The Megyn Kelly Show - The Truth About January 6th, with Andy McCarthy and Julie Kelly ｜ Ep. 140

00:00:00.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.020 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.020 Oh, we have a lot of good answers coming your way today.

00:00:17.300 A lot of good facts that you're not going to hear anyplace else.

00:00:19.720 We're talking about, among other things, January 6th with Andy McCarthy and Julie Kelly,

00:00:24.620 who's been doing really good reporting on this.

00:00:26.520 Yes, she caused a bit of a controversy in her reaction to the police officer's testimony last week,

00:00:31.500 and we'll get into that too.

00:00:32.960 But we're going to start with one of my favorite legal analysts, and that is Andy McCarthy.

00:00:36.620 And first, we're going to touch on a few things that you want to hear his reaction on.

00:00:39.820 Cuomo, right? What's going to happen with that?

00:00:42.380 Is he going to get impeached? What does he think about Cuomo's defense yesterday?

00:00:46.440 I'm going to ask him about these vaccine passports that we're seeing pop up more and more in places like New York,

00:00:50.960 which is now mandating that you show proof of vaccine if you want to go into a restaurant.

00:00:54.500 I'm going to ask him about the rent abatement controversy now and how Biden appears to have given himself the authority to do something

00:01:01.120 both he and the Supreme Court previously realized he has no authority to do.

00:01:05.480 So we're going to get into all of that, and then we're going to talk in depth about January 6th and these hearings that we're seeing

00:01:11.200 and whether this is just a sideshow, right?

00:01:14.080 Like, what is real?

00:01:14.980 What do we actually think about the charges that have been brought so far,

00:01:18.300 what the Justice Department is doing, so many people in jail for effectively a year,

00:01:23.620 heading on to a year now without facing trial, without knowing what the evidence is against them,

00:01:29.500 with, in some cases, defense lawyers who are looking to re-educate them by making them read certain materials

00:01:35.260 and watch certain movies.

00:01:36.800 I mean, it's kind of crazy what's happening.

00:01:38.580 One guy, we're going to talk about this guy, doesn't appear to be a nice guy.

00:01:43.040 A lot of racist writings and clips on his phone and so on.

00:01:46.860 So far as I can tell, even the courts are admitting he didn't actually do anything criminal.

00:01:51.120 But he's thinking about it.

00:01:53.400 He's thinking bad things.

00:01:55.000 How does he wind up in jail for so long without any sort of a hearing?

00:01:59.240 We're going to get into all of it today.

00:02:00.900 I found it a fascinating discussion.

00:02:02.400 So we're going to kick it off with Andy.

00:02:03.740 He's a bestselling author.

00:02:04.600 He's a National Review Institute senior fellow, contributing editor at National Review 2,

00:02:10.080 but really I think is among his greatest contributions to our country,

00:02:14.680 is he prosecuted terrorists for a living for a long, long time.

00:02:18.160 He put in jail the blind sheik when he was assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. 1.00

00:02:23.340 He led that prosecution.

00:02:24.860 He's contributed to the prosecution of terrorists who bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and so on.

00:02:30.700 So he's spent a lot of years protecting us.

00:02:32.400 And now he protects us in another way by offering his smart editorial thoughts on legal cases of the day.

00:02:37.440 And then Julie is a political commentator, also senior contributor at American Greatness,

00:02:43.380 which is a right-leaning sort of Trump-supporting publication.

00:02:46.360 But she's written in the past for National Review, for The Hill, for The Wall Street Journal, The Federalist, and so on.

00:02:52.520 She is a stay-at-home mom in suburban Chicago.

00:02:55.640 And she's got a lot of thoughts on what's been happening with these criminal defendants

00:02:58.980 because she's been actually interviewing them.

00:03:00.680 She's been taking the time to follow each case like the mainstream media refuses to do.

00:03:05.480 Okay, it's all coming up one minute away.

00:03:13.560 Andy McCarthy.

00:03:14.920 Hi, how are you?

00:03:16.360 I'm doing just great.

00:03:17.240 How are you?

00:03:18.240 Good.

00:03:18.740 Love talking to you.

00:03:19.900 So excited that you're here.

00:03:21.520 So much to go over.

00:03:22.920 Let's get to it.

00:03:23.540 Start with Cuomo.

00:03:24.860 An unbelievable day yesterday.

00:03:26.600 Um, I talked to Janice Dean as it was going down here.

00:03:32.200 We were taping and I hadn't yet seen his denial.

00:03:35.200 That happened as we were kind of putting the podcast to bed.

00:03:38.620 And it was, I have to say, somewhat entertaining.

00:03:41.700 It was like, my mother and father touched people.

00:03:45.160 I touch people.

00:03:46.600 We're touchers.

00:03:47.480 Not, not the way you want to go, governor, but just for people who hadn't seen it, here's a little sampling of the governor's defense.

00:03:57.780 The New York Times published a front page picture of me touching a woman's face at a wedding and then kissing her on the cheek.

00:04:10.200 That is not front page news.

00:04:13.940 I've been making the same gesture in public all my life.

00:04:19.420 I actually learned it from my mother and from my father.

00:04:27.500 It is meant to convey warmth, nothing more.

00:04:33.120 Indeed, there are hundreds, if not thousands of photos of me using the exact same gesture.

00:04:40.420 I do it with everyone, black and white, young and old, straight and LGBTQ, powerful people, friends, strangers, people who I meet on the street.

00:05:03.840 There's a long, long list of people he's touched.

00:05:07.620 Yeah.

00:05:08.180 Just like mom and dad.

00:05:10.420 Yeah, well, you know, I must say when I hear this, you know, first of all, if you rob the bank at high noon, it's still a bank robbery.

00:05:19.280 You know, it doesn't matter if the camera's rolling and everybody's watching.

00:05:23.360 And the other thing that rubs me the wrong way about this is, you know, he keeps saying I'm 63.

00:05:28.080 I'm from another time.

00:05:29.920 No one else is listening to this, Megan.

00:05:31.660 So this is between you and me, right?

00:05:32.920 I'm 62 and I've sort of traveled around in, not at the same level, obviously, but I've, you know, I've been in sort of elite Washington and especially New York legal circles and some political circles.

00:05:48.740 What's described in that report was never right.

00:05:52.420 There was never a time when that was when that was OK.

00:05:55.740 So, you know, for him to sort of he's a very sophisticated guy.

00:06:00.860 And, you know, for him to say, you know, gee whiz, the mores changed and I just it just happened so fast that I never caught up with it is laughable.

00:06:12.420 On the other hand, the report that was written is very explosive and I think it's devastating for him politically.

00:06:23.540 But you'll appreciate this as as a lawyer when you're preparing a case to go to trial, when you're writing an indictment or you're writing a civil claim, you write the charging instruments with an eye toward what you can actually prove in court.

00:06:40.300 And this thing is very interesting because Letitia James, the AG, took her mandate as basically writing a report not to do anything.

00:06:51.160 So, you know, no criminal prosecution, no civil claim.

00:06:55.380 So the usual thing that you have as a lawyer that disciplines you to only put out what you can prove is not present in the four corners of that report.

00:07:05.180 That doesn't mean that there's not a lot of corroborated information and that the victims are incredible.

00:07:11.700 But, you know, I mean, this thing has been put out in a way that is never going to be challenged in court.

00:07:20.560 And, you know, it's probably going to kill him politically.

00:07:25.400 Maybe we'll see. I mean, he's not going to step down.

00:07:27.440 So it's really up to the assembly to see whether they want to impeach him.

00:07:31.080 And so far, they haven't won. They haven't wanted to.

00:07:34.100 You know, he's too powerful. There's a battle.

00:07:35.940 I saw your tweet on this yesterday. You nailed it.

00:07:38.480 This isn't about Dem versus GOP.

00:07:40.240 This is about moderate Dems versus progressive woke Dems.

00:07:43.960 And unfortunately, as a New Yorker, I'm on the side if I have to choose between those two of moderate Dems, which sadly he kind of is.

00:07:53.020 So if we lose him and I want him to go, don't get me.

00:07:56.260 I mean, I just think he's too bad of a man to stay in office.

00:07:58.280 But what are what are we going to get?

00:08:01.220 Well, I think if they do it quickly, you may get the lieutenant governor you have now, who I think moderates would be more pleased with than than with Cuomo.

00:08:10.640 The weather vane here, Megan, it seems to me, is heasty because he's a Cuomo guy through and through.

00:08:18.340 And I thought it was very interesting.

00:08:20.380 He really did a 180 yesterday when the report first came out.

00:08:23.420 I mean, you knew what was going to happen, right?

00:08:24.800 The report comes out and these guys are like humming and humming and humming.

00:08:28.160 They don't want to say anything where they're planting their feet and they want to see how the polls in New York go for two or three days before they decide where they have to come out.

00:08:36.620 So he initially came out and said, I find this report very disturbing.

00:08:41.800 Really?

00:08:42.580 You know, this is the top Dem in the state legislature.

00:08:44.920 But by by sundown, after Biden had kind of cut the legs out from under Cuomo, heasty was saying a different tune.

00:08:55.160 He was saying I found my moral conscience.

00:08:58.040 Yeah, right, right, right.

00:08:59.880 As soon as the president told me what it was.

00:09:01.740 And then, you know, he basically said he's unfit to serve and we've lost confidence in him.

00:09:07.840 To me, that's a big deal in New York politics because he's Cuomo's guy.

00:09:13.540 And I just don't see how Cuomo survives.

00:09:16.620 This to me is not like a Ralph Northam situation where he toughed it out.

00:09:21.380 But the politics of Virginia are really that sort of prism of Republican versus Democrat.

00:09:26.080 I don't think Cuomo can survive the woke progressives wanted him out already.

00:09:32.540 So this is a very different dynamic than what we see in the country.

00:09:36.200 And if he doesn't have the support of establishment Democrats, I think he's toast.

00:09:40.800 Yeah, I think I mean, this is really a this is an important moment, I think, for Democrats in New York state, because somebody tweeted out yesterday, if they don't get rid of this guy, the Me Too movement is officially dead.

00:09:52.060 I mean, I would argue it died with Kavanaugh.

00:09:54.240 But whatever was left of it is definitely dead if they don't get rid of this guy.

00:09:59.180 You got 11 women coming forward and he has had the opportunity to submit his 85 page rebuttal and he's had press conferences and he has he's had aides out there defending him.

00:10:08.160 So he you know, in the in the public world, in the PR world, he's had, quote, due process.

00:10:13.340 This isn't yet a legal matter that would require a whole level, additional level of scrutiny.

00:10:17.980 But, you know, you've got state troopers coming forward with other state troopers who witnessed her account.

00:10:23.820 These women seem very credible to me and not like somebody bringing up a 30 year allegation that there's no way of knowing whether it happened and there's no contemporaneous corroboration.

00:10:33.460 At this point, if if if they don't do anything about it.

00:10:38.140 I don't know what it's saying to American women. 0.90

00:10:40.780 I just feel like it's just a such a middle finger to American women if they don't do anything about this. 1.00

00:10:45.660 Yeah, I think that's right.

00:10:47.120 The interesting thing, though, is you were rolling all through that.

00:10:50.320 And that's exactly the way that you would want to marshal it.

00:10:54.800 I keep going back to, you know, you with Janice Dean yesterday when this all came out.

00:11:00.240 What we're now seeing, this latest report has turbocharged this thing in a way that, you know, two days ago you would have thought that Cuomo would easily survive.

00:11:10.640 Now it looks like he probably won't survive.

00:11:14.060 But the real important thing here, I mean, I don't mean to belittle the sexual harassment report.

00:11:21.060 But the handling of the nursing homes with the covid patients is the is the five alarm scandal here.

00:11:31.100 And it just I find it interesting.

00:11:33.600 Right.

00:11:33.800 As a direct result, you could definitely make the case of his order sending covid positive patients back into these small nursing homes with the most vulnerable population over the objections of nursing and health groups who said, don't do this, governor.

00:11:46.180 You're going to kill a lot of people.

00:11:47.300 Well, yep. 0.98

00:11:48.380 And I think, you know, if he had copped to it at the time, Megan, you know, if he had just said, look, we were grappling at the beginning, we didn't really know the tiger we had by the tail.

00:11:57.940 We were worried about hospital space and we screwed up.

00:12:01.620 I think, you know, people wouldn't have liked that, but they would have understood it.

00:12:05.720 But he not only didn't do that, they covered up what they did.

00:12:09.480 And then he takes this friggin victory lap with the with the book, which is just I mean, it's infuriating.

00:12:15.460 And I just think that should have been enough in a normal political culture and normal political climate that should have been enough to get him out. 0.94

00:12:22.780 Well, they believe that a lot of those Dems have their own hands dirty when it comes to that scandal. 1.00

00:12:28.180 And therefore, they'd much rather boot him based on this.

00:12:31.660 They weren't there while he allegedly put his hand under the executive assistant's blouse and grabbed her breast. 0.97

00:12:36.380 You know, that can be totally his scandal.

00:12:38.080 So we'll see. OK, let's move on to vaccine passports, because we're seeing in New York City and trust me, it's coming to a city near you.

00:12:46.000 Yeah, that now you're not going to be able to go out to eat inside of a restaurant or go to an entertainment venue or go to a gym without proof of your vaccination.

00:12:56.060 And I know that there's Supreme Court precedent saying vaccine mandates are OK in many settings.

00:13:00.980 That's sort of the history here for public health reasons.

00:13:03.300 But do you think there's any legal argument against this or do you think this is going to fall right in line with legal precedent?

00:13:09.840 Well, it does fall in line with the legal precedent.

00:13:12.480 But you have a lot of important voices, Justice Alito and Justice Gorsuch among them, saying that we really need to revisit Jacobson versus Massachusetts,

00:13:23.740 which is this early 20th century, I guess it's smallpox era case that basically said these vaccine mandates are OK.

00:13:33.300 They didn't really come out and say they're OK.

00:13:36.820 I mean, basically, the mandate in that case, you could get out of it by paying a five dollar fee, which is about 140 bucks now.

00:13:45.580 So it's not really the same kind of mandate we're talking about.

00:13:49.160 And the other thing that justices say who are who want to revisit this is that this case came out before the Supreme Court developed what is now its its real jurisprudence for evaluating claims that the state has infringed your what you claim to be your fundamental rights.

00:14:09.500 Right. So after that case, the Supreme Court develops this test where they say if you're claiming a fundamental right,

00:14:19.160 was is being infringed, the state has to show that it has a compelling reason to regulate and that the regulation it's chosen is the least restrictive alternative.

00:14:30.220 It's the it's the smallest thing they can do in terms of interfering with your right while at the same time pursuing or facilitating their compelling interest.

00:14:40.120 And if we're if you're not dealing with a fundamental right, you're in a different category called rational relation, which means the state just has to show they have a legitimate reason to regulate and that the regulation they've chosen is rationally related to the end they're trying to accomplish.

00:14:59.320 And what this all means in a nutshell is that if it's rational relation, the government wins always.

00:15:07.280 And if it's strict scrutiny, the government usually loses, but not always.

00:15:13.320 So what you get down to is what kind of right is this?

00:15:17.520 What is the right not to be vaccinated?

00:15:20.520 And so far, the courts relying on Jacobson have said it's an important right, but it's not a fundamental right.

00:15:28.740 So we're going to use rational relation scrutiny.

00:15:32.080 But, you know, the case came up before there was rational relation scrutiny.

00:15:36.300 So there there may be very good reason to go back and take another look at it.

00:15:39.800 Hmm. So if you were a betting man and you look at the Supreme Court, which leans more right now than it has in any recent decade, what would you say the odds are that they would say the government's gone too far on some of these vaccine mandates?

00:15:52.860 I mean, we've seen district courts, lower federal trial courts uphold them at universities already saying you can't come to this college unless you get a vaccine.

00:16:00.440 But that's not the Supreme Court.

00:16:02.180 So what I mean, would you say there's a chance there's a good chance that they might say you can't do this?

00:16:07.480 I'd say it's a low chance now.

00:16:10.420 Now, the wild card here is and this is unbelievable from the Biden people.

00:16:16.900 The vaccine doesn't have final approval from the FDA.

00:16:20.640 Right. So, yeah, since it's only approved for emergency purposes, statutorily, they have to tell people that they have an option not to to take it.

00:16:30.100 So I think that, you know, that that obviously if they if they button that down, then you're in a different you're a different set of facts before court.

00:16:38.660 But the history of the United States, I don't mean to be like too portentous about this, but this is this is what it is.

00:16:45.480 Right. When we have a crisis.

00:16:48.880 The court tends to give a wide berth to the elected officials, especially the executive officials, to deal with the crisis.

00:16:57.760 And to the extent that you get new law that upholds civil rights, it tends to come after the crisis is over and it sets norms for the next crisis.

00:17:09.060 But it's cold comfort to the people in the here and now. Right.

00:17:11.540 So, you know, you have Lincoln suspending habeas corpus, you have the Japanese internment, all sorts of things that the court has kind of looked the other way on while the crisis was going on and then clamped down afterwards.

00:17:25.800 If this follows that pattern, I think and you have not only the the three progressive judges on the court, but I think certainly Chief Justice Roberts and maybe even Justice Kavanaugh are kind of of a mind to sort of let the elected officials do their thing.

00:17:46.160 And if the people don't like it, let there be a political, not a judicial outcome.

00:17:52.740 And I think the court is probably with respect to vaccines, at least going to give the executive branches of the state and the federal government a wide berth.

00:18:07.680 Now, there's other things that they're that they're going to do, especially if we get to lockdowns again.

00:18:15.160 Yeah. The Cuomo decision a few months ago indicated that if you really are in that established fundamental right category, like religious liberty, the Cuomo case was about the restrictions on worship rights in a couple of places in New York.

00:18:32.220 And the court said, no, you can't do that because religious exercise is a fundamental right.

00:18:39.960 And there's a lot of ways that you could accomplish what you're trying to accomplish without these ridiculous draconian limitations.

00:18:47.780 So, you know, if you can if you could come up with a theory where not getting vaccinated gets you into the basket that the court calls fundamental rights, you know, then you'd be in a different, you're a better position as far as the vaccines.

00:19:02.180 Let me ask you this quickly. I want to get to the January 6th thing, but I but I I've been reading you on this rent abatement thing that's happening.

00:19:09.680 So the CDC said we're going to issue rent abatement for people.

00:19:14.480 They don't have to pay their rent because we've imposed all these, you know, the government's imposed all these terrible restrictions and lockdowns.

00:19:20.680 And it's not fair to stop people's income stream and then say, and now get the hell out for not paying your rent.

00:19:25.980 That was the original thought behind the rent abatement program.

00:19:29.600 And by the CDC, exactly. Unelected bureaucrats.

00:19:33.820 So I was like, OK, well, so then the Supreme Court said, yeah, that's going to end on July 31st.

00:19:40.840 That's the end of that. And the executive doesn't have the power to do this.

00:19:44.300 And then what happened? The executive stepped in and did this again.

00:19:47.760 There was so much pressure. The Congress needed to extend it.

00:19:50.460 If anybody, they refused. They didn't have it.

00:19:53.200 So Biden, under enormous pressure, basically just flouted the Supreme Court and said, we're extending it.

00:19:58.980 And I think you tell me, I think the strategy is that I heard Cori Bush over on NPR saying, yeah, we yeah, that's it.

00:20:05.800 And we don't care. And really, what we're looking to do is buy time to get more money to tenants and so on.

00:20:13.400 While this legal process plays out, even though we know we're going to lose.

00:20:17.620 So is there any question that they've overstepped their executive power?

00:20:20.460 Something we we we heard them complain about a lot under Trump.

00:20:24.480 And it seems a rather big power grab to me under Biden.

00:20:27.160 There's there's no question that they have overstepped and they know it just on Monday.

00:20:34.560 Gene Sperling, who's a White House advisor, longtime smart guy in Democratic circles, was at the briefing in the White House with Jen Psaki and said, you know, we've looked at this up, down and sideways.

00:20:48.240 There's no legal way to do it.

00:20:50.200 And that was when Biden was basically pleading with the states to do something, which, by the way, you wouldn't be surprised because this is intrastate commerce.

00:21:00.320 It's not intrastate commerce. It's not something the federal government ought to be regulating anyway.

00:21:04.620 But, you know, no, they absolutely know that they're in the wrong and they are playing for time.

00:21:11.080 And I think, Megan, you know, I hate to go back to the, you know, to the Alinsky rhetoric about Obama.

00:21:19.280 But this really is governance where the process is the penalty.

00:21:25.040 You know, you have people who they know they're running the government.

00:21:29.100 They may be in the wrong, but the wheels of justice grind slowly.

00:21:33.120 It takes a long time to get this stuff challenged in court.

00:21:35.420 It takes a long time to get it up to the Supreme Court.

00:21:37.660 And there's a lot you can do if you're willing to be abusive and use the the slowness of the process and the difficulties of people trying to to pursue their rights that are built into the process.

00:21:51.860 If you're willing to use those in a punitive way, there's a lot of bad things you can accomplish.

00:21:56.800 And it's not to say that anybody has anything other than empathy for the people struggling to pay the rents at the moment.

00:22:02.380 But they've also been given a lot of checks. The government's also already issued a lot of aid.

00:22:08.340 The taxpayers are already trying to help these people.

00:22:10.880 The unemployment rate is still unnecessarily low because people are on their couches, not going back into the workforce.

00:22:17.000 So it's a complicated issue.

00:22:19.720 Up next, why Andy McCarthy does not think January 6th was an insurrection and why he, like yours truly and many of you,

00:22:26.820 is deeply offended at the continuing narrative that January 6th was even comparable to, never mind worse than, 9-11.

00:22:39.300 Let's start on January 6th with what I think is not a complicated issue.

00:22:43.240 You, our listeners mostly know, have spent a career as a U.S. attorney, as a federal prosecutor, putting terrorists in jail.

00:22:52.680 So you know what an actual bad guy looks like, what an actual terrorist case looks like.

00:22:57.040 And I, and we're intimately involved after 9-11.

00:23:00.620 I am deeply offended.

00:23:03.040 As bad as January 6th was.

00:23:05.140 And I make no excuses for those guys.

00:23:06.700 I do, however, think the media and the Democrats are out of line and overstating it grossly to say that it was worse than 9-11.

00:23:16.360 And for me, Andy, I think it matters.

00:23:19.020 9-11 was a singular event in this country's history.

00:23:21.600 It was uniformly awful.

00:23:25.140 And I'm sick that they're trying to politicize the January 6th event to the place where, without, without downplaying it, they're trying to overstate it.

00:23:37.040 And I'm just going to give you a little flavor of the press and the left making the case that this is worse.

00:23:44.080 The 1-6 was worse than 9-11.

00:23:46.380 Listen.

00:23:46.920 The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.

00:23:50.200 The 1-6 attack for the future of the country is a profoundly more dangerous event than the 9-11 attacks. 0.92

00:23:58.920 And in the end, the 1-6 attacks are likely to kill a lot more Americans than were killed on the 9-11 attacks, which will include the casualties of the wars that lasted 20 years following.

00:24:11.680 This is the most important issue of our time, and I think it's actually the most important issue in the last 150 years since the Civil War.

00:24:21.060 Though there was less loss of life on January 6th, January 6th was worse than 9-11 because it's continued to rip our country apart. 0.86

00:24:30.040 It looks directly like fascism.

00:24:33.060 It looks like Mussolini's Italy.

00:24:34.640 I would like to see January 6th as burned into the American mind as firmly as 9-11 because it was that scale of shock to the system.

00:24:46.600 In my career as a judge and in law enforcement, I have not seen a more dangerous threat to democracy than the invasion of the Capitol.

00:24:58.660 That last one was Merrick Garland, Merrick Garland, our Attorney General.

00:25:03.220 Your thoughts?

00:25:04.040 Well, to start with Merrick Garland, who you finished with there, I got to know Merrick Garland prosecuting terrorist cases in the 90s, and I really liked him.

00:25:14.660 He was one of the real adults in the Clinton Justice Department.

00:25:19.860 And when we needed something in terrorism prosecutions, he was the guy that you would talk to because he had a real sophisticated understanding of the issues and the importance of them.

00:25:30.980 And then he personally, Megan, led the prosecution.

00:25:36.200 He didn't end up trying the case, but he ran the investigation when Timothy McVeigh killed almost 180 people and destroyed a federal courthouse.

00:25:44.500 So for him to come out and say, echoing these other folks that you played, that this is the worst thing that he's ever seen in his professional career in terms of peril to the United States is just, to me, mind-boggling.

00:26:02.340 And I'm really tired of every time I have to go on this rant saying that, you know, January 6th was a bad thing.

00:26:11.520 January 6th was a disgrace.

00:26:12.900 Anybody who watched it knows it was terrible for the country.

00:26:18.460 The worst thing about it is our proud boast, which became a norm for Western democracy on the peaceful transfer of power.

00:26:27.240 We'll never be able to brag about that in the foreseeable future like we were on January 5th, right?

00:26:33.760 So that's a terrible thing for the country.

00:26:36.200 But to compare it to a mass murder attack, I mean, the World Trade Center was destroyed and the Pentagon was struck by a missilized jumbo jet, right?

00:26:46.560 You want to compare that to a riot at the Capitol that, A, wouldn't have happened if they had put adequate security forces that had adequate training, if they were out there a number enough.

00:26:59.300 This might not even have happened.

00:27:00.600 But as bad as it was, Congress was able to reconvene that night. 0.81

00:27:05.920 And this talk that, like, you know, democracy was imperiled and we were on the precipice, that's ridiculous.

00:27:13.920 I mean, there was no way that Congress and Pence were going to refuse to count the electoral votes.

00:27:20.160 Biden was going to be president.

00:27:21.580 There was never a shadow of a doubt about that.

00:27:24.080 If they had needed to reconvene, they would have reconvened in Union Station or someplace if that's what they needed to do.

00:27:29.840 But they didn't need to do it because unlike 9-11, where buildings were destroyed, they were able to, you know, they had some broken windows and broken doors.

00:27:39.940 And I'm not trying to, you know, I want to say that that's not a big deal.

00:27:43.380 It's a very big deal.

00:27:44.580 And the people who get prosecuted for that, they're going to do time and they deserve to do time.

00:27:49.160 But come on, let's not turn this into something it wasn't.

00:27:51.520 They were able to do their job that night.

00:27:53.900 Yeah.

00:27:55.540 Unlike 9-11, we had 3,000 Americans killed, the hundreds of firefighters, the New York City police, and all of the firefighters and police officers who have died since as a result of cancers and other illnesses at Ground Zero, all of our troops who've been killed fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

00:28:13.440 I just think it is the height of disrespect to even mention those two events in the same sentence.

00:28:19.360 If I could say one more thing about it also, Megan, here's their excuse for doing it.

00:28:25.040 They say that maybe not as many people were killed and buildings weren't destroyed, but this was our democracy that hung in the balance.

00:28:35.640 So basically what they're saying is there's this abstraction out there that they call democracy that was going to be killed by this event.

00:28:45.260 Under circumstances where the reality of the situation is, the outcome of the presidential election was not in doubt, and there was no question that Congress was going to do its constitutional job, whether it was able to do that in the Capitol or not.

00:28:57.640 But if the abstraction they're talking about, democracy, is so weak that what happened on January 6th could destroy it, then we have much bigger problems than January 6th.

00:29:12.920 Right. That's exactly right.

00:29:14.260 So you've heard it. I've heard it. It was an insurrection. It was an insurrection.

00:29:19.200 One of the things I've been following you on is, interestingly, it's almost like the Giuliani thing, where Giuliani kept saying fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud in front of the cameras during the Trump electoral challenges.

00:29:30.660 But when he got into court, he wouldn't say that. That's what's happening now with the other side. 0.99

00:29:36.840 They say in front of the cameras, insurrection, insurrection, sedition, terrorism.

00:29:40.980 But when you actually look at what they're saying in court, they're not charging anyone with insurrection.

00:29:47.660 Right. And there is a crime of insurrection on the books and seditious conspiracy is on the books.

00:29:53.460 I prosecuted the blind sheikh and his jihadist cell for that. 1.00

00:29:58.000 And interestingly, the statute is called seditious conspiracy.

00:30:04.840 But if you read the charging language of it, the word sedition doesn't appear because of this dark history we have with the Alien and Sedition Acts.

00:30:13.140 But all of all of the statutory prongs are about using force against the government in a way that is almost projecting making war on the government.

00:30:23.860 In fact, one of the prongs is levying war against the United States.

00:30:28.000 Nobody's been charged with that. So, again, you're exactly right.

00:30:31.880 This is one of these things where there's kind of a public rhetoric about this and then there's what they say and do in court.

00:30:38.660 And there was a case, Megan, I think, within the last two weeks where one of the demonstrators, rioters, who was famously in the well of the Senate near Vice President Pence's desk there, pled guilty.

00:30:55.560 I think they charged him with interfering with Congress.

00:31:00.080 The government wanted him to get 18 months, which, given their extravagant rhetoric, is not exactly what you would expect for the seditionist, insurrectionist event that ended the United States.

00:31:12.680 This is Paul Hodges.

00:31:13.620 The judge thought, yeah, right. And the judge thought that this was that was that was over the top.

00:31:18.900 So he gave him eight months. So, you know, maybe that maybe the one silver lining we have here is that for all the crazy stuff that's being said.

00:31:27.880 And I can I can attest to this for from my terrorism prosecution, too.

00:31:32.220 There was there was one set of things that the government was saying on the steps of the courthouse and in, you know, in the White House and the press conferences.

00:31:42.200 And then there was what was going on in the four corners of the trial where there was no politically correct presentation.

00:31:48.420 And we were able to say this is what happened. This is why it happened.

00:31:52.800 And maybe here we're getting kind of the reverse of that, where, unlike in my case, where they were trying to soft pedal what happened here, they're they're hysterical about it.

00:32:04.060 But when you look at what's going on in the courtroom, the charges are very reasonable.

00:32:07.860 It looks like the sentences have been pretty reasonable, too.

00:32:10.260 They keep saying over and over again that seven people died on the January 6th riot. Is that true?

00:32:18.120 Well, one person died and that was the rioter and the Justice Department looked at that.

00:32:25.380 Anybody can look at it. It's on tape.

00:32:27.840 And they decided it was a righteous shooting and they didn't charge anyone.

00:32:31.960 Actually, that was Ashley Babbitt. Right.

00:32:34.060 As far as, you know, they continue that even last week at this at this first committee meeting of the January 6th committee, again, chairman who's at Benny Thompson is the chairman, said that six.

00:32:49.360 And I guess they now say it's seven or did he say seven and now it's eight because somebody else, another police officer who committed suicide.

00:32:56.240 Yeah. So we're up to eight. But the thing is, you know, you hate to have to to do this, but nobody was killed in the fighting, which is the suggestion that you that you get when they say these things.

00:33:12.380 Officer Sicknick, what they did with that guy is just I mean, it's appalling the way they they used his death.

00:33:19.540 But Democrats and the media have really misrepresented the Brian Sicknick case in a way that and.

00:33:26.240 Is egregious. Yeah. And right up to not only did they misrepresent it at the time when the Democrats filed their impeachment brief in the Senate, which was now almost five weeks after Sicknick passed, they continued to say that he was bashed over the head with a with a fire extinguisher extinguisher when it was already known by then that he went back to his office.

00:33:51.460 He never got hit over the head. He talked to his brother by text and said that he was fine other than he had gotten sprayed.

00:33:57.800 And then he expired. And then he expired tragically because of two strokes that he had, which, you know, can we say as a cosmic certainty that they had no causal connection between the between the rioting and what happened to him?

00:34:14.020 No. But, you know, no. But, you know, the burdens on the government to prove that that's the way it's supposed to work.

00:34:19.300 And they haven't proved it. There's no. In fact, two people have been charged with assaulting Officer Sicknick.

00:34:25.880 And his death is not even mentioned in the charges, much less do they allege that the people who they've charged caused it.

00:34:35.020 And in the meantime, the other police officers and now there now I guess there's three other ones who have who were involved in the fighting and who have died all committed suicide.

00:34:45.500 And it's just it's a tragic fact about police work. But it is a fact that people in that profession commit suicide at higher rates than people in other walks of life in our society.

00:35:01.100 So, you know, you can't say with certainty that that the rioting had anything to do with these people who passed.

00:35:08.620 And I just think, Megan, the fact that they so obviously hyperbolize here and continue to to distort the record on this speaks volumes about their ridiculous rhetoric about how this is worse than 9-11 and worse than every other.

00:35:25.020 You know, let's face it, it's the worst thing that's ever happened in the history of things. Right.

00:35:28.940 Right. But if it were, you wouldn't have to make this kind of stuff up and you wouldn't have to, you know, take people who didn't die in it and pretend that they did.

00:35:39.760 That's right. And none of that is to diminish what actually happened that day and in particular what the cops went through, because to me, that was the most infuriating thing.

00:35:50.520 And I said it right from the beginning and I've heard you say it over and over.

00:35:53.080 I thought the law enforcement officers who testified on day one of the January 6th hearing were compelling.

00:36:00.480 At least one of them was definitely very partisan.

00:36:03.360 And if you look at his tweets about Trump and so on, you know, had I been there as a Republican lawmaker, I probably would have raised that stuff just to show the potential for exaggeration or some extra flair in the testimony.

00:36:16.740 Right. Because he clearly hated Trump and he does not like Republicans. But these guys were hurt and you could see it.

00:36:23.880 You don't even really need to believe them. You could see it. You could hear the N word.

00:36:27.280 You could like a lot of this stuff is on tape. And I do think it's important for the purposes of this discussion to play some of that.

00:36:34.080 We have a lot of Republicans and Trump supporters listening to this program.

00:36:37.580 Let's operate in reality because this was not a day in the park either.

00:36:41.340 When I was 25 years old and then a sergeant in the army, I had deployed to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

00:36:53.360 But on January 6th, for the first time, I was more afraid to work at the Capitol than my entire deployment to Iraq.

00:37:02.300 Iraq. The rioters called me a traitor, a disgrace. I, an army veteran and a police officer, should be executed.

00:37:12.540 I told them to just leave the Capitol. And in response, they yelled, Joe Biden is not the president. 0.94

00:37:19.560 Nobody voted for Joe Biden. Well, I voted for Joe Biden. Does my vote not count? Am I nobody?

00:37:26.980 That prompted a torrent of racial epithets. One woman in a pink MAGA shirt yelled, you hear that, guys?

00:37:36.260 This voted for Joe Biden. Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in screaming, boo.

00:37:44.660 I heard chanting from some in the crowd, get his gun and kill him with his own gun. 0.94

00:37:53.680 I was aware enough to recognize I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm. 0.97

00:38:00.200 I was electrocuted again and again and again with a taser.

00:38:06.020 During those moments, I remember thinking there was a very good chance I would be torn apart or shot to death with my own weapon.

00:38:12.540 I thought of my four daughters who might lose their dad.

00:38:15.960 Doctors told me that I had suffered a heart attack and I was later diagnosed with a concussion, a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

00:38:25.700 Directly in front of me, a man seized the opportunity of my vulnerability, grabbed the front of my gas mask and used it to beat my head against the door. 0.87

00:38:33.300 He switched to pulling it off my head, the strap stretching against my skull and straining my neck.

00:38:37.300 He never uttered any words I recognized, but opted instead for guttural screams.

00:38:43.180 At this point, I knew I couldn't sustain much more damage and remain upright.

00:38:47.180 At best, I would collapse and be a liability to my colleagues.

00:38:50.720 At worst, be dragged out into the crowd and lynched.

00:38:53.040 I did the only thing that I could do and screamed for help.

00:38:58.000 That's dark. Dark.

00:39:00.680 What's going to happen to the guys who are charged with hurting those officers?

00:39:04.320 I think they're going to do a lot of time and they deserve to.

00:39:08.280 You know, I think you got probably three baskets of defendants, right?

00:39:15.300 You have people who were essentially loitering around the Capitol, many of whom got into the building after the defenses had been breached and the police were not trying to stop them from coming through anymore.

00:39:28.380 They're the kind of cases that, in a normal case, would get deferred prosecutions, which would mean you wouldn't actually indict them and prosecute them.

00:39:37.360 Here, apparently, the Justice Department is taking the position that that's not available.

00:39:41.360 So they're the kind of people you're going to see getting, you know, eight months or less.

00:39:46.220 Some people will get no time at all, probably.

00:39:49.000 Then there's the next category of people who were involved in breaching the defenses and breaking glass and vandalizing and doing those kind of things.

00:39:57.960 And I think they're going to get, you know, four or five years in prison, maybe a little more, maybe a little bit less.

00:40:04.840 And then there's the category, Megan, of people who did something to interfere with the police.

00:40:11.400 And the reason I'm sounding a little bit weaselly on that is because what the indictments say is that they've done anything from impede the police to assault a police officer.

00:40:24.880 And as we just heard, assaulting a police officer can be very serious.

00:40:30.060 On the other hand, in my second trial, I think around, I don't want to put a year on it, but many years ago, my second trial was assault on a federal officer.

00:40:39.220 And I had a defendant who clenched his fist and lunged but didn't do anything, and the police officer flinched.

00:40:47.000 And that was enough to get him on assault, you know.

00:40:49.660 So obviously there's gradations of that kind of behavior.

00:40:54.200 But let's say out of 130 or 140 people who have been charged with crimes against the police, 50 or 60 of them are really serious.

00:41:03.420 I think those people are going to do major time.

00:41:06.180 I think they're going to do more than 10 years, and they ought to.

00:41:09.220 And I mean, it does bear noting that as horrified as some of these committee members purport to be at what happened to guys like Officer Fanon, who we heard there talking about his heart attack and so on.

00:41:23.560 Very different reaction, Andy, in the wake of the BLM riots, where 2,000 police officers were stabbed, hurt, had bricks thrown in their heads, at their heads, had bones broken.

00:41:34.060 25 people died in and around the riots and connected with them.

00:41:39.320 I mean, a very different message.

00:41:41.160 And it's kind of infuriating when you see the Democrats have a mixed message.

00:41:45.020 And frankly, some of these Republicans who purport to care about the cops not care about these cops.

00:41:49.800 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:41:51.580 And, you know, this goes to one of the hysterical statements that you played from one of the political people before talking about, you know, this is so important because it's tearing our nation apart.

00:42:04.960 What's tearing our nation apart is the idea, which is much more than an idea, it's a concrete reality, that you have two tiers of justice in this country.

00:42:15.420 And that if you are of a certain political persuasion, you are treated officially by the Justice Department and by prosecutors across the country one way.

00:42:25.800 And if you are of a different political persuasion, you're treated entirely differently to the point that you have the FBI scorching the earth using Facebook, 0.65

00:42:37.560 using all kinds of technological means to identify every single moron who was, you know, loping through the Capitol that day, no matter how unserious the behavior was, so they could prosecute them for something. 0.69

00:42:51.140 And then in New York, the district attorney just cut loose everybody who was involved in the rioting because they say, well, you know, they were wearing masks. 0.94

00:42:59.120 It's hard to identify them.

00:43:00.740 Really?

00:43:01.920 You know, especially if you don't try.

00:43:04.600 Right.

00:43:05.000 But if you want to know what's tearing the country apart, that's what's tearing the country apart.

00:43:09.420 When the government officially treats the society like we have two different castes, that's what tears the society apart. 0.99

00:43:17.060 That is the perfect note to tee up our next guest, Julie Kelly, who's been taking a hard look at some of the specific cases and what the government's doing.

00:43:24.820 It's it's all hands on deck against a couple of these guys who on your in your categories are probably going to end up in category one.

00:43:31.520 You know, they loped onto the property after the breach had taken place.

00:43:34.440 But they may have said racist things.

00:43:37.080 They may have had bad thoughts, but the government's treating them as though they were cop assaulters and so on.

00:43:43.040 And so it raises an interesting debate.

00:43:45.160 If you find yourself with a very bad person in custody, an immoral person, but in what he's actually done is not that serious under the law.

00:43:54.420 How do you treat him?

00:43:55.280 Well, they're being treated very differently right now than they normally would.

00:43:59.220 Andy, I love talking to you.

00:44:00.360 It's so good to see you again.

00:44:02.160 Me too, Megan.

00:44:02.740 Thank you so much for this.

00:44:05.300 Up next, Julie Kelly, who has been interviewing those charged in connection with the January 6th riot and why she says thought crimes are now being punished with jail time.

00:44:16.940 That's next.

00:44:17.460 I want to pick up where I just left off.

00:44:23.440 We just we just said goodbye to Andy McCarthy.

00:44:25.320 And his final point was that in looking at those who are being held right now in connection with the January 6th riot, there are there appear to be two tiers of justice.

00:44:34.000 And those tiers depend on your political stripes, because we talked about how those who are in custody right now for January 6th are being held to a very different standard than those who rioted, maimed, murdered, hurt people.

00:44:50.620 During the BLM riots that we saw during the BLM riots that we saw the previous year, two very different approaches to crimes that may or may not have been violent.

00:44:58.460 I know you agree with that.

00:44:59.960 But what's your overall view on sort of the difference in the approaches?

00:45:03.680 I mean, it's very clear.

00:45:05.880 And I think that that is what really enrages people is because they saw over last summer for weeks, if not months, of violent protests, attacks against hundreds, if not thousands of police officers across the country.

00:45:21.040 Those people were not charged the same way as, say, several of the detainees in the D.C. jail who have been accused of attacking police officers who are denied bond.

00:45:31.580 They can't even, their families can't even have an opportunity to place bond for them.

00:45:37.380 The judges are outright denying and going along with the government for pretrial detention orders.

00:45:42.860 So that's just one set of differences is how so many people, protesters, violent protesters, including those outside of the White House in June of 2020,

00:45:53.900 how they were let off, charges dropped, certainly not held behind bars for months on end, awaiting a trial or a plea deal, whereas these defendants, many of them with no criminal record,

00:46:06.800 have been held for months and could be held, Megan, up to a year before their trials even start early or mid, middle of next year.

00:46:14.280 Hmm. It's funny because in New York, there's this big movement to get rid of bail because sort of these more progressive people think it's unfair to hold people for a year in jail

00:46:25.680 because you don't yet know whether they're guilty of a crime and that we're sort of overusing the bail system and setting bail too high in too many cases.

00:46:33.140 They don't they haven't said a word about what's happening to the January 6th rioters.

00:46:37.840 And I realize that they may not be the most sympathetic group, but fair is fair. Right.

00:46:41.960 What's good for the goose. So how many people have been arrested at this point?

00:46:46.140 Do we know and how many people are still in custody?

00:46:49.120 So, Megan, about 550 Americans have been arrested for their involvement in the Capitol protest.

00:46:56.340 The overwhelming majority face misdemeanor charges.

00:47:00.060 So the most frequent charges are trespassing in a restricted area, disorderly conduct, violent entry, parading and picketing in Congress, which always makes me laugh.

00:47:11.320 So those are the overwhelming majority of charges.

00:47:15.740 Roughly 100 defendants face charges of either assaulting or impeding law enforcement.

00:47:22.520 The same amount carrying some sort of weapon.

00:47:26.120 It's important to note that there were no one was arrested for carrying firearms or using firearms in the building that day,

00:47:33.960 even though we were told it was an armed insurrection.

00:47:36.380 A lot of people charged with pepper spray, flagpoles. 1.00

00:47:40.960 Some people stole riot shields that have been left by police.

00:47:44.600 So those are the sort of weapons charges that we saw.

00:47:48.060 But again, over and over, you see this disparity in how January 6th protesters were hand are handled by our judicial system and how other rioters, activists.

00:47:59.960 You could go back to the 2018 Brett Kavanaugh protests inside the Senate office building.

00:48:06.200 Those protesters got far closer to lawmakers in the face of lawmakers screaming at them, threatening them than certainly anyone on January 6th.

00:48:14.820 And so that is what's really, and listening to these court hearings and reading these documents, Megan, very upsetting because the judges are going along with this.

00:48:25.380 The prosecutors are insisting, and I just heard this a few weeks ago, that January 6th was an act of domestic terrorism.

00:48:33.480 And anyone who was involved, even someone who walked through an open door, committed no violent act, should be considered a domestic terrorist.

00:48:42.040 That is the bar that they're setting.

00:48:43.620 It's not only dangerous individually for these people, but certainly for the country and what that means for future political protests.

00:48:51.260 Right. And no one's been charged with domestic terrorism.

00:48:53.680 So they say that, but they're not actually able to prove that in court, but they use it to hold these people behind bars for, as you say, up to a year prior to actually seeing the inside of a courtroom.

00:49:03.680 Meanwhile, Antifa, according to Andy Ngo, who's been reporting on them, you know, from the inside, going to all of their protests, they're using the ends of umbrellas as weapons.

00:49:14.020 They're throwing rocks at people, frozen water bottles openly caught on camera at cops.

00:49:18.740 And the number is 2,000 cops.

00:49:20.980 According to the law enforcement officers unions, 2,000 cops were injured in the BLM riots and related melees that we saw over the past year.

00:49:28.460 So it's not to diminish what happened to those on January 6th, but the lack of outrage by the people claiming to be so empathetic toward the cops right now on behalf of the other 2,000 cops who were injured over the past year is stark.

00:49:43.800 OK, so let's talk about what's happening, because I heard last week that the Justice Department's lead prosecutor announced she's not going to be able to try a lot of these cases until the earliest 2022.

00:49:56.920 Two, because they haven't even set up the database that would allow them to share with defense counsel the evidence they're amassing.

00:50:06.460 Right. So that I listened to that hearing on Friday.

00:50:10.220 That was the prosecutor in the Tim Hale case.

00:50:12.860 Tim Hale has not been charged with any violent offense.

00:50:15.260 He's been in the D.C. jail since early February, arrested middle of January.

00:50:20.160 But I've seen this over and over.

00:50:22.780 The government does not have their evidence together.

00:50:25.780 They don't even have a platform, Megan, to set up all this huge trove of digital evidence, which, as you know, includes 14,000 hours of surveillance video captured by the U.S. Capitol Police surveillance system that day that they are desperately trying to keep under wraps, not just from the public, but from the media and even from defense attorneys.

00:50:46.920 They also have thousands of hours of body-worn camera footage.

00:50:51.540 They have social media posts.

00:50:53.420 They have open source video.

00:50:55.500 This has been basically sitting there.

00:50:58.080 They still don't have a platform to put all of it on.

00:51:01.980 The defense attorneys are desperate to get this information that they know could very possibly contain exculpatory evidence in favor of their client.

00:51:10.680 In the meantime, the Justice Department is using little cherry-picked clips, even like we saw last week in the January 6th Select Committee, little tiny cherry-picked clips to prove the guilt of a certain client.

00:51:25.200 What's dangerous is they're using those clips in these detention hearings to prove that this person is a danger and should stay behind bars.

00:51:32.100 But what this prosecutor said even surprised the judge, Judge Trevor McFadden, when she said the government will not meet its full discovery obligations until early 2022 at the soonest.

00:51:46.340 This means they will not have all of this evidence available, possibly until a year from now.

00:51:52.480 Meanwhile, you have all these people sitting in jail, denied bond, waiting to see their evidence, and they won't be able to for several more months.

00:52:01.160 Wow. And, you know, in a real trial, just a little clip without providing the full videotape would not be allowed into evidence.

00:52:09.180 That wouldn't be considered fair. It wouldn't allow the defense attorney to do his job.

00:52:13.000 So let's get through, let's go through a couple of these cases, because I have to tell you, as a lawyer, I find this stuff very interesting.

00:52:19.700 I really, I definitely want to talk about Timothy Hale, because I think his case is maybe one of the most interesting.

00:52:24.180 But let's start with Paul Hodgkins, who Andy mentioned as well, that Paul Hodgkins, he pleaded guilty in June.

00:52:32.040 He admitted to breaching the Senate floor with a Trump flag and a backpack full of goggles, rope and a pair of latex gloves. 0.99

00:52:38.860 He said he was remorseful for his stupid decision. 0.92

00:52:41.340 And then can you just tell, because I did not know this until I read it in your article, they're making people like Hodgkins and others say certain magic words upon pleading guilty about Biden's presidency? 0.98

00:52:56.080 Um, yes, well, they're not so much forcing them, maybe his attorney did say that.

00:53:02.960 But I'll tell you, Megan, that I listened to that hearing, and it broke my heart.

00:53:08.460 And I've covered a lot of this, as you know, from the very beginning, I felt so bad for this man.

00:53:14.360 He took a bus by himself from Tampa to Washington, D.C., 900 miles.

00:53:19.900 I think he's a crane operator.

00:53:22.020 He has an apprenticeship to be a mechanic.

00:53:24.880 He went there.

00:53:26.440 He committed no violent crime.

00:53:28.280 As you said, he went inside.

00:53:30.080 He had a Trump flag, which the judge and the prosecutor found very insulting, accusing Paul Hodgkins of displaying his loyalty to a man instead of a country.

00:53:41.780 You know, there are a lot of people who think supporting your president is supporting the country.

00:53:45.380 But when it's Donald Trump, that's different.

00:53:47.640 He begged for mercy.

00:53:49.180 He pleaded guilty to a felony count obstruction of an official proceeding, which about 200 defendants face.

00:53:56.840 This is the charge that the government is using in lieu of, as you said, terrorism, sedition, insurrection.

00:54:04.060 But it's a felony charge.

00:54:05.740 It's been added to misdemeanor cases.

00:54:07.740 He pleaded guilty.

00:54:08.900 He begged the court for forgiveness.

00:54:11.300 He said, I acknowledge fully, respectfully, that Joe Biden is the elected president of the United States.

00:54:19.260 That's what he said in court.

00:54:21.020 And begged this judge for mercy.

00:54:22.900 The judge did not give him mercy.

00:54:24.740 He has no criminal record.

00:54:26.360 And sentenced him to eight months in prison.

00:54:28.700 And he will now be a convicted felon, a man with no criminal record, working class guy from Florida, for the crime of going in the Capitol and for bringing a Trump flag. 0.51

00:54:38.000 And, you know, Andy pointed out, too, not in our discussion, but in a piece I read online that the Justice Department, in order to inflate the gravity of the misconduct, has been hyping the potential exposure of up to 20 years incarceration, up to 20 years, they've been saying.

00:54:55.620 Then they didn't charge Hodgkins with anything like terrorism.

00:54:59.140 In fact, they charged him to that single count that you mentioned, obstructing a congressional proceeding, which no one's getting 20 years for.

00:55:06.800 And then behind closed doors, when they got in there, they asked for an 18 month sentence, which is not 20 years.

00:55:12.720 And even the judge said, you're not getting 18 months.

00:55:15.920 I'll give him eight months.

00:55:17.520 And, you know, you can I hear your point.

00:55:19.780 You think that's too much.

00:55:20.700 But I mean, even if you look at the other side's rhetoric, it was overstated.

00:55:25.560 They didn't actually hold it up when the cameras were off.

00:55:28.100 And then the judge left them out of court on what they recommended.

00:55:31.460 So that's how these cases are going down.

00:55:34.160 Well, they are going down.

00:55:35.700 And what's interesting is, and you will appreciate this as a lawyer, they're going to have a really hard time, the Justice Department,

00:55:41.960 proving that this obstruction of an official proceeding, which, by the way, is not targeted towards political people, protests.

00:55:49.100 What I wrote about several months ago is this felony, as you said, 20 years in jail, was a post-Enron law, 2002.

00:55:59.300 It was aimed at white collar criminals to prevent them from interfering in congressional investigations.

00:56:06.060 It was not supposed to apply.

00:56:07.840 And when George W. Bush signed the law, he specifically said, this does not apply to political protests.

00:56:13.100 We cannot use this to silence political protests.

00:56:17.860 So there was an interesting filing this week.

00:56:21.060 A defense attorney finally is pushing back on this obstruction of an official proceeding and saying, look, this wasn't really official business.

00:56:28.360 It was more ceremonial, but even so, is this going to apply to all committee hearings?

00:56:36.620 Is this going to apply to Judge Kavanaugh, Supreme Court proceeding, which we saw that was disrupted several times.

00:56:44.000 So this is the slippery slope.

00:56:46.140 And so they really are pushing people to plead guilty to this, making them convicted felons.

00:56:50.780 But some people are starting to push back.

00:56:53.040 It's going to be interesting to see how the government defends that charge in court.

00:56:56.740 That's fascinating because, I mean, I spent a lot of years in the Fox News anchor chair watching Code Pink disrupt military related hearings, you know, 9-11, post-9-11 related hearings on Capitol Hill.

00:57:08.740 And you raise a good point.

00:57:10.980 Like, be careful what you wish for, because if you're going to interpret that statute this broadly, you could wind up sweeping a lot of regular old protesters in there, American protesters.

00:57:19.740 This is as American as apple pie, regular protest in America, into this statute.

00:57:24.040 So you do have to worry about long term ramifications.

00:57:26.740 All right.

00:57:27.220 Let's talk about Timothy Hale Cusinelli.

00:57:29.920 He is in prison.

00:57:31.380 Now, you tell me, Julie, what I read is now I think you'll agree.

00:57:34.740 This is a troubled guy.

00:57:35.960 This is a very troubled man.

00:57:38.000 And his history supports a conclusion that he has said a lot of racist things.

00:57:43.300 He seems to have a very bizarre affinity for Adolf Hitler.

00:57:48.040 This isn't somebody anybody any of us would want to hang out with or go to dinner with.

00:57:51.600 So, but what's the problem in how they're dealing with him?

00:57:55.140 Yes, they did find some racially charged and really outrageous things on his cell phone.

00:58:01.700 I've spoken with him.

00:58:03.760 He has had a very troubled life.

00:58:06.040 That's, of course, no excuse.

00:58:07.240 A lot of people do.

00:58:08.100 But he was an Army reservist and he's not charged with any violent crime.

00:58:12.480 It's not a crime to be a racist.

00:58:15.300 It's a crime to take those viewpoints and commit a crime against someone because of that.

00:58:21.760 That's not what happened here.

00:58:23.120 And so what happened with Tim Hale is he was a friend, a colleague, was wired up, knew that Tim went to the protest.

00:58:32.600 He wore a suit and tie.

00:58:33.920 He committed no crime, didn't attack anyone, didn't vandalize the property, was inside, I think, for about 15 or 20 minutes, like a lot of people.

00:58:42.140 He was wired up.

00:58:43.360 Then Navy Intelligence, where he was working at a Navy yard, interrogated about four dozen of his coworkers trying to seek out his white supremacy views.

00:58:54.980 And this is actually in the filing, seeking his pretrial detention, accusing him of being a white supremacist, explaining what his coworkers had said in a questionnaire, looking at memes on his phone, some of his videos.

00:59:08.840 He calls himself a satirist.

00:59:10.860 I, you know, he could be, he could not be.

00:59:14.800 But look, if we're going to start interrogating people's coworkers and looking at people's phones after they are involved in a political protest, again, we're going down a very slippery slope.

00:59:25.840 He has been held in jail now going on almost seven months.

00:59:30.780 And this was the hearing on Friday where the government admitted they can't meet their discovery obligations until next year.

00:59:36.520 But he's still being held behind bars in Washington, D.C., again, for no violent, committing no violent crime.

00:59:45.180 He is a thought crime defendant.

00:59:48.460 That's basically what he is.

00:59:50.860 That's the thing.

00:59:51.760 So the reason I find his case so interesting is because, and listen, I haven't met with him on what I read.

00:59:57.120 I don't buy satirist.

00:59:58.080 But the point is, let's assume for purposes of this discussion, he is a racist. 0.99

01:00:03.560 And just to give the audience a feeling, they say that they found things on his phone saying, this is in his voice, babies born with disabilities should be shot. 0.99

01:00:11.980 Hitler should have finished the job. 1.00

01:00:13.600 Jews, women and blacks are at the bottom of the totem pole. 1.00

01:00:16.300 His coworkers say he's unstable. 0.99

01:00:17.700 He wears a Hitler mustache.

01:00:18.920 He discussed leaving his workplace in a blaze of glory.

01:00:21.940 He says racist and anti-Semitic things.

01:00:24.080 He's got some criminal history and so on.

01:00:25.940 So let's assume for purposes of this discussion, all of that is true.

01:00:29.980 What he actually did that day appears to have been without a weapon.

01:00:36.780 He entered doors already kicked open and then he left the Capitol after learning someone had been shot.

01:00:42.760 They say he admitted to using voice and hand signals to urge others to, quote, advance.

01:00:47.540 OK, ambiguous.

01:00:49.500 And he admitted to picking up a flagpole that someone else had thrown like a javelin at a cop and referring to it as a murder weapon.

01:00:55.640 But he's not accused of using the flagpole himself or of threatening to use a flagpole.

01:00:59.720 And so you get in front of a court and this is a Trump appointee that you mentioned him a moment ago, Judge Trevor McFadden, who denied his release, who said you've got to stay in jail.

01:01:09.820 And the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, after the Supreme Court, the most powerful and respected court in the nation, refused to overturn that order and said, you've got to stay in jail.

01:01:18.340 And they said, look, he's got a well-documented history of racist and violent language, generally engaged in hateful conduct, if not violent conduct.

01:01:28.320 And they said we don't typically penalize people for what they say or what they think.

01:01:33.620 But the district court thinks he poses a danger to the community.

01:01:37.260 And that weighs in favor of detention, given all of the, quote, violent language he used.

01:01:44.580 Now we're on thin ice, Julie.

01:01:46.800 Now we're on thin legal ice.

01:01:49.240 Yes, we really are.

01:01:50.600 And I said in my piece after I reported on him, he's not an easy defendant to defend.

01:01:56.980 Because the things that he has said, the things that they found on video and on his phone, are highly offensive.

01:02:03.560 And you're right.

01:02:04.120 It's not anybody, it's not anything that you would want to defend.

01:02:08.320 But we still have rule of law.

01:02:10.400 And we still have due process.

01:02:12.760 And when you have judges, even appellate court judges, as you said, one of the most powerful, respected courts in the country,

01:02:19.000 going along with prosecutors, keeping him behind bars, and criminalizing his thoughts or his viewpoints, that is very thin ice.

01:02:29.480 But that is, and it's not the first time I've seen it.

01:02:31.860 I mean, I've seen defendants being mocked for being homeschooled.

01:02:37.300 In the case of Bruno Kua, they did not want to release him, an 18-year-old high school senior, to his parents because his parents homeschooled him.

01:02:44.620 And as the prosecutor said, Bruno ingested his parents' political beliefs.

01:02:50.420 I mean, I've seen this repeat.

01:02:52.180 Yes.

01:02:52.960 Those were the exact words.

01:02:55.100 And also forced his father in a detention hearing to admit that the 2020 election was not stolen,

01:03:02.560 and that he should not have taken his son to a Stop the Steal rally in Georgia last fall after the election.

01:03:08.860 Wow.

01:03:09.620 Wow.

01:03:10.500 That's none of the court's business.

01:03:12.220 That's none of their business.

01:03:13.420 Because people are allowed to think the election was stolen.

01:03:16.180 They're allowed to go to rallies.

01:03:17.500 They're not allowed to commit crimes.

01:03:19.840 Not in this, Megan.

01:03:21.640 The prosecutors and the judges.

01:03:24.000 I mean, if you saw some of the things that D.C., the chief judge, Beryl Howell, has said in court about what happened on January 6th,

01:03:32.260 what these people did, how their beliefs that the election was stolen somehow makes them a criminal.

01:03:39.000 It's just outrageous.

01:03:41.760 Not only seeing this in court documents, but hearing this from highly respected federal judges, it's very alarming.

01:03:51.720 Can we talk about Anna Morgan Lloyd?

01:03:54.620 What's going on with Anna Morgan Lloyd and her weird lawyer? 0.84

01:03:57.620 So her weird lawyer is Heather Shaner. 0.97

01:04:02.520 A lot of these people, it's important to know, and you can understand this, Megan, as an attorney,

01:04:07.960 they cannot afford their own attorneys, especially a D.C. criminal defense attorney,

01:04:14.000 because every case is being litigated out of Washington, D.C.

01:04:17.160 So they are at the mercy of public defenders or court-appointed attorneys.

01:04:21.980 In this case, Heather Shaner is a court-appointed attorney for Anna Morgan Lloyd.

01:04:26.440 Again, one of the hundreds of Americans charged with misdemeanor crimes for going into the building.

01:04:33.480 She's 49 years old.

01:04:34.580 She's from Indiana.

01:04:35.480 She's a grandmother of five.

01:04:37.160 Didn't think she was doing anything wrong.

01:04:38.880 Heather Shaner, who gives her a list of books and movies that she needs to read and watch to confront America's racist past.

01:04:50.920 Heather Shaner has said America's great, if you look aside from the fact it was built on genocide against Native Americans and slavery,

01:04:58.860 forced her to read, you know, she watched Schindler's List.

01:05:02.940 That's fine.

01:05:04.200 The books were fine. 0.99

01:05:05.300 But the idea is that the mere fact she was there supporting Donald Trump makes her a racist, makes her an anti-Semite, makes her somehow ignorant. 0.96

01:05:16.460 So, again, she wrote this whole letter to the court saying she basically apologizing for her white privilege and saying that she now understands, you know, 0.97

01:05:27.000 things that other Americans have gone through that she doesn't have to because she's white. 0.86

01:05:31.080 She called out her own son-in-law for being a Holocaust denier.

01:05:35.960 So this is the sort of thing that some of these defense attorneys are doing.

01:05:41.120 Heather Shaner has a lot more clients. 1.00

01:05:43.400 She just bragged in an article last week that one of her clients switched her party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.

01:05:50.340 She now is representing a family of five in Texas who are arrested for misdemeanors, too.

01:05:55.100 So this is all part of of how this is a reeducation working against.

01:06:01.740 That's right.

01:06:02.380 Wow.

01:06:02.840 I mean, that's that's amazing.

01:06:04.400 That is definitely not part of her role as a court appointed lawyer. 0.97

01:06:07.360 By the way, we're paying for her.

01:06:09.040 Right.

01:06:09.340 I mean, you're court appointed.

01:06:10.420 The taxpayers paying that money.

01:06:13.380 OK, let's spend a little time on these two guys and Brian Sicknick.

01:06:17.340 OK, because I want to talk about cops.

01:06:18.880 You said something controversial about one of the officers who testified for known.

01:06:22.780 I want to ask you about that.

01:06:23.920 But let's just start with Brian Sicknick's case.

01:06:26.340 And Julian, is it Cotter?

01:06:28.380 K-H-A-T-E-R. 1.00

01:06:29.800 Julian Cater and George Tanios, who remain in prison right now.

01:06:34.760 Now, what are these two accused of doing?

01:06:37.280 So they both are accused of attacking Officer Sicknick and a few other officers with chemical spray.

01:06:45.760 At first, as you will recall, Megan, we were told that Brian Sicknick was bludgeoned to death with fire extinguisher.

01:06:51.120 That was New York Times.

01:06:52.520 They had to retract that article in February, but not before it made it into the House impeachment memo.

01:06:59.360 So then we were told Sicknick had some kind of allergic reaction to chemical spray.

01:07:04.060 That was the new storyline.

01:07:06.360 In March, both of these men were arrested and charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon, which was a chemical spray.

01:07:14.860 It ended up being pepper spray against Officer Sicknick.

01:07:17.560 So they basically have been arrested, kept in jail.

01:07:21.800 They're both in the D.C. jail since March to keep alive the storyline that somehow Brian Sicknick, who died of natural causes at the age of 42, very tragically, somehow he was killed by Trump supporters that day.

01:07:36.480 So both have been charged, and Julian Cater actually is the one who is accused of using, it was a keychain pepper spray against Sicknick.

01:07:46.820 Now, it's important to also note that police were attacking protesters that day, too.

01:07:53.120 And we have this video, and I'm sure you've seen this video, Megan, several videos of police attacking the crowd with explosive devices.

01:08:00.580 One judge called it a super soaker filled with tear gas.

01:08:05.240 These were people far outside the building, not inside.

01:08:08.060 So anyway, they were charged.

01:08:10.460 George Tanios is not accused of spraying Sicknick with anything, but the two men are charged with conspiracy to assault an officer because they brought chemical spray to Washington, D.C.

01:08:22.760 That day, and George Tanios had the backpack, Julian Cater took, apparently took the spray out and allegedly sprayed Brian Sicknick and a few others.

01:08:31.640 So that is why they are in jail.

01:08:34.400 The appellate court recently upheld Julian Cater's detention.

01:08:38.600 A judge denied a $15 million bond package put up by Julian Cater's family.

01:08:44.180 Again, a man with no criminal history.

01:08:47.360 And so they are basically, it's huge.

01:08:50.480 It's huge.

01:08:50.920 A reporter noted that was three times the bond package for Harvey Weinstein, I believe.

01:08:57.360 So this is exactly what they are, political prisoners.

01:09:01.120 Again, Megan, think of all the weapons that were used against police last year, including pepper spray, including bear spray.

01:09:10.700 Those people were all let off the hook.

01:09:13.120 But yet we have these men languishing.

01:09:14.720 George Tanios has three children under the age of four, had to shutter his business.

01:09:19.140 He runs a sandwich shop in a college town, worked seven days a week to keep it alive.

01:09:23.900 That's been closed down for really since March.

01:09:27.460 This one to me is compelling.

01:09:31.820 It's more compelling for the government than the others, because if they did spray Brian Sicknick with pepper spray and he had a stroke a day later, whether that's, you know, I realize the medical examiner is not tying it exactly to that moment.

01:09:45.520 I think the average person can say, yeah, you've got blood on your hands, you know, you if that affected him in some way negatively and ultimately had a stroke.

01:09:52.620 Now we're in business and I feel less empathy for those guys than for somebody, you know, like the last like Anna Morgan, who walked into the Capitol for five minutes and then walked out.

01:10:03.320 True. But look, we also need to see all the video and there's a reason why they are keeping the surveillance video under wraps, under protective orders, 14,000 hours, not including body cam footage from D.C. Metro Police.

01:10:17.900 U.S. Capitol Police do not wear body cameras.

01:10:20.540 Why are they keeping these clips?

01:10:22.140 You even have 15 media organizations called the Press Coalition who are pushing to see full video of what was happening.

01:10:30.920 And for example, in the Tanya's case, that's one.

01:10:34.360 You can't just take 15 seconds.

01:10:37.920 And these are really spliced up showing what happened that day.

01:10:41.560 Perhaps they did spray pepper spray at those police.

01:10:44.220 But what was happening before that?

01:10:46.200 And you can't just say, well, you can never do anything.

01:10:48.240 Well, you're entitled to defend yourself, too, regardless of who is attacking you.

01:10:54.100 Well, but look, we have to see what the police were doing that day, OK, because we already saw evidence of what they were doing outside that Capitol about 1 or 115.

01:11:03.000 We are entitled to the full story.

01:11:05.460 There are also rules for police officers.

01:11:07.580 They can't just go ahead and attack people who are doing nothing wrong for American citizens on public property, protesting lawfully and not committing any crime.

01:11:19.700 So everyone has rules that they're supposed to abide by, not just protesters, police, too.

01:11:25.980 Thanks for staying with us this far.

01:11:27.220 The end of the episode and who's coming up on our next show is right after this quick break.

01:11:31.800 You brought up Officer Fanone.

01:11:37.940 I want to tell you something that probably your audience does not know.

01:11:41.540 The press coalition and the defense, the three men who are charged with attacking Officer Fanone, have asked for his full body camera footage.

01:11:51.120 A judge has denied that, saying that they are not entitled to see the full body camera footage of Officer Fanone.

01:11:59.800 Why not?

01:12:00.360 If we are told these people are domestic terrorists, that this was an act of domestic terrorism similar to 9-11, we need to see all the footage from everyone, especially publicly paid employees and publicly paid surveillance system of what happened on January 6th.

01:12:17.300 There's no reason not to make that available.

01:12:20.240 In the same way we want to see the whole body camera footage in a case like Floyd or any of these officer-involved shootings, we want to see it here.

01:12:29.620 And it's for the benefit of the officer and for those being accused.

01:12:33.220 What's the stated reason for us not being able to see his body cam footage?

01:12:38.480 They are calling this all protected material.

01:12:41.480 In the case of the 14,000 hours, they're calling it highly sensitive government material.

01:12:47.160 In the case of Officer Fanone's body-worn camera, here's what they're doing in court, Megan.

01:12:52.400 They're taking still shots from the body camera footage, still shots, and putting it in these motions for pretrial detention.

01:13:02.540 So what the government and what the judges are agreeing with is that because the video was not itself, wasn't used in these court proceedings, that the press is not entitled to see it.

01:13:15.760 That's how they're getting around this.

01:13:17.460 In the meantime, we can see 20 seconds of what happened to Officer Fanone.

01:13:22.820 We don't see what led up to that.

01:13:26.060 He himself admitted he was not supposed to be there.

01:13:28.960 He's a narcotics officer.

01:13:30.620 He put on the uniform for the first time in 10 years, including body camera.

01:13:35.600 We should see the entire body of video footage, all the digital evidence that the government has on this.

01:13:43.820 And it should raise many red flags that the government and federal judges continue to withhold this, not just from the public, from the press, and even from defense attorneys.

01:13:55.780 So let's talk about Fanone because you sent out a tweet about him.

01:13:59.120 This is the guy we played a butted soundbite with Andy, and he is the man who said he suffered a heart attack in the midst of this whole thing, among other injuries.

01:14:07.680 And you tweeted out, crisis actor Fanone just beat on the table and said it's disgraceful that any elected official denies his narrative of what happened on January 6th.

01:14:19.360 Calls it an insurrection, blasting GOP lawmakers.

01:14:23.340 Now says this isn't about politics, LOL.

01:14:25.700 Well, he has many tattoos and and there was blowback, considerable blowback on you for calling this guy a crisis actor and questioning his testimonial.

01:14:37.760 So why did you call him that?

01:14:39.100 I called him that because I thought the overheated, emotional, highly partisan, and dangerous rhetoric coming out of these officers already helping to taint a very partisan jury pool in Washington, D.C.

01:14:57.040 I thought it totally crossed the line.

01:14:59.520 None of them gave just an unemotional, factual account of what they saw or what they experienced on January 6th.

01:15:07.780 Michael Fanone has been in the media since January 14th when he was profiled in the Washington Post.

01:15:15.940 He is repeatedly going on CNN.

01:15:18.960 He's walking the halls of Congress demanding that people like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy meet with him.

01:15:27.220 For what purpose?

01:15:28.480 You have three men who have been charged with assaulting him.

01:15:31.900 Three men who have been behind bars since they were arrested for attacking Michael Fanone.

01:15:36.640 Three men who are going to either plead guilty or have a jury trial, where hopefully we will see all of the evidence what happened.

01:15:45.800 But why is he banging on a table?

01:15:48.500 Why were all of them making such disparaging remarks about Republican lawmakers calling Trump supporters terrorists and traitors?

01:15:56.580 All of it totally crossed the line.

01:15:59.560 I don't think that crisis actor for someone who then went on the Don Lemon show that night had this hugging fest saying, I love you, man.

01:16:09.580 Your family's been great.

01:16:11.180 You're the best.

01:16:12.060 He was on CNN the next morning.

01:16:14.140 I mean, come on.

01:16:15.000 This is not a way to get to the truth or tell the American people your story.

01:16:19.980 There's another agenda at play.

01:16:22.720 And I certainly did not think calling him a crisis actor would cross the line.

01:16:28.640 Well, fair enough.

01:16:29.400 I think that this is one of the problems in not having any Republicans.

01:16:33.340 I mean, forgive me, but sort of real Republicans there to press the witnesses a bit, with all due respect to the police officers in particular, whose service I admire.

01:16:44.100 It would have been nice to have somebody there to say, Officer Fanon, with all due respect to the injuries you've suffered, may I ask you why have you appeared on CNN, you know, four dozen times between then and now, with Don Lemon, with Chris Cuomo, right?

01:17:00.080 That you've gone to sort of left-leaning media to attack Republicans writ large, to attack Republican lawmakers.

01:17:05.740 And the other police officer, whose name escapes me right now, but he's been very partisan in his tweets, very anti-Trump, anti-Trump supporters.

01:17:15.500 Yeah.

01:17:15.640 What is it, Don?

01:17:16.960 Oh, Don.

01:17:17.420 Officer Dunn.

01:17:17.920 Yes.

01:17:19.200 So it's not to say that they're not telling the truth.

01:17:22.520 I don't know.

01:17:23.220 I wasn't there.

01:17:23.900 I haven't seen the evidence.

01:17:24.760 But I do think this is why you normally have both sides represented, so that even if gently, like we saw during Kavanaugh, there's somebody there to press the witness on possible other motives, political motives, because this case is totally charged with politics on both sides.

01:17:41.280 And we're not seeing that, because Adam Kinzinger isn't going to do it, and neither is Liz Cheney.

01:17:46.480 So it really is sort of a kangaroo court that's designed to reach a political indictment against Trump and his supporters, and they'll get that.

01:17:55.020 That's how it will end.

01:17:56.860 And, you know, he's awful, and his supporters are awful, and the people who protested that day are awful, without much nuance on what individuals may or may not have done.

01:18:07.220 Well, and I do think, you know, Officer Dunn said, held a moment of silence for Brian Sicknick for being killed in the line of duty.

01:18:14.980 Again, not true.

01:18:16.480 You had Officer Hodges repeatedly refer to American citizens as terrorists.

01:18:22.520 You had Officer Gunnell say that Republican lawmakers who had been at the Justice Department that day demanding answers about this unequal treatment between January 6th protesters and protesters last year.

01:18:35.580 You had this man say they don't belong in elective office.

01:18:39.500 Who are these people to make such outlandish, partisan statements?

01:18:45.080 These are not legit people acting as law enforcement officers.

01:18:50.940 They are partisan props, and that is exactly why Nancy Pelosi did not want Jim Jordan and Jim Banks on that committee. 1.00

01:18:57.780 Andy McCarthy wrote this week that, you know, he didn't understand why she would leave them off, because he thought that the testimony from these officers was unimpeachable.

01:19:08.300 But if it was, then there's a reason why Pelosi wanted Jim Jordan and Jim Banks not to be on that committee, because they would have asked some of the tough questions.

01:19:17.860 That's right. I do think you have to be sensitive with a witness like that, right?

01:19:21.680 It's a cop. These are not rich guys.

01:19:24.500 These are public servants.

01:19:25.900 They've been hurt.

01:19:26.820 We can see it on camera.

01:19:28.020 So you have empathy for them and what they've been through.

01:19:30.560 I certainly do.

01:19:31.400 But that doesn't mean you don't ask the questions.

01:19:33.920 It doesn't mean you don't probe.

01:19:35.120 Again, back to the Blasey Ford example, same thing.

01:19:38.560 And it wasn't done.

01:19:40.020 And I do think that undermines the legitimacy of the whole thing.

01:19:43.660 And also, if you really want to be taken seriously, if you don't want to be seen as a partisan, then you don't go on CNN nonstop.

01:19:50.820 You don't deal with partisan media.

01:19:52.060 You don't make big statements about the Republican Party, because that all gives people a reason to dismiss your testimonial and see you through a partisan lens.

01:20:01.680 So these are fair questions to raise.

01:20:04.200 You're not entitled to sort of an immunity blanket against tough questions because you're a police officer, right?

01:20:12.660 So you can't overcorrect too much the other way.

01:20:15.320 So what's your takeaway on the whole thing, Julie, at this point?

01:20:18.920 What do you want people sitting at home to remember in the months ahead as we see all these people sit in jail awaiting trial dates that have yet to be set?

01:20:27.180 And they basically have already been sentenced to a year in prison at this point without having had a trial.

01:20:33.880 I think people, especially people on the right, need to be very aware that January 6th is being used as a pretext to achieve all sorts of long sought after goals by the Democrats,

01:20:46.600 which is basically weaponizing powerful government agencies against people on the right.

01:20:52.620 You know, I wrote that last week was a five-year anniversary of the official launch of Crossfire Hurricane.

01:20:59.620 This is yet another iteration of Crossfire Hurricane because they got away with this Justice Department under Obama and then under Donald Trump through Robert Mueller's probe and then impeachment.

01:21:11.580 Because the Democrats were allowed to use all of the levers of power to go after Donald Trump, his family, his associates, now they're going after Trump supporters.

01:21:23.660 And this is going to include not just the Justice Department.

01:21:26.740 We already see it coming out of Department of Homeland Security.

01:21:30.220 It's coming out of the intelligence community, overreaching their authority to target foreign terrorists, to making, to now targeting Americans.

01:21:39.720 They're going to use all of their surveillance tools and now law enforcement tools to go after, to quash political dissent, to silence political speech and activity.

01:21:51.320 And this is really unchartered territory.

01:21:55.220 So anyone who thinks that it's just about these 550 people, these insurrectionists and what happened for four hours on the Capitol on January 6th,

01:22:04.220 anyone who thinks that this is legitimately what it's about really needs to look harder behind the scenes at what the Biden administration is already doing and has plans to do to Americans on the right.

01:22:17.860 It's really scary territory, Megan.

01:22:20.280 It kind of ties into what we're seeing with COVID and the crackdown on speech that pushes back against the official narratives on COVID, the increasing push to monitor our phone message, our text messages, our emails, never mind our online posts,

01:22:36.100 because Big Brother will decide what's appropriate, what's not, what's factual, what's not.

01:22:41.720 We're in we're in dicey territory right now.

01:22:44.480 And I mean, I think it's why people libertarians like Charles Cook over at National Review is writing a lot about this.

01:22:51.620 Like people need to pay attention because even if you like the cause, even if you're on the left and you don't like the COVID pushback, you know, the quarantine pushback and the lockdown pushback, the mandate pushback.

01:23:01.040 And you hate what happened on January 6th and you hate all the Trump supporters.

01:23:04.540 You should care because you care about America.

01:23:07.360 You cared about small L liberal values that the country stands for.

01:23:13.040 Julie, thank you for your reporting on this.

01:23:14.560 I found you a fascinating read.

01:23:16.100 And what I love about you is that you give a lot of facts that I that I haven't found anywhere.

01:23:20.420 You actually go do the interviews of the people who have been arrested.

01:23:23.260 No one else seems interested in doing that in traditional media.

01:23:26.520 So I really appreciate the legwork and the sort of the shoe level leather reporting that you've been doing as a as a citizen journalist.

01:23:34.380 Well, Megan, thank you so much for covering this.

01:23:36.540 I know this will reach a whole new audience who needs to know about this.

01:23:40.240 So thank you so much.

01:23:46.040 Don't miss Friday's show because we've got Dr. Drew, Dr. Drew Pinsky coming up.

01:23:50.340 He's a cool guy.

01:23:51.020 You know, he he partnered with our pal Adam Carolla back on Loveline years ago.

01:23:56.380 So funny to me that Adam was doing that show and offering relationship advice.

01:24:03.060 Dr. Pinsky makes more sense.

01:24:04.900 Dr. Drew makes more sense.

01:24:05.880 But anyway, he's opining on everything these days.

01:24:08.220 He's gotten a lot of guff from the left for being somebody who will push back on the mainstream COVID narratives.

01:24:13.300 But he persists.

01:24:15.160 He'll be joining us in a conversation I've long been looking forward to.

01:24:17.860 Don't miss Friday.

01:24:18.840 Go ahead and subscribe to the show.

01:24:20.160 Download the show.

01:24:21.160 Give us a five star rating.

01:24:22.320 We'd love that.

01:24:23.440 And a review on what you think about the January 6th riots and the media's coverage of them on Apple Reviews or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:24:33.680 See you Friday.

01:24:35.020 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:24:37.160 No BS, no agenda and no fear.

01:24:41.700 The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

01:24:46.100 We'll see you Friday.

01:24:47.180 Bye-bye.

01:24:50.880 Peace.

01:24:51.420 Peace.

01:24:52.260 Peace.

01:24:52.620 Peace.

01:24:52.880 Peace.

01:24:53.500 Peace.

01:24:56.540 Peace.

01:24:59.660 Peace.

The Megyn Kelly Show - August 04, 2021

The Truth About January 6th, with Andy McCarthy and Julie Kelly ｜ Ep. 140

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript