The Megyn Kelly Show - Media Irrelevance, Fauci's Retirement, and the Trump Raid, with Jared Kushner, Bryan Dean Wright, and Mike Davis | Ep. 378

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Jared Kushner, author of "Breaking History," to talk about the media obsession and hatred of his father-in-law President Trump, out-of-touch elites, media irrelevance, how COVID was used to hurt Trump's 2020 campaign, Dr. Fauci's retirement and politicalization of science, whether Trump runs in 2024, the hypocrisy in DC, fighting with Bannon, responding to the latest media nonsense on the Mar-a-Lago raid and his book, the process of writing a book about his time in the White House, and more. Then, Bryan Dean Wright, host of the "President's Daily Brief" podcast, joins to talk about the real story behind the "classified" documents taken in the Trump raid, what may happen with the affidavit ruling coming up, Merrick Garland politicizing the DOJ, whether the FBI needs to be disbanded, and more. And then Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, joins to discuss the legal path ahead for President Trump after the FBI raid, the misreporting about the legality of "classified" documents, the behavior of the national archivist, 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. There are a lot of new headlines today involving the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, the main one being new details on what was reportedly found in the boxes. Also, I want to tell you, I recently read one of the smartest takes yet on what is likely to happen as a result of this whole thing by a lawyer who has served as legal counsel in all three branches of government. He knows what he's talking about. He's coming up later and he's going to walk us through all the latest and tell us what is likely

to happen in this case as we await the magistrate judge's ruling on what exactly is going to be revealed to us all and what is not, as a legal fight plays out between the Department of Justice and Trump's lawyers on what we're entitled to know when it comes to what was in that supporting affidavit behind the warrant that was issued. But first, outside of President Trump, few were villainized by the press more than his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Jared was a White House senior advisor to his father-in-law. He's also, of course, as I say, married to the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump. And he is out with a new book today titled Breaking History, a White House memoir.

I get that. I get it, right? It's not making history. It's breaking history. It's associated with Trump. And he broke a lot of things that needed to be broken during his four years in the White House. In the book, Jared talks about his time at the White House and tells a story I've never heard before about Trump and Hillary Clinton after the 2016 election. He also gets personal talking about how he met Ivanka, what it's like to raise a family under constant fire, how hard it was on him when his dad went to prison for a couple of years. Nothing is left untouched. And Jared Kushner joins me now. Jared, so nice to have you on. It's great to meet you. Thank you. It's an honor to be with you.

So you really do talk about a lot of personal things, which is surprising because not that many people know you. You were covered a lot in the media, but you didn't, you know, you weren't on TV every night like a lot of folks in the administration. So was it hard to be this open in the book about your family and your personal troubles? No, it wasn't hard to be open at all. First of all, thank you for the nice things you were saying about the book. It's a very lonely process to write a book. And as somebody who is not used to be communicating, I was more used to doing things. I was from the private sector. And in the private sector, success or failure isn't about perception. Success or failure is really about accomplishments and

reality. And there's a real scorecard. You achieve results and it's good. And if not, you don't, you have to keep trying. So it was a very hard process really to chronicle everything that we'd been through from the campaign all the way through the end of the administration. As I was going through it, you realize just how many things occurred. There's one example I think about where there was the whole controversy where Trump called, they alleged that Trump called the shithole countries in Africa, and that was burning up the headlines. And then I was at a friend's, and I went back to the house three weeks later, and I saw that newspaper on the counter. And there was a different scandal. And I remember

at the time thinking this was the biggest thing in the world. And then a couple weeks, it just kind of went away. And so really trying to chronicle through the book, the different Russian investigation, the impeachments, the congressional investigations, and then also go through the accomplishments, how Trump built the economy, the prison reform and criminal justice reform that we got done, the Mexico trade deals, how we secured the border, how we built the wall, and then really a lot of the work through the pandemic with Operation Warp Speed and the vaccine in 10 months, and really all the work in the Middle East that we were able to do that everyone thought would be not successful, but ultimately led to the Abraham Accords,

which was six historic peace deals, which has changed the world. So there was a lot of ground to cover. And I tried to weave it in so that it would read very fast and give the readers the same intensity while they're reading it that we felt while we were experiencing it. But it's accurate. I felt like the media did not, either they didn't try very hard or they didn't have the right access, but they really misjudged a lot of what was happening in the White House. And I think that this gives people hopefully a very fair-minded and just honest perspective on what we went through, what we learned, where we got things wrong, where we got things right. But for people who are- You are being so nice. I'm sorry?

You are being so nice to say the media misjudged what was happening in the White House. I mean, you know as well as I do that the media, more than any group, suffers from Trump derangement syndrome, truly sees him as evil, devoted themselves to bringing down his presidency. Every reporter, every blogger on the left suddenly consider themselves a mini Woodward and Bernstein and saw everything he did through a negative lens, conspiratorial lens, and interpreted every motivation as truly out for evil. I mean, that really explains the coverage. When you understand that's their mindset,

that explains the coverage. So you're being very nice to a group of people who has been very unkind to you and your family. But I'll give you the counter of that. And maybe it's my optimism. But because they went so crazy so early, I think we just stopped trying to cater to them and stop caring what they think, what they're going to say. And that freed us up to really take on a lot of power. So most White Houses will say we have one priority. Trump totally changed the metabolism of government. We were taking everything on at once. And that's what led to, I think,

so many disruptive policies and results that other politicians were not able to achieve. Then the din got so loud. It's like a child who's angry you're not paying attention to him when he's throwing his tantrum, right? So Trump wasn Trump wasn't paying attention or, you know, you're saying sort of, you just decided to pursue policy. And then we got two impeachments. We got Russiagate. Now we're on a federal raid of his home. You know, it's like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. I'm not going to be ignored, Don.

That's the media and your father-in-law. Yeah, it's been an interesting relationship that they've had. And the truth is, I think he wanted them to understand that he was also the most accessible president that you've ever had to the media. He answered more questions. He liked engaging with them, I talk about this in the book, how, you know, we go to Washington. We have this improbable campaign in 2016. We're all, you know, outsiders coming to the system. You know, we really, you know, pull it off. A bunch of things went our way.

President Trump did an amazing job campaigning. And we get there and you're expecting to be fairness. And then they hit us at the get go with the Russia investigation where they were alleging that we colluded with Russia. And for me, I mean, I used to get calls from my mom who was concerned and say, you know, are the things they're saying about you true? Chuck Schumer, who my parents knew very well, and they were in the same circle on the Upper East Side, you know, he was telling people that I was going to go to jail and be arrested. And he was absolutely certain. And then you'd see Adam Schiff on television promising people that there was indisputable evidence that he'd seen. And I'm sitting there saying, we didn't collude with anybody. And then I'm seeing the New York Times and CNN and the Washington

Post parrot these leaks that they're getting from Intel sources, or I don't know who the hell they were getting from. But every time they would write it, it became the biggest thing and then people would cover it. And it turned out to all be a bunch of bullshit. So it was an interesting environment to work in, but you learn a lot about the world and a lot of these institutions that are mythical, you know, tend to just be, you know, pretty, pretty either rotten or they never were what they were, but they're definitely not today. The institutions that people have thought that they were. Yeah. What, what is that like now to have been inside that washing machine and to know what's true and what's not?

You know, there are those of us on the outside who believed we knew what the truth was or disbelieved the media because we already had a healthy skepticism. But being inside the washing machine, getting, you know, pulled and tugged and washed around, knowing that these things are untrue, but they're citing national security sources, right, which are supposed to be inviolate, you know, unchallengeable.

How does that leave you when it's all said and done? Like, how does that leave you looking at those institutions? So I never used that description before, but I think it's actually pretty apt for my experience of being in a washing machine. But I think that if you take, you know, a couple steps back back and you try to go to 10,000 feet, you'll see that the Trump candidacy and the Trump presidency, I never saw it as about left versus right. I saw it as about outside versus in. And I think that Trump truly didn't represent the donor class. He didn't represent the career politicians. And people saw him as an existential threat. And again, I was in an echo chamber on the Upper East Side, and you were also in a media echo chamber.

And I was hearing from all my people that Trump was going to lose, and I was risking my reputation by helping him. But as I traveled the country with him, I remember going to Springfield, Illinois, where he says, come, come see one of my rallies. And so it was my father-in-law. I always respected him. And so I went to see, because I wanted to see for my own eyes what was happening in the country and why the polls were defying what all the, what I would call elite people were saying. And so I go to the rally and Trump gets up there and he starts talking about issues that like a common core or trade deals and protectionist trade policies to keep jobs in America, which my friends on the

Upper East Side were saying were the wrong policies, but the people in the crowd were loving it. And it just made me realize that you have to find your truth for yourself. You have to explore more. And Trump represented these people against the career politicians. And Washington, for 30 years, were either part of the Clinton clan or the Bush clan. And that really represented and people just came to feel like they were not representing them. And so when Trump came in, he didn't play by their rules and he brought an outsider's approach to Washington. And so this book in a nutshell, what it shows is somebody who's not from the Washington establishment, normal person going to Washington and then getting thrown in a pretty abnormal world

and really trying to understand how Washington works, what drives people, where they resist, and then how do you ultimately get things done? Because it is an amazing system and we did get a ton of things done. And we really, I really write in this book how they happened, which of course, many of the stories are not well known because it was all the maneuvering behind the scenes to create the outcomes, even in light of all the resistance and investigations that they were throwing at us. If he had been a Democrat, we already would have had 40 books explaining how he did it, how he got the Abraham Accords, how he got prison reform. Those are two of your things, two policies that you worked on very hard and praising him and celebrating exactly how it went down because he's Trump. Very different response, right? Like

they're still looking for ways to poke holes into his initiatives, even those that the left should like that they would like if he had been Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. So let me ask you this. I'm just curious as a media person, who would you say are among the worst media offenders? Like who who do you say are among the worst media offenders? Like who who do you think is truly not trustworthy? I'll be honest, I know this may sound a little strange. I didn't pay that much attention to the media. I didn't do a lot of interviews even with with the media.

I thought that was supportive and got it. And I didn't spend too much time being angry about the media that that was not supportive. I just felt like at the end of the day, it didn't matter. I remember during the campaign, Trump called me one morning about a about a New York Times story that was alleging him of some crazy thing. And he says, Can you believe that? I said, Look, the New York Times matter, you'd be at 1%. But they don't, you know, they speak to a very small subset of the people. And as I learned, it's a big country, people get their news in different ways. And, and I just didn't think it mattered that much. But wait, if the media doesn't matter, the accomplishments, if they don't matter, then how did Trump lose? I mean, how you don't think like the suppression

of the Hunter Biden story, for example, like they, they definitely had a hand in driving down Trump's enthusiasm, driving up Joe Biden's enthusiasm. Yeah, but I think the more apt question is that if they mattered, then how did he get 75 million votes from people when 98% of the media was saying how bad he was? I mean, that's one of the great mysteries in the country. I mean, people are a lot smarter than the media think. And that was one of my great lessons also with Trump. I said in the book, the three rules from Trump that I learned from the 2016 campaign, which were not intuitive to me beforehand, was number one is controversy elevates message. Number two is when you're right, you double down and you fight. And number three,

which I saw with him, but I think it does apply more in today's world, I didn't say anything wrong. I write about a scene in the book how Ivanka and Hope, after his initial announcement speech, brought him an op-ed and said, let's put this in the New York Times. This explains that you're against illegal immigration, but you're for legal immigration. And he says, I didn't say anything wrong. They want me to apologize. They want me to play by their rules, tell them to go screw themselves. And the more they did that, people then the controversy, and they'd have a discussion at their table. And

they say, Look, Trump's right about stuff. And so I think that he was able to get his message across. And I think that the strength of his policies were very good. But I also think he got a lot of votes because he delivered results, right? And you can't, no matter what the media says, you had the wealth gap shrinking in 2019. For the first time, wages were rising, inflation was low, the world was at peace. I mean, there was no, you know, gas prices were low. And he was fighting for America, he's delivering his promises. So. So I think people are a lot smarter than the media think. So what happened? What happened in 2020 then? In 2020, I think that COVID, I mean, I think that COVID did two things. One is it created a lot of uncertainty for people who

were feeling really good. Again, Trump was in 2009, right before COVID, had the highest poll numbers he ever had. It was right after the phony impeachment. He was growing with all the minority voters. He was growing with Hispanic voters. I think his numbers with black voters were in the 20s. And people were seeing that he kept his promises. But again, our economy was rocking and Trump was doing a great job. I think COVID created a lot of uncertainty for people. And I think even more than that, the Democrats, you know, the 2016 campaign was about, I think, social media, getting out our vote, using technology to help us figure out how to find ways to impact the outcome of an election in a way that trifled with a lot of traditions of voting that people are used to and created a lot of custody issues and a lot of issues that created more uncertainty. And then people had distrust

in the 2016 election. A lot of the Democrats were challenging the election then. But the way that they changed all the rules and procedures in 2020 created a lot of confusion for people and a lot of distrust in the system. You don't think the media blew up COVID coverage and aggressively fear-mongered because they knew and believed that it would hurt Trump? Oh, they absolutely did. That was the first issue in four years that they were able to get him on because it was one of these issues where it was, you know, heads you lose, tails we win. Right. So if he were to, you know, be more restrictive than they would be running up on the screens, you know, 30 million Americans unemployed, which really was something that Trump was carrying as a big burden. There's one scene in the book I write about where he basically is screaming at Dr. Fauci and saying, look, I'm done with these lockdowns. You said we needed to do this in order to get the medical supplies and get ourselves ready to deal with the virus. We've got what we've got. We're ready to deal with it now, but I'm not going to oversee the funeral of the greatest country in the world. And then so when he would focus on the health and the

care too much, they would say, well, you know, he's causing unemployment, then he would focus on loosening up the restrictions in order to allow people to make their own choices, they would say, oh, he's killing people. And it really was, I mean, it's just it's such a big country that all they had to do was find one example. I mean, there's one example I read about in the book, how, you know, we saw on CNN nurses and in the hospital, and I think Brooklyn, who were saying they didn't have enough, you know, K95 masks in order to, to get through. And so literally, what we did is I was checking around, it wasn't a widespread problem, it was a localized problem, but CNN was creating this fear by putting these nurses on TV. So I called the head of the New York health system said, how many masks you need for the next month in order to make your situation solved?

And he gave me a number. I said, okay, you're going to have them there tomorrow. And so we had to go and figure out how to put out every single ember of the fire. And we pulled off miracle after miracle during COVID to really rise to the occasion. But again, the media loved celebrating it because it was an issue they could use to attack Trump. Yeah, they were openly gleeful that they now had something that was affecting literally everyone in the country and that they could effectively blame it on him. That's what they were doing. Question for you before we move on from the election, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but Peter Baker, the New York Times had a report that you do not agree with your father-in-law that this was a stolen election,

that he in fact won the 2020 election. Is that true? So I think that there's different words, right? What I believe, I can only say what I believe is that, and I just said this before, is that it was an election in which a lot of the traditions that we're used to were trifled. It was a very sloppy election and how it was were trifled. It was a very sloppy election and how it was conducted. I think it was a very close election. Even with that, I think the final tally was 44,000 votes, basically in three states that determined the outcome. But I think that there's a lot that they could be doing better to make sure that it was a much cleaner election. Well, I agree with all that. I don't think and I don't actually think that's even that

controversial. I mean, look what they did in Pennsylvania and the mail-in votes and all that. But it's different. What he's arguing is different, as you know. So do you agree that it was actively stolen by unlawful means and illicit means and things like voting machines and so on that as he and his lawyers have alleged? So I think there's a whole bunch of different approaches that different people have taken in different theories. Look, I accept the fact that Joe Biden's president. I think he's been an absolutely awful president. I think you look at what's happening now in Russia with the war, which never would have happened under Trump. You look at what's happening with China being aggressive right now. That never was what happened under Trump. So

I think what's happening is just awful. And it really is heartbroken. But, you know, for me, I'm always looking more into the future than in the past. Well, I get you. But to be frank, that sounds like a dodge. It sounds like you don't want to upset your father-in-law and say something that he does not like it when people say, which is he lost and it wasn't stolen. So will you say that? Like I said, what I'll say is that I believe it was a very sloppy election. I think that there's a lot of issues that I think if litigated differently, you may have had, you know, different insights into them. But I think it is what it is and it's in the past. And so. So Peter Baker's wrong, to be honest.

Peter Baker's report is untrue. I don't recall exactly what Peter wrote. So just that you don't agree with your father-in-law's stolen election claims. No, I think that what he wrote was that my, at least from what I recall, was that my advice was, let's focus on the future and what's done is done. And let's figure out how to make yourself somebody who can be fighting for the issues you did. I mean, he was a phenomenal president. And I write about that extensively in the book, the job he did with the economy, the job. I get all that. I know. And that's listen, that's what most Republicans would like Trump to talk about. Right. Like that's the frustration of those who love Trump, but see that his focus on 2020 is undermining 2024 for him. And I can say one thing to that, which is that I do think that what's happened over the last years is that there has been a debate that's been badly needed in this

country about election integrity. And I think there's a lot of things that we can all agree on, which is that, you know, we should know the results of an election on election night. You know, we're forced to show an idea to go into a building in New York City here or to go onto an airplane. You know, if you have the sacred right of voting, we should find ways to make it more secure. There's a lot of things that happened in that election that were really embarrassing for our country. And I think that, quite frankly, that there has been some reforms that have made it better. But I think that that debate is an integral debate for us to have if we want to have confidence in the elections in the future. Okay, so let's move on, because I want to talk to you quickly about some news of the day. We mentioned Fauci. He's retiring. Goodbye, Anthony Fauci. I don't know that I'm going to say farewell. A lot of us would say

good riddance. And you write in the book a very interesting story about him, which explains a lot. You write about how he once told you or told Trump and you were privy to it. My advice in situations like this is that we should make people feel as bad as possible. Side note, check. We want to explain the worst possible scenario. If it comes true, we were right. If it doesn't, then we did a better job than people expected. I mean, to me, it's just further confirmation, Jared. This guy is an operator. He's an operator. He's not some impartial above it all scientist. So off he goes. The science is leaving the National Institute of Health. And what do you think his legacy will be? I don't know. Like I said, he's not, he occupies a lot more space in other people's minds than he does in mine. I think that it was interesting to work with him. That scene that you depict in the book, I thought was fascinating where he was giving the, you know, if you were just taking those two people together and one person was saying, let's manage expectations that

we can exceed them. And the other person saying, no, we have to, you know, show strong leaderships that we can get out of this and hold our economy and hold people's spirits together during this big challenge. You wouldn't have been sure which one was the politician, which one was the doctor trying to help people through. But, but look, you know, the thing that was the most frustrating for people who worked with him on the task force is that he would, you know, the thing that was the most frustrating for people who worked with him on the task force is that he would, again, he was supposedly the expert on infectious diseases. I'd been there for a very long time. And then he'd be in all the meetings. One of the big challenges we had was testing. I write about this in the book about how we got

involved to try to ramp it up. And we were going to roll out these testing in all these different locations. We came up with this idea, which bureaucrats wouldn't have done to basically go to CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, all the big American companies that are in all the different communities stepped up and agreed to do it. They weren't asking for liability waivers. And then they come in and said, well, we have a problem. We only have 1.3 million swaps in the country right now, which basically meant instead of going to 400 locations, we can only go to 37. And so our biggest constraint on ramping the testing wasn't imagination. It wasn't money.

It was really just gravity. We had to create more effectively Q-tips. And so we used the DPA to really scale that manufacturing and we were doing it as fast as we could. And we were scaling pretty rapidly. And then Fauci goes on television instead of saying, well, you know, this is what we're doing. And he says, we're just not there yet on testing. Everyone's like, wait, what are you, a sportscaster or are you part of the team? You're in every meeting. If you have better ideas, you know, tell us what they should be. But constantly we were being undercut. And there was another story that I write about where he was in my office and we were going through something and his phone's on the table and it rings and it shows up Jim Acosta on the phone. And so we were trying to figure out who in the White House was giving Acosta all this information from CNN saying that we were disorganized. And it became pretty clear that there was just a lot going on that was complicated. So Fauci and Jim Acosta are talking, and maybe Fauci's your leaker to CNN.

It's unbelievable. I mean, look, we're going to have a lot more to say about Fauci later in the show and later this week, I'm sure. But when you think about school closings, when you think about the harm done to children, he's squarely to blame. And I'll tell you, as a mother of young children, I don't forgive him.

I know you've got four young ones yourself. I don't forgive him. I think he's the one who was responsible and he never took responsibility. In fact, all he's doing now is bragging, bragging about the Fauci effect, which is allegedly people going to medical school because they believe in truth. I'm sorry, Jared. No, it's complicated. But that's also why we made the decision. We left Washington to go to Florida. I mean, New York was like Pompeii. The restaurants were closed. All of our friends who could left. And we said, let's go to Florida. It's a land of freedom. The schools are open. We'll put our kids in school. And we came really because of that. But we've now just fallen in love with the lifestyle. I mean, it's an amazing environment. You've got incredible people. But a lot of these places that followed the doctrine of what they were saying and really made it a political issue to many degree, I think they really harmed the children and did things that have had long-term impacts on their communities. Yeah. All right. So you say you like Florida. There's a great governor down there by the name

of Ron DeSantis, who they talk about a lot as a possible GOP contender in 2024, right after they talk about Donald Trump. Trump's crushing DeSantis in every straw poll at CPAC and so on. But he's the next name that gets mentioned. So what do you think Donald Trump is likely to do in 2024? Will he likely run? And if he doesn't, could you get behind DeSantis? So I like Ron. I worked very, very closely with him on the COVID response. Florida was a place. He was very well organized. He had his statistics under control. He had real data. He was pretty good operationally. But I do think that a lot of people who support Ron support Trump first. And again, obviously, President Trump has not made an announcement on what he would do. But I think DeSantis would have a very tough time challenging him. You do. And do you think your father-in-law is likely to be

first in line? I know you're not going to make an announcement. Well, what's your guess about what Trump does? It's not even me making an announcement. It's just, you know, with Trump, you know, this is part of what frustrated other world leaders and frustrated so many people is that he keeps his optionality, he keeps flexibility, and he's open to changing his mind. I think his flexibility is a strategic asset, not a liability. But again, especially when dealing with China, they always knew exactly how presidents thought, how our process worked.

And he kept them off balance because, you know, we'd go into a meeting and we weren't even sure what decision he would make. But that's how businessmen think. And that's, you know, that's how Trump thinks. And I know it's something he's been thinking about. It's been really bothering him seeing the way that, you know, he gave them a really strong economy and a peaceful world. And now we have, you know, rapid inflation and wars in Europe and China's being provocative we have, you know, rapid inflation and wars in Europe and China's being provocative and, you know, they're running to Iran, you know, on their knees to try to make a deal. And so I know it's bothering him and what he'll decide to do ultimately will be up

to him. So, but, you know, we'll see. I await like you to know what his decision will be and when he will make it. There's a great story in the book about Trump and a meeting with the Chinese leader and Trump just sort of revealing something that was whispered to him in his ear about our military dealings in Syria and how the Chinese leader, she just completely reacted like, oh my God, he's sharing information with me. But I love it because it really, it is sort of part of Trump being so unpredictable that these leaders never knew what they'd get or how far they should push him. And, you know, we didn't we didn't have a Russian invasion of Ukraine under President Trump, and we didn't have quite the saber rattling that we're seeing now in quite a few places. It's just something for people to

consider. All right. Stand by. I got to squeeze in a quick break and much, much more with Jared Kushner right after this break. So, Jared, let's spend a minute on the raid at Mar-a-Lago, which continues to make news now. Now, The New York Times has been reporting steadily that there was national security information, that there was classified information in these boxes. There was a report last night that that potentially as many as 300 documents were classified in some way, again, by The New York Times. Without getting into the substance of whether all that is true, it's going to play out. Let me ask you the big question. Do you believe that he is going to be indicted by this Department of Justice? I don't really see what they would indict him on. I think that it goes back to what I was saying earlier, right? So you're referencing a report from the New York Times that probably, again,

I'm assuming it came from a real source, so it probably came from a source in the intelligence or the Justice Department. This is the exact same thing that they did to us in the first four, I guess, the full four years, where basically, you know, there'd be some kind of action. And then, you know, the New York Times or the Washington Post would carry water for them and put out, you know, different theories that they would have. And sometimes the billing would not, sometimes it'd be fully untrue. Sometimes it would, you know, the billing wouldn't even, you know, be close to it. And, you know, I read about, you know, during the transition, I had a meeting with the Russian ambassador to discuss the situation in Syria, which was

horrific. There was a civil war going on there. About 500,000 civilians were killed because of, I think, bad foreign policy by the American government. And then you had ISIS had to caliphate the sides of Ohio where they were beheading journalists and killing Christians. And there was, you know, threats to the homeland. So we wanted to meet with the Russians to, you know, to discuss, you know, what should we be doing about it? America had been in retreat, so Russia was more there. So I met with General Flynn at the time, who was, you know, the incoming national security advisor, you know, I think 20, 30 year veteran of the military and intelligence and all different areas. And then, you know, we read a

couple months later that they leaked to the Washington Post that we requested a secret back channel with the Russians. And then for, you know, for the whole weekend, you had people, you know, going crazy on CNN, calling it treason, you know, saying all kinds of crazy things. And then it turns out, you know, once I testified for, I think about maybe 15 or 16 hours between the House, the Senate, and the special counsel said, OK, it turns out it's just nothing, you know, nothing to do here. So I think you have him as a threat. They promised first he was a Russian agent and they spent two years saying he was going to leave because of that. And then they tried to impeach him for investigating corruption in Ukraine where there was abundant corruption. And then now it just seems like they keep trying to find new things to get him on. And I'm sure if

this one doesn't work, they'll probably find him for jaywalking or a traffic ticket. But they're being very aggressive to do it. And it's very disheartening to me. One of the issues I spent a lot of time on was criminal justice reform, because I don't have a lot of confidence that prosecutors left unchecked will always make the right decisions. A lot of them are ambitious or politically motivated. And a lot of my allies on the left were with me on that. But now, when they're persecuting Trump, it's almost like they've suspended all their morals and beliefs that they held so highly because it's about getting Trump. And so, like I said, I think on my third

day in office, I realized hypocrisy is just something you have to deal with in Washington. But that's one of the interesting things in reading the book is, is how frustrating it is to work even within the white house. Obviously you're not taking shots at the president himself in that way, but the staff, the power hungry people, the leaking to the press on one another, you know, it was very game of thronesy and that's gotta be a whole level of stress, you know, that you don't need. You've already got, you know, people outside the tent shooting at you, you don't really need it inside the tent constantly. Yeah, well, actually, you know, when I when I wrote the book, that that was really one of the things I wanted to capture,

right. And again, I don't complain about it, I what I basically write is that how I learned to adjust. And the more I read different books, the more I saw that the game is the game. It was like this before I got there, I'll be there long after I left. And the notion was it's a very, very high stakes environment with maximum pressure, a lot of people with competing interests. And it's funny for Lincoln, he had his team of rivals and there was great books written about it and it was celebrated. But Trump also had people from different persuasions and from different perspectives and he wanted robust debate. And it was, it was like blood sports some days, but I think that that was his process. No, you were right about Steve Bannon. I don't have it in front of me. Hold on. Let me see if I can find it. But you said about Steve Bannon, I do, do I have it? Yeah. That he said to you,

if you go against me, I will break you in half. Don't fuck with me. He had declared war, you write, and I was woefully unprepared. What did he do to you? It was most, look, I believe that I saw in Washington time and time again, that power just makes you more of what you already are. And with Steve, he, I think the power was going to his head. And I think he saw me as a threat. We agreed actually on a lot of issues. We agreed on securing the border. We agreed on the fact that we wanted to cut trade deals to bring jobs back to America. We agreed that we wanted to try to take a different approach to the Middle East and to China to cut down on their abusive practices.

But I think for him, he just saw me as a threat. And so he started leaking on me. And I would get constant calls from people. I mean, the same accusations would come every 15 minutes to a different reporter. But Steve was a master at that. Again, he was a very tough competitor in the White House. He was a great ally. We were on the campaign. But again, it created a very hostile environment for me and others. And fortunately, the president made the decision because I think it was just too tough to get things done while we were there. He was very focused on fighting with inside the Republican Party when once you're in power, you have to come together as a team and realize that the parties aren't ubiquitous, right? They're both collections of different tribes. And when you're

in power, you have to bring your tribes together in order to get things passed through the system that our founders created. And so it was very complicated, but I really try in the book to give people the feeling of what it's like to be in that environment and to know, especially as an outsider who's working in the corporate world, how you get things done in Washington. It feels awful. It makes me certain in my decision not to run for office or actually work for anybody who's achieved what your father-in-law did. Back on the subject of the Trump raid, I got to ask you to weigh in on this. Mary Trump, who is like all over the media as if she knows anything. Mary Trump thinks you're the mole. So does Michael Cohen, by the way. They think that you're the mole down at Mar-a-Lago calling the DOJ to say Trump didn't turn over all of his documents. Do you care to reply to that? Yeah. So first of all, it's absolutely not true categorically in every way. But I think that that's more a statement of kind of the sad state of the media, where the more outlandish of an accusation you make, especially if it includes me,

then the media will write about it and create headlines. Mary and Michael figured out, Chris Christie used to use that all the time to get relevance for his books that he could sell more than like 300 copies. He would make up these crazy things about me, but the media rewards that behavior. And so they publish it, but absolutely not true. I don't even think she said she thought it was the case. She thought it could be the case. And so I read the article. I was like, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. But for whatever reason, the media thought it was worth covering. Of course, because as I said in the intro, you're probably second most demonized right after Trump. And you'd think that they'd like you. I mean, you used to be a Democrat. You were a lifelong

Democrat. You were by far not the most partisan person in the White House. You'd think they'd say, all right, you know, we could work with him. We could work with Ivanka. But no, for a bunch of different reasons, you had to be demonized as well. I mean, that's a whole different psychological discussion. Money, good looks, access to power, sort of slow and steady wins the day that they don't like that. They want somebody who feeds the trough, you know, continues leaking to them and giving them all good stories that they're going to get hits on anyway. A couple of things I want to get to. But also Megan, you know, when I was there, I wasn't there to play the game. I wasn't trying to save political capital or, you know, tell, you know, bullshit somebody their face and then go do

something else. I was there to get things done. And that's really what I think that the story in the book is just the race against the clock where you only have so many time. It's a time duration game and you have to use every minute possible to try to get as many things done. So my biggest criticism in the beginning was that I was taking on too many things and too many hard things. I was saying, why, if I'm giving up my career and my business and I'm spending time with my family to do this, why don't we do take on few things and easy things? Try to make big difference. And again, I'm very gratified. I left government without a single regret of not having spent all my time trying to accomplish those things I wish I could have accomplished as well. But I put a lot of points on the board, and I'm very, very proud

of the work we did. I made it. The process, I'm okay with that. I've got to read you just this, forgive me, this one excerpt from this review of the book by The Times, which, to your credit, they hate. Breaking History, again, is the name of the book. Dwight Garner says it's soulless, Jared. He says it's soulless. And he says, OK, Kushner looks like a mannequin, which is interesting because that's what they said about Melania when Trump was running, which is, I thought, very sexist.

So perhaps they aren't sexist. Perhaps they're doing this equal opportunity. And he writes like one and peculiarly selective in his appraisal of Donald Trump's term in office. Here's what they're really mad about. Kushner almost entirely ignores the chaos, the alienation of allies, the breaking of laws and norms, the flirtations with dictators, the comprehensive loss of America's moral leadership, and so on ad infinitum, to speak about boyish tinkering, the mechanic, with issues he was interested in. Why didn't you write that book? So first of all, I have to say that I read that review and I thought it was hysterical. I've

actually been asking my team to try to find a hard copy because I want to hang it on my wall, but I don't know if they put it in there. The second thing I'll say about that is that it actually sold a lot of books. That's when I started moving up the Amazon list. And then after I went to Mark Levin, we got to number one worldwide on Amazon. So I have to thank the New York Times for that. But I think fundamentally, again, it was a silly review, but I think fundamentally, if I had to say why the New York Times doesn't want you to read this book, it's just a function of the fact that it disproves all the different things that they were going crazy about in their editorial page. I think they called on me to resign several times. They said my work in the Middle East was foolish and going to cause wars. Footnote,

we got six peace deals done. They didn't cover the criminal justice reform done. I mean, they write all these glowing articles about these social justice warriors and then an issue that they've claimed to care about when Trump was doing it to bring programs into prisons to help people figure out how to deal with drug addiction, mental health addiction, and get job training so when they leave prison, they can figure out how to reenter society and not commit future crimes. We did a lot of great work on trade where we were able to fight to bring jobs back to America, and they just neglected to cover all these things. So they want you to believe that Trump was incompetent, that we didn't get anything done, but the results are just totally

contrary to everything that they wrote. Dwight should write his own book. He was a bandit of honor. Yeah, So I should write his own book. Yeah. Dwight should write his own book. You don't, you don't work for Dwight or the New York Times. We know what it would say already. It wouldn't be that interesting. Yeah, it's true. We've read it for four plus years now. A couple of things I want to get to, because I teased him. Hillary Clinton was almost invited or she was invited to have dinner with Trump at the White House after he won in 16. So, you know, one of the things I think about all the time is, again, I know, you know, Donald for a long time, you know, since I started dating Ivanka. And you have to remember that he's had so many iterations of his life. And he's somebody who's been pop culture for a long time.

He was in 20 rap songs. He was in movies. He was left. He was center. He was right. He's been everywhere. And after he won, I think that he saw the responsibility. I write about on election night how we didn't really have a victory speech prepared. And the speech that they gave him was much more gloating. And he was watching on television the despondent faces of people at Hillary's beautiful celebration party. And he basically said, you know, the country needs to hear something different. And his words that night were very magnanimous, reaching out, trying to bring people together. And in the weeks after the election, he really felt the responsibility of saying, how can I how can I unite the country after such a divisive time under Obama and a fairly divisive campaign where he was, you know,

called terrible names. And so he really was carrying that. He at the time, you know, Chelsea Clinton, her husband, Mark, were friends with Ivanka and I. We knew them socially in New York. And so he asked Ivanka to reach out to Hillary. He knew Hillary and Bill well for many years and said, look, let's get to dinner. Let's get together for dinner and let's try to bury the hatchet and figure out how to show everyone that we want to put the country first. And then Vaca relayed the message. And I think a couple of days later, you know, Jill Stein came out saying she was going to challenge the election because the election was illegitimate and she wanted to do a recount. And then Hillary Clinton came out and supported it and then started blaming the Russians for, you know, for the reason Donald Trump won. And he said, you know, look, screw this, you know, let's move on. And so I think that every time Trump tried

to reach out, and again, we did get some incredible bipartisan achievements done, whether it was the First Step Act or whether it was, you know, the USMCA trade deal and many more. They just attacked him viciously. They were investigating him during the campaign that, you know, then they have the whole situation during the transition where they're leaking information about the Steele dossier, which turned out to be total, total crap. Lying about it. No, I know.

I mean, nobody has to make the case about what Hillary did to Donald. It's just interesting that he was sort of willing to let things go for a while there and bury the hatchet. And instead the hatchet got buried in him by her over and over and over and dinner was not to be. Well, one thing I'll just say about him, and this is where I think people misunderstand him. And something that I wish people saw more often was that he's always willing to meet with his, with his enemies. And I think that if you're against him and you want to get things done, like I would see so many people who were friends of mine from the left who would be sending out tweets

or virtue signaling or trying to promote how much they hate Trump more than the next person, maybe because that was what they needed to do socially. But the people who wanted to get things done, actually, they said, let me take a little bit of risk. Let me show up to the White House. And that always happens. You look at like Van Jones, who's a big Trump critic. He was called Uncle Tom because he came to the White House.

People like John Lewis and Cory Booker were criticizing him for working with the White House at the time on criminal justice reform, which was an issue that they cared about. And Van ended up delivering. He took some personal risk. Kim Kardashian, she was very heavily criticized for coming to the White House to meet with the president because there was a case in her heart that she felt she could make an impact on, which was Alice Johnson's case. And Kim researched it meticulously. We spent seven months going through it. We've done all that. We've had Alice on the show. It's an amazing story. It's one of my favorite interviews. People should go back and listen to it. Everybody loves it. Bipartisan love for Alice Marie Johnson. I only have a couple of minutes left. So I got to ask you this because we haven't done a lot of personal stuff. You met Ivanka.

So 10 years before Trump won, you were dealing and people can read the book if they want to know what happened to your dad. The whole story is laid out in there. But you're dealing with your dad having gone to prison for a couple of years. You meet Ivanka Trump, 2007. You fall in love. You're playing backgammon in coffee shops, which is kind of cute. And you're getting more serious. And Donald Trump wasn't president,

but he was very well known. He's a very successful businessman. So you go in to meet with him. And there was a funny exchange in which a very famous football player was referenced. Can you tell us that story? Sure. Well, before that, actually, the funnier part was Ivanka was starting the process of converting to Judaism, and we'd been studying for many months, but we wanted to tell her father. And so when I told him Ivanka was going to start the process of converting, he looked at me and said, well, why can't you convert? Why does she have to convert? And I said, well, that's actually a very good question, but we've been studying, and this is the way we want to do it. And this is how we want to raise our family. This is what we're going to do. And he says, you know, that's great.

He says, you know, I've been in New York real estate forever. I think most people think I'm Jewish anyway. All my friends are Jewish. This is great. And, you know, even for all the people, you know, who've made up all these crazy claims of, you know, him being anti-Semitic or promoting it, you know, he's been very, very tolerant and respectful of, of me and of his grandchildren of the family. And he's done incredible things as president to combat anti-Semitism. But then after he says, he says, you know, look, Ivanka is in a great place in her life right now where a lot of people want to take her out. And, you know, Tom Brady's a friend and he'd want to take her out.

And I said, well, if I was here, I'd go with Tom Brady. And he looks at me and says, yeah, I know. And so, you know, it was a very funny exchange, but he loves his daughter and he's been an amazing father-in-law and a lot of fun to be with. And we've had some incredible adventures. Well, listen, Tom Brady's doing pretty well, but so are you doing investment now. And that's a whole other story, but running an investment firm and, and living in Florida and enjoying the weather and enjoying the freedom of that state. Final question, because I got to go, if Trump were to

run again and to win, would you be open to going back to Washington and serving? So that's a lot of hypotheticals. But right now, I'm loving the time I get to have with my kids, getting to meet them again and spend the time. And I'm loving being in the private sector. It was an absolute honor to serve the country. I'm very, very proud of all the things I got done. But if you read the book, you'll see all the challenges that came with it. And it really would have to be all the challenges that came with it. And it really would have to be all the right conditions to be willing to do that again. But right now, I'm loving my life. And I feel very, very blessed. I've had the experience, very

proud of all the things we did, but really enjoying my current life. You've accomplished a lot for 41 years old. It's hard to believe. Jared, all the best to you and good luck with this. I think it's a great read. I think our audience will really enjoy it. Great. Thank you very much. A pleasure to be with you. Likewise. Again, the book is called Breaking History. It's out today. Coming up much, much more on the Trump raid and the new details that I've just broken about it. We're going to have Brian Dean Wright and we're going to he's a former CIA officer and we're going to have a lawyer who's very well steeped in these issues. Don't go away.

My next guest is a former CIA officer and a former Democrat who is now focused on principles over party. He's kind of like Jared, former Democrat, now America first. Brian Dean Wright is the host of the President's daily brief podcast, and he is with us to discuss the latest on the Mar-a-Lago raid, the affidavit next steps and more. Welcome back to the show, Brian. How you doing? I am great. Such a pleasure to be here. I too am a former Democrat. I'm a former Republican as well. I've been a registered independent for about 20 years now. Uh, but I think that's why you make sense to me. And Jared made sense to me. And, you know, it's like it's it can offer you a nice viewpoint of the

world to not be a hardcore ideological partisan. Well, but now you are definitely America first. And in that vein, you do not approve of what the FBI has done down at Mar-a-Lago. Let me just get the news headline in so people know what we're talking about. Again, this is the New York Times reporting. So as Jared Kushner points out, take it with a grain of salt. Trump had more than 300 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. The information is sourced to multiple people briefed on the matter, but names are not provided.

The government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings, says the Times. The first batch was retrieved in January. One hundred and fifty were marked classified. Another set was provided by Trump aides to the Department of Justice in June, just this past June. And then more was receipt was recovered in the seized material. Now, The New York Times says this helps explain why the Justice Department moved so urgently. Not really. It does. How?

Now, the facts don't support that statement, do they? Look, I think what I just heard you say is that the former president and his team have been cooperating and collaborating with the government in every way that they thought helpful and possible. This started last January to include into June. lots of conversations. So this isn't as though the president and his team are trying to abscond with, you know, secret intelligence and, oh, here we go again, maybe send it to the Russians. So I don't think that what we're seeing so far would be alarming to any reasonable person, but we don't really live in reasonable times, do we? No, we certainly do not. And so this people are still very irritated at the FBI as we await

a ruling and the DOJ because I mean, it's really the DOJ we should be mad at. You know, I'm kind of with Alan Dershowitz. You can't blame the individual FBI agents for having done what they were hired to do. You can blame Merrick Garland and you should blame Merrick Garland. And that's not to say there are no problems with the FBI, but Merrick Garland is the person responsible for this. And now we're going to find out, we think, what was in the affidavit that they had to submit supporting this extraordinary warrant because this judge seems poised to release at least part of it tomorrow. Well, and thank God for that. So if we really step back, if we think about these 300 documents and they say classified, well, what does that really mean? Let me talk to you about a couple of things. This is my world, so I know a lot about

classified information. First of all, you can over and under classify things. So just because someone like the president in this case has a document that says classified, that doesn't necessarily mean it is so. I might look at it as I'm creating that document and say, I think that's top secret. And then actually somebody up the food and say, I think that's top secret. And then actually somebody up the food chain says, no, that's unclassified. You're being ridiculous. So that's the first piece that a lot of folks don't understand that is absolutely true. But even on the other end of that, even if these documents did have some sort of top secret or secret classification on them, that doesn't mean that the president couldn't wave his presidential wand as the law allows and the Constitution allows to say these are declassified. He can't do that. Now, we might

disagree on whether or not certain documents should have been declassified, but that is the prerogative of the president, irrespective of whether it's Trump or Obama or anybody else. That is the prerogative of the president. So this affidavit has to make very clear that the president did not declassify the documents or that these documents somehow fell into a legal gray area. And I'm not really sure that I've seen that argument be made well. Article two of the constitution for there was a 1988 Supreme court lawsuit or ruling that said presidents have pretty broad and profound authorities to declassify. So whenever I see these headlines that say he's got 300 classified

documents, OK, that's not the full story. Did he declassify them? And does the law and his protocol allow him to do that, irrespective of whether you or I might have agreed with that declassification process that he used? A lot. A lot of back and forth on that very issue on exactly what T's, what I's, you know, needed to be crossed and dotted respectively for him to declassify. We'll talk about it with our lawyer who joins us in a minute as well. But my takeaway from listening to everybody is it depends on who you ask. Some would say he could do it with the magic wand. Some would say, no, he's got to follow a certain protocol. Then others say, no, that protocol is there for people underneath, lower than the president. The president has a much greater ability to do it just by speaking

the classified information, for example, he could do it. So it's unclear to me sitting here today how a court would rule on it, though I'm going to guess this Supreme Court would probably be pretty permissive of presidential authority. We don't know. But but this has been, you know, even if you take those classified documents out of it, the DOJ is pissed. The DOJ is basically saying you had no right to the non classified documents. You stole them. They belong to the people. And, you know, that that could be true that those documents technically belong to us because the president's documents belong to the people. But that doesn't speak to the remedy that was employed here. Amen. So if we are looking at precedent, what have other presidents prior to this one been

treated by the Department of Justice, the Records Administration? So what are those protocol? What does that history look like? And if President Trump is being treated differently, well, that begs the question, why? And again, in this case, it looks as though from all reasonable accounts, even the Department of Justice is saying, yes, the Trump folks have been helpful. They've been working with us. We just decided to engage in this particular remedy for reasons that, well, let's see what the affidavit has to say.

But it's not real clear here. So I'm not convinced. The facts don't do at this point suggests that there's an issue or a problem, but really for me. And I think a lot of other folks who work in the intelligence community have still friends like me in the intelligence community. We have concerns about the level of trust, right? Because Trump and his team can say whatever they want, but we would like to defer to the Department of Justice and the FBI and some of our colleagues who are still FBI agents. We want to say, hey, they are probably right here because we should trust them. We should trust their counsel. But what we have seen over

the past five years is that's just not true. We can't unfortunately trust. There's just been too many cases of it. The Department of Justice, their inspector general, pointed to James Comey and his leaking, saying that he set a dangerous example for the 36,000 employees at the FBI for purposely leaking information that shouldn't have been all for partisan purposes. You know, you take that and make it one of the other things that I will never forget is when Chuck Schumer was on TV and had that interview where he was asked, hey, you know, is it wise for President Trump to criticize the FBI and the CIA? And he said, boy, they have six ways Sunday to get back at you. So if we are hearing that from people like Chuck Schumer, that's literally what he said. One of the leaders of this country, certainly of his party,

saying that the FBI and the CIA have the ability and indeed they use it to target people, not because the law says so, but rather they have been angered by their, we say, the president. Well, that's outrageous. We should be concerned about that. My goodness, if that's the culture of this country, holy smokes, we got bigger problems in these 300 documents in Mar-a-Lago for Pete's sake. Yeah. And you may not know it's the FBI. It may be the IRS that calls you up and says, guess what? I'm one of the new 86,000 auditors and I'm coming for you because a phone call was made. Who knows? They're smart enough in some cases not to put their fingerprints on it. But the thing about Merrick Garland, you raise a good point. Do we have reason to trust him? Has he been a straight shooter? Okay, well, let's look at what he did last week when he came out and he tried to play holier than thou. You know, some stuff is not disclosable. And I'm just going to give a very, very brief statement and then immediately leaks to The New York Times and The Washington Post about, you know, the behind the scenes rationale alleged in nuclear secrets. OK, what does that mean? We have no idea what he means by that. The most incendiary term he could drop and the lapdogs in the media print it.

And then everybody's like, holy shit, Trump has the nuclear codes unlocked in Melania's underwear drawer. Right. So like exactly as planned. And then just take a take a step back a year, not even a year ago, where remember he was calling the parents, the domestic terrorists, Merrick Garland, agreeing with that alleged school board representation that said, oh, they're domestic terrorists. So he said, OK, we're going to investigate them as domestic terrorists. And then finally, he got called into a hearing and said, where are you getting that

from? Like what what's your basis for suggesting the FBI has any role at the school board meetings? And he was forced to admit it was based on these alleged reports that he got from this school board that had we went through them point by point. My entire team looked at every single incident and literally it was like the guy refused to wear his mask when told to wear his mask. The one guy yelled at the meeting and spoke beyond the point where his time was up. I mean, it was there was one there was like one where it got somewhat dicey with it with an altercation. All the rest were these small, petty. And so I don't trust him. I don't trust him not to overinflate, not to exaggerate when it suits his political purposes. And look, it's and it's not just an opinion. Right. So you just laid out a lot of very

thoughtful and good examples of a degree of politicization, if not weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI based on partisan realities or preferences, right? So this isn't an opinion issue. There is a long book and record. Let me add one more. You know, recently, obviously, the Roe v. Wade decision came down very, very controversial. But in the weeks leading up to it, there were, of course, all the protests out in front of the houses. And of course, that was violation of the law. And Merrick Garland and the FBI and the Department of Justice didn't protect those individuals. They didn't act in an aggressive or thoughtful way per what the law allowed. And so I think a lot of people ask, well, why not? Why aren't you protecting what some people might say are the conservative justices?

And would you perhaps have a different view if they were the more liberal justices? So there are lots of examples, some big, some small, but you put them together and no longer are we talking about an opinion about the Department of Justice and the FBI becoming politicized. In fact, these are the facts and that's what's frightening. We all know the answer to that. You're telling me, okay, Katonji Brown Jackson takes her seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. She's been sworn in now and she gets protesters outside of her house night and day with children at home. There is zero chance the FBI would ignore that. Zero. Correct. We all know it. It's what leads

to the frustration and distrust. And we would want the FBI to shut that down just as we wanted them to shut it down when it was Kavanaugh and it was Alito and it was all the conservatives. And you're bringing up this really important point, which is what happens when the FBI loses the trust of the American people? Well, we naturally say, tear it down, destroy it, get rid of it, restart it, do something with it. But there are a lot of threats in this country and this world that the FBI needs to take a part of. It needs to be investigated. It needs to help solve. I mean, I'm a national security guy. China is a big one for me. The FBI, we know, starts an investigation of the Chinese-related entities once every 12 hours in this country, 365 days a year. So we need the FBI engaged and involved in these kinds of efforts to keep our adversaries at bay,

to keep us safe. But when we start lacking in trust, the calls to disband the FBI, which I actually agree with because it's become so politicized, well, then we start losing the ability to keep the country safe. So the stakes here are really big. This is not just about Trump or the documents at Mar-a-Lago. This is about being able to keep the nation safe. And right now, the FBI and the DOJ are putting this country at risk because of their own partisan politics. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when we had an ISIS threat every other day in this country and these Muslim extremists were, you know, randomly attacking us in various pockets of the country. And the FBI was extremely valuable and we relied on them. And it's one of the reasons

why a lot of people were very pro-national security had a soft spot for the FBI. It's hard for me to stomach even the notion of disbanding them, especially because I realize we've got some examples of some bad things they've done and some bad agents, Peter Strzok and his little girlfriend and, you know, Comey was a nightmare as it turned out. And look what they did against Trump and the Russiagate and all the nonsense and the allegations, the affidavits. But but that doesn't mean the rank and file is partisan or bent on anything other than law enforcement. And so I get uncomfortable with talks of disbandment. I don't think that's a solution. Look, I get it. And I think it's fair because it does feel and indeed it is very extreme. But the assumption here, if we're going to keep it, is two things. One, you have different leadership, leadership that acknowledge that there's a problem. And second, you have good oversight. Your congressional folks at both the House and the Senate provide that deep dive oversight along with the Department of Justice's own inspector general. So you have all three of those folks working very collectively saying there's a problem. We have to fix it. The culture here, there's something wrong with it. But unless you have all those pieces and you only continue to have more examples of this weaponization and the politicization stuff, well, then you start asking yourself, well, how do you fix it? If the people in charge, the people providing oversight are not willing to fix it, what's the solution? And that's when you start leaning into

some of the more radical solutions like disbanding. It doesn't mean you get rid of the actual work they do. You farm it out to other organizations because that one just doesn't work anymore. What magical organization is not going to have any political bias in it? Well, it's the degree to which each organization has it and whether or not you can create oversight over each of them. I hear the point that so long as you have the power that you could have people abuse it. But I think until you have a change of authority and until you have a different oversight and within the Department of Justice, a different degree of that investigation and making sure that people aren't doing bad things. I don't know what the other response is. I don't know how you fix it.

How is this one on the FBI? How is this one not on the DOJ? Look, I think it's both, but in terms of the FBI- What specifically the FBI do? So this affidavit was obviously based on some degree of investigation. So the question is trust. Do you trust that that investigation and the analysis of when those FBI agents, well before the latest raid, before they were down talking to the Trump team, when they were asking questions, looking in the locker room, as it were, of where the material was being held, they asked them to put the lock on the door. Who was that individual? Do we know whether or not they had a degree of bias? Because we have seen that on the individual level. We've seen that repeatedly in the FBI. So I hear the point that on a big level, the DOJs, Garland and others take responsibility, Christopher Wray, the head of the

FBI. But we have seen in cases that FBI agents, right, that the FBI agents though do engage in falsifying evidence and submitting it to judges. We've seen that. We started with Carter Page. Carter Page is a great example. Yeah, right. So it's not true that there is no issue amongst the rank and file. I mean, I will tell you, I still have friends within the FBI. This isn't just Brian throwing an arrow because I want to say silly things. I have friends who know it and see it, that this politicization issue is real. And they're angry by it because they understand it's

their life's blood and work that they have spent years. So they are frustrated and upset. And we know this today that there are whistleblowers talking to different people in Congress from the FBI about this issue, that politics are influencing investigations. You know, it makes you wonder, Brian. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say, it makes you wonder. You remember the CIA recruiting video that had like, I have two moms and I'm a lesbian too. And I'm, you know, I don't know, however many boxes on the LGBTQ plus whatever spirit they wanted to check.

Remember that recruiting ad? She said she had a mental illness. That was one of them. So yes, she was a Latina. She was a millennial. Yes, there was a big long list. Yeah, I can't keep all my ads straight because there are some that recruited for the military.

There's some that recruited for the CIA. In any instance, one gets the impression they might be like screening for the wrong shit. You know, like, do you have two moms? You do? You do. You're in. They forget to ask about political bias. Would you go after your political enemy if ordered to do so by a politically corrupt boss?

Yes. Walk this way as long as you're a Democrat. Well, I will tell you, again, I have friends in the agency and what they have told me is the past five, certainly 10 years since I left in 2015, 16, that they are seeing an increasing number of people who go to the CIA, work there, want to stay there, not because of mission, not because they want to protect the country, but because they want to express their truth or be involved in... Right. So it's that language. I have heard that from people still inside saying that they hear that at meetings. So when we start drifting in that

direction, we have just lost it. We have absolutely lost it. You may feel that the raid at Mar-a-Lago was driven by partisan politics at some level, whether it's Merrick Garland or somebody underneath. You may feel that way. You would be in conflict with the outgoing Congresswoman Liz Cheney. OK, here is what she had to say about the matter the other day. Are you entirely confident that there was no political motivation behind this by the Biden administration or by the Attorney General? I've seen no evidence that there was any political motivation. You've now got, you know, the judge reviewing whether or not the affidavit or portions of it will be released. I think that will provide us additional information.

It also seems to be the case that there were clearly ongoing efforts to get back whatever this information was and that it was not presented, you know, that the former president was unwilling to give back these materials. Now we will see. We'll learn more. But, you know, it's a really serious thing. And I just think that for us as a party to be in a position where we're reflexively attacking career law enforcement professionals in order to defend the former president who conducted himself the way this one did. It's a really sad day for the party. I mean, if I were a Twitter editor, I would slap on lax context to her little statement. Sure, the automatic distrust of the FBI.

Hello, Liz. this is why you lost look there was something else that she said there that i that i want to put on people's radars so one of the things that's happening right now and what they have asked of the intelligence community is to look at these 300 documents and say what is the damage assessment all right this is where politics are going to come into play again, because the people making that assessment are individuals focused with and indeed a part of the Biden administration. The State Department spokesman right now is a name, a guy named Ned Price. He's a former CIA officer. All right. So he is a partisan, long been a partisan. And he was in the CIA for a long period of time. And people like him would be involved in this damage assessment.

So there's going to be some political sneaking going on on this one, deciding what the exact fallout is in terms of national security. There's going to be some very serious questions that I and others are going to be raising looking at this material or at least their assessment and saying, prove it because your own political biases could very well have played into your damage assessment. Well, let's play that game. What if what we finally find out is they went back in there because the mole, whoever the

mole was, told them literally there are nuclear codes to launch the weapons, although I guess they might change those after one president leaves office. I don't know how it works. In any event, the nuclear codes are sitting in Melania's closet, unprotected, unlocked. I guess they might change those after one president leaves office. I don't know how it works. Yes. In any event, the nuclear codes are sitting in Melania's closet, unprotected, unlocked. OK. What in that circumstance should Merrick Garland do? So two things. One, if the material, it does not qualify for a presidential declassification.

Right. So if a reasonable person looks at that per the 1988 Supreme Court case, it does not qualify for a presidential declassification, right? So if a reasonable person looks at that per the 1988 Supreme Court case that authorized that, then that will be a lawsuit, right? And that's what should have happened. And there would be a counter case and so forth. I'm going to defer to the legal folks on exactly that process. But the point is, there would be a process. It wouldn't necessarily be a part of a raid. So second, I'm just coming back to this issue about the declassification process, because we have to remember that it's not a cut and dried case here. If there are documents there, again, the president has a

pretty broad authority. And I appreciate your comment earlier that, all right, well, how much authority? Well, there's a little bit of wiggle room, but I think the overall message to the American people should be the president, irrespective of person or party, has profound ability to declassify. So I think that that's the first piece that I keep coming back to. But again, I want to emphasize one other thing. What would you and I do? What would we encourage? What counsel would we give Biden or Trump or any other president? When you're going to take information from the White House, specifically declassified, let's say you wave the wand. Why? Why are you doing it? Right. So I would use something called a need to know and to want principle. Right. So out of the CIA,

we had this need to know idea of why do I really need that information? Well, that's what we should be talking about in terms of sort of stepping back from this, encouraging our politicians, our presidents to say, look, when you leave the White House, why do you really need that classified document? Just because you want to remember the old times, that's probably not sufficient. Even though you might have the authority, that's not wise, right? But if there's some other reason President Trump believes that there's corruption involved and the only way to solve that is declassify things, take it and then release it into the press or whatever his legal strategy might be. Well, that's fair. I mean, I'm not saying that that's what I would do, but I understand the logic in that case. So I hope at

some point we can step back and start talking about, you know, what are the reasonable steps that you and I might want to take if we were president to do this over again and maybe prevent this from happening in the first place. But we got an affidavit to look at and we got 300 documents and more to really explore before we really cast judgment on this one. Yeah. I mean, it's going to take that level of information to convince most of us that this was even arguably the right move by Merrick Garland. I don't know that I can be convinced. I really don't. It just comes in the heels of so many false investigations into the guy that even somebody like me, who I'm happy to criticize President Trump when he deserves it. Yes, I'm I'm throwing my hands up like I'm no longer listening to you. I mean, you can't do it 13

times and have me remain open minded to you. This doesn't come in a vacuum. Megan, what you're saying is you recognize that this issue is not about Trump. It's bigger than Trump. It's about the country. It's about rule of law. It's about the stability of the nation. And you're right. That's absolutely what this is about. So it doesn't matter if you like or dislike Trump, you vote for him or not. What matters is the big, big questions at hand here, which is, do we survive when our FBI or our CIA, our intelligence communities, our law enforcement communities become politicized and we lose trust and faith in them? That's the issue. You blew it, Jim Comey and Merrick Garland. You blew it. It's too late. I don't know how

you're going to restore trust and credibility in your agencies, but you must. You must, because otherwise we have situations like this where even when you might have a perfectly legitimate reason to seize documents, half the country looks at you and says, we know you've got it in for this guy. Brian, it's such a pleasure. I want people to I want to recommend the president's daily brief because we didn't get to it today. But you talk about the most interesting things that people might not be hearing on every other podcast or newscast. Going to give the audience an example, this new rail line in China that's transporting all this coal, all the shit that we just did in the latest Inflation Reduction Act. Like, oh, OK, you want to feel better about yourself and all you're giving up and all the money we're spending and

getting rid of all this coal and instead going to renewables. Take a look at what they're doing in China. Brian breaks it down. And he also tells you why you need to go buy coffee right now. You might want to stockpile. I'm going to leave that as a tease. He's well worth your time. Brian, great.

Great to have you. Such a pleasure. All right. Coming up, we're going to take a hardcore look at the legal side of the raid with the guy I've been waiting to talk to on exactly this. Our next guest is Mike Davis. He's an attorney, founder of the Article 3 Project and former chief counsel for nominations at U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. And he has written a fascinating Newsweek column with his views on the Trump raid. That's not all he's written.

He's written a lot. He's tweeted a lot. He's tweeted a lot. He's been on TV. And I've become a big fan of Mike Davis's. Mike, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. You're so sensible. I love listening to your opinion because unlike most people out there, you actually have the

history and the resume and just the way you present your argument to back it up, to actually convince me that you know what you're talking about. And I've been I tune in whenever I know you're speaking now. So let's just start with let's let's go through it. OK, let's go through it in baby steps so that people understand. I'm going to ask you all the dumb questions and you can answer them. The New York Times reports that Trump took documents he wasn't entitled to. Those are my documents. They're your documents, but they're not his documents because they belong to the people. That the National Archives tried to work with him to say, tap, tap, tap, Mr. Former President, those are ours.

Give them back. And that Trump said, OK, here are these boxes. But he kept boxes he shouldn't have kept. He knew enough that he had to turn them over, but he didn't. He kept another collection of them at Mar-a-Lago. And then they got wind of that and they sent lawyers down to Mar-a-Lago. They saw classified documents, by the way, in the documents he turned over. And that's when they opened up a grand jury and they said, he's not being honest.

He said he gave us these 15 and that's all. But we know there's more. The grand jury issues a subpoena saying, give us the rest of the documents. Well, maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. But they have a meeting in June and Trump puts up his lawyers and his lawyers sign a sworn declaration under oath, they claim, saying, we gave you all the documents and we certainly gave you all the classified documents.

Bye. And then poor Merrick Garland thinking, finally, I've washed my hands of the evil Trump in this document drama, gets a call from a mole inside Mar-a-Lago or who's been near Mar-a-Lago saying he lied. I saw them. Check the safe. Check the room. There's more. And they say we have no choice. He's not above the law. He doesn't get to keep the documents just like Bill Clinton didn't get to keep the furniture. Get your asses down there, FBI. We're going to get you a warrant, which is the next step up from a subpoena. And you get the people's property because we may be vulnerable when it comes to national security. Plus, he just doesn't own this stuff. And so he's not allowed

to keep it. Rule of law applies to everyone, even former presidents. Done. That's what is wrong with the Merrick Garland's procedure, as reported by The New York Times. Well, it sounds like a good political narrative, but it was an unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful home raid on a former president of the United States who also happens to be Merrick Garland's chief political rival for the, or the boss of Merrick Garland's chief political rival for the 2024 presidential election. I think we need to step back, Megan, to remember two key legal issues here. Number one, the president of the United States has the absolute constitutional authority as commander in chief to declassify any record he wants for any reason he wants in any manner he wants. And that is

confirmed by a 1988 Supreme Court case, Department of the Navy versus Egan. And number two, the President of the United States has the absolute soul, as the judge said, statutory authority under the Presidential Records Act to make personal any presidential record he wants. So if President Trump took records with him out of the White House to Mar-a-Lago when he was president, they are declassified by his actions. He also has separate declassification memos, like on January 19th, declassifying the Mar-a-Lago or excuse me, the Crossfire Hurricane records before he went to Mar-a-Lago when he left the presidency on the 20th.

So he has the constitutional power to declassify and he has the statutory power under the Presidential Records Act to say these are my records. This is my love note with the North Korean dictator. This is not a government record and I'm taking it with me. Or if they're photocopies of records that he's declassified, he can say that this is my personal copy. And that's confirmed by a 2012 opinion by an Obama appointed district court judge in DC. There was a lawsuit by Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch versus Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton took recordings or tapes from his presidency that should have been presidential records. And the Obama appointed judge says, no, he can make these personal. He has the sole authority under the statute. So what's left? If

you look at the face of this unprecedented, unnecessary and unlawful warrant, you have the Espionage Act violation on there that Trump could not have violated because I just said the president has the constitutional power to declassify. And you also have this destruction, alteration, theft of government property, which is legally impossible because under the Presidential Records Act, he could take a personal copy. The third charge was obstruction. Well, how, as a matter of law, how can you legally obstruct investigations into non-crimes that the Justice Department has no right to investigate in the first place? So this is a political fishing expedition. It's a charade. And my theory is, if you look at item number two on that inventory from the Justice Department of what they raided and took from Mar-a-Lago. Number two is this leather bound book of documents. And I think that those are the

crossfire hurricane documents that Trump declassified on January 19th before he left on the 20th. And I think that is terrifying to the Biden, Obama, Hillary, FBI, Intel regimes, because I think President Trump has the goods, declassified goods that shows about the Russian collusion mess. So interesting and so much in there. OK, so jumping back to let's table classified for right now. Let's spend a minute on not classified, but not technically his, technically ours, because we the people and, you know, their presidential records really are records of the people. You're saying if they are

copies, he can take them. But what if there are originals in there? If there are originals, do you concede he wasn't entitled to take them? Under under this 2012 Obama judge opinion with Judicial Watch versus Clinton, the president has the sole statutory authority under the Presidential Records Act to determine whether something is a personal record that belongs to him, like Clinton's audio tapes that were in his sock drawer, or a presidential record that goes to the bureaucrats, the National Archives, their catalogs, and then they're sent, almost certainly sent back to the former president to put in his library. That's what this comes down to, right? So even if it's an original, he's okay? He has the power under the statute to make personal any

record he wants, according to this 2012 District of Columbia District Court decision by an Obama appointed judge. Now, there's a there's a difference of opinion over what he needs to do to wave that wand. Like my pals over at National Review, I think it was Jim Garrity and Andy McCarthy were disagreeing over that opinion, saying it may or may not has been put to the test yet. It's not totally clear that it would totally exonerate Trump in this instance. Do you think it's unclear? I don't think it's unclear at all and i'll read you the language from the 1988 supreme court decision the president after all is the commander of commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the united states his authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national

security and to determine whether what that's irrelevant. It says it flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the president and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant, meaning the Espionage Act, any other act dealing with classified materials, any regulation, those apply to everyone else on the planet except for the current president of the United States. Right. So that those apply to the secretary of state, the former president of the United States, anyone who has access to classified material except for the president of the United States, because he has the inherent constitutional power and constitutional power as commander in chief to declassify and classify anything he wants. Now, he says, I had a standing order that documents I took with me. I think this is how it was phrased. Forgive me if that's not correct. But basically, I had a standing order that documents I took with me would be declassified.

And John Bolton comes out. Of course, he's become an antagonist to the president, but he comes out and says, I knew of no such order. And he said, that's almost certainly a lie. And you've got all these former Trump officials saying, I didn't know about it. I didn't know that. I didn let me give you an example. In 2012, President Obama, March of 2012, President Obama was meeting with the president of Russia, one of Vladimir's puppet presidents before Vladimir went back. Medvedev. And exactly. So President Obama gets caught on a hot mic saying that he would have more negotiating room with Russia after the presidential election in 2012. So basically giving them some of the most classified information you can give to our enemy saying, hey, hold tight for eight months. You're going to have more negotiating

room. That is highly classified information. And if anyone other than the president of the United States or someone authorized by the president of the United States said that to our enemy, they'd be in prison, right? For espionage. But because it was the president of the United States who relayed this, he could not violate the Espionage Act by how he handles classified material, period, full stop. It's so fascinating. Okay. so let's talk about what's happening in court. Now, today, President Trump has gone in there and filed an objection to this search on Fourth Amendment grounds and has said, I want a special master appointed to separate out attorney-client privileged information. You know, there's stuff in there that by any standard,

the FBI should not be reviewing, is his point. Does he have a point? And do you think they will appoint a special master? Or is there some greater ability of the DOJ and the FBI to review documents than you or I could do? Because we wouldn't be allowed to look at his private privilege information. So they this motion included a rule 41 G request under the federal rules of criminal procedure, which is to get back the property that belongs to President Trump. And as part of that, you can tee up these legal issues. Right. And there are several legal issues in this case. Number one, as we discussed, the president has the absolute constitutional power to classify or declassify. He has the absolute statutory power to determine whether it's a personal record that belongs to Trump or a presidential record that goes to the archives and then gets sent back to Trump's library as the former president. There's also the issue that this magistrate judge, Bruce Reinhart, is clearly biased. He has a judicial bias that requires

his recusal under 28 U.S.C. 455A, the United States Code, along with Canon 2 and Canon 2A of the Judicial Canons. There's no reason that this judge should be on this case. He has a clear bias against Trump as evidenced by his 2017 Facebook post where he bashed President Trump's integrity, personal integrity. And then also just eight weeks ago on June 22nd, this magistrate judge Bruce Reinhart recused from President Trump's civil lawsuit versus Hillary Clinton. So what happened in the last eight weeks that made Judge Reinhart's bias that he recognized and caused him to recuse, what made his bias go away in this case, right? And so that's the other issue that's a problem. The bigger issue, the Fourth Amendment issue, or another issue is the Fourth Amendment issue that they raised in this motion, that Trump's lawyers raised in this motion. And it's what you talked about with your prior guest, Megan, is when you're dealing with anyone, especially a former president, a home raid should be the last option. And it doesn't seem like they went to the last option here. Former presidents get federally funded office space.

They have secure facilities called SCIFs so they can look at classified material. They get security clearances. They have staff, paid federal staff. They have Secret Service protection to guard these paper records. Unlike Hillary Clinton's illegal home server that was likely hacked by foreign governments, these are paper records that are protected by the Secret Service with cameras and bugging devices. There is no reason that Merrick Garland should have ordered this home raid. There is no reason, you know, Merrick Garland said that ordered this home raid. There's no reason, you know, Merrick Garland said that he had, the story keeps changing. First, they said that Merrick Garland

in Newsweek, they said Merrick Garland didn't order the raid. Well, that's nonsense. He had to admit that he did order the raid. And then they said that the Biden White House was not involved in this raid. Now, John Solomon from Just the News is reporting that yes, yes, in fact, the White House Counsel's Office was very much involved with this home raid. And then they were saying that there were nuclear documents in Mar-a-Lago like Trump had the launch codes. Well, that's just nonsense on its face. If Trump had the launch codes, first of all, they changed them after he leaves the presidency. They do. I knew it.

Launch codes. Why did they wait 18 months to go get them? Why did Merrick Garland leak out that he deliberated for weeks, he said, to get these records? They do. I knew it. records, why didn't they go get them immediately? And then also, if you look at the inventory, if they had nuclear records, why didn't the inventory include Q-level classification, Department of Energy Q-level classification for nuclear records? They had TS, they had SCI, which are CIA records. They had SAP, which are Department of Defense records. Why didn't they have Q records? The story keeps changing. They keep spinning and putting out these lies because they realize that they screwed up royally and this is backfiring badly on them. So they're trying to make their raid look more justified than it was. And at the end of the day, this was a political raid to get politically damaging documents from President Trump that he declassified and made personal, which was his constitutional and statutory power as president. This is so fascinating to me.

This is this is why I love you, Mike, because you've got all your facts. I love people with their facts. So let's just let's go back. OK, the little archivist who also hates Trump. That's that's clear, too, from his public comments. This guy doesn't like Trump. The Federalist did a long report on this guy and how he was like, oh, I'm definitely retiring under Joe Biden, which he did because he didn't he wanted to be replaced by Biden, not by Trump. Called January 6th the worst day of his life and so on. So this guy is upset that he doesn't have all of his files. You can just picture it like the pocket protector, you know, the glasses with the tape on it. I'm sorry, archivist. That's how I picture you.

And he's like, I don't have all my documents. So he winds up getting Trump to submit to return 15 boxes and then says, oh, there are classified documents in here. There are classified. And so he runs over to the DOJ and they do something extraordinary even then. Right. Why did they then open up a grand jury proceeding and slap Trump with a subpoena? Like what would the normal move have been to open up a grand jury proceeding at that point? Or would it have been for somebody at DOJ to call up Trump and say, yo, there's some classified documents in here. You know, give us a point person to deal with. Were you surprised to see the next move was grand jury? Well, I should be surprised. I've worked at the Justice Department. I've clerked for the Supreme Court, for Justice Gorsuch. I've clerked on the Court of Appeals. I should be very, I've actually been a federal prosecutor. I should be very surprised. But with the Obama, Biden, Hillary regimes, I'm not surprised by anything. They've proven that they are more than willing to weaponize the Justice Department. They're willing to spy on presidential candidate Donald Trump Department. They're willing to spy on presidential presidential candidate Donald Trump.

They're even willing to spy on President Trump. So nothing surprises me with this corrupt regime, the Biden, Hillary Obama regime. The alleged crimes that they're investigating, espionage, government property destruction or theft, and then obstruction of these investigations, as we discussed, Megan, it's legally impossible for a president of the United States to violate the Espionage Act by how he handles classified materials. And it's legally impossible to charge Trump for destruction of government property under the Presidential Records Act. First of all, there's no criminal component to the Presidential Records Act. They're trying to bootstrap other statutes onto this to make it a crime. But again, President Trump made these declassified records personal, a copy of these records personal. And so it's just, they've gone over the red line here and they're time and time again doing everything they can to get Trump. OK, so then so they open up the grand jury proceeding, they get a subpoena, they hit Trump with the subpoena, and then they they get more boxes.

They go down there in June, they have a meeting, and this is where they claim they they have the moral high ground. You know, it reads it reaches its peak because they claim that one of the Trump lawyers submitted an affidavit or a declaration, a sworn testimony in paper saying, we gave you everything. You've got it all. And then the mole can't comes out and says it's a lie, even lied to by the lawyers. And they hit Trump with a subpoena for videotape of Mar-a-Lago. And this is when, you know, they needed their smelling salts because they saw randos, according to them, according to The New York Times, running around Mar-a-Lago near these precious secrets. And they called up Mar-a-Lago and Trump's team and said, put a damn padlock, an extra one on the door. And Trump's team said, OK. But they're basically saying because a lawyer lied to us under oath, what choice did we have but to go nuclear from pardon the pun and get a warrant, which,

of course, is far more serious than a subpoena. And that's why we had to do it. We've been lied to by lawyers under oath. We were out of options. That's just you just don't know. These are these are leaks that are coming out of this investigation they're improper leaks but what did the affidavit actually say that that trump didn't have classified records well he didn't he declassified them right so that's number one and if you're if in order to charge someone with an 18 usc 1001 violation they have to intend to lie right it can't just be that they made a mistake and they thought they sent in an affidavit that was correct. They ended up not being correct because there was another box

in Melania's underwear drawer that they didn't realize. I mean, you have to show that the lawyer actually knew that they were making a false statement in order to charge them with 18 USC 1001. So short on time, but do you believe they're going to indict Donald Trump? I think that that was their intent going into this thing, but I think they've seen the tremendous blowback on this thing. Look, they know that they can't. They know that Trump's going to win the nomination and they've actually helped solidify Trump winning the nomination by doing this raid. His poll numbers have gone up by 12 points. They know that Biden can't run again because he's demented and he's not going to be able to run again. So who do they have left? Kamala? So they know that President Trump has a very serious, very real chance of becoming the president again. And I

think they're doing everything they can to stop this. And they're being, this is desperate. This is a desperate move on their part and it backfired badly. So we'll see. I think they want to indict him, but there will be a huge backlash by the American people because I think people see that this is unjust. Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton took $180,000, $190,000 worth of furniture out of the White House and they didn't get an FBI raid. Hillary Clinton had a home server that got hacked by foreign governments, no raid, but we're going to find every way we can to get a former President Trump because he's Trump. Mm hmm. Quick question, Donna, technicality. Does it matter that Trump is a former president? Right. Like some people have been saying if he didn't declassify all this stuff before he left the White House, then he's in trouble.

Well, so only the current president has the classification authority under the Constitution. But under the Presidential Records Act, it contemplates that former presidents have classified materials. There's a very good piece in the Wall Street Journal on this. I think it was yesterday by Rifkin, and people should read that. It talks about this exact issue, that it doesn't matter whether Trump had classified or unclassified under the statute, under the Presidential Records Act, because the Presidential Records Act contemplates that he has these records, but he absolutely declassified these records. We saw this in his January 19th declassification order on Crossfire Hurricane and other records, and he declassified them by his actions, just like President Obama declassified when he in 2012, when he told the Russian

president some of the most highly classified information. 10 seconds or less. If they were to charge him, would it be in D.C.? Would he have would he face a D.C. jury or could it possibly be in Florida? They would try to they would try to they would try to get it in D.C. because they know it's a Trump deranged D.C. is like 95 percent Democrat. And they know that they'd get a good judge and they'd get a in D.C. because they know it's a Trump deranged D.C. is like 95 percent Democrat. And they know that they'd get a good judge and they'd get a good D.C. circuit. At the end of the day, the Supreme Court would have to step in and reverse.

And I even I even think Democrat appointed justices like Justice Kagan know that they would have to step in because this is bigger than Trump. This is about the presidency and his presidential powers. Yeah. Mike, so great to hear your POV. Thank you for coming on and sharing your insights with us. And I hope you'll come back. I will. Thank you. Coming up tomorrow,

we've got Dan Wooten back to talk about Meghan Markle's new podcast. Don't miss that. Thanks for listening to The Meghan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.