Peter Schweizer on media bias, his new book and the 'two sides to Joe Biden'

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Mark Levin says Democrats' impeachment case has been an embarrassment

House impeachment managers have produced zero evidence of treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors.

This is a rush transcript from "Life, Liberty & Levin," January 26, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MARK LEVIN, HOST: Hello, America. Welcome to "Life, Liberty & Levin." We have a great guest later in the show Peter Schweizer, "Profiles in Corruption."

He has a book on the Biden's -- five of them -- Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and we're really going to want to dig into this.

But before we do, I feel compelled to address what's been going on, on the floor of the United States Senate.

It's supposed to be a somber occasion. There's nothing somber about it. It's a farce. It's pathetic. It's grotesque.

The senators have a job to uphold the Constitution of the United States and to protect it, not from a law-abiding President, but from a lawless majority in the House of Representatives, the Democrats.

You don't need three days and 24 hours if you have a true case of impeachment against a President, a Vice President or a judge and so forth. They're all over the map.

They've got their graphs and their video clips and the repetition and their emotion, and they're attacking the President and they're attacking the senators. They're undermining judicial review in the court. It is an embarrassment.

The very Chairman of these two committees, the House Intelligence Committee and the House Judiciary Committee, who ran Stalinist-like hearings, violated their own committee rules, violated the House rules, violated basic due process.

I'm not talking about the Bill of Rights, but the due process that is customarily and traditionally been afforded a President facing a situation like this or a judge facing impeachment was completely eviscerated.

And then we have the czarina - that is the Speaker of the House. She didn't have a vote to open an Impeachment Inquiry. She declared it. She declared it like Eva Peron, she declared, we're having an Impeachment Inquiry.

None of the rules that were in place in the past, when Henry Hyde, a Republican ran the Judiciary Committee the Republicans ran the House of Representatives had been applied.

When Peter Rodino, a Democrat ran the House Judiciary Committee and the Democrats controlled the House when they were looking at Nixon for impeachment, all those rules thrown out the window, all due process thrown out the window, all the House rules thrown out the window.

And as you know, the Republicans couldn't call witnesses. The President's lawyer wasn't present for those secret Star Chamber testimony events taking place in the basement of the House of Representatives. It's appalling.

I mean, the real story here is Donald Trump is being treated like no President in American history. In fact, no person facing impeachment in American history. That's the fact.

The corruption, the abuse of power, if you will, has taken place already in the House of Representatives.

And so every Republican in the House voted against this. Every single one. Every democrat, but one voted for it. That should tell you everything you need to know. So that's their case.

These Articles of Impeachment which are phony: Abuse of power, obstruction of Congress. Absolutely phony.

Let's look at what the requirements are under the Constitution of the United States. Take a look.

"The final section of Article II which generally describes the executive branch, specifies the President, Vice President, all civil officers of the United States, shall we be removed from office if convicted in an impeachment trial of treason bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. Two clauses in Article I lay out the role of the House of Representatives and the Senate in impeachments and in trials of impeachment."

"In practice, impeachments by the House have been rare, and convictions after a trial by the Senate, even less common. Two Presidents, one senator, one Cabinet officer and 15 judges have been impeached, and of those only eight judges have been convicted and removed from office."

So you better have a strong case, boy. It better be an overwhelming case.

Why do you need 24 hours and three days? Oh, we need John Bolton. He'll make the case. If not, Mulvaney will make the case. Oh, well, you had the iron fist to control the House.

Well, that's different. Now we're in the Senate. Yes, we don't like the judiciary telling us what it can or it can't do. Now, we're in the Senate, and the senators better do at least say otherwise, they're involved in a cover up and they're obstructing and they're not holding up their constitutional duty.

Well, I'll tell you what they have. They have zippo, nothing. I have right here the telephone call that we go back to, the transcript of the President of the United States' July 25, 2019 with the President of Ukraine.

Tell me, where in here is their treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors? There aren't any.

There are none. Zero. Which is why they almost never referred to it.

Now what about regular crimes that are out there, which of course you don't have to have for an impeachment, but it would be nice if they had something.

What did the President do? Did he say, look, President of Ukraine, I want you to get me dirt on the Bidens. He never said that.

Or I'm going to withhold military aid -- it never came up.

Or I want you to announce you're going to do an investigation -- that's not what he said.

He said, none of those things. So they have to spend 24 hours and three days putting words in the President's mouth that he never spoke, putting words in the mouths of other people.

Now, they did have some witnesses over there in the House in the House Intelligence Committee, the House Judiciary Committee -- not really. A couple of law professors, a couple of lawyers who had served on the House Intelligence Committee. That was the extent of their investigation.

But let's take a look. Let's look at what the individuals who Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, by the way -- almost all of whom are hearsay witnesses, firsthand witnesses to nothing. But what did they have to say about impeachment and high crimes and all the rest of it? Take a look.

Go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Either of you ever have any evidence of quid pro quo? Mr. Morrison?

TIM MORRISON, FORMER TOP NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL OFFICIAL: No ma'am.

QUESTION: Ambassador Volker?

KURT VOLKER, FORMER UNITED STATES SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR UKRAINE NEGOTIATIONS: I did not.

QUESTION: Any evidence of bribery.

MORRISON: No, ma'am.

VOLKER: No, ma'am.

ALEXANDER VINDMAN, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL AIDE: Not that I can recall.

VOLKER: No, they did not.

GORDON SONDLAND, UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO THE EUROPEAN UNION: He said, I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo.

QUESTION: You testified that you had no direct knowledge of any nefarious motivations to withhold aid to Ukraine. Correct?

DAVID HALE, UNITED STATES UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR POLITICAL AFFAIRS:

Correct.

QUESTION: And to your knowledge, you testify that there were no strings attached to the aid, correct? That's Page 184 of your deposition.

HALE: I have no such knowledge.

QUESTION: In this impeachment hearing today, where we impeach Presidents for treason or bribery or other high crimes. Where is the impeachable offense in that call? Are either of you here today to assert there was an impeachable offense in that call? Shout it out. Anyone?

QUESTION: Do you have any information regarding the President of the United States accepting any bribes?

MARIE YOVANOVITCH, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO UKRAINE: No.

QUESTION: Do you have any information regarding any criminal activity that the President of the United States has been involved with at all?

YOVANOVITCH: No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEVIN:

That was a minute 10 seconds. Now, you won't see any of that video, not on the Democratic side. House Managers didn't play it. That was a minute and 10 seconds. I don't need 24 hours. I don't need three days. Case closed. Case closed. What do these other witnesses going to tell them? Now, the President of Ukraine says, I wasn't pressured.

We heard on and on and on. They're droning on. There was a pressure campaign, ladies and gentlemen. The C.I.A. sitting on documents, the N.S.A. sitting on the -- they had all these documents we can't get our hands on.

Where's the document, the smoking gun document that the President committed an impeachable offense? Where is it? It doesn't exist. Where is the killer witness? The killer witness, the firsthand witness in the House of Representatives?

Here, she doesn't exist. They don't exist. There's nothing. That's why it takes 24 hours and three days to keep cobbling things together like good demagogues and propagandists.

But let's be honest, folks, what's really going on here? We were told about this, November 17, 2016 in "The New York Times." Trump's foreign business ties may violate the Constitution -- the Emoluments Clause.

President Donald Trump's business dealings have raised concerns about ethical considerations.

And they go on about how that may impact his ability to serve as President.

December 15, 2016. "Vanity Fair," Democrats are paving the way to impeach Donald Trump -- to impeach Donald Trump.

I mean, Donald Trump announced for President in June 16, 2015. They're already impeaching him. That was "Vanity Fair."

Then we go to "The Washington Post" on the very day he is inaugurated, the campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.

That's why they need 24 hours and three days. Because their hands, their DNA is all over their crooked, corrupt practices. That's why.

And it's absolutely outrageous. An impeachment campaign.

Now, the media were already calling for Trump's impeachment following a BuzzFeed piece. Remember this? I'm going to remind you, if -- if the President had done these things. If he did these -- if -- oh my god, he'll be impeached. He'll be impeached for campaign law violations, remember that?

Michael Avenatti and Michael Cohen, all the rest of them and now we have Parnas, except Schiff lied about Parnas. So we've got all kinds of witnesses.

In fact, they need to go to Craigslist. Hey, any witnesses out there? Anybody out there foreign or domestic who thinks they can tell us on the floor of the United States Senate, tell us that the President of the United States violated the Constitution? Treason bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanor -- anything. We need something.

Let's take a look at this. Go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If this BuzzFeed news report is true, then we are likely on our way to possible impeachment proceedings.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: If it were to be true, it means the President told someone to lie under oath, that very simply as a crime and is impeachable.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If this story is true, we must begin impeachment proceedings.

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: If you can prove that the President ordered it, that could certainly rise to the level of -- it rises to the level of impeachable offense.

ANA NAVARRO, ABC HOST: What I know is the President of the United States committed a Federal felony and at that point, we are in high crimes and misdemeanors and we are in impeachment territory.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is that an impeachable offense?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is suborning perjury, I think there's no question it's an impeachable offense.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is considered an impeachable offense.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely. These are impeachable offenses.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Inside that answer, I did hear the "I" word, impeachable.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Impeachment is a very fine alternative way to deal with this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Democrats will move maybe faster, maybe more aggressively toward impeachment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are an awful lot of similarities between a couple of the Articles of Impeachment against Nixon and the elements of this story.

SCIUTTO: The very same offense for which the House of Representatives moved to impeach Richard Nixon.

BERMAN: In the past, it had been impeachable.

JOY BEHAR, ABC HOST: That is the exact way that Richard Nixon was kicked out office.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's one of the things that drove Richard Nixon out of office.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: CNN has not corroborated this reporting.

SCIUTTO: CNN, we should be clear has not independently confirmed this.

BERMAN: CNN has not independently confirmed this reporting.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: It is important for us to note this morning that neither CNN nor any other major news outlet has so far confirmed BuzzFeed's reporting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEVIN: Oh, wow. It's not confirmed, but just in case. The President committed treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors because he directed Michael Cohen to lie. No, he didn't.

Every damn thing they've said about this President is a lie.

Oh, there must be secret -- secret indictment against him in the Southern District of New York on the nondisclosure agreements. He violated campaign finance laws. No, he didn't. No, he didn't.

Oh, the Russian collusion stuff. Here it is. I've got it right here. Right here. $40 million. Hundreds of witnesses. Thousands of subpoenas. Millions of pages of documents. Thirteen foreign countries. Nothing.

I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: Welcome back. So you see the Democrats have rewritten the Constitution: Treason bribery, other high crimes and misdemeanors. Now, it's whenever we say it is. Abuse of power.

Abuse of power? When the President of the United States is upholding his responsibility to determine if foreign aid is properly spent? When he wants to determine if there's corruption going on in Ukraine towards the United States and in the United States towards Ukraine?

No, no, no. You can't talk about Biden. You can't investigate the Bidens before an election, then you're interfering in an election.

But you can investigate Trump all you want. You can have a phony impeachment. You can have a phony trial and interfere with the election.

In fact, you've even stated you want to interfere with the 2020 election. We have to stop Trump now. He is a national security threat, until we slow the process down. We have to stop Trump now and if he wins reelection, it's a sham.

Here they are the whole time interfering in the 2016 and 2020 election, and they're afraid that if you look into the Bidens, as we'll see later in the show, then you're interfering in the election you see.

Yes, that's just who these people are and no more pretense of journalistic independence. The Democrats are the reporters and the reporters are the Democrats. Let me prove it to you. Go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable fact of the President's betrayal of his oath of office.

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: The President has been exposed violating his oath of office.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): The President of the United States has betrayed his oath of office.

CHUCK TODD, MSNBC HOST: Violations of his oath to the Constitution.

PETE BUTTIGIEG, (D-IN), MAYOR, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Unprecedented breach of the oath of office.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Betrayals of his oath of office.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The President has admitted enough, we've got enough information at this point.

BROOK BALDWIN, CNN HOST: He has already confirmed what he's done in broad daylight.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA): We've basically got a confession.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has already confessed to this crime.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The President has already admitted --

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSBNC HOST: The President admits he did it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The White House and the State Department continue to orchestrate this massive cover up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are watching a cover up by the President of the United States.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They've been in the business of trying to cover up.

BALDWIN:

... implicated in a cover up.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There's a cover up.

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: The cover up, the attempted cover up --

SCHIFF:

... to interfere with the Congress's ability to call before it relevant witnesses will be considered as evidence of obstruction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trump strategy, it's pretty clear, obstruct, deflect, confuse.

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE Obstructing justice, refusing to comply with the congressional inquiry.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is obstruction of justice. It's bribery.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of the committees have documented obstruction of justice.

MADDOW: All of this obstruction from the White House and from the President specifically --

BIDEN: He is using the abuse of power in every element of the presidency.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The heart of the abuse of power.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This gross abuse of power.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You could say it was an abuse of power.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There has been an abuse of power.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Abuse of power.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Abuse of power.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Abuse of power.

HAYES: And that is an obviously impeachable abuse of power.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEVIN: But the very same media when it came to the Clinton impeachment process had a completely different attitude. Let's check it out. Go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The whole issue has been a sham. It shouldn't have gotten this far. The House acted improperly in passing it on to the Senate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why is your party dragging this thing out?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why is this happening?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why go through all of this business about witnesses. It's going to add months to this thing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We should stop this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This bogus inflated case.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And get on with business or governance.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Will these people just get down to business and leave this impeachment thing alone?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's going to be an enormous distraction to the White House and all kinds of issues that the Congress ought to be considering.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a long line of the people's business that seems to have been put aside and apparently is going to be put aside for weeks if not months now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We begin tonight with the voice of the people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The visitor who got up and shouted, "God Almighty, take the vote and get it over with."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: God Almighty, the man said, take the vote and get it over with you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I mean, you know who the hero of this whole thing is. It's the guy who stood up in the Senate gallery last week and said, good God, vote and get over with this with this, will you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This process is Stalinist.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is there or is there not some concern of the public perception in some quarters, not all of them Democratic, that this is in fact a kind of effort at a "coup."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've heard of managers from the House. I mean, frankly all they were missing was -- geez, they were like Knight Riders.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One White House official told me today in 20 years, he said people will remember three things about this. That the President was impeached in the House, that he was acquitted in the Senate, and that the whole thing was a partisan hit job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEVIN: All right, ladies and gentlemen, and one other thing, Bill Clinton was accused of 11 felonies. Trump is accused of none.

Finally, the Democrats in 1998, again, let's see what they said. Go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PELOSI: I rise to want to oppose these unfair motions, which call for the removal of the President of the United States from office.

The Independent Counsel knew that the President was exonerated.

REP. JERROLD NADLER (D-NY): The effective impeachment is overturn the popular will of the voters. There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment supported by one of our major political parties, and opposed by the other.

BIDEN: Not all crimes are impeachable offenses, and not every impeachable offense needs to be a crime to throw a President out of office.

The Senate, for example, could decline to convict even if the President had committed --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEVIN: And he slurred his speech back then I noticed.

So you see what this is. This is a complete setup by the Democrats. They've hijacked the impeachment process and turned it on its head. They're trying to hijack the trial process in the United States Senate. They're undermining our constitutional system.

They've tried to disenfranchise 63 million people with a variety of claims from Russia and the rest of 2016 and they're trying to affect the 2020 election.

If they don't win, they've already told us that it's a corrupt election. These are very, very devious people. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AISHAH HASNIE, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CORRESPONDENT: Live from "America's News Headquarters," I'm Aishah Hasnie.

The sports world is shocked and saddened by the tragic death of basketball superstar, Kobe Bryant. The NBA legend and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna were among nine people killed in the crash of his private helicopter some 30 miles northwest of LA this morning.

Thousands of fans mourning, gathering outside LA Staple Center, paying their respects to a true hometown hero. His record as an 18-time NBA All- Star explains exactly why.

He won five championships during his 20-year career with the LA Lakers. Bryant retired in 2016, scoring 60 points in his final game.

He is survived by his wife, Vanessa and three other daughters. Kobe Bryant was 41 years old. The whole world, the country of mourning his loss.

I'm Aishah Hasnie, now back to LIFE, LIBERTY & LEVIN.

LEVIN: Welcome back. Peter Schweizer, how are you my friend?

PETER SCHWEIZER, AUTHOR: Great. Good to be here, Mark.

LEVIN: As promised America, here he is in the flesh. Tremendous book, "Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elite."

Your books are important because they break news. Your books important because they're in depth. You have an enormous number of end notes in this book scholarship, and you've been a scholar for a long time digging into these sort of things and I want to jump in right away before we run out of time here.

I am stunned by what you had to write about a number of these progressives, including Biden. Biden has been in public office since he's been about four years old. He has never done anything else.

SCHWEIZER: Yes.

LEVIN: The City Council in Wilmington, then United States Senator for decades. Vice President for two terms. Now, he's running again.

And you dig this information out, like you dug the information out on Burisma. First of all, why is that? Why is it with all these massive newsrooms? These conglomerates, billions of dollars, enormous research staff that they don't take this information out, and you do?

SCHWEIZER: Great question. I don't know. I think part of it is a bias. Part of it is news organizations don't have the resources to do this digging.

I mean, some of these Biden stories took seven months of research and hard work. But overall, with a few exceptions, the reality is most news organizations have zero curiosity about this.

They're not even interested in following up to seeing how the patterns of these transactions take place.

Everything in the book is based on paper trails. There's no anonymous sources. They can replicate the information that we have put together. So it's not that hard to do. There just seems to be a lack of curiosity in doing so.

LEVIN: Let's jump in. You don't just talk about Hunter Biden where you broke the story about Burisma before in your prep -- five Bidens.

SCHWEIZER: Right.

LEVIN: It's like a whole family of I'll say, of corrupt Bidens. What did you find?

SCHWEIZER: Well, you know, it's interesting. There's two sides to Joe Biden. Let me begin with a real small illustration where I think proves the point.

Joe Biden has been seen as the Amtrak senator, the guy who's the regular guy who gets on the Amtrak train, would go home the Delaware. That's absolutely true.

But in our research, what we found from local newspaper accounts in Delaware is he not only did that. If he was running late, he would call Amtrak and have them hold the train.

So yes, he was regular Joe Amtrak, but if he wanted to pull strings power for his benefit, he would do so.

LEVIN: Plus he knew somebody on the Board.

SCHWEIZER: Yes.

LEVIN: His son.

SCHWEIZER: Exactly. His son was put on the Board.

Now we talk about the five Bidens. We know about Hunter. There's new material about Hunter in the book. The chapter is 70 pages long, so there's a lot of ground to cover.

But some of the other ones are very, very interesting. James Biden, for example, his brother. Very, very interesting development. In November of 2010, this old town Biden family friend named Kevin Justice who grew up in Delaware with Joe Biden's kids, starts this construction company called Hillstone, goes to the White House in November of 2010, meets in Biden's office according to White House visitor logs.

We don't know what they discussed, Mark. It was the only time he ever visited the White House. But three weeks after that meeting, he appoints James Biden, the Vice President's brother, as the Executive Vice President of the construction company. Now --

LEVIN: James have any construction background?

SCHWEIZER: Great question, Mark. And the answer is no. He did not. In fact on the company bio which is no longer up, they said that his skill was he was comfortable in the corridors of political power. And of course, you're very comfortable when your brother is the second most powerful man in the world.

But that's just the beginning of the story. About six months after James Biden becomes the Vice President, this company gets a contract from the Federal government to build 100,000 homes in Iraq. It's about a billion and a half dollar contract.

They get a $22 million contract with the State Department. They get legions of other Federal contracts.

That's the kind of thing you see repeated over and over with the Bidens, and it's all about the timing, Mark. These things occur when Joe Biden is pulling the strings of governmental power at this time.

LEVIN: And then he always says, I don't know anything about it.

SCHWEIZER: Yes.

LEVIN: My son, my brother, my other brother. I don't know anything about any of it.

SCHWEIZER: Yes. Let me give you an example where it's undeniable the role he played. So in June of 2011, these two executives from a new company called StartUp Health, go to the Oval Office.

Joe Biden ushers them in to meet with Barack Obama. StartUp Health is a healthcare investment company. They barely have a website. They don't have a business plan. They've just been launched. They are meeting with the President of the United States. They have their picture taken. They put it on their website.

The next day, they are a centerpiece of this Federal conference -- Obama administration conference on healthcare data.

Over the next five years, Vice President Joe Biden regularly goes to StartUp Health's private meetings and updates investors and partners on Obama administration healthcare policy.

Now, the fact that I've left out is one of the three principals involved in the company is married to Joe Biden's daughter, Ashley Biden.

There is an absolute case where he is using government resources, government influence, government information for the benefit of a family member's business.

And you know, you imagine if the Trumps had done that, there would be outrage. I would be outraged. But they have done that and the Bidens have. You can look at his brother Frank, who did --

LEVIN: How many Bidens are there? Just curious.

SCHWEIZER: Well, I tell you, we found --

LEVIN: They fill up half the bureaucracy.

SCHWEIZER: Yes, I mean, we found five members that received these sweetheart deals. That is all of his siblings and his living children. Of course Beau passed away from cancer a few years ago. So it's all five Biden family members, nobody has been left out.

LEVIN: So what about this other brother?

SCHWEIZER: So Frank Biden starts doing deals in Costa Rica, shortly after Joe Biden as Vice President visits the country in spring of 2009.

Joe Biden comes down, talks with President Oscar Arias about, you know, providing aid and cooperation. Within months, Frank Biden has a deal with the Costa Rican power company.

He has meetings with the President of Costa Rica and with government ministers. He's setting up an energy company. We can add him to the list --

LEVIN: He knows nothing about energy.

SCHWEIZER: No background in energy whatsoever. He is also involved in an energy project in Jamaica. He actually gets the power purchasing agreements on a solar project in Jamaica that is financed with $47 million of U.S. taxpayer money in the form of guaranteed loans. Again, no background in renewable energy.

Multiple examples. This is all occurring simultaneously at the same time that Hunter is doing his deals in China and Ukraine and other family members are engaging this behavior as well.

LEVIN: Peter Schweizer, when we come back and the book is great, "Profiles in Corruption." When we come back, I want to pursue this a little bit further. Do you think in part, one of the reasons that Democrats immediately jumped to the defense of Biden, immediately said that you can't ask Ukraine -- really any government or any country -- about Biden and the Biden family is to immunize him from any sort of research or evaluation or criticism, he and his family?

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: So Peter Schweizer, do you think at least in part, one of the reasons they are jumping up and down about interfering in the election with Biden is to protect Biden?

SCHWEIZER: Yes, I think so. I mean, to me, I don't understand how you're interfering in the election when you're basically showing the commercial ties and the corrupt activities of somebody who may run for President. I mean, that's what the media is supposed to do. It's not interfering in the election to follow the money as it relates to other candidates.

So I'm sort of mystified as to why the Bidens apparently are supposed to get special favor. By the way, special favor that I don't even think they quite even gave to the Clintons.

In the case of the Clintons, they were at least willing from time to time to go there. With the Bidens, there was a complete lack of interest in a lot of people in the media to even actually go there and explain to readers, here's what we know. Here's how much they were paid. Here's what the deals that they got.

LEVIN: But he is their guy to beat Trump.

SCHWEIZER: Yes.

LEVIN: And so they take the victim, in my view, Trump who is put under constant investigation.

SCHWEIZER: Right.

LEVIN: Including this farce now that we're watching. They don't say that interferes with the election.

They take the victim and they turn him into the provocateur, or what have you. And when it comes to Biden, no touch.

All right, let's move on. We have Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is a -- he calls himself a democratic socialist. He's really an out of the closet hardcore socialist when you look at his career. He hasn't done anything in the private sector that's been productive, but he's a multimillionaire.

SCHWEIZER: That's right. And it's interesting, you're right, he describes himself and his policies are certainly hard core socialist.

If you look at his investment for portfolio, this will surprise a lot of people. He is invested in Fortune 500 companies. He's not invested in renewable energy companies or socially responsible investment funds.

And when you look at his public career since the 1980s as Mayor of Burlington and then a Congressman, and then a Senator and presidential candidate. It all revolves around bringing money into the family.

So take back to Burlington, Vermont. He is the Mayor. One of the first things he does Mark, is he says, I'm going to hire my girlfriend and put her on the city payroll.

Jane Sanders, who is now his wife was put on the payroll and you go back and look at the local press accounts and you realize the City Council said wait a minute, you're giving her a job that we didn't actually create, we haven't funded and if this position were to exist, you never advertised it. You may never gave other people the opportunity to take it or to apply for it.

And Bernie just blew them off. So Jane had a paid job throughout his tenure.

When he ran for Congress, he discovered a secret that a lot of Washington insiders know, Mark, which is you can make a lot of money doing media buys for political campaigns.

So for example, if you were a candidate for the United States Senate, and you wanted to buy a million dollars in advertising, and I did that purchase, I would get the million dollars, but the standard practices, I would get to keep about 15 percent as a commission. You'd make a lot of money doing media buys.

So what does Bernie Sanders do? He's running for Congress in Vermont. He makes his wife Jane responsible for media buys. And we estimate based on the numbers --

LEVIN: So the family gets the 15 percent.

SCHWEIZER: Absolutely. In fact, Mark, they set up an LLC, which they registered at their home in Vermont, and the owners were his wife, Jane Sanders, and their two children. So it's quite a cozy setup.

So we estimate they probably made $150,000.00 off of that arrangement.

LEVIN: He is quite the crony capitalist.

SCHWEIZER: Yes, he is quite the crony capitalist. The big question, Mark that we don't know the answer to, but we have suspicions comes with the 2016 presidential race.

We're not talking about small media buys now. We're talking about his campaign spending $83 million on media buys, which means the commission is somewhere around $12 million.

So who got the $83 million? Where did that $83 million flow? It went through this company called Old Towne Media.

Now, you look up Old Towne Media, it has no website, it has no footprint. It's registered to a suburban Virginia home on a cul de sac. Then you find out who owns this entity. It happens to be two individuals who worked with Jane Sanders doing media buys when Bernie was running for Congress.

Now, Jane was asked about this by a progressive reporter, actually from Vermont during the 2016 election. What did she know about Old Towne Media? Did she have any involvement in it? According the reporter, she hung up the phone.

So the question is where did that money go? It certainly fits the pattern that we've seen with Bernie Sanders, who for decades for about 36 years, by our accounts, used the phrase, our politics should not be dominated by billionaires and millionaires.

About three years ago, he dropped the reference to millionaires because he is now one. And I think the big surprise that a lot of supporters will find is this is an individual who talks about socialism, certainly has not conducted himself and his investments and his family life, not being interested in the --

LEVIN: You know what, Peter? That's typical of oligarchs in Russia, and these other totalitarian regimes, whether they are communist or fascist or whatever it is. It's one thing for the people.

SCHWEIZER: Right.

LEVIN: But it's another thing for them. So this is an area that that the media and Bernie Sanders that we should really pursue.

SCHWEIZER: I absolutely --

LEVIN: To try and nail it down.

SCHWEIZER: Yes, absolutely we should. And you know, the other thing that comes through in all of this, Mark is if you look in in the Vermont press, in a lot of the interviews, I mean, Bernie Sanders does not dislike or hate all rich people.

He only dislikes and hates rich people who are opposed to his agenda. So you find that there are very prominent wealthy people in Vermont who have vested interests, who he goes to bat for all the time, at the expense of local people.

For example, there's a gentleman who is creating these large scale industrial wind farms, you know, where they put these big windmills, dozens of them and people that live there are --

LEVIN: They're falling.

SCHWEIZER: Yes, exactly. And you know, if you live next door to it, suddenly you've got these huge windmills all around you. Those landowners sue, trying to stop him from building these. Which side does Bernie come down on? On the side of Mr. Blythersdof who is doing this. Why? Because Blythersdorf backs him and is supportive of his campaigns.

LEVIN: Fascinating, fascinating. Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget, most weeknights, you can see me on Levin TV, Levin TV., I hope you'll join us over there. Go to blazetv.com/mark to sign up; blazetv.com/mark or give us a call 844 LEVIN-TV, 844 LEVIN-TV. We'll be right back.

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LEVIN: Peter Schweizer, great book, "Profiles in Corruption." Elizabeth Warren is trying to outflank Bernie Sanders as a democratic socialist. What do you know about her?

SCHWEIZER: Yes, very interesting. I mean, with Elizabeth Warren, you have what I call sort of a layer cake of corruption.

At the top of it is Elizabeth Warren herself. A lot of people know that she's a lawyer. What people don't realize, Mark, is that in the mid-1990s, for three years, she was actually paid by U.S. taxpayers as a consultant to Congress to help rewrite bankruptcy laws.

Now, why is that interesting? Well, what's interesting is she gets paid to rewrite a narrow section of law. We know this because she talks about it in legal briefs. What does she do? She then goes to large corporations and says, I rewrote this portion of law, hire me to help you get around it and to maximize this law for their own benefit.

And these are companies like Dow Chemical, Armstrong Worldwide. These are major corporations that are facing litigation over issues related to faulty breast implants, asbestos cases, et cetera. She's being paid the equivalent of about $1,000.00 an hour, and she made millions of dollars doing this. So that's Elizabeth Warren herself.

You go down to the second layer. You have her daughter, Amelia Tyagi, they're very close. They've written books together. Amelia Tyagi in 2007- 2008 is trying to put together a company that's been launched called BTG, and she's looking for investors and she's looking for advisers.

Very interesting, Mark. In 2008, Elizabeth Warren goes and meets with Harry Reid, who wants her to become the chairwoman of the Oversight Committee for TARP, the bailout where we're sending billions of dollars to Wall Street firms to bail them out.

Elizabeth Warren goes to that meeting, brings her daughter along. A couple of things happen after that meeting. Number one, Elizabeth Warren is chairwoman of the TARP Oversight Committee and that committee and TARP is sending billions of dollars to Wall Street firms.

Her daughter, Amelia, at the same time, is raising capital and getting advisers from the same firms that her mother is participating in bailing out.

Very, very interesting developments and that company, BTG today, as Elizabeth Warren as a United States Senator, has a number of contracts with government agencies that as I point out in the book have benefited from Elizabeth Warren's legislative activities.

LEVIN: You know, it's fascinating. The common thread here as I listen to you. Donald Trump is under attack for the billions he made before he was President.

SCHWEIZER: That's correct.

LEVIN: The Emoluments Clause and all the other phony issues. The people who make a fortune as a result of their names in government, their relationships to people in government, their relationships to politicians and so forth, used the taxpayer, use the political system. They are never scrutinized in any significant way.

SCHWEIZER: Right. That's a hugely important point. I think you're exactly right. There's a huge difference between somebody like Donald Trump or let's pick somebody from the left, a Michael Bloomberg, who has made money before they are in political office, then somebody who once they are in political office says we're going to leverage our position. We're going to leverage our power to enrich our families. There's a huge difference between the two.

LEVIN: And then you look at the Obamas. They have to be worth tens of millions of dollars.

SCHWEIZER: Right.

LEVIN: Gore worth $207 million.

SCHWEIZER: Yes.

LEVIN: I wouldn't have hired him to run a 7-11. But that's just me personally. The Clintons when you look at all they have, they have quarter of a billion dollars. I mean, something's horribly wrong with this. We'll be right back.

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LEVIN: Peter Schweizer's blockbuster book, "Profiles in Corruption" and I doubt you have many interviews from "The New York Times", "Washington Post" CNN or MSNBC, but you're here. That's what counts.

You were saying Elizabeth Warren. Tier one, tier two. Now tier three.

SCHWEIZER: Yes. So tier three. This is very interesting. This involves her son-in-law, Sushil Tyagi. He is from India. He met Elizabeth Warren's daughter, when they were both going to the Wharton School of Business.

He has a lot of international businesses. It's hard to trace a lot of them because corporate reporting is different in India. But one company that's very interesting is an entity he created called Tricolor Films.

And Tricolor Films, they've now taken down their website, but we've captured all of it. And on the website, it describes their business model is producing movies in cooperation with foreign governments. Very, very interesting.

So we started looking into this and found to our shock, that he actually did a film that was financed by a foreign government, that would be the government of Iran.

It's a film, a very religious film. Sushil Tyagi was listed as the sole producer. There are two government agencies that are listed as the financiers for this project.

These are the same government agencies that put together and helped organize events like al Quds Day, which of course is you know, expression of their anger at losing Jerusalem. They're very anti-Semitic celebrations if you can use that term.

And in the film credits, they also give thanks for their contribution to the film -- I don't know what they contributed -- to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Air Force. It's there on the actual film credits itself.

LEVIN: This is the company owned by Elizabeth Warren's son-in-law.

SCHWEIZER: Yes, right. Sushil Tyagi, and this all comes from their film -- the film credits in Persian originally. Strange, Mark, the film was originally reviewed in "The New York Times" with Sushil Tyagi listed as the producer.

As Elizabeth Warren announced her run for the Senate, that story disappeared.

LEVIN: Let me tell you, your book is filled with a hell of a lot more than we were able to get to. It's perfectly timed. I hope the people watching this program will get their copy as soon as possible for the sake of the nation.

Peter Schweizer, "Profiles in Corruption." Thank you my friend.

SCHWEIZER: Thank you, Mark.

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