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Speaker 1: And now for a moment of clarity.

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Speaker 2: What is the purpose of these investigations. You know they're

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not going to get a successful prosecution. Presumably it's to

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raise the costs for the journalists. These are organizations that

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don't necessarily have a ton of money, and it's to

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discourage leakers and scare them from coming forward.

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Speaker 1: Well, that's why I was just going to say, that's

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why I insist, as I noted, if the institutions in

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media pulled themselves together and created that wall, that First

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Amendment wall, then those journalists know they have the protection.

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And so to the extent that you're absolutely right. Individually,

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it is very expensive for one newspaper, it's particularly a

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small newspaper or outlet, to sort of go up against

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the behemoth of the White House and the allegations. But

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if everybody's kind of working together and saying no, no, no, no,

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we're the only thing, that's only business that's mentioned in

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the Constitution that we have this space, I think it

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would be I think it would send a very important

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signal in this moment. So there's that I discribed to

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your I just.

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Speaker 3: They are not being honest with lol every day. But

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we can't just take their statement about classified information being

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leaked on face value. Classified information does not equal information

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the public doesn't know. Classified information is actually very specific. Right,

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But in the way in which Todd Blanche is using it,

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anything that was discussed in the Department of Justice, or

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in the Pentagon or in a White House meeting, right,

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that is not public information that is given to a journalist.

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They are grouping that in given his statements as classified information.

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That's actually not true. Again, Todd Blanche is very good

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at making any statements and making it sounds but it's

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non normal.

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Speaker 1: But that goes to the point you made before. Okay,

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that's not that we consume that. At this table, we

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can talk about and frame it expertly like you did it.

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Folks out there sitting around getting ready for you know,

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work tomorrow or the weekend or the next thing, and

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they're like, that's the level of minuit sha. They don't

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need to get.

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Speaker 3: Involu point, which is good, I mean, not good for us,

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but I mean it's good for Todd Lance because then

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people at home are like, oh, well they're leaking classified

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they should.

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Speaker 1: Be going exactly the point. But then you have to

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at some point get to a prosecution right now. Donald

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Trump grabbed a whole bunch of classified documents and had

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them in the bathroom down at mar Alga Largo. What

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happened there, They disrupted that process, right because they knew

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in fact where that could end up. They got it

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founder judge that sort of said no, no, we're not

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even going to investigate that any further. We're going to

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stop it here. That's not what's going to happen with

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the stuff they're doing now, which creates a real problem

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on the back end. Meanwhile, the public, to your point,

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is thinking, oh my god, they're you know, leaking classified information.

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And the press is involved in that. I heard a

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little bit at it on the on the way here

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today from some callers into a show. But the reality

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still rests at the end of the day, you've got

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to prove it. And so now you've now sandwiched these

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Justice Department officials between the reality of doing their job

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and trying to do it right so they don't come

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up on the short end of the stick on the

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back end with charges against them and the political pressure

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that the president is putting on them. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Well, and you know, it's not even obvious that this

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investigation is targeting the journalists specifically. Nominally, the only people

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that might have potentially have committed a crime would be

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people that are leaking classified information.

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Speaker 1: Catch Michael Steele on the weeknight Monday through Friday at

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seven pm Eastern on ms now