'Hannity' on testimony Clinton approved Trump-Russia leak

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Clinton campaign manager: Hillary approved Trump-Russia leak

Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett and Trump attorney Alina Habba weigh in on new Durham probe developments on 'Hannity.' 

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," May 20, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

JASON CHAFFETZ, FOX NEWS HOST: Welcome to this special edition of HANNITY. I'm Jason Chaffetz, in for Sean. 

And tonight, crisis after crisis after crisis. The Biden administration is driving this country right off a cliff. 

But we begin in a federal courthouse in Washington, the Washington swamp, where a top Clinton campaign lawyer is now on trial for his role in the Russia collusion hoax. Michael Sussmann is accused of lying to the FBI after allegedly using Russian disinformation to smear Donald Trump to federal agents on behalf of the Clinton campaign. 

And breaking today, former Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook, he testified that Hillary Clinton herself approved the smear campaign, but denied any involvement in Sussmann's efforts to involve the FBI. 

Now, even the world's richest man is tweeting about the case. Elon Musk, he tweeted, quote: I bet most people still don't know that a Clinton campaign lawyer using campaign funds created an elaborate hoax about Trump and Russia. Makes you wonder what else is fake. 

Here now with reaction is FOX News legal analyst Greg Jarrett and someone who is in the courtroom today, attorney to former President Trump, Alina Habba. 

Thank you so much for being here with us tonight. 

Gregg, I want to start with you because oh my goodness, Hillary Clinton personally signed off on this personally. Hillary Clinton herself. 

GREGG JARRETT, FOX NEWS LEGAL ANALYST: She personally approved the scheme to peddle phony collusion information to the media that dropped like a bombshell by her own campaign manager Robbie Mook and it seems so incredibly foolish for the defense of all people who have called Mook to the witness stand. It's fundamental in trying cases never call a witness to the stand that only helps you a little bit because the downside of hurting you tremendously is quite severe. And sure enough, that's what happened. 

I mean, Mook helped a little bit marginally by saying, well, we, the campaign didn't put up Sussmann going to the FBI to lie to them. What the campaign intended is irrelevant. What's material is what Sussmann's intent was. And his intent has already been demonstrated by the evidence and the testimony. He put his lie to the FBI in writing. 

So, now, he's only left with some rather vacuous defenses. He can say, well, the lie was an itsy bitsy lie. That is it wasn't material as required under law. That's nonsense, because the FBI has said, are you kidding? We wouldn't even have the meeting with Sussmann had we known the truth. 

He can also claim the whoops defense. Gee, I didn't intend to lie. I just misspoke made a little bit of a mistake. That's not going to fly either. 

And finally, and he's going to claim I think that the FBI figured out his lie so if they knew, it was a lie, how can that be a genuine lie under the law. That wouldn't normally work in front of a neutral and fair jury. But, you know, Jason, this is Washington. D.C. 

CHAFFETZ: Yeah, it is Washington, D.C. 

And, Alina, you are actually in the courtroom. What was the atmosphere like? How did the jury react? What happened in the atmosphere right there in the courtroom when it was revealed that Hillary Clinton herself approved of this scheme? 

ALINA HABBA, ATTORNEY FOR FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We've all been watching this for days and I plan on being there every single day to make sure I hear every bit of testimony. This was amazing. I never heard so many pens click and start immediately writing. I got reporters asking me for clarification, what did that mean, what did that mean, are they in trouble? And I said, that was very big, that was very big. He just cut it right to the top and thank you very much, Robbie Mook, for what you did today. 

Made it very clear there was a phone call. She paid Fusion GPS through her campaign, through her lawyers and that she was actually told that there were papers provided that had not been verified that she had not -- and they said we had no DNS expertise. We just figured the media would take it and do their own vetting. 

Now, remember the media that they went to was "Slate". It was not "The New York Times". It was not "The Wall Street Journal," which maybe is a little bit more sophisticated. It was "Slate". 

On top of that, this was the same time that she was deleting emails and that she was having her own problems with her servers. So she and her team have an October surprise and this has been a real big theme by the Durham team and it's exactly what happened. And then October 31st, ironically, she retweets Jake Sullivan's tweet that oh my god, cyber security, crimes, Trump has a server with Alfa Bank, complete lie. 

CHAFFETZ: Yeah, yeah. There are a couple of quotes. I want to I want to highlight for everybody here. The first one I think is from Robbie Mook who in his testimony and look at what he said here. He said two or three of the most damaging days of the campaign were caused by Comey, not Trump. 

And the other one is very interesting, and this goes back a few months actually to Hillary Clinton. If the election were on October 27th, I'd be your president, Clinton said, in May of 2017. 

Now I happen to be the chairman of the oversight committee at the time that this happened, Gregg, and the letter from Comey was actually addressed to me and some other members of Congress and I thought about it I looked at it I spent about a half hour with my general counsel looking at it and decided that there was no classified information, that the public had a right to know and I released it. 

And, boy, that sent them scrambling because Comey stepped in it again and gave us this information and we gave it to the public. 

JARRETT: Yeah, this is an attempt by Robbie Mook to inject politics into a case about evidence and the law, to try to unduly influence this pro- Hillary Clinton jury which we discovered during jury selection. And it's also rather disingenuous because Mook's trying to suggest that we would have never gone onto the FBI with the collusion story. 

Well, in fact, declassified documents show that's exactly what they did. Moreover, James Comey you'll recall was Hillary Clinton's BFF on July 5th, 2016. He stood before television cameras and spent about or minutes describing how she violated the law with her email server and then in a complete about-face in the course of 10 seconds, he said, but no reasonable prosecutor would ever bring such a case. Not his job, he's a law enforcement official. He's not a prosecutor. And in the end the Department of Justice spanked him big time for an abuse of power usurping the authority of the attorney general. 

So this is Robbie Mook trying to turn a case about evidence in the law into pure politics for an acquittal. 

CHAFFETZ: Yeah, I actually thought Comey was wrong. He -- for somebody he's not charging to go forward and spend minutes telling him all the places that she broke the law, I got to tell you, honestly, I just think that was fundamentally wrong. 

Nevertheless, Alina, I want to go back to you because it all comes down to these 12 jurors as it relates to Sussmann. What else can you tell us about the atmosphere, how the jurors are reacting to this, how is the prosecutor received? Is he -- is he the right person with the right message? Is it too much about Trump? What -- what's going on there in the courtroom? 

HABBA: Sure. The prosecutor is actually I think doing a, you know, a fantastic job. Durham's team has been very articulate. They went up. They were brief and they had gotten what they needed at that point. 

And, you know, the media and the non-legal entities that were in the room probably didn't follow it as well but he was on top of it. 

What happened with the Sussmann defense was -- they've there's been times that we've seen them become defensive, with Jim Baker, we've seen Berkowitz become very angry and remind Baker that didn't you say Sussmann was your friend? Didn't you say Sussmann was your friend? And try in some ways I think intimidate him and that was because Jim Baker said very clearly that Michael Sussmann, a hundred percent said to me via text and in person, that he was not there for any client. 

And that's really all they need to prove. There's only one count here. The jury is a Washington jury. We are not going to know what is going to happen with them until we see what their verdict is. 

But I do think it's becoming very evident what happened was a hundred percent wrong, they misled, they obstructed justice and the entire FBI was in on it, and the campaign and the DNC. 

CHAFFETZ: Alina Habba, and Gregg Jarrett, thank you so much for joining us tonight on HANNITY. We do appreciate it. 

All right. Despite the mountain of evidence against Sussmann, prosecutors still face an uphill battle in part because of the Clinton donors in the jury pool. 

Here now with more is FOX News contributor and George Washington law professor, Jonathan Turley. 

Professor, thanks so much for joining us here. You've written about this. 

JONATHAN TURLEY, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Thank you. 

CHAFFETZ: I really appreciate your comments on this, but what is it three of the jurors are actually Clinton donors? Why in the world are they sitting in this jury pool? 

TURLEY: Right. Well, it's sort of a bizarre twist when we guarantee you a jury of your peers, we don't mean that if you're a Clinton person you'll be tried by other Clinton people, and you can sort of feel like John Durham might take away the lesson that that's the case in D.C., because, you know, 90 percent of people voted for Hillary Clinton in D.C. And so, the jury pool is going to be naturally heavily weighted in that direction. 

But there is a difference between a Clinton supporter and a Clinton donor. I mean, when you're a donor, it's a much more active role. It's different from just voting for Hillary Clinton. So we have three people who indicated that they are in fact Clinton donors. 

We also have another person who said that she's a donor to AOC, and had to be sort of probed and sort of prodded I should say to say that she was going to be actually impartial. 

And these people very well could be impartial. They could be fair. Certainly Clinton supporters can be fair and impartial jurors. But when you have donors on the jury, it raises real concerns. 

There's also a juror by the way whose daughter plays on a team with Sussmann's daughter and the judge said, I'm going to let that go through as well. So, for John Durham, I think that the impression is that you know short of having Chelsea Clinton on this jury I couldn't be doing much worse in terms of a jury pool. 

Now, having said all of that I don't mean to suggest that these jurors are going to be biased. They very well could be impartial jurors take things very seriously. What is very clear at this point is that the evidence against Sussmann is overwhelming. I mean, Sussmann's text to Baker states very clearly: I am not representing any client and the prosecutors have said, he was and he was billing that time to the Clinton campaign. 

But now that we have this bombshell of Mook saying that Hillary Clinton personally greenlighted this effort these juror connections become more of a concern. They certainly become more magnified because one of the jurors was told by a defense attorney don't worry Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are not on trial here and the jurors said, oh, okay, then I think I really can be impartial. Well, as of Friday Hillary Clinton was very much part of the uh the testimony. 

CHAFFETZ: You've also commented about the difference between the way General Flynn was dealt with and the way this prosecution is going. Can explain to us the difference between the two because the judge is making very different rulings? 

TURLEY: Right. Well, you know, Jason, as you recall, we had a perfectly bizarre situation with Flynn. Judge Emmett Sullivan even in one hearing accused him of basically treason using the flag in the courtroom as a prop, and Sullivan seemed to remove every obstacle from the path of prosecutors. 

Judge Cooper has really been tough on the prosecution. He has narrowed the scope of evidence and of questioning. He's made a number of rulings that the prosecutors have very, very much objected to. And it's sort of like an obstacle course for John Durham in that sense. 

So he's got a tough jury and a very tough judge, and this is in the same courtroom. This is the same courthouse I should say in D.C. and I think people look at those two trials and they say wow this is a really striking and fairly glaring difference. It's the same charge about lying to federal investigators but you couldn't have a greater difference in terms of the optics in terms of these orders. 

CHAFFETZ: Now, when you look at this and you're analyzing again the jury pool it's in Washington, D.C. Do prosecutors make the mistake of overcomplicating it because it is a very simple one-charge case here? 

TURLEY: Well, that's true although it is fascinating to see what happened in the courtroom because the defense had won in narrowing the case. Cooper gave them critical rulings, told Durham that he couldn't bring in this broader context of the Clinton campaign and also the specific data that was generated. They won those fights and then they decided to put Mook on the stand and he became Johnny the human torch right on the stand. 

I mean -- I mean, all of us have had bad experiences in court but few would compare to that. I mean, Hillary Clinton, there's a general rule in Washington that thou shalt not name Hillary Clinton in a scandal if you're a Democrat. And this thing really violated that commandment in D.C. I mean, you have Mook saying that this was raised to her. 

Now, keep in mind that Durham has already documented that the researchers who put together this material said that they didn't think it was -- it would stand up to scrutiny. They said that people could really mock us for what we're saying here. And then Hillary was reportedly told, we really don't have anything clear here, and she green lighted it and they gave it to "Slate". 

And "Slate" ran with it and then we see this familiar pattern, right? They get friendly media to run it and then they respond as if they had nothing to do with it, right? So they then have you have Jake Sullivan and Hillary Clinton tweeting out, wow, look at what "Slate" just reported and at the same time you have associates pushing these claims in the FBI. It's the same pattern on for both the Steele dossier and the Alfa Bank scandal. 

CHAFFETZ: Yeah and you know what it's "Slate" comes out with it and they all report it and they regurgitate it. But suddenly, you have a campaign attorney in a federal courthouse charged with a crime and he's talking about Hillary Clinton and the media are absolutely nowhere in reporting. We're going to talk about that next. 

Jonathan Turley, thank you so much for joining us tonight on HANNITY. 

And while the media has all but ignoring the Sussmann trial, they are suddenly interested in covering hunter Biden didn't they call it Russian disinformation. Joe Concha and Rachel Campos Duffy will join us next. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CHAFFETZ: Now, tonight, we turn to the Hunter Biden saga where there's even more bad news for the Biden family and their nefarious foreign dealings. Even NBC News is now coming to the party and covering the family's shady international pay for play scheme. Watch this. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) 

REPORTER: The president's son and his company brought in about $11 million between 2013 and 2018, including some years in which his father was vice president, working as an attorney, a board member to a Ukrainian gas company accused of bribing a prosecutor and for a joint venture involving a Chinese businessman now accused of fraud, according to an NBC News analysis of a copy of Biden's hard drive and iCloud account as well as documents released by a Senate committee. 

(END VIDEO CLIP) 

CHAFFETZ: Of course, it was the same NBC News and the same far-left news outlets that falsely claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation all to cover for Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election. Remember, the Hunter laptop scandal is also a media scandal, big tech, left-wing journalists and all their allies in between colluded to censor the story, all to protect you guessed it Democrats. 

Here now with reaction to both this story and the Michael Sussman trial, FOX News contributor Joe Concha and "FOX and Friends Weekend" co-host and a personal favorite, Rachel Campos-Duffy. 

Thank you both for joining us tonight on HANNITY. 

Joe , I got to go -- Rachel's my favorite but I'm going to you first, Joe, because you cover this, you understand this. We got two things going on here. It's not even close, Joe, don't even try to dispute the judge's findings here on who's the favorite. 

But, Joe, tell us -- I mean, the NBC News, what, NBC news is what you're a year and a half late? I mean, come on. 

JOE CONCHA, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Oh, to quote the great John McClane, Jason, welcome to the party pal, right? "New York Times" now, "Washington Post", NBC News, joining this party, just a little bit late as in 20 months after "The New York Post" and their report on this story got laughed out of the room by all these news organizations and those who work for him and as you said social media suppressing the story, locking people out of their accounts just for sharing it. 

And Jonathan Turley said it best earlier, not with you, he's been on often tonight, but with Bret Baier, he said that this is the most successful disinformation campaign in American political history, right, when we're talking about the Sussmann trial. 

But when you go back to Hunter Biden and you consider that a presidency was hijacked for the better part of three years by an elaborate lie pushed by the Clinton campaign and bought hook, line, sinker by the FBI and intelligence agencies because they wanted to believe it, right? 

And by the way, Robbie Mook who somehow served as Hillary Clinton's campaign manager is perhaps either the most arrogant or stupid person in American politics by openly admitting under oath that they leaked this BS story to the press around Sussmann and his boss Hillary Clinton signed off on it. It's genius. What a gift to John Durham and the only question now is what did Hillary Clinton know, Jason, and when did she know it? 

CHAFFETZ: Well, she -- you know, Robbie Mook, the campaign manager saying she greenlit it. But Rachel, we have the Sussman trial going on and I tell you, you can go to the websites of some of the others out there, MSNBC, CNN, whatever, there is not a peep about a trial. It's a criminal trial about Hillary Clinton's, you know, attorney and you have the campaign manager saying Hillary Clinton personally signed off on it and they didn't even write a story about it. 

RACHEL CAMPOS SUFFY, CO-HOST OF "FOX & FRIENDS WEEKEND": Yeah, it's so typical of the media but look, look at what happened with the Hunter Biden laptop,. it's finally catching up and I'll tell you what's catching up to them because they don't really want to tell the story about hunter Biden just like they didn't want to tell it a year and a half ago. So why are they doing it? The numbers are cratering. 

Let me give you an example. The Hispanic numbers have absolutely created they can't ignore it anymore, and the Hunter Biden story is actually a story with Hispanics. I know everyone's focusing on the economy and jobs and, of course, that's a big thing with Hispanics. But Hispanics also know what shamelessly corrupt government looks like. That's why they left those countries. 

And the story of Hunter Biden is so corrupt, it's so grotesque, it's so disgusting, they recognize it right away, the Biden family are the Castro families -- are just like the Castro family, they're just like the Maduro families. They are the Fidel Castros and the Maduros of the American politics. 

And, you know, Hispanics are looking at this crappy economy and they're looking at this third world banana republic corruption and they're going, I don't like this. This is -- this is the same kind of dysfunction I saw in the country I left. So, yeah, the media can't ignore this anymore. 

And back to Hillary really quick, I think the American people absolutely want to see how far this goes up the food chain. This net ought to ensnare her and you're right with this Robbie Mook admission on the stand is going to change the game and may actually force the media to do what they don't want to do, which is to talk about the story. 

CHAFFETZ: Joe, let's go back to this uh this assessment trial. I mean, this is a federal trial, federal charges criminal trial -- how in the world can the media what excuse did they possibly have? That there's not enough space on the internet? I mean, what excuse do they have for not running this story? 

CONCHA: Yeah. There's finite space on the Internet. So you can't say, well, we ran out of time or we ran out of space in the newspaper. So, that's an excellent point. 

Look, you would think that this would be a big story considering how big now it is getting given the Mook admission and now saying that, yeah, Hillary Clinton absolutely signed off on this she knew about it. But again, I think this is what proves why the American press is so distrusted, Jason. 

When you think about back in after Watergate, three quarters of the country actually trusted the media, trusted the press or those days of Cronkite and Mudd and so on. And now, it's at an all-time low because we have journalists that have become activists, right? It has shifted completely and as a result, the bias omission is now rearing its ugly head. It is -- it is an insidious kind of bias because now, you're not reporting what people should hear and as you said on those other cable news networks and on the national news networks, the evening news, this is barely being mentioned because they just hope that it goes away, and if there's a Washington jury as you talked about, maybe somehow Sussmann does get off despite overwhelming evidence that he shouldn't. 

It's a shame and it's why so many people are angry about the swamp and the way it operates because people keep doing bad things and they keep getting rewarded for it like James Comey, who got a mini-series after he was fired from the FBI, got two books. John Brennan who's like the Joy Behar of cable news, once the head of the CIA, now he's on NBC talking about ethics. James Clapper, director of national intelligence, now with CNN talking about how horrible Donald Trump is. 

So that's the way it goes. You do bad things, you get rewarded, you're Sussmann, you probably get off because that's the way the swamp works, Jason. 

CHAFFETZ: Yeah, I mean this jury poll with three Clinton donors and one of the jurists -- their daughter plays on the same team as the person who's on trial and somehow the judge allows that to move forward. That is just unbelievable to me. 

Rachel, last comments on both the Hunter Biden and the Sussmann trial and the total lack of coverage that's going on from the other media besides FOX News and foxnews.com. 

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Well, the Hunter Biden story ought to give us some hope that even though it took a long time, little by little, the truth comes out and it is hurting Joe Biden. And in the case of the Sussmann trial, maybe the media has met its match with Durham because Durham, you know, some of us Republicans were really frustrated at how slow this process has been, but it looks like he was doing very diligent good work. 

And so, maybe when the verdict comes out, maybe that's when they'll actually start to cover it and they won't be able to ignore it. But all of us who have a platform ought to keep pounding this because this story is important. It speaks to our institution. It speaks to -- you know, this is again -- this is a more third world politics stuff. 

The Sussman stuff and the Biden family corruption, and we don't need that in America, we need to get America back again um and we need to clean up this system so people can have faith in our institutions again. 

CHAFFETZ: Yep, the rule of law, Lady Justice with a blindfold. But, boy, it does feel like that blindfold, they take a little peek over and see if there's a Biden or a Clinton involved in it, whether or not they're actually going to cover it as a news story. 

Joe Concha, Rachel Campos-Duffy, thank you both for joining us tonight. 

All right. President Biden's approval rating is in a free fall. Tammy Bruce and Leo Terrell will tell you why right after the break. Stay with us. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CHAFFETZ: Now, Joe Biden's failures are going from bad to worse tonight as inflation surges gas, prices rise, stocks tank, the border is still a mess, along with so much more, and voters -- they're taking notice. A new poll from "The Associated Press" finds that Biden's approval crashed to 39 percent, the lowest point since he took office. 

The Biden agenda is failing on every single front as everyday Americans continue to suffer, wage gains are being eaten up by inflation, 401ks are taking a hit, and the Biden team continues to deflect blame rather than offer real solutions to all of these growing crises. 

Ask yourself, is there one thing Biden has done to improve the lives of Americans, one thing he's done to actually improve the country? It's been one massive disaster after another. 

Here for reaction FOX News contributors Leo Terrell and Tammy Bruce. 

Thank you both for joining us tonight on HANNITY. 

Tammy, I want to go to you first because I got to tell you, I -- seriously, I can't find a single issue where the Democrats can claim victory and say, yep, we really did it, we really did that. 

TAMMY BRUCE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I mean, if your goal is to demolish the United States, you're having a party right now, right? The champagne is out, everybody's happy, you might -- you got candles running. 

The fact is it's bad enough if it was just static, if they didn't do anything like if nothing changed, if we weren't getting better. But this has been the opposite, right? It's been on every single issue. I mean, even a broken clock is right twice a da. In order to be this wrong all the time it has to be deliberate. 

And you'd think you know leadership always talks about and people I've got this in my column today. Everybody makes mistakes, some people don't get things right all the time none of us do, but then leadership knows that's what you learn from. You see all right, that didn't work, let's do this, let's change this, and that's what leadership is. 

The Biden administration doesn't -- is not interested in that because it seems like they have a different agenda. The interesting thing about the polls is and I think this is also they're doing it because they so underestimate the American people and have such contempt for them is that 33 percent of -- only 33 percent of Democrats, only three out of every Democrats think the country is on the right track. That is down, Jason, from 49 percent just last month. 

So I don't know what they thought about the Roe versus Wade controversy and the draft leak and the riots and, you know, no gas and dealing with Iran and sending billions to Ukraine, no, and the baby food situation. He took action after months saying that he could do nothing and suddenly there is the Defense Production Act, and the flying the formula in. 

So, people are saying, well, wait a minute, you could have done that last year, why didn't you? So that's what the American people have noticed, that it seems to be deliberate. We don't appreciate it, and we're going to make that feeling known in November. 

CHAFFETZ; Yeah, I heard Dana Perino actually talk about this on the where she talked about you know the worst label you can get as an administration, Leo, is that of incompetence, and that's what it seems like. I mean, ultimately, it is about policy, the implementation of policy and they're going to be legitimate policy differences. But I can't -- I can't even make sense of what they're talking about over at the Biden administration. 

LEO TERRELL, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: And you never will because there's a total disconnect, Jason, between the Biden administration and the American people. Let's just be very honest. Joe Biden is a lousy, ineffective president. And I don't even think he knows that. 

America is unsafe under the Biden administration. Look at the streets in the Democratic cities. Look at our southern borders. Americans can't afford to live under the Biden administration. 

Look at the inflation rate, look at the gas prices. As Tammy said, look, at the food shortage. And you know what? 

America will never forget, Jason, the Afghanistan fiasco. It was a disaster. Thirteen U.S. service members lost their lives. On the first day Joe Biden was in office, he lied to the American people. He said he was going to unify this country he has polarized his country. 

Jim Crow, the race card, it's being played every single day and the American public will never forgive the Democratic Party and they're going to take it out on them in November because Joe Biden really -- I really believe this, he doesn't understand the damage he has done to this great country. 

CHAFFETZ: Tammy, you know, policy is one issue. Another part of it is the communications. I mean you have a very feeble Joe Biden. You have Kamala Harris who puts out word salads that just mystify people. And their ability to actually communicate a message and instill confidence in the American people and let alone the world is just totally absent. 

BRUCE: Well, it is and it's because that communication and I hope like the three of us have it, you have people in business who can have it. But you have it when you believe in what it is you're saying. When you own the nature of what it is you're proposing, you don't need the cards, you don't need the script, you don't fumble over what you really meant. 

If you're trying to obscure, if you're trying to gaslight, then you use techniques like gaslighting which is effectively trying to fool people into believing something's true that it isn't, and that takes a different kind of communication. But when we talk about the nature of what the American people are used to and you know, we talk a lot about Donald Trump, certainly so do the Democrats. What he showed us is what real commitment and a real owning of what it is you're saying looks like and what it feels like. 

And what the communication is, that there is you might not have liked everything he said but just like all of us, when you really believe in what you're doing, when you have a passion for making a difference, you can speak extemporaneously for two hours at a rally with 50,000 people and convey those ideas. That's what Americans want. We want clarity and the only way we're going to get clarity is when you've got people who believe in what they're doing and when it's not a charade. 

CHAFFETZ: Yep and it's competence and a full knowledge of everything that's happening. 

Last word to you, Leo. 

TERRELL: I'll simply say this and you know I felt this confident to say that while Kamala Harris is incompetent to be vice president, Joe Biden is incompetent to be president, it's totally incompetent. And I'll tell you right now, they have tricked the American public for a year and a half, they have doubled down. They realize they have destroyed this country. 

And I'll tell you right now, they're going to take this type of negative adverse approach up to the American nation until November when the American people are going to tell them we reject everything you have done to harm this country. I cannot wait until November. 

CHAFFETZ: Yep and I -- all those uh congressional races, House and Senate, I think are going to be taken out on them in November. 

Leo Terrell, Tammy Bruce, thanks again for joining us tonight on HANNITY. 

All right. Coming up, a federal judge has ruled that Title 42 must remain in place. How could this impact Biden's border crisis? After the break, we'll get more details from Bill Melugin, and we'll speak with Sara Carter and Tom Homan. 

Stay with us. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

CHAFFETZ: This is a FOX News alert, a federal judge has just upheld Title 42. That's the Centers for Disease Control order that gives the federal government the power to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the country because of COVID. 

Our own Bill Melugin has a full report -- Bill. 

BILL MELUGIN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jason, in a nutshell, this federal ruling means that the status quo is just going to stay in place here at the southern border. Title 42 has been in place throughout these historic massive border numbers. 

Take a look at this video we shot earlier this morning here in Eagle Pass. We had yet another massive single group cross illegally, this one 167 in total, mostly single adults. Border Patrol here in Del Rio sector saying they had more than 1,800 illegal crossings in just a 24-hour span. 

Then take a look at this video out of Brackettville last night. We were with Texas DPS, they tried to pull over a human smuggler, then all of a sudden, illegal immigrants start bailing out of the vehicle and trying to run off into the brush in an effort to evade. You'll see some men were being smuggled in the bed of the pickup truck, they decided it wasn't worth it to run. 

The female driver, a woman from Florida also didn't run. She was arrested, just another typical day out here in the border here in the Eagle Pass area. And back out here, the question now becomes with this Title 42 ruling, what's going to happen with all the migrants in those Mexican border cities who have been waiting for May 23rd when they thought Title 42 would drop. Are they now just going to go back home or are they going to say, well, we're going to give it a shot and cross anyways? 

We'll find out in the coming days. We'll send it back to you. 

CHAFFETZ: Bill, thank you. 

So while Title 42 stays in place for now, the Justice Department has announced it plans to appeal the ruling and states along our southern border are preparing for the worst. In Texas, Governor Gregg Abbott says that his state has already sent 10,000 National Guard troops to the southern border, which he is expecting over 4.2 million people to cross every year. That's more people than the city of Houston. 

And Biden's own Department of Homeland Security also knows the border will get swamped with new arrivals. Whenever Title 42 ends and they're trying to keep trying hard to keep up, reportedly pushing Biden to ask Congress for special funding for up to $2 billion to deal with it all. 

Here now with reaction are two people who know an awful lot about this, our own Sara Carter who has extensively covered the border, and Tom Homan the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Sarah, first, I want to go to you. You've been on the border a lot. You've been covering this extensively. You talked to a lot of border agents out there. 

I mean, look, we got a lot of people crossing the border now even though Title 42 is still in place. I can't only imagine if Title 42 goes away, what this onslaught is going to be like. 

SARAH CARTER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I think Judge Summerhays, the federal judge, Jason, who blocked the Biden administration's ability to rescind Title 42 understands that. He is looking at not just the border and it was an argument made by attorney general, you know, from Arizona, Mark Brnovich, who said, look, every community in America is a border community. It's like the Biden administration is trying to double down on chaos, and they're doing it through the CDC. 

But think of the hypocrisy. The Biden administration believes that the American people are stupid I guess because the CDC is telling everyone to get tested. 

Now, they just made an announcement. They want everybody to get tested for COVID before they get on a flight. But yet, they're going to open the border wide open to everyone and say there's not a problem with covet at the border? It makes no sense at all. 

And absolutely there is concern. DHS has made the announcement that over 18,000 people are expected daily if Title 42 is rescinded and you're right, we're seeing those numbers in droves. I think Bill Melugin's report was excellent, but I think what we're going to see is all those people that were in Mexico are going to be flooding to come across the border and I know Tom Homan has talked about this in the past, and I'm sure -- I'm sure that that is going to be the case in the upcoming days. 

CHAFFETZ: Tom, you dedicated your career to enforcing the border and removing these people that are here illegally. I mean this is absolutely disgusting what's going on and the Biden administration is doing everything they can to get as many illegal people into this country that they possibly can. 

TOM HOMAN, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: You know, you're right, Jason. I get up every day I'm angry with this administration. The president, the vice president, secretary, this island the misfit toys, their job is to defend this country, protect our border, protect our sovereignty, and they've all -- they've all thrown their oaths under the bus. 

None of them are doing the job they're supposed to be doing. None of them are upholding the oath they took to secure our border and protect America. You can't have national security without border security. 

And you're right, DOJ has already filed an appeal. So we've had two federal judges one that ordered them to put the remain in Mexico back in place, we had to sue him for that. I was part of that lawsuit. Then another federal judge just said, no, you can't stop Title 42. 

So this administration twice when a federal judge ordered them to do this in order to secure the border they appeal it. What secretary of homeland security purposely appeals a decision to secure the border? And because of their policies, because of what this bunch of people have done, they took the most secure border we've ever had for all the work we did in the Trump administration and purposely unsecured it, which resulted in more migrant deaths under Joe Biden in any year of my career. Over 112,000 Americans dying from overdose deaths of a drug that's coming across the southwest border because 50 to 70 percent of the Border Patrol are changing diapers making baby formula rather than doing their job. 

More women are being trafficked, more children being trafficked, more rapes are occurring on women that -- assaults in these cartels. The cartels are making billions of dollars. 

This administration is a joke and I tell you, I met with a bunch of Republican congressmen the other day, and I told them. First day, the first day you take the House back and the Senate, you need to impeach Mayorkas, and if you don't, I'm done with them, too. You know, we need to stand up. This is what national security is. 

I'll add one more point, 700,000 got-away since Joe Biden became president. We don't know who they are. We don't know where they are, but we know they arrested people from 161 countries. We know a lot of those countries sponsored terrorism. 

We know they arrested 42 people on terrorist watch list, how many of the 700,000 came to this country to blow something up or to attack this nation? If the secretary had one ounce of integrity, one ounce of integrity, he would tell the White House, I can no longer support open borders is put this country at great risk of terrorism? At what point does American people stand to say this is enough? 

CARTER: That's what -- 

CHAFFETZ: I totally agree but hey, yes, Sarah, I mean, hey, thank goodness Kamala Harris is on top of it as the border czar, and you know, Joe Biden in his whole political career has never visited the southern border. He could be overseas right now, but you can't make it to the southern border. 

CARTER: Jason, I got to tell you, Tom is 100 percent right. The morale -- you hear that passion in Tom Homan's voice, it's the same passion you hear from Border Patrol agents, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, from people in the DHS that are saying, look, we can't even do our jobs anymore. Our hands are tied behind our backs. People are coming into this country that have not been vetted. Our job is to protect this nation and our national security has been completely eroded. 

And not only that, I'm out there on the border and I see the suffering of the people that are being trafficked by the drug cartels and by the human traffickers, and I see the suffering of American families whose children have died because they have taken counterfeit pills that have come across that border that look exactly like pills prescribed by doctors and pharmacies here that are nothing but pure fentanyl and they are killing the American people. 

And remember, it's not just about the Mexican drug cartels. This is about our enemy states. This is about countries like China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and others taking advantage of that border. And I think it is a serious problem but I got to say I agree with Tom, it appears that the Biden administration actually wants this. This is part of their policy. 

It's not a failed policy. It's a successful policy on the part of the Biden administration. 

CHAFFETZ: Sara Carter, Tom Homan -- Tom, thank you for your service to our country and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, we really do appreciate it. 

More of this special edition of HANNITY coming back right after this break. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 

HANNITY: Welcome back to this special edition of HANNITY. 

I wish we had more time but we don't. My thanks to Sean Hannity and his incredible staff for allowing me to sit in this seat. Not many people get a chance to do it and he's let me do it a few times. So thanks to Sean. 

I also want to give a shameless plug for my podcast, "Jason in the House". Just go to FOX News podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts, type in Jason in the house, Jason in the house. You'll find it. Hope you enjoy the interviews. 

Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend. And remember, you live in the United States, the greatest country on the face of the planet. Enjoy your weekend. 

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