July 28, 2026 • 31 mins
Jason Chaffetz examines ongoing concerns surrounding the U.S. Secret Service with investigative journalist Susan Crabtree, discussing agency culture, recent misconduct allegations, and the need for stronger accountability following multiple security failures. The hour also previews Dr. Anthony Fauci’s expected testimony before Congress before turning to the emotional centerpiece of the program: Sean Hannity’s heartfelt eulogy honoring his longtime friend, Senator Lindsey Graham, reflecting on Graham’s service, patriotism, and enduring legacy.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, this is Jason chaff It's filling in for Sean
and truly appreciate it. You know, there's there's a lot
going on in the world. There's always somebody doing something stupid. Somewhere.
There's always some crazy nut out there trying to to
blow themselves up or blow other people up, use use
some incnidary, the incendiary device, or do something stupid. I mean,
(00:23):
the world is just a dangerous place, you know. I
was watching the some of the the the uh, the
eulogies and the the funeral there for Senator Lindsey Graham,
you know, a sad moment, hard moment. And later on
in this hour we're going to play some of the
comments that Sean Hannity made having the honor of being
(00:45):
able to to eulogize Senator Graham. But when I was
looking at that, I saw the President of the United States.
I saw the Benjamin Nett and yah who I saw Zelensky.
I saw the cabinet, you know, people like John the
CIA director. They're all gathered there together, and I thought,
oh my goodness, this is terrace. You know, best case scenario.
(01:10):
They're all together in one room, in one place, and
the logistics and the difficult nature of being able to
protect all those people, particularly when they're gathered together, is
a very difficult thing. But at any moment, something crazy
could happen, and there are people who creatively think through
how to damage and take down the United States of
(01:33):
America and the free world. We stand for freedom, we
stand for liberty, we stand for justice, we stand for
the things that a lot of people don't like. They
don't like the United States of America. They want to
take us down, and they want to do it with
it violently and inject terrorism into our culture. And consequently,
(01:56):
you have to have some really good people who spend
all day every day thinking, doing, thinking these things through
in order to protect them. So as I look at
Homeland Security, the formation after nine to eleven, a number
of different departments and agencies were constituted together to form
this new Homeland Security, and I think it's justifiable, particularly,
(02:22):
you know, given that we're going to come up hard
to believe the twenty fifth anniversary of nine to eleven
is this September eleventh. In doing so, we got to
think things through. Now through my time in Congress as
the former chairman of the Oversight Committee, I spent a
lot of time, unfortunately, having to look at the United
(02:43):
States Secret Service. What became evident is that through those years, nobody,
but nobody had been paying attention to the Secret Service,
because you know, their secret not supposed to look at them.
But without oversight, without the congo, the Congress, asking probing
some difficult questions, a lot of the agency was going sideways.
(03:08):
And our next guest has really done an amazing job
investigating and revealing things about the United States Secret Service.
And so I want to bring in Susan Crabtree. Susan
is a national correspondent for Real Clear Politics. She's also
(03:29):
the author of Fool's Gold, and she's also somebody that
I had interacted with through the years on issues related
to the Secret Service. Now, some people would say, oh, well,
you shouldn't expose anything, you shouldn't ask hard questions, you
shouldn't do this in public. But you know what, the
United States is different. We are self critical. We do
(03:49):
go and look at these things. That's what makes us
the United States of America. And when there's a problem,
we want to fix it. It's not that we want
to expose it to embarrass people. We want to actually
fix it, because I would venture to say, Susan that
the single most important job of the Department of Homeland
Security is to protect the President of the United States.
(04:11):
So thank you for joining us on Chan Hannity. That's
a long interes Susan, But you've done some great work
on this, and you have a new piece out, and
you've discovered some other nefarious things happening in the Secret Service.
So let's talk about that.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yes, well, thanks so much Jason for having me on.
I covered all of your hearings, all of your hard
work to ferret out the problems of the Secret Service
after that big Columbia prostitution scandal. Obviously there was a
cultural problem in the Secret Service, and unfortunately we had
to revisit this after the two assassination attempts to figure
out what went wrong so that we couldn't so that
(04:48):
didn't happen again in the future. And so unfortunately, I
don't think the cultural rod at the Secret Service has
been fully reformed. Have I was very happy, and I
do want to stress that all of these the majority
of the Secret Service agents and officers that I know
(05:11):
and have come to know over a decade more than
a decade of reporting are the best of humanity. These
are among us we put themselves that lies on the
line because people say, oh, you're taking potshots, and I
know every agency is corrupt. You know, people outside of
Washington just say, oh, all of Washington is corrupt. Well,
that's not necessarily the case. We will take a look
(05:34):
at these issues because there are serious morale issues in
the Secret Service that have been ongoing that you've done
a lot of work about, and we want to know,
get to the heart of it so that we can
reform the agencies and so that were better equipped to
protect the President and our continuity of government. So that
being said, along wind up too. There are problems with
(05:55):
the Secret Service, especially this year alone. In the last
eight months, there have been at least six agents or
officers that have been arrested or run a foul of
the law that are Secret Service agents, and they have
been placed on administrative leave. The latest, unfortunately, I did
report in June about this particular agent, Marquez Pinder. He
(06:20):
was arrested in charge Sunday with five felony counts and
then a near fatal fraternity hazing incident that occurred this spring.
I've been reporting on this, trying to get information. It
all came to a head yesterday. New York Times broke
the story on Sunday night. I knew about it. I
didn't break the story. I had already broken a story
(06:40):
I've reported on nder soon as possible. But this is
the problem there have been. This is one of five
to six different agents than the officers that have been arrested,
or one of them had his home rated by the
FBI because of a risk tax investigation, of wide ranging investigation,
(07:03):
whether his nonprofit that he's doing for the moonlighting deal
is on the up and up with the federal charity laws,
whether he's whether this agent is actually taking Ticket Service
laptops that he got from the agency and giving them
to you young people that need them, or whether he's
(07:24):
holding on to them. I don't know. There's a lot
to this. There's Like I said, it's sad that I
keep reporting this. I would like to report about reforms
and Secret Service. Let me tell you, and I've asked
them for interviews. I've asked them for positive stories. Tell
me about your recruiting, you know, any kind of recruiting
efforts that you've made so positive, But they don't get
(07:45):
back to me on those requests.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
So after a two year investigation, my committee ten years
ago did a four hundred and fifty page report and
came up with a lot of findings and a lot
of very difficult things, and some of them still what
bothers me is ten years later, I still haven't solved them.
So we were looking at over one hundred and ten
(08:08):
I believe it was plus security incidents involving the Secret Service,
everything from fence jumpers and guys running with crocs right
into the White House, to shots fired at the White House,
shots fired at Joe Biden's vice presidential residents in Delaware
where they never did catch anybody. They didn't even have
(08:31):
cameras at the time, to things that were happening with
George W. Bush's compound down in Crawford. I mean, it
just went on and on and on. Man with a
gun next to President Obama in an elevator. I mean,
we had a lot to look at and then made recommendations.
I don't think anything's changed, and that's what scares me.
It scares me that we've become very lucky. We've had
(08:54):
a couple of different assassination attempts on President Trump's life.
You know, you know, it's amazing to me, Susan, I
still can't get over this, and tell me if I'm
overstating it. But the President of the United States, Donald Trump,
in a campaign in Pennsylvania was shot. Not a single
person was dismissed fired. They all somewhat onlike administrative leave temporarily,
(09:19):
but they went back and worked at the Secret Service.
And one of them is now the director of the
Secret Service. So a lot of them got promotions. The
president was shot and people got promoted. It's unbelievable to me.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, there were two supervisors. There was an experienced DASI
known for partying, who was in charge of the whole
Secret Service security plan and execution for that day. Before
she had help, she had supervisors. The two supervisors were
promoted by Sean Karen, who you know, the buck stops
at the detail leader. He was a detail leader for
Trump's campaign. There's a lot of blame to go around
(09:56):
for that day, including on a campaign I reported did
the campaign tried to remove didn't like the optics of
the farm equipment, so they wanted those removed. But hey,
nobody stood up to them and said, no, they were
protecting the line of sight. They were obstructing the line
of site that Thomas Crooks used from the adr ability
(10:17):
to shoot and almost nearly kill President Trump and then
candidate Trump, former President Trump. Nothing has changed, well, I
don't know. They don't talk about the changes that they've
made very much. They are facing an inordinate amount of threats.
That's what we heard from shankhar And before the White
House Correspondents Dinner than one that was resquitted last Friday.
(10:41):
He said that it's gone up exponentially the level of threats.
So the reforms should have been going up exponentially as well.
And we've had Secret Service agents officer and one at
the ud office uniformed division officers like a police. As
you know, he was found in a hallway by the
police masturbating in the act of masturbating recently after the
(11:04):
President Trump, it was Evans or Trump went down there
to Miami. He was out of the Miamis office.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
There was a and this is like in a hotel hallway.
This is like, I mean, this is like there's video
cameras and the guy is I mean, let's not mention
what he was doing, but come on, I mean, and
this is a guy with a gun protecting the president
vice president of the United States of America.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yes, it's really that one was, I mean obviously shocking.
There's another recent incidents so that are equally shocking. In March,
there was a Secret Service Uniform Division officer, Kristin Hale.
He was arrested and faces charged charges for sending sexually
explicit messages, images and video to a girl, a minor.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
And it's.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
There was a Secret Service agent that I reported last
week who was actually on a PPD, but then he
became polygrapher who was supposed to be in charge of
vetting other Secret Service agents. He got a DWI the
morning of July fifth, so maybe it was for the
July related when he was driving impaired. Then he assaulted
(12:26):
a law enforcement officer and he was accused of sexual
battery in Virginia. Since Barne, the sexually battery was dismissed.
But yeah, there is a law enforcement officer resisting her
arrest and assaulting another law enforcement officer when he was
charged with a DWI when he was on his ATV
and at an accident. The mugshot is horrible, but this
(12:50):
is a problem. I've said it so many times and
it just doesn't seem like Congress cares, or maybe they're
working behind the scenes. I do have some indication that
they're working behind the scene. But what needs to happen
is some transparency to hold the Secret Service accountable or
make them answer the questions, how is your recruiting going?
Please let me know that you're doing better. But what
(13:11):
I'm hearing is that the standards are completely lowered. There's
no mental health examination and there hasn't been for years
that other police departments put in place to prevent any
kind of insider threats or mental health issues from rising
up within the Secret Service agents and officers while they're
(13:32):
on the job, like we had the one at Joint
Base Andrews that was the canary in the coal mine
before the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at Butler. A
couple months before that, I reported that there was this
woman who was who had a mental breakdown at Joint
Based Andrews who right before she was supposed to protect
Kamala Harris on a trip with's assaulting her supervisor. They
(13:54):
had to wrestle her down and get her gun away
from her. I just think that there's a culture problem
in secret Service that you exposed, and then it hasn't
that cultural problem hasn't gone away. And there is an agent,
Rashid Ellis that I've written about extensively. He has a
lawsuit into the Secret Service. He's come forward and has
(14:14):
said that DEI had everything to do with the assassination
at Butler and the failures at Butler, and he is
a African American and this is just not changing and
they're punishing him.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Well, here's here's the problem going forward. Here's the problem.
You and I could go on for another hour and
a half exposing this. It hasn't been fixed. It's not fixed.
It is the single most important thing. Heaven forbid, something
happen on either side of the stile. This is not
a partisan issue, folks, This is bipartisan. They need to
solve this. Congress has allocated the money, but the leadership
(14:52):
is not in place to actually solve this. And until
they do, there are lots of vulnerabilities in it. Heaven forbid,
it does scare me. Susan Crabbe Crabtree, thank you so
much for joining us on the Sean Hannity Show. We'll
be right back and I'm Jason Chief. It's been filling
in for Sean because he was honored to give the
(15:14):
eulogy at Senator Graham's funeral, one of the few people
with the President of the United States speaking, and we
wanted to play that for you. So here's Sean Hannity
giving tribute to his friend, Senator Lindsey Graham.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
I want to thank all of you for being here
on behalf of Lindsey, Darlene and his family.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
I loved him so much.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
You know, many of you know that I speak for
a living and President Trump often reminds me that I
kind of never stopped talking, whether on air or off air.
And while it is an honor to be standing in
this place today, I simply wish that our dear friend
(15:59):
Lindsey we're here with.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
Us, as all of you do.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
He would have been so proud, he would have been
so honored as the President that you were here, as
the Vice President that you were here.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
I see the Secretary of State is here. I see
the entire cabinet is here.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Thank you, all of you, Each and every one of
your chiefest staff is here.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
Steve Whitkoff is here. I see everybody. We are here
to say goodbye.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
As the President said, to a true original, there was
nobody like Lindsey Graham. Nobody he loved being a US senator.
He loved representing the great state of South Carolina. He
worked harder, He traveled more than any senator I ever knew.
I couldn't believe his travel schedule. And he was just
(16:48):
a force of nature in a good way for good reasons.
Nobody visited more war zones. Nobody met with more active
duty troops. Nobody loved, with the exception perhaps of our President,
our military more. And that included the decades of service
that he served himself, both an.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
Active duty and in the reserves, to our nation's warriors.
I have a message to you today. He was so
so grateful to all of you for putting your lives
on the line for your country.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Nobody admired you more. Now, I want to say, for
the record, Lindsay and I did not always agree, not
on everything, but we could disagree and we could remain friends,
and we've remained friends for decades. We had similar backgrounds.
This may shock all of you. We both in different ways.
(17:43):
We both grew up in a bar. You know, I
started working at twelve Washington dishes till two three in
the morning, and I was a cook at thirteen. At seventeen,
I was tending bar Lindsay, as the President mentioned, and
a bartender at seventeen. And his father, Darlene you know,
(18:04):
as you know, he ran a bar, he ran a
liquor store, he ran a pool room. And it's amazing
what life lessons you can learn in that environment. By
the way, not all of them are really good lessons.
I can tell you that we did laugh about it constantly.
We shared stories always, and yes I shouldn't admit this.
(18:27):
In the National Cathedral, we could still curse like we
were behind the bar.
Speaker 5 (18:33):
Lindsey does hold a couple of records that I.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
Don't think will ever be broken on the Fox News channel.
And number one was how freely he would use certain
words on my show, in particular.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
Now in this beautiful cathedral. I will not repeat them.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
But his first record was on how many different occasions
those words were complying out of his mouth.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
That was record one.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Record number two, how many times could he say it
a single appearance. I did show a montage on my
show about this, and you know, I will selfishly admit
that when a US senator other certain words on national TV,
it is really mister President will appreciate this. It is
great for ratings, and Senator Graham was great for ratings
(19:22):
because people listened to him.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
He threw you in. He had that passion to draw
you in.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
So for that, I was very grateful. Lindsay also was
well known on my TV show. He was a shameless
self promoter. I don't think any one person ever said
Lindsey Graham dot com more than Lindsey Graham. And then
he called me hours later and tell me how much
money he raised on my show that night, and over
(19:51):
and over. If he were here today, I'm sure he
would not miss a chance to say Darlenegraham dot com.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
I'll say it for him.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
For the record, it was always a bit risky to
have Lindsay on your TV show. My Fox colleagues, they
would understand this, and I could have easily been fired
for any of these occasions. And I'm extremely grateful to
my boss, Malcola Murdoch. He is with us today and
his father, Rupert, the founder of the Fox News Channel.
Speaker 5 (20:22):
And they never held me accountable.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
Darlene for what your brother said and I'm about to
finish my thirtieth year of Fox in part because I
got to interview wonderful leaders like your brother, Lindsay. I
want everybody to know I was so proud to be
a senator. He was so proud to serve the people
of South Carolina for the people of that great state.
(20:47):
I want you to know, with no ambiguity, that you
gave Lindsay Graham the honor of a lifetime thank you.
At his core, Lindsay was a man driven by principal God, family, country.
Speaker 5 (21:03):
He was a friend's friend. He was a great patriot.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
He fought with every ounce of strength he had in
his body for the things that he deeply believed in.
He's also, as my friend, one of the funniest people
that you could ever know. We laughed NonStop. We laughed
often about many of you in this room.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
With me.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
He never held back, and that was the basis of
our deep friendship. I will miss him so much, mister President.
He would be so honored, so honored that you were
here today. He loved you as he loved his country.
(21:46):
He loved the times you played golf. I heard about
every single solitary hole. He loved the meals that you shared.
He loved the late night conversations you had, and mister President,
you gave him the greatest gift of his life, and
that was a front row seat at the highest levels
(22:06):
of history in the making. It meant the world to him.
Thank you, sir for that. I see Prime Minister Natanyahu
is here. Mister Prime Minister, you two have been a
dear friend of mine for thirty years. It's an honor
to have you and Lindsay would have been blown away
that you took this long journey with your beautiful bride
(22:28):
to be here today. He loved you, He loved the
state of Israel.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
He loved the people of Israel.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Under your leadership, Israel has been one of America's most
consistent and loyal allies.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
He was never shy to say it to the day
he passed. And just as.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
President Trump has been Israel's strongest friend in the history
of the White House, you know the two partners aligned together.
Lindsay was that friend to Israel. In the United States Senate.
As long as I've known this man, Lindsay, he was
often unfairly characterized.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
As a warmonger.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
I've heard that false criticism a lot, It's not true.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
The truth was the opposite.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Lindsay desperately wanted and talked to the President about a
lasting peace in the Middle East. He wanted every region,
every country in the region, on that path to peace.
That was Lindsay's dream. If people would only listen to
what he had been saying. His greatest gift in life,
from my perspective, was Lindsay had moral clarity. He understood
(23:41):
right from wrong, good from evil, and he knew, as
President Trump knows, as Israel knows, as I know, there
can be no path to peace until evil is defeated. Evil,
in this case embodied in a death cult, an ideology,
(24:02):
the world's number one state sponsor of terror. Thanks to
the partnership of the President, the Prime Minister, and many
other allies. I pray their days are numbers, and I
pray that Lindsey's dream of a lasting peace becomes real
life soon. My dear friend, Senator Darlene Graham, you know
(24:23):
I see that you're here with your beautiful husband, your family,
all the people that love you, love Lindsay, and as
you have said yourself, Lindsay was your brother, your father,
and your mother, and you were only as the President
pointed out, You're only thirteen years old when your parents
(24:46):
passed away, and he was only twenty one years old,
and he left school, and he took over the family business,
and he made it his business to raise his little sister.
Politics was politics, Lindsay, and I a lot of politics.
But you, Darlene, you were his life. Your family was
(25:06):
his life. You were his God given purpose. He loved
you with all of his heart, and he.
Speaker 5 (25:13):
Told me often.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Now we all know that he was a true believer.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
We know that he is in paradise today, and we
know that he is so proud of you. We all
know in this room today, this beautiful cathedral, that these
past two weeks have been the hardest two weeks of
your life. And most people could not imagine losing the
brother that raised them.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
And then almost immediately.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Almost immediately, you got a call from the president of
our country. You got a call from the governor of
your state. They asked you if you would be willing
to step up and finish the work of the brother
that we honor here today, Your brother, Lindsay, you barely
had time to warn if any You told me that
(26:07):
you asked yourself the one question that mattered.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
What would Lindsay want me to do? That was the
one question.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
You put your personal tragedy aside for the state that
you love and for the country that you love. Within
two days you were sworn in as the first female
senator from the great state of South Carolina. And by
the weekend you were in shorts and a T shirt
on your hands and knees with your daughter painting her
(26:42):
parking space at her school. That was the week that
your brother passed away. Now, to me, that tells us
everything we need to know about you. Your brother loved
you with all his heart. I would be negligent if
I did not acknowledge Lindsay's staff. There's too many to mention.
The heart work that went into to this service today
(27:04):
and the service that will be in Columbia tomorrow is extraordinary.
Center staff. I know how hard you all work, Richard Perry,
Van Cato, Tara, I know how hard you work, Kevin Taylor.
There are so many others, too many to name. The
fact that the vast majority of you are staying on
to work for Darlene would have made him grateful beyond words,
(27:27):
and on his behalf. I want to say thank you
to all of you.
Speaker 5 (27:31):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
My Christian faith is the most important thing to me
in my life. I like lindsay, God, family, country, and
I believe that with all my heart, we will see
him again. To my dear friend, to our feelers warrior.
I will miss our late night calls. I will miss
our strategy strategizing together. I will miss our dinners. I
(27:54):
will miss our conversations about the president and the country
we both loved.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
I miss the gossip.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
I'll be honest, I'll miss talking about how to defeat
evil in our time and how to find a path to.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Peace so that peace may one day reign around the world.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Many people ask me if I know at the end
of my television show that I'm quoting Scripture when I
say the words let not your heart be troubled.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Well I am, he answers, Yes, John fourteen, let not.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
Your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also
in me. In my father's house are many mansions. If
it were not so, I would have told you I
go to prepare a place for you. And if I
go and prepare a place for you, I will come
again and receive you. Unto myself. That where I am there.
(28:47):
Ye may be also Lindsey is the president, I'll argue
in my mind, probably has a heavenly version of mar
A Lago.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
It may even be a little bigger.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
He may have a little more golden in the oval
office in his mansion in heaven. And I wouldn't be
surprised if he hadded one big, beautiful ballroom and of
arch somewhere on the property, because he would want to
obviously duplicate his dearest friend in life, you, mister President Lindsay,
my friend, goodbye.
Speaker 5 (29:22):
For now.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
We will see you again. We will finish the work
that you started. Well done, Good and faithful servants, servant,
enter thou into the joy of thy Lord, God speed,
Lindsey Graham.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
That's Sean Hannity doing what he does best, talking from
his heart, talking about his friend, sharing a little smile
in a life tribute to Senator Lindsey Graham. Stay with us,
We'll be right back.
Speaker 6 (29:58):
You know, now that the adults back in office, maybe
we can get some work done around here.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Are you ready?
Speaker 6 (30:05):
Welcome back, President Trump. This is the Sean Hannity Show.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
So many thanks to Sean Hannity. It's an honor, it's
a privilege to fill in for Sean. We've talked about
a lot of different things. There's a lot going on
in the world. But I got to tell you what big,
big hearing tomorrow with doctor Fauci going before Senator Rand Paul.
It's going to be a good show. Lots of things
to talk about tomorrow. Again, thanks for Sean allowing me
(30:56):
to fill in. I'm Jason Chafitz. You can follow me
on Jason and in the House. Thank you so so
much for joining us.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
Do appreciate it.
Hey, this is Jason chaff It's filling in for Sean
and truly appreciate it. You know, there's there's a lot
going on in the world. There's always somebody doing something stupid. Somewhere.
There's always some crazy nut out there trying to to
blow themselves up or blow other people up, use use
some incnidary, the incendiary device, or do something stupid. I mean,
(00:23):
the world is just a dangerous place, you know. I
was watching the some of the the the uh, the
eulogies and the the funeral there for Senator Lindsey Graham,
you know, a sad moment, hard moment. And later on
in this hour we're going to play some of the
comments that Sean Hannity made having the honor of being
(00:45):
able to to eulogize Senator Graham. But when I was
looking at that, I saw the President of the United States.
I saw the Benjamin Nett and yah who I saw Zelensky.
I saw the cabinet, you know, people like John the
CIA director. They're all gathered there together, and I thought,
oh my goodness, this is terrace. You know, best case scenario.
(01:10):
They're all together in one room, in one place, and
the logistics and the difficult nature of being able to
protect all those people, particularly when they're gathered together, is
a very difficult thing. But at any moment, something crazy
could happen, and there are people who creatively think through
how to damage and take down the United States of
(01:33):
America and the free world. We stand for freedom, we
stand for liberty, we stand for justice, we stand for
the things that a lot of people don't like. They
don't like the United States of America. They want to
take us down, and they want to do it with
it violently and inject terrorism into our culture. And consequently,
(01:56):
you have to have some really good people who spend
all day every day thinking, doing, thinking these things through
in order to protect them. So as I look at
Homeland Security, the formation after nine to eleven, a number
of different departments and agencies were constituted together to form
this new Homeland Security, and I think it's justifiable, particularly,
(02:22):
you know, given that we're going to come up hard
to believe the twenty fifth anniversary of nine to eleven
is this September eleventh. In doing so, we got to
think things through. Now through my time in Congress as
the former chairman of the Oversight Committee, I spent a
lot of time, unfortunately, having to look at the United
(02:43):
States Secret Service. What became evident is that through those years, nobody,
but nobody had been paying attention to the Secret Service,
because you know, their secret not supposed to look at them.
But without oversight, without the congo, the Congress, asking probing
some difficult questions, a lot of the agency was going sideways.
(03:08):
And our next guest has really done an amazing job
investigating and revealing things about the United States Secret Service.
And so I want to bring in Susan Crabtree. Susan
is a national correspondent for Real Clear Politics. She's also
(03:29):
the author of Fool's Gold, and she's also somebody that
I had interacted with through the years on issues related
to the Secret Service. Now, some people would say, oh, well,
you shouldn't expose anything, you shouldn't ask hard questions, you
shouldn't do this in public. But you know what, the
United States is different. We are self critical. We do
(03:49):
go and look at these things. That's what makes us
the United States of America. And when there's a problem,
we want to fix it. It's not that we want
to expose it to embarrass people. We want to actually
fix it, because I would venture to say, Susan that
the single most important job of the Department of Homeland
Security is to protect the President of the United States.
(04:11):
So thank you for joining us on Chan Hannity. That's
a long interes Susan, But you've done some great work
on this, and you have a new piece out, and
you've discovered some other nefarious things happening in the Secret Service.
So let's talk about that.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yes, well, thanks so much Jason for having me on.
I covered all of your hearings, all of your hard
work to ferret out the problems of the Secret Service
after that big Columbia prostitution scandal. Obviously there was a
cultural problem in the Secret Service, and unfortunately we had
to revisit this after the two assassination attempts to figure
out what went wrong so that we couldn't so that
(04:48):
didn't happen again in the future. And so unfortunately, I
don't think the cultural rod at the Secret Service has
been fully reformed. Have I was very happy, and I
do want to stress that all of these the majority
of the Secret Service agents and officers that I know
(05:11):
and have come to know over a decade more than
a decade of reporting are the best of humanity. These
are among us we put themselves that lies on the
line because people say, oh, you're taking potshots, and I
know every agency is corrupt. You know, people outside of
Washington just say, oh, all of Washington is corrupt. Well,
that's not necessarily the case. We will take a look
(05:34):
at these issues because there are serious morale issues in
the Secret Service that have been ongoing that you've done
a lot of work about, and we want to know,
get to the heart of it so that we can
reform the agencies and so that were better equipped to
protect the President and our continuity of government. So that
being said, along wind up too. There are problems with
(05:55):
the Secret Service, especially this year alone. In the last
eight months, there have been at least six agents or
officers that have been arrested or run a foul of
the law that are Secret Service agents, and they have
been placed on administrative leave. The latest, unfortunately, I did
report in June about this particular agent, Marquez Pinder. He
(06:20):
was arrested in charge Sunday with five felony counts and
then a near fatal fraternity hazing incident that occurred this spring.
I've been reporting on this, trying to get information. It
all came to a head yesterday. New York Times broke
the story on Sunday night. I knew about it. I
didn't break the story. I had already broken a story
(06:40):
I've reported on nder soon as possible. But this is
the problem there have been. This is one of five
to six different agents than the officers that have been arrested,
or one of them had his home rated by the
FBI because of a risk tax investigation, of wide ranging investigation,
(07:03):
whether his nonprofit that he's doing for the moonlighting deal
is on the up and up with the federal charity laws,
whether he's whether this agent is actually taking Ticket Service
laptops that he got from the agency and giving them
to you young people that need them, or whether he's
(07:24):
holding on to them. I don't know. There's a lot
to this. There's Like I said, it's sad that I
keep reporting this. I would like to report about reforms
and Secret Service. Let me tell you, and I've asked
them for interviews. I've asked them for positive stories. Tell
me about your recruiting, you know, any kind of recruiting
efforts that you've made so positive, But they don't get
(07:45):
back to me on those requests.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
So after a two year investigation, my committee ten years
ago did a four hundred and fifty page report and
came up with a lot of findings and a lot
of very difficult things, and some of them still what
bothers me is ten years later, I still haven't solved them.
So we were looking at over one hundred and ten
(08:08):
I believe it was plus security incidents involving the Secret Service,
everything from fence jumpers and guys running with crocs right
into the White House, to shots fired at the White House,
shots fired at Joe Biden's vice presidential residents in Delaware
where they never did catch anybody. They didn't even have
(08:31):
cameras at the time, to things that were happening with
George W. Bush's compound down in Crawford. I mean, it
just went on and on and on. Man with a
gun next to President Obama in an elevator. I mean,
we had a lot to look at and then made recommendations.
I don't think anything's changed, and that's what scares me.
It scares me that we've become very lucky. We've had
(08:54):
a couple of different assassination attempts on President Trump's life.
You know, you know, it's amazing to me, Susan, I
still can't get over this, and tell me if I'm
overstating it. But the President of the United States, Donald Trump,
in a campaign in Pennsylvania was shot. Not a single
person was dismissed fired. They all somewhat onlike administrative leave temporarily,
(09:19):
but they went back and worked at the Secret Service.
And one of them is now the director of the
Secret Service. So a lot of them got promotions. The
president was shot and people got promoted. It's unbelievable to me.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, there were two supervisors. There was an experienced DASI
known for partying, who was in charge of the whole
Secret Service security plan and execution for that day. Before
she had help, she had supervisors. The two supervisors were
promoted by Sean Karen, who you know, the buck stops
at the detail leader. He was a detail leader for
Trump's campaign. There's a lot of blame to go around
(09:56):
for that day, including on a campaign I reported did
the campaign tried to remove didn't like the optics of
the farm equipment, so they wanted those removed. But hey,
nobody stood up to them and said, no, they were
protecting the line of sight. They were obstructing the line
of site that Thomas Crooks used from the adr ability
(10:17):
to shoot and almost nearly kill President Trump and then
candidate Trump, former President Trump. Nothing has changed, well, I
don't know. They don't talk about the changes that they've
made very much. They are facing an inordinate amount of threats.
That's what we heard from shankhar And before the White
House Correspondents Dinner than one that was resquitted last Friday.
(10:41):
He said that it's gone up exponentially the level of threats.
So the reforms should have been going up exponentially as well.
And we've had Secret Service agents officer and one at
the ud office uniformed division officers like a police. As
you know, he was found in a hallway by the
police masturbating in the act of masturbating recently after the
(11:04):
President Trump, it was Evans or Trump went down there
to Miami. He was out of the Miamis office.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
There was a and this is like in a hotel hallway.
This is like, I mean, this is like there's video
cameras and the guy is I mean, let's not mention
what he was doing, but come on, I mean, and
this is a guy with a gun protecting the president
vice president of the United States of America.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yes, it's really that one was, I mean obviously shocking.
There's another recent incidents so that are equally shocking. In March,
there was a Secret Service Uniform Division officer, Kristin Hale.
He was arrested and faces charged charges for sending sexually
explicit messages, images and video to a girl, a minor.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
And it's.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
There was a Secret Service agent that I reported last
week who was actually on a PPD, but then he
became polygrapher who was supposed to be in charge of
vetting other Secret Service agents. He got a DWI the
morning of July fifth, so maybe it was for the
July related when he was driving impaired. Then he assaulted
(12:26):
a law enforcement officer and he was accused of sexual
battery in Virginia. Since Barne, the sexually battery was dismissed.
But yeah, there is a law enforcement officer resisting her
arrest and assaulting another law enforcement officer when he was
charged with a DWI when he was on his ATV
and at an accident. The mugshot is horrible, but this
(12:50):
is a problem. I've said it so many times and
it just doesn't seem like Congress cares, or maybe they're
working behind the scenes. I do have some indication that
they're working behind the scene. But what needs to happen
is some transparency to hold the Secret Service accountable or
make them answer the questions, how is your recruiting going?
Please let me know that you're doing better. But what
(13:11):
I'm hearing is that the standards are completely lowered. There's
no mental health examination and there hasn't been for years
that other police departments put in place to prevent any
kind of insider threats or mental health issues from rising
up within the Secret Service agents and officers while they're
(13:32):
on the job, like we had the one at Joint
Base Andrews that was the canary in the coal mine
before the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at Butler. A
couple months before that, I reported that there was this
woman who was who had a mental breakdown at Joint
Based Andrews who right before she was supposed to protect
Kamala Harris on a trip with's assaulting her supervisor. They
(13:54):
had to wrestle her down and get her gun away
from her. I just think that there's a culture problem
in secret Service that you exposed, and then it hasn't
that cultural problem hasn't gone away. And there is an agent,
Rashid Ellis that I've written about extensively. He has a
lawsuit into the Secret Service. He's come forward and has
(14:14):
said that DEI had everything to do with the assassination
at Butler and the failures at Butler, and he is
a African American and this is just not changing and
they're punishing him.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Well, here's here's the problem going forward. Here's the problem.
You and I could go on for another hour and
a half exposing this. It hasn't been fixed. It's not fixed.
It is the single most important thing. Heaven forbid, something
happen on either side of the stile. This is not
a partisan issue, folks, This is bipartisan. They need to
solve this. Congress has allocated the money, but the leadership
(14:52):
is not in place to actually solve this. And until
they do, there are lots of vulnerabilities in it. Heaven forbid,
it does scare me. Susan Crabbe Crabtree, thank you so
much for joining us on the Sean Hannity Show. We'll
be right back and I'm Jason Chief. It's been filling
in for Sean because he was honored to give the
(15:14):
eulogy at Senator Graham's funeral, one of the few people
with the President of the United States speaking, and we
wanted to play that for you. So here's Sean Hannity
giving tribute to his friend, Senator Lindsey Graham.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
I want to thank all of you for being here
on behalf of Lindsey, Darlene and his family.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
I loved him so much.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
You know, many of you know that I speak for
a living and President Trump often reminds me that I
kind of never stopped talking, whether on air or off air.
And while it is an honor to be standing in
this place today, I simply wish that our dear friend
(15:59):
Lindsey we're here with.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
Us, as all of you do.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
He would have been so proud, he would have been
so honored as the President that you were here, as
the Vice President that you were here.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
I see the Secretary of State is here. I see
the entire cabinet is here.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Thank you, all of you, Each and every one of
your chiefest staff is here.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
Steve Whitkoff is here. I see everybody. We are here
to say goodbye.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
As the President said, to a true original, there was
nobody like Lindsey Graham. Nobody he loved being a US senator.
He loved representing the great state of South Carolina. He
worked harder, He traveled more than any senator I ever knew.
I couldn't believe his travel schedule. And he was just
(16:48):
a force of nature in a good way for good reasons.
Nobody visited more war zones. Nobody met with more active
duty troops. Nobody loved, with the exception perhaps of our President,
our military more. And that included the decades of service
that he served himself, both an.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
Active duty and in the reserves, to our nation's warriors.
I have a message to you today. He was so
so grateful to all of you for putting your lives
on the line for your country.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Nobody admired you more. Now, I want to say, for
the record, Lindsay and I did not always agree, not
on everything, but we could disagree and we could remain friends,
and we've remained friends for decades. We had similar backgrounds.
This may shock all of you. We both in different ways.
(17:43):
We both grew up in a bar. You know, I
started working at twelve Washington dishes till two three in
the morning, and I was a cook at thirteen. At seventeen,
I was tending bar Lindsay, as the President mentioned, and
a bartender at seventeen. And his father, Darlene you know,
(18:04):
as you know, he ran a bar, he ran a
liquor store, he ran a pool room. And it's amazing
what life lessons you can learn in that environment. By
the way, not all of them are really good lessons.
I can tell you that we did laugh about it constantly.
We shared stories always, and yes I shouldn't admit this.
(18:27):
In the National Cathedral, we could still curse like we
were behind the bar.
Speaker 5 (18:33):
Lindsey does hold a couple of records that I.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
Don't think will ever be broken on the Fox News channel.
And number one was how freely he would use certain
words on my show, in particular.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
Now in this beautiful cathedral. I will not repeat them.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
But his first record was on how many different occasions
those words were complying out of his mouth.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
That was record one.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Record number two, how many times could he say it
a single appearance. I did show a montage on my
show about this, and you know, I will selfishly admit
that when a US senator other certain words on national TV,
it is really mister President will appreciate this. It is
great for ratings, and Senator Graham was great for ratings
(19:22):
because people listened to him.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
He threw you in. He had that passion to draw
you in.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
So for that, I was very grateful. Lindsay also was
well known on my TV show. He was a shameless
self promoter. I don't think any one person ever said
Lindsey Graham dot com more than Lindsey Graham. And then
he called me hours later and tell me how much
money he raised on my show that night, and over
(19:51):
and over. If he were here today, I'm sure he
would not miss a chance to say Darlenegraham dot com.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
I'll say it for him.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
For the record, it was always a bit risky to
have Lindsay on your TV show. My Fox colleagues, they
would understand this, and I could have easily been fired
for any of these occasions. And I'm extremely grateful to
my boss, Malcola Murdoch. He is with us today and
his father, Rupert, the founder of the Fox News Channel.
Speaker 5 (20:22):
And they never held me accountable.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
Darlene for what your brother said and I'm about to
finish my thirtieth year of Fox in part because I
got to interview wonderful leaders like your brother, Lindsay. I
want everybody to know I was so proud to be
a senator. He was so proud to serve the people
of South Carolina for the people of that great state.
(20:47):
I want you to know, with no ambiguity, that you
gave Lindsay Graham the honor of a lifetime thank you.
At his core, Lindsay was a man driven by principal God, family, country.
Speaker 5 (21:03):
He was a friend's friend. He was a great patriot.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
He fought with every ounce of strength he had in
his body for the things that he deeply believed in.
He's also, as my friend, one of the funniest people
that you could ever know. We laughed NonStop. We laughed
often about many of you in this room.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
With me.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
He never held back, and that was the basis of
our deep friendship. I will miss him so much, mister President.
He would be so honored, so honored that you were
here today. He loved you as he loved his country.
(21:46):
He loved the times you played golf. I heard about
every single solitary hole. He loved the meals that you shared.
He loved the late night conversations you had, and mister President,
you gave him the greatest gift of his life, and
that was a front row seat at the highest levels
(22:06):
of history in the making. It meant the world to him.
Thank you, sir for that. I see Prime Minister Natanyahu
is here. Mister Prime Minister, you two have been a
dear friend of mine for thirty years. It's an honor
to have you and Lindsay would have been blown away
that you took this long journey with your beautiful bride
(22:28):
to be here today. He loved you, He loved the
state of Israel.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
He loved the people of Israel.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Under your leadership, Israel has been one of America's most
consistent and loyal allies.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
He was never shy to say it to the day
he passed. And just as.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
President Trump has been Israel's strongest friend in the history
of the White House, you know the two partners aligned together.
Lindsay was that friend to Israel. In the United States Senate.
As long as I've known this man, Lindsay, he was
often unfairly characterized.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
As a warmonger.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
I've heard that false criticism a lot, It's not true.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
The truth was the opposite.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Lindsay desperately wanted and talked to the President about a
lasting peace in the Middle East. He wanted every region,
every country in the region, on that path to peace.
That was Lindsay's dream. If people would only listen to
what he had been saying. His greatest gift in life,
from my perspective, was Lindsay had moral clarity. He understood
(23:41):
right from wrong, good from evil, and he knew, as
President Trump knows, as Israel knows, as I know, there
can be no path to peace until evil is defeated. Evil,
in this case embodied in a death cult, an ideology,
(24:02):
the world's number one state sponsor of terror. Thanks to
the partnership of the President, the Prime Minister, and many
other allies. I pray their days are numbers, and I
pray that Lindsey's dream of a lasting peace becomes real
life soon. My dear friend, Senator Darlene Graham, you know
(24:23):
I see that you're here with your beautiful husband, your family,
all the people that love you, love Lindsay, and as
you have said yourself, Lindsay was your brother, your father,
and your mother, and you were only as the President
pointed out, You're only thirteen years old when your parents
(24:46):
passed away, and he was only twenty one years old,
and he left school, and he took over the family business,
and he made it his business to raise his little sister.
Politics was politics, Lindsay, and I a lot of politics.
But you, Darlene, you were his life. Your family was
(25:06):
his life. You were his God given purpose. He loved
you with all of his heart, and he.
Speaker 5 (25:13):
Told me often.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Now we all know that he was a true believer.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
We know that he is in paradise today, and we
know that he is so proud of you. We all
know in this room today, this beautiful cathedral, that these
past two weeks have been the hardest two weeks of
your life. And most people could not imagine losing the
brother that raised them.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
And then almost immediately.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Almost immediately, you got a call from the president of
our country. You got a call from the governor of
your state. They asked you if you would be willing
to step up and finish the work of the brother
that we honor here today, Your brother, Lindsay, you barely
had time to warn if any You told me that
(26:07):
you asked yourself the one question that mattered.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
What would Lindsay want me to do? That was the
one question.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
You put your personal tragedy aside for the state that
you love and for the country that you love. Within
two days you were sworn in as the first female
senator from the great state of South Carolina. And by
the weekend you were in shorts and a T shirt
on your hands and knees with your daughter painting her
(26:42):
parking space at her school. That was the week that
your brother passed away. Now, to me, that tells us
everything we need to know about you. Your brother loved
you with all his heart. I would be negligent if
I did not acknowledge Lindsay's staff. There's too many to mention.
The heart work that went into to this service today
(27:04):
and the service that will be in Columbia tomorrow is extraordinary.
Center staff. I know how hard you all work, Richard Perry,
Van Cato, Tara, I know how hard you work, Kevin Taylor.
There are so many others, too many to name. The
fact that the vast majority of you are staying on
to work for Darlene would have made him grateful beyond words,
(27:27):
and on his behalf. I want to say thank you
to all of you.
Speaker 5 (27:31):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
My Christian faith is the most important thing to me
in my life. I like lindsay, God, family, country, and
I believe that with all my heart, we will see
him again. To my dear friend, to our feelers warrior.
I will miss our late night calls. I will miss
our strategy strategizing together. I will miss our dinners. I
(27:54):
will miss our conversations about the president and the country
we both loved.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
I miss the gossip.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
I'll be honest, I'll miss talking about how to defeat
evil in our time and how to find a path to.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Peace so that peace may one day reign around the world.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Many people ask me if I know at the end
of my television show that I'm quoting Scripture when I
say the words let not your heart be troubled.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Well I am, he answers, Yes, John fourteen, let not.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
Your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also
in me. In my father's house are many mansions. If
it were not so, I would have told you I
go to prepare a place for you. And if I
go and prepare a place for you, I will come
again and receive you. Unto myself. That where I am there.
(28:47):
Ye may be also Lindsey is the president, I'll argue
in my mind, probably has a heavenly version of mar
A Lago.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
It may even be a little bigger.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
He may have a little more golden in the oval
office in his mansion in heaven. And I wouldn't be
surprised if he hadded one big, beautiful ballroom and of
arch somewhere on the property, because he would want to
obviously duplicate his dearest friend in life, you, mister President Lindsay,
my friend, goodbye.
Speaker 5 (29:22):
For now.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
We will see you again. We will finish the work
that you started. Well done, Good and faithful servants, servant,
enter thou into the joy of thy Lord, God speed,
Lindsey Graham.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
That's Sean Hannity doing what he does best, talking from
his heart, talking about his friend, sharing a little smile
in a life tribute to Senator Lindsey Graham. Stay with us,
We'll be right back.
Speaker 6 (29:58):
You know, now that the adults back in office, maybe
we can get some work done around here.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Are you ready?
Speaker 6 (30:05):
Welcome back, President Trump. This is the Sean Hannity Show.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
So many thanks to Sean Hannity. It's an honor, it's
a privilege to fill in for Sean. We've talked about
a lot of different things. There's a lot going on
in the world. But I got to tell you what big,
big hearing tomorrow with doctor Fauci going before Senator Rand Paul.
It's going to be a good show. Lots of things
to talk about tomorrow. Again, thanks for Sean allowing me
(30:56):
to fill in. I'm Jason Chafitz. You can follow me
on Jason and in the House. Thank you so so
much for joining us.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
Do appreciate it.
The Sean Hannity Show News
Host
Sean Hannity
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