Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Peter Schweizer & John Solomon ｜ 4⧸4⧸19
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 2 minutes
Words per Minute
173.21848
Summary
While everyone is focused on Joe Biden's handsy son, Glenn Beck and Peter Schweizer take a deep dive into the scandal surrounding Joe Biden and his inappropriate behavior with a young woman at a Democratic primary debate. They talk to John Solomon, a reporter for the Associated Press who has been covering the Biden scandal for over 20 years, about what we know and what we don't know.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, podcasters. Today is a today's a great show. We are we are putting a special together next week on Joe Biden.
00:00:10.180
And while everybody's talking about how handsy is, I want to talk about how handsy his son is in a story that almost no one knows.
00:00:19.360
We are talking to the experts and we're going to put it all together for you next week.
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I believe it's a week from today, week from Thursday, that you will hear all of the evidence against Joe Biden and his son.
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There's some pretty stunning stuff. We had Peter Schweizer on about it.
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And John Solomon, a guy who reported for the for the Associated Press in The Washington Post for over 20 years.
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Now saying, no, no, no, he's an opinion guy. No, he's not. No, he's not.
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Well, he's pointing out things that are not based on opinion. That's for sure.
00:00:50.240
Yeah, he's pointing out facts. And by the way, we're going to go through all this, as you pointed out, next week on the TV show.
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You're not only going to get Glenn's analysis and these big exposés that are coming out on all these candidates every single week.
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We're doing a new one. You're also going to get analysis from Mark Levin and Stephen Crowder and, you know, Eric Bowling and a whole great slew of people who can break down every issue from every angle.
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So go to BlazeTV.com slash Glenn, use the promo code Glenn and save 10 bucks.
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And we really need your help. We definitely need your help to be able to do the connecting of the dots and tying it all together for you.
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We need your support at BlazeTV.com slash Glenn, promo code Glenn. Make sure you put the promo code Glenn in. Please do that today.
00:01:38.480
Also, it's Helium Thursday. We found something that we, I mean, fit Helium perfectly.
00:01:48.640
Louis Farrakhan. And who's the biggest fraud candidate? All this and more on today's podcast.
00:02:01.480
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:02:08.480
Okay. So while everybody is concentrating on Joe Biden and he's, well, would you call it an apology, Stu?
00:02:19.840
I mean, no, I wouldn't say it was an apology. I mean, first of all, he didn't say you're sorry, not required in an apology, by the way.
00:02:27.140
But, you know, it's an expression of regret. So I think you could get, there's some level of apology in there.
00:02:32.720
Uh, however, it's more of, you know, look, you guys changed the rules and I now realize you've changed the rules and I will change to reflect that.
00:02:43.300
Uh, we actually have the rules. Wait, what rules?
00:02:48.560
Uh, no, the rules have never been like that. I mean, unless you're John Wayne Gacy. I mean, really, seriously, what are the rules?
00:02:54.920
That, that's like, those are like, I think that guy's a pedophile. In 1965, you know, to 2025, that's pretty clear.
00:03:05.240
Well, I mean, I don't know if that's actually true. I will say that, you know, there's been a lot of study on who is offended by such things, such creepy Joe Biden actions over the past couple of weeks.
00:03:17.540
And it seems to me to be largely some sort of generational gap in which they, everyone who seems to be interviewed and who's a Democrat and is, you know, campaigned with Joe Biden or been at rallies with him, the, the older generation seems to really like it.
00:03:35.800
And, uh, you know, like there's people, one of the women who came out now, there's seven, by the way, who've come out and said, Hey, Joe Biden made me feel uncomfortable.
00:03:43.460
One of the women specifically said, after it happened, everyone started coming up to me and saying, Oh, you're so lucky.
00:03:50.200
And I thought to myself, wow, should I think of myself as lucky and not offended, which I don't even understand.
00:03:56.320
I don't even understand the thought process that goes into that. I mean, if you felt creepy, creeped out about it, why are you second guessing and thinking you might be lucky?
00:04:03.940
Uh, I don't understand it. But the point there is that everyone around her did not seem like it was offended to the fact that she's got a bunch of attention from the vice president of the United States.
00:04:14.140
People were thinking it was kind of great. And the funny thing about this is, and I think it's very central to this whole incident.
00:04:20.860
The first thing you have to remember is absolutely no one on the democratic side actually cares about any of this.
00:04:27.840
Nope. Not one little bit. None of them think it's bad. None of them care.
00:04:32.560
Including, I would say the women who actually are coming forward. Now, yes, they may have been offended, but watch how little they care about those incidents.
00:04:41.820
If he wins the nomination, they'll all be out there being like, you know what? I mean, it did make me feel upset at the time, but I think he's changed.
00:04:49.080
And I honestly, he's a really good guy. I've learned over the past few months about what a great guy this guy is.
00:04:53.900
And I support him. And that's why I'm campaigning for him.
00:04:56.960
The timing of this coming out is just ridiculous. It's ridiculous.
00:05:00.500
It's ridiculous. This has been an issue for a very long time. We've talked about it before.
00:05:05.160
This is solely an issue being used for politics because at this very moment, they think they can get someone who's more socialist than him to be president.
00:05:14.380
If they believe the two choices are Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the most socialist person they're going to be able to find is Joe Biden.
00:05:22.100
And then they will love him and they will only be critical of whatever they think Donald Trump did.
00:05:26.200
And they will hammer anyone who comes out against him.
00:05:30.240
Of course. I mean, it's so transparent. So it's hard to take any of this seriously.
00:05:34.680
But here's the here's the sort of underlying issue here for Biden when it comes to the story.
00:05:43.800
Joe Biden's strength as a campaigner is very closely related to what we're calling creepy, which is he comes out.
00:05:52.680
He shakes everybody's hands. He gives everybody hugs.
00:05:55.680
He doesn't put his hands on the shoulder of everybody.
00:05:59.080
He doesn't kiss everybody's head, but he doesn't do it if it's a man or a boy.
00:06:02.440
No, he says he does do it sometimes as a man with a man.
00:06:05.400
He says that in a state. He's come up to a man and smell the back of his head.
00:06:09.180
He does allude to that. He doesn't specifically say it.
00:06:13.160
I've never seen that more. It's possible. I'd like to see the video.
00:06:16.380
But if you're Joe Biden and your strength is walking around some Iowa firehouse and shaking hands and kissing babies,
00:06:25.320
which is what everyone used to call it. I don't think you could call it that anymore.
00:06:28.180
If he can no longer do that, because if he has one moment that looks creepy, it's going to be a national news story every time now.
00:06:37.460
So you've taken his strength away from him for this entire primary, which, of course, is the secondary part of this.
00:06:44.860
Number one is get him out of the race. Hopefully this turns into a big thing so we can win because we're socialists.
00:06:49.280
Number two is if he's going to be in the race, at least the things that give him an advantage over us, we're going to be able to take away.
00:06:57.060
I feel somewhat like remember that scene with the with the emperor where Luke has all this, you know, gusto like, oh, yeah, my friends are coming.
00:07:08.340
And the emperor just goes, oh, you think that your friends will save you?
00:07:13.940
It's kind of it's kind of like that. It's kind of like, oh, at least we got Biden.
00:07:23.780
He will not. He will not. He's going to try, though.
00:07:26.920
And Jolton Joe had a statement that came out yesterday.
00:07:30.620
And this is it was made on a phone. So the audio is not fantastic.
00:07:35.440
But we let's listen to it and we can translate if needed.
00:07:38.440
In my career, I've always tried to make a human connection.
00:07:41.880
That's my responsibility, I think. I shake hands.
00:07:44.580
I hug people. I grab men and women by the shoulders and say, you can do this.
00:07:49.500
And whether they're women, men, young, old, it's the way I've always been.
00:07:54.600
It's the way I've tried to show I care about them and I'm listening.
00:07:58.160
And over the years, knowing what I've been through, the things that I've faced,
00:08:01.920
I've found that scores, if not hundreds of people, have come up to me and reached out for solace and comfort.
00:08:08.660
Something, something, anything that may help them get through the tragedy they're going through.
00:08:20.500
They've shifted and the boundaries of protecting personal space have been reset.
00:08:32.600
That's my responsibility, my responsibility, and I'll meet it.
00:08:37.100
But I always believe governing, quite frankly, life for that matter, is about connecting, about connecting with people.
00:08:50.800
And so the idea that I can't adjust to the fact that personal space is important, more important than it's ever been, is it's just not thinkable.
00:09:06.900
His beautiful, lovely, talented, good wife, Jill.
00:09:14.220
And because he always talks about Jill and and quite honestly, if I were doing these videos, you know, and I had been hugging people and you saw these kids like, oh, this is creepy.
00:09:26.320
My wife would say to me, would you stop doing that?
00:09:37.480
You've got love in your heart and everything else.
00:09:43.040
And and where is she just going, you know, not just stepping up and just going, you know what?
00:10:01.580
Maybe maybe he doesn't ever want to include her in this because, you know, whatever.
00:10:05.620
But it just seems strange because I know my wife, your life would, too.
00:10:11.780
If you were seen in these videos, because you watch these videos and a lot of them are very uncomfortable.
00:10:23.600
But if you were trying not to be right, if you were acting like a creepy, if you were acting like Joe does.
00:10:31.400
Hey, I mean, she'd probably be delicate about it.
00:10:33.860
But try to tell me, stop doing that immediately.
00:10:43.360
But, you know, be careful with people's personal space.
00:11:07.140
Remember, they're not even in the campaign yet.
00:11:09.500
You know, I mean, it could very well be that they're holding that back as a as a future defense.
00:11:35.440
I mean, it could very well be that they're holding that back as a future defense.
00:11:36.800
I mean, it could very well be that they're holding that back as a future defense.
00:11:37.920
I mean, it could very well be that they're holding that back as a future defense.
00:11:41.500
He said yesterday, God does not love this world.
00:11:52.480
Jesus died because he was 2000 years too soon to bring about the end of civilization of the Jews.
00:12:10.980
He's offended everybody except the people who follow him here.
00:12:30.620
Jesus died because he was 2000 years too soon to bring about the end of the civilization of the Jews.
00:12:56.940
Can you can you make Louis Farrakhan sound like he's on Helium?
00:13:11.740
Ladies and gentlemen, the Glenn Beck program presents Helium Thursdays with
00:13:30.220
Jesus died because he was 2000 years too soon to bring about the end of the civilization of the Jews.
00:13:44.860
It makes it a little more palatable, doesn't it?
00:13:57.960
Play the Joe Biden apology thing from yesterday.
00:14:02.160
In my career, I'm always trying to make a human connection.
00:14:20.540
You can't really hear the Alyssa Milano one too well.
00:14:22.540
Is there, what was from, let's see, how about the green, the green real deal?
00:14:39.820
The feeling from this administration is that we are in a full-blown crisis and that they are overwhelmed by it.
00:14:47.560
I don't believe the BS that women and children who are fleeing dangerous circumstances present a national security threat to this country.
00:15:01.940
And then you could just, it doesn't matter what they say.
00:15:04.460
The pro rating would definitely go up from, what is it, like 14%.
00:15:07.240
Hey, how about the five days away from fundamental transformation?
00:15:15.680
It wouldn't have been so scary if he would have sounded like he was on Helium.
00:15:23.220
We played it, we played it yesterday and you can find even the Barack knows.
00:15:30.840
Barack knows what we're going to have to do is change our traditions.
00:15:33.860
We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.
00:15:42.260
I think we should just be playing Louis Farrakhan.
00:15:43.540
I don't know that any of these other ones work.
00:15:45.220
It should just be Louis Farrakhan, Helium Thursday.
00:15:57.340
Yeah, but no one, I've never heard anyone, and she says she felt violated, and I have to
00:16:04.400
take her out of word, but it wouldn't be nice if she had turned to him and said,
00:16:11.960
Or, Mr. Vice President, I'm not really comfortable with that.
00:16:16.980
I don't think it rises to the point that we've been listening to about how we want to see
00:16:23.580
When you're looking at Joy Behar and you're hearing that voice, it's pretty good.
00:16:28.600
It's a much better voice than her normal speaking voice.
00:16:29.780
It's a little closer to her actual name of Joy, you know.
00:16:48.220
Jesus died because he was 2,000 years too soon to bring about the end of the civilization of the Jews.
00:17:14.900
Early one Saturday morning, our Savior taught us.
00:17:23.040
When he found out he was 2,000 years too soon to end the civilization of the Jews,
00:17:30.520
he decided that he would give his life for the truth that he taught,
00:17:47.740
when he's 2,000 years too soon and there's that pause and there's people in the crowd going,
00:17:53.920
Because I had no idea where he was going on that.
00:18:00.540
I mean, I don't think you have usual people like you, me,
00:18:05.420
or Bill from Ohio that's just kind of sitting in there like,
00:18:12.520
The whole speech was a thrill, a roller coaster of emotions.
00:18:16.840
As someone who attended Yale's Divinity School,
00:18:24.260
He's saying that Jesus showed up, I didn't know,
00:18:27.740
he was 2,000 years too soon to end the civilization of the Jews,
00:18:32.080
And so he decided instead to kill himself, basically,
00:18:38.480
to say that his name would live on so that eventually we would end the civilization of the Jews.
00:18:45.020
So I can't speak for the Yale Divinity School because I did not go to the Yale Divinity School.
00:18:51.080
No, no, no, I intentionally went and took it through history.
00:18:54.060
I wanted to learn the historic part of it, not the Divinity School's, you know, smoke and jive on it.
00:19:03.020
I wanted to hear from a, you know, a professor of history that, of course, had no smoke, no jive.
00:19:10.880
But anyway, I think, if I may, I'm having a hard time even figuring out where he might find that in any scripture.
00:19:23.020
That Jew was, I mean, I don't, I mean, the scriptures of Bob.
00:19:26.760
Bob, the apostle on the bench, you know, he was like, if Peter is sick or whatever, he's like, I don't know, get Bob.
00:19:41.140
Even, I think, Bob, the alternate apostle, I don't even think you could find anything close to that there.
00:19:48.180
Yeah, that one's, I can't, because I can't even follow it.
00:19:54.780
I'm trying to follow, I'm trying to follow even who wants to believe in a God that doesn't love the world.
00:20:06.040
I think, don't they believe Allah does love the world?
00:20:14.660
Because I don't know any scripture where it says God does not love the world.
00:20:18.320
In fact, that God so loved the world that he said his only begotten son.
00:20:36.580
I had people taking full-page ads out in the New York Times saying that I was an anti-Semite and I had to be stopped.
00:20:53.080
Can you imagine if I would have got up and said, you know, Jesus, he failed in his mission.
00:20:58.880
He was sent to wipe out the Jews and he couldn't do it.
00:21:02.720
So he decided, kill me or I'm going to kill myself.
00:21:16.220
Like, you know, because Twitter has obviously banned a bunch of conservatives over the years.
00:21:20.160
They've had, this is the talking point of every conservative every time it happens.
00:21:24.220
At some point, you'd think they'd just be like, all right, just take it off so we don't have to hear that point again.
00:21:34.140
I don't think he should be taken off, but you did.
00:21:39.160
Well, I mean, he's saying the Jews should be wiped out now.
00:21:44.600
Yeah, and he's also saying that our government is killing children in schoolhouses, you know, to take away our guns.
00:21:52.880
But he's not calling for the extermination of an entire people.
00:22:05.340
One of them was not Bob, the alternative apostle.
00:22:08.300
No, but we do know them usually only by one name.
00:22:37.780
I mean, if your last name is Farrakhan, you've got to be considering a change at this point.
00:22:43.440
Because my wife is on the radio, as you guys know, and her name is Lisa Page on the air.
00:22:49.400
And ever since this scandal started happening with the FBI, and there's a woman named Lisa Page who's in the middle of this thing texting back and forth about how to ruin the Trump administration from the inside.
00:23:01.840
And I told her at one point, I'm like, there is a scenario here where this story gets so big, you have to abandon your name.
00:23:10.040
If her name was Monica Lewinsky, she would have had to have changed her air name.
00:23:14.520
And I think if your last name is Farrakhan at this point, just, you know, you just go to Smith.
00:23:19.900
You just go to a bag and just pull the trigger.
00:23:22.300
You know that there were Hitlers around the world that had nothing to do.
00:23:26.440
Mine had been so anti-Hitler, and they were like, oh, jeez.
00:23:37.920
At least he's, I mean, honey, honey, honey, honey.
00:23:41.080
I know you married into the name, at least, but it could be worse.
00:23:59.780
Peter Schweitzer, he is the producer of The Creepy Line, which is a movie everyone needs to see.
00:24:14.120
He is also the author of Secret Empires, which has come out in paperback.
00:24:18.480
And, Peter, I didn't think we would have you on the air so quickly,
00:24:22.500
but there is another piece of the story you started telling us last week that has dropped,
00:24:30.440
And can you tell us why you say that Joe Biden is the most corrupt vice president in history?
00:24:39.580
Well, it's always great to be on with you, Glenn.
00:24:43.520
And all you have to do is look at his son's financial transactions
00:24:48.580
and specifically financial accounts that he's tied to.
00:24:52.980
And, Glenn, I'd be happy to provide a copy of this for you, and you could share it with your listeners.
00:25:00.200
But all you need to do is look at the financial records from the Morgan Stanley account that involves his son,
00:25:07.980
And what it shows is while his father was vice president, his son is cashing in.
00:25:12.880
He's cashing in with our rivals and adversaries, the Chinese government.
00:25:16.700
He's cashing in with other countries that are rife with corruption like Ukraine.
00:25:22.340
He's cashing in with payments from corrupt oligarchs in Kazakhstan,
00:25:27.340
the one involving the son of the former prime minister there.
00:25:30.280
And he's cashing in from unknown, mysterious sources.
00:25:35.620
This bank account shows a deposit of $1.2 million from this sort of alphabet LLC that nobody can trace
00:25:45.560
coming out of a small Swiss bank called BSI, which has been implicated in money laundering in 10 different countries.
00:25:54.260
And this is all happening, Glenn, while Joe Biden, according to Barack Obama, was vice president,
00:26:02.760
was point person on U.S. policy towards these countries.
00:26:07.820
So it's self-enrichment at the highest level, and it involves, in the case of the Chinese government,
00:26:14.380
actually a political powerful rival to us that I would argue presents a much bigger challenge to our future than Russia does.
00:26:22.580
Russia is a declining power demographically and in terms of its, you know, industrial might.
00:26:29.500
China is rising and threatening the United States, and Hunter Biden was cashing in from the Chinese government itself.
00:26:37.640
Okay, so the reason why one of the guys who was investigated during this Trump thing,
00:26:42.640
the reason why he went to jail is because he was involved in Ukrainian politics,
00:26:46.880
and Ukrainian politics is really dirty, lots of people on the take, lots of people on the take from Russia,
00:26:57.700
What's happening now, and I don't, do you know John Solomon?
00:27:04.380
He was at the Associated Press, the Washington Post.
00:27:11.180
All right, so he, like you said, worked for the Washington Post, the Associated Press.
00:27:16.300
He, when he went over, he's the executive vice president at the Hill.
00:27:19.840
For him to publish, because of the Clinton camp, they put the pressure on the Hill
00:27:28.180
to make sure that all of his stories are opinion and not filed as stories.
00:27:37.280
I don't know the full ins and outs, and John is not one that would, you know,
00:27:43.100
But what is very clear is that John does amazing reporting.
00:27:48.560
And on Ukraine, Glenn, what he has shown quite clearly is the prosecutor general in Ukraine
00:27:56.080
during the tenure when Joe Biden was vice president was a guy named Shokin.
00:28:00.720
And Joe Biden bragged after he left the vice presidency that he got Shokin fired.
00:28:17.280
So Shokin was a prosecutor general, and as in the case in a lot of situation in Ukraine,
00:28:23.260
you know, you don't quite know who is straight and who is on the take.
00:28:27.120
But Shokin was appointed by the reformist government, by Poroshenko, who Biden was friends with.
00:28:34.320
Biden claimed publicly that he didn't like Shokin because Shokin was not investigating
00:28:46.060
What Joe Biden doesn't say is that Shokin was investigating his son at the time.
00:28:52.720
And this is where it takes an interesting twist, Glenn.
00:28:55.320
So Shokin does get fired because Joe Biden tells Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine,
00:29:01.620
I'm going to withhold a billion dollars in loan guarantees unless you fire Shokin.
00:29:06.900
And then his successor gets appointed, a guy named Lushenko.
00:29:11.700
And Joe Biden gives Lushenko his imprint and says this guy is a solid choice.
00:29:19.140
Lushenko is now saying he wants to reopen the investigation into Joe Biden's son.
00:29:30.300
This was not an investigation into the company that he had ties to.
00:29:43.520
And I know this is very complicated and there are lots of names.
00:29:49.420
And it was this sort of energy company in Ukraine.
00:29:53.160
Well, Burisma was started by, as can only happen in the Ukraine,
00:29:57.400
was started by the minister for energy at the time, Zlochevsky.
00:30:01.940
Zlochevsky was aligned with Yanukovych, who's the pro-Russian minister.
00:30:11.700
Hunter Biden, the vice president of the United States' son,
00:30:15.260
is being paid millions of dollars by a corrupt energy minister
00:30:20.900
who worked for the pro-Russian leader in Ukraine.
00:30:27.140
And what Shokin and now Lutsenko want to investigate is, first of all, Burisma,
00:30:32.360
the company, because there's all kinds of allegations of money laundering and corruption.
00:30:37.260
But they, second of all, explicitly back in 2014 and 2015,
00:30:46.440
And now the new prosecutor general wants to reopen that case
00:30:50.540
and wants to share that file information with the current U.S. Attorney General, William Barr.
00:30:59.040
Manafort went to jail for the same connections with the same people
00:31:05.880
that were locked in with the former Soviets, right?
00:31:23.200
I knew about Manafort years before he went to jail.
00:31:28.900
We had all of that stuff was out, kind of like this is with Joe Biden's son.
00:31:33.600
But nobody covered it until Manafort went to work for Trump.
00:31:39.460
So we know what that's all about, because that guy should have been in jail long ago.
00:31:45.980
And by the way, working with Manafort for Yanukovych and these Yanukovych-related entities
00:31:51.840
were a guy named Tony Podesta, John Podesta's brother, who's a lobbyist,
00:31:58.240
and Greg Craig, who was the former White House counsel in the Obama White House,
00:32:05.180
All three were working for Yanukovych or Yanukovych-linked entities.
00:32:09.960
So, yes, this goes very deep and it's very widespread.
00:32:14.440
And now you have the vice president's son wrapped up in this.
00:32:18.160
At the time when Joe Biden, he could, you know, elevate his thumb or he could give thumbs down
00:32:24.180
and determine whether the Ukrainian government was going to get, you know, more than a billion dollars in aid.
00:32:34.200
He was the point person and his son was getting rich while his father was doing that.
00:32:40.680
OK, let me play the audio of what we have Joe Biden saying at a group of, you know, foreign relations people.
00:32:51.980
And he's bragging about getting this guy fired.
00:32:55.380
I'm desperately concerned about the backsliding on the part of Kyiv in terms of corruption.
00:33:04.200
They made, I mean, I'll give you one concrete example.
00:33:07.980
I was, not I, I, but it just happened to be that was the assignment I got.
00:33:14.180
And so I got Ukraine and I remember going over convincing our team or others to convincing us that we should be providing for loan guarantees.
00:33:26.500
And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kyiv.
00:33:31.040
And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion dollar loan guarantee.
00:33:36.040
And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against a state prosecutor.
00:33:46.160
So they said they had, they were walking out to the press conference and said, no, I said, I'm not going to, we're not going to give you the billion dollars.
00:33:58.160
I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars.
00:34:04.540
I looked at him, I said, I'm leaving in six hours.
00:34:06.600
If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money.
00:34:12.900
And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.
00:34:20.800
We're going to go back into that here in just a second with Peter Swiser.
00:34:43.280
He is the executive vice president of the Hill.
00:34:46.500
And I'm confused by this, John, an opinion contributor to the Hill.
00:34:52.160
Your story does not read like an opinion piece.
00:34:58.960
I think, I think today we call me an investigative columnist as sort of in the, in the tradition
00:35:04.340
But what my goal is, is to tell stories to people that are, are hidden under rocks that
00:35:08.760
matter about the integrity of their government.
00:35:11.200
Call it opinion, call it news, call it what you want, but that's the mission.
00:35:14.440
And you're, but I would just want to make sure that people know that you have credibility.
00:35:17.240
You worked as a reporter for the Washington Post.
00:35:19.480
Uh, you worked as a reporter for the Associated Press.
00:35:25.860
So you're not some schlub who just has a blog and an opinion like me.
00:35:33.820
So, so John, the story that, um, I heard from Peter Swiser a couple of weeks ago, you have
00:35:41.400
now taken, and I think taken it to a new level, uh, and no one is reporting on it.
00:35:48.780
We kind of know the story, but can you take us through it and give us the meat of this?
00:35:55.140
So first off, Peter did some fantastic work during the 2016 election, raising questions
00:35:59.620
about why is Hunter Biden in Ukraine getting money in Ukraine from a natural gas company
00:36:06.660
And his dad, Joe Biden, the vice president is the official point man for the Obama administration
00:36:13.200
And if you look at the timing that, uh, that Peter laid out, Joe Biden gets named to be point
00:36:20.800
And within a few weeks, Hunter Biden suddenly gets this mystery offer to go be a board member
00:36:26.800
So on the face of it, it looks like the sort of pay to play or, or, uh, scratch my back politics
00:36:34.600
But here's the big, uh, the development by 2016, Ukrainian corruption prosecutors have
00:36:45.660
And the Ukrainian prosecutors were examining it for multiple reasons.
00:36:49.120
They, they feared there might've been some tax evasion under Ukrainian law.
00:36:52.280
They believe there might've been some corruption in the securing of drilling permits.
00:36:56.480
And then they were very concerned that money was being exfoliated or taken out of the company
00:37:01.360
and moved to the United States, whether it's money laundering, misuse of money, legitimate.
00:37:05.520
They didn't know they wanted to get to the point of interviewing the people that were
00:37:10.120
And one of those persons was Hunter Biden and American now working for this natural gas
00:37:14.240
And at the moment, the prosecutors were preparing a request to interview Hunter Biden.
00:37:20.020
Joe Biden shows up in Ukraine on one of his Ukraine trips.
00:37:22.620
And he tells the president of the country, uh, if you don't fire the prosecutor, the chief
00:37:28.220
prosecutor of this country in the next six hours while I'm here, I'm going to pull back
00:37:32.260
the $1 billion in loan credits your company, your country needs to stay solvent.
00:37:39.680
If you don't do it, I'm leaving here in six hours, fire that prosecutor.
00:37:44.000
I want to play the, I want to play the audio of him actually saying this and telling the
00:37:49.760
I'm desperately concerned about the backsliding on the part of, uh, uh, Keeve in terms of
00:37:58.040
They made, I mean, I'll give you one concrete example.
00:38:01.640
I, I, I was not, I, I, but it just happened to be, that was the assignment I got.
00:38:07.940
Uh, and, uh, so I got Ukraine and, uh, um, I remember going over convincing our team or
00:38:15.120
others to convincing us that we should be providing for loan guarantees.
00:38:20.040
And I went over, I guess the 12th, 13th time to Keeve and, uh, and I was going supposed to
00:38:26.940
announce that there was another billion dollar loan guarantee.
00:38:29.820
And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from, uh, Yatsenyuk that they would take
00:38:37.000
action against the state prosecutor and they didn't.
00:38:39.880
So they said they had, they were walking out to press conference and I said, nah, I said,
00:38:42.960
I'm not going to, we're not going to give you the billion dollars.
00:38:50.720
I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars.
00:39:00.240
If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money.
00:39:06.700
And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.
00:39:11.840
Notice he says at the time, we'll get into that later.
00:39:15.360
So this is the prosecutor general that was fired, Victor Shokin.
00:39:26.840
Well, he thinks he was, but he was an old school prosecutor and he was facing some criticism
00:39:33.820
Now, there had been some major corruption prosecutions in the securing of some victories
00:39:38.400
against money that had been left from the country.
00:39:41.180
But, you know, he wasn't a popular guy in Ukraine when Biden did this.
00:39:44.540
I think the most important part for Americans is our law, our ethics law, say you don't
00:39:49.820
get involved in a U.S. policy matter if your family has a financial interest.
00:39:54.200
It is irrefutable that Hunter Biden had a financial interest in Burisma and, more importantly,
00:40:01.800
And yet Joe Biden goes in, and there's no way Joe Biden can say he didn't know.
00:40:06.480
There were numerous stories his son had joined the company.
00:40:09.140
There were numerous stories that the very prosecutor that he was seeking to be fired was looking
00:40:13.700
at his son's company before he went and did this.
00:40:18.300
Shokin said, I was just a few days away from requesting an interview with Hunter Biden
00:40:25.740
And they had records showing more than $3 million flowed out of this company, Burisma,
00:40:31.160
to the United States into accounts controlled by Hunter Biden and his business partners
00:40:39.200
The solid guy that replaces him, that's the new prosecutor general, Yuri Lysenko.
00:40:44.860
I interviewed him, and Yuri Lysenko said, I only recently learned that the Burisma investigation
00:40:50.020
was shut down because of pressure from Joe Biden.
00:40:52.600
And I'm reopening it because I have some serious concerns about what we might have known
00:40:56.660
and what we might not have been allowed to investigate.
00:40:59.340
And so right now, as the 2020 campaign starts, Ukrainian prosecutors have reopened a portion
00:41:07.740
And this could have some very big consequences both in Ukraine and in the United States.
00:41:11.600
So, John, when you said the new prosecutor had no idea that this Burisma investigation
00:41:21.020
was shut down, was there anything else that was shut down?
00:41:28.060
You've talked to so many people that were involved, and they verified that what Joe Biden said happened.
00:41:35.540
He had been pressuring them for a couple of weeks, I guess.
00:41:42.340
And so they were being pressured, so they all know it.
00:41:46.640
Is there any doubt in their mind over there that what had to happen to not piss Joe Biden
00:41:54.220
or the United States off was end this investigation?
00:41:59.820
Lusenko addressed this in the interview, and he said, listen, we were a country on the brink
00:42:04.300
of insolvency at this point, and we were so reliant on U.S. money, we would do whatever
00:42:09.080
it takes to get that next loan guarantee, because otherwise we go insolvent and we can't pay
00:42:13.780
our bills, and he said when the Russian leadership that had previously run the country, the Russian
00:42:19.000
friendly president, Yanukovych, left the country, there was only $8,000 left in the entire country's
00:42:27.980
The Russians looted the country on the way out, and so without the U.S. money, they could
00:42:33.760
not survive, and so he said, absolutely, we would bend to the will of Joe Biden, but now
00:42:40.700
There's a new president, President Trump in town, and we don't like the way this was
00:42:45.680
shut down, and they're also talking about other pressure exerted in other investigations.
00:42:50.680
About 10 days ago, I reported that Lusenko and other prosecutors and law enforcement
00:42:55.620
officials said the U.S. embassy on multiple occasions pressured them to not pursue certain
00:43:01.120
people, and one of the groups they were asked not to pursue, and I had the letter actually
00:43:04.940
from the embassy was a non-profit that was run by George Soros or funded by George Soros,
00:43:11.580
and you can see the letter basically, the embassy saying, back off these guys.
00:43:16.140
So something was going on in Ukraine in the 2016 election where the Ukrainian prosecutors
00:43:22.040
felt that the U.S. was interfering in their sovereign affairs, the ability for them to conduct
00:43:27.300
their own criminal investigations on their own soil.
00:43:30.140
So isn't it interesting how the left has made such a big deal out of Paul Manafort, which
00:43:34.980
he's a guy, before he was ever involved with Donald Trump, I talked about Paul Manafort.
00:43:42.020
He should have been prosecuted before he even joined with Trump.
00:43:45.740
He went to jail because of the same kind of stuff, playing footsie with the Russians and
00:43:51.180
taking money and not claiming it, et cetera, et cetera.
00:43:53.600
Um, it's interesting to me that such a big deal was made out of Manafort and yet not a
00:44:08.940
Well, it may even go into a deeper pool and, uh, there are some growing signs.
00:44:13.720
Let's, let's take some things that we now know are in the public record, irrefutable, uh,
00:44:18.760
There was a recent court ruling in Ukraine in which a Ukrainian court concluded that
00:44:23.440
NABU, the FBI of Ukraine, uh, knowingly and willfully tried to intervene in the 2016
00:44:34.200
They leaked, uh, documents in the summer of 2016 to American media, like the New York
00:44:39.520
Times, laying out, um, the evidence or alleged evidence against Paul Manafort of these, these
00:44:45.600
monies coming from the party of regions in Ukraine.
00:44:47.720
And that led to, uh, Manafort being, uh, leaving the campaign and then the criminal investigation.
00:44:53.260
What's extraordinary is that we, uh, in the interview I did, uh, just a couple of days
00:44:57.460
ago with the Ukrainian prosecutors, they say they were under pressure.
00:45:00.780
They won't say specifically who, but they were under pressure from the United States to
00:45:04.600
narrow the focus of what was leaked to the media, to just Manafort and to leave out of
00:45:09.160
the records that they gave the medium, similar payments that were being made to democratic
00:45:13.780
figures, including Greg Craig, Obama's former white house counsel.
00:45:19.660
So you have a foreign country saying, we leaked Manafort, but we protected the Democrats,
00:45:26.320
And, uh, also in the same interview, the prosecutor divulges for the first time that he has affidavits
00:45:32.620
or sworn statements from two federal law or U S, um, Ukrainian law enforcement officials
00:45:38.140
saying, yes, we were trying to interfere in the election to the benefit of Hillary Clinton.
00:45:42.560
So now we may have real proof that a foreign power did knowingly and willfully intervene
00:45:47.700
in the election, but not on behalf of Donald Trump, in behalf of Hillary Clinton.
00:45:52.060
John, you have been around, like I said, at the beginning, decades, AP Washington post,
00:45:57.540
um, you have been around stories that have been earth shattering.
00:46:08.180
Not how big it will become because we have no idea what the press will do with it, but
00:46:14.900
Can you compare it to anything you've seen in the past?
00:46:17.540
You know, I don't want to get ahead of the, uh, of our skis because there's still a lot
00:46:21.240
more reporting, but let's just think about what we know at this very moment.
00:46:24.460
These are facts that are irrefutable in the record.
00:46:27.660
Mrs. Clinton and the Democratic Party had, uh, uh, a person assigned to the Ukrainian
00:46:33.660
embassy in Washington to receive research on Donald Trump's ties to Russia.
00:46:40.300
Uh, the Ukrainians say they have a court ruling and, and intercepts tape recordings showing
00:46:46.200
their Ukrainian law enforcement institution, Nabu, trying to intervene in the election on
00:46:53.040
You have, uh, uh, Nellie Orr's testimony to Congress saying at Fusion GPS, when I worked
00:46:59.940
there as the wife of a senior justice official, Bruce Orr, working for the same firm as Christopher
00:47:04.500
Steele and Glenn Simpson, one of our primary sources of information on dirt on Donald Trump
00:47:17.060
The fact that we now know irrefutably by Joe Biden's own words, he ordered or pressured
00:47:22.960
the firing of a prosecutor who was looking at his son's company.
00:47:27.020
Just those four things are more than anything that ever came out and was corroborated in
00:47:32.200
So when we, when we see that we have to at least say there are some very serious questions
00:47:36.900
that have to be asked of the Democrats of the Ukrainian government tomorrow, I'll be
00:47:40.940
reporting that Ukrainian authorities have tried multiple times in the last, uh, several
00:47:46.460
months to come to Washington and deliver to the new attorney general, Bill Barr, uh, evidence
00:47:51.500
of what they believe occurred in the 2016 election.
00:47:53.940
And it occurred in Burisma and Biden, but every time they ask for permission, the U S embassy
00:47:59.080
has been in Kiev has been unwilling to give them a visa to come here.
00:48:05.420
Why can't we let these Ukrainians come here and talk to our own justice department and
00:48:11.100
I don't want to get ahead of the skis yet, but I think there's enough in the record of
00:48:14.440
evidence to, to demand more investigation and certainly more answers to questions.
00:48:46.660
You know, the, the, the reason why Donald Trump won in my opinion is well, a Hillary
00:48:58.200
The, it has to be the worst major party nominee ever.
00:49:02.620
Well, they might be, well, up until that point, 2020 might be, maybe worse, maybe worse.
00:49:07.800
Um, but, uh, the reason why he won is because he was, um, authentic in his own way.
00:49:21.920
He doesn't mind being seen with big gold gaudy things.
00:49:31.260
I mean, so he's authentically him, even in the things that are not real.
00:49:41.160
You know, my woman started to look a little saggy.
00:49:43.160
So, uh, we put some, uh, you know, lift dinner bazoombas.
00:49:52.060
You're while you're, while you're, you know, saying, Hey, plastic surgery, it is authentically
00:49:59.160
And I'm not saying that I'm just using that as an example.
00:50:01.900
The bottom line is he says what he, what he thinks.
00:50:05.500
Uh, and so, and that's what I thought was a rebound from Barack Obama.
00:50:11.940
I knew Barack Obama was so slick and so perfect that it would, it would rebound and you'd get
00:50:20.900
The buttoned up guy goes to, I mean, I remember you initially talking about this theory with
00:50:24.300
Chris Christie when he was coming in, like he could kind of just see that some guy who's
00:50:27.560
plain spoken and, you know, his shirt's kind of untucked and he's got gravy on his shirt.
00:50:33.460
You see a little bit of his fat and you're like, and he's like, yep, I'm fat.
00:50:44.320
And Trump's not that guy, but he's that, he is a different version of that.
00:50:49.540
So now I don't think we're at the pendulum yet.
00:50:53.020
I don't think the pendulum is now at four, at eight years, maybe we'll be at the pendulum
00:50:57.980
where you're going to want somebody who is just really, you know, soft spoken.
00:51:06.720
The Buddha judge thing is, is, is happening now.
00:51:09.360
I think based on that, I watched his CNN town hall and he's getting this big spike.
00:51:15.040
He's, you know, again, the polls, he's up to, you know, four or 5%.
00:51:18.440
He's not a huge factor yet, but he is breaking out of that.
00:51:22.400
I mean, there's a, you know, it's a field of 16 right now.
00:51:25.620
We expect at least four or five more to be in this race in the next few weeks.
00:51:30.000
So he's being, he's able to separate himself a little bit from that very lower tier and
00:51:42.080
Um, he talks about all the details of his policies.
00:51:50.500
He's a center of the country, a gay man would be the first gay president.
00:51:54.100
And again, if you think, well, we shouldn't, we just, you know, like someone on merit.
00:51:58.400
No, we should elect someone on who has the most intersectionality points.
00:52:01.760
And that's, I think the most, I think even more than a Kamala Harris would be the first
00:52:06.300
black woman who would be, you know, president, there's more intersectionality points for first
00:52:13.660
I think at this point, I think if that would be such a big deal, the Democrats want that
00:52:18.700
They want to be able to say that they ran someone, uh, who, who is openly gay.
00:52:25.560
I mean, he, at least in his first appearance and bulletproof because he's gay, bulletproof,
00:52:30.400
bulletproof because there'd be a lot of people that won't listen to anything other than,
00:52:34.260
you know what, I want to make that statement that we're not homophobic.
00:52:40.740
It really didn't matter how many times he said he wanted to bankrupt this industry or
00:52:45.840
The bottom line was he was going to be the first black president and that gave him enough
00:52:52.400
I think honestly, even if he was white, he probably beats John McCain relatively easily.
00:52:56.000
But I mean, it wasn't even a contest because those, there's enough people in the middle who
00:53:00.300
didn't really have, don't follow these things that closely who just wanted to make that
00:53:03.420
statement and it's, and it's a good statement, right?
00:53:05.840
I mean, we, it's nice to think that we don't care about those things in the United States
00:53:09.640
Of course, immediately upon getting into office, he spent eight years telling us that's all
00:53:16.520
I mean, so it was, it completely backfired on the people who wanted to make a statement,
00:53:22.520
So it'll be interesting to see, um, uh, Buddha judge who is just a, he's a mayor from Indiana.
00:53:36.680
A soft-spoken regular guy, uh, for a, who's a mayor in, uh, South Bend, Indiana who goes
00:53:49.580
I think this guy is should be, is worth watching because you look at Elizabeth Warren.
00:53:58.140
First of all, she's absolutely done, but there's no genuine Elizabeth Warren that you'd like,
00:54:04.460
No, she's not a genuine communicator in any way.
00:54:11.140
If she's not, if she's not as bad as Hillary Clinton.
00:54:13.600
They're very similar in their delivery and their inability to seem authentic in any way.
00:54:28.440
And so over the top that he just will not connect.
00:54:32.080
And I'm not talking about policies with any of these people.
00:54:37.360
Listen, listen to Cory Booker, um, in a sit down conversation, uh, with Democrats in the
00:54:46.300
He all of a sudden gets up out of his chair and he does this.
00:54:55.640
This is a time to stand up, to speak up, to rise up.
00:54:59.700
Because when we stand as Americans, when we join together and fight together and work
00:55:07.320
We usher in civil rights, women's rights, workers' rights.
00:55:10.780
And in this era, if we organize again, we are going to bring a progressive agenda to this
00:55:15.480
country and move it forward for everyone, no matter who's in the Senate.
00:55:20.500
I mean, that is, and that's the good side of Cory Booker.
00:55:24.800
I think that's better than his normal, uh, his normal performance.
00:55:28.620
But that's just, does not strike you as authentic.
00:55:34.160
That is the kiss of death that we saw with, uh, what's his face?
00:55:40.460
That is the same kind of speech where it's not authentic.
00:55:50.380
It's such a great way to put it with Booker because that, I mean, the Spartacus thing
00:55:54.180
It was a different, it was a different, uh, tone, tone, but it was the same thing.
00:56:06.240
And you can just tell all he wants in life is to come up with like this perfect speech
00:56:11.320
that's going to win all Democrats to his side so we can get this nomination.
00:56:14.600
When people can sense you want it that badly, you usually don't get it.
00:56:18.700
And I think that's where, uh, you know, Biden was or is authentically Joe Biden.
00:56:29.940
I think there's some authentic candidates in this race for them.
00:56:33.820
We talked, I think Biden is authentically Biden and he's similar in that way.
00:56:37.900
You're talking about with Chris Christie, where he'll come out and blurt out things that don't
00:56:41.680
And he'll say things that, that are sort of offensive and he's going to be apologizing
00:56:51.760
But I mean, I think Bernie Sanders is authentic.
00:56:54.700
You know, again, like here's another guy who I think does not fit into that very basic
00:56:59.320
politician mold where he's, you know, look, he's 147 years old.
00:57:08.180
I mean, it looks like he's got a flux capacitor and somewhere inside of his house he's created
00:57:16.760
But he is, he is, look, all of a sudden things changed in, in 1960.
00:57:24.380
You had this handsome, good looking, well-spoken Camelot kind of wow.
00:57:44.360
And we have been looking for the Kennedy image for so long.
00:57:53.160
I mean, when I think of Bernie Sanders, I think of Scuttle.
00:57:57.080
You remember the seagull from, you know, Little Mermaid played by Buddy Hackett?
00:58:04.300
I mean, I've never seen Scuttle and Bernie Sanders in the same room.
00:58:09.180
I'm not saying they're the same people, but that's what we're going for now.
00:58:13.120
We are officially finished with the JFK good looking kind of guy.
00:58:31.400
If you look that way, I think you have to be deeper.
00:58:35.340
I think you have to have deep, meaningful thoughts.
00:58:41.520
You know, RFK, everybody who is a fan of JFK that I know of, they all say the same thing.
00:58:51.940
Everybody likes RFK because he actually earned it.
00:58:56.860
Where JFK was just living on his looks and his daddy's money.
00:59:04.540
And I think because we're looking for somebody so authentic now, I think to win, you're going to have to earn it.
00:59:11.560
And it's not by memorizing rhymes like Cory Booker just did.
00:59:16.180
Look at this theory, though, on the pendulum real quick.
00:59:21.320
So JFK, this perfect guy, he's just this, you know, buttoned up, everything else.
00:59:25.960
You skip over Lyndon Johnson because, I mean, he wasn't elected, right?
00:59:39.820
But he was like, you know, you think of him sweating and you think of him like, then there's like this, you also think of corruption, right?
00:59:54.580
Then you go from just, but it was complete incompetence.
01:00:01.720
Some people saw that, though, as like family values and everything in that whole generation.
01:00:07.280
I mean, George H.W. Bush largely wins because Reagan was so successful he couldn't lose.
01:00:27.620
And he does the hard things that nobody really likes.
01:00:38.980
Then you have, but remember, the other thing about Bush was stumbling over speeches all
01:00:47.100
Then you have the Mr. Perfect buttoned up guy with Obama.
01:00:51.200
That's all he does is he makes great speeches, supposedly.
01:00:54.240
And he's the most buttoned up intellectual guy you've ever seen in your entire life.
01:00:57.280
The exact opposite of the way Bush was portrayed.
01:01:01.660
And again, if you believe the left, how on earth does Hillary Clinton lose?
01:01:05.100
This is just a handoff because Barack Obama's presidency was so successful.
01:01:11.560
And you have a guy who is swearing on stage, who is, you know, who doesn't always nail every
01:01:18.320
He's out there, but he gets the people pumped up.
01:01:24.440
It's a totally different, again, profile of a candidate.
01:01:30.000
And so, again, you know, Barack Obama won twice, right?
01:01:32.860
So, does it go back in 2024 to a Democrat who has the exact opposite profile of Trump?
01:01:41.680
I mean, it's an interesting thing because we get sick of what we have and we go for something else.
01:01:51.600
However, if you're just looking at based on, you know, the pendulum, the only thing you couldn't
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count on is that time has sped up now because everything is so intense.
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What used to take four or eight years now can take two or four years.
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But one thing I do know is the candidate that runs against Trump will need to be as authentic
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He he makes no bones about who he is, how he runs his business, what he does.