UK Column Radio

A conversation with Joseph B. Sweeney, former CIA Head of Litigation

Joseph B. Sweeney served in the CIA Office of General Counsel for 25 years supporting world-wide intelligence operations. His knowledge and experience ultimately led him to question the Department of Justice’s protection of President Biden and the persecution of former President Trump. Read the write-up: www.ukcolumn.org/video/a-conversation-with-joseph-b-sweeney-former-cia-head-of-litigation-and-the-author-of-a

Duration:: 1h 33m
Broadcast on:: 29 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

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And I think the simple way is for me to read his CV that he's kindly provided and it runs as follows. Joseph B. Sweeney served in the CIA Office of General Counsel for 25 years in support of broad spectrum of intelligence operations all over the world, including espionage and terrorism investigations and prosecutions. His work has been recognized with the 1999 Public Service Award from the Eastern District of Virginia for his support of an espionage prosecution, a 2002 Attorney General's Award for his support of the Southern District of New York's prosecution of Osama bin Laden and others for bombing U.S. embassies in East Africa, a 2011 Intelligence Community Legal Award for his support of a spy swap, and a 2018 Assistant Attorney General Award for his support of the Department of Justice National Security Division. He's a 1987 graduate of the United States Military Academy and served as an airborne ranger qualified infantry officer for six years. And after graduating law school in 1996, he was accepted into the CIA National Security Law Honors Program. And in 2012, he earned an LLM in National Security Law from Georgetown Law School. So a very eminent CV, Joseph B. Sweeney. Welcome to UK column. Thank you and thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Now, I understand you're joining us from Washington, D.C. this afternoon. Is that correct? That is correct. I'm right in the swamp. Okay, thank you. Now, the other bits which I just wanted to point the view as that is your website so that once they've completed the interview with us, they can go and have a look at that and probably bring it up at the end as well. But that's www dot s w w w n e y j b dot com. So Sweeney j b dot com. Well, there we are. I'm going to say a very big thank you for agreeing to this interview and, of course, for providing me with a copy of your book. Now, I have spent a lot of time reading it and I ended up having to take some of the information and put it in a little bit of a diagrammatic form so that I could track through some of your arguments. But I thought what I'd do is just sort of spell out the flow of it for the audience and then maybe we can work through that a bit until we get the critical element. So, you begin by a little bit of history with talking about George Washington and warnings to the American public about what happens when there's fractions appear in the nation and how that actually is a threat to the nation and the unity of the nation. So that was a pretty poignant start. You quickly give a little bit of a summary, which is about from 2016 onwards, the Democrat attacks on Trump from his presidential campaign onwards. Until, of course, we get to the critical point where there's been an armed raid on Trump's home. And you point out that very quickly. At that time, the Biden administration came up with two criminal indictments against Trump. That was interfering with the 2020 presidential election and violating number two violating espionage. The espionage, the espionage act by mishandling classified information. And the next bit I'll just do very briefly before we bring you in is that you then point out to your readers that they need to follow three key steps in order to really get on to understand the complexities of the law around classified information. And you say that to understand the extent to which the party affiliations determined conduct to the investigations against Trump, the reader needs to understand cases both against Biden and Trump. And to do that, you need to understand how defense information is classified and protected. So that's probably the starting point for us. Most people will have little idea about the intricacies of official secrets and how the documentation works. So, would you like to start there and just tell the audience how the system works and what classified information is? Sure, absolutely. In the United States, information that is national defense related is classified pursuant to a presidential executive order. So all the safeguarding, classifications, you know, all the rules on storage, handling, processing, access, all of that is pursuant to presidential executive order. The President makes the rules for this sensitive national security related information. Now, you know, just for your viewers who may not be familiar with our system, we have three coordinate branches of government, the judiciary, the executive branch, and Congress. So classified information is not controlled by Congress, and it's not controlled by the judiciary. It is created pursuant to executive power, because under the Constitution, the President is also the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. So it's that Commander-in-Chief power flowing from that power that the President issues an executive order to classify information. And there are many, many, many rules, some of which I go into in the book about storage, handling, creation, transportation. There are very strict rules, and for those of us like me who spent decades working with classified information every day, they're all second nature. It's like breathing, taking care of the information and making sure you're following all the rules. And so that's the basics for creating and protecting classified information. And the most important point is that it all flows from executive power. Now, there are also criminal laws that make it a crime under U.S. law to mishandle or steal or be grossly negligent in the handling of classified information. So for instance, gross negligence is at the lower end of the spectrum, because it's when you're not doing something purposeful, but you're just being maybe stupid, excessively stupid in the way that you're transporting or handling classified information. It's when you're violating a duty of care, and the lack of attention to the duty of care is so extreme that the law would actually make it a crime. So there's gross negligence, and then there is the other end of the spectrum, willfully retaining, willfully stealing classified information. In all of those violations would be under the U.S. Espionage Act. So the Espionage Act itself, it covers actually a broad range of conduct, because there is, of course, the classic type of spying that you would see in the movies, where foreigners are trying to steal your government secrets and you catch them. That's a classic case that is an Espionage Act prosecution. But even something as simple as mishandling classified information, if it's gross negligence, that can also be prosecuted, even though you weren't trying to steal secrets for money, you weren't doing anything to purposefully harm the country, but you did violate a duty of care. So that's kind of in a nutshell, that's how classified information is controlled, and that's how mishandling or stealing is punished under U.S. law. Right, okay, and of course, if we do something simple, we're talking about classified information within a government. There's all sorts of different types of classified information that's circulating. We might have documents that relate to foreign relations, and we might have documents which are more orientated towards the military. And can you explain to the audience what sort of documents would how documents would normally be classified so that they can be identified as. Sure. Under the presidential executive order, there are eight categories of information that are eligible to be classified as our state secrets, and they include the things that you would expect. The foreign information pertaining to foreign relations of the United States, information pertaining to the military of the United States, information pertaining to intelligence sources and methods, for instance. So the categories are basic and what you would expect, and if you're going to classify information from those categories, you have to determine the level of damage that could be expected from an unauthorized disclosure of that information. So if it's just simple damage, then the information would be classified at the confidential level. That's the most basic level. And then one step up would be the secret level where there's perhaps more damage to the national security that could be expected. And then if there is exceptionally grave damage to the national security, that's classified at the highest level, top secret. Now, once you get up to the top secret level, it's not one monolithic category because information up at that level can be further compartmented. And so there's top secret diamond, top secret jade, top secret, you know, a lavender, and you don't get access to those categories of information unless you have a need to know them. So there's further compartmentation at the top secret level, but that's basically how it works under the executive order. Confidential, secret, top secret, and at the top secret level, it can be even further compartmented. Right, and those classified documents would normally have those classifications clearly marked on them. So somebody handling and reading a document with a particular security implication would see that classification in any additional caveats printed on the document. Absolutely, and so under the executive order governing the classified information, there is very specific instructions as how a classified document would be marked so that anyone, anyone, you know, would see them the classification levels in the header and in the footer. And then there would be additional code words and code names and so forth. But that way, everyone knows from when they pick up a document, what level it's classified at, and whether or not they shouldn't even be reading the document. Because like I said, if it's top secret lavender, and I haven't been read into that category, and I'm not supposed to read it, then I know this is not a document that I should be reading. So one other related nuance to that is sometimes documents are not properly marked. And let's say someone creates a classified document, maybe it's even a handwritten note. And they don't properly mark the header and the footer with the appropriate classification markings. And in the document could then get out into the public domain, people could be passing it around with no knowledge that there's actually very sensitive information in the document. And I've worked on cases of that nature, and the position of the government is, well, that document is still classified. It's just not properly marked. And so what the government would do in those instances is we would refuse to confirm or deny the accuracy of any of the information in the document. We would say that the information in the document is not declassified just because it wasn't properly marked. And then once we got a hold of the document, we would properly mark it and start protecting the information in it. I've worked on cases where these complex cities can make life a little difficult because, for instance, in America under the Freedom of Information Act, citizens can request documents from the government. And sometimes when we come across a document that should have been classified, but was not properly marked, we have to then mark it at that time and explain all of this to a federal judge so that we're not being accused of playing fast and loose with the rules. Right. Okay. Thank you for that. And just to reinforce the point, your key specialist area is at law within the CIA in particular in relation to classified information and court cases that have taken place around the use and abuse of classified information. That's correct. I had kind of a unique career in the CIA General Counsel's Office in that half of my time about 12 years was spent in the litigation division line attorney deputy acting chief and then I was chief of the litigation division for four years. Handling civil and criminal cases, in conjunction with the Department of Justice, when those cases involved classified information in some way shape or form. So there's, there is just about no, no aspect of a civil or criminal case involving classified information that I haven't handled. Right. And as I have discovered from reading your book, this, this is a complex, very complex area. Now, just to set the scene a bit, your book is essentially an analysis of what took place around the investigation into President Trump when he was accused of having taken classified material to his home. And of course there was a raid by armed FBI agents, and subsequently huge media for all, but also a legal process took place. So that, that is the meat of your book. But in order to be able to explain to the redo some of the complexities around not only the case that Trump was faced with, but how he got in the position of having to face that case. You have had to take the reader through some key steps as to how you have seen the system work, either protection of classified material, but also in particular where the system has failed. And what has happened to individuals. And what I perceive is that key segment to the book is where you've been looking at examples of particular individuals who fall and foul of the law in relation to classified documents. And then you've, you've given a sort of summary of those cases, and you've also the end of it identified what the final charge was, what the sentence was. So I wonder whether you would be kind enough to just take us into some of those cases where you're able to say, yes, I was there, I handled this material. This is what an individual did. This is how the case unfolded and this is what the final charge was. This is a sort of backdrop to getting to both some indiscretions by President Biden, and of course what happened with President Trump. Sure, it's what got me interested in Trump's case in the first place is that I had just retired for just about a year when Mar-a-Lago was rated. And there were only in the history of the United States, there were only four cases where senior executive branch officials had been investigated or prosecuted for mishandling classified information. And it just so happened, I worked on three of those four cases throughout my career. I'm probably the only person in the world who did. And even the one I didn't work on, that happened during my time in government and I was aware of the case and following it. So what I'll do is I'll just walk your viewers through those four cases in the order that they occurred. The first case ever was a man by the name of John Deutsch, who was the director of Central Intelligence. He was the top spy and the head of the intelligence community. This was the four 9/11 and before the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the head of the CIA was also the head of the intelligence community. Now that changed after 9/11, there was a restructuring of the intelligence community and the position of DNI was created, that's the director of national intelligence. And the head of the CIA was made just the head of the CIA. But back when Deutsch was the head of the CIA, he was also the head of the intelligence community and so his title was Director of Central Intelligence. Now, after Deutsch left his job, the agency discovered that Deutsch had been keeping on his home computers that were unsecured and hooked up to the Internet. Over 300 classified documents and what he was doing was he was bringing them home at night, unlike a thumb drive, plugging them into his home computer and working on documents at night. That is something I can tell you that if any rank and file officer in the executive branch did, they would absolutely go to jail. But Deutsch was very high up and when it came to light, the agency started to investigate. There's a lot of procedural history that I go into in the book that I won't bother with. I'll just focus on his conduct for now and that was that he had over 300 classified documents, so that's a very high volume. And many of them were highly classified up at the top secret level. Now, this was the first case of this nature and the Department of Justice was struggling without a handle it. Our Attorney General at the time was named Janet Reno. She was appointed by President Clinton as the Attorney General and Clinton had also appointed John Deutsch. So, you know, one of the things I emphasize in the book is you cannot examine these cases without examining the politics. The politics heavily influenced how these cases were handled, all of them. And Deutsch is a great example because at first the Attorney General refused to even conduct even a preliminary investigation. And then there was a public backlash because the Senate Intelligence Committee did their own investigation and released an unclassified report that caused the backlash. And then the Attorney General had to reverse herself and appoint someone to investigate and perhaps prosecute the case. I worked with that person. And so what ended up happening was, you know, the Department of Justice, which was controlled by the Clinton Administration, was very lenient on John Deutsch. And they ended up permitting Deutsch to sign a plea agreement for possessing one single classified document that was at the secret level. Now Deutsch had a lot of stuff that was at the top secret level. That was all ignored in the plea agreement. And he had this plea agreement for one single secret document. And by only charging that one document that lowered the charges from something that would be very serious in our country, which is called a felony. That's punishable with one year or more down to a misdemeanor, which is maximum of one year. But Deutsch's plea agreement just it permitted him to just get a fine and do some probation. And there was no jail time. So that's a very light slap on the wrist. Now, the day after Deutsch signed his plea agreement was President Clinton's last day in office. And so Clinton then issued a pardon to Deutsch. And a pardon visciates the plea agreement. So he never had to pay the fine. He never had to do the probation. He basically was let off Scott Free for what was a very major breach of national security. Now, that was the first case. The second case was also someone who was working for President Clinton. And that was Clinton's national security advisor, who is kind of an informal cabinet member for the President. And his name was Sandy Burger. Now, Sandy Burger, he, after he served as national security advisor, this is after 9/11, Burger was going to the U.S. National Archives to review documents for related to testimony he was going to have to give to the 9/11 Commission. And when Burger was reviewing these documents, they were classified. Many were top secret. He was stealing them, sticking them down his pants and in his socks, bringing them to a construction site that was across the streets from the National Archives, and then bringing them home and destroying them. Now, we don't know for sure what was in the documents that he was stealing, but they all appeared to be the different versions, drafts of an after action report on some terrorism activities. And the rumor going around Washington at the time was that this document, the documents he was stealing, they showed that the Clinton administration had the opportunity to kill Osama bin Laden well before 9/11, but they decided not to. Now, that was just a rumor. I don't know if that's true or not, but it made sense to me because whatever he was trying to protect and destroy and hide, it was something that was obviously very damaging to him in the Clinton administration. That would just make sense to me. So at first, what happened was the archivist noticed that some of the folders were coming back light. Not all the documents were in them, so they started marking the documents, and that's when they caught Burger stealing. Now, originally he denied it, he lied to the FBI, and normally that would be an additional crime. That's obstruction of justice under US laws. It's a false official statement, and that lie alone would be five years in jail, just just for a lie to the FBI for each lie, by the way. But he finally confessed, and like John Deutsch, Burger got off very easily through a plea agreement. Again, this was, you know, the plea agreements were very lenient in all the cases, as you'll see. Burger's was particularly lenient, because he, again, got a fine and a probation. They only took away his security clearance for three years, which is unbelievable. Again, if any rank and file person in the executive branch did what Burger did, they would never get a security clearance again, and they would go to jail. But Burger just got a fine and a probation, and was actually permitted after three years to seek his security clearance returned, which is just for anyone who's worked in the executive branch, it's really unbelievable. So that was the second case. Now, the third case was another CIA director, and by the time this case was investigated, I was chief of our litigation division, and this was a gentleman by the name of David Petraeus, who was an army general, high ranking, who was appointed by President Obama to be what at the time was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. And this is one of the more interesting human interest stories, because Petraeus was having an affair with a woman who was also his biographer. Her name was Paula Broadwell. Well, Broadwell got jealous of a third woman who was getting too close to Petraeus for her comfort. And she started sending anonymous, threatening emails to this woman. Well, the woman reported it to the FBI, who traced the IP address back to Broadwell's house, and they raided her house. When they raided the house, they found classified information that Petraeus had given to Broadwell when she was writing the book on Petraeus. So they went and interviewed Petraeus, and the FBI asked him if he had provided classified information to her, and he lied. Again, that would normally be obstruction of justice, false official statement, that's a five year penalty under under American law. Putting aside even the mishandling of the classified information, which is double that. So the FBI ended up doing a thorough investigation in Petraeus's case, more thorough than any of the other cases. But at the end of the day, our Department of Justice is still responsible for charging decisions. And they did the same thing in Berger's case, the same thing in the case of John Deutsch. They did a very lenient plea agreement, and they permitted him to plead to a misdemeanor, you know, a low level crime. And they didn't even document the classified information. They just generically described it, and he got a fine and probation. And by all appearances, Petraeus even maintained his security clearance, because he continued to be an informal advisor to President Obama, even after he resigned from the CIA. So that's the first three cases in US history. Now, the last one is the most famous, the most infamous, the one that just about everyone in the United States recognizes, and perhaps the world. And that was Hillary Clinton's case. When Clinton was the Secretary of State, right, the top diplomat for the United States of America, she had arranged for all of her work emails to be stored on a server in her own home. And that server was in government parlance, not secured. Now, of course, being the Secretary of State, recall that one of the categories of information that's eligible to be classified is information that pertains to the foreign affairs of the United States. Well, Clinton was the top diplomat for the United States. Anyone working in the executive branch would know that her emails would absolutely contain classified information and should not be stored on an unsecured server in her home. But that's what Clinton did. And by the time it came to light, she had over 60,000 emails on these servers. And as it turned out, 30,000 of them were, were government documents that that she had basically stolen from the government. And so there was a classification review of all the emails to determine which contain classified information. I participated in that classification review. I'm one of the few people to have read the fabled Clinton emails and I always point out, I am not suicidal. I love myself. And I mentioned that because a lot of people around the Clintons have ended up having premature deaths. So, so the result of the classification review was that a little over 100 of them, the emails were found to contain classified information. And about a dozen of those were at the top secret level again, the highest level of classified information. Now that's what came out in the public record. But having participated in the classification review, I can tell you that there were actually thousands of classified emails, likely, and because what I saw in the process was the State Department was purposefully kind of downgrading the decisions they were making. Either they didn't want to be embarrassed or they didn't want Clinton to be embarrassed, or they were trying to protect her. I can't really speak to their motivations, but I can say that that that was my observation that they were purposefully not classifying some documents that should have been classified. And all you'd have to do is look at the numbers to know that. I mean, over 30,000 emails from from the Secretaries of State or to the Secretary of State. Anyone working in government would know that it would be a lot more than 100 or so that were classified because that would come out to like 0.33% one third of one percent were classified. Yeah, no way. It had to be higher than that. In fact, after the Clinton case, the FBI director gave a public testimony. He had a press conference during which he said there were over 2000 emails that were up classified. That's the term he used. I had never heard this term before, and I worked with classified information every day for 25 years. But he said over 2000 were up classified, meaning they weren't classified when they were sent. But they were found to be classified later when they were reviewed. My sense is all of those documents were probably classified when they were sent. Now, the Clinton investigation was not a real investigation. Everything was done voluntarily. There were no, no subpoenas, no search warrants. The FBI actually permitted Clinton's private lawyers to review her hard drive. They never seized it. They never reviewed the documents themselves. They just let they let Clinton's lawyers do the searches when they had an open criminal investigation. There's only one other case in US history that I know of where that's happened, and that was Joe Biden's case, which I'll get to later. So the investigation was not a true investigation. And at the end of it, Clinton was charged with nothing. The FBI director described her conduct as extremely careless, but not grossly negligent. I don't see how any reasonable person could not see those descriptions as synonymous. Extremely careless is grossly negligent and gross negligence in the handling of classified information, as I covered as a crime under the Espionage Act. So there's no doubt that Clinton violated the criminal law, but she was being investigated by the Obama administration. And she was also a candidate for president in the United States at the time for the Democratic Party. And so that's why I say, you can't analyze any of these historical cases without examining the politics, and you have the Democratic administration investigating the Democratic candidate for president, who was also a Democratic appointee by the same president to be the Secretary of State. So it is perhaps it's disappointing, but perhaps not surprising that a real investigation was not conducted. And so Clinton was charged with nothing. So in all four of those historical precedents, all four of them were high ranking Democrats. All four of them were treated very leniently by the Department of Justice, where they either got a slap on the wrist, or in Clinton's case, you know, they got nothing at all. So those are those are the historical presidents and I'll tell your viewers, I go into great a lot more detail in the book, because I've done all the research on the cases and I worked on most of them. And each one of them has human interest stories. So I think they make for interesting reading, and they're fascinating cases. Thank you very much for that very concise run through. I just want to make a comment, which is as I was reading the book and I'm reading about this very high level, highly classified material, which is being used and abused and goes missing or it's put on classified computers in somebody's home. My background in the military in the Navy here in UK will be it many years ago. I was handling confidential secret sometimes top secret material, but even the confidential which will say relatively low level material. The confidential books had to be checked page by page regularly and my goodness if there was a page missing or an update hadn't been inserted correctly severe penalties within the military for that. I remember during my military career a lot of time went into the checking of classified material, and also the training and how to handle it correctly to ensure that no material went missing. And yet you're describing the system in a country America as far as it's known within its sort of NATO military allies is a country, which is very, very strong on confidentiality of material. And yet we've got such casual treatment to this material by people in very high in positions of power and influence high positions, and nothing is happening to them. This does seem rather strange as to you know as to why this is taking place. Can you imagine if back when you were serving and by the way, thank you for your service. If you had been caught with 300 classified documents in your house, you'd probably still be in jail. I think that's absolutely correct. And, and of course, immense damage can be done by the leaking or, or loss of this sort of material. The one for me is always the Walker brother espionage case in America because acoustic secrets were handed over to the Russians, which I know made a difference to the conduct to the Cold War within a matter of, I'll certainly say a year. So this is the reason that material has to be has to be carefully looked after but a very casual system operating at high level and questions need to be asked. So in America, we're very fond of saying that no one is above the law, you know, no one is above the law in America. Well, our history shows something different. You know, no justice system is perfect and I say this in my book, no system is perfect because it's implemented by humans, and we are all imperfect. So any justice system is going to have strengths and weaknesses. And we have a good justice system, but it is not perfect. And there are in fact people in my book shows this that are above the law. You know, there's the old saying that rank has its privileges, and these senior people are absolutely treated differently. At least, at least, when they were high ranking Democrats. As you know, and as we'll get into Trump's case was handled very differently disparities in the handling are really quite unbelievable. Right. And in relation to what happened with Trump, you, you use some words and phrases, which I thought, wow, this is really interesting because you say that that when the Democrat administration unleashed what it did on Biden, they'd cross the Rubicon, they'd taken a step which hadn't been seen before, which is one presidential administration going after another president using the law, and also the invasion of his home. This was something that had never been seen before. So you talk about crossing the Rubicon. You also, I think it's later on in the book sort of described the whole palms. This was happening as demonstrating that America had become a third world country, or at least saying, this is what people would expect to see in a third world country, not in America. Yeah, you know, when the, the rate on Mar-a-Lago was the 8th of August, 2022. And I had retired from the CIA in July of 21. So it was almost exactly a year after I had retired. And because I had worked on three of the four historical precedents, and I was an expert in this area of law, and these types of investigations and prosecutions, I was very interested to see how the case was going to proceed. And I've also always been a student of American history. I majored in American history at West Point. And I was just fascinated by this from every angle, because never before in American history had a presidential administration rated the home of a former president period, let alone a former president from the opposing political party, and a former president who was the likely candidate to run against the incumbent in an upcoming election. Nothing, nothing even close to this had ever occurred in American history. And so, I was very anxious to look at the documents. And so, originally the Biden administration was fighting transparency. And they were trying very hard to keep the raid affidavit. This is an FBI affidavit that laid out, you know, all the reasons why they were seeking the search warrant. They were trying to keep that off the public record, and they were successful for a while, but eventually they had to put the document on the public record. It was heavily redacted. But there was still quite a bit that was that was released. Now, for background, the part that was released was explaining to the federal judge, classification in general, you know, as I did at the beginning of our talk. And then also describing to the federal judge, the classified information that is bought to be at issue in the case. I have written hundreds of those types of affidavits to the federal judges, and I have supervised the drafting of thousands of such affidavits. So I know what to look for. Where to go. And sure enough, I found mistake after mistake after mistake in the FBI affidavit. They did not even properly state the standard for classification under the executive order, which I don't think was purposeful on their part. And it gave them no, no benefit. I think it was just sloppy drafting. But there were other aspects of the affidavit where they were clearly misrepresenting the law to the federal judge. So for instance, and I, and I give many examples in my book, I'll just give you the big one right now. In the in the FBI affidavit, they, they had one sentence that said that information is classified pursuant to executive order. And then they had a lengthy section laying out for the federal judge, all the rules for safeguarding transportation, handling, access. And as I said before, there are many of these rules. They are very strict, but they all flow from executive power. You wouldn't know that to read the affidavit. They just said there's all these rules and laws. Well, all those rules are from the president, and they are directed to the president's subordinates, but they do not bind the president in any way shape or form. But you would not know that to read the affidavit. The affidavit made it sound like the president had violated all these rules. And the president cannot violate the rules because they're his rules to his subordinates. So for instance, President Biden, this weekend, could take an entire box of classified information with him to his home in Wilmington, Delaware, bring them to the beach and hand out top secret documents to sunbathers. He will have violated no law. So that classified information belongs to the president, the president can do whatever he wants with it. Everyone below him has to obey his rules. So that's just one example of what I saw in the affidavit. And then also as more documents came to light supporting the raid. The American public saw that there was 30 armed FBI agents that raided the home of the former president. They were authorized to use deadly force. It's right in the documents. So that's why I call that in the book crossing the Rubicon because no one had ever done anything like this in American history. When, when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon to basically take over Rome, he only brought part of his army with him. Just part of it. Biden took his entire political party and half the country with him when he crossed the Rubicon. And so you just can't go back from something like that. And I was shocked by it and it started me digging. So I started researching and with every stone I unturned, I just found more nefarious politics, more malfeasance by the Biden administration. In full disclosure, I don't belong to a political party. I am independent. And so I had no preconceived notion. I wasn't trying to beat up the Biden administration or the Democratic Party, but that's what I found in my research and that's what I lay out in the book. That they just bent over backwards at every point to twist laws to twist regulations to misrepresent the law and misrepresent the facts. To turn Trump's conduct into something that was criminal when, in fact, he had done nothing wrong. And then while I was researching and writing, it came to light that Biden had been caught with classified information, both in his D.C. office, a private office in downtown D.C. and in his home. Now, in Biden's case, the Biden administration kept that a secret for months. No one knew. It was treated as if it was national security information, the fact that Biden had had classified documents in his personal possession. So if you'd like, I could now go into kind of the details of their conduct of the cases themselves, unless you have any more questions at this point. Well, that would be really excellent, Joseph. I'm so glad you just switched there to the Clinton to the Biden affair, because I'm going to say that very, very few people here in the U.K. at least, I think, have ever heard that Biden has been in trouble with classified material. And so when I started to read that section in your book, I was absolutely fascinated, not only to understand more about what had happened, but of course, what it demonstrating was to me sheer hypocrisy of the Biden administration who had essentially broken rules themselves, serious rules. But then they had thrown the book at Trump and pretended as if they were completely squeaky clean themselves. So this was an amazing story to me. So please go ahead and tell us more about Sir Biden. I'll just say the other part of the Biden story was that he was able to use his attorneys in order to deal with the information. So, please go ahead. So what I'll do is I'll run through the highlights of Biden's conduct. And then I will compare that conduct to Trump's conduct. So, first of all, some of Biden's private lawyers were going through his office in downtown DC, a private office. And this is something called the Penn Biden Center. And they found classified documents. Well, they reported that to the White House, and then it was reported to the National Archives who came and got the documents. It was kept a secret. And then about a month later, two months later, Biden's private attorneys were searching Biden's house and they found more classified documents. Now, this was again, this was all kept in secret. So the American public was not informed of this, but they kept finding more stuff. And it finally got to a point where the Biden administration realized that they could no longer contain the fiasco. And so then they leaked the story to the press selectively, and they only leaked selective facts. And I go through all the analysis of the press reporting and how it came to be in my book. But what they found was that Biden had, in his home, well over a hundred classified documents. Now, we don't know the total number. The American public has never been given the total number of classified documents that Biden possessed. But we know it was over a hundred because I counted them. There's an appendix in the report that was done. I've counted them, but you can't do a total because they have some descriptions are like a stack of highly classified note cards. Well, I don't tell you how many there could be a hundred in there alone. So the classified documents Biden had in his home spanned five decades, 1970s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s, right? He had half a century worth of classified documents in his home. Now, these were documents. Some of them were from his time in the Senate, and some of them, many of them were from his time as vice president. And what he was doing was Biden was plucking, plucking classified documents out of the flow of documents that were crossing his desk as vice president. And he was taking some home. Biden's documents were not just in boxes. Some of them were in boxes in his garage, but others were all over his house, all over his house. The first level den, the third level den, the foyer in a grocery bag outside of his bedroom, in his private office in file in file cabinets, where the files, some of the files were in Biden's own personal handwriting. So, there is no doubt to any reasonable person that Biden would have known that he was maintaining classified documents, because they were all over his house, and in his personal library, in his own file folders. So, that's, that's the baseline of his conduct. That is, that is willfully retaining classified documents. It's also grossly negligent in the handling of classified documents. And in the, in the final report that was done, it also laid out that Biden was known to be grossly negligent with classified documents throughout his vice presidency. I go into great detail on this in my book, but I'll just say, the people in the executive secretariat around him, basically followed him around with a dustpan and a broom, trying to pick up all the classified that he was leaving in many places where it was not supposed to be unsecured, right? And he had a, he had a known reputation for being grossly negligent in not taking classified information seriously. There were special briefings that were done for him. There were special memorandums that were done for him. And the language in all of these is that you must do this. You must do that, because Biden was not the president. He was the vice president, which means being below the president, he had to obey all the same rules for storage and handling of classified information as any other member of the executive branch. So that's pretty egregious conduct, right? And also, the final report showed that Biden was stealing this classified information for personal financial gain. They actually discovered notes in Biden's handwriting, where when he was still vice president, where he was talking, writing notes to himself that he was going to write a memoir after he left the vice presidency, which he subsequently did. So, and in there, he listed as one of the reasons to write the memoir, income. So he wanted to write a book when he left the vice presidency. And as he was leaving the vice presidency, now he'd already taken a lot of classified home while he was vice president, but he wanted to take more. He wanted to take highly classified note cards, so some of his staff started creating binders, so he could take classified information home with him for the time he was going to be just a citizen, so that he could write his book to make money. Now, you were in the military, and there were military detailees on the staff on Biden's staff. And you know, and I know military people take classified information the most seriously, right? They are because the punishments in the military are the most severe, and it is really drilled into the military people, even more so than the civilian side. So the military detailees on Biden's staff, they raised objections. They said this shouldn't be happening. One of them felt so strongly about it that she drafted a memorandum for the record that basically said, and I'm paraphrasing here, it basically said, look, we shouldn't be doing this. We shouldn't be taking home classified, highly classified information. He's about to become a private citizen. And I've raised this with my manager, and my manager told me this is fine, and I know it's not fine. And I have asked not to be part of any meetings or any actions that involve these note cards that they're helping Biden to basically steal classified information. And so this entire memorandum for the record, it's in the final report, and I have a copy of it on my website. But he went right ahead and took those documents home with him. There's a lot more detail, of course, in the book, but that's kind of Biden's conduct in a nutshell. The guy was stealing classified information for 50 years, and he was doing it at least in part for financial gain. What I've seen with other senior officials is, it's also just kind of convenience and laziness. They think they're above the law, and frankly, in many ways, they are. And so they take things home to work on them and sometimes forget, leave them at home, or they just want it for whatever reason for reference. But with Biden, it was probably partly that, but also, absolutely, he was doing it for financial gain. That's his conduct in a nutshell. Joseph, could I just come in here with a couple of questions? Sure. You make a particular comment in relation to this event, that the National Archives and Records admin essentially made no comment about what Biden did, and you say, in contrast to what they subsequently said about Trump. Could you explain a little bit more who the National Archives and Records admin are? Sure. What those sort of power is? Sure. In the United States, we have an official person called the Archivist, and that is the National Archivist, and they are the head of a federal agency called NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration. And so they are responsible for preserving America's history, right, in terms of documents. And one of the big areas is presidential records. And so, you know, my book focuses on the weaponization of DOJ and the FBI against conservatives and specifically Trump. But it's more than that, because really what the Democratic Party in the United States has done is they've weaponized the entire executive branch against their political opponents. And part of the executive branch is the National Archives, and so I do detailed analysis of how the National Archives treated Biden's case and Trump's case. And in Biden's case, I had to wade through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of releases to the public under the Freedom of Information Act. You can find them, they're out there, and you've got to pan through this large stream of information to get to the nuggets, but I pan through it. And I've done a lot of Freedom of Information Act work in my time for the government, and so I know where to look. And what I found amongst the sea of emails that were released by the National Archives were the ones where they were obviously talking about Biden's case, even though they didn't come out and say it. And so it was fascinating, because they're in an email dialogue with Biden's private attorneys. And the archivist is purposefully not mentioning any details. So it's obvious that they're having phone conversations with details, but they're being very cautious not to include details in their emails. But there was enough in there that I could see what was going on, because they were handling this in their own language they use in emails with the utmost discretion. This is when Biden got caught with classified documents originally at his downtown office in DC. Well, they were handling that with the utmost discretion in helping the White House to keep it a secret. Now, normally, they would do a press release that would say, Oh, we, you know, we've just gotten some vice presidential records that should have been turned over to us six years ago. And they would inform the public that they've got at least something and that it will be eventually made available to the public. But they didn't do that in Biden's case. There was no press release whatsoever in Biden's case. And then in the book I compare that to how Trump was handled by the National Archives. And it was the exact opposite, right? They were anxious to report every detail that they could. They even twisted the knife in the way they were describing things with facts that they could not even support any opportunity they had to twist facts, twist laws to go after Trump. That's what the National Archives did, and they were routinely making press releases because Trump, and I'll get into his case next. I may as well start comparing his case to Biden's. So when Trump leaves office, his staff pack up his boxes. Now, this was chaotic, truly chaotic, because Trump was still, of course, trying to retain his presidency, right? It looked like he lost the popular vote, but he was definitely going around talking to people saying, "Hey, are you sure these election results are legitimate?" And so there's total chaos at this time. But his staff is packing up boxes, and they get put on moving trucks, and the boxes go to Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago. Now, there is no evidence on the public record that Trump knew what was in those boxes. They were packed by his staffers, but off they went to Mar-a-Lago. Now, once they're there, Trump's attorneys start reviewing some of the documents, and they actually send to the National Archives 15 boxes of documents because they determined that they were presidential records that should have gone to the archives. So there was some facts showing cooperation between Trump's staff and the National Archives. Now, you compare that to Biden's case. Biden never returned any documents to the National Archives. They were all over his house in his DC office, but he didn't send them to the archives. He kept them. So that's one data point of comparison. Now, with Trump's boxes, there is evidence on the public record that Trump thought they were all his personal papers. There are even in the indictment against Trump, they're citing the emails and text messages with some of his employees where they keep referring to the president. Trump wants his papers moved from this place to another place. So this is a stark comparison to Biden's case also, because there's no doubt that Biden knew he was possessing classified information. There's no doubt it was all over his house. And during the investigation of Biden, the FBI discovered audio recordings of Biden talking to his ghostwriter. Now, this is after he left the vice presidency, he's now a private citizen. He's working with a ghostwriter to publish the book that he wanted to publish to make some money, income. In one of the audio recordings, and this was February of 2017, soon after Biden left the White House. You can hear Biden say, as he's coming up from the basement, I just found all the classified stuff downstairs. Now, in any other case, I can tell you a prosecutor would call that a taped confession, but not in Biden's case. They came up with many excuses to let Biden off the hook, despite the fact that they had a taped confession of Biden admitting that he knew there was classified documents in his home, and he made no effort to return them at any time. And until much later, right, five years later, when it finally came on the public record that he had them in his house, and even then, even then. When the FBI finally searched Biden's house, and this came much later, when they found a top secret notebook, Biden's private lawyer told the FBI, you don't have the consent to take that. And they actually sent a White House lawyer to Biden's home to seize evidence and take it from the FBI, and never in American history have I heard of an instance, where a White House lawyer would insert himself into the chain of custody for a piece of evidence in a criminal case. Let me kind of transition from the conducted issue, right, where you have Biden stealing classified documents for 50 years, as opposed to Trump, who at the end of his presidency boxes are packed up by his staffers and taken to his house. If you compare the investigations, there are also stark disparities. So, one of the big disparities, which you mentioned earlier, was that the FBI permitted Biden's lawyers to search Biden's homes. Now, this is after classified information had been discovered in Biden's private office in downtown DC, and after classified had been found in the home. The FBI had an open investigation, a criminal investigation. Instead of going to search, they let Biden's private lawyers search to of Biden's homes in Delaware, before they went and searched. There's only one other case in history I know where something like that has happened, and that was Hillary Clinton's case. When the FBI permitted Clinton's attorneys to go through her servers and decide what they were going to provide to the government and what they weren't. So, you know, there's a lot of things were on the surface. Any reasonable person could see that there's disparity in these cases, but someone with my experience and expertise. I can see the depth of the disparities and the breadth of the disparities and how devious they were because this was all purposeful. This didn't happen just by chance that Biden was given a freebie while they were turning the knife on Trump, because, and here's something most people would not catch. Biden's private lawyers did not have security clearances, which means they should not have been permitted to have access to classified. And yet they were permitted to search a home that were classified had already been discovered in it while there was an open criminal case. So, by doing that, the FBI and DOJ actually facilitated additional crimes, because Biden's lawyers and I would take them at their word they said they didn't read classified when they found it, and I would take them at their word for that. But they should never have had access to it. It's unlawful for them to even hold those documents in their hands. And yet, so that's what happened in Biden's case. And also in that investigation, there was no legal compulsion. No subpoenas, no search warrants, no grand jury. Everything was done voluntarily, and much of the searches were done by Biden's own private lawyers. So, that is, that is not typical investigative strategy. Now, when you look at it, you know, at the surface, it's not a big surprise. It's the Biden administration investigating Joe Biden. And so they created a process and was not a typical process, and what they were doing at the same time. And this is really, this really gold me. Biden and his private lawyers and the White House counsel, every time they talked about this case publicly, they would always emphasize that Biden was cooperating with the process. Well, of course he was. It was a process that was set up by his own administration to his benefit to his great benefit, and not not a typical investigative process in any way shape or form. Contrast that with Trump's case. They moved quickly to legal compulsion, subpoenas, search warrants, grand jury. They even went so far as to take Trump's private lawyers. Hall them before the grand jury and force them to disclose attorney client privilege communications. That rarely happens in American jurisprudence, but that's what they did in Trump's case. And, and again, you compare that to Biden's case. Now Biden's private lawyers, they were permitted to rummage through the crime scenes. They actually collected evidence. They were never questioned. They were not taken before the grand jury. And in the final report, the special counsel even said why he says in the final report. Gee, you know, I would have loved to have talked to Biden's private attorneys about some of this stuff, because they would have probably had some very helpful information. But I couldn't do that because I had to respect the attorney client privilege. The exact opposite in Trump's case, they hauled his private attorneys before the grand jury, forced them to disclose otherwise privileged communications, and then they use those privileged communications in the indictment against Trump. So, you could not have a larger disparity in terms of how the two investigations were handled. Once all was said and done, and they had completed their investigation, they indicted Trump, and the indictment against him for these classified documents has 40 felonies, 40 felonies, and if you add up the jail time for all those 40 felonies, it's 140 years in jail. Now, just step back and look at this broadly. Trump didn't pack his boxes. There's no evidence even there's no allegation even in the indictment that Trump knew what was in the boxes, and there's no allegation that he packed the boxes, but they went to his home, where they resided for as of the time of the raid they were there about 18 months. The raid got a little over 100 maybe 130 classified documents. 18 months they were in Trump's home. There's no evidence he knew they were there. And, and no evidence he packed the boxes or knew the pedigree of the documents in the box. You can trust that with Biden's case. Biden was stealing classified information for 50 years, half a century, and he knew that he had it. There's no doubt because of the audio recording where he says, I just found all the classified stuff downstairs. Trump is charged with 40 felonies, added up to 140 years in jail. Biden was charged with nothing. That's the disparity. Now, you know, I've worked on in my career, I've worked on a spectrum of prosecutions under the Espionage Act. And, you know, we've been talking about the ones that were mishandling of classified information, where government employees were either grossly negligent, or they willfully retained classified documents when they should not have, but they weren't spying. Right? They weren't stealing secrets and giving them to a foreign country. But I have worked on those cases as well, and I talk about two of them in the book, because at the time they were highly publicized in the United States, they were major espionage prosecutions, and that's when we caught people stealing our secrets to harm the country. In those cases, those people were charged with one felony under the Espionage Act, one. They were not charged with multiple documents, they were not charged with multiple counts under the Espionage Act. There was no need to do that. Trump's case, his indictment has 32 felony counts for 32 separate documents. That's how far DOJ went to go after him. They literally picked the most sensitive documents, and charged him with 32 crimes. We don't even do that for real spies. And yet that's what they did with Trump. So again, the disparities are huge, not even in terms of the historical presidents for mishandling, but even when you compare them to actual spy cases, which by the way, are eligible for the death penalty under the Espionage Act, those true spying cases. Not even then were those people charged as heavily as Trump was charged. Now, Joseph, one point if I may, because I was extremely interested in this, you say in your description of what was happening to Trump, that Speaker Pelosi buried evidence, which could have exonerated him. I was fascinated in that comment. Can you tell us more? Sure, because after after the raid on Mar-a-Lago, there were two different federal indictments against Trump. One of them is the one I've been talking about pertaining to the classified documents. The other one is for election interference, because there was a riot on January 6. It got out of control. They got into the Capitol building. And this was at the time that the Electoral College was meeting to vote for the president. And so in the election interference case, at the same time, Congress was also investigating the riot. And the person who was in charge of building security for the Capitol building is the Speaker of the House. Well, the Speaker of the House is a Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, so Congress had, they set up their their investigatory body, which was the January 6 committee. And what Pelosi did was, again, for the first time in American history, she refused to let the minority party pick their own representatives on the committee. So the minority party was the Republicans. So she herself picked the jury, and she picked all people who hated Trump. That's who was on the January 6 committee. So meanwhile, she was responsible for building security. This is a fact. And what recently came to light was a videotape of Nancy Pelosi talking to her staff on January 6 during the riot, where she's saying, clearly, this was all my fault. Well, normally, that type of evidence would be is what an American jurisprudence is called exculpatory, right? It tends to prove the innocence of people who are being held accountable for the riot. Because that should have been provided to them so that they could use it in defense of themselves when they were being prosecuted. And just about everyone who went into the Capitol that day has been prosecuted or is being prosecuted. And so that video never came to light. It was leaked fairly recently. But basically, the Speaker of the House set up a process that was designed to get Trump to protect her from accountability. So that's what was happening with Pelosi and the other case, the election interference case. Okay, thank you for that. That's really interesting. I'm smiling here because you actually described the raid on Trump as being a medieval siege. And everything was being thrown at him, including the burning oil, which certainly seems to be the case. You also go on to make some pretty hard statements, you say there was no evidence of Trump colluding with Russia. And you also point out that the poisonous approach of the Democrats to Trump. I think you're insinuating is the right word here that there is the possibility that this publicly expressed hate and poison towards Trump could have helped inflame the situation around the attempted assassination. And so really, your warning readers that the system in America has got to a very parlorist fortress state as the George Washington's warning there. Yes, and so, you know, after the raid on Mar-a-Lago, I started digging. And I kept digging, and I went all the way back to 2016, which was Trump's first presidential campaign. And during that presidential campaign, the FBI and DOJ had already been weaponized against Trump and what they were doing back then was they were using intelligence collection authorities, very powerful tools to target Trump's campaign. Now, these collection mechanisms are secret because they're intelligence related. And I thought, well, you know, it's interesting because back then in 2016, they at least had the decency to try and hide their conduct by using intelligence collection methods which exist in the shadows to target Trump. I mean, you fast forward to the raid on Mar-a-Lago and the current indictments, they're not trying to hide it anymore. There, DOJ and the FBI are openly acting as enforcement arms for the Democratic Party. And so I was fascinated by this and this progression, right, this increased aggressiveness targeting Trump and conservatives and anybody around Trump. And I give numerous examples from 2016 forward. And I said to myself, you know, this is really fascinating because, again, on the surface, you can see that it's wrong. You can't see how wrong it is unless you're someone like me who's worked on the inside. But any reasonable person could see that this isn't right and yet half the country is fine with it because they've become so brainwashed against Trump and conservatives that they think the ends justifies the means. And I was fascinated by this and I researched this kind of sentiment of political party passion permitting people to justify doing some egregious deeds. And I traced it all the way back to President Washington's farewell speech to the nation in 1796. Now, Washington had been president for two terms, eight years. And at the time he said, that's enough. It's time for me to step down. And he wrote kind of a, what I call a 26 page love letter to the nation. And in many ways, he was the father of the nation. He had helped birth it, raise it, defend it, create it. And so in his farewell speech, he warned his fellow citizens about a couple things that he felt could harm the country. Or even, or even cause it to topple. And the biggest thing he warned about was the rise of the two party system and the political passions that are aroused by the two party system. He called it the baimful effects of the spirit of party. And he said, let me now warn you in the gravest of terms against these baimful effects. I mean, even back in 1796, Washington prophesied that these political party passions could destroy national unity by causing citizens to despise each other and to turn them against each other. And his words to alienate them against each other. Now, this was fascinating to me because back in those days, there was obviously no internet. There was no television. The only way to spread political passion was through a town square speech or a pamphlet that was run through a printing press or a poster that was put on a tree. And even with those rudimentary forms of disseminating political passion, even just with those, Washington saw that is one of the greatest dangers to our national unity. I was giving, I've been doing some public speaking recently and just last week, someone asked me what I felt was the greatest danger currently facing the United States. And I gave them what I think was a surprising answer for them. I said, us. Us, because that's where we're at is a nation where half the country thinks it's thinks obvious tyrannies are acceptable. And that's scary. And Washington warned us about it. And nowadays, we can we can mainline political party histrionics into our veins all day long. We've got 24 seven new streams. We carry one with us, you know, every day in our pocket. And it's amplified, right? It is magnified and amplified. And going back to like the 2016 timeframe, like I live in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. and the United States is the strongest of the strongholds for the Democratic Party. It is the bluest of the blue. And to give an example, in 2020, Washington, D.C. voted 92% for Joe Biden. So it's strong hold of the Democratic Party. And back in 2016, Hillary Clinton was a shoe in. Some polls had her like up 20%. Everybody expected her to be the next president and certainly everyone in Washington, D.C. You know, my neighbors were all hanging the buntings for her coronation. And then the Grinch came along and pulled off the greatest upset in in U.S. political history. And Donald Trump actually actually won. Well, all my friends were Democrats. And it's most of my family and friends and neighbors. They went into deep despair. And their political party leaders and most of our mainstream media, instead of kind of brushing them off and saying, Oh, don't worry. Well, you know, we'll do better in another four years. They took an opposite approach. And they just started feeding them hatred. And violent political rhetoric. Right. Trump is Hitler. He stole the election. You know, we had what I call the Russia collusion hoax coup. And they, and what I saw with these people is they turned, right? These are good, loving people. But they, they just became hooked on the hatred. And, and to this day, it still occurs. I call it, you know, in America, we call it TDS Trump derangement syndrome. And it comes in different levels. Most of the people I know have a level five Trump derangement syndrome. They've eaten all the hatred. He's Hitler. He's an existential threat to democracy. None of these things actually make sense. I mean, he was a president for four years. The republic stood. We actually did a lot better under him than we have for the last four. But, but this is all the, all the violent political heated political rhetoric coming from the Democratic Party. And their members have just become hooked on the hatred. Yeah. And you warned, we're coming to the close. I think it's been a really fascinating. You have given a fascinating analysis of this. I have so many questions, but I think we're, we're coming to a natural conclusion. But one of the things that you say, I think it's quite early in the book, you're actually saying that when people believe a lie, when people believe an illusion, it actually means that any atrocity is possible. Yeah, I'm a big fan of the French philosopher Voltaire. And Voltaire once said, anyone who can get you to believe absurdities can get you to commit atrocities. Because once that the reasonable faculties of the mind have been dominated, anything's possible after that. And this is what I saw with my friends and family and neighbors. They came to believe absurdities. And then they could at least maybe not commit atrocities, but certainly support them. And that's what I saw happen in my country. It's, it's why I wrote my book. You know, I didn't write my book for fame or fortune. I, in fact, had to take a huge chunk out of my retirement funds, my savings, just to get the book published. But I got tired of hearing things that were just not correct. And I thought, you know, there might be some people who actually want to know the truth of how these cases are handled and what I discovered in my research. Yeah, incredible. We're in a perilous state. I'm speaking to you, of course, from UK, but we have seen, I think, very similar things, maybe not quite in the same way, of course, up to prime minister level. But we've seen very devious activities by a combination of the Metropolitan Police and the intelligence services around crimes committed by people at high level in the government. So we certainly see similar things happening here. It isn't just America. But yes, the outcome, unless it's dealt with, is very serious indeed. And I think it's a really key point that you make that ultimately, it's beholden on all of us to stand up and do the right things in order to get the changes. We'd like to see in America's case through into the Department of Justice and through into the CIA and the other intelligence agencies. It has to be something that the ordinary member of the public does in order to get things to change for the better. Absolutely. Joseph B Sweeney, I'm going to say, thank you so much for joining me. It's been utterly fascinating. We'll pop up a picture of your book on screen again so people know what they should go and look for, but I'm going to say to our audience. Please get hold of a copy, because you'll find it fascinating reading so many interesting cases were obviously you Joseph have been able to go into them in intimate detail because you were there. You were handling this material you were dealing with the cases, and that's quite a journey through to produce this book so to the audience. What can you do by the book? This is the thing. And one last question before I let you go, your background was as a ranger so an infant treatment, essentially in the army. That's a very outdoors physical occupation, and I found it a very interesting jump across to something which was much more desk and paperwork based. What made you take that big plunge. As an infantry officer, all the fun is when you're a lieutenant, because that's when you're a platoon leader down at the tactical level. And as you get ranked and move up the chain, you become a bureaucrat. You know you're you're you're you're you're you're helping with all the logistical sides and you still have some leadership, but it's not nearly as much fun as as being a lieutenant and a platoon leader, and I thought to stay with my infantry platoon for as long as I could. So what I realized eventually was that you know the paperwork the bureaucracy part of the army just wasn't as challenging for me, and I thought well if I'm going to be a bureaucrat, I could find a job within the government. And so I got out and I went to law school and then I went right back into the government and I found what I was looking for. It was a very challenging job. I couldn't imagine a place to have more fun practicing law than the CIA. I can tell you, I've come closer to getting killed as a lawyer for the CIA than I ever did as an airborne ranger qualified infantry officer, which is crazy, but true. It doesn't all let's leave it there. Joseph, thank you very, very much for joining me. Just fascinating to hear your analysis and to and to have a look in detail at your fascinating book. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. It was my pleasure. In the Sprouts Farmers Market, we're all about fresh, healthy, and delicious. 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