The panel on Thursday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Daily Beat with Ari Melber spent more than ten minutes overreacting to comments made by Fox News's Sean Hannity on his show Hannity Wednesday night. Hannity jokingly advised witnesses in the Mueller probe, who have been asked to turn in their phones to Special Counsel Robert Mueller: “Use bleach bit, remove the SIM cards and then take the pieces and hand it over to Robert Mueller and say Hillary Rodham Clinton, this is equal justice under the law.” Former Federal Prosecutor Joyce Vance took his comments way too seriously; suggesting that Mueller should bring in Hannity for questioning and slamming the Fox News host for his “reprehensible conduct.”
Hannity brought up this point multiple times on his show Wednesday night. At the beginning of his opening monologue, he brought up Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s demand that “all witnesses turn over their phones so his merry band of Hillary-supporting and Trump-hating sycophants can comb through private communications.” Hannity then asked, “Are these witnesses going to be allowed to follow the Clinton model? Are they going to be allowed to delete, bleach bit, remove the SIM cards and bust them up with hammers? Interesting thought, I doubt it.”
Hannity made these points in an effort to underscore the “two-tiered justice system,” where Hillary Clinton and her associates got away with this type of behavior when it came to her private e-mail server but someone who does not have her political power and/or policy positions would face much stronger consequences. Wednesday night’s program also focused quite a bit on the upcoming report from The Inspector General of the Department of Justice, which will likely implicate several officials at the FBI and Department of Justice for improper behavior during the Clinton e-mail investigation.
Not surprisingly, the Trump-haters at MSNBC did not play the clip where Hannity made it perfectly clear he was joking. Later in the episode, as he was having a discussion with panelists Gregg Jarrett and Sara Carter, Hannity said “Mueller wants everyone’s cell phones. My advice to them, not really, kidding, bad advice, would be, follow Hillary’s you know, lead… Delete them, acid-wash them, bust them up and take out the SIM cards and say here little pieces, here Mr. Mueller, here, I’m following Hillary’s lead.” What part of “not really, kidding, bad advice” do Hannity’s counterparts in the left-wing media not understand?
The fact that Melber chose to lead his show with this story underscores just how unhinged the media has become as a result of Trump Derangement Syndrome. They will do anything to take down President Trump and his supporters. In addition to suggesting that Mueller should talk to Hannity, Vance encouraged Fox News to “perhaps impose some sanctions on Hannity for this conduct” but ultimately admitted that he will not likely face any prosecution, as “Federal prosecutors give people a very wide berth on First Amendment-related conduct.”
While the media will continue to obsess over the Mueller investigation, the Inspector General’s report, due out next week, will shed some light on the FBI and Justice Department’s handling of the Clinton e-mail investigation. Don’t expect the media to cover this story with the same passion that they cover the Russia probe.
Here is a transcript of the relevant portions of Wednesday night’s Hannity. Click expand to read more.
Hannity
06/06/18
09:00 PM
SEAN HANNITY: Also, we have breaking new information surrounding Mueller’s runaway witch hunt as he is now demanding that all witnesses turn over their phones so his merry band of Hillary-supporting and Trump-hating sycophants can comb through private communications. Are these witnesses going to be allowed to follow the Clinton model? Are they going to be allowed to delete, bleach bit, remove the SIM cards and bust them up with hammers? Interesting thought, I doubt it.
(…)
09:04:55 PM
HANNITY: And meanwhile, as the Mueller witch hunt churns on, the Special Counsel, this is interesting, they are demanding that witnesses turn in their phones so Team Mueller and, of course, his pit bull Andrew Weissmann and Jeannie Rhee, who worked for Clinton, get to review all of their electronic communications. He wants the phones turned over, even texts that are on what are called encrypted apps like WhatsApp or Signal or one of these things. Now maybe Mueller’s witnesses, I don’t know. If I advise them to follow Hillary Clinton’s lead, delete all your e-mails and then acid-wash the e-mails and hard drives on the new phones, then take your phones and bash them with a hammer into little itsy-bitsy pieces, use BleachBit, remove the SIM cards, and then take the pieces and hand it over to Robert Mueller and say, Hillary Rodham Clinton, this is equal justice under the law. How do you think that would work out for everybody who Mueller is demanding their phones of tonight? Now I’m certain the result would not be the same as Hillary’s.
(…)
09:18:35 AM
HANNITY: And as I said, now that Robert Mueller wants everybody’s phones in case they used one of these applications I guess, you know, WhatsApp, or whatever you call this stuff, so he wants all this information and interestingly, he wants it and I wonder if everybody that has phones if they did what Hillary did and that’s delete the emails, delete the app, acid-washed the phone, break it up to little bits and take the SIM cards out, how would that work out for all the people Robert Mueller’s requesting phones from?
DIGENOVA: If they have done any of those steps that you just identified, they would have obstructed justice and would be subject to prosecution. Of course, that wasn’t the way Hillary Clinton was treated because James Comey conducted a fraudulent investigation. No subpoenas. No search warrants. No grand jury. Massive use illegally of immunity, with the permission of the Attorney General and Sally Yates, the Deputy Attorney General. So, what you have is a double standard, and it’s just flagrantly visible by the way Mueller is conducting his investigation. The ultimate pressure as opposed to the ultimate no pressure in the Hillary Clinton investigation.
(…)
09:32:03 PM
HANNITY: Mueller wants everyone’s cell phones. My advice to them, not really, kidding, bad advice would be, follow, Hillary’s, you know, lead.
SARA CARTER: Absolutely.
JARRETT: Yes.
HANNITY: Delete them, acid-wash them, bust them up and take out the SIM cards and say here little pieces, here Mr. Mueller, here, I’m following Hillary’s lead.
JARRETT: Clinton and her associates did that, they were obstructing justice.
CARTER: That’s right.
JARRETT: What is inexplicable is that the FBI gave immunity to at least five different Clinton people in exchange for what, you don’t get immunity for…
HANNITY: And let them keep their devices.
JARRETT: They got to keep their devices. Those devices that the FBI obtained, some of them they never looked at. The others had nothing on them.
HANNITY: Yeah. It’s amazing.
CARTER: And Sean, this is a tactic. This is the a of Mueller. He is shaking the trees he’s making people nervous.
HANNITY: Here’s my cell phone, boom, boom, boom, crack it up and have a little pieces and say here, Mr. Mueller, courtesy of Hillary. All right. That’s why I bust my cell phone every day.
Here is a transcript of the exchange on Thursday’s The Beat with Ari Melber. Click expand to read more.
The Beat With Ari Melber
06/07/18
06:00 PM
ARI MELBER: I want to begin tonight with four facts that underpin the top story. One, Donald Trump is under investigation for obstruction of justice. Two, several of Trump’s former aides have plead guilty or been charged with crimes related to obstruction like lying to the feds. Three, the man who literally ran Trump’s campaign was accused this week of witness tampering, one of the more serious ways to obstruct any probe. Four, Bob Mueller is finding new leads in his probe by looking through witnesses’ phones and reading their once encrypted messages. And then five, one of the most powerful people in Trump’s orbit is Sean Hannity, conservative activist and TV host who reportedly speaks to Trump daily and is one of the only other clients as Trump’s embattled lawyer Michael Cohen. Take that all in right now; those five facts because they make what we’re about to show you especially legally significant. I don’t mean this as some sort of media commentary story. I mean this as a story about what’s coming out of the Trump White House. Because that same influential man, Sean Hannity is now literally telling potential witnesses and subjects in the Mueller probe to destroy the evidence and hammer their phones into pieces.
SEAN HANNITY: They are demanding that witnesses turn in their phones…follow Hillary Clinton’s lead. Delete all your e-mails and then acid wash the e-mails and hard drives on the phones. Then take your phones and bash them with a hammer into little itsy bitsy pieces.
MELBER: Now Hannity’s defenders may call that sarcasm or poetic license but words are words. Sean Hannity lives off his words and we all know they have a huge impact. And another way to understand those words, why this is such an important story tonight. If anyone actually does what Sean Hannity says there, they’d be committing a crime. If Sean Hannity were their lawyer and told them to do it, he could be disbarred or even charged. This is what’s going on in the country right now as Mueller gets closer to potential targets. This is not a drill. This is not just any random commentator. People around Donald Trump may reasonably and logically perceive that those words, that what Sean Hannity is saying is effectively speaking on behalf of Trump. Now Donald Trump not only channels the Fox News Channel, he recruits from it; hiring staff, hiring criminal defense lawyers right off the screen and now there are new reports that Trump might try to hire Fox personality Jeanine Pirro to take measures at the Justice Department that his current appointees will not take. Politico reporting that this is a serious process with an interview for her for top jobs at DOJ and even potentially including a path to being Bob Mueller’s boss. Let me say that again, a path to being Bob Mueller’s boss. Now while Pirro is a lawyer, legal experts know she has far less federal experience than most top DOJ officials do in either party and either administrations and she has a far more questionable background for the kind of public partisanship and conspiracy theorizing that typically in any other administration tends to disqualify people from law enforcement posts.
JUDGE JEANINE PIRRO: This is a fishing expedition…The dirt started really bad with Jim Comey…He turned into a political whore…This guy McCabe needs to be taken out of in cuffs…Hillary Clinton and Bill making money on the deal…Obama and the Clintons sold us out…Look, these people belong in jail. Lock her up.
MELBER: Now, tonight Trump’s actual employee, Rudy Giuliani, is pushing a conspiracy theory that Mueller will frame or trap Donald Trump, the exact angle Hannity has been pushing.
HANNITY: Mueller is laying a huge perjury trap for the President of the United States…The Special Counsel’s obsessive determination to set a perjury trump for President Trump…I would argue he would be stepping right into a perjury step…The only point of a Presidential interview is to set a perjury trap.
MELBER: Take it all in. Take it in together. You know, one of the common critiques about Donald Trump is that he lives in a TV world and acts like the reality show star he once was. Now that critique seems to assume that there are limits to his approach and that when it makes contact with the real world, he’ll suffer. Donald Trump is President. This Congress rarely stands up to him. So if he does empower enough people from Fox News and hire enough people from Fox News, then maybe someday Donald Trump won’t actually be the odd man out anymore. The Justice Department itself could be run by TV performers and this show will be in charge of reality. I’m joined by former Watergate Special Prosecutor Nick Ackerman, Former Federal Prosecutor Joyce Vance, and Natasha Bertrand, who’s covering the Mueller probe for The Atlantic. Nick, do you see this as something larger than a story about a loud commentator and entertainer if you will but rather a story about the thinking in the White House and the way they are approaching this probe?NICK ACKERMAN: Yeah, I think the thinking in the White House is to tamper with witnesses. What Sean Hannity admitted to and actually was enticing people to do and asking them to do was to destroy evidence, which is a violation of the witness tampering statute. It’s not just people who destroy the evidence but it’s also people who actually ask others to do it. I mean, if you just look at the language of the statute. Who ever knowingly persuades another person to do so with intent to cause or induce any person to alter, destroy, mutilate or conceal an object with intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding commits a 20-year felony. He’s doing it on TV. We have a rash of witness tampering going on right now. We’ve got it with Manafort who’s going to have to answer to this tomorrow before a judge and may go straight to jail as a result. We have it with Donald Trump who is making up the story for Don Jr. that can be used by Don Jr. and others to make a false story over the June 9 meeting. This is all witness tampering. This is a crime that didn’t even exist back in the Watergate days. This is a crime that has been separated out of what was a five year felony that Congress has now made a much more serious crime with a punishment of up to 20 years.
MELBER: Joyce, let me play for you a little more of Sean Hannity because of course, there’s a wide berth for free speech, for sarcasm, for jokes, for all of that kind of thing. And yet this does come in a context in a week of the actual tampering that’s going on and the really, I would say to some degree, unprecedented language from a White House not saying oh, Donald Trump’s innocent but rather he can obstruct what he wants which gets very close to an environment of obstruction encouragement. Here was Hannity last night talking about removing sim card and using bleach bit.
HANNITY: Use bleach bit, remove the sim cards and then take the pieces and hand it over to Robert Mueller and say Hillary Rodham Clinton, this is equal justice under the law.MELBER: Joyce?
JOYCE VANCE: Hannity seems well versed in how to wipe out a phone so I guess if I were Bob Mueller I might have some questions for him about what he’s been doing to his own devices. But look, this is reprehensible conduct. No responsible person on television, no responsible so-called journalist should be advocating for people to destroy evidence in a serious Federal investigation. It’s reprehensible, it is sadly more of what we’ve come to expect from the people that this President surrounds himself with. One would hope that Fox would perhaps impose some sanctions on Hannity for this conduct. But I don’t think that we’ll see him prosecuted. Federal prosecutors give people a very wide berth on First Amendment-related conduct and so unless there’s something more specific to link it up, I think that this will be what we often categorize as awful but lawful conduct.
MELBER: Right. And Natasha, I’m not suggesting these words alone constitute a crime. Although that would be a pretty low bar for discussing whether, as Joyce said, this is proper, this is responsible; especially if we’re talking about how the nation should run and Sean Hannity has done many, many programs about law and order and accountability and what should happen to people who don’t follow the law. These obviously are our laws that govern respect for government investigations. More broadly, take a listen to him and Trump echoing each other.
HANNITY: Your communities are being hurt and you’re paying a lot of money because of illegal immigrants, crimes and drugs that are coming across the border.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: We will get the criminals out, the drug lords, the gang members, we’re getting them out.
HANNITY: When it comes to recognizing the violence that took place and both sides were involved in the fighting.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I think there’s blame on both sides.
MELBER: Natasha, given your close eye on the probe, walk us through the role that someone like Hannity plays in your view of the rather extraordinary report that Jeanine Pirro could potentially be in line to become Bob Mueller’s boss.
NATASHA BERTRAND: Well, Donald Trump really likes people who defend him on television. I mean, he pretty much spends a very good portion of his day every day watching Fox News. And he watches for surrogates, he watches for people who will go out there and defend what is pretty much indefensible at this point, which are kind of baseless attacks on Robert Mueller, like Giuliani said, that, you know, this was all an attempt to frame him but I think it’s also really important to mention that Hannity is not a neutral player in all this. I mean, Sean Hannity has potential legal vulnerability especially because there is evidence that perhaps he was talking to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, during the, after the election when Julian Assange reached out to a Twitter account that he thought belonged to Sean Hannity and said let’s communicate on another platform. So that’s evidence that perhaps Sean Hannity did have prior communication with Julian Assange. And then there was also the issue of whether or not he was involved in any way in this relationship between Keith Davidson, the former Attorney for Stormy Daniels, and Michael Cohen. Of course, he had hired Michael Cohen to be his attorney so there’s some kind of weird relationship there. And he was mentioned in court filings that were, that were submitted by Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels’ current attorney, yesterday. So Hannity’s attacks here are not all in an effort to defend the President. He also faces exposure in a way that perhaps he’s trying pre-empt now.
MELBER: Right, which is, you raise great points given the primacy of Michael Cohen this week. Nick Ackerman, I want to read a little more of Sean Hannity’s version of events because we’ve played the sound, people can judge it for themselves. Washington Post write-up notes that he would then say he was kidding and then repeat the advice. “My advice to them, not really! Kidding! Bad Advice!...Follow Hillary’s lead.” But The Washington Post notes then he raised it again in a serious discussion with Attorney Joe DiGenova, who like so many of these players that are complexly interrelated actually had briefly been announced as a criminal defense attorney for Donald Trump. So it’s not, look, let me put it like this. That show, with all due respect, is not known for its comedy or bonhomie.
NICK ACKERMAN: No but it’s also very similar to what I used to see when I prosecuted organized crime figures. What they would do is they would come on hard, they’d tell people to destroy the evidence, to get rid of the evidence and then they’d just say oh I’m just kidding. I mean, it was kind of like a wink and a nod but what they want you to do is to destroy the evidence.
