Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed former Trump Deputy National Security Advisor and author of Revolution: Trump, Washington and “We the People” KT McFarland to the newsmakers line.
During the second hour, McFarland detailed her experience with the FBI and Mueller investigators who she says intimidated her into almost bankruptcy trying to tie Trump to the Russians. Devastated by the experience, McFarland explained her remote trip to Scotland where she was inspired to write her new book.
Leahy: We are delighted to have as our guest, the author of a new book, Revolution: Trump, Washington, and We the People. KT McFarland former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Trump. Good morning KT.
McFarland: Good morning!
Leahy: We are delighted to have you on. Also delighted because your book has been published by a Brentwood, Tennessee based publisher, Post Hill Press. They do great work, and we are delighted to have that Tennessee connection here.
McFarland: Post Hill Press is really an extraordinary organization because it’s a new wave of publishing. The author gets control. You split the profits. And it distributes through Simon and Schuster. So it’s all good. Every aspect of it is good.
And Anthony Ziccardi who is the publisher and creator of this company understands that the publishing industry has really changed in the last year because Amazon controls it all. He’s adapted his business model to fit that and it’s been really great working with him.
Leahy: And it’s based right here in Brentwood, Tennessee just a few miles from where our studios are located. So we are big fans of Post Hill Press and of your book and of your story. KT, my goodness. Talk about a harrowing story. Walk people through what happened to you and how they tried to put you in jail with a perjury trap. It was the Mueller Investigation guys, and they were not nice.
McFarland: Yeah. I was one of the first Republican foreign policy experts who decided to jump ship on the Republican foreign policy establishment and join Trump. And so I did. And I was the most powerful woman in the West Wing of the White House. And I left after five months. I was going to be the Ambassador to Singapore.
And while I was waiting for Senate confirmation, I get a tap tap tap on my door and it’s the FBI. So three months after I leave the White House, tap tap tap there is the FBI saying that they just wanted to ask me a few questions about the Russia probe and what Russia was doing to try to influence our elections.
Leahy: Did they say, KT you might want to have a lawyer?
McFarland: Well I asked them that. That was the first question I asked before I let them in the door. Do I need a lawyer for this? I’ve never met any Russians. And they said well we can’t tell you to get a lawyer. But, we are just here to talk to you as a fact witness.
And I said, well am I under some kind of investigation? Are you looking at me as committing some crime? Oh, no, no, no. (Leahy laughs) We’re not going to ask you any gotcha questions. We just want to try to figure out what the Russians were doing.
And I, like a good girl scout, I wanted more than anybody wanted to find out if the Russians had done to meddle in the elections and how to prevent them or anybody else in the future to protect our democracy and our sacred institutions. So I let them in.
I started answering their questions, most of which were, who reported to whom? What happened here? Did you talk to any Russians? No, I didn’t talk to any Russians. I didn’t shake any Russian’s hands? I didn’t even work on the Trump campaign. And they said OK.
After six to eight hours of this, I was alone in my house and my husband joined from time to time. And they left. And I said what’s happened next? And they said well probably nothing but it’s been good for us and you’ve given generously of your time.
And frankly, it’s been good for you. A light bulb should have gone off at that point, but it didn’t. I always thought the FBI was our friends keeping us safe. Not the people trying to trap people and put them in jail. That’s what happens in a police state. Not in America.
Anyway, long and short of it, I have three more sessions with the FBI increasingly showing me documents that they had that I’ve written or received or participated in that I had no record of. When I left the government again, the good girl scout that I am, I turned over all of my files.
All of my emails and text messages and cell phone logs and calendars that I had no access to. They had access to it, and they controlled what I saw and didn’t. And they only let me see parts of things. An email that had forwarded paragraphs and three sentences.
And they asked me about the three sentences trying to put it in context. When I asked them if I could have copies, they said no, that’s not how this works. So I said can I make copies of what you have? They said no, that’s not how it works.
And they were setting me up for a perjury trial. Sure enough, I did finally get the best lawyer in the country, head of litigation at Sullivan and Cromwell. He said look, they are walking you into a perjury trap. They are trying to trick you to make a mistake.
Not because you are lying, but because you forgot. Or you confused two events into one. And when they get that they’ll say, ah-ha you’re lying. I said well no I’m not. And they said, well, we think you are lying, and they can charge you with a crime. They didn’t really want me.
They could care less about me. I might have been a nice pelt to pin to the wall but what they really wanted was Trump, and they wanted to implicate me. Catch me in a perjury trap. Then intimate me and bankrupt me to the point that I would accuse others of crimes that they didn’t commit. Or to plead guilty to a crime that I didn’t commit.
Leahy: How much money did you end up spending on your legal fees?
McFarland: Oooh. I’d say we’re close to half a million at this point.
Leahy: Who’s paying for that?
McFarland: My husband and I and our retirement plan. You get no reimbursement. The government and the FBI and the Congressional committees do the same thing and know they can bankrupt people. And we had a nice savings account.
But once that’s gone, what do you do? You sell the house. We own the house. Our kids were already through college. We weren’t as intimated as others. Other people, I think General Flynn included were crushed. They lost their house. They lost their savings.
The federal government, the FBI and the Justice Department and intelligence committees know they can squeeze people to the point of bankruptcy, and then they’ll say whatever the FBI wants them to say. I came really close.
I got to the point after 20 to 30 hours of this I said to my lawyer, there’s nothing else for me to say. I’d say anything to get this over. And then my husband jumped in. My wonderful husband of 35 years. Five children and six grandchildren later, he said you can’t lie.
You’ll never be able to live with yourself. And I said, honey, it’s going to bankrupt us. We will spend years trying to prove my innocence. And he said well you just got to do it. And finally when we said that the FBI and the Mueller investigators kind of backed off and moved on to other things like Stormy Daniels and this porn star queen.
But I was so devastated that I left the country. My husband and I went to the most remote part of Western Scotland. No cell phone, no WiFi, not nothing. And I just started to make sense of it all.
Leahy: Is that where the McFarlands come from?
McFarland: Yes indeed it is! Where there are more sheep than people.
Leahy: Didn’t Donald Trump’s mother come from an island or near an island in northwestern Scotland? Somewhere in that area?
McFarland: Yes. Donald Trump’s mother, Miss McCloud married Donald Trump’s father Fred Trump. She came from the Isle of Skye in western Scotland. Very near where we stayed. But we stayed in even more remote places than she was from.
Leahy: Isn’t it an evil thing KT McFarland for the federal government to target you and Mike Flynn and others and basically go after you with no evidence and put you in a situation where either you are forced to lie to avoid jail OR you are bankrupted? That’s the option, isn’t it?
McFarland: That’s the choice. Or you could implicate someone else. And maybe you get off. They wanted me to implicate Trump. They kept saying, well didn’t Trump give you marching orders to give to Flynn to tell the Russians to cut a deal? And I kept saying, no no no not at all.
But that’s not the answer they wanted. I went up to the western coast of Scotland to think it through. I started writing. And what I came up with was this book which is now by the way an Amazon number one bestseller. So get it while you can.
But what I realized is that this is not just about Trump. This is a real revolution. The government in Washington, the perpetual, self-appointed, you can’t fire them. They hire each other. They hire themselves. They control all the evidence, all the power, all the resources. And they think they’re in charge.
And when Donald Trump was elected President, they didn’t like that. He wasn’t one of their own. They couldn’t control him. They couldn’t manipulate him. In fact, he went to war against them. He was elected to do different things. Take the country in a different direction. Have different policies and appoint different people. And they didn’t like it because it threatened their whole cozy game. These are revolutions we have and we should have.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 am to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “KT McFarland” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Background Photo “DOJ Building” by Tony Webster. CC BY 2.0.
