The Megyn Kelly Show - Who Was NYC Shooter Target, and New Reporting on Russiagate Hoax Collusion, with Buck Sexton and Aaron Mate

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:00:12.280 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We begin today with a terrifying

00:00:16.820 scene in New York City as we learn new information about the gunman's potential motive. Around 6.30

00:00:23.140 p.m. last night, Monday, a lone gunman armed with an M4 rifle marched into 345 Park Avenue

00:00:29.660 in Midtown Manhattan, a 44-floor skyscraper that houses the likes of the NFL, private equity

00:00:37.160 behemoth Blackstone, the accounting firm KPMG, and the management company for the building.

00:00:44.320 And went on the deadliest shooting spree the city has seen in the last 25 years. This is a picture

00:00:50.380 for the listening audience we were seeing of the suspect walking in very calmly with, you've probably

00:00:56.800 seen the picture by now. The rifle casually hanging down on his right side. He looks like he's going

00:01:05.280 for a stroll. The shooter, and we do not name mass shooters here on The Megyn Kelly Show, killed

00:01:11.580 four individuals, including a police officer, before turning the gun on himself. Another victim remains

00:01:18.120 in critical condition. It is interesting to note that he killed himself with the long gun by shooting

00:01:23.960 himself in the chest. And there had been some comments wondering last night, why, how? He had

00:01:30.980 a revolver as well that was found in his BMW outside of the building, which, you know, not to put too

00:01:37.000 fine a point on it, but would have been a far easier weapon with which to commit suicide. But we, I think,

00:01:43.020 are getting some new information on why he did what he did. And I'll get to that in a second.

00:01:47.320 The 27-year-old male suspect is from Las Vegas, originally born in Hawaii. He drove across the

00:01:53.960 country directly to New York City to inflict his carnage. According to the police, the shooter's

00:01:58.200 vehicle was seen in Colorado on Saturday, Nebraska and Iowa on Sunday, and then in Columbia, New Jersey

00:02:03.700 at 4.24 p.m. Monday before entering New York City. And I'm sure our listeners in those places are

00:02:09.300 wondering whether they encountered him and must be feeling some gratitude and relief that their cities

00:02:17.620 were spared. It does appear he was targeting New York and this building for a reason. Here's the New

00:02:25.500 York City Police Commissioner, Jessica Tisch, who, by the way, has received praise from left and right

00:02:31.780 prior to this incident. She seems to be the one person we can feel good about in New York City government.

00:02:36.720 She's describing here the harrowing scene of how the shooting unfolded. Watch.

00:02:41.920 Surveillance video shows a male exit a double-parked black BMW on Park Avenue between 51st and 52nd

00:02:49.680 streets. Carrying an M4 rifle in his right hand, he walks towards the building's entrance.

00:02:57.200 That individual was seen exiting the BMW alone. The building's security camera footage shows the

00:03:03.660 shooter enter the lobby, turn right, and immediately open fire on an NYPD officer.

00:03:10.300 He then shoots a woman who took cover behind a pillar and proceeds through the lobby, spraying it

00:03:16.760 with gunfire. He makes his way to the elevator bank where he shoots a security guard who was taking cover

00:03:24.080 behind the security desk. One additional male is shot in the lobby per his own statement from the hospital.

00:03:32.140 The shooter then calls the elevator, which opens in the lobby. A female exits that elevator and he allows

00:03:39.160 her to walk past him unharmed. He goes up to the 33rd floor, which is Rudin Management, and begins to walk

00:03:47.540 the floor, firing rounds as he traveled. One person was struck and killed on that floor. He then proceeds

00:03:55.580 down a hallway and shoots himself in the chest.

00:04:00.540 Hmm. Take a look at your screen for our YouTube audience. You can see the dead shooter on the ground

00:04:05.420 here. His final act of cowardice forever memorialized for the listening audience. You see a typical office

00:04:11.660 setting with a long runner, a white runner, it looks like, down in front of the desks and the shooter

00:04:19.800 lying horizontally across it. Another photo emerged of his weapon smeared with blood. If you really zoom

00:04:26.560 in, you can see it's got blood on the handle and among other places. At first, this is so extraordinary.

00:04:32.260 They don't normally release photos like this. We wondered if it was real, but it is. According to CNN,

00:04:36.860 the shooter had no significant criminal background and had a concealed carry permit for a handgun,

00:04:42.820 as well as an expired private investigator license in Nevada. Former NYPD on Fox News this morning was

00:04:49.960 saying he had at least two mental health incidents that had been documented in Nevada and also adding

00:04:57.400 that his information was that this guy worked at security at a casino in Las Vegas. Again, that's

00:05:05.520 from a former NYPD officer appearing on America's newsroom this morning. The shooter was a competitive

00:05:10.760 football player in his youth. And Commissioner Tish in New York said he had a, quote, documented mental

00:05:16.640 health history without going into details. Again, our information now is that there were at least two

00:05:21.540 incidents in Las Vegas that will absolutely lead to appropriate questions about why his gun license

00:05:28.480 was not revoked. That's that's not a gun nut thing. You got two documented mental health incidents

00:05:34.540 reportedly out in Las Vegas. You'll lose your concealed carry permit. You'll lose your permit

00:05:39.020 to carry a gun. Um, and I understand, you know, we can't get them all, but if it's documented,

00:05:45.680 if he's having interactions with officials, with authorities of any kind, um, something happened

00:05:50.900 with the system and we're going to have to figure out what, um, there was also reported this morning,

00:05:57.620 a three page note found on the gunman claiming that he suffered from the degenerative brain disease

00:06:04.640 known as CTE from playing football. CNN reporting. The note reads quite quote, Terry long. And that's

00:06:13.620 a man I'll get into. He was a Pittsburgh Steeler who had CTE and died by suicide. Um, but he writes

00:06:20.120 Terry long, I guess there's supposed to be kind of a comment as though he's addressing it to him.

00:06:26.300 Football gave me CTE and it caused me to drink a gallon of antifreeze. That's also something

00:06:32.680 Terry long did. You can't go against the NFL. They'll squash you. Okay. So long was a former

00:06:40.000 offensive lineman for the Steelers and did commit suicide in 2005 by drinking antifreeze.

00:06:45.540 The note went on to say, study my brain, please. I'm sorry. Tell Rick, I'm sorry for everything.

00:06:51.520 We don't know who Rick is. The New York times reports investigators are focusing on whether the

00:06:56.480 gunman was targeting the NFL with mayor Eric Adams saying this morning, the shooter appears to have

00:07:02.460 intended to go to the football league's offices, but took the wrong elevator bank. I don't know how

00:07:08.340 it is in your city, but in New York, you basically can't get into a building anymore without selecting

00:07:12.600 like the floor, all the elevators and virtually all these high rises. And I've worked in plenty of them

00:07:18.200 require you to select whether you're going to like floor one through 15 or floor 16 through 30 or

00:07:24.780 floors 31 through 44. And depending on which one you want, you get into a different elevator.

00:07:30.600 And if you wanted floor 44, but you got into the first bank that services one through 15,

00:07:35.560 you're screwed. That seems to be what Eric Adams is saying happened, suggesting that it's,

00:07:41.820 it is possible this shooter wanted to go to the floor that housed the NFL staff, but didn't press

00:07:50.520 the right numbers, went up to the 33rd floor, which is where the management company for the building

00:07:56.320 was and started shooting and did in fact, shoot one person there. The NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell

00:08:02.640 says one NFL employee was quote, seriously injured in the incident. We don't have all the details on

00:08:09.360 where everyone was, but we know that, uh, most of the carnage happened in the lobby. We're also

00:08:15.760 starting to learn more about the victims, including the NYPD officer who was on duty in uniform and was

00:08:23.060 shot to death in the back. Here's commissioner Tish. But today for innocent victims are dead.

00:08:31.380 Among them, the NYPD police officer Dita rule Islam, 36 years old, four years on the job.

00:08:39.540 Officer Islam was married with two young boys. His wife is pregnant with their third child.

00:08:45.940 He's assigned to the four, seven precinct in the Bronx. He was doing the job that we asked him to do.

00:08:52.740 He put himself in harm's way. He made the ultimate sacrifice shot in cold blood, wearing a uniform

00:09:00.660 that stood for the promise that he made to this city. He died as he lived a hero.

00:09:07.220 Oh God. So awful. Two little boys and a third baby on the way. His poor wife.

00:09:16.420 Take a look at your screen. Now, this moving picture of officer Islam's body removed from the

00:09:21.860 building, just absolutely heartbreaking. Beyond the loss of officer Islam, Bloomberg reporting.

00:09:30.260 Another victim is Wesley Lepatner, the CEO of Blackstone real estate income trust.

00:09:36.740 This is a woman. Bloomberg's Sonali Basak writes, quote, she was a rising star in a crown jewel of

00:09:42.980 a business and was caught in the crossfire of an active shooter trying to reach the NFL. Can I tell

00:09:47.940 you something? Do you know how hard it is to get hired by Blackstone for anyone, male or female?

00:09:54.500 And then once there, to actually get promoted to run one of the large groups as a female, no less.

00:10:00.020 Plus she looks relatively young too. I mean, this, this person obviously was incredibly driven

00:10:07.300 and accomplished and died yesterday for what, for what? Clearly she was one of the ones in the lobby.

00:10:16.180 She was probably terrified as she saw this guy pull out that M4 rifle pointed at her and shoot.

00:10:25.060 We know at least one of the victims was trying to hide behind a pillar. Our understanding is

00:10:29.460 they shot the cop who was there in uniform, which is allowed by the NYPD, especially with young cops,

00:10:34.980 they let them do it because they need to supplement their income. So totally blessed by the NYPD and it

00:10:39.540 helps keep a building safe ostensibly because they're there in uniform. There was also a security guard.

00:10:45.300 Both of them were shot. We know that only one of the people, five people were shot,

00:10:50.260 one survived and is in the hospital. Now we don't know who that is, but we know the cop was shot dead.

00:10:55.860 A security guard was shot. We know one of the other victims was the woman I just showed you,

00:11:01.780 Wesley from Blackstone. And then there are two more who were shot and killed. And we believe

00:11:08.500 one of those was shot and killed on the 33rd floor. And the other one would have been shot and

00:11:14.100 killed in the lobby. So we'll bring you updates on the other victims and their identities as we learn them.

00:11:19.060 Joining me now for reaction is Buck Sexton. He's a former NYPD employee who worked on counterterrorism,

00:11:25.140 the CIA too, and co-host of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show.

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00:12:36.500 alternative for care from a healthcare provider. Buck, very good to see you. You know, the thing

00:12:42.580 that jumped out at me and Doug, my husband, as you know, you know him, we were chatting this over this

00:12:47.940 morning was because it's so odd that he shot himself in the heart with a long gun. And now that you see

00:12:53.940 the note saying he thought he had CTE and begging for them to study his brain, it makes a bit more sense

00:13:01.700 that he would shoot himself in the chest instead of in the head, potentially. But this was obviously

00:13:08.260 a mentally unwell man. There's nothing coming out this morning about connections to terror or

00:13:13.460 radicalization or anything like that. You're the expert. What do you think? Well, he's a crazy person

00:13:20.980 and trying to understand his mindset and motivations is going to be complicated and I think will be

00:13:28.580 debated even by people who study this kind of mass shooting for a living. You know, what I did was

00:13:37.220 ideologically based terrorism and I worked the NYPD intelligence division and it was essentially

00:13:43.300 jihadist terrorism that was 90, 99 percent of what the workload was. But we would look at mass shooting

00:13:50.340 scenarios around the world, study them. And in fact, Jessica Tisch, who's now the commissioner of the NYPD,

00:13:56.340 this was now 15 years ago, but she was a rising star in the counterterrorism division, which did

00:14:02.340 assessments to protect buildings like this one at the time. And I knew Jesse when I was at the NYPD

00:14:08.100 on the Intel division side working against jihadism. So this is something that you can prepare for

00:14:15.220 at some level in terms of security precautions, but there's never going to be a perfect security

00:14:22.420 cordon that you can have here. This also, by the way, hits home, Megan. I know, you know,

00:14:26.740 you know this area well. I know this area well. I had a family member who walked across this plaza

00:14:30.900 10 minutes before the shooting happened. So last night I was at dinner and I was getting text messages

00:14:35.140 about this and I realized where it was. I know people who work at Blackstone. In fact,

00:14:40.260 one of my cousin's husband's works in that building on that floor. And it was it was quite a one of those

00:14:47.540 times when you have to sit there and think, oh, my God. And I had to go through and make sure that

00:14:51.300 everybody that I knew was accounted for. So I know this area very well. I know people who work

00:14:57.620 in that building and even on on the Blackstone floors, I should say, not on the on the NFL floors.

00:15:03.380 As for the shooter himself, I think that you'll find more about him in those incidents, likely the

00:15:12.020 mental health incidents that you that you noted. The fact that this guy, I would be curious to know

00:15:16.660 how he was able to transport this this long gun, which the New York Post was reporting as an M4.

00:15:23.060 So I'm assuming it's a it's a civilian version of the M4. The military version would be fully automatic.

00:15:28.580 I'd be curious to know how he was able to get around with this as a clearly a mentally disturbed

00:15:35.700 person without anybody noticing. Now, it's possible. But in New York City, AR-15s,

00:15:39.940 for example, are all illegal. You know, you would know it's not like you could walk around.

00:15:44.580 If I was loading this into my car, I have an AR-15. I have a couple of them. If I was loading

00:15:48.580 one into my car in Florida, totally legal. Right. As long as I have a legitimate purpose for us for it.

00:15:54.340 This guy, what he's carrying around, that alone would get him sent to prison for years.

00:15:58.340 So I'm just saying he might have been planning this out with some degree of caution, because at

00:16:03.860 least until he strolled, as you pointed out, into the building. I think we'll find out more in these

00:16:07.940 mental health incidents, though, that this is somebody who should have been flagged. I think

00:16:11.140 there'll be more discussion about what could have been done to to perhaps involuntarily

00:16:17.780 commit him. I mean, this is the kind of person that should have been historically involved.

00:16:21.620 And Trump is on this. And Trump just signed an executive order about this. And we need to really

00:16:25.540 think more about this. And the people in New York City, you know, my wife was just I was just in

00:16:31.140 New York, Megan visiting my family the day. Well, day before this happened for my dad's birthday.

00:16:36.980 And my wife was on the subway and there was a stampede into her subway car because in the subway

00:16:42.260 car next to her, there was some complete maniac with no shirt on who smelled like he hadn't bathed

00:16:46.500 in, you know, a couple of years screaming at everybody. We actually have to take we actually have

00:16:52.260 to take action and take dangerous, mentally unstable people out of circulation in broader society.

00:16:59.380 Get them help. No one's saying be inhumane. Get them. But but you can't allow things like this to

00:17:04.500 happen because the ACLU wants to bring down the pillars of civilization and see what happens. I mean,

00:17:10.580 we have to be able to do things about those who are dangerously mentally ill, like this individual

00:17:16.660 who now took a number of lives. They're so worried the ACLU about the civil liberties of shooters like

00:17:24.500 this and not at all about the civil liberties of his victims, of the of the right of the rest of us

00:17:31.060 to live a peaceful life without having to worry about getting shot in the lobbies of our building.

00:17:36.980 I mean, involuntary commitment is the bare minimum we should be doing. And yet this won't this won't

00:17:42.660 start that conversation. But you know it as well as I do. We're going to go back to and it's fine. We

00:17:46.820 should talk about why this guy still didn't didn't have his firearms taken away from him after if he

00:17:51.780 really did have two mental health incidents with authorities, you know, to the point where it was

00:17:56.660 documented and our cops have already uncovered them. We should have that discussion in this. But that's

00:18:01.540 they won't cover it. They never cover anything on the left other than guns, gun violence.

00:18:07.300 Well, and as we know, because the shooter is not a white male, this is going to be and has been

00:18:14.420 treated very differently. I know everyone's pointed out what was said on CNN, which twice was quite.

00:18:20.340 Yeah, twice, which is quite a moment for CNN to say possibly a white male. We all understand that

00:18:26.340 in the world of the Democrat on TV or just, you know, the left wing mindset, it's it's much more of a

00:18:34.020 story if it's a white guy who's doing the mass killing, because then you can maybe you can attach

00:18:38.580 it to Trump more easily or maybe you can attach it. We all know the routine and it's pathetic and

00:18:43.060 it's gross. And it's why those, you know, pre-established media outlets have completely

00:18:50.660 destroyed their credibility and are in a free fall. That's not going to stop. So I don't think, you know,

00:18:54.820 there's really a need to spend too much time on on that aspect of it. But I do think that the fact

00:18:59.540 that this guy is a minority, I saw it reported that they think he's, you know, half black,

00:19:04.980 half Japanese. I'm not sure if that's true, but it's clearly not a white guy.

00:19:08.740 Well, he's born in Hawaii.

00:19:09.620 Because it's not. Yeah. OK, born. So I mean, whatever the case may be, he's not some white

00:19:15.540 guy. And so therefore, it's not an opportunity to in bad faith manufacture a MAGA connection

00:19:22.580 and make it somehow about that, even though there's no real basis for it. We know that that's

00:19:26.020 what they do all the time. In this case, they'll try to make it about about guns,

00:19:30.260 I think. But the problem that we keep running into is that I think, Megan, if you if you were

00:19:35.620 a serious person about if someone was seriously trying to deal with whether it's crime or even

00:19:41.700 mass shootings, but there are there are steps they would take. And in the mass shooting context,

00:19:47.540 the looking at the mental health component of this, which means involuntary commitment.

00:19:52.180 I mean, it means that when you've had a few incidents where people are scared to be around

00:19:56.420 you and it's clear that I mean, this guy was thought he was in the NFL. He was never in the

00:20:00.260 NFL. He's nuts. OK, he's nuts. And now obviously he's gone. But the fact that it would be almost

00:20:08.180 impossible by the laws of really every state, almost impossible to put him on an involuntary

00:20:14.340 psychiatric hold where you could really establish what kind of a risk is he to the public? Should we

00:20:20.420 really take away any access that he has to firearms? This this kind of a problem, if you're

00:20:26.340 not going to address what could be addressable, you're going to repeat the scenario. And I think

00:20:31.940 that's likely, unfortunately, to be the case with this, where you have somebody who they're going to

00:20:36.660 do everything they can to find some way to make this about politics in the media that that they favor,

00:20:43.220 right, whatever it may be. They'll attack the disfavored group, in this case, gun owners,

00:20:47.540 and they won't deal with the reality, which is this guy is an absolute wacko and should have

00:20:53.460 been flagged and stopped in advance of this. I mean, the other side of making this, you know,

00:20:57.140 you can't or country 350 million people, give or take. And there are some very bad,

00:21:01.780 very crazy people out there. You're not going to be able to stop all of them. You know,

00:21:05.620 it's unfortunate here. There was a good guy with a gun, so to speak. There was an NYPD officer on the

00:21:10.180 scene. But first of all, he's outgunned. You know, he's got he's going to have his just his sidearm

00:21:15.460 or rather his his pistol against somebody who's got a long gun like this. That's going to be very

00:21:20.660 tough. And he was shot in the back. He probably didn't even have a chance to react to the unfolding

00:21:25.460 threat. And and even obviously, if he had a ballistic vest on not enough to stop the five,

00:21:31.700 five, six round that was shot out of this rifle. So it's it's a it's a very tough situation when

00:21:37.380 someone who is a dedicated shooter like this, who has access to that firearm and doesn't care about

00:21:42.900 living. Right. I mean, that's the other part of this. So that's very tough to to neutralize this

00:21:48.500 threat in advance of any casualties. The only other thing is this could have been. Unfortunately,

00:21:52.340 I mean, you always hate saying this. This could have been much worse. You know, this guy, fortunately,

00:21:57.780 didn't keep going on this rampage because it's not like they were able to get ESU, which is the New York

00:22:02.740 version of SWAT there to stop him in time before he could do any of this. So in a sense, because he's so

00:22:09.460 crazy, he killed himself. And that, I think, probably spared a number of lives. I also know

00:22:13.620 there's the photos of people barricading their offices. I mean, think about the trauma of that,

00:22:18.820 too. You know, there's an active shooter in your on your office floor and you're just trying to take

00:22:23.220 the sofa and the chair and wedge it against the door. I know that those were reportedly Blackstone

00:22:29.700 employees. And those guys must have been in a full panic, you know, hearing gunshots and or maybe

00:22:35.460 having gotten a call to tell them that there was an active shooter in the building. And what can

00:22:39.780 you do? You know, it's like. Well, what they did is the right move, by the way. I mean, I just. Oh,

00:22:43.860 totally. I imagine that this is going to lead to even more security provisions in in some New York

00:22:50.260 City buildings, especially those that have high target profiles like a Blackstone, like an NFL.

00:22:55.700 I mean, I actually did work right across the street from this for three years when I was at Jones Day.

00:23:00.260 I was at 53rd and Lex for three years of my life. It's a relatively quiet area of New York. I mean,

00:23:06.480 it's Midtown, but it's not like the hop in Times Square, which is just a few blocks to the west.

00:23:12.040 And it's clear that this was targeted. I mean, we don't know for sure that he was going to the NFL,

00:23:16.560 but if you just wanted to unleash carnage, you'd go to Times Square, which is just a few blocks

00:23:20.260 west. As I said, you wouldn't go into this particular building. This guy seemed to have a mission.

00:23:25.000 It's not like he listed the states he had driven through. He appears to have gotten into New York

00:23:30.040 City, driven right to this building, just left his car and walked right in. The only way for a cop

00:23:36.840 like this one to protect a building like that would have been for him to be on guard at the door.

00:23:42.860 And you and I both know, Buck, these guys are there generally as a deterrent and to like intervene

00:23:48.060 once something has happened. They're not really like a military guy standing at the door to prevent

00:23:53.080 armed intruders like this guy. I mean, I'm just a civilian who goes to the range regularly,

00:23:59.400 Megan, and I shoot a lot more than 95% of people in the NYPD. And I was in the NYPD and went

00:24:04.580 shooting with them, just to be clear. Like, I know it's a budgetary thing. They don't get,

00:24:09.000 they're not, I mentioned ESU, that's emergency services unit. That's think SWAT. It's the same

00:24:14.340 thing essentially, but they're called ESU and the NYPD. Those guys shoot a lot. Those guys are

00:24:18.860 tactical. They can handle a threat like this. They're trained to handle a threat like this.

00:24:23.520 It's a beat cop essentially on his own when somebody's ambushing him and got a long gun.

00:24:29.560 I mean, you know, it's, this is just, you know, they're, they're just human beings trying to do

00:24:32.400 a job on their end. I mean, you know, they're not Superman. They're not able to necessarily

00:24:36.420 engage and, and neutralize a threat of that, of that magnitude. And, you know, this is now going to

00:24:43.400 have, I think there'll be more discussion about what about having armed security personnel in more

00:24:47.260 lobbies. Well, there was an, there was an NYPD cop on duty here. I mean, you had a guy show up with,

00:24:53.020 with a semi-automatic rifle who wanted to kill a lot of people. And that's, that's a major,

00:24:57.600 that's a major threat to tackle for any, for anybody, no matter what your level of training is.

00:25:03.980 And, and so, yeah, on the NYPD side, I just think that this is one of those times where it was a,

00:25:11.060 a terrible scenario that there aren't going to be that many lessons learned in terms of response,

00:25:18.160 in terms of protective procedures, essentially. I am kind of surprised. I don't, I don't know what

00:25:22.260 the layout was on the, on the floors, but in most buildings in New York now, you go up to the

00:25:27.040 individual floor and now you have to get through another layer of security where there will be

00:25:31.580 glass. And in some cases, bulletproof glass, and you don't get to even see a receptionist unless you

00:25:38.200 can get yourself through the glass. I can't imagine they would not have that at a place like

00:25:43.320 Blackstone. He didn't go to that floor. He went to the floor of the management company. That's what

00:25:47.880 the cops said, where I managed, imagine the security probably would have been lesser. So yeah,

00:25:53.300 it's all about layers. There's room for improvement, but we can't, we've chosen not to live like this in

00:25:57.100 general in America. Yeah. Well, that's, that's, I think the critical point, Megan, is that we can't

00:26:00.860 think that we're all going to be going to work in bunkers every day. You know, look, I would say this

00:26:05.940 as, as, as an, as a former New Yorker for almost 40 years, and now a Floridian and a Floridian who

00:26:11.740 often conceal carries, you know, that's another good, good. You know, I, I would, I would be, uh,

00:26:17.700 I'd feel better about these situations, or I think we, we could think that there's a better chance that

00:26:22.120 this could be thwarted. If you had people with training who choose to carry, who are law abiding

00:26:26.720 gun owners, you know, gun owners are, uh, concealed carry gun owners specifically are, are incredibly law

00:26:31.720 abiding by the numbers. Um, and that may be another, uh, another thing to consider in a

00:26:37.360 place, unfortunately, that's not New York because New York's a gun-free zone. New York's a gun-free

00:26:42.100 zone. The good guys don't have guns in New York. Well, this is what I was going to say. I mean,

00:26:45.260 there are signs up. I mean, I've actually taken photos of this. It's so preposterous that, that

00:26:48.960 Times Square is a gun-free zone, which is, you can't carry a gun anywhere in New York, really. I mean,

00:26:54.840 I, and people will say, oh, but there are very, very few people can get, uh, even getting a premise

00:26:59.560 permit's pretty hard, but getting a concealed carry permit is almost impossible. You have to prove

00:27:03.600 need, and there's all these different steps, and it takes like a year, and the whole thing is, is a

00:27:07.460 mess. Um, but I, I'm reminded of this, uh, of the old, uh, the quote, the kind of very harrowing, uh,

00:27:15.040 ominous quote from the IRA. Uh, I think after they tried to get Thatcher one time, they just said,

00:27:20.100 you know, you have to be lucky all the time. We only have to be lucky once. And when you're dealing

00:27:24.280 with something like this, you know, you, you really want to establish, you'd like to establish

00:27:28.520 perfect security, perfect deterrence. It's just not possible. There are always going to be

00:27:32.220 individuals. I mean, you mentioned the different layers of security, and those are important.

00:27:37.660 They're particularly important for, as you and I know, Megan, like in the media business,

00:27:41.920 maniacs who want to get onto your floor of your, you know, and maybe they, you know, they think that

00:27:46.460 they're, uh, you know, they have some, like. No, I showed up at Fox News one time ready to kill me

00:27:51.920 with a knife. I mean, it was like, if we didn't have security there, it would have been very dangerous

00:27:57.200 situation. That's just one of many incidents. I'm sure. I mean, but that, that, so that shows

00:28:02.580 you the security procedures are generally working. There's no security procedures in these office

00:28:06.400 buildings that are going to be perfect. And in this context, even if you had say the, you know,

00:28:11.160 the elevator go to a floor where there was a secondary barrier to entry, you know, we have

00:28:16.580 this now it is standard and most standard in my office in New York where you have to badge in.

00:28:21.020 Okay. Well, this guy, if he gets in the elevator bank, he can take somebody, he has a gun and

00:28:25.240 you can take somebody and say, all right, you're going to open this for me now. Right. I mean,

00:28:27.620 it's not, there's, there's ways that you can get around this, right. It's not foolproof. There's

00:28:31.300 always layers of, or, or, I mean, I don't know if the glass or the doors are going to be ballistic,

00:28:34.960 but if you shoot a glass door with enough five, five, six rounds, guess what? It's going to,

00:28:38.160 it's going to break apart. So, uh, you know, even if it's supposedly bulletproof, so isn't it more

00:28:43.760 about, isn't it, you tell me, cause when, when, you know, there was a very dark period of my life

00:28:47.320 where a different guy was stalking me. And, um, well, the one lesson I learned more than any other from all

00:28:53.140 the security we had in our lives back then was it's all about putting layers between you and the

00:28:57.000 bad guy. It's just to slow the person down. So it's not that you're, you're assuming they're

00:29:00.520 going to be foolproof. It's just assuming the more layers, the more I can slow them down. So if you

00:29:05.340 had cops, you had, if you had civilians in the lobby who actually were carrying, maybe one would

00:29:09.760 have gotten a shot off against the guy. If you had, you know, that sort of security on the floors,

00:29:13.920 maybe there could have been more advanced warning. And again, we are lucky. It wasn't worse than it

00:29:18.200 was. I hate to say it with people dead, but that, but I don't know in America, we,

00:29:22.460 we generally just don't live like that. We generally live as it's a free country and we

00:29:27.820 know there's going to be some nutcases. And sadly we've gotten to assume because of the ACLU

00:29:32.300 that they will be roaming around our loved ones because their civil liberties are what is most

00:29:38.460 important. Well, that's what I think we're doing is we're sitting here and we're going through the

00:29:42.260 layers of security. And what you said is absolutely correct, which is that at every, and this was

00:29:46.620 true. So, so for people to understand NYPD, uh, and it may have switched a little bit,

00:29:53.020 but when I was there, the breakdown was there was intelligence division, which was doing

00:29:57.100 essentially, uh, Intel gathering, often using undercovers and sources of active plots against

00:30:03.240 the city of New York. And then there was something else called CTD, which was counterterrorism division,

00:30:07.260 the counterterrorism division. And I know it's confusing because I think their missions cross

00:30:11.860 over, but CTD, which is where now commissioner Tish worked, uh, when I was there, they do things

00:30:16.740 like how secure is the building? What's the blast radius of somebody parks a car bomb in front of

00:30:23.160 this, you know, federal building or that office building or whatever. They looked at all these layers,

00:30:27.820 did assessments, did secure. So that, that was the mission because they recognized New York City

00:30:31.900 is such a target. And that's why you have those huge planters out in front of places like the JCC.

00:30:37.940 So someone can't ram the building with a car bomb or, or, or somebody can't do what we've seen where

00:30:42.940 these, these vehicle attacks, which unfortunately in the past have been, you know, horrifically high

00:30:46.600 body counts where somebody will just get into a, you know, a vehicle and start mowing people down.

00:30:50.840 They'll put barriers in the way. Again, the barriers don't mean that some maniac can't run over one or

00:30:55.140 two people. The barriers mean some maniac hopefully can't run over 50 or a hundred, right? So this is,

00:30:59.940 it's all about mitigation and it's about layers. And that is how the professionals do these

00:31:04.840 security assessments in these buildings. There's different groups. Uh, you know,

00:31:08.240 some of them are led by former NYPD commissioners and that is their job where they go in and they

00:31:13.040 look at security. I'm just looking at what happened here in this instance and saying,

00:31:17.580 there's not a, uh, I'm not aware of at least from the reporting so far, a gaping security

00:31:23.880 vulnerability or a lack of law enforcement response, right? Or, or a too slow.

00:31:29.700 No, no, I get it. I get it. I mean, I will say it's just jarring. It's jarring to see the guy on

00:31:34.940 the, on the walk-in shot with the long gun down at his right side, walking across the plaza to enter

00:31:40.620 the building. And if you zoom out, you can see civilians just walking about. They, they clearly

00:31:45.820 don't see that he has a gun on the side of his body because otherwise there would have been some

00:31:50.160 sort of a panic. They would have screamed gun, you know, something would have gotten, you can see,

00:31:53.580 look at these people, at least these two guys in the back and the top of the shot. They can't see. Um,

00:31:58.220 I don't know whether on this guy's right side or whether it's one of those situations, Buck,

00:32:03.660 where like, you don't believe you're seeing what you think you're seeing. You know, I've,

00:32:08.340 I've been in those situations before where you're like, there's no way that's, and you don't want

00:32:11.840 to be like that hysterical person, you know, like I reported some guy had a long gun when really it

00:32:17.140 was just like, I don't know, an umbrella, you know, like New Yorkers, our instinct is much more to

00:32:22.820 be like, everything's fine. Yeah. There must be something else. It's a

00:32:28.140 toy. It's a paintball gun. It's a gag. It's a joke. I mean, this is where your brain goes,

00:32:32.300 unless you're somebody who is trained and looking for these kinds of things. And like I said, I mean,

00:32:37.400 even, even one NYPD officer, this is, this is why I think, you know, in some cases you've had in

00:32:44.000 these, in the school shooting situations, for example, it's clear that the school shooter had,

00:32:48.880 first of all, this was clear with the, with a terrible Tennessee, uh, the Nashville school shooting

00:32:53.460 that the shooter was looking for a place where there was nobody who was going to have a gun,

00:32:56.860 right? We know that schools are generally gun-free zones, which is also preposterous because the bad

00:33:01.020 guys don't care about those laws, but there are armed security at some schools. That shooter looked

00:33:04.960 for a school where there was no armed security. So they'd have total freedom of movement, no chance

00:33:09.280 that anybody would stop them. You know, in this instance, you have an NYPD guy in the lobby and,

00:33:15.800 you know, that, that wasn't, uh, that wasn't sufficient to, to stop this threat. And, you know, no,

00:33:20.860 no, no, obviously fault of that officers who died a hero. And, and, you know, he, he was there

00:33:25.980 really, as, as you pointed out, it's more of a deterrent and it's also more to deal with

00:33:29.960 some maniac who wants to run upstairs and, and, and, you know, cause problems, maybe has a knife,

00:33:34.960 but when somebody shows up and they're a committed shooter and they have a semi-automatic rifle

00:33:40.460 and they, this guy obviously knew, knew how to, knew how to, you know, work, work the gun and

00:33:45.740 understood enough of it to do some real damage. That's going to be a very challenging thing for any,

00:33:51.300 any security assessment to, to be able to handle. So I know it's unsatisfying to anybody who wants

00:33:57.160 to hear this won't happen again, uh, that there's not really a lot that could have been done

00:34:01.540 differently here in the moment to stop this, but short of New York city changing its laws. So you

00:34:06.760 have people that can conceal carry the general population, you know, the, the good guys and

00:34:11.020 gals with a gun, um, short of putting really, I mean, it's just not possible. You're not going to

00:34:16.620 have. Well, look, you could, you could, you could, if I'm running Apollo, they have more money than

00:34:22.740 God or Blackstone more money than God. I'm saying we are going to put an armed guard at the entrance

00:34:28.600 to the building to watch out for something like this. In addition to another armed guard inside who

00:34:34.160 watches like the people once they're already in the building, but the nine times out of 10, somebody

00:34:37.920 who's a shooter like this doesn't walk in into a building like this with it totally exposed. I mean,

00:34:43.420 they just, I think anticipate something will happen to them that it would be more concealed.

00:34:47.440 And look, the worst school shooting in American history was at Virginia tech. And that guy did

00:34:51.540 not use an AR 15. He used semi-automatic handguns. Yeah. So, I mean, it's like we can do all we want

00:34:57.680 to protect. Oh, I'm not, I'm not, I'm just, I do want to say this. No, I know you're not saying

00:35:01.360 that. I just, I do want to point out that to the point we're making, which is it's a free country.

00:35:06.220 And sadly, this kind of thing happens. His home state adopted home state, Nevada had another shooting

00:35:12.900 not involving him, Reno. Six people were shot. Three are dead. It was outside of a casino.

00:35:19.380 And it happened yesterday. Three people killed, several others injured in a shooting outside a

00:35:23.800 casino in Reno, Reno on Monday morning. It happened around 725 AM in the valet area outside of the

00:35:30.020 Grand Sierra resort and casino. The suspect, an adult man was found within minutes. He's been taken to a

00:35:35.340 hospital following an officer involved shooting. The shooter walked into the parking lot in the valet area

00:35:39.940 of the hotel and casino, pulled out a handgun, which initially malfunctioned. But after he made

00:35:44.240 it operable, he began firing at victims. He had multiple magazines. He ran through the parking lot,

00:35:48.840 said police, where he exchanged gunfire with a security guard. Almost nobody's reporting on this

00:35:53.840 because it didn't happen in New York city, which is the media hub. They don't care when it happens

00:35:57.860 with a Nevada man who actually lives in Nevada. You see, that doesn't matter to the Acela media.

00:36:02.700 What matters is themselves and their safety. That's why they're super interested in this guy.

00:36:08.740 But, you know, there's, what are you going to do? Like, that's okay. That's you're in a parking lot

00:36:14.500 leaving a casino where you had a good time with your friends and family. And this guy pulls out a gun,

00:36:20.420 not for nothing, but all those security guards I work with over the years have told me the best

00:36:24.240 thing, the number one thing, this applies to everybody that you can do to protect yourself.

00:36:28.140 Get a dog, get a dog. They all say that, like there's no better deterrent against somebody

00:36:36.040 coming into your home and potentially your workplace than, you know, a mean looking guard

00:36:40.760 dog. Now I don't have a mean looking guard. I have a big galoot named Stredwick who is more likely to

00:36:45.500 lick your face and eat your snack. But a dog in general is a deterrent against someone looking to

00:36:51.860 enter your home and do harm to you. And they don't know that it's a big galoot. In most cases,

00:36:56.020 they hear barking and they think, oh, the barking is, the barking is what matters. You're not looking

00:37:00.080 for, you know, you don't, you don't have a Malinois with titanium inserts in your house, but you don't

00:37:03.920 need one. I mean, you can just have a dog that lets everybody know that, hey, there's a bad guy

00:37:08.280 around here because people, the element of, yeah, exactly. I mean, look, element of surprise for bad

00:37:13.560 guys is, is critical. And if they're, if all of a sudden people know they're at the door, or in this

00:37:19.360 case, if all of a sudden people know that a maniac with a gun is entering a lobby in advance,

00:37:23.060 then people can take evasive action or even counter the threat much more, much more easily.

00:37:28.120 So it's. All right, but let's spend a minute on Zoran Mamdani, who's likely to be the next mayor

00:37:34.040 of New York and how this affects. I'm interested in the politics of it. I am, but I'm, I'm really more

00:37:40.380 interested in just the utter failure that's coming our way in Manhattan, because this is a defund the

00:37:44.860 police guy and he has the nerve. He has the nerve yesterday to start tweeting. I honestly, I think it

00:37:50.040 would have been better if he didn't, he's trying to look like he cares about the cops. First, he

00:37:53.940 tweeted, oh, I'm so sorry. He's in critical condition because there were reports early on

00:37:57.020 that the cop was. And then, uh, then when he learned that he had died, he sent out, you know,

00:38:02.040 the appropriate, I'm very sorry. He was a hero kind of tweet. This, this guy, Zoran Mamdani,

00:38:07.600 if he's elected, will get cops and other New York civilians killed with his policies. He wants to defund

00:38:14.260 when challenged by somebody who said, oh, when we say defund, we don't really mean defund. We mean

00:38:18.720 like re reallocate. And he said, no, we mean defund. The police are racist, anti queer and

00:38:26.300 endanger Americans. And so now he tried to soften it when he was running for the actual mayoral

00:38:32.020 nomination because he was running against people who were not for defunding the cops. But this guy

00:38:36.820 is still saying he wants domestic violence victims to be treated with social workers showing up and not

00:38:42.520 cops and so on. I'm, I'm incensed by it. I do not believe him that he, his heart is totally in the

00:38:48.680 right place when it comes to our New York city cops. I believed him the first time that he thinks

00:38:51.980 they're racist and ought to be defunded. So what's coming our way in New York. If this guy wins as he's

00:38:58.140 overwhelmingly likely to do. What's coming your way is people like my family who still live in

00:39:04.600 Manhattan, uh, at least half of my family, my immediate family does are thinking about moving,

00:39:08.960 uh, which even didn't happen during COVID. Uh, or at least, I mean, I moved because of COVID,

00:39:14.100 but my mom, dad, and my sister decided that they were going to stick it out in New York city,

00:39:18.240 but they're not sure they can stick out a mom, Donnie administration. Um, this is,

00:39:23.320 it's troubling because when you look at the numbers, people, and this is a frustration for me,

00:39:27.480 Megan, uh, people will say, well, New York is getting what it deserves or New York is getting what,

00:39:32.000 what it, you know, what it wants. Uh, and it's actually a very small percentage of the 8.5 million

00:39:38.300 residents of New York who want this guy to be mayor, to be clear. It's depending on,

00:39:42.340 and I know we haven't had the general election and maybe he won't win, but even just based on

00:39:46.040 what just happened in this primary, you know, you're going to, you're going to end up having

00:39:49.420 like 20% or 15% of New Yorkers actually end up voting for this guy. Maybe it's going to be a very

00:39:55.140 small. Now you can blame people who don't get off their butts and get up and vote, you know,

00:40:01.400 in the sense that they're there, they should have their voices heard here and not vote for this guy.

00:40:05.520 Right. But the, the disaster that is the Mamdani administration, uh, I think is unfortunately

00:40:12.180 going to result in not only a lot of really good people fleeing the city, but a lot of people who,

00:40:16.660 uh, who stay behind suffering. And you pointed out what would happen on the, on the crime front.

00:40:21.380 And what, one of the things that I find most frustrating about his, uh, philosophy,

00:40:25.060 if you can call it that, or his, his communism is he is, he is appealing to people mostly on the

00:40:31.900 New York is really expensive line, right? That's the, the, the cop stuff. Yeah. He's anti-cop and

00:40:37.520 there's a, there's a, maybe a 10 to 15% of the New York city electorate that are far left Democrats

00:40:43.660 that like that anti-cop stuff. Um, but really he's appealing to people on the New York is so

00:40:49.060 expensive. You can't afford the rent. I'm going to make it cheaper for you. And what's so maddening

00:40:54.760 about this is that the approach that someone like a Mamdani takes is only going to make it worse.

00:41:01.640 And every time this has been shown anywhere, I mean, you, you, you pick the case, you show me the

00:41:08.240 case study when somebody comes in and decides to play God in the market, right? They decide what

00:41:15.660 supply and demand really is. They decide what the price should be price controls. Price controls is

00:41:21.240 why Venezuela went from one of the richest countries in the Western hemisphere to a impoverished hell

00:41:27.380 hole with a level four advisory from the state department telling Americans not to go. That

00:41:33.000 only took about 20 years for that to happen, but price controls were a big part of that. The idea

00:41:37.620 that Mamdani is going to come in and have city, like have all this housing built for people. First of

00:41:43.280 all, is it going to be housing? Anybody's going to want to live in what makes him think he knows how

00:41:46.420 to get this done. He has no managerial experience whatsoever. And if you're going to set artificial

00:41:52.440 rates for what people would pay for this housing, or just add it to the city's already massive budget

00:41:58.780 for, for what is essentially, you know, welfare housing, the projects, you're going to put a blow

00:42:06.260 a giant hole through the city budget. You're going to have to raise taxes on people and cause even more

00:42:09.980 people to leave. And it creates this vortex of destruction and how people can't see that

00:42:16.540 is, is enraging. Honestly, at this point, how any New Yorker, you know, there's some people who,

00:42:22.680 if they tell me they're going to vote for the Meg and I say, all right, I disagree, but like, I get

00:42:26.920 it. You know, you're like so into being, I don't know, pro-choice or you're, you're so opposed to

00:42:31.800 the Republican foreign policy. You know, I disagree with you, but I don't think you're insane. Voting for

00:42:35.820 Mamdani is insane. It's going to make it worse for everybody. It actually would make it worse

00:42:39.980 for all the residents of New York city. There will be no benefit. I really hope people reconsider

00:42:43.480 now that this has happened. I really hope, you know, they, they take this as the reminder they

00:42:48.180 needed that safety and security in New York are an absolute essential or New York doesn't exist in

00:42:54.760 the way that we knew it. It tourism dies. It's a critical industry of New York. Um, the New Yorker

00:43:00.660 that 8 million New Yorkers live there full time, but 20 million New Yorkers, about 22 come in

00:43:05.160 and fill the city on a work day. And that needs to be able to go on without people fear,

00:43:09.980 fearing for their lives. And you take away the cops, you defund the cops in any meaningful way.

00:43:14.300 And it, it changes, it changes dramatically. All right. I want to move on to Cincinnati in the time

00:43:19.420 we have left. So Cincinnati had this terrible fight, which we showed yesterday where we, we came in

00:43:25.180 and pointing out, we didn't know where on the dispute this was, but what we saw was a group of

00:43:29.420 black people beating the hell out of a white man, a white woman, and then a second white man in three

00:43:36.700 different though. It seems if not related, at least closely located spots in this first video,

00:43:43.020 the white man strikes first, he reaches across and appears to smack a black man. And then this mob of

00:43:49.600 black people beats the living daylights out of the white man over and over and over. And it's obviously

00:43:54.580 disproportionate and it's awful. And it's women and men who are kicking him and stomping on his head.

00:43:59.800 And then a white woman tries to save him. Uh, at least that's what the report was, but she appears

00:44:05.740 to be one of the only ones trying to intervene. And she gets the shit kicked out of her by men and

00:44:10.620 women to the point where the vice president of the United States commented on what kind of a man would

00:44:15.360 punch a woman in the face like this. And then there's another white man who gets attacked. Okay.

00:44:20.740 So that's what happened in Cincinnati yesterday. There were no cops. Now the Cincinnati police chief,

00:44:26.140 whose name is Teresa Fiji is how you pronounce her last name. She's the first woman to lead the

00:44:32.380 department. She took over in January, 2023. She would like us all to know that we've gotten it all

00:44:38.280 wrong, that we journalists and social media people are the ones really responsible for making this into

00:44:44.120 a thing. And then when asked by a journalist who was there, how exactly have we misrepresented anything

00:44:49.040 that happened? We're totally open-minded to, you know, what tell us, was there a mob beating up

00:44:53.460 the first mob first? Like tell what happened that we didn't, no answers, absolutely no additional

00:44:59.520 information. It appears this woman is just making it up, trying to shame journalists out of covering

00:45:04.380 this story. She's a woke warrior. She's already been sued by four white cops in her department

00:45:10.220 for discriminating against white men. The only one they say she will promote are either women or

00:45:16.480 minorities. And this is her message for the rest of us in the wake of her city's embarrassment. Watch

00:45:24.280 social media and journalism and the role it plays in this incident. And yes, guys, that's you.

00:45:32.580 That is you. At times, social media and mainstream media and their commentaries are misrepresentation

00:45:42.740 of the circumstances surrounding any given event. Because what happens, that social media post

00:45:51.380 and your coverage of it distorts the content of what actually happened. And it makes our job more

00:46:00.980 difficult. What exactly was distorted? I think by the irresponsibility with social media is it just

00:46:09.340 shows one side of the equation quite frequently without context, without factual context. And then

00:46:18.780 people run with that. And then it grows legs and it becomes something bigger that we then have to try

00:46:26.460 to manage as part of the investigation. What context would make a mob of people in the dozens

00:46:35.700 kicking the living shit out of three people in separate incidents? Again, we don't know whether

00:46:42.560 they were related or not. Better or OK. She she failed to tell us.

00:46:48.760 I hadn't seen that clip until you just played it now. And and I just it's good to know that the

00:46:54.480 police commissioner or the police chief of Cincinnati is an absolute moron. That's helpful going forward to

00:46:59.660 understand how this is going to be covered and talked about. That was shocking. I can't believe

00:47:05.540 I can't believe that that person's in charge of anything. Never mind men and women who are carrying

00:47:10.700 firearms and trying to keep people safe. That's really appalling. But this is unfortunately the

00:47:15.020 reality of a lot of city bureaucracies they've elevated. You know, we're allowed to talk about

00:47:20.400 this now. And we some of us have been talking about it for a long time. Megan, you have I have many

00:47:24.180 others. But I mean, broadly in the culture, a lot of people were elevated under DEI principles,

00:47:30.000 especially in large cities in the bureaucracy, whether it's the police commissioner, the mayor,

00:47:34.840 et cetera, for. Yeah, yeah. For for the characteristics of, you know, skin color and gender. And that results

00:47:44.160 in what we just saw there, which is people who are completely unqualified. So I don't even know

00:47:50.680 what she thinks she's saying other than clearly she's a lib. And she thinks that there's some

00:47:55.580 story that she doesn't want coming out of this. But there's no context. That's the critical point.

00:48:00.820 And I did see a lot of comments online. You probably saw this, too. Well, what did they what

00:48:04.720 the guy say before? This is also something we might have to address a little bit more as a society.

00:48:09.860 I don't care what he said before. I don't care. There's not some word. There's not some word,

00:48:14.220 any word that allows people to say we're going to engage in mom,

00:48:16.940 mob violence and maybe stomp you to death on the street. There's no word doesn't exist. Sorry.

00:48:22.820 So, you know, that's another part of the conversation that I think people need to own

00:48:26.220 up to and have more frequently now, which is you can't just attack somebody because you don't like

00:48:30.280 what they say. If, in fact, that's what happened, we don't even know. Yeah. And there she is in front

00:48:36.080 of the very journalist she say or says are so evil. And they're asking, what did we miss? Please tell us.

00:48:41.780 And you heard her inane, empty answer. She seems to just be angry that they're showing the video,

00:48:47.700 which doesn't reflect well in her city or, for that matter, the cops who were not called until

00:48:52.380 well into it because apparently the bywatcher, the bystanders were enjoying watching the fight

00:48:56.660 more than they cared about the lives being risked. Buck Sexton, always a pleasure, my friend.

00:49:01.800 Thanks for being here with your expertise. Coming up next, we're going to dig into the latest

00:49:05.040 in the Russiagate story with an independent journalist who's been covering it extensively

00:49:09.660 for years. You've heard his name mentioned repeatedly by Matt Taibbi. Well, we wanted

00:49:13.980 to meet him and he's here next. If you are stressed about back taxes, maybe you missed

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00:50:14.480 tnusa.com slash Megan to talk to a real expert at Tax Network USA. Take the pressure off. Let

00:50:21.920 Tax Network USA handle your tax issues. Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show. Now, if there's one

00:50:30.540 thing the left does not want to talk about these days, it is the Russiagate hoax that

00:50:36.060 was perpetrated against Donald Trump. People like the Pod Save America bros, even National

00:50:41.120 Review, our friends over there, dismissed the latest revelations by director of national

00:50:46.060 intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, as nothing new. That there's no scandal that warrants an investigation

00:50:51.680 and even go so far as to say this is all just a distraction from either the Epstein scandal

00:50:57.320 or something else. But there's absolutely no there there. Well, there is there there. There

00:51:01.920 is there there. But our next guest is a glaring exception to the rule of these leftist naysayers.

00:51:10.160 Aaron Maté is an independent journalist who has been covering the story from the beginning. He's

00:51:14.200 been sharply critical of the actions the Obama administration took to investigate claims of

00:51:18.980 Russian election interference. You may remember his name from last week when Matt Taibbi mentioned

00:51:23.660 he was one of the reporters who cast significant doubt on that Senate Intel Committee report that

00:51:30.980 everyone on the left, including President Obama, has cited to defend their actions. You remember

00:51:36.760 they're saying like in response to Tulsi, hey, you know, the Russians did interfere. We didn't

00:51:42.820 misstate anything. And you need only look at Marco Rubio's Senate Intel Committee report to know that

00:51:49.180 we're telling the truth. Why would he say Russia interfered to help Trump if it weren't true?

00:51:53.760 Well, Maté has a different view. He previously worked for left wing organizations, by the way,

00:51:58.820 like Democracy Now!, Vice News. But now he's an independent journalist where he covers the Trump

00:52:03.700 Russia story for real clear investigations. And he's been on Tucker Carlson's show over on when he

00:52:09.600 was still on Fox a bunch of times. Aaron, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

00:52:13.900 Okay. So this is really interesting to me. And there aren't more than a handful of journalists

00:52:19.320 who have been neck deep in Russiagate from the start. And you're one of them. I'm not one of them

00:52:25.300 because I freely confess that when this was all unfolding, I had just started at NBC and I was

00:52:32.020 trying to do not non-political stuff. And it was a delight not to be immersed in all the Russiagate

00:52:37.800 nonsense back then, which seemed like bullshit, but you really had to get neck deep in order to know

00:52:42.900 one way or another, you know, and there were a few who did it and you're one of them.

00:52:46.200 So now that it all comes out that it was even more of a hoax than we knew, people like you are

00:52:52.140 invaluable who have been on it from the beginning. So let's go through it because there's new,

00:52:56.680 like we've been having Taibion. We had him on twice last week to walk us through the initial

00:53:01.040 tranches of information, what Tulsi released that one Friday night, what we then gleaned from that

00:53:06.320 House intelligence report of 2020 that was stuck in a vault at CIA until it was just

00:53:12.420 declassified. And we got a look at it last week. And we've learned that the intelligence

00:53:18.280 community was preparing a report for Barack Obama presidential daily brief that was going

00:53:22.800 to really downplay Russia's interference. And then Obama said, hold on, hold on, hold on.

00:53:28.960 They had a big meeting. And the next thing you know, he received a report saying, oh, Russia did

00:53:33.980 interfere. It was bad. It was bad, sir. And then we got the January of 17 intelligence community

00:53:39.380 assessment that said they interfered and they did it to help Trump. And now we've learned that that

00:53:46.260 second, we learned from Matt Taibbi last week, who analyzed the latest releases for us, that that did

00:53:52.400 it to help Trump thing was just completely made up. They knew it was made up. Brennan required it based

00:53:58.780 on a bunch of bullshit. The Steele dossier, yes, but also three other really flimsy, even more pathetic

00:54:05.560 pieces of so-called analysis or data that were just completely made up. And he knew it. Some of them

00:54:11.780 preceded like 2014 analysis before Trump was even running. So that, and did it to Trump helped win

00:54:18.140 thing was completely not made up and nonsense. And now you've got a piece out talking about how

00:54:24.840 that's not all that was nonsense. The Russia interfered in the election piece also turns out to be

00:54:33.980 almost entirely bullshit, including the piece we all accepted, which was that they hacked

00:54:41.740 those DNC emails. They were responsible for, for hacking the DNC emails. And that later got posted

00:54:48.600 on WikiLeaks. So do I accurately state like the overview as to where we are now?

00:54:54.200 Yes. Uh, and the intelligence that has just been declassified by Tulsi Gabbard gives us some really

00:54:59.980 important new information on the ladder piece that you mentioned. The core allegation at the heart

00:55:04.760 of Russiagate, even before collusion became a public thing, it was that Russia hacked the DNC

00:55:09.400 and gave the emails to WikiLeaks. That basically broke out in June, 2016, followed by the release

00:55:15.120 of the WikiLeaks emails in July, 2016. And at that point, the Clinton campaign through its contractor

00:55:20.040 CrowdStrike was the first entity to say that the Russians did it. And a lot of people in the media just ran

00:55:25.700 with it because that's what they were saying. And for some reason, if you accuse a foreign actor of

00:55:30.520 something, uh, then we just have to take it on faith. That's sort of an established playbook going

00:55:35.000 back to, you know, the Iraq war and many other similar propaganda campaigns. And then the intelligence

00:55:40.200 community assessment that you talked about that was released in January, that formally endorsed that

00:55:44.400 said with high confidence, uh, Russia hacked the DNC, gave the emails to WikiLeaks. And along with

00:55:49.680 collusion, that Russian email hacking allegation was the core plank of Russiagate. Now we all know by

00:55:55.360 now that collusion was a complete scam, uh, laundered through the Clinton campaign through Christopher

00:55:59.740 Stilt. Nobody, even, uh, in corporate media that was all about it, even defends that anymore. Even

00:56:04.720 Adam Schiff, I think has stopped defending the collusion allegation, even though he was claiming

00:56:09.180 for years, he had seen secret evidence of it. But as you said, they have clung to the Russian email

00:56:14.260 hacking allegation. And what we, and what we get now from Tulsi Gabbard's declassification is that in

00:56:19.300 September of 2016, less than two months before the election, the FBI and the NSA, which are the

00:56:25.340 two premier intelligence agencies that would be able to investigate this hack and leak allegation,

00:56:30.280 the FBI taking the lead in investigating the hacking of the DNC. And the NSA is, we all know,

00:56:36.080 like the premier surveillance agency in the world, they can see anything that comes in and out, uh,

00:56:41.360 over cyber warfare. So they'd be in the best position to assess whether or not Russia hacked

00:56:46.700 the DNC and gave the emails to WikiLeaks. And what they said, and we're only learning this now,

00:56:51.180 nearly nine years later, is that they had low confidence in the Russia hack and leak allegation

00:56:57.080 that was suppressed. Instead of the public hearing about that, the Obama administration put out a

00:57:02.380 report through Clapper, who was then heading the, uh, office of the director of national intelligence

00:57:07.840 and Jay Johnson, who was heading department of Homeland security on October 7th. And they said in the name

00:57:13.080 of the intelligence community, they have high confidence that Russia was behind the hacking of the

00:57:17.180 DNC suppressing what the FBI and the NSA had said. And that remains the same after the election. There

00:57:22.040 was another assessment circulated that we learned about through Tulsi Gabbard that said the picture

00:57:27.080 of the attribution of doubting the attribution of Russia had not changed at all. Uh, and the reason

00:57:32.240 was that the FBI and the NSA said, we didn't have the technical evidence for it. And that was the point

00:57:37.160 that people like myself had been making is like, yes, intelligence officials were telling us Russia

00:57:41.480 did it, but where's the evidence? We were never, uh, told it. And now we know the reason why is

00:57:46.140 because they had none. So that gets suppressed. And as you said, then Obama orders the production

00:57:49.900 of a new intelligence community assessment that gets released in January, 2017. And the low confidence

00:57:56.200 assessment of the FBI and the NSA gets buried. And, you know, someone might argue, okay, well,

00:58:00.580 fine. What if the U S got new intelligence after the FBI and NSA first made that low confidence

00:58:05.200 assessment? Well, now we know from the declassified HPSI report that you mentioned that just came out

00:58:09.780 that basically the house intelligence report from 2020 that was in the vault. Keep going.

00:58:14.080 Exactly. Uh, now we learned from them that basically no new intelligence was collected

00:58:19.000 after the election, that most of the intelligence that went into the ICA was collected before the,

00:58:23.960 uh, election, which means at the time that the FBI and the NSA made their low confidence assessment

00:58:29.000 that Russia hacked the DNC, uh, no new evidence was collected after that to change their minds.

00:58:34.580 And think about it. This makes sense. At the same time as the Clinton campaign was framing Trump

00:58:39.480 as a Russian asset. They were also hiring a firm crowdstrike, uh, which first accused Russia of

00:58:45.300 hacking the DNC. And when the FBI went to crowdstrike and said, can we investigate the DNC servers for

00:58:51.300 ourselves? Crowdstrike said no. And for some reason, the FBI agreed to that. This would be as if,

00:58:56.460 you know, I accused someone of robbing my house. And then when the police came, I said, yeah, I think

00:59:02.120 that person did it, but you can't investigate yourself. You have to rely on my own internal investigation,

00:59:06.520 but that's what happened. No, wait, let me, let me jump in because that that's raises an interesting

00:59:10.840 issue. Why would the FBI accept that? Why would the FBI say, okay, we accept your word, Hillary

00:59:17.120 Clinton, that crowdstrike is saying it was the Russians who hacked the DNC emails. And therefore

00:59:22.260 we accept that it was Russia who hacked the DNC emails. And, and it brings me to a report that's

00:59:28.060 just out or it's coming. It's coming, I guess. Uh, hold on. I want to make sure I have it right.

00:59:31.980 Like Fox news yesterday reported that before the FBI ever launched its probe into Russia and Russia

00:59:40.300 and collusion with Trump and all that before that us Intel agencies had credible foreign sources

00:59:47.500 saying that the FBI would help spread the Russia collusion hoax. That in other words,

00:59:55.660 there were going to see documents according to Fox news, I think this week from Tulsi that show

01:00:00.260 before the FBI started probing Trump and this alleged collusion nonsense, they had been told

01:00:07.020 by credible foreign sources that, I'm sorry, us Intel agencies had credible foreign sources that

01:00:14.640 indicated the FBI, one of our Intel services was going to help spread the Russian collusion hoax.

01:00:22.220 So in other words, is that Russia Russia's like, they know the FBI is going to help Hillary

01:00:28.900 spread nonsense about them and Donald Trump.

01:00:33.540 Well, we do know that John Brennan briefed Obama right before the Trump Russia investigation was

01:00:39.260 open on July 31st, that he had picked up intelligence that Russia was aware of a plot in which Hillary was

01:00:45.660 going to frame Trump as a Russian asset and tie that to alleged Russian interference.

01:00:50.840 And Brennan got that and briefed it to Obama. And now we learn actually what Brennan was concerned

01:00:56.680 about was not that Hillary was framing Trump as a Russian asset, but that Russia was aware of it.

01:01:00.820 That's what allies of Brennan have said. And that's why even when Brennan sent a referral to the FBI,

01:01:06.420 making sure that they're aware of this in early September, James Comey later said he couldn't

01:01:10.760 remember it didn't ring any bells. That was his testimony to Congress. You're not aware that the

01:01:16.300 CIA told you that a major presidential candidate was framing her rival as a Russian asset, which you

01:01:22.140 happen to be investigating on. And look, just based on what we know already, the FBI claims that the

01:01:27.820 Steele dossier had nothing to do with decision to open up crossfire hurricane. But yet we also know

01:01:32.240 the investigation by the FBI into Donald Trump and whether he colluded with Russia to win.

01:01:36.400 Correct. But we also know that weeks before the FBI opened up its investigation,

01:01:41.580 Victoria Nuland, who was then a senior State Department official and a very hawkish

01:01:46.980 bureaucrat when it comes to Russia and was really alarmed by Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail

01:01:52.740 where he was criticizing foreign interventions and even talking about getting along with Russia,

01:01:57.260 even saying we don't want to have World War Three over Ukraine. Victoria Nuland approves

01:02:02.000 the deployment of the of an FBI agent to go to Rome and meet with Christopher Steele and receive

01:02:07.600 his dossier. And this FBI agent received the dossier. This is early July 2016 and gives it to

01:02:13.220 his colleagues. And then three weeks later, the FBI opens up the Trump Russia investigation

01:02:17.040 immediately uses Steele's dossier as source material, including for surveillance warrants on

01:02:22.000 Carter Page. And they want us to believe that this had nothing to do that that the FBI receiving

01:02:27.160 the Steele dossier weeks earlier had nothing to do with opening up Crossfire Hurricane. And they

01:02:31.800 want us to believe the official pretext is this ridiculous official predicate of George Papadopoulos,

01:02:37.300 a low level Trump campaign volunteer receiving, quote, a suggestion of a suggestion of someone

01:02:42.940 specified Russian help. It just it doesn't make any sense. So if this Fox News is if this Fox News

01:02:49.160 report is correct, that there's new evidence that the FBI was in on this. It just it tracks exactly with

01:02:54.220 what we already know, because they did. Right. What else? It explains the behavior that that seems

01:02:58.960 somewhat mysterious right now. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And all by the way, on the issue of

01:03:03.540 CrowdStrike, what the public also wasn't told until a year after Mueller shut down was a CrowdStrike in

01:03:08.900 December 2017. Their president, Sean Henry, who, by the way, used to work with James Comey and Robert

01:03:13.920 Mueller at the FBI. He testified before Congress in December 2017 that CrowdStrike, which had first accused

01:03:20.660 Russia of hacking the DNC, actually had no evidence. That's a quote, no evidence that these alleged

01:03:26.160 Russian hackers actually took anything from the DNC. And that's a pretty big admission. You're accusing

01:03:31.920 Russia of hacking and leaking these emails, but you have no evidence that they actually took anything

01:03:36.560 from your servers. So how can you possibly make this allegation? Well, the public wasn't allowed to ask

01:03:41.440 this question because that was buried for almost three years and only got released a year after the

01:03:46.440 Mueller probe shutdown. So that's just another example of countervailing evidence that comes

01:03:50.780 out years after the fact that undermines this explosive allegation that at the time, if you

01:03:55.200 recall this, it seems so silly now, like hacking, leaking emails. It's, you know, people were comparing

01:04:00.060 this to Pearl Harbor and 9-11. Even if Russia did do that, you can't compare it to these seismic

01:04:05.060 events. And by the way, we do, I think, far worse things around the world to other countries.

01:04:08.380 Right. We do the same. Sure.

01:04:10.080 And by the way, Russia has done this in many elections. It wasn't just the 16 election in which

01:04:14.260 they tried to sow chaos or amplify, you know, bad news articles that would make us fight.

01:04:18.840 That was when I, before I went to interview Putin, that was one of the main things that I learned

01:04:22.060 was he, what he was really interested in doing is sowing chaos. Like they would amplify, for example,

01:04:26.960 in 2020, maybe black lives matter articles that would sort of get people fired up and riled up and

01:04:31.940 start like fighting internally. That's his real goal is to make us fight each other. But like they'd

01:04:37.640 been doing that for a long time. It was nothing new to help Trump in 2016.

01:04:41.120 What I think is documented is that a Russian troll farm put out some really dumb memes and ads on

01:04:48.040 social media that nobody saw and they were barely about the election. That's documented. That's

01:04:52.260 what Russia actually did. If you want to call that interference. Okay. I mean, some Russians did do

01:04:56.620 that. I don't think it impacted a single person in the U S certainly did not impact a single vote,

01:05:01.440 let alone swing the election. As we were told, I mean, this was, there were academic studies trying to

01:05:05.940 argue that Russian trolls swung the election. It's an insult to everybody's intelligence. And it was a

01:05:11.700 way to cover up for the democratic party's own failures in that elections. Uh, and their refusal

01:05:16.980 to, um, come to grips with that. So blaming Russia was a convenient foil, but the hysteria around this

01:05:23.520 was just, it was unbelievable. So I don't know if you remember this, but when Trump gave his joint

01:05:27.400 press conference with Putin in July, 2018, and you know, Trump next to Putin said that Putin had denied

01:05:32.480 interfering. And Trump said, you know, I have no reason to doubt him that the freak out was

01:05:38.040 unbelievable. Like the way this was described, this was like the worst thing a president has ever done.

01:05:42.220 John Brennan described Trump as quote, nothing short of treasonous when John Brennan must have known

01:05:48.780 that the FBI and the NSA actually shared Trump's conclusions. Certainly they had the low confidence

01:05:54.440 assessment that had been buried. And by the way, we also learned now from the house intelligence report

01:05:58.700 that they had, they were aware of Putin's view on the election and he, and people close to Putin

01:06:03.420 were saying that Putin didn't care because no matter who won in Putin's view, it wouldn't really

01:06:07.880 matter. Policy towards Russia wouldn't change. And of course, that's one of many, uh, pieces of

01:06:13.340 critical information that got suppressed in order to put out this narrative that Russia was back in

01:06:17.260 Trump. Exactly. So they were taking out actual human intelligence of somebody close to Putin who was

01:06:23.320 saying he doesn't care who, and they were putting in nonsense, like information from the Steele dossier,

01:06:28.700 and little sentence fragments that five different CIA analysts could not agree upon and stuff that

01:06:34.800 predated Trump's even arrival on the political scene from like 2014. And one other statement saying,

01:06:39.920 you know, Trump and Putin could work together as businessman or something like that. It was like

01:06:44.080 completely amorphous, empty stuff that they use to try to say he wants Trump to win. And that's,

01:06:51.200 that's how they got to it. So it seems very clear that they had an agenda within the intelligence

01:06:55.020 community to make sure this assessment came out as it did saying Russia interfered and they did it to

01:07:00.940 help Trump, which was to some extent, a reversal from where they had been going prior to the Obama

01:07:06.640 meeting. And this is where you get the Andy McCarthy's who I really like and admire and respect,

01:07:12.120 but I just really disagree with him on this of the world saying it's apples to oranges. Cause he keeps

01:07:17.160 focusing on, on the fact that that presidential daily brief, they were going to prepare for Obama

01:07:22.460 on December 8th was really just going to say that wasn't downplaying all Russian interference.

01:07:29.380 It was just going to say that the Russians didn't hack election machines. And that's the way that's

01:07:36.700 fine. They didn't, he is his point. And so it's fine. They were going to say that what happened in the

01:07:42.520 ultimate report is they didn't come out and say they did hack election machines. They never reversed

01:07:49.060 on that. It wasn't a one 80 after the Obama meeting on that. It just simply focused on what the Russians

01:07:55.180 did succeed at doing like hacking the DNC and interfering in general with the goal of helping

01:08:02.840 Trump, but hacking the DNC. Now we're learning appears to have been false. General interference was

01:08:10.360 way overplayed. It was a bunch of bullshit. Like you point out with the farms and to help Trump

01:08:15.240 was completely made up. Correct. And look, here's the one criticism you can make of Tulsi Gabbard

01:08:23.020 here. You can criticize her, her language, like accusing Obama of treason. Maybe that's not her

01:08:27.640 place to make that determination. That's for the justice department. And also she did conflate vote

01:08:33.160 hacking with email hacking in the way that she put out these findings. So I think that's a fair critique,

01:08:38.520 but as you point out, it doesn't matter because the fact is we learned from Tulsi's declassification

01:08:43.500 something really important, which is that the intelligence on the email hacking, forget the

01:08:47.840 vote hacking that was suppressed. And the two premier us intelligence agencies who would be best

01:08:53.340 placed to assess who hacked the DNC and gave the emails to WikiLeaks. They had low confidence in the

01:08:58.880 allegation that it was Russia. That's the bottom line here. So even if there was a conflation made

01:09:02.860 between vote machine hacking and DNC server hacking, it doesn't matter because the intelligence on the

01:09:08.740 email hacking said that we don't have any evidence that Russia did it. And that was kept from the

01:09:13.220 public. That's a major scandal because for years we were told this was the intelligence. This was the

01:09:18.100 intelligence consensus. If you question this, you're a Russian propagandist. You're treasonous,

01:09:22.780 as John Brennan said of Donald Trump when he questioned this. And that is the scandal here.

01:09:27.060 The suppression of intelligence to manufacture a lie in the same way that the U.S. government did

01:09:33.100 in going to war in Iraq. And by the way, some of the same players in the Iraq WMD hoax are involved

01:09:38.220 here, including James Clapper, who oversaw the production of the intelligence community assessment

01:09:42.360 along with John Brennan. In his memoir, James Clapper writes about how he basically, in the rush

01:09:48.280 to help the Bush administration make its case for invading Iraq, he went and found things that weren't

01:09:53.440 there. That's almost a direct quote. I went and found things that weren't there. So what he was

01:09:58.080 admitting to is manufacturing intelligence. So why are we surprised that he wouldn't, why are we

01:10:04.340 surprised that he did the same thing here? And why are we supposed to take these people's word on faith,

01:10:08.260 especially given the record? And as a journalist, I mean, look, I'm not a Trump guy. I'm not a fan,

01:10:15.120 but it's not for unelected intelligence bureaucrats to decide who gets to be in power,

01:10:20.640 what the foreign policy of the U.S. is. It's for the elected president. And what we saw here

01:10:25.280 was just a contemptuous response to an election in which the wrong guy in the eyes of powerful

01:10:31.480 people won. And so they did work to undermine him. And no matter where you are on the political

01:10:35.400 spectrum, you shouldn't support that. The other thing about now learning that Russia hacked the DNC

01:10:43.620 being a lie or at least being totally unsupported is it remains to this day. One of the main things

01:10:50.400 people downplaying the Tulsi news rely on to stand up their own conclusions that Russia was trying to

01:10:58.680 help Trump. They say he hacked, you know, Putin hacked the DNC. Putin released through WikiLeaks the

01:11:06.760 dirt, at least some of it, that he had on Hillary. And therefore, how can you say he had any goal

01:11:13.440 other than to help Donald Trump? That was not a helpful release for Hillary Clinton. And that's

01:11:19.120 yet another reason why it is so significant that we're now learning that we don't actually have

01:11:24.600 the goods on Russia being behind that DNC hack. Exactly. Exactly. We're learning this nearly nine

01:11:30.080 years later. And this is not the peak of Russiagate anymore. People have moved on to other stories.

01:11:34.220 But at the time, if you read any single news account in establishment media, it's just taken

01:11:38.700 as fact that Russia hacked and leaked those emails. And there was never any scrutiny whatsoever. And

01:11:44.420 the point that people like myself and Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi and others were trying to make

01:11:48.300 is, you know, Russia might have hacked the DNC. It's certainly possible. But we've never been given

01:11:52.180 the evidence for it. And the role of a journalist is not to write down what intelligence officials tell

01:11:57.060 you to say. It's to look for the facts. And the more facts we get, the more they undermine the

01:12:01.840 narrative that Russia hacked the DNC. And even on the issue of voting machines, yes, it's true.

01:12:06.620 You know, the Obama administration never said that Russia hacked voting machines. But if you look at

01:12:10.100 the media clips, like what was the common talking point from Hillary Clinton on down? Russia hacked

01:12:15.640 the election. Russia hacked the election. And it did create an impression among many people,

01:12:20.000 especially Democratic voters, if you look at polls, that Russia had changed the votes. And that's what

01:12:24.360 happens when you have these propaganda campaigns that you're not allowed to question. And if you do,

01:12:29.000 you're called names, you're marginalized, you're kicked out of media spaces, they just create

01:12:33.520 consensus. Like no one issued an edict saying you all have to believe that Russia hacked the DNC. But

01:12:39.300 just this sort of group mania allowed for this to be pervasive. And even now, when evidence comes out

01:12:46.480 showing that the intelligence wasn't there to support it, has any mainstream outlet reported on

01:12:52.800 this? Have they reported that the NSA and the FBI had low confidence in the Russia hacking leak

01:12:57.340 allegation? Has anyone ever reported that? They're ignoring all of this. They're going with the

01:13:01.120 Democrat line of like, there's no there there, the Obama line. There's no there there, the Pod Save

01:13:04.700 America line. There's no there there, which I'm going to get to in one second. But let me show a

01:13:07.860 little bit of that. This is from the Media Research Center and what we were hearing about Russia

01:13:12.840 hacking the election at the time, Sot 63. Russia hacking the election to elect Trump is the end of

01:13:18.520 our democracy. Votes were definitely affected. Russia hacked the election to tilt it to Mr. Trump.

01:13:22.800 The Russians definitively hacked the election. Russia did hack the election. No doubt the Russians

01:13:30.100 hacked the election. Yes, Russia hacked the election. Fact Russia hacked the election. President

01:13:35.280 elect Donald Trump still not sounding convinced that Russia hacked the election. If you can get

01:13:40.420 him to accept that Russia hacked the election, see if you can get him to accept who won the Civil War.

01:13:45.200 The director of national intelligence, the head of the National Security Agency, the head of the FBI,

01:13:49.860 all of these intelligence experts saying Russia hacked the intelligence, Russia hacked the election.

01:13:56.060 The FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper. I mean,

01:14:01.260 they've all said this. So to believe that that's wrong, you have to believe they're all involved in

01:14:05.220 an elaborate conspiracy to get Donald Trump. Oh, my God, that's an amazing clip. I hadn't actually seen

01:14:13.040 it myself, Aaron. And by the way, the lower third on the CNN clip where they're saying, you know,

01:14:17.940 they hacked. These are all the officials and the agencies that said they hacked. The lower third

01:14:23.140 is Trump colon unsure if Russia interfered. So like Trump was the only one who actually was right.

01:14:31.220 Actually, I'm not quite certain whether they did or they didn't. And all those media figures so sure

01:14:36.300 because the NSA and the CIA and the FBI were undoubtedly leaking to them, telling them that it

01:14:43.300 was so. And they completely forgot a journalist's obligation, which is to kick the tires, especially

01:14:48.660 on a story that is hand delivered to you with a big red ribbon on it from any three letter agency.

01:14:55.120 It's unlike anything I've ever seen, the level of media subservience to this narrative.

01:14:59.380 And also, everyone also was convinced that there was a conspiracy between Trump and Russia,

01:15:03.500 too. I mean, try to challenge that on one of these network shows. And it was very,

01:15:07.700 very difficult. In fact, they didn't even allow on guests who would challenge that narrative.

01:15:11.380 It's just this was the talking point. And even though there's no one like we don't live in a

01:15:16.700 totalitarian society, there's no official telling people what to say. But everybody just intuited

01:15:21.900 that this was the narrative to go with. This was the way to respond to Trump.

01:15:25.640 If you wanted to get into media spaces, this is what you had to say. And it was absolute mania.

01:15:31.380 And by the way, for me, you know, there's all this fear mongering about foreign interference.

01:15:34.800 Like I'm on the left end of the spectrum. I do think there's foreign interference.

01:15:38.280 I think Israeli interference in US democracy is a lot more significant. AIPAC spends tens of millions

01:15:43.580 of dollars to elect candidates and defeat candidates based on what it deems to be in

01:15:47.860 the interests of Israel. Marjorie Taylor Greene's called for AIPAC to be registered as a foreign

01:15:51.960 agent. I think that's a much more significant foreign interference in US democracy than whenever

01:15:56.360 Russian trolls put out on social media. But that all gets completely ignored because that is

01:16:01.020 bipartisan. And here, because there was this partisan effort, you know, started by Hillary Clinton

01:16:06.040 to frame Trump as a Russian asset and blame Russia for his election rather than look at the Clinton

01:16:11.640 wings own dysfunctions, their own failures. Everybody went along with it and we're still

01:16:16.660 paying the price because now, you know, people still want answers. And, you know, Trump voters

01:16:21.460 especially were, you know, dismissed with contempt as malleable dupes who were brainwashed by Russia

01:16:27.120 into not voting for, you know, saintly Hillary Clinton. And so there's also this elitist contempt

01:16:32.780 that underpins all this. So accordingly, people in the media don't want to be embarrassed for going

01:16:38.020 along with a massive scam. And that's why it's still very difficult to get accountability. And

01:16:43.300 that's why they're still not reporting on the countervailing facts, the low confidence assessment

01:16:46.840 from the FBI and the NSA. No one ever acknowledged the crowd strike. The Clinton campaign contractor

01:16:52.500 had admitted under oath. They had no evidence of Russian hacking and leaking. No one.

01:16:57.400 It's like, it's amazing when you, when you pair that with the red siren warning, they'd been given

01:17:05.200 that, Hey, Hillary Clinton's team is planning to try to paint Trump as a Russian proxy and agent of some

01:17:16.260 sort in order. The purpose was in order to distract from her email scandal. If you look at what's unveiled

01:17:22.780 in the intelligence. So our intelligence agencies knew that at a minimum. And if the Fox news reporting

01:17:28.000 turns out to be true, cooperated with it, but at a minimum new. And then when the alleged Intel

01:17:35.780 started coming in from Hillary sources, like the steel dossier and the crowd strike thing on who hacked

01:17:42.500 the DNC, they didn't say, okay, we were warned. This is going to happen. Here's the bullshit that this

01:17:49.460 woman is orchestrating. Let's not get hooked on that line. Like a gullible fish. They jumped on it,

01:17:57.760 ran with it. And while an initial report to president Obama was going to say, well, they

01:18:02.520 didn't, the Russians didn't really do this much. It took one woodshitting from him, from the sound

01:18:06.660 of it. And they were all on board with, they did it cite the seal dossier, cite the, the crowd

01:18:12.360 strike information. They were completely on team. Let's get Trump.

01:18:16.100 They were. And that's what the Mueller investigation was for. Like the Mueller investigation

01:18:21.420 essentially was waged to make this whole narrative look credible. And they spent tens of millions of

01:18:26.620 dollars making this thing seem somewhat legitimate. And of course the media ran with it. And if you

01:18:32.240 read all the indictments that came out of the Mueller probe in retrospect, I mean, at the time they were

01:18:36.240 so dumb, but even now, especially given all we know now they're written by really smart people,

01:18:41.080 people probably gone to Ivy league schools, law schools, and they're basically, you know,

01:18:46.020 wielding their intelligence to make it appears that they have something on Trump and Russia when

01:18:50.660 there was absolutely nothing. The indictment of George Papadopoulos and harder page and Michael

01:18:57.240 Flynn, Michael Flynn, who was accused of lying to the FBI about discussing sanctions with the Russian

01:19:04.640 ambassador. When, if you actually read the transcript of his wiretap conversation, they're not even talking

01:19:09.400 about sanctions. They're talking about the fact that Obama had kicked out a bunch, a bunch of

01:19:13.260 Russian diplomats. And all Flynn basically said was, listen, we're going to come in soon. Things

01:19:17.460 will be different. So don't retaliate, you know, too harshly because we want to have good relations.

01:19:21.800 We don't want this to go out of hand. That's all he said. And he gets indicted and he's forced to

01:19:25.640 resign. He's basically sabotaged, uh, by the FBI. Um, and all of this, and, and they actually,

01:19:31.580 this was, it's pretty well established that this was a deliberate effort. So, I mean,

01:19:35.640 there's so much malpractice here, so much deception. Uh, and it was, again, no matter

01:19:41.340 what you think about Donald Trump, why do we accept the intrusion of the national security

01:19:45.840 state and into the democratic process? And geopolitically it had many consequences. You

01:19:50.320 know, Trump went on the campaign trail was talking about getting along with Russia, which I think is a

01:19:54.320 good thing. Why do we want to have tensions with another nuclear armed power between the U S and

01:19:58.880 Russia? Both countries can destroy the world many times over. So I think it's good to have

01:20:02.800 cooperation, uh, and diplomacy with Russia and Russiagate basically made that impossible.

01:20:07.520 In fact, Trump even complained about that in the fall of 2017, he said, Russiagate is going to get

01:20:11.760 people killed because his mandate as he saw it, which was to, you know, cooperate, reduce foreign

01:20:17.640 interventions that was undermined by people basically urging him to get so-called tough on

01:20:23.240 Russia. Yeah. Now he had something to prove where he didn't before. All right. Let me, let me stand

01:20:28.700 you by. Cause I, there's a couple of things I want to go through. I do want to show you some of the

01:20:32.100 defenses that these Obama acolytes, the pod save America guys have been offering and talk about

01:20:37.620 that Senate Intel report. And then I've got to show you what happened on MSNBC and morning Joe

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01:21:34.720 gcu.edu. A lot of people worry about the online platforms and which one to trust for your general

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01:23:37.620 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show, independent journalist and contributor to real clear

01:23:45.740 investigations. Aaron Mate is back with me now, Aaron. I just want to make something perfectly

01:23:49.760 clear because I think I glossed over it. We talked and I outlined about the info we got from Tulsi on

01:23:56.060 that Friday night. And then the house intelligence report that came out the next week from Tulsi,

01:24:01.100 from 2020 and how it showed the intel community was about to give Obama this presidential daily

01:24:09.460 brief that kind of downplayed Russia's involvement. Then he has a big meeting. And the next thing you

01:24:13.720 know, they produce a report that says, oh, no, Russia, Russia, Russia interfered and did it to help

01:24:18.380 Trump. You're what you and I have been discussing is something else, which is the low quality

01:24:26.520 intelligence assessment earlier that fall that Russia hacked the DNC. And we've talked about how

01:24:33.860 then that low quality assessment was turned into a high confidence assessment for no apparent reason.

01:24:40.440 But here to having reviewed the documents, your your reporting is that Obama got involved. Once again,

01:24:48.760 it was Obama stepped in and appears to have said that's not that's not the assessment I want.

01:24:56.100 You outlined it as follows. On September 12th, 2016, the FBI and NSA expressed low confidence in

01:25:01.080 the core Russiagate allegation that they hacked and leaked these Democratic Party emails. By December

01:25:05.680 7th, 2016, that assessment hadn't changed. Most U.S. agencies only had moderate confidence at best

01:25:12.720 that Russia was maybe probably behind the hack and the leak. And that was also concealed from us.

01:25:19.520 And then Obama had that principles meeting that same day where he did the reversal on all the other

01:25:23.940 stuff we're talking about. And it was there, too, that he appears to have decided that he wanted a

01:25:31.280 write up saying Russia did this anyway. So, I mean, his fingerprints are all over this reversal

01:25:37.780 in the Russian information. Obama, to me, was pretty malleable. So I don't know to what extent this is

01:25:44.860 Obama running the show or just Obama standing down to John Brennan and Hillary Clinton. But regardless,

01:25:51.320 Obama's fingerprints are on this. And if you look at the timeline, September 12th, we now know this

01:25:58.040 has just come out from Tulsi Gabbard. NSA, FBI say they have low confidence in the Russia hacking

01:26:02.820 leak, hacking leak allegation. OK, October 7th, even though that's the view of the FBI and NSA,

01:26:09.000 Obama gets the Department of Homeland Security and the director of the national intelligence to put out

01:26:14.320 a statement saying the intelligence community has high confidence that Russia is behind the hacking,

01:26:18.760 contradicting what the FBI and NSA were concluding. And let me just pause you there. Just hold on.

01:26:23.860 Hold that thought, because we do have the Obama soundbite here. Well, it's former Department of

01:26:27.840 Homeland Security Secretary Jay Johnson talking about Obama approving that statement that Russia was

01:26:33.860 behind the DNC hack, even though he knew that there was at best a low confidence assessment to that

01:26:40.260 effect. Here it is in SOT 55 when he, Jay Johnson, testified before the House Intelligence Committee.

01:26:45.500 On October 7th, we issued a very clear declaration based upon what we knew at the time that the Russian

01:26:52.640 government was behind the hacks of the DNC. The October 7th statement was an administration

01:26:58.340 statement. That was the result of an intelligence community assessment. The president approved the

01:27:06.480 statement. I know he wanted us to make the statement. So that was very definitely a statement

01:27:11.480 by the United States government, not just Jim Clapper and me. But he doesn't reveal that the

01:27:17.020 intelligence that had been given to Obama was low confidence. And then somehow Obama interferes and we

01:27:23.540 wind up with a high confidence assessment that they did this. And it does not appear any additional

01:27:29.100 information was received to change it from low to high. And that latter point about no additional

01:27:34.220 information being received, that's now documented in the House Intelligence Committee report that's just

01:27:38.760 being released by Tulsi Gabbard, where they say the only new intelligence that came in, their words

01:27:43.140 are, it's quote, paltry. So most of the intelligence that was produced for the ISA was collected before

01:27:47.840 the election at a time when the FBI and NSA were saying that they had low confidence. And yeah,

01:27:53.000 Jay Johnson's saying that this was an administration document. He's saying it speaks in the name of the

01:27:57.140 intelligence community, but that's false because the two premier agencies that were best placed to

01:28:02.220 assess this, the FBI and the NSA, they were dissenting on the allegation that Jay Johnson and Obama put out

01:28:08.300 publicly. And by the way, meanwhile, and the recent CIA review by John Ratcliffe made this point,

01:28:13.820 other key intelligence agencies were excluded altogether. So the Defense Intelligence Agency

01:28:18.700 of the Pentagon and the State Department's Intelligence Bureau, the INR, they were completely excluded from

01:28:24.280 the process. And the CIA review by Ratcliffe noted that this was odd, especially if you're talking about

01:28:30.300 the actions of an adversary, Russia, why are you excluding the Pentagon's Intelligence Agency and the State

01:28:35.880 Department, which would presumably have a lot to contribute. So you have overruling and ignoring

01:28:40.900 the dissenting view of the NSA and the FBI, the dissenting view of the NSA and the FBI,

01:28:46.640 and completely excluding the Pentagon and the State Department.

01:28:51.120 Wow. Okay. Well, we'll put a pin in that one and see, because it also does raise questions. If the FBI

01:28:57.160 actually wanted to help participate in a Hillary Clinton lie that Russia interfered,

01:29:02.780 then why would they have been coming forward saying, we don't think they hacked the DNC? We

01:29:08.180 only have low confidence and we're going to dissent from anything that tries to pin it on them?

01:29:13.480 Well, I can answer that because look, at the time they were relying on CrowdStrike to investigate

01:29:18.760 the DNC server hacking and CrowdStrike wasn't cooperating. And I suspect, you know, obviously

01:29:23.740 someone like Peter Strzok, who was the lead FBI agent on Crossfire Hurricane, he was all on board with

01:29:29.160 framing Trump as a Russian agent. You know, there's text messages of him disparaging Trump, disparaging

01:29:33.380 Trump voters, his bias, and also talking about the Russians as, you know, effing savages. So, you know,

01:29:39.020 his view is pretty clear. Not everybody in the FBI was on board with this. And I think what happened

01:29:43.820 with Comey is this. So Comey, after Trump wins, he gets blamed because of his handling of the Clinton

01:29:50.240 email investigation when he came out right before the election and talked about the FBI going back

01:29:55.300 into the laptop and uncovering the Anthony Weiner stuff. So Comey is under a lot of fire now from

01:30:00.900 the Clinton wing. And so I think Comey, being the sycophant that he is, decided just to completely

01:30:07.360 shift gears and go along with anything that was asked of him. And that's why we now learn he was

01:30:11.800 pushing for the Steele dossier to be included in the intelligence community assessment. And funnily

01:30:16.700 enough, I mean, maybe this is a coincidence, but, you know, at that December 9th meeting between Obama

01:30:22.160 and his top principles, where all of a sudden the narrative really shifts. So, you know, James,

01:30:27.280 James Clapper's there. John Brennan is there. Susan Rice is there. But representing the FBI and the NSA

01:30:33.880 are not the respective heads of the FBI and the NSA. James Comey and Mike Rogers were not there at that

01:30:39.220 meeting. The FBI was represented by Andrew McCabe, who was a hardcore Russia gator. He's the one who,

01:30:45.980 in May of 2017, opened up a new probe of Trump while he was a sitting president as a potential

01:30:51.480 Russian asset. So McCabe is there, not Comey. And the head of the NSA, Mike Rogers, also was not

01:30:57.820 there. And maybe that's just a coincidence that the heads of these dissenting agencies weren't there,

01:31:02.860 or maybe they weren't there and they were told basically in their absence afterwards to fall

01:31:08.340 in line. And that's at least what I think Comey did. Wow. Just to clarify, Obama wasn't personally

01:31:14.840 there, but his chief of staff, Dennis McDonough, was there at that meeting at his behest. And we have many

01:31:20.120 officials on record after the fact saying these are the orders that they were given were per the

01:31:24.640 president's request. I mean, it was very clear that McDonough was speaking for Obama and that Obama was

01:31:29.500 on board with the change in intelligence or the representation of the intelligence, which did not

01:31:36.020 look anything like the actual intelligence that they had. Okay. There's a couple of things I want

01:31:40.700 to get to. These Pod Save America guys have been running cover for Obama since the story broke.

01:31:44.820 They're crapping all over it. They think people like you, like me, like Matt, are completely

01:31:49.660 irresponsible. I'm going to give you a flavor for it and let you respond. Sop 50.

01:31:54.480 Do you think they can will this scandal into existence just by repeating treasonous coup

01:32:01.260 and false narrative and manipulated intelligence over and over again?

01:32:07.500 I don't think we should call this a scandal. I don't even know what else to call it,

01:32:10.320 like a crock of shit. Like it's not, a scandal suggests that there was an allegation of something.

01:32:15.120 There was a, at least credible allegation of something. There's, there is, they can't even

01:32:19.640 explain the allegation. It makes no sense. This is the most easily debunked thing in the world.

01:32:24.200 And the shortest way I would do that is how could it possibly be that Obama was trying to steal the

01:32:29.000 election from Trump when during the election, the FBI was investigating Trump and told no one,

01:32:33.360 but the FBI instead announced an investigation to Hillary Clinton three weeks before the election.

01:32:36.880 Good. It's all part of the plan, Dan. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's, it's so stupid.

01:32:43.200 Thoughts on that one, Aaron? First of all, it's not true that the investigation into Trump and

01:32:47.840 Russia was suppressed. It came out in the New York times shortly before the election. So that's not

01:32:52.620 even true. And yeah, they couldn't say very much because they didn't have anything. It was a scam.

01:32:58.220 And I think they were still putting together exactly what kind of conspiracy theory they wanted to

01:33:02.300 go with and what aspects of it because Trump was being framed as a Russian asset. And so,

01:33:06.880 yes. And the point is, whatever they did before the election, after the election,

01:33:11.200 they ran with this and they basically sabotaged Trump's incoming presidency before it even began.

01:33:16.760 They released an intelligence assessment saying that basically Trump was the product

01:33:20.560 of Russian interference. They sabotaged his cabinet by going after Mike Flynn and they threw leaks

01:33:28.760 to credulous media stenographers. They basically painted this picture that Trump was being controlled by

01:33:34.400 Vladimir Putin. And they made the Steele dossier look credible. So sure, you can say maybe Obama

01:33:39.940 wasn't trying to tip the scales for Trump in the election, but certainly other people were. John

01:33:44.560 Brennan was. John Brennan was briefing members of Congress in August, trying to basically say

01:33:48.960 that Russia was backing Trump. And that's why you had letters from Harry Reid to Obama demanding that

01:33:54.660 Obama put out there what he knew about Russian meddling in the election.

01:33:58.280 So even if Obama wasn't trying to help Hillary Clinton out with this, he was allowing it to happen

01:34:04.700 by having a CIA and an FBI help frame Trump as a Russian agent. And he was briefed back in July

01:34:11.420 by Brennan that Russia was aware of a plot to frame Trump. So really what Obama should have done is

01:34:16.940 called all this out and said, like, we can't have a baseless investigation, which the FBI had already

01:34:22.780 launched and had massive consequences way into Trump's first term. Sure did. By the way, that

01:34:28.640 that first guy on there was Jon Favreau of Pod Save America, who has said he really, really, really

01:34:34.240 wants to debate somebody on this issue. And I mean, you're the perfect guy. I'd be happy to host it

01:34:41.760 here. Has he invited you to go on his show to actually have the debate he claims he so desperately

01:34:46.700 wants? No, I've never been invited by any prominent proponent of the Russiagate controversy

01:34:54.320 because they because like you can't it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And that's the problem here.

01:34:59.140 This was a propaganda campaign. You know, people make fun of QAnon and all the conspiracy theories

01:35:03.520 around QAnon. This was blue and on. This was a Democratic Party conspiracy theory. And it was had

01:35:09.580 catastrophic consequences. So many of them domestic and increased polarization. But for me, you know,

01:35:15.800 someone who was very supportive of the policies of Bernie Sanders, I believe in Medicare for all I

01:35:21.340 don't support attacking other countries. I believe in cutting military aid to Israel. After 2016, that

01:35:26.880 would have been a great chance for Bernie Sanders to take control of the party and say, unlike Trump,

01:35:30.760 I'm a genuine populist alternative like Trump appealed to working class people. I actually have

01:35:35.980 policies that can actually benefit them. And Bernie Sanders, unfortunately, rather than stand up and

01:35:41.540 say, you know, it's it's my turn now, he bowed down to the Russiagate narrative. And he paid lip

01:35:47.240 service. He paid lip service to it. And how was he rewarded, by the way, for his obedience? In 2020,

01:35:51.940 when he's running against Biden in the primaries, the Russiagate narrative gets used against him

01:35:56.020 by these same people, including including Pod Save America. So the Democrats have been out to get

01:36:01.360 Bernie from the beginning. I mean, just as as Tulsi, that's that's one of the reasons she got

01:36:05.200 excised from the Democrat Party, because she stood up to it saying this is wrong. What are you doing?

01:36:09.460 We shouldn't be putting our finger on the scale to help one Democrat win over another,

01:36:13.800 which raises a great point. If they don't like the fact that Tulsi is now accusing people of

01:36:17.900 treason, they shouldn't have tolerated back when they were accusing Tulsi of treason and being a

01:36:22.820 Russian asset. Hillary Clinton calls her a Russian asset. That's right. And they were accusing Trump

01:36:27.460 and all his supporters of being Russian assets, too. So if they don't like that language now,

01:36:30.920 they're getting exactly what they asked for when they're the ones who put this out there in the

01:36:35.400 first place and still they actually. Yeah, that's right. One more from the Pod Save America guys

01:36:40.760 and their attempted defense. This is on that Senate Intel report that we've seen Obama himself rely on

01:36:48.260 to say there's no there there. Move on. Here it is. Sock 51. She lays that out in great detail,

01:36:54.680 but then claims somehow that because the intelligence community didn't include didn't conclude that the

01:37:02.180 voting systems were hacked. Therefore, this has all been a conspiracy by Barack Obama to commit some

01:37:08.240 kind of a coup after the fact, even though Donald Trump became president. I don't I don't like it

01:37:14.200 doesn't mean it doesn't make any fucking sense. We all keep having a version of this conversation,

01:37:18.740 which is like, am I missing something? Because I just feel like this doesn't make any sense at all.

01:37:22.540 Like they're saying that yeah, they're releasing new intelligence that shows Russia didn't launch a

01:37:27.080 cyber attack on our election infrastructure that altered the outcome, which is what the Obama

01:37:31.880 administration said. What they said. And they're trying to make it sound like that's a smoking gun

01:37:35.060 that proves that the Russians didn't interfere in the 2016 election. But as you mentioned at the top,

01:37:39.720 we know that they did in part because the Senate Intelligence Committee then led by Marco Rubio,

01:37:43.760 now the Secretary of State, conducted a three year investigation that determined Russia waged an

01:37:48.220 aggressive effort to interfere in our election. Okay, so that the entire two thirds of that was just a

01:37:54.500 straw man misstating Tulsi's argument, your argument, everyone's argument. No one's saying the the ultimate

01:37:59.860 PDB or Intelligence Committee community assessment needed to say that the Russians hacked election

01:38:06.060 machines. No one is saying that or it's not even about the election machines. It's about all the other

01:38:11.580 things that we've been discussing, and they're straw manning it. But the Senate Intel Committee report,

01:38:16.360 can you speak to that? Yeah, just last point on the point about the election hacking. Tulsi and her team,

01:38:22.220 I think, made a narrative mistake in focusing on the intelligence that found there was no Russian

01:38:26.940 hacking of election infrastructure. But as you say, it's also a complete straw man, because what the

01:38:31.660 intelligence she released also shows is that the FBI and NSA were, again, relying on Steele dossier,

01:38:38.160 lying about it. John Brennan told Congress it was not a part of the Intelligence Committee

01:38:41.840 assessment. It was. And also critically, they buried the low confidence assessment that the FBI

01:38:46.840 and the NSA made in the Russian hacking leaking allegation. And that's not something I've ever

01:38:51.360 seen Pod Save America or any other Russia gate adhering media outlet address. And so until they

01:38:57.500 address that, they just cannot dismiss this as nothing, because what they're doing is simply

01:39:01.120 cherry picking a conflation that Tulsi made and ignoring the actual real revelations here on the

01:39:07.220 issue of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Look, if you read that report, there is so much that they

01:39:13.220 either missed on purpose or weren't aware of. So if you look at the House Intelligence Committee

01:39:18.320 report that we've just got, they talk about the fact that intelligence was cherry picked.

01:39:22.340 They talk about the fact that the U.S. had intelligence, that Putin didn't care who won

01:39:25.700 the election. And that was all cherry picked. Either the Senate Intelligence Committee had that

01:39:29.660 intelligence, same access. Either the Senate Intelligence Committee either had the same access

01:39:33.340 and just simply ignored it, or they didn't have the access. Either way, the point is,

01:39:38.840 the fact that we're still learning new revelations now from Hipsy shows that the Senate Intelligence

01:39:43.040 Committee didn't do its job. And therefore, why should we take their word seriously? All they

01:39:47.520 really cared about on the Republican side was disproven collusion, and they did. I think they just

01:39:51.020 ignored the Russian interference side. But now, thankfully, from this Hipsy report and more

01:39:55.240 disclosures, we're learning the truth that was suppressed.

01:39:57.940 I've got to go over this. This guy writes for the New Republic. His name is Michael Tomoski,

01:40:03.360 and he was on Morning Joe this morning, discussing this whole storyline. And here's his take on it.

01:40:13.040 The question is, how much does Trump mean this? We don't really know. But by God, if he means it,

01:40:20.800 there's every reason to suspect that they will go out and do it.

01:40:24.840 And by do it, you mean they will indict President Obama for something?

01:40:32.060 Something.

01:40:32.700 Something for what?

01:40:34.140 I mean, what would they indict him for?

01:40:35.520 That's a good question. And I was discussing this with a friend who is a former prosecutor. He said,

01:40:40.640 yeah, but where are they going to find a witness who's willing to say that Obama did something

01:40:45.380 illegal? How are they going to actually prosecute the case? And I said, fair point. But in this

01:40:50.580 instance, maybe that isn't really even the point. The point's retribution.

01:40:54.840 The point's revenge. The point is the besmirching of Obama's character and so on and so on.

01:41:01.560 Okay. And he's very upset about that. He doesn't want that at all. And they had him on to discuss

01:41:06.800 the article that he had posted earlier today, right? It's today, the 27th or 28th or yesterday,

01:41:13.240 earlier on the 28th. And here's what he wrote. On planet Earth, Obama cannot be indicted,

01:41:19.460 but we live on planet Trump. The attempted persecution of a former president is both a dangerous

01:41:24.540 line to cross and an expression of this failed administration. He's very upset about the

01:41:30.060 attempted persecution of a former president. It's a dangerous line to cross. It took me about

01:41:35.260 10 seconds to see what this same guy wrote when Donald Trump was indicted by Alvin Bragg,

01:41:44.100 also a former president. And here's how that went. The title was the Trump indictment.

01:41:48.820 He's had it coming for years, he writes. This is historic, he goes on. He even uses the planet

01:41:56.200 Earth line. Only here it goes as follows. On planet Earth, this means Trump singularly may have,

01:42:02.840 even he is still presumed innocent, violated laws and norms that everyone else has followed.

01:42:08.180 The bottom line here, and the one big thing that we know above all else,

01:42:12.180 Donald Trump has had this coming for years. This feels like justice coming. And he ended with this.

01:42:20.980 They have to revere the law, these former presidents. This has been a given throughout

01:42:25.580 our history until Trump. Then he goes off on a tangent about Nixon, goes on. Only Trump knows

01:42:31.580 and respects no law. He got away with what was in the inherently sleazy business. He got away with it

01:42:38.240 when he was in the inherently sleazy business of slapping his name on casinos. But the presidency

01:42:42.480 of the United States is not an inherently sleazy business, or at least it's not supposed to be.

01:42:47.240 Trump made it that. If there's any justice left in this country, he will die in a jumpsuit that

01:42:53.040 matches his cratered skin. We're far cry from the attempted persecution of a former president

01:42:59.540 is a dangerous line to cross, Michael Tomaski. So I don't know. I'm not expecting a piece from him.

01:43:08.220 Or anybody at the New Republic, or for that matter, the National Review, saying this may not be a

01:43:15.460 dangerous line to cross. President Obama and his top emissaries in particular really do appear to

01:43:20.640 have done something deeply wrong. It's all projection. They talk about, you know, persecution

01:43:26.900 of political opponents wanting to jail them. Well, this is what they try to do with Russiagate. And then

01:43:30.700 when that failed, they tried again with the, you know, two impeachments. And then all the lawfare

01:43:35.300 that followed Trump after he left office, which, again, even if you put aside, you know, basic

01:43:39.820 ethics, where we hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold other people to, putting

01:43:43.520 that aside, just politically, this was a disaster for Democrats to try to use the legal system to go

01:43:49.040 after their political opponent, to try to jail Trump and basically make him unqualified for office.

01:43:54.780 People rebelled against that because they saw this, I think, rightfully, as an intrusion into the

01:44:01.060 democratic process where you're supposed to win at the ballot box, not in courts. And it goes beyond

01:44:05.240 Trump. I mean, people forget this, but many people in Trump's circle had their lives ruined as a

01:44:09.560 result of this Russiagate scam. Rick Gates, who was an associate of Paul Manafort, he was indicted by

01:44:14.920 Mueller on some ridiculous trumped up charges because, again, Mueller and their team needed to bring

01:44:19.920 charges to justify their existence and justify their investigation. So Rick Gates, you know, had went

01:44:26.360 through a lot of trouble and people lost a lot of money. Roger Stone, if you remember, CNN, you know,

01:44:31.060 very giddily broadcast a raid on his home by armed police officers to arrest him in his case, which

01:44:37.480 is over what? Lying to Congress. Who else lied to Congress? We just we now know that John Brennan

01:44:42.020 lied to Congress when he got up and said the Steele dossier played no role in the intelligence

01:44:46.840 community assessment when we know from the available evidence that, in fact, it did. And John Brennan even

01:44:52.600 pushed to have it included in the intelligence community assessment. So they've normalized this

01:44:57.000 climate now where, yeah, people are going to be persecuted. And unlike with Russiagate,

01:45:00.300 Russiagate fraudsters actually have something to be concerned about because, you know, John Brennan,

01:45:05.880 I think, committed perjury. Wait, was it here? This is May 23rd, 2017, in front of the House

01:45:11.160 Intel Committee. John Brennan sought 58. Do you know if the Bureau ever relied on the Steele dossier as

01:45:18.800 any, as part of any court filings, applications, petitions, pleadings? I have no awareness.

01:45:28.800 Did the CIA rely on it? No. Why not? Because we, we didn't. It wasn't part of the corpus of

01:45:37.460 intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the intelligence

01:45:44.740 community assessment that was done. It was, it was not.

01:45:51.800 Was that it, Aaron? Yeah. Yeah, that's it. And so that's just not true. It was used as the basis

01:45:56.580 for the intelligence community assessment. It's referenced in the body of the ICA. We now know

01:46:02.480 because it was declassified by Tulsi Gabbard. And the footnote is an annex which has the Steele dossier.

01:46:07.700 So it's just not true that it wasn't used. And if you look at the language about Putin aspiring to

01:46:13.760 help Trump, and it mirrors a lot of the Steele dossier. So even if we didn't know from the documents

01:46:20.160 that the Steele dossier was used, it was pretty apparent, especially when you also understand that

01:46:24.220 the FBI was using the Steele dossier to get surveillance warrants on Carter Page and using

01:46:28.500 it for investigative leads. So yeah, John Brennan has exposed himself here to a perjury case. And

01:46:34.080 unlike the perjury cases in Russiagate, this actually is consequential. And it's substantive.

01:46:39.040 And all those cases back then were cheered on. Like, you know, with every, if you remember this,

01:46:43.120 with every indictment of George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn and Rick Gates and Paul Manafort,

01:46:48.700 media loved this. Everyone was giddy over this. And because they felt as if Mueller was getting

01:46:52.860 closer and closer to the secret Trump-Russia conspiracy. In real life, it was just political

01:46:57.820 lawfare to make a fake investigation that was aimed at framing a campaign as Russian assets

01:47:03.580 look credible. And so anybody who deprives now accountability for that, you know, has no leg

01:47:08.840 to stand on. And by the way, you know, I think we should oppose this equally no matter who's doing

01:47:13.660 it. So I'm personally opposed to Trump administration criminalizing free speech because they don't like

01:47:18.040 what student protesters are saying about Israel. But the Russiagate playbook was to normalize that,

01:47:23.920 to say that the government can go after people if they deem to be spreading disinformation or acting

01:47:28.380 on behalf of a foreign power, even when there's no evidence whatsoever.

01:47:32.140 The CIA director current, John Ratcliffe, spoke to what might be the potential charges in this?

01:47:39.900 Because that's the big question, right? Question mark. Tulsi used the word treason. That's very,

01:47:43.860 very hard to prove. You basically have to be like working to undermine the United States with a,

01:47:48.900 or have turned on the United States with a foreign government. But there are a bunch of other

01:47:54.220 charges that could potentially be brought by the DOJ to which she's made a referral. And so they're

01:47:59.320 reviewing that right now. Now that testimony by John Brennan is dated 2017, and it's been more than

01:48:06.000 five years. The federal statute of limitations on perjury is five years. But we had Mike Davis,

01:48:11.840 who's very close to the administration. He runs the Article III project, which is basically

01:48:15.300 kind of like MAGA law. They've been right about a lot saying there's really no statute of limitations

01:48:21.140 that would be, that would stop us from bringing conspiracy claims. And that could envelop Brennan's

01:48:28.000 statement. That could have been part of the conspiracy. Perjury charges, the statute of

01:48:33.020 limitations gets told, meaning it won't start running. If the person who lied did something to

01:48:38.260 make it impossible or, you know, near impossible for people to unearth the lie, like taking maybe the

01:48:43.940 House intelligence report that put the lie to what he said and burying it in a safe in a vault at Langley

01:48:50.060 to the point where it took a presidential intervention years later to actually get it

01:48:54.000 out and figure out what there's a lie. But having said all that. But that's on Trump, too, because

01:48:59.080 Kash Patel tried to get that report released during Trump's first term. And Trump listened instead to

01:49:03.980 William Barr and Gina Haspel, who did not want that released. So Trump has a responsibility there as

01:49:08.340 well. That's awful. Did not know that. OK, here's CIA Director Ratcliffe. This is on Fox News

01:49:14.640 Sunday, speaking to the potential charges. South 40. John Brennan testified to Congress and so did

01:49:22.300 Hillary Clinton within five years. I think it was in 2020 and then again in 2021. Are those statute of

01:49:29.800 limitations still alive? What hasn't come out yet and what's going to come out is the underlying

01:49:37.140 intelligence that will come out in the John Durham report classified annex. And what that intelligence

01:49:44.200 shows, Maria, is that part of this was a Hillary Clinton plan, but part of it was an FBI plan to

01:49:50.500 be an accelerant to that fake steel dossier. And you're right, Maria. John Brennan testified to John

01:49:59.160 Durham in August of 2020. He also testified to the House Oversight Committee in 2022. Hillary Clinton

01:50:05.300 testified before John Durham under oath in 2022. James Comey testified before the Senate Committee in

01:50:12.620 September 2020. All of that's within the last five years. And much of that testimony is, frankly,

01:50:19.200 completely inconsistent with what our underlying intelligence that is about to be declassified

01:50:24.360 in the Durham annex. That's very interesting. I just want to note, he mentioned September 2020.

01:50:31.460 One of those other dates was August 2020 in connection with the Durham investigation.

01:50:35.540 If those dates are operative and they're basing any sort of potential perjury charge or other charge on

01:50:41.960 those dates, we could see indictments within the next 32 days because the statute is about to run

01:50:49.900 and they have a deadline. They have to get it in under. And we're almost there, Aaron.

01:50:54.620 Yeah, we are. And I can make a point about media. The media here has an opportunity to question these key

01:51:01.100 figures if they wanted to. John Brennan is an analyst at MSNBC, and he's been interviewed now multiple times

01:51:06.520 ever since Tulsi Gabbard's documents were released. MSNBC has never asked him about his testimony to Congress

01:51:12.720 that the steel dossier was not used for the intelligence community assessment. When that's just an obvious

01:51:17.900 question, you told Congress one thing. This is what the documents say, that you relied on the steel dossier.

01:51:23.700 And in fact, Brennan fought to have it included because the quote was, according to one CIA official,

01:51:28.640 that John Brennan said it just feels right, which meant it felt right to the conspiracy theory that he

01:51:32.620 was pursuing as part of the plot to frame Trump as a Russian issue.

01:51:34.800 Wait, can I show you something, Aaron?

01:51:35.620 Please.

01:51:36.380 Can I show you something? I got to show you something. So John Brennan did go on MSNBC just the other day

01:51:41.460 with Jen Psaki. This is last Wednesday. And the questioning was so pathetic. We did a montage of

01:51:50.120 it because we this is the entirety of what she asked him. Watch this at 44.

01:51:56.400 I know you have been through a lot, but this is still a lot. What did I miss that people should

01:52:01.740 understand here? Don't you think the timing is around the Epstein files and changing the subject?

01:52:06.340 I mean, I was there just in responsible for releasing things, not any of this. And I

01:52:10.400 President Obama wanted to make sure people understood, as you just said.

01:52:14.580 And this is not something that the Russians see through a partisan lens in the sense of they could

01:52:19.660 do it again many times. So everybody should have this information, which I think is important to

01:52:23.800 know. Director Brennan, I'm so grateful that you were here. You never shy away from telling your

01:52:28.880 story. Oh, God, is it over, Aaron?

01:52:33.280 Well, that's what happens when you have a media in which one former government official interviews a

01:52:38.520 former government official colleague. And they've all been enlisted in this scam to fool the public

01:52:43.880 into believing Trump was a Russian asset and won't take responsibility for it. I mean, the question

01:52:47.900 is so obvious. You told Congress this. The documents show otherwise. What's your explanation? But this

01:52:52.540 isn't journalism. It's just stenography. And it's unfortunate. And perhaps we'll get accountability

01:52:57.260 through the judicial process. I got to say, it's very difficult, though, to go after a former

01:53:01.880 director of the CIA. That's a pretty. All of it's going to be tough. Yeah, because it's a very

01:53:07.760 powerful person. They do seem determined. And I mean, that's the problem with having gone after

01:53:11.500 Trump is he's not really. I don't think he cares. Like, I think he's like, OK, you know, I've got a

01:53:17.560 lot more on you than you guys ever had on me. And you were full steam ahead against me. I want to give

01:53:21.720 you one more from that Psaki Brennan interview. It's unbelievable. Listen to 43. And the fact that

01:53:27.820 Donald Trump now is saying that Barack Obama was the head of this conspiracy is just so absurd.

01:53:32.800 Now, I certainly understand why Donald Trump has such a deep seated inferiority complex vis-a-vis

01:53:37.780 Barack Obama, given their respective records. And also, it's quite remarkable the coincidence of

01:53:44.800 timing between the release of these documents that seem to have been put together just in a very

01:53:49.720 short period of time as compared to these multi-year investigations and reviews that were done

01:53:56.120 about this issue and the furor that is around the Epstein files. So again, I think it's very

01:54:01.980 suspicious as far as the motivations here. That is incredible. Well, look, let's say it's true.

01:54:09.820 Let's say Trump is motivated right now to distract from the Epstein thing because he feels he has

01:54:14.040 something to hide and his base is angry. Even if that were 100 percent true, it wouldn't matter.

01:54:17.920 The question is, is this material significant? Is it real? Does it show malfeasance?

01:54:22.760 The inferiority complex thing? That is so ridiculous. That is absurd. That is a leftist

01:54:27.600 dream. Well, Brennan's doing psychology. Look, there's an irony here. I mean, Trump tried to

01:54:32.920 frame Obama as being born in Africa when he wasn't. So Trump pushed the birther conspiracy theory.

01:54:40.140 How did Democrats respond? By their own conspiracy theory that he was being blackmailed by Vladimir

01:54:45.980 Putin. It's truly the dumbest conspiracy theory of all time. And Democrats having to make made the

01:54:50.820 choice to elevate that as the way to resist Trump in his first term, they're still paying the price

01:54:55.840 and they should not feign outrage now or claim outrage now when there's demands for accountability,

01:55:01.120 because a lot more people than Trump were hurt. You know, there were a lot of consequences. And so

01:55:06.480 we do need these answers at the very minimum. These declassifications by Tulsi Gabbard are very

01:55:11.400 important. It should have happened a long time ago, but it speaks to the entrenched power of the

01:55:14.980 national security state that this couldn't get out during Trump's first term because people around

01:55:18.640 Trump didn't want to release because they didn't want to embarrass the CIA. But now, thankfully,

01:55:22.660 we have different people who feel differently and are getting the truth out to the public.

01:55:27.360 I want to mention before we go, this Susan Miller. Have you seen her? She's sort of surfacing

01:55:34.240 around this whole thing. And Susan Miller is a retired CIA spy who says she led the team that helped

01:55:41.920 draft that controversial 2016 US intelligence community assessment on Russian election meddling.

01:55:47.780 I think the one that ultimately hit in 2017, in January 2017. She says that she led that team.

01:55:54.800 Well, it comes out now, just the news is Jerry Dunleavy reporting here, that she's a bit of a

01:56:01.540 partisan hack. She has called Donald Trump a dictator. She's called MAGA supporters Nazis. And she insists

01:56:10.240 that the now discredited Steele dossier, quote, might be true. Oh, is that all? I'm not shocked,

01:56:18.840 but it is very interesting to get a closer look at the real feelings of the people who were behind

01:56:25.840 that ultimate assessment, Aaron.

01:56:28.200 What you had here and all these intelligence officials is a convergence of contempt for

01:56:32.920 average voters who don't vote for the candidate they prefer, which was Hillary Clinton. We saw that

01:56:37.200 with Peter Strzok and Lisa Page making fun of MAGA voters who go to Walmart, you know, just making

01:56:41.880 fun of people. James Clapper, he talked about how, in his view, Russians are genetically predisposed to

01:56:49.980 deceit. So he holds a bigoted view towards Russians. And he said, you know, I'm a cold warrior. And also,

01:56:54.700 he has a record, as I talked about earlier in the main interview, that in his book, he admitted to

01:56:59.280 fabricating intelligence for the Iraq WMD hoax. So you have a convergence of people who have contempt

01:57:05.060 for average voters, the entitlement to believe that they can meddle in an election, and a real

01:57:10.060 path, you know, a real just hatred of Russia and a real aversion to talk about cooperation with

01:57:14.560 Russia. It all converged here into this massive scam. And I'm not surprised at all to learn that

01:57:19.200 yet one more official was afflicted by this. And yeah, so partisan hackery is a recurring theme

01:57:24.480 throughout this. I mean, Peter Strzok, there's that text message where he tells Lisa Page, yeah,

01:57:28.040 don't worry, we're going to stop Trump. And basically, the Russian investigation is an

01:57:32.260 is an insurance policy against him. And for some reason, for some reason, we're supposed to take

01:57:37.020 these people seriously and take their investigation seriously. When she, she, let me just give you one

01:57:42.220 on this, Susan Miller. So they, to their credit, the folks at Just the News reached out to her,

01:57:47.380 and her response was long, but I'll give you part of it. First, she says, your comments are mean

01:57:52.040 spirited and uninformed. She doesn't like that. And by the way, their request for comment was so

01:57:57.340 straightforward. They actually weren't mean spirited at all. She didn't like it. Then she

01:58:02.120 tried to claim that I was originally pro-Trump and a solid Republican since I could start voting.

01:58:07.220 I even voted for him in his first election, which would have been months before that intelligence

01:58:13.400 community assessment, so close in time. And then she goes off about how our constitution limits the

01:58:19.060 president to two terms. Trump is already talking about a third. I refuse to put the dossier in our

01:58:24.060 report as it could not be corroborated. Sorry to ruin your view of me as a left-wing Republican hater.

01:58:28.900 And then she goes on how she was out of overseas. I don't know. I, all I know is what she's saying

01:58:35.900 literally still to almost this day, July 17th, she gave an interview to Times Radio and here's

01:58:42.920 what she said, Sot 45. Have you seen or heard any information which seems to you credible evidence

01:58:51.260 that the president might be a Kremlin asset? Direct question. What do you say to that?

01:58:57.540 I say I have seen some things. I don't, I'm still working out whether or not it is true, but yes,

01:59:10.860 there has been some information that's out there that's been on the web and some other things like

01:59:14.900 that, that make it look like he could be. Oh. Okay. And you can't share details of what you're referring

01:59:21.500 to there? Uh, no, there was some, uh, there was some, uh, posting, I want to say a month or two ago,

01:59:31.020 um, that made it sound like, um, there, there might be something there.

01:59:37.960 This is what we're dealing with Aaron.

01:59:39.700 It's so embarrassing. It's just so embarrassing. This has been the norm. You're allowed to go

01:59:44.220 on TV and accuse someone of being a Kremlin asset, the president of the United States of being a

01:59:48.940 Kremlin asset and not present anything to back it up. And when even given the minimal challenge of

01:59:54.340 saying something, she can't offer anything. You know, Adam Schiff kept saying he had seen secret

01:59:58.280 evidence of Trump, Russia collusion, which he wasn't allowed to divulge. And he went on, uh,

02:00:03.180 establishment networks and kept saying that. And the only time I've ever seen him subjected to

02:00:06.840 actual real journalistic scrutiny was when he went on the view and a conservative guest co-host

02:00:12.580 actually challenged him on this and destroyed it because this was the first time that Adam Schiff

02:00:17.180 had actually been challenged to, you know, substantiate his allegation that Trump was committing

02:00:21.580 treason, including with Russia. And that's the norm here. It's just like, this was abetted by a media

02:00:25.640 class that let people go on TV and say the most insane things, launch the most wild accusations.

02:00:31.520 And this was treated as, as normal. And so for people who are tired of the story, uh, cause it's

02:00:36.580 been going on now for nearly nine years, uh, it's understandable, but it's not going away because

02:00:41.860 this was a, this is a massive scandal. A president is campaign were framed as being agents of a foreign

02:00:46.620 power. There was so much to see to, uh, advance this scam. And amazingly, we're still even learning

02:00:54.100 details of it so many years later. That conservative, uh, person was Morgan Ortegas

02:00:59.520 who did a great job and was never invited back again. Um, Aaron, what a pleasure. Thank you for

02:01:07.580 being so clear and, uh, so well-informed on this has been a great service to our audience. I appreciate

02:01:11.840 it. Thanks for having me. Yeah. We'll talk again. Uh, coming up tomorrow, our pal Walter Kern is here

02:01:17.680 and also, and you'll figure out why, um, the girlfriend of Kash Patel wanted to come on.

02:01:26.140 You'll find out why. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - July 29, 2025

Who Was NYC Shooter Target, and New Reporting on Russiagate Hoax Collusion, with Buck Sexton and Aaron Mate

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