Givin' Liz the Biz Part 2

Please welcome former Director of Operations for Donald J. Trump for President, Megan Small, and CPAC board member, Matthew Whitaker. How are you? Good. Okay, so we talked with Jim Jordan a lot about what's going on on J6. I don't know if all of you know, but CPAC, through our C3, the American Conservative Union Foundation, has been raising money to take care of the legal defenses of a lot of these victims, these political victims of J6. We've raised over a million, spent almost a million, our staff has volunteered their time to have all the money that's donated go right to these victims, and I do mean that they are victims. This is something we haven't seen in our country probably ever. It's really gross. And Matt Whitaker, who you know was the former Attorney General for Donald Trump, and we enlisted him to join our CPAC board, so we appreciate that, Matt. But more than that, when people started, Mercy's sitting over here, when these victims started calling us, Megan, your former colleagues, and you worked for President Trump, you worked on the campaign. And when the committee started hammering people with these subpoenas, Mercy and I started getting calls from her former colleagues, and they would cry, and it was emotional, and they were scared, and they didn't know what to do. And the first call we made was to Matt Whitaker, and I just want you all to know that no matter what time, sometimes it was late at night, when we would call, Matt Whitaker would pick up the phone, and he'd say, have that former staffer call me in the morning. Here's my cell phone. I'll take care of him. So thank you for everything you've done, a ton of pro bono work. Let's start off, Matt, you were the AG, you've been a U.S. attorney, you've been involved in politics. How are they getting away with this? Great question, Matt. And the first thing I would tell you is that, in addition to all those things I've done, I have always stood for the rule of law. And I've always stood for holding people accountable for wrongdoing. And so that's been consistent, no matter what my role, whether it's been as a, you know, as a prosecutor, as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, or even as acting attorney general. It is standing for the rule of law, no matter, you know, sort of what the particular case might be. And this committee is not? It's not, because what we have, and I know a lot of the people in this room feel it, is suddenly we have this two-tiered system of justice, where the left riots and tries to attack the White House, attack the courthouse in Portland, you know, whatever they might be doing. I seem to remember a whole summer of riots where 24 people died in this country, and it's like it never happened. It's like it never happened. There was no investigation. There was no unselect committee, nothing. Cases were dismissed. The current vice president of the United States was raising bail funds to get these folks out of jail so that they could go do it again. I mean, it was utter chaos. And then, on the other hand, conservatives, those that feel like the 2020 election was a little fishy, end up being harassed with a two-pronged approach, not only a congressional investigation, but a concurrent— Now a DOJ. DOJ investigation. So, I mean, you just can't have—this republic will not stand if we have a two-tiered system of justice, because it's not what the rule of law demands. The rule of law demands that fundamental fairness works in the system, and this is not fundamentally fair. Megan, you're working with us at a partner organization, the Chestnut Street Council, which we'll be talking more about. But, first of all, there's people in this audience who have contributed to the fund, which has helped you, and you're brave enough to talk. It's hard to do this. There's a lot of other people who have had their legal fees paid for, too. I assume you're appreciative. Oh, I had no idea when I got my subpoena, two days before my wedding, mind you. So that was a busy week. I had no idea what to do, who to call. I didn't even know what kind of lawyer you needed. So, of course— You need a damn good one. Well, you need Matt Whitaker, really, is who you need. So I called Matt and Mercy, and I said, what do I do? How much trouble am I in? It was so unfathomable to me what this experience would be like, and not only me, but so many other people. I mean, below 30 years old is the average age of people who are receiving money from this fund. People who don't have the resource. I mean, my legal bills have tallied, I think, north of $80,000 now, and I'm just a witness. I'm not even being accused of anything. I really think they're trying to scare people out of working for Republican politics by putting this so publicly out, and saying, we will come after you even when we don't think you did anything wrong, just to punish you and scare you away from it. So you get a subpoena two days before your wedding, and even some people, I believe, tried to come to your wedding to kind of make sure you didn't, what, like, flee town and go on your honeymoon or something? So, yeah, and Matt stepped in and called and negotiated me being able to go on my honeymoon, but they thought there were more people they might want a subpoena, so they sent marshals they were sitting outside of our wedding. Unbelievable. It's insane. This, you know, again, Matt, when you called... And you're all paying for this, by the way. Yeah, when you called me, it was, we didn't know the scope of this. This was the first sort of set of subpoenas that anyone had seen, and we were, you know, we didn't, you said, I don't know where this is going, but we all need to make, be a part of this, and we all need to push back on this. And, you know, when I first talked to Megan, I mean, literally days before her wedding, she didn't know, because again, you've seen their techniques, you see Peter Navarro being pulled off a plane, you see, I mean, you know, most Americans don't understand all how all these things separate, and so you see one thing, you see another, and you see this thuggery and this threatening behavior, and so, I mean... And they tip off to CNN each and every time they move. And so from Megan's perspective, she really, and I think legitimately thought that the people that were going to serve the subpoena, the U.S. Marshals, were going to show up and disrupt her wedding, not only for her, but for her guests. And so I knew, like, we had, first I had to, you know, make sure that, you know, we talked, I understood the scope of what had happened, and then we made sure that we came up with a plan that not only didn't disrupt her wedding, but didn't disrupt her honeymoon, because again, this is, the lefts may think this is important, they may think this is their secret way to win the election in 2022, but the bottom line is that this was not so important to disrupt the people's lives, like Megan, that had no role in the riot that happened on January 6th. It had really no role in anything that Congress was looking into, and you know, I just, as a point of personal privilege, this committee is not even looking at the security failures at the Capitol. I mean, how can you not look at why the National Guard wasn't there, why the Capitol Police weren't ready for this? How about going into January 6th, I don't know if you all know this, but due to Tom Fitton at Judicial Watch through FOIA, it was discovered that they went into January 6th at 50% strength with the Capitol Police. Everybody knew that that was going to be a rough day, and they went in with 50% strength. How come that wasn't out there? And there's a couple of other questions I think people want to know. You get the subpoena, and Megan's here representing a lot of your friends and colleagues. By the way, there's a downside to doing this. You know this, Matt, you know this as a lawyer. Every time someone speaks up against this committee, they're running the risk that the committee or that DOJ gets more aggressive with them. All of us are running that risk by even having this conversation, but David, we have to stop being quiet. We have to say what they're doing, and we have to call it out and say no more. And I want to ask another question, Matt, because you're giving these people legal advice. Obviously, that has to stay confidential, but it's not just a subpoena to say what did you know about the activities around January 6th. It's your phone records, it's your texting, it's your financial records, it's your credit card records. For months. They're trying to destroy people. So one of the battles that we've had to fight is that this committee sent subpoenas to all the cell phone carriers for all the people to try to get every single text and phone call. Did they give in? Those are still being litigated right now. To the credit of the cell phone carriers is if you pushed back and said, I have an interest in this, and please don't give this personal information about everybody that I called away just because Congress claims to sort of have some purient interest, and I mean that in its fundamental sense, they want to look at who Megan knows and maybe subpoena them too, and then see who they know. And it's just never-ending, and if you saw, you know, the left didn't accomplish their goal with this committee, and so they've continued it on now. We're going to have more hearings as we head into the fall because this is the only thing they have to try to win an election by ruining like junior staffers, people that are going to have a long life in public policy and politics. They're trying to scare them out of the business and disarm us from some of our brightest stars. And Megan, you have a lot of character because what we've seen with some of these other young staffers is they get scared, and we've seen some, and we've released some of these texts who were on the Trump team, thought that blaming Trump or Trump's allies and calling them insurrectionists was outrageous, but we've had a couple flip. We've had a couple flip. One went to some show called The View, right, and we had to read about another one who went up there and said that President Trump likes to throw his food against the wall. I'd just like to say something for the record about President Trump. I don't know if you guys know this about him. He takes pride in his appearance, and he also, Matt knows, would, if you gave him a beautiful steak on a platter, he's not going to throw it against the wall. He's going to eat it, probably with a little bit of ketchup, and if you throw food against the wall, a little bit of ketchup, a lot of ketchup, but Megan, it takes a lot of character to do what you've done. You haven't, you could have turned. You could have said, you know, I'll just give them a little bit of what they want, and I'll just go along over here, and I'll publicly criticize the president. I want to applaud you for not doing that. We appreciate the fact that you stood your ground. I appreciate that, but frankly- By the way, yes, you could have gone to The View, but this is so much cooler. I frankly, there's no, there's, there's, there's no way I could turn because I don't have these stories. I don't have these false things made up to embarrass the president. Like, that's all these stories are, second-hand accounts of embarrassing tidbits. I mean, there is no legal anything. I mean, this is going so far beyond the basic premise when they said, we're going to investigate this attack on the Capitol, and it's like, why are we talking about ketchup spilled on a wall, and who cleaned it up? I mean, it's ridiculous, so I appreciate that. I don't have any bad stories to share, and that's what I told them when I was interviewed You have good stories. They probably don't ask you about them. Yeah, they, oh, no, nothing flattering. I wasn't asked to testify publicly, so I don't think I was cutting enough. Matt, to wrap this up, obviously, if you all want to help the First Amendment Fund, just go to our website, and you can contribute to the fund through our C3. It doesn't just go to pay legal fees, it goes to do all kinds of things. One of the things we did with the money was also, we set up J6 Facts on Twitter, you guys should follow it, and we put out there all this information about pushing back on all the false stories, the false, you know, kind of gossipy stuff on Trump, but also just how the Biden DOJ is picking and choosing when they want to prosecute what they see as violence. Matt, this is a big job, because the First Amendment Fund, it's not just about J6, it's about cops who don't want to teach BLM and CRT, it's about teachers who don't want to teach gender confusion, it's about parents who don't want to give their kids a vaccine, it's about doctors who want to tell the truth and not get fired. We're going to have some doctors on this stage that have been canceled because they said the truth about the virus and the vaccines and stuff. This is a big job. What's your advice to the American people who are feeling scared to take, to follow their conscience and speak out on something, because they know the strong arm of this socialist government is going to whack them hard. What can they do? Well, first of all, do not fear. God is on our side, and we will win the victory. We have already won the victory. I want to say, if you've donated to the First Amendment Fund, thank you. There's still a lot of work to do. I mean, while we've mostly made it through the committee's work. Now we've got the bigger one. Yeah, now we have DOJ's work, and they are currently actively subpoenaing people, including some of the folks that have previously received congressional subpoenas. Including me. Yeah. We have also, we're also seeing some ancillary thrusts, like trying to disbar some lawyers who were involved in the administration, and other types of attempts that, it's just like, there's a lot of need here, and it's going to go to important work defending people that otherwise would not be able to defend themselves, or would have to, you know, make a terrible choice. Well, I think both of these people have shown tremendous leadership and courage, and will you please let them know how much you appreciate everything they're doing. Thank you all very much. Thank you.