The MeidasTouch Podcast - Reaction to BOMBSHELL January 6 Hearings Day 5

Episode Date: June 24, 2022

On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, Ben and Brett recap Day 5 of the January 6th Hearings, which focused on Donald Trump’s attempts to corrupt the Justice Department in order to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Thursday’s hearing was the most intense one yet, with compelling footage, information, and witness testimony from Jeffrey Rosen, Rich Donoghue and Steven Engel. Get official Meidas Merch for 10% OFF through the end of this week using code ‘JUSTICE’ at checkout: https://store.meidastouch.com Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We are going to be covering the fifth day of hearings for the January 6th committee. I think by far the most impactful day, although I will say each hearing has built upon the previous hearing. So while it was the most impactful based on all the knowledge that we previously had, the interference with the DOJ, the attempts for Trump and Giuliani and Eastman, and this guy who we learned more about today, this little known environmental DOJ lawyer named Jeffrey Clark, who bought into all the absurd conspiracy nut job nonsense, trying to take over America's law enforcement apparatus in the Department of Justice. And I think the panelists said it best, it is so important for the DOJ to adhere to the facts

and the law. And if the DOJ gets out of that role, it will never be easy to repair our most fundamental institutions. Today's panelists included Jeffrey Rosen, the former acting attorney general on the DOJ, Richard Donahue, former acting deputy attorney general in the DOJ, Stephen Engel, former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel in the DOJ, all part of Trump's DOJ, if you will, Jeffrey Rosen taking the acting role after Bill Barr resigned in December. Adam Kinzinger led today's hearings. And what I loved about Kinzinger, in addition to his just spot on questioning that brought these witnesses really day by day from the moment Bill Barr had resigned until January 6th and thereafter.

I thought just the way it built and the way the story was told was so incredibly compelling. And I'll throw it to you there in breath. But the other thing that Adam Kinzinger did is he was able to stand there as a Republican on the January 6th committee and discuss how pretty much all of the other major Republicans from Gates to Marjorie Taylor Greene to Biggs, you know, you name it, Scott Perry, all of these Republicans, they asked for a blanket pardon from Donald Trump. And as Kinzinger said, you don't ask for a blanket pardon unless you believe that you were guilty. And what this evidence showed is that this current Republican Party, other than the Kinzinger's and the Cheney's and maybe a handful

of other people, are criminals, are traitors, should be charged with treason, as should Donald Trump. This is a no-brainer how disgusting and despicable this Trump-lacky MAGA movement is. Sickening is how I left this, and pissed, to be quite honest. I have two words to go along with those words, Ben, that you just dropped. And A, the first one, Adam Kinzinger, the January 6th committee, masterful, masterful storytellers. The way they have conducted themselves, the way they have led this investigation, facing headwinds, by the way, from all sides. You've had detractors on the left. You've had detractors on the right.

But they are doing an absolutely outstanding job of telling the story to the American people. The other word that comes to my mind, criminals. Criminals are the Republican Party. It is disgraceful what they did to our country. Every hearing that I watch, I am watching with absolute rage as to what they were willing to do and not just what they were willing to do, but what they are still willing to do to overthrow our democracy and shred our Constitution and throw away the American experiment because that's exactly what they are trying to do here. It is disgraceful. It is disgusting. Their approval rating should be at one and a half percent. Nobody should ever take this party seriously, or you should take him seriously because they're a threat, but nobody should ever, ever put this party in places of power. And I think, Ben, you mentioned the pardon list, which actually came towards the end. We'll circle back there. We'll get back there soon.

But I wanted to add there, the interesting thing about Gates's request for a pardon, Matt Gates asked for a blanket pardon, quote, from the beginning of time up until today for any and all things. Hmm. I wonder why Gates wanted a pardon for any and all things from the beginning of time. These are people who knew that they were engaged in criminal activity. They knew exactly what they were doing. And I think the story that the January 6th committee is telling here is that this day, January 6th, it's not about January 6th. It's about everything that happened before January 6th and everything that happened after January 6th. January 6th. It's about everything that happened before January 6th and everything that happened after January 6th.

January 6th is not Mr. QAnon shaman running into the Capitol. It's not the guy putting his feet on the desk of Nancy Pelosi's desk. January 6th was the Donald Trump and his minions attempt to overthrow the United States government by any means possible. And today we learned that that by any means possible went all the way up to the highest levels of our government in the Department of Justice, which he corrupted and tried his best to use and weaponize to overthrow our democracy. And I got to say, our Aku and Plain Sight video that we made is aging pretty damn well right now. I want you to go back to the video that we made,

a coup in plain sight, a few months back, because guess who we mentioned in a coup in plain sight as a major player in all of this? We mentioned Jeffrey Clark at the Department of Justice, who was a big name that came out today. Brett, you mentioned detractors on both sides. I think it's an important point, though, that we make the following, that the radical right-wing extremists who want to undermine our institutions, sometimes it was what leaves people on the pro-democracy side or on the left. Again, you know I hate saying left and right because I think the dichotomy is completely skewed and wrong. And I don't believe the right is conservative. But that said, just using that framing, I think lots of people feel after the Mueller report, after just seeing criminals run around forever, what can we do? So let's just wave the white flag. And I say to you, stop it.

That's why Midas Touch is created to tell you, stop it. What the January 6th committee is doing right now is working. It is a bipartisan panel. There are Republicans and Democrats. And if anything, it is a partisan hearing in the sense that every single witness has been top level Republicans. Such a good point. And this is moving minds. It is changing minds. And you on the pro-democracy side of it, just stop getting beaten down by all of the gaslighting and all of the right wing stuff. They do that stuff to wear you down. And you see that they're good at it because they have

no ideas other than power for power's sake. And we see that in everything that Trump was doing. His lies, the relentless nature, the continuous, every second in the face of seemingly everyone. You think about as you set forth these other hearings from the state legislatures to the state secretaries of state to just individuals who were out there vote counting. Every single day, this fascist, disgusting, power hungry, egomaniacal maniac in Donald Trump

was out there trying to intimidate and bully everyone. And I say enough, enough of getting bullied by Trump and those wannabe freaking criminals. We will stand together. And what the January 6th committee is doing right now is changing hearts and minds. So let's go through the highlights for everybody watching this. And so let's go through the highlights right now of the key moments. And one of the key moments, Brett, as captured in one of the Midas real-time live tweets, quote, this is absolutely chilling. Bill Barr told the January 6th committee if the Justice Department didn't investigate Trump's claims of voter fraud, he was not sure we would have a transition of power at all. In essence, what Bill Barr said is one of the reasons we had to investigate is because if we didn't, Trump was going to basically say, look, they failed to investigate.

So I am therefore the king and emperor of the United States. Let's play that clip. Former attorney general was asked why he authorized the Department of Justice to investigate fraud in the 2020 election at all. Why not just follow the regular course of action and let the investigations occur much later in time after January 6th? Here's what he said. Felt the responsible thing to do was to be to be in a position to have a view as to whether or not there was fraud. And frankly, I think the fact that I put myself in the position that I could say that we had looked at this and didn't think there was fraud was really important to moving

things forward. And I sort of shudder to think what the situation would have been if the position of the department was, we're not even looking at this until after Biden's in office. I'm not sure we would have had a transition at all. And then I want to go to another critical moment. And I think Eric Hirschman, you know, has been, it's been kind of highly entertaining. He's been highly entertaining to watch Hirschman, who was a Trump senior lawyer within the White House. to send this letter, this letter that would be on DOJ letterhead to Georgia and to other states, basically saying the 2020 election was a fraudulent election. It was corrupt. And therefore, you need to seriously investigate or consider the fake elector slates and not the actual elector slates. And to put this letter out, this phony fake letter out on American DOJ letterhead out to states calling the 2020 election corrupt. That is what we see in banana republics.

But I want to get your thoughts on that, Brett, but let's play the clip with Eric Hirschman first. And when he finished discussing what he planned on doing, I said, good fucking soothing. Sorry, congratulations. You just admitted your first step or act you take as attorney general would be committing a felony and violating rule six city. You're clearly the right candidate for this job. What's your reaction? It's a great line. Congratulations. You just admitted your first act as attorney general would be committing a felony. You're clearly the right candidate for the job. All these people around Trump knew how corrupt he was and knew the scheme that he was pulling. And none of these people are heroes, by the way.

Don't get me started with the comments. Oh, Bill Barr isn't a good guy. Hirschman isn't a good guy. I get it. I get it. But let's watch these clips and let's take what they say, because this is damning evidence that all of them knew what they were doing was highly illegal. And they were looking to do everything possible they could to overthrow our democracy.

Everything, no matter what. Even Donald Trump, we learned today, he said, echoing kind of a statement that he had made to voters, especially Black voters during his campaign, when he said, what do you have to lose? He turned that question inwards to himself when he was down and out and knew that he had lost the election. And he said, when he was devising all these schemes, he said, well, what do I have to lose? What do I have to lose? And Donahue basically responded to him, everything. You have everything to lose here. And now the chickens from then are coming home to roost. And we'll get there, Brett. That was the Oval Office meeting that you're referring to a few days before January 6th, where we got to see the White House logs, where they actually, according to the White House logs,

internally at the White House, they were already referring to Jeffrey Clark as the acting attorney general. They had already named him acting attorney general. And this meeting was held a few days, like three days before January 6th, where they were going to, where Trump was basically going to introduce Jeffrey Clark as the acting attorney general. And he called in Rosen, who was the actual acting attorney general at the time. And Donahue was there. And Eric Hirschman was there. All these people were there who were basically saying, Trump, you're out of your mind. But that was a big showdown, a pivotal meeting that we'll talk about. But as Trump starts to talk with Donahue and Rosen and all of these people, one of the things that

Trump starts saying as he's confronted with the facts, as Rosen and Donoghue are telling Donald Trump, look, here's why you're wrong here. That's a stupid conspiracy here. That's utterly absurd here. We've looked into it. We've tracked all of these things you're saying. They are false. There is no evidence to support him. And what Trump said is just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressman. Play that clip.

Let's take a look at another one of your notes. You also noted that Mr. Rosen said to Mr. Trump, quote, DOJ can't and won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election. How did the president respond to that, sir? He responded very quickly and said, essentially, that's not what I'm asking you to do. What I'm just asking you to do is just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressman. So let's now put up the notes where you quote the president. As you're speaking to that, he said, the president said, just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest of me and the Republican congressman. So, Mr. Donahue, that's a direct quote from President Trump, correct? That's an exact quote from the president. Yes.

That was one of the most memorable lines to me. What? Just just say just say it was corrupt. Just say it was corrupt. What do you what? Why do you give a shit? Like, but that's Donald Trump's attitude. Let me sacrifice our great Republic of the United States of America for my own ego, for my fragile ego. Let's sacrifice our great Republic and just say it was, just say it was fragile. We'll handle the rest. That's how he was talking to the most senior members of the Department of Justice. Brett, what was your reaction to that? Well, my reaction to me was that we have heard this statement before, like listed in newspapers and things. We've seen this

reported. I think this is the first time, though, that we've seen it actually told to us under oath by somebody who was there. So it was that much more powerful to me that these were the exact words verbatim that Donald Trump said. And I think it's also interesting what he said there, where he said, leave the rest to me, but not only to me, leave the rest to me and the Republican congressman. To me, that is incredibly incriminating for all the Republican congressmen who were in on the scheme. And it shows also why they would later ask for pardons, because they all knew that they were in on this corrupt scheme. And throughout this, one of the things that kept coming up then, and this was something I don't even remember if I had heard

of at the time, because I'd heard of Venezuela and Hugo Chavez and all that wacky shit. But I didn't really hear of all this Italy stuff. And they were chasing down these Italy conspiracy theories, whereby the Italian government was using satellites in Italy to change the voting tabulations on American voting machines. And this is a rabbit hole that they went down so much that they actually had the Secretary of Defense, Prince Miller, make a call to the government in Italy to investigate this bogus theory and try to get them to claim that, yes, something weird happened there. So the election must be investigated and the election must be overturned.

I mean, this is really sick, weird, QAnon, bizarre stuff. Let me frame that for you, too, just so people know the context of what this Italy story is. So shortly after the election, there was a video circulating on YouTube by this conspiracy theorist person who was known as a crazy person who had been arrested by the Italian government. So he had this for internet related crimes.

And so he had this ax to grind with the Italian government. And so he made this ax to grind with the Italian government. And so he made this conspiratorial video basically saying that the Italian government was beaming election votes to Biden through an embassy and changing votes in the United States of America. And he made this YouTube video that would be like, yo, that person like needs serious help. And Mark Meadows forwarded that video to the DOJ, the people who were testifying. They were asked today when they were taking the panel and they were under oath. They said, we looked at this video and we basically said that was bat shit crazy. We're not doing anything with this. But then these DOJ people learned that Mark Meadows and the White House actually forward this to the Department of Defense and had the Department

of Defense investigate this in Italy and send investigators to Italy to go into this absurd, ridiculous, beyond ridiculous conspiracy theory. And Adam Kinzinger made the point, that is what they did to our government. They had our government debase itself, where our Department of Justice was going to track down the craziest internet conspiracy theories. And this is what the White House was focused on as they went to all of these things, which again, these members who were Republican, who were appointed as part of the Trump DOJ, they were giving advice to Trump and Trump's own lawyers said, this election stuff is false. This is not true. You will be violating the law. And so what did Trump do when those people

said that internally? Trump went to Giuliani, John Eastman, and this guy, Jeffrey Clark, who we heard a lot about. And Jeffrey Clark was this incredibly unqualified person who was in the civil division of the Department of Justice who handled environmental related issues. And so he would basically look into investigations for the DOJ if there was like an oil spill or something, which, you know, is an important job in the DOJ, but nowhere near leadership. And just as a point of being a competent person, these senior members of the DOJ who testified today said, this guy Clark, he had never been in front of a grand jury, yet alone a trial jury. He had never led a criminal investigation. And now because of Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani have thrust this individual because he's literally the only person in the DOJ who will come on with these wacky, wacky, crazy theories. Brett, you're raising

your hand. So jump in. You didn't have to say it. The people couldn't see me while I was raising my hand. So I thought I was being stealthy and I want to get a point in. I wanted to highlight Eric Hirschman's quote, another great quote from Hirschman, the Trump advisor who we were talking about before. He said, the only thing you know about environmental law and elections is that they both begin with E. And after this conversation, I'm not even sure that you know that. That's what Hirschman said to Jeffrey Clark. And when it was announced that they were trying to install Jeffrey Clark as the head of the Justice Department,

all the Justice Department leadership basically said, well, we're going to leave if that happens. You know, we're out of here. So Jeffrey Clark might be running the place, but he's going to be running the place with zero employees whatsoever. Another comment, I just want to go back to the Italy issue for one second, because I did not want to finish this podcast without saying Donald Trump's statement when the Justice Department told him that the Italy story is bullshit. And Donald Trump goes to the Justice Department, you guys may not be following the internet the way that I do. Like the guy is like going down these, I'm so curious to look at this guy's web history. It's just gotta be like the worst parts of the internet and the four chans, the eight chans, the rumble. This is the stuff you guess you see on truth social and stuff. It's just all

conspiracy theories and lies. And they live in their own world where they're trying to create their own reality to try to keep power. So here's the thing. So Jeffrey Clark prepares this letter that's going to go out to the various states, an official DOJ letterhead. And it has the names of all these senior DOJ officials so that they were supposed to sign this letter. And the letter would basically say that the election of 2020 was corrupt, it was filled with fraud, and that you need to select the fake electors and not the real electors. And the people who testified today, the senior DOJ leadership said, we are absolutely not going to sign that. We are not going to send that letter. And because they refused to sign and send that letter. And because they refused to sign and send that letter, Trump increased the pressure on him day by day by day

until basically Trump's plan was, we are going to make this random lawyer who happens to work at the DOJ but has no leadership qualifications. As the current senior DOJ leadership basically said today, this guy, Clark, he couldn't even find the office of where to go and find the leadership in the building because he hasn't been anywhere near where the leadership actually is. And so Trump was going to appoint this guy, Clark, to become the acting attorney general. In fact, he probably did appoint him that. Trump eventually backed down. But when there was this meeting right around New Year's, right after New Year's, a few days before, January 6th, there's this meeting in the Oval Office. And the meeting in the Oval Office has all of the senior leadership that we discussed today.

It has Jeffrey Clark. And Trump basically says the following. Brett, play the clip about what went down at that meeting. Mr. Donahue, during this meeting, did the president tell you that he would remove you and Mr. Rosen because you weren't declaring there was election fraud? Toward the end of the meeting, the president, again, was getting very agitated. And he said, people tell me I should just get rid of both of you. I should just remove you and make a change in leadership, put Jeff Clark in, maybe something will finally get done. And I responded, as I think I had earlier in the December 27th call, Mr. President, you should have the leadership that you want. But understand, the United States Justice Department functions on facts, evidence, and law. And those are not going to change. So you can have whatever

leadership you want, but the department's position is not going to change. So here we have at this Oval Office meeting, you have Jeffrey Rosen, President, the former Acting Attorney General, Richard Donahue, President, former Acting Deputy Attorney General, Stephen Engel, President, the former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of the Legal Counsel. You have all of them present. Then you have, I think they have, was Eric Hirschman there and Trump's other lawyers? I think Hirschman was there. I believe they were. The January 6th committee, by the way, had some incredible graphics packages that showed the people in the seats. They're really doing a really good presentation. As a guy who comes from the TV world, they did a really good job. And then you have Jeffrey Clark there. And leading up to this meeting in the Oval Office,

a few days before January 6th, what led and precipitated this meeting is Jeffrey Clark calls up Jeffrey Rosen. And think about this. This is like, if you're thinking about a big organization, like a low level director calling up Bill Gates or someone at Microsoft and saying, I got your job now. And Bill Gates is like, what do you mean you got my job? What the fuck are you talking about? You don't have my job. Let me go. Who are you? And that's like the, you know, there's the best way to, I'm going to go speak to my board of

directors, you know? And so what Jeffrey Rosen did as soon as that happened, Jeffrey Rosen called up all the other assistant attorney generals. He called up Trump and demanded a meeting immediately. And when he, before the meeting, when he spoke to all the assistant attorney generals, he said, if they replace me with Jeffrey Clark, I need to know what you're going to do. Cause I'm about to go speak to Trump. I'm going to the Oval Office to talk to him about it. You're really going to do this. And what are you going to do? And he said, immediately, all of the assistant attorney generals who represent the leadership in Washington, DC and all of the assistant attorney generals who represent the leadership in Washington, D.C., and all of the various branches within the Department of Justice, we will all immediately resign. And so they said, we're not going to work for this guy, Jeffrey Clark. And so that led to

this Oval Office meeting where Trump's like, I'm just going to fire you. I'm going to bring this guy in. And then everybody in the room put pressure on Trump and said, if you do that, you're going to make the biggest fool of yourself ever. And finally, Trump actually backed down, you know, from, shouldn't back down from his coup plot, no, he backed down from firing Jeffrey Rosen at that given time and realized that he actually couldn't go about doing that. But why that meeting to me is so important, why that meeting is so critical, though, is also to that happened before January 6th. So before January 6th, literally everybody who Trump talked to, other than his co-conspirator coup plotters like Eastman and Clark, who have all pled the fifth, his inner circle of Republican congressmen like Gates and Marjorie Taylor Greene and all of those individuals and his Giuliani's and his Sidney Powell's. Oh, we should reflect on that. One of the things that happened today as well was that we learned that Trump was going to appoint Sidney Powell as a special counsel, basically like Mueller. He was going

to appoint Sidney Powell to become the Mueller to investigate election fraud. And that was fortunately nixed by the DOJ who said, what the fuck are you doing? But that was something that he was going to think about all of her cracking and craziness that that was the person that he was going to appoint to investigate the election fraud and just how scary that is. And he told her that you were going to be appointed. She testified to that. But then every single person had told Trump, you're wrong. We've tracked down all of these things. So why is this important from a legal perspective? Then we'll get into the issue of pardons because Trump knew he can never possibly argue based on the evidence that we now have, frankly, what we knew from common sense before, but from the undeniable evidence of top DOJ officials, top state officials, his own lawyers, his own internal counsel, that there was no voter fraud in this election or any such fraud at all that would change the election at all, period. Yet he took the stage on January 6th. This is why the next hearing is going to be so

important because when all of this failed, when the fake electors, when the DOJ, when Pence wouldn't go along, what did he resort to? Mob violence. And what we're going to see in the upcoming hearings are those links, the links between terrorist organizations and the White House. And so when you think about how you build this case, and you think about the great work that January 6th did from its opening statement, to getting into the fake elector plot, to getting into the issues with Pence, to getting into the secretaries of state, to focusing on all of those things, right? And then now today with the DOJ, when all that failed, Trump resorted to violence. Trump resorted to trying to kill people. That is what Trump did. And we're going

to hear about the links between the Proud Boys terrorist organizations. We're going to hear about the links of the group that calls himself the Oath Keepers, another terrorist organization, all of these groups, the three percenters, and their links to the White House, their conduit and links. And those hearings right there are going to leave you saying, holy shit. And Ben, remember, and I think this is something that has not been talked about quite enough yet, but prior to January 6th, Enrique Tarrio, who headed the Proud Boys, posted a photo on whatever social media app they use, I forget which one, at the White House saying that he was invited to the White House for a

special emergency meeting. I think that's going to end up being a really big deal because like you said, Ben, after Trump tried to get the Department of Justice to do things, to get the Republican Congressman to do things, after all those options failed, he asked the Department of Justice to do things, to get the Republican congressman to do things, after all those options failed, he asked the Department of Justice to seize the voting machines, go to Georgia and take the machines. These are all the things that the Department of Justice said, we're not doing that. After all that failed, after he was unsuccessfully able to get in Clark into that position, who does he turn to? He turns to these terrorist groups, like you said, to try to make a last ditch Hail Mary effort to make this happen through violence, through war, is essentially what he wanted to do. And it's chilling and it is horrifying.

And the extent of what we are seeing here, I think is far greater than most Americans even knew or ever knew before this. I think most people have thought of January 6th as a sort of insular event, as a rally where he sent people to a specific place. It may have gotten out of hand and there was violence. But no, that is not what happened at all. This was premeditated for weeks, if not months, if not for years, because Donald Trump had laid the groundwork for fraudulent election claims when he was running back in 2016 and 2015. This was in the works for a very long time. January 6th was just the culmination of all that. Absolutely. And I want to play now the clip, and this is where I think Adam Kinzinger really got to show the

contrast between him. And when he started off with his opening statements today, Adam Kinzinger talked about his military service. And he said, what I wanted to make sure when I ran for political office, I don't care if I would lose my seat. I'm going to defend our constitution and defend our democracy first and foremost, because there are people, there are troops who are willing to die for this country. So if I lose my job, so what? But I'll be defending this country. And that's in contrast to all of these obsequious individuals. And so as you actually see people who stood up to the president, lots of people were not able to stand up to the president. Lots of people succumb to all of the Trump things, you know, and the,

come on, just do this for me. Just do this thing for me. You know, you're going to do it. Like, really? That's what convinces you? That's you? Come over here. I'm not going to be very happy with you. You know, and Gates saw himself, look, I'm an incompetent idiot moron. But yet here I have the ability to be treated as someone with power by just being in Donald Trump's orbit. People like Marjorie Taylor Greene with totalitarian leanings, people like Uber, you know, these are unqualified people. These are people unqualified to really do anything. Yet here they are stirring an attack on our country. But play the clip now where Kinzinger names names about who sought pardons after January 6th. Five days after the attack on the Capitol, Representative Mo Brooks sent the email on the screen now. As you see, he emailed the White House, quote, pursuant to a request from Matt Gaetz, requesting a pardon for Representative Gaetz himself and unnamed others.

Witnesses told the select committee that the president considered offering pardons to a wide range of individuals connected to the president. Let's listen to some of that testimony. And was Representative Gates requesting a pardon? I believe so. The general tone was we may get prosecuted because we were defensive of, you know, the president's positions on these things. The pardon that he was discussing, requesting, was as broad as you could describe. From the beginning, I remember he said, from the beginning of time up until today, for any and all things. He mentioned Nixon, and I said Nixon's pardon was never nearly that broad. And are you aware of any members of Congress seeking pardons? Mr. Gates and Mr. Brooks, I know have both advocated for there to be a blanket pardon for members involved in that meeting

and a handful of other members that weren't at the December 21st meeting as the preemptive pardons. Mr. Gates was personally pushing for a pardon and he was doing so since early December. I'm not sure why. Mr. Gates reached out to me to ask if he could have a meeting with mr meadows about receiving a presidential party yeah thank you not all of them but several of them did so you mentioned mr gates um mr cakes did mr jordan talks about congressional pardons, but he never asked me for one.

It was more for an update on whether the White House is going to pardon members of Congress. Mr. Gohmert asked for one as well. Mr. Murray asked for a pardon too. I'm sorry. Did he stop? Did he stop? Did he stop? Did he stop? Did he stop. I'm sorry. Did he stop? Yes, he did. Did Marjorie O'Neill contact you? No, she didn't contact me about it.

I heard that she asked for a pardon from Mr. Philbin, but I didn't frequently give this. Are you aware of any conversations or communications regarding the possibility of giving Congressman Matt Gaetz a pardon? I know he had asked for it, but I don't know if he ever received one or what happened with it. How do you know that Congressman Gaetz asked for a pardon? He told me. Tell us about that. He told me know that Congressman Gates asked for a pardon? He told me. Tell us about that.

He told me he'd asked Meadows for a pardon. Were you involved in or did you witness any conversations about the possibility of a blanket pardon for everyone involved on January 6th? I have heard that mentioned, yeah. Do you know whether the president had any conversations about potentially pardoning any family members? I know he had hinted at a blanket pardon for the January 6th thing for anybody, but I think he had for all the staff and everyone involved, not with January 6th, but just before he left office, I know he had talked about that. The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you've committed a crime. that was said kind of indirectly there, where you have Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz,

Mo Brooks, Louie Gohmert, Andy Biggs, and Scott Perry, all asking for blanket pardons. And as I said earlier, Matt Gaetz stressing that he wants it to cover anything, all crimes, all possible things from the beginning of time. But there's one other thing that stood out to me, and that was Jim Jordan, the way he kind of asked for a pardon,

but he kind of protects himself a little bit here because he asked about just in general, how the pardon situation's going, just how are those pardons coming along, but didn't directly ask for a pardon himself. I guess he could call Jim Jordan, I don't know, pardon curious or something at that point, but the other people directly, directly implicated in all of this. And then also we learned that Trump was considering blanket pardons for everyone involved, staff, family, anyone who was involved in January 6th. And so that basically concluded the hearings today. At the end, Benny Thompson said that the next hearing was going to be focused on the mob violence. What appears to be the case, though, is that because of the success of the January 6th hearings,

that the timeline is probably not going to be adhered to of what we expected and when we expected this to be completed. I think if you heard Benny Thompson's words at the end, it sounded like he was even leading it open, that we've gotten a ton of new information, actually, since these hearings have begun, we're going to make sure we get all the evidence that needs to go in front of the public in front of the public. So I think it left it open that we may be seeing these hearings, not only through July, but possibly through August. And I say to that, great,

great. Yeah. I was going to say when, when. When everybody was like, oh, these are going to be, the other hearings are going to be pushed to July. I'm like, first off, that's in five days. July is in like five days. It's not that far off. Okay. It's in seven days, but July is not that far off. A. B, I want these to be as close to the midterm elections as possible. Yes, I separate this from the midterm elections a hundred percent. I think justice needs to have its own lane, but I am totally, completely okay. If these end up going as close to the midterm elections as

possible, that is absolutely okay with me. And there's so much damning stuff coming out right now. And now we see even like a guy like Mo Brooks kind of saying, Oh, well now that Trump threw him under the bus and he lost his election and all this stuff saying, oh, well, I'll testify if it's in public. We'll we'll see if that ends up happening. But you're going to start seeing other people come out of the woodwork, either due to pressure or just being mad at Trump or whatever it is. And look at what is happening now around the January 6th committee hearings. I saw an interesting theory proposed by Alison Gill, friend of the show, host of Mueller, she wrote. And she made a comment that, hmm, maybe this hearing today, because this was supposed to be one of the ones that was another time it was delayed, maybe the Department of Justice asked them to delay it so that they could do the early morning raid that they did this morning on Jeffrey Clark's home before the

testimony about Jeffrey Clark came out. I found that to be an interesting potential theory about what happened. But what we're seeing now across the country are federal agents from the Department of Justice, from the FBI, raiding the homes of these fake electors, going to Michigan, going to Arizona, going to Georgia, doing the early morning raid with Jeffrey Clark,

having him get out of his house in his pajamas while they searched and seized whatever they needed. Court ordered, of course, court approved. This is a big deal because all of these people, the entire fraudulent electors scheme, all of it is directly connected to Donald Trump. And at this point, I think there has to be indictments. There will be indictments. There's really, to me, and I'm not the lawyer in the group, there's really no chance that there aren't indictments here because the evidence is that damning. The activity that we're seeing from the feds is that in our face now. And we're really seeing the wheels turning on these

investigations as the January 6th hearings ramp up and as public perception becomes such that the people want it. And I think that's an important part of these hearings, that public perception. Now we're at 59%. That's going to keep going up. People are going to be demanding that action happen. And when DOJ has that kind of authority from the people, they're going to be left with no choice at that point, but to indict. And here's the thing. Public perception is not like Bitcoin. What I mean by that is public perception doesn't just go, oh, just like randomly go in different directions. Public perception is created by the public. It's created by leaders. It's created by stewards of our democracy. And so if we remain on the sidelines and we do nothing, then fascism is going to win.

That's what's going to happen because they're going to take over public perception. They're going to swarm the field and be all over the internet and there are four chans and eight chans and take over social media and spew their hate. That's what they want to do. And that's frankly why we created this pro-democracy platform that we did at Midas Touch, because we view what our job is, is we got to be the counterbalance to a Fox News, to the fake news that's out there. We have to come in day out and deliver the truth. And I'm so grateful that our live stream has one of the biggest audiences out there. I am so honored that this YouTube channel that we have continues to grow by thousands and thousands of people each and every day. And I'll just tell everyone here,

please subscribe to this YouTube channel. Please subscribe to this pro-democracy content. For those listening on audio, make sure you subscribe to YouTube. For those watching on YouTube, do me a favor right now, right when this podcast ends, go to the audio and make sure you subscribe to the audio as well and play the audio. That helps our rankings in the algorithm there as well. And we need to be on the top of those charts as well, like we're on the top of the YouTube charts, because enough of this BS, Charlie Kirk, the monk and Dan Bagino's and all these people out there who enable this fascism, who enable the criminality that you see, who try to steal the hearts and minds

of democracy-loving people. And we need to fight together. That's the recap show. I'm headed out to Dallas for a Midas Touch to pro-democracy meetup. I gotta catch my flight right now. Brett, final words. Final words. Yes. I just want to reiterate. Thank you everybody for following the Midas

Touch coverage. There is so much more to come. Make sure you subscribe to the YouTube and make sure you're telling your friends and speaking to your friends and family about what's going on with the January 6th committee. It is so important because they could hear it from people like us. They could hear it from pundits on TV, but the ultimate way to influence people and persuade people is if you are doing it directly with them, if they are hearing it from their son, from their daughter, from their friend, et cetera. So you need to be the person who speaks out and helps get the message across. I also want to let you know that we are currently running a 10% off sale at the Midas Touch store, that's store.midastouch.com. You just got to use

the code justice. Use the code justice at store.midastouch.com. That's going to go to the end of the week. So make sure that you take advantage of it. Now we got these great new pins at the Midas Touch store and they're not new, but we got these great pins that were actually kind of low on stock on right now. If you want to get them, I think we have less than a hundred left. They say convict 45 or convict 45. It has multiple meanings depending on what time we're in. So right now it's convict him. Soon he'll be the convict.

Make sure to check out store.midastouch.com. Ben, wish I could be with you and Jordi at the Midas meetup in Texas. I have a wedding that I got to be at, so I will not be able to make it. But I do want to tell all of our listeners in the spirit of Jordy not being here, shout out to the Midas Mighty.