Truth About Hegseth Smears and Leak Firings, and Shocking Details of Ellen Greenberg Case, with Steve Bannon and Nancy Grace | Ep. 1054

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Speaker 4 Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at Uneast.

Speaker 4 Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show. I'm Megan Kelly.
Today we are bringing in Steve Bannon in just a moment. But first, I want to start with this news update because the story is kind of confusing.

Speaker 4 So I laid it out for you, okay?

Speaker 4 It's about Pete Hexeth, and the knives are out for him. They've never not been out for him.
They remain out for him.

Speaker 4 Who NPR, that bastion of exclusive Trump White House gets, is reporting may be on his way out. They're reporting that Trump is looking for a replacement, which Trump is denying.

Speaker 4 Now, why would NPR have a scoop like that about Trump, not matched by Fox News or any other outlet? Ask yourself that. Here's how we got here.

Speaker 4 Someone at the Pentagon has been leaking to the press about very serious matters, even top secret matters, like the report that appeared on NBC News in mid-March, revealing that the White House had directed the Pentagon to draw up options to increase American troop presence in Panama to advance the president's goal of reclaiming the Panama Canal.

Speaker 4 What was that doing on NBC News? The report was very specific. It stated, quote, U.S.

Speaker 4 Southern Command is developing potential plans for partnering more closely with Panamanian security forces to the less likely option of U.S.

Speaker 4 troops seizing the Panama Canal by force, end quote, citing, quote, two U.S. officials familiar with the planning.

Speaker 4 The Department of Defense began investigating those leaks and made it known in the press that they would be using polygraphs to get to the bottom of who was behind them.

Speaker 4 Now, as with any time a threat like that makes its way into the public eye via the news, one has to wonder, are they really going to polygraph everyone or are they just setting some sort of a trap?

Speaker 4 For example, first person to complain about the polygraphs is likely someone you want to polygraph or at least look into.

Speaker 4 Now, in the course of that investigation, Defense Secretary Hegset wound up firing three of his top aides. On Friday, it happened.
They were escorted out of the building.

Speaker 4 Those fired include some who had been close to Secretary Hegseth before he became Secretary, like senior advisor Dan Caldwell, who had worked with Pete at Concerned Veterans for America for some nine years.

Speaker 4 Also fired Deputy Chief of Staff Darren Selnick and Colin Carroll, Chief of Staff to the Pentagon's Deputy Secretary.

Speaker 4 A fourth staffer, a press aide named John Elliott, also parted ways with the Pentagon, supposedly because he didn't want to be second in command of the comms shop.

Speaker 4 But there's some real sour grapes with this guy.

Speaker 4 He ran to Politico, first of all, a left-wing rag, to say the Pentagon is in disarray under Secretary Hegseth and predicted that Hegseth will be fired by President Trump.

Speaker 4 Almost immediately after, Don Trump Jr. took to X and made clear that this guy, Mr.
Elliott, is not America First, though he claims to be, and is officially exiled from the movement.

Speaker 4 He's not happy with this guy, Elliot. The three alleged leakers, however, remain a bit of a mystery.

Speaker 4 Why would Pete's top aides, including his friend Dan Caldwell, allegedly leak to NBC News about alleged war plans? involving the Panama Canal.

Speaker 4 And there were other leaks too, like that Elon Musk went over to the Pentagon.

Speaker 4 There were a few of them. It wasn't just the one.
But this one would be top secret.

Speaker 4 All we know for sure is that Dan Caldwell appears to be part of MAGA's more non-interventionalist wing, which is fine. That's probably how Trump won the election in large part.

Speaker 4 There is absolutely nothing wrong with being non-interventionalist. I think the Republican Party in general has had it with the forever wars and the more bellicose nature of some of the parties.

Speaker 4 Certainly the neocons have become otherized and almost enemies to that strain of the party. So there's nothing wrong with Dan Caldwell feeling that way, and he does appear to feel that way.

Speaker 4 But the question is, was that view abhorrent to the people who fired him? Mr. Caldwell seems to think so.
He went on Tucker's podcast last night with his first remarks since he got the axe.

Speaker 4 And in that exchange, Caldwell suggests that he was forced out of the Pentagon, not because he leaked anything to any member of the press, which he denies doing, but because he is anti-war with Iran due to his experiences in Iraq.

Speaker 9 It started really pushing me to where I'm at now in foreign policy. Like, we need to do something differently.
And it kind of radicalized me in a certain way on this and really

Speaker 9 there's an argument that you need to be when you're talking about foreign policy, you kind of need to be cold and detached. Like some people say that realists need to be cold and detached.

Speaker 9 I don't necessarily buy that.

Speaker 10 But,

Speaker 9 you know,

Speaker 9 when I hear about launching a new military operation or somebody talk about something, my first thought is,

Speaker 9 what's it going to be like for the guys? What's going to be like for the boys that are going to be in the front?

Speaker 4 Now, the suggestion implies that Secretary Hegseth or those who suggested to Hegseth that Caldwell be fired feel differently than Caldwell does there.

Speaker 4 Though I can tell you myself from many conversations with Pete over the past six months, he is far from a neocon. We've talked all about it.

Speaker 4 He was much more pro-war as much of the Republican Party was back during the Bush years. He signed up.
He left Princeton to go fight. I mean, he was in that mindset, which most of us were post-9-11.

Speaker 4 That's why he volunteered and fought at Gitmo and in Iraq and in Afghanistan. But he's had a serious change of of heart from and thanks to those experiences, much like Caldwell.
Pete is not a neocon.

Speaker 4 Honestly, President Trump is the one making the most noise about bombing Iran. And Pete's job is to do what President Trump tells him.
Remember this from February with Trump?

Speaker 11 You cannot allow Iran, or just about anybody else, by the way, but especially Iran, because they are very militant. I mean, they're very, very militant.

Speaker 11 You can't allow them to have a nuclear urban, but there's two ways of stopping them, with bombs or with a written piece of paper.

Speaker 11 I think Iran would love to make a deal, and I would love to make a deal with them without bombing them.

Speaker 4 Okay. I mean, that's good.

Speaker 4 But Trump hasn't taken military action against Iran off the table. It's, of course, what Israel wants.

Speaker 4 They want the green light for them to do it, which, of course, will draw all of us into a military conflict with them and their supporters as well.

Speaker 4 This is one of the topics of conversation that Caldwell and Tucker got into today. Well, I listened to it today, but it hit last night.

Speaker 4 Well, we can confirm based on our own reporting that Mr. Caldwell did not have his phone searched, nor was he polygraphed before he was escorted out of the Pentagon.
He told Tucker that as well.

Speaker 4 But we do have to point out that those are not the only ways one can be discovered as a leaker.

Speaker 4 One of the ways they used to track confidential information at my old law firm, for example, was to make everybody log in before they could print a document. Do you have that at your company, maybe?

Speaker 4 If you work with sensitive information, they make you do that. That was one of the controversies over the Supreme Court when they leaked the Dobbs decision.

Speaker 4 Remember, they were like, don't they have this system already where nothing can be printed without somebody logging in their ID number first?

Speaker 4 Anyway, nothing, nothing got printed at my law firm without a record of who did it. That's just one possible way.

Speaker 4 of finding a leaker, not to mention one's desktop computer records or email records or possible intra-office comms between loose-lipped staffers. So, you know, with all due respect to Mr.

Speaker 4 Caldwell, it doesn't really answer the question definitively to say they didn't take his phone and they didn't give him a polygraph before they fired him.

Speaker 4 We don't know what they did at the Pentagon that led them to believe Dan Caldwell and those two others needed to go.

Speaker 4 Now we have more questions like, will Caldwell and these other two turn over their phones voluntarily to the Pentagon? Will they volunteer them?

Speaker 4 Will the other two, you know, come forward and offer their own defenses? Will these three voluntarily return any laptops or other electronics given to them by the Pentagon?

Speaker 4 Will they allow the Pentagon to search their personal laptops? I mean, all of this can be obtained rather easily by a warrant, which may well yet be heading Mr.

Speaker 4 Caldwell's way, as well as the way of his two now-fired colleagues.

Speaker 4 While Caldwell told Tucker he would likely already be under arrest if he'd been caught leaking, the truth is that oftentimes, in fact, I think a lot of the times, they fire the suspected leakers.

Speaker 4 They continue their investigations because they don't want them having ongoing access to confidential information. So they fire them.
They continue the investigations.

Speaker 4 And then when and if they have enough to charge the person, then comes the indictment, the handcuffs, and the arrest, all of which could, I don't know, but could potentially be in these guys' future.

Speaker 4 I mean, now is the time for these three to be cautious.

Speaker 4 I was kind of shocked to see the one on Tucker's podcast when he's clearing, he's going on offense saying I was fired for my Iran views, not because I leaked. We don't know whether that's true.

Speaker 4 We just don't know right now.

Speaker 4 I mean, I can tell you this, when three people are accused of participating in the same allegedly illegal scheme, one and only one has the opportunity to cut a deal.

Speaker 4 One and only one has the opportunity to cut a deal. And the first one into the Pentagon to say, choose me, is going to get a great one.
Anyone after that could be looking at prison time potentially.

Speaker 4 If, in fact, the Pentagon has evidence on leaking that it certainly seems to feel it does.

Speaker 4 All right, getting back to the main story, though, since those terminations, it's been an all-out assault on Pete Hegseth in the press.

Speaker 4 So when you read these hit pieces on Pete, you have to keep that in mind. This isn't coming out of nowhere.

Speaker 4 He did nothing to these people. He was running the Pentagon.
Then somebody leaked top secret information to NBC News. Then they opened up an investigation at the Pentagon to figure out who did it.

Speaker 4 And the next thing we knew, these guys got fired. And now suddenly the field is flooded with hit pieces on Hegseth.

Speaker 4 The White House has made clear they think it's these guys behind these hit pieces.

Speaker 12 This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement.

Speaker 12 And unfortunately, there have been people at that building who don't like the change the Secretary is trying to bring. So they are leaking and they are lying to the mainstream media.

Speaker 12 We've seen this game played before. The Secretary is doing a tremendous job, and the President stands strongly behind him.

Speaker 4 I mentioned that guy, Elliot. Elliot.

Speaker 4 He wrote a direct hit piece under his own name in Politico, arguing, quote, from leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, still pissed about Doge, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president.

Speaker 4 So what is he talking about? He's talking about these leaks, which they investigated and just fired three people for. Elliot was not part of that firing.
He's something else.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 mass firings, Doge.

Speaker 4 That's the dysfunction.

Speaker 4 What's the dysfunction? People leaked. And unlike in previous administrations, Hexeth's trying to do something about it.

Speaker 4 And yeah, Doge hit the Pentagon same as it hit the other administrative branches. What's the dysfunction, Mr.
Elliott?

Speaker 4 And went on to say, try to play to Trump's vanity, saying the president deserves better from his senior leadership. And he predicted Pete will be fired.

Speaker 4 Elsewhere, we have just been seeing the drip, drip, drip of the chaos narrative, including news that Pete allegedly had a second signal chat going about those Houthi attack plans.

Speaker 4 This one, not with all the

Speaker 4 administration officials, but with people who are close to him, his personal advisors, meaning his brother, who works with him at the Pentagon now, his attorney, who also works with him at the Pentagon, he's military, and his wife, who doesn't work with him at the Pentagon, and would be a controversial person with whom to share his Houthi attack plans, which again, the Pentagon is saying were not classified.

Speaker 4 And that could be because they would have, that would have to be because he had declassified them prior to sharing them with anybody. Mr.
Trump asked about all of this. All of this yesterday.

Speaker 4 Does second signal chat and the narrative around Pete made very clear he stands by Hexeth.

Speaker 13 Oh, total.

Speaker 14 Why do you even ask a question like that? We have recruitments that's at an all-time high. The spirit in the armed forces is fantastic.

Speaker 14 Are you bringing up Signal again? I thought they gave that up two weeks ago.

Speaker 13 There was a new report this weekend that he used in a separate job that included some family news.

Speaker 14 It's all

Speaker 14 just the same old stuff from the media.

Speaker 14 That's an old one. Try finding something new.

Speaker 4 Which is good because Pete is not a neocon. He's not a war hawk.
He's not a chaos agent.

Speaker 15 We live in one of the most dangerous times since the end of the Cold War. There's just no doubt about it.
You've refined it.

Speaker 15 But I'm also the product of two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, where my view shifted a great deal from where it was was to where it is today, because you would have to be a fool to look at the outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan and think that what we got out of them was beneficial to American national security interests.

Speaker 15 And that's not to take away from every vet who gave everything.

Speaker 10 I was one of them.

Speaker 15 Those last folks in Afghanistan, the 13 we lost, the people who fought for the places that ISIS took back. Like that investment, that fight, that mission is real, and I love all of it.

Speaker 15 But we have to be realists and clear-eyed about what that intervention meant.

Speaker 15 The finite resources that we have, the debt that we have, the threats that we have, the responsibilities our allies have to show in Europe if they want to defend that continent, the reality of the outcome in Ukraine, Donald Trump's been very clear about that, but that he wants to end it right away.

Speaker 4 He's a war fighter who has helped already the Army, Navy, and Air Force get on track for record recruiting years, who is eliminating woke from our armed forces, who is restoring lethality to our military by making sure standards are uniformly high, high and much much more so here to help unpack some of this republican on republican violence is steve bannon host of bannon's warroom you know those rare occasions where you can actually sleep in then at the crack of dawn you're woken up because your blinds aren't doing their job it's 2025 are your blinds from 2005 what's going wrong there is a better way consider 3-day blinds the leading manufacturer of high-quality custom window treatments in the united states and right now you can get their buy one, get one 50% off deal when you use our URL, 3Dayblinds.com.

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Speaker 4 Steve, welcome back. What do you make of all this?

Speaker 10 Well, you know, having worked in the Pentagon, I came off sea duty back the first day that President Reagan came, I was there for, I don't know, three, three and a half, almost four years.

Speaker 10 There's one thing about controlling that building and another thing about being President Trump's senior national security advisor for the military.

Speaker 10 I think this goes back, and I think Caldwell, people got to watch that Tucker interview.

Speaker 10 I think there's some deep and disturbing truths in that.

Speaker 10 This is,

Speaker 10 and I think the leaks and all this stuff is

Speaker 10 they're wanting us to chase rabbits here. The core of this to me gets down to, you said, Republican on Republican, Megan.

Speaker 10 I think it's almost even deeper than this. This is about the America first national security policy and about how we've had been a neoliberal, neocon

Speaker 10 country for 40 or 50 years.

Speaker 10 This gets down to, I believe, this whole strategy in the Middle East and people like Caldwell, who came from the Koch's defense priority, which essentially also made Pete and transformed Pete.

Speaker 10 And years ago, they were looking to do that, transform him from a Fox News host to someone who could go into senior levels.

Speaker 10 of national security by giving him some of these veterans groups and others that would promote him something over and above just a media figure.

Speaker 10 I think it shouldn't be lost on anybody that this comes up, and I say this with total respect for Tucker, who I respect and I consider a friend and a colleague,

Speaker 10 that

Speaker 10 our show and our part of the MAGA base, we're quite, or at least two-thirds of our audience, 80%, are very pro-Israel in the defense, but we're very anti-

Speaker 10 any type of military conflict with Persia about these nuclear sites. I think this comes down to a fundamental break between

Speaker 10 the defense priority guys and the Koch organization, which is much more isolationist, much more bring it all home, versus people who want to understand we have to be engaged in the world.

Speaker 10 We have to have a national security policy, even around hemispheric defense, that is forward-leaning, but we don't want to lead with military. We want to lead with economic warfare and others.

Speaker 10 And I think that's where this rift is. It shouldn't be lost on in your story, which I thought was a brilliant overview of this and bringing in all the elements.
You know, Bibi Netanyahu

Speaker 10 has come here twice in the last four or five weeks. One time, President Trump literally blew up the conversation with Trump Gaza, which kind of came out of nowhere.

Speaker 10 And because Bibi was here to pitch the United States being a part of, an active part of a military support for at least an air assault, maybe even a ground assault into Persia to take down their nuclear facilities, which would be catastrophic from a military view if you know what the damage assessment would be.

Speaker 10 He came back

Speaker 10 under the headline of tariffs, but he was here to make a second pitch because President Trump did not engage the first time.

Speaker 10 And President Trump basically told him in front of the world: hey, by the way, we're starting negotiations one-on-one with

Speaker 10 no participation of Israel with the Persians starting next week in Oman. And now it's going to continue again in Rome

Speaker 10 this weekend,

Speaker 10 which I'm sure the president being there for

Speaker 10 the Pope's funeral may even participate or have some sort of more direct involvement.

Speaker 10 So I think this gets down to, and I think we ought to get on the table, it gets down to the situation with Israel and people like Tucker and Kurt Mills and other brilliant people who I think the world of saying, hey, for too long, we've had the tail wag the dog, right?

Speaker 10 And President Trump and others who are supporters of Israel saying, hey, look, this has to be part of an American national security policy, and we have to have this.

Speaker 10 And I don't totally agree with President Trump about a piece of paper, but it has to be something other than a military conflict.

Speaker 10 I don't think it's lost on people that the Pentagon has been accused under Pete and with these guys of not having detailed plans and support criteria ready to basically jump in here and have it.

Speaker 10 They've kind of slow walked it.

Speaker 10 And I think the reason they've slow walked it is that there is this President Trump, and he said it again the other day in the press briefing, the press available on the Oval, that he wants peace.

Speaker 10 He wants a peaceful way to settle this.

Speaker 10 I don't like the ver and he's got his top guy, Witkoff, on the negotiation. I don't like the V word.
I don't like verification. I think this has to be taken down piece by piece.
And I think we have to

Speaker 10 go up the escalatory ladder on economic warfare. Number one, my question is, why are we allowing

Speaker 10 you know, they say 1.5 million, but it's really almost 2.5 million barrels of oil a day to leave iran that funds the mullahs uh and goes through the straits of hormuz uh to uh through straits of malacca to china and it's 22 percent to 25 percent of china's uh output of which oh by the way we're engaged in an economic uh war right now i think going up the escalatory ladder uh which would say hey i've been in a carrier battle group you know off the coast of iran for the hostage crisis in the in the Persian Gulf.

Speaker 10 We've got two carrier battle groups right now in the Red Sea keeping the Suez Canal open.

Speaker 10 Just move one over, you know, over to in front of the Straits of Amuz, and let's do a blockade, a naval quarantine of everything, and you'll have the Mulas will be gone in 100 days.

Speaker 10 Now, you're going up the escalatory ladder, but I think all of this in the Pentagon gets down to a major fissure on really our national security policy going forward.

Speaker 10 And are we prepared to get sucked back into an open conflict in the Middle East again?

Speaker 4 I don't think you're wrong,

Speaker 4 but I wonder who they're fighting. I think they're fighting Trump, not Pete.
You know, Pete is Trump's executor. Like, Pete will do what he is told to do.
And Trump

Speaker 4 has had, he hasn't been as non-interventionalist as that core strain of MAGA, right?

Speaker 4 Like Ibam Suleimani, his rhetoric around Iran has been a lot more bellicose than I think some in the party would like to hear.

Speaker 4 We do not want saber-rattling suggesting our boys are going to have to go fight a war against Iran at all, much less than have to do it.

Speaker 4 But but i think what like my take on this story this is my own opinion based on the facts as i just laid them out is that probably there is a strong anti-interventionalist strain within the pentagon a lot of these you know and this guy uh caldwell's former military too he fought uh abroad and saw horrible things and i think a lot of those guys like pete got to the place where they do not want us to be too trigger happy And so I'm not saying Caldwell leaked those top secret documents to NBC News, but it certainly could have been him.

Speaker 4 And it looks like the Pentagon thinks it was him. And if he were to do it, why would he do it?

Speaker 4 Well, because those documents were about possible war down in Panama, possible use of armed forces in Panama.

Speaker 4 It's possible there is a strain even within the Pentagon that's even more to just make it easy to understand dovish than those in charge and certainly more dovish than Trump.

Speaker 10 I see your analysis, and I'm going to disagree. And here's why.

Speaker 10 I think there's not, and this is why the promotions under Bush and Obama and President Trump the first time with Madison, these guys, you know, we took, we took down the caliphate, but, but remember, the center of gravity of U.S.

Speaker 10 foreign policy and military and the defense contractors is big army, big operations in CENTCOM, in the Middle East. It shouldn't be lost to you on the chats.

Speaker 10 When you're doing the signal chat, the one thing that jumps off the page at you is President Trump is not engaged with these guys on a real-time basis. Who's he talking to in a real time?

Speaker 10 Go back and look at the chats. They're kind of throwing up ideas and Pete's getting them up to speed.
They're directly talking to the combatant commander in CENCOM on the Houtis thing.

Speaker 10 President Trump's engaged directly with the combatant commander right there, CENCOM. CENCOM is the center of gravity.
This is why Obama failed on the pivot to Asia. All the pivot to Asia.

Speaker 4 Let me just keep it simple from me. Keep it simple for me.

Speaker 4 Why would somebody, and again, with all due respect to Dan Colwa, who I want to underscore is denying that he leaked anything, but why would someone like that

Speaker 4 leak the

Speaker 4 alleged war plans? I mean, the report was that Trump had asked the Pentagon to drop war plans against the Panama, against the Panamanians, basically, to retake the Panama Canal.

Speaker 4 Why would they leak that? Here's why.

Speaker 10 Because the strategic endeavor of President Trump is a hemispheric defense. It's to get off the Eurasian landmass in a direct military conference.

Speaker 10 Look, you look at NATO, you look at the Gulf Emirates in the Middle East, you look around to the Straits of Malacca, the South China Sea, and you look up to Korea and Japan.

Speaker 10 Around the rim of the Eurasian landmass, where we fought all the wars of the 20th century. You have America.

Speaker 10 You have American commercial relationships, trade deals, capital markets, but it's underwritten by an American security guarantee. This is why we have a trillion-dollar defense budget.

Speaker 10 This is why the kids, the sons and daughters of the deplorables are on two carrier battle groups in the Red Sea to keep the Suez Canal open for Europe.

Speaker 10 What President Trump has said in Panama is central to this for the non-interventionists, or at least to tone it down, we're going to shift to a hemispheric defense.

Speaker 10 And that hemispheric defense is going to go from the Panama Canal, initially from the Panama Canal, which we're going to control to block the Chinese and Russian Navy from meeting in the Caribbean, all the way up to Greenland, where we're going to block this Russian Navy from coming through Murmansk and Archangel coming down

Speaker 10 to the North Atlantic to basically put ballistic missile submarines off of New York so they can launch in the United States.

Speaker 10 and fast attacks down off of Norfolk and all of our ports on the East Coast. Also, you talk about Canada and the Arctic.
That's part of the hemispheric defense.

Speaker 10 Pete Hex's first visit outside of Panama was to go to the three island chain, Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines to talk about the vast Pacific, as that is the natural defense of the United States.

Speaker 10 President Trump's strategy

Speaker 4 was first strategic. And the Secretary of State was down to Panama.
Go ahead, keep going. Panama.

Speaker 10 And hey. The guys in the Pentagon, the defense contractors are smart people and they're tough.
They ran Elon Musk out of there in a second. He hasn't done anything about the Pentagon.

Speaker 10 These are the original gangsters. Okay.

Speaker 10 They're OGs and they sit to go, hang on, the hemispheric defense is the way you cut the defense budget down from a trillion dollars to $500 billion and really defend America.

Speaker 10 And then on expeditionary forces, you can pick and choose wherever you go for that. But we're off of the Eurasian landmass.
Wait, I'm staying in the middle of the morning.

Speaker 4 We're off of the Eurasian landmass.

Speaker 4 Okay, but wait, but you got to help me because

Speaker 4 if that whole,

Speaker 4 if that, what you were saying ended with, and is, was, and Dan Caldwell is a neocon who doesn't want that he wants he doesn't want dependent defense department budgets to be slashed he wants us to be more interventionalist in in eurasia and he doesn't want us to be focused on panelists and it would make sense

Speaker 4 but he's not he's no he's aligned with tucker

Speaker 10 He's aligned with Tucker, but that's the people turfing him out. Remember, he's the one turfed out.
Look, I'm not a huge Dan Caldwell fan originally. He's okay.

Speaker 10 He's one of these coke guys, the defense priorities, which are total isolationists and kind of support what I would call hemispheric defense. The reason he was turfed out and they leaked

Speaker 10 the

Speaker 10 and I'm not so sure he leaked it, allegedly leaked, but the Panama war plans, I'm not so sure he actually leaked them.

Speaker 10 We'll have to find that over time, is they're trying to get rid of the Tucker, the people more aligned with Tucker Carlson, the defense priority guys, who Pete really came from that area.

Speaker 10 That's why Pete's sitting there going, you know, it's his chief of staff, these other guys. It looks like the building's coming after Pete.

Speaker 10 I think this comes down fundamentally to what your audience ought to think of. There's two separate ways you look at American national security in the 21st century.

Speaker 10 President Trump is presenting a radical but a plan that goes back to our founders in the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny about you take care of the Western hemisphere if you secure the Western hemisphere with the vast Pacific, which is as big as the Eurasian landmass, as a defense, and you take care of the Russian Navy from the Arctic and from Greenland and from Panama, you've basically hermetically sealed the united states this is why he's also talking about a iron dome type thing or anti-ballistic missile once you've done that you've hermetically sealed the united states and probably have the potential of cutting our defense budget by half okay if you continue and and this is the plan of what the pentagon has is not sustainable if you continue this madness of us being everywhere and having troops everywhere and having you know, from Ukraine to the Middle East to everywhere,

Speaker 10 you're going to bankrupt the nation. And I think that's the fundamental thing.
And you're seeing turmoil. And Pete does not have control of the building.
I'm a huge Pete fan.

Speaker 10 We went fixed bayonets on Pete when he was almost tossed over for Ron DeSantis very early in the confirmation phase. So

Speaker 10 our audience is 100% back of Pete. We want Pete to stay.
But this gets to deeper, and they're coming after Trump. That's why this is the deep state.

Speaker 10 Marco Ruby today had a huge restructuring of the State Department. You're going to see, and they leaked it on Sunday with some false things.

Speaker 10 The deep state, whether it's the National Security Council, whether it's at DNI, whether it's at CIA, State Department, or particularly the Pentagon, is trying to put a siege mentality on President Trump that he can't take any actions he wants to do to

Speaker 10 basically implement Megan, the America First National Security Strategy. And this is a live fire exercise.
They're out for Pete Hexeth.

Speaker 10 And I think NPR is based on, I think Ron DeSantis is out there telling people, you should have picked me at first. That who's you're going to trade out Pete on.
I'm in the bullpen. I'm ready to go.

Speaker 10 And the Republican establishment would love that.

Speaker 4 Oh, wow.

Speaker 4 There is something coming in from left field that is Ron DeSantis the source that NPR is basing. It's they're out looking for others.

Speaker 4 Because Eric Erickson, a conservative commentator, was all over X last night saying he's hearing it too from White House staffers.

Speaker 4 I'm being assured it's not true. And Trump himself on camera yesterday saying it's not true with no wiggle room.

Speaker 4 You know, Trump knows how to leave himself a little wiggle room, but he gave a full throated endorsement of Pete.

Speaker 4 I remain confused.

Speaker 4 I still don't get it.

Speaker 4 If Caldwell's the leaker of the Panama Canal attack plan news, that would be something that would be done by someone who is, I think, extremely dovish, which he sounds like he is.

Speaker 4 But he, in that interview with Tucker, sounded more pro protecting Panama Canal than getting involved in Iran. So it doesn't make sense to me that he's the leaker to NBC.

Speaker 4 And that's a point in his favor. In any event, we'll find out eventually because we're going to know.

Speaker 4 Unfortunately,

Speaker 10 I think your summary was brilliant. I think your summary is brilliant.

Speaker 10 And I think folks really ought to focus on this because it gets to, if you see the way they're coming at President Trump through the judiciary and the courts, the deep state, and this is my problem when I hear Pete talking about we're going to have an investigation and light all this and we're going to put it to DOJ.

Speaker 10 Hey, this thing right now and DOJ should be number 20. I mean, people have to wake up.
We have to have a sense of urgency. Right now, we are burning daylight.

Speaker 10 We're 18 months away or however long away from the midterm elections where

Speaker 10 if they raise $2 billion and flip a couple of seats in New York and California, Hakeem Jefferson is going to speak of the House.

Speaker 10 They're going to impeach Trump in the first weeks of not going to remove him, but impeach him. We're going to get to this whole thing again.

Speaker 10 And people are not at DOJ, at FBI, and others are not moving quickly enough and fast enough with a sense of urgency. and even CIA and DNI of taking down the deep state.

Speaker 10 These people are at war with President Trump. What's happening to Pete Hexeth is part of that war.
And we have to stop it by direct action.

Speaker 10 You just can't sit there and wish it away and don't think that the election in November means anything to these people.

Speaker 10 They're dug in now more than ever and understand they need to get rid of Trump and they need to get rid of Trump-ism.

Speaker 4 That's exactly right. They'd be thrilled to get Pete Hexeth's scalp.
They couldn't care less.

Speaker 4 They don't think there's chaos.

Speaker 4 They don't care about any of that. They just want to scalp.
Anyone on Team Trump will do. SecDeaf would be brilliant in their minds.
That's all they care about.

Speaker 4 And I think Trump should stand by him and not show them that he'll roll over based on politico and NPR, which doesn't sound like Trump to me. I think he will stand by him.

Speaker 4 And by the way, we'll hear more. This is not going to be it.
They're not done with Pete, especially these guys who are now. obviously going to be pretty bitter that they got fired.

Speaker 4 I'm sure we'll see more. So Trump's going to have to be steely spined on Pete, as he has been from the beginning.
All right, let's talk about what the Democrats have done.

Speaker 4 I mean, if Trump had like drawn it up in a like dark cigar smoke-filled room, he couldn't have done much better than to get all these Democrats running down to embrace this MS-13 gang member, wife beater, Abrego Garcia.

Speaker 4 But they're doing it. The best video I saw online was someone used AI to show Chris Van Hollen, Senator Van Hollen of Maryland dancing with the MS-13 guy, Abrego Garcia, in

Speaker 4 like a waltz together. Sometimes AI is used for good.
But they're running down there to embrace him, Steve.

Speaker 4 And while we don't know what's going to happen on the legal battle for Trump, he's had a setback with the Supreme Court this past weekend. PR-wise, politically, he's winning this, isn't he?

Speaker 10 He's winning it, but I would say it's a quite brilliant strategy I think they're doing because this is not about the criminal gangs.

Speaker 10 Clearly, they're embracing these people, and the American people are 80-20 against that. But their overall strategic goal is not, is no mass deportations.

Speaker 10 Under Biden's watch, watch, we have at least 10 million illegal alien invaders here.

Speaker 10 If I was running their operations, I'd kind of do the same thing is delay and deny, block Trump on the most egregious. If they can slow us down, Megan, on

Speaker 10 Emmis 13, if they can slow us down with the Venezuelan gang, if they can do that, when do we actually get to the mass deportations? And here's what happens on the deep state.

Speaker 10 You talk about exactly. First off, we'll wear them down.
We'll change the public. You know, the Wall Street guys have come out and said, we need these guys for the economy.
They add 2% to GDP.

Speaker 10 The wages are low because of this.

Speaker 10 They are most focused on the 10 million because they want them here as essentially indentured servants, but also as voters. That's why we got to keep the eyes on the price.

Speaker 10 And honestly, they've slowed us down. They've used the courts, but let's talk about what happened in the courts.
President Trump used the

Speaker 10 Alien Enemies Act of 1798. One of the predicates of that is actually make the case for an invasion by a foreign power and using these gangs.

Speaker 10 The deep state came out over the weekend with a national intelligence estimate kind of leaked to the press to say, hey, the community, you know, over at DNI, they're doing this internal analysis and it doesn't support that at all.

Speaker 10 This is what's happening. I think the Democrats are playing their cards smartly, although for most people, they're sitting there going, how can they embrace these guys?

Speaker 10 They're embracing these, the worst of the worst, to slow us down and getting the worst of the worst out. Now they got us jammed up in court.

Speaker 10 They got President Trump's the energy, the attention, and nobody's talking about the mass deportations.

Speaker 10 You wait till the bill comes up for the reconciliation where we're asking for $170 billion to rebuild the infrastructure, the ICE, and the logistics to get people out of here.

Speaker 10 That's going to be another firestorm. So I think we got to double and triple down.
You're a lawyer. I'm not.
I think

Speaker 10 President Lincoln

Speaker 10 held up a habeas corpus in the Civil War.

Speaker 10 General Washington was all for it and a couple of times after he became president about the situation we have with the French Revolution and some of the French people over here.

Speaker 10 I think you've got to get much more on everything we're doing on taking down the deep state and going after this aspect of it. I think we have to double and triple down now.

Speaker 10 There can't be any retreat and no pushback. And quite frankly, the courts have got us jammed up.
And I think we've got to look at other alternative methods. And I think there's got to be a challenge.

Speaker 10 There is a constitutional crisis right now. My point is go maximalists on this and let's bring it to a head and let's bring it now so we can get to the mass deportations.

Speaker 10 Otherwise, the Democrats are going to win.

Speaker 4 Yes, I totally agree with that. We talked about the numbers just the other day.
You know, they were 10.5 million before Joe Biden took over in this country.

Speaker 4 And now you've got the Center for Migrant Studies saying, well, now they estimate it's about 11.7, way more than a million came in under Joe Biden.

Speaker 4 In fact, CPB estimates it's more like 8.2 million. So now you're talking, you know, to round up 20 million illegals here, 500,000 of which, a little less, are said to be also extra criminals.

Speaker 4 You're a criminal if you came in here illegally, but then committed other crimes. And that's what he's starting with.
So they've been doing a good job of stopping it legally.

Speaker 4 But how can Trump, I mean, Trump could, in the Abrego Garcia case,

Speaker 4 literally, under the best, totally,

Speaker 4 what's the opposite of the straw man? Stone Manning? Strong Manning, the other side's argument. I'm a strong man, the other side's argument.

Speaker 4 The absolute best they can argue about Abrego Garcia is that he's entitled to be flown back to the United States, brought in front of an immigration judge, who can then say that gang you are fearing in El Salvador is no longer.

Speaker 4 Therefore, the

Speaker 4 suspension of removal to El Salvador is lifted, and now you have to go back home. And then we fly him home.
That is literally the best case scenario for Abrego Garcia right now.

Speaker 4 And this is all this time and U.S. senators and energy expended on this one man's case.
Forget the fact that he's a gang member, allegedly. Forget the the fact that he's a wife beater.

Speaker 4 It's all interesting, but it's irrelevant legally. All you have to prove is that he was here illegally and deported, which he was.
He was.

Speaker 4 All that happened, except the court said, but not to El Salvador, because he's convinced me he's going to get killed if he gets sent back there.

Speaker 4 So all we'd have to do is fly him back here, have a little hearing where they said, you know what? That threat is no longer existent. You're going back home to El Salvador.
Done.

Speaker 4 But the reason they won't do it is what you just said, because you do that for the one they've won. The ACLU has won.

Speaker 10 If we do that, if we're, and I don't like the fact he's been transferred from Seacott, I don't like the direction of this so far. This is the worst of the worst.

Speaker 10 And look how the media has embraced this and made this guy a hero. The reason is it's about due process.
If in their concept of these invaders, if we bring him back for that hearing, it's over.

Speaker 10 It's over. It's over for the sovereignty of the country.
It's over for the country. You're never going to get to the rest of the criminal gangs.
President Trump, I think, came on True Social Day.

Speaker 10 Megan, look, you know this a thousand times better than I do. I think he said the calculation that the ICE guys have done is 200 years.

Speaker 10 You'd have 200 years to even get to the criminals, not even to the 10 million, just the due process hearings you would have to have it over and over again.

Speaker 10 So I think we have to take a hard line on this. I think Stephen Miller is 100% correct.
I think we have to take a hard line, and I would like further action. I just think now's the time to do it.

Speaker 10 I do believe, and I think, look,

Speaker 10 the Supreme Court to come out at 1 o'clock in the morning in the dark of night over

Speaker 10 Easter weekend and put out a ruling and then have Justice Alito put out his opinion was blistering to his colleagues.

Speaker 10 We have now, this thing's up at the Supreme Court and there's a civil war in the Supreme Court.

Speaker 10 On the conservative side, not even talking about the progressive judges, we've allowed, and these guys are now feeling empowered. You're going to have lawsuits on tariffs.

Speaker 10 You're going to have lawsuits on every action President Trump's going to do. To delay is to deny.
And they're playing it masterfully.

Speaker 10 The Justice Department is overwhelmed because you only have so many lawyers. Yes.
This is, we have to lance the boil on this.

Speaker 10 Otherwise, the legal insurrection of these neo-Marxist judges is going to win just by overwhelming us. And that's why I think it's more and more direct and tough action.

Speaker 4 I just don't think anybody is accounted other than the Trump administration, but none of these courts, and we're not.

Speaker 4 effectively making the point, I guess, enough to the judges or the appellate court judges or the Supreme Court that every single one of these came into this country without affording anybody any due process.

Speaker 4 No hearing was held to allow them. No application was filed to allow them.
They just broke our laws.

Speaker 4 Why can't we just afford them commensurate due process with that they afforded us in coming into the country? Shouldn't it be a quid pro quo? It should be, it should be a match.

Speaker 4 If you fill out forms and we your own case stay here, now we're trying to deport you, you get your full hearing.

Speaker 4 But if you broke our laws to come here, why do you deserve anything before we get you out of here?

Speaker 10 Megan, you're arguing law, constitutional law. You're arguing logic and the rule of law.

Speaker 10 That's what I'm saying. This is not about that.
You can make all those arguments and they don't care. Bozberg, look, on the unitary theory of the executive, where President Trump is an executive.

Speaker 4 Excuse President Bozberger. Excuse me, Steve.
Please show some respect.

Speaker 10 No, but this is my point.

Speaker 10 He stepped in the middle of President Trump's primary responsibility, being commander-in-chief of the armed forces and being commander-in-chief and taking an oath to God about the national security of the United States.

Speaker 10 He stepped in the middle of it and now is bringing criminal, is setting up a record of criminal contempt charges, of which, as you remember, I went to prison.

Speaker 10 They're trying to do the exact same thing around people around President Trump. This is so obvious.
This gets back to the Pentagon. Folks, you have to understand this deep state.

Speaker 10 This just didn't occur overnight. This has been 40 or 50 years.
All those generals and field officers and civilians have been around forever as part of the deep state of the Pentagon.

Speaker 10 They're just not going to have Pete Hexeth come in with President Trump's ideas and a handful of people and say, oh, this is terrific. Why didn't we think of this? The same with the judiciary.

Speaker 10 Look at the radical nature of these judges. You're the lawyer.
You're a constitutional lawyer. You know how outrageous some of this has been.
It's post-constitutional.

Speaker 10 That's what the American people, and particularly MAGA, has to wake up, I think, even more to and say, hey, look, we're not playing by the old rules here anymore because they're going to bury President Trump in that way.

Speaker 10 And that's why I think we have to be even more aggressive and more outside the box.

Speaker 10 And I think this legal insurrection, and you see this at the Supreme Court of the United States to file something in the middle of the night at one o'clock in the morning and then have Alito so furious that he puts out his own opinion, which throws a couple of sharp elbows at people, his colleagues, and the colleagues he was throwing a sharp elbow at was the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Roberts, right?

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 4 we're in a single Trump justice

Speaker 4 voted to stop it either. Not one of the Trump justices voted.
It's not that they're obligated to vote on his side.

Speaker 4 It's just if you are a conservative justice and you're, you're, you're opposing both Alito and Thomas, you've done something wrong.

Speaker 4 Okay, I've got to get your reaction to Letitia James finding herself on the wrong side of the law, allegedly.

Speaker 4 The audience probably remembers we reported this late last week, but now she's been referred to the DOJ by this housing investigator for having allegedly filled out fraudulent forms in getting two different mortgages, one out of Virginia, which she claimed reportedly as her primary residence, even though her primary residence is in New York, where she's attorney general, and one out of New York, where she claimed, allegedly for mortgage break purposes, that it was a dwelling that didn't have more than four apartments, when in fact it has five, and she would have had to pay more in a mortgage if she had been honest.

Speaker 4 And then he also alleged that back in 1990, 1983, she applied for a mortgage with her father, claiming the two of them were husband and wife, allegedly as part of a scheme just to show she has a long history of playing fast and loose with the facts in applying for mortgages, meaning she thinks she's entitled to do something that the rest of us are not.

Speaker 4 So she finally spoke out to this on Thursday, and here is what she said on New York Spectrum One.

Speaker 16 Let me just say to all New Yorkers and to all Americans, the allegations are baseless.

Speaker 16 The allegations are nothing more than a revenge tour. No, as any good attorney, I will not litigate this case in a camera.

Speaker 16 It's important that we will respond to these allegations at the appropriate time and in an appropriate way.

Speaker 4 Now she doesn't want to litigate cases on camera, Steve.

Speaker 10 If those facts are the case, I hope the DOJ in the Southern District of New York are moving rapidly to an empanel, do a quick investigation, panel and grand jury, and let's get on with it.

Speaker 10 This is another thing about it. Let's just move off on it.
It looks pretty straightforward, right? On the facts have been presented. She's presented no

Speaker 10 counterfacts about this. It looks pretty egregious.
And I think it was done at the same time that she was dropping these charges, these phony charges on President Trump.

Speaker 10 So what's good for the Goose is better for the gander. I would say, let's get on it and get on it quickly.
This is what I'm saying about we got to have a sense of urgency.

Speaker 10 I would hope we would be seeing, if the facts are the case and you have to have an investigation, you would be seeing an indictment pretty quickly.

Speaker 10 And let's perp walk her into federal court and see if she says she's not going to do it. She's not going to do it on TV.
That's fine. We'll do it in a court of law, but get on with it.

Speaker 4 Right on.

Speaker 4 The Daily Caller sent two reporters down to Virginia or

Speaker 4 down to Virginia, where she claimed it was her primary residence. Again, clearly, obviously not.
She's the AG of New York. She's required to live here.
Just to see, you know, like, is she here?

Speaker 4 Does she own this building? Is this somehow her primary residence? Here's how that went. South 35.

Speaker 17 Hi there. I'm a reporter with the Daily Caller News Region.

Speaker 17 I understand.

Speaker 10 We mean no trouble.

Speaker 4 We're just curious who the occupants of the home are because there's about whose occupants.

Speaker 2 That's none of your business.

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 17 there are connections to New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Speaker 17 Are you related to Letitia James?

Speaker 10 Do you know her?

Speaker 4 You're trespassing. Go with the house.
Do you know Letitia James?

Speaker 4 You're trespassing.

Speaker 10 No comment. Thank you, ma'am.

Speaker 9 Thank you, ma'am. You have a good one.

Speaker 4 You will.

Speaker 4 Be well.

Speaker 10 Hello there, ma'am. No comment.
You're trespassing. No comment? Yeah, you're trespassing.

Speaker 4 Okay, well, who lives here?

Speaker 7 Who lives here, ma'am?

Speaker 10 No comment. No comment.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 4 It didn't sound like Letitia James to me, Steve. I know her voice pretty well by now.

Speaker 10 She's also never shy about a camera. That'd be the first time she didn't want to jump in front of a microphone, right?

Speaker 10 Megan?

Speaker 4 Okay, absolutely.

Speaker 4 Speaking of people who love to be in front of the microphone, your old pal, AOC, you've had very complimentary things to say about her in the past and her ability to resonate with the crowd and the Democrats, is making a run for it right now.

Speaker 4 Fight the oligarchy tour. They're getting a lot of...

Speaker 4 tens of thousands of people to watch AOC and Bernie. And she's polling at the top of the Dem field right now.
All the numbers are relatively low, but she's at the top of it.

Speaker 4 I think she's right behind Kamala Harris in terms of their next favorite. So what do you make of what she's doing right now and whether it sets her up for a possible presidential run next time around?

Speaker 10 Let's talk about the substance in a second, but the optics are clearly she, you know, in a party that's dispirited and doesn't have, you know, any way forward and really has no policies, she's out there as a dynamic personality.

Speaker 10 She's putting some energy into it.

Speaker 10 Number one is you've got to get people to kind of believe in something. Hey, we're going to fight for something.
So in that regard, I think she is energy because

Speaker 10 the geriatrics in the Democratic Party are not just wrong on policy, they're beaten, right? You can tell that, and they don't have a response.

Speaker 10 Now, you look at the substance of the fight, the oligarchy, I've never seen anything more crassly, a bigger lie, and phony.

Speaker 10 I have watched virtually every second of the speeches of her and Bernie because I am impressed by the crowds they are drawing. And this is just not all Coachella.

Speaker 10 They've driven huge crowds in the middle of a beautiful Saturday in Los Angeles. They're getting people there.
Those people are thirsting for kind of populism.

Speaker 10 This is what the Democratic Party abandoned. The bayonets in the Democratic Party and the credentialed class walked away from the working class.
Those people do want to fight the oligarchs.

Speaker 10 Unfortunately, everything Bernie and AOC say in these speeches has nothing really about tacking the oligarchs. It's all this kind of Green New Deal and Gaza.

Speaker 10 It's everything but the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is President Trump's tariff policy and what he's trying to do is bring manufacturing jobs back here for the working class.

Speaker 10 If you look at the tax bill, everything's everybody's talking about is President Trump is open to, and I think you're going to be shocked to see that President Trump is not going to allow a snapback at the upper bracket.

Speaker 10 In fact, I think he'll create a million-dollar bracket, and that bracket will be at 40%. He will actually tax the wealthy in this entire tax plan, something that Schumer and

Speaker 10 Pelosi and Biden didn't do in the first hundred days when they had everything in 2021. They talked about it.
It didn't even come out of committee. President Trump will do it.

Speaker 10 The third thing is in federal court in Washington, D.C.,

Speaker 10 working off Lena Kahn's great work when she was head of the FTC and abandoned by Kamala Harris and abandoned by Joe Biden. You have Zuckerberg, who has been a supplicant to President Trump.

Speaker 10 You've had Zuckerberg there in court about breaking up the Facebook empire. And we have Google in Northern Virginia and D.C.
about breaking up their empire.

Speaker 10 Trump Justice Department, Trump FTC breaking up the oligarchs. The Republican Party under Trump, the MAGA movement is taking down the oligarchs.
AOC and Bernie are running around cosplaying populist.

Speaker 4 Steve Bannon, the one and only, always with a great take on things. Great to see you.
Thanks for being here.

Speaker 10 Megan, thank you so much. Appreciate you.

Speaker 4 Fascinating, right? My God, there's so much in the news, and you really have to buckle in to really digest it all. Next up,

Speaker 4 Nancy Grace is here and she is going to tell us about possibly the most bizarre criminal case I have ever heard of.

Speaker 4 I do not understand what happened here or how the system failed this family, but man, oh man, does she have a story for you? Stay tuned.

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Speaker 7 I cannot wait to bring you this story.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 4 This is the most bizarre, disturbing case I have heard in recent memory. It remains sort of unsolved.
I mean, you'll see why I say sort of, more than 14 years after it happened.

Speaker 4 Ellen Greenberg was a 27-year-old bride-to-be, first-grade teacher, whole life in front of her, living in Philadelphia, loving family, whole bit, fiancé whom she reportedly loved.

Speaker 4 One night, that fiancé, Sam Goldberg, returned home. They had been in the apartment together.

Speaker 4 She had gotten home early from school because it had been a very snowy day, so they apparently let school out. She came home early.
He was home too.

Speaker 4 They lived in a sixth-floor apartment in this Philadelphia, nice apartment building. And he went downstairs to work out in their

Speaker 4 gym that was in their apartment building. He came back upstairs and couldn't get the door open.
Like one of those latches, those latch locks was closed.

Speaker 4 He had been in the apartment with her some 45 minutes earlier, and now it was latched, the latch lock from inside.

Speaker 4 So he starts banging on the door, and he says he went down to the doorman and enlisted help and so on.

Speaker 4 There's a dispute about whether that happened, but NetNet, he wound up breaking the door in, breaking the lock basically to get in, and says that is where he found his fiancée

Speaker 4 who appeared to him to be dead. Now, he called 911.
Nancy Grace is here and she's going to bring, she's written an amazing new book on this. But listen to this, okay? Because

Speaker 4 he called 911,

Speaker 4 and it's a long call, but I'm going to play you the entire thing. We're going to bring Nancy in and she's going to explain to us why this case has wound up being so bizarre and controversial.

Speaker 4 But just listen to his 911 call.

Speaker 4 Oh, but I got

Speaker 4 everything out.

Speaker 4 I just walked into my apartment. My fiance's on the floor with blood everywhere.
What is the address?

Speaker 19 4601 Flat Rock Road. Please come.
Help. What are you? Now.

Speaker 19 Flat Rock Road. Is this a house or apartment?

Speaker 19 Oh, no.

Speaker 19 Oh, no.

Speaker 19 It's an apartment. Please, Harry, please.

Speaker 19 I don't know. I can't tell.
She's.

Speaker 19 You have to calm yourself down in order to get you some help. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. I don't know.
I'm looking at her right now.

Speaker 19 She, I don't know, I can't see anything. She didn't, there's nothing broken.
She's bleeding. Ellie.
You don't know where she's bleeding from, can't you? Ellie?

Speaker 19 It's, I think, her head. I think she hit her head, I think.
But there's dark blood everywhere.

Speaker 19 Everywhere. She might have fallen.
Do you know what happened?

Speaker 19 She may have slipped. There's blood on the table.
Her face is a little purple. Okay, hold on for rescue for her.
Stay on the phone. Let's go.

Speaker 19 i went downstairs to go work out i came back up the door is latched my fiancé's inside she wasn't she wasn't answering so after about a half hour i decided to break it down i see her now just on the floor with blood like she's not she's not responding okay is she breathing

Speaker 19 look at her chest i need you to calm down and i need you to look at her chest is really i don't think she is i really don't think she is listen to me someone's on the way look at her chest is she flat on her back she's on her back do i bring her back look at her chest and tell me if it's going up and down, up and down.

Speaker 4 I don't see her moving.

Speaker 19 Okay, do you know how to do CPR? I don't. Okay, I can tell you what to do, okay, until they get there.
I want you to keep her foot. Oh, God.
Hello? Yeah, hi, okay.

Speaker 19 Willing to do CPR with me over the phone until they get there?

Speaker 19 I have to, right? Okay, so get her flat on her back, bear her chest. Okay, you want to rip her shirt off?

Speaker 19 Okay?

Speaker 19 Yeel down by her side. Oh, my God.
Allie, please. Listen, listen.
You can't freak out, sir.

Speaker 19 Okay, I'm trying not to. I'm trying not to.
Her shirt won't come off. It's a zipper.
Oh, my God. She stabbed herself.
Where? She fell in a knife. Oh, no, her knife's sticking out.
Her what?

Speaker 19 There's a knife sticking out of her heart.

Speaker 19 Oh, she stabbed herself?

Speaker 19 I guess so. I don't know where she fell on it.
I don't know. Okay, well, don't touch it.
Okay, so I'll just let her down. Here now, I mean, what do I do?

Speaker 19 No, I mean, you can't, if the knife is in her chest, it's going to be kind of hard for you to do CPR at this time. Oh, no.
Oh, my goodness. Okay.
Police the shop reader. 277.

Speaker 19 Is someone coming here? Yes, they are. You said 4601 Flat Rock, right? Yes.

Speaker 19 Okay, someone's on the way. And the knife is still inside?

Speaker 19 Wait, is there what? The knife is still inside of her? Yes, I didn't take it out. Was it her chest or what area that she had? It's in her chest.

Speaker 19 It looks like it's right.

Speaker 19 It looks like it's right in her heart.

Speaker 19 Okay, someone's on the way out there, okay? Just get out of here. Oh, my God.
Oh, my God. How old is she? She's 27.
27 and there's no sign of life at all

Speaker 19 no no please don't be what bench under her arm and tell me she responds to pain

Speaker 19 she's

Speaker 19 ellie

Speaker 19 she's not it's not her arm her hands are still warm i don't know if that means but there's blood everywhere i mean i know but you can't and the knife is still inside of her how far can you see how far it went in it looks pretty deep

Speaker 19 okay it looks three and it's a long knife don't touch it again don't touch anything okay I'm not touching anything.

Speaker 19 I can't believe this stuff. No, wait, it was just you there with her?

Speaker 19 We, yeah, we're the only ones here. And she ran in the door, and you said Lance is shut? No, no,

Speaker 19 I went downstairs to work out, and when I came back up, the door was latched.

Speaker 19 It wasn't like it was, you know, it was locked from the inside. And I'm yelling.

Speaker 19 And I saw it was

Speaker 19 yelling and all.

Speaker 19 No, no, no, no, no. So there's no sign of a break-in? No, no sign of a break-in at all.
I mean, there will be when you get here because I had to break the latch, but

Speaker 19 to get in. Okay, 4601.

Speaker 4 Unbelievable. That was her fiancé, Sam Goldberg.
She would eventually go to the coroner's office where he would find she had been stabbed more than 20 times.

Speaker 4 And the medical examiner ruled her death a suicide.

Speaker 4 A suicide.

Speaker 4 Our next guest, Nancy Grace, has dedicated her life to finding answers in criminal cases. And this is very much her latest project.
She's written a whole book about it.

Speaker 4 It's called What Happened to Ellen? An American Miscarriage of Justice. You can get it via audio.
I downloaded the audio this morning. She had sent me the book.
You can get it hard copy too.

Speaker 4 Nancy, welcome back to the show. Take it from there.
Unbelievable. Like a suicide.
Like people do commit suicide, but 20 times they stab themselves? Can you

Speaker 4 like explain how?

Speaker 7 First of all, thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 7 And on behalf of her mother and father, Josh and Sandy, the only way to get justice in this case is to bring the feds in on the case, and I'll explain why. But just let it sink in.

Speaker 7 Despite 20 knife wounds, 20 knife wounds, 11 bruises, and

Speaker 7 catch this,

Speaker 7 the textbook signs of strangulation. I'm not saying, Megan, that she died.
The COD is not, cause of death is not strangulation, but she was strangled.

Speaker 7 There are bruise marks that are unrelated to the stab wounds on her neck and strap muscles, like this. See what I mean?

Speaker 7 Here and here.

Speaker 7 I can see them with the naked eye and the autopsy photos.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 7 listen to this. When the then medical examiner, Dr.
Marlon Osborne, first got got Ellen's body, he ruled it a homicide.

Speaker 7 Of course, she stabbed 20 times, including 10 stab wounds to the back, even slicing her dura, the protective sheath around the spine. Yet she kept stabbing herself 20 times.

Speaker 7 So naturally, he said, this is a homicide. Wait for it.
Then, because police had already said, oh, yeah.

Speaker 7 Lot from the inside. This is definitely a suicide.
They go meet with the medical examiner, and this stinks to high heaven.

Speaker 7 The medical examiner, Marlon Osborne,

Speaker 7 a rep from the district attorney's office, a female prosecutor who has now gotten immunity about this, and members of the police department, Philly PD. They all meet behind closed doors.

Speaker 7 When the ME comes out, he goes, correction. It's a suicide.
Okay, what happened in 72 hours? It was a homicide. They have the meeting.
They never divulge what happened.

Speaker 7 He comes out and goes, change my mind, oopsie, and rules it a suicide.

Speaker 7 Now,

Speaker 7 the parents of Ellen Greenberg have spent their life savings. This is just before the wedding.
They've already booked the venue, gorgeous, the band, the food, the works. It's all done.

Speaker 7 She met Mr. Wright.
Okay, she was happy. Why suicide? They spent all their life savings.
They just sold their house, Megan,

Speaker 7 to try to get her name cleared that she did not commit suicide. So they sue the city, the cops, they throw the book, they sue them civilly.

Speaker 7 They're picking the jury, and the ME is going to have to take the stand and divulge what happened in that closed-door meeting, why he changed his ruling. Last minute, 11th hour, they settle the case.

Speaker 7 Rather than tell the truth, he settles the case. Where does that leave the case? Pending.

Speaker 7 And I'm telling you, Josh Shapiro, the now governor, and you know how I hate to talk about politics because I don't want the crimes I report and investigate to be any swayed by politics.

Speaker 7 Josh Shapiro was the state AG at the time. He was begged, look at this.
He's like, I don't see any evidence. I agree with the police.
How could he say that?

Speaker 7 He was this close to the Oval Office until the name Ellen Greenberg popped up in the media, and suddenly he was off the roster of potential VP candidates.

Speaker 4 That's right. That close to the Oval Office.

Speaker 7 And now he's the governor.

Speaker 4 So one of the, there's so many really interesting facts connected with this. One of the damning facts against Sam Goldberg, who is, you know,

Speaker 4 obviously suspected by some as having killed her. He denies it forcefully and is disgusted that that's been alleged and has a strong statement about mental health and how people don't understand it.

Speaker 4 But we're going to consider him because obviously that's, that's what many people, including Ellen's family, think happened, that he killed her.

Speaker 4 But one of the things that is not a good fact for him is he did while

Speaker 4 I think while outside the apartment trying to get in, or that's at least during the period he says he was out there trying to get in, he made two phone calls or he made a phone call to a cousin who happens to be a lawyer.

Speaker 4 And that cousin's father, who's a lawyer, called him back.

Speaker 4 So Nancy, that jumped out at me as like, why if your fiancé is outside of apartment in which you're non-responsive, why would he be calling a lawyer? Can you explain what happened there?

Speaker 7 Well,

Speaker 7 that jumped out at me as well.

Speaker 4 However,

Speaker 7 I will say that at this juncture, when there hasn't even been a real investigation.

Speaker 7 No luminol was used. I would like to point out that no fingerprints were taken.

Speaker 7 Her blood was smeared along the kitchen cabinet. She was found sitting up in the kitchen floor, legs in the kitchen floor, back against the cabinets.

Speaker 7 And there was blood smeared behind her. as if she had been slammed against the cabinets and then land, landed where she was sitting.

Speaker 7 This is devastating to the investigation. There's something called that we call the wrong way blood.

Speaker 7 When fire and PD got there, blood was dried, Megan.

Speaker 7 She's sitting up going horizontally across her face.

Speaker 7 Impossible. If you believe in Sir Isaac Newton findings and gravity, the blood would have gone like that, right?

Speaker 4 Straight down.

Speaker 7 It was dried this way, which proves at some point she had been lying that way for the blood to dry and then propped up, which is staging of the scene.

Speaker 7 What I'm saying right now, all I want is an independent investigation. I'm not ready to point a finger at anybody.
Nobody. Yeah, sure, I can speculate.

Speaker 7 But I believe that that would hurt the investigation because what if down the line is somebody else and the state will be haunted by speculation.

Speaker 7 So I think what we need right now is this case to be reopened for an independent investigation. You just touched the tip of the iceberg.
There's the wrong way blood. There's signs of strangulation.

Speaker 7 You and I discussed the criminal statistics, the method and assessment of homicide and suicide.

Speaker 7 It is highly unlikely, A, for a female to kill herself and destroy anything around the face and the head. She might poison herself.
She might OD. She might jump out a window.

Speaker 7 She might use carbon monoxide, you know, in a car or an oven, gas.

Speaker 7 But it's highly unlikely she would stab herself. Now, in the real clothing, a female does stab herself.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 7 It wouldn't be 20 times. When the fire department got there, Megan,

Speaker 7 They said she would have to be double or triple jointed to stab herself in the back that many times in the back and here is the cue degras here's the topper I hope you're sitting down you may need to lay down Megan to hear this oh boy some of the wounds according to experts not me

Speaker 7 experts medical examiners death investigators at least one if not more wounds were administered post-mortem

Speaker 7 after death, after her heart stopped beating. Why? They did not bleed.

Speaker 7 If you're dead and you're lying there and I stab you, it's not going to bleed because your heart's not pumping blood anymore. At least one, if not two, wounds were post-mortem, Megan.

Speaker 7 It's impossible for this to be suicide. Now,

Speaker 7 I do not

Speaker 7 impugn perjury or nefarious intent on anyone.

Speaker 10 yet.

Speaker 7 I believe the cops got there.

Speaker 7 They

Speaker 7 believed they just ate the story they were told that the door was broken in. And maybe it was.
I don't know the answer to that yet.

Speaker 7 I do know by breaking in a door, you destroy evidence if the door was locked or unlocked because the door is now broken down.

Speaker 7 But they said when they got there

Speaker 7 that something was wrong when they first got there but they didn't use luminol they didn't make any measurements i have found out that on the bottom of her shoes megan was covered in blood if she killed herself what why would that be i found that clumps of her hair covered in blood were between her legs where she was sitting according to a rep for the family

Speaker 7 none of this equals suicide i think the cops did a shabby job the very next day The apartment manager was asked if the fiancé's family could come get items for the funeral.

Speaker 7 She called the police and asked them, can they? And they went, sure.

Speaker 7 And she said, well, can I clean the apartment so it can be rented out again? And they went, sure. And they even gave her a cleaning, a crime cleaning specialist.

Speaker 7 She sensed something was wrong and she videoed the apartment before and after the cleaning, which is kind of a way to preserve evidence. And guess what? The police lost the video.
I mean, you know,

Speaker 7 what else could they possibly do wrong? And I think in a bid to cover up their mistakes, they started a lie.

Speaker 4 Let me

Speaker 4 take a stab at a bad choice of words, but defending the suicide theory.

Speaker 4 The people who believe it or who want us to believe it say

Speaker 4 she was on a couple of drugs, a sleeping medication and an anti-anxiety med. She was seeing a therapist.
She, by the way, the therapist said she did not complain about the fiancée at all.

Speaker 4 They seem to have a loving relationship for what it's worth. And she

Speaker 4 had these, I guess, commonly prescribed medications to help her sleep and to help with her anxiety.

Speaker 4 And the reported side effects, they always list the side effects and they tend to include suicidality.

Speaker 4 You know, 99.99% of the cases, they don't cause that, but the drug manufacturers put it on there as one of the possible risks.

Speaker 4 And so the theory is that though, you know, she seemed happy and she seemed maybe a little anxious, but net a happy person. Something flipped and

Speaker 4 many of those wounds were superficial, like a testing, which could happen. Somebody who's like seeing what it would feel like and working up the nerve to actually do it.

Speaker 4 And there was some question about whether I saw the testimony by that one expert saying, yeah, those wounds didn't bleed and therefore they probably committed post-mortem.

Speaker 4 But then there was something on the other side saying,

Speaker 4 the same woman saying, but I can't be totally sure on that either, to be honest. So that's the argument that she took her own life.
And of course, that she was in a locked apartment by herself.

Speaker 4 There was only one other way out. There was that front door that was locked with a latch from the inside, and there's only one other way out, which was the deck leading off their patio.

Speaker 4 But it was a snowstorm, and the snow was totally preserved and unfootmarked at all. So the cops reasonably did not believe anybody had come in or gotten out from there.
So

Speaker 4 it had to be, didn't it have to be her or her fiancé?

Speaker 7 It doesn't have to be anything

Speaker 7 but i can tell you this it's not suicide i will address each of the points you raised in order that you raised them number one sleeping meds and anti-anxiety meds

Speaker 7 she had just seen her therapist why was she seeing a therapist she was seeing dr ellen berman Because shortly before her murder, she had called her parents, Josh and Sandy, and asked to move home,

Speaker 7 to move out of the apartment she shared with her fiancé, quit her job, and move home. She was teaching first graders.

Speaker 7 She had always loved her job and indicated nothing otherwise. Her father advised her, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't quit your job in the middle of the year.
Finish out the term

Speaker 7 and then, if you want to, then quit your job.

Speaker 7 why she wanted to move out of the apartment with Sam remains a mystery I don't know the answer to that but I do know that she asked her parents and one of her best friends Debbie could she move in with them

Speaker 7 shortly before her death her mother was like what's wrong why why why do you want to quit your job and move home with us you know what Before you do that, before you leave your job, I want you to see a therapist and I'll find you a counselor.

Speaker 7 And she did, did dr ellen berman berman states specifically that ellen had anxiety but was not suicidal

Speaker 7 was not suicidal hence the prescription for anti-anxiety pills and sleep meds she's having trouble sleeping she

Speaker 7 ellen spoke to friends concerned about the effects of the anti-anxiety pill but what what effect was she worried about? Gaining weight before her wedding. That was her concern.

Speaker 7 The autopsy revealed she had a normal amount of the meds in her. There was no OD.

Speaker 7 I would also like to point out that the day of the murder, there was a blizzard. A nor'easter blew in.
Her first graders had to go home early.

Speaker 7 Just before her death, it was questioned, why was she calling all these people on her phone? Was she crazy

Speaker 7 the family contacted all those numbers she called every single student's family to make sure the child got home each child those were the phone calls on her phone the people contacted the parents said she was absolutely fine there was nothing wrong so explain to me

Speaker 7 In the one hour before her murder, she was on the phone making sure her children got home from school. She was perfectly happy and bubbly on the phone.

Speaker 7 And the 45 minutes it took for Sam to go work out, Sam Goldberg to go work out and come back, that is not enough time.

Speaker 7 I think a jury would agree for her to form the intent to commit suicide.

Speaker 7 She was still in the kitchen where she's making a fruit salad for lunch.

Speaker 7 And while she's supposed to be committing suicide with her right hand, when she was found, she still had a pristine white dishcloth in her left hand. So, Megan,

Speaker 7 you believe

Speaker 7 in any world she could stab herself 20 times, including to the back of the spine, the top of the head,

Speaker 7 and hold on the other hand with a clean dish towel?

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 4 No,

Speaker 7 that did not happen.

Speaker 4 The

Speaker 4 latching of the lock lock is very interesting because was it the kind of

Speaker 4 lock that we all have in the hotel rooms, you know, with a little chain or was it something more, you know, strong?

Speaker 7 Not the chain. It was the kind that

Speaker 4 you

Speaker 7 pull over like that.

Speaker 4 Yep.

Speaker 7 And the person on the outside can open it like that much. It was one of those.
Now,

Speaker 7 tests have been done that suggests the door was not broken in.

Speaker 7 according to others the door was broken in but i stand firmly on the forensic evidence the the door broken or not broken is

Speaker 7 another can of worms but just on the physical evidence alone and i'd like to point out

Speaker 7 that in the last months the original medical examiner marlon osborne

Speaker 7 reversed and he says

Speaker 7 this is not a suicide i'm now convinced it's not a suicide so you and I and the rest of the world and all the online haters can hash it apart as much as we want to but the ME that saw the body and multiple other MEs and medical examiners state it was not suicide so

Speaker 7 the original problem was from Marlon Osborne who after his closed door meeting where the DA got immunity changed it to suicide. He's reversed.
Everyone is in agreement now. It's not suicide.

Speaker 7 So why is nothing being done?

Speaker 4 Why aren't we looking for a killer? Can I ask you a question about the fiancé?

Speaker 4 When he was, because he says he went down to workout, he came back up. The apartment door is latched.

Speaker 4 And he's, you know, saying, hey, you know, he's sending her an increasingly annoyed series of texts inside.

Speaker 4 And then he says. He went down to the doorman and said, hey, I'm locked out.
She's got the latch closed. And he claims the doorman was like, kind of like, not my problem.

Speaker 4 You're gonna have to break it in if you, if that's what you want, if you want to enter. And that's what he then did: went up there and pushed up, pushed it open with his shoulder or his body.

Speaker 4 Does anybody verify any of that, Nancy? Does the doorman back that up?

Speaker 4 Did anybody witness the fact that he was locked out and pacing and trying to figure out what to do for that period of time, maybe like a 30-minute window after workout and before finding her?

Speaker 7 Well, according to some reports,

Speaker 7 the doorman is Philip Hanton.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 he says the fiancé came down and told him he needed to break in the door. And Hanton said, I cannot leave this front desk.
I'm in charge of this and I can't go up there and I'm not going up there.

Speaker 7 Now, according to some reports, the fiancé said he did have a witness that watched him break down the door.

Speaker 7 and suggest that it was Philip Hanton. It wasn't Philip Hanton.

Speaker 7 And as of now, we have not uncovered any employee or anyone that went with him to watch him break down the door.

Speaker 4 And do we have evidence that he did, in fact, go work out? Is that in dispute?

Speaker 7 I've seen the video of him going into the workout club. It's downstairs, like a workout room.
And

Speaker 7 according to the Greenbergs, Rep coming out in about 45 minutes. I've looked very carefully at him walking around because he then goes and gets some mail and he's looking at his phone.
It looks to me

Speaker 7 that there is sweat on the back of his shirt, but I can't tell from the black and white video. But I can look at the timing.
He goes into the workout room and then comes out.

Speaker 7 That much I do know. And then do so he comes home, finds her.
She wasn't supposed to come home early that day, but she did because of the blizzard.

Speaker 7 He's there, he goes and works out 45 minutes, comes back up, and she's dead. And she's cold to the touch, according to him in the 911 call.
She's already cold in a warm apartment.

Speaker 7 Now, that takes a little bit of time right there for the body temp to go down.

Speaker 7 But he says she was cold to the touch in a heated apartment in the kitchen.

Speaker 7 That presents an issue for the medical examiner as to the time of death. Why do I care about the time of death? Because that rules suspects in or out.

Speaker 7 According to the medical examiner now, this is no longer considered a suicide, and what we're waiting on is the local DA to relaunch the investigation. That has not happened.
I don't know why.

Speaker 7 And really,

Speaker 7 gosh, you've covered so many of these. I cannot trust the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office Office because they've already screwed it up once.
I can't trust the PA authorities.

Speaker 7 This has got to be handled by the feds. There's just really no other alternative.

Speaker 4 They never found the fiancé's DNA on the knife. This was a shoddy investigation, no question.

Speaker 4 But what I read in any event is that his DNA was not found on the knife and that he was not found with blood all over him.

Speaker 4 I actually would have thought he would have had some blood on him just from that purported attempt at CPR that we heard him go through with the 911 operator. But,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 again, just because as I look at it, I don't understand how it could be anybody else. I suppose there could have been somebody lying in wait in a closet and then they killed her.

Speaker 4 And then when they ran out of the apartment, they slammed the door so hard that somehow the latch connected.

Speaker 4 Maybe that's a possibility.

Speaker 4 But if you go with the odds and you look at the fiancé, it just doesn't like make sense to me that he,

Speaker 4 I don't know, he came back up. She had locked him out.
He allegedly broke down the door. He says he locked down the, he broke down the door.
And at that point,

Speaker 4 if he did something to her, would the murder have occurred then, Nancy? Is that the,

Speaker 4 if you're against the fiancée in this hypothetical world, would that have been the moment of murder or prior to the workout?

Speaker 7 I believe at this juncture, speculating as to the identity of the killer

Speaker 7 will damage the investigation.

Speaker 7 If you think about what the police did or did not do,

Speaker 7 I'm not defending anyone or pointing the finger at anyone.

Speaker 7 I got to get this case reopened. But,

Speaker 7 of course, they're going to look at the fiancé.

Speaker 4 But did the parents think it was the fiancé?

Speaker 4 The parents think she was a domestic abuse victim, and they point to those old bruises that were found, 11 bruises on her body that predated the date of her death. Keep going, sorry.

Speaker 7 The police did not determine: had there been visitors in the apartment? Had there been visitors in the lobby? Was there another access for visitors or intruders to get in?

Speaker 7 Had there been delivery people? Had she been stalked at school? Did anyone follow her home? Is there video surveillance in the parking lot or in the hallways or in the trash chute areas?

Speaker 7 Had she she had any complaints? Had she had any threats?

Speaker 7 I think that the investigation was so bad. I remember a time

Speaker 7 when I was prosecuting, there was this beautiful young pre-K teacher. Her name is Julie Love,

Speaker 7 and she disappeared. And it was assumed that she was murdered.
And many people called for the fiancée to be indicted.

Speaker 7 It was obvious to everyone. He did it.
He did it. Listen to this.

Speaker 7 Years later, years later, like five or six years later, a woman came into the PD, police department, APD, and had been beaten horribly, ag salt beating.

Speaker 7 She said it was her boyfriend,

Speaker 7 Emmanuel Hammonds. I still remember his name.
And she said, hey, hey, hey, I got something else for you. He killed Julie Love.
There was no connection between them at all.

Speaker 7 What really happened? Emmanuel Hammonds and some of his friends were driving along, saw her, chased her, raped her, beat her, killed her,

Speaker 7 threw her body away. And you know what they found of her when they went to where the girlfriend I directed them? They found her glass eye.
Nobody even knew she had a glass eye. A glass eye and a bone.

Speaker 7 the remains of Julie Love.

Speaker 7 And the DA, in his wisdom, had been goaded to try and indict the boyfriend. He never did it, thank goodness, because someone else killed Julie Love.
That is a true story.

Speaker 7 So I'm very careful about naming a would-be suspect because that's what it looks like now.

Speaker 7 I don't know what it looks like because the police did not do their job.

Speaker 4 So I need all the facts.

Speaker 7 This has to be reopened.

Speaker 4 And I don't want to reach a conclusion. But

Speaker 4 her parents

Speaker 4 are true conclusion.

Speaker 7 But you got to look at the fiancé, sure, like the husband, like the ex, like the boyfriend. You always look at those closest to the victim, of course.

Speaker 4 But here's what he says.

Speaker 4 Sam Goldberg, he gave this statement to CNN in

Speaker 4 2024. It was his first public statement.
He hasn't spoken at all. This is as much as we could find.

Speaker 4 When Ellen took her own life, it left me bewildered. She was a wonderful and kind person who had everything to live for.
When she died, a part of me died with her.

Speaker 4 Unimaginably, Unimaginably, in the years that have passed, I have had to endure the unimaginable passing of my future wife and the pathetic and despicable attempts to desecrate my reputation and her privacy by creating a narrative that embraces lies, distortions, and falsehoods in order to avoid the truth.

Speaker 4 Mental illness is very real and has many victims.

Speaker 4 I hope and pray that you never lose someone you love, like I did, to a terrible disease and then be accused by ignorant and misinformed people of causing her death.

Speaker 4 If you're really writing a truthful story, dig deeper and please do some good by raising awareness for mental health. Best SG.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 he obviously believes she was mentally ill and that she took her own life and really hasn't said anything other than that since we heard on that 911 call him saying she stabbed herself.

Speaker 4 She fell on a knife, one of those two things. I'm aware of that.

Speaker 7 I believe in light of the fact that the original medical examiner has now stated that this is not a suicide.

Speaker 7 There's really no other alternative other than this is a homicide.

Speaker 4 Wasn't that a weird statement, Nancy, can I ask you? Didn't that the

Speaker 4 counter argument to that is that he just came out and did that to settle this case that the parents brought. And he said

Speaker 4 he withdrew the suicide declaration, but he didn't say homicide. He said something else, which is not, you know, it's kind of weak sauce.

Speaker 4 And that will not exactly help a new prosecutor say, I want to take this on as a homicide case.

Speaker 7 There are only a limited number of CODs, manners, manners of death. And those manners of death are

Speaker 7 suicide, accident, natural cause, undetermined, and homicide. It's obviously not natural.
She didn't die of a heart attack. They've said it's not suicide.

Speaker 7 Okay? We're running out of things. Not natural, not suicide.
It's clearly not an accident. That leaves two

Speaker 7 alternatives only, undetermined and homicide.

Speaker 7 He says it's not suicide. He's not the only one.
Everyone is falling in line now and agreeing it's not suicide.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 7 unless everyone else is a medical examiner that has inspected the body and read all of the autopsy reports and every scintilla of evidence and know more than all these doctors, then then it is not suicide.

Speaker 7 It is not accident. It is not natural causes.
It's either homicide or undetermined.

Speaker 7 It's homicide. That's not a leap of faith or logic.

Speaker 4 So you need

Speaker 7 to believe at the time, this is where we are now. And I am not ready to point the finger.
at him or anybody else until we have the facts. Now, you don't normally hear me say that.

Speaker 7 Normally, I think I know exactly what happened based on the facts that we've got.

Speaker 7 But the problem here is that we don't have the facts. We don't have them because of the shoddy investigation.
It's got to be started at the beginning, the very beginning with what we've got left.

Speaker 7 I remember having to restart a murder investigation that was tried when I was in law school. It took all the way up to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, one step below the U.S.
Supreme Court.

Speaker 7 It landed back in the DA's office because of, by the way, interlocking confessions, interlocking statements. They had to be ruled out.
The whole thing had to be retried.

Speaker 7 Severed the two defendants separately. And I got it.
When I got to the evidence room, Megan,

Speaker 7 there were two pieces of evidence left. An x-ray, which I couldn't make heads or tails of and didn't know who it belonged to, and a hat.
that said kiss my bass.

Speaker 7 I had to start ground zero and and work the case up. Got a conviction, by the way.
Well, I mean, he did. Of course, I did.
The jury did the right thing. And that is what is happening here.

Speaker 7 And it's so easy to go, yeah, this means that, and that means this.

Speaker 7 But that is not prudent

Speaker 7 in pursuing justice in this case. What is prudent right now is that we get an independent investigator.
And the only clear-cut path I see, Megan, is a Fed. And you know, I don't like the Feds either.

Speaker 4 But there are only hope. There are only hope now.

Speaker 7 Shapiro is tainted because he's the AG that was embroiled at the beginning, that washed his hands and turned the other way like Pontius Pilate. That's him.
He did nothing.

Speaker 7 You can't have anyone connected to the earlier ADA's office. In fact, I ran down a then ADA who read the file and was waving the flag.
Guys, this is not a suicide. This is not a suicide.

Speaker 7 Everybody knew at the time it wasn't a suicide. So where does that leave Josh and Sandy Greenberg in a lot of pain?

Speaker 4 The book is called What Happened to Ellen, an American Miscarriage of Justice.

Speaker 4 We're going to take a break and be right back with Nancy Grace, who I'm going to ask about another big case in the news right now, the Brian Kohlberger case.

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Speaker 2 Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 3 Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 2 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 3 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 2 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 6 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 7 Yay! Woo!

Speaker 4 I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.

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Speaker 4 The Brian Kohlberger case right now is set for trial this August, finally, after all these years of of delay and some strange motions being filed, I think, by the defense, so far without success in recent days.

Speaker 4 First, defense attorneys for Kohlberger asked the judge, Hip Lur, two Ps, you say it fast, it could be confused for another name. Judge Hip Lur

Speaker 4 was not impressed with the motion to disallow any reference to the bushy eyebrows, that his defense attorneys didn't want the roommate's description before she knew who Brian Kohlberger was when she was just describing the intruder.

Speaker 4 She saw he was wearing a mask, but recognized his bushy eyebrows. The judge has said that will not be barred.
That's a matter for cross-examination. Secondly,

Speaker 4 the defense wanted to bring up that he's on the autism spectrum in like opening so that it might explain away what they suggested were some of his odd behaviors, perhaps during the hearing or during the trial.

Speaker 4 And the judge said, you're not bringing that in. You can, if you want to put him on the stand and talk about him being on the spectrum, great.

Speaker 4 But you can't just offer testimony as the lawyers in order to explain away either his behavior in the court or any of the other behavior in this case.

Speaker 4 And they also asked him if they could call an expert to talk about his alleged OCD.

Speaker 4 because they said prosecutors may make arguments that Koberger was destroying evidence right before law enforcement arrested him.

Speaker 4 And so they wanted to get around having him testify by having an expert take the stand and say that's his OCD.

Speaker 4 Because I guess everybody who's got OCD puts all of their garbage in little Ziploc baggies and then has the garbage disposed of in the neighbor's trash.

Speaker 4 But this is defense attorney Ann Taylor doing whatever she can to zealously represent her client. So what do you make of,

Speaker 4 what does all that tell you about where this case is for the defense, first of all?

Speaker 7 It tells me, Megan, Megan, that they're between a rock and a hard spot. Now, the judge has ruled that they may not bring in evidence of alleged autism

Speaker 7 on Coe Burger's behalf in the case in chief. This is a death penalty case.
It is a bifurcated trial. trial split in two.

Speaker 7 First, there's the guilt-innocence phase, and if he is found guilty, which I predict he will be, there is in the second phase of the trial, which is the sentencing phase, where the jury will decide whether he gets the death death penalty.

Speaker 7 Now, regarding autism, the defense wanted to bring in

Speaker 7 their theory that he has autism, although apparently none of the defense experts have stated thus far that he is autistic or under the spectrum. None of them have said that.

Speaker 7 They said they wanted to bring it in, as you surmised, because of his odd behavior. What odd behavior, the judge says.
I don't see any odd behavior. He just sits there.

Speaker 7 So, therefore, that's irrelevant. If it becomes relevant, then I will review your motion again if you choose to renew it.

Speaker 7 But as of right now, the only way it would be relevant is if they noted quirky or odd behavior when he takes a stand. So if you want to bring it in then, sure,

Speaker 7 but he'll have to take the stand because just sitting there i don't see any relevance um

Speaker 7 however if there is a guilty verdict and it goes to sentencing i believe the judge will relent and bring in if there is any any expert that says he is autistic to diminish his capacity to commit a crime now

Speaker 7 Will it diminish his capacity to commit a crime? No, that's a big N-O. Why? This guy is a Ph.D.
student.

Speaker 7 He has made stellar grades. He is actually teaching other students.

Speaker 7 He is not going to be deemed

Speaker 7 incapable or incompetent to commit a crime. In fact, he was obsessed with committing crimes.
You know about the questionnaires he would send violent felons

Speaker 7 under the guise of studying criminology. How did you feel right before you did it? How did you pick your victim? How did you make your exit?

Speaker 7 In other words, how can I get out of this without getting caught?

Speaker 7 They're between a rock and a hard spot. His, Brian Kohlberger's DNA is on the knife sheath in the snap button where you put the knife in and you snap the sheath shut

Speaker 4 under

Speaker 4 a dead body.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 again, rock in a hard spot. That's where they are.

Speaker 4 Howard Bloom, who's been all over the reporting on this case, reports that Kohlberger's mother, Mary Ann,

Speaker 4 his reporting is that she's encouraging her son to plead not guilty, notwithstanding all this evidence.

Speaker 4 And that there might even be a movement afoot by Kohlberger's defense attorneys to somehow wrest the decision to stay in the not guilty camp away from Mary Ann and Brian as we get to the trial and somehow convince this judge to let them enter into some sort of a plea bargain negotiation with the prosecution.

Speaker 4 That Brian Kohlberger is apparently not capable potentially of making this decision, that the mother's overly influential, and that Ann Taylor, as defense attorney, probably knows better about what's going to happen at this trial.

Speaker 4 There's no world in which Ann Taylor can cut a deal for him without his consent, right?

Speaker 7 No world.

Speaker 7 No world.

Speaker 7 As far as a guilty or not guilty, no.

Speaker 7 As far as a

Speaker 7 not guilty by reason of insanity, which he's not insane, guilty but mentally ill, he's not mentally ill.

Speaker 7 There's no way that she can usurp his ability to enter a plea, either guilty or not guilty, or an alford, which is, I accept my sentence, but I'm not going to say I did it.

Speaker 7 I don't know, frankly, if the state would even go along with a guilty plea for life without parole. I'm not sure that they would do that.

Speaker 7 They are hell-bent on seeking the death penalty and he's not going to plead guilty to the death penalty. To me, that means you're going to trial.

Speaker 7 Now, there is a way that the judge could enter a blind plea, which is there's no recommendation by the state, but I don't think they would do that either because what if the judge said, okay, yeah, I'll take your guilty plea.

Speaker 7 You're getting the death penalty. So I don't think there's going to be a blind plea.

Speaker 7 Ann Taylor cannot plead in his behalf without his consent.

Speaker 7 So with the mother trying to convince him to stick with the not guilty, according to Bloom, who's written a book about the case,

Speaker 7 that is undue influence on the son, where the defense attorney wants to enter a guilty plea. That's what he's saying.

Speaker 4 He's saying what he's saying is we're on our way to a trial, which Nancy will be all over and we're going to cover a lot too. Great to see you.

Speaker 4 Buy the book, What What Happened to Ellen Out Today, and support the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Nancy, thank you.
We're back tomorrow. We'll see you all then.

Speaker 4 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

Speaker 2 Hey weirdos, I'm Elena and I'm Ash and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 3 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 2 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 5 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 2 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 6 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 7 Yay! Woo!

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