The Young Turks - Pardon My Pardon

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

You’ve got to check out ShopTYT’s Free Hunter shirt. He IS the moment. Israel establishes bases in central Gaza, suggesting it may have long-term plans to remain in the area. President-elect Trump selects Kash Patel as his nominee for FBI director. President Biden pardons his son despite previously stating he wouldn’t. Additional troubling details about Pete Hegseth surface, raising further concerns." HOST: Ana Kasparian (@anakasparian), Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right. Turks, Jake U Granite Kasparian with you guys, not quite from the polymarket studio in L.A. So Anna's home in L.A., and I am out on the road. I'm in Washington, D.C. We've got a killer show for you guys today. Tons of stuff in the news, Cash Patel at FBI, Pete Higgsith at every bar and strip club in America, apparently. We'll get to that in a little bit.

And then, of course, the pardon of Hunter Biden. Lots of interesting thoughts on that as well. But first, as usual, these days, we start with foreign policy. And then we'll get into all of those really important stories as well. Casper. Well, I wanted to actually give an update on Gaza because, unfortunately, there was quite a bit of bloodshed over the holiday weekend in Gaza. In fact, on one day alone, literally hundreds of people in the Gaza Strip were killed.

And it's becoming clearer and clear what the IDF is building in Gaza, which would essentially take away additional land from the Palestinian people. So without further ado, here are the details. In recent days, Israel killed three aid workers with World Food Central Kitchen, the head of the intensive care unit at Kamal Edwan Hospital, a staff member with the Save the Children, as well as Mahmoud Amatun, who co-founded the Gaza. soup kitchen that's fed Palestinians facing hunger due to Israel's blockade of vital food aid. Ahmad Houn was killed in Israeli drone strike. He survived by seven children, the youngest, just a newborn. And tragically, he isn't the only humanitarian aid worker that was killed by Israeli defense forces over the weekend. In fact, on one day alone last Saturday. More than 200 people were killed in the Gaza strip. Among them were three humanitarian aid workers. In fact,

of the 200 individuals who were killed in Gaza, 40 of them were part of the same family. Now, before we get to some of the details about the airstrikes that were conducted by the IDF over the weekend, I also think it's important to just give you some details about what the IDF has been building in the Gaza Strip. Now, the New York Times is reporting that it does appear that the IDF has been building a buffer zone, and they have been expanding military bases in the Gaza Strip. In order to do so, they have destroyed more than 620 buildings to create said buffer zone.

But when the New York Times asked the IDF why they had demolished the buildings, they gave the same answer that you can expect from them. It's the answer that they give every single time. They lied and said that Palestinian militants were using the 620 buildings. they destroyed as lookout posts and hiding places. Now, in reality, they just cleared the land in order to build the military bases and the buffer zone, which includes a vast, vast network of bases in central Gaza. And this is according to satellite imagery and video evidence that was obtained by and analyzed by the New York Times. Now, the Israeli military has at least

19 large bases throughout the area, in addition to dozens of smaller bases. And the construction seems to be accelerating in recent months with at least 12 of these bases having been constructed since early September. Now also according to the New York Times, Israeli military analysts say the increase in infrastructure along the Netserim, which cuts across Gaza from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea has given Israel the ability to regulate travel across the length of the enclave, keeping hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in the South. And that's because they intend to continue occupying northern Gaza. Now, in recent months, the Israeli military has extended its power over territory on either side of the corridor, roughly 4.3 miles wide

and 4.3 miles long to make it easier for Israeli forces to hold onto the area. So remember, we also had previously shared details about how Israel has taken control of the so-called Philadelphia corridor, the border between Gaza and Egypt, thus completely trapping Palestinians into this tiny, tiny area of land. And previously, there were some Palestinians who are allowed to leave through the border with Egypt in order to get medical care and medical treatment. That has basically been cut off entirely. And I want to show you this visual that's been provided by the New York Times, which shows just how much territory Israel is planning to essentially snatch away from the Palestinians as part of this so-called buffer zone.

Around 50% of the strip will now be taken over by the Israelis. Now, Avi Ditcher, who is an Israeli government minister said that Israel was going to stay in Gaza for a long time. He also told reporters in Jerusalem, quote, we are definitely not at the beginning of the end because we still have a lot of work to do. Another individual, retired Brigadier General with the IDF by the name of Amir Avivi, who has been briefed on the Israeli government's plans, says the following. Withdrawing and separation are no longer options. That's why they're building all of this. At the end of the day, the facts speak for themselves. So, Jake, they're not really hiding the ball here. They're making it abundantly clear that the intent here is to essentially permanently occupy this part of the Gaza Strip while also having

complete control of Gaza's border with Egypt. Yeah. Yeah, there's a couple of things you said in there that are so telling. So first of all, in the beginning, people just believed it because it was in mainstream media that, oh, they're just targeting Hamas and Hamas happened to be in that building or Hamas was not found in the building, but maybe they were in the tunnels underneath the building or maybe they were looking at it using it as an outpost. But all 620 buildings in that area? Okay, no one in their right mind believes that.

You have to be a diehard Israeli supporter as blind as blind gets to believe that. But okay, let's say that you believe that ridiculous piece of propaganda. And you said, well, my God, coincidentally, they had to destroy every building in that 4.3 square mile that Anna explained to you. And by the way, now they're expanding it to 12 miles long because they're in charge. So they're going to take more land. And this has always been about taking land. I'll come back to that. But how about Al Mukraqqa village?

It's a village also in that corridor and there's 10,000 people. Oh, correction, there were 10,000 people in that village. They raised tomatoes, cucumbers, and lemons. And that's how they sustained a living there. Every building in the village has been destroyed. And people say that in the beginning, they used to go back to check on their land, their homes. But now going in there at all is risking your life because Israel will kill anyone that goes into that area. So this isn't about Hamas.

This is just about taking land. Now, again, Israeli apologists will say, oh my God, they had to take more Arab land like they did before. They had to take it in 48. They had to take it in 67. They had to take it in 73. They have to take it now. They have to keep taking more and more and more Arab land. Not because they want to take land and put settlers in there like they have with the 700,000 settlers in the world.

West Bank, not because they're looking to keep this part of Gaza, and not because they're going to evacuate everybody in the southern Gaza and just keep all of northern Gaza. Oh, gosh, no. It's all for security and self-defense from an attack that happened over 13 months ago. So none of this is about self-defense. Self-defense ended 12 months ago, 11 months ago, however long you want to go back. This is just about Israel, brutally ethnically cleansing Gaza. And yes, I'm going to use the word steal, because that is exactly what they're doing, stealing more Palestinian land in prelude to stealing even more Palestinian land in keeping all of northern Gaza.

And now it's become absolutely indisputable as they have destroyed every building and the villages in that area to seize the land for themselves exactly as we had warned. Yeah. In fact, Jank, you're not the only person saying this. Activists in America or activists in the international community aren't the only people saying this. Over the weekend, a former defense minister for Israel made clear that he believes that Israel is currently conducting war crimes and carrying out the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. And I appreciate the fact that he came out and said that because that is the truth. And it's important for people to hear that from an Israel. who served in the Israeli government. But, you know, when it comes to that very topic about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the insane brutality that they're dealing with here, I want to talk about what happened over the weekend with some of these airstrikes. So in a single day, last Saturday, more than 200 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes, as I mentioned earlier.

Among those 200 people were 40 members of the same family. Now Intercept reporter Prem Thacker reported that on December 1st, he put this out on December 1st, indicating that in the two days prior, Israeli forces had killed three world central kitchen aid workers, killed a Save the Children staffer, killed a Gaza soup kitchen chef, killed an ICU director, attacked and killed hundreds of displaced Palestinians, and shot a 10-year-old girl. Now, I want to just talk about the World Central Kitchen for a second because they have again halted operations in the Gaza Strip due to the fact that they just can't get any commitment from the IDF that their workers aren't going to be targeted and killed. And remember, we had previously reported about the seven World Kitchen workers who were targeted and, you know, airstrike to oblivion by the IDF months ago. And that same activity happened over the weekend. So the IDF's justification for targeting a world, you know, these humanitarian aid workers was that they had allegedly, or one of them allegedly had been part of Hamas.

Obviously, no evidence had been provided indicating that that was true. Nazmi Ahmed said his nephew worked for WCC for the past year. He said he was driving to the charity's kitchens and warehouses. Today he went out as usual to work and was targeted without prior warning and without any reason. And so you still have more and more humanitarian aid workers getting killed. Another Israeli airstrike Saturday hit a car near a food distribution point in Kahn Yunus, killing 13 people, including children gathering to receive food. So how many times does this need to happen for people to understand that this is very much intentional?

How many times does it need to happen? And besides which, I just want to quickly mention that the UN is reporting that Israel has already violated its ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon around a hundred times. So that ceasefire remains fragile. And I want to make the point that I made earlier about that ceasefire. If Israel reneges on the ceasefire, what would the consequences be? Israel has the globe's, you know, military superpower, the United States backing it regardless of what it does. So of course it's going to renege on the ceasefire. Why wouldn't it? Now, the ceasefire is still in place, Jank, but again, multiple reports indicate that violations of the ceasefire have already occurred. So there's two elements of violating the ceasefire. One is the ceasefire isn't meant for Israel.

It's just them meant to get Hezbollah to stop firing back. So, and that's what happens when you have absolute power. So we told you Israel wouldn't listen to the ceasefire. And of course, it didn't listen to the ceasefire. Not only has it bombed a hundred times. And if you ask them, they said, what, we have to do it? No, you don't have to do it. In fact, you're not allowed to do it.

That's the whole point of the ceasefire. And they say, no, no, no, it's preemptive. Hezbollah might one day strike. So we just bombed them 100 times after we did a peace deal because we're liars. giant, enormous liars. They never trust a single thing the Israeli government says. It's never true. And so here they are again. And they're not the ones trying to reach peace. They always say like, oh, we have no partner for peace. Yeah, because you're not a partner for peace. So Hezbollah says yes. And then Israel says yes. And they goes, ha ha, we're just kidding. We're the lying Israeli

government. So we're just going to keep on bombing you. And if you dare bomb us one time and not even bomb us, launch a bomb that those bombs almost never hit anyway. We'll say, oh my God, they broke the ceasefire. And then every person in mainstream media, Dana Bash will go out there and go, yes, it's Hezbollah. They are all at fault. It's all the Arabs and Muslims. They are at fault. Poor Israel only broke it 100 times. I mean, no, it's Hezbollah that broke it. So I'm sick of this propaganda. And then meanwhile, they also attacked Syria again. Why? Because they're allowed to attack any country they like. They're allowed to start any war they like. And after they bomb them to oblivion, then they'll say, oh, ceasefire, ceasefire, and they'll get

them to stop firing back and they'll keep firing into Syria. So that's Israeli. I'm going to go back to Gaza now. World Central Kitchen, you think it's an accident that they hit them a second time? You think they keep, it's an accident every time they hit a food distribution center with people waiting their innocent civilians, including children, every time they have the same absolutely preposterous excuse. thought there might be a Hamas militant in the area. I mean, we didn't find any, right? But they're gonna have been, but we murdered all those kids just in case. And the world's Central Kitchen, they say one of the five people we murdered might have had some relationship with Hamas. Are you kidding me? If you told me, one of the people that the government just

killed might have done something wrong, but they killed, the US government killed four innocent people at the same time. Well, like one guy might have done an armed bank robbery. But we kill them all. I would say that's outrageous. How could you kill four innocent human beings who are actually among the best people on earth looking to feed starving children? Israel goes, who cares? I can murder anyone I like. And I get my dogs in the American government, whether it's dog Biden or dog Trump to do anything I want. I could break any peace treaty. I could bomb anyone. I could murder anyone I like. And that's the out of control Israeli government. There is absolutely no excuse left for Israel at all.

It's an open air robbery. It's like the beginning of Pulp Fiction. They just scream to the world, this is an effing robbery. And so that's what they're doing now. If you're still making excuses for them, look, understand that when those bombs land, those children are lit on fire or their body parts are exploded into God knows how many pieces. How many videos you have to see online of parents picking up body parts

of children before you realize Israel is not the good guys. The current government of Israel are the terrorists that are starting all of the violence. They're the ones they're the terrorists who occupy millions of people and enslave them for their own economic benefit. And then now propose to steal more Arab land. It's disgusting. It's colonial, it's imperial, and they are definitely the bad guys. And if you think Israel's, no, my beloved Israel can do no wrong, you're blind, absurd, and unfortunately, as it breaks my heart, immoral, deeply, deeply immoral to say constantly murdering human rights workers and healthcare workers and children is what the moral guys, the good guys, the moral, the

moral army would do. No, it's what disgusting terrorists would do. Well said, I couldn't agree more with you on that. All right. Well, why don't we take a break and we'll get off of international news. Talk a little bit more about Trump's transition because he did name who he wants his head of the FBI to be. So we'll talk a little bit about Cash Patel, his history, what he represents and what he might do should he get confirmed by the Senate. And then later on, of course, we're going to also discuss Joe Biden deciding to pardon Hunter Biden over the weekend. What does it mean? I think some of the dates involved are fishy, and I'll explain what I mean by that when we come back.

All right, back on CYT, Chenkin, Anna, with you guys. Lots more news, so let's get to it. Anna, what's next? Well, a lot of news broke over the weekend, including this. We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rigged presidential elections. We're going to come after you.

Whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out. But yeah, we're putting you all on notice. And Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we're tyrannical. This is why we're dictators, because we're actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes. They said we have always been guilty of, but never have. Well, the gentleman that you just heard from is Cash Patel, who Donald Trump announced he will be nominating as the FBI director to replace Christopher Ray, the current FBI director whose term isn't up until 2027, but Trump, of course, has soured on Christopher Ray and wants him out. Now, if

confirmed, Patel will replace Christopher Ray and has made all sorts of threats about what he would do in the position should he get confirmed. Now, the video that you just watched is actually from 2003. Patel was on Steve Bannon's show, and we're going to get back to more of what he said in just a minute. But first, some more details. Now, Patel is a hardline critic of the FBI, which I personally don't have an issue with. There are areas where critique of the FBI, makes a lot of sense, but he is called for shutting down the agency's Washington, D.C. headquarters. Patel's move, though, is considered to be mostly symbolic when it comes to shutting down the Washington, D.C. Bureau. In fact, he said, I take the 7,000 employees that work in that building

and send them across America to chase down criminals, to which I say, great. What's the problem with that, you know, Ken Klippenstein says, that's not really dismantling the FBI. That's just moving people around. But Patel's argument is, well, once you're in that D.C. bubble, that ends up corrupting the agency. So he wants to kind of spread them out to other, you know, other headquarters throughout the country. But most of Patel's grievances are personal. And he and Trump believe that the FBI engaged in unjustified investigations and prosecutions of Donald Trump. Trump, remember, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago because Trump had kept classified documents and top-secret documents that the federal government was asking him to return, but he was refusing to do

so. So after this back-and-forth, after lies about how Trump had allegedly returned all the documents, and the federal government knew that wasn't the case, the FBI ended up carrying out this search of Mar-a-Lago where they did, in fact, find that he was in possession of classified documents. and top secret documents. Now, Trump did reference his nomination on Truth Social announcing that Cash played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution. By the way, Cash Patel literally traveled to the UK looking for steel, of the steel dossier,

without any green lighting from the federal government or anything like that. So he is very, how should I say? He is very heated about anything having to do with Donald Trump being investigated, any wrongdoing in his mind toward Donald Trump. Patel laid out his vision for wreaking vengeance on the FBI and Justice Department in a book Government Gangsters, calling for clearing out the top ranks of the Bureau, which he called a threat to the people. He has vowed to investigate and possibly prosecute journalists once he's back in the government,

adding that he would follow the facts and the law. He says, quote, yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you, whether it's criminally or civilly. We'll figure that out. And here's more from Patel's appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast back in 2023. Do you feel confident that you will be able to deliver the goods, that we can have serious prosecutions and accountability? And I want the Morning Joe producers that watch us and all the producers to watch us.

This is just not rhetoric. We're absolutely dead serious. You cannot have a constitutional republic and allow what these deep staters have done to the country. The deep state, the administrative state, the fourth branch of government never mentioned in the Constitution, is going to be taken apart. brick by brick. Cash, I know you're probably going to be head of the CIA, but do you believe that you can deliver the goods on this in a pretty short order of the first couple of months so we can get rolling on prosecutions? Yes, we got the bench for it, Bannon. The one thing we learned in the Trump administration the first go around is we got to put in all America patriots top to

bottom. And we got them for law enforcement. We got them for intel collection. We got them for offensive operations. We got them for DOD, CIA, everywhere. And the one thing we will do that they never will do is we will follow the facts and the law and go to courts of law and correct these justices and lawyers who have been prosecuting these cases based on politics and actually issuing them as lawfare. So that sounds threatening, obviously. And what's interesting is Ken Clippenstein's reporting on Cash Patel's public statements and what he purports to do, should he get confirmed. Patel's theory of reform fixates on these weird personal grievances with individuals who are now largely irrelevant instead of the broader system of national security,

which I think most people agreed needs to be upended. His entire memoir is based upon the premise that the FBI is all about FISA surveillance of Trump advisors and the steel dovetes. and the quest to prove collusion between Donald Trump and Russia. What about the rest of the country? Like law-abiding protesters on both the left and right that have been surveilled, or all of us who have to live through the consequences of the FBI's intelligence failures from 9-11 to January 6th, for which no one is ever fired. Klippenstein also writes that Patel focuses on the centralization of power as the problem,

but is also suggesting some countervailing centralized power to root it out. He wants to fight fire with fire, Clippenstein writes, or politicization with more of the same. And I think he's right about that. Now, if you're wondering what Cash Patel's experience or background is, he did actually serve in Trump's first term. He was chief of staff at the Department of Defense, at the Department of Defense, Deputy Director of National Intelligence, for counterterrorism at the National Security Council. Patel also worked as both a federal prosecutor and a public defender.

So he doesn't have the experience to be the head of the FBI, but he at least has some experience within DOD and was the deputy director of national intelligence, as well as the senior director of counterterrorism at the NSC, Jank. Yeah, so there's a difference between what people want Cash Patel to be and what he actually is. So, and there's some people who want him to be exactly what he is. So we'll break all that down right now. So if Cash Patel said, hey, look,

I'm looking for more transparency. Who are these folks wiretapping? Are they, is it right wing groups, left wing groups? Why are they wiretapping them? Is it because they're a real danger or is this lawfare against some American citizens, right? Let alone politicians like Donald Trump or anyone else that they might have politicized. Well, I'd be totally in favor of that, right? I mean, the FBI has looked into left wing groups ad nauseum. That's been the number one thing that they've done in terms of politics, at least, which is infiltrate, spy on, et cetera, left wing groups. So I'm here for it. But that's not what he's saying. He's saying, no, let's make sure that we only look after the people that went after Trump. Well, A, that's not.

that interesting, right? Okay, good, fine, I get it. If that's part of a broader picture, and you really have some sort of evidence that he was, that people went after him in a way that was not kosher. But you can't just say, oh, they went after Trump. And even though he clearly broke these laws, I'm going to fire everyone who dared to do their job right. That's not getting off on the right foot. But it goes down the list. He says, I'm going to scam, they close down the FBI office and then scatter those FBI agents throughout the country because they're better off not being in the Washington culture and being so politicized. Well, there's nothing wrong with that proposal. That sounds pretty good, right? But then he says, no, I'm going to build an FBI

within the FBI, basically in essence. And so to like basically make sure they're doing what we want them to do politically. Well, wait a minute, that means you're politicizing them even more, not black. Exactly. Yep. Right. And so when you go down the list, so if he said, hey, you know, Well, the 51 intelligence agents that signed that letter about how Hunter Biden's laptop was from the Russians. I'm gonna look into them. I'd say, yeah, I get it, man, that makes sense. I don't know why they signed that when it wasn't the Russians at all.

We could argue about what was in the laptop, et cetera, but it wasn't the Russians, and I don't know why those 51 people made it up. Okay, that would be great and fair. But the media, you're gonna go after the media on what pretense? So for example, we think that Joe Scarborough is a serial liar. I think the view is a disaster. You know, we talked about all the things that are wrong with Main Street media and saying absurd things like Joe Biden is young and dynamic behind the scenes.

But that's not illegal. What do you, what did the media do that's illegal? Or are you just going after your enemies here? So and the reality is he has said repeatedly that yes, they're going to target their political enemies. Well, that's a disastrous pick, a terrible pick. So if you're in the camp in the MAGA camp that says, oh, hell yeah, I never wanted to depoliticize the FBI. I wanted to politicize it more, but to our benefit. Okay, all right, brother. I mean, you're a bad guy and, and I'm not interested in you. And I know, well, we're going to strike back. We don't want less lawfare. We want more

lawfare against anyone who dares to oppose us. Okay, well, you're in the authoritarian camp. You're in the un-American camp and I got no interest in you. And it appears that Cash Patel is in that camp. If you actually want to do transparency and actually write the ship on the FBI or the intelligence agencies, we're here for it. We've been here for it for 20 years. But they're not going to do that if Cash Patel's in charge. Yeah, and look, there's definitely some question as to whether he would get confirmed by the Senate. I know that you just need a simple majority, but there are some of the more moderate Republicans who certainly do not favor him. You know, I'm thinking about the Susan Collins of the Republican Party.

So I don't know if he's going to just easily breeze through the confirmation process. But assuming he does manage to get confirmed, if he is in fact planning to carry out, you know, politically motivated investigations on behalf of Donald Trump, rather than use this as an opportunity to implement real reforms that benefit the American people overall, it's going to be a wasted opportunity because there are issues with the FBI. There's no question about that. I mean, look, I have to say, nothing disgusts me more than the reputation laundering. of the Bush administration and Bush administration officials, people like David Frum, who's a speechwriter for Bush, who's basically created the phrase access of evil to justify

and manufacture consent for wars that we should not have engaged in. But over the weekend, you know, in response to Cash Patel being named by Donald Trump, he was talking about a constitutional crisis. And it's like, let's remember what the FBI was up to during the Bush administration. Let's remember

the illegal wiretapping. Okay, let's remember that Bush himself, you know, unconstitutionally suspended habeas corpus for two years until the Supreme Court finally stepped in and reversed it. There was a constitutional crisis taking place under the Bush administration. So I don't want to hear a peep from David from about constitutional crises. But the other thing I want to just quickly mention is, you know, because of the Patriot Act, because of what happened on 9-11, because of Bush's failures in protecting the country on 9-11, and due to the feet, A understandable fear that there was in the country, the FBI was like spying on random college students just because they're Muslim. Remember, they were working with the NYPD and going on like weird random college field trips because there were Muslims there who were American citizens, by the way.

They were just practicing Muslims and there was no reason, no real probable cause cited for the spying and for all these like disgusting, you know. by the way, we're paying them. We're paying them to spy on Americans who had not been found guilty of doing a damn thing wrong. Okay, we were detaining people without charging them. And we still have people in Gitmo who have never been charged with a damn thing, who haven't been found guilty of a damn thing, but they're still being detained at Gitmo. So it's just, there are some real issues here.

And I know that Patel is obviously a politically motivated person based on everything we've heard him say. But I don't think he's a dumb person. I mean, he has this legal background, and it would be incredible if he used this opportunity to actually do something good on behalf of the American people. But based on what he said publicly, it doesn't seem like he would take advantage of that opportunity. Yeah, no. Look, we're not in the, again, in the mainstream media camp where Scarboard today was like, you know, Cash Patel, this is totally unacceptable. I agree with him for the reasons that he's stating. But then he turns around and goes, don't get me wrong.

There's some good Trump picks like Marco Rubio. Of course, he picks the most establishment guy, the guy who's going to say, oh yeah, let's pay for all of Israel's wars, let's do more neocons, attack more people, start more wars, of course Joe Scarborough's in favor of that, right? So we're not in that camp at all. And could Cash Patel ask relevant questions? Like, yeah, here, I'll give you one. Why did Merrick Garland wait two and a half years so appoint a special counsel for Trump? If he thought those were crimes against democracy, which I did. If he thought that these are gross violations of the law, why did he wait two and a half years? I can understand on the documents case because they were working with Trump and they kept asking for the documents and Trump wouldn't give them over, etc. But on the democracy case, there was no reason to wait. I think that the waiting of it was politicized and I'd be very curious to see what answers are going to get. But it doesn't look like based on everything he said so far that Cash Patel has any real interest in uncovering what's wrong with the FBI and fixing it. It seems like he has an interest in doubling down on what's wrong with the FBI, just directing

it on behalf of Donald Trump and against his political enemies. Look, last thing on this is like the media, again, I'm going to go back to that because almost every part of media, whether it's right-way media, mainstream media, et cetera, has lied about us in ways that range from mild to vicious, right? Would I imprison any of them? No, of course not. Well, outrageous liars at the New York Times who wrote an article about me that was so defamatory, it's such absolute trash, right, that even other journalists have to say, what are you guys doing?

Why are you lying on purpose? Would I put them in jail? Under no circumstances, would I put them in jail? That kind of talk is a talk that isn't against tyranny. That's, it's for tyranny. Yeah, the great point. And besides which, you know, Patel keeps noting over and over again, we're going to follow the Constitution, we're going to follow the law. Well, if he intends to do that, what is the legal

basis in which you're going to go after the press, which of course enjoys certain constitutional rights in order to be able to do its job? Doesn't mean that the press does a good job all the time, doesn't mean they're doing an accurate job, but it doesn't matter. I mean, he's going to run into some serious constitutional issues if he does, in fact, intend to seek prosecution of media outlets or journalists that he doesn't like. Go ahead, Jank. Yeah. And one last thing for me, look, he can start out on a good foot. And any time that he does anything positive, we'll give him credit where credit is due. And the minute he does anything negative, you know, we'll do our best in fighting 200% against any kind of tyranny in this country. But what he should do to get

off to a good start is convince Trump to pardon Edward Snowden. So there's no reason to hold Edward Snowden, he's the guy who revealed the wiretapping on all American citizens in the first place. He's the one that if you want to call it a deep state, you can call it any name you like, but he's the one that revealed their wrongdoing, and the deep state chased them across the world. He's now basically in Russia. Bring him back home. Give it to your tape parade, right? So I know that the right wing agrees. I know that the left wing agrees. So are you going to actually do anything positive? Or did you just set, are you going to set up this tyrannical FBI within the FBI to bring it back to the worst days of the FBI where they would just

target anyone they disagreed with. Exactly. Well, we're going to, I guess, have to wait and see. But for now, we're going to take a break. And when we come back, we'll get into the details of Joe Biden making the decision to issue a blanket pardon to his son, Hunter Biden. Come right back. All right, back on TY-T, Janganana with you guys, and Flourishing Recovery, who gifted a Young Turks membership on YouTube, which leads to our flourishing recovery. So appreciate it. Everybody, you know where that beautiful join button is.

Oh, my God, it's right below the video. So that's how you can become a member on TYT on YouTube for Young Turks. I would love that. We appreciate you guys. Casper. Well, Jank, it turns out that some Democratic voters have come to this revelation that politicians lie, and that includes Democratic politicians like Joe Biden. Let's talk about it. I actually talked to Joe Biden about this. When he was on the show, I told him, I hoped he pardoned 100. I remember. I take issue with lying about it. I wanted to ask him here when he came on the view. but the thought was he said so many times he wasn't going to pardon him.

That to me is lying to the public. I would stop calling it a lie. This is very different than any other situation that we have averaged out with. Because when we're talking about who gets a pardon and who doesn't get a pardoning, this man, I think Biden had no intentions of pardoning Hunter. Except he did, in fact, pardon his son. hunter Biden after saying that he wouldn't repeatedly. Now he announced this over the weekend with a statement. I'm going to read the relevant excerpts from it. Biden says from the day I took

office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department's decision making. And I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively and unfairly prosecuted without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. So what he's referencing there is Hunter Biden's charge in lying in a government document in order to obtain or buy a firearm. What he lied about was his drug use. He bought the gun at a time when he was addicted to drugs. Biden continues saying those who were late paying their taxes because of serious

addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently. Finally, he says, no reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter's cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son, and that is wrong. And he ends a statement, Jank, by saying, look, I hope the American people understand where I'm coming from and why I'm doing this. So, you know, he wants them to see this as like the unfair prosecution of his son. He sees it as lawfare. And that's how he's trying to kind of soften the

blow considering for many, many months for a few years. This is what we were hearing from the Biden administration. Watch. Is there any possibility that the president would end up pardoning his son. Yeah. And have you ruled out a pardon for your son? Yes. It's still a no. It will be a no. It is a no. And I don't have anything else to add. Will he pardoned his son? No. Does the president have any intention of pardoning him? We've been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no. Now look, Karina Jean-Pierre's White House press secretary, she's regurgitating what she's told to say. And Biden said on record multiple times that he does not intend to pardon his son. I think that the hypocrisy angle here is actually the least interesting

angle to the story. Yeah, politicians lie. Yeah. Even Democratic presidents lie. I'm not surprised by that at all. And in fact, Jake, when it comes to these two particular charges, right, the gun charge and the failure to pay his taxes, well, Biden is right. His son did end up paying his taxes back with the penalties, with interest included. And he did lie on that government. form, but the fact that he's facing 25 years in prison over that is ridiculous. So I personally do not mind the pardon over those offenses. However, however, I do have a problem with the window of time in which Biden has given his son a blanket pardon. And I'm going to get to that in just a minute, but I want to get your thoughts first. Yeah. Well, first of all, let's acknowledge how powerful

we are. I brought on a free hunter t-shirt from shoptyt.com onto Hassan's Jenksgiving special. And boom, he's free. Look, I'm not saying we did it, but I'm just saying, okay? Now, seriously, the reason why we have that t-shirt is, it's kind of playful for the reasons that I'm going to explain now. So first on the view, whoopies excuse for Biden were hilarious. Well, you can't call that a lie. It's a lie. He wasn't going to pardon his son, and then he did. Wait, why can't you call that a lie? It's a bald face. lie. It's as lie as lie gets, right? And the reason she's saying that you can't call that a lie is because Joe Biden's her friend. So she just wants to have a completely different standard.

And then she said, why did he had intent to lie? When you say you're not going to do something thinking, it doesn't matter, we'll probably win the election anyway. Oh my God, we lost the election. I didn't see that coming. I was lying the entire time. That's intent. That's intent. But for mainstream media, corporate Democrats are the beloved, they could do no wrong. So it doesn't matter if they do the same exact thing as Donald Trump, which we'll get back to in a second, Donald Trump bad, Joe Biden's an angel. No, neither one of them is an angel. So now on Hunter Biden, as we've said hundreds of times on this show, low level con man, everybody knows that. He's not a Ukrainian gas expert, he's not a modern artist.

That's all scams using his name to get paid. Okay, so second thing is the laptop showed that he's not connected to Joe Biden. Every piece of evidence shows, and my God, did Comer and the Republican is trying. They got his bank accounts, they got every piece of evidence that they needed, and still nothing connecting him to Joe Biden. In fact, in the laptop, he says, don't ever say that we can represent the big guy because we can't, and he won't do what we say. And it turns out, as far as we can tell, Joe Biden never did anything to help Hunter Biden. Now, when the Republicans say, well, he must say, he must, but brother, you got to have evidence.

We'll come back to that in the scope of how big the pardon is. So would I have pardoned these things? Well, look, as another thing we pointed on this show 100 times, and Anna just made it 101, I'll make it 102. These charges were garbage. They were trash. That gun charge would imprison half the country. Right wing, right wing, you do not want that gun charge to be a precedent, okay? Because if you ever smoke pot and then you write in a in the form that, you know, whatever, that you haven't done drugs, that's it.

You're as guilty as Hunter Biden, give them 25 years. I mean, that's how they can clean up all the guns in the country. They just arrest like three quarters of right wingers for lying on that form. It's almost impossible not to lie on that form. So now the income tax thing also total trash. Look, I love that the IRS hired more auditors and want to audit the rich. They're getting away with, you know, cheating on their taxes at nauseam to the tune of billions of dollars. But this guy didn't file his taxes because he was high.

Then before he was charged, he was like, oh, okay, I'll make amends. He filed his taxes, paid the taxes, and paid the penalty. We're done with it. What are we, we're gonna go after him and not go after the billionaires that are not paying their taxes? No, those are all political. And you don't solve Biden administration going after Trump politically by the Trump administration going after Hunter Biden politically. And that's what Biden was worried about. And that's why he cut off.

That's why he pardoned him. If you say, wait a minute, it's Joe Biden administration that went after Hunter. Well, that's what we're going to talk about next. Okay, why did they do that? And was it for optics or was there something bad in there that they wanted to avoid? So, Ann, I'm back to you. So I just want to reiterate, even though Biden did lie, I actually do not have an issue with the pardon as it pertains specifically to his two current charges, right? The tax charge and the gun charge.

Putting that aside, though, when you notice. the period of time in which Biden has provided the blanket pardon for his son, the dates are super fishy. I noticed that it's like this lengthy 11 year period. So like what justifies that? And more importantly, when did he commit the crimes that he's being prosecuted for? So I looked into this and luckily Lee Fong did some excellent reporting on this issue. He writes that the order grants Hunter a pardon for those offenses against the United States, which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1st, 2014 through December 1st, 24. So that's 10 years, a 10 year span. So he writes that the pardon window extends beyond the period of the crimes prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Okay. Because after all, the illegal firearm purchase was on October 12th of 2018. Hunter failed to pay his 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 taxes on time. So what justifies going all the way back to January 1st

of 2014? Well, 2014 is when he was tapped to serve on the board of the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma. And while Joe Biden has not been. been found guilty. There's no evidence to indicate that Joe Biden engaged in any influence peddling. Recent reporting from the New York Times indicates that Hunter Biden was certainly trying to engage in influence peddling. Now, there hasn't been any prosecution on those grounds. And I think that the congressional Republicans were so intent on catching Joe Biden in some sort of criminality that they kind of didn't pursue prosecution of Biden on these alleged corruption charges or corruption allegations.

But nonetheless, I think that window is far too long. And to me, it signals that there's a possibility that Hunter Biden did something illegal. And Joe Biden is offering this blanket pardon for a lengthier period of time in order to protect his son. I could be wrong about that. Yeah, so look, there's two different things here, as Anna's pointing out. One is, what did Hunter Biden do wrong? And the other is, is he connected to Joe Biden? And so far, in every piece of evidence we've seen, including the infamous laptop, it appears

that Joe Biden is not connected to Hunter Biden. Like, so he goes and works with some Romanian criminal, Hunter does, some Chinese company that wanted something and they couldn't get it and then went bankrupt, et cetera. Not just the Ukrainian gas guys, but there's all sorts of different scams he's involved in, right? So the thing is, though, you see in every instance, they do not get what they wanted from the U.S. government. So that is enormously exculpatory of Joe Biden. That means Joe Biden likely didn't do anything wrong, and there's never been a shred of evidence. that he did. On the other hand, did Hunter do something worse than the gun and, uh, and tax charges? That's entirely possible, right? To me, I never, to this day, I don't know if Biden's

justice department brought up the gun and income tax charges just to charge it with something, just to say, hey, look, we're being fair and honest. We're charging the president's son. So get off our backs, but that was a way of avoiding the corruption issue, which is much larger and worse, right? Or they really didn't have anything on the corruption issue, but the Republicans were breathing down their neck so badly that they're like, all right, all right, let's just charge them on the gun charge because technically it's illegal and the income taxing because technically it's illegal. And that way we can get a win and get the Republicans off our back because they're investigating us every single day. And I don't know how many times it's

telling me, there is no corruption that connects to Joe Biden. So it could be either one of those things. Yeah, in fact, I remember when there was a plea deal for Hunter Biden that the Republican party succeeded in torpedoing because the issue they had with the plea deal is that it would prevent the Republicans from investigating possible influence peddling or corruption that Hunter Biden may have engaged in. And they thought that was unfair. You know, a plea deal pertaining specifically to the charges he's currently dealing with. They seem to be open to, but they didn't like the added, you know, contingency that Republicans or prosecutors would not be able to go after Hunter Biden over potential corruption. And the New York Times reporting that I'm referring to, I'll give you a few examples. So in 2015, Hunter Biden was hired by this Gabriel Papovicchu, who is a Romanian businessman. He was facing prosecution for corruption in Romania. And in 2015, he hired Hunter Biden, who is a lawyer, while his father was vice president to help fend off charges. That effort was unsuccessful, to your point, Jank. And in 2016, this Russian businessman was

convicted on charges related to a land deal in northern Bucharest. So there are other like specific examples that have been provided by the New York Times and they're reporting, having to do with China, as you referenced, Jank. I don't know what the truth is, right? This is not really something that has been investigated by prosecutors. But again, I do think that the length of time in which Hunter Biden has now been given, like, cover is too long. And I think could potentially be done on purpose to protect Biden, Hunter Biden, if he engaged in any illegal corruption, which does happen time to time, believe it or not. some corruption is still considered illegal in America. Yeah, I know because, you know, especially the Corrupt Foreign Service Act,

prevents you from bribing foreign officials, as an example, or them bribing you, because one of Trump's top donors, Sheldon Adelson, had that charge against him, which magically went away with a tiny little fine in that context when Trump got an office. So, but I'm sure the Republicans are livid about that. are they no oh yeah i'm getting news from by non-existence earpiece that they are not livid about that and i'll come back to that and i'll say but so prosecutors i don't know if they did the right thing or not in unearthing everything they could about hunter biden but i do know that james comer had all the time in the world to investigate him and here's how many connections that he found

between joe biden and hunter bide zero exactly nothing okay so if you're pretending that he found something. Well, where is it, brother? Where is it? So he's full of crap. He never found anything. One of our members here, a box on Super Chat made a good point. So on the gun charge. He said, so I'm pretty pro second amendment. I don't like the depart and Hunter without fixing the question of the gun gun form too. That question needs to be changed. I agree. This has nothing to do with any substance. If you thought that that was bad, you should change that line in the gun form. And I agree. I'm not a gun rights advocate. I'm probably the opposite. But that line makes no sense and it should be taken out. But nobody fixes anything that affects the average American. They only do things that affect the very, very elite. Now, finally to that point, I'm allowed to be outraged by Hunter Biden's scams. I'm allowed to know, hey, wait a minute, did it connect to Joe Biden or not, et cetera. But that's because I'm consistent and principled, whether it's Republicans or Democrats. But if you're saying, if you're a Republican or a right winger who's saying Hunter Biden is the worst thing in the world, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but then you don't mind that Donald Trump pardon Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, and Charles Kushner, let alone dozens of other incredibly wealthy people and people connected to Donald Trump that I could tell you about. Well, then you're a giant hypocrite. So you got to own up to that. So for example, Steve Bannon's crimes had nothing to do.

with the Trump administration, he was building a fake wall. He just robbed his own viewers and his co-conspirers went to jail. And Trump's like, yeah, but he's my guy and I like that he was robbing people, I pardon him. But if you say, okay, well, but Bannon and Stone, maybe they're crooks, but they're his crooks. Charles Kushner is obviously his son-in-law's dad, Jared Kushner's dad. That crime that Charles Kushner committed was both awful, was a white collar crime looking to rip other people off and happened before the Trump administration. It had nothing to do a lawfare and a guy who convicted him was Chris Christie.

So why did you pardon Charles Kushner? Because he's part of the Trump family. So I couldn't be mad and you could be mad about Hunter Biden, but Trump and his allies don't get this cry, fake cry about, oh, I can't believe Biden pardoned family members. All right, why did you pardon Charles Kushner, that giant criminal? Oh, right, because he's now part of your criminal family. Yeah, and in fact, Donald Trump has named him the ambassador of France, which is quite, yeah, wait, Jared Kushner is going to be the ambassador of France? That's what I thought.

Oh, I thought it was going to be his dad. Maybe I'm mistaken. Is it his father or is it Jared Kushner? It's his father? Yeah, it's his father. You made a criminal ambassador to France? Yes. Yes.

Yes, it's wrong. And look, this is the kind of stuff that erodes trust among the American people in our various institutions, including our justice system. There's very clearly a two-tier justice system at play here. And so, look, I think that there should be a law preventing presidents from pardoning individuals where they have a conflict of interest, family members, right? There should be protections to prevent that kind of activity from taking place. But if there isn't, we're going to continue seeing more of this, and we're going to continue seeing more trust eroded among the American people toward our institutions and our justice system. It's just the fact of the matter. And it is unjust. It is unjust. You know, that Jared Kushner's father engaged in white-collar crime prior to Trump taking office, was in prison, was pardoned by Trump, and is now going to serve as the U.S. ambassador to France. That's insane. So that's what we're dealing with here. Yeah, sorry, I read that headline in a hurry. Your guys are right.

It's his dad, of course. And so why is Charles the criminal Kushner, our ambassador to France? If you guys don't know the story, part of what he did was that he wanted to screw over his brother-in-law. So he hired a prostitute to have sex with him and tape it. And then he sent that tape to his own sister to use his black man. He's a sick, sick guy. And now he's our ambassador to France because when you're sick and corrupt and a white collar criminal, Trump gives you a reward for it.

Keep it real. And then if you're MAGA guys, hey, what are you doing? So Hunter Biden getting $5 million from a Ukrainian gas company that he has no expertise in and is totally full of crap about. We agree with you guys. That's a scam. That's a con. That's the Ukrainian government trying to, or the Ukrainian company trying to influence U.S.

foreign policy. They failed, but they tried to. But Jared Kushner was in charge of policy in regards to Saudi Arabia in the first term. And then after helping Saudi Arabia with U.S. foreign policy, hey, look at that. Jared Kushner got $2 billion. Now, that's not a low-level scam. That's a high-level con man. $2 billion from the Saudis.

You guys enraged about that? Are we going to have hearings about that? In fact, James Comer was asked about it because he did mention it once. And I remember giving him credit, oh my God, he mentioned Jared Kushner in the same sentence, right? The very next day when he's asked about it or a little bit later after he's asked, Comer said, oh, no, I mentioned that. But we will not be investigating Jared Kushner. Of course not because he's not fair. He doesn't care about doing what's right.

He's just a political hatchet man. So his job was to destroy the Biden family and protect the Kushner and Trump. family. Well, congratulations. Mission accomplished. All right. When we come back for the second hour of the show, we'll talk a little bit about some of the news that broke in regard to Pete Hegesith. Another individual that Donald Trump has nominated, that's his defense secretary pick. And these details are damning, including basically an email sent to Hegseth by his own mother, indicating that he is abusive to women. So we've got that and more coming up. Don't miss it.