Hello and welcome to the UK column, viewers and listeners.
A little bit of a grey afternoon here in Plymouth, England, but
we're not going to worry about that.
We've got a really interesting interview just coming up.
I'm delighted to be joined today by Joseph B Sweeney, who's the
author of Dangerous Injustice, How Democrats Weaponize the
Department of Justice to Protect Biden and Persecute Trump.
Now, this is an absolutely fascinating book, which I've
been able to read over the last couple of weeks.
So I think we're going to have a very interesting discussion just
to tell you a little bit more about our guests today.
And I think the simple way is for me to read his CV that he's
quite kindly provided, and it runs as follows.
Joseph B Sweeney served in the CIA Office of General Counsel
for 25 years in support of broad spectrum of intelligence
operations all over the world, including espionage and
terrorism investigations and prosecutions.
His work has been recognised with a 1999 Public Service Award
from the Eastern District of Virginia for his support of an
espionage prosecution, a 2002 a General Attorney General's Award
for his support of the Southern District of New York's
prosecution of Osama bin Laden and others for bombing US
embassies in East Africa, a 2011 Intelligence Community Legal
Award for his support of a spy swap, and a 2018 Assistant
Attorney General Award for his support of the Department of
Justice National Security Division.
He's a 1987 graduate of the United States Military Academy
and served as an Airborne Ranger qualified Infantry officer for
six years and after graduating law school in 1996, he accepted.
He was accepted into the CIA National Security Law Honours
program and in 2012 he earned an LLM in National Security Law
from Georgetown Law School. So a very eminent CV.
Joseph B Sweeney, welcome to UK column.
Thank you and thank you for having me.
It's a pleasure. Now, I understand you're joining
us from Washington, DC this afternoon.
Is that correct? That is correct.
I'm right in the swamp. OK, thank you.
Now the other bits which I I just wanted to point the viewers
at is your website so that once they're they've completed the
interview with us, they can go and have a look at that and
probably bring it up at the end as well.
But that's www.sw EE NEY jb.com. So sweeneyjb.com.
Well, there we are. I'm going to say a very big
thank you for agreeing to this interview and of course for
providing a be with a copy of your book.
Now, I have spent a lot of time reading it and I ended up having
to take some of the information and put it in a little bit of a
diagrammatic form so that I could track through some of your
arguments. But I thought what I'd do is
just sort of spell out the the flow of it for the audience and
then maybe we can work through that a bit until we get.
Sounds good. The critical element so you you
begin by a little bit of history with talking about George
Washington and warnings to the American public about what
happens when there's fractions appear in the nation and how
that actually is is a threat to the nation and the unity of the
nation. So that was a pretty poignant
start. You quickly give a little bit of
a summary, which is about from 2016 onwards, the Democrat
attacks on, on Trump from his presidential campaign onwards,
until, of course, we get to the critical point where there's
been a, an armed raid on the on Trump's home.
And you point out that very quickly at that time, the Biden
administration came up with two criminal indictments against
Trump that was interfering with the 2020 presidential election
and violating #2 violating espionage, the Espionage Act, by
mishandling classified information.
And the next bit I'll just do very briefly before we will
bring you in, is that you then point out to your readers that
they need to follow three key steps in order to really get on
to understand the complexities of the law around classified
information. And you say that to understand
the extent to which the party affiliations determined conduct
to the investigations against Trump, the reader needs to
understand cases both against Biden and Trump.
And to do that, you need to understand how defence
information is classified and protected.
So that's probably the starting point for us.
Most people will have little idea about the intricacies of
official secrets and how the documentation works.
So would you, would you like to start there and just tell the
audience how the system works and what classified information
is? Sure, absolutely.
In the United States, information that is National
Defense related is classified pursuant to a presidential
executive order. So all the safeguarding
classifications, you know, all the rules on storage, handling,
processing, access, all of that is pursuant to Presidential
Executive order. The President makes the rules
for this sensitive national security related information.
Now you know, just for, for your viewers who may not be familiar
with our system, we have 3 coordinate branches of
government, the judiciary, the executive branch and and
Congress. So classified information is not
controlled by Congress and it's not controlled by the judiciary.
It is created pursuant to executive power because under
the Constitution, the president is also the commander in chief
of the armed forces. So it's that commander in chief
power flowing from that power that the president issues an
executive order to classify information.
And there are many, many, many rules, some of which I go into
in the book about storage, handling, creation,
transportation. They're, they're very strict
rules. And for those of us like me who
spent decades working with classified information every
day, they're all second nature. It's like breathing, taking care
of information and making sure you're following all the rules.
And so that's, that's, that's the basics for creating and
protecting classified information.
And the most important point is that it all flows from executive
power. Now, there are also criminal
laws that, that make it that make it a crime under U.S. law
to mishandle or steal or be grossly negligent in the
handling of classified information.
So for instance, you know, gross negligence is, is at the lower
end of the spectrum because it's when you're not doing something
purposeful, but you're just being maybe stupid, excessively
stupid in the way that you're transporting or handling
classified information. It's when you're violating a
duty of care and you're beings in, in the, in, in the, the, the
lack of attention to the duty of care is, is so extreme that the
law would actually, you know, in, in make it a crime.
So there's gross negligence and then there is the other end of
the spectrum, willfully retaining, willfully stealing
classified information in all of those violations would be under
the US Espionage Act. So the Espionage Act itself, it,
it covers actually a broad range of conduct because there is, of
course, the classic type of spying that you would see in the
movies where foreigners are trying to steal your government
secrets and you catch them, right?
That that's a classic case that is an Espionage Act prosecution.
But it it even, even something as simple as mishandling
classified information, if it's gross negligence, that can also
be prosecuted. Even though you weren't trying
to steal secrets for money, you weren't doing anything to
purposefully harm the country, but you, you did violate a duty
of care. So that's kind of in a nutshell.
That's how classified information is controlled, and
that's how mishandling or stealing is punished under U.S.
law. Right, OK.
And of course, if we do something simple and we're
talking about classified information within a government,
there's all sorts of different types of classified information
that's circulating. We might, we might have
documents that relate to Foreign Relations and we might have
documents which are more orientated towards the military.
And can you you explain to the audience what sort of documents
would, how documents would normally be classified so that
they can be identified as? As under the Presidential
Executive Order, there are 8 categories of information that
are eligible to be classified as as as is our state secrets, and
they include the things that you would expect, the foreign
information pertaining to Foreign Relations of the United
States, information pertaining to the military of the United
States, information pertaining to intelligence sources and
methods, for instance. So the categories are basic in
what you would expect. And if you're going to classify
information from those categories, you have to
determine the level of damage that could be expected from an
unauthorized disclosure of that information.
So if it's just simple damage, then the information would be
classified at the confidential level.
That's the most basic level. And then one step up would be
the secret level where there's perhaps more damage to the
national security that could be expected.
And then if there is exceptionally grave damage to
the to the national security, that's classified at the highest
level top secret. Now, once you get up to the top
secret level, it's not, it's not one monolithic category because
information up at that level can be further compartmented.
And so there's top secret, diamond, top Secret, jade, top
secret, you know, a lavender, and you don't get access to
those categories of information unless you have a need to know
them. So it's just there's further
compartmentation at the top secret level.
But that's basically how it works under the executive order.
Confidential secret, top Secret. And at the Top Secret level, it
can be even further compartmented.
Right. And and those those classified
documents would normally have those classifications clearly
marked on them. So somebody handling and and
reading a document with a particular security implication
would see that classification and any additional caveats
printed on the document. Absolutely.
And so under the executive order governing the classified
information, there is very specific instructions as to how
a classified document would be marked so that anyone, anyone
see you know, would see them the the the classification levels in
the header and in the footer and and and then there would be
additional code words and code names and so forth.
But that way everyone knows from when they pick up a document
what level it's classified at and whether or not they should
even be reading the document is like I said, if it's top secret
lavender and I haven't been been read into that category and I'm
not supposed to read it, then I know this is not a document that
I should be reading. So one other related nuance to
that is sometimes documents are are not properly marked.
And let's say someone creates a classified document, maybe it's
even a handwritten note and they don't properly mark the header
in the footer with the appropriate classification
markings. And in the document could then
get out into the public domain. People could be passing it
around with no knowledge that there's actually very sensitive
information in the document. And I've worked on cases of that
nature and, and the, the position of the government is,
well, that document is still classified, it's just not
properly marked. And So what the government would
do in those instances is we would refuse to confirm or deny
the accuracy of any of the information in the document.
We would say that the information in the document is
not declassified just because it wasn't properly marked.
And then we would, once we got a hold of the document, we would
properly mark it and start protecting the information in
it. I've worked on cases where these
these complexities can make life a little difficult because, for
instance, in America, under the Freedom of Information Act,
citizens can request documents from the government.
And sometimes when we come across a document that should
have been classified but was not properly marked, we have to then
mark it at that time and explain all of this to a federal judge
so that we're not being accused of playing fast and loose with
the rules. Right.
OK, thank. Thank you for that.
And just to reinforce the point, your key specialist area is at
law within the CIA, in particular in relation to
classified information and court cases that have taken place
around the use and abuse of classified information.
That's correct. I had kind of a unique career in
the CIA general counsel's office in that half of my time, about
12 years was spent in the litigation division, line
attorney, deputy acting chief. And then I was chief of the
litigation division for four years, handling civil and
criminal cases in conjunction with the Department of Justice
when those cases involved classified information in some
way, shape or form. So there is there is just about
no no aspect of a civil or criminal case involving
classified information that I haven't handled.
Right. And as I have discovered from
reading a book, this this is a complex, very complex area.
Now, just to set the scene a bit, the your book is
essentially an analysis of what took place around the
investigation in into President Trump when he was accused of
having taken classified material to his home.
And of course there was a a raid by armed FBI agents and
subsequently huge media for all, but also a legal process took
place. So that that is the meat of your
book. But in order to be able to
explain to the reader some of the complexities around not only
the case that Trump was faced with, but how he got in the
position of having to face that case.
You've had to take the reader through some key steps as to how
you have seen the system work, IE the protection of classified
material, but also in particular where the system has failed and
what has happened to individuals.
And what I perceive is that a key segment of the book is where
you've been looking at examples of particular individuals who've
fallen foul of the law in relation to classified
documents. And then you've you've given a
sort of summary of those cases and you've also the end of it,
identified what the final charge was, what the sentence was.
So I wonder whether you would be kind enough to just take us into
some of those cases where you're you're able to say, yes, I, I
was there, I handled this material.
This is what an individual did. This is how the case unfolded.
And this is what they, the final charge was.
This is a sort of backdrop to getting to both some
indiscretions by President Biden and, of course, what happened
with President Trump. Sure.
It's it's what got me interested in Trump's case in the 1st place
is that I had just retired for just about a year when Mar a
Lago was raided. And there were only in the
history of the United States, there were only four cases where
senior executive branch officials had been investigated
or prosecuted for mishandling classified information.
And it just so happened, I worked on three of those four
cases throughout my career. I'm probably the only person in
the world who did and, and even the one that I didn't work on
that happened during my time in government and I was aware of
the case and following it. So what I'll do is I'll just
walk your your viewers through those four cases in the order
that that they occurred. The first case ever was a man by
the name of John Deutsch, who was the Director of Central
Intelligence. He was the top spy and the head
of the intelligence community. This is, this was before 911 and
before not the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
The head of the CIA was also the head of the intelligence
community. Now that changed after 911.
The the, there was a restructuring of the
intelligence community and the position of DNI was created.
That's the director of National Intelligence and the head of the
CIA was made just the head of the CIA.
But back when Deutsch was the head of the CIA, he was also the
head of the intelligence community.
And so his his title was director of Central
Intelligence. Now after Deutsch left his job,
it that the agency discovered that Deutsch had been keeping on
his home computers that were unsecured and hooked up to the
Internet over 300 classified documents.
And what he was doing was he was bringing them home at night on
like a thumb drive, plugging them into his home computer and
working on documents at night. That is something I can tell you
that if any rank and file officer in the executive branch
did, they would absolutely go to jail.
But you know, Deutsch was very high up and when it came to
light the the agency started to investigate.
There's a lot of procedural history that I go to into in the
book that I won't bother with. I'll just focus on his conduct
for now. And that was that he had over
300 classified documents. So that's a very high volume and
many of them were highly classified up at the top secret
level. Now, this was the first case of
this nature and the Department of Justice was struggling
without a handle it. Our attorney general at the time
was named Janet Reno. She was appointed by President
Clinton as the attorney general, and Clinton had also appointed
John Deutsch. So, you know, one of the things
I emphasize in the book is you cannot examine these cases
without examining the politics. The politics heavily influenced
how these cases were handled, all of them.
And Deutsch is a great example because at first the attorney
general refused to even conduct even a preliminary
investigation. And then there was a public
backlash because the the the the Senate Intelligence Committee
did their own investigation and released an unclassified report
that caused the backlash. And then the attorney general
had to reverse herself and appoint someone to investigate
and perhaps prosecute the case. I worked with that person.
And So what ended up happening was, you know, the Department of
Justice, which was controlled by the Clinton administration, was
very lenient on John Deutsch. And they ended up permitting
Deutsch to sign a plea agreement for possessing one single
classified document that was at the secret level.
Now, Deutsch had a lot of stuff that was at the top secret
level. That was all ignored in the plea
agreement. And he, he, he had this plea
agreement for one single secret document.
And, and by only charging that one document that lowered the
charges from something that would be very serious in, in our
country, which is called a felony.
That's punishable with one year or more down to a misdemeanor,
which is maximum of one year. But Deutsch's plea agreement
just it, it permitted him to just get a fine and do some
probation and there was no jail time.
So that's a very light slap on the wrist.
Now, the day after Deutsch signed his plea agreement was
President Clinton's last day in office.
And so Clinton then issued a pardon to Deutsch.
So the in in a pardon vitiates the plea agreement.
So he never had to pay the fine. He never had to do the
probation. He basically was let off Scott
free for what was a very major breach of of national security.
Now, that was the first case. The second case was also someone
who was working for President Clinton and that was Clinton's
national security advisor, who is kind of an informal cabinet
member for the president and his name was Sandy Berger.
Now, Sandy Berger, he after he served as National Security
advisor, this is after 911, Berger was going to the US
National Archives to review documents for related to
testimony he was going to have to give to the 9/11 Commission.
And when Berger was reviewing these documents, they were
classified. Many were top secret.
He was stealing them, sticking them down his pants and in his
socks, bringing them to a construction site that was
across the street from the National Archives and then
bringing them home and destroying them.
Now, we don't know for sure what was in the documents that he was
stealing, but they all appeared to be the different versions.
Drafts of of an after action report on on some terrorism
activities. And the rumor going around
Washington at the time was that this document, the documents he
was stealing, they showed that the Clinton administration had
the opportunity to kill Osama bin Laden well before 911, but
they decided not to. And now that was just a rumor.
I don't know if that's true or not, but it made sense to me
because whatever he was trying to protect and destroy and hide,
it was something that was obviously very damaging to him
in the Clinton administration. That would just make sense to
me. So after so at first what
happened was, you know, the national, the the archivist
noticed that some of the folders were coming back, like not all
the documents were in them. So they started marking the
documents and that's when they caught burger stealing.
Now, originally he denied it. He lied to the FBI and normally
that would be an additional crime.
That's obstruction of justice under US laws.
It's a false official statement. And that lie alone would be five
years in jail just just for a lie to the FBI for each lie, by
the way. But he finally confessed.
And like John Deutsch, Berger got off very easily through a
plea agreement. Again, this was, you know, the,
the, the plea agreements were, were very lenient in all the
cases. As you'll see, Burgers was
particularly lenient because he again got a fine and a
probation. They only, they only took away
his security clearance for three years, which is unbelievable.
Again, if any rank and file person in the executive branch
did what Burger did, they would, they would never get a security
clearance again and they would go to jail.
But Berger just got a fine and a probation and was actually
permitted after three years to to seek his security clearance
returned, which is just for anyone who's worked in the
executive branch. It's really unbelievable.
So that was the second case. Now, the third case was another
CIA director. And by the time this case was
investigated, I was chief of our litigation division.
And this was a gentleman by the name of David Petraeus was an
Army general, high-ranking, who was appointed by President Obama
to be what at the time was the director of the Central
Intelligence Agency. And this is one of the more
interesting human interest stories because Petraeus was
having an affair with a woman who was also his biographer.
Her name was Paula Broadwell. Well, Broadwell got jealous of a
third woman who was getting too close to Petraeus for her
comfort, and she started sending anonymous threatening emails to
this woman. Well, the the the woman reported
it to the FBI, who traced the IP address back to Broadwell's
house and they raided her house. When they raided the house, they
found classified information that Petraeus had given to
Broadwell when she was writing the book on Petraeus.
So they went and interviewed Petraeus and the FBI asked him
if he had provided classified information to her and he lied
again. That would normally be
obstruction of justice, false official statement.
That's a five year penalty under, under American law,
putting aside even the mishandling of the classified
information, which is, which is double that.
So the FBI ended up doing a thorough investigation in
Petraeus's case, more thorough than any of the other cases.
But at the end of the day, our Department of Justice is still
responsible for charging decisions.
And they did the same thing in Burger's case, the same thing in
the in the in the case of John Deutsch, they did a very lenient
plea agreement and they permitted him to plead to a
misdemeanor, you know, a low level crime.
And they didn't even document the classified information.
They just generically described it.
And he got a fine and, and probation.
And by all appearances, Petraeus even maintained his security
clearance because he continued to be an informal advisor to
President Obama even after he resigned from the CIA.
So that's the, the, the, the first 3 cases in U.S. history.
Now, the last one is the most famous, the most infamous, the
one that just about everyone in the United States recognizes and
perhaps the world. And that was Hillary Clinton's
case. When Clinton was the Secretary
of State, right? The top diplomat for the United
States of America, she had arranged for all of her work
emails to be stored on a server in her own home.
And that server was, in government parlance, not
secured. Now, of course, being the
Secretary of State, recall that one of the categories of
information that's eligible to be classified is information
that pertains to the foreign affairs of the United States.
Well, Clinton was the top diplomat for the United States.
Any, anyone working in the executive branch would would
know that her emails would absolutely contain classified
information and should not be stored on an unsecured server in
her home. But that's what Clinton did.
And by the time it came to light, she had over 60,000
emails on these servers. And as it turned out, 30,000 of
them were, were government documents that that she had
basically stolen from the government.
And so there was a classification review of all the
emails to determine which contained classified
information. I, I participated in that
classification review. I'm one of the few people to
have read the fabled Clinton emails.
And I always point out I am not suicidal.
I love myself. And I mentioned that because a
lot of people around the Clintons have ended up having
premature deaths. So, so the result of the
classification review was that a little over 100 of them, the
emails were found to contain classified information.
And about a dozen of those were at the top secret level.
Again, the highest level of classified information.
Now that's what came out in the public record, but having
participated in the classification review, I can
tell you that there were actually thousands of classified
emails likely. And because what I saw in the
process was the State Department was purposefully kind of down
grading the decisions they were making.
Either they didn't want to be embarrassed or they didn't want
Clinton to be embarrassed, or they were trying to protect her.
I can't really speak to their motivations, but I can say that
that that was my observation that they were purposefully not
classifying some documents that should have been classified.
And all you'd have to do is look at the numbers to know that.
I mean, over 30,000 emails from from the secretaries of state or
to the Secretary of State, anyone working in government
would know that it would be a lot more than 100 or so that
were classified because that would come out to like .33
percent, 1/3 of 1% were classified.
Yeah, no way. It had to be higher than that.
In fact, after the Clinton case, the FBI director gave a, a, a, a
public testimony. He had a a press conference
during which he said there were over 2000 emails that were up
classified. That's the term he used.
I have never heard this term before and I worked with
classified information every day for 25 years.
But he said over 2000 were up classified, meaning they weren't
classified when they were sent, but they were found to be
classified later when they were reviewed.
My sense is all of those documents were probably
classified when they were sent. Now, the Clinton investigation
was not a real investigation. Everything was done voluntarily.
There were no no subpoenas, no search warrants.
The FBI actually permitted Clinton's private lawyers to
review her hard drive. They never seized it.
They never reviewed the documents themselves.
They just let, they let Clinton's lawyers do the
searches when they had an open criminal investigation.
There's only one other case in U.S. history that I know of
where that's happened, and that was Joe Biden's case, which I'll
get to later. So the the investigation was not
a true investigation. And at the end of it, Clinton
was charged with nothing. The FBI director described her
conduct as extremely careless, but not grossly negligent.
I I don't see how any reasonable person could not see those
descriptions as synonymous. Extremely careless is grossly
negligent and gross negligence in the handling of classified
information, as I covered, is a crime under the Espionage Act.
So there's no doubt that Clinton violated the criminal law.
And but she was, you know, being investigated by the Obama
administration and she was also a candidate for president in the
United States at the time for the Democratic Party.
And so that's why I say you can't you can't analyze any of
these historical cases without examining the politics.
And you have the Democratic administration investigating the
Democratic candidate for president who is also a
Democratic appointee by the same president to be the Secretary of
State. So it is perhaps it's
disappointing, but perhaps not surprising that a real
investigation was not conducted. And so Clinton was charged with
nothing. So in all four of those
historical precedents, all four of them were high-ranking
Democrats, all four of them were treated very leniently by the
Department of Justice where they either got a slap on the wrist
or in Clinton's case, you know, they got nothing at all.
So those are, those are the historical presidents.
And I'll tell your viewers, I go into great, a lot more detail in
the book because I, I, I've done all the research on the cases
and I worked on most of them and, and each one of them has
human interest stories. So I think they make for
interesting reading and in their fascinating cases.
Thank. Thank you very much for that
very concise run through. I just want to make a comment
which is as I was reading the book and I'm, I'm reading about
this very high level, highly classified material which is
being used and abused and goes missing or it's put on
unclassified computers in somebody's home.
My background in the military in the Navy here in UK, albeit many
years ago, I was handling confidential, secret, sometimes
top secret material. But even the confidential, which
we'll say relatively low level material, the confidential books
had to be checked page by page regularly.
And my goodness, if there was a page missing or an update hadn't
been inserted correctly, severe penalties within the military
for that. So I, I remember during my
military career, a lot of time went into the checking of
classified material and also the training and how to handle it
correctly to ensure that no material went missing.
And yet you're describing the, the system in a country,
America, as far as it's known within it's sort of NATO
military allies is a country which is very, very strong on
confidentiality and material. And yet we've got such casual
treatment to this material by people in very high in positions
of of power and influence, high positions, and nothing is
happening to them. This this does seem rather
strange as to you know as to why this is taking place.
Can you imagine if, back when you were serving, and by the
way, thank you for your service, if you had been caught with 300
classified documents in your house, you'd probably still be
in jail? I'd still be in prison.
I think that's absolutely correct.
And and of course, immense damage can be done by the
leaking or well or loss of this sort of material.
The one for me is always the Walker brother espionage case in
America because acoustic secrets were handed over to the
Russians, which I know made a difference to the conduct of the
Cold War within a matter of, I'll certainly say a year.
So this is the reason that material has to be has to be
carefully looked after, but a very casual system operating at
high level and questions need to be asked.
So in America, we're very fond of saying that no one is above
the law. You know, no one is above the
law in America. Well, our history shows
something different. You know, no justice system is
perfect. And I say this in my book.
No system is perfect because it's implemented by humans and
we are all imperfect. So any justice system is going
to have strengths and weaknesses.
And we have a good justice system, but it is not perfect.
And there are in fact people in my book shows this that are
above the law. You know, there's the old saying
that rank has its privileges, and these senior people are
absolutely treated differently, at least at least when they were
high-ranking Democrats. As and, you know, and, and as
we'll get into Trump's case was handled very differently.
The disparities in the handling are really quite unbelievable.
Right. And, and in relation to what
happened with Trump, you, you use some words and phrases which
I I thought, yeah, well, this is really interesting because you
you say that that when the Democrat administration
unleashed what it did on Biden, they'd crossed the Rubicon.
They'd taken a step which hadn't been seen before, which is 1
presidential administration going after another president at
using the law and also the invasion of his home.
This was something that had never been seen before.
So you talk about crossing the Rubicon, you also.
I think it's later on in the book sort of describe the whole
poems this was happening in as as demonstrating that America
had become a third world country, or at least saying this
is what people would expect to see in a third world country,
not in America. Yeah.
You know, when the the raid on Mar a Lago was the 8th of August
2022, and I had retired from the CIA in July of 21.
So it was almost exactly a year after I had retired.
And because I had worked on three of the four historical
precedents and I was an expert in this area of law and these
types of investigations and prosecutions, I was very
interested to see how the case was going to proceed.
And I've also always been a student of American history.
I majored in American history at West Point.
And I was just fascinated by this from every angle because
never before in American history had a presidential
administration rated the home of a former president, period, let
alone a former president from the opposing political party and
a former president who was the likely candidate to run against
the incumbent in an upcoming election.
Nothing, nothing even close to this had ever occurred in
American history. And so I was very anxious to
look at the documents. And so originally, the Biden
administration was fighting transparency, and they were
trying very hard to keep the raid affidavit.
This is an FBI affidavit that laid out, you know, all the
reasons why they were seeking the search warrant.
They were trying to keep that off the public record and they
were successful for a while, but eventually they had to put the
document on the public record. It was heavily redacted, but
there was still quite a bit that was that was released.
Now, for background, the part that was released was explaining
to the federal judge classification in general, and,
you know, as I did at the beginning of our talk, and then
also describing to the federal judge the classified information
that is thought to be at issue in the case.
I have written hundreds of those types of affidavits to the
federal judges, and I have supervised the drafting of
thousands of such affidavits. So I know what to look for.
I know right where to go. And sure enough, I found mistake
after mistake after mistake in the FBI affidavit.
They did not even properly state the standard for classification
under the executive order, which I don't think was purposeful on
their part. And it gave them no, no benefit.
I think it was just sloppy drafting.
But there were other aspects of the affidavit where they were
clearly misrepresenting the law to the federal judge.
So for instance, and I and I give many examples in my book,
I'll, I'll just give you the big one right now.
In the, in the FBI affidavit, they, they had one sentence that
said that information is classified pursuant to executive
order. And then they had a lengthy
section laying out for the federal judge all the rules for
safeguarding, transportation, handling access.
And as I said before, there are many of these rules.
They are very strict, but they all flow from executive power.
You wouldn't know that to read the affidavit.
They just said there's all these rules and laws.
Well, all those rules are from the president and they are
directed to the president's subordinates, but they do not
bind the president in any way, shape or form.
But you would not know that to read the affidavit.
The affidavit made it sound like the president had violated all
these rules. And the president cannot violate
the rules because they're his rules to his subordinates.
So, for instance, President Biden this weekend could take an
entire box of classified information with him to his home
in Wilmington, DE, bring them to the beach and hand out top
secret documents to sunbathers. He will have violated no law.
Classified information belongs to the president.
The president can do whatever he wants with it.
Everyone below him has to obey his rules.
So that's just one example of what I saw in the affidavit.
And then also, as more documents came to light supporting the
raid, the American public saw that there was 30 armed FBI
agents that raided the home of the former president and they
were authorized to use deadly force.
It's right in the documents. So that's, that's why I call
that in the book crossing the Rubicon, because no one had ever
done anything like this in American history.
You know, and when, when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon to,
to, to basically, you know, take, take over Rome, he, he
only brought part of his army with him, just part of it.
Biden took his entire political party and half the country with
him when he crossed the Rubicon. And so you just can't go back
from something like that. And I was shocked by it, and it
started me digging. So I started researching.
And with every stone I unturned, I just found more nefarious
politics, more malfeasance by the Biden administration.
In Full disclosure, I don't belong to a political party.
I am independent, and so I had no preconceived notion.
I wasn't trying to beat up the Biden administration or the
Democratic Party. But that's what I found in my
research and that's what I lay out in the book, that they just
bent over backwards at every point to twist laws, to twist
regulations, to misrepresent the law and misrepresent the facts,
to turn Trump's conduct into something that was criminal when
in fact, he had done nothing wrong.
And then while I was researching and writing, it came to light
that Biden had been caught with classified information both in
his DC office, a private office in downtown DC, and in his home.
Now, in Biden's case, the Biden administration kept that a
secret for months. No one knew it was treated, was
treated as if it was national security information, the fact
that Biden had had classified documents in his personal
possession. So if you'd like, I could now go
into kind of, you know, the details of their conduct of the
cases themselves unless you have any more questions at this
point. Well, that that would be really
excellent. Joseph, I'm so glad you just
switched there to the Clint to the Boyden affair because I'm
going to say that very, very few people here in the UK, at least
I think have ever heard that Biden has been in trouble with
classified material. And so when I started read that
section in in your book, I was absolutely fascinated.
Not only to understand more about what had happened, but of
course what it demonstrating was to me, sheer hypocrisy of the
Biden administration. Who would, who would essentially
broken rules themselves, serious rules.
But then they'd, they'd thrown the book at Trump and pretended
as if they were completely squeaky clean themselves.
So this, this was amazing story to me.
So please go ahead and tell us more about, I'll just say the,
the, the other part of the Biden story was that he was able to
use his attorneys in order to deal with the information.
So, but please go ahead. So what else?
What I'll do is I'll run through the the highlights of Biden's
conduct, and then I will compare that conduct to Trump's conduct.
So first of all, some of Biden's private lawyers were going
through his office in downtown DCA private office, and this is
is something called the Penn Biden Center.
And they found classified documents.
Well, they reported that to the White House and then it was
reported to the National Archives who who came and got
the documents, but it was kept a secret.
And then about a month later, two months later, Biden's
private attorneys were searching Biden's house, and they found
more classified documents. Now, this was, again, this was
all kept in secret. So the American public was not
informed of this, but they kept finding more stuff.
And it finally got to a point where the Biden administration
realized that they could no longer contain the fiasco.
And so then they leaked the story to the press selectively,
and they only leaked selective facts.
And I go through all the analysis of the press reporting
and how it came to be in my book.
But what they found was that Biden had in his home well over
100 classified documents. Now, we don't know the total
number. The American public has never
been given the total number of classified documents that Biden
possessed. But we know it was over 100
because I counted them. There's an appendix in the in
the report that was done. I've counted them.
But it you, you can't do a total because they have some
descriptions are like a stack of highly classified note cards.
Well, they don't tell you how many there could be 100 in there
alone. So the classified documents
Biden had in his home spanned 5 decades, 1970s, eighties,
nineties, 2000s, twenty 10s, right.
He had half a century worth of classified documents in his
home. Now, these were documents.
Some of them were from his time in the Senate, and some of them,
many of them were from his time as vice president.
And what he was doing was Biden was plucking, plucking
classified documents out of the flow of documents that were
crossing his desk as vice president.
And he was taking some home. Biden's documents were not just
in boxes. Some of them were in boxes in
his garage, but others were all over his house, all over his
house. The first level den, the third
level den, the foyer in a grocery bag outside of his
bedroom, in his private office, in file, in file cabinets where
the files, some of the files were in Biden's own personal
handwriting. So there is no doubt to any
reasonable person that Biden would have known that he was
maintaining classified documents because they were all over his
house and in his personal library in his own file folders.
So, so that's, that's the baseline of his conduct, that is
that is willfully retaining classified documents.
It's also grossly negligent in the handling of classified
documents. And in the in the final report
that was done, it also laid out that Biden was known to be
grossly negligent with classified documents throughout
his vice presidency. I go into great detail on this
in my book, but I'll just say the people in the executive
secretariat around him basically followed him around with a
dustpan and a broom trying to pick up all the classified that
he was leaving in many places where it was not supposed to be
unsecured, right. And he had a he had a known
reputation for being grossly negligent and not taking
classified information seriously.
There were special briefings that were done for him.
There were special memorandums that were done for him.
And the language in all of these is that you must do this.
You must do that because Biden was not the president.
He was the vice president, which means being below the president.
He had to obey all the same rules for storage and handling
of classified information as any other member of the executive
branch. So that's pretty egregious
conduct, right? And also the final report showed
that Biden was stealing this classified information.
So for personal financial gain, they actually discovered notes
in Biden's handwriting where when he was still vice
president, where he was talking, writing notes to himself that he
was going to write a memoir after he left the vice
presidency, which he subsequently did so and, and in
there he listed as one of the reasons to write the memoir
income. So he wanted to write a book
when he left the vice presidency.
And as he was leaving the vice presidency now, he'd already
taken a lot of classified home while he was vice president, but
he wanted to take more. He wanted to take highly
classified note cards. So some of his staff started
creating binders so he could take classified information home
with him for the time he was going to be a just a citizen so
that he could write his book to make money.
Now, you were in the military and there were military
detailees on the staff, on Biden's staff.
And you know, and I know military people take classified
information the most seriously, right?
They are because the punishments in the military are the most
severe, and it is really drilled into the military people, even
more so than the civilian side. And so the military detailees on
Biden's staff, they raised objections.
They said this shouldn't be happening.
One of them felt so strongly about it that she drafted a
memorandum for the record that basically said, and I'm
paraphrasing here, it basically said, look, we shouldn't be
doing this. He shouldn't be taking home
classified, highly classified information.
He's, he's, he's about to become a private citizen.
And I've raised this with my manager and my manager told me
this is fine. And I know it's not fine.
And, and I have asked not to be part of any meetings or any
actions that involve these note cards that they're helping Biden
to basically basically steal classified information.
And so this entire memorandum, for the record, it's in the
final report and I have a copy of it on my website.
But he went right, went, went right ahead and took those
documents home with him. That's, there's a lot more
detail, of course, in the book, but that's kind of Biden's
conduct in a nutshell. The guy was stealing classified
information for 50 years and he was doing it at least in part
for financial gain. You know, what I've seen with
other senior officials is it's also just kind of convenience
and laziness. They do, they think they're
above the law and frankly, in many ways they are.
And so they, they take things home to work on them and
sometimes forget, leave them at home or they just want it for
whatever reason. For reference.
But with Biden, it was probably partly that, but also absolutely
he was doing it for financial gain.
Joseph's conduct in a nutshell. Joseph, could could I just come
in here with a with a couple of questions.
Sure. You you make a particular
comment in relation to this, this event that the National
Archives and Records admin essentially made no comment
about what Biden did and you say in contrast to what they
subsequently said about Trump. But could you explain a little
bit more who the National Archives and Records Admin are
and what what what their sort of power is?
Sure. In the United States we have an
official person called the archivist, and that is the
National Archivist. And, and they, they are the head
of a federal agency called Nara, the National National Archives
and Records Administration. And so they are responsible for
preserving America's history, right, in terms of documents.
And one of one of the big areas is presidential records.
And so, and you know, my book focuses on the weaponization of
DOJ and the FBI against conservatives and specifically
Trump. But it's more than that.
Because really what the Democratic Party in the United
in the United States has done is they've weaponized the entire
executive branch against their political opponents.
And part of the executive branch is the National Archives.
And so I do detailed analysis of how the National Archives
treated Biden's case and Trump's case.
And in Biden's case, I had to wade through hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of pages of releases to the public under
the Freedom of Information Act. You can find them.
They're out there. And you've got to pan through
this, this large stream of information to get to the
Nuggets. But I panned through it and I,
I've done a lot of Freedom of Information act work in my time
for the government. And so I know where to look in,
in, in what I found amongst this sea of emails that were released
by the National Archives were the ones where they were
obviously talking about Biden's case, even though they didn't
come out and say it. And so it was fascinating
because they're they're in an e-mail dialogue with Biden's
private attorneys and the archivist is purposefully not
mentioning any details. So it's obvious that they're
having phone conversations with details, but they're being very
cautious not to include details in their emails.
But there was enough in there that I can see what was going on
because they were, they were handling this in their own
light, in, in, in language they use in emails with the utmost
discretion. This is when Biden got caught
with classified documents originally at his downtown
office in DC. Well, they were handling that
with the utmost discretion and helping the White House to keep
it a secret. Now, normally they would do a
press release that would say, oh, we, you know, we, we've just
gotten some vice presidential records that should have been
turned over to US six years ago. And they would inform the public
of that they've got at least something and that it will be
eventually made available to the public.
But they didn't do that in Biden's case.
There was no press release whatsoever in Biden's case.
And then in the book, I compare that to how how Trump was
handled by the National Archives.
And it was the exact opposite, right?
They were anxious to report every detail that they could.
They even twisted the knife in the way they were describing
things with facts that they could not even support any
opportunity they had to twist facts, twist laws to go after
Trump. That's what the National
Archives did. And they were routinely making
press releases because Trump and, and I'll get into his case
next. I may as well start comparing
his case to Biden's. So when Trump leaves office, his
staff pack up his boxes. Now, this was chaotic, truly
chaotic, because Trump was still, of course, trying to
retain his presidency, right? He had it looked like he lost
the popular vote, but he was definitely going around talking
to people, saying, hey, Are you sure this, this is these, these
election results are legitimate. And so there's total chaos at
this time. But his staff is packing up
boxes and they get put on moving trucks and the boxes go to
Trump's home at Mar a Lago. Now, there is no evidence on the
public record that Trump knew what was in those boxes.
They were packed by staffers and but off they went to Mar a Lago.
Now, once they're there, Trump's attorneys start reviewing some
of the documents and they actually send to the National
Archives 15 boxes of documents because they determined that
they were presidential records that should have gone to the
archives. So there was some some some
facts showing cooperation between Trump's staff and the
National Archives. Now you compare that to Biden's
case. Biden never returned any
documents to the National Archives.
They were all over his house in his DC office, but he didn't
send them to the Archives. He kept them.
So that's one, one data point of comparison.
Now with Trump's boxes, there is evidence on the public record
that Trump thought they were all his personal papers.
There are even in the indictment against Trump there citing the
emails and text messages with some of his employees where they
keep referring to, you know, the president Trump wants his papers
moved from this place to another place.
So this is this is in stark comparison to Biden's case also
because there's no doubt that Biden knew he was possessing
classified information. There's no doubt it was all over
his house. And in during during the
investigation of Biden, the FBI discovered audio recordings of
Biden talking to his ghost writer.
Now, this is after he left the vice presidency.
He's now a private citizen. He's working with a ghost writer
to publish the book that he wanted to publish to make some
money income in one of the audio recordings.
And this was February of 2017, soon after Biden left the White
House. You can hear Biden say as he's
coming up from the basement. I just found all the classified
stuff downstairs. Now, in any other case, I can
tell you a prosecutor would call that a taped confession, but not
in Biden's case. They came up with many excuses
to let Biden off the hook, despite the fact that they had a
taped confession of Biden admitting that he knew there was
classified documents in his home and he made no effort to return
them at any time until much later, right?
Five years later when it finally came on the public record that
he had them in his house. And even then, even then, when
the FBI finally searched Biden's house, and this came much later
when they found a top secret notebook, Biden's private lawyer
told the FBI, you don't have the consent to take that.
And they actually sent a White House lawyer to Biden's home to
seize evidence and take it from the FBI.
And never and never in American history have I heard of an
instance where a White House lawyer would insert himself into
the chain of custody for a piece of evidence in a criminal case.
Let me kind of transition from the conducted issue, right,
where you have Biden stealing classified documents for 50
years as opposed to Trump, who at the end of his presidency,
boxes are packed up by his staffers and taken to his house.
If you compare the investigations, they're also
stark disparities. So one of the one of the big
disparities which you mentioned earlier was that the FBI
permitted Biden's lawyers to search Biden's homes.
Now, this is after classified information had been discovered
in Biden's private office in downtown DC and after classified
had been found in the home. The FBI had an open
investigation, a criminal investigation.
Instead of going to search, they let Biden's private lawyers
search 2 of Biden's homes in Delaware before they went and
searched. There's only one other case in
history I know where something like that has happened, and that
was Hillary Clinton's case when the FBI permitted Clinton's
attorneys to go through her servers and decide what they
were going to provide to the government and what they
weren't. So, you know, there's a lot of
things were on the surface, any reasonable person could see that
there's disparity in these cases.
But someone with my experience and expertise, I can see the
depth of the of the disparities and the breadth of the
disparities and how devious they were because this was all
purposeful. This didn't happen just by
chance that Biden was given a freebie while they were turning
the knife on Trump. Because, and here's something
most people would not catch, Biden's private lawyers did not
have security clearances, which means they should not have been
permitted to have access to classified.
And yet they were permitted to search a home that were
classified, had already been discovered in it while there was
an open criminal case. So by doing that, the FBI and
DOJ actually facilitated additional crimes because
Biden's lawyers and I would take them at their word.
They said they didn't read classified when they found it
and I would take them at their word for that, but they should
never have had access to it. It would it's unlawful for them
to even hold those documents in their hands.
And yet so that's what happened in Biden's case.
And also in that investigation, there was no legal compulsion,
no subpoenas, no search warrants, no grand jury.
Everything was done voluntarily and much of the searches were
were done by Biden's own private lawyers.
So that is that is not typical investigative strategy.
Now, when you look at it, you know, at the surface, it's not a
big surprise. It's the Biden administration
investigating Joe Biden. And so they created a process
and was not a typical process. And what they were doing at the
same time, and this is really, this really gulled me, Biden and
his private lawyers and the White House counsel, every time
they talked about this case publicly, they would always
emphasize that Biden was cooperating with the process.
Well, of course he was. It was a process that was set up
by his own administration to his benefit, to his great benefit,
and not, not a typical investigative process in any
way, shape or form. Now contrast that with Trump's
case. They moved quickly to legal
compulsion, subpoenas, search warrants, grand jury.
They even went so far as to take Trump's private lawyers, haul
them before the grand jury and force them to disclose
attorney-client privilege communications.
That rarely happens in American jurisprudence, but that's what
they did in Trump's case. And, and again, you compare that
to Biden's case. Now, Biden's private lawyers,
they were permitted to rummage through the crime scenes.
They actually collected evidence.
They were never questioned. They were not taken before the
grand jury. And in the final report, the
special counsel even said why? He says in the final report,
you, Gee, you know, I, I would have loved to have talked to
Biden's private attorneys about some of this stuff 'cause they
would have probably had some very helpful information.
But I couldn't do that because I had to respect the
attorney-client privilege. The exact opposite in Trump's
case. They hauled his private
attorneys before the grand jury, forced them to disclose
otherwise privileged communications, and then they
used those privileged communications in the indictment
against Trump. So you could not have a larger
disparity in terms of how the two investigations were handled.
Once all was said and done and they had completed their
investigation, they indicted Trump.
And the indictment against him for these classified documents
has 40 felonies, 4040 felonies. And if you add up the jail time
for all those 40 felonies, it's 140 years in jail.
Now just step back and look at this broadly.
Trump didn't pack his boxes. There's no evidence even there's
no allegation even in the indictment that Trump knew what
was in the boxes. And there's no allegation that
he packed the boxes. But they went to his home where
they resided for as of the time of the raid, they were there
about 18 months and the raid got a little over 100, maybe 130
classified documents, 18 months they were in Trump's home.
There's no evidence he knew they were there And and no evidence
he packed the boxes or knew the pedigree of the documents in the
boxes. You contrast that with Biden's
case. Biden was stealing classified
information for 50 years, half a century, and he knew that he had
it. There's no doubt because of the
audio recording where he says, I just found all the classified
stuff downstairs. Trump is charged with 40
felonies added up to 140 years in jail.
Biden was charged with nothing. That's the disparity.
Now, you know, I've worked on in my career, I've worked on a
spectrum of prosecutions under the Espionage Act.
And, you know, we've been talking about the ones that were
mishandling of classified information, where government
employees were either grossly negligent or they willfully
retained classified documents when they should not have.
But they weren't spying, right? They weren't.
They weren't stealing secrets and giving them to a foreign
country. But I have worked on those cases
as well. And I talk about two of them in
the book because at the time they were highly publicized in
the United States, they were major espionage prosecutions.
And that's when we caught people stealing our secrets to harm the
country. In those cases, those people
were charged with one felony under the Espionage Act.
One, they were not charged with multiple documents.
They were not charged with multiple counts under the
Espionage Act. There was no need to do that.
Trump's case, his indictment, has 32 felony counts for 32
separate documents. That's how far DOJ went to go
after him. They literally picked the most
sensitive documents and charged him with 32 crimes.
We don't even do that for real spies.
And yet that's what they did with Trump.
So again, the disparities are huge, not even in terms of the
the historical precedents for mishandling, but even when you
compare them to actual spy cases, which by the way, are
eligible for the death penalty under the Espionage Act.
Those true spying cases? Not even then were those people
charged as heavily as Trump was charged now.
Joseph, Joseph, one, yes, one point, if I may, because I was
extremely interested in this. You you say in your description
of what was happening to Trump that Speaker Pelosi buried
evidence which could have exonerated him.
I was fascinated in that comment.
Can you tell us more? Sure, because after after the
raid on Mar a Lago, there were two different federal
indictments against Trump. One of them is the one I've been
talking about pertaining to the classified documents.
The other one is for election interference because there was a
riot on January 6th. It got out of control.
They got into the Capitol building.
And this was at the time that, that, you know, the, the, the,
the Electoral College was meeting to, to, to, to vote for
the president. And so in the election
interference case, at the same time, Congress was also
investigating the the riot and the person who was in charge of
building security for the Capitol building is the speaker
of the House. Well, the speaker of the House
is a Democrat, Nancy Pelosi. So Congress had they set up
their their investigatory body, which was the January 6th
committee. And what Pelosi did was, again,
for the first time in American history, she refused to let the
minority party pick their own representatives on the
committee. So the minority party was the
Republicans. So she herself picked the jury
and she picked all people who hated Trump.
That's who was on the January 6th committee.
So this, so meanwhile, she was responsible for building
security. This is a fact and and what
recently came to light was a videotape of Nancy Pelosi
talking to her staff on January 6th during the riot where she's
saying clearly this was all my fault.
Well, normally that type of evidence would be, is what the
in American jurisprudence is called exculpatory, right?
It tends to prove the innocence of people who are being held
accountable for the riot because that should have been provided
to them so that they could use it in defense of themselves when
they were being prosecuted. And just about everyone who went
into the Capitol that day has been prosecuted or is being
prosecuted. And so that video never came to
light. It was leaked fairly recently.
But basically, the speaker of the House set up a process.
It was designed to get Trump and to protect her from
accountability. So, so, so that that's what was
happening with with Pelosi and and and the other case, the
election interference. Case OK, thank you for that.
That's really, really interesting.
I'm smiling here because you, you actually described the the
raid on, on Trump as being a medieval siege and everything
was being thrown at him, including the burning oil, which
certainly seems to be the case. But you, you also go on to make
some, some pretty hard statements.
You say there was no evidence of Trump colluding with Russia, and
you also point out that the poisonous approach of the
Democrats to Trump. I, I think you're insinuating is
the, is the right word here, that there is the possibility
that this publicly expressed hate and poison towards Trump
could have helped inflamed the situation around the attempted
assassination. And so really you're you're
warning readers that that the system in America has got to a
very parlorous, parlorous, fractious state as per George
Washington's warning there. Yes.
And so, you know, after the Radon Mar a Lago, I started
digging and I kept digging and I went all the way back to 2016,
which was Trump's first presidential campaign.
And during that presidential campaign, the FBI and DOJ had
already been weaponized against Trump.
And what they were doing back then was they were using
intelligence collection authorities, very powerful tools
to target Trump's campaign. Now, these collection mechanisms
are secret because they're intelligence related.
And I thought, well, you know, it's interesting because back
then in 2016. They at least had the decency to
try and hide their conduct by using intelligence collection
methods, which exist in the shadows to target Trump.
I mean, you Fast forward to the Radon, Mar a Lago and the
current indictments. They're not trying to hide it
anymore. They're DOJ and the FBI are
openly acting as enforcement arms for the Democratic Party.
And so I was fascinated by this, in this progression, right, this
increased aggressiveness targeting Trump and, and
conservatives and anybody around Trump.
And I, and I give numerous examples from 2016 forward.
And I, and I said to myself, you know, this is really fascinating
because again, on the surface you can see that it's wrong.
You can't see how wrong it is unless you're someone like me
who's worked on the inside. But any reasonable person could
see that this isn't right in yet half the country is fine with it
because they've become so brainwashed against Trump and
conservatives that they think the ends justifies the means.
And I was fascinated by this. And I and I researched, you
know, this kind of sentiment of, you know, political party
passion, permitting people to justify doing some egregious
deeds. And I traced it all the way back
to President Washington's farewell speech to the nation in
1796. Now, Washington had been
president for two terms, eight years.
And at the time, he said, that's enough, it's time for me to step
down. And he wrote kind of a what I
call a 26 page love letter to the nation.
And in many ways, he was the father of the nation.
He had helped earth it, raise it, defend it, create it.
And so in his farewell speech he warned his fellow citizens about
a couple things that he felt could harm the country or even
or even 'cause it to topple. And the biggest thing he warned
about was the rise of the two party system and the political
passions that are aroused by the two party system.
He called it the baneful effects of the spirit of party.
And he and he said, let me now warn you in the greatest of
terms against these baneful effects.
I mean, even back in 1796, Washington prophesied that these
political party passions could destroy national unity by
causing citizens to despise each other and to turn them against
each other, in his words, to alienate them against each
other. Now, this was fascinating to me
because back in those days there was obviously no Internet.
There was no television. The only way to spread political
passion was through a town, town square speech or a pamphlet that
was run through a printing press or a poster that was put on a
tree. And even with those rudimentary
forms of disseminating political passion, even just with those
Washington saw that is one of the greatest dangers to our
national unity. You know, I was giving, I, I've
been doing some public speaking recently and, and just last week
someone asked me what I felt was the greatest danger currently
facing the United States. And I, I gave them what I think
was a surprising answer for them.
I said us, us, because that's where we're at as a nation where
half the country thinks it's thinks obvious tyrannies are
acceptable. And that's scary.
And Washington warned us about it.
And nowadays we can, we can mainline political party
histrionics into our veins all day long.
We've got 24/7 news streams. We carry one with us, you know,
every day in our pocket. And, and, and, and it's and it's
and it's amplified, right? It is magnified and amplified
and going back to like the 2016 time frame, like I live in
Washington DC. Washington DC in the United
States is the strongest of the strongholds for the Democratic
Party. It is the bluest of the blue.
And to give an example, in 2020, Washington DC voted 92% for Joe
Biden. So it's stronghold of the
Democratic Party. And back in 2016, Hillary
Clinton was a shoo in some polls had her like up 20%.
Everybody expected her to be the next president.
And certainly everyone in Washington, DC You know, my
neighbors were all hanging the buntings for her coronation.
And then the Grinch came along and pulled off the greatest
upset in in US political history.
And Donald Trump actually, actually won.
Well, all my friends were Democrats and it's most of my
family and friends and neighbors.
They went into deep despair and, and their political party
leaders and most of our mainstream media, instead of
kind of brushing them off and saying, oh, don't worry, we'll,
you know, we'll, we'll do better in another four years.
They took an opposite approach and they just started feeding
them hatred, hatred and, and violent political rhetoric,
right. Trump is Hitler.
He stole the election. You know, we had what I call the
Russia collusion hoax coup. And they, and what I saw with
these people is they turned right.
These are good loving people, but they, they just became
hooked on the hatred and, and to this day it, it, it, it still
occurs. I call it, you know, in America,
we call it TDs, Trump Derangement Syndrome.
And it comes in different levels.
Most of the people I know have level five Trump Derangement
Syndrome. They've eaten all the hatred.
He's Hitler. He's an existential threat to
democracy. None of these things actually
make sense. I mean, he was a president for
four years. The Republic stood.
We actually did a lot better under him than we have for the
last four. But but this is all the all the
violent, political, heated political rhetoric coming from
the Democratic Party and their members have just become hooked
and the. Hatred, yeah.
And you've warned. We're we're coming to the close.
I think it's, it's been a really fascinating, you have given a
fascinating analysis of this. I have so many questions, but I
think we're we're coming to a natural conclusion.
But one of the things that you say, I think it's quite early in
the book. You're actually saying that when
people believe a lie, when people believe an illusion, it
actually means that any atrocity is possible.
Yeah, I'm, I'm a big fan of the French philosopher Voltaire.
And Voltaire once said, anyone who can get you to believe
absurdities can get you to believe atrocity, can get you to
commit atrocities. Because once that the the the
reasonable faculties of the mind have been dominated, anything's
possible after that. And this is what I saw with my
friends and family and neighbors.
They came to believe absurdities.
And then they could at least maybe not commit atrocities, but
certainly support them. And that's what I saw happen in
my country. It's it's why I wrote my book.
You know, I didn't write my book for fame or fortune.
I, in fact, had to take a huge chunk out of my retirement
funds, my savings, just to get the book published.
But I got tired of hearing things that were just not
correct. And I thought, you know, there
might be some people who actually want to know the truth
of how these cases are handled and, and, and what I discovered
in my research. Yeah, incredible.
We're in a perilous state. I'm speaking to you of course
from UK, but we have seen, I think very similar things, maybe
not quite in the same way, of course, up to Prime Minister
level, but we've seen very devious activities by a
combination of the Metropolitan Police and the intelligence
services around crimes committed by people at high level in the
government. So we certainly see similar
things happening here. It isn't just America.
But yes, the outcome unless it's dealt with is very serious
indeed. And I, I think it's a really key
point that you make that ultimately it's beholden on all
of us to stand up and do the right things in order to get the
changes we'd like to see in America's case, through into the
Department of Justice and through into the CIA and the
other intelligence agencies. It has to be something that the
ordinary member of the public does in order to get things to
change for the better. Absolutely.
Joseph B Sweeney, I'm going to say thank you so much for
joining me. It's been utterly fascinating.
We'll pop up a picture of your book on screen again so people
know what they should go and look for.
What I'm going to say to our audience, please get hold of a
copy because you'll find it fascinating reading.
So many interesting cases where obviously you, Joseph, have been
able to go into them in intimate detail because you were there,
you were handling this material, you were dealing with the cases
and that's quite a journey through to produce this book.
So to the audience, what can you do?
Buy the book? This is the thing.
And one last question before I let you go.
Your, your background was as as a Ranger, so an infantryman
essentially in the Army. That's a very outdoors physical
occupation and I found it a very interesting jump across to
something which was much more desk and paperwork based.
What made you take that big plunge?
So as an infantry officer, all the fun is when you're a
Lieutenant because that's when you're a platoon leader down at
the tactical level. And as you get ranked and move
up the chain, you become a bureaucrat.
You're, you're, you know, you're, you're, you're helping
with all the logistical sides and you still have some
leadership, but it's not nearly as much fun as, as being a
Lieutenant and a platoon leader. And I fought to stay with my
infantry platoon for as long as I could.
But in So what I realized eventually was that, you know,
the, the paperwork, the bureaucracy part of the Army
just wasn't as challenging for me.
And I thought, well, if I'm going to be a bureaucrat, I
could find a job within the government that's more
challenging mentally. And so I got out and I went to
law school, and then I went right back into the government
and I found what I was looking for.
It was a very challenging job. I couldn't imagine a place to
have more fun practicing law than the Ciai can tell you I've
come closer to getting killed as a lawyer for the CIA than I ever
did as an Airborne Ranger qualified infantry officer.
Which is crazy, but true. Well, that says it all.
Let's leave it there. Joseph, thank you very, very
much for joining me. Just fascinating to hear your
analysis and to and to have a look in detail at at your
fascinating book. Thank you very much.
Thank you for having me, it was my pleasure.