Stefan Passantino
speaker
273 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Stefan Passantino’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
She was a producer. I think that she's moved on. She might have been the one who reached out because she had known me previously.
She was not. She is an on-air person. Right.
Yeah. She has a news program and I think she took a hiatus because she was having a child or children. But I think she's back on the air. But I think her involvement might have only been that she was the one who... was calling me to just let me know that this was coming and then saying, but you need to call Caitlin because she's running this. So I begged them, please put this up.
I think if you go on CNN today and you say Cassie Hutchinson transcript, the only thing that comes up is the September transcript accusing me. I don't think you could even find those here. But this is where it became clear that there was this interplay. Not only did I realize that on the day these allegations came out, CNN had all of this already.
And it was not lost on me that a lot of the people who were on the January 6th committee who might potentially have had reason to give this to CNN are now all contributors. Kinziger is over there. Alyssa Farah Griffin is now a contributor over there. Some of these- They're all being paid by CNN. Some would, yes, clearly being paid.
But what was particularly painful for me was two hours after that story breaks, I then get a notification from the District of Columbia Bar saying, this is to notify you that we have an open bar investigation relating to all of this conduct within three hours. The DC bar does not operate within three hours based on seeing something on CNN for the first time.
It is clear that in addition to working with CNN before breaking this story, the January 6th committee or somebody was also working with the various bar organizations that I'm a member of to set this story up. I literally received bar complaints every created on their own accord within hours of this story breaking. That does not happen unless they have been forewarned that all of this is coming.
And that is the real core concern, that it is fundamental to this democracy that everyone have effective assistance of counsel. Everyone has the right. It does not matter if you are a Guantanamo detainee or if you're a Republican. You are entitled to... even if you might be out of favor with the establishment elite.
And as Shakespeare said in Henry VI, if you want to destroy a society, the first thing you do is kill all the lawyers. Well, that's what's happening now. One, within... I would say within a few months, I started getting bar complaints filed against me by the various institutional organizations set up. There's a group called the 65 Project, which filed bar complaints.
And the 65 Project is named because these are the 65... lawyers that they originally filed bar complaints who had been working with President Trump out of 2020. They advertise.
To this day, if you go on the 65 Project website, you will see they proudly advertise a six-figure ad buy that's running right now in the six swing states destined for Republican lawyers saying, do not represent President Trump. You will be disbarred. Do not represent any of these conservatives. We are watching you. That is on their website right now.
Yeah, it's a group. There's a lawyer out of Utah. I'm actually... I filed a bar complaint against him just recently for this. But these are groups that are designed to intimidate Republicans against representing conservatives. And the whole idea is... It is extraordinarily difficult to get a big law lawyer to represent a Republican. It's just, we can't get those people.
You can't be a lawyer in a white shoe or a major law firm and represent a Republican. And this is explicitly advertised. Within maybe a month after I received this 65 Project bar complaint, I get a phone call at 7.30 in the morning from the New York Times saying,
we're going to run a story about a group called Lawyers Defending American Democracy that has filed this very, very in-depth bar complaint against you. Would you care to comment? That was at 7.30 in the morning. By 8.30 in the morning, the New York Times was running this
multiple-page complaint alleging, accusing me of numerous crimes, lots of bar violations, saying very proudly, we filed these bar complaints. And this is signed. And you can imagine, I've been an established lawyer my whole life. I revere these institutions. They got more signatories on that complaint. And it's all online. I don't particularly want anyone to read it, but it's there.
The bar complaint was signed by, I think they got more than the 51 former intel officers. It was filed by former attorneys general, Former deans of various law schools, multiple past presidents of various bars. This who's who of the glitterati of the legal profession, all of whom sign on to this letter. Like I said, law professors, former state senators, former attorneys general.
And what was, of course, most concerning to me was four past presidents of the D.C. bar had signed on to a letter. knowing nothing about me other than what had been fed to them, accusing me of crimes to take my license away.
Well, for me, imagine now really, I have to now defend my bar license before the DC bar against a complaint signed by 60-some luminaries, including four past presidents of the very bar that I'm going to be defending myself against. It's pretty easy to feel like the entire world is arrayed against you. You have no chance whatsoever."
Now, I have to say, in all fairness, I was pleasantly surprised at how professional the D.C. Bar and the Georgia Bar were. They conducted a thorough investigation of me and all of these facts. And even in light of all of this happening, the D.C. Bar dismissed my cases with no discipline. I was shocked because I was too cynical at that point to believe that they were doing it.
And they are explicitly messaging it. Today, as we're talking right now on the 65 Project, they have proudly, we are running this campaign in the swing states geared where big law lawyers and the partners at these law firms and these lawyers are going to see it. threatening them, do not represent Trump in any post-election challenge because we will come after your license.
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