Senator Eric Schmitt joined me today to discuss what ought to be done in the aftermth of the revelations concerning the FBI’s “Operation Artic Frost.”:

Audio:

10-07hhs-schmitt

Transcript:

HH: Joined by Senator Eric Schmitt of the great state of Missouri. Senator, welcome back. I have been plugging your book, The Last Line of Defense in my appearances on Fox, because all of a sudden, your chapter on your case against, what became Murthy, but it wasn’t the original one you filed, it came to pass that they have to pay up. And I was glad, and I was celebrating for you. I hoped that everyone noticed that you were there first.

ES: I did see that. You know, and actually, the interview that we got a chance to do, I appreciate it, because you had read the book. It was very substantive, and there’s a lot to tell, obviously, in the book, but especially about that censorship regime we uncovered. And I mean, it really was Orwellian. It really was.

HH: Well, speaking of Orwellian, we’re going to get there, but I notice that you’ve got a Chiefs helmet behind you. They choked last night. The Browns have the Jaguars’ first-round draft pick, and I did not appreciate that. Why would the Chiefs choke against the Jaguars? I don’t know.

ES: I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s probably too soon. By the way…

HH: Let’s get to the outrage of the day.

ES: Actually, yes, it was…

HH: Oh, yeah, they’re in the SCC, aren’t they? Yeah.

ES: Yes, and they were playing Alabama at home. Your 14th ranked Tigers are playing the number 8 ranked Crimson Tide in Columbia, Missouri. So upset alert. Upset alert.

HH: Well, when you get up to single digits, then you get to play they Big Ten. When you get to single digits, when you get to be…

ES: (laughing) You’ve got like one team. What are you talking about? You’ve got like one team.

HH: Yeah, we probably do only have one team, but it’s a really good, well, we’ve got two. Oregon’s pretty good. Senator, I want to turn very, very, very serious. An American Javert, really an American Beria, anointed himself the surveiller of the Senate. And I was going to talk to you about the shutdown, but these records of the FBI surveilling senators have got my Con Law professor head spinning around. It’s never happened in our 250 years. What are you going to do about it?

ES: Yeah, I mean, this makes Watergate, this is like Watergate’s one one-thousandth, I think, of this scandal. And if you had an honest legacy media, they would cover this. I mean, that, Watergate took down a president. And here, you had, and what I tried to do in the hearing today with Pam Bondi is this stuff’s been uncovered. So yes, Jack Smith subpoenaed the phone records to tap the phones of 8 U.S. senators, by the way, also did that with the Republican Attorneys General Association. I was the chairman at the time. Ashley Moody was on the executive board, so pull in two more U.S. senators that were involved in this effort. It really was this, it began with Russiagate. That was a hoax. They tried to sideline the presidency. Then, you’ve got the FBI then working on the Hunter, pre-bunking the Hunter Biden laptop story. We took Elvis Chan’s deposition in the book, The Last Line Of Defense, by the way. You had that. And then, once Biden comes in, three days later, they start this censorship regime, and they start spying on U.S. senators. And they start, you know, subpoenaing records of organizations like Turning Point with Charlie Kirk. This, we’ve never seen anything like this whole thing. This is like Soviet-style justice in the United States of America. So what do I think should happen? I mentioned in the hearing today. I think personally, you know, the statute of limitations runs on some of this stuff, but not on the conspiracy. So if you’re part of the conspiracy in mile marker one, even though you take an exit ramp on mile marker five, you are still liable for that conspiracy at mile marker 10. And we’re at mile marker 10. And so I would hope, I would expect to see more charges probably in line with a vast conspiracy, conspiracy against rights, conspiracy against the United States. That would involve, certainly, Comer, Clapper, Brennan, a lot of folks. And Jack Smith, at a minimum, ought to be disbarred. But there ought to be prosecutions here. I actually think what we should do is really spend the time, have a joint committee, the Senate and the House, or maybe like an after Watergate kind of hearing where we really get into what they did. Because the Democrats, Hugh, are claiming that Trump’s weaponizing the DOJ. And I tried to make the point today. Biden’s DOJ was weaponized not just against Trump, but his supporters, Catholics, you name it. They went after their political enemies. Going after and making those people accountable is not the same thing. That is not a weaponization. That is going after the people who weaponized. And that’s where we’re at right now, and I hope that’s what comes next.

HH: Well, my suggestion, and I’ll write it up in a Fox column for Thursday, is that Leader Thune announce a select committee like the Watergate select committee, that it would be a real select committee, and we put onto it people like you and Senator Hawley, former Attorneys General, people like Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton and Mike Lee, great lawyers. You hire a great lead counsel. You let the Democrats pick their three or four, whoever they want. I don’t care. We don’t do a J6 show committee. We actually have a committee, and we do Watergate Committee 2.0 and you bring them all up and you immunize who you have to. But we get going, and we go fast. I love the Judiciary Committee. You guys do great work. But some members are not lawyers, and some of them, I’ve never been a prosecutor. I don’t know how to prosecute anything. You do. I would like to see prosecutorial focus brought to bear on Mr. Smith, his staff. And I don’t know what Chris Wray was doing. Was he asleep? But what was Merrick Garland doing? This is truly without precedent in the history of the Republic, I think. Do you agree with that?

ES: Yeah, I do, and I like your idea. I would say, too, that it really, we can’t allow this to happen. The Democrats never forgave Trump for coming down the escalator. And they have never come to grips that the lengths at which they went to break the law and break all these Constitutional norms to get Trump. I mean, you’ve got to remember also that after they thought Trump was gone, and they were going after his allies, three days after he announced he was running for president again, Jack Smith gets appointed special counsel. You’ve got the number three person at DOJ go to Alvin Bragg’s office. You’ve got the Assistant District Attorney in Atlanta meeting with the White House Counsel’s Office. All these cases were meant to put him in prison for the rest of his life and bankrupt his family. I mean, they were hellbent on it. And by the way, if Biden or Harris would have won, we wouldn’t know any of this stuff, Hugh.

HH: Correct.

ES: All this stuff would still be buried in burn bags in the FBI headquarters, right? And so now, the disrupters are in. They’re exposing it, but you’re right. We need to do more with it.

HH: Well, I want people who are serious about getting to the answers as to, because there’s a chain of custody of the unconstitutionality. Somebody comes up with the idea of wire-tapping, or I’m not sure they wire-tapped you, but did they surveil you? Is that what it was, Senator?

ES: Well, what we know right now, based on a briefing yesterday, is that they had sort of call logs, knowing who people called, who was calling them, and the location. But it could be, because this has just been uncovered, it could be a lot more than that. It could be electronic communications. It could be potentially the contents of the call. We’ll find out. There’s also a question here with the carriers, the phone companies that actually agreed to turn over these documents. I mean, it’s totally insane and unprecedented, as you said. And so I think there’s a lot more questions based on the recent revelations from Arctic Frost that deserve answers, and like I said, ultimately, accountability.

HH: Is there anything that connects the eight senators who were named, plus you and Attorney General Ashley Moody, is there anything that connects you ten together? I mean, why would they pick you ten?

ES: Well, this was done under the auspices, yeah, this was done under the auspices of January 6th, as everything was, right? They had, felt like they had license to go break the law and do this massive round-up. I mean, that’s what they’re, that’s what they’re saying. And so you know, it really was, in many ways, a predicate for them to do things that are unprecedented in this country. Like I said, I mean, Richard Nixon…

HH: Do we even know, Senator…

ES: What’s that?

HH: Do we even know how many people work for Jack Smith? Do we know how many lawyers he put on his payroll?

ES: I don’t know the exact number, but I think I saw a $50 million dollar price tag.

HH: That’s the price tag.

ES: $50 million dollars was spent on this. It’s crazy.

HH: So you know, if I’m king of the world, not queen, not duke, not earl, I begin with the junior member on his staff and begin working my way up as to finding out where…and then over to the Bureau. And Patel and Bongino will give you help, won’t they?

ES: Yeah, and by the way, this most recent revelation for Arctic Frost came from a whistleblower, came from somebody on the inside. So there are people in the FBI, I’m sure, that were very uncomfortable with what was happening. And you want to make sure that they have the ability to come forward and give their statements and then follow up on that. That’s how an investigation would work. And I think we ought to do all that. Like I said, we can’t let this go by, Hugh. This is like, this isn’t some small thing. I mean, it’s hard to think of a bigger thing…

HH: No, it’s huge. Yeah, and you’re too young to remember, but in the summer of 1973, I’m in summer school in Warren, Ohio, and because we had a coach as a teacher, he just rolled the TV in and we watched the Watergate hearing. The world learned everything, right?

ES: Yeah.

HH: That’s the way you do it, is you put them up. But it’s got to be our smart people. It’s got to be our best lawyers, not people who are looking to run for anything, but our best lawyers. So I hope you go to the conference. When does the conference get together next?

ES: Well, we’re together every lunch, but yeah, there are some conversations about this, and I will say that the very smart lawyer, Hugh Hewitt, made this suggestion, and he’s right. So…

HH: Well, I’m not a prosecutor, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn recently, so I’m hoping that we find the bottom of it. To the benefit of the audience, The Last Line Of Defense becomes more and more relevant every day. It’s Eric Schmitt’s brand-new book. You want to read up on how the censorship enterprise, as he called it, I love that term, got started and got underway. Well done today, Senator, and thank you for joining me.

End of interview.