Hannity Shrugs Off Manafort And Cohen Filings: ‘No Evidence Of Any Collusion. Nothing’
Fox News host and White House shadow chief of staff Sean Hannity opened Thursday night’s broadcast of Hannity by downplaying the Michael Cohen sentencing memos filed by the Southern District of New York and the special counsel’s office and the Paul Manafort filing by the special counsel.
Transcript
HANNITY: Major breaking news on multiple fronts. Paul Manafort accused of lying to investigators. Michael Cohen will spend time in prison and bad news for the left. No evidence of any collusion. Nothing. And what the left is claiming is not true. We’ll prove that in the course of our hour. Trump, Russian collusion has been a hoax, has been and we now have evidence.
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First, the special counsel’s memo on Paul Manafort is out. It’s heavily redacted. We know, however, that Robert Mueller believes that Paul Manafort briefed his plea deal and lied to investigators all surrounding alleged crimes, none of which have anything to do with President Trump, none of which have to do with Russia or anything to do with collusion. Instead, a source with knowledge of the investigation tonight telling Fox News that much of the redacted information likely includes potential criminal allegations we’re told against Tony Podesta. That would be John Podesta’s brother. John Podesta the Clinton campaign chair. Nothing. Now we’re talking about in the Manafort case. Tax evasion, other charges. Bank loan applications dating back to 2007. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders issued this statement. Said “The government’s filing in Mr. Manafort’s case is nothing about the president. It says even less about collusion. It’s devoted almost entirely to lobbying-related issues and I’ll add long before Paul Manafort ever met Donald Trump.”
Also breaking today, two separate sentencing memos were filed against Michael Cohen. First, the southern district of northern completely rejecting Cohen’s pleas for leniency writing that a substantial term of imprisonment is warranted and then the memo says Cohen’s decision to plead guilty rather than seek a pardon for his crimes does not make him a hero. In exchange for Cohen’s guilty plea, the prosecutor’s recommended only a slight reduction to the suggested five-year prison sentence. The next memo from the special counsel, that focused on Cohen admitting that he lied under oath to the federal government saying the sentence should reflect the fact that lying to investigators has real consequences. Let’s be clear. The one thing that these two filings have in common. Nothing to do with Russia or collusion at all. Zero evidence in any of these documents of Trump-Russia collusion, zero. The president applauded the ruling. He tweeted “Totally clears the president. Thank you.” The president’s attorney, Rudy Guliani, called these findings “a complete exoneration of the president. They have nothing. We’re happy about it.”
The president and Guliani are right about this. Alan Dershowitz said don’t ever think about making a deal with Mueller because it’s not going to work out wheel for you. Take a look.
DERSHOWITZ (CLIP): Right now it does not sounds like it’s good news from Mueller. Doesn’t sound like in Cohen they have found a witness that will give them the key to the kingdom. So far the only solid evidence he’s provided is the campaign contribution issue, and it’s a very weak case.
HANNITY: Tonight we have two men facing years behind bars, a third one, George Papadopoulos who was released tied who was jailed for lying to investigators The question is for what? When you read these documents, we hear about taxi medallions, fraudulent loan applications, tax evasion. Lying about a potential project in Moscow that never got off the ground and whether they stopped talking about it in January in 2016 or June in 2016. The horror. How will America ever recover.
Clearly an election was stolen by this information after months of intense investigations, millions and millions and millions of your dollars spent, seedy perjury traps, legal coercion? We have absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing by the president of the United States. Then you ask yourself this question, do you feel safer tonight? Do you feel safer that a low-level campaign volunteer spent his 12 days in jail for allegedly lying to the omnipotent Robert Mueller? Do you feel safe the American military hero, Lieutenant General Flynn had to sell his house to pay his legal bills? Oh, the thanks one gets for 33 years of service to his country, five of those years in combat.
By the way, neither Comey, Mccabe, Strzok or anybody in the FBI thought he lied. They put the screws to Flynn and he had to compose a lie and he did it to get out of the mess that they were putting him in. You feel any safer than Michael Cohen is going to go to prison for a significant amount of time? For lying to Congress? Lying on a bank loan application. Taxi medallion loans. Not paying taxes. He feels safer knowing that Manafort might spend the rest of his life behind bars because of tax fraud and lies on loan applications? Had nothing to do with Russia. Years before he met Trump. He feels safer that everyone surrounding the president is seemingly targeted and those on the left get away every single day scot-free? Is that the America we want to live in?
Watch the clip above, via Fox News.
