Speaker 1: Look, there are fifty former national intelligence folks who said
Speaker 1: that what this he's accusing me of is a Russian plan.
Speaker 1: Nobody believes it except them his and his good friend Rudijiolli.
Speaker 2: You mean the laptop is now another Russia Russia Russia hopes.
Speaker 3: Hey you that's exactly what this is? Why exactly what
Speaker 3: is this? Where he's going?
Speaker 4: Here we go again with the Russia.
Speaker 3: I'm John Ceipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I served in
Speaker 3: the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover
Speaker 3: all around the world.
Speaker 5: And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I
Speaker 5: served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 3: Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
Speaker 3: created conspiracies in our operations.
Speaker 5: We got people to believe things that weren't true.
Speaker 3: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
Speaker 3: news almost every day.
Speaker 5: We'll break them down for you to determine whether they
Speaker 5: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Mission Implausible. So in this episode, we are
Speaker 3: going to continue our discussion with Adam Davidson about the
Speaker 3: Biden laptop.
Speaker 5: But keep in mind we recorded this before progosion. The
Speaker 5: head of the Wagner group mysteriously died in a plane crash.
Speaker 2: Jerry, I'm not sure it's that mysterious.
Speaker 3: Not everything is a conspiracy, right.
Speaker 2: So guys, you're not just watching this, you're actually a
Speaker 2: little bit part of this story.
Speaker 5: We are the most junior, least important cocks in this machinery.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you that right now.
Speaker 2: Believe me, I would much rather talk to anyone else involved.
Speaker 3: You can't fight it. You should fight people who are
Speaker 3: more important than us. Yeah, we're part of the Dirty
Speaker 3: fifty one, if you will.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what are the dirty fifty one?
Speaker 3: Well, that's what the New York Post calls The former
Speaker 3: intelligence officers just signed a letter in the lead up
Speaker 3: to the twenty twenty election. So, as we talked about earlier,
Speaker 3: this story of a laptop shows up right a few
Speaker 3: weeks before the election and is tied to Rudy Giuliani,
Speaker 3: and it's tied to Hunter Biden and Ukraine a number
Speaker 3: of other issues. And as Jerry mentioned before, it sort
Speaker 3: of looked as if this was meant to be some
Speaker 3: sort of October surprise, similar to what the Russians got
Speaker 3: up to before the twenty sixteen election. So a group
Speaker 3: of former intelligence professionals wrote a public letter that said, essentially,
Speaker 3: be careful here because we saw what the Russians did
Speaker 3: before the previous election, and there are earmarks of what's
Speaker 3: happening here that could be part of a disinformation campaign.
Speaker 3: In other words, there's stuff that we don't know what's
Speaker 3: happening here. It involves Rudy Giuliani, who's been involved with
Speaker 3: Russian intelligence officers in Ukraine, and so therefore be careful.
Speaker 3: This letter was signed by both Jerry and I, but
Speaker 3: also by people far more senior and general James Clapper,
Speaker 3: the former Director of National Intelligence from NSA and CIA
Speaker 3: Director Mike Hayden, CIA Director and Secretary Defense Liane Panetta,
Speaker 3: former CIA director John Brennan, Michael Morel and John mcgloffin,
Speaker 3: who both were former DCI or deputies of the CIA. Essentially,
Speaker 3: even to this day, if you read the letter, it's
Speaker 3: not really saying anything that anybody can really argue with.
Speaker 3: This is essentially just a public warning, and it probably
Speaker 3: have fallen away. But what happened is in the presidential debate,
Speaker 3: which happened a few days later, Donald Trump brought up
Speaker 3: Hunter Biden and talked about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden
Speaker 3: in response, said that this fifty one former senior intelligence
Speaker 3: officer signed a letter saying that the laptop was Russian disinformation.
Speaker 3: Now that's not exactly what the letter said, not exol
Speaker 3: what it says, not at all what it said. However,
Speaker 3: when Biden ended up winning the election, disgruntled Republicans and
Speaker 3: others tried to use this to say, hey, these people
Speaker 3: must have been in cahoots with the Biden administration and
Speaker 3: therefore used their former positions to try to influence an election.
Speaker 3: And so now they are hearings supposedly to look into this.
Speaker 5: The hearings are about the mischaracterizations of the letter. So
Speaker 5: the actual letter simply says caveat emptor we don't actually
Speaker 5: say it's disinformation, which implies that we know it's like
Speaker 5: made up and wrong. We're talking about malign influence in information.
Speaker 5: That's where it could be true but was put out
Speaker 5: at a certain time. It could be mostly true, but
Speaker 5: cherry picked or curated. And we're basically saying we don't
Speaker 5: know what this is, nor do we advocate for Donald
Speaker 5: Trump or for Joe Biden, but we're simply saying, don't
Speaker 5: take this at face value, have a look at it,
Speaker 5: and let's get the facts first.
Speaker 2: I fully understand what you saw as the risk, and
Speaker 2: you seem to still think is a risk. There's a
Speaker 2: few different scenarios that pop into my head. One scenario
Speaker 2: is there was an explicit effort by Russian intelligence to
Speaker 2: swear our election by taking accurate information from a laptop
Speaker 2: and spreading it. Another is taking information from a laptop,
Speaker 2: manipulating it to make it look more incriminating, or selectively
Speaker 2: releasing it out of context. Another thing is maybe they
Speaker 2: made the whole thing up. Until you answer some of
Speaker 2: these questions about the provedance the history of this thing,
Speaker 2: you just can't answer any of that. It is something
Speaker 2: like as a journalist that we've really struggled with, because
Speaker 2: the instinct of a journalist is if someone gives you
Speaker 2: information and it's at all good and checkable, you go
Speaker 2: with it. But what do you do if the even
Speaker 2: if it's accurate, but the person who gave it to
Speaker 2: you gave it to you with malign intent. It's complicated.
Speaker 2: And what's kind of striking is it's now more than
Speaker 2: two years later and we still can't answer a lot
Speaker 2: of those questions.
Speaker 3: Well, Adam, I want to admit here and now that
Speaker 3: I too have a laptop, and I use that laptop
Speaker 3: to look up the letter, which I haven't looked at
Speaker 3: for quite a long time now. Yeah, and I just
Speaker 3: want to point to one part of the letter here,
Speaker 3: which says, quote, we want to emphasize that we do
Speaker 3: not know if the emails provided to the New York
Speaker 3: Post by President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani are genuine
Speaker 3: or not, and that we do not have evidence of
Speaker 3: Russian involvement, just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious
Speaker 3: that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.
Speaker 3: If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence
Speaker 3: all Americans voting this will and we believe strongly that
Speaker 3: Americans need to be aware of this.
Speaker 5: So a few things happened that push this letter into
Speaker 5: the spotlight. First, during the second Biden Trump debate, Biden
Speaker 5: said something, even though he mischaracterized our letter a bit,
Speaker 5: it sounded something like.
Speaker 3: This, I want to stay on the issue of race.
Speaker 3: We're talking about from Hill President Trump.
Speaker 4: We're talking about.
Speaker 1: Race right now, and I do want to stay on
Speaker 1: the issue of race, President Trump, you have to respond
Speaker 1: to that. Please, look, very are fifty former national intelligence
Speaker 1: folks who said that what this he's accusing me of
Speaker 1: is a Russian plant. They have said that this has
Speaker 1: all the four five former heads of the CIA, both
Speaker 1: parties say what he's saying is a bunch of garbage.
Speaker 1: Nobody believes it except them his and his good friend
Speaker 1: Rudy Gilli.
Speaker 5: You mean the laptop is now another Russia Russia Russia hoax.
Speaker 3: You that's exactly what. Exactly what is is where he's
Speaker 3: going is Russia. I want to stay on the you
Speaker 3: have here.
Speaker 6: We go again with the Russia.
Speaker 5: So, John, the first thing it strikes me and listening
Speaker 5: to this is it's two bald guys fighting over a comb.
Speaker 5: Neither one of them has got it right right, they don't.
Speaker 5: It's not what the letters said.
Speaker 3: Well, politics is about simplifying things for the people who
Speaker 3: want to hear what you have to say. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: it's frustrating for people like us who tried to carefully
Speaker 3: look at this and provide some context and background.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna a little bit push back on the
Speaker 2: both sides. I think one of the guys, is really bald.
Speaker 2: The other does have a few whisky hairs on this subject,
Speaker 2: A few strands.
Speaker 3: All, all right, I'll grant you that. Yeah, But in
Speaker 3: this case, what but Biden did though, is he mischaracterized it,
Speaker 3: which gave Trump actually a decent end to pit back.
Speaker 2: So I want to get at White. You guys had
Speaker 2: this suspicion. Can you talk a bit about Russian active measures,
Speaker 2: Russian information campaigns, disinformation campaigns.
Speaker 5: Odd's the expert, So let me jump in first. Pregosion
Speaker 5: has said recently that he was involved. He's saying this publicly.
Speaker 5: He was involved in trying to manipulate our elections in
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen. He was involved in trying to manipulate our
Speaker 5: elections in twenty twenty, and he will continue to do so.
Speaker 5: So the Russians have admitted that they were doing so
Speaker 5: on behalf of Donald Trump. So turn it over to
Speaker 5: the expert though, that's John.
Speaker 2: Although this goes back before twenty sixteen, right, this was
Speaker 2: not some new tactic that showed up.
Speaker 3: Well, let me go back to the nineteenth century. If
Speaker 3: we remember the names Lev Bronstein used up, Druw gosh
Speaker 3: Vili and Vladimir Ulyanov will know where we're coming from here. Well,
Speaker 3: I'm joking, but those names are actually those are the
Speaker 3: real names for Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. And it's a
Speaker 3: good reminder because the Soviet Union was founded by people
Speaker 3: who operated as terrorists, as underground as people trying to
Speaker 3: destroy the Artist regime and we're in and out of prisons.
Speaker 3: And so when they took over and created this new
Speaker 3: Soviet Union, first thing they did is create a security service,
Speaker 3: and coming from the roots of being essentially underground operatives
Speaker 3: and terrorists, their Security Service started out almost as a
Speaker 3: terrorist organization which would tried to weaken their enemies from within,
Speaker 3: and they used deception and subversion and disinformation because they
Speaker 3: couldn't take their enemies on head on. You know, even
Speaker 3: Churchill at the time said, you know, we need to
Speaker 3: strangle the Bolshevik baby in its cradle. They knew that
Speaker 3: they couldn't take on the European powers at the time,
Speaker 3: and so they created this, you know, very strong security
Speaker 3: service which kept internal opposition at bay and tried to
Speaker 3: weaken their external enemies from inside. Why that's relevant is
Speaker 3: because essentially the subsequent security services, the KGB and others
Speaker 3: have all followed that same playbook. It's been the same
Speaker 3: thing that's gone on. And Vladimir Putin is a career
Speaker 3: KGB officer, has been involved in years and years and
Speaker 3: decades and decades of this same kind of subversion and
Speaker 3: disinformation and deception and agitation and all of these things
Speaker 3: which they've been doing to us for years. Before social
Speaker 3: media could spread fake stories, the Russians created fake stories
Speaker 3: like that the United States and the Pentagon created the
Speaker 3: AIDS virus, and they spread that around the world and
Speaker 3: made its way into major media markets when it was
Speaker 3: a completely invented story. And this happened to us again
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen. By twenty sixteen, the US intelligence services
Speaker 3: and others have been so focused on terrorism that I
Speaker 3: think we didn't put the resources into looking at what
Speaker 3: the Russians are up to. And I think we're sort
Speaker 3: of caught by surprise when we find out that the
Speaker 3: Russians were using heavy efforts in social media that pushed
Speaker 3: in information. In fact, several different Russian security services hacked
Speaker 3: into the Democratic National Committee to steal all of their
Speaker 3: emails and others and then publicize them. Of course, there
Speaker 3: was a number of groups you know the Muller Report,
Speaker 3: this Senate Intelligence Committee and others who looked into it
Speaker 3: and have said definitively that the Russians tried to influence
Speaker 3: our elections. They tried to do that on behalf of
Speaker 3: the Donald Trump campaign because Donald Trump was the chaos candidate,
Speaker 3: and chaos benefits the Russians. Anything that weakens the United
Speaker 3: States or keeps US inwardly focused benefits them, so they
Speaker 3: can mess around in Europe and in their neighborhood. And
Speaker 3: we've seen what the outcome of that is in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: And for similar reasons to the early Bolsheviks, we see
Speaker 2: if Russia can't be as successful in Ukraine as they
Speaker 2: had hoped militarily, they clearly couldn't take us on in
Speaker 2: a head to head fight. But this is a way
Speaker 2: to use their oil well.
Speaker 3: To weaken your enemies from the inside if you can't
Speaker 3: take them on head out. And that's why I brought
Speaker 3: up the term terrorism and why the early sort of
Speaker 3: Bolsheviks were terrorists. That's how terrorists operated. They look for
Speaker 3: your weaknesses and try to exploit them.
Speaker 5: Let's take a breather and back in a moment. Glad
Speaker 5: to have everybody back let's go back down.
Speaker 6: The rabbit hole.
Speaker 2: We've done it too, right. We did it in Honduras
Speaker 2: in the fifties. We did it in Iran where we
Speaker 2: spread I mean Honduras, we kind of spread this fake war.
Speaker 2: But don't other nations, including US use disinformation sometimes.
Speaker 3: This is often the pushback that we get from people
Speaker 3: who don't follow these things, and I think in some
Speaker 3: ways it's certainly true. There's two points I'd like to make.
Speaker 3: One is after World War Two, when we had not
Speaker 3: had a national intelligence service prior to that, we created one,
Speaker 3: and the fear of massive Soviet troops taking over Europe
Speaker 3: Stalin with the bomb our new intelligence services thought we
Speaker 3: had to fight fire with fire, and we had to
Speaker 3: play the Russian game, and so we did get into
Speaker 3: the game of disinformation and trying to subvert countries that
Speaker 3: we didn't like. Now we found over time that that
Speaker 3: actually one number one, we weren't very good at it.
Speaker 3: And number two, it isn't really the strength of our country.
Speaker 3: The strength of our country is sort of art. We're
Speaker 3: a vision for others that we have our open democracy
Speaker 3: and open diplomacy, such that by the early nineteen seventies
Speaker 3: there were significant reforms in the intelligence community. There was
Speaker 3: of investigations, There was a big change in the intelligence community,
Speaker 3: and they created congressional oversight. They changed some of the
Speaker 3: laws about the United States can't get involved in assassination,
Speaker 3: It can't get involved in some of these things, so
Speaker 3: much so that nowadays the US is really not in
Speaker 3: that game. And you know, you can argue that in
Speaker 3: some ways it's worse if we're trying to overthrow other countries.
Speaker 3: We do it overtly, we go into a rocker Afghanistan
Speaker 3: or what have you, with our military as opposed to
Speaker 3: trying to subvert from the inside. That's another discussion for
Speaker 3: another time. But our intelligence services largely don't play the
Speaker 3: game in the same way that the Russians do.
Speaker 5: I think it's important it's illegal for US intelligence agencies,
Speaker 5: for example, to use journalists as cover or to use
Speaker 5: journalists in the English speaking world. The Russians know that,
Speaker 5: and that's one reason I think since Donilov was arrested
Speaker 5: the journalists in nineteen eighty six, journalists have been left alone,
Speaker 5: the English speaking journalists in Russia up until the Wall
Speaker 5: Street Journal journals was arrested. Where we did get involved
Speaker 5: in information operations. Radio Free Europe was started out as
Speaker 5: a CIA operation was so successful that CIA withdrew from
Speaker 5: it as it self finance. That actually was one of
Speaker 5: the most powerful weapons during the Cold War, and that
Speaker 5: broadcast truth inside to the you know, real journalism, real
Speaker 5: truth inside, and that was very effective. And I think
Speaker 5: that is something that we've learned from inside of the
Speaker 5: intelligence agencies. Truth has been more powerful than lies in
Speaker 5: the long run.
Speaker 2: All right, So what's happening with you guys? Are you
Speaker 2: like under investigation by Congress by Jim Jordan? What is
Speaker 2: happening right now?
Speaker 3: Well, let me take a quick step back. So what's
Speaker 3: happened is with the twenty twenty two elections and the
Speaker 3: Republicans taking over the House Representatives, a number of committees
Speaker 3: were put together by Republicans like Jim Jordan and others,
Speaker 3: and one of them is called the Committee on the
Speaker 3: Weaponization of the Federal Government. And what they are trying
Speaker 3: to do is make the case publicly that somehow Democrats
Speaker 3: have used agencies like the CIA, the FBI, Justice Department
Speaker 3: to go after conservatives. There's a number of things that
Speaker 3: they're doing here. We're one small piece of it. So
Speaker 3: one small piece of Jim Jordan's committee is to look
Speaker 3: at the Hunter Biden letter, the letter that the fifty
Speaker 3: one Ormer intelligence officers signed in the lead up to
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty election, And as part of that process,
Speaker 3: all of us received a letter from Jim Jordan's committee
Speaker 3: saying that we had to share whatever internal correspondence we
Speaker 3: have in terms of what we did to sign the
Speaker 3: letter and who we talked to, and then separately be
Speaker 3: available to be questioned by the committee. Even if you're
Speaker 3: taking on facebat that they're looking at the federal government
Speaker 3: and using its power inappropriate ways. Not a single person
Speaker 3: who signed that letter was working in the federal government.
Speaker 3: All of us had been retired for some of us
Speaker 3: for many years and some of us for a few years.
Speaker 3: So you know, we were prior citizens with no access
Speaker 3: to secret information.
Speaker 5: Not only were we private citizens, we were also people
Speaker 5: men and women who had devoted our lives to protecting
Speaker 5: the constitution. Right. I never saw Jim Jordan in Afghanistan,
Speaker 5: did you, I never saw Paul Gosar in Iraq. I
Speaker 5: never saw any of these people and all the you know,
Speaker 5: some of the rough, dangerous places that we volunteered to
Speaker 5: serve and to serve our country, to protect the Constitution,
Speaker 5: which is what we pledged to do. And yet these
Speaker 5: people who've never done any of this, they're the ones
Speaker 5: to call us up and try to intimidate us for
Speaker 5: expressing our First Amendment rights. And I think it's a
Speaker 5: really dangerous step in the wrong direction.
Speaker 3: None of us were partisans. None of us ever talked
Speaker 3: about Democrat versus Republican party politics. Why we served in
Speaker 3: the agency. We worked for the United States government, and
Speaker 3: we were professionals, and so that doesn't mean that we
Speaker 3: don't have a right to express opinions after you retire.
Speaker 3: They're finding that there isn't much there, and I think
Speaker 3: they're finding it's already being a failure before they've even
Speaker 3: come to our issue.
Speaker 5: Right, And I think it's important to note people should
Speaker 5: read the letter to actually see what if they're interested.
Speaker 5: But the letter doesn't advocate for Joe Biden to become president.
Speaker 5: It doesn't advocate for or against Trump, for or against Biden.
Speaker 5: It's simply questions whether or not the Hunter Biden laptop issue,
Speaker 5: what the facts are, and the facts were and continued
Speaker 5: to be disputed.
Speaker 3: Well, what we come to is we are worried about
Speaker 3: foreign interference in the United States, Russian active measures, and frankly,
Speaker 3: the Chinese are up to the game pretty heavily now.
Speaker 3: And so I think as Americans and as American national
Speaker 3: security professionals, that's what we care about. You know, if
Speaker 3: Americans elect one president or one candidate over another, that's
Speaker 3: the way the system should work. But if a foreign
Speaker 3: adversary is putting their finger on the scale, that's something
Speaker 3: I think we should try to call out. And what's
Speaker 3: unfortunate now is there are people who are seeing a
Speaker 3: benefit to having a foreign interference because it may benefit
Speaker 3: their party over the other party. And frankly, that's as
Speaker 3: skeazy as anything you find on the Biden laptop.
Speaker 5: That's on America. This doesn't happen in a vacuum. So
Speaker 5: there is Paul Manifort, who was Donald Trump's campaign manager.
Speaker 5: He himself has admitted publicly that he was providing to
Speaker 5: a Russian intelligence officer, secretly providing him inside information on
Speaker 5: the Trump campaign that the Russians could use to assist
Speaker 5: the campaign. He was providing polling.
Speaker 3: To a Russian intelligence officer, and he's provided that afforation
Speaker 3: to a Russian intelligence officer saying, does this information help
Speaker 3: defer my eighteen million dollar debt to an oligarch?
Speaker 5: Right, then you've got Michael Flynn, who was for a
Speaker 5: little while that they as a security advisor to the
Speaker 5: president who before that, So Hunter Biden received fifty thousand
Speaker 5: dollars from Barissima per month. I don't think he earned it.
Speaker 5: I think it was clearly because of his last name.
Speaker 5: But Michael Flynn received twenty five thousand dollars to go
Speaker 5: to a dinner in Moscow to sit next to Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 5: That disturbs me as well, right.
Speaker 3: And did not report it to the Defense Intelligence Agency
Speaker 3: by regulation he was supposed to report as a recently
Speaker 3: retired former military general.
Speaker 5: And he was taking money from the Turkish government, which
Speaker 5: he later admitted, and was actually discussing kidnapping a US person,
Speaker 5: not a citizen, a Turkish citizen living in the United States,
Speaker 5: actually discussing kidnapping this individual and bringing him back to Turkey.
Speaker 5: So these are people around Trump who are being manipulated
Speaker 5: by Russian forces just.
Speaker 3: To get into the foreign interference thing here. As I
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, for example, years ago, the Russians would create
Speaker 3: a false story and then promote that false story, for example,
Speaker 3: the notion that the Pentagon created the AIDS virus and
Speaker 3: used it in places like Africa and others. But frankly,
Speaker 3: you know how easy it is now. So you know,
Speaker 3: we're focused on the Hunter Biden laptop or whatever. But
Speaker 3: what the Russians want to do, and the Chinese want
Speaker 3: to do, when the Iranians want to do, when the
Speaker 3: North Koreans want to do, is create chaos inside the
Speaker 3: United States, because the more Americans attack each other, they're
Speaker 3: not focused externally. The more Americans attack each other, the
Speaker 3: weaker we are as a polity. Nowadays, you don't even
Speaker 3: need to create the false story. What you do is
Speaker 3: you watch the things that we're saying to each other,
Speaker 3: and you amplify and exploit that. So the Hunter Biden
Speaker 3: laptop story now is probably being used even more now
Speaker 3: by the Russians and others than it would have been
Speaker 3: even in the lead up the election, because they see
Speaker 3: that people in the Republican Party and in the House
Speaker 3: representatives are trying to use it as a weapon against others,
Speaker 3: and so they say, oh, my goodness, what a free
Speaker 3: weapon you're handing us. You hand us the bat will
Speaker 3: gladly beat you with it. So they can see bad
Speaker 3: actors on Twitter and Reddit and all these kind of places,
Speaker 3: and they can promote them and pump them up, and
Speaker 3: they can essentially just exploit the things that we're doing
Speaker 3: to ourselves. They don't have to create it anymore. You know,
Speaker 3: it's a shame more essentially hurting ourselves in the process.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, Rudy Giuliani, of course, is deeply associated
Speaker 2: with the laptop. He talked about it a fair bet.
Speaker 4: Hunter, this degenerate drug addict made that way, probably by
Speaker 4: his father, because his father didn't take care of him,
Speaker 4: put him in business with some of the biggest criminals
Speaker 4: in the world.
Speaker 7: Was a bag man for his father. He explains it
Speaker 7: right into our drive.
Speaker 4: He says, I've had to pay all the expenses of
Speaker 4: the family for thirty years, he tells his door to this,
Speaker 4: and I've had to give fifty percent of my income
Speaker 4: to Pop Well because the income.
Speaker 6: Was really Pops. He started cheap a little slimy.
Speaker 7: Center from Delaware, and then he became an international criminal.
Speaker 8: Missus MC allow me to jump in here just for saying,
Speaker 8: because I want to get to some of the things
Speaker 8: that we learned today. I don't know if you read
Speaker 8: this or not, but Hunter Biden's lawyers they're threatening a
Speaker 8: lawsuit against Fox and Tucker Carlson about some payments that
Speaker 8: he made. Now he did put something on his taxes
Speaker 8: that he actually did make the payments for this house.
Speaker 8: Can you can you maybe clear some of this up
Speaker 8: for us?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Sure, I mean, first of all, they sent a letter
Speaker 7: to the to Daddy's Justice Department and to Daddy's the
Speaker 7: Delaware Attorney General asking that myself, Steve Bannon, Bob Castello,
Speaker 7: and mister John mac Isaacs be investigated for stealing his laptop.
Speaker 7: Of course, that's absurd because I got the documents right here.
Speaker 6: He signed a contract with John.
Speaker 4: Mac Isaacs had said if he didn't come and get
Speaker 4: it in ninety days, he abandoned it and it became
Speaker 4: mac Isaac's property.
Speaker 6: Here's the contract, and here's the notice right here of
Speaker 6: the fact that it reverted to John mac Isaac.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's the first time that somebody asked
Speaker 3: Rudy Juliana to clear something up.
Speaker 2: I gotta say I've used the move on the radio
Speaker 2: a bunch of times. If I have the documents right here.
Speaker 2: It's a very effective performance because of course they aren't
Speaker 2: going to look at the documents. It's just a prop.
Speaker 3: Senator McCarthy did it famously. You remember, I have here
Speaker 3: in my hand a list.
Speaker 2: Of fifty seven, and I remember I read a book
Speaker 2: that said fifty seven just came into his head because
Speaker 2: of fifty seven varieties of Heinz.
Speaker 3: But a lot of it is, even what you hear there,
Speaker 3: is just for political purposes. It's a smear of information
Speaker 3: that sounds awful but doesn't really have anything to do
Speaker 3: with the issue at hand. I mean, sure, Hunter Biden's
Speaker 3: laptop may have ugly stuff on it, Sure he might
Speaker 3: have had been a drug addict and done really bad
Speaker 3: and ugly things. But some of the assertions that somehow
Speaker 3: his father was involved in illicit activity, as far as
Speaker 3: I know, none of that stuff has ever in any
Speaker 3: way not only just not been proven, but other than
Speaker 3: people just making assertions, they haven't even tried to give
Speaker 3: any follow up information that would make those assertions even
Speaker 3: sound plausible.
Speaker 2: So that's where my mind goes with this, is creating
Speaker 2: a conspiracy theory around Hunter Biden's laptop. They've been very
Speaker 2: bad at it. They've missed some real easy best practices
Speaker 2: of creating a conspiracy by getting these really specific and
Speaker 2: easily falsifiable factoids, by over selling at every stage, they've
Speaker 2: left it where as I understand it. Yes, there is
Speaker 2: a kind of Trump cultist belief that I was watching
Speaker 2: a YouTube video the other day and a big Trump
Speaker 2: supporter was screaming Hunter Fiden's laptop is true. But it
Speaker 2: was like, what does that even mean? Like my iPhone
Speaker 2: is true? Like it's there's no thing that could be
Speaker 2: true or could not be true.
Speaker 5: Okay, let's take a break from the craziness just for
Speaker 5: a minute or two, and we're back.
Speaker 2: Like, if you were hired to spread this particular conspiracy,
Speaker 2: I feel like I would recommend, like keep it, Like
Speaker 2: ben Ghazi was awesome.
Speaker 5: Because it was sort of nebulous.
Speaker 2: It was nebulous. It wasn't clear. Whitewater, like what was white?
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't remember what whitewater was, but
Speaker 2: it's that and the Clintons are bad, and I feel
Speaker 2: like they messed that up. I mean, they've done a
Speaker 2: great job of motivating the people who were already fully motivated,
Speaker 2: but they've done a terrible job of getting converts because
Speaker 2: they oversold it. There are too many details, and the
Speaker 2: thing is by sticking to vague but truthful statements, they
Speaker 2: really box the Hillary side in in that there wasn't
Speaker 2: a simple no. That's not true. And what I've learned
Speaker 2: as a journalist is you don't want to give a
Speaker 2: list of things because if I say, John Ceipher is
Speaker 2: the most incomfident CIA agent ever, he destroyed the CIA's
Speaker 2: abilities to investigate Russia. He's a coward. In fact, he
Speaker 2: lives in Mexico and he like I just throw in
Speaker 2: one thing, you get to turn the whole thing into
Speaker 2: I do not live in That is a lie. I
Speaker 2: do not. So I feel like Rudy, it's just bad
Speaker 2: conspiracy fearmongering. Like with Hillary, it was like her emails
Speaker 2: and then it was some were more confidential and yes
Speaker 2: they could say well no they were more confidential later
Speaker 2: and it wasn't top you know, but she didn't have
Speaker 2: a clean no. That's not true.
Speaker 3: But to be fair, Rudy Juliani's not just bad at
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: Bad a lot of things, but one thing he has
Speaker 2: known for is his lifelong commitment to combating substance abuse.
Speaker 5: There's one thing that we can all agree on that
Speaker 5: none of us are going to vote for Hunter Biden
Speaker 5: for president.
Speaker 2: I don't think I would.
Speaker 5: So let's play back an interview we had with a different,
Speaker 5: better looking, and more charming ad him Adam Kinsinger, until
Speaker 5: recently a congressman from Illinois. He was one of only
Speaker 5: ten Republicans to vote to impeach Trump after January sixth,
Speaker 5: and was the only other Republican on the January sixth
Speaker 5: committee along with Liz Cheney. We have a full episode
Speaker 5: with Adam Kinsinger. Here's an excerpt talking about the fifty.
Speaker 3: One Adam, with the Hunter Biden laptop thing has become
Speaker 3: a big political issue. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about how you think the Republicans see that, how they're
Speaker 3: going to use it, and if possible, what do you
Speaker 3: think they really believe about that issue?
Speaker 9: First off, the thing I haven't become clear on is
Speaker 9: was it legally obtained? At any point? If you have
Speaker 9: evidence that seized illegally, I think it's thrown out a
Speaker 9: court typically, right. I'll leave that to the legal experts
Speaker 9: on it. What we don't know, and maybe forensic people
Speaker 9: have gone through it, we don't know was any file
Speaker 9: or anything inserted into it later, was it tampered with
Speaker 9: after the fact. What's happened though, is that's a whole issue.
Speaker 9: But they have tried to turn this into a way
Speaker 9: to blunt and throw more spaghetti on the wall of
Speaker 9: confusion to what about in blunt the very reality that
Speaker 9: Donald Trump profited on his name, his family profited on
Speaker 9: his name, but he launched an insurrection against the government,
Speaker 9: which has never happened. He launched an insurrection. This has
Speaker 9: not happened since the eighteen hundreds in the Civil War.
Speaker 9: And so they're trying to create any what about ism,
Speaker 9: and they've created this Torrent I mean, the fifty one
Speaker 9: of you guys are getting pulled into some conspiracy when
Speaker 9: you never said, as far as I know, you never
Speaker 9: said the laptop is fake. You said what we were
Speaker 9: all saying, which is, we need to be very careful
Speaker 9: because not just in twenty sixteen, before that, in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 9: and certainly in twenty twenty, the Russians, the Chinese, the
Speaker 9: Iranians are going to try to influence the selection. So
Speaker 9: don't just take something that all of a sudden pops
Speaker 9: up at face value. Understand and be cautious about it.
Speaker 9: There's nothing wrong with saying that you guys did what
Speaker 9: you should have is as former professional intelligence officials. But
Speaker 9: that doesn't mean they're not going to drag you in.
Speaker 9: And you'll tell the truth in front of them even
Speaker 9: if they do. But they'll collect snippets. You know, Matt
Speaker 9: Gates will get his time. And it's garbage. And I
Speaker 9: got to tell you, if anybody is listening to this,
Speaker 9: who's a Republican and you have some sympathy to this, fine,
Speaker 9: all of this needs to be handled in a court
Speaker 9: of law. But what is happening in Congress is it
Speaker 9: is a fundraising slash attempt to take away blame from
Speaker 9: Donald Trump. That is all it is. So take that
Speaker 9: with a grain of s and then come to your
Speaker 9: own conclusions. And I think that's a real thing. I'm
Speaker 9: not saying most people on the right believe that, but
Speaker 9: I think there are certainly people that have truly understood
Speaker 9: that the only way to stay in power, as whether
Speaker 9: it's white, whether it's right, or whatever, is visa v
Speaker 9: force and visa v anti democratic methods, and I think
Speaker 9: they want to do that.
Speaker 3: So Jerry and I fond ourselves playing a small role
Speaker 3: in the counter Biden conspiracy because we were two of
Speaker 3: the Dirty fifty one who signed a letter in the
Speaker 3: lead up to the twenty twenty election that's been spun
Speaker 3: into somehow we were part of a deep state who
Speaker 3: purposely are trying to impact the election.
Speaker 9: Well, we're in a club because people somehow think I
Speaker 9: was part of the Steele dossier, because David Kramer, who's
Speaker 9: a friend of mine, had the dossier early. He with
Speaker 9: McCain took it to the government. But I got a
Speaker 9: copy of it probably about five hours, maybe a day
Speaker 9: before it hit Politico or whoever it hit first. And
Speaker 9: so now I'm actually the guy that pushed around the
Speaker 9: Steele dossier. Yeah, here's another of my favorite here's another
Speaker 9: of my favorite ones. You can find this on Twitter,
Speaker 9: Google or whatever. They have a picture of me with
Speaker 9: Arabs and John McCain with Arabs and they're all, of
Speaker 9: course bag daddy of ISIS, because I guess they all
Speaker 9: look the same to some of these people. And so
Speaker 9: it's me and John McCain invented ISIS. We worked for
Speaker 9: the CIA to do it, and that's where you and
Speaker 9: I all got to meet each other. We were on
Speaker 9: the build isis because it's good for America operation for
Speaker 9: some reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you shouldn't have done that. One of the things
Speaker 3: you're suggesting is leaders and people elected officials should push
Speaker 3: back even if it's hard. What do you do because
Speaker 3: you can't do that all day long. Each individual you'd
Speaker 3: say no to isn't going to necessarily change. So what
Speaker 3: are some of the answers of how we can sort
Speaker 3: of slowly pull ourselves out of this.
Speaker 9: I mean, if I had that answer, you know, I'd
Speaker 9: certainly be implementing it. The thing I try to do
Speaker 9: is a occasionally, for instance, I always see this thing
Speaker 9: pop up on Twitter about me and John McCain. Occasionally
Speaker 9: I'll retweet it and just say, just so everybody knows
Speaker 9: there are people that really believe this it's insane, because
Speaker 9: I do think there.
Speaker 3: Is.
Speaker 9: It's like, I got to be careful in how we
Speaker 9: put it out there, but there is some benefit in
Speaker 9: ridicule on some of this. Right to show the rest
Speaker 9: of the world like what's going on, I think is
Speaker 9: important Sometimes like I'll and I shouldn't do it as much, probably,
Speaker 9: but I'll retweet somebody that don't have that many followers.
Speaker 9: That's going after me again because I want my followers
Speaker 9: to see the reality of what people are thinking out there.
Speaker 9: Because you have to be on the guard for this.
Speaker 2: You have to do that now. Our old friend of
Speaker 2: the show, Rudy Giuliani, also had some things to say
Speaker 2: about Adam Kinsinger.
Speaker 8: So, mister mayor, Kinsinger's claiming that either mc isaac or
Speaker 8: you know whoever stole this, now you care to respond.
Speaker 4: He's a complete He's not crying, right, I mean, here's
Speaker 4: that that idiot wouldn't bother to read well because he's
Speaker 4: a liar. The document says clearly equipment left with the
Speaker 4: mac shop after ninety days of notification of completed service
Speaker 4: will be treated as abandoned property, and you agree to
Speaker 4: hold a max store harmless against any py damage for
Speaker 4: the loss of your property.
Speaker 2: Can I just once again say, I think Giuliani's really
Speaker 2: bad at this. There's another lesson I feel like I've
Speaker 2: learned in my journalistic career. There may be audience that's
Speaker 2: fully with you, like I love you, Rudy. Anything you say.
Speaker 2: If you call someone a liar, I believe they're a liar.
Speaker 2: But by going all the way to there, like for
Speaker 2: the for the audience. It's like genuinely like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't pay that much attention. Maybe Adam Kinzinger has
Speaker 2: a point. When you go all the way to he's
Speaker 2: a liar, he's an idiot, it's putting a huge burden
Speaker 2: on the viewer, on the listener.
Speaker 5: To take on this like big weighty choice.
Speaker 2: Like what I think would have been much more effective
Speaker 2: is to say, ah, you know that bugs me when
Speaker 2: politicians talk about stuff without really looking at the information.
Speaker 2: You know, I can understand why you might think that.
Speaker 2: But let me show you. I have this letter, and
Speaker 2: it makes it really clear that Adam Kinziger is mistaken.
Speaker 2: I think Juliani is bad at spreading conspiracies.
Speaker 5: Rudy, if you're out there and you're listening, you can
Speaker 5: contact Adam directly. He can give you some tip.
Speaker 3: Let me offer another suggestion. Perhaps, in fact, he understands
Speaker 3: his audience better than we think he does. I think
Speaker 3: his audience is an audience of one. I think when
Speaker 3: he speaks on Fox News, he is trying to appeal
Speaker 3: to Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: That's a good point.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm excited to bring together two of my favorite people.
Speaker 2: Aaron Hayes is one of the best comedic actresses working today,
Speaker 2: and George Santo's from the great State of New York
Speaker 2: is one of our best comedic congressman working today. I
Speaker 2: should note we're recording this when he is almost certainly
Speaker 2: going to not be a congressman by the time this airs.
Speaker 2: George Santos felt that the call from several people, including
Speaker 2: John and Jerry, to actually investigate facts before you tell
Speaker 2: the world about them was an outrage, and he wrote
Speaker 2: this bill to strip them of their security clearances.
Speaker 10: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives
Speaker 10: of the United States of America in Congress assembled. This
Speaker 10: act may be cited as the Drain the Intelligence Community
Speaker 10: Swamp Act of twenty twenty three. In general, not later
Speaker 10: than twenty four hours after the date of enactment of
Speaker 10: this Act, the security clearance of any individual listed in
Speaker 10: Subsection C signatories of the statement titled Public Statement on
Speaker 10: the Hunter Biden Emails dated October nineteenth, twenty twenty are
Speaker 10: hereby revoked, and no security clearance may be granted or
Speaker 10: renewed for any such individual. The Secretary of Defense and
Speaker 10: the Attorney General shall investigate such individual, Jules and their
Speaker 10: role in the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and level of
Speaker 10: engagement with the Biden presidential campaign.
Speaker 3: I think it's quite ironic that George Santos is the
Speaker 3: one that brings this up. The one person who certainly
Speaker 3: could not get a security clearance, who could certainly not
Speaker 3: go through an inspection or a polygraph and get themselves
Speaker 3: into a position of authority in any feshion is the
Speaker 3: one who's saying we should be held accountable and we
Speaker 3: shouldn't have our security claimss. Like I'd almost it's almost
Speaker 3: makes it, like you said, Adam comical.
Speaker 2: Right, I want Jared Kushner himself would say God, that
Speaker 2: guy should knock down. Can I ask, like, what's it
Speaker 2: like being at the middle of some political theater?
Speaker 5: The death threats are a bummer?
Speaker 2: Did you get death threats?
Speaker 5: We've gotten death threats.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's strange because you spent the greatest part of your
Speaker 3: adult life, you know, working in secret where nobody knows
Speaker 3: who you are. There's no public face to what you do,
Speaker 3: and for the most part you are given pray for
Speaker 3: your work in defense of the American people and defense
Speaker 3: in ne security, and then all of a sudden, once
Speaker 3: you put out an opinion in public in some ways.
Speaker 3: You know, the attacks are weird and scary to see
Speaker 3: and it's really sort of unhealthy, but it doesn't affect
Speaker 3: my day to day life. And in fact that the
Speaker 3: fact that he's offering to take away our security clearances
Speaker 3: is really sort of a canard. Most of us are
Speaker 3: retired and no longer working as contractors with the intelligent
Speaker 3: community and don't need security clearances, and those who do,
Speaker 3: who are doing really important work, probably can find a
Speaker 3: way around that.
Speaker 2: I did some other questions. So when you join the CIA,
Speaker 2: is that when you become part of the deep state?
Speaker 2: Or is there like a selection process from people in CIA?
Speaker 5: But let's this is this succumbs a shock to you,
Speaker 5: But there is some hypocrisy in Washington. I spent time
Speaker 5: like up in northern Afghanistan and like on a horse
Speaker 5: tracking bin laden. After nine to eleven, I was in
Speaker 5: Iraq and the bad days with ices outside, and we
Speaker 5: briefed Congress about this, and I sat across from some
Speaker 5: of these same congressmen who then talking about how, you know,
Speaker 5: colleagues risked their lives to protect this country. And they
Speaker 5: were all happy and supportive and thankful and thank you
Speaker 5: for your sacrifice, and when when it came to politics,
Speaker 5: they were ready to cut our throats without a second thought.
Speaker 5: So I mean a lot of these guys who in
Speaker 5: Congress who were attacking us are the same guys who
Speaker 5: were thanking us what we risked our lives earlier on.
Speaker 3: I can remember coming back for a Chief of Station conference.
Speaker 3: We would go down to the Hill to speak to
Speaker 3: centers and congress people and their staff and actually being hugged.
Speaker 3: You know, thank you for what you guys are doing.
Speaker 3: It's so wonderful. And that night seeing in them on
Speaker 3: TV tearing into the CIA is dishonest. Whatever He's like, geez,
Speaker 3: it could have waited a day or two.
Speaker 2: Thank you guys. I gotta say, it's kind of exciting
Speaker 2: to have a couple of deep state stooges on to
Speaker 2: talk about the conspiracy, about the very sane deep state
Speaker 2: stooges who are hosting this show.
Speaker 3: Thanks guys, Oh you're very welcome.
Speaker 5: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'sha, John Cipher,
Speaker 5: and Jonathan Stern. The associate producers are Rachel Harner and
Speaker 5: David Sollinger. This has been a production of honorable Mention
Speaker 5: and Abominable Pictures for iHeartMedia