Ingraham: Democrats kick off futile impeachment trial with drama, lies

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Ingraham: Democrats kick off futile impeachment trial with drama, lies

Former Clinton impeachment manager Bob Barr joins Reps. Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan on 'The Ingraham Angle' to discuss

This is a rush transcript from "The Ingraham Angle" February 9, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: I'm glad you press the Trump lawyer on the
first lawyer who presented the case.

HANNITY: Yes, little meandering, little free associative, let's just say -
go ahead.

INGRAHAM: It was terrible. I'm sorry but it was terrible.

HANNITY: Extemporaneous.

INGRAHAM: You're way too charitable. If you hire that guy in the case that
you were paying the bills on you - it would have been like, I'm sure you're
a nice person but enough praise toward the Democrats.

HANNITY: I was a little nervous in the beginning.

INGRAHAM: Oh my God.

HANNITY: I was like oh boy.

INGRAHAM: How much time could he spend praising the Democrats. The whole
thing was like a walk down memory lane about how much he loves the Senate
and I mean this is like story time at this - at the at the trial, it was
ridiculous.

All right sorry, I'm going to get into this but I'm pretty worked up about
it given what's at stake for the - for the constitution, the country but
I'm glad you pressed - the second lawyer Sean was much better so.

HANNITY: All right Laura, have a great show.

INGRAHAM: All right Sean, good to see you. I'm Laura Ingraham. This is THE
INGRAHAM ANGLE from Washington tonight. The left's vow to reprogram Trump
supporters is getting serious. Now they want to purge law enforcement as
well and last week they tried pretending remember they cared about the
police but we're going to tell you the truth later on the hour.

Also tonight, an adviser to the WHO says the organization's dismissal of
the COVID lab leak theory, they said this today. He's saying it's a lie and
he's brave enough to come on to tell us why but first the impeachment
circus kicked off today with House Dems making this argument to justify
impeaching a president no longer in office.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Their argument is that if you commit an
impeachable offense in your last few weeks in office, you do it with
constitutional impunity. You get away with it. This would create a brand
new January exception.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: It looked like a DNA chart. Of course the media approached it all
with the usual uncritical lie.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: What a powerful presentation, quoting the framers and
quoting the history of past impeachments saying, we have every right to be
here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This really was a master class.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Disqualification is powerful here to protect the
country.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: House impeachment managers made a very, very
powerful case.

ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: One of the most powerful and disturbing pieces of
an opening argument I've seen covering any trial.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Do they do they send around talking points to each other because
they know nothing about the law themselves, OK. But for all the
bootlicking, it made no difference at all and we have the evidence to prove
it because they couldn't convince retiring GOP senators like Rob Portman or
Richard Byrd a flip, they have nothing to lose and despite language to the
contrary over the past few weeks, no GOP leader from McConnell to John
Thune broke ranks either.

Now to put it simply, 44 Republicans voted against allowing the impeachment
trial to continue meaning Democrats still have 0 chance of convicting
former President Trump. They need 67 votes to do so. Now meanwhile Trump's
lawyers argue that the impeachment trial shouldn't be happening.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID SCHOEN, TRUMP DEFENSE ATTORNEY: In this unprecedented snap
impeachment process, the House of Representatives denied every attribute a
fundamental constitutional due process that Americans correctly have come
to believe is part of what makes this country so great.

How and why did that happen, it is a function of the insatiable lust for
impeachment in the House for the past four years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Well in there a session with Trump obviously hasn't ended with
Trump leaving office. They crave Trump at this point. They want to make an
example of him and what they really want to do and I've said this before,
they want to demoralize you and scare you.

But leave processing constitutionality aside for a moment, what is inside
the article that the Democrats have brought, well, remember what's inside,
let's read it. "Incited by President Trump members of the crowd he had
addressed, in an attempt to interfere with the constitutional duty to
certify the results of the 2020 presidential election unlawfully breached
and vandalized the Capitol."

So again, they're saying President Trump incited those people who breached
the doors. Now here's the key part of his January 6 speech that the
impeachment managers would rather you not see.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD J. TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I know that
everyone here will soon be marching over to the capitol building to
peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Marching over peacefully and patriotically. Patriot's don't break
doors or put people's lives in danger. That's not what patriots do. Are the
Trump words, the words of someone trying to foment an insurrection?

Joining me now is Congressman Devin Nunes, ranking member of the House
Intel committee. Congressman Jim Jordan, ranking member of House Judiciary
and former Clinton impeachment manager Bob Barr.

Congressman Jordan, now the process arguments of course matter but I think
the weakness of the Democrats article of impeachment, their single article
of impeachment, I wish the President Trump's team had spent more time just
on that. Your take?

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): Well yes, but they got across the main message
Laura, which is this is about canceling the guy who got 74 million
Americans to vote for him. They don't want him on the ballot in 2024 and
they're so focused, obsessed I think the word you used and that's the right
word. They're so obsessed with that, they're willing to ignore the
constitution, they're willing to ignore due process and they're willing to
ignore the facts which as you point out, the president said peacefully and
patriotically go down to the capitol and make your voices heard. I mean I
think about this past year, Laura.

The Democrats told us you couldn't go to church, you couldn't go to work,
you couldn't go to a loved one's funeral, your kids couldn't go to school
and now they're trying to tell those same Americans you can't vote for the
guy you want to vote for in 2024.

That's how obsessed they are. I think the American people see through it
all. I think they understand that this is ridiculous and as you said the
president's going to prevail here which he should based on the
constitution, the lack of due process and based on the facts.

INGRAHAM: Congressman Barr, I thought it was significant that Congressman
Cicilline refused to concede that the Chief Justice not showing up to
preside was in fact significant. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DAVID CICILLINE (D-RI), HOUSE IMPEACHMENT MANAGER: Let me state this
very plainly. It does not matter. It is not significant. When the current
president is on trial, if he - the chief justice doesn't preside, the vice
president can preside and it would be a conflict for someone to preside
over trial that would become president if there was a conviction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: OK. Ken Starr vehemently disagreed with that last night on the
show and said it is entirely significant that the Chief Justice declined to
be part of this. Your take.

BOB BARR, FMR CLINTON IMPEACHMENT MANAGER: Well first of all, Chief
Justices don't like to sit in impeachment trials. That was obvious a
generation ago when Justice Rehnquist had to be sort of dragged kicking and
screaming to preside over the Clinton impeachment and with the last
impeachment of President Trump also, it puts the Chief Justice in an
uncomfortable position but the fact that this Chief Justice properly reads
the constitution that they cannot impeach by prior, they cannot convict a
former president is very significant.

Otherwise since President Trump as president was impeached, now they're
going to triumph if in fact there was a constitutional basis for that
trial, the Chief Justice would be sitting in that chair. The fact that he
is not is very significant.

INGRAHAM: Now Congressman Nunes, House impeachment managers played video of
the violence on January 6. They produced quite a - quite a presentation and
it included a very disturbing moment. I have to warn our viewers. It's
graphic. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Congressmen, that's the moment Ashley Babbitt was shot dead. We
still don't have a report on what exactly happened, who shot her, what was
the actual finding in the report. Was it capitol police? Was it secret
service? You can't really tell what is going on here. Why don't we know
this?

REP. DEVIN NUNES (R-CA): Well, I would start with what you're talking about
Laura is actual evidence so if you go back four years are actually five
years now, open an investigation into Trump. No evidence but they
investigated the Trump campaign for supposedly colluding with the Russians.

I feel like we're kind of groundhog day from a year ago, I think Jim and I
were probably on your show during the last impeachment that they had a year
ago and but when the evidence was actually presented, the evidence was that
the Democrats were actually coordinating with someone who really wasn't a
whistleblower and the I.G. testimony still is sitting behind locked doors.

Nobody's ever seen that likely because the Inspector General who was
involved in this was actually also meeting with the Democrats and their
staff so fast forward and look at what's happened here. OK, there was a
violent Bob a riot. We want everybody prosecuted and when during every
prosecution, you will have to present evidence.

But what they're trying to conflate is that Donald Trump participated in a
rally and told everybody to come to Washington and have a rally. That is
perfectly legal. It's one of our basic rights as Americans and when you
look, the rioting, the mobs and the fires and the looting that were going
on all over this country, that's what I hope that we will raise that, that
the Trump lawyers will raise this and Republicans will raise this.

Democrats were saying this, there were Democrats who have in previous past
not voted to certify electors.

INGRAHAM: Yes a lot of unanswered questions. Yes, 100 percent. The
unanswered questions that Byron York wrote about days ago still haven't
gotten answers so if a president's going to be impeached for something, we
better have a full report. That's my point in raising Ashley Babbitt issue.

It's just one question. Both of by the way, the BLM riots over the summer
Congressman Barr and the January 6 riot at the capitol were obviously,
they're all terrible but let's talk about the damages that were caused
because we need to put all of this in perspective, given the Democrat
rhetoric that was inciting people all last summer.

Now the BLM riots did upwards of $2 billion in damage, injured over to 2000
police officers, resulted in at least 30 deaths. The capitol riot injured
about 50 officers and 5 deaths. Congressman Barr, deaths are deaths but
when you when you repeatedly say that America is a systemically racist
country and tell - get people out of restaurants and threaten people just
because they supported Trump, threaten them when they're out with their
families.

I mean there's never a charge of incitement going the other way, ever.

BARR: No, it's a one way street like so many things are to the Democrats in
today's world Laura. It's a one way street. The fact that there were riots
this past summer, spring and summer and really into the fall, is irrelevant
for their purposes because of course it doesn't fit their narrative.

The riots swept across this country caused hundreds of millions of dollars
in damage, damage that cannot be replaced, small businesses shut down,
lives lost, families torn apart and yet the Left still to this day will
have America believe that those rights were or those demonstrations were
mostly peaceful. It's laughable.

INGRAHAM: Well Cicilline, Congressman Cicilline, Congressman Jordan,
basically just blew off any concern about violence over the summer. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CICILLINE: To counter the undisputed evidence of what actually happened in
this case, you'll see video clips. They'll show video clips of other
politicians including Democratic politicians using what they consider
incendiary language.

Apparently, they think this will establish some sort of equivalence. That's
a gimmick. It's a parlor game meant to inflame partisan hostility and play
on our divisions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Oh yes, so the Republicans are the ones trying to foment
division, Congressman Jordan so certain violence is apparently dismissed,
other violence has to be taken seriously enough to impeach a man no longer
in office.

JORDAN: Yes, you're right. Both on the 6th and what happened last summer,
both tragic and both wrong. What happened last summer though while it was
going on, we had Democrat members of Congress say while the violence is
taking place in the streets, we had Democrat members of Congress say we
need more unrest in the streets at the very time there is unrest in the
streets.

Now compare that to what happened in this situation where the president
says peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard, where the - where
the attack was planned before the president even gave his speech. The FBI
knew about it. There was a pipe bomb filed the day before.

The Sergeant of Arms told a Capitol Hill police when they asked for
additional help, asked for the National Guard, he told him no. So those are
the fundamental fact that show how this is so much different than what
happened last summer where you had people encouraging the very thing that
was going on at the time, it was going on.

That's the problem and Americans I think again see through all this.

INGRAHAM: And Congressman Nunes, it really is the case, is it not? That
Democrats for all their boasting and all their you know, they think they
have the wind at their back now because they have control of both Houses of
Congress and the presidency, they don't seem very secure about just making
their policies, put them front and center and bringing them to the American
people.

They are absolutely obsessed with stopping another Trump run for the
presidency.

NUNES: Yes, it's very odd because that's exactly what it looks like. They
just don't want President Trump to run again but what you're also not
hearing and Jim mentioned a little bit about this, the intelligence was
good in the days leading up to that.

So FBI and other law enforcement knew there was going to be a problem. I
had been briefed on it that morning by Capitol Hill police officers who
were wondered what intelligence that I had and if I had seen anything so
they knew of the groups. They knew the groups are going to be there.

What they're trying to do, the reason they're so worried about this is
because for some reason there was the smallest fencing I've ever seen
around the capitol as getting as we get closer to inauguration of the new
president.

You had the request for additional security that was denied. Ultimately the
Speaker of the House is responsible for that. Nobody's asking those
questions is what did the speaker know and when did she know?

INGRAHAM: Well, we got to keep pursuing that. That is extremely interesting
and a phenomenal conversation tonight. Gentlemen, thank you so much for
being here tonight. And we're going to move on because there's something
very perverse going on in our country.

We have woke agitators looking to shame and cancel, de-platform you, make
sure that you never work again. My ANGLE on the rise of the sanctimonious
snitches is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: And now Biden's snitch patrol. That's the focus of tonight's
ANGLE. Now you probably encountered the busybody phenomenon, right, during
this never ending COVID-era. You know the neighbor who barks at you for
going maskless while you're out walking your dog in a freezing day, an
empty road.

You know, the social media friends who comment on your Instagram post. Hey,
nice dinner party but looks like more than 10 people at your house. Well,
the Super Bowl parties in Tampa Bay. They had COVID-scolds in a froth.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Large crowds of mostly maskless fans celebrating the
Superbowl win.

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: Man, if you could just animate the COVID being spread.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I thought you know Florida's going to kill all of us.
I really felt that way.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I spoke to the Tampa Bay police and I asked them what
are you doing about this?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: I think they just hate Florida now. Of course liberal politicians
in the medical cartel have been encouraging us to tell on one another since
the shutdowns began.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know the old expression about snitches. Well, in
this case snitches get rewards. We want to thank you for turning folks in
and making sure we are all safe.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you see a crowd, when you see a line that's not
distance, when you see a supermarket that's too crowded, anything, you can
report it right away so we can get help there to fix the problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: What a horrible mayor. Well, it was last April when the
Associated Press seemed thrilled to report that snitches are emerging as
enthusiastic allies as cities, states and country work to enforce
directives meant to limit person to person contact. They're phoning police
and municipal hotlines complaining to elected officials and shaming
perceive scofflaws on social media.

Wow, the CCP must be very, very proud and our very own social credit
system. We've done it to ourselves, courtesy of unhinged progressives who
are happiest when they're ordering someone else around. Now this is funny
in one way but it's pernicious stuff and it's infected every level of our
society.

Last fall students were encouraged to rat out their friends who had the
nerve to attend parties on campus, that a way to build class spirit. Now my
guess is that about, I don't know 90 percent of the sanctimonious snitches
are just frustrated bitter lefties with too much time on their hands.

Case in point. Taylor Lorenz, a reporter who covers the challenging Tik Tok
beat for The New York Times. We learned that she recently strayed from
covering stupid pet and dance videos to snitching on a Silicon Valley group
chat.

She tried to embarrass Marc Andreessen, the wildly successful investor by
falsely accusing him of using the word retarded during a private discussion
on the platform Clubhouse. Well, when retraction - retraction was demanded
because it was false, she diluted it by saying well, people just needed to
be more careful about context and when they use certain words.

According to The Federalist for months Lorenz had obsessed over Andreessen
in conversations on Clubhouse. Last fall Lorenz alleged that several men on
the platform were perpetrating malicious sexual behavior on the app,
tweeting that it was rife with sexism and misogyny.

But people like Ms. Lorenz, they're kind of everywhere and with Biden in
office, the snitches are even more emboldened. You don't even want - they
don't even want you to freely communicate in private now. Earlier this
month, a New York Times tech writer said "I'm worried about Telegram. Other
than private messaging people love to use Telegram for group chats. Up to
200,000 people can meet inside a Telegram chat room. That seems
problematic."

You know what else seems problematic that these seething snitches have more
in common with the old fashioned Soviet faux police than they have with the
free speech liberals of the 1970s. That's what's problematic. And one of
the most disturbing aspects of the rise of the Snitch and Ditch culture is
how the Left is using it all to divide families.

Now we've seen how children who rat out their conservative parents are
instantly just crazed by corporate media and their praise by corporate
media and even some of them become social media darlings. This woke 18-year
old spotted her own mother in a viral video taken outside the January 6
riot.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: The mom was the one punched in the face. Her daughter then called
her out in a tweet. And then the daughter did an interview with TMZ.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HELENA DUKE: I would have had no idea she was there at that video for
getting punched in the face. It wasn't viral on Twitter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Down the road, I could see government officials moving to
liberate children from their conservative parents on the pre-tax of
preventing kids from getting radicalized.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DUKE: I present her with like educated points and facts that I have like
studied or researched because I want to be as like unbiased as possible and
she would just be like nope, that's not right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: She was like nope, that's not right. Like totally. Apparently
family snitchdom pays. She's raised $74,000 for college on a GoFundMe page
since tweeting about mommy. I guess it beats baby sitting or waiting tables
to pay for tuition.

Liberal busy bodies claim that they're just trying to save lives with their
snitching but we know that's not true. They're silent when blue state
mayors and governors are caught violating their own COVID dictates and they
made excuses when entire city blocks were in flames last summer because of
the BLM riots.

The complete frauds. This is not about standing on principle. Snitches want
riches and of course, they want power. Their political overlords in the
Biden administration themselves are masters of snitching.

That's entire job description - that's an entire job description for
Anthony Fauci shaming America for wanting to go back to normal. But it's
time to shame them right back, for turning Americans against Americans and
that's THE ANGLE.

All right, joining me now is Dave Rubin, host of 'The Rubin Report' and
author of 'Don't burn this book.' Dave, this isn't just one issue of COVID,
you know the people who are, you're outside on a trail and they literally
jumped to the other side of the trail if you don't have a mask on in the
middle of summer.

It's pervasive on a whole host of issues and it's having a very corrosive
effect on personal relationships and even family.

DAVE RUBIN, HOST, THE RUBIN REPORT: Yes, Laura, you gave me so much to work
with there in that - in that beautiful intro. I mean I'm hearing crazy LA
where I kid you not, if I'm walking my dog, people walking their dogs the
other way on the other side of the street will pull them in different
directions.

The dogs are going to start having nervous breakdowns and I'm only
partially kidding about that. I mean we're going to actually start giving
dogs the same anxiety that so many people are walking around with. But real
quick on the New York Times and this Taylor Lorenz story and Clubhouse and
everything else, this is exactly what wokism will bring to every industry.

Wokism and social justice and the ideas of equity as opposed to equality
will destroy every single institution, whether it's an educational
institution, a journalist institution, a governmental institution wherever
it goes he will destroy things but there's something a little more
nefarious going on here with the New York Times, which is the reason that
they write all of these anti-tech stories is because they don't like
competition.

People are starting to realize that you don't need the paper formerly known
as The New York Times to get information anymore. It's pure left wing
propaganda. We all know it. The New York Times wrote a piece actually, the
journalist too you mentioned who wrote that piece about Telegram, that
Telegram is scary now.

That's where the bad guys are coordinating. He once wrote a piece that
included me about a bunch of YouTubers that were leading people to the all
right. It was a Sunday front page piece. It also included libertarian
economist who I think won a Nobel Prize Friedman.

So that is what we're up against. They don't want competition on top of the
generally bad ideas that they have.

INGRAHAM: I think they don't want freedom. They - I mean these are the same
people who are praising China's response to the virus. Where you have a few
people making all the decisions for everybody else because everybody else
is dumb and uneducated.

Even that 18-year-old girl who ratted out her mother, I tried to give my
mom facts, like, like, like -- I tried to give her facts. But they are the
ones who are terribly uneducated, Dave, about history and what this type of
thought police, these thought police patrols, what it will ultimately do
when it backfires on them.

DAVE RUBIN, HOST, "THE RUBIN REPORT":  Of course, when you see Eric
Garcetti say snitches get rewards, it's not much of a jump for then kids to
turn in their parents, right? So this will affect, as you said, it will
affect families, it will affect local communities, it will affect basically
everything.

And it does have something to do with belief, I think, that the general
belief systems that these people have if they can control the world. They
can create a system that all the generations before them could never
create. All the people before them that were backwards, racist, bigot,
homophones, they did all of this terrible, terrible stuff, and only these
educated, follow the science, elite "New York Times" people and their woke
partners, who are antiracist -- although they are actually, that's the
irony -- only they if we gave them enough power could they perfect a
society.

But of course, you know this, Laura, any time you try to get to utopia, you
end up in dystopia. And in many ways that's what we're in right now. We're
in a modern dystopia. We just don't quite see it.

INGRAHAM:  And just going back to the obsession with President Trump, Dave,
President Trump really has revealed these folks for who they really are.
They don't want -- they don't really want the people to have any say or to
be able to meet in private or to go to church when they want. Families
getting together, there is too much tradition in families.

They don't like any of that. The find it all a threat. And it took Trump,
four years of Donald Trump, to really explode this out into the public,
because a lot of us knew this was happening, but now we really see them for
who they are and what they really represent.

RUBIN:  Absolutely. I had well-respected, liberal public friends that were
applauding Jack Dorsey on Twitter when he banned Trump. Since when are good
liberals for censorship? But he broke a lot of these people, he really did.
But even when you see what is going on with impeachment right now, nobody
cares except the media elite and the woke-sters.

Nobody cares. I'm fairly certain we have got some bigger problems in the
country, like all the unemployed people and the lockdowns, and the litany
of other issues that maybe government should have something to do with. But
instead, what are they doing? We are impeaching a guy who is out who can't
even get on Spotify because they booted him from that.

INGRAHAM:  Dave, great to see you tonight, thanks so much.

And the WHO has just dismissed the COVID lab leak theory. So it's all over,
no questions asked. Not so fast. A current advisor to the WHO, he is brave
to come on. He's going to tell us why, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM:  We've told you about the seedy ties between Biden's cabinet and
China. But it's Joe's pick to head the CIA who has perhaps the most
extensive CCP links to date. Since 2015, William Burns has served as
president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and according
to the Daily Caller News Foundation, the endowment took millions from pro-
China interests under his leadership. That includes $1.5 million from a
Chinese businessman who is a member of the two organizations directly tied
to the Communist Party, and as much as $250,000 from the China-U.S.
Exchange Foundation. Now, that's a think tank to help advance the CCP's
geopolitical ambitions.

Burns also invited a number of congressional staffers on a junket to China
in 2019 where they met with a slew of Chinese bigwigs. One congressional
staffer who attended said they were surprised Burns was able to have that
much access to Chinese officials.

Now, should Americans feel confident that this man is poised to lead
America's premier spy agency? Sadly, that is not all, though. Before
leaving office, former President Trump proposed a requirement that U.S.
schools disclose their relationships with the Confucius Institutes.
Basically, those are fronts for CCP propaganda. Well, late tonight we
learned the Biden administration quietly axed the Trump plan, allowing the
influence operation to continue working in the shadows.

While Biden lets China's propaganda infect our schools, the World Health
Organization is becoming a global super-spreader of Chinese disinformation.
The head of the team that the WHO sent to investigate the origin of COVID
more than a year later made this absurd statement today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  We also looked, for example, at the Wuhan Institute of
Virology. It was very unlikely that anything could escape from such a
place. And we also know that when lab accidents happen, they are, of
course, extremely rare.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM:  Now, let's get this straight, the WHO wants you to believe that
COVID-19 just happened to start spreading at a wet market that is very
close to not one but two high-security China virology labs, one of which
was doing highly controversial gain of function research on coronaviruses.

Joining me now is Jamie Metzl, WHO adviser and Atlantic Council senior
fellow. Jamie, what did the WHO fail to do in it's Wuhan investigation?

JAMIE METZL, W.H.O. ADVISER:  Well, the investigation itself was very
short. It was two weeks of quarantine and two weeks of meetings, but the
actual investigation was done by Chinese authorities. And so the WHO
investigators were basically receiving a report from the Chinese officials.
And as I see it, the big failure is that they outlined four possible ways
that COVID could have begun. One was direct bat to human, second, bat
through an animal intermediate host, third through shipping or some kind of
frozen food from somewhere else, and four, the accidental lab leak.

As you know, Laura, for more than a year I've been one of the leading
advocates saying we have to look very, very seriously at option four. But
rather than saying, let's look more deeply at all of those possibilities,
the WHO investigators say we should look at the first three, but not at the
accidental lab leak. And I'm just miffed that this happened. I think it is
really terrible. We don't know, most of us don't know exactly how COVID
began, but certainly an accidental lab leak is a very, very credible
possibility.

INGRAHAM:  What really needs to be done, then, in order determine how the
virus started, how it originated?

METZL:  In the best of all possible worlds, we would have an international
team that would be able to go to China and have the ability to do an
unrestricted forensic investigation of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and
other sites. This is in many ways a potential crime scene. But we're not
going to get that kind of information from the Chinese. So what we really
need to do is to build an international consortium of private scientists
and professors and willing government and others to say we need to get to
the bottom of how COVID began. We need to be fearless. We need to ask tough
questions.

Yes, most of the evidence is in China, but there's lots of evidence that is
elsewhere. I'm actually part of a community of scholars who are connecting
digitally around the world, trying to ask the tough questions, trying to
get to the bottom of this. But it is going to be really difficult. And I
think today was an unfortunate step backward.

INGRAHAM:  The problem is also, is it not, China's outsized influence and
money that it donates quite generously to all sorts of academic and
research institutions that, frankly, depend on that money. China has an
enormous reach across the globe, and there are a lot of people, I'm sorry,
they don't want to get crossways with China now, not if China is running
the field.

METZL:  Yes, unfortunately it's true. So let's take it in two parts. First
is with the WHO. As you and I discussed the last time I was on the show,
Laura, the challenge for the WHO is it's an organization created, funded,
and controlled by states. And so by definition, the WHO needs to balance
big power politics. And so the WHO is in a really tough position.

But then there are these broader Chinese influence operations all around
the world. You look at a place like Australia where they are really
suffering from all kinds of intervention, including the most aggressive
intervention in Australia's political system. It's not just there. It's all
around the world.

And that is one of the big challenges that we face, because for those of us
in the democratic world, we have certain norms, ways that we think about
interacting with civil society groups, with business investment. And China
is in many ways playing by a different set of norms. And if we don't
recognize that and respond aggressively and creatively and wisely, we are
going to lose so much of what we've spent many decades building.

INGRAHAM:  We learned today that Beijing is saying any country that decides
to boycott the Beijing Olympics is going to be subject to all sorts of
sanctions and a really aggressive -- so China responds very aggressively
when anyone questions them. But Jamie, your insight and your willingness to
discuss this, especially given what is at stake, is really admirable. Thank
you so much for coming on.

METZL:  My pleasure, Laura.

INGRAHAM:  The left's plan to deprogram those they consider extremists, now
it includes sheriffs who keep us safe. One of them reacts, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM:  The left began its mission to purge conservatives from
government by targeting the military, remember, looking for all those
extremists. But they are not done yet. "Axios" reporting that "A key part
of breaking extremists' rising mainstream influence will be making it
unacceptable for white nationalists, antigovernment extremists, and
conspiracy theorists to serve in the military, in police forces, or as
lawmakers. Former FBI counterterrorism analyst Clint Watts says "It's a lot
of sheriffs' departments that make me nervous because they're elected.
Politics means you go with party."

Here to respond is Sheriff Richard Giardino of Fulton County, New York.
Sheriff Giardino, this isn't just insulting to law enforcement, in my mind,
it's incredibly dangerous.

SHERIFF RICHARD GIARDINO, FULTON COUNTY, NEW YORK:  It's very dangerous.
But see, they are very clever. What they are doing, Laura, is what started
in the summer when the narrative outpaces the facts. And what they are
doing is saying what makes him nervous is elected sheriffs. Elected
sheriffs serve the Constitution, and they serve the public and their
communities. And what they are seeking to do is eliminate elected sheriff's
so they can take control over law enforcement.

We saw it this summer when we had over 35 chiefs, superintendents, and
commissioners, mostly men and women of color, removed as chiefs, sheriffs,
and superintendents because they did not adopt the narrative that they were
supposed to. And so you see this now, they are trying to undercut the
Constitution. They are trying to take away power from the sheriffs. If you
remember, the sheriffs were some of the few people that stood up to some of
these unconstitutional orders at Thanksgiving, that we're going to count
how many are at home. It's insulting. I don't want members who are QAnon
supporters. I don't want white supremacists.

INGRAHAM:  Obviously.

GIARDINO:  They are trying to paint all of us with the same brush. Go
ahead.

INGRAHAM:  I just have to ask you. I am worried about this being set as the
narrative as you get closer to the warmer weather, because people thought
Biden is in office, there's going to be no more BLM riots. There is going
to be something that happens, and then you add this to the mix, fomenting
this understanding that law enforcement is rife with white supremacists? I
find that puts a target on your back. Forget getting rid of the elected
sheriff. It's put a target on the backs of law enforcement.

GIARDINO:  It continues the narrative from the summer that all police
officers are racist. All police officers get up in the morning with the
intent to go shoot men of color. And what is really disturbing about that
is the narrative outpaces the facts. For instance, nobody knows that 60
children 12 and under of color were killed last year in drive-by shootings
because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hardly anyone knows
the names of those kids. There's no condemnation. There's no protests.

Then other thing is law enforcement during the summer and into the fall, we
were ambushed in cars in Los Angeles. We were thrown -- bottle rockets were
host at us, rocks, bottles. They condemn us. They say we are there to
murder people. They set this narrative, and then they call -- we're the
only profession when all that is done on a Friday night, you call 911 on
Saturday and beg for help. And we don't care what color you are. We don't
care what your religion is or your politics. We go.

It is very scary, because it continues to undermine law enforcement and
authority. And the statistics and the facts really outweigh that law
enforcement is the enemy of young black and brown people. And that is
showing in New York City last year where last year 1,500 shootings and
almost 500 homicides, 90 percent of victims were black and brown, and over
90 percent of the suspects were black and brown. It's not the police.

INGRAHAM:  It's heartbreaking. Sheriff, we really appreciate your joining
us. We are out of time, but we are following this story, don't you worry.
We are staying on it.

And a virtual court hearing takes a pretty funny turn, I think so. I
couldn't stop laughing. The Last Bite explains.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM:  A west Texas judge got a big surprise today when one of the
lawyers in a virtual hearing appeared on the screen like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I believe you have a filter turned on in the video
settings. You might want to -- I think it's a filter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  It is. I don't know how to remove it. I've got my
assistant here. She is trying to. But I'm prepared to go forward with it.
I'm here live. It's not -- I'm not a cat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can -- I can see that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Thanks for clarifying. What an interview late tonight, that
lawyer Rod Ponton. If I can make the country chuckle for a moment in these
difficult times, I'm happy to let them do that at my expense. I -- how old?
What a good sport and I can't take those filters off either when my kids
put them on.

That's all the time we have tonight. Shannon Bream and the "FOX NEWS @
NIGHT" take it from here. Shannon, I think I've watched it 10 times.

END

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