Hans Mahncke on the Durham Probe
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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds. With your host, Chuck Warren, I'm Sam Stone. Another fantastic program lined up for you today.

We are going to first up have Rod Derulis, running Republican congressional candidate in Florida's District 21. We'll follow him up with Hans Manke to discuss the Durham filings. And then we have some news coming out of some of the attempted prosecutions of certain members of the Republican Party for their alleged roles on January 6th. But before we get going into all the politics and all the

terrible things, frankly, that are going on throughout this country right now. Rod Derulis, welcome to the program. Rod is at age 17 enlisted in the United States Navy. He served for six years as a petty officer, second class, and assistant engagement control officer on board the USS Sullivan's stationed out of Jacksonville. Upon completion of his military service, Rod attended law school at Syracuse University. Go orange.

With the help of the GI Bill, after graduating, he served in President Trump's administration in the U.S. Department of Commerce. Rod, before we get into all the good reasons you're running for Congress, and there are a lot of them, you would be a fantastic addition to the U.S. House.

I want to start out with you served on the USS Sullivan's, which is one of the sort of most tragic stories of World War II. But it also leads to something I think most people know from popular culture. Private Ryan. Yeah. Saving Private Ryan. Can you tell us who were the Sullivan's?

Yeah, well, first off, it's great to be with you all. Thanks for having me. Yeah, like you mentioned, I did serve on board USS Sullivan's, the latest ship, which is a destroyer class, guided missile destroyer. But the siblings, there were five sailors.

who were of the last name the Sullivans, hence the Sullivans brothers, who served together in World War II. They unfortunately perished in the same battle on board the same ship. They were stationed all on the same ship during World War II. These brothers loved their country. They loved their selflessness and willing to serve in war.

in World War II to save their country and the world, put a limelight on exactly what America has to offer. But unfortunately, their lives kind of...

set a light on the Navy's policies, right, where they, since that time, they went, the Navy went forward and not allowed, well, strictly enforced or not strictly enforced, not allowed siblings to serve together on the ship for that same reason. They lost their lives. I mean, there are some of them tragically were stories. The story that I've heard is that

Some of them were tragically eaten by sharks post the sinking of their ship, USS Juno. But it's unfortunate that the mother, and I know still I think his great – one of their great-granddaughters, Kelly Sullivan, the sponsor of my current ship, the ship I served on –

She talks about that. It's very touching. She comes back every year to talk with the Stables and Board of U.S. Assessments, and it's always a great time to talk about self-assistance sacrifice that we've seen across our military. Yeah, absolutely. And in the wake of that, the military largely tried to ensure that family members would not be serving in the same units on board the same ships, that sort of thing, which is essentially the basis of the movie Saving Private Ryan a lot of people would be familiar with.

We have some other news about the Sullivans. As I was doing a little prep for this interview, I guess one of the older versions of the ship, and there have been a couple U.S. Navy ships named after them, is having some problems. It's a museum ship, and it's taken on water and listing, sitting at the dock in Buffalo. They're trying to save it right now. Yeah.

Yeah, I heard about that. It was unfortunate. I think we have a group chat on Facebook that kind of brought that to my attention, which is just...

It's sad to say because there are a lot of money being thrown around at other causes, but I think this is one of the causes that should be... There should be a priority to kind of siphon off money for that instead of spending on other things we can get to later on. I think preserving the real history of the United States and our military history, the sacrifice that's been made by so many is worth doing, absolutely. Yeah. Rod... It's a rich story. Yeah, a very rich story. Rod, this is Chuck Warren. So...

The economy is an issue. We don't see inflation going away before November. How is this playing with people you talk to, groups you discuss? And in Congress, what would you do to get inflation tamed again? That's a great question. I mean, obviously, the economy and the inflation is affecting everyone here. And I'm one of those people who firmly believe

believe that a strong America abroad requires a strong America back home. One of my favorite presidents, Ronald Reagan, knew this, understood this best, and that was that our elected officials, their primary responsibility

our our responsibilities would be to protect the american people their prosperity their freedom right and so my parents immigrated to the united states uh in pursuit of the american dream um and unfortunately the democrats and our elected officials now in washington are destroying the uh the possibility of many uh to achieve their own american dream by doing the exact opposite right high crime high inflation um disregarding immigration laws uh selling selling out to china uh essentially um but

With regards to the inflation, we must show, and I believe this, we must show unwavering resolve when it comes to this, to protecting the livelihood of the American people, preserving or protecting the wages and jobs of Americans. That should be a priority. And that's what I'm seeing complaints about back home in my district in Palm Beach County, Florida. We should be rebuilding an economy that works for all citizens, especially those...

forgotten men and women, right, who were left behind by decades-old policies of open border and unfettered trade and globalization, right? And so we, you know, our leaders right now owe a loyalty to the American people. They owe a loyalty to our interests and aspirations, but at the end of the day, right, if the American dollar is worth far less, how is that encouraging people to

to save, right, and to

How does that encourage saving in thrift instead of spending in debt? Inflation isn't so much of a burden on the rich, I believe, you know, the rich who invested their money in the market. But it's more so about the ordinary workers who keep their money in checking and saving accounts or, you know, live by paycheck to paycheck. It's those folks that are complaining and feeling it. I'm talking to some business owners, small business owners, minority business owners who complain about,

you know, let's say the gas prices, you know, if you think about what fuels the lawnmowers to cut the grass, right? That effect is essentially, you know, raising prices on those services. Yeah, absolutely, Rod. Those costs for the inflation that is hitting gasoline, which has just been extraordinary, plays into the cost for almost every small business.

You've got families like you like you said if you are on the bottom end of the economic spectrum you're struggling living paycheck to paycheck. This is a devastating thing for you. And you know as the son of Haitian immigrants first generation immigrants.

Your family came here, did it the right way, worked really hard, started a business. And Democrats are making it a lot harder to do that. And their open borders policy is making it a lot harder to get wages up, which we saw for years under Trump. And you worked in his commerce department. You had the best wage growth for the bottom 20 percent of American workers that we've had in any time in recent history.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've got to – there's many different things that could be pointed to, right, to point to where we're at right now. A lot of issues that I saw through my time at the Commerce Department, specifically you had issues with how we – I call it selling out to China –

policies that encourage folks to stay at home and i believe um everyone who's able to work should work and uh there are policies that encourage the opposite and i believe that the welfare system also has a part in this as well and so we've got to take a look at that we've got to look at um you know getting control over our our budget right we got to have some physical responsibility coming um

coming into this new congress i hope my hope is that uh this next congress and i believe it will will be a republican majority but we've got to hit day one um hitting the ground running and we've got to get inflation under control even though i can see i've been hearing reports uh about the likelihood of a recession coming in soon at the end by the end of this year

Yeah, absolutely. Growing risk. Anytime you see high inflation like this and, you know, Chuck, I'm sort of barely old enough to have lived through the last period of really high inflation in the 70s and 80s. But that was a really rough time for a lot of Americans. And we're heading down that same road again. Well, I think we're there now. You know, I mean, I think the average is over five hundred dollars per month in new expenses for Americans.

For the same stuff? Yeah, for the American family. Now, I know if you take like some – if you own a home, I mean there are some things that reduce that obviously. But overall, if you calculate everything –

So it's a real problem. Obviously, deficits have to do with it. Printing money has to do with it. Not allowing us to be in energy independent as we could be. There's just lots of factors to this. Rod, let me ask you just two questions here. First of all, when people think of Palm Beach, which is which area you represent, I believe they think of Mar-a-Lago, all these billionaire hedge fund people on the beach.

Tell the audience a little bit about – Palm Beach has a lot of middle class, working class people there. Yeah, you're exactly right. Everyone typically thinks of Palm Beach versus the middle class section –

to poorer income folks, which would reside on the west side of Palm Beach. So you have Palm Beach, the island, where there's, I believe, 44, 45 billionaires that reside there. But then you have, and you have Mar-a-Lago, of course. And the island's like the size of a postage stamp, a long postage stamp. Right, right, exactly. And then the vast majority, you have about 2 million people who reside there.

On the other side of the island, on the actual inland side, West Palm Beach, all the way down to Delray, Boca Raton, you know, the income or the average income for those folks drops drastically. We're talking about an average income of $50,000 to $60,000, you know, median income. And I understand that other parts of this country, they're lower, but there's a distinction that people kind of miss here.

Yeah, that's well, that's that's still that's just a middle class income that again, the perception is everybody in Palm Beach is a billionaire. And then you have your low class millionaires. And it's important for people to know that's just not the case in that district. Yeah, absolutely. And it's one of those areas where you have very high end areas and you walk two blocks and you're in a in a working class, lower income area.

That's a lot. You got a lot of work ahead of you talking to those folks and spreading the message. This is. Yeah, we're going to take a break. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren and Sam Stone on the line with us today. Rod Derulis, congressional candidate, Republican congressional candidate, Navy veteran, son of Haitian immigrants. Fantastic backstory. You've got Rod Derulis.

And tell us about your experience in the land of the frozen north at Syracuse University, because that's obviously a pretty liberal place and also not a whole lot like Florida.

Yeah, you're exactly right there. So my time up at Syracuse University College of Law there, I mean, the institution was – how can I say this? It was great in terms of I'm getting a good quality education, but at the same time it wasn't because –

I want to say 99% of the faculty and students were not just liberal, but extremely liberal. And so I found myself being the Clarence Thomas in the classroom. And, you know, there's, I could tell you a story about how, you know, going after class, going up to the lockers and putting my, my,

five or six heavy law books into the locker, and people are coming up to me asking me, hey, I heard there's a rumor going around. I heard that you might be a conservative or Republican, and I'm looking at them like, yeah, and then there's the reaction, and since then, I mean, people would just, I mean,

I mean, it's very social there. You can imagine people just siphoning off and just leaving me to be by myself on my own island, which is fine. I will always stick up and defend conservative values, and especially in constitutional law class, people would...

would look, the teachers, the professor would look at me when there are, you know, when they're looking for someone to debate the other side of the issue. Everyone's talking about, oh, the Constitution's a living document and all that stuff, but let's talk about how we're supposed to interpret the law according to, you know, the actual text, right? And so...

So it was fun, but at the same time, I needed to get out and get back to sanity. And so actually during law school, I was afforded an opportunity to get back into the fight, literally while in law school, by joining the Trump administration as a legal assistant, legal intern in the Department of Justice and in the White House. And so that's how I got my foot in the door, wanting to gain experience and to help our country at the same time finishing my law degree.

And from there, once I finished my law degree and earned my license, I impressed the faculty or not the faculty, but the White House counsels in the White House personnel's office enough for them to recommend me to the president to give me a presidential appointment and serve as counsel lawyer to the secretary of commerce, Wilbur Ross. Nobody nobody is going to make themselves look bad by following in the shoes of the steps of Justice Thomas. I mean, he has been really flexing those legal muscles lately and and I'm loving it.

Rod, tell us about your family's journey to America. A friend of the show, former Congresswoman Mia Love, some Haitian immigrants as well. And I remember going and watching her swearing in and just the pride beaming from her parents. Tell me about your parents, what brought them here. Do you still have family there? Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, well, so my parents immigrated here during the Reagan administration, I believe it was 1985. And they came here on an opportunity to serve the American people by picking fruits and vegetables on the farm fields in Florida, in Palm Beach County, the West Palm Beach County area. And they did so happily, you know, it wasn't.

all sunshine and rainbows and butterflies, but they took that opportunity and ran with it. They understood that not, they were not only benefiting their own lives, but the lives of their future children at the time. And so they, you know, they were homeless too. I, I,

neglect to say that. They were homeless, too. You can imagine the wages weren't great. And then my dad used to take refuge up in some of the churches in Palm Beach County, sleeping there at night and sometimes in his car as well. And eventually,

Long story short, they worked their way up by putting their head down low, working hard to owning their own small business. And they started their own little restaurant, which was good enough for them then to raise and put food on the table and raise four children who have since then gone on to become lawyers, doctors, and chemical engineers. This is the American dream right here. This is it, folks. Yeah.

And so I'm so grateful to this country, and I tell my little brother Alex all the time, you never forget the sacrifices our parents made. You always stay true to America because no other country could this have happened. So I'm truly loyal to the American cause, American dream, the American people, and so that's why I'm running for Congress pretty much.

Well, and you talk about the success of your siblings and what they've been able to achieve off of that foundation your parents helped create for you. But that's at risk right now for a lot of kids, isn't it? Because when they're going to our public schools, a lot of them aren't getting that fundamental education that they need. No. No, actually, good thing you raised that because –

You know, unfortunately, my younger brother, Alex, I just mentioned what I found out towards the tail end of my stint in the Department of Commerce in January of 2020. He calls me and says, hey, Rod, I'm

you know, I'm being forced to wear this mask, but I'm wearing the mask that has an American flag. Something simple is just the American flag. And now I'm being bullied by my peers are being told, why am I wearing that mask? Hey, you're black. You shouldn't be wearing that. It's a racist symbol now. It's exclamatory.

X, Y, and Z. And so I got infuriated, or I was infuriated, and I told him to not listen to those kids. It kind of was one of the impetus of me jumping in and understanding that. And now you have, you know,

kids being taught to hate their country instead of learning their ABCs and 123s, the basics. These radicals are even claiming that English, math, and standardized tests are somehow racist. And they're worrying more about that than getting back to the fundamentals. Because I'm someone who firmly believes that

Teaching study skills and study habits will do far more to move working poor Americans toward success than will teaching them critical race theory or gender fluidity. Yeah, absolutely. Well, 100 percent, because that's how you are able to advance. Quickly here, tell us about Title 42. The Biden administration wants to eliminate it. You're a child of immigrants. What is your view on that?

It would be a disaster. It will be fuel to the fire. I hope and I pray that he doesn't. I think we've done a wonderful job during the Trump administration and to see him unroll everything, literally everything. And I believe because it just has a Trump stamp or Trump Trump origin on it. He's just, you know, no matter if the policy is good or bad, he just want to roll it back. You know, as someone as a first generation American,

My parents, I understand how the legal process may be time-consuming or take time or a lot of paperwork behind it, but it's the right thing to do because folks who are coming through the illegal way are causing a strain on our system, right? A lot of folks who are in need, we can't supply everything to the world. We've got to focus on providing homes for veterans. We've got to focus on helping veterans get on the scene. We've got to focus on the issues that are affecting our

Our families just cannot be the complete and total savior for everyone. That's the sad truth. And so we've got to handle the border because the border is bringing in a lot of crime. And I just briefly – I just had a briefing the other day about human trafficking, human sex trafficking.

trafficking that's happening and it's right in our backyard now in Palm Beach County. It's prevalent here. And you have fentanyl killing kids all over the country. Rod, our time is running out here. Would you please tell our audience how they can track your campaign and follow you and possibly donate?

Yeah, if you're an audience, please go to RodDorilas.com. That's R-O-D-D-O-R-I-L-A-S.com. You can see all about my platform, see who I am, and you can donate, please, because I need the help. Rod, thanks a million. We hope to have you back soon. You've been fantastic today, and good luck. Thank you. Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Very happy to have our next guest on the program talking about something I know Chuck and I have been talking about quite a bit, Hans Munker. He is from Epic TV, co-host of the Truth Over News on Epic TV, recently co-authored a piece in the Epic Times, Breaking Down the Flurry of Legal Filings by Clinton Campaign Associates in Durham's Prosecution of Michael Sussman.

It is a labyrinth, a legal labyrinth being thrown up by the left. But in many cases, they're kind of making themselves look even more guilty. And obviously, I think this house of cards is coming down. Hans, tell us what what you found out and what's going on with this case, because I don't think a lot of people really understand it.

Yeah, you're right. It's a total labyrinth at this point. So this is one of the two prosecutions brought by Special Counsel John Durham. So he's indicted Hillary's campaign lawyer. That's a guy called Michael Sussman. And he's also indicted this Russian guy called Igor Danchenko. So what happened these past few days is on the Sussman side. So Sussman, the campaign lawyer, was indicted for lying to the FBI. And there's kind of been this legal back and forth.

And then what happened this week, which was complete madness, is that all these Hillary associates suddenly dropped court filings, even though they're not a party to the case. And what they're all trying to do, and there's a whole litany of them, and what they're trying to do is they're trying to prevent

Durham from accessing their emails because they were all emailing each other while sort of the Russiagate plot was unfolding about what they were doing. And Durham obviously wants to see those emails and they're trying to stop that. That's the short of it. It seems like when I was reading your articles, and by the way, appreciate it, it was just great reporting. We were telling our crew and our producer we almost need to make a PowerPoint for people and put it online.

so they can understand all the connections because there's so many people involved in this and probably more, don't you think? Oh, absolutely. I mean, just from the guys who filed this week, we have Rodney Joffe, who's a tech executive who was involved with creating or falsifying, and we don't quite know, data that supposedly tried Trump to Russia. And that data turned out to be false. So you got this guy, Rodney Joffe, the tech executive,

You've also got people on the Hillary campaign who are now sweating it out. Mark Elias, the other campaign lawyer. Robbie Mook, the campaign manager. John Podesta, the campaign chairman. As well as Fusion GPS. That's the company of, what do we call them, political operatives or whatever. Those were the guys who were putting all these stories into the papers.

So anyway, all these guys were back in 2016. They were all coordinating with each other about how do we get this Trump-Russia story out there, the story that they themselves made up. So they were kind of communicating and coordinating, especially around August of 2016. And Durham wants to have those emails. And all of those people obviously don't want those emails to come out. And you're reporting for this, and you've been at this for a while. What has surprised you about it?

I think one of the big surprises was the appearance of this guy, Rodney Joffe. That's really sort of, no one had him on their radar. So we knew about Christopher Steele and we put out this dossier and we knew Hillary had paid for it. And we knew that Fusion GPS, the company I just mentioned, that they were pushing this into the media and actually collaborating with certain members of the media. So we knew all that, but we didn't know that there was a tech executive who exploited his access to this non-public data, this DNS data.

This guy is basically working for a company that acts like the phone company of the internet. So when you go to your browser and you type in an address or whatever, the browser or the computer asks this, I guess, phone directory, for lack of a better word, how do I get there? So

By being in charge of the phone directory, this guy basically had access to everyone's internet activities, at least indirectly, because he could see what everyone was searching for. And he was actually – his company were government contractors at that time, right? So which gave him the access to the Trump administration, to Donald Trump himself. Right.

Absolutely right. And even within the White House, they had a contract. They had a contract with the Pentagon. I mean, they had their hands all over the place. That's right. So this is the guy who ran the company, and he exploited his access to that data to try and smear Trump with this Russia collusion story. So basically, coming back to your question, no one had him up until a few months ago. No one had him on their radar until Durham sort of said, hey, there's this guy, and this is what he did.

Hans, we have just a little over one minute now before we go to break. We're going to have you back on for the next segment. But, you know, one of the things I think that a guy like Joffe, you know, kind of scares some of the political establishment that was involved with this is.

To my experience, there are sort of two types of people when it comes to these kind of internal communications. There are government people who are – government insiders who are well aware of all the laws of disclosure and go out of their way to use very careful language. And then there are people who are outside that system. In a way, a Jaffe scares the political insiders a lot more because he's not part of their cabal.

Have you talked more about that? Sorry, I'm running up against the break. I kind of overran you there, but let's talk about that when we come back. Breaking Battlegrounds, right back at you.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. On the line with us right now, Hans Menke. He was with Truth Over News on Epic TV doing some fantastic work around the Durham filings, the case there. When we went to break, I was speaking over our guest, which I try not to do, but I did, talking about kind of the legal risk that a guy like Joffe presents. Hans, can you tell us about that a little bit and what you see coming from this case going forward?

Sure. You made a really good point there before the break, which is that Jaffe is not in the government. He sort of appears to be an outsider, but he has access to all this data, which makes him pretty dangerous. So very interestingly, he was offered by his own admission a top government job by Hillary Clinton if she had won the presidency. So I think that's kind of one way that he was brought into the system. And that's probably the motivation as to why he did what he did.

In terms of where all this is heading, one word that Durham has been using a lot more often these past few weeks is conspiracy or joint venture, similar legal terms there. He hasn't charged anyone with that yet, but it appears that

that's where this is heading. So what he's trying to figure out is he's trying to figure out to what extent did these people collaborate in order to push this false information, not only to the media, I guess pushing false information to the media is not good, but it's probably not a crime, but they also pushed it to the FBI, which is a crime.

So in order to tie all these people together, one of the things that Durham needs is those emails we just talked about. Once you can tie them together in a conspiracy where they were discussing beforehand that they were going to come up with this data, this falsified data or cherry picked or whatever it is, we don't know for sure, and push that into the FBI in order to open an investigation to Trump.

then there's a big problem between all those people. And essentially that's what Durham is trying to do. He's trying to get the evidence in order to get at least all the people I had mentioned earlier and possibly higher-ups within the Clinton campaign as well. Hans, if this was just some consultant that had access to these records for any government agency, say defense or Homeland Security, and they did what Jaffe did,

What would be the punishment for them? Well, the case would have been brought a long time ago and they would have already been convicted. The trouble is in misusing – one of the problems that Durham faces is when you misuse data –

it's often not clear-cut in terms of what particular crime that is. It may or may not be. It's easier to have everyone on a conspiracy because then you attach a crime to that, but the core of it is having a conspiracy between these people. Coming back to that earlier point, what if a policeman goes and accesses their access to the database? They run a license plate for a car, things like that, but they do it for reasons outside of their...

their job, which is essentially what Jaffe did with his data. Is that a crime or not? That's a bit of a gray zone, and that's one of the reasons why Durham has probably struggled a bit with this, and that's why he's going the conspiracy route. What else? Okay, so we have the Jaffe surprise. What else has surprised you or something that you thought has gone deeper than you could have imagined?

Perhaps not surprised, but I'm kind of, I think what we found out these past few days is how much trouble Mark Elias is in. So Mark Elias is a big Democrat Party lawyer. People have probably heard of his name. He was involved with the 2020 election. He was the guy who helped Al Franken overturn the election results in Minnesota back in 2008. So he's been around the block a few times.

He was the lead lawyer on Clinton's campaign, and this guy Michael Sussman was sort of the sidekick. And it's pretty clear from these filings in the past week that Durham is really kind of aiming for Elias here. And Elias does have some exposure, because if you...

If you read all these filings very carefully, everyone kind of hedges a bit. Everyone's like, well, and if you look at the footnotes and you kind of cross-reference and so on, you see that they're all pointing it back to Elias. So Elias is essentially the one who's being accused here, not yet directly, but that's where it's heading, of sort of

being the brains behind this scheme, where he came up with this scheme where not only was there going to be this conspiracy where they push out this false info on Trump-Russia, but they're all hiding behind attorney-client privilege. That's how they're trying to hide these emails. They're saying, oh, well, we had an attorney-client privilege. You can't see these emails. But of course, he

Is it an attorney-client privilege if the relationship is not a legal one, that the relationship is one of pushing out false info into the media or the FBI? No, it's not. That's precisely the fight that Durham is now having in the courts. But the fact that this is all leading to Elias is, I guess, maybe not surprising, but certainly noteworthy. So I don't think we'll go any higher than that. But, you know, Elias is pretty high. If Durham could get Elias on this, that would be pretty, pretty high up, I think. Oh, yeah, Elias would be a...

Yeah, that's pretty high up. I mean, he's a Democrat whale. Yeah, he is. Hans, let me ask you this. The one thing in your article that you had out today or yesterday, breaking down the flurry of legal filings by Clinton campaign associates in Durham prosecution, you said they're all trying to claim attorney-client privilege. So explain to our audience what merits attorney-client privilege. If you're an attorney and I send an email to Sam in CCU,

That's not a blanket coverage. So what is attorney-client privilege for our audience, and why does this not apply to what they're doing with your investigation?

Sure. So in simple terms, you go to an attorney and you seek advice. So you seek legal advice. So that conversation is covered by the privilege. Now, if then the attorney goes to a third party and seeks their advice on something, it may or may not be covered. So this is the problem, because even though Elias and Sussman had clients, being the Hillary Clinton campaign, as well as this guy, Joffe, he then went to Fusion, which is a

a firm of political operatives, not a legal firm. And he's now trying to argue that going to Fusion was also part of this legal advice relationship. But it clearly was not, because Fusion wasn't giving legal advice. Fusion wasn't helping with legal advice in any way. Fusion was putting out stories into the media. They were basically smear merchants. So the fact that this isn't a real attorney-client privilege situation, that's pretty clear.

And Hans, I mean, what's kind of unsaid in here is that they were coordinating with some of these attorneys, including Elias, to break the law. And if you're doing that, that is not covered by attorney-client privilege, right?

Right, now that's exactly right. So that's the other angle to this. So either it's because what you're doing is not covered by legal advice, that's the part I talked about, and you're absolutely right. The other part is even if it is covered by legal advice, if you're committing a crime, then you're also, that privilege can be pierced, so it no longer applies. That's absolutely right. So Durham has a couple of angles to go at this.

But mind you, the judge, right? It's an Obama appointee, Christopher Cooper. Don't know how it's going to play out with him. Durham could have had more luck with the withdrawal of the judge, that's for sure. It seems like on something like this, the law needs to have you put a Republican appointee and a Democrat appointee in the future.

Because, you know, Democrats like to pretend their judges are fair and impartial, and that's just not true. They're as predictable as, you know, the sun in San Diego. It's just not reality. Let's talk quickly here about the two people they've given immunity to. Is this a big deal who the two underlings are they gave immunity to on this that germs received? Yeah.

Yeah, that's a really good point. It is. So one of them is a tech guy at Georgia Tech and he worked for Joffey and he got immunity last summer and we don't know what he told Durham but it seems to be pretty

pretty significant what he did tell Durham in terms of what was going on behind the scenes. So even though he's kind of pretty low down the food chain, it's important to have one of these tech people on board because they can tell you how they manipulated the data and that kind of stuff. The other one is someone who works at Fusion GPS. We don't know who it is. That person hasn't been identified. It could be the higher-ups. I don't think it is the higher-ups, but

Having someone at Fusion GPS is also great because they can tell you that Fusion's relationship was not one of giving legal advice or anything connected to that. They were basically putting stuff out into the media. So if you have a witness to that effect, that's great too. So yeah, having those two people basically flip and be given immunity by DERM is very, very big news. Yeah, Hans,

One of the things that I've seen in this is the contrast. You have essentially the same group of people that run around calling January 6th a coup attempt.

who were directly involved in what appears to be a coup attempt. Shouldn't the defendants in these two cases be treated – A more sophisticated coup attempt. A much more sophisticated coup attempt. Shouldn't the defendants in these cases, if we're going to treat one of them by throwing – one group by throwing them in jail, not giving them bail, really putting the hammer down on them, shouldn't we be doing that to the other?

Oh, absolutely. But as you said, the Clinton operatives were far more sophisticated than the January 6th people. So that's a huge hurdle there. Grandma Smith with her sign and the pole that they called a weapon is not nearly as good at getting around the legal system as Mark Elias.

Unfortunately not, no. But there's another aspect to this which Durham has not explored and probably won't because he might not want to or the DOJ might not let him. It's the role of the government actors. I mean, everyone we just spoke about, Elias and all those people, they're not government actors. What about Comey? What about Brennan? What about Strzok? What about all those people? And that's where it gets – I mean, they were involved in this coup, especially after the election. Maybe not before, but certainly after.

Oh, Comey stinks to high heaven. Comey stinks to high heaven on this. Yeah, it looks like they're going to walk. My question is, you know, the one thing I hate both sides of the political aisle do is whoever's president. Obviously, if something happened in commerce, well, obviously the president must have known that, right? And we know it's a big federal government. We know campaigns presidential are huge. Do you think, and this is purely a guesstimate, that Hillary Clinton knew this was being done?

Oh, I have no doubt whatsoever that Hillary Clinton knew exactly what was being done. And in fact, Obama was briefed about the fact that she knew what was being done and what was being done. And this was back in July of 2016. So they all knew. Now, they're going to say, oh, you know...

we got that information, but, uh, maybe it was sort of a double bluff. You see what I mean? So the Russians were doing this, but then the Russians also put this information out that Hillary was doing it. And, you know, you can sort of play games with that. Um, but it is beyond doubt that, uh,

Obama and Hillary knew, at least she knew and he knew that there was information that she knew. And this came from the CIA who had intercepted some communication. I have no doubt that she knew. Her campaign manager put in an affidavit this past week as part of what we just talked about. And his language is so coy. He's really very concerned. There's no doubt about that. He's feeling it, isn't he? He's feeling it now, isn't he?

Very much so. And if he knew, she knew. And what he says in his affidavit is that, well, I thought at the time everything was done properly and it was legal. He's not saying that it was legal. You see, that's sort of a pretty big deal. Well, the interesting thing about him is I've read various articles and books after the election of 16. He got a lot of the blame for her loss.

So I am sure there's a part of him saying, I'm not going down with this ship at the end of the day. I think he is somebody to really watch for on this.

Yeah, I completely agree, especially based on all these filings. We probably had two dozen filings or so just this past week. And out of all of those, Robbie Moop, the campaign manager, easily the weakest link. He's the one who hedges the most, who's the most nervous in terms of what he says and what he doesn't say. And yeah, I totally agree with you. Wow. Well, unfortunately, this pack of scoundrels has a long history of getting out from under legal issues that they probably...

should not have. But it does sound like at least there's a pretty good chance that a lot of these high-ranking folks are going to be indicted at some point. Yeah, no, I agree, especially the ones we just talked about. What's next in this investigation by the special prosecutor? What can we

be looking forward to next? And looking forward is a bad word. This is not an optimistic thing, but what are something we can see down the road that's going to come out, do you believe? Sure. So first of all, the judge will have to decide whether or not to open up those emails. And then the next step is that there will be the trial of Michael Sussman. That's in May. So that's coming up. I think there's...

Hans, I'm going to cut you off because we have just 30 seconds here before we go to the end of the program. But tell people how they can follow you and follow your work because I think you and Epic are doing really, really great work on this issue that a lot of others aren't. Thanks very much. Yeah, no, you can follow me on Twitter at H-A-N-S-M-A-H-N-C-K-E. Perfect. Folks, follow Hans on Twitter, Hans Monk, H-A-N-S-M-A-H-N-C-K-E.

On Twitter, he is doing fantastic stuff. Really encourage you to stick with this. Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be back with our podcast-only segment for those on the download. If you're on the radio, we'll see you next week. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. This is our podcast-only segment. Very exciting. And, you know, we just came off of talking with one legal expert. Now we've got a lawyer. This is, I think, the crazy legal case show of the year.

Going on right now on the line with us, Corey Langhofer, who represented and represents U.S. Congressman Andy Biggs against claims the congressman broke the law related to the events around January 6th.

And he was actually sued by some folks who said due to that, he can't be on the ballot. Was sued by a group called Free Speech for People. They like to pretend they're a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. If you go to the board of directors and staff, there's nothing nonpartisan about this group at all. Every leftist.org pretends that they're not a leftist.org, which gives it away. So, Corey, explain to us what happened. You represented Congressman Bakes. Tell us a little bit of background on the case. What happened?

etc. Yeah, so there's a series of cases that have been brought by this group, Free Speech for People. We like to refer to them as free speech for half of the people. Obviously, that's the goal. And they brought a case in North Carolina. They brought one in

Georgia against Marjorie Taylor Greene. They brought three cases here. And then there's a similar case brought by a different group in Wisconsin against Senator Johnson there. So, you know, there's six cases kicking around the country, all on this issue of whether these sitting congresspersons participated or engaged in an insurrection against the United States.

So that's a sensational allegation, saying these people who are well-regarded members of Congress supported the violent overthrow. That is not merely a sensational allegation, Corey. That is a historic allegation. There are very few times in U.S. history when that kind of action or alleged action has ended up in court.

And they're throwing it around for some things that are pretty darn questionable in this case, right? Oh, yeah. So, you know, lawyers have duties to not bring cases without a reasonable basis. And you read these complaints and you just say to yourself, OK, I'm reading this very closely to see why do they say this congressman supports the violent overhanging of the United States? And you get into things like,

They tweeted support for the president. They met with the president. Ooh, they met with the president. That's insurrection. Or they expressed a lot of concern about disenfranchise. Okay, none of these things are proximate to insurrection. They're not merely not proximate. They're not on the same planet with insurrection.

Exactly. And, you know, I got to say, we would not have filed this case if the rules were reversed, right? If, you know, the Democrats were in the same, had done the same things, because I just don't think there's a good faith basis for it. Well, not only not a good faith basis, we just got done on this program talking to Hans Manke with Epic TV, who has been reporting on the Durham case.

Where there's far more significant evidence of insurrection of essentially an attempted coup against the sitting president than there is in anything around surrounding January 6th.

And largely the media has been treating the Durham investigation like it's some sort of partisan activity, and they're treating these attacks and these lawsuits against people like your client, Congressman Biggs, as if they are proven beyond a reasonable doubt. One of the things about this series of cases that really bothers me is how they're transparently –

driven by media attention. So we found out about the case because the New York Times published an article minutes after the case was filed, before the Secretary of State had even been served, before certainly we'd been served. The New York Times did a full write-up of the case

Because it's more important to them to notify the New York Times than to serve the papers, right? And when they filed their case, they also asked the court to immediately suspend the rules of discovery and let them depose Congressman Biggs and get text messages and emails and so on. It's just...

a tool for negative media coverage and to just intrude into the private affairs, private communications of the congressman. But you actually see literally as we're talking right now, Marjorie Taylor Greene is on the stand in Georgia because she's the one sort of unfortunate defendant in this series of six cases who has been forced to take the stand.

And, you know, what they're doing is going through every rowdy tweet she's ever had and every speech that was particularly spirited. And I think she said some things that probably Congressman Biggs wouldn't have said. But, you know, she certainly never told people to

you know, invade the Capitol riot. No. I mean, she tends to be a little less judicious. Well, yeah, but they're going through her tweets. They'll be there all day. We can be talking about this next week with her, right? They could do that with me. Yeah, they were asking her just a moment ago to tell, the question was, I was listening to this just in the background as I worked here. They said, tell me everyone you spoke to about January 6th.

Are you kidding me? What kind of a question is that? She's on the road. She's like, I can't answer the question. She says, well, what did you say to Congressman Biggs? All right, just time out here. You think you can put her on the road and just ask her about her conversations with other congressmen about a matter that's pending before Congress? This is no regard for legislative privilege at all. It's what they're doing.

is transparently an abuse to just get information that they can use for political purposes. They have no prayer of winning, right? They just lost in Arizona. We probably should talk about the Arizona ruling at some point. But, you know, even if they lose, they're going to view this as a win because, like, look, they got Marjorie Taylor Greene under oath, asked her about the mean tweet she said about Nancy Pelosi.

I guess that's the way they're going to take some some clips from these court cases and blow them out of context on CNN, The New York Times. And that's their win. A question for you, Corey, is I know attorneys you mentioned earlier, you're supposed to only file a case if there's legitimate reasoning to it. Do you feel there could be some penalties from the court for them filing this? Is it something you'll pursue?

So, I can't rule anything out, and I don't want to get ahead of Congress. Now, let's just say everything's being considered.

Let's just talk generally about what can go wrong here. Obviously, there are barred consequences for lawyers who go too far. You know that issue very well. There are also ways to be financially liable. The plaintiffs or the attorneys on the other side are, you know, they're funders or strategists or everything else with the idea. So there's a tort called abusive process where if you file a case primarily against

for some reason other than winning the case. You could be financially liable. There's also a tort called malicious prosecution where you file a case and you didn't have what we call probable cause to believe your allegations. Like, probable cause is a little bit difficult to define, but let's just think of it kind of like you think it's 35% likely to be true, you know, roughly, something like that. And, you know, there's also just, you know, sanctions available for people who do harassing things in court. So, you know,

I don't want to, I have not thought about this very carefully. Let me just say it's in the back of my mind. Obviously, we've got to think about all the options here, but those are the deterrents for abuse of litigation. Could citizens in Biggs and Gosar's district sue? I don't believe so. In fact, one of the big defenses in the case was

These citizens can't sue. Right. Like basically most of these issues need to be solved in Congress and not by citizens. And also we have elections coming up. Right. I mean, if people felt that there was actual wrongdoing, then we have a forum to hold elected officials accountable.

Yes, exactly. That's one of the things that Judge Corey said in his ruling this morning. It doesn't mean there's no accountability. It just means you've got to make the argument to the people. The thing about the political, the electoral accountability is that plays out over months or years. Everyone gets to make their argument, and perhaps there's no sort of abuse of discovery whatsoever.

The way these cases were brought, they were filed and they have to be decided in 10 days. So they want depositions and discovery and suspending the rules that ordinarily require things to go longer. So everything would have been crunched and rushed into this week and a half. An entire case that could disqualify you from Congress, effectively finding that you supported the file and over-serving the country, and you've got 10 days to defend yourself, go. That's not...

That's not fair, right? That is not the way we would resolve such a significant accusation. Well, especially when you have defendants that the government is prosecuting from January 6th who have been jailed for a year or more without actually having their cases brought forward by the government that's theoretically charging them. In some cases, they haven't been charged. It's just a this entire thing seems like a total abrogation of the justice system.

Yeah, you know, at the moment, we're kind of at a happy end to those cases. These three cases in Arizona this morning, we got a ruling from Judge Corey. It's really well written. You know, I've

I said earlier there's a series of six cases. I think this is the best ruling we've seen from any of the judges around the country. I'm pretty sure it's been cited and quoted by other trial court and appellate courts because his analysis is very thorough and careful. And I'm not saying that just because we won. We lost on some issues, too. But you read his reasoning, and you're like, well...

I see that. Good point. It's just a really well-done opinion. And so that's great. It appears to have not worked in Arizona. Marjorie Taylor Greene, she's getting raked over the coals there for no good cause. In that case, to clarify, that case is actually in federal court where this was a case in state court, right? Well, you know, it's funny. That's a good point. She's actually in state court now. But what happened was

And I said earlier there were six cases. There's actually a lot more than that because in North Carolina and in Georgia, so in Marjorie Taylor Greene's case, she's sued in state court. And then the defendants in both North Carolina and Georgia sued separately in federal court to stop the state court proceeding. So she goes to federal court and loses. The federal court refused to stop the proceeding. So then it bounced back down to state court. And that's where she is today. Okay.

Well, Corey, thank you so much for joining us on the program today and congratulations on your on your win. And for Congressman Biggs, who, you know, I think Chuck and I both know him enough to know he is one of the really decent and honorable people in the U.S. Congress. I am glad that you have a court ruling now that clears him of this because this is really a ridiculous political persecution coming from the left.

And thank you for being part of the group that stepped up to defend it. It's a pleasure to be on the show. Thanks for having me. Thanks a million. Yes. Well, Sam, what a legal day. Yeah, it was good. This is deeper and more intellectual than our usual fluff stuff. Well, Democrats love to use the legal process and they always act shocked when people go after them back with the legal process.

Well, they've gotten used to getting away with it. Well, so like this group, Free Speech for People. Folks, if you want to go, just look them up. Yeah. Go look through their bios. I mean, there is nothing nonpartisan about this group. This is a group that's donors are masked, which Sam and I believe in because people are crazy.

but they are mass and given money simply to terrorize people. That's all they're there for. They're not doing anything to better. If they really cared, you know, they make the point here confronting corruption of government. If that really was their case, they would be doing the work Hans is doing and getting affidavits from Jaffe and Crewe and Elias and saying, okay, you really did participate in an insurrection. And I can understand them saying,

Look, I understand people think one six went out of control. I mean, it was nuts. You and I have talked about this. We've talked about it. Stupid. It was deplorable. It was absolutely deplorable. Yeah. But you can't go criticize that and not criticize a very stealth insurrection that the Clinton campaign was doing. Period. Conducted with coordination inside the U.S. federal agency. That tore this country apart. And everybody wants to go back and blame Trump for this. And.

You know, when do we be interested in all the so-called psychology we have talking about how would this play a role in anybody who's being attacked like him? And he know he didn't. He knows he did not do something right now. Look, when you look at the two incidents between the Russian collusion hoax and you look at the events of January 6th, I can't help. My conclusion is the Russian collusion hoax was a far more significant attack.

on our system of government than what happened on January 6th, which was a riot, which was wrong. But it was not a coordinated effort to overthrow the sitting president of the United States. So, yeah. I mean, again, I just think this whole Clinton-Russian hoax has been a catastrophe. And 20, 30 years from now, you're going to have some historians who are not so ideologically aligned on this issue who are probably in their 20s

teens now come out and say, this was a travesty. This was a crime. I'm sorry. If you compare this to Watergate, this blows Watergate out of the water.

I mean, it is a far more significant violation of our laws and of the ethos of the United States than that was. I agree. Well, folks, thanks for joining us at Breaking Battlegrounds. For our friends in Tampa and Phoenix, we've got Draft Day this coming Thursday. So enjoy that for your favorite NFL team. And we'll be with you next week. And just, you know, don't worry about Tom Brady being traded to Miami anytime soon. It's not going to happen.

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