Judging Freedom - Exclusive - ROGER STONE reacts to the DURHAM REPORT - 1_45p est

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, May 16, 2023. It's about 1.55 in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. My guest is one of the most recognizable names and faces in all of the media today, the inimitable Roger Stone, my boyhood friend and champion of personal liberty and the rule of law. Unfortunately, a victim of the democratic version of the rule of law, which we'll get to in a minute. Roger, it's a pleasure. Thank you, my dear friend, for joining us. Roger Hines Judge, it's great to be here. It's kind of a bittersweet experience with the news of the Durham report. It is absolutely clear now that Donald Trump is exonerated entirely in the entire Russian collusion hoax. Abundantly clear that neither the FBI or seemingly

the CIA had any evidence whatsoever of Russian sympathies or collusion by Trump. That the entire premise of Crossfire Hurricane had no probable cause, that the Mueller investigation was unnecessary because it was based on no information. Mr. Durham should have addressed the alleged hack of the DNC by Russian assets, because if you listen to the testimony of Bill Binney and Jim McGovern and other CIA counterintelligent experts who are conversant with the download scientific data, they will tell you an online hack never took place but was blamed on the Russians. He doesn't delve into the Steele dossier as deeply as he should, other than to say that the FBI paid the source of this phony document a bonus if he could find proof for his assertions. Incredible.

But here to forejudge Durham, first of all, what does he know today that he did not know before the last November's election. And secondarily, where is the, these low-lying prosecutions never made any sense. He essentially indicted the guy who drove the getaway car for double parking while letting the bank robbers flee. In fact, it's worse than that. He let the bank robbers come in and testify against the driver in these low-level trials, which prove the conspiracy above them, the testimony of all of them, but then recommends that unlike General Flynn, unlike George Papadopoulos, unlike Paul Manafort, unlike Roger Stone, unlike Donald Trump, nobody will be held responsible for anything.

Well, if I could continue your getaway car analogy, you also allowed the bank robbers to keep the money that they stole. I mean, my criticism of, my view of the report is identical to yours. My criticism of the report is identical to yours. Why wasn't anybody charged? We know that FBI agents and officials in the DOJ, and let's face it, the FBI is toothless without the DOJ. Without the DOJ, it doesn't have subpoena powers. It doesn't have arrest warrants. It doesn't have search warrants. Every FBI agent works for a federal prosecutor who directly or indirectly works for the DOJ.

I understand, but this probe is a minimalist document. Yes. is a minimalist document. You read that Mark Elias, who many would claim is responsible for a number of misdeeds pertaining to the elections and other democratic shenanigans, declined to be interviewed. This is a criminal investigation. Why wasn't he subpoenaed before a grand jury? You know, John Durham had a grand jury. It's a head scratcher as to why this is such a lukewarm document and a fruitless investigation. Two criminal trials, both for lying to the FBI, both acquitted by juries. Lying to the FBI, that shouldn't even be a crime as long as the FBI is legally allowed to lie to us. You know what it's like. So now basically Durham says there were much, much larger crimes, but he doesn't recommend that anybody be held accountable.

Where in the case of people like myself and Manifold and Flynn, we were framed for non-existent Russian collusion. That is the whole basis for this, something that never actually happened. So this idea that in my trial, the judge says, you have been convicted of lying to cover up for Donald Trump. Cover up what? Not Russian collusion, not Wink's collaboration. Mueller admitted in his in the special, the final report which was only released by federal court order and judge which they released at midnight on election day 2020, the busiest media day in the world. That's when to put out a press release if you want to bury something.

Mueller was forced to release the last remaining long hidden, long redacted sections of his final report in which even he couldn't sugarcoat the fact that he had found, quote, in this case, Trump is exonerated. But this is, I always thought the appointment of Durham was a clever holding action by Bill Barr. Barr was taking criticism for all of the apparent shenanigans and crimes of the Clintons in their cohorts and the lack of DOJ's interest in them. Roger, it was the Bill Barr DOJ and the Bill Barr FBI that did much of this. Obviously, obviously Durham is just some sort of an effort to cover this over. He didn't produce the bombshell that we wanted. I'll tell you what he did produce, and you'll know why I'm smiling. The origin, the origin of all of this is a meeting in the White House with Barack Obama,

Joe Biden, Jack Brennan, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, when they decide to use intelligence assets to go after Mr. Donald Trump. And after that meeting is over, Jack Brennan comes up with the idea of, let's use the British intelligence assets rather than using our own. You know what happened? The plausible deniability. Trump was absolutely right. His campaign was spied on. That makes this a scandal much, much larger than Watergate. Watergate was a break-in by a bunch of misguided private citizens, whereas this is the use of the full force, authority, and technological capability of the federal government to proceed on a political agenda that has no probable cause or basis in law. Let me point out to you something else that I didn't see in the document and I haven't heard today, and this is entirely, entirely Durham's fault. These crimes occurred in 2016 and 2017. 17. Crimes against Trump. Initiation of prosecutions without probable cause. Conspiracy to go after, to use government assets to go after a political candidate. A statute of limitations

has expired. He could have gotten indictments at a grand jury's if this report had come out a year ago. This is a win-win for Bill Barr. It's a historic win for Donald Trump, but it's not a vindication of justice. Well, you're absolutely right, but he slow rolled this on purpose for exactly that goal. Secondarily, the lawsuit filed in federal court in Miami by Donald Trump, which is extremely well crafted, basically makes the exact same case that Mr. Durham just documented for us. But that case was dismissed by a Clinton appointed judge. Today, I'm, as you might expect, inundated by people asking me whether I'm going to sue anybody, the Justice Department, the government, the FBI. First of all, it's very, very difficult for any private citizen to sue the government. had nothing to do with Russian collusion are therefore, even though I was framed and even though no misstatement I made hid any underlying crime. In other words, to the extent that I made errors under oath, they were inadvertent and they were immaterial, irrelevant. They hid no

Russian collusion or two weeks collaboration. Correct. I mean, this report helps you emotionally and in the broad brush of history, but it does not help you, in my view, to bring a legal case against the government. I want to play a tape for you of Jake Tapper. I was surprised to hear this. He did everything but mention your name. Take a listen. Regardless, the report is now here. It has dropped and it might not have produced everything of what some Republicans hoped for. It is regardless devastating to the FBI and to a degree it does exonerate Donald Trump. This is absolutely this is absolutely true. Look, as a man who had his home

stormed by the FBI at six o'clock in the morning by 29 heavily armed FBI agents in full SWAT gear, brandishing fully automatic M4 assault weapons, scaring the daylights out of my dog, scaring my wife, who's hard of hearing, and woke up looking down the barrel of a gun. You know, that was unnecessary. My lawyers were in touch with the special counsel's office the very day before to hand over evidence that I was telling truth the truth and one of the government's major witnesses was lying in the form of text messages. So they could have said to me at that time, we're going to arrest your client.

He's to he needs to surrender, as in most white collar cases. But no, they staged this stunning raid at my home. This cost the FBI $1.1 million, completely unnecessarily, but it provided great fodder for the CNN cameras that just happened, coincidentally, of course course to be 25 feet from my front door. Well isn't CNN always in front of your house at 5 30 in the morning? I mean this is ridiculous of course they tipped CNN off and of course they chose CNN. We know that definitively judge because I was arrested at 6 0 6 a.m. at a 6 11 a CNN personnel type sends my lawyer a copy by text of my still sealed federal indictment,

which has no timestamps or court markings on it. Right. Because in the metadata tags have the initials of the man who wrote it, Andrew Weissman. Ergo, Weissman supplied this document to CNN, pretty open and shut. The judge was completely uninterested in this in my case, as you might expect. You and I both took some risk in discussing this on my then show at Fox because while I wasn't, you were under a gag order, but we were just discussing facts that were in the public record. We were not expressing opinions of the judge

or of the prosecution against you. And I remember writing an op-ed in the days when I could post it posted at Fox and it got millions of views about midnight at the Stone House and what they did to you and how it shouldn't happen to anybody. Jim Jordan, who is the courageous chair of the House Judiciary Committee, so courageous that he's questioned whether or not he's even going to allow the House to vote to re-up Section 702 of the FISA Act. That's the one that permits the FBI to spy on foreigners and Americans without search warrants. The powers that be are in favor of it. You and I almost talked Donald Trump into vetoing it five years ago. He said he was going to veto it. He changed his mind. They made promises to him, which they didn't keep. Now it's up again. If he keeps it from getting to the floor of the House, it won't be

the law of the land. I don't know what the FBI will do if they actually have to go and get search marks. Here's the same Jim Jordan summarizing, I think beautifully, what you went through and what you just so nicely articulated, Roger, about the Durham report today. Here's what the Durham report said, quote, the FBI failed to uphold their mission of fidelity to the law. They didn't follow the law. In 2020, we've just learned in the last couple of weeks, it was the Biden campaign working with 51 former intelligence officials to put together a letter that was not accurate to interfere with a presidential election. Politics is driving the agenda in far too

many agencies in our government. And today it's not limited to presidential campaigns. Today, they come after American citizens. You could be a Catholic attending a mass. You could be a parent showing up at a school board meeting, or you could be like Mr. Houck, a pro-lifer praying at a clinic, and you will be targeted. You could be targeted by our government. That is how scary the situation has become. He's 100% correct, is he not? He absolutely is. I like Jim Jordan. Sometimes you can be a little tougher, but he is a true leader and a true patriot. And I think he makes an excellent case.

But the FBI directors, I'm sure you've seen, put out a statement saying that they have initiated a number of reforms so that none of these egregious things we learned today could happen again. The problem is that they are they do appear to be happening right now. Oh absolutely. And in in a number of areas including the disposition to Hunter Biden's laptop in which there are whistleblowers whose claims are concerning that we are yet to hear in detail, but who House members assure us are credible. We have the harassment of Roman Catholics who may be pro-life, which is deeply concerning. We have the administration and the Justice Department misleading us about whether

parents who are concerned about the curriculum being taught to their children in public schools are being viewed as domestic terrorists. I mean, this is a broken system. All these people telling me to sue, I would like to sue. General Flynn has a suit pending against the government. I don't think, given the narrow and very clever way the charges against me were stacked in indictment written by Mr. Weissman, I'm not sure that I have a legitimate litigation and I can't afford to file a frivolous lawsuit, nor would I do so. So these are hard questions I have to sit down and look at with my lawyers. uh meanwhile i'm still fighting 11 other spending civil suits 11

11. it was 117. uh today it is 11. i have uh i prevailed in five settled one uh and we're we're moving forward but this is what they call lawfare This is the filing of false baseless groundless meritless, but highly sensationalized lawsuits against you in an effort to grind you down make you pay tens of thousands of dollars and legal fees and drag your name through the mud. So those who want to help can go to stonedefensefund.com. That money is strictly for attorneys and related to legal expenses. Stonedefensefund.com.

God bless you for it. Right now, Judge, I have Hunter Biden's chief lawyer, Abby Lowell, who is now threatened twice to sue me because of my public commentary regarding the contents of hunter biden's laptop all of which i know because i read the new york post so it's a public domain this is uh this is political commentary i have no role in how those documents or that information became public no knowledge and no role. I was entertained and outraged to read it like every other American. So the FBI targeted a Roman Catholic church in Richmond, Virginia, of all places, where the masses are held in Latin, where the rosary is said before the mass in Latin, where everybody that's there is like your humble correspondent and boyhood friend,

a traditional pre-Vatican II, old-fashioned Latin mass attending priest facing the altar, pro-life Roman Catholic. That FBI office sent around a memo saying these people are potential terrorists and threats to national security. It went to all 70, seven zero FBI field offices before Jim Jordan brought it to Chris Ray's attention. Chris Ray is the director of the FBI who claims it was a mistake. This was about six months ago. Last month, a priest friend of mine from here in New Jersey, scholar, never said the English mass in his life, only says the Latin mass, said iPhone and his desktop wouldn't work. He took them both to his IT specialist, a nonpolitical type who said, only a government could have done this to you, father. And then about two days later, everything came back. So Jim Jordan is right, and you are right. I realize this is just anecdotal, and it's an odd case because it has to do with claiming that Latin mass authentic Catholics are terrorists.

You're both right that the FBI is still up to its old tricks. We know that it uses, this is my column this week, zero-click software to spy on us. Zero-click, of course, does not require that the operator of the device to be surveilled click onto a link. You just have to be within proximity of somebody who has the zero-click, and they can download everything that's in here. Joe Biden is worried because on his recent trip to Ireland, he may have been victimized by

Europeans using the zero-click, which the FBI continues to use. So it's a mess, Roger. When Donald Trump said, I know sometimes he says things in anger and he says them in reaction to events that have just been made known to him, The FBI should be disbanded and defunded. I would make the argument in favor of that. There is no authority under the Constitution for a federal police force, whether you call them FBI, whether you call them DHS, whatever you want to call them. Each one of those cabinet departments has its own police force.

The main one is FBI, though the DHS one has more numbers in it. No one's already in it. With all honesty, Judge, I think you're shooting too low. I mean, using the standard that was used for impeachment of President Donald Trump, I think Mr. Comer has already produced more than sufficient evidence to justify articles of impeachment against the president. There's certainly more evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors than existed under Donald Trump, who was acquitted twice. Even if one did not think one had the votes in the Senate, if that one believed that the oath of the office had really been

violated, then one would vote articles of impeachment. And that's the question each Republican should be asking themselves. We've just posted the website. Put it up again, Gary. Stonedefensefund.com. If you want to help my boyhood friend and mentor, Roger Stone, defend against these frivolous litigations, all of the donations will go directly to his legal defense. Roger, I know you have a very busy day today. My audience and I deeply appreciate your time. We have to run to another one of these in a couple of minutes. Thank you very much for joining us. Great to be back with you again.

Thank you. If you like that, like and subscribe. Wouldn't it be great to have Stone on maybe once a week? More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.