Senior Contributor to American Greatness Julie Kelly joined The Seth and Chris Show to discuss Senator Chuck Grassley’s memo, the Nunes memo, and the growing scandal surrounding the 2016 presidential election.
Chris Buskirk: I am Chris Buskirk. He is Seth Leibsohn. This is The Seth and Chris Show. Welcome back everybody. We have got on the line right now the one, the only, Julie Kelly, senior contributor at American Greatness. Julie, welcome back, how are you?
Julie Kelly: Good, how are you, Chris?
Chris Buskirk: Only good? I’m great. I want you to be great too.
Julie Kelly: I am great.
Seth Liebsohn: Make Julie Great Again, that’s the subtitle of the show, isn’t it? Make Julie Great Again.
Julie Kelly: We need a hat.
Seth Liebsohn: We need a hat, order it up, call Zazzle.
Julie Kelly: It’s busy, again.
Chris Buskirk: It’s always busy. There’s always something, right? We’re never bored.
Julie Kelly: That is for sure.
Chris Buskirk: Julie, you published something today at American Greatness called “Black Lines Matters”, Lines, L-I-N-E-S, “Black Lines Matter”. It’s about the memo that was put out by Senator Chuck Grassley in the Senate. It basically confirms what we learned last week from the House memo, the FISA abuse memo. It recommends criminal charges. Can you maybe just talk people through that?
Julie Kelly: Sure, so there’s two issues here. First is the criminal referral that Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham made to the Department of Justice to investigate Christopher Steele, the dossier author, for lying to the FBI. The allegation is that he lied to the FBI about his media contacts in September and early-mid-October of 2016. That was the origination of this memo. Now, there were two versions that came out this week. Then we can get into what my article today is about. The FBI sought release of what they were calling top secret, classified information that was contained in Grassley’s first, initial memo. Grassley asked the FBI after the President declassified the Nunes memo to go ahead and declassify more information, because yes, it did back up a lot that was in the House intelligence memo as well.
The version that was released last night raises a lot of questions about why the FBI is insisting on classifying information that has nothing to do with national security, protecting sources, it only has to do with protecting themselves.
Chris Buskirk: What are the major distinctions in your mind if any, between the Senate memo and the House memo?
Julie Kelly: The Senate memo actually goes a little bit further. Look, I think that Nunes became a political target, very easily. I think that that made him an easier target for the Democrats and media to go after him. They’re not necessarily gonna do that to Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham has been an outspoken Trump critic, Charles Grassley is not exactly a hyper-partisan Senator. So their memo actually goes a step further and not only supports what’s in the Nunes memo, but the declassified version that was released last night really gets into the details of what the FBI told the FISA court. How they went about, not just the initial application, but subsequent renewal, how much they relied on the Steele dossier, how much they relied on Steele’s credibility and really did not use much more information to corroborate what was in Steele’s dossier, except for that Yahoo news article.
Chris Buskirk: Which Steele had planted.
Julie Kelly: Exactly, let’s get into that a little bit. Steele had planted that, he and Gwen Simpson with Fusion GPS met with Michael Isikoff who was the author of the Yahoo news article in a restaurant in Washington DC in September of 2016, and that’s when they informed him of Steele’s actions and also what was contained in the dossier. Isikoff, of course, wrote up the article, but the FBI, according to the Grassley memo, Steele, and this is why they’re referring him for criminal charges, Steele lied to the FBI that he had not spoken to anyone in the media until the day the Corn article that came out in Mother Jones on October 30th. When in reality, he had already spoken with Michael Isikoff and other news outlets.
This information came out in a British court, an affidavit that Steele had to file because he’s being accused by a Russian businessman for defamation, for information that he put in the dossier that was false. You’ve got all these moving parts that are sure confusing, confusing to me too. I’m following it as closely as I can. But it really corroborates the Nunes memo and takes it a few steps further. We’re getting more information about the FBI used Steele and the dossier and Fusion to get the warrant against Carter Page.
Chris Buskirk: The FBI was an instrument of the Clinton campaign and of the Democrat National Committee, right? This wasn’t just happening in a vacuum. Christopher Steele wasn’t out there doing this independently, he had been hired by the Clinton campaign and by the DNC, he was paid a lot of money that went to him and to Fusion GPS and to this other firm, Crowdstrike to create the appearance of some nefarious activity on the part of the Trump campaign.
Why did they do this? It started actually back in the summer just as your normal, political dirty trick, but then they upped the ante later in the summer. They used this, said we can actually use this because we have friends and allies, fellow travelers, in the FBI and in the Department of Justice, we can use all this information, we can give that to them. Apparently, if you look at the [inaudible] page text, maybe with the knowledge of Obama, of the president, we’re gonna use this to get a warrant from the FISA court to give us the veneer of legality as we spy on the Trump campaign, as we spy on our political opponents in the middle of a presidential campaign.
Julie Kelly: Exactly. This is just as these pieces are coming together on top of James Comey’s actions, which we know exonerated Hillary Clinton on July 5th. That statement was edited several times to water down her conduct, it removed a reference to President Clinton, excuse me, President Obama, who was in the original draft. You just start to put all of this together, we’ve talked about this before and people are saying this, this is really uncovering what is probably going to be the biggest, if not one of the biggest, political scandals in American history. We’re still getting more information. We have these two, the Senate investigation and the Judiciary investigation, the House Intelligence Committee. We also have a report released today by Senator Johnson, who is investigating the Clinton email probe through the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and then of course next month we’re expected to get the Inspector-General report from the Department of Justice into the Clinton investigation. There’s so much more that we still have to learn.
You know, Chris, the idea that the media immediately went after Nunes even before the memo was released, and basically ignored the Grassley memo, really is telling how much the media has played lead role in propagating this scandal and this conspiracy against President Trump. It’s really, really disheartening to see just how dishonest the media is on this issue.
Chris Buskirk: When you listened to the questions that were posed to Devin Nunes last Friday, by Bret Baier on Fox, I’m gonna focus on Fox here for a second because this is supposed to be where conservatives go to get an unbiased, fair and balanced news, a shot at actually getting the facts. I’m not talking about Tucker, I’m not talking about their primetime programming, which has a lot of opinion and commentary. When you think about Chris Wallace on Sunday or you thinking about Bret Baier, who normally is pretty decent, they were basically spouting Democratic talking points, going right at Nunes with the Democrat line, and totally ignoring the substance. Totally ignoring the fact that we have the Clinton campaign and the DNC paying money to the FBI and the FBI corrupting themselves, perjuring themselves in court documents, in order to get a wiretap on a presidential campaign of the Republican candidate.
But, “Oh, we’ll get to that at the end of the interview.” In the meantime, “oh, you didn’t read all the Devin Nunes,” Bret Baier says to him, “you didn’t read all the documents.” That was a Democrat talking point. Well, no he didn’t read all of the documents because that was part of a negotiated agreement with the Department of Justice where they would designate one Republican and one Democrat from the Intelligence Committee to read all these very sensitive documents. The Republican was Trey Gowdy. But there was all kinds of obfuscation. I was very disappointed to see Fox buying into that. The substance here is damning. It’s important and it goes to the heart of our electoral system.
Do have final thought before we go to the break, or shall we pick it up on the other side?
Julie Kelly: Yeah.
Chris Buskirk: Yeah, let’s pick it up. Alright. Julie Kelly is my guest, have a look at her latest piece at American Greatness, amgreatness.com, it’s called “Black Lines Matters.” It’s a reference to the redacted portions of the Grassley memo. The Grassley memo, boy. The memo that came out of the House, the FISA abuse memo that came out last Friday, a bombshell. The Grassley memo corroborates it but actually goes a step further. Have a look at that, you can find it at amgreatness.com.
Julie Kelly is my guest, she’s a senior contributor at American Greatness. Gonna go to a quick break and we’ll be right back.
I am Chris Buskirk, he is Seth Liebsohn, welcome back to the Seth and Chris Show. Our guest is Julie Kelly, senior contributor at American Greatness. She’s been writing on the FISA abuse scandal. I don’t think we’re gonna call it the FISA abuse scandal for very long, Julie. Because that is just one aspect of an unfolding scandal that will engulf the Clinton campaign. Again, if there’s scandal, the Clintons are there. The Clinton campaign, the Democrat National Committee, the Obama administration, the FBI, the Department of Justice. What were they doing? They were trying to fix the election. They conspired to illegally spy on American citizens. Why? Because they were part of the presidential campaign of their Republican opponent, Donald Trump, so they used the power of the FBI in order to do that, in order to gain electoral advantage.
That simply cannot stand. This is about more than just FISA abuse, though that is an important instrumentality here. Do you agree?
Julie Kelly: Absolutely. Not to correct you, because you are my boss, but the State Department as well. We’re still waiting for, there’s a reference to that in the Grassley memo, and I believe that Nunes’ Committee is also ready to release something about the State Department’s involvement in this as well.
Chris Buskirk: Yeah, Congressman Nunes made that very clear in that same interview with Bret Baier last week. He said, “This is the end of phase one. We are now moving on to a second phase to see what role the State Department had in all this.” Why the State Department? Who had been Secretary of State? Hilary Clinton. Were there still her people there at the State Department, or at a minimum, people who were highly sympathetic to her? Of course, there were.
Julie Kelly: Yes, and then the Department of Justice giving certain aides of hers immunity in the email investigation. Chris, this just has so many layers. At the end of the day, this is an Obama administration scandal. The idea that someone like Christopher Steele can have access, free rein, at the FBI that he can be taken seriously even though they know that he… again. This is a foreign political operative, who is used to gain power to spy on a US citizen. Here we’re worried about foreign involvement in our election. You have a man like Christoper Steele, they keep referring as a spy, a former British M16 spy, to give him some credibility. But the dossier is still uncorroborated, he was paid by Clinton’s campaign and the DNC. To think a guy like that can have free rein at the FBI, that a Glen Simpson, with all of his ties to the media, can also manipulate people at the FBI, is really frightening.
Let’s talk for a minute about this Yahoo news article. Every time this pops up, I have to laugh. Can you imagine a judge taking seriously, anywhere, the citation of a Yahoo news article, in any capacity?
Chris Buskirk: Well, any Yahoo news article, but especially one written by Michael Isikoff. The man is a Democrat operative.
Julie Kelly: These judges live in the real world. They have to know who Michael Isikoff is. Furthermore, as I point out in my piece today, who asked the FBI, no one suspected that Steele or Simpson picked off Michael Isikoff for that piece then they’re really bad investigators. They’re either dishonest or they’re just lousy at their job. The fact that nobody thought, wait a second, this is awfully suspicious, and we know who Michael Isikoff is, and this seems kind of odd that he has the same kind of information. No they didn’t because it conveniently was gonna add support for the dossier. They actually said, in the Grassley memo, the FBI did not think that Gill was the source for that Yahoo news article. That’s preposterous.
Chris Buskirk: Julie, everything in the Steele dossier is pure fantasy. How about the fact that one of the allegations in the Steele dossier is that quote unquote the Russians offered Carter Page a 19 percent stake is Rosneft, which is a state oil company. It’s worth $12 billion. They alleged in the Steele dossier and went into court with straight faces, saying that Carter Page was being offered a $12 billion bribe in a public company. It’s absurd. James Comey signed off on that on three separate occasions, knowing that it was uncorroborated and knowing that it was untrue.
Julie Kelly: They might as well have brought in an article from The Onion. Maybe that would have sounded more legitimate than the dossier. Furthermore, Carter Page told Laura Ingraham the other night, he never met with [inaudible], who is the Russian who’s also mentioned in the dossier. That’s the basis of his lawsuit against Buzzfeed and I believe Huffington Post. I know that there’s been commentators out there, pundits saying this dossier has been 90 percent verified.
Chris Buskirk: It hasn’t even been 10 percent verified, Julie. As Devin Nunes said last week, he was speaking rhetorically, “What’s been corroborated? What? That Russia is a country and Carter Page is a person? Other than that, I don’t know anything.”
Julie Kelly: Well said.
Chris Buskirk: On that basis, they will go out and say it’s partially corroborated. Yeah, that he’s a person and Russia is a country.
Julie Kelly: I guess they’ve got a point there, I suppose the Washington Post and the New York Times editorial board can pick up on that.
Seth Liebsohn: Julie, Chris, can I just interject? When this thing is as weird as it is, it just got weirder. Today, it even gets weirder, now when we’re learning that Sidney Blumenthal may have had a hand in some of this.
Chris Buskirk: Of course.
Seth Liebsohn: Just when you think it couldn’t get weirder, it gets weirder. It goes back to what Chris was saying last week, Julie, when the abuse memo came out, this isn’t the end, this is the beginning. It’s going to get weirder, it’s going to get uglier, it’s going to get dirtier, it’s going to get darker, it’s going to get more scandalous. They didn’t know what they had originally with the arrest of the criminals at the Watergate hotel. Woodward and Bernstein didn’t exactly know what they had. And then they started digging a little further and digging a little further. We’re moving at a faster rate of speed here.
Julie Kelly: Right, and where does this go? We have all this information and what do we do after this? Are there grand juries? Are there more hearings? I think that the Senate Committees have to hold more hearings and have people like Comey and other officials testify publicly and tell the American people what they did and what they know. That, I assume, will be the next step. Who knows where it goes from there?
Chris Buskirk: All of this testimony, you alluded to this, Julie, all of this testimony should be in public. It should be open. This idea that there are some deep dark state secrets that would put honorable people in jeopardy, that would expose sources and methods as they were saying just a week ago, we can’t put out the House memo because it would expose sources and methods and lead to a compromise in national security. That was a lie. That was just as much of a lie as what was put into application to the FISA court. I think all of this should be completely done out in public.
Julie Kelly: Absolutely. They tried to redact two entire pages of Grassley’s eight-page memo that had nothing to do with anything secretive, only to protect themselves.
Seth Liebsohn: Julie, thank you very much. Folks, go to American Greatness, read Julie Kelly’s latest on all of this. Read her all the time. You’re doing great work, Julie. We really appreciate it when you can come on our show.
Julie Kelly: Thanks, guys. I love being on, thanks for having me.
Seth Liebsohn: You betcha. I’m Seth, he is Chris, our phone number is (602)508-0960, that’s (602)508-0960, and the lines are open.
Welcome back to the Seth and Chris show, I’m Seth, he is Chris, our number is (602)508-0960. Did you say you had a new nickname for me? Wink?
Chris Buskirk: Wink, yeah.
Seth Liebsohn: Why Wink?
Chris Buskirk: Because we were talking about how easy these game show host guys have it, they can live wherever they want, fly into LA, do a whole month’s worth of shows in two days, and this got us thinking. Think about Wink Martindale.
Seth Liebsohn: From the old Tic Tac Toe show?
Chris Buskirk: And others. He hosted a bunch of different game shows in the 70s. He had that real thin stick microphone.
Seth Liebsohn: I loved those. That Gene Washburn had?
Chris Buskirk: Exactly.
Seth Liebsohn: Or Wallburn or whatever his name.
Chris Buskirk: Nobody has the nickname Wink anymore. We could bring it back. Bringing back the expression boy, that was gas, having a gas.
Seth Liebsohn: We was born Winston Conrad, so Wink makes sense. That’s a really good acronym for Winston Conrad.
Chris Buskirk: Right, Wink Leibsohn.
Seth Liebsohn: Problem is I wasn’t born Winston Conrad.
Chris Buskirk: See now you’ve spoiled it. Nobody knew that.
Seth Liebsohn: Yeah, I looked too deep, didn’t I? How do you know that it isn’t?
Chris Buskirk: Maybe your given name is Wink and Seth is your nickname.
Seth Liebsohn: Maybe.
Chris Buskirk: I’ve never seen your birth certificate.
Seth Liebsohn: That opens up a whole other can.
Chris Buskirk: Long-form or short-form.
Seth Liebsohn: (602)508-0960. We’re probably gonna have a continuing resolution that will keep the government operating, but it gets us away from this conversation that I keep wanting us to have, not you and me, not necessarily you and the listeners, but the country. I keep wanting us to have this conversation. When there are government shutdowns, we get this very curious phrase about non-essential employees. Non-essential government employees. We never really get to do a deep dive on that. We make fun of it a little bit. It’s a very serious thing.
The Washington Times had a really good editorial today. They write, “The problem with the threat of the shutdown is no one apparently knows the precise size of the federal workforce, and it’s not likely that anyone really wants to find out. We can hope that Mick Mulvaney, the President’s OMB Director, and Jeff Pon, the President’s nominee to head the Office of Personnel Management will make taking a census of the swamp a priority.”
That’s a pretty good idea. We can measure the size of the country. How come we can’t measure the size of the government? Anyone ever asked that question? When we talk about the regulatory state, this question needs to be asked. Why do we not have a census of government employees?
Chris Buskirk: Good question. Probably require a whole new department or agency to do it.
Seth Liebsohn: Or regulation on how to do it. The Times cites this study I really like by Open the Books. We had the head of Open the Books on the show. Open the Books, a study of the administrative state found that there are roughly two million federal employees who collectively are paid $1 million per minute over a 40-hour workweek, and this does not include the military. $1 million dollars a minute. When we talk about, and you hear politicians talk about, eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, fine. It’s a fairly stock phrase. But has anyone really talked about the waste, fraud, and abuse actually of the jobs themselves? Not just the procurement issues, not just the duplicity of paperwork issues, or the redundancy issues, but whether the job even is required.
Do you know how sick this is? Between 2010 and 2016, the number of federal employees making $200,000 per year or more increased 165 percent. The number making more than $100,000 grown by 37 percent. Did you know that there were federal employees making more than $200,000 a year? Did you know that?
Chris Buskirk: I had no idea.
Seth Liebsohn: In addition, federal employees on average get 10 annual holidays, 13 sick days, and 20 vacations days per year. Holidays, once established to honor the greats in our history, presidents like Washington and Lincoln, have been combined to establish long weekends to massage the convenience of the grunions. If every eligible employee used all of the holidays, this would cost the Federal Treasury close to $25 billion. Do you know what you could do with $25 billion? I have a lot of ideas.
More on this. Talk about non-essential employees, talk about non-essential government. (602)508-0960. I’m Seth, he’s Chris, we’ll be right back.
Do you want to share it with everyone? I’m sure we’d all like to laugh.
Chris Buskirk: Should we?
Seth Liebsohn: Remember when your teachers would say things like that when you were sharing a note.
Chris Buskirk: I hope you’ve brought enough for everyone.
Audio clip: It ain’t one at a time in here! We’re mass-communicating!
Seth Liebsohn: Charles Sterning
Chris Buskirk: The one and only.
Seth Liebsohn: Remember your teachers would do that, sharing a note, there was laughter, and they would take the note. “Should I share this with the class? I’m sure we’d all like a laugh.” It’s kind of nonsequitur. Education dies in darkness in those days if you think about it. What’s wrong with private communication?
Chris Buskirk: I guess we’d all like to know what you and Sally Sue were talking about.
Seth Liebsohn: Exactly. No. Why did no student ever stand up and say, “No, it’s a private communication, and gentlemen don’t read other people’s mail”? Why did no student invoke Brandice and say that?
Chris Buskirk: Maybe some did.
Seth Liebsohn: Maybe some did. Did you?
Chris Buskirk: You might be in the same room as a student who, in the sixth grade, did not invoke Brandice but did lead an all-class strike which lasted a day and a half.
Seth Liebsohn: Was there no threatened expulsion? What was the strike over?
Chris Buskirk: We wanted to arrange the desks in tables instead of in rows. The teacher believed that this was just so we could talk to our friends and not pay attention. He was, in fact, correct.
Seth Liebsohn: Oh, there wasn’t some pedagogical study on how learning is enhanced by the new?
Chris Buskirk: No, but we did actually make the argument for group learning, team-building, that sort of thing. When that didn’t work, we decided that we would go on strike, and being the cheeky little devils that we were at 12, said, “You realize that you are all members of a union yourselves and you should respect our right to strike.”
Seth Liebsohn: Interesting. You pulled that on them.
Chris Buskirk: We pulled that on them, yeah.
Seth Liebsohn: Didn’t go down well.
Chris Buskirk: Here’s the very funny thing about this, you were in sixth grade at the same time I was.
Seth Liebsohn: We went to different schools together.
Chris Buskirk: This was about the time of the PATCO strike, so we had some ideas. We did not think that either our teacher or our principle was Reagan and we would not be summarily fired. We were not, in fact. We won.
Seth Liebsohn: You won?
Chris Buskirk: Yes.
Seth Liebsohn: Not sure I agree with the outcome of that.
Chris Buskirk: I don’t agree with the outcome either, but it is striking that they were willing to put up with that for a day and a half of class time.
Seth Liebsohn: Speaking of what I was speaking of—
Chris Buskirk: My last union action, by the way.
Seth Liebsohn: Did they compel dues?
Chris Buskirk: My partner in crime and I probably should have.
Seth Liebsohn: You know the rule on that, by the way? You don’t have to join a union, in a union shop, but you do have to pay dues.
Chris Buskirk: Right.
Seth Liebsohn: You know where that comes from?
Chris Buskirk: The devil.
Seth Liebsohn: It comes from a federal court case William Buckley was involved in. He was the named plaintiff.
Chris Buskirk: No kidding. I did not know that.
Seth Liebsohn: On firing line, if you looked up the name of it, it’s Buckley v something. It might be Buckley v Screen Actors Guild.
Chris Buskirk: Valeo?
Seth Liebsohn: No, no, that’s his brother. Did you know that was his brother?
Chris Buskirk: Yeah.
Seth Liebsohn: Buckley v Valeo was his brother. William Buckley was, I believe, forced to join the Screen Actor’s Guild because of his firing line show, I think I have this right, and refused to do so on principle, and the court ruling on it ultimately held that he didn’t have to join the union but he had to pay the dues. I think I’m right on this. Let me know if I’m not. Are you able to do that? You have access to some form of investigatory immediacy?
Chris Buskirk: You mean the Google? This could take a minute.
Seth Liebsohn: While you’re taking your minute, talking about the size and scope of federal government non-essential employees. This Washington Times piece is getting us to the national discussion I think we need to have, not about waste, fraud, and abuse, but about the waste, fraud, and abuse of jobs, of certain jobs. Two federal departments, Department of Veteran’s Affairs and US Postal Service, which is a private company owned by the federal government, that’s a funny sentence as well, employ more than half of what the survey calls disclosed federal workers. Disclosed federal workers. But does not include men and women on active military. These two agencies have become the poster children for government waste and inefficiency.
Near the end of the Obama administration, the scandal at the VA, the prospect of reform, was so daunting that it was thought that abolishing the department and starting all over would be easier and more efficient. If Adam Andrzejewski, the director of Open the Books, is correct, there are small and large agencies across the federal government gaming the system for federal gain. Remember folks, a million dollars per minute. $1 million per minute for a 40-hour workweek is what we’re paying for the non-defense employment of the federal bureaucracy, of the federal government. You’re telling me you cannot find, you will not find, places to cut? $200,000 salaries and more?
Chris Buskirk: Can’t do it.
Seth Liebsohn: There are over 30,000 federal employees making over $200,000 a year.
Chris Buskirk: How many?
Seth Liebsohn: Over 30,000.
Chris Buskirk: Wow.
Seth Liebsohn: Over 30,000. This is just an incredible thing. Anyway, I don’t wish for a government shutdown, I really don’t. But when it next does, I really would like us to have the conversation of what constitutes a necessary employee of the federal government. A non-essential and an essential employee of the federal government. I really would like to have that discussion in a very serious way. It’s long overdue. You’re not gonna get a handle on the non-discretionary parts of the federal budget until you start having these serious conversations. Are you gonna erase the deficit with just looking into this? No. But can you save tens of billions of dollars? Perhaps yes. Remember what this report says. If every federal employee took every vacation entitled to them per year, it would cost the government about $25 billion dollars. It’s an incredible thing.
Chris, have you followed any of the fighting debate and kerfuffle and concertante that Dennis Prager has found himself in, defending evangelicals who defend Trump? Have you followed any
of this debate over the last few days?
Chris Buskirk: At a distance.
Seth Liebsohn: We like to ask hard questions. He asks a few. I’d like to repeat them. I think these are good questions.
“Former President Jimmy Carter has been married once. Virtually all critics of Trump note that he is thrice married as a character defect. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, Jimmy Carter has been faithful to his wife their whole life. If you are conservative, religious, or secular, would you vote for Jimmy Carter over Donald Trump? Do you believe that Hilary Clinton has a finer character than Donald Trump? Whom should pro-choice voters support? A pro-life activist, a fine character, or a pro-choice activist of dubious character? You’ve already answered that question.
“Whom should pro-Israel voters support, an anti-Israel activist of fine character or a pro-Israel activist of dubious character? And if there were to have cancer, god forbid, would any of the evangelical’s critics choose an oncologist based on character? If not, why not?”
Chris Buskirk: I think he frames that beautifully.
Seth Liebsohn: I do too. (602)508-0960. I’m Seth, he’s Chris. We’ll be right back.
It’s a great guitar lick. Stop it. Stop doing that. Thanks for spending your three-hour tour with us today folks. As I said, it’s a real privilege to be here with you and we don’t take any of it for granted. What we also should not take for granted is our government, and I just wanna say a concluding remark or two about that.
Molly Hemingway over at The Federalist puts the sentence this way: “A criminal referral from top Senate investigators confirms explosive charges in last week’s House Intelligence Committee memo regarding abuse of surveillance authorities at the FBI and Department of Justice.”
Think about that for a moment. Just think about that for a moment. The American people, as the founders knew and wrote, are a good people. We are a fundamentally good people. We deserve a government as good as it’s people. Not better, not worse. Representative democracy deserves a government as good as it’s people. Do you have that? Do you have that when you read about what has taken place at the FBI and Department of Justice? Do you have that when the lead investigators are tweeting to each other about how horrible all Romanians and Italians are? Do you have that?
This is not Donald Trump. This is the deep-state of the investigative body of the federal government, which evidently thinks it has the power to use a fantasy dream, a fantasy dream of a Donald Trump hater, paid for by an opposition party, putting into the most scrupulous or scrutinizing kind of warrant request, which is what FISA is. A fantasy dream paid for by the opposition party perpetrates a fraud on a judge so that a Republican can be surveilled because he’s of the wrong party. If this doesn’t stun you about what’s going on in the deep-state of partisan politics and government, few things will.
We’ll have more news on this tomorrow, not Chris and I, but people tracking this, and we’ll bring it to you. Because Chris is absolutely right. This is just the beginning. It’s not the end.