The David Pakman Show - 12/21/22: Trump's Taxes Coming Out, Satanic Confrontation Goes Bad

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

-- On the Show: -- The House Ways and Means Committee votes to release six years of Donald Trump's tax returns -- Despite his endless claims that his tax returns were under audit, the House Ways and Means Committee reveals that Donald Trump was lying about being under audit -- George Santos, the gay Republican Jewish Congressman who lied about his work and educational history appears to also be lying about being Jewish -- Fox Host Jesse Watters tries to confront Satanic Temple leader Lucien Greaves but it goes very poorly for him -- Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman says on CNN that he expects both federal and state criminal charges to be filed against Donald Trump -- It is revealed that Donald Trump's ethics lawyer directed January 6 Committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson to lie under oath -- Failed Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is now calling for a new election in Arizona -- Arizona Republican State Senator Wendy Rogers wrongly claims that Kari Lake, who lost, is now the Governor-Elect of Arizona -- Voicemail caller asks how to deal with whataboutism in political discussions -- On the Bonus Show: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky comes to US and will address Congress, Elon Musk will resign as head of Twitter, confusion and falsehoods spread as China reverses zero-COVID policy, much more... 🌿 Sunset Lake CBD: Get 20% OFF using code PAKMAN at https://sunsetlakecbd.com 👩‍❤️‍👨 Try the Paired App FREE for 7 days and get 25% OFF at https://paired.com/pakman ❄️ ChiliSleep by SleepMe: Get 25% OFF your bed-cooling system at https://chilisleep.com/pakman 👍 Get 10% off the Füm Journey Pack with code PAKMAN at https://tryfum.com 🔊 Try Blinkist for FREE and get 25% off at http://www.blinkist.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Subscribe to Pakman Finance: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanfinance -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Speaker 1 It is finally happening. We are going to get six years worth of Donald Trump's tax returns after spending so much time and so much money and so much effort, exhausting every possible means. The House Ways and Means Committee has the tax returns and they have voted that indeed they are going to release them. This is absolutely huge. And we will talk about what we might find in these tax returns. We already found out the supposed audits that were taking place were not actually taking place. We'll delve into that in a moment. Reuters reporting U.S. House Committee to release redacted Trump tax fought tax filings.

The U.S. House of Representatives committee voted yesterday to release partially redacted tax filings from Trump and said tax authorities had failed to properly scrutinize his returns while he was in office, despite endless, breathless, apoplectic claims that the IRS is working in a politically partisan way to target Republicans. Trump's filings were not even actually scrutinized in the way he claimed that they were. The committee said the U.S. Internal Revenue Service did not follow its own rules when it failed to audit Trump's tax returns during three of his four years in office. Members said Congress should pass a law to strengthen the presidential audit program. Let's look at a video here of Congressman Lloyd Doggett

explaining what we are going to get and when we are going to get it returns. That's going to be it. We're not also going to get all the tax returns. Just to be very clear here? You will get all of the tax returns that the Supreme Court and the lower courts said that Mr. Neal's request could get. You will get all of those. That may be delayed for a few days only to permit time to redact things like Social Security numbers, personal ID numbers, that type of thing. But you will get the complete tax return such as they are for the years that Mr. Neal requested. Okay. So that's 2015 through 2020, just to be clear. Yeah, that's correct. And I think what I find surprising, our focus had been on the IRS

audit and whether it was being done properly. Right. Is the IRS did no audits at all and such time as the day they received Mr. Neal's request for these documents. And that day they requested the first audit. They have yet to complete a single audit of Mr. Trump. Can you imagine? And we're going to delve more into the audit part. But the critical question is, at this point in time, what might we learn from these tax returns? A number of

different things. Trump is not as wealthy as he claims to be. Almost certainly. And in fact, we have so many other sources that suggest that is the case. We may learn about Trump's conflicts of interest. Trump's tax returns could potentially reveal conflicts between his business dealings and his role as president of the United States, potentially conflicts of interest with a national security consequence. And it could include details about financial arrangements with foreign governments or individuals or questionable relationships. We could learn about tax evasion or outright fraud. There have been concerns for a long time about Trump's financial dealings, including whether, and it seems almost guaranteed that he is from everything else we know, whether he is misstating,

exaggerating or understating the value of certain assets for whatever purpose is convenient at the time. Use of charitable funds. Trump has been criticized for his use of funds from charitable found from the Charitable Foundation, which, remember, had its own legal problems some years ago, including that he was using that money as a sort of personal expense slush fund in the tax returns. It's possible that we might learn more about that hidden assets, whether Trump has hidden assets or income streams that have not been previously disclosed. And there is much more. Why would Trump work so hard to prevent the release of

the tax returns? Well, based on the reasons I just gave you, there could be legal concerns. In other words, if indeed Trump's tax returns contain information about possible fraud or any of the other things I mentioned that could potentially be used against Trump in a legal context, it could be the evidence for the tax evasion or fraud that he is expected suspected of engaging in. And that could be why he didn't want the tax returns released. Image protection. Trump is extraordinarily vain and narcissistic. The tax returns, as I mentioned, might reveal Trump's not as wealthy as he claims to be or that he has debts that are maybe bad for his image. So image protection. And thirdly,

to some degree, strategic considerations in the sense that if he had normal followers, they might react to the information contained in the tax returns negatively and might abandon Trump. Trump doesn't have normal followers. We experienced that during 2016 and the phrase I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any support, it actually seems much more accurate than we might have assumed at the beginning. So in theory, there would be strategic considerations for Trump wanting to prevent the release of his tax returns. In practice, it's not clear his followers really give to whatever's about what the guy

has done or claimed or lied about or whatever the case may be. So we are days away, maybe even less from the release of six years of Trump's tax returns. We will delve into it. But one thing we know, the IRS audit claims were lies. I want to talk about that next. Trump has been caught lying. He was not being audited by the IRS in the way that he claimed to be this so far. We haven't yet gotten the tax returns themselves, but we will based on the House Ways and Means Committee vote yesterday. We're going to get the tax returns within a few days, maybe by the end of this week, maybe over the weekend, maybe by the start of next week. And we will deal with that. But one of the big takeaways is that the IRS mandatory audits for Trump when he

became president were essentially nonexistent. Trump lied. Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied. And so many of them lied. Let's go back to we looked at some of this clip earlier, Congressman Lloyd Doggett explained Trump was not being audited. I hope I'm roughly at the right moment here. Let's see exactly where we are. Here we go. 2015 through 2020. Just to be clear. That's correct. And I think what I find surprising, yes, focus had been on the IRS audit and whether it was being done properly. The IRS did no audits at all until such time as the day they received Mr. Neal's request for these documents. And that day they requested the first audit. They have yet to complete a single audit of Mr. Trump.

And I think they'll also be surprised by what's not there with the tax returns. And that is supporting data. Any taxpayer who goes in for audit has to produce some receipts and some affidavits and some substantiation. And that just seems to be missing from what we've been provided. That is absolutely fascinating. So even what they have obtained, it seems as though they really haven't gotten the full data. Here is Congressman Richard Neal, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, expanding on this. We argued for an examination of how the audit process played out. once staff went to visit the IRS and once staff had a chance to go to some of the other locations that are within the jurisdiction of the IRS, they quickly concluded that in fact, the audit did not occur. There were no audits in a timely manner. And that goes, I think, for 2017, 2018, and 2019. And I'm restrained

with the speech and debate clause from talking about the other issue that we had on our agenda. So the mandatory initiative, it highlights the idea that it's sort of a two-tiered system. If you are at the top, you really have no chance of getting audited. And as Steve Horsford pointed out today in our get together of the Democratic caucus on the committee, your chances of being audited if you claim the earned income tax credit are far better than being audited for people who are at the very top of the economic system. Now that's an entire other story we should talk about. But this claim that the IRS is targeting rich conservatives certainly does not appear to be true. And that's a bigger story. As a reminder,

here is Donald Trump claiming that everything is under audit and it's also complicated. Nobody would understand it anyway. This was at the end of 2018 already. Go ahead, John. He gave me a fair interview the other day, so I might as well ask him a question. All right. Thank you, Mr. President. And picking up there, you told me the other day, so I might as well ask him a question. All right. Thank you, Mr. President. And picking up there, you told me the other day that you are an open book. I think I am an open book. So point blank, Democrats go after your tax returns. Will you try to block that, or will you allow them to have it?

Well, look, as I've told you, they're under audit. They have been for a long time. They're extremely complex. People wouldn't understand them. As I've told you, they're under audit. They have been for a long time. They're extremely complex. People wouldn't understand them. They're done by among the biggest and best law firms in the country. Same thing with the accounting firms. The accountants are very, very large, powerful firm from the standpoint of respect. Extremely powerful from the standpoint of respect. Don't forget that. Respected big firm. Big and wide. Gertie, a great law firm where you would you know it very well. They do these things. They put them in. But people don't understand tax returns.

Now, I did do a filing of over 100 pages, I believe, which is in the offices. And when people went and saw that filing and they saw the magnitude of it, they were very disappointed. And they cried and they said, Sir, there's so many pages in such font. Well, the you know, the details you get far more from that. And I guess we filed that now three times. But you get far more from that than you could ever get from a tax return. But when you're under audit and I'm on a very continuous order because there are so many companies and it is a very it's like a Mobius strip of audits, quite frankly, big company far bigger than you would even understand. It's a bigger company than you've got, Jim. It's a it's a great company, but it's big and it's complex and it's probably feet high.

It's a very complex instrument. And I think that people wouldn't understand it. I don't know if a tax return is an instrument, but OK, so there was Trump talking about even if it's all under audit, continuous audit and it's too complicated for you to even understand. And then here was then Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also making similar claims. I want to ask a whole question, but I think the third question that you said from podium here on taxes, you said, I think, Matt, on Tuesday, that as long as his taxes are under audit, he's not going to release them.

His 2016 taxes, to our knowledge, are not under audit unless they are. My understanding and I will double check, but the president's taxes, no matter who the president is, actually immediately go under audit after being filed. So that's actually wasn't happening, though, in accurate factors. But I'll double check to be one. So my question broadly is, I want to. So lies after lies after lies.

So I think the strategy here, first, we need to see what we learn from the tax returns and that may modify the strategy. But absent the content, remember, he said he would from the tax returns and that may modify the strategy. But absent the content, remember, he said he would release his tax returns when Obama releases his birth certificate or whatever the birth certificate we had, the tax returns he blocked. He was going to release his taxes if he won the presidency. He won the presidency in 2016, didn't release the tax returns. Once the audits were finished, he was going to release them. Turns out there weren't actually audits going on. So it's lie upon lie upon lie. We're going to get them. We're going to get them soon, soon, and we're going to learn all about it. Folks, Friday, we are two days away

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in the way of you and your partner enjoying some connecting. Paired makes it simple and giving your significant other a paired subscription is a great last minute holiday gift. Head over to paired dot com slash Pacman for a seven day free trial and 25 percent off a subscription. The link is down below. Yesterday, I told you about the Republican congressman elect George Santos, who got caught lying about his employment history. description. The link is down below. saying that he is a gay Jewish man and it turns out that he does not appear to be Jewish. I guess he's still really gay. We don't know. But the Jewish part seems to have also been part of his completely made up story.

LGBTQ Nation reporting gay Jewish Republican congressman elect busted in another fake claim. He's probably not Jewish either. LGBTQ Nation writes about a New York Times piece exploring all of the different lies that he told about education and the other things that we talked about. And then it goes on to say now another falsehood has likely been exposed. Santos touted his Jewish heritage to woo Orthodox Jewish voters. But Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that more than likely that is fake, too.

The outlet went back through Santos's appearances and claims and concluded that as with so much else in his personal narrative, there is little to suggest truth beyond his own past comments. Santos identifies as Jewish through his mother, although his father was Catholic. Santos has said that he is Catholic. That's common in America for someone to identify as ethnically Jewish and religiously Christian, according to the outlet. Both his parents are Brazilian. His biography includes the info that George's grandparents fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium and again fled persecution during World War Two.

They ultimately settled in Brazil where his mother was born. Sounds reasonable. Santos, his mother, Fatima Devolder, died in New York City and her obituary doesn't claim Jewish heritage. Fatima is a famous Roman Catholic appellation for the Virgin Mary. What this means is. I've never met a Jew named Fatima. That's essentially what is being written here. DeVolder is a Flemish name validating his claim about Belgian heritage, but the Flemish people are overwhelmingly Catholic. Santos,

his sister and his lawyer all refused comment. But Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told the outlet he questioned the duplicitous GOP congressman elect. I asked him about this. He identifies as Jewish. So this appears to be a lie as well. Now, I don't know. It's not stolen valor. Stolen valor is something we talk about.

People who claim military service when they were not in the military or they say, well, I had combat in the military when they did not see combat in the military. This isn't stolen valor, but it's something else is applied to the Jewish people. And many of you know that I am Jewish. Jewish heritage and identity and ethnicity are really closely tied to the culture and history of the Jewish people and the oppression of Jewish people for 2000 years. And for a lot of Jews, it's an important part of our identity. And so when you see someone that is claiming this and it is made up in this case potentially to woo Orthodox Jewish voters, you are attempting to profit from a story that has a lot of tragedy and it has a lot of horrible things that affects and guides how Jewish people feel today without actually having that in your family history,

without actually having lived it. family history, without actually having lived it. And the sum total of the lies that this guy has told in any normal job would get you fired. I mean, in normal jobs, if it was uncovered after you were hired by H.R., that you lied about your employment history and you lied about your educational history. You know, the Jewish thing is more of an from an employment standpoint. It's less relevant to claim that you are Jewish when you are not. But the sum totality of this in any normal job would get you fired. And this is a guy who I can't imagine that he was voted. They voted for him. They voted for him,

maybe based on some lies. If he had said, hey, you know what? I actually don't really have any relevant employment history or impressive education, and I don't share an identity with the Orthodox Jewish voters. And it's possible that he might have lost. Of course, it is too late at this point in time. But starting starting off strong, an incredibly historic level of dishonesty from a guy that was celebrated by many, including by people like Glenn Greenwald. Look, it's Republicans electing a gay congressman and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Seems like he made everything up.

The last thing would be, is he actually gay? And I couldn't care less one way or the other. He's a liar. That's what I care about. But it seems for now that is the one part of his claimed person, personal description that remains true. Hey, you've got to see this. Fox host Jesse Waters tried to confront a satanic temple leader, Lucian Graves, who we've had on the program before and it went really, really, really poorly. Jesse Waters and others on Fox News love to go after the satanic temple and the satanic temple. You know, some people say the satanic temple is a satirical religion, but the truth is it's really no more or less satirical

than any other religion. And this is sort of the point that you don't get to say, well, the satanic temple, it's not like Christianity. No, it actually kind of is. And so Jesse Waters brings on Lucian Graves and he seems to think that he's going to steamroll him and he doesn't. And it's very, very interesting. Take a look at this. Well, we still have some questions. So let's ask the satanic temple spokesperson, Lucian Greaves. Speaker 1 First of all, Lucian Greaves, it's Lucian Greaves. It's not a particularly difficult name to say. Speaker 4 Lucian, if Satan is evil, I thought nice to meet you, too.

If Satan's evil, why should kids be in an evil club? Well, obviously we don't view Satan as evil, and it really doesn't matter to us what your mythology is surrounding Satan. You need to ask yourself if your distaste over us identifying as Satanists is strong enough that you would abandon the principles of free speech and religious liberty. I always thought Satan was like sex, you know, like when you're 18, Satan, sex, do your thing. But I don't know if I would want Satan in schools. You understand how parents feel, right? Well, parents can feel that way, and many parents feel similarly about evangelical after-school clubs.

And in fact, we put our club in place to offer an alternative against an evangelical club that's explicitly designed to convert children and get them to proselytize to other kids. So if parents don't want to send their kids to an after-school Satan club, they can send them to an evangelical club. There's other religious clubs. Really, I think the controversy just evades the issue as to whether or not we're willing to allow government functionaries at school boards or whatever to simply shut down somebody's religious liberty or free speech because they don't like it. So you're kind of doing it to tweak the system. I get it.

What are these tenets of Satanism? Can you enlighten me? Yeah, I think the tenets are very pro-social. They're almost universal, I would think. And I think as time goes on, we'll kind of converge on a consensus morality. But we don't have to. I mean, we're not looking to convert people into Satanism. We're not even teaching children about Satanism in the classes. Give me a tenet. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy to all creatures within reason. Oh, that sounds fine.

All right. You might like it. Maybe. I don't know about all that. Are you married, by the way? No, I'm not. Oh, OK. I'm just I was just wondering. All right. So you're probably going to go to hell, right? I don't believe in hell. We're a non-theistic religious group. All right. I thought maybe you wanted to go to hell. I don't. What do I know? I need to

learn more about Satanism. It sounds like learn more about this better party than heaven. Fox News promoted this as a grilling of Lucian graves that Jesse Waters really grilled him. The one substantive point that came up, which is Lucian explaining how others should be treated based on the Satanic Temple's view, Jesse agreed with and then he switched to are you married, I guess, to just ridicule him. And based on I don't even know and say, no, of course, you couldn't find a wife or husband. Who knows? You know, I mean, you have one place where all the sexless kind of go after they live

a celibate, uninteresting life. How am I? Might be OK. All right. We got to go. I'm probably going to butcher your name again. Lucian. That's OK. Lucian. Lucian Greaves. Lucian. Almost had it. Thank you very much. Have a great night. Yeah. So Fox News promotes that as a grilling. And really, the interesting thing here is every time that this satanic temple stuff comes up and again, my view is I'm not a satanic temple

member and I'm not Christian, but I don't really see any difference. And the condescension from and there's many Christians that have interviewed Lucian, the condescension about your religion. It's it's nothing like ours. Like our thing is real. Your thing isn't real. It's either evil or it's a parody and a joke. Substantively speaking, and it very importantly, in the eyes of the law, and this applies to after school programs as well, there really is not a distinction. Now, I do think that where you would start to go over a line is if there is a religious group and they want to have an after school program and they're like openly advocating for violence or murder. And by the way, I mean, what's crazy is there are evangelical churches recently that have advocated for violence against

people who support, for example, abortion being legal. So like it actually happens and they don't get in trouble. But if things were sensible, I could see arguing that a particular religion maybe shouldn't be allowed to have an after school group if it could be proven that they're really just advocating for physical violence and they're teaching kids to go out and attack people or something like that. Beyond that, to pass these moral judgments or to create tiers of religion based solely on the number of followers that they have, and certainly there are more Christians than satanic temple members, really misses the point of the framework of how this country is organized. And Jesse Watters and people like him seem to from a starting point assume that, of course, Christianity is in a different category than

the Satanic temple when it really isn't. And so Fox News promoted that as a grilling. I didn't see much of a grilling. Let me know your thoughts. Make sure you're subscribed to our YouTube channel. There are more than three million of you who watch our clips but don't subscribe. My request is hit that subscribe button. It's free and it really helps us. one of the best ways to get consistent deep sleep is lowering your core body temperature. When your body stays cooler at night, you're more comfortable and your sleep is better. Our sponsor, Sleep Me, is the home of Chili Sleep, the customizable climate controlled sleep solutions that can improve your sleep by keeping you cooler at night. There are three different chilly sleep

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PACMAN to get 10% off today when you get the journey pack, which comes with three unique flavors and the new version to fume. That's T.R.Y. F.U.M. Dotcom code Pacman saves you 10 percent on the journey pack. The info is in the podcast notes. What is forthcoming in terms of criminal charges for former President Donald Trump? We are really getting into the meat of this now as we see criminal referrals from the January 6th House Committee, the Georgia investigation, the tax returns possibly exposing tax fraud and evasion are coming out within days. There is one opinion that is an interesting one, which is from former Watergate prosecutor Nick Ackerman, who expects Donald Trump to face both state and federal charges.

What would happen if that took place? We will discuss. But first, let's look at what Nick Ackerman had to say on CNN yesterday. And his production predictions are very clear and they sound confident. Now remember, many times people say things confidently and they're wrong. So let's take that consideration. What do you think happens? That's what everyone wants to know. Well, I think Donald Trump is going to be indicted. He's going

to be indicted in Georgia. And I think he's going to be indicted by the feds. I think they've got the evidence. We don't know exactly what a lot of these cooperating witnesses are saying. And I think that you've got someone like Mark Meadows, who's probably the weak link. And if you're looking for the one witness, the most likely to turn, I would vote him the most likely to turn. What do you think? So if this happened, what happens in the United States? Because this would be a very, very, very big deal. If a former president were to be indicted, there would be a number of issues that would

have to be overcome. First and foremost, who sits on the jury? And as I've said before, if you had someone like Trump in front of a jury, how do you find a jury that is not going to be subject to appeal because of the preconceived notions and biases of those jurors. There are very few people in the United States who don't have a strong opinion about Donald Trump, either for or against. And if you find the people who genuinely don't have an opinion, they are usually acutely and painfully uninformed people that I would also worry about having on a jury simply due to their ability to understand what the hell is going on if I'm able to speak candidly with you. So I do think that the jury question is a major,

major question. But long before you even got to that, it's important to understand the framework around criminal charges for a president of the United States. First, you have to understand the legal immunity component. While a president is president, there is significant legal immunity from prosecution for certain actions that are taken as part of their official duties. There are disagreements among the legal community if not connected to their official duties. There are disagreements among the legal community. If not connected to their presidential duties, a president, while president went and committed some kind of cold blooded murder, are they subject to prosecution? You can find legal

opinions on both sides of that question, but that's not actually what we're talking about right now. And that immunity extends to certain actions taken after a president leaves office. But how far that goes is also a subject of legal debate. There are political considerations because the prosecution and theoretically the conviction of a former president on criminal charges is undoubtedly going to be a politicized event. And that can make it extraordinarily difficult for prosecutors to actually get a conviction. And if you do get one, you could have serious problems, as I mentioned, in terms of who was on that jury and the jury selection. And it's very finding someone guilty in the court of public opinion is a very different

thing than finding legal guilt beyond a reasonable beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal court. You also have a burden of proof issue when going after a former president. You have that in general. But in order to get a conviction on criminal charges, prosecutors do need to establish the defendant's guilt beyond that reasonable doubt. In general, that's a tough standard in the American legal system. That's why we have many acquittals. But when the defendant is a former president with access to every resource and advisors and the best lawyers, that can also be a significant challenge to overcome. And also these things move slowly. Trump has been out of office now for just short of two years. And the passage of time can make it more difficult to secure convictions on criminal charges

if there's a lot of distance from when the alleged crime took place. And this can be because of inability to locate witnesses who remember relevant issues or a loss of evidence or for a whole number of other reasons. And also, it's important to consider that public sentiment can change. George W. Bush is a good example of this. And I've been careful on this program never to rehabilitate George W. Bush's image while acknowledging like, OK, he's not as whacked as Trump in a lot of different ways. Right after George W. Bush left office, if you were to poll the American public, I think

you would have found that there was significant support for going after Bush as a war criminal for his actions related to the Iraq war. My belief is, and this is just speculation and maybe there's polling on this, I don't know, that if you polled the country now on that exact same question, you would find much less support for going after Bush for war crimes, even though the actions taken while he was president don't differ. Now, this is different than was he immune because these were actions taken in Iraq related to his work? It's not it's not even a legal question. It's just a public opinion question.

I believe that although the facts haven't changed since George W. Bush left office, the interest from the public in going after Bush for whatever wrongdoing he may have participated in would have been greatly diminished. And I do think that the longer that this goes without charges against Trump, that is potentially also going to be a factor. So Nick Ackerman says legal criminal charges coming at the state and federal level. We will probably soon know, as so many things are now happening at once. Donald Trump's ethics lawyer allegedly told a witness to the January 6th Trump riot committee

to lie under oath. This is absolutely unbelievable. CNN has an exclusive report. Trump's former White House ethics lawyer told Cassidy Hutchinson to give misleading testimony to the January 6th committee, according to multiple sources. Look at this. The January 6th committee made a startling allegation on Monday, claiming it had evidence that a Trump backed attorney urged a key witness to mislead the committee about details they recalled, though the committee declined to identify the people. CNN has learned that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the Trump White House,

is the lawyer who allegedly advised his then client, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did recall. Sources familiar with the committee's work tell CNN. Trump Save America PAC funded Passantino and his law firm Elections LLC, including paying for his representation of Hutchinson. Other sources tell CNN the committee report notes the lawyer did not tell his client who was paying for the legal services when asked about pressure on Hutchinson after Monday's hearing. Committee member Representative Zoe Lofgren told CNN she was advised to say she didn't recall something when she did. So that's pretty serious stuff. The episode is just one of several instances in which the

committee has accused members of Trump's orbit of trying to obstruct the panel's investigation. This is extraordinarily serious, if true. If a lawyer were to tell a congressional witness to lie under oath, it could potentially constitute the crime of perjury or the related offense of suborning of perjury or maybe it's subornation of perjury, which is the act of inducing someone to commit perjury. And it's important to note that the specific legal consequences of that depend on the details of the case, the applicable law, the circumstances, what you can prove is as often the case when it comes to perjury, et cetera, et cetera. Now, you and I, of course, recognize the kind of oxymoronic nature of a Trump ethics lawyer. I get

that. We're not even going to focus in on that. But this is sort of like a third layer of what is going on with the Trump riots, because you have sort of at the top of the food chain, as the case may be at the top of the pyramid is the riot itself and who was involved in inciting and the planning of that riot. That's number one. Number two is you have the witnesses at the Trump riot committee hearings and whether they told the truth or lied, whether they were tampered with, etc. The third layer now is were there other people influencing the testimony of the witnesses at the January 6th committee hearing about the Trump riots and who incited those? So you've got like Trump inciting the riot

and then you've got Cassidy Hutchinson testifying about what she saw in terms of who was inciting or talking about or trying to dissuade the writers. And now we have a third level, which is who influenced Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony and potentially told her to say she doesn't recall things that she actually does recall about that top layer of the pyramid. We now have three layers to this pyramid. The fourth layer maybe is like the rioters themselves in some way. It starts to get extraordinarily complicated. But this is already above and beyond anything that we have seen in the history of the United States. Part of the difference is in an era of records for communication and text messages, an event that was on camera and on and on. That makes it different in terms of our ability

to actually see and figure out what went on. And that's understandable. But there has never been anything like this in American history. And so we are going to at some point see if and when the Justice Department decides to act on those criminal referrals that have already been sent forward. And that applies to Donald Trump, as we learned earlier this week, John Eastman, the lawyer and others. But there's this whole other layer, which is what about all of the perjury that is suspected among some of the witnesses? And then who got to them? And was there indeed witness tampering? One of the things that was also alleged during maybe it was the second to last or one of the kind of later public hearings of the January 6th committee was that there were individuals. There were multiple instances

of individuals reaching out to witnesses and allegedly trying to intimidate or tamper. I don't believe we ever actually fully got to the bottom of that. I don't think this example is the full scope of that. And that's just another layer that needs to be investigated. Unfortunately, the January 6th committee is going to end because this session of Congress is ending and then Republicans are taking over. They don't want to look into the riots. They want to look into stuff like the genitalia of Hunter Biden and stuff like that. So things are going to change dramatically, but we will hopefully get to the bottom of this component. And again, Trump ethics lawyer. I don't know of any greater oxymoron than that. enough time to read all the books that I want, which is why Blinkist has been such an important

part of my life for years now. Our sponsor Blinkist is the app that takes thousands of nonfiction books, boils them down into an explainer that you can read or listen to in just 15 minutes, which includes all the most important takeaways from the book with Blinkist. I can absorb the essence of 15 different books in an afternoon so I can quickly gather insights from all sorts of perspectives, make connections, have those kind of aha moments that don't happen so easily, which is why I feel enriched when I use Blinkist. Blinkist also summarizes episodes of popular podcasts into 15 minute explainers. And with the Blinkist connect feature, my girlfriend and I can share one account, share books, podcasts with each other, talk about them on the go.

And don't forget, Blinkist makes the perfect holiday gift. My audience can try Blinkist free for seven days and get 25 percent off. After that, go to Blinkist dot com slash Pacman. That's B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. I want to have a brief update with you about what's going on in Arizona and in America fest and with the Arizona gubernatorial election. It's actually becoming even more cartoonish and pathetic and humiliating than what we saw after the 2020 election with Donald Trump. Carrie Lake, who lost the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election. That's it.

There's no other. That's the story. She lost her opponent, got more votes. She is now calling for a new election. And there are people around her who seem to be encouraging her. We're going to go to our first clip. This is from the last whimpers of America Fest, an event put on by Turning Point USA. Here is Carrie Lake speaking to Charlie Kirk, and they now want a new election in Arizona.

All that happened is Carrie Lake lost. Understand that. What is the remedy we're asking for? I think that we need a new election. I think that there needs to be a new election. But we can't have the same clowns running this election. We can't put it back into the hands of people who have bungled the election time and time again. And yes, now that's there's an important little detail in there, which is in some alternate universe, which we might enter in the next clip. I'm going to show you, by the way, but in some alternate universe where you get a new election. You know that if they did the election and then Carrie Lake lost again, they would just say the same people ran this election. This election was just as biased and fraudulent and

rigged as the first one. And we know that that would happen because it's what it's what we see when they do recounts and audits every single time you get an audit to the. And again, when you say an audit, what is it that they want? They do an audit and it turns out the result was fine or even that the Democrat actually won by more. And then they come back and they say that wasn't really an audit. All they did was recount the same fraudulent ballots. We need signature verification. We need curing. We need sauteing and smoking and grilling. We need to do all these things to the ballots to figure out whether these should even be counted because at the end of the day, they will adjust their allegation of what happened

simply to fit whatever narrative they need at that moment. At one point, the problem in Arizona was people didn't get to vote. And that hurt Carrie Lake because of tabulators and power circuits and all these different printers. People who wanted to vote didn't get to vote. Then the story shifted to so many people voted in Arizona who shouldn't even have voted. And it was and tons of Republicans voted and their votes were counted for Katie Hobbs. Wait a second. Was the problem that Republicans weren't able to vote or was the problem that Republicans were able to vote in huge numbers, but tons of their votes were counted with Katie Hobbs. Which of the two is actually the problem?

And it's both depending on what's going on. One other really funny moment from this interview with Charlie Kirk, Carrie Lake explains her process for hiring attorneys. And it's it's pretty damn funny. And it was a valley wide ambush is what happened. Absolutely. Absolutely. One hundred percent. And they're trying to tell us this is normal power for the court. Don't insult. Hey, Steven Richard, don't insult my intelligence. We know what you're up to and we're going to, we're going to put you on the stand and ask you a few tough questions. So I feel very confident. My team is great. My attorneys are true patriots. We had attorneys who did walk away because the left is threatening them with their ability to make a living and

practice law. And some of our attorneys said, look, I got mouths to feed. I can't do this case. I don't want to be sanctioned. So I really love I got to a point where I said, I'll take anybody. We'll take better call Saul. Come on. Are you a patriot? Are you willing to fight? Are you willing to risk everything on this very important case? And that's who we have assembled. True fighters. And we're going to court tomorrow and Thursday. And we hope for a quick, you know, ruling. Yeah, it's evident that absolutely anyone can be Carrie Lake's lawyer that that we figured out. And that is abundantly clear. So there's not going to be a new election. Katie Hobbs is going to be the governor of Arizona. Katie Hobbs won. Carrie Lake lost.

But before we completely get off of this topic, I have to show you someone who truly does seem to be living in an alternate universe. I'm going to play a clip for you now of Arizona Senator Wendy Rogers saying that right now, yes, December 2022, Kerry Lake is the governor elect of the state of Arizona. Now, of course, Kerry Lake is not the governor elect of the state of Arizona. I think you probably know that. But what is fascinating about this is I don't think Wendy Rogers really thinks Kerry Lake is the governor elect of Arizona. And I don't think Wendy Rogers really thinks Carrie Lake is the governor elect of Arizona. And I don't think Stephen Bannon, who's conducting this interview, really thinks Carrie Lake is the governor elect of Arizona. What's fascinating about this is that it seems to just be sort of

like a power game. Does Bannon have the power to get Wendy Rogers to say something that they both know, of course, isn't true. Who wields the power in this dynamic? And it seems that it's Bannon. Take a look at this. This is unbelievable. The problem and we need to get to the bottom of all of this. And I just telling you, we're not having it anymore. We're done. As Carrie said, you're messing with the wrong people. Is Carrie Lake the governor-elect of Arizona? Yes. Is there any doubt in your mind? And she will have an even stronger mandate.

And she told me about a week ago, she said, you know, Wendy, by the way, if you're watching this, Bannon's co-host is so bored she's just texting on her phone. When I might have assumed office, had I been elected properly without all this aftermath, maybe we would have had a honeymoon period with everybody. Maybe we would have had a transition time of, you know, let's all get along. No, no, that's that ship sailed. OK, so what we're doing now is we're going to in the Senate and in the House, we're going to legislate and then we will work with her to get it all done. And people ask me, oh, Senator, will you take a meeting for this or that? I go, no, not until I know who the governor is. Amen. So, of course, maybe this is evidence of a multiverse

insofar as maybe maybe there is a parallel universe in which Carrie Lake is the governor elect of Arizona. But the universe you and I occupy is not one in which that is the term that applies to Carrie Lake. You know, you can pray to Jesus, wish upon a star, pull out a Ouija board, get a divining rod, start chugging homeopathy. I don't I don't know. You could do whatever you want. Reiki, it's not going to make Carrie Lake be the governor elect of Arizona. At another point during this very same interview, Steve Bannon and Wendy Rogers call on people to get themselves arrested over Carrie Lake's election. But you're not throughout, right? This was intentionally done to suppress the vote of Carrie Lake supporters and MAGA voters in Maricopa County on game day,

correct? Yes. And so we're talking what we what I want to see is people arrested. Right. Very strong arrests. Hold on. Do you think do you think Colonel Rogers would be like Judge Roy Beam? Right. She's a hanging judge. Right. Get some air. But you're not throughout. Right. Unbelievable stuff. And by the way, when someone like Bannon gets arrested, which, by the way, happened, he's got the money for a great legal defense and they're going to make it so that he goes to, you know, the cushiest prison and all this different stuff. When the people that watch this crap follow the advice and they go out there and they get themselves arrested, they're the ones that get stuck in pretrial detention. They're the ones with the public defenders and public defenders can be

great. They're just totally overworked and they don't just don't have the time to devote to all the cases that are handed to them and all these different things. They don't care about you at that point in time. And Marjorie Taylor Greene will make a show out of going to visit you at some jail and say it's also unfair. It's unfair. It's unfair. But your experience when you get arrested on their say so is going to be very different than their experience when they get arrested.

One other sad slash funny moment is just this co-host in the pink dress on the right of the screen. She just is so bored with everything. She just texts the entire show. Look at her. Unseat Ronna McDaniel because she's failed us. Okay. Real quickly. Give us that again. You've got to get contact with the precinct committee, man, your precinct chair, and make sure eventually you get up to the two committee. There's one committee, man, and committee woman for each state, correct? Yes. There's a committee woman and committee state,

but the thing is, listen, if I was sitting there listening to Steve Bannon drone on about this, I'd probably be texting someone as well. But just a horrible, pathetic, but also extraordinarily dangerous situation. They're just straight up lying. Carrie Lake, not the governor elect of Arizona. She's not going to be governor of Arizona for now. Maybe she'll run in the future. Maybe she'll win in the future. But right now, Katie Hobbs won. Thankfully, Katie Hobbs is going to be the governor. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here is a really great question about how to deal with people who do a certain really annoying thing during political debates and conversations. Take a listen. Hey, David, sir, this is Jose. I just had a quick question. Yes. I was wondering if you had any advice to what you would tell somebody

if you're having a discussion with them about politics, where they just immediately go to whataboutism. They don't really bring anything to the conversation. They just say, what about this? What about that? What about this? Yeah, this needs some help just with that. Thank you. So this is super common. The way it might go is you say, listen, the evidence is indicative that Trump committed crimes and should be charged. And then the person you're talking to goes, well, what about Hunter Biden? Understand that sometimes when people do the what about this other thing, it's because their brain is scrambled. And I'm not saying this to make fun of people. But what I mean is there are lots of people who they don't organize their thoughts in their head

and they can't think straight. And so they're just bouncing all over the place. And it's sort of like a cognitive issue of getting them to actually focus in on the one thing you're trying to talk about. That's one category. You then also have people who use whataboutism as deliberate deception or to try to undermine or distract and create red herrings. They use it sort of like as a tool, very deliberately and in bad faith. And then you've got people who it's not that their brain is totally scrambled and they're not completely bad faith. They're just kind of like a little ignorant and they don't realize that there's all these separate issues and we should deal with these issues one at a time. So step one is sort of try to figure out if the person doing the whataboutism is doing it for one or the other of those possibilities that I mentioned, bad faith,

brain scrambled, sort of confused, try to figure that out. And one of the best tools that I find when somebody brings out this other thing that they want to talk about is to say, hey, you know what? That may also be a problem. I'm glad to talk about that. But let's stick with this topic first, resolve it, and then we can talk about that other thing very quickly. You'll know if you say something like that when the whataboutism pops up, whether you're dealing with a brain scramble or someone functioning in bad faith or someone who's just a little bit confused. And sometimes they'll say, oh, you know what? You're right. OK, yeah, let's figure this thing out first. Then we can talk about that other thing. Another tool. These aren't even really tools. These are literally just one liners to try to refocus the conversation. Another thing that

can sometimes be said when the whataboutism pops up is something along the lines of can we just decide and agree what we're talking about now? I know there's all these different things we can talk about. You're wanting to talk about something different. Let's just agree what we're now talking about. And oftentimes it'll get the other person to have to actually tell you what it is we're talking about. And if they're doing a whataboutism with something that really isn't related. But what about that time when Obama drew a red line in Syria? Doesn't really have anything to do with the Qatari World Cup, does it? Right. Example, sometimes that will also get people refocus because you're letting them decide what you're talking about. And sometimes it'll become evident that the two things aren't related. If you're trying to talk about criminal charges

against Trump and they want to talk about Obama's red line and you say, can you just tell me what are we talking about right now? Just so we can finish that. It's going to be hard for them to go, well, we're talking about criminal charges against Trump and Obama's red line in Syria. A lot of people, when they say that out loud, would go, wait a second, that those two things aren't even remotely connected. That doesn't make any sense. OK, so some ideas for dealing with the what about us Friday, December 23rd, we are doing a one day membership special, hugely discounted last one of the year. Remember, we're an independent media show and we're funded by our viewers. But we're going to do something extra. We are going to donate your first month's discounted payment.

When you sign up Friday with a coupon code that is forthcoming, we will donate that first month's payment to charity to be sent as cash to people in need. I'm talking about people for whom a few bucks makes a big difference. People living on a dollar a day, people living on two dollars a day in different parts of the world. We've never done this before. And we have an up to fifteen thousand dollar match. So if you have a six dollar a month membership, coupon code smacks it down to three dollars a month. We will donate your three dollars and we will match it with another three dollars. We've never tried this. We're trying to do something for the people.

If you want to be notified about this, it'll be in an email that goes out Friday morning. Get on my newsletter at David Pakman dot com. It's free to get on it. You just type in your email address at the top right of the page. And Friday you will get all of the details on today's bonus show. The Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, is coming to the US. He may already be here. He will be addressing Congress tonight. It is a big deal when a foreign leader addresses Congress. We will talk about it. Elon Musk will resign as head of Twitter. And many of you wrote to me and said, this is great news. A few of you wrote to me and said, this is bad news. They're going to install a flunky. He'll do all the same terrible things. And then Elon Musk can say, I'm not even in charge

anymore and shift blame. We'll talk about it. And we are also going to talk about the confusion and the falsehoods that have been spreading in China as China has reversed its so-called zero covid policy, which, of course, didn't really lead to zero covid. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. We will see you then.