The Megyn Kelly Show - Media Irrelevance, Fauci's Retirement, and the Trump Raid, with Jared Kushner, Bryan Dean Wright, and Mike Davis

00:00:00.560 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.800 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.240 There are a lot of new headlines today involving the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago.

00:00:19.120 The main one being new details on what was reportedly found in the boxes.

00:00:23.260 Also, I want to tell you, I recently read one of the smartest takes yet on what is likely to happen

00:00:27.560 as a result of this whole thing by a lawyer who has served as legal counsel in all three

00:00:32.020 branches of government. He knows what he's talking about. He's coming up later and he's

00:00:36.520 going to walk us through all the latest and tell us what is likely to happen in this case

00:00:41.360 as we await the magistrate judge's ruling on what exactly is going to be revealed to us all

00:00:47.620 and what is not as a legal fight plays out between the Department of Justice and Trump's lawyers

00:00:52.540 on what we're entitled to know when it comes to what was in that supporting affidavit.

00:00:57.560 Behind the warrant that was issued. But first, outside of President Trump,

00:01:02.500 few were villainized by the press more than his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

00:01:08.920 Jared was a White House senior advisor to his father-in-law. He's also, of course, as I say,

00:01:13.780 married to the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump. And he is out with a new book today titled

00:01:18.200 Breaking History, a White House memoir. I get that. I get it, right? It's not making history,

00:01:24.420 it's breaking history is associated with Trump. And he broke a lot of things that needed to be

00:01:29.460 broken during his four years in the White House. In the book, Jared talks about his time at the

00:01:33.860 White House and tells a story I've never heard before about Trump and Hillary Clinton after the

00:01:39.560 2016 election. He also gets personal talking about how he met Ivanka, what it's like to raise a family

00:01:46.880 under constant fire, how hard it was on him when his dad went to prison for a couple of years.

00:01:55.520 Nothing is left untouched. And Jared Kushner joins me now.

00:02:04.240 Jared, so nice to have you on. It's great to meet you.

00:02:06.740 Thank you. It's an honor to be with you.

00:02:08.540 So you really do talk about a lot of personal things, which is surprising because

00:02:13.180 not that many people know you. You were covered a lot in the media, but you weren't on TV every

00:02:19.200 night like a lot of folks in the administration. So was it hard to be this open in the book about

00:02:25.320 your family and your personal troubles?

00:02:28.020 No, it wasn't hard to be open at all. First of all, thank you for the nice things you were saying

00:02:32.040 about the book. It's a very lonely process to write a book. And as somebody who is not used to

00:02:38.080 be communicating, I was more used to doing things. I was from the private sector and in the private

00:02:43.060 sector, you don't, success or failure isn't about perception. Success or failure is really about

00:02:48.560 accomplishments and reality. And there's a real scorecard. You achieve results and it's good.

00:02:53.880 And if not, you don't, you have to keep trying. So it was a very hard process really to chronicle

00:03:00.200 everything that we'd been through from the campaign all the way through the end of the administration.

00:03:06.180 As I was going through it, you realize just how many things occurred. There's one example I think

00:03:12.580 about where there was the whole controversy where Trump called, or they alleged that Trump called

00:03:19.580 the shithole countries in Africa. And that was burning up the headlines. And then I was at a

00:03:25.640 friend's house and I went back to the house three weeks later and I saw that newspaper on the counter

00:03:29.320 and there was a different scandal. And I remember at the time thinking this was the biggest thing in the

00:03:33.420 world. And then a couple of weeks, it just kind of went away. And so really trying to chronicle

00:03:38.400 through the book, the different Russia investigation, the impeachments, the congressional

00:03:44.780 investigations, and then also go through the accomplishments, how Trump built the economy,

00:03:49.180 the prison reform and criminal justice reform that we got done, the Mexico trade deals, how we

00:03:54.120 secured the border, how we built the wall. And then really a lot of the work through the pandemic

00:03:58.440 with Operation Warp Speed and the vaccine in 10 months and really all the work in the Middle East

00:04:03.860 that we were able to do that everyone thought would be not successful, but ultimately led to the

00:04:08.480 Abraham Accords, which was six historic peace deals, which has changed the world. So there was a lot of

00:04:13.820 ground to cover. And I tried to weave it in so that it would read very fast and give the readers the

00:04:19.920 same intensity while they're reading it that we felt while we were experiencing it. But it's accurate.

00:04:24.920 I felt like the media did not either they did try very hard or they didn't have the right access, but they

00:04:31.480 really misjudged a lot of what was happening in the White House. And I think that this gives people

00:04:36.480 hopefully a very fair minded and just honest perspective on what we went through, what we

00:04:41.700 learned, where we got things wrong, where we got things right.

00:04:44.840 But for you are being so nice, I'm sorry, you are being so you are being so nice to say the media

00:04:49.340 misjudged what was happening in the White House. I mean, you know, you know, as well as I do that

00:04:55.440 the media, more than any group suffers from Trump derangement syndrome, truly sees him as evil,

00:05:01.600 devoted themselves to bringing down his presidency. Every reporter, every blogger on the left suddenly

00:05:07.080 consider themselves a mini Woodward and Bernstein and saw everything he did through a negative lens,

00:05:13.040 conspiratorial lens and interpreted every motivation as truly out for evil. I mean, that really

00:05:19.140 explains the coverage. When you understand that's their mindset, that explains the coverage. So

00:05:23.640 you're being very nice to a group of people who has been very unkind to you and your family.

00:05:27.640 But I'll give you the counter of that. And maybe it's my optimism. But because they went so crazy

00:05:32.180 so early, I think we just stop trying to cater to them and stop caring what they think, what they're

00:05:37.320 going to say. And that freed us up to really take on a lot of power. So most White Houses will say we

00:05:42.300 have one priority. Trump totally changed the metabolism of government. We were taking everything on at once.

00:05:47.880 And that's what led to, I think, so many disruptive policies and results that other politicians were

00:05:53.340 not able to achieve.

00:05:54.480 Hmm. Then the din got so loud. It's like a child who's angry. You're not paying attention to him

00:06:00.000 when he's throwing his tantrum. Right. Which so Trump wasn't paying attention or, you know,

00:06:04.080 you're saying sort of you just decided to pursue policy. And then we got two impeachments. We got

00:06:08.860 Russiagate. Now we're on a federal raid of his home. You know, it's like Glenn Close in Fatal

00:06:14.940 Attraction. I'm not going to be ignored, Don. That's the media and your father-in-law.

00:06:21.080 Yeah, it's been an interesting relationship that they've had. And the truth is, I think he wanted

00:06:25.300 them to understand that he was also the most accessible president that you've ever had to

00:06:30.260 the media. He answered more questions. He liked engaging with them, but he also bypassed them and

00:06:35.460 went directly to the people. And so it was interesting dynamic. But again, I never believed in

00:06:40.840 information asymmetry as much as I did. But then, you know, I talk about this in the book, how,

00:06:45.800 you know, we go to Washington, we have this improbable campaign in 2016. We're all, you know,

00:06:50.640 outsiders coming to the system. You know, we really, you know, pull it off. A bunch of things

00:06:54.300 went our way. President Trump did an amazing job campaigning. And we get there and you're expecting

00:07:00.060 to be fairness. And then they hit us at the get-go with the Russia investigation where they

00:07:04.860 were alleging that we colluded with Russia. And for me, I mean, I used to get calls from my mom

00:07:08.980 who was concerned and say, you know, are the things they're saying about you true? I mean,

00:07:12.680 Chuck Schumer, who my parents knew very well, and they were in the same circle on the Upper East Side,

00:07:17.680 you know, he was telling people that I was going to go to jail and be arrested. And he was absolutely

00:07:21.420 certain that you'd see Adam Schiff on television promising people that there was indisputable

00:07:25.740 evidence that he'd seen. And I'm sitting there saying, we didn't collude with anybody. And then

00:07:29.940 I'm seeing the New York Times and CNN and the Washington Post, you know, parrot these leaks that

00:07:34.420 they're getting from intel sources or I don't know who the hell they were getting from. But, you know,

00:07:38.260 every time they would write it, it became the biggest thing and then people would cover it.

00:07:42.340 And it turned out to all be a bunch of bullshit. So it was an interesting environment to work in,

00:07:47.060 but you learn a lot about the world. And a lot of these institutions that are mythical,

00:07:51.980 you know, tend to just be, you know, pretty, pretty either rotten or they never were what they were,

00:07:56.880 but they're definitely not today the institutions that people have thought that they were.

00:08:01.720 Yeah. What is that like now to have been inside that washing machine

00:08:05.980 and to know what's true and what's not? You know, there are those of us on the outside who

00:08:09.860 believed we knew what the truth was or disbelieved the media because we already had a healthy

00:08:14.620 skepticism. But being in the inside the washing machine, getting, you know, pulled and tugged and

00:08:20.460 washed around, knowing that these things are untrue, but they're citing national security sources,

00:08:25.680 right, which are supposed to be inviolate, you know, unchallengeable.

00:08:29.920 How does that leave you when it's all said and done? Like, how does that leave you looking at those

00:08:33.460 institutions? So I never used that description before, but I think it's actually pretty apt from

00:08:38.940 my experience of being in a washing machine. But I think that if you take, you know, a couple

00:08:44.700 steps back and you try to go to 10,000 feet, you'll see that the Trump candidacy and the Trump

00:08:50.840 presidency, I never saw it as about left versus right. I saw it as about outside versus in. And I

00:08:56.200 think that Trump truly didn't represent the donor class. He didn't represent the career

00:09:01.540 politicians and people saw him as an existential threat. And again, I was in, you know, an echo

00:09:06.120 chamber on the Upper East Side and you were also in a media echo chamber. And I was hearing from all

00:09:11.580 my people that, you know, Trump was going to lose and I was risking my reputation by helping him.

00:09:16.280 And, but as I traveled the country with him, I remember going to Springfield, Illinois, where he

00:09:20.140 says, come, come see one of my rallies. And so there's my father-in-law, I always respected him. And so I

00:09:25.220 went to see, so I wanted to see from my own eyes what was happening in the country and why the polls were

00:09:30.600 defying what all the, what I would call elite people were saying. And so I go to the rally

00:09:35.020 and Trump gets up there and he starts talking about issues that like a common core or trade deals and

00:09:42.580 protectionist trade policies to keep jobs in America, which my friends on the Upper East Side

00:09:47.120 were saying were the wrong policies, but the people in the crowd were loving it. And it just made me

00:09:51.740 realize that you have to find your truth for yourself. You have to explore more. And Trump represented

00:09:57.000 these people against the career politicians and Washington for 30 years, you're either part of

00:10:01.800 the Clinton clan or the Bush clan. And that really represented, and people just came to feel like

00:10:07.500 they were not representing them. And so when Trump came in, he didn't play by their rules and he

00:10:12.380 brought an outsider's approach to Washington. And so this, this book in a nutshell, what it shows is

00:10:17.940 somebody who's not from the Washington establishment, normal person going to Washington

00:10:22.140 and then getting thrown in a pretty abnormal world and, you know, really trying to understand

00:10:27.080 how Washington works, what drives people, where they resist, and then how do you ultimately get

00:10:32.200 things done? Because it is an amazing system. And we did get a ton of things done. And we really,

00:10:37.500 I really write in this book, how they happened, which of course, many of the stories are not well

00:10:42.280 known because it was all the maneuvering behind the scenes to create the outcomes, even in light of all

00:10:48.260 the resistance and investigations that they were throwing at us. If he had been a Democrat, we

00:10:52.880 already would have had 40 books explaining how he did it, how he got the Abraham Accords, how he got

00:10:58.800 prison reform. Those are two of your, you know, things, two policies that you worked on very hard

00:11:02.420 and praising him and celebrating exactly how it went down because he's Trump. Very different response,

00:11:08.280 right? Like they're still looking for ways to poke holes into his initiatives, even those that the left

00:11:13.180 should like, that they would like if he had been Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.

00:11:19.020 So let me ask you this. I'm just curious as a media person, who would you say are among the worst

00:11:23.860 media offenders? Like who, who do you think is truly not trustworthy?

00:11:29.600 I'll be honest. I know this may sound a little strange. I didn't pay that much attention to the

00:11:34.720 media. I didn't do a lot of interviews even with, with the media. I thought that was supportive and,

00:11:39.580 and, and got it. And I didn't spend too much time being angry about the media that that was

00:11:44.140 not supportive. I just felt like at the end of the day, it didn't matter. I remember during the

00:11:47.980 campaign, Trump called me one morning about a, uh, about a New York times story that was alleging

00:11:52.420 him of some crazy thing. And, uh, and he says, can you believe that? I said, look, if the New York

00:11:57.140 times matter, you'd be at 1%, but they don't, you know, they speak to a very small subset of the

00:12:01.460 people. And as I learned, it's a big country, people get their news in different ways. And, um,

00:12:06.780 and I, I, I just didn't think it mattered that much. I, I, I, but wait, if the media doesn't

00:12:11.500 matter, if they don't matter, then how did Trump lose? I mean, how you don't think like the suppression

00:12:17.800 of the Hunter Biden story, for example, like they, they definitely had a hand in driving down

00:12:22.420 Trump's enthusiasm, driving up Joe Biden's enthusiasm. Yeah. But I, I think that the, yeah,

00:12:28.820 the more apt question is that if they matter, then how did he get 75 million votes, uh, from people

00:12:35.040 when 98% of the media was saying how bad he was? I mean, that that's one of the great mysteries in

00:12:40.420 the country. I mean, people are a lot smarter than the media think. Uh, and that was one of my great

00:12:44.680 lessons also with Trump. I said in the book, the three rules from Trump that I learned from the

00:12:49.320 2016 campaign, which were not intuitive to me beforehand was number one is controversy elevates

00:12:56.040 message. Uh, number two is when you're right, you, you double down and you fight. And number three,

00:13:01.020 which I saw with him, but I think it does apply more in today's world is don't apologize. I think

00:13:06.540 that, you know, we're kind of in a post apology world where people take up an apology as an

00:13:11.040 admonition of guilt and then they just, you know, cancel or hit you even harder for it. But, you know,

00:13:15.660 when Trump would say something about illegal immigration, maybe he didn't say it the way people

00:13:19.300 wanted, but then the media would make the point they thought they had him. And then he would fight

00:13:23.640 back because he said, look, I didn't say anything wrong. I write about a scene in the book,

00:13:27.480 how Ivanka and hope after his initial announcement speech brought him an op-ed and said, let's put

00:13:31.760 this in the New York times. This explains that you're against the legal immigration, but you're

00:13:35.780 for legal immigration. And he says, I didn't see anything wrong. They want me to apologize. They

00:13:40.180 want me to play by their rules, you know, tell them to go screw themselves. And the more they did that

00:13:44.620 people then took the, the, the, the controversy and they'd have a discussion at their table and they

00:13:49.840 say, look, Trump's right about stuff. And so I think that he was able to get his message across.

00:13:54.660 And I think that the strength of his policies were very good, but I also think he got a lot

00:13:59.500 of votes because he delivered results. Right. And you can't, no matter what the media says,

00:14:03.760 you had the wealth gap shrinking in 2019 for the first time, wages were rising, inflation was low.

00:14:09.940 The world was at peace. I mean, there was no, you know, gas prices were low and he was fighting

00:14:14.840 for America. He was delivering his promises. So, so I think people are a lot smarter than the media think.

00:14:21.340 So what happened? What, what happened in 2020 then?

00:14:24.660 In 2020, I think that COVID, I mean, I think that COVID did two things. One is it created a lot of

00:14:33.700 uncertainty for people who were feeling really good. Again, Trump was 2009, right before COVID had the

00:14:41.120 highest poll numbers he ever had. It was right after the phony impeachment. He was growing with

00:14:45.780 all the minority voters. He was growing with Hispanic voters. I think his numbers with, with black voters

00:14:51.020 were in the twenties and, and, and people were seeing that he kept his promises, but again,

00:14:56.220 our economy was rocking and, and Trump was doing a great job. I think COVID created a lot of uncertainty

00:15:01.540 for people. And I think even more than that, the Democrats, you know, the, the 2016 campaign was

00:15:08.060 about, I think, social media, getting out our vote, using technology to help us figure out how to out

00:15:13.320 maneuver the other side. I think that the 2020 election was a legal election where they basically

00:15:19.260 used a whole bunch of legal maneuvers and different tactics to find ways to, to, to impact the outcome

00:15:26.160 of an election in a way that, that, that trifled with a lot of traditions of voting that, that people

00:15:31.480 are used to and created a lot of custody issues and a lot of issues that created, you know, more

00:15:36.140 uncertainty. And then people had distrust before the election, in the 2016 election, a lot of the

00:15:40.860 Democrats were, were challenging the election then, but the way that they changed all the rules and

00:15:46.180 procedures in 2020, it created a lot of confusion for people and a lot of distrust in the system.

00:15:51.240 Hmm. You don't think the media blew up COVID coverage and aggressively fear-mongered because they

00:15:57.820 knew and believed that it would hurt Trump? Oh, they absolutely did. You know, that was the first

00:16:03.720 issue in, in four years that they were able to get him on because it was one of these issues where it

00:16:08.820 was, you know, heads, you lose tails, we win. Right. So if he were to, you know, be more restrictive

00:16:14.200 than they would be running up on, on the screens, you know, 30 million Americans unemployed, which

00:16:19.500 really was something that, that Trump was carrying as a big burden. You know, there's one scene in the

00:16:23.620 book I write about where he basically is screaming at, you know, Dr. Fauci and saying, you know, look,

00:16:28.260 I'm, I'm done with these lockdowns. You know, you said we needed to do this in order to,

00:16:31.800 you know, get the medical supplies and get ourselves ready to deal with, with the virus.

00:16:36.080 You know, we've got what we've got, we're ready to deal with it now, but I'm not going

00:16:39.340 to oversee the funeral of the greatest country in the world. And then, so, so when, when he

00:16:44.080 would focus on, on, on, on the health and the care too much they would say, well, you know,

00:16:49.100 he's causing unemployment. Then he would focus on loosening up the restrictions in order to

00:16:53.260 allow people to make their own choices. They would say, oh, he's killing people. And, and it

00:16:57.440 really was, I mean, it's just, it's such a big country that all they had to do was find one

00:17:00.840 example. I mean, there, there's one example I read about in the book, how, you know, we

00:17:04.880 saw on CNN nurses and in, in the hospital and I think Brooklyn who were saying they didn't

00:17:10.460 have enough, you know, K95 masks in order to, to get through. And so literally what we

00:17:15.720 did is, is I was checking around. It wasn't a widespread problem. There was a localized

00:17:18.980 problem, but CNN was creating this fear by putting these nurses on TV. So I called the head

00:17:23.280 of the New York health system, said, how many masks you need for the next month in order

00:17:26.520 to make your situation solved? And he gave me a number. I said, okay, you're going to

00:17:30.560 have them there tomorrow. And so we, we, we had to go and figure out how to put out every

00:17:34.460 single ember of the fire. And we pulled off miracle after miracle during COVID to really

00:17:39.900 rise to the occasion. But again, the media loved celebrating it because it was an issue

00:17:44.240 they could use to attack Trump.

00:17:46.260 Yeah. They were openly gleeful that they now had something that was affecting literally everyone

00:17:50.240 in the country and that they could effectively blame it on him. That's what they were doing.

00:17:54.340 Great question for you before we move on from the election. And I don't want to spend a lot

00:17:58.180 of time on this, but I do Peter Baker, the New York times had a report that you do not

00:18:01.940 agree with your father-in-law that he, that this was a stolen election that he in fact won

00:18:07.960 the 2020 election. Is that true?

00:18:11.340 So I think that there's different words, right? What I believe I can only say what I believe

00:18:16.400 is that, uh, and I just said this before is that it was an election in which a lot of the

00:18:22.120 traditions that we're used to were trifled. It was a very sloppy election and how it was conducted.

00:18:27.140 I think it was a very close election. Even with that, I think the final tally was, was 44,000

00:18:31.660 votes basically in three States that determined, uh, the outcome. But I, I think that there's a lot

00:18:37.040 that they could be doing better to make sure that it was a much cleaner election.

00:18:40.780 Well, I agree with all that. I don't think, and I don't actually think that's even that

00:18:43.320 controversial. I mean, look what they did in Pennsylvania and the mail-in votes and all that,

00:18:46.580 but it's different. What he's arguing is different as you know. So do you agree that it was actively

00:18:52.180 stolen by unlawful means and illicit means and things like voting machines and so on that as

00:19:00.020 he and his lawyers have alleged. So I think there's a whole bunch of different approaches that different

00:19:06.080 people have taken in different theories. What would look, I, I accept, uh, the fact that Joe Biden's

00:19:10.920 president, I think he's been an absolutely awful president. I think you look at what's happening now

00:19:14.640 in Russia with the war, which never would have happened under Trump. You look at what's happening

00:19:18.520 with China being aggressive right now. I mean, that never was what happened under, under Trump.

00:19:23.380 So I think what's happening is, is just awful. And it really is, is, is, is heartbroken, but

00:19:28.340 you know, for me, I'm always looking more into the future than in the past.

00:19:32.360 Well, I get you. It's, but to be frank, that sounds like a dodge. It sounds like you don't want to upset

00:19:36.240 your father-in-law and say something that he does not like it when people say, which is he lost

00:19:40.780 and it wasn't stolen. So will you say that? Uh, like I said, uh, what I'll say is that I believe

00:19:46.800 it was a very sloppy election. I think that there's a lot of issues that, uh, I think if

00:19:51.180 litigated differently, you may have had, uh, you know, different insights into them. Um, but I think

00:19:56.640 it is what it is and it's in the past. And so, so Peter Baker's wrong to be honest, Peter Baker's

00:20:01.920 report is untrue. Uh, I, I don't recall exactly what Peter wrote. So just that you don't agree with

00:20:08.280 your father-in-law's stolen election claims. No, I think that what, what he wrote was that

00:20:13.220 my, my, uh, at least from what I recall was that my advice was let's focus on the future and, and,

00:20:18.960 uh, and what's done is done and let's figure out how to make yourself, you know, somebody who can

00:20:23.480 be fighting for the issues you did. I mean, he was a phenomenal president and I write about that

00:20:27.940 extensively in the book, the job he did with the economy, the job. I get all that. I know. And that's

00:20:32.400 listen, that's what most Republicans would like Trump to talk about, right? Like that's the frustration

00:20:36.460 of those who love Trump, but see that his focus on 2020 is undermining 2024 for him.

00:20:44.720 Um, and really just one thing to that, which is that I do think that what's happened over the last

00:20:49.820 years is that there has been a debate that's been badly needed in this country about election

00:20:54.060 integrity. And I think there's a lot of things that we can all agree on, which is that, you know,

00:20:58.560 we should know the results of an election on election night. You know, we're forced to show an

00:21:02.580 idea to go into a building in New York city here or to, uh, or to go onto an airplane. You know,

00:21:08.340 if you have the sacred right of voting, uh, we should find ways to make it more secure.

00:21:12.420 There's a lot of things that happened in that election, uh, that were really embarrassing for

00:21:16.480 our country. And I think that, uh, that quite frankly, that there has been some reforms that

00:21:20.940 have made it better, but I think that that debate is an integral debate for us to have. If we want

00:21:25.360 to have confidence in the elections in the future. Um, okay, so let, let's, let's move on. Cause I

00:21:31.320 want to talk to you quickly about some news of the day. We mentioned Fauci, he's retiring.

00:21:34.820 Goodbye, Anthony Fauci. I don't know that I'm going to say farewell. A lot of us would say good riddance.

00:21:40.360 Um, and he, you write in the book, a very interesting story about him, which explains a lot. You write

00:21:48.260 about how he once told you or told Trump and you were privy to it. My advice in situations like this

00:21:53.980 is that we should make people feel as bad as possible. Side note, check. We want to explain

00:22:01.500 the worst possible scenario. If it comes true, we were right. If it doesn't, then we did a better

00:22:06.680 job than people expected. I mean, to me, it's just further confirmation, Jared, this guy's an

00:22:10.860 operator. He's an operator. He's not some impartial above it all scientist. So off he goes. The science

00:22:19.140 is leaving the national Institute of health. And what do you think his legacy will be?

00:22:25.900 I don't know. I, like I said, he's not, he occupies a lot more space in other people's

00:22:30.560 minds than he doesn't mind. I think that it was interesting to work with him. Uh, that,

00:22:34.860 that scene that you depict in the book, I thought was fascinating where he was giving the, you know,

00:22:39.620 if you were just taking those two people together and one person was saying, let's manage expectations

00:22:45.120 that we can exceed them. And the other person saying, no, we have to, you know, show strong

00:22:49.620 leadership so that we can get out of this and hold our economy and hold people's spirits together

00:22:53.420 during this big challenge. Uh, you wouldn't have been sure which one was the politician,

00:22:57.880 which one was the doctor trying to help people through. But, um, but look, you know, the thing

00:23:03.060 that was the most frustrating for people, uh, who worked with him on, on the, uh, task force is that

00:23:08.120 he would, you know, again, he was supposedly the expert on infectious diseases. I'd been there for a

00:23:12.940 very long time. And then he'd be in all the meetings. Um, one of the big challenges we had

00:23:17.740 was testing. I write about this in the book about how we got involved to try to ramp it up. And we

00:23:21.720 were going to roll out these testing and in all these different locations, we came up with this

00:23:25.620 idea, which bureaucrats wouldn't have done to basically go to CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, all the

00:23:31.300 big American companies that are in all the different, uh, you know, communities stepped up and agreed to do

00:23:36.080 it. They weren't asking for liability waivers. And then they come in and said, well, you know,

00:23:40.720 we have a problem. We only have 1.3 million swaps in the country right now, which basically meant

00:23:45.360 instead of going to 400 locations, we can only go to 37. And so our biggest constraint on ramping

00:23:51.120 the testing wasn't imagination. It wasn't money. It was really just gravity. We had to create,

00:23:55.180 you know, more effectively Q-tips. And so, uh, we use the DPA to, to, to really scale that

00:24:00.600 manufacturing and we're doing it as fast as we could. And we were scaling, you know, pretty rapidly.

00:24:06.520 And then Fauci goes on television and instead of saying, well, you know, this is what we're doing.

00:24:10.240 And he says, we're just not there yet on testing. And everyone's like, wait, what are you a sports

00:24:14.000 caster? Or are you part of the team? You're in every meeting. If you have better ideas, you know,

00:24:17.880 tell us what they should be. Um, but constantly we were being undercut. And there was another story

00:24:23.160 that I write about where he was in my office and we were going through something and, you know,

00:24:27.380 his phone's on the table and it rings and it's a, it shows up Jim Acosta on the phone. And so,

00:24:31.300 you know, we were trying to figure out who in the white house, all this information from CNN saying that

00:24:37.260 we were disorganized and, you know, became pretty clear that, that he was, uh, that there was just

00:24:42.360 a lot going on that was, that was complicated. So Fauci and Jim Acosta are, are talking and maybe

00:24:47.620 Fauci is your leaker to CNN. It's unbelievable. I mean, look, people are, we're going to have a lot

00:24:51.700 more to say about Fauci later in the show and later this week, I'm sure. But, uh, when you think about

00:24:56.140 school closings, when you think about the harm done to children, he's squarely to blame. And I'll tell

00:25:01.080 you, you know, as a mother of young children, I don't forgive him. I know you've got four young

00:25:04.780 ones yourself. I don't forgive him. I think he's the one who was responsible and he never took

00:25:09.280 responsibility. In fact, all he's doing now is bragging and bragging about the Fauci effect,

00:25:13.580 which is allegedly people going to medical school because they believe in truth. I'm sorry, Jared.

00:25:19.320 No, it's complicated, but that that's also why we, we, we made the decision. We left Washington to,

00:25:24.600 to go to Florida. I mean, New York was like Pompeii. The restaurants were closed. All of our friends

00:25:28.780 who could left. And we said, let's go to Florida. It's a land of freedom. You know, the schools are open.

00:25:33.360 We'll put our kids in school. And, you know, we came really because of that, but we've,

00:25:37.020 we've now just fallen in love with the lifestyle. I mean, it's an amazing environment. You've got

00:25:40.540 incredible people. Um, but a lot of these places that followed the doctrine of, of what they were

00:25:46.500 saying, uh, and, and really made it a political issue to many degree. I think they really harmed

00:25:50.800 the children, um, and, uh, and, and did things that have had long-term impacts on their, their

00:25:55.860 communities. Yeah. All right. So you say you're like Florida. There's a, there's a great governor

00:26:00.400 down there by the name of Ron DeSantis, who they talk about a lot as a possible GOP contender in

00:26:06.140 2024, right? After they talk about Donald Trump, Trump's crushing DeSantis and every, you know,

00:26:11.740 straw poll at CPAC and so on, but he's the next name that gets mentioned. So what do you think

00:26:17.860 Donald Trump is likely to do in 2024? Will he likely run? And if he doesn't, could you get behind DeSantis?

00:26:23.920 So, so I like Ron, I worked very, very closely with him on the COVID response. Florida was,

00:26:30.340 was a place he was very well organized. He had, uh, his, uh, his statistics under control. He had

00:26:36.160 real data. Uh, he, he was pretty good operationally. Um, but I, I do think that a lot of people who

00:26:41.080 support Ron support Trump first. And again, obviously the president, uh, president Trump has

00:26:45.540 not, uh, made announcement on what he would do, but I, I think DeSantis would have a very tough time,

00:26:50.620 uh, challenging him. You do. And so do you think your father-in-law is likely to be

00:26:56.620 first in line? I know you're not going to make an announcement. Well, what's your guess

00:27:00.980 about what Trump does? It's not even me making announcement. It's just, you know, with Trump,

00:27:04.760 you know, this is part of what frustrated other world leaders and frustrated so many people is that,

00:27:08.960 you know, he keeps his optionality, he keeps flexibility and, and he's open to changing his

00:27:13.440 mind. I think his flexibility is a strategic asset, not a liability. Uh, but again, you know,

00:27:18.120 especially when dealing with China, they always knew exactly how presidents thought, how our,

00:27:22.660 our process worked and, uh, and he kept them off balance because, you know, we'd go into a meeting

00:27:27.420 and we weren't even sure what decision he would make, but that's how, uh, businessmen think. And

00:27:31.900 that's, that's, you know, that's how Trump thinks. And I know it's something he's, he's been

00:27:35.360 thinking about. It's been really bothering him seeing, uh, the way that, you know, he gave them a

00:27:39.540 really strong economy and a peaceful world. And now we have, you know, rapid inflation, um, and,

00:27:45.100 and wars in Europe and China's being provocative and, you know, they're running to Iran, you know,

00:27:49.560 on their knees to try to make a deal. Um, and so I know it's bothering him and what he'll decide to

00:27:54.380 do ultimately will be up to him. So, uh, but you know, we'll see. I, I, I, I always like you to,

00:28:00.180 to know what his decision will be and when he will. There's a great story in the book about, uh, Trump

00:28:05.440 and a meeting, uh, with the Chinese leader and Trump just sort of revealing something that was

00:28:10.880 whispered to him in his ear about, uh, our military dealings in Syria and how the Chinese leaders,

00:28:16.740 she just completely reacted like, Oh my God, he's sharing information with me. But I love it

00:28:21.340 because it really, it is sort of part of Trump being so unpredictable that these leaders never

00:28:27.380 knew what they'd get or how far they should push him. And, you know, we didn't, we didn't have a

00:28:34.160 Russian invasion of Ukraine under president Trump. And we didn't have quite the saber rattling that

00:28:38.560 we're seeing now in quite a few places. Um, it's just something for people to consider.

00:28:42.620 All right, standby. I got to squeeze in a quick break and much, much more with Jared Kushner

00:28:46.540 right after this break. So Jared, let's spend a minute on the raid at Mar-a-Lago,

00:28:57.080 uh, which continues to make news now. Uh, now the New York times has been reporting steadily that

00:29:01.620 there was national security information, that there was classified information in these boxes.

00:29:05.160 Uh, there was a report last night that, that potentially as many as 300 documents were

00:29:09.740 classified in some way, uh, again, by the New York times without getting into the substance of

00:29:14.840 whether all that is true, it's going to play out. Let me ask you the big question. Do you believe

00:29:19.380 that he is going to be indicted by this department of justice?

00:29:23.380 Uh, I don't really see what they would indict him on. I think that it goes back to what I was saying

00:29:27.940 earlier, right? So you're, you're referencing a report from the New York times that probably,

00:29:32.220 again, I'm assuming it came from a real source. So it probably came from the source and the

00:29:36.100 intelligence or the justice department. This is the exact same thing that they did to us,

00:29:40.340 uh, in the first four, I guess the full four years were basically, you know, there'd be some

00:29:45.320 kind of action. And then, you know, the New York times or the Washington post would carry water for

00:29:49.100 them, uh, and put out, you know, different, um, different theories that they would have. And

00:29:54.080 sometimes, uh, the billing would, would, would, would not, uh, sometimes it'd be fully

00:29:58.160 untrue. Sometimes it would, you know, the billing wouldn't even, you know, be close to it. And,

00:30:01.660 and, you know, I read about, you know, during the transition, I had a meeting with the Russian

00:30:05.600 ambassador to discuss the situation in Syria, which was horrific. There was a civil war going on

00:30:10.580 there. Uh, about 500,000 civilians were, were killed because of, I think, bad foreign policy,

00:30:15.760 uh, by the American government. And, um, and then you had ISIS had to caliphate the size of Ohio,

00:30:21.220 where they were, uh, beheading journalists and killing Christians. And there was, you know,

00:30:25.060 threats to the homelands. So we wanted to meet with the Russians to, you know, to discuss,

00:30:28.980 you know, what should we be doing about it? America had been a retreat. So Russia was more

00:30:32.460 there. So I met with general Flynn at the time, who was, you know, the incoming national security

00:30:36.680 advisor, uh, you know, uh, I think 20, 30 year veteran of, of the military and intelligence and

00:30:42.700 all different areas. And, um, then, you know, we read a couple of months later that they leaked to

00:30:47.760 the Washington post that we requested a secret back channel with the Russians. And then for,

00:30:51.980 you know, for the whole weekend, you had people, uh, you know, going crazy on CNN, calling it

00:30:56.840 treason, you know, you know, saying all kinds of crazy things. And then it turns out, you know,

00:31:00.640 once I testified for, I think about maybe 15 or 16 hours between the house, the Senate

00:31:04.660 and the special counsel said, okay, it turns out it's just nothing, you know, nothing to do here.

00:31:08.480 So I think you have to be very, very careful, um, putting a lot of stock into what the leaks are

00:31:14.960 that comes out of them. I think that they have shown for six years that they've been persecuting

00:31:19.960 Trump. He's, he's an outsider. I think they see him as a threat. They, uh, they, they promised

00:31:24.320 first he was a Russian agent and they spent two years saying he was going to leave because of that.

00:31:28.320 And then they tried to impeach him for investigating corruption in Ukraine, where there was,

00:31:32.400 you know, abundant corruption. Um, and then now it just seems like they keep trying to find new

00:31:37.260 things to, to get them on. And, and I'm sure if this one doesn't work, they'll probably find him

00:31:41.240 for jaywalking or, or, or a traffic ticket, but, um, but they're, they're being very aggressive

00:31:45.900 to do it. And it's, uh, it's very disheartening to me. You know, one of the issues I spent a lot

00:31:49.980 of time on was criminal justice reform, because I don't have a lot of confidence that prosecutors

00:31:54.900 left unchecked, um, you know, will always make the right decisions. And a lot of them are ambitious

00:31:59.440 or politically motivated. Uh, and a lot of my allies on the left with me on that, but now,

00:32:04.200 uh, when they're persecuting Trump, it's almost like they've suspended all their morals and beliefs

00:32:08.400 that they held. So, so, so highly, uh, because it's about, you know, getting, getting Trump.

00:32:13.040 And so, uh, like I said, I think on my like third day in office, I realized hypocrisy is just

00:32:17.600 something you have to deal with in Washington, but, um, but that's one of the interesting things

00:32:21.960 in reading the book is, is how frustrating it is to work even within the white house. Obviously

00:32:27.280 you're not taking shots at the president himself in that way, but the staff, the power hungry people,

00:32:33.280 the leaking to the press on one another, you know, it's, it was very game of Thrones-y

00:32:37.820 and that's gotta be a whole level of stress, you know, that you don't need. You've already got,

00:32:43.780 you know, people outside the tent shooting at you. You don't really need it inside the tent

00:32:47.360 constantly. Yeah. Well, actually, you know, when I, when I wrote the book that that was really one of

00:32:52.020 the things I wanted to capture. Right. And again, I don't complain about it. I, I, what I basically

00:32:55.920 write is that how I learned to adjust. And the more I read different books, the more I saw that

00:33:00.960 the game is the game. It was like this before I got there. I'll be there long after I left. Um,

00:33:07.060 and the notion was it's a very, very high stakes environment with maximum pressure. A lot of people

00:33:12.100 with competing interests. Um, and you know, it's funny for Lincoln, he had his team of rivals and,

00:33:17.280 and there was great books written about it and it was celebrated that Trump also had people from

00:33:21.520 different persuasions and from different perspectives and he wanted robust debate. Um,

00:33:26.100 and, and it was, it was like blood sports some days, but I think that no, you write about Steve

00:33:31.020 Bannon. I don't have it in front of me. Hold on. Let me see if I can find it. But you said about

00:33:34.560 Steve Bannon, I do, do I have it? Yeah. That he said to you, if you go against me, I will break you

00:33:40.480 in half. Don't fuck with me. He had declared war. You're right. And I was woefully unprepared.

00:33:46.500 What, what did he do to you?

00:33:49.200 It was most, look, I believe that I saw in Washington time and time again, that power

00:33:55.460 just makes you more of what you already are. And with Steve, uh, he, I think the power was going to

00:34:02.600 his head and I think he saw me as a threat. You know, we agreed actually on a lot of issues.

00:34:07.400 We agreed on securing the border. We agreed on, on, on the fact that we wanted to cut trade deals to

00:34:12.480 bring, uh, to bring, uh, you know, jobs back to America. We agreed that we wanted to try to

00:34:18.040 take a different approach to the middle East and to China to, uh, to cut down on their abusive

00:34:22.560 practices. But I think for him, he just saw me as a threat. And, uh, and so he started leaking on me

00:34:27.920 and, uh, I would get constant calls from people. I mean, the same, uh, you know, accusations,

00:34:32.960 you know, would come every 15 minutes to a different reporter, but Steve was a master at

00:34:36.840 that. Again, he was a very tough competitor, uh, in the white house. We was a great ally.

00:34:40.640 We were on the campaign. Um, but again, it, it created a very hostile environment for me and

00:34:44.880 others. And, uh, fortunately the president made the decision because I think it was just too

00:34:48.800 tough to get things done. Uh, while we were there, he was very focused on fighting with inside the

00:34:53.300 Republican party. When, once you're in power, you have to come together as a team and realize that,

00:34:57.700 you know, the parties aren't ubiquitous, right? They're both collections of different tribes.

00:35:01.680 And when you're in power, you have to bring your tribes together in order to get things passed

00:35:05.680 through the system that, you know, our founders created. And so it was very complicated, but I,

00:35:10.200 I really try in the book to give people the feeling of what it's like to be in that environment.

00:35:14.520 You do. Especially as an outsider who's working in the corporate world,

00:35:18.900 how you get things done in Washington.

00:35:20.180 It feels awful. It makes me certain in my decision not to run for office or actually

00:35:25.500 work for anybody who's achieved, uh, what your father-in-law did back on the subject of the

00:35:29.860 Trump raid. I got to ask you to, um, weigh in on this. Mary Trump, who is like all over the media

00:35:36.760 as if she knows anything. Uh, Mary Trump thinks you're the mole. So does Michael Cohen, by the way,

00:35:41.480 they think that you're the mole down at Mar-a-Lago calling the DOJ to say Trump didn't turn over all

00:35:47.180 of his documents. Do you care to reply to that? Yeah. So first of all, it's absolutely not true

00:35:52.720 categorically in every way, but I think that that's more a statement of kind of the sad state

00:35:57.440 of the media where the more outlandish of an accusation you make, especially if it, uh, if it

00:36:03.340 includes me, then the media will write about it and create headlines. You know, Mary and Michael

00:36:08.400 figured out Chris Christie used to use that all the time to get, you know, relevance for his books and

00:36:12.600 he could sell more than like 300 copies. He would make up these crazy things about me, but, uh, the

00:36:17.320 media rewards that behavior. And so they, they publish it, but absolutely not true. I don't even

00:36:22.060 think she said she thought it was the case. She thought it could be the case. And so I read the

00:36:26.120 article. I was like, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen, but, uh, but for whatever reason,

00:36:30.420 the media thought it was worth covering. Of course, because as I said in the intro, you're probably

00:36:35.520 second most demonized right after Trump. And you'd think that they'd like you, you know what I mean?

00:36:39.440 You used to be a Democrat. You were a lifelong Democrat. You were by far not the most partisan

00:36:43.720 person in the white house. You'd think they'd say, all right, you know, we could work with him.

00:36:48.540 We could work with Ivanka, but no, um, for a bunch of different reasons, you had to be demonized as

00:36:53.280 well. I mean, that's a whole different psychological discussion, but money, good looks, access to power,

00:36:58.760 um, sort of slow and steady wins the day that they don't like that. They want somebody who feeds the

00:37:04.940 trough, you know, can continues leaking to them and giving them all good stories that they're going to get

00:37:08.420 hits on. Anyway, um, a couple of things I want to get to making, you know, when I was there,

00:37:12.440 I wasn't there to play the game. I wasn't trying to save political capital or, you know, tell,

00:37:17.500 you know, bullshit somebody their face and then go do something else. I was there to get things done.

00:37:21.240 And that's really what I think that the story in the book is just the race against the clock where

00:37:25.960 you only have so many time. It's a time duration game and you have to use every minute possible to

00:37:30.200 try to get as many things done. So my biggest criticism in the beginning was that I was taking on too

00:37:34.440 many things and too many hard things. And I was saying, why, if I'm giving up my, my career and

00:37:39.020 my business and I'm staying, spending time away from my family to do this, wanting to take on a few

00:37:42.800 things and easy things like, you know, try to make big difference. And again, I'm very gratified. I,

00:37:47.100 I left government without a single regret of, of, of not having spent all my time trying to accomplish

00:37:52.720 those things I wish I could have accomplished as well, but I put a lot of points on the board and I'm

00:37:56.980 very, very proud of the work we did.

00:37:58.460 Here, I got to read the process. I'm okay with that.

00:38:02.460 I've got to read you just this, forgive me this one excerpt from this review of the book by the

00:38:06.700 times, which to your credit, they hate, um, breaking history again is the name of the book.

00:38:10.940 Dwight Garner says it's soulless, Jared. He says it's soulless. And he says, okay,

00:38:17.540 Kushner looks like a mannequin, which is interesting because that's what they said about Melania when

00:38:21.020 Trump was running, which is, I thought very sexist. So perhaps they aren't sexist. Perhaps

00:38:24.980 they're doing this equal opportunity. And he writes like one and peculiarly selective in his

00:38:31.140 appraisal of Donald Trump's term in office. Here's what they're really mad about. Kushner

00:38:35.580 almost entirely ignores the chaos, the alienation of allies, the breaking of laws and norms, the

00:38:40.920 flirtations with dictators, the comprehensive loss of America's moral leadership and so on ad

00:38:46.080 infinitum to speak about boyish tinkering the mechanic with issues he was interested in.

00:38:51.660 Why didn't you write that book? So, so, so first of all, I have to say that I read that

00:38:57.320 review and I thought it was hysterical. And I've actually been asking my team to try to find a

00:39:01.420 hard copy because I want to hang it on my wall, but I don't know if they, they put it in there.

00:39:05.700 The second thing I'll say about that is that, uh, it actually sold a lot of books. That's when I

00:39:09.740 started moving up the Amazon list. And then after I went to Mark Levin, we got to number one worldwide

00:39:14.580 on Amazon. So I have to thank the New York times for that. But I think fundamentally, uh, again,

00:39:19.280 it was, it was a silly review, but I think fundamentally, if I had to say why the New York

00:39:23.600 times doesn't want you to read this book, it's just a function of the fact that it disproves all

00:39:27.840 the different things that they were, um, that they were, that they were going crazy about in their

00:39:32.460 editorial page. I think they called on me to resign several times. They said my work in the

00:39:36.120 Middle East was, was foolish. I'm going to cause wars, you know, footnote, we got six piece deals

00:39:40.040 done. Um, they, they, they didn't cover the criminal justice reform done. I mean, they, they,

00:39:44.920 they write all these glowing articles about these social justice warriors, and then an issue that

00:39:48.860 they've claimed to care about when Trump was doing it, uh, to bring, uh, uh, uh, uh, programs into

00:39:56.440 prisons to help people figure out how to deal with drug addiction, mental health addiction,

00:39:59.920 and get job training. So when they leave prison, they can, uh, they can figure out how to reenter

00:40:04.220 society and not commit future crimes. Uh, we did a lot of great work on trade where we were able to

00:40:09.240 fight to bring jobs back to America and they just neglected to cover all these things. So they want you

00:40:14.480 to believe that, you know, that, that Trump was, was, was incompetent, that we didn't get anything

00:40:18.720 done, but the results are just totally contrary to everything that they wrote. So, uh, I should

00:40:23.460 write his own book. Yeah. Dwight should write his own book. You don't, you don't work for Dwight,

00:40:28.560 uh, or the New York Times. We know what it would say already. It wouldn't be that interesting.

00:40:32.260 Yeah, it's true. We've read it for four plus years now. Um, a couple of things I want to get to,

00:40:36.640 because I teased him. Hillary Clinton was almost invited, or she was invited to have dinner with

00:40:41.420 Trump at the white house after he won in 16. So, you know, one, one of the things I think

00:40:47.260 about all the time is, is again, I, I know, you know, uh, Donald for a long time, you know,

00:40:51.820 since I started dating Ivanka and you have to remember that he's had so many iterations of,

00:40:57.180 of his life. And he's somebody who's been pop culture for a long time. He was in 20 rap songs.

00:41:01.760 He was in movies. He was, you know, he was left, he was center. He was right. He's been everywhere.

00:41:06.620 And after he won, um, I think that he saw the responsibility. I write about on election night,

00:41:14.100 how we didn't really have a, a victory speech prepared. And, you know, the speech that they

00:41:18.300 gave him was much more gloating. And he was watching on television, the despondent faces of

00:41:22.560 people at, you know, Hillary's beautiful celebration party. And he basically said, you know,

00:41:27.600 the country needs to hear something different. And his words that night were very magnanimous,

00:41:31.280 reaching out, trying to bring people together. And in the weeks after the election,

00:41:35.360 he really felt the responsibility of saying, how can I, how can I unite the country, uh,

00:41:40.880 after such a divisive time, um, under Obama and, and a fairly divisive campaign where he was,

00:41:46.860 you know, called terrible names. And so, um, he really was carrying that he, he, at the time,

00:41:52.080 you know, uh, Chelsea Clinton, her husband, Mark, uh, were friends of Ivanka and I, we knew them

00:41:56.100 socially in New York. And so he asked Ivanka to reach out to, uh, to Hillary. He knew Hillary and

00:42:01.220 and Bill well for many years and said, look, let's, let's get to dinner. Uh, let's get together

00:42:05.400 for dinner and let's try to bury the hatchet and figure out how to, you know, show everyone that

00:42:09.760 we, that we want to put the country first. And then, uh, Ivanka relayed the message. And I think

00:42:14.120 a couple of days later, uh, you know, Jill Stein came out saying she was going to challenge the

00:42:18.940 election because the election was illegitimate and she wanted to do a recount. And then Hillary Clinton

00:42:23.480 came out and supported it and then started blaming the Russians for, um, you know, for the reason

00:42:28.160 Donald Trump won. And he said, you know, look, screw this, you know, let's move on. And so

00:42:31.680 I think that every time Trump tried to reach out, and again, we did get some incredible

00:42:35.940 bipartisan achievements done, whether it was the first step act or whether it was, uh, you know,

00:42:40.500 the, uh, the, the USMCA trade deal and many more, they just attacked him viciously. They were

00:42:47.200 investigating him during the campaign that, you know, then they have the whole situation during

00:42:50.660 the transition where they're leaking information about the, uh, the steel dossier, which turned out

00:42:55.080 to be total, total crap lying about it. No, I know. I mean, nobody has to make the case about

00:42:59.720 what Hillary did to Donald. It's just interesting that he was sort of willing to let things go

00:43:03.880 for a while there and bury the hatchet. And instead that had you got buried in him by her

00:43:09.900 over and over and over and dinner was not to be. Well, one thing I'll just say about him,

00:43:14.700 and this is where I think people misunderstand him. And something that I wish people saw more often

00:43:18.840 was that he's always willing to meet with his, with his enemies. And I think that if you're

00:43:23.420 against him and you want to get things done, like I would see so many people, uh, were friends of

00:43:27.740 mine from the left who would be sending out tweets or virtue signaling or trying to promote how much

00:43:32.760 they hate Trump more than the next person, maybe because that was what they needed to do socially.

00:43:36.560 But the people who wanted to get things done, actually, you know, they said, let me take a

00:43:40.460 little bit of risk. Let me show up to the white house. And that always happens. You look at like

00:43:44.280 Van Jones, who's a big Trump critic. Uh, he was called uncle Tom because he came to the white house.

00:43:49.140 You know, people like John Lewis were in Cory Booker were criticizing him for working with

00:43:54.020 the white house at the time on, on criminal justice reform, which was an issue that they

00:43:57.680 cared about. And van ended up delivering. He took some personal risk, Kim Kardashian. She was

00:44:02.600 very heavily criticized for coming to the white house to meet with the president, because there

00:44:06.720 was a case in her heart that she felt she could make an impact on, which was Alice Johnson's case.

00:44:11.240 And Kim researched it meticulously. We spent seven months going through it.

00:44:14.860 And we've done all that. We've done it. We've had Alice on the show. It's an amazing story. It's one

00:44:19.240 of my favorite interviews. People should go back and listen to it. Everybody loves it. Bipartisan

00:44:22.300 love for Alice Marie Johnson. Um, I only have a couple of minutes left, so I got to ask you

00:44:27.160 this because we haven't done a lot of personal stuff. You met Ivanka. So 10 years before Trump won,

00:44:32.240 you were dealing and people can read the book if they want to know what happened to your dad.

00:44:35.420 The whole story is laid out in there. Um, but you're dealing with your dad having gone to prison

00:44:39.760 for a couple of years. You meet Ivanka Trump, 2007, you fall in love, you're playing backgammon

00:44:45.760 in coffee shops, which is kind of cute. And, um, you're getting more serious and Donald Trump

00:44:51.800 wasn't president, but he was very well known. He's very successful businessman. So you go in to meet

00:44:55.320 with him and there was a funny exchange in which a very famous football player was referenced.

00:45:02.320 Can you tell us that story? Sure. Well, well, before that, actually the funnier part was,

00:45:07.020 you know, Ivanka was starting the process of, of converting to Judaism and we've been studying

00:45:11.080 for, for many months and, and, uh, but we wanted to tell her father. And so when I told him, you

00:45:16.020 know, uh, Ivanka, you know, is going to start the process of converting, he looked at me and said,

00:45:20.560 well, why can't you convert? Why does she have to convert? And I said, well, that's actually a

00:45:24.080 very good question, but we've been studying and this is the way we want to do it. And, uh, and this

00:45:29.280 is how we want to, you know, raise our family. This is what, what, what, what, what we're, we're going to,

00:45:33.600 we're going to do. And he says, you know, that's great. He says, you know, I've been in,

00:45:37.000 New York real estate forever. I think most people think I'm Jewish anyway. All my friends

00:45:40.420 are Jewish. This is great. And, uh, and, you know, even for all the people, you know, who've

00:45:44.700 made up all these crazy claims of, you know, him being antisemitic or promoting it, you know,

00:45:49.480 he's been very, very tolerant and respectful of, of me and, and of, of his grandchildren and of the

00:45:55.040 family. And he's done incredible things as president to combat antisemitism. But then after he says,

00:45:59.960 he says, you know, look, um, Ivanka's in, in a great place in her life right now, where, uh,

00:46:05.920 where, you know, a lot of people want to take her out and, you know, Tom Brady's a friend and,

00:46:08.880 you know, he'd want to take her out. And, and, and I said, well, if I was here, I'd go with,

00:46:12.680 with Tom Brady. And he looks at me and says, yeah, I know. And so I, I, you know, it was a,

00:46:16.980 it was a very funny exchange, but he loves his daughter and he's been an amazing father-in-law and

00:46:21.180 a lot of fun to be with. And, uh, we've had some incredible adventures.

00:46:24.920 Well, listen, Tom Brady's doing pretty well, but so are you, um, doing investment now. And that's a whole

00:46:31.360 other story, but running an investment firm and, and, uh, living in Florida and enjoying the weather

00:46:36.380 and enjoying the freedom of that state. Uh, final question. Cause I got to go, if Trump were to run

00:46:42.000 again and to win, would you be open to going back to Washington and serving? Um, so that's,

00:46:47.840 that's a lot of hypotheticals, but right now I'm loving the time I get to have with my kids,

00:46:52.060 getting to meet them again and spend the time. And I'm loving being in the private sector.

00:46:56.180 It was an absolute honor to serve the country. I'm very, very proud of all the things I got done. But

00:47:00.520 if you read the book, you'll see all the challenges that came with it. And, and, uh, it really would

00:47:05.600 have to be all the right conditions to be willing to do that again. But it's, uh, for right now I'm

00:47:10.240 loving my life and I feel very, very blessed. I've had the experience, very proud of all the things we

00:47:14.900 did, but, but really enjoying my, my current life. You've accomplished a lot for 41 years old. It's

00:47:20.880 hard to believe Jared, all the best to you and good luck with this. I think it's a great read. I think

00:47:25.120 our audience will really enjoy it. Great. Thank you very much. A pleasure to be with you.

00:47:29.560 Likewise. Again, the book is called breaking history. It's out today coming up much, much

00:47:36.160 more on the Trump raid and the new details that I've just broken about it. Uh, we're going to have

00:47:40.360 Brian Dean, right? And we're going to, he's a former CIA officer and we're going to have a lawyer

00:47:43.940 who's very well steeped in these issues. Don't go away. My next guest is a former CIA officer and

00:47:52.540 former Democrat who is now focused on principles over party. He's kind of like Jared, former Democrat,

00:47:58.020 now America first. Um, uh, Brian Dean, right? Is the host of the president's daily brief

00:48:05.220 podcast. And he is with us to discuss the latest on the Mar-a-Lago raid, the affidavit next steps

00:48:11.040 and more. Welcome back to the show, Brian. How are you doing? I am great. Such a pleasure

00:48:15.800 to be here. I too. I'm a former Democrat. I'm a former Republican as well. I've been a registered

00:48:20.260 independent for about 20 years now. Uh, but I think that's why you make sense to me. And, uh,

00:48:25.920 Jared made sense to me. And, you know, it's like, it's, it can offer you a nice viewpoint of the

00:48:30.420 world to not, not be a hardcore ideological partisan. Um, but now you are definitely America

00:48:36.220 first. And, and in that vein, you do not approve of what the FBI has done down at Mar-a-Lago. Let

00:48:42.020 me just get the news headline in. So people know what we're talking about. Again, this is the New

00:48:45.680 York times reporting. So as Jared Kushner points out, take it with a grain of salt. Trump had more than

00:48:50.240 300 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Uh, the information is sourced to multiple people briefed

00:48:56.200 on the matter, but names are not provided. The government has recovered more than 300 documents

00:49:00.400 with classified markings says the times the first batch, uh, was retrieved in January. 150 were marked

00:49:06.660 classified. Another set was provided by Trump aides to the department of justice in June, just this past

00:49:12.220 June. And then more was receipt was recovered in the seized material. Now the New York times says this

00:49:19.600 helps explain why the justice department moved so urgently. Not really. It does. How now the facts

00:49:28.760 don't support that statement, do they? Look, I think what I just heard you say is that the former

00:49:34.080 president and his team have been cooperating and collaborating with the government in every way

00:49:39.100 that they thought helpful and possible. This started last January to include into June, lots of

00:49:44.720 conversations. So this isn't as though the president and his team are trying to abscond with, you know,

00:49:49.360 secret intelligence and, Oh, here we go again, maybe send it to the Russians. So I don't think

00:49:53.880 that the, what we're seeing so far would be alarming to any reasonable person, but we don't really live

00:49:59.240 in reasonable times. Do we? No, we certainly do not. And so this, people are still very irritated at

00:50:06.200 the FBI as we await a ruling and the DOJ, because I mean, it's really the DOJ we should be mad at.

00:50:12.020 You know, I'm, I'm kind of with Alan Dershowitz. You can't blame the individual FBI agents for having

00:50:16.120 done what they were hired to do. Um, you can blame Merrick Garland and you should blame Merrick Garland.

00:50:21.360 Uh, and that's not to say there are no problems with the FBI, but Merrick Garland is the person

00:50:25.200 responsible for this. And now we're going to find out. We, we think, uh, what was in the affidavit

00:50:30.520 that they had to submit supporting this extraordinary warrant? Cause this judge seems

00:50:35.500 poised to release at least part of it tomorrow. Well, and thank God for that. So if we really step

00:50:40.280 back, if we think about these 300 documents and they say classified, well, what does that really mean?

00:50:45.700 Let me talk to you about a couple of things. This is my world. So I know a lot about classified

00:50:49.720 information. First of all, you can over and under classify things. So just because someone like

00:50:55.880 the president in this case has a document that says classified, that doesn't necessarily mean

00:51:00.140 it is. So I might look at it as I'm creating that document and say, I think that's top secret.

00:51:05.380 And then actually somebody up the food chain says, no, that's unclassified. You're being ridiculous.

00:51:09.520 So that's the first piece that a lot of folks don't understand that is absolutely true.

00:51:13.640 But even on the other end of that, even if these documents did have some sort of top secret

00:51:18.560 or secret classification on them, that doesn't mean that the president couldn't wave his presidential

00:51:23.220 wand as the law allows and be the constitution allows to say, these are declassified. He can't

00:51:29.760 do that. Now we might disagree on whether or not certain documents should have been declassified,

00:51:34.600 but that is the prerogative of the president, irrespective of whether it's Trump or Obama or

00:51:40.260 anybody else, that is the prerogative of the president. So this affidavit has to make very clear

00:51:46.100 that the president did not declassify the documents or that these documents somehow fell into a legal

00:51:52.260 gray area. And I'm not really sure that I've seen that argument be made. Well, article two of the

00:51:57.520 constitution heard there was a 1988, uh, Supreme court lawsuit, uh, ruling that said presidents have

00:52:04.080 pretty broad and profound authorities to declassify. So whenever I see these headlines that say he's got

00:52:09.460 300 classified documents, okay, that's not the full story. Did he declassify them? And there's a law

00:52:15.480 and his protocol allow him to do that irrespective of whether you or I might have agreed with that

00:52:20.900 declassification process that he used a lot, a lot of back and forth on that very issue on exactly

00:52:28.420 what T's, what eyes, you know, needed to be crossed and dotted respectively for him to declassify.

00:52:33.640 We'll talk about it with our lawyer who joins us in a minute as well. But my takeaway from listening

00:52:38.460 to everybody is it depends on who you ask. Um, some would say he could do it with the magic wand.

00:52:43.740 Some would say, no, he's got to follow a certain protocol. Then others say, no, that protocol is

00:52:47.540 there for people underneath lower than the president. The president has a much greater

00:52:51.580 ability to do it just by speaking the classified information. For example, he could do it. Um, so it's

00:52:56.520 unclear to me sitting here today how a court would rule on it, though. I'm going to guess the Supreme,

00:53:00.900 this Supreme court would probably be a pretty permissive of presidential authority. Um, we don't

00:53:06.340 know, but, but this has been, you know, even if you take those classified documents out of it,

00:53:10.800 the DOJ is pissed. The DOJ is basically saying you had no right to the non-classified documents.

00:53:15.580 You stole them. They belong to the people. And you know, that, that could be true that those

00:53:20.820 documents technically belong to us because the president's documents belong to the people,

00:53:23.980 but that doesn't speak to the remedy that was employed here.

00:53:28.180 Amen. So if we are looking at precedent, what have other presidents prior to this one been treated by,

00:53:33.940 you know, the department of justice, the, the records administration.

00:53:36.800 So what are those protocol? What does that history look like? And if president Trump is being treated

00:53:43.380 differently, well, that begs the question why? And again, in this case, it looks as though from all

00:53:48.780 reasonable accounts, even the department of justice is saying, yes, the Trump folks have been helpful.

00:53:53.960 They've been working with us. We just decided to engage in this particular remedy for reasons that,

00:53:59.000 well, let's see what the affidavit has to say, but it's not real clear here. So I'm not convinced the

00:54:04.520 facts don't to at this point suggest that there's an issue or a problem, but really for me. And I

00:54:10.300 think a lot of other folks who work in the intelligence community have still friends like

00:54:14.140 me in the intelligence community. We have concerns about the level of trust, right? Because Trump and

00:54:19.720 his team can say whatever they want, but we would like to defer to the department of justice and the

00:54:24.160 FBI and some of our colleagues who are still FBI agents. We, we want to say, Hey, they are probably

00:54:29.500 right here because we should trust them. We should trust their counsel. But what we have seen over

00:54:35.160 the past five years is that's just not true. We can't unfortunately trust. There's just been too

00:54:39.760 many cases of it. The department of justice, their inspector general pointed to James Comey and his

00:54:45.000 leaking saying that he set a dangerous example for the 36,000 employees at the FBI for purposely leaking

00:54:53.020 information that shouldn't have been all for partisan purposes. You know, you take that and Megan,

00:54:58.460 one of the other things that I will never forget is when Chuck Schumer was on TV and had that,

00:55:02.960 that interview where he was asked, Hey, you know, is it wise for president Trump to criticize the FBI

00:55:07.880 and the CIA? And he said, boy, they have six ways Sunday to get back at you. So if we are hearing

00:55:13.740 that from people like Chuck Schumer, that's literally what he said. One of the leaders of this country,

00:55:18.400 certainly of his party saying that the FBI and the CIA have the ability and indeed they use it

00:55:23.840 to target people, not because the law says so, but rather they, they have been angered by their,

00:55:30.720 we say the president. Well, that's outrageous. Yeah. We should be concerned about that. My goodness.

00:55:36.380 If that's the culture of this country, holy smokes, we got bigger problems in these 300 documents

00:55:42.120 in Mar-a-Lago for pizza. Yeah. And you may not know it's the FBI. It may be the IRS that calls

00:55:47.700 you up and says, guess what? I'm one of the new 86,000 auditors and I'm coming for you because a

00:55:53.700 phone call was made. Who knows? They're smart enough in some cases not to put their fingerprints

00:55:56.760 on it. But the thing about Merrick Garland, you raise a good point. Do we have reason to trust him?

00:56:02.160 Has he been a straight shooter? Okay. Well, let's look at what he did last week when he came out and he

00:56:06.880 tried to play holier than thou, you know, some stuff is not disclosable and I'm just going to

00:56:11.200 give a very, very brief statement and then immediately leaks to the New York times and

00:56:14.840 the Washington post about, you know, the behind the scenes rationale alleged in nuclear secrets.

00:56:20.020 Okay. What does that mean? What we have no idea what he means by that. The most incendiary term he

00:56:24.200 could drop and the lapdogs in the media print it. And then everybody's like, holy shit, Trump has the

00:56:28.360 nuclear codes unlocked in Melania's underwear drawer. Right. So like exactly as planned. And then just take a,

00:56:34.580 take a step back a year, not even a year ago where remember he was calling the parents, the domestic

00:56:39.820 terrorists, Merrick Garland agreeing with that alleged school board representation that said, oh, they're

00:56:45.020 domestic terrorists. So he said, okay, we're going to investigate them as domestic terrorists. And then

00:56:47.860 finally he got called into a hearing and said, where are you getting that from? Like what, what's your basis

00:56:51.820 for suggesting the FBI has any role at these school board meetings? And he was forced to admit it was based

00:56:57.900 on, you know, these alleged reports that he got from this school board that had, we went through them

00:57:02.880 point by point. My entire team looked at every single incident and literally it was like the guy refused to wear

00:57:07.700 his mask when told to wear his mask. The one guy yelled at the meeting and spoke beyond the point where his time

00:57:14.600 was up. I mean, it was, there were like one, there was like one where it got somewhat dicey with a, with an

00:57:21.120 altercation. All the rest were these small petty. And so I don't trust him. I don't trust him not to overinflate,

00:57:28.020 not to exaggerate when it suits his political purposes. And look, it's, and it's not just an

00:57:33.300 opinion, right? So you just laid out a lot of very thoughtful and good examples of a degree of,

00:57:39.440 of politicization, if not weaponization of the department of justice and the FBI based on partisan

00:57:44.680 realities or preferences, right? So this isn't an opinion issue. There is a long book and record.

00:57:50.800 Let me add one more, you know, recently, obviously the Roe v. Wade decision came down very,

00:57:55.500 very controversial, but in the weeks leading up to it, there were of course all the, the, the protest

00:58:00.120 out in front of the houses. And of course that was violation of the law and Merrick Garland and the

00:58:04.480 FBI and the department of justice didn't protect those individuals. They didn't act in an aggressive

00:58:10.140 or thoughtful way per what the law allowed. And so I think a lot of people ask, well, why not?

00:58:15.000 Why aren't you protecting what some people might say are the conservative justices? And would you

00:58:19.600 perhaps have a different view if they were the more liberal justices? So there are lots of examples,

00:58:25.340 some big, some small, but you put them together and no longer are we talking about an opinion about

00:58:31.200 the department of justice and the FBI becoming politicized. In fact, these are the facts and

00:58:36.200 that's, what's frightening. We all know the answer to that. You're telling me, okay,

00:58:40.200 Katanji Brown Jackson takes her seat on the U S Supreme court. She's been sworn in now and she gets

00:58:45.120 protesters outside of her house night and day with children at home. There is zero chance the FBI

00:58:51.820 would ignore that. Zero. Correct. And we all know it. It's what leads to the frustration

00:58:56.240 and distrust. And we would want the FBI to shut that down just as we wanted them to shut it down

00:59:00.820 when it was Kavanaugh and it was Alito and it was all the conservatives.

00:59:03.960 And you're bringing up this, this really important point, which is what happens when the FBI loses the

00:59:09.780 trust of the American people? Well, we naturally say, tear it down, destroy it, get rid of it, restart it,

00:59:15.400 do something with it. But there are a lot of threats in this country and this world that the FBI needs to

00:59:20.640 take a part of, it needs to be investigating, needs to help solve. I mean, I'm a national security guy.

00:59:26.020 China is a big one for me. They, the FBI, we know starts an investigation of the Chinese related

00:59:32.000 entities once every 12 hours in this country, 365 days a year. So we need the FBI engaged and involved

00:59:40.080 in these kinds of efforts to keep our adversaries at bay, to keep us safe. But when we start lacking

00:59:46.440 in trust, the calls to disband the FBI, which I actually agree with because it's become so

00:59:51.940 politicized, well, then we start losing the ability to keep the country safe. So the stakes here are

00:59:58.240 really big. This is not just about Trump or the documents at Mar-a-Lago. This is about being able

01:00:03.000 to keep the nation safe. And right now the FBI and the DOJ are putting this country at risk because of

01:00:09.220 their own partisan politics. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when we had an ISIS threat every other day

01:00:14.780 in this country. And these Muslim extremists were, you know, randomly attacking us in various pockets

01:00:20.260 of the country. And the FBI was extremely valuable and we relied on them. And it's one of the reasons

01:00:24.480 why a lot of people were very pro national security, had a, had a soft spot for the FBI.

01:00:31.600 It's hard for me to stomach even the notion of disbanding them, especially because I realized we've

01:00:37.080 got some examples of some bad things they've done and some bad agents, Peter Strzok and his little

01:00:41.160 girlfriend. And, uh, you know, Comey was a nightmare as it turned out and look what they did against

01:00:46.020 Trump when the Russia gate and all the nonsense and the allegations, the affidavits, but, but that

01:00:50.400 doesn't mean the rank and file, uh, is partisan or bent on anything other than law enforcement. And so

01:00:56.540 I get uncomfortable with talks of disbandment. I don't think that's a solution.

01:01:01.520 I look, I get it. And I think it's fair because it does feel, and indeed it is very extreme,

01:01:06.480 but, but the assumption here, if we're going to keep it is two things. One, you have different

01:01:10.620 leadership, leadership that acknowledged that there's a problem. And second, you have good

01:01:14.940 oversight. Your congressional folks, both the house and the Senate provide that deep dive oversight along

01:01:20.740 with the department of justice's own inspector general. So you have all three of those folks

01:01:25.340 working very collectively saying, there's a problem. We have to fix it. The culture here,

01:01:30.000 there's something wrong with it, but unless you have all those pieces and you only continue to have

01:01:35.480 more examples of this weaponization and the politicization stuff. Well, then you start

01:01:40.160 asking yourself, well, how do you fix it? If the people in charge, the people providing oversight,

01:01:44.500 you know, oversight are not willing to fix it. What's the solution. And that's when you start

01:01:49.920 leaning into some of the more radical solutions like disbanding. It doesn't mean you get rid of

01:01:54.080 the actual work they do. You farm it out to other organizations because that one just doesn't work.

01:01:58.700 What magical organization is not going to have any political bias in it?

01:02:01.620 Well, it's the degree to which each organization has it and whether or not you can create oversight

01:02:07.740 over each of them. I hear the point that so long as you have the power that you could have people

01:02:13.240 abuse it. But I think until you have a change of authority and until you have a different oversight

01:02:18.220 and within the department of justice, a different degree of that investigation and making sure that

01:02:23.460 people aren't doing bad things. I don't know what the other response is. I don't know how you fix it.

01:02:28.160 How is this one on the FBI? How is this one not on the DOJ?

01:02:32.940 Look, I think it's both. But in terms of the FBI, what specifically the FBI do?

01:02:37.920 So this affidavit was obviously based on some degree of investigation. So the question is trust.

01:02:43.760 Do you trust that that investigation and the analysis of when those FBI agents,

01:02:47.880 well before the latest raid, before they were down talking to the Trump team, when they were

01:02:51.980 asking questions, looking in the locker room, as it were, of where the material was being held,

01:02:56.480 they asked them to put the lock on the door. Who was that individual? Do we know whether or not

01:03:02.200 they had a degree of bias? Because we have seen that on the individual level. We've seen that

01:03:07.700 repeatedly in the FBI. So I hear the point that on a big level, the DOJ's, Garland and others take

01:03:14.540 responsibility, Christopher Wray, the head of the FBI. But we have seen in cases that FBI agents,

01:03:19.680 right. The FBI agents though, do engage in falsifying evidence and submitting it to judges.

01:03:27.400 We've seen that. We started with Carter Page.

01:03:29.680 Carter Page is a great example.

01:03:31.200 Yeah, right. So it's not true that there is no issue amongst the rank and file. I mean,

01:03:37.400 I will tell you, I still have friends within the FBI. This isn't just Brian throwing an arrow because

01:03:41.620 I want to say silly things. I have friends who know it and see it, that this politicization issue

01:03:48.220 is real. And they're angry by it because they understand this. It's their life's blood and work

01:03:54.160 that they have spent years. So they are frustrated and upset. And we know this today that there are

01:04:00.580 whistleblowers talking to different people in Congress from the FBI about this issue,

01:04:05.560 that politics are influencing investigations. So I think that it's time.

01:04:10.400 Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, it makes you wonder, you remember the CIA recruiting video

01:04:14.780 that had like, I have two moms and I'm a lesbian too. And I'm, you know, I don't know, however many

01:04:20.520 boxes on the LGBTQ plus whatever spirit they wanted to check. Remember that recruiting ad?

01:04:25.880 She said she had a, she said she had a mental illness. That was one of them. So yes, she was a

01:04:30.780 Latina. She was a millennial. Yes. There was a big long list.

01:04:33.880 Yeah. I can't keep all my ads straight because there are some that recruited for the military.

01:04:37.160 There's someone recruited for the CIA in any instance. One gets the impression they might

01:04:41.320 be like screening for the wrong shit. You know, like, do you have two moms? You do? You're in.

01:04:46.120 They forget to ask about political bias. Would you go after your political enemy if ordered to do so

01:04:50.440 by a politically corrupt boss? Yes. Walk this way. As long as you're a Democrat.

01:04:55.700 Well, I will tell you that again, I have friends in the agency and what they have told me is the past

01:04:59.860 five, certainly 10 years since I left in 2015, 16, that they are seeing an increasing number of people

01:05:05.920 who go to the CIA, work there, want to stay there, not because of mission, not because they want to

01:05:11.620 protect the country, but because they want to express their truth or be involved in, right. So

01:05:17.620 it's that language. I have heard that from people still inside saying that they hear that at meetings.

01:05:23.120 So when we start drifting in that direction, we have just lost it. We have absolutely lost it.

01:05:28.880 You may feel that the raid at Mar-a-Lago was driven by partisan politics at some level,

01:05:35.840 whether it's Merrick Garland or somebody underneath. You may feel that way.

01:05:38.660 You would be in conflict with the outgoing Congresswoman, Liz Cheney. Okay. Here is what

01:05:45.680 she had to say about the matter the other day.

01:05:48.740 Are you entirely confident that there was no political motivation behind this by the Biden

01:05:56.360 administration or by the attorney general? I've seen no evidence that there was any political

01:06:00.580 motivation. You've now got, you know, the judge reviewing whether or not the affidavit or portions

01:06:05.940 of it will be released. I think that will provide us additional information. It also seems to be the

01:06:11.040 case that there were clearly ongoing efforts to get back whatever this information was and that it was

01:06:18.400 not presented, you know, that the former president was unwilling to give back these materials.

01:06:26.380 Now we will see. We'll learn more. But, you know, it's a really serious thing. And I just think that

01:06:32.700 for us as a party to be in a position where we're reflexively attacking career law enforcement

01:06:39.320 professionals, um, in order to defend the former president who conducted himself the way this one

01:06:46.180 did, uh, is it's a really sad day for the party. I mean, if I were a, uh, a Twitter editor, I would

01:06:56.520 slap on lax context to her little statement. Sure. Yep. The distrust, the automatic distrust of the

01:07:04.460 FBI. Hello, Liz. This is why you lost. Yeah. Look, there was something else that,

01:07:09.320 she said there that I, that I want to put on people's radars. So one of the things that's

01:07:13.160 happening right now and what they have asked of the intelligence community is to look at these 300

01:07:17.440 documents and say, well, what is the damage assessment? All right. This is where politics

01:07:22.420 are going to come into play again, because the people making that assessment are individuals

01:07:27.260 focused with and indeed a part of the Biden administration. The, the state department spokesman

01:07:33.140 right now is a name, a guy named Ned Price. He's a former CIA officer. All right. So he is a

01:07:38.540 partisan, long been a partisan, and he was in the CIA for a long period of time. And people like him

01:07:44.260 would be involved in this damage assessment. So there's going to be some political sneaking going

01:07:49.660 on on this one, deciding what the exact fallout is in terms of the national security. There's going

01:07:54.200 to be some very serious questions that I and others are going to be raising, looking at this material,

01:07:58.740 or at least their assessment and saying, prove it because your, your own, your own political biases

01:08:04.380 could very well have played into your damage assessment. Well, let's play that game. What

01:08:09.880 if, what if what we finally find out is they went back in the air because the mole, whoever the mole

01:08:14.700 was told them literally there are nuclear codes to launch the weapons. Although I guess they might

01:08:20.620 change those after one president leaves office. I don't know how it works. Um, yes. In any event,

01:08:25.420 the, the nuclear codes are sitting in Melania's closet, unprotected, unlocked. Okay. What in that

01:08:32.300 circumstance should America Garland do? So two things, one, if the material,

01:08:40.720 it does not qualify for a presidential declassification, right? So if, if a reasonable

01:08:45.660 person looks at that per the 1988 Supreme court case, it authorized that then that will be a lawsuit,

01:08:52.040 right? And that's what should have happened. And, and there would be a counter case and so forth.

01:08:56.260 And I'm going to defer to the legal folks on exactly that process. But the point is there

01:09:00.180 would be a process. It wouldn't necessarily be a part of a raid. So second, I I'm just keep coming

01:09:06.040 back to this issue about the declassification process, because we have to remember that it's

01:09:11.040 not a cut and dried case here. If there are documents there, again, the president has a pretty broad

01:09:17.020 authority. And I appreciate your, your comment earlier that, all right, well, how much authority?

01:09:21.100 Well, there's a little bit of wiggle room, but I think the overall message to the American people

01:09:24.820 should be the president, irrespective of a person or party has profound ability to declassify. All

01:09:30.440 right. So I think that that's the first piece that I keep coming back to. But again, I want to

01:09:34.300 emphasize one other thing. What would you and I do? Like, what would we encourage? What counsel would

01:09:39.500 we give Biden or Trump or any other president when you're going to take information from the White

01:09:44.580 House, specifically declassified, let's say you wave the wand. Why, why are you doing it? Right.

01:09:49.560 So I would use something called a need to know and to want principle. Right. So out of the CIA,

01:09:54.700 we had this need to know idea of why do I really need that information? Well, that's what we should

01:10:00.080 be talking about in terms of sort of stepping back from this, encouraging our politicians,

01:10:04.660 our presidents to say, look, when you leave the White House, why do you really need that

01:10:08.380 classified document? Just because you want to remember the old times, that's probably not

01:10:12.820 sufficient. Even though you might have the authority, that's not wise. Right.

01:10:16.340 But if there's some other reason, President Trump believes that there's corruption involved,

01:10:21.020 and the only way to solve that is declassify things, take it and then release it into the

01:10:25.260 press or whatever his legal strategy might be. Well, that's fair. I mean, I'm not saying that

01:10:29.620 that's what I would do, but I understand the logic in that case. So I hope at some point we can step

01:10:34.740 back and start talking about, you know, what are the reasonable steps that you and I might want to

01:10:38.560 take if we were president to do this over again and maybe prevent this from happening in the first

01:10:43.020 place. But we got an affidavit to look at and we got 300 documents or more to really explore before

01:10:47.900 we really cast judgment on this one. Yeah. I mean, it's going to take that level of information

01:10:55.400 to convince to convince most of us that this was even arguably the right move by Merrick Garland.

01:11:02.580 I don't know that I can be convinced. I really don't. It just comes in the heels of so many false

01:11:08.620 investigations into the guy that even somebody like me, who I'm happy to criticize president

01:11:13.620 Trump when he deserves it. Yes. I'm, I'm, I'm throwing my hands up. Like I'm no longer listening

01:11:18.020 to you. I mean, you can't do it 13 times and have me remain open-minded to you. This doesn't come in

01:11:25.000 a vacuum. Megan, what you're saying is you recognize that this issue is not about Trump.

01:11:29.920 It's bigger than Trump. It's about the country. It's about rule law. It's about the stability of the

01:11:34.220 nation. And you're right. That's absolutely what this is about. So it doesn't matter if you like

01:11:38.980 or dislike Trump, you vote for him or not. What matters is the big, big questions at hand here,

01:11:43.600 which is, do we survive when our FBI or our CIA, our intelligence communities, our law enforcement

01:11:48.820 communities become politicized and we lose trust and faith in them? That's the issue.

01:11:54.940 You blew it, Jim Comey and Merrick Garland. You blew it. It's too late. I don't know how you're

01:12:01.340 going to restore trust and credibility in your agencies, but you must, you must, because

01:12:07.480 otherwise we have situations like this, where even when you might have a perfectly legitimate reason

01:12:11.500 to seize documents, half the country looks at you and says, we know you've got it in for this guy.

01:12:17.700 Brian, such a pleasure. I want people to, I want to recommend the president's daily brief because

01:12:21.800 we didn't get to it today, but you talk about the most interesting things that people might not be

01:12:26.580 hearing on every other podcast or newscast. I'm going to give the audience an example.

01:12:31.780 This new rail line in China that's transporting all this coal, all the shit that we just did in

01:12:37.020 the latest Inflation Reduction Act. Like, oh, OK, you want to feel better about yourself and all

01:12:41.640 you're giving up and all the money we're spending and, you know, getting rid of all this coal and

01:12:45.380 instead going in renewables. Take a look at what they're doing in China. Brian breaks it down and

01:12:49.600 he also tells you why you need to go buy coffee right now. You might want to stockpile. I'm going to

01:12:53.440 leave that as a tease. True. He's well worth your time. Brian, great. Great to have you.

01:12:57.980 Such a pleasure. All right. Coming up, we're going to take a hardcore look at the legal side

01:13:02.380 of the raid with the guy I've been waiting to talk to on exactly this.

01:13:10.200 Our next guest is Mike Davis. He's an attorney, founder of the Article 3 Project and former chief

01:13:15.680 counsel for nominations at U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. And he has written a fascinating

01:13:21.180 Newsweek column with his views on the Trump raid. That's not all he's written. He's written a lot.

01:13:24.880 He's tweeted a lot. He's been on TV. And I've become a big fan of Mike Davis's. Mike, welcome

01:13:28.760 to the show. Thank you for having me. You're you're so sensible. I love listening to your opinion

01:13:34.380 because unlike most people out there, you actually have the history and the resume and just the way

01:13:39.600 you present your argument to back it up, to actually convince me that you know what you're

01:13:43.480 talking about. And I've been I tune in whenever I know you're you're speaking now. So let's just

01:13:48.660 start with let's let's go through it. OK, let's go through it in baby steps so that people understand.

01:13:54.120 I'm going to ask you all the dumb questions and you can answer them. The New York Times reports that

01:14:00.080 Trump took documents he wasn't entitled to. Those are my documents. They're your documents,

01:14:05.020 but they're not his documents because they belong to the people that the National Archives tried to

01:14:09.600 work with him to say, tap, tap, tap, Mr. Former President. Those are ours. Give them back.

01:14:14.320 And that Trump said, OK, here are these boxes. But he kept boxes he shouldn't have kept. He knew

01:14:20.320 enough that he had to turn them over, but he didn't. He kept another collection of them at

01:14:25.060 Mar-a-Lago. And then they got wind of that and they sent lawyers down to Mar-a-Lago and they saw

01:14:30.740 classified documents, by the way, in the documents he turned over. And that's when they opened up a grand

01:14:34.820 jury and they said he's not being honest. He said he gave us these 15 and that's all. But we know

01:14:39.100 there's more. The grand jury issues a subpoena saying, give us the rest of the documents. Well,

01:14:43.140 maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But they have a meeting in June and Trump puts up his lawyers and

01:14:48.680 his lawyers sign a sworn declaration under oath. They claim saying, we gave you all the documents

01:14:55.700 and we certainly gave you all the classified documents. Bye. And then poor Merrick Garland

01:15:00.540 thinking, finally, I've washed my hands of the evil Trump in this document drama, gets a call from a mole

01:15:05.380 inside Mar-a-Lago or who's been near Mar-a-Lago saying he lied. I saw them. Check the safe. Check the room.

01:15:12.760 There's more. And they say we have no choice. We he's not above the law. He doesn't get to keep

01:15:18.000 the documents just like Bill Clinton didn't get to keep the furniture. Get your asses down there,

01:15:22.380 FBI. We're going to get you a warrant, which is the next step up from a subpoena. And you get the

01:15:27.320 people's property because we may be vulnerable when it comes to national security. Plus, he just

01:15:31.880 doesn't own this stuff. And so he's not allowed to keep it. Rule of law applies to everyone, even former

01:15:36.200 presidents. Done. That's what is wrong with the Merrick Garland's procedure as reported by the New

01:15:44.320 York Times. Well, it sounds like a good political narrative, but it was an unprecedented, unnecessary

01:15:50.200 and unlawful home raid on a former president of the United States who also happens to be Merrick

01:15:56.900 Garland's chief political rival for the or the boss of Merrick Garland's chief political rival for the

01:16:04.540 2024 presidential election. I think we need to step back, Megan, to remember two key legal issues here.

01:16:12.420 Number one, the president of the United States has the absolute constitutional authority as commander

01:16:19.520 in chief to declassify any record he wants for any reason he wants in any manner he wants. And that is

01:16:26.620 confirmed by a 1988 Supreme Court case, Department of the Navy versus EGIT. And number two, the president

01:16:34.780 of the United States has the absolute soul, as the judge said, statutory authority under the Presidential

01:16:40.920 Records Act to make personal any presidential record he wants. So if he if President Trump took records

01:16:49.020 with him out of the White House to Mar-a-Lago when he was president, they are declassified by his

01:16:54.380 actions. He also has separate declassification memos like on January 19th, declassifying the Mar-a-Lago or

01:17:02.120 excuse me, the Crossfire Hurricane records before he went to Mar-a-Lago when he left the presidency on

01:17:08.940 the 20th. So he has the constitutional power to declassify and he has the statutory power under the

01:17:15.800 Presidential Records Act to say these are my records. This is my love note with the North Korean

01:17:21.400 dictator. This is not a government record and I'm taking it with me. Or if they're photocopies of

01:17:26.780 records that he's declassified, he can say that this is my personal copy. And that's confirmed by a 2012

01:17:32.940 opinion by an Obama appointed district court judge in D.C. There was a lawsuit by Tom Fitton in Judicial

01:17:40.640 Watch versus Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton took recordings or tapes from his presidency that

01:17:46.560 that should have been presidential records. And the Obama appointed judge says, no, he can make

01:17:51.880 these personal. He has the sole authority under the statute. So what's left? If you look at the face

01:17:56.540 of of this unprecedented, unnecessary and unlawful warrant, you have the Espionage Act violation on

01:18:02.620 there that Trump could not have violated because I just said the president has the constitutional power

01:18:07.140 to declassify. And you also have this destruction, alteration, theft of government property, which is

01:18:14.620 legally impossible because under the Presidential Records Act, he could make he could take a personal

01:18:20.280 copy. The third charge was obstruction. Well, how as a matter of law, how can you legally obstruct

01:18:26.840 investigations into non-crimes that the Justice Department has no right to investigate in the

01:18:32.480 first place? So this is a political fishing expedition. It's a charade. And my theory is if

01:18:38.880 you look at item number two on that inventory that from the Justice Department of what they rated and

01:18:45.260 took from Mar-a-Lago, number two is this leather bound book of documents. And I think that those are

01:18:51.640 the crossfire hurricane documents that Trump declassified on January 19th before he left on the 20th.

01:18:57.020 And I think that is terrifying to the Biden, Obama, Hillary, FBI, intel regimes, because I think

01:19:04.780 President Trump has the goods, declassified goods that shows about the Russian collusion mess.

01:19:12.320 So interesting and so much in there. OK, so jumping back to let's table classified for right now.

01:19:19.000 Let's spend a minute on not classified, but not technically his, technically ours, because we the

01:19:25.020 presidential records really are records of the people you're saying if they are copies, he can

01:19:31.400 take them. But what if there are originals in there? If there are originals, do you concede he

01:19:36.600 wasn't entitled to take them? Under under this 2012 Obama judge opinion with Judicial Watch versus

01:19:44.280 Clinton, the president has the sole statutory authority under the Presidential Records Act to determine

01:19:50.620 whether something is a personal record that belongs to him, like Clinton's audio tapes that were in his

01:19:56.080 sock drawer, or a presidential record that goes to the bureaucrats, the National Archives, their

01:20:01.860 catalogs, and then they're sent almost certainly sent back to the former president to put in his

01:20:06.880 library. That's what this comes down to, right? This is even if it's an original, he's OK.

01:20:11.900 He can. He has the he has the power under the statute to to make personal any record he wants,

01:20:18.740 according to this 2012 District of Columbia district court decision by an Obama appointed

01:20:25.600 judge. Mm hmm. Now, there's a there's a difference of opinion over what he needs to do to wave that

01:20:31.100 wand. Like my pals over at National Review, I think it was Jim Garrity and Andy McCarthy were disagreeing

01:20:36.640 over that opinion, saying it may or may not. It hasn't been put to the test yet. It was not totally

01:20:41.020 clear that it would totally exonerate Trump in this instance. Do you think it's unclear?

01:20:45.860 I don't think it's unclear at all. And I'll read you the language from the 1988 Supreme Court decision.

01:20:50.460 The president, after all, is the commander of the commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the

01:20:55.580 United States, his authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national

01:21:01.380 security and to determine whether what that that part's irrelevant. It says it flows primarily

01:21:09.100 from this constitutional investment of power in the president and exists quite apart from any

01:21:15.860 explicit congressional grant, meaning the Espionage Act, any other act dealing with classified

01:21:21.780 materials, any regulation, those apply to everyone else on the planet except for the current president

01:21:27.740 of the United States. Right. So that those apply to the secretary of state, the former president of the

01:21:32.920 United States, anyone who has access to classified material except for the president of the United

01:21:38.540 States, because he has the inherent constitutional power and constitutional power as commander in

01:21:43.820 chief to declassify and classify anything he wants. Now, he says, I had a standing order that

01:21:51.880 documents I took with me. I think this is how it was phrased. Forgive me if that's not correct.

01:21:56.260 But basically, I had a standing order. The documents I took with me would be declassified.

01:22:00.300 And John Bolton comes out. Of course, he's become an antagonist to the president,

01:22:04.700 but he comes out and says, I knew of no such order. And he said, that's almost certainly a lie.

01:22:10.840 And you've got all these former Trump officials saying, I didn't know about it. I didn't know

01:22:13.840 that I didn't know about such an order. What do you make of that? So President Trump can literally

01:22:18.560 wave a magic wand and declassify anything he wants when he was president. And let me give you an

01:22:24.160 example. In 2012, President Obama, March of 2012, President Obama was meeting with the president

01:22:30.820 president of Russia, one of Vladimir's puppet presidents before Vladimir went back.

01:22:35.620 Medvedev.

01:22:36.640 And exactly. So President Obama gets caught on a hot mic saying that he would have more negotiating

01:22:44.580 room with Russia after the presidential election in 2012. So basically, giving them some of the most

01:22:51.820 classified information you can give to our enemy saying, hey, hold tight for eight months. You're

01:22:58.100 going to have more negotiating room. That is highly classified information. And if anyone other than

01:23:03.040 the president of the United States or someone authorized by the president of the United States

01:23:07.580 said that to our enemy, they'd be in prison, right, for espionage. But because it was it because it was

01:23:13.700 the president of the United States who relayed this, he could not violate the espionage act by how

01:23:18.780 he handles classified material, period, full stop.

01:23:22.900 It's so fascinating. OK, so so let's talk about what's happening in court.

01:23:26.300 Now, today, President Trump has gone in there and filed an objection to this search on Fourth

01:23:32.500 Amendment grounds and has said, I want a special master appointed to separate out attorney client

01:23:37.520 privileged information. You know, there's stuff in there that by any standard, the FBI should not

01:23:42.380 be reviewing is his point. Does he have a point? And do you think they will appoint a special master

01:23:48.080 or is there some greater ability of the DOJ and the FBI to review documents than you or I could do

01:23:56.280 because we wouldn't be allowed to look at his private privilege information?

01:24:00.800 So they this motion included a rule forty one G request under the federal rules of criminal

01:24:06.540 procedure, which is to get back the property that belongs to President Trump. And as part of that,

01:24:11.080 you can tee up these legal issues. Right. And there are several legal issues in this case.

01:24:16.260 Number one, as we discussed, the president has the absolute constitutional power to classify or

01:24:21.340 declassify. He has the absolute statutory power to determine whether it's a personal record that

01:24:26.440 belongs to Trump or a presidential record that goes to the archives and then gets sent back to

01:24:30.880 Trump's library as the former president. There's also the issue that this magistrate judge Bruce

01:24:35.880 Reinhardt is clearly biased. He has a judicial bias that requires his recusal under 28 U.S.C. 455A,

01:24:44.840 the United States Code, along with Canon 2 and Canon 2A of the judicial candidates. There's no reason

01:24:50.400 that this judge should be on this case. He has a clear bias against Trump as evidenced by his

01:24:55.040 2017 Facebook post where he bashed President Trump's integrity, personal integrity. And then also just

01:25:02.620 eight weeks ago on June 22nd, this magistrate judge Bruce Reinhardt recused from President Trump's

01:25:09.680 civil lawsuit versus Hillary Clinton. So what happened in the last eight weeks that made

01:25:15.160 Judge Reinhardt's bias that he recognized and caused him to recuse, what made his bias go away

01:25:22.780 in this case? Right. And so that's the other issue that's a problem. Another, the bigger issue,

01:25:28.520 the Fourth Amendment issue, or another issue is the Fourth Amendment issue that they raised in this

01:25:33.300 motion, that Trump's lawyers raised in this motion. And it's what you talked about

01:25:37.240 with your prior guest, Megan, is when you're dealing with anyone, especially a former president,

01:25:44.880 a home raid should be the last option. And it doesn't seem like they went to the last option

01:25:51.500 here. Former presidents get federally funded office space. They have secure facilities called

01:25:57.200 SCIFs so they can look at classified material. They get security clearances. They have staff,

01:26:03.080 paid federal staff. They have Secret Service protection to guard these paper records. Unlike

01:26:08.640 Hillary Clinton's illegal home server that was likely hacked by foreign governments, these are paper

01:26:14.080 records that are protected by the Secret Service with cameras and bugging devices. There is no reason

01:26:20.560 that Merrick Garland should have ordered this home raid. There is no reason, you know, Merrick Garland

01:26:26.280 said that he had, the story keeps changing. First, they said that Merrick Garland in Newsweek,

01:26:31.340 they said Merrick Garland didn't order the raid. Well, that's nonsense. He had to admit

01:26:34.720 that he did order the raid. And then they said that the Biden White House was not involved

01:26:39.140 in this raid. Now, John Solomon from Just the News is reporting that, yes, yes, in fact,

01:26:43.840 the White House Counsel's Office was very much involved with this home raid. And then they were

01:26:49.340 saying that there were nuclear documents in Mar-a-Lago, like Trump had the launch codes. Well,

01:26:54.260 that's just nonsense on its face. If Trump had the launch codes, first of all, they changed them

01:26:58.180 after he leaves the presidency. They do. I knew it.

01:27:01.380 Watch codes. Why did they wait 18 months to go get them? Why did Merrick Garland leak out that he

01:27:06.500 deliberated four weeks, he said, to get these records? Why did they wait three days after this

01:27:11.760 biased judge, Bruce Reinhardt, authorized this home raid before they actually executed the raid? If

01:27:16.940 these records were so sensitive, nuclear records, why didn't they go get them immediately? And then also,

01:27:22.720 if you look at the inventory, if they had nuclear records, why didn't the inventory include

01:27:27.860 Q-level classification, Department of Energy Q-level classification for nuclear records? They

01:27:33.060 had TS, they had SCI, which are CIA records. They had SAP, which are Department of Defense records.

01:27:38.980 Why didn't they have Q-records? The story keeps changing. They keep spinning and putting out these

01:27:43.680 lies because they realize that they screwed up royally, and this is backfiring badly on them.

01:27:50.080 So they're trying to, uh, uh, they're trying to make their raid look more justified than it was.

01:27:55.500 And at the end of the day, this was a political raid to get politically damaging documents from

01:28:01.420 President Trump that he declassified and made personal, which was his constitutional and statutory

01:28:07.560 power as president. This is so fascinating to me. This is, this is why I love you, Mike,

01:28:12.760 is we just, you've got all your facts. I love people with their facts. Uh, so let's just,

01:28:16.460 let's go back. Okay. The, the little archivist who also hates Trump, that's, that's clear too,

01:28:21.240 from his public comments, this guy doesn't like Trump. The federalist did a long report on this

01:28:24.720 guy and how he was like, Oh, I'm, I'm definitely retiring under Joe Biden, which he did. Cause he

01:28:28.220 didn't, he wanted to be replaced by Biden, not by Trump called January 6th, the worst day of his

01:28:33.460 life and so on. So this guy is upset that he doesn't have all of his files. You can just picture

01:28:38.160 it like the pocket protector, you know, the glasses with the tape on it. I'm sorry,

01:28:42.940 archivist. That's how I picture you. Um, and he's like, I don't have all my documents.

01:28:47.380 So he winds up getting Trump to submit, to return 15 boxes and then says, Oh, there are classified

01:28:53.960 documents in here. They're classified. And so he runs over to the DOJ and they do something

01:28:58.300 extraordinary even then. Right. Why did they then open up a grand jury proceeding and slap Trump with

01:29:05.820 a subpoena? Like what would the, would the normal move have been to open up a grand jury proceeding at

01:29:10.380 that point? Or would it have been for somebody at DOJ to call up Trump and say, yo, there's some

01:29:15.860 classified documents in here. You know, give us a point person to deal with. Were you surprised to

01:29:20.620 see the next move was grand jury? Well, I, I, I should be surprised. I've worked at the justice

01:29:25.980 department. I've clerked for the Supreme court for justice course, which I've clerked on a court of

01:29:30.460 appeals. I should be very, I've actually been a federal prosecutor. I should be very surprised,

01:29:35.240 but with the Obama, Biden, Hillary regimes, I'm not surprised by anything. They've proven that

01:29:40.860 they are more than willing to weaponize the justice department. They're willing to spy on

01:29:46.040 presidential presidential candidate, Donald Trump. They're even willing to spy on president Trump.

01:29:50.060 So nothing surprises me with this corrupt regime, the Biden, Hillary, Obama regime. But I will say,

01:29:57.720 if you look, as we talked about, if you look at the, the alleged crimes that they're investigating,

01:30:02.980 espionage, uh, government property, destruction or theft, and then obstruction of these investigations,

01:30:09.660 as we discussed, Megan, it's legally impossible for a president of the United States to violate the

01:30:15.380 espionage act by how he handles classified materials. And it's legally impossible for, to

01:30:21.820 charge Trump for destruction of government property under the presidential records act. First of all,

01:30:26.900 there's no criminal component to the presidential records act. They're trying to bootstrap

01:30:30.540 other statutes onto this to make it a crime. But again, president Trump made these declassified

01:30:36.660 records, personal, a copy of, of these records personal. And so it's just, they've gone over

01:30:43.780 the red line here and they're doing everything they can to get Trump.

01:30:48.920 Okay. So then, so they open up the grand jury proceeding, they get a subpoena,

01:30:51.540 they hit Trump with a subpoena, and then they, they get more boxes. They go down there in June,

01:30:56.860 they have a meeting. And this is where they claim they, they have the moral high ground. You know,

01:31:02.480 it reads, it reaches its peak because they claim that one of the Trump lawyers submitted an affidavit

01:31:07.100 or a declaration, a sworn testimony in paper, um, saying we gave you everything. You've got it all.

01:31:12.420 And then the mole can't comes out and says, it's a lie. You've been lied to by the lawyers.

01:31:19.020 And they hit Trump with a subpoena for videotape of Mar-a-Lago. And this is when, you know,

01:31:25.660 they needed their smelling salts because they saw randos, according to them, according to the New

01:31:31.320 York Times, running around Mar-a-Lago near these precious secrets. And they called up Mar-a-Lago

01:31:36.780 and Trump's team and said, put a damn padlock, an extra one on the door. And Trump's team said,

01:31:41.720 okay. Um, but they're basically saying because a lawyer lied to us under oath, what choice did we

01:31:47.140 have, but to go nuclear from, pardon the pun and get a warrant, which of course is far more serious

01:31:53.060 than a subpoena. Um, and that's, that's why we had to do it. We've been lied to by lawyers under

01:31:58.080 oath. We were out of options. That's just, uh, you just don't know. These are, these are leaks that

01:32:04.560 are coming out of this investigation. They're improper leaks, but what did the affidavit actually say

01:32:08.860 that Trump didn't have classified records? Well, he didn't, he declassified them. Right. So

01:32:12.940 that's number one. And if you're, if in order to charge someone with an 18 USC, 1,001 violation,

01:32:19.660 they have to intend to lie, right? It can't just be that they made a mistake and they thought they

01:32:24.800 sent in an affidavit was, that was correct. Then it ended up not being correct because there was

01:32:28.780 another box and, you know, Melania, Melania's underwear drawer that they didn't realize. I mean,

01:32:33.320 you have to show that the lawyer actually knew that they were making a false statement in order to

01:32:37.500 charge them with 18 USC, 1,001. So short on time, but do you believe they're going to indict

01:32:43.860 Donald Trump? I think that that was their intent going into this thing, but I think they've seen

01:32:49.400 the tremendous blowback on this thing. Look, they know that they can't, they know that Trump's going

01:32:54.680 to win the nomination and they've actually helped solidify Trump winning the nomination by doing this

01:32:59.100 rate. His, his poll numbers have gone up by 12 points. They know that Biden can't run again

01:33:03.660 because he's demented and he's not going to be able to run again. So who do they have left? Kamala.

01:33:08.520 So they know that trip, president Trump has a very serious, very real chance of becoming the

01:33:13.880 president again. And I think they're doing everything they can to stop this. And they're

01:33:17.800 being, this is desperate. This is, this is a desperate move on their part and it backfired back.

01:33:22.520 So we'll see. I think they want to indict him, but there will be a huge backlash by the American

01:33:28.380 people. Cause I think people see that this is unjust Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton took 180,000,

01:33:33.140 $190,000 worth of furniture out of the white house. And they didn't get an FBI raid. Hillary

01:33:37.660 Clinton had a home server that got hacked by foreign governments, no rate, but we're going to,

01:33:41.560 we're going to find every way we can to get a former president Trump because he's Trump.

01:33:47.180 Quick question on a technicality. Does it matter that Trump is a former president, right? Like

01:33:53.380 some people have been saying if he didn't declassify all this stuff before he left the white house,

01:33:58.060 Benny's in trouble. Well, it, it, so only the current president has the,

01:34:02.740 the classification authority under the constitution, but under the presidential records

01:34:06.720 act, it contemplates that former presidents have classified classified materials. There's a very

01:34:12.220 good piece in the wall street journal on this. I think it was yesterday by Rifkin and people should

01:34:17.420 read that it talks about this, this exact issue that it doesn't matter whether Trump had classified

01:34:22.160 or unclassified under the statute, under the presidential records act, because the presidential

01:34:27.040 records act contemplates that he has these records, but he absolutely declassified these

01:34:32.040 records. We saw this in his January 19th declassification order on crossfire hurricane

01:34:37.320 and other records. And he declassified them by his actions, just like president Obama declassified

01:34:43.280 when he, in 2012, when he told the Russian president, some of the most highly classified information,

01:34:49.260 10 seconds or less, if they were to charge him, would it be in DC? Would he have,

01:34:52.920 would he face a DC jury or could it possibly be in Florida?

01:34:56.780 They, they would try to jur, they would try to, they would try to get it in DC because they know

01:35:01.760 it's a, a Trump deranged DC is like 95% Democrat. And they know that they'd get a good judge and

01:35:07.080 they'd get a good DC circuit. At the end of the day, the Supreme court would have to step in and

01:35:11.100 reverse. And I even, I even think Democrat appointed justices like justice Kagan know that

01:35:16.420 they would have to step in because this is bigger than Trump. This is about the presidency and

01:35:20.220 his presidential powers. Yeah. Oh gosh, Mike. So great to hear your POV. Thank you for coming

01:35:27.040 on and sharing your insights with us. And I hope you'll come back. I will. Thank you.

01:35:31.000 Coming up tomorrow. We've got Dan Wooten back to talk about Meghan Markle's new podcast. Don't miss that.

01:35:38.380 Thanks for listening to the Meghan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - August 23, 2022

Media Irrelevance, Fauci's Retirement, and the Trump Raid, with Jared Kushner, Bryan Dean Wright, and Mike Davis ｜ Ep. 378

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