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A conversation with Joseph B. Sweeney, former CIA Head of Litigation · UK Column Radio

0:07
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the UK Column viewers and listeners.
0:11
Speaker 1: A little bit of a gray afternoon here in Plymouth, England,
0:14
Speaker 1: but we're not going to worry about that. We've got
0:16
Speaker 1: a really interesting interview just coming up. I'm delighted to
0:21
Speaker 1: be joined today by Joseph B. Sweeney, who's the author
0:25
Speaker 1: of Dangerous Injustice, How Democrats weaponize the Department of Justice
0:31
Speaker 1: to protect Biden and persecute Trump. Now, this is an
0:37
Speaker 1: absolutely fascinating book which I've been able to read over
0:41
Speaker 1: the last couple of weeks. So I think we're going
0:43
Speaker 1: to have a very interesting discussion. Just to tell you
0:46
Speaker 1: a little bit more about guests today, and I think
0:50
Speaker 1: the simple way is for me to read his CV
0:54
Speaker 1: that he's kindly provided, and it runs as follows. Joseph B.
1:00
Speaker 1: Sweeney served in the CIA Office of General Council for
1:04
Speaker 1: twenty five years in support of broad spectrum of intelligence
1:08
Speaker 1: operations all over the world, including espionage and terrorism investigations
1:14
Speaker 1: and prosecutions. His work has been recognized with a nineteen
1:18
Speaker 1: ninety nine Public Service Award from the Eastern District of
1:23
Speaker 1: Virginia for his support of an espionage prosecution, a two
1:28
Speaker 1: thousand and two Attorney General's Award for his support of
1:32
Speaker 1: the Southern District of New York's prosecution of Osama bin
1:36
Speaker 1: Laden and others for bombing US embassies in East Africa,
1:41
Speaker 1: a twenty eleven Intelligence Community Legal Award for his support
1:45
Speaker 1: of a spy swap, and a twenty eighteen Assistant Attorney
1:49
Speaker 1: General Award for his support to the Department of Justice
1:53
Speaker 1: National Security Division. He's a nineteen eighty seven graduate of
1:58
Speaker 1: the United States Military account to me and served as
2:01
Speaker 1: an airborne Ranger qualified Infantry officer for six years, and
2:07
Speaker 1: after graduating law school in nineteen ninety six, he he
2:12
Speaker 1: was accepted into the CIA National Security Law Honors Program,
2:18
Speaker 1: and in twenty twelve he earned an LM in National
2:22
Speaker 1: Security Law from Georgetown Law School. So a very eminent
2:29
Speaker 1: CV Joseph B. Sweeney, Welcome to UK column.
2:35
Speaker 2: Thank you and thank you for having me.
2:37
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure. Now. I understand you're joining us from Washington,
2:42
Speaker 1: DC this afternoon. Is that correct?
2:45
Speaker 2: That is correct, I'm right in the swamp.
2:47
Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. Now, the other bits which I just
2:51
Speaker 1: wanted to point the viewers at, is your website so
2:54
Speaker 1: that once they've completed the interview with us. They can
2:59
Speaker 1: go and have a look at that. We'll probably bring
3:00
Speaker 1: it up at the end as well, but that's www
3:04
Speaker 1: dot s w w n eyjb dot com. So sweeneyjb
3:13
Speaker 1: dot com. Well, there we are. I'm going to say
3:16
Speaker 1: a very big thank you for agreeing to this interview,
3:21
Speaker 1: and of course for providing me with a copy of
3:25
Speaker 1: your book. Now, I have spent a lot of time
3:28
Speaker 1: reading it, and I ended up having to take some
3:31
Speaker 1: of the information and put it in a little bit
3:33
Speaker 1: of a diagrammatic form so that I could track through
3:38
Speaker 1: some of your arguments. But I thought what I'd do
3:41
Speaker 1: is just sort of spell out the flow of it
3:46
Speaker 1: for the audience and then maybe we can work through
3:48
Speaker 1: that a bit until we get into the critical element.
3:53
Speaker 1: So you begin by a little bit of history with
3:58
Speaker 1: talking about George Washington and warnings to the American public
4:03
Speaker 1: about what happens when there's fractions appear in the nation
4:07
Speaker 1: and how that actually is a threat to the nation
4:11
Speaker 1: and the unity of the nation. So that was a
4:13
Speaker 1: pretty poignant start. You quickly give a little bit of
4:19
Speaker 1: a summary, which is about from twenty sixteen onwards, the
4:25
Speaker 1: Democrat attacks on Trump from his presidential campaign onwards until
4:33
Speaker 1: of course we get to the critical point where there's
4:35
Speaker 1: been an armed raid on Trump's home, and you point
4:43
Speaker 1: out that very quickly, at that time, the Biden administration
4:49
Speaker 1: came up with two criminal indictments against Trump that was
4:53
Speaker 1: interfering with the twenty twenty presidential election and violating number
4:59
Speaker 1: two too, violating espionage the Espionage Act by mishandling classified information.
5:08
Speaker 1: And the next bit I'll just do very briefly before
5:11
Speaker 1: we will bring you in, is that you then point
5:15
Speaker 1: out to your readers that they need to follow three
5:18
Speaker 1: key steps in order to really get on to understand
5:23
Speaker 1: the complexities of the law around classified information. And you
5:29
Speaker 1: say that to understand the extent to which the party
5:32
Speaker 1: affiliations determined conduct to the investigations against Trump, the reader
5:39
Speaker 1: needs to understand cases both against Biden and Trump, and
5:45
Speaker 1: to do that, you need to understand how defense information
5:49
Speaker 1: is classified and protected. So that's probably the starting point
5:55
Speaker 1: for us. Most people will have little idea about the
5:59
Speaker 1: intricate sees of official secrets and how the documentation works.
6:04
Speaker 1: So would you like to start there and just tell
6:08
Speaker 1: the audience how the system works and what classified information is.
6:13
Speaker 2: Sure, absolutely in the United States, information that is national
6:19
Speaker 2: defense related is classified pursuant to a presidential executive order.
6:25
Speaker 2: So all the safeguarding classifications, you know, all the rules
6:30
Speaker 2: on storage, handling, processing, access, all of that is pursuant
6:36
Speaker 2: to presidential executive order. The president makes the rules for
6:41
Speaker 2: this sensitive national security related information. Now you know, just
6:47
Speaker 2: for your viewers who may not be familiar with our system,
6:52
Speaker 2: we have three coordinate branches of government, the judiciary, the
6:55
Speaker 2: executive branch, and Congress. So classified information is not controlled
7:02
Speaker 2: by Congress and it's not controlled by the judiciary. It
7:05
Speaker 2: is created pursuant to executive power because under the Constitution,
7:10
Speaker 2: the president is also the commander in chief of the
7:13
Speaker 2: armed forces. So it's that commander in chief power flowing
7:17
Speaker 2: from that power that the President issues in executive order
7:21
Speaker 2: to classify information. And there are many, many, many rules,
7:25
Speaker 2: some of which I go into in the book about storage, handling, creation, transportation.
7:32
Speaker 2: They're very strict rules, and for those of us like
7:34
Speaker 2: me who spent decades working with classified information every day,
7:39
Speaker 2: they're all second nature. It's like breathing, taking care of
7:42
Speaker 2: information and making sure you're following all the rules. And
7:45
Speaker 2: so that's that's the basics for creating and protecting classified information.
7:53
Speaker 2: And the most important point is that it all flows
7:56
Speaker 2: from executive power. Now, there are also criminal laws that
8:03
Speaker 2: make it that make it a crime under US law
8:07
Speaker 2: to mishandle, or steal or be grossly negligent in the
8:12
Speaker 2: handling of classified information. So, for instance, you know, gross
8:17
Speaker 2: negligence is is at the lower end of the spectrum
8:20
Speaker 2: because it's when you're not doing something purposeful, but you're
8:23
Speaker 2: just being maybe stupid, excessively stupid in the way that
8:26
Speaker 2: you're transporting or handling classified information. It's when you're violating
8:31
Speaker 2: a duty of care and you're beings in the in
8:35
Speaker 2: the lack of attention to the duty of care is
8:39
Speaker 2: so extreme that the law would actually, you know, make
8:42
Speaker 2: it a crime. So there's gross negligence. And then there
8:46
Speaker 2: is at the other end of the spectrum, willfully retaining,
8:51
Speaker 2: willfully stealing classified information. In all of those violations would
8:56
Speaker 2: be under the US Espionage Act. So the Espionage Act itself,
9:02
Speaker 2: it covers actually a broad range of conduct because there
9:06
Speaker 2: is of course the classic type of spying that you
9:09
Speaker 2: would see in the movies where foreigners are trying to
9:12
Speaker 2: steal your government's secrets and you catch them. Right, that's
9:15
Speaker 2: a classic case that is an Espionage Act prosecution. But
9:21
Speaker 2: even something as simple as mishandling classified information, if it's
9:25
Speaker 2: gross negligence, that can also be prosecuted. Even though you
9:29
Speaker 2: weren't trying to steal secrets for money, you weren't doing
9:32
Speaker 2: anything to purposefully harm the country, but you did violate
9:36
Speaker 2: a duty of care. So that's kind of in a nutshell,
9:39
Speaker 2: that's how classified information is controlled, and that's how mishandling
9:43
Speaker 2: or stealing is punished under US law.
9:48
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, And of course if we do something simple,
9:54
Speaker 1: we're talking about classified information within a government, there's all
9:58
Speaker 1: sorts of different types of classific information that's circulating. We
10:03
Speaker 1: might have documents that relate to foreign relations, and we
10:09
Speaker 1: might have documents which are more orientated towards the military.
10:14
Speaker 1: And can you explain to the audience what sort of
10:18
Speaker 1: documents would how documents would normally be classified so that
10:23
Speaker 1: they can be identified as.
10:27
Speaker 2: Under the Presidential Executive Order, there are eight categories of
10:31
Speaker 2: information that are eligible to be classified as our state secrets,
10:38
Speaker 2: and they include the things that you would expect the
10:41
Speaker 2: foreign information pertaining to foreign relations and the United States,
10:45
Speaker 2: information pertaining to the military of the United States, information
10:50
Speaker 2: pertaining to intelligence sources and methods, for instance. So the
10:54
Speaker 2: categories are basic in what you would expect, and if
10:59
Speaker 2: you're going to classify information from those categories, you have
11:05
Speaker 2: to determine the level of damage that could be expected
11:09
Speaker 2: from an unauthorized disclosure of that information. So if it's
11:14
Speaker 2: just simple damage, then the information would be classified at
11:18
Speaker 2: the confidential level, that's the most basic level, and then
11:22
Speaker 2: one step up would be the secret level, where there's
11:25
Speaker 2: perhaps more damage to the national security that could be expected,
11:29
Speaker 2: and then if there is exceptionally grave damage to the
11:33
Speaker 2: national security, that's classified at the highest level, top secret. Now,
11:39
Speaker 2: once you get up to the top secret level, it's
11:42
Speaker 2: not one monolithic category because information up at that level
11:47
Speaker 2: can be further compartmented, and so there's top secret, diamond,
11:53
Speaker 2: top secret, jade, top secret, you know, a lavender, and
11:58
Speaker 2: you don't get access to the those categories of information
12:02
Speaker 2: unless you have a need to know them. So it's
12:04
Speaker 2: just there's further compartmentation at the top secret level. But
12:08
Speaker 2: that's basically how it works under the Executive Order. Confidential, secret,
12:13
Speaker 2: top secret, and at the top secret level, it can
12:16
Speaker 2: be even further compartmented.
12:18
Speaker 1: Right, and those classified documents would normally have those classifications
12:25
Speaker 1: clearly marked on them, So somebody handling and reading a
12:31
Speaker 1: document with a particular security implication would see that classification
12:37
Speaker 1: and any additional caveats printed on the document.
12:42
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and so under the executive order governing the classified information,
12:47
Speaker 2: there is very specific instructions as how a classified document
12:51
Speaker 2: would be marked, so that anyone, anyone see, you know,
12:55
Speaker 2: would see the classification levels in the header and in
12:59
Speaker 2: the footer, and then there would be additional code words
13:03
Speaker 2: and code names and so forth. But that way everyone
13:07
Speaker 2: knows from when they pick up a document what level
13:10
Speaker 2: it's classified at and whether or not they should even
13:13
Speaker 2: be reading the document, because, like I said, if it's
13:15
Speaker 2: top secret lavender and I haven't been read into that
13:19
Speaker 2: category and I'm not supposed to read it, then I
13:21
Speaker 2: know this is not a document that I should be reading.
13:24
Speaker 2: So one other related nuance to that is sometimes documents
13:30
Speaker 2: are not properly marked. And let's say someone creates a
13:34
Speaker 2: classified document, maybe it's even a handwritten note, and they
13:38
Speaker 2: don't properly mark the header and the footer with the
13:42
Speaker 2: appropriate classification markings in the document could then get out
13:47
Speaker 2: into the public domain. People could be passing it around
13:50
Speaker 2: with no knowledge that there's actually very sensitive information in
13:53
Speaker 2: the document. And I've worked on cases of that nature,
13:57
Speaker 2: and the position of the government is, well, that document
14:01
Speaker 2: is still classified, it's just not properly marked. And so
14:07
Speaker 2: what the government would do in those instances is we
14:09
Speaker 2: would refuse to confirm or deny the accuracy of any
14:13
Speaker 2: of the information in the document. We would say that
14:16
Speaker 2: the information in the document is not declassified just because
14:20
Speaker 2: it wasn't properly marked, and then we would once we
14:23
Speaker 2: got ahold of the document, we would properly market and
14:25
Speaker 2: start protecting the information in it. I've worked on cases
14:29
Speaker 2: where these complexities can make life a little difficult because,
14:34
Speaker 2: for instance, in America, under the Freedom of Information Act,
14:38
Speaker 2: citizens can request documents from the government, and sometimes when
14:42
Speaker 2: we come across a document that should have been classified
14:45
Speaker 2: but was not properly marked, we have to then market
14:48
Speaker 2: at that time and explain all of this to a
14:51
Speaker 2: federal judge so that we're not being accused of playing
14:54
Speaker 2: fast and loose with the rules.
14:57
Speaker 1: Right, So, okay, thank you for that. Just to reinforce
15:00
Speaker 1: the point your key specialist area is law within the CIA,
15:07
Speaker 1: in particular relation to classified information and court cases that
15:12
Speaker 1: have taken place around the use and abuse of classified information.
15:19
Speaker 2: That's correct. I had kind of a unique career in
15:22
Speaker 2: the CIA General Counsel's Office in that half of my time,
15:26
Speaker 2: about twelve years, was spent in the Litigation Division Line Attorney,
15:31
Speaker 2: Deputy Acting Chief, and then I was Chief of the
15:34
Speaker 2: Litigation Division for four years, handling civil and criminal cases
15:40
Speaker 2: in conjunction with the Department of Justice when those cases
15:44
Speaker 2: involved classified information in some way, shape or form. So
15:48
Speaker 2: there is just about no aspect of a civil or
15:51
Speaker 2: criminal case involving classified information that I haven't handled.
15:56
Speaker 1: Right, And as I have discovered from reading a book,
16:00
Speaker 1: this is a complex, a very complex area. Now, just
16:07
Speaker 1: to set the scene a bit, your book is essentially
16:12
Speaker 1: an analysis of what took place around the investigation into
16:18
Speaker 1: President Trump when he was accused of having taken classified
16:23
Speaker 1: material to his home, and of course there was a
16:27
Speaker 1: raid by armed FBI agents and subsequently huge media for all,
16:35
Speaker 1: but also a legal process took place. So that is
16:39
Speaker 1: the meat of your book. But in order to be
16:42
Speaker 1: able to explain to the reader some of the complexities
16:47
Speaker 1: around not only the case that Trump was faced with,
16:51
Speaker 1: but how he got in the position of having to
16:54
Speaker 1: face that case. You have had to take the reader
16:57
Speaker 1: through some key steps as to how you have seen
17:01
Speaker 1: the system work the protection of classifying material, but also
17:06
Speaker 1: in particular where the system has failed and what has
17:10
Speaker 1: happened to individuals. And what I perceive is that a
17:15
Speaker 1: key segment of the book is where you've been looking
17:18
Speaker 1: at examples of particular individuals who fall and foul of
17:23
Speaker 1: the law in relation to classified documents, and then you've
17:28
Speaker 1: given a sort of summary of those cases, and you've
17:31
Speaker 1: also at the end of it identified what the final
17:36
Speaker 1: charge was and what the sentence was. So I wonder
17:39
Speaker 1: whether you would be kind enough to just take us
17:43
Speaker 1: into some of those cases where you're able to say, yes,
17:47
Speaker 1: I was there, I handled this material, this is what
17:51
Speaker 1: an individual did, this is how the case unfolded, and
17:55
Speaker 1: this is what the final charge was. This is a
17:57
Speaker 1: sort of backdrop to getting to both some indiscretions by
18:02
Speaker 1: President Biden and of course what happened with President Trump.
18:07
Speaker 2: Sure, it's what got me interested in Trump's case in
18:10
Speaker 2: the first place, is that I had just retired for
18:15
Speaker 2: just about a year when mar A Lago was raided,
18:18
Speaker 2: and there were only in the history of the United States,
18:22
Speaker 2: there were only four cases where senior executive branch officials
18:27
Speaker 2: had been investigated or prosecuted for mishandling classified information. And
18:32
Speaker 2: it just so happened. I worked on three of those
18:35
Speaker 2: four cases throughout my career. I'm probably the only person
18:38
Speaker 2: in the world who did. And even the one that
18:41
Speaker 2: I didn't work on that happened during my time in government,
18:44
Speaker 2: and I was aware of the case in following it.
18:47
Speaker 2: So what I'll do is I'll just walk your viewers
18:49
Speaker 2: through those four cases in the order that they occurred.
18:54
Speaker 2: The first case ever was a man by the name
18:56
Speaker 2: of John Deutsch, who was the Director of Central and Telegence.
19:00
Speaker 2: He was the top spy and the head of the
19:03
Speaker 2: intelligence community. This was before nine to eleven, and before
19:09
Speaker 2: the terrorist attacks of nine to eleven, the head of
19:12
Speaker 2: the CIA was also the head of the intelligence community.
19:17
Speaker 2: Now that changed after nine to eleven there was a
19:21
Speaker 2: restructuring of the intelligence community and the position of DNI
19:26
Speaker 2: was created, that's the Director of National Intelligence, and the
19:30
Speaker 2: head of the CIA was made just the head of
19:32
Speaker 2: the CIA. But back when Deutsch was the head of
19:35
Speaker 2: the CIA. He was also the head of the Intelligence Community,
19:38
Speaker 2: and so his title was Director of Central Intelligence. Now,
19:43
Speaker 2: after Deutsch left his job that the agency discovered that
19:48
Speaker 2: Deutsch had been keeping on his home computers that were
19:53
Speaker 2: unsecured and hooked up to the internet, over three hundred
19:57
Speaker 2: classified documents. And what he was doing was he was
20:00
Speaker 2: bringing them home at night on like a thumb drive,
20:03
Speaker 2: plugging them into his home computer, and working on documents
20:07
Speaker 2: at night. That is something I can tell you that
20:10
Speaker 2: if any rank and file officer in the executive branch did,
20:12
Speaker 2: they would absolutely go to jail. But Deutsch was very
20:17
Speaker 2: high up, and when it came to light, the agency
20:21
Speaker 2: started to investigate. There's a lot of procedural history that
20:25
Speaker 2: I go into in the book that I won't bother with.
20:27
Speaker 2: I'll just focus on his conduct for now, and that
20:30
Speaker 2: was that he had over three hundred classified documents. So
20:34
Speaker 2: that's a very high volume, and many of them were
20:39
Speaker 2: highly classified up at the top secret level. Now, this
20:43
Speaker 2: was the first case of this nature and the Department
20:46
Speaker 2: of Justice was struggling with how to handle it. Our
20:49
Speaker 2: Attorney General at the time was named Janet Reno. She
20:53
Speaker 2: was appointed by President Clinton as the Attorney General, and
20:56
Speaker 2: Clinton had also appointed John Deutsch. So, you know, one
21:00
Speaker 2: of the things I emphasize in the book is you
21:03
Speaker 2: cannot examine these cases without examining the politics. The politics
21:09
Speaker 2: heavily influenced how these cases were handled, all of them,
21:13
Speaker 2: and Deutsch is a great example because at first the
21:16
Speaker 2: Attorney General refused to even conduct even a preliminary investigation,
21:23
Speaker 2: and then there was a public backlash because the Senate
21:29
Speaker 2: Intelligence Committee did their own investigation and released an unclassified
21:34
Speaker 2: report that caused the backlash, and then the Attorney General
21:39
Speaker 2: had to reverse herself and appoint someone to investigate and
21:43
Speaker 2: perhaps prosecute the case. I worked with that person, and
21:47
Speaker 2: so what ended up happening was, you know, the Department
21:52
Speaker 2: of Justice, which was controlled by the Clinton administration, was
21:56
Speaker 2: very lenient on John Deutsch, and they ended up up
22:01
Speaker 2: permitting Deutsch to sign a plea agreement for possessing one
22:07
Speaker 2: single classified document that was at the secret level. Now,
22:12
Speaker 2: Deutsch had a lot of stuff that was at the
22:14
Speaker 2: top secret level that was all ignored in the plea agreement.
22:18
Speaker 2: And he had this plea agreement for one single secret
22:23
Speaker 2: document and by only charging that one document that lowered
22:28
Speaker 2: the charges from something that would be very serious in
22:32
Speaker 2: our country, which is called a felony that's punishable with
22:34
Speaker 2: one year or more down to a misdemeanor, which is
22:39
Speaker 2: maximum of one year. But Deutsche's plea agreement just it
22:43
Speaker 2: permitted him to just get a fine and do some
22:46
Speaker 2: probation and there was no jail time. So that's a
22:49
Speaker 2: very light slap on the wrists. Now, the day after
22:55
Speaker 2: Deutsch signed his plea agreement was President Clinton's last day office,
23:01
Speaker 2: and so Clinton then issued a pardon to Deutsch. So
23:06
Speaker 2: in a pardon vitiates the plea agreement, so he never
23:09
Speaker 2: had to pay the fine, he never had to do
23:11
Speaker 2: the probation. He basically was let off scott free for
23:15
Speaker 2: what was a very major breach of national security. Now
23:20
Speaker 2: that was the first case. The second case was also
23:24
Speaker 2: someone who was working for President Clinton, and that was
23:28
Speaker 2: Clinton's National Security advisor, who is kind of an informal
23:32
Speaker 2: cabinet member for the president, and his name was Sandy Berger.
23:37
Speaker 2: Now Sandy Berger after he served as National Security Advisor,
23:42
Speaker 2: this is after nine to eleven, Berger was going to
23:45
Speaker 2: the US National Archives to review documents related to testimony
23:52
Speaker 2: he was going to have to give to the nine
23:55
Speaker 2: to eleven Commission. And when Berger was reviewing these documents,
23:59
Speaker 2: they were classified, many were top secret. He was stealing them,
24:05
Speaker 2: sticking them down his pants and in his socks, bringing
24:09
Speaker 2: them to a construction site that was across the street
24:11
Speaker 2: from the National Archives, and then bringing them home and
24:14
Speaker 2: destroying them. Now we don't know for sure what was
24:19
Speaker 2: in the documents that he was stealing, but they all
24:23
Speaker 2: appeared to be the different versions drafts of an after
24:30
Speaker 2: action report on some terrorism activities. And the rumor going
24:34
Speaker 2: around Washington at the time was that this document, the
24:39
Speaker 2: documents he was stealing, they showed that the Clinton administration
24:44
Speaker 2: had the opportunity to kill Osama bin Laden well before
24:48
Speaker 2: nine to eleven, but they decided not to. Now that
24:51
Speaker 2: was just a rumor. I don't know if that's true
24:53
Speaker 2: or not, but it made sense to me because whatever
24:57
Speaker 2: he was trying to protect and destroy and hide it
25:01
Speaker 2: was something that was obviously very damaging to him in
25:04
Speaker 2: the Clinton administration. That would just make sense to me.
25:07
Speaker 2: So after so, at first what happened was, you know,
25:10
Speaker 2: the National the archivist noticed that some of the folders
25:15
Speaker 2: were coming back light. Not all the documents were in them,
25:19
Speaker 2: so they started marking the documents and that's when they
25:23
Speaker 2: caught Burger stealing. Now, originally he denied it. He lied
25:28
Speaker 2: to the FBI, and normally that would be an additional crime,
25:33
Speaker 2: that substruction of justice under US laws, it's a false
25:37
Speaker 2: official statement and that lie alone would be five years
25:41
Speaker 2: in jail just for a lie to the FBI for
25:45
Speaker 2: each lie, by the way, But he finally confessed and
25:52
Speaker 2: like John Deutsch, Berger got off very easily through a
25:56
Speaker 2: plea agreement. Again, this was you know, the plea agreements
26:02
Speaker 2: were very lenient in all the cases. As you'll see.
26:05
Speaker 2: Berger's was particularly lenient because he again got a fine
26:11
Speaker 2: and a probation. They only they only took away his
26:14
Speaker 2: security clearance for three years, which is unbelievable. Again, if
26:17
Speaker 2: any rank and file person in the executive branch did
26:21
Speaker 2: what Burger did, they would they would never get a
26:25
Speaker 2: security clearance again, and they would go to jail. But
26:28
Speaker 2: Burger just got to find in a probation and was
26:32
Speaker 2: actually permitted after three years to seek his security clearance returned,
26:37
Speaker 2: which is just for anyone who's worked in the executive branch.
26:40
Speaker 2: It's really unbelievable. So that was the second case. Now
26:44
Speaker 2: the third case was another CIA director And by the
26:48
Speaker 2: time this case was investigated, I was chief of our
26:52
Speaker 2: Litigation division. And this was a gentleman by the name
26:55
Speaker 2: of David Petraeus, who was an army general, high ranking,
26:59
Speaker 2: who was appointed by President Obama to be what at
27:04
Speaker 2: the time was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
27:08
Speaker 2: And this is one of the more interesting human interest
27:11
Speaker 2: stories because Petraeus was having an affair with a woman
27:16
Speaker 2: who was also his biographer. Her name was Paula Broadwell. Well.
27:22
Speaker 2: Broadwell got jealous of a third woman who was getting
27:26
Speaker 2: too close to Petraeus for her comfort, and she started
27:31
Speaker 2: sending anonymous threatening emails to this woman. Well. The woman
27:36
Speaker 2: reported it to the FBI, who traced the IP address
27:39
Speaker 2: back to Broadwell's house and they raided her house. When
27:45
Speaker 2: they raided the house, they found classified information that Petraeus
27:50
Speaker 2: had given to Broadwell when she was writing the book
27:55
Speaker 2: on Petraeus. So they went and in reviewed Petraeus and
28:02
Speaker 2: the FBI asked him if he had provided classified information
28:05
Speaker 2: to her, and he lied again. That would normally be
28:10
Speaker 2: obstruction of justice, false official statement. That's a five year
28:14
Speaker 2: penalty under under American law, putting aside even the mishandling
28:19
Speaker 2: of the classified information, which is which is double that.
28:24
Speaker 2: So the FBI ended up doing a thorough investigation in
28:30
Speaker 2: Petraeus's case, more thorough than any of the other cases.
28:34
Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, our Department of
28:36
Speaker 2: Justice is still responsible for charging decisions, and they did
28:40
Speaker 2: the same thing in Burger's case, the same thing in
28:43
Speaker 2: the in the in the case of John Deutsch, they
28:46
Speaker 2: did a very lenient plea agreement and they permitted him
28:50
Speaker 2: to plead to a misdemeanor, you know, a low level crime,
28:55
Speaker 2: and they didn't even document the classified information. They just
29:00
Speaker 2: generically described it and he got a fine and probation,
29:05
Speaker 2: And by all appearances, Petreus even maintained his security clearance
29:10
Speaker 2: because he continued to be an informal advisor to President
29:14
Speaker 2: Obama even after he resigned from the CIA. So that's
29:20
Speaker 2: the first three cases in US history. Now the last
29:24
Speaker 2: one is the most famous, the most infamous, the one
29:28
Speaker 2: that just about everyone in the United States recognizes and
29:31
Speaker 2: perhaps the world, and that was Hillary Clinton's case. When
29:34
Speaker 2: Clinton was the Secretary of State, right the top diplomat
29:38
Speaker 2: for the United States of America. She had arranged for
29:41
Speaker 2: all of her work emails to be stored on a
29:45
Speaker 2: server in her own home, and that server was, in
29:49
Speaker 2: government parlance, not secured. Now, of course, being the Secretary
29:56
Speaker 2: of State, recall that one of the categories of information
30:00
Speaker 2: that's eligible to be classified is information that pertains to
30:04
Speaker 2: the foreign affairs of the United States. Well, Clinton was
30:06
Speaker 2: the top diplomat or the United States. Anyone working in
30:11
Speaker 2: the executive branch would know that her emails would absolutely
30:16
Speaker 2: contain classified information and should not be stored on an
30:20
Speaker 2: unsecured server in her home. But that's what Clinton did,
30:24
Speaker 2: and by the time it came to light, she had
30:28
Speaker 2: over sixty thousand emails on these servers, and as it
30:31
Speaker 2: turned out, thirty thousand of them were government documents that
30:37
Speaker 2: she had basically stolen from the government. And so there
30:41
Speaker 2: was a classification review of all the emails to determine
30:45
Speaker 2: which contain classified information. I participated in that classification review.
30:51
Speaker 2: I'm one of the few people to have read the
30:54
Speaker 2: fabled Clinton emails, and I always point out I am
30:57
Speaker 2: not suicidal. I love myself, and I mentioned that because
31:02
Speaker 2: a lot of people around the Clintons have ended up
31:05
Speaker 2: having premature deaths. So the result of the classification review
31:12
Speaker 2: was that a little over a hundred of them the
31:14
Speaker 2: emails were found to contain classified information, and about a
31:19
Speaker 2: dozen of those were at the top secret level, again,
31:22
Speaker 2: the highest level of classified information. Now that's what came
31:25
Speaker 2: out on the public record, But having participated in the
31:28
Speaker 2: classification review, I can tell you that there were actually
31:32
Speaker 2: thousands of classified emails, likely because what I saw in
31:37
Speaker 2: the process was the State Department was purposefully kind of
31:41
Speaker 2: downgrading the decisions they were making. Either they didn't want
31:45
Speaker 2: to be embarrassed, or they didn't want Clinton to be embarrassed,
31:48
Speaker 2: or they were trying to protect her. I can't really
31:50
Speaker 2: speak to their motivations, but I can say that that
31:55
Speaker 2: was my observation that they were purposefully not classifying some
31:59
Speaker 2: documents should have been classified. And all you'd have to
32:02
Speaker 2: do is look at the numbers to know that. I
32:04
Speaker 2: mean over thirty thousand emails from the secretaries of State
32:10
Speaker 2: or to the Secretary of State. Anyone working in government
32:14
Speaker 2: would know that it would be a lot more than
32:15
Speaker 2: one hundred or so that were classified, because that would
32:18
Speaker 2: come out to like zero point three to three percent,
32:21
Speaker 2: one third of one percent were classified. Yeah, no way,
32:25
Speaker 2: it had to be higher than that. In fact, after
32:27
Speaker 2: the Clinton case, the FBI director gave a public testimony.
32:34
Speaker 2: He had a press conference during which he said there
32:38
Speaker 2: were over two thousand emails that were up classified. That's
32:43
Speaker 2: the term he used. I had never heard this term before,
32:46
Speaker 2: and I worked with classified information every day for twenty
32:48
Speaker 2: five years. But he said over two thousand were up classified,
32:52
Speaker 2: meaning they weren't classified when they were sent, but they
32:56
Speaker 2: were found to be classified later when they were reviewed.
33:00
Speaker 2: My senses, all of those documents were probably classified when
33:03
Speaker 2: they were sent. Now, the Clinton investigation was not a
33:08
Speaker 2: real investigation. Everything was done voluntarily. There were no subpoenas,
33:13
Speaker 2: no search warrants. The FBI actually permitted Clinton's private lawyers
33:19
Speaker 2: to review her hard drive. They never seized it, they
33:24
Speaker 2: never reviewed the documents themselves. They just they let Clinton's
33:29
Speaker 2: lawyers do the searches when they had an open criminal investigation.
33:34
Speaker 2: There's only one other case in US history that I
33:38
Speaker 2: know of where that's happened, and that was Joe Biden's case,
33:41
Speaker 2: which I'll get to later. So the investigation was not
33:46
Speaker 2: a true investigation, and at the end of it, Clinton
33:50
Speaker 2: was charged with nothing. The FBI director described her conduct
33:56
Speaker 2: as extremely careless but not gross negligent. I don't see
34:03
Speaker 2: how any reasonable person could not see those descriptions as synonymous.
34:08
Speaker 2: Extremely careless is grossly negligent, and gross negligence in the
34:12
Speaker 2: handling of classified information, as I covered, is a crime
34:15
Speaker 2: under the Espionage Act. So there's no doubt that Clinton
34:18
Speaker 2: violated the criminal law. But she was, you know, being
34:23
Speaker 2: investigated by the Obama administration, and she was also a
34:28
Speaker 2: candidate for president in the United States at the time
34:32
Speaker 2: for the Democratic Party. And so that's why I say,
34:35
Speaker 2: you can't analyze any of these historical cases without examining
34:41
Speaker 2: the politics. And you have the Democratic administration investigating the
34:48
Speaker 2: Democratic candidate for president, who was also a Democratic appointee
34:53
Speaker 2: by the same president to be the Secretary of State.
34:56
Speaker 2: So it is perhaps it's disappointing, but perhaps not rising
35:00
Speaker 2: that a real investigation was not conducted, and so Clinton
35:06
Speaker 2: was charged with nothing. So in all four of those
35:11
Speaker 2: historical precedents, all four of them were high ranking Democrats,
35:16
Speaker 2: all four of them were treated very leniently by the
35:21
Speaker 2: Department of Justice, where they either got a slap on
35:24
Speaker 2: the wrists or in Clinton's case. You know, they got
35:27
Speaker 2: nothing at all. So those are those are the historical presidents,
35:31
Speaker 2: and I'll tell your viewers I go into great a
35:33
Speaker 2: lot more detail in the book because I've done all
35:36
Speaker 2: the research on the cases, and I worked on most
35:39
Speaker 2: of them, and each one of them has human interest stories,
35:43
Speaker 2: so I think they make for interesting reading and they're
35:46
Speaker 2: fascinating cases.
35:50
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for that very concise runs through.
35:54
Speaker 1: I just wanted to make a comment, which is, as
35:57
Speaker 1: I was reading the book and I'm reading about this
36:00
Speaker 1: very high level, highly classified material which is being used
36:05
Speaker 1: and abused and goes missing or it's put on unclassified
36:11
Speaker 1: computers in somebody's home. My background in the military, in
36:16
Speaker 1: the Navy here in UK, albeit many years ago, I
36:20
Speaker 1: was handling confidential secret sometimes top secret material, but even
36:26
Speaker 1: the confidential, which will say relatively low level material. The
36:33
Speaker 1: confidential books had to be checked page by page regularly,
36:38
Speaker 1: and my goodness, if there was a page missing or
36:43
Speaker 1: an update hadn't been inserted correctly, severe penalties within the
36:49
Speaker 1: military for that. So I remember during my military career
36:55
Speaker 1: a lot of time went into the check king of
37:00
Speaker 1: classified material and also the training in how to handle it.
37:06
Speaker 1: Correctly to ensure that no material went missing. And yet
37:11
Speaker 1: you're describing the system in a country America, as far
37:17
Speaker 1: as it's known within its sort of NATO military allies,
37:20
Speaker 1: as a country which is very very strong on confidentiality
37:27
Speaker 1: and material and yet we've got such casual treatment to
37:32
Speaker 1: this material by people in very high in positions of
37:36
Speaker 1: power and influence, high positions, and nothing is happening to them.
37:42
Speaker 1: This does seem rather strange as to why this is
37:47
Speaker 1: taking place.
37:49
Speaker 2: Can you imagine if back when you were serving, and
37:51
Speaker 2: by the way, thank you for your service, if you
37:54
Speaker 2: had been caught with three hundred classified documents in your house,
37:59
Speaker 2: you'd probably still be in jail.
38:00
Speaker 1: I'd still be in prison. I think that's absolutely correct.
38:03
Speaker 1: And of course immense damage can be done by the
38:09
Speaker 1: leaking or loss of this sort of material. The one
38:13
Speaker 1: for me is always the Walker brother espionage case in
38:17
Speaker 1: America because acoustic secrets were handed over to the Russians,
38:22
Speaker 1: which I know made a difference to the conduct to
38:25
Speaker 1: the Cold War within a matter of i'll certainly say
38:28
Speaker 1: a year. So this is the reason that material has
38:32
Speaker 1: to be has to be carefully looked after. But a
38:34
Speaker 1: very casual system operating at high level and questions need
38:43
Speaker 1: to be asked.
38:44
Speaker 2: So in America, we're very fond of saying that no
38:47
Speaker 2: one is above the law. You know, no one is
38:50
Speaker 2: above the law in America. Well, our history shows something different.
38:55
Speaker 2: You know, no justice system is perfect, and I say
38:58
Speaker 2: this in my book is perfect because it's implemented by
39:02
Speaker 2: humans and we are all imperfect. So any justice system
39:07
Speaker 2: is going to have strengths and weaknesses. And we have
39:11
Speaker 2: a good justice system, but it is not perfect. And
39:15
Speaker 2: there are in fact, people in my book shows this
39:19
Speaker 2: that are above the law. You know, there's the old
39:21
Speaker 2: saying that rank has its privileges, and these senior people
39:25
Speaker 2: are absolutely treated differently, at least at least when they
39:30
Speaker 2: were high ranking Democrats. As you know, and as we'll
39:35
Speaker 2: get into, Trump's case was handled very differently. The disparities
39:40
Speaker 2: in the handling are really quite unbelievable.
39:44
Speaker 1: Right, and in relation to what happened with Trump. You
39:48
Speaker 1: you use some words and phrases which I thought, yeah, wow,
39:52
Speaker 1: this is really interesting because you say that when the
39:57
Speaker 1: Democrat administration unleashed what it did on Biden, they'd crossed
40:02
Speaker 1: the rubicon. They'd taken a step which hadn't been seen before,
40:07
Speaker 1: which is one presidential administration going after another president at
40:15
Speaker 1: using the law, and also the invasion of his home.
40:19
Speaker 1: This was something that had never been seen before. So
40:23
Speaker 1: you talk about crossing the rubicon. You also, I think
40:26
Speaker 1: it's later on in the book, sort of described the
40:29
Speaker 1: whole ponds this was happening as demonstrating that America had
40:35
Speaker 1: become a third World country, or at least saying, this
40:38
Speaker 1: is what people would expect to see in a third
40:41
Speaker 1: world country, not in America.
40:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know when the raid on mar Lago was
40:48
Speaker 2: the eighth of August twenty twenty two, and I had
40:52
Speaker 2: retired from the CIA in July of twenty one, so
40:55
Speaker 2: it was almost exactly a year after I had retired.
41:00
Speaker 2: Because I had worked on three of the four historical precedents,
41:04
Speaker 2: and I was an expert in this area of law
41:06
Speaker 2: and these types of investigations and prosecutions, I was very
41:10
Speaker 2: interested to see how the case was going to proceed.
41:14
Speaker 2: And I've also always been a student of American history.
41:19
Speaker 2: I majored in American history at West Point, and I
41:23
Speaker 2: was just fascinated by this from every angle because never
41:27
Speaker 2: before in American history had a presidential administration rated the
41:32
Speaker 2: home of a former president period, let alone a former
41:37
Speaker 2: president from the opposing political party and a former president
41:42
Speaker 2: who was the likely candidate to run against the incumbent
41:46
Speaker 2: in an upcoming election. Nothing, nothing even close to this,
41:50
Speaker 2: had ever occurred in American history, and so I was
41:53
Speaker 2: very anxious to look at the documents. And so originally
41:58
Speaker 2: the Biden administration was fighting transparency and they were trying
42:03
Speaker 2: very hard to keep the raid Affidavid. This is an
42:07
Speaker 2: FBI Affidavid that laid out, you know, all the reasons
42:11
Speaker 2: why they were seeking the search warrant. They were trying
42:15
Speaker 2: to keep that off the public record, and they were
42:17
Speaker 2: successful for a while, but eventually they had to put
42:20
Speaker 2: the document on the public record. It was heavily redacted,
42:25
Speaker 2: but there was still quite a bit that was that
42:27
Speaker 2: was released. Now for background, the part that was released
42:32
Speaker 2: was explaining to the federal judge classification in general, you know,
42:37
Speaker 2: as I did at the beginning of our talk, and
42:40
Speaker 2: then also describing to the federal judge the classified information
42:45
Speaker 2: that is thought to be at issue in the case.
42:49
Speaker 2: I have written hundreds of those types of affidavits to
42:54
Speaker 2: to federal judges, and I have supervised the drafting of
42:57
Speaker 2: thousands of such affidavits, so I know what to look for,
43:00
Speaker 2: I know right where to go, and sure enough, I
43:04
Speaker 2: found mistake after mistake after mistake. In the FBI Affidavid,
43:08
Speaker 2: they did not even properly state the standard for classification
43:11
Speaker 2: under the executive order, which I don't think was purposeful
43:14
Speaker 2: on their part, and it gave them no benefit. I
43:17
Speaker 2: think it was just sloppy drafting. But there were other
43:20
Speaker 2: aspects of the Affidavid where they were clearly misrepresenting the
43:26
Speaker 2: law to the federal judge. So, for instance, and I
43:30
Speaker 2: give many examples in my book, I'll just give you
43:33
Speaker 2: the big one right now. In the FBI Affidavid, they
43:40
Speaker 2: they had one sentence that said that information is classified
43:45
Speaker 2: pursuant to Executive Order, and then they had a lengthy
43:49
Speaker 2: section laying out for the federal judge all the rules
43:53
Speaker 2: for safeguarding transportation handling access. And as I said before,
43:58
Speaker 2: there are many of these rules. They are very strict,
44:02
Speaker 2: but they all flow from executive power. You wouldn't know
44:07
Speaker 2: that to read the AffA David. They just said there's
44:09
Speaker 2: all these rules and laws, Well, all those rules are
44:15
Speaker 2: from the President, and they are directed to the president's subordinates,
44:23
Speaker 2: but they do not bind the president in any way,
44:25
Speaker 2: shape or form. But you would not know that to
44:28
Speaker 2: read the Affidavid. The Affidavid made it sound like the
44:31
Speaker 2: president had violated all these rules, and the president cannot
44:36
Speaker 2: violate the rules because they're his rules to his subordinates. So,
44:39
Speaker 2: for instance, President Biden this weekend could take an entire
44:43
Speaker 2: box to classified information with him to his home in Wilmington, Delaware,
44:47
Speaker 2: bring them to the beach, and hand out top secret
44:50
Speaker 2: documents to sun bathers, he will have violated no law.
44:55
Speaker 2: Classified information belongs to the president. The president can do
44:59
Speaker 2: whatever he wan wants with it. Everyone below him has
45:04
Speaker 2: to obey his rules. So that is just one example
45:08
Speaker 2: of what I saw in the affidavit. And then also
45:11
Speaker 2: as more documents came to lights supporting the raid, the
45:15
Speaker 2: American public saw that there was thirty armed FBI agents
45:20
Speaker 2: that raided the home of the former president and they
45:24
Speaker 2: were authorized to use deadly force. It's right in the documents.
45:31
Speaker 2: So that's that's why I call that in the book
45:33
Speaker 2: crossing the rubicon, because no one had ever done anything
45:37
Speaker 2: like this in American history, you know, and when when
45:41
Speaker 2: Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon to to basically, you know,
45:46
Speaker 2: take take over Rome. He he only brought part of
45:52
Speaker 2: his army with him, just part of it. Biden took
45:58
Speaker 2: his entire political party and half the country with him
46:01
Speaker 2: when he crossed the Rupican. And so you just can't
46:05
Speaker 2: go back from something like that. And I was shocked
46:08
Speaker 2: by it, and it started me digging. So I started researching,
46:13
Speaker 2: and with every stone I unturned, I just found more
46:19
Speaker 2: nefarious politics, more malefeasans by the Biden administration. In full disclosure,
46:25
Speaker 2: I don't belong to a political party. I am independent,
46:29
Speaker 2: and so I had no preconceived notion. I wasn't trying
46:33
Speaker 2: to beat up the Biden administration or the Democratic Party.
46:36
Speaker 2: But that's what I found in my research, and that's
46:38
Speaker 2: what I lay out in the book. That they just
46:41
Speaker 2: bent over backwards at every point to twist laws, to
46:46
Speaker 2: twist regulations, to misrepresent the law and misrepresent the facts,
46:53
Speaker 2: to turn Trump's conduct into something that was criminal, when
46:57
Speaker 2: in fact he had done nothing wrong. And then while
47:01
Speaker 2: I was researching and writing, it came to light that
47:06
Speaker 2: Biden had been caught with classified information both in his
47:11
Speaker 2: DC office a private office in downtown d C and
47:15
Speaker 2: in his home. Now, in Biden's case, the Biden administration
47:22
Speaker 2: kept at a secret for months. No one knew it
47:28
Speaker 2: was treated. It was treated as if it was national
47:32
Speaker 2: security information, the fact that Biden had classified documents in
47:37
Speaker 2: his personal possession. So, if you'd like, I could now
47:42
Speaker 2: go into kind of, you know, the details of their
47:45
Speaker 2: conduct of the cases themselves, unless you have any more
47:48
Speaker 2: questions at this point.
47:50
Speaker 1: Well, that would be really excellent. Joseph, I'm so glad
47:53
Speaker 1: you just switched there to the Clint to the Boyden affair,
47:59
Speaker 1: because I'm going to say that very very few people
48:03
Speaker 1: here in the UK, at least, I think, have ever
48:06
Speaker 1: heard that Biden has been in trouble with classified material.
48:11
Speaker 1: And so when I started to read that section in
48:15
Speaker 1: your book, I was absolutely fascinated, not only to understand
48:20
Speaker 1: more about what had happened, but of course what it
48:23
Speaker 1: demonstrating was to me, sheer hypocrisy of the Biden administration,
48:29
Speaker 1: who had essentially broken rules themselves, serious rules, but then
48:36
Speaker 1: they had they'd thrown the book at Trump and pretended
48:40
Speaker 1: as if they were completely squeaky clean themselves. So this
48:45
Speaker 1: was amazing story to me. So please go ahead and
48:50
Speaker 1: tell us more about Syden. I just say the other
48:54
Speaker 1: part of the Biden story was that he was able
48:57
Speaker 1: to use his attorneys in order to deal with the information.
49:02
Speaker 1: So please go ahead.
49:04
Speaker 2: So what else. What I'll do is I'll run through
49:07
Speaker 2: the highlights of Biden's conduct, and then I will compare
49:13
Speaker 2: that conduct to Trump's conduct. So, first of all, some
49:19
Speaker 2: of Biden's private lawyers were going through his office in
49:23
Speaker 2: downtown d C. A private office, and this is something
49:28
Speaker 2: called the Pen Biden Center, and they found classified documents. Well,
49:32
Speaker 2: they reported that to the White House, and then it
49:35
Speaker 2: was reported to the National Archives who came and got
49:38
Speaker 2: the documents, but it was kept a secret. And then
49:42
Speaker 2: about a month later, two months later, Biden's private attorneys
49:48
Speaker 2: were searching Biden's house and they found more classified documents.
49:52
Speaker 2: Now this was again, this was all kept in secret,
49:55
Speaker 2: so the American public was not informed of this. But
49:58
Speaker 2: they kept finding more stuff, and it finally got to
50:02
Speaker 2: a point where the Biden administration realized that they could
50:06
Speaker 2: no longer contain the fiasco, and so then they leaked
50:11
Speaker 2: the story to the press selectively, and they only leaked
50:16
Speaker 2: selective facts. And I go through all the analysis of
50:19
Speaker 2: the press reporting and how it came to be in
50:21
Speaker 2: my book. But what they found was that Biden had
50:26
Speaker 2: in his home well over one hundred classified documents. Now
50:31
Speaker 2: we don't know the total number. The American public has
50:35
Speaker 2: never been given the total number of classified documents that
50:39
Speaker 2: Biden possessed. But we know it was over one hundred
50:44
Speaker 2: because I counted them. There's an appendix in the report
50:47
Speaker 2: that was done. I've counted them, but you can't do
50:50
Speaker 2: a total because they have some descriptions are like a
50:53
Speaker 2: stack of highly classified note cards. Well, they don't tell
50:56
Speaker 2: you how many. There could be one hundred in there alone.
51:00
Speaker 2: The classified documents Biden had in his home spanned five
51:06
Speaker 2: decades nineteen seventies, eighties, nineties, twoys, twenty tens. Right, he
51:13
Speaker 2: had half a century worth of classified documents in his home. Now,
51:19
Speaker 2: these were documents. Some of them were from his time
51:21
Speaker 2: in the Senate and some of them, many of them
51:24
Speaker 2: were from his time as vice president. And what he
51:27
Speaker 2: was doing was Biden was plucking, plucking classified documents out
51:34
Speaker 2: of the flow of documents that were crossing his desk
51:37
Speaker 2: as vice president, and he was taking some home. Biden's
51:42
Speaker 2: documents were not just in boxes. Some of them were
51:45
Speaker 2: in boxes in his garage, but others were all over
51:50
Speaker 2: his house, all over his house, the first level den,
51:55
Speaker 2: the third level den, the foyer, in a grocery bag
51:59
Speaker 2: outside of his bedroom, in his private office, in file
52:03
Speaker 2: in file cabinets where the files. Some of the files
52:07
Speaker 2: were in Biden's own personal handwriting. So there is no
52:16
Speaker 2: doubt to any reasonable person that Biden would have known
52:21
Speaker 2: that he was maintaining classified documents because they were all
52:25
Speaker 2: over his house and in his personal library, in his
52:28
Speaker 2: own file folders. So so that's that's the baseline of
52:33
Speaker 2: his conduct. That is that is willfully retaining classified documents.
52:38
Speaker 2: It's also grossly negligent in the handling of classified documents,
52:42
Speaker 2: and in the in the final report that was done,
52:46
Speaker 2: it also laid out that Biden was known to be
52:50
Speaker 2: grossly negligent with classified documents throughout his vice presidency. I
52:55
Speaker 2: go into great detail on this in my book, but
52:58
Speaker 2: I'll just say, uh, the people in the executive secretariat
53:01
Speaker 2: around him basically followed him around with a dust pan
53:05
Speaker 2: in a broom trying to pick up all the classified
53:07
Speaker 2: that he was leaving in many places where it was
53:10
Speaker 2: not supposed to be unsecured, right, and he had a
53:13
Speaker 2: known reputation for being grossly negligent in not taking classified
53:18
Speaker 2: information seriously. There were special briefings that were done for him,
53:22
Speaker 2: there were special memorandums that were done for him, and
53:24
Speaker 2: the language in all of these is that you must
53:27
Speaker 2: do this, you must do that. Because Biden was not
53:32
Speaker 2: the president, he was the vice president, which means being
53:38
Speaker 2: below the president, he had to obey all the same
53:42
Speaker 2: rules for storage and handling of classified information as any
53:47
Speaker 2: other member of the executive branch. So that's pretty egregious conduct, right.
53:54
Speaker 2: And also the final report showed that Biden was stealing
54:00
Speaker 2: this classified information for personal financial gain. They actually discovered
54:09
Speaker 2: notes in Biden's handwriting when he was still vice president
54:15
Speaker 2: where he was talking writing notes to himself that he
54:18
Speaker 2: was going to write a memoir after he left the
54:21
Speaker 2: vice presidency, which he subsequently did so, and in there
54:27
Speaker 2: he listed as one of the reasons to write the
54:29
Speaker 2: memoir income, So he wanted to write a book when
54:35
Speaker 2: he left the vice presidency. And as he was leaving
54:39
Speaker 2: the vice presidency, now he'd already taken a lot of
54:42
Speaker 2: classified home while he was vice president, but he wanted
54:46
Speaker 2: to take more. He wanted to take highly classified note cards.
54:52
Speaker 2: So some of his staff started creating binders so he
54:56
Speaker 2: could take classified information home with him for the time
55:02
Speaker 2: he was going to be just a citizen, so that
55:05
Speaker 2: he could write his book to make money. Now, you
55:09
Speaker 2: were in the military, and there were military detail ees
55:13
Speaker 2: on the staff, on Biden's staff, and you know, and
55:17
Speaker 2: I know, military people take classified information the most seriously,
55:24
Speaker 2: right they are because the punishments in the military are
55:27
Speaker 2: the most severe, and it is really drilled into the
55:30
Speaker 2: military people even more so than the civilian side. And
55:35
Speaker 2: so the military detail ease on Biden's staff. They raised objections.
55:41
Speaker 2: They said this shouldn't be happening. One of them felt
55:45
Speaker 2: so strongly about it that she drafted a memorandum for
55:49
Speaker 2: the record that basically said, and I'm paraphrasing here, it
55:51
Speaker 2: basically said, look, we shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't
55:55
Speaker 2: be taken home classified, highly classified information. He's about to
55:59
Speaker 2: become a private citizen. And I've raised this with my manager,
56:04
Speaker 2: and my manager told me this is fine, and I
56:08
Speaker 2: know it's not fine. And I have asked not to
56:12
Speaker 2: be part of any meetings or any actions that involve
56:16
Speaker 2: these note cards that are helping Biden to basically basically
56:20
Speaker 2: steal classified information. And so this entire memorandum for the record,
56:25
Speaker 2: it's in the final report and I have a copy
56:27
Speaker 2: of it on my website. But he went right went
56:31
Speaker 2: went right ahead and took those documents home with him.
56:35
Speaker 2: That's there's a lot more detail, of course, in the book,
56:38
Speaker 2: but that's kind of Biden's conduct in a nutshell. The
56:40
Speaker 2: guy was stealing classified information for fifty years, and he
56:43
Speaker 2: was doing it, at least in part for financial gain.
56:46
Speaker 2: You know, what I've seen with other senior officials is
56:49
Speaker 2: it's also just kind of convenience and laziness they do.
56:53
Speaker 2: They think they're above the law, and frankly, in many
56:55
Speaker 2: ways they are, and so they take things home to
57:00
Speaker 2: work on them and sometimes forget or leave them at home,
57:04
Speaker 2: or they just want it for whatever reason. For reference,
57:07
Speaker 2: with Biden, it was probably partly that, but also absolutely
57:13
Speaker 2: he was doing it for financial gain. Joe's conduct in
57:16
Speaker 2: a nutshell.
57:17
Speaker 1: Joseph, could I just come in here with a couple
57:20
Speaker 1: of questions. You make a particular comment in relation to this,
57:27
Speaker 1: this event that the National Archives and Records admin essentially
57:35
Speaker 1: made no comment about what Biden did, and you say,
57:40
Speaker 1: in contrast to what they subsequently said about Trump, but
57:44
Speaker 1: could you explain a little bit more who the National
57:48
Speaker 1: Archives and Records admin Are? And sure, well, those sort
57:53
Speaker 1: of power.
57:53
Speaker 2: Is sure In the United States, we have an official
57:57
Speaker 2: person called the archivist, and that is the National Archivist
58:02
Speaker 2: and and they they are the head of a federal
58:06
Speaker 2: agency called NARA, the National National Archives and Records Administration,
58:14
Speaker 2: And so they are responsible for preserving America's history right
58:19
Speaker 2: in terms of documents, and one of one of the
58:22
Speaker 2: big areas is presidential records and so and you know,
58:27
Speaker 2: my book focuses on the weaponization of DJ and the
58:32
Speaker 2: FBI against conservatives and specifically Trump, but it's more than that,
58:41
Speaker 2: because really what the Democratic Party in the United in
58:44
Speaker 2: the United States has done is they've weaponized the entire
58:48
Speaker 2: executive branch against their political opponents. And part of the
58:55
Speaker 2: executive branch is the National Archives. And so I do
59:00
Speaker 2: detailed analysis of how the National Archives treated Biden's case
59:05
Speaker 2: and Trump's case. And in Biden's case, I had to
59:09
Speaker 2: wade through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of
59:13
Speaker 2: releases to the public under the Freedom of Information Act,
59:17
Speaker 2: you can find them. They're out there, and you've got
59:19
Speaker 2: to pan through this large stream of information to get
59:23
Speaker 2: to the nuggets. But I panned through it, and I've
59:26
Speaker 2: done a lot of Freedom of Information Act work in
59:29
Speaker 2: my time for the government, and so I know where
59:32
Speaker 2: to look. In what I found amongst this sea of
59:37
Speaker 2: emails that were released by the National Archives, we're the
59:40
Speaker 2: ones where they were obviously talking about Biden's case, even
59:45
Speaker 2: though they didn't come out and say it, And so
59:48
Speaker 2: it was fascinating because they're in an email dialogue with
59:54
Speaker 2: Biden's private attorneys, and the archivist is purposely not mentioning
1:00:00
Speaker 2: any details. So it's obvious that they're having phone conversations
1:00:05
Speaker 2: with details, but they're being very cautious not to include
1:00:10
Speaker 2: details in their emails. But there was enough in there
1:00:13
Speaker 2: that I could see what was going on because they
1:00:16
Speaker 2: were handling this in their own in language they use
1:00:19
Speaker 2: in emails, with the utmost discretion. This is when Biden
1:00:23
Speaker 2: got caught with classified documents originally at his downtown office
1:00:28
Speaker 2: in DC. Well, they were handling that with the utmost
1:00:31
Speaker 2: discretion and helping the White House to keep it a secret.
1:00:35
Speaker 2: Now normally they would do a press release that would say, oh,
1:00:39
Speaker 2: we've just gotten some vice presidential records that should have
1:00:45
Speaker 2: been turned over to US six years ago, and they
1:00:47
Speaker 2: would inform the public that they've got at least something
1:00:50
Speaker 2: and that it will be eventually made available to the public.
1:00:53
Speaker 2: But they didn't do that in Biden's case. There was
1:00:55
Speaker 2: no press release whatsoever in Biden's case. And then in
1:01:01
Speaker 2: the book, I compare that to how how Trump was
1:01:03
Speaker 2: handled by the National Archives, and it was the exact opposite, Right,
1:01:06
Speaker 2: they were anxious to report every detail that they could.
1:01:10
Speaker 2: They even twisted the knife in the way they were
1:01:12
Speaker 2: describing things with facts that they could not even support
1:01:16
Speaker 2: any opportunity. They had to twist facts, twist laws to
1:01:22
Speaker 2: go after Trump. That's what the National Archives did. And
1:01:25
Speaker 2: they were routinely making press releases because uh, Trump, uh,
1:01:30
Speaker 2: and I'll get into his case next, I may as
1:01:32
Speaker 2: well start comparing his case to Bidence. So when Trump
1:01:36
Speaker 2: leaves office, his staff pack up his boxes. Now this
1:01:42
Speaker 2: was chaotic, truly chaotic, because Trump was still, of course
1:01:46
Speaker 2: trying to retain his presidency, right he had it looked
1:01:50
Speaker 2: like he lost the popular vote, but he was definitely
1:01:52
Speaker 2: going around talking to people saying, hey, are you sure
1:01:54
Speaker 2: this this is these these election results are legitimate, and
1:01:57
Speaker 2: so there's total chaos at this time. But his staff
1:02:01
Speaker 2: is packing up boxes and they get put on moving
1:02:03
Speaker 2: trucks and the boxes go to Trump's home at mar
1:02:07
Speaker 2: A Lago. Now there is no evidence on the public
1:02:12
Speaker 2: record that Trump knew what was in those boxes. They
1:02:17
Speaker 2: were packed by his staffers, but off they went to
1:02:21
Speaker 2: mar A Lago. Now, once they're there, Trump's attorneys start
1:02:25
Speaker 2: reviewing some of the documents and they actually send to
1:02:29
Speaker 2: the National Archives fifteen boxes of documents because they determined
1:02:34
Speaker 2: that they were presidential records that should have gone to
1:02:36
Speaker 2: the Archives. So there was some facts showing cooperation between
1:02:43
Speaker 2: Trump's staff and the National Archives. Now you compare that
1:02:47
Speaker 2: to Biden's case. Biden never returned any documents to the
1:02:50
Speaker 2: National Archives. They were all over his house in his
1:02:53
Speaker 2: DC office, but he didn't send them to the Archives.
1:02:56
Speaker 2: He kept them, so that one data point of comparison. Now,
1:03:03
Speaker 2: uh with Trump's boxes, there is evidence on the public
1:03:07
Speaker 2: record that Trump thought they were all his personal papers.
1:03:13
Speaker 2: There are even in the indictment against Trump, they're citing
1:03:16
Speaker 2: to emails and text messages with some of his employees
1:03:19
Speaker 2: where they keep referring to you know, the President Trump
1:03:21
Speaker 2: wants his papers moved from this place to another place.
1:03:25
Speaker 2: So this is a This is in stark comparison to
1:03:30
Speaker 2: Biden's case, also because there's no doubt that Biden knew
1:03:34
Speaker 2: he was possessing classified information. There's no doubt it was
1:03:39
Speaker 2: all over his house and in during during the investigation
1:03:44
Speaker 2: of Biden, the FBI discovered audio recordings of Biden talking
1:03:51
Speaker 2: to his ghostwriter. Now this is after he left the
1:03:55
Speaker 2: vice presidency. He's now a private citizen. He's working with
1:03:59
Speaker 2: a ghost writer to publish the book that he wanted
1:04:02
Speaker 2: to publish to make some money income. In one of
1:04:06
Speaker 2: the audio recordings, and this was February of twenty seventeen,
1:04:13
Speaker 2: soon after Biden left the White House, you can hear
1:04:16
Speaker 2: Biden say, as he's coming up from the basement, I
1:04:20
Speaker 2: just found all the classified stuff downstairs. Now, in any
1:04:27
Speaker 2: other case, I can tell you a prosecutor would call
1:04:30
Speaker 2: that a taped confession, but not in Biden's case. They
1:04:35
Speaker 2: came up with many excuses to let Biden off the hook,
1:04:39
Speaker 2: despite the fact that they had a taped confession of
1:04:42
Speaker 2: Biden admitting that he knew there was classified documents in
1:04:47
Speaker 2: his home, and he made no effort to return them
1:04:50
Speaker 2: at any time until much later, five years later, when
1:04:56
Speaker 2: it finally came on the public record that he had
1:04:58
Speaker 2: them in his house. And even then, even then, when
1:05:04
Speaker 2: the FBI finally searched Biden's house, and this came much later,
1:05:10
Speaker 2: when they found a top secret notebook, Biden's private lawyer
1:05:15
Speaker 2: told the FBI, you don't have the consent to take that,
1:05:20
Speaker 2: and they actually sent a White House lawyer to Biden's
1:05:23
Speaker 2: home to seize evidence and take it from the FBI.
1:05:28
Speaker 2: And never in American history have I heard of an
1:05:31
Speaker 2: instance where a White House lawyer would insert himself into
1:05:35
Speaker 2: the chain of custody or a piece of evidence in
1:05:37
Speaker 2: a criminal case. Let me kind of transition from the
1:05:41
Speaker 2: conducted issue right where you have Biden stealing classified documents
1:05:45
Speaker 2: for fifty years, as opposed to Trump, who at the
1:05:49
Speaker 2: end of his presidency boxes are packed up by his
1:05:51
Speaker 2: staffers and taken to his house. If you compare the investigations,
1:05:58
Speaker 2: they're also stark to spair. So one of the big disparities,
1:06:03
Speaker 2: which you mentioned earlier, was that the FBI permitted Biden's
1:06:08
Speaker 2: lawyers to search Biden's homes. Now, this is after classified
1:06:14
Speaker 2: information had been discovered in Biden's private office in downtown
1:06:17
Speaker 2: d C. And after classified had been found in the home,
1:06:22
Speaker 2: the FBI had an open investigation, a criminal investigation. Instead
1:06:27
Speaker 2: of going to search, they let Biden's private lawyers search
1:06:32
Speaker 2: two of Biden's homes in Delaware before they went and searched.
1:06:38
Speaker 2: There's only one other case in history I know where
1:06:40
Speaker 2: something like that has happened, and that was Hillary Clinton's case,
1:06:44
Speaker 2: when the FBI permitted Clinton's attorneys to go through her
1:06:48
Speaker 2: servers and decide what they were going to provide to
1:06:52
Speaker 2: the government and what they weren't. So, you know, there's
1:06:56
Speaker 2: a lot of things were on the surface, any reasonable
1:07:00
Speaker 2: person could see that there's disparity in these cases. But
1:07:03
Speaker 2: someone with my experience and expertise, I can see the
1:07:07
Speaker 2: depth of the disparities and the breadth of the disparities,
1:07:12
Speaker 2: and how devious they were because this was all purposeful.
1:07:14
Speaker 2: This didn't happen just by chance that Biden was given
1:07:17
Speaker 2: a free bee while they were turning the knife on Trump.
1:07:21
Speaker 2: Because and here's something most people would not catch. Biden's
1:07:25
Speaker 2: private lawyers did not have security clearances, which means they
1:07:31
Speaker 2: should not have been permitted to have access to classified
1:07:36
Speaker 2: and yet they were permitted to search a home that
1:07:39
Speaker 2: were classified, had already been discovered in it while there
1:07:42
Speaker 2: was an open criminal case. So by doing that, the
1:07:45
Speaker 2: FBI and DOJ actually facilitated additional crimes because Biden's lawyers,
1:07:52
Speaker 2: and I would take them at their word, they said
1:07:54
Speaker 2: they didn't read classified when they found it, and I
1:07:56
Speaker 2: would take them at their word for that, but they
1:07:59
Speaker 2: shouldn't ever have had access to it. It's unlawful for
1:08:04
Speaker 2: them to even hold those documents in their hands. And yet,
1:08:09
Speaker 2: so that's what happened in Biden's case. And also in
1:08:12
Speaker 2: that investigation, there was no legal compulsion, no subpoenas, no
1:08:18
Speaker 2: search warrants, no grand jury. Everything was done voluntarily and
1:08:23
Speaker 2: much of the searches were done by Biden's own private lawyers.
1:08:27
Speaker 2: So that is not typical investigative strategy. Now when you
1:08:37
Speaker 2: look at it, you know, at the surface, it's not
1:08:40
Speaker 2: a big surprise. It's the Biden administration investigating Joe Biden.
1:08:46
Speaker 2: And so they created a process and was not a
1:08:49
Speaker 2: typical process. And what they were doing at the same time,
1:08:53
Speaker 2: and this is really this really galled me. Biden and
1:08:58
Speaker 2: as private lawyers and the White House counsel, every time
1:09:02
Speaker 2: they talked about this case publicly, they would always emphasize
1:09:07
Speaker 2: that Biden was cooperating with the process. Well, of course
1:09:13
Speaker 2: he was. It was a process that was set up
1:09:15
Speaker 2: by his own administration to his benefit, to his great benefit,
1:09:20
Speaker 2: and not not a typical investigative process in any way,
1:09:24
Speaker 2: shape or form. Now contrast that with Trump's case. They
1:09:29
Speaker 2: moved quickly to legal compulsion, subpoenas, search warrants, grand jury.
1:09:36
Speaker 2: They even went so far as to take Trump's private lawyers,
1:09:43
Speaker 2: haul them before the grand jury and forced them to
1:09:47
Speaker 2: disclose attorney client privileged communications. That rarely happens in American jurisprudence.
1:09:55
Speaker 2: But that's what they did in Trump's case. And again
1:10:00
Speaker 2: you compare that to Biden's case. Now, Biden's private lawyers,
1:10:04
Speaker 2: they were permitted to rummage through the crime scenes, They
1:10:09
Speaker 2: actually collected evidence, they were never questioned, they were not
1:10:15
Speaker 2: taken before the grand jury. And in the final report,
1:10:18
Speaker 2: the Special Council even said why he says in the
1:10:21
Speaker 2: final report, Gene, you know, I would have loved to
1:10:24
Speaker 2: have talked to Biden's private attorneys about some of this stuff,
1:10:29
Speaker 2: because they would have probably had some very helpful information.
1:10:33
Speaker 2: But I couldn't do that because I had to respect
1:10:37
Speaker 2: the attorney client privilege. The exact opposite. In Trump's case,
1:10:42
Speaker 2: they hauled his private attorneys before the grand jury forced
1:10:46
Speaker 2: them to disclose otherwise privileged communications, and then they used
1:10:49
Speaker 2: those privileged communications in the indictment against Trump. So you
1:10:56
Speaker 2: could not have a larger disparity in terms of how
1:10:59
Speaker 2: the two investigations were handled. Once all was said and
1:11:03
Speaker 2: done and they had completed their investigation, they indicted Trump,
1:11:08
Speaker 2: and the indictment against him for these classified documents has
1:11:12
Speaker 2: forty felonies for zero forty felonies, and if you add
1:11:17
Speaker 2: up to jail time for all those forty felonies, it's
1:11:21
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty years in jail. Now, just step
1:11:24
Speaker 2: back and look at this broadly. Trump didn't pack his boxes.
1:11:30
Speaker 2: There's no evidence, there's no allegation even in the indictment
1:11:34
Speaker 2: that Trump knew what was in the boxes, and there's
1:11:36
Speaker 2: no allegation that he packed the boxes. But they went
1:11:39
Speaker 2: to his home where they resided for as of the
1:11:42
Speaker 2: time of the raid. They were there about eighteen months,
1:11:45
Speaker 2: and the raid got a little over one hundred maybe
1:11:48
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty classified documents eighteen months. They were in
1:11:53
Speaker 2: Trump's home. There's no evidence he knew they were there,
1:11:56
Speaker 2: and no evidence he packed the boxes are new. The
1:12:00
Speaker 2: pedigree of the documents in the boxes. You can trast
1:12:04
Speaker 2: that with Biden's case, Biden was stealing classified information for
1:12:08
Speaker 2: fifty years, half a century, and he knew that he
1:12:12
Speaker 2: had it. There's no doubt because of the audio recording
1:12:15
Speaker 2: where he says, I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.
1:12:21
Speaker 2: Trump is charged with forty felonies added up to one
1:12:26
Speaker 2: hundred and forty years in jail. Biden was charged with nothing.
1:12:33
Speaker 2: That's the disparity. Now. You know, I've worked on in
1:12:38
Speaker 2: my career. I've worked on a spectrum of prosecutions under
1:12:42
Speaker 2: the Espionage Act. And you know, we've been talking about
1:12:46
Speaker 2: the ones that were mishandling of classified information where government
1:12:51
Speaker 2: employees were either grossly negligent or they willfully retained classified
1:12:57
Speaker 2: documents when they should not have. But they weren't spying,
1:13:03
Speaker 2: they weren't stealing secrets and giving them to a foreign country.
1:13:08
Speaker 2: But I have worked on those cases as well, and
1:13:11
Speaker 2: I talk about two of them in the book because
1:13:13
Speaker 2: at the time they were highly publicized in the United States.
1:13:17
Speaker 2: They were major espionage prosecutions, and that's when we caught
1:13:21
Speaker 2: people stealing our secrets to harm the country. In those cases,
1:13:28
Speaker 2: those people were charged with one felony under the Espionage
1:13:34
Speaker 2: Act one. They were not charged with multiple documents. They
1:13:41
Speaker 2: were not charged with multiple counts under the Espionage Act.
1:13:44
Speaker 2: There was no need to do that. Trump's case, his
1:13:49
Speaker 2: indictment has thirty two felony counts for thirty two separate documents.
1:13:56
Speaker 2: That's how far doj went to go after him. They
1:14:00
Speaker 2: literally picked the most sensitive documents and charged him with
1:14:04
Speaker 2: thirty two crimes. We don't even do that for real spies,
1:14:09
Speaker 2: and yet that's what they did with Trump. So again,
1:14:12
Speaker 2: the disparities are huge, not even in terms of the
1:14:15
Speaker 2: historical precedents for mishandling, but even when you compare them
1:14:19
Speaker 2: to actual spy cases, which by the way, are eligible
1:14:25
Speaker 2: for the death penalty under the Espionage Act. Those true
1:14:29
Speaker 2: spying cases, not even then were those people charged as
1:14:35
Speaker 2: heavily as Trump was charged.
1:14:38
Speaker 1: Now, Joseph, yes, one point, if I may, because I
1:14:42
Speaker 1: was extremely interested in this, you say in your description
1:14:47
Speaker 1: of what was happening to Trump that speak of pelucy
1:14:53
Speaker 1: buried evidends which could have exonerated him. I was fascinated
1:14:57
Speaker 1: in that comment.
1:14:58
Speaker 2: Can you tell us more shirt it? Sure? Because after
1:15:03
Speaker 2: the raid on mar A Lago, there were two different
1:15:08
Speaker 2: federal indictments against Trump. One of them is the one
1:15:12
Speaker 2: I've been talking about pertaining to the classified documents. The
1:15:17
Speaker 2: other one is for election interference because there was a
1:15:22
Speaker 2: riot on January sixth. It got out of control, they
1:15:26
Speaker 2: got into the Capitol Building. And this was at the
1:15:30
Speaker 2: time that that, you know, the Electoral College was meeting
1:15:35
Speaker 2: to to vote for the president, and so in the
1:15:39
Speaker 2: election interference case. At the same time, Congress was also
1:15:47
Speaker 2: investigating the riot. And the person who was in charge
1:15:53
Speaker 2: of building security for the Capitol building is the Speaker
1:15:58
Speaker 2: of the House. Well, the Speaker of the House is
1:16:01
Speaker 2: a Democrat, Nancy Pelosi. So Congress had they set up
1:16:07
Speaker 2: their investigatory body, which was the January sixth Committee. And
1:16:13
Speaker 2: what Pelosi did was again for the first time in
1:16:17
Speaker 2: American history, she refused to let the minority party pick
1:16:24
Speaker 2: their own representatives on the committee. So the minority Party
1:16:29
Speaker 2: was the Republicans. So she herself picked the jury, and
1:16:38
Speaker 2: she picked all people who hated Trump. That's who was
1:16:41
Speaker 2: on the January sixth committee. This so meanwhile she was
1:16:46
Speaker 2: responsible for building security. This is a fact. And what
1:16:53
Speaker 2: recently came to light was a videotape of Nancy Pelosi
1:17:00
Speaker 2: talking to her staff on January sixth during the riot,
1:17:06
Speaker 2: where she's saying, clearly, this was all my fault. Well,
1:17:12
Speaker 2: normally that type of evidence would be is what an
1:17:16
Speaker 2: American jurisprudence is called exculpatory right. It tends to prove
1:17:21
Speaker 2: the innocence of people who are being held accountable for
1:17:24
Speaker 2: the riot, because that should have been provided to them
1:17:28
Speaker 2: so that they could use it in defense of themselves
1:17:30
Speaker 2: when they were being prosecuted. And just about everyone who
1:17:33
Speaker 2: went into the Capitol that day has been prosecuted or
1:17:36
Speaker 2: is being prosecuted. And so that video never came to light.
1:17:41
Speaker 2: It was leaked fairly recently. But basically, the Speaker of
1:17:44
Speaker 2: the House set up a process. It was designed to
1:17:47
Speaker 2: get Trump and to protect her from accountability. So that's
1:17:54
Speaker 2: what was happening with Pelosi and the other case. The
1:17:58
Speaker 2: election interference came.
1:18:01
Speaker 1: Okay, thank you for that. That's really really interesting. I'm
1:18:05
Speaker 1: smiling here because you actually describe the raid on Trump
1:18:11
Speaker 1: as being a medi evil siege and everything was being
1:18:16
Speaker 1: thrown at him, including the burning oil, which certainly seems
1:18:22
Speaker 1: to be the case. But you also go on to
1:18:25
Speaker 1: make some some pretty hard statements. You say there was
1:18:29
Speaker 1: no evidence of Trump colluding with Russia, and you also
1:18:37
Speaker 1: point out that the poisonous approach of the Democrats to Trump.
1:18:43
Speaker 1: I think you're insinuating is the great word here, that
1:18:47
Speaker 1: there is the possibility that this publicly expressed hate and
1:18:52
Speaker 1: poison towards Trump could have helped inflame the situation around
1:18:57
Speaker 1: the attempted assassination. And so really, yeah, what your warning
1:19:03
Speaker 1: read is that the system in America has got to
1:19:06
Speaker 1: a very polorius fractious state. As for George Washington's warning.
1:19:14
Speaker 2: There, yes, And so you know, after the raid on
1:19:18
Speaker 2: mar Lago, I started digging, and I kept digging, and
1:19:22
Speaker 2: I went all the way back to twenty sixteen, which
1:19:27
Speaker 2: was Trump's first presidential campaign. And during that presidential campaign,
1:19:33
Speaker 2: the FBI and DOJ had already been weaponized against Trump.
1:19:37
Speaker 2: And what they were doing back then was they were
1:19:40
Speaker 2: using intelligence collection authorities, very powerful tools to target Trump's campaign. Now,
1:19:49
Speaker 2: these collection mechanisms are secret because they're intelligence related, and
1:19:56
Speaker 2: I thought, well, you know, it's interesting because back then,
1:19:59
Speaker 2: in twenty sixt they at least had the decency to
1:20:03
Speaker 2: try and hide their conduct by using intelligence collection methods
1:20:07
Speaker 2: which exist in the shadows to target Trump. I mean,
1:20:12
Speaker 2: you fast forward to the raid on mar Lago and
1:20:14
Speaker 2: the current indictments. They're not trying to hide it anymore.
1:20:18
Speaker 2: Theoj and the FBI are openly acting as enforcement arms
1:20:25
Speaker 2: for the Democratic Party. And so I was fascinated by this,
1:20:28
Speaker 2: in this progression, right, this increased aggressiveness targeting Trump and
1:20:34
Speaker 2: conservatives in anybody around Trump, and I give numerous examples
1:20:39
Speaker 2: from twenty sixteen forward, and I said to myself, you know,
1:20:43
Speaker 2: this is really fascinating because again, on the surface, you
1:20:50
Speaker 2: can see that it's wrong. You can't see how wrong
1:20:54
Speaker 2: it is unless you're someone like me who's worked on
1:20:56
Speaker 2: the inside. But any reasonable person could see that this
1:21:01
Speaker 2: isn't right. And yet half the country is fine with
1:21:07
Speaker 2: it because they've become so brainwashed against Trump and conservatives
1:21:14
Speaker 2: that they think the ends justifies the means. And I
1:21:18
Speaker 2: was fascinated by this, and I researched, you know, this
1:21:21
Speaker 2: kind of sentiment of you know, the political party passion
1:21:25
Speaker 2: permitting people to justify doing some egregious deeds. And I
1:21:29
Speaker 2: traced it all the way back to President Washington's farewell
1:21:32
Speaker 2: speech to the nation in seventeen ninety six. Now, Washington
1:21:36
Speaker 2: had been president for two terms eight years, and at
1:21:42
Speaker 2: the time he said, that's enough, it's time for me
1:21:45
Speaker 2: to step down. And he wrote kind of a what
1:21:48
Speaker 2: I call a twenty six page love letter to the nation.
1:21:51
Speaker 2: And in many ways he was the father of the nation.
1:21:54
Speaker 2: He had helped birth it, raise it, defend it, create it.
1:21:58
Speaker 1: And so.
1:22:00
Speaker 2: In his farewell speech, he warned his fellow citizens about
1:22:05
Speaker 2: a couple things that he felt could harm the country
1:22:09
Speaker 2: or even cause it to topple. And the biggest thing
1:22:14
Speaker 2: he warned about was the rise of the two party
1:22:18
Speaker 2: system and the political passions that are aroused by the
1:22:22
Speaker 2: two party system. He called it the baneful effects of
1:22:26
Speaker 2: the spirit of party, and he said, let me now
1:22:30
Speaker 2: warn you, in the gravest of terms, against these baneful effects.
1:22:34
Speaker 2: I mean, even back in seventeen ninety six, Washington prophecied
1:22:40
Speaker 2: that these political party passions could destroy national unity by
1:22:46
Speaker 2: causing citizens to despise each other and to turn them
1:22:49
Speaker 2: against each other, and his words to alienate them against
1:22:53
Speaker 2: each other. Now, this was fascinating to me because back
1:22:57
Speaker 2: in those days, there was obviously no internet, there was
1:23:01
Speaker 2: no television. The only way to spread political passion was
1:23:05
Speaker 2: through a town square speech, or a pamphlet that was
1:23:10
Speaker 2: run through a printing press, or a poster that was
1:23:12
Speaker 2: put on a tree. And even with those rudimentary forms
1:23:17
Speaker 2: of disseminating political passion, even just with those, Washington saw
1:23:24
Speaker 2: that is one of the greatest dangers to our national unity.
1:23:27
Speaker 2: And I was giving I've been doing some public speaking recently,
1:23:30
Speaker 2: and just last week someone asked me what I felt
1:23:35
Speaker 2: was the greatest danger currently facing the United States, and
1:23:39
Speaker 2: I gave them what I think was a surprising answer
1:23:42
Speaker 2: for them. I said, us, US, because that's where we're
1:23:49
Speaker 2: at as a nation where half the country thinks it's
1:23:53
Speaker 2: thinks obvious tyrannies are acceptable, and that's scary. And Washington
1:23:59
Speaker 2: warned us about it. And nowadays we can we can
1:24:02
Speaker 2: mainline political party historyonics into our veins all day long.
1:24:07
Speaker 2: We've got twenty four to seven news streams. We carry
1:24:10
Speaker 2: one with us you know every day in our pocket,
1:24:12
Speaker 2: and uh, and it's and it's and it's amplified, right,
1:24:16
Speaker 2: it is magnified and amplified. And going back to like
1:24:22
Speaker 2: the twenty sixteen time frame, like I live in Washington
1:24:25
Speaker 2: d C. Washington d C in the United States is
1:24:29
Speaker 2: the strongest of the strongholds for the Democratic Party. It
1:24:33
Speaker 2: is the bluest of the blue And to give an example,
1:24:37
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, Washington d C voted ninety two percent
1:24:41
Speaker 2: for Joe Biden. So it's stronghold of the Democratic Party.
1:24:47
Speaker 2: And back in twenty sixteen, Hillary Clinton was a shoe
1:24:51
Speaker 2: in some polls had her like up twenty percent. Everybody
1:24:55
Speaker 2: expected her to be the next president, and certainly everyone
1:24:58
Speaker 2: in Washington d C. You know, my neighbors were all
1:25:01
Speaker 2: hanging the buntings for her coronation. And then the Grinch
1:25:05
Speaker 2: came along and pulled off the greatest upset in US
1:25:08
Speaker 2: political history and Donald Trump actually actually won. Well, all
1:25:14
Speaker 2: my friends who are Democrats, and it's most of my
1:25:16
Speaker 2: family and friends and neighbors, they went into deep despair
1:25:22
Speaker 2: and and they're political party leaders, and most of our
1:25:26
Speaker 2: mainstream media instead of kind of brushing them off and saying, oh,
1:25:30
Speaker 2: don't worry. Well, you know, well, we'll do better in
1:25:32
Speaker 2: another four years. They took an opposite approach and they
1:25:36
Speaker 2: just started feeding them hatred, hatred and violent political rhetoric. Right,
1:25:45
Speaker 2: Trump is hitler. He stole the election. You know, we
1:25:48
Speaker 2: had what I call the Russia collusion hoax coup, and
1:25:53
Speaker 2: they and what I saw with these people is they
1:25:55
Speaker 2: turned right. These are good, loving people, but they they
1:26:01
Speaker 2: just became hooked on the hatred. And to this day
1:26:05
Speaker 2: it's still occurs. I call it, you know, in America,
1:26:09
Speaker 2: we call it TDS. Trump Derangement syndrome, and it comes
1:26:13
Speaker 2: in different levels. Most of the people I know have
1:26:16
Speaker 2: level five Trump Derangement syndrome. They've eaten all the hatred.
1:26:20
Speaker 2: He's hitler, He's an existential threat to democracy. None of
1:26:25
Speaker 2: these things actually make sense. I mean, he was a
1:26:27
Speaker 2: president for four years, the Republic stood. We actually did
1:26:30
Speaker 2: a lot better under him than we have for the
1:26:32
Speaker 2: last four But this is all the violent political, heated
1:26:36
Speaker 2: political rhetoric coming from the Democratic Party, and their members
1:26:40
Speaker 2: have just become hooked on the hatred.
1:26:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you've warned we're coming to the clothes. I
1:26:50
Speaker 1: think it's been already fascinating. You have given a fascinating
1:26:55
Speaker 1: analysis of this. I have so many questions, but I
1:26:58
Speaker 1: think we're coming to an natural conclusion. But one of
1:27:02
Speaker 1: the things that you say, I think it's quite early
1:27:04
Speaker 1: in the book. You're actually saying that when people believe
1:27:08
Speaker 1: a lie, when people believe an illusion, it actually means
1:27:14
Speaker 1: that any atrocity is possible.
1:27:17
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm a big fan of the French philosopher Voltaire,
1:27:22
Speaker 2: and Voltaire once said, anyone who can get you to
1:27:25
Speaker 2: believe absurdities, can get you to believe atrocity, can get
1:27:30
Speaker 2: you to commit atrocities, because once the reasonable faculties of
1:27:35
Speaker 2: the mind have been dominated, anything's possible after that. And
1:27:38
Speaker 2: this is what I saw with my friends and family
1:27:40
Speaker 2: and neighbors. They came to believe absurdities and then they
1:27:44
Speaker 2: could at least maybe not commit atrocities, but certainly support them.
1:27:48
Speaker 2: And that's what I saw happen in my country. It's
1:27:51
Speaker 2: why I wrote my book. You know, I didn't write
1:27:54
Speaker 2: my book for fame or fortune. I in fact had
1:27:57
Speaker 2: to take a huge chunk out of my retirement funds,
1:27:59
Speaker 2: my say, just to get the book published. But I
1:28:03
Speaker 2: get tired of hearing things that were just not correct,
1:28:07
Speaker 2: and I thought, you know, there might be some people
1:28:08
Speaker 2: who actually want to know the truth of how these
1:28:11
Speaker 2: cases are handled and what I discovered in my research.
1:28:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, incredible. We're in a perilous state. I'm speaking to you,
1:28:23
Speaker 1: of course from UK, but we have seen I think,
1:28:26
Speaker 1: very similar things. Maybe not quite in the same way
1:28:30
Speaker 1: of course up to Prime minister level, but we've seen
1:28:33
Speaker 1: very devious activities by a combination of the Metropolitan Police
1:28:41
Speaker 1: and the intelligence services around crimes committed by people at
1:28:46
Speaker 1: high level in the government. So we certainly see similar
1:28:50
Speaker 1: things happening here. It isn't just America, but yes, the
1:28:54
Speaker 1: outcome unless it's dealt with is very serious, indeed, and
1:28:58
Speaker 1: I think it's a really key point that you make
1:29:02
Speaker 1: that ultimately it's beholden on all of us to stand
1:29:07
Speaker 1: up and do the right things in order to get
1:29:10
Speaker 1: the changes we'd like to see in America's case, through
1:29:14
Speaker 1: into the Department of Justice and through into the CIA
1:29:18
Speaker 1: and the other intelligence agencies. It has to be something
1:29:23
Speaker 1: that the ordinary member of the public does in order
1:29:27
Speaker 1: to get things to change for the better.
1:29:31
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Joseph B.
1:29:33
Speaker 1: Sweeney, I'm going to say thank you so much for
1:29:35
Speaker 1: joining me. It's been utterly fascinating. We'll pop up a
1:29:39
Speaker 1: picture of your book on screen again so people know
1:29:43
Speaker 1: what they should go and look for. What I'm going
1:29:45
Speaker 1: to say to our audience, please get hold of a
1:29:49
Speaker 1: copy because you'll find it fascinating. Reading so many interesting cases,
1:29:56
Speaker 1: we're obviously you, Joseph, have been able to go into
1:29:59
Speaker 1: them in intimate detail because you were there, you were
1:30:03
Speaker 1: handling this material, you were dealing with the cases, and
1:30:07
Speaker 1: that's quite a journey through to produce this book. So
1:30:10
Speaker 1: to the audience, what can you do by the book?
1:30:14
Speaker 1: This is the thing. And one last question before I
1:30:18
Speaker 1: let you go. Your background was as a ranger, so
1:30:24
Speaker 1: an infantryman essentially in the army. That's a very outdoors,
1:30:31
Speaker 1: physical occupation and I found it a very interesting jump
1:30:36
Speaker 1: across to something which was much more desk and paperwork based.
1:30:40
Speaker 1: What made you take that big plunge?
1:30:44
Speaker 2: So as an infantry officer, all the fun is when
1:30:49
Speaker 2: you're a lieutenant, because that's when you're a platoon leader
1:30:52
Speaker 2: down at the tactical level, and as you get ranked
1:30:56
Speaker 2: and move up the chain, you become a bureaucrat. You
1:31:00
Speaker 2: know you're you're you're helping with all the logistical sides,
1:31:03
Speaker 2: and you still have some leadership, but it's not nearly
1:31:06
Speaker 2: as much fun as as being a lieutenant and a
1:31:09
Speaker 2: platoon leader. And I fought to stay with my infantry
1:31:13
Speaker 2: platoon for as long as I could. But and so
1:31:17
Speaker 2: what I realized eventually was that, you know, the paperwork,
1:31:21
Speaker 2: the bureaucracy part of the army just wasn't as challenging
1:31:25
Speaker 2: for me. And I thought, well, if I'm going to
1:31:27
Speaker 2: be a bureaucrat, I could find a job within the government. Uh,
1:31:31
Speaker 2: that's more challenging mentally. And so I got out and
1:31:34
Speaker 2: I went to law school, and then I went right
1:31:36
Speaker 2: back into the government, and I found what I was
1:31:39
Speaker 2: looking for. It was a very challenging job. I couldn't
1:31:43
Speaker 2: imagine a place to have more fun practicing law than
1:31:46
Speaker 2: the CIA. I can tell you I've come closer to
1:31:49
Speaker 2: getting killed as a lawyer for the CIA than I
1:31:53
Speaker 2: ever did as an airborne ranger, qualified infantry officer, which
1:31:57
Speaker 2: is crazy but true.
1:32:00
Speaker 1: Says it all. Let's leave it there, Joseph, thank you
1:32:02
Speaker 1: very very much for joining me. Just fascinating to hear
1:32:06
Speaker 1: your analysis and to have a look in detail at
1:32:11
Speaker 1: your fascinating book.
1:32:12
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Thank you for having me. It
1:32:15
Speaker 2: was my pleasure.