Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - Lawless Lawfare and the Meme Wars. Interviews with Alex Swoyer & Doug Mackey | TRIGGERED Ep.262

00:08:00.000 out my news app mxm news like mike xray mike mxm news where you can get the mainstream news without the mainstream bias and of course don't forget about our brave sponsors for having the guts to support this kind of show be sure to check out the birch gold group we are weeks away from what's been dubbed as the rio reset the greatest threat to the u.s global dominance in over 80 years on july 6th bricks nations are expected to unveil their plan to

00:08:30.000 circumvent the u.s so how can you protect your ira or 401k for the future do it with gold from the birch gold grouped and diversify your portfolio remember guys it's about educating yourself and learning more you can do that with a free info kit on tax sheltered gold and ira's by texting don jr d-o-n-j-r to the number 989898 arm yourself with all the info you need make sure just

00:09:00.000 text Don Jr., D-O-N-J-A-R, text it to the number 989898 and claim your free information kit on gold.

00:09:08.000 Guys, joining me now, reporter from the Washington Times and author of the new book, Lawless Lawfare, Alex Sawyer.

00:09:18.000 How are you, Alex?

00:09:19.000 Hey, good.

00:09:20.000 I'm great.

00:09:20.000 Thank you for having me.

00:09:22.000 It's my pleasure.

00:09:23.000 So your book is on a topic that we're really all too familiar with.

00:09:30.000 Yeah.

00:09:30.000 And then some, I got a lot of firsthand experience.

00:09:33.000 What made you want to put together, you know, a timeline of the lawfare and what readers, what are they going to take away from it?

00:09:41.000 Yeah.

00:09:42.000 So I'm a lawyer and a reporter.

00:09:44.000 So having gone to journalism school and law school, when I was covering the 2024 election, I was really troubled with what I was seeing.

00:09:51.000 And it wasn't just me.

00:09:53.000 I have a little kind of group chat with some of my friends from law school.

00:09:56.000 We're all lawyers across the country.

00:09:58.000 And every time there was like a new lawsuit announced against your father or one of his allies, our Trump supporters, we would all just kind of get in our chat and talk about it, share the complaint and just really think like, this is just so far fetched.

00:10:12.000 These cases, the charges, we were extremely troubled by what we were seeing happening to the courts.

00:10:17.000 And I thought that that needed to be laid out for the American public.

00:10:20.000 Really, I make the argument that the lawfare started with Russia, the special counsel investigation, then they kind of snowballed into impeachment.

00:10:30.000 And then from impeachment, we got to indictments.

00:10:33.000 And I think it's just very concerning that unfortunately, I worry that that the lawfare might be the new Democrats norm.

00:10:41.000 Yeah, it certainly seems like that's the case.

00:10:43.000 I mean, the full title of the book is Lawless Lawfare, Tipping the Scales of Justice to Get Trump and Destroy MAGA.

00:10:50.000 But in the end, lawfare backfired big time and actually made MAGA stronger.

00:10:56.000 I mean, I think to your point, right, it wasn't just you guys having that conversation that this seems insane.

00:11:02.000 It doesn't really check out with anything I've ever actually seen.

00:11:04.000 Exactly right.

00:11:05.000 Yeah.

00:11:06.000 So on that key point, I talked to a pollster in the book, Robert Haley.

00:11:09.000 And I was like, you know, what a vote when you were out there talking to voters during the 2024 election.

00:11:14.000 Like, how did this play?

00:11:15.000 And he was like, they were just so lost.

00:11:18.000 And I think it actually motivated voters to come support Trump even more because they saw what was happening with the judicial system.

00:11:25.000 And they're like, this is so un-American. 0.79

00:11:26.000 For example, the hush money trial up in New York, they were like, don't celebrities just pay hush money?

00:11:32.000 Like, isn't that like what part of like, how is that a crime?

00:11:35.000 And then, you know, everything going on with the special counsel investigation with Jack Smith, the classified documents case specifically, they were like, well, we see this happening with like Joe Biden, with Hillary Clinton and her use of the private email server.

00:11:49.000 So like, why is it that Donald Trump is the one that's being indicted and, you know, having to go in and out of courtrooms while he's trying to campaign?

00:11:57.000 It was extremely troubling.

00:11:59.000 So yeah, it did not sit well with the voters.

00:12:01.000 Obviously, the election results show that.

00:12:03.000 It's just, you know, we hope that the Democrats learned their lesson.

00:12:06.000 Yeah, I think the mugshot was probably the greatest campaign poster in the history of American politics, which is sort of hard to believe.

00:12:13.000 Again, it keeps backfiring.

00:12:15.000 It was that.

00:12:16.000 I think Laura Trump actually in the book called it Elvis Presley level, which I think that's like totally accurate. 0.73

00:12:22.000 The other image I think that embodies the 2024 election was your father, like after being shot coming up with his fist in the air.

00:12:29.000 I mean, you know, those are the two images people

00:12:32.000 think of that's interesting in the sense that that that sort of happened really for the same thing right the lawfare uh so much of it was a disinformation campaign right they created this hysteria trump is literally the greatest threat to democracy ever or the rule of law now is what we're hearing the rule of law democracy you know you know any kind of societal norms i mean you know and when you say that loud enough and you say that often enough you know the derange crazy is like oh my God, there must be some truth to this.

00:13:01.000 I mean, like everything else, that didn't matter, but it, uh, no question that sort of motivated someone to do literally tried to assassinate him, not once, but twice.

00:13:09.000 Absolutely.

00:13:10.000 And like to your point, on if you say something enough and over and over again, I think of Adam Schiff.

00:13:15.000 I covered Capitol Hill for 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.

00:13:20.000 And I just remember having to go outside of closed door meetings where he was promising he comes out and he's like, oh yeah, there's evidence of Russia collusion.

00:13:29.000 Like, just wait, we have it.

00:13:30.000 And then, you know, what is it?

00:13:32.000 Almost a decade later, still waiting.

00:13:34.000 And I think that was one of the most troubling aspects that I saw from the get-go happening to your father.

00:13:39.000 And then it just, obviously, it just, you know, grew from, it mushroomed from there.

00:13:43.000 Yeah, I've been waiting for a while since I was the recipient of a lot of the shift IR.

00:13:47.000 I was like, if you had it, why wouldn't you release it by now?

00:13:49.000 You know, exactly.

00:13:50.000 Yeah.

00:13:51.000 And like now, finally, you know, with DNI Gabbert coming out with what she did this week, I think that's fantastic that they're getting to the bottom of that.

00:13:58.000 This was a created narrative by President Obama and his high-level intel chiefs.

00:14:04.000 And unfortunately, you know, it cost the American taxpayer, what, like $40 million of a special counsel probe that was really a waste of time and money.

00:14:14.000 Well, to me, it was really what they prevented them from being able to do.

00:14:17.000 I mean, obviously they had a lot of effective wins in the first term.

00:14:19.000 I think we'll have a lot more this time because they understand the system better.

00:14:22.000 But so much of that time, you know, energy, the brain suck, the, you know, I think that costs the American people probably a lot more.

00:14:31.000 It's just sort of hard to enumerate it.

00:14:34.000 Yeah, you're exactly right.

00:14:35.000 So the first chapter of the book, I went with the cost of law fair, and that's exactly what I get into.

00:14:41.000 Steve Bannon actually said that their goal was to prevent that American first agenda from being implemented.

00:14:47.000 And to a large part, everybody was focused on Russia.

00:14:50.000 And so he's like, so I guess in part, they succeeded.

00:14:53.000 And it was unfortunate.

00:14:54.000 I talked to General Michael Flynn, and he was one of the biggest casualties of that whole Russia narrative.

00:14:59.000 He, you know, with his phone, obviously we're finding out now, like, was there even a reason?

00:15:04.000 There was no reason for the sanctions.

00:15:05.000 And that's what led to the phone call that then like, you know, poured fuel on this fire, this Russia fire.

00:15:10.000 And he says, you know, somebody like him with his military background, they're usually retired.

00:15:16.000 They're sitting on a board, making millions.

00:15:17.000 He's like, I'm having to scratch out a living basically because of the defamation that happened to him and the way that he just became kind of like the image and the face of the Russia investigation when it first started under Mueller.

00:15:29.000 Very, very unfortunate.

00:15:31.000 And I know, like, I talked a little bit about, you know, with you and you said what you experienced.

00:15:36.000 Like Laura Trump also said that everybody in the family, it was so raw.

00:15:39.000 She said, you know, like even the idea of getting a mortgage, like it was just everything.

00:15:45.000 Yeah.

00:15:45.000 It was, yeah, no, the debanking, the deinsurance, the, the, the, everything, it was, uh, it was rough.

00:15:51.000 But I guess, you know, when I look back, it's sort of, you needed almost those four years, though, for us, created a whole new level of fighter, created, you know, just people that, hey, you know, I'd say there were, you know, two day ones, right?

00:16:03.000 Where were you in 16 and then where were you on January 7th?

00:16:06.000 And so, you know, now for the first time, we actually have sort of like a MAGA bench that we didn't have.

00:16:11.000 And it's like, I'm not so concerned or not as concerned, because they will try to watch sort of the today's Republican Party, which is really an America first MAGA party, you know, revert back to that old school neocon kind of way.

00:16:25.000 So, you know, I think that was really important.

00:16:26.000 You actually needed all of that stuff to happen to really codify and solidify, you know, so much of what our party now stands for.

00:16:33.000 Yeah.

00:16:34.000 And I think it really exposed that how deep the deep state actually is.

00:16:38.000 You know, the fact that it's not just, I think people think of it like, oh, you know, politicians, Congress, the executive branch, maybe.

00:16:46.000 But now with this law affair, it's the judiciary has become part of that.

00:16:52.000 And that's what's extremely concerning.

00:16:54.000 You know, as a lawyer, I hate that I can like look at a case and see that it has political leanings, go and see which judge is appointed to the case right after the complaint is filed and have an idea of like how the outcomes are going to go.

00:17:08.000 What's the judge going to do based on who appointed that judge?

00:17:11.000 It should not be like that.

00:17:13.000 That's not, you know, lady justice is supposed to be blind. 1.00

00:17:15.000 And that's one of the things that really, really bothered me with how your father was treated as a defendant.

00:17:20.000 If anyone in America should be able to speak freely, it should be a defendant, no matter the last name, and facing, you know, the potential of having to go behind bars.

00:17:32.000 And I did some math after like the four indictments came down.

00:17:36.000 I think your father had to do at least like 90 campaign rallies while under criminal court gag orders.

00:17:42.000 And that, that really does not sit there well with me.

00:17:45.000 Anyone who treasures the First Amendment, anyone who treasures the fact that we have political speech in our country and the idea of free, you know, the freedom to debate should be extremely disheartened by that.

00:17:56.000 That precedent should have never been, you know, set.

00:17:59.000 And where was the media?

00:18:01.000 They should have been challenging that.

00:18:02.000 Like looking back, the Supreme Court precedent on gag orders, media is usually the one fighting for access.

00:18:08.000 And where were they?

00:18:09.000 I think there was one New York blogger I found that actually filed a lawsuit to try to get the gag order lifted on your father in New York.

00:18:17.000 And it's just, it was incredibly unfortunate.

00:18:20.000 So was there anything interesting that you found when you were researching the book that may not have been common knowledge on just how far the Democrat Party was willing to go to destroy my father and the country and the movement?

00:18:33.000 Yeah, I mean, so I kind of start with the cost of law there and then Russia.

00:18:36.000 I go through each of the impeachments.

00:18:37.000 I go through, I mean, there's so many lawsuits.

00:18:39.000 I forget about the whole battle trying to get his name off the ballot.

00:18:43.000 I mean, it's like people are like, oh, yeah, I forgot about that one.

00:18:45.000 I was like, yeah, I was in the Supreme Court for that too.

00:18:48.000 One of the things I think is super interesting now that Russia is back in the news this week was I have a career, an Intel career.

00:18:55.000 It's his name is John Mills.

00:18:56.000 He went on the record with me in the book.

00:18:59.000 And in the Russia chapter, he said, you know, I worked under the Obama administration.

00:19:03.000 I'm, you know, I was apolitical.

00:19:05.000 But no, no matter what meeting I started going into in 2015, 2016, all of a sudden, Russia was the topic.

00:19:14.000 And he said, we kind of, some of us like looked at each other like, this is literally out of nowhere.

00:19:19.000 So it wasn't like, you know, it's just kind of now that some of the stuff that Tulsi Gabbard's releasing, it's like, this is exactly what I have in the book, what he told me.

00:19:29.000 And it's just head Scratching.

00:19:31.000 One of the other things I did some research on, and I think is a really good place for people to go look, is the Media Research Center followed some of the coverage of the law fair and the cases against your father.

00:19:43.000 And it's just so, you know, we all know the legacy media, like it just, it's pretty much dead.

00:19:49.000 But it's just when you look at what they did, it's wild.

00:19:53.000 So one of the reports, one of my favorite things to share that's in the book is the coverage of the Fonnie Willis case down in Georgia.

00:20:01.000 ABC and CBS did 99 stories in April of 2024 on that case.

00:20:07.000 Never once mentioned that Fonnie Willis, the district attorney, was a Democrat, prosecuting, of course, the leading Republican presidential candidate.

00:20:15.000 No one even decided like, oh, we should probably mention she's a Democrat. 1.00

00:20:18.000 And here's the kicker.

00:20:19.000 She was running for reelection.

00:20:21.000 So like, you would think that's also an important aspect of a story.

00:20:25.000 So just complete journalistic malpractice.

00:20:28.000 But, you know, I think that sometimes that you asked about Democrats, that goes hand in hand with the media.

00:20:33.000 Well, you have that obviously in New York with all the people doing it.

00:20:36.000 And then you have the judges that were all hand-selected.

00:20:38.000 And it was always interesting that in New York, it was, you know, the same judge got us, got Steve Bannon, got, yeah, like, I'm like, how is it?

00:20:45.000 It's supposed to be a random lottery. 0.98

00:20:46.000 And yet, like, literally every time, everyone that Muzmaga end up with the same scumbag. 1.00

00:20:52.000 Like, it, yeah, I guess it shouldn't shock us, but it was happening. 0.94

00:20:56.000 I mean, I guess it's also interesting that really the same cast of villains who launched all of the law fare are some of the ones that are really implicated in a lot of these scandals, like Russia Gate and many others.

00:21:08.000 And you see the stuff going on with shift these days I keep reading about.

00:21:11.000 I mean, shift, homie, Letitia James, of course, right? 1.00

00:21:15.000 Those that live in glass houses.

00:21:17.000 That's the mortgage fraud fun, you know.

00:21:21.000 But I think it's all going to come out.

00:21:23.000 And that's one of the things I ask about is like, what can be done to stop this?

00:21:27.000 And some people say they want public hearings.

00:21:29.000 They want it to be all out in the open, true transparency for the American people.

00:21:33.000 Others say that they want to see indictments.

00:21:35.000 And it looks like that could potentially happen with what we had released this week in terms of Clapper, Comey, and so forth.

00:21:43.000 One of the interesting suggestions I had, I spoke to Governor Rod Logojevich for the book, and he said he was hoping maybe President Trump would have a commission that he could make bipartisan appointments to that could study this and look at ways to solve our courts from being abused and basically politics taking over the courtroom so this doesn't happen again in the future to somebody.

00:22:04.000 Jim Jordan also spoke to me, leading the Judiciary Committee in the House.

00:22:08.000 He had a couple interesting suggestions.

00:22:10.000 So one, he said that there was legislation they were looking at about if someone like your father or politician were to be indicted in state court, them having that ability to transfer it to federal court where there's a little bit more of, you know, a fair chance.

00:22:25.000 And I think that would be very smart.

00:22:26.000 You get out of those deep blue states or even vice versa if it was to happen to Democrats deep red.

00:22:32.000 You could go to a more fair territory.

00:22:33.000 Like I always think about your, the hush money trial.

00:22:36.000 If that happened right outside of Manhattan in Purple County, you would have had a different result or a different judge would have helped too.

00:22:43.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:22:44.000 Yeah.

00:22:45.000 So those were some interesting suggestions.

00:22:47.000 I asked him if he was going to subpoena Jack Smith.

00:22:50.000 I think a lot of the American people would like to see a hearing where Jack Smith has to answer some questions.

00:22:55.000 And he left the door open.

00:22:57.000 Okay, well, that's good.

00:22:58.000 I mean, as a reporter, we've been talking sort of with the lawyer hat on, but as a reporter, what have you taken away from the events that you've covered over the last decade now and beyond?

00:23:08.000 What's going on in the media?

00:23:10.000 And is that even reversible at this point?

00:23:13.000 So, I mean, the media is such an interesting industry to be in because I think I'm in it as its kind of implosion is happening, right?

00:23:22.000 Like there's just a change in how people get their news.

00:23:25.000 And I think it's for the better going to social media for truth rather than necessarily like only having a certain amount of networks that they can zone into and kind of being fed a certain narrative.

00:23:37.000 From the book, I actually share an interesting story.

00:23:41.000 I was in Judge Chutkin's courtroom and it was right after the superseding indictment came down.

00:23:47.000 So your father had won the Supreme Court case on presidential immunity.

00:23:51.000 Also, there was an obstruction charge that had been kind of kicked off by the Supreme Court with the January 6th defendant that could impact Jack Smith's indictment.

00:24:00.000 And so I was like looking and like, wow, he like really didn't, you know, reshape this indictment like after you just kind of suffer some losses at the Supreme Court like you might want to.

00:24:08.000 And I had a little conversation with the reporter next to me who was an NBC reporter.

00:24:12.000 And I was like, yeah, I just think that's like a huge mistake, you know, strategically as a lawyer.

00:24:17.000 And he's like, oh no, like that ruling was just so narrow and went on and on.

00:24:22.000 And I'm like, what are you talking about?

00:24:23.000 This is not a narrow ruling.

00:24:25.000 Like this is literally like the Supreme Court telling the prosecution that like you can't, this, you don't have enough evidence to bring this type of charge against, you know, not only your father, but all the other January 6th, 300 or so defendants they were trying to bring that one charge against.

00:24:39.000 Like you, you have to drop it. 0.98

00:24:41.000 And I'm like, are they just so dumb they don't understand? 0.99

00:24:46.000 Or is this just all a narrative that they're trying to push? 1.00

00:24:50.000 You know?

00:24:51.000 And it was in that same hearing, actually, it was September, when the next step, typically in the process, is for a defendant to have a chance to file a motion to dismiss.

00:25:02.000 And so, of course, we're like two months ahead of the election, a little under, I think.

00:25:07.000 And that would have been time, you know, like a couple weeks here for this party to file, a couple weeks.

00:25:12.000 And Judge Chucken was like, you know, Owen Obama pointy.

00:25:16.000 Yes, I recognize that usually the next course of action would be for the defendants' lawyers to be able to file their say, but we're not going to do it like that.

00:25:25.000 And so that's when she went ahead and basically gave the green light to Jack Smith's team to file his oversize motion, which I'm sure you guys recall dropped like October, sometime in October, right?

00:25:38.000 Like weeks before the election.

00:25:39.000 And it was obvious they were just trying to get this out there in the public right before people went to the polls.

00:25:45.000 And it's just so political.

00:25:47.000 Like she said, I remember the quote, and I kept it in my story.

00:25:50.000 It was something to the effect of, I'm aware there's an election and I don't care.

00:25:53.000 And it's like, well, if actions speak louder than words, you obviously care.

00:25:58.000 Without question.

00:25:59.000 I mean, as you cover Washington today, how would you sum up the state of the Democrat Party?

00:26:04.000 I mean, is there a coherent agenda or is it just a hodgepodge of people who hate all things Trump?

00:26:10.000 You know, what effect did the law fair have on how they plan on conducting themselves?

00:26:16.000 And perhaps what did it have on common sense Americans?

00:26:20.000 Well, okay, so twofold with that.

00:26:22.000 One, I remember after the Iran strikes, there was like all this kind of buzz or push from impeachment for impeachment, right?

00:26:28.000 Like that was like some talk from like some of the lower level Democrats that was tamped down pretty fast.

00:26:33.000 So I'm thought, I thought maybe, you know, maybe they saw the law fare and they kind of learned a little bit.

00:26:38.000 Maybe that might be like a positive.

00:26:41.000 The other part that I think is just extremely terrifying is that because the Democratic Party is in such disarray and don't really have a strategy or a leader, you have Mandani in New York City coming to Washington, D.C. and having breakfast with some of like, you know, your most top Democrats and like recruiting them, trying to get them to support him.

00:27:06.000 And he literally wants to take away private housing.

00:27:09.000 I mean, like, I don't know very many Americans that would say there's any common sense to that.

00:27:14.000 Nobody even likes to go to the DMV.

00:27:15.000 Who wants to have a government-run grocery store, right? 1.00

00:27:19.000 It makes zero sense.

00:27:20.000 Yeah, as someone who has a mother that escaped communism and spent some of my childhood summers in a communist nation, I can assure you it's not going to be good.

00:27:29.000 But I mean, that's the point.

00:27:30.000 It doesn't seem to matter to these people.

00:27:32.000 They don't seem to care or to notice or, you know, it's going to work this time.

00:27:37.000 I mean, I don't get it.

00:27:39.000 Yeah, I don't get it either.

00:27:40.000 I think it's one of those things where you get what you vote for.

00:27:45.000 You know, unfortunately, I hope that New York doesn't go that way.

00:27:48.000 I guess time will tell.

00:27:50.000 It could be like an epicenter for the country to look at and notice, well, that's definitely what we don't want.

00:27:55.000 And then maybe it benefits Republicans in the midterms and so forth.

00:27:59.000 I kind of think of something like California with Governor Newsom.

00:28:03.000 You know, look at what your father was able to do with California from 2020 to 2024.

00:28:10.000 I mean, people are waking up and seeing the light.

00:28:13.000 When they have to live under crazy policies, there is going to be change.

00:28:16.000 They're going to vote for it.

00:28:17.000 They're going to have to.

00:28:18.000 Well, Alex, where do you think this story goes from here and what can we expect from everyone involved?

00:28:25.000 Yeah, so I hope, I think that there is going to be more and more transparency for the American public.

00:28:31.000 They're going to be able to see what the Obama administration did to your father.

00:28:35.000 I think that there's also going to be transparency out of the Biden DOJ.

00:28:40.000 I think it would be wonderful to, I'm not like a huge fan of special counsels.

00:28:43.000 I think they waste money.

00:28:45.000 But I think that, you know, there's something to be said about looking at kind of how all of this came to be, and especially the use of the auto pin with the whole memory issue and like where do we draw the line there?

00:28:55.000 Because there's some people I'm sure that received pardons that should be held to account for what happened.

00:28:59.000 Yeah, like I can't imagine that even a Joe Biden, when he was in his right mind, pardoning some of the rapists and the murders.

00:29:05.000 I'm like, I just don't like, who's pardoning those people?

00:29:08.000 Like, it would just seemingly be political suicide unless you're just, you know, like a radical Democrat activist and it's like, okay, then maybe it makes sense.

00:29:15.000 And the other thing I think, too, is like, you know, people are like, should we live in the past and keep investigating the past?

00:29:22.000 Or should we do we move forward and just forget?

00:29:24.000 I don't think you can.

00:29:25.000 The American people want answers.

00:29:26.000 They want to know what happened because they don't want it to happen again.

00:29:30.000 And people think, oh, like the welfare impacted President Trump, some of his top-level allies, but it touched everyday supporters.

00:29:38.000 I talked to a couple in Texas in the book.

00:29:40.000 They counter-protested Biden's campaign bus, and they ended up having big law and Democrats come after them under the Ku Klux Klan Act, saying that they violated the right to vote.

00:29:50.000 They had to go to trial.

00:29:52.000 They had to, obviously the First Amendment was their defense, but they won.

00:29:57.000 It's still that they chose to Austin, Texas, right?

00:30:00.000 Like the most liberal area you can bring the case.

00:30:03.000 But the point is, is it cost this like little couple, you know, in Texas like $300 plus thousand dollars to be able to defend their right to counter protest Biden's campaign bus, like public streets, right?

00:30:16.000 It's just terrible.

00:30:17.000 And I think the more that people can read about what happened, it's a lesson learned not to repeat history.

00:30:23.000 Well, Alex, thank you very much.

00:30:24.000 Really appreciate it.

00:30:25.000 Alex Sawyer, thank you for being here.

00:30:27.000 Everyone, check out the book Lawless Lawfair.

00:30:30.000 Hopefully we don't have to do a sequel to it, but I imagine we got three more years left, so I imagine it's coming one way or the other.

00:30:37.000 But like, you know, it is what it is.

00:30:38.000 We're used to it at this point, but hopefully not, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

00:30:42.000 Thank you so much for having me.

00:30:44.000 I appreciate it.

00:30:45.000 And guys, coming up, another victim of Lawfare, Douglas Mackey.

00:30:50.000 You may know him as Ricky Vaughn.

00:30:52.000 Remember to check out Burna to protect yourself in a time of crisis.

00:30:56.000 Burna's Let Liesl launchers are equipped with tear gas and kinetic ammunition.

00:31:00.000 They're designed to incapacitate an attacker for up to 40 minutes.

00:31:03.000 And Burna is excited to introduce an all-new Compact launcher.

00:31:08.000 It's the same size as a smartphone, allowing you to conceal carry everywhere comfortably and with confidence.

00:31:14.000 Over 80% of the components of the Compact Launcher are sourced in the United States, and their pistols are hand-assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

00:31:23.000 Burna is legal in all 50 states, requires no background checks, and can be shipped directly to your door.

00:31:29.000 Try before you buy.

00:31:31.000 Visit Burna Byrna.com and find a Burna dealer partner near you.

00:31:38.000 That's BYRNA.com.

00:31:40.000 Check it out, guys.

00:31:43.000 Guys, joining me now, Douglas Mackey and his attorney, James Burham.

00:31:49.000 Guys, I guess a lot of people don't necessarily know the backstory of this.

00:31:53.000 I was following Doug back when he was Ricky Vaughn on Twitter in 2016.

00:31:57.000 It was sort of one of the epic sort of the OG MAGA Twitter accounts.

00:32:04.000 Just awesome stuff.

00:32:05.000 So that's the backstory.

00:32:08.000 And then you have the lawfare about it.

00:32:09.000 So thank you guys both for being here.

00:32:11.000 But Doug, I'll start with you.

00:32:12.000 I mean, can you give the audience just a quick refresher on how the Biden DOJ targeted you and then some of the big news you got a few weeks ago?

00:32:22.000 Yeah, thank you, Don.

00:32:23.000 Thanks for having me.

00:32:24.000 So in 2016, I posted a meme, like I said, I was Ricky Vaughn.

00:32:29.000 It was humorous.

00:32:30.000 It said, Hillary Clinton voters skip the line, stay home.

00:32:33.000 Text your vote for Hillary Clinton to 59925.

00:32:38.000 And sort of my Twitter account at the time got suspended, and this got some media attention, but I kind of forgot about it.

00:32:48.000 Four years later, seven days after Joe Biden was inaugurated, the FBI came knocking on my door.

00:32:54.000 They indicted me over this meme saying that I was part of a grand conspiracy to steal votes.

00:33:01.000 And this dragged on.

00:33:03.000 I was tried and convicted in 2023.

00:33:06.000 And we appealed the case.

00:33:08.000 One of the first sort of minor victories we won was when I won appeal bond.

00:33:16.000 So the judge wanted me to report to prison, and we had to appeal just to get a bond to stay out of prison for the duration of the appeal.

00:33:25.000 We got the great news roughly two weeks ago that the court came down with a unanimous decision on appeal of a 3-0 judgment of acquittal.

00:33:35.000 They didn't just order the case dismissed or remanded for a new trial.

00:33:40.000 They actually ordered the judge to enter a judgment of acquittal saying that there was no evidence, there was insufficient evidence that I was part of any grand conspiracy to steal anybody's vote.

00:33:51.000 Yeah.

00:33:52.000 And if I remember correctly, I mean, there were left-wing Twitter accounts at the time doing the same thing to Trump voters, like almost verbatim.

00:34:00.000 Like literally, they took your meme and like made it about Trump and like all nothing ever happened to those guys, right?

00:34:06.000 It wasn't like this was a general crackdown.

00:34:07.000 I mean, this just targeted you.

00:34:09.000 You are a provocative Twitter account.

00:34:13.000 Again, like I said, definitely one of the funniest that I had seen in that cycle.

00:34:18.000 That was before it was, I mean, for you, it was just fun, right?

00:34:22.000 That was before it became sort of a bit of an industry.

00:34:25.000 Exactly.

00:34:26.000 We were having fun.

00:34:27.000 We were trying to support and promote President Trump and get him elected.

00:34:31.000 There was no stealing of anybody's vote.

00:34:34.000 So, yeah, you're right.

00:34:36.000 A liberal comedian named Christina Wong put out a video that said the same thing.

00:34:40.000 And this is an age-old joke that people make.

00:34:42.000 You know, Democrats vote on Wednesday, Republicans vote on Tuesday.

00:34:46.000 And I think Jimmy Kimmel did something with this in the 2020 cycle, if I'm not mistaken.

00:34:51.000 Similar type of joke on national television.

00:34:54.000 Yeah.

00:34:54.000 So, James, from a legal perspective, where do you go from here?

00:34:57.000 I mean, this has been now, you know, four years.

00:35:00.000 I assume, you know, a lot of money.

00:35:03.000 You know, what's the next chapter in this story for you guys?

00:35:06.000 Yeah, look, so it's all about getting justice for Doug.

00:35:08.000 And I mean, just to lay out how starkly the timeline of his case is, it really, I mean, I don't need to tell you about Lawfare, obviously, and what you guys have had to go through.

00:35:16.000 But I mean, we're talking about memes before the election.

00:35:19.000 They charged Doug with the crime two days after Biden was inaugurated.

00:35:22.000 Two days.

00:35:23.000 I mean, it was literally like they were waiting until the Biden DOJ came in to bring this thing.

00:35:27.000 So now we have to get justice for Doug.

00:35:29.000 Oh, and one other detail that I think you'll like.

00:35:32.000 Two of the main lawyers that did Doug's appeal, that won the case for him in the Second Circuit, now work for your father at the Justice Department.

00:35:38.000 So Yakov Roth and Harry Graver are both politicals in the current Justice Department.

00:35:42.000 So we've actually brought the good guys inside the house again as we try to restore order with A.G. Bondi.

00:35:47.000 So what happens now?

00:35:48.000 There's a law called the Federal Tort Claims Act that says you can sue the government when they do bad things to you.

00:35:53.000 That includes what the government did to Doug here.

00:35:55.000 As soon as the acquittal is final after July 30th, we're going to file a claim with the Justice Department for a considerable amount of money to get Doug paid back for his legal fees and try to do whatever you can with money to make the man's life right again.

00:36:06.000 I mean, these guys destroyed his life for four and a half years, and that's going to require, I think, you know, that you really can never make somebody whole for something like that, but we're going to do the most we possibly can.

00:36:15.000 The second half of justice for Doug is holding accountable the people that did this to him.

00:36:19.000 So the first way to hold them accountable is make sure Doug's compensated.

00:36:22.000 The second way to hold him accountable is make sure that the people, the individuals, are held accountable.

00:36:26.000 And so we're looking at everything we can do.

00:36:28.000 We're looking at suing the prosecutors and the agents individually.

00:36:31.000 We're looking at misconduct complaints.

00:36:33.000 And we're also going to be engaging with A.G. Bondi's team and the rest of the DOJ folks on different things we can do to make sure that these folks that did this to Doug are never able to do this to anybody again and that people like them don't get ideas down the road if God forbid we ever don't control the Justice Department again.

00:36:49.000 Yeah, I mean, you know, when I'm listening, Hillary Clinton claiming that a guy posting a meme on Twitter in 16, like it was voter suppression.

00:36:58.000 It was a scheme.

00:36:59.000 Just like they claimed the Russians were hacking the election and Trump was working as an agent and all of this nonsense.

00:37:07.000 You know, Doug, when you look back at comments like that, how do you respond now?

00:37:13.000 I mean, especially, by the way, in lieu of what we found out, you know, over the last week about just how much they were actually conspiring to steal elections, just how much they were actively colluding to subvert the duly elected president of the United States.

00:37:28.000 Absolutely.

00:37:29.000 This just became, like you said, much more relevant.

00:37:32.000 Like you said, Hillary Clinton went on stage at some shindig that globalists go to and said that, oh, by the way, this guy was just convicted and he tried to steal the election.

00:37:42.000 Okay, go back to 2017.

00:37:45.000 Senator Amy Klobuchar blew this meme up and put it on the floor of the Senate saying, oh, this is Russia.

00:37:51.000 Look at this speech.

00:37:51.000 This is Russia.

00:37:52.000 This is part of the Russia conspiracy. 0.58

00:37:54.000 And we now know that one of the poor guy that they squeezed, the cooperating witness who was pled guilty to this crime that wasn't even a crime, they were interviewing him saying, are you loyal to the United States?

00:38:11.000 Are you working for Russia?

00:38:12.000 They actually believe that this meme came from Russia.

00:38:15.000 So this whole thing, Germany. 0.59

00:38:17.000 Do you think that, though?

00:38:18.000 Like, knowing what you know now, do you think that?

00:38:20.000 Or do you think, you know, they just didn't care?

00:38:23.000 And it was like, it was just a convenient, everything was Russia.

00:38:26.000 I mean, I was an agent of Russia.

00:38:27.000 Trump was an agent of Russia.

00:38:28.000 I guess he needed the money.

00:38:31.000 It never really made a lot of sense to us.

00:38:33.000 I think everyone, certainly who are sort of as sort of vocal as we were during that time and since, always knew it was BS, right?

00:38:41.000 Just like, of course, COVID came from the lab in Wuhan that studied the exact virus in question at ground zero of the outbreak of the virus.

00:38:48.000 But it didn't matter.

00:38:49.000 If you said that, even if it was the most obvious, even if it was obviously the most plausible solution, you were still canceled and crushed.

00:38:57.000 I don't know which would be worse that they actually believe this or if they were just cynically using it.

00:39:03.000 I don't know which would be worse. 1.00

00:39:04.000 Yeah, I'd almost be like, How did we have people that stupid if they actually believed it? 0.99

00:39:07.000 I mean, you know, at least the other way, you can be like, Okay, you know, sometimes, you know, I wish we played the game the way that they do because that would stop this nonsense. 0.99

00:39:14.000 But as long as they're going that hard and we're not, they're going to keep doing it.

00:39:18.000 Exactly.

00:39:19.000 That's what we need to do.

00:39:20.000 We need to push back here and not just let this, you know, bygones be bygones here.

00:39:25.000 And, you know, just on this witness that Doug was talking about, this guy microchip, I mean, one of the things that the Biden Justice Department did that the left is very good at is what I call law enforcement theater.

00:39:35.000 So they do things that's innuendo.

00:39:37.000 It's a lot of suggestion.

00:39:38.000 And so this guy, they had testify anonymously.

00:39:41.000 Okay, that's what you do when it's like El Chapo, okay, and you've got the secret witness from Sinaloa, okay?

00:39:46.000 Not when you're talking about Ricky Vaughn with the tweets about voting for Hillary Clinton with a text message.

00:39:51.000 Why do they do it?

00:39:52.000 Because it makes it look more sinister.

00:39:54.000 It makes it look like this is some big, nefarious MAGA plot that's there.

00:39:58.000 This guy's in jeopardy.

00:40:00.000 And all that stuff is ways that they make people who didn't do anything wrong, like Doug, look guiltier.

00:40:05.000 And it's the same thing with Russia.

00:40:06.000 And I'm glad that Tulsi Gabbard's there and is able to share all the stuff she has with that about us.

00:40:11.000 James, what motivates you to take on this fight, too?

00:40:16.000 What does accountability look like for the prosecutors who launched this witch hunt?

00:40:20.000 What does real justice look like?

00:40:21.000 I mean, is this disbarment?

00:40:23.000 Is it just fines, censure?

00:40:25.000 How does that work in legalese?

00:40:27.000 Yeah, so look, I mean, I've done my fair share of criminal defense work before, and I really get upset when the government overreaches.

00:40:33.000 I have never seen the government overreach like it did in Doug's case, where they literally tried to put him in prison for a meme.

00:40:39.000 I mean, we have a constitutional right to send memes.

00:40:41.000 This country was founded on memes.

00:40:43.000 When I first heard about it, and again, I'd followed Doug for years before.

00:40:49.000 I literally thought it was a joke.

00:40:50.000 I was like, I literally thought it was a meme.

00:40:53.000 I'm like, are you serious?

00:40:54.000 You're going after a Twitter account?

00:40:56.000 Like, it's.

00:40:57.000 Yeah, dude.

00:40:57.000 I mean, Thomas Paine was like a meme ster in the founding era.

00:41:00.000 Anyway, it's just crazy.

00:41:01.000 So that's why I wanted to get involved.

00:41:03.000 I knew Doug before when the case first launched, and I've talked to him for a long time.

00:41:06.000 So that's why I'm here.

00:41:08.000 And look, in terms of accountability, we need to follow the facts where they lead.

00:41:11.000 There's a lot about this case we don't know.

00:41:12.000 When you're a criminal defendant, you have very few tools to figure out what's going on on the government side.

00:41:18.000 I mean, as you know, as you guys have seen, because you had to deal with all this nonsense.

00:41:21.000 And so one of the things we're going to be doing is engaging with the Attorney General and Dag Blanche and soon-to-be associate AG Stanley Woodward and Ed Martin and all the other folks at DOJ to make sure that we actually figure out what happened here.

00:41:33.000 What was going on?

00:41:34.000 Why did they do it?

00:41:35.000 And what are all the different remedies we have to hold these people accountable?

00:41:38.000 But yeah, we're not going to stop at anything until we make sure that there is never another case like this again.

00:41:43.000 Ever.

00:41:44.000 Doug, what's your life been like during all of this?

00:41:48.000 I mean, how has it impacted your career, ambitions, your day-to-day life?

00:41:53.000 Can you still be a general in the meme wars?

00:41:56.000 You're like, you know what?

00:41:57.000 I'm just, I've had enough.

00:41:59.000 Well, that's how it was for a long time.

00:42:01.000 You know, I was I basically had to go radio silent on Twitter before the case and I couldn't do anything.

00:42:11.000 I mean, it was very difficult because, you know, I had my fiancé at the time and we had to eventually just say, hey, we're going to get married here because we can't wait forever for this case.

00:42:24.000 We got married right before.

00:42:26.000 And then we found out the trial, we got married in January 23.

00:42:29.000 We found out the trial was going to be in March.

00:42:32.000 The week of the trial, I found out that my wife was pregnant.

00:42:36.000 The October of that year, my wife had to be hospitalized.

00:42:42.000 It was a difficult pregnancy.

00:42:44.000 I had to jump on an airplane to go up and be sentenced in Brooklyn, New York.

00:42:50.000 As soon as I touched down on the ground, my wife called me and said, the doctor said we have to do an emergency C-section tonight at 8 p.m.

00:42:58.000 And obviously there was nothing I could do except go to the sentencing the next day and fly back the next day.

00:43:05.000 And my son was born.

00:43:06.000 And then we spent months in the NICU.

00:43:09.000 I can't go travel abroad overseas to visit my wife's family.

00:43:14.000 It's been extremely difficult.

00:43:16.000 Not to mention when the FBI comes and knocks on your door and people hear about this and it's on Rachel Maddow's show that night.

00:43:23.000 I mean, I wonder how she got the inside information there.

00:43:27.000 Then you can only imagine even your close friends and family are saying, what in the world did you do here?

00:43:33.000 Now, I'm fortunate that a lot of them, as they saw the facts of the case, they realized this was not a real case.

00:43:39.000 There was no crime.

00:43:40.000 And I didn't actually do anything wrong.

00:43:42.000 But it was extremely difficult, missed opportunities.

00:43:46.000 I missed friends' weddings.

00:43:48.000 The list goes on and on.

00:43:49.000 Very difficult personally.

00:43:51.000 And four and a half years of my life on pretrial supervision.

00:43:55.000 And they wanted two more years of probation after seven months of imprisonment.

00:43:59.000 So this, it just, it's, it, it's hard to even explain how this drags on and on and on.

00:44:06.000 And can I just underscore the fact that they arrested him is totally crazy.

00:44:11.000 Even if you take the rest of this at face value, which obviously you shouldn't, this is a nonviolent offender who obviously would self-report.

00:44:18.000 It's an awful lot like executing a forcible search warrant at the former president's residence in Florida.

00:44:23.000 It's just classic, heavy-handed Gestapo tactics to intimidate people and scare them.

00:44:28.000 Yeah, when they showed up at Mar-a-Lago with the FBI's hostage rescue team, when they've been cooperating with the legal counsel and the others, back and forth for months, if not years, that's there to deliver a message.

00:44:41.000 I mean, how did they single you out, Doug?

00:44:44.000 I mean, you weren't the only person posting memes in 2016.

00:44:47.000 I mean, there's probably a lot more meme warriors these days than then.

00:44:51.000 You were on the leading edge, but why'd they pick you?

00:44:54.000 Well, this is once again pure animus, I believe, against MAGA because they said this guy had the biggest account.

00:45:02.000 He was the most effective.

00:45:04.000 He got the most under our skin.

00:45:06.000 And they actually even, you know, they, you know how these people operate.

00:45:09.000 They were leaking to Reuters.

00:45:11.000 They were leaking to New York Times.

00:45:13.000 So what they told Reuters was that we were going to bring a case against this one guy because he had the loudest voice.

00:45:19.000 And we could say maybe his memes actually impacted the election, which, by the way, is crazy if they actually believe that.

00:45:26.000 But not only that, they thought that if they came and arrested me, that somehow I was going to, you know, they were going to, this would lead to some trail of some foreign conspiracy or something.

00:45:37.000 And they actually thought that they were going to be able to start rolling up other people.

00:45:42.000 Little did they know that, you know, I didn't cooperate with them at all.

00:45:45.000 There was no grand conspiracy.

00:45:47.000 And even when they squeezed this other guy, they weren't able to find anything there other than sort of a poor sap who didn't have the fortitude to stand up against the federal government.

00:45:56.000 There was no trail to Russia or some great conspiracy.

00:46:00.000 The fact is, as we all know, it's simply that Hillary Clinton lost the election and these memes.

00:46:06.000 I mean, the only way that we actually influenced the election was mostly just using her own words against her. 1.00

00:46:12.000 So and the idea, we just amplified what Donald, what your, what your father was saying, what President Trump was saying on the campaign trail.

00:46:18.000 There was nothing nefarious about any of this.

00:46:20.000 James, you know, from a legal procedure perspective, what's the process from here?

00:46:25.000 You know, what else do we need to know?

00:46:26.000 What do we have to keep an eye out to make sure that justice is done here?

00:46:30.000 Yeah, so I have total confidence in the DOJ team that will receive our requests.

00:46:34.000 The first step is an administrative process at DOJ.

00:46:37.000 So we're going to file a claim on Doug's behalf.

00:46:39.000 As soon as the acquittal is final, the district court should enter the final acquittal at the end of July, beginning of August.

00:46:45.000 And then we'll go to DOJ and we'll submit a claim on his behalf.

00:46:47.000 And hopefully we'll be able to work it out with them in relatively short order.

00:46:51.000 They've been such warriors for the president and everything else.

00:46:53.000 I am totally confident that they're going to be great here.

00:46:56.000 So that's the process.

00:46:58.000 Awesome.

00:46:58.000 Well, I wish you guys the best of luck.

00:47:02.000 This kind of stuff shouldn't be happening anywhere in the world, let alone in America.

00:47:06.000 So Douglas, James, thank you so much for taking the time.

00:47:09.000 We'll definitely keep following the story, and I look forward to seeing those who did you wrong get what's coming to them.

00:47:16.000 Thanks, Don.

00:47:16.000 Really appreciate it.

00:47:17.000 Be well, guys.

00:47:18.000 Thank you.

00:47:19.000 Guys, thanks so much for tuning in.

00:47:21.000 Remember to like, to share, to subscribe so you never miss a major episode.

00:47:26.000 Download the Rumble app.

00:47:27.000 Check out our incredible sponsors down below and in the video description.

00:47:32.000 Really appreciate it.

00:47:33.000 It's easy to do.

00:47:33.000 It makes a difference.

00:47:34.000 It moves the needle.

00:47:36.000 Hit that like button.

00:47:37.000 Check these guys out.

00:47:38.000 Support those who support you.

00:47:40.000 Thanks so much.

Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - July 28, 2025

Lawless Lawfare and the Meme Wars. Interviews with Alex Swoyer & Doug Mackey | TRIGGERED Ep.262

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript