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1:17

Hello, America, and happy Thursday. Hey, this

1:20

is a really fun conversation for me.

1:22

Today, I'm gonna be the interviewed.

1:25

For the next two days, my

1:27

amazing co-host on television, Amanda Head, is going

1:29

to turn the tables on me and

1:31

ask me to trace all my five years

1:33

of reporting on Hunter Biden. We're

1:36

gonna start today with all the scoops that gave

1:38

rise to the Biden family scandal in 2019 when

1:41

I was working at The Hill newspaper. Tomorrow,

1:43

we'll talk about all the scoops we've achieved

1:46

at Just the News and why, when

1:48

you take all that reporting, there is

1:50

such extraordinary evidence, often denied by the

1:52

mainstream media, to support an impeachment inquiry.

1:55

Well, today's day one. Amanda's gonna turn

1:57

the tables. I'll be the interviewed. I

2:00

hope you enjoy it. I hope you learn

2:02

something from it. It's a fun look down

2:04

the reporting I've done and why it matters,

2:06

why we should all be concerned about the

2:08

Biden family's behavior, regardless of whether we're a

2:10

Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent. Today

2:12

and tomorrow, that's what we got for you. Please

2:14

enjoy. And a big thank you to Amanda

2:16

Head for putting this together with me. Have a good time. Enjoy

2:19

this for the next hour. Hey,

2:23

it's Ryan Holiday, host of the Daily Stoic

2:26

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That's amazon.com/news ad free and

3:33

catch up on the latest

3:35

episodes without the ads. I'm

3:41

your host, Amanda Head, reporting to you from Los Angeles,

3:43

California. And Tonight with cooperation from my

3:46

amazing Titan of a co-host, John Solomon,

3:48

we are going to bring you a

3:50

very special educational briefing of the origins

3:53

of the Hunter Biden scandal. Now, you

3:55

might be thinking, Amanda and John are

3:57

always on air together. What's so special?

4:00

The about it well on this

4:02

area so every day we have

4:04

members of Congress, thought leaders, business

4:06

leaders, even United States President. But

4:08

someone who ranks up there with these

4:11

heroes is my very own cohosts and

4:13

I get to share the screen with

4:15

him every night. Now as you all

4:17

know, John Solomon has an illustrious career

4:19

as a journalist, interviewing some of America's

4:21

most popular pro athletes, most Wanted Fugitives,

4:23

and and best known politicians. and in

4:25

his thirty year career, his creative and

4:28

aggressive style as an investigative journalist. Coupled.

4:30

With his honesty and integrity led

4:32

to his uncovering of one of

4:34

the biggest and potentially most corrupt

4:37

political families and modern American history.

4:39

And like I always say, John Solomon's

4:41

is that guy who is. He is

4:44

digging around and asking questions about you.

4:46

You better hire a lawyer. A good

4:48

one like are Now I'm a low.

4:50

Oh yeah, that's just what Hunter Biden

4:52

did specifically our me alone. Our John

4:54

was one of the few interested and

4:56

courageous journalist who caught the Biden corruption

4:58

sent early on how early? Well we're

5:01

gonna find out if you have Red

5:03

Zone Solomon's both that he coauthored with

5:05

one of our favorite. So guess. I

5:07

stayed. Shame is greater Titled Fallout. Nuclear

5:10

bribes, Russian spies, and the Washington lies that

5:12

enrich the Clemson Biden dynasties. and you already

5:14

got kind of a primer on the conversations

5:17

that we're going to be having some. I

5:19

for John was one of the lone voice

5:21

is sounding the alarm when he was working

5:24

over at the Hell, as he always does.

5:26

He research, as he writes, establishes with the

5:28

utmost integrity, which is more than I can

5:30

say for ninety percent of the rest of

5:33

media. The he caught a lot of heat

5:35

back then were formerly Legacy institutions calling him

5:37

a conspiracy Theorists time after time with his

5:40

trademark. Patients for letting the truth comes out while

5:42

he's sick. So the fact he was proven right.

5:44

And. They were proven wrong. Tonight.

5:47

I want to use the first two segments of the

5:49

show. kind of like a study guide for all of

5:51

the there a lot of pieces and players involved so

5:53

we're going to walk through as those who a cast

5:55

of characters of this Biden saga we are then going

5:57

to go through the fast as we know it. Funny.

6:00

The boy from Johns initial discoveries and

6:02

reporting of possible wrongdoing by dividing throughout

6:04

his time as the hell. Any case

6:06

you all need a refresher, this is

6:08

what Joe Biden has a third and

6:10

all along and is still same answer

6:12

to the information and reporting that were

6:15

about the reveals you rather take. Or

6:17

never disclose my So's

6:20

run early, one. How.

6:25

Many times have you ever so

6:27

concerned about is over. Reversals

6:30

unless. You're

6:36

saying no? Yes, I stand by that

6:38

There's not a single solitary seen anyone

6:40

says that was done wrong. I will

6:42

discuss business of my son because I

6:44

don't want to have any knowledge of

6:46

money. I don't want to be choose

6:49

them Will you talk with your Sony?

6:51

A talk with your school members and

6:53

so the fact is know. everybody's

6:55

looked at that. He didn't

6:57

have a roof. Zero. I've never

6:59

discussed my business or their business. My sons

7:02

and daughters and I've never discuss the because

7:04

they know where I have to do my

7:06

job and that's it is. They have to

7:08

make your own judgment fly With is appropriate

7:11

when you are the vice president for him

7:13

to have foreigners ss. Detractors:

7:16

I was unaware of his

7:18

investors Zola occurred and I've

7:20

never discussed what my son's

7:22

business resumed. My son has

7:24

not made money, In. Terms

7:27

of this thing about what he

7:29

talking about China I have not

7:31

had The only guy made money

7:33

from China is disguise. When

7:37

you say so, we bring in a man of

7:39

hours on still had so much reporting on that

7:41

so much that has been proven right and I

7:43

am ready to take a trip down memory lane

7:46

how they'll. be a you know i am

7:48

i was lost i was thinking wow consisted joe

7:50

biden is when he's meant and says it all

7:52

on his magnificently rawness but is that very consistent

7:55

i gotta give him credit for that he started

7:57

with talking points which he doesn't always do so

8:00

I love that. That's the least

8:02

part today. I'm looking forward to this. Thank you. Thanks

8:04

for doing this. I am too. And I'm

8:06

looking forward to picking your brain because so often

8:08

when I'm out talking to Americans, when

8:11

I'm out at conferences or even in Washington

8:13

DC, I constantly get stops and people ask

8:15

me, what is it like

8:17

working for John Solomon? And I always just

8:19

tell them in a word, it's a dream

8:22

because I get to learn from you and

8:24

observe you, observe your practices, observe your

8:26

integrity every day. And I'm really excited

8:28

to dive into that. That's correct.

8:30

On one thing you don't work for, you work with.

8:32

That's the most important thing. We're a team and I'm

8:35

very proud of that. I really am. I

8:38

appreciate that. So before we

8:40

dive into the cast of characters, I wanted

8:42

to ask you because you've

8:44

been covering this so long and I think

8:46

for a lot of people, they think that

8:48

John Solomon has probably just been covering this

8:51

forever because there is such a voluminous amount

8:53

of volume of materials. And

8:56

I can't remember if it was Marie Curie. There

8:59

was someone in the scientific community who said, you

9:01

know you found something at the end of an

9:03

experiment, not when you say Eureka, but when you

9:05

say, hmm, that's funny. And it

9:07

often starts like that, doesn't it? When

9:09

you see something that's a little off-kilter

9:11

that just doesn't seem to line up,

9:13

when was that moment for you when

9:15

you saw some association, some money trail,

9:17

some documents, some emails, some comment, when

9:19

was the first moment, can you remember

9:21

back then, when you thought

9:24

to yourself, I think something is not

9:26

right? So the very first time

9:28

that I had an odd feeling about it was

9:30

in the spring of 2014. I

9:33

was the editor of the Washington Times at the

9:35

time and I saw this little story come out

9:37

in one of the wire services saying that Hunter

9:39

Biden had agreed to join this Ukrainian natural gas

9:42

company. We just Googled it at the time. I

9:44

remember my investigative team at the Washington Times and

9:46

it's like, well this company has a lot of

9:49

luggage in the Ukrainian press and it's such an

9:51

odd place for Joe Biden to go, let's keep

9:53

an eye on that. And then of course, Joe

9:55

Biden didn't run for president in 2016 and

9:58

it fell off our radar. But

10:00

the real moment when I knew that there

10:02

was something up, I had been for over

10:04

two years working on the Russian collusion story,

10:07

unraveling piece by piece with it, people like

10:09

Sarah Carter and Devin Nunes and Kash Patel

10:11

and John Radcliffe and Jim

10:13

Jordan, we worked together, Mark Meadows, who had

10:16

been in Congress. And it

10:18

was December of 2018, I remember it. It

10:21

would have been this week, this very

10:23

week, couple days before Christmas, when

10:25

I get the phone call and

10:28

it's from one of my FBI sources who've been helping

10:30

me on a whole

10:32

bunch of the Russia story

10:36

and all the unraveling. And by that point, I

10:38

was pretty far out there. In December of 2018,

10:41

three months before the Mueller report came out, I

10:44

had already reported on Hannity and on my own

10:46

news outlet at the Hill that

10:49

Mueller had cleared President Trump

10:52

on Russia collusion charges. So I was hanging out

10:55

there waiting for that to happen, but I knew

10:57

I was right, because I had the right sources.

10:59

And I got a call from one of my FBI sources

11:01

saying, we're gonna send you a little Christmas package and

11:03

happy reading. And it

11:06

showed up a couple days later, I went downstairs, picked it

11:08

up just before work. And the first

11:10

half of the document was some things

11:12

I still needed to report on Russia

11:14

collusion, things like an FBI agent named

11:16

Barnett, who had given this explosive account

11:18

to the FBI about all the mishandling.

11:21

And then all of a sudden, the

11:23

document takes a turn about

11:25

eight pages in, and then on the eight pages

11:27

in, Mark goes, oh, there's a whole nother

11:29

thing that the FBI is being thwarted on. At

11:31

the same time, they're being pushed to investigate

11:33

Donald Trump for something that doesn't appear to

11:35

be legitimate, there's this other issue. And I'm

11:37

like, what's this other issue? It's Hunter Biden,

11:39

and I remember, oh, I remember this coming

11:41

up when I was at the Washington Times,

11:43

and it laid out a pretty remarkable story

11:46

that Joe Biden had been caught on tape just

11:49

a few months earlier, back in the summer of

11:51

16, or May of 16, I think it was.

11:54

I'm sorry, May of 18, saying I

11:57

withheld a billion dollars from the Ukrainian president, I

11:59

leveraged it until. If our the prosecutor and

12:01

then me documents editor or that prosecutors

12:03

just happen to me investigating sprays my

12:05

were undermine was working and again what

12:07

was a six or eight months or

12:09

any. I got the documents week before

12:11

Christmas. Twenty a team. ah a lot

12:13

of the Muller stuff broke up in

12:15

the January February March I'm from. I

12:18

went back and really stayed focused on

12:20

maps and then after the motherboard came

12:22

up. With eyes of the

12:24

I was corroborated a been corroborated. In

12:26

fact mother would that's Artists or Donald

12:28

Trump have any crimes related to Russia

12:30

collusion. I went back to this very

12:32

quickly. I found the video games. I

12:34

found some of these information. I said

12:36

I need to interview the law enforcement

12:39

officials in Ukraine. They seem to know

12:41

something about this and I reached out

12:43

Bob Odds who are one of my

12:45

lawyers who had a a fixer I

12:47

handler in Ukraine who smokes Ukraine If

12:49

you know I ask adverse and guys

12:51

the is a Muslim far. As they

12:53

can you help me get these interviews,

12:56

introduce me and I'll make them requests

12:58

And I did and a short while

13:00

later the it's or any Journal of

13:02

Ukraine and as I'm a guy named

13:04

Yuri Lutsenko ah agreed to do an

13:07

interview in In an interview he said

13:09

listen we think that there was inappropriate

13:11

pressure to shut down on me i

13:13

our investigations, embarrassments and are Also he

13:16

said something very profound and this is

13:18

what I got the Tinfoil Hat Award

13:20

for Ottaway Sti said Ukrainian officials believed

13:22

that undermine. And had paid his taxes

13:24

and summers me for money. People call me

13:27

a knack for trusting me. dirty job you

13:29

processing that's well what What do we now

13:31

know from indictment that came out of we

13:33

receive one hunter Biden did not pay taxes

13:35

on t as some of his a brief

13:38

money from Forty Fourteen just like earrings and

13:40

mad But that began to journey and in

13:42

the last week of March of Twenty nineteen

13:44

the information I got in a December twenty

13:46

a team of first became a public in

13:49

that started a long journey and the first

13:51

couple months. The. new york times and a

13:53

b c news and others match me and

13:55

then all of a sudden everybody flipped around

13:57

african very nice memories and started to say

13:59

all This is a conspiracy theory. And

14:01

the reversal came as it became more and

14:03

more clear that that Joe Biden against the

14:05

odds was going to become the Democratic nominee.

14:07

And the press just turned on its own

14:09

story. I didn't. I stuck with the facts.

14:11

And it was a long journey after that.

14:15

Yeah, I just picture that GIF of

14:17

Bart Simpson just receding into the bushes.

14:19

That's how I picture mainstream media when

14:21

you started pulling all of these facts

14:23

and presenting them to the American people.

14:25

And I think that this is the

14:27

perfect place to start because I want

14:29

to get a tear out. Throw it

14:31

up on the screen, guys, of your

14:33

reporting over at the Hill. This very

14:35

first article that you put out, senior

14:37

Ukrainian official says he opened probe into

14:39

U.S. election interference. That, of course, would

14:41

be one of your interviews with Yuri

14:43

Latsenko. This is when he talks

14:45

about the Naboo director,

14:48

Artem Sitnik, the

14:50

National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine fellow that

14:52

had some shady connections that we're going

14:54

to talk about in a minute. But

14:57

tell us why this is important. Well,

14:59

as the story went on, the Ukrainian

15:02

officials who first confirmed their concerns about

15:04

Hunter Biden and some other things, they

15:06

believe that back in 2016, the

15:09

Ukrainian embassy in Washington had interfered in

15:11

the U.S. election. They were trying to

15:13

get a better promotion

15:17

of Hillary Clinton and to try to

15:19

raise concerns about Donald Trump. In fact,

15:21

I think the ambassador to the United

15:23

States from Ukraine actually wrote an op-ed

15:26

basically saying Donald Trump would be bad for Europe.

15:28

That's kind of a foreign power interfering in

15:30

our elections. I was able to

15:32

find a former embassy

15:34

employee. So he was a Ukrainian employee. He

15:37

worked in the Washington embassy for the government

15:39

of Ukraine. And he came forward, as he

15:41

had done previously, with Politico and

15:43

said, listen, in during the middle of

15:45

the election, I witnessed some efforts by

15:48

the embassy of the Ukraine in the

15:50

city of Washington, D.C., trying to help

15:52

Hillary Clinton and hurt Donald Trump. One

15:54

of the ideas was they were going

15:56

to try to arrange for

15:58

Victor for the. Any

18:00

monthly withdrawals or transfers reduce earnings.

18:10

Welcome back everybody to this special episode where I

18:12

just get to pick my co-host brain and there

18:14

is so much in that brain of his John

18:16

Solomon. I don't know how we're going to actually

18:18

get to all of it and of course we

18:20

won't. It would take us weeks upon weeks to

18:22

uncover and discuss all of the items

18:24

pertaining to Hunter Biden and his shady business

18:26

dealings. But I want to get back to

18:28

that March 2019 article of yours from The

18:31

Hill. I think this was your first interview

18:33

with Yuri Lettsenko who for our audience who

18:35

doesn't dive into all of these characters and

18:37

who they are. He was actually Victor Shokin's

18:40

successor as prosecutor general. So this

18:42

guy had a lot of

18:44

information on a lot of the people. One who

18:46

we were just discussing in the previous block,

18:48

Artem Sitnik. Now this guy was

18:51

the director of NEBU, the Anti-Corruption

18:53

Group in Ukraine. I

18:55

wanted to ask you because he

18:58

was willing to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. That's

19:01

what this probe was all about anyway. What

19:03

was the help that he was

19:05

willing to put forth for Hillary Clinton

19:08

to win? Clear

19:10

right? It's just there was a

19:12

belief that some Ukrainian officials, not particularly Artem

19:14

Sitnik, he might have been the recipient of

19:16

it. But that they had come up with

19:18

these ledgers showing that Paul

19:20

Manafort was taking these payments. We

19:23

later learned, and it's not even in dispute

19:25

now, that the ledgers were actually manufactured. The

19:27

original ledgers had burned in a fire. And

19:30

so they were manufactured. In fact, the lawmaker in

19:32

Ukraine who found them, and I forget his name

19:34

now because it's been a long time, but he

19:37

was like this reformer, the former journalist. He

19:41

told me in an interview, I kind of knew they

19:43

probably were manufactured, but I want to get into the

19:45

FBI because they might have some truth in them. The

19:47

FBI never really made clear when the story leaked in

19:49

The New York Times about Paul

19:52

Manafort that these might have been

19:54

manufactured documents. And so

19:56

that was the beginning. They wanted to create the

19:58

beginning of the... a Russia collusion

20:01

story with Paul Manafort in Ukraine. All

20:03

right. So we're starting to peel back the

20:05

layers of the onion. And with this next

20:07

piece that you published, John, I think this

20:09

was when you started blowing the lid off

20:11

of the relationship between the Bidens and Ukraine.

20:14

And you published this article on

20:16

April 1st of 2019 entitled, Joe Biden's 2020

20:18

Ukrainian nightmare

20:20

of closed probe is revived.

20:24

And I just want to remind everybody, you

20:26

know, Joe Biden, there's this infamous video out

20:28

there of him bragging about

20:30

having Victor Shokan, the prosecutor general

20:33

at the time fired. Right. And

20:35

Joe Biden claims that there were different motives behind it

20:38

other than what seems to be. But

20:40

let's roll that tape. So now I said, I'm not going to

20:43

we're not going to give you the billion dollars. They

20:46

said, you have no authority. You're not the president. The

20:48

president said, I should call him. I

20:51

said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars. I

20:54

said, you're not getting the billion. I'm going to be leaving here.

20:56

I think it was what, six hours. I look at it, I'm

20:58

leaving in six hours. And the prosecutor is

21:00

not fired. You're not getting the money. Oh,

21:03

son of a bitch. Got

21:05

fired. And they put in

21:07

place someone who was solid at

21:10

the time. Oh,

21:13

the chain reaction of that

21:15

time that I think that was that was a

21:17

Kiev visit in 2015 that

21:19

ultimately led to the firing in March of 2016. Joe

21:24

Biden claims that the reason that he

21:27

pressured them to fire Victor Shokin to

21:29

move on to someone else as a

21:31

prosecutor general is because Joe Biden sensed

21:33

corruption, among other things. The

21:36

unfortunate thing is that that didn't

21:38

necessarily align with State Department policy.

21:40

And also, Victor Shokin at the

21:42

time was being criticized by both

21:45

Ukrainian and U.S. officials for not

21:47

going hard enough at corruption.

21:49

And, John, when you see things like this, when you

21:51

see the dichotomy between what Joe Biden is saying, or

21:53

I want you to think back to your mind side

21:56

of the time, when you saw that dichotomy between what

21:58

Joe Biden was saying and what was reality. How

22:01

do you feel? So I knew something

22:03

that I couldn't report yet when this article came

22:05

out, April 1st, But

22:07

I knew it and I was eventually able to report it. But on the

22:09

1st of April of 2019, I couldn't. But

22:11

I knew it was there because it was in the

22:14

original FBI documents. In the fall of 2018, shortly

22:17

before I was reached out to by FBI

22:19

officials, the

22:21

Ukrainian government in the form of Yuri Lusenko and

22:23

some other prosecutors, they tried to reach out to

22:25

the US government and say, listen. We think there

22:27

is a corruption problem with the Biden family. We

22:30

don't know if he's going to run or not

22:32

in 2020. But you ought to

22:34

take a look at this. And they were trying to

22:36

get the US attorney in New York, Donald

22:39

Trump's US attorney in New York, to open

22:41

an investigation into the possibility that Hunter Biden

22:43

was cheating on his taxes and may have

22:45

involved in some other wrongdoing. And

22:48

they even hired a former US attorney

22:50

from the United States to go do it. And we've

22:52

had him on our show several times. He

22:54

reaches out to

22:57

New York and says, hey, the Ukrainians want

22:59

to come and brief you on some possible

23:01

corruption. Nothing ever comes to that.

23:03

But I knew of that overture. And I knew that

23:06

there were documents sitting in the United States

23:08

government that the Ukrainian prosecutors had come to

23:11

the United States trying to get an investigation

23:13

started. And I knew that would eventually come

23:15

out. And in fact, it did. We

23:18

eventually did get that out. But at

23:20

the time, I had a lot of

23:22

things that I knew were going to fall into place over

23:24

time. I knew that what I

23:26

was reporting was accurate. And I knew what the

23:28

Ukrainian prosecutors were telling me. I had already corroborated

23:30

with the FBI and other US government

23:32

agencies before I reported it. Now,

23:35

other people in the media didn't know what I knew. And

23:38

so they were swinging arrows at me or suggesting

23:40

it was thinly reported. But we had it pretty

23:42

well nailed down. And I think what

23:44

the Ukrainians did in the spring of 2019 when

23:47

I got on the trail was they decided, hey,

23:49

we'll get the rest of the media to follow

23:51

this because we're going to announce we're reopening all

23:53

these issues on Burisma. And they did. They just

23:56

decided to reopen them. And some people in the

23:58

media did report on the reopening. That

24:00

was the hook for that particular column. But

24:02

I knew the bigger story. I knew that there was

24:05

something else that the FBI was concerned about with Hunter

24:07

Biden, and I knew that there was a tax issue

24:09

with Hunter Biden related to brief month. And

24:11

everybody I talked to, including State Department officials who

24:13

I talked to before the first story, thought it

24:16

was very odd for the vice president of

24:18

the United States to care about who was

24:20

the attorney general of Ukraine. That's an internal

24:22

matter in a country. We're not supposed to

24:24

dictate to other countries who their cabinet of

24:26

secretaries are. We stay out of that. Why

24:28

was Joe Biden so interested in changing

24:30

out that prosecutor? And the answer came

24:32

back very quickly because that prosecutor had

24:35

started to ramp up an investigation of

24:37

the brief month. And today

24:39

we know that to be true. But back

24:41

at the time, a lot of people disputed it. They

24:43

said, oh, there was no investigation going on. That's not

24:45

true. There was. There was no

24:47

asset forfeiture going on. There was. They

24:50

actually received Mr. Zilczewski's

24:52

assets back in. Yeah,

24:54

that's a car. Yeah. And

24:57

I was like, right. As this is going on, I would

24:59

watch these people in Ukraine. See, that's not happening. And I'm

25:01

like, it did. There's a court order. Here's the court order.

25:03

Look at it. But the media, the

25:05

media protectors of the Biden family literally ran a

25:07

disinformation campaign for a while. And what I decided

25:10

to do is listen, I can't change their minds.

25:12

What I'm going to do is keep flooding the

25:14

zone with facts. And over the next

25:16

three years, that's what I did. I flooded the zone with as many

25:18

facts as I could. Yeah.

25:20

And it's been incredible to see because as I

25:22

look at your reporting and I look at some

25:24

of the reporting from mainstream media, your

25:27

articles are anchored with facts. They are

25:29

anchored with states. They are anchored with

25:31

names. They are anchored with firsthand accounts,

25:33

firsthand interviews that you had with people.

25:36

They are anchored with documents. And

25:38

then you look at some of the

25:40

articles of some of the mainstream media

25:42

and the accusations, the claims of conspiracy

25:44

theory, the innuendos. It's just it's

25:48

if someone were to look at your

25:50

articles side by side critically, not knowing

25:52

anything about the background. I don't think

25:54

that there would be any comparison. I

25:56

wanted to ask you. So

25:59

you spoke with. What

26:01

were some of the top lines from the conversations that

26:03

you were able to have with him? Yes,

26:06

I talked to both Lucentco who succeeded Chokan,

26:08

a Urela Senko, and a Victor Chokan. And

26:10

they were very, very consistent. Both of them

26:12

had access to the same body of records

26:15

Lucentco was trying to get in his current

26:17

role, get the US to investigate this. Chokan

26:20

felt like he had been a victim. His story was

26:22

very simple. Don, I

26:25

took over after the barista case was initially

26:27

dropped by my predecessor. I didn't act on

26:29

it for a while. Then

26:32

I saw the US ambassador, Jeffrey Pyatt,

26:34

an Obama Biden ambassador in the fall

26:37

of 15 say, why isn't Chokan doing anything

26:39

about Bresman? I looked at it like, oh,

26:41

I can restart that. So he restarted the

26:43

case and that made Joe Biden angry. And

26:46

Victor Chokan said he was told directly by

26:48

Petro Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine, that Joe

26:51

Biden called and said, I need you

26:53

to fire Victor Chokan because he

26:55

won't shut down his investigation of Bresman. It's

26:57

causing me some heartache. So president

26:59

Poroshenko is telling

27:02

Victor Chokan and Victor Chokan has been telling me

27:04

he was fired for one reason and one

27:06

reason only. And that is that Joe Biden

27:08

was mad that Victor Chokan had a three

27:12

started an investigation of Bresman that

27:14

had been buried under Victor Chokan's

27:16

predecessor as the Ukraine prosecutor general.

27:19

And so his story was consistent. He later

27:21

would swear it out in an affidavit in

27:23

a court in Austria. So under the panel

27:26

of perjury, he would tell that same story.

27:28

And his story never changed and wavered. Joe

27:30

Biden's story has changed and wavered as recently

27:32

as a few weeks ago. And

27:35

I knew one other thing. I knew there

27:37

were some documents that early on the State

27:39

Department showed me some documents that I could

27:41

just use for background, but I couldn't put them out. But

27:43

I knew that the State Department had

27:45

documents telling Joe Biden that in the fall of

27:48

2015, he should keep Victor

27:50

Chokan and approve a billion dollars, meaning he

27:52

should do the opposite of what he actually

27:54

did when he bragged to that videotape. Joe

27:56

Biden went to Ukraine, fired or forced the

27:59

firing of Chokan. and said, I'm going to

28:01

withhold a billion dollars. I had been shown documents

28:03

in the summer of 2019 that

28:05

showed that the State Department had recommended Joe

28:07

Biden give him the billion dollars. They've made

28:09

enough progress. And hey, Victor Shokins

28:12

is doing a good job. In fact, we even

28:14

sent him a letter of praise. I would later

28:16

sue and get those documents to make them public.

28:18

But I knew at the time I was writing

28:20

this, my story was incredibly solid. Based on things

28:22

I would see, I had been shown, but wasn't

28:24

able to report yet. Yeah,

28:26

I mean, you knew your story was solid all

28:28

along, but we are going to pick

28:31

up where we left off and then power through chronologically

28:33

if you're reporting over at the Hill. All of which,

28:35

so much of these items, we all

28:37

already know to be true. But of course, all along

28:39

the way, John Solomon was called

28:41

the conspiracy theorist, and we're going to debunk so

28:43

much of that coming up after these commercial messages.

28:58

Welcome back, everybody. We are going to dive straight back

29:00

in. And I just have one more question related to

29:02

that last story, John. Because as you said, Victor Shokins'

29:04

story has remained consistent this entire time. Where is he

29:07

and how can we get him on the show? He's

29:10

in Vienna, Austria sometimes, and sometimes in Ukraine.

29:13

He moves back and forth. He's been very

29:15

hard to reach over the last couple of

29:17

years because he knows under the

29:19

current president in Ukraine, there's

29:21

no value in him popping his head out.

29:23

So he's lying pretty low. He

29:25

did one brief interview with Fox News, but

29:27

thus far hasn't been willing to do another

29:30

one. But he knows my number, and we

29:32

stay in touch. Yeah,

29:34

I would think if there was any journalist out there

29:36

that he would want to stay in touch with and

29:38

serve as an interview, it would be you. All right,

29:41

so let's move on to the month of April, 7th

29:43

of 2019 with the publishing of

29:45

Your Peace Up the Hill, Ukrainian

29:47

to US prosecutors. Why don't you

29:49

want evidence on Democrats? And John,

29:52

you start off this article and

29:54

you highlight, I

29:56

think this is the one where you talked about our

29:59

Ambassador Marie Uyasova. and the

30:01

relationship that she had at that

30:04

time with your interviewee, Yuri

30:07

Lusenko. Right. And it was kind

30:09

of dicey because she seemed to

30:12

assert some power moves on Ukraine

30:14

that really I would think in

30:16

diplomatic circles would not be appropriate.

30:20

Yeah, listen, I think that's always been

30:22

one of the mysteries here. Why was

30:24

the US so heavy-handed with the Ukrainian

30:26

prosecutor's office? And one answer is Ukraine

30:28

has a long history of corruption, so

30:30

the United States doesn't want to see

30:32

its money get squandered. And so they

30:34

were putting pressure on these prosecutors. But

30:36

Yuri Lusenko came out of a camp

30:39

of Ukrainian politicians who had

30:41

fought the more Russian-friendly. So he was

30:43

kind of a favored son

30:45

of the United States. He had been

30:48

imprisoned by Yanukovych, I believe it was,

30:50

and he was sort of a Western hero

30:52

when he got out. When he

30:54

was named to the job, remember,

30:56

after Shokin gets fired by Joe

30:58

Biden, Lusenko is the Obama-Biden administration

31:00

handpicked guy. Now all of a

31:02

sudden, Joe Biden's people want to take and

31:05

attack the character of Yuri Lusenko,

31:07

the very man they picked to

31:09

replace Viktor Shokin. And to

31:11

me, it didn't seem congruent.

31:13

There was something going on, and I knew,

31:15

hey, the Ukrainians keep trailing us the same

31:17

story and somebody doesn't want it to be

31:20

told in the United States. And those

31:22

somebodies, all are Democrats or permanent administrative

31:24

figures. People have been in the government

31:26

a long time, like Victoria Newland and

31:28

Maria Vannovich and George Kent.

31:31

And it's amazing, George Kent, the

31:33

guy with the bow tie at

31:37

the impeachment inquiry of

31:39

Donald Trump, he managed

31:41

to tell two entirely

31:43

different stories without anyone

31:45

noticing it. And the

31:47

people inside the State Department, Joe Biden's

31:49

son, ruined our anti-corruption efforts by allowing

31:51

his son Hunter to run over and

31:53

do this deal with Briezma. Then he

31:55

was telling everybody in the impeachment inquiry,

31:57

oh, I know there was no reason

31:59

for Trump to be asking questions.

32:01

The answer was Donald Trump had a right

32:03

to ask questions. I had a right to

32:05

ask questions. The American public had a right

32:07

to ask questions because something was not right

32:10

in Ukraine when it came to the Bidens.

32:12

And eventually I would get this extraordinary document.

32:14

It's only been a year ago. I think

32:16

we broke it on this show. In fact,

32:18

it was a classified document. It was a

32:21

email from George Kent, the number two at

32:23

the US Embassy in Kiev to Maria

32:25

van Average, the woman you just mentioned.

32:28

And he literally wrote, somebody should tell

32:30

Vice President Joe Biden that his son undercut,

32:32

that was his word, undercut US

32:35

anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine. Now that's a

32:37

direct contradiction to all of the State

32:39

Department officials' testimony during the impeachment trial.

32:41

They kept saying, Hunter Biden, yeah, it

32:43

was a conflict of interest, but it

32:45

didn't have any impact on US policy.

32:47

This document shows the State Department did

32:49

see Hunter Biden having a negative impact

32:52

on US policy. It came out two

32:54

years after the impeachment

32:56

trial, or three years after the impeachment

32:58

trial. And so the American public couldn't

33:00

judge it at the time. But Maria van

33:02

Average was just one of these characters that

33:04

felt that it was the Americans' job to

33:06

tell Ukrainians how to run their prosecutors, how

33:09

to run their police, who to prosecute, and

33:11

who not to prosecute. The story you're citing

33:13

there, there were these NGOs

33:15

funded by George Soweth and other liberal

33:17

activists in Ukraine. They called them civil

33:19

society groups. And I'm sure they were

33:21

trying to do good things. But the

33:24

Ukrainian prosecutors believed that they had been

33:26

misappropriating some money, including US money. And

33:28

the embassy didn't want, maybe

33:30

not Ivanovich personally, but the embassy didn't

33:32

want the prosecutors to look

33:34

at these civil society groups aligned with the

33:36

United States, even though it was okay under

33:38

Russian law for them to investigate that. And

33:41

that became the source of this conflict that

33:43

that story is about. Yeah,

33:45

I mean, I can't imagine

33:47

a culture of diplomacy where you

33:49

would have a nation submitting a

33:51

list of people not to prosecute

33:53

in another country, trying to muscle

33:55

that on another country. It's insane

33:57

to me. But I wanted to read a

34:00

clip from one of your articles

34:02

from this article actually. Ukrainian businessmen

34:04

authorized payments for lobbying efforts directed

34:07

at the US government. In addition,

34:09

these payments were made from funds

34:11

that were required during the money

34:13

laundering operation. We have information that

34:15

a US company was involved in

34:17

these payments. That company is tied

34:20

to one or more prominent Democrats,

34:22

Ukrainian officials and system. Do you remember what

34:24

the companies were and do you remember who the Democrats were? They

34:26

never gave me the information on

34:28

that. And so that turned out to be, you know,

34:30

they hinted at it but they never dropped at it.

34:32

Now we do know one thing that

34:34

happened was that Hunter Biden would later go out

34:36

and hire a company called Bluestar to

34:39

try to make these allegations against

34:41

Hunter Biden and specifically Burisma go

34:43

away and they succeeded at that.

34:45

And I eventually got all of

34:47

the Bluestar documents under FOIA's. They

34:49

were lobbying the State Department or

34:51

certainly communicating with the State Department,

34:53

meeting with Ukraine prosecutors. So Bluestar

34:55

became an American company that was working

34:57

alongside of Hunter Biden, trying to put

35:00

the toothpaste back in the tube after

35:02

Viktor Shokin had decided he was going

35:04

to restart the investigation of Burisma. These

35:06

Americans, Hunter Biden, who had been brought

35:09

in to be on the board, and

35:12

Bluestar, they worked together to get that

35:14

case shut down so that there would

35:16

be no more negative publicity about Burisma

35:18

or Hunter Biden. And Bluestar became a

35:20

very important figure in it. But the

35:22

exact company that the prosecutors were talking

35:24

about in that thing, they never told me the name

35:27

and I never got to it. Interesting.

35:29

Okay, all right, let's move

35:31

on to your June 3rd

35:34

of 2019 reporting. Hillary Clinton's

35:36

Russia collusion, IOU, the answers

35:38

that she owes America. And

35:40

this enters around the quite

35:43

fat payments that were facilitated for

35:45

the Clinton Foundation, the quid pro

35:47

quos, pay-to-play, money laundering, whatever you

35:50

want to call it, the Clinton

35:52

involvement, and

35:54

how that plays into the 2016 election.

35:57

Because I would assert

35:59

that Hillary Clinton knew exactly what she was

36:01

doing when she in conjunction with

36:03

the DNC hired Perkins

36:05

Cuy, who then hired Glyn Simpson, Fusion

36:07

GPS, who then hired Christopher Steele, who

36:09

then wrote the Russian dossier. So effectively,

36:12

if you compress all of those connections,

36:14

he got Hillary Clinton paying for this

36:16

oppa research piece on her

36:19

political opponent. But then there is the

36:21

governmental aspect of all that because obviously

36:23

this happens all the time in politics

36:25

where you dig up dirt on your

36:27

opponent. It's not often though

36:29

that you have someone like then Secretary

36:31

of State Hillary Clinton who is able

36:33

to sit the United

36:35

States Federal Bureau of Investigation

36:38

on her political opponent. We've

36:40

got about a minute left, John, so I just want to

36:42

kind of get your top line from this reporting. Well,

36:45

this became the genesis of the book, Fallout. This is

36:47

when Seamus and I decided after this column that we

36:49

would write this. Yeah, Hillary

36:51

Clinton knew that her efforts to reboot the

36:53

relationship with Russia had failed and that she

36:55

had a big liability going into the 2016

36:57

campaign. Her family and

37:00

her foundation, her husband, $500,000, the foundation, several million

37:04

dollars came from Russia. She knew this was going

37:06

to be a big liability. They even had a

37:08

poll showing this was her biggest liability with voters.

37:11

So she tried to concoct a story to flip

37:13

this around and project her sins on Donald Trump.

37:15

And that's how the Steele dossier was born, how

37:17

all of the intelligence information

37:19

was given to the FBI, which wasn't intelligence.

37:21

It was political operatives trying to make the

37:23

FBI do their work, carry out a political

37:26

dirty trick like those guys who showed up

37:28

my home one night said the FBI was

37:30

used to carry out a political dirty trick

37:32

on Donald Trump from Hillary Clinton. All

37:35

right. I just want

37:37

to throw this up there because this is absolutely

37:39

one of my favorite books. It is a staple

37:41

on my bookshelf. And I always make sure that

37:43

it's about eye level when we have certain people

37:45

come over to our house so that they can

37:47

then then they can ask

37:50

questions and maybe maybe scratch the surface a little.

37:52

So before we leave, because we've got just a

37:55

minute left in this break, it almost seems like

37:57

because you look at the coordination and the orchestration

37:59

of Hillary Clinton. Intense and the Dnc

38:01

with respect to the Steele dossier

38:03

mass the eyes involvement. In

38:06

it almost seems like that was breaking the seal

38:08

for what we're seeing Now with Joe Biden and

38:10

his the O J and his Fb I. Yeah.

38:13

Burleson One throughout the I got involved in

38:15

a picking winners and losers in the election

38:17

they didn't stop right? In all throughout Forty

38:19

Nineteen and Twenty you see evidence where the

38:21

of the ice or is trying to a

38:23

not look at things about Joe Biden In

38:25

and try to accelerate things about Donald Trump's

38:27

and that's why we today of the weaponization

38:29

sub to there's a legitimate questions about the

38:31

F B I losing its way And it's

38:33

not the men and women on the front

38:35

lines is the leadership in Washington Dc. You

38:37

hear that time again for like seven. Brock.

38:40

Said it was game assessors. I would say the

38:42

whole sci nothing and six or seven zero and

38:45

just gonna leave the rest of them are I

38:47

was I think a very exciting other I. Welcome.

38:59

Back Everybody Let's rewind and time

39:02

Let's go back to and June.

39:04

Thirteen Of Twenty Nineteen Enzymes Authority.

39:07

says. On Y and Z here

39:09

it's a stunning inability to prosecute

39:11

his own bad actors times. His

39:13

highness started. I started off with

39:15

the sauce. And then went

39:18

into the really really have you started

39:20

off talking about these for the O

39:22

J employees who had committed crimes everything

39:24

from shoplifting to fraud who were punished

39:26

by being afforded early retirement, are being

39:29

transferred or does the able to keep

39:31

their jobs and considering everything that we

39:33

see nowadays the system on the scale

39:35

the suit your system. Of does is

39:38

unfortunately not that surprising but it also seems

39:40

like you are one of the first before

39:42

I think that this this report came out

39:44

from draft before was on and on a

39:46

horse but it is a i think like

39:49

you're one of the first whistle blowers with

39:51

respect to feds going going well. yeah

39:53

was in this would set the stage for all the

39:55

lack of punishment has occurred in the up the i

39:57

collusion days are all the fi since eating and him

39:59

and problems that we've learned about that. By the way,

40:01

went beyond Carter Page. We know there were dozens of

40:03

other vices that had problems and 278,000 times where Americans' phone

40:06

records were

40:08

improperly searched. The FBI has a culture of

40:11

sweeping things under the rug and finding an

40:13

excuse not to punish its people even when

40:15

it's warranted, and that's what this story got

40:17

at. Let's think about it. Remember, Andy McCabe

40:19

would eventually get his retirement back even though

40:21

he's fired for misconduct. Peter

40:23

Strzok is suing right now, trying to

40:25

claim that his

40:28

case was a violation of his privacy because people

40:30

found out what potential wrongdoing he had engaged

40:32

in. But I did

40:34

two stories at the Hill that I think really woke

40:36

up overseers on Congress Hill. This

40:39

one here, Congress on Capitol Hill. This one

40:41

here about all the cases where there was

40:43

wrongdoing substantiated but no real punishment. And then

40:45

an earlier one where the FBI and Justice

40:47

Department sometime in the Obama years

40:50

began allowing FBI agents and Justice

40:52

Department prosecutors to accept free trips

40:54

from special interests. And just think

40:57

about that. Special interests who might

40:59

eventually one day be before the FBI

41:01

or the DOJ with cases, and they were

41:03

going on these far-flung adventures. One

41:05

of the sponsors of some of these trips was

41:08

a nonprofit called Transparency International, a group funded

41:10

by George Soros. And some of the agents

41:13

and prosecutors who went on some of those

41:15

trips would later be the prosecutors that got

41:17

reached out to on the famous

41:19

fake black ledger that started the Manafort

41:21

aspect of the Trump collusion

41:24

case. So you start to see

41:26

the ties come together which is

41:29

the FBI starts allowing itself to accept free gratuities,

41:31

the FBI starts excusing bad behavior, and then

41:33

people start to wonder why, why are we

41:35

losing faith in the FBI? Those

41:37

were two seminal decisions, two seminal patterns

41:39

that began to erode Americans confidence in

41:41

the FBI. And it's carried on through

41:44

to today. Oh,

41:46

well, speaking of people losing confidence in

41:48

the FBI because of the FBI using

41:50

a faulty intelligence product, let's talk about

41:52

the black ledger. So on June 19th

41:54

of 2019, you published this article. FBI

41:59

warned early. and often that Manafort

42:01

file might be fake and they

42:03

used it anyway. This was the

42:06

infamous black ledger of Paul Manafort.

42:09

John, there were people on both sides

42:11

of the pond who were warning against

42:13

those products saying it's probably fake. There's

42:16

probably not much legitimacy to it. Where

42:19

did you get tipped off and fill in some

42:21

of the details for us? Well,

42:23

the Ukraine prosecutors in those first interviews, you know, we

42:25

talk about a lot. I would only use the parts

42:27

about Joe Biden for the Joe Biden story, but I

42:29

saved other parts of it. The prosecutors told me, hey,

42:31

we knew right away when we got these ledgers that

42:34

they had been manufactured. Why? Because

42:36

when we went to find out where they came from, we found out

42:38

the place they restored had a big fire. Everything

42:40

burnt to the ground. So someone had to have

42:42

recreated them and they were fraudulent. The prosecutors in

42:44

Ukraine told me that. Then an FBI source told

42:47

me that. And then one of

42:49

them said, hey, go interview the state or

42:51

the Ukrainian assembly member, the MP, parliament member,

42:53

who found this and turned it over to them,

42:55

ask him what he thinks. And

42:57

interviewed that parliament member on TV, on camera. And

43:00

he said on national television, on Hill TV, yeah,

43:02

I thought it was a fake, but I turned

43:04

it over to the FBI anyway, just in case

43:06

there was some useful evidence. Imagine

43:08

that. There were three major elements that

43:10

drove the Russia collusion story in the summer and fall

43:13

of 2016. The Steele

43:15

dossier, the Black

43:17

Ledger, and the Alpha

43:19

Bank. They have a famous, bizarre story

43:21

that maybe there was a computer server and

43:23

they were secretly communicating through Moscow. All

43:26

three of those turned out to be fakes. It shows

43:28

you, when I was warned early

43:30

on at my home in March of 17

43:32

by two intelligence officials that the FBI was

43:34

being used to carry out a political dirty

43:36

trick. It really was a political dirty trick.

43:39

Three fake narratives made to look real

43:41

to the American people, engulfing two and

43:43

a half years of American political attention

43:45

and scandal. And it turned out that

43:47

none of it was true. It

43:50

is a shame that our country was put through that. And the people

43:52

who pervaded, the people who concocted

43:55

it, the people who sold it to the FBI, the

43:57

people in the FBI who ran with it even though

43:59

they knew it was a fake. wasn't true, almost none

44:01

of them got any punishment. Yeah.

44:03

And when you see the political maneuverings of all this,

44:05

it's like up and down and down is up. It's

44:08

unbelievable. I want to move on to a very

44:11

important article that you wrote in September of 2019.

44:13

This was September 20th. It's just for all

44:16

of you out there to understand the zeitgeist

44:18

at the moment. This was, I think, a

44:20

few days before Nancy Pelosi officially filed an

44:22

impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump for the phone

44:25

call with Vladimir Zelensky. This was about two

44:27

months after Rudy Donald

44:29

Trump had had that phone call. But this

44:31

centers around Rudy Giuliani and his contacts

44:34

with Ukraine and

44:36

the mainstream hysteria over his contacts

44:38

with them. When in fact

44:40

the contact was burned on by the

44:43

statement department, right? Yeah, that

44:45

was it. And this was the one

44:47

story that I ever used Rudy Giuliani

44:49

for a source on. He

44:51

on the record told me that the State

44:53

Department reached out to him and asked him

44:55

questions and engaged him on meeting with these

44:57

Ukraine officials to find out if this information

44:59

about Hunter Biden was true

45:01

and whether there was a national security

45:03

concern to it. The State Department was

45:05

actually dealing with Rudy Giuliani, engaging him

45:07

and then turning around suggesting that Rudy

45:09

Giuliani was trying to pressure the State

45:11

Department. It was the only time

45:13

in all of my reporting that I used Rudy

45:15

Giuliani as a source for any of this reporting.

45:18

It's one of the great misnomers. Again, there would

45:20

have been nothing inappropriate about me using the

45:23

lawyer for the President of the United States

45:25

as a source, but he just wasn't a

45:27

source for the information, most of the information

45:30

I got. I got from government officials and

45:32

from FBI officials and from public documents and

45:34

from the interviews I did with the Ukrainian officials.

45:37

But this is the one time I did use

45:39

something from Rudy Giuliani and it

45:41

really was a shocker to me. It

45:43

turns out the State Department was reaching out to him. That

45:45

was the opposite of the narrative we were hearing at that

45:48

time. And well, we remember the story because it was on

45:50

the record and it was confirmed by State

45:52

Department officials as well. Yeah.

45:55

And the contrast between this

45:57

that was driven by State Department, by the

46:00

State Department. This wasn't Hillary

46:02

Clinton paying for, you know,

46:05

the dossier from a shady Brit to smear

46:07

her political opponent. This was, this was actually

46:09

policy at the time. John, we've

46:11

got one time maybe to kind of dip

46:14

into this next article. These once secret memos

46:16

cast out on Joe Biden's Ukraine story. This

46:18

is from September of 2019. And your top

46:20

line from this

46:23

before we get a break. Yeah, just like it's been

46:26

today, Joe Biden kept telling a story and it

46:28

wasn't true. And the document showed it wasn't true.

46:30

And I just wanted to put the documents out

46:32

there, government documents and show people that what he

46:34

was saying wasn't true. And I did, I put

46:36

it out there and people ignored it for a

46:38

while today. They pay attention to these very documents

46:40

a lot closer. And

46:42

it was hundreds of pages of documents

46:44

and memos. So John Solomon, if I

46:47

know anything, he backs up his story

46:49

100% with documents for us. We'll be

46:51

right back. Now

47:00

we get to my favorite part when I get

47:02

to encourage John to take a victory lap. Let

47:04

me tell you, he is highly resistant to it

47:06

all the time because I know his mentality. His

47:09

mentality is you are only as successful as your

47:11

next headline. And John is nose to the grindstone.

47:13

He never stops working. But I do want you

47:15

to pause John and take a victory lap over

47:17

this headline from Rolling Stone

47:19

who, whose reputation, my gosh, compared to

47:21

10 years ago, just absolutely in the

47:24

gutter. Anyway, the headline was

47:26

it doesn't take a genius to interfere in

47:28

the US presidential election. How

47:30

a desperate foreign official bumbled his

47:33

way into the center of Trump's

47:35

impeachment crisis. I'm not even going to

47:37

mention the authors because it's not worth it. John, you were mentioned

47:39

24 times in this.

47:41

I think this was probably the

47:44

first time you were officially labeled

47:46

a conspiracy theorist. This would have absolutely

47:48

made my blood boil if it was me. Yeah.

47:50

Listen, there were a lot of arrows coming at

47:53

that point. And these, a lot of these publications,

47:55

Rolling Stone has had some serious problems with his

47:57

journalism over the year, including the University of Virginia.

48:00

Virginia, rape story that it had to recant.

48:03

At the end of the day, I made

48:05

a decision early on. I would not allow

48:08

these arrows to distract me. I

48:10

owed the public answers. I understood people

48:12

were questioning my reporting. And I made

48:14

a decision. Rather than get upset or

48:16

yell or scream or fight back, I

48:18

would just keep putting facts into the

48:20

public domain and trust the American people

48:22

to be smarter than the elitists who

48:24

ran some of these media institutions or

48:26

these government institutions. And I think long

48:28

term that served us well. I think

48:30

we just kept getting information. FOIA's and the

48:32

work that the Southeastern Legal Foundation did and

48:34

the work that Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley

48:37

did, the work that Jim Jordan did and

48:39

Mark Meadows did. And over time, it was

48:41

a long time, it was like turning a

48:43

battleship. But I think we got a

48:45

really extraordinary set of facts

48:48

out there and the story has changed. It's

48:50

now Joe Biden who's the conspiracy theorist. He's the

48:53

guy that sent my family to get money from

48:55

China. He did. He didn't change

48:57

US policy in Ukraine. He did. Even

48:59

the Washington Post agrees on that. He caught an

49:01

audible recently. They came around to my way

49:03

of thinking on the facts because the facts

49:06

are stubborn. But the

49:08

key, I learned something valuable in this. And

49:10

there were moments where I was angry. There

49:12

were moments, I remember a moment where reporters

49:14

came to my neighborhood and interviewed my neighbors

49:16

and tried to suggest to them I was

49:18

a Russian spy trying to influence the 2020

49:20

election. And it

49:22

was pretty, they wouldn't talk to me for a long time.

49:24

I had to go try to make amends with neighbors about

49:26

something that just simply wasn't true. But I think the best

49:28

thing you can do as a journalist is use

49:30

your pen and pad and let facts fight

49:33

back rather than emotion or personal slings. And

49:35

that's what I tried to do. And I

49:37

hope now in 2023, the body of facts

49:39

that we put out there have informed the

49:41

American public. That's all you can do. Yeah,

49:44

I wish that I could recount to

49:46

our audience all of the times that

49:48

I have personally witnessed you, John, and

49:50

your integrity driving the actions that you

49:52

make. You've been covering politics.

49:54

I think your first election was Reagan in

49:57

1984. I

50:01

mean, I think about how long ago that was.

50:03

I was still in diapers at the time, and

50:05

I don't say that to age you. I say

50:07

that to express and exhibit how long you have

50:09

retained your integrity. And I say that because there

50:12

are a lot of journalists out there who they

50:14

go into journalism and they have

50:16

this idealistic view of what they're doing and

50:18

they stick to their guns, but then there

50:20

starts to be chips at the armor and

50:22

they start to just make concessions in this

50:24

arena, or they tell a little bit of

50:26

a lie about this, or they engage in

50:28

yellow journalism about that, and you are someone

50:30

who throughout your entire career, you

50:33

have remained integrous and you have this sacrosanct

50:35

view of the truth and the facts. And

50:37

I know it because every day when I'm

50:39

on air and I start moving into opinion

50:42

territory, I can visibly see

50:44

you starting to get uncomfortable because John

50:46

Solomon cares about the who, the what,

50:48

and the where, and he doesn't care

50:50

about the why or any of the

50:52

opinions surrounding it. Thank you. You honestly,

50:54

John, I look at the

50:56

people in your newsroom, you are raising

50:58

a generation of journalists just like you,

51:01

and just in case you were wondering, all of your reporting

51:03

that obviously is gonna be a huge part of

51:06

your legacy, but that's really gonna be your legacy.

51:08

Be a journalist who you raise and set an

51:10

example for. Well, I appreciate you saying that. I

51:12

gotta tell you what I'm most proud of are

51:14

the journalists I've been able to work alongside of

51:16

you right there, right now, every day. I

51:18

love coming into work, knowing I'm gonna sit in this

51:20

chair and hang out with you. I got to work

51:23

with Sarah Carter and Jeff Birnbaum. I got to work

51:25

with 60 Minutes. I'm a very

51:27

lucky journalist. I get up every day saying, I can't

51:29

believe I've been allowed to do this job, but the

51:31

thing that makes me most proud and motivate to come

51:33

in every day are the people I get to work

51:35

with, and you're right there with me, Amanda, integrity

51:38

and honesty, and you just wanna get the truth

51:40

out, and that's all Americans ever ask of us. Just give

51:43

us the truth and let us make up our own minds,

51:45

and it's fun being on this venture with

51:47

you and all the people in the newsroom over there,

51:49

they're awesome too, and all the people I've worked with

51:51

in my career, I've been very blessed. Well,

51:54

you have a trademark sourcing. You don't put

51:56

anything out there until you've got at least

51:58

double coverage on the search. and I think

52:00

that's so important. Before we go, I just want

52:02

to air a video that I think is important

52:05

for all of us to remember, and I think

52:07

it's very true, and it might be coming, speaking

52:09

of sources, from a very strange source. Check this

52:11

out. There are

52:13

nations, and we've

52:15

seen it recently, that

52:18

exploit corruption to

52:22

exercise malign influence

52:25

and undermine the very

52:27

sovereignty and independence of

52:29

their neighbors. In

52:32

this way, corruption has

52:35

become an instrument of foreign

52:37

policy for some nations.

52:41

When politicians can be bought, when

52:44

courts can be manipulated, when

52:47

the media becomes a tool

52:49

of propaganda, there

52:51

you will find a society that

52:54

is susceptible to manipulation from

52:57

the outside. I

53:01

just want to say that again. When politicians can

53:03

be bought, courts can be manipulated, media becomes a

53:06

tool of propaganda. There you will find a society

53:09

susceptible to manipulation, I would argue, from the

53:11

inside as well, John. Yeah.

53:13

Joe Biden said it well. Maybe he was projecting at

53:15

the moment he said it, but it is the moment

53:18

we live in in our country. We are

53:20

in an existential moment, and being able to

53:22

get the facts right and the truth right

53:25

about the Biden scandal, the Russia scandal, it

53:27

isn't about picking reds and blues, or the

53:29

next election, it's about restoring integrity to America.

53:32

Joe Biden had it right. He didn't live by it,

53:34

but those words ring true today. They really do. Yeah.

53:38

John, for people who care about the truth,

53:40

you're reporting your legacy, your job, your reputation

53:43

in journalism is at the very, very top, and

53:45

we all owe you a huge debt of gratitude.

53:47

Thank you all for tuning in tonight. We'll be

53:49

back tomorrow night, same time, same place.