Don Lemon ARRESTED Under Klan and FACE Acts, with Michael Knowles, Mike Davis, Bill Shipley, and Howard Blum | Ep. 1242

27:03As you said, Megan, a woman fell and broke her arm. This is textbook Facebook or Face Act violation. This is textbook Klan Act violation under 18 U.S.C. Section 248 and 18 U.S.C. Section 241. And these Democrats who are wailing about this today know are very familiar with these charges because the Biden Justice Department under Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco and Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clark used both of those charges to go after elderly Christians. who trespassed and prayed in abortion centers. So if you're going to use the FACE Act to go after elderly Christians in abortion centers, you can certainly use it to go after Don Lemon and his fellow modern-day Klansmen who are terrorizing white Christian churches on purpose.

27:58That's the thing, Bill. If Don Lemon, or Megyn Kelly for that matter, just trespassed into an abortion clinic, or let's say, no, into a Rite Aid. Okay, let's pick that. It was closed, but somebody opened it like somebody was burglarizing it. And we walked in without permission. We could be cited for trespass as journalists, but that'd probably be it. We wouldn't be charged for burglarizing necessarily, but they crossed into a facility that has an extra layer of protection. And like he messed with the wrong Marine, to quote Colonel Jessup. And that Marine in this case was a bunch of parishioners trying to worship.

28:37and which makes a big difference under the law for Don Lemon. Of course. And thank you for having me on, Megan. I'm a longtime fan. Mike and I know each other well. You know, the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law. Journalists typically or generally can avoid prosecution based upon the Department of Justice's forbearance and tolerance for some journalistic activity that might otherwise be in violation of the strict language of a statute. The FACE Act, however, provides no journalistic exception. If the conduct of a journalist violates the text of the FACE Act or Section 241, the conspiracy against rights, The First Amendment provides no protection.

29:31The First Amendment is, in effect, at its core, a constitutional right to prevent the government from banning publication of information. It's not a failsafe. It's not a provision that protects the actions of journalists in pursuing information. And that's what we have here. And in fact, Mike mentioned the use of the FACE Act by the Biden administration, Biden Justice Department, Merrick Garland. There were multiple conservative journalists prosecuted in connection with January 6th. I represented one of them. And they were there recording the events, video, audio recording. They defended themselves on the basis that they were just observers of the events.

30:27But in their background, in their history, or even on that day, they made comments that the courts viewed. They made comments that the courts viewed. And on that basis, correct, expressions of First Amendment opinion. And the court viewed that sympathy with the protesters as, you know, setting them apart from other journalists. You know, and I represent one of them, Steve Baker, who now works for Glenn Beck and Blaze. We made a motion to dismiss the case against him on the basis of selective prosecution. We identified 60 credentialed and freelance journalists who had not been prosecuted, whereas Steve was singled out and prosecuted.

31:14And Judge Cooper in D.C. focused on some of Steve's commentary during the event and after the event and said, well, you know, you really were, you know, your comments express an intention to sort of go along and be part of the protest. Well, I got to tell you, I'm watching the video you're showing, and a lot of that I had not seen before. And I'm just chuckling to myself thinking back to my 21 years as a prosecutor and 90 trials and thinking he can't get on the stand. He can't get on the stand and defend himself because he's going to have to eat all these words in front of a jury. Plus what we don't know yet, you know, what we don't know yet, which I think we will see maybe in the indictment today and certainly we'll see it in the weeks ahead, is all the communications that the government now has our hands on.

32:02emails, text messages, other kinds of communications, not on video as he did, but just his his, you know, back and forth before and after the event, not just with the organizers, the event, but anything he said to anybody else. There there are so many soundbites of Lemon sounding like he's one of them, Mike. I mean, if they want to make that case, as they did in the J6 prosecutions, like he went well beyond journalism. It's not going to be hard. Steve, let's play. Is it SOT 8? I know we converged 8 and I think 9 or 10, but let's play that one. SOT 8. This is the beginning of what's going to happen here.

32:39When you violate people's due process, when you pull people off the street and you start dragging them and hurting them and not abiding by the Constitution, when you start doing all of that, people get upset and angry. And if you remember what the civil rights movement was about. The civil rights movement was about these very kinds of protests. And for some reason, in our modern era, people think that in order to have protests, you've got to be cordoned off to a certain area and what time you can protest. There's nothing in the Constitution that tells you what time you can protest. You can protest at any time.

33:21That's the whole point of it, to disrupt, to make uncomfortable. And that's what they're doing. And that's what I believe when I say everyone has to be willing to sacrifice something. You have to make people uncomfortable in these times. If you see how uncomfortable people uncomfortably and how harsh people are being treated on the streets, you have to be willing to go into places and disrupt and make people uncomfortable. That is what this country is about. Mike Davis, that soundbite could be played in the closing argument without much more. I mean, that should be how the prosecution ends its closing and then sits down.

34:00Yeah, that that watching that makes my blood boil. I went to 13 years of Catholic school. I'm a terrible Catholic, but I remember going to Catholic mass. And I just can't imagine if the mass were stormed like that by these agitators. and the mass was stormed because I went to a white Catholic church. And that's exactly why they did this. They stormed the church because it was a white Christian church. This is textbook, Facebook, act violation, and textbook. And just to interject, he said that. He said that on that podcast with the angry Jennifer lady, that this isn't how I practice Christianity, Christianity.

34:43But this is these are white supremacists in this church. And he thinks that's why they support this ice pastor. Sorry, Mike. Yeah. And I'm going to pick up what Bill just said about how the DOJ may have given some forbearance here as a journalist. If the guy went in there and realized, OK, we made a mistake here. We should not have gone in here. But instead, Don Lemon went out there sanctimoniously and doubled down and tripled down and quadrupled down, they had to arrest him. They had to arrest him to not only punish him, but to deter others who think it is acceptable to storm a place of worship during the service.

35:22Just imagine if this were a mosque or a black church or a Jewish synagogue. I would be outraged. And it's just because these are white Christians that these Democrats think it's open season. I would say this to Don Lemon. Don Lemon can go to hell, but in the meantime, Pam Bondi is going to put him in prison. Here's that soundbite of him on the podcast the Monday after he did this, which is 24 hours later. I think that there is obviously this there's racism. And at the whole point of it is that they're trying to they're detaining people on the streets because of accents in the color of their skin.

36:00And they're also targeting targeting people of color and black people as well as brown people. So there is a certain degree of racism there, and there's a certain degree of entitlement. I think people who are in religious groups like that, it's not the type of Christianity that I practice, but I think that they're entitled, and that entitlement comes from a supremacy, a white supremacy. And they think that this country was built for them, that it is a Christian country, when actually we left England because we wanted religious freedom. It's religious freedom, but only if you're a Christian and only if you're a white male, pretty much.

36:31And so, yeah, absolutely 100 percent. But it's an intimidation tactic. On top of that, Bill, here he is on camera, his own, confronting the pastor of the church in the middle of the disruption. Here it is. Our church had gathered for worship, which we do every Sunday. And we were interrupted by this group of protesters. We asked them to leave, and they obviously have not left. What do you think of this? I mean, this is unacceptable. It's shameful. It's shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship. But there were folks who will say. I have to take care of my flock. Listen, there's a constitution in the First Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest.

37:21We're here to worship. We're here to worship Jesus because that's the hope of these cities. That's the hope of the world is Jesus Christ. I want to be very respectful. Please don't push me, though. We're here. We're here to worship Jesus. That's why we're here. That's why we're here. That's what we're about. Don't you think Jesus would be understanding and love these folks? We're about spreading the love of Jesus. But did you try to talk to them as a Christian? No one is willing to talk. Okay. I have to take care of my church and my family, so I ask that you actually would also leave this building.

37:50You don't want us to chronicle whatever. I'm always worship. I'm a Christian. I mean, Bill, it's right there. Black and white. Leave. Get out. Then he tries to do the right to protest, right to write. And the pastor's right on. He keeps bringing it back to, we have a right to worship. We are trying to worship. We have rights too. Says specifically, I want them out and I want you out. And Don Lemon doesn't. He doesn't leave. He stays after that. I mean, like, that's a trespass case, but it's all over the place. He's justifying the actions of the of the protesters. He's refusing to leave when told to.

38:24He knows the rest are there illegally and he's justifying every single outrageous thing that they've done because allegedly First Amendment. Well, the Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion in the same First Amendment. So there's absolutely no basis for Don Lemon to claim that his First Amendment right as a member of the press is somehow superior to the First Amendment rights of all those people inside to exercise, freely exercise the religion. And frankly, I think the prosecutor or the the the pastor would have been perfectly within his rights to shove Don Lemon out of the church.

39:08It's a bit of self-help. But but, you know, there would have been nothing, nothing wrong with that, in my view. And, you know, Don Lemon's not there as a member of the press. I mean, we all know that he's he might as well be a videographer for the group. He was capturing what they did for their benefit. A very interesting comment you made back before we started the discussion, mentioning his finances, you know, him pitching for people to join his YouTube channel as a subscriber and to, you know, help support their independent journalism. That opens up all the finances of his enterprise to not just discovery efforts, but it's all relevant now in the trial.

39:57Why was he there? Was he there for the First Amendment or was he there for the financial well-being of his organization trying to build it and promote it? And this was just – it was just a content opportunity. That's not going anywhere. Something else I want to mention if you unbolge me just a second. You know, I believe this church is actually in St. Paul, not in Minneapolis. And I've done some digging. You know, there are different federal courthouses in St. Paul and Minneapolis, and they're in different counties. Now, I don't think it's news to anybody here that jury pools for federal court are drawn not just from the city where the event happens, but they're drawn from the federal district and the division within the federal district where the charges are filed.

40:52I expect what we're going to see today is an indictment not out of Minneapolis, not out of the U.S. Well, it'll be out of the district of Minnesota, but it won't be filed in the Minneapolis courthouse. It'll be filed in the St. Paul courthouse. And the jury pool for that will come from not just St. Paul, but all of the counties in Minnesota that are within that division of the district of Minnesota. Don Lemon's jury pool is going to consist of a lot of people just like the people trying to worship in that church. This isn't a Washington, D.C. situation that Pam Bondi has walked into. It's not a Minneapolis situation.

41:31The demographics of Minneapolis and St. Paul, my understanding is they're quite different. You know, St. Paul is not a is not a conservative bastion by any stretch of the imagination, but it is not Minneapolis. You didn't see him rioting and burning down buildings after George Floyd in St. Paul. Good point. You know, Mike, they're already trying to say over on CNN, which was hysterical this morning and so replete with misinformation. Nobody over there knows the law, honestly. Like Ellie Honig is the only guy who even makes an effort at being fair and actually sticking to the facts. He's a former federal prosecutor.

42:12But they didn't have him on this morning. They are saying he's doing this. Trump is doing this because Don Lemon is a critic, because Don's been critical of President Trump. Meanwhile, they arrested another woman there who styled herself as a, quote, journalist. Her name is Georgia Fort. She used to be a news anchor in Duluth, Minnesota, and in Columbus, Georgia, and now has her own independent, I guess, media company called Black Press. and she was arrested too, and as were several others. So it's not, it isn't just about Don Lemon or critics of President Trump. They went after the ringleaders who were there and anybody else who they could identify and they're still working it to my understanding is on identifying all the people who participated in this.

43:00It has nothing to do with Don Lemon's politics, but that's where they're gonna go with it. And here's what I wanted to ask you. I told the audience that originally the magistrate judge who was conflicted and wouldn't say that there was probable cause for this case, he kicked it out and said, either improve your probable cause or go to a jury, a grand jury. So they tried to overrule him, our DOJ did, by going to his boss, basically, the chief district judge. And that guy said, what are you doing here? I agree with that other guy's remedy. Go improve your probable cause affidavit or go to a grand jury.

43:30I'm not getting involved. And then they tried to go above him to the eighth circuit. And the eighth circuit said, what are you doing here? You're premature here. We don't take these cases on appeal until they're all done. Get out. So they went to a grand jury and got the indictment. But that chief judge wrote a letter. And in his letter, he did say go to a grand jury. But he also said, I see no evidence to support a case against Don Lemon. And that's all over X this morning. All these journalists are like, there's no evidence. Two judges said that the magistrate judge wouldn't do it. The district judge said there's no evidence.

44:02And now this morning, just FYI, reports just in that the Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who went on Don Lemon's podcast within 24 hours of this event saying you didn't do anything wrong, is now saying the same via paper statement. And on top of that, we are now told that a group of journalists have gathered outside of the federal courthouse in downtown L.A. where Don Lemon is expected to be booked and anti-ice protest is expected to be held near this afternoon. So we're going to hear all about that judge's conclusion and the magistrate judge not finding PC to begin with. Your thoughts on those angles?

44:33Well, that's great. But guess what? the federal grand jury found probable cause because that's how you get an indictment, right? So you can either get an indictment under felony charges, under Rule 7 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. You can also get a grand jury indictment for misdemeanors, right? The right to a grand jury indictment belongs to the defendant, so that's why you have to do it for felonies, but the government can certainly go do it for a misdemeanor, like under the FACE Act, And they apparently did. And the grand jury agreed that there was probable cause. I don't think that anyone who watched the videos of your show today, Megan, can say that there's not probable cause to move forward with face act and Klan act charges against Don Lemon and his fellow Klansmen.

45:23Right. So there's there's no question there's probable cause. And it doesn't matter what these activist judges in Minnesota hand selected by Democrat senators. It doesn't matter what what what they think about this. The grand jury has already said that there is probable cause to move forward. because people need to know that even though federal district judge may be appointed, if the opening is, is there under a Republican administration, yes, the president can nominate the judge, but they have to be Mike's saying, but the democratic senators, if it's from a blue state, like Minnesota, you can nominate all you want.

45:59You can nominate a Mike Davis, but he's never going to get through with, because the two blue state senators are going to say, oh, hell no. So even under a Republican administration in the blue states, we wind up getting soft Republican or conservative judges during administrations that are held by a Republican like the Bush administration. I think this chief judge is a Bush administration appointee. But your point is you can't you can't go with that because in a state like Minnesota, he would have had to be blessed by the Democrat senators. OK, Megan, if I can make a comment on that. Yeah, go ahead.

46:31So so the timeline here is that this event happened on Sunday morning. On Sunday evening, Assistant Attorney General of Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dillon put out on X that she had dispatched prosecutors from her office, so Civil Rights Division prosecutors, to Minnesota. Monday was Martin Luther King Day. On Monday, she posted on X that her prosecutors were working with the FBI. So on Monday, they were working on this. They presented the affidavits in support of a proposed criminal complaint on Wednesday. So they had 48 hours to gather whatever information they could and put that in the affidavit.

47:15The magistrate rejected the affidavit. They then made the effort to go seek discretionary review. And the Magistrates Act provides that a district court judge may review any decision made by a magistrate. So he didn't have to do it, but his letter – I mean I read his letter, got into a little bit of a discussion online over it. It seemed to suggest that he didn't think he had the discretion to do it, and then the government ran to the Eighth Circuit with a petition for rid of mandamus to order him to do it. Now, the commentary about the judge having said there's no probable cause is based upon that initial affidavit filed in 48 hours.

48:00We're now eight days after that. The government has had the opportunity in eight days to accumulate a tremendous amount of more information, interviewing people that were there, interviewing people that were there, getting their hands on communications with grand jury subpoenas. We don't know yet, but they probably even went and tried to get and maybe did get a search warrant, which you would need to go through open emails. So we're eight days down the road from the information that those judges were presented. And what those judges concluded eight days ago is irrelevant to what this happened.

48:39Very good point. And I have it on good information that the supporting affidavit here, the supporting evidence here is very powerful and that they have definitely shorn up their case. So we await that document. It could come at any time. You guys are awesome. That was so good. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Bill. First, but not last time for you here at the MK Show. Thanks for coming. Thank you, Megan. See you, Bill. Thank you, Megan. All right. We're not done. Up next, Michael Knowles reacts to the breaking news. Don't go away. These are not the meat sticks you grew up with. This is Paleo Valley made with 100 % grass fed beef from small scale regenerative American family farms.

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50:20joining us now for more reaction on the arrest of don lemon and others michael knowles host of the michael knowles show on the daily wire michael knowles your thoughts on don leman being taken away in handcuffs when i got the news i was sitting down for my show this morning i pulled a mayflower a cigar out of my cigar box. I lit it up. I'm a simple man. The feds arrest Don Lemon. I light a cigar. This is, without any qualification, a wonderful thing to happen. It is good for society. It is good for law and order. It's even good for Don Lemon, because the guy is clearly very messed up. Now, look, all the public stories about Murph's Bar in Sag Harbor, and the guy's got a lot of problems, okay?

51:07And this is good. He needs to be rehabilitated. He's got a lot of issues. He needs to be corrected. But it's really important because the biggest impediment, I think, to our having a good orderly society in recent years has been the establishment media. They're the ones who lie. They're the ones who push their radical policies. They're the ones who protect the horrible politicians. And they've gotten away with it. And what this arrest signifies is that you can't just go about and commit crimes and then claim journalism as a defense. You know, the idea that Don Lemon could, by all evidence, conspire with this mob, he said, I know a little secret, I know what we're about to do, go in there, violate federal law, the FACE Act notably, deprive people of their rights, and then say, no, no, I have a camera while I did it.

51:55I mean, that would be like saying, you go over, you murder your enemy, you shoot him five times in the head, and you say, no, no, no, you can't arrest me, I was going to write an article about it later. That's not a defense. And so I'm pleased by the arrest. Now what's very important is we need the serious charges and we need him to be found guilty. He needs to actually serve time for this. Pro-life grannies served years in the clink for praying at abortion clinics because of face act violations. Don Lemon needs to serve double that. What he did is much, much worse than what the pro-life grannies did.

52:28So the fear here is if he gets off the hook, it'll be good for him. It'll put us in a worse position than we were in in the beginning. But that's not an excuse to do nothing. You just have to push ahead. This guy needs to face consequences. I totally agree with that. I agree with every word. I know some people are worried about making him a martyr. That's not the point. He violated the law. It's all there. It's right on camera. It's really not even ambiguous. And people claiming that it is are activists or political hacks. and the point is it is justice going to apply to both sides or isn't it if the grannies have to go to jail for the abortion clinics don lemon has to go to jail for the church sorry them's the breaks i guess the question you would have to ask the people who are defending don lemon or saying that he's a martyr or something like that is okay did he violate the law did and and just try to figure out i guess if they actually defend the face act by the way i think the face act is horrible it It obviously only exists to protect abortionists.

53:31Right. It's always been used on the abortion clinics. That's all it's for. But to get it passed, they had to also carve out protections for churches. Now, I think churches could be protected in plenty of other ways that don't involve the FACE Act. But just get the people who are defending him to ask, okay, did he violate the FACE Act? I think anybody who's being even slightly honest here has to admit, yes, he did that. And so then get them to admit the next principle, which is, okay, well, why should he get off the hook? And they'll say, well, because he's a journalist. So journalists have immunity to commit any crime that they want?

54:02I don't think that's a principle of American law. I don't know, Megan, I didn't go to law school, but I don't think that's a part of our law or our jurisprudence. So then on what grounds is he to be defended? And the only grounds is, well, those dirty Christians had it coming. Those white people in Minnesota who, that ICE agent that they said was being harbored in the church, they had it coming, and it's okay to break the law if it punishes our political enemies. And I think if you scratch the left on this far enough, that's what you're going to get to, which is a preposterous argument. I just, I hope it comes to a consequence, because Don Lemon right now must be feeling either that he's in trouble, You know, he might actually go to the clink or he might say, great, this is act two of my career.

54:46My career was in the doldrums. Now I've got a lot of attention, which is obviously what I was craving. And so the stakes are very high. The DOJ is in a slightly tough position here because I think they really need to come through. I think they do, too. And good for them for swinging for the fences on it, because there were a lot of pressure on them from the left not to touch anybody who calls themselves a journalist. and they blew through that, understanding that this is a serious before and after moment going into a church and doing this. And you've got Lemon, I just played the soundbite, Michael.

55:17Here's the transcript of it, of what he said on camera. To like inside the church, he said, quoting, you can protest at any time. He says, there's nothing in the constitution that tells you what time you can protest. No, but there are time, place, and manner restrictions that have been upheld under case law interpreting the constitution for decades. He says you can protest at any time. That's the whole point of it, to disrupt. It's to make uncomfortable. And that's what they're doing. And that's what I believe when I say everyone has to be willing to sacrifice something. Right? You too, Don. You're about to sacrifice your freedom to have disrupted and to have made the people feel uncomfortable.

56:04You have to make people uncomfortable, he says, in these times. You see how uncomfortable people, how uncomfortably and how harsh people are being treated on the streets. So you have to be willing to go into places and disrupt and make people uncomfortable. That is what this country is about. He is completely in solidarity with the protesters. He's making their case on camera to encourage it. He's arguing with the pastor about how this is necessary and he should take it. Honestly, I have to tell you, Michael, this is very creepy, but to me, his whole trauma is part of it, and you have to make people uncomfortable.

56:41That's all part of it. He sounds to me like a weird sexual assaulter talking to his victim. This is part of it. Trauma's part of it. Just take it. Just get used to it. Just lie back and take it. Given some of the other allegations against Don Lemon, I guess that's probably par for the course. I think your observation here, Megan, is key. What the defense is going to claim is that he was a passive observer, a reporter committing an act of journalism. And all of the evidence we have is that he was not a passive observer. He was an active participant. He didn't just stumble onto this news story. He rode up there with the criminals, with the mob.

57:22He knew what they were going to do ahead of time. He participated in that. As you point out, he made their case for them on air. He's also on camera giving them coffee and donuts in solidarity. Oh, we have that. Yeah, I mean, there's... Let me show that, Michael. Good point. We haven't shown that yet. Here it is. Wait a minute. You want some coffee? All right, so thank you. Anybody want some coffee? You're good. You're welcome. Anybody want some coffee? Thank you, Doc. We're out here. Good, good. You want some? I'm good. Thank you. Want any coffee? Thank you. You guys want any coffee? I'm good.

57:53Thank you. What about you, brother? Appreciate what you're doing, Doc. I'm okay. Thank you. You're good? Yeah, we're good. Thank you. You're good? Thank you. Thank you. All right. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. You guys want some? You don't want to wash that down with anything? In all my years covering the Westboro Baptist Church or Code Pink or the Women's March, I never joined Michael Knowles. Never. I never served coffee, donuts. I never said good when they were telling me about their plans. Never. I never gave them any assistance or aid whatsoever because that would be crossing an ethical line for a journalist.

58:36Of course. I've never even given coffee and donuts to the subjects that I interview that I like, much less the ones that I don't like. To the staff of the Michael Lowell Show. You kidding me? We run a tight ship around here. This is so above and beyond. And by the way, it is incriminating. You know, I know Don Lemon wanted to get some great clips out of this and he did. that he went viral for it. But this is incriminating because it shows that he is an active participant here. And I would go even further. You know, if Don Lemon were really pressed on this, I would I would put it back on him and say, well, hold on.

59:10So you're not in solidarity with the protesters? Because obviously the whole reason that he's there is to express this solidarity, to suck up to an audience that is promoting political violence and violations of federal law and undermining other federal law like immigration enforcement. So I'd put him in this position say hold on you've been on camera now for weeks talking about how you stand with these people now that's put you in legal hot water because it impelled you to commit a crime and so now you're going to try to say you don't stand with these people which one is it he can't have it both ways uh you know i think he just got a little too far out ahead of his skis he he was upset that he lost his career in cable news and he wanted to try to make his bones in new media not everyone is that good at it not everyone can pull a megan kelly and go from tv to new media and then dominate new media too.

59:57Don Lemon was basically pushed to the side of the media world. He saw this as his opening, and he got a little too excited, and he committed a very serious federal crime. That's the problem for Don Lemon. If he had stayed on that sidewalk, this wouldn't be happening to him. But he didn't. He joined the mob. He disrupted the service. He got in the face of the pastor and other parishioners. He was told to leave. He refused. He's in a lot of trouble. And it's not because President Trump doesn't like Don Lemon. Trust me, there are many other journalists, ones who actually have power, unlike Don Lemon, who President Trump would love to take out but doesn't.

1:00:35This isn't about any vendetta against Lemon. he would have been picking on him and trying to get him fired from sienna he would have been like actively interfering in don's life long before this this is about what don lemon chose to do and who he chose to target it target i want to give you a flavor for what we're hearing from the insane left jim acosta this is outrageous and cannot stand i know you really wanted to ask you you're asking yourself what is every morning i wake up what does jim think please what if he could set the standards of journalism for me then i could finally proceed with my day uh This is outrageous and cannot stand.

1:01:09The First Amendment is under attack in America. Julie K. Brown, who did a good job breaking the Epstein story, but is a partisan hack. She's gone ever like we covered Epstein. We have covered Epstein just as aggressively as anybody, especially like the substantive allegations against Epstein. We asked her to come on many times to just explain them from the beginning of the launch of this show all the way. She'll never come on. She will not appear because she only wants to talk about it in front of left wing hacks. First, they came for the journalists. We don't know what happened after that. Hashtag free Don Lemon.

1:01:45Here's Jon Favreau from the Pod Save Group. Do we think Newsom's DOJ will start with the Megyn Kelly and Matt Walsh types or just make it more efficient by raiding Fox and arresting everyone? Then there's Lulu Garcia of the New York Times. OMG, I never thought I'd see this in America. Journalist Don Lemon arrested after protests that disrupted Minnesota church service. I mean, I'm surprised she didn't see this happen because it happened to the tune of six or five or six journalists who were arrested after January 6th, which wasn't that long ago. It did happen. I guess she just didn't think that one was as interesting.

1:02:27I hope this becomes a referendum on the First Amendment. I hope so. That's what the left wants to make it because they think that the facts are on their side. They're not. This is a little bit of a hobby horse of mine. I wrote a whole book called Speechless about the limits of the First Amendment and our free speech tradition. A lot of people who are going out blocking traffic, obstructing law enforcement, driving SUVs into cops, they think that all of that activity is protected by some right to protest. It is not. That's nowhere in the First Amendment. That's nowhere in our legal tradition. We have the right to peaceably assemble.

1:02:56We have the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That's why we have to do so in an orderly way. There are licenses that you have to, permits that you have to receive. That's what it's for, and all of that is protected. When it comes to journalism, when it comes to freedom of speech, we have broad freedom of speech in the country, but there's a lot of speech that's not protected. Speech like obscenity, speech like direct threats, speech like fighting words, and so on. You cannot use free speech as a justification to commit additional crimes. You cannot claim that your status as a journalist, whatever that means in the era of the citizen journalist and of the new media, gives you some kind of blanket immunity to break the law.

1:03:41That's not true. That's never been what the First Amendment means from the very beginning. Immediately, almost after the ratification of the Constitution, the federal government clarified what sort of speech was off limits and what kind of speech acts are off limits. So I think it's great. I think a lot of our present political ills are because people sincerely have no idea what is actually meant by our free speech tradition. And then they go out and commit a bunch of crimes, whether it means they're going to riot in the streets of Minneapolis in 2020 and 2025 and 26, or whether it means that you're going to invade a church and call it journalism.

1:04:12Yeah, great. Let's make this about the First Amendment. It kind of reminds me of how, you know, when President Trump went into Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro previously said, come and get me, come and get me. That's what Don Lemon was doing here. It was a game of chicken. He was saying, you know, look, I'm going to go right up here. I'm going to break the law, and you guys are too chicken to come and arrest me. So I think the Trump DOJ had to come in and enforce the law here. It's the same kind of thing we see with the body camera debate. You know, the left for years said that the cops need to wear body cameras because when we finally get to the truth of what's going on, that's going to vindicate the left, and it's going to make the cops look terrible.

1:04:50What happened? It's exactly the opposite. it. Body cams come around. All the footage makes the criminals look awful, totally exonerates the cops. I think if we get down to the heart of the matter here, the truth of our law, the truth of what these journalists are really doing, it's going to be a massive win from the right and not a moment too soon. The Harmeet Dillon was on the program last week saying it's not as though just because you're a journalist, you get an invisibility cloak while you're going in to help commit the crimes. You know, like you don't have some special immunity that the other people don't have while you're in the middle of committing a crime.

1:05:24We were watching a crime on that Don Lemon videotape. By the way, the stuff that we saw on video only really tells half the story. Some of the reports that we now have coming out of the courts because of the other prosecutions in this case show that when this mob went in there, they didn't just start chanting randomly in the air. They blocked off the Sunday school where the kids were from their parents. So the parents couldn't even get to the kids. In one case, you had one of these lunatic activists screaming in the face of crying kids saying your parents are Nazis and your parents are going to go to hell.

1:05:57You know, actually tormenting these kinds of children, creating a very dangerous situation. So I want all the facts to come to light here. And I want all the facts of Don Lemon's involvement to come light. He already teased it himself on camera. Tee he he. I have a secret. I know what's about to go down here. I want to know about those meetings beforehand. I want to see his text threads with all of the organizers. I want to I want to see his take on going into violate federal law. You know, it'd be one thing if he could claim ignorance and maybe is a fairly ignorant guy. But ignorance of the law is no defense, first of all.

1:06:32And I think it goes deeper than that. I think he knew that this was a major provocation. He thought that the Trump administration was too chicken. He got called on his bluff. Yeah, that's exactly right. He did. The FACE Act says, again, you cannot by force, threat of force, or by physical obstruction, which has been interpreted to mean blocking entrances, blocking exits, even blocking pathways, even getting in the way of somebody who's in an abortion clinic or here, a church, you cannot, by doing any of that, interfere with any person attempting to exercise their religious freedom. I mean, it's all there on camera.

1:07:15Don Lemon may not have been personally blocking an exit or an entrance, but he absolutely was obstructing the aisles and the areas of that church, including right up at the altar with that pastor, he, it's there. Yes. And honestly, like this is actually something where I think one of my listeners or viewers wrote in and said, this could be a situation where it's not, where like they, not only did they prevent them from leaving, but they, they prevented them from attending. You know, like that's the whole point is that the mass blew up, the service blew up. Nobody got, nobody fulfilled their Sunday obligation that day.

1:07:53You know, they were not able to complete the act that they were there for. So this is this is the equivalent of like you're at an abortion clinic and you didn't actually stop the woman from going into the surgery room, but you did something so disruptive that everyone had to evacuate the clinic. You would not get out of a face act violation for that. That's still an obstruction of what the person was there to do. Of course. And in in the case of the abortion clinic application, The left would be up in arms. It would be an international outcry if someone, heaven forfend, prevented a woman from murdering her own child.

1:08:31Here, it's actually ironic that the FACE Act protects these two diametrically opposed things, one infanticide and one worshiping God in a church. But here, of course, they're going to see no problem with it. They'll see it as some First Amendment right. So it's great. I can't wait for them to defend people demonstrating at abortion clinics. I'll probably be waiting for a long time on that front. But, oh, you know, let me tell you something. Let me tell you something again. If Don Lemon, if this case gets thrown out, you know, by a judge when we get into motion practice, you and I should go together to an abortion clinic.

1:09:09That's great. Let's go in. Yep. And, you know, we can pick it. You can be the protester and I'll be the journalist or vice versa, whatever. But if I'm the journalist, I'm just going to hold a mic. You're going to cause mayhem in there. You're going to you're just going to run around. You're going to intimidate people. You're going to scream, you're Nazis, you're baby killers. You're going to get right up in the faces of the clinic providers, scare the women who are there to the point where they're crying. And I'm going to be on camera saying this is what it's all about to disrupt. This is as American as apple pie.

1:09:40And then we will see what the next Democrat administration does and whether they all rush to defend you and me, Julie Kay Brown and Jim Acosta and Jon Favreau of the PodSafe. And Don Lemon. I'm sure Don Lemon will have us on whatever show he has now to defend us, to defend our First Amendment rights, of course, right? I don't know. Maybe I'll have to identify as trans so we can at least bunk up in the prison cell together that they send us to. You'd be a great roommate. I would accept that. You'd be the one I would say yes to. Here's the other person who's already been arrested as the ringleader.

1:10:15Her name is Nakima Levy Armstrong. I play this because it's very interesting where they're going with it now. OK, and I should mention three other people were arrested today besides Don Lemon. There's Georgia Fort, who I mentioned. She describes herself as an independent journalist based in Minnesota. There's Traherne Jean Cruz, who was a co-founder of is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Minnesota, big on the George Floyd thing. There's Jamal Lydell Lundy, who is an aide to the Soros-based prosecutor out there in Minneapolis, Mary Moriarty, and he works in local government there. And then I was told that Don Lemon's producer was also indicted.

1:11:03But the press release or the post on X from Pam Bondi says at my direction, early this morning, federal agents arrested Lemon, Traherne, Georgia, and Jamel. So I think I'm guessing then that Lemon's producer is yet to come. I think I have been reliably told that he was indicted. So we'll see whether that pans out. We'll cover it either way, whether it's true or it's not true. We'll update the audience. But OK, let's get back to Nakima, who was arrested along with that other lady and William Kelly last week. Here is her take on what her arrest in this week have been like for her. So 26. We had belly chains around our waist and we had handcuffs with bars in the middle.

1:11:50As someone who majored in African-American studies, I can tell you that that is the closest I ever felt to slavery in my life. Being shackled as if I was a slave. It is unacceptable and unconscionable. It's great to work your priors. She sounds like someone who majored in African-American studies. That part I totally believe. Generally speaking, any department in a university that ends with studies, it's not a real department. You're not learning a lot in that department. And here she's saying, well, you see, there's this superficial similarity because criminals are in chains and slaves are also in chains, which makes me think as a boy, I would wear a Paul O 'Neill jersey, a big Yankee fan.

1:12:39I'm still a big Yankee fan. So does that mean that I'm a professional baseball player? Am I a New York Yankee? I don't, you know, superficial similarities do not necessarily signify any real similarity. So I guess maybe this would be her argument. If the chains themselves are what's so bad, then we need to abolish all of the prisons, right? You know, I was saying that as kind of a punchline, but probably... I think that is what she thinks is a BLM-er. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, amazing. Like, the closest I ever felt to a slave. How did you get in handcuffs again, Nakeema? Oh, wait, you terrorized a room full of children and churchgoers.

1:13:15That's what happens. Broken bones happen. People in tears and terrified. That's what you did. That's why I'm not in cuffs. Michael Knowles is not in cuffs. But you are. Something is different between the three of us. But she's had him in a hell of a week there, Michael Knowles. Because listen, listen, listen to this. Top 30. once we got to the sherburne county jail we were strip searched we were placed in jail uniforms we were locked in cells side by side and i'm not even going to talk about what they tried to feed us that look like mystery meat that makes me sad for the people who are currently incarcerated and not even being fed decently for their survival i didn't want to even use the restroom in my cell Why?

1:14:05Because there's a camera watching your every move. This is in spite of going through x-ray machines and being strip searched where they know you have no contraband. And yet still there's a camera in your room watching you with nothing else in there but a bed on cement and a metal toilet that doubles as a water fountain.

1:14:28Note to Nakima, we're not really arresting the best people. So generally we like to keep an eye on them i i love the complaint she thought she was going to the ritz michael i wonder did she expect foie gras they didn't even serve me creme brulee afterward not even a tasty little snack to follow my meal this is and she seems genuinely surprised by this mystery mystery meat this wasn't even grass-fed wagyu no it wasn't you're because prison this is truly this has been lost on the left but i think it's been lost on some parts of the right too prison is for punishing people that's what it's for when we often hear we have uh overpopulation of the prisons uh that is not true as long as crime is going up as long as crime is substantial we have a severe under incarceration problem the purpose of the criminal justice system primarily is retribution.

1:15:27There are secondary purposes, which is rehabilitation or deterrence. But the primary purpose, the reason we arrest you and put you in the clink in the first place, is because you did something wrong. And when you do something wrong, you get punished and you don't get foie gras. If this woman had majored in criminology rather than African-American studies, maybe she would have learned that. Maybe not. Here's Jamel Hill, always a radical. They arrested Don Lemon. this is horrifying. I don't care what your political beliefs or leanings are. By the way, that's a lie. She very much cares. What journalism outlet you represent.

1:16:01This absolutely cannot stand. He did not participate. Jamel, take the time. Watch the tape. Don did not enter the church until the protest began. Also not true. He interviewed the people protesting and showed what they were doing. That's what journalists do. In response to which Stephen L. Miller responded, if you really want your mind blown, he violated the KKK act. She's going to fall out of her seat when she hears that. And, okay, and speaking of making it a black thing, here's thought 29 from Nakima. Here we are, black women, nonviolent, our only weapons are voices, being treated like Hannibal Lecter, being treated like a mass murderer.

1:16:52Tell me where is the justice in that? And media, you have a responsibility, as I said before, because you all participate in spinning headlines and turning us into criminals. Even though we are standing up for the poor, we're standing up for the vulnerable, we are standing up for the truth. I don't think Hannibal Lecter was, even in the fictional version of the movie, was allowed out on bail in a nice suit to talk to the media without his weird face mask on, Michael. I'm not sure it's identical. They're going to treat me like Hannibal Lecter and they won't even serve me fava beans with a nice glass of Chianti.

1:17:35I think she's very upset by the quality of the food. I see this as a recurring theme. The point that she's making about the protests or that Jamil Hill's making about the protests, We have to correct the language here. What occurred in that church is not a protest. Even before you had reminded me that Don Lemon's being charged under the Ku Klux Klan Act, the comparison with the Klan is apt because you should ask these people, would you consider a lynching or even just a milder cross burning to be a protest? In a way, it's a kind of a protest. It's a gathering of people who are angry about something, who want some of their grievances redressed.

1:18:12That's true. And so in that way, it's similar to the mob that showed up to the church. But it's obviously not a protest because protests are constitutionally protected acts. And what those people are doing is a criminal act. And so just as you don't get to host the lynching or the cross burning and claim it as a constitutionally protected protest or an act of journalism if someone's filming it or something, the same holds true of the church. What happened in that church was many things, and it violated multiple laws. What it emphatically was not is a protest. Well, you've got now these BLMers, because it's no accident that the George Floyd crew from Minneapolis is jumping in on this, that they were the ones who did the church so-called protest.

1:18:55I mean, it was terrorism to me. That Don Lemon also, in the wake of last Sunday and the threats of arrest, played the race card. You're shocked. I know, shocked. This is the soundbite here, SOT18, because there's an update here. SOT18 first. And, you know, I said, I don't understand how I've become the face of it when I was a journalist. I do understand that I'm the biggest name there. And I'm also, as I was on with my producers this morning, you know, you and Kylie talk all the time. My producers were saying, I said, how did I become the face of this? And my producer said, Don, you're a gay black man in America.

1:19:30And you have a platform. And you're the biggest name. Of course, you're going to be the person that they single out and they're going to make the headline because it plays to their base and their base is full of racist, bigoted homophobes like Nicki Minaj, by the way. OK, so he tried. There's a lot of gay black man, gay black man. I don't know if you were aware that Don Lemon is a gay black man, Michael. He never mentioned he doesn't know. It's news. I'm hearing it for the first time. It's news to me. so there he is mentioning it again before the doj he said it before he got fired from cnn just to just remind everybody i'm gay and i'm black um didn't work didn't work here again you'd think he'd stop doing it nikki minaj did have thoughts on don lemon she sat down with katie miller and here's how that went 32 you called for don lemon's arrest over his church stunt in minneapolis He's since called you racist, unhinged, homophobic, and out of your death.

1:20:30Anything you'd like to say to Don Levin? Cocksucker, stop.

1:20:40Wow. It's dangerous to play with people who do not give an F. I also don't really get, so he's upset because Nicki Minaj likes Trump, and she showed up to America Fest, sat down with Erica Kirk. Then she just was with the president the other day. So she's out in the open. she's on the American right. That's great. And so he says, she's homophobe and this and that. But he also said she's an anti-black racist, which I think weakens his argument. Because I'm not super familiar with Nicki Minaj's oeuvre, but it seems to me that that's a hard claim to make. Yes, that whole interaction with Don Lemon, it reminds me of a clip, this was years ago, with David Webb.

1:21:20It was on Fox. He was doing his radio show, and someone called in, and he was making a conservative argument and the the person just lazily said well that's just your white privilege talking and david started laughing yes for the for the listeners who are not familiar david webb very much a black man but this was radio and so the caller didn't didn't know that and it was just this uh gut you know knee-jerk reaction this lazy kind of attack to say well you know you're only attacking me because i'm black or a woman or this or that so that's that's what Don Lemon's doing. And I think actually the desperation of his excuses, which in some ways are inconsistent, contradictory, the Nicki Minaj line, I think it shows you he realizes he doesn't have a real leg to stand on for what he did.

1:22:05And so he has to try to just throw spaghetti at the wall to mix all of my metaphors and try to puff himself up. And go back again to his priors. Gay black. You can't do it to me. I'm a gay black man. I suppose he went through the same search that Nakima did last night. Look forward to hearing all about that on his live feed when he gets out on bail, which he will. I want to shift gears slightly because yesterday we devoted the program to questioning what exactly has changed in Minneapolis. Because Tom Holman, who we love, got out there and said, I talked to Keith Ellison. I made good progress with him.

1:22:44He's now saying that he's going to cooperate with us on allowing ICE to make arrests at the county jails in Minnesota. that before somebody gets out, you know, like whatever, this guy, we know he's an illegal and he DWI'd, he's in prison for two years. He gets out in March. I'm going to call him now. It's January until ICE, you know, Hector gets out March 14th. That's great. Okay. But we questioned on this program yesterday, how exactly is Keith Ellison going to do this? Because this is really more of a county by county issue. And he is the attorney general had just issued an opinion not long ago saying it would be a Fourth Amendment violation to hold people even like one day longer.

1:23:28So like if ICE came on March 15th, they couldn't hold them. So it was just, you know, my basic question was, has the Minneapolis mayor weighed in on this? Did we hear directly from Keith Ellison on this? And yesterday before our show, we actually called the sheriff for Hennepin County, which is where Minneapolis was, is to say, did you agree to that? Like, are you going to do that? And here's the long and the short of it. We got a long gobbledygook answer from the sheriff, which amounts to no, I did not agree to that. We now hear reporting from Fox News correspondent Matt Finn, who says that Ellison has given Fox a statement saying he made no deal with Tom Homan and also wrote that he cannot tell jails to cooperate with ICE, but that jails historically can do their own thing.

1:24:19Then he writes the sheriff's office in Hennepin County tells us at Fox, it is not in the process of making any changes, which dovetails with what he told us, which is gobbledygook, gobbledygook. No, there's no deal. So as far as I can tell, we don't have an explicit agreement from anybody to actually change things at the county jail. Now, this sheriff does say this would have to come from the state. But again, Ellison is saying he did not cut a deal. So it's not coming from the state attorney general. So is it up to Governor Walz? Because Governor Walz today is issuing proclamation, say, by local because ICE is hurting our economy and definitely not saying make the local and county jails cooperate with ICE.

1:25:06long and short long way of saying michael knows i have no idea what if any deal has been struck between our federal government and the local governments in minneapolis and i have zero reason to change to believe they're going to change but it does seem we're changing in not going after anybody other than illegals who have also criminal uh done something extra well it's difficult even to interpret what that means from our side or from the federal government side or the side of the law. Because, you know, Tim Walls claims a scalp because Greg Bovino was reassigned. Okay, well, it's one thing to move the commander at large of Border Patrol.

1:25:44But then if you're just going to sub in the guy who is even more the face of the mass deportations, Tom Homan, that doesn't seem like a huge win necessarily for the left. On top of that, there was this strange sequence of events. On Sunday, Tim Walls goes out, he compares the face tattooed Venezuelan rapists to Anne Frank and compares ICE to the Nazis. And he says someday they're going to write a book about what happened here. And he said, you know, this is awful. He gets a call from Trump on Monday. By Tuesday, he says, we are going to cooperate with the Nazis. He says, Tim Walls basically comes out, he says, I'm a Nazi collaborator now, and we're going to work together, and it's going to be great.

1:26:22They're not so bad after all. Yes, they're not so bad. So that was hugely embarrassing for Tim Walls. And we have to wonder what happened on that phone call with Trump. Were there threats made regarding the Insurrection Act? Were there threats made regarding fraud? Obviously, Tim Walls seems to be neck deep in fraud, allegedly, reportedly, allegedly, but there's a lot of evidence for that. So, you know, clearly it was enough to scare Tim Walls straight. Whether that made it down to Ellison or the county sheriffs remains to be seen. So the question then becomes, what has changed? And I suspect right now what I want is for these jails to hand over the illegals and make this a little bit easier.

1:26:57And it could kind of be a win-win. But if that is not the case. But that's totally contrary to what a sanctuary city does. Like, that's really at the heart of what they will not do. So that's why it jumped out at me when Homan said that they had agreed yesterday. Because if they actually did agree to do that, then they're agreeing not to be a sanctuary city anymore. That is very big news, which is why my first reaction was, what is Jacob Fry saying? What is the sheriff saying? Like, he's mentioning Ellison. I didn't hear Ellison say it. Now it sounds like Ellison's denying it. and the locals. Let me play what Jacob Fry sounds like.

1:27:31Not like somebody who's giving up sanctuary city status. Listen, this is yesterday. We are on the front lines of a very important battle, and it's important that we aren't silenced, that we aren't put down. This is not a time to bend our heads in despair or out of fear that we may be next. And so we've been very clear. the operation metro surge needs to end this kind of conduct and siege needs to stop not just in minneapolis it needs to stop nationwide on behalf of the next city and the city after that that may experience this kind of invasion thank you we gotta hold rock solid we cannot back down our cities Our mayors are what will hold this democracy together.

1:28:22Cannot back down. We're on the front lines of a very important battle. The long and the short of it, Michael, is I don't know where we are on Minneapolis. Both sides seem to be jockeying for position to the public. But behind closed doors, it seems to me we haven't gotten anything, but we're ready to give something. Yes. You know, the one thing I know about Minneapolis is that we are in Minneapolis and it's all about Minneapolis. I love that Jacob Frey said these need to stop in Minneapolis and nationwide. That's a helpful reminder that these ice raids are going on nationwide. How come they're only a really big problem in Minneapolis?

1:29:00Why is it only Minneapolis? Why is it always Minneapolis? Why has this been true since George Floyd and since even before then? Obviously, it's a political problem. The problem is that you have leaders here who are contravening federal law, who are committing crimes, who are protecting criminals. And so, you know, it's a game of chicken with the federal government. What has really changed so far? Nothing is all that we know. What probably could happen, maybe best case scenario, is both sides make their points and then nothing changes. And Tom Homan comes in and he keeps conducting the same kinds of raids.

1:29:35But it is crucial here that the administration does not let up one bit. it is crucial that the administration does not pull one officer one agent off of the case does not leave one extra illegal in the city because this is a game of chicken that could have nationwide implications the the summer of love in during the year of our floyd began in minneapolis and because the federal government didn't quash it it it spread it infected the rest of the country so we can't just repeat what happened there hopefully we have to learn these lessons And when you look at the public opinion polls, they're kind of split.

1:30:11On the one hand, it's true most voters think that ICE should chill out in Minneapolis. But then when it comes to mass deportations generally, voters are overwhelmingly majority in support of that. And so what that means is they like it in principle. They don't like the nasty pictures. This means that we need to win the war of the pictures. This means, and Tom Homan is pretty good at this. He's very good at messaging. We need to make clear that these rapists and the murderers and all the rest of them, you know, child abusers, we see their faces. We see their face tattoos. That becomes the image of Minneapolis.

1:30:45In addition to that, people who have not committed additional crimes also need to be deported. But I hope it's just a PR shift. You know, you don't need to say that you're deporting abuela in order to deport abuela. If you're going to have mass deportations, some abuelas are getting deported. I'm sorry. It's just how it works. It's federal law. Both parties agreed with this until like five minutes ago. You have to do that. But at least on the messaging, we need to we need to show the problem where it is most urgent, where it's most grievous, where you have 80 percent support. I hope that's what Homan's doing.

1:31:17But if the White House is using this as an opportunity to back off, I think it is a huge, potentially existential mistake. Totally agree with you. And on that front, I want to tell the audience that we've been working on this for a while now, and we've put together a very powerful, it's like a five-minute montage of victims of these illegals, you know, from Lakin Riley to Kate Steinle to Jocelyn Nangare and names that you haven't heard. So many, by the way, have been killed in DWIs. Like these illegals, they're not all murderers, but a lot are serious booze bags who get behind the wheel of cars and have absolutely no compunction about driving the wrong way on a one-way street or down a major highway, killing our most promising young people.

1:32:05It's absolutely horrifying. Please do yourself a favor and watch this. We're gonna post it a little later today on our YouTube feed. It's five minutes long. I feel like we owe it to them. Michael, it's a pleasure to see you. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. Great to be with you always, Megan. Thanks for having me. Okay. We're going to bring on Howard Bloom in a minute because we've got new details in the Brian Kohlberger case. He's trying to get transferred out of his prison, but more importantly, Howard Bloom now thinks Brian Kohlberger may have had an accomplice. That's next. Relief Factor loves hearing from pain-free customers and hopes they can help you next.

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1:33:42New unsealed court filings reveal more horrifying details about the final moments of the four University of Idaho students murdered by Brian Kohlberger. The autopsy findings show the victims were stabbed at least 150 times collectively. Three attacked as they slept, one fighting desperately for her life in her final moments. That was Zanna Kurnodal. Our friend, the great journalist Howard Bloom has been covering this case from the beginning. He literally wrote the book on it. It was a bestseller called When the Night Comes Falling, A Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders, and has covered this case so well for so long.

1:34:18And now he's raising an unsettling theory, having seen all the latest evidence that Brian Kohlberger may not have acted alone. He joins me now to explain. Welcome back, Howard. Great to have you. Um, that's, that's quite a headline. Why are you saying that? Well, you know, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I believe the world happens more by accidents and by planning. And I, there was just a lot about this case I didn't quite understand. It was settled very quickly over a course of a weekend. And the case was sort of wrapped up after two and a half years of combative vitriolic wrangling between the prosecution and the defense.

1:35:02And suddenly things were wrapped up. And when the case ended, I thought, well, they've got the right man. And I still believe Kohlberger is guilty. But I think there's a larger story to tell when you look at the evidence that's suddenly being released. We're getting troves and troves of new evidence. And as you pointed out, just let's start with the crime scene photographs. The scenario for the murders, according to the police, is that the murders occurred between 4.07 a.m. and 4.20, 13 minutes. I think that scenario is a little overly generous. I would suggest that the murders occurred in just nine minutes because Kohlberger had to then leave the house, go up the hill, take off his bloody suit.

1:35:45So between nine and 13 minutes, the murders occurred. But as you said, 150 stab wounds. This was a very brutal, vicious attack. Could one man have gone through two floors of the house and with just nine minutes or 13 minutes, even as the police say, committed all these murders? And then the prosecutor has come out and said that perhaps there was another weapon involved. He says, I cannot rule out, and this is a direct quote from him, that another weapon was involved. And he also talks about one of the victims being gagged or her nose was broken. I don't think one person could do this. So that's where I started looking into it.

1:36:27Just for the just for listening audience, we were showing on the board while Howard was speaking there pictures that the Daily Mail downloaded for the very brief time that they were posted online by law enforcement handling this case in Idaho. So the Daily Mail, to its credit, chose not to publish the most gruesome ones, but they published one showing blood all over the murder scenes. And you can see the bloody walls and the bloody beds and the bloody floors and shoes and so on. And it is horrifying because you know exactly what happened there. And it is evidence of the massive, massive carnage and the struggle that ensued in these rooms, which is part of Howard's theory that how in nine minutes did one man produce all this?

1:37:07Keep going, Howard. And again, let's emphasize it's a hypothesis. It's something I think worth exploring. I'm not saying for sure that Koberger had an accomplice, but enough questions have been raised for me to want to dig deeper into this. Then you can look, the one thing that we've always wondered about is the motive. There's never been a motive in this case. Why did Kohlberger do it? On the day he was sentenced, the prosecutor stood before the courtroom and he said, I cannot say that Kohlberger ever even knew these victims. He did not follow them on social media. media, and the only evidence that we have is his knife sheath in the house with touch DNA on it.

1:37:53So when we have to look for a motive, the prosecution was going to say, well, he picked this house randomly. It was a random killing spree. Now everything we've known about Kohlberger that we've been following for over these two and a half, three years is that nothing was done randomly. He was a criminal justice student. He had written about crime scenes. He had written about how to get rid of blood evidence, how to clean up crime scenes. And there's no trail of blood through the house. There's no blood in his apartment. There's no blood in his car. But now we're supposed to believe that he just picked one house by random.

1:38:31And why would he have picked this house by random? There were five cars parked in front. Plus at 4 a.m. there was a door dash delivery, which Kohlberger would have seen. So he would have known that the five cars, at least five people, and that perhaps someone was up because of this door dash. So I don't think this was a random event. But no, I mean, I feel like they didn't have evidence of why this house was chosen. But they there's no question he'd been watching these girls and that he'd been watching the house. They saw his car had been there prior to the night of the murders. He'd been casing it.

1:39:10And obviously he knew that at least, you know, three young, five young, beautiful women lived there. All right, stand by. We have to take a quick break. We're going to come back on the opposite side of this. So don't go away. Howard's going to finish his theory on this, which is provocative and interesting. And we'll get to the prison transfer as well. You know, Pure Talk's favorite holiday, it's President's Day, because they believe wireless service should only cost you a couple of presidents, just a Jackson and a Lincoln, to be exact. that's 25 bucks a month. And that 25 bucks a month will get you from Pure Talk, unlimited talk, text, and plenty of data.

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1:41:15We are back now with journalist Howard Bloom talking about Brian Kohlberger and why Howard believes now, having seen the crime scene photos and done some other investigation, that Brian Kohlberger may have had an accomplice. And more than that, that Brian Kohlberger may have been the accomplice to someone else. Now, Howard, one of the most interesting things that you raise in your piece, positing this possibility, is you reckon back to, hearken back to the moment Kohlberger was taken into custody. and one of the few public statements that he made on the record about this case. And the very first question he asked the investigators when he was arrested.

1:42:05Yes. On the night of Coburg's arrest in his parents' house in Pennsylvania, he's put up in zip ties. His parents and one of his sisters are put in zip ties by the police. He's taken out to a state trooper's car. He's put in the back seat. And the first thing he says to the state trooper is, was anyone else arrested? And at the time, no one really paid too much attention to this. We thought he was being the dutiful son concerned about his parents or his sister. But now, in retrospect, when you look at all the other aspects of the case, when you look at what occurred that night, whether one man could have done it, this question has a more ominous echo, was anyone else arrested?

1:42:49It raises the possibility that someone else is out there right now. It really is an odd question when you think about it. You know, if Kohlberger, we know he committed the crime, but let's assume if he had done it totally by himself with no accomplice, why would that be the first question you asked investigators? It certainly is a troubling one. And there's more evidence that makes this question even eerier. On the knife sheath, which we know has Kohlberger's DNA on it, a little bit of touch DNA on the button snap, that was a cornerstone of the state's case against him. But there now is, according to the documents that have been released, there's unknown Y DNA on it, a speck of that.

1:43:37Y DNA is male DNA. They say in the documents that they ran it against Kohlberger. They ran it against other males who had been in the house and been suspects, and they could not identify it. Wait, on the knife sheath? Yes, on the knife sheath, this bit of DNA. What they didn't do is compare this little speck. Maybe it's too small. I don't know why they didn't do this, but they didn't compare it to the blood samples they had found previously, which they never investigated, on the handrail and on a glove outside. Sometimes you don't ask questions because you don't want to know the answer. When I was talking to people in law enforcement about this theory, many people didn't want to talk, but one person who's very knowledgeable about the case wound up telling me said, look, this case is all wrapped up.

1:44:27We wanted it to go away, and now it's going away, and we're not going to poke into it anymore, but there's a lot of things that we don't know and we'll never know. The question is, do the Idaho state taxpayers, do the public, do the families want to leave those questions hanging out there? Right. I mean, if it's true, there's another vicious serial killer roaming free. So it seems worth a question or two that we have now come to understand per People magazine that the defense had hired a forensic criminologist named Dr. Brent Tarvey, who was going to testify for the defense if this case had gone to trial.

1:45:09And this guy, now obviously he's hired by the defense to try to get Brian Kohlberger off the hook. So we take it with a serious grain of salt. But he is raising in this draft testimony that people got its hands on some similar questions. And here are a few of them as outlined by the magazine. They say that he argued that one killer could not have contained, for example, both Ethan Chapin and his girlfriend, Zanna Kronodal, or rendered the two different types of lethal force used on Kaylee Gonsalves. Because we know the killer killed Kaylee and Madison first, we believe, on the third floor. And Kaylee fought for her life.

1:45:46And Kaylee had a broken nose and many injuries about the face, which we were told were defensive wounds as she definitely tried to fight him. And it was Kaylee's injuries that led the authorities at the presser after the plea to say, we believed he used a weapon other than a knife. And people were like, what? He said, like, there's two weapons? That was the first we heard. And then he kind of hedged a little saying, well, can't say for sure. Maybe, you know, there was speculation, was it the butt of the knife? But it seemed to be some sort of blunt forced object to beat Kayleigh. Forgive me, these are disturbing details, Howard.

1:46:23I mean, these are questions that are raised and that they didn't follow up on. And I find that, you know, from the moment they tore down the murder house, they wanted this case just to disappear. So many people involved in the case have just wanted to move on. The original police chief couldn't wait to quit his job and move on. The original judge couldn't wait to retire. They tear down again the murder house, as I said. And then they're able, just over a course of a weekend, a single weekend after three years nearly of legal wrangling, to just settle things without demanding an allocution, without trying to say we want the answers.

1:47:03They say, well, Kohlberger would never tell us the truth. Well, either he will tell you where the murder weapon is or he won't. It's pretty cut and dry to ask that question and get a clear answer. You will be able to tell you how he knew the young women involved or he didn't. Why they did this, I don't understand. They had cards to play and they refused to play them. I want to go back to this guy, Dr. Brent Tarvey, because he's raising other good questions along the lines of yours. I mentioned, so we're looking at the injuries on Kaylee, who we now know because they've released the number of stab wounds each victim received.

1:47:41Kaylee received 38. Zana, poor Zana, she was the one who was awake, received more than 67 stab wounds. Madison Mogan, 28. And Ethan Chapin, 17. And he was asking questions about how could Ethan have been killed with Zana? Like he said, it is not reasonable to think that Ethan would have remained in his bed after waking up or being awake while Zana was being attacked in front of him. This evidence and context begin to suggest the existence of a second attacker. Ethan and Zanna appear to have been attacked at the same time. So it's inconsistent with the state's theory that these crimes were committed solely by one individual.

1:48:22But Howard, isn't it possible that Brian Kohlberger could have, could have attacked Ethan first, killed him and then killed Zanna? Because you would think he would take out the man before, you know, going after the woman. it's possible but the way it's been reconstructed now and the way I understand the events is that Zanna was literally going up the stairs because she heard the commotion in the third floor bedroom and then she was going down and Koberger chased her and then immobilized her then he dealt with Ethan and then she was killed that's the way it's been explained to me. But also, you know, Ethan is six foot four.

1:49:07He was a big guy. He was a basketball star in high school, an athlete. It's sort of hard to believe. Also, the house was dark. There are two different floors. There's a long staircase. It takes time to move around. How all this could happen by one person, I just don't see it. He could have been wearing a headlamp. I don't know. He wasn't seen. The witness who saw him, the roommate, Dylan, who saw him did not say he had a headlamp on, however. She said she had some device, like maybe a vacuum cleaner, she said at one point. But let's go back to these two surviving witnesses. They're victims too.

1:49:47They went, this is horrible for them. And yet at the same time, there's a lot we don't know, a lot we don't understand that raises troubling questions. And it's exacerbated by the fact that when we read the interviews, they keep on changing their story. There's no coherent, consistent storyline through all their interviews with the authorities. Well, one of the questions is, where are the bloody footprints? I guess there were not a ton of bloody footprints all over these pictures or the murder scene, Howard. And the question is, who cleaned them up? Or like, let's say Brian Kohlberg was wearing head to toe covering, including booties, well, those booties would have made footprints.

1:50:29They wouldn't have had treads on them, but they would have made bloody footprints. And if he took off the booties immediately after the murders, he would have had to step through blood. There was so much blood. So either way, there should be bloody footprints. And this is, again, one of the things this Brent Tarvey was pointing out. There's an absence of bloody footwear patterns at the scene in general. It's a very important question. There's this eight-hour gap between the Koberger or the assassin being spotted by Dylan Mortensen, and then they're calling the police. The house during that period looks very much as if it were cleaned up.

1:51:10The blood, the footprints, it's not there. If you look at the picture of the knife sheath on the bed, it looks like it's been arranged. Did the police do that or was it done by someone else? These are questions that I think should be answered. And I think the defense could have raised this issue of an accomplice, but again, they settled. Why did Kohlberger settle so quickly? What was he trying to protect? Did he have enough of a relationship with someone that he would want to protect them? Well, they'd know if he had a relationship with somebody, that would be all over his phone. There'd be eyewitnesses to that.

1:51:49We'd know if he were dating somebody or communicating with somebody. Well, we do know he was sort of dating with someone. He did have a, I spoke with her, someone involved in the, a foreign student involved in the program at WSU, in the criminal justice program. And, you know, it was known in certain circles. They would say, oh, she has a co-burger. That's how they sort of made fun of her at the time or mocked her. That was her boyfriend. And there's more we're learning about Koberger. The question is, he cleaned his phone. I think one theory would be that he wants to have the last laugh. Why did he settle?

1:52:30He knew he was doomed, but this is this one secret he can hold on to that will give him strength to survive, because he knows something that we don't know. And why the prosecution did not press to get these issues resolved, to get answers is something that I still find troubling. It is. I mean, when you think about it, it's the thing that troubled everybody from the beginning. And we didn't know that there were 150 total stab wounds in the beginning. We just knew that four people were killed in a very short time, but it's down to about nine minutes, 150 stab wounds. And it's not gunshot. It's stabbing somebody, stabbing for somebodies over the course of nine minutes from different room to different room to struggles, at least two fought for their lives that would have gone on.

1:53:18And again, the absence of some bloody evidence that we would have expected. Yeah. I mean, these really are very good questions. And then his question was anyone else arrested, but we're never going to know, right? Unless he gives an interview to that criminologist, Dr. Catherine Rumler from his undergrad program and fesses everything up. Or he talks to his sister, decides to write a book, which is perhaps happening, or maybe something will come out. I don't think conspiracies can be buried forever, but we're still looking into other old conspiracies that have lingered for generations. So I'm going to poke around a bit more into it.

1:54:00I'm getting some leads to follow. Maybe they're dead ends. But I think it's important to raise these hypotheses. I mean, the search for truth is the search for greater theories. And I'm looking at new theories. Very important. Correction, Catherine Ramsland. Catherine Rumler is the general counsel, or what, she's high up at Goldman Sachs now, but she used to be a Jeffrey Epstein advisor, which she doesn't want us to talk about now. But you were, madam. You're all over the documents. And I saw you. I heard you myself on audio tapes advising him. So deal with that. Okay. Now there's a report out that Brian Kohlberger may be getting transferred.

1:54:39The prison's denying it, but there are some sources saying, trust us, it's true, from this Idaho prison where he's been sentenced because he's been so utterly difficult, Howard. He complains regularly about the food, about his treatment from the other prisoners. They try to keep him up all night. They threaten him with sexual assault. I mean, I think it's called being a prisoner. But he's so annoying to the prison staff that they reportedly want to get rid of him and ship him off to anybody who will take him. Again, the prison on the record is denying that that's happening. But Fox News had, it was either, it was, no, it was Daily Mail, an interview with a source who went on the record saying, it's true, trust me, I'd bet millions of dollars on it.

1:55:26Or was it Fox? Yeah, it was Fox, a guy named McDonough, who says he has solid information from a prison insider and that the move could take place in about a month. I'd put$2 million on it, he told Fox News Digital. So what do you make of that report? Do you believe it? I certainly don't know anything about the credibility of that specific report. I do know a bit about Kohlberger's personality and character. All his time at Washington State University was time of constant complaining. That's all he did. When I spoke with the people who were close to the girlfriend or the friend, she wasn't a romantic girlfriend.

1:56:07She was a friend who maybe wanted to have a romance with him, but he was friendly with. It was one of constant complaining, constant bickering. That is part of his personality. Even his friends in Pennsylvania talked about that. So that would seem to fit his character. But again, I don't know anything at all about this specific being transferred. I don't know anything about that. Okay. Well, this guy McDonough is a retired homicide detective who is a source for the Daily Mail on this, and he's saying he's got it. So we'll see if he gets transferred from this prison to another. It's one of those things, Howard, like be careful what you wish for, because a prison that says we'll take him, we don't mind all that complaining, is probably not going to be a great one.

1:56:50There's probably a reason they don't care if you complain a lot. So he better be careful. I, for one, hope he's suffering. It might be interesting if he does get transferred, because you raised the question, will we ever know the answers? Well, I think at some point down the road, he's going to be very unhappy, very bored. He's going to see his chance to become the criminologist he always wanted to become. And he's going to talk to someone who will be, I don't know, will be you, me, Catherine Lampson. Maybe he'll pull a Ghislaine Maxwell and use his information about where the murder weapon is and a possible accomplice to get himself transferred to a more humane facility.

1:57:33I don't know whether anybody would actually make that deal, but certainly if there's an accomplice, we'd like to know. I think in Idaho, they're willing to make any deals. I'm shocked about how many deals they've made with him. Good point. Well, Howard, you've been on it from the beginning, a true pursuer of truth, and we appreciate that. We love talking to you. Thanks for coming on. Always like talking to you too, Megan. Take care. All right, everybody. That'll wrap it up for us today. What a show. All this stuff is just crazy. It's a crazy time to be in news. We hope you have a great weekend.

1:58:03We're going to see you on Monday.

1:58:07Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.