Glenn and Pat are joined by Nick D'Paolo and John Solomon to discuss the latest on the latest in the Russia/Podesta scandal. Also, Pat takes a shot at a trans athlete in Australia.
00:02:20.480And was not given a chance to defend himself.
00:02:24.560And I don't know, Pat, if you've read, and I don't know if I have the strength right now to read the Washington Post article.
00:02:32.340It's an article, not an opinion piece.
00:02:36.200GOP embraces a debunked Ukrainian conspiracy to defend Trump from impeachment.
00:02:42.180Republicans' promotion of Trump's Ukraine conspiracy theory is the latest example of their capitulation to him and of the GOP's rapid transformation on Russia from a party that for decades celebrated its hawkish stance towards the Kremlin to one that is reluctant to take a hard line and risk Trump's wrath.
00:03:04.740I take a hard line all the time against Russia.
00:03:07.320Now, there are some people who are on television, some people that are in Washington that are not, but Donald Trump has a much harsher policy on Russia than Obama ever did.
00:03:26.800They sold our uranium to the Russians.
00:03:31.400And let's not forget the Obama conversation with Medvedev that was captured on camera and microphone about after the election, he'd have a lot more leeway to do what Putin wanted him to do.
00:03:43.140And let's not also forget that the Democrats have done the exact opposite of some Republicans.
00:03:49.160And now, all of a sudden, to them, Russia is the greatest threat on Earth.
00:04:02.980We were voting for that guy when the Democrats and the press went and decided they were going to vote for the guy who said, yeah, right, well, the 80s called.
00:04:16.220And we should point out the front runner for the Democratic nomination right now was in the administration that believed that Russia was such a non-threat that they could mock and say that, you know, mock him as an 80s Ivan Drago situation.
00:22:00.200I mean, were you really having arguments about this at the dinner table?
00:22:05.260Because at the dinner table, even my dinner table, during the election, there was all kinds of back and forth and, you know, polite, but all kinds of back and forth.
00:22:28.960We're going to get back to the news here in a second.
00:22:31.000But, Nick, before we take a break here, this Saturday, Glenn Beck is going on the stage in Salt Lake City for his Christmas show, which some have described as stand-up comedy in the past.
00:22:46.680Now, I'm interested to see what your opinion would be of something like this.
00:25:54.900Can he legally unmask an American citizen in the name in an official report like this?
00:26:01.920Well, first off, I don't have AT&T as a phone service.
00:26:04.540So those most likely aren't my records.
00:26:06.920They're likely someone else's records where my phone calls show up.
00:26:11.880And, you know, anytime the government uses its power in a subpoena or a warrant or a, you know,
00:26:20.120I think these are probably congressional subpoenas.
00:26:21.640As we know, they announced subpoenas for Lev Parnas and Rudy Giuliani.
00:26:25.940My suspicion, without having been able to get confirmation yet, is that my phone records just simply show up in some of their call logs that we know were subpoenaed.
00:26:35.900Anytime the government uses that power, it has a chilling effect on you as a reporter.
00:26:40.100Who wants to call me the next time if they think, you know, their records could be subpoenaed or shown on screen?
00:26:45.120But at the end of the day, what does it show?
00:26:47.480It shows I'm a reporter that was engaged in reporting.
00:26:50.660In March and April of 2019, the Russia Mueller report was coming down.
00:26:55.640Of course I was talking to Rudy Giuliani.
00:26:57.820So was the New York Times and every other major news organization in America.
00:27:01.600They've made to look scandalous what it's supposed to be, what reporters do every day, talk to all sides of a story and do journalism.
00:27:09.760I wonder if you're going to file a lawsuit at all about, you know, being followed by the government or with AT&T or the government if they didn't obtain it the right way.
00:27:21.540Or really a lawsuit against the smears that are coming your way.
00:27:25.900Let me read something from the Washington Post.
00:27:27.640Last night, there was never any real story here.
00:27:30.960There were only an effort by Giuliani to scare up a bogus line attack against Democrats in preparation for the 2020 presidential election.
00:27:39.280The record demonstrates that Solomon's work advanced that campaign, end quote.
00:27:44.800Yeah, I guess if you want to ignore the facts, you can take that position.
00:27:49.800And then the Washington Post has a good history of ignoring the facts.
00:27:52.920That's why they got large parts of the Russia collusion story together.
00:27:57.040I'd compare my reporting on Russia collusion against theirs any days, and I think the American public's verdict will be clear.
00:28:03.080But let me describe what are the political issues, and then people can judge for themselves.
00:28:07.820Isn't it a fair issue to ask whether Joe Biden created the perception of a conflict of interest when he fired a prosecutor who he knew was overseeing an investigation of his son?
00:28:18.180Regardless of his motive, because I never established one way or the other what the motive was.
00:28:21.940I established the timeline and the facts that it happened.
00:28:38.560The Washington Post apparently doesn't see that because it affects a Democrat.
00:28:42.220The second issue was there was a dysfunctional relationship between our U.S. embassy and the Ukraine prosecutors charged with fighting corruption.
00:28:50.200Donald Trump's talking about corruption.
00:28:51.580They're criticizing him for maybe considering withholding aid because of corruption.
00:28:54.860Well, if the State Department has a bad relationship with the people fighting corruption, you're never going to solve the problem.
00:29:20.980What I said was there were these isolated instances where a DNC contractor seeks dirt from the embassy, where the ambassador writes an op-ed criticizing Donald Trump in the mid-election, and where two government officials knowingly and willfully released evidence they weren't supposed to release to force Paul Manafort's resignation.
00:29:37.600And, by the way, a Ukrainian court concluded that was an intrusion on the U.S. election.
00:29:41.640Those are three legitimate journalism storylines.
00:29:45.380And the Washington Post, by its own admission, shows its bias by not acknowledging the importance of those issues to the American public.
00:29:52.840It's something I have just never – I've never seen anything so obvious as this before.
00:29:57.760They are trying to make it look and paint this picture that you, Giuliani, and his two associates, they used you as the engine for some sort of giant propaganda and smear operation.
00:30:12.300Can you address the relationship and communications with Giuliani and his two associates?
00:30:18.640So I have acknowledged from the beginning, and my bosses were fully aware and approved of this, that in March of 2019, after more than a year or nearly a year of reporting on Ukraine issues, I was still at a loggerhead.
00:30:35.880I couldn't get some of these Ukraine officials to talk on the record.
00:30:38.600I knew everything on background, had lots of documents.
00:30:40.620But after a year of reporting, I didn't have anyone on record.
00:30:44.780Joe DeGentleman, Victoria Tensing, are two of my lawyers.
00:30:49.360I sent a draft or went over a draft with one of my stories with them saying, hey, can you go over libel and help me on some issues here?
00:30:55.560And they said, listen, you're struggling with this issue being on the record.
00:30:58.420And I said, yes, I want to get people on the record.
00:31:00.160I want people to believe it because people put their name to it.
00:31:02.600And they said, well, we have this guy named Lev Parnas that we work with on some of our Ukrainian cases.
00:31:50.180Now, after my stories began emerging, Rudy Giuliani, who I talked about, talked with a lot about the Russia case, because he was the president's defense man on that case, occasionally would call me and he would tell me something or he'd offer to help.
00:32:04.900So in the end, nothing I can say this.
00:32:31.520I don't report things that aren't true.
00:32:33.420So that's what reporters do on a daily basis.
00:32:36.120And the idea that The Washington Post and Schiff could demonize this is bad for journalism, bad for free speech and certainly hurtful to me.
00:32:49.080I guess you're like the Goebbels maybe of this story, according to the the the press and and the left.
00:32:57.080But but they had did they call you to testify?
00:33:01.200Have you been did you expect to be called?
00:33:03.700Are you expecting to be called by the Senate?
00:33:06.720I don't, you know, and again, I'd have to.
00:33:09.920There are lots of obligations I have as a journalist, including the IP is owned by the Hill.
00:33:13.840So if that event ever occurred, if I ever was sought to participate, I'd have to go through a process that all journalists have to go through.
00:33:21.580But there is a lot of supposition that in all of these accusations and all of this smear campaign against me, nobody wants to look at the facts.
00:33:30.380It's all designed to distract from the facts that I actually have reported.
00:33:33.960The facts I have reported are incontrovertible.
00:33:47.340The prosecutor suspects he had another.
00:33:48.880That's a he said, she said, but those facts are not in dispute.
00:33:52.560And all of this effort by Adam Schiff, the Democrats and his allies in the media are designed to distract from the fact that the factual trail in my stories is true and unassailable.
00:34:04.100So they engage in character assassination and assassination by affiliation or by assassination by phone records with no context.
00:34:11.420I guarantee you, if you ran Rudy Giuliani's phone records, you'd find lots of other reporters in them.
00:34:36.420I'm going to take a one minute break and then I come back because I want to talk to you about that factual information and why the Republicans don't seem to be using the actual documents and the recordings and the taped testimonies.
00:35:17.660Do you have any inkling or any feeling that you will go after the media or shift with some sort of a lawsuit on what's happening?
00:35:27.080Listen, my lawyers and I are taking a look at some of the more outrageously false claims that are in some of these news articles, and we'll make a decision soon on whether to take some action.
00:36:26.640So it's not just about you, but I want to talk about Lusanko.
00:36:30.400Now, I've talked to Rudy Giuliani, and he's even said, Lusanko is – you know, he says one thing, then he says another.
00:36:36.180So you can't always take everything that he says at face value, you know, and they're all corrupt, as he said.
00:36:43.640Everybody, you just have to assume going in, don't trust anybody.
00:36:47.320However, with Lusanko, his name is in this report over 60 times, and every single time he's mentioned, they call him corrupt, but they never cite a charge.
00:36:59.380Why is he considered corrupt now when Biden labeled him as one of the good guys just, you know, the years prior?
00:37:12.420Because no – they all call him corrupt, but there is no evidence that we can find anywhere that he was charged or questioned about anything.
00:37:21.880Yeah, in every column I wrote in Ukraine, I carefully noted to the reader that everything in Ukraine is a Wild West.
00:37:30.560There's a lot of corruption, a lot of politics.
00:37:32.720Take everything with a grain of salt, but there's enough that here in the factual evidence that you should look at.
00:37:37.720When I – and again, I don't know of any corruption charges that were lodged against Lusanko formally, certainly not in the time when I interviewed him.
00:37:45.580He was the sitting attorney general of the country, pretty senior official.
00:37:49.300But I didn't just take Lusanko's word for things.
00:37:53.140I went and got the State Department's side of the story.
00:37:57.480There's very little difference between the State Department and Lusanko.
00:38:00.540They want to argue over the word whether a list was given from the ambassador to him.
00:38:05.260Whether it was a list or a set of names, the State Department has testified under oath.
00:38:09.560Yes, we did pressure the Ukraine prosecutor's office on multiple cases not to pursue certain people that we liked or that we considered anti-corruption activists.
00:38:20.060So the thing that Lusanko was highlighting, that there was this pressure that created resentment between the Ukrainians and the State Department, remains true today.
00:38:29.660Whether there was a list or just some names discussed, the State Department was interfering in internal investigations of the Ukrainian government.
00:39:17.400So here's where here's where the State Department officials get exposed for their diplo speak and their double speak.
00:39:24.600They'll say it really wasn't pressure when we wrote a letter saying there's no evidence and you shouldn't be pursuing George Soros's group called Antac.
00:39:32.200It wasn't really pressure when we told them we don't think you should investigate the parliamentary member, Lusanko.
00:39:37.220It really wasn't pressure when we told them not to investigate the journalist named Shabanan.
00:39:55.680But what they did was specifically instruct the Ukrainians on multiple occasions, we don't want you pursuing, harassing, investigating, prosecuting these people.
00:40:06.240And before I did my stories, I interviewed the State Department and they said, yeah, we did that.
00:40:28.440So, John, I mean, the volumes of information that you have, the documents that we have shared with you, you've given to us and we have found additional stuff.
00:40:44.120But why, this case is so clear, why are the Republicans not sitting down when they're called a conspiracy theory?
00:40:54.920Why are they not sitting in front of television saying, here's the document?
00:41:06.920I mean, Devin Nunes has made some pretty strong statements during the hearings.
00:41:10.020And I think Lindsey Graham now is requesting some of these documents, right?
00:41:14.000There was a document request just last week.
00:41:16.260I think at the end of the day, you know, each side, each party is going to come to whatever they think their best strategy is, both for resolving impeachment and for 2020 politics and just for traditional oversight.
00:41:27.400But there is a body of evidence that you have, I have, Rudy Giuliani has, ABC News has, New York Times has.
00:41:35.200Remember, before the New York Times, Washington Post and ABC and all these others turned on me, they confirmed my stories back in May and April.
00:41:41.460And then they abandoned them when the criticism of the Democrats began, which is a really odd dynamic in America.
00:41:47.880But there is a body of trail that those three issues we talked about are true, and they're important oversight issues.
00:41:54.240And somebody should step to the plate and look at them.
00:41:56.480That's why I wrote the columns, not to demean any ambassador or cause anything to cause, to highlight public interest issues that probably needed oversight.
00:42:03.660And, you know, I think the country, most, many people in the country appreciate what I did.
00:42:09.260Hopefully Congress will do its job and do the oversight and get to the bottom of these issues.
00:42:52.420If you're not a subscriber, become one now on iTunes.
00:42:55.520And while you're there, do us a favor and rate the show.
00:42:58.380Hey, tomorrow on BlazeTV.com, you can get an interview.
00:43:02.480I did about an hour or so with Nikki Haley, commercial-free, and it is on the impeachment and on her time and what she saw behind the scenes.
00:43:17.800If you're a BlazeTV subscriber, you'll get this tomorrow.
00:43:21.660It'll be available online for the next couple of days.
00:43:24.380Saturday, it will go everywhere else on my podcast, but you'll get it early, and it is really worth watching.
00:43:30.140Here's Nikki Haley on the impeachment.
00:43:32.480I think the investigation actually should start here in the United States.
00:43:35.940I think we should look at what sort of conflict of interest Biden had, what was said to the prosecutor, because we've got the videos of things that he had said and things that he demanded.
00:44:29.940But more than that, the Democrats might slightly have an ounce of credibility had they not been trying to do this since the day he was elected.
00:44:37.640She goes into how the the attacks on the president are so unconstitutional and within his own cabinet.
00:44:50.960Listen to her tell the story about Rex Tillerson trying to, quote, save the country.
00:44:55.960This was a real concern for me because I saw that he was slow walking things or I saw that they just weren't doing what the president was asking in the National Security Council meetings.
00:45:06.220But on this day, we had had a meeting in the Oval Office and it was about giving Palestinian aid.
00:45:12.220And I wanted to pull the aid because they were anti-American.