The Megyn Kelly Show - Hunter Biden Plays the Victim, and Left Shifts Blame on Israel, with Peter Schweizer, Margot Cleveland, and Rabbi Steve Leder | Ep. 685

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by Margot Cleveland, lawyer for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, and Peter Schweizer, host of The Drill Down podcast, to discuss Hunter Biden playing the victim and speaking to the press instead of testifying before Congress, the contempt proceedings that will now take place against him, the relevance of Hunter Biden's lobbying operations, what we know about President Biden's involvement, the reasons we already know President Biden has committed bribery because his family was enriched, the evidence of corruption that has been revealed so far, the shifting narrative about President Biden's involvement in Hunter Biden's business, Hunter Biden going on Moby's podcast and saying the GOP in the House are trying to kill him to hurt his dad President Biden, what's behind Jack Smith's aggressive timeline on the Trump 1/6 trial and how the Supreme Court is getting involved, the major lawsuit filed against the Biden administration by The Daily Wire and The Federalist, and more. Then Rabbi Steve Leder of Wilshire Boulevard Temple joins to discuss his disappointment in people’s inability to disambiguate Hamas' atrocities and the more nuanced situation in Gaza, the clear anti-Semitism from some on the left, the depth of Jew hatred and hypocrisy of some of his former allies, how anti-Israel Americans flip the script and blame victims, who really are the perpetrators in Gaza and the Middle East, the true meaning of Hanukkah (and what First Gentleman Doug Emhoff got wrong), a powerful message to American Jews and supporters of Jewish people this tough year, and more.Cleveland: https://nclalegal.org/margot-cleveland/Schweizer: https://www.thedrilldown.com/Leder: https://www.instagram.com/steve_leder 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, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. A wild scene on Capitol Hill today where Hunter Biden was scheduled to be deposed behind closed doors as Republicans pursue an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. For months, Republicans have been looking into the president's alleged ties, possible ties to his son's overseas business dealings and to the Biden's enrichment as a result of Joe Biden, then vice president's connections. But instead of appearing before lawmakers, Hunter went to Capitol Hill and gave

them the bird. He flipped them the bird rhetorically. Jonathan Turley, very smart lawyer, is out there saying, I cannot fathom for the life of me why he would choose this. It's so stupid to openly defy the subpoena, choosing instead to actually show up there showing you are available, but instead to make comments in front of the press, but not take any questions, where he waxed poetic about how hard it is to be a Biden. I'm here today to acknowledge that I've made mistakes in my life and wasted opportunities and privileges I was afforded. I am first and foremost a son, a father, a brother, and a husband from a loving and supportive family. They've ridiculed my struggle with addiction.

They've belittled my recovery. And they have tried to dehumanize me, all to embarrass and damage my father, who has devoted his entire public life to service. They displayed naked photos of me during an oversight hearing. And they have taken the light of my dad's love, the light of my dad's love for me, and presented it as darkness. They have no shame. Oh, my God. I think there's a psychiatric term for that. It's called projection. That is unbelievable. My dad's love. You are a tax cheat, sir. I'm sorry. That's what's happened to you. You exploited the Biden family name. The American people elected your dad in good faith to that

office. And then you spent the next several years exploiting it to line your own pocket. That's what happened. No one feels sorry for you, you absolute baby. He also took aim at the so-called MAGA Republicans, insisting that his father was not. Here's the new term. Ready? Here's the new iteration of what Joe Biden was not doing, was not financially involved in my business. Let me state as clearly as I can. My father was not financially involved in my business. Let me state as clearly as I can, my father was not financially involved in my business, not as a practicing lawyer, not as a board member of Burisma, not in my partnership with a Chinese private businessman, not in my investments at home nor abroad, and certainly not as an artist. And in the depths of my addiction, I was extremely

irresponsible with my finances. But to suggest that as grounds for an impeachment inquiry is beyond the absurd. There's no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen. James Comer, Jim Jordan, Jason Smith, and their colleagues have distorted the facts by cherry-picking lines from a bank statement, manipulating texts I sent, editing the testimony of my friends and former business partners, and misstating personal information that was stolen from me. No matter how many times it is debunked, they continue to insist that my father's support of Ukraine against Russia is the result of a non-existent bribe. Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry,

or hear what I have to say. This is spectacular stuff. This is a gift. This is mana from heaven. This guy, can you believe the nerve? Can you imagine not paying millions of dollars in taxes, in taxes, getting paid 80 grand a month on a Ukrainian energy company that you don't know shit about energy, cashing all these checks as your uncle Jim does the same, your kid, everybody, and then going out there and having the nerve to pay the play the victim. It's like he's spectacular. This guy, what a class act. Republicans are now threatening to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress. Hello. That is what you must do. Right now, though, it's unclear when or if that will happen. Joining me to discuss it all, Peter Schweitzer,

president of the Government Accountability Institute and co-host of The Drill Down with Peter Schweitzer, which I enjoy, Peter, and Margo Cleveland, senior legal correspondent at The Federalist and lawyer with the new Civil Liberties Alliance. Peter and Margo, welcome back to the show. Boy, we lucked out having you guys booked. I mean, we knew that he was supposed to give testimony this morning. We didn't know it was going to come out like, can you believe the whining and the, oh, poor me. You took my father's light, the light of his love, and turned it into darkness. Is that what this impeachment inquiry is about, Peter, turning the light into darkness? Well, yeah, I think there's a lot of darkness. I think it has to do with the financial deals that Hunter was involved in.

I mean, this is really honestly almost like a Saturday Night Live skit. You know, Hunter Biden has been hiding from taking questions from the press, from taking questions from the IRS, from people who wanted to investigate these things. And now when he's been subpoenaed, he suddenly shows up and doesn't even talk about the substance of what's going on. Look, my feeling is that there is already ample evidence for a criminal bribery inquiry involving the president of the United States. I think the committee is making a mistake by focusing on money going to Joe Biden. The bribery statute is clear. If your family profits off of your public service specific acts you're doing, and I think there's ample evidence for it, that constitutes bribery. You don't have to show that Joe Biden personally profited from this. And we have tens of millions of dollars of examples to show that the family

received money and Joe Biden took specific actions that benefited those that were paying his family. As far as I'm concerned, bribery has already been proven. And this is all kind of just a shy sideshow. So you're saying that the Republicans are setting too high a standard for themselves in this impeachment inquiry. They all this stuff is interesting about, you know, we just heard that there were some small payments, relatively speaking, from Hunter's account directly into Joe Biden's account. I think it was like thirteen hundred bucks a month for a few months. And Democrats kind of laugh like, oh, yeah, you got him on the $4,000 alleged auto loan repayment. This is not the 10% of a Chinese $5 million payment. Republicans, you know, put up or shut up. And your point is kind of there doesn't have to be any payment from Hunter or Jim Biden to Joe.

Not one. The enrichment of Hunter and Jim is plenty. Yeah, exactly right. I mean, really, honestly, it's only the dumb politicians who take bribes by taking the money themselves. They usually lose use a third party, whether that's their chief of staff or a family member. And look at the Menendez case. I mean, Senator Menendez's defense is that, well, that was my wife's business. It was not mine. And the Republicans are really playing into Democratic hands because the goalposts have shifted. When I first reported on the overseas deals with the Bidens in 2018, they said there were no deals. Then it became that Joe had no knowledge of the deals. Then it became Joe did not participate in the deals. Then it became that Joe had no knowledge of the deals. Then it became Joe did not participate in the deals. Then it became now that Joe did not profit from the deals. They're always going to

move the goalposts. You're not going to get Democrats to acknowledge what is going on here. And the criminal legal standard, the federal statute is clear. If you pay a politician or a third party in exchange for favors in government actions, which I think is there, that constitutes bribery as if Joe Biden took the tens of millions of dollars personally himself. OK, but what's the favor? I mean, I think you it's pretty well established that everybody around Joe Biden got paid. And there's actually plenty of evidence that Joe Biden got some money, too. It's just a question of for what, but what, what is the, you know, this quid pro quo? What, what is, what's the deal? What did Joe Biden do in response? Cause most of this dough came post his vice presidency, uh, though not all of it. Hunter was on that board while Joe was the

sitting vice president in charge of Ukraine policy. Yeah, no, I think there's a couple of examples. I mean, I could give three of the first one is the firing of the prosecutor. I kind of poo-pooed this when it first came out in 2019. But honestly, there's an email from Vadim Pazarsky, the executive at Burisma in late 2015, telling Hunter Biden, we're paying you money. Your deliverables for us to get this money is to get the prosecutor to lay off our boss, the guy that's paying you money. We know that about six weeks after that, according to his business partner, Devin Archer, Hunter and Burisma executives called Joe Biden from Dubai and said, you need to fire the prosecutor. And we know that

Joe Biden later bragged about using a billion dollars in USAID to get the prosecutor. And we know that Joe Biden later bragged about using a billion dollars in USAID to get the prosecutor fired. We also now know, based on John Solomon's reporting, that the State Department, in the midst of all of this, was actually giving accolades to the prosecutor. So that's example number one. That's important. Let's just pause there, because I just think this is a point that gets missed too often, not by you two. But that John Solomon reporting showing State Department correspondents where they were all said they were fine with the prosecutor. They liked that Ukrainian prosecutor. They thought he was doing a good job cleaning up the corruption. And they were taken aback when the then sitting vice president, Joe Biden Biden suddenly said, no, we're going to fire

him. No, we've got to get him fired or we're going to withhold the aid. And he has the correspondence showing the State Department employees being like, what? Wait, this is a reversal from where we just were. I mean, I just think that's so telling. It is very telling. And Megan, also, let's keep in mind, it's not a defense to say, well, I wanted to fire him for other reasons, too. The moment that Joe Biden knew that his son was on the board of Burisma, which he knew by the spring of 2014, the moment that his son called him to ask him to fire the prosecutor, Joe Biden had a legal responsibility, according to federal law, to recuse himself from any decision that would have benefited Burisma. So even if he said, oh, I fired him for other reasons, the fact of the matter is he has a legal obligation to avoid even the appearance of a connection between them.

So for me, the firing the prosecutor is a great example. Look at the issue of Yelena Baturina in 2014. She wires millions of dollars to Hunter's business. Three point five million dollars. tried to raise in the debate against Biden that Chris Wallace shut down, did not let Trump raise it. It was a legitimate, but Trump was right. And he didn't get to air it on the presidential debate stage because the moderator interfered Candy Crowley style to stop the discussion. Sorry, keep going, Peter. No, you're exactly right. And and here's the the strange thing. So you've got Yelena Baturina, who is a pro-Putin oligarch. Her husband was the mayor of Moscow. She is listed in Obama State Department cables that came out in WikiLeaks as a member of

Russian organized crime. She wires $3.5 million to Hunter Biden. About five, six weeks later, Russia invades Ukraine. The the Biden sort of the Obama Biden administration releases a list of hundreds of oligarchs, Russian oligarchs who are now sanctioned because of their connections to the regime. And guess whose name is not on the list? That is a very curious and glaring omission on the part of the Biden administration. So just stated explicitly, you're suggesting she bought her way off the list. She bought her and and glaring omission on the part of the Biden administration. So it'd be very interesting- Just stated explicitly,

you're suggesting she bought her way off the list. She bought her and her husband's way off the list. That's correct. And when Vladimir Putin went back into Ukraine, again, during the Biden administration, now, guess what? They expanded the sanctions even more. It still does not include Elena Baturino, which is,

again, a massive omission. And the third example I would give is the exclusion that Chinese companies have from abiding by our accounting standards to list on the American stock exchanges, the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ. Only companies on the planet, German, Japanese, American companies, all have to abide by Sarbanes-Oxley and other restrictions. Chinese companies are exempt because of an agreement that Joe Biden, as vice president, negotiated in 2013 with Chinese officials. As he was negotiating the terms of that agreement, which ended up benefiting the Bank of China. Guess who inked the private equity deal with the Bank of China? Hunter Biden. This was all going on in the summer of 2013. So you see this pattern of favorable treatment for entities that are

paying Hunter Biden. And, you know, Joe initially said he didn't know about the deals. He never met with the business partners. We now know that all of that is not true. So that to me is grounds for the impeachment inquiry. And I think when it comes to the firing of the prosecutor, there is already ample evidence that shows that there is bribery that took place. All right. So, Margo, let's talk about what happened with Hunter on Capitol Hill today. I mean, the brazenness of showing up there. Right. It's kind of like double barrel, middle finger. He's there. He's where he was subpoenaed to show up. But he wouldn't give testimony because he wanted to set the terms of where and how he would do it, which is not how this works. If you or I got subpoenaed

by the House, we'd have to show up where they told us to and give testimony or they'd find us in contempt. And he wouldn't have testified to anything, even if it was on public in the middle of Congress. His attorney would have had him plead the fifth and say, I can't talk about this. But you are so right. That was manna from heaven. His father's public service, the public service that enriched the family by millions from this poor guy from Scranton, please, he got that money. And his family was enriched by the public service of the selling of the Biden name. And as Peter said, all of these favorable

treatments to these other folks who were feeding Hunter Biden millions of dollars, as well as Jim Biden. Then you got to look at the fact that he said, my father had nothing to do with the financial affairs. However, he spun it this time. You know what he didn't mention? He talked about being on the board of Burisma and being an investor. He didn't talk about the lobbying, though, how his father had nothing to do with the financial benefits from the lobbying, which is clear, even if even if we're going to put to the side bribery, which I don't think we should. There was clear lobbying going on.

And his father was the reason that lobbying was being was made possible. So explain that. Can you just put a little meat on that bone? Sure. So and this actually ties to the indictment that just came out in California that's against Hunter Biden. After Patrick Ho, who was one of the Chinese connected businessmen, was under, well, was about to be under indictment. He transferred a million dollars that went to a partnership Hunter Biden had, and then Hunter had that million dollars transferred to him, supposedly for legal representation. Oh, yeah. Oh, is, I know this one. This is the one, the judge, that brilliant judge who stopped the plea deal was like, wait a minute,

were you there? Lawyers? Were you, were you the lawyer for this guy for this million dollar payment? And he was on his heels in court. He was like, oh yeah. Oh, well I'd have to go back and check. And everyone paying attention said that's him trying not to perjure himself in front of the judge because that wasn't a legal fees payment. That was that was a bought and paid for bribe or something much more nefarious than straight legal fees. So keep keep going. Sorry, just trying to keep the audience up. That's exactly right. And and that's not really the old news. You're right. That came up during the plea agreement.

And it was a tell when he said, well, I think it was my law firm. But, you know, I'm not positive of that. The indictment that Weiss just dropped in California continued to pretend that was legal fees. It wasn't legal fees. It didn't even go to Hunter Biden's law firm. It went to a different association that was a holding company. Then Hunter took all of that money and spent it on his personal affairs. So was this money a bribe or was this money to get Hunter to lobby the DOJ to drop the investigation into Ho? Or did he embezzle this money from Patrick Hoolt. Any of these scenarios is a clear criminal violation. But I think the lobbying has the most meat to it. Even if you're saying the Burisma stuff wasn't a bribe, which I'm with Peter on that, there's more than ample evidence. It was lobbying on behalf of Burisma. He was

working, Hunter Biden was specifically working with another lobby firm to help Burisma kind of clear its name so that it could kind of come out into the friendly nations and make money after all of this corruption. That was clearly- What would be the import of that? Would that be a violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, where if you're doing the business of a foreign government, you have to be open about it. Right, correct. And that's the lobbying component of it. And I do wonder if Weiss is going down that road, because the indictment in California that dropped started out with a description of Hunter Biden as being a businessman, an artist. Apparently, he's also an actor given today's performance. And then we also have lobbyists thrown in there. So Weiss actually put lobbyists in it. And yet

we didn't have any far registration showing he was doing this lobbying. So is there any possibility he lobbied on? He was talking about doing that on behalf of a domestic corporation that would not require that kind of disclosure under FARA? Right. I'm sure that his attorneys will be able to spin it as some reason that there's no requirement for it. But I don't see that flying with Burisma. Definitely not when we're talking about the Chinese companies. And this is just part of it. There is a huge, a huge business, multinational, going through so many countries, going through millions of dollars. We have barely scratched the surface of this. Well, let me ask you this.

I mean, just the audience should remember that Paul Manafort, who ran Trump's campaign for a while, he he was indicted and convicted over this kind of behavior for not for allegedly acting as a foreign agent for Ukraine and not registering it, not disclosing it. So why why would he be prosecuted? And Hunter Biden would not. And then speaking of that same thing, this administration or Congress, I should say that that Congress found Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro in contempt of Congress for flouting subpoenas in exactly the way Hunter Biden just did. And as this comes in, Margo, you're a lawyer. We just got this in from my team quoting here, Hunter Biden today. This is House Oversight Chair James Comer and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan.

Hunter Biden today defied lawful subpoenas. And we will now initiate contempt of Congress proceedings, saying we will not provide special treatment because his last name is Biden. So it seems to me they're likely to succeed on that based on what we saw this morning. He showed up. He was available. What was his good reason for not giving testimony? He said, I wanted to be in public. They said, no, we'll dictate. We wanted to be behind closed doors, which is their right. And he just said, F you, I'm going to go out and talk to the press and I'm not going to give you the testimony at all. In no world is that OK? Absolutely not. And his whole idea that the Republicans are leaking, you know, selective information. Democrats have the transcript, too. They can share it with anyone.

But he's taking things out of context. It was a big lie. And Hunter Biden knows this. And there's no way, again, his attorney would let him say anything substantive. But again, it allowed him to play the victim card, the mega Republican card. But there's too much evidence out there for the country to look at this and say this is just an attack on Hunter Biden because of what his last name is. People know it doesn't pass the sniff test. They know that there's something going on here and it's taking time, but it's actually finally breaking through to to the media, to the general populace

of how this money went to the Biden family. I want to go back, Peter, to what you were saying. And again, you know, understanding that they don't have to prove payment to Joe Biden. They only have to prove that the family members were enriched as a result of some deal that involved Joe Biden's conduct in some way. This story has evolved, as you made reference to a few minutes ago. Initially, we were told we never discussed it, that Joe Biden never discussed business with his son. Then they changed it to, uh, he was never in business with his son, never in business. And then today we got a new iteration from Hunter of, he was not financially involved in business. So that could leave open he was in business,

but wasn't getting direct payments, which kind of underscores your point earlier, which is only the dumbasses would take a direct payment when they're involved in like a corruption scheme. There's other ways of doing it. And so I think we're getting closer and closer to the truth and to him getting less and less able to wiggle because there's too much evidence that disproves the lie that he never discussed business and that he wasn't in business. Anyway, here's just some of that.

Well, actually, let's just listen to the way he put it today first so the audience can hear his latest claim in SOT3. Let me state as clearly as I can. My father was not financially involved in my business, not as a practicing lawyer, not as a board member of Burisma, not my partnership with a Chinese private businessman, not in my investments at home nor abroad, and certainly not as an artist. Okay. So that's where he's going, right? He wasn't financially involved in that. Maybe they can prove that. I don't know. I mean, maybe not, but it's kind of beside the point. Yeah, it is. When he says my dad was not financially involved in my businesses, he's saying my dad was involved in my businesses. That's really what he's saying.

He's just trying to carve out the financial part of it. And there's just so much evidence here. If you look at the Hunter Biden laptop, which I know has been picked over so many times, there are ample communications, not just with Hunter Biden, you know, communicating with his dad, but with his business partners communicating with his dad, Eric Schwerin and Devin Archer communicating with the vice president of the United States. I mean, who are they? They're business partners with his son. What are they talking about? They're not talking about the weather that was jokingly referenced in the past. You also have the issue of the phone. I mean, Joe Biden, vice president of the United States, is carrying around his official phone that he has as the vice

president of the United States at Secure. He's got a phone line that is for his family. That's his personal phone. He's also carrying around a phone that is being paid for by who? Rosemont Seneca Partners, which is Hunter Biden's business. Why on earth is he carrying around a phone that's being paid for by his son's business? Because he wants to be available to talk to his son and the business partners like Eric Schwerin.

It's crystal clear how this thing operated and they've tried to structure it in such a way to give them plausible deniability. business partners like Eric Schwerin, it's crystal clear how this thing operated. And they've tried to structure it in such a way to give them plausible deniability. The problem is, is that the evidence that continues to amount, they simply can't make that point anymore. So they now need to increasingly parse their words. And again, I think the point to make here is, even if Joe Biden didn't get a dime, there's plenty evidence that he got, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars from Hunter and his brother. But even if he didn't get a dime, there is still criminal conduct that occurred here. And we have to ask the broader question, Megan.

I, you know, raised the same question when it came to the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation back in 2015, 2016. Do we want to have a country? Yeah. I mean, Megan, do we want to have a country where the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense, as long as they don't take money, their adult children, maybe even their spouse, can go out and secure multimillion dollar deals with Chinese and Ukrainian and from companies all around the world. But as long as that politician doesn't take a dime, it's OK. Is that going to become the Biden rule? Is that really the standard that we want for our leaders? I sure hope not. The you know, the allegation by Hunter and that soundbite that we played was I was an addict and I behaved irresponsibly with money.

OK, that both of those things are true, but also not at issue here. It's it's really not what anybody's accusing Hunter of doing. There no one's bringing up his addiction and nor is that a legal excuse to tax cheating. And he's saying that then he pivots to, but that's not grounds for impeachment. And to me, that was just such an obvious straw man, like, right. And no one's claiming that it is. Yeah. Well, and I will say this, Megan, I've talked to two of Hunter Biden's former business partners, Devin Archer and Jason Galanis. Galanis is now in prison. And they will both tell you that, yeah, Hunter clearly had an addiction, but he showed up at meetings. He charmed these foreign businessmen when they had very detailed, specific discussions.

He was there. So, you know, they went from saying at first he's this buttoned up businessman. Now they're saying he's like this druggie who could barely get dressed in the morning because they're trying to emphasize that point and avoid the responsibility. The fact of the matter is, is he did show up at meetings. He did make presentations. But separate apart from that, well, the point I'm going for is, yeah, I don't care whether he was high or he was sober. The point is you, the allegation is you got on this board and took this money as part of a quid pro quo that involved your dad, the sitting vice president. That's it's not. Yes, there's a separate matter of criminal charges against you for tax being a tax

cheat. That's not what the impeachment inquiry is about. It's about the alleged quid pro quo. It's about enrichment for political favors. You also appear to have committed a bunch of other crimes when it comes to not paying your taxes and dealing with a gun. But he's trying to mix the two because he can bring up his addiction and try to play the sympathy card. Meanwhile, the quid pro quo. No one gives a damn if you did that while in a drug induced haze. All we care about is the American people is did you do that? And did your father participate when he was our sitting VP? Yeah, no, no, that that's exactly right. I mean, whether whether he was sober or whether he was on

drugs, if he had this drug addiction and he hadn't done foreign deals, people would have felt sorry for him, but they certainly would not be investigating it. This is about the conduct of his father, ultimately. And whether Hunter wants to say that he did that because he was trying to enable me or whatever is irrelevant. The fact is, is that his father took actions in his official capacity. He certainly played along with the notion that his son was juiced in meeting with his business partners on multiple occasions. And so it's not something that is even relevant anymore. And I think if you look at a lot of the polling now, Megan, that has come out, the Harvard-Harris poll, the New York Times poll, this is an issue that resonates with people because they see the pattern of behavior.

They see how the story has changed. I don't think this gambit is going to work. It may help with the base of Biden supporters, however large that is or small that is, but it's not helping with independent swing voters. And kind of what I've spent this past half hour talking mostly to Peter about, the impeachment inquiry. Why is Joe Biden in trouble for any of this? Like what connection does he have, if any? And he's not in trouble because Hunter didn't pay his taxes. That's a separate lane. And that's Hunter's legal troubles that he's dealing with right now in two different jurisdictions that are alleged crimes. The impeachment inquiry is about selling access and getting favors for the enrichment of the son's bank account and in some instances, Joe Biden's brother's bank account. But Hunter

keeps conflating the two. Hunter's lawyer, Abby Lowell, has tried to argue in the second lane the criminal charges against Hunter, which now include this gun charge and tax evasion for later years. They let the most troubling years lapse the statute of limitations. He says this is BS, that Joe Schmo would never be charged criminally for these crimes and that this is a political persecution. Here he was to CNN's Sot9. The charges in this new tax indictment talk about a period where Hunter was at the lowest ebb of his addiction. And like people in that regard, and I know everybody in America either has somebody in their family or friends who suffer from addiction, he certainly did things that he's not proud of. But wait, what happened since? He got himself sober in 2019, and he paid all of the taxes that are owed in this indictment more than two years ago with interest and penalties. Nobody in that position would be charged the way he was yesterday.

Agree? Absolutely not. And I want to add a third line there, what the FBI and the DOJ did to protect the Biden family, because that is just as important. And the criminal charges that were just dropped in California established that there was a protect Biden racket going on because everything in there they knew about before the 2020 election. It tracks everything that the whistleblowers said. The only reason they weren't charged is because they gave a sweetheart deal to Hunter Biden just, I think it was a couple weeks after the whistleblowers went forward. And they knew about it. And all of a sudden, we have the U.S. attorney,

the assistant U.S. attorney in Delaware, contacting Hunter's lawyers to come up with this really complicated scheme to let him plead to basically nothing. So complex, in fact, that now we've got this whole procedure about, well, is this diversion agreement valid? Is it not valid? Does it get rid of all these- I'll get to that in one second. So you got to look, there's a third lane here. The third lane is what did our DOJ, our FBI do to protect the Biden family? And the lane about his tax violations was clearly covered up. And as much as Lowell wants to say this is when he was in the deepest depths of his addiction, the indictment dropped in California. It was extremely clear that the evasion of taxes in 2018 was done later, after he had already gone and rehabilitated himself. It wasn't filing false returns while he was addicted. It happened, I think, in 2020. So you can't even blame it on the addiction that he lied on these tax returns.

It's several million dollars. The notion that a regular person not named Biden would not be prosecuted for that is absurd. It's absurd. You look at the stats of who gets prosecuted by IRS agents, and it's overwhelmingly men like Hunter Biden. And the dollar figures tend to be what I think it's around 300,000 that they don't pay. It's far less than two point whatever million like he did. And in anybody's return, if you've got write offs for hookers, you're going to get in trouble. Those are not business expenses. It doesn't take a seasoned IRS agent to find it. It's a lie.

He got away with it for as long as he did because he's a Biden. He didn't get targeted for prosecution because of the last name. Everyone knows that. And this lawyer, Abby Lowell, is just trying to spin us. I want to take a quick break because I want to do that. But then I want to come back with Hunter. He actually gave an interview to this the rocker Moby. And you will not believe what he's he should he really he won't talk to Congress, but I'll talk to Moby and he really should keep his mouth shut. We'll go there with Peter and Margo next. Stand by.

All right, guys, so a couple of questions to clean up here. So what happened this morning? Comer wants to hold him in contempt. Just as a practical matter, what will that mean? Like, what will that look like? Will he have to serve time if he's found in contempt? Like, what happens to him? Peter, do you know? Well, I think, you know, Steve Bannon faced a similar situation. He claimed executive privilege because he'd served in the Trump administration. This is a mirror case. And Bannon's looking, I think, at four months in jail because of this. So I think that's a real possibility. Look, I think as far as the hearings are concerned, Megan, the reason you want them behind closed doors is in that format, in the privacy of a meeting, in that format, you can have extended questioning and conversations. If you have the public hearings, you get where each politician gets five minutes,

nothing gets accomplished, nothing of substance. So I'm glad they're sticking to their guns because if they're going to question him, it needs to be in the context of an actual deposition rather than the kind of political theater we see in these public congressional hearings. OK, so he's in trouble. But then what this is, there's not an official impeachment inquiry going on in the House that they've voted on yet. It just got started, but they haven't voted to support it. And even if they do, that won't be an official impeachment effort. It's just an inquiry still, just with the stamp of approval. So they're looking at doing that. Do we think, Peter, that that's going to happen, that they will vote to support an official impeachment inquiry? I think they will, and I think it will give them more power in terms of subpoenas to gather information. Whether that vote passes or not, I think it will. Hunter Biden is still in contempt of Congress.

You know, if a congressional committee that has subpoena power subpoenas you and you don't show up, you have a legal issue. But I do think we're going to see the expansion to the impeachment inquiry, and it's going to provide more evidence and more information to confirm what we already know. And I think that is a disaster for Joe Biden. And keeping in mind here, that's a long way away from actually impeaching Joe Biden in the House. And even if they were to impeach Joe Biden in the House, there is zero chance of conviction in the Senate, similar to what we saw under President Trump, because the Senate is controlled by the same party as the president. You know, the impeachment is basically like an indictment. And then the trial takes place in the Senate and you're found guilty or not. So, you know, yes, it could dirty him up politically in the same way

the Dems did to Trump. But just, you know, for people who really want to see Joe Biden gone, don't get your hopes up. That's that's not where this is going in any sane man's take on what lies ahead. I want to get to what Hunter Biden is saying. Amazingly, he gives an interview to Moby. I guess they have like the addiction thing in common or so I read. And so there must be some sympathy going on there. And listen to the musings of Hunter Biden and what's really behind all this drama in SOT6. I recognize that none of this is necessarily about me. They are trying to, in their most illegitimate way, but rational way, they're trying to destroy a presidency. And so it's not about me. In their most base way, what they're

trying to do is they're trying to kill me, knowing that it will be a pain greater than my father could be able to handle. These people are just sad, very, very sick people that have most likely just faced traumas in their lives that they've decided that they are going to turn into an evil that they decide that they're going to inflict on the rest of the world. OK, so it's about the childhood trauma of James Comer and Jim Jordan, Margot. That's what's and the effort as a result of that trauma to kill Hunter Biden, which would then in turn kill Joe Biden from grief and sadness. That's his take on what's happening here. Well, he is right on one thing. This isn't about Hunter Biden.

It's about Joe Biden and Joe Biden taking bribes, allegedly, that we had from Ukraine. Joe Biden helping the money go to Hunter Biden. So Hunter is right. This isn't about him when we're talking about the impeachment inquiry, that lane. But the tax stuff, that's all about Hunter and his evasion there and the gun charges. That's about Hunter. It is ridiculous, though, that he's it's projection. I think, as you said, that these are evil people who are acting out because of it.

Hunter showed us the acting out that he had. And great, he's recovered. Has nothing to do with whether or not Joe Biden helped accept bribes through his family members. No, I mean, listen, they keep saying, oh, you know, millions of Americans have had somebody in the family who's an addict or dealt with it themselves. Right. And if you've ever had somebody who's an addict who you love and they happen to commit a crime, which is not that unusual for addicts, they don't get off because they can say, I was an addict when I did that thing. That's not how this works. It doesn't work that way for regular people and it doesn't work that way for Hunter. So they really should stop playing that card because there's not a person in America who's had to deal with that issue that got special treatment or got a pass because the loved one

said, oh, well, I was an addict and that's why I stole or I did X, Y, or Z. Let's go back, Margo, to what you were saying on the diversion agreement where I stopped you because it's a little complicated, but we're going to make it simple for the audience. Hunter Biden in the lane of the criminal charges against him, which are now in California for the tax cheating and in Delaware for the gun, having a gun and lying on the gun application. He tried to strike this sweetheart deal with the prosecutors in July. And the prosecutors, we, I think both believe were totally on his side. And the only

reason that sweetheart deal did not go through is because that smart judge said, what is this? You're giving immunity on everything. No, no, I'm not signing off on that. But the prosecution, David Weiss, may have been too cute by half here. And what they did manage to sign before the judge found this whole thing may actually get Hunter off in the criminal lane entirely. His lawyers are bringing what looks like to me a pretty good argument that a lot of these charges have already been waived because of what David Weiss signed with Hunter in July. So can you explain that? Sure. So the pretrial diversion agreement is something that was entered into by the U.S. attorney and by Hunter Biden. A diversion agreement does not have to be approved by a judge. The diversion agreement was about the gun and said if Hunter doesn't buy another gun, if he doesn't use drugs, then after 24 months, then there will be no charge. But they didn't say no charge about the

gun. They said no charges related to anything in Exhibit 1 and Exhibit A, which went through and detailed all of these financial affairs that Hunter was doing during that time period, including the underlying tax problems. Because the diversion agreement did not require the judge to approve it, Hunter Biden is arguing this agreement is fully binding. We both signed it. It wasn't conditioned on anything. And under this agreement, which I'm living up to, I'm still staying sober, I'm not buying guns, they can't prosecute me. And they can't prosecute me for the gun charges or the tax charges. Or if another charge comes later for a FARA or a bribery, watch for his attorneys to argue they can't prosecute me for that.

It does look like a very solid argument. And I've actually debated other conservative attorneys on this. I don't think it's going to fly one before this judge, because this judge has already kind of shown her hand that she doesn't think there was ever what's called a meeting of the minds under contract. Because the prosecution, once it got caught by that judge was like, huh, what? Oh, we didn't mean to give him blanket immunity on everything. We swear. We're just these dumb ass bumpkins who don't know anything because they got so much shit for trying to give away the whole farm. So they tried to pretend like they didn't realize they were giving him sweeping immunity. But meanwhile, Hunter's lawyers are like, that's a lie.

We all knew he was getting sweeping immunity. It's right there, black and white. So the judge is kind of using the acting job by David Weiss to say, oh, see, no meeting of the minds. You didn't agree on what was being waived. That, along with the fact that during the hearing, Hunter Biden said, oh, no, of the minds. You didn't agree on what was being waived. That, along with the fact that during the hearing, Hunter Biden said, oh, no, no, no, I'm not going to plead if I don't get this diversion agreement, which was also showing there was no meeting of the minds on whether it was a separate agreement. So I think that when we look at it, we're going to see that the judge is

not going to hold the diversion agreement protects Hunter Biden. But it's ridiculous. We're even getting here. And it's all because Weiss tried to give him a get out of jail free card. And it would be the ultimate Weiss move to knowing that he signed that agreement, then try to look tough by bringing charges in California, which he chose not to do. There have been no additional facts, as you pointed out, that would justify the charges now and bringing charges in Delaware and knowing all the while he's good. I already signed the deal that's going to get this guy off, but I get to look tough. And yet this agreement is going to get him. All right. I'm going to hold you guys over if you

don't mind, because we've got to get to the Trump immunity claims that looks like it's going up to SCOTUS right now. Stand by for that. Peter and Margo, stay with me. Something very interesting, just crossing the news transom, guys. This is very interesting. Couple of interesting things happening for President Trump in fighting one of the worst cases against him, and that's the January 6th allegations against him in Washington, D.C., in federal court by Jack Smith. One of the reasons that's the worst, potentially, is the judge can't stand him. That's obvious. The jury is going to hate his guts. The city went 92 percent for Joe Biden. And she has the trial judge set the trial for March 6th. Right.

Six or four. I always confuse it. But the day before or the day after Super Tuesday. And she's been holding fast to it. And in fact, Trump filed a motion to get the whole thing kicked, saying he can't file a criminal charge against somebody for things they did as president. And she struck that down saying, yes, you can get out. And normally the fourth. OK, normally what you do is you as Trump would then appeal that to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. And if they ruled against you, you'd file in the Supreme Court. What happened in this case was Trump was expected to file an appeal with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. And he would have enjoyed that because what Trump wants is delay. Trump does not want the federal cases being tried before he potentially becomes the president again and he can remove the DOJ off of his back because he's president.

He wants delay. Jack Smith wants pedal to the metal. And so Jack Smith filed an immediate request with the U.S. Supreme Court saying, you need to hear this immunity thing right now. Skip the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. People had expected eventually Trump would do that when he lost at the D.C. Circuit. No, Jack Smith went right to SCOTUS and said, you need to hear it. You need to hear it now. And we need an almost immediate declaration about whether you are going to hear it. And the high court just set a briefing on that, whether it should hear it for like next week. So it was proceeding with speed to try to decide whether this is an issue it wants to take up and do it to do it quickly. It will, I think, take it up and we'll see how that goes. But something very interesting just happened. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. But now this just happened in the break. The Supreme Court in a totally separate matter, but it very much relates to this case against Trump that we just that I just outlined. The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to decide a question at the heart of this January 6th case against Trump in federal court before Judge

Chutkin, not to mention this is how they got it. Hundreds of prosecutions arising against others from the assault on the Capitol on January 6th. Can the government charge defendants in those cases under a federal law that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct an official congressional proceeding? The decision to hear this case by the Supreme Court will complicate and perhaps delay the start of Mr. Trump's trial. So this is a challenge going up by one of the J6 defendants, not Trump, but it directly affects him because he's been charged with this offense, too. And so this J6 defendant is saying this is not a real crime. You can't get me with this. And Trump's been charged with it, too. So he's going to get more delay, which, again, inures to Trump's benefit because he wants the whole thing kicked after November 2024 when he believes he'll be reelected and he can remove the DOJ from this case entirely. He's back in charge. It's getting so interesting. The Supreme Court's ultimate

ruling, which may not arrive until June, is likely to address the viability of two of the main counts against Trump. It could severely limit efforts by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to hold the former. What is the source of what I'm reading? You guys, they sent me a news alert, but I don't know who I'm reading from. Let's see their ultimate reading from The Times, which may not arrive until June, likely to address the viability of two of the main counts against Trump. It could severely limit efforts by special counsel Jack Smith to hold the former president accountable for the violence of his supporters at the Capitol. The court's eventually decision could also invalidate convictions that have already been secured against scores of Trump's followers who took part in the assault. That would be an enormous blow to the government's prosecutions of the J6 riot cases.

Look, the bottom line is things just got a lot better for Donald Trump in one of the worst cases against him. Do I have that right, Margo? I think you do. I think that the Supreme Court taking this up so quickly indicates that at least several of the justices are concerned about what the charges alleged were. I actually didn't think it was problematic that Smith sought to go right to the Supreme Court. There's no case law on this. It makes sense to not waste time at the circuit level. I'm surprised, though, that the Supreme Court expedited. There was no reason they couldn't have just said that we will consider it. And everything has stayed until then and kind of you're talking now just to just to make sure everybody understands you're

talking now about the immunity argument that you can't charge me with a crime for things I did while I was president, which is not yet decided. Weirdly, the Supreme Court's never had to take that up. And so your point is SCOTUS is going to have to decide it at some point soon. Right. So it makes sense for them to take it. But from a practical standpoint, there's no reason for them to expedite it, just put on hold his criminal trial. There's no reason it has to happen before the election. So that actually kind of surprised me that they want quickly with that, unless they are trying to resolve it before the election, in which case, you got to wonder which way the tea leaves go on that.

The thing is, Peter, on the news that just broke, if this charge against Trump falls apart, thanks to this January 6th, the defendant appealed to SCOTUS. There are other charges like it's it doesn't mean the case is gone, but there is no question it's going to delay the trial against Trump. If the Supreme Court right now is deciding whether one of the main charges against the defendant can be brought is even a real crime or Congress meant to make it a real crime. That's the question. You can't as a trial judge say, oh, we're going full speed ahead. She's going to have to wait, I think, until the Supreme Court

ruling, which pushes this thing well back. She doesn't want that. And Jack Smith doesn't want that. And I have to tell you, as a lawyer, Jack Smith's like, I do think it's relevant. He skipped the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Why is he so viciously pursuing it on such an aggressive timeline? Because he wants Trump in jail and convicted at least before the election. To me, it just underscores the political nature of this whole case. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to defer legal questions to you and Margo because you are two very, very smart lawyers. I'm not a lawyer at all. But there are two things about the Trump case and frankly, the January 6th cases that I think don't seem to pass the smell test. The first one is the political nature. I mean, a lot of the J6 people

that went to jail, it was on political crimes like sedition. I think a lot of people say, hey, look, if they hit a police officer when they were there, if they did property damage or vandalism, charge them with those crimes. But when you start to get into these politically motivated crimes, it really gets very, very fuzzy. And they're trying to do the same thing with Donald Trump. They're trying to say that these, quote unquote, political crimes occurred. And so that's the first thing that I think makes a lot of people nervous, not even people that are just Trump supporters, but a lot of civil libertarians that look at this case seriously. The second one is the point you just made, Megan, is the aggressive speed with which

he is engaging in this. It has all the smell of political interference. We've got to get this done before the election. We've got to get everything rammed through so he cannot be on the ballot in November. And again, I think there are a lot of people, independent voters, they may not even like Donald Trump, but they look at it and say, why are you doing this? You're trying to limit our electoral choices. This could certainly wait until after an election. And I think those are heavy marks against these cases. And this is the case that Andy McCarthy of National Review has been saying is most likely of all to potentially put Trump in jail prior to November of 2024, which really, let's face

it, even Trump would have difficulty, I think, getting a certain section of the electorate to vote for him if he's in jail. You know, he does. And he said there's there's a decent chance Judge Chutkan would say you are not free pending your appeal. You're going into the pokey. But I do think Margo is very interesting because the immunity claims, you know, Trump's argument, you can't prosecute me for things I did, alleged crimes while I was the sitting president. That's not good for the United States. Because there's already been rulings that you can't, a sitting president can't be sued civilly for certain actions that he did while president, not all, but some. And that's because they just, he'd be a sitting target.

Everybody would go after him all the time. It's the president of the United States, how fun to just mess with his life. But criminal is different. And the Supreme Court hasn't decided that. And I think just based on what little I've read, I'd like to read more on it. I think Trump's going to lose that argument. I think the Supreme Court is going to say you can charge criminally certain actions that were done while you were still in the presidency. I could be wrong. But since I think the legal argument there is not stellar for Trump, this development is a very, very good development for him, that they're going to take up this other case, that we're not going to get a ruling before June

or, you know, sometimes it crosses over into the first week of July. Delay, delay, delay. He hopes to win. He pulls Jack Smith off the case entirely and Bob's your uncle. All right, let me end on the following legal matter, which caught my eye this week. And I do think it's interesting. We have the guys from Reason Magazine on a lot. Our friends from the fifth column, our libertarian buddies. They, Reason Magazine, which is awesome, just like you at The Federalist, just like our pals at The Daily Wire. These are all great websites. I check them all the time for my news feed, have been targeted by the government as disinformation sites.

And you found this out. And The Federalist, among others, have now joined in a lawsuit against the State Department. Why exactly? What's being alleged that they did what? Sure. So I'm putting on my new Civil Liberties Alliance hat. Everything else was the Federalists that I've been talking to before. But the State Department is being sued because of what the State Department did. The State Department funded, tested, and promoted

over 365 different types of technology that is used to supposedly find and censor misinformation and disinformation. You just highlighted one of the types of technology that's used, a blacklist through a group called Global Disinformation Index that has Reason, The Federalist, The Daily Wire on there. But the State Department actually tested over 365 of those. They put that technology on a platform for the government and the military, and then went out and invited outside tech companies, so we're talking LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, to come and join this government platform and look at what is available to help, quote, meet their needs, which means censorship. And then they sent a government State Department employee, embedded them in

Silicon Valley to go visit and market this. This is our State Department that is supposed to be limited to foreign affairs, helping to test markets, promote all of this technology to censor speech that they don't like. And as I recall, the list of websites they came up with that were reliable, that, you know, they fell into the good column. I think all three of us would have a problem with who they say is fit to print. Right. I think they had BuzzFeed in there as one, HuffPost, NPR. So they had some outrageous ones GDI did. That's just what we know. What we don't know is likely much, much more terrifying. Wow. Okay. So got it. According to the State Department, you should all be checking out HuffPost every morning, but do not go near The Daily Wire, The Federalist, or Reason Magazine because

our betters understand what disinformation is and what it isn't. Sure. In fact, this is what I have to say to that. Sure, Jan. I love it. Love it so much. Peter, Margo, that was a very illuminating, easy to understand segment. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having us. Thanks so much, Megan. All right, coming up, we are heading to the seventh night of Hanukkah. And one of the best known, most famous rabbis in the world, Steve Leder, is here with me next. I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch The Megyn Kelly Show on Triumph,

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Get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MK show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three months free. Offer details apply. Now we turn to the stories of glaring anti-Semitism across our college campuses and throughout the country since the terror attack on Israel on October 7th. Joining me now to discuss it, Rabbi Steve Leder, the senior rabbi at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. He was twice named one of the 10 most influential rabbis in America by Newsweek magazine, and he comes very highly recommended and respected. Also the author of several books, including his latest For You When I Am Gone, 12 Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story. Ahead of the seventh night

of Hanukkah, welcome to the show, Rabbi. Great to have you here. Thank you, Megan. I'm really, really humbled and honored to be with you. Oh, thank you. How are you doing? How are you doing? It's been, gosh, two months now, and I just think it's a question we should be asking all of our Jewish friends. Yeah. You know, I've been, the day after October 7th and October 8th, I met with our entire clergy team and staff, and I added one word to your question, which I so appreciate coming from you, which is, how are you really? Because that changes the depth of the conversation. So how am I really? I am exhausted.

I am disappointed. I am determined, focused, grateful for my friends who have reached out. And I feel, not I feel, we're at war. And I'm using the weapons I have to help win this war. And that's how I am. You know, I'm at war. So let's go bring it on. What are you disappointed in people's inability to disambiguate Hamas on October 7th from other admittedly more complex, nuanced challenges in the Middle East for and because of Palestinians and Israelis. That is a complicated story. Hamas on October 7th, to me, is incredibly simple. But when you conflate it with the complex, in a sense, you're moving away from truth, and you're moving away from fact. There's this old Yiddish expression I love, which is a half truth is a whole lie. And when you conflate Hamas in October 7th with the other complexities and with the fact that the Palestinians have been the doormat of the Middle East for a century, full stop, they have. When you conflate those two things,

you're telling a half truth. So I'm disappointed in people's inability, by the way, extraordinarily bright people, in some cases, and incredibly ignorant people and others, their inability to disambiguate and or, and I think it's more or as we go up the IQ ladder here, deliberately conflating these things because they don't want to face the truth about what happened on October 7th, and they want to blame the victim. They want to flip the script. So that's disappointing. I'm disappointed in most, I can't say all, but most of my friends with whom I marched for their causes. And now I realize that we were marching on a one-way street. Well said. was those three university professors testifying before Congress, which SNL thought the need to

mock would target Elise Stefanik, not the university professor. You know, there's tone deaf and there's tone deaf, and that was really bad. Yeah. Right. I mean, the reports that Cecily Strong was supposed to play the Elise Stefanik part and said, I'm not doing this. Actually, I'm not doing this. I don't feel comfortable. And they had to bring in the newbie who's getting all sorts of blowback now. But when you watch those three university professors, I mean, the thing about that moment to me was it just so it was so indicative of what we're hearing now from this woke left, just this cluelessness, this, as you say, tone deaf in their case, as well as SNL's attitude in response to the calls for genocide of the Jewish people.

It's like, well, let me consult my blacks law dictionary as opposed to showing any humanity. Yes. Well, first of all, I think they were overlawyered. Not that that's an excuse. PhDs who've been leading institutions. So they intentionally absorbed and reflected back that legalese. Okay. But the hypocrisy is what angered and disappointed me. And now maybe we can get into what I really think is going on underneath this. I think that to some degree, the hypocrisy teaches us about the underlying issues of which Jew hatred is a symptom, but not the disease. First of all, this idea that they can't, that they, now here's where disambiguating is the enemy, right? The fact that they can't conflate what happened on their campuses with earlier examples of racism and hatred and hate speech and death threats, the fact that they can't put Jews in the same category is disgusting. And look, I'll pose a rhetorical question because

I think you and I both know the answer, Megan. Imagine if there were a couple thousand kids, white kids, white supremacist kids, marching at Columbia or Brown or Harvard or MIT or Penn in white sheets carrying nooses and shouting from sea to shining sea, America will be free. How long do you think it would take those university presidents and their boards to shut that down? It would take about five minutes. We know that. I don't think that's a stretch of the imagination. They'd call out the

National Guard if they had to, to walk those black kids into school to get the education they deserve past those haters. And they would fire faculty who supported those racist haters. But somehow, when it comes to Jews, we're in a unique category. And when I say unique, I mean unique. We're there all by ourselves. Now, I have some thoughts about why that is. But let's accept, first of all, the fact that there is gross, rampant hypocrisy on our college campuses. And I think, and this, you know, I wish I didn't think this, but I do. I think a part of it is if you want to hate and rebel against

privileged white people or successful white people or majoritarian culture which is clearly western you can do it if you just start with the jews because most people don't really care if you want to pick on what you perceive as white privilege and patriarchy, as long as your first target is the Jews, you kind of get a free pass. And I think that this is, this Jew hatred is a symptom for many people of that deeper, more, even more troubling disease. And so that's one theory. I stand by it personally. That's my view. But at the very least, we can agree that when you are a feminist out there marching for Hamas, you're a feminist marching for rape. If you are an LGBTQ person out there marching for Hamas, you are marching

for a group of murderers who, if you were in Gaza, would mutilate your genitals, execute you and behead you. And that's who these people are out there marching for. If you are a person of color and marching for Hamas, you are unclear about the fact that more than half of Israelis are people of color. So what does this mean? This means either you are incredibly ignorant and or your Jew hatred is so powerful that it subordinates all of the other ideals and values you claim to live by. In other words, your professed values and your lived values are not the same. If you're a feminist out there marching for Hamas, marching for rape, that means your hatred of Jews subordinates your very identity. And that's where we are.

And it runs deep, very clearly. You can see it's like, I don't, I think a lot of us have been shocked at the depth of the Jew hatred. People apologizing. There was news just, just today. This is out of Seattle, Washington. A high school teacher there in Chief South High School teaches social studies. He's the department chair. Ian Golash. Facebook post, end of November, saying the following. This is what I understand. Correct me if I'm wrong. With evidence, please. On October 7th through 9th, Hamas did not behead anyone. Hamas didn't rape anyone. The bodies found charred beyond recognition were made that way either by Israeli tanks, missiles or helicopter gunships. And on and on it went. This is it. There's something in this guy that makes him and he

is not alone. We've been covering the stories, just rejects the foot, the photography, the videography, the eyewitness accounts as all lies. What is that? Is that just Jew hatred? I think it's Jew hatred. I think it's anxiety about, I don't know this guy and I can't get into his traumatic childhood, but it's also probably related to anxiety about his own position or standing in society or else in his family. I don't know. But what we do know, what we do know, you don't have to be Sigmund Freud to realize that this person's Jew hatred has caused him to lose his mind. You know, you you know a lot about groupthink. I know a lot about groupthink. People in groups lose their minds. And that's what we're seeing. And where are the adults? Where are the grownups?

You know, come on. Now, we're overstating it a bit because we do have people who care. We do have people stepped up and said and done the right things. Many. I'm not as surprised as most people by what we're seeing. I'm saddened by it. Really? But I'm not surprised that when we turned the rock over, this is what we discovered. Because this is just a new chapter in the oldest of stories, Megan. But haven't you been surprised at, I forget the term, but it's almost bipartisan, the Jew hatred? Like you're getting it from a segment on the far right,

and you're definitely getting it mostly from the far left. I was, I'm surprised. I don't, I mean, I guess there's the sort of the alt-right that has hated Jews for a long time and blacks and all sorts of people, but it seems like this isn't just alt-right. There's a segment of the right that really couldn't care less, even though it is mostly leftists who are leading this charge? Yes. Look, first of all, I remember many years ago, I've been working on Black-Jewish relations my entire adult life, my entire career here in Los Angeles, almost 38 years now. And I remember when I was a young 27-year-old rabbi and I wanted to bring Blacks and Jews together and I was reaching out and reaching out and I was having a hard time finding partners to work with. And I remember complaining to who then was arguably the most important black preacher in LA, Chip Murray from First AME.

And I said, Chip, I can't even get my phone call returned from some of these churches. What is the problem? And he looked at me, he said, Steve, do you know what most blacks think about Jews? I said, no. And he said, they don't. So this idea that there's something left of all right and right of all left that is sort of like, okay, the Middle East is on fire again. It'll get worked out. And, you know, there you think more deeply about what I said earlier, that class warfare starts with the Jews, but it never ends there.

Hamas is an American problem, not a Jewish problem. What Hamas has stimulated, uncovered, catalyzed is an American problem, not a Jewish problem. And look, neither the alt-left nor the alt-right surprise me. I'm sure you've heard of this horseshoe theory that if you look at the shape of a horseshoe, the left and the right are actually closer together than the middle. Meaning the real enemy here is fanaticism. That's the enemy. The enemy is not left or right. The enemy is fanatics on the left and fanatics on the right. That's the danger. That's the malignancy. And then you've got the woke left,

not all people of color are woke, but then you've got the woke left, people like Susan Sarandon, who's constantly out there marching for this, that, the other thing. And she said this nonsense, she actually had to try to dial it back as she realized she stepped on a rake. She said, there are a lot of people that are afraid of being Jewish at this time, and they're getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence. Because Rabbi, you may know Jews have no familiarity in their history with what it's like to be subjected to violence. Because when you were talking about how on a college campus, you could never get away with this, with the white hat calling for the death of blacks. Of course, they'd say, right, because A, it's wrong. And B, there's a history. There's a history when it comes to blacks. Same, same. Well, there's a history. Not only is there a history

of othering and violence and irrational hatred, subordinating every worthy value you can think of. But there's another dynamic at work here, which we are very familiar with, and we can sniff out faster than most, which is the flipping of the script. This is Hamas playbook 101. Attack, provoke, murder, rape, burn. And then, knowing in advance what the counter willizer, as the victim, you can flip the script. And the real victim becomes the oppressor. Most people stand by and they either don't speak out against the flipping of the script, are too naive to even understand the script has been flipped. But we have to keep speaking out. We have to keep telling the truth. Can I say sort of bad words on this?

I don't know. Yeah, go for it. it okay you're on the right show we have to call on this we have to and and woe unto us and woe unto this country and and and woe unto the world if we ever stop saying its name. Now we've had six weeks of the Israeli response. And to me, it's so frustrating because now the whole narrative, we knew it was going to happen. It happens every time Hamas does this. They're flipping the script attack Israel constantly, right? And now it's all, now the people who,

let's face it, they were thrilled at what Hamas did on 10-7. They thought the Israelis deserved it, many of them, before there was a single retaliatory strike by Israel. But now they feel they have their excuse. Now they can say, oh, it's just, you know, my heart is breaking for the poor Palestinians. And maybe that's true for some of these folks. But my distinct impression is that that's not what it's about there. They'd love to see Hamas regroup and they muddy the waters. Right. Like where you're saying we, too, are sad about dead Palestinian children. But we also understand who's responsible for that. And yet you hear, you know, the college campuses and the marchers and even I've had like some people I know come up to me like it's just so terrible what Israel's doing to the children. It's like you have to zoom out and maintain perspective. So what's going on there?

How do we get perspective on these arguments? We have been raised, not we, but many, particularly anyone under the age of, I don't know, I'm going to take a guess here, 40, including university faculty who were in their 20s when this started on the college campuses and they were students. They have kind of embraced and internalized the idea that the underdog is always the victim. Hamas militarily, of course, is that. And they conflate it, here we go again, with the inability to disambiguate. They conflate it with the death, kidnapping, torture of innocent people on October 7th. And Hamas is responsible for the death of probably, I don't know, 20,000 innocent Palestinians, Gazans in Gaza. Yes, it's sad, but let's be clear about the perpetrator. And now another reason this is happening, Megan, I believe is because people are using what they believe, even the best people who have this feeling that Israel's at fault,

they are using a single metric to determine who is the victim and who is the victimizer, which is the number of innocent people who have died. Now, let's think about that for a moment. Somewhere between 6.5 and 8.5 million Nazis and German citizens, innocent German citizens, died in World War II. About half a million, I'm rounding up and down here, closer to 600,000 from the UK and closer to 500 million from France. Now, does that mean since 6.5 to 8.5 million Germans died and 600,000 from the UK died, does that mean the Germans were the victims? Does that mean that the UK was the perpetrator? That is not the metric by which you determine good and evil.

I'm sorry. It's a metric that pulls at the heartstrings. But if that is your only metric, you have no real understanding of how to assess what is evil and what is not. So where do we go from here? You know, my hope is that this expose of, in particular, the woke left will leave them in ruins, will leave this pernicious DEI ideology that divides us based on race, gender, so-called identity. We'll be in ruins because it's a force for evil. That's my hope. If we can get that out of this, I would count that as a small win. It doesn't tackle the larger problem that's happening in the Middle East. But

do you see reason for hope there? Look, there's always hope when the misguided overplay their hand, because people wake up in a different way to that. And people, there are still a lot of people who can tell hypocrisy, who know hypocrisy when they see it, when they feel it, when they hear it. It's part of why conversations like this are so important. I am hopeful for the following reasons. First of all, every generation of Jews gets its wake-up call. And for younger Jewish leaders now, we realize some of us knew this but couldn't do anything about it. We know we were outmaneuvered, outflanked on the college

campuses. And we have a lot of work to do to catch up, but we're going to do that work and we're going to catch up. Secondly, I have been called by four or five different people who could make this happen with a stroke of a pen saying, Steve, here's what I want to do, and I hope you'll help do it. I want to now aggregate the best and the brightest of the Jewish people. And I want a legal, a lawsuit division. I want a campus college division. I want a PR and social media division. I want a campus college division. I want a PR and social media division. And I want now to have a kind of full-scale effort to rid America of this cancer. Look, it's metastatic. Will we get it everywhere? No. But I do think this has been an important wake-up call. By the way, I'm not for a moment suggesting that what happened

on October 7th was worth the wake-up call. However, what is my job? What is your job? What is every good person's job? To make sure that we don't allow it to be worthless, right? I often say to people, Megan, when they're sitting on my couch of tears in my study, sharing some very sad event that they have to endure. And I will say this on the macro level also. If you have to go through hell, don't come out empty handed. So I'm hopeful because I know we are not going to come out empty handed because of this.

The other reason I'm very hopeful is, why did Hamas do this now? They did it to sabotage the peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Now, Saudi Arabia is Sunni, and Sunnis are 85% of the world's Muslim population. Saudi Arabia has the two holiest sites in Islam within its borders. If Israel makes peace, even a cold peace, with Saudi Arabia, it fundamentally removes the religious component to the conflicts in the Middle East, number one.

Number two, it further marginalizes Iran. And finally, we know that peace deals with Israel work. You can make peace with Israel, and Israel can make peace with you. The peace with Egypt has held. The peace with Jordan has held. The peace with the UAE has held. The peace with Bahrain has held. Morocco, Sudan. You can make peace with Israel if you want peace. is return the hostages, turn themselves over, and there will be a permanent peace treaty between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. And hopefully Gaza, I'm also hopeful because whoever Gaza is turned over to when that time comes, they have to be maybe only marginally, but nevertheless better than Hamas, because Hamas cares nothing about the betterment of the Palestinian people.

Gaza could have been. Well, yes, and Gaza could have been another Singapore. It's about the same size. It's about the same population. They could have had beautiful seaside resorts. They could have had desalination. It wasn't their mission. No, their mission was dead Jews. Look at Article 7 of the Hamas Covenant. Their mission is not the betterment of Palestinians. Their mission is dead Jews. They don't want Singapore. Right. And by the way, they don't want it.

Right. And they don't just want dead Israelis. They want dead Jews. They want me dead too. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Not to mention gays i mean it's amazing to see these these gays from palestine or queers have lost their minds see how that goes for you um let me switch to this in the time that we have it's the seventh night of hanukkah and so many jews across the nation are scared at the moment. There was a report in the New York Times about how some Jewish families in New York were not displaying a menorah in their windows. I mean, New York, this is like the most Jewish city, I think, outside of Israel, right, in the world. Yes, for sure.

They're afraid. Now, some behaving differently, some intentionally putting a menorah in the window for the first time in years just to sort of assert who they are. But I understand the fear. You know, we've seen Jews attacked, including on college campuses over and over and over just for being Jewish. Yes. So what, you know, how should our Jewish friends, many of whom are listening to this program right now, be dealing with their fear? It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you. And yet the ones here are

Americans too. And we don't, we don't, we don't hide in America. That's not, that's not in our DNA. So what's your advice for them? My advice is, and, and this is what I would have said had I written, I would have had the second gentleman say at the Hanukkah candle lighting had he asked me, wait, we got to get to that. We got to get to that. All right. So I,

I honestly, I confess I did actually not know. I want to get, let me table the question I just asked you. The second gentleman, Doug Emdorf decided to debt Emhoff, sorry, decided to post,

um, the true story of Hanukkah. He says in the Hanukkah story, the Jewish people were forced into hiding. No one thought they would survive or that the few drops of oil they had would last. But they did survive and the oil kept burning. During those eight days in hiding, they recited their prayers and continued their traditions. That's why Hanukkah means dedication and so on.

And then I was forced to take that post down. Yeah, yeah. He was either. That's not quite it, Rabbi. it, that's not quite it, Rabbi. No, that's not quite it. That's like a game of telephone, and you're the 10th guy to hear the story. So he was not well prepared, and he was ill-informed or ignorant or both. I don't know.

But here's what I would say and what I wish he had said. This business about the oil, when the Jews won this kind of guerrilla war against the Hellenized Assyrians who defiled their temple and forbid them to be Jews, when the Jews won, and it was a guerrilla war, which is why he got the in hiding part when they won it was a triumph of tenacity and right over might a triumph it was a military triumph now about 600 years later megan later make. The rabbis of the day under horrible oppression and occupation, they created this myth about the oil for the rededication of the temple being only enough for one day, but lasting eight. They created this myth to transform the Hanukkah story from a story of right over might and tenacity and zealousness for your people, they became uncomfortable with the actual narrative. So they flipped the script and made it a story about God's miracle, the miraculous nature of Hanukkah in the vessel of this oil.

Why? Because they were uncomfortable with the idea and the exercise of power, of Jewish power. Now, they were at best ambivalent. They didn't want to provoke they they they didn't want to lionize uh bravery and courage in that way i would say to america's jews today let's get let's for now let's remove that oil mythology and let's tell the real story of of right over might of tenacity. And let's make it clear that it's not as easy to kill Jews as it used to be. And, you know, we do have power, and we are going to exercise it. And by that, I do not only mean military power. We have the power of the court

system in this country still. We have the power of our platforms still. We have the power of the court system in this country still we have the power of our platforms still we have the power of moral clarity and moral authority when we talk about jews as the chosen people we don't mean chosen for privilege we mean chosen for responsibility to be responsible morally clear and responsible for the values by which our entire Western civilization has been created. So that's the message I would give. Be loud, be proud, be brave, be courageous. Now, I will say one other thing that I wish I had thought of sooner, and I know we're

running out of time. I wish I thought of this sooner, megan a couple weeks ago i wish i had put out a call for every decent gentile and muslim in this country to put a menorah in their window and light those candles that yeah that is a statement about who we are and who our allies are and what we all need to stand for. I wish I thought of it. I hope I don't need to use this next year. Right. Wow.

What a pleasure meeting you, Rabbi Steve Leder. Thank you for your thoughts and your guidance, your wisdom. And happy Hanukkah to you. I'm going to get on that. Thank you. There's always light. Always. God bless. All the best to you. You too. We'll see you tomorrow. I'm going to get on that. Thank you. There's always light, always. God bless.

All the best to you. Thank you. You too. We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks to all of you for listening. What a way to end the show. I hope that meant as much to you as it did to me. We needed that.

We needed that after a rough couple of months together. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.