The Great America Show hosts Lou Dobbs and Tim Parlatore discuss the latest in the ongoing saga of the Biden White House and its attempts to convince the public that the economy is not in recession. They also discuss a new report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the use of Russian disinformation to influence the 2020 election.
00:11:33.720And we also, we also have heard, and I'm going to say it that way, this is pure hearsay,
00:11:40.220certain members of the media have been told that elements of the intelligence apparatus,
00:11:48.400any one of these agencies actually contacted social media, their, some of their owners and CEOs,
00:11:57.820as well as news media to specifically knock down the story with the same claim that they were publishing
00:12:05.940from these 51 co-signers on this letter.
00:12:13.840I'm not totally familiar with, with all those claims.
00:12:16.680I will tell you this, the FEC complaint that we're filing that will require a, an investigation into that type of activity by the FEC.
00:12:28.480And if within a certain period of time, they do not take action, or if they dismiss our complaint under the statute,
00:12:35.180that then gives President Trump the standing to file a lawsuit in the U.S. district court against all 51 and the Biden campaign directly.
00:12:46.680So that we would be able to use the, you know, the civil process within the U.S. district court to get discovery and to get into all of these things.
00:12:56.340And it seems to me that you've anticipated a great deal here in terms of the consequences of the, of the, of the actions you're seeking here from the court.
00:13:14.500And we, I have to tell you, I, I'm not about to say to the audience of this podcast that I have a great deal of confidence in the court system being impartial.
00:13:23.740We have witnessed, we have witnessed, all of us in this country have witnessed our FBI reveal itself as an arm of the Democrat, the Marxist Democrat machine.
00:13:36.220The, the deep state is precisely that.
00:13:39.100Not only the FBI, the D.O.J., the judiciary, you know, you're very familiar with John Roberts saying there's, there are no Trump judges, there are no Bush judges, there are no Obama justices and judges.
00:14:06.240Well, I'm, I'm not going to speak bad about the judiciary.
00:14:09.240I mean, I think that, you know, it is a situation where when you file a case, you, you have the judge that you're, you're dealt.
00:14:17.160And so as lawyers, you try to put together, you know, the best case that you can.
00:14:22.320I mean, certainly I've had personally plenty of success in front of judges who very much disagreed with the position.
00:14:30.000But if you're able to present it in, in the right way, you know, you, you can, you can often get success.
00:14:37.780And if not, there are appellate levels to go to.
00:14:41.260So, you know, as far as the FBI is concerned, obviously that's a different, that's a different story.
00:14:48.520You know, we had the recent report about the letter from Chuck Grassley about, you know, this supervisory intel analyst, Brian Auten, who had suppressed Hunter Biden information on the claim that it was Russian disinformation.
00:15:06.760And when, when those reports came out, when I saw the letter, you know, it set off some alarm bells to me because, you know, the name Brian Auten is familiar to me because he's actually one of the defendants in the lawsuit that we filed against DOJ on behalf of Carter Page.
00:15:27.080Yeah, he was one of the architects of the, of the illegal FISA surveillance of Carter Page back in 2016.
00:15:35.220So you had the same, the same characters, you know, four years later, still, you know, trying to put their thumb on the scale at DOJ and at the FBI to pursue partisan goals as opposed to pursuing justice.
00:15:51.060I believe it was an effort to overthrow the president of the United States without any reservation, equivocation on my part.
00:16:02.460It may not be the evidence that would be determinate in a court of law, but common sense and just reasoning leads you to only one conclusion.
00:16:13.880In what was a conspiracy across various agencies and departments of government and the Democrat Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
00:16:25.480It's just sitting there staring at us all in the face.
00:16:30.560And now we have the January 6th committee doing precisely what that Marxist DIM machine has been doing for six years almost.
00:16:39.080They're trying to, as you put it, put their finger on this, on the scales, but they're also trying desperately to hang on to their control of both the House and the Senate in the upcoming election.
00:16:53.680But this is a difficult and, you know, to me, just disgusting time in this country's history that we have to contend with this level of political corruption in our government and one of our political parties.
00:17:11.520Well, I mean, it's I've been dealing with the January 6th committee quite a bit for a few of my clients.
00:17:16.860And, you know, it is it's an interesting body, shall we say it, you know, they don't they try to pretend that they're doing an election, an investigation.
00:17:28.160And yet all of my dealings with them have indicated that it's it is purely about appearances.
00:17:35.180It is purely about, you know, controlling the narrative and trying to, again, influence the outcome of the election through the dissemination of this information.
00:17:49.380They subpoenaed Bernie Carrick when they subpoenaed him.
00:17:52.860They put out a letter saying the reason we're subpoenaing him is because, you know, we have received credible information that he was at this meeting on January 5th.
00:18:02.920And that that's what we want to talk to him about.
00:18:06.280Problem is, he wasn't at that meeting and the credible information they relied upon actually footnoted it.
00:18:12.520They said it was in Bob Wilber's book.
00:18:14.040When Bob Wilber was contacted about this, he said, I don't know where he got that from.
00:18:27.520But they wanted to talk to him anyway.
00:18:29.920We got, you know, President Trump granted Bernie Carrick a conditional privilege waiver that he would allow Bernie Carrick to answer every single question.
00:18:40.180Talk about everything on the sole condition that that interview become public, you know, whether it's a public hearing or whether a taped interview that the videotape is then released immediately thereafter.
00:18:53.040Benny Thompson made the conscious decision to reject the privilege waiver, to only receive part of the information because he was too afraid to allow the entire interview to become public.
00:19:13.620And what congressional committee goes to is encounters executive privilege on the part of a former president and then follows with criminal contempt citations against one of his advisers.
00:19:34.020In this case, I'm referring to, obviously, Steve Bannon.
00:19:37.760That was one of the most tortured moments I've seen in the course of a week's trial of a man on contempt of Congress or any other charge.
00:19:48.360Your reaction to what they did in that instance?
00:19:51.420Well, you know, one thing to remember here, I'm I am primarily a federal criminal lawyer.
00:19:59.480You know, I'm not a even though I represent figures in politics, I'm not a political lawyer by trade.
00:20:05.360And, you know, I began my career in New York City doing a lot of organized crime work.
00:20:09.380And I remember back then that there was, you know, there was a lot of case law that had developed.
00:20:15.340And one of the appellate judges had even said at the time, you know, we can't create new rules just because the defendant's last name is Gotti.
00:20:27.840OK, you know, we still have to follow the Constitution.
00:20:30.440Sure. And I see kind of the same situation here where they're trying to create new standards and new rules because of their zeal to get President Trump.
00:20:44.120And so, you know, with the way that they treat the executive privilege, a lot of these things are setting dangerous precedents that could certainly come back to bite them.
00:20:55.280You know, should it should the same precedent be used against President Biden?
00:20:59.000You know, is this going to become the norm now for future presidents that, you know, that the privileges are essentially going to be waived as soon as you get out of office and, you know, your successor doesn't like you as much?
00:21:16.060You know, it's a very dangerous precedent to be setting here.
00:21:21.620And by the way, I'd be saying the exact same thing no matter which party is doing it.
00:21:26.240You know, these institutions, you know, there are rules and they have to be protected and you have to have a proper adversarial system.
00:21:36.260And, you know, the fact that they're doing this is just wrong.
00:21:40.400Absolutely. And I say on this on this show quite often, this isn't left and right and it's not conservatism versus liberalism.
00:21:48.740This is right and wrong. It is good and evil.
00:21:52.560And this country is embattled over those those direct opposite poles of human conduct.
00:22:02.880And about 40 years ago, we started watching partisanship take on mean, ugly and direct, obvious and flaunted politics of personal destruction on the part of the Democratic Party.
00:22:16.700And by the way, I'm not saying that as a partisan.
00:22:19.300If the Republicans had done the same thing, I would be saying that of them, Tim.
00:22:23.740By the way, I've been I've been blacklisted by a Republican White House, too.
00:22:28.440So, I mean, I have I've got some some claim to independence and impartiality.
00:22:39.840I am. I think he is the right man for the job without question in 2024, just as it was in 2016.
00:22:47.280But that has nothing to do with independent, objective truth and anyone who cares about this country, our traditions, our our values, our Constitution.
00:23:01.000I hear you saying that with great, great respect and reverence as any officer of the court should.
00:23:08.800But what we are witnessing on the part of the legal profession right now, I think, is is everlasting, shameful, because no one is standing up and saying this from the Democratic side, the left side, saying this is not the way this is not who we are.
00:23:33.440Well, they are blinded by the hatred that they have right now for Donald Trump.
00:23:38.800You know, I think about, you know, the hearing that they had a couple of weeks ago with Cassidy Hutchison.
00:23:44.420And, you know, again, I look at it as a criminal lawyer and I say, you know, how would DOJ have handled this or any prosecuting agency for that matter?
00:23:54.020You have a witness who comes in and tells you this absolutely fantastical story about, you know, him, you know, physically assaulting the, you know, the the Secret Service agents to try and go to the Capitol.
00:24:07.400And let me tell you how a real investigator would have handled that.
00:24:36.640So why don't we go talk to them first to to get some corroboration of this?
00:24:41.920Assume for a second that the story was true.
00:24:47.880If it were true and if this committee was staffed by actual investigators instead of, you know, partisan, you know, essentially election strategists.
00:24:59.360What they would have done, the presentation they would have given if it were true, they would have had her come in.
00:27:26.520I mean, it's something that as a lawyer, it bothers me because, you know, I prefer to deal with the facts and the law.
00:27:37.180You know, there's a reason why I'm not, you know, the so-called political lawyer.
00:27:41.120You know, because I just want to deal with what are the facts, what is the law.
00:27:47.020And I represent people on both sides of the aisle, you know, happily.
00:27:50.740As long as there you have a case that is based on the facts and the law.
00:27:55.760And that's why, you know, if you have a system that allows for, you know, an adversarial process to present both sides of the story equally with certain guidelines and rules,
00:28:12.180so that ultimately, whether it's a jury or whether it's the public, they can reach their own conclusions because they've been presented with both sides of the story to let them decide what is their analysis of somebody's credibility.
00:28:26.520And which story do they believe more, you know, then that's where people can actually get to the truth.
00:28:34.100But when you only present one side of the story and then people get so, you know, married to the first thing that they happen to hear that anybody else that tells them something that differs from that, you know, they want to get violent with.
00:28:51.800And I'm thinking of two trials, Steve Bannon and the only person to have a public trial coming out of the origin investigation, the John Durham investigation, in which two D.C. juries didn't need much fact.
00:29:09.480They didn't need any time to deliberate.
00:29:29.900Many times I say that a criminal case is decided by the end of jury selection, not by the end of the case.
00:29:36.280And if you have, if you have a good and fair jury, you know, then you can present your case and, and, and get a fair shake.
00:29:47.080Um, and I had, I remember as a young lawyer being taught that, you know, the exact same case in New York city, whether you're trying it in the Bronx or Manhattan or Staten Island, have to be three completely, totally different presentations because they're very different jury pools.
00:30:16.400Uh, and it seems to be the nature of the system that that's where the draw is going to, uh, to lead, uh, each time in, uh, these cases, uh, I, I want to just, and I appreciate your time today.
00:30:30.180I, uh, Merrick Garland, uh, making it clear that he is, uh, open to, uh, charging, uh, Donald Trump, even if he is a candidate for 2024, uh, the 2024 presidential election.
00:30:43.360Just the news is reporting right now that the justice department is investigating Trump in a January 6 criminal probe.
00:30:51.520Uh, what is your reaction to, uh, to America?
00:30:56.640Well, you know, I know this is a difficult question for you to answer, but what is to stop the Republicans for saying that, uh, they're open, uh, to impeaching Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, uh, if they win the majority, uh, in the Senate and in the house, uh, in, uh, 2022.
00:31:16.420This right here is exactly why the criminal justice system should never be weaponized for any political purposes.
00:31:27.020And, you know, the, I can certainly give you my legal analysis as to why I think that a, a prosecution against Donald Trump is, you know, really legally doomed to failure, um, both legally and factually.
00:31:42.260Uh, but ultimately, do you want to, if you want to erode the public's confidence in the system, this is how you do it.
00:31:51.040This is how they do it in banana republics.
00:31:53.320Um, when you think about it, how upset did everybody get at the crowd shouting, lock her up?
00:32:01.040Uh, and, and ultimately when Trump took office, you know, could he have had, you know, the justice department to go and, you know, relook at Hillary Clinton?
00:32:13.100You know, certainly Jim Comey didn't, you know, give her immunity or anything like that, but.
00:32:18.620He did what most administrations do, which is to say, I'm not going to use the criminal justice system right or wrong to go against my political opponents.
00:32:33.020Um, you know, Hillary commit Clinton in the manner in which she handled the classified material certainly did commit a crime in my opinion and could have been prosecuted, but.
00:32:42.680Um, it makes sense that it makes sense that we didn't do that.
00:32:48.060Um, it makes sense that they didn't, you know, prosecute, you know, Richard Nixon.
00:32:53.140Um, there are reasons why we don't want to do those things.
00:32:57.100And, uh, so just from a policy perspective, um, I think this is a bad precedent to set.
00:33:05.080I do think that the, you know, the Garland memo that, uh, outlines how to deal with politically sensitive entities and individuals.
00:33:16.000Um, I think that the media kind of grabbed onto that as, you know, having various interpretations as it relates to Donald Trump.
00:33:26.620And really what I saw it being is more of, um, for these past two years, the U S attorney in Delaware has been left mostly on, uh, unrestrained by main justice in the investigation of Hunter Biden.
00:33:41.960And that memo, as much as it may apply to a prosecution of Donald Trump, it also asserts control over the Delaware U S attorney in what they can and can't do with Hunter Biden.
00:33:55.780Yeah, that's a great point, uh, which frankly, I hadn't considered because I am so frustrated that the U S attorney in Delaware has had the, the field of four years to carry out a straightforward investigation.
00:34:12.820You as a, uh, uh, organized crime, uh, prosecutor, uh, investigator, uh, investigator, you know, if you're, if you give people four years to deal with evidence, to manufacture and construct alternative realities that they can put in front of a jury, that isn't serving justice.
00:34:35.360That's serving the defendant's interest, the criminal defendant's interest.
00:34:40.200And it makes no sense that this justice department has also become the go-to agency where send truth there.
00:34:50.500And it will surely die because of the idea that there is no urgency.
00:34:55.100There is no, uh, there is no institutional, uh, it seems compunction to be efficient and effective and deal with it efficiently.
00:35:07.240It just doesn't make sense what we are witnessing, whether it be in the Hunter Biden case or any number of others, uh, where truth is gone to die.
00:35:42.160I've, I've, I've seen what the justice department can do when it's motivated.
00:35:46.520I can definitely see what they can do when they're motivated to do that.
00:35:50.600I, I, you know, I really haven't seen the motivated to do anything other than, uh, uh, you know, try to overthrow a president, uh, and to conceal the truth rather than reveal it, uh, and punish evil doers.
00:36:03.240Uh, and, and, and right now the experience of the past six years, it looks like the justice department and the FBI, uh, have more evil doers than the people they're investigating.
00:36:13.400With the 51, the, the, the thing, the thing with, with that situation is that there's not really any defense because they, they wrote it out.
00:36:26.120You know, they put it all on paper and they signed their names to it.
00:36:30.240So it's not, um, yeah, I'm very confident in it because this is black letter law.
00:36:37.600They each signed a contract when they received their top secret, uh, security clearances.
00:36:47.120I mean, hell, one of the signers of that letter had previously written an op-ed discussing the pre-publication review process.
00:36:54.620And, you know, you got one of the, uh, I believe it was Panetta who was investigated, um, and initially the IG found, you know, certain violations.
00:37:06.580And then that was quietly cleaned up related to, um, you know, his, his assistance on the movie related to the Bin Laden raid.
00:37:16.440Uh, you have people on the other side of it.
00:37:18.720You know, one of my clients, um, Matt Bissonnette, who was, uh, who was the Navy SEAL, who was one of the three guys who walked into Bin Laden's bedroom that night.
00:37:29.020They went after him and they've completely destroyed him financially.
00:37:33.740And, you know, completely wrecked his life for writing this book.
00:37:41.480And he didn't reveal any classified information.
00:37:44.360He didn't even intimate that there was any classified information in it.
00:37:48.680And yet, you know, with, with these individuals, it really does come down to a matter of prosecutorial discretion, where if they want you and they, and they exercise the discretion to say, okay, we're going to hold this person accountable.
00:38:07.140They can, and they will look at John Bolton, John Bolton released his book without getting pre-publication review.
00:38:20.760The court said, no, you know, the, uh, the government had absolutely has an interest here in, in ensuring that you've complied with pre-publication review.
00:38:33.740And the new DOJ leadership, who was perhaps more, um, favorable to the information that John Bolton put out, forgave the fact that he failed to get it properly reviewed and withdrew the case.
00:38:51.680So it really does come down to that measure of discretion.
00:38:55.480It is, but when we're not, but when we're doing the lawsuit, as opposed to, you know, the government, yeah, through the FEC, uh, the, the election law, uh, context, you know, yeah, I'm very confident.
00:39:40.900Um, you know, in, in my lawsuit, do I have the power to, you know, put them in jail or to take their security clearances or things like that?
00:39:50.200But, you know, it is, it is more monetary penalties.
00:39:53.320Uh, but the complaints that we filed with the CIA and, and the various other intelligence agencies, um, which they, I have not seen whether they've taken any action on yet.
00:40:12.280I presume that in January when the, um, you know, when the house changes hands, that there will probably be more questions, uh, from the legislative branch and providing oversight.
00:40:23.320To make sure that those investigations have been properly handled.
00:40:27.840Um, but those investigations can and should result in all 51 of these individuals losing their security clearances, all 51 of these individuals being prohibited from working for the government, working in any intelligence capacity.
00:40:45.320Um, and I mean, quite frankly, here, here's the other thing.
00:40:51.640The, the pre-publication review rules as written, if enforced, would completely change a whole bunch of stuff that's going on right now.
00:41:04.280Because right now you have a whole host on both sides of talking heads, you know, former Intel officer now, you know, providing their commentary on, on events.
00:41:18.780And all of that is completely prohibited, but not enforced.
00:41:24.000And if they actually enforce all those regulations, then both CNN and Fox News will lose their ability to put former Intel officer on to comment on, you know, their analysis of current events.
00:41:40.060But the viewer is not going to lose anything because they'll be able to put, you know, college professors and, and other very knowledgeable people on to give the same type of commentary.
00:41:49.620But ultimately I think it's going to trickle down to recruiting because what's going to happen at the recruiting level of CIA, when you remove that motivation and you remove everybody from the agency, whose career aspirations is to someday be involved in politics or political commentary or be a news media personality.
00:42:14.220And they're really just there to check a box in their resume.
00:42:18.480And when you remove that further career aspiration from them, I think that'll actually go a long way towards removing a lot of the politics and the, you know, the deep state of these people that are in these agencies with, you know, with later political ambitions and instead attract people to the intelligence community that are motivated to perform the work necessary to keep our country safe.
00:42:46.940And here's the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Democrats, and they have every reason to be right now, but we have to have some system in which that there is a consequence for what happens.
00:43:12.120It is not enough for us to, it is not enough for us to wait until there's a generation of new intelligence officers who are serving as we would expect anyone in our military to serve for the nation.
00:43:23.480And if we are that far astray, we desperately need consequences for those who break the rules, break the regulations, and flaunt, flaunt their efforts to corrupt our entire federal government.
00:43:38.740Do we not, do we need a major course correction on these things?
00:43:43.620We always conclude with the, our guests having the last word, uh, and if you will, your thoughts as we wrap up.
00:43:51.980Well, you know, I, as a lawyer, I've always been a, a great fan of, uh, John Adams.
00:43:59.940Um, you know, one of the founding fathers who tried, you know, one of the first major murder trials in this country, the Boston massacre.
00:44:06.980And, you know, it's, it's something that he said in his closing argument that guides everything that I do in the courtroom and that I wish would guide more people in how they analyze these cases.
00:44:21.480Um, what he said to the jury at that point was, he said, facts are stubborn things and whatever may be our wishes or inclinations or the dictates of our passions.
00:44:31.480They cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
00:44:35.560So I hope more people would, would, would focus on that as the theme for how they analyze things.
00:44:42.780We thank you for sharing those words, those sentiments, uh, and, uh, and, uh, they are inspiring to, to even journalists in this country.
00:44:52.180I would hope, uh, we appreciate it, Tim.
00:44:55.880Thanks so much for being with us here on the great America show.
00:45:04.520Our guests here next week will be Senator Marsha Blackburn, Senator Rand Paul, pollster Robert Cahaly, conservative attorney, Kurt Olson, candidate for Arizona attorney general, Abe Hamaday and judicial watches, Tom Fenton and pastor Robert Jeffress.
00:45:22.180Please join us here on the great America show till then.