Verdict with Ted Cruz - July 14, 2023


FBI Stonewalls Congress, White House Covers up Cocaine Culprit, & BIG WIN for Texas


Episode Stats

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Ben Fergus (D-Maine) join me to talk about the Wray hearing, the border bridge project, and more. Plus, we don t just have cocaine at the White House. We have other illegal drugs.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.620 Guaranteed human.
00:00:06.360 Welcome. It is a verdict with Senator Ted Cruz.
00:00:09.160 Ben Ferguson with you, Senator.
00:00:10.820 We've got a lot to talk about, including Christopher Wray being grilled in front of the House side of Congress.
00:00:17.240 And there were some very awkward responses from him.
00:00:20.700 We're going to break all that down for everybody listening.
00:00:23.480 Plus, we don't just have cocaine at the White House.
00:00:25.880 We've got other illegal drugs that have now been disclosed.
00:00:29.600 But don't worry, we're never going to find any of these people, apparently.
00:00:32.600 We'll give you an update on that.
00:00:33.520 But before we get to that, Senator, there's a big victory that took place in the Foreign Relations Committee
00:00:40.520 that's going to have a huge impact on commerce, not just in this country, but specifically as well with Texas.
00:00:47.360 Talk about this victory and what it means.
00:00:49.980 Well, that's exactly right.
00:00:51.280 It was a massive victory that we won yesterday for the state of Texas before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
00:00:57.860 And it concerns commerce and trade with Mexico.
00:01:03.180 So Texas engages in a massive amount of trade with the nation of Mexico.
00:01:08.240 About $800 billion a year is the value of the goods and services that travel north and south across the border to Mexico.
00:01:15.860 And much of that travels over bridges that cross the Rio Grande and that you have trucks and cars that are driving across the Rio Grande,
00:01:26.000 either north from Mexico to Texas or south from Texas to Mexico.
00:01:30.120 And there's an enormous amount of whether it's agricultural trade and commerce or manufacturing trade and commerce or auto parts.
00:01:39.140 It's just a massive volume.
00:01:43.600 The Biden administration, bizarrely, has been doing everything it can to slow walk new bridges across the Rio Grande, new bridges to Mexico.
00:01:56.800 And in particular, in south Texas, there are four bridges that are that that are trying to be either built or expanded bridges that would allow more traffic, more trucks, more cars to travel and more commerce to travel.
00:02:12.440 And the Biden administration has been putting unnecessary bureaucratic roadblocks in the way of doing so.
00:02:21.000 In particular, if you want to build a bridge anywhere in the state of Texas, anywhere in another state,
00:02:27.560 you can do so and you don't need a special permit from the White House.
00:02:32.940 If you want to build a bridge across an interstate border, there's a federal law that says you have to get a permit from the president of the United States because it's crossing a border.
00:02:44.740 Now, the process used to be and this is what the Trump White House did,
00:02:49.440 that the president would grant that permit for a new bridge or an expansion of a bridge across the border.
00:02:55.780 And the president would grant that permit conditional on completing the environmental review that is required for every bridge that's built in this country.
00:03:05.240 Anywhere you're building a bridge, you have to do under a statute called NEPA, an environmental review.
00:03:10.220 And so the way President Trump would do this, he'd approve the bridge, but you'd still have to complete the environmental review on the back end before you built the bridge.
00:03:18.520 Biden came into office and he implemented a new rule that made no sense whatsoever.
00:03:23.620 And his new rule was that the presidential permit would not be issued until all of the environmental review was completed.
00:03:33.000 And the problem is that actually delays these bridges by years, two to three years, it pushes them back.
00:03:41.120 And there's an even bigger problem, which is that the groups that are building these bridges are having a difficult time getting financing
00:03:49.460 because the financing doesn't want to commit until after the presidential permit is granted and the presidential permit won't be granted until after the environmental review is complete.
00:03:59.880 And so it's delaying the projects dramatically.
00:04:03.180 This makes zero sense.
00:04:05.060 And so for months, I have been working, leaning on the Biden administration to change this policy.
00:04:11.620 I have raised this directly and repeatedly with the White House.
00:04:14.520 I've raised this directly and repeatedly with the Department of State.
00:04:17.820 I've raised this directly and repeatedly with the Secretary of Transportation.
00:04:22.100 And I work to bring together a bipartisan coalition in South Texas, and in particular to get every member of Congress from South Texas,
00:04:31.900 both Democrats and Republicans, all united behind this issue, behind building the bridges.
00:04:37.860 And so I drafted a letter to Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and it was signed by all four of the Rio Grande Valley congressmen.
00:04:47.760 It was signed by Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat.
00:04:50.480 It was signed by Monica De La Cruz, a Republican.
00:04:53.180 It was signed by Henry Cuellar, a Democrat.
00:04:55.480 It was signed by Tony Gonzalez, a Republican.
00:04:58.000 And so all four of them signed my letter, and John Cornyn signed the letter.
00:05:01.600 And so we had complete bipartisan agreement.
00:05:04.600 And even so, the Biden administration continued to slow walk these bridges.
00:05:10.760 Well, yesterday in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I filed an amendment to the Department of State authorization.
00:05:18.660 And the amendment would dramatically streamline the approval of these bridges.
00:05:23.940 And in particular, it directs the White House and it directs the State Department not to delay the presidential permit until after the NEPA review is concluded.
00:05:33.940 And so it forces them to decide and issue the presidential permit and then move forward.
00:05:39.660 And the environmental review occurs, as it does ordinarily, for any other bridge.
00:05:44.500 Well, it was initially a battle, and it went round and round and round.
00:05:49.580 And there were initially Democrats who were fighting me on this.
00:05:52.780 And yet, yesterday afternoon, I ended up getting the support of both Democrats and Republicans on the committee.
00:06:00.080 And it was voted into the bill.
00:06:02.540 So the amendment is now adopted with big bipartisan support.
00:06:06.780 And the next step is that the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are trying to attach the entire bill,
00:06:16.140 the Senate, the state authorization bill to the National Defense Authorization Act, which is right now moving in the Senate Armed Services Committee.
00:06:27.340 The reason for that is, is every year Congress passes the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act.
00:06:34.540 And it is often a vehicle for passing legislation because it's considered must pass legislation.
00:06:40.640 And so we ended up with a big, big victory that for two and a half years, the Biden administration had been stiff arming Texas and hurting the people of South Texas.
00:06:53.480 And we got this amendment adopted, which if it goes forward and gets signed into law, and I think it will be, it will speed up these bridges by several years.
00:07:04.560 Ben, that's good for South Texas in terms of jobs that has the potential to produce thousands of high-paying jobs.
00:07:12.340 It's good for Texas farmers.
00:07:14.060 It's good for Texas ranchers.
00:07:15.340 It's good for Texas small businesses and manufacturers.
00:07:19.200 And I'll tell you the amazing thing.
00:07:21.220 Not only is this good for jobs and commerce and farmers and manufacturing, it's also very good for the environment.
00:07:29.040 Because right now, let's take the city of Laredo.
00:07:31.860 Laredo is the single largest land port in the United States.
00:07:36.460 A massive amount of commerce flows through Laredo each and every day.
00:07:40.820 Right now, if you go down to the bridge in Laredo, it's a massive bridge.
00:07:45.360 And there are hundreds, sometimes thousands of 18-wheelers backed up waiting to cross the bridge.
00:07:51.700 And they can sit there two, three, four, five hours just sitting there spewing out pollution.
00:07:57.640 Just sitting there doing nothing.
00:08:00.200 One of the bridges that's going to be expanded is that big, that main bridge, that the proposal is to add eight new lanes to that bridge.
00:08:09.360 Doing that will dramatically speed up commerce across that bridge.
00:08:14.760 And that's good for the environment.
00:08:16.360 No one wants hundreds or thousands of 18-wheelers sitting there idling and just spewing pollution into the air.
00:08:23.480 And so, this is good all around.
00:08:26.080 The Biden administration's policy made no sense.
00:08:29.500 But I'll tell you, it was a hard-fought battle.
00:08:32.900 And one that I was really pleased to see.
00:08:35.340 A lot of allies came together.
00:08:37.120 The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce came and supported my amendment.
00:08:41.660 Supported my effort.
00:08:42.860 And it was a big win in Senate Foreign Relations.
00:08:45.400 You mentioned that this was bipartisan as well at the end.
00:08:49.760 And did that shock the White House, how bipartisan this became, as you mentioned there, at the end?
00:08:56.180 Because this, what was, I mean, the politics behind this, was this just a ticket to Texas, a border state?
00:09:03.980 And that's the reason why they made the change at the beginning?
00:09:06.040 Obviously, you said it didn't make sense why they did this.
00:09:08.620 But what was their reason for doing it?
00:09:10.540 Was it solely political, and then when it became bipartisan, that's how you're going to overcome it?
00:09:15.060 You know, I actually think it was more mundane than that.
00:09:18.200 I had a former boss who used to say, never blame on malice what can be explained with incompetence.
00:09:26.920 I think there's a lot of wisdom to this.
00:09:28.640 What I think happened is I think there was some 26-year-old knucklehead,
00:09:33.460 either at the Department of State or the White House, who just is a Green New Deal zealot.
00:09:41.240 And they said, nope, we're not approving anything until all the environmental review is done.
00:09:46.120 And it just was sort of a knee-jerk, no, no, no.
00:09:51.100 But it never made any sense.
00:09:52.920 And I have to tell you, when I explained it to people, you know, Pete Buttigieg sat in my office.
00:09:58.380 When I explained it to him, his reaction was, that doesn't make any sense at all.
00:10:01.640 Now, the Department of Transportation doesn't have a formal role in this process,
00:10:05.320 but he offered his help to try to get it fixed.
00:10:10.300 And so what I decided to do and what I explained to the White House,
00:10:15.060 what I explained to the State Department, is I said, this is a massive priority for me
00:10:19.840 because this is a massive priority for Texas.
00:10:22.380 And I said, I'm a big believer in carrot and stick.
00:10:26.600 And so I'm going to continue ratcheting up the pressure and I'm going to ratchet it up higher and higher and higher.
00:10:34.740 And I'm going to make it more and more unpleasant until you change these policies.
00:10:40.420 And that's the one thing the Biden administration responds to.
00:10:43.540 And so in particular, I placed a hold on a number of State Department nominees.
00:10:47.940 And I said, I'm not going to let these go through unless and until you fix this problem
00:10:53.860 and stop putting idiotic roadblocks in the way of these four bridges in Texas.
00:11:01.940 Part of the way we got this done yesterday is the State Department desperately wanted these holds lifted.
00:11:09.080 And state asked, well, gosh, if we agree to go along with this, will you lift the holds?
00:11:14.840 And I said, sure, of course, the whole point of the holds is to get you to change the policy.
00:11:20.600 And so state, at the end of the day, was willing to go along with it,
00:11:26.500 which in turn is what led the Democrats on the committee to agree to it as well,
00:11:31.100 is that state wanted me to end the holds that I had put in place
00:11:36.020 in order to incentivize them to do the right thing for the state of Texas.
00:11:40.220 I want to ask you one more question about what this also means outside of Texas nationally.
00:11:44.840 with this opening up and how that's going to affect other states.
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00:13:21.820 Senator, you mentioned this is obviously a big win for Texas,
00:13:24.440 but the amount of commerce that you're talking about that's going to be moving with this expansion
00:13:30.240 and these bridges, that's not just going to affect Texas.
00:13:33.220 That's also going to affect all these trucks that are going all over the country as well
00:13:37.160 and getting things there quicker.
00:13:39.400 So that's exactly right.
00:13:40.980 It affects the entire country.
00:13:42.460 And whether when you go to the grocery store and say you buy fresh fruits and vegetables,
00:13:47.080 many of those fruits and vegetables are grown in Mexico.
00:13:49.560 And so speeding up the travel reduces the cost.
00:13:53.700 It means you'll pay less than you would have otherwise at the grocery store.
00:13:57.500 If you're buying a new car, many automobiles, there are significant auto parts that are assembled in Mexico.
00:14:03.800 A lot of auto parts are built in Texas.
00:14:06.020 A lot of them are built in Mexico.
00:14:08.280 And there's actually a trade that goes back and forth, sometimes two, three, four times,
00:14:12.840 where a component will be built partially in Texas and then shipped to Mexico
00:14:17.400 and more of it will be built there and then it'll ship back to Texas and more of it's built there.
00:14:20.760 And it goes back and forth.
00:14:22.620 And so every time you're crossing the border, the delay drives up the cost.
00:14:27.620 And so if you're buying a car or truck, speeding this up lowers the cost that you're paying.
00:14:33.740 But there's an even broader benefit to that.
00:14:36.540 And there is a national security benefit, particularly post-COVID.
00:14:40.780 Many of us rightly have focused on the need to decouple from China and in particular to move more and more manufacturing out of China
00:14:52.360 and to move it closer to America, either bring it home and bring manufacturing here to the United States
00:14:58.280 or at a minimum bring it to allies that are not controlled by communist China.
00:15:03.240 And a lot of that manufacturing is moving to Mexico.
00:15:06.020 That's a good thing, decoupling from China.
00:15:09.120 And so expanding the ability to have trade and commerce crossing our southern border helps us de-link and decouple from China.
00:15:18.060 That's unambiguously good for the entire country.
00:15:21.220 I want to also move on to another big issue that we teased earlier, and that was the Christopher Wray testifying before Congress.
00:15:29.720 There's been a lot of fallout from this.
00:15:31.880 You've seen a lot of the clips.
00:15:33.200 And before we get into some of those, Senator, give me your overall take on Christopher Wray.
00:15:38.820 Did he stabilize the ship or did it actually make things worse for his standing and the defense or lack thereof?
00:15:48.440 I would say if some of the decisions they've made on schedule one to ten, what grade would you have given him before Congress?
00:15:54.120 Well, let me focus less on his grade before Congress and let me focus more on his grade in the job.
00:15:59.920 And in terms of the job, I'd give him an F minus because he has utterly failed to correct the rabid partisanship and the deep politicization of the FBI.
00:16:12.700 He has been at the helm when the FBI has behaved like the DNC's political stormtroopers, and it's done enormous damage.
00:16:25.200 And he's also been at the helm when the FBI stonewalled, which they have done to Congress over and over and over again.
00:16:34.600 Jim Jordan talked about some of that stonewalling when he was kind of laying out just how much the FBI has fallen under his direction.
00:16:44.540 And here's part of the reminder, the American people, about what's happened with the politicalization of the FBI and the DOJ.
00:16:51.900 Americans have seen the FBI's Richmond field office put together a memorandum saying pro-life Catholics are extremists.
00:17:02.540 They've seen 20 FBI agents, SWAT team members, show up at the home of Mark Houck and arrest him in front of his wife and seven children,
00:17:13.200 even though he had indicated he'd be happy to turn himself in.
00:17:18.140 And what was he arrested for?
00:17:19.340 Remember, him and his 12-year-old son were praying outside an abortion facility.
00:17:23.760 Some guy starts screaming in his son's face, and he did what, frankly, any dad would do, defended his child.
00:17:32.040 What's interesting is the National School Board Association apologized for the letter,
00:17:36.540 but the attorney general refuses to rescind his directive.
00:17:41.140 The FBI did rescind, thank goodness, the Richmond Catholic Memorandum,
00:17:44.240 but they refused to tell Congress who wrote it and who approved it.
00:17:49.340 And Mr. Houck, Mr. Houck, when he got his day in court, he was acquitted by a jury of his peers.
00:17:56.800 American speech is censored, parents are called terrorists, Catholics are called radicals,
00:18:00.740 and I haven't even talked about the spying that took place of a presidential campaign,
00:18:05.760 or the raiding of a former president's home.
00:18:07.660 You listen to that list, it is stunning to think that this is happening in the United States of America.
00:18:17.620 It is, and as you know, the entirety of that list is laid out in detail in my most recent book,
00:18:25.860 in the book, Justice Corrupted, how the left has weaponized the legal system.
00:18:29.920 The book starts with the sexual assault in Loudoun County, Virginia,
00:18:35.160 of the teenage girl by a boy dressed in a skirt in the girl's bathroom,
00:18:40.540 and the school board covering it up, lying about it,
00:18:44.220 and ultimately having the father of the girl arrested because he dared speak up for his daughter.
00:18:51.000 And that incident was one of the incidents that prompted the letter from the National Association of School Boards
00:18:58.260 to President Biden that resulted in Merrick Garland five days later issuing a memo,
00:19:04.260 a directive to the FBI to go after parents, to target them,
00:19:08.860 essentially to treat them as domestic terrorists if they dare speak up at school board meetings.
00:19:15.820 That memo was disgraceful.
00:19:17.840 It's a perfect example of weaponization.
00:19:21.000 And what has happened is, like the Mark Hauk example is another one I discuss at great length.
00:19:28.640 Mark Hauk, it is a disparate standard of justice to send more than a dozen agents
00:19:37.340 with machine guns drawn at the crack of dawn to arrest someone at their home in front of their crying children.
00:19:44.940 But this administration, if you are pro-life, if you dare speak up in defense of life,
00:19:51.000 you have to worry about the stormtroopers showing up at your front door.
00:19:55.680 And by the way, when they tried, Mr. Hauk, the jury threw the case out within minutes.
00:20:00.140 They thought the case was ridiculous, that he was defending his 12-year-old son,
00:20:05.500 and he was charged with basically pushing a guy who was screaming at his son.
00:20:10.800 And that merited sending in the stormtroopers.
00:20:17.000 It is an absolute double standard, and I have to say the FBI has been willing to be complicit in this.
00:20:24.900 And then after it happens, the FBI engages in stonewalling.
00:20:28.920 What you don't see Chris Wray doing, let's take the memo from the Richmond Field Office targeting Catholics
00:20:34.620 and laying out a strategy of let's send undercover agents into Catholic churches to spy on churches,
00:20:42.140 and let's see if we can recruit the clergy to spy on the members of the parish.
00:20:47.980 It's absolutely shameful and disgraceful.
00:20:50.700 And as Jim Jordan noted, the FBI rescinded it.
00:20:54.040 When it became public, they realized it was indefensible.
00:20:56.360 But we don't know who wrote it.
00:20:58.880 We don't know who approved it.
00:21:00.140 We don't know who thought it was a good idea to target Catholics.
00:21:03.780 And the problem with Chris Wray is any time he's given a choice between defending the rabidly partisan left-wing extremists
00:21:17.860 who are in the senior career leadership at the FBI or standing with the American people,
00:21:24.320 he chooses the partisans who are corrupting the FBI.
00:21:30.540 You mentioned one thing, and I want to clarify on this point, because I think for many Americans,
00:21:36.220 they hear the defense from Wray, well, we rescinded it.
00:21:39.060 If they wouldn't have been caught in public, and this wouldn't have been made public, the memo,
00:21:45.280 I think it would probably still be going on today, and there's a very good chance
00:21:49.380 they would have found people to spy on their own parishioners.
00:21:53.180 And you know what they are doing?
00:21:55.400 They're still going after parents who speak up at school boards.
00:21:59.240 There are multiple parents across the country who went to express their free speech rights.
00:22:04.660 And to be clear, nobody has a right to engage in violence.
00:22:08.380 If you threaten someone with violence, if you engage in violence, you should be prosecuted.
00:22:12.880 But everyone has a right to peaceful speech.
00:22:17.000 And multiple parents who go to a school board and speak up because they're upset about some policy at the school board,
00:22:24.540 whether it was COVID policies or vaccine mandates, or whether it was teaching critical race theory,
00:22:30.140 or whether, as it was in Loudoun County, turning a blind eye to sexual assaults against the children in their care,
00:22:39.120 multiple parents have had the G-men show up at their door to intimidate them and interview them
00:22:44.980 just because they exercised their First Amendment rights.
00:22:48.260 And they're doing that even after they got caught.
00:22:51.020 That's how brazen it is.
00:22:53.120 It's also not just that one issue that you described, but there's also the other issue of
00:22:59.100 why are you not looking into the crimes that have been potentially committed by the Bidens?
00:23:07.840 Matt Gaetz called him out for that, Christopher Wray, and here's what he said.
00:23:12.180 I'm sitting here with my father.
00:23:14.480 I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows
00:23:18.580 and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.
00:23:24.540 I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.
00:23:29.580 Sounds like a shakedown, doesn't it, Director?
00:23:32.620 I'm not going to get into commenting on that.
00:23:34.820 You seem deeply uncurious about it, don't you?
00:23:38.680 Almost suspiciously uncurious.
00:23:40.520 Are you protecting the Bidens?
00:23:42.800 Absolutely not.
00:23:43.960 The FBI does not and has no interest in protecting anyone politically.
00:23:46.280 You won't answer the question about whether or not that's a shakedown and everybody knows
00:23:50.140 why you won't answer it because to the millions of people who will see this, they know it is
00:23:55.580 and your inability to acknowledge that is deeply revealing about you.
00:23:59.900 When he says it's deeply revealing, it's deeply revealing about how much he's willing
00:24:04.780 to protect people that screw up and make big mistakes, right?
00:24:07.740 I mean, that's part of this here is if you talk to people in law enforcement, especially
00:24:12.380 people that are in investigative positions, they tell you that finding what we just found
00:24:18.080 there, seeing what they've seen is that moment where you go, this is why I signed up for
00:24:24.320 this, Senator, because now I'm going to deal with this corruption and get rid of it.
00:24:30.020 And instead, it seems like they say every time they find the corruption, they help them cover
00:24:34.380 it up.
00:24:34.900 No, that's exactly right.
00:24:37.400 And look, this is in a context where we now know that a confidential informant approached
00:24:43.720 the FBI with evidence that Joe Biden as vice president had personally received a $5 million
00:24:49.640 bribe from a foreign national.
00:24:51.600 And the FBI covered up, refused to acknowledge the form they prepared with that complaint, refused
00:24:58.540 to describe any investigation they engaged in it.
00:25:01.420 We subsequently learned that there were allegedly 17 voice recordings of conversations between
00:25:08.680 that Ukrainian oligarch and 15 of them with Hunter Biden, two of them with Joe Biden.
00:25:15.400 As you know, as we've talked about on this podcast, I questioned the deputy director of
00:25:20.420 the FBI, Chris Ray's deputy, and asked him, will you hand over the FBI form detailing the
00:25:28.760 allegations from the confidential informant?
00:25:31.040 He refused to do so.
00:25:32.240 I said, will you confirm the existence of the 17 voice recordings?
00:25:35.820 He refused to do so.
00:25:37.280 I asked him, does the FBI have possession of the 17 voice recordings?
00:25:41.580 He refused to answer.
00:25:42.960 I asked him, will the FBI give those 17 voice recordings to the Senate Judiciary Committee?
00:25:47.860 He refused to commit to doing so.
00:25:49.920 And there is just a brazen defiance.
00:25:53.780 There's an attitude at the FBI.
00:25:56.140 We don't work for you.
00:25:57.720 We don't work for anybody.
00:25:59.060 We do what we want and we answer to nobody.
00:26:02.580 And the deputy director, when I was questioning him, had just this contempt.
00:26:07.700 How dare you ask me those questions?
00:26:11.040 I decide what to investigate and nobody gets to second guess it.
00:26:15.720 And it's a contempt.
00:26:16.980 It's not ultimately a contempt for me or for the Senate or for Congress.
00:26:22.820 It's a contempt for the American people.
00:26:25.500 Because when Congress engages an oversight, we're fulfilling our constitutional responsibility.
00:26:32.500 And we're doing so.
00:26:33.360 So when I ask those questions, I am doing so on behalf of 30 million Texans.
00:26:38.000 I'm doing so because I believe Texans would want me to ask those questions and get to the bottom of it.
00:26:45.260 And I hear that from Texans frequently that they are grateful that I engage in that oversight.
00:26:50.560 But when the FBI has this sneering condescension that I'm not going to answer that.
00:26:57.720 And in the instance where Matt Gaetz was asking him about that WhatsApp communication between Hunter Biden and the Chinese communist official,
00:27:09.240 that is one of the most damning communications I've ever heard.
00:27:13.580 Of course, it's a shakedown.
00:27:14.900 It's not transparent.
00:27:16.180 It's not subtle.
00:27:19.040 It is about as blatant a shakedown as possible.
00:27:22.820 The only conceivable defense is either that the communication was false, although at this point,
00:27:29.540 Hunter and his lawyer have basically implicitly admitted that it's true,
00:27:33.760 or that Hunter was lying, that Joe Biden was not sitting next to him,
00:27:39.260 and that even though Hunter was threatening the retribution from Joe Biden, that he was not telling the truth.
00:27:48.340 That is a possible defense for Joe Biden, although it's not a defense for Hunter.
00:27:53.240 But the FBI, and remember, by the way, you got to also look at this in the context of the two IRS whistleblowers
00:27:59.880 that allege that in the entire course of this investigation,
00:28:03.000 the Department of Justice politically interfered with the investigation and said,
00:28:07.980 do not ask any questions about Joe Biden, do not ask any questions about the big guy, do not.
00:28:14.840 They refused to allow GPS to be looked at to determine was Joe Biden sitting next to Hunter Biden
00:28:24.180 when that communication was sent.
00:28:25.540 They could confirm that, but the allegation from the IRS whistleblowers are
00:28:30.960 that the DOJ didn't want to know if Joe Biden was sitting right next to Hunter Biden
00:28:39.180 when he said, I'm sitting next to my father.
00:28:41.320 And so in that context, Chris Wray's refusal to answer is stonewalling,
00:28:48.960 and it's ultimately stonewalling the American people,
00:28:51.880 which does an enormous disservice to the FBI and to the rule of law.
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00:30:18.820 Senator, there was also something else that was interesting,
00:30:21.720 and that was the FBI director was asked a very interesting question
00:30:26.180 by the Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, Harriet Hageman,
00:30:30.020 and this is what she asked him,
00:30:32.440 and the snarky response from Christopher Wray may have been one of the biggest backfires
00:30:37.260 because it was also something that he really should have never said
00:30:41.040 regardless of what his answer was going to be.
00:30:45.300 Here it is.
00:30:46.060 Twitter files, Missouri v. Biden disclosures,
00:30:49.840 the Durham investigation and report,
00:30:51.900 and exposure and collapse of the Russian collusion hoax.
00:30:55.560 The American people fully understand that there is a two-tiered justice system
00:30:59.420 that has been weaponized to persecute people based on their political beliefs
00:31:03.160 and that you have personally worked to weaponize the FBI against conservatives.
00:31:09.060 I asked Mr. Durham about this, to which he answered,
00:31:11.640 I don't think that things can go too much further with the view that law enforcement,
00:31:15.500 particularly the FBI or Department of Justice, runs a two-tiered system of justice.
00:31:19.980 The nation can't stand under those circumstances.
00:31:22.820 Director Wray, what are you prepared to do to reform federal law enforcement in a manner
00:31:26.680 which earns back the trust of the American people?
00:31:29.300 Well, first off, I would disagree with your characterization of the FBI
00:31:32.880 and certainly your description of my own approach.
00:31:36.280 The idea that I'm biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me,
00:31:42.140 given my own personal background.
00:31:44.620 Somewhat insane to me, Senator.
00:31:46.280 This on top of the fact that a new poll's come out saying that just 37% of Americans
00:31:51.260 have a favorable view of the FBI right now,
00:31:55.640 meaning overwhelmingly the majority of Americans do not trust or have faith in the FBI under Director Wray.
00:32:03.360 Well, I have to say I understand both sides of that conversation.
00:32:07.720 So Harriet Hageman is a friend of mine.
00:32:09.940 And I supported her enthusiastically when she ran against Liz Cheney in the primary
00:32:15.400 and beat her in the primary in Wyoming.
00:32:16.980 And I supported her in the general election, raised a bunch of money for Harriet.
00:32:20.840 She is a smart, serious, conservative, constitutional litigator and lawyer.
00:32:26.100 And so her question was carefully constructed,
00:32:28.940 and it relied on a number of very specific data points,
00:32:33.220 all of which Chris Wray uttered and ignores.
00:32:35.580 So he doesn't actually address the substance of what she says.
00:32:38.380 Instead, he says the idea that he is biased against conservatives,
00:32:44.020 he thinks is, quote, somewhat insane.
00:32:47.100 Now, you and I have talked in this podcast.
00:32:49.140 It's easy for people at home watching everything happening at the FBI
00:32:53.280 to think that Chris Wray is some wild-eyed liberal.
00:32:58.160 And I've said before, I don't think that's accurate.
00:33:00.860 He is not. I've known Chris Wray for 25 years.
00:33:04.240 He is not a wild-eyed liberal.
00:33:07.160 He's not even a Democrat.
00:33:08.000 He is a Republican.
00:33:08.880 He's been a Republican his whole life.
00:33:11.000 He has been in law enforcement much of his life.
00:33:14.320 As far as I know, he still considers himself a Republican.
00:33:17.780 So the problem is not that he came into the office
00:33:21.960 with an ideological hatred for conservatives.
00:33:26.640 By the way, Merrick Garland, he has that.
00:33:29.080 Merrick Garland is a partisan, but Chris Wray is not.
00:33:31.560 And remember, it was Donald Trump who appointed Chris Wray as director of the FBI.
00:33:37.700 Chris's problem is different, which is that he is temperamentally, he is a company man.
00:33:44.080 It's just his instinct.
00:33:45.340 And so when he became director of the FBI, he instantly went native.
00:33:51.220 And so in every dispute, he looks to the senior career officials at the FBI and he says,
00:33:57.600 my responsibility as director is to have their backs.
00:34:01.920 Now, that is often a good instinct in a leader, that if you're in an institution, you want to support your people,
00:34:07.420 you want to have your people's backs.
00:34:10.140 That is a good instinct in a leader, unless your people are actively undermining the integrity of the institution you serve.
00:34:21.000 And the problem with Chris Wray, he seems to have an absolute blind spot,
00:34:26.860 that he does not understand that many of these career bureaucrats at the FBI are hard, vicious partisans.
00:34:37.940 And because he doesn't perceive that, he's not willing to rein them in.
00:34:44.180 And in any battle, he takes the side of the hard, vicious partisan and he defends them and he stonewalls.
00:34:51.480 Chris Wray could choose to answer these questions.
00:34:56.880 He doesn't want to.
00:34:57.960 And there's a second component, which is he does not have the humility
00:35:04.200 that a senior government official should have a recognition that he is accountable.
00:35:10.580 He believes I, Chris Wray, am in charge of the FBI.
00:35:15.200 And I think he believes in his heart they are not biased or weaponized.
00:35:19.660 And I just think he's utterly blind to what his underlings are doing.
00:35:25.040 It's why he doesn't engage in the substance of any of the points.
00:35:29.860 But and by the way, I have had literally screaming arguments with Chris Wray as director,
00:35:38.060 where I've said, you are not defending the FBI when you defend these wild eyed partisans.
00:35:45.940 You are hurting the FBI.
00:35:47.840 You are hurting the integrity of the institution you lead.
00:35:50.760 I hear from and I've told him this, your agents who come and tell me that they're embarrassed to be FBI agents
00:35:58.560 because under your leadership and it started before Chris Wray, it started it.
00:36:04.520 Jim Comey was much worse.
00:36:06.680 But Chris Wray wasn't willing to clean house.
00:36:09.340 He wasn't willing to throw the partisans out.
00:36:11.680 And he's not willing to go forward and say, you know what?
00:36:14.640 The American people deserve transparency here.
00:36:16.960 On the investigation of Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, right now, the IRS whistleblowers are alleging
00:36:24.160 that DOJ engaged in a cover up, that the attorney general lied under oath to Congress,
00:36:30.780 responding to my questioning in the Senate Judiciary Committee,
00:36:33.940 and that the attorney general likely committed obstruction of justice.
00:36:37.700 Those are very serious charges.
00:36:39.640 You know who has a lot of information on whether that's true?
00:36:42.560 The FBI.
00:36:43.200 They were side by side in all of this investigation.
00:36:47.200 And Chris Wray feels no obligation to come forward and be candid with the American people
00:36:53.380 and answer those questions.
00:36:55.220 And look, I get often law enforcement, it's a standard response in law enforcement,
00:37:00.280 if you ask about an investigation for law enforcement to say,
00:37:03.340 I can't comment on a pending investigation.
00:37:06.400 That's true in the run of the mill case.
00:37:08.600 In this instance, when you're dealing with serious allegation of corruption,
00:37:15.480 of bribery, of multiple felonies by the president of the United States
00:37:21.140 and by the attorney general of the United States,
00:37:23.380 I think the FBI has a bigger obligation, and that's to the American people,
00:37:27.780 to say, here's what we know.
00:37:30.180 And in that regard, Chris Wray has failed utterly.
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00:39:20.740 Lastly, Senator, I want to talk about cocaine at the White House.
00:39:25.380 It's no longer just cocaine that we're finding at the White House.
00:39:28.700 The Secret Service has now apparently said, yeah, we find other drugs there like weed.
00:39:34.340 And yet, Democrats have come out and they said they actually feel good about this.
00:39:39.080 Representative Raskin said this about the investigation into the cocaine.
00:39:44.240 Who brought the White House?
00:39:45.160 And, of course, we called it here on Verdict Center.
00:39:47.900 We're never going to find out who brought it in.
00:39:49.840 They're saying they couldn't figure it out.
00:39:52.040 I'm satisfied that the Secret Service and the White House are on top of it.
00:39:56.680 You know, I was reading a book about Lincoln recently.
00:39:59.620 And anybody in Washington could just walk right into Lincoln's White House, go directly in
00:40:05.840 and try to find the president and talk to him.
00:40:08.480 And, obviously, we're in a very different security environment than that.
00:40:13.460 But I don't know how many people would want to go to the White House if they were going
00:40:16.680 to be administering a drug test on the way in, which is what some of my colleagues have
00:40:21.020 suggested.
00:40:22.400 You know, some people are saying everybody should be drug tested on the way into the White House.
00:40:25.800 And, you know, these are the same people who are opposed to COVID-19 tests.
00:40:31.560 So I don't see a lot of coherence in the criticism.
00:40:37.640 That's one hell of a statement, Senator.
00:40:39.360 Your reaction?
00:40:40.880 Well, I think it's rather hysterical to see a Democrat congressman saying, gosh, you know,
00:40:46.580 Democrats would be really afraid to go to the White House if we had to get drug tested.
00:40:50.140 I mean, look, you got to get drug tested to get hired as a truck driver.
00:40:53.900 You got to get drug tested to get hired as a forklift operator.
00:40:57.080 There are a lot of jobs in America you got to get drug tested for.
00:41:00.400 In fact, when I speak to small business owners in Texas, they say one of the challenges of
00:41:05.440 hiring new employees is finding people who can pass the drug test.
00:41:09.080 Well, that's one thing if you're dealing with ordinary citizens.
00:41:15.080 But you would think a member of Congress should be held to a higher standard.
00:41:18.680 And yet he's saying, gosh, you know, we don't want to go to the White House with drug tests.
00:41:23.800 Look, this is a White House that applies no ethical standards to itself.
00:41:32.200 This is a White House that covers up serious allegations of criminality by the president of the United States, including bribery.
00:41:42.360 This is a White House that covers up serious allegations of criminality by the president's adult son, Hunter Biden.
00:41:50.520 This is a White House that sends a press secretary out every day to brazenly lie to the American people.
00:41:58.720 This is a White House, as you noted, who they said they multiple times found marijuana in the White House.
00:42:03.880 And they're like, oh, oh, well, no big deal.
00:42:05.700 They just confiscated the marijuana, threw it away, but didn't bother naming whose it was, didn't apparently seem to have any concern on figuring out whose it was.
00:42:13.780 Because, you know, I mean, you know, who hasn't smoked pot in the White House?
00:42:18.540 This is a White House.
00:42:20.100 Look, this cocaine story.
00:42:22.460 If this cocaine story happened when Donald Trump was president, the media would be losing their minds.
00:42:28.800 Democrats would be losing their minds.
00:42:30.340 And yet, because it's under Joe Biden, listen, this was cocaine that was left in a working entrance of the White House where they have a log of every person who walked through that door.
00:42:42.460 And the exact time they walked through that door just yesterday, the Secret Service announced, oh, we've done our investigation.
00:42:50.180 And guess what?
00:42:51.460 We can't figure out who did it.
00:42:53.240 And let's be clear, this podcast predicted that right after the cocaine was found.
00:42:58.380 We said on this podcast, here's going to be the result.
00:43:01.660 They're going to announce, we don't know.
00:43:04.760 Well, what do you know?
00:43:05.540 That's exactly what they announced.
00:43:07.020 And the reason they announced it, they don't want to know.
00:43:10.020 Because whoever it is, it's somebody embarrassing.
00:43:14.300 Well, and you go back to the Secret Service now confirming they found marijuana not once, but twice in the White House in 2022 alone, long before cocaine was located in the West Wing.
00:43:25.000 The Secret Service revealed that.
00:43:26.340 Last year, not a long time ago, last year.
00:43:27.440 Yeah, and the Secret Service revealed the information to Congress like, oh, yeah, by the way, in this classified briefing on this investigation into the cocaine found in the West Wing.
00:43:36.020 Yeah, we've also found some other drugs.
00:43:37.760 We found weed a few times last year.
00:43:39.960 This is not normal behavior, yet they're acting like it is.
00:43:44.420 Well, this White House believes they are immune from scrutiny.
00:43:51.020 It really is stunning.
00:43:52.840 By the way, look, I'll give another example.
00:43:54.840 So there was a really interesting column that Maureen Dowd wrote in in The New York Times.
00:44:01.860 Maureen Dowd, of course, is a left wing columnist.
00:44:04.720 She is a hard partisan Democrat.
00:44:08.340 And the title of her column was it's seven grandchildren, Mr.
00:44:12.900 President.
00:44:13.240 And that, of course, is because Hunter Biden has an illegitimate child, a little girl, Navy Joan, who Hunter Biden has gone to court to stop her from using the name Biden.
00:44:26.580 This little four year old, she doesn't get to use the name Biden because he's unhappy about the circumstances in which he fathered a child.
00:44:34.420 Now, deadbeat dads are not honorable people.
00:44:37.220 When you run away from your kid, that's not honorable.
00:44:41.060 That's not right.
00:44:42.360 That is, frankly, shameful.
00:44:44.360 But Joe Biden consistently refers to his six grandchildren.
00:44:49.100 In fact, every Christmas he puts up six stockings.
00:44:51.340 But as Maureen Dowd pointed out, you don't have six grandchildren.
00:44:55.840 You have seven.
00:44:57.200 And and the fact that Joe Biden won't even acknowledge that she exists.
00:45:01.600 And by the way, we're not speculating that she's his grandchild.
00:45:06.620 They did a paternity test and concluded, yep, Hunter is daddy.
00:45:10.860 And and and by the way, look, look, people have children and they have children out of wedlock.
00:45:16.140 That is not, you know, that happens in the world.
00:45:20.260 It shouldn't.
00:45:21.240 But but we live in reality.
00:45:23.280 The question is, if that happens, how does someone behave?
00:45:26.840 Do they behave honorably?
00:45:27.860 Do they provide for the kid?
00:45:29.580 And and Hunter literally said here, you can have a couple of my paintings like holy crap.
00:45:35.820 That's dad of the year stuff.
00:45:37.420 You're shaking down communist China and Ukraine for millions of dollars.
00:45:41.960 And you're giving your daughter that you deny your name to.
00:45:46.300 A couple of your idiotic paintings that you're trying to grift money off of it.
00:45:54.440 And you can't have my last name.
00:45:56.480 You can't have my last name at the same time.
00:45:58.620 You can't have my last name.
00:46:00.780 And the fact that Maureen Dowd made that point is a big deal.
00:46:05.820 That The New York Times is starting to turn on him.
00:46:09.320 That's a big deal.
00:46:10.480 But still, most of the corporate media won't ask Joe Biden.
00:46:15.040 Why are you denying this four year old child?
00:46:19.380 And refusing to acknowledge that she's yours, your grandchild.
00:46:24.340 Great point.
00:46:24.820 The media, by the way, wanting to cover this up.
00:46:26.840 They're now saying that if you care about cocaine in the White House, you are a conspiracy theorist.
00:46:34.560 Chuck Todd, meet the press now on MSNBC.
00:46:37.660 This is what he had to say about the Secret Service ending the White House cocaine investigation.
00:46:42.140 What do you sense, Congress?
00:46:43.260 You know, we know there's a few members of Congress are going to try to use this as a hobby horse.
00:46:46.960 What do you sense?
00:46:47.780 What could they do here enforcing more focus on this?
00:46:51.240 I think one of the questions was, if this can get through, is there a vulnerability in some other way?
00:46:57.540 And people I've been talking to say, when it comes to agents that might have been a powdery substance that could be used in a weapon form, that they have mechanisms to test for that.
00:47:07.520 That they don't test for contraband.
00:47:09.160 They don't test for illegal drugs that don't pose a threat to the president or others inside the White House.
00:47:14.880 It certainly is not a good look.
00:47:17.180 And no one feels good about that.
00:47:19.180 I was just going to say, I'm guessing the White House doesn't like that there's no answer there.
00:47:22.280 Oh, it's unsatisfying for everyone.
00:47:24.200 Because it only feeds the beast, the conspiratorial beast that we know of, like, trying to destroy our information.
00:47:29.980 And to answer that, family members typically don't use this entrance.
00:47:33.800 Not that they couldn't, but they typically don't.
00:47:35.460 And they're not asked to put their stuff in cubbies.
00:47:37.620 And this is, yeah.
00:47:38.640 Yes.
00:47:39.080 Nice to see you.
00:47:40.040 Silly, right, Senator?
00:47:41.280 It's just silly.
00:47:42.020 Like, oh, the conspiracy theorist there.
00:47:43.780 There's real cocaine found.
00:47:45.560 We find out more drugs are in the White House with marijuana as well.
00:47:48.140 But you're a conspiracy theorist if you want answers.
00:47:51.320 So it is, of course, not a conspiracy.
00:47:53.920 It is a fact that a bag of cocaine was found in the West Wing of the White House.
00:47:58.440 I agree with the comment there.
00:48:00.360 And we've talked about this on the pod.
00:48:01.900 I think it's unlikely that it was Hunter Biden's cocaine because the entrance where it was found is the working entrance that the staff goes in and out of.
00:48:09.940 It's not an entrance that I think Hunter was likely to use.
00:48:13.820 So so I find it more plausible that it is a staff member who works in the West Wing of the White House.
00:48:20.880 It could very well be a senior staff member of the Biden White House.
00:48:25.400 Now, if a senior staff member of the Biden White House is bringing cocaine in, that's a big damn deal.
00:48:30.420 If they are a drug addict while being a senior White House official, that is a very serious problem.
00:48:37.640 And and the reason that we predicted right at the outset, we will never know the Secret Service will announce we can't figure out who it is, is because they recognize it's embarrassing as hell.
00:48:49.460 And a real problem if senior White House aides are drug addicts.
00:48:55.840 Chuck Todd dismisses it all as conspiracy theory.
00:48:58.420 I'll tell you this, Chuck wouldn't think that if this were the Trump White House, if this were the Trump White House, he would be lighting his hair on fire.
00:49:05.860 Yeah, great point.
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