Bill on Secure Freedom Radio 2/15/22

Transcript 2/15/22 Frank Gaffney (00:00): We're back. And it's a pleasure always to say we are joined by Bill Walton. He is one of our regulars here at Secure Freedom Radio, a man who brings an enormous breadth of talent, notably from his time as a master of the universe on Wall Street, but also as a leader of the conservative movement here in the nation's capital in more recent times, notably as the past president of the Council for National Policy of which I'm very proud to be a member. He is the host of a terrific television podcast program, The Bill Walton Show, which I recommend to all of you. And a great friend as well and always glad to have him with us. Bill, thanks so much for joining us again, Bill Walton (00:43): Nice to be with you, Frank, as always. Frank Gaffney (00:45): Well, especially to have your perspective on a very, very important development, it seems to me. I did my commentary on it this morning. The Durham special prosecution investigation has now taken what seems to be, at long last, a turn many of us have prayed for in the belief that if there is no rule of law in this country, there won't be much of a country left in fairly short order. Bill, talk to us a little bit about what developed on Friday in terms of that investigation and its implications, as you see them. Bill Walton (01:27): Well, by way of background, we've listened about the Russia collusion scenario forever, it seems. And it turns out this story may have been one of the dirtiest tricks in US political history. In fact, there's nothing behind that story. And, on Friday, Special Counsel John Durham, who's the man that been working to unravel the collusion story, filed against Michael Sussmann, who's a lawyer who represented the Clinton campaign, and he was with the firm Perkins Coie, which works with the left on almost all these issues. And specific the accusation, he was lying to the FBI when he denied that there were any work on his behalf or the campaign's behalf, Hillary Clinton, to spy on Donald Trump. And, in fact, they did, and the indictment calls out a man named Rodney Joffe, who was with New Star, Inc, who provided him with inside internet data traffic at the Trump apartment in the West Side, Trump Tower, and most chillingly, internet data in the White House. Bill Walton (02:47): And this began before the election, as early as mid-summer 2016. And what the indictment doesn't tell us is when did this end? But they were monitoring all the internet traffic and, and Joffe denies it, but, I guess, they've pretty much got him red-handed. And what they were doing was they're trying to build a case that there was a connection between Trump and this Russian mobile phone operator, and that was not the case. And let me see if I can find the exact quote here. It's quite good. "Mr. Joffe's goal was to create an inference and narrative about Mr. Trump that would please certain VIPs," referring to the lawyers at Perkins Coie and the Clinton campaign. And the question's here, how long did this go on? Who had access to what was found? Who approved it in the White House? And who, specifically, were the people in the FBI and in the White House that knew about it because somebody certainly did. And it certainly begs the question was Mrs. Clinton and the senior people in her campaign personally aware of what was going on? Bill Walton (04:07): And I think the question answers itself, but this takes it well beyond The Steele dossier, which was about, I can't remember the full story, some Russian emigre working in Washington, working with Trump and Putin. It was all just a complete work of fiction. This is not fiction. They were actually monitoring internet traffic, and we need to get a lot deeper into this one to find out who else was involved, who was doing it, who approved it, and how long it lasted. Frank Gaffney (04:38): So just so I'm clear, Bill, is the suggestion that somebody in the Trump White House was letting them have access to this information, or is it somebody in the Obama White House who facilitated what took place on their watch and somehow enabled that access to continue after they left? I'm a little unclear. Bill Walton (05:04): It began with- Frank Gaffney (05:05): Do you understand? Bill Walton (05:06): Well, Obama was in the White House, and it began with the Obama team and continued on into January, February after Trump was inaugurated. And, after that, it's not clear to me how much longer it did last. And the White House is one of the few agencies where there's almost a complete transition of personnel when the administration changes. So the question is, was there somebody left in the IT department who was still funneling this information while Trump was president? We don't know yet, but it's certainly possible. Frank Gaffney (05:46): Watch this space, folks, is all I can say. This is breaking news of tremendous import because, Bill, as you certainly appreciate, it's not just that this was about partisan political machinations and criminal activity, it would certainly seem, but if this were going on, especially with the leakiness of Hillary Clinton's operations- Bill Walton (06:14): Remember her server? Frank Gaffney (06:16): Yeah. There's almost certainty that you had hostile powers also having access to some of the most sensitive traffic in the world [crosstalk 00:06:29]- Bill Walton (06:29): Well, that's the elephant in the room. I mean, it's clear that if somebody like this could penetrate the White House and do what they did with Trump Tower and the other Trump apartment, they can do this with anyone. And it's probably my guess, and your guess, is it's still going on and probably is still monitoring White House traffic. And certainly, my guess is with Biden coming in last year, they've resumed operations. Frank Gaffney (06:59): Or continued operations, as the case may be. Great stuff, Bill, of huge import, obviously, on all of these levels. And thank you for covering it for us, and we'll definitely be taking stock with you in the days to come about it, and others. I wanted to go through, speaking of the Biden administration, some of the personnel decisions, Bill, that are now awaiting action by the United States Senate in a couple of key posts, individuals who seem to have something in common. Well, they're all female, for one thing, but they all seem to be pretty hard left as well. And again, that may not be surprising given the character of this administration and its policy approach, but for some of these jobs that... For example, Sarah Raskin is being proposed to fill, namely in her case, the number-two position on the Federal Reserve. It's very, very troubling that this sort of ideological agenda seems to be the principle qualification for the job or at least the principle justification for this particular nomination. Tell us about Sarah, for starters, and we'll go on to- Bill Walton (08:29): Well, Sarah's- Frank Gaffney (08:29): ...the others. Bill Walton (08:31): ...an extremely dangerous candidate for the number-two job in the Federal Reserve overseeing financial institution, bank regulation. She's very smart. She knows the financial services industry. She was on the board of the Federal Reserve and also deputy treasury secretary. She's also one of the most radical climate people you can find and believes that Federal Reserve policy should be to shut down the fossil fuel industry, basically by chucking off capital to oil and gas firms and related. She's married to Jamie Raskin, who's on the January 6th Commission, and we know what that kangaroo court is doing. Frank Gaffney (09:20): Senior leftist member of Congress. Bill Walton (09:22): Yeah, senior leftist member. They're quite a power couple, Frank, quite a power couple. Anyway, so in addition to her really bad ideas when it comes to climate and her sophistication, she's a very sophisticated financial operator. And while she was on the board... I believe it was while she was deputy... What year was it? In 2018, she became... Or 2017, she joined the board of directors of a company called Reserve Trust. What Reserve Trust does is it engaged in pavement processing related to business-to-business transactions. And it's extremely valuable to be a chartered company, to obtain a Federal Reserve master account, which gives a company direct access to Federal Reserve clearing payment settlement services. Bill Walton (10:15): Well, while she was on the board, she made a call to the fed to ask that they approve this company's status, and they did so. And while it's not illegal, per se, it certainly smells to high heaven. And when she joined the board, she received almost 200,000 shares of the stock. She sold the shares in 2020 for $1.4 million, pretty good pay for three years on a board. Of course, she was worth every penny because this company's got this special status accorded to them by the fed. And this is happening, Frank, all along the time when you got Elizabeth Warren condemning Randall Corals for terrible conflict of interest, because what he did is he returned to work for private equity company that he founded. So this is part of the terrible revolving door that Elizabeth Warren is always complaining about. Well, she had to look very closely at her own nominee, Sarah Raskin. Frank Gaffney (11:24): It'll be very interesting to see if she does [inaudible 00:11:28]. [crosstalk 00:11:28]- Bill Walton (11:28): I'll hold my breath, Frank. Frank Gaffney (11:33): Speaking of the Federal Reserve, Bill Walton, let me talk to you about another nominee of Joe Biden, Dr. Lisa Cook, I believe it is. Tell us about her and her qualifications for this position and, apparently, her own pretty strongly-held, hard-left agenda. Bill Walton (11:55): Well, on paper, she's got quite a pedigree. I don't have her resume in front of me, but she's got a PhD in finance economics from a big university. And she has had some pretty important jobs. The issue, though, is you see this all the time in Washington, is people have nice resumes and they move from position to position, but they never actually demonstrate they know anything. And if you look at everything she's written as an academic and otherwise, it's all about critical race theory and social justice and righting the wrongs that America is all about. And so we've got another... She's black. She's female. So we've got another race warrior who Biden wants to put on the board of the Federal Reserve and, in my mind, that's part of the issue. The other part of the issue is she doesn't seem to know anything about monetary economics. So we're adding somebody else into the mix, when we've got a Federal Reserve which is printing money like mad, and I think is likely to have a very, very tough next couple of years, as we try to unwind all this monetary madness that's been going on. And we're adding yet another unqualified person to the mix. Frank Gaffney (13:16): Well, again, if this were the only example of this sort of- Bill Walton (13:21): It goes on and on. Frank Gaffney (13:22): ...racist preoccupation being- Bill Walton (13:24): Well, and then we've got- Frank Gaffney (13:24): ...projected- Bill Walton (13:24): ...our head of the FTC. Frank Gaffney (13:26): Yeah, well, I wanted to turn to her next, Bill, but again, this is just fitting increasingly, isn't it, a pattern of people who are determined to use whatever instruments they have at their disposal to advance- Bill Walton (13:43): We have a Biden administration [crosstalk 00:13:44]- Frank Gaffney (13:44): ...arguably the most radical and, I would say, communist agenda in our history. Bill Walton (13:49): Well, whatever you want to call it, Marxist, nihilist, totalitarian. I can think of 53 labels for these people, but the one thing they all have in common is they don't know anything about the private sector. They don't know anything about wealth creation. They don't understand anything about the markets that created the prosperity that's brought billions of people out of poverty worldwide. These people are wholly ignorant of that. And they weigh in on things that they know very little about, with a political agenda, and worse, they're in a position to make policy to further damage the economy. And the head of the FTC is now blaming inflation on price fixing among big companies. Well, I don't exactly think that Microsoft is price fixing with Apple. And I don't think that's the way the modern economy works anymore. What does work, in creating inflation, is mass federal spending and the massive federal deficits in the 3 or 4 trillion range, debt that's 30 trillion, Federal Reserve flooding of the market with money, buying back the treasury debt, and in fact, paying for these deficits with inflation. So there's a culprit, and it lies right in front of us in the middle of the road. And instead, you've got the head of the FTC blaming these mysterious price fixes somewhere, somehow that it's all their fault. Frank Gaffney (15:21): Bill Walton, I think that the key point here is that we're in a world of hurt, at the moment, on a lot of different fronts. We're going to be talking about Ukraine in a moment and what may flow from Russia's ambitions to, well, crush that part of the free world. [crosstalk 00:15:44]- Bill Walton (15:44): Well, I put out a piece today. We had Mike Waller and Peter Pry on, and I'll just real quickly... Mike points out, or Peter points out that we have very little understanding of what Russia and China are doing with each other. They formed an alliance. The Pentagon itself is war gamed defending Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion 18 different times, and 18 different times China won the war game. So we're playing with fire here, with people in the administration, and the foreign policy establishment or elites under Biden are very little different from the economic elites that he's trying to put in place. We have a lot to worry about. Frank Gaffney (16:27): Similar agendas, global warming being the greatest threat we face, and domestic terrorists that look a lot like Trump voters being the greatest national security and Homeland Security challenge. Bill Walton, I congratulate you on the Waller Pry tag team and look forward to seeing it myself and encourage all of our listeners to watch it and all of the Bill Walton Show. Thank you for your time today on our program, Securing America, being our mutual interest and for all that you do for that purpose and cause. And next up, we are going to speak with Ruben Johnson about Ukraine, Americans' perspective on the ground there, right after this.