Trial Of The Century - March 17th, Hour 1

Greg Jarrett fills in for the vacationing Hannity and sits down with Don Yeager, co-author of "The Trial of the Century" to talk about their collaboration.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Sean Hannity Show. I'm Greg Jarrett, filling
in for Sean over the next three hours. You can
follow me on Twitter at Greg Jarrett. You can read
my legal columns and other articles on my website de
Greg Jarrett dot com, and listen to my podcast, The Brief.
I'm happy to be here today. This is for viewers

(00:24):
who are regular the Sean Hannity Show. It's familiar truth
for me. I've been a frequent guest on this program
discussing criminal cases and legal issues, the various punitive investigations
launched against Donald Trump. Over the last six years. I've
been an anchor in a legal analyst for the Fox
News Channel. For the last twenty years. I wrote two

(00:47):
books that were New York Times bestsellers, The Russia Hoax
and the sequel called witch Hunt, The Story of the
Greatest mass Delusion in American political History. And in both books,
I sought to expose the abuse of power by government
that has become so commonplace, so egregious, In particular unscrupulous

(01:13):
officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI. They
have weaponized their vast authority and become a law under themselves.
And it's still going on. They seem to think they
can do anything they want. They arm themselves with immense
power and unlimited resources. If they don't like you or

(01:37):
your political views, they come after you with a vengeance.
They don't care about rights and liberties, they don't care
about fidelity to the law. They certainly don't care about honesty. No,
their goal is to punish their political enemies, whether it's
parents who complain at school board meetings about critical race

(02:02):
theory or pandemic mandates, or the targeting of Catholics as
potential terrorists, or persecuting pro life activists. And of course
the flip side is that Democrats and liberals they all
get a free pass. They get protection. Hillary Clinton's criminal

(02:24):
email scandal, the Biden family influence pedaling schemes, to name
just a couple. So this is a dual system of justice,
this unequal justice, and frankly, it is symptomatic of a
sickness and a rot and a corruption within our government.

(02:45):
And sadly it's been going on for a long time.
And in fact, I've written a new book about government abuse.
It's called The Trial of the Century. It's available now
for pre order online. Again. It's called The Trial of
the Century. I hope you'll order it now. Just go

(03:06):
to Amazon dot com, Barnesennoble dot com, or other online sites.
Type in the name of the book, the Trial of
the Century, or we're just my name Greg Jared, and
I hope you'll get the book and read it, because
this is an important one. Publishers Weekly called it a

(03:27):
colorful and dramatic account of one of the most consequential
free speech debates in American history, and they're right about that.
My book tells the story of how the greatest trial
lawyer who ever lived, Clarence Darrow, had the courage to
stand up to the government when it was unpopular to

(03:50):
do so, when the government passed a law making it
a crime to teach science, in particular the science of evolution,
and Darrow's intrepid defense of free speech, academic freedom, and
the power of ideas that helped form the legal bedrock

(04:12):
on which our civil liberties depended today, and it foreshadowed
our culture wars, our struggles over partisan censorship, these disinformation campaigns,
classroom indoctrination of students where diversity of opinion and opposing
views are banned. If you don't conform to a particular orthodoxy,

(04:38):
you're punished, you're canceled, you're erasd It's been going on
for a long time, as I say, and in fact,
nearly a hundred years ago in the trial of the century.
So let's step back to when it happened. In nineteen twenties,
under pressure from fundamentalists, leaders across the nation, individual state

(05:00):
began to ban books. Any book that mentioned the theory
of evolution was removed from shelves in public schools. Why
because they believed, incorrectly that Darwin's established theory of evolution
conflicted with a story of man's creation in the Bible.

(05:23):
It didn't. But it didn't matter that evolution was accepted
by scholars and scientists and a great many theologians across
the world. Now, the religious fervor at the time was
so strong that states began to cave in. In Tennessee,
they made it a crime for an educator to teach

(05:47):
evolution in a classroom, even though the state approved textbook
that students were required to read by law had a
chapter on evolution. So that's insane, right, Well, a twenty
five year old school teacher by the name of John Scopes,

(06:08):
an affable young man all the students liked him, was arrested, handcuffed,
and carted off to jail for violating the new law. Well,
the great Clarence Darrow in Chicago read about it. He
was incensed, he was angry. He volunteered to defend Scopes

(06:29):
for free, spending his own money to handle the case.
And I should acknowledge that Darrow had an additional motive
because leading the prosecution team was Darrow's nemesis, William Jennings Bryant,
the nation's leading fundamentalist leader who helped the laws get passed,

(06:51):
and like Darrell, Brian was famous. He was a mesmerizing orator,
a three time presidential candidate. He had served Secretary of
State for Woodrow Wilson. So the trial that followed became
the biggest legal blockbuster of a generation, this titanic clash

(07:14):
between two American icons. It was known far and wide
as the Scope's Monkey Trial, an invidious take on evolution,
but it was also dubbed the trial of the century,
and in my judgment, it truly was. Journalists the world
over converged on the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. Darrow

(07:37):
and scopes, fighting for the indispensable proposition that no one
should be told how to think. And in the pre
television age, this was the first trial to be broadcast
live on radio to a riveted nationwide audience. Newsreel cameras
were set up inside the courtroom. They captured all of

(08:00):
the events and flew the film everyday to Chicago for
distribution in movie theaters. Banner headlines appeared in all the
major newspapers across America recounting what happened each day as
the trial of the century unfolded. Now the cards were
stacked against Clarence Darrell, so was the judge, who refused

(08:24):
to let him call a dozen renowned experts to the
witness stand. They were prepared to explain to the jury
that evolution and creationism were harmonious, they're not in conflict.
But having been shut down by the bias, Judge Clarence
Darrell was desperate, so he did something quite remarkable. He

(08:47):
called William Jennings Bryan, the prosecutor, to the witness stand
as an expert on the Bible, which he was. Now,
of course, the other prosecutors and the judge objected, you
can do that, but Darrell was smart. He was counting
on William Jennings Bryan's ego that he just couldn't resist

(09:09):
taking center stage, and that is precisely what happened. Brian
demanded that he testify as an expert on the Bible
and creationism, and methodically and brilliantly, Clarence Darrow picked apart
Brian and his insistence that everything in the Bible must

(09:32):
be accepted as literal. With that, Brian fell apart. He
was utterly destroyed. The New York Times described Darrow's withering
cross examination as the most amazing court scene in Anglo
Saxon history. I recounted in the book, but there's more.

(09:55):
Devastated and heartbroken. Brian died days later, still there in Dayton, Tennessee,
his reputation in tatters. So what was the outcome of
the trial anyway? How did the jury decide this seminal case. Well,
for that, I hope you'll read the book, The Trial

(10:17):
of the Century Again. You can preorder it online right
now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble websites, or you can
go to my website, the Greg Jarrett dot com. Because
this case, the Scopes Monkey Trial, that incredible story that
forever changed free speech and academic liberty in America. That's

(10:41):
why I became a lawyer. Darrel, you see, was my hero.
And when we come back, I'll tell you about that
part of the story dating back to when I was
just a teenager. Be sure to follow me on Twitter
at Greg Jarrett, and you can follow me on my

(11:01):
own website where you can also find information about my book,
The Trial of the Century. The website is the Greg
Jarrett dot Com. We're gonna take a short break. This
is Greg Jarrett filling in for Sean on the Sean
Hannity Show. We'll be right back, and now a word

(11:28):
from the forty six presidents of the United States. By
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(12:52):
to the Sean Hannity Show on Greg Jarrett filling in
for Sean. You can follow me on Twitter at Greg Jarrett.
You can read my columns or listening to my podcast
The Brief by going to my website Viegreg Jarrett dot com.
But you can also learn more about my new book,
The Trial of the Century, available for pre order right

(13:14):
now at the usual sites Amazon, Barnes and Noble. And
How I came to the right This particular book really
dates back to the early nineteen seventies. I was barely
a teenager when one day I don't know why, and
I've never been able to figure it out. Maybe I
was bored, maybe it was raining. I plucked a book

(13:35):
off my father's shelf, and I sat down to read
it cover to cover, and then I read it again.
It was a biography of America's greatest trial lawyer, Clarence Darryl.
I was consumed by Darrow's courtroom exploits, the fearless, heroic
figure who despaired of the dangers of conformity, social control.

(13:59):
But most of all, he hated government intrusion and abusive power.
He upheld the right to individualism and self determination, never
backing down from a legal brawl. The lost and the damned,
those were his treasured clients. He gave them compassion and hope.

(14:20):
He detested the unchecked authority unlimited resources of government prosecutors.
In Daryl, the needy, despised and oppressed found a champion.
Without him, they scarcely stood a chance. I didn't know
it at the time, but that book set a course

(14:40):
for the rest of my life. I decided one day
to try to become a lawyer. Darrell's most famous courtroom
trial with the Scope's Monkey Trial. It became known as
the Trial of the Century, the name of my book.
A couple of years ago, I teamed up with Don Jagery.
He and I traveled to Dayton, Tennessee, to the very
courthouse where that trial was held, and the building still stands,

(15:04):
the second floor courtroom unchanged from nineteen twenty five. We
met with town leaders, including the archivist, who gave us
access to the original trial transcript as well as the judges,
reporters notes in Longhand and that formed the basis of
our book. I study the transcript and analyze the trial.

(15:28):
Don dug deep into the history of the town and
the many colorful characters who participated in the Trial of
the Century, and what we found was quite amazing. The
story of this courageous battle to uphold a precious right

(15:48):
in America, the right to think for yourself, based on
the principles of free speech and intellectual liberty. Well today,
those same principles are under siege by our pervasive cancel culture,
conformed the approved ideology and liberal orthodoxy or else. In

(16:13):
just a few minutes, Don Jeger will be joining me
to talk about this legendary case and our book, The
Trial of the Century. In the meantime, you can follow
me on Twitter at Greg Jarrett. You can read my
columns and listen to my podcast The Brief by going
to my website, thee Greg Jarrett dot com, and you

(16:35):
can learn more about my new book, The Trial of
the Century. In just a few minutes, Don Jeger will
join me to talk about the legendary case and our
work together on the Trial of the Century. Please stay
with us for that. We'll be back after the break.
This is the Sean Hannity Show. I'm Greg Jarrett. Welcome

(16:56):
back to the Sean Hannity Show. I'm Greg Jarrett filling
in for Sean today. You can follow me on Twitter
at Greg Jarrett. You can read my columns and listen
to my podcasts. The brief I have to do is
go to my website, the Greg Jarrett dot com. I've
been talking about my new book. It's called Trial of

(17:17):
the Century, and it's available by the way for pre
order online. You can do that now the usual site
it's Amazon, Barnes and Noble. But I want to introduce
now is my guest, my co author of Trial of
the Century, Don Yeger. He is a New York Times
bestselling author, longtime associate editor at Sports Illustrated, and a

(17:40):
very popular, i must say, public speaker. You know, Don,
thanks for being here. It's really great talking to you
about that project, which we have spent so much time
on over the last two years together, and it's really
it's been quite a journey for me, and I think
it has been for you, digging deep into the trial

(18:02):
or the century that actually began. When you and I
traveled to Dayton, Tennessee. The courthouse at the time was
closed for renovations. You wrangled a key through the archivists
there who let us inside. So take it from there done,
you know, Greg, it was. It was special because, as

(18:24):
you said, people were not making their way through. It's
generally a place Dayton, Tennessee quite actively advertises itself as
a as a as a tourist stop because of the
history and this trial, and so normally it comes back
where we are where we would have been in a

(18:46):
courthouse there where there would have been a lot of
a lot of folks, and instead we got the chance
to sit and just soak it in. We got to
sit there and experience what it would have been like
in the heat of that summer of nineteen twenty five
to imagined that trial taking place. You know, I remember

(19:08):
being struck with the archivists had been kind known in
advance that we were going to get in there, and
he laid out on the table in the courtroom in
this huge book leather bound the handwritten longhand notes of
the judges reporters notes which told the story of the

(19:34):
legal obstacles that the great Clarence Garrow was trying to
overcome and convincing the judge to allow him to call
all these scientific experts and theologians to the stand to
explain evolution, and that, together with a complete original copy
of the trial transcript, really formed the basis for our book.

(19:56):
Would you agree, without question? I think one of the
things it's always unique about these opportunities to take on
history right and to try to to to tell it
in a in a new create in some ways creative
and energized way, is to look at something that's one
hundred years old and find find something new to talk about.

(20:18):
I think that was what most people who write about
that trialer have in the past. Um didn't sit and
read it word for word as you did, I mean
you read the entire transcript. That ability to kind of
get in and imagine as we set there in that courtroom, Um,
what what Judge Rawlston was doing as he was making

(20:40):
it so so abundantly clear that he had an opinion
of how this trial should turn out. And uh and
and in many ways he was making it nearly impossible
for Darrow to be able to pull off a victory
in some way, So in Darrow's defense of John Scopes,

(21:01):
the teacher who by some accounts might not really have
even actually taught in his class the work that he
was being tried on, And so there was so many
elements to it. In your ability to kind of pour
into the word for word transcript helped us to find

(21:26):
little nuances, places where where the difference between the way
certain things were said as you saw it through your
legal eye, allowed us to tell the story, I think
a little more uniquely than it had ever been quite
told before. What struck me from our investigation, our discussions
with people in Dayton, is that some of the students

(21:48):
there have never heard of the trial that made their
town famous or infamous, depending upon your point of view.
But I think that's true for so many Americans, done
especially younger people. They have never heard of the Scopes
monkey trial. I mean, I've been working on this for
two years as you have, and I've talked to so
many people. And the Scopes Monkey trial. What's that? Evolution

(22:12):
versus creationism? What's that? I mean? And this is such
an important case in American history, forming the bedrock principles
upon which our civil liberties depend today, which made it
more imperative. I think that you and I needed to
tell the story of the Trial of the Century, the
title of our book. But that lack of knowledge, that

(22:36):
lack of awareness, really shocked me. How about you. You
know it's funny, Greg, you and I had the opportunity.
I sent you a text the other day. I was
in Atlanta, Georgia, and I just was in a Chick
fil A for doing little work and sitting there having
lunch when in preceded the women's softball team from Brian College,

(23:01):
which is there in Dayton, Tennessee, which is named after
William Jennings Bryan, right, So it was it was because
of his efforts that the that the community decided they
needed a school UH in which it would be named
for this man who they thought was so important as
the defender of creationism and in that h So there

(23:26):
I am. I'm sitting there in walk all these young women,
and I decided to walk over and talk to them,
talk to their coach. I mentioned that we were writing
this book and that it was about ready to come out,
and I was met with a with a table full
of blank stairs. Several of them did not know exactly
what I was talking about. Those who did did not

(23:47):
know that the hundredth anniversary of the trial is literally
just a year and a half away. And so that
idea that you know that even right there in the
the seat of all of this, we found that people
didn't really understand its importance. And the idea to me

(24:09):
that someone like you that's covered so much, so many
great and important trials, even in your own career, would
have called this the trial of the century I really
really stood out to me from the very beginning of
this project. You know, the ACLU back in nineteen twenty five.
They wanted to challenge this new law correctly, so that

(24:31):
made it a crime to teach evolution in public schools
because it allegedly and I underscore that that word undermine
the Bible and religious teaching, especially the Book of Genesis,
the story of man's divine creation. But Clarence Darrow's strategy,
which I thought was so smart, was to prove that
creationism and evolution are not in conflict, they are indeed harmonious.

(24:57):
And he assembled the stellar team of the nation's a
scientists and respected theologians prepared to tell it to the jury.
But prosecutors would have none of it. And the judge,
John Ralston, who was so horribly biased against the defense,
refused to let the jury hear that testimony. So Darrow,

(25:17):
you know, down and out but not defeated, comes up
with this ingenious plan to call William Jennings Bryan to
the witness stand, the prosecutor in the case, knowing that
Brian's ego was so huge he couldn't possibly resist the spotlight.
And don you know, Brian fell right into the trap.

(25:41):
It was a clever trap, wasn't it. It was. I
mean again, I'm not I am not the legal scholar,
you are, for sure, But I and everything I have
ever read about trials, I've never heard of the defense
the lawyer being able to actually convince the prosecutor that
the prosecutor deserved to take a seat in the witness

(26:05):
box right and to sit there and actually answered questions
about about whether everything in the Bible was in fact true.
And then he he challenged him with individual biblical stories,
and he as he as you said, uh, William Jennings
Bryan amazing reputation, but amazing ego he had, He had

(26:28):
experienced so much in his career. He was an icon,
uh to to that side of the political spectrum. And
for him to fall into the trap as he did,
for him to he was in some ways he was
laughed out of that out of that box by by
some people who realized how he had let his ego

(26:52):
get in the way. And in many ways things never
recovered for him reputationally um as as some might know.
It wasn't but just a few days later there in
Tennessee that Brian died. So this was literally his last

(27:14):
major act, and it was a moment in which he,
by most accounts embarrassed himself as I remember writing the
book that Brian mistakenly ascribed his righteousness to virtue and
that can be fatal, and you know, for him, literally fatal.

(27:37):
He was utterly destroyed by a withering cross examination by
Clarence Darrow, and you know, the crowd that was so
for him turned against him and they began laughing at him,
and it unnerved him. He couldn't believe that his people

(27:57):
were laughing at him, and he was wondering, are they
really laughing at me? Did Daryl make a fool of myself?
Of me? Or did I make a fool of myself?
And of course five days later he laid down for
a nap and died. But you know that famous cross examination,
which the New York Times said was the greatest courtroom

(28:19):
confrontation in Anglo Saxon history. Uh you know he it
was held on an outdoor platform. Yeah, that's what I
love about it. It It was the greatest you know, courtroom
back and back and forth that it ever occurred. But
it actually didn't occur in the courtroom. The judge so

(28:40):
knew that that this really required the attention of as
many people as possible. He knew it was going to
be that enormous of an opportunity for people to feel
part of the trial that he they they moved it
to an outside stage adjacent to the court house, a
stage that is still kept intact today, in part because

(29:06):
it's it's part of history, but secondly because they continue
now today. They hold a they have a Scopes Monkey
Trial event every summer in which they replay parts of
the trial, and they use that stage to do so.
So fascinating to me that they that had happened, not

(29:29):
even in the courtroom, and with thousands of spectators watching
Darryl evisceerate the great William Jennings Bryant. And you can
not only read about this trial if you go online
and pre order Trial of the Century by Greg Jarrett
and Don Yaeger, but you can also see the photographs.

(29:51):
I dug these out of the archives in Tennessee. It's
about forty photographs of the trial. I gained permission I
wear these white cotton gloves to handle these old, fragile pictures,
and I used a high resolution scanner to copy and
download the incredible photographs. And they show, for example, the
circus like atmosphere that enveloped the Trial of the Century,

(30:14):
complete with a trained chimpanzee named Joe Mindy parading around
town banging out notes on a miniature piano, drinking sodas
at the local drug store. I mean, it really was
a circus. And you know, I mean that's that's just
part of the story. And my guest has been Don Yeager,
who's the co author of my new book, Trial of

(30:38):
the Century. You can order online. Pre order it to
go to Amazon dot com, Barnes and Noble dot com
or some of the online sites that are out there.
It's available for pre order and done. You know, I
have so much more I'd love to talk to you about.
We're out of time for this hour. Can I prevail
upon you to come back in the fivety hour to

(31:01):
talk a bit more about our work on the book,
The Trial of the Century. Can you do it? I'd
be honored. Okay, that's great. We'll pause and take a
quick break, and when we come back, I'll be telling
you what's ahead on the Sean Hannity Show. I'm Greg
Jared filling in for Sean. Coming up is my guest,
Congressman Jim Jordan, to talk about Anthony Fauci and whether

(31:28):
or not there should be a criminal investigation into potential
perjury against America's so called doctor. I'm Greg Jared in
for Sean Hannity. We'll be right back. And now a
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