'Hannity' with Donald Trump on NY AG lawsuit, Mar-a-lago raid

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Donald Trump: We were soon going to be energy 'dominant'

Former President Donald Trump sits down with Sean Hannity to discuss President Biden's energy policies and why America should be energy-independent on 'Hannity.'

This is a rush transcript of "Hannity" on September 21, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: And welcome to HANNITY.

And tonight, we are in beautiful Palm Beach, Florida, broadcasting from Mar-A-Lago, where in just a moment the 45th President of the United States Donald J. Trump, he will join us for his very first sit-down interview since roughly 30 federal agents, guns drawn, stormed through the doors right here in the president's own home, now, in what was obviously an unprecedented raid historically.

But we begin with a few serious questions to everybody watching tonight. Do we have, in America today, equal justice under the law? Do we have equal application of our laws in this country? Do our local, state, and federal officials, do they investigate crimes or prosecute people?

If America's justice system is ever weaponized and politicized beyond repair, this country that we all love, we are in big trouble.

Take a look at New York Attorney General Letitia James. Now, today she filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump and three of his children and other entities, claiming that they inflated the value of the Trump Organization. It is nothing short of a very obvious political stunt. It is not a criminal case. It is a civil case.

But after three years of non-stop obsessive investigations into every aspect of the president's life by Letitia James, she had to do something because during her race for attorney general in the state of New York, she seemed totally, completely uninterested with investigating crimes or keeping New York safe from violent offenders. It's less safe than it's ever been.

Instead, her main campaign pledge was to go after one man, Donald Trump, and Donald Trump's family and Donald Trump's organization. Well, today in front of the entire nation, she fulfilled her campaign promise. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

LETITIA JAMES (D), NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL: I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate president. When our fundamental rights are at stake.

I believe that the president of these United States can be indicted for criminal offenses.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Will you sue him for us?

JAMES: Oh, we are definitely going to sue him. We're going to be a real pain in the (EXPLETIVE DELETED). He's going to know my name personally.

That man of the White House who can't go a day without threatening our fundamental rights.

Yes we need to focus on Donald Trump and his abuses. We need to follow his money. We need to find out where he has laundered money. We need to find out whether or not he is engaged in conspiracy.

(EDN VIDEO CLIPS)

HANNITY: Now, is it any number these numbers came out today? The state of New York set a brand-new record for the month of August: 5,838 residents in the state of New York have now switched, in 30 days -- 31 days, their driver's licenses from New York to Florida. That's in one month.

Now, the attorney general isn't even trying to hide her efforts to weaponize justice in New York State. Her conduct is deeply unethical at best.

But she's not alone, you know, from the Trump haters on Capitol Hill, high- ranking deep state bureaucrats in the DOJ, the FBI. Now we have witnessed, going on many years, the 45th president has been the subject of what is non-stop, never-ending legal scrutiny focused not on a specific crime but on the man himself.

Now, this is an intense legal scrutiny that no Democrat has ever faced, no other president has ever faced. For example, for the first time in history, an American president's home was raided by the FBI.

Biden, his main opponent in 2020 -- maybe 2024 -- well, his DOJ is accusing former President Trump of holding on to 103 classified documents after his presidency, and they have 1,100 that were not controversial in any way.

And, by the way, the president can declassify any of these documents -- unlike, for example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she cannot. We'll get to that in a minute.

Still, she stored 110 classified documents on unsecured private servers. Hillary Clinton was never forced to endure a federal raid. She was never charged with any crime.

Now here is James Comey, in his own words, outlined all the classified information that he and his FBI at the time, that they found. And then stating, no reasonable prosecutor would ever bring a case against Clinton.

Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: One hundred and ten emails and 52 email chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent received. Eight of those chains contain information that was top-secret at the time they were sent, 36 of those chains contained secret information at the time. And eight contained confidential information at the time.

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in our handling of very sensitive and highly classified information. Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Now, keep in mind, with what you just heard, 33,000 e-mails on servers and hard drives -- remember nobody had ever heard of something called Bleach Bit. Well, she washed those servers -- those hard drives clean with Bleach Bit. Now, the country knows what it is.

Also, communication devices, they were destroyed with hammers. SIM cards removed from phones and Blackberrys. One set of rules for Trump, another for Hillary Clinton.

Now we see the same thing, by the way, with the Bidens -- Joe Biden and his family. As President Trump was impeached over a routine phone call with Ukraine saying, I hope you're not going to be like your predecessors and abuse the money of my taxpaying fellow Americans.

Well, they accused President Trump at the time of a quid pro quo. They went to an impeachment over that.

Apparently, though, on the other hand, it was perfectly fine, Joe Biden bragging on tape that he literally leveraged $1 billion of your taxpayer dollars to get a prosecutor in Ukraine fired. We find out why, for investigating his son who's making millions with no experience. Is this equal justice?

Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, THEN-U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: We're not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority, you're not the president, the president said -- I said call him. I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars. I said you're not getting the billion, I'm going to be leaving here and I think it was, what, six hours. I look at him and I said, we're leaving in six hours, if the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money. Son of a (EXPLETIVE DELETED) he got fired.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Now the prosecutor Joe wanted, well, is gone. After six hours, the son of a B is gone. When the investigation for his son Hunter, for public corruption, for years has been going on, zero-experience Hunter, that prosecutor was investigating. He went on GMA.

No experience in oil, or gas, or energy, or Ukraine. And he was traveling the world with his father, selling access to the office of then-Vice President Biden, making millions of dollars from Communist China. $150 billion deal there, again, no experience. A Russian oligarch, the former first lady of Moscow, $3.5 million -- Kazakhstan and every corrupt country they could on the face of the Earth.

And then, by the way, he allegedly funneled that money back to the United States. There were issues involving taxes there. Tony Bobulinski told the country that he had -- that he was the "Big Guy." He sat in the meetings, saying were going to give him his percentage, meaning Joe Biden.

And meanwhile, Hunter was on video with the laptop that everybody said three weeks before the 2020 election was Russian disinformation. It wasn't. But there he is smoking crack, soliciting foreign prostitutes and according -- and recording all of it on the laptop that the FBI has now had for years.

Oh, and he also lied on a gun application, lost track of that gun. It ended up in a dumpster near an elementary school. But Hunter's home? His home was never raided. Joe's home, it's never been raided.

We now have all the evidence that one could ever want that Joe Biden knew of, and knowingly profited from, his son's Hunter foreign business dealings. He lied to the country when he said, I've never one time talked to my son about his foreign business dealings.

Now the media mob -- I'll know you're watching tonight, welcome aboard. They won't even ask him about why he lied. All the evidence exists. He did meet many of Hunter Biden's business partners -- foreign business partners.

And according to whistleblowers, we're expecting a lot of them in the coming weeks and months, high-ranking federal officials intends to either slow walk or, in fact, block investigations into these apparent crimes.

So, tonight, I ask the media mob, I know you're watching; I ask the attorney general, Merrick Garland, I know you're watching; I ask FBI Director Wray, I'm sure you're all watching, is this really the America you want? Is this the justice system that the American people deserve where political justice and vengeance is doled out by those in power while others are protected and shielded from prosecution?

Because the pendulum, by the way, I will remind you, it will swing. And right now we are headed down a very dark path.

And I want to be very clear, I'm very clear I'm a conservative. And I would never want in the United States of America, I believe the greatest country God gave man, any Democrat, any socialist to be treated unfairly, not to have equal justice or application of our laws. That would be unconstitutional.

All right. Joining us now for the full hour, the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump.

Mr. President, good to see you.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That was very good job.

HANNITY: OK.

TRUMP: You've done that before.

HANNITY: I have once in a while, but a number of years.

TRUMP: Thank you very much.

HANNITY: So, your whole family, you saw the Leticia James presser.

TRUMP: Terrible, terrible.

HANNITY: OK. What was your reaction?

TRUMP: Well, she campaigned on it four years ago. It was a vicious campaign and she just talked about Trump and we're going to indict him, we're going to get him. She knew nothing about me. I never heard of her.

But I saw this woman, I saw the statements she was putting out without knowing anything. And she said, we're going to get him. Her whole campaign was based on that. And then she came after us. We've been going over this for years.

And I actually thought because our values are really high. The company is great. I built a great company. You take places like this, so many other places that I have like this, frankly. I mean, just among the finest places anywhere in the world.

I actually thought that they would never bring a case, and she brought it. And the reason I thought, because she didn't have a case. I was of the impression she wanted to settle. But I had a problem because how do you pay something, even if it's a small amount of money, if you're not guilty?

This was just a continuation of a witch hunt that began when I came down the escalator at Trump Tower with our -- who would know? Our great future first lady who has done a great job and people love her. But we came down the escalator and it started.

But I'm so proud of what we did. We had the strongest border in the country. We had the biggest tax cuts and regulation cuts. We had the best employment ever in the country. We were energy independent. We did things that nobody ever thought possible.

We would have been energy dominant throughout the world in a very short period of time. Much larger than Russia, much larger than Saudi Arabia put together. We were all set.

And then they came along and they just dismantled that. They wouldn't finish the wall. The wall was completed, the original section was completed. And I said, let's do more. We did more. He could have had that finished in three weeks. And now you have millions and millions of people pouring through.

We had the strongest border in history. And by the way, that included drugs too. We had drugs down 19 percent from what they were the previous year, and 20 percent from what they were that previous year. We were doing great and now the drugs are pouring into our country at a level that nobody has seen. And the people, they're emptying out their prisons --

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: We're going to get to all of these issues.

Let me go back to Leticia James. Did you ever in your life throw out a loan application running the Trump Organization?

TRUMP: Well, you know, we make loans, but I have very little debt. You know --

HANNITY: Here's what I want to tell you what she said today.

TRUMP: And, Sean, I might -- I might add one thing. They demeaned me for years with this stuff. And now they find out I have very little debt, very, very little, a lot of cash. We have a great company. And we have among the best assets anywhere in the world.

What I went through, they were demeaning me, you know, constantly these people. There's something wrong with them. I really believe they hate our country.

HANNITY: I was told that in your financial statements, when you were making a loan application, and you can confirm or -- if you know this or not know this, do you put in a caveat that actually says, "These are our valuations"?

TRUMP: Yes.

HANNITY: Because I don't know a lending institution, a bank, a financial institution that would lend money to anybody and just go by the borrower's estimation of valuation of a particular property. So if you're buying $100 million property and you're putting X, Y, and Z up for leverage, you estimate its value at this, they estimate at this.

TRUMP: Right.

HANNITY: Don't they have a fiduciary responsibility before they give you that amount of money --

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: So what they do --

HANNITY: -- determine what the value is?

TRUMP: -- first of all, these are banks that have the best law firms in the world, the biggest and best and most powerful. They do their own work. They don't rely on us.

But what they do is we have a disclaimer and we put together -- my people put it together. I would look at it and it looked fine. But it's not overly important. What's important is the property. I have the best property.

What happened, Sean, is we have a disclaimer right on the front. And it basically says, you know, get your own people. You're at your own risk. This was done by management. It wasn't done by -- it was done by management. So don't rely on the statement that you're getting.

And it's -- and by the way, it goes on for like a page-and-a-half. It's a very big disclaimer. It's a very powerful disclaimer. It basically says to an institution, you're going to loan money, you have to go out and make sure that, you know, you get your own appraisers, your own lawyers, everything.

These are banks that have the best lawyers in the world, Sean. This is the only -- by the way, they got paid back. Just so you know.

HANNITY: Everything paid back. Nobody got harmed. There was no harm.

TRUMP: I never got a default -- I paid them back because we have a lot of cash. I paid them back. I paid many of them off. I have very little debt. Unbelievably little debt.

HANNITY: You paid the loans off.

TRUMP: Yeah.

HANNITY: So here's -- so there was no harm, no --

TRUMP: No bank --

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: So you told every institution what you believed the valuation is. They have a fiduciary responsibility before they give you $100 million or $200 million or $300 million to buy a property, they have that responsibility to come up with their own valuation because they've got their own bosses and shareholders that they have to answer to.

TRUMP: So they would look at a property like this. I don't even have a mortgage on this property. I don't have a mortgage on most of my properties. You know, I used to read where I was overextended and he had so much money, they borrowed (ph), and I'm saying, what are they talking about?

But and actually the one good thing is people see what a great company I built. I built a great company, a powerful company, a company that's very lowly leveraged with among the best assets anywhere in the world.

I mean, you look at this asset, she has this down as $75 million. I can tell you it's many times that number. She said, oh, he valued it at 75 or whatever it was worth, she valued at 75, what does Letitia James know?

But if I were going -- I don't have a mortgage on this property (ph). If I was going to put a mortgage on this property, the institutions are going to be coming over. They're going to go through comparable properties all over Palm Beach or whatever it is, wherever it may be, Miami.

We have them all over. We have tremendous properties. And, again, we have very little debt.

The debt we did have, it was paid, current. The banks made a lot of money. She's trying to defend banks that got paid off. She's trying to defend banks that had unbelievable legal talent. I will tell you that. They're very good.

HANNITY: You don't -- there's no loan that you can think of where they didn't do their own valuation, their own vetting, their own financial assessment.

All right. Let me move --

TRUMP: By the way, they have people in-house that do it, too.

HANNITY: Right.

TRUMP: But you can't just say, you know, here's a financial statement. But what we do is here's a financial statement but be careful because it may not be accurate. It may be way off.

I mean, we go, I think it's close to page-and-a-half of all of these things. Get your own people. Use your own appraisers. Use your own lawyers. Don't rely on us. And then she sued us.

Now, again, I didn't think this would ever happen because they had no case. I met with them, I actually thought they wanted to settle but I didn't want to settle because how can -- even if I paid a very small amount, you're sort of admitting guilt.

HANNITY: Did she offer you a settlement deal?

TRUMP: I could have -- in my opinion, I could have settled the case.

HANNITY: All right. We are just getting things started. Former President Trump is here for the full hour tonight here at Mar-a-Lago.

When we come back, we're going to ask him about the raid right here at Mar- a-Lago as we continue.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWSBREAK)

HANNITY: Welcome back to HANNITY, reporting tonight from Mar-a-Lago. And here is more of my interview from earlier today with President Donald Trump.

Let's talk about where we are right now. We're at Mar-a-Lago.

TRUMP: Right.

HANNITY: Where were you when you heard that your personal home was being raided? And what did you think?

TRUMP: I was in New Jersey. I got a call in the morning from somebody that's here, you know, a person who works. Sir, the FBI just came in. I said, what? The FBI? Who? And they go, the FBI.

And I said, how many people? Many, many people, sir. Many, many people.

And I couldn't believe it. And they wanted to do it quietly, silently. And I said, what do you mean, silent? They're not silent. Because I watched the way they were so horrible to so many people that you know and that I know that are good people where they just attacked them at the house. And they wanted to do it quietly.

And by 4:00 in the afternoon, we started getting little strange calls like from the group called media, if you've ever heard of them.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: And they said, something strange is happening at Mar-a-Lago. There are people standing at the gates with AK-47s or some kind of a very sophisticated gun. And what's happening at Mar-a-Lago?

And when I heard that, I said, well, let's put out a notice that we were attacked or raided or broken in by the FBI. I couldn't believe it.

HANNITY: They wanted -- they wouldn't allow your lawyers to go with them as they went through --

TRUMP: No.

HANNITY: -- this entire --

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: They wouldn't allow. We sent lawyers to the property.

HANNITY: So here's my question. But you -- they did ask you to turn off your security cameras.

TRUMP: That's right.

HANNITY: But you didn't do it.

TRUMP: That's right.

HANNITY: Will you release those tapes publicly?

TRUMP: Well, they've asked me not to do it because they feel the FBI agents might be in physical harm, in danger because --

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: -- there is a fervor in this country. This country is so tired of this stuff. They're really -- and so they -- so I have not done it.

HANNITY: You could pixel out their faces to protect their identity?

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Yes, I guess they could do that.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: I listened, I said, look, I don't want -- I really believe that most of the people within the FBI, out of the top groups, most of the people of the FBI, they probably voted for Trump. I don't want to have anybody hurt.

But they came on to the site. They wouldn't allow any legal representation or representation. So they go into the rooms like my bedroom, my office. They go into the rooms --

HANNITY: Your wife's closet?

TRUMP: Wife's closet.

HANNITY: Your son's bedroom?

TRUMP: My room. My son's bedroom, yes.

There's a picture of Hunter Biden and Barron Trump. Barron looks so innocent. And Hunter doesn't look so innocent. They said his room was raided but his wasn't. They have a terrible thing.

HANNITY: OK. So --

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: -- they went to a magistrate. Merrick Garland has said -- he came out and he said, I authorized this.

Now what's interesting is they went to a magistrate right here in Florida, a magistrate who had already previously recused himself from a case involving you because of he was prejudiced against you. OK. I understand it was, what, months earlier. Why then didn't he recuse himself in this case?

And then part two of this question is this: They took your passport. They took your medical records. They took your tax records. And probably the scariest part to me, and this is why a broad warrant like this to me would be dangerous, we do have a Fourth Amendment, they also took, what, 500 pages of attorney-client privileged information? Have you gotten that back, by the way?

TRUMP: A lot. I don't know. I really don't know. They took a lot. I think they took my will. I found out yesterday. I said, where is it?

HANNITY: Am I in it?

TRUMP: I think they took my will.

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: That could cause a lot of problems.

HANNITY: No luck.

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: No. That could cause a lot of people -- a lot of problems if that gets published and people that won't be so happy or maybe will be very happy.

(LAUGHTER)

HANNITY: OK.

TRUMP: But no, I think they took my will. No, it's a horrible thing.

HANNITY: But wait a minute. But why, this guy --

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: They shopped. They shopped. They went to a magistrate that hates me, a magistrate that recused himself not long ago on another case because he hated Trump.

He's a Clinton person and an Obama person. And I understand that. But he hated Trump.

And for a smaller case that was less meaningful, he decided to recuse himself. For a very important case for the country, he decided that I'll take this one.

Now, he didn't do it because of his hatred of Trump. I don't know why he hates me, but he hates me. Maybe he doesn't like strong military, low taxes, good education, but he hates me --

HANNITY: He might like $6 a gallon gasoline.

TRUMP: Well, he's got it. He's got it. That's what he's got.

HANNITY: He does, in many places. Let me go through this. Before you left the White House, please explain the process. From my understanding, what I've read, you have the GSA. They pack all the boxes, OK.

Did you pack any boxes?

TRUMP: No. They work together with people in the White House. I don't know how you would classify them. But GSA was involved, that's government services, they're --

HANNITY: Right.

TRUMP: -- fantastic people.

And they packed them (ph) -- and not only that, and they brought them in, along with people in the White House. I don't know who they are, but a lot -- there are a lot of people working in the White House.

They packed them up, but not the clothing, massive amounts of pictures -- you know, they take so many pictures every day and they give you copies of all the stuff. And it's boxes and boxes of pictures, newspaper articles, tremendous -- even kitchen things. You have tremendous amounts of different items, much clothing. I mean, shirts and everything, sports gear. So, all of this stuff.

Now, just to show you, there are many pictures of this stuff standing on the sidewalk outside -- not in the basement. Not in the basement. They're standing outside, I was going to say, like Joe. But I decided not to because I want to be a very nice person.

HANNITY: And be magnanimous.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: But this is -- Sean, standing outside, boxes, all this stuff (ph) getting ready to be put, by the GSA I assume, into a truck and brought down to Palm Beach. There was nothing that was hiding.

And if you look at the Presidential Records Act, this was what happens. You get together with GSA -- now, you have to understand, they bring it down.

But NARA and you talk, and you work, and you negotiate. I mean, they did it -- it's not that old, I think in the 1970s -- exactly for this. And we were having very nice discussions, no problem. And then, all of a sudden, we got hit very hard by the FBI.

HANNITY: Let's backtrack a little. In January of this year, the National Archives Record Administration, I guess they had been negotiating or --

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Yes.

HANNITY: -- they came and got 15 boxes. My understanding is that they sent you a letter thanking you and your team for their cooperation.

TRUMP: They actually thanked us, yes.

HANNITY: They thanked you. OK. Then in -- so at that point, what was your involvement in the process? Did you have (ph) --

TRUMP: Not much of an involvement other than we had boxes, and again, many of these boxes had other things. You know, many, many newspapers, literally massive amounts of newspapers and pictures. But there were a lot of boxes for a lot of different things.

But they actually wrote a letter, thank you very much for your cooperation, effectively. And we were doing that, which is exactly what we're supposed to do, based on the Presidential Records Act. And Sean, we were doing that. And we continued to do it, and then we got hit by -- we got -- it was really a break-in by the FBI --

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: Is it because it was so voluminous the number of papers that --

TRUMP: Well, it was out, we have pictures of it. Actually, we have pictures of it, pretty much -- I think many pictures of people -- I think they were GSA, mostly people -- some people in the White House standing outside of the White House.

Other people were coming up and taking pictures. If we wanted to do this, we'd do it through the basement, and we wouldn't let anybody take pictures. We had nothing to hide.

HANNITY: Did you ever at any point deny any access from anyone in the national -- from NARA, or from the DOJ or the FBI access? Because in June there were, my understanding is, the DOJ, the FBI guys were here. And they saw a remaining 10 boxes which they ended up taking in the raid. And a couple days later they asked you and your team to put a padlock on it.

TRUMP: Yeah.

HANNITY: And that day, were they free to take those documents with them? Was there any disagreement about that?

TRUMP: When you said access, I'm sure they asked for access per say.

HANNITY: They were shown the boxes.

TRUMP: I thought -- I thought we were having a very good conversation even when they went downstairs, the attorneys went downstairs, I showed them the room, showed them the boxes.

I thought it was a very routine thing. And again if you look at the law or the act or whatever the Presidential Records Act, it basically said everything that we were doing we should be doing. We can talk to `em.

Now when they're here, we could do lots of things. I think we had good security. We had, as you know, we had tremendous Secret Service, they are unbelievable people and they're all over Mar-a-Lago as happens to a former President, et cetera, et cetera. I hate to use the word former because I have a lot of problems with what happened.

But the fact is -- and we wouldn't be having all these problems that we have right now, by the way, with Ukraine and Russia talking about nuclear weapons now.

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: I want to get to all of this.

TRUMP: And all of that because what's happening in the world is horrible. But we had good discussion as per the whole Records Act -- Presidential Records Act. And then, all of a sudden, we were suppressed. I was very surprised.

By the way, if we don't have good discussion, if you can't agree with them, it is like a process that you go through. And I think that the president predominates in the end. It's his choice in the end.

HANNITY: Let me stop here. I started this show with a monologue.

TRUMP: Yeah.

HANNITY: In that monologue I pointed out Hillary Clinton which is I guess the closest case in modern history that this mirrors your case, except hers were electronic. And you heard Jim Comey, I just played it, you know, top secret, classified information on her server, they got all these e-mail chains. And then we have the deleted e-mails, the Bleach Bit of the other 33,000 e-mails. The hammers, the devices, the SIM cards, all those things that I mentioned.

TRUMP: Right.

HANNITY: So we have a similar case. And then you heard James Comey say, no prosecutor would ever prosecute. But they're threatening to prosecute you.

What is the difference between what you're describing with having -- they found, apparently, 101 top -- classified documents in the boxes that they found.

They found 11,000 pages that weren't classified that you had (ph).

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Sean, we don't know what they found because they wouldn't let any representative, they had our lawyers, it was 100 degrees out, they had our lawyers standing outside, not even allowing them into a building where they had air conditioning. It's a big complex.

And you had 100 -- you had a lot of people here, I don't know how many, but you had a lot of people. They wouldn't let anyone inside. And, you know, if you look at NARA and if you look at the FBI over the last 10, 15 years, and if you look at all of the things that the Justice Department what's taken place. When you look at what took place with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax -- Sean, they spied on my campaign, what could be worse?

Could you imagine -- take Obama, if we spied on his campaign, it would probably be death sentence. They spied on my campaign even when I was in the White House. And who would think that this is possible?

But they spied, so -- you know, we're not dealing with a lot of trust here. And the public isn't either. The American public is really angry.

HANNITY: So then this is a big part of what I want to get in to. And that is, OK, I mentioned, for example, 33,000 deleted e-mails. We talked about Hunter Biden's laptop. We talked about in that laptop, Joe Biden is implicated many times by his own son. He didn't want to pay all dad's bills.

TRUMP: Right.

HANNITY: He didn't want to pay for his repairs. The big guy gets his cut.

Tony Bobulinski confirmed the big guy is Joe Biden. He met with, we now know, about 14 of the foreign business partners, which means he lied during the campaign. You don't see anything happen there.

For three years --

TRUMP: Nothing -- nothing is going to happen there, I don't believe --

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: So, do we have equal justice in the country?

TRUMP: No, we don't, and it's very unfair. It's a very unfair situation.

You mentioned the word "prosecute", I don't think prosecute -- I don't know that this is prosecutable. Under the Presidential Records Act, there's no retribution or prosecution. You're supposed to negotiate.

We're talking about documents. We're talking about documents that actually are being watched over to a certain extent, and I would say to a large extent by the Secret Service, if you think about it. But I can't imagine the word -- you mentioned the word prosecution, I don't hear the word prosecution --

HANNITY: No, I'm saying they didn't prosecute them.

TRUMP: No, no, but I don't see how they could prosecute me. How do you prosecute somebody --

HANNITY: But they didn't raid their homes.

TRUMP: No, they didn't --

HANNITY: They raided this home.

TRUMP: They certainly didn't raid their homes. They certainly didn't raid their homes.

And when Hillary broke them up -- broke up all her phones with the hammers and they did the Bleach Bit, all the things that happened were incredible. Well, you could also say 33 million documents or pages with President Obama. That's very questionable. Thirty-three million, not 33,000. Happens to be a similar number, 33 million, they're fighting over `em or arguing over `em.

The problem that you have is they go into rooms -- they won't let anybody near -- they wouldn't even let them in the same building. Did they drop anything on those piles? Or did they do it later? There's no chain of custody here with them.

HANNITY: Wouldn't that be on videotape, potentially?

TRUMP: No, I don't think so. I mean, they were in a room.

HANNITY: OK, so let me ask you this question. Because I think this is the next logical question, because the president of the United States, you unlike say, Hillary Clinton in her case --

TRUMP: Right.

HANNITY: -- a president has the power to declassify.

TRUMP: Correct.

HANNITY: OK. You have said on Truth Social a number of times you did declassify --

TRUMP: I did declassify.

HANNITY: OK. Is there a process -- what was your process to declassify?

TRUMP: There doesn't have to be a process, as I understand it. You know, there's -- different people say different things, but as I understand there doesn't have to be.

If you're the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, it's declassified. Even by thinking about it, because you're sending it to Mar-a-Lago or to wherever you're sending it.

And there doesn't have to be a process. There can be a process, but there doesn't have to be. You're the president, you make that decision. So when you send it, it's declassified. We -- I declassified everything.

Now, I declassified things, and we were having a lot of problems with NARA. You know, NARA is a radical left group of people running that thing, and when you send documents over there, I would say there's a very good chance that a lot of those documents will never be seen again.

There's also a lot of speculation because of what they did, the severity of the FBI coming and raiding Mar-a-Lago. Were they looking for the Hillary Clinton e-mails that were deleted but they are around someplace. Or were they looking for the spying on Trump's --

HANNITY: Wait, wait, you're not saying you had it --

TRUMP: -- no, no, they may be saying -- they may have thought that it was in there.

HANNITY: That you did. OK.

TRUMP: And a lot of people said the only thing that would give the kind of severity that they showed by actually coming in and raiding with many, many people, is the Hillary Clinton deal, the Russia, Russia, Russia stuff or -- I mean, there are a number of things. They're spying on Trump's campaign, so they spied on my campaign.

So why did they come in and do that? Especially since we were having such great conversations, Sean?

HANNITY: All right, so let me go -- you mentioned Russia a number of times, let's talk about that. Andrew McCabe, deputy FBI director --

TRUMP: Yes.

HANNITY: -- famously said, without Hillary's bought and paid for dossier - - now remember, she used her money and DNC money.

TRUMP: Right.

HANNITY: She funneled it to a law firm. Law firm hires Fusion GPS an op- research firm. It was in 2016. They then hired Christopher Steele, former MI6. Christopher Steele's main source is a guy by the name of Danchenko.

TRUMP: Right.

HANNITY: He's now on trial for lying to the FBI.

We know. And we've been able to confirm and report it, widely believed. First of all, media you all got it wrong on the Russia issue. My show got it right.

TRUMP: Full of surprises, should be returned.

HANNITY: Yes, I'll take it.

TRUMP: They have -- they are 100 percent wrong. They got it wrong.

HANNITY: They got it wrong, and this is important because this dragged this country through hell for three years and I am -- with us ensemble cast. We -- I think you were watching some of the coverage.

So, my -- my next question is, if in fact they couldn't get the -- they couldn't get the FISA warrant according to Andrew McCabe without Hillary's dossier, they ruined Carter Page's life and then because there was a connection to you that was a backdoor to your campaign, your transition team, and your presidency.

Here's my question, Danchenko was the source for Christopher Steele.

TRUMP: Uh-huh.

HANNITY: He told the FBI in January of 2017 that, in fact, it was all total B.S., bar talk, not true, none of it. Then a few months later, he's on the FBI's payroll.

TRUMP: Yes.

HANNITY: And yet, they used his words as the source to spy on you as a president and candidate.

TRUMP: He was on the payroll and another very high up in the FBI was working with the Mueller camp. Think of this, with the Mueller witch hunt, another one of the witch hunts, at least I tell you what, we've shown the people of this country there is such corruption whether it be elections, whether it be open borders, whether it be the kind of things we're talking about right now.

The corruption is unbelievable. They have a high man in the FBI and I think they just perp walked him out of the building a couple of weeks ago, right, when they found it.

They were paying -- he was in charge of -- think of this, he was in charge of for Mueller, for the Mueller group of 18 radical left Democrat haters who said no collusion, there was collusion after two years.

But he was in charge, he worked for the FBI. They walked him out of the building. They walked him out. They got rid of him.

But how is that fair to me?

So when somebody says like you're not very trusting of the FBI, there have to be changes made, Sean, because our country is sick. Our country has so many problems right now. Our country is sick. We really have a country that's going downhill and it's going downhill.

You know, I say --

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: I have to get to all of that.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: -- when I give rallies, I'll say we have a failing country. But I say we have a -- we have a country in decline, it's a country in decline --

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: I watched your rally in Ohio.

TRUMP: Yeah.

HANNITY: I watched the one in Pennsylvania and I want to ask you about that.

This is the last question on this topic. And that was in court yesterday.

TRUMP: Yeah.

HANNITY: It was about the issue of whether or not you can declassify. First of all, I don't know why -- why did anyone want -- why did you approve a special master that signed one of the FISA warrants? That was surprising.

TRUMP: Well, the lawyers had a lot -- I didn't know any of the people involved. But, you know, if you look at it, he was stung badly by that because the FBI lied to him and the people in the Justice Department lied to him.

So, if you think about it, yes, he approved it and he got stung very, very badly by that. So, you know, we'll see --

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: So your lawyers argued yesterday that they need to see the documents to be able to answer whether they were declassified or not. And the special master is saying, well, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Who's right?

TRUMP: Well, I think the lawyers, you know, are saying something. But I declassified the documents when they left the White House. In other words, when they left the White House, they were declassified.

HANNITY: And when we come back, Donald Trump will weigh in on Biden's disastrous policies. He'll tell us all about it, straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: Welcome back to HANNITY reporting from Palm Beach in Mar-a-Lago.

So, I asked President Donald Trump to weigh on Biden's policy failures.

Let's take a look.

When you left the presidency, gas was two dollars and like, twenty cents a gallon. It's now doubled --

TRUMP: Well, actually, you have to go back to the date of the election. If you go back to November 3rd -- don't go back to January 20th.

HANNITY: I think it was $1.90 --

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Go to November (ph). It was -- it was less than $2, but --

HANNITY: Yeah.

TRUMP: -- during that period it was $1.87, and during that period, it was also $1.50. We had gasoline. I mean, it was incredible what was happening.

HANNITY: So, our borders were secure, gas was cheap, energy was cheap. You leave office, the Consumer Price Index, the inflation measure, is, what, 1.4 percent. Now, we're, what, seven months in a row at 8.4 percent --

TRUMP: It could have been much higher, soon as the election's over, they're artificially -- I filled up the strategic reserves when oil was cheap. I bought 75 million barrels at a very, very cheap price. Filled it all up right to the top, first time it happened in 50 years where it was filled to the top. And they've taken that, and they're giving it to people. It's supposed to be meant for war and for the military.

HANNITY: Right.

TRUMP: They're giving it to people to keep the oil prices down before an election, that's where it's being used. When the election is over, gasoline will go through the roof.

HANNITY: All right.

TRUMP: And so will your heating bills, so will your electric bills.

HANNITY: But the thing about it, I mean, what puzzles me and maybe you can answer it. I can't figure it out for myself. But OK, we have more energy resources, hundreds and hundreds of years of natural gas and oil, and coal in this country. You got us to energy independence. That was the first time in 75 years. You left office. We were a net exporter of energy.

TRUMP: Right.

HANNITY: I would argue, especially in light of Putin cutting off Western Europe, that we should be -- you used the word dominant -- we should be energy dominant and providing Western Europe with their energy needs.

TRUMP: We were soon going to be dominant. We would have been the most dominant in the world. We would have been supplying all of Europe.

HANNITY: We'd be rich too.

TRUMP: We would have been supplying China. We would have been supplying every -- we had 500 years right under our feet.

HANNITY: Yes. OK. So Western Europe makes the mistake that I think we're about to make. And that is they gave into the climate alarmists religious cult, I call it.

TRUMP: Right.

HANNITY: And they became dependent on Vladimir Putin, hostile actor, hostile regime, you knew him well. And as a result, Germany, it was announced yesterday and Italy, so dependent -- 174 percent increase in their heating bills anticipated this year.

TRUMP: Which I said would happen.

HANNITY: Thirty percent of people's yearly income will go to heat people's homes. There are real reports and fear that people will die and freeze to death in Europe this winter because Putin has cut them off.

TRUMP: It's true.

HANNITY: So we have all these resources. Explain this to me, why is it OK to get oil from Iran? Biden is trying to make a deal. And by the way, last year when nobody was looking, he imported a million barrels, 674 million from Russia last year.

He's been begging OPEC to increase production. They reject him every time. The Saudis have rejected him.

TRUMP: Yeah.

HANNITY: He sent an emissary to Venezuela. Why would we ever make those countries wealthy and rely on them for the life blood of our economy especially in light of what we've seen in Western Europe because their dependency problem is now destroying their economies.

TRUMP: So listen to -- it's sort of -- it's not -- to me, it's not complex. We are making Putin rich as he does his war thing. He's making money over and above because it's so expensive barrels of oil right now.

If we ever reduced oil, he's going to have to stop. You don't even have to negotiate. The deal would have never happened. That horrible war where hundreds of thousands of people probably are dead already.

But this would never happen --

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: You believe it wouldn't have happened if you were president, you told me that.

TRUMP: I know it wouldn't have happened.

HANNITY: Tell me why.

TRUMP: I used to talk to him about it because he knew that I was going to take tremendous retribution, or he felt that way, whether it's 10 percent or 5 percent.

HANNITY: Did you tell him in no uncertain terms you would?

TRUMP: I'd rather not say but the answer is yes.

HANNITY: Now, part two of my interview with President Trump that will air tomorrow right here on the Fox News Channel. I will tell you what else we cover, that's straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: It's all the time we have left this evening. As always, thank you for being with us. We're going to have my exclusive interview, the rest of it with President Trump, the 45th president. That's all coming up tomorrow.

We talked about the upcoming midterm elections, Biden's failing economy and what motivates him to want to get back in the game potentially.

So, I hope you'll join us tomorrow night. Please set your DVR. Never miss an episode of HANNITY.

Thank you for making the show possible. In the meantime, let not your heart be troubled. Laura Ingraham and "THE INGRAHAM ANGLE" is next. See you tomorrow night.

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