Biden strikes a deal with rail workers, the FBI investigates a Russian oligarch, and former FBI agent Greg Schaefer asks why no one wants access to Joe Biden's secret meetings with his son Hunter and brother James. Plus, a look at how the FBI is being used as a political pawn.
00:00:00.120Hello, everybody. I'm Lou Dobbs, and this is The Great America Show.
00:00:05.460History, it seems, is being made almost every day in this country.
00:00:09.640Certainly a lot of news as well, and most of it not particularly helpful to sunny, rosy outlooks and buoyant moods.
00:00:17.280But hey, we're Americans. We can handle it all, and more, I'm sure.
00:00:21.620But let's take care of what we have on our plates right now. What do you think?
00:00:25.560We don't want to run the risk of running too far over our quota of challenges and threats.
00:00:31.840President Biden continues to make history.
00:00:34.740He's been given credit for stopping a threatened strike by 50,000 railroad workers who would have slowed our economy even more.
00:00:43.560He reportedly called into the meeting as the evening negotiations were wearing on and helped stake out a tentative deal.
00:00:50.860And what a deal it is. 24% pay raises over a period of five years, retroactive to 2019.
00:00:59.940With $1,000 annual cash bonuses and back pay, those rail workers will be receiving, after the deal is ratified,
00:01:08.440about $11,000 apiece and raises of about 6% a year from there on.
00:01:14.320Pretty rich when you think about what's happening to pay raises all around this country.
00:01:19.640But then there is that more than 8% inflation rate that's ripping through the economy now.
00:01:25.660Tough times, but less so for these union workers whose average pay will be about $110,000 a year by 2024.
00:01:35.080Now, Joe, why don't you fix that runaway inflation you caused with those massive spending programs over the past 20 months?
00:01:42.560That would be a good deal for the other 155 million workers in this country.
00:01:49.140Speaking of this puppet president, his vice presidential records on meetings with his son Hunter and brother James are in the National Archives.
00:02:58.620The Daily Mail, reporting the FBI's ex-head of counterintelligence, is being investigated for doing business with a sanctioned Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a Putin pal.
00:03:12.540He's not charged with a crime, but he is, says the Mail, the target of a federal grand jury.
00:03:18.360Yet another scandal for the FBI for the scandal-plagued and politically corrupt FBI and DOJ.
00:03:26.480Our guest today worked as a special agent of the FBI for 20 years.
00:03:31.660He is as appalled as any of us about what's happened to his once-storied agency.
00:04:12.460I mean, there's no other way to put it.
00:04:13.960You know, I still have many friends in the FBI that I talk to quite regularly.
00:04:17.640And most of those field agents have the concerns that I have in America.
00:04:23.840And that is what's happening to the FBI.
00:04:26.620It has become a political pawn, it seems like, to this administration.
00:04:30.840It's just, as a former agent, you know, I bleed FBI blue.
00:04:36.300And I think it's the greatest law enforcement agency to ever exist.
00:04:39.760And what has happened in the last few years is just, it's heart-wrenching.
00:04:46.740It is, I think, to all of us who, you know, who grew up, I guess, three generations of FBI agents that I've known.
00:04:56.800And as a cub reporter, watching what the FBI was doing, whether it's on the border or whether it is working to defend the nation in a dozen different ways.
00:05:11.820And to think that the FBI is, after all that Donald Trump went through from before he was president, throughout his term in office, and following on in his post-presidency.
00:05:26.980We're entering the seventh year of political persecution of a president.
00:05:30.780And it's as if no one in the Justice Department, no one in the FBI, understands that this man has been found to have done absolutely no wrongdoing of any kind.
00:05:42.920That, while the FBI has had four consecutive directors who've lied to Congress, who've lied to the American people, and it's a demonstrable fact.
00:05:53.360And the number of people involved in the frame-up of General Michael Flynn, the attempted frame-up of President Trump.
00:06:03.580The list goes on, as you well know, through two impeachments, a special counsel.
00:06:09.160What has gripped that agency, in your best judgment, that would permit it to behave, to conduct itself in this ugly manner?
00:06:19.900Well, I think a lot of the loot comes down to leadership.
00:06:24.080I think the last three or four directors, you know, starting with Mueller and then Comey and now Ray, it's just this lack of leadership.
00:06:38.840I think the last director that was supportive of the agent and really had the support of all the field agents was Louis Free.
00:06:47.940You know, he was referred to as the agent's director.
00:06:51.540And I had the privilege of receiving my credentials and my badge upon graduation from the FBI Academy from Director Free.
00:06:59.920And he was the last one, you know, in the storied history of the FBI that I think was in it for the right reason.
00:07:07.340You know, you look at the most recent, you know, FBI action at Mar-a-Lago conducting that search of former President Trump's residence and how that was done and the lies being told still about that.
00:07:22.700I mean, is it national security or is it just some records for the National Archives?
00:07:30.060Well, if it was exigent because there were nuclear weapons secrets being, you know, held in an unsecured location, then why was it that the FBI didn't execute the warrant until Monday when the magistrate signed it on Friday?
00:07:43.840And if it was so important, too, why would the DOJ go to a magistrate and not a district judge to sign off on a warrant that was to be executed on a former president's residence?
00:07:56.180I mean, there's just so much misinformation, miscommunication, and just outright lies that are happening, you know, from the FBI's selling floor.
00:08:04.140And again, I do want to reiterate that a vast majority of the field agents in the FBI are solid, patriotic Americans who just want to do one thing, and that's put bad people in jail and protect America.
00:08:21.040I, for a good while, was questioning whether or not even that was true, that is, the rank-and-file agents.
00:08:28.800And until we had these whistleblowers start stepping forward, I truly was in great doubt.
00:08:37.200But now I think hope is rekindled, faith is rekindled, that we're seeing these agents risk their careers and their livelihoods to let the American people know and this government know what has been transpiring
00:08:54.300and the ugly political corruption that reaches across the entire Department of Justice.
00:09:00.780There is no sacrosanct corner of the Department of Justice that is immune to this awful, toxic, poisonous political corruption that has invaded it beginning, I know not when, but certainly over the past decade.
00:09:17.760Well, absolutely, there's absolutely zero transparency being conducted right now by either the DOJ or even the FBI.
00:09:25.240You know, the affidavit that was sworn to by the agent who went to the magistrate to get that search warrant signed from Mar-a-Lago, the affidavit needs to be released,
00:09:36.680because that will tell the American public exactly what was said and done in June with the president, what they were looking for, you know,
00:09:46.180and it will easily define whether or not there was overreach or not by the government, because that affidavit should specifically detail what it is they were looking for.
00:09:54.360And we're finding out, you know, just in the last day or two, the amount of documents that were seen by the FBI that had nothing to do with, quote, unquote, nuclear weapon information or any information about the National Archives that they were looking for.
00:10:10.180I mean, they had medical records, tax records, attorney-client records, so that transparency just isn't there.
00:10:19.780And if the Department of Justice wants to gain some, their reputation back, then maybe be very transparent and release that affidavit.
00:10:28.580It is, and by the way, to your point, those documents numbered over 500 pages of client-attorney privilege alone.
00:10:44.580Forget about executive privilege and, as you said, medical records, financial records.
00:10:49.140This is an outrage and an overreach, and we know why it is now taking some time.
00:10:54.940We're talking about, we're looking at five weeks now since the raid, which occurred on the 8th of last month, and nothing much has really happened here.
00:11:07.580They're going, they, being the Justice Department, has decided to slow their roll because they right now understand that there is an immense public backlash against them.
00:11:17.320The most recent polling shows most Americans want Biden impeached because he's lied again.
00:11:23.920He lied about not giving the order to the National Archives and the Department of Justice.
00:11:29.780Merrick Garland, for his part, also lying as the attorney general because he was directly involved in a court, and everyone knew it.
00:11:38.380These are silly lies that, you know, are unworthy of children, let alone, too, the top official of the government and one of the top officials.
00:11:56.120You know, and now it's just that it's attorneys fighting attorneys where nothing's really happening, and everything's just frozen in time right now, and I think that's to the government's benefit because they don't want the truth to come out this close to the midterms.
00:12:10.480You know, every FBI agent is trained to use the least intrusive method possible when executing a search warrant, and you're given a copy of the affidavit, and you're briefed before the operation to do the warrant of what they're looking for,
00:12:28.480and for the agents to take and feed, like you said, 500 pages of client-privileged material, attorney-client-privileged material, as well as tax records and medical records.
00:12:53.720It's documented ad nauseum, and there's just no excuse.
00:12:58.480For the agents to have taken those kind of records when the search warrant was for national archive records or, you know, nuclear weapon information.
00:13:12.060And, again, and we don't know which one it is.
00:13:13.720Is it national archive records, or is it nuclear weapon secrets?
00:13:18.140What is it what they were looking for?
00:13:19.800Because we haven't seen the affidavit.
00:13:21.160So we really don't know, and there's so much misinformation coming from the Justice Department.
00:13:24.900They changed their tune every five minutes.
00:13:31.440They are in real – I think that there is great desperation that has swept at least the top officials of the Justice Department and the FBI.
00:13:39.680I believe they're fully conscious now of their overreach and having acted out of arrogance that they would never have a consequence as a result of misjudgment or an illegal criminal act.
00:13:54.140I don't know whoever – whoever decided on this was the course of action to take was one of the greatest missteps in political maneuvering.
00:14:05.320I mean, you know, what kind of – you know, who thought that this would be a great idea, and the American public would see this as something honorable and righteous?
00:14:14.880You know, this just stinks of political maneuvering and vindictiveness.
00:14:21.680I mean, this is a sitting president, and I guarantee you the president of the United States, Biden, knew exactly everything about this war before it was executed.
00:14:30.560There is no way the FBI would have done this on a former president without the sitting president knowing about it.
00:14:35.840There's no way – but for him to make that political move and think it would work in his benefit, I don't see how anybody can look at that and say, this is going to work out well for me.
00:14:46.280The judge in the – making a decision on the special master in her 24-page order, again, did the fools who did this – and I include that – by the way, let me be very clear.
00:15:02.080I'm starting with – number one fool is Joe Biden, as per usual.
00:15:10.200Christopher Wray is just waiting for another chance to smirk smugly at the cameras as he sits before Congress and the Senate to explain himself, but I think he's in huge trouble as well.
00:15:22.360So it just doesn't make any sense that they – they had to know that their role in all of this would be revealed.
00:15:32.080We know that this judge is – she has really rolled back the curtain considerably, just in her order, presiding district court judge Aileen Cannon, who, by the way, is a Trump appointee,
00:15:47.820held that the Department of Justice cannot review for criminal investigative purposes any of that material or any of those documents until there is a full review process undertaken.
00:16:01.900She also makes it clear, ladies and gentlemen, this is something.
00:16:06.260We have a district court judge who is calling it as she sees it and doing so knowing full well that there will be immense consequences and attempts at retribution against her.
00:16:18.000But she's saying, point blank, the taint, so-called taint squads and teams for the FBI that are to preserve privileges and rights of the suspect or target, failed horribly.
00:19:28.320Because Bill Barr, the attorney general, is the one who said, well, there was no widespread fraud.
00:19:33.920But we also know there was no investigation of any kind.
00:19:36.980And we also know that the month before he said those things, or almost two months before he said those things, he was saying there is pervasive fraud.
00:19:46.120There is great danger in this election.
00:19:49.640He was talking primarily about mail-in balloting.
00:19:52.240But he was acknowledging that what a tender box we were sitting on sociologically and politically in this country as we approached that election.
00:20:02.860And it came to pass because we know it was rigged.
00:20:06.340Yeah, I think Bill Barr's reputation is damaged beyond repair, not from anything other than what he has said himself and his quick turnarounds and his varying opinions and how quickly they change.
00:20:25.740That he has done so much damage to his own reputation that it's irreparable in my eyes.
00:20:29.840And you're referring to the fact that for three years he was talking about the cheating, the illegality, and the fraud of the FBI and Justice Department itself as they pursued President Trump baselessly.
00:20:42.600And now talking as though the Department of Justice and the FBI are filled with saints and never a sinner.
00:20:51.060I mean, as you say, it's just a crazy turnaround.
00:21:04.760It seems such a 180 on what he believes happened in the election three years ago or two years ago and what he's saying now publicly.
00:21:16.900It's just none of it makes sense to me.
00:21:19.160I don't think it makes sense to anybody who's listened to him.
00:21:21.580And that's why I said his credibility is shot because it's not a spectacle.
00:21:25.360It doesn't make any sense to me how he can, again, just have a 180-degree view on what he said publicly just a few years ago or a couple years ago.
00:21:39.840And to look at now the 35 to 50 MAGA supporters who have reportedly been raided by the FBI in the last 48 hours for no apparent reason with wide, apparently, just very broad search warrants, apparently approaching that of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant and seizure documents.
00:22:05.600This is – did you ever think that you would hear all sorts of commentators and politicians referring to the FBI now as the Marxist Dems, Gestapo?
00:22:23.480Well, people are – I mean, I remember when that – the Jewish defense would be coming down to people's heads for doing that, but that's precisely what's happening because of the way in which the FBI is now conducting itself.
00:22:39.040And I said at the very beginning, it truly hurts my soul.
00:22:43.200I absolutely was incredibly proud of my 20 years in the FBI.
00:22:51.300I traveled the world with the hostage rescue team, done operations in Iraq and Pakistan and Somalia and traveled the world and think it was the greatest law enforcement agency ever known to mankind.
00:23:10.840You work the investigation and let the chips fall where they may.
00:23:15.320And for this agency now to be tainted the way it is by just this horrific leadership over the last three directors and this political correctness seeping in even to its, you know, agent ranks, it's just – it's crushing.
00:23:31.440It's just – there's no way to put it.
00:23:35.800For example, I went from being somebody who was very proud to be an FBI agent to somebody who now doesn't talk about it a lot to anybody, especially strangers.
00:24:09.800They need to be out there visiting in the 56 field offices, getting in front of the agents, finding out what they want, what they need, supporting them.
00:24:22.040It wouldn't be nice to have that be the expression that you would hear from the next FBI director.
00:24:29.280I have to say, I don't know that if – I think this is going to have to go much farther than a replacement for Christopher Wray.
00:24:37.660I think that the – I don't think, I know that for this country to ever have any regard again for the Department of Justice and for the FBI, there is going to have to be a wholesale housecleaning of its leadership.
00:24:52.660And I don't know how many floors of the FBI that will be, but it will be considerable, and I'm sure it will reach out to the field offices as well, where there seems to have been some sort of asset training program going on between management and those field office director assignments.
00:25:10.380This has just been a cancer that has spread throughout the organization.
00:25:19.180Yeah, it truly is, because – and here's how it spreads, Lou.
00:25:23.560The director hand-selects the 56 field offices SAC, special agent in charge.
00:25:29.000So each 56 field office is – has an SAC appointed and hand-selected by the director.
00:25:36.760Those SACs then hand-select their ASACs, their assistant special agent in charges.
00:25:42.640And some offices have 10 ASACs, some offices have two ASACs, depending on how large they are.
00:25:49.820And then the supervisors who run the each squads, they're selected by the ASACs.
00:25:54.160So it's a self-perpetuating cancer once you, you know, get that mindset of political correctness and wokeness and whatever it is that is creating this mess.
00:26:06.060Then it just, again, metastasized because each individual then picks their own follower, and, you know, they pick the like-minded, of course.
00:26:16.700And as you say that, it's no wonder that the Michigan governor, who were kidnapping scandal case – I guess it was a scandal before it was a case – the FBI supervising agent who put that all together, that frame-up of some of those people in Michigan who luckily got off, two did not.
00:26:40.240But he was then moved to Washington to take up that field office and is actually the person involved in the Mar-a-Lago escapade and outrage.
00:26:53.820Just to support what you're saying, it's just – it's a system that is toxic across the breadth of the FBI.
00:27:06.740The department, this National Security Department, its role in this is also incredible.
00:27:15.400And to me, it seems – and I'll give you my straightforward view – I believe the National Security Division has got to be ripped out of the FBI.
00:27:23.640It doesn't belong, and that function doesn't belong in the United States.
00:27:42.400They have a domestic intelligence agency, and they have an overseas intelligence agency, you know.
00:27:46.320So it's like, you know, their CIA – their MI6 is their CIA – or our CIA, their MI5 is the National Security Division of the FBI.
00:27:56.460So – and Australia has the same thing.
00:27:58.620They have a domestic intelligence terrorism agency, and then they have the Australian Federal Police, and then they have another agency that does what our CIA does, that's collect intelligence over the seas.
00:28:10.380So there's always been that argument that should the FBI be split into two organizations, one, a domestic intelligence agency, and the other, the domestic federal crime investigating agency.
00:28:27.480And after 9-11 – well, I think it works with the FBI having it in the same agency because it does help prevent something like another 9-11 happening.
00:28:39.740Where the two agencies don't talk to each other.
00:28:42.820There's that Chinese wall between the two where the criminal investigators don't share information with the domestic intelligence agency and vice versa.
00:28:50.560Where they hold into the information when they need to share that information so that they can connect the dots.
00:28:56.960Because a lot of terrorism acts raise funds by doing criminal acts.
00:29:03.480So the criminal side of it needs to have connectivity to the domestic intelligence side of it.
00:29:09.400So, again, those connections can be made as a result.
00:29:13.740And to put it in larger context, we know also 51 intelligence agency, Obama intelligence agency chiefs and veterans, signed that letter saying that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation, knowing full well it was a lie.
00:29:35.200And they used it as a shield for the presidential debate, and they used it as a shield for Joe Biden to lie more in the second and final debate of the presidential debates that year.
00:29:43.540We also know that had they not done that, it's very unlikely that Joe Biden would have been elected president.
00:29:52.580And not a single one of those 51 individuals has come out and apologized or admitted they're wrong.
00:30:01.360I think the Hunter Biden laptop is one of the greatest cover-ups, you know, down along with the Jeffrey Epstein story, two of the greatest cover-ups in American history.
00:30:14.060And had those 51 people not come out and lied, and that laptop did get the attention that it should have garnered, that I agree with you that Biden would not have even gotten close to 81 million votes.
00:30:25.660You know, I would not have ever imagined, and I'm hardly, as you might guess, I'm hardly naive, but I never imagined there were 51 individuals who could be corralled up from each of the major intelligence agencies of the United States who would affix their names to a letter, a public letter designed to push Joe Biden across the finish line.
00:30:53.680Or any partisan act that would be that replete with, including five directors, former directors of the CIA.
00:31:04.480It's still, to me, it's just incomprehensible.
00:31:08.400Well, does that support the belief that there is a deep state and that Trump was exposing that?
00:31:13.860I mean, that's the writing on the wall.
00:31:16.820Well, I'm not going to leave my opinion out there on that because I have a business to run, but to me, that just reeks of the deep state.
00:31:26.660And they were about to be exposed by Trump, and they're rallying the troops, circling the wagons.
00:31:35.180It is the largest disinformation campaign that I'm aware of ever waged by the United States against the American people.
00:31:51.040But no one approaches the United States government in running disinformation campaigns against the American people.
00:31:59.580It is now wholesale disinformation emanating from the White House, from the Pentagon, from the State Department, the Justice Department, you name it.
00:32:10.600We are watching it happen every day in Technicolor and live.
00:32:50.280But one I truly believe yet, we will prevail, the American people will prevail, and this republic will emerge stronger, and all of us a lot smarter.
00:33:02.620I want to say, Greg, it's been great talking with you.
00:33:06.920We always conclude with our guests summarizing thoughts, and we always give you the last word.
00:33:14.520So this is that moment, and if you will.
00:33:19.680Well, I'm the consummate optimist, Lou, and I like your last comments, and I agree with them.
00:33:26.080I do think that this republic will flourish once again, that the people of America are good, wholesome, patriotic Americans that want to sing the Star-Spangled Banner.
00:33:42.800They know that we are the greatest nation in the history of the earth, and that there are a billion of the people throughout the globe that would give their left arm to be an American citizen because they know how great this country is and what it has to offer and the opportunities that this country offers.
00:34:01.500So I, too, believe that we will come out stronger, that the left and the enemies of the state will be exposed, and that we will come out of this stronger, more patriotic, and we'll have learned some very valuable lessons on how quickly and how dangerously close you can get to becoming a Venezuela.
00:34:26.720I mean, look at Venezuela in one generation.
00:34:29.800They went from being one of the most productive economies on earth to where they are today in 25 years.