FBI To Re-Open Investigations on Cocaine in the White House, J6 Pipe Bomber & SCOTUS Leak, plus Comey Advocates Murder of Trump
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This is an iHeart Podcast. Good Wednesday morning. Nice to have you with us. It's Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. And Senator, we're going to get some redos on some cover-ups on the Democratic Party, apparently. This is going to be music to many people's ears on accountability. Well, the FBI has announced three brand new investigations on stories that just broke, things that just happened yesterday. So just yesterday, cocaine was found in the White House.

Just yesterday, there was a secret leak from the Supreme Court of a decision the court had not yet issued. It was a decision overturning Roe versus Wade. It was shocking. It was incredible. And I'll tell you, the FBI was on it. And just yesterday, unbelievably, a pipe bomb was planted outside the DNC. It was on the day of the certification of what ended up being the certification of Joe Biden's presidency. And all three of these...

understandably, when they occurred, they were major news stories, horrific crimes, grotesque violation of laws. So, of course, the FBI devoted all of the resources to discover nothing.

Well, we have a new FBI. We have a new DOJ. And now the FBI and DOJ is going back to do what they should have done years ago when these stories actually happened. They're going to go investigate. And I hope they're going to find the wrongdoers, find the criminals, prosecute them, and put them in jail.

Also, we're going to look into recent comments and actions by the former head of the FBI, that crack law enforcement official who managed not to investigate those crimes we just talked about, James Comey, who spent the entire Trump presidency or much of the Trump presidency undermining the president of the United States, attacking the president of the United States until finally he was rightly fired. He's made some comments that are nothing short of shocking and shocking.

He is effectively called for the assassination of the president of the United States. You might think that is hyperbole, but we're going to break down exactly what James Comey did. And finally, we're going to talk about a lawsuit that NPR has filed. NPR National Public Radio has filed a lawsuit saying that President Trump, trying to cut off taxpayer funding for their wildly partisan, biased, dishonest reporting—

Well, their allegation is that not paying for that wildly dishonest partisan reporting violates the First Amendment to the Constitution, that the First Amendment mandates that you and I and all of us pay for NPR's lying. We're going to explain the absolute nonsense of that lawsuit, and we're going to get into the details right now.

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All right, so Senator, let's talk about, and you had some humor there in the lead up to this topic, because it is insane that we had these three massive investigations that got us no information. Everybody just moved on in the last administration. And the opening up of these investigations yet again by the FBI, I don't think this should be looked at as an issue of revenge. It's an issue of justice that clearly didn't happen and was covered up in the past. Right.

Well, understand that when you're dealing with the politicization and weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI and the law enforcement apparatus, there are two components of it.

One component of it is using it as a weapon to attack your political opponents. We saw Joe Biden and the Democrats do that over and over and over again, most notably when they indicted Donald Trump, not once, not twice, not three times, four separate times. That was a clear illustration of weaponization. It was designed ultimately to fight democracy. It was designed because they were terrified the voters would do what, in fact, they did in November, reelect Donald J. Trump as president of the United States. But there's another aspect of weaponization.

And that is refusing to investigate crime, refusing to enforce the law against your friends and political allies. And we saw the Biden Department of Justice, the Biden FBI do that over and over and over again. And these three cases are among the most egregious. You know, you're in my friend Dan Bongino. So Dan Bongino is now the deputy director of the FBI. Cash Patel's the director of the FBI. Dan tweeted out this week the following. A few updates.

The Director and I have most of our incoming reform teams in place by next week. The hiring process can take a little bit of time, but we are approaching that finish line. This will help us both in doubling down on our reform agenda. Shortly after swearing in, the Director and I evaluated a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest. We made the decision to either reopen or push additional resources and investigative attention to these cases.

These cases are, number one, the D.C. pipe bombing investigation, number two, the cocaine discovery at the prior administration's White House, and number three, the leak of the Supreme Court's Dobbs case. I receive requested briefings on these cases weekly, and we are making progress. If you have any investigative tips on these matters that may assist us, then please contact the FBI.

That is really significant. And by the way, I'm going to add a fourth one that is not in this tweet, but it is something that both Kash Patel and Don Bogino and also Pam Bondi have committed to, which is transparency regarding Jeffrey Epstein. And I will say that Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking case was grotesque.

I think the American people need to know every name in that little black book. I think they need to know the clients. I think they need to know everyone who participated in the child sex trafficking. And I do believe I've had multiple conversations with Pam Bondi, with Kash Patel, with Dan Bongino about it. I do believe we will see transparency. I know a lot of people are frustrated that we haven't seen all that information yet.

My understanding from those conversations is on Epstein, there is a vast trove of information, much of which implicates minors. And what I've been told is they're working to put it in a format where it can be released, where you don't release, say, video of a minor being sexually assaulted, which would obviously be inappropriate for protecting that child. A little boy or girl should not have that image released by the government for the world. But at the same time,

the assaulter, the criminal, his image should be released. And I have every expectation we will see transparency on that front. And I will continue asking both of the Department of Justice and FBI to provide transparency and pressing them to do so as fast as possible. But on these three cases as well, look, let's take them one at a time. Cocaine and the West Wing of the White House.

All right, Ben, you worked in the West Wing. Tell me, how big a deal would it be when you worked in the George W. Bush White House? Can you imagine the reaction if cocaine were found in that White House? No, and it would have been a wall-to-wall story, and it would have been 24-7, and the media would have dug and dug and dug and demanded answers, and they would not have let up until they had a name.

or someone who had been fired or dismissed. And they would have also then, I think, TMZ'd it where they would have said, how many people are high at the White House? How many people are around the Situation Room? Which, by the way, this cocaine was not far from. The stories would have exploded to hurt George Bush. Ben, explain to people where this work...

where this was because you said it wasn't far from the Situation Room. You're right. But give people a sense of the layout of the West Wing and where exactly this was. If you walk in the West Wing from basically the EEOB, the old executive or the Eisenhower building, there's kind of a breezeway. And when you walk in there, I want to stop you for a second.

There is an interesting divide in Washington, and you can tell how long someone has been in Washington by what acronym you use. And you actually just use both of them. Yes. So there's a building. I was bridging the gap there. Did you like that? I did. But I want to explain it to our listeners because this is a very insidery little thing, but it is kind of funny and it's real. So there's a giant building right next to the White House.

That is the executive office building. And a lot of the offices that are said to be, quote, in the White House are actually in that building. That building is much bigger than the White House and is part of the White House campus. So when you enter the White House grounds, if you're walking up Executive Avenue on the right is the West Wing. On the left is the executive office building. Now, folks who have been in D.C. a long time, they call that the OEOB.

Why is that? That stands for the old executive office building. So the O is OEOB. And at some point, and I don't know what year, actually, maybe when we're talking, you can Google it and give us the answer, Ben. But at some point,

They renamed the building the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. They put up a sign that says Eisenhower Executive Office Building. And so now it's called EEOB. And you can tell people who I would say have been to D.C. in the last decade or two, they call it the EEOB and old farts. And you're actually young enough. You're not fully an old fart.

Exactly. I'm going to take pride in that, by the way. And by the way, I can tell you when they changed the name. Are you ready for this? I heard you typing. When I said use the Google, you click clacked on your keyboard. So I knew you had an answer. Yes. President Bill Clinton approved legislation changing the name on November the 9th of 1999 from the old executive office building to was renamed to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building. So there you go. 99 November 9th.

So that's just a quick aside, and you can really tell someone's... So look, I came to D.C. I was a law clerk in D.C. in 1995 to 96, and then I was a law clerk at the Supreme Court in 96 to 97. And so when I first moved there, it was called the OEOB. So I'm just barely on the old fart line of it. But as you said, it was renamed in 1999, so you're very much on the young fart line of it. And yet I like that you use them both.

Yeah, it's a cool building. And you can also always we always we always used to laugh because you could always tell who was full of it and who was lying. If they said they worked in the White House and then they actually worked in the EOB, you're like, hold on a second. Like, wait, wait. Are they are they are they flexing saying that they work in the West Wing when they really don't? Because 99 percent of the staff does not work in the actual White House. They work in the EOB.

And so the White House itself, you've got a lot of the White House that's like a museum and that has beautiful rooms and you have tours going through it. And it's it's it's a quasi public area. You've got the residence, which is upstairs, and that's where the president, the first family lives.

And then you have the West Wing, which is where the senior offices working for the president are. And the West Wing is not very big. No, it's tiny. It's three stories. You've got a basement. You've got a first floor and second floor. The offices are not very big. Actually, the OEOB offices are much bigger than the West Wing offices. But...

But in the White House, power and prestige is measured by one thing, and that is proximity to the president, proximity to the Oval Office. And so a tiny little closet next to the Oval is much more prestigious than a huge grand office. All right, I'll tell you something funny, Ben.

So, you know, the little office off the West Wing where Bill Clinton did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky? Yes. And by the way, for those of you all too young to remember, Bill Clinton, when he was accused of having oral sex with an intern, Monica Lewinsky, he said to press conference, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. That was turned out to be a flat out lie because he did.

There's a little room off the West Wing where those interactions occur. Do you know what Donald Trump has turned it into? So I know this. I know you do. It's the trinket room now. If he likes you and he says, come over here, you can get you some swag from the Oval Office. Like it's got he's got MAGA hats in there. He's got presidential cuff links. He's got all sorts of it. He just goes and says, take whatever you like. And there's just like a bunch of stuff. And it's really cool stuff.

So so he's got he doesn't have those in the swag room, but but but he also has. Have you seen Trump's challenge coins? They're incredible. So when you went to the Oval recently, you got a couple coming back and I got to see them. They're amazing and they're huge.

So a challenge coin, for those of y'all who are not familiar, a challenge coin is a tradition both in the military and in law enforcement. And so when you meet with typically senior officers of the military, they'll have a challenge coin that is branded with their unit, with their battalion, and they'll give it to you. And there's a whole culture of like having to present your challenge coin. And if you don't have it, having to buy drinks. And so...

In my office, I have a whole display behind my desk of probably 150 challenge coins that have been given to me by military leaders across the country and across the world. That's behind my desk. And then in front of my desk on the other end of the office is a display with challenge coins from law enforcement. And so it's a similar thing. Police officers, sheriffs, police chiefs, firefighters, police.

Federal law enforcement will have challenge coins and they give them and usually they're about the size of a silver dollar and they're elaborate. Well, Trump has made these presidential challenge coins that are about the size, somewhere between the size, the diameter of a baseball and a softball. I think they're a little bigger than a baseball, but not quite as big as a softball. And they're gorgeous. And of course, Trump's challenge coin is bigger because because how would it be otherwise?

Yeah, of course. And that's the part about, I do say, people that go to the Oval Office and get to meet with him, you have no idea what you're going to leave with, including, I will say, his cufflinks. I got a pair in the first, in the 45 years. You got the new pair from 47. I'm very jealous because they are absolutely beautiful. Yeah. So anyway, where the cocaine was found is,

is right as you walk into the entrance of the West Wing, by the way, that entrance is where Trump now parks his brand new Tesla. It's literally parked right out front. So I tweeted out a picture. Because I've never seen a car of the president. Like when you become president, they take your car keys and they don't let you drive and you're driven around in the beast. And so his car is parked right out front. Now, actually, they don't let Trump drive either. So he doesn't get to drive his Tesla anymore.

And so I'm told a staffer about once a week has to drive the Tesla like several times around the block. So it just so it doesn't die entirely. That's not a bad job, by the way, if you get that job. But as you mentioned, you walk in that entrance there and where they found the cocaine. It is probably, I don't know, 30 to 40 feet away from the door to the situation room because you walk in the West Wing there.

Your lockers are to the left where you put your phones up. Traditionally, that's where they found this cocaine was over in that area. You go straight for 10, 12 feet. You go to your right. And then right down there is a little area where you can get food and turn to drink. And immediately to your right is where you walk in to the Situation Room. Like, it's right there. Like, the idea that cocaine was found in the White House is...

It should have been like hell to pay and no one stopped reporting on the story until somebody was arrested. So so look, I am very glad the FBI is going to investigate that. You take in another case, January 6th, the Biden Justice Department spent $1

thousands and thousands of man hours, spent enormous money investigating every little old lady on the mall, waving a flag, singing God Bless America. They treated those poor little old ladies like they were Osama bin Laden. And the actual terrorist who plants a pipe bomb outside the DMC. Look, if you plant a pipe bomb that can blow up people and murder people, there's a word for that. You are a terrorist if you're planting a pipe bomb.

There is video of this dude planting the pipe bomb. And yet we've had four plus years transpire and we know nothing about the actual terrorist who planted a pipe bomb that could have killed multiple people. It was actually, it was found before it exploded, thank God, but it could have been, it could have resulted a serious loss of life if it hadn't. I'm very glad that they're finally investigating that. And then...

Can we just pause and ask your gut on this one? Why was it not investigated? I don't know. I really... Look, there's conspiracy theories online. Some of them have to do with...

FBI informants, undercover agents in the crowd on January 6th. As you know, I've questioned the FBI and the Department of Justice multiple times about the informants they had underground. They refused to make that public. I'll tell you, I also have urged Pam Bondi and Kash Patel to make that public. I hope that they do, that they engage in radical transparency.

I don't know. I find it weird because it is the action on that day that could have resulted in the greatest loss of life had the pipe bomb detonated. I mean, it's on a busy public street where people are walking by every minute. It could have killed multiple people.

And we don't know. And so all sorts of people, I mean, Twitter and the Internet speculates like crazy. I'm not interested in speculation. I would like to find out who actually planted it, why, and I'd like them to go to jail. And I hope, listen, I'm encouraged by Dan Bongino's post on X that we are making progress. I hope that we can find out who did it. And I will say of the three,

And ironically, the one that is the most consequential, I think, is the third one, which is the leak of the Supreme Court's Dobbs case. And it is hard to overstate how much damage that leak did not just to the Supreme Court of the United States, but also to the rule of law. The way the Supreme Court operates is

Justices deliberate on cases. They circulate opinion drafts back and forth. They change opinion drafts. A given opinion, particularly in a consequential opinion, can change 100 times or more. They're literally negotiating over every sentence, over every footnote. And in 200 and nearly 50 years of our nation's history, never once did

has a draft of an opinion of the Supreme Court been leaked until the Dobbs case. And it did, I think, irreparable damage to the trust between the justices, to the ability of the justices to have candor with each other. And the person who leaked it, at the end of the day, it is a really small universe of people who would have access to that draft opinion.

It is essentially the justices, and I refuse to believe a justice did that. Unless you had irrefutable proof, I have too much faith in the institutions of our country to believe a justice did it. I believe it was very likely a law clerk and a law clerk from one of the liberal justices. But look, there are only 36 law clerks. There are not that many, and I am confident, having been one of them myself,

These people are not master criminals. They are not incredibly adept at hiding their tracks. And so I think we did not get a thorough investigation into it. And of the three, if I could pick one to be solved, it would be finding the leaker of the Dobbs opinion, prosecuting him or her and locking them up, because I think that did lasting damage to the rule of law in this country.

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This is, again, goes back to the basic issue of law and order. And this is something that this administration keeps saying over and over again, like they're not joking. They're going to treat everyone the same. And we're going to look at things through the glasses of law and order instead of picking winners and losers based on politics. Well, yes. And that is unless the head of the FBI is calling for the murder.

of the president of the United States. And that is another story that broke in the last few days. So the former FBI director, James Comey, he tweeted out this image. And it is an image of seashells on the beach that spell out 86-47. Now, 47 is obviously Donald Trump. And 86 on the face of it

to 86 someone is standard slang for killing someone. And as I posted on social media, is there any other reasonable interpretation of this other than the former head of the FBI publicly calling for the murder of the president of the United States? And Comey backed away from it. I got to say, part of the reason I think he put it out is he's got a new book coming out and he wanted some attention. But it is unimaginable

That that a head of the FBI would be particularly a president who has had two assassination attempts. This this is not theoretical. Donald Trump was shot. He came within a half inch of being killed in Butler, Pennsylvania. And yet the head of the FBI is openly calling for people to 86 Donald Trump.

Well, and it's not only, as you mentioned, is it a dog whistle, but also, yeah, he had a book coming out. He's like, hey, if I do this and maybe there's just narcissism and arrogance to a level that even I didn't realize with with him. And I thought it was pretty high where he's like, I'm I'm I'm so powerful. I can get away with this. And then everybody will want to interview me.

I get to dog whistle this against the president while also guaranteeing that every single show will want to book me to talk about my book, a.k.a. and also the seashells on the beach. It was one hell of a move. And I think it's one where he thought nothing's going to happen to me. Even if I do get interviewed by the Secret Service, who cares?

Well, and I will say he doubled down this week by calling on the FBI essentially to fight the president of the United States and accusing the Trump administration of being, in his words, quite white supremacist adjacent. Listen to this.

So follow up on the seashell situation when you're explaining why you took it down. But what were you trying to communicate to the public? Impeach Trump? What was your reasoning for it? No, I just thought it was a cool picture.

Some was expressing a political view in a very clever way in shells that were organized by the same color for each of the letters. I just thought, what a cool thing. And I'm well known as a political opponent of Donald Trump. And I just thought, that's cool. My Instagram account is family.

stuff, including stuff like this. I put a shell on last fall. I thought it was cool. Someone had painted the inside of a big shell to say vote Kamala. I thought, that's really cool. So I put that on. But so it's not any particular message other than that.

I was just going to ask you about the MSNBC interview you were doing. Because on social media, everyone's saying he's talking about the white supremacist adjacent Republican Party. Everybody in the party. Voters. You want to clarify? I don't want to answer that one. No, thank you. No clarification at all? No, I'm not going to comment on it. Okay. Be well. Thank you. Hello. I love it. Be well. I'm not going to clarify on that. I'm going to keep that out there as well. Buy my book.

What utter garbage. Oh, I just thought it was kind of interesting. I just thought it was, you know, kind of pretty. The seashells were pretty. Like what an absurd claim. And there's something mocking about it that he could claim. OK, number one.

James Comey is not a stupid man. Yeah, he's smart. He knows what he's doing. He knows exactly what he is doing. And James Comey, number one, he knows who 47 is. He knows exactly who 47 is. 47 is the 47th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. Number two, the claim that he didn't know what 86 is. Listen, that is...

That is absurd. It is not remotely credible. And the fact that he's saying that, the fact that he's saying that is mocking. It is a level of contempt. And listen, I got to say, I don't know Comey personally, but in my view, he is someone who was consumed by power.

When he was the head of the FBI, I think he had delusions of grandeur. I think he believed he was J. Edgar Hoover, and he wanted to have presidents of the United States reporting to him. By the way, do you happen to know off the top of your head what 18 U.S.C. Section 871 provides? No, what is it?

What's funny, it's actually a felony. Threatening the president of the United States is a felony that's punishable by up to five years in prison. And you would think the head of the FBI would know that. And yet he blithely said, oh, I just saw some pretty seashells, you know, nothing to see here. Yeah.

And let's just remind people when you said that he's smart, this is the same guy that mocked the Trump administration the first time, right when they got into office, when he just sent a couple FBI agents over to try to entrap general Flynn, like never forget. That's how calculated this guy is. So for him to say, Oh, I just saw a picture here and I thought it was really cute as seashells. I,

don't buy that crap for a moment. He proposed sending someone wearing a wire to entrap the president of the United States. And I want you to listen to him with Nicole Wallace on MSNBC, because I want you to listen to just this this smarmy, sanctimonious, dishonest. You can tell what I think about him. Just play his words and see if you agree with me. You are back in the middle of a political firestorm. Yeah, for walking on the beach with my wife. So

I don't know how we ended up here. It never occurred to me that it was any kind of controversial thing, but that's the time we live in. Ben, there's a technical word for what he just said there. That would be called a lie. He is deliberately lying. He knows he's lying. He is not in trouble for walking on the beach with his wife. He is understandably in trouble for publicly advocating the murder of the president of the United States.

And yet there's a lot of people think he knew exactly what he was doing. And yeah, he may get hauled in for some questioning, but he's not going to get arrested because he's the former FBI director. And that guy never gets in trouble, right? Well, we shall see. I will say Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are not your typical heads of the FBI.

Yeah, that's a great point. It'll be very interesting to see what happens moving forward. We'll keep you updated on it. I want to move also the NPR lawsuit and get your take on that, Senator, as well. So this week, NPR, National Public Radio and three Colorado public radio stations filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Trump White House against the president's executive order barring the use of funds for NPR and for PBS.

And the lawsuit says, quote, it is not always obvious when the government has acted with a retaliatory purpose in violation of the First Amendment. But this wolf comes as a wolf. The order targets NPR and PBS expressly because in the president's views, their news and other content is not fair, accurate or unbiased. Now, let me stop and say, listen,

You could file a reasonable lawsuit arguing that on any of these particular executive orders that where you're dealing with congressional appropriations, that challenging the authority of an executive order to limit congressional appropriations that.

That's an area that's being litigated, that's going to be litigated, and reasonable minds can differ on what is permissible. And we've talked in previous podcasts that there is a significant dispute over the president's authority to engage in what is called impoundment, which is essentially to decline to spend money that Congress has appropriated. That, you want to file a lawsuit over that, okay. Courts will sort that out, that'll be litigated. But...

But here, what this lawsuit is claiming is that the First Amendment prohibits defunding NPR. And the reason they say it really is absurd.

is you can't defund the NPR simply because, quote, their news and other content is not fair, accurate, or unbiased. Now, let me say, I think no objective person on planet Earth can contend that NPR or PBS are fair, accurate, or unbiased. And so we really are in Alice in Wonderland through the looking glass, where you now have litigants arguing because NPR and PBS are dishonest,

and political, you can't cut off funding because cutting off funding would be silencing our right to be dishonest and political. And not just, look, you absolutely have a right to be dishonest and political. So MSNBC can publish any nonsense they want. CNN can publish any nonsense they want. Now, nobody watches them. It's kind of a tree falling in the woods. But they have a right to say it. They have a right to say utter nonsense. But MSNBC

But NPR's argument is not only do they have a right to say it, which I agree they do, but they have a right to have the taxpayers fund them forever. That it is illegal for us to stop paying for their partisan lies. I got to say that is an absurd claim and it is the simple reality of the absurdity of the left.

Yeah, it is. And I wonder when we will actually get resolution on this. Is there a real chance you think that we could actually defund NPR PBS and just say, hey, make it on your own? Is there a real chance? Look, I certainly hope so. I am pressing to do so. I'm pressing Congress to do so.

I'm pressing Congress to enact and codify the Doge cuts that we've seen Elon Musk and Doge put in place. We're going to have a battle in Congress. We're going to have a battle in Congress. If it has to go through regular order, what regular order means is the standard path of legislation. That means it's subject to filibuster. That means you need 60 votes in the Senate, which means you need seven Democrats. If you have to get seven Democrats...

And that's how they save it is what you're saying. That's right. That's their ideal situation is you guys complain about it and we keep giving billions to our propaganda machine. Yeah. Zero Democrats will vote to defund NPR or PBS, which means if it goes through regular order, it will not happen. The other way is that proof of just how biased they are. The fact that zero of them would would go to defund it because they know how valuable it is to their propaganda. And.

And they don't care. In fact, I want you to listen to Catherine Marr, the CEO of NPR, who describes the First Amendment as the, quote, the greatest challenge that she faces to controlling narratives. Here, give a listen. The number one challenge here that we we see is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States is a fairly robust one.

protection of rights. And that is a protection of rights both for platforms, which I actually think is very important that platforms have those rights to be able to regulate what kind of content they want on their sites. But it also means that it is a little bit tricky to really address some of the real challenges of where does bad information come from and sort of the influence peddlers who have made a real market economy around it.

I mean, that's where your tax dollars are going. And that's the woman who's in charge. Damn it, that pesky First Amendment. We want to censor. We want to silence voices we disagree with. And that First Amendment stands in the way. And here I want you to listen to this. There's this montage of Catherine Maher being being grilled at congressional hearing. Give a listen to just how extreme the NPR CEO is.

And I welcome the opportunity to discuss the essential role of public media in delivering unbiased, nonpartisan, fact-based reporting to Americans. Madam Chair, thank you so much for the opportunity to address this. I know... Do you... Is it up to you and NPR to crack down on bad information or decide the truth? Answer the question, yes or no, Ms. Moore? Absolutely not. I'm a very strong believer in free speech, and I believe that

Your public statements say otherwise. During the COVID pandemic and the 2020 election, you said you censored information through conversations with government. Which governments were those, Ms. Maher? The Biden administration, yes or no? Madam Chair, Wikipedia never censored any information. These are your public statements, Ms. Maher. Madam Chair, we are in full compliance with the FCC's inquiry and will continue to cooperate.

I remind you, you're under oath. I'm assuming both of you are concerned about this, and that's why you brought so many attorneys with you today. First of all, I want to recognize your concerns. One of the first things that I did in coming in in May was to beef up our editorial standards. Why is NPR even doing editorials?

I'm so sorry. Federally funded entity that's supposed to provide the news. Did you not provide the news? Of course. Fair and balanced? Of course, Congressman. An article by Uri Berlinger. I've been at NPR for 25 years. Here's how we lost America's trust. Well, I do want to say that NPR acknowledges that we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner. Our current editorial leadership.

We recognize that we were reporting at the time, but we acknowledge that the new CIA evidence is worthy of coverage and have covered it. You've even talked about the First Amendment kind of getting in the way of what you wanted to get done. NPR is now taking this non-biased approach. I so appreciate the opportunity to perhaps clarify some things. My talk about truth was really referencing the way that people use truth to refer to belief as opposed to facts. Your comments said that truth was getting in the way of getting things done and that you were

prioritizing what you wanted to get done over truth. Did they come up in your job interview? Like, do you see a problem? Congressman, thank you for the question. No, they never came up in my job interview. You're a rabid progressive. Like, do you not think it's a problem that your political leanings make it seem to the American people that you're not biased and you're not doing your job because you agree that your job is to have journalistic integrity, right?

Absolutely, but there is a strong firewall between the newsroom and anything that I do. Let's talk about the newsroom. You have 87 registered Democrats, not a single Republican in your editor boards. I mean, how does that work to give us the perception that you're doing your job of actually delivering unbiased information? Well, I would agree with you that that number is a concern if it is accurate. I do believe that we need to have journalists who represent the full breadth of the American society so that we can report well for all Americans. Well,

I just got to stop it there. This goes on for several more minutes. But that part there at the end where he's like, you got 87 people on that editorial board. They're all Democrats. You don't have a single Republican. And then she's like, yeah, if that number is true, then it is a concern.

The argument of NPR is that the First Amendment requires for you and me to keep paying for them to propagandize and lie. And I got to say, one of my favorite facts, as I said, it's not just NPR. It's three Colorado radio stations, the statewide Colorado Public Radio Station based in Denver.

KSUT, which was originally founded by the Southern Ute Indian tribe. And this is the one that cracks me up. The Aspen Public Radio, which broadcasts in Aspen, one of the richest communities on planet Earth.

If you're in Aspen and you look at the airport, you just see a line of private jets as far as the eye can see. And their argument is the First Amendment mandates that we tax American workers to pay for propaganda in Aspen because the poor, wretched masses of Aspen can't afford to pay for their own propaganda. They need to tax American workers instead.

Yeah, there it is. And now you know why Donald Trump's doing what he's doing. Don't forget we do this show Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Hit that subscribe or auto-download button so you don't miss a single episode. Right after today, five-star review, if you wouldn't mind. It helps us reach new listeners. And the Senator, I will see you back here on Friday morning.

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