The Megyn Kelly Show - VP JD Vance on the Iran Deal, the Divide on the Right, and Coming Back to Faith, PLUS Alleged 1⧸5 Pipe Bomber's Lawyer Speaks Out ｜ Ep. 1340

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00:00:45.780 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:57.500 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:59.100 Welcome to the Megan and Kelly show. We've got a great show for you today. We are live from the

00:01:03.280 Sirius XM HQ in New York City with Vice President J.D. Vance, and we have a lot to talk about the

00:01:10.380 potential end of the war in Iran and his excellent new book, which is out today. It's called

00:01:16.040 Communion, Finding My Way Back to Faith. It's a great read, especially right now for anybody who's

00:01:23.060 having some of the same doubts that the vice president had about his own Christian faith

00:01:28.120 not so long ago. He's here with me. I just saw him in SiriusXM HQ, but he is on the phone with

00:01:34.760 the president, which is about the best excuse any guest has ever given me for being a little

00:01:39.640 late to the show. That seems like something we shouldn't interrupt, but it actually works out

00:01:44.740 well because I didn't really want to bore him with going over the reports of what's in this

00:01:49.640 Iran deal, because he knows. But you and I should go through it together so that you know when he

00:01:55.220 and I are talking what the points are that we're that we're going over. This is reportedly the deal

00:02:01.140 as reported by some sources who have been reliable on reporting previous points of

00:02:09.500 negotiation between us and Iran. Number one, we're going to stop fighting. This is my very

00:02:14.280 simplified version. Everybody's going to stop fighting, including, it says, Lebanon and Israel.

00:02:20.360 OK, so the deal terms reportedly done. This has been confirmed by the administration. That's one

00:02:24.040 of the points of contention here is that they haven't told us exactly what's in the memorandum

00:02:28.560 of understanding. The critics of the deal already feel betrayed. They want to know, like, why can't

00:02:33.940 we know? And so on. But this is reportedly what's in there. Stop all fighting, including in Lebanon.

00:02:39.660 Lift the blockade of the Iranian ports. And in return, the Iranians open up the Strait of Hormuz. 0.85

00:02:45.420 Nothing's in the memorandum of understanding, as we know it, about the tolls that Iran's been 0.67

00:02:50.880 charging. $300 billion to Iran from the MOU says the U.S. with its regional partners will come up

00:03:00.020 with a plan for that. The administration has suggested already that that would be money from

00:03:05.960 its regional partners to try to rebuild Iran. So $300 billion, not U.S. money, but that would go

00:03:11.480 to Iran. That's been criticized by some, but it's to help them rebuild. All sanctions to come to an

00:03:19.640 end against Iran. That's worth reportedly about $100 billion. That's sanctions that have been

00:03:25.680 imposed by us, the UN and the IAEA against Iran. No nukes ever for them, that this is to be 0.73

00:03:32.360 negotiated, but that we're going to agree that they won't develop a nuke. And then the agreement

00:03:40.720 suggests we may be negotiating their needs, their nuclear needs, which has got a big question mark

00:03:46.320 over it. The fate of the nuclear dust is to be negotiated, the enriched uranium. The Treasury

00:03:55.560 will allow Iranian oil exports. That's worth about $4 billion a month. Iran's frozen money

00:04:01.220 will be released. That's worth about $24 billion. And then there's a question of

00:04:08.700 what exactly they have to do in order to get all this money. So President Trump has made clear

00:04:14.880 repeatedly that he's not just going to give them all this dough. They have to do things in order

00:04:19.860 to earn this relief of sanctions and the green light from the Treasury for them to export their

00:04:26.800 oil. And that's one of the questions we have, which is what exactly do they have to do? How

00:04:32.200 will we know when they've done it? And how are we going to basically just hold them to account as

00:04:38.500 opposed to just opening up the financial spigot and making Iran very, very rich while we peace 0.89

00:04:43.500 out of there. Now, the critics of the deal, they don't want any of this. I mean, let's be honest,

00:04:48.500 what the critics of this deal want is more fighting. That's what they want. They want us

00:04:52.140 to bomb Iran to smithereens. I think they'd be fine with Israel growing and its hegemony 0.97

00:04:59.100 in the Middle East. And they're not going to be satisfied until we have, it looks like, 0.89

00:05:05.940 military occupation over there. How else could we ensure that they never do additional enrichment,

00:05:13.500 that they don't want them to be able to do it for energy purposes. They certainly don't want

00:05:18.400 nuclear purposes. And they don't like how much maneuvering, how much wiggle room there is in here

00:05:24.520 for Iran to potentially resume its nuclear program. They also want the nuclear dust,

00:05:32.420 as Trump's calling it. That's basically the enriched uranium that they had in Iran prior to

00:05:39.220 our bombing 12 months ago, June of 2025, until thanks to our bombing campaign, it's now the

00:05:47.540 equivalent of a skyscraper's length underground, not too accessible. And this is what President

00:05:54.100 Trump has been saying. They can't really get to it. And if they were to try, we've got satellites

00:06:00.820 watching them that would tell us immediately. And we have the magical power of our airplanes

00:06:06.820 to go back over there if they were to try such a thing.

00:06:09.620 So he has said from the beginning,

00:06:10.880 he's not all that worried about this so-called nuclear dust,

00:06:14.220 about them like somehow digging it up

00:06:15.960 and working from there to make a bomb.

00:06:19.420 But it's going to have to be addressed

00:06:22.160 in one way, shape or form.

00:06:24.300 Under the Obama deal,

00:06:26.300 there was a question about what to do

00:06:27.720 with their enriched uranium.

00:06:31.100 And there they said something like 98% of it

00:06:34.160 was going to be sent to Russia under the JCPOA, which Trump tore up. Now, reportedly under this

00:06:39.780 deal, it's to be negotiated. We don't have the explicit agreement yet, but there has been a

00:06:49.480 statement, let's see, Trump had suggested that we would be joining with Iran in downblending it

00:06:57.260 and then removing it. He told the New York Times that, that the U.S. will over time join with Iran

00:07:03.300 in downblending it. In other words, if it's enriched beyond the point one would need for

00:07:08.400 domestic energy and is looking more like it's for a nuke, you would get it back down and then

00:07:14.420 removal. And he also said this would require near constant monitoring, any sort of engagement by

00:07:22.080 Iran with uranium. So he's not ruling it out. That has his critics upset. That has neocons, 0.55

00:07:29.300 hawks, whatever you want to call them, very upset because they don't trust Iran.

00:07:33.920 They don't think we should trust them no matter what. 0.80

00:07:36.120 And, you know, we had monitoring of them under the JCPOA. 0.65

00:07:40.500 Obama's defenders and Iran's defenders say that they were complying with the JCPOA and

00:07:46.620 its enrichment requirements back then, which was not beyond 3.67 percent, and that they

00:07:53.420 were complying and that they didn't start to enrich to weapons grade until Trump tore up the

00:07:59.500 original deal. In any event, they do have I don't know if you'd call it weapons grade, but they have

00:08:05.340 uranium that's been enriched well beyond three point six seven deep in the earth at those three

00:08:11.180 nuclear sites right now. And what to do about those is going to have to be decided. We're still

00:08:18.000 waiting on the vice president. He must be having quite the call with the president of the United

00:08:21.220 States. What's supposed to happen later this week is Vice President Vance is supposed to be heading

00:08:27.940 to Switzerland for the formal signing of this memorandum of understanding. So they they didn't

00:08:37.600 they did like a docusign. So it's already been signed, but they're going to do a more formal

00:08:41.680 signing this Friday. And so the president or the vice president shortly after today's interview

00:08:47.660 and some of the other ones that he's going to have to do is going to head to Switzerland and

00:08:51.660 sign this deal. It looks like the president will stay stateside. Okay, it looks like the VP is

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00:09:58.380 J.D. Vance, Mr. Vice President, thanks so much for being here. Good to see you. All right,

00:10:01.880 so what happened with the president and the phone call? Which president, which phone call

00:10:07.720 are you talking about? You mean just back there? Yeah, just back there, yeah. Oh, okay. I mean,

00:10:10.720 Well, you know, he's at the G7.

00:10:12.120 He's about to go to dinner over in Switzerland.

00:10:13.760 And so he just called me to check in on how things are going.

00:10:15.760 Which president?

00:10:16.180 What the update?

00:10:17.100 Well, I meant which phone call.

00:10:18.260 I was like, wait a second.

00:10:19.260 Do you guys have me tapped in there?

00:10:20.380 I didn't think you were in there.

00:10:22.260 Who is feeding you intelligence?

00:10:24.040 They just told us that.

00:10:24.880 That's why you were going to be a little late to say.

00:10:26.840 I see.

00:10:27.320 Okay.

00:10:27.520 Sorry.

00:10:27.820 I was confused at that.

00:10:29.300 But yeah, no, we had just a chat about how the G7 was going.

00:10:32.280 And he was asking about how is, you know, what's the progress of the deal?

00:10:36.060 What's going on?

00:10:36.600 What are we hearing?

00:10:37.200 and just the things that you talk about when you're the president and the vice president.

00:10:39.940 What is the progress of the deal? What are you hearing? How's it going?

00:10:42.920 Well, I mean, the deal is done, at least the first step of it. And, you know, one of the

00:10:48.160 things I've been doing for the past couple of days is correcting a lot of misinformation about

00:10:51.400 the deal because I've heard so many conspiracies, so many things that just aren't true. So like,

00:10:56.620 let me kind of run you through what the deal is and what the deal isn't.

00:11:00.320 Yeah. Okay. So number one, what it says is effectively the United States will open the

00:11:07.980 Strait of Hormuz, lift the naval blockade. The Iranians will destroy the dust and then hand it 1.00

00:11:13.620 over either to us or to an international organization. They will. So they agree to 1.00

00:11:16.980 destroy the dust. Exactly. And the third part of it is, assuming they comply with the terms of the

00:11:22.200 agreement, there are all of these economic benefits that can flow to the Iranians. And so

00:11:26.380 So what happens? So if you're an Iranian hardliner and you want to be out of this and you want to make this deal, but you don't want to sort of pitch it a certain way to a domestic audience, what you do is you go through the document, you identify everything the Iranians could get, and you say, we are getting it.

00:11:45.780 And then you under-emphasize or don't even talk about all the things that they have to give in order to get those benefits. 0.75

00:11:51.020 And so, like, the way that I think about it is there's sort of a, you know, we're at a fork in the road in this entire relationship with Iran. 0.89

00:11:59.800 For 47 years, we've obviously had basically a terrible relationship with Iran. 0.87

00:12:04.680 They funded a lot of terrorist organizations. 0.63

00:12:06.240 There's obviously the nuclear issue that's been in the background, you know, going back well before Donald Trump even got on the political scene.

00:12:12.800 And here's where we are right now.

00:12:14.740 Their nuclear facilities are destroyed.

00:12:16.820 That is just objectively true.

00:12:17.940 Their ability to enrich uranium, to build a nuclear bomb, completely destroyed.

00:12:22.020 Number two, their economy is currently in shambles, right?

00:12:24.920 The blockade and all of the other sanctions have had a very profound effect.

00:12:28.740 And number three, they are in a position where what they're saying is that they want to make long-term commitments to the United States and to the Gulf Arab countries to change their relationship.

00:12:39.620 So that's true whether they comply with this deal or not. 0.66

00:12:44.200 Now, if they comply with this deal, I think it's much better for the United States, and it's going to be much better for Iran.

00:12:48.960 But if they don't comply with the deal, the straits are still open. 0.60

00:12:52.340 We've still done incredible damage to their nuclear program. 0.60

00:12:55.440 And it's really, you know, we can get on with our lives as a country, and they don't get anything if they don't get anything.

00:13:01.880 But turn off the financial spigot.

00:13:03.520 Exactly.

00:13:04.100 Well, the way I put it is the financial spigot has already turned off.

00:13:08.220 It's been turned off for a very long time.

00:13:09.900 In fact, we've probably turned the screws even tighter.

00:13:12.020 but we can either unscrew the financial spigot or we can keep it where it is right now, 0.94

00:13:17.520 which is fundamentally just very bad for the people of Iran. And I'm like, you know, as you

00:13:21.840 know, I'm fundamentally an optimist about these things. I always try to think about what can do

00:13:25.800 rather than just what can happen rather than just identify problems. But, you know, if we go down

00:13:30.520 the option where the Iranians comply with their obligations under the deal, like this totally 0.87

00:13:35.460 transforms the Middle East. And it's interesting, you know, there's always this question about how

00:13:39.640 was this the same? How is this different from the JCPOA, the Obama deal that Republicans have been

00:13:45.680 very critical of for 10, 15 years? And I actually think I could walk you through the substantive

00:13:49.980 differences between what we're talking about and what the Obama deal did. But fundamentally,

00:13:58.200 how did the Gulf Arab countries, the Gulf Coast coalition, how did they respond to the Obama

00:14:02.360 JCPOA? They hated that deal. They thought it empowered Iran. They thought it did nothing for

00:14:06.980 them. They weren't consulted. They weren't a participant in the process. How do they feel

00:14:10.560 about this Trump peace plan? They love it because they see it as a genuine opportunity to transform

00:14:15.880 how the Middle East has worked for the next couple of generations. So I think we have a

00:14:20.320 real opportunity here. But regardless, if it just ends in Iran's nuclear program is destroyed,

00:14:25.940 the war is over, the Straits of Hormuz are opened. That's a great place for the United States to be 0.99

00:14:30.740 in. How is it though? Okay. How is that different from where we were before we launched this war?

00:14:35.700 I get how it's different thanks to the strikes we did last June.

00:14:40.200 That was very helpful.

00:14:41.740 But straight open and nuclear sites destroyed and we're no longer fighting is where we were in February.

00:14:48.980 Well, we did additional destruction to their nuclear facilities and particularly their capacity to rebuild. 0.68

00:14:54.500 So if you look, while a lot of people were focused on, you know, we want to replace the Ayatollah with Reza Pavlavi or somebody like that. 0.77

00:15:03.060 what the president always said is we want to destroy their ability to project power across 0.51

00:15:07.760 the Middle East. And, you know, obviously people always talk about Israel and Israel. I'm sure

00:15:11.600 we'll get into that during this conversation, but it was just the Israelis, but it was also

00:15:15.140 the Gulf Coast coalition that the Arab countries in the Gulf who were frankly petrified of the role

00:15:21.380 that Iran played of their ability to project power of their ability to launch missiles and

00:15:25.880 hit some of these energy facilities. But then also that industrial base that produced missiles 0.84

00:15:30.940 was also useful in rebuilding their nuclear capacity, right?

00:15:35.600 And so what we've done fundamentally

00:15:37.320 is destroyed that conventional military capacity,

00:15:39.880 also destroyed their ability

00:15:41.000 to rebuild their nuclear program.

00:15:43.200 And then what we have an option to do,

00:15:44.920 and again, it really depends

00:15:45.980 on what the Iranians respond with,

00:15:49.000 what we have an option to do, I think, 0.74

00:15:50.320 is fundamentally transform our relationship with Iran.

00:15:52.800 So-

00:15:53.140 I mean, I liken it to what President Trump

00:15:54.980 was doing in that Middle East summit with Saudi Arabia,

00:15:57.060 with whom we didn't use to have the greatest relationship,

00:15:59.360 trying to say, what if we could get along?

00:16:00.940 economically. Like, what if we could help make you rich? Correct. And it like for a U.S. president

00:16:06.300 to look at Iran and even suggest such a thing has many people upset. But if it worked out,

00:16:11.980 would be transformative. Well, it would be transformative. And what the president has

00:16:15.820 said is, I want Iran to be a successful country. But if in order to do that, just look with Saudi 1.00

00:16:20.460 Arabia. It's actually a great example. You know, if you went back 20, 25 years, one of our biggest

00:16:24.580 concerns with Saudi Arabia is they were funding Islamic radicalism. They sent all the 9-11 1.00

00:16:28.200 terrorists. Yeah, a lot of the ideas, the terrorists themselves, but also the ideas that 0.72

00:16:32.540 were spreading all over the Middle East, all over the world, were funded, not necessarily by the

00:16:36.440 Saudi government, but certainly by people within Saudi Arabia. The Saudis completely cut down on

00:16:40.780 that, transformed their country, have a great economic and political relationship with the

00:16:45.100 United States of America. And the president's saying, if the Iranians are willing to change 1.00

00:16:49.060 their behavior in the same way the Saudis did, then absolutely we want them to be a successful 0.70

00:16:52.820 country. And it's interesting. But the two governments are very different. The two governments

00:16:55.960 are very different, but there are similarities too. And again, we just have to go down this

00:17:02.200 pathway, see where we get. If it works out, great. If it doesn't work out, we're still in a good

00:17:07.960 place in our country. What do they have to do specifically to get us to turn on the financial

00:17:12.100 spigot? Yeah. So a lot of this stuff is to be negotiated at kind of the technical level of

00:17:16.800 detail, but it's basically, if you think about it, we care about their attempt to rebuild their

00:17:21.180 enrichment capacity. We care about this enriched uranium, this nuclear dust, as the president

00:17:26.120 calls it. We also care about, you know, are they getting along well with their neighbors? Are they

00:17:30.500 funding revolutions in their neighboring countries? Are they funding terrorist organizations?

00:17:35.220 Or are they being good partners with the Gulf Coast Coalition and of course other countries

00:17:40.040 in the region? And what we're saying is the more that you do, the more we're going to try to

00:17:45.120 reintegrate you into the world economy. And that's the basic template of the deal. And I said, I talk 0.55

00:17:49.520 about like what the deal is and what the deal isn't. What the deal isn't, you know, we don't

00:17:53.880 list this stuff out specifically. We've been talking to them directly about what this might

00:17:58.340 look like. They seem very interested. But again, we've also been very clear that if you guys don't

00:18:03.040 do this thing, none of the actual benefits are going to accrue to your country.

00:18:06.840 How about Hezbollah and Lebanon? Because, you know, that's a proxy that they're funding and 0.71

00:18:12.520 that could easily clear this deal. It could clear this deal. This weak people fear,

00:18:16.960 never mind on a go-forward basis,

00:18:19.160 either side, Israel or Hezbollah. 0.97

00:18:20.680 Sure.

00:18:21.220 Look, it's always delicate with these things.

00:18:24.820 And what we've seen with the ceasefire in Lebanon, 0.99

00:18:28.860 and it's been clear, to be clear, a dirty ceasefire. 0.58

00:18:31.960 There's been some shooting back and forth.

00:18:33.860 But frankly, there's way less shooting now

00:18:37.840 than there was two weeks ago.

00:18:39.120 There's way less shooting two weeks ago

00:18:40.280 than there was before.

00:18:41.400 So with these things,

00:18:42.120 as the President of the United States

00:18:43.200 said a couple of weeks ago,

00:18:44.480 he said, sometimes a ceasefire

00:18:45.640 just means they're shooting less.

00:18:47.460 And that's the progress.

00:18:48.900 And then you get to the next stage.

00:18:50.240 I feel good about it.

00:18:51.600 Is Lebanon included in Hezbollah?

00:18:53.980 It is a regional peace deal.

00:18:55.840 It's gonna include the Gulf. 0.66

00:18:57.060 It's gonna include Israel. 0.89

00:18:58.080 It's gonna include Lebanon. 0.85

00:18:59.060 The idea is this is a true regional peace deal

00:19:01.580 because again, if the Iranians comply-

00:19:03.580 Sorry, forgive me for I'm trying to try.

00:19:04.460 No, no, no. 0.91

00:19:05.160 The idea is that if the Iranians comply,

00:19:09.260 then we are gonna have a true transformative deal

00:19:12.240 for the Middle East.

00:19:13.140 And if not, they don't get any economic benefits.

00:19:15.640 The United States, we got what we came to do, and we're done.

00:19:18.940 And that's the basic approach. 0.93

00:19:19.880 We would not turn on the spigot if Hezbollah hit Israel over and over? 0.93

00:19:26.040 Well, what I would say is, like, if Iran is funding Hezbollah, we're not going to allow a bunch of unfrozen assets to freeze to the Iranians, right? 0.75

00:19:34.780 Now, I want to be clear about this, too, because those are not American assets.

00:19:39.020 There's been a lot of misreporting on this, and people have said, oh, is the United States going to give Iran billions of dollars?

00:19:44.620 No.

00:19:44.980 It will be very, very crystal clear. Even if the Iranians do everything contemplated by this deal, not a penny of American money flows to Iran. But let me give you an example of one of these things that people, again, have misrepresented. Let's say, for example, that the United Arab Emirates, they've been one of the best allies that we've had in the region. Let's say that they want to invest in a nuclear power plant in Iran. They really can't do that without us lifting some of the sanctions that exist in the global financial system to make that possible.

00:20:14.240 Now, are the Emiratis going to invest in Iran or is America going to let the Emiratis invest in Iran unless the Iranians change their behavior?

00:20:24.280 No.

00:20:24.900 So all these people say, well, you know, you're giving Iran money.

00:20:27.600 No, no, no.

00:20:28.020 We're saying that if the Iranians change their behavior, we're going to let some of these other countries invest in rebuilding their country and creating some prosperity for their people. 0.95

00:20:38.640 That's like a good thing, right? 0.60

00:20:40.180 If the Iranians stop funding terrorism, if they're behaving and their relationship is transformed, not just with us, but with the whole region, like that's a thing to celebrate. 0.96

00:20:49.160 You know, somebody said, I forget who, but somebody said, you know, this is like doing the Marshall Plan when the Nazis are still in control.

00:20:56.660 And that's wrong on a few different ways.

00:20:58.740 Number one, the Marshall Plan was a lot of American tax money.

00:21:01.680 This is not American tax money.

00:21:04.080 Number two, we're saying you only get the benefits of the bargain if you change your behavior.

00:21:09.800 If that happens, we're talking about a transformed Middle East.

00:21:13.080 That's a great legacy for the president.

00:21:14.820 But more importantly, it's a great one for the American people.

00:21:16.800 Well, we have inspections of whatever they are or aren't doing when it comes to nuclear slash enrichment.

00:21:23.700 You know, I mean, and is enrichment even on the table?

00:21:26.020 Because I haven't been able to totally understand what President Trump is saying on that.

00:21:30.020 If they want the benefits of the bargain, enrichment is going to be on the table.

00:21:32.860 And more importantly, verification and inspections is going to be on the table.

00:21:35.740 So that means we'd let them do it a little.

00:21:38.500 Like, what else are we inspecting?

00:21:39.660 No, look, our plan is, well, what we would be inspecting is the full part of building a nuclear weapon.

00:21:46.480 So I'm hardly a nuclear engineer.

00:21:48.880 So forgive the scientists are going to have to forgive me for this summary.

00:21:52.560 But building a nuclear weapon is the infrastructure to enrich uranium.

00:21:57.340 It's the infrastructure to turn enriched uranium into nuclear fuel.

00:22:00.560 It's the infrastructure to turn that nuclear fuel into a bomb that you can detonate.

00:22:05.280 It's the delivery mechanism for that bomb.

00:22:07.080 The cascades and the centrifuges.

00:22:08.520 All of this stuff, right?

00:22:09.660 Can those stay?

00:22:10.440 Or are those coming out? 0.89

00:22:12.120 Our plan under this deal is, again, the Iranians are going to get a lot of benefits so long as they dismantle that nuclear weapons program. 0.93

00:22:19.520 And again, people always ask me, why do you believe them this time? 0.98

00:22:23.080 I don't believe them.

00:22:23.840 I don't trust, Megan, I don't trust anything that anybody says.

00:22:27.320 I trust what people do.

00:22:28.560 And the way this deal is structured is that as they do more, they receive more.

00:22:33.260 As they do less, they receive less.

00:22:35.680 And that's the basic structure.

00:22:37.300 Now, the reaction to this from the neocons, from the hawks has been negative already.

00:22:43.980 They're mad that they can't see the Memorandum of Understanding, which I get, actually, in their defense.

00:22:48.180 Why can't they see?

00:22:49.020 Why can't we all see the MOU right now?

00:22:51.460 So, first of all, the president said by the latest Friday, possibly as early as tomorrow, we're going to release the Memorandum of Understanding text.

00:22:58.200 The reason why we haven't released it yet is there are some delicate diplomatic things going on where the Iranians and not just the Iranians, but some of our mediators, the Pakistanis and the Qataris have asked us to sequence this in the right way.

00:23:11.680 I don't, frankly, fully understand it, but there are sensitivities that exist in the Arab and Muslim world that we're trying to be responsive to.

00:23:19.480 Fundamentally, does it really matter if the deal comes out on Wednesday versus Friday?

00:23:23.600 No, that's why we haven't emphasized it so much is because at the very latest, the text is going to be out on Friday.

00:23:29.820 OK, yeah. I mean, you've already signed it, but it's not like legally binding to where you can't undo it.

00:23:35.580 It's a diplomatic agreement. So it's correct.

00:23:37.640 If people freak out, there's an utter meltdown here in the United States.

00:23:40.600 It could always be undone if you change your mind.

00:23:43.120 Exactly. And again, I could summarize this deal in like two or three sentences,

00:23:46.940 which is that if the Iranians change the way that they behave with regards to their nuclear weapon,

00:23:52.500 with regards to their financing of terrorism, 0.89

00:23:54.880 we are going to bring them into the world economy. 0.93

00:23:57.660 If they don't, we won't.

00:23:59.240 It's really that simple.

00:24:00.400 Okay, so here's some of the reaction.

00:24:02.400 Mark Thiessen said if the deal terms are accurate

00:24:05.920 as has been leaked, it's a complete disaster.

00:24:08.500 He's calling this, by the way, the Vance deal.

00:24:13.260 I wonder why he doesn't call it the Trump deal.

00:24:14.860 I wonder too.

00:24:16.440 There is Ben Dominich,

00:24:18.240 who was on a special report last night,

00:24:19.480 called this a hillbilly Obama deal.

00:24:22.040 I wonder who that's a reference to. Seems to be a shot at you, sir. Not bold foreign policy. There's a guy named Yanan Magal, who is an Israeli journalist who's very close with Netanyahu, who is basically his mouthpiece, who called you a lowlife, called Donald Trump a loser.

00:24:38.000 The Israeli ambassador to the United States called this so disappointing.

00:24:42.820 Then there's Mark Levin, who's been rage tweeting about it every five minutes.

00:24:46.840 He demands to see the memorandum.

00:24:48.760 He demands that this be treated like a treaty to where now you have to get congressional

00:24:53.800 approval for the MOU.

00:24:55.420 The Constitution does say you need approval to declare war, which Trump doesn't think

00:24:59.720 he did and didn't seek.

00:25:01.040 But now and he defended him on that.

00:25:03.960 But now that we're ending it, which you definitely don't need congressional approval for, he wants this treated like a treaty and is demanding you go before Congress, sir.

00:25:12.840 Well, to be clear, I don't think that congressional approval was required.

00:25:16.160 I really firmly do believe that the president, this is not was never a full scale war in the conventional or legal sense of it.

00:25:24.180 So we definitely made sure that we dotted our I's and crossed our T's here.

00:25:27.480 So I want to defend the administration on that point.

00:25:29.340 But it is kind of ironic that they're really, really worried about stopping this thing, but they were completely gung ho about starting this thing. And look, I want to be responsive and charitable to some of these concerns. So first of all, why do they believe Iranian propaganda only about one thing, the peace deal?

00:25:48.580 They don't seem to believe Iranian propaganda, rightfully so, about anything else. 0.84

00:25:52.940 So if you're in the position of endorsing Iranian propaganda only when it's related to this peace

00:25:58.220 deal, then maybe you should check yourself a little bit and question your sources.

00:26:03.340 The second thing that I'd say is, what is their alternative?

00:26:07.120 If you look today, Brent crude is around $78 a barrel.

00:26:11.060 West Texas crude is even lower, $75, $73 a barrel.

00:26:14.480 I mean, the numbers float around a little bit.

00:26:16.440 But what that means is lower gas prices for Americans, lower energy costs for Americans.

00:26:21.520 That means that this little blip that we've had of an increase in energy costs, which has caused a lot of people some problems, we're now getting back to normal.

00:26:30.100 And I think that fundamentally, if you look at what they're proposing, they're proposing an endless conflict. 0.97

00:26:37.960 They want this to go on until every bomb has been dropped or until every Iranian is dead.

00:26:43.760 That is not what the president of the United States wants. 0.87

00:26:45.960 What he said is, I set about this to end their nuclear program, to eliminate their ability to threaten their neighbors and project power, and to fundamentally make sure that no future child would have to deal with a terrorist regime with an atomic bomb. 0.63

00:27:02.000 That's why the president set out to do this. 0.81

00:27:04.460 He feels, and he's right, that he's accomplished that goal, and now we can get to the negotiation to see what are the other benefits that we can get from this. 0.94

00:27:11.720 And frankly, what are the benefits the Iranians could get from this if they behave? 0.68

00:27:15.960 I just don't think that people who are criticizing this, one, they're not actually dealing with the reality of what's in it. 0.91

00:27:22.960 And number two, they don't have an alternative.

00:27:25.300 If your alternative is just to drop bombs without any clear goal or any clear American interest implicated, then you're not making the wise decisions on behalf of the American people.

00:27:37.040 The president is, and that's why we're in this position. 0.53

00:27:39.460 I'm going to give you a shot from Sound on Tape from John Podoretz, who is the chief over at Commentary Magazine, which is very pro-Israel, very neo-conny. Preview, he's not happy. Here it is.

00:27:50.720 I honestly don't know if it could be worse. America is going to be in a strategically,

00:27:56.480 tactically and militarily worse position than it was under Biden. He made a choice to test

00:28:04.600 America's resolve and he has choked. He has chickened out. He has bled himself dry. Trump,

00:28:12.960 the crazy lunatic psychotic who doesn't care about lives and will do anything and do anything, 1.00

00:28:18.060 could not bear the idea of putting a boot on the ground anywhere in Iran 0.99

00:28:23.760 and could not bear the idea of a single American possibly being taken hostage,

00:28:29.280 which I understand.

00:28:30.400 I'm not saying that either of those is a good thing,

00:28:33.300 but if you're going to go to war, you have to put boots on the ground.

00:28:36.420 Everyone in the military has volunteered to put their lives on the lines for their country

00:28:42.020 and that the country itself may have to sacrifice in the form of wildly higher oil prices

00:28:47.420 If you think that the American national interest has to be engaged in this process, and if you go into the process and you lose it, and it's a complete war of choice, you have made things worse.

00:28:59.760 The situation is worse.

00:29:02.360 Thoughts on that?

00:29:03.320 Well, there's a lot to respond to in there.

00:29:04.780 But I actually think, John, I appreciate that because John is kind of giving away the game.

00:29:08.420 He's saying he really doesn't care that much about higher oil prices for Americans, doesn't care about high gas prices, and he wants boots on the ground in a country.

00:29:16.700 They seem to care about casualties.

00:29:17.860 Exactly. And once boots on the ground and casualties in a country of 95 million people where, again, the president of the United States never said that his goal was to install Reza Pavlavi to become the new leader of Iran.

00:29:33.740 What he said is if the Iranian people want to rise up, great. That's their business. That's between them and their government.

00:29:39.240 What we want is a cessation of their nuclear program, either through diplomatic means or through military means, as he ultimately went down that pathway.

00:29:48.060 And I think, Megan, there's actually a deeper foreign policy debate that I think the last few months has sort of papered over here, which is when President Trump uses military power, he's not an isolationist, right?

00:29:58.400 He's not a Rand Paul guy, a Ron Paul guy.

00:30:00.440 Clearly.

00:30:00.700 He never has been, never was.

00:30:02.360 But what he is is a guy who says, if I'm going to use American military power, I want to accomplish a discrete objective.

00:30:08.800 And every single day I saw it very, very much on the inside.

00:30:12.260 He was asking, have we accomplished that objective?

00:30:15.020 Can we stop this?

00:30:16.760 And once we got to the point where people were saying, yes, we feel like we are in a

00:30:21.100 much stronger position.

00:30:22.300 We feel like their nuclear program is destroyed.

00:30:24.380 We feel like they're conventional military.

00:30:26.120 It's going to be impossible for them to rebuild it for very, very many years. 0.91

00:30:30.140 He said, OK, then I want you to go and negotiate a deal that transforms the Middle East.

00:30:34.960 And that's what he did.

00:30:35.720 I mean, how integral was the sneaking of the oil out of the Strait of Hormuz overnight?

00:30:40.180 Very important.

00:30:40.800 Because to me, that was one of the best things we did.

00:30:43.340 Correct.

00:30:43.660 They thought they shut down the Strait and had us by the neck.

00:30:47.220 Correct.

00:30:47.520 We closed up their ports, which gave them skin in the game.

00:30:50.220 But we were secretly getting oil out of there because the biggest pressure point on us has been the prices, the energy prices.

00:30:56.920 That's absolutely right.

00:30:57.740 And so for the first few weeks of this, actually, there was this totally misaligned thing where the Iranians were getting oil out of the Strait of Hormuz, but literally nobody else was.

00:31:06.340 And we kind of flipped that on its head a little bit.

00:31:08.480 We shut down any access they had to the Strait of Hormuz.

00:31:11.880 They couldn't get anything in or out.

00:31:13.800 But while that was happening, we were getting sometimes it was 12 million barrels.

00:31:18.740 Sometimes it was three to four million barrels, but it averaged out to many millions of barrels every single day that us and the Arab allies were getting out of the Strait of Hormuz.

00:31:28.540 Iran was getting nothing. 0.68

00:31:30.040 And that leverage point did increase the pressure on them.

00:31:32.360 This idea of closing the Strait of Hormuz, this has obviously been in some ways the biggest strategic back and forth of the entire conflict.

00:31:39.620 That's a card you can play, but if you play it every day, it gets weaker and weaker and weaker. 1.00

00:31:45.820 And again, I think that's one of the reasons why we are in a stronger position here and why the Iranians are coming to the table. 0.90

00:31:52.200 You know, this, you know, John Potteritz is basically calling, it was this Israeli journalist who said, you know, the president's a loser and I'm a total lowlife or whatever he said.

00:32:01.980 And Potteritz wasn't that far off. 0.61

00:32:04.480 What these guys don't realize is we fundamentally have all the cards.

00:32:08.380 Like, what is it that they wanted us to do besides put 300,000 ground troops in Iranian soil, which we were never going to do?

00:32:17.060 The president felt like he could accomplish his objective using the means that he used.

00:32:21.680 They're mad.

00:32:21.820 He was right about that, by the way.

00:32:23.160 They're mad Trump said help is on the way and that they don't think he sent it.

00:32:26.240 And they think it's the same leadership.

00:32:27.600 And it was bad leadership either way.

00:32:29.220 It's not the same guys, but it's IRGC.

00:32:30.760 That is different.

00:32:31.560 People attack the president on this.

00:32:33.020 But when the president says that we're dealing with more reasonable people, he is actually right.

00:32:38.380 Now, again, my attitude is verification. I trust actions, not words. But we are dealing with people, some of whom our own intelligence agencies say, you know, these are the super hardliners. And what they're saying is, you know what, we are hardliners, but we've realized that for 47 years that maybe this is a mistake.

00:32:54.400 Well, there's a report out today, though, saying that Ratcliffe, who runs the CIA, has been listening to their intel saying they don't mean a word of what they're saying. They're not going to live up to any of this.

00:33:02.980 Well, first of all, I'd be skeptical of that reporting. You know, I always see sometimes with my own name on it, administration officials who believe this or that. I'd be very skeptical of this stuff. The inner team of the Trump administration, we're actually very tight. We're very close to each other. There isn't nearly the factionalism that people say that there is. So I'd be skeptical about that report. But I'll let John speak for himself.

00:33:24.380 Scott Bessent and Bill Pulte.

00:33:26.900 They're not tight.

00:33:29.200 Scott Bessent and Bill Pulte are not super close.

00:33:32.020 That is true.

00:33:32.520 And I say that as admirers of both of them.

00:33:34.980 You've admitted it.

00:33:35.820 But fundamentally, that's why the deal says verification and action.

00:33:42.100 Trust but verify.

00:33:43.200 Oh, I'd say just verify.

00:33:44.960 Just verify.

00:33:45.940 That's good.

00:33:46.540 What the president says is we don't trust anybody.

00:33:48.660 And I think that's exactly right.

00:33:49.520 He said we don't trust our allies.

00:33:50.620 We don't trust our foes.

00:33:51.840 We trust action.

00:33:52.960 and that's what we have to anchor ourselves to.

00:33:55.240 All right, let's talk about what happened

00:33:56.280 to the GOP base as a result of all this.

00:33:58.180 Because it's divided.

00:34:00.120 I know you've experienced it yourself.

00:34:02.520 I've experienced it too.

00:34:03.660 It's been sort of a sad, tumultuous, stressful time.

00:34:06.320 It's much more fun, I think, for most of us

00:34:08.500 who lean right or right-leaning independents

00:34:11.000 to be fighting with the left.

00:34:12.380 But it's been kind of civil worry

00:34:14.320 over on the conservative teams

00:34:16.540 since this whole thing got launched.

00:34:18.180 And the non-interventionalist right

00:34:20.900 feels very betrayed, very betrayed by it. Whether you agree with that they've been betrayed or not,

00:34:27.000 Mr. Vice President, what do you say to those people?

00:34:29.660 Well, what I'd say to them is, one, I think you can walk through all the ways in which this has

00:34:35.080 led to a good place for the United States of America. And I'd ask them not to sort of view

00:34:39.260 this purely through the filter. I know a lot of these folks are frustrated with the role that

00:34:43.880 Israel has in all this. We can talk about that. But don't look at it from the lens of, you know,

00:34:49.080 what what is it that different people think about it what do you think about it what like

00:34:53.600 fundamentally do you think i've talked to a lot but i'm saying ask yourself i think you can make

00:34:58.920 the best argument that the nuclear program is destroyed the iranian conventional military is

00:35:04.840 destroyed we had yes a temporary rise in energy prices that's already coming down substantially

00:35:10.440 and we didn't get as i said repeatedly we were never going to get the quagmire that a lot of

00:35:16.380 people were warning about because Donald Trump is just not George W. Bush. So I would say first,

00:35:21.080 the first argument I'd make is look at where we are right now. And I think you can make the best

00:35:25.620 argument that where we are right now is a good place for the United States of America. And again,

00:35:29.560 if we transform the Middle East, this was fundamentally worth it. Okay. The second 1.00

00:35:33.560 argument I'd make, this is maybe, is this, even if you disagree with this particular action, 0.83

00:35:40.040 it's completely ridiculous to pick up your marbles and go home. That's not how politics

00:35:46.000 works. And I've been very much on the inside of a lot of these debates and conversations.

00:35:50.560 You know, some people have criticized our immigration policy. Some people have criticized

00:35:55.000 tax policy or some people have criticized foreign policy. The way that politics works

00:36:00.200 is that you have to stay engaged in the process. You absolutely have to make your voice heard.

00:36:05.440 But right now, right now, we have a very good deal for the American people.

00:36:10.400 And importantly, we have a constituency right now that is saying that we're going to send

00:36:14.540 boots on the ground.

00:36:15.480 They want Donald Trump to send hundreds of thousands of ground troops into Iran. 0.93

00:36:20.300 The best thing, we need people, but we need people to be pushing back from inside the 0.92

00:36:24.980 tent.

00:36:25.400 Okay, but some of us push back and then we're told, and I quote, those who speak ill of

00:36:31.160 Mark Levin are not MAGA.

00:36:32.580 Well, the president, as he does, is pushing back at a criticism of yours that he thought was unfair.

00:36:40.840 But not just me.

00:36:41.560 I mean, a lot of the non-interventionalists.

00:36:43.040 But I talked to him last night and I said, Mr. President, I'm going to go on Megyn Kelly's show and I'm going to defend the administration's policies.

00:36:48.000 Absolutely.

00:36:48.540 I love that.

00:36:49.580 Because, again, he engages and he's going to criticize you when he agrees or disagrees with you.

00:36:56.080 I don't mind.

00:36:56.680 He's going to say nice things about you when he agrees with you.

00:36:59.180 But that's what I actually love about the president.

00:37:00.720 He's not like viewing these debates from the outside.

00:37:04.600 He's participating in them himself.

00:37:07.140 And again, Megan, the frustration that I've had with the non-interventionist side has

00:37:12.680 been that the attitude seems to be, we disagree with the president on this policy.

00:37:17.280 Look, we can have that debate, but fine, okay?

00:37:20.100 You disagree with the president on this particular policy.

00:37:22.600 That doesn't mean you can give up on the entire enterprise.

00:37:25.800 Yeah, no, I agree with that.

00:37:55.800 voice heard. This is where you've got to participate in the process. Disagree when you

00:38:00.120 disagree, agree when you agree. But I don't like this idea of the president did something I didn't

00:38:06.440 like, so I'm out. I think it's a very immature way to approach the political process. And it's

00:38:11.120 the way to ensure that your enemies always win. I've been saying the same, because a lot of people

00:38:16.160 have been saying that they feel blackpilled by the whole experience, you know, like I'm just out.

00:38:19.640 And I have been trying to make the point that you can't do that, right? You got to stay.

00:38:24.020 But realistically, as we, because after these midterms are over.

00:38:28.240 Sorry, can I make one more point about this, Megan?

00:38:29.820 This is like very important.

00:38:30.620 I'm sorry to interrupt.

00:38:31.320 No, it is.

00:38:31.960 So look, the coalition that made Donald Trump the president of the United States and J.D. Vance the vice president of the United States, people have to remember this.

00:38:39.680 It was Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan.

00:38:43.340 It was also Mark Levin.

00:38:46.040 It was also a lot of people like John Potteritz who want a more aggressive foreign policy.

00:38:50.700 What I think is important, I'm never going to say that John Paldoritz is not welcome in the Republican Party.

00:38:56.920 He is.

00:38:57.780 But just as he's disappointed right now, sometimes other people are going to be disappointed at other times.

00:39:02.520 You can't just quit politics because the leader of a country of 330 million people makes a decision you disagree with.

00:39:11.580 I agree with you.

00:39:12.740 I know a lot of people don't agree with us here.

00:39:15.480 They're very, very angry over the Iran war.

00:39:17.820 It was like their number one issue. And they feel like Trump is not the man they thought he was because he betrayed that promise and didn't explain much about it. And I understand their feeling, too. But I will just say that, you know, Podoritz and Levin and all those those that's the original never Trump crew.

00:39:34.440 They hated him, hated him.

00:39:36.620 I was there.

00:39:37.680 I had those people coming on my show saying, absolutely not, never Trump.

00:39:42.780 And then they embraced him like a bear hug just as soon as he decided he was going to attack Iran and was cozying up with Israel.

00:39:50.100 And that's their main issue. 0.77

00:39:51.480 And now they're starting to get a little wobbly.

00:39:53.460 And I wonder whether the president sees maybe his new best friends aren't quite as in love with him and loyal as he thought.

00:39:59.880 Yeah, and I would say the same thing to them that I'd say to the non-interventionists who have been a little blackpilled over the last few months. I'd say you don't quit the political process just because the president, who, by the way, has way more information than any of his critics have, is making a decision that they don't agree with. Disagree with it. We have the First Amendment in the United States of America. I'm not saying be a patsy. I'm not saying be, you know, a person who always falls in line. Make your viewpoint understood.

00:40:24.540 but I think this is a very important part. In a coalition, we have a two-party system in this

00:40:30.920 country. You've got, what is it, 80 million people, 85 million people who voted for Donald Trump.

00:40:36.120 Nobody is going to agree with the administration 100% of the time. So it actually doesn't bother

00:40:42.200 me that Mark Levin is criticizing this deal, even though I think this deal is great for the

00:40:46.820 American people. I'm going to go on a show for the next few days. I'm going to defend it.

00:40:50.040 What would bother me is if Mark Levin said, you know what? The president did something I didn't like, and I'm going to go home. I'm not part of this coalition. Screw that guy. I think that's the mistake that way too many people across our political system make.

00:41:03.760 Has any of this influenced your thoughts on a possible run? Don't tell me you're not thinking about it. And I know you gave me that answer. But after these midterms are done, it's on. You don't have three years. You have about six months.

00:41:15.720 I'm not thinking about it, Megan.

00:41:17.100 You have to decide. You're going to have to decide.

00:41:19.020 I mean, you know me, and you know that I'm kind of a procrastinator.

00:41:25.920 I don't make decisions until I have to. 1.00

00:41:27.980 It probably frustrates my wife a lot of times.

00:41:30.680 But we still don't have a name for our baby.

00:41:32.720 And every time my wife tries to talk to me about it, I'm like, well, let's just figure it out when we actually see the baby and see what he looks like and want to name him.

00:41:37.680 You know it's a boy, right?

00:41:38.640 We know it's a boy, but we don't have really even a single name that we've picked out that both of us liked.

00:41:44.440 And the baby's coming in about four weeks.

00:41:46.340 I just make decisions when I have to.

00:41:49.020 So yes, after the midterms, I will eventually have to make that decision.

00:41:52.540 Let's make it then.

00:41:53.480 If you don't run, I mean, you represent more of the non-interventionalist wing.

00:41:58.360 And you're all over the New York Times is reportedly predicting this would be a disaster.

00:42:02.260 It's going to cause regional chaos.

00:42:04.200 It's going to break apart Trump's coalition.

00:42:06.200 Don't believe everything you read in the New York Times, Megan.

00:42:07.380 Oh, that's okay.

00:42:08.400 There may be tapes now given to Maggie Haberman.

00:42:10.800 Which is crazy, by the way.

00:42:12.520 That was a very weird story.

00:42:14.380 Very weird.

00:42:15.040 You're talking about the Epstein.

00:42:16.120 So just for your audience's sake, there was this story about Epstein

00:42:18.720 that came out in the New York times and like half of it or so was BS and about half of it,

00:42:23.360 you know, that's how these stories are. There's always an element of truth. There's always an

00:42:28.040 element of non-truth, but there were certain things in there that legitimately made me worried

00:42:32.840 that people were like taping. Yeah. In the situation room, which by the way,

00:42:36.700 is like a felony. Yeah. It's a super dangerous precedent. So that was weird. That story was very

00:42:41.580 bizarre. It was sort of a nothing burger of a story in the sense that everybody sort of knew

00:42:45.600 all those details anyway. But the fact that somebody had taped, well, where I was going

00:42:49.840 with that list of predictions of yours that turned out to be true, um, was if you don't run,

00:42:55.660 who, who would run that would represent that wing of the party?

00:42:59.940 Well, I think the, you know, committed non-interventionist America first Ted Cruz

00:43:04.260 could be a representative for that wing of the party. He's clearly running for president. Um,

00:43:10.100 I, you know, I, I just, I think about how do I be successful in this job?

00:43:18.240 There are a lot of interesting people out there.

00:43:20.280 Some of them won't for president, some of them won't.

00:43:22.380 I really just don't think about it.

00:43:24.180 Part of it is I'm, I'm not, I'm like, as you know, I'm not a sort of person who thinks

00:43:28.960 of all, you know, who are the people I have to be worried about?

00:43:31.440 Who are the people I have to not be worried about?

00:43:33.020 I just live my life.

00:43:34.040 It'll all work out.

00:43:34.600 No, in our first conversations in 2017, you, you were offended that I said you could be

00:43:38.780 a politician one day.

00:43:39.780 I was.

00:43:41.060 You thought you gave up used car sales and vibes.

00:43:43.580 Yeah, now here I am.

00:43:44.680 Look at your ear.

00:43:45.520 There's a secret service everywhere.

00:43:47.300 All right, let's talk a bit about your book

00:43:48.740 because I actually do think it's a great book.

00:43:50.700 It's called Communion.

00:43:51.740 It's called Finding My Way Back to Faith.

00:43:53.860 Here it is right here.

00:43:54.880 You can get it today.

00:43:56.200 And I actually learned a lot about you in this book

00:43:59.000 that I didn't know.

00:43:59.720 I love that you begin it with Mamaw,

00:44:01.880 who is everybody's favorite person.

00:44:04.280 And here is what you say.

00:44:07.260 Mamaw hardly fit the stereotype of a sweater-knitting, kindly old grandmother, and her faith wasn't

00:44:12.320 always, well, perfectly consistent with her own religious upbringing. 0.96

00:44:15.700 She loved to say the F word.

00:44:17.840 I can't relate.

00:44:19.360 And when she died, she owned 19 loaded handguns.

00:44:22.720 Mamaw's God suited her, loving and forgiving, but tough, demanding, and possibly packing.

00:44:28.020 So you credit her with giving you the gift of faith.

00:44:30.700 That's right.

00:44:31.200 How did you get to the point where, for a time, you lost it?

00:44:34.000 Yeah, it just didn't stick.

00:44:35.360 And I think this is one of the many reasons that motivated me to write about this is,

00:44:39.340 you know, I've got three little kids.

00:44:40.420 I've got a fourth on the way.

00:44:42.180 We take our kids to church every Sunday.

00:44:44.780 And for some kids, even though their parents believe, even though they pray, even though

00:44:49.420 they try to raise their kids to be followers of Jesus Christ, it just doesn't stick.

00:44:54.580 And part of this was sort of trying to understand why didn't it stick for me.

00:44:58.940 And I think there are a couple of reasons for that, Megan.

00:45:00.920 And I think one of them is that fundamentally, I started to care about things that were, if not anti-Christian, then just were totally separate from Christianity.

00:45:11.760 Like, I don't know what it is.

00:45:13.980 It's maybe just an innate character flaw that I have.

00:45:16.020 But I just cared so much about making as much money as possible, getting the best job, going to the best.

00:45:21.780 Like, I had this fever for rising.

00:45:24.060 I wanted to rise above my circumstances.

00:45:26.100 Yeah.

00:45:26.520 That can happen.

00:45:27.160 Which, again, there is a legitimate urge there, right, which is provide your kids stability, provide your kids some of the things that you didn't have.

00:45:32.880 I think that's all well and good.

00:45:34.220 But what I had was way more beyond that.

00:45:36.340 It was ambition for ambition's sake.

00:45:37.820 You described it as a striver.

00:45:38.320 You said I was a striver.

00:45:39.340 I was a super striver.

00:45:40.500 And, you know, I got to Yale Law School, and I had, like, all of these outward markers of success.

00:45:46.280 I'd fallen in love with Usha.

00:45:47.580 We were dating at the time but not yet married.

00:45:49.820 And I started to think to myself, like, am I a good person?

00:45:52.320 And the answer that kept coming back is, no, I care way too much about stuff that doesn't matter.

00:45:57.160 and way too little about stuff that does matter. And then at the same time, like I have this

00:46:02.020 self-impression. This is back in the era of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins,

00:46:06.700 the new atheist. I have this impression of myself of like, I'm super rational.

00:46:11.480 I form opinions based on reason and intellect. And there are all these bumpkins who believe in 1.00

00:46:17.460 things like Jesus, and it's just a superstition. But yet, all of those people who believed in 0.99

00:46:24.080 Jesus, or at least a lot of them, were very good people. They were much happier. They were much

00:46:29.580 more well-adjusted than some of the people I saw in the elite circles that I was running in.

00:46:33.540 You sell a corridor.

00:46:34.240 Yeah, there were these, I call it rays of light, where there were these little pieces of evidence

00:46:40.200 that there was some deeper truth to Christianity, and that it motivated something that was very

00:46:45.140 good and very powerful. It wasn't a conversion on the road to Damascus, but I fell away from

00:46:50.940 my faith, I think, because I cared too little about the things that mattered. And falling in

00:46:56.000 love and getting married and becoming a father started making me care about the things that do

00:46:59.760 matter. I'm thinking about St. Michael, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of

00:47:03.680 the devil. And there maybe he was for you, right? In that church in France, is that where you had

00:47:10.460 your light bulb moment? Yeah, we were on vacation. And at that point, I would have called myself a

00:47:15.680 Christian, but I was kind of thinking like, what kind of church is home for me? And I grew up in

00:47:21.840 sort of a Pentecostal or evangelical tradition, a lot of speaking in tongues, really good music.

00:47:27.360 I also had, my uncle was Catholic and I had some Southern Baptists and my friends. It was a very,

00:47:34.080 it was like a hodgepodge of American Christianity. But what I was attracted to in my own church in

00:47:41.840 Catholicism was just the sense that it was like stable, right? Things didn't change that much.

00:47:47.880 Never. That's exactly right. I love it. There's always going to be a male priest up there.

00:47:53.740 You know exactly what you're going to get. There's not going to be a homily on accepting

00:47:57.200 trans children like I saw in the Episcopal Church. And you go to church in New York City,

00:48:02.140 or you go to church while you're in vacation in France, you go to church in rural Ohio,

00:48:06.640 and it's the same readings. The homily might differ from church to church, but like you said,

00:48:11.280 there isn't, you know, this is why we should have men playing in women's sports.

00:48:14.220 There's not gonna be a pride flag hanging outside.

00:48:16.560 And like more importantly than that, there were just a lot of people, good friends of mine,

00:48:20.860 who were good Christians, who were good people, who were good role models to me. They were good

00:48:24.300 husbands and good fathers. They had what I wanted to have, and they were Catholics, and that kind

00:48:29.520 of led me into the church. And so, but that said, even though I was sort of attracted to this church,

00:48:35.080 that was in the peak of some of the sex abuse investigations that were going on. This is the

00:48:40.580 summer of 2018, there was a really bad investigation that I think came out of Pennsylvania. And I've

00:48:46.200 got a little baby boy, and I'm reading these things, and I'm like, it felt like, on the one

00:48:53.100 hand, I'm really attracted to the stability of this church. On the other hand, this is some pretty

00:48:58.460 icky stuff. And I just was thinking a lot about it and trying to reason my way through it. And

00:49:03.600 we're in this church in France, and Usha's like, you know, in the bathroom somewhere. She's not

00:49:08.300 in the church. So it's me, my son, he's, you know, a year old, he's asleep. And it's just one of these

00:49:14.600 beautiful old cathedrals and it's the perfect time of day. So the light is shining through

00:49:18.780 this beautiful stained glass window and you can kind of see like the specks of dust in the light.

00:49:23.780 And I just had this feeling of like, you know, I belong here and it's not always perfect. That's

00:49:30.140 one of the great lessons of the Bible is God takes these people who are deeply, profoundly 0.68

00:49:35.640 sinful human beings. And he actually chooses to reveal himself through them. And you can't just 0.86

00:49:43.440 again, pick up your marbles and go home because there is a sex abuse scandal. The fact that

00:49:47.940 there's a sex abuse scandal means that you need better people, that you need people who are

00:49:53.360 committed to what's good in this institution so that you can actually try to fight against the

00:49:58.800 bad. And that feeling of belonging is ultimately baptized about a year later. And

00:50:05.120 we've been going to church every Sunday, ever since.

00:50:07.700 And you're raising the kids Catholic.

00:50:08.980 We are.

00:50:09.560 Okay. And I know you point out in the book, we only have about a minute left, but after Charlie's

00:50:16.560 death, you were both feeling devastated, you and Usha. And then that's when you found out

00:50:21.420 she was pregnant with your fourth child.

00:50:24.860 Yeah. So this makes me very emotional to talk about because, you know, after Charlie got killed

00:50:29.800 the next day, it was 9-11. I'll never forget that because I was supposed to go to New York

00:50:33.800 for the 9-11 memorial service and I flew out to pick up Charlie's body. And then I flew he and

00:50:39.960 Erica back to their home in Arizona. So I flew out to Utah and then to Arizona and Eric was

00:50:47.280 devastated. And you know, you know, both of them knew both of them very well and know Erica very

00:50:51.780 well. And she was just crying and so upset, but she said something that like really stuck out at

00:50:56.600 me, which is, I wish that we had had more kids. And that just hit me like a ton of bricks.

00:51:03.560 And a couple months later, Ushia became pregnant with baby number four.

00:51:06.480 Yeah. I don't know. I'll stay in my lane, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear if that

00:51:11.820 baby winds up with at least a middle name that sounds familiar to us from that family.

00:51:17.300 All right. I'm going to stay out of it. I'm sending lots of love to her in the last few

00:51:21.660 weeks of this pregnancy and to you as well. We're praying for you both every day. God bless.

00:51:25.600 Appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. Don't forget, the book is called Communion by J.D. Vance. Check it out.

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00:53:01.140 No! No, no!

00:53:03.920 Oh, come on!

00:53:05.340 This is not happening! Turn off the water!

00:53:07.780 Where's the shutoff? The pipe! 0.62

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00:53:29.760 Back on December 4th, the Trump administration announced it had accomplished one of its primary

00:53:35.900 law enforcement goals of its second term, arresting, they said, the alleged January 5th

00:53:42.220 pipe bomber. Federal officials announced that 30-year-old Brian Cole Jr. of Woodbridge, Virginia,

00:53:48.340 had been taken into custody and charged with interstate transportation of explosives

00:53:53.180 and with malicious attempt to use explosives.

00:53:57.140 The DOJ has since added attempting to use weapons of mass destruction and terrorism charges to the list,

00:54:03.300 and Cole faces life in prison if convicted.

00:54:06.380 He's been in custody since his arrest and is back in court for a status conference next month.

00:54:12.140 He's accused of planting pipe bombs near the Republican National Committee HQ and the Democratic National Committee HQ on the night of January 5th, 2021.

00:54:23.900 That was the night before the riot at the Capitol, the night before the vote for the presidential election would be certified on Capitol Hill.

00:54:31.540 The FBI has said the bombs were viable, but thankfully they did not go off.

00:54:36.940 They were found the next day.

00:54:37.980 The suspect eluded authorities for almost five years, despite the FBI releasing surveillance footage to the public.

00:54:46.640 Watch this.

00:54:47.520 This footage shows the suspect sitting on the DNC bench before placing the first bomb.

00:54:54.000 Here we see the suspect place the bomb at approximately 7.54 p.m.

00:54:58.540 This footage shows the suspect passed between the RNC and the Capitol Hill Club

00:55:12.140 holding the backpack out to the side

00:55:14.440 The person continues between the RNC and the Capitol Hill Club

00:55:19.960 Then continues north on 1st Street, east on C Street

00:55:25.760 back into the alley toward Rumsey Court,

00:55:33.000 back onto Rumsey Court.

00:55:45.000 They place the second pipe bomb at approximately 8.16 p.m.

00:55:51.400 The suspect then turns back onto Rumsey Court,

00:55:54.440 walking east until the person is last seen on camera at approximately 8 18 p.m wearing the

00:56:01.260 backpack on their shoulders the bomb is believed to have been placed shortly before this video

00:56:06.660 based on how the suspect is carrying the backpack

00:56:09.580 brian cole was not an obvious suspect he lived with his mother worked for his family's business

00:56:17.340 had no prior criminal history and his lawyers say he is autistic but the fbi and doj say

00:56:24.420 the evidence against Cole is overwhelming. They say they have cell phone data showing that he was

00:56:29.460 near the RNC and DNC when the bombs were planted, that his car passed through a license reader in

00:56:35.400 D.C., and they even say he confessed. Here's FBI Director Kash Patel talking about this case and

00:56:42.560 detailing the evidence against Brian Cole. Watch. Obviously, we need to match the description of the

00:56:48.080 suspect on video. The video has been publicized for years, but what this FBI did was came in and

00:56:53.000 enhance the video. I don't know why the prior FBI didn't do that. I don't know why the prior FBI

00:56:57.040 didn't look at the 3 million lines of evidence. I don't know why they didn't use our cell phone

00:57:00.340 capabilities and our technological capabilities at the FBI. The only thing I can come up with is

00:57:05.380 either they were too incompetent in terms of leadership or intentional. And I think it was

00:57:09.520 intentional because it was a further weaponization of law enforcement. So when you match up the

00:57:13.720 suspect's height and physical appearance with things like a license plate reader that attributes

00:57:19.300 to him, and further information such as cell phone pings, you're getting into a very small

00:57:24.080 circle of people that it could be. And once we're able to execute law enforcement process and search

00:57:29.760 warrants over these last few months, we were able to produce what he bought, where he bought it,

00:57:35.240 when he bought it, and the history of buying it, and how often he bought it.

00:57:40.320 Director Patel said he had zero doubt that the FBI had arrested the right person.

00:57:44.980 Let me ask you this. Now, having had 24 hours to process this since, you know, post arrest, is there any doubt in your mind you have the right man?

00:57:53.520 We've got the right guy based on the totality of information and other information we haven't publicly released yet that we just can't right now.

00:58:03.180 But there is someone who says Cole is not the man who planted those two pipe bombs, and that's his lawyer, Mario Williams.

00:58:10.180 He says the FBI has arrested the wrong person, and regardless of that, that this case should

00:58:15.180 be dismissed for another interesting reason.

00:58:17.940 Joining me now, Mario Williams in the Red Studio.

00:58:20.760 Mario, thanks so much for being here.

00:58:22.120 Hey, thank you for having me.

00:58:23.580 Yeah, I mean, this is a huge case.

00:58:25.860 It's a large case.

00:58:26.880 It's a big deal.

00:58:27.660 How'd you get connected to this?

00:58:29.560 I actually had previously done some work for Brian Cole Sr.

00:58:33.080 And my law partner, John Shorme, out of D.C., we had done some work with him.

00:58:38.360 called us up and told us that his son, who I actually knew, had been arrested as a suspect

00:58:44.920 in this case. And then there's a third, Alex Little is another lawyer on the case.

00:58:50.040 Do you do criminal mostly or civil mostly? I do a variety of things. I do some commercial

00:58:55.800 litigation. I do constitutional law, employment. I do self-defense murder cases, stuff like that.

00:59:02.280 So I do a variety of things.

00:59:03.480 I've seen it on both sides, IRS tax defense, SEC defense, all kinds of stuff.

00:59:10.220 Okay.

00:59:10.920 I mean, this one's probably the most serious you've had, I would imagine.

00:59:14.760 It's serious.

00:59:16.260 I did want to correct something, though, that was said.

00:59:19.340 Sure, yeah, please.

00:59:19.580 So I know it's easy to say bomb, you know, J-6 bomber, J-5 bomber, but I like facts,

00:59:29.420 and I like to use facts to put things in context.

00:59:31.980 So what I would like the public to understand that even though what you said is that the government said that the bombs were viable, that's not what the experts say.

00:59:41.700 Now, we have on record an expert opinion, former FBI bomb expert.

00:59:46.840 And so what I like to refer to as what people say is a bomb, is a device based on expert testimony and science that never could have detonated, did not detonate, and did not harm each other, which is very different from felony assault, felony battery of people convicted and then given a pardon regardless.

01:00:08.320 Okay.

01:00:08.840 Now, wait.

01:00:09.540 When you say you have an expert opinion to that effect on record, you're saying in the defense of this case, you've found that expert and you've submitted that testimony?

01:00:17.220 The opinion's on record.

01:00:18.740 We filed it.

01:00:19.440 Okay.

01:00:20.020 And based on what I believe, we haven't gotten any pushback on it.

01:00:24.180 The government will say, hey, but this, this, this, this.

01:00:26.800 But no, those devices, it's proven, could not have detonated.

01:00:32.300 And they did not detonate.

01:00:33.560 So, not to be obtuse, but why is that relevant?

01:00:38.060 Like, what will that do to this case?

01:00:39.780 Well, first of all, it's an intent charge.

01:00:42.820 But second of all, as you know, you're a lawyer, public opinion means so much.

01:00:47.560 So when you call somebody a J-6 bomber and you make it seem like, hey, these devices were about to explode and kill thousands of people,

01:00:56.240 and then somebody finds out, hey, these are no more dangerous than a prop.

01:01:01.120 And then you have a video out here, and I respect Mr. Patel.

01:01:04.700 I respect him.

01:01:05.440 But you have a video out here, and he tries his best to match that up to my client.

01:01:09.360 But the bottom line on that video is that you can't see anybody on that video.

01:01:13.580 The bottom line, as far as suspects are concerned, you had a law enforcement officer who failed two polygraph tests.

01:01:20.960 And you probably read about this because it was part of some motion practice in the case.

01:01:25.140 Simple questions.

01:01:26.380 Are you the person on this video planning these devices?

01:01:29.720 No.

01:01:30.120 failed. There are other suspects, but I can't get too far into this because we're trying to figure

01:01:35.960 out the different avenues and different suspects that were in this case and why basically those

01:01:42.380 investigations were shut down. But to just say, here's a video, we have peeing evidence from the

01:01:49.040 cell phone and we're 100% sure it's Brian Cole Jr. When you actually had other suspects,

01:01:55.800 you're fighting us as far as revealing the information and documentation to examine that

01:02:01.780 situation. We're far from determining and saying that that was Brian Cole Jr.

01:02:07.220 The person to whom you are referring is Shawnee Kirkhoff. She was a Capitol Hill police officer

01:02:14.700 on January 5th and 6th. She now works for the CIA. That's right. And we first learned from a motion

01:02:21.140 you filed in this case in defense of brian that she had allegedly been given a polygraph by the

01:02:28.620 fbi and allegedly failed it and had been investigated by the fbi even prior to brian

01:02:34.600 cole that's right uh coming on their radar she um she was also named by the blaze as somebody

01:02:42.880 who may have done this uh pipe bomb i believe she sued him and so yes so that's what i'm getting i

01:02:48.980 want to make sure we're super fair to Shawnee Kirkhoff. She's now sued the blaze and Steve

01:02:53.800 Baker, who's the reporter who wrote the piece. Um, the blaze has retracted the article. Steve

01:03:00.320 Baker says he stands by the article. Um, it has officially been quote debunked because the blaze

01:03:06.800 says they don't stand by it. And that the thing that's in there as their chief evidence against

01:03:12.540 her is like gate analysis, like an analysis of how she walks, which is not scientific and it's

01:03:17.680 not, that's not reliable in court. And Steve Baker has not produced the name of the person

01:03:23.520 he claims he relied upon for that. However, Shawnee Kirkhoff in her, now she's filed this

01:03:30.160 defamation lawsuit in her complaint. She herself says I was given a polygraph by the FBI and I was

01:03:37.420 told that I failed it. So, I mean, we no longer have to rely on anybody other than Shawnee for

01:03:42.280 this information. Now, in her complaint, she outlines how she alleges she seems to be suggesting

01:03:49.820 this is not a good poly because the examiner referred to some problems that he was having

01:03:55.560 with the communication wires and was sending mixed messages to her and that she was, of course,

01:04:01.160 very nervous just being given a polygraph by the FBI. That'll all play out. But it is interesting

01:04:07.340 that she's now admitting that she was on the FBI's radar and that she was told that she failed

01:04:12.260 a polygraph. Now, the FBI says it's not her. They've moved on from her. They've closed the

01:04:16.260 case on her. It was not Shawnee Kirkhoff. And that she has an alibi tape on which we can at

01:04:22.420 least hear her voice dealing with her dog on the night in question when the bombs were being

01:04:28.000 planted. So why are you still focused there? Well, this is what I'll say. I didn't mention

01:04:32.880 her name so i you brought the name into the place so i just want to make sure she doesn't think that

01:04:37.480 i'm trying to you know put her name out there but the issue is not necessarily all the evidence for

01:04:42.580 example the gate analysis well initially we were told the gate analysis was done and it pointed to

01:04:47.460 our guy so who told you the fbi said that or that's what they told us they got a gated analysis

01:04:53.900 okay and and and that that helped support their case for our guy okay so now she's saying the

01:04:59.620 gate analysis was off. And so now we're throwing the gate analysis out the window. My issue with

01:05:04.680 Ms. Kirkhoff is her name, right? Is, hey, look, there's other people out there that you all

01:05:12.080 suspected and that we're trying to figure it out as to why you closed those investigations and

01:05:17.880 what's the evidence around it. Let me ask you, would that typically be something you'd have

01:05:21.560 access to? Like when the government goes investigating three other suspects before

01:05:25.540 or around arresting the one suspect,

01:05:28.820 is it usually fair game to have everything they know about that suspect?

01:05:33.020 Absolutely. Beyond a reasonable doubt exists for a reason.

01:05:36.540 And the way you create reasonable doubt is to understand

01:05:39.120 what other suspects were involved in the credibility of that evidence.

01:05:41.280 Or persons of interest.

01:05:42.120 Yeah, persons of interest and the credibility of that evidence.

01:05:45.160 So it's absolutely something that we feel we're entitled to

01:05:47.940 and we're doing motion practice.

01:05:49.400 But I want to bring up something about that.

01:05:51.600 Now, Mr. Patel went on TV to discuss the evidence, some of the evidence in this case.

01:05:59.140 Now, as you know, there was a sanctioned motion filed saying that we had inappropriately put our subpoena on file and everything.

01:06:06.840 Let me tell you something.

01:06:07.360 Just so the audience knows what we're talking about.

01:06:09.080 You wanted to subpoena some of these records and some of these people, and you asked the judge to give you sort of a fast track to getting those subpoenas.

01:06:17.760 and you filed that motion in the public record, which is how most court documents are filed.

01:06:22.860 That's right. First Amendment rights.

01:06:24.420 But this one needed to be under seal because it revealed some addresses, I guess, of some of the people.

01:06:29.920 Well, and some other information that they were claiming, hey, we wanted to keep this under seal because –

01:06:34.660 and I'm getting to that point.

01:06:36.200 Okay. Anyway, so that's the motion, the subpoenas and the motion to which you're referring.

01:06:40.140 You filed that. Go ahead.

01:06:41.120 So the government gives us literally over 700,000 files, documents, basically.

01:06:47.760 And so and they mark them and this is usual. They mark them all confidential, you know, attorney's eyes only.

01:06:53.700 But somehow. These are confidential statements, confidential evidence, confidential video is put out in the press, that video that they keep talking about.

01:07:05.580 That's been marked confidential. Oh, in the course of this case, of course it is.

01:07:10.780 Of course it is. So you you mark everything confidential, including these so-called statements that he's made.

01:07:17.760 You want us to go and say, oh, let's follow this pattern and let's go here and ask the judge for this.

01:07:22.660 It's OK. We have confidential orders for a reason, but you don't abide by them.

01:07:28.880 You come out and talk about statements. You come out and say, watch this video.

01:07:34.020 That's not a public record. That was part of an FBI investigation.

01:07:38.340 But because of the initiation of this situation, you thought it benefited you.

01:07:41.760 it's okay to break the rules for you, the government, but it's not okay for us to do

01:07:46.040 something that we believe is in our best interest. I believe this is one of the sound bites that

01:07:51.280 you're not happy about. This is Janine Pirro, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Let's watch it.

01:07:55.780 What was that moment where you were pretty confident the investigators were, to your mind,

01:08:01.220 on the right path? In my mind, they were on the right path when it was clear that the cell phone

01:08:08.780 was pinging in the exact locations where we had the video of the suspect walking along the area

01:08:17.540 everywhere he walked his cell phone was pinging at the cell tower so it is it it is unmistakable

01:08:26.980 that he was the guy who was walking along and placing those items you did the search warrant

01:08:33.200 yesterday the arrest uh have you found the sneakers have you found any items that match

01:08:37.760 what we saw in the video so you know about those uh air max speed turfs uh he told us that he had

01:08:47.440 those sneakers and that he got rid of them after he placed the pipe bombs so now i want to talk

01:08:55.320 about that yeah please that bothers me why and i'll tell you why first of all let's put things

01:09:00.160 in context number one when brian cole senior was arrested he wasn't arrested at his house

01:09:06.100 Brian Cole Jr.

01:09:07.440 I'm sorry.

01:09:07.680 Jr., yeah, right.

01:09:08.140 Was not arrested at his house.

01:09:09.640 They had been surveying him and following him and watching him for months. 0.88

01:09:13.800 He's autistic.

01:09:14.640 They had FBI as some of the best behavioral specialists in the world, okay?

01:09:19.800 I have DA experts, AT, all kinds of people say, hey, Mario,

01:09:24.080 they didn't believe this man was a danger.

01:09:26.080 Because if you think he's a danger after you've watched him for months,

01:09:30.040 do the same thing, get up, go to the store, buy pizza, walk his dog,

01:09:32.940 Say hi to his neighbor, characteristics of autism.

01:09:36.520 But if you think that, you go to his home, you surround it with probably every local law enforcement within a country mile, and you say, come on out.

01:09:45.840 But Brian Sr., his business, what he's involved in, he has to know the law, and he knows his rights.

01:09:53.340 He knows to say don't speak, to talk to a lawyer.

01:09:55.520 So what happened?

01:09:57.340 Brian Jr. goes down the street like he normally does.

01:10:00.820 They surround him, they pick him up, they swoop him off, 48 hours of interrogation, can't talk to his family.

01:10:07.600 Then they come and say, leaking contents of confidential information, they say they cherry pick, they put some stuff out there.

01:10:15.480 Like the sneakers.

01:10:16.800 Yeah, and oh, he admitted to this and he said this, no context.

01:10:22.200 You don't even know, I don't even know if she saw the video.

01:10:24.780 She probably was prepped on that.

01:10:26.120 But the most I can say about that is we're going to go ahead and do a motion to suppress evidence.

01:10:32.360 I disagree with the context that she said that statement in.

01:10:36.260 And that's the most I can say right now.

01:10:37.760 Are we talking about specifically the confession?

01:10:39.640 The alleged confession statements that they have attributed to Brian Jr.

01:10:46.060 In that context of taking him under arresting him down the street, taking him to an interrogation room with FBI agents.

01:10:54.800 I think it was 48 hours without any contact with his parents we are going to challenge that but he

01:11:00.780 wasn't a minor I mean he's how old is he 30 years old yeah so they don't have to notify the parents 0.99

01:11:06.880 they don't really have that's all right but you you but you know you're dealing with an autistic

01:11:10.460 person you there's no doubt about it is there no doubt is there a medical diagnosis yes absolutely 0.89

01:11:15.380 100 and they know that so that can be backed up absolutely 100 and they know that they have the

01:11:21.400 best behavioral specialists in the world. They understood that. They followed him around for

01:11:25.520 months, according to them. They saw him do the exact same routine every day. That's how they

01:11:30.140 knew where he was. So we're going to challenge that. We're going to challenge those alleged

01:11:34.680 confessions. We're going to challenge a lot of things that I can't, I'm not at liberty to say,

01:11:39.100 hey, this is exactly what we're going to do. This is false. This is, I'm not at liberty to do that,

01:11:45.000 but I feel very confident in challenging those statements.

01:11:47.380 I mean, when somebody has confessed in a criminal case, one of the grounds on which you could challenge it would be that it wasn't actually voluntary, that he was coerced into giving the confession.

01:12:00.260 But that's tricky. All of it's tricky. It's very technical. I don't really want to get into the legal aspects of it for the viewers and stuff.

01:12:07.700 But I believe legally speaking, we can challenge what they are presenting, quote unquote, as evidence of a confession.

01:12:14.360 just to and i understand you can't reveal everything so just you tell me what you can

01:12:19.000 reveal but um are you suggesting that he didn't say the words i did it or that he he did say

01:12:27.540 something that looks like a confession but you don't think it was obtained in a lawful manner

01:12:32.940 well no i don't believe that he confessed when you take that that what we see as evidence

01:12:37.780 in its totality i absolutely deny the fact that he confessed to doing this

01:12:42.000 so there's no 100 it's not just that you object to the procedure that's right it's also you

01:12:47.420 dispute the characterization let me say this i believe in brian jr's innocence in this situation

01:12:52.720 total factual innocence factual innocence legal innocence look the bottom line is you got to go

01:12:59.960 into a court and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he meets the legal criteria now for some

01:13:04.940 reason people want to say hey look even if he meets the legal criteria if you can beat that

01:13:10.300 Does that mean he wasn't the person on the video that did that?

01:13:13.060 Hey, he's innocent.

01:13:14.780 It's not my burden.

01:13:16.400 I do civil litigation.

01:13:17.680 I know what the burden is on a plaintiff.

01:13:19.620 It's the government's burden to say, legally speaking, he did this.

01:13:24.300 And until we can prove that, he's presumed innocent.

01:13:27.380 So when everyone says, hey, Mario, I want you to tell me, is that him putting down those devices that they're calling bombs?

01:13:34.820 I say the same thing every time.

01:13:37.600 Can you tell me that's him by looking at that video?

01:13:39.740 No, you cannot. You can't do it.

01:13:42.400 Well, I agree. I can't. But when I listen to the FBI do its presser after the arrest.

01:13:47.680 But of course.

01:13:48.300 But I mean, if they found bomb making components in his room, that's where they get you.

01:13:52.740 That doesn't mean he's that. No, they don't get me on that.

01:13:55.340 They get me.

01:13:56.040 Yeah. OK, but they don't get me. That's part of the process.

01:14:01.160 Do you know how many people it appears that they might have done something?

01:14:04.820 then once you get into court, you have to meet legal standards, other issues come up.

01:14:10.380 Oh, well, that person actually is innocent, which we'll get to the pardon.

01:14:14.120 But just on that alone, you can't just come in and say, hey, he's guilty, like Cash Patel and Bondi get on TV.

01:14:21.780 He's guilty because X, Y, Z, before you've proven it in court.

01:14:24.940 I can't reveal all of our strategies, but we have them.

01:14:28.520 We have them.

01:14:29.360 I mean, I don't know the full extent of their evidence, but the things that have been highlighted as their best pieces are the confession, the alleged confession.

01:14:38.160 Alleged, because I really have to stress alleged.

01:14:40.700 Okay.

01:14:41.260 And we'll eventually see that tape and we'll know.

01:14:43.080 Yeah.

01:14:43.700 Well, see, that's another issue.

01:14:45.940 Will you eventually see it if it's not leaked?

01:14:48.740 Because we have a motion to dismiss based on the plain language of the president's pardon and saying it applies to him.

01:14:55.140 So if that gets granted, you're never going to see it.

01:14:57.500 If it doesn't get granted, you're going to try to see it.

01:14:58.900 Then we're going to try to see it.

01:15:00.240 Yeah.

01:15:00.560 So there's the alleged confession.

01:15:02.160 There's the fact that he allegedly had the same bomb making materials as the government describes them in his home, in his room at the time of arrest.

01:15:12.180 And the license plate readers putting his car and him in the area when the bombs were being planted on the night in question, January 5th.

01:15:20.880 This is what I can say about that.

01:15:23.320 All that that they're putting out is their side of the story.

01:15:26.780 It's not up to my team to come in and debunk that in public.

01:15:30.600 But at trial, we will.

01:15:33.700 Has there been any discussion of a possible plea?

01:15:37.620 Well, I'm glad you talked.

01:15:38.920 I'm glad you're bringing up the good stuff.

01:15:41.020 Now, let's talk about the government's attempt to get a plea.

01:15:45.260 You're a lawyer.

01:15:46.700 You know how this works.

01:15:48.600 So he gets the initial charges, right?

01:15:53.000 We go through this back and forth of whether or not you can get him in D.C. court for federal court and all this kind of stuff.

01:15:58.200 But at the end of the day, he's in a federal court with the initial charges.

01:16:02.380 We look at everything. We look at the pardon language.

01:16:04.900 Pardon language is very clear. Conduct related to the events that are President Trump's pardon of January 6th defendants.

01:16:10.640 And you guys are arguing that that should apply to Ryan Cole, whose alleged behavior happened the night before January 6th.

01:16:15.960 But you argue it was connected and therefore he should be included in the pardon.

01:16:18.800 I don't argue it was connected. The allegations by the government demonstrated it was connected.

01:16:24.120 I didn't say it's only by coincidence, a so-called coincidence, that this happened on January 5th, the night of the certification.

01:16:31.880 The government said that.

01:16:33.340 OK.

01:16:33.740 I didn't say I wasn't the police chief that said these devices were absolutely part of a strategic plan related to the certification within 12 hours.

01:16:42.920 the government said that i didn't hold uh committees j6 bomber and all this kind of stuff

01:16:49.660 in fact this whole j5th bomber only occurred after we started making the the arguments because it was

01:16:55.200 always hey he's the j6 bomber okay the government made those allegations the government's allegations

01:17:00.600 tie them to the events that occurred at under the capitol on january 6 2021 so what happened

01:17:05.540 so we look at the the language say oh okay based on the government's own allegations regardless of

01:17:12.280 guilt or innocence he's they're tying him to this so let's seek the pardon now what now we're going

01:17:18.220 to get to the police though so what happens we exercise his legal right his entitlement to file

01:17:25.100 a brief and argue for the pardon to apply and thus dismiss the charges what does the government do

01:17:31.120 with no new facts zero zero new facts they amended they amend and go for the weapons of mass

01:17:39.900 destruction which we all know the public you all know when you think of wmd you say to yourself

01:17:45.000 nuclear warheads you do not think of a device based on expert testimony that could never have 0.76

01:17:52.900 detonated did not detonate didn't harm a person but they go and do that anyways they say okay

01:17:57.580 you're gonna go out here and do this and i i've dealt with the government i've sued the united

01:18:02.020 states and won an international court precautionary measures i've i've dealt with this my whole adult

01:18:07.300 career. So they say, OK, you're going to do that. Watch this. I'm going to put this WMD charge on

01:18:14.540 you. And then you're going to be facing life. So we're going to raise the stakes, raise the risk

01:18:20.500 for trial. You're a lawyer. You know this tactic. Raise the risk for trial. And why? Because if the

01:18:25.640 pardon does apply, we want to squeeze a plea deal out of it or something by raising the stakes so

01:18:31.220 we can say we won and put some more pressure on them to get something out of this before a ruling

01:18:36.480 comes down on the pardon i mean i will say my government sources say they feel very confident

01:18:42.420 in their case and that they think we're going to be wowed by the amount of evidence against him

01:18:46.420 look you can produce two million documents you still got to meet the legal criteria

01:18:53.960 okay it's a circumstantial case yeah they don't have his fingerprints on the device that's right

01:19:00.020 they're talking about gym shoes and sneakers and and uh in my opinion confessions that were

01:19:05.120 unlawfully obtained, but they are not really confessions taken out of context. You're showing

01:19:11.060 me, you know, 30 second clips, which I'm glad you're showing me because I want to talk about

01:19:14.280 30 second clips that are completely contextual. You can produce anything you want, but the bottom

01:19:20.940 line is you got to prove it. You're not, in my opinion, in my legal team's opinion,

01:19:26.460 they're not going to be able to prove this. Can you tell us a little bit about Brian?

01:19:31.940 Yeah, so, and I want to talk about, I want to tell you a little bit about Brian in the context of why he's still sitting in jail for no lawful reason, in my opinion.

01:19:40.500 Because you wanted him out pre-trial, and it's been denied repeatedly by courts.

01:19:44.500 Yeah, so what's going on, and in the context of that, I can tell you.

01:19:47.840 So when you, and anybody, any criminal lawyer knows this, when you go for the bond, this is a little bit different because there's a rebuttable presumption because of the nature of the allegations.

01:19:57.440 But you are able to rebut the presumption.

01:19:59.500 It's a rebuttable presumption that he would pose a danger to the community.

01:20:02.740 That's right.

01:20:03.380 And so they have all these factors.

01:20:06.420 He meets every one of them.

01:20:08.560 Zero criminal history, but more than zero criminal history,

01:20:11.840 zero physical history of actually harming anybody.

01:20:16.220 Because you can have zero criminal history,

01:20:18.020 but then have a reputation, let's say, in high school,

01:20:20.180 that you were fighting everybody and doing all kinds of stuff.

01:20:23.040 I mean, if he did this, this is a big one.

01:20:26.240 But I'm glad you said that.

01:20:28.020 The argument would be he started with a biggie.

01:20:29.860 That's the whole point.

01:20:31.520 You don't deny Bond.

01:20:33.500 Bond is the norm, not the exception.

01:20:35.940 You don't deny it based on the particular charge at the moment.

01:20:39.540 Well, look at Nick Reiner out in L.A.,

01:20:43.280 the guy who allegedly killed Rob Reiner and Michelle,

01:20:45.920 his parents, with a knife in their bedroom at night, horrific.

01:20:51.480 He may have had some sort of a criminal history when it comes to drugs,

01:20:54.720 but not in terms of hurting anybody.

01:20:56.820 That judge is not going to let him out.

01:20:58.680 But see, he still had a criminal history.

01:21:00.740 Even if he hadn't done drugs, there's no way that guy's getting out because the nature of this crime tells the judge he's a danger.

01:21:07.540 If you don't, that's not how the law works doing this.

01:21:10.220 That might be the politics of it, and that's the problem.

01:21:14.960 That's the problem.

01:21:15.620 No, hear me out on this.

01:21:16.260 Let me just ask you this.

01:21:17.560 If Brian Cole actually did do it, do you think he should be out walking around?

01:21:21.680 Let me answer that.

01:21:23.400 If I even believe that he did it, which I don't, he met the statutory factors for release.

01:21:29.340 And that's what people don't have that people have a problem with.

01:21:32.280 Hey, I didn't make the law.

01:21:34.460 I didn't say, hey, we're going to because of the nature of allegations, but we're going to still examine all these factors to see if you can get out.

01:21:41.780 Regardless, the punishment, legally speaking, on bond to try to deny bond is the rebuttable presumption.

01:21:49.060 We're going to assume you are a danger until you meet these factors.

01:21:52.500 But once you meet these factors, including conditions of confinement, house arrest, because see, that's what it is.

01:21:58.680 It's not just Katie. I mean, I'm sorry.

01:22:02.940 It's not just the issue that what he did.

01:22:06.540 If you can meet these factors, it's not just not having a criminal history.

01:22:10.940 It's not just, hey, he doesn't have a violent history.

01:22:13.920 It's not just, hey, he's been working since he's 16.

01:22:17.300 It's all those things plus house arrest.

01:22:21.880 So if you put them on house arrest with an ankle monitor and then you waive his Fourth Amendment rights, you can come in and check on him at any time.

01:22:29.960 Where is he going?

01:22:31.540 So if you meet all those factors, then you put the conditions of bond on them.

01:22:36.040 And then a magistrate judge gives an order.

01:22:39.160 I'm not talking negative about the court because I don't want to be hauled in in front of a judge.

01:22:43.220 Good move.

01:22:43.720 I'm just telling you, a magistrate judge gives an order that is just, as a matter of fact, was factually erroneous on some particular issues.

01:22:54.240 It's brought up on the objection to the district court judge.

01:22:58.080 We're waiting for an opinion. And it's just a matter of fact that we didn't get an opinion.

01:23:01.580 We got two sentences that said I'm going to uphold that.

01:23:06.400 OK, so then we go to the Court of Appeals with a two sentence affirmance, a docket entry.

01:23:12.580 We're waiting up on the court of appeals and we get barely more than that two sentence

01:23:18.860 affirmance.

01:23:19.700 I mean, that's not unusual, right?

01:23:21.720 That's very unusual.

01:23:22.540 I do court of appeals all the time.

01:23:23.980 They give opinions and especially on something like this, they don't just, you don't have

01:23:27.980 anything to fish with.

01:23:29.500 Well, what they hear the, just looking at the, the statute here on the pretrial detention,

01:23:35.440 the governing statute, 18 USC 3142G factors to be considered.

01:23:39.980 the judicial officer shall, in determining whether there are conditions of release that

01:23:43.560 will reasonably assure the appearance of the person as required and the safety of any other

01:23:47.300 person in the community, take into account the available information concerning, one,

01:23:51.420 the nature and circumstances of the offense charged. So they can consider this is a, if true,

01:23:56.120 this is a doozy. Well, let me say something. I got to stop you. You're taking that out of context.

01:24:01.300 The law says that the weight of the evidence as far as guilt and innocence. That's number two,

01:24:05.820 the weight of the evidence against the person. That's right. Number three is. That's not taken

01:24:09.100 into consideration the way you're saying it? Well, these are the four factors. They said that

01:24:13.240 the judicial officer shall consider, in addition to whether there are conditions of release that

01:24:21.000 would reasonably assure he'll show up and that people will be safe in the community if we let

01:24:25.160 him out, take into account the following information. Nature and circumstances of the

01:24:30.000 offense charged, weight of the evidence against the person, history and characteristics of the

01:24:34.480 person, nature and seriousness of the danger to any person or the community that would be posed

01:24:38.840 by the person's release right so i mean it is entirely appropriate for them to consider do we

01:24:45.740 think there's a potential danger and what are the what's the nature and circumstances of the

01:24:49.140 offense i don't want to get into a legal argument with you but those are factors that are etched out

01:24:54.540 by law okay so when you talk about weight of evidence the circuit court will tell you weight

01:25:00.460 of evidence doesn't mean his guilt or innocence and we're looking for a present danger and we're

01:25:05.060 looking for factors that we can actually apply to him, such as house arrest, waiver a fourth

01:25:09.260 amendment, and ankle monitor, so we can know every move that he makes. Is he not doing well in jail?

01:25:15.760 I mean, like, why are you so focused on this particular? I'll tell you why I'm so focused

01:25:19.740 on it, because, and just think about anybody that you know, including yourself, that's never been

01:25:24.580 to jail. Yeah, I don't think I do very well. There you go. So when people ask me, they say, hey,

01:25:30.160 how's Junior doing in prison or jail? It's two distinctions, but depending on the jail that you

01:25:34.740 go to, you might think you're in prison, but that's another story. But look, I say the same

01:25:39.680 thing. Nobody who has zero history with jail and criminal offenses is going to be okay in jail.

01:25:49.340 However, he talks to his parents every day. He talks to his grandmother every day. John Shorman,

01:25:55.300 who lives in the D.C. area, goes and visits him, I say, once every 10 days, 14 days. Who's he?

01:26:00.240 He's the other lawyer on the case. John Shorman is another lawyer on the case. So

01:26:03.400 he goes and visits them. So to that extent, he has support. But I'm not going to say he's doing

01:26:10.240 well. So how was he living his life before all of this? Oh, another thing. Went to high school,

01:26:17.080 graduated. His father has a bail bonds business and is national, very successful. So he worked

01:26:23.700 with the family business since the age of 16. He went to work every day. He associated with his

01:26:31.100 friends. He had a small community of friends in school. They played video games, stuff like that.

01:26:36.280 And just got up every day, walked his dog, talked to his neighbors. Neighbors gave him affidavits

01:26:41.460 in support of his release from bond, saying he's a very nice person, no problems, no anger issues,

01:26:46.460 nothing. And that was his day-to-day life. You know, you say he's autistic. Sometimes the

01:26:52.720 folks who are on the spectrum can have serious genius. They can be socially not that functional,

01:26:58.900 but very, very bright, capable of putting together a bomb pretty financially.

01:27:04.740 Well, let's talk about that.

01:27:05.840 Now, we want to assume that Brian Jr. had a serious genius

01:27:10.000 and capable of putting together a bomb.

01:27:11.880 We have an expert that laughed at the ability of this bomb to even detonate.

01:27:17.920 So I don't want to really comment too much.

01:27:20.820 I know that he's diagnosed as autistic.

01:27:24.020 Before all this, was he diagnosed?

01:27:26.140 Well, see, that's another thing.

01:27:27.400 So before all this, I don't think he was officially diagnosed because a lot of times, especially in the African-American community, I feel very comfortable in saying this, in the era that his parents grew up in.

01:27:41.560 Now, nowadays, 2026, man, on the spectrum, I don't even know what it means.

01:27:47.820 Yeah.

01:27:47.960 You know, it can mean anything. But back in the 80s and 90s, you had a child who you say, oh, okay, well, I'm just looking to see if he's a problem. If he's doing well in school, he's not a problem. He has a small group of friends. Okay, well, he might be shy. He might be quiet, but we're not going out to get psychiatric help and put him on medication.

01:28:09.720 So when all this happened, yes, he was definitely diagnosed as on the spectrum, as autistic.

01:28:17.540 But the role that autism plays in forming sufficient criminal mens rea is something that I just have to leave to experts.

01:28:27.260 I'm not an expert in that.

01:28:28.780 And it's an emerging field because of the autism and on the spectrum is an emerging field, especially in Europe.

01:28:34.540 Did they say what kind of autism?

01:28:36.980 You know, there's different levels.

01:28:39.060 Yeah, I can't remember the exact level that he is, but I know that it was represented in one of the briefs in court.

01:28:47.580 So was it like Asperger's, do you remember?

01:28:50.320 No, I don't believe it was Asperger's, but I can't really comment completely on that.

01:28:55.200 I'm trying to rack my brain to think about it.

01:28:56.620 But I know what he was diagnosed with was represented in some of the briefing.

01:29:00.720 And how about the OCD?

01:29:02.420 That's another allegation that he allegedly has.

01:29:05.840 That has to deal with the doctors.

01:29:07.820 I think it was two medical physicians that put them through a battery of tests, made these determinations, and there's a report.

01:29:16.360 Hired by the defense?

01:29:17.980 Yeah.

01:29:18.400 Okay.

01:29:18.720 I mean, that's no problem.

01:29:19.900 No, that's standard.

01:29:21.340 Yeah.

01:29:22.560 I mean, I know you get people on the stand and you want to say that to try to show bias, but I invite the government.

01:29:28.040 No, any defense lawyer would do it.

01:29:29.840 And I can assure you that these behavioral specialists for the FBI, they already made the diagnosis.

01:29:35.480 About the autism, just having watched him, you mean?

01:29:38.720 Having watched him, talked to him, come on.

01:29:41.340 What's he like to talk to?

01:29:43.460 I actually think he's very pleasant.

01:29:45.420 Does he have an affect?

01:29:46.860 How would I know in talking to him that he's autistic?

01:29:50.200 Well, I don't know the characteristics of autism.

01:29:53.660 I can just say when I talk to him, I feel he's just normal in the sense of he answers questions.

01:29:59.880 He'll say, hey, what are we doing on this?

01:30:01.600 I don't want to get into attorney-client privilege, but he just seems normal to me.

01:30:05.480 But he's been diagnosed that way.

01:30:08.840 And so you got to just talk.

01:30:10.460 I just don't feel comfortable saying, how would I know he's autistic?

01:30:13.980 Because I'm not a medical professional. 0.91

01:30:15.180 And there's nothing that really stood out to me to say, man, this guy has a problem.

01:30:19.200 So how would the FBI have known that?

01:30:22.020 Because they're behavioral specialists.

01:30:23.460 I'm not.

01:30:23.920 They're trained to detect minor details in people's, for example, getting up every day or going to the same routine.

01:30:31.460 I don't know what that means in terms of the universe of autism.

01:30:35.080 What did that look like?

01:30:36.160 What did that look like in terms of what he was doing?

01:30:38.100 You mentioned the pizza every day.

01:30:39.680 I didn't watch it.

01:30:40.680 I didn't see it.

01:30:41.460 I just was, these are in reports.

01:30:43.800 But the thing about autism is, like I said, it's just something that is going to have to take shape throughout the trial if we actually get there through experts.

01:30:53.540 Yes, right.

01:30:54.820 Will it be relevant outside of the argument over whether the alleged confession comes in?

01:31:02.200 I don't, to be honest with you, I don't even place it in that argument. See, for me, the argument about the alleged confession and all these statements that Patel and Bondi said acontextually, that has everything to do with the manner in which he was arrested and interrogated.

01:31:19.980 Well, yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, the reason that's relevant is did they get something out of him that is not usable because he was.

01:31:26.080 The role that autism plays in that is something that at that stage when we get ready to file that motion, if we believe that we need some kind of expert opinion on it or that's going to affect it, then we can take that up with our experts and the judges and file it in the motion.

01:31:40.340 But I don't have any kind of opinion on that at this point.

01:31:43.080 So what was he doing the evening of January 5th, 2021?

01:31:50.440 Now, if I told you that, I'd give away the secret sauce.

01:31:53.620 Is there an alibi?

01:31:54.460 Hey, I'm not going to comment on that, but I am looking forward to the government trying to make this case.

01:32:00.920 Was he planting those bombs?

01:32:03.420 I am looking forward to the government trying to make this case.

01:32:07.280 I'm not going to see because if I get into that, this is the problem.

01:32:11.320 If I get into that, that's giving away our strategy.

01:32:14.960 So I'm not going to do that.

01:32:16.560 But what I am going to tell you wholeheartedly is that they have to make their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

01:32:23.540 I don't believe they can make their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

01:32:26.500 And I'm looking forward to a trial if by chance we don't get the pardon.

01:32:30.840 Now, you mentioned that your inside sources say they feel very strong about going to trial and winning.

01:32:37.380 I want to know how they feel about the pardon because the plain language of that pardon applies to them.

01:32:41.620 Yeah, we'll talk about that in one second.

01:32:43.180 But wait, I was going to ask you something about the trial.

01:32:45.640 Yes.

01:32:46.360 Who right now are you most looking forward to cross-examining?

01:32:49.580 my colleagues would hurt me if i said i'm just being honest which i'm not i want to answer

01:32:58.520 everything yeah no worries you can see that i'm opening up you have somebody's life in your hands

01:33:02.460 i appreciate my colleague if i said that and they saw that and i i would get called on the phone

01:33:08.220 and they would abuse me okay we don't we don't want that i can't i can't give you that one but

01:33:13.480 let's go to the next question do we have a trial date yet we don't when when would you guess this

01:33:18.380 is likely to happen i'm well we're hoping the first of 2027 somewhere about that january march

01:33:27.700 we keep on having to do you know continuances because of the the discovery process yeah and

01:33:33.280 the judge being updated and so federal court in dc right now yeah so we're hoping i would say

01:33:40.660 anywhere from january march of 2027 we want to do that how about um brian's political leanings

01:33:47.680 Can you shed any light on that?

01:33:50.060 You know, there's been this big deal about him having voted for Trump.

01:33:55.080 OK, so let me address that first.

01:33:57.020 First of all, in this country, technically speaking, you can just vote for who you want to and you shouldn't be attributing certain things to them.

01:34:05.340 I know Trump is a very polarizing figure.

01:34:09.540 I have never talked to Brian about that that particular vote because I think it's irrelevant to his innocence.

01:34:14.720 But what I can tell you, and I'd like to get back to this evidence, is that when we were doing the bond hearing, one of my biggest things was, hey, Your Honor, I know you asked the questions, but can we see some evidence of political affiliations here?

01:34:31.320 like proud boys and uh oath keepers and can we see a history of political quote-unquote violence

01:34:39.260 can we see a text message with anyone or saying anything that you would say that's kind of

01:34:45.260 disturbing from a political perspective or this is right wing or left wing or whatever nothing

01:34:50.840 see and that gets back to be honest with you getting the wrong guy see that stuff that

01:34:57.180 was showed about Patel and Bondi

01:34:59.000 was at the very beginning of the arrest.

01:35:01.840 You don't hear any of that anymore.

01:35:04.260 And the reason why you don't hear it...

01:35:06.020 I thought you were the one who put out

01:35:07.100 that he had voted for Trump twice.

01:35:08.980 No, everybody knew that.

01:35:10.780 Okay, so you stand by that.

01:35:12.380 That was known.

01:35:13.000 Oh, yeah, I'm not going to deny that.

01:35:14.760 That's just a fact.

01:35:16.340 That's a fact that's been confirmed.

01:35:18.340 Because the government was alleging

01:35:19.820 that he was disgruntled

01:35:21.660 because he was unhappy

01:35:23.760 with the way the election was being handled.

01:35:27.480 Okay, well, let me ask you.

01:35:28.020 This is obviously the 2020 election.

01:35:29.560 Well, let me ask you this then.

01:35:31.520 If he was disgruntled, according to them,

01:35:34.520 and he was unhappy,

01:35:36.040 and the certification process within 18 hours

01:35:38.560 of what they allege he did,

01:35:41.180 then it's related to the J6 events.

01:35:44.640 Then he gets the pardon.

01:35:45.720 This is back to your pardon argument.

01:35:47.140 Yeah, yeah.

01:35:47.440 See, see, there's no way to escape it.

01:35:50.060 You just said the government is alleging

01:35:52.860 he was disgruntled with with the outcome and he was upset about that and then therefore he went

01:35:58.420 there and did this because he was disgruntled and the certification was within i think 18 hours of

01:36:03.120 what they allege he did well then it's related to the events that occur to happen on j6 i do want

01:36:10.100 to talk about the pardon and whether he falls within it that you're making the argument right

01:36:12.660 now that he does but i i'm just interested in a couple of these a couple of these things that i

01:36:17.640 know you gave one other interview and i thought you said in the interview with fox with a dc

01:36:23.620 reporter that um that brian had you talked about how he'd wiped the data from his phone right the

01:36:32.280 government had alleged that he wiped the government alleged that he wiped almost a thousand times a

01:36:36.540 thousand times and then uh that came up on briefing that's when that all the obsessive

01:36:41.720 compulsive but what i what i morally said to him is show me some data on it now you you're saying

01:36:47.260 he wiped the data starting on this day which was well after january uh 2021 the date that they're

01:36:54.080 claiming all this data was wiped was years right but my bigger thing is just show you you're at one

01:37:01.200 on one end you're saying you got two million lines of data of a million documents well then show me

01:37:08.180 something if you got all these text messages all these documents all this data you got all the

01:37:15.060 ability to restore data esi native format all this kind of stuff that you know of all this you

01:37:21.120 know csi stuff then show me the political affiliations show me the the radicalism

01:37:28.960 that you came out with and the reason why you can never show it is because it's not there to where

01:37:35.420 he would drop two bombs yeah yeah you you can't show it so you got the wrong guy the image that

01:37:42.080 you portrayed of brian jr is completely antithetical to the image that you come to know

01:37:49.700 so then we're saying okay well where's that evidence now now you you this guy was the

01:37:54.620 uni bomber according to you when he when you first came out where is that evidence he's not that

01:37:59.940 person so you know for me it's like okay you can keep telling you and fox and cnn all kinds of

01:38:08.040 crazy stuff. But what's going to happen is you're going to have to prove that. You're going to have

01:38:13.260 to get up beyond a reasonable doubt, prove that. And as far as this whole whether the pardon

01:38:18.280 applies to him, which I'm very willing to talk about, is because it's not, and I want to make

01:38:24.260 sure the public understands this, it's not me alleging that his conduct is related to

01:38:31.180 It's the government.

01:38:32.060 It's the government.

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01:41:03.480 Hey everyone, it's me, Megan Kelly.

01:41:05.720 I've got some exciting news.

01:41:07.640 I now have my very own channel on Sirius XM.

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01:41:37.860 This is a left field question, but we're just coming off of the verdict in the Carmelo Anthony case.

01:41:44.280 A young man accused of, well, now found guilty of killing Austin Metcalfe at this Texas.

01:41:49.720 Is that the tent?

01:41:51.140 Yes.

01:41:51.700 Okay.

01:41:52.360 That's the one.

01:41:53.100 I've heard about it.

01:41:53.980 There was no evidence in the case at all that this had anything to do with race.

01:41:57.180 None.

01:41:57.640 The defendant happens to be black and the victim happened to be white.

01:42:01.220 But now that he's been convicted, there are certain folks who are trying to make it about race.

01:42:06.520 And this is a case involving a black defendant and no clear victim.

01:42:10.700 I mean, no one was hurt.

01:42:11.640 These pipe bombs didn't go off.

01:42:13.100 But do you think race has anything to do with this case?

01:42:16.580 Okay.

01:42:17.120 First of all, I want to talk about the Carmelo.

01:42:19.100 I don't know anything about that, so I don't want to comment on that.

01:42:21.760 I don't want to offend the family.

01:42:23.140 I don't want to offend anybody's family with stuff that I don't even know about.

01:42:26.380 I have never researched the facts of that case.

01:42:28.160 I did not look at the trial.

01:42:29.400 I didn't even look at the little snippets that I saw.

01:42:31.460 I would scroll up because I just didn't look at it.

01:42:33.800 Now, to answer your question directly about race in this case, this is the problem I have.

01:42:39.480 And I'm going to explain my experience growing up in New Orleans, Louisiana, and how race, in my experience as a lawyer who deals with constitutional employment discrimination cases, sex, race, national origin.

01:42:53.820 so when we file a pardon motion a motion to dismiss based on the pardon and you then come

01:43:07.340 back with no evidence to raise the stakes and you put a frivolous and i i will go to the mat saying

01:43:14.760 you're never going to prove this wmd charge it was just a scare tactic okay in my opinion because

01:43:20.740 you could have done it before you didn't, but then

01:43:22.920 you got mad because you filed the motion to dismiss

01:43:24.960 for the party you raised to Annie. That does

01:43:26.840 happen in prosecutions. I'm not

01:43:28.980 saying it happened here, but that

01:43:30.800 has been known to happen. I know what's going on.

01:43:33.260 And so you do that.

01:43:35.300 But see, what I focus on,

01:43:37.760 and this is real big for

01:43:39.000 me, is okay. He

01:43:40.980 had the legal right to do it. You did that.

01:43:43.060 But I'm focused on your arguments.

01:43:46.360 So the

01:43:46.640 first argument is, now suddenly

01:43:48.900 he's the J5 bomber.

01:43:50.740 When the whole time he's been the J-6 bomber.

01:43:53.880 Now the argument is, oh, one of them, because it's a bit basically throw anything up on the wall to see what sticks.

01:43:59.980 Now one of the arguments is, oh, he wasn't there on January 6th.

01:44:05.660 But we know the Proud Boys guy wasn't there on January 6th.

01:44:08.360 He got convicted.

01:44:09.560 We know multiple.

01:44:10.500 Got pardoned.

01:44:11.200 Pardon.

01:44:12.040 We know multiple people who actually pled out and were convicted for conduct that happened on January 1st through 5th.

01:44:19.520 And it didn't matter if they were there on six, but you're still making that frivolous, unsupported, factually unsupported, legally unsupported argument.

01:44:28.480 So then you say, OK, well.

01:44:30.800 But they had been indicted or convicted prior to the date of the pardon.

01:44:36.540 OK, let's talk about that, because that came up in a different interview.

01:44:39.820 So first, let me finish this.

01:44:41.360 Yeah.

01:44:41.500 So you bring up because that has that's a different argument.

01:44:45.600 So the first argument has no weight at all, that he wasn't there on J-6.

01:44:50.240 That has no weight.

01:44:51.640 If what he did on J-5 is related to, is directly related to January 6th, we have seen other people pardoned.

01:44:57.660 That's right.

01:44:58.200 I get it.

01:44:58.740 Okay, so that has no weight and they know it.

01:45:00.600 So now they say, oh, well, wait a minute.

01:45:03.900 This only applies to people who are convicted or are a part of this situation prior to the date the pardon was issued.

01:45:13.420 OK, really, because without being too technical, statutory construction, fundamental principles of statutory construction that apply to this pardon easily say if the president wanted to say pending charges and reduce that down to only at the time of the pardon, he would have done that.

01:45:35.480 he didn't say it that's just another way to say let's just think of every single thing we can

01:45:43.040 think of to say what is obvious we've already put ourselves in a hole by relating his conduct

01:45:50.680 but now we got to get out of that so we're willing to say anything that's my personal opinion 0.92

01:45:55.860 but here's the thing about race a lot of people will say women blacks uh latinos are oh you're 0.95

01:46:05.240 throwing out the race card. No, that's not really true in my experience. What happens is 0.73

01:46:09.420 those groups, those demographics find themselves in a situation where it's not making sense,

01:46:16.480 where they're saying, hey, look, wait a minute. I know a guy that's on video

01:46:22.680 assaulting law enforcement officers. He was so out of control that a fellow Jay Sitcher tried

01:46:30.880 to stop him he assaulted him cracked open the shield of an officer that laid down and thought

01:46:36.460 he was about to die got convicted and didn't get his and people need to understand this about

01:46:43.220 clemency clemency is two things you can get a commuter sentence which just means you can't

01:46:47.740 spend any time in jail but then you can turn around and get a full pardon which restores all

01:46:52.100 your rights your rights to gun violence and everything else that you might think of that

01:46:56.680 you had before, you get them restored. So this person gets convicted, 49-page memorandum by the

01:47:05.540 government for his sentencing, and he gets a full pardon. Then you start saying, okay, that guy's

01:47:11.180 white. Now, let's look at the most extreme people involved in this situation. Then some people

01:47:18.600 start saying, hey, and not necessarily me. Some people are saying, hey, well, hold on. The

01:47:23.600 government relates the conduct of my client to this, these other people actually got convicted

01:47:29.700 for felony assault. See, some people say J6 is patriotic. I say convicted felon. Convicted felon,

01:47:37.440 pardon. Is it your contention that all of the people who benefited from the J6 pardon are white? 0.77

01:47:43.620 No, not at all. What I'm saying is the most heinous acts that I've seen that were committed 0.99

01:47:50.520 and people got convicted on draws the specter of race.

01:47:54.540 I'm not saying, look, I said before, I don't accuse me. 0.94

01:47:57.280 He pardoned the blacks. 0.98

01:47:58.300 He pardoned the whites. 0.97

01:47:59.520 He pardoned everybody. 0.93

01:48:00.500 No, no, no.

01:48:01.480 He did with a stroke of a pen.

01:48:03.340 Megan, I have to disagree on one thing.

01:48:05.500 The point I'm making is it brings the conversation to the table

01:48:09.520 because you're wondering, this African-American person

01:48:13.340 who didn't harm anybody, no matter what you say about the allegations

01:48:17.240 and whether you feel he's guilty or innocent, no one was harmed.

01:48:20.300 And then people say, but that was just a stroke of luck.

01:48:22.920 It's called felony murder.

01:48:24.720 If you go into a bank and rob it and you don't kill anybody, you're going to get lesser charges.

01:48:30.100 And when you kill somebody.

01:48:31.620 If he actually planted a viable bomb, which is what the government claims, I know you claim no, then he's got to go to prison for a very long time.

01:48:38.220 Well, see, that's why I disagree because these people.

01:48:41.500 It doesn't have to go off.

01:48:42.480 No, hold on.

01:48:43.320 These people who got convicted didn't go to prison for a long time.

01:48:47.480 But it's apples and oranges.

01:48:48.800 They got a pardon.

01:48:49.760 If your guy didn't get a pardon.

01:48:51.560 So when you talk about race, we're trying to figure out what's the distinction. 0.93

01:48:54.720 But that's like, if every single J6 defendant was white, that'd be one thing. 0.96

01:48:58.480 But they weren't. 0.98

01:48:59.260 Blacks got pardoned too.

01:49:00.300 That's not true. 0.96

01:49:01.280 We're talking about a sub... 0.64

01:49:02.840 Look, a lot of people feel if blacks were on TV assaulting law enforcement officers.

01:49:12.660 They were. 0.95

01:49:13.400 Did you watch the BLM riots?

01:49:14.780 I did.

01:49:15.640 Oh, no, no.

01:49:16.780 Yes, they absolutely were. 1.00

01:49:19.000 I'm talking about J-6. 1.00

01:49:20.800 Okay, but I'm just saying. 0.88

01:49:22.280 I'm talking about J-6. 1.00

01:49:23.060 We saw that and they got a pass. 0.98

01:49:24.680 I'm talking about J-6. 1.00

01:49:26.380 There is not one person that I know of convicted of 22 years. 0.99

01:49:31.800 Convicted of 22 years.

01:49:34.340 When you say somebody got a pass, that means they didn't get convicted.

01:49:38.900 They didn't even get arrested.

01:49:40.260 Okay, we're talking about people who got arrested, convicted, and were on video.

01:49:44.180 I get it, I get it.

01:49:45.100 The pardon was very controversial for the reasons you're out.

01:49:47.920 But see what you're laying out, but not race. But you asked me about race. People start thinking about race when they see, hey, why is the government fighting the pardon with frivolous arguments?

01:49:58.220 Can it be his circumstances are different? I understand your argument that, OK, they're saying the motivation for dropping these bombs was allegedly disgruntled over how the election was playing out.

01:50:12.220 But the truth is, January 5th is a whole different date than January 6th, and January 6th involved a very different situation.

01:50:19.800 It was rioting at the Capitol, insurrection if you ask the president's detractors, and assaults on police officers, illegal entry.

01:50:28.960 Those are the crimes that we've seen charged around J6, and then excessive treatment of some of the defendants versus how they'd normally treat a trespass case, for example.

01:50:39.020 This is something that was a prelude to it, that I think the theory of the case has been,

01:50:45.180 well, it actually depends on who you ask and who you're looking at as the defendant on the theory of why these bombs were placed there.

01:50:49.920 When they thought it might be this other person, it was a training exercise, allegedly, to distract officers from what was happening on Capitol Hill.

01:50:57.300 And with your client, I don't actually fully know why they say he did it, but it didn't happen on J6.

01:51:02.860 And we don't know the motivation was related to J-FET.

01:51:06.600 Let's go back to what you said initially.

01:51:08.560 You said the circumstances are entirely different, but that's saying the same argument.

01:51:13.620 He wasn't there on J6.

01:51:14.860 That's been debunked because of the late—I didn't write the pardon.

01:51:18.100 Hold on, let me just finish this.

01:51:18.520 But what about the fact that he wasn't indicted or charged or convicted?

01:51:22.680 Let me say this.

01:51:23.840 Yeah, yeah.

01:51:24.180 I didn't write the pardon.

01:51:25.700 Yep.

01:51:26.980 The pardon says conduct related to the events that occurred at or near the Capitol.

01:51:32.220 Let me read that.

01:51:32.960 You're right.

01:51:33.360 Okay, but you left out an important word.

01:51:35.380 grants a full, complete, and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses

01:51:42.020 related to events that occurred at or near the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021.

01:51:47.620 Convicted. Convicted.

01:51:49.260 Go down to the bottom.

01:51:49.940 And above that, it says commute the sentences of the following individuals.

01:51:53.780 Go down to the bottom.

01:51:54.600 I further direct the Attorney General to pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government

01:51:59.500 of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the Capitol.

01:52:04.820 There you go. What do you mean? Read it again. This wasn't a pending indictment at the time he issued this pardon. You're putting in at the time he issued the pardon. What do you mean? No. Pending forevermore? No. Look at the preamble. The preamble. President Trump said, hey, I just want to get past anything dealing with J6.

01:52:25.720 Did he say that? 0.70

01:52:26.940 Did he say, I want to get past, this is a moment in history we need to get past with anything dealing with J6. 0.73

01:52:33.540 It says, if he wanted to delimit it to the time that he issued it, he could have done that.

01:52:39.840 Everybody's trying to read in language.

01:52:41.320 I think he did when he said pending indictments.

01:52:44.840 Pending indictments.

01:52:46.800 That's exactly, we have pending indictments and charges.

01:52:50.080 You think that, that's a statutory construction thing.

01:52:52.600 But I believe, based on statutory construction, that that doesn't fly.

01:52:57.360 I get it.

01:52:57.760 You're making an argument.

01:52:58.660 Yeah, that doesn't fly.

01:52:59.300 I'd be making the same argument if I were you.

01:53:00.900 And here's the thing.

01:53:01.500 Not only do I believe it doesn't fly, to sit there and say the distinction is, ultimately, because that's what you're saying, he just wasn't there on J6.

01:53:12.660 As long as his conduct, as alleged by the government related to J6, he falls squarely within the pardon's plain language.

01:53:20.340 And let me say this.

01:53:21.680 They have another person who played out, I think, to 10 years.

01:53:25.380 His whole charges were putting out, pushing in firearms, moving firearms from January 1st through 5th.

01:53:34.160 On that alone, he was convicted on conspiracy.

01:53:38.360 In advance of January 6th to be used on January 6th.

01:53:40.780 Very, very clearly tied to January 6th.

01:53:43.520 Well, according to them, this is clearly tied to January 6th.

01:53:47.040 The police say that it was a distraction technique.

01:53:50.920 The government has said that, that it's not coincidence that it was done on the eve of January 6th.

01:53:57.240 So we get back to the same arguments.

01:53:59.920 It's the allegations of the government.

01:54:02.820 They put this at issue.

01:54:05.120 Not me.

01:54:05.680 Not Mario Williams didn't do this.

01:54:07.120 The government did.

01:54:07.980 When's your hearing on this?

01:54:09.540 I don't know.

01:54:10.240 You know, a lot of people mistakenly believe that federal courts give a lot of hearings.

01:54:15.000 They don't.

01:54:16.120 So a lot of things are just decided on the papers.

01:54:17.740 You might not get to argue it.

01:54:18.720 Yeah, we might not get to argue it.

01:54:20.200 And, you know, my understanding and my experience, especially at the court of appeals level, but even at district court levels, judges kind of come in with their mind made up on an oral argument.

01:54:28.400 You might be able to say something, but the chances that you actually reverse a preconceived position are very slim.

01:54:35.780 So I'm not so much worried about getting an oral argument.

01:54:38.920 I'm really worried about just sticking to the paper, you know, what we argue versus what they argue, you know, because they made that argument.

01:54:46.120 Their other argument is that the attorney general should be the one who interprets executive intent as part of the executive branch, that their opinion of what President Trump meant is worth more than your opinion.

01:55:00.220 Okay, so first of all, statutory construction, basic principles apply to the pardon.

01:55:07.300 D.C. Circuit has already come out and said as long as we're applying those statutory principles, the government has flip-flopped so many times on who they're going to support and who they're not going to support that there's opinions out there that say, hey, look, this is getting crazy.

01:55:22.340 Like, we can't, if we base it on just what you all feel in a given moment, we're going to be flip-flopping all the time.

01:55:28.760 Now, we got to get, this is the language of the pardon.

01:55:31.580 There has to be something that every party can go off.

01:55:33.480 Yeah, absolutely.

01:55:34.160 This is the language of the pardon.

01:55:35.780 Do the facts apply or not?

01:55:37.460 We're not going to sit here and say the pardon applies to charges in Kentucky and all this because you say it does.

01:55:43.620 And, you know, that's called Chevron deference.

01:55:45.780 Yep.

01:55:46.420 And Chevron deference, the Supreme Court put a nail in that pretty much in an immigration case about six or seven years ago.

01:55:53.660 But they really nailed it a couple of, about two years ago, I think it was.

01:55:57.600 You know that.

01:55:58.040 And so that whole Chevron deference argument, again, you're making an, you know, technically speaking, you have a duty to actually talk about opinions that go against what you're saying.

01:56:08.920 So they come in court and argue Chevron deference knowing that the Supreme Court has already done away with it.

01:56:14.040 Right. And this term again. I mean, they did it again. You're right.

01:56:17.580 Yeah. Back to those tapes. To the people who are looking at those tapes and this figure walking around, he's not identifiable, and we actually can't even tell if it's a he or a she.

01:56:28.460 That's right.

01:56:30.680 But they're going to play those tapes a lot if this thing goes to trial.

01:56:34.440 That's true.

01:56:34.700 And they're going to do a height analysis where they're going to try to say they, I'm assuming, I don't, this is just my assumption.

01:56:42.300 They're going to try to look at the height of Brian Cole Jr.

01:56:44.800 They're going to try to look at the bricks on the ground and say it matches and so on and so forth.

01:56:49.980 Are you going to be able to dispute that that is Brian Cole Jr. in these videotapes?

01:56:55.360 I'm going to tell you the same thing I said before.

01:56:57.760 We are looking forward to them going down that road.

01:57:01.580 But that's all I'm going to say, because like I said, I do have to take serious that I can't say certain things.

01:57:06.820 I love talking to you and I really appreciate that. You've been great.

01:57:10.100 Yeah. But I can't say certain things because it just will undermine our case and it'll give them a tip off to something.

01:57:16.200 But what I can say is we're looking forward to them going down that road and we're actually in the discovery process.

01:57:22.920 And one reason why my colleague, who I absolutely 100 percent stand behind, who filed those subpoenas and stuff.

01:57:30.280 Now, they argue that there was some procedural vagaries in there and stuff like that.

01:57:34.540 But like I said, you are the one leaking all the stuff that you say is confidential.

01:57:39.040 You're on TV saying this stuff and making these allegations against Junior on stuff that I'm looking at confidential attorney's eyes only, but somehow is making it to the press a contextually.

01:57:48.680 So, you know, let me ask it this way. In federal court in D.C., if you are going to argue he has an alibi, do you have an obligation to admit that in advance of trial and give the government notice of it?

01:58:02.220 There's an argument to be said for that.

01:58:04.860 I mean, well, that would just be a rule of civil procedure or criminal procedure that aren't you required to tell them in advance if you're going to argue alibi?

01:58:11.480 You know, we live in a country with 50 states and about a million cases, but I can say that generally speaking, you would have to do that.

01:58:20.400 But, you know, there's arguments saying that the timing of that and when you do it, basically the timing is another issue.

01:58:28.160 How are his parents doing?

01:58:30.180 Horrible.

01:58:31.440 I mean, you know, I know you read off those those criteria and that's no problem.

01:58:38.740 But I do say like I stick by the fact that those criteria etched out in law to mean something a little bit different with the bond.

01:58:45.040 But the issue with with the parents, of course, they're going to be feel bad because, number one, he's accused of this.

01:58:51.740 And then he's stuck in jail when we, as a team, firmly believe that he met the conditions of release and that we could have crafted some conditions of release along with meeting those other factors that could have allowed him to be on home arrest.

01:59:07.820 So the idea that he's still in jail and they just feel bad, but they do talk to him almost every day, you know.

01:59:16.220 And I go back with the father, so I know he's a great guy.

01:59:20.100 And Brian Cole Jr. never had any trouble as a youth? No, no juvie record?

01:59:26.400 That's what I'm trying to tell you. So that's what that's my point. So it's one thing as an adult not to have a criminal history. I'm going, you know, our job, you know, this, you do these mitigating factor analysis to try to humanize the person and all that.

01:59:39.880 So I go back and say, okay, well, let me look at all the way back to elementary, junior high, high school.

01:59:47.080 There's just no history of being a problem child.

01:59:50.920 There's no juvie record.

01:59:52.580 There's no history of fighting.

01:59:54.080 There's no expulsions.

01:59:55.360 Some of these things that you think is a marker to say, hey, maybe this is a precursor to real problems.

02:00:02.120 Or like this is a sociopath, animal torture.

02:00:04.780 There's nothing, nothing like that. 0.91

02:00:07.320 Nothing.

02:00:07.760 And so I'm like, OK, so when we go into the bond hearing, I start challenging the government like you can't prove anything from his past because trust and believe if he had a juvie record, if he had animal, you would have known by it by now.

02:00:21.020 So you can't do that. So show me the I'm real big on show me these political affiliations.

02:00:29.260 Show me the text messages and things like with these other people that say, hey, get right with God is ready. 0.99

02:00:35.280 time to die. Like, or when he got radicalized, you're saying. Yeah, exactly. But there is

02:00:39.760 nothing. There's nothing. So, you know, I mean, for me... Can you speak at all to cell phone

02:00:45.760 evidence? I mean, that's what everybody wants to know. Because the cell phones tell everybody

02:00:48.760 everything about us, where we were and when. Okay. So the government says that they're going

02:00:53.580 to match up these pings and that he swiped. We already talked about the swipe and they're

02:00:59.500 talking about years difference in the event. As far as the pings, all I can say is

02:01:04.520 I really want you to do it.

02:01:07.440 I want to see if you can do that one.

02:01:09.540 You know, it's easy to come on TV as Cash, Patel, or Bondi.

02:01:15.560 You have so much authority.

02:01:17.220 Your position is so high.

02:01:19.240 You know, I respect those people just for what they've been able to accomplish,

02:01:23.000 regardless of what I think about their political thoughts or whatever.

02:01:26.300 You made it up there.

02:01:27.160 Okay, great.

02:01:27.980 So it's easy for you to get on and just talk.

02:01:31.360 And people say, oh, Patel said this.

02:01:34.520 It's different to prove it.

02:01:37.360 And so that's what we're looking forward to.

02:01:39.660 I want to see you prove this.

02:01:41.680 If they do prove it and your client is convicted of these charges,

02:01:46.840 is it automatically life in prison?

02:01:49.580 If they prove the WMD charge, I mean, that's what they raise the stakes to.

02:01:54.340 That's the most serious one. 0.62

02:01:55.260 Yeah, I mean, but that's just, I know you can say that's a tactic.

02:02:00.540 I call it bullying.

02:02:01.400 you see when you when you don't check now it'd be different if they said we have now discovered

02:02:08.180 new factual evidence to demonstrate that this man should be charged with weapons of master

02:02:12.980 nothing they just straight up tried to bully him and they did as far as putting the charge on to

02:02:19.920 say hey you keep pushing this pardon thing we're gonna push life in prison so you can go down as

02:02:26.300 the only person who the government has said his conduct relates to J6, but you're going to go down

02:02:32.120 as the only person that spends life in prison. And see, that's what I'm talking about. I know

02:02:37.540 you call kind of, oh, well, I don't know about race and all that, but people start thinking about

02:02:43.040 race. I mean, they may. They think about it. You need evidence. Yeah. You start thinking about race

02:02:48.080 when you say, hey, look, Brian Cole Jr., they want to go down as the only J6. Seriously, though, 1.00

02:02:53.320 seriously you think that they wouldn't be doing that if he were white just to bully him into 0.97

02:02:58.600 giving them their oh the wmd charge yes but but not giving the pardon they like they like this

02:03:05.740 is our case we're going forward with our cases mean a lot circumstances mean a lot i'm not going

02:03:11.120 to get into a situation of accusing anybody of racism but i am explaining why some people start

02:03:17.820 thinking about race whether you say you have to have more facts than that that's your personal

02:03:22.000 opinion but i can tell you coming out of the black community especially they start thinking

02:03:26.580 about race when things don't add up those arguments that are made by the government

02:03:31.500 he wasn't there on j6 oh even though it says pending indictments and charges and all this

02:03:36.740 kind of stuff uh we're gonna say that it doesn't apply because he wasn't indicted and didn't have

02:03:42.280 a pending charge at the time the part even though it doesn't say that when you start talking i get

02:03:46.400 i get the pardon uh say hey what's going on but i like my question initially was more about do you

02:03:51.820 think they charged him is has he been charged because of the fact that he's a black man did

02:03:57.420 that play into this at all oh no i'm not going to go and say that he the actual allegations against

02:04:04.040 him yeah man we got much more discovery to go through that i'm not going to say he was charged

02:04:10.620 just because he's black no i'd be crazy to say that like i'm talking about when things are start

02:04:16.920 don't add up this pardon motion you don't understand why he's not getting the pardon

02:04:20.860 Exactly. There's no way in the world that this man does not qualify to have a dismissal motion granted, in my opinion, based on the plain language of the pardon. It just doesn't make sense to me.

02:04:32.160 I will say this. If you get this case dismissed based on that pardon argument, it will be the greatest legal victory that we have seen in the past 10 years.

02:04:42.200 We already know we're in a battle because, and you know this, from civil litigation especially, you know, I sue the government all the time.

02:04:49.560 I was an elected official myself out in a small town, Clarkson, Georgia.

02:04:53.020 I did opponent research, getting dirt on people, making media commercials, all kind of stuff, helping media commercials be made.

02:04:59.760 And so I've been around politics a lot.

02:05:02.400 So, you know, for me, when I go into a case, I just think even if we were to win, even if the district court were to say, I think he's entitled to the pardon, we're going up to the appeals court.

02:05:13.620 And then if we were to win there, we're going to the Supreme Court and vice versa.

02:05:18.740 So we're in this for the long run.

02:05:20.420 You know, we're in it thinking, hey, win or lose, we're going to be litigating this probably for the next three to five years on this issue alone.

02:05:28.660 The issue is, will the trial courts stay the trial?

02:05:31.820 Right, they normally don't.

02:05:33.140 Yeah, they won't.

02:05:34.100 So that's why it's so important to kind of, as soon as we get it, we have to move quickly to try to get it up and see what the other courts are saying.

02:05:41.440 And they have to do the same if they lose.

02:05:43.820 So, you know, it just doesn't make sense to me.

02:05:47.480 I'm just going to always say that the pardon issue makes no sense to me because I'm looking at that language and I'm saying, how is he not entitled to this?

02:05:55.640 how is he how could he be facing life in prison as the only person the government alleges

02:06:02.500 conduct related to day six but he could be facing life in prison that doesn't make sense to me i got

02:06:08.760 it so interesting mario thank you thank you thanks for coming in here i appreciate it tell

02:06:13.480 us the story and i and i appreciate how upfront you were about everything there's i know there's

02:06:17.880 certain things these guys would kill me you got a man's life in your hands they didn't want me to

02:06:21.520 come on here. They'd be like, hey, man, this lady's going to destroy 1.00

02:06:23.640 you. 0.99

02:06:26.580 This is not

02:06:27.300 local Channel 5. This lady's

02:06:30.240 going to argue with you and kill you. 1.00

02:06:32.380 I said, but man, we can at least talk 1.00

02:06:34.080 a little bit about the story. Now you've got to go back and tell

02:06:36.120 them that they were wrong. Well, you're tough,

02:06:38.420 but you know, it was good.

02:06:40.040 It was a good opportunity. I appreciate it.

02:06:42.140 Listen, we're grateful to you.

02:06:44.580 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

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02:07:10.380 All right, full-time thoughts.

02:07:11.860 Craig, who stood out?

02:07:12.860 Brazil's lime cheesecake started bright, didn't let up.

02:07:15.380 Nah, for me, Italian cappuccino was the standout in the box.

02:07:18.340 But if we're talking decadent performance, that's all France.

02:07:21.300 Chocolate creme brulee had the richest finishes.

02:07:23.680 Canadian fireworks really showed up big too.

02:07:25.680 And Mexico's caramel churro ice cap.

02:07:28.060 Gave me chills.

02:07:29.180 We are, of course, talking about Tim's taste of the globe lineup.

02:07:31.920 New globally inspired Timbits and ice cap flavors available at Tim Horton's for a limited time.

02:07:36.600 Pick some up today.

02:07:37.600 And while you're at it, check out Footy Prime Daily.

The Megyn Kelly Show - June 16, 2026

VP JD Vance on the Iran Deal, the Divide on the Right, and Coming Back to Faith, PLUS Alleged 1⧸5 Pipe Bomber's Lawyer Speaks Out ｜ Ep. 1340

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