Sen. Johnson Reacts to News on Mar-a-Lago Raid, Zuckerberg

CLAY: Joined now by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and we got a lot to get into with you, Senator. Let’s start here. The affidavit, redacted substantially, is now out, and it appears — at least based on all of the evidence out there — that this is almost entirely a dispute over Trump having documents that the National Archives does not believe he should have access to. Given that fact — and again, we’re just going off what we can see — it makes it appear even more outrageous that AG Garland decided to do this inside of the Biden Department of Justice. Is that your take as well, based on what you’ve been able to see from the affidavit?

SEN. JOHNSON: Yeah, from what we can tell, you guys are saying, they redacted about 57% of the main body of the affidavit first 32 pages. I thought the most interesting part of it was really the exhibit that had the letter from Trump’s attorney where he pretty well laid out that the president has absolute authority to classify documents and that presidential actions involving declassification are not subject to criminal sanction. (laughing) That’s what I’ve always thought. It’s like, “So, what is this all about?”

President Trump, as he’s leaving office, has all these papers and just says, “All this stuff is declassified and I’m taking it with me,” I just view that as pretty much end of story. You also have told the fact that it’s being stored in Mar-a-Lago. Mar-a-Lago is completely guarded by Secret Service. Where is the national security interest? Where is the jeopardy to our national security in that scenario? And there really is none — and I was listening to your program earlier.

From what I can tell, our government so overclassifies material, and generally not for national security purposes, but primarily to reduce embarrassment to the agencies for the actions they’ve taken to hold up to public scrutiny, and that’s what I’ve always thought this was about. You know, I subpoenaed the FBI. We didn’t get the good information. We got some pages of information, but nothing really damaging to the FBI.

President Trump was trying to declassify. He did declassify documents at the very end of the administration would have been responsive to our subpoena. We never have ever seen one page of that information. And my guess is some of those are the documents we’re talking about that just might have some embarrassing information to the FBI. Now the FBI is in possession of those again and we’ll probably have a very difficult time ever getting those back.

BUCK: Senator Johnson, it’s Buck. You know, we’ve seen the story about a whistleblower allegation — speaking of the FBI and whether we can trust it and what it’s up to, whistleblower allegations — from within the FBI about the Hunter Biden investigation. You’re all over this. What can you tell us about it?

SEN. JOHNSON: Well, first of all, I want to thank those whistleblowers. And we just need a whole lot more. So we had a whistleblower come to Senator Grassley’s office talking about how the FBI had a scheme starting in August 2020 to downplay the derogatory information against Hunter Biden for the purposes of deep sixing the investigations. Now we have whistleblowers coming forward to my office. And to quote, you know, one of the whistleblowers:

According to new whistleblower allegations, local FBI leadership told employees, “you will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop.”

Read more about these revelations and my letter to the DOJ IG here:https://t.co/qn4zSj7pAU pic.twitter.com/bfi2PkX5G8

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) August 25, 2022

FBI leadership told employees, quote, “You will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop,” unquote, and the FBI is, quote, “not going to change the outcome of the election again,” which of course by, you know, their efforts to suppress that information. It could have been derogatory to somebody who was not running for office, had he absolutely interfered in the election one more time and in this case made sure that Donald Trump wasn’t reelected. I can’t imagine. Quite honestly, you combine that — their scheme quarterback to downplay the derogatory information on Hunter Biden, even going so far as go to Facebook and tell them to basically censor as well.

I went to Twitter. I don’t know. I haven’t heard that yet out of Jack Dorsey. If you combine that with the 51 former intelligence officials that also covered up for Hunter Biden by saying that the laptop had “all the earmarks of a Russian information operation.” No, I’m sorry, gentlemen. That letter you wrote, that was an information operation, and that had far greater interference — interference and influence — on our election than anything Russia or China ever could have hoped to accomplish.

CLAY: No doubt. We’re talking to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and you’re referencing some of the responses. I mean, we are, Buck and I, both super fired up about what Mark Zuckerberg said on the Joe Rogan podcast, where he effectively said one reason why we were acting as we did in the wake of the Hunter Biden story coming out from the New York Post was because we had been told that Russian disinformation was coming. And so, Senator Johnson, to me, it doesn’t look like there’s any doubt now that the FBI actively colluded with Big Tech companies to try and ensure that Donald Trump was not reelected in 2020. When you saw that interview with Mark Zuckerberg, is there any other conclusion that can be drawn based on what he said?

SEN. JOHNSON: No, and an even stronger piece of evidence: Both Senator Grassley and I were given an unsolicited briefing coincidentally on August 6th of 2020 when they were apparently engaged in this scheme to downplay information, unsolicited briefing. There was no new information in it whatsoever. None. We were asking, what’s the purpose of this…? (crosstalk)

CLAY: Sorry to cut you off, Senator. Explain what you mean by “unsolicited briefing in August.” The FBI contacts you and says, “We want to meet with you,” and tells you what?

SEN. JOHNSON: Again, we go down into the secure briefing room, and I was actually pulled away from walking back to my office going to a vote. I had no idea this was gonna happen. We got about five FBI briefers there. Again, this is what’s been… They end up leaking this to the Washington Post to smear me, by the way, basically saying we’re a target of the Russian disinformation. This in the midst of our Hunter Biden investigation. Now, we had been told repeatedly.

We’d been accused falsely of soliciting and disseminating Russian disinformation by Democrats who created intelligence product had a classified leak that to the media. So this was not news to us at all. We were being incredibly careful. Our report was based on U.S. documents, U.S. persons. So we did not need this briefing. And then when we asked for, “Well, was there new intelligence”? There was none. So we asked them, who directed this briefing? And they kind of looked at each over, “Uh, you know, agency decision.” Okay. There are people in the interagencies.

Who directed this briefing? Two years later we still don’t know. We sent multiple letters. Just sent another letter to Christopher Wray, to Merrick Garland. Who directed this briefing? We still don’t know, which makes me highly suspicious. So why’d they give us that briefing? Were they also trying to warn us away from issuing our report? I mean, I knew it was a setup ’cause I knew they were gonna smear me, and they did in May of 2021 when they leaked the fact of that briefing to the Washington Post. So no. I’ve been targeted by FBI operations. So I don’t trust ’em any further than I could throw them.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Senator, where do you think this is going? We’ve had really top legal analysts who think that it’s still likely — they’ve come on the show and said it’s still likely — that President Trump could face an actual prosecution over this. We’ve had others who say, probably not. Where do you think this is all going?

SEN. JOHNSON: Well, to me it’s completely political. The FBI, now we have all kinds of proof that they have been politicized at the top levels. I am very glad that we have whistleblowers, people inside the agency that have integrity and they’re coming forward. The only way we’re gonna restore the credibility to the FBI and Department of Justice, federal health agencies is if we have whistleblowers telling the truth, exposing it to hold people accountable and we can restore these agencies. But we need that kind of information. But my concern is the media is in the tank with these guys.

And so they can get away with so much. They just get away with it. They operate with impunity. No matter how much we’re outraged by this and how obvious the corruption is to us, it’s not to the American public because the media backs them up. And this cover up for them. Here’s a classic example. The whole Russian hoax. The media… The members of the media that pushed that, they know who gave them the false information. Why have they never revealed those sources that gave them false information on the Russian hoax? Because they’re complicit and they’re also corrupt.

CLAY: Amen. We need to make sure that you’re back reelected. You’ve got a massive reelection coming up in November. How can people out there who enjoy hearing you on our show, who appreciate the fight that you are putting out for truth, justice, and everything else associated with it — how can they — help and ensure that you’re back come November?

SEN. JOHNSON: RonJohnsonForSenate.com. They’ve already spent more than $50 million lying about me, distorting everything I said. Plus, you’ve got the media try to take me out as well, and that’s priceless. So RonJohnsonForSenate.com. I’m gonna need a lot of help. This is razor close. (crosstalk)

CLAY: Razor close. Yeah, we’re gonna be up there. We still need to talk to your crew, come up and do a show from Milwaukee. We’ve got the biggest audience on radio in the entire state, and we want to make sure that we mobilize everybody there to make sure that you’re back come November.

SEN. JOHNSON: You guys doing a great job. I appreciate the opportunity.

CLAY: For sure. That’s Ron Johnson. Go support him. We’ll be up there at some point to do a show with him.