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The Dan Bongino Show
REVEALED: Ed Martin To Pursue The J6 Pipe Bomber And More | Episode 41
00:55:35
Trump warned you to buy stocks... Now the China deal has arrived. In this episode, I cover this stunning move, one of Trump's "most consequential" executive orders to date, and an in-depth interview with the DOJ's new "Weaponization Czar" Ed Martin about what's coming next in accountability.
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- [00:00]
Vince Colonnades
Once again, you should have listened to Trump. He told you to buy stocks on Thursday. And now what's happening? We'll get into the big market moves this morning. A big China deal being announced, and essentially this Ed Martin interview, the interim U.S. attorney, the outgoing U.S. attorney here in Washington, D.C. is headed out the door. And the gloves are definitely off. Wait until I tell you about how this whole Ed Martin interview has gone down and what you're gonna hear from him this morning. It's crazy. It is really crazy. I hope you had a fantastic weekend. I hope you took care of mom this weekend. Happy Mother's Day, all the moms out there. Hey, before we dive into the content today to thank our sponsors, I gotta tell you, what you do online, it's not private, it's not. Data brokers are tracking and creating a profile on your online activities in the United States. They're legally allowed to sell that information to whoever wants to buy it. But there is a way to push back and hold onto your values autonomy and freedom. And. And that's with ExpressVPN. You see, with ExpressVPN, 100% of my online activity is rerouted through secure encrypted servers, which makes it impossible for my Internet provider to know what I'm doing online. ExpressVPN also hides your IP address, so data brokers can't use that number to build a profile on you and sell that profile. ExpressVPN is very easy to use. It just takes one click and it works on all of your devices. And. And you can have it on up to eight devices at once. So you can give the gift of privacy and freedom to your whole family. Right now, you can get it an extra four months for free when you use my special link. Go to expressvpn.com Vince and you'll get four extra months of Express VPN. That's E X P-R-E-S-S V P N.com Vince. All right, we got a big show today. On Friday. This is unreal. On Friday. I was telling you that today's program would include a live in studio interview with Ed Martin, the interim and outgoing U.S. attorney for Washington D.C. but I'm here to tell you today Ed Martin is not live in studio with me. Now. Vince, what happened? You might be wondering. Well, I've got a good answer for you. First and foremost, let me just get right to the news that matters the most. I interviewed Ed and you will see that interview coming up here on this program. Can't wait to show that to you. But here's what happened on Friday. Friday, at the conclusion of our show, at the conclusion of the podcast, at 11:00am Eastern Time, I'm getting frantic phone calls from my producers telling me that Ed Martin is right now inside of your Washington D.C. studio, the one that I'm seated in right now. For those of you who watched on Friday, you know, I wasn't in my DC Studio. I was home. I was at my home studio Friday. There was apparently a mix up on the part of Ed's team about which day this interview was gonna be conducted. We all operated under Monday, which is, of course, what was in our notes. So all the notes, Monday, Monday, Monday. He and his team got here Friday. So what to do? Well, luckily, through the miracle of modern technology, we were able to connect one on one. I was home, Ed was here in this seat, and we had a great conversation. So what you will see coming up, because I want to get to the breaking news from this weekend first. Then we'll get to the Ed Martin interview. But what you will see coming up is Ed Martin talking about the fact is that he and Dan Bongino. That's right, he brought this up himself, have been looking into the January 6th pipe bomber as a team. They've been digging up information on that. Now, you've heard some complaining people are like, well, what's happening? When are we gonna get some answers on this? Who's actually pursuing it? Has Dan Bongino been consumed by the deep state? Has Cash Patel, for that matter? Well, none of that, of course, is true. These guys are just as dogged as they were before they got into the administration. But now they have the power to do something about all of this. And so today, what you're gonna hear from Ed Martin is that Dan and Ed have been working together, which is a really big deal. This is a U.S. attorney. An arrest means nothing without a prosecution. This is a US Attorney working directly with the deputy director of the FBI to get the answers that you and I so meaningfully deserve. The other thing that you'll hear Ed talk about today is that they're going after government officials who overcharged January 6th defendants, treated them like garbage. The tyranny of our government. And yes, they are investigating Biden administration officials. Ed himself has gone after the Biden family for answers. The Biden world, the orbit around Joe Biden for answers on all of those out of control pardons. Was Joe Biden even competent at the time that those pardons were signed by a robot? So the Ed Martin interview coming up. I'm looking forward to sharing that with you. I think you're gonna find that there's a lot of news in it. And then when you see it. All I can ask in terms of my request to you today is please share this with everybody in your life who is even vaguely interested in seeing justice, in seeing justice and making sure that there is accountability. So a big, big, big news day today with the Ed Martin interview. Let me start, though, with the China announcement coming out of the weekend. Going into this weekend, we had Scott Besant and the trade representative, Jameson Greer, head over to Switzerland. They go to Geneva in order to meet with a Chinese delegation. Now on Saturday, we're told that the conversations with China lasted for about eight hours straight through eight hours of conversation. And then on Sunday, they went for hours and hours more. And so the result of that is a big joint statement from the United States and China today that they are dropping the tariffs down meaningfully for 90 days. The US and China have lifted their tariffs for 90 days. Now, here's a joint statement. This just came out from the White House overnight. The government of the United States of America and the government of the People's Republic of China released this statement. And they say things like, well, we recognize the importance of our relationship and making it productive and having good things going on. And here they basically say that the United States is modifying the rates all the way down to about 30 percentage points right now. That's what this gobbledygook means. Ultimately, it's 30 percentage points. And the reason for that is because the Trump administration has administered a 10% flat tariff on the planet and then an additional 20% on China for its fentanyl abuses of the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are dying every year due to fentanyl. So the Trump administration is keeping a 20% penalty on China for that until the Trump administration is satisfied that the fentanyl threat is abating. In the meantime, the rest of the tariffs are now suspended for 90 days. The same is true going the opposite direction, China is imposing on the United states a mere 10% tariff now, a dramatic decline from the well over 100% tariff that they had slapped on us in the midst of this trade battle. So what happens during this 90 day phase? Well, the 90 day phase is used for negotiation. Both countries are opening up communication lines to make it so that we are both satisfied that our trade deal is good. And that's a big deal because the United States has been taken advantage of for decades by China. So the Trump administration is saying, look, we'll ease up on you for 90 days. But during that 90 day period, you need to satisfy, not only that, you're dropping regular old tariff barriers which are really not the big threat from China. It's the non tariff violations that are going on. The stealing of intellectual property, the use of slave labor, the destruction of American industry through that, the subsidization of industries like steel. China is a gross violator of trade agreements. And the Trump administration is saying you will abide or you will suffer the consequences. And 90 days, that's the window here. So a big victory here for Scott Bessant and Jameson Greer bringing down all of these trade barriers between both of these countries meaningfully for now. And this morning the markets are reacting like crazy. A massive, massive jump in the markets. They're celebrating this deal. Global stocks jumping all across the planet after the United States and China have cut tariffs down for now. And I'm here to tell you that if you had listened, if you had listened to President Trump on Thursday, you will be making bank this morning. You already have made bank this morning. If you listen to the president. Take a look. Here's the president. If we can cut to my screen, here's the president in the Oval Office on Thursday making this announcement. This is the president alongside on the phone, the prime Minister of the UK Here he is. You better go out and buy stock now.
- [09:09]
Donald Trump
Let me tell you, this country will be, will be like a rocket ship that goes straight up. This is going to be numbers that.
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Vince Colonnades
Nobody'S ever seen before.
- [09:18]
Donald Trump
That's a very important element of all of this. You know, if we get that, if you don't, and the Democrats are fighting it only because they want to fight, they have Trump derangement syndrome. You know, if it was somebody else, they wouldn't fight. If you had a normal person, some stiff sitting behind you, they'd be fine. But they have Trump derangement syndrome. You know, Senator Schumer's become a Palestinian welcome. I don't know when they're going to give him the ceremony, whatever the ceremony may be. It's terrible what's happened to the Democrats. So very, very important element of everything, of what we're doing unrelated to today, but related in the sense that we'll do if that passes, we'll do even more business with the UK we'll have so much.
- [10:03]
Vince Colonnades
All right, so there's the president saying, hey, look, go out and buy, go out and buy, buy stock. You heard him right there at the top of this clip. How Many ways. Does he have to hit you over the head to tell you what's going on? Now, what I love is the left is accusing Trump already this morning, they're doing it again of insider trading. So Trump tells Americans in public, out loud from the Resolute desk, from the Oval Office, everyone should buy stock. Now, I don't know how that's insider trading. That's about as public as you can possibly get. It is a declaration that this is a good opportunity for all Americans, and yet the left is accusing him of insider trading. Oh, there's something, something nefarious about the President's presentation here. It's crazy. It's crazy. And it's not the first time he's done this. He keeps telling Americans to do this. Look at this one. This is, this is the President on April 9th. This is what he posted to Truth Social. If we could once again, on my screen here, President Trump, this is a great time to buy. He said, this is a great time to buy. Look right there. That was what Trump posted to the Truth Social at 9:37am in the morning on April 9th. Now, what happened four hours later? Four hours later, the president announced a 90 day pause. A 90 day pause on tariffs on every other country except for China. That was April 9th. What did the market do? It exploded. It had a huge pop that day. What did the left do? They accused Trump of insider trading. So I'm not telling. I'm not here to be your financial advisor. I'm just a guy, but I'm a guy who likes the President of the United States and now is definitely and has been placing stock in this idea that when the President comes forward and he says, buy stock now, buy into the market. Now, if you've got a little bit of wiggle room to be able to do that, it might be a good idea to jump in. It might be a good idea because he keeps saying it and it keeps paying off. So, again, I'm not sure how much more explicit he can be on this subject, but I just wanna give you this pattern that I've detected where the President explicitly says, buy the stock market. You do, and then hours later, it's a huge payoff. I don't know. Just think, kind of nice that he's doing that. It's funny, though, insider trading. Okay, great. All right, so that's the deal. We do have some video here from Scott Bessant talking about this deal with China. If we could pull that up. Fellas, show me that video of Scott Besant. China. The US Trade talks. We have reached the an agreement on a 90 day pause and substantially move down the tariff levels. Both sides on the reciprocal tariffs will move their tariffs down 115%. We had very robust discussions. Both sides showed great respect. It was a chance for me to meet the Chinese delegation. The Vice Premier I had previously had only a video call with. Ambassador Jamison was familiar with two of the other leaders on the delegation from his previous time. So there was very good personal interaction. Both countries represented their national interests very well. We concluded that we have shared interest and we both have an interest in balanced trade. The US Will continue moving towards that. Yeah, look, the key here is, and I actually predicted going into the weekend that we wouldn't have a meaningful deal coming out of this weekend. Cuz China's the toughest one, right? China's the toughest one. They've been such a big adversary. They violated so much and we've got so much leverage over them. Going into this weekend, Chinese factories had slowed to a halt. You have Chinese workers protesting in the street. The Chinese government doesn't know what to do. They're trying to slash their own rates internally in order to get a bunch more money printed. It's been chaos in China. So President Trump, Scott Bestin and the team, we've got China over the barrel. So I'm a little surprised that this moved as quickly as it did this weekend. And so my prayerful hope is that these 90 days, these lines of communication really do result in some meaningful reforms to the Chinese US Business relationship because we desperately need it. Now, Scott Bessant did announce that one of the issues here is that China's basically US Trade policy on China has not been enforced, has not been enforced in any meaningful sense by the Biden administration. So when Biden came into office, he was getting taken advantage of. Here, take a look, fellas. We could pull my screen up here. We've got Scott Bessen this morning talking to Bloomberg about all of this. Here he is, Scott Bessant, right here on my screen. What has to happen is it has to be fair for the American people. But in January 2020, President Trump produced a template. We had an excellent trade agreement with China and the Biden administration chose not to enfor. The Chinese delegation basically told us that once President Biden came into office, they just ignored their obligations. So, you know, we all already have a large framework. The other thing to remember here, Jonathan, that's huge. All right, so what Scott Besson, of course is laying out is that the Biden people were Too weak. They were too weak and the Chinese knew it. So they took advantage of these guys. And the Biden administration, of course, thankfully, is gone. Trump is in office, which makes a. Makes a gigantic deal, which is a gigantic deal. All right, More in a moment, including the out of control Democrats who just staged an insurrection in New Jersey. They tried to raid an ICE facility, and then they're being arrested. You want to talk about accountability? You want to talk about stopping Democrats who break the law? The Democrat mayor of Newark, New Jersey, was just arrested by the Trump administration. We'll get into the details on that coming up. But first, thank you to our sponsors who make all of this possible here on Vince. If I'm ever feeling like I'm gonna have trouble sleeping or I just want to make sure that I get a really good night's sleep, Beam's Dream Powder has been absolutely essential for me. I'll just make it. It's like a cup of hot cocoa or something a night. You take this powder, you just put it into a cup of boiling water, hot water, you mix it in, and then you drink it. It's delicious. And it helps you sleep really, really well. And the nice thing about sleeping well is you wake up the next day and you feel fantastic. You really do. It's made all the difference in the world for me, and it will make all the difference in the world for you. I had my family, my parents visiting recently, and my dad was hoping for something, like, he actually wanted to try it, and I was like, yeah, you could try it. So I got a cup, I made it for him, and he drank it, went to sleep that night, woke up the next day feeling totally refreshed. It's great. It's really great. So here's my recommendation to you. Follow me on this. Get Beam's Dream powder, go to shopbeam.com Vinceshow and you can use the code Vince show for 40% off. How do you get a deal like that? 40% off? Go to shopbeam.com Vincehow and use the code Vinceshow and you will get 40% off. I highly recommend it. You should do it today. And if you sleep well, you won't wake up to do crazy things like raid an ICE facility and then get arrested by the Trump administration instead. You'll be well balanced, you'll be able to think clearly, and you'll say to yourself, that's a stupid idea. I shouldn't raid an ice facility. I got a great night's sleep last night. I can think clearly. Yeah. All right. The chat loves Beam. Beam is great. Beam is really great. Okay, let's talk about these Democrats, these psychotic Democrats who tried to raid an ice facility going into the weekend. So the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, was just arrested by the Trump administration for attempting to storm his way into a local ice facility because for whatever reason, he thought this was a good idea. That I'll really show that the Trump administration is doing something unjust. Fellas, if you could, my screen here, I've got Fox and Alina Haba, the current U.S. attorney up there in New Jersey, saying, yes, we've arrested the mayor of Newark, New Jersey. This is FAFO ICE Edition. Well, I can confirm, as I have publicly stated, that we have put the mayor, Ras Baraka under arrest. You know, it's very simple, Martha. As I said in the state of New Jersey, as Pam Bondi has said, in the United States, we will not stand for anybody getting in the way of getting rid of criminals in this country. It's very simple. Unfortunately, the mayor has publicly for three days been saying that he's going to break in, eventually, did break in, was given multiple opportunities to remove himself, failed to do so, and has been detained and will be charged. And where is he being held? I'm not going to speak to that right now. He's obviously in New Jersey. But he's in custody. Yes, he is. He has been arrested and will be charged. So the report of the. He's arrested and has been charged and will be charged. So the Democrat mayor of Newark, New Jersey, gets taken into custody, handcuffed, because, look, he's, they, they tried to tell this guy, you can't do this. He's trespassing into this property. He tries to barrel his way in. Look, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey has just as much right to storm his way into a federal facility as the rest of us do, which is you don't, you can't just storm your way into a federal detention center. You don't get to do that. There's a reason for that. And so it doesn't matter if you're the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, if you're Vince Colonnades, if you're the dog catcher, you can't just storm your way into a detention center. If you do, there's a law for that. And you can be handcuffed and arrested and charged with trespass, which is what happened in the case of this mayor from Newark, New Jersey. Now, Tom Ohman said, this guy's an idiot for what he did. Take a look. Tom Allman Appearing on Fox this weekend saying, guy's a dumb. Dumb for even attempting this. Here he is. Take a look. Watching that body cam video. Absolutely incredible to see that that went down. And before we get to it, I'd like you to also hear what the Newark mayor had to say. Also in his defense.
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Donald Trump
We asked him to obey our laws, to obey the policies and rules here in the city and the state of New Jersey, not to run roughshod over the Constitution.
- [21:57]
Vince Colonnades
By the way, I love the way he's holding the microphone like he's a rapper. He's got kind of the Jay Z thing going on. I hold my microphone straight up and down. I don't know what this. That, like, aerial microphone hold. That's him declare. I guess that's how you get to get to an ICE facility if you hold it like that.
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Donald Trump
United States, the Bill of rights, the 4th, the 5th, the 14th amendment, that everybody on this soil deserves due process.
- [22:18]
Vince Colonnades
Tom, he's saying they're the good guys here. Well, look, he's not very smart. I mean, bottom line is, that's what the facility's all about. This facility's about due process. This facility is where we put illegal aliens, people in the country illegally. First of all, if you're in the country illegally, they're being detained, and they were screaming and yelling about due process 14 and all this in the Constitution. This is where due process happens. We have to detain them to go through the due process. You know, sometimes seeing a judge, sometimes they already have final orders. It's arranging removal to their countries and getting travel docs from other countries and making sure all the administrative processes are followed. So what Yahoman is saying is this is due process. What are you doing? These people are here illegally in our country, and you're fighting for them to stay. Do you realize how insane this is? And not only are you fighting for that insane position, you're violating the law in the process. And he's not the only one. The mayor of Newark, New Jersey, is not the only moron here. And there may be more consequences coming. Among them, Democrat Congresswoman LaMonica McIver. Benny Johnson got ahold of this. This body camera video. Take a look in this video. You're gonna see her. She's dressed in red shell. She's dressed in red, so it makes it really obvious who she is. And she is shoving law enforcement officials during this ruckus at the ICE facility. Here she is. Take a look here. Ready? Here we go. There she is in red. There she is. Look. Shoving the officer. Shove, shove. Now in slow motion. She's shoving. She's got the arm check. Going up. Pushing this federal official. Now, what happens to you if you do that? What happens to a January 6th defendant if they shoved an officer? Well, they end up in the slammer. That's what happens. So now you have a Democrat congresswoman shoving federal law enforcement officials. Now she's been pretending like she didn't do anything wrong. Oh, there's nothing to this. I didn't body slam them. I love how the standard is changing to whether or not she body slammed someone. Here you go. This is Congresswoman McIver accounting for herself on CNN this weekend. She was asked a stupid question. They moved the goalposts all the way away from assault to did you body slam an officer? Take a look at this. Ready? Here we go. Congresswoman McIver, I want to go back to some of the footage we were looking at. At some. And I want our viewers to see that you are the woman in the red blazer as we show them. The DHS says that obviously that there were chaos, that maybe you were trespassing. You can talk about that. But the DHS also says that in their words, you were body slamming an ICE officer. Is that what we're looking at? Is that what happened? Absolutely.
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Donald Trump
No.
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Vince Colonnades
I mean, I honestly do not know how to body slam anyone. There's no video that supports me. Body slamming. What is this? I mean, what is the. CNN just yanks the goalposts and shoves them off the field. Oh. Oh. Did you body slam anybody? That's not the question. Did she assault an officer? The answer to that is on video. As Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman said, we were simp there to do our job, therefore, oversight visit and what you're watching in a video. We don't have all of the body cam, and we hope that all of the body cam is released. I don't need any more. I already saw what you did. We need the rest of the body cam footage. All right, so that's enough of her. That's McIver. So DHS is saying right now that the accountability will continue. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that there will be more investigations and arrests. If you assault a law enforcement officer, you answer to the law. So again, now you have Democrats facing the accountability for their own actions, including Democrat elected officials who are trespassing on federal property and assaulting federal law enforcement officers. More charges expected in that case. And one would assume that the woman dressed in red shoving cops. Well, she will be Subjected to that. So that's an important, very important point to all of this. All right, fellas, I want to thank our sponsors here. Who do I have next here? Guy. Did you know that Fast growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the whole United States? Did you know that? With thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers, they have all the plants that your yard needs, like fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, and so much more. Whatever plants that you're interested in, Fast growing Trees has you covered. You can order online and get your plants delivered directly to your door in just a few days. 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Well, fortunately, I was wrong. Helix Helix, this mattress has changed my life. My wife and I love it. If you go onto their website, they have a little sleep quiz you can use and you go through all of the details about how you sleep. Do you sleep too hot? Do you sleep too cold? Do you like sleeping on your side, your back, your stomach, all that stuff. And then by the end of it, they recommend a mattress. And my mattress recommendation was awesome. I love it and very much, actually. And gui. Oh, Guy. Speaking of gui, Guy got a Helix too. He loves his Helix. Everybody loves their Helix, I'm telling you. What are you waiting for? I've upgraded to the Helix mattress and I'm sleeping better than ever. And every night at the end of a long day, I get into that Helix mattress and I sleep so soundly on my Helix. It's an award winning mattress brand. It's the essential reason why I do wake up feeling so much better. Each and every morning you can go to helixsleep.com Vince and you can get started. And then once your mattress gets delivered, get some comfortable sleep. Right now, Helix has that exclusive offer for you. 27% off site wide, plus a free bedding bundle, which includes a sheet set and mattress protector with any luxe or elite mattress order. That's right. Just visit helixsleep.comvince and get 27% off site wide, plus a free bedding bundle with any luxe or elite mattress order exclusive for listeners of The Vince Podcast. Helixsleep.com Vince. Yes, indeed. All right, thank you very much. All right, so here we go. Ed Martin is the outgoing U.S. attorney. He was supposed to be the guy that stayed there full time, but Tom Tillis in North Carolina got in the way of. Now Jeanine Pirro's gonna take that job and Ed Martin, well, he's headed off to do something very important at the Department of Justice. My conversation with Ed Martin starts now. Joining me now, the outgoing interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. ed Martin is in the house. Ed, thank you very much for doing this. Good to talk to you today, sir.
- [31:22]
Donald Trump
Always a pleasure. Great to be with you, Vince. Thanks.
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Vince Colonnades
Just an amazing, first of all, an amazing tenure as the interim U.S. attorney. I'm appreciative of what you've done for Washington D. But just an amazing series of events this past week because you were the nominee for to become the next U.S. attorney for D.C. to do that on a more permanent basis. And then Thom Tillis, it appears, got in your way. What happened there?
- [31:49]
Donald Trump
Well, look, I tell people I respect the process, right. The Senate has a particular role. You know, I was appointed by President Trump For 120 day term, it's called at the beginning of the administration. I was for that, by the way, a lot of times a U.S. attorney is nominated and it takes two or three or four months to get in office. And during that two or three or four months, it's the beginning of a presidency, especially in D.C. and so I said, look, put me in for the 120 day one and I'll either earn the confirmation from the Senate or I'll, you know, find something else to do. And in this case, the President liked what we were doing, the direction he gave us, we were doing well. And I was nominated and went up to the Senate, went through the process. You know, Senator Tillis expressed a bunch of reservations during a meeting with me, hour and a half meeting. Most of the reservations were about January 6th. But I don't really have to, I can say, I really don't understand substantively why he was, you know, decided he wasn't going to support moving forward. But that's what he said. And more importantly, I think I could have won nomination, actually. I could have gone and continued to fight. But President Trump said, hey, look, we got other things we're doing.
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Vince Colonnades
Ed, I was listening to Thom Tillis's explanations for why he couldn't confirm you. And he said, look, if Ed Martin was being considered for any other U.S. attorney's job in the whole country, I would have said yes, but just not for D.C. that to me, that's completely incoherent. Was that bizarre to hear from him?
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Donald Trump
Well, I certainly don't understand it, let's say it that way. Like, you know, I'm not sure characterize it as bizarre, but I didn't understand it. I mean, I spent 90 minutes with him. We talked a lot about January 6th. He was very, very energetic. He had a lot of opinions. And I explained mine. You know, I think the job that the President nominated me to do, U.S. attorney, requires a certain amount of character, a certain amount of ability. I think I have both of those. So I look at a certain point, you know, Vince, I have a, I have the distinction of being like you. I did a lot of talk radio. I said a lot of thing about things about a lot of people, including senators, and for some reason they didn't want to move forward. And Thom Tillis was the lead guy. At the end of the day, I'm not going to spend much time worrying about it. We got work to do.
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Vince Colonnades
Were you surprised by the groundswell that came out to support you for this role?
- [33:59]
Donald Trump
Well, I was surprised in the sense that, you know, my name is Ed Martin, and suddenly all these people are putting my name on social media, other places to support me. I wasn't surprised because people believe in Donald Trump. And so they were saying Donald Trump should have his pick for the U.S. attorney in D.C. and so that was gratifying, and I was glad my name was on it. But it's a little bit like when President Trump said in the Oval Office as he was talking about this, he said, I like Ed Martin, he's a good guy, all that stuff, which is nice. But he said, Ed Martin drove down crime 25%. Well, I didn't really drove, drive down crime. Donald Trump put me in charge and gave us a vision, gave us the resources, and we got it done. So that's really on him. And, and it's his deal. And, you know, but I was so, I was excited that people were supporting me because I was with President Trump on these issues in this job, and that was kind of cool.
- [34:50]
Vince Colonnades
But your time in office was defined by way more prosecutions than your predecessor. Matthew Graves, at one point, wasn't prosecuting 67% of all arrests in the District of Columbia. And the news that I heard about you from law enforcement sources was that you are now prosecuting somewhere in the vicinity of 65% of all of the arrests that were coming before you. That's a dramatic Turnaround. It's a 180 degree turnaround.
- [35:14]
Donald Trump
Yeah. And it was even better than that, to be honest. I mean, we. What happened. These are nuts and bolts of an office, but, you know, a Prosecutor's office, the D.C. office, is the greatest in the, in the country because half of it is the local crime. The other half is a big federal district, you know, federal U.S. attorney's office. As to the local crime, we flipped everything on its head. The Pred, my predecessor, did everything by email. We asked the cops and the prosecutors to get face to face. And when you're face to face, you figure out how to charge these things, you figure out how to manage a case. And so we changed our papering rules. They call it how you charge cases. As you said, we told our prosecutors, you don't get to turn down misdemeanors because you don't like them. See, that's a lot of Times prosecutors don't want to be bothered. A misdemeanor is hard to do. You don't get much of a penalty. The juries are hard. No, if somebody breaks a rule, we're going to charge them. We're going to char, we're going to charge them with the, as John Ashcroft famous memo, he said, we're going to charge with the, the, the, the, the most readable, readily, a readily provable crime you charge. And so we were doing that. We also changed the rules. My predecessor did not fight to get assaults on police officers. A lot of times those are misdemeanors. And they say, well, it's too much trouble. No, if you touch a cop in the district, you know, if you spit on a cop, I have some experience now of this, of that. If you do any of those things, you should be charged, no matter what the charge is. Yes. And the law officers, the cops said, hey, we can feel you're on our side. So again, that was the vision the president had. Last one, by the way. If you want to stop violent crime, you can run around and have conversations about lots of things, but the most likely way to slow it is to get people, man, mostly with guns, off the streets. And we targeted the people with guns and we got them off the street. And in two months, and that was March and April and May's numbers are still climbing. We charged almost as many gun crimes in March and April as my predecessor did all last year. Okay, so that's the difference. And look, if you get a guy with a gun off the streets in D.C. you get somebody off the streets who's probably not going to Boy Scouts, probably not going to be part of the Rotary Club, right. He's doing other things. And so the es, the cascading effect is very, very effective. And we were doing that, and we'll continue to do it.
- [37:15]
Vince Colonnades
So the woman who spit on you, since you brought the spitting issue up, she spits on you on Newsmax live on camera. And then we've got a great shot of her walking away with her little dog. What happened? Do we have any leads on who that was?
- [37:31]
Donald Trump
Yeah, law enforcement's awesome, right? So very quickly, the marshal service as well as the FBI, they got track of her. And I think if she hasn't been arrested yet, it's anytime, I think they know who she is, they know where she lives, what she's about. So, yeah, look, I mean, here's the thing. I, I, you know, being spit on is not nice. Right. When she was charging towards Me, I thought we were about to have a, you know, a full on assault. But I just would say this. She said, are you Ed Martin? And, and I turned and she said, oh, you are Ed Martin. Now, she wasn't targeting me because I wasn't, you know, kind to her in shop class in high school. I never saw her before. I don't know her. She did it because I was the U.S. attorney. If you hit the U.S. attorney, if you attack him, if you assault him, just like Judge Boasberg, you know, the conservatives are frustrated with Judge Boasberg. But I sent Judge Boasberg a letter soon after. A lot of the attention. I said, if anyone threatens you or your family, we want to prosecute them to the fullest. Not. Not to the most interesting. No, anything you do, because you cannot, you have to raise the cost of being a jerk. Even if you think, oh, well, it's not that threatening, somebody spitting on me. I didn't feel. Well, I did feel like I was being threatened, but maybe, you know, it turned out fine, but you can't allow that. And so they'll get her and she'll be charged.
- [38:44]
Vince Colonnades
Okay, so you brought up letters. I want to ask you about your, your pattern of sending out letters, because you did that a bunch as U.S. attorney. You sent Chuck Schumer a letter demanding that he account for himself, for the threats that he made against the United States Supreme Court a number of years ago. And you also, I understand, sent letters to people in Biden's world to assess whether or not he was actually competent at the time that all of these pardons were being signed. Because it seems relevant whether or not the president had his wits about him as pardons were being signed as a constitutional matter. Have you received responses to any of those letters and did any of them make any sort of progress that we haven't seen yet?
- [39:22]
Donald Trump
I answer the second question first by saying I have. Well, let me say this. As U.S. attorney, my job is to look at what is going on and to try to assess how we can make things better and enforce the law, but also the policy preferences of this president. President Trump talked about weaponization, talked about anti Semitism. He has banned dei, which is really racist and hateful. So all these preferences, as prosecutor, I have an obligation in my mind, but to ask questions when you see these things. Look, Chuck Schumer stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and he said, we will release the whirlwind on you, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh by name. Now, I looked at that and I thought, that sounds like a threat. Pretty direct, pretty narrow, pretty clear. A month later, Kavanaugh's got somebody in front of his house with a gun and zip ties. So you can say, whoa, what are we doing here? My letter to Schumer was. Clarify what you're saying. Because if you're saying, I think you deserve to clarify, and I wanted the public to know I was asking. And by the way, Schumer did clarify on the floor of the Senate, and he backed off and he apologized and all the rest. And he probably didn't. Oh, he didn't, in my estimation, commit a crime. That's why I didn't charge him. But the fact is, we have to have public conversations about these horrendous things. Dei, Georgetown University School of Law. Someone came to me and they said they're still pushing the DEI stuff. Georgetown. By the way, the silly dean wrote me back and he said, oh, First Amendment, First Amendment. I didn't say he couldn't do it. Do whatever you want, but don't take federal tax dollars. If you're gonna put it publicly out there that you're doing DEI and doing hate, just like if you're doing anti Semitism, we're gonna say, we're not gonna send tax dollars your way, and we don't have to. So that's what the letters were about. I tell people it's like an iceberg. You're seeing the top third. About 2/3 of it was below. Nobody's seen most of the letters I wrote as to the Biden letters about the pardon, the question was about the pardons. And to be fair, it wasn't about the auto pan necessarily. It was about. We've never seen pardons of the scope, and it looks at least like something that you could be corrupt. When. When Bill Clinton pardoned Mark Rich and. And turns out that Mark Rich had paid a boatload of money to one of Clinton's friends, lawyers. That's not corrupt. It's not criminal. Because the plenary power of the pardon. But in the case of. Of Joe Biden and his pardons, they were so specific back 14 years, covering everything you've ever done. I mean, when I say specific, they were. They were broad, but they had time stuff on them. It was very. And that least leads to questions because the plenary power is true. But the question is, what was going on here? And I did get responses from some of them, and those things are ongoing.
- [41:56]
Vince Colonnades
Okay, so you got some ongoing things there. As far as one of the things that our audience cares about, and the reason they were fighting so hard for you to become the permanent U.S. attorney is because of what we. The impression we have about the importance of that office to tackling weaponization, which is what you just talked, which is what you're talking about. Can you explain that the U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, for those of us who have watched as the government has abused our citizens for years, what kind of power does this job in particular have? And what kind of partner could the U.S. attorney for D.C. be to the FBI in bringing some of these people to justice?
- [42:32]
Donald Trump
Well, first of all, the most glaring example of weaponization of government that we've probably ever seen is, at least in terms of numbers, is the January 6th use of the 1512 charge. The 1512 charge was written 20 years ago to deal with evidence and destruction of evidence, physical evidence. A guy named Andrew Weissman tried to use the 1512 during the Mueller investigation on Donald Trump to claim that the 1512 charge, which refers to obstruction of an official proceeding, but it refers to evidence destruction. In other words, the official proceeding ongoing at the time the law was written, was when they had Arthur Andersen, was destroying documents because there was an investigation at Enron. And the idea was, wait a second. If you know there's an investigation, official proceeding, you shouldn't be destroying things. Arthur Anderson. That's why it was written. Well, the 1512 charge was then used against hundreds and hundreds of Americans, and a bipartisan Supreme Court threw it out. People spent years in jail, some of them over a year in solitary confinement, having walked through the Capitol because of the 1512. That's weaponization. That's the use of the law against individuals in a very specific way. And, and my office, where I am, is the one that did that. So I've been investigating why they do that. Who, who made the 1512 call, you know, how did you make that decision? That's an example. You can't really weaponize the law, only by the FBI. When the FBI was abusing the Catholics, they made a list, you know, target the Catholics. That's the beginning of the abuse. The, the further abuse is when you use the prosecutor, because you got a grand jury and you subpoena people and you look at their records, and that's in, again, a prosecutor's office, the surveillance of people under FISA. The FISA is, of course, secret and it's in D.C. but our office is butting up against that, and some of that's classified. So it's hard to talk about to you on the TV right now. But this is all the use of government against individuals and discovering how they're doing it is an ongoing process. And, and again, this office is one of the places where you needed the tool, meaning the prosecutor's office, to abuse people. And so that's why we're digging into it. And I think we're going to see more and more. Well, I'm going to be a part of it. Uncovering broadly how the weaponization has impacted people. You know, Jack Smith, the use. Jack Smith, how he was using. Jack Smith used the grand jury in D.C. friendly grand jury to get lots of information and then he went down to Florida to move the case against Trump. That's, that's weaponization. That's the use of the government, the law against individuals in ways that we haven't seen done before. And again, maybe it's not criminal, I don't know, but we're going to find out.
- [45:05]
Vince Colonnades
So. But some of what you just described could result in charges.
- [45:09]
Donald Trump
Yes. Yes, it could. Yes, it could. Certainly could. Look, Vince, I'll tell you something I've talked a lot about recently and I want to say to your viewers. Justice right now requires two things. It requires the truth, transparency, and then accountability by prosecution, in my opinion. In other words, right now, all of us in this country do not trust the government so much. We're in the opposite. We're the anti Reagan moment when Reagan said trust and verify. We're in the distrust and verify starting point is I distrust the government. We better if we're going to. And so if I said tomorrow, hey, Vince, I'm going to prosecute, so and so you should say, I don't trust you, I don't trust anybody. That's. Is that weaponization? So what you have to do first to get real justice right now and is be transparent, get the truth out. Tell me what actually happened. What was Jack Smith doing when he shopped the grand jury to go to Florida? Tell me those facts so I can trust when you say next he's going to held accountable this way. And let me tell you something, like for example, Fauci, what Fauci looks like he was doing, maybe it was legal, but he got a pardon. So I'm going to ask, I can ask him, what'd you do? And he has to answer. But even more importantly, maybe his chief of staff or one of his lawyers is sitting at home saying, we were doing some stuff that wasn't really copacetic. Now a prosecutor can say, look, if I want to get to the truth, I want to Know what happened? Maybe I've got to take off the table prosecuting you. So maybe I give immunity to one of those guys and say, now, you know, tell me the truth of what's going on so you're protected. And I think more and more right now, we can't win the fight in the courts fast enough if we are not advocating on the truth. And that's what it means to be focused on weaponization. And that's why I'm so excited about. On what the President wants me to do next.
- [46:45]
Vince Colonnades
All right, before I get to that next job, I just want to ask you about Jeanine Pirro. That's the new nominee to take the role. Well, actually, not the nominee. She's just being named interim U.S. attorney, just like you've been. How much confidence do you have in Jeanine Pirro doing this job, being your successor here?
- [47:00]
Donald Trump
Well, it's funny. She's a, she's a TV personality, so people may know her on tv, but she had a long career as a lawyer. I mean, she was a prosecutor, she was a judge. I mean, she's, she's somebody who's top shelf. She's a few years older than me, so a little bit more experience and, and, but experience in that field. She's also tough, and she's a great communicator. So I think it's, Look, I, I, I was worried that the person after me wouldn't be tough enough to, to, to keep doing the things I was doing. And then the President told me, it's Judge Jeanine Pero. And I thought, okay. I think they even maybe went above and beyond Ed Martin. So I, I think she'll be great. I think. Here's the thing. It's a, it's a huge, huge honor that she would take this position at the point in her life. She's so accomplished, she's so successful. She doesn't need to get down into the, into the, the nitty gritty with us. And she's doing it. It's, it's spectacular for America. She'll be awesome.
- [47:50]
Vince Colonnades
Okay, so the new gig that you will be doing, according to the President of the United States, man, you've got a lot of things coming. You'll be the director of the Weaponization Working Group at the Justice Department. You'll be the Associate Deputy Attorney General, and you will be the pardon attorney. I honestly, I'm just most excited about the phrase weaponization that you're going after. What are you going to do with the Justice Department in that role?
- [48:12]
Donald Trump
Well, We've already been working on it. There's a, there's something called the Weaponization Working Group that Attorney General Bondi put us on. There's about 15 of us on there. I've been on there with folks working on it. The idea is to look closely at a number of specific instances that we all know about and then we can look at and say like targeting the Catholics, you know, the, out of Richmond, you know, they did, they did that. And, and, but also saying to the public, where else can we go? And it's so big already, I mean, the work is so big that I think the reason the President said get in charge of that is cuz we need somebody to actually start to drive this agenda. But look, everywhere you go in this country, if the, if the government has weaponized the law against the people we care, it's not just going after Trump. They did go after Trump, right? They did. But they also go after little guys all around the country. And I got somebody that came to me and said, hey, when they leaked Donald Trump's tax returns, they also leaked a bunch of businesses and it really impacted this guy. Well, that was weaponization and somebody needs to be held accountable for that. And so we are going to be the place, the tip of the spear for getting clear on what was done to the American people. And then what are we gonna do to fix it? Sometimes we're gonna have to fix it by helping people get back up, other times hold them accountable by the law.
- [49:19]
Vince Colonnades
One of the things I keep hearing and I keep trying to basically tamp down because I think, I do think results are coming. But there's this concern among people who are watching this program, conservatives, people who voted for Trump, that results may never be coming, that indictments may never be coming, the charges may never be coming, that accountability may never be coming, in fact, that somehow the deep state has won out and that that accountability will never present itself. What is your view? You've been working as a U.S. attorney, you're the director of the Weaponization Working Group, you're talking about. It sounds to me like you're talking about consequences are en route. Give us a sense of what's happening next.
- [49:58]
Donald Trump
Vince, It's a little bit of the same answer earlier. First of all, I'll tell you, as a prosecutor and U.S. attorney, things didn't move fast enough for me too. Like I wanted things to move faster. Right. We opened an investigation. It seems to take forever. You know, one of the investigations we've reopened and put energy into is the pipe Bomber, you know, pipe bomber. It's insane. It's insane that in the greatest country in the world we have two pipe bombs at our two largest political parties. We don't know who it is. It's insane. And I will say Bongino and I have hyper. You know, put focus and resources on this. And they got a bunch going on, but it's insane to me. I'm like, make it faster. Fix it tomorrow. I'll tell you a quick story. When I got in the job, I got briefed on something. They said, we have a spy for China at the Fed. And I said, is this a joke? It sounds like I'd have a movie. There's a spy for China at the Fed leaking stuff to him. And they said, we think we might arrest him like six weeks from Monday. And I was like, really? Can we get him, like, tomorrow? Why are we waiting? Like, isn't there a chance he gets on a plane and goes back to China or goes to China? He wasn't. He's American. And so they arrested him a couple days later. So one thing we can do is demand speed. And we're trying, but it's frustrating. But I'll go back to this. You can only have. We. We will get beat by the system that wants us to only litigate and play ball in Article 3 courts, right? You got to deal with all these judges and appeals and up and the President. And the president's been clear.
- [51:14]
Vince Colonnades
He.
- [51:15]
Donald Trump
He always says, we're going to abide by the rulings and all that. He doesn't. I mean, I might be more frustrated than he was if I was him. But here's the thing. What we got to do is start showing. Showing and holding. In other words, I'm going to tell you right now, I'm going to be on your show 20 times, and I'm going to say, yeah, we're asking about weaponization because we found this. And I don't care when a prosecutor says, oh, you might be endangering a prosecution. No, that's making me hold the truth for a time where it won't matter, because three and a half years from now, the truth won't matter. You need to know now. You need to know why. And now. So I think again, we're back to this thing. Get the truth, transparency, and then hold accountable prosecutions. But you can't get. You can't just do prosecutions and wait to tell me the truth because time is passing and people are distrusting and it's not fair. So I know people are frustrated. There will be more. But more importantly, you're going to know more really quickly because I start a week from Monday.
- [52:09]
Vince Colonnades
So that means, Ed Martin, that you and I are going to be talking a lot in the weeks and months ahead, right?
- [52:13]
Donald Trump
You bet. You bet. Yeah. When I got this, yeah, when I got this position, I was told by the White House, they said, and you and you can be out communicating about this in a way that, you know, we really need because the weaponization is such a big priority. We've got to get confidence in our system. People got to know. So, yeah, I look forward to it.
- [52:29]
Vince Colonnades
Good. Well, I'm going to hold you to it. I really appreciate you, Ed Martin. Thank you for the job you've already done. I'm looking forward to the job you'll continue to do inside the Trump administration. Very nice to talk to you today, sir.
- [52:40]
Donald Trump
Thank you, Vince.
- [52:44]
Vince Colonnades
Very grateful to Ed Martin for his commentary and joining us again. We had that conversation on Friday. Kind of unexpected, the interview scheduling. We thought he'd be here Monday. There was things got crossed, so we were able to lock that in. That guy right there, the person you just saw was deserving of the effort you gave to try and keep him as U.S. attorney. And the president figured out a perfect way to handle all of this. He put Jeanine Pirro in Now as the U.S. attorney, Ed Martin, as the director of the weaponization group inside of the Justice Department, that what you just witnessed was not a random commentator from the outside of government just thinking sort of about all of these issues. What you just witnessed was the current U.S. attorney, he is the U.S. attorney until the end of this week, indicating that they are conducting real deal investigations into all of these people who have abused the American people. How many things did he mention in that interview? He mentioned things like Anthony Fauci and the abuses at his hands, at Jack Smith's hands, the overcharging of January 6th defendants, the treatment of Catholics, including by the FBI, as some sort of terrorists. He mentioned the January 6th pipe bomber, his work with Dan Bongino to get to the bottom of that story, both for transparency sake and for prosecution's sake. And the final piece there is where I think you and I can find a lot of encouragement. You heard Ed Martin just say that beginning next week, Monday, when he's fully tasked to this weaponization task force as the director, that you will be hearing on a routine basis, updates even before charges are leveled against all of the people who have weaponized our government, all of the information that you've been wanting that I've been wanting. Ed just gave us his promise. He's gonna be delivering it frequently. What did he say? He'll be on our show 20 times. Yeah. And maybe more than that. So we'll keep talking to Ed. We'll bring him in here. This is what you just witnessed is some of the most important commentary we've heard from any Trump official anywhere. And the thing that I'm asking you today is would you share this podcast, make sure people see that interview with Ed Martin because as he just laid it out, they're definitely digging. They're digging hard and I can't wait for the accountability that'll come with it. As always, thank you for joining us today on the Vince Podcast, the national radio show live 12 to 3 Eastern. That's on rumble.com Vince. You can watch it there. Always appreciate you, the best damn audience in media. Thanks for joining us today.