The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump Shakedown Exposed, and Loser Students Occupy Columbia, with Andy McCarthy, Julian Epstein, Lexie Rigden, and Carrie Sheffield | Ep. 779

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Megyn Kelly calls out the agitators and protesters who are breaking into and occupying buildings at Columbia University, the pro-Hamas students stopping a Jewish student from attending class at UCLA, and more. Then Andy McCarthy of National Review and attorneys Julian Epstein and Lexie Rigden join to discuss the way the biased Judge Merchan in New York is setting Trump up to be convicted with his rulings, DA Alvin Bragg’s bizarre prosecution strategy, Bragg’s lack of authority to enforce federal election law, why it shouldn't matter legally if Trump paid Stormy Daniels in an effort to influence the election, the misrepresentation by the prosecution about why Michael Cohen actually went to jail, the judge blocking key details for the jury, what's happening right now in the Trump trial, the sleazy shakedown of Trump that's being exposed with Stormy Daniels' former attorney on the stand, how the Bill Clinton scandals were treated differently than Trump's by the press, loser Columbia students taking over building and getting cupcakes delivered, and more. Then Carrie Sheffield, author of "Motorhome Prophecies,” joins to discuss her turbulent upbringing, her father claiming to be a prophet, her ability to overcome her circumstances and attend BYU and Harvard, turning her abuse into fuel for career success, how she became Christian after years of agnosticism, and more. McCarthy- https://www.nationalreview.com/author/andrew-c-mccarthy/Rigden- https://twitter.com/lexiethelawyerSheffield- https://www.amazon.com/dp/1546004386Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow 

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. This is the show I've wanted to bring you. I'm dying to get into today's topic with Andy McCarthy to kick things off, and we'll get to him in one second. We're also going to get to the nonsense over at Columbia where it goes on and on. These students have blown right past their 2 p.m. deadline yesterday to go back to school and leave their, quote, encampment and try to be a little normal. And now they're breaking into buildings. This president is so feckless. Don't send your kid to Columbia. OK, if you do, you you're going to get what you know you're going to get, right? Like you're assuming the risk at this point. You just want your child

to be a far left activist who doesn't actually want to learn, but wants to preen in front of the cameras. And by the way, why are they so unattractive? I really legitimately want to know why are all the protesters so homely? I don't think they're unconnected. I'm not going to lie. I think attractive, smart people are not drawn to this nonsense. They're living their lives being successful. It's the unattractive and or dumb people who feel the need to do this to feel like they matter. Sorry, hard truths. Elsewhere in New York City, former President Donald Trump is back on trial. It resumed today. It was off yesterday. And now the judge has ruled on the gag order violations, 10 in all, although there's another hearing on Thursday about additional

violations. And he has started fining Trump over his supposed attacks on witnesses and says next step was probably jail time. This is a pivotal moment in American history with serious election implications. And so we begin there with truly the smartest legal mind I know, our friend Andy McCarthy of National Review. Andy, welcome back. Megan, great to be with you. I hope I'm not one of those unattractive people who went to Columbia. No, you're not. I'm telling you, it's one or the other. If you see an attractive person out there, then they're dumb. But the vast majority.

It's hard. It's hard to watch, though. You know, I went to most of my classes in first year were in Hamilton Hall, which they're now occupying. It's just it's mind boggling. Yeah. Yeah. And absolutely no desire to do anything about it. That president ought to go. Can you imagine I'd be filing a lawsuit so quickly if I were the parent of a student who's just trying to go to class and learn? Yeah, I agree with that. But, you know, I know this is a little off topic, but I have to say, because this is something I've been involved in for more decades than I care to acknowledge. But it's been a crime in the United States since the mid-1990s to provide material support to terrorist organizations. And Hamas and Hezbollah have been designated terrorist organizations since the mid-90s.

That's more than justification to open investigations. And what I think they would find in connection with those investigations is that a lot of people who are involved in these so-called spontaneous protests are people who probably don't have a right to be in the United States and who should be removed from the United States. I don't think this is all students or just on campus agitators. I think there's a lot of there's a lot of outside direction going on here. What does support look like? Could it be just an on campus protest?

Like what is something more than that required? Well, what what I'm saying is two things, Megan. One is what can properly predicate an investigation, after which once you open an investigation, you find out all kinds of stuff, right? To make a case of material support, it's basically any affirmative support of a terrorist organization. It can't be something that is constitutionally protected like merely speech. But if it's recruitment, if it's fundraising, if it's coordinated, forcible activity with outside agents of Hamas, for example, all those things are actionable. If you contribute yourself to an the investigation. And once you start to screen these people, I think what you're going to find is there's a lot of people who are involved who don't have a right to be here. Well, I mean, this guy yesterday, who was one of the student leaders

at Columbia, who was on tape speaking to the Columbia administrators about his desire to kill Zionists and how they should be grateful he hasn't killed any so far. But and he can see he thinks he won't, but he might. That'd be where I'd start. I don't know that he has actual terrorist funding, but he certainly has terrorist sympathies. So and he is not alone. Yeah, that's right. But the other point I would want to make about this, though, is that we have a hard time when we're dealing with U.S. citizens who have a right to be here and green card holders who are deemed to be U.S. persons. incitement on the one hand, which is illegal, and the espousing of unpopular views, which even if they're obnoxious, you have to let that go on. That's true when you're dealing with Americans. But if you're dealing with people who don't have a right to be here in the first place, you don't have to hew to that line. And I think we have more than enough people in this country who we can't get rid of because they're U.S. persons who are causing a lot of problems for us.

The thought that we need to import more of that is nuts. And if you want to talk about what has generated this problem, I wrote a book about this called The Grand Jihad about 14, 15 years ago. The Muslim Students Association started in a couple of campuses in the Midwest. They're Muslim Brotherhood tentacle organizations in the United States. They were set up initially by Saeed Qutb, who was in America briefly and later became the head of the Muslim Brotherhood. They started out with about a handful of chapters in the mid-60s in the Midwest. They now have like three, four, five chapters on, I don't want to say every campus in the United States and Canada, but man, I bet it's close to 95 percent of them.

And, you know, you let that go for 60 years without addressing it. And they have a program which is anti-American, which is counter-constitutional, which is Sharia supremacist. And then you exacerbate that by eviscerating security at the borders so that the crazies can now all come in and find each other. And then you wake up one morning and you wonder why you have a problem on the campuses. Right. Right. The Muslim Brotherhood we've been talking about for years. I don't think young people know about them. I don't think people who didn't live through 9-11 like you and I did, a lot of our audience, even know what that is. Or even for that matter, what Sharia is. We've been talking about it for years together. has subsided a bit, at least domestically, so it hasn't captured the news headlines. But coming soon to a theater near you, based on what I see on these campuses, did you see the students all down following the Muslim prayer as they raise the Palestinian flag

and they're wrapping themselves in the keffiyehs? I mean, I like I've never seen such a thing on American college campuses. No. And they openly support Hamas. I don't know if they know that Hamas has a charter that it, you know, that announced Hamas when it came into being in the 1980s and announces itself as part of the global jihad and the palestinian branch of the muslim brotherhood that's what hamas is i think i mean that's what it is i think i think they see the the other part of the charter saying we exist to destroy israel and they say right on you should i agree they're genocidal yeah well what happened here megan i think is if you remember at the end of the Bush 43 administration, they were actually prosecuting the Holy Land Foundation, which was Hamas's piggy program of the Muslim Students Associations, they were all listed in that prosecution, which led to convictions, by the way, as unindicted co-conspirators. And they were proved at trial to be unindicted co-conspirators. Obama administration, they went from targets of investigations to people who were inside the

government giving the Justice Department, the military, and the intelligence community a new perspective on how to think of Islamic ideology. And they, in the Obama administration, the approach which has been continued and I think exacerbated in the Biden administration was we're not supposed to look at ideology at all because any ideology, if you take it to its extreme, could result in forcible activity. So the only potential terrorism we're allowed to talk about or that we're supposed to talk about is domestic terrorism by, you know, people who wear red baseball caps in the United States. And in the meantime, you have the Sharia supremacists who are actually very blunt about the fact

that they would they hate the West. They hate our Constitution and they want to destroy our country. I called my book The Grand. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I was just going to say if Sharia is coming soon to a town near you, it means your women are going to be covered head to toe. Honor killings will be back in style. So if a woman, I don't know, is seen having dinner with a man other than her husband, potentially she could fairly be killed by that man, the husband's

family or him. And to get to keep honor in the family. All little girls may be subject to genital mutilation so that their clitoris is removed by scalpel without appropriate anesthesia. This is what you're supporting as you're out there in your little tent sipping your latte. They're so clueless, Andy. Yeah, they're so clueless that they're running around Morningside Heights with signs that say, you know, queers for Palestine. And I'm thinking, if you're going to be a queer for Palestine, you better be at Columbia because you don't want to be in Palestine. You don't want to be in Gaza. You're not going to have a very long career as queers for Palestine in Gaza. So whatever. There was somebody online, I think it

was James Woods, who retweeted one of those pictures of the people wearing their rainbow flags and having Palestine signs in rainbow lettering. And he said, I assume this meeting was not on the top of the building. Right. Well, if anyone actually read books anymore and they didn't feel like reading mine, they should they should read everything written by our mutual friend, Diane Herci-Ali, who I think is written with more depth on this and what this experience is actually like. And to know that and then to watch these dilettantes on these campuses, it's just the disconnect is a little bit much. Yeah. I love Ayaan. She's a dear personal friend. I spoke with her yesterday and she can't believe her eyes as to what she's saying, but she's been

warning about it. She's been warning. And so our audience knows most of them know you, but Andy used to prosecute terrorists for a living. He was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, the most prestigious district in America, and convicted, among others, the blind sheikh who bombed the World Trade Center the first time around. So he knows what he's talking about. I'm going to you can stay for past 1230. Yes, Andy. Yeah, sure. OK, good. So let's get into the campus thing, because this is interesting. I do want to talk to you about what the legal rights are for these students,

but I'm just going to bring the audience up to date on what happened overnight, and then we're going to get back to Trump, because you've got the most salient, sound legal analysis of anybody on this, and your latest piece in particular is helpful. And this audience and I have been trying to figure out what in God's name Alvin Bragg's new theory is. And I think we got there.

I read your piece. Now I know we got there because you're in the same befuddled state of realization that we are. So we're going to go deep on it, but let's just spend a minute on the campus stuff. My team has put this together and I want to show it to the audience. Overnight, a mob broke into the university at Columbia and now they're occupying an academic building. It's Occupy Columbia now. The university's only response so far has been to tell students and staff, avoid the campus. Do not collect the benefit of your bargain. Stay home. There'll be no learning here. Shortly before 1 a.m., protesters using metal barricades, chairs, tables and hammers took over Hamilton Hall, named after Alexander Hamilton.

You just heard Andy mention this. named after a six-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza, notably absent from their new names, or any of the American hostages who still sit in some underground tunnels in Gaza, missing limbs, having been potentially raped and tortured, didn't see any renaming in their names. Here's a look at some of the scenes overnight taken by Columbia University student journalist, Jessica Schwab. Unbelievable. For the listening audience, that was the students breaking into that academic hall, taking it over, slamming doors with tables to make their way in. At some point, a maintenance worker was seen trying to stop the protesters all by himself at no point where police called in. She tried that, the head of the university, and almost got fired. So now she's been cowed. Reporters on the scene saw zero pushback from authorities. In fact,

the student group behind the encampment posted on social media that Hamilton Hall had been taken over by a, quote, autonomous group of Columbia community members. What does that mean? The group said they plan to remain in the building until the university conceded this fight entirely. They wanted them to accede to their demands. So far, that hasn't happened, but they'll probably cave. I mean, there's only like a month to go, and Columbia has no spine. Yesterday, a deadline set by Columbia's president for the encampment to be disbanded came and went. Now Columbia is vowing to suspend the students inside the encampment, but it seems they want to hand out the punishments in private so as not to embarrass the little snowflakes who are acting so tough. The encampment's leader, who has reportedly already been suspended

but remains on campus, took the letter and wrote, Columbia will burn in red marker. Also, I ain't reading all that. Free Palestine. I'm telling you, they're dumb and or unattractive. Take it to the bank. Meantime, on the other side of the country, disturbing scenes at UCLA. Deeply disturbing scenes. I couldn't believe this video went everywhere online on X yesterday. This is truly shocking. A Jewish student shared this footage on social media showing himself trying to use the university's main entrance and a bunch of these losers standing shoulder to shoulder, I guess in solidarity with Hamas, preventing a Jewish American from accessing his university. The young man, the Jewish man, is wearing a visible Star of David necklace. Watch this. We are UCLA students. I have my ID right here. I'm being blocked off, not by the security guard,

but by you two, you three. Oh, look, they're making their burger. Well, I'm going this way. This is what they do. Everybody look at this. Look look at this i'm a ucla student i deserve to go here we pay tuition this is our school and they're not letting me walk in my class is over there i want to use that entrance well i can't take it will you let me go in this could be over in a second just let me and my friends go in to class we're not engaging. Then you can move. Will you move? We're not engaging. Okay, we're going. We're going. I'm going in. I have my hands up.

I'm not hurting them. I'm not hurting them. That's what they do. That's what they do, everybody. You guys are promoting aggression. You guys are promoting hate. We're UCLA students. We deserve to be there.

They blocked him. But the listening audience. He tried to get through and a big man came and blocked his way. And these feckless protesters with their masks on again, I refer you back to the homely comment. It's not because they don't want to be identified. It's the same people who insisted we mask forever during COVID common thread. We'll take a deep dive on that someday. Wouldn't let him in. Now, here, another video also taken at UCLA showing a masked woman chasing down a counter protester, somebody who is speaking up for Israel and Jewish people, hitting him on the head and then pointing something at him that appears to be a taser. He got attacked. He was being shoved. He said, stop, stop, stop. And then the pro-Palestinian lady whips out a taser, which you can clearly hear. That video taken by independent journalist

Cam Higby. And God bless these independent journalists and students who are documenting all of this. Thank you to all of them. So to recap, the protesters get to ram into universities, ransack them, claim academic halls for themselves, rename them, restrict the movements of others on campus, prevent them from attending class, all without any swift repercussions whatsoever. So back to Andy McCarthy. Is any of that legal? No, the uses of force are not legal. Blocking people is a use of force. So this goes beyond speech. This is actual action. And, you know, these are seditious crimes. They're material support to terrorist organizations, and they don't have to be tolerated by these universities. I mean, look, they're tolerating a lot that we wouldn't tolerate within the bounds of what you might say is like the reasonable, I don't know, the curtilage around the First Amendment, the penumbras.

Time, place, and manner. Yeah, they're doing more than I would do. But when it gets to use of force and particularly when the universities, which are like in blocking of the students from, you know, forget about the taser lady, the people who are blocking students from access to buildings on campus should absolutely be prosecuted. And here's the question, Megan, where is the Biden administration's civil rights unit? Right. For title violations, discrimination against Jewish students. Yeah. Where are they? You know, it's a crime in the have access to places and you're being stopped, particularly if you're being stopped because you're a Jewish person and they're not letting you have access, that's a civil rights violation. And they're afraid. Andy, they're they've opened a civil rights investigation.

They said it's some 11 universities. It's all the Ivies. And they're just open. They've just been opened. Absolutely nothing is happening. School, this was going to go on for another month because school ends, you know, for most campuses at late May. So there, this is a political decision by the Biden administration. They don't want to take the heat from Michigan and elsewhere who are more pro Palestinian and the youth within the Democratic Party are too. Yeah. So it's complete BS. They just want to say that they've opened the investigation so that they can't be said it can't be said that they're not doing anything, but they're not doing anything. And, you know, that if these were a category of people that they have hammered away for four years are domestic terrorists, whether it's like MAGA

groups or conservative groups, parents protesting the woke agenda in their schools. The Biden Justice Department would be all over this like white on rice. You wouldn't have to ask where they were. They'd be there. And by the way, here's this. This just breaking. Miguel Cardona of the Department of Education before the Senate right now testifying per The New York Times regarding Columbia.

Cardona said the department was doing everything it could. Quote, we're doing a lot. We have updated guidance. We have a letter in draft right now. We have increased Title IX investigations. We have open investigations. I mean, that's just further confirmation of what you just said. Right. Who's in cuffs? That's what I want to know. I'm glad they have opened. Who's in cuffs? And look, why can't the Jews get on campus? Yeah. Look, when I was at Columbia, it was only seven years when I started there after Kent State, which was one of the the liminal events of the of the anti-Vietnam protests. So I'm completely sympathetic to the idea that you have to have very measured responses to what goes on at campus. That was a historic, horrible event that in many ways led to the

history that's been written about that period. So obviously, they have to be very careful about use of force. I'm not being cavalier about that. But you have to establish order. And they're not establishing order. And the only way that you establish order is to is to actually take law enforcement action. And to my mind, Megan, I got to say, a lot of these kids want to get arrested. It's kind of like they're radical chic. It's a little credential that they can have. But what has to happen here is you've got to start expelling people. I think that's what people. Yep. That would be that. This would be over in an afternoon if they did that. Well, that's like the students at Princeton. Right. They set up two minutes later.

The guy with a bullhorn went down there and said, you're going to get in serious academic trouble. You know, could be suspended, could be worse. And they were out of there. They're nevermind little Prestonians. Oh my God. What do they make? We are Columbia. We're not going to risk our futures. Holy crap. What if Goldman Sachs is watching and they find out my feelings? So, okay. We'll continue to follow and we're going to have more on the show on this too, but I got to switch to Trump because you're the guru on what's happening to him right now. You know, I have to say for the record, Trump has had his highs and lows. He's not a huge fan of national review because they were not huge fans of Trump either in 16 or thereafter, but there is nobody who I trust more on news about

Trump or news period, the national review that even it just goes to show you like you could, he could, he might not be your favorite candidate, but you could be completely fair toward him. If you're a fair minded journalist, lawyer, commentator, et cetera. And that's the truth about my pals at national review. Trump should be sending you guys. Thank you notes every day for what you expose about what's happening to him. Instead, he likes to attack you. Okay. Let's talk about your latest piece, which everybody needs to read. We printed it out so you can see it here. It's called How Judge Mershon is Orchestrating Trump's Conviction. And this is so well said. He's, the fix is in. Like, I'll tell you something, Annie. Some of my team will come to me and say,

well, what about this? You know, the government's struggling to prove that. And I'm kind of like, it's already over. Like it's over in the way the OJ trial was over once they picked that jury and got that judge. That's very much how this one feels. And Judge Mershon has done nothing to disabuse you of that notion. To the contrary, you argue he's reinforcing it every day in ways that are blatant and more sly. So give us the overview on how. Well, the fundamental problem with the case is that in the United States, under the Fifth Amendment, you have to, if you're going to charge someone with a felony, you have to do it in a grand jury proceeding where they produce an indictment,

where it's clear that the grand jury has found probable cause of all the elements of the offense that's charged. So the indictment has to state the offense. In this case, the offense that has been charged 34 times is the falsification of business records with a fraudulent intent to conceal another crime. The other crime is not set forth in the indictment. So the indictment fails as an indictment because the purpose of it is to put a person on notice of what the charges are. With specificity, and this is the one that Alvin Bragg said when he charged the case, I don't have to tell you. Yeah, and he does have to tell them. I have another column that's out today, which argues that this is actually, the prosecution is a violation of the New York State Constitution,

which requires that if you're going to be prosecuted on a criminal statute, the criminal statute can't do what this statute does, Megan, which says if you falsify business records to commit another crime and the statute doesn't say what the potential other crime is, that's not good enough under New York law. You're not allowed to incorporate by reference. The New York Constitution requires that the legislature spell out the activity that is alleged to be criminal. It's either... Wait, say that again andy because you fade it out you have to spell out the activity that's alleged to be criminal is that what you said correct right so you can you can do it two ways you could in the criminal context you can do it descriptively which is to say you could have a statute that says if you falsify your business records to conceal

a violation of the federal campaign finance laws, that would be one way to do it. Or you could have a statute that says to conceal a violation of 18 U.S. Code section, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, they would let that go. But what you can't do is just say another crime because that doesn't put the person doesn't put the public on notice of what the statute criminalizes. So we have a right to know what's lawful and unlawful, what's legal and what's illegal, so that we can color within the lines as citizens, because we don't want our government to just be able to throw us in jail. We want to be able to

prevent that by our good behavior. And ambiguous laws like this make that an impossibility. Yes, that's right. And in fact, we talked about Sharia a few minutes ago, as I argued over the weekend, under Alvin Bragg and Judge Merchan's interpretation of this statute, the other crime, what they said here is that Bragg can bring in federal campaign finance violations because the statute just says conceal another crime. It doesn't specify that it has to be a New York crime, which is, by the way, the only thing that makes sense. We're talking about a New York penal statute that a New York prosecutor has to be able to enforce. So it's got to be a New York law. But what they're saying is, no, it just says another crime. So it could be any other crime. So as I pointed out, by their logic, it could be a Sharia crime. It could be a crime against the penal laws of China.

For all I know, it could be a crime against the criminal laws of the Roman Empire, because there's nothing in it that says the crime still has to be in existence. It just has to be another crime. That's ridiculous. But it's more ridiculous than I thought it was, because over the last couple of days, I've done some research into the New York Constitution, and they're more exacting than even I am. What they say is that you can't incorporate by reference. If you're going to prosecute somebody under a statute, the statute has to describe what is made criminal. And it can't do it by vague references to other crimes. It actually has to specify the right.

It has to specify the conduct and it doesn't. All right. So he gets to the opening statements. He has his assistant, Bragg does, Colangelo stand up there. And instead of saying the other crime is Trump violated federal election law, which is kind of what we'd been expecting. He says he engaged in a conspiracy, a conspiracy to violate election laws by trying really hard to get himself elected, by paying off a porn star who was threatening to come forward. This is the alleged crime. But you've pointed out Trump has not been charged with conspiracy. Like that's that's not a crime listed in the indictment. And so what how does that reshape this case?

Well, it allows Trump to be convicted of a crime he hasn't been charged with. So the way the state has teed this up and Judge Merchan is green lighting all of this. You would think, Megan, just reading the indictment that you're dealing with 34 business record falsification offenses that occurred from February to December of 2017. Then you hear the prosecutor's opening. The very first sentence he says to the jury is this is a case about a criminal conspiracy. And it's not a case about the criminal conspiracy. There's no conspiracy charge in the indictment, but that's the way they're teeing it up. And what they're telling the jury is that it's a conspiracy to suppress politically damaging information by violating the federal campaign finance laws. Now, just to explain how outrageous that is, there is no such thing in New York law as a crime called theft of an election or anything of the sort. Okay? So the first thing people need to understand is, what is a conspiracy? A conspiracy very simply is an agreement by two or more people

to violate a criminal law. So you can't have a conspiracy unless the objective of the conspiracy is actually a crime that's made a penal law by the legislature. So there is no conspiracy to steal an election. There's no such thing. What he's saying is that effectively he stole the election because he violated federal campaign finance law. Now, Bragg, as a state prosecutor, has no authority to enforce federal campaign finance laws. When that corpus of law was enacted in the 1970s, Congress made the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission the exclusive authorities, the exclusive agencies for prosecutions of the federal campaign law. And they did that for a very specific reason. This is very complicated law. It's collision with the First Amendment is fraught with constitutional problems.

A lot of what Congress has enacted in this area has been thrown out by the courts because of constitutional problems. So when Congress created these statutes, they created the Federal Election Commission to enforce them civilly. The Justice Department enforces them criminally. But the point of doing that was to ensure that they are uniformly applied throughout the United States and allowing a state prosecutor to enforce them and make up federal law, not only make it up as he goes along, but make it up in a way that runs afoul of the guidelines that the Justice Department and the FEC have for prosecuting it is the opposite of what Congress

intended when it enacted these laws. So as it stands now, is it Alvin Bragg trying to prove that Trump violated the federal election law or is he trying to change it to he's proving that Trump engaged in a conspiracy to violate federal election law, whether or not he actually did it. Yeah, I think, Megan, it's worse than that. What he's trying to do is establish that Trump conspired to violate federal election law as defined by Alvin Bragg, as opposed to as defined by the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department. Let me hold you there. Well, let me hold you there. OK, yes, I agree. As defined by Alvin Bragg,

because I know you guys have had Brad Smith post a national review. We've had Brad Smith on the show here. You cited him in your latest article. I actually looked it up. We had Brad Smith on in April of 2023. Well, I didn't know this. I've been watching the Trump trial, but not this closely. In January of 2024, Brad Smith tried to submit expert witness testimony or be called be named as a witness for Trump. In this case, as a true expert on election law, he was serving on the FEC, which you mentioned, Federal Election Commission, under Bill Clinton. And he says there's no violation here. He says it's a very complex area of law, just like you said, which is why they typically leave it to the experts. And that the fundamental thing that's been misunderstood, as far as I can tell by almost

everyone in this case, is that it doesn't matter what was in Trump's head or Michael Cohen's head or David Pecker's head in making these payments. The subjective reasoning for making the payment is irrelevant. The only thing the FEC or justice would look at is the nature of the payment in general. If this is a payment that could only ever be used to advance someone's election, then it may be a campaign finance charge fee. If it's something that could be used for anything other than one's campaign, then it's not within the purview of campaign finance law. And he said on this show, a hush money payment, of course, is used by men all the time. Not just men, but even criminal defendants or people who are threatened with nasty information about themselves.

And there's been testimony at this trial. Arnold Schwarzenegger cut a deal with the National Enquirer to protect him. Rahm Emanuel, when he was about to run for mayor of Chicago, cut a deal with the National Enquirer via his brother Ari, who's a big Hollywood agent. Bill Cosby cut a deal with the National, like he wasn't running for office, but those first two were to try to bury damaging information. So this has been happening for a long time. And the reason those things didn't get charged and the reason Trump didn't get charged by the FEC, by the by the feds, the Justice Department here is because tail end of it, you will hear Dave Ehrenberg, Palm Beach County prosecutor, great guy, comes on the show a lot, try to come back at Brad because they were all on the show together. This is episode 522 of The Megyn Kelly Show with the John Edwards rebuttal. All right, take a listen to SOT1. Let's suppose I decide to run for Congress and I say, you know, I need to be in a debate and I need a really good suit.

So I go out and I spend, you know, two thousand dollars on a suit, which I would never otherwise do. Right. It doesn't make it a campaign expense, even though my purpose was to do it to influence the election. Campaign expenditures are things that no one would spend money on unless you're running for office. So, again, it's not the subjective reason why Trump made the payment. It's the actual nature of the payment itself. John Edwards was prosecuted by the feds for something just like this. He had an outside, some rich folks who were paying off his mistress so that he could help win the election.

They kept paying off the mistress even after the election. And he And his wife had cancer. And it was clear that he didn't want her to know. How then were the feds able to prosecute John Edwards under the same set of facts? Judges are not experts in campaign finance law. Most prosecutors are not. And I think it was just a wrong decision. There is a lot of Supreme Court precedent emphasizing that idea that you have to use objective standards for campaign finance law, not subjective standards. It's sort of the only logical reading of the statute because otherwise, take a person like Hillary Clinton, right?

One could at least theoretically argue that everything she did between 1976 and 2016 was for the purpose of influencing her election as president. So good, so clear. And so it's very galling to listen to the coverage of this case, Andy, because I don't know if you're having the same reaction I am, but I hear all over CNN, Fox News, I hear them getting down to David Pecker testified. He did it to help Trump win. He did it to help Trump win. Who cares? You could have Trump on the stand saying, yeah, they did it to help me win. That was the goal. And it still wouldn't amount to a federal election campaign finance violation. Yeah, Megan, I think this is something that we see a lot, those of us who are kind of legal wonks, which is this conflation of two things that have to be separated out, intent

and motive. As Brad said, here, you don't even get into intent unless you have something that objectively violates, you know, is a commission of the acts that are required in a criminal statute for a prosecution to go forward. You don't even have to think about somebody's intent unless you have that. And here, as he points out, these are not technically campaign expenses. To the extent they're talking about the Edwards case, that's a very interesting case to talk about, actually, because it proves his point. The Federal Election Commission declined to prosecute Edwards because they thought it wasn't a campaign expense, the hush money payments.

The Justice Department, I think recklessly, went ahead and charged him anyway. They had a very complex trial. The judge clearly didn't like the case, but he allowed it to go to the jury. And then the jury hung on counts. They didn't convict him. I think they acquitted him on one and hung on everything else. And then the Justice Department, having learned its lesson, decided not to re-prosecute the case. So I don't think that's really a very strong argument for concluding that what's happened in the Trump case is a viable campaign expense. But when I say that you have to separate out intent and motive, if Stormy Daniels used the election to get Trump to pay because the election gave her leverage and Trump

paid her because he was concerned about his chances in the election. That goes to Trump's motive to pay. It doesn't make the expense a campaign expenditure under the campaign finance laws because it's not like polling or get out the vote efforts. It's not the kind of an expenditure that would only happen if there was a political campaign. Stormy Daniels could have tried to extort Trump to pay for any number of reasons, having nothing to do with whether he was a presidential candidate or not. It happens that he was a presidential candidate. So she tried to strike while the iron was hot and he had an incentive to pay her. That doesn't make it a campaign violation. The judge refused to allow Brad Smith and his expert testimony.

Harmeet Dhillon pointed this out on the show the other day. I had missed it. It just happened in late March, about a month ago. He said, no, Brad Smith cannot take the stand. It would be improper to have him instruct the jury in the law, among other things. Well, yeah, tell tell us what's wrong with that. And and if if Brad Smith can't get up there and speak about the federal election standards, how do the actual standards, like you objectively look at the nature of the payment, not the subjective belief in the person's head, how does that get into this courtroom? How does it get in front of the jury so they have the accurate framing of the law?

But by an utterly inadmissible lawless method, the jury in this case is being instructed on federal campaign law by David Pecker and Michael Cohen. Now, it's a black letter principle of the criminal law that, let's say A and B commit a crime together, right, or an alleged crime together. A decides to plead guilty. B goes to trial. A's guilty plea is not admissible to prove that B either committed the crime or believed that he was committing the crime. Yet, Judge Merchan is allowing the district attorney to elicit from Michael Cohen that he pled guilty to two campaign finance payments and campaign finance offenses. And worse than that, Bragg's lawyer, Bragg's prosecutor, opened to the jury saying that you're going to hear that Michael Cohen pled guilty to these payments because they violated the campaign finance laws. And he went to jail over that. Now, what Bragg knows is that my old office, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, had Bragg dead to rights on four million dollars. I'm sorry, had Cohen dead to rights on $4 million plus of bank fraud and tax fraud crimes.

He was going to go to jail over those crimes. The campaign finance stuff is trivial compared to those crimes. What drove Cohen's sentencing guidelines and his prison sentence were the fraud crimes he was already looking at. He agreed to plead guilty to two campaign finance violations because he was trying to make himself a saleable witness to the Southern District of New York against Trump. If they had signed him up as a cooperator, then the prosecutors, the federal prosecutors could have filed a motion with the court to get to get Cohen out of having to do any prison time at all. So that's the reason he agreed to plead to those charges. So this judge.

No, right. It was it was an add on. So but this judge is allowing Cohen when he takes the stand to say, I pleaded guilty to this crime that you're now accusing Trump of and allowed already David Pecker of the National Enquirer to take the stand and say, I signed this agreement sort of like a cooperation agreement with the feds on these crimes that you're now alleging. And yet when Trump says, I would like to respond by bringing in my own election and campaign finance official to say, I don't really give a damn what they pleaded guilty to or signed a conciliation agreement on. I'm here to tell you there was no violation of the law. The judge says no. Right. It's even it's worse than that, because Trump says if you're going to let Cohen say he pled guilty and you're going to let this other stuff in from Pecker, I should at least be able to tell the jury that I was investigated by the Justice Department and the FEC. And they decided not to charge me for a lot of reasons, not least that the campaign finance laws are different when you're the candidate versus when you're a supporter of the candidate. He doesn't allow,

he's not allowing him to put in front of the jury that those agencies that have exclusive authority under the law to enforce these statutes looked at him and decided not to prosecute him. And what the judge says about that is, well, you know, there could be a lot of reasons why they didn't charge him. How about there could be a lot of reasons why Michael Cohen pled guilty that don't have anything to do with whether he was actually guilty. He makes no allowance for any of that. All the rulings are so heavily weighted in favor of Bragg and against Trump. All of this doesn't help Trump right now, but it should help him on appeal, which will happen well after the November election. I got to run. You're the best, Andy. Check him out at National Review. Great to see you.

Megan, great. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. We're going to stay on legal with two first time guests to the show right after this, but quick break first. Joining me now, Julian Epstein and Lexi Rigdon. Julian is a longtime Democratic lawyer and consultant who served as chief counsel to Democrats during Bill Clinton's impeachment trial. He also has some interesting takes on the lawfare happening now against Trump. Lexi is also an attorney who appears regularly on Fox News and OutKick. Julian, Lexi, thanks for being here. Great to see you again, Julian. Thank you for having us.

Megan, it's great to be back. I was just going to say, Megan, it's great to be back with you. I'm such an admirer. I watch your program all the time. I remember I used to come on with Jay Sekulow when you were at Fox. And sort of all of the, you know, the tribal left would always ask me, how do you like going on Megan's show? And I would always say, you know, she is always in search of the truth. She is always incredibly well-researched. And I enjoy coming on that show probably more than any other show. And I think you've taken it to this show as well, sort of the rise of independent journalism, you and Barry Weiss and others. I think it's just a joy to watch you. And I find myself agreeing with 95% of what you say. Wow. Thank you so much. Well, you are always an honest broker. That's how you got onto,

you know, the Kelly Fowler, all the shows that I did. I didn't care whether you were left or right. I just cared if you were an honest broker and could stick to facts. And that's, you know, like what more can we offer the audience? And it's such a pleasure to be able to do it long form, right? On Fox, you do all this prep, you'd come on, Julian, we'd have a three minute hit where you could never do a meaningful legal segment like the one we just did with Andy or one we're going to do with you guys. So anyway, here we are basking in our new glory. And Lexi, so nice to meet you. I've heard the best things. So here's the latest from the Trump courtroom, which, as I mentioned, is underway. So Keith Davidson is on the stand now. And Keith Davidson was Stormy Daniels' lawyer right before

Michael Avenatti. She did not have good luck with lawyers. So Keith Davidson is up there to help establish the alleged scheme that, you know, they all cut to areas to make these payments in order to advance Trump's electoral chances. And they're zeroing in right now on a text Keith Davidson sent to Dylan Howard, who is David Pecker's number two at the National Enquirer, where Keith Davidson, again, this is he represented not only Stormy, but also Karen McDougal, the playboy playmate with whom Trump allegedly had an affair. Quote, Don't forget about Cohen, meaning Michael Cohen. He's saying this to the National Enquirer

guy. Time is of the essence. The girl is being cornered by the estrogen mafia. Keith Davidson addresses this term in court, calling it a very unfortunate, regrettable text, adding he thinks it was a term that Karen McDougal's associates used during the first meeting. He continued that several women were leaning on McDougal to sign a deal with ABC. He's trying to rush their payment, like pay her off, for the love of God, because the National Enquirer did pay Karen McDougal to be quiet. Then the New York Times continues. Just stepping back here for a moment. The gossip industrial complex, which by the way, I don't think they can use that term. That is a term about the military, maybe big pharma. I don't think there's a gossip industrial complex. But

anyway, okay, fine. That's an aside. That Keith Davidson is describing is remarkable and remarkably crass. He's out there leveraging his client's sexual liaisons for money and employment opportunities in a way that resembles a mafia shakedown. Can I just start with this? I mean, Lexi, it's all well and good for the New York Times to try to preserve the integrity of Stormy and or Karen McDougal. But there's a reason they had Keith Davidson representing them and that he was calling the National Enquirer to begin with. And that is that those women were all too happy to participate in said shakedown as well.

Right, exactly. They benefited from it, too. And I mean, their reputations have been smeared a bit, and I'm sure that they don't want to be in the news as they are yet again, because this saga just continues to unfold. But they got the benefit of their bargain at the time. And, you know, the way things shook out for everybody involved in this has not been good. But, you know, like I said, they got the benefit of the bargain at the time. Julian, what do you make of this whole, we just spent an hour talking about it with Annie

McCarthy, this rejiggering of Alvin Bragg's theory that really what happened was they falsified records to cover up an underlying crime. And that crime was a conspiracy to violate federal election law, even though Alvin Bragg couldn't directly prosecute a violation of federal election law. And he's barred campaign finance officials and experts from testifying at trial about, you know, on Trump's side saying this actually didn't violate federal election law. He's just kind of letting Michael Cohen say, I pleaded guilty to it. And also David Pecker saying, I signed a conciliation agreement saying I would cooperate so I didn't get prosecuted for it. And so he's basically supporting the notion that there was such a violation and just asking the jury to say,

do you believe somehow there was a violation? Well, Megan, I think this is sort of like Joseph Stalin. You show me the man, I will show you the crime. This is a case that would never have been brought if the defendant's last name was anything other than Trump. The Edwards case was an outlier. The Justice Department got creamed on it. The Michael Cohen case, as Andy was saying, the Southern District of New York got him to plead to an election reporting violation only because they had much stronger tax cases they could have brought, and they wanted a precedent because they had no precedent. And that's the point. There is no crime here. Non-disclosure agreements are not a crime,

nor are they reportable under the federal election laws. There is no precedent for this case. The idea of bootstrapping a misdemeanor charge on bookkeeping that expired probably in 2019 as a two year statute of limitations to a federal election law requirement, essentially a reporting requirement, is is just wrong on so many levels that it will likely be overturned. Let me ask you a follow up on that, Julian, because I think if memory serves, you helped Clinton during the whole impeachment scandal that he faced. And Rich Lowry, again, back to National Review, has a great piece today posted on how didn't Clinton do this

too? I mean, it's been a while, but he had a bunch of women coming forward who they then paid off to not come forward or to not speak to the media, at least, so that he could get elected. Yeah, well, so he was never charged, obviously, with anything like that. But there are plenty of precedent for politicians paying or going to all kinds of extents to keep bad stories out. Look what the Biden campaign did in 2020 with a Hunter laptop. They used extraordinary pressure to get the national security establishment to say it was a Russian plant. So, you know, Andy explained quite well why this is not a reporting, a federal election violation under the reporting requirements. You cite Brad Smith. Brad Smith wrote a very important op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in 2018, explaining why hush money is not a reportable expenditure under federal campaign laws and why somebody couldn't be charged with

that. And under the law, you have to have, there's an intent requirement. So Trump would have had to have intended to violate the reporting requirements. So nobody has sort of asked the basic question, if the chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Election Commission is saying that nondisclosure agreements are not reportable, how can you possibly say that Trump intended to violate a law that federal election enforcement officials are saying is not a violation? Okay, so let me take that on. Let me take that on because he says, I pulled the Judge Mershon decision denying Brad Smith's testimony. And there's a line in there where he says he's rejecting him as a witness. And he says, okay, Smith was previously precluded from

testifying about similar matters in the Southern District of New York by Judge Kaplan. Judge Kaplan reasoned that Smith's testimony was, as it is here, improper because it sought to instruct the jury on matters of law. Further, the testimony defendant, meaning Trump, seeks to elicit from Smith here was also rejected in U.S. v. Suarez, a federal case. He writes, in Suarez, the court ruled that Smith's proposed testimony was not relevant. The court agreed with the government that, quote, whether the laws are commonly misunderstood does not weigh on whether defendants in this case intended to violate campaign finance laws. And he says the same holds true here. He seems to be saying that whether Trump knew this was going to be a violation or wrongly thought it wasn't a violation is irrelevant to him. And therefore, Brad Smith doesn't get to tell us this isn't a violation. He seems to be boiling

it down to if Trump thought he was committing a crime or didn't think he was violating a crime, like committing a crime. That's all I care about. Not whether, in fact, the payments were criminal. Well, that goes to in the laws, you know, Megan, whether it's a specific intent or a general intent standard and the rules on the FEC are not that clear. So I think that is a very narrow reading on the part of the judge. But it does go to the fact as to whether this case should be brought at all. This is a

case, again, this is an indictment in search of a crime. This is a prosecutor who waited eight years to bring a case on the eve of election, on the eve of the 2024 election. This is a prosecutor who is deeply conflicted. He ran on a platform of going after Donald Trump. There is basically no precedent for a case being brought on this fact situation. Again, I say this as somebody who did not vote for Donald Trump. I did not vote for him in 16. I did not vote for him in 20. But what you are seeing is a pattern here of the law being applied to Donald Trump in a way it would not be applied to anyone else. And if this looks like a political prosecution, it's because it is a political prosecution. And the left, who has for so long spoken about it, and I made this argument when Clinton was under the gun,

that no one would bring these type of legal actions against somebody if the last name wasn't Clinton. And I still believe that was the case. I believe that was a political impeachment. And I believe the legal actions afterwards were also political. But the same is true here. And you can you could look at also the New York, the fraud case that was brought by Letitia James, also a deeply conflicted prosecutor. Let me jump in on this. Lexi, here's the thing about Clinton, because you look at this National Review piece and it reminds us of Bill Clinton. And, you know, I lived through this. I was a young woman at the time, but they were coming out of the woodwork. These women, when he was running for president in 1992, It truly was like, oh, there's another one. Oh, I got another one. And we all knew that Clinton was not a good husband. I mean, by what we would most, I don't know anything about their weird marriage or what their agreement may or may not be,

but not somebody I'd want to marry. But they did care to suppress these stories because the American populace cared. And I think we cared a lot more about extramarital affairs in 1992 than we do today, where we've gotten a little bit more tolerant of like somebody's private business, whatever. So here this is part from Rich's article. The Clinton campaign fought to silence or discredit women as necessary. He says Clinton's operatives had the foresight. There's nothing like planning ahead, to secure affidavits of denial from women rumored to have had affairs with Bill Clinton. The truth didn't matter here, of course. They just wanted the exculpatory statements,

and the women were usually happy to sign them. Who wants the embarrassment of such matters being aired in public? So when the Star tabloid reported that five Arkansas women, including one named Jennifer Flowers, had affairs with Clinton, the campaign was ready. According to George Stephanopoulos, the campaign strategy initially was to attack the tabloid messenger and use previously signed affidavits to undermine the story. Then Flowers shifted from denying the affair to confirming it in detail. Her story had to be destroyed. Her background and appearance would provide the hook for the campaign's effort. Stephanopoulos wrote in his memoir, Jennifer's red suit and dark rooted hair sent exactly the right message. Everyone knew what they were doing, writes Rich Lowry, which was keeping the truth from the voters in the service of what they considered a higher good. That an old dalliance dredged up by a tabloid would curtail the professional experience of my life or the promise I saw in Clinton, wrote George Stephanopoulos. Can you listen to George Stephanopoulos 48 hours ago on his Sunday show?

Until now, no American president had ever faced a criminal trial. The scale of the abnormality is so staggering that it can actually become numbing. It's all too easy to fall into reflexive habits, to treat this as a normal campaign, where both sides embrace the rule of law. But that is not what's happening this election year. Those bedrock tenets of our democracy are being tested in a way we haven't seen since the Civil War. It's a test for the candidates, for those of us in the media and for all of us as citizens. This is the problem, Lexi. The American people know they know this.

Your guy did all of the things in a different form, but all of the things he's being accused of right now. The difference is in the norms. He he wasn't put under criminal prosecution by Alvin Bragg or New York State Supreme or threatened with jail time for the hush money for trying to keep the women quiet. Right. He just really essentially got lucky and he was a beneficiary of his time because now that Bragg did this, the first indictment, which, by the way, was only brought a year ago and now we're already at trial, which is in and of itself unprecedented, especially when a defendant is out on the street and is not in custody, that Clinton was just a beneficiary of the fact that nobody did this to him. But had there been a politically motivated prosecutor in those instances like Bragg, who was running on a campaign of getting him, they could have looked into this and maybe they could have gotten an indictment and they could have gone to trial and could have thrown everything at the wall to see what would stick. So by doing this, Bragg has upended just the de facto precedent that we have in this country where we're not prosecuting our political

opponents for stuff like this. But it doesn't mean it wouldn't necessarily have been justified based on what happened previously if we're using the playbook now. And when he was saying that- You can't say that buying a woman's silence so you don't get embarrassed in front of the populace right before an election is a crime. Could there be so many presidents and politicians from Schwarzenegger to Rahm Emanuel to Bill Clinton to Trump who would go to jail if that were an actual crime. We're just pretending it's a crime because, as Julian said, the last name here is Trump. All right. Let's I want to get to a couple of other things. We talked in the first hour about what's happening at Columbia and so many other college campuses

right now. It's absolutely outrageous. And just a quick update from Columbia, where the students have now commandeered one of the academic halls and they've taken it over by knocking the doors open with tables and chairs and are now in control of university property. This just in, other students who are sympathetic to the pro-Palestinian protesters are using some sort of a rope pulley system to deliver goods up to the students who have taken over this hall, including, you cannot make this up, tins of cupcakes, which you could argue is appropriate given the nature of these folks. But I would say, given my theory, that only the unattractive people or dumb are the ones who are doing this kind of protesting. You should send some cover up and some ozempic, which would be a smarter and more useful delivery to the protesters. Julian, what do you make of what we're seeing on these college campuses?

Well, when you coddle and pander to bad behavior, you get more of it. You know, in January, the administrators at Columbia sat down with the Students for Justice in Palestine and some other extremist groups. And one of them was saying that it was preaching death to Israel. And you should be glad that I'm not on the street killing Jews right now. And these are the type of people that the Columbia administrators were trying to coddle to or trying to appease. It's not their job. It's not their job to sit down with students and listen to their demands about disinvesting from Israel. The moral confusion of administrators here is so profound.

The lack of education from students at these prestigious schools is unbelievable in terms of how they are aligning with the most anti-progressive forces on the globe today. And, you know, the Biden administration, I think, has in many ways encouraged this. You heard Karine Jean-Pierre today say, we're not going to get involved in sort of policing decisions. The schools have been utterly, you know, flaccid in terms of dealing with students and outside agitators, probably getting funds from foreign sources, who are not only disrupting classrooms, but who are, you know, assaulting Jews with flagpoles, spitting on them, painting swastikas. I mean, imagine for a minute the tolerance of both federal officials in the Biden administration, school officials.

If you had a group of white supremacists who were assaulting black Americans, saying they should go back to Africa, sort of all of these other obnoxious things, if you were to do an analogy, there would be no tolerance for it in a minute. But in the same way that the left thinks that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself from what is one of the most horrific genocidal attacks on October 7th, and the response to it, by the way, the civilian casualty ratio has been one of the lowest of any urban warfares ever in history. In the same way that we have a double standard for Israel, there's a double standard when it comes to these incredibly anti-Semitic, uninformed, ahistorical assaults

and attacks on Jews on campus universities. And it's outrageous. One of the reasons, Megan, it's one of the reasons that I think that Jews are going to leave the Democratic Party. Yeah. And some have already. Even my own friends, I have tons of Jewish friends in and around New York who are all saying, for the first time ever, I'm taking in conservative media. I like, I'm no longer watching MSNBC. Like, I can't stand the coverage. New York Times just reporting, Columbia has announced the students occupying Hamilton Hall will face expulsion.

We made it very clear yesterday that the work of the university cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules, said a spokesman. It's not coming from the president herself. Ben Chang in a statement continuing to do so will be met with clear consequences. More warning, no action. Basically, nothing's happening. I mean, how much more do they have to do before the message is you are expelled by empty threats? You did empty threats yesterday. They didn't listen. Now it's truly like the parent, like, no, I really mean it this time. You know, you put down that toy or mommy's going to punish you, even though I didn't punish you the previous three times, Lexi. Yeah. How many

more janitors do they have to hold hostage for these people to be expelled? I mean, this is honestly ridiculous. The leadership there is they are gutless. They are spineless. And the big problem with this is that, as Julian said, this would not be tolerated for a right wing protest. There's no way it would be quashed immediately. I think the problem is that some of these administrators, probably a lot of them, kind of have some sympathy for this cause. And so they're trying to take a hands-off approach. And now it's gotten completely out of control and they don't know what to do.

And the utter hypocrisy of these students who say, number one, you have to divest from Israel. I would like to ask 100 of those students if they even know what divesting means. They probably don't even balance their checkbook. Who are they to tell a university that it needs to divest from a country? They are there to be students. I mean, let me cut, let me, let me jump in because I want to get to a couple of other things because we did a lot of Israel and there's just a couple of really gold salts I need to ask you guys about. On Capitol Hill right

now, Miguel Cardona is testifying and he was asked in part about this. And he was also asked, thank God, God bless Senator Cindy Hyde Smith of Mississippi, who had the guts and the smarts to ask him about the Title IX abomination that happened 10 days ago. She got in his grill. These are agency regulations he changed without the help of any lawmakers. No lawmaker, no representative of ours has blessed these changing the definition of women, changing the right of biological men to absolutely in all cases, access the locker rooms and bathrooms of young girls, K through 12 in college as well. Listen to this. So when a biological male goes into the locker room with biological females, you think that that is a safe space for those young girls? When girls walk into bathrooms, you may not be recognizing students who are transgender,

but because you don't recognize them doesn't mean that I don't protect them. I think the line of questioning is trying to create division. What we're trying to do is protect all students. We're not trying to create division. You just said protecting students is my number one priority. So do you feel like that those biological females are protected in that setting? The Title IX regulations that we have protect all students. We can't pick and choose which students we want to protect.

I totally agree. All students need protecting. But there's a difference in boys and girls and where they change clothes and undress. Do you agree with that? Students who are LGBTQ have, unfortunately, historically in our country, been under attack. And we need to protect those. No one is attacking anyone right now. We are talking about school safety and girls' locker rooms and bathrooms.

So you don't need to change the conversation that somebody's attacking someone. It is my honor as an educator to protect students who have been marginalized in our community. How about girls? Girls have been marginalized. Girls are the victims of over 90% of all sexual assaults. It goes male to female. That's how it goes. And he's completely ignoring biological reality there, Lexi. It's like biological boys posing as girls, 100%. Those are girls. And so there's no problem. I deny there's a problem. And he says he's choosing, he's, he's not choosing to protect a certain person. He is choosing, he's choosing to protect transgender students that want

to use the opposite gender's bathroom. I mean, so he is. And so this is like the tail wagging the dog because there aren't that many of these students out there. So the priority should be, obviously someone's going to get their feelings hurt in this scenario, but the priority should be protecting girls and protecting the sanctity of a women's locker room over protecting the feelings of some of these people who I mean, I have sympathy for a lot of them. They're obviously struggling with somebody something. But that does not mean that should trump the rights of girls in their locker room to feel safe and not have to wonder if there's actually a biological male in their locker room. Julie, do you think Democrats are behind this, like support this? I mean, do you think they think this is a good idea or they're just too afraid about blowback in their lives to speak out more forcefully against it? I think a lot of Democrats have the common sense to know this is just nonsense, the idea that biological men can walk into women's restrooms or participate in

women's sports. Look, we all think that people that may be different from us should be treated with respect, should be treated with dignity. But this just shows you how far the Democratic Party has gone from that principle of treating everyone with respect, tenderness, care, dignity, to listening to the intersectional left is promoting this DEI ideology that if you claim somehow you're oppressed, that no rules apply to you, and that you as a biological man can walk into a woman's bathroom or play women's sports. And most people reject this. And this is another reason you look at the CNN poll on Sunday that shows Trump ahead 49-43. There is a massive realignment that is going on right now with

not just Jews, as we just talked about, leaving the Democratic Party, but working class blacks and browns, because a lot of this ideological left is just such a turnoff and just makes no common sense. And sort of, you know, one of the things that I said at the beginning of the show is I appreciate the real, true, independent journalists like you, like Barry Weiss, like others, who are really trying to go at the truth on issues. You know, you look at the New York Times reporting yesterday on Colombia, and you see a very sympathetic portrayal of the students for justice in Palestine, even though they are aligned with the most illiberal ideas on the planet Earth. The idea that you should commit genocide on anyone is just different from you. And sort of you're seeing this in, I think,

mainstream media. You're seeing it in the Trump case where people are not going at the falsity of the case in an honest way. You're seeing it in the student protests where people are not exposing both the foreign sources and the demented ideology that many of these students are professing. And you see it with many on the left who are just become too intimidated because of the flying monkeys of social media of just saying what's right. And the idea that biological men can walk into women's locker rooms is just wrong. But people have become too scared because the activists who have control over social media will shame you. And that's why the

independent journalists like yourself, Megan, are so important to get sort of the honest, get at the honest truth and be able to present both sides. And I think when people hear the arguments, like Cardona was just pathetic in that response. He was absolutely pathetic. And Senator Heitkamp just slapped him down. He sounded incoherent. And he lapsed into people need to need to be protected. Everybody agrees that even if you're trans, you need to be protected, you need to be treated with respect, you need to be treated with decency. Everybody agrees with that. That's not the issue. He avoided the issue. The issue was whether men should be able to go into women's private spaces because they claim that they identify as female. That's the question.

How about the girls? OK, you're very interested in protecting the trans students. How about the girls? How are you say you can't pick and choose who to protect? How are you protecting girls who are going to be exploited and upset. Therein lies the rot of the intersectional hard left, the moral rot of the intersectional hard left. What about the girls? How is that defending, showing any sensitivity,

any protection of their basic rights? And this is, again, why I think you're seeing a realignment, a massive shift of particularly working class voters leaving the Democratic Party. And I think it's in part, I mean, I believe Trump is going to win the election. And I think this is one of the reasons that Trump will win the election. Well, I think you're right. He's this issue alone has gotten people like me who are independent and right leaning, but not necessarily the biggest Trump fans on earth. I mean, I like his policies.

I got some issues with him personally. Trump voters, that's, this is, this is, for me, this issue alone has done it. But I mean, there's, we could go down the list on immigration and so many others, the economy. All right, I got to run, but Julian and Alexi, thank you both so much. Really appreciate it today. Thank you. Thanks, Megan. Great to be with you again. Up next, Carrie Sheffield's incredible story. Don't miss her. legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch The Megyn Kelly Show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megyn Kelly.

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Get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free. Offer details apply. Our next guest has a remarkable story. Carrie Sheffield was raised in an abusive household. Her family essentially lived as nomads moving across the country, living in motorhomes and sheds. But despite it all, Sheffield overcame her difficult childhood and the mental health

struggles she suffered as a result to become a successful broadcaster and columnist. She credits her conversion to Christianity and the power of forgiveness for her salvation, which she writes about in her brand new book, Motorhome Prophecies, A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness. Keri Sheffield joins us now to share more. Keri, good to see you again. How are you? Hey, Megan. It's been forever.

I'm back on your Fox days. It's good to see you. Yeah, likewise. I have to say, getting deep into your personal background was revelatory, A lot in here that I did not know. And good on you for being so open about a lot. I mean, a lot. So you've, I should tell the audience, like you wound up accomplishing so much academically and professionally and so on, but you had a very rough upbringing.

Give us a sketch of why it was so hard. Yeah, it was hard. So, and yes, you're right. The book it's called Motorhome Prophecies, A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness. And it's called Motorhome Prophecies because I have seven biological siblings. And with our mom and dad, we grew up with 10 people for large parts of my childhood in a motorhome. And we also lived in sheds and tents. My mom gave birth to one of my brothers when the family was living in a tent. I took my ACT exam to go to college

when our family was living in a shed in the Ozarks with no running water. We had to get it piped in with one of those green hoses. And we also lived in houses as well. So I describe it as careening between a first world existence and a third world existence quite periodically and just without any rhyme or reason. And it was because my dad claimed that he was basically a Mormon prophet. He eventually, after I grew up, was eventually excommunicated

from the official Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But growing up, he would always evade the spiritual authorities and the religious authorities. One of my first childhood memories is the child custody coming to take us away. And we were taken to their office and they interviewed us. We were brainwashed to say how great our dad was. And then he took us out and drove 2,000 miles away from Massachusetts to Utah. So we were constantly on the run. He didn't believe in paying his taxes. And so it was just, it was not a healthy environment. And unfortunately, two of my brothers developed schizophrenia. I actually think in this case, it is approaching this level because we're having the highest

depression rate ever. We have the highest suicide rate since the Great Depression, since coming out of that in 1941. And in 2022, which is the most recent data that we have, almost 50,000 people killed themselves. So and three of my siblings have attempted suicide. And we've just been struggling with so many of these mental health issues that I think it's important to talk about it, especially

for men too, because men are actually four, three to four times more likely to commit suicide than women. So these issues are something to discuss, not to victimize yourself. And I think that's the main takeaway that I hope people get from the book is you're not a victim of your circumstance. However, we also need to process and we need to heal from the circumstance. OK, so I want the audience to know, notwithstanding that background that you just sketched out there, you wound up getting into BYU. You wound up getting a risk manager at Goldman Sachs, were a healthcare bond portfolio lead

analyst on a multi-billion dollar healthcare bond portfolio at Moody's, a founding partner at Bain Capital. You had traveled to every continent before the age of 30. So this is a remarkable turnaround. That's before we get to any of your journalism career, a remarkable turnaround. So how, how did you do that? Yeah. Well, one little clarify, I worked for a former, uh, Bain Capital founding partner. I worked for him. His name was Ed Conard. I was a researcher for him. Um, but in any case, that was after he left Bain Capital, but the, you know, it's interesting

because I would say I was motivated by two kind of competing forces, which I think kind of torments and also inspires most people. There is this desire to succeed, to lift yourself above your circumstance. For me, I saw this abusive situation I was in. It was a pivotal moment when I was 17. One of my schizophrenic brothers groped me and tried to rape me. And at that moment, I knew that I was no longer safe. And I am fifth in the birth order. I have four big brothers and they were still at home and they were still part of the prophetic mission.

And after I knew that I was not safe, biological male, twice my size coming after me, I had to go on this exploration of do of, I call it my first investigative journalism project, is my father a prophet? And through that investigation, I realized that I did not believe that he was. And so I told my dad, I need to go away to college. I don't want to be here anymore. And this is what he said in response. He raised his hand like he was making an oath. And he said, I prophesy in the name of Jesus, you'll be raped and murdered if you leave. And, you know, to be have the name of Jesus spoken over you in a curse, you can maybe imagine why I didn't love religion or the name of Jesus for a long time. I spent about 12 years as an agnostic, really angry and bitter at God. And

in that period, that was when I really pushed myself. I took this time, you know, I would see my roommates going home to mama and clutching their teddy bears and summer breaks and Christmas breaks. I was not allowed home. My dad said my blood changed and I was no longer his daughter. And so I took that as motivation to work my butt off. And I got five journalism. And I took that as fuel. And so I succeeded. However, as you see quite often, when children have child abuse, there is still lacking a fundamental sense of just inherent self-worth. And so you're always looking for achievements to get that feeling of self-worth and it'll never come if you're relying on the achievements for it.

So virtually to the point where I just got so burned out that I landed in the hospital and almost died because I was such a workaholic because I didn't have that inherent sense of self-worth because I had allowed the person who had abused me to really take that away from me. This year, when you held up the book, it looks to me, it kind of reminded me of J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. And your story, in some ways, really reminds me of his story too, where he had so many challenges in his nuclear family that he grew up in with his mother, all sorts of issues there, not to mention father

figures. And through it all, he had two really important influence influences, his sister, Lindsay and his mama, uh, who's his grandmother, his maternal grandmother. And they made all the difference. I mean, they, I think are responsible in large part for the J.D. Vance we all see today who became a U S Senator. So did you have somebody like that in your life who made the difference? Cause in there, in there was a strong foundation with the moral compass, notwithstanding all the challenges that you suffered. Well, unfortunately, I didn't have a mamaw like that, which I think is why he's a U.S. Senator and why I was in the hospital nine times and almost died from fibromyalgia. So, uh, but at the same time, you know, I, I think, you know, ultimately I mentioned that I was agnostic for about 12 years. Um, and that was when I was really angry at God and the

idea of religion and, um, you know, just what I, what I, I like to now, uh, eventually through a very unexpected series of months, I did become a Christian and I was baptized. I was able to forgive my dad. And scientifically, there is this proven impact when you forgive on your body and to embrace faith in my life that I have faith in, you know, something above this mess, that's this ugly earth that we live in, that the ugly parts of it, and that I can have faith in, you know, a God who loves me versus a God who says I should be raped and murdered, you know, and so that was really the turning point. I think, again, going back to this moment in time of why I chose to write the story now is because we're seeing this horrific takeover of psychology and psychiatry, which you do a great

job of calling it out when it comes to, you know, just confusing children. But the problem is, if you look at the data, there's so much overwhelming scientific evidence for a healthy faith, a grounding in knowledge of God being separate from abusive man-made religion, that if you are in a healthy faith community, you are 90% less likely, this is according to literature review of almost 150 studies in psychiatric times. They looked at almost 150 studies and they found 90% of them showed a strong relationship between less substance abuse. That means less opioids, less drug addiction, less alcohol overdose and religiosity. And there was also, they also found looking at some other studies in a

literature review that the there's almost 70% of them showed the study showed a strong relationship between less depression and healthy religious practice. And then Harvard school of public health found something similar as well as the national bureau of economic research. So I could talk till I blew the face about the science behind how faith in God and religious community is so good for your mental health. And then on the flip side, Harvard also found that psychologists and psychiatrists are the most atheist profession.

And so you have conflict of interest, I believe, where, and they also found at Harvard School of Public Health as well, that patients who are denied good spiritual health care or spiritual needs being met have much less like robust healthcare outcomes and their quality of life goes down if they don't have spirituality integrated into their treatment and their care. And so that's what I believe is happening in our country is part of why, you know, in Abigail Shire's book, she talks about the bad therapy.

The bad therapy is divorced from spirituality, divorced from the Judeo-Christian foundation. And look, I'm a Christian, but one of my endorsers on the back of my book is a Hindu, a very well-known Hindu named Deepak Chopra. So I believe Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. But I also understand this is a world where there are many faiths and we are a country where we have freedom of religion. And I'm more interested from a health standpoint in bringing faith and integrating that into our mental health treatment. And unfortunately, the academy is going the other direction. It just seems like we've done almost everything wrong the past 50 years. It just feels like everything we did was the opposite, you know, in terms of pressuring women. Yes, we want equal rights. We want the ability to work outside of

the home if that's our choice. But we didn't want to destroy the nuclear family. We shouldn't have been shaming women who would prefer to stay home and raise their children and be, you know, full time moms. Somehow that became out of favor or stigmatized. We shouldn't have. We didn't want to be to oppress the sexual revolution and all that. We don't want to create a generation of women who feel no worth and give it up to everybody and wind up feeling disgusting about themselves in a downward spiral, not to mention the parades of public nudity that we have at every turn, the thing that's happening in the trans lane. You know, there's so many areas in which we made wrong choices. And I do think the common and largest and most consequential one was the rejection of any sort of religion, religiosity,

spirituality in public life, whether it's in schools or in courts. It's not that we should be deciding cases or teaching classes all through our particular belief system. But there was a foundational belief in terms of social mores and religious tenets that we all agreed on for a long, long time that we've completely abandoned. We totally have, Megan. And historically, our whole education system was built around creating virtuous citizens. Well, when you have the takeover of the left of our educational system, they converted that to using the education system, not only the university, but K through 12 as well as a system for indoctrinating people on this idea of class warfare and having the proletariat rise up. And so it was more about fighting over resources. That was what education was to train

and equip people to fight over resources and fight over these supposed, you know, suppressor and suppressed ideologies. That's what education is today. And it's in that process has been happening now for decades, if not a century. And you read the ideologies of the people who have taken over the education system. They weren't even hiding it. And this is the result. We took away this classic understanding of creating a virtuous citizen into creating someone who's fighting with a scarcity mentality over physical resources instead of rooting and grounding them in a

spiritual understanding of virtue and who they were in the eyes of God. And just the whole notion of human rights was something that was created in the Judeo-Christian system. And so in some ways, my life is sort of a parallel of this because I was raised in an abusive, controlling, toxic expression of Judeo-Christian understanding. And it was in a lot of ways because my dad had been sexually abused as a boy. And I try to be as compassionate to him when his first memories is being assaulted by a Mormon babysitter from his congregation, a female babysitter.

And he said later on that that led him to be feeling suicidal. And unfortunately, we don't talk enough about men who are sexual assault victims. I think I say in the book, that's part of why I think the Johnny Depp case caught on so much is because he and his sister confirmed it had been a childhood victim of an abusive mother. And that's part of why he stayed with Amber Heard. And that's why to hear Amber Heard mocking him and saying, oh, no one will ever believe that I hit you. You know, it was jarring. And it's something that we should talk about more as a society. But because I had been raised in an abusive context of Judeo-Christian understanding or my dad's twisted interpretation of it, I threw everything out. I threw the baby out with the bathwater. And that's

exactly, I think, what you're saying about the 60s. And so I was in that period of it. I threw everything out. I threw the baby out with the bathwater. And that's exactly, I think what you, what you're saying about the sixties. And so I was in that period of anger and, um, and to come back and find that healthy middle ground. I don't know how you did that. How did you ever, you know, were you open-minded enough to say, yeah, you know what, I'm going to give it another try. I'm going to try Christianity and consider faith again. Well, I tried everything else. That's what I like to say. It was sort of a trial. Yeah. Well, there's a pastor who died last year. He was amazing. People called him a modern day C.S. Lewis. His name was Tim Keller. Phenomenal author. Every book, every video of his, I just devour it whenever I can. But he had a book that I think explained what I went through in this period. And it's the title is counterfeit gods.

And each chapter is basically a false God that we worship in instead of God. And one is, is the God of money, you know, the God of career, the God of dating relationships, of marriage and family for women, sex for men. And it's like, I tried all of them and they kept failing me. You know, like I got laid off because there was a new management that came in and everyone from the old management had a target on our backs. And that I became suicidal after that time, because I had put that as my, my God. And then I tried dating and relationships. I ended up dating really abusive men. Unfortunately, one was a drug addict behind my back, emotionally abusive men. One was abusing alcohol. And I accepted it because that's what abused women do. The pattern is normal and familiar. And it just,

you know, kept failing me. And so it really was the process of elimination that I said, you know, these things are not working and I need something that's more eternal. And that's, that's how I returned to God. This, this God's not going to disappoint you. Carrie, I'm amazed at your story, what you've overcome. Thank you for writing about it. Again, the book is called Motorhome Prophecies, which is a great, great name. Thank you for taking the risks and for coming on and telling your story. Thank you, Megan. Thanks for having me. God bless you.

Yeah. All the best. You too. Wow. All right. Tomorrow, before we go, I want to tell you that we're going to have back on Batya Angar Sargan. And the number one thing I want to do when she gets here is play you the extended clip

of Kamala Harris on With Drew Barrymore. It got even worse than the clip we played you yesterday. Believe it or not, it actually went downhill. We'll talk about it, among other things, like hard news. Don't miss that. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.