Best of the Program | Guest: Rep. Chris Stewart | 9/26/19

Hey podcasters, it's Thursday and a great podcast for you to listen to today to really gain perspective.

Right before we went on the air and started recording the podcast, we got the raw data from the whistleblower.

And so we just went through it.

And that's what this podcast is about, just going line by line.

And we stumbled into some things that I don't think you're going to hear anywhere else.

This is not about Joe Biden.

And this really isn't about Donald Trump.

It's what Donald Trump is trying to expose.

You'll understand why Nancy Pelosi was so adamant that we have to impeach him.

This is a battle of titans, and you'll understand it in totally new perspective just by listening to today's podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck Program

To the Honorable Richard Burr, Chairman, Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate, and the Honorable Adam Schiff, Chairman, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House of Representatives.

Dear Chairman Burr and Chairman Schiff, I am reporting.

This is the whistleblower now.

This is August 12th, 2019.

I am reporting an urgent concern in accordance with the procedures outlined in 50 USC, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

This letter is unclassified when separated from the attachment.

In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S.

government officials that the President of the United States is using his power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S.

elections.

Wow, that's quite a charge.

The interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the president's main domestic political rivals.

The president's personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort.

Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.

Okay, so I want to set this out from the outset.

In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S.

government officials.

So in other words,

what he's about to present, he has no first-hand knowledge of.

But even if he did, what he's saying, I don't know if there's a problem.

He said, over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S.

officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort.

The information provided herein was relayed to me in the course of official interagency business.

It is routine for U.S.

officials with responsibility for a particular regional or functional portfolio to share such information with one another in order to inform policymaking and analysis.

So, in other words, I want you to know we're not doing anything weird here.

I was not a direct witness to most of the events described.

Let me read that again.

I was not a direct witness to most of the events described.

However, I found my colleagues' accounts of these events to be credible because in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted a

fact pattern that was consistent with one another.

In addition, a variety of information consistent with these private accounts has been reported publicly.

Now, let me tell you something.

First of all,

we'll let you decide whether there's anything in this.

But I just, I want you to know, I really truly believe we would have read this document differently had the press and the intelligence community not spent the last three and a half to four years trying to take this president down on everything.

This used to mean something when you'd have a so-called whistleblower.

But does anybody trust the press, the intelligence community, the DOJ, any of it?

They have so discredited themselves that you don't know what's real and what's not.

He says, I am deeply concerned that the actions described below constitute a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or executive order that does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters.

It is consistent with the definition of an urgent concern in US C 50 blah blah blah.

I am therefore fulfilling my duty to report this information through proper legal channels to the relevant authorities.

I am also concerned that these actions pose risk to the U.S.

national security and undermine the U.S.

government's efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S.

elections.

To the best of

my knowledge, the entirety of this statement is unclassified when separated from the classified enclosure.

Stu, do we have the classified enclosure?

Was that there is a classified appendix which is attached to it?

Okay, only a little bit of black boxes, right?

Yeah, there's, yes.

Yeah.

I have

endeavored to apply the classification standards outlined in Executive Order 13526 and to separate out information that I know or have reason to believe is classified for national security purposes.

If a classification

marking is applied retroactively, I believe it is incumbent upon the classifying authority to explain why such a marking was applied and to which specific information it pertains.

So here's his case.

One, the 25th July presidential phone call.

Now remember, we went over this yesterday.

And because you may have missed yesterday's show and maybe really only heard

the reporting with ellipses,

the media in newspaper, online, on television, on all fronts

used an ellipse, three, you know, dot, dot, dot, used the ellipse to to skip over

five about 540 words

now I've never seen that done before but they removed almost an entire page between I have a favor to ask

and could you look into Joe Biden

what

what those ellipses took out was the president looking to say to the the president of the Ukraine,

I need you to understand, we think you're surrounded by some of the bad guys that hacked into the DNC servers.

That server is still lost.

We need to know where that server is.

We think one of the oligarchs, maybe in your circle, has it or knows where it is.

We need to know that because we've been doing this investigation with

Robert Mueller, and he's got nothing.

He's been looking into me.

He should be looking into Russia, and that those Russian oligarchs have infiltrated your oligarchs, and we think they're working together.

Now, that is national security.

That's doing what the Congress and everybody else should have been doing.

But they didn't.

So here's how they described the phone call in this whistleblower's report.

Early in the morning of July 25, the president spoke by telephone with the Ukrainian president, Zelensky.

I do not know know which side initiated the call, but this was the first publicly acknowledged call between the two leaders since a brief congratulatory call after Mr.

Zelensky won the presidency on April 21st.

Multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call informed me that after the initial exchange of pleasantries, the president used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests.

Stu, fact-check.

With personal interests,

after they had

the exchange of pleasantries, the president used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests.

I mean, it certainly wasn't the remainder of the call.

There was other things discussed as well.

And you could certainly, if you want to take the worst reading of Trump's words, that they were only about his own personal interest,

then you could say that to some degree.

However, his personal interests seemingly align with a national interest in that if he had a vice president of the United States

participating in corruption related to favoring his child

and also a bunch of money over a billion dollars disappearing, that would be of the national interest of the United States.

Sure would be.

But beyond that, you know it wasn't in his personal interest because he said, I need you to look into, apparently they call it crowd strike.

He didn't even understand what he was talking about.

It did seem like he was reading notes about what he was supposed to say.

He was briefed on here's what you need to tell them to further the Russian investigation.

That's a pretty big thing just to overlook because that was the main thrust of the call.

And if you watched, again,

mainstream news last night, the way you understood everything we're talking about right now is dot, dot, dot.

And a little bit.

They didn't cover this.

They just said, I want you to do me a favor.

Can you look into Joe Biden and his son?

Incredible.

We know what happened.

I've been doing this, so we should play at some point today.

Yeah, okay.

Multiple White House officials with direct knowledge informed me, namely, he sought to pressure Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the president 2020 re-election bid.

That is untrue.

He mainly, listen to this, he mainly sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the president's 2020 re-election bid.

He did not pressure him,

first of all.

He did not ask him to take steps to help him in his re-election bid.

Right.

I mean, obviously, again, the worst reading of it, you could say that, right?

You could say he did use the word reciprocal.

He did ask for things.

And you could say if you're the president of Ukraine, the president of the United States is mentioning stuff.

It goes to the top of your heap of

things to do.

Of course it does.

So you can argue these things, things, but again, a lot of assumption here.

But that was not.

Yeah, and that was not the first thing on the list.

The first thing on the list was help us investigate and stop Russia from taking your military apart and interfering in our elections.

We need this information.

Can you find this?

Totally legitimate.

Totally legitimate.

Stu, have you seen anything big that

we have already read that we need?

Yes, there's one very big thing in here as part of the accusation that directly relates to this program and and specifically today's radio program

because when they're talking about the circumstances leading up to the 25th of july presidential phone call this is section four

they discuss uh a series of articles which they find suspicious appearing in an online publication called the hill

The author of those stories is our guest in the third hour of the program, John Solomon.

John Solomon is

not a conspiracy theorist.

John Solomon is a well-known award-winning investigative journalist.

He worked for The Times.

He worked for The Washington Post.

He now runs

the Associated Press.

He now runs the

editorial section for the Hill.

But he's done the investigative reporting on this, and he has been on this for years.

Years.

This is not a Trump thing.

Now, what they're accusing, what they're basically saying in this complaint is to say Trump asks for this favor.

Hey, look into Biden.

There's a bunch of backroom dealings between them.

The threat of withholding funds may or may not have occurred, blah, blah, blah.

And one of the ways Ukraine is

helping Donald Trump and trying to win his favor is by people in the Ukrainian government leaking information to essentially John Solomon at the Hill.

This is ridiculous.

This is a ridiculous, ridiculous charge.

John Solomon has been working on this story literally for years.

We have worked with him on this story.

We know him.

We know how it works.

We know who is also helping him with it.

We don't know all of his sources, but we also know how hard it has been to get anybody in Ukraine to actually help him and speak.

Especially when

Obama was in office.

Okay, so let's go through.

The president asked, pressured Mr.

Zelensky to initiate or continue an investigation into the activities of the former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

Now, you'll notice that these are flipped because that's not the first thing he did.

In the phone call, he did, what is bullet point number two, ask them to assist purportedly uncovering the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election that originated in Ukraine with specific requests that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee and examined by U.S.

cybersecurity from CrowdStrike, which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC's network in 2016.

So let me ask,

we have our foreign affairs and military expert here for military intelligence, Jason Patrol.

And Jason,

let me see if I have this right.

Is he asking

to

find where these things are and who is involved in helping Russia hack

the DNC servers?

Or is he saying here, hey,

I want those DNC servers.

I want to see what's on those DNC servers.

Can you help me find those?

It sounds like, so I think this ties directly into what Stu was just talking about with that.

That's the section actually I'm like scrutinizing the most right now in this report is where he's referencing that Solomon article in the Hill.

All of these like cases, all of these instances that are bulleted out,

they're all kind of connected.

So they're all kind of centering around corruption, but they're all they

they they involve multiple different officials, not just Joe Biden and his son.

So the crowd strike stuff is involved, and I think he was just looking.

It sounded like CrowdStrike.

So if anybody doesn't know, this is a U.S.

firm

called CrowdStrike.

Explain what they did.

They assisted in identifying who was involved with hacking the DNC.

So before they even knew, you know, how the heck this stuff got put on, you know, DCLeaks.com or whatever, they went in to look and actually do the forensics, the computer forensics, to find out who was involved.

And they were the ones that were very pivotal in helping to identify that it was Russian intelligence.

So CrowdStrike looked into that.

They were like, okay, the Russians are involved.

We,

U.S.

intelligence officials, came to the same conclusion.

And then they also continued their work, and CrowdStrike found out, and this was not in his report, but they also found out that the Russians were involved in hacking the actual Ukrainian military.

Correct.

So there was a lot involved in that.

So, Stu, would you go back and find in yesterday's actual transcript what the president was asking for?

Because I think this is different than what he's saying here in this memo.

And let's start with the transcript from yesterday where he talks about CrowdStrike and what he was asking for.

The best of the Glenbeck program.

Hey, it's Glenn, and you're listening to the Glenn Beck program.

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It's available wherever you download your favorite podcasts.

From behind my cardboard microphone.

Yes, I'm not a doctor, but I...

Oh, no, wait a minute.

Yes, I am.

It's the Glenn Beck program.

And we're going over the Select Committee on Intelligence report from the whistleblower.

And we found some interesting things.

Stu, can you...

Can you just kind of cover what we've already covered in a condensed form?

Yes, I think I can.

Going through the timeline is a little difficult.

We talked a little bit about this last

time,

last hour.

The accusation from the whistleblower essentially revolves around a few things.

This call that we all talked about yesterday, where Trump

talks to him about Biden, talks to the president of Ukraine about

crowd strike and these big issues related to the election.

That is part of the accusation.

Again, this person

says that they were not a direct witness to basically any of these events.

Okay, so it's important to know.

It's all secondhand information from this person.

So to us, it's third and fourthhand.

So

she or he goes through this.

When do you think it's a she

said she or he?

Well, no.

Should I say they them?

No, you've been saying she all morning.

They them?

No, you've been saying she all morning.

I don't want to assign a gender

for this particular gender.

I don't know if you knew something that I didn't know because you keep saying she, and then you bait yourself.

Don't bait me.

All right.

So

basically, this person is accusing there being a problem there.

They go on to say one of the big issues that is an indicator here is that they slid these transcripts over to a much highly much more highly secured computer system, one that would not normally hold such transcripts.

So the transcript that we got yesterday, the phone call, they say

there was nothing secret about this.

Why is it not top, top secret?

Again, and this is their case.

Yeah.

Why did the White House move this transcript and actually the actual digital recording over to a super secure top secret, which is not usually done for something that would just contain this kind of language?

Right.

And so the accusation is they knew there was a problem in this call, and therefore they did this to hide it from people.

We can get into the alternate explanation to that here in a second, which I think when you lay out the whole case, fits pretty well as to why they would do this.

But this is the accusation.

We're just going through the accusations here.

Now, we are going on the assumption of a couple of things.

One, we're not going to assign motive.

However, we will look at past actions and take that into account.

And no one is guilty.

You have to prove them guilty.

We will assume that both the DNC and Donald Trump are innocent.

But we're trying to figure out a couple of things.

One,

this is not a smoking gun.

If you make this about Joe Biden, And you make this about this phone call, this is not a smoking gun.

So why,

after this time of never going for impeachment, why did people suddenly flip without any information and they immediately went, impeachment, he's got to be removed.

They've made this the battle, right?

And it wouldn't work out to their advantage.

So what is it?

Are they just really crusaders, or is there something else going on?

Well, we've kind of stumbled into something in this reading of this memo.

This is not about Joe Biden.

This memo has very little to do with Joe Biden and his son.

I believe that's the cake and the circus for the masses.

That's what has been given to the media because the media can understand, mmm, Trump bad, Joe Biden good.

Okay,

and so they're giving that to the masses, but that's not the show that's really happening.

That is misdirection.

Because as you look in this, it has very little to do with Joe Biden.

The case that Trump seems to be making in this,

and the reason why I think he has attorney bar on all of this.

Yeah, okay, well, you got to talk to our attorney general.

You can only say that if Donald Trump needs to be impeached, then our attorney general is in on it from the start.

And that may be.

I don't think so, but that may be.

Or is it that Donald Trump has a theory that is pretty sound

and

he's investigating it because he doesn't trust anyone,

but he trusts Attorney Barr.

So you have Attorney General Barr

going and shadowing with Rudy Giuliani.

And what is it that they're looking for?

We're going to lay this all out for you here in just a few minutes, and I'll answer all those questions.

But I want to get back into this memo so you have all of it.

We left it at the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature.

One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.

Or did it?

I do not know whether similar messages or measures were taken to restrict access to other records of the call, such as contemporaneous handwritten notes by those who were listening in.

Three, ongoing concerns.

This is the whistleblower.

On 26 July, day after the call, U.S.

Special Representative for Ukraine negotiations, Kurt Volcker, visited Kiev.

By the way, we should explain Kiev.

Kiev is what we've always grown up saying, but that is because that was the Soviet name, and the people in Ukraine actually find that offensive.

The name is not pronounced Kiev.

That was the Soviet translation and the Soviet renaming and kind of just a dig and a little salt in the wound for Ukraine.

The same way that they say the Ukraine.

We're all used to that.

It's supposed to be just Ukraine.

Just Ukraine.

It is a sovereign nation.

So you'll notice U.S.

diplomats, you notice Biden in the video saying Kiev because it's seen as a measure of respect for Ukraine as a sovereign nation.

And I keep saying, I got Kiev.

I keep saying the Ukraine, and it's not.

They're both Uprites.

All right.

26th July, day after the call, U.S.

Special Representative Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volcker visit Kyiv and met with President Zelensky and a variety of Ukrainian political figures.

Ambassador Volcker was accompanied in his meetings by U.S.

Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sonderland.

Based on multiple readouts of these meetings recounted to me by various U.S.

officials, Ambassadors Volcker and Sonderlin reportedly provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership on how to navigate the demands that the president had made of Mr.

Zelensky.

I also learned from multiple U.S.

officials that on or about 2nd of August, Mr.

Giuliani reported he traveled to Madrid to meet with one of President Zelensky's advisors.

The U.S.

officials characterized this meeting, which was not recorded publicly at the time, as a direct follow-up to the President's call with Mr.

Zelensky about the cases they had discussed.

Separately, multiple U.S.

officials told me that Mr.

Giuliani had reported privately reaching out to a variety of other Zelensky advisors, including chief of staff and acting chairman of the security service of Ukraine.

I don't know whether those officials met or spoke with Mr.

Giuliani, but I was told separately by multiple U.S.

officials that Mr.

Yermak and Mr.

Bakanov intended to travel to Washington in mid-August.

On August 9th, the president told reporters: I think President Zelensky is going to make a deal with President Putin and he'll be invited to the White House.

And we look forward to seeing him.

He's already been invited to the White House and he wants to come, and I think he will.

He's a very reasonable guy.

He wants to see peace in Ukraine, and I think he'll see it coming very soon, actually.

End quote.

So, what is all of this about?

If you remember in the phone call, Mr.

Zelensky asked for Rudy Giuliani to come.

Can you brief me on these things?

Can you help us?

And Zelensky was already aware of all of the corruption that Mr.

Trump was talking about.

Now, the circumstances leading up to the July 25th presidential phone call, according to the whistleblower, we're reading the transcript as it was was given to the House and the Senate earlier this morning.

Beginning in late 2019, a series of articles appeared in an online publication called The Hill.

These articles, several Ukrainian officials, most notably Prosecutor General Yuri Lusenko, made a series of allegations against other Ukrainian officials and current and former U.S.

officials.

Mr.

Lusenko and his colleagues alleged, according to John John Solomon at the Hill, who, by the way, is coming up in about 40 minutes, to the very best of my knowledge.

Oh, wait, wait, wait.

I'm on the wrong page.

That was four, so I got to go to five now.

Hang on, let me pay.

All right, now,

Mr.

Lusenko from

Ukrainian government,

alleged that the Ukraines possessed evidence that Ukrainian officials, namely head of National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and member of parliamentary

Serhi Lyshenko, had interfered in the 2016 U.S.

presidential election, allegedly in collaboration with the DNC and the U.S.

Embassy in Kyiv.

That's quite a charge.

The U.S.

Embassy in Kyiv, specifically U.S.

Ambassador

Marie Yavanovich, who had criticized Mr.

Lizenko's organization for its poor record in fighting corruption, had allegedly obstructed Ukrainian law enforcement agencies' pursuit of corruption cases, including by providing a do not prosecute list, and had Ukrainian prosecutors banned from traveling to the United States, especially to prevent them from delivering their evidence about the 2016 U.S.

elections.

Also, that former Vice President Biden had pressured former Ukrainian President Petro Proshenko in 2016 to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor general, Viktor Shorkin, in order to quash a purported criminal probe into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board the former Vice President's son, Hunter, sat.

Now,

what's interesting about this

is

this is

what Trump is operating on.

This is the part that the media will never tell you about.

They'll say he was just after Joe Biden.

He was asking for a favor.

He pressured.

No, no.

The countercharge, the other side of this is

that the DNC working with the former government that thought they would be in power forever, the Democrats had absolutely, nobody had any idea that that government was going to be overturned by a comedy talk show host.

Okay, remember, this is the guy who's like the Jon Stewart of Ukraine.

He's the guy the president was talking to.

And the reason why he won, he never did any debates.

He never did anything.

He never stated policy.

He just said, this is all insane.

And we're corrupt and it's got to stop.

Nobody would have thought he won.

So the Democrats, if this is true, the Democrats thought they they have all of the hatches closed.

There's no water going to be leaking out of this.

We're all fine.

The allegation is from Luchenko was that

the government at the highest levels, in collusion with our U.S.

ambassador

appointed by Obama, right?

was

they were all working together.

The DNC had come over and said, hey, we need some dirt on Donald Trump.

And the

Ukrainian government, working through oligarchs, went to Russia and helped gather information.

Then when the 2016 Russian investigation was happening,

they were firing and

bribing everybody to shut up, and the ambassador was stopping people to come to the United States to say, hey, this is what's really going on.

That's what Trump is asking for.

And Trump is asking for the Russian hacked servers

because what's on their servers?

What's on their servers?

Did any of them, were they saying, hey, can you find out some information on Donald Trump?

Now, he's not doing this just with Rudy Giuliani.

He's doing this with the Attorney General.

And the Attorney General denies, we should point out.

The Attorney General says that there was...

Barr says he was not involved in this, at least

to the extent of

in anything, like

what happened in the call, right?

So

he's saying that, because in the call,

Trump says, I want you to talk to Barr.

I want you to talk to Giuliani.

Barr says he did not have those conversations.

Giuliani has publicly admitted he has had them.

Right.

But just to be clear, to give Barr.

He may not have had those conversations.

It may not have risen to his level.

Who knows?

We don't know where.

I'd be interested to see if Barr knew about any of this.

But what you just laid out explains perfectly, in my mind, about the thing that, Stu, you brought up with

the computer system, with the conversation in the White House being transferred over into that classified

record keeping.

Right.

This is one of the things that they say is a piece of evidence that shows they were trying to hide it.

And I think it can be just as easily interpreted the other way.

Yeah, well, I mean, if you think about it, I mean, as is,

if you look at that conversation, just the mere fact that he mentioned Biden and that scandal does not constitute, who cares?

Like, even if that got out, it might look bad, but it's not going to

warrant them putting a classification on this and throwing it over there.

But if everything you're looking into, if all of the, if what, if what you, Glenn, just laid out is accurate, then you don't want the Obama holdovers in the White House getting wind of that.

You don't want intelligence knowing about that.

Especially if you think about it from Trump's perspective.

He's very suspicious of intelligence.

He's had bad experiences with them.

But what he's alleging here is, and we have evidence to back up that things like this have happened,

that what he's alleging is that Obama and the DNC worked with the intelligence agency and the

government of Ukraine to try to dig up dirt on Donald Trump to stop his campaign.

Well, if I'm having conversations about

making sure I do not want the intelligence community, I do not want the DNC, the Obama holdovers.

I don't want anyone knowing about it, but I do want a trail of it someplace.

Don't delete it.

This reminded me of a note.

Back in just a second.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

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And if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

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He's on with us now, Congressman from Utah, Chris Stewart.

How are you, sir?

Glenn, it's good to be with you.

You're the only guy I'd lock out of the hearing for.

I think you're foolish for doing it.

You have a front row seat, literally a front row seat.

Tell me what you think this is really,

what's really going on here.

Well, it's nothing that we haven't seen for three years, and that's just not shocking.

It shouldn't surprise anyone.

This is a concerted effort by Democrats to

repeal and rescind the 2016 election.

It's what they've been doing since the very day Donald Trump was elected.

And Glenn, it's not going to be successful.

There's just nothing here that is impeachable.

And if I could make this point, I think it's a fair point.

I'm not here to protect the president.

I'm not here to protect anyone.

We just want to know the facts, but the facts just don't bear this out, unlike in previous impeachments.

I mean, with Richard Nixon, the American people understood that that was wrong.

There was a break-in.

There was a cover-up.

There was obstruction of justice.

With Bill Clinton, the American people knew.

that it was wrong for him to be with an intern, and it was wrong for him to lie to a grand jury.

And what in the world are you going to commit?

How in the world do you convince the American people that there's an impeachable offense here?

Because he asked a foreign leader to investigate what he thought was corruption.

And I think most Americans look at that and listen that go, well, why in the world should we remove him from office for that?

Yeah.

And, you know, Chris, as I read this, because I read this this morning and you had access to it yesterday.

As I was reading this this morning, I don't think this is about Joe Biden.

This is really all about the Russia investigation.

What was going on,

you know, when Obama was in office?

Were the Democrats using the Ukrainians to look for dirt on Donald Trump?

And, you know,

that crowd strike server thing is disturbing if you look at it from a different point of view.

Then you all of a sudden go, wait a minute, that would explain why he would take this transcript and put it into an encrypted form that no one can get to unless subpoenaed by uh by the congress no one can get into this because

he's showing i think he's trying to make the case of a deep state

am i wrong i think there's no i think there's much more that that we got to learn there and you know what with the crowd strike it there's just so much to this that many people are overwhelmed by it but the essence of that is just exactly as you've described it and by the way this this thing too about whether this document was stored in a a highly classified server,

we have no idea whether that's standard for conversations between a head of state, and it certainly isn't criminal, and it may not be outside of the norm at all.

So, I mean, some people are trying to make a big deal of that, as if that's part of the cover-up.

But A, again, we have no idea if that's not standard, and B, it doesn't mean anything anyway.

So, Ben Sasse, I mean, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer said exactly what I would expect them to say, and that is, oh, this is is very disturbing.

I read this and it's very, and so I've I read this today with an open mind thinking, okay, I'm going to find something disturbing.

I haven't found it, except I think I found a reason where all of it makes sense on what Trump is doing

and what they're accusing him and why they flip so hard and made this their key to destroy him finally.

But

what did Ben Sass, do you have any idea?

Did you see anything in here?

Because Ben Sasse said, look, there's some things in here that I think we need answers to questions on.

And, you know, you shouldn't circle the wagons.

And I agree with all of that.

I'm not here to protect the president.

I want the truth.

But

is there anything in here that stuck out to you?

Well, I mean, I went into this with

a little bit of anxiety.

You never know what to expect.

And in this world, for heaven's sakes, you never know what to expect, right?

Right.

And I was fearful that there might be something something to this, some surprise to this.

And I read it carefully.

I read it two or three times.

I took notes.

And at the end of this, which was late yesterday afternoon,

to be honest with you, Glenn, I was much more confident that this president was not going to be impeached than I was before I read the document.

Once again, I said, is this it?

I mean, is that really all there is to this?

And I think, again, you look, it doesn't matter if you get to 217 votes in the House.

You have to convince the American people.

And the American people have to have had a consensus among them that this president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, and he should be removed from office.

And I don't think there's a chance in the world that this document convinces the American people of that.

And you talk about Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer being disturbed, but Glenn, they've been disturbed for three years.

Yeah, but here's the thing.

This is the part that doesn't fit, Chris, that Nancy Pelosi has been against this.

This makes no sense.

She's been against this the whole time.

Why, all of a sudden, with nothing, does she say, this is it?

Got to strike while the iron is hot.

The iron isn't hot.

The American people, even Democrats, are not for impeachment.

Yeah, you know what, Glenn, I think there's actually a fairly simple explanation for that.

And it's two elements to it.

Number one is, and this is just obvious, and you know this, and that is that she just finally reached a point with

her own party, her own caucus, that she couldn't do nothing.

And I think the genesis was that with those seven moderates who represent moderate districts and have in the past have been kind of a buffer for her.

When they wrote that

editorial over the weekend, I think she felt like she had to respond to this.

But at the same time, the second element to this is this, she's not serious about this effort.

If she was serious about an impeachment inquiry, that requires a vote on the House floor.

She has to put her members on record of saying, yes, we are seeking impeachment.

And she hasn't done that.

She's trying to split the baby.

She's saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going to start an impeachment inquiry, and we're going to do it by doing the same thing we've been doing for the last

nine months.

And that's the committee's doing the same, same thing.

She's not serious about this inquiry, or she would have the vote and compel her members to say, yes, I want to proceed.

And she hasn't done that.

All right.

The guy who you just questioned, he is the director of national intelligence.

He's the guy who stopped the memo from coming out and be given to Congress.

They're saying that this is unprecedented.

No whistleblower has ever been kept in the history of our country from Congress.

Is that true?

What do you make of

this and his testimony?

Yeah, it's true, but there's a reason for that.

And that is we've never had a whistleblower complaint that was an accusation against the President of the United States.

And so then you have elements of executive privilege.

And the second thing that he had to consider, the law compelled him to consider, is was this outside of the jurisdiction of the director of intelligence, which it was.

And look, Mr.

Maguire, as I was adamant in my defense of him, this is a man of clear integrity.

He found a deficiency and ambiguity in the law and did not know what to do.

He wasn't trying to obstruct.

He wasn't trying to protect the White House.

He simply didn't know what legally he could do in this situation.

And I think he did the only thing that he could do.

You go to the the office of legal counsel and you seek their advice.

That's what they're there for.

So to create this narrative of my Democratic colleagues, and they attacked his integrity so often

and so repeatedly as if he's the problem.

And then I said to them, if you think you're going to win on this by trying to convince the American people that this is a political stooge sitting before us, good luck on that.

Because if anyone watches this hearing for even a few minutes, it's very clear.

This is a military officer who has served his nation for 36 years.

He's not here for political ambitions.

He's here to serve his country, and that's what he was trying to do.

So

it was a threat to the national security, according to this whistleblower.

It's a threat to the presidency itself and the country.

Who does it?

What should he have done?

You say, well, it wasn't in his jurisdiction.

So can't he pass that to somebody's jurisdiction?

Or, you know,

he said, he was asked, well, did people investigate this?

And they did.

What did they find?

Or why did it not go to someone else?

Well, and it gets a little bit complicated, Glenn, and

I don't want to bore you with some of the technical legalities, but I mean, what it comes down to is this.

At what point, and it's not whether he had to, I mean, the objection of my Democratic colleagues is that he didn't do it immediately, but he had a 14-day window where he could seek legal counsel and make a decision.

And it's apparent that, again, he and the Inspector General were in disagreement and a bit of a loggerheads.

And I think that we have to realize that, as I said, the law is deficient on this, and we need to address the law.

But,

I mean, this information, as a member of Congress,

and I've made this clear repeatedly over the years, my job and the thing that I protect is allowing Congress to provide its oversight, allowing Congress to have access to this information.

And I've always said this should come to Congress, but I recognize in this case there was a complicated legal process before it could come to Congress, and that's what he was trying to comply with.

And it seems to me that it only added fuel to the fire,

you know, because

everybody knows they try to play off the Nixon thing.

It's the cover-up that got you in trouble.

And, you know, if it's a legal process and this guy is honorable, I mean, what are you going to do about it?

It just goes in to just make make more smoke.

Chris, I appreciate it.

Good to talk to you.

Thank you.

Representative Chris Stewart, Republican from Utah.

I mean, legitimately, right out of the hearing.

Like, you'll see him here.

He's going to walk back into the hearing room in a second.

We'll see him on C-SPAN walking back in.

He just finished questioning.

You're not going to get better, quicker insight from a real player in the story than that.

And we should mention, too, John Solomon, who was supposed to be on here

if you were looking for that interview.

He had to reschedule till tomorrow.

Apparently, he said a meeting with a source that had just come up.

Had just come up.

So he's rescheduled till tomorrow.

He was the guy who is not by name, but his work is mentioned in the whistleblower report.

Extensively.

Extensively.

And so he's going to come on and tell us what that is like to go through on tomorrow's program at this time.

And in one minute, I want to come back, and I'm going to give you the timeline.

Stu will take you through the timeline of this whistleblower report because it's all out of order, so it's kind of hard to figure out, but he's taken the time and put it all in order so you can understand it.

And we'll get to that.

Also, on today's television program, we're going to take your phone calls.

And I'm going to be taking phone calls right after this broadcast in about 40 minutes.

If you'd like to come on, I'd love to hear your opinion.

I want to know what you've pieced together, what you're thinking, what your friends and neighbors are saying about this impeachment stuff.

Call us now at 888-727-BEC.

888-727-BECK.

We're going to take your phone calls, and we'll do that right after

this broadcast in about 40 minutes.

So call now and talk to our producers.

888-727-BEC.

All right, let me tell you about Goldline.

There is something happening, as I'm going to outline to to you

tomorrow.

Whatever changed last week, we clearly still have a very big problem.

They are still, the Fed is still bailing out the banks to the tune of $100 billion, I'm sorry, $160 billion

a day.

Why?

What happened?

No one is answering this this question.

And it's gone from $50 billion to now they announced yesterday $160 billion every day.

At least they can tell us, though, which banks

are borrowing

the money, right?

No, the Fed doesn't even know

who's borrowing the money.

That's insane.

That's one of the most fascinating parts.

It's legitimately an anonymous borrowing system.

It is.

That is something I need to get involved in.

Yeah, you ain't kidding.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I didn't borrow that 10 bill.

All right, there's, and tomorrow I'll get into this because we have to.

There's something wrong, and

it's going to affect the entire world.

I think this, if this whistleblower complaint is what I think it is,

buckle up 2020 is going to be an ugly, ugly year for everything.

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