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Episode One Hundred Thirty Six: Pick A Lane · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number one hundred and thirty six of the Death of Journalism Podcasts.
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My name is John Zigler. I'm your host. On today's show,
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Special Counsel Robert Herr testifies. Nick Saban also speaks to Congress about Nil Tucker
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Carlson and Chris Cuomo have a love fest, and I get involved somewhat hilariously,
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and yes, I will finally give my take on the Kate Middleton conspiracy
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theories. We begin this episode of the podcast with the Congressional testimony of Special
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Counsel Robert Herr, which was much anticipated because obviously his report cauds quite a
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stir because of his conclusion that he could not recommend prosecuting Joe Biden because his
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memory wasn't good enough. Now that's not really hyperbole, but that's basically what
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HER's conclusion was. And this created all sorts of media consternation and a fire
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storm of reporting, some of it which actually was pretty fair and good about
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whether or not the Special Councils reported indicated that Joe Biden was not capable of
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one being president today, but more importantly, I guess being president four or
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five years from now, which is what he would be should he win reelection,
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that this could potentially shift the entire course of the presidential election. And
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I talked about it mainly from the standpoint of, Okay, how does Joe
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Biden dodge debates against Donald Trump when this narrative is now part of the campaign
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in a way that even the mainstream news media cannot ignore. So there are
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really two separate issues, whether or not Biden should have been charged or been
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potentially charged by the classified documents investigation of the results of that investigation, and
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whether or not his memory really is so bad that he couldn't even really be
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eligible to be prosecuted, because no reasonable jury could ever convict the guy who
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couldn't remember basic things about his life when his knowledge and intent and memory is
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key to any potential prosecution. So what happened here was her testified in a
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way I thought was very credible, very strong. He comes across as I
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think a smart guy, a fair guy. He did not take a lot
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of crap from the Democrats or the Republicans, because, frankly, her is
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in an incredibly strange situation. In fact, I would say that the most
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bizarre element of her testimony is that you have this incredibly strange circumstance where Democrats
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and Republicans are coming after her in ways that don't seem to make sense on
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the face of it. Right, here's a guy who decided not to recommend
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prosecution of the President of United States, right, so, but found that
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he had reason to potentially recommend prosecution of the President the United States after Lee's
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office. So you would think, based upon that conclusion, that this would
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be a witness that Democrats would be at least somewhat praising and Republicans would be
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attacking. Now, there was some of that in the latter portion of that
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analysis, because some Republicans were not particularly happy with her, but by and
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large it was the opposite. He was seen as a Republican witness and Democrats
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were relentlessly attacking him. Democrats were relentlessly attacking the guy who decided, you
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know what, I'm not even though I found some evidence indicating that he could
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be prosecuted for his handling of classified documents after he was vice President of United
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States, I'm not going to do that. You would think that Democrats would
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at least respect that, But no, because of the danger of this memory
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issue and mental acuity, issue, they felt like they had to go on
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an all out attack on Robert her So all of this was very much out
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of this upside down world in which we now live, where nothing seems to
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make sense. And I get, you know, why this was a complicated
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situation and why sometimes the self interests here and the incentives were perverse because of
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the fact that we're in the middle of a presidential campaign. But before I
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get to the specifics of what her found about Biden's memory and why he based
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his decision partially on the issue of whether or not Biden's memory was good enough
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to prosecute, and how the media is handling that very important issue, I
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just want to play a couple of minutes of HER's opening statement because I think
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it gives you a sense of who this guy is. And also, but
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he found because I thought he was very straightforward, really didn't screw around a
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lot, was very much to the point, and here's the essence of his
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opening statement to Congress. We identified evidence that the president wilfully retained classified materials
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after the end of his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. This
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evidence included an audio recorded conversation during which mister Biden told his ghostwriter that he
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had quote just found all the classified stuff downstairs end quote. When mister Biden
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said this, he was a private citizen speaking to his ghostwriter in his private
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rental home in Virginia. We also identified other recorded conversations during which mister Biden
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read classified information aloud to his ghostwriter. We did not, however, identify
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evidence that rose to the level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Because the
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evidence fell short of that standard, I declined to recommend criminal charges against mister
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Biden. The Department's regulations required me to write a confidential report explaining my decision
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to the Attorney General. I understood that my explanation about this case had to
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include rigorous, detailed, and thorough analysis. In other words, I needed
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to show my work, just as I would expect any prosecutor to show his
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or her work explaining the decision to prosecute were not. The need to show
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my work was especially strong here. The Attorney General had appointed me to investigate
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the actions of the Attorney General's boss, the sitting President of the United States.
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I knew that for my decision to be credible, I could not simply
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announce that I recommended no criminal charges and leave it at that. I needed
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to explain why my report reflects my best effort To explain why I declined to
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recommend charging President Biden. I analyzed the evidence as prosecutors routinely do, by
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assessing its strengths and weaknesses, including by anticipating the ways in which the president's
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defense lawyers might poke holes in the government's case if there were a trial,
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and seek to persuaders that the government could not prove his guilt beyond a reasonable
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doubt. There has been a lot of attention paid to language in the report
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about the president's memory, so let me say a few words about that.
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My task was to determine whether the president retained or disclosed national defense information wilfully.
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That means knowingly and with the intent to do something the law forbids.
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I could not make that determination without assessing the president's state of mind. For
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that reason, I had to consider the president's memory, an overall mental state,
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and how a jury likely would precede his memory and mental state in a
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criminal trial. These are the types of issues that prosecutors analyze every day,
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and because these issues were important to my ultimate decision, I had to include
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a discussion of them in my report to the Attorney General. The evidence and
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the president himself put his memory squarely at issue. We interviewed the President and
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asked him about his recorded statement quote, I just found all the classified stuff
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downstairs end quote. He told us that he didn't remember saying that to his
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ghostwriter. He also said he didn't remember finding any classified material in his home
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after his vice presidency, and he didn't remember anything about how classified documents about
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Afghanistan made their way into his garage. My assessment in the report about the
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relevance of the president's memory was necessary and accurate and fair. Most importantly,
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what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows and what I expect jurors
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would perceive and believe. I did not sanitize my explanation, nor did I
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disparage the president unfairly. I explained to the Attorney General my decision and the
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reasons for it. That's what I was required to do. Now. Obviously,
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the most controversial part of what her concluded related to Biden's memory and whether
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or not he still is capable of doing the job as president, especially as
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I've said and I will continue to say, because people need to wrap their
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brains around this, that he would still be president five years from now,
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almost almost five years from now. I mean, the idea that Joe Biden
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could be president the United States over four years from now is just insane,
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and I don't think there's any chance that's going to happen. I've said time
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and time again Kamala Harris will take over for Joe Biden at some point in
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his second term should he be re elected, and that she will be far
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more formidable as an incumbent, historic first female president in twenty twenty eight than
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Republicans are giving her any credit for. But that's another story for another day.
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But the issue of Biden's memory and what her found about his memory and
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what the trans gripts of his interview with Biden indicate about Biden's memory, obviously
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we're a focus of a lot of attention, and I want to share some
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of an article written in the Washington Free Bacon, because Beacon, because they
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got apparently exclusive look at some of the transcripts of the interviews that her did,
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two different interviews that her did with Biden back in October of last year,
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and here's what they reported. Transcripts of HER's interviews with Biden, released
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Tuesday and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, support HER's assessment that there are
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quotes significant limitations unquote surrounding Biden's memory. Throughout the five hours of interviews on
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October eighth and ninth, Biden struggled to recall relevant details about his handling of
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classified records or when he served as vice president. The transcript also confirms Biden
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could not recall when his son bo died, and further shows that the President
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raised that subject unprompted, contradicting the President's claim during a February eighth press conference
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that her raised the subject himself. The transcripts also revealed that Biden went off
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on a number of tangents during his interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hurr, including
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antidotes about what sound a car makes, a riscae bathing suit his seventy two
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year old wife wears, and a horrific industrial accident where a young man's genitalia
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was burned off. Early on in his October eighth interview with her, the
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Special Council asked Biden if he ever transferred any documents from his Vice presidential residence
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to his primary Delaware residence. Biden answered that he did quote occasionally, and
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as he provided context to his answer, the President deemed it necessary to mention
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that, first, lady, Joe Biden looks great in a bikini. All
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right, now, let me stop there for a secutive. You know,
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some of this is Biden being Biden. Some of this, by the way,
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might be Biden trying to get off the subject and basically filibuster. So
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in a weird way, this kind of goes against the idea that Biden's out
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of it. It's possible, as I read about these transcripts, that Biden
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knew what he was doing. Perhaps, but at the very least you have
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to acknowledge that this is who Biden is. I mean, Biden goes off
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on tangents and starts talking about things that you know don't make any sense in
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the context of what's happening now. It is important to note that this is,
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you know, his testimony to a special counsel and time is of the
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essence, it's the President of the United States time, and you know it's
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being disrespectful to the process and to her at best. But I'm not one
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hundred percent sure I would classify this as evidence that Biden's losing it completely mentally.
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But anyway, back to the Washington Free Beacon. Biden didn't stop there.
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He proceeded to provide the Special Council a history lesson on his struggles as
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a frustrated architect designing plans for the home as it was built. Biden went
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into great detail about how how he obtained his furnishings, including a beautiful desk
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he purchased during his brief career as an attorney prior to his election to the
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Senate in nineteen seventy. During the tangent, Biden revealed a remarkable feat he
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hit a target hundreds of yards away with a bow and arrow during a visit
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to Mongolia in August of twenty eleven. I'm not a bad archer, Biden
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said, after referring to Mongolian archers as gorillas. I know what hell that
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means. Quote, but I hit the goddamn target, Biden said. Video
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uploaded by the Obama administration of the occasion shows Biden shooting a bow into an
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empty field. The White House did not respond to her request for comment.
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Now, at this point, the Washington Free Beacon story goes off on all
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the different tangents that Biden went into in his testimony with her, and some
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of these stories are truly bizarre. You know, the guy who has his
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penis burned off, and you know his history in law school being completely revised,
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because this is a guy whose presidential campaign in the nineteen eighties was derailed
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because it was determined that he had plagiarized in that career, and I mean,
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which we've completely forgotten about, and all sorts of things that have absolutely
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no remote relevance to the issue of classified documents and the free beacon rights.
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At the end of their analysis of all these crazy things that Biden went into.
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At first glance, it's unclear how any of this relates to Biden's classified
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record scandal. The President later clarified to her that he told these stories to
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demonstrate his lifelong habit of keeping notes, which I can at least theoretically see
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the relevance of. But the bottom line here is, at best, at
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best, Biden was trying not to answer these questions. Now, is that
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because Biden is, as I've already suggested, philibustering because he knows he did
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something wrong, or is he just that out of it that like an old
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man like grandpa often does, you know, he starts going down a path
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and he gets lost, and he doesn't even know why he started down that
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path, and he can't get back. Who knows, I mean, it's
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very difficult to tell that when you're reading an account of a transcript and not
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seeing a video of what actually transpired. But of course this is the core
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issue that really matters here. I mean, he's not going to be prosecuted
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for his handling classified documents. I do think it's important from the standpoint of
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how Trump's classified documents case is going to be perceived, both by the public
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and by a jury. I do think all of this makes it much more
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difficult to get a conviction, even if it's not the same exact case.
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And it's not and her goes to great lens to emphasize that, which I
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think should go to his credibility, But they are obviously very similar. And
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if you're not going to charge Biden, and it's really hard to understand how
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during a presidential campaign in the state of Florida, should that case even go
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forward during the campaign, you're going to be able to get twelve jurors to
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convict the Republican presidential nominee for the very same thing that a special counsel let
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the current president off the hook for. That's really hard for me to understand.
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So that is a significant element of all this. But the memory issue
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really is at the core of why people care. I don't think anyone would
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really care about Robert Hurr's testimony very much or the classified documents case other than
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its relationship to Trump's case unless her had raised the memory issue. And of
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course the left is apoplectic over this. Democrats during her testimony went after him
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in various different ways regarding this memory issue, and of course the left wing
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media has tried to defend Biden on this particular issue. Maybe the most obvious
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example I saw came from The Daily Beast. They had a headline, Biden
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transcript calls into question special counsels bombshell memory claims. Now, this is a
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classic tactic, both by the left and by the right right. So there's
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a narrative that's out there, and in this particular case, we don't know
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exactly what it said or what the context was, And there was this bombshell
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claim that Biden's memory is so bad he can't even be prosecuted, and the
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memory and the media largely latched onto it. So the latch was exceedingly concerned
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about this, and understandably so. So there's gonna be a market. There's
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gonna be a market for when we actually find out what the transcripts actually say,
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for somebody on the left to go, aha, see her lie or
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or her didn't really tell the full truth, or there's another at least there's
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another side to this story that's that is a clickbait one oh one, because
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there's gonna be a market for that story. There's gonna be a lot of
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liberals who are gonna want to hear about how her didn't tell the truth.
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And now now that we have all the evidence, there's a different story to
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tell. That happens on the left and on the right every single time we
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have one of these situations. We saw this constantly in both directions. For
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instance, in the entire Russia Gate investigation, where when we found out what
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really happened, Okay, let's see whether or not that narrative was really true.
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So the Daily Beast comes out with that headline, Biden transcript calls into
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questions, special counsels bombshell memory claims, and the biggest part of the whole
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memory claim that they are latching onto is allegedly not being true. I already
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alluded to in that Washington Free Beacon story. It deals with whether or not
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Biden knew the year in which his son Bo died. Well, to me
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and obviously to the Washington Free Beacon, the real story here is wait a
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minute, Biden lied. Biden lied at that press conference because Biden was all
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outraged that her would even ask him the question. But Her didn't ask him
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the question. We still know that Biden didn't know the year in which Bo
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died. So I don't know how in the world, even as a left
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wing outlet, you defend Biden here. But here, here's the actual essence
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of the story that under the headline I just gave you about how supposedly the
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transcript calls into question. By the way, that should be the first key
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that they don't really have anything. If they had something, they wouldn't be
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using phrases like calls into question. They would be saying, you know,
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Prouve's false, or you know something much more, much stronger than calls into
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question. And so that was my first inkling that wait a minute, there's
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something wrong here, But here's their own story. Their own story contradicts their
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headline, and they ignore the issue about Biden lying about who brought the subject
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up. So here's their own story. Daily Beast Biden had angrily hit back
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at her in reaction to his son's death. How dare he raised that?
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Biden said on the day the report was released. Frankly, when I asked
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the question, I thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business.
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So that right there. Just to be clear, the Daily Beast and
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a part of this is Biden's fault because Biden is playing both sides here.
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Wait a minute, did her raise it or did Biden ask the question?
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So this is giving everyone plausible deniability for whatever narrative they want. But the
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Daily Beast doesn't clarify that. But the Daily Beast doesn't say, well,
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wait a minute, mister president, did you raise the issue and were you
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you were wrong to be outraged in your press conference or did you misspeak?
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And actually it was you who raised the issue, So which was it?
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Well back to the Daily Beast article. In fact, the transcript shows that
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her never even asked about Bo's death. It was Biden himself who brought up
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the subject while he discussed book in which he addressed his son's illness and death,
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according to AP, which has reviewed the transcript. Okay, so then
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we have further confusion here. So wait a minute. You're attacking her for
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something that Biden said. Her never said that he brought it up. So
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when you say, in fact, the transcript shows that her never asked about
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Bo's death, that's on Biden. That's not on her. I mean,
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this is maddening here. Her never said that. Her just said that Biden
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didn't know what year his son died, and he based out on a statement
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that Biden made. And in the transcript it's clear that at least seemingly clear
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that Biden did not know what year in which his son Bo died. Here's
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the actual transcript again, in the same Daily Beast article that's claiming to be
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a gotcha aha moment, heard didn't tell the truth. Well, no,
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apparently Biden didn't tell the truth. You don't want to make that clear to
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your readers. And here's what was actually said in the transcript, quote,
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what month did Bo die? Biden asked? That's Biden what month did bo
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die? Before adding, oh, god, May thirtieth the correct date,
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after a White House lawyer said that death was in twenty fifteen, which is
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interesting, right, So I'm not going to necessarily say that's a smoking gun
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that Biden didn't know what year's son died, but it's odd that a White
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House lawyer felt the need to jump right in and say it was twenty fifteen,
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sir, those are my words, but that's that's how I'm imagining this
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went down. And then Biden asked, quote, was it twenty fifteen he
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died? Now how you say that phrase? I guess matters a lot when
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it comes to the issue of is he not remembering? Is he is he
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just saying, oh my gosh, I can't believe it's been that long,
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or maybe it hasn't been that long. So I'm gonna give some some leeway
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on that. But from a factual standpoint, Biden brought up the year,
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and Biden didn't know what the year was. Biden asked, was it twenty
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fifteen? Now her was there? And based upon the rest of his testimony,
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this guy doesn't seem like he's the type that six's gonna make something up.
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That he I feel pretty good in trusting his judgment of what was really
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happening when Biden said that. Now, it's also important to point about not
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remembering the year of his son's death, or at least having to ask what
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year it was, is not the sole basis for this idea that Byyen's memory
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isn't good enough to prosecute. That's the other thing the left is doing.
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Aha, this was the keystone to the whole case. No, it wasn't.
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There are all sorts of other things that Biden didn't remember, including when
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he was vice president. So you know, this memory issue is important.
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It's important one from the standpoint of should he be president and can he be
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president in a second term. It's important from the perspective of the general election
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because this is an issue that is potentially lethal to Biden because it's something that
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every American voter has an experience with, or almost every American voter has an
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experience with and can relate to, and it's very difficult for the media to
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spin it. So it's important from those standpoints. It's also somewhat important as
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to HER's decision not to prosecute on the classified documents case. But when it
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comes to how the Democrats handled this issue, I honestly did not understand what
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there logic was here, and I put logic in quotes because which is it?
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So if your argument is her lied about Biden's memory, his memory is
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plenty good enough, then how do you then not say, Okay, well,
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shouldn't Biden have been prosecuted? Because there's evidence that Biden broke the law
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and maybe even engaged in a cover up with his ghost writer. So I
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don't understand. So you're in a weird way, you kind of go back
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to the upside down world in which we lived. And I started this commentary
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on in a weird way, Democrats were actually arguing for Biden to have been
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prosecuted, or the recommendation to be Biden be prosecuted, because the basis for
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him not being prosecuted in their minds is illegitimate. It's not based in truth,
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which doesn't make any sense. So to me, Democrats ought to pick
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a lane. Either he should have been prosecuted, right, or his memory
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is dangerously bad. Pick a lane? Which is it? Her maid?
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That exceedingly clear. Thanks for listening to today's free drop of the abbreviated show.
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