Taking Back America: Bold Truths from Gene Valentino & Rick Leventhal

Welcome back to the Leventhal Report. One of the men who tried to put President Trump in prison, former Special Counsel Jack Smith, now faces a federal investigation of his own. The Office of Special Counsel, an independent watchdog agency, confirmed over the weekend it’s launched a probe into alleged partisan political activity by Smith.

Newsmax Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen joins us now with the latest. James. Rick, good evening.

At issue is whether former Special Counsel Jack Smith violated the Hatch Act, the 1939 law that bars most federal employees from engaging in partisan political activities. Smith, of course, was the career federal prosecutor. Hello, Mr. Valentino.

Thank you so much for joining us on the Leventhal Report. Always a pleasure to have you on. Thanks, Jack.

We’ll be on in about a minute after we finish with Mr. Rosen here. The other in Washington, charging Mr. Trump with having led a criminal conspiracy to overturn the election results of 2020. A federal judge threw out the documents case shortly after the grisly events of Butler, Pennsylvania, while Smith himself moved to dismiss the January 6th case after Mr. Trump won the 2024 election.

The Office of Special Counsel probe follows a referral by Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who has characterized Smith’s work throughout 2023 as a massive exercise in attempted election interference. The fact that he got smacked down so badly in the courts is suggestive of the fact that these were hyper political and partisan prosecutions and weaponization of his office being brought. And I think if nothing else, the process has to serve as some form of punishment and hopefully deterrent going forward to the weaponizing of these offices.

The Trump administration is trying to turn the Office of Special Counsel into a political weapon. And this kind of weaponizing a supposedly independent and objective investigator simply produces bad, unfair, unreliable results. President Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, 28-year-old Paul Ingracia, was pulled at last minute from his Senate hearing last month.

His confirmation seemingly in doubt. Lawmakers had raised concerns over Ingracia’s history of association with extremists and incendiary posts online. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters at that time that lawmakers wanted to take, quote, a harder look at Ingracia’s nomination.

As for Jack Smith, he left the federal government earlier this year, so it’s unclear what penalties he might face if OSC concludes he did violate the Hatch Act. Usually the most severe punishment for such a violation is termination from the federal workforce. Rick.

James, thank you. For more on the Jack Smith investigation, let’s welcome NGOP political strategist and insider and host of Grassroots Truthcast podcast, Gene Valentino. Gene, great to see you again, sir.

Good to see you too, Mr. Leventhal. Many suspected the cases against Trump were politically motivated. It actually seemed pretty obvious to most of us.

So might this investigation actually lead to proof of bias? It will not only lead to proof of bias, Richard, it’s going to lead, in my prayers, to a constitutional amendment which is now, I regret, necessary. We have 27 amendments to our constitution that all talk about rights, privileges, entitlements, but there’s one thing missing in those amendments, penalties for wrongdoing by the elected officials. We need a constitutional amendment that stops a Smith here under Merrick Garland from finding his way into the White House to get his marching orders on how to go after Donald Trump.

And then when the Republicans have the chance to fix things without being so adversary, we’ve got an exodus from Texas as the current example in trying to stop the change that’s been underway. We need penalties in place to stop this behavior from continuing. Look at the amount of time it’s taking, Rick, to address this stuff.

Look how many things are getting done by Donald Trump. He’s running the 440 sprint and he’s winning the race. No one’s taking note that he’s got a ball and chain in his hand that he has to carry to get over the finish line and he’s still winning.

Yeah. You’re so right about that, Gene. The liberal media, of course, is doing what they usually do, attempting to shift the blame.

MSNBC legal analyst Brad McQuaid wrote on X the Jack Smith investigation is worse than the Red Scare and others on that network are parroting those claims. Listen to this. I think there are just so many other examples of the Red Scare where we are going through sort of the 1950s McCarthyism, but on steroids.

A fair comparison, Gene. Not at all. Come on.

The Democrats have been going after gerrymandering long before the Republicans knew how to spell it. I mean, the fact of the matter is the process has been in place going back to a deep state mentality. If you can’t win with the voters, structure the system so we’re advantaged and you’re not.

Enough’s enough. America has caught on. Even the Gen Z crowd is becoming Republican conservative.

Not that every Republican who is conservative deserves to be reelected. Some have been rhinos, truly. But the fact of the matter is that there’s there’s an attitude, Rick, that needs to change.

And the Democrats can’t stack the deck anymore to favor themselves without the due process allowing them to get duly elected by the people. They’re supposed to be working for. Yeah.

Gene, there’s something else I want to ask you about, and that is President Trump standing by his decision to fire the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner, Erika McIntarper, calling last week’s rigged jobs report a scam. Yeah, it was. That wasn’t that’s not a decision made in a vacuum.

McIntarper has got a history. She was through the Biden administration. She’d been giving false reports historically over the years.

And instead of looking at the overall success in the economy, she’s coming out with a one liner that’s that’s first of all, it’s wrong. It’s false. But more importantly, there’s a pattern over time.

Trump’s decision to take her out is based on a pattern over time, not an anger over a specific report. Well, and we all know that numbers can be rigged. Numbers can be moved around to say different things.

But the president did sit down with our own Rob Finnerty to discuss the situation. I want you to listen to this. Well, it’s a Biden appointee and we’ve had problems in the past and we had problems even before the election.

You remember those wonderful results that were put out just before the election and everybody said, where did they come from? Then I think they adjusted it after the election. And we had some difficulties with her and there have been a lot of questions and we fired her because we didn’t believe the numbers today. You agree with the president, what should we make of the numbers? Well, the problem is that the jobs report is an important economic indicator and drives investors into the market or away from the market.

It is a factor that we should respect and heed. The problem is, is that it’s been ill founded and ill reported. And it goes right back to why isn’t the rest of the media, not Newsmax, but why isn’t the rest of the media challenging people like McIntyre and dozens of others who are falsifying information that comes to the market, comes to the media in the first place? Yeah, Gene Valentino, always appreciate you.

Good to see you again. Good to see you. Coming up after this break, the Red Cross renewing its call to be granted access.

All right, Mr. Valentino, you’re clear. Thank you very much for your time. Have a great week.

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