The Great America Show - June 17, 2024


CONGRESS MUST STOP FUNDING DOJ & FBI


Episode Stats


Length

26 minutes

Words per minute

155.84029

Word count

4,180

Sentence count

273

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A new report from Peter Swizer at the Government Accountability Institute accuses the Justice Department of profiting from anti-Camp Lejeune ads and fees paid to lawyers involved in the ongoing campaign against the controversial Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:33.600 Hello, everybody. Welcome to The Great America Show. Great to have you with us.
00:00:38.380 Electoral integrity will be at the forefront of the 2024 election.
00:00:43.800 And with less than five months to go, voters are rightly concerned.
00:00:48.560 A new poll out from Rasmussen shows 66% of likely U.S. voters are concerned that the outcome of the 2024 election will be affected by cheating.
00:00:59.560 That includes 40% who are very concerned.
00:01:03.740 Also in that poll, 44% of voters say it's likely that many electronic voting machines are connected to the Internet.
00:01:12.100 This poll comes at a highly peculiar time.
00:01:14.780 Puerto Rico's Elections Commission this week said it's reviewing its contract with Dominion voting machines.
00:01:22.720 That review comes after hundreds of discrepancies were discovered following the island's heated primaries earlier this month.
00:01:31.060 Marxist AG Merrick Garland may be the most protected man in America after Joe Biden.
00:01:36.780 An internal DOJ memo arguing Garland should be protected from prosecution for contempt of Congress.
00:01:45.560 So Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, and the rest who defy sham subpoenas by illegitimate committees,
00:01:52.080 well, they're just, their fate's in the wind.
00:01:54.760 Garland is shielded.
00:01:56.580 Our guest today has a new report out at his watchdog group, the Government Accountability Institute.
00:02:02.460 Peter Swiser says Merrick Garland is allowing attorneys to take advantage of their clients in the long-ongoing Camp Lejeune litigation.
00:02:13.420 And now here with us is Peter Swiser.
00:02:16.060 And Peter, I want to start with this new report coming out from Merrick Garland about the Justice Department
00:02:24.780 on these ads that we're all seeing and the exorbitant fees that some attorneys are charging.
00:02:34.260 What's behind all that?
00:02:37.660 Yeah, so a lot of us have seen the Camp Lejeune ads.
00:02:41.000 And these are instances where, of course, U.S. military personnel and their families who were stationed there
00:02:47.580 ended up being poisoned because of water there that was poisoned.
00:02:51.320 So they were certainly victimized and they're showing that they had medical problems that resulted from this.
00:02:59.200 There's a settlement that's been reached.
00:03:01.440 The problem is, is that these ads are being run by law firms and law groups,
00:03:06.080 and they are taking 60 percent fees, lawyer fees in some cases on these settlements.
00:03:12.640 So these soldiers and these Marines and others are being victimized a second time.
00:03:18.740 So the question is, is how did this happen?
00:03:21.520 It happened on two levels.
00:03:23.160 First of all, there was an effort when this legislation was passed to put a cap on fees.
00:03:29.200 That was stripped from the legislation primarily by lobbyists, including the former chief of staff of Nancy Pelosi,
00:03:37.280 who fought that restriction.
00:03:39.560 But more recently, Merrick Garland, the attorney general, could do something about this.
00:03:44.500 There's a Department of Justice guidance that says that that in these particular cases, lawyers should not be taking fees more than 25 percent.
00:03:54.080 They are clearly doing so now.
00:03:55.960 But Merrick Garland has done nothing about it.
00:03:58.620 And the reason is, when you look at some of the law firms that are taking in the largest fees and making the largest amounts of money on this,
00:04:05.920 these were the actual lawyers who were pushing for him to be appointed attorney general and also pushed for him to be put on the Supreme Court back in 2016.
00:04:16.100 So it is absolutely backscratching taking place between these trial attorneys and Merrick Garland.
00:04:22.080 And the victims, of course, are the men and women who serve their country and our family who are stationed at Camp Lejeune,
00:04:29.260 who are trying to get assemblies of justice.
00:04:31.140 And it's basically being taken away by these trial attorneys and their law firms.
00:04:35.900 Is there anything that you think will likely be done about this?
00:04:39.720 Because it's outrageous.
00:04:40.680 As you say, you're minimized twice.
00:04:44.160 It is.
00:04:45.040 Well, certainly Congress can revisit this and pass legislation capping fees at 25 percent.
00:04:51.900 The second thing we're calling on is for the congressional committees, including House Oversight and the Senate Committee of Investigations.
00:04:59.900 I understand Republicans are in the minority, but to call for subpoenas to DOJ to find out how this situation happened,
00:05:08.480 who jerry-rigged it at DOJ and who did Merrick Garland meet with and when did he meet with them?
00:05:14.660 In terms of these law firms or others, they're involved in this legal heist that's taking place for these people that were victimized at Camp Lejeune.
00:05:24.180 Well, it's been a busy time for Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice.
00:05:29.180 They've declared that he is in point of fact above the law and cannot be held in contempt by the United States Congress.
00:05:36.500 They have also held that none of the prosecutors, whether federal or local, whether it's Alvin Bragg or Fannie Willis,
00:05:48.120 and the special counsels have been working together, conspiring to go after and prosecute and persecute Donald Trump.
00:05:57.500 So they've wiped the slate clean here over the last two weeks.
00:06:03.040 Where in the world do you go in the Justice Department to find somebody who makes sense?
00:06:09.880 Yeah, it's very, very hard to find, Lou.
00:06:12.420 And look, here's the bottom line.
00:06:14.680 This is all about the power of the purse string.
00:06:17.580 I don't say this very often, but what would Democrats do?
00:06:21.080 If these roles were somehow reversed, what Democrats would do on Capitol Hill is say, guess what?
00:06:27.640 We are not going to fund the Department of Justice until you comply with the subpoenas that we submitted to you.
00:06:35.580 That's really the next step.
00:06:37.120 It's really, I think, up to Jim Jordan, the people on the Judiciary Committee.
00:06:41.060 That's, of course, where funding for the Department of Justice is approved to step up, because what you have is really a test of the branches of government.
00:06:52.880 None of the three branches are supreme.
00:06:55.340 The judicial branch is not supreme to the executor or the legislative.
00:06:59.360 They are all co-equals.
00:07:01.280 And if Congress is trying to exercise legitimate oversight, which they are, they have a right to ask these things from the Department of Justice.
00:07:10.140 The only reason the Department of Justice is not sharing this information, whether these are the Joe Biden tapes of his interview with the special prosecutor or whether it's correspondence related to their discussions, potentially with Alvin Bragg or with Fannie Willis.
00:07:26.480 The only reason they're not turning it over is not because it's going to violate anybody's rights.
00:07:32.420 It's because it's potentially deeply embarrassing.
00:07:35.820 So they are engaging in a political exercise and they shouldn't be doing that.
00:07:40.860 And Congress has to call them out for it.
00:07:43.400 I am one, Lou, that lots of times has called for congressional investigations.
00:07:48.180 We need those.
00:07:49.320 But when push comes to shove, sometimes you need to use the power of the purse and go further and say, guess what?
00:07:56.260 We are not going to fund this department until you share this information that we have legitimately requested from you.
00:08:03.480 What do you suppose Speaker Johnson has refused to do so?
00:08:08.260 He's he's he's been a disappointment in many ways, but he had every opportunity to use the power of the purse to constrict that those budgets are to eliminate them in point of fact.
00:08:22.080 Yeah, I mean, look, I think that, you know, he is trying to walk this tightrope.
00:08:27.160 Obviously, he saw what happened to McCarthy and he's trying to balance a lot of things.
00:08:33.140 But, yeah, at the bottom line, when you have power, you have to use that power when it's necessary to accomplish legitimate goals and purposes.
00:08:42.340 And this is one of them.
00:08:43.360 It's it's ultimately not, Lou, about these tapes, although they're important with Joe Biden talking to her.
00:08:50.380 And it's not ultimately about Alvin Reck.
00:08:52.640 It's about the balance of power.
00:08:54.760 And the executive branch should not feel like it can just thumb its nose at Congress.
00:09:00.600 And again, if the roles were reversed, if this was a Democrat Congress doing this during the Trump administration or during the George W.
00:09:09.480 Bush administration, I would dare say they would push it until they got the results that they wanted.
00:09:15.440 So it's up to Johnson.
00:09:16.860 It's also up to these committee chairs to do the right thing and use the power of the purse.
00:09:23.300 That's the next phase, because otherwise, this is only going to embolden them to continue to defy Congress on other legitimate requests that they've made.
00:09:33.320 So I think you've got to shoot a cannon across their bow and you need to correct this because these are absolutely legitimate requests.
00:09:43.520 Absolutely.
00:09:44.300 We're talking with Peter Schweizer.
00:09:46.140 We're coming right back.
00:09:47.500 Please stay with us.
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00:11:23.320 We're back with Peter Swiser and it's to me, it's interesting right now that the White House is playing games with the distinction between a pardon and commutation when it comes to Hunter Biden and his his father.
00:11:41.020 Your thoughts.
00:11:41.660 Yeah, certainly they're playing word games, Lou.
00:11:45.820 But I would also add, I mean, everybody seems to be accepting Joe Biden's word when he issued this statement that he's not going to pardon Hunter Biden.
00:11:54.320 He has lied.
00:11:55.680 And I don't use that word loosely.
00:11:57.360 He has lied repeatedly when it comes to his son, Hunter Biden.
00:12:01.560 Let's remember, I mean, he told the American people Hunter had not received the dime from China when, in fact, he had received millions from China.
00:12:09.760 He said that he had had no contact with Hunter Biden's business associates that ended up being a lie.
00:12:16.360 He actually met with them.
00:12:17.660 He was on the phone with them, et cetera.
00:12:19.620 He said that he personally had not profited from any of these deals.
00:12:24.140 We now know, of course, from the House Oversight Committee that he received hundreds of thousands of dollars.
00:12:29.060 So I don't take it face value that he's not going to pardon Hunter Biden.
00:12:33.020 I think after the November election, whether he wins or loses, I would not be surprised if he decides in the name of, you know, fatherly or paternal love that he's going to pardon Hunter Biden.
00:12:46.740 I think that's absolutely something that we should expect him to do.
00:12:50.360 And again, you know, the Democrats have said repeatedly, you know, Trump does not accept the, you know, the edicts of the judicial system on these sort of trumped up charges that have been brought against him.
00:13:05.760 What the Biden campaign has done is sort of passively, aggressively say that they accept what the court has done.
00:13:14.180 But clearly there are murmurings that they don't accept it, that, you know, reports from Politico that Joe Biden thinks Hunter Biden is a victim here.
00:13:24.700 So they don't accept these verdicts.
00:13:27.320 I think they're doing things for PR spin on the public surface level.
00:13:31.440 But I would fully expect him after the election, win or lose, that he is going to pardon Hunter Biden.
00:13:37.760 And the problem is the criticism of the press probably will be muted.
00:13:41.960 They haven't called him out on the other things that he has lied about regarding Hunter Biden, his personal profiting, et cetera.
00:13:49.220 So I would expect him to believe that he's going to get away with it with minor criticism from the mainstream media.
00:13:56.280 Yeah, minor, if any.
00:13:59.720 The absurdity of all of this is frankly overwhelming because Joe Biden has gamed everything he's ever touched.
00:14:09.320 There's nothing about him that isn't circuitous, that isn't deceitful, you name it.
00:14:16.400 He comes out and he says, well, you know, the reason my son got convicted is it's a weaponized justice system.
00:14:22.380 I mean, scratch your head over that one.
00:14:24.780 I mean, it's they have no shame and they play every game that they can imagine.
00:14:30.180 And they conjure pretty well.
00:14:31.540 They do. And look, they don't get called out on it anymore.
00:14:35.960 I actually saw an old video clip online from I think it was ABC News calling out Joe Biden, then Senator Joe Biden, during the 88 presidential campaign, calling him out for his repeated lies.
00:14:49.580 And it was a brutal, hard hitting investigative report by ABC News.
00:14:54.500 Well, where is that kind of reporting now?
00:14:56.780 I don't see it anywhere.
00:14:57.820 I mean, the lies haven't stopped. In a sense, the lies are worse.
00:15:02.120 The lies that we associate with Joe Biden in his past relate to, you know, padding his resume, claims about law school and, you know, his great academic successes, which weren't actually there.
00:15:13.820 What he's now lying about is these massive conflicts of interest, these massive efforts of influence peddling and the flow of tens of millions of dollars to his family.
00:15:24.800 And yet the media doesn't call him out on it.
00:15:27.120 It's really, really remarkable.
00:15:29.120 When I look at the shaky state of the American republic, certainly you look at what's going on in government.
00:15:35.660 But the biggest concern is we don't have a mainstream media that will do anything other than report on scandals faked and imagined on one side and ignore real scandals on the other side.
00:15:50.820 And if you don't, if that's the media that you have, that is the bulk of the mainstream media that most people listen to, you do not have an independent watchdog on our government officials anymore.
00:16:02.920 And when you don't have that, they are going to push the envelope of what they can get away with.
00:16:07.920 And that is certainly what Joe Biden is doing.
00:16:10.940 Joe Biden, the entire I mean, they're no longer simply a crime family.
00:16:14.940 These are such lowlifes.
00:16:17.020 They're a slime family as well.
00:16:19.200 It is the perversion.
00:16:21.860 All of it documented.
00:16:23.520 Not all of it, but at least what we know has been documented.
00:16:28.120 It's it is really ugly to watch this and to see the acceptance, as you point out, in the in the national corporate media.
00:16:36.980 And the only thing that one can imagine is their corporate masters of those news organizations are laying out the agenda.
00:16:45.500 And it's not an agenda that is in any way pro-America, pro-Americans, pro-American family.
00:16:53.920 It's it's just disgraceful what we're witnessing is and and the watchdogs who seem to be, with your notable exception, absolutely, absolutely silent.
00:17:08.880 Yeah, you're right, Lou.
00:17:09.800 I mean, here's the good news, although it's not news that that any any of us think is ultimately healthy is.
00:17:16.540 The good news is these mainstream media outlets are paying a massive price for the bidding that they are doing.
00:17:24.580 Their ratings are way down.
00:17:26.420 Their credibility is way down.
00:17:28.000 I saw a survey done by a legitimate pollster that faith in the mainstream media is actually lower than Congress.
00:17:35.420 I mean, you know, Congress is like at 18, 19 percent and that's left, right and center.
00:17:41.440 So by doing this, by kind of carrying water for certain political figures or for the political establishment, these news outlets are totally trashing their brands.
00:17:53.440 I guess they don't seem to mind it because they keep doing it, but they are bearing a price for it.
00:17:58.480 And I do think the rise of independent media, again, left, right and center.
00:18:03.640 I mean, there are some left wing news websites out there that I don't agree with everything they do, but they also actually do some good reporting that you're not going to see in the mainstream media.
00:18:13.620 So that's where the future of media is.
00:18:15.840 If we can get past the issue of a big tech censoring of these independent news outlets, which, of course, is a big challenge.
00:18:23.100 There is a future and there are alternative sources of information out there as these mainstream media outlets continue to see a decline in their ratings and in their reputations.
00:18:34.940 It's truly a crisis, cord cutting, streaming, all of these pressures.
00:18:41.260 And then the political, socio-political influences right now, as you say, depressing their ratings and their circulation as well.
00:18:51.400 Well, we're talking with Peter Schweizer and we are coming right back.
00:18:56.000 Stay with us and we'll find out what what is next in this great country, because we haven't checked in.
00:19:03.620 At least we don't know that we've checked in with the Chinese yet. 1.00
00:19:07.720 And we do know where the president gets many of his ideas.
00:19:11.860 We'll be right back.
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00:19:37.960 We're back talking with Peter Schweizer.
00:19:49.380 And, Peter, it seems to me that the corporate America right now is in a dramatic shift.
00:19:57.440 We're the president of the United States meeting with some of the top CEOs in banking, in business, and they are coming to him.
00:20:05.780 He's not going to them.
00:20:07.480 And I think that's an important symbol.
00:20:10.180 I don't know if it's a contrived symbol on their part, a strategic decision, so that they won't be accused of impressing him too much.
00:20:20.100 But we're really seeing a change on the part of a lot of corporate America here, aren't we, in regard to the upcoming likely Trump presidency?
00:20:31.020 Yeah, I think that corporate America is trying to hedge their bets.
00:20:36.300 And as always, you know, there are very few profiles in courage among these corporate executives.
00:20:42.560 I mean, they're worried about the relationship with China, not in the way that you and I and the majority of the American people are.
00:20:49.000 They're worried about it disrupting these intricate relationships that they have established that are part of their corporate profit network.
00:20:58.540 You know, look at what Larry Fink, you know, head of BlackRock, said in 2011, where he candidly announced in an interview what many other CEOs would not quite so publicly say when he literally said he actually prefers to do business with, in his words, totalitarian regimes because they're more predictable.
00:21:19.980 That goes for most of corporate America, whether it's certainly Wall Street, the financial sector or big tech.
00:21:27.020 They want to maintain a stable relationship with China and they don't really worry about the cost of that stability, whether it's rising China, whether it's a threat to our civil liberties, whether it's a threat to our national security. 0.84
00:21:40.480 They ultimately place less emphasis on that and they're more focused on maintaining stable relationships because it's good for their quarterly profits.
00:21:50.400 But the American people have shifted on China.
00:21:53.440 The latest polling shows that that, you know, the vast majority of them see China not as a friendly rival, but actually as an enemy, as in a threat to the United States.
00:22:04.000 So corporate America is going to have to pick and choose where they are going forward.
00:22:09.920 I understand they've got to straddle certain relationships.
00:22:12.920 They may have to reorient supply lines, supply chains.
00:22:16.840 But the American people are shifting on many of these issues, many of these important issues.
00:22:22.600 And if corporate America doesn't get on board, they're going to get left behind.
00:22:26.340 And I think that the American people's patience, you know, for elites in the financial sector who are sort of jettisoning the interests of the American people for their own personal benefit, patience is waning.
00:22:41.900 And I think Americans are really waking up on this issue.
00:22:45.480 And corporate America is trying to figure out how to straddle these new realities.
00:22:51.100 And there are some building conflicts, whether it be China's direct threats to Taiwan, of course, and their insistence on dominion over the South China Sea.
00:23:03.340 But we also, and I don't know if you imagined this when you wrote Blood Money, but suddenly the head of the Select Committee on the CCP, Mike Gallagher, Congressman Gallagher,
00:23:15.700 the first major move was for him to retire from Congress.
00:23:21.800 It's astounding to see what's happening.
00:23:25.060 Next, the big strategic partner, of course, with China.
00:23:30.080 Russia now has four warships in the Caribbean at one point, 30 miles off the U.S. coast.
00:23:36.520 I think that a lot of people in corporate America are going to have a lot of trouble getting realigned, given the rising aggression of their expansionary aims.
00:23:52.780 Yeah, no, I think you're exactly right, Lou.
00:23:55.620 You nailed it.
00:23:56.420 And all you need to do is look at the divide, the way that Wall Street talks about Russia, as opposed to the way they talk about China.
00:24:04.180 Russia, of course, is a threat, but it's a waning, declining power.
00:24:09.140 They have big demographic problems.
00:24:11.260 Their economy is not doing well.
00:24:13.220 They are a waning threat.
00:24:14.900 But, of course, corporate America is all on board with the Russian threat.
00:24:19.820 And the reason is, is that a lot of them don't have deep commercial ties in Russia.
00:24:23.660 Other than the energy sector, most sectors of corporate America don't have deep commercial interests in Russia.
00:24:30.980 They have massive interests in China.
00:24:34.000 For some of these big investment funds, a third or more of their profits are actually coming from mainland China.
00:24:41.240 That's where their biggest growth is coming from.
00:24:43.700 So it's a lot harder for them to talk about the Chinese threat because they are so conflicted.
00:24:50.760 You know, who becomes president in November and is inaugurated in January is going to make a huge difference on this issue.
00:24:59.120 We saw what President Trump's posture was towards China, especially when the administration was really sort of set in place, which was really challenging China, calling out China on on many of the threats that they posed.
00:25:13.980 You know, Trump was the first president to call out China on their involvement with the fentanyl trade.
00:25:19.640 And of course, President Xi made promises to Trump, which he never kept.
00:25:24.100 But Joe Biden has been silent on fentanyl.
00:25:27.400 He does not call China out on it.
00:25:29.180 So a lot is at stake in this 2024 election, not just as it relates to the lives of individual Americans, as it relates to taxes and civil liberties, but our very national security, how we deal with China.
00:25:44.280 There is a stark contrast between Biden's soft posture, essentially giving China what they want and what Donald Trump says he's going to do in his second term.
00:25:56.800 We we appreciate you being with us here today, Peter.
00:26:00.240 And as always, a great conversation.
00:26:02.540 Thanks for thanks for joining us and all the very best, my friend.
00:26:07.020 Always great to be with you, Lou.
00:26:08.240 Thanks for having me.
00:26:09.560 Thanks to Peter Schweizer.
00:26:10.540 Thank you for being with us today and be sure to join us tomorrow for the Great America Show.
00:26:16.260 Our guest will be attorney Mark McCloskey.
00:26:19.600 Mark is the man you may remember from the summer of love.
00:26:23.140 He and his wife confronted BLM supporters and demonstrators outside their home.
00:26:29.220 Mark's record has just been expunged and now he wants his guns back.
00:26:34.060 He joins us with an update on how that's going.
00:26:36.420 And be sure to join us tonight for Lou Dobbs tonight, 7 Eastern, 6 Central on Frank's speech, Roku, Rumble and X.
00:26:45.520 Thanks, everybody.
00:26:46.600 God bless you and may God bless America.