Verdict with Ted Cruz - December 16, 2023


Dick Durbin Dodges Epstein, Democrats Against Funding for Israel plus Biden Impeachment Inquiry Center Stage the Week in Review

Topics
Jeffrey Epstein flight logs subpoena Jeffrey Epstein subpoena subpoena Jeffrey Epstein's flight records corrupt corporate media Joe Biden family corruption investigation
Hosted by
Ted Cruz
Mentioned
Hunter Biden Jeffrey Epstein Joe Biden Dick Durbin Marsha Blackburn Hillary Clinton Leonard Leo Verdict Burisma Ben Ferguson Harlan Crowe Jim Jordan Donald Trump Christopher Steele Jennifer Stewart Clarence Thomas Caitlin Clark John F. Kennedy John Ossoff James Comer and 14 more
Hunter DEFIES Congress & House Votes to Open Impeachment Inquiry on Joe Biden Exclusive with James Comer-ALL the Evidence of Joe Biden's Corruption (PART 1)

Episode Stats


Length

32 minutes

Words per minute

173.41

Word count

5,602

Sentence count

472

Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Toxicity

12

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn join forces to subpoena Jeffrey Epstein's flight logs, and Dick Durbin tries to block it. Also, Democrats block funding for a border patrol station in Ukraine. And finally, the latest on the Biden impeachment inquiry.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.540 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.340 Welcome, it is Verdict with Ted Cruz Weekend Review.
00:00:08.760 Ben Ferguson with you, and these are the stories that you may have missed
00:00:12.040 that we talked about this week.
00:00:13.740 First up, Senator Marsha Blackburn and Senator Ted Cruz have joined together
00:00:18.740 asking for the Jeffrey Epstein flight logs to be made public with a subpoena.
00:00:24.560 What will happen moving forward, and why are Democrats blocking it?
00:00:27.940 We'll have that for you.
00:00:28.920 Also, Israel funding.
00:00:31.400 Democrats saying no, but they want you to send billions to Ukraine.
00:00:35.840 And now it's all involved with border security.
00:00:38.520 We'll have the latest on that financial fight.
00:00:41.060 And finally, the latest with a Biden impeachment inquiry moving forward
00:00:45.480 and what this means for the days ahead.
00:00:48.380 It is the Weekend Review, and it starts right now.
00:00:51.880 Senator, I want to move on to another issue this week that was kind of shocking.
00:00:55.400 Your colleague, Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, has asked for a basic request,
00:01:01.840 and that is subpoenaed the Epstein flight logs.
00:01:04.800 They exist.
00:01:06.000 We should know who was on those planes.
00:01:08.920 And Dick Durbin kind of wanted to have it both ways, claiming,
00:01:12.280 hey, I didn't really know about this, so therefore I don't have to do it.
00:01:15.340 But I'm willing to talk about it.
00:01:17.100 But this should be a simple, like, yes or no question for him.
00:01:21.840 Do you want Epstein's, you know, flight logs to be out there?
00:01:24.740 Yes.
00:01:25.240 Do we want to know who was on those planes?
00:01:26.860 Yes.
00:01:27.200 Do we want to know who was involved in this human and sex trafficking?
00:01:30.500 Yes.
00:01:31.140 So why is he defending it?
00:01:32.700 And you may have been as shocked as I was.
00:01:34.580 This doesn't seem like a smart political move.
00:01:37.020 Yet maybe there's so many Democrats that he's trying to protect here or big donors.
00:01:40.900 I don't understand it.
00:01:41.740 Yeah, look, look, Durbin is doing everything he can to cover this up,
00:01:45.600 to hide the Jeffrey Epstein flight logs.
00:01:48.600 Take a look right here.
00:01:50.040 This is a Fox News reporter questioning Dick Durbin as he walks to a Judiciary Committee hearing.
00:01:55.140 Give a listen.
00:01:56.540 I don't know anything about his flight logs.
00:01:58.900 Why won't you subpoena them?
00:02:00.100 Why don't you want to know?
00:02:01.760 I don't know the issue.
00:02:03.120 I know who Epstein was, but I certainly don't know anything about the issue.
00:02:07.100 Well, he was charged with sex trafficking, so why don't you want to know who was utilizing his private plane?
00:02:13.320 Never been raised by anyone.
00:02:15.160 Well, Senator Blackburn has wanted to subpoena them, and there hasn't been a vote in your committee.
00:02:19.840 He said a word to me, not a word.
00:02:22.120 But aren't you curious, like, what high-profile or powerful people might be closeted predators and pedophiles?
00:02:28.940 Doesn't that concern you?
00:02:30.080 Of course.
00:02:31.260 So why won't you subpoena them if you can't?
00:02:33.460 It's the first time anyone has raised it.
00:02:35.300 Thank you, Fox.
00:02:36.020 So are you curious about it?
00:02:38.780 Will you do it?
00:02:40.120 All right, so Durbin is lying.
00:02:42.420 Just like when Claudine Gay said, Harvard doesn't know how many Jewish students we have.
00:02:48.480 Baloney.
00:02:49.140 Yes, they do.
00:02:50.620 Durbin is flat-out lying.
00:02:51.720 Now, let me give you some backstory.
00:02:53.600 This fight occurred in the context, and we talked about this in a podcast about a week ago.
00:02:59.080 Yeah.
00:02:59.320 Where the Democrats subpoenaed Harlan Crowe and Leonard Leo.
00:03:06.280 Harlan Crowe, very successful real estate developer based here in Texas and Dallas.
00:03:11.260 Leonard Leo has been very active with the Federalist Society for a long time, very active in helping with judicial selection, in fighting for constitutionalist judges.
00:03:21.780 Because the Democrats hate them.
00:03:23.660 And the subpoenas going after Harlan Crowe and going after Leonard Leo are part of their ongoing effort to harass the Supreme Court, to delegitimize the Supreme Court, and in particular to target Clarence Thomas.
00:03:37.500 They despise Clarence Thomas.
00:03:39.820 So in response to that, a number of Republicans had different amendments that we were pushing, that if they were going to force a vote on these subpoenas, we were going to force a vote on our amendments.
00:03:51.000 So when we went into it, I had an amendment that would subpoena the GPS data for Hunter Biden's cell phone and Joe Biden's cell phone at the exact moment that Hunter Biden sent the WhatsApp text to the Chinese communists saying, I'm sitting here next to my father. 0.57
00:04:08.260 Because we know from the IRS whistleblowers that when the investigators wanted to find out, was he in fact sitting next to Joe Biden when he was extorting the Chinese communists, the Biden DOJ blocked that and said, nope, you can't find that out.
00:04:22.420 So that's what I wanted to tee up.
00:04:24.880 I think that was important.
00:04:26.160 I think we should have voted for it.
00:04:27.260 I'm going to continue to look for an avenue to vote for it.
00:04:31.060 Marsha Blackburn came up with, I think, an even better idea of a subpoena to vote on. 1.00
00:04:36.180 And her idea was that we should subpoena the Epstein estate for the flight logs to to his plane. 0.97
00:04:43.680 And in particular, the Lolita Express, the the private jet that flew down to Jeffrey Epstein's island with lots and lots of politicians, allegedly mostly Democrats.
00:04:53.440 We don't know.
00:04:54.220 We don't know who was on it.
00:04:55.740 Yeah, show it.
00:04:56.360 If there's a Republican, fine.
00:04:57.520 Let's find out who they are.
00:04:59.200 Now, we do know that Epstein was was an original friend to Bill, that he was very close with Bill Clinton.
00:05:04.940 He was so close with Bill Clinton.
00:05:08.140 Do you know what Jeffrey Epstein had hanging on the wall in his living room?
00:05:11.300 Maybe one of the creepiest, weirdest things ever.
00:05:13.400 Yeah, go ahead and tell everybody because it's truly shocking.
00:05:16.120 A painting of Bill Clinton wearing a blue dress.
00:05:22.340 Monica Lewinsky. 1.00
00:05:23.400 And wearing red high-heeled pumps. 0.70
00:05:25.860 Like, it's just weird.
00:05:27.520 Yeah.
00:05:27.720 That's what Epstein had hanging on his wall in his New York house.
00:05:34.280 So, Marsha Blackburn introduced an amendment to subpoena the flight logs. 1.00
00:05:40.100 I thought her idea was fantastic, so I co-sponsored her amendment.
00:05:44.180 So, it was a Blackburn-Cruz amendment to subpoena the flight logs.
00:05:49.860 Now, the first time we were going to vote on the subpoenas on Harlan Crowe and Leonard
00:05:54.900 Leo, we didn't vote on them.
00:05:57.960 And I can tell you, like all the Republicans, we were all ready for combat.
00:06:01.540 Let's go battle the Democrats.
00:06:03.000 This is a partisan witch hunt.
00:06:05.180 And what happened, so back behind the dais, there's a conference room where the Judiciary
00:06:10.120 Committee meets.
00:06:10.960 You have the dais there.
00:06:13.260 And behind it, there's a conference room.
00:06:15.020 And you can go and have meetings there.
00:06:16.900 I can tell you, Dick Durbin was sitting in that conference room with John Ossoff, the
00:06:22.780 freshman Democrat senator from Georgia who serves on Judiciary.
00:06:27.220 And Durbin and Ossoff were having a heated, heated conversation.
00:06:32.100 I don't know for sure what they were discussing.
00:06:35.280 I didn't overhear their conversation.
00:06:38.060 But it was energetic.
00:06:40.200 And it delayed and delayed and delayed.
00:06:42.320 And then Durbin ended up deciding not to vote on the subpoenas.
00:06:46.960 And I'll tell you, all the Republican senators were like, what's going on?
00:06:50.280 Yeah.
00:06:51.100 And a number of us thought it was a number of Republican senators suggested the problem
00:06:59.140 was Ossoff told Durbin he was not willing to vote on the Epstein subpoena.
00:07:06.140 Now, I don't know if that's because he didn't want it voted on or he didn't want to vote.
00:07:10.380 No, I don't know why.
00:07:11.260 And I don't know if it's true.
00:07:12.160 I mean, we were Durbin never explained any of it to us.
00:07:14.920 He just canceled it.
00:07:16.780 Fast forward then to when they did vote vote out the subpoenas.
00:07:21.380 The way he did so, he allowed no amendments.
00:07:23.360 He just rammed it through and blocked all amendments.
00:07:26.980 And so the logical inference is the only way Durbin could get his votes for the Harlan Crowe and
00:07:33.700 Leonard Leo subpoenas is to stop a vote on the Jeffrey Epstein subpoena.
00:07:39.460 And somebody, and I think the most likely candidate is John Ossoff, really, really, really doesn't want to vote on that.
00:07:46.500 I think that's all the more reason to vote on it.
00:07:49.040 And by the way, if Ossoff is listening to this and he says, hey, that's not true.
00:07:53.120 I'm happy to vote on it.
00:07:54.080 Great.
00:07:54.700 Let's vote on it.
00:07:55.420 Let's vote on it.
00:07:56.140 There's an easy way to resolve it.
00:07:58.320 But it's interesting.
00:08:00.660 So Fox News asked Durbin that question in the hallway.
00:08:03.340 You saw it at the end.
00:08:04.360 He's like, thanks, Fox.
00:08:05.500 Yeah.
00:08:05.640 With this, like, nastiness.
00:08:07.860 Well, what happened next was interesting.
00:08:09.420 So Durbin went into the hearing room and he tried to rehabilitate himself.
00:08:13.600 He tried to say. 1.00
00:08:14.360 Cover your ass. 1.00
00:08:14.940 Politics. 1.00
00:08:15.580 So watch what he said as soon as he came into the hearing room.
00:08:18.740 Senator Blackburn, before you leave, I want to make a point for the record since I understand you made some statements about the Jeffrey Epstein flight logs.
00:08:28.440 There's a Fox reporter in the hallway who asked me about this.
00:08:32.560 And I said, I had not spoken to you one time about this issue.
00:08:36.400 I think you'll back me up on that.
00:08:38.380 And I'm not mistaken.
00:08:39.960 I didn't know that this was even a subject of your amendments, which, if you'll recall, you were the first on the list until the two-hour rule was invoked.
00:08:48.400 I don't know anything about this request on your part.
00:08:51.660 I'll be happy to discuss it with you.
00:08:53.540 But I haven't done any discussion with you to this point.
00:08:56.120 Mr. Chairman, I know.
00:08:57.740 And I think you're fully aware that I had two amendments, one dealing with Epstein and Sotomayor.
00:09:03.940 I brought it up previously.
00:09:06.240 I have to confess I didn't know that you'd offer that amendment.
00:09:09.620 Happy to discuss it with you.
00:09:10.880 But I want to point on the record.
00:09:13.020 You and I have never personally discussed this, have we?
00:09:16.760 We talked briefly on the floor as a conclusion.
00:09:20.000 You never mentioned what the subject matter of your amendment was.
00:09:22.380 You said you wanted to offer your amendment.
00:09:23.420 On the committee, I brought up the subject matter of my amendments.
00:09:28.200 Not in my presence.
00:09:29.700 Not in my presence.
00:09:30.800 Do you believe him?
00:09:31.960 Well, the nice thing is, as they say, we can roll the tape.
00:09:37.380 What he said there is a flat-out lie.
00:09:39.480 It is objectively false.
00:09:41.400 We're going to show that to you in just a moment.
00:09:43.400 It is unequivocally false.
00:09:47.440 It is possible, giving him enormous benefit of the doubt, he forgot.
00:09:53.480 Yeah.
00:09:54.220 It is possible it was not a knowing lie.
00:09:56.720 But it is unequivocally, 100%, demonstrably false that the words he said are wrong.
00:10:05.420 And I'll show you why.
00:10:06.800 We're going to right now play the tape of that first hearing.
00:10:10.340 Now, I was there.
00:10:12.420 Marsha Blackburn was there.
00:10:13.940 And Dick Durbin was there.
00:10:15.300 And you're going to hear Marsha bring up her amendment about Jeffrey Epstein.
00:10:18.900 He just said, you've never mentioned Jeffrey Epstein in my presence.
00:10:23.320 I was not physically present.
00:10:24.780 Well, you're going to see Dick Durbin recognize her and then cut her off while she's bringing 0.99
00:10:29.380 up Jeffrey Epstein.
00:10:30.400 Roll the tape.
00:10:31.440 I seek recognition.
00:10:33.200 Senator Blackburn.
00:10:34.140 Since we're in the business of issuing subpoenas now, here are a few more that I've filed.
00:10:42.060 A subpoena to Jeffrey Epstein's estate to provide the flight logs for his private plane.
00:10:48.940 Thank you, Senator.
00:10:50.300 When I recognized you, I didn't know what subject you wish to speak to.
00:10:53.840 As I announced at the beginning, the first thing we'll consider the two judicial nominations.
00:10:58.380 Then we will move to the subpoena.
00:11:00.260 So she's speaking to the man in the middle of the room.
00:11:03.600 He's right there in the middle.
00:11:04.460 It's direct eye contact.
00:11:05.580 He's looking directly at her.
00:11:06.920 He's at the hearing room.
00:11:08.160 He's in the center center.
00:11:09.500 I'm in between Durbin and Marsha Blackburn.
00:11:12.740 We're all sitting there.
00:11:13.680 She flat out says, I want to subpoena Jeffrey Epstein's flight records.
00:11:18.880 And he hears it.
00:11:20.540 He recognizes her.
00:11:21.640 Then he interrupts and says, no, no, I want to do some other stuff first.
00:11:24.560 This is easy to resolve.
00:11:26.560 We should subpoena Epstein's flight records.
00:11:30.500 If there are politicians, Democrat or Republican, or anybody else who was on that plane, who
00:11:36.580 was going to that island, who was molesting and sexually assaulting children, we should 1.00
00:11:43.780 know who they are.
00:11:45.080 We shouldn't have Jeffrey Epstein's client list.
00:11:48.580 And the fact that the Democrats are apparently in a full on panic.
00:11:52.940 I don't know if Durbin knows somebody on that list or multiple people, or I don't know if
00:11:59.660 they're just afraid.
00:12:01.420 I don't know what their fear is, but they're plainly terrified of voting on it.
00:12:08.100 And if I'm wrong, Durbin can solve it very easily by bringing it up for a vote and issuing
00:12:14.500 the subpoena.
00:12:15.100 And to be clear, when we subpoena those flight logs, we should make them public.
00:12:19.180 I will tell you this, one of my favorite moments in all of Senate Judiciary was when John Kennedy
00:12:26.380 leaned forward at a hearing and he said, Christmas tree ornaments and Jeffrey Epstein, two things
00:12:36.840 you know didn't hang themselves.
00:12:40.080 And this is why he is a legend of the Senate.
00:12:42.900 I almost laughed out of lung and I'm sitting there.
00:12:46.140 John sits a couple of seats to my right.
00:12:49.160 I almost fell over.
00:12:50.740 I was like, I cannot believe he just said that in a live and open hearing of Senate Judiciary.
00:12:56.120 He did.
00:12:57.560 But it seems to me, I don't know if Jeffrey Epstein had a visit from Hillary Clinton late at night.
00:13:02.860 I don't know what happened.
00:13:04.120 But it seems to me Dick Durbin really, really, really doesn't want you to know what happened.
00:13:09.160 Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast
00:13:14.220 from earlier this week.
00:13:16.240 Canadian women are looking for more, more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected 1.00
00:13:20.880 leaders and the world around them.
00:13:22.660 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:13:26.460 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:13:27.560 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:13:28.780 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women, entrepreneurs, artists,
00:13:33.900 athletes, politicians and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.
00:13:38.300 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:13:41.260 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:13:47.280 Now on to story number two.
00:13:49.660 Let's talk about that Israeli funding because this is really important.
00:13:53.120 Obviously, as you mentioned, Democrats said hell no to it.
00:13:56.280 No one, not a single Democrat would go with you guys.
00:13:59.280 What does it look like now moving forward?
00:14:01.420 And how desperate is the need from Israel at this point?
00:14:05.920 It's amazing that Democrats are going all in with Ukraine and the corruption there, 1.00
00:14:09.960 asking no questions, whereas in Israel, there's none of those questions that need to be asked.
00:14:15.440 And there's transparency and we know what's going on.
00:14:18.720 And yet they're saying, ah, not so much.
00:14:21.400 And even the White House now is starting to distance themselves from Israel,
00:14:25.600 changing their tune a little bit over the last couple of days, which is what I expected.
00:14:30.140 But it's also incredibly disheartening.
00:14:31.540 Well, look, the one word I disagree with that you said there is you said even the White House.
00:14:37.580 Listen, we've outlined at length on this podcast how this White House is the most anti-Israel White House we've ever had.
00:14:44.480 Yeah, good point.
00:14:45.320 And Joe Biden and this White House have been undermining Israel from the day Biden was sworn in as president repeatedly.
00:14:51.460 And we've outlined from the very first minutes of this attack on October 7th.
00:14:56.080 This White House has been undermining Israel, has been urging Israel, do not retaliate, do not attack Hamas, do not kill the terrorists.
00:15:03.660 From day one, the State Department, the State Department literally tweeted that out on the night of October 7th.
00:15:10.000 While people were still being murdered, while women and children were being raped,
00:15:13.800 the State Department is tweeting out, Israel, do not respond militarily, do not kill the terrorists.
00:15:20.460 And so, yes, you're right.
00:15:22.740 The White House doesn't really care about the Israel funding.
00:15:25.260 In fact, we know they don't, because if they cared about it, we'd pass it as a freestanding bill.
00:15:30.260 It has the votes to pass as a freestanding bill.
00:15:32.240 But their only interest on Israel funding is to use it as a sweetener to try to convince Republicans to fund the rest of the Democrats' priorities.
00:15:42.880 And I think that's incredibly cynical.
00:15:44.860 I think it's wrong.
00:15:45.860 And their focus is on Ukraine.
00:15:49.500 But it's interesting.
00:15:50.740 If you want to take away from what we've seen over the last six weeks in Washington,
00:15:55.920 it's that the Democrats are much, much more committed to open borders than they are to the war in Ukraine.
00:16:03.380 And they're willing to abandon funding for Ukraine in order to keep the tragedy of open borders at our southern border.
00:16:10.640 That is a higher priority for them.
00:16:13.160 And it's incredibly revealing because they self-righteously claim otherwise.
00:16:19.480 And look, you look at why Zelensky came this week.
00:16:22.520 It's Chuck Schumer trying to browbeat Republicans into saying,
00:16:26.280 give us what we want, even though we will do nothing on the border.
00:16:30.900 And I think that has zero chance of success.
00:16:33.220 Senator, I want to also move to one other subject real quick that I think is obviously an important one.
00:16:39.300 And that is to give an update on what's going on now with impeachment.
00:16:45.000 We've seen the House Committee is going to vote on impeachment.
00:16:48.280 The House Speaker, Mike Johnson, says the White House is impeding the investigation to President Joe Biden.
00:16:53.740 And the next step will be a vote to formalize an impeachment inquiry.
00:16:57.100 This also, as Fox News is reporting, that Hunter Biden received $250,000 wires originating in Beijing with a beneficiary address listed as Joe Biden's home.
00:17:10.580 This is all about, as the House Oversight Committee put it, the Biden's influence peddling and what they have been doing.
00:17:16.500 This vote, Senator, is a very important vote.
00:17:19.140 And it's also going to give Republicans more power.
00:17:22.280 Explain why this vote is important to happen now.
00:17:25.040 Well, the House has scheduled the vote today.
00:17:28.320 It is a vote on a resolution formalizing the impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
00:17:33.900 And previously, the House had not scheduled that vote because it wasn't clear that they had the votes to pass it.
00:17:39.880 And so Kevin McCarthy, when he was Speaker, he didn't schedule it because it looked like the votes weren't there.
00:17:45.980 What Republicans are telling the press, at least, is it looks like the votes are there.
00:17:50.940 And so a number of the Republicans who are in blue districts that Biden carried are now moving forward.
00:17:58.860 So, for example, Mike Garcia in California said, quote, there is enough substantiation to move forward.
00:18:05.160 And, quote, the executive branch made clear they're not going to cooperate with the inquiry unless we formalize it.
00:18:10.900 So let's formalize it.
00:18:12.120 Another one, Mark Molinaro, who's a Republican from New York, again in a district Biden carried, said, quote, Congress has every responsibility to provide oversight.
00:18:21.740 There are serious questions of impropriety.
00:18:23.660 The White House and the president have yet to comply with requests for information and subpoenas, adding that he is, quote, inclined to support the measure.
00:18:31.140 And another Republican from New York, again in a district, and, in fact, the most Democrat-leaning district of any Republican, Anthony Desposito, said that he will vote to authorize the inquiry.
00:18:47.620 And so what we are hearing is that the votes are there.
00:18:51.580 It's scheduled for a vote today.
00:18:54.560 And the resolution directs the House Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means Committees to, quote, continue their ongoing investigations as a part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist to impeach Biden.
00:19:09.320 And so formally voting this for this is a significant step forward, and I'm glad they're going to do that.
00:19:16.520 I hope they pass it, and we will discuss on the next verdict what happens when the vote happens later today.
00:19:23.260 As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from early this week to hear the entire thing.
00:19:31.620 Canadian women are looking for more, more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them. 0.98
00:19:38.940 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:19:42.680 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:19:43.840 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:19:45.080 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
00:19:48.840 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.
00:19:54.580 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:19:57.560 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:20:03.420 I want to get back to the big story number three of the week you may have missed.
00:20:07.920 Senator, I want to move to the other major issue.
00:20:11.100 And they are very much intertwined but separate.
00:20:14.440 And so let's look at this completely separately for a moment.
00:20:17.600 The House formalizing the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
00:20:23.140 There has been a lot of media protection on this story.
00:20:26.940 And I think it's important that we remind people why this impeachment matters, why it's not a witch hunt, how it's different from what the Democrats did against Donald J.
00:20:37.340 Trump when they knew, for example, the Steele dossier was created by the DNC and Hillary Clinton, paid for by them. 0.92
00:20:43.760 The FBI categorized the Steele dossier as user-generated, meaning it was crap. 0.81
00:20:48.200 They even offered a million, I think it was a million dollars to Christopher Steele to authenticate anything in the dossier. 0.68
00:20:53.920 They couldn't do it.
00:20:55.040 And yet they still used it and weaponized it to try to overthrow the will of the people.
00:21:00.960 And so I want people to understand that impeachment is important.
00:21:04.560 It shouldn't be used as a political weapon.
00:21:06.440 And Republicans are not using it as a political weapon.
00:21:09.900 So let's go back and remind people why the House is formalizing this impeachment inquiry.
00:21:16.520 Well, the reason the House has opened the impeachment inquiry is because there is serious evidence of corruption.
00:21:22.420 There is serious evidence of bribery on behalf of the President of the United States.
00:21:27.080 And it's from multiple directions.
00:21:29.540 But, you know, Jim Jordan sent out a very simple tweet that I think is powerful.
00:21:32.920 What Jim Jordan said was, quote, four facts that will never change.
00:21:37.580 One, Hunter Biden sat on Burisma's board.
00:21:40.460 Absolutely true.
00:21:41.580 Two, he was unqualified to do so.
00:21:44.300 Absolutely true.
00:21:45.640 Three, Burisma pressured him to get D.C. to act on policy issues in Ukraine.
00:21:51.460 And four, Joe Biden did just that.
00:21:55.620 Now, of those four facts, the only one the Democrats argue against even slightly is number three.
00:22:01.660 And they have some disputes.
00:22:03.400 They say, well, well, no, Burisma didn't really want the prosecutor fired who was investigating the corrupt oligarch who owns Burisma because he was a bad prosecutor.
00:22:12.820 So they didn't really want him fired.
00:22:14.740 I got to say, that is an incredibly weak argument.
00:22:17.680 And it is contrary to the evidence the House has compiled.
00:22:20.520 But that's the whole of their argument.
00:22:22.160 And so remember, when they say no direct evidence, we talked a minute ago about what is bribery.
00:22:28.420 Bribery is quid pro quo.
00:22:29.920 This for that.
00:22:31.000 That's the Latin phrase.
00:22:32.740 The that was for Joe Biden to get the prosecutor fired in Ukraine.
00:22:37.920 And we know that Joe Biden did that.
00:22:40.140 We know that that the quo happened because Joe Biden has confessed on video that he flew to Ukraine, that he held over a billion dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds that are guaranteeing loans to Ukraine.
00:22:52.920 He held them hostage and said, you will not get that money unless you fire the prosecutor. 0.98
00:22:58.240 And then his response we've talked about at length was, son of a bitch, they fired the prosecutor. 0.99
00:23:04.000 So the quo is admitted. 0.99
00:23:05.780 It is stipulated.
00:23:06.840 Joe Biden has confessed on video to it.
00:23:09.840 The only question is the quid, which is, was he paid or by the way, paying his family for that that official act is also bribery.
00:23:19.740 So it doesn't matter whether the money went directly to Joe Biden's bank account or whether it simply went to Hunter Biden's bank account.
00:23:26.580 We know that he was making eighty three thousand dollars a month.
00:23:29.720 Hunter was to sit on a board.
00:23:31.140 Now, mind you, I don't know of another board anywhere on Earth that pays eighty three grand a month to board members.
00:23:36.800 That is bizarre just on the face of it.
00:23:39.220 It's a lot more than ExxonMobil pays their board members.
00:23:41.680 It's a lot more than any board I've ever heard of pays their board members.
00:23:45.380 And remember, Hunter Biden had zero experience in oil and gas.
00:23:50.980 He didn't speak Ukrainian.
00:23:52.540 I'm not even sure he could find Ukraine on a map.
00:23:55.520 What he did have was daddy's cell phone.
00:23:58.220 What he did have was daddy's fake email addresses.
00:24:00.740 What he did have was daddy's burner phones.
00:24:03.120 What he did have was access to daddy.
00:24:04.960 And I got to say, it was a good investment.
00:24:08.140 If you're a corrupt oligarch and you hire Skippy boy here and daddy uses the full force of the U.S. government to get the prosecutor fired, who's coming after you, that is a great investment. 0.70
00:24:19.100 So that is number one, right at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.
00:24:24.540 But number two, we have the WhatsApp where Hunter is is shaking down a Chinese communist and saying, I'm sitting here next to my father. 0.56
00:24:33.060 And he's threatening retaliation from daddy, not from Hunter, from daddy, from Joe Biden, if they didn't pay him millions of dollars.
00:24:40.580 And we know that they paid him millions of dollars.
00:24:43.480 So that again, look, bribery can be on either front.
00:24:46.940 It can be either for getting a benefit, but it could also be bribery.
00:24:51.800 Pay me money.
00:24:52.580 Give me a benefit or else I will do this bad thing through government to you.
00:24:57.880 That's also bribery.
00:25:00.020 You know, if if if a prosecutor for U.S. attorney says, give me a million dollars or else I will indict you and you give him a million dollars and he doesn't indict you.
00:25:09.620 That's bribery.
00:25:11.160 In this case, the retaliation that Hunter was threatening from daddy, it would absolutely constitute bribery on Joe's part.
00:25:19.000 And mind you, the IRS whistleblowers say that in the investigation they wanted to get the GPS data.
00:25:24.400 It's very simple to ascertain when Hunter sent that WhatsApp text.
00:25:29.300 Was he in fact sitting next to Joe?
00:25:32.240 You'll have Hunter's GPS data.
00:25:34.160 You'll have Joe's GPS data if they're in the same room, if they're sitting next to each other.
00:25:37.820 That goes right to the heart of that.
00:25:41.220 Joe knew and was involved in shaking down these corrupt foreign players. 1.00
00:25:46.580 That's why the House has now opened the impeachment inquiry.
00:25:50.040 Senator, I want to get your reaction to something that was said on MSNBC.
00:25:55.160 They're claiming now that Biden's impeachment inquiry is, quote, Trump's retribution.
00:26:01.980 Take a listen to this.
00:26:03.420 The fact that there is no there, that probably doesn't bother the likes of Jim Jordan.
00:26:08.240 I think Representative McGovern got it right when he said when Trump asks them to jump, they say how high.
00:26:16.240 And that they're now jumping.
00:26:18.600 They're now jumping for Trump.
00:26:20.260 This is his retribution.
00:26:21.860 And it's a PR, a PR, very cynical PR driven attempt to besmirch Biden without any evidence.
00:26:30.200 Without any evidence?
00:26:31.340 You just went through that evidence, but this is what we're up against in the media, saying this is just retribution for Trump.
00:26:38.740 No, it's not.
00:26:39.580 This is based on the facts.
00:26:41.540 Well, MSNBC is not actually a journalistic outlet.
00:26:45.900 They are propagandists.
00:26:47.060 They are the left wing of the Democrat Party.
00:26:48.720 So they're going to repeat that and ignore the facts altogether.
00:26:53.120 They won't cover the facts.
00:26:54.340 Look, if you watch MSNBC, you have no idea that Hunter Biden sent a WhatsApp text to a Chinese communist shaking him down for millions of dollars.
00:27:02.880 You don't know that because you know what? 0.99
00:27:04.920 If they don't report on any evidence, then they can send idiots on camera to say there's no evidence. 0.99
00:27:09.240 And if all you watch is MSNBC, you're right. 1.00
00:27:12.200 You're right.
00:27:12.640 There is no evidence because they won't report on any of the evidence.
00:27:16.400 It's purely circular.
00:27:18.740 And that is part of why the Democrats, their behavior is so bad.
00:27:23.140 The corrupt corporate media facilitates their blatant dishonesty because the corporate media is every bit as dishonest as the White House is.
00:27:31.460 Yeah, and I think we should end with this.
00:27:34.000 James Comer took to the floor of the House.
00:27:36.040 This is the man that's been digging into all this.
00:27:38.300 He's been a guest on Verdict.
00:27:40.180 There's a two-part series.
00:27:41.420 You can go back and listen to it.
00:27:42.960 But I want you to hear what he had to say on the floor of the House just as a reminder.
00:27:47.840 Kentucky is recognized for three minutes.
00:27:49.720 Thank you, Chairman Cole.
00:27:51.260 Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support House Resolution 918.
00:27:54.580 Joe Biden has repeatedly lied to the American people about his family's corrupt influence-peddling schemes.
00:28:02.400 He told the American people he never spoke to his son about his family's business dealings.
00:28:06.720 He claimed there was an absolute wall between his official government duties as vice president and his family.
00:28:13.000 He said his family never made money from China.
00:28:16.600 All of these are blatant lies.
00:28:19.100 Our investigation has revealed how Joe Biden knew of, participated in, and benefited from his family cashing in on the Biden name around the world.
00:28:31.160 Since January, we have learned some of the following.
00:28:34.480 The Bidens created 20 shell companies, most of which were created while Joe Biden was vice president.
00:28:41.000 The Bidens and their associates then raked in over $24 million through these shell companies from China, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Romania between 2014 and 2019.
00:28:57.840 At least 10 members of the Biden family have benefited or participated in these schemes.
00:29:05.220 The Bidens layered these payments through their bank accounts to hide the sources of the money.
00:29:12.560 The banks even flagged many of these transactions in more than 150 suspicious activity reports to the Treasury Department.
00:29:21.760 One bank investigator was so concerned about Hunter Biden's financial transactions with a Chinese company that he wanted to reevaluate the bank's relationship with him.
00:29:31.540 He noted that his transactions served, and I quote, no current business purpose, end quote.
00:29:38.920 That's what I call a shell company.
00:29:41.000 According to Devin Archer, a Biden family associate, Joe Biden was the brand of the business.
00:29:46.960 The brand showed up.
00:29:48.580 Joe Biden spoke to his son's associates by speakerphone over 20 times, dined with foreign oligarchs and a Burisma executive,
00:29:55.300 and had coffee with his son's Chinese associate, all when he was vice president.
00:30:00.660 Weeks after Joe Biden left the vice presidency, money from this Chinese Communist Party-linked entity began to make its way to the bank accounts of several Biden family members.
00:30:13.760 Based on one Biden associate's interview with the FBI, these payments were sent to the Bidens as a quote,
00:30:20.340 thank you, ask any Justice Department public corruption investigator about the importance of payments received after one leaves public office.
00:30:29.420 It's a hallmark of corruption.
00:30:32.360 We are now at a pivotal moment in our investigation.
00:30:35.080 We will soon depose and interview several members of the Biden family and their associates about these influence-peddling schemes.
00:30:41.260 But we are facing obstruction from the White House.
00:30:46.100 The White House is seeking to block key testimony from current and former White House staff.
00:30:50.840 It's also withholding thousands of records from Joe Biden's time as vice president.
00:30:55.720 President Biden must be held accountable for his lies, corruption, and obstruction.
00:31:00.960 I urge my colleagues to support this important and necessary resolution I yield back.
00:31:04.820 Senator, I think you and I both can say, listening to him lay that out, thank goodness we've got people in the Republican movement, the conservative movement, like James Comer, who have been willing to do this hard work and methodically do it the right way.
00:31:19.240 Yes, and that's more substance than MSNBC has aired in a year.
00:31:23.380 Bingo.
00:31:23.600 Those three minutes, they can claim no evidence because they won't air that.
00:31:28.120 They don't actually want you to hear what the evidence is.
00:31:30.640 They only want their talking heads that are shilling for a corrupt White House. 0.98
00:31:35.280 And it's – look, that's why verdict – so many listeners keep coming to verdict because you find out information here that the corporate media will not tell you.
00:31:44.520 And this podcast is designed to give you that information and equip you to go talk with your friends and family and loved ones and coworkers and go engage the lies and counter them with truth.
00:31:55.220 As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz.
00:31:59.480 Ben Ferguson with you.
00:32:00.400 Don't forget to download my podcast and you can listen to my podcast every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards.
00:32:07.440 I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast.
00:32:11.160 And we will see you back here on Monday morning.
00:32:14.520 This is an iHeart Podcast.
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