Dems continue twisting every possible event to be yet another Trump misstep. One of their own pleads guilty, therefore, dirt must be dug up on Trump – no matter how confabulated. Bannon, not the best with details, now faces mail fraud charges from the US Post Office. A non-profit raising donations for The Wall, Bannon is a go-to fundraiser but something went amiss and the Post Office arrested Bannon on a yacht. The press says Trump is shaking in his boots, but Bannon had left the Trump administration prior to all of this. Just another day of mudslinging by the Bully Party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcFlJKpYZgU
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brad johnson it is august the 21st of
00:03
2020
00:04
and uh there was a very interestingly
00:08
timed arrest
00:09
of steve bannon um allegedly for
00:12
breaking some rules
00:14
in terms of fundraising for the wall and
00:17
uh for me
00:18
it just looks like a tit for tat
00:21
in terms of the the guilty plea
00:24
of the fbi lawyer but maybe there’s some
00:26
more to it what do you what do you know
00:27
about that
00:29
yeah it’s kind of an interesting case
00:31
and as you say there’s some quirks to
00:33
the timing that are worth kind of
00:35
laying out a little bit but uh in
00:37
essence what happened
00:39
was uh after steve bannon left the
00:42
uh you know working for president trump
00:45
after he
00:46
left his job at at national security
00:48
council he went off and did some other
00:50
things
00:51
and one of the things that he did was
00:53
try to raise this
00:54
fund for build the wall so he was trying
00:57
to
00:58
privately fund it uh by getting
01:01
donations from people
01:02
and according to the what the press is
01:04
reporting on the charges
01:06
which you know take this with a grain of
01:08
salt what they’re reporting is
01:09
that part of his sales pitch
01:13
was you know to get donations was that
01:16
it was an all-volunteer effort
01:18
and so uh then part of the money was
01:22
was paid out of that fund to another
01:25
nonprofit
01:26
and out of that other non-profit some
01:29
people that were
01:31
friends of steve bannon working with him
01:32
on this project were getting money
01:35
nowhere in that did they say that steve
01:37
bannon was being paid money
01:39
they did say that out of this uh
01:43
effort to build the wall he was paying
01:45
some of his expenses
01:47
now there’s some talk about some of this
01:49
was done
01:50
you know it’s it’s unclear who exactly
01:52
was doing that but some of what they’re
01:53
saying is that it
01:55
it crossed the line because he was
01:56
buying you know a car
01:58
and and plastic surgery for his face
02:01
which
02:01
after looking at him i don’t see a lot
02:03
of signs of that
02:05
but maybe so and uh you know other
02:08
personal items so that’s the charge that
02:10
he was using this money to cover his
02:12
personal items now out of a non-profit
02:16
if you don’t pay yourself a salary but
02:18
cover your expenses that is still an
02:20
all-volunteer organization now
02:22
i don’t know steve bannon well i mean
02:24
i’ve met him he goes to some of these
02:26
events and organizes events that i
02:28
get invited to and things like that so
02:30
i’ve met him but don’t know him
02:31
we’ve never had a personal one-on-one
02:33
conversation but just in my observations
02:35
of the man
02:36
and something that everybody says about
02:38
him is he’s very sloppy i mean he’s just
02:40
a sloppy guy you know if you look at how
02:42
he’s dressed how he
02:43
you know kind of doesn’t really cut his
02:45
hair and all this sort of stuff
02:47
uh he’s just a sloppy guy so if anything
02:50
i would kind of lean towards that that
02:53
you know he was
02:55
just sloppy in the way he did some of
02:57
this stuff
02:58
but the friends that were helping him on
03:00
this thing
03:02
according to the press reporting were
03:03
the ones that were getting the money
03:05
uh paid in as uh like a salary
03:08
out of this other non-profit so then the
03:10
the charge is that this is
03:12
as uh electronic mail fraud the post
03:15
offices that are the guys
03:16
impressing these charges uh
03:20
now some of the timing out of this
03:22
that’s so interesting
03:23
and what you alluded to early on in the
03:25
introduction is that this
03:27
lawyer kleinsmith uh
03:30
just got indicted out of part of the u.s
03:34
attorney uh john durham investigation
03:36
which is this whole
03:37
fisa fiasco stuff so and then in a
03:40
previous interview we talked about what
03:41
a key guy he is and
03:43
it really looks like he’s basically
03:45
flipped and agreed to testify to get
03:47
only one charge and a much less lesser
03:50
penalty you know lesser jail time
03:52
uh out of the deal so it’s a big deal
03:54
and a lot of i think a lot of other
03:57
uh indictments are coming on the heels
03:59
of that and he’s sort of like the first
04:01
the first domino to be touched and
04:03
pushed over
04:05
now so what the timing of this
04:08
is kind of matches that i will say one
04:10
thing now of course the post office
04:12
is like state department and a lot of
04:13
the other federal agencies it’s been
04:15
very very liberal for a very long time
04:18
and so it would be
04:19
an a place that’s clearly susceptible
04:22
to uh you know political corruption in
04:26
the leadership level
04:27
and certainly within that investigative
04:29
arm of the post office
04:31
most people don’t realize i mean the
04:32
post office even has jail cells in
04:35
in the larger post office uh facilities
04:38
and so they’re they’re actually quite
04:39
active on this and a lot of people have
04:41
gone to jail for
04:42
mail fraud of one type or another and
04:44
this is what they’re saying falls into
04:46
that category
04:47
uh but now the suspicious end of things
04:50
of course is the timing one
04:52
because we just had kleinsmith the
04:54
lawyer kleinsmith the fbi
04:56
lawyer get indicted so they need
04:58
something to offset that
05:00
so the democrats do so this would be
05:02
good timing in that sense to show that
05:05
there’s other indictments and
05:06
the press coverage of this now is saying
05:08
oh president trump
05:10
better be worried in all this but i i
05:13
think this is going to be the same as
05:14
all of this other stuff the ukraine
05:17
phone call the mueller investigation
05:19
all of this stuff is just doing whatever
05:21
they can do whatever they can come
05:23
across whatever they can find that can
05:25
be twisted
05:26
in any way shape or form i personally
05:29
doubt steve bannon who is not
05:32
poor uh who wasn’t apparently even
05:36
according to the negative reporting
05:37
coming out of the mainstream media
05:38
wasn’t
05:39
paying himself a salary he was covering
05:41
expenses
05:43
um i just don’t see him you know
05:47
that he’s such in such desperate needs
05:50
of money that that he really did all of
05:52
that stuff
05:53
now the legitimate expenses i mean if
05:55
he’s having
05:56
while he’s out trying to collect money
05:58
has to go to a meeting here there and
05:59
all that
06:00
travel expenses and you know hotel and
06:02
food and
06:03
basically per diem expenses all of those
06:05
are
06:06
perfectly legitimate expenses that
06:08
almost everyone does
06:09
even if they don’t take a salary so i
06:13
i tend to suspect some sort of
06:14
manipulation of the information out
06:16
there and
06:17
what he came out and said was steve
06:19
bannon was publicly
06:20
but it hit this morning but he just said
06:22
this is you know by people who don’t
06:24
want the wall built which
06:25
struck me as kind of a lame comment but
06:27
that’s what he said
06:29
president trump on the other hand first
06:30
of all steve bannon had left
06:33
working for the nsc had not was not
06:34
working for the government wasn’t
06:35
working for trump wasn’t working for the
06:37
campaign
06:38
at any of those things they were
06:39
completely cut
06:41
they not that they don’t have a friendly
06:43
relationship but all that had stopped
06:44
the professional end of it
06:46
had ended and uh steve bannon went out
06:49
on with all this on his own
06:51
the president according to the president
06:53
uh which were also comments that were
06:54
published this morning
06:56
he said look you know i heard about this
06:58
thing didn’t like it because it’s
07:00
you know not government it’s not private
07:02
it’s just some sort of
07:03
mix and i told them you know i don’t
07:05
like this whole idea if that’s what
07:06
you’re gonna do go do it but you know
07:08
i’m not involved
07:09
and if you look back the president was
07:11
never the one coming out and supporting
07:13
this
07:13
he never came out and said oh you know
07:15
support this this non-profit to build a
07:17
wall
07:18
so i think the hands of the president
07:21
are completely clean on this he had
07:22
never
07:23
had anything to do with it directly i
07:25
think it was a
07:26
a thing by steve bannon and why he got
07:29
involved in that
07:30
maybe he just believed strongly in the
07:32
wall don’t know i
07:33
like i say i would be tend to be
07:35
surprised if he really you know he’s
07:37
kind of a sloppy guy so maybe he bent
07:39
some of the rules a little bit but
07:40
probably more out of the
07:41
just kind of his natural state of being
07:44
than like going oh
07:45
i can steal you know five thousand
07:47
dollars over there for my
07:48
new haircut or whatever which steve you
07:52
can do some helping that everybody
07:53
and at any rate the other aspect of this
07:57
i also find very interesting is where he
07:59
was arrested
08:01
and so they wait to arrest him because
08:03
of course
08:04
once they get to that point they’re
08:05
surveilling him i mean how would you
08:07
know somebody’s out on a yacht
08:09
and that’s where he got arrested the
08:10
yacht belongs to guo i think is how it’s
08:13
pronounced guo
08:14
ed who is basically a chinese oligarch
08:17
anti-communist
08:18
and that guy and steve bannon have been
08:21
working on some things to expose
08:23
chinese corruption and things that
08:26
they’re doing in the united states so
08:27
it’s actually been a fairly effective
08:29
program and and that guy
08:31
that chinese oligarch who owned the
08:33
yacht and steve bannon have been working
08:35
on that so that was a natural thing for
08:37
them to
08:38
meet and certainly a yacht out you know
08:40
out in the ocean is a great place to
08:41
have
08:42
private conversations away from you know
08:44
eavesdropping or
08:45
electronic collection means things like
08:47
that so uh
08:48
why they he would be arrested while he
08:50
was on a yacht and they even report
08:52
in the press reporting that he was
08:54
arrested having a sunburn
08:56
and so i find that very suspicious i
08:58
think they’re trying to
08:59
you know arrest him at a moment where
09:01
it’s it’s
09:02
done for appearances to make him
09:05
look bad and if you look back i i
09:08
hearkened back
09:09
to uh uh some of the guys that were
09:12
arrested that had uh
09:13
uh worked with uh president trump in the
09:16
campaign and
09:17
you know they were going to the guy the
09:19
one guy’s house in the middle of the
09:20
night and arrested him at
09:22
two or three o’clock in the morning with
09:23
12 vehicles and all these guys and dogs
09:26
and arms and just
09:26
you know and the older guy just you know
09:29
would have come out and turned himself
09:31
in if they’d asked him to do it
09:32
and yet they arrested him that way and
09:34
the cnn news crew happened to be staking
09:37
out the property just in case
09:39
and so the whole thing was filmed and
09:40
put out on the news i think this is a
09:42
repeat of that and that’s one of the
09:44
reasons i’m so suspicious
09:46
of this whole thing from the very
09:47
beginning i doubt there’s anything very
09:49
serious in there against steve bannon
09:51
we’ll see uh but certainly the timing
09:54
and the place of arrest you’ve got to
09:57
question i think it clearly shows
10:00
uh a political uh acts to grind behind
10:03
the scenes on how all this was done
10:05
the other aspect of this and final point
10:08
on this is
10:08
u.s attorney general barr has not
10:11
weighed in on this
10:12
i don’t know how it works for the post
10:15
office
10:16
to be arresting them i don’t know if
10:19
their
10:19
authorities are under department of
10:21
justice but that’s an interesting
10:23
question
10:24
it again is an area of of
10:27
that i find suspect because if the post
10:30
office was selected to do this
10:32
in order to get out from under u.s
10:35
attorney general barr
10:36
who’s clearly been cracking down on
10:39
these
10:40
politically motivated arrests versus
10:43
you know being motivated by just
10:44
straight up criminal activity
10:46
i i wonder about all of that aspect of
10:48
it and of course the u.s attorney
10:50
general bar hasn’t weighed in on any of
10:52
this yet
10:52
i don’t know if it’s appropriate for him
10:54
to do so that’s another aspect of this
10:56
that i find very interesting
10:58
that specifically it was the post office
11:00
not that they were inappropriate to do
11:02
it
11:02
just that the post office was selected
11:04
because we see these
11:06
uh these politically motivated aspects
11:08
of it to the timing
11:10
and which i find very suspicious and the
11:12
fact that he was arrested on this yacht
11:14
which is also clearly i think meant to
11:16
embarrass
11:17
us steve bannon so i the whole thing
11:19
stinks i think it’s going to be another
11:21
mueller investigation but
11:23
uh well time will tell we’ll see also i
11:25
mean i just read this
11:26
i can’t even cite the source so i don’t
11:28
know if it’s true or not but
11:29
what i had read was that the total
11:32
amount of money in question was well
11:34
below
11:35
the three or four percent which is fully
11:36
allowable for a not-for-profit
11:40
yes i think that’s true as well and so
11:42
it it it
11:43
just it makes the whole thing look like
11:45
it’s politically motivated versus some
11:47
sort of criminal thing
11:49
and uh like i said i you know the these
11:52
guys involved i don’t know the others
11:54
the other three people i think there
11:55
were four indictments total
11:57
uh i but this the steve bannon i mean
12:00
he’s not a poor guy
12:02
and you know he wasn’t making huge
12:03
amounts of money off of this
12:06
and as you say the amounts out of the
12:07
total were quite small
12:09
and there’s always a an allowable fudge
12:11
amount in there and
12:13
if it went off to another nonprofit and
12:14
that non-profit paid people salaries i
12:17
don’t know that that’s necessarily
12:19
illegal so you know not my area of
12:22
expertise clearly but you know all that
12:24
has to be pounded out and we’ll see how
12:26
it goes but i
12:27
i don’t like i say i just don’t see uh
12:30
this
12:30
that steve bannon is in any great
12:32
trouble and i think that the press
12:34
trying to link this to president trump
12:36
is just pure bs it’s the usual stuff it
12:39
just looked at it as like
12:40
that ukraine phone call which was
12:42
nothing uh which is all perfectly
12:45
legal and moral and ethical and all
12:47
those sorts of things
12:49
i think it’s just another thing like
12:50
that they’re taking something fairly
12:52
normal
12:53
maybe not perfect but fairly normal and
12:55
trying to taint it as some evil thing
12:57
and they’re out there
12:58
talking about oh this guy was
13:00
recommended for indictment and that guy
13:01
for investigation and this and that and
13:03
the other
13:03
trying to make it look like some sort of
13:06
you know criminal cabal
13:07
where it’s all bs it’s just it’s it’s
13:10
all politically motivated
13:12
bs by corrupt u.s government officials
13:15
who are willing to
13:16
support the democratic party and prison
13:19
and the uh democratic uh uh
13:22
biden you know a candidate and all this
13:25
sort of stuff i
13:26
i it’s just it’s stinky the whole thing
13:28
is just stinky
13:39
[Music]
14:04
you
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