The Daily Signal - 500+ Arrests in DC, Judicial Fights w/ Sen. Schmitt, China's Pressure on Ukraine/Russia | Aug. 21, 2025

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Starting point is 00:00:25 We'd love to talk. Business. The FBI announces over 500 arrests in Washington, D.C., as the legacy media flips out over the arrest of an alleged rapist and illegal immigrant. Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri joins us to talk judicial fights, and our Virginia Allen gets us up to speed on President Trump, Ukraine, Russia, the Europeans, and now China. I'm Tony Kennett, host of the Daily Signals Tony Kennett cast,

Starting point is 00:00:53 syndicated nationally at 7 p.m. Eastern. It is Thursday, August 21st, 2025. This is the Daily Signals. Top News in 10. After claims from various pundits and legacy media outlets like the Washington Post, New York Times, MSNBC, etc. ad nauseum, that Washington, D.C. was perfectly safe, that crime was at record lows. The president had no reason or need to dispatch the National Guard or to federalize the Metropolitan Police Force in Washington, D.C. FBI director, Cash Patel, announced today that over 500 arrests and a series of gun and drug seizures have been made in Washington, D.C.

Starting point is 00:01:39 Thanks again to President Trump is his initiative to clean our streets and rid of violent criminals starting in our nation's capital. Let me speak to just briefly what the FBI did last night. FBI had 41 arrests last night, including six gun seizures and eight drug seizures. That's eight drug seizures and six guns off our streets. Now the totality and the brilliance of the Trump administration and the Department of Justice combining forces with DEA, ATF, and the U.S. Park Police and our local law enforcement authorities, in just one week alone, we have 550 total arrest of violent criminals, including dozens of firearms and 40 drug seizures to include narcotics, meth, fentanyl, cocaine, and violent crimes

Starting point is 00:02:22 such as rape, homicide, assaults, all here in our nation's capital. Now, while Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and the Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller toward Union Station looking a lot cleaner and less crime-ridden than it used to be. The reception receiving the Vice President, Secretary of Defense and Deputy Chief of Staff was about as you'd expect.

Starting point is 00:03:15 In the midst of that visit and protest, a group of Capitol police officers made an arrest on an individual wrestling him to the ground as he began. screaming in Spanish. According to Amy Cho, who posted the original video from NBC Washington over on X, she said, quote, just saw D.C. police and federal agents detain a man on the National Mall. He appeared to try to escape, then was quickly tackled to the ground by several agents and was screaming in Spanish, quote, please, I'm not a criminal, I work here, I want to be with my family,

Starting point is 00:04:05 end quote, then tagged NBC Washington. Underneath, she tweeted, I've asked the agents what the man was being charged with, but they didn't reply. I have also reached out to ICE for comment. This is when a number of pundits over on the left started suggesting that we would never hear of this man again. This was terrible. This was somehow symptomatic of a terrible fascist takeover, disappearing people. Jessica Tarlov made the case. This doesn't make DC safer. It'll just make people not come to DC. The cruelty is always the point. Julie K. Brown, an investigative journalist of the Miami Herald, posted in a now deleted tweet, don't get ahead of me. Quote, his crying hits me in the gut, and we will probably never be told who he is, why he was stopped, or if he was here illegally,

Starting point is 00:04:54 end quote. Now, as to why she likely deleted that post a little bit later, according to Amy Cho just a few hours later, quote, update, ICE has sent a statement on this man's detention, saying his name is David Perez Tiofani, and that he was arrested in Fairfax County in 2024 and charged with aggravated sexual battery against a minor under 13. Underneath listed a couple of bullet points from Mexico, has a final order of removal, entered the U.S. illegally three times, was arrested in Fairfax County on January 30th of 2024, and then, of course, charged with aggravated sexual battery against a minor under 13, felony indecent liberties, and proposed sex acts. Cho did post one more update just before 6.30 p.m. yesterday. Another update, quote,

Starting point is 00:05:48 Fairfax County court records show the charges were later dropped, and then in parentheses, Noelle Prosequi. I have reached out to the Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney's Office for comment, but haven't yet heard back. An ice spokesperson tells me, quote, prosecutors refuse to prosecute, end quote. It's a very interesting way to phrase that. She did include two screenshots of prior arrest records and disposition information. the Latin phrase that is cited in the court records that she posted a screenshot of, Nolae Prosequi, is actually Latin for prosecutors choosing not to prosecute.

Starting point is 00:06:28 That's what that legal term means. So the phrasing of this tweet by waiting until the ICE spokesperson to say, prosecutors refuse to prosecute as though this is the federal government under the Trump administration's decision to label this as prosecutors choosing not to prosecute, as opposed to the terminology listed in the court documents is a little suspicious, perhaps irresponsible. We also sat down yesterday with Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri to talk about pushing back against the Biden administration when he was the Attorney General of Missouri, as well as the steps taken towards trying to achieve justice for Americans now as individuals from prior administrations that violated the law, especially in cover-up related to Russiagate or perhaps the COVID-19 scandal are now brought to light before

Starting point is 00:07:20 the House, the Senate, and the rest of the federal government. Well, I think for me, and the reason why I wrote the book, The Last Line of Defense, is that, you know, it's important to remember exactly how close we were to, I think, losing it all until the fever broke in November of 2024, right? President Trump wins. We're talking about all those great successes, defending those successes in court now. But you got to remember, this was a time of lockdowns, of compulsory COVID shots, of DEI struggle sessions, of blatantly open borders, in a censorship regime that was really, really vast and oppressive. And so when I was AG in Missouri, we stood up and we fought back on all that stuff and we won. And the lesson I think in the book is,

Starting point is 00:08:00 now we've got a playbook. It takes courage. We need to embrace the idea of using the legal system to fight these fights. I think conservatives for a long time ceded too much territory there. that we were fighting in the legislature. We were fighting in the executive branch, but not so much in the courts. And now we've got a spring court that, you know, is on average and generally speaking, is relatively conservative, views the law as it is,

Starting point is 00:08:25 not how they want it to be. And so we have a terrain now we can fight and win to defend the things we believe in. But yes, this is playing out now, now that I'm in the Senate, you see it, we're doing some things to kind of rein in some rogue activist judges. But by and large, President Trump and his legal team,

Starting point is 00:08:38 they're being successful as these cases move up sort of the latter, right, to the appellate court, the Supreme Court. There's no more nationwide injunctions. They're winning on deportations, all that sort of core stuff. So the point of the book, last line defense, is to say, this is a turf we have to fight in.

Starting point is 00:08:53 If we do it right, we can win. We will include a link to the rest of that interview down in the description. And lastly, while individuals from certain parts of the Russian Federation government are disputing whether or not there are certain plans from the Russian government to either accept. or refuse certain aspects of Article 5-like agreements to the Ukrainian possible peace negotiation, long-term, the division of territory. The current understanding from the international community after the European delegation

Starting point is 00:09:27 visited the United States and President Trump met with both Vladimir Putin in Alaska and then President Zelensky of Ukraine in Washington, D.C. there's an understanding that the Trump administration is currently working towards a trilateral meeting between Putin, Zelensky, and Trump as the common mediator. Now there could be a slight wrench in the situation, a third actor who may not want this to proceed as the situation is currently heading, that being communist China. Because this story is rapidly developing, we brought in our senior news producer and host of the Daily Signals Problematic Women, Virginia Allen to help us parse some of this out. Yeah, well, there's so many players involved here. So it is really complex. And then when you start adding in some of those other outside factors, it gets even more complex. The main outside factor being China. So I had a conversation, as you mentioned,

Starting point is 00:10:23 with KT. McFarland, as she served in the first Trump administration, and we were talking about what security provisions, because everyone's finally on the same page, that, yes, Ukraine needs security provisions. So what could that look like? There's a lot of areas and ways that that could look. We can talk about that in a second. But I want to touch on this China piece because what K.T. McFreland said to me, she was like, you know, Trump here is really trying to thread a needle because he doesn't want to push Russia so hard that he essentially pushes them, in her words, into the arms

Starting point is 00:10:57 of China, the very happy awaiting arms of China. and I had another conversation today with Dean Cheng. He's a China expert written multiple books on China. He's on Fox News all the time. And I was asking, you know, what role is really China playing here? And he said, well, China, for their purposes, they want to see this work continue. They don't want it to stop because they're worried that the moment it does and Russia's sort of handled that then the U.S. is really going to turn its attention on China and that they will receive more pressure from the United States. And so it's to the advantage of China to just keep the U.S. distracted with Russia.

Starting point is 00:11:36 So they want the war to continue. Before you go, head down to the description and make sure you're subscribed to the Tony Kinnettcast. And join us every weeknight at 7 p.m. Eastern over on the live stream at YouTube.com slash Daily Signal for Roundup of the Day's news and nonsense or afterward wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tony Kinnett, and this has been the Daily Signal's top news in 10. Take care. Thank you.

The Daily Signal - 500+ Arrests in DC, Judicial Fights w/ Sen. Schmitt, China's Pressure on Ukraine/Russia | Aug. 21, 2025

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