Jerry Falwell Jr., Matt Gaetz

... and the top 7 things you need to watch out for in the Russia investigation. 

Falwell interview

John Solomon  0:00  

One. Alright folks, welcome back from the commercial break, and as promised Jerry Falwell, Jr, the president of Liberty University and one of the all around great guys, one of my good friends. Jerry, welcome to the show.

Jerry Falwell  0:13  

Good to be with you. I really appreciate it.

John Solomon  0:17  

We're, we're honored to have you and you have one of the most outrageous stories of media malfeasance that I've seen in the last few months.

Jerry Falwell  0:28  

First of all, I want to congratulate you on your perseverance and tenacity over the last three years and exposing the corrupt Obama administration and their department of justice and you never gave up... it's like when Winston Churchill gave that speech, I forget which college it was a commencement speech after World War Two. He only said three words. He said, never give up. That was his whole speech. And that reminds me of you because you just every night watch sean hannity be pounding a new angle and finally... looks like john Durham's finally gonna bring some justice those folks. I

John Solomon  1:05  

think so and thank you for your kind words. You know, the truth is the facts are always there people just had to be willing to go dig for them and we've been fortunate to get the truth out and thank you that means a lot.

Jerry Falwell  1:16  

Thank you for thank you for doing that.

John Solomon  1:20  

Thank you. That means a lot. Well, speaking of a lack of facts, your university and you were smeared in extraordinary ways back in March when you made the decision to keep your campus open during the coronavirus outbreak, and I have gone back and I can't find a single news article that went back and corrected itself and I want to read a couple headlines just to set this up for our readers because it's jaw dropping. I remember some of these I think the Daily Beast it was had the "if Liberty University reopens people will die." Remember that quote from a physician. Then there was The New York Times which used to be fit to read but I'm not sure it is anymore. "Liberty University brings back its students and coronavirus too" so they accused you of bringing Coronavirus into the campus. And then I think there are a couple other I think it was maybe the Financial Times had an article saying that 12 students promptly came down with coronavirus. Let me ask you was that actually tru?

Jerry Falwell  2:19  

No zero cases on campus with zero cases many students, about 1200 students came back we normally have about 8000 living on campus 16,000 attending classes there, none of them at all went to online format for those 16,000. But the ones that live on campus, some had elderly relatives at home, some didn't have high speed internet at their home so that they couldn't do their education. And others were just international students. So they came back and we took all the safety measures the governor of Virginia, "Governor black face" and a couple surprise inspections done right at the beginning and they gave us glowing reviews and reports on how well we were doing and following all the guidelines so we didn't break any rules. We did everything by the book, we protected our students, we put no trespassing signs all over campus to keep others out from bringing the virus end of the campus. This area's got about a quarter million people and we've only had about 189 cases and three deaths over the whole course of the pandemic and so it's not a hotspot by any means, but we still put up no trespassing signs, the only ones that we know who trespassed were the New York Times report... Pro Publica. 

John Solomon  3:43  

So it's trying to make your story come true. 

Jerry Falwell  3:46  

Yeah, complete disregard for the health of our students.

John Solomon  3:51  

It's just extraordinary. So no students have come down with Coronavirus. No faculty came down everything has been fine and you were able to give their students who were trapped a place to stay stay on campus even as others took the remote learning option. 

Unknown Speaker  4:09  

 I got thank you letters from so many parents who just so much appreciated us giving young people a place to shelter.

John Solomon  4:19  

It is remarkable and yet all the bad press you would swear that something horrific... and I have a couple other headlines I dug up as I was... we're gonna put all these headlines up on Just the News so people can see how bad the media really was on this, but I think it was the Washington Post. I'm just looking at this headline here. "An authoritarian power structure brought coronavirus to Liberty University," has the Post ever corrected that story or headline?

Unknown Speaker  4:42  

No none of them have and we've drafted a complaint a New York law firms drafted a complaint to New York Times that took me an hour to read the other night and it's it's gonna be fun to watch him squirm. But it's it's still I mean, all I have to do is come out. Well the problem is 750 different news outlets picked up their false story. And there's no way they can get those outlets to take no correction even if they decided to correct it, which they won't because they're so arrogant, but it's just I think they survive financially. They've can become more like BuzzFeed than the New York Times... all about clickbait all about, you know, I think actually, what I was told somebody wrote a book that used to work there said they actually take money from advertisers to print negative stories about the their advertisers' competitors. And so, the people read a story they think it's legitimate news story, but it's really just an ad a paid for ad... if that's true, then they become, you know, they become a shadow of what they once were, and it's sad to see. It was an American institution that was respected for a long time.

John Solomon  6:00  

Yeah, it was and it did a lot of great good over the years. And then somehow in these last five years... to me, it starts with the very story we talked talked about like Russia, where there are stories on the front page of the New York Times never been retracted against the President that are now blatantly false. And now, it carries on to folks like you. Do you think it's because you're conservative, because you're lying with Trump? Because you're a man of faith? What drives the media to to attack you and then when it's wrong, just pretend like nothing ever happened?

Jerry Falwell  6:30  

Yeah, I think it's because of my support for a non establishment candidate in early 2016. Trump is not traditional Republican, I think nobody ever really cared when conservatives supported Bush, McCain, Romney, but all of a sudden, if you support Trump, you're the Antichrist... they can't take you Anything that challenges their power structure. The Obama administration thought they had this country locked down they thought they had control,would have control for generations to come and would become a socialist nation. And that's why they were so arrogant in believing that they could just.... I'm not, I'm not using the right word, but just undo an election. And they, you know, they had that arrogance that made them think they could pull that off and, they found out quickly that the American people were not falling for their storyline and for their trickery. And so, they were shocked, I believe when Trump won and they couldn't do anything about it. I'm so excited. I'm cautiously optimistic about John Durham's conclusions. Rule of law depends on him coming through doing the right thing.

John Solomon  8:13  

Our country also dependent on an accurate media and we've got to find a way either to create a new generation of journalists or somebody to stop the sort of silliness that happened to you. I mean, you look in your families, your students are not not only satisfied with your performance, they're grateful for what you did. And you'd never know that from the hundreds and hundreds of news stories that were written during that moment of emotion. Speaking of students, you're finished for this year, but what happens in the fall? What are your plans for the fall as you get the university ready for September?

Jerry Falwell  8:44  

You know, I was listening to the President Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University last night... made a lot of sense what he said he, he said the science dictates that his school open. We feel the same way. The chances of someone college age contract in this virus and passing away is is almost zero. And that's about 80% of his community. Same thing at Liberty. We do have faculty members that are older and so we're looking at ways... like he's already announced, you know, putting plexiglass up to separate the professors from the students in the classroom. Other measures to protect the ones that might be at risk, but it all can be done and it all can be done safely. And it's business as usual and our enrollment is the same as it was this time last year. We're not trying to grow the resident program. Our online enrollment is up 10% over the lastyear, 

John Solomon  9:47  

How many online students do you have now?

John Solomon  9:49  

We just went over 100,000 two weeks ago, first time ever a previous high was 98,000 in 2014. And so now, we're gonna end up at about 106,000 for this for this fiscal year in the next year, we're up 10% over that. So it's just exploding and I think it's a way for the future for higher education, but so many prestigious Ivy League type schools think it's beneath them to provide online education to adults because it's just not traditional. It's not personally whatever the word is. But they're doing a disservice to our students. We tried to try to treat students like customers... we charge... we're in the lowest 25% of private colleges and our tuition for online and resident, and we want to keep it affordable and keep our best professors in the classroom. Instead of sending them off to Sweden to do research or something...

John Solomon  11:00  

I was on a plane a couple of months ago coming back from the Midwest and I sat next to this young student, young fellow who had just graduated and he had just finished the Liberty University online course. And he was a retired soldier. He was  retired military. And he said that so many of his colleagues in the military had taken advantage of Liberty because their lifestyle didn't allow to go away for six months of school, and being able to learn at night and on weekends was empowering for him. And so you're doing a lot particularly for our veterans and those in the military taking advantage of this online learning opportunity, aren't you?

Jerry Falwell  11:39  

Well, it's military. It's with 27% African Americans in our online university, we have lots of first responders we have 65% of our online students are low income, and 2000 of the hundred thousand are Virginia students and they qualify for special tuition assistance grant from the state of Virginia. Well, the governor of Virginia, that's the only group he targeted... The military, the minorities, the low income students, he eliminated that tuition assistance grant, just recently, just in the last few weeks.

John Solomon  12:18  

That's right.

Jerry Falwell  12:19  

We're providing that same grant now to any student in Virginia who wants to study online. But we're not just providing the money. We're buying their claim against the governor of Virginia because it's a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution to treat one group of students different from another. That way, they don't have to sue the governor. We're gonna do it for them. Should be interesting to watch that play out.

John Solomon  12:45  

We'll be looking for that lawsuit that'll be coming up soon, I imagine.

Jerry Falwell  12:49  

It'll be a little while but it's in the works for sure.

John Solomon  12:54  

You've been an innovator in the education space and the size of your student body is an affirmation that what you've done has transformed education and so now all we need to do is transform media so that they cover you a little more fairly that'll be the next big challenge for us all.

Jerry Falwell  13:09  

I don't know how you do that. I don't know how the government...

John Solomon  13:18  

eah, it's got to come from within. It's gotta start with... we were so wrong we have to just get this right and I just don't know whether that chain points been reached yet.

Unknown Speaker  13:27  

I don't know. I don't know that's a tough one but it's... you're right has to come from within the media itself. They have to return to the roots and try to be try to be real journalists.

John Solomon  13:40  

That's our mission. 

Jerry Falwell  13:43  

Like you are. 

John Solomon  13:44  

Well, thank you. You're very kind. On behalf of a profession that really wronged you, Jerry, I want to thank you  for joining us. We're gonna share this with our listeners and I know they're going to they're going to go back and look at these headlines and just be amazed by the the malfeasance that the profession, practiced against you and your your university and we will wish you a good summer and successful...

Jerry Falwell  14:05  

The worst part about it was they were on campus for several days during that week. They never spoke to anybody at Liberty. They talked to a doctor across town who had some students come see him, come to his practice because of upper respiratory colds and allergies and he told him that, but he told him you should talk to the on campus doctor who runs a clinic on campus, they refused to talk to her. But then when they left that Sunday about noon, they called us and said we already written a story but they asked a few questions they gave us till three o'clock when they published so they... it was all a set up. And it's just... it's all going to be outlined in this lawsuit. But it's something I think you'll enjoy when you see it.

John Solomon  14:55  

Oh, we're grateful that you stood up for the truth. And then also I have to shout out ane journalist who did get this right because William McGurn at the Wall Street Journal went back the only journalists to go back and find out, did it really happen. And he found out the truth which never happened.

Jerry Falwell  15:10  

He called us out of the blue. And we're so grateful for his... that started to get the word out, because everybody believed the original.

John Solomon  15:19  

New York Times, of course, you're gonna believe it, right?

Jerry Falwell  15:21  

A lot of people still believe it, but it's just, we're gonna fight and they're not gonna get away with it I promise.

John Solomon  15:27  

Now, that is good news to hear. We need to have more accountability in this profession if we're ever going to fix it. So, on behalf of Just the News, and john Solomon reports here, I want to thank you very much. I know you're very busy, but thanks for the time and we'll be sure to get this story out to our audience.

Jerry Falwell  15:41  

Now, John, great to be with you. Thank you so much.

John Solomon  15:44  

Thank you, sir. Have a good rest of the day. 

Gaetz interview

 

John Solomon  0:00  

Alright folks, welcome back from the commercial break. And as promised the Congressman Matt Gaetz from Florida is here with us. And I've got some news about Congressman Gaetz. He's got a brand new podcast called "Hot Takes with Matt Gaetz," you should check it out. It's awesome. I'm going to be a subscriber right away. Congressman, welcome to the show.

Matt Gaetz  0:19  

Oh, thanks so much, John. And thanks for mentioning my podcast "Hot Takes with Matt Gaetz," I think that the news of the day really opens the door into a lot of the work of the Congress. And so each and every weekday, I do about 20 minutes, so it's fast tight, and it'll get you ready on your drive home to be well informed as to how the news and work of the Congress informs on people's lives. So I'm super excited about it. And thanks for mentioning.

John Solomon  0:46  

That's fantastic. I'm adding it to my podcast list today once I found out about it, so I'll be a listener too. So that's really great fan. Congratulations. All right. There's so much going on. And let's start with the breaking news. So we have been without a FISA law for a couple months, we haven't had any terrible things happen. But there's an effort to ramrod through some version of a new law to get the FISA capabilities up and running again, I think you have some concerns about what they're trying to do behind the scenes. Can you describe a little bit just what's going on in the back doors of Congress right now?

Matt Gaetz  1:22  

I can, John, and this is literally unfolding during our conversation. President Trump last week, said that up until this point in time, he had really deferred to Mitch McConnell, on the design of a FISA reauthorization. And of course, those of us most concerned about how FISA had been weaponized against the President and used as a political tool, we really wanted to see major structural reforms, not just a little bit of virtue signaling, a little bit of sanding off some rough edges. We really wanted to change the way that system works. Because right now, John, it only is as good as the people running it right? There is no mechanism by which the system or the institution can stop corrupt people. And that really is the touchstone of our reform objective. And so the President set that as the standard, the Senate send over a bill. Interestingly, only two senators voted on the Republican side voted against the bill. It was Richard Burr, who wants no reforms. He's got a lot of his own problems right now, and then Rand Paul, who probably wouldn't support a reauthorization at all. And so then the President says he wants House Republicans to vote against it. And guess what, late last night about, you know, 9:30 10 o'clock at night, Nancy Pelosi didn't have the votes for the reauthorization that I think empowers the leadership and empowers the sort of intelligence apparatus over those of us who want to see major changes. So in a very short period of time, Nancy Pelosi is going to try to get a motion to approve a conference committee so that Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy's picks can go and work with Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer's picks to try to develop a legislative solution. I will be voting against that appointment of a conference committee. Because I don't think that you pick a club within a club within the Congress to deal with these major issues. I actually think that we need to open hearings. We need to come back to Washington. We need to bring forward witnesses. We need to hear a lot more from the Inspector General. But as we sit here today, John, Nancy Pelosi trying to get a smaller and smaller group of senators and congressmen together to try to reorient the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

John Solomon  3:45  

That's a storyline we've heard time again, when there are tough decisions. You just tried to get a party of a few to pass what the party of the rest of us will have to live with. And let's remind folks that just recently the Inspector General the Justice Department reviewed 29 FISA applications, and all 29 had errors that violated the FBI...  they were 29 for 29. Bad. There's got to be something far more sweeping to be done to correct that behavior. So it'll be interesting to see how this vote plays out. Do you have the votes for conference?

Matt Gaetz  4:19  

Yeah, yeah. Hey, John, let me just highlight two of the major substantive issues that are creating the thrust.One is whether or not this will convert from a non adversarial process to an adversarial process. So right now, as you've recorded, the government sort of goes in with the judge, and there's no one else there asking tough questions about the predicating material in the sub sourcing and the individuals that are cited as having unique credibility on these questions. So we believe that there should be a permanent ... there to ask the tough questions, and try to poke the holes in the government's case, so that we really get a more complete version of the facts. So that's I'd say the first major rub, some of the national security type folks don't like that some of the civil libertarians do. The second is what standard one should have to acquire to do bulk collection of people's internet searches of their emails, and Warren Davidson and so ... Senator Gaines and Senator Wyden in the Senate have led the effort to restore the probable cause standard, rather than just a suspicion standard. And the reason that's important is that, while the probable cause standard certainly isn't perfect, it happens to be the best ever designed by human beings on the planet. And we have a real doctrine around that standard, we know what it means. And when you water it down for one particular group of searches or infringements on rights, it really can fall off the rails very quickly. So if you're wondering what it is we're debating about in the private and in the back rooms, it's those two principal issues.

John Solomon  5:58  

That's important. Those are important. issues and the idea in every other court in America, you have a representative when when you're accused of something and the FISA court is the one place where you don't so having that, what we call amicus or that lawyer in absentia I'd call it, is going to be an important reform, if it can get done that would be transformational. And it's interesting. There are people on the left and the right that both agree that that's a good solution, right?

Matt Gaetz  6:24  

Absolutely. On these issues of intelligence, and surveillance, and civil rights, you can't really map it out by Republicans versus Democrats. We have republicans and democrats on really both sides of issue. It really is more about whether or not someone believes in a stronger government control or more individual liberty. I typically fall more on the individual liberty side of that spectrum. But certainly we see how the government control has been abused. When you see that the system that has been designed and built cannot survive against corrupt people, that it can't quell that corruption. That's when you need these types of major structural changes.

John Solomon  7:10  

Those are such important issues as is the probable cause standard, because that's the standard for search warrants, generally. And yet the FISA warrant has had the lower standard, which is potentially lead to the sort of issues that we've seen in the the Russia case where their probable cause wasn't even in sniffing distance of what they were proposing to the court. They had nothing, they had third hand suggestion of suggestions. Yeah.

Matt Gaetz  7:34  

Yeah. What probable cause it was just a corrupt cause for them.

John Solomon  7:38  

There you go. That's important line. Now remember that line. Well, the, I want to ask you because since the last time you were on our podcast, we've had a dizzying array of disclosures and we sort of went from a period where you were lucky to squeeze any water out of the cactus to get some disclosure to now dramatic disclosures coming every two or three days in the Russia investigation, I want to ask of all the things you've seen, and you you were one of the earliest people to see this for what it was and to call it out, and to put pressure on the Justice Department to give us disclosure... What are the most important new developments of the investigation of the investigators in your mind?

Matt Gaetz  8:17  

To me, the ... disclosure, that Russian intelligence was not only targeting the sub sources of the Steele dossier, that our own government knew that the sub sources of the Steele dossier had been targeted by foreign intelligence, and we relied on it anyway, presented it to a court anyway, and didn't tell the court that the sub sources were being targeted by Russian intelligence. To me the reason that's so significant, John, is because it proves what we've been saying about the left always accusing us of what they're doing. You know, the notion that you had a DNC funded operation that was commingling, at least an interest, at least in perspective, perception and ambition, with Russian intelligence... It really I think wraps this all up. When it comes to how high this went up in to the Obama White House. I think we've still got a little more digging left to do. And let me suggest to you what I think are some of the most important disclosures yet to come. We know our intelligence community had to Tom Sawyer, a few other countries into doing the work that we weren't allowed to do. You know, it wasn't always the US intelligence community whitewashing the proverbial fence. When it came to George Papadopoulos and Dr. Carter Page and other we got others to do it for us. And so those correspondence with foreign governments, foreign actors, could not have solely occurred at sort of the Peter Strzok level, or even the Jim Comey level. I think that for those other governments who have gotten engaged and involved, and that were willing to do some of the dirty work would have to get tied back to senior officials in the Obama White House, you know, and maybe all the way to the top. And that's what I think is around the corner in the disclosure cycle that we're in.

John Solomon  10:22  

If you had to guess. I mean, we talked about five eyes the alliance of America's closest intelligence allies. A lot of a lot of smoke signals at Great Britain was involved. There's a text message from Pete Strzok a few days before the Steele dossier is leaked, where he talks about exposure to Great Britain's intelligence service and he's not talking about Steele because Steele has been out of service for a long time, but is Great Britain one of those countries that we might learn some activities about if you had to guess?

Matt Gaetz  10:52  

Yeah, I would think that Great Britain would be a precisely you know, the type of country that we would go to when you look at the activities in and out of London, when you look at some of the names of people involved. I think it's quite possible that senior Obama administration officials, maybe even the President, or Vice President, but we still have to discover we still have to get more documents and communications revealed. But I think that it would have had to occur at that level. Like I don't think Great Britain or Australia or Italy or any other country gets involved in performing our Intel operations on a political hit job from like, just a Peter Strzok or Jim Comey.

John Solomon  11:35  

Yeah, there's no doubt and we know from your great interviews back in 2018, that Bill Priestap, the man who seemed to have a conscience according to his handwritten notes, at least, that Priestap was in London, and when he was asked what he was doing there in May of 2016, he said he couldn't talk about it because it was part of the ongoing Russia case. So London I think is going to become an intersection. Italy, Austria... do those come to mind?

Matt Gaetz  12:01  

Hey, John, do you remember who was the station chief for the CIA over in London? At that time?

John Solomon  12:06  

I believe it may be our current CIA director, Gina Haspel. 

Matt Gaetz  12:11  

Weird. 

John Solomon  12:12  

Yes, the connections are pretty remarkable. And my reporting indicates that the CIA and Gina Haspel have been very helpful to John Durham's investigation in recent weeks. And so we may get some pretty remarkable disclosures here because the CIA would... let me ask you this, the CIA would probably be the most logical intersection point if you were going to try to ask your allies to get involved in something that U.S. intelligence or U.S. law enforcement couldn't do yet because the evidence wasn't warranting of it. That's where you would probably turn right the CIA?

Matt Gaetz  12:42  

One would think that that would be where you would go for the engagement. But, you know, that's why I think also, we got to get these recordings or transcripts if they exist, from the Papadopoulos and Carter Page offensives that our government was running. inconceivable to me that someone would run intel at Page and Papadopoulos without having some sort of recording device. And so that means that somewhere, those transcripts of what page and Papadopoulos were saying, are available. Okay? We have not seen or heard about those yet. And I think they're gonna really, really shed a lot of light on the total lack of predication, because I think you're going to see Page and Papadopoulos when intel is being run at them saying things like, hey, you know, we're not breaking the law. We're not doing anything illegal with Russia. That's certainly exculpatory.

John Solomon  13:37  

Yeah, no, we've seen at least one of those transcripts from Papadopoulos already. The Halper interactions in September, but he has long said he suspected he's told me this. I know he's told you this. George Papadopolis that he thought Alexander Downer was recording him on his cell phone when they met at the London Bar in May. If such a recording exists at that time, that could be really essential evidence

Matt Gaetz  13:59  

Absolutely and I can't imagine that Downer would be running the operation he was running without a recording device. We'll see.

John Solomon  14:08  

Yeah, that's very important. I think those are going to be big revelations. How disturbed are you to learn about all the things you've learned about Mike Flynn? I know they're gonna release the Mike Flynn. Transcript about the Russian ambassador, quite frankly, we know so much about it. That's going to be almost anticlimactic. But the conduct of the FBI and keeping the case open when there was no basis to do so when their own career agents said shut it down. Given the timeframe of that weekend in early January, do you think the White House was meddling in the Flynn investigation?

Matt Gaetz  14:40  

Oh, we we know better than that. John, we know, based on the unmasking logs and we know based on the meeting notes and the Susan Rice email that the Flynn activity did go to the top. That was something that President Obama was directly involved in that Vice President Biden was directly involved in. We just have to now go through and figure out at which decision points, were they calling the shots, but their involvement is now I think, well evidence. It's just a question of which particular decisions did they make or guide rather than simply setting the tone that they want to be as disruptive as possible and there's not just disruptive but delegitimizing as possible. This wasn't an effort to stumble the President. It was quite literally an effort to have the country believe that he wasn't legitimately elected. And that has done far more damage to our democracy than anything the left has accused President Trump of doing.

John Solomon  15:40  

It is remarkable if you're Vladimir Putin, you have to be thanking all the people who carried out the three year investigation because it achieved more damage to our democracy than any of the other activities that the Russians ever managed to do in America and he turned our own intelligence agencies into his propaganda arm. It's really remarkable. Really remarkable. We've talked a lot over the last few years about the FBI and has it come to grips with what it did wrong? And is it on a better course now? What's your diagnosis? If you're the doctor and the FBI is a patient, what's your diagnosis of the current Christopher Wray FBI this day, a couple weeks after he announced the internal investigation of the Flynn matter in the earlier review? Do you feel like the FBI is coming to grips with what he did wrong and what he can get right?

Matt Gaetz  16:31  

Well, I'm a lawyer, not a doctor, but I would not give the FBI a clean bill of health. Perhaps the the acuity of the disease is diminished because more of us are actively engaged in oversight than when Paul Ryan was in charge. And the FBI basically knew that the Justice Department would never have to really respond to document requests because Ryan was never going to be serious about oversight. Now, I think that you know, you got the President more aware of what happened now that there's more attention given to the issue. But the acuity level of the disease is not as bad. But I do believe there are chronic ailments that still exist at the FBI. And I think that the proverbial X ray to torture the metaphor a bit more, would be the Inspector General report that said, gosh, you know, I looked at these dozens of files and, you know, every single time we opened the file, there's something that the government had done wrong. And that is just not indicative of a clean bill of health.

John Solomon  17:35  

It's not, and you can see that some of these issues like cheating on the FISA, failing to manage confidential human sources like Christopher Steele went far beyond that case, that their systemic issues of cheating that the FBI has just gotten away with for so long. And I think that's why your oversight and others who have provided it is beginning to at least focus attention on what needs to be fixed. That's remarkable accomplishment by you and Congressman Jordan and Senators Grassley, Johnson, and Graham. Speaking of Senator Graham, we get Rod Rosenstein on the box for the first time next week as a witness. What do you think are the most important questions that Rod Rosenstein needs to answer?

Matt Gaetz  18:19  

Rod Rosenstein still hasn't answered the questions that I asked him nearly two years ago. You know, Mr. Deputy Attorney General, your signature is on this FISA renewal. Did you read it before you signed it? And the answer was like a handful of howdy in a mouthful of much obliged. He wanted to give me a you know, 12 minute description of the FISA process, instead of simply answering the question whether he had read what he had signed. I also don't believe that Rod Rosenstein has sufficiently been called to account for suggesting that the 25th amendment be invoked, and that he would wear a wire and his answer was well, I was joking. That doesn't cut it. You don't get to joke about removing the President of the United States and wearing a wire on him when you were a deputy attorney general. And so I think that there, there were elements of this coup attempt that installed people, not only, you know, in the Obama government, obviously, but the Trump government. I mean, Comey was essentially the inside man, that goes from the Obama government to the Trump government, and then they were able to get Rosenstein in and then Sessions who you know, I mean, Good Lord, I hope he's not returning to Washington with any any power to wield. Jeff Sessions came in employee at the Justice Department rather than a leader and Rod Rosenstein was able to keep this view legitimizing on their investigation rolling, when it should have been shut down. It should never begun. It was corrupt from the beginning. But there were so many opportunities to peel back the layers of the onion to realize that this was a rotten political endeavor. Not counterintelligence or law enforcement endeavor and to shut it down but instead Rosenstein... I think a lot of to play out with the hopes that, you know, there could be some obstruction of justice smear on the back end.

John Solomon  20:13  

Yeah, it's almost the same thing they did with Flynn, right? We can't get them on a counterintelligence threat. Let's even catch him lying. I think they couldn't get Trump on anything Russia collusion because of zero evidence. So then the idea was, could they create up a creative crime out of obstruction? It seems like they use the same pattern twice to to hamper this administration. And that's exactly what our founding fathers never intended our law enforcement apparatus to do. One last question on Rosenstein. Recently, the scoping memo came out the August 2017 scoping memo, and it clearly shows that one of the predicates he gave to Special Prosecutor Muller was stuff derived solely from the Steele dossier and specifically information in the Steele dossier that by August 2017 have been debunked. This is the he met with the two Igors in Russia, the FBI knew not only that, that that had not happened, but that it most likely came from a Russian intelligence information campaign, that specific allegation of Carter Page. How problematic is it that the special counsel investigation was predicated on evidence that the FBI knew to be false and disproven?

Matt Gaetz  21:21  

It is problematic that that was the original predication. But as I think your question drills down on, it's equally problematic, that there were continued renewals, and they were continued affirmations of the legitimacy of this investigation, long after we learned of its corrupt origins and of its political ambitions. And that's really where Rosenstein has to be held to account. You know, Rosenstein did not start this investigation. I mean, I honestly think that this really all started in the Obama White House. But then Rosenstein is sort of the lifer brought in to ensure that it isn't shut down. That it's able to be maintained. And just like you said, when they when they needed some paper, to try to legitimize the Steele dossier as a basis to continue, Rosenstein was the guy that developed it. And remember, we weren't being quiet during this time. You know, you're reporting, Sarah Carter's reporting, the the investigative work that Meadows and Jordan and DeSantis and myself were doing was continually calling into question his dossier. You had Schiff and their team saying the dossier is true. Nothing in the dossier is unproven. And that's why Rosenstein wanted to give the imprimatur of legitimacy to it with the scoping memo to try to crowd out at least in the focus of the Muller team, the legitimate and now proven correct criticisms that that we were offering.

John Solomon  22:49  

Yeah, no, that's the key but history will look back at Adam Schiff public statements in 2017 and 2018, I think in a very harsh light, because they've all... nearly all been proven wrong. Well, Congressman, it's always a pleasure to have a conversation with you whether in a podcast or in the green room, I want to thank you for all you've done to help my reporting and to help us get the truth on this. And we wish you luck with your podcast. And with all those negotiations you're headed into with the FISA law later today.

Matt Gaetz  23:18  

Yeah, thank you very much for it. And John, one thing we just have to keep in mind is that the left doesn't stay stagnant with their tactics. They evolved from Russia to Ukraine, you know, the work you did to blow a hole in the Russia story, the Russia hoax really, was something that they didn't want to have happen in Ukraine. And so they were actually deft enough, nimble enough to turn their cannons on you, on Rudy Giuliani on, you know, those of us in Congress who've been very active. And I think it's just really important for the listeners to understand that these podcast platforms where you can give direct reporting, or I can give a direct analysis on "Hot Takes with Matt Gaetz," it's so essential so that people don't don't have to endure that filter. And so that we can actually ensure that we direct the government to its highest and most proper virtues.

John Solomon  24:10  

That's such a great point. Getting beyond the filter of the media, who was a co conspirator in this whole Russia case is so important. And thank you for making that point. It's a very, very important point. All right, folks, we'll be back from the commercial break in a couple seconds to wrap things up again. Thank you, Congressman Matt Gaetz. That was a lot of fun.