bill Taylor has never had a conversation with President Trump so far as I'm aware.

00:21:18.000 That doesn't make a difference.

00:21:20.000 Right?

00:21:21.000 His reasoning is perfectly plausible.

00:21:22.000 I'm not saying that Bill Taylor's testimony isn't a plausible take on events.

00:21:26.000 I'm just saying it is not a dispositive take on events.

00:21:29.000 It is not evidence.

00:21:31.000 It is his perception of the situation.

00:21:31.000 Right?

00:21:33.000 It is not evidence that what he believes happened actually happened.

00:21:38.000 So the Washington Post also sums up who Bill Taylor is.

00:21:41.000 He's the acting U.S.

00:21:42.000 ambassador to Ukraine, also known as the Charged Affair.

00:21:44.000 Taylor is also a career diplomat and military veteran who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations, including as ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009.

00:21:52.000 He was asked by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to take over after Trump had Marie Yovanovitch removed from the ambassadorship.

00:21:58.000 He said it was a tough decision to return to Kiev, but ultimately he accepted Pompeo's request.

00:22:03.000 He was not in the room, as the Washington Post acknowledges, where the alleged quid pro quo orders were issued.

00:22:08.000 But he was talking to many people who were in the key rooms, both in Washington and in Kiev.

00:22:11.000 So again, we have second-hand or third-hand testimony.

00:22:14.000 In his closed testimony, he was asked specifically if he'd ever spoken to President Trump.

00:22:19.000 He said, I have not.

00:22:20.000 He was not present on the July 25th phone call with Ukraine.

00:22:24.000 He said, I received no readout of the call from the White House.

00:22:27.000 And his allegations, what were they based off of?

00:22:30.000 Right, here's the question answer with Taylor from his closed testimony question.

00:22:33.000 It's your inference that Mr. Giuliani's goal would be the president's goal?

00:22:36.000 Taylor, yes.

00:22:37.000 And your source is the New York Times?

00:22:38.000 Taylor, yes.

00:22:39.000 So do you have any other source that the president's goal in making this request was anything other than the New York Times?

00:22:46.000 Taylor, I have not talked to the president.

00:22:47.000 I have no information from what the president was thinking.

00:22:50.000 So again, this is Democrats trotting out people who have perceptions.

00:22:53.000 And their perceptions are as valid as your perceptions.

00:22:55.000 Maybe slightly more valid in the sense that they actually know about Ukraine, know about Ukrainian politics, know some of the players.

00:23:01.000 But, if the idea here is that they can offer the damning testimony that gets Trump?

00:23:06.000 Nope.

00:23:07.000 Nope.

00:23:09.000 The Washington Post, though, is talking him up.

00:23:12.000 They say he testified that he learned via conversations with White House aides and national security officials and Trump's point people in Ukraine.

00:23:17.000 There was a concerted effort to force Ukraine into a quid pro quo.

00:23:20.000 If it wanted military aid and an Oval Office meeting, Ukraine's president needed to publicly agree to investigate Democrats.

00:23:25.000 What's critical about Taylor's testimony is that he didn't attribute this to one conversation with one person.

00:23:30.000 He talked to high level officials at the National Security Council, officials in Ukraine's presidential office, and two of the three amigos designated by Trump to handle Ukraine policy outside the normal diplomatic channels.

00:23:40.000 Taylor said he was in the regular channel.

00:23:41.000 He said he was also in the irregular channel.

00:23:44.000 Now, there are a bunch of people who have similar perceptions of all of this.

00:23:49.000 Taylor's testimony was corroborated by a bunch of other people, including National Security Council official Tim Morrison.

00:23:55.000 Gordon Sondland originally testified he didn't remember offering Ukraine a quid pro quo to unfreeze its military aid, but then Sondland went back and revised all of that.

00:24:04.000 This is why the testimony that's really going to matter here is Sondland's testimony.

00:24:09.000 Even in his own testimony, by the way, Taylor explicitly said that Trump didn't direct all of this, that he didn't know if Trump directed all of this.

00:24:19.000 So Lee Zeldin asked him, where was this condition coming from if you're not sure if it was coming from the president?

00:24:24.000 And Taylor said, I think it was coming from Mr. Giuliani.

00:24:26.000 And Zeldin said, but not from the president?

00:24:27.000 Taylor said, I don't know.

00:24:29.000 So again, this is going to come down to, do they subpoena Giuliani?

00:24:32.000 Does Giuliani have to testify?

00:24:33.000 And what exactly does Giuliani have to say?

00:24:36.000 Okay, in just one second, we're going to get to the outstanding questions here.

00:24:40.000 Also, we're going to introduce you to some of the players who you're going to be hearing about in the very near future, because they are not actual members of Congress.

00:24:46.000 They're just advising the Democrats and advising the Republicans.

00:24:48.000 We'll give you their background, and it gives you a window into the strategy being pursued by both Democrats and Republicans.

00:24:53.000 We'll get to all of that in just one second.

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00:26:03.000 Okay, so there are a bunch of outstanding questions that we still need answered in this impeachment inquiry.

00:26:07.000 Amber Phillips over at the Washington Post actually has a fairly good roundup of the questions that still need answering.

00:26:12.000 And the fact is, Democrats are not going to get the answers from the witnesses that they are proposing to interview right now.

00:26:17.000 Question number one, who is directing all of this?

00:26:19.000 Did Trump himself order aid withheld to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political opponents?

00:26:23.000 Or were some people in his administration acting of their own volition or their interpretation of what he wanted?

00:26:28.000 And by the way, that last phrase is the key.

00:26:30.000 Their interpretation of what he wanted.

00:26:31.000 What we have seen with President Trump over and over and over again is that people who work for him are constantly trying to forecast what he wants.

00:26:39.000 The most obvious example is there was talk back when Trump was visiting South Korea that people had ordered the cover-up of the USS John McCain, like the logo of the USS John McCain.

00:26:49.000 And then it turned out Trump hadn't ordered any of that.

00:26:50.000 It was just some intrepid, forward-thinking member of his administration trying to please him preemptively.

00:26:57.000 Is it possible that people around him were saying things like, yeah, you know, I can see that Trump is really bothered by all of this, but the thing he's really bothered by is Joe Biden.

00:27:05.000 And so we really need the Joe Biden statement.

00:27:07.000 The statement will probably please Trump.

00:27:09.000 Did Trump demand the statement or was that something concocted by other members of his team in order to sort of please Trump?

00:27:15.000 And that makes a difference because, again, to go back to the Obama IRS example, let's say you wanted to impeach Barack Obama back in 2015.

00:27:21.000 Over the Lois Lerner IRS scandal, they were targeting conservative 501c3s and preventing them from receiving their 501c3 status on the basis of ideology, a violation of IRS regulation and the First Amendment.

00:27:32.000 And he said, OK, well, Obama clearly wanted that to happen.

00:27:34.000 He was going out and publicly calling for it to happen, in fact.

00:27:37.000 He and fellow Democrats were suggesting that the IRS do just that.

00:27:41.000 And then the IRS did that.

00:27:43.000 Well, Obama would say, well, yeah, but I didn't order anybody to do that.

00:27:45.000 I'm the president of the United States.

00:27:47.000 If I want to order somebody to do that, theoretically, I could, but I didn't.

00:27:50.000 That was just people taking the law into their own hands and trying to forecast what I wanted.

00:27:53.000 Well, Trump could easily say the same thing here.

00:27:56.000 In September, as all this was getting started, the Washington Post reported that Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold off on aid just before Trump called Ukraine's new president and asked for political investigations.

00:28:06.000 But weeks of interviews with current and former officials have yet to connect the dots that Trump explicitly ordered the aid withheld to force Ukraine to do something for him.

00:28:15.000 Right?

00:28:15.000 So that is obviously the big one.

00:28:17.000 If you can't link it directly to Trump, if it was just people around Trump who were getting out over their skis because they were trying to please Trump preemptively, well, that's not going to get Trump.

00:28:25.000 Then question number two.

00:28:26.000 According to the Washington Post, what was Mick Mulvaney's role?

00:28:29.000 They say if anyone knows why the aid was paused, it's likely Mulvaney.

00:28:32.000 He publicly said Trump held up the money to try and force Ukraine to investigate a conspiracy theory about their involvement in the 2016 election.

00:28:39.000 He said, did Trump also mention to me the past corruption related to the DNC server?

00:28:42.000 Absolutely.

00:28:43.000 No question about that.

00:28:44.000 But that's it.

00:28:44.000 And that's why we held up the money.

00:28:46.000 He tried to walk that back later by saying there was no quid pro quo.

00:28:49.000 But at the very least, he said he knows the aid was held up.

00:28:51.000 And why?

00:28:52.000 Well, yeah, that's true.

00:28:53.000 But again, that's not illegitimate, right?

00:28:54.000 If Trump said, I want to hold up the aid until you, Ukraine, investigate corruption surrounding 2016, I fail to understand how that is any different in any way from Senator Bob Menendez and two other Democratic senators in 2018.

00:29:07.000 Sending a letter to Ukraine saying if you don't help with the Mueller investigation to get to the bottom of Russian interference in the 2016 election, then we're going to hold up the aid.

00:29:15.000 There is, in fact, an ongoing investigation into Ukrainian and Russian interference in the American election.

00:29:22.000 The results of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation from the IG are supposed to come out very, very soon, like sometime this month.

00:29:30.000 Then there is the question of Rudy Giuliani, and this is the big one to me.

00:29:33.000 Because Rudy is the guy who Trump dispatched to Ukraine, and Rudy has the biggest mouth.

00:29:37.000 The man has no discipline whatsoever.

00:29:40.000 So, was Rudy deployed to Ukraine to go dig up dirt explicitly on the Bidens, or was this about assuaging Trump's feelings about 2016?

00:29:47.000 Was he investigating corruption in Ukraine that had to do with 2016, or was he looking forward to sinking Joe Biden in 2020 by digging up dirt on Joe Biden?

00:29:57.000 And the only person who's going to be able to testify to that is Rudy Giuliani.

00:30:00.000 And Giuliani, so far, has said publicly that his whole thing is that he wants to defend Trump against allegations.

00:30:05.000 Well, defending Trump against allegations is, in fact, tied up in something that does have national security implications.

00:30:11.000 Meaning, if the allegations are that Trump was involved in skewing the election of 2016, and so Giuliani is out there trying to dig up other information about people interfering in the 2016 election, there's nothing illegitimate about that.

00:30:22.000 We just did a two-and-a-half-year investigation about foreign interference in American elections.

00:30:27.000 If, however, it was about Giuliani digging up dirt on Biden in order to benefit Trump for 2020, and then Trump militarizing that with Ukrainian foreign aid, then you got a problem on your hands.

00:30:36.000 Okay, we're gonna get to more of this, more of the analysis of Impeachmentgate.

00:30:40.000 The day has arrived.

00:30:42.000 We'll get to all of that in just one second.

00:30:44.000 First, you need to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

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00:31:23.000 Go check it out.

00:31:31.000 Again, we don't know Giuliani's role, we don't know Mulvaney's role, we don't know whether Trump directly ordered any of this.

00:31:37.000 The Washington Post suggests, if Giuliani was acting of his own volition, his motives are unclear.

00:31:41.000 We know that two of his business associates who were recently indicted on campaign finance charges had ties to Ukraine, and State Department officials have testified they may have felt threatened by anti-corruption efforts U.S.

00:31:50.000 diplomats were leading against some Ukrainian officials.

00:31:52.000 Okay, well, let's say, in the most nefarious circumstance, let's say that there's an accusation made that these Ukrainian officials were trying to make time with the Trump administration by using Giuliani as a funnel for information.

00:32:04.000 And they were funneling damaging information about Biden, about Ukraine, about corruption via Giuliani to Trump.

00:32:10.000 Does that implicate Trump or go to Trump's motive?

00:32:13.000 Not really.

00:32:13.000 It mostly raises questions about Giuliani.

00:32:16.000 And fourth question is, did Ukraine know why its military aid in an Oval Office meeting were being withheld?

00:32:22.000 Well, in order for them to know that, presumably they would have had to coordinate directly with Trump.

00:32:26.000 So, even answering this question doesn't answer the fundamental question, which was, what was Trump's motive?

00:32:30.000 What was Trump's intent?

00:32:31.000 Let's say that Gordon Sondland was misinterpreting Trump, and then he went over to Ukraine and said, we want Biden.

00:32:37.000 Well, without showing that Sondland was told by Trump to go get Biden, maybe that's Sondland who is acting on his own, not because he hates Biden, but because he is trying to forecast the feelings of the President of the United States.

00:32:48.000 The Washington Post suggests Sunlin testified he told the Ukrainians they were likely to get their aid released when they announced an investigation into Democrats.

00:32:55.000 But again, likely to get their aid released means that he is speculating.

00:32:59.000 The acting U.S.

00:32:59.000 ambassador in Ukraine, Bill Taylor, was in close contact with the Ukrainians.

00:33:02.000 He testified they knew what was being asked of them and they didn't want to do it.

00:33:05.000 He said, I think it was becoming clear to the Ukrainians that to get this meeting they wanted, they'd have to commit to pursuing these investigations.

00:33:12.000 Whether Ukraine knew it was being forced into something would go a long way to confirming a quid pro quo, but Democrats are actually backing off of this proposition because they don't like the idea they're going to have to actually prove the elements of bribery.

00:33:22.000 Instead, they think that the president's attempt to simply hold back the taxpayer aid for unspecified reasons could theoretically be enough.

00:33:32.000 Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, he said, extortion doesn't require a you give me this and I'll give you that kind of quid pro quo.

00:33:37.000 It simply requires using your muscle to get something that you don't have a right to.

00:33:41.000 Okay, but you haven't established what exactly he doesn't have a right to yet, or that he was applying muscle in order to get that thing.

00:33:49.000 If I tell you that I'm not going to pay you until you give me that hamburger, that's called a free market transaction.

00:33:54.000 If I tell you I'm not going to pay you until you off my wife, that is a very different sort of transaction.

00:33:59.000 So we actually have to determine what kind of transaction this is.

00:34:04.000 And the fifth question is really the big one, which is why did Trump withhold the aid in the first place?

00:34:07.000 Like, what was the point?

00:34:09.000 What was Trump's issue with Ukraine?

00:34:10.000 And again, I think that the answer here is kind of obvious, right?

00:34:12.000 I don't think that Trump has been hiding the ball.

00:34:14.000 Trump thinks that Ukraine is hiding the CrowdStrike server, right?

00:34:18.000 He thinks they're hiding Hillary's server.

00:34:19.000 I don't know why.

00:34:20.000 I don't know why.

00:34:21.000 He read too much InfoWars.

00:34:22.000 He put together some weird conspiracy theory.

00:34:24.000 And now he has been out there proclaiming that somewhere buried in the forests of Kiev is some Hillary Clinton surfer.

00:34:30.000 They took it from her bathroom.

00:34:31.000 They flew it over to Kiev.

00:34:33.000 They took it out into the forest and they buried it under a Dasha or something. 0.98

00:34:36.000 It's like it's... I don't get it.

00:34:38.000 Okay, but that was Trump's belief.

00:34:39.000 He also believes, correctly, that the Ukrainians were working with the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016.

00:34:44.000 That part is actually true, right?

00:34:45.000 It was reported by Politico.

00:34:46.000 Also, he believes that something corrupt is going on with Burisma and Biden.

00:34:50.000 And he believes that that impacted the 2016 election because obviously if the Ukrainians were working hand in glove with the Obama administration to get him and covering up for the Bidens, that's a big problem.

00:35:01.000 Right?

00:35:01.000 So he believes all of those things.

00:35:04.000 Are any of those beliefs wrong?

00:35:06.000 Sure.

00:35:07.000 I think the CrowdStrike thing is completely unsubstantiated.

00:35:09.000 I think the Hunter Biden, Joe Biden thing so far does not have proper evidence to actually substantiate the allegation.

00:35:15.000 But is it illegal or impeachable for the president to want things that he wants investigated and investigated?

00:35:22.000 Not necessarily.

00:35:22.000 I mean, not really.

00:35:24.000 Not unless what you're talking about is the president really attempting to leverage American foreign aid on behalf of his electoral results.

00:35:31.000 Purely.

00:35:32.000 Purely.

00:35:33.000 Not as a side effect of foreign policy.

00:35:34.000 Purely.

00:35:35.000 Because he wanted Biden out.

00:35:37.000 And that part, honestly, I don't actually see that in Trump's activity.

00:35:42.000 People don't believe me when I say this, obviously.

00:35:44.000 And you shouldn't, right?

00:35:45.000 Because the fact is, I am a conservative.

00:35:47.000 I'm a Republican.

00:35:48.000 But the fact is, I don't actually see objectively that Trump has ever had the level of intent necessary to do anything.

00:35:55.000 I don't think that he's ever had the level of intent to eat a hamburger.

00:35:59.000 I think that it's half accident when he eats a hamburger.

00:36:04.000 I guess the idea here is that Trump, like a laser beam, focused in on Joe Biden.

00:36:07.000 Then he was like, I'm going to withhold military aid to get Joe Biden because Joe Biden is just so dangerous.

00:36:11.000 And I have been following this Burisma thing like a hawk. 1.00

00:36:14.000 Or, alternatively, he has thoughts, and he vomits the thoughts whenever he is asked about a particular topic.

00:36:19.000 Which one sounds more like Trump to you?

00:36:21.000 Thought-vomit Trump?

00:36:22.000 Or, like a laser beam, 40 chest, planning out every move in the belly's Admiral Thrawn from the post-Star Wars trilogy?

00:36:31.000 Yeah, I don't think so.

00:36:33.000 I don't think so.

00:36:33.000 Okay, so now we need to introduce you to a couple of the players who are going to become pretty important in this whole impeachment inquiry.

00:36:41.000 The Democrats have an impeachment lawyer.

00:36:42.000 The Republicans have an impeachment lawyer.

00:36:45.000 The Democrats impeachment lawyer is a person named Daniel Goldman.

00:36:48.000 He spent a decade as an assistant U.S.

00:36:50.000 attorney in Manhattan.

00:36:51.000 He left that job in 2016 to become a TV legal analyst, but now he is going to be questioning witnesses called to testify about Trump's efforts to persuade Ukraine to investigate a political rival.

00:37:03.000 Again, alleged efforts to persuade Ukraine to investigate a political rival would be more honest, Washington Post.

00:37:09.000 The Washington Post reports that Goldman is slotted to question each witness for 45 minutes, followed by five-minute question sessions for each lawmaker.

00:37:16.000 Stephen Castor, the general counsel for the House Oversight Committee, will be the Republican's point man.

00:37:21.000 Apparently, Goldman has been doing high-profile cases for quite a long time, and he has focused specifically on organized crime.

00:37:29.000 In 2017, when then-assistant U.S.

00:37:30.000 attorney Brooke Cuccinella was preparing for the trial of Billy Walters, a professional gambler who made millions on insider stock trades, she knew it would make big headlines because the case involved Phil Mickelson.

00:37:40.000 Cuccinella said she requested Goldman to be on the trial team because he has a bit of swagger as a trial lawyer and has a confidence that serves him well in a courtroom.

00:37:46.000 He's incredibly effective.

00:37:49.000 Walters, one of the most successful sports gamblers in Las Vegas history, rolled the dice against Cuccinella and Goldman and lost.

00:37:57.000 Goldman has a long history of high-profile cases.

00:38:04.000 According to Preet Bharara, the former U.S.

00:38:06.000 Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who was Goldman's boss for years.

00:38:08.000 You can see my interview with Preet Bharara on our Sunday special.

00:38:10.000 We did it about a month ago, before the impeachment inquiry opened.

00:38:14.000 Bharara said he was one of the go-to trial guys.

00:38:15.000 There's no case that's too complex for him.

00:38:17.000 He's a great prosecutor.

00:38:18.000 He's got powerful presence.

00:38:19.000 To the extent the public will be watching him and looking for a credible questioner, I think they'll be very impressed with Dan Goldman.

00:38:27.000 Papparara said that the impeachment hearing will be challenging, even for a skilled trial lawyer, because of the proceeding's unusual nature.

00:38:32.000 He said impeachment is fully 100% a legal event, in that it's a constitutional enterprise right from the start.

00:38:37.000 At the same time, the nature of the constitutional proceeding is a dynamic that includes two political branches, so it's political in that sense, but not political in the pejorative sense.

00:38:45.000 That's how the founders wanted this to happen.

00:38:48.000 He says that he thinks that Goldman will handle the spotlight well.

00:38:52.000 Goldman, by the way, had prosecuted a number of the Genovese mobsters, including a hitman named Fyotis Fredi Gias.

00:38:59.000 He also prosecuted a sprawling auto insurance fraud case involving Russian organized crime figures.

00:39:04.000 So his job is going to be to connect the dots on behalf of the Democrats.

00:39:07.000 This is the idea here.

00:39:10.000 Meanwhile, on the Republican side of the aisle, there's a man named Stephen Castor, who's the GOP staff attorney.

00:39:15.000 The Washington Post reports that Castor will help lead the effort as General Counsel for the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

00:39:22.000 Castor has spent his career avoiding media spotlight.

00:39:24.000 He's risen through the ranks over nearly 15 years and seven consecutive chairmanships to become the Oversight Panel's top GOP lawyer.

00:39:32.000 A half-dozen former colleagues and bosses praised him as a straight-shooting attorney whose deliberate low-key style will make him an asset to Republicans amid intense public scrutiny of the impeachment hearings.

00:39:40.000 Daryl Issa said that Caster's job is to focus on making complex things simple.

00:39:43.000 Daryl Issa said that Caster's job is to focus on making complex things simple.

00:39:58.000 Issa said he wouldn't want to play poker because he doesn't give up what he's thinking particularly easily.

00:40:02.000 Caster was originally hired by the Oversight Committee Chairman Tom Davis in 2016.

00:40:06.000 He had spent four years as a commercial litigator at the Philadelphia and Washington offices of the law firm Blank Rome.

00:40:13.000 One of his first investigations involved the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

00:40:18.000 As part of that probe, the GOP-led committee held nine hearings, obtained more than half a million pages of documents, and released a 569-page final report critical of the Bush White House.

00:40:28.000 Also, he helped handle the probes of Benghazi and the Fast and Furious scandal.

00:40:34.000 So a lot of, even Democrats, suggest that this guy is an institutionalist who is a solid lawyer.

00:40:41.000 So those will be two of the faces that you see cropping up throughout this entire process.

00:40:47.000 Meanwhile, President Trump continues to fulminate.

00:40:49.000 The best thing that Trump can do here is to sit still.

00:40:51.000 I mean, again, this has always been true.

00:40:53.000 It was true during the Mueller report.

00:40:54.000 It is true now.

00:40:55.000 The best thing that Trump can do is to sit still.

00:40:57.000 Just sit down.

00:40:59.000 Stop saying things.

00:41:01.000 Feel free to say.

00:41:02.000 This is a partisan political witch hunt.

00:41:05.000 If you're Trump's team, you're telling him, yeah, keep saying that, because that obviously, there's truth to it.

00:41:09.000 I just keep saying that over and over and over.

00:41:11.000 But other than that, like, stop.

00:41:13.000 Just stop doing things.

00:41:14.000 Apparently, however, inside the White House, there are constant conversations about firing people, which is obviously going to be a bad move.

00:41:21.000 Apparently, Trump immediately wanted to fire Mick Mulvaney after Mulvaney went out there and said there was a quid pro quo.

00:41:27.000 According to the Washington Post, senior advisors have cautioned Trump that removing Mulvaney at such a sensitive time could be perilous, both because Mulvaney played an integral role in the decision to freeze the aid and because of the disruption that would be caused by replacing one of Trump's most senior aides.

00:41:40.000 One Trump advisor says, I don't think you'll see him going anywhere until after December.

00:41:43.000 But the president was very unhappy with that press conference.

00:41:46.000 That was a very bad day for the president.

00:41:47.000 Well, the problem is you oust Mulvaney.

00:41:49.000 And now what exactly is Mulvaney's interest in not going and testifying about what Trump ordered him to do, particularly if he's the one who ends up coming into the crosshairs here?

00:41:59.000 Trump's advisors are saying, well, you ousted Bolton and now Bolton is flirting with testifying, so why would it be smart to get rid of Mulvaney?

00:42:06.000 Plus, it would look to the public, the Democrats would make the case that the reason you fired Mulvaney is not because he was fibbing or because he was exaggerating, but because he was telling the truth.

00:42:13.000 That he said something you didn't like, so you fired him.

00:42:16.000 And by the way, they're going to use the exact same logic with regard to this other rumor, which is that Trump was apparently considering firing the intelligence community inspector general who reported the whistleblower complaint to Congress.

00:42:28.000 According to the New York Times, Mr. Trump's private complaints about a man named Michael Atkinson, the Intel Community Inspector General, who deemed the complaint against him to be credible.

00:42:38.000 According to the New York Times, Trump's private complaints about Mr. Atkinson have come as he has publicly questioned his integrity and accused him of working with the Democrats to sabotage his presidency.

00:42:47.000 It's unclear about how far Trump's discussions about removing Atkinson have progressed.

00:42:51.000 Two people familiar with what took place said they thought Trump was just venting and insisted Mr. Atkinson's dismissal was never under serious consideration.

00:42:58.000 That is probably true.

00:42:59.000 But, again, sit still.

00:43:02.000 Sit still.

00:43:02.000 Stop this.

00:43:03.000 It is not a smart thing to do.

00:43:05.000 Now, who are the witnesses who are going to matter?

00:43:07.000 Okay, well, the people who spoke directly to Trump.

00:43:09.000 So, Gordon Sondland, the EU ambassador, as I've said, he's going to matter.

00:43:13.000 The testimony of Rudy Giuliani, when he is forced by a court to testify, which is quite likely, his testimony will matter.

00:43:21.000 John Bolton, if he is told to testify, that will matter because he can go to state of mind for President Trump.

00:43:26.000 Right?

00:43:27.000 Those are all the ones that are going to matter at this time.

00:43:29.000 Now, meanwhile, the Democrats are trying to beat Trump to the punch a little bit here because the Justice Department Inspector General is now inviting witnesses to review his draft of his Russia report.

00:43:38.000 And Democrats are deeply afraid that the origins of the Trump Russia report are simply going to lend credibility to Trump's claims that they have been trying to target him via the intelligence community.

00:43:47.000 Since before he was President of the United States, according to the Washington Post, the Justice Department's Inspector General has begun scheduling witnesses to review draft sections of his report on the FBI's investigation of President Trump's 2016 campaign.

00:43:58.000 The clearest indication yet that the long-awaited document will soon be released publicly, people familiar with the matter said, and that will be a bombshell dropped right in the middle of the impeachment hearings.

00:44:07.000 If it turns out that there was malfeasance by the Obama administration, in coordination perhaps with Ukrainian sources, as Politico reported, That is going to throw a bombshell into the middle of this because then it looks like Trump is really upset about something that actually happened.

00:44:20.000 Ukrainian coordination with members of the Hillary campaign and the Obama administration.

00:44:25.000 That Trump is really upset about the coordination of Democrats to suggest that he did things that he did not do.

00:44:33.000 According to the Washington Post, several witnesses have been scheduled or in talks to review sections of the report dealing with their testimony in the next two weeks.

00:44:40.000 That could mean public release is imminent, though the witnesses will be allowed to submit feedback, which could theoretically spark more investigative work and slow down the process.

00:44:49.000 But again, if this thing is released in the near future, wow, it will definitely throw a wrench into the entire impeachment hearing.

00:44:57.000 And if it has anything in it, right?

00:44:58.000 The Washington Post reported earlier this month the DOJ was trying to release the report quickly.

00:45:03.000 One person involved said November 20th was being eyed as a target date.

00:45:07.000 Lest you forget, today is November 13th, so one week from today, in the middle of the hearings, the DOJ report on Trump-Russia investigation origins could break, which would be just wild.

00:45:19.000 Another person indicated the report was more likely to be released after Thanksgiving.

00:45:23.000 But we are starting to get close, in other words.

00:45:28.000 As the Washington Post suggests correctly, conservatives hope the report will give them ammunition to argue the FBI was corrupt in its pursuit of Trump and his alleged ties to Russia, and Republican lawmakers have been pressing the DOJ to make the report public next week.

00:45:39.000 Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa tweeted, quote, I will be very disappointed and left to wonder what the game is.

00:45:43.000 Is someone at the FBI or DOJ tying the IG's hands?

00:45:46.000 So, again, this is the next two weeks are going to be a mess.

00:45:50.000 Welcome to the holiday season, gang.

00:45:53.000 How exciting.

00:45:54.000 And meanwhile, the 2020 Democrats are still in turmoil.

00:46:00.000 Their field is just a mess.

00:46:03.000 They still have not decided whether, in fact, they want a revolution at the top of the Democratic ticket or whether they simply want a return to normalcy.

00:46:10.000 Joe Biden would be the return to normalcy candidate, and then you have Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders campaigning for the revolutionary title.

00:46:17.000 Certain candidates are basically done.

00:46:18.000 So Kamala Harris is basically finished, right?

00:46:20.000 She's down at 1% in the polls in New Hampshire. 0.59

00:46:22.000 She's toast.

00:46:23.000 She can't raise any money.

00:46:24.000 She's trying to make a comeback in South Carolina and having no success.

00:46:27.000 And so, and why?

00:46:29.000 Why?

00:46:29.000 Well, in one clip, I would go with probably it's because of her crazy laugh.

00:46:35.000 I know, I know. 0.98

00:46:36.000 That's not a great reason to get rid of a candidate, but when the crazy laugh attaches to lack of credibility and ridiculous policy proposals, you're pretty much toast.

00:46:42.000 Here's Kamala Harris laughing eerily over the last couple of days. 0.97

00:46:46.000 Isn't anybody in charge?

00:46:49.000 And no one is laughing with her.

00:46:54.000 No one is laughing with her.

00:46:56.000 By the way, she suggests that you text FEARLESS to 70785.

00:47:00.000 But after hearing that laugh, are you fearless?

00:47:02.000 Or are you fearful that she will burst out of your closet at 2am and attack your children?

00:47:08.000 That laugh, man, that is a joker laugh.

00:47:10.000 A full-on joker laugh.

00:47:14.000 Oh, my God.

00:47:15.000 I can't imagine why she's seen no success.

00:47:17.000 Meanwhile, Joe Biden is still stumbling around and getting angry at people who ask him basic questions.

00:47:21.000 So somebody had the temerity to ask him about his support for the 1994 crime bill.

00:47:25.000 And Joe Biden got very frustrated and started asking them personal questions.

00:47:30.000 Let me answer the question, okay?

00:47:32.000 Good, thank you.

00:47:32.000 Very nice.

00:47:33.000 Number one.

00:47:35.000 Every single solitary member and major black mayor and mayor in the country said we had to respond to the violent crime rise.

00:47:46.000 Look at the facts.

00:47:46.000 That's not true.

00:47:47.000 That is absolutely true.

00:47:48.000 Check.

00:47:49.000 And the majority of the black caucus overwhelmingly supported it.

00:47:52.000 The number of violent crime has risen after the war drops.

00:47:56.000 No, violent crime went down, kiddo.

00:47:59.000 Where do you go to school, man?

00:47:59.000 Okay.

00:48:00.000 So, by the way, Joe Biden is saying things that are correct, but he is a bit prickly there.

00:48:07.000 Okay.

00:48:08.000 The Democratic field is weak, which is why Hillary Clinton may be thinking about jumping back in. 1.00

00:48:13.000 Really, like she was making noises about, it's never too late for Hillary Clinton.

00:48:17.000 Never too late.

00:48:18.000 Ugh.

00:48:18.000 Just what America needs.

00:48:20.000 Another Trump-Hillary election cycle after an impeachment hearing.

00:48:23.000 Just fantastic.

00:48:24.000 Okay, time for a quick thing I like, and then a quick thing that I hate, and we'll be out of here.

00:48:27.000 So, things that I like.

00:48:29.000 I'm in the middle of a book by Yannick Wasserman, who's an economist.

00:48:32.000 It's called The Marginal Revolutionaries, and it is an excellent book.

00:48:35.000 It is all about the Austrian school of economics.

00:48:38.000 I tend to think of myself as a devotee of the Austrian school of economics, but it talks about the different sort of views within the Austrian school, right?

00:48:45.000 Hayek did not agree with von Mises, who did not agree with Schumpeter, These were all different thinkers and it's a fascinating sort of discussion of where the Austrian school came from, what its thought processes were, why in some cases Austrian economics has been exaggerated in terms of libertarianism.

00:49:05.000 A lot of these economists were in favor of, for example, progressive income tax.

00:49:09.000 It really does lend a lot of color to some of the basic thought that you would read if you just read The Road to Serfdom.

00:49:14.000 It gives you a broader background.

00:49:16.000 The economists really did shape America in tremendous ways, because the battle between the Austrian School of Economics and then its sort of branching successor, the Chicago School of Economics, on the one side, and then the Keynesians on the others, it's really shaped how Americans think about economics.

00:49:30.000 And now, of course, you have the actual Marxists who are coming back into play, which is absurd.

00:49:33.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:49:40.000 So, if you think that Democratic cities are good evidence that Democrats should govern, I have some news for you.

00:49:46.000 San Francisco's new DA says that public urination will not be prosecuted, so that's exciting stuff.

00:49:50.000 Chase Abudin, the urine and feces-plagued city's incoming district attorney, according to the Daily Caller, pledged during the campaign not to prosecute public urination and other quality-of-life crimes if he was elected.

00:50:01.000 He declared victory on Saturday night after results showed him winning a plurality of votes in the DA race.

00:50:06.000 He said we will not prosecute cases involving quality of life crimes, crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc.

00:50:15.000 should not and will not be prosecuted.

00:50:18.000 He said many of these crimes are still being prosecuted.

00:50:19.000 We have a long way to go to decriminalize poverty and homelessness.

00:50:23.000 You're not criminalizing poverty.

00:50:25.000 You are criminalizing people sleeping on the streets, spreading disease, living in their own filth, pooping on the sidewalks, pissing on the sidewalks, blocking children from going where they need to go, camping in public parks.

00:50:37.000 Like, is this the America you want? 0.84

00:50:40.000 Because the radicals of the Democratic Party, this is the America they want.

00:50:44.000 And by the way, things are not going fantastically well in Democrat-governed cities where they have taken up this sort of policy.

00:50:52.000 The New York Post reported that a homeless man dumped a bucket of hot diarrhea on an LA woman near the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

00:50:58.000 Heidi Van Tassel said she was about to drive home from a Thai restaurant near the famed tourist area in April when her alleged assailant, Jerry Blessings, dragged her out of the vehicle.

00:51:06.000 He pulled her over into the middle of the street where he dumped a bucket of feces over her head, she said. 1.00

00:51:11.000 It was diarrhea, hot liquid.

00:51:12.000 I was soaked and it was coming off my eyelashes and into my eyes.

00:51:16.000 Presumably this all would have been okay if the guy hadn't just dumped it.

00:51:19.000 If he just sort of like pushed the bucket at her and it had sort of spilled, then I guess that's not prosecutable in the city of Los Angeles.

00:51:25.000 She was tested for infectious diseases and thank God she came up clean.

00:51:30.000 But she said that apparently the paramedics said that it looked like the man had been saving all of this up for about a month.

00:51:35.000 I mean, you never want to spend.

00:51:37.000 You definitely want to save.

00:51:38.000 The investment potential is high for hot feces.

00:51:40.000 So, America's liberal governed cities just doing fantastically, fantastically well.

00:51:45.000 Okay, we'll be back here a little bit later today for two additional hours of content.

00:51:49.000 I'm also speaking tonight at Boston University.

00:51:51.000 It should be fascinating.

00:51:52.000 I think it will be interesting.

00:51:54.000 I think you'll want to tune in.

00:51:54.000 You can check that out at yaf.org slash live.

00:51:57.000 You can also check it out at dailywire.com and on our Facebook page and on our Twitter and all the rest of those places.

00:52:02.000 Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow for all of the impeachment updates.

00:52:05.000 The day has arrived and the process has begun.

00:52:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:52:08.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:52:09.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.

00:52:16.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:52:17.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:52:19.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:52:21.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

00:52:23.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:52:26.000 Assistant director, Pavel Wydowski.

00:52:28.000 Edited by Adam Sievent.

00:52:30.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

00:52:31.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:52:33.000 Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.

00:52:35.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:52:37.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

00:52:39.000 It was the best of times.

00:52:40.000 It was the worst of times.

00:52:42.000 It was the age of Make America Great Again.

00:52:44.000 It was the age of America Was Never Really That Great.

00:52:48.000 It was the election season of hope.

00:52:49.000 It was the election season of despair.

00:52:51.000 The Atlantic Monthly and many others think America is heading for a civil war.

00:52:56.000 It's actually dedicating an entire issue to how that civil war might be avoided.

00:53:01.000 We will examine how to bring our country back from the brink.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 13, 2019

U Can’t Impeach This! | Ep. 896

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