Truth About Hegseth Smears and Leak Firings, and Shocking Details of Ellen Greenberg Case, with Steve Bannon and Nancy Grace | Ep. 1054
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 40 minutes
Words per Minute
176.5605
Summary
Steve Bannon joins me to talk about the latest in the scandal surrounding Pete Hegseth and the possible ouster of his chief of staff, Pete Hexth. We also discuss the latest on the leak scandal at the Department of Defense, including the firings of three more top aides, and what it means for the future of the agency.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. I'm Megyn Kelly. Today we are bringing in Steve Bannon in just a
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moment, but first I want to start with this news update because the story is kind of confusing,
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so I laid it out for you, okay? It's about Pete Hexth and the knives are out for him. They've
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not been out for him. They remain out for him, who NPR, that bastion of exclusive Trump White House
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gets, is reporting maybe on his way out. They're reporting that Trump is looking for a replacement,
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which Trump is denying. Now, why would NPR have a scoop like that about Trump, not matched by
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Fox News or any other outlet? Ask yourself that. Here's how we got here. Someone at the Pentagon
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has been leaking to the press about very serious matters, even top secret matters,
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like the report that appeared on NBC News in mid-March revealing that the White House had
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directed the Pentagon to draw up options to increase American troop presence in Panama to advance the
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president's goal of reclaiming the Panama Canal. What was that doing on NBC News? The report was
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very specific. It stated, quote, U.S. Southern Command is developing potential plans for partnering
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more closely with Panamanian security forces to the less likely option of U.S. troops seizing the
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Panama Canal by force, end quote, citing, quote, two U.S. officials familiar with the planning.
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The Department of Defense began investigating those leaks and made it known in the press that they
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would be using polygraphs to get to the bottom of who was behind them. Now, as with any time a
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threat like that makes its way into the public eye via the news, one has to wonder, are they really
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going to polygraph everyone or are they just setting some sort of a trap? For example, first person to
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complain about the polygraph is likely someone you want to polygraph or at least look into. Now,
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in the course of that investigation, Defense Secretary Hegseth wound up firing three of his top
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aides on Friday. It happened. They were escorted out of the building. Those fired include some who had
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been close to Secretary Hegseth before he became secretary, like senior advisor Dan Caldwell, who had
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worked with Pete at Concerned Veterans for America for some nine years. Also fired Deputy Chief of Staff
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Darren Selnick and Colin Carroll, Chief of Staff to the Pentagon's deputy secretary. A fourth staffer,
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a press aide named John Elliott, also parted ways with the Pentagon, supposedly because he didn't want
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to be second in command of the comms shop. But there's some real sour grapes with this guy. He ran
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too political, first of all, a left-wing rag, to say the Pentagon is in disarray under Secretary
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Hegseth and predicted that Hegseth will be fired by President Trump. Almost immediately after,
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Don Trump Jr. took to X and made clear that this guy, Mr. Elliott, is not America First,
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though he claims to be, and is officially exiled from the movement. He's not happy with this guy,
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Elliott. The three alleged leakers, however, remain a bit of a mystery. Why would Pete's top aides,
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including his friend Dan Caldwell, allegedly leak to NBC News about alleged war plans involving the
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Panama Canal? And there were other leaks, too, like that Elon Musk went over to the Pentagon. There
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were a few of them. It wasn't just the one. But this one would be top secret.
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All we know for sure is that Dan Caldwell appears to be part of MAGA's more non-interventionalist
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wing, which is fine. That's probably how Trump won the election in large part. There's absolutely
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nothing wrong with being non-interventionalist. I think the Republican Party in general has had it
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with the forever wars and the more bellicose nature of some of the parties. Certainly the neocons
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have become otherized and almost enemies to that strain of the party. So there's nothing wrong with
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Dan Caldwell feeling that way. And he does appear to feel that way. But the question is,
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was that view abhorrent to the people who fired him? Mr. Caldwell seems to think so.
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He went on Tucker's podcast last night with his first remarks since he got the ax. And in that
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exchange, Caldwell suggests that he was forced out of the Pentagon, not because he leaked anything to
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any member of the press, which he denies doing, but because he is anti-war with Iran due to his
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experiences in Iraq. It started really pushing me to where I'm at now in foreign policy. Like,
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we need to do something differently. And it kind of radicalized me in a certain way on this. And really,
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there's an argument that you need to be, when you're talking about foreign policy,
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you kind of need to be cold and detached. Like some people say that realists need to be cold
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and detached. I don't necessarily buy that. But, you know, when I hear about launching
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a new military operation, somebody talk about something, my first thought is,
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what's it going to be like for the guys? What's it going to be like for the boys that are going to be in
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front? Now, the suggestion implies that Secretary Hegseth, or those who suggested to Hegseth that
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Caldwell be fired, feel differently than Caldwell does there. Though I can tell you myself, from many
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conversations with Pete over the past six months, he is far from a neocon. We've talked all about it.
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He was much more pro-war as much of the Republican Party was back during the Bush years. He signed up.
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He left Princeton to go fight. I mean, he was in that mindset, which most of us were post 9-11.
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That's why he volunteered and fought at Gitmo and in Iraq and in Afghanistan. But he's had a serious
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change of heart from and thanks to those experiences, much like Caldwell. Pete is not a neocon.
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Honestly, President Trump is the one making the most noise about bombing Iran. And Pete's job is to do
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what President Trump tells him. Remember this from February with Trump?
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You cannot allow Iran, or just about anybody else, by the way, but especially Iran, because they are
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very militant. I mean, they're very, very militant. You can't allow them to have a nuclear weapon. But
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there's two ways of stopping them, with bombs or with a written piece of paper. I think Iran would
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love to make a deal, and I would love to make a deal with them without bombing them.
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Okay. I mean, that's good. But Trump hasn't taken military action against Iran off the table. It's,
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of course, what Israel wants. They want the green light for them to do it, which, of course, will draw
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all of us into a military conflict with them and their supporters as well. This is one of the topics
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of conversation that Caldwell and Tucker got into today. Well, I listened to it today, but it hit last
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night. Well, we can confirm, based on our own reporting, that Mr. Caldwell did not have his
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phone searched, nor was he polygraphed, before he was escorted out of the Pentagon. He told Tucker
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that as well. But we do have to point out that those are not the only ways one can be discovered
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as a leaker. One of the ways they used to track confidential information at my old law firm, for
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example, was to make everybody log in before they could print a document. Do you have that at your
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company, maybe? If you work with sensitive information, they make you do that. That was
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one of the controversies over at the Supreme Court when they leaked the Dobbs decision. Remember,
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they were like, don't they have this system already where nothing can be printed without
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somebody logging in their ID number first? Anyway, nothing got printed at my law firm without a record
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of who did it. That's just one possible way of finding a leaker, not to mention one's desktop
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computer records or email records or possible intra-office comms between loose-lipped staffers.
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So, you know, with all due respect to Mr. Caldwell, it doesn't really answer the question
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definitively to say they didn't take his phone and they didn't give him a polygraph before they
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fired him. We don't know what they did at the Pentagon that led them to believe Dan Caldwell and
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those two others needed to go. Now we have more questions like will Caldwell and these other two
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turn over their phones voluntarily to the Pentagon? Will they volunteer them? Will the other two,
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you know, come forward and offer their own defenses? Will these three voluntarily return
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any laptops or other electronics given to them by the Pentagon? Will they allow the Pentagon to search
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their personal laptops? I mean, all of this can be obtained rather easily by a warrant, which may
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well yet be heading Mr. Caldwell's way, as well as the way of his two now fired colleagues. Because
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while Caldwell told Tucker he would likely already be under arrest if he'd been caught leaking, the truth
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is that oftentimes, in fact, I think a lot of the times they fire the suspected leakers. They continue
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their investigations because they don't want them having ongoing access to confidential information. So they
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fire them. They continue the investigations. And then when and if they have enough to charge the
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person, then comes the indictment, the handcuffs and the arrest, all of which could, I don't know,
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but could potentially be in these guys' future. I mean, now is the time for these three to be
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cautious. I was kind of shocked to see the one on Tucker's podcast. I mean, he's clearing, he's going
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on offense saying I was fired from my Iran views, not because I leaked. We don't know whether that's
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true. We just don't know right now. I mean, I can tell you this, when three people are accused of
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participating in the same allegedly illegal scheme, one and only one has the opportunity to cut a deal.
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One and only one has the opportunity to cut a deal. And the first one into the Pentagon to say,
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choose me, is going to get a great one. Anyone after that could be looking at prison time,
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potentially. If in fact, the Pentagon has evidence on leaking that it certainly seems to feel it does.
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All right. Getting back to the main story, though, since those terminations,
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it's been an all out assault on Pete Hegseth in the press. So when you read these hit pieces on Pete,
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you have to keep that in mind. This isn't coming out of nowhere. He did nothing to these people.
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He was running the Pentagon. Then somebody leaked top secret information to NBC News. Then they opened
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up an investigation at the Pentagon to figure out who did it. And the next thing we knew, these guys got
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fired. And now suddenly the field is flooded with hit pieces on Hegseth. The White House has made
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clear they think it's these guys behind these. This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is
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working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement.
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And unfortunately, there have been people at that building who don't like the change the secretary is
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trying to bring. So they are leaking and they are lying to the mainstream media. We've seen this game
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played before. The secretary is doing a tremendous job and the president stands strongly behind him.
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I mentioned that guy, Elliott. He wrote a direct hit piece under his own name,
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Politico, arguing, quote, from leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings,
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still pissed about Doge. The dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president.
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So what is he talking about? He's talking about these leaks, which they investigated and just fired
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three people, four. Elliott was not part of that firing. He's something else. And mass firings,
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Doge. That's the dysfunction. What's the dysfunction? People leaked. And unlike in previous
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administrations, Hegseth's trying to do something about it. And yeah, Doge hit the Pentagon,
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same as it hit the other administrative branches. What's the dysfunction, Mr. Elliott?
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And went on to say, try to play to Trump's vanity, saying the president deserves better from his
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senior leadership. And he predicted Pete will be fired. Elsewhere, we have just been seeing the
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drip, drip, drip of the chaos narrative, including news that Pete allegedly had a second signal chat
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going about those Houthi attack plans. This one, not with all the, you know, administration officials,
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but with people who are close to him, his personal advisors, meaning his brother who works with him at
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the Pentagon now, his attorney who also works with him at the Pentagon, he's military, and his wife who
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doesn't work with him at the Pentagon, uh, and would be a controversial person with whom to share,
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you know, his Houthi attack plans, which again, the Pentagon is saying we're not classified.
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And that could be because they would have, that would have to be because he had declassified them
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prior to sharing them with anybody. Mr. Trump asked about all of this, all of this yesterday,
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does second signal chat and the, uh, narrative around Pete made very clear. He stands by Hegseth.
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Do you remain confident in the access? Do you remain confident in the access?
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President Trump, why, why do you even ask a question like that? We have recruitments that's at an all-time
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high, the spirit in the armed forces is fantastic. Are you bringing up signal again? I thought they
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There was a new report this weekend that he used in a separate chat that included some family members.
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It's just all, it's all, uh, just the same old stuff from the media.
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I said, that's an old one. Try finding something new.
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Which is good because Pete is not a neocon. He's not a war hawk. He's not a chaos agent.
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We live in one of the most dangerous times since the end of the Cold War. There's just no doubt
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about it. You've refined it. But I've also, I'm also the product of two decades of war in Iraq and
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Afghanistan, where my view shifted a great deal from where it was to where it is today, because you
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would have to be a fool to look at the outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan and think that what we
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got out of them was beneficial to American national security interests. And that's not to take away
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from every vet who gave everything. I was one of them. Those last vet, those last folks in Afghanistan,
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the 13 we lost, the people who fought for the places that ISIS took back. Like that investment,
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that fight, that mission is real. And I love all of it. But we have to be realists and clear-eyed
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about what that intervention meant. The finite resources that we have, the debt that we have,
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the threats that we have, the responsibilities our allies have to show in Europe if they want to
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defend that continent. The reality of the outcome in Ukraine, Donald Trump's been very clear about
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that, but that he wants to end it right away. He's a war fighter who has helped already the Army,
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Navy and Air Force get on track for record recruiting years, who is eliminating woke from our armed forces,
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who is restoring lethality to our military by making sure standards are uniformly high,
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and much, much more. So here to help unpack some of this Republican on Republican violence is Steve
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Bannon, host of Bannon's War Room. You know those rare occasions where you can actually sleep in,
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What do you make of all this? Well, you know, having worked in the Pentagon after I came off sea duty back
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the first day that President Reagan came, I was there for, I don't know, three, three and a half,
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almost four years. There's one thing about controlling that building and another thing
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about being President Trump's senior national security advisor for the military. I think this
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goes back, and I think Caldwell, people got to watch that Tucker interview. I think there's some
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deep and disturbing truths in that. This is, I, and I think the leaks and all this stuff is, is,
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is the, they're wanting us to chase rabbits here. The core of this to me gets down to,
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you said Republican or Republican, Megan. I think it's almost even deeper than this. This is about
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the America first national security policy and about how we've had been a neoliberal neocon
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country for 40 or 50 years. This gets down to, I believe, this whole strategy in the Middle East
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and, and people like Caldwell, who came from the Koch's defense priority, which essentially also
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made Pete and transformed Pete. And years ago, they were looking to do that, transform him from a
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Fox news host to someone who could go into senior levels of national security by giving him some of
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these veterans groups and others that would promote him something over and above just a media figure.
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Uh, I think it shouldn't be lost on anybody that this comes up. And I say this with total respect
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for Tucker, who I respect. And I, I consider a friend and a colleague, um, that, uh, you know,
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what our show and, and, and our part of the mega base were quite, or at least, at least two thirds
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of our audience, 70% are very pro Israel in the defense, but we're very anti, uh, any type of
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military conflict with Persia about these nuclear sites. I think this comes down to a fundamental
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break, break between, between the defense priority guys and the Koch organization, which is much more
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isolationist, much more bringing it all home versus people who are engaged, want to understand we have
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to be engaged in the world. We have to have a national security policy, even around hemispheric
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defense that is forward leaning, but we don't want to lead with military. We want to lead with
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economic warfare and others. And I think that's where this rift is. It shouldn't be lost on in
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your story, which I thought was a brilliant, uh, overview of this and bringing in all the elements,
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you know, BB Netanyahu has come here twice in the last four or five weeks. One time president Trump
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literally blew up the conversation with Trump, Gaza, which kind of came out of nowhere. And,
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and cause BB was here to pitch the United States being a part of an active part of a, uh, a military
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support for at least an air assault, maybe even a ground assault into Persia to take down, uh, their
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nuclear facilities, which would be catastrophic from military view. If you know what the damage
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assessment would be, he came back, you know, under the, under the headline of tariffs, but he was here
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to make a second pitch because president Trump did not engage the first time. And president Trump
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basically told him in front of the world, Hey, by the way, we're starting negotiations one-on-one
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with no, uh, no, no participation of Israel, uh, with the Persians starting next week in Oman.
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And now it's going to continue again in Rome, uh, you know, this weekend, uh, with which I'm sure
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the president being there for the Pope's, uh, the Pope's, um, funeral may even participate or have
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some sort of more direct involvement. So I think this gets down to, and I think we ought to get on the
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table. It gets down to the situation with Israel and people like Tucker and Kurt Mills and other
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brilliant people who I think the world of saying, Hey, for too long, we've had the tail wag the dog,
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right? And president Trump and others who are supporters of Israel saying, Hey, look, this has to be
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part of an American national security policy. And we have to have this. And I don't totally agree with
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president Trump about a piece of paper, but it has to be something other than a military conflict. I
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don't think it's lost on people that the Pentagon has been accused under Pete and with these guys
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of not having detailed plans and support criteria ready to, to basically jump in here and have it.
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They've, they've kind of slow walked it. And I think the reason they've slow walked it is that there is
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this president Trump. And he said it again the other day in the, in the, in the press briefing,
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the press avail on the oval that he wants peace. He wants a peaceful way to settle this. Uh, I don't
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like the very, and he's got his top guy, Whitcoff on the negotiation. This, I don't like the V word.
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I don't like verification. I think this has to be taken down piece by piece. And I think we have
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to go up the escalatory ladder on economic warfare. Number one, my question is why are we allowing,
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you know, they say 1.5 million, but it's really almost two and a half million barrels of oil a day
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to leave Iran that funds the mullahs, uh, and goes through the Straits of Hormuz, uh, to, uh,
00:21:21.980
through Straits of Malacca to China. And it's 22% to 25% of China's, uh, output of which, oh, by the
00:21:28.360
way, we're engaged in an economic, uh, war right now. I think go up the escalatory ladder, uh, which
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would say, Hey, I I've been in a carrier battle group, you know, off the coast of Iran for the hostage
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crisis in the, in the Persian Gulf. We've got two carrier battle groups right now in the Red Sea,
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keeping the Suez Canal open, just move one over, you know, over to in front of the Straits of Hormuz
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and let's do a blockade, a naval quarantine of everything. And you'll, the mullahs will be gone
00:21:55.160
in a hundred days. Now you're going up the escalatory ladder, but I think all of this in
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the Pentagon gets down to a major fissure on really our national security policy going forward.
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And are we prepared to get sucked back into an open conflict in the, in the Middle East again?
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I don't think you're wrong. And I, but I wonder who they're fighting.
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I think they're fighting Trump, not Pete. You know, Pete is Trump's execute. Like Pete will do
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what he is told to do. And Trump has had, he hasn't been as non-interventionalist as the,
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that core strain of MAGA, right? Like he bombed Soleimani, his rhetoric around Iran has been
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a lot more bellicose than I think some in the party would like to hear. We do not want saber rattling,
00:22:38.960
suggesting our boys are going to have to go fight a war against Iran at all, much less than have to
00:22:44.840
do it. But I think what, like my take on this story, this is my own opinion based on the facts
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as I just laid them out, is that probably there is a strong anti-interventionalist strain within
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the Pentagon. A lot of these, you know, and this guy Caldwell's former military too. He fought abroad
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and saw horrible things. And I think a lot of those guys like Pete got to the place where they
00:23:08.000
do not want us to be too trigger happy. And so I'm not saying Caldwell leaked the, those top secret
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documents to NBC news, but it certainly could have been him. And it looks like the Pentagon thinks it
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was him. And if he were to do it, why would he do it? Well, because those documents were about
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possible war down in Panama, possible use of armed forces in Panama. It's possible there is a strain
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even within the Pentagon. That's even more to just make it easy to understand dovish than those in
00:23:36.580
charge and certainly more dovish than Trump. I, I, I see your analysis and I'm a disagree. And here's
00:23:42.320
why I think there's not, and this is about, this is why the promotions under Bush and Obama and
00:23:47.100
president Trump the first time with Madison, these guys, you know, we took, we took down the
00:23:51.680
caliphate, but, but remember the center of gravity of us foreign policy and military in the defense
00:23:57.560
contractors is big army, big operations in CENTCOM in the middle East. It shouldn't be lost you on
00:24:03.040
the chats. When you do on the signal chat, the one thing that jumps off the page at you is president
00:24:08.680
Trump is not engaged with these guys in a real time basis. Who is he talking to in a real time?
00:24:13.320
Go back and look at the chats. They're kind of throwing up ideas and Pete's getting them up to speed.
00:24:17.520
They're directly talking to combatant commander and CENTCOM on the Houthis thing. President Trump's
00:24:22.600
engaged directly with the combatant commander right there. CENTCOM. CENTCOM is the center of
00:24:27.160
gravity. This is why Obama failed on the pivot to Asia. All the pivot to Asia. Let me just keep it
00:24:33.600
simple for me, but keep it simple for me. Why would somebody, and again, with all due respect to again,
00:24:39.000
Dan Caldwell, who I want to underscore is denying that he leaked anything, but why would someone like
00:24:44.360
that leak the alleged war plans? I mean, the report was that Trump had asked the Pentagon to drop war
00:24:52.440
plans against the Panama, against the Panamanians, basically to retain the Panama. Why would they
00:24:57.940
leak that? Here's why. Because, because the strategic endeavor of president Trump is a hemispheric
00:25:02.720
defense. It's to get off the Eurasian landmass in a direct military conference. Look, you look at NATO,
00:25:08.780
you look at the Gulf Emirates in the Middle East, you look around to the Straits of Malacca,
00:25:12.620
the South China Sea, you look up to Korea and Japan. Around the rim of the Eurasian landmass,
00:25:16.940
where we fought all the wars of the 20th century, you have America. You have American commercial
00:25:21.780
relationships, trade deals, capital markets, but it's underwritten by an American security guarantee.
00:25:26.940
This is why we have a trillion dollar defense budget. This is why the kids, the sons and daughters
00:25:32.460
of the deplorables on two carrier battle groups in the Red Sea to keep the Suez Canal open for Europe.
00:25:38.620
What president Trump has said in Panama central to this, for the non-interventionists, or at least
00:25:43.500
to tone it down, we're going to shift to a hemispheric defense. And that hemispheric defense
00:25:47.880
is going to go from the Panama Canal, initially from the Panama Canal, which we're going to control
00:25:52.440
to block the Chinese and Russian Navy from meeting in Caribbean, all the way up to Greenland,
00:25:57.400
where we're going to block the Russian Navy from coming through Murmansk and Archangel,
00:26:01.660
coming down to the North Atlantic to basically put ballistic missile submarines off of New York
00:26:08.760
so they can launch in the United States and fast attacks down off of Norfolk and all of our ports
00:26:12.740
on the East Coast. Also, you talk about Canada and the Arctic, that's part of the hemispheric defense.
00:26:18.200
Pete Hex's first visit outside of Panama was to go to the three island chain, Hawaii, Guam,
00:26:24.360
and the Philippines to talk about the vast Pacific, as that is the natural defense of the United States.
00:26:29.700
President Trump's strategy is brilliant. And Marco Rubio's first trip as Secretary of State
00:26:33.240
was down to Panama. Go ahead, keep going. Panama. Yes, and hey, the guys in the Panama,
00:26:38.640
the defense contractors are smart people and they're tough. They ran Elon Musk out of there
00:26:43.200
in a second. He hasn't done anything about the Pentagon. These are the original gangsters, okay?
00:26:48.740
They're OGs and they said to go, hang on, the hemispheric defense is the way you cut the defense
00:26:53.280
budget down from a trillion dollars to $500 billion and really defend America. And then on expeditionary
00:26:58.880
forces, you can pick and choose wherever you go for that. But we're all for the Eurasian landmass.
00:27:07.820
Okay, but wait, but you got to help me because if that whole, if that, what you were saying ended
00:27:13.280
with and is, was, and Dan Caldwell is a neocon who doesn't want that. He wants, he doesn't want
00:27:19.740
defense department budgets to be slashed. He wants us to be more interventionalist in,
00:27:24.220
in Eurasia and he doesn't want us to be focused on Panama. But he's not, he's aligned with Tucker.
00:27:33.160
He's aligned with Tucker, but that's the people turfing him out. Remember he's the one turfed out.
00:27:37.720
Look, I'm not a huge Dan Caldwell fan originally. He's okay. He's one of these Coke guys, the defense
00:27:43.020
priorities, which are total isolationists and kind of support what I would call hemispheric defense.
00:27:48.220
The reason he was turfed out and they leaked, they leaked the, and I'm not so sure he leaked it
00:27:54.120
allegedly leaked, but the, the Panama war plans, I'm not so sure he actually leaked them. We'll
00:27:58.980
have to find that over time is they're trying to get rid of the Tucker, the people more aligned
00:28:03.780
with Tucker Carlson, the defense priority guys who Pete really came from that area. That's why Pete
00:28:08.560
sitting there going, you know, it's his chief of staff, these other guys, it looks like the
00:28:12.660
building's coming after Pete. I think this comes down fundamentally and what your audience
00:28:16.820
started to think of, there's two separate ways you can look at American national security
00:28:20.760
in the 21st century. President Trump is presenting a radical, but a plan that goes back to our
00:28:27.400
founders in the, in the Monroe doctrine and manifest destiny about you take care of the
00:28:32.540
Western hemisphere. If you secure the Western hemisphere with the vast Pacific, which is as
00:28:37.360
big as the Eurasian landmass as a defense. And you, and you take care of the Russian Navy from
00:28:42.960
the Arctic and from Greenland and from Panama, you've basically hermetically sealed the United
00:28:47.500
States. This is why he's also talking about a iron dome type thing or anti-ballistic missile.
00:28:52.640
Once you've done that, you've hermetically sealed the United States and probably had the potential
00:28:57.140
of cutting our defense budget by half. Okay. If you continue, and the plan of what the Pentagon
00:29:03.220
has is not sustainable. If you continue this madness of us being everywhere and having troops
00:29:09.040
everywhere and having, you know, from Ukraine to the middle East to everywhere, you're, you're,
00:29:13.480
you're going to bankrupt the nation. And I think that's the fundamental thing. And you're seeing
00:29:16.840
turmoil and Pete does not have control of the building. I'm a huge Pete fan. We, we went fixed
00:29:21.820
bayonets on Pete when he was almost tossed over for Ron DeSantis very early in the confirmation phase.
00:29:27.900
So our, our, our audience is a hundred percent back of Pete. We want Pete to stay, but this gets to
00:29:33.600
deeper and they're coming after Trump. That's why this is the deep state. Marco Ruby today had a
00:29:38.640
huge restructuring of the state department. You're going to see, and they leaked it on Sunday with
00:29:43.180
some false things. The deep state was the national security council, whether it's at DNI, whether it's
00:29:49.140
at CIA state department, or particularly the Pentagon is trying to put a siege mentality on president
00:29:54.720
Trump that he can't take any actions he wants to do to basically implement Megan, the America first
00:30:01.220
national security strategy. And this is a live fire exercise. They're out for Pete Hexeth. And I
00:30:06.340
think NPR is based on, I think Ron DeSantis is out there telling people you should have picked me at
00:30:12.400
first that who's you going to trade out Pete on. I'm in the bullpen. I'm ready to go. And the
00:30:17.540
Republican establishment would love that. Oh, wow. There's a, there is something coming in from
00:30:22.820
left field. That is, is Ron DeSantis, the source that NPR is basing. It's they're out looking for
00:30:28.920
others because Eric Erickson, a conservative commentator was all over X last night saying
00:30:32.760
he's hearing it too, from white house staffers. Um, I'm being assured it's not true. Uh, and Trump
00:30:38.700
himself on camera yesterday saying it's not true with, with no wiggle room, you know, Trump knows
00:30:42.940
how to leave himself a little wiggle room, but he gave a full throat throat endorsement of Pete.
00:30:46.840
I, I remain confused. I don't, I still don't get it. If Caldwell's the leaker of the Panama canal
00:30:52.820
attack plan news, that would be something that would be done by someone who is, I think,
00:30:58.620
extremely dovish, which he sounds like he is, but he, in that interview with Tucker sounded more
00:31:04.720
pro protecting Panama canal than getting involved in Iran. So it doesn't make sense to me that he's
00:31:10.960
the leaker to NBC. And that's a point in his favor. In any event, we'll find out eventually,
00:31:15.440
because we're going to know they, unfortunately, I think you're, I think, I think your summary was
00:31:20.440
brilliant. I think your summary is brilliant. And I think folks really ought to focus on this
00:31:24.200
because it gets to, if you see the way they're coming at president Trump to the judiciary and
00:31:28.960
the courts, the deep state, and this is my problem. When I hear Pete talking about, we're going to have
00:31:33.840
an investigation and light all this, and we're going to put it to DOJ. Hey, this thing right now
00:31:38.920
in DOJ should be number 20. I mean, people have to wake up. We have to have a sense of urgency right
00:31:44.480
now. We are burning daylight. We're 18 months away or however long away from the midterm elections
00:31:49.320
where if, if, if, if they raise $2 billion and flip a couple of seats in New York and California,
00:31:55.000
Hakeem Jeffries is going to speak at the house. They're going to impeach Trump in the first weeks
00:31:58.200
of, uh, of not going to remove him, but impeaching. We're going to get to this whole thing again.
00:32:02.680
And people are not at DOJ at FBI and others are not moving quickly enough and fast enough for the
00:32:09.000
sense of urgency and even CIA and DNI of taking down the deep state. These people are at war with
00:32:15.320
president Trump. What's happening to Pete Hegseth is part of that war and we have to stop it by
00:32:20.280
direct action. You just can't sit there and wish it away. And don't think that the election in
00:32:24.540
November means anything to these people. They're dug in now more than ever and understand they need to
00:32:29.520
get rid of Trump and they need to get rid of Trump ism. Mm-hmm. That's exactly right. They'd be
00:32:34.660
thrilled to get Pete Hegseth's scalp. Uh, they couldn't care less. They don't, they don't think
00:32:39.080
there's chaos. They don't think they don't care about any of that. They just want to scalp
00:32:42.680
anyone on team Trump will do sec def would be brilliant in their minds. That's all they care
00:32:48.060
about. And I think Trump should stand by him and not show them that he'll roll over, uh, based on
00:32:53.460
Politico and NPR, which doesn't sound like Trump to me. I think he will stand by him. And by the way,
00:32:59.520
we'll hear more. This is not going to be it. They're not done with Pete, especially these guys
00:33:02.940
who are now obviously going to be pretty bitter that they got fired. I'm sure we'll see more. So Trump's
00:33:08.440
going to have to be steely spined on Pete as he has been from the beginning. All right,
00:33:11.880
let's talk about what the Democrats have done. I mean, if you, if Trump had like drawn it up in a
00:33:18.080
like dark cigar smoke filled room, he couldn't have done much better than to get all these Democrats
00:33:23.060
running down to embrace this MS 13 gang member, wife beater, Abrego Garcia, but they're doing it.
00:33:28.800
The best video I saw online was, um, someone did it used AI to show Chris Van Hollen, Senator Van
00:33:34.040
Holland of Maryland dancing with the MS 13 guy, Abrego Garcia in like a waltz together.
00:33:40.860
Sometimes AI is used for good, but they're running down there to embrace him, Steve. And while we don't
00:33:47.940
know what's going to happen on the legal battle for Trump, he's had a setback with the Supreme Court
00:33:51.320
this past weekend, PR wise, politically, he's winning this, isn't he?
00:33:59.720
He's winning it, but I'm going to say it's a quite brilliant strategy. I think they're doing it because
00:34:04.440
this is not about the criminal gangs. Clearly they're embracing these people and the American
00:34:08.240
people are 80, 20 against that. But their overall strategic goal is not, is no mass deportations
00:34:14.580
under Biden's watch. We have at least 10 million illegal alien invaders here. If I was running their
00:34:20.720
operations, I kind of do the same thing is delay and deny block Trump on the most egregious. If they
00:34:26.660
can slow us down, Megan on MS and MS 13, if they can slow us down with the event as a whaling gang,
00:34:32.920
if they can do that, when do we actually get to the mass deportations? And here's what happens
00:34:37.480
on the deep state. You, you talk about exactly. First off, we'll wear him down. We'll change the
00:34:42.900
public. You know, the wall street guys come out and say, we need these guys for the economy. They
00:34:45.900
had 2% to GDP that the wages are low because of this there. They are most focused on the 10 million
00:34:52.760
because they want them here as essentially indentured servants, but also as voters. That's what we got
00:34:58.080
to keep the eye on the price. And honestly, they've slowed us down. They use the courts,
00:35:02.220
but let's talk about what happened in the courts. President Trump used the alien, alien enemies act
00:35:08.700
of 1798. One of the predicates of that is actually make the case for an invasion by a foreign power
00:35:13.880
and using these gangs. The deep state came out over the weekend with a national, uh, intelligence
00:35:19.340
estimate kind of leaked to the press to say, Hey, the community, you know, over at DNI, they're doing
00:35:24.800
this internal analysis and it doesn't support that at all. This is what's happening. I think
00:35:29.840
the Democrats are playing their cards smartly. Although for most people, they're sitting there
00:35:34.100
going, how can they embrace these guys? They're embracing these, the worst of the worst, the slowest
00:35:39.120
down and getting the worst of the worst out. Now they got us jammed up in court. They got president
00:35:43.520
Trump's, the energy, the attention, and nobody's talking about the mass deportations. You wait to the,
00:35:48.440
the bill comes up, uh, for the, the reconciliation where we're asking for $170 billion to rebuild the
00:35:56.280
infrastructure, the ice and the logistics to get people out of here. That's going to be another
00:36:00.260
firestorm. So I think we got to double and triple down. Uh, you're a lawyer. I'm not, I think there's
00:36:05.900
president Lincoln, uh, you know, uh, held up a habeas corpus in the civil war. General Washington
00:36:13.660
was all for it. And a couple of times, you know, after he became president about the situation we
00:36:18.340
have with the French revolution and some of the French people over here, I think you've got to
00:36:22.280
get much more on everything we're doing on taking down the deep state and going after this aspect of
00:36:27.660
it. I think we have to double and triple down. Now there can't be any retreat and no pushback.
00:36:32.540
And quite frankly, the courts have got us jammed up. And I think we've got to look at other
00:36:36.820
alternative methods. And I think there's got to be a challenge. There is a constitutional crisis
00:36:41.580
right now. My point is go maximalists on this and let's bring it to a head and let's bring it now.
00:36:46.600
So we can get to the mass deportations. Otherwise the Democrats are going to win.
00:36:51.560
Yes, I totally agree with that. We talked about the numbers just the other day. Uh, you know,
00:36:55.960
they were 10 and a half million before Joe Biden took over in this country. And now you've got the
00:37:01.140
center for migrant studies saying, well, now they estimate it's about 11.7, a way more than a million
00:37:05.300
came in under Joe Biden. In fact, CPB estimates it's more like 8.2 million. So now you're talking,
00:37:11.580
you know, to round up 20 million illegals here, 500,000 of which a little less are said to be
00:37:17.260
also, uh, extra criminals. You know, you're, you're a criminal if you came in here illegally,
00:37:21.700
but then committed other crimes. And that's what he's starting with. So they've been doing a good
00:37:26.500
job of stopping it legally, but how can Trump, I mean, Trump could in the Abrego Garcia case,
00:37:30.980
literally under the best, totally, um, what's the opposite of the straw man, stone manning,
00:37:38.500
uh, strong manning the other side's argument. I'm a strong man. The other side's argument,
00:37:42.540
the absolute best they can argue about Abrego Garcia is that he's entitled to be flown back
00:37:47.420
to the United States, brought in front of an immigration judge who can then say that gang you
00:37:52.180
were fearing in El Salvador is no longer. Therefore the, uh, suspension of removal to El Salvador is
00:37:59.320
lifted. And now you have to go back home. And then we fly him home. That is literally the best
00:38:03.980
case scenario for Abrego Garcia right now. And this is all this time and U S senators and energy
00:38:11.520
expended on this one man's case. Forget the fact that he's a gang member, allegedly forget the fact
00:38:16.200
that he's a white wife beater. It's all interesting, but it's irrelevant legally. All you have to prove is
00:38:20.500
that he was here illegally and deported, which he was, he was all that happened. He said, the court
00:38:25.380
said, but not to El Salvador. Cause he's convinced me he's going to get killed if he gets sent back
00:38:29.980
there. So all we'd have to do is fly back here, have a little hearing where they said, you know
00:38:33.740
what? That threat is no longer existent. You're going back home to El Salvador done. But the reason
00:38:38.460
they won't do it is what you just said, because you do that for the one they've won. The ACLU has won.
00:38:45.300
If we do that, if we're, and I don't like the fact he's been transferred from Seacott. I don't
00:38:51.800
like the direction of this so far. This is the worst of the worst. And look how the media has
00:38:56.380
embraced this and made this guy a hero. The reason is it's about due process. If in their concept of
00:39:02.460
these invaders, if we bring him back for that hearing, it's over, it's over, it's over for the
00:39:08.620
sovereignty of the country. It's over for the country. You're never going to get to the rest of
00:39:12.260
the criminal gangs. President Trump, I think, came on True Social today. Megan, look, you know
00:39:16.240
this a thousand times better than I do. I think he said the calculation that the ICE guys have done
00:39:20.620
is 200 years. You'd have 200 years to even get to the criminals, not even to the 10 million.
00:39:26.920
Just the due process hearings, you would have to have it over and over again. So I think we have to
00:39:31.760
take a hard line on this. I think Stephen Miller is 100% correct. I think we have to take a hard line
00:39:35.840
and I would like further action. I just think now's the time to do it. I do believe, and I think,
00:39:41.800
look, the Supreme Court to come out at one o'clock in the morning in the dark of night over Easter
00:39:48.720
weekend and put out a ruling and then have Justice Alito put out his opinion, which was blistering
00:39:55.020
to his colleagues. We have now, this thing's up at the Supreme Court and there's a civil war in the
00:40:00.540
Supreme Court. On the conservative side, not even talking about the progressive judges that we've
00:40:06.440
allowed, and these guys are now feeling empowered. You're going to have lawsuits on tariffs. You're
00:40:10.340
going to have lawsuits on every action President Trump's going to do. To delay is to deny. And
00:40:15.340
they're playing it masterfully. The Justice Department is overwhelmed because you only have
00:40:20.040
so many lawyers. Yes. This is, we have to lance the boil on this. Otherwise, the legal insurrection
00:40:26.700
of these neo-Marxist judges is going to win just by overwhelming us. And that's why I think it's more
00:40:32.480
and more direct and tough action. I just don't think anybody's account, other than the Trump
00:40:38.080
administration, but none of these courts, and we're not effectively making the point, I guess,
00:40:41.880
enough to the judges or the appellate court judges or the Supreme Court, that every single one of these
00:40:47.040
came into this country without affording anybody any due process. No hearing was held to allow them.
00:40:52.240
No application was filed to allow them. They just broke our laws. Why can't we just afford them
00:40:57.880
commensurate due process with that they afforded us in coming into the country? Shouldn't it be a
00:41:02.800
quid pro quo? It should be, it should be a match. If you fill out forms and we erroneously said you
00:41:07.420
can stay here and now we're trying to deport you, you get your full hearing. But if you broke our laws
00:41:10.880
to come here, why do you deserve anything before we get you out of here? Megan, you're arguing
00:41:15.700
law, constitutional law. You're arguing logic and the rule of law. This is, that's what I'm saying.
00:41:21.580
This is not about that. You can make all those arguments and they don't care.
00:41:24.660
Boesburg, look, on the unitary theory of the executive, where President Trump's the chief executive,
00:41:29.620
It's President Boesburg to you, Steve. Please show some respect.
00:41:32.340
No, but this is my point. He stepped in the middle of this, of President Trump's primary
00:41:36.720
responsibility being commander in chief of the armed forces and being commander in chief and
00:41:41.360
taking an oath to God about the national security of the United States. He stepped in the middle of
00:41:45.600
it and now is bringing criminal, is setting up a record of criminal contempt charges of which,
00:41:50.780
as you remember, I went to prison. They're trying to do the exact same thing around people around
00:41:55.060
President Trump. This is so obvious. This gets back to the Pentagon. Folks, you have to understand
00:42:00.640
this deep state. This just didn't occur overnight. This has been 40 or 50 years. All those generals and
00:42:06.580
field officers and civilians have been around forever as part of the deep state of the Pentagon.
00:42:11.060
They're just not going to have Pete Hexas come in with President Trump's ideas and a handful of
00:42:15.820
people and say, oh, this is terrific. Why didn't we think of this? The same way the judiciary. Look
00:42:20.760
at the radical nature of these judges. You're the lawyer. You're a constitutional lawyer. You know
00:42:25.340
how outrageous some of this has been. It's post-constitutional. That's what the American people
00:42:31.140
and particularly MAGA has to wake up, I think, even more to and say, hey, look, we're not playing by the
00:42:36.500
old rules here anymore because they're going to bury President Trump in that way. And that's why I think we
00:42:40.700
have to be even more aggressive and more outside the box. And I think this legal insurrection and
00:42:45.880
you see this at the Supreme Court of the United States to file something in the middle of the
00:42:50.320
night at one o'clock in the morning and then have Alito so furious that he puts out his own opinion,
00:42:56.060
which throws a couple of sharp elbows at people, his colleagues and the colleagues he was throwing
00:43:00.440
a sharp elbow at was that's the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Roberts. Right. So we're in it.
00:43:07.300
We're in it now voted to stop it either. Not one of the Trump justices voted. It's not that
00:43:12.820
they're obligated to vote on his side. It's just if you are a conservative justice and you're you're
00:43:17.820
opposing both Alito and Thomas, you've done something wrong. OK, I've got to get your reaction to
00:43:23.520
Letitia James finding herself on the wrong side of the law. Allegedly, the audience probably remembers
00:43:32.720
we reported this late last week, but now she's been referred to the DOJ by this housing investigator
00:43:39.120
for having allegedly filled out fraudulent forms and getting two different mortgages,
00:43:44.680
one out of Virginia, which she claimed reportedly as her primary residence, even though her primary
00:43:50.020
residence is in New York where she's attorney general and one out of New York where she claimed
00:43:55.620
allegedly for mortgage break purposes, that it was a dwelling that didn't have more than four
00:44:00.620
apartments when, in fact, it has five and she would have had to pay more in a mortgage if she had
00:44:06.000
been honest. And then he also alleged that back in 1990, 1983, she applied for a mortgage with her
00:44:13.580
father, claiming the two of them were husband and wife, allegedly as part of a scheme just to show
00:44:18.740
she has a long history of playing fast and loose with the facts in applying for mortgages, meaning she
00:44:23.580
thinks she's entitled to do something where the rest of us are not. So she finally spoke out to this
00:44:28.040
on Thursday, and here is what she said on New York Spectrum One.
00:44:34.120
Let me just say to all New Yorkers and to all Americans, the allegations are baseless. The allegations
00:44:40.880
are nothing more than a revenge tour. You know, as any good attorney, I will not litigate this case
00:44:48.040
in a camera. It's important that we will respond to these allegations at the appropriate time,
00:44:56.880
um, and in the, an appropriate way. Now she doesn't want to litigate cases on camera, Steve.
00:45:06.560
Uh, if those facts are the case, I hope the DOJ in the Southern district of New York,
00:45:11.480
uh, are moving rapidly to an, a panel, do a quick investigation panel and grand jury.
00:45:16.760
And let's get on with it. There's another thing about, let's just move off. And it looks
00:45:19.760
pretty straightforward, right? On the facts have been presented. She's presented no,
00:45:24.880
no counter facts about this. It looks pretty egregious. And I think it was done at the same
00:45:29.920
time that she was dropping these charges, these phony charges on president Trump.
00:45:34.080
So what's good for the goose is, is better for the gander. I would say, let's get on it and get on
00:45:39.080
it quickly. This is what I'm saying about, we got to have a sense of urgency. I would hope we would be
00:45:43.980
seeing if the facts are the case and you have to have an investigation, you would be seeing an
00:45:48.200
indictment pretty quickly. And, uh, and let's perp walk her into, uh, into federal court and,
00:45:53.760
uh, and see, she says, she's not going to do it. She's not going to do it on TV. That's fine.
00:45:57.520
We'll do it in a court of law, but get on with it. Right on. Um, the daily caller sent two reporters
00:46:02.720
down to Virginia or a down to Virginia where she claimed as her primary residence. Again,
00:46:07.700
clearly, obviously not. She's the AG of New York. She's required to live here just to see,
00:46:11.520
you know, like, is she here? Does she own this building? Is she, is this somehow her
00:46:15.120
primary residence? Here's how that went. Stop 35.
00:46:19.600
Hi there. I'm a reporter with the daily caller.
00:46:22.840
I'm sorry. My kids are out here. I understand. We, we, we mean, we mean the trouble. We're just
00:46:29.540
curious who, who the occupants of the home are because there's, that's none of your business.
00:46:35.060
Well, there are connections. There are connections to New York attorney general,
00:46:40.120
Letitia James. Are you related to Letitia James? Do you know her? You're trespassing. Go with the
00:46:46.160
house. Do you know Letitia James? Okay. No comment. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am. You have a good
00:46:52.660
one. Be well. Be well. Hello there, ma'am. No comment. You're trespassing. No comment? Yeah,
00:47:02.060
you're trespassing. Okay. Who lives here? You're trespassing. Who lives here, ma'am? No comment. No
00:47:07.840
comment. Okay. It didn't sound like Letitia James to me, Steve. I know her voice pretty well by now.
00:47:16.660
She's also never shy about a camera. That'd be the first time she didn't want to jump in front of a
00:47:20.400
microphone, right? Megan? Okay. Absolutely. Speaking of people who love to be in front of
00:47:25.940
the microphone, your old pal, AOC, you've had very complimentary things to say about her in the past
00:47:30.700
and her ability to resonate with the crowd and the Democrats is making a run for it right now.
00:47:36.620
Fight the oligarchy tour. They're getting a lot of tens of thousands of people to watch AOC and Bernie.
00:47:44.000
And she's polling at the top of the Dem field right now. All the numbers are relatively low,
00:47:48.620
but she's at the top of it. I think she's right behind Kamala Harris in terms of their next
00:47:54.000
favorite. So what do you make of what she's doing right now and whether it sets her up for a possible
00:47:59.600
presidential run next time around? Let's talk about the substance in a second,
00:48:03.720
but the optics are clearly she, you know, a party that's dispirited and doesn't have,
00:48:08.420
you know, any way forward and really has no policies. She's out there as a dynamic personality.
00:48:13.460
She's putting some energy into it. First, the number one is you've got to get people
00:48:18.620
to kind of believe in something. Hey, we're going to fight for something. So in that regard,
00:48:22.380
I think she is energy because the, the, the, the geriatrics and the democratic party are not just
00:48:28.560
wrong on policy. They're, they're, they're beaten, right? You can tell that. And they don't have
00:48:32.440
response. Now you look at the substance of the fight, the oligarchy. I've never seen anything
00:48:36.900
more crassly, a bigger lie and phony. I have watched virtually every second of the speeches
00:48:44.400
of her and Bernie, because I am impressed by the crowds they are drawing. And this is just not all
00:48:48.500
Coachella. They've driven huge crowds in the middle of a beautiful Saturday in Los Angeles. They're
00:48:53.340
getting people there. Those people are thirsting for kind of populism. This is what the democratic
00:48:58.820
party abandoned. The bayoners, the democratic party in the credential class walked away from the
00:49:03.340
working class. Those people do want to fight the oligarchs. Unfortunately, everything Bernie and,
00:49:08.180
and, uh, and AOC saying these speeches has nothing really about tacking the oligarchs.
00:49:12.540
It's all this kind of green new deal and Gaza. It's, it's everything, but the heart of the matter,
00:49:18.300
the heart of the matter is president Trump's tariff policy. And what he's trying to do is bring
00:49:22.900
manufacturing jobs back here for the working class. If you look at the tax bill, everything's
00:49:28.020
everybody's talking about is president Trump is open to, and I think you're going to be shocked
00:49:32.100
to see that president Trump is not going to allow a snapback at the upper bracket. In fact,
00:49:37.720
I think he'll create a million dollar bracket and that bracket will be at 40%. He will actually tax
00:49:42.860
the wealthy in this entire tax plan. Something that Schumer and, and, and, and Pelosi and Biden
00:49:49.400
didn't do in the first hundred days when they had everything in 2021, they talked about it. It didn't
00:49:54.000
even come out of committee. President Trump will do it. The third thing is in federal court in
00:49:58.860
Washington DC working off Lena Kahn's great work when she was head of the FTC and abandoned by
00:50:05.120
Kamala Harris and abandoned by Joe Biden. You have Zuckerberg who has been a supplicant to
00:50:10.020
president Trump. You've had Zuckerberg there in court about breaking up the Facebook empire.
00:50:15.120
And we have Google in Northern Virginia and DC about breaking up their empire. Trump justice department,
00:50:21.340
Trump FTC breaking up the oligarchs, the Republican party under Trump, the MAGA movement is taking down
00:50:27.200
the oligarchs. AOC and Bernie are running around cosplaying populist.
00:50:32.960
Steve Bannon, the one and only always with a great take on things. Great to see you. Thanks for being
00:50:37.260
here. Megan, thank you so much. Appreciate you. Fascinating, right? My God, there's so much in
00:50:42.780
the news and you really have to buckle in to really digest it all. Next up, Nancy Grace is here and she is
00:50:51.420
going to tell us about possibly the most bizarre criminal case I have ever heard of. I do not
00:51:00.280
understand what happened here or how the system failed this family, but man, oh man, does she have
00:51:07.680
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I cannot wait to bring you the story. Okay. This is the most bizarre, disturbing case I have heard
00:52:23.840
in recent memory. It remains sort of unsolved. I mean, you'll see why I say sort of. More than 14
00:52:32.020
years after it happened. Ellen Greenberg was a 27-year-old bride-to-be. First grade teacher,
00:52:38.780
whole life in front of her, living in Philadelphia, loving family, whole bed, fiance whom she reportedly
00:52:45.600
loved. One night, that fiance, Sam Goldberg, returned home. They'd been in the apartment
00:52:51.720
together. She had gotten home early from school because it had been a very snowy day, so they
00:52:56.180
apparently let school out. She came home early. He was home too. They lived in a six-floor apartment
00:53:01.780
in this Philadelphia, nice apartment building. And he went downstairs to work out in the gym that was
00:53:09.560
in their apartment building. He came back upstairs and couldn't get the door open. Like one of those
00:53:16.360
latches, those latch locks was closed. He had been in the apartment with her some 45 minutes earlier,
00:53:23.300
and now it was latched, the latch lock from inside. So he starts banging on the door and he says he went
00:53:30.860
down to the doorman and enlisted help and so on. There's a dispute about whether that happened, but
00:53:34.800
net, net, he wound up breaking the door in, breaking the lock basically to get in and says that is where
00:53:42.340
he found his fiancee who appeared to him to be dead. Now he called 911. Nancy Grace is here and she's
00:53:52.040
going to bring, she's written an amazing new book on this, but listen to this. Okay. Because
00:53:56.280
he called 911 and it's a long call, but I'm going to play you the entire thing. We're going to bring
00:54:04.020
Nancy in and she's going to explain to us why this case has wound up being so bizarre and controversial,
00:54:13.280
I just, I just walked to my apartment. She's on the floor with blood everywhere.
00:54:29.520
5601 Flat Rock Road. Is this a house or apartment?
00:54:31.520
Oh, no. Oh, no. It's an apartment. Please, Harry, please.
00:54:39.520
Sir, you have to calm yourself down in order to get you some help.
00:54:43.520
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. She, I don't know. I'm looking at her right now. She, I don't,
00:54:49.520
I can't see anything. She doesn't, there's nothing broken. She's bleeding. Ally?
00:54:53.520
You don't know where she's bleeding from? Can't tell where the blood's coming from?
00:54:57.520
It's, I think her head. I think she hit her head, I think.
00:55:02.520
You think she might have fallen? Do you know what happened to her?
00:55:04.520
She, she, she may have slipped. There's blood on the, on the table. Her face is a little purple.
00:55:09.520
Okay. Hold on for rescue for her. Stay on the phone.
00:55:13.520
My, my, I just, my, I went downstairs to go work out. I came back up. The door was latched.
00:55:19.520
My, my fiance's inside. It wasn't, she wasn't answering. So after about a half hour,
00:55:24.520
I decided to break it down. I see her now just on the floor with blood. Like she's not,
00:55:31.520
Look at her chest. I need you to calm down and I need you to look at her chest.
00:55:36.520
I don't think she, I really don't think she is.
00:55:38.520
Listen to me. Someone's on the way. Look at her chest. Is she flat on her back?
00:55:44.520
Look at her chest and tell me if it's going up and down, up and down.
00:55:52.520
Okay. I can tell you what to do. Okay. Until they get there.
00:55:58.520
Are you willing to do CPR with me over the phone until they get there?
00:56:02.520
Okay. So get her flat on her back, bare her chest. Okay. You want to rip her shirt off.
00:56:14.520
Okay. I'm trying not to. I'm trying not to. Her shirt won't come off. It's a zipper.
00:56:22.520
She fell on a knife. Oh no. Her knife sticking out.
00:56:30.520
I guess so. I don't know where she fell on it. I don't know.
00:56:35.520
Okay. So I'm just going to let her down here now? I mean, what do I do?
00:56:38.520
No. I mean, you can't. If the knife is at her chest, it's going to be kind of hard for you to do CPR at this time.
00:56:54.520
Okay. Someone's on the way. And the knife is still inside?
00:57:03.520
It's in her chest. It looks like it's right. It looks like it's right in her heart.
00:57:08.520
Okay. Someone's on the way out there, okay? Just get to know.
00:57:22.520
You've been turned to her arm and tell me she responds to pain.
00:57:28.520
She's not... Her arms... Her hands are still warm. I don't know what that means. But there's blood everywhere. I mean...
00:57:34.520
I know, but you can't. And the knife is still inside of her. How far? Can you see how far it went in?
00:57:43.520
Don't touch anything. Yeah, don't touch anything, okay?
00:57:45.520
I'm not touching anything. I can't believe this, though.
00:57:53.520
And she ran in the door. You said, latched it shut?
00:57:55.520
No, no. I went downstairs to work out. And when I came back up, the door was latched.
00:58:02.520
Like, it was... You know, it wasn't like... You know, it was like locked from the inside.
00:58:14.520
No, no sign of a break-in at all. I mean, there will be when you get here.
00:58:17.520
Because I had to break the latch, but... To get in.
00:58:24.520
Unbelievable. That was her fiance, Sam Goldberg.
00:58:27.520
She would eventually go to the coroner's office where he would find she had been stabbed more than 20 times.
00:58:33.520
And the medical examiner ruled her death a suicide. A suicide.
00:58:42.520
Our next guest, Nancy Grace, has dedicated her life to finding answers in criminal cases.
00:58:52.520
It's called What Happened to Ellen? An American Miscarriage of Justice.
00:58:59.520
I downloaded the audio this morning. She had sent me the book.
00:59:07.520
Like, people do commit suicide, but 20 times they stabbed themselves?
00:59:19.520
And on behalf of her mother and father, Josh and Sandy,
00:59:23.520
the only way to get justice in this case is to bring the feds in on the case.
00:59:32.520
Despite 20 knife wounds, 20 knife wounds, 11 bruises.
00:59:48.520
The COD is not cause of death is not strangulation, but she was strangled.
00:59:52.520
There are bruise marks that are unrelated to the stab wounds on her neck and strap muscles like this.
01:00:03.520
I can see them with the naked eye and the autopsy photos.
01:00:10.520
When the then medical examiner, Dr. Marlon Osborne, first got Ellen's body, he ruled it a homicide.
01:00:19.520
Of course, she stabbed 20 times, including 10 stab wounds to the back, even slicing her dura, the protective sheath around the spine.
01:00:36.520
Then, because police had already said, oh, yeah.
01:00:43.520
They go meet with the medical examiner, and this stinks to high heaven, the medical examiner, Marlon Osborne, a rep from the district attorney's office, a female prosecutor who has now gotten immunity about this, and members of the police department, Philly PD.
01:01:06.520
When the M.E. comes out, he goes, correction, it's a suicide.
01:01:24.520
Now, the parents of Ellen Greenberg have spent their life savings.
01:01:33.520
They've already booked the venue, gorgeous, the band, the food, the works.
01:01:49.520
They just sold their house, Megan, to try to get her name cleared that she did not commit suicide.
01:02:01.520
They're picking the jury, and the M.E. is going to have to take the stand and divulge what happened
01:02:07.520
in that closed door meeting, why he changed his ruling.
01:02:13.520
Rather than tell the truth, he settles the case.
01:02:20.520
And I'm telling you, Josh Shapiro, the now governor, and you know how I hate to talk about
01:02:25.520
politics because I don't want the crimes I report and investigate to be swayed by politics.
01:02:43.520
He was this close to the Oval Office until the name Ellen Greenberg popped up in the
01:02:48.520
media, and suddenly he was off the roster of potential VP candidates.
01:02:58.520
So one of the, there's so many really interesting facts connected with this.
01:03:03.520
One of the damning facts against Sam Goldberg, who is, you know, obviously suspected by some
01:03:13.520
He denies it forcefully and is disgusted that that's been alleged and has a strong statement
01:03:18.520
about mental health and how people don't understand it, but we're going to consider him because
01:03:23.520
obviously that's, that's what many people, including Ellen's family think happened that
01:03:28.520
But one of the things that is not a good fact for him is he did while I think while outside
01:03:35.520
the apartment trying to get in, or that's at least during the period he says he was out
01:03:40.520
there trying to get in, he made two phone calls or he made a phone call to a cousin who happens
01:03:45.520
to be a lawyer and that cousin's father who's a lawyer called him back.
01:03:51.520
So Nancy, that jumped out at me as like, why if your fiance is outside of apartment in
01:03:57.520
which, you know, you're non-responsive, why would he be calling a lawyer?
01:04:08.520
However, I will say that at this juncture, when there hasn't even been a real investigation,
01:04:19.520
I would like to point out that no fingerprints were taken.
01:04:25.520
Her blood was smeared along the kitchen cabinet.
01:04:29.520
She was found sitting up in the kitchen floor, legs in the kitchen floor, back against the cabinets.
01:04:37.520
And there was blood smeared behind her as if she had been slammed against the cabinets and then landed where she was sitting.
01:04:50.520
There's something called that we call the wrong way blood.
01:04:56.520
When fire and PD got there, blood was dried, Megan.
01:05:02.520
She's sitting up, going horizontally across her face.
01:05:08.520
If you believe in Sir Isaac Newton findings in gravity, the blood would have gone like that.
01:05:15.520
It was dried this way, which proves at some point she had been lying that way for the blood to dry and then propped up, which is staging of the scene.
01:05:26.520
What I'm saying right now, all I want is an independent investigation.
01:05:37.520
But I believe that that would hurt the investigation because what if down the line is somebody else and the state will be haunted by speculation.
01:05:48.520
So I think what we need right now is this case to be reopened for an independent investigation.
01:06:02.520
You and I discussed the criminal statistics, the method and assessment of homicide and suicide.
01:06:08.520
It is highly unlikely, A, for a female to kill herself and destroy anything around the face and the head.
01:06:22.520
She might use carbon monoxide, you know, in a car or an oven gas, but it's highly unlikely she would stab herself.
01:06:29.520
Now, in the rare event, a female does stab herself.
01:06:36.520
When the fire department got there, Megan, they said she would have to be double or triple jointed to stab herself in the back that many times.
01:06:56.520
Some of the wounds, according to experts, not me, experts, medical examiners, death investigators.
01:07:03.520
At least one, if not more wounds were administered post-mortem after death, after her heart stopped beating.
01:07:16.520
If you're dead and you're lying there and I stab you, it's not going to bleed because your heart's not pumping blood anymore.
01:07:24.520
At least one, if not two wounds were post-mortem, Megan.
01:07:31.520
Now, I do not imping perjury or nefarious intent on anyone yet.
01:07:43.520
They believed they just ate the story they were told that the door was broken in.
01:07:54.520
I do know by breaking in a door, you destroy evidence if the door was locked or unlocked because the door is now broken down.
01:08:01.520
But they said when they got there that something was wrong when they first got there.
01:08:13.520
I have found out that on the bottom of her shoes, Megan, was covered in blood.
01:08:22.520
I found that clumps of her hair covered in blood were between her legs where she was sitting, according to a rep for the family.
01:08:37.520
The very next day, the apartment manager was asked if the fiance's family could come get items for the funeral.
01:08:45.520
She called the police and asked them, can they?
01:08:49.520
And she said, well, can I clean the apartment so it can be rented out again?
01:08:54.520
And they even gave her a cleaning, a crime cleaning specialist.
01:09:02.520
And she videoed the apartment before and after the cleaning, which is kind of a way to preserve evidence.
01:09:11.520
I mean, you know, what else could they possibly do wrong?
01:09:16.520
And I think in a bid to cover up their mistakes, they started a lie.
01:09:21.520
Let me let me take a take a stab at a bad choice of words, but defending the suicide theory.
01:09:28.520
The people who believe it or who want us to believe it say she was on a couple of drugs, a sleeping medication and an anti-anxiety med.
01:09:37.520
She was seeing a therapist that she, by the way, the therapist said she did not complain about the fiance at all.
01:09:43.520
They seem to have a loving relationship for what it's worth.
01:09:46.520
And she had these, I guess, commonly prescribed medications to help her sleep and to help with her anxiety and the reported side effects.
01:09:55.520
They always list the side effects and they they tend to include suicidality.
01:09:59.520
You know, ninety nine point nine nine percent of the cases they don't cause that.
01:10:03.520
But the drug manufacturers put it on there as one of the possible risks.
01:10:07.520
And so the theory is that, though, you know, she she seemed happy and she seemed maybe a little anxious, but net net a happy person, something flipped.
01:10:18.520
And many of those wounds were superficial, like a testing, which could happen.
01:10:24.520
Somebody is like seeing what it would feel like and working up the nerve to actually do it.
01:10:28.520
And there was some question about whether I saw the testimony by that one expert saying, yeah, those wounds didn't bleed and therefore they were probably committed postmortem.
01:10:38.520
But then there was something on the other side saying she the same woman saying, but I can't be totally sure on that either, to be honest.
01:10:45.520
So that's the argument that she took her own life.
01:10:48.520
And of course, that she was in a locked apartment by herself.
01:10:52.520
There was only one other way out. There was that front door that was locked with a latch from the inside.
01:10:56.520
And there's only one other way out, which was the the deck leading off their patio.
01:11:00.520
But it was a snowstorm and the snow was totally preserved and unfootmarked at all.
01:11:04.520
So the cops reasonably did not believe anybody had come in or gotten out from there.
01:11:08.520
So it had to be. Didn't it didn't have to be her or her fiance?
01:11:22.520
I will address each of the points you raised in order that you raised them.
01:11:27.520
Number one, sleeping meds and anti-anxiety meds.
01:11:37.520
She was seeing Dr. Ellen Berman because shortly before her murder,
01:11:42.520
she had called her parents, Josh and Sandy, and asked to move home.
01:11:49.520
To move out of the apartment she shared with her fiance.
01:11:59.520
She had always loved her job and indicated nothing otherwise.
01:12:03.520
Her father advised her, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
01:12:15.520
Why she wanted to move out of the apartment with Sam remains a mystery.
01:12:22.520
But I do know that she asked her parents and one of her best friends, Debbie,
01:12:27.520
could she move in with them shortly before her death?
01:12:35.520
Why do you want to quit your job and move home with us?
01:12:39.520
Before you do that, before you leave your job, I want you to see a therapist.
01:12:48.520
Berman states specifically that Ellen had anxiety but was not suicidal.
01:12:59.520
Hence the prescription for anti-anxiety pills and sleep meds.
01:13:06.520
She, Ellen, spoke to friends concerned about the effects of the anti-anxiety pill.
01:13:23.520
The autopsy revealed she had a normal amount of the meds in her.
01:13:30.520
I would also like to point out that the day of the murder, there was a blizzard,
01:13:42.520
Why was she calling all these people on her phone?
01:13:51.520
She called every single student's family to make sure the child got home, each child.
01:14:07.520
In the one hour before her murder, she was on the phone making sure her children got home from school.
01:14:15.520
She was perfectly happy and bubbly on the phone.
01:14:18.520
And the 45 minutes it took for Sam to go work out, Sam Goldberg to go work out and come back.
01:14:28.520
I think a jury would agree for her to form the intent to commit suicide.
01:14:33.520
She was still in the kitchen where she was making a fruit salad for lunch.
01:14:38.520
And while she's supposed to be committing suicide with her right hand, when she was found, she still had a pristine white dishcloth in her left hand.
01:14:47.520
So, Megan, you believe in any world she could stab herself 20 times, including to the back of the spine, the top of the head, and hold on the other hand with a clean dish towel?
01:15:12.520
The latching of the lock is very interesting because was it the kind of lock that we all have in the hotel rooms, you know, with a little chain or was it something more, you know, strong?
01:15:35.520
And the person on the outside can open it like that much.
01:15:39.520
Now, tests have been done that suggest the door was not broken in.
01:15:53.520
The door broken or not broken is another can of worms.
01:15:58.520
But just on the physical evidence alone, and I'd like to point out that in the last months, the original medical examiner, Marlon Osborne, reversed.
01:16:16.520
So you and I and the rest of the world and all the online haters can hash it apart as much as we want to.
01:16:25.520
But the ME that saw the body and multiple other MEs and medical examiners state it was not suicide.
01:16:31.520
So the original problem was from Marlon Osborne, who after his closed door meeting where the D.A. got immunity, changed it to suicide.
01:16:52.520
When he was he says he went down to work out, he came back up, the apartment door is latched.
01:16:58.520
And he's, you know, saying, hey, you know, he's sending her an increasingly annoyed series of texts inside.
01:17:06.520
And then he says he went down to the doorman and said, hey, I'm locked out.
01:17:12.520
And he claims the doorman was like kind of like, not my problem.
01:17:15.520
You're going to have to break it in if that's what you want, if you want to enter.
01:17:20.520
Went up there and and pushed up, push it open with his shoulder or his body.
01:17:29.520
Did anybody witness the fact that he was locked out and pacing and trying to figure out what to do for that period of time, maybe like a 30 minute window after workout and before finding her?
01:17:39.520
Well, according to some reports, the doorman is Philip Hanton.
01:17:44.520
And he says the fiance came down and told him he needed to break in the door.
01:17:53.520
And Hanton said, I cannot leave this front desk.
01:18:01.520
Now, according to some reports, the fiance said he did have a witness that watched him break down the door.
01:18:13.520
And as of now, we have not uncovered any employee or anyone that went with him to watch him break down the door.
01:18:25.520
And do we have evidence that he did, in fact, go work out?
01:18:31.520
I've seen the video of him going into the workout club.
01:18:38.520
And according to the Greenbergs, rep coming out in about 45 minutes.
01:18:45.520
I've looked very carefully at him walking around because he then goes and gets some mail and he's looking at his phone.
01:18:52.520
It looks to me that there is sweat on the back of his shirt, but I can't tell from the black and white video.
01:19:02.520
He goes into the workout room and then comes out.
01:19:11.520
She wasn't supposed to come home early that day, but she did because of the blizzard.
01:19:16.520
He goes and works out 45 minutes, comes back up and she's dead.
01:19:24.520
According to him in the 911 call, she's already cold in a warm apartment.
01:19:29.520
Now that takes a little bit of time right there for the body temp to go down.
01:19:35.520
But he says she was cold to the touch in a heated apartment in the kitchen.
01:19:46.520
That presents an issue for the medical examiner as to the time of death.
01:19:55.520
According to the medical examiner now, this is no longer considered a suicide.
01:20:00.520
And what we're waiting on is a local D.A. to relaunch the investigation.
01:20:08.520
And really, gosh, you've covered so many of these.
01:20:12.520
I cannot trust the Philadelphia District Attorney's office because they've already screwed it up once.
01:20:26.520
They never found the fiance's DNA on the knife.
01:20:33.520
But what I read in any event is that his DNA was not found in the knife and that he was not found with blood all over him.
01:20:39.520
I actually would have thought he would have had some blood on him just from that purported attempt at CPR that we heard him go through with the 911 operator.
01:20:46.520
But, you know, again, just because as I look at it, I don't understand how it could be anybody else.
01:20:53.520
I suppose there could have been somebody lying in wait in a closet and then they killed her.
01:20:58.520
And then when they ran out of the apartment, they slammed the door so hard that somehow the latch connected.
01:21:07.520
But if you go with the odds and you look at the fiance, it just doesn't like make sense to me that he.
01:21:20.520
He says he locked down that he broke down the door.
01:21:23.520
And at that point, if he did something to her, would it would the murder have occurred then, Nancy?
01:21:28.520
Is that the if you're against the fiance in this hypothetical world, would that have been the moment of murder or prior to the workout?
01:21:36.520
I believe at this juncture speculating as to the identity of the killer will damage the investigation.
01:21:45.520
If you think about what the police did or did not do.
01:21:51.520
I'm not defending anyone or pointing the finger at anyone.
01:21:58.520
But of course, they're going to look at the fiance.
01:22:05.520
The parents think she was a domestic abuse abuse victim.
01:22:08.520
And they point to those old bruises that were found, 11 bruises on her body that predated the date of her death.
01:22:16.520
The police did not determine had there been visitors in the apartment.
01:22:24.520
Was there another access for visitors or intruders to get in?
01:22:35.520
Is there video surveillance in the parking lot or in the hallways or in the trash chute areas?
01:23:09.520
And many people called for the fiance to be indicted.
01:23:19.520
Years later, years later, like five or six years later,
01:23:23.520
a woman came into the PD, police department, APD,
01:23:37.520
And she said, hey, hey, hey, I got something else for you.
01:23:47.520
Emmanuel Hammons and some of his friends were driving along,
01:23:51.520
saw her, chased her, raped her, beat her, killed her,
01:24:00.520
when they went to where the girlfriend I directed them?
01:24:12.520
And the DA, in his wisdom, had been goaded to try and indict the boyfriend.
01:24:25.520
So I'm very careful about naming a would-be suspect,
01:24:43.520
And I don't want to reach a convenient conclusion.
01:24:50.520
Like the husband, like the ex, like the boyfriend.
01:24:52.520
You always look at those closest to the victim, of course.
01:25:06.520
When Ellen took her own life, it left me bewildered.
01:25:09.520
She was a wonderful and kind person who had everything to live for.
01:25:17.520
I have had to endure the unimaginable passing of my future wife
01:25:20.520
and the pathetic and despicable attempts to desecrate my reputation and her privacy
01:25:25.520
by creating a narrative that embraces lies, distortions, and falsehoods
01:25:30.520
Mental illness is very real and has many victims.
01:25:34.520
I hope and pray that you never lose someone you love, like I did, to a terrible disease
01:25:38.520
and then be accused by ignorant and misinformed people of causing her death.
01:25:42.520
If you're really writing a truthful story, dig deeper,
01:25:45.520
and please do some good by raising awareness for mental health.
01:25:50.520
So, he obviously believes she was mentally ill and that she took her own life
01:25:56.520
and really hasn't said anything other than that since we heard on that 911 call him saying
01:26:02.520
she stabbed herself, she fell on a knife, one of those two things.
01:26:08.520
I believe in light of the fact that the original medical examiner has now stated that this is not a suicide.
01:26:17.520
There's really no other alternative other than this is a homicide.
01:26:26.520
The counterargument to that is that he just came out and did that to settle this case that the parents brought.
01:26:33.520
And he said he withdrew the suicide declaration, but he didn't say homicide.
01:26:38.520
He said something else, which is not, you know, it's kind of weak sauce.
01:26:43.520
And that will not exactly help a new prosecutor say, I want to take this on as a homicide case.
01:26:49.520
There are only a limited number of CODs, manners, manners of death.
01:26:54.520
And those manners of death are suicide, accident, natural cause, undetermined, and homicide.
01:27:17.520
That leaves two alternatives only, undetermined and homicide.
01:27:29.520
Everyone is falling in line now and agreeing it's not suicide.
01:27:33.520
So unless everyone else is a medical examiner that has inspected the body and read all the
01:27:39.520
autopsy reports and every scintilla of evidence and no more than all these doctors, then it
01:27:59.520
So you need the federal DOJ to get involved here.
01:28:06.520
And I am not ready to point the finger at him or anybody else until we have the facts.
01:28:17.520
Normally, I think I know exactly what happened based on the facts that we've got.
01:28:21.520
But the problem here is that we don't have the facts.
01:28:25.520
We don't have them because of the shoddy investigation.
01:28:28.520
It's got to be started at the beginning, the very beginning with what we've got left.
01:28:33.520
I remember having to restart a murder investigation that was tried when I was in law school.
01:28:40.520
It took all the way up to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, one step below the US Supreme Court.
01:28:45.520
It landed back in the DA's office because of, by the way, interlocking confessions, interlocking statements.
01:28:54.520
The whole thing had to be retried, severed the two defendants separately.
01:28:59.520
When I got to the evidence room, Megan, there were two pieces of evidence left.
01:29:03.520
An X-ray, which I couldn't make heads or tails of and didn't know who it belonged to.
01:29:12.520
I had to start ground zero and work the case up.
01:29:30.520
But that is not prudent in pursuing justice in this case.
01:29:37.520
What is prudent right now is that we get an independent investigator.
01:29:43.520
And the only clear cut path I see, Megan, is a fed.
01:29:55.520
Shapiro is tainted because he's the AG that was embroiled at the beginning.
01:29:59.520
That washed his hands and turned the other way like Pontius Pilate.
01:30:06.520
You can't have anyone connected to the earlier ADA's office.
01:30:10.520
In fact, I ran down a then ADA who read the file and was waving the flag.
01:30:23.520
Everybody knew at the time it wasn't a suicide.
01:30:25.520
So where does that leave Josh and Sandy Greenberg?
01:30:37.520
We're going to take a break and be right back with Nancy Gray.
01:30:40.520
So I'm going to ask about another big case in the news right now.
01:30:43.520
The Brian Kohlberger case and wait until you hear what the judge just ruled.
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01:32:55.520
The Brian Kohlberger case right now is set for trial this August.
01:32:59.520
Finally, after all these years of delay and some strange motions being filed, I think, by
01:33:07.520
the defense so far without success in recent days.
01:33:10.520
First, defense attorneys for Kohlberger asked the judge, Hippler, two Ps, you say it fast,
01:33:20.520
Judge Hippler was not impressed with the motion to disallow any reference to the bushy eyebrows.
01:33:29.520
That his defense attorneys didn't want the roommate's description before she knew who Brian Kohlberger was when she was just describing the intruder.
01:33:37.520
She saw he was wearing a mask but recognized his bushy eyebrows.
01:33:45.520
Secondly, the defense wanted to bring up that he's on the autism spectrum in like opening so that it might explain away what they suggested were some of his odd behaviors, perhaps during the hearing or during the trial.
01:34:03.520
And the judge said, you're not bringing that in.
01:34:06.520
You can if you want to put them on the stand and talk about him being on the spectrum.
01:34:10.520
But you can't just offer testimony as the lawyers in order to explain away either his behavior in the court or any other behavior in this case.
01:34:19.520
And they also asked him if they could call an expert to talk about his alleged OCD because they said prosecutors may make arguments that Kohlberger was destroying evidence right before law enforcement arrested him.
01:34:34.520
And so they wanted to get around having him testify by having an expert take the stand and say that's his OCD because I guess everybody who's got OCD puts all of their garbage in little Ziploc baggies and then has the garbage disposed of in the neighbor's trash.
01:34:50.520
But this is defense attorney Ann Taylor doing whatever she can to zealously represent her client.
01:34:55.520
So what do you make of what do you what does all that tell you about where this case is for the defense?
01:35:00.520
First of all, it tells me, Megan, that they're between a rock and hard spot.
01:35:04.520
Now, the judge has ruled that they may not bring in evidence of alleged autism on Kohlberger's behalf in the case in chief.
01:35:15.520
This is a death penalty case. It is a bifurcated trial trial split into first is the guilt innocence phase.
01:35:22.520
And if he is found guilty, which I predict he will be there is in the second phase of the trial, which is the sentencing phase where the jury will decide whether he gets the death penalty.
01:35:32.520
Now, regarding autism, the defense wanted to bring in their theory that he has autism, although apparently none of the defense experts have stated thus far that he is autistic or under the spectrum.
01:35:55.520
They said they wanted to bring it in, as you surmised, because of his odd behavior.
01:36:10.520
If it becomes relevant, then I will review your motion again if you choose to renew it.
01:36:17.520
But as of right now, the only way it would be relevant is if they noted quirky or odd behavior when he takes a stand.
01:36:25.520
So, if you want to bring it in then, sure, but he'll have to take the stand, because just sitting there, I don't see any relevance.
01:36:35.520
However, if there is a guilty verdict and it goes to sentencing, I believe the judge will relent and bring in, if there is any, any expert that says he is autistic, to diminish his capacity to commit a crime.
01:36:53.520
Now, will it diminish his capacity to commit a crime?
01:37:12.520
He is not going to be deemed incapable or incompetent to commit a crime.
01:37:19.520
In fact, he was obsessed with committing crimes.
01:37:24.520
He would send violent felons under the guise of studying criminology.
01:37:35.520
In other words, how can I get out of this without getting caught?
01:37:41.520
His, Brian Kohlberger's DNA is on the knife sheath in the snap button where you put the knife in and you snap the sheath shut under a dead body.
01:37:56.520
Uh, Howard Bloom, who's been all over the reporting on this case, reports that Kohlberger's mother, Marianne, uh, his, his reporting is that she's encouraging her son to plead not guilty, notwithstanding all this evidence.
01:38:11.520
And that there might even be a movement of foot by Kohlberger's defense attorneys to somehow rest the decision to stay in the not guilty camp away from Marianne and Brian as we get to the trial and somehow convince this judge to let them enter into some sort of a plea bargain negotiation with the prosecution.
01:38:34.520
That, that Brian Kohlberger is apparently not capable potentially of making this decision, that the mother's overly influential, and that Ann Taylor, as a defense attorney, probably knows better about what's going to happen at this trial.
01:38:48.520
There's no world in which Ann Taylor can cut a deal for him without his consent, right?
01:38:59.520
As far as a, um, not guilty by reason of insanity, which he's not insane, guilty, but mentally ill.
01:39:09.520
There's no way that she can usurp his ability to enter a plea, either guilty or not guilty, or an Alford, which is, I accept my sentence, but I'm not going to say I did it.
01:39:23.520
I don't know, frankly, if the state would even go along with a guilty plea for life without parole.
01:39:31.520
They are hell bent on seeking the death penalty, and he's not going to plead guilty to the death penalty.
01:39:40.520
Now, there is a way that the judge could enter a blind plea, which is there's no recommendation by the state, but I don't think they would do that either.
01:39:52.520
Because what if the judge said, okay, yeah, I'll take your guilty plea.
01:39:58.520
So I don't think there's going to be a blind plea.
01:40:01.520
Ann Taylor cannot plead in his behalf without his consent.
01:40:06.520
So with the mother trying to convince him to stick with the not guilty, according to Bloom, who's written a book about the case, that is undue influence on the son, where the defense attorney wants to enter a guilty plea.
01:40:25.520
What he's saying is we're on our way to a trial, which Nancy will be all over, and we're going to cover a lot, too.
01:40:31.520
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