On this Flashback Friday episode, Jason Hartman interviews author and former Department of Justice attorney, Sidney Powell. Sidney shares some of the most scandalous and historic events of the United States’ Department of Justice. They also talk about www.pogo.org, the Freedom of Information Act, and the IRS. They end on a discussion about Powell’s book, Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice.
Investor 0:00
So my name is Mitch Russo, and I’m getting started in real estate investing and I came to this conference to learn more about what Jason does after listening to his podcast and loving it for as many months as I have. I figured it was finally time to meet the man behind the voice, and explore his methods for real estate investing, which so far have been fabulous. I love the way he ties information together. I love the way he sources other people to present their way of doing things as well.
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Welcome to this week’s edition of Flashback Friday, your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason is handpicked to help you today in the present, and propel you into the future. Enjoy.
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Jason Hartman 1:38
It’s my pleasure to welcome Sidney Powell to the show, former Department of Justice attorney and author of licensed to lie exposing corruption in the Department of Justice. What could be more timely than that? Sidney? Welcome. How are you?
Sidney Powell 1:54
Thank you so much. I’m fine. Thank you.
Jason Hartman 1:55
It’s good to have you just give our listeners a sense of geography. Where are you located?
Sidney Powell 1:59
At the moment? I’m in Asheville, North Carolina.
Jason Hartman 2:01
Oh, beautiful place. I’ve been there. Tell us how you came to write the book. I mean, you broke some amazing news. Tell us about that, too.
Sidney Powell 2:09
Yes. I wrote the book, not because I wanted to, but because I felt like I had to I call it the book I literally prayed I would not have to write. It tells the truth story of prosecutorial misconduct, deliberate prosecutors wrongdoing at the highest and worst levels, and some of the most major high profile litigation of the last decade, including the Arthur Andersen case, the Merrill Lynch, Enron prosecution and the government’s prosecution of United States Senator Ted Stevens, thereby unseating the longest serving Republican in the United States Senate changing the balance of power in the Senate and enabling the enactment of Obamacare among other things.
Jason Hartman 2:52
This is just unbelievable. I’m glad you wrote the book because people need to know, they need to know this for sure.
Sidney Powell 2:59
Yes, they, they do need to know and I wrote it like a legal thriller. So it’s not too full of legalese. And everyone should be able to understand that they say it reads like a john Grisham novel.
Jason Hartman 3:09
Well, I hope they make a movie out of it, or at least a documentary, but a movie would be best,
Sidney Powell 3:14
It would make a good movie.
Jason Hartman 3:16
First of all, you outlined those cases. Tell us why. I mean, I always ask what would be the motivation for the prosecutors to engage in these dirty deeds? Why would they do it? Like in each of those cases? What do you think their motives were?
Sidney Powell 3:30
It’s hard for me to understand I can’t really ascribe a particular motive to them because it’s so wrong. It’s off my radar screen. I do know that they punch their tickets to, you know, very high powered jobs and very lucrative senior positions and major international law firms and I’m talking about, you know, drawing seven, eight figure incomes. From from that. One became Chief White House Counsel, one became General Counsel, Deputy Director of the FBI, one became the acting Attorney General for the criminal division of the Department of Justice that then micromanaged Stevens prosecution. And that wound up being so corrupted judge Sullivan dismiss the indictment, and then started they appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the Department of Justice itself. And the ironically named Public Integrity section lawyers who had corrupted that prosecution under the direction of Mr. Matthew Friedrich. Another. Yeah, and another is now head of the criminal division of the Department of Justice Leslie Caldwell, she’s the prosecutor who led the government’s indictment of Arthur Andersen, only to be reversed by the United States Supreme Court years later, after 85,000 jobs were destroyed. The Supreme Court reversed at non to nothing, stating it was shocking how little criminal culpability the jury instructions required and the indictment did not allege criminal conduct.
Jason Hartman 5:00
Okay, so let’s maybe go chronologically here and we’ll work our way up to Lois Lerner who is, in my opinion should be sitting in jail coulier heels for contempt, or at least sanctioned at the very least. What’s the oldest cases? Is it the Enron one? Or the ones that you mentioned?
Sidney Powell 5:16
Yes, the Enron prosecutions were the oldest one, the government appointed the Enron Task Force. The Department of Justice did actually I think Michael Chertoff, handpick these prosecutors,
Jason Hartman 5:27
For someone just kind of give the high level view of that case. It involves Enron, Arthur Andersen.
Sidney Powell 5:34
Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch. There were, there were multiple cases. And everyone assumed, of course, there was, you know, justifiable public outrage over the complete destruction of Enron. And it was a complicated scenario. There was outrage across the country, because so many people lost so much money that led to the creation of this department of justice task force that was then untethered from the department because of Bush’s connection with Ken Lay, who was chair of Enron. So this group of handpicked terror of prosecutors got together and decided to make up crumbs out of things that weren’t. It cast a net that was far too broad. Of course, there were some people at Enron, who had committed crimes, but many who were indicted had not. And they went about it in such a way that they really shut down any opportunity for justice to prevail, given the public outrage, you know, that kind of fuels a feeding frenzy for scalps in the first place. And then they named over 100 people as unindicted co conspirators so that anyone in that realm at all had to lawyer up, couldn’t talk to anybody else.
Jason Hartman 6:53
Unindicted co-conspirators. So that means? what does that mean? Explain the legal implications of that, if you will. So, in other words, the Department of Justice labeled what you said 100 people,
Sidney Powell 7:05
Over a hundred people.
Jason Hartman 7:06
Okay, so over 100 people now, these were people that probably worked for Merrill Lynch and Ron and Arthur Andersen, right?
Sidney Powell 7:12
Correct.
Jason Hartman 7:13
Okay. And so they labeled them as unindicted co conspirators. So they didn’t go after them.
Sidney Powell 7:19
They didn’t, the people did not know whether they were coming after them or not. They knew that there was a poll cast over them, and that immediately put extreme stress on them, and required them to get lawyers required them to invoke their rights against of their Fifth Amendment protections, if they were called to testify, because the prosecutors were also threatening to indict for perjury or obstruction of justice. Anyone who testified at any time about any facts that were contrary to the task force view of the facts.
Jason Hartman 7:56
Wow, that’s, that’s just amazing. So what effect does that have on the case like the fact that these people lawyer up they take the Fifth Amendment? What does that do? What does the outcome that creates?
Sidney Powell 8:08
It made it virtually impossible to mount a defense for example, the for Merrill Lynch executives, who were literally just doing their jobs, couldn’t even talk to their own in House Counsel about what had happened in the transaction. It took us six years to find out the truth about what she had told the grand jury, the Enron grand jury before the indictment, and it turned out that she had testified before the grand jury
Jason Hartman 8:38
Hang on a second though. The transaction. What is the transaction?
Sidney Powell 8:42
Yeah, the transaction was the it’s called the Enron or Nigerian barge transaction pursuant to which Merrill Lynch invested $7 million in a power project that Enron was conducting for the country of Nigeria at the request of our state department.
Jason Hartman 8:59
And I got to ask you something before you dive into more detail, and I appreciate the detail, it’s really quite fascinating. I have noticed over the years that Merrill Lynch as well as Goldman Sachs, but Merrill Lynch seems to be involved in so many criminal activities. So many, actually, I don’t know if they’re technically criminal, per se, but I’ll call them criminal for laymen terms. They’re just wrong. Okay. Are you saying Merrill Lynch and Enron weren’t guilty of anything they didn’t do anything wrong? Or Arthur Andersen with a paper shredders and so forth, because that’s my belief is from the public point of view is seemed like Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm that was in business for what 150 years before that my cousin used to work for Arthur Andersen. It seemed like they destroyed documents. And Ron, it seems like was pulling scams with their special purpose vehicles and such. I don’t know exactly what Merrill Lynch was doing in there, but they always seem to be involved in something bad. Do you like that for throwing the baby out with the bathwater I’m not a lawyer, I don’t have to live up to any big standards here. I’m not a prosecutor. So just my impression anecdotally, I you know, I have not studied this in detail.
Sidney Powell 10:09
That was that was my impression too, frankly, until I got into the cases. And the book explains that the reason that’s what everybody thinks is because that’s all anybody heard.
Jason Hartman 10:21
Right, right. Of course, yeah, that was in the media. And whatever the media sells is what everybody ends up believing.
Sidney Powell 10:26
And that’s all the government was sharing, because they were hiding the evidence that showed people were innocent, for example, in the Merrill Lynch case, they have actually yellow highlighted the evidence from witnesses who had been direct participants in the alleged transaction that was they said was criminal. And the yellow highlighted their exculpatory statements that were favorable to the defense and they hid them for six years, while for Merrill Lynch executives went to prison on an indictment that did not even state a criminal offense.
Jason Hartman 11:01
Wow. That’s, uh, now I’m actually starting to feel some sympathy for Merrill Lynch. Did Enron do anything wrong? I mean, just broadly.
Sidney Powell 11:08
There weren’t any number of things done wrong at Enron. Some work bad business judgment, some were overly aggressive. I certainly think their procedures for accounting were way overly aggressive. And there were people at Enron who actually stole money. Fastow, Cooper, and Ben Glisan, made sweet plea agreements with the government actually listened, pled guilty without a deal, but then got one later, they actually the young Treasurer of Enron to soften him up. When he pled guilty and refuse to cooperate. They put him straight into solitary confinement for a few weeks. I mean, they really played hardball with with these business people. One of our young Merrill Lynch executives was sent to a maximum security prison with the worst of the worst, and we got him completely acquitted on appeal.
Jason Hartman 12:04
So how long did he spend in prison?
Sidney Powell 12:06
Eight months.
Jason Hartman 12:07
Wow, that’s amazing.
Sidney Powell 12:08
Away from his four year old and two year old and I maximum security federal transfer facility.
Jason Hartman 12:14
Since I asked you the very general question, did Enron do anything wrong? Did Merrill Lynch do anything wrong at all?
Sidney Powell 12:18
If it did, it was a civil issue only, not a criminal one. Merrill made, another tactic of the task force was after they destroyed Arthur Andersen merely been dieting it, they turn their sights on Merrill Lynch, Merrill Lynch, agreed to a very onerous non prosecution agreement that required among other things that any Merrill employee who spoke about the transaction agree only with the government’s view of the case. In other words, they couldn’t say anything contrary to the task force view of the case or Merrill Lynch could be indicted solely within the discretion of the task force, and an indictment of Merrill Lynch would have destroyed Merrill Lynch.
Jason Hartman 13:01
How about Arthur Andersen
Sidney Powell 13:02
Arthur Andersen was actually everybody thinks they were convicted of shredding documents. Arthur Andersen was actually charged with witness tampering, not shredding documents that had no legal obligation to keep any documents at the time the documents were shredded and as you know, you know accountants, lawyers, doctors, they’re not supposed to have paper flying around. They’re things we are supposed to protect and shred. There was no subpoena at the time. And so after Andersen 75,000 jobs were destroyed, the Supreme Court reversed that completely non to nothing. A unanimous Supreme Court reversal based on the flawed indictment in the fact that the prosecutors and the district judge in Houston took any element of criminal intent out of the jury instructions.
Jason Hartman 13:54
Wow, that’s amazing. They’re really a different story. You know, I gotta tell you, I call Wall Street the modern version of organized crime somewhat frequently. And I still think that but maybe it is time for another look at this case and some of these other cases because there’s a really interesting documentary that reframed and I have the I had the director of this documentary on my show before. It’s called hot coffee. And it really reframed this Stella, McDonald’s coffee spill case. And McDonald’s just completely vilified this poor old lady. It seemed like this ridiculous jury verdict. And immediately I thought and everybody else did knee jerk reaction was, oh, we need tort reform. This is absurd that these companies can be liable for this kind of stuff. Blah, blah, blah. But there’s two sides to that story, too. So maybe there’s two sides to this one. I’m open to hearing it. Okay. I don’t want to spend all our time on this one, though, because there’s a few others and we really got to get to Lois Lerner as well. Any other comments about Enron Arthur Andersen Merrill Lynch. That case, if you will.
Sidney Powell 14:53
One of the things I’m encouraging people to do is to wait to form judgments until We know more of the facts, because it is so easy to jump to a conclusion with respect to anything, I was guilty of it myself and this and that. And the book reveals that as it goes along, but that there was so much out there that the government hid. And then the prosecutors that hid it rose to extremely powerful positions and have basically been running our government for the last six years. And nothing has been done to them, they’ve not only not been punished or called to account for their wrongdoing in any way, they were all promoted.
Jason Hartman 15:31
Of course, that’s what happens in our system. You do something wrong, you get promoted.
Sidney Powell 15:36
Apparently.
Jason Hartman 15:37
Next case, if you will. Next case on the docket.
Sidney Powell 15:41
The next one would have been Anderson was the first conviction. It was the first conviction another task force and then the for Maryland’s defendants. The Merrill Lynch defendants from the barge case, the judges he sent them to prison literally said I realized you were just doing your jobs. But he refused to dismiss the indictment, even though it stated something that had never been charged as a criminal offense in the history of our country. It was a completely unprecedented application of the statutes to facts like we’re in this case. For Merrill Lynch executives went to prison while the prosecutors had actually yellow highlighted and hidden the evidence that showed they were innocent.
Jason Hartman 16:26
Unbelievable. This is insane. This is so terrifyingly scary that you could be and this could happen to any of us, okay, you may think you live this pristine life. And believe me, there are so many laws, everybody’s breaking laws nowadays, even if you don’t speed in your car, you’re breaking a law, trust me, the government has a law that you are breaking. Some I’ll say ambitious in a snarky way, district attorney or someone at the DOJ, they could just have it out for you. And or they could be trying to win reelection, or they could be trying to further their career in some way. And they’ll just go and ruin your life. And maybe take away your freedom and maybe take away your life.
Sidney Powell 17:13
Yes. At the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the conviction of the 12 out of 14 counts of the Merrill Lynch convictions, because the indictment was fatally flawed and defendants conduct was not criminal. But we couldn’t even get them bail pending appeal. So they serve a year in prison while their appeals were pending only to be told by the court that there was no criminal offense charged. So that shattered all of their lives. But the government was undeterred by the reversal. They decided they would just wiped out the portions of the indictment that the Fifth Circuit had specifically criticized. So they’ve widened those out, and we’re going to drag the defendants through a second trial. So these men, my client, for example, was in litigation for almost 10 years. The entire teenage years of both as children. And going back to your comment about people, you know, leaving pristine lives, Dan Bailey was one of the Merrill Lynch executives indicted and sent to prison. Judge warline as he sentenced him told him he’d never had such a fun person stand before Him for sentencing.
Jason Hartman 18:25
And the judge had to do it, though, right? Because that’s the law.
Sidney Powell 18:27
Well, no, he didn’t have to do it. He should have dismissed the indictment, because we made the same arguments to him that the Court of Appeals reversed on the indictment did not stay to crime.
Jason Hartman 18:37
But sometimes the judge is tied, right? They have to do things even if the judge doesn’t even agree with it. Right, just because of the way the law is written.
Sidney Powell 18:45
No, no, no, he could have applied the law correctly, he would have dismissed the indictment, there would never have been a trial.
Jason Hartman 18:51
Why would he even say that then? Why would he say I’ve never had such a fine person? You know, it sounds like he didn’t want to convict them, or have a sentence. I mean,
Sidney Powell 18:58
He didn’t want to have to send them to prison. But when he refused to dismiss the indictment and allow it to go to trial, and that was the consequence.
Jason Hartman 19:05
Wow. Amazing.
Sidney Powell 19:07
But that was because I mean, he didn’t he didn’t do his job in any way, shape, or form. The trial was a total farce. I’ve never seen a trial so infected with errors as the Merrill Lynch trial was from the indictment through the jury instructions.
Jason Hartman 19:21
It’s amazing, though. I mean, all these bigwigs at Merrill Lynch, they must have had the world’s best attorneys defending them, right.
Sidney Powell 19:27
They did. It didn’t matter. I mean, when you have a judge that’s determined to ensure your conviction, and prosecutors who have the evidence that show your innocent, anybody can be sent to prison. No one in this country is safe from this kind of misconduct by the government. And the only person who can and can stand between the prosecutors and the jail cell is a good federal judge. And if you have one that just sits there and watches the parade go by. It’s not going to do the right thing.
Jason Hartman 20:03
So one of the things you talk about in your book is the dangerous fuel of public outrage. This is kind of where the media turns us all into Lynch mobs, right? Yeah. We just want to bring people to justice so bad that we become blinded in the courts become blinded, you know, how much pressure do these judges and prosecutors feel to just nail somebody even? Maybe it’s not even the right person.
Sidney Powell 20:31
The prosecutors were selected for the purpose of doing that. I mean, that was their whole mission was to see how many scalps they could rack up and see what kind of crimes they could create, basically, on behalf of the Enron Task Force, they went in with the mindset that’s totally contrary to the way I was raised in the Department of Justice. There’s an old Supreme Court case that talks about how a prosecutor is supposed to seek justice, not convictions. And while he is at liberty to strike, fair blows, he cannot strike foul ones. They violated every aspect of that mantra. Yeah.
Jason Hartman 21:11
Before we get to Lois Lerner. Can we do anything about this?
Sidney Powell 21:14
Yeah, there There is. There are a number of things that can be done. Several years ago, after the ted stevens conviction was thrown out, Judge Sullivan named a special prosecutor Henry shulkie. To investigate the Department of Justice. He came out with a mammoth report about 500 pages long, detailing his investigation and a lot of evidence that he had obtained, he found systematic and pervasive intentional misconduct within the Department of Justice. There’s a nonprofit organization called Pogo project on government oversight.org pogo.org. And it has also by virtue of Freedom of Information Act requests, identified over 400 instances of prosecutorial misconduct in the last decade that has been intentional or reckless. Eric Holder refuses even to release the names of the prosecutors who engaged in misconduct of the department itself has verified as intentional or reckless.
Jason Hartman 22:18
Okay, tell us a little bit about the Ted Stevens story. Give us the background on that.
Sidney Powell 22:23
Senator Stevens was indicted by one of the former Enron Task Force prosecutors Matthew Friedrich, at his insistence, an insistence when he became acting Attorney General in charge of the criminal division of the department. They also in that case, had evidence that seriously impeached, the government’s main witness with whom they had made a very sweet deal and basically controlled anything and everything he would want to say or need, they would need him to say among the evidence they hid was the fact that he had engaged in sex trafficking with a minor and engaged in subornation of perjury, rather crucial things that should have been disclosed to the defense in that case, and they also had made up a story to explain a note that Senator Stevens had written on which his entire defense was based. So the senator was convicted a few days before the election, that for his senate seat, that was one of the most hotly contested contested races in the country at the time. He lost the election by only a few votes, despite the criminal conviction because Ted Stevens was beloved in Alaska, the airport was named boring. Everybody loved Ted Stevens, who was World War Two hero he was former US Attorney just done all kinds of good things for the state of Alaska. So he only lost by a few boats, but that changed the balance of power in the United States. An unusual thing happened, a young FBI agent assigned to the case, broke ranks from his fellow agents and blew the whistle on prosecutorial misconduct that he had witnessed that happened in December after the conviction in late October, early November. There were had already been any number of instances where the defendants and the judge had caught the government and one lie after the other having failed to disclose this or fail to disclose that. They sent a witness back to Alaska to keep him off the witness stand. We found out they found out later it was because he had not done well in his mock cross examination. They claimed it was because he wasn’t feeling well and he was under the weather but the defense had subpoenaed him also they sent him back without letting the defense know. So a number of things had been discovered throughout the trial while the FBI agent blowing the whistle just blew it wide open. Judge Emmett Sullivan and the District of Columbia was absolutely livid. The defense had been filing motion after motion. So that led to a new set of prosecutors being appointed that Sullivan held the original prosecutors in contempt of court. that triggered a requirement within the Justice Department that new prosecutors be assigned to the case. It didn’t take those new prosecutors, but a couple of weeks to find the evidence that the original team had hidden. And that led to Eric Holder rushing in as the newly appointed attorney general, I think he’d only been in office three or four weeks at the time to dismiss the indictment in the interest of justice and announced that he was going to clean up the department, you know, this would send the message throughout the department that Brady violations wouldn’t be tolerated. While we were still in the Merrill Lynch litigation at the time and hadn’t even discovered the yellow highlighted evidence yet. But I still had a strong sense that the government was hiding things, nothing made any sense. They’d only given a few lines summaries of the testimony of these crucial witnesses. And we knew there had to be more out there. In terms of notes or the FBI reports of their transactions or their grand jury testimony or sec testimony, they wouldn’t give us any of that. So we kept pounding for that. Well, after the Stephens debacle and the dismissal of that indictment, the third team of prosecutors assigned to the Maryland case as they were trying to redraw the defendants did give us a few little things. And in March of 2010, they gave us a disk and that disk, unbeknownst to them, they apparently didn’t review it before they gave it to us contain the yellow highlighting of the evidence that directly contradicted the government’s entire case against Maryland defendants. So they produce that only by accident, and didn’t realize they’ve even done it.
Jason Hartman 26:57
Yeah. Wow, that’s just unbelievable. Can these prosecutors be prosecuted for
Sidney Powell 27:05
Obstruction of justice?
Jason Hartman 27:07
Yeah, going on these witch hunts? I mean, does that ever happen though? Probably.
Sidney Powell 27:12
It can happen. I know of one time that has happened. It is extremely rare. One of the reasons I had to write the book is because we couldn’t get the Department of Justice to do anything about this. My client still stands convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, for expressing his personal understanding of a telephone call. He wasn’t on. Even though Andrew Weissman, the prosecutor in the grand jury had told him to share his personal understanding whether it was accurate or not. And even though as it turns out, his personal understanding was absolutely true. And had been yellow highlighted by the government and by the actual participants on the call. Unbelievable.
Jason Hartman 27:58
Okay, so prosecution is rare, if ever, it’s so rare, it’s negligible. Right? But what about civil liability? If one of these prosecutors goes after you, right, you can’t sue the dang judge. They’re pretty much immune. But can you sue the prosecutor?
Sidney Powell 28:14
That is extremely difficult also, there is a little bit of precedent for that. But again, it is so rare as to be negligible and a standard so hard to meet as to be negligible.
Jason Hartman 28:28
What’s the standard? Why, why is it so hard?
Sidney Powell 28:31
I don’t remember the precise wording of it. But it requires significant level of proof. And the courts are just not interpreting it with any sort of leniency at all. And the bar associations are doing nothing we filed grievances. Bill Hodes, one of the leading legal ethics experts in the country and I filed grievances against Andrew Weissman, who became general counsel to the FBI. Catherine rumbler who became Chief White House counsel and Matthew Friedrich, who became the person who micromanage the Stephens prosecution. We filed grievances against those with their respective bar associations, because after we found the yellow highlighting, the Fifth Circuit did hold that the prosecutors had plainly suppressed evidence favorable to the defense. There’s an ethical rule 3.8, a special rule governing prosecutors that says that is a serious ethical violation. Well, the Department of Justice defended Weissman. And they said, like the Fifth Circuit did and it’s refusing to reverse the conviction of my client on the perjury and obstruction charges that were ridiculous. And no new trial. No, nothing. In fact, we couldn’t even get a hearing on the motion for new trial because of the yellow highlighting
Jason Hartman 29:49
You were talking about what we can do about it. Did you cover all those things? You’ve mentioned an organization Pogo, I think, just quickly, maybe, you know, one or two more. Yeah, I don’t want to talk about Lois Lerner.
Sidney Powell 29:58
Yes. Well, there was legislation proposed for in Congress called the fairness and disclosure of evidence act. And there’s going to be a new Act introduced called the prosecutorial integrity act that’s designed to put some teeth in the rule that requires prosecutors to disclose evidence favorable to the defense and to set some timelines for that. The fairness in disclosure of evidence act was widely supported from the ACLU, through the National Association of criminal defense lawyers to the Chamber of Commerce. I mean, everybody supported it at that in committee, because it was opposed by the now ironically named Department of Justice. Yeah. And so now the prosecutorial integrity act will be introduced, we’ll try again to get that legislation passed. And hopefully there will be more impetus to pass it, particularly with the book out and then people reading it and listening to radio shows like this. Also, good judges can enter Brady compliance orders, District Court judges at the trial level in the states and the federal system could do that tomorrow, and require prosecutors to produce the actual evidence summary should rarely ever be allowed. They shouldn’t have been allowed. In our case, if we had gotten the actual documents, this wouldn’t have happened.
Jason Hartman 31:19
That could be a good step in the right direction.
Sidney Powell 31:21
Yeah, that’s an immediate step in the right direction. I also want to encourage people not to shirk their jury duty. And everybody thinks it’s such a pain and it does take time out of your life, but it’s one of the places a single juror is the last bastion of democracy because a single juror can stop an unjust criminal conviction. That’s a great saying, by the way, a single juror, just you one person is the last bastion of democracy.
Jason Hartman 31:48
It reminds me of a great quote by ein Rand when she’s talking about group rights, the concept of does a group have any rights, right? And you know, nowadays, we have all these groups and they want rights. But the smallest minority on earth is the individual. There’s no such thing as group rights, only individual rights.
Sidney Powell 32:05
Yeah. And you know, John Galt. Who is John Galt? comes out in theaters tomorrow.
Jason Hartman 32:12
The third one is already out. Our our three comes out tomorrow. That’s great. I have a couple friends that were involved in the production of that movie. I’m sure it’ll be awesome. Let’s talk about the IRS scandal really quickly. We’ve definitely taken a deep dive into this stuff. But this is just disgusting. What is going on with Lois Lerner and her blackberry and you broke that story.
Sidney Powell 32:32
Tell us more about it. Yes, Judge Emmett Sullivan. One of the heroes in the book license to lie, is the judge who is presiding over judicial watches Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the IRS pursuant to which they’ve requested the same emails that Congress has been trying to get. Judge Sullivan was the one who appointed the special prosecutor in the Stephens case to investigate the Department of Justice. So he is not going to sit and watch the parade go by. He is a judge of great integrity and courage. And he is very interested in doing what’s right and fair. So when the first affidavits were filed in response to his order, he had also appointed a special magistrate to assist the parties in finding the emails from other sources that magistrate judge is an expert in electronic discovery. So they are working on it touch Sullivan wasn’t satisfied with the first affidavits that IRS provided in response to his questions about you know, well, where are the emails and what happened to this computer? And first, it was one and then it was seven, and then it was almost 20. And just last week, they came out with another five had crashed. Basically, the answer is if Congress wants to subpoenas that person, I mean, if Congress wants the emails, that person’s computer crashed.
Jason Hartman 34:01
Unbelievable. I mean, that’s just. If I did that, in the case, I would get fined and sanctioned, and then Congress can even get the emails. That’s amazing.
Sidney Powell 34:09
It is. It is extraordinary. Extraordinary.
Jason Hartman 34:14
How do these people get away with this crap? I mean, it’s disgusting.
Sidney Powell 34:18
I don’t think they’re gonna get away with it much longer with just after the first declarations were filed, and he wasn’t satisfied with those answers. He requested second declarations and he specifically asked about a blackberry because they’d said nothing about it. Well, when the government filed the second set of declarations, you had to read them very carefully, and put the pieces together, but they disclose that Lois Lerner actually had two blackberries. They described one bus serial number they described the other one by date. So I sat down with the two declarations ran a time one you know kept track of the numbers and real That they were admitting that they had destroyed Lois Lerner’s blackberry that would have applied and had the emails on it for the time that Congress was requesting. She turned it in for destruction and got a new one on Valentine’s Day. 2012, which was when Congress had really focused on her they’d already talked to her. And IRS destroyed it in June of 2012. For a computer had crashed in, think it was April of 2011.
Jason Hartman 35:29
Her computer had conveniently and allegedly crashed but
Sidney Powell 35:32
Right. Just a few days after she got the request from Congress for the emails, letters.
Jason Hartman 35:40
Here’s what’s funny about this whole case, I mean, certainly you would expect that the IRS backs up their computers for God’s sake. Right.
Sidney Powell 35:48
Right. They also terminated their long standing contract for document
Jason Hartman 35:54
All of this coalescing to be so such a convenient series of events here. Yeah.
Sidney Powell 35:58
And I’ve got a number of articles on this topic as it [email protected]. A lot of those have gone viral and been widely reported and used by other media as well.
Jason Hartman 36:12
Here’s a snarky idea as to where to get Lois Lerner’s data and her emails from. Why don’t we just go to the NSA? Don’t they have everything?
Sidney Powell 36:25
Right? Several people have suggested that.
Jason Hartman 36:25
Oh, I thought that was an original idea. Darn it.
Sidney Powell 36:27
Sorry. No. Several people have suggested that if you read the comments, to the articles on the observer calm you’ll you’ll see comments to that effect.
Jason Hartman 36:36
I can’t be original as hard as I dry.
Sidney Powell 36:39
But, the government did admit to Judicial Watch a week or two ago that there is a massive government backup system. But the claim is be too hard and too onerous for them to go find the emails there. So that’s why they said there weren’t any. Yeah.
Jason Hartman 36:55
Unbelievable.
Sidney Powell 36:56
Just because it’s difficult and obstruct justice, because it’s too hard to go find.
Jason Hartman 37:00
Sure. Yeah, of course. Okay. So what else do we need to know about the IRS? I mean, basically this case, it just give the listeners the overall view. I’m sorry, we didn’t do that. First. The case is about the IRS targeting or not approving tax exempt status of like tea party groups, right?
Sidney Powell 37:19
Yes. Political, the use of IRS for political purposes to harass conservatives, conservative groups, especially before Obama’s reelection in 2012. And there is the Inspector General for Treasury who’s the watchdog over RF in house with the government even confirmed in his report that improper political targeting had occurred. And, Lois Lerner’s activities were totally inappropriate.
Jason Hartman 37:54
We all saw the testimony of some people in these groups that couldn’t get their political group approved their political action committee or whatever it was, or their nonprofit. And it’s just this is unbelievable that the Obama administration is using the IRS as a weapon to target political opponents. I mean, that is just that is outrageous like an understatement. That is disgusting. Yeah. And how high up? I mean, did that come from Obama himself? Um, he must have he must have known about it.
Sidney Powell 38:30
It definitely, it definitely has to go into the White House, or there wouldn’t be such an extraordinary effort to refrain from producing the paper, and all these ridiculous mysterious computer crashes that defies logic, reason or reality, and basically, are intellectually insulting to even, you know, 10 and 15 year olds in this country who know that computers don’t crash like that.
Jason Hartman 38:56
You know, even if they do crash, the data can still be recovered most of the time. Yeah, the only thing that really makes it so you can’t recover the data from what I understand is a fire
Sidney Powell 39:04
or drilling a hole in the hard drive.
Jason Hartman 39:06
Yeah, a complete physical destruction of it.
Sidney Powell 39:08
Yeah. In fact, Lois Lerner’s hard drive was just scratched according to the initial report, and supposedly one person that testified to Congress that he suggested that we sent to an outside vendor to recover the emails. IRS didn’t do that and said they completely physically shredded it. And they did the same with the Blackberry. They wiped it and then they physically destroyed.
Jason Hartman 39:31
Unbelievable. This is just disgusting.
Sidney Powell 39:34
Many of us did that we’d be under the jail. I mean, Trump, you know, not being able to produce your material for an audit because your computer crashed and you shredded the computer and conveniently they didn’t lose any audit or taxpayer files, they can still go after the taxpayers. It’s just amazing that only the email traffic between the folks in the White House and around the political targeting of the conservative groups seems to have been lost. Meanwhile, there was a RS person who made over 165 visits to the White House during the same timeframe in person.
Jason Hartman 40:09
Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Okay, just wrap this all up for us. We’ve been going a little long here. Any closing comments on anything? give out your website, tell people where they can find the book.
Sidney Powell 40:18
Yes. Read Licensed to Lie exposing corruption in the Department of Justice. The website is licensed to la.com. The book is definitely available on Amazon. It also should be through various bookstores. I tweet at Sidney Powell followed by the number one, and like licensed allowed on Facebook, tell your friends, it’s on Kindle and nook. It’s available in every form.
Jason Hartman 40:46
Fantastic. And, Sidney, give out that Twitter again. But spell your first name the way you spell Sidney?
Sidney Powell 40:52
Yes. S I D N E Y P O W E L L . The numeral 1.
Jason Hartman 40:57
I really hope that they make a movie out of your book. because number one, I think it’ll be fascinating. But number two, that’s the only way the mainstream culture will ever know any of this stuff.
Sidney Powell 41:08
That’s That’s true. It would reach a much wider audience if it goes to that form.
Jason Hartman 41:13
Very, very important topic and very interesting. Sidney Powell. Thank you so much for joining us.
Sidney Powell 41:18
Thank you very much. Oh, and remind people also to go to the observer.com to read the assorted articles, including one about the White House and the emails.
Jason Hartman 41:27
Good stuff. Sidney Powell. Thank you.
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