The Megyn Kelly Show - Feds Raid Trump's Home, and American Opportunity, with Sen. Tim Scott, Alan Dershowitz, and Harmeet Dhillon

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00:00:31.080 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.540 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:46.120 We are tracking breaking developments this afternoon after former President Donald Trump's

00:00:51.040 private residence was searched by the FBI in an early morning raid yesterday morning.

00:00:59.060 That's not technically the correct legal term because they did get permission from a court,

00:01:04.320 but it's the term that Donald Trump is using and it's something that seems correct

00:01:08.720 based on what happened there.

00:01:10.560 Some 30 plus agents descending on Mar-a-Lago before sunrise,

00:01:15.200 reportedly seeking classified documents that he allegedly took from the White House when he left

00:01:20.500 office back in 2021. And in a word, my response to that is bullshit. Bullshit. There is no way

00:01:29.740 that's what they were searching for. There's no way. I watched all the coverage last night. I've read

00:01:34.720 everything and I read Andy McCarthy this morning who, as it turns out, agrees with me. I agree with him.

00:01:40.180 He's a former top prosecutor, former assistant U.S. attorney. And he says the same thing. This is

00:01:45.480 about January 6th. If you believe this is about classified documents having to do with bullshit

00:01:49.920 Trump took with him when he left office, your head is in the sky. This is about January 6th and the

00:01:55.600 never ending desire to get Donald Trump on something. They don't want him to run for election

00:02:02.260 again. They want him behind bars. They want him disqualified under the Presidential Records Act or

00:02:07.720 whatever they can possibly find. They don't care. They don't care. They're mad. They're mad he did

00:02:12.360 not get convicted on the first or the second impeachment. They're mad that he did not get

00:02:16.160 pursued criminally by the New York D.A. They are mad that Russiagate fell apart and they are mad that

00:02:23.000 he's leading in the polls. He's crushing DeSantis. His his candidates of choice all made it into office,

00:02:29.040 virtually all of them last week, and they are prepared to unleash hell. The Democrats play dirty.

00:02:34.240 And Merrick Garland is very clearly willing to go along with that. He's been moving in the

00:02:40.120 concentric circles toward Donald Trump over the past several weeks, going after his top advisors,

00:02:46.000 subpoenaing them. You know, we've seen close Trump advisors in handcuffs dragged away as if they're

00:02:51.920 mobsters. This is this is really getting alarming. And the American public deserves answers. Did

00:03:00.160 Attorney General Merrick Garland personally sign off on this? Hello? Yes, he did. There's zero chance

00:03:06.360 that he didn't. And we don't know it for sure, but I'm telling you, there's zero chance he didn't.

00:03:11.700 Did the White House have any prior notice? They're actually claiming they had no idea they learned it

00:03:15.040 from Twitter. Sure, they did. Sure. OK. Just like they had no idea that letter from the school boards

00:03:21.240 was coming out asking the DOJ to label parents domestic terrorists. The White House had no idea.

00:03:26.400 Oh, really? They orchestrated the whole thing. We found that out later thanks to some record

00:03:31.660 requests by some well-meaning citizens. When are we going to see the FBI's justification for this

00:03:37.460 raid? It's all laid out in an affidavit in front of a magistrate judge down in South Florida. Let's

00:03:41.120 see it. Put it out. You're so sure he committed a crime? Great. Tell us all. It's 90 days before

00:03:47.940 a midterm election. Show the American public what did the former president allegedly do? Don't we have a

00:03:54.380 right to know? Right. How does he get raided? And Hunter Biden doesn't get raided. And Jim

00:04:01.100 Biden doesn't get raided. And Hillary Clinton never get raided. But Donald Trump, he gets raided.

00:04:07.280 His safe gets busted into when he's not even on the property. Later, we're going to be joined by two

00:04:12.840 of the top legal experts in the country. Alan Dershowitz is here and Harmeet Dillon, who's

00:04:17.080 representing another case. Let's not forget another client, Project Veritas, James O'Keefe or his

00:04:22.480 organization that got raided, seizing all of his private and personal information and that of his

00:04:29.040 employees because they had the nerve to investigate a story involving President Joe Biden's daughter,

00:04:34.420 Ashley, and her private diary, which she clearly left at some friend's house. And it got passed around

00:04:40.200 from people who wanted them to publish a story that included reportedly alleged incidents between

00:04:47.400 Ashley Biden and her dad, Joe Biden, that they did not want to see the light of day.

00:04:52.500 So the FBI raids Project Veritas. What happened to the First Amendment? Did Merrick Garland sign off

00:04:59.300 on that, too? Did Joe Biden know about that, too? Because, like, I'm thinking if my diary got stolen,

00:05:05.920 the FBI wouldn't be tracking it down with a raid. This is the state of America. And this is getting crazy.

00:05:10.940 The politicization of our law enforcement agencies is deeply disturbing. I don't care whether you hate

00:05:18.240 Donald Trump. I don't care whether you campaigned for Hillary and then Joe Biden. This is deeply,

00:05:24.960 deeply disturbing. And there's no person better to ask about all of that than our first guest today

00:05:32.600 before we get to the lawyers. And that is South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. He is a Republican,

00:05:37.920 first and only black Republican in the U.S. Senate. He says yesterday's raid raises new questions for

00:05:45.480 the FBI. And he's got a new book out today talking about how he made it. This incredible position he

00:05:50.400 now holds. It's called America, a redemption story, choosing hope, creating unity.

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00:06:28.340 Senator Scott, welcome back to the show. Great to have you here.

00:06:34.140 Megan, it's always good to be with you. Thank you so much. And frankly, thank you for your opening

00:06:37.760 conversation, because ultimately what's the most important thing is how do we restore

00:06:43.100 balance, fairness in this nation? As an African-American growing up in the Deep South in

00:06:48.420 the early 70s and 80s, the one thing we always wanted was to be judged by the content of our character,

00:06:53.480 not the color of our skin. Today, it seems like the color of the skin is red and blue.

00:06:57.800 And so we're seeing this unfolding again in the history of this country where people are being

00:07:03.580 judged not based on who they are, what they've done, but based on whether they have a red flag

00:07:09.300 or a blue flag or whether you have a donkey or an elephant. That ought not be. We fought for

00:07:15.420 generations to eliminate this from a part of the American fabric. And yet we find ourselves again

00:07:22.400 in the same place we saw ourselves in the 1930s, in the Jim Crow South, in the 1960s, the 70s,

00:07:28.980 and even in my lifetime. And so I wrote this book because I feel like America, a redemption story

00:07:34.800 is giving all of us a perspective of unity and hope based on the fact that we keep overcoming

00:07:41.920 the greatest challenges that we face. And it looks like we have to do it again.

00:07:46.680 Yeah, exactly. It's I mean, I woke up this morning. I don't know how you felt, but I wasn't feeling

00:07:52.180 stunned unity. Yeah, I wasn't feeling you. I was feeling angry. And again, I've made pretty clear

00:07:57.380 I'm not some sycophant. You know, I've always said about Trump, I'm not I'm not under his spell,

00:08:02.780 but I'm not suffering from Trump derangement syndrome either. So I feel like I'm in a unique

00:08:08.400 position. And I feel like the same is true of you. You've been critical of the president at times.

00:08:12.960 You've been extremely supportive of him at times. You have beautiful stories in your book about

00:08:16.640 his treatment of people like your mom. So I feel like you're able to criticize him when he's done

00:08:21.840 wrong. But what's happening here really feels like persecution. Yeah. Megan, you're 100% right. One of

00:08:28.400 the things that we have to do is tell both sides of the story, see both sides of the ledger. And

00:08:32.760 while the president has done some things that I've spoken out against, he's also led one of the

00:08:37.660 greatest economic recoveries and one of the most inclusive economies. But at the same time,

00:08:42.420 he sat down with victims, families whose loved ones lost their lives at the hand of police. And he

00:08:48.480 listened. He was patient, deferential. And what I hope from Lady Justice is when the blindfold is on

00:08:56.640 the balance, the scales are balanced. And when I'm looking at today, I question whether or not there's

00:09:02.240 a thumb or a foot on the scale when it comes to certain people in certain places that we just don't

00:09:09.160 like. That's not America. It's not American. It's not justice. We as Americans fought for the last 246

00:09:17.900 years to come to the place where every single person should be judged based on what they do,

00:09:24.260 not who they are, not whether or not we like them. And that's what's so stunning and concerning

00:09:30.120 about the current predicament that we see our Justice Department in. And remember,

00:09:35.180 last week in the Judiciary Committee, Christopher Wray was testifying about inconsistencies

00:09:43.160 in the FBI. So this is not simply about yesterday. The precursor to yesterday was this inconsistent

00:09:50.840 application of justice for a very long time. And now it's heading to the most powerful regions of

00:09:58.300 this country. What does that say to the average person in this nation?

00:10:03.040 They can't stop going after Donald Trump. They love nothing more than to pursue him criminally,

00:10:10.880 whether it's in the U.S. Senate trying to get a conviction on the impeachment. And as I mentioned,

00:10:15.800 the New York prosecutors, which that DA was under enormous pressure. And to his credit, he said,

00:10:21.080 I'm not doing that one that we don't have it. And I could go down the list. And the Democrats are

00:10:26.060 ratcheting up the pressure now on Merrick Garland. They want and I'm sure they'd love to see Trump

00:10:31.600 behind bars. They would love that. But what they really don't want is for him to run again. And God

00:10:37.400 forbid, in their view, to win again. I believe in my core. That's what this is about. You you were on

00:10:43.540 Capitol Hill on January 6th. You write openly in the book about how scary that was having to run in the

00:10:49.040 in the private room with the chaplain praying. Yes. It's not like you didn't get that. It was a

00:10:53.380 serious, dangerous day. A terrible day. But this ongoing obsession with pinning it entirely on

00:10:59.580 Donald Trump and slapping criminal charges on him. That's what this is about. What do you think of

00:11:06.420 it? Well, Megan, there's no doubt. I've done a lot of interviews this week, trying to make sure that

00:11:10.700 people understand and appreciate what I believe is the future of America. And that's us getting along

00:11:14.600 together. And it's one of the reasons why America redemption story is so important. And in the book,

00:11:18.620 I talked specifically about January the 6th, and I put the blame exactly where it needs to be on the

00:11:25.900 shoulders and in the hearts of those entering the Capitol. I put it right where it needs to be as I'm

00:11:32.820 finding an escape route. Those pursuing me should be held responsible for their bad and disgusting

00:11:40.820 decisions at times to come out and come against people like me and other senators. I think through that

00:11:47.020 day, and the one thing that a lot of media refuses to accept is that the responsibility for individuals

00:11:55.320 is the person in the mirror. Not somebody at 1600 Pennsylvania, but literally the person in the

00:12:01.900 mirror is the one that I must hold accountable for hunting me. What do you mean? Expand on that.

00:12:09.880 Well, as opposed to suggesting that President Trump somehow persuaded these folks to show up with

00:12:15.860 weapons in hand or guns in their sacks to look for a way to overturn the election, I think that the best

00:12:22.480 thing that I can do is to look at the folks coming down the hallway and hold those individuals

00:12:28.100 responsible for their actions. It's like my mama used to say when I was a youngster, if your friends jump

00:12:33.980 off the bridge, are you jumping off the bridge too? I love your mom's advice, by the way.

00:12:40.260 And I love your grandma's advice too, like pass down generation, generation, and how all the top

00:12:46.280 three rules are basically the same rule. And it's about personal responsibility.

00:12:50.880 That's been my experience. There's no doubt about it that the more personally responsible we are,

00:12:55.960 the more liberty we will experience. The less we give our lives over to some central control,

00:13:02.300 central command, we'll have a caste system in this nation, and those at the bottom will be stuck there.

00:13:08.260 And that's what I don't know why we don't see clearly into the future under this current drive

00:13:15.320 where the application of justice is inconsistent, where the rules are changed based on who's on the

00:13:21.540 field. That is exactly what we fought against. It's exactly why I thought this was the time to

00:13:27.480 write a book about hope and unity forged together through hard work, discipline, perseverance,

00:13:33.960 and tenacity. Those characteristics lead us in the right direction, but blaming somebody else,

00:13:40.160 victimhood, those are the things that lead us in the wrong direction.

00:13:44.340 You know, I listened to you on CBS this morning with Gayle King, and she was all about,

00:13:51.140 is Donald Trump really the best representative of the Republican Party right now? He's crushing in

00:13:56.120 all the polls. As much as the Republicans love Ron DeSantis, and he's been a leader on fighting

00:14:00.520 back on some of the woke nonsense. Trump's crushing. I mean, he was the U.S. president

00:14:04.720 just a couple of years ago, so he's going to remain in the lead unless something catastrophic

00:14:09.080 happens, like he goes behind bars. But she was very pressing on, is he the right representative?

00:14:15.720 Yes.

00:14:15.880 I find it fascinating because it exposes her view, the liberal media's view. They hate him. They see

00:14:23.980 him as a devil. They don't understand that there could possibly be a good man in there who actually

00:14:31.120 cares about the country. They see him as entirely narcissistic, selfish, that he doesn't care about

00:14:38.160 the country even a little, that he only cares about getting his name in lights. And this is part of the

00:14:43.280 problem because they're willing to do anything to stop such a man from resuming in power.

00:14:48.560 Megan, there's no doubt when you think about what you just said, and it's so powerful, clear,

00:14:53.080 and succinct. One of the things I do in the books, I walk people through the Donald Trump when the

00:14:59.780 cameras are off. I walk people through this experience that I had when President Trump calls

00:15:05.040 my mother on her 70th, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say my mother's age out loud. I apologize. 75th birthday

00:15:10.180 though. And it was an unexpected call at an unexpected time, but it was perfectly timed.

00:15:16.920 And literally for 10 or 15 minutes, my mama said for five minutes, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

00:15:22.680 And President Trump was so patient. And then they had a conversation for 10 minutes after two minutes

00:15:27.540 of, oh my God. Why people refuse to see that there's a human under the caricature of Donald Trump,

00:15:35.120 I don't understand. Why people want to judge others by their actions and we judge ourselves

00:15:41.800 by our intentions? It just doesn't make a lot of sense, especially in the echo chambers of justice.

00:15:48.800 I want the echo in our country to sound like fairness. I want the view that the average person

00:15:54.320 coming from the poorest neighborhoods have that in America, the rules are set. And I'm going to judge

00:16:00.100 everybody by the same yardstick, that the same value system that I want for you is the same value

00:16:06.960 system I'm willing to live under. And your opening monologue was so important in establishing

00:16:12.760 the inconsistencies that we are seeing in this justice department and the way that justice is

00:16:19.800 being applied to one of the most powerful figures of our time.

00:16:23.700 They get away with it because they've convinced their base he's truly evil and must be stopped.

00:16:29.180 He's a uniquely evil force. And it brings me to two stories in your book, which I found illuminating.

00:16:35.180 One, speaking about your mom, was the trip that you and Donald Trump gave her, the special trip.

00:16:42.420 I'd love to hear about that. And then we'll get to opportunity zones. But let's talk first about

00:16:46.920 your mom and the special surprise you and Donald Trump arranged for her.

00:16:49.620 Well, Megan, I was talking to the president one day and he said, anything I can ever do,

00:16:54.080 you know, President Trump, President Trump's always saying, you know,

00:16:56.380 whatever in the world you ever want, please give me a call. I'll be happy to help. And

00:17:00.560 I know he means well, but I don't always ask for anything. Usually I don't. And this time I decided

00:17:06.860 to say, you know what, President, I want my mother to have a once in a lifetime experience. Air Force

00:17:12.380 One would be a once in a lifetime experience. I said that I never followed up on it. It's probably more

00:17:18.320 than a year later. I can't remember exactly how long it was. I get a call. President Trump is

00:17:23.340 inviting my mom on Air Force One. And I will tell you what, I have the pictures to prove it.

00:17:29.080 That was one amazing experience with a, thank you, a thrilling experience. My mother was so

00:17:37.720 ecstatic about the experience and President Trump's pulling his chair out for her. And once again,

00:17:44.360 there are no cameras except for the ones taking the pictures. There's no TV show to watch. This

00:17:49.540 was literally a private exchange with the president of the United States on Air Force One with someone

00:17:55.360 who's been demonized from the day before he took the office, the day before he took the oath.

00:18:01.800 There were already headlines about impeaching President Trump. And yet we don't see the humanity

00:18:06.640 of the individual. And I have been critical of the president when necessary. And so I'm not coming

00:18:12.180 with a, with a lady justice blinders on my eyes. I actually see just fine. And the truth is that

00:18:20.380 I am thankful to live in a country where there is a blindfold on justice. I just want us not to peek

00:18:26.500 around the blindfold when it comes to people we don't like or experiences we don't understand.

00:18:32.180 In the book, you write about how not only did he give her and insist that she sit in his seat on

00:18:37.220 Air Force One, which she was reluctant to do, but made her, but he sat with her for the whole flight.

00:18:42.060 I mean, that's really the thing that got me and chatted her up. You said they were laughing so hard.

00:18:46.200 It was hilarious to look back and peek in on a lot of people in his position, even before he was

00:18:51.000 president, even when he was just a big celebrity would have said, Oh, nice to meet you. Glad handing.

00:18:55.780 And then moved on and didn't, wouldn't want to spend an entire air flight, you know, talking to a

00:19:00.480 stranger who's in her seventies that, I mean, that's just the reality, but he did, he's in his

00:19:06.280 seventies too, you know, he did and really seemed to want her to have a great time. I mean, I do think

00:19:12.280 that speaks well of him. You acknowledge the abrasive language. We all know president Trump is not

00:19:16.800 perfect. Yes. Um, but to those who think the man's not even human, he's just this monster who's

00:19:22.680 looking, who's like drunk on power, wanting to hurt people. It isn't true. There there's another side to

00:19:28.300 him. He's human, just like the rest of us. Totally agree. And the fact of the matter is when

00:19:31.560 you think about his response in almost every situation where he and I disagreed, he gave me

00:19:36.740 deference. He gave me enough margin to make my case. And he didn't agree with me all the time,

00:19:41.240 frankly, but he always said, is there an alternative? He gave me the pivot, the opportunity to pivot. And

00:19:46.940 that's such an important quality in the leader of the free world to say to someone that he doesn't have

00:19:52.840 to. I hear you. I see you now show me a better way for the nation, not for those who supported me,

00:20:00.100 because as we talk about opportunities zones in a few minutes, the one thing you'll hear is that the

00:20:04.860 voters that he was helping, the constituents that he helped in that decision were the ones that he

00:20:09.760 offended. So he wasn't looking for a way to get them back on the team. That may never happen, but he

00:20:15.000 literally went out of his way to hear the painful story and the provocative history of race in this

00:20:22.200 country. And at the same time, respond by saying, let's do something that brings opportunities

00:20:28.300 into the most fragile economic communities in this nation. It was a stunning experience.

00:20:33.960 It's a great story because you write in the book about how you were not happy with the president's

00:20:38.240 comments, you know, in total in after Charlottesville. And he had said, you know, the good people on both

00:20:46.140 sides. And he had said that he condemned the white supremacists. But a lot of people, especially people

00:20:50.600 in communities of color were like too close, didn't like it, offended. The messaging should

00:20:55.800 have been really clear and they didn't think it was. So you made a comment about that publicly and

00:21:02.180 he called you up and said, let's have a meeting. And you write in the book about how you're like,

00:21:06.000 oh boy, you know, I feel how I feel, but I know what it's like, what's going to come my way. I'm in

00:21:12.880 his crosshairs now and he doesn't really lose fights. And so this could be highly unpleasant.

00:21:18.980 So you go, you sit down in the Oval Office with him and something remarkable happened for 20 minutes.

00:21:26.780 What did he do?

00:21:27.900 Listen, literally listened. I was stunned. I was looking forward to the lecture and hopefully

00:21:33.740 only a 40% drop in my approval ratings at home. But that's not what happened. He actually did what

00:21:40.340 people say he never does. And frankly, I've seen him do it almost every time I've been with him.

00:21:45.460 He actually, Megan, he listened. And he didn't just listen waiting for his turn to talk.

00:21:51.960 He listened to the pain and the misery that so many African-Americans have had to endure over

00:22:01.000 generations, over a century. And as I talked through my grandfather's life and all the pain and the

00:22:09.900 misery and the misdeeds that came his way, President Trump was silent. And when we finished,

00:22:16.400 he did not embrace necessarily my entire view of race or equality, but he didn't reject it either.

00:22:22.900 He simply said, help me help those I've offended.

00:22:28.180 Now, for the president of the United States who catches more Hades than the law allows to say and

00:22:39.540 said, let me tell you what we're going to do. Instead of doing that, he simply said, show me the way.

00:22:46.780 And I offered him something that he understood, which was let's create by redeveloping poor communities.

00:22:53.320 And he said, I'm a developer. I understand incentives. And literally we were off to the races.

00:22:59.820 And without his support, we would not have seen in 2019, $29 billion from the private sector

00:23:08.480 invested into the poorest communities across America that led to the lowest level of poverty

00:23:15.220 ever recorded in America and only a 4% gentrification rate in those communities.

00:23:21.920 It's a stunning success story that he gets so little credit for, especially when it comes to the

00:23:28.060 important topic of race and fairness in America.

00:23:30.720 Well, he and you, because you've been trying to sell that for a long, long time.

00:23:34.720 And you had no takers in the in the Oval Office prior to President Trump, who it was sort of it was

00:23:41.500 sort of divine right order, right? Because it's like you point out his suddenly without even

00:23:45.300 realizing it, you were talking his language development. This is his business. Yes.

00:23:49.440 Right. So he was like, yes, I get it. Let's do tax incentives for these big corporations to want

00:23:54.460 to build in these opportunity zones, which tend to be largely minority, these inner city pockets that

00:24:00.240 have dealt with more blight than they have opportunity. And that's what happened. He made it happen.

00:24:05.680 It was stunning. And frankly, when I think about even in my little state of South Carolina,

00:24:09.060 the greatest state in all of the nation, the one thing I can tell you without any question is you

00:24:13.100 go to a rural part of South Carolina called Hampton County. They haven't seen a hundred jobs created

00:24:18.660 probably in the last five years because of opportunity zones. There's this new thing called

00:24:23.040 an agricultural tech center being developed in rural South Carolina, $300 million investment,

00:24:30.820 1,500 new jobs, permanent jobs, plus construction jobs, all because President Trump and I got together

00:24:38.840 in the Oval Office after an obstacle and we turned that obstacle into opportunities. And that's why

00:24:44.880 I'm so, so convinced that America's greatest days are ahead of her. When two people who disagree on

00:24:51.360 something can do it without being disagreeable, we can see the most remarkable things happen in the

00:24:56.740 greatest country on earth. And when you read America, a redemption story, you'll hear more of

00:25:01.500 those stories where the success of this nation came right after a failure, where the obstacles that we have

00:25:08.240 all had to endure as a country presented the best opportunities and the pain of our past has become

00:25:14.060 the promise of our amazing future. I think it's so insightful because I do think that, you know,

00:25:20.960 to see them go after Trump again, it's like he's already had to deal with the ruination attempted of

00:25:28.680 his first term, you know, with the Russiagate, which did not hold up, put it mildly, right? Two

00:25:35.020 impeachments, the criminal prosecutions, the going after his family, his close advisors, you know,

00:25:40.620 half of his administration has now been publicly embarrassed by Merrick Garland's DOJ and cuffs and,

00:25:46.240 you know, prosecuting people for contempt of Congress when they never did that under Democratic

00:25:50.280 organizations or representation. In any event, I think people have had it like this is a bridge too

00:25:56.700 far what they're doing to him. He he he's rough around the edges. I of all people know that. And he can

00:26:02.860 do the mean tweets and all that. But there's a bigger story about President Trump. And it's

00:26:09.160 exactly that Opportunity Zone story. It's what he did, what he made up for in sort of finesse,

00:26:15.440 I guess, for lack of a better word, what he what he lacked in finesse. He made up for in policy that

00:26:21.820 actually changed lives. I could tell you the same story about women, you know, in the anti sex trafficking

00:26:26.180 act, which they could not get through with any other president. But then Donald J. Trump, despite his

00:26:31.660 language about women and some of the accusations that have been made against him, he's the one who

00:26:35.820 got it through. Right. So it's like these Democrats have been told a story that is agenda driven by the

00:26:42.320 MSNBCs of the world. And the consequences of that are in the news every day. This is just the latest

00:26:48.200 example. Well, Megan, you said it right. And one of the most important things that you've said

00:26:52.320 is how exhausted Americans are with all the division, with all the sniping back and forth.

00:26:58.940 It's one thing to target someone, but to target them for every single day of their administration and every

00:27:06.340 single day after they've left, it's exhausting to watch. Whether you're Republican or Democrat, whether you are

00:27:12.560 conservative or progressive, the one thing we should all want is a consistent standard of justice applied to all

00:27:18.380 Americans. And the one thing that we're seeing today is the contrast between justice for those we like and and

00:27:24.600 justice for those we don't like. And frankly, we know that if there are two standards, there's only

00:27:28.800 injustice. There is no justice. And one of the things I struggle with through the book was the

00:27:34.320 injustices that I felt that I was a victim of. And my grandfather walking to me one day and said,

00:27:38.360 you're never a victim. There may, you may have been victimized in your life, but you have to choose

00:27:44.620 today. Are you a victim? Are you going to be victorious? There's only one road ahead. If you're

00:27:51.520 going to be a victim, you will always be a victim. And if you're going to be victorious, you will have

00:27:56.260 to overcome the challenges that present themselves in your face. And I'm thinking to myself, my grandfather

00:28:02.500 born in 1921 in Sally, South Carolina in the deep South, stepping off of a sidewalk. If a white person

00:28:10.020 was coming, this is the guy that's telling me not to be bitter and to never be a victim. The man that

00:28:15.540 was forced to stop his education in the third grade who never learned to read is telling me, don't let

00:28:22.020 what people call you decide what you answer to. This is a man whose wisdom was beyond my years and his

00:28:29.920 years combined. But it was a man who had so much faith in America, that somehow, some way, his

00:28:37.420 children and his grandchildren would experience a very different America. And I am so thankful that I

00:28:43.340 am. I'm experiencing in many ways the best of what America is. And as you look at my grandfather,

00:28:48.920 you look at my mother, you just know that the scars that they bear, I am now able to use that scar

00:28:56.060 tissue to make it easier for the next generation. It shouldn't be about those of us in elected office.

00:29:02.360 It shouldn't be about a swamp in Washington. It shouldn't be about the capitals in the nations,

00:29:07.180 the capitals around the country. It should be about the people. The people are our greatest blessing,

00:29:14.720 not those who are in government. The whole book is, has the same tone in that you could easily look

00:29:22.620 back at your grandfather's life, your dad's experience, your mom's experience and say,

00:29:27.540 this is a racist country and, you know, there is no redemption. And instead you see it very

00:29:33.500 differently. You see it as, yes, there's racism. There always, there always has been, but we are

00:29:37.500 making steady progress. We appeal to our better angels. We've been going in the direction of the

00:29:43.100 angels steadily for the past hundred years plus. And my grandfather's story and my family's story

00:29:48.940 is evidence of that. One of the stories that stood out to me is, you know, you point out that the guy

00:29:54.260 who held your Senate seat for, I don't know how many years, a couple of generations ago.

00:30:00.900 Yes. Cottonhead. Yes.

00:30:02.600 Can you tell, tell us to make that point? Cause I was like, my God, that's, that's a very illuminating.

00:30:06.940 So, so, so man, cotton, cottonhead, I believe it was what we called him, uh, had my seat,

00:30:11.820 gosh, uh, two generations ago. And he was an avowed racist who literally was undeniably

00:30:19.620 wanting blacks out of the country and certainly out of any leadership positions. And one of the

00:30:25.480 stories I tell there is that I now have that man's seat because it was never his seat. Like it's not

00:30:31.960 my seat. The seat always belongs to the American people or in South Carolina to the, to the Gamecock

00:30:39.060 fans. And I guess the tiger fans as well. But the truth is that in America, political seats

00:30:45.480 continues to evolve because the nation and the voters continue to evolve. And one of the things

00:30:51.580 I write about Megan is the fact that you think about 2010 in this country, the tea party movement,

00:30:57.320 and I get into a very crowded race with the son of Strom Thurmond in Charleston, South Carolina,

00:31:04.520 where the civil war started. And I ended up winning a very competitive race against his son in the

00:31:10.400 runoff because the evolution of the Southern heart had come to the point where the vast majority of

00:31:16.300 voters were willing to judge me on the content of my character and not the color of my skin,

00:31:20.940 even though I was running against one of the greatest namesakes in South Carolina history,

00:31:26.460 a Thurmond. So if that doesn't speak to the progress that this nation is making, I don't know

00:31:30.960 what does. The fact that we've had an African-American president, we've had an African-American vice

00:31:36.340 president, we've had an African-American head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We have an African-American

00:31:41.380 who's the head of all the military today. We have had an African-American running American Express.

00:31:46.700 Supreme Court justices.

00:31:47.720 Supreme Court justices. I mean, when you, when you take a look at the progress made and you don't look

00:31:53.780 at both sides of the ledger, how do you come to the conclusion that America is a racist country?

00:31:59.320 We may struggle with the issue of race, but the truth is that I said it and Kamala Harris has said

00:32:05.460 it. Joe Biden has said it, has said it as well, that America is not a racist country. Now here's

00:32:09.380 what I'm going to challenge all leaders to do. Let's act like it. Let's not sell to people this

00:32:14.020 division that is easy to conquer so that you win an elected office. If you have to win through anger

00:32:20.020 and win through division, you might win, but the country loses. And ultimately if the country loses,

00:32:25.620 the world loses. I'm not willing to let America think that we're divided when we are the greatest

00:32:32.240 force on earth for good. Nothing close, no second place. We are the city on the hill. We are the

00:32:39.180 beacon in the midst of the storm. I got to chill. I love this. Wait, I want to tell one story before

00:32:44.780 I squeeze in a quick break. Can you, like just speaking of the progress that we've made as a

00:32:49.660 country and also the lack of bitterness, the story of your grandfather who couldn't read,

00:32:56.780 you point out in the book, uh, he was born in 2020, uh, 1921 and two years earlier than that,

00:33:03.080 a black man had been, had been beaten to death for not stepping off the stop, the sidewalk as a group

00:33:08.100 of white men came by. So that's the time your grandfather was born into in South Carolina. And

00:33:13.580 then you take us forward to 2008 and a man named Barack Obama who happened to be black was running

00:33:21.160 for president and your grandfather who still couldn't read, um, went to vote. Can you tell

00:33:28.540 us that story? Yeah. I still get a little emotional about it to be honest with you. I was just thinking

00:33:33.480 about this last night. So my grandfather, 2008, uh, he's, you know, can't believe the progress has

00:33:41.220 been made in America. You got to think about it. He's 86, 87 years old and I'm taking him to vote.

00:33:49.140 And for the first time, there's a choice in the ballot where there's an African American person

00:33:54.580 running for president. And my grandfather cannot believe it. And so we walk into the polling place

00:34:01.560 and the lady at the counter, knowing that I'm a Republican, seeing my grandfather, uh, is, is,

00:34:06.840 is, looks like me a little bit and it's not going to be voting for a Republican. So she thinks,

00:34:11.260 even though he did vote for me to thank God for that part. But, uh, so we're going into the voting

00:34:15.700 booth much to her chagrin and, and literally she's trying to tell my grandfather, we can get someone

00:34:20.420 to assist you and not this Republican. And with great respect, he's like, read the hand, read the

00:34:27.960 hand. And so we go in there and I, and I tell my grandfather, I said, granddaddy, look at that name.

00:34:34.080 And he has a photographic memory. I said, look at the name. That's Barack Obama. I want you to

00:34:39.060 memorize that so that when you see it on TV, you will know the name you voted for. I didn't know

00:34:44.840 who was going to win at that point in time. And so I pushed a button to light up his name. And I

00:34:49.920 said, granddaddy, I need you to hit that green button. The green button of course is vote.

00:34:52.900 And he hit that button and we walked back to the car. And the first time I saw my grandfather cry was

00:35:01.260 April 29th, 2001, when his wife of 56 years passed away. The second time I saw my grandfather

00:35:07.440 shed tears was that night after voting for Barack Obama. And if you ever wonder how blessed

00:35:15.540 we are to live in this amazing nation and how much progress we've made in this nation, think

00:35:22.160 about a man named Artisware and how far we've come.

00:35:28.160 Wow. Senator Tim Scott, you're amazing. I'm so happy you're staying with us. We're going

00:35:33.620 to do a quick commercial break and there's so much more, so many wonderful stories to mine

00:35:38.060 out of this beautiful book, which you should absolutely get out and buy right now. It's called

00:35:44.320 America, a redemption story. We will be right back.

00:35:53.800 So let's spend a minute on race. I hate having like a black man on and you make it all about

00:35:58.300 race or a woman on and you make it all about gender. It's like you're about way more than

00:36:02.060 that. And I get it, but there's some good points in there that I don't want to miss.

00:36:06.720 You talk about the fact that you've been pulled over in the past 20 years. Tell us how many times

00:36:11.440 you've been pulled over when driving a car. Now it's up to 23 or 24. It keeps going. Unfortunately,

00:36:16.480 every year or two, I get another two or three and it's unfortunate, but I understand. And frankly,

00:36:21.420 even the last time they said that I was using my blinkers in the wrong place. I was literally

00:36:27.280 helping someone find their cell phone and the cops pulled me over and then they saw who I was and they

00:36:33.140 said, you're not that guy. Because they asked me for my driver's license and they looked at it and

00:36:37.880 looked at me, looked at my driver's license and said, I'm sorry. We, uh, we just thought that he

00:36:44.920 has some stupid excuse, but, but yeah, and then I got pulled over another time for something almost as

00:36:49.380 stupid. Uh, they were using these flash floodlights at 11 o'clock at night. I was leaving the airport

00:36:54.240 coming home and got pulled over and they said they were looking for a seatbelt violation, which is a

00:36:59.560 secondary offense in South Carolina and you cannot be pulled over for it. But yet we were pulled over.

00:37:04.000 I was doing 30 and a 30, which might be a miracle in itself. I was doing 30 and a 30, but any other

00:37:10.740 given day, it would have been 32, never faster than 32. Uh, and we had a serious conversation

00:37:16.860 on the side of the road. But one of the things I try to do in my book is while I've had some really

00:37:21.800 painful experiences, the other side of the ledger is that when my house was broken in, I was so thankful

00:37:27.980 that men of integrity at that point, they were both men came in and tried to provide comfort

00:37:33.740 and take, take the reports. When I had a major car accident, my senior year where I missed seven

00:37:39.180 weeks of my senior football season, because I fell asleep driving my car down an interstate.

00:37:44.440 Don't recommend that for your listeners. It was a police officer who showed up and told me that

00:37:51.080 your mama is going to be so glad you're alive. My response to him, by the way, Megan was,

00:37:56.540 you don't know my mama. She's going to kill me. But, uh, and so I've had both sides, right? So I've

00:38:01.520 had lots of positive experiences and I've had some negative ones. And I want Americans to understand

00:38:06.600 as they read a book about redemption, that we are evolving in the right direction. We are better

00:38:13.020 than we used to be, but we still have room to grow. Life is messy though. And because I know life is

00:38:19.440 messy, I want to give you the deference that I hope that you give me.

00:38:23.340 Yeah. Can I just say for the record in the past 20 years, I've been pulled over

00:38:28.100 one time. It was recent. Um, that's it. And we, and I've told the story before one of our

00:38:33.360 very good friends is a black man and he went to Navy and he went to Wharton and now he's with an

00:38:39.900 investment bank. And, um, he was out with my husband on our boat and my husband drove like the entire

00:38:44.920 five hour journey. And literally our friend took over the wheel. He was in the Navy.

00:38:49.700 He took over the wheel for like two minutes, got pulled over by the coast guard. I mean,

00:38:54.800 we don't, we don't do ourselves any favor by saying their, their racism's gone in America

00:39:00.440 and black people never, never get profiled. We can admit all those facts and, and acknowledge

00:39:05.700 what we need to work on without condemning the whole country. That's where the left loses people

00:39:10.400 where they just try to say it's a, it's a failed project.

00:39:13.080 Tilted agree with you, Megan. One of the things I think the left is liberal elite, especially in the

00:39:17.740 media gets a pass on all the racist things that they say, by the way, which I think is astounding

00:39:22.240 and stunning. But today, and I say this after some thought and the truth is that I experienced

00:39:30.740 more prejudice at the hands of liberals. Sometimes we look like me in the media because I will not fit

00:39:38.860 what they believe is a caricature of a conservative person who happens to be black. They want to make

00:39:46.020 a cartoon of me, or if you watch wrestling, I'm sure you don't, but I do WWE. They want me to be

00:39:51.500 the heel in the story. It's the most remarkable thing that while we have championed the highest

00:39:58.800 funding for historically black colleges, universities, while we took the unemployment rate to the lowest

00:40:03.740 level for African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, 70 year low for women, a 50 year low for the majority

00:40:08.780 population. I'm still not interested in issues of justice that impact the minority communities,

00:40:15.120 even though Republicans led on the criminal justice reform. I led on police reform. I led on

00:40:20.180 rewriting the tax code to give a single mom a 70% tax cut. None of those issues matter. Only thing

00:40:26.920 that matters is if you have an R by your name, you are now the new form of inferior in modern society

00:40:35.080 as it relates to politics. And that just should never be.

00:40:38.900 Hmm. My God, it's so true. I mean, we've seen it happen to so many prominent black conservatives,

00:40:44.860 you know, from Clarence Thomas and what he's had to deal with to just, just, I think yesterday or

00:40:49.660 the day before recently, the past couple of days, this guy, Ellie Mistal of the nation, he's an MSNBC

00:40:54.820 contributor. I mean, he's never seen a black Republican. He doesn't dismiss hate as an uncle Tom. He's done

00:41:00.960 it to you. I'm sure. Yes. Yes. But this is here. He was talking about Herschel Walker,

00:41:04.800 a candidate for Senate on the Republican side down in Georgia. Take a listen.

00:41:11.480 Now you ask, why are Republicans backing this man who's so clearly unintelligent,

00:41:16.460 who so clearly doesn't have independent thoughts, but that's actually the reason Walker's going to

00:41:22.180 do what he's told. And that's what Republicans like. That's what Republicans want from their Negroes

00:41:29.040 to do what they're told. And Walker presents exactly as a person who lacks independent thoughts,

00:41:36.980 lacks an independent agenda, lacks an independent ability to grasp policies. And he's just going to

00:41:43.540 go in there and vote like Mitch McConnell tells him to vote.

00:41:47.760 Wow. I've heard it before, but every time I hear him talk about blacks and Negroes in the Republican

00:41:54.880 party, it just, it just stuns me a little bit. Every time I've heard it, I've heard it only three or four

00:41:59.700 times, but Megan, that is classic example of the bigotry coming from the left that is condoned and

00:42:07.260 sometimes celebrated in national media. Here's what they're telling to every little boy and girl

00:42:13.700 in the poorest communities. If you step out of line, we will attack you. You will have no home.

00:42:21.020 You will have no community. You are not a part of our culture. When you send those types of negative

00:42:27.080 stereotypes into communities that are struggling to find their footing, you are literally damaging

00:42:33.780 the future potential of the country and specifically those marginalized communities. We need independent

00:42:41.940 thinkers leading the way in every facet of our life and in our being as Americans, frankly, and as

00:42:48.680 folks that live in South Carolina or in New York. And yet what we hear is exactly the opposite. And one

00:42:54.540 of the things I talk about in my book, America Redemption Story, is how I had to deal with that

00:43:00.240 kind of hatred in high school from people who looked like me. I talk about being called all kinds of

00:43:05.980 racially offensive terms because I didn't fit in. And frankly, you can read books of amazing African

00:43:12.600 Americans and you'll hear their same, a similar story on how they too were put into a small category

00:43:20.400 and not allowed to think for themselves. That's not the way it should be. And frankly, I think there is

00:43:27.260 a growing echo chamber who will rebuke that as time evolves. And we're just the forerunners,

00:43:34.580 the front runners. We are the ones that are going to have the, I guess we're the tip of the arrow,

00:43:38.900 so it's going to be more painful for a little while. But I hope that the sacrifice and the

00:43:42.720 suffering of my grandfather, my mother, and hopefully the stuff I'm going through right now

00:43:47.680 will make a better way for my nephew and hopefully my kids and grandkids to come in some distant

00:43:52.500 future. Now, you may be the first black Republican in the U.S. Senate, but are you going to stay in the

00:44:00.320 U.S. Senate? Because I read that in 2019, you said publicly that this election in 2022 would be your

00:44:08.660 last Senate race. Is that true? Megan, I'm a big believer in term limits. And so I do think that

00:44:15.760 one should serve the country where they are. No, those are only for the bad politicians.

00:44:21.640 That doesn't apply. You know, I hate to go back to that daggum equal application of my words and my

00:44:29.280 system of justice. I do think that I can't think of a better and more amazing experience that I've had

00:44:36.460 in public service than to serve the greatest nation in the greatest state. But I do believe

00:44:41.820 that everyone should go. What about instead of going, a promotion?

00:44:47.980 Well, I'll say this. One of the best things that one can do is win the race coming up. And so

00:44:53.700 as a person on the ballot for re-election, my number one objective

00:44:57.060 is to win this Friday night's football game and worry about what happens later.

00:45:02.000 All right. Well, you're on the short list, as we all know, not just for potentially running. If

00:45:07.140 Trump doesn't run, you're definitely one of the top names that gets mentioned. Or as a potential VP

00:45:12.180 candidate, since it doesn't appear Mike Pence and Donald Trump are going to be together next time

00:45:16.480 around. Is that something you would consider? You know, I did mean what I said. I know that most

00:45:21.660 of us say things that we kind of mean sometimes, but this time I meant it. I always mean it,

00:45:26.480 actually. But I'm only interested in winning my re-election. And then after that, may the Lord

00:45:32.740 bless me indeed on whatever that means. Okay. Across that bridge. Well, it's funny because

00:45:37.120 HarperCollins, in publishing your book, they put a note, you know, one of the little descriptions

00:45:42.120 of the book. Nashville, Tennessee, Nelson Books, an imprint of Thomas Nelson's summary.

00:45:46.140 Senator Scott's a rising star who sees understandable importance of bipartisanship,

00:45:49.740 blah, blah, blah. This is a political memoir that includes his core messages as he prepares to

00:45:54.020 make a presidential bid in 2022. I mean, it's an obvious error because there's no presidential

00:45:59.120 race in 2022. But you must have been like, um, thanks for the speculation.

00:46:04.820 I tell you what, Megan, we don't get to see the copyright page before your book comes out,

00:46:10.340 or at least I didn't see the copyright page. I would have proofread that. But the truth is,

00:46:13.640 when I saw that, I said to myself, wait a minute, am I making a presidential announcement

00:46:18.040 on a copyright page? How bad of a marketing machine are we? And so I literally called the

00:46:23.860 publishers and said, this ain't going to work for me. I didn't say it won't work for me. I said,

00:46:27.400 ain't going to work for me. And so they were like, oh my God, we didn't blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:46:32.160 Hey, okay. Okay. I get it. I see how it happened perfectly. It's actually quite funny.

00:46:36.480 Um, I want to ask you before, before I go, um, this is my producer Kelly. Now she helped me prepare

00:46:43.240 for the segment. She's from South Carolina. She moved up to damn Canada with Canadian Debbie,

00:46:47.560 but anyway, she's near and dear to my heart. And just a couple of notes. This is what she writes

00:46:52.320 in like sort of her top takeaway. He had me in tears a few times. Uh, he weaved other people's

00:46:58.440 stories of redemption in America, heartbreak triumph with his own story. This is a must read

00:47:02.720 for any political junkie or someone who wants to remember the good about America and how far we've

00:47:07.440 actually come as a nation with, while also acknowledging pain in the past. She writes,

00:47:11.220 I kept saying to myself, this man, this politician is too good to be true. How can he be real?

00:47:17.440 Well, why hasn't Washington broken him? That is a great story. It's what everyone's probably

00:47:25.680 wondering right now. How did you not get broken by this broken system?

00:47:30.720 Well, thank you, Kelly, for your incredibly kind comments. Washington is incredibly broken.

00:47:36.860 The blessing of my life is going home to my hometown where I'm not that big of a deal,

00:47:41.340 where people just call me Tim and my friends and family call me Timmy.

00:47:44.400 The truth is that if we are going to hold onto the greatness of America,

00:47:48.260 we need to spend less time away from home and more time close to people who know who you are.

00:47:53.120 Number one. Number two, I'm a big believer that my faith is the key

00:47:56.360 and prayer does lock, unlock the door. And so I'll finish with this. There is a scripture

00:48:01.220 in Ephesians 3 20. That is my life verse that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all

00:48:07.500 that we ask or imagine. And as long as I remember that this is not about me,

00:48:11.440 I can continue to serve. Well, I pray.

00:48:15.300 Hmm. You are an inspiration, sir. Senator Tim Scott, you're welcome.

00:48:20.160 Anytime buy his new book, America, a redemption story, choosing hope, creating unity.

00:48:25.720 And he lives what he writes. All the best.

00:48:29.160 Coming up, a deeper dive into the FBI raid search, whatever you want to call it. It felt very,

00:48:35.140 very wrong at President Donald Trump's Florida home with two very well-respected lawyers,

00:48:41.200 Alan Dershowitz and Harmeet Dillon.

00:48:46.640 Joining me now, Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.

00:48:50.560 He is the author of a new book, The Price of Principle,

00:48:54.080 Why Integrity is Worth the Consequences. Man, has he lived that one.

00:48:57.980 It's about the efforts to cancel Alan throughout his career for not being sufficiently partisan.

00:49:02.580 It's such BS what they put him through. Also joining us is Harmeet Dillon. She's chairwoman of

00:49:08.060 the Republican National Lawyers Association and managing partner of the Dillon Law Group and is

00:49:12.700 representing at least one other client targeted by the FBI for what we believe was an investigation

00:49:18.180 the Biden administration simply didn't like a story that they didn't like. All right. So

00:49:23.020 I'm stunned by what they've done here. I mean, I realize they've crossed lines,

00:49:28.360 but this is a brand new one and really shows how emboldened Merrick Garland's DOJ has become,

00:49:34.840 has become. They don't seem to care about perception or, or scaring the right half of

00:49:39.920 the country into believing that the FBI and DOJ have become political weapons. Let me start with

00:49:44.820 you, Alan, as, as a professor who's been watching this for, I don't know, your entire life,

00:49:49.440 the law enforcement agencies like the DOJ and the FBI. What is this on a scale of one to 10 in terms

00:49:54.500 of shock value? Oh, I think it's a 12. I think it's a 12. I've never seen in my 60 years a search

00:50:02.520 warrant used in a situation like this. In the first place, the crime that apparently has been alleged

00:50:09.340 is generally punished by an administrative fine, not by criminal prosecution. That was the case,

00:50:15.980 of course, with Sandy Berger, Hillary Clinton, comparable offenses regarding classification,

00:50:23.100 no searches of, of their houses. And so, look, there may be more than meets the eye. I liked

00:50:31.300 Merrick Garland. I supported him when he was nominated to the Supreme Court. I remember him

00:50:35.500 as a student at Harvard Law School. It's very hard for me to believe that on the basis of what we hear

00:50:41.080 in the media, he would authorize such an extreme measure instead of saying subpoena them, subpoena the

00:50:48.800 15 boxes, subpoena the safe, let judges go through each document and determine whether or not they had

00:50:55.240 ever been classified, whether they've been declassified, whether there's lawyer-client

00:50:59.220 privilege, whether there's executive privilege. That's the way it's done. You don't use a search

00:51:05.300 warrant unless you have firm evidence that there would be destruction of the evidence. And Donald Trump

00:51:12.000 wasn't even there. He was a thousand miles away. They could have subpoenaed it to be produced in court

00:51:16.940 before Trump ever got back. And yet, and of course, if Trump or anybody in his behalf destroyed

00:51:22.720 evidence that was subpoenaed, that would be a much more serious crime than anything that has

00:51:27.680 apparently been investigating. I do not understand this. And the burden is now on Garland and on the

00:51:34.420 head of the FBI to come forward, not give a statement, but give a complete explanation and

00:51:39.880 subject themselves to very, very tough questioning by a journalist like you.

00:51:44.980 Okay. I'm coming back to that in one second because Mike Pence just weighed in and said

00:51:49.800 something similar. I'll come back to that point about a full accounting by them. But the notion

00:51:56.200 that this is about classified documents, Harmeet, seems like complete and utter BS to me. I think

00:52:01.520 that's a lie. I think this is about January 6th. I don't think they give two dams about classified

00:52:06.200 information or the destruction of classified information. Certainly didn't under Hillary Clinton

00:52:10.920 when she did it. I think this is all a pretext to try to get him on the Democrats' golden cow,

00:52:18.260 which is somehow saddling January 6th around the former president's neck.

00:52:23.460 Well, absolutely correct. And I agree with everything that the professor just said about

00:52:26.580 this. And having just gone through this and we're going through this with Project Veritas,

00:52:31.080 I could never have believed as an American lawyer with almost 30 years of experience,

00:52:35.100 most of it doing First Amendment litigation, that I would see the United States Department

00:52:39.360 of Justice executing search warrants on journalists in the United States without going through all of

00:52:47.720 the proper checks and balances, concealing information from magistrate judges, not flagging

00:52:52.880 the fact that they're journalists and ignoring multiple federal laws to do so. But the reality

00:52:58.600 is, even as much as I agree that there should be an accounting here, that it isn't likely to happen

00:53:04.340 very easily because the DOJ holds all the cards. They don't unseal these search warrants. They vigorously

00:53:10.100 oppose that. And it's really up to the accused in our system. Unfortunately, it shouldn't be this way,

00:53:16.560 but the reality is it's up to the accused. So I'm concerned that it's going to be an absolute mess to

00:53:21.860 try to get accountability here. But to the political question, I think that this was very poorly

00:53:27.500 thought through and kind of a knee-jerk reaction. I think this is purely political. I don't think

00:53:32.340 this is about documents. I think that the Democratic Party in the United States feels like

00:53:37.500 it needs Trump as a boogeyman. And the focus of the American populace going into these November

00:53:45.580 elections has been on our terrible economy, on the weakness of this country, on the open borders,

00:53:50.740 and on all of these issues. And they have to struggle mightily hard to turn the topic back to

00:53:55.120 President Trump, who hasn't been in the White House for two years now. And this is one of their

00:53:59.140 ways of doing it. But if their goal was to somehow hurt Republicans in the midterms, I think it is

00:54:05.040 backfiring. And I think that politically it was a big blunder. But back to the legal issue, as an

00:54:12.020 American, I wouldn't have wanted to see this happen by a Republican president. And indeed, President Trump,

00:54:18.520 while he talked a lot and there was a lot of lock her up chants, he didn't go after his political

00:54:22.960 opponents. And I don't want to see that in America. That's what happens in Pakistan. You lose

00:54:27.420 an election, they blow up your plane, they assassinate you. I don't want to see that kind

00:54:31.720 of behavior here in the United States. And I'm afraid that we're going down a very dangerous path

00:54:35.380 here with this.

00:54:35.880 Yes, it's one of the reasons Putin can't let himself lose power. Go ahead, Professor.

00:54:40.100 Where are Trump's lawyers? They should have been in court yesterday at 11 a.m. They should have been

00:54:47.060 in court this morning at 9 a.m. Maybe they have been. I don't know about it. But where are Trump's

00:54:52.940 lawyers? Where is the American Civil Liberties Union? Where are Democratic civil libertarians?

00:54:58.660 I'll tell you where the Democratic civil libertarians are. People like Professor Lawrence

00:55:02.720 Tribe has been urging Merrick Garland to indict President Trump for the attempted murder, the

00:55:09.720 attempted murder of Vice President Pence. He's prepared to trash the Constitution in order to

00:55:15.700 get Trump. That's where the extremists on the Democrat side are. But Republicans and lawyers

00:55:21.940 for Trump have to be more aggressive. They have to go to court. They have to challenge

00:55:25.660 this, not today, but yesterday.

00:55:27.540 But what could they do, Alan? What would be the basis for the claim?

00:55:31.320 You go to court and you say, first, we want to see the search warrant. Second, we want to

00:55:36.180 see the affidavit. Third, we want to see Justice Department rules and regulations about when you

00:55:41.820 go after former presidents. Then we want to look at everything seized and see whether or not

00:55:47.140 any of them are privileged. Any of them are not classified. And put the other side on the

00:55:53.440 defensive. Right now, all the Justice Department is going to say, well, we never comment on ongoing

00:55:58.780 investigations. Well, let the court appoint a master, an objective, neutral master, a former

00:56:04.600 Supreme Court justice. You know, there are two of them now available. One a Republican, one a Democrat.

00:56:11.520 Let them let a real congressional committee, not the fake one that was established to look into

00:56:17.280 January 6th, investigate this. We, the American public, have a right to know because today it's

00:56:23.900 Trump, tomorrow it's you, Megan, and the next day it's the rest of us that they can come after.

00:56:30.100 If this precedent is established, it is so dangerous to any Americans. And this is not the first instance.

00:56:37.240 What happened to Manafort? What happened to, uh, uh, these stone, what happened to other people,

00:56:45.180 Navarro, people, Navarro, they don't get shackled. They don't get handcuffed. Normally I've done this

00:56:51.380 for 60 years. I get a phone call saying, oh, by the way, your client has been indicted. Can you bring

00:56:56.460 him to court tomorrow morning? And I said, you know, tomorrow's a little inconvenient to me. Can I bring

00:57:00.500 him Wednesday? Oh, sure. Bring him Wednesday or Thursday. That's the way it works.

00:57:04.860 If I can weigh in on this, we have this exact playbook in the project Veritas cases. We did

00:57:10.780 all the steps that the professor just mentioned. Just remind people, just remind people what that's

00:57:15.660 about. Cause not everybody's sure. So, so project Veritas was, uh, came into the possession because

00:57:22.480 they're journalists of Ashley Biden's purported diary and they started investigating whether it was

00:57:28.880 true. They made some phone calls. They called Ashley Biden's lawyer eventually, who is well-connected

00:57:34.240 in the Southern district. And Ashley Biden's lawyer didn't want to, you know, play ball,

00:57:38.080 didn't want to confirm that it was hers or not. Instead, she dropped a dime to the U S attorney's

00:57:42.000 office in the Southern district of New York, which treated these journalists in violation of the

00:57:47.420 United States constitution and violation of the privacy protection act in violation of common law

00:57:51.800 and in violation of a department of justice guidelines of how you handle journalists.

00:57:56.100 And went, went on these, uh, shock and awe raids on three American journalists, handcuffing them,

00:58:02.940 bringing them out into the hallway in their underpants and, and all on the pretext, just like

00:58:07.240 in this case, that, uh, evidence was about to be destroyed, which is a complete lie. We all know

00:58:12.660 president Trump was playing golf at Bedminster a thousand miles away as, as a professor Dershowitz just

00:58:19.040 said, there was no risk of destruction. This is two years after the man left office. It is a

00:58:24.520 complete farce. So we went into court immediately and sought the unsealing of the search warrants,

00:58:29.840 sought the underlying affidavits to be disclosed, got journalist organizations, including the ACLU

00:58:35.340 reporters committee and so forth to come in on our behalf and ask for the same thing and ask for

00:58:40.740 accountability. And so eventually a special master did get appointed in, in this case, the project

00:58:46.380 Veritas case. And that's exactly what needs to happen right now. And if Merit Garland were thinking

00:58:50.940 clearly about not just the instant, not just his job, but the institution of the United States

00:58:56.760 department of justice and the, his attorney general's office, he would have been transparent

00:59:00.760 from the beginning and set all of this up so that he could foreclose allegations of misconduct and

00:59:06.580 weaponization and politicization of his body. He hasn't done that. And that shows me that we really

00:59:11.700 dodged a bullet in having him on the Supreme court because the judgment shown here is it is lacking.

00:59:17.440 It is lacking and it is so just, it is nihilistic to respect the office.

00:59:23.500 We all know that Merit Garland was a great judge. He was a very good lawyer. Um, I supported him for

00:59:30.740 the Supreme court. Many did. I can tell you a funny story. One day I'm on the porch of the

00:59:35.300 Chilmark store and the phone rings. Hey, Alan, it's Donald. I was tempted to say Donald who, uh,

00:59:41.560 the president, I, I, I, who should I put on the Supreme court? This was for his first vacancy.

00:59:46.020 So I said, easy, Mr. President, you should put Merit Garland on the Supreme court. He had just

00:59:50.320 been stopped. And president Trump said, ha ha, good joke. Now tell me really who should I put

00:59:55.500 on the Supreme court? And I said, Kavanaugh. Um, but, uh, you know, I think Garland would have been

01:00:00.340 a good Supreme court justice. I don't understand what's going on here. He came in to try to

01:00:06.540 depoliticize the office. The office has become terribly politicized. That's why I wrote my book,

01:00:12.480 The Price of Principle to point out the politicization, how politics trumps principle

01:00:18.220 today all over the United States, not only in the justice department, but in administrative agencies

01:00:23.740 in lower courts, all over the country in libraries, libraries, I'm banned from speaking

01:00:30.660 in the Chilmark library because I defended president Trump. The people, you would just

01:00:36.120 dress in drag and put on a show for toddlers. They would let you back in. Um, let me talk to you

01:00:40.920 about Merrick Garland for a second because he gave an interview to NBC news is Lester Holt

01:00:44.540 shortly before all of this. It was, I'm trying to find the date of this soundbite. Anyway,

01:00:49.420 it was within the past week, I think. Um, and he was telegraphing, I think perhaps not this exact

01:00:56.820 action, but that Donald Trump may soon be in his crosshairs. Listen,

01:01:01.660 the indictment of a former president of perhaps candidate for president would arguably tear the country

01:01:09.560 apart. Is that your concern as you make your decision down the road here? Do you have to

01:01:14.500 think about things like that? Look, we pursue justice without fear or favor. We intend to hold

01:01:22.060 everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for the events surrounding January 6th for any attempt

01:01:31.180 to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another accountable.

01:01:36.180 That's what we do. So if Donald Trump were to become a candidate for president again, that would

01:01:40.820 not change your schedule or, or how you move forward or don't move forward. Say again, that, uh, we will

01:01:48.640 hold accountable anyone who was criminally responsible for attempting to interfere with the transfer

01:01:55.100 legitimate lawful transfer of power from one administration to the next. Can I tell you this,

01:02:01.280 this to me amounts to, they're going to prosecute him for a bad legal theory. You know, he, he worked

01:02:08.580 with John Eastman and others. He really thought that he could overturn or have Mike Pence overturn

01:02:12.400 the electoral count. We all know that that's all ancient history. And he's, he's basically getting

01:02:18.360 ready to go after Trump because he can't really get him on incitement of violence and so on for a bad

01:02:23.360 legal theory. That's how it sounds to me, Harmeet. Absolutely. I mean, this is some kind of a half-assed

01:02:28.640 Elliot Ness attempt to try to, you know, get at the president in some other way. And without regard

01:02:33.380 to the longstanding, long-term consequences of destruction of public trust in the institution of

01:02:39.620 the department of justice, but let's not pretend that Merrick Garland has suddenly fallen from

01:02:44.560 grace. One of his first acts as an attorney general was to go after the state of Georgia for

01:02:49.460 upgrading its election laws and making them actually better than the laws of the state of Delaware where

01:02:54.200 the current president is from. And so he is political. He is, he has allowed himself, I agree,

01:03:00.080 formerly respected jurist, has allowed himself to become a political hack and a tool. I mean,

01:03:05.840 where is the judgment where even if you're just taking off your AG hat and putting on your, you know,

01:03:11.280 Democrat hat as a part of an administration to say, you know what, this is a bad idea, guys. This is a

01:03:17.600 bad idea, Susan Rice or whoever's actually running the country. It certainly isn't Joe Biden. This is a

01:03:23.140 really bad idea. It's going to come back to haunt us. We're all going to end up being

01:03:26.120 persecuted and prosecuted whenever, uh, whenever power changes hands. This is so lacking in judgment

01:03:32.260 to do that. Why did he do it then? He's not stupid and he's not all that partisan. Why did he do this?

01:03:40.500 I don't know. I don't know if I agree with that, Alan. I just gave me points out the Georgia thing.

01:03:45.960 Let's not forget about what he did to parents, uh, and his coordination with that school board about

01:03:51.040 labeling parents, domestic terrorists who showed up not wearing a mask or objecting to mandatory

01:03:55.500 vaccines and the nonsense with COVID. And then they lied and lied about how that came out. I mean,

01:03:59.320 I think he's very partisan. Well, you know, this is the worst. This is the worst because this time

01:04:05.780 he's used all the power of the justice department and the FBI, 30 people, dawn raid, the kind of thing

01:04:13.940 you don't expect to see in the United States. You know, it was a dictator in South, the central America

01:04:19.240 who said, for my friends, everything for my enemies, the law. And, you know, Garland said,

01:04:25.760 we want to apply it equally, but he has to look at the precedent of Sandy Berger. He has to look at

01:04:31.100 the precedent of Hillary Clinton. And he has to understand that you can't change those precedents

01:04:36.660 based on the party affiliation of the individual. What about this? What about this? You raised it

01:04:43.300 earlier, Alan, Mike Pence has come out and said, in part, yesterday's action undermines public

01:04:47.420 confidence in our system of justice. And Attorney General Garland must give a full accounting to the

01:04:52.080 American people as to why this action was taken. And he must do so immediately. Now, normally,

01:04:59.080 normally the search warrant application gets filed with the court and it remains sealed

01:05:05.680 until charges get filed. So normally we wouldn't be getting a look at that unless and until he filed

01:05:11.700 charges. And maybe he's just playing, you know, forgive me, hide the salami where he's just getting

01:05:16.300 everybody all upset and no charges will ever come. And we're supposed to never see this thing.

01:05:20.740 But what would a full accounting look like? Because you're saying you want one, too.

01:05:24.600 That's not a rule. That's a practice. I have seen search warrants the day they were issued.

01:05:30.660 I have had cases where my client has demanded a copy of the search warrant and has been given it

01:05:36.960 way before any indictment. So he has the power to make public not only the search warrant,

01:05:43.480 but also the affidavit. And let's remember, it doesn't provide a lot of protection for a judge

01:05:48.520 to have to sign off on a search warrant. Judges give search warrants more easily than homeowners

01:05:52.900 give give Halloween candy. This is on the judge. In my view, this is not on the magistrate judge.

01:06:00.200 This is on Merrick Garland. Go ahead, Harmeet. Well, I was going to say it is on the judge,

01:06:04.000 too. It is actually their job, their J-O-B, which they get paid for by the people,

01:06:07.560 we the people to actually examine these search warrants. And Alan is correct. In practice,

01:06:11.640 they rubber stamp them like, you know, I don't know the example, but they absolutely don't

01:06:17.280 exercise the discretion that they're supposed to. And look, this particular magistrate judge,

01:06:22.180 I don't know what happened here. But what I can tell you from this other case and other cases I've

01:06:27.480 been involved in is by the time you get to this level where you're willing to do this type of a

01:06:31.020 raid, you actually have probably issued a bunch of other search warrants that have remained sealed

01:06:35.540 at this point. And the president's team may or may not know about them. We certainly don't know

01:06:40.380 about them. And while search warrants are more often revealed, it is the underlying affidavits

01:06:45.140 that an FBI agent went in and swore and was presented to the judge that remain under seal.

01:06:50.960 So who's going to make the attorney general of the United States accountable? Who's going to do that?

01:06:56.780 There's nobody above him except for the president. And, you know, certainly I think I agree with Alan

01:07:02.280 that people need to be going into court right now and making motions and jumping up and down at this

01:07:06.760 absolute travesty and outrage. I mean, it isn't just about this, uh, the, the, this, this like

01:07:12.360 traffic ticket of a violation. What I want to see the whole mountain of what's been presented to this

01:07:19.880 magistrate judge and other magistrate judges in the district. There's a whole lot more than what

01:07:23.420 we're seeing right now. I know. Wait, I do want to talk about the judge. Hold on. Hold that thought.

01:07:26.660 Hold that thought. I want to talk about the magistrate judge for one second. But before I get to that,

01:07:30.680 um, the, uh, like my mind is jumping all over on the classified documents, um, Mike, I would be

01:07:40.520 now saying you have to elect a Republican house. I'm a Democrat, but I would be arguing you have to

01:07:46.360 elect a Republican in order to have investigations that are fair. Right now, the Democrats have

01:07:52.100 proved that they are unwilling to have fair investigations. If you nominate, or if you elect

01:07:57.660 a Republican has, let's assume it's split senators, Democrat, the house of Republican, at least you

01:08:02.560 get an opportunity for Kevin McCarthy is basically saying that by put Republicans back in charge of

01:08:08.200 the house. And we will get to the bottom of this and saying, Merrick Garland, you're on notice,

01:08:11.020 preserve all your documents. Here's the point I wanted to raise army. Um, you say the traffic

01:08:15.380 ticket. And I think what you mean is the, the fig leaf, the pretext of, oh, classified documents,

01:08:21.480 but don't you think like I'll make it the defense of the magistrate judge without knowing more.

01:08:25.480 Now I think it's tied together. They probably have Trump on the likelihood that he's got

01:08:31.700 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago that he shouldn't have. Cause we've learned a lot about

01:08:35.080 that in the past couple of months, they probably have them on that. So they went into this magistrate

01:08:39.060 judge who, as far as I can tell, his name is judge Bruce Reinhardt. I don't know what his political

01:08:43.160 affiliation is just a magistrate judge. Um, he was elevated magistrate judge in 2018, 10 years in

01:08:48.920 private practice prior to that. He was an assistant U S attorney in South Florida prior to that.

01:08:53.000 Um, they say he left and then he represented some of Epstein's employees in connection with that

01:08:58.100 whole thing. Um, his wife was appointed to a Florida circuit court. His wife's a judge too

01:09:02.980 by governor Rick Scott, a Republican. I don't know. He could be a never Trumper. I have no idea

01:09:07.880 what the guy's politics are, but let's not forget. It looks like Merrick Garland went in there and

01:09:13.580 didn't say January 6th, January 6th, January 6th, but went in there and said classified documents.

01:09:18.300 And what we know about that is that in January, the national archives retrieved 15 boxes that

01:09:24.440 Trump took with him when he left the white house, they described it as mementos memos.

01:09:28.620 Apparently in there was the, were the quote love letters between Trump and Kim Jong-un. That was

01:09:33.920 Trump's description and some things that, you know, technically should have been left behind

01:09:37.440 because they belong to the American people, not to the former president, but they said also included

01:09:41.320 with some classified national security information. Hell that could have been the love letters.

01:09:45.000 Um, and then the archives contacted the department of justice, federal prosecutors began a grand jury

01:09:52.440 investigation into this. Prosecutors issued a subpoena earlier this year to the archives to obtain

01:09:59.620 the boxes. That's the last I knew about this until today. So can't you see a thing where Merrick

01:10:05.760 Garland goes in there? He's trying to get them on January 6th. He telegraphed it to Lester Holt.

01:10:09.500 The Democrats have been very loud about it on January 6th committee. And Merrick Garland says,

01:10:14.120 I got it. He's got more boxes. I don't have the love, love letters to Kim Jong or whatever it is

01:10:19.420 he thinks he's missing. And, um, then Maggie Haberman of the New York times, who's writing a book

01:10:23.780 tweets out, Oh, look at this picture I have of the Trump toilet in the white house with some random

01:10:29.540 document that appears to have president Trump's handwriting on it as if it's a smoking gun.

01:10:33.580 It could be a love note to Melania. We have no idea what's in that thing. And Merrick Garland says

01:10:39.260 emergency he's flushing. He hasn't complied. The classified documents, you know, are only

01:10:46.180 partially turned over. Look at the national archives. Give me, give me the one. I mean,

01:10:50.380 he's flushing and Maggie Haberman has a, has a photograph of it. Like, you know, this is such

01:10:55.960 BS. I'm sorry to, you know, you know, use that language here, but it, it, it, it boggles the mind

01:11:02.000 that with the crises going on in this country, this is what the United States department of justice and

01:11:06.220 attorney general are focusing on. Look, the national archives are my understanding. I'm

01:11:11.000 not an expert on this, but they're temporary custodians of these documents until Trump opens

01:11:15.040 up his library, at which point these documents get to go back. There are many of them. I mean,

01:11:19.680 the classification, sure. We can argue about that. Is that at the level that we should be crossing this

01:11:24.320 line to go use these troops? But secondly, whoever the magistrate judge is.

01:11:29.720 Just so people know, never before across the first time in U.S. history that they've raided the

01:11:34.320 form of a former president. And if this becomes the new norm, believe me,

01:11:37.500 Republicans are going to do this too. And I don't want to see that either as a Republican.

01:11:41.160 Yeah, I see. Wait, wait, let her finish your point. Let her finish your point.

01:11:44.920 So the point I want to finish is no, whoever the magistrate judge is, you're right. I'm not going

01:11:49.840 to get speculate about the person's politics or his affiliation with, you know, Epstein defendants.

01:11:56.400 Magistrate judges around the United States have many times abdicated their duty

01:12:02.320 responsibility to ask hard questions of the DOJ. Why do you need a search warrant? Why can't this

01:12:08.540 be done some other way? What's going on that makes it appropriate for me to be the magistrate judge to

01:12:13.840 sign off on this, you know, very extreme exercise of power? Those questions are not being asked around

01:12:20.780 the country. It isn't just this magistrate judge. And we see this type of abuse of power all too

01:12:25.700 frequently. I say that as a civil libertarian.

01:12:27.660 I agree with you. And I do say that as a liberal Democrat who wants to have an opportunity to vote

01:12:34.060 against President Trump in the next election, I want to be free to vote against him. I want you

01:12:38.500 to be free to vote for him. I don't want to see efforts to have bureaucrats tell us who we can vote

01:12:42.960 for. And that's why I want to make sure that the Justice Department isn't weaponized toward the goal

01:12:49.940 of preventing President Trump from seeking re-election. I want to have the right to vote against

01:12:54.720 them. That's my American right. There is now speculation among some pundits in the in the

01:12:59.880 press, Twitter and so on, saying this won't be the last. Trump's got a home in Trump Tower. You know,

01:13:06.920 he's got other properties. And what do you think the likelihood of that is that that that we're going

01:13:13.380 to see more than just this one? Preemptive action should go to court and seek injunctions,

01:13:18.520 should seek a hearing to determine whether or not the Justice Department is abusing its

01:13:24.180 authority. Lawyers have to become more proactive and more aggressive. And I don't know what the

01:13:30.180 Trump lawyers are doing. I would expect and hope they're preparing for this onslaught. But you can't

01:13:37.500 just sit back and wait. You can't wait until he's indicted. The job of a criminal defense lawyer is to

01:13:43.420 prevent indictment, to prevent searches. And that's what good criminal defense lawyers do.

01:13:48.500 And I expect that. Yeah, go on offense. Harmeet, this is another this is another comment, a hysterical

01:13:56.660 one. If you ask me, you tell me. Michael Beschloss, NBC presidential historian. He thinks the classified

01:14:02.140 documents is real and he thinks it's a massive deal that that President Trump would have such things.

01:14:08.240 I'd love to go back and look what he thought about Hillary Clinton's documents as well. I'll do that

01:14:12.460 at some point. But this is what he said. If Trump illegally took national security classified

01:14:16.820 documents and hid them, hid in his Florida mansion, and especially if he shared them with outsiders.

01:14:22.980 Oh, I don't I don't know where the proof of that is. He may have been putting all of our lives

01:14:28.720 in danger and those of our families in danger. So it's a matter of life and death, according to this

01:14:35.500 guy. What do you think that that's hysterical nonsense, you know, unbecoming of somebody who calls

01:14:42.320 himself a historian? It is it is it is it is ridiculous. And this is suddenly a crisis. This

01:14:48.960 is suddenly an issue. The guy hasn't been in the White House for years. Have any of us died as a

01:14:54.700 result of these free floating, you know, national security documents and at Mar-a-Lago? I mean,

01:15:00.320 you cannot get beyond the fact that a search warrant was executed, meaning, as as Alan said earlier,

01:15:06.740 imminent threat of these documents disappearing or, you know, being used in a nefarious way.

01:15:12.320 When the former president is is at a golf course somewhere else, there is no such risk. It is

01:15:21.060 it is ludicrous. And so Americans, so many conservatives, I get so angry with my conservative

01:15:27.860 friends who say, well, if you know, what's the problem with the Patriot Act, Harmeet? If you're

01:15:31.200 not doing something wrong, why do you care that the government is, you know, reading your emails?

01:15:35.260 This is why you care. You care because you can have people come into your home when you're at work

01:15:42.140 or playing golf or whatever and rifle through your stuff, take it. And then the burden is on you to

01:15:46.760 get it back. This is outrageous. It needs to change. And, you know, liberals have an incredible double

01:15:50.880 standard about this. Would you like Peter Strzok reading your emails? You want that guy to have

01:15:56.060 access to your private information, given his bias and agenda? I don't want Republican or Democrat

01:16:00.220 prosecutors reading my stuff. The burden should be very high. The three of us have that in common.

01:16:05.040 We have different political affiliations, but we all put our partisanship aside, all three of us,

01:16:10.540 and focus on civil liberties, focus on the shoe on the other foot, focus on principles. That's what's

01:16:16.980 needed in this country. That's why Megan's show is so important today to have that kind of voice

01:16:23.060 heard. And it's not being heard on CNN. It's not being heard on MSNBC. It's not being seen in the New

01:16:29.220 York Times. It has to be promoted. America is a moderate centrist country that believes in the

01:16:36.860 rule of law and not the weaponization of partisanship. And that we in the middle have to

01:16:42.800 stand up for this. We have to get ourselves organized and put the extremists on the margin

01:16:49.840 and focus on the rule of law objective. Sometimes it'll help our side. Sometimes it'll hurt our side.

01:16:56.360 But the three of us agree that principle must be more important than partisanship.

01:17:02.040 Amen to that. You know, it may not have been an imminent threat, Trump coming in and interfering

01:17:07.480 with the execution of what would have been a normal process. But you know what is imminent?

01:17:12.880 The loss of the House to the Republicans. We're 90 days away from an election now that the Democrats

01:17:18.240 are poised to lose. And that's one of the truly disturbing things about what's happened here.

01:17:23.100 Trump said it in a statement he put out last night, and I don't think he's wrong about the fact that he

01:17:27.580 had massive wins this past week on these Tuesday primaries in terms of who he endorsed. He crushed

01:17:33.340 DeSantis in a straw poll. He's by far the leading candidate for the GOP nomination. And the January 6th

01:17:41.160 committee made no bones about the fact that its goal was to change people's hearts and minds before the

01:17:48.220 midterm elections. And there's very good reason to question whether this is part of that.

01:17:57.660 So let's pick it up where I left off before the tease about what's imminent is the midterm elections,

01:18:02.340 Alan. Well, first of all, there are efforts now to disqualify President Trump from being a leader of

01:18:08.040 this party and from running for reelection. Some Democratic leaders have made up a story saying that

01:18:13.660 if he were guilty of some crime like classified information, he couldn't run. The Constitution

01:18:18.000 provides only four reasons a person can't run. He has to be over 35. He has to be born in America.

01:18:24.400 He has to have not fought in the Civil War as part of an insurrection. And he has to have been

01:18:29.520 impeached with the impeachment plus disqualification. If he meets all of those four criteria, it doesn't

01:18:35.380 matter whether he's convicted of a crime or whether he's in jail. The Constitution provides the

01:18:39.880 criteria for president, not Democrats in the legislature. So the effort to try to disqualify

01:18:45.520 him is absolutely going to fail. And I can imagine a crisis in this country if Congress passes a

01:18:52.560 statute disqualifying him and he says, sorry, I'm running. I'm not being disqualified. We could have

01:18:58.720 a real major constitutional crisis in this country over that issue. Yeah. If I can add on that, Democrats

01:19:04.620 tried this in California by trying to pass this qualification that you had to disclose your tax returns

01:19:09.760 to run for president. I'm one of the lawyers who went into court and invalidated that under the

01:19:13.760 exact terms that Alan just set forth here. Democrats can't like we have this crap legislation being

01:19:20.060 passed every day in the United States Congress. You think they can just sneak in a clause that says

01:19:24.260 Donald Trump can't be president? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that can be constitutional. That's not how

01:19:28.640 it works in America. No, it's a bill of detainers. Trump came out. I mean, like, look, we are so

01:19:34.660 light years away from Trump actually getting charged and then convicted and then stopped running for

01:19:39.000 off. I mean, it's just but this is a Democrat pipe dream. And if it happened, there'd be a complete

01:19:43.020 meltdown in this country. I mean, I don't know. I shuddered. I'm not sure we're light years away,

01:19:47.200 Megan. I think we're, you know, more like light minutes away.

01:19:50.540 Uh, the weather signaling. Yeah. People Lawrence tribe who have the ear of the attorney general

01:19:55.900 giving him 15 grounds on which to indict, urging him and academics are stretching the laws.

01:20:03.740 If any of them were my students in my first year class, where I used to give an exam,

01:20:08.260 figure out how many crimes you can get and then give a judgment as to whether they should be brought

01:20:12.280 tribe and all of his associates would be getting C minuses with great inflation.

01:20:17.400 A Lawrence tribe just filed an amicus brief in my, in where I'm defending, uh, people being sued by,

01:20:22.760 uh, Alex Vindman in the DC district court, you know, arguing for the opposite of what liberals

01:20:28.060 should be arguing for. So Alan is absolutely correct. It's, it's upside down world here and

01:20:33.360 in DC today. But wait, Harmi, go, go on about why you think it's not light years away because,

01:20:38.320 you know, normally, well, this DOJ kind of drags its feet a lot, but, but normally it would take a

01:20:42.960 while for them to actually get an indictment. Although I will say once you execute, you know,

01:20:47.400 a search warrant in the way they just did. Normally you've got all your ducks in a row

01:20:50.300 and you're ready to prosecute if you want, but it's just such a huge leap to go prosecute the

01:20:54.480 former president of the United States, the likely opponent to the sitting president of the United

01:20:59.220 States. Like, look, it's hard for me to believe. Megan, one thing that civil libertarians on both

01:21:05.320 sides have been complaining about for years is the plethora and, and metastasizing size of the

01:21:11.100 United States criminal code means that all of us are committing federal crimes on a regular

01:21:15.300 basis. You, me, Alan, we've all committed federal crimes. According to somebody's definition of

01:21:21.120 that, it is, it is very easy for federal prosecutors to make up a case. And if they are

01:21:26.320 hacks and, and enabled by judicial hacks, able to get, to get an indictment, it is not that hard

01:21:33.040 for the feds to indict somebody. So if you've made the decision that it's okay to send 30 FBI agents

01:21:38.480 to the former president's home, where he conducts business, where he's been hanging out for two

01:21:44.760 years, they can't do it across that line. You know, but, but here's the thing, just going back

01:21:50.500 to my original point, wait, wait, wait, I'm going back. I don't believe it. I think it's a lie. It's

01:21:54.860 pretext. That's a pretext to get in there and get into the safe, which according to Eric Trump,

01:21:58.200 didn't even have anything. You can find something against anybody. I know, but they can't like even

01:22:03.780 Merrick Garland partisan though he is, has got to realize after they didn't go after Hillary Clinton

01:22:09.780 for the 30,000 emails and the destruction, the acid washes Trump put it of her server.

01:22:15.480 They cannot possibly turn around and go after Donald Trump, who by the way,

01:22:19.900 has the authority to declassify documents. Unlike Hillary Clinton, there's just no,

01:22:23.860 even Merrick Garland's not that bold. But you know, Lavrenti Beria, the head of the KGB

01:22:28.740 went to Stalin one day and said, Stalin, show me the man and I'll find you the crime.

01:22:35.400 That's what's going on. Trump has been targeted. And now the job of the tribes of the world is

01:22:42.300 find me the crime. Do anything to find me the crime.

01:22:46.540 They can do that to any of us. Absolutely. Megan, you, anything, they don't like what we're saying,

01:22:52.020 they can do it to any of us. Well, by the way, they probably will be soon is where you just,

01:22:55.940 they just passed this, you know, act that, that authorized 87,000 new IRS agents. Oh, great.

01:23:02.000 How's that going to go? Well, historically it goes badly for the working in and middle class.

01:23:06.980 I was ordered four times during the Nixon administration. So this is not something new.

01:23:12.340 Karthi Ice did this. Nixon did this. Now the shoe was on the other foot and it's the left that's doing

01:23:18.400 this. It's just as bad. And true civilitarians like us have to stand up against our own party,

01:23:25.020 against the opposing party with equal vigor.

01:23:27.420 Hmm. They're out there saying exactly opposite. I listened just for kicks last night to some

01:23:32.300 MSNBC. So I did that. So you don't have to, um, and they, you would have thought I actually wrote

01:23:38.840 it down just so I would remember what the woman was saying. She was saying to the effect of it's

01:23:43.080 not an exact quote. The Republic depends on equal justice under law. Okay. We all agree with that.

01:23:48.240 The law must apply equally to Donald Trump, who she was making the point has managed to dodge

01:23:54.380 responsibility for so many of these criminal, you know, inquiries that he's been the subject

01:24:00.120 of. And so the left sees it as if Merrick Garland doesn't go after him, that special treatment

01:24:06.700 for Donald Trump, which they believe he's already got. I heard Scarborough this morning going on about

01:24:11.440 how Bill Barr pre rigged the whole Russiagate investigation. And he really should have been

01:24:16.500 gone after for obstruction. I mean, the same old arguments recycled as a justification for getting

01:24:22.480 Trump on anything classified documents, January 6th, take your pick. If they wanted to get Scarborough

01:24:29.460 from murdering his, uh, intern, uh, a prosecutor could have stretched the law to get him. Let he

01:24:35.520 who's without sin cast the first stone. Scarborough is certainly not without sin. And many of the other

01:24:41.560 commentators are not without sin. And so the idea of applying a double standard, just because you don't

01:24:48.260 like the person is so dangerous to democracy. What about Hillary? What about Hunter? What about

01:24:54.440 Hunter? I mean, Harvey, that's one of the questions. Uh, the Babylon Bee always good for a

01:24:58.280 laugh. They can't, they had a great headlines. Where is it? I have so many papers. I can't keep

01:25:02.040 track of them. Here it is. Um, Kyle man of the Babylon Bee tweets out Hunter Biden breathes sigh of

01:25:06.680 relief as FBI raid team passes by his house on way to Mar-a-Lago. What about Hunter?

01:25:11.240 Look, Hunter Biden, we have videos of him committing sex trafficking and drug offenses and

01:25:16.100 admissions of weapons offenses. I still don't think that we should be using the power of the

01:25:22.400 United States department of justice to single out our political opponents. So my point is it's not

01:25:28.080 like we got to focus on the big picture here. The big picture is Democrats are afraid that they

01:25:33.200 cannot win the upcoming election, the 2024 election by legitimate means. And they're turning

01:25:38.340 to illegitimate means. That's what is happening in front of us today.

01:25:41.240 I agree with that. Oh, okay. Great. I like it. I like a point of agreement. Um, I think

01:25:49.000 the principle, because that tells the whole story, you got more time, the price of principle. We all

01:25:54.300 love Alan in his book. Can I, let me ask you this. Okay. Uh, the, as you know, Merrick Garland,

01:26:00.160 you know, he, we don't know for sure whether he signed off on this, but just for the record,

01:26:04.500 is there any chance? Of course he did. Okay. Okay. So we were all in agreement that,

01:26:09.900 and what are the, what is the odds, what are the odds that the white house as it's claiming

01:26:14.080 was absolutely clueless that this was going to happen?

01:26:17.220 I think president Biden was clueless on this, whether or not there were people in the white

01:26:22.640 house is a different question, but I think the president of the United States signed off on this.

01:26:28.540 He says he didn't. And I believe that he's out of it. He's out of it. His advisors definitely knew

01:26:34.760 about it, signed off on it and probably instigated it. What about, I mean, how on earth could they

01:26:40.800 actually go after Donald Trump with criminal charges? I mean, truly like, how could they do it?

01:26:44.560 Cause let's talk about spin. How could they look at the American public with, when Hillary Clinton

01:26:48.340 got away with this? Uh, I think I believe their own BS. I think that the people inside the beltway

01:26:54.140 are completely out of touch with what's happening in Washington. If you're the January 6th committee

01:26:58.820 and putting on this ponderous show for the public and thinking that this is what all Americans think

01:27:03.580 you're completely out of touch. So I think they genuinely thought what we are doing is popular.

01:27:08.000 We are getting, you know, we are, we're going after somebody. It'll be,

01:27:10.880 we'll be applauded for this. It is backfiring. Bigly.

01:27:14.560 Everybody's missing is if he were indicted, where would he be indicted? If he were indicted

01:27:19.080 in Palm beach County, he'd get a fair trial. If he were indicted in the district of Columbia,

01:27:23.720 it's a foregone conclusion. All of the district of Columbia cases have resulted in convictions

01:27:28.620 because what? 85% of the jurors are, are, are, are, are Democrat and probably most of them

01:27:34.940 are very anti-Trump, but this search took place in Palm beach County. Now the offense may

01:27:40.740 have taken place in the district of Columbia. And I assure you that prosecutors would bring

01:27:45.100 an indictment in the district of Columbia and probably would win a conviction. Then the question

01:27:50.940 would be whether it was reversed on appeal. The, um, this is new reporting from Fox news

01:27:56.280 on the subject of those classified documents, allegedly at Mar-a-Lago. I mean, we know some

01:28:00.820 where they are. The questions are more and how many sources were telling Fox news on Tuesday,

01:28:05.580 investigators from the DOJ visited Mar-a-Lago in June for a meeting about turning over,

01:28:11.100 I guess, more records. Cause he's already given them 15 boxes as part of an investigation into

01:28:15.720 documents. Former president Trump allegedly took with him from the white house to his private

01:28:19.360 residents when he left office in January, 2021, Trump's attorneys were present at that meeting.

01:28:23.760 And the sources say the former president himself stopped in to say hello for a few minutes.

01:28:27.520 The June meeting was about additional documents that were being sought, but following it,

01:28:32.180 the justice department and FBI felt they were not getting the same cooperation. They'd been

01:28:35.900 receiving earlier in the probe, according to a source with knowledge of the negotiations,

01:28:39.000 the perceived lack of cooperation is why a search warrant was requested and ultimately executed

01:28:46.000 on Monday, August 8th at Trump's Palm beach property. Do you, do you believe that perceived lack

01:28:51.680 of cooperation? That's no justification. They can still issue a subpoena. They hadn't issued subpoenas.

01:28:57.460 That's the first step issue was subpoena. If then you think that evidence is being destroyed,

01:29:02.180 you're hidden. Then you go to the court and you get a search warrant, but you don't skip the step

01:29:06.020 of subpoena looking for justice. That's right. No, it's thug mode. Like this is an adversarial

01:29:13.380 process. United States department of justice are not inquisitors. They don't just get to come in

01:29:17.700 and get whatever they want. If there's a back and forth conversation and if documents were not turned

01:29:22.260 over, the president's lawyers may very well have had a good argument for that. That should have been

01:29:26.260 hashed out in court, not gone into in the sluggish manner.

01:29:30.100 And since when, like what, what is even allegedly in there that is of such national security importance

01:29:35.700 that it's got to be done immediately? The, the, the greater likelihood in my view is that they want

01:29:41.060 something else, but let me make this point. They want something else. They want to, the reason there

01:29:44.640 was urgency was they wanted to find a secret communications with John Eastman on the January 6th

01:29:49.460 riots on overturning the election. That's what they thought was in that state.

01:29:53.780 But John Eastman's documents have already been adjudicated in front of judge Carter in this,

01:29:59.720 in the central district of California. I mean, what is there to find in that regard?

01:30:03.400 It could be a fishing expedition for sure for looking for some new stuff. That's that is a completely

01:30:09.440 illegitimate and frankly, shocking abuse of power by the department of justice.

01:30:14.040 That's what I think is happening here.

01:30:15.100 There was smoking gun documents. Nobody is using them now. There's no imminent threat

01:30:20.820 to national security. There's already past that. No, but we're already past that. That

01:30:24.820 is inappropriate that, that the other thing is protectual. What they really want, I think

01:30:28.680 is January 6th documentation. And this is Andy McCarthy had a piece on this agreeing with

01:30:33.340 that position today. And this is something he pointed out. I think this is very interesting.

01:30:37.680 In recent weeks, I'm sort of quoting, but I'm paraphrasing too, because I just took notes

01:30:41.780 from it. In recent weeks, DOJ has gone after close advisers to Donald Trump. Jeffrey Clark,

01:30:47.180 who sought to help Trump convince contested states of the premise, untrue, that DOJ believed

01:30:52.480 Biden's victory might be fraudulent, like that wanted this guy was going to tell everybody DOJ

01:30:57.200 thinks this is a fraudulent win. So they they've gone after him. Constitutional law scholar John

01:31:02.940 Eastman, and we mentioned architect of the legal strategy by which Trump unsuccessfully sought

01:31:06.460 to persuade Mike Pence to discount the vote, also issued grand jury subpoenas to White House

01:31:10.780 counsel, Pat DiBoloni and his deputy, who were aware of and pushed back on Trump schemes

01:31:15.240 to undo the election results. And so the circle around Trump with respect to the legal advisors

01:31:22.360 and others who had something to say about his strategy to overturn the election results is

01:31:27.300 the exact circle that's been caught up in Merrick Garland's web. And now the big kahuna,

01:31:33.360 Donald Trump himself, who they they continue to tell us on the January 6th committee, which,

01:31:37.520 of course, is coordinating with Merrick Garland. He knew he knew it was false. He knew it was false.

01:31:41.420 And he said it anyway. And some of us have been saying bullshit. He was a true believer. He didn't

01:31:45.420 know anything. He genuinely believed the stuff that he was saying. And they seem to think this is an

01:31:49.100 important point legally to prove knowledge that it was false while he was saying it. And I believe

01:31:53.900 Merrick Garland thought there might be stuff about that in the safe, in the Mar-a-Lago boxes.

01:31:58.260 But saying false things isn't a crime either. There are very few false things that you can say

01:32:04.840 in the United States that are criminal. And they're just trying to make up crimes out of a

01:32:09.660 political disagreement. And again, that should never be allowed in America.

01:32:13.300 The interesting legal issue that is unresolved is if you have probable cause for a crime A

01:32:18.600 classification, can you then use the search warrant not to get more evidence of that,

01:32:24.360 but to get evidence of a totally different crime. That's an interesting legal issue that I think the

01:32:30.860 Trump people will probably want to litigate because you're absolutely right, both of you.

01:32:35.680 The motive behind this was not to get more information about classification. It was to

01:32:40.360 get information about January 6th. But that's not what the application for the search warrant says.

01:32:45.900 And so we'll see what the courts have to say about that. It's a very, very interesting legal issue.

01:32:50.360 Let me ask you guys, if they want to go after Trump or-

01:32:54.360 Conspiracy to defraud the United States government. And this is one of the claims being kicked around

01:33:00.140 with respect to Trump on the January 6th doc. Conspiracy to defraud. Then they do have to figure

01:33:05.860 out what was in his head. What did he know? And did he intentionally lie about it? You know,

01:33:10.600 did he know he had lost? I mean, the odds of them finding the Donald Trump black Sharpie memo where he

01:33:17.840 says, dear diary, I know I lost, but I plan on unleashing a scheme that will fraudulently

01:33:24.440 reinstall me into the office of the presidency are absolutely nil. So like, I don't know how dumb

01:33:30.000 they think in this version of Trump is where he knew it all. He lied about it. He put it all in

01:33:35.360 writing. He put it in a safe at Mar-a-Lago, the very safe near the boxes that he was in an active

01:33:40.520 contentious dispute with the government about returning and then flew off to New York and left it

01:33:44.840 all. Like, I don't, this isn't a man I know. We know what president Trump has been thinking

01:33:50.740 because he tells us on Twitter and truth social every few minutes. Uh, you know, so I, that the

01:33:56.500 premise that there's some big secret, Megan, to your point is ridiculous. Look, this is, this is

01:34:01.120 about, they, they are afraid of him and they're showing it by these actions. They're afraid of facing

01:34:05.520 him in at the, at the polls. And this is how they're dealing with that fear instead of competing with

01:34:11.400 better ideas, better candidates and better results for our country. My favorite part of this episode

01:34:16.160 is the Al Capone, uh, Geraldo Rivera moment where they break into the safe in order to get the smoking

01:34:24.580 gun and the safe is empty. Um, and I suspect that's, that'll be true of a great many things

01:34:31.520 they look into. They won't be empty, but there will not be significant evidence of the kinds of crimes

01:34:38.120 that have been prosecuted in the past. Well, I'll tell you who should be really worried today

01:34:42.220 under Biden, because I do think the Democrats are smart enough to realize if they're going to indict

01:34:47.300 Trump and they don't slap that guy with something serious, there's going to be a revolution openly

01:34:53.860 in the country. So if I were Hunter Biden, I would view this as a very bad development, but who knows,

01:34:58.800 perhaps I underestimate the chutzpah of Merrick Garland and Joe Biden and PS.

01:35:03.980 But those two things are not equal. I mean, that's not going to forestall a crisis for sure.

01:35:08.480 That's no, that's the thing. And I don't believe the white house had no idea. Absolutely not. And

01:35:12.980 of course there's a way of knowing without knowing, like I'd really love to see an indictment. How

01:35:16.980 about those documents? Deeply problematic, isn't it? I'd really like you to stop being the measured

01:35:21.060 judge, which Joe Biden did say, um, and, you know, be more active. And then it's like, you know,

01:35:26.200 you shove the right memo in front of him and the next thing, you know, it happens. Like I,

01:35:29.980 they're not, but a real committee could investigate what the white house knew when they knew it and

01:35:35.620 who in the white house authorized this. That's a legitimate issue of inquiry for a real committee

01:35:41.040 or for a special master. So if Republicans take control, we get that special master and, um,

01:35:47.480 Trump's lawyers need to be very aggressive in response to all of this. Alan Harmeet,

01:35:53.000 such a great discussion. Thank you both so much for being here. We appreciate it.

01:35:56.340 Glenn Beck back on the program tomorrow. Lots to go over.

01:35:59.980 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - August 09, 2022

Feds Raid Trump's Home, and American Opportunity, with Sen. Tim Scott, Alan Dershowitz, and Harmeet Dhillon ｜ Ep. 370

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