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


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 36 minutes

Words per minute

187.43886

Word count

18,009

Sentence count

1,199

Harmful content

Misogyny

12

sentences flagged

Toxicity

21

sentences flagged

Hate speech

24

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The FBI raided Trump's Mar-A-Largo early in the morning, but did they have a warrant from a court order? And did they know what they were looking for? Megyn gives her thoughts on the matter.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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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 0.99
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 0.99
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 0.97
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. 0.51
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 0.90
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. 0.99
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 0.81
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 0.99
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 0.98
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. 1.00
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, 1.00
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 1.00
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 0.53
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. 1.00
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 1.00
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 0.99
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 1.00
00:36:49.380 stupid. Uh, they were using these flash floodlights at 11 o'clock at night. I was leaving the airport 1.00
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 0.99
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 0.99
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, 0.87
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 0.98
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 0.99
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, 1.00
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 1.00
00:41:29.040 to do what they're told. And Walker presents exactly as a person who lacks independent thoughts, 0.67
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. 1.00
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 0.84
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 1.00
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, 1.00
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 0.98
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, 0.98
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 1.00
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 1.00
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 0.97
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. 1.00
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 0.99
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 0.85
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 0.88
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 1.00
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. 0.99
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 0.63
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 0.98
01:19:20.060 passed every day in the United States Congress. You think they can just sneak in a clause that says 0.99
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. 0.99
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. 0.63
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 0.98
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 0.99
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. 0.58
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, 0.77
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 1.00
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 0.97
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 0.99
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 0.91
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.