Richard Staropoli is a former Homeland Security and Secret Service special agent who served as the Chief Information Officer at the agency. He has extensive experience in intelligence, law enforcement, and emerging technologies. He served as Director of the Office of Public Diplomacy and Liaison with the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) and served as Chief of Staff to the Director of National Security, John Kelly.
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00:00:30.000We talk about pardons with Alan Dershowitz and Mike Lee.
00:00:35.500We talk about the dangers just ahead of our own president with Richard Staropoli.
00:00:42.660He's with Homeland Security and Secret Service.
00:00:46.920And we talk about the Ark of the Covenant, its location they may be getting close to with Zev Orenstein, all on the best of today's podcast.
00:01:00.000Let me tell you about the Burnout Launcher.
00:01:58.120You hit anywhere, like five feet around this threat, up to 60 feet away, and they'll be taken down by tear gas for about 40 minutes incapacitated.
00:03:24.340Um, so can you, can you give us the threat that you see coming?
00:03:31.280Well, you know, Glenn, I don't think I said anything, um, that most people hadn't surmised to begin with about the deficiencies and the shortcomings of the Secret Service and how they've allowed their political feelings
00:03:43.880to compromise the, the, the mission of the Secret Service and providing the adequate level of protection for President Trump.
00:03:51.860It is, it is, I think it's more than obvious to, to real bad guys or evil doers as W would have put it, um, that every incident that's gone on that involved President Trump,
00:04:03.260since he was shot in Butler to include the incident with the guy on the golf course, the, the Chinese national walking onto the Mar-a-Lago property, um, other incidents, um, people are watching these things and they're viewing them as a test of the response of the Secret Service.
00:04:19.940And I've got to tell you from a law enforcement, from a Secret Service perspective, the Secret Service has not fulfilled their primary mission.
00:04:27.560They've simply allowed way too many things to happen, um, that could have ended in total tragedy.
00:04:33.420And were it not, but for a millimeter in Butler, we'd be having a much different conversation about who the next president is going to be.
00:04:41.040So Richard, um, I have, I, I've actually begged to, to testify against the Secret Service in Congress because I have firsthand knowledge of things that, that I have done, um, and, and how I've been able to approach the president without anybody, you know, looking into me and my team with guns.
00:05:03.120I mean, it's crazy. Um, however, in the last few, um, well, probably the last two months, maybe the Secret Service is at least for a layman like me all over it.
00:05:20.420I've never seen security like what's happening right now with Donald Trump. Never.
00:05:25.880And that's, that's partly right, right? The optics now has gotten a lot better, but the problem is, and this is just by virtue of the, the acting director's, you know, most recent testimony where he continually says in full view of the public, um, that they're lacking the adequate manpower resources to do this job.
00:05:44.280So a real bad guy interprets that as, okay, let's take a look and see what's going on.
00:05:49.300And yes, the people that are around the secrets that are around president Trump have been pulled much closer.
00:05:54.800It is more difficult to get closer to them.
00:05:57.600All that simply means that these organized groups need to pull back their perimeter.
00:06:02.160Look what happened at the event in Vegas before the election, a guy in a car or a truck was allowed to drive within a quarter of a mile.
00:06:10.680Turns out he was a Trump supporter, but he was stopped by the local sheriff's office.
00:06:16.400Hey, what if that truck had been loaded with explosives?
00:06:19.560He got close enough to cause tremendous damage to that building and bring the roof down.
00:06:24.700And yet even at a quarter of a mile, he never encountered a federal agent, let alone a Secret Service agent.
00:06:31.420The Secret Service is not providing the presidential level of protection that they need to, to President Trump.
00:06:37.880And they're masking that because they're saying, well, he was a former president.
00:06:41.880Now they're saying, well, he's, he's not inaugurated yet.
00:06:44.600So consequently, you left the guy who's target number one on everyone's hit list, not as protected as he should be.
00:06:53.560Yet you're providing 40 or so protected details to members of the Biden crime family to include crackhead, non-taxpaying Hunter Biden.
00:07:02.920And this is a big problem. You don't have manpower. Why are you providing protective details to the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Kareem Jean-Pierre, Admiral Kirby?
00:07:16.220And I could go on and on for another 20 people.
00:07:19.040Kareem Jean-Pierre has Secret Service protection?
00:07:22.120Oh, this has been going on for, for a long time.
00:07:25.600There are almost 40 protective details that are being worked out of the White House.
00:07:29.840Not all of them are done by statute that involve the Biden family.
00:07:34.880There are people that are being given one or two agents and are driven to work back and forth under the guise of, well, you know, it's in the best interest of national security.
00:07:44.240You can't tell me that isn't a conscious decision by the Biden administration to suck resources away from where they should have been allocated to President Trump.
00:07:54.340Now, can I push back again, Richard, on this only because you're a pro at this.
00:08:00.480I'm a layman, but I have been around presidents, you know, since Reagan.
00:08:05.420And I remember the Secret Service around Reagan.
00:08:09.560It was intense when I was at Mar-a-Lago just, what, last week.
00:08:15.860I mean, I've never seen anything like it.
00:08:18.260And in fact, I said to my wife, I think all of the taxes that I will pay in my entire life will not cover the bill of all of this apparatus and all of these people protecting the president.
00:08:51.280The fact that you've got to go through all these metal detectors and pass through this coordinate of Secret Service agents, that's part of it.
00:08:58.700But the other part of it is things like where's the air assets, right?
00:09:03.040For years, the Secret Service has been using a helicopter airborne asset.
00:09:06.860Well, since Igor Sikorsky invented helicopters, right?
00:09:10.220By doing that, you've put people in the air.
00:09:13.000You've demonstrated the ability to have secure communications amongst the personnel on board that helicopter.
00:09:19.660And you've allowed the service to extend their perimeter out much, much further.
00:09:25.360What the service is doing now is nice.
00:09:27.660That'll stop the guy with the handgun.
00:09:29.860That'll stop the guy from getting in close.
00:09:31.900But that's not going to stop the organized threat.
00:09:34.820And it's the organized threat that's a really, really big concern here today.
00:09:39.240Right now with the nation state or the cartels, they don't need to get that close.
00:09:44.300They just need to know where he is and take a building down, and that's the concern.
00:09:49.500So there's two things that concern me, and you, having experience with Department of Homeland Security, would recognize this immediately.
00:09:57.820I am – I mean, I see the way his plane – down in Florida, it was protected by rows of old school buses, okay?
00:10:07.940They just parked them all around his plane.
00:10:10.100And that didn't seem – I mean, that seemed a little like, I don't know, like how Venezuela might do it.
00:10:16.520But I know that it probably is not that hard for a cartel or someone to get a rocket launcher across the border.
00:10:27.380And the president's plane does not have – what is it, chaff or chaff?
00:10:35.180So I'm worried about that, and I am worried that we do have really bad drug cartel people in the country and people from several countries who wish us death that could get those rocket launchers.
00:10:52.600So is Department of Homeland Security – are they working with the Secret Service at all to find that?
00:10:59.560Because I don't hear that – I heard that right after the first shooting, and then I haven't heard anything about it since.
00:11:06.600No, and no one's heard anything from the Department of Homeland Security.
00:11:09.760This guy, Alejandro Mayorkas, has turned out to be the biggest empty suit I think I've ever seen in the federal government, right?
00:11:16.160The military assets that should be afforded President Trump – and I understand, listen, okay, he's not the inaugurated president yet.
00:11:51.000There's military jets, there's countermeasures that can be put on the aircraft, there's classified programs that can be employed and are employed for the sitting president of the United States that are designed to make sure that somebody doesn't lob a missile at the direction of that plane or fly a drone into the protected airspace and so on and so forth.
00:12:11.500And these assets are not being used because he's not the sitting president yet.
00:12:25.320That's what you're really worried about is these next 40 days?
00:12:29.960Well, it's the next 40 days, but it's also the next four years, right?
00:12:33.500How can someone be a Secret Service agent and not go to work every day with the mindset, hey, I've got to stop the Muzadeen from coming over the wall today.
00:12:43.500I've got to be thinking about what is the biggest cataclysmic effect that can possibly happen and design my protective security net, my site to thwart that.
00:12:54.000Anything less than that and you're fooling yourself and you should not be a Secret Service agent.
00:12:58.920So in the old days, that just wouldn't happen.
00:13:01.260So I know that Donald Trump, he's a guy who grew up going to church with Norman Vincent Peale.
00:13:13.220He doesn't like to speak things like this.
00:13:15.300And he has said to me, he said to the American people and he has said to me privately, I am very comfortable with the people who are around me, the Secret Service.
00:13:23.380They're doing their job, blah, blah, blah.
00:13:26.160And he won't talk about any of the security at all, ever, even privately.
00:13:32.380In fact, I brought it up and I said, hey, I'm really concerned.
00:14:13.820This guy that's in there now certainly doesn't have that.
00:14:16.740Right. And that became monumentally evident when that congressman during last week's hearing produced that photo of the acting director sitting behind President Biden at the September 11th events.
00:15:18.400And this is where it gets a little more difficult.
00:15:19.980That has been out of the government, say, for a decade or so, that has the business acumen to be able to deal with an organization that has 7000 employees.
00:15:38.800You need someone that can appreciate how big of a number that is.
00:15:43.080And the current policy of the Secret Service continually promoting Secret Service agents that have backgrounds in sociology and science into positions where they're managing that kind of a budget.
00:19:22.120But nobody who's in the abortion industry wants to talk about it because they don't actually care about the baby and they don't care about women.
00:26:08.980What they are trying to hide is that the Jewish people, and by extension Christians, have been in Jerusalem for thousands of years.
00:26:15.240And so, if they can destroy that history, destroy that heritage, well, then they could go along with their claims that Israel's occupying, colonizing power that has no history and no heritage in the land of Israel or in Jerusalem.
00:26:26.140They are seeking to rewrite history, to erase the Judeo-Christian heritage from Jerusalem.
00:26:30.820In fact, the United Nations passed a resolution a couple of years ago saying that the Temple Mount and Western Wall are exclusively Islamic holy places.
00:26:55.000If the story that you want to tell about Jerusalem is an exclusively Islamic story, then you will hate a place like the City of David, one of the most archaeologically excavated sites in the world,
00:27:04.900because every single day we're in earthing antiquities, fancy word for old stuff, that show not simply as a matter of faith, but as a matter of fact that Jerusalem's biblical heritage is true,
00:27:14.800that the connection that Jews and Christians have with Jerusalem, the foundations that the United States of America, that the Judeo-Christian heritage that it's built upon comes from Jerusalem, that it's real.
00:27:26.200So last time you were on, I think we talked about the Pool of Bethesda, and this is where Jesus healed the man who had been, you know, waiting for a miracle at the pool.
00:27:37.720Right, the Pool of Siloam at the southern end of the City of David, right, which up until 2004 was totally covered up.
00:28:05.900And only because of a busted sewage pipe.
00:28:08.520We have a teaching in our faith that says God has many miracles.
00:28:11.120The reason we found one of the most significant biblical heritage sites in all of Jerusalem, the Pool of Siloam with deep significance to Christians and Jews alike,
00:28:20.300And that, of course, leads then to another discovery.
00:28:22.380Because the Pool of Siloam was the place where, before going up to the temple on Passover, Pentecost, tabernacles, the pilgrimage festivals, you had to cleanse yourself.
00:28:32.800In the Christian scriptures, the story of the healing of the blind man, also Pool of Siloam.
00:28:36.980And so the archaeologists said, well, if we know where the pool is, at the southern end of the city of David, the place where Jerusalem began,
00:28:42.620how did the millions of pilgrims get from the pool all the way up to the temple on the Temple Mount?
00:28:46.940Well, they widened the excavation, and they end up discovering what's known as the pilgrimage road,
00:28:52.020the road that our ancestors, yours and mine, Jews and Christians alike, would have walked on 2,000 years ago when they went on pilgrimage up to the temple on the Temple Mount.
00:29:00.420So it goes, that road would go right directly from that pool.
00:29:25.860Well, the answer is really very simple.
00:29:27.280If you believe that there was a historic Jesus 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem, well, he was Jewish.
00:29:32.800He went with all the Jews down to cleanse at the Pool of Siloam, the southern end of the city of David.
00:29:36.380He would have then walked up from the pool along the pilgrimage road, along the half-mile journey up to the temple on the Temple Mount.
00:29:43.160The Pool of Siloam that we're excavating as we speak in the city of David today is 100% the same Pool of Siloam from 2,000 years ago at the time of Jesus.
00:29:49.800The pilgrimage road that archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority are excavating as we speak today, 100% the same pilgrimage road, same Temple Mount, same city of David.
00:29:58.380Not simply a matter of faith, but a matter of fact.
00:30:20.520How deep down did you have to dig to find the road?
00:30:24.460So the pilgrimage road itself runs up the length of the city of David.
00:30:29.880It comes out at the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount.
00:30:33.300So now what happens is it then splits off.
00:30:35.480When it gets to the southwestern corner, there is one branch that goes off to the east, which comes out by the southern steps.
00:30:41.480Again, another site with deep significance for Jews and Christians alike.
00:30:44.660And then the other part, when it gets to the southwest corner, keeps going north along the western wall.
00:30:50.120And that became the main thoroughfare.
00:30:52.420In fact, when a person stands at the southwest corner of the Temple Mount, you could see the remnants of a massive staircase that would have taken the pilgrims up into the temple.
00:31:33.780Except in this part of Jerusalem, we don't do that.
00:31:36.700And so the challenge is, how do you, on the one hand, respect the modern-day City of David and the people who live there today,
00:31:41.980and at the same time uncover all the heritage with significance to billions of people around the world and give access to all those who want to see it themselves?
00:31:50.440And the answer is with a lot of sensitivity.
00:31:53.220That's why the City of David is only 11 acres in size.
00:31:56.320We've only excavated one-third of the site to date over the last 150 years.
00:34:47.820Well, that's kind of what you just say.
00:34:51.340Years, years ago when I was clicking on the Supreme Court, I was looking, found a list of law clerks who served during October term, 1963, when my dad was a law clerk to Justice White.
00:35:02.680And I saw that another one of the law clerks that year for a different justice was Alan Dershowitz.
00:36:19.180And he argues that it's it's an absolutely essential tool for mitigating what he called the cruelty of the law.
00:36:28.900Now, remember that the federal prisoners, those who have been convicted of a federal offense, it's an executive authority that keeps them in prison.
00:36:39.020It's the president's job to execute the law.
00:36:40.940And so it operates as kind of a natural extension of the president's power to oversee that process.
00:36:50.820But this one goes a step further and allows the president even to officiate the underlying conviction or in some cases through the clemency power, take the lesser included step of reducing a sentence.
00:37:01.500The idea here is that even though it is subject to abuse, even though it can be abused and it has been abused at times in the past, as some would argue, it's nonetheless better to have it there.
00:37:15.960Yeah, as a backstop for abuses in the law and excesses in punishment, such that if we took it away, I think their problems would be greater.
00:37:27.200Yeah, there is. It's kind of the idea.
00:37:30.200I'd rather have, you know, one bad guy go free or 10 bad guys go free than one good guy, you know, unjustly in prison.
00:37:39.800So I guess I kind of I can kind of see it from that point of view, because I think there there is some, you know, injustice that happens from time to time.
00:37:48.000Um, Dershowitz said that, um, in granting his son blanket immunity, he said he thinks that was a big mistake.
00:37:58.340It opens his son up to testify on a lot of stuff.
00:38:05.440In fact, that was one of the first observations I made on X for my at based Mike Lee account right after this happened.
00:38:12.840I pointed out that this makes it very easy for us now to issue a subpoena and hold hearings in the House and of the Senate in which we invite Hunter Biden to come and testify to tell us a lot of things, including things about his business operations and any business relationship he had with the big guy and have him named the big guy and identify him as such.
00:38:39.360But he'll say he'll just take the fifth, right?
00:38:44.700But what happens when he pleads the fifth?
00:38:47.660And then we can point out that you're immune because he's pardoned you prospectively, not just for the crimes of which he's been charged and convicted, but of any and all other crimes that might arise out of any of his conduct since 2014.
00:39:04.560So when you say the fifth, you're like, who are you protecting besides your dad?
00:39:10.980So what is it exactly you're protecting?
00:39:13.160Because anything older than 2014 is almost certainly covered by the statute of limitations.
00:39:19.140And anything since then, you're immune because you're pardoned prospectively.
00:39:26.320And so you can't plead the fifth if you don't have any sort of credible basis for arguing that it could lead to your criminal liability.
00:39:33.840But so, Mike, I just don't think we're going to I don't think we're going to continue with the hearings on the Biden family.
00:39:40.900I think we should only because it should at least be exposed.
00:39:46.320And people know if the president had sold his office and sold the American people out, that should be known because there has to be at least some shame attached to it.
00:40:28.260And so I strongly suspect that you'll have at least one committee in the House and at least one committee in the Senate that will hold hearings on this and do some investigating and hopefully subpoena under Biden to come and testify as a witness.
00:40:40.620So I talked to Kash Patel, well, this is probably four or five months ago before he was, you know, before we it was before the assassination attempt.
00:40:48.620So it was still a time where you're like, I don't know, it's going to be close.
00:41:41.120Pointing out that one of many reasons why they do this sort of thing, they don't keep investigations open long after there has ceased to be any meaningful possibility of moving on them.
00:41:56.620Just so that they can keep the files closed.
00:42:00.020And this is the very kind of thing in government that makes people curious.
00:42:04.860It's one of the reasons why you still have the JFK files.
00:42:58.360But I do believe that he will declassify a lot of things.
00:43:03.020I'll leave it up to him to decide how, when and what circumstances to do that.
00:43:08.840But I know that his strong inclination is to declassify things that don't need to be classified anymore and that the American people have the right to know.
00:43:18.000And so one of the many reasons why we need to get cash to tell confirmed.
00:43:54.100And I don't know whether or how many Republican senators might, at the end of the day, vote against him.
00:44:01.300But I think it's going to be a very small number.
00:44:03.400And I think it's going to be small enough that, at a minimum, we'll get him confirmed, even if that means we have to bring in the vice president to break a tie.
00:44:10.540But I think they will both get through.
00:44:14.240Remember, when a president gets elected, the president has a certain mandate.
00:44:19.360And there's a time-honored practice of deferring, in most instances, to the president's choices, particularly on very key positions, like Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Attorney General, and, yes, FBI Director.
00:45:46.680This is why we have a constitution, so that the people remain in control of government, and so that the people don't become pawns of the government.