The Dan Bongino Show - SPECIAL: "Obamagate" DEEP-DIVE with Gen. Mike Flynn, Mike Benz and Paul Sperry

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

VINCE returns with LIVE programming tomorrow, August 1st! In this special episode, Vince is joined by three great guests to discuss the fallout from what is being called "Obamagate" Stunning Stat...s From the Border Crisis https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2025/07/30/stunning-stats-from-the-erstwhile-border-crisis-n4942229 Republicans Push Past Democrat Obstruction To Confirm Trump-Aligned Judge https://www.dailywire.com/news/republicans-push-past-democrat-obstruction-to-confirm-trump-aligned-judge American fertility rate hits all-time low as Dems clamor for foreign replacements https://www.theblaze.com/news/american-fertility-rate-hits-all-time-low-as-dems-clamor-for-foreign-replacements Sponsors: American Financing - American Financing.net/Vince Birch Gold - Text VINCE to the number 989898 Fatty 15 - fatty15.com/vince Blackout Coffee - BlackoutCoffee.com/Vince Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 What if you could delay your next two mortgage payments? That's right. Imagine putting those two payments in your pocket and finally getting a little bit of breathing room. It's possible. When you call American financing today, yes indeed. If you're feeling stretched by everyday expenses, groceries, gas, bills piling up, you're not alone. Most Americans are putting those expenses on a credit card and there doesn't seem to be a way out. American financing can show you how to use your home's equity to pay off that debt.
Starting point is 00:00:24 You need to call American financing today before you get to a point where you can't make those payments. Their salary-based mortgage consultants are helping homeowners just like you restructure their loans and consolidate debt, all without upfront fees. Their customers are saving an average of $800 a month. That's like $10,000 in a raise. It's fast, it's simple, and it really could save your budget this summer.
Starting point is 00:00:47 Call now before it's too late. 888-879-6460. That's 888-879-6460. Americanfinancing.net slash Vince, NMLS number 1-82334, NMLSconsumeraccess.org. Hey everybody. NMLS consumer access dot org. Hey everybody. Yes, I'm traveling this week, but we have a great best of episode for you today,
Starting point is 00:01:17 which includes a ton of great guests on Obama gate, digging into all of the ways the Obama administration truly was tyrannical and out of control. That's coming up. Also, just so you know, tomorrow there is gonna be a live edition of Vince. The great Hailey Carania is gonna be guest hosting. Please tune in to watch Hailey do her thing. She's so good, she'll be on with you live tomorrow. And then I'm back live next week, all week long from Silverlock Studios in Florida.
Starting point is 00:01:41 Don't miss a moment. Great as always to be working with you, the best damn audience in media. Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is addressing the nation right now from the White House Press Room. She just declared that a presidential daily brief that was supposed to be assembled
Starting point is 00:02:02 on December the 9th of 2016 was aborted because it had concluded that no, the Russians hadn't stolen the election at all. And guess which two presidents were about to be briefed on that subject before it was aborted. Here's Tal to Gabbard a moment ago. On December 5th of 2016, the FBI and ODNI gave the House Intelligence Committee its first post-election classified briefing in which there was no mention of Putin aspiring to elect Trump by either agency.
Starting point is 00:02:34 The presidential daily brief, drafted on December 8th of 2016, stated that no Russian or criminal actors impacted vote counts. This document was pulled just hours before it was to be published due to quote unquote new guidance. If it had been published, it would have been briefed to both President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump. But it wasn't. In other words, President Trump would have known that the Obama administration did know
Starting point is 00:03:02 that Russia didn't steal the election for Trump. For more on this, a man who got to see it all firsthand joins us now, General Mike Flynn, the former national security advisor to President Trump, joins us on the phone. Sir, good to have you with us today. Thanks, Vince, thanks for having me. I appreciate all the coverage that you have given this story. It's monumental, Vince, the state of play
Starting point is 00:03:25 for where the United States, and I don't think any listener would ever believe that our country would be in a place like this, but this is where we are. And now it's so disheartening. And I've known it, I've known it for a long, long time. Was that the fulcrum of it? I actually, after Trump appointed me as the national security advisor, before, you know,
Starting point is 00:03:51 actually before these dates, as you just mentioned, for your audience, I was reading, once I was appointed, you know, my clearances were already very high anyway, because I led the DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. And so I was started reading the PDBs on a daily basis. Never once did I ever see any of this information, not once, not until we were briefed in January up at Trump Tower on the 6th of January. And one of the things that Tulsi, you know, courageous Tulsi Gabbard has revealed, and this was revealed on Friday, was this now known 8 December meeting,
Starting point is 00:04:32 which is a couple of days after this House Intel committee briefing that they pulled this information from. So a couple of days later, from the 5th of December 2016, now on the 8th of December 2016. Now, in the 8th of December 2016, I think it was in the Oval Office, if I read the report correctly. This is really when Barack Obama, with Brennan and Comey and Clapper, Susan Rice was there, I believe, they basically then intentionally took
Starting point is 00:05:00 what they knew to be a lie, and they worked it into a conspiracy to then undermine a duly elected president of the United States. You know, if this was Mike Flynn, let me just finish it, because this is so important, Vince, if this was Mike Flynn as the DNI of the United States of America now, you know, saying all these things, you know, the Democrats on the left, they would lose their minds. They go, oh, Flynn's just, you know, he's being vindictive. This is Tulsi Gabbard, you know, and I think she's probably still registered Democrat, you know, and I, I'm a big fan of known Tulsi since she first came into,
Starting point is 00:05:35 uh, into Congress years ago. And so I think that this is a real, this is a masterful stroke by Trump and allowing this to be done the way it's being done. But I think that this is, I mean, you use the word disheartening. Now, I'm not, you know, it's worse than that for me because it really destroyed my family and my life and frankly, hurt the country because it did not allow the country to have, you know, and I'll speak for myself for a second, did not allow the country to have my skill set, which is significant, to be able to perform the duties as a national security advisor for the United States of America under President Donald J. Trump during his first term.
Starting point is 00:06:19 Well, General Flynn, as I understand your career, you can tell us, I mean, you were the head of the DIA, you were very concerned about the problems you had detected in the Intel community. Your plan was to come in and to help reform and fix that Intel community. And they had it out to get you because of that. Is that right? Yeah, that's 100% right.
Starting point is 00:06:38 You know, my career going back before all this, you know, I was down at US Central Command, which ran the war in the Middle East and in Afghanistan. And I was down there. And that's and then I rose up to the Pentagon where I was working as the basically the senior intelligence officer inside the Pentagon for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And then eventually, I went over to the DIA. And when I went to the DIA, I did some, I
Starting point is 00:07:04 actually did some extensive reforms over there. And those reforms that I created back in 2012, they still are in place because I worked on not only, or, you know, lines and boxes, but also the human resource components of it to be able to get people promoted fairly. That was kind of my thing. And also to make sure that intelligence
Starting point is 00:07:25 was actually being created and not weaponized by the real experts, by the pros. As we are learning from Tulsi, the more she's saying, what she's saying is that the pros in the intelligence community, the analysts really, were saying this was a bunch of garbage. And so I was doing that at DIA. And I had been doing it pretty much the second half of my career. And that was kind of what I was known for Vince, when all of a sudden
Starting point is 00:07:51 I become, I get designated as a national security advisor. Now I'm going to, you know, now I'm over the top really of all this intelligence and national security apparatus with the year of the president. And I can do far more reform. So, you know, that's, you're right. So, now with the benefit of hindsight, all of this declassification we're getting from Tulsi Gabbard, we know a bunch of really important things, including, obviously, that the Trump campaign,
Starting point is 00:08:18 the President Trump never colluded with the Russians on anything, that the Russians didn't actually have any sort of credible preference for President Trump to win the election. They weren't attempting to make that happen. There's no evidence to support that. That's crystal clear in all of the intelligence that's being released. In fact, what we found out today is that the Russians had derogatory information about Hillary that they didn't release. They could have if they wanted to use it against her, but they didn't. It was about her health and what bad shape she was in.
Starting point is 00:08:47 And so with all of that in mind, I keep thinking about you in particular, General Flynn, because they concocted, meaning the left, the intel community, the Obama administration, they concocted a theory that you were involved in a collusion conspiracy, that you were guilty of one, and then they used the justice system to wreck your life. It kind of seems to me that all of the evidence of how corrupt they are, much of it can be found in the case against you. Absolutely. I mean, 100%.
Starting point is 00:09:15 And another important meeting that occurred, and it occurred in the Oval Office, Barack Obama led it. So now what we know that Tulsi has exposed, then there was another meeting on the 5th of January. During that meeting, Vince, and to your audience, during that meeting is the very famous � first we have to get Flynn, because remember Obama told Trump, �Don�t hire Flynn,� and he did. So that 5 January meeting, which was the same group of people, call me Clapper, Brandon Rice, Sally Yates was in there, you know, that same group during that meeting,
Starting point is 00:09:50 they said, essentially, we must first get rid of Flynn, and then we can get rid of Trump. We know that from evidence that we were able to pull out from my case, which was eventually dismissed, which most people don't realize. Right. So yeah, I mean, that's why there was a, you know, like why Mike Flynn, why did they go after Flynn so hard? Well, they went after Mike Flynn so hard because there was no way in the world that any of
Starting point is 00:10:18 this would have come to light because it's total BS as we now know. And you're right about the Hillary Clinton part. I mean, I can direct you to page 17 of the latest files that Tulsi released. It's incredible the amount of information that they had on, that the Russians had on Hillary Clinton's health. I mean, and that's normal. They normally study those types of things. But this is now essentially a conspiracy to overthrow a duly elected president of the United States
Starting point is 00:10:51 by a former president, by his predecessor, right? I mean, it is just an incredible, you know, I'm almost at a loss for words, which is a fair thing for me. So seeing all of this, General Flynn, over the past few days, all of these revelations, you've always had a cool demeanor, even in the midst of all of the persecution you've endured.
Starting point is 00:11:13 But have you found yourself enraged by anything you've read, any of these discoveries, you look at it, you must be losing your mind over some of it. Yeah, I mean, it's upsetting, but I'm a forward looking guy, Vince, because I learned that as a kid growing up, but also in my military experiences,
Starting point is 00:11:33 bad things are gonna happen. And it's not that the bad thing happened, it's what do you do about it? And what I have tried to do about it over the years is I've tried to stay above it, and just, you know, continue to pray, but also continue to fight in my own way, for the truth to be exposed. I mean, I worked my tail off to get, you know, as one one component of trying to get Trump reelected, thank God
Starting point is 00:11:57 that he saved humanity. But, but I think we have to be now forward looking, I don't want to sit there and go, you know, pat myself in the back that I was right or vindictive or hateful or strong. I can't live like that. None of us should. We have to be forward looking and we have to be strong now because something is going to have to be done. There is going to have to be accountability and that's up to the justice system to figure
Starting point is 00:12:22 that out. Okay. I want to ask you about that, but I just wanna point out one last thing, which is like, I marvel at the amount of self-control you have because not only did they upend your life very meaningfully, they tried to destroy your son's life too. They threatened to hurt him if you didn't play by their rules.
Starting point is 00:12:40 And I'm glad you're here still fighting it out on behalf of your country and your family. Let me ask you about accountability. Accountability clearly matters. I do sense in Tulsi Gabbard that she means it. She keeps saying she wants prosecutions. They're talking today about criminal referrals to the Justice Department.
Starting point is 00:12:55 I sense in Cash Patel and Dan Bongino that they mean it. They've obsessed over this issue for years. There's no way that they're taking this lightly. Do you think Pam Bondi means it? Do you think that the Justice Department means it right now? Well, I think that Pam is going to have to respond to the American people because Donald Trump, President Donald J. Trump is clearly responding to the American people, not just on this issue, but other issues.
Starting point is 00:13:24 So I think that Pam doesn't have a choice. I think she's got good people around her that are good advisors within the Department of Justice. You just mentioned Cash and Dan, and she's got her meat over there. And I know Mac Warner's another one, Ed Martin's another one. These are people that Trump brought into that team.
Starting point is 00:13:43 What people need to realize though, is that there's still an awful lot of people over there that are made in the image of Comey or made in the image of Mueller or made in the image of, you know, of Derek Holder or Loretta Lynch. I mean, there's still a lot of people in the Department of Justice here in Washington, DC,
Starting point is 00:13:58 because I'm here today, that are still in their likeness. And so, and I know that they understand that. So Trump is gonna have to be very smart, very shrewd, which he is both, and he's gonna have to work very closely with the intelligence community. And we now know that American people now know that we're being led, the US intelligence community
Starting point is 00:14:21 is being led by a tough, smart woman here. And that's a good thing. And so, you know, to cut to the chase, there is going to have to be a formation of some type of task force that is going to have to consist of people that are not wedded to the to the those inside of the DOJ. And I don't know whether that's somebody that has to come in from the outside that's given the authority and the resources To do to do all these things the other thing and I'll shut up things is that the American people aren't gonna wait
Starting point is 00:14:52 We're not gonna wait for years of investigations There is so much evidence that we already know from IG reports from from FOIA requests that have been come out my own case From the Durham report what Tulsi just gave us, the evidence is all there. I will say that, because I know this for a fact, there are people, there are whistleblowers that have gone forward to the DNI and to others in the DOJ. And these are not like some young analysts that witnessed something from a distance.
Starting point is 00:15:25 These are people that were directly involved and some of them are very senior people. So that's a positive thing. And we're gonna have to figure out and Trump's gonna have to do this in a very smart way. We're gonna have to figure out how to move the country forward from this absolute disaster.
Starting point is 00:15:44 Big time, big time. And so, that's, if there's anything out there to move the country forward from this absolute disaster. And so, you know, that's, you know, if there's anything out there for people to do, it's pray for this president. Well, I'm doing it. I'm praying. General Flynn, I'm praying for you too. Thank you, sir.
Starting point is 00:15:55 Appreciate your time today. Yep, God bless, Vince. Thank you. There's General Mike Flynn. More ahead on the Vince show. The Vince show. Also, thanks to Birch Gold. Really appreciate Birch Gold.
Starting point is 00:16:05 Really appreciate Birch Gold for being a great sponsor of the program. It's difficult for this administration to take all of our personal finances into account when they're trying to do what's right for the country. You've got to do that for yourself and for your family. This is why tens of thousands of Americans are buying gold right now from Birch Gold. Here are the facts for you, very straightforward. In the past 12 months, the value of gold has actually gone up by as much as 40%. Many central banks, well, they continue to bolster demand for that gold by buying it
Starting point is 00:16:29 in record quantities. And global instability and tension, well, it could be the highest it's been in decades. But you can find peace of mind in gold. Birch Gold makes it extremely easy to convert an existing IRA or a 401k into a tax sheltered IRA in physical gold or just buy some to store at home. Just text my name, Vince to 989898 and Birch Gold is going to send you a free info kit on gold. There's no obligation, only useful information with an A plus rating with the Better Business
Starting point is 00:16:59 Bureau and tens of thousands of happy customers. It's time for you to take control of your savings today. Just text the word VINCE to 989898, data and message rates apply. Our thanks to Birch Gold, as always. It's a show where we cover so much breaking news and we anticipate a lot more to come. The president of the United States today
Starting point is 00:17:20 in the Oval Office just moments ago saying that Tulsi Gabbard is set to release thousands of pages of new documents getting to the bottom of not just Russiagate but the broader conspiracy to subvert the will of the American people. One of the few reporters who has really dug into this question and produce a lot of interesting information now joins us on the program.
Starting point is 00:17:43 That's Paul Sperry from Real Clear Investigations who I've been reading for years. Paul, it's great to have you on the show today, sir. Glad to be with you, Vince. Okay, it was your coverage of not this past weekend, but the prior weekend, on Sunday, there was a big meeting at the Trump White House ahead of the release of all of this information. What happened at that meeting, Paul? Well, the meeting was actually at ODNI in Tysons, but they did brief the president, or at least his Chief of Staff. They briefed the White House about what they were doing. But this is something that I was told by Tulsi Gabbard's office that has been in the works a long time.
Starting point is 00:18:29 And she actually has a team that she's assembled that's using AI programs to go through unclassified, classified networks of all the 18 intelligence agencies that she oversees. She has authority, people don't understand this, she has authority over all of the intelligence agencies and can go through there and declassify unilaterally all of their emails, chat room discussions, all sorts of messaging, and their documents. So this is a huge project, and she's got to set up an entire team to do this, and they're actually using artificial intelligence to help aggregate and collect all this stuff.
Starting point is 00:19:18 Well that, okay, so that's a fascinating component of this. AI at its current form hasn't existed for very long. So that that gives us some perspective on why this is different than when John Ratcliffe was the head of national intelligence, right? Yeah, that could could be why we're seeing some results here. Finally, all this stuff has been bottled up, you know, for the past eight years, not just by the media, but of course, administrations. And the dam is starting to break. Tables are finally starting to turn on the bad guys who conspired to do this, to kneecap Trump and frame him,
Starting point is 00:20:07 and try to cripple his presidency and his agenda. Yes. So the left is claiming that what Tulsi Gabbard has released is old news. There's nothing to see here. It doesn't implicate Obama or John Brennan in anything at all. How do you view it? Well, not at all. They're ignoring the key piece that's two things,
Starting point is 00:20:33 actually three things. One, we found out that they put the dossier in the main body of the intelligence community assessment that Obama ordered after Trump's surprise victory over Hillary, they were all shocked and needed to do something to derail him. And so they came up with this intelligence, cooked it up, and laundered Hillary's political dirt in the form of this dossier and incorporated it into the actual analysis in the main body of the text of the classified
Starting point is 00:21:07 version of the ICA. And they didn't even disclose that they had included an annex, a summary of the dossier, that came out in 2020. But now we knew that, but now we know that no, there was actually a bullet point supporting the most controversial conclusion that they had in the ICA, which was that Putin had aspired to intervene in the election directly, personally, to help Trump beat Hillary. Okay? So that was the most radioactive conclusion they had. And it obviously wasn't supported enough with what they had in terms of other intelligence,
Starting point is 00:21:56 so they added the dossier to back it up in one of the four bullet points that they had in the text. And they're all ignoring this. When they go on TV now, I noticed that Michael Isikoff was on last night, and he was debating Matt Taibbi. And he says, no, you know, all he did was they put this in an annex, the dossier. B.S. Either he didn't read the documents that have been declassified or he's just being intellectually dishonest. Now we know that it was actually as a supporting bullet point
Starting point is 00:22:34 in the main text and that's just hugely scandalous new information. The other thing we found out is that they changed the level of confidence they had, reversed it from low confidence in that conclusion to high confidence before and after the election, after Trump won, which is very convenient. And then the other thing is they've got whistleblowers now that worked on this project who are coming out of the woodwork, as DNI Gabbard said, and they have one that's showing up in the document dump that you put out, 114 pages, who was
Starting point is 00:23:16 saying that he was pressured by his superiors to stay quiet because he had worked on the pre-election intelligence that said no we don't have any confidence that Putin did this and he was pressured to change that conclusion and then he when he protested he dissented then they took him off the thing and they kept telling him listen listen we have we have intelligence that but they wouldn't let him see it and they said just trust us so so here's another piece about the confidence you mentioned low and high confidence How confident was the intelligence community that the Russians had actually hacked Hillary Clinton's email? They weren't confident as it turns out from these declassified documents
Starting point is 00:24:00 At a high level at all it started out They had a low confidence that Putin ordered any hacking and leak operation. And then that suddenly changed to, you know, they had high confidence, strong confidence in that after the election. And what they said in the declassified documents that they didn't have the technical evidence to link Putin to the Hack and leak the alleged hack and leak And so that is now coming out and that's something else that everybody is ignoring that's in there because of course no one really
Starting point is 00:24:39 Reads this stuff. They don't get right any of the time of the inclination or they're just it corrupt and they won't go into the into the document uh... can really find this stuff uh... but you know that's something that that uh... the d n i should have
Starting point is 00:25:00 yes highlighted i mean that that's pretty explosive very uh... Yes highlighted. I mean that that's pretty explosive very Just now now, you know, the whole thing is being questioned I mean that this ICA that Obama ordered told its community assessment on Russia is looking more and more like a fraudulent document That they juiced and possibly falsified that they juiced and possibly falsified, you know, frame Trump as, you know, that he's too compromised a government as president and, you know, lay the foundation for endless investigations, which they did, to cripple his agenda.
Starting point is 00:25:39 So Paul, there's been, you know, what Tulsi Gabbard released indicated that there was supposed to be a presidential daily brief to be delivered to Obama in early December that would make the claim that no Russia didn't have any meaningful impact on the election. In other words, President Trump won at fair and square. It had nothing to do with the Russians. That presidential daily brief was blocked before it could get started and a meeting was assembled at the White House where so much of this plot that you and I are talking about was schemed. I saw Mike Flynn say in the media just in the last few days that he believes that the reason
Starting point is 00:26:13 the presidential daily brief was stopped was because as the incoming national security advisor, he would have been able to see it. That the presidential daily brief was stopped from happening in order to prevent the Trump team from seeing that evidence. Do you have any reporting or inclination to believe that that's what happened here? So that was, that PDB was December 8th as I recall and then Obama convened the meeting in the Situation Room on December 9th to start manufacturing this
Starting point is 00:26:47 ICA and they blocked it. So they removed it from circulation on the 8th and then they held the meeting on the 9th. Now that would have been during the transition. Yes. And yes, I think you have to share stuff like that with the transition team, the national security team for sure. Yes. But they were trying, they were running it off against Flynn. They were, they were trying to, you know, sabotage him as national security advisor.
Starting point is 00:27:20 That's the first person they really needed to go after. For sure. the first person they really needed to go after because he has supervision over entire intelligence apparatus, law enforcement, counterintelligence. He could have gone in there and seen what they were doing against Trump and he was pretty aggressive. So they actually had a meeting, I think it was in January 5th, and Obama was in that, Susan Rice, and she actually had a meeting, I think it was in January 5th. Obama was in that, Susan Rice, she actually wrote a memo to file to kind of cut CYA, what they did. Biden was in there, they were talking about the Logan Act, going after Flynn with the Logan Act because he was talking to the ambassador of Russia.
Starting point is 00:28:01 And then they leaked, some of the White House leaked that transcript to David Ignatius at the Washington Post we still don't know who actually leaked it there's some prime suspects in the White House but that's that's what they were doing they were going after Flynn yes they were let me let me finish on one point with you here Paul Sperperry, while we have you. Accountability. You've been telling you've been telling us about the meetings that the Trump White House has been holding across the intelligence community to deal with all of this.
Starting point is 00:28:34 How integrated is the Justice Department in all of these conversations? Well, Justice Department officials, now this is at the senior staff level, like the principals, cabinet principals weren't at that meeting on that Sunday. It was a pretty urgent meeting. But you know, AG Bondi was, Tulsi Gabbard wasn't actually there, as I understand from her deputy. But they had their senior staff organize this rollout, this first rollout. This is the first wave. They've got a lot more coming, as I understand. And DOJ was there, DOJ officials,
Starting point is 00:29:13 people connected to the weaponization working group were there. So yeah, so this is important because especially with these whistleblowers, these whistleblowers do depositions, if they do affidavits rather, and then they do depositions with prosecutors and FBI investigators then turns into depositions. These are things that they can present before a grand jury if they're gonna prosecute a broader conspiracy case. Yeah, okay. Paul Sperry, thank you for all of your dogged reporting through the years.
Starting point is 00:29:50 Appreciate you coming on today and I hope I get a chance to talk to you again soon, sir. Absolutely, my pleasure. Really nice to chat with you. There he is, Paul Sperry of Real Clear Investigations with, honestly, I think one of the best overviews we've heard yet of everything that's transpiring here. More ahead on the Vint Show. The Vint Show. Hey, do you think about aging? Do you think about it at all? The effect it has on you and your body? I've noticed as I get older, my energy goes down and I kind of feel all the aches and the pains, you know, as you get a little bit older, they really start to become more and more apparent. And what you want to do, what I've been trying to do is figure out ways to get my energy
Starting point is 00:30:26 back. And I'm excited to share with you C15 from fatty 15. It's great. It's the first essential fatty acid to be discovered in more than 90 years. Fatty 15 co-founder, Dr. Stephanie Van Watson, discovered the benefits of C15 while working with the U.S. Navy. And based on studies, we do know that when our cells don't have enough C15, they can actually age faster.
Starting point is 00:30:48 Fatty 15 can help repair and protect age-related damage to cells and help activate pathways in the body that repair mechanisms that support your overall wellness. Fatty 15 is science-backed. Look it up, seriously. It's award-winning, it's vegan, it's 100% pure C15 supplement, and refills are shipped right to your door.
Starting point is 00:31:08 Fatty15 is on a mission to optimize your C15 levels to help support your long-term health and wellness, especially as you age. You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription starter kit by going to fatty15.com slash Vince. Use the code Vince at checkout. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Starting point is 00:31:30 fatty15.com slash Vince. Thank you to fatty15. I take it every day, love it. This the Monday after a massive, massive bout of declassification. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, releasing hundreds of pages of documents demonstrating a treasonous conspiracy, in her words, treasonous conspiracy by the Obama administration back in 2016 to salt the
Starting point is 00:31:54 earth ahead of the arrival of President Trump, to allege that it was the Russians who hand-delivered the election to him and that President Trump was a willing participant in that scheme. For more on what all of this tells us, I want to bring in Mike Benz now. He's the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online. Mike, good to have you with us, sir. Hey, great to have you. Great to talk to you.
Starting point is 00:32:17 Okay, so Tulsi Gabbard, you know, I don't usually hear a director of national intelligence refer to a treasonous conspiracy in the United States, but for her to say that, that seems like a big deal. Yeah, no, I mean, it's certainly what I think everyone is feeling. And when you look at what was revealed in these documents, the CIA and FBI assessed that there was effectively no Russian interference of any material degree. And then it looked like there was a secret meeting with President Obama and everyone was retasked to find a way to include Russian interference. And that's what gave rise to the three-year special prosecutor probe that ended up bankrupting
Starting point is 00:33:03 or devastating a significant proportion of the White House and hamstringing the entire foreign policy apparatus of the Trump administration. I think that while, you know, treason is a big word, I would like to see it articulated as a way consistent with the crimes that are with whatever charges are going to be brought by the Justice Department. Yeah, no, that seems clear. If you've committed a crime, you should be prosecuted for it. The fact that it's over 10 years old is why everybody's talking about a conspiracy, because that opens up the statute of limitations to look at the whole sweep of events that have happened over the last decade, Mike?
Starting point is 00:33:45 That's exactly right. You know, there are so many times where we have a conspiracy to cook intelligence in American history, whether that's the cooked intelligence that took us to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the cooked intelligence about Russian bounties on people's heads in Syria and beyond.
Starting point is 00:34:10 But this was one of these cooked intelligence conspiracies that truly devastated the ability to administer US foreign policy around Russia and Eurasia affairs that truly hamstrung the entirety of the Trump administration and that cast a huge amount of doubt in the legitimacy of our election system. The same people who would later come back and effectively criminalize questioning the legitimacy of US election infrastructure like mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines, they were the original election deniers by effectively arguing that the Trump election wasn't legitimate. And at some point, this will continue
Starting point is 00:34:55 as long as intelligence officials believe that there's no penalty for doing it. And this has to be the last straw. John Brennan and Jake Sullivan and Comey and this whole network that were involved in cooking this intelligence, if there is not a criminal penalty for that then there's going to be no reform. There needs to be an image that's seared into the intelligence world's minds that you can only push things so far because we give them power and power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Starting point is 00:35:30 And when you think that you are untouchable, James Clapper openly lied to Congress about domestic bulk intelligence. And when a couple of years later, within the statute of limitations, the Snowden League showed that Clapper had lied to the American people's faces and he got away with perjury. Yes. That was that was one of
Starting point is 00:35:48 those incredible moments where it's where everyone thought okay well if they can get away with that they can get away with anything and then they got away with Russiagate. Yes. And if they're allowed to get away with it then there we need an image that burns in people's minds that that we can only push it so far or else we're gonna end up like person X whoever that burns in people's minds that that we can only push it so far or else we're going to end up like Person x whoever that is whether that's john brennan or barack obama or whoever there has to be justice So what you're describing is the reason why so many people are pessimistic about the chances Of any justice being had here because we've been through it a million times and we've known so much and there's no one's held accountable. I wanted to find out from
Starting point is 00:36:27 you Mike if you think that the cast that's working for President Trump now makes a difference because Tulsi Gabbard is not holding any punches here. You do have Cash Patel and Dan Bongino at the top of the FBI. They've both written books on this subject. They're intimately familiar with the scandal that's involved here. Do you think it makes a difference that the president has a different, and I think better, team with him this time? Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know,
Starting point is 00:36:51 Director Gabbard herself at ODNI said, you know, when she was going through these, she was shocked that Durham missed it, that Durham didn't publish any of these. I think she felt a combination of confused and shocked that she was the one who discovered these documents given that there was a special probe on it led by Durham and none of these documents came out then while Trump was president the first time and actually under the gun of all this. But the fact is, when it comes to the criminal indictment
Starting point is 00:37:25 side of this, you have the issue of if you bring an indictment and then a jury finds them innocent, you could see there being blowback about that because you've got a fundamental problem of a DC jury in this case, which is that I think the defense that Obama and Brendan would make is that they believed at the time the credibility of the Steele dossier and that on the basis of the Steele dossier, they asked for a second draft of the, a rewrite of the intelligence community assessment to account for it. And that they would, given that I think that Democrats
Starting point is 00:38:08 have a much, I won't say more favorable, but a much more acceptable or tolerant view of the legitimacy of the Steele dossier, that you could potentially have a DC jury where you have 95% Democrats ultimately acquit folks at the end of that process. This was the argument made by Robert Herb, by the way. Robert Herb, if folks remember, this was the case of the Justice Department investigation
Starting point is 00:38:40 of Biden having classified documents at his house at the same time that the Justice Department had brought criminal charges against Donald Trump for having classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. And so after the Justice Department indicted Donald Trump, it came out that Joe Biden had classified documents in his garage and at the Penn-Biden Center and the like. And so everyone was saying, well, there's a two-tier justice system. You've arrested one president for something that the current president is guilty of.
Starting point is 00:39:12 So why isn't the Justice Department arrest the current president? And Robert Herr, what he found and he published, which was incredible, he said, actually, yes, it's true. Biden did knowingly mishandle classified documents, but we're not going to bring charges because we believe a DC jury would look at this senile old man who presents himself in a gentle way
Starting point is 00:39:37 and simply not find him criminally liable. And so basically, you had the Justice Department say, he's guilty of the same crime, but we're not going to bring the criminal case. And that to me can no longer be the case. You can't determine whether or not to run someone through the gauntlet of the criminal justice system where they're paying millions of dollars of lawyer's fees and they are run through the press because the Justice Department
Starting point is 00:40:07 has publicly said they have enough evidence to pursue a criminal indictment and simply not indict someone because you think a DC jury is going to be rigged in their favor. But you know in the Justice Department that this has to be a practical consideration as they figure out a way to go forward. This is why we've heard a lot in the last week, Mike, that if they stretch this out into what they keep referring to as a grand conspiracy, they may be able to impanel this grand jury in Florida, not in D.C., because in Florida is where Jack Smith raided Mar-a-Lago.
Starting point is 00:40:37 And the grand theory here is that was in furtherance of the conspiracy. You think that could work? Well, I defer to them. I certainly think that Florida would be a more equitable jurisdiction. You're talking about the, you know, but for all the jury shopping that's been done by this same network, in all in all of the malfeasance that that they've effectuated from the January 6th prosecutions to the Russiagate terror. I think that if they were to get a taste of their own
Starting point is 00:41:13 medicine that way in terms of having a bit of venue shopping in that way, as long as it's legally practicable, I think that that would be something that it would be karmic justice to pursue. And it would give us a shot here at justice. Okay, Mike Benz, I know you're busy. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you as always. Thanks. Also, I should tell you about Blackout Coffee,
Starting point is 00:41:36 which fills my cup and energizes me each and every day. Blackout Coffee is awesome. Look, John, the owner at Blackout Coffee, I got to meet him him speaking to Dan Mangino when we did the big handoff down in Florida. Oh, and I'm heading back to Florida. I've got news to share with you on that. I'll get to that, we'll get to that.
Starting point is 00:41:54 But I met John while I was down there. And ever since then I've been in touch. He's a great guy and he's actually built Blackout Coffee from the ground up. He refuses to compromise on quality or values. This Blackout Coffee is America first coffee. It's roasted fresh right here in the ground up. He refuses to compromise on quality or values. This blackout coffee is America first coffee. It's roasted fresh right here in the United States. There's no woke nonsense, just bold strong coffee for people who actually get stuff done. And you see, blackout
Starting point is 00:42:15 coffee has been the official coffee of all of us here at Silverlock. This is a brand that not only stands for the right values, but energizes the people who like to talk about them. And they make a great cup of coffee. I drink my coffee black, so blackout coffee is for me because it's delicious. Here's the deal, John is hooking you up as well. Head over to blackoutcoffee.com slash Vince. Use the code Vince, that's V-I-N-C-E.
Starting point is 00:42:38 And you're gonna get 20% off your first order. Whether you like whole being ground or even instant coffee that doesn't suck, blackout coffee has you covered. Yes they do. They really do. blackoutcoffee.com slash Vince. Use the code Vince and get 20% off your first order.
Starting point is 00:42:55 That's blackoutcoffee.com slash Vince. Thank you to Blackout for supporting the program. Appreciate you guys as always.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.