BUCK: We obviously have a huge news to break down with you today. You all know about the raid on President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, the home of the former president, and Clay and I are going to dive into this because this isn’t just a turning point, I think, for the midterm election. This is a real moment, a gut-check moment for the country about what will happen here, what’s our future.
I’ll just say this. I was on the couch yesterday after a pretty long day, and I’m in my… I was honestly in my pajamas ’cause I like to change when I get home into pajamas. I’m a pajamas guy, and I’m sitting there, and I get a text message from a former White House employee of the Trump administration as soon as this thing breaks, and I just remember looking at my phone.
I said, “Wait. What?” You know, it was just a moment of disbelief. As soon as he gives me a quick update that this is real, this is happening, that the FBI — dozens of FBI agents — are at the Mar-a-Lago home of former president Trump, I call Clay. I’m trying to get through to Clay just because I know this is gonna be… We’re putting out the Bat Signal. It’s gonna be… Clay, you were at football practice?
CLAY: I was picking up… Yeah, I was picking up my son at football practice. So usually, you know, I’m plugged in and, you know, got my phone and really on top of everything with it. Football practice has started for my middle schooler, and so I was making sure I picked him up and find out how practicing went and everything else, and I looked down, and you saw I missed a call from you, and I get a text message. Then my phone started to blow up like a lot of people out there reacting.
BUCK: It was avalanche. Everyone. Yeah. And then Fox asked me, you know, how quickly can you get in here, and I told them five minutes. The scooter has its advantages. Clay was on —
CLAY: You had to change out of the PJs, get into real, normal, grown-man working clothes and hop on the scooter and head right down to Fox studios?
BUCK: Indeed. I was on Jesse Watters’ show last night as the news is breaking. Clay was on Sean Hannity’s show last night to break down what’s going on. Let’s just start with the, “This is completely outrageous.” This is a crossing of the Rubicon. This is a bright red line that have gone beyond here, and it seems to me that it sets this up where there are really only two options, and Clay and I are gonna break it down.
There’s the politics of this, the legality of this, the national security discussion about documents. Here’s what they’re saying. The claim right now is that the DOJ — on an urgent basis — needed to get into Mar-a-Lago because of records that the national archives resist classified and are in Trump’s possession. Now, this stretches back to February. They already went through a whole bunch of this and there were some documents, some back-and-forth on what is effectively a presidential keepsake.
But that is what the claims being made in regime, Biden regime media are. All right. Clay. Seems to me there are two possibilities here. One, this was a thuggish-style Stasi raid. They do not actually have the goods. And we’re just going to see in a matter of days or weeks them say, “Well, fine. Whatever. We hate Trump so it doesn’t matter that we did this to him,” or they’ve put themselves in a place where they do have something substantial enough that they will have to bring a criminal charge against a former president of the United States, who may well run again and could well win again. What say you?
CLAY: I was stunned when our conversation started last night, because, to me, when you get a warrant — and look, I understand. I’m gonna go ahead and put out the phone line because if you are a lawyer, if you are a former judge, we want people with legal backgrounds, and obviously this is where I can put my lawyer hat on and be somewhat helpful. I’m not claiming to be an expert in presidential document policies or this the criminal law at all.
I have represented people in criminal-related endeavors before, charges and whatnot. Certainly, never on a presidential level. Phone number 1-800-282-2882. So, Buck, I always go back to the procedure. When a story like this happens, we got on the phone and I told you that my two first thoughts were, “Who served the warrant?” — that was my first question: Like, who signed the warrant? — and “What are they attempting to uncover based on that warrant?”
And let me just kind of give everybody out there an idea, because I do think there have not been that many explanations about what would have to go on here. A search requires probable cause, and it has to be reasonable and particular in nature. So whoever at the FBI filled out this search warrant is saying, “We are looking for these specific things, and we believe that they are located on this particular location, and we believe we have to get them, essentially, now.”
And Christopher Wray, who is the FBI director, and Attorney General Merrick Garland, given the sensitivity of this warrant request, would be briefed, informed, and fully aware of this decision. Now, the reports are out there that they went to a judge down in South Florida. Judge has a bit of a sketchy background. We don’t know if they went to others. Sometimes you go to multiple judges, Buck. Certainly, in the Russia collusion investigation there were warrants that were granted based on faulty premises of the warrants themselves.
CLAY: And we didn’t know that those were not based in fact until years later, when some of the Russia collusion hoax began to collapse. So that’s the background on a warrant and what is required. To me, you said there’s two pathways here. As soon as they doing a public predawn raid… Let’s not underrate this either. The video that Fox News had up was of a predawn raid that was taking place, 30-some-odd FBI agents before the sun had come up in Palm Beach, go in Mar-a-Lago.
Buck, you and I have been both been there multiple times. We did the show there with the president in February, right there beside his private residence, probably near where these FBI agents were executing these warrants. So, they intend to charge Donald Trump with a crime. As soon as I saw this raid — and, Buck, you know better than many: When the FBI goes in, the FBI doesn’t go in with the intent of, “Hey, maybe we’re gonna bring charges here.”
You don’t investigate the former president of the United States like this in this public all of fashion without intending to bring charges. And it sounds like these are effectively, Buck, trumped-up charges — pardon the pun — dealing with the handling of formerly classified or classified documents from his tenure as president of the United States.
BUCK: The smartest conservative that I know who has worked in the federal judiciary responded to me last night with, “There’s a sealed indictment against President Trump right now.” Now, that’s his guess. He doesn’t work for them anymore. He doesn’t have any inside information. But that was his sense when I asked him, having been in the federal court system for a long time.
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: He’s now out and, as I said, “There’s only two options here.” They’re pulling out all the stops, no more guardrails, brute force, street-fight politics and politicization of the FBI against Trump because they’re so terrified of him running again — or, they do have an indictment that is either pending or perhaps is already under seal about classified information, which is going to cause a storm of you-know-what, everybody. I mean, this is going to rip the country apart. Let’s all just take a moment.
There has been no indication, Clay, that there’s any legal issue involved here other than records and classification of records. I had a TS clearance at the CIA. I had to go through all the training and for years and years was handling classified documents all day long. It was my life. Hillary Clinton… This is not a whataboutism. This is not. Hillary Clinton violated, while running for president — she violated and was clearly on the wrong side of — the law about classification documents, and the apparatus said, “Nobody would bring this charge. We’re gonna make it go away.”
BUCK: If they try to bring a classification-based, mishandling-of-information charge against Donald Trump, the country is going to be on edge in a way that we have not seen in decades.
CLAY: You use the analogy, and I think it’s a good one, and I heard it repeated, that this is the crossing the Rubicon moment.
BUCK: Yes, sir.
CLAY: And historically Caesar crossing the Rubicon, you can no longer claim neutrality anymore. It is that next level of a situation we have never seen with this precedent in the history of the United States, and I know what everybody out there gets it, but I think sometimes just crystallizing exactly what’s going on here. We have the Department of Justice of the current president who just beat the former president and is right now poised to run, potentially, against Trump again using his Department of Justice to potentially destroy and put in prison his primary political adversary.
This is something that happens in Third World countries all the time. This is something that happens in banana republics all the time. Buck, we have never seen anything like this in a modern era — and I say modern era because if you’re a big historian, I mean, Aaron Burr tried to, back in the day, commit treason against the United States and start his own country, right? There are maybe some sort of crazy happenings that occurred in the nineteenth century, in the very early days of our country. But we have never seen anything like this in anyone living today’s memory. Nothing close to it.
BUCK: The people who have been lecturing us for years now about our sacred democracy.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: If this is what we all think it is. I want to say this too. They are telling you right now, “Wait until all the facts are in.” They’re telling you, “Well, we don’t really know.” I’m sorry. They don’t get the benefit of the doubt.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: Not after Russia-Trump collusion, not after 10 counts of possible obstruction. Not after the Ukraine phone call that was fine. After all of the emoluments clause, the tax evasion allegations an all the things they’ve said about Trump… Every time they say Trump broke the law, they have been lying to you. Now we’re going to assume that this time — this time — it’s real? This time it’s different? I’m sorry.
They don’t get the benefit of the doubt, nobody should give them the benefit of the doubt. And those who are going on along with that are doing the bidding of the Biden regime right now. I’m sorry, but it is true. I am seeing people on the right who are saying, “We have to see.” What are we gonna see? All of a sudden President Trump is actually the Russian stooge and the felon they’ve been saying for years, they finally got him now? Bullcrap! No way.
CLAY: We’re about to go to break here, but I want to you to think about this, I’m gonna build on it, and certainly we’re gonna attack this story from as many different angles as you can imagine. We’ll also play a couple of top legal analysts, Alan Dershowitz last night was great on Fox News. CNN’s legal analyst was just on discussing this case. But I just want you all to think about this, and I’m gonna build on it when we come back:
What would the reaction be if Donald Trump’s Department of Justice had raided Joe Biden’s house during the campaign for Biden to become the Democrat nominee or after he was already the Democrat nominee and had been investigating — based on the Hunter Biden laptop, which we all know has tons of incriminating data on it — what would media have said?
If, in a predawn raid, suddenly Donald Trump’s Justice Department had shown up outside of Joe Biden’s front gate and gone in and started seizing documents as part of a criminal investigation, what would the media say? If they are not saying that exact same thing related to this Donald Trump investigation with the Joe Biden Department of Justice, that is the very essence of choosing a side over a principle. Just think about that a little bit.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
CLAY: Buck, as we were going to break, I just asked everybody out there to think about what the media reaction would have been if Donald Trump’s Department of Justice had raided Joe Biden’s house in relation to the Hunter Biden laptop. Now, the Hunter Biden laptop contains ample evidence of a bevy of felonies. You could pick any number of things to investigate aggressively, and I’ll point out that there is an independent counsel investigation involved there.
And when we come back in this next segment, we should play Alan Dershowitz, who is making a good point — and many people have made this point — that there is a clear and present conflict of interest here where the guy who ran against Trump and may run against him again is using his FBI and his Department of Justice to potentially be trying to knock his top opponent out of being able to run for president. I mean, it’s so corrupt, it’s unbelievable.
BUCK: There are few things that will destroy a country’s political process faster than the regime in power being willing to use the force of the state against political opposition because it raises the stakes all across the board. Right now, if you lose an election, there’s gonna be reprisals, and then you convince yourself when you’re the party in power…
CLAY: This is what happens in Third World countries and banana republics.
BUCK: The parties in power say, “Well, we can’t give up power because they’re gonna jail my relatives! They’re gonna throw me in prison. So I’m now taking preemptive…” Last night on Fox, you said this almost feels like a preemptive coup, right, stopping him before he can even get into power and using the force of the state as it exists to do so. We have never seen it. They said everything about Trump was “unprecedented,” Clay, and that we’d always see.
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: Actually, it used to happen with executive orders, whatever and stuff.
CLAY: People have short historical memories. This is bad.
BUCK: This is actually unprecedented in a way that… Rarely do I get shocked. Rarely do you get shocked in American politics. This was a real moment, folks.
Buck, Carrie (and Ginger) announce on-air that they're expecting a baby boy. Congratulations, Buck and…
She's been on the Daniel Penny beat and tells us what's going on inside the…
Will The View survive another Trump term?
Watch Clay and Buck open Friday's program by focusing on the attacks on Trump Defense…
Race hoaxer Jussie Smollett dodged punishment because of a legal technicality rig job.