Dangerous Injustice: Ex-CIA Counsel Exposes DOJ’s War on Trump and Shielding of Biden

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If you don’t want to watch the entire hour and half (which I strongly suggest you do) then I had AI write a article to summarize it. Below that I will place the entire transcript. It’s an excellent interview and worth your time.

Introduction

Recently, former CIA legal counsel Joseph B. Sweeney gave his interview to UK Column, where he raised several themes and insights from his new book Dangerous Injustice: How Democrats Weaponize the Department of Justice to Protect Biden and Persecute Trump. It is enlightening with regard to the evolving misuse of legal institutions for political gain, mishandling of classified information, and deepening political divide in America.

Sweeney’s personal experience in several high-profile cases places him at the forefront of these complex issues; thus, his observations are both commanding and revealing.

Sweeney’s Career and Expertise

During his 25-year tenure at the CIA’s Office of General Counsel, Joseph B. Sweeney supported intelligence operations across the world, from espionage investigations through terrorism prosecutions. His notable contributions include involvement in the prosecution of Osama bin Laden and the legal management of spy swaps. Rarely does one find this unique combination of litigation experience with deep knowledge in national security matters, which placed Sweeney in the front row for some of America’s most complex legal and intelligence issues.

Handling of Classified Information: Double Standards in Full View

One of the focuses of Sweeney’s book is the disparate treatment accorded to high-ranking officials and their mishandling of classified documents. He highlights actual cases involving senior Democratic officials such as John Deutch, Sandy Berger, David Petraeus, and Hillary Clinton who were given light punishments—if any—despite serious breaches of national security protocols.

  • John Deutch (former CIA Director) was facing prosecution for keeping over 300 classified files on unsecured home computers. He signed a plea deal, which was annulled the next day by Bill Clinton’s presidential pardon.
  • Sandy Berger, a two-time National Security Advisor, destroyed classified documents from the National Archives and only faced a fine and probation.
  • David Petraeus (CIA Director) shared classified information with his biographer and lied to the FBI, but escaped with minor penalties.
  • Hillary Clinton managed thousands of emails—many containing classified information—on a private server but was not criminally charged.

Sweeney points out that political connections played a role in the lenient outcomes for these individuals.

Trump vs. Biden: A Tale of Two Investigations

A large part of the interview focused on the contrasting legal treatment of Donald Trump and Joe Biden regarding mishandling classified documents. Trump was suspected of keeping classified materials at Mar-a-Lago, which led to a highly publicized FBI raid and 40 felony charges. Meanwhile, Biden was found to have decades-old classified documents, some in his garage and personal offices, but faced no legal scrutiny.

Sweeney highlights several discrepancies:

  • Legal Treatment: Biden’s lawyers searched his properties voluntarily, while Trump’s legal team dealt with subpoenas and search warrants.
  • Attorney-Client Privilege: Trump’s lawyers were compelled to testify before a grand jury, but Biden’s lawyers—despite lacking security clearances—handled classified materials with no similar accountability.
  • Media and Transparency: Trump’s investigation was highly publicized, while the discovery of Biden’s documents was concealed for months and revealed selectively.

According to Sweeney, these inconsistencies show a double standard, with the Department of Justice targeting political opponents selectively.

Crossing the Rubicon: Political Weaponization of Justice

Sweeney sees the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as a turning point in U.S. politics. For the first time, an administration used law enforcement against a former president—and a potential political rival. “Biden crossed the Rubicon,” Sweeney remarks, referring to the irreversible move toward politically motivated legal warfare. He likens it to third-world tactics that undermine trust in democratic institutions.

Political Hatred and the Warnings of Washington

Sweeney links today’s polarization back to Trump’s 2016 election, which triggered widespread animosity. He argues that the media and political elite fueled this hatred into what he calls “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Borrowing from George Washington’s farewell address, Sweeney warns that unchecked party loyalty can divide the nation. Washington foresaw the danger of factions alienating citizens from one another—a warning that resonates today.

Voltaire’s Wisdom and the Danger of Believing Absurdities

On the emotional and ideological intensity gripping American politics, Sweeney invokes Voltaire: “Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” He reflects on how irrational hatred toward Trump has created a climate where even eroding legal norms is accepted in pursuit of political goals.

Restoring Justice and Unity: A Call to Action

Sweeney stresses that citizens must demand accountability to restore trust in American institutions. While no justice system is perfect, failing to address political bias will push the U.S. further toward chaos.

Conclusion: An Explosive Moment in America

The interview ends on a sobering note. Without systemic reforms, the U.S. political and legal system may face collapse. Sweeney’s book urges readers to confront difficult truths about American governance.

The interviewer emphasizes the importance of Sweeney’s work: “The only way to effect change is for the public to demand accountability.” Sweeney, a former U.S. Army Ranger, transitioned from physical combat to legal battles—demonstrating his resilience and reminding us that the fight for justice continues.

In Dangerous Injustice, Joseph B. Sweeney offers an insider’s view on the politicization of the U.S. justice system, providing valuable insights for those concerned about the future of democracy.

Entire Transcript:

Brian Gerrish:
Hello and welcome to the UK Column viewers and listeners. Little bit of a grey afternoon here in Plymouth, England, but we’re not going to worry about that. We’ve got a really interesting interview just coming up. I’m delighted to be joined today by Joseph Sweeney, who’s the author of Dangerous Injustice: How Democrats Weaponize the Department of Justice to Protect Biden and Persecute Trump.

Now, this is an absolutely fascinating book which I’ve been able to read over the last couple of weeks, so I think we’re gonna have a very interesting discussion. Just to tell you a little bit more about our guest today—and I think the simple way is for me to repeat his CV that he’s quite kindly provided—and it runs as follows:

Joseph B. Sweeney served in the CIA Office of General Counsel for 25 years in support of a broad spectrum of intelligence operations all over the world, including espionage and terrorism investigations and prosecutions. His work has been recognized with the 1999 Public Service Award from the Eastern District of Virginia for his support of an espionage prosecution, a 2002 Attorney General’s Award for his support of the Southern District of New York’s prosecution of Osama bin Laden and others for bombing US embassies in East Africa, the 2011 Intelligence Community Legal Award for his support of a spy swap, and a 2018 Assistant Attorney General Award for his support to the Department of Justice National Security Division. He is a 1987 graduate of the United States Military Academy and served as an Airborne Ranger-qualified infantry officer for six years. After graduating law school in 1996, he accepted—he was accepted into the CIA National Security Law Honors Program, and in 2012, he earned an LL.M. in National Security Law from Georgetown Law School.

So, a very eminent CV. Joseph B. Sweeney, welcome to UK Column.

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Thank you, and thank you for having me.

Brian Gerrish:
It’s a pleasure. Now, I understand you’re joining us from Washington, DC this afternoon. Is that correct?

Joseph B. Sweeney:
That is correct. I’m right in the swamp.

Brian Gerrish:
OK, thank you. Now the other bits which I—I just wanted to point the viewers at is your website, so that once they’ve completed the interview with us, they can go and have a look at that. We’ll probably bring it up at the end as well, but that’s www.sweeneyjb.com. So sweeneyjb.com.

Well, there we are. I’m gonna say a very big thank you for agreeing to this interview and, of course, for providing me with a copy of your book. Now, I—I have spent a lot of time reading it, and I ended up having to take some of the information and put it in a little bit of a diagrammatic form so that I could track through some of your arguments. But I thought what I’d do is just sort of spell out the flow of it for the audience, and then maybe we can work through that a bit until we get the critical element.

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Sounds good.

Brian Gerrish:
You—you begin by a little bit of history, with talking about George Washington and warnings to the American public about what happens when there’s fractions appear in the nation and how that actually is, uh, is a threat to the nation and the unity of the nation. So that was a pretty poignant start, and you quickly give a little bit of a summary, which is about—from 2016 onwards—the Democrat attacks on—on Trump, from his presidential campaign onwards. Until, of course, we get to the critical point where there’s been an armed raid on the—on Trump’s home, and some—you point out that very quickly at that time, the Biden administration came up with two criminal indictments against Trump. That was interfering with the 2020 presidential election, and violating—number two—violating the Espionage Act by mishandling classified information.

And the next bit I’ll just do very briefly before we bring you in is that you then point out to your readers that they need to follow three key steps in order to really get on to understand the complexities of the law around classified information. And you say that to understand the extent to which the party affiliations determined conduct of the investigations against Trump, the reader needs to understand cases both against Biden and Trump. And to do that, you need to understand how defense information is classified and protected. So that’s probably the starting point for us. Most people will have little idea about the intricacies of official secrets and how the documentation works. So would you—would you like to start there and just tell the audience how the system works and what classified information is?

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Sure. Absolutely. In the United States, information that is National Defense-related is classified pursuant to a presidential executive order. So all the safeguarding, classifications, and all the rules on storage, handling, processing, access—all of that is pursuant to presidential executive order. The president makes the rules for this sensitive, national-security-related information. Now, you know, just for—for your viewers who may not be familiar with our system, we have three coordinate branches of government: the judiciary, executive branch, and—and Congress. So classified information is not controlled by Congress, and it’s not controlled by the judiciary. It is created pursuant to executive power, because under the Constitution, the president is also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. So it’s that commander-in-chief power, flowing from that power, that the president issues an executive order to classify information.

And there are many, many, many rules, some of which I go into in the book, about storage, handling, creation, transportation. They’re—they’re very strict rules. And for those of us, like me, who spent decades working with classified information every day, they’re all second nature. It’s like breathing, taking care of the information, and making sure you’re following all the rules. And so that’s—that’s—that’s the basics for creating and protecting classified information. And the most important point is that it all flows from executive power. Now, there are also criminal laws that—that make it a crime under U.S. law to mishandle or steal or be grossly negligent in the handling of classified information. So, for instance, you know, gross negligence is—is at the lower end of the spectrum, because it’s when you’re not doing something purposeful, but you’re just being maybe stupid—excessively stupid—in the way that you’re transporting or handling classified information. It’s when you’re violating a duty of care, and you’re being in the—in—in the—the—the lack of attention to the duty of care is—is so extreme that the law would actually, you know, make it a crime. So there’s gross negligence, and then there is, at the other end of the spectrum, willfully retaining, willfully stealing classified information. And all of those violations would be under the U.S. Espionage Act.

So the Espionage Act itself—well, it—it covers actually a broad range of conduct, because there is, of course, the classic type of spying that you would see in the movies where foreigners are trying to steal your government secrets, and you catch them, right? That—that’s a classic case—that is an Espionage Act prosecution. But it—it—even—even something as simple as mishandling classified information—if it’s grossly negligent—that can also be prosecuted, even though you weren’t trying to steal secrets for money, you weren’t doing anything to purposely harm the country, but you—you did violate a duty of care. So that’s kind of, in a nutshell, how classified information is controlled, and that’s how mishandling or stealing is punished under U.S. law.

Brian Gerrish:
Right, OK. And of course, if we do something simple, we talk about classified information within the government. There’s all sorts of different types of classified information that’s circulating. We might—we might have documents that relate to Foreign Relations, and we might have documents which are more orientated towards the military. Can you explain to the audience what sort of documents would—how documents would normally be classified so that they can be identified as—as?

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Sure. Under the presidential executive order, there are 8 categories of information that are eligible to be classified as, is—is, is our state secret. And they include the things that you would expect: the foreign information pertaining to Foreign Relations of the United States, information pertaining to the military of the United States, information pertaining to intelligence sources and methods, for instance. So the categories are basic and what you would expect.

And if you’re going to classify information from those categories, you have to determine the level of damage that could be expected from an unauthorized disclosure of that information. So if it’s just simple damage, then the information will be classified at the confidential level. That’s the most basic level. And then one step up would be the secret level, where there’s perhaps more damage to the national security that could be expected. And then if there is exceptionally grave damage to the national security, that’s classified at the highest level, top secret.

Now once you get up to the top secret level, it’s not—it’s not one monolithic category, because information up at that level can be further compartmented. And so there’s top secret diamond, top secret jade, top secret, you know, lavender, and you don’t get access to those categories of information unless you have a need to know them. So it’s just—there’s further compartmentation at the top secret level, but that’s basically how it works under the executive order: confidential, secret, top secret. And at the top secret level, it can be even further compartmented.

Brian Gerrish:
Right. And—and those classified documents would normally have those classifications clearly marked on them. So somebody handling and—and reading a document with a particular security implication would see that classification and any additional caveats printed on the document.

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Absolutely. And so under the executive order governing the classified information, there is very specific instructions as to how a classified document would be marked, so that anyone—anyone, you know—would see the—the—the classification levels in the header and in the footer, and—and—and then there would be additional code words and code names and so forth. That way, everyone knows from when they pick up a document what level it’s classified at and whether or not they should even be reading the document, because like I said, if it’s top secret lavender and I haven’t been read into that category, and I’m not supposed to read it, then I know this is not a document that I should be reading.

So one other related nuance to that is: sometimes documents are not properly marked. And let’s say someone creates a classified document—maybe it’s even a handwritten note—and they don’t properly mark the header and the footer with the appropriate classification markings. And—and the document could then get out into the public domain, people could be passing it around with no knowledge that there’s actually very sensitive information in the document. And I’ve worked on cases of that nature. And—and the—the position of the government is, well, that document is still classified—it’s just not properly marked.

And so what the government would do in those instances is we would refuse to confirm or deny the accuracy of any of the information in the document. We would say that the information in the document is not declassified just because it wasn’t properly marked, and then we would, once we got a hold of the document, we would properly mark it and start protecting the information. I’ve worked on cases where these complexities can make life a little difficult, because, for instance, in America, under the Freedom of Information Act, citizens can request documents from the government. And sometimes, when we come across a document that should have been classified but was not properly marked, we have to then mark it at that time and explain all of this to a federal judge so that we’re not being accused of playing fast and loose with the rules.

Brian Gerrish:
Right, OK. Thank—thank you for that. And just to reinforce the point: your key specialist area is at your—within the CIA, in particular in relation to classified information and court cases that have taken place around the use and abuse of classified information.

Joseph B. Sweeney:
That’s correct. I had kind of a unique career in the CIA General Counsel’s Office in that half of my time, about 12 years, was spent in the litigation division—line attorney, deputy, acting chief—and then I was chief of the litigation division for four years, handling civil and criminal cases in conjunction with the Department of Justice when those cases involved classified information in some way, shape, or form. So there is—there is just about no—no aspect of a civil or criminal case involving classified information that I haven’t handled.

Brian Gerrish:
Right. And as I have discovered from reading the book, this—this is a complex, a very complex area. Now, just to set the scene a bit, the—your book is essentially an analysis of what took place around the investigation into President Trump when he was accused of having taken classified material to his home. And, of course, there was a raid by armed FBI agents and subsequently huge media furore, but also legal process took place. So that—that is the meat of your book.

But in order to be able to explain to the reader, these are some of the complexities around not only the case that Trump was faced with, but how he got in the position of having to face that case, you’ve had to take the reader through some key steps as to how you have seen—and the system work—on the protection of classified material, but also in particular where the system has failed and what has happened to individuals. And what I perceive is that the key segment of the book is where you’ve been looking at examples of particular individuals who’ve fallen foul of the law in relation to classified documents. And then you’ve—you’ve given a sort of summary of those cases and you’ve also at the end of it identified what the final charge was, what the sentence was. So I wonder whether you would be kind enough to just take us into some of those cases where you’re—you’re able to say, yes, I—I was there, I handled this material, this is what an individual did, this is how the case unfolded, and this is what they—the final charge was. This is a sort of backdrop to get into both some indiscretions by President Biden and, of course, what happened with President Trump.

Joseph B. Sweeney:
It’s—it’s what got me interested in Trump’s case in the first place, is that I had just retired for just about a year when Mar-a-Lago was raided. And there were only, in the history of the United States, there were only four cases where senior executive branch officials had been investigated or prosecuted for mishandling classified information. And it just so happened, I worked on three of those four cases throughout my career. I’m probably the only person in the world who did. And—and even the one I didn’t work on, that happened during my time in government. And I was aware of the case and following it.

So what I’ll do is I’ll just walk your—your viewers through those four cases in the order that—that they occurred. The first case ever was a man by the name of John Deutch, who was the Director of Central Intelligence. He was the top spy and the head of the intelligence community. This is—this was before 9/11, and before—not the terrorist attacks of 9/11—the head of the CIA was also the head of the intelligence community. Now, that changed after 9/11. The—there was a restructuring of the intelligence community, and the position of DNI was created—that’s the Director of National Intelligence—and the head of the CIA was made just the head of the CIA. But back when Deutch was the head of the CIA, he was also the head of the intelligence community, and so his—his title was Director of Central Intelligence.

Now, after Deutch left his job, the—the agency discovered that Deutch had been keeping on his home computers that were unsecured and hooked up to the Internet over 300 classified documents. And what he was doing was, he was bringing them home at night on, like, a thumb drive, plugging them into his home computer, and working on documents at night. That is something I can tell you that if any rank-and-file officer in the executive branch did, they would absolutely go to jail. But, you know, Deutch was very high up.

And when it came to light, the—the agency started to investigate. There’s a lot of procedural history that I go into in the book that I won’t bother with. I’ll just focus on his conduct for now, and that was that he had over 300 classified documents. So that’s a very high volume. And many of them were highly classified—up at the top secret level.

Now, this was the first case of this nature, and the Department of Justice was struggling with how to handle it. Our Attorney General at the time was named Janet Reno. She was appointed by President Clinton as the Attorney General, and Clinton had also appointed John Deutch. So, you know, one of the things I emphasize in the book is, you cannot examine these cases without examining the politics. The politics heavily influenced how these cases were handled—all of them.

And Deutch is a great example because, at first, the Attorney General refused to even conduct even a preliminary investigation. And then there was a public backlash because the—the—the Senate Intelligence Committee did their own investigation and released an unclassified report that caused the backlash. And then the Attorney General had to reverse herself and appoint someone to investigate and perhaps prosecute the case. I worked with that person.

And so what ended up happening was, you know, the Department of Justice, which was controlled by the Clinton administration, was very lenient on John Deutch, and they ended up permitting Deutch to sign a plea agreement for possessing one single classified document that was at the secret level. Now, Deutch had a lot of stuff that was at the top secret level—that was all ignored in the plea agreement. And he—he—he had this plea agreement for one single secret document, and—and by only charging that one document, that lowered the charges from something that would be very serious in our country, which is called a felony that’s punishable with one year or more, down to a misdemeanor, which is maximum of one year.

But Deutch’s plea agreement just—it permitted him to just get a fine and do some probation. And there was no jail time. So that’s a very light slap on the wrist. Now, the day after Deutch signed his plea agreement was President Clinton’s last day in office. And so Clinton then issued a pardon to Deutch, and a pardon vitiates the plea agreement. So he never had to pay the fine. He never had to do the probation. He basically was let off scot-free for what was a very major breach of—of national security.

Now, that was the first case. The second case was also someone who was working for President Clinton, and that was Clinton’s National Security Adviser, who is kind of an informal cabinet member for the President. And his name was Sandy Berger.

Now, Sandy Berger—he, after he served as National Security Adviser—this is after 9/11—Berger was going to the U.S. National Archives to review documents related to testimony he was going to have to give to the 9/11 Commission. And when Berger was reviewing these documents, they were classified—many were top secret. He was stealing them, sticking them down his pants and in his socks, and bringing them to a construction site that was across the street from the National Archives, and then bringing them home and destroying them.

Now, we don’t know for sure what was in the documents that he was stealing, but they all appeared to be the different versions—drafts of—of an after-action report on—on some terrorism activities. And the rumor going around Washington at the time was that this document—the documents he was stealing—they showed that the Clinton administration had the opportunity to kill Osama bin Laden well before 9/11, but they decided not to. Now, that was just a rumor. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it made sense to me because whatever he was trying to protect and destroy and hide, it was something that was obviously very damaging to him and the Clinton administration. That would just make sense to me.

So, at first, what happened was, you know, the—the archivists noticed that some of the folders were coming back, like, not all the documents were in them. So they started marking the documents, and that’s when they caught Berger stealing. Now, originally, he denied it. He lied to the FBI. And normally, that would be an additional crime—that’s obstruction of justice under U.S. laws. It’s a false official statement. And that lie alone would be five years in jail, just—just for a lie to the FBI, for each lie, by the way. But he finally confessed.

And like John Deutch, Berger got off very easily through a plea agreement. Again, this was—you know—the—the plea agreements were—were very lenient in all the cases, as you’ll see. Berger’s was particularly lenient because he again got a fine and a probation. They only—they only took away his security clearance for three years, which is unbelievable. Again, if any rank-and-file person in the executive branch did what Berger did, they would—they would never get a security clearance again, and they would go to jail. But Berger just got a fine and a probation and was actually permitted, after three years, to seek his security clearance returned, which is just, for anyone who’s worked in the executive branch, it’s really unbelievable.

So, that was the second case. Now the third case was another CIA Director, and by the time this case was investigated, I was Chief of our Litigation Division. This was a gentleman by the name of David Petraeus, who was an Army General—high-ranking—who was appointed by President Obama to be, at the time, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

And this is one of the more interesting human-interest stories because Petraeus was having an affair with a woman, who was also his biographer. Her name was Paula Broadwell. Well, Broadwell got jealous of a third woman, who was getting too close to Petraeus for her comfort, and she started sending anonymous, threatening emails to this woman.

The woman reported it to the FBI, who traced the IP address back to Broadwell’s house, and they raided her house. When they raided the house, they found classified information that Petraeus had given to Broadwell when she was writing the book on Petraeus. So they went and interviewed Petraeus. The FBI asked him if he had provided classified information to her, and he lied.

Again, that would normally be obstruction of justice—false official statement. That’s a five-year penalty under American law, putting aside even the mishandling of the classified information, which is double that. So the FBI ended up doing a thorough investigation in Petraeus’s case—more thorough than any of the other cases. But, at the end of the day, our Department of Justice is still responsible for charging decisions.

And they did the same thing in Berger’s case, the same thing in—in the case of John Deutch—they did a very lenient plea agreement, and they permitted him to plead to a misdemeanor, you know, a low-level crime. And they didn’t even document the classified information—they just generically described it—and he got a fine and probation. By all appearances, Petraeus even maintained his security clearance because he continued to be an informal adviser to President Obama, even after he resigned from the CIA.

So that’s the—the—the first three cases in U.S. history. Now the last one is the most famous, the most infamous, the one that just about everyone in the United States recognizes—and perhaps the world—and that was Hillary Clinton’s case. When Clinton was the Secretary of State—the top diplomat for the United States—she had arranged for all of her work emails to be stored on a server in her own home. And that server was, in government parlance, not secure.

Now, of course, being the Secretary of State, recall that one of the categories of information that’s eligible to be classified is information that pertains to the foreign affairs of the United States. While Clinton was the top diplomat for the United States, anyone working in the executive branch would know that her emails would absolutely contain classified information and should not be stored on an unsecured server in her home. But that’s what Clinton did.

By the time it came to light, she had over 60,000 emails on these servers. As it turned out, 30,000 of them were government documents that she had basically stolen from the government. So, there was a classification review of all the emails to determine which contained classified information. I participated in that classification review. I’m one of the few people to have read the fabled Clinton emails. And I always point out—I am not suicidal. I love myself. And I mention that because a lot of people around the Clintons have ended up having premature deaths.

So, the result of the classification review was that a little over 100 of the emails were found to contain classified information, and about a dozen of those were at the top secret level—again, the highest level of classified information. Now, that’s what came out in the public. But, having participated in the classification review, I can tell you that there were actually thousands of classified emails, likely. What I saw in the process was the State Department was purposefully downgrading the decisions they were making—either they didn’t want to be embarrassed, or they didn’t want Clinton to be embarrassed, or they were trying to protect her. I can’t really speak to their motivations, but I can say that that was my observation—that they were purposefully not classifying some documents that should have been classified.

And all you’d have to do is look at the numbers to know that. I mean, over 30,000 emails from the Secretary of State or to the Secretary of State—anyone working in government would know that it would be a lot more than 100 or so that were classified. That would come out to, like, .33 percent—one third of one percent were classified. Yeah, no way. It had to be higher than that.

In fact, after the Clinton case, the FBI Director gave a public testimony. He had a press conference during which he said there were over 2,000 emails that were “up-classified.” That’s the term he used. I had never heard this term before, and I worked with classified information every day for 25 years. But he said over 2,000 were “up-classified,” meaning they weren’t classified when they were sent, but they were found to be classified later, when they were reviewed. My sense is all of those documents were probably classified when they were sent.

Now, the Clinton investigation was not a real investigation. Everything was done voluntarily—there were no subpoenas, no search warrants. The FBI actually permitted Clinton’s private lawyers to review her hard drive. They never seized it. They never reviewed the documents themselves—they just let Clinton’s lawyers do the searches. When they had an open criminal investigation—there’s only one other case in U.S. history that I know of where that’s happened, and that was Joe Biden’s case, which I’ll get to later.

So, the investigation was not a true investigation. And, at the end of it, Clinton was charged with nothing. The FBI Director described her conduct as extremely careless, but not grossly negligent. I don’t see how any reasonable person could not see those descriptions as synonymous. Extremely careless is grossly negligent, and gross negligence in the handling of classified information, as I covered, is a crime under the Espionage Act.

So, there’s no doubt that Clinton violated the criminal law. But she was being investigated by the Obama administration, and she was also a candidate for President in the United States at the time—for the Democratic Party. And so that’s why I say you can’t—you can’t analyze any of these historical cases without examining the politics. And you had the Democratic administration investigating the Democratic candidate for President, who was also a Democratic appointee by the same President to be the Secretary of State. So it is perhaps—it’s disappointing, but perhaps not surprising that a real investigation was not conducted. And so Clinton was charged with nothing.

So, in all four of those historical precedents, all four of them were high-ranking Democrats. All four of them were treated very leniently by the Department of Justice, where they either got a slap on the wrist, or, in Clinton’s case, you know, they got nothing at all.

Those are the historical precedents. And I’ll tell your viewers, I go into great—a lot more detail in the book because I—I’ve done all the research on the cases, and I’ve worked on most of them. And—and each one of them has human interest stories, so I think they make for interesting reading. And—and they’re fascinating cases.

Brian Gerrish:
Thank you very much for that very concise run-through. I—I just want to make a—a comment, which is, as I was reading the book, and I’m—I’m reading about this very high-level, highly classified material which is being used and abused and goes missing, or it’s put on—on unsecured computers in somebody’s home. My background in the military and the Navy here in the UK, albeit many years ago—now, I was handling confidential, secret, sometimes top-secret material. But even the confidential, which we’ll say is relatively low-level material, the confidential books had to be checked page by page regularly. And, my goodness, if there was a page missing or an update hadn’t been inserted correctly—severe penalties within the military for that.

So, I—I remember, during my military career, a lot of time went into the checking of classified material and—and also the training on how to handle it correctly to ensure that no material went missing. And yet you’re describing a system in a country—America, as far as it’s known within its sort of NATO military allies—is a country which is very, very strong on confidentiality and material, and yet we’ve got such casual treatment to this material by people in very high positions of power and influence. High positions, and nothing is happening to them. This—this does seem rather strange as to, you know, as to why this is taking place.

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Can you imagine if back when you were serving—and, by the way, thank you for your service—if you had been caught with 300 classified documents in your house? You’d probably still be in jail.

Brian Gerrish:
I’d still—I’d still be in prison, I think that’s absolutely correct. And—and, of course, immense damage can be done by the leaking or—or—or loss of this sort of material. The one for me is always the Walker brother espionage case in America, because acoustic secrets were handed over to the Russians, which I know made a difference to the conduct of the Cold War within a matter of, I’d certainly say, a year. And so this is the reason that material has to be carefully looked after. But very—a very casual system operating at high level, and questions need to be asked.

Joseph B. Sweeney:
So, in America, we’re very fond of saying that no one is above the law, you know, “No one is above the law in America.” Well, our history shows something different. You know, no justice system is perfect, and I say this in my book: no system is perfect, because it’s implemented by humans, and we are all imperfect. So any justice system is going to have strengths and weaknesses. And we have a good justice system, but it is not perfect. And there are, in fact, people—and my book shows this—who are above the law. You know, there’s the old saying that rank has its privileges, and these senior people are absolutely treated differently. At least—at least, when they were high-ranking Democrats.

And, you know, as we’ll get into, Trump’s case was handled very differently. The disparities in the handling are really quite unbelievable.

Brian Gerrish:
Right. And—and in relation to what happened with Trump, you—you use some words and phrases which I—I thought, yeah, well, this is really interesting because you—you say that—that when the Democrat administration unleashed what it did on Biden, they’d crossed the Rubicon. They’d taken a step which hadn’t been seen before, which is one presidential administration going after another president using the law—and also the invasion of his home. This was something that had never been seen before. So you talk about crossing the Rubicon. You also—I think it’s later on in the book—sort of describe the whole process this was happening in as—as demonstrating that America had become a third-world country, or at least this is what people would expect to see in a third-world country, not in America.

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Yeah, you know, when the raid on Mar-a-Lago was the 8th of August 2022. And I had retired from the CIA in July of ’21, so it was almost exactly a year after I had retired. And because I had worked on three of the four historical precedents, and I was an expert in this area of law and these types of investigations and prosecutions, I was very interested to see how the case was going to proceed.

And I’ve also always been a student of American history—I majored in American history at West Point—and I was just fascinated by this from every angle, because never before in American history had a presidential administration raided the home of a former president. Period. Let alone a former president from the opposing political party and a former president who was the likely candidate to run against the incumbent in an upcoming election. Nothing—nothing even close to this had ever occurred in American history.

And so, I was very anxious to look at the documents. Originally, the Biden administration was fighting transparency, and they were trying very hard to keep the raid affidavit—this is an FBI affidavit that laid out, you know, all the reasons why they were seeking the search warrant—they were trying to keep that off the public record. And they were successful for a while, but eventually, they had to put the document on the public record. It was heavily redacted, but there was still quite a bit that was released.

Now, for background, the part that was released was explaining to the federal judge classification in general—you know, as I did at the beginning of our talk—and then also describing to the federal judge the classified information that is thought to be at issue in the case. I have written hundreds of those types of affidavits to federal judges, and I have supervised the drafting of thousands of such affidavits, so I know what to look for. I know right where to go. And sure enough, I found mistake after mistake after mistake in the FBI affidavit.

They did not even properly state the standard for classification under the executive order, which I don’t think was purposeful on their part—and it gave them no benefit. I think it was just sloppy drafting. But there were other aspects of the affidavit where they were clearly misrepresenting the law to the federal judge.

So, for instance—and I give many examples in my book, but I’ll just give you the big one right now. In the FBI affidavit, they had one sentence that said that information is classified pursuant to executive order. And then they had a lengthy section laying out for the federal judge all the rules for safeguarding, transportation, handling, access—and as I said before, there are many of these rules. They are very strict. But they all flow from executive power.

You wouldn’t know that to read the affidavit—they just said, there are all these rules and laws. Well, all those rules are from the president, and they are directed to the president’s subordinates. But they do not bind the president in any way, shape, or form.

So, for instance, President Biden this weekend could take an entire box of classified information with him to his home in Wilmington, Delaware, bring it to the beach, and hand out top-secret documents to sunbathers. He will have violated no law. Classified information belongs to the president; the president can do whatever he wants with it. Everyone below him has to obey his rules.

So that’s just one example of what I saw in the affidavit. And then, as more documents came to light supporting the raid, the American public saw that there were 30 armed FBI agents that raided the home of the former president. And they were authorized to use deadly force—it’s right in the documents.

So that’s—that’s why I call that, in the book, crossing the Rubicon—because no one had ever done anything like this in American history. And when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon to—to basically, you know, take over Rome, he—he only brought part of his army with him, just part of it. Biden took his entire political party and half the country with him when he crossed the Rubicon. And so you just can’t go back from something like that.

And I was shocked by it, and it started me digging. So I started researching, and with every stone I turned over, I just found more nefarious politics—more malfeasance by the Biden administration. In full disclosure, I don’t belong to a political party. I am independent. And so I had no preconceived notion. I wasn’t trying to beat up the Biden administration or the Democratic Party. But that’s what I found in my research, and that’s what I lay out in the book—that they just bent over backwards at every point to twist laws, to twist regulations, to misrepresent the law and misrepresent the facts to turn Trump’s conduct into something that was criminal when, in fact, he had done nothing wrong.

And then, while I was researching and writing, it came to light that Biden had been caught with classified information—both in his D.C. office, a private office, and in his home. Now, in Biden’s case, the Biden administration kept that a secret for months. No one knew. It was treated—it was treated as if it was national security information, the fact that Biden had classified documents in his personal possession.

Brian Gerrish:
Right.

Joseph B. Sweeney:
So—if you’d like, I could now go into kind of, you know, the details of their conduct—of the cases themselves—unless you have any more questions at this point.

Brian Gerrish:
That—that would be really excellent, Joseph. I’m so glad you just switched there to the Biden affair, because I’m going to say that very, very few people here in the UK, at least, I think, have ever heard that Biden has been in trouble with classified material. And so when I started reading that section in your book, I was absolutely fascinated—not only to understand more about what had happened, but, of course, what it demonstrated to me was sheer hypocrisy of the Biden administration, who had essentially broken rules themselves—serious rules—but then they had—they’d thrown the book at Trump and pretended as if they were completely squeaky clean themselves. So this—this was an amazing story to me. So please go ahead and tell us more about it.

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Sure. What I’ll do is I’ll run through the highlights of Biden’s conduct, and then I will compare that conduct to Trump’s conduct.

First of all, some of Biden’s private lawyers were going through his office in downtown D.C., a private office. This is something called the Penn Biden Center, and they found classified documents. Well, they reported that to the White House, and then it was reported to the National Archives, who—who came and got the documents. But it was kept a secret.

And then, about a month later—two months later—Biden’s private attorneys were searching Biden’s house, and they found more classified documents. Now, this was, again, all kept in secret. So the American public was not informed of this, but they kept finding more stuff. And it finally got to a point where the Biden administration realized that they could no longer contain the fiasco. And so they leaked the story to the press—selectively. And they only leaked selective facts, and I go through all the analysis of the press reporting and how it came to be in my book.

But what they found was that Biden had in his home well over 100 classified documents. Now, we don’t know the total number—the American public has never been given the total number of classified documents that Biden possessed. But we know it was over 100, because I counted them. There’s an appendix in the report that was done. I’ve counted them. But it—you—you can’t do a total because they have some descriptions like “a stack of highly classified note cards.” Well, they don’t tell you how many. There could be 100 in there alone.

So the classified documents Biden had in his home spanned five decades: the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s, 2000s, and 2010s. Right? He had half a century worth of classified documents in his home. Now, these were documents—some of them were from his time in the Senate, and some of them—many of them—were from his time as Vice President. And what he was doing was Biden was plucking classified documents out of the flow of documents that were crossing his desk as Vice President, and he was taking some home.

Biden’s documents were not just in boxes. Some of them were in boxes in his garage. But others were all over his house—all over his house—the first-level den, the third-level den, the foyer, in a grocery bag outside of his bedroom, in his private office, in file cabinets. Some of the files were in Biden’s own personal handwriting.

There is no doubt, to any reasonable person, that Biden would have known that he was maintaining classified documents because they were all over his house—and in his personal library, in his own file folders.

So that’s—that’s the baseline of his conduct: that is willfully retaining classified documents. It’s also grossly negligent in the handling of classified documents. And in the final report that was done, it also laid out that Biden was known to be grossly negligent with classified documents throughout his vice presidency. I go into great detail on this in my book, but—but I’ll just say the people in the executive secretariat around him basically followed him around with a dustpan and a broom, trying to pick up all the classified that he was leaving in many places where it was not supposed to be unsecured.

And he had a known reputation for being grossly negligent and not taking classified information seriously. There were special briefings that were done for him. There were special memorandums that were done for him. And the language in all of these is that you must do this, you must do that, because Biden was not the president. He was the vice president, which means, being below the president, he had to obey all the same rules for storage and handling of classified information as any other member of the executive branch.

So that’s pretty egregious conduct, right? And also, the final report showed that Biden was stealing this classified information for personal financial gain. They actually discovered notes in Biden’s handwriting where, when he was still vice president, he was talking—writing notes to himself—that he was going to write a memoir after he left the vice presidency, which he subsequently did.

And in there, he listed as one of the reasons to write the memoir: income. So he wanted to write a book when he left the vice presidency. And as he was leaving the vice presidency—now, he’d already taken a lot of classified home while he was vice president—but he wanted to take more. He wanted to take highly classified note cards.

So some of his staff started creating binders so he could take classified information home with him for the time he was going to be just a citizen. So that he could write his book to make money. Now, you were in the military, and there were military detailees on Biden’s staff. And you know, and I know, military people take classified information the most seriously, right? They are—because the punishments in the military are the most severe, and it is really drilled into the military people even more so than the civilian side.

And so the military detailees on Biden’s staff—they raised objections. They said this shouldn’t be happening. One of them felt so strongly about it that she drafted a memorandum for the record that basically said—and I’m paraphrasing here—it basically said, “Look, we shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn’t be taking home classified, highly classified information. He’s—he’s—he’s about to become a private citizen.”

And, “I’ve raised this with my manager, and my manager told me this is fine. And I know it’s not fine. And—and I have asked not to be part of any meetings or any actions that involve these note cards that they’re helping Biden to basically steal classified information.” And so this entire memorandum for the record, it’s in the final report. And I have a copy of it on my website. But Biden went right ahead and took those documents home with him.

There’s a lot more detail, of course, in the book, but that’s kind of Biden’s conduct in a nutshell. The guy was stealing classified information for 50 years, and he was doing it, at least in part, for financial gain. You know, what I’ve seen with other senior officials is—it’s also just kind of convenience and laziness. They do—they think they’re above the law, and frankly, in many ways, they are.

And so they—they take things home to work on them and sometimes forget, leave them at home, or they just want it for whatever reason—for reference. But with Biden, it was probably partly that, but also, absolutely, he was doing it for financial gain.

Brian Gerrish:
Joseph, could—could I just come in here with a—with a couple of questions?

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Sure.

Brian Gerrish:
You—you make a particular comment in relation to this—this event, that the National Archives and Records Administration essentially made no comment about what Biden did. And you say, in contrast to what they subsequently said about Trump. Could you explain a little bit more who the National Archives and Records Administration are and what—what—what their sort of power is?

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Sure. In the United States, we have an official person called the Archivist. And that is the national archivist. And—and they—they are the head of a federal agency called NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration. And so they are responsible for preserving America’s history, right, in terms of documents. And one of the big areas is presidential records.

And, you know, my book focuses on the weaponization of DOJ and the FBI against conservatives—and specifically Trump. But it’s more than that, because really, what the Democratic Party in the United States has done is they’ve weaponized the entire executive branch against their political opponents.

Brian Gerrish:
Yes.

Joseph B. Sweeney:
And part of the executive branch is the National Archives. And so I do detailed analysis of how the National Archives treated Biden’s case and Trump’s case. And in Biden’s case, I had to wade through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of releases to the public under the Freedom of Information Act. You can find them—they’re out there—and you’ve got to pan through this—this large stream of information to get to it. And I’ve—I’ve done a lot of Freedom of Information Act work in my time for the government, and so I know where to look.

And what I found amongst this sea of emails that were released by the National Archives were the ones where they were obviously talking about Biden’s case, even though they didn’t come out and say it. And so it was fascinating because they’re—they’re in an email dialogue with Biden’s private attorney. And the archivist is purposely not mentioning any details, so it’s obvious that they’re having phone conversations with details. But they’re being very cautious not to include details in their emails. But there was enough in there that I could see what was going on, because they were—they were handling this, in their own—in—in language they use, with the utmost discretion.

This is when Biden got caught with classified documents originally at his downtown office in D.C. Well, they were handling that with the utmost discretion, in helping the White House to keep it a secret. Now, normally, they would do a press release that would say, “Oh, we, you know, we’ve just gotten some vice-presidential records. It should have been turned over to us six years ago.” And they would inform the public that they’ve got at least something, and that it will be eventually made available to the public. But they didn’t do that in Biden’s case—there was no press release whatsoever.

Now, in the book, I compare that to how Trump was handled by the National Archives, and it was the exact opposite. They were anxious to report every detail that they could. They even twisted the knife in the way they were describing things, with facts that they could not even support. Any opportunity they had to twist facts, twist laws, to go after Trump—that’s what the National Archives did. And they were routinely making press releases.

Because, when Trump left office, his staff packed up his boxes. Now, this was chaotic—truly chaotic—because Trump was still, of course, trying to retain his presidency, right? He had—it looked like he lost the popular vote, but he was definitely going around talking to people, saying, “Hey, are you sure these election results are legitimate?” And so there was total chaos at this time. But his staff was packing up boxes, and they got put on moving trucks, and the boxes went to Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago.

Now, there is no evidence on the public record that Trump knew what was in those boxes. They were packed by staffers. But off they went to Mar-a-Lago. Now, once they’re there, Trump’s attorneys start reviewing some of the documents, and they actually send to the National Archives 15 boxes of documents, because they determined that they were presidential records that should have gone to the archives. So there was some cooperation between Trump’s staff and the National Archives.

Now, you compare that to Biden’s case—Biden never returned any documents to the National Archives. They were all over his house and in his D.C. office, but he didn’t send them to the archives. He kept them. So that’s one data point of comparison.

Now, with Trump’s boxes, there is evidence on the public record that Trump thought they were all his personal papers. There are even emails and text messages, cited in the indictment against Trump, with some of his employees, where they keep referring to, “You know, President Trump wants his papers moved from this place to another place.”

This is in stark contrast to Biden’s case, because there is no doubt that Biden knew he was possessing classified information. There’s no doubt—it was all over his house. And during the investigation of Biden, the FBI discovered audio recordings of Biden talking to his ghostwriter. Now, this is after he left the vice presidency—he’s now a private citizen. He’s working with a ghostwriter to publish the book that he wanted to write for income.

In one of the audio recordings—and this was February of 2017, soon after Biden left the White House—you can hear Biden say, as he’s coming up from the basement, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” Now, in any other case, I can tell you, a prosecutor would call that a taped confession. But not in Biden’s case. They came up with many excuses to let Biden off the hook, despite the fact that they had a taped confession of Biden admitting that he knew there was classified information in his home, and he made no effort to return it—at any time—until much later. Like, five years later, when it finally came out in the public record that he had it in his house. And even then—

Even then, when the FBI finally searched Biden’s house—and this came much later—they found a top-secret notebook. Biden’s private lawyer told the FBI, “You don’t have the consent to take that.” And they actually sent a White House lawyer to Biden’s home to seize evidence and take it from the FBI. Never—never in American history have I heard of an instance where a White House lawyer would insert himself into the chain of custody of a piece of evidence in a criminal case.

Now let me transition from the conduct at issue, right—where you have Biden stealing classified documents for 50 years, as opposed to Trump, who, at the end of his presidency, had boxes packed by his staffers and taken to his house. If you compare the investigations, there are also stark disparities.

One of the biggest disparities, which you mentioned earlier, was that the FBI permitted Biden’s lawyers to search Biden’s homes. Now, this is after classified information had been discovered in Biden’s private office in downtown D.C., and after classified material had been found in his home. The FBI had an open investigation—a criminal investigation. Instead of going to search, they let Biden’s private lawyers search two of Biden’s homes in Delaware before they went and searched.

There’s only one other case in history I know of where something like that has happened, and that was Hillary Clinton’s case, when the FBI permitted Clinton’s attorneys to go through her servers and decide what they were going to provide to the government and what they weren’t.

So, you know, a lot of things were, on the surface, apparent to any reasonable person—that there’s disparity in these cases. As someone with my experience and expertise, I can see the depth of the disparities, the breadth of the disparities, and how devious they were. This was all purposeful. This didn’t happen just by chance—that Biden was given a freebie while they were turning the knife on Trump.

And here’s something most people wouldn’t catch: Biden’s private lawyers did not have security clearances, which means they should not have been permitted to have access to classified material. And yet, they were permitted to search a home where classified documents had already been discovered—while there was an open criminal case. So, by doing that, the FBI and DOJ actually facilitated additional crimes, because Biden’s lawyers—and I would take them at their word—they said they didn’t read classified material when they found it. And I would take them at their word on that. But they should never have had access to it. It’s unlawful for them to even hold those documents in their hands.

And yet, that’s what happened in Biden’s case. And also, in that investigation, there was no legal compulsion—no subpoenas, no search warrants, no grand jury. Everything was done voluntarily, and much of the searches were done by Biden’s own private lawyers.

So that is not typical investigative strategy. Now, when you look at it, you know—at the surface, it’s not a big surprise. It’s the Biden administration investigating Joe Biden. And so they created a process that was not a typical process.

And what they were doing, at the same time—and this really galled me—Biden and his private lawyers, and the White House counsel—every time they talked about this case publicly, they would always emphasize that Biden was “cooperating with the process.” Well, of course, he was. It was a process set up by his own administration to his great benefit—not a typical investigative process in any way, shape, or form.

Now, contrast that with Trump’s case. They moved quickly to legal compulsion—subpoenas, search warrants, grand juries. They even went so far as to take Trump’s private lawyers, haul them before the grand jury, and force them to disclose attorney-client privileged communications. That rarely happens in American jurisprudence. But that’s what they did in Trump’s case.

In contrast, Biden’s private lawyers were permitted to rummage through the crime scenes. They actually collected evidence. They were never questioned. They were not taken before the grand jury. And in the final report, the special counsel even said why. He says, in the final report, “Gee, you know, I—I would have loved to have talked to Biden’s private attorneys about some of this stuff, because they would have probably had some very helpful information. But I couldn’t do that, because I had to respect the attorney-client privilege.”

The exact opposite happened in Trump’s case. They hauled his private attorneys before the grand jury, forced them to disclose otherwise privileged communications, and then they used those privileged communications in the indictment against Trump. So you could not have a larger disparity in terms of how the two investigations were handled.

Once all was said and done, and they had completed their investigation, they indicted Trump. And the indictment against him, for these classified documents, lists 40 felonies. Forty felonies. If you add up the jail time for all those 40 felonies, it’s 140 years in jail.

Now just step back and look at this broadly: Trump didn’t pack his boxes. There’s no evidence—there’s not even an allegation in the indictment—that Trump knew what was in the boxes. There’s no allegation that he packed the boxes. But they went to his home, where these boxes resided for, as of the time of the raid, about 18 months. And the raid netted a little over 100 documents, maybe 130 classified documents.

Eighteen months they were in Trump’s home—no evidence that he knew they were there, no evidence that he packed the boxes, or even knew the pedigree of the documents inside those boxes.

Now contrast that with Biden’s case: Biden was stealing classified information for 50 years—half a century. And he knew that he had it—there’s no doubt—because of the audio recording where he says, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.”

Trump was charged with 40 felonies—adding up to 140 years in jail. Biden? Charged with nothing. That’s the disparity.

I’ve worked on many prosecutions under the Espionage Act in my career. We’ve been talking about mishandling cases—cases where government employees were either grossly negligent or willfully retained classified documents. These were not spies—they weren’t stealing secrets to harm the country. But I have also worked on actual espionage cases—true spy cases—and I discuss two of them in my book, because at the time, they were highly publicized in the U.S. They were major espionage prosecutions.

In those cases, the people were caught stealing secrets to harm the country. And those cases are eligible for the death penalty under the Espionage Act. But even then, those real spies were charged with one felony under the Espionage Act. One.

They didn’t stack the charges by the number of documents. They didn’t do that even with people stealing secrets for foreign governments. But in Trump’s case, they did—they charged him with 32 counts for 32 separate documents. That’s how far the DOJ went to go after him. They literally picked the most sensitive documents and charged him with 32 felonies. We don’t even do that for actual spies. But they did it to Trump.

So, again, the disparities are huge. Not just when you compare the handling of Trump’s case with the historical precedents we discussed, but even when you compare it to actual spy cases—cases where individuals intentionally betrayed the country. And yet, Trump gets 32 felony counts just for documents.

Brian Gerrish:
Joseph, at one point, if I may—because I was extremely interested in this—you say in your description of what was happening to Trump that Speaker Pelosi buried evidence which could have exonerated him. I was fascinated by that comment. Can you tell us more?

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Sure. After the raid on Mar-a-Lago, there were two different federal indictments against Trump. One of them is the classified documents case that we’ve been discussing. The other one was for election interference—relating to the January 6th riot at the Capitol.

Now, Congress was also investigating the January 6th events through the January 6th Committee. And the person who was in charge of security for the Capitol building is the Speaker of the House. At that time, that was Nancy Pelosi. So Pelosi was responsible for Capitol security, and she also controlled the January 6th investigation.

Here’s where things get interesting: Pelosi did something unprecedented. For the first time in American history, she refused to let the minority party—in this case, the Republicans—pick their own representatives on the January 6th Committee. Instead, she herself selected Republicans who were hostile to Trump. So she handpicked the committee. The entire committee was stacked against Trump.

Now, as Speaker of the House, Pelosi had access to key information about Capitol security. And recently, a videotape surfaced—a recording of Pelosi, during the riot, saying to her staff, “This was all my fault.” That’s a huge statement. In American law, that would be considered exculpatory evidence—evidence that tends to prove someone’s innocence.

But that video was buried by Pelosi and the committee. It never came to light during the investigation. That kind of evidence should have been disclosed to everyone who was being held accountable for the events of January 6th, especially Trump. But instead, the evidence was suppressed—another example of how the system was manipulated to target Trump and protect the Democratic leadership.

Brian Gerrish:
Thank you for that. That’s really interesting. I’m smiling here because you describe what’s been happening to Trump as a “medieval siege,” where everything is being thrown at him—including the burning oil. It certainly seems to be the case!

But you also make some very hard statements—you say there was no evidence of Trump colluding with Russia, and you highlight that the Democrats’ poisonous rhetoric towards Trump could have fueled dangerous behavior, even potentially influencing the attempted assassination of key figures. Essentially, you’re warning readers that the political system in America has reached a very dangerous and fractious state, just as George Washington warned.

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Yes. After the raid on Mar-a-Lago, I started digging deeper, and I traced the problems all the way back to Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016. The FBI and DOJ were already weaponized back then, using secret intelligence tools to target Trump’s campaign.

What I found fascinating was that in 2016, at least, they were trying to hide what they were doing. They were operating in the shadows, using intelligence collection methods. But now, with the raid on Mar-a-Lago and the indictments, they’re not hiding it anymore. The DOJ and FBI are openly acting as enforcement arms for the Democratic Party.

And that shift—going from secretive intelligence tools to open lawfare—is critical. In 2016, they were at least trying to cover their tracks. Fast forward to the raid on Mar-a-Lago in 2022, and they’re not even pretending to be impartial anymore. It’s blatant. It’s out in the open. The DOJ and FBI have become instruments of political power, enforcing the will of the Democratic Party.

I started tracing this pattern further. It wasn’t just Trump being targeted—it was anyone around him. And I give examples throughout my book of how people who worked with or supported Trump were harassed, investigated, and prosecuted in ways that didn’t align with how other cases are normally handled. This is part of what I call the weaponization of the executive branch.

And it’s not just law enforcement. It’s the entire executive branch—agencies like the DOJ, FBI, and even the National Archives—being turned into political tools. It’s no longer about justice or fairness. It’s about using the power of the government to go after political opponents. And that is deeply dangerous, not just for Trump or Republicans, but for democracy as a whole.

You know, I’ve always been a student of American history. I studied it at West Point. And as I dug deeper into what’s been happening, I was reminded of George Washington’s farewell address. In 1796, Washington warned about the dangers of political factionalism—what he called the “baneful effects of the spirit of party.” He warned that, if left unchecked, partisan passions would divide the country and destroy national unity.

And what’s happening now is exactly what Washington feared. Back in his time, political passion was spread through town square speeches or pamphlets. Today, we have 24/7 news channels, social media, and smartphones. The political rhetoric is inescapable, amplified, and magnified. People are being fed hatred and anger every single day.

I call it Trump Derangement Syndrome—TDS. It comes in levels, and most of the people I know have level five TDS. They’ve bought into the narrative that Trump is an existential threat to democracy—that he’s the new Hitler, that his presidency was a disaster. None of these things align with reality. Trump was president for four years, and the Republic survived. In fact, by many measures, we did better under him than we’ve done in the last four years. But that doesn’t matter to people who have been conditioned to hate him.

And here’s the scary part: once people buy into an absurdity, as Voltaire warned, they can be led to commit atrocities. That’s what I’ve seen happen in my country. People have come to believe the most absurd things about Trump and his supporters. And now, they’re willing to justify or support acts of tyranny, as long as they believe it will hurt Trump or his allies.

Brian Gerrish:
Yes. And we’ve seen something very similar here in the UK. It’s not quite the same, but we’ve seen devious activities involving the Metropolitan Police and elements of the intelligence services—working to protect those in power from accountability. Crimes committed by people in high office have been buried, while ordinary citizens face harsh penalties. So it’s not just America—it’s happening here too. And I agree with you: if this isn’t addressed, the consequences will be very serious.

What stands out in your book is your call for ordinary citizens to act. You’re saying that change won’t come from within these institutions—it has to come from the public. It’s up to the people to hold the Department of Justice, the CIA, and other agencies accountable, and demand reform.

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Absolutely. That’s exactly right. No system of justice is perfect. Every system has strengths and weaknesses because it’s run by people, and people are imperfect. But the only way to make real change is for citizens to demand it.

The DOJ, CIA, and FBI aren’t going to fix themselves. They’re entrenched bureaucracies. Change will only happen if the public speaks up—if people are willing to stand up and hold these institutions accountable. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary. And it’s not just about Trump or Biden—it’s about preserving the integrity of our entire system of government.

Brian Gerrish:
Joseph B. Sweeney, thank you so much for joining me. This has been a fascinating discussion. And I want to tell our audience—please, get hold of a copy of Dangerous Injustice. It’s an incredible book, filled with firsthand insights and detailed analysis. Joseph has lived this—he’s handled these cases and seen the inner workings of the system. It’s a must-read if you want to understand what’s really happening in the United States today.

Before we wrap up, I have one last question for you, Joseph. Your background was as a Ranger—an infantry officer in the Army. That’s a very physical, outdoors role. What made you decide to leave that behind and move into a career dealing with law and paperwork?

Joseph B. Sweeney:
Well, as an infantry officer, all the fun happens when you’re a lieutenant. That’s when you’re a platoon leader, down at the tactical level, leading soldiers on the ground. But as you move up in rank, you become more of a bureaucrat. You’re dealing with logistics, planning, and administration. It’s not the same as being on the front lines.

I fought to stay with my platoon for as long as I could. But eventually, I realized that the bureaucratic side of the Army wasn’t as challenging for me. So I thought, “If I’m going to be a bureaucrat, I might as well find a role that challenges me mentally.” That’s what led me to law school. And after I graduated, I went right back into the government—this time with the CIA.

And let me tell you—working as a lawyer for the CIA was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life. I’ve come closer to getting killed as a CIA lawyer than I ever did as an airborne Ranger. Which is crazy, but true.

Brian Gerrish:
That says it all! Thank you, Joseph, for your time and your insights. It’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. And to our audience, please—get a copy of Dangerous Injustice. You won’t regret it.

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Trump needs to have the right people in the right positions. They need to be as tough as he is and they need to pursue everyone that has weaponized our government against their opponents… US. It will look like Trump is going after political opponents, it’s not that they targeted him that is the issue; it is that they violated laws and the Constitution to do it.

BY 2030, either the USA OR the DNC MUST be ended, BOTH can NOT co-exist now. They (leftards) devolved into bolsheviks again and want to murder everyone except themselves. “legally”.
Choose wisely.

I am afraid you are right. Especially in our foreign policy, we need some consistency. This crap of every 4 or 8 years doing a drastic 180 whenever the other party takes the White House totally undermines building coalitions and alliances necessary to oppose the forces of aggression. The Democrat party of today does not represent the historic and underlying character of the United States of America and only seeks to destroy that and replace it with something more socialist, more fascist and more totalitarian.

What do you expect from a political faction that makes murder a main platform, ya nuclear fall out is a-ok if I can kill my unborn baby.
This crap of every 4 or 8 years doing a drastic 180 whenever the other party takes the White House totally undermines building coalitions and alliances necessary to oppose the forces of aggression.
Nope the diplomats are not not not to set policy, way to easily swayed by NGOs like we saw in Ukraine coup of 2014. Then allow their selected government murder ethnic russians.

All Globalists UN and CFR must Leave America Now