MAJOR GARRETT:
00:02:20
But you talk about the pressure you felt, either from Letitia James or Alvin Bragg, operating as a Manhattan DA or as a state attorney general in New York. I need to interrupt you on that one. That's where I was a subpoenaed witness. That had nothing to do with me. I was merely a subpoenaed witness in a case that was being brought, The People of the State of New York--or the Manhattan District Attorney, as well-- vs. Donald J. Trump. It had nothing to do with me. I was merely a subpoenaed witness. So in that context, that's not an abusive situation from your point of view? Well, it was abusive in the fact that I had to testify, and that not only is it a financial strain, but on top of that, a physical and an emotional strain, as well. But no, that would not be something covered by this anti-weaponization fund. For my audience's benefit, Michael, articulate what you believe was abusive in relationship to your treatment by federal prosecutors or law enforcement. Well, interestingly enough, Donald Trump brought a $10 billion lawsuit against the government, as well as with the IRS. Similarly, it started out, for me, with the Russia hoax. Whereby in the Steele dossier, it was alleged that 13 different times that, one, I was either in Prague, that I had paid off Russian Kompromats, that I have a dacha in Sochi next door to Putin, that family members of mine are the largest real estate developers in Moscow. Nobody in my family has ever even been to Moscow. I've never been to Prague, the Czech Republic, and I certainly did not travel over there with $10 million in cash to help Paul Manafort. The allegations that were raised against me in that Steele dossier are emphatically false, proven to be emphatically false. And for months-- and I mean months, not just nationally, but globally-- attacked me on a daily basis. Now, remember that that Steele dossier was initially created as opposition research by the Clinton campaign. When they looked at it and they realized it was garbage, they then gave it, somehow, to John McCain-- whether he bought it or acquired it, I don't know. Who then turned it over to James Comey, who turned it over to Andrew Weissman, who turned it over to Geoffrey Berman at the Southern District of New York, and then to Robert Khuzami for prosecution. So again, that's where it starts. Now, the second cause of action that Donald Trump raised in that lawsuit was the fact that they had stolen, or that they improperly took, his IRS tax documents. Coincidentally, the individual, Charles E. Littlejohn, he was an outside contractor for the IRS-- he's the one who took Trump's documents. Well, not to be confused, he did it to me, as well. But that was the second time that it happened to me. Remember that there was a gentleman named Jonathan Fry, an IRS agent out of San Francisco, who actually downloaded all of my information onto a thumb drive, gave that thumb drive to Michael Avenatti, who gave it to Ronan Farrow for reporting. So the same causes of action that Donald Trump brought his $10 billion lawsuit against the US government, well, those two causes of action apply to me, as well. Michael, I want to play for our audience something they might recall-- your testimony before Congress in 2019. And I want you to answer on the other side, whether or not any of what you said then is relevant to the times we live in now. Let's play that. I've acknowledged I have made my own mistakes. And I have owned up to them, publicly and under oath. But silence and complicity in the face of the daily destruction of our basic norms and civility to one another will not be one of them. I did things and I acted improperly, at times at Mr. Trump's behest. I blindly followed his demands. So for those who remember that, Michael, what does those statements mean, contextually, in what you've just described to my audience about this application, or this letter that you're putting forward? Well, they're two completely different things. When I talked about in that opening statement to the House Oversight Committee, I was also referring to doing things at the behest of, or I should say, when I was employed at the Trump Organization. For example, we talked about, many, many times, the CNBC poll. There was no need for me to do it. I should not have done it. It was irrelevant across the board, but nevertheless, I still did it. So I acknowledge, I take responsibility for what I did. But as I start out in my letter-- which again, I intend to send to the Department of Justice right after this Memorial Day weekend-- I started off by saying that there are moments in American history when the truth is buried so deeply beneath politics, ambition, media frenzy, and prosecutorial misconduct, that the people caught in the middle are no longer viewed as human beings. They become symbols, targets, sacrificial lambs. And I know this, because I became one of them-- and that's the point. And you know what? I applaud Donald Trump, by the way, for starting this thing. Because I brought an action against the United States government myself. I took that case all the way to the Supreme Court, who refused to hear it. But as a direct result of the Dobbs decision-- and that's the same decision that overturned Roe v. Wade-- it also overturned a case called Bivens, and Bivenswas the way that you sue the government when they violate your constitutional rights, as mine were. And so here, what Donald Trump has in essence done, is he has fast-tracked to those individuals who believe that their constitutional rights have been violated. And I'll tell you something. I'm extremely disappointed on both sides of the aisle when they start talking about, well, as a result of this fund, January 6 participants might be able to collect, or they could potentially collect. All of that we don't know exactly yet. There are a lot of questions still around this and a lot of hypotheticals. And, Michael, we're going to have to leave it there. I appreciate the time. We'll revisit this as circumstances and reaction you get may warrant. Thank you very much. Well, I look forward to it.
