Buck Brief - Should Trump Appoint an Epstein Special Counsel

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show Episode: Buck Brief - Should Trump Appoint an Epstein Special Counsel
Release Date: July 17, 2025
Host: Buck Sexton
Guest: Kurt Schlichter, Author of American Apocalypse

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Introduction

In the "Buck Brief" episode of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, host Buck Sexton engages in a compelling discussion with Kurt Schlichter, a multifaceted commentator known for his roles as an author, columnist, thinker, and veteran lawyer. The episode delves into two primary topics: the implications of former President Donald Trump potentially appointing a special counsel to investigate connections between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, and a deep dive into Schlichter's new novel, American Apocalypse.

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Pleading the Fifth: Biden's Legal Maneuvers

Buck Sexton opens the conversation by addressing recent developments where individuals connected to President Joe Biden have invoked the Fifth Amendment. Sexton poses a critical question to Schlichter:

Buck Sexton [01:26]: "People are pleading the Fifth when asked about Biden's mental state and the possibility of conspiracy to keep that from the American people. What do you make of it?"

Kurt Schlichter responds by explaining the strategic use of the Fifth Amendment:

Kurt Schlichter [01:31]: "When we use it, it's often to avoid being railroaded. When they use it, it's often to avoid accountability, which it does."

Schlichter elaborates on how the left may be expanding statutory definitions to encompass actions that typically wouldn't be considered crimes, thereby providing a broader scope for invoking the Fifth Amendment. He suggests that this tactic allows individuals to evade responsibility without clear evidence:

Schlichter [02:12]: "The left has created creative use of statutes to turn things that normal people wouldn't see as crimes into crimes... So, he’s like, 'I’m not exactly sure what they charged me for because it would all be nonsense.'"

Buck Sexton probes further into the potential crimes Biden could be implicated in, but Schlichter maintains that without concrete evidence, such charges remain speculative and largely unfounded.

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The Epstein Special Counsel Debate

Transitioning to the Epstein investigation, Sexton expresses skepticism about the feasibility and efficacy of appointing a special counsel to probe the late financier’s connections:

Buck Sexton [05:02]: "I just look at this and I go, that's a terrible idea."

Schlichter concurs, describing the appointment of a special counsel as "awful" and argues that the Department of Justice (DOJ) should handle such investigations internally unless a genuine conflict of interest is present. He emphasizes the challenges in uncovering definitive evidence, especially given the sensitive nature of Epstein's crimes and the possibility that key evidence may no longer be available:

Kurt Schlichter [07:55]: "If that stuff was out there and people say things like there's a foreign intelligence service or that this was somehow a deep state cabal, they're not going to leave that stuff around. They would know where it is, and they would have cleaned this up a long time ago."

The discussion highlights the complexities and potential pitfalls of reopening Epstein's case without substantial new evidence, cautioning against baseless conspiracy theories that could undermine the integrity of genuine investigations.

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American Apocalypse: A Glimpse into a Divided Nation

The episode transitions to a discussion about Kurt Schlichter's latest book, American Apocalypse. Schlichter describes the novel as a speculative portrayal of a divided America teetering on the brink of civil war:

Kurt Schlichter [11:26]: "American Apocalypse, the Second American Civil War is a book I wrote because I'm worried about... half of America, the left half, doesn't believe that the right half has any legitimacy to govern."

Schlichter illustrates a dystopian scenario where deep political polarization leads to the erosion of democratic norms and the rule of law. He warns of a future where mutual distrust and vilification between the political left and right escalate to the use of force and violence:

Schlichter [12:00]: "When you have a society that isn't run by laws and isn't run by political procedures, what's left to run it? Force."

He further explains that the novel serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of abandoning constitutional principles and resorting to authoritarian measures to settle political disputes. Schlichter hopes that his fiction will resonate with readers, encouraging them to value and uphold democratic institutions:

Schlichter [14:10]: "I wrote it as fiction because I wanted to tell stories of regular folks that we can identify with so we can see why it's so important that we get back to the Constitution."

Buck Sexton encourages listeners to pre-order the book, highlighting its relevance in the current political climate:

Buck Sexton [13:37]: "Go get your copy or get your at least your pre order in for your copy at Amazon. And wherever books are sold."

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Conclusion

In this thought-provoking episode, Buck Sexton and Kurt Schlichter navigate complex political and legal landscapes, addressing the strategic use of the Fifth Amendment in high-profile cases and critiquing the proposal of a special counsel for the Epstein investigation. The conversation seamlessly transitions to exploring the themes of Schlichter's American Apocalypse, underscoring the urgent need for unity and adherence to constitutional values in preventing societal collapse.

Listeners are left with a nuanced understanding of the challenges facing American democracy and the imperative to foster trust and uphold the rule of law amidst increasing political polarization.

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Notable Quotes:

• Kurt Schlichter [01:31]: "When we use it, it's often to avoid being railroaded. When they use it, it's often to avoid accountability, which it does."
• Kurt Schlichter [02:12]: "The left has created creative use of statutes to turn things that normal people wouldn't see as crimes into crimes..."
• Kurt Schlichter [07:55]: "If that stuff was out there and people say things like there's a foreign intelligence service or that this was somehow a deep state cabal, they're not going to leave that stuff around."
• Kurt Schlichter [11:26]: "American Apocalypse, the Second American Civil War is a book I wrote because I'm worried about... half of America, the left half, doesn't believe that the right half has any legitimacy to govern."
• Kurt Schlichter [14:10]: "I wrote it as fiction because I wanted to tell stories of regular folks that we can identify with so we can see why it's so important that we get back to the Constitution."

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Recommendation: For listeners interested in the intersection of politics, law, and societal trends, this episode offers valuable insights and a compelling preview of American Apocalypse, making it a must-listen for those navigating the complexities of contemporary American discourse.

Transcript

[Buck Sexton]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Kurt Schlichter]

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[Buck Sexton]

Your grandpa and I used to work on this car together. And when I'm gone, I want you to have it. Wow, thanks, dad.

[Kurt Schlichter]

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[Buck Sexton]

Make sure you subscribe to the podcast.

[Kurt Schlichter]

On the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Buck Sexton]

Hey everybody. Kurt Schlichter back in the mix. Author, columnist, thinker, conservative commentator, veteran lawyer. He's got a lot of titles, including the title of his new book, American Apocalypse, which is available for pre order right now. So get those pre orders going. It's a fiction book. We'll talk about the book in a second. Let's first talk about this, Mr. Kurt. So we got people. You're a lawyer, so that comes in handy here. People are pleading the Fifth when asked about Biden's mental state and the possibility of conspiracy to keep that from the American people. What do you make of it?

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, I know why they're doing it and they may be allowed to do it if there's a crime involved and there may be a crime. You know, the Fifth Amendment applies to. When we use it, it's often to avoid being railroaded. When they use it, it's often to avoid accountability, which it does. I mean, this doctor also invented a physician patient privilege that doesn't exist under federal law, so that's out. But there's an easy way to get the doctor's testimony, which is to pardon the doctor for any alleged crimes that might be associated with his treatment or care of Joe Biden.

[Buck Sexton]

What do you think the crimes do you have any sense of what the crime could be?

[Unknown Speaker]

I don't. One of the problems which the left has created is creative use of statutes to turn things that normal people wouldn't see as crimes into crimes. Which makes, which gives people a lot of leeway when they're asserting potential self incrimination. So you know, he's like, well, I'm not exactly sure what they charged me for because it would all Be nonsense. But they might charge me. So anything I say could incriminate, tend to incriminate me. So I'm not going to say anything. And I think he has a good chance of getting away with that.

[Buck Sexton]

I was going to say if you were his attorney. So if you were the consulate.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, he'd be doing that. That's what he'd be doing. He'd be taking the Fifth.

[Buck Sexton]

Totally. Right. I mean, this is.

[Unknown Speaker]

I ask. Absolutely, yeah.

[Buck Sexton]

There's no upside, especially, I mean, if.

[Unknown Speaker]

I was his attorney.

[Buck Sexton]

Right, yeah, yeah, of course. Because there's no upside in talking about any of this. And people say, oh, what about the reputational damage. We all know. They knew Biden had dementia. Like, there's nothing. There's not going to be some. Oh, my go gosh. You mean you guys were dishonest about the Biden dementia situation in the White House?

[Unknown Speaker]

Like.

[Buck Sexton]

No, we know. We already know.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah. The SS Reputation has pulled out a port and set sail, let's put it that way. I mean, we all know what this guy did. We all knew what he was covering up. They'd like to get him on the record about it. And if they want to be sneaky, they can, you know, get Trump to issue a pardon for anything he did involving the Joe Biden, his care, treatment or administration. And then you've got a incriminate. Then you have a Fifth Amendment problem. So we'll, we'll see what happens.

[Buck Sexton]

Now, something else I want to ask you about. I'm seeing what I, what I don't want to do is get into a 20, 20 years of Epstein conspiracy conversation. Like this is, this is everywhere now. I know, I know. So we're going to skip past the, all the, there's all this stuff and there's all the theories and there's all this. Already covered this on the show. I can already, the comments I can, I can pre. See in my mind, they're just like, he's paid off.

[Unknown Speaker]

He's.

[Buck Sexton]

I've talked about this all. I've been talking about this much longer than a lot of other people. I was the one who told everybody on the Sean Ryan show, which obviously blew up everywhere because it's a freaking huge show about the 2019 raid. The FBI is like, oh, we have the tapes. We're going to leave the tapes and we're going to leave the house and the tapes are gone. We come back, you know, I told people this. They didn't even believe anyway. I don't want to get too, too deep into this. Now, what I do want to ask, though, is I'm seeing that there's, like, the online chirping. I don't know if it's real about a special counsel. And to me, I just look at this and I go, that's. That's an even. That's a terrible idea.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's an awful idea. Let's let this thing die out. Look, here's the thing. We are all like, well, we want the truth about Epstein. Okay. How would you get that? Well, I would send people I absolutely trust in to review everything, because obviously, everything can't come out because innocent people might be involved. They're innocent victims. You. You. You can't, you know, display child gross tapes.

[Buck Sexton]

Yeah, yeah, of course.

[Unknown Speaker]

We send people who are absolutely trustworthy in to see what there is, and then they come and report to us. And we did that. And, you know, Dan Bongino et al, comes out and says, okay, I've looked at it, and I was wrong. There was nothing there. And people were like, well, you're. They've turned Dan Bongino. Okay, you're not going to turn Dan Bongino. You know, sometimes you've got to take yes for an answer. Is there. Is there more there? I've looked for it. I can't find it. Maybe it was there. Now it's gone. Maybe there were other.

[Buck Sexton]

This is my thing about. About the. The JFK files, which. I know it's different, but it's also gotten. Which is there's nothing you can release from the JFK files that will make the people who believe there's more in the JFK files believe that they've gotten all the JFK files.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. And again, I'm not criticizing people who are suspicious or upset or annoyed to. And abused.

[Buck Sexton]

Yeah. People have been lied to. This whole thing's been handled horribly. There. There were. Clearly, at some level, you're like, okay, so if the DOJ wasn't being pushed by, like, the Cabal or some foreign intelligence service or whatever, it's really this incompetent that they could let Epstein get away with this as long as they did? I mean, that's horror. That's horrifying.

[Unknown Speaker]

Horrifying in a whole different way.

[Buck Sexton]

Right. Horrifying.

[Unknown Speaker]

I just. I just ask myself, do you think Dan Bongino is going to go in there and lie to cover up, to protect Epstein? I think that is less likely, more likely, not true than true. Do you think that Epstein is going to sit down and have a notarized list in his Own handwriting. Of all the people and their various perversions, I think he probably hasn't. Do you think that if Donald Trump's name was on any of that stuff, it wouldn't have been on the front page of the New York times in probably 2016? No. I'm still a lawyer. Technically. I have to go where the evidence takes me. And the evidence says this is a very bad guy who did a lot of very bad things. But the idea that he was some sort of ernstavros Blofeld of child molesting, we had this giant network of connected people. I don't see the evidence of it. I'm not against seeing the evidence. If it was there, I'd be.

[Buck Sexton]

The other thing that I brought up, see where I was just trying to talk with the special counsel idea, but here we are talking about the, you know, we're going down the Epstein rabbit.

[Unknown Speaker]

Hole, but there we are down the.

[Buck Sexton]

Rabbit hole that when, when someone has done something that would be very high profile and rather involving very high profile, very powerful people a long time ago, that would rely on very, very clear evidence. The thing about this as well is the kind of crimes that people are talking about here, if you bring that charge against somebody, even their life is probably ruined, whether they're, you know, and they could be innocent, right? I mean, like, you're done. So you got to be damn sure about it. A lot of that evidence may have long since been destroyed, discarded, all of the above. And I don't think that that's. I don't think that that's somebody being naive or anything else. Like, if that stuff was out there and people say things like there's a foreign intelligence service or that this was somehow, you know, a deep state cabal, whatever it is, they're not going to leave that stuff around. They would know where it is, and they would have cleaned this up a long time ago. So I think that that's a fair point to make in all this, that what Dan and Cash and Bondi have access to now very well may not be for a variety of reasons, the totality of what existed. So, anyway, but see, we're getting special counsel. I just put this out to you. I also say, terrible idea. I also. It's a terrible idea. And it's because you do a special counsel, when you can't trust your own DOJ because of a conflict of interest to do the, to do the. The investigating. And so that would be the Trump administration saying, I can't trust my doj. We have a conflict of interest, therefore. Right. It's a horrible idea. Do I have to call these influencers on the phone who are friends of my influencers, whatever we call them, like the you's and the me's out there, like the guys like us who are talking about this stuff in public and say, guys, special counsel, horrible idea. Stop talking about this.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's a terrible idea. And I think this is a combination of disappointment, well earned distrust, revulsion at the subject and just a, you know, a general understanding that we've been abused so much in the past and lied to so thoroughly and so often that, you know, there's simply no defaulting to trust. And that's, I mean, that's a real problem. The answer is to be trustworthy. But, you know, once you've lost trust, it takes a long time to earn it back.

[Buck Sexton]

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[Unknown Speaker]

Well, American Apocalypse, the Second American Civil War is a book I wrote because I'm worried about. We have a status quo right now where half of America, the left half, doesn't believe that the right half has any legitimacy to govern, even when it wins full and fair elections for the presidency, for Congress, every, you know, buck. It's not that they just disagree with us, it's that they think we're actively evil. When you're telling, when you're saying Trump is literally Hitler. And they are literally saying Trump is literally Hitler. Where do you go from that? It kind of implies that the normal rules don't apply and the normal rules haven't applied the norms, the guidelines, they're all gone. And we're to the point where we can't rely on political procedures and the law the way we used to be able to. We used to be able to go into court and basically think, well, you know, you know, if we're right, even if the judge doesn't agree with us, we're going to be able to enforce the laws. That's not happening. And when you have a society that isn't run by laws and isn't run by political procedures, what's left to run it? Force. And we are seeing force used by them. Force against ICE agents. We're seeing palace sympians murder people. They just murdered a couple people this weekend. We're seeing more and more violence, more and more threats. We had a low grade insurgency in the 60s and 70s with the weather Underground and the Simulanese Liberation army with the LAPD knew how to take care of. Unfortunately, the FBI didn't. Bill Ayers is still a prominent member of academia instead of rotting in Florence, Colorado supermax. But you know, could it be worse? And this, this book is the worst case scenario. This shows how a combination of arrogance, corruption, stupidity, and a failure to honor norms and rules could spin completely out of control into a real nightmare. And this novel is about that nightmare.

[Buck Sexton]

Go get your copy or get your at least your pre order in for your copy at Amazon. And wherever books are sold.

[Unknown Speaker]

Amazon is where you go to get it. And I gotta tell you again, it's not a complete death march. There are some trademark Schlichter amusing moments. I think there may be a Buck Sexton. There may be a Buck Sexton cameo in there.

[Buck Sexton]

Fantastic. I mean, you need a former CIA analyst with a great head of hair and a cynical attitude about life in whatever your novel may be, who also.

[Unknown Speaker]

Has the greatest porno name I've ever heard. But it's a burden you live with. But you know, I didn't write this to be miserable. And I didn't write it as nonfiction. I wrote it as fiction because I wanted to tell stories of regular folks that we can identify with so we can see why it's so important that we get back to the Constitution rather than kind of solving our problems by beating each other over the head. And if it ever got to that, it would be horrifying. And there's a lot of It's a tough book. Like the attack was a tough book. My previous one about a terrorist incident. This is a tough book. And there are some lighter moments. But if you come out of this going, oh boy, it'd be great to take that other side and just beat the hell out of them. And then, then everything will be great. No, no.

[Buck Sexton]

All righty. Go get your copy on Amazon. Kurt Schlichter thank you so much.

[Unknown Speaker]

Hey, thanks for having me.

[Buck Sexton]

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[Kurt Schlichter]

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[Buck Sexton]

And Will Son, your grandpa and I used to work on this car together and when I'm gone, I want you to have it. Wow.

[Unknown Speaker]

Thanks dad.

[Kurt Schlichter]

Doesn't count. What you need is a will. Luckily, Trust and Will makes it easy. Designed by attorneys but customized by you, you can easily create a state specific, legally valid document that actually counts. Now let's let the engine do the talking. Am I right? Start your [e-mail], use offer code, count for 20% off and make it. Trust and Will is an online estate planning service. For details, see trustandwill. Com.

[Unknown Speaker]

This is an iHeart podcast.