The Great America Show - RETIRED FBI AGENT ON THE STATE OF THE BUREAU, DISPARATE TREATMENT AND AMERICA’S CONTEMPT FOR THE FBI

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. I'm Lou Dobbs, and welcome to the Great America Show.

00:00:04.900 No matter what anyone says to the contrary, we're living in the American age of outrage.

00:00:11.300 Our young children are under assault by teachers who insist on talking sex and gender

00:00:16.740 in what were once our best-in-the-world public schools.

00:00:21.040 Our workers and their families are at the mercy now of left-wing globalist employers

00:00:26.160 who insist on globalist elite Marxist doctrine training in their woke workplaces,

00:00:32.620 as does our federal government, including the military, and our colleges and universities,

00:00:38.180 our law schools, business schools, and now many of our medical schools as well.

00:00:43.400 The outrages against our citizens, our families, our faith, and daily relentless and destructive attacks

00:00:50.520 against our American way of life and America itself have become, of late, a way of life. 0.76

00:00:57.820 And there should be no doubt, no mistake, the Marxist Dems are now in control of the Democrat Party

00:01:04.260 and this puppet president, and they have plenty of help from the rhino liberals of the Republican Party. 0.84

00:01:11.040 Former Attorney General Bill Barr is a case in point.

00:01:14.380 He only added his voice to the outrageous abuse of power by the Biden regime's outrageous assault

00:01:21.940 on President Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago.

00:01:24.820 Barr, on the Barry Weiss Honestly podcast, declared he's tired of those on the right who, quote,

00:01:32.340 pander to outrage and frustrations, end quote.

00:01:36.140 Barr made that ludicrous statement despite the FBI storming Mar-a-Lago,

00:01:40.960 the illegal seizure of President Trump's lawfully held documents,

00:01:45.980 Barr obviously siding with the politically corrupt FBI and DOJ.

00:01:51.640 How could he do that?

00:01:53.300 What is wrong with Bill Barr?

00:01:55.360 Is he under some threat?

00:01:57.700 And just who is Bill Barr?

00:02:00.680 Does he forget that as Attorney General, he refused to warn the American people and voters

00:02:05.940 that the former Vice President, Joe Biden, lied in the second and final presidential debate,

00:02:13.300 lied about his son Hunter's laptop and its incriminating contents,

00:02:18.920 and lied about it being Russian disinformation?

00:02:22.800 He didn't warn America, he said, because he didn't want to intervene in the election.

00:02:28.740 If he didn't want to intervene then, why did his FBI rush to intervene with only days till the election

00:02:38.200 to tell big tech, big media, social media, including Facebook, that it was all Russian disinformation?

00:02:46.120 And his FBI, according to whistleblowers, also telling FBI agents not to investigate the laptop from hell

00:02:53.740 until after the presidential election, which still doesn't explain why the FBI sat on that laptop

00:03:01.120 and the investigation it should have triggered for the better part of a year.

00:03:06.400 And so it goes in the American era of outrage, when the outrageous defend the deep state

00:03:12.660 and its constant outrages against the American people and our Constitution.

00:03:17.720 Thanks to the lawsuit by the watchdog group, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington,

00:03:25.320 a federal appellate court ordered the Department of Justice to release the unredacted DOJ memo

00:03:31.940 to William Barr when he was Attorney General, recommending no prosecution of President Trump in 2019.

00:03:39.900 No obstruction of justice prosecution because there was no underlying crime.

00:03:46.340 Three years and court battles to honor the American public's right to know

00:03:51.360 and for our Justice Department to be transparent.

00:03:54.660 Three long years.

00:03:56.920 Yes, this too is an outrage, Mr. Barr.

00:03:59.960 And so it goes with what seems to me to be an unredeemably corrupt Biden regime, Department of Justice and FBI.

00:04:08.460 The number of whistleblowers who are now speaking out gives all of us, though,

00:04:12.820 hope that there may be many more like them in the FBI and DOJ

00:04:17.840 and who still believe in right and wrong, truth, justice, and the American way

00:04:23.900 and will stand up for good against evil.

00:04:28.040 What are the thoughts of those in the FBI and the DOJ as they witness these corrupt acts, these outrages?

00:04:35.720 What are the thoughts of those who've served the nation in the FBI and DOJ

00:04:40.680 as we witness one outrage after another?

00:04:44.420 I wanted today the perspective of one of those good people

00:04:47.620 and perhaps as well the assurance that there are many more like him still

00:04:51.740 in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

00:04:54.740 Our guest today is a 25-year veteran of the FBI,

00:04:58.960 a supervisory special agent, James Galeano.

00:05:02.360 James is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

00:05:06.640 He served as an infantry officer, served with the 10th Mountain Division,

00:05:11.020 now a CBS News law enforcement analyst.

00:05:14.280 And, James, it's great to have you with us here on The Great America Show.

00:05:17.160 Thank you for being with us.

00:05:18.540 Let's begin with the release of that Barr memorandum after three long years.

00:05:23.300 Your thoughts?

00:05:25.400 Well, sir, first of all, good to join you, Mr. Dobbs.

00:05:27.820 I'm a big fan.

00:05:29.520 I'm looking forward to this.

00:05:30.900 I know you want to do kind of a deep dive into the inside baseball of how these things happen.

00:05:37.540 Look, the FBI is subject to FOIA requests just like any other government agency

00:05:42.420 or municipality or local or state.

00:05:46.120 In this regards, I do not know why it took so long.

00:05:49.320 I know that there are rules.

00:05:50.600 I serve as a mayor in a small upstate bucolic village in New York, and we're subject to FOIA requests,

00:05:59.120 you know, Freedom of Information Act requests, and we have a particular amount of time to respond to those.

00:06:03.880 And I understand that sometimes when it comes to voluminous documents, it takes time.

00:06:09.460 But I have to agree with you.

00:06:10.940 I was quite surprised at the timing.

00:06:14.100 I want to believe that the people that did the actual work of the essentially triage and the redactions are operating in good faith.

00:06:22.100 But, sir, as you well know, having experience in dealing with government officials, the red tape and sometimes the partisanship, unfortunately, gets in the way.

00:06:31.100 Yeah, I've noticed that more than a few times over the course of my career and with greater velocity and frequency nowadays.

00:06:40.620 And you're exactly right.

00:06:43.520 I want to turn to the idea that this memorandum verifies what William Barr said, which was there is no presentation for obstruction of justice.

00:06:53.920 That's what he said in 2019, not long after he had been appointed the Attorney General of the United States.

00:07:03.640 And Mueller himself makes it very clear that there was no underlying crime.

00:07:10.060 There was no Russian collusion that he could in any way obstruct because there was no underlying predicate for it.

00:07:19.040 It's a strange moment in history.

00:07:22.120 And, again, we have a partisan issue that with Congress, Adam Schiff and his megaphone going after Trump day in and day out, the Marxist Dems.

00:07:35.880 It's just it's been an ugly six years in which four directors of the FBI have, with quite clear evidence, lied to the American people and or Congress.

00:07:49.500 It's it's it's a stunning, a stunning six years.

00:07:54.240 And meanwhile, the guy they're persecuting politically, they being the Department of Justice, the FBI, the deep state have, in point of fact, been the perpetrators of wrongdoing, not their intended victim.

00:08:11.760 Yes, sir. Well, you know, and I'm sure your listeners, because I'm guessing they're pretty educated and erudite crowd know that in the FBI's history, we've been around since 1908.

00:08:25.160 J. Edgar Hoover took over as a 29 year old in 1924, and he helmed it, gosh, 48 years under eight presidents from Calvin Coolidge all the way to Richard Nixon when he passed away in 1972.

00:08:38.960 I served under four of the eight Senate confirmed FBI directors, and I had my differences with all of them.

00:08:46.800 I knew some of them better than others because I served as on their protection details with the FBI's hostage rescue team.

00:08:55.060 I'm dissatisfied here. Now, having said that, I came into the FBI in early 1991.

00:09:01.400 Interestingly enough, during William Barr's first tenure as the attorney general under Bush 41, and I always felt like he was a straight shooter.

00:09:11.200 Didn't always agree with him, but always felt like he called it straight.

00:09:14.300 You are right in how you look at and how you how you frame the six years of the crossfire hurricane Russian collusion investigation.

00:09:26.080 I'm supremely disappointed. I think a lot of the agents and the people in the mid-level management positions acted in good faith.

00:09:34.620 But, sir, we know their names, the James Comeys, the Andrew McCabe's, the Kevin Kleinsmith's, the Peter Strzok's, the Lisa Page's, and now the Timothy Tybalt.

00:09:45.820 We know the names of these folks now through whistleblowers and obviously through four, I believe, inspector general reports.

00:09:52.880 And it's damning. It shouldn't indict the entire agency.

00:09:56.780 I believe the entire agency is good. But, Lou, I'll leave you with this one and close it this way.

00:10:01.780 When I left the FBI in 2016, I believe the American public held the FBI in the 95 percent favorability realm.

00:10:11.480 Rasmussen Reports just last week put out a poll that suggests that 53 percent of Americans, sir, do not trust the FBI.

00:10:21.260 And that, sir, breaks my heart.

00:10:22.880 You know, I think it breaks all our hearts because we looked years ago now at the FBI as the essential law enforcement agency and also for its national security role.

00:10:41.360 But that has that has been, it seems, long ago.

00:10:45.360 And I don't know whether or not we will ever recover from it, whether the FBI will recover from it.

00:10:50.940 But the raid on Mar-a-Lago, I truly believe, and I said this on this show, I don't believe America will ever quite be the same after the FBI raid on the president's offices in Mar-a-Lago.

00:11:05.240 The FBI, I do not believe, will ever be regarded in the same way, nor the Department of Justice.

00:11:11.240 It was an absolute outrage.

00:11:15.240 And I believe it will be the defining moment in most people's minds as they walk into those voting booths and vote on November 8th.

00:11:22.960 Your thoughts?

00:11:24.260 Sir, you may be right.

00:11:25.180 We may just diverge on one piece.

00:11:28.040 I think the American public has a short memory.

00:11:31.740 And I think that agencies that are inherently good but that suffer under poor leadership for a time, i.e., the federal beard investigation in this instance, I think you can recover from this.

00:11:44.380 You and I are both old enough to remember COINTELPRO and the wiretapping of Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders, the black bag jobs. 1.00

00:11:53.720 Jared Goover was an amazing director and did a lot of wonderful things.

00:11:58.280 He was born in 1895.

00:12:00.200 He also did some things that we all look back on and go, yeah, the FBI was wrong for doing that.

00:12:06.800 I'm hoping that this is a period like that and that we will recover.

00:12:10.200 But, Mr. Dobbs, I believe it's going to require new leadership.

00:12:14.400 The FBI director is a political appointee, and he or she gets a 10-year term, which allows them to overlap any presidential administration.

00:12:24.580 But, sir, we need new leadership.

00:12:26.240 We need a cleaning out at the top, and we need changes in the seventh floor at FBI headquarters where promotions are not part of a meritocracy.

00:12:34.680 They're part and parcel of a system that a lot of us retired FBI agents believe is broken.

00:12:41.840 In that regard, and I make no mistake, I want the FBI to recover from this as quickly as they possibly can, but I don't want it to be an exercise in public relations.

00:12:53.440 I want it to be an organizational, absolute organizational reform that makes it so we will not see a repetition of this ever again.

00:13:06.920 And as you say, I agree with you 100%.

00:13:09.440 It will take a significant change of leadership.

00:13:13.280 The Governor Whitmer case, for example, has shown up now with, again, the FBI framing victims rather than, and in point of fact, participating in the plotting of a crime with their informants, with undercover agents.

00:13:33.280 Two of the defendants in the case found not guilty, largely because of the fact that it was entrapment.

00:13:43.120 Two others just recently have been found guilty, but they had different roles.

00:13:47.060 Your thoughts about why the field officers, and in fact, the head of the Detroit field office, I should say, parenthetically, is now the head of the D.C. field office, which was involved, obviously, in the raid on the president's home offices at Mar-a-Lago.

00:14:06.440 Your thoughts about how we got to this point where it is so, it is just outrageous what the FBI is being found to do.

00:14:18.080 They are being revealed to be greater perpetrators, more numerous, and frankly, more guilty than those that they have been seeking to prosecute politically.

00:14:31.560 Yeah, so let me unpack that for the listeners.

00:14:35.040 So, I served as an FBI undercover agent for about 10 years in the drug realm, in the gang realm, in the organized crime realm.

00:14:46.240 Let me just give a quick definition to the listeners about what actually, what you meant by saying governmental entrapment.

00:14:52.060 So, entrapment is when we, meaning the government, and those acting on behalf of the government, lure somebody, an individual, into committing a crime that they might not have been originally predisposed to commit.

00:15:05.040 So, we can't go up to an innocent citizen and say, hey, I want you to rob a bank, I'm going to give you a bunch of money to do it, and then they do it.

00:15:12.500 If we're acting in the capacity of a government agent, we've now put that into an otherwise unassuming innocent person's mind, and the law specifically states we're not allowed to do that.

00:15:23.320 The mission case that you referred to was fraught with problems, and I don't know the individuals personally.

00:15:30.260 I know them by name, but I did not serve personally with them.

00:15:33.380 I know that there was an undercover agent that had a number of issues in his personal life.

00:15:38.260 I know that some of the supervision of the case has been subjected to some scrutiny in regards to what was allowed to happen.

00:15:45.640 And, Lou, I'll say this, and let me preface it by saying this is Jimmy Galliano private citizen supposition, but someone who knows the FBI inside and out spent fully one half of my life in the FBI, retired at age 50, I spent 25 years in the Bureau.

00:16:02.840 I think right now there is such an emphasis on trying to prove that domestic terrorists and white supremacists hide behind every rock and every tree that the Bureau is going out of their way to kind of, I think the term is confirmation bias, prove what the Attorney General and prove what this President and the political party that's in power right now is insisting. 0.86

00:16:29.200 Look, Lou, I can't stand white supremacists. 0.93

00:16:32.240 I think if you're a bigot and a racist, I don't care if you're on the far left extreme or the far right extreme, if you do anything in furtherance of that, you should face justice. 0.74

00:16:41.940 But I think we live in a period of time now where the government in power is so bent on proving that far right extremism is just as much of a threat as far left extremism, that they're going to do anything to make that case.

00:16:57.500 And, Lou, I think the Michigan case is a perfect example of that.

00:17:00.980 And I think that your analysis is exactly correct.

00:17:06.440 It comports to the information that we are getting in secondhand, I will put it that way, from the whistleblowers.

00:17:15.680 And I must say about whistleblowers, James, the whistleblowers that have stepped forward, at least 14 of them, with Congressman Jim Jordan, with Senator Chuck Grassley and Senator Ron Johnson, we don't know how many more, but the substantial number.

00:17:32.280 For the first time, I am hopeful that that reform we were talking about of the FBI is possible, because I've had to say at various points over the course of the past several years.

00:17:42.920 There was a time where I would say, but there are good people in the rank and file, but the silence has been deafening, and their willingness to go along makes me wonder about how strong the will is to protect law and order in this nation on the part of the FBI.

00:18:03.060 It took six years, but I have to tell you, thank God they are finally stepping forward.

00:18:09.780 Your thoughts about those whistleblowers and how important they are.

00:18:13.160 Look, I mean, there are whistleblower protections in place for a reason, and whatever the wrongdoing is, those folks need to be protected.

00:18:23.520 They have a right to come forward.

00:18:25.540 It's happened going back, I mean, almost, you know, in perpetuity, but in my recollection, back to 9-11, when there were some FBI agents that blew the whistle that the Bureau didn't take seriously the fact that there were some Middle Eastern students in the United States

00:18:41.280 who were taking flying lessons with no interest in taking off or landing, just in keeping the plane upright in the air, and apparently it was ignored, and so they came out, they were protected.

00:18:53.400 In this instance, you're referring to folks that are pushing back right now, and it's interesting.

00:18:59.600 I'm sure you're familiar with the case of William Jefferson, who was a congressman in Louisiana that a number of years ago was arrested by the FBI for corruption,

00:19:09.580 and I believe we found like $90,000 in quote-unquote cold cash inside his freezer at his home.

00:19:16.780 The case agent, Lou, on that case was Timothy Tybalt.

00:19:22.520 He's the same case agent who then moved on up the ranks and is the one that two weeks ago, while he was in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee,

00:19:31.580 Director Christopher Wray, FBI Director Wray, stated he was deeply troubled by the allegations that suggested that Mr. Tybalt, prior to the 2020 election,

00:19:43.960 had quote-unquote slow-walked the Hunter Biden laptop.

00:19:48.460 So these are the kind of things that I appreciate now.

00:19:52.280 I understand that Senator Grassley and Congressman Jordan and a number of whistleblowers have come to them,

00:19:58.660 and they are obviously getting that information from them to determine whether or not was the FBI overreacting to 2016,

00:20:08.320 and James Comey stepping in front of the microphones, and what some people have accused him of,

00:20:12.620 altering the election, putting his finger on the scale because he was talking about a case that was not adjudicated,

00:20:19.840 but it might have influenced the election.

00:20:21.840 Was this an overreaction in the other direction, sir?

00:20:24.800 Quite possibly.

00:20:26.140 But the fact that big tech tried to submarine this,

00:20:29.520 the fact that the New York Post was muted on Twitter when they tried to first report this,

00:20:34.100 and now we learn that the FBI, mid-level and senior-level bosses, stood this down prior to the 2020 election.

00:20:43.160 Lou, it's beyond troubling.

00:20:45.980 Yeah, it is beyond troubling.

00:20:48.180 And to go back to William Barr.

00:20:50.900 William Barr, it turns out on his book tour and his book,

00:20:54.540 acknowledges that he knew that the former Vice President, Joe Biden,

00:21:01.180 in the second debate in 2020, presidential debate,

00:21:05.020 knew he was lying about the laptop,

00:21:09.240 knew he was lying about Russian disinformation,

00:21:12.880 and William Barr chose because, he said,

00:21:16.280 he did not want to intervene in an election,

00:21:18.600 did not want to intervene in an election with just two weeks to go to that election,

00:21:26.500 even though he knew that they were all lies.

00:21:29.980 He knew that the intelligence agencies were lying,

00:21:33.260 the former heads of those agencies, five of them were lying,

00:21:37.180 and he knew that the FBI was in possession of the evidence.

00:21:42.320 It is, as you said, I like the expression,

00:21:46.080 it is beyond troubling.

00:21:47.440 It is gut-wrenching to think what has happened to this country

00:21:51.480 because in those decisions, we changed American history.

00:21:57.380 Yes, sir.

00:21:58.240 And I'm not going to go ahead and assume that you share my affinity for Attorney General Barr.

00:22:05.080 I was a huge fan of his the first time around in the early 90s

00:22:08.280 when I was a young brick agent,

00:22:09.860 and I was a big fan of how he pushed back

00:22:12.500 and came back to government service to serve under the 45th president.

00:22:17.980 I will say this, sir, because everything is a, are shades of gray.

00:22:23.600 And I'm a West Point graduate, and I understand a lot of things are black and white,

00:22:26.820 but there are things that are shades of gray.

00:22:29.140 And what frustrates me, even being a fan of the former Attorney General,

00:22:33.000 is why were none of the criminal referrals from the Inspector General report,

00:22:39.580 Michael Horowitz, who was appointed by President Obama,

00:22:43.700 and again, a position that's apolitical and nonpartisan,

00:22:47.280 why when people like James Comey were referred to the Attorney General,

00:22:51.240 and Andy McCabe, a kid,

00:22:53.560 and I'll say that because he was a kid when he served under me in the New York office

00:22:57.020 as a member of the New York SWAT team for the FBI that I ran,

00:23:00.800 I've known Andy a long time.

00:23:02.740 Why were they given what much of America looks like as disparate treatment,

00:23:08.820 where if anybody else, not during that whole confluence of events,

00:23:14.660 anybody else had lied to the Inspector General's investigators

00:23:20.280 four times, three times under oath, as Andy McCabe did,

00:23:23.820 they would have been fired and criminally referred and charged.

00:23:27.780 And regarding Mr. Comey, here's a man who's six foot eight,

00:23:31.840 who meets with the President, meaning President Trump on a number of occasions,

00:23:35.800 is so unsettled and discomforted that he felt the need to write,

00:23:40.260 you know, contemporaneous memos,

00:23:42.740 and then some of them including potentially secret or top secret information,

00:23:47.620 then doesn't even have the courage to leak it to the New York Times himself,

00:23:51.500 he leaks it through a surrogate, his attorney, to give to the New York Times

00:23:56.380 because he's afraid to stand up to the President, and he gets away with that,

00:24:00.500 and yet we raided former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago properties

00:24:04.080 for quote-unquote classified information and documents.

00:24:07.540 Lou, it's beguiling, it's mind-boggling, and what frustrates me,

00:24:12.300 and again, I'm not a sycophant or a shill for the former President,

00:24:15.260 but what frustrates me is I see this as disparate treatment

00:24:19.660 and misapplication of the law.

00:24:22.660 Some people get away with things, other people do not.

00:24:26.940 I concur, and unfortunately, I believe it rises well above that.

00:24:33.260 I believe that there are a group, a cabal, of Marxist Dems,

00:24:39.100 and I am using the words advisedly, I mean Marxist.

00:24:42.760 They are in the Democratic Party, they are leading the Democratic Party,

00:24:47.040 and they are the masters of this puppet president who sits in the Oval,

00:24:52.080 well, he doesn't sit often in the Oval Office, but should be in the Oval Office.

00:24:55.800 It is beyond frustrating to think of what we have witnessed in bright daylight,

00:25:08.660 right before our very eyes, that is corrupt, that is, as you say, disparate treatment.

00:25:16.140 The son of a sitting president now, who is clearly, has been connected to illegal drugs,

00:25:24.400 weapons, he has been connected to the intelligence agencies of the CCP of China,

00:25:33.080 he has been involved in the corruption of Ukraine, Russia, China, and the list goes on.

00:25:41.700 And there has been no consequence, and a four-year investigation is underway

00:25:46.040 in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware that shows no signs of emerging

00:25:51.820 before the election, the midterm elections of 2022.

00:25:56.800 Disparate treatment? Absolutely.

00:25:59.680 Your thoughts about how it is that there is no response from the Republican Party,

00:26:04.900 from the American people, no outrage that will in any way seemingly shame

00:26:10.200 this deep state and these radical Marxist Dems?

00:26:14.980 Well, I think part of it is, and again, I agree with the Department of Justice's policy,

00:26:23.520 at least their long-held policy, that attorney generals and obviously people that speak

00:26:28.900 on the attorney general's behalf, whether it's their deputies or assisting the United States

00:26:34.040 attorneys or politically appointed U.S. attorneys across the country,

00:26:38.780 they're not supposed to speak to ongoing, unadjudicated criminal investigations. I get that.

00:26:46.240 And in 2016, James Comey essentially broke that mold, separated himself, got in front of the cameras

00:26:52.460 and microphones, and basically spoke to the Hillary Clinton email investigation

00:26:57.600 where there were top secret emails. I believe there were eight of them, a number of secret emails.

00:27:04.460 I don't know the number of those, and some 33,000 that were bleach-bitted while they were under subpoena.

00:27:11.580 And Lou, I understand they were about yoga pants and about what the bridesmaid's dresses for her

00:27:17.240 daughter's upcoming wedding were going to be.

00:27:19.680 And the grandchildren.

00:27:20.620 Yes. And I believe in that instance, you know, people started to say there is unequal

00:27:27.980 dispensing of justice here. There's disparate treatment. So why didn't the FBI kick in the

00:27:33.720 doors in Chappaqua, New York, and, you know, take possession of the private server that the former

00:27:41.520 Secretary of State was using so that she would not have to turn over her emails? Look, I'm a mayor.

00:27:47.600 I understand that anything I write on one of our municipal computers is subject to FOIA. It's

00:27:55.600 subject to review. It's subject to scrutiny. Those are the rules. So when you try to circumvent them,

00:28:00.760 and then we turn a blind eye and say, as James Comey famously did, no reasonable prosecutor would,

00:28:08.300 well, then why didn't that apply in Mar-a-Lago? And Lou, here's why. We know that the National Archives

00:28:13.840 and Records Administration was having communications with the former president and his legal advisors

00:28:20.000 back and forth since about January or February of this year. We know that the NARA had advised that

00:28:27.040 some of the boxes that have been packed and that were at Mar-a-Lago be, you know, better secured.

00:28:35.040 We know that. Okay. People say, well, why did Trump take those things? If you think that a president

00:28:41.500 of the United States on his way out of the White House packs anything, you're mistaken. It's done

00:28:46.820 by the Government Services Administration. It's done by other people. Now, regardless of who made

00:28:52.460 that decision that those documents would go to Mar-a-Lago, why then did we need to go this route?

00:28:59.100 And I'll say this, my last thing, Lou. So we know that the judge in Florida signed the search warrant

00:29:04.960 warrant at 12, 12 p.m. on a Friday. The FBI executed it on Monday morning. So if the argument is,

00:29:12.200 well, Jimmy, exigent circumstances, there were dangerous nuclear secrets there. There were dangerous

00:29:17.500 Department of Defense information there. There were classified documents, TS slash SCI documents.

00:29:24.480 Well, then, Lou, if it was so exigent, why didn't they immediately execute the search warrant?

00:29:30.500 That right there says to me, a guy that can read the investigative tea leaves and say,

00:29:35.100 hmm, something doesn't smell right.

00:29:39.260 Yeah. And we have seen it not smell right for six years, haven't we, James? There is no question

00:29:45.820 about the integrity of the FBI. It has none. There is no question about the political corruption of the

00:29:52.580 Department of Justice. It is rampant and pervasive in the Department of Justice. We do know

00:30:00.500 that they have lied, tried to frame and overthrow a president from the latter half of 2016, while

00:30:08.520 President Trump was then a candidate, right through to the current to this present day. And it makes no sense

00:30:16.260 to anyone what is happening here until you think about who is the outsider and who was opposed to

00:30:23.660 everything in the establishment of both political parties. It is it is an outrage against decency as well

00:30:33.980 as law and this Constitution. And this administration has demonstrated it has no regard for either. I just can't

00:30:42.140 even imagine why there has been no accountability for a single individual over the course of the the Russia hoax,

00:30:52.160 Russian collusion, all of it, six years of it, which has been one attacked after another, relentless over six years. How is it that that could happen?

00:31:06.660 Your best guess. Well, I think a part of it and the only thing and I know you were speaking in the macro sense and not the micro, but the only thing I'll push back on Lou is I do not believe when we say the FBI is corrupt, people think that the good men and women who swear no to uphold and defend and protect the Constitution and are out there doing the hard work every single day putting themselves in harm's way. And many of them become martyred because they get killed while they're performing their duty. And they're out there doing the hard work every single day putting themselves

00:31:31.660 in harm's way and many of them become martyred because they get killed while they're performing their duties on behalf of all of us. Many people think that if we say that or suggest that as you did, that we are smearing them. And I don't think that's your intent. I believe that you sense that the vast majority there are 36,000 FBI employees, 12,000 sworn FBI agents. Now to put that into into context, the NYPD, the New York City Police Department in New York City has 36,000

00:32:01.660 36,000 police officers, the FBI only has 12,000. So one in three, and they're scattered across the globe, and obviously across the 50 states in the in the United States. So I don't believe that's the problem. What I believe the problem is, is I mentioned it at the top, the confirmation bias that goes on, where you have young, hallow, sycophants that are promoted that shouldn't be that go to headquarters, and then they surround the king, the emperor, and

00:32:31.640 they basically agree with whatever he or she says. And a lot of these cases, and mid-year exam, which was the Hillary Clinton email case, crossfire hurricane, which you referenced, which was the case into, quote unquote, Russian collusion. And the, I'm pretty confident that the Hunter Biden laptop case, they're worked out of the FBI headquarters, seventh floor where the bosses are. Those cases need to be in the field.

00:33:00.040 And that's the problem. They're being, we're running this from a centralized command instead of having the experienced folks do it in the field, Lou. That's something that has to change.

00:33:09.900 It has to change. And by the way, it's also an affront to the American people in so many ways. Not only the loss of integrity and respect, the loss of integrity that results from the FBI's, those in the FBI who violate the law and the rights of citizens, they are supposed to serve.

00:33:32.780 But it is also a loss of respect for them on the part of the American people. And as you said, we're, more than half of the American people do not respect, and that's putting it kindly, the FBI.

00:33:48.220 There is a huge problem. But they are ignoring, the leaders of the FBI are ignoring the oversight. Absolutely. Laughing in the faces of the congressmen and senators who are to provide oversight for the American people.

00:34:04.000 They've become so powerful, they've become so powerful, they can thumb their nose at anyone in the government who wants to question anything they do.

00:34:11.780 And by the way, I've been under surveillance by federal agents, and I can't speak specifically whether it was the FBI, but I know that they were federal agents surveilling me, wiretapping my home.

00:34:26.680 There's no question about it. There's no question about it. And I have no animus. I, you know, it's just the way it is.

00:34:34.420 But to think that this is going on, I have to, I have to get to a point here where I want to take up the issue of the Patriot Act after September 11th, and what it has wrought, and whether or not in your judgment, the National Security Division of the Department of Justice and, and the FBI need to be just broken away from the FBI and DOJ.

00:35:05.100 Wow. All right. So you're, I hope we have a little bit of time for this.

00:35:09.680 Surely.

00:35:10.480 Your question here is, it's a great one. And I think my career kind of bookended what you're talking about, because 9-11 was a seminal moment for the FBI, and obviously for America. I mean, that sounds like a stupid statement. Of course, it was a seminal moment.

00:35:26.800 But for the FBI, there were some discussions amongst, you know, on Capitol Hill, whether or not the FBI should be broken up into essentially what the Brits have with an MI5 and an MI6 handling domestic intelligence and international intelligence, and whether or not the old school G-Man, the FBI that I joined, where I cut my teeth under

00:35:56.800 the FBI, who were Hoover-era agents, where we went after public corruption, we went after gangbangers, we went after drug dealers, we went after bank robbers, we went after pedophiles.

00:36:08.100 Well, the Bureau was essentially reshaped under Robert Mueller. He came in, I think he was appointed FBI director. Lou, I think it was seven or eight days before 9-11. So he kind of had to hit the ground running.

00:36:20.920 And he made some decisions in real time. And I can't fault him for that. It's easy in hindsight to look back and say, should have done this or should have done that. But to your point, if your question is, Jimmy, should the agency be broken apart?

00:36:34.780 Yes, I tend to think that the old school working, you know, criminal violations, that FBI is a different FBI from the one that is completely intelligence driven, part of the intelligence community, and has to look beyond the shores of America, and has to kind of be part of that community that includes the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense and DIA and NSC

00:37:04.780 and all those on all those acronyms. Yes, I think that that would help because I think that the agency is at war with itself. It is their internecine battles going on every day between the people that still want to go out, find the crime, fix the crime, prove the crime and send those people to jail. And people that are in the more esoteric, you know, you know, the kind of counterintelligence realm, the counterterrorism realm, where cases don't last a year or two,

00:37:34.780 they can last 10 years, they can last a decade or more. So to your point, to sum it up. Yeah, Lou, I think that makes sense. Do I think defunding the FBI, which Marjorie Taylor Greene said two days ago, makes sense? No, that's silly and unserious. Do I think that the FBI could be reformatted, broken up? Yeah, probably should have happened after 9-11. But I think it was a different time. And I'm not going to blame those folks then. But yes, I think a reshaping and a reformatting should occur.

00:38:01.640 Well, I'm glad to hear that. And I agree with you. And certainly, I wouldn't judge what was done in the days, weeks and months after September 11th, because like most Americans, I was filled with outrage and anger. And yes, I'll say it, bloodlust.

00:38:22.200 For any who were responsible for taking the lives of those 3,000 people at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and in the field in Pennsylvania.

00:38:33.960 But since then, we have learned much, and we should be applying it. It's a reason, by the way, James, I have said, I've called for the removal of the National Security Division from the FBI,

00:38:49.280 to have those people reassigned, if they have acted with absolute integrity, and if not, to be absolutely removed from the federal service.

00:39:03.260 So I'm glad we agree on that. And I have to say, I agree with you on just, you know, I will say nearly everything.

00:39:11.680 I agree with you on everything that you've said, except those things, of which, of course, you argued with me.

00:39:20.120 That's fair. You did it civilly, sir. No complaints.

00:39:23.380 Well, say back at you. James, we always give our guests the last word here. And please, your concluding thoughts.

00:39:32.040 Lou, first of all, I appreciate what you're doing.

00:39:33.640 And I think that's what makes this country great, is the fact that, you know, we're moving into an era where people don't just listen in, you know, to music in their cars while they're on their commutes.

00:39:44.140 They try to listen to become informed, whether they agree with the host, or they disagree, or they agree with the guest, or disagree.

00:39:51.280 I think platforms like this, look, I worked at CNN for four years.

00:39:56.080 I work for CBS Now.

00:39:57.820 I do some spots for Fox Now.

00:40:00.220 Everything is a soundbite, and you have 20 seconds to hit it or quit it and make your point.

00:40:06.640 I appreciate mediums like this, where people like you that have the platform allow folks like me a chance to flesh things out that are more nuanced than a soundbite.

00:40:16.780 So thank you, sir, for what you're doing.

00:40:18.760 Keep doing it, and I appreciate you for what you do.

00:40:22.680 James, thank you very much for those kind words.

00:40:24.720 And I have enjoyed our conversation immensely.

00:40:28.700 I hope you'll come back soon, and we can continue our discussion, our conversation about what is of immense importance to this great country of ours.

00:40:39.280 James Galliano, thanks so much.

00:40:41.680 Thank you for all of your service to this country, and God bless you.

00:40:46.440 Thank you, sir.

00:40:48.600 Thanks, everybody, for being with us.

00:40:50.480 It's looking like another busy week in Biden's America.

00:40:53.580 I want to thank, again, President Trump for being our guest here on The Great America Show.

00:40:59.080 Check out his episode.

00:41:00.360 You'll enjoy it.

00:41:01.420 And just knowing the president will be fighting for America is good for our soul.

00:41:06.460 I promise.

00:41:07.600 Tomorrow, our guest will be a great American, James Comer, serving the nation in Congress, the ranking Republican on the powerful Oversight Committee,

00:41:16.200 who is a Republican leader in the fight against corruption in our federal government.

00:41:20.980 Please join us here tomorrow.

00:41:22.160 Till then, God bless you, and God bless America.

The Great America Show - August 29, 2022

RETIRED FBI AGENT ON THE STATE OF THE BUREAU, DISPARATE TREATMENT AND AMERICA’S CONTEMPT FOR THE FBI

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