The Megyn Kelly Show - The Truth About January 6th, with Andy McCarthy and Julie Kelly | Ep. 140

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Andy McCarthy, National Review Institute Senior Fellow, and Julie Kelly, Senior Contributor to American Greatness, to discuss all angles to January 6th, including the justifications for holding January 6 rioters in jail, comparisons to 9/11, some of the most egregious January 6 cases, Officer Fanone and the media, insurrection vs. other descriptions of the events, and also Gov. Andrew Cuomo's political future, the legality of vaccine passports and eviction moratoriums, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind 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. Oh, we have a lot of good answers coming your way today. A lot of good facts that you're not going to hear anyplace else. We're talking about, among other things, January 6th with Andy McCarthy and Julie Kelly, who's been doing really good reporting on this. She caused a bit of a controversy in her reaction to the police officer's testimony last week, and we'll get into that too. But we're going to start with one of my favorite legal analysts, and that is Andy McCarthy. And first, we're going to touch

on a few things that you want to hear his reaction on. Cuomo, right? What's going to happen with that? Is he going to get impeached? What does he think about Cuomo's defense yesterday? I'm going to ask him about these vaccine passports that we're seeing pop up more and more in places like New York, which is now mandating that you show proof of vaccine. And if you want to go into a restaurant, I'm going to ask him about the rent abatement controversy now and how Biden appears to have given himself the authority to do something both he and the Supreme Court previously realized he has no authority to do. So we're going to get into all of that. And then we're going to talk in depth about January 6th and these hearings that we're seeing and whether this is just a sideshow, right? Like what is real? What do we actually think about the charges that have been brought so far,

what the Justice Department is doing? So many people in jail for effectively a year heading on to a year now without facing trial, without knowing what the evidence is against them, with, in some cases, defense lawyers who are looking to re-educate them by making them read certain materials and watch certain movies. I mean, it's kind of crazy what's happening. One guy, we're going to talk about this guy, doesn't appear to be a nice guy. A lot of racist writings and clips on his phone and so on.

So far as I can tell, even the courts are admitting he didn't actually do anything criminal, but he's thinking about it. He's thinking bad things. How does he wind up in jail for so long without any sort of a hearing? We're going to get into all of it today. I thought I found it a fascinating discussion. So we're going to kick it off with Andy. He's a bestselling author. He's a National Review Institute senior fellow, contributing editor at National Review, too, but really, I think is among his greatest contributions to our country

is he prosecuted terrorists for a living for a long, long time. He put put in jail the blind sheikh when he was assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. He led that prosecution. He's contributed to the prosecution of terrorists who bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and so on. So he's spent a lot of years protecting us. And now he protects us in another way by offering his smart editorial thoughts on legal cases of the day. And then Julie is a political commentator, also senior contributor at American Greatness, which is a right leaning sort of Trump-supporting publication. But she's written in the past for National Review, for The Hill, for The Wall Street Journal, The Federalist, and so on.

She is a stay-at-home mom in suburban Chicago. And she's got a lot of thoughts on what's been happening with these criminal defendants because she's been actually interviewing them. She's been taking the time to follow each case like the mainstream media refuses to do. Okay, it's all coming up one minute away. Andy McCarthy. Hi, how are you? I'm doing just great. How are you? Good. Love talking to you. So excited that you're here. So much to go over. Let's get to it. Start with Cuomo. An unbelievable day yesterday. I talked to Janice Dean as it was going down here. We were taping and I hadn't yet seen his denial. That happened as we were kind of putting the podcast to bed.

And it was, I have to say, somewhat entertaining. It was like my mother and father touched people. I touch people. We're touchers. Not not the way you want to go, Governor. But just for people who hadn't seen it, here's a little sampling of the governor's defense. The New York Times published a front page picture of me touching a woman's face at a wedding and then kissing her on the cheek. That is not front page news. I've been making the same gesture mother and from my father. It is meant to convey warmth, nothing more. Indeed, there are hundreds, if not thousands of photos of me using the exact same gesture. I do it with everyone, black and white, young and old, straight and LGBTQ, powerful people,

friends, strangers, people who I meet on the street. There's a long, long list of people he's touched. Sure. Just like mom and dad. Well, you know, I must say when I hear this, you know, first of all, if you rob the bank at high noon, it's still a bank robbery. You know, it doesn't matter if the camera's rolling and everybody's watching.

And the other thing that rubs me the wrong way about this is, you know, he keeps saying I'm 63. I'm from another time. No one else is listening to this, Megan. So this is between you and me, right? I'm 62. And I've sort of traveled around in not at the same level, obviously, but I've, you know, I've been in sort of elite Washington and especially New York legal circles and some political circles. What's described in that report was never right. There was never a time when that was, when that was okay. So, you know, to, to, for him to sort of, he's a very sophisticated guy. Um, and you know, for him to say, you know, gee whiz, the mores changed and I just it just

happened so fast that I never caught up with it is laughable. On the other hand, the report that was written is very explosive. And I think it's devastating for him politically. But you'll appreciate this as a lawyer. When you're preparing a case to go to trial, when you're writing an indictment or you're writing a civil claim, you write the charging instruments with an eye toward what you can actually prove in court. And this thing is very interesting because Letitia James, the AG, took her mandate as basically writing a report not to do anything. So, you know, no criminal prosecution, no civil claim. So the usual thing that you have as a lawyer that disciplines you to only put out what you can prove is not present in the four corners of that report. That doesn't mean that there's not a lot of corroborated information and that the victims are incredible. But, you know, I mean, this thing has been put out in a way that is never going to be challenged in court. And, you know, it's probably going to kill him politically.

Maybe we'll see. I mean, he's not going to step down. So it's probably going to kill him politically. Maybe we'll see. I mean, he's not going to step down. So it's really up to the assembly to see whether they want to impeach him. And so far they haven't won. They haven't wanted to, you know, he's too powerful. There's a battle. I saw your tweet on this yesterday. You nailed it.

This isn't about Dem versus GOP. This is about moderate Dems versus progressive woke Dems. And unfortunately, as a New Yorker, I'm on the side, if I have to choose between those two of moderate Dems, which sadly he kind of is. So if we lose him and I want him to go, don't have now, who I think moderates would be more pleased with than was Cuomo. The weather vein here, Megan, it seems to me is heasty because he's a Cuomo guy through and through. And I thought it was very interesting. He really did a 180 yesterday when the report first came out. I mean, you knew what was going to happen, right? The report comes out and these guys are like humming a humming a humming. They don't want to say anything where they're planting their feet and they want to see how the polls in New York go for two or three days before they decide where they have to come out. So he initially came out and said, I find this report very disturbing. Really? You know, this is the top Dem in the state legislature. But by by sundown, after Biden had kind of cut the legs out from under Cuomo, he Steve was saying a different tune. He was saying, I found my moral conscience.

Yeah, right, right, right. My as soon as the president told me what it was. And then, you know, he basically said he's unfit to serve and we've lost confidence in him. To me, that's a big deal in New York politics because he's Cuomo's guy. And I just don't see how Cuomo survives. This to me is not like a Ralph Northam situation where he toughed it out. But the politics of Virginia are really that sort of prism of Republican versus Democrat. I don't think Cuomo can survive. The woke progressives wanted him out already. So this is a very different dynamic than what we see in the country. And if he doesn't have the support of establishment Democrats, I think he's toast. Yeah, I think I mean, this is really a this is an important moment, I think, for Democrats in New York State, because somebody tweeted out yesterday, if they don't get rid of this guy, the Me Too movement is officially dead. I mean, I would argue it died with Kavanaugh. But whatever was left of it is definitely dead. If they don't get rid of this guy, you got 11 women coming forward. And he has had the opportunity to submit his 85 page rebuttal and he's had press conferences and he has, he's had aides out there defending him. So he, you know, in the, in the

public world, in the PR world, he's had quote due process. This isn't yet a legal matter that would require a whole level, additional level of scrutiny. Um, but you know, you've got state troopers coming forward with other state troopers who witnessed her account. These women seem very credible to me and not like somebody bringing up a 30 year allegation that there's no way of knowing whether it happened and there's no contemporaneous corroboration. At this point, if they don't do anything about it, I don't know what it's saying to American women. I just feel like it's just such a middle finger to American women if they don't do anything about this. Yeah, I think that's right. The interesting thing, though, is you were rolling all through that. And that's exactly the way that you would want to marshal it. I keep going back

to, you know, you with Janice Dean yesterday when this all came out. What we're now seeing, this latest report has turbocharged this thing in a way that two days ago you would have thought that Cuomo would easily survive. Now it looks like he probably won't survive. But the real important thing here, I mean, patients is the is the five alarm scandal here. And it just I find it interesting. As a direct result, you could definitely make the case of his order sending COVID positive patients back into these small nursing homes with the most vulnerable population over the objections of nursing and health groups who said, don't do this, governor. You're going to kill a lot of people. Yep. And I think, you know, if he had copped to it at the time, Megan, you know, if he had just said, look, we were grappling at the beginning. We didn't really know the tiger we had by the tail. We were worried about hospital

space and we screwed up. I think, you know, people wouldn't have liked that, but they would have understood it. But he not only didn't do that, they covered up what they did. And then he takes this frigging victory lap with the with the book, which is just I mean, it's infuriating. And I just think that should have been enough in a normal political culture and normal political climate. That should have been enough to get him out. Well, they believe that a lot of those Dems have their own hands dirty when it comes to that scandal. And therefore, they much rather boot him based on this. They weren't there while he allegedly put his hand under the executive assistant's blouse and grabbed her breast.

You know, that can be totally his scandal. So we'll see. OK, let's move on to vaccine passports, because we're seeing in New York City and trust me, it's coming to a city near you. Yeah, that now you're not going to be able to go out to eat inside of a restaurant or go to an entertainment venue or go to a gym without proof of your vaccination. And I know that there's Supreme Court precedent saying vaccine mandates are OK in many settings. That's sort of the history here for public health reasons. But do you think there's any legal argument against this? Or do you think this is going to fall right in line with legal precedent? Well, it does fall in line with the legal precedent, but you have a lot of

important voices, Justice Alito and Justice Gorsuch among them, saying that we really need to revisit Jacobson versus Massachusetts, which is this early 20th century, I guess it's smallpox era case that basically said these vaccine mandates are okay. They didn't really come out and say they're okay. I mean, basically the mandate in that case, you could get out of it by paying a $5 fee, which is about 140 bucks now. So it's not really the same kind of mandate we're talking about. And the other thing that justices say who want to revisit this is that this case came out before the Supreme Court developed what is now its real jurisprudence for evaluating claims that the state has infringed what you claim to

be your fundamental rights, right? So after that case, the Supreme Court develops this test where they say, if you're claiming a fundamental right is being infringed, the state has to show that it has a compelling reason to regulate and that the regulation it's chosen is the least restrictive alternative. It's the, it's the smallest thing they can do in terms of interfering with your right while at the same time pursuing or facilitating their compelling interest. And if we, if you're not dealing with a fundamental right, you're in a different category called rational relation, which means the state just has to show they have a legitimate reason to regulate and that the regulation they've chosen is rationally it's rational relation, the government wins always. And if it's strict scrutiny, the government usually loses, but not always. So what you get down to is what kind of right is this?

What is the right not to be vaccinated? And so far, the courts relying on Jacobson have said it's an important right, but it's not a fundamental right. So we're going to use rational relation scrutiny. But, you know, the case came up before there was rational relation scrutiny. So there may be very good reason to go back and take another look at it. So if you were a betting man and you look at the Supreme Court, which leans more right now than it has in any recent decade, what would you say the odds are that they would say the government's gone too far on some of these vaccine mandates? I mean, we've seen district courts, federal trial courts uphold them at universities already saying you can't come to this college unless you get a vaccine. But that's not the Supreme Court. So what I mean, would you say there's a chance,

there's a good chance that they might say you can't do this? I'd say it's a low chance now. Now, the wild card here is, and this is unbelievable from the Biden people, the vaccine doesn't have final approval from the FDA, right? So since it's only approved for emergency purposes, statutorily, they have to tell people that they have an option not to take it. So I think that, you know, that obviously, if they button that down, then you're in a different set of facts before court. But the history of the United States, I don't mean to be like too portentous about this, but this is what it is, right? When we have a crisis, the court tends to give a wide berth to the elected officials,

especially the executive officials, to deal with the crisis. And to the extent that you get new law that upholds civil rights, it tends to come after the crisis is over and it sets norms for the next crisis, but it's cold comfort to the people in the here and now, right? So, you know, you have Lincoln suspending habeas corpus, you have the, you know, Japanese internment, all sorts of things that the court has kind of looked the other way on while the crisis was going on and then clamped down afterwards. If this follows that pattern, I think, and you have not only the three progressive judges on the court, but I think certainly Chief Justice Roberts and maybe even Justice Kavanaugh are kind of of a mind to sort of let the elected officials do their thing. And if the people don't like it, let there be a political, not a judicial outcome. And I think the court is probably,

with respect to vaccines at least, going to give the executive branches of the state and the federal government a wide berth. Now, there's other things that they're going to do, especially if we get to lockdowns again. The Cuomo decision a few months ago indicated that if you really are in that established fundamental right category, like religious liberty. The Cuomo case was about the restrictions on worship rights in a couple of places in New York. And the court said, no, you can't do that because religious exercise is a fundamental right. And there's a lot of ways that you could accomplish what you're trying to accomplish without these, you know, ridiculous draconian limitations. So, you know, if you can if you could come up with a theory where not getting vaccinated gets you into the basket that the court calls fundamental rights, you know, then you'd be in a different.

You're in a better position. As far as the vaccines. Let me ask you this quickly. I want to get to the January 6th thing, but I've been reading you on this rent abatement thing that's happening. So the CDC said, we're going to issue rent abatement for people. They don't have to pay their rent because we've imposed all these, you know, the government's imposed all these terrible restrictions and lockdowns. And it's not fair to stop people's income stream and then say, and now get the hell out for not paying your rent. That was the original thought behind the rent abatement program. Right. And by the CDC, exactly. Unelected bureaucrats. I was like, okay, well,

so then the Supreme court said, yeah, that's going to end on July 31st. That's the end of that. And the executive doesn't have the power to do this. And then what happened? The executive stepped in and did this again. There was so much pressure that Congress needed to extend it. If anybody, they refused. They didn't have it. So Biden, under enormous pressure, basically just flouted the Supreme Court and said, we're extending it. And I think you tell me, I think the strategy is because I heard Cori Bush over on NPR saying, yeah, we yeah, that's it. And we don't care. And really what we're looking to do is buy time to get more money to tenants and so on. Well, this legal process plays out, even though we know we're going to

lose. So is there any question that they've overstepped their executive power, something we we we heard them complain about a lot under Trump. And it seems a rather big power grab to me under Biden. There's no question that they have overstepped and they know it. Just on Monday, Gene Sperling, who's a White House advisor, longtime smart guy in Democratic circles, was at the briefing in the White House with Jen Psaki and said, you know, we've looked at this up, down and sideways. There's no legal way to do it. And that was when Biden was basically pleading with the states to do something, which, by the way, you wouldn't be surprised because this is intrastate commerce. It's not interstate commerce. It's not something the federal

government ought to be regulating anyway. But, you know, no, they absolutely know that they're in the wrong and they are playing for time. And I think, Megan, you know, I hate to go back to the, you know, to the Alinsky rhetoric about Obama, but this really is governance where the process is the penalty. You know, you have people who they know the process is the penalty. You know, you have people who they know they're running the government. They may be in the wrong, but the wheels of justice grind slowly. It takes a long time to get this stuff challenged in court. It takes a long time to get it up use the slowness of the process and the difficulties of people trying to pursue

their rights that are built into the process, if you're willing to use those in a punitive way, there's a lot of bad things you can accomplish. And it's not to say that anybody has anything other than empathy for the people struggling to pay the rents at the moment, but they've also been given a lot of checks. The government's already issued a lot of aid. The taxpayers are already trying to help these people. The unemployment rate is still unnecessarily low because people are on their couches, not going back into the workforce. So it's a complicated issue. Up next, why Andy McCarthy does not think January 6th was an insurrection and why he, like yours truly and many of you, is deeply offended at the continuing narrative that January 6th was even comparable to, never mind worse than, 9-11. Let's start on January 6th with what I think is not a complicated issue. You, our listeners mostly know,

have spent a career as a U.S. attorney, as a federal prosecutor, putting terrorists in jail. So you know what an actual bad guy looks like, what an actual terrorist case looks like. And I and we're intimately involved after 9-11. I am deeply offended as bad as January 6th was. And I make no excuses for those guys. I do, however, think the media and the Democrats are out of line and overstating it grossly to say that it was worse than 9-11. And for me, Andy, I think it matters. 9-11 was a singular event in this country's history. It was uniformly awful. And I'm sick that they're trying to politicize the January 6th event to the place where without without downplaying it, they're trying to overstate it. And I'm just going to give you a little flavor of the press and the left

making the case that this is worse. 9-1-6 was worse than 9-11. Listen. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. The 1-6 attack for the future of the country is a profoundly more dangerous event than the 9-11 attacks. And in the end, the 1-6 attacks are likely to kill a lot more Americans than were killed on the 9-11 attacks, which will include the casualties of the wars that lasted 20 years following. This is the most important issue of our time. And I think it's actually the most important issue in the last 150 years since the Civil War. Though there was less loss of life on January 6th, January 6th was worse than 9-11 because it's continued to rip our country apart.

It looks directly like fascism. It looks like Mussolini's Italy. I would like to see January 6th is burned into the American mind as firmly as 9-11 because it was that scale of shock to the system. In my career as a judge and in law enforcement, I have not seen a more dangerous threat to democracy than the invasion of the Capitol. That last one was Merrick Garland, our attorney general. Your thoughts? Well, to start with Merrick Garland, who you finished with there, I got to know Merrick Garland prosecuting terrorist cases in the 90s, and I really liked him. He was one of the real adults in the Clinton Justice Department. And when we needed something in terrorism prosecutions, he was the guy that you would talk to because he had a real sophisticated understanding of the issues and the importance of them.

And then he personally, Megan, led the prosecution. He didn't end up trying the case, but he ran the investigation when Timothy McVeigh killed almost 180 people and destroyed a federal courthouse. So for him to come out and say, echoing these other folks that you played, that this is the worst thing that he's ever seen in his professional career in terms of peril to the United States is just, to me, mind boggling. And I'm really tired of every time I have to go on this rant, saying that, you know, January 6 was a bad thing. January 6 was a disgrace. Anybody who watched it knows it was terrible for the country. The worst thing about it is our proud boast, which became a norm for Western democracy on the peaceful transfer of power, we'll never be able to brag about that in the foreseeable future like we were on January 5th, right? So that's a terrible thing for the country. But to compare it to a mass murder attack,

I mean, the World Trade Center was destroyed and the Pentagon was struck by a missileized jumbo jet. Right. You want to compare that to a riot at the Capitol that a wouldn't have happened if they had put adequate security forces that had adequate training. If they were out there a number enough, this might not even have happened. But as bad as it was, Congress was able to reconvene that night. And this talk that democracy was imperiled and we were on the precipice, that's ridiculous. I mean, there was no way that Congress and Pence were going to refuse to count the electoral votes. Biden was going to be president. There was never a shadow of a doubt about that. If they had needed to reconvene, they would have reconvened in Union Station or someplace if that's what they needed to do. But they didn't need to do it because unlike 9-11, where buildings were destroyed, they were able to, you know, they had some broken windows and broken doors. And I'm not trying to, you know, I want to say that that's not a big deal. It's a very big deal. And the people who get prosecuted for that, they're going to do time and they deserve to do time.

But come on, let's not turn this into something it wasn't. They were able to do their job that night. Yeah. Unlike 9-11, we had 3,000 Americans killed, the hundreds of firefighters, the New York City police, and all of the firefighters and police officers who have died since as a result of cancers and other illnesses at ground zero. All of our troops who have been killed fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I just think it is the height of disrespect to even mention those two events in the same sentence. If I could say one more thing

about it also, Megan, here's their excuse for doing it. They say that maybe not as many people were killed and buildings weren't destroyed, but this was our democracy that hung in the balance. So basically what they're saying is there's this abstraction out there that they call democracy that was going to be killed by this event. Under circumstances where the reality of the situation is, the outcome of the presidential election was not in doubt, and there was no question that Congress was going to do its constitutional job, whether it was able to do that in the Capitol or not. If the abstraction they're talking about, democracy, is so weak that what happened on January 6th could destroy it, then we have

much bigger problems than January 6th. Right. That's exactly right. So they you've heard it. I've heard it. It was an insurrection. It was an insurrection. One of the things I've been following you on is, interestingly, it's almost like the Giuliani thing where Giuliani kept saying fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud in front of the cameras during the Trump electoral challenges. But when he got into court, he wouldn't say that. That's what's happening now with the other side. They say in front of the cameras, insurrection, insurrection, sedition, terrorism. But when you actually look at what they're saying in court, they're not charging anyone with insurrection. Right. And there is a crime of insurrection on the books and seditious conspiracy is on the books. I prosecuted the blind Sheikh and his jihadist cell for that.

And interestingly, the the statute is called seditious conspiracy, but if you read the charging language of it, the word sedition doesn't appear because of this dark history we have with the Alien and Sedition Acts. But all of the statutory prongs are about using force against the government in a way that is almost projecting making war on the government.

In fact, one of the prongs is levying war against the United States. Nobody's been charged with that. So again, you're exactly right. This is one of these things where there's kind of a public rhetoric about this, and then there's what they say and do in court. And there was a case, Megan, I think within the last two weeks, where one of the demonstrators, rioters, who was famously in the well of the Senate near Vice President Pence's desk there, pled guilty. I think they charged him with interfering with Congress. The government wanted him to get 18 months, which given their extravagant rhetoric is not exactly

what you would expect for the, you know, seditionist, uh, insurrectionist event that ended the United States. Uh, and the judge thought, yeah, right. And the judge thought that this was, that was, um, that was over the top. So he gave him eight months. So, you know, maybe the, maybe the one silver lining we have here is that for all the crazy stuff that's being said, and I can I can attest to this from from my terrorism prosecution, too. There was there was one set of things that the government was saying on the steps of the courthouse and in, you know, in the White House and the press conferences. And then there was what was going on in the four corners of the trial where there was no politically correct presentation. And we were able to say, this is what happened. This is why it happened. And maybe here we're getting kind of the reverse of that, where unlike in my case, where they were trying to soft pedal what happened here, they're hysterical about it. But when you look at what's going on in

the courtroom, the charges are very reasonable. It looks like the sentences have been pretty reasonable too. They keep saying over and over again that seven people died on the January 6th riot. Is that true? Well, one person died and that was the rioter. And the Justice Department looked at that. Anybody can look at it. It's on tape. And the Justice Department looked at that. Anybody can look at it. It's on tape. And they decided it was a righteous shooting and they didn't charge anyone. That was Ashley Babbitt. Right. As far as you know, they continue to even last week at this at this first committee meeting of the January 6th committee, again, chairman, who's at Benny Thompson as the chairman, said that six, and I guess they now say it's seven, or did he say seven and now it's eight because somebody else, another police officer who committed suicide. Yeah. So

we're up to eight. But the thing is, you know, you hate to have to, to do this, but nobody was killed in the fighting, which is the suggestion that you that you get when they say these things. Officer Sicknick, what they did with that guy is just I mean, it's appalling the way they they used his death. But Democrats and the media have really misrepresented the Brian Sicknick case in a way that is egregious. Yeah. And right up to not only did they misrepresent it at the time when the Democrats filed their impeachment brief in the Senate, which was now almost five weeks after Sicknick passed, they continued to say that he was bashed over the head with a fire extinguisher. Fire extinguisher. It's a lie. It was already known by then that he went back to his office. He never got hit over the head. He talked to his brother by text and said that he was fine other than he had gotten sprayed. And then he expired, tragically, because of two strokes that he had, which, you know, can we say as a cosmic certainty

that they had no causal connection between the rioting and what happened to him? No. But, you know, the burden's on the government to prove that. That's the way it's supposed to work. And they haven't proved it. There's no, In fact, two people have been charged with assaulting Officer Sicknick and his death is not even mentioned in the charges. Much less do they allege that the people who they've charged caused it. And in the meantime, the other police officers and now they're now I guess there's three other ones who have who were involved in the fighting and who have died all committed suicide. And it's a tragic fact about police work, but it is a fact that people in that profession commit suicide at higher rates than people in other walks of life in our society. So you can't say with certainty that that the rioting had anything

to do with these people who passed. And I just think, Megan, the fact that they so obviously hyperbolize here and continue to distort the record on this speaks volumes about their ridiculous rhetoric about how this is worse than 9-11 and worse than every other. Let's face it, it's the worst thing that's ever happened in the history of things, right? But if it were, you wouldn't have to make this kind of stuff up and you wouldn't have to, you know, take people who didn't die in it and pretend that they did. That's right. And none of that is to diminish what actually happened that day and in particular what the cops went through, because to me, that was the most infuriating thing. And I said it right from the beginning and I've heard you say it over and over. I thought the law enforcement officers who testified on day one of the January definitely very partisan. And if you look at his tweets about Trump and so

on, you know, had I been there as a Republican lawmaker, I probably would have raised that stuff just to show the potential for exaggeration or some extra flair in the testimony, right? Because he clearly hated Trump and he does not like Republicans. But these guys were hurt and you could see it. You don't even really need to believe them. You could see it. You could hear the N-word. You could like a lot of this stuff is on tape. And I do think it's important for the purposes of this discussion to play some of that.

We have a lot of Republicans and Trump supporters listening to this program. Let's operate in reality because this was not a day in the park either. And here's some of the officer testimonial in case you guys missed it. When I was 25 years old and then a sergeant in the army, I had deployed to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom. But on January 6th, for the first time, I was more afraid to work at the Capitol than my entire deployment to Iraq. The rioters call me a traitor, a disgrace. I, an army veteran and a police officer, should be executed. I told them to just leave the Capitol, and in response they yelled, Joe Biden is not the president. Nobody voted for Joe Biden. Well, I voted for Joe Biden. Does my vote not count? Am I nobody?

That prompted a torrent of racial epithets. One woman in a pink MAGA shirt yelled, you hear that, guys? This voted for Joe Biden. Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in screaming boo I heard chanting from some in the crowd get his gun and kill him with his own gun I was aware enough to recognize I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm I was electrocuted again and again and again with a taser. During those moments, I remember thinking there was a very good chance I would be torn apart or shot to death with my own weapon. I thought of my four daughters who might lose their dad. Doctors told me that I had suffered a heart attack, and I was later diagnosed with a concussion, a traumatic brain injury, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Directly in front of me, a man seized the opportunity of my vulnerability, grabbed the front of my gas mask, and used it to beat my head against the door. He switched to pulling it off my head, the strap stretching against my skull and straining my neck. He never uttered any words I recognized, but opted instead for guttural screams. At this point, I knew I couldn't sustain much more damage and remain upright. Hmm. It's dark. Dark. What's going to happen to the guys who are charged with hurting those officers? I think they're going to do a lot of time and they deserve to. You know, I think you got probably three baskets of defendants, right? You have people who were essentially loitering around the Capitol, many of whom got into

the building after the defenses had been breached and the police were not trying to stop them from coming through anymore. They're the kind of cases that in a normal case would get deferred prosecutions, which would mean you wouldn't actually indict them and prosecute them. Here, apparently the Justice Department is taking the position that that's not available. So they're the kind of people you're going to see getting, you know, eight months or less. Some, you know, some people will get no time at all, probably. Then there's the next category of people who were involved in breaching the defenses and breaking glass and vandalizing and doing those kinds of things. And I think they're going to get, you know, four or five years in prison, maybe a little more, maybe a little bit less. And then there's

the category, Megan, of people who did something to interfere with the police. And the reason I'm sounding a little bit weaselly on that is because what the indictments say is that they've done anything from impede the police to assault a police officer. And as we just heard, assaulting a police officer can be very serious. On the other hand, in my second trial, I think around, I don't want to put a year on it, but many years ago, my second trial was assault on a federal officer. And I had a defendant who clenched his fist and lunged but didn't do anything. And the police officer flinched. And that was enough to get him on assault. You know, so obviously there's gradations of of that kind of behavior.

But let's say out of 130 or 140 people who have been charged with crimes against the police, 50 or 60 of them are really serious. I think those people are going to do major time. I think they're going to do more than 10 years and they ought to. And I mean, it does bear noting that as as horrified as some of these committee members purport to be at what happened to guys like Officer Fanon, who we heard they're talking about his heart attack and so on. Very different reaction, Andy, in the wake of the BLM riots, where 2000 police officers were stabbed, hurt, had bricks thrown in their heads, at their heads, had bones broken. 25 people died in and around the riots and connected with them. I mean, a very different message. And it's kind of infuriating when you

see the Democrats have a mixed message. And frankly, some of these Republicans who purport to care about the cops, not not care about these cops. Yeah, that's exactly right. And, you know, this goes to one of the, you know, the hysterical statements that you played from when the political people before talking about, you know, this is so important because it's tearing our nation apart. What's tearing our nation apart is the idea, which is much more than an idea. It's a concrete reality that you have two tiers of justice in this country. And that if you are of a certain political persuasion, you are treated officially by the Justice Department and by prosecutors across the country one way.

And if you are of a different political persuasion, you're treated entirely differently to the point that you have the FBI scorching the earth using Facebook, using all kinds of technological means to identify every single moron who was, you know, loping through the Capitol that day, no matter how unserious the behavior was, so they could prosecute them for something. And then in New York, the district attorney just cut loose everybody who was involved in the rioting because they say, well, you know, they were wearing masks. It's hard to identify them. Really? You know, especially if you don't try. Right. But if you want to know what's tearing the country apart, that's what's tearing the country apart. When the government officially treats the society like we have two different castes, that's what tears the society apart. That is the perfect note to tee up our next guest, Julie Kelly, who's been taking a hard look at

some of the specific cases and what the government's doing. It's all hands on deck against a couple of these guys who in your categories are probably going to end up in category one. You know, they loped onto the property after the breach had taken place, but they may have said racist things. They may have had bad thoughts, but the government's treating them as though they were cop assaulters and so on. And so it raises an interesting debate. If you find yourself with a very bad person in custody, an immoral person, but what he's actually done is not that serious under the law, how do you treat him? Well, they're being treated very differently right now than they normally would. Andy, I love talking to you. It's so good to see you again. Me too, Megan. Thank you so much for this.

Up next, Julie Kelly, who has been interviewing those charged in connection with the January 6th riot and why she says thought crimes are now being punished with jail time. That's next. I want to pick up where I just left off. We just we just said goodbye to Andy McCarthy. And his final point was that in looking at those who are being held right now in connection with the January 6th riot, there to a very different standard than those who rioted, maimed, murdered, hurt people during the BLM riots that we saw the previous year. Two very different approaches to crimes that may or may not have been violent. I know you agree with that, but what's your overall view on sort of the difference in the approaches?

I mean, it's very clear. And I think that that is what really enrages people is because they saw over last summer for weeks, if not months of violent protests, attacks against hundreds, if not thousands of police officers across the country, those people were not charged the same way as, say, several of the detainees in the D.C. jail who have been accused of attacking police officers who are denied bond. They can't even, their families can't even have an opportunity to place bond for them. The judges are outright denying and going along with the government for pretrial detention orders. So that's just one set of differences is how so many people, protesters, violent protesters, including those outside of the White House in June of 2020, how they were let off, charges dropped, certainly not held behind bars for months on end awaiting a trial or a plea deal, whereas these defendants, many of them with no criminal record, have been held for months and could be held, Megan, up to a year before their trials even start early or mid-middle of next year.

It's funny because in New York, there's this big movement to get rid of bail because sort of these more progressive people think it's unfair to hold people for a year in jail because you don't yet know whether they're guilty of a crime and that we're sort of overusing the bail system and setting bail too high in too many cases. They don't, they haven't said a word about what's happening to the January 6th rioters. And I realized that they may not be the most sympathetic group, but fair is fair, right? What's good for the goose. So how many people have been arrested at this point? Do we goose. So how many people have been arrested at this point? Do we know? And how many people are still in custody? So Megan, about 550 Americans

have been arrested for their involvement in the Capitol protest. The overwhelming majority face misdemeanor charges. So the most frequent charges are trespassing in a restricted area, disorderly conduct, violent entry, parading and picketing in Congress, which always makes me laugh. So those are the overwhelming majority of charges. Roughly 100 defendants face charges of either assaulting or impeding law enforcement, the same amount carrying some sort of weapon. It's important to note that no one was arrested for carrying firearms or using firearms in the building that day, even though we were told it was an armed insurrection. A lot of people charged with pepper spray, flagpoles. Some people stole riot shields that had been left by police. So those are the sort of weapons charges that we saw. But again, over and over, you see this disparity in how

January 6th protesters are handled by our judicial system and how other rioters, activists, you go back to the 2018 Brett Kavanaugh protests inside the Senate office building. Those protesters got far closer to lawmakers in the face of lawmakers screaming at them, threatening them than certainly anyone on January 6th. And so that is what's really and listening to these court hearings and reading these documents, Megan, very upsetting because the judges are going along with this. The prosecutors are insisting, and I just heard this a few weeks ago, that January 6th was an act of domestic terrorism. And anyone who was involved, even someone who walked through an open door, committed no violent act, should be considered a domestic terrorist. That is the bar that they're setting. It's not only dangerous

individually for these people, but certainly for the country and what that means for future political protests. Right. And no one's been charged with domestic terrorism. So they say that, but they're not actually able to prove that in court, but they use it to hold these people behind bars for, as you say, up to a year prior to actually seeing the inside of a courtroom. Meanwhile, Antifa, according to Andy Ngo, who's been reporting on them, you know, from the inside, going to all of their protests, they're using the ends of umbrellas as weapons. They're throwing rocks at people, frozen water bottles, openly caught on camera at cops. And the number is 2,000 cops. According to the law enforcement officers unions, 2000 cops were injured in the BLM riots and related melees that we saw over the past year.

So it's not to diminish what happened to those on January 6th, but the lack of outrage by the people claiming to be so empathetic toward the cops right now on behalf of the other 2000 cops who were injured over the past year is stark. Okay. So let's talk about what's happening because I heard last week that the justice department's lead prosecutor announced she's not going to be able to be able to try a lot of these cases until the earliest 2022, because they haven't even set up the database that would allow them to share with defense counsel the evidence they're amassing. Right. So that I listened to that hearing on Friday. That was the prosecutor in the Tim Hale case. Tim Hale has not been charged with any violent offense. He's been in the D.C. jail since early February, arrested middle of January. But I've seen this over and over. The government does not have their evidence together. They don't even have a platform, Megan, to set up all this huge trove of digital evidence, which, as you know, includes 14,000 hours of surveillance video captured by the U.S. Capitol Police surveillance system that day that they are desperately trying to keep under wraps, not just from the public, but from the media and even from defense attorneys. They also have thousands of hours of body

worn camera footage. They have social media posts. They have open source video. This has been basically sitting there. They still don't have a platform to put all of it on. The defense attorneys are desperate to get this information that they know could very possibly contain exculpatory evidence in favor of their client. In the meantime, the Justice Department is using little cherry-picked clips, even like we saw last week in the January 6th Select Committee. Little tiny cherry-picked clips to prove the guilt of a certain client. What's dangerous is they're using those clips in theseicked clips to prove the guilt of a certain client. What's dangerous is they're using those clips in these detention hearings to prove that this person is a danger and should stay behind bars.

But what this prosecutor said even surprised the judge, Judge Trevor McFadden, when she said the government will not meet its full discovery obligations until early 2022 at the soonest. This means they will not have all this evidence available possibly until a year from now. Meanwhile, you have all these people sitting in jail, denied bond, waiting to see their evidence, and they won't be able to for several more months. Wow. And, you know you know, in a, in a real trial, just a little clip without providing the full videotape would not be allowed into evidence that that wouldn't be considered fair. It wouldn't allow the defense attorney to do his job. So let's get through, let's go through a couple of these cases. Cause I have to tell you as a lawyer, I find this stuff very interesting.

Um, I, I really, I definitely want to talk about Timothy Hale because I think his case is maybe one of the most interesting, but let's start with Paul Hodgkins, who Andy mentioned as well that Paul Hodgkins, um, he pleaded guilty in June. He admitted to breaching the Senate floor with a Trump flag and a backpack full of goggles, rope, and a pair of latex gloves. He said he was remorseful for his stupid decision. Um, and then can you just tell, cause I did not know this until I read it in your article, they're making people like Hodgkins and others say certain magic words upon pleading guilty about Biden's presidency? Yes. Well, they're not so much forcing them.

Maybe his attorney did say that, but I'll tell you, Megan, that I listened to that hearing and it broke my heart. And I've covered a lot of this, as you know, from the very beginning, I felt so bad for this man. He took a bus by himself from Tampa to Washington, DC, 900 miles. I think he's a crane operator. He has an apprenticeship to be a mechanic. He went there. He committed no violent crime. As you said, he went inside. He had a Trump flag, which the judge and the prosecutor found very insulting, accusing Paul Hodgkins of displaying his loyalty to a man instead of a country. You know, there are a lot of people who think supporting your president is supporting the country, but when it's Donald Trump, that's different. He begged for mercy.

He pleaded guilty to a felony count obstruction of an official proceeding, which about 200 defendants faced. This is the charge that the government is using in lieu of, as you said, terrorism, sedition, insurrection. But it's a felony charge. It's been added to misdemeanor cases. He pleaded guilty. He begged the court for forgiveness. He said, I acknowledge fully, respectfully that Joe Biden is the elected president of the United States. That's what he said in court and begged this judge for mercy. The judge did not give him mercy as no criminal record and sentenced him to eight months in prison. And he will now be a convicted felon, a man with no criminal record, working class guy from Florida for the crime of going in the Capitol and for bringing a Trump flag. And, you know, Andy pointed out to not in our discussion, but in a piece I

read online that the Justice Department, in order to inflate in a piece I read online, um, that the justice department in order to inflate the gravity of the misconduct has been hyping the potential exposure of up to 20 years incarceration up to 20 years. They'd been saying, then they didn't charge Hodgkins with anything like terrorism. Um, in fact, they charge them to that single count that you mentioned obstructing a congressional proceeding, which no one's getting 20 years for. And then behind closed doors, when they got in there, they asked for an 18 month sentence, which is not 20 years. And even the judge said, you're not getting 18 months.

I'll give him eight months. And, you know, you can I hear your point. You think that's too much. But I mean, even if you look at the other side's rhetoric, it was overstated. They didn't actually hold it up when the cameras were off. And then the judge left them out of court on what they recommended. So that's how these cases are going down. Well, they are going down. And what's interesting is, and you will appreciate this as a lawyer, they're going to have a really hard time, the Justice Department, proving that this obstruction of an official proceeding,

which by the way, is not targeted towards political people, protests. What I wrote about several months ago is this felony, as you said, 20 years in jail, was a post-Enron law, 2002. It was aimed at white collar criminals to prevent them from interfering in congressional investigations. It was not supposed to apply. And when George W. Bush signed the law, he specifically said, this does not apply to political protests. We cannot use this to silence political protests. So there was an interesting filing this week. A defense attorney finally is pushing back on this obstruction of an official proceeding and saying, look, this wasn't really official business. It was more ceremonial. But even so, is this going to apply to all committee hearings? Is this going to apply to

Judge Kavanaugh's Supreme Court proceeding, which we saw that was disrupted several times? So this is the slippery slope. And so they really are pushing people to plead guilty to this, making them convicted felons. But some people are starting to push back. It's going to be interesting to see how the government defends that charge in court. That's fascinating because I mean, I spent a lot of years in the Fox News anchor chair watching Code Pink disrupt military related hearings, you know, 9-11, post 9-11 related hearings on Capitol Hill. And you raise a good point, like be careful what you wish for, because if you're going to interpret that statute this broadly, you could wind up

sweeping a lot of regular old protesters in there, American protesters, this is American as apple pie, regular protest in America, into this statute. So you do have to worry about long-term ramifications. All right. Let's talk about Timothy Hale Cusinelli. He is in prison. Now you tell me, Julie, what I read is now I think you'll agree. This is a troubled guy. This is very troubled man. And his history supports a conclusion that he has said a lot of racist things. He seems to have a very bizarre affinity for Adolf Hitler. This isn't somebody anybody, any of us would want to hang out with or go to dinner with. So, but what's the problem in how they're dealing with him? Yes, they did find some racially charged and really outrageous things on his cell phone. I've spoken with Tim. He has had a very troubled life. That's, of course,

no excuse. A lot of people do. But he was an Army reservist, and he's not charged with any violent crime. It's not a crime to be a racist. It's a crime to take those viewpoints and commit a crime against someone because of that. That's not what happened here. And so what happened with Tim Hale is he was a friend, a colleague, was wired up, knew that Tim went to the protest. He wore a suit and tie. He committed no crime, didn't attack anyone, didn't vandalize the property, was inside, I think, for about 15 or 20 minutes, like a lot of people. He was wired up. Then Navy Intelligence, where he was working at a Navy yard, interrogated about four dozen of his co-workers trying to seek out his white supremacy views. And this is actually in the filing, seeking his pretrial detention, accusing

him of being a white supremacist, explaining what his co-workers had said in a questionnaire, looking at memes on his phone, some of his videos. He calls himself a satirist. He could be, he could not be. But look, if we're going to start interrogating people's co-workers and looking at people's phones after they are involved in a political protest, again, we're going down a very slippery slope. He has been held in jail, now going on almost seven months. And this was the hearing on Friday where the government admitted they can't meet their discovery obligations until next year. But he's still being held behind bars in Washington, D.C., again, for committing no violent crime. He is a thought crime defendant. That's basically what he is. That's the thing. So the reason I find his case so interesting is because, and listen, I haven't met with him. What I read, I don't buy satirist. But the point is,

let's assume for purposes of this discussion, he is a racist. And just to give the audience a feeling, they say that they found things on his phone saying, this is in his voice, babies born with disabilities should be shot. Hitler should have finished the job. Jews, women, and blacks are at the bottom of the totem pole. His coworkers say he's unstable.

He wears a Hitler mustache. He discussed leaving his workplace in a blaze of glory. He says racist and anti-Semitic things. He's got some criminal history and so on. So let's assume for purposes of this discussion, all of that is true. What he actually did that day appears to have been, uh, without a weapon, he entered doors already kicked open, and then he left the Capitol after learning someone had been shot. They say he admitted to using voice and hand

signals to urge others to, quote, advance. OK, ambiguous. And he admitted to picking up a flag pole that someone else had thrown like a javelin at a cop and referring to it as a murder weapon. But he's not accused of using the flagpole himself or of threatening to use a flagpole. And so you get in front of a court. And this is a Trump appointee that you mentioned in a moment ago, Judge Trevor McFadden, who denied his release, who said you've got to stay in jail. And the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, after the Supreme Court, the most powerful and respected court in the nation, refused to overturn that order and said, you've got to stay in jail. And they said, look, he's got a well-documented history of racist and violent language, generally engaged in hateful conduct, if not violent conduct. And they said we don't typically penalize people for what they say or what they think. But the district court thinks he poses a danger to the community.

And that weighs in favor of detention, given all of the, quote, violent language he used. Now we're on thin ice, Julie. Now we're on thin legal ice. Yes, we really are. And I said in my piece after I reported on him, he's not an easy defendant to defend because the things that he has said, the things that they found on video and on his phone are highly offensive. And you're right. It's not anybody, it's not anything that you would want to, that you would want to defend, but we still have a rule of law and we still have due process. And when you have judges, even appellate court judges, as you said, one of the most powerful respected courts in the country, going along with prosecutors, keeping him behind bars and criminalizing his thoughts or his viewpoints, that is very thin ice.

But that is and it's not the first time I've seen it. I mean, I've seen defendants being mocked for being homeschooled in the case of Bruno Kua. They did not want to release him, an 18 year old high school senior, to his parents because his parents homeschooled him. And as the prosecutor said, Bruno ingested his parents' political beliefs. I mean, I've seen this repeat. Yes, those were the exact words. And also forced his father in a detention hearing to admit that the 2020 election was not stolen and that he should not have taken his son to stop the steel rally in Georgia last fall after the election. Wow. Wow. That's none of the court's business. That's none of their business. People are allowed to think the election was stolen.

They're allowed to go to rallies. They're not allowed to commit crimes. Not in this, Megan, the prosecutors and the judges. I mean, if you saw some of the things that D.C., the chief judge, Beryl Howell, has said in court about what happened on January 6th, what these people did, how their beliefs that the election was stolen somehow makes them a criminal. It's just outrageous, not only seeing this in court documents, but hearing this from highly respected federal judges. It's just, it's very alarming. Can we talk about Anna Morgan Lloyd? What's going on with Anna Morgan Lloyd and her weird lawyer? So her weird lawyer is Heather Shainer. A lot of these people, it's important to know, and you can understand this, Megan, as an attorney, they cannot afford their own attorneys, especially a D.C. criminal defense attorney, because every case is being litigated out of Washington, D.C. So they are

at the mercy of public defenders or court-appointed attorneys. In this case, Heather Shainer is a court-appointed attorney for Anna Morgan Lloyd, Heather Shainer is a court-appointed attorney for Anna Morgan Lloyd, again, one of the hundreds of Americans charged with misdemeanor crimes for going into the building. She's 49 years old. She's from Indiana. She's a grandmother of five, didn't think she was doing anything wrong, has Heather Shainer, who gives her a list of books and movies that she needs to read and watch to confront America's racist past. Heather Shaner has said America's great if you look aside from the fact it was built on genocide against Native Americans and slavery. Forced her to read, you know, she watched Schindler's List. That's fine. The books were fine. But the idea is

that the mere fact she was there supporting Donald Trump makes her a racist, makes her an anti-Semite, makes her somehow ignorant. So again, she wrote this whole letter to the court saying she basically apologizing for her white privilege and saying that she now understands, you know, things that other Americans have gone through that she doesn't have to because she's white. She called out her own son-in-law for being a Holocaust denier. So this is the sort of thing that some of these defense attorneys are doing. Heather Shaner has a lot more clients. She just bragged in an article last week that one of her clients switched her party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.

She now is representing a family of five in Texas who are arrested for misdemeanors too. So this is all part of how this is- The re-education. Working against. That's right. Wow. I mean, that's, that's amazing. That is definitely not part of her role as a court appointed lawyer, by the way, we're paying for her, right? I mean, you're court appointed, the taxpayers paying that money. Um, okay. Let's spend a little time on these two guys and Brian Sicknick. Okay. Cause I want to talk about cops. You said something controversial about one of the officers who testified for known. I want to ask you about that, but let's just start with Brian Sicknick's case and Julian, is it Cotter? K-H-A-T-E-R. Julian Cater and George Tanios

who remain in prison right now. Now, what are these two accused of doing? So they both are accused of attacking Officer Sicknick and a few other officers with a chemical spray. At first, as you will recall, Megan, we were told that Brian Sicknick was a few other officers with chemical spray. At first, as you will recall, Megan, we were told that Brian Sicknick was bludgeoned to death with fire extinguisher. That was New York Times. They had to retract that article in February, but not before it made it into the House impeachment memo. So then we were told Sicknick had some kind of allergic reaction to chemical spray. That was the new storyline. In March, both of these men were arrested and charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon,

which was a chemical spray. It ended up being pepper spray against Officer Sicknick. So they basically have been arrested, kept in jail. They're both in the D.C. jail since March to keep alive the storyline that somehow Brian Sicknick, who died of natural causes at the age of 42, very tragically, somehow he was killed by Trump supporters that day. So both have been charged. And Julian Cater actually is the one who is accused of using, it was a key chain pepper spray against Sicknick. Now, it's important to also note that police were attacking protesters that day too. And we have this video, and I'm sure you've seen this video, Megan, several videos of police attacking the crowd with explosive devices. One judge called it a super soaker filled with tear gas. These were people far

outside the building, not inside. So anyway, they were charged. George Tanios is not accused of spraying Sicknick with anything, but the two men are charged with conspiracy to assault an officer because they brought chemical spray to Washington, D.C. that day. And George Tanios had the backpack. Julian Cater apparently took the spray out and allegedly sprayed Brian Sicknick and a few others. So that is why they are in jail. The appellate court recently upheld Julian Cater's detention. A judge denied a $15 million bond package put up by Julian Cater's family. Again, a man with no criminal history. And so they are basically, it's huge. It's huge. Somebody, a reporter noted that was three times the bond package for Harvey Weinstein, I believe. So this is exactly what they are,

political prisoners. Again, Megan, think of all the weapons that were used against police last year, including pepper spray, including bear spray. Those people were all let off the hook. But yet we have these men languishing. George Tanios has three children under the age of four, had to shutter his business. He runs a sandwich shop in a college town, worked seven days a week to keep it alive. That's been closed down for at least since March. This one to me is the, is, is compelling. It's more compelling for the government than the others, because if they did spray Brian Sicknick with pepper spray and he had a stroke a day later, whether that's, you know, I, and I realized the medical examiner is not tying

it exactly to that moment. I think the average person can say, yeah, you've got blood on your hands. You know, you, if that affected him in some way negatively and ultimately he had a stroke, um, now we're in business and I feel less empathy for those guys than for somebody, you know, like, uh, the last, like Anna Morgan who walked into the Capitol for five minutes and then walked out. True. But look, we also need to see all the video. And there's a reason why they are keeping the surveillance video under wraps, under protective orders, 14,000 hours, not including body cam footage from D.C. Metro Police, U.S. Capitol Police do not wear body cameras. Why are they keeping these clips? You even have 15 media organizations called the Press Coalition who are pushing to see full video of what was happening. And for example, in the Tanios case, that's one. You can't just take 15 seconds. And these are really spliced up showing what happened that day. Perhaps they did spray pepper spray at those police, but what was happening before that? And you can't just say, well, you can never do anything. Well, you're

entitled to defend yourself too, regardless of who is attacking you. Well, but look, we have to see what the police were doing that day. Okay. Because we already saw evidence of what they were doing outside that Capitol about one or 115. We are entitled to the full story. There are also rules for police officers. They can't just go ahead and attack people who are doing nothing wrong for American citizens on public property, protesting lawfully and not committing any crime. So everyone has rules that they're supposed to abide by, not just protesters, police too. Thanks for staying with us this far. The end of the episode and who's coming up on our next show is right after this quick break.

You brought up Officer Fanone. I want to tell you something that probably your audience does not know. The Press Coalition and the defense, the three men who are charged with attacking Officer Fanone have asked for his full body camera footage. A judge has denied that, saying that they are not entitled to see the full body camera footage of Officer Fanone. Why not? If we are told these people are domestic terrorists, that this was an act of domestic terrorism similar to 9-11, we need to see all the footage from everyone, especially publicly paid employees and publicly paid surveillance system of what happened on June 6th. There's no reason not to make that available in the same way we want to see the whole body camera footage in a case like Floyd or any of these officer-involved shootings, we want to see it here. And it's for the benefit of the officer and for those being accused. What's the stated reason for us not being able to see his body cam footage?

They are calling this all protected material. In the case of the 14,000 hours, they're calling it highly sensitive government material. In the case of Officer Fanone's body worn camera, here's what they're doing in court, Megan. They're taking still shots from the body camera footage, still shots, and putting it in these motions for pretrial detention. So what the government and what the judges are agreeing with is that because the video itself wasn't used in these court proceedings, that the press is not entitled to see it. That's how they're getting around this. In the meantime, we can see 20 seconds of what happened to Officer Fanone. We don see, we don't see what led up to that.

He himself admitted he was not supposed to be there. He's a narcotics officer. He put on the uniform for the first time in 10 years, including body camera. We should see the entire body of video footage, all the digital evidence that the government has on this. And it should raise many red flags that the government and federal judges continue to withhold this, not just from the public, from the press, and even from defense attorneys. So let's talk about Fanone because you sent out a tweet about him. This is the guy, we played a butted soundbite with Andy, and he is the man who said he suffered a heart attack in the midst of this whole thing, among other injuries. And you tweeted out, um, crisis actor Fanone just

beat on the table and said, it's disgraceful that any elected official denies his narrative of what happened on January 6th, calls it an insurrection, blasting GOP lawmakers. Now says this isn't about politics, LOL. He has many tattoos and there was blowback, considerable blowback on you for calling this guy a crisis actor and questioning his testimonial. So why did you call him that? I called him that because I thought the overheated, emotional, highly partisan and dangerous rhetoric coming out of these officers already helping to taint a very partisan jury pool in Washington, D.C. I thought it totally crossed the line. None of them gave just an unemotional factual account of what they saw or what they experienced on January 6th. Michael Fanone has been in the media since January 14th when he was profiled in the Washington Post.

He is repeatedly going on CNN. He's walking the halls of Congress demanding that people like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy meet with him. For what purpose? You have three men who have been charged with assaulting him, three men who have been behind bars since they were arrested for attacking Michael Fanone, three men who are going to either plead guilty or have a jury trial, where hopefully we will see all of the evidence what happened. But why is he banging on a table? Why were all of them making such disparaging remarks about Republican lawmakers, calling Trump supporters terrorists and traitors? All of it totally crossed the line. I don't think that crisis actor for someone who then went on the Don Lemon show that night had this hugging fast saying, I love you, man.

Your family's been great. You're the best. He was on CNN the next morning. I mean, come on. This is not a way to get to the truth or tell the American people your story. There's another agenda at play. And I certainly did not think calling him a crisis actor was would cross the line. Well, fair enough. I think that this is one of the problems in not having any Republicans. I mean, forgive me, but sort of real Republicans right there to press the witnesses a bit. With all due respect to the police officers in particular, whose service I admire. It would have been nice to have somebody there to say, Officer Fanone, with all due respect to the injuries you've suffered, may I ask you why have you appeared on CNN, you know, four dozen times between then and now with Don Lemon, with Chris Cuomo, right? That you've gone to sort of

left-leaning media to attack Republicans writ large, to attack Republican lawmakers. And the other police officer whose name escapes me right now, but he's been very partisan in his tweets, very anti-Trump supporters. Yeah. What is it, Don? Oh, Don. Yes. So it would, it's not to say that this, that they're not telling the truth. I don't know. I wasn't there. I haven't seen the evidence. But I do think this is why you normally have both sides represented so that even if gently, like we saw during Kavanaugh, there's somebody there to press the witness on possible other motives, political motives, because this case is totally charged with politics on both sides. And we're not seeing that because Adam Kinzinger isn't going to do it and neither is Liz Cheney. So it really is sort of a kangaroo court that's designed to reach a political

indictment against Trump and his supporters. And they'll get that. That's how that's how it will end. And, you know, he's awful and his supporters are awful. And the people who protested that day are awful without much nuance on what individuals may or may not have done. Well, and I do think, you know, Officer Dunn said held a moment of silence for Brian Sicknick for being killed in the line of duty. Again, not true. You had Officer Hodges repeatedly refer to American citizens as terrorists. You had Officer Gannell say that Republican lawmakers who had been at the Justice Department that day demanding answers about this unequal treatment between January 6th protesters and protesters last year, you had this man say they don't belong

in elective office. Who are these people to make such outlandish, partisan statements? These are not legit people acting as law enforcement officers. They are partisan props. And that is exactly why Nancy Pelosi did not want Jim Jordan and Jim Banks on that committee. Andy McCarthy wrote this week that, you know, he didn't understand why she would leave them off because he thought that the testimony from these officers was unimpeachable. But if it was, then there's a reason

why Pelosi wanted Jim Jordan and Jim Banks not to be on that committee because they would have asked some of the tough questions. That's right. I do think you have to be sensitive with a witness like that, right? It's a cop. These are not rich guys.

These are public servants. They've been hurt. We can see it on camera. So you have empathy for them and what they've been through. I certainly do. But that doesn't mean you don't ask the questions. It doesn't mean you don't probe again, back to back to the Blasey Ford example, same thing. And it wasn't done. And I do think that undermines the legitimacy of the whole thing. And, and also if you really want to be taken seriously, if you don't want to be seen as a partisan, then you don't go on CNN nonstop. You don't deal with partisan media. You don't make big statements about the Republican Party, because that all gives people a reason

to dismiss your testimonial and see you through a partisan lens. So these are fair questions to raise. You're not, you know, you're not entitled to a sort of an immunity blanket against tough questions because you're a police officer. Right. So you can't can't overcorrect too much the other way. So what's right. What do you what's your takeaway on the whole thing, Julie, at this point? What do you want people sitting at home to remember in the months ahead as we see all these people sit in jail awaiting trial dates that have yet to be set. And they basically have already been sentenced to a year in prison at this

point without having had a trial. I think people, especially people on the right, need to be very aware that January 6th is being used as a pretext to achieve all sorts of long sought after goals by the Democrats, which is basically weaponizing powerful government agencies against people on the right. You know, I wrote that last week was a five year anniversary of the official launch of Crossfire Hurricane. This is yet another iteration of Crossfire hurricane. Because they got away with this Justice Department under Obama, and then under Donald Trump through Robert Mueller's probe, and then impeachment, because the Democrats were allowed to use all of the levers of power to go after Donald Trump, his family, his associates, now they're going after Trump supporters. And this is going to

include not just the Justice Department. We already see it coming out of Department of Homeland Security. It's coming out of the intelligence community, overreaching their authority to target foreign terrorists to now targeting Americans. They're going to use all their surveillance tools and now law enforcement tools to go after, to quash political dissent, to silence political speech and activity. And this is really what it's about really needs to look harder behind the scenes at what the Biden administration is already doing and has plans to do to Americans on the right. It's really scary territory, Megan. It kind of ties into what we're seeing with COVID and the crackdown on speech that pushes back against the official seeing with COVID and the crackdown on speech that pushes

back against the official narratives on COVID, the increasing push to monitor our phone message, our text messages, our emails, nevermind our, our online posts, because big brother will decide what's appropriate. What's not what's factual. What's not, uh, we're in, we're in dicey territory right now. And I mean, I think it's why people, libertarians like Charles Cook over at National Review is writing a lot about this. People need to pay attention because even if you like the cause, even if you're on the left and you don't like the COVID pushback, the quarantine pushback and the lockdown pushback, the mandate pushback, and you hate what happened on January 6th and you hate all the Trump supporters. You should care because you care about America and you cared about

small L liberal values that the country stands for. Julie, thank you for your reporting on this. I found you a fascinating read. And what I love about you is that you give a lot of facts that I haven't found anywhere. You actually go do the interviews of the people who have been arrested. No one else seems interested in doing that in traditional media. So I really appreciate the legwork and the sort of the shoe level leather reporting that you've been doing as a, as a citizen journalist. Well, Megan, thank you so much for covering this. I know this will reach a whole new audience who needs to know about this. So thank you so much. Don't miss Friday's show because we've got Dr. Drew, Dr. Drew Pinsky coming up. He's a cool guy. You know, he partnered with our pal Adam Carolla back on Loveline years

ago. So funny to me that Adam was doing that show and offering relationship advice. Dr. Pinsky makes more sense. Dr. Drew makes more sense. But anyway, he's opining on everything these days. He's gotten a lot of guff from the left for being somebody who will push back on the mainstream COVID narratives, but he persists. He'll be joining us in a conversation I've long been looking forward to. Don't miss Friday. Go ahead and subscribe to the show. Download the show. Give us a five-star rating. We'd love that. And a review on what you think about the January 6th riots and the media's coverage of them on Apple Reviews or wherever you get your podcasts. See you Friday. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS,

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