The Megyn Kelly Show - Feds Raid Trump's Home, and American Opportunity, with Sen. Tim Scott, Alan Dershowitz, and Harmeet Dhillon | Ep. 370

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Sen. Tim Scott, author of "America, a Redemption Story: Choosing Hope, Creating Unity," to talk about the FBI raiding President Trump's home, the left and the media's hate for Trump, the inconsistencies in how justice is being applied, what Trump is like when the cameras are off, Scott's important meeting with President Trump after he criticized Trump's Charlottesville comments, how Trump helped bring "Opportunity Zones" to America, the real progress of the nation, the bigotry and racism of the left, Scott's future political ambitions, and more. Then Alan Dershowitz, author of "The Price of Principle," and Harmeet Dhillon, chairwoman of The Republican National Lawyers Association, join the show to dig deeper into the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, on the shocking use of a search warrant for this type of crime, whether this is all a pretext for January 6 and political, the challenge of accountability, how AG Garland's credibility is on the line, what Trump's lawyers should do now, questions about the magistrate judge, the myth that Trump wouldn't be allowed to run for president if tried and convicted, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We are tracking breaking developments this afternoon after former President Donald Trump's private residence was searched by the FBI in an early morning raid yesterday morning. That's not technically the correct legal term because they did get permission from a court, but it's the term that Donald Trump is using. And it's something that seems correct based on what happened there. Some 30 plus agents descending on Mar-a-Lago before sunrise, reportedly seeking classified

documents that he allegedly took from the White House when he left office back in 2021. And in a word, my response to that is bullshit, bullshit. There is no way that's what they were searching for. There's no way. I watched all the coverage last night. I've read everything. And I read Andy McCarthy this morning, who, as it turns out, agrees with me. I's no way. I watched all the coverage last night. I've read everything. And I read Andy McCarthy this morning, who, as it turns out, agrees with me. I agree with him. He's a former top prosecutor, former assistant U.S. attorney. And he says the same thing. This is about January 6th. If you believe this is about classified documents having to do with bullshit Trump took with him when he left office, your head is in the sky. This is about January 6th and the never ending

desire to get Donald Trump on something. They don't want him to run for election again. They want him behind bars. They want him disqualified under the Presidential Records Act or whatever they can possibly find. They don't care. They don't care. They're mad. They're mad he did not get convicted on the first or the second impeachment. They're mad. They're mad he did not get convicted on the first or the second impeachment. They're mad that he did not get pursued criminally by the New York D.A. They are mad that Russiagate fell apart and they are mad that he's leading in the polls. He's crushing DeSantis. His his candidates of choice all made it into office, virtually all of them last week, and they are prepared to unleash hell. The Democrats play dirty. And Merrick Garland is very clearly willing to go along with that. He's been moving in the concentric circles toward Donald Trump over the past several

weeks, going after his top advisers, subpoenaing them. You know, we've seen close Trump advisers in handcuffs, dragged away as if they're mobsters. This is this is really getting alarming. And the American public deserves answers. Did Attorney General Merrick Garland personally sign off on this? Hello? Yes, he did. There's zero chance that he didn't. And we don't know for sure, but I'm telling you, there's zero chance he didn't. Did the White House have any prior notice? They're actually claiming they had no idea they learned it from Twitter. Sure, they did. Sure. OK. Just like they had no idea that letter from the school boards was coming out asking the DOJ to label parents domestic terrorists. The White House had no idea. Oh, really? They orchestrated the whole thing. We found that out later, thanks to some record requests by some well-meaning citizens. When are we going to see the FBI's justification for this raid? It's all laid out in an affidavit in front of a magistrate

judge down in South Florida. Let's see it. Put it out. You're so sure he committed a crime? Great. Tell us all. It's 90 days before a midterm election. Show the American public what did the former president allegedly do? Don't we have a right to know? Right. How does he get raided? And Hunter Biden doesn't get raided. And Jim Biden doesn't get raided. And Hillary Clinton never get raided. But Donald Trump, he gets raided. His safe gets busted into when he's not even on the property. Later, we're going to be joined by two of the top legal experts in the country. Alan Dershowitz and harmy dylan who's representing another case let's not forget another client project veritas james o'keefe or his organization that got raided seizing all of his private and personal information and that of his employees because they had the nerve to investigate a story involving

president joe biden's daughter Ashley, and her private diary, which she clearly left at some friend's house. And it got passed around from people who wanted them to publish a story that included reportedly alleged incidents between Ashley Biden and her dad, Joe Biden, that they did not want to see the light of day. So the FBI raids Project Veritas. What happened to the First Amendment? Did Merrick Garland sign off on that, too? Did Joe Biden know about that, too? Because like I'm thinking if my diary got stolen, the FBI wouldn't be tracking it down with a raid. This is the state of America. And this is getting crazy. The politicization

of our law enforcement agencies is deeply disturbing. I don't care whether you hate Donald Trump. I don't care whether you campaigned for Hillary and then Joe Biden. This is deeply, deeply disturbing. And there's no person better to ask about all of that than our first guest today before we get to the lawyers. And that is South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. He is a Republican, first and only black Republican in the U.S. Senate.

He says yesterday's raid raises new questions for the FBI, and he's got a new book out today talking about how he made it. This incredible position he now holds. It's called America, a redemption story, choosing hope, creating unity. Senator Scott, welcome back to the show. Great to have you here. Megan, it's always good to be with you. Thank you so much. And frankly, thank you for your opening conversation, because ultimately what's the most important thing is how do we restore balance, fairness in this nation? As an African-American growing up in the deep South

in the early 70s and 80s, the one thing we always wanted was to be judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin. Today, it seems like the color of the skin is red and blue. And so we're seeing this unfolding again in the history of this country where people are being judged

not based on who they are, what they've done, but based on whether they have a red flag or a blue flag, or whether you have a donkey or an elephant. That ought not be. We fought for generations to eliminate this from a part of the American fabric. And yet we find ourselves again in the same place we saw ourselves in the 1930s, in the Jim Crow South, in the 1960s, the 70s, and even in my lifetime. And so I wrote this book because I feel like America, a redemption story, is giving all of us a perspective of unity and hope based on the fact that we keep overcoming the greatest challenges that we face. And it looks like we have to do it again.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I woke up this morning, I don't know how you felt, but I wasn't feeling unity. Yeah, I wasn't feeling you. I was feeling angry. And again, I've made pretty clear, I'm not some sycophant. I've always said about Trump, I'm not under his spell, but I'm not suffering from Trump derangement syndrome either. So I feel like I'm in a unique position. And I feel like the same is true of you. You've been critical of the president at times. You've been extremely supportive of him at times. You have beautiful stories in your book about his treatment of people like your mom. So I feel like you're able to criticize him when he's done wrong. But what's happening here really feels like persecution.

Yeah. Megan, you're 100% right. One of the things that we have to do is tell both sides of the when he's done wrong, but what's happening here really feels like persecution. Megan, you're 100% right. One of the things that we have to do is tell both sides of the story, see both sides of the ledger. And while the president has done some things that I've spoken out against, he's also led one of the greatest economic recoveries and one of the most inclusive economies. But at the same time, he sat down with victims, families whose loved ones lost their lives at the hand of police, and he listened. He was patient, deferential. And what I hope from Lady Justice is when the blindfold is on, the scales are balanced. And what I'm looking at today, I question whether or not there's a thumb or a foot on the scale when it comes to certain people in certain places that we just don't like. That's not America. It's not American. It's not justice.

We as Americans fought for the last 246 years to come to the place where every single person should be judged based on what they do, not who they are, not whether or not we like them. And that's what's so stunning and concerning about the current predicament that we see our Justice Department in. And remember, last week in the Judiciary Committee, Christopher Wray was testifying about inconsistencies in the FBI. So this is not simply about yesterday. The precursor to yesterday was this inconsistent application of justice for a very long time. And now it's heading to the most powerful regions of this country. What does that say to the average person in this nation? They can't stop going after Donald Trump. They love nothing more than to pursue him

criminally, whether it's in the U.S. Senate trying to get a conviction on the impeachment. And as I mentioned, the New York prosecutors, which that D.A. was under enormous pressure. And to his credit, he said, I'm not doing that one that we don't have it. And I could go down the list. And the Democrats are ratcheting up the pressure now on Merrick Garland. They want and I'm sure they'd love to see Trump behind bars. They would love that. But what they really don't want is for him to run again and God forbid, in their view, to win again. I believe in my core. That's what this is about. You you were on Capitol Hill on January 6th. You write openly in the book about how scary that was, having to run in the private room with the chaplain praying. It's not like you didn't

get that it was a serious, dangerous day. A terrible day. But this ongoing obsession with pinning it entirely on Donald Trump and slapping criminal charges on him, that's what this is about. What do you think of it? Well, Megan, there's no doubt. I've done a lot of interviews this week trying to make sure that people understand and appreciate what I believe is the future of America and that's us getting along together.

And it's one of the reasons why America, redemption story is so important. And in the book, I talk specifically about January the 6th and I put the blame exactly where it needs to be on the shoulders and in the hearts of those entering the Capitol. I put it right where it needs to be as I'm finding an escape route. Those pursuing me should be held responsible for their bad and disgusting decisions at times to come out and come against people like me and other senators. I think through that day, and the one thing that a lot of media refuses to accept is that the responsibility for individuals is the person in the mirror.

Not somebody at 1600 Pennsylvania, but literally the person in the mirror is the one that I must hold accountable for hunting me. What do you mean? Expand on that. Well, as opposed to suggesting that President Trump somehow persuaded these folks to show up with weapons in hand or guns in their sacks to look for a way to overturn the election, I think that the best thing that I can do is to look at the folks coming down the hallway and hold those individuals responsible for their actions. It's like my mama used to say when I was a youngster, if your friends jump off the bridge, are you jumping off the bridge too?

I love your mom's advice, by the way. And I love your grandma's advice too, like pass down generation to generation and how all the top three rules are basically the same rule. Yes. And it's about personal responsibility. That's been my experience. There's no doubt about it that the more personally responsible we are, the more liberty we will experience. The less we give our lives over to some central control, central command, we'll have a caste system in this nation. And those at the

bottom will be stuck there. And that's what I don't know why we don't see clearly into the future under this concurrent drive where the application of justice is inconsistent, where the rules are changed based on who's on the field. That is exactly what we fought against. It's exactly why I thought this was the time to write a book about hope and unity forged together through hard work, discipline, perseverance, and tenacity. Those characteristics lead us in the right direction, but blaming somebody else, victimhood, those are the things that lead us in the wrong direction. You know, I listened to you on CBS this morning with Gayle King and she was all about, is Donald

Trump really the best representative of the Republican Party right now? He's crushing in all the polls. As much as the Republicans love Ron DeSantis and he's been a leader on fighting back on some of the woke nonsense, Trump's crushing. He was the US president just a couple of years ago. So he's going to remain in the lead unless something catastrophic happens, like he goes behind bars. But she was very pressing on, is he the right representative? I find it fascinating because it exposes her view, the liberal media's view. They hate him. They see him as a devil they don't understand that there could possibly be a good man in there who actually cares about the country they see him as entirely narcissistic um selfish

uh that he doesn't care about the country even a little that he only cares about getting his name in lights and and this is part of the problem because they're willing to do anything to stop such a man from resuming in power. Megan, there's no doubt when you think about what you just said and it's so powerful, clear and succinct. One of the things I do in the books, I walk people through the Donald Trump

when the cameras are off. I walk people through this experience that I had when President Trump calls my mother on her 70th, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say my mother's age out loud. I apologize. 75th birthday, though. And it was an unexpected call at an unexpected time, but it was perfectly timed. And literally for 10 or 15 minutes, my mama said for five minutes, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. And President Trump was so patient. And then they had a conversation for 10 minutes after two minutes of, oh, my God. Why people refuse to see that there's a human under the caricature of Donald Trump, I don't understand. Why people want to judge others by

their actions and we judge ourselves by our intentions, it just doesn't make a lot of sense, especially in the echo chambers of justice. I want the echo in our country to sound like fairness. I want the view that the average person coming from the poorest neighborhoods have that in America, the rules are set. And I'm going to judge everybody by the same yardstick, that the same value system that I want for you is the same value system I'm willing to live under. And your opening monologue was so important in establishing the inconsistencies that we are seeing in this justice department and the way that justice is being applied to one of the most powerful figures of our time. They get away with it because they've convinced their base he's truly evil and must be stopped. He's a uniquely evil force. And it brings me to two

stories in your book, which I found illuminating. One, speaking about your mom, was the trip that you and Donald Trump gave her, the special trip. I'd love to hear about that. And then we'll get to Opportunity Zones. But let's talk first about your mom and the special surprise you and Donald Trump arranged for her. Well, Megan, I was talking to the president one day and he said, anything I can ever do, you know, President Trump. President Trump's always saying, you know, whatever in the world you ever want, please give me a call. I'll be happy to help. And I know he means well, but I don't always ask for anything. Usually I don't. And this time I decided to say, you know what, President? I want my mother to have a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Air Force One would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I said that I never followed up on it. It's probably more than a year later. I can't remember exactly how long it was. I get a call. President Trump is inviting my mom on Air Force One. And I will tell you what, I have the pictures to prove it. That was one amazing experience with a, thank you,

a thrilling experience. My mother was so ecstatic about the experience. And President Trump's pulling his chair out for her. And once again, there are no cameras except for the ones taking the pictures. There's no TV show to watch. This was literally a private exchange with the president of the United States on Air Force One with someone who's been demonized from the day before he took the office, the day before he took the oath. There were already headlines about impeaching President Trump, and yet we don't see the humanity of the individual. And I have been critical of the president when necessary. And so I'm not coming with a lady justice blinders on on justice. I just want us not to peek around the blindfold when it comes to people we don't like or experiences we don't understand. In the book, you write about how not only did he give her and insist that she sit in his seat on

Air Force One, which he was reluctant to do, but he made her, but he sat with her for the whole flight. I mean, that's really the thing that got me and chatted her up. You said they were laughing so hard. It was hilarious to look back and peek in on a lot of people in his position, even before he was president, even when he was just a big celebrity, would have said, oh, nice to meet you, glad handing and then moved on and didn't wouldn't want to spend an entire air flight, you know, talking to a stranger who's in her 70s that I mean, that's just the reality. But he did. He's in his 70s, too. You know, that's just the reality, but he did, he's in his 70s too, you know, he did and really seemed to want her to have a great time. I mean,

I do think that speaks well of him. You acknowledge the abrasive language. We all know President Trump is not perfect. But to those who think the man's not even human, he's just this monster who's looking, who's like drunk on power, wanting to hurt people. It isn't true. There's another side to him. He's human, who's like drunk on power, wanting to hurt people. It isn't true. There's another side to him. He's human just like the rest of us. Totally agree. And the fact of the matter is when you think about his response in almost every situation where he and I disagreed, he gave me deference. He gave me enough margin to make my case. And he didn't agree with me all the time, frankly. But he always said, is there an alternative?

He gave me the pivot, the opportunity to pivot. And that's such an important quality in the leader of the free world to say to someone that he doesn't have to. I hear you. I see you. Now show me a better way for the one thing you'll hear is that the voters that he was helping, the constituents that he helped in that decision were the ones that he offended. So he wasn't looking for a way to get them back on the team. That may never happen, but he literally went out of his way to hear the painful story and the provocative history of race in this country. And at the same time, respond by saying, let's do something that brings opportunities into the most fragile economic communities in this nation. It was a stunning experience. It's a great story because you write in the book about how you were not happy with the president's comments in total after Charlottesville. And he, the, the good people on both sides. And he had said that he condemned the white supremacists, but a lot of people, especially people in communities

of color were like too close, didn't like it offended. The messaging should have been really clear and they didn't think it was. So you made a comment about that publicly and he called you up and said, let's have a meeting. And you write in the book about how you're like, oh boy, you know, I feel how I feel, but I know what it's like, what's going to come my way. I'm in his crosshairs now and he doesn't really lose fights. And so this could be highly unpleasant. So you go, you sit down in the Oval Office with him and something remarkable happened for 20 minutes, what did he do? Listen, literally listened. I was stunned. I was looking forward to the lecture and hopefully only a 40% drop in my approval ratings at home, but that's not what happened. He actually did

what people say he never does. And frankly, I've seen him do it almost every time I've been with him. He actually, Megan, he listened. And he didn't just listen waiting for his turn to talk. He listened to the pain and the misery that so many African Americans have had to endure over generations, over a century. And as I talked through my grandfather's life and all the pain and the misery and the misdeeds that came his way, President Trump was silent. And when we finished, he did not embrace necessarily my entire view of race or equality, but he didn't reject it either. He simply said, help me help those I've offended. Now, that's amazing.

For the president of the United States who catches more Hades than the law allows to say and said, let me tell you what we're going to do. Instead of doing that, he simply said, show me the way. And I offered him something that he in America and only a 4% gentrification rate in those communities. It's a stunning success story that he gets so little credit for, especially when it comes to the important topic of race and fairness in America. Well, he and you, because you've been trying to sell that for a long, long time. And you had no takers in the Oval Office prior to President Trump, who it was sort of divine right order, right? Because it's like you point out his suddenly without even realizing it, you were talking his language, development. This is his business, right? So he was like, yes, I get it. Let's do tax incentives for these big corporations to want

to build in these opportunity zones, which tend to be largely minority, these inner city pockets that have dealt with more blight than they have opportunity. And that's what happened. He made it happen. It was stunning. And frankly, when I think about even in my little state of South Carolina, the greatest state in all of the nation, the one thing I can tell you without any question is you go to a rural part of South Carolina called Hampton County. They haven't seen a hundred jobs created probably in the last five years because of opportunity zones. There's this new thing called an agricultural tech center being developed in rural South Carolina, $300 million investment, 1,500 new jobs, permanent jobs, plus construction jobs, all because President Trump and I got together in the Oval Office after an obstacle, and we turned that obstacle into opportunities. And that's why I'm so convinced that America's greatest days are ahead of her. When two people who disagree on something can do it without being disagreeable,

we can see the most remarkable things happen in the greatest country on earth. And when you read America, a redemption story, you'll hear more of those stories where the success of this nation came right after a failure, where the obstacles that we have all had to endure as a country presented the best opportunities. And the pain of our past has become the promise of our amazing future. I think it's so insightful because I do think that, you know, to see them go after Trump again, it's like he's already had to deal with the ruination attempted of his first term. Yes. You know, with the Russiagate, which did not hold up, put it mildly. Zero. Right. Two impeachments, the criminal prosecutions, the going after his family,

his close advisors. You know, half of his administration has now been publicly embarrassed by Merrick Garland's DOJ and cuffs and, you know, prosecuting people for contempt of Congress when they never did that under Democratic organizations or representation. In any event, I think people have had it like this is a bridge too far what they're doing to him. He he he's rough around the edges. I have all people know that. And you can do the mean tweets and all that. But there's a bigger story about President Trump. And it's exactly that Opportunity Zone story. It's what he did, what he made up for in sort of finesse, I guess, for lack of a better word, what he what he lacked in finesse. He made

up for in policy that actually changed lives. I could tell you the same story about women, you know, in the anti-Sex Trafficking Act, which they could not get through with any other president. But then Donald J. Trump, despite some of his language about women and some of the accusations that have been made against him,

he's the one who got it through, right? So it's like these Democrats have been told a story that is agenda-driven by the MSNBCs of the world. And the consequences of that are in the news every day. This is just the latest example. Well, Megan, you said it right. And one of the most important

things that you've said is how exhausted Americans are with all the division, with all the sniping back and forth. It's one thing to target someone, but to target them for every single day of their administration and every single day after they've left, it's exhausting to watch. Whether you're a Republican or Democrat, whether you are conservative or progressive, the one thing we should all want is a consistent standard of justice applied to all Americans. And the one thing that we're seeing today is the contrast between justice for those we like and justice for those we don't like. And frankly, we know that if there are two standards, there's only injustice. There is no justice. And one of

the things I struggled with through the book was the injustices that I felt that I was a victim of. And my grandfather walked into me one day and said, you're never a victim. You may have been victimized in your life, but you have to choose today. Are you a victim or are you going to be victorious? There's only one road ahead. If you're going to be a victim, you will always be a victim. And if you're going to be victorious, you will have to overcome the challenges that present themselves in your face. And I'm thinking to myself, my grandfather born in 1921 in Sally, South Carolina, in the deep south, stepping off of a sidewalk if a white person was coming. This is the man whose wisdom was beyond my years and his years combined, but it was a man who had so much faith in America that somehow, some way, his children and his grandchildren

would experience a very different America. And I am so thankful that I am. I'm experiencing, in many ways ways the best of what America is. And as you look at my grandfather, you look at the nations, the capitals around the country. It should be about the people. The people are our greatest blessing, not those who are in government. The whole book has the same tone in that you could easily look back at your grandfather's life, your dad's experience, your mom's experience, and say, this is a racist country. And there is no redemption.

And instead, you see it very differently. You see it as, yes, there's racism. There always has been. But we are making steady progress. We appeal to our better angels. We've been going in the direction of the angels steadily for the past hundred years plus. And my grandfather's story and my family's story is evidence of that.

One of the stories that stood out to me is, you know, you point out that the guy who held your Senate seat for, I don't know, how many years? A couple of generations ago. Yes. Cottonhead. Yes. Can you tell us? Make that point. Because I was like, my God, that's very illuminating.

So Cottonhead, I believe is what we called him, had my seat, gosh, two generations ago. And he was an avowed racist who literally was undeniably wanting blacks out of the country and certainly out of any leadership positions. And one of the stories I tell there is that I now have that man's seat because it was never his seat. Like, it's not my seat. The seat always belongs to the American people or in South Carolina to the Gamecock fans and I guess the Tiger fans as well. But the truth is that in America, political seats continues to evolve because the nation and the voters continue to evolve. And one of the things I write about, Megan, is the fact that you think about 2010 in this country, the Tea Party movement, and I get into a very crowded race with the son of Strom Thurmond in Charleston, South Carolina, where the Civil War started. And I end up winning a very competitive race against his son in a runoff because the evolution of the

Southern heart had come to the point where the vast majority of voters were willing to judge me on the content of my character and not the color of my skin, even though I was running against one of the greatest namesakes in South Carolina history, a Thurman. So if that doesn't speak to the progress that this nation is making, I don't know what does. The fact that we've had an African-American president, we've had an African-American vice president, we've had an African-American head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we have an African-American who's the head of all the military today, we have had an African-American running American Express. Supreme Court justices. Supreme Court justices. I mean, when you take a look at the progress made

and you don't look at both sides of the ledger, how do you come to the conclusion that America is a racist country? We may struggle with the issue of race, but the truth is that I said it and Kamala Harris has said it, Joe Biden has said it as well, that America is not a racist country. Now, here's what I'm going to challenge all leaders to do. Let's act world loses. I'm not willing to let America think that we're divided when we are the greatest force on earth for good. Nothing close, no second place. We are the city on the hill. We are the beacon in the midst of the storm. I get a chill. I love this. Wait, I want to tell one story before I squeeze in a quick break. Yes, ma'am. Can you like just speaking of the progress that we've made as a country and also the lack of bitterness, the story of your grandfather who couldn't read, you point out in the book, he was born in 1920, 1921.

Yes, ma'am. And two years earlier than that, a black man had been had been beaten to death for not stepping off the sidewalk as a group of white men came by. So that's the time your grandfather was born into in South Carolina. And then you take us forward to 2008 and a man named Barack Obama, who happened to be black, was running for president. And your grandfather, who still couldn't read, went to vote. Can you tell us that story? Yeah. I still get a little emotional about it, to be honest with you. I was just thinking about this last night. So my grandfather, 2008, he can't believe the progress that's been made in America.

You got to think about it. He's 86, 87 years old, and I'm taking him to vote. And for the first time, there's a choice in the ballot where there's an African-American person running for president, and my grandfather cannot believe it. And so we walk into the polling place and the lady at the counter, knowing that I'm a Republican, seeing my grandfather looks like me a little bit, and is not going to be voting for a Republican. So she thinks, even though he did vote for me, thank God for that part. So we're going into the voting booth, much to her chagrin. And literally, she's trying to tell my grandfather, we can get someone to assist you and not this Republican. And with great respect, he's like, read the hand, read the hand. And so

we go in there and I tell my grandfather, I said, granddaddy, look at that name. And he has a photographic memory. I said, look at the name. That's Barack Obama. I want you to memorize that so that when you see it on TV, you will know the name you voted for. I didn't know who was going to win at that point in time. And so I pushed a button to light up his name. And I said, Granddaddy, I need you to hit that green button. The green button, of course, is vote. And he hit that button. And we walked back to the car. And the first time I saw my grandfather cry was April 29th, 2001, when his wife of 56 years passed away. The second time I saw my grandfather shed tears was that night after voting for Barack Obama.

And if you ever wonder how blessed we are to live in this amazing nation and how much progress we've made in this nation, think about a man named Artis Ware and how far we've come. Wow. Senator Tim Scott, you're amazing. I'm so happy you're staying with us. We're going to do a quick commercial break. And there is so much more, so many wonderful stories to mine out of this beautiful book, which you should absolutely get out and buy right now. It's called America, a redemption story. We will be right back. So let's spend a minute on race. I hate having like a black man on and you make it all about race or a woman on who to make it all about gender. It's like you're about way more than that. And I get it. But yes, ma'am, there's some good points in there that I don't want to miss. You talk about the fact that you've been pulled over in the past 20 years. Tell us how many times you've been pulled over when driving a car. Now it's up to 23 or 24. It keeps going. Unfortunately, every year or two, I get another two or three and it's unfortunate, but I understand. And frankly,

even the last time they said that I was using my blinkers in the wrong place. I was literally helping someone find their cell phone and the cops pulled me over and then they saw who I was and they said, you're not that guy. Because they asked me for my driver's license and they looked at it and looked at me, looked at my driver's license and said, I'm sorry. We just thought that he had some stupid excuse. And then I got pulled over another time for something almost as stupid. They were using these flash floodlights at 11 o'clock at night. I was leaving the airport, coming home, and got pulled over. And they said they were looking for a seatbelt violation, which is a secondary offense in South Carolina.

And you cannot be pulled over for it. But yet, we were pulled over. I was doing 30 in a 30, which might be a miracle in itself that I was doing 30 in a 30. Not any other given day. We were in 32. We were never faster than 32. And we had a serious conversation on the side of the road. But one of the things I try to do in my book is while I've had some really painful experiences, the other side of the ledger is that when my house was broken in, I was so thankful that men of integrity, at that point, they were both men, came in and tried to provide comfort and take the reports. When I had a major car accident my senior year, where I missed

seven weeks of my senior football season because I fell asleep driving my car down an interstate, don't recommend that for your listeners. It was a police officer who showed up and told me that your mama is going to be so glad you're alive. My response to him, by the way, Megan, was, you don't know my mama. She's going to kill me. So I've had both sides, right? So I've had lots of positive experiences and I've had some negative ones. And I want Americans to understand as they read a book about redemption, that we are evolving in the right direction. We are better than we used to be, but we still have room to grow. Life is messy though.

And because I know life is messy, I want to give you the deference that I hope that you give me. Yeah. Can I just say for the record in the past 20 years, I've been pulled over one time. It was recent. That's it. And I've told the story before. One of our very good friends is a black man and he went to Navy and he went to Wharton and now he's with an investment bank. And he was out with my husband on our boat and my husband drove like the entire five hour journey.

And literally our friend took over the wheel. He was in the Navy. He took over the wheel for like two minutes, got pulled over by the Coast Guard. I mean, we don't we don't do ourselves any favor by saying their racism is gone in America and black people never get profiled. We can admit all those facts and acknowledge what we need to work on without condemning the whole country. That's where the left loses people, where they just try to say it's a failed project. I totally agree with you, Megan. One of the things I think the left is, liberal elite, especially in the media, gets a pass on all the racist things that they say, by the way, which I think is astounding and stunning. But today, and I say this after some thought, and the truth is that I experience more prejudice at the hands of liberals, sometimes who look like me in the media,

because I will not fit what they believe is the caricature of a conservative person who happens to be black. They want to make a cartoon of me, or if you watch wrestling, and I'm sure you don't, but I do, WWE, they want me to be the heel in the story. It's the most remarkable thing that while we have championed the highest funding for historically black colleges and universities, while we took the unemployment rate to the lowest level for African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, 70-year low for women, a 50-year low for the majority population. I'm still not interested in issues of justice that impact the minority communities, even though Republicans led on the criminal justice reform. I led on police reform. I led on rewriting the tax code to give a single

mom a 70% tax cut. None of those issues matter. Only thing that matters is if you have an R by your name, you are now the new form of inferior in modern society as it relates to politics. And that just should never be. My God, it's so true. I mean, we've seen it happen to so many prominent Black conservatives, you know, from Clarence Thomas and what he's had to deal with to just just I think yesterday or the day before recently, the past couple of days. This guy, Elie Mestal of The Nation, he's an MSNBC contributor. I mean, he's never seen a black Republican. He doesn't dismiss hate as an Uncle Tom.

He's done it to you, I'm sure. Yes, yes. But this is here. He was talking about Herschel Walker, a candidate for Senate on the Republican side down in Georgia. Take a listen. Now, you ask, why are Republicans backing this man who's so clearly unintelligent, who so clearly doesn't have independent thoughts? But that's actually the reason Walker is going to do what he's told. And that's what Republicans like. That's what Republicans want from their Negroes, to do what they're told. And Walker presents exactly as a person who lacks independent thoughts, lacks an independent agenda, lacks an independent ability to grasp policies. And he's just going to go in there and vote like Mitch McConnell tells him to vote.

Wow. I've heard it before, but every time I hear him talk about Blacks and Negroes in the Republican Party, it just stuns me a little bit. Every time I've heard it, I've heard it only three or four times. But Megan, that is a classic example of the bigotry coming from the left that is condoned and sometimes celebrated in national media. Here's what they're telling to every little boy and girl in the poorest communities. If you step out of line, we will attack you. You will have no home. You will have no community. You are not a part of our culture. When you send those types of negative stereotypes into communities that are struggling to find their footing, you are literally damaging the future potential of the country and specifically those marginalized communities.

We need independent thinkers leading the way in every facet of our life and in our being as Americans, frankly, and as folks that live in South Carolina or in New York. And yet what we hear is exactly the opposite. And one of the things I talk about in my book, America Redemption Story, is how I had to deal with that kind of hatred in high school from people who looked like me. I talk about being called all kinds of racially offensive terms because I didn't fit in. And frankly, you can read books of amazing African-Americans and you'll hear a similar story on how they too were put into a small category and not allowed to think for themselves. That's not the way it should be. And frankly, I think there

is a growing echo chamber who will rebuke that as time evolves. And we're just the forerunners, the front runners. We are the ones that are going to have the, I guess we're the tip of the arrow, so it's going to be more painful for a little while. But I hope that the sacrifice and the suffering of my grandfather, my mother, and hopefully the stuff I'm going through right now will make a better way for my nephew and hopefully my kids and grandkids to come in some distant future. Now, you may be the first Black Republican in the U.S. Senate, but are you going to stay in the U.S. Senate? Because I read that in 2019, you said publicly that this election in 2022 would be your last Senate race. Is that true?

Megan, I'm a big believer in term limits. And so I do think that one should serve the country where they are. No, those are only for the bad politicians. That doesn't apply. You know, I hate to go back to that daggum equal application of my words and my system of justice. I do think that I can't think of a better and more amazing experience that I've had in public service than to serve the greatest nation in the greatest state. But I do believe that everyone should go. What about instead of going, a promotion?

Well, I'll say this. One of the best things that one can do is win the race coming up. And so as a person on the ballot for reelection, my number one objective is to win this Friday night's football game and worry about what happens later. All right. Well, you're on the short list, as we all know, not just for potentially running. If Trump doesn't want or doesn't run, you're definitely one of the top names that gets mentioned. Or as a potential VP candidate, since it doesn't appear Mike Pence and Donald Trump are going to be together next time around, is that something you would consider? You know, I did mean what I said. I know that most of us say things that we kind of mean sometimes, but this

time I meant it. I always mean it, actually. But I'm only interested in winning my reelection. And then after that, may the Lord bless me indeed on whatever that means. Okay, across that bridge. Well, it's funny because HarperCollins, in publishing your book, they put a note, you know, one of the little descriptions of the book, Nashville, Tennessee, Nelson Books, an imprint of Thomas Nelson's summary. Senator Scott's a rising star who sees understandable

importance in bipartisanship, blah, blah, blah. This is a political memoir that includes his core messages as he prepares to make a presidential bid in 2022. I mean, it's an obvious error because there's no presidential race in 2022. Right. He must have been like, thanks for the speculation.

I tell you what, Megan, we don't get to see the copyright page before your book comes out, or at least I didn't see the copyright page. I would have proofread that. But the truth is, when I saw that, I said to myself, wait a minute, am I making a presidential announcement on a copyright page? How bad of a marketing machine are we? And so I literally called the publishers and said, this ain't going to work for me. I didn't say it won't work for me. I said, ain't going to work for me. And so they were like, oh my God, we didn't blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Okay. I get it. I see how it happened perfectly. It's actually quite funny. I want to ask you before, before I go, this is my producer,

Kelly. She helped me prepare for the segment. She's from South Carolina. She moved up to damn Canada with Canadian Debbie, but anyway, she's near and dear to my heart. And just a couple of notes. This is what she writes in like sort of her top takeaway. He had me in tears a few times. He weaved other people's stories of redemption in America, heartbreak triumph with his own story. This is a must read for any political junkie or someone who wants to remember the good about America and how far we've actually come as a nation with while also acknowledging pain in the past. She writes, I kept saying to myself, this man, this politician is too good to be true. How can he be real? Why hasn't Washington broken him?

That is a great story. It's what everyone's probably wondering right now. How did you not get broken by this broken system? Well, thank you, Kelly, for your incredibly kind comments. Washington is incredibly broken. The blessing of my life is going home to my hometown where I'm not that big of a deal, where people just call me Tim and my friends and family call me Timmy. The truth is that if we are going to hold on to the greatness of America, we need to spend less time away from home and more time close to people who know who you are. Number one. Number two, I'm a big believer that my faith is

the key and prayer does unlock the door. And so I'll finish with this. There is a scripture in Ephesians 3.20 that is my life verse that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or imagine. And as long as I remember that this is not about me, I can continue to serve well, I pray. You are an inspiration, sir. Senator Tim Scott, you're welcome anytime. Buy his new book, America, A Redemption Story, choosing hope, creating unity, and he lives what he writes all the best. Coming up, a deeper dive into the FBI raid, search, whatever you want to call it. It felt very, very wrong at President Donald Trump's Florida home with two very well-respected lawyers, Alan Dershowitz and Harmeet Dhillon. Joining me now, Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard

Law School. He is the author of a new book, The Price of Principle, Why Integrity is Worth the Consequences. Man, has he lived that one. It's about the efforts to cancel Alan throughout his career for not being sufficiently partisan. It's such BS what they put him through. Also joining us is Harmeet Dhillon. She's chairwoman of the Republican National Lawyers Association and managing partner of the Dhillon Law Group and is representing at least one other client targeted by the FBI for what we believe was an investigation the Biden administration simply didn't like, a story that they didn't like. All right, so I'm stunned by what they've done here. I mean, I realize they've

crossed lines, but this is a brand new one and really shows how emboldened Merrick Garland's DOJ has become. They don't seem to care about perception or scaring the right half of the country into believing that the FBI and DOJ have become political weapons. Let me start with you, Alan, as a professor who's been watching this for, I don't know, your entire life, law enforcement agencies like the DOJ and the FBI. What is this on a scale of one to 10 in terms of shock value? Oh, I think it's a 12. I think it's a 12. I've never seen in my 60 years a search warrant used in a situation like this. In the first place, the crime that apparently has

been alleged is generally punished by an administrative fine, not by criminal prosecution. That was the case, of course, with Sandy Berger, Hillary Clinton, comparable offenses regarding classification, no searches of their houses. And so, look, there may be more than meets the eye. I liked Merrick Garland. I supported him when he was nominated to the Supreme Court. I remember him as a student at Harvard Law School. It's very hard for me to believe that on the basis of what we hear in the media, he would authorize such an extreme measure instead of saying, subpoena them, subpoena the 15 boxes, subpoena the safe, let judges go through each document and determine whether or not they had ever been classified, whether they've been declassified, whether

there's lawyer-client privilege, whether there's executive privilege. That's the way it's done. You don't use a search warrant unless you have firm evidence that there would be destruction of the evidence. And Donald Trump wasn't even there. He was a thousand miles away. They could have subpoenaed it to be produced in court before Trump ever got back. And yet, and of course, if Trump or anybody on his behalf destroyed evidence that was subpoenaed, that would be a much more serious crime than anything that has apparently been investigating. I do not understand this. And the burden is now on Garland and on the head of the FBI to come forward, not give a statement, but give a complete explanation and subject themselves to very, very tough questioning

by a journalist like you. Okay. I'm coming back to that in one second because Mike Pence just weighed in and said something similar. I'll come back to that point about a full accounting by them. But the the notion that this is about classified documents, Harmeet, seems like complete and utter BS to me. I think that's a lie. I think this is about January 6th. I don't think they give two dams about classified information or the destruction of classified information. Certainly didn't under

Hillary Clinton when she did it. I think this is all a pretext to try to get him on the Democrats golden cow, which is somehow saddling January 6th around the former president's neck. Well, absolutely correct. And I agree with everything that the professor just said about this. And having just gone through this and we're going through this with Project Veritas, I could never have believed as an American lawyer with almost 30 years of experience, most of it doing First Amendment litigation, that I would see the United States Department of Justice executing search warrants, well, search warrants on journalists in the United States without going through all of the proper checks and balances, concealing information from magistrate judges, not flagging the fact that they're journalists and ignoring multiple federal laws to do so. But the reality is,

even as much as I agree that there should be an accounting here, that it isn't likely to happen very easily because the DOJ holds all the cards. They don't unseal these search warrants. They vigorously oppose that. And it's really up to the accused in our system. Unfortunately, it shouldn't be this way, but the reality is it's up to the accused. So I'm concerned that it's going to be an absolute mess to try to get accountability here. But to the political question, I think that this was very poorly thought through and kind of a knee-jerk reaction. I think this is purely political. I don't think this is about documents. I think that the Democratic Party in the United States

feels like it needs Trump as a boogeyman. And the focus of the American populace going into these November elections has been on our terrible economy, on the weakness of this country, on the open borders and on all of these issues. And they have to struggle mightily hard to turn the topic back to President Trump, who hasn't been in the White House for two years now. And this is one of their ways of doing it. But if their goal was to somehow hurt Republicans in the midterms, I think it is backfiring. And I think that politically it was a big blunder. But back to the legal issue, as an American, I wouldn't have wanted to see this happen by a Republican president, and indeed, President Trump, while he talked a lot, and there was a lot of locker up chants, he didn't go after his political

opponents. And I don't want to see that in America. That's what happens in Pakistan. You lose an election, they blow up your plane, they assassinate you. I don't know about it. But where are Trump's lawyers attempted murder, the attempted murder of Vice President Pence. He's prepared to trash the Constitution in order to get Trump. That's where the extremists on the Democrat side are. But Republicans and lawyers for Trump have to be more aggressive. They have to go to court. They have to challenge this, not today, but yesterday. But what could they do, Alan? What would be the basis for the claim? You go to court and you say, first, we want to see the search warrant. Second, we want to see the affidavit. Third, we want to see Justice Department rules and regulations about when you

go after former presidents. Then we want to look at everything seized and see whether or not any of them are privileged, any of them are not classified, and put the other side on the defensive. Right now, all the Justice Department is going to say is, well, we never comment on ongoing investigations. Well, let the court appoint a master, an objective, neutral master, a former Supreme Court justice. You know, there are two of them now available. One a Republican, one a Democrat. Let a real congressional committee, not the fake one that was established to look into January 6th, investigate this. We, the American public, have a right to know, because today it's Trump, tomorrow it's you, Megan, and the next day it's

the rest of us that they can come after. If this precedent is established, it is so dangerous to any Americans. And this is not the first instance. What happened to Manafort, what happened to these Stone, what happened to other people. Navarro. Navarro, they don't get shackled. They don't get handcuffed. Normally, I've done this for 60 years. I get a phone call saying, oh, by the way, your client has been indicted. Can you bring him to court tomorrow morning?

And I say, you know, tomorrow is a little inconvenient to me. Can I bring him Wednesday? Oh, sure. Bring him Wednesday or Thursday. That's the way it works. If I can weigh in on this, we have this exact playbook in the Project Veritas cases. We did all the steps that the professor just mentioned.

We went into court and did that. Just remind people what that's about because not everybody's been talking this closely. So Project Veritas came into the possession because they're journalists of Ashley Biden's purported diary. And they started investigating whether it was true. They made some phone calls. They called Ashley Biden's lawyer eventually, who is well-connected in the Southern District. And Ashley Biden's lawyer didn't want to play ball, didn't want to confirm that it was hers or not. Instead,

she dropped a dime to the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York, which treated these journalists in violation of the United States Constitution, in violation of the Privacy Protection Act, in violation of common law, in violation of Department of Justice guidelines of how you handle journalists, and went on these shock and awe raids on three American journalists, handcuffing them, bringing them out into the hallway in their underpants. And all on the pretext, just like in this case, that evidence was about to be destroyed, which is a complete lie. We all know President Trump was playing golf at Bedminster, a thousand miles away, as Professor Dershowitz just said. There was no risk of destruction. This is two years after the man

left office. It is a complete farce. So we went into court immediately and sought the unsealing of the search warrants, sought the underlying affidavits to be disclosed, got journalist organizations, including the ACLU Reporters Committee and so forth, to come in on our behalf and ask for the same thing and ask for accountability. And so eventually a special master did get appointed in this case, the Project Veritas case, and that's exactly what needs to happen right now. And if Merrick Garland were thinking clearly about not just his job, but the institution of the United States Department of Justice and his attorney general's office, he would have been transparent from the beginning and set all of this up so that he could foreclose allegations of misconduct and weaponization and politicization of his body. He hasn't done that. And that shows me that we really dodged a bullet in having him on the Supreme Court because the judgment shown here is, it is lacking. It is lacking and it is so, it is nihilistic to the respect of the office. We all know that Merrick

Garland was a great judge. He was a very good lawyer. I supported him for the Supreme Court. Many did. I can tell you a funny story. One day, I'm on the porch of the Chillmark store, and the phone rings. Hey, Alan, it's Donald. I was tempted to say, Donald who? The president. Who should I put on the Supreme Court? This was for his first vacancy. So I said, easy, Mr. President, you should put Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court. He had just been stopped. And President Trump said, ha ha, good joke.

Now tell me really, who should I put on the Supreme Court? And I said, Kavanaugh. But, you know, I think Garland would have been a good Supreme Court justice. I don't understand what's going on here. He came in to try to depoliticize the office. The office has become terribly politicized. That's why I wrote my book, The Price of Principle, to point out the politicization, how politics trumps principle today all over the United States, not only in the Justice Department, but in administrative agencies, in lower courts all over the country, in libraries, libraries. I'm banned from speaking in the Chilmark Library because I defended President

Trump. The people of my- If you would just dress in drag and put on a show for toddlers, they would let you back in. Let me talk to you about Merrick Garland for a second, because he gave an interview to NBC News' Lester Holt shortly before all of this. It was, I'm trying to find the date of this soundbite. Anyway, it was within the past week, I think. And he was telegraphing, I think, perhaps not this exact action, but that Donald Trump may soon be in his crosshairs. Listen. The indictment of a former president, of perhaps candidate for president, would arguably tear the country apart. Is that your concern as you make your decision down the road here? Do you have to think about things like that? Look, we pursue justice without fear or favor. to hold everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for the events surrounding January

6th, for any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable. That's what we do. So if Donald Trump were to become a candidate for president again, that would not change your schedule or how you move forward or don't move forward? Say again that we will hold accountable anyone who is criminally responsible for attempting to interfere with the transfer, legitimate, lawful transfer of power from one administration to the next. Can I tell you, this to me amounts to they're going to prosecute him for a bad legal theory.

You know, he he worked with John Eastman and others. He really thought that he could overturn or have Mike Pence overturn the electoral count. We all know that that's all ancient history. And he's he's basically getting ready to go after Trump because he can't really get him on incitement of violence and so on for a bad legal theory. That's how it sounds to me, Harmeet. Absolutely. I mean, this is some kind of a half-assed Elliot Ness attempt to try to, you know, get at the president in some other way. And without regard to the longstanding, long-term consequences of destruction of public trust in the institution of the Department of

Justice. But let's not pretend that Merrick Garland has suddenly fallen from grace. One of his first acts as an attorney general was to go after the state of Georgia for upgrading its election laws and making them actually better than the laws of the state of Delaware, where the current president is from. And so he is political. He is he has allowed himself, I agree, formerly respected jurist, has allowed himself to become a political hack and a tool. I mean, where is the judgment? Where even if you're just taking off your AG hat and putting on your Democrat hat as a part of an administration to say, you know what, this is a bad idea, guys. This is a bad idea, Susan Rice

or whoever's actually running the country. It certainly isn't Joe Biden. This is a really bad idea. It's gonna come back to haunt us. We're all gonna end up being persecuted and prosecuted whenever power changes hands. This is so lacking in judgment to do that. Why did he do it then? He's not stupid and he's not all that partisan. Why did he do this? I don't know. I don't know if I agree with that, Alan. I think he's pretty partisan. I just gave you an example. Harmeet points. The Georgia thing, let's not forget about what he did to parents and his coordination with that school board about labeling parents domestic terrorists who showed up not wearing a mask or objecting to mandatory vaccines and the nonsense with covid.

And then they lied and lied about how that came out the worst, because this time he's used all the power of the Justice Department and the FBI, 30 people, dawn raid want to apply it equally. But he has to look at the precedent of Sandy Berger. He has to look at the precedent of Hillary Clinton. And he has to understand that you can't change those precedents based on the party affiliation of the individual. What about this? What about this? You raised it earlier, Alan. Mike Pence has come out and said, in part, yesterday's action undermines public confidence in our system of justice. And Attorney General Garland must give a full accounting to the American people as to sealed until charges get filed. So normally, we wouldn't be getting a look at that unless and until he filed charges. And maybe he's just playing, you know, forgive me, hide the salami, where he's just getting everybody all upset and no charges will ever come. And we're supposed to never see this thing. But what would a full

accounting look like? Because you're saying you want one too. That's not a rule. That's a practice. I have seen search warrants the day they were issued. I have had cases where my client has demanded a copy of the search warrant and has been given it way before any indictment. So he has the power to make public not only the search warrant, but also the affidavit. And let's remember, it doesn't provide a lot of protection for a judge to have to sign off on a search warrant. Judges give search warrants more easily than homeowners give Halloween candy. Yeah, this isn't on the judge, in my view. This is not on the magistrate judge. This is on Eric Garland. Go ahead, Hermit. Well, I was going to say it is on the judge, too. It is actually their job, their J-O-B, which they get paid for by the people, we the people, to actually examine

these search warrants. And Alan is correct. In practice, they rubber stamp them like, like, like, you know, I don't know the example, but they absolutely don't exercise the discretion that they're supposed to. And look, this particular magistrate judge, I don't know what happened here. But what I can tell you from this other case and other cases I've been involved in is by the time you get to this level where you're willing to do this type of a raid, you actually probably issued a bunch of other search warrants that have remained sealed at this point. And the president's team may or may not know about them. We certainly don't know about them. And while search warrants are more often revealed, it is the underlying

affidavits that an FBI agent went in and swore and was presented to the judge that remain under seal. So who's going to make the attorney general of the United States accountable? Who's going to do that? There's nobody above him except for the president. And, you know, certainly I think I agree with Alan that people need to be going into court right now and making motions and jumping up and down at this absolute travesty and outrage. I mean, it isn't just about this, this like traffic ticket of a violation. What I want to see the whole mountain of what's been presented to this magistrate judge and other magistrate judges in the district. There's a whole lot more than what we're seeing right now.

I know. I do want to talk about the judge. Hold on. Hold that thought. Hold that thought. I want to talk about the magistrate judge for one second. But before I get to that, the like my mind is jumping all over on the classified documents. Mike, I would be saying you have to elect a Republican House. I'm a Democrat, but I would be arguing you have to elect a Republican House in order to have investigations that are fair. Right now, the Democrats have proved that they are unwilling to have fair investigations. If you nominate, if you elect a Republican House, let's assume it's split. Senate is Democrat, the House is Republican. At least you get an opportunity.

Yes, I know, I got that. Kevin McCarthy is basically saying that, like put Republicans back in charge of the House and we will get to the bottom of this and saying Merrick Garland, you're on notice, preserve all your documents. Here's the point I wanted to raise, Harmeet. You say the traffic ticket. And I think what you mean is the fig leaf,

the pretext of, oh, classified documents. But don't you think like, I'll make it the defense of the magistrate judge without knowing more now. I think it's tied together. They probably have Trump on the likelihood that he's got classified documents at Mar-a-Lago that he shouldn't have, because we've learned a lot about that in the past couple of months. They probably have him on that. So they went into this magistrate judge, who, as far as I can tell, his name is Judge Bruce Reinhart. I don't know what his political affiliation is, just a magistrate judge. He was elevated magistrate judge in 2018, 10 years in private practice prior to that. He was an assistant U.S. attorney in South Florida prior to that. They say he left and then he represented some of Epstein's employees in connection with that whole thing. His wife was appointed to a

Florida circuit court. His wife's a judge, too, by Governor Rick Scott, a Republican. I don't know. He could be a never Trumper. I have no idea what the guy's politics are. But let's not forget, it looks like Merrick Garland went in there and didn't say January 6, January 6, January 6, but went in there and said, classified documents. And what we know about that is that in January, the National Archives retrieved 15 boxes that Trump took with him when he left the White House. They described it as mementos, memos. Apparently in there was the were the, quote, love letters between Trump and Kim Jong Un. That was Trump's description and some things that, you know, technically should have been left behind because they belong to the American people, not to the former president.

But they said also included was some classified national security information. Hell, that could have been the love letters. And then the archives contacted the Department of Justice. Federal prosecutors began a grand jury investigation into this. Prosecutors issued a subpoena earlier this year to the archives

to obtain the boxes. That's the last I knew about this until today. So can't you see a thing where Merrick Garland goes in there? He's trying to get him on January 6th. He telegraphed it to Lester Holt. The Democrats have been very loud about it on January 6th committee. And Merrick Garland says, I got it. He's got more boxes. I don't have the love letters to Kim Jong or whatever it is he thinks he's

missing. And then Maggie Haberman of The New York Times is writing a book, tweets out, oh, look at this picture I have of the Trump toilet in the White House with some random document that appears to have President Trump's handwriting on it as if it's a smoking gun. It could be a love note to Melania. We have no idea what's in that thing. And Merrick Garland says emergency. He's flushing. He hasn't complied.

The classified documents are only partially turned over. Look at the National Archives. Give me give me the word. I mean, he's flushing and Maggie Haberman has a has a photograph of it like, you know, this is such BS. I'm sorry to, you know, you know, use that language here. But it boggles the mind that with the crises going on in this country, this is what the United States Department of Justice and Attorney General are focusing on. Look, the National Archives are, to my understanding, I'm not an expert on this, but they're temporary custodians of these documents until Trump opens up his library, at which point these documents get to go back there, many of them. I mean, the classification, sure, we can argue about that. Is that at the level that we

should be crossing this line to go use these troops? But secondly, whoever the magistrate judges- Never before crossed, by the way. Just so people know, never before crossed. The first time in US history that they've raided the home of a former president. And if this becomes the new norm, believe me, Republicans are going to do this too. And I don't want to see that either as a Republican. But- Yeah, I see. Wait, wait, let her finish her point. Let her finish her point and then I'll leave it to you out. So the point I want to finish is, no, whoever the magistrate judge is, you're right, I'm not going to speculate about the person's politics or his affiliation with, you know, Epstein defendants. Magistrate judges around the United States have many times abdicated their duty to ask hard questions of the DOJ.

Why do you need a search warrant? Why can't this be done some other way? What's going on that makes it appropriate for me to be the magistrate judge to sign off on this very extreme exercise of power? Those questions are not being asked around the country. It isn't just this magistrate judge. And we see this type of abuse of power all too frequently. I say that as a civil libertarian. I agree with you. And we see this type of abuse of power all too frequently. I say that as a civil libertarian. I agree with you. And I do say that as a liberal Democrat who wants to have an opportunity to vote against President Trump in the next election, I want to be free to vote against him. I want you to be free to vote for him. I don't want to see efforts to

have bureaucrats tell us who we can vote for. And that's why I want to make sure that the Justice Department isn't weaponized toward the goal of preventing President Trump from seeking reelection. I want to have the right to vote against them. That's my American right. There is now speculation among some pundits in the in the press, Twitter and so on, saying this won't be the last. Trump's got a home in Trump Tower. He's got other properties. And what do you think the likelihood of that is, that we're going to see more than just this one rate? The lawyers should be in preemptive action, should go to court and seek injunctions, should seek a hearing to determine whether or not the Justice Department is abusing its

authority. Lawyers have to become more proactive and more aggressive. And I don't know what the Trump lawyers are doing. I would expect and hope they're preparing for this onslaught. But you can't just sit back and wait. You can't wait until he's indicted. The job of a criminal defense lawyer is to prevent indictment, to prevent searches. And that's what good criminal defense lawyers do. And I expect that.

Yeah, go on offense. Harmeet, this is another this is another comment, a hysterical one. If you ask me, you tell me. Michael Beschloss, NBC presidential historian. He thinks the classified documents is real and he thinks it's a massive deal that that President Trump would have such things. I'd love to go back and look what he thought about Hillary Clinton's documents as well. I'll do that at some point. But this is what he said. If Trump illegally took national security classified documents and hid them hid in his Florida mansion, and especially

if he shared them with outsiders. I don't I don't know where the proof of that is. He may have been putting all of our lives in danger and those of our families in danger. So it's a matter of life and death, according to this guy. What do you think? That's hysterical nonsense, unbecoming of somebody who calls himself a historian. It is ridiculous. And this is suddenly a crisis. This is suddenly an issue. The guy hasn't been in the White House for years. Have any of us died as a result of these free-floating national security documents at Mar-a-Lago? I mean, you cannot get beyond the fact that a search warrant was executed, meaning, as Alan said earlier, imminent threat of these documents disappearing or, you know, being used in a nefarious way when the former president is at a golf course somewhere else. There is no such risk. It is

ludicrous. And so Americans, so many conservatives, I get so angry with my conservative friends who say, well, if you know, what's the problem with the Patriot Act, Harmeet, if you're not doing something wrong, why do you care that the government is, you know, reading your emails? This is why you care. You care because you can have people come into your home when you're at work or playing golf or whatever, and rifle through your stuff, take it, and then the burden is on you to get it back. This is outrageous. It needs to change. And liberals have an incredible double standard about this. Would you like Peter Strzok reading your emails? You want that guy to have access to your private information given his bias and agenda? I don't want Republican or

Democrat prosecutors reading my stuff. The burden should be very high. The three of us have that in common. We have different political affiliations, but we all put our partisanship aside, all three of us, and focus on civil liberties, focus on the shoe on the other foot, focus on principles. That's what's needed in this country. That's why Megan's show is so important today, to have that kind of voice heard. And it's not being heard on CNN. It's not being heard on MSNBC. It's not being seen in the New York Times. It has to be promoted. America is a moderate, centrist country that believes in the rule of law and not the weaponization of partisanship, and that we in the middle have to stand up for this. We have to get ourselves organized and put the extremists

on the margin and focus on the rule of law objective. Sometimes it'll help our side. Sometimes it'll hurt our side. But the three of us agree that principle must be more important than partisanship. Amen to that. You know, it may not have been an imminent threat, Trump coming in and interfering with the execution of what would have been a normal process. But, you know, it is imminent. The loss of the House to the Republicans. We're 90 days away from an election now that the Democrats are poised to lose. disturbing things about what's happened here. Trump said it in a statement he put out last night, and I don't think he's wrong about the fact that he had massive wins this past week on these Tuesday primaries in terms of who he endorsed. He crushed DeSantis in a straw poll. He's by far the leading candidate for the GOP nomination. And the January 6th committee made no bones about the fact that its goal was to change people's hearts and minds before the midterm elections. And there's very good reason to question whether this is part of that.

So let's pick it up where I left off before the tease about what's imminent is the midterm elections, Alan. Well, first of all, there are efforts now to disqualify President Trump from being a leader of his party and from running for re-election. Some Democratic leaders have made up a story saying that if he were guilty of some crime like classified information, he couldn't run. The Constitution provides only four reasons a person can't run. Has to be over 35, has to be born in America, he has to have not fought in the Civil War as part of an insurrection. And he has to have been impeached with the impeachment plus disqualification. If he meets all of those four criteria, it doesn't matter whether he's convicted of a crime or

whether he's in jail. The Constitution provides the criteria for president, not Democrats in the legislature. So the effort to try to disqualify him is absolutely going to fail. And I can imagine a crisis in this country if Congress passes a statute disqualifying him, and he says, sorry, I'm running. I'm not being disqualified. We could have a real major constitutional crisis in this country over that issue. Yeah, if I can add on that, Democrats tried this in California by trying to pass this qualification that you had to disclose your tax returns to run for president. I'm one of the lawyers who went into court and invalidated that under the exact terms that Alan just set forth

here. Democrats can't, like we have this crap legislation being passed every day in the United States Congress. You think they can just sneak in a clause that says Donald Trump can't be president, and that can be constitutional. That's not how it works in America. No, it's a bill of the tangers. Trump came out. I mean, look, we are so light years away from Trump actually getting charged and then convicted and then stopped running for office. But this is a Democrat pipe dream. And if it happened, there'd be a complete meltdown in this country. I mean, I shuddered. I'm not sure we're light years away, Megan. I think we're more like light minutes away.

What? The way they're signaling. People in the Lawrence tribe who have the ear of the attorney general, giving him 15 grounds on which to indict, urging him, and academics are stretching the laws. If any of them were my students in my first year of class, where I used to give an exam, figure out how many crimes you can get, and then give a judgment as to whether they should be brought, Tribe and all of his associates would be getting C-minuses with great inflation. people being sued by Alex Vindman in the D.C. district court, you know, arguing for the opposite of what liberals should be arguing for. So Alan is absolutely correct. It's upside down world here in D.C. today. But wait, Harmeet, go go on about why you think it's not light years away, because, you know, normally, well, this DOJ kind of drags its feet a lot. But but normally it would

take a while for them to actually get an indictment. Although I will say once you execute, you know, a search warrant in the way they just did, normally you've got all your ducks in a row and you're ready to prosecute if you want. But it's just such a huge leap to go prosecute the former president of the United States, the likely opponent to the sitting president of the United States. Like, look, it's hard for me to believe. Megan, one thing that civil libertarians on both sides have been complaining about for years is the plethora and metastasizing size of the United States criminal code means that all of us are committing federal crimes on a regular basis. You, me, Alan, we've all committed federal crimes according to somebody's definition of that. It is very easy for federal prosecutors to make up a case. And if they are hacks and enabled by judicial hacks, able to get to get an indictment. It is not that hard for the feds to indict somebody.

So if you've made the decision that it's OK to send 30 FBI agents to the former president's home where he conducts business, where he's been hanging out for two years. They can't do it. Cross that line. No, but here's the thing. Just going back to my original point. Wait, wait, wait. I'm going back. I don't believe it. I think it's a lie.

It's pretext. That's a pretext to get in there and get into the safe, which, according to Eric Trump, didn't even have anything. You can find something. You can find somebody. I know, but they can't like even Merrick Garland, partisan though he is, has got to realize after they didn't go after Hillary Clinton for the 30,000 emails and the destruction, the acid washes, Trump put it, of her server. They cannot possibly turn around and go after Donald Trump, who, by the way, has the authority to declassify documents, unlike Hillary Clinton. There's just no even Merrick Garland's not that bold. But you know, Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the KGB, went to Stalin one day and said, Stalin, show me the man and I'll find you the crime. That's what's going on. Trump has been

targeted. And now the job of the tribes of the world is find me the crime. Do anything to find me the crime. They can do that to any of us. Absolutely. Megan, you, anything. They don't like what we're saying. They can do it to any of us. Well, by the way, they probably will be soon is where you just they just passed this, you know, act that that authorized 80 that 87000 new IRS agents. Oh, great. How's that going to go? Well, historically, it goes badly for the working and middle class. I was ordered four times during the Nixon administration. So this is not something new. Carthy Ice did this. Nixon did this. Now the shoe is on the other foot and it's the left that's doing this. It's just as bad. And true civil libertarians like us have to stand up against our own party, against the opposing party with equal vigor. They're out there saying exactly opposite. I listened just for kicks last night to some MSNBC. So I did that. So you don't have to. And they you would have thought I actually

wrote it down just so I would remember what the woman was saying. She was saying to the effect of is not exact quote. The republic depends on equal justice under law. OK, we all agree with that. The law must apply equally to Donald Trump, who she was making the point has managed to dodge responsibility for so many of these criminal inquiries that he's been the subject of. And so the left sees it as if Merrick Garland doesn't go after him, that's special treatment for Donald Trump, which they believe he's already got. I heard Scarborough this morning going on about how Bill Barr pre-rigged the whole Russiagate investigation and he really should have been gone after for obstruction. I mean, the same old arguments recycled as a justification for getting Trump on anything. Classified documents, January 6th. Take your pick.

If they wanted to get Scarborough for murdering his intern, a prosecutor could have stretched the law to get him. Let he who's without sin cast the first stone. Scarborough is certainly not without sin. And many of the other commentators are not without sin. And so the idea of applying a double standard just because you don't like the person is so dangerous to democracy. Because what about Hillary? What about Hunter? What about Hunter? I mean, Harvey, that's one of the questions. The Babylon Bee, always good for a laugh. They had a great headline. Where is it? I have so many papers, I can't keep track of them. Here it is. Kyle, man of the Babylon Bee tweets out Hunter Biden breathes sigh of relief as FBI raid team passes by his house on Waitamara Lago.

What about Hunter? Look, Hunter Biden, we have videos of him committing sex trafficking and drug offenses and admissions of weapons offenses. I still don't think that we should be using the power of the United States Department of Justice to single out our political opponents. So my point is, it's not like we got to focus on the big picture here. The big picture is Democrats are afraid that they cannot win the upcoming election, the 2024 election by legitimate means, and they're turning to illegitimate means. That's what is happening in front of us today. I agree with that. I agree with that. Oh, great. I like it. I like that point of agreement.

I think the price of principle, because that tells the whole story. You got more time. The price of principle. We all love Alan and his book. Can I, let me ask you this. Okay. The, as you know, Merrick Garland, you know, he, we don't know for sure whether he signed off on this, but just for the record, is there any chance?

He had any chance. Of course he did. Okay. Okay. So we were all in agreement this, but just for the record, is there any chance? He had to. Is there any chance? Of course he did. Okay. Okay. So we're all in agreement. And what are the odds that the White House, as it's claiming, was absolutely clueless that this was going to happen? B.S. I think President Biden was clueless on this.

Whether or not there were people in the White House is a different question. But I don't think the President of the United States signed off on this. He's a different question, but I think the president of the United States signed off on this. He says he didn't, and I believe him. He's out of it. He's out of it. His advisors definitely knew about it, signed off on it, and probably instigated it. What about, I mean, how on earth could they actually go after Donald Trump with criminal charges? I mean, truly, like how could they do it? Because let's talk about spin. How could they look at the American public with when Hillary Clinton got

away with this? I think they believe their own BS. I think that the people inside the Beltway are completely out of touch with what's happening in Washington. If you're the January 6th committee and putting on this ponderous show for the public and thinking that this is what all Americans think, you're completely out of touch. So I think they genuinely thought what we are doing is popular. We are going after somebody. We'll be applauded for this. It is backfiring, bigly. The big thing everybody's missing is if he were indicted, where would he be indicted? If he were indicted in Palm Beach County, he'd get a fair trial. If he were indicted in the District of Columbia, it's a foregone conclusion. All of the District of Columbia cases have resulted in convictions because, what, 85% of the jurors are Democrat, and probably most of them are very anti-Trump.

But this search took place in Palm Beach County. Now, the offense may have taken place in the District of Columbia, and I assure you that prosecutors would bring an indictment in the District of Columbia and probably would win a conviction. Then the question would be whether it was reversed on appeal. This is new reporting from Fox News on the subject of those classified documents allegedly at Mar-a-Lago. I mean, we know some were there. The question is, are more and how many? Sources were telling Fox News on Tuesday, investigators from the DOJ visited Mar-a-Lago in June for a meeting about turning over, I guess, more records because he's already given them 15 boxes as part of an investigation into documents former President Trump allegedly took with him from the White House to his private residence when he left

office in January 2021. Trump's attorneys were present at that meeting, and the sources say the former president himself stopped in to say hello for a few minutes the June meeting was about additional documents that were being sought but following it the Justice Department and FBI felt they were not getting the same cooperation they'd been receiving earlier in the probe according to a source with knowledge of the negotiations the perceived lack of cooperation is why a search warrant was requested and ultimately executed on Monday, August 8th at Trump's Palm Beach property. Do you believe that? Perceive lack of cooperation. That's no justification. They can still issue a subpoena. They hadn't issued subpoenas. That's

the first step, issue a subpoena. If then you think that evidence is being destroyed or hidden, then you go to the court and you get a search warrant, but you don't skip the step of subpoenaing if you're looking for justice. That's right. No, it's thug mode. This is an adversarial process. The United States Department of Justice are not inquisitors. They don't just get to come in and get whatever they want. There's a back and forth conversation. And if documents were not turned over, the president's lawyers may very well have had a good argument for that. That should have been hashed out in court, not gone into in this thuggish manner. And since when, like what is even allegedly in there that is of such national security importance that it's got to be done immediately? The greater likelihood, in my view, is that they

want something else. But let me make this point. They want something else. The reason there was urgency was they wanted to find a secret communications with John Eastman on the January 6th riots on overturning the election. That's what they thought was in that safe. But John be a fishing expedition for sure for looking for some new stuff. That is a completely illegitimate and frankly shocking abuse of power by the Department of Justice. That's what I think is happening here. Even if it was smoking gun documents, nobody is using them now. There's no imminent threat to national security. Oh, no, we're already past that.

No, but we're already past that. That is inappropriate. That the other thing is protectual. What they really want, I think, is January 6th documentation. And this is Andy McCarthy had a piece on this agreeing with that position today. And this is something he pointed out. I think this is very interesting. In recent weeks, I'm sort of quoting, but a paraphrasing, too, because I just took notes from it. In recent weeks, DOJ has gone after close advisors to Donald Trump, Jeffrey Clark, who sought to help Trump convince contested states of the premise, untrue, that DOJ believed Biden's victory might be fraudulent, like that wanted this guy was going

to tell everybody DOJ thinks this is a fraudulent win. So they they've gone after him. Constitutional law scholar John Eastman, and we mentioned architect of the legal strategy by which Trump unsuccessfully sought to persuade Mike Pence to discount the vote, also issued grand jury subpoenas to White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy, who were aware of and pushed back on Trump's schemes to undo the election results. And so the circle around Trump with respect to the legal advisors and others who had something to say about his strategy to overturn the election results is the exact circle that's been caught up in Merrick Garland's web. And now the big kahuna, Donald Trump himself, who they they continue to tell us on the January 6th committee, which, of course, is coordinating with Merrick Garland. He knew he knew it was false. He knew it was false. And he said it anyway. And some of us have been saying bullshit. He was a true

believer. He didn't know anything. He genuinely believed the stuff that he was saying. And they seem to think this is an important point legally to prove knowledge that it was false while he was saying it. And I believe Merrick Garland thought there might be stuff about that in the safe say in the United States that are criminal. And they're just trying to make up crimes out of a political disagreement. And again, that should never be allowed in America. The interesting legal issue that is unresolved is if you have probable cause for crime A classification, can you then use the search warrant not to get more evidence of that, but to get evidence of a totally different crime. That's an interesting legal issue that I think the Trump people will probably want to litigate because you're absolutely right, both of you. The motive behind this was not to get more information about classification. It was to get information about January 6th, but that's not what the application for the search warrant says. And so we'll see what the courts have to say about that. It's a very, very interesting legal issue. Let me ask you guys, if they want to go after Trump for, or conspiracy to defraud the United

States government, and this is one of the claims being kicked around with respect to Trump on the January 6th stuff, conspiracy to defraud, Then they do have to figure out what was in his head. What did he know? And did he intentionally lie about it? You know, did he know he had lost? I mean, the odds of them finding the Donald Trump black Sharpie memo where he says, dear diary, I know I lost, but I plan on unleashing a scheme that will fraudulently reinstall me into the office of the presidency are absolutely nil. So like, I don't know how dumb they think in this version of Trump is where he knew it all. He lied about it. He put it all in writing. He put it in a safe at Mar-a-Lago, the very safe near the boxes that he was in an active contentious dispute with the

government about returning and then flew off to New York and left it all. Like, I don't, this isn't a man I know. We know what president Trump has been thinking. Cause he tells us on Twitter and truth social every few minutes. Uh, you know, so I, that the premise that there's some big secret Megan, to your point is ridiculous. Look, this is, this is about, they are afraid of him and they're showing it by these actions. They're afraid of facing him in at the, at the polls. And this is how they're showing it by these actions. They're afraid of facing him at the polls. And this is how they're dealing with that fear instead of competing with better ideas, better candidates and better results for our country.

My favorite part of this episode is the Al Capone, Geraldo Rivera moment where they break into the safe in order to get the smoking gun and the safe is empty. And I suspect that's going to be true of a great many things they look into. They won't be empty, but there will not be significant evidence of the kinds of crimes that have been prosecuted in the past. Well, I'll tell you who should be really worried today under Biden, because I do think the Democrats are smart enough to realize if they're going to indict Trump and they don't slap that guy with something serious, there's going to be a revolution openly in the country. So if I were Hunter Biden, I would view this as a very bad development. But who knows? Perhaps I underestimate the chutzpah

of Merrick Garland and Joe Biden. But those two things are not equal. I mean, that's not going to forestall a crisis for sure. That's no thinking. And I don't believe the White House had no idea. Absolutely not. And of course, there's a way of knowing without knowing, like I'd really love to see an indictment. How about those documents? Deeply problematic, isn't it? I'd really like you to stop being the measured judge, which Joe Biden did say and, you know, be more active. And then it's like, you know, you shove the right memo in front of him and the next thing you know, it happens. They're not. But a real committee could investigate what the White House knew when

they knew it and who in the White House authorized this. That's a legitimate issue of inquiry for a real committee or for a special master. So if Republicans take control, we get that special master and Trump's lawyers need to be very aggressive in response to all of this. Alan, Harmeet, such a great discussion. Thank you both so much for being here. We appreciate it. Glenn Beck back on the program tomorrow. Lots to go over. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.