February 26, 2024 • 32 mins
In this episode, Lisa talks to Paul Mauro a former NYPD inspector and counsel at DeMarco Law about the breakdown of the administration, the increase in crime in New York City, the impact of crime statistics, the disincentives for reporting crimes, the challenges faced by police officers, the Daniel Penny case and self-defense, the influx of illegal immigrants and crime, the history of boat lifts and criminal elements, the lack of federal support, the political motivations of prosecutors, and the importance of voting. Subscribe Now to The Truth with Lisa Boothe - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
New York City is a mess.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
We've got an Attorney general who is weaponizing her position
purely for political reasons to get Donald Trump. We have
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who doesn't want to prosecute criminals,
but wants to go after people who engage in self
defense like Daniel Penny. We've got a mayor who's a mess,
(00:23):
a governor who's a mess of the state.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Kathy Hokeel, I want to.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Dig into a lot of the problems in this city,
the crime. We've recently seen illegal immigrants make news for
beating police officers there, as well as just the broader
issues facing the country. So we're going to talk to
one man named Paul Morrow. He's a contributor at Fox News.
I was on with him recently on out Numbered, and
he just did such a great job. He's so interesting,
(00:49):
So I wanted to have him on the show to
get into some of those more granular issues that are
going on in New York City, but also the broader
issues facing the country of crime, also just wasted resources,
as our cities are falling apart in America, but they
sure as hack have enough money and time to go
after Donald Trump. And then also just looking at New
(01:10):
York City with this influx of illegal immigrants, you know,
what's the likelihood of a terror attack. Paul is a lawyer,
and he also previously served as the commanding officer of
the NYPD's Legal Bureau and the executive officer of the Intelligence,
Operations and Analysis Bureau, so he's sort of seen all
(01:30):
different sides of these issues that we're going to talk
about today. Really interesting guy, super smart. I think you're
going to like this one. Stay tuned for Palmorrow. Well, Paul,
it's great to have you on the show. I was
on Outnumbered with you not too long ago, and you
just did such a great job, so I really wanted
(01:51):
to have you on the show.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So I'm glad we're able to make it happen.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I appreciate that. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
You'd made a really interesting point from your perspective of
when Secretary Austin was in the hospital and he failed
to alert the White House. That meant that Joe Biden
was not the guy in charge, and you had kind
of seen that before, and I just thought it was
such an interesting perspective and an interesting point that you
had made.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yeah, so I think it's a subtlety, and you may
have had to have worked in a military paramilitary organization
to kind of pick up on it. But Austin got
a lot of heat to that, and then there was
the sort of reflective heat of it on the White
House for saying, well, how was he not even missed?
But going a little further, what occurred to me almost
(02:34):
immediately was the fact that it was the atmosphere within
the administration itself as which explained why Austin didn't feel
compelled to notify his overhead. And anybody who's worked in
this sort of environment knows that it often happens in
transition periods when a big commissioner or a chief leaves
(02:55):
and there is a vacuum at the top, you suddenly
feel a little bit it cast a drift. Now, the
good side of that is when you have somebody who's
not micromanaging you, right, it's a macro manager is letting
you do your thing. But then the continuum goes to
the point where you have an overhead that's absentee, and
what happens then is that you just don't feel like
(03:17):
anything you do much matters or is going to be
responded to by the people above you. And that's my
read on why Austin didn't bother to make what would
have been a simple email or phone call notification, which,
trust me, is in the blood of people, especially at
his level. In a military or power military organization, you
have to keep your overhead notified, and the fact that
(03:41):
he didn't just really speaks to me of a very
very loose and disjointed organization at the top of our
military apparatus, These bureaus, these bureaucracies, they survive by their
connective tissue, and very clearly here that connective tissue is
worn down.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
You know, of having served in the n y PD
is both a committing officer of the legal Bureau as
well as in the intelligence Opera, Operations and Analysis Bureau.
I mean, it's got to be hard to see what's
happening in this city, just the lawlessness.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
The lack of respect for the law.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
When do you think the breakdown started and why do
you think it's gotten so bad?
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Well, I think it's always there here in New York
and in our major cities because it's such an endemic
part of the progressive narrative. And what you have is
disciples where they are either in the incendency or they
are not post nine to eleven, the lack of a
better term, we got a little bit of honeymoon period
(04:50):
and there was great support for the police and for
the mission of the police of law and order in
general that even went so far as too sort of
how the Feds were perceived. And so you had all
these federal test forces and they were really given a
lot of purchase, and we had about a twenty year
renaissance where we were able to implement the classic broken
(05:12):
windows policing. The metrics were cleared, they were working, and
then what you had was the sort of, for lack
of a better term, victims of our own success syndrome
where it just became received wisdom that this is how
it always was. And a lot of new arrivals into
this city have no cognizance of what New York looked
(05:32):
like when I was a kid in the eighties, seventies, eighties, nineties,
you know, when the city had not implemented broken windows,
and when they went to an all hands on deck
approach and so very naively they began to advocate for
a much less proactive policing and in fact villainized the
police as has traditionally been the case on the left
(05:54):
since at least the nineteen sixties. And then you got
a fellow traveler in office named Bill de Blasio, and
that's when I would say that the trend that you're
referring to really took off. The Blasio had to play
ball for his first two years or so because he
knew the narrative was that his was going to be
a failed mayoralty because he was going to cut against
everything I just said. Everybody was waiting to that. Now,
(06:17):
the Blasio isn't a stupid man. He has a certain
reptilian political intelligence, which is how he got where he got.
So he put in Bill Bratton, one of the nation's
premier police commissioners. And I mentioned all that because it
was a real honeymoon period. Not only did crime continue
to go down to record low levels, so did incarceration rates.
(06:38):
And that's something we really should be looking at, and
that these so called police scholars were really worth their salt,
they would be looking at that era to figure out
why it all worked so well, because it did, and
I had a front row seat. But the Blasio couldn't
take that. No could the progressives in this town who
just use all this as a lever for power. And
so once Bratton moved on, he put in a police
(07:01):
commission on the Blasio, put in a police commissioner who
he could control. And his subsequent two police commissioners for
the rest of his tenure were really just catspaws. They
were uniform guys who came up to the rank. And
it's no knock on them, but it's just they were
very beholden to the mayor's office. Where As Bratton could
tell the may to go pounce in, the Blasio wouldn't
mess with. And as a result, the Blasio, as much
(07:22):
as we have Adams now becomes the police commissioner. And
so you had the beginning of the erosion, and it
took It was snowballing downhill, getting worse and worse, because
it's much harder to build than it is to destroy. Right,
once you start to destroy something, it just that's the
easy part. It's much easier to break things down. And
of course he couched it in all of the usual
(07:43):
liberals soaring rhetoric, etc. But it was a breakdown and
things were getting worse and worse, and then of course
to spig it open death to George Floyd, which the NYPD,
of course, had nothing to do with, and which is
a narrative that I think we're seeing undermined now after
seeing the Fall of Minneapolis and some other documentaries that
have looked at that whole case. And so we're really
(08:05):
now in a position where I don't think we've yet
bottomed out, and it really is depressing. You're right, because
we've made so much progress and now everybody I know
is either left or wants to move out.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
We've got to take a quick commercial break more.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
With Paul on the other side, do crime statistics matter
anymore in this sense of, you know, if we're not
arresting people or crime statistics truly a reflection of what
is happening in some of these areas like New York City.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Good question, and you know, I think more and more
there is a feeling that they don't because, and it's
just human nature, if nobody's getting arrested, or if the
police take four hours to call. I was recently told
that a non emergency call, let's say, a burglary in
the past or something, the response time is four hours
because that's how overwhelmed the police are. Because they're down
at least three thousand officers, which is what the PD
(08:54):
will admit to, so it's probably a lot more. So
people don't even call, they don't even report. With shoplifting,
Let's say if the security guard struggles with the shoplifter,
then what would be a larceny which is not even
attract crime, A pettit larceny, a larsennie under one thousand dollars.
Well that'll bump to a robbery, and now you have
a felony and that's tracked. So the police, security guards,
(09:17):
and the stores are incentivized not even to call the
police because they don't want that insurance headache. You get
two or three of those. The CEO to command, the
committee officer of the precinct now has a bunch of
felonies he didn't want to have to deal with. He's
gonna have to answer for. He'll come in and he
can do things like Okay, I'm gonna shut down your
store and we're going to process it as a crime scene. Well,
you know what, that Dwayne Reed just lost three hours
(09:38):
of commerce. The insurance companies will call up and say,
you know what, this is a third felon that you've
had now you have an injury, you're gonna get sued
with dropping you for your insurance purposes. The security guard,
who's probably an off duty cop who needs the money,
is now going to get fired because he's the one
that keeps intervening and they don't want that. So all
of these things cut against reporting, and especially when you
see things like felonies being up to misdemeanors, which Alvin
(10:01):
Brage is setting a record with. And if there's a
misdemeanor arrest, they don't even go downtown. They go to
the precinct, They get a piece of paper and they leave.
All of these things incentivize not even bothering to report.
There are certain crimes that I think of the bell
whether they tend to point to murders as the bellwether
crimes that's accurate and that you can use as a
true metric. Murders and auto theft are two crimes that
(10:24):
people tend to say you can count on. I actually
think that the better metric for actual street safety is robbery,
and that's the crime I always look at because that's
crime that's stealing with violence. That's the basic formula for robbery,
and that's when you know, things in your neighborhood and
your community are going bad. When there is there are
(10:44):
people committing violence for a profit motive on the street,
where people are calling the police and saying, this guy
took my wality at a gun, et cetera, those numbers
are up. Those things tend to be reported. People need
to cancel, cancel credit cards and sometimes they get hurt,
and I always look at that, and those numbers are up,
and I find that disturbing.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
You know, you'd mentioned brag.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Does that also I assume if you're a police officer,
if you're an NYPD officer, you're kind of disincentivized to
even arrest because you put your life on the line,
you stick your neck out to get the guy, and
then he's not even convicted. You know. So it's like,
(11:29):
does that kind of I mean, do you think cops
are sort of feeling like, you know, why even go
through with the arrest and doing the job if you
know there's not going to be any repercussions for this person.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Oh well, I don't have to speculate. I know that
to be true. Yeah, obviously, I still have a lot
of contacts on the job, and this was going on
even when I was there, you know, are going back.
The last good district attorney Manhattan had was Morgentha who
was there set a record for the longest serving and
he was right in with the intelligence led broken windows
(12:05):
theory of enforcement, and he was one of the main
players and why all of that worked out well. Subsequent
to it that we had a guy named Cyrus Vance
who was just a democratic political functionary, and then we
got Bragg. Now, so yeah, it does. And yet, Lisa,
you know, there is a counterfactual here that really startles.
(12:26):
In light of the fact that Bragg is setting a
record for dropping felonies to misdemeanors, he's also setting a
record for declining prosecution, which is the most disheartening thing
in the world. You got the guy, you have him
dead to rights, You write up the paperwork, you go
downtown in a district attorney because of a policy that's
been set by the Brag administration says no, we're not
(12:48):
going to prosecute period DP this decline prosecution, in which
case all the paperwork has to be voided. And I'm
thinking specifically of a absolute foundational crime in broken windows policing,
which is fair jumping and as the old maxim goes,
not everybody who jumps the fair is a member of
a robbery crew. But no member of a robbery crew
(13:09):
pays the fare. So if you do fair enforcement, you're
going to get guys with guns who are coming on
the subway, or knives or sharpened screw sharp and screwdrivers
or whatever they're coming on to do robberies. Well, all
of that stuff's gone away. And yet and yet in Manhattan,
Alvin Braggs jurisdiction and hyped arrests are up by a third.
(13:33):
So consider that they're still working, which I find astounding
because imagine you go to work every day and whatever
you do at your job immediately gets undone in front
of your eyes, and it happens every day, and you're
operating with who are supposed to be your partners, and
all they do is knock you on the head. Would
you still keep showing up? Would you still keep doing
the job? Most of us would say no. But there
(13:55):
is still enough of a culture of professionalism and identity
is what I would call it, that the cops still
aren't doing it, which I find fairly astounding. But I
will say that the over under on that is ticking
and it can't go on forever.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Well, and it also just creates this really dangerous environment
where you know you have sort of these lacks policies
in place. But then also, like God forbid, you engage
in self defense. When you look at what initially happened
to Jose Alba until there was so much backlash that
store clerk who defended himself, Or what's happening to Daniel
(14:33):
Penny who stepped in a situation where people felt unsafe.
You had a career criminal, do you know, engaging in
scary behavior and then now you know he is in
serious jeopardy his life and his future. So you know,
like God forbid, you engage in self defense or try
to protect anyone else in the city.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Well, everybody feels that, and it's why you know, I
had to give a lection yesterday up back Columbia, and
so I went way uptown, and you know, some of
those subway stops up there can be can feel a
little bit sort of unpleased, and it's just interesting to see,
just as it does here in Midtown where I'm speaking
to you from now, the attitude on the subways, which
(15:15):
are always you know, there are two sort of key
areas that the police department tends to look at as
a barometer of safety in the city, and really the
media does it too, which is Central Park and the subways,
because in the bed seventies and eighties, both of those
had gone south. You didn't even go in the Central
Park when it was anywhere near dark, and so crimes
in those areas tend to get a lot of attention.
(15:36):
And the subways of the life blooded this town, and
the subway crime in New York is up twenty two percent.
And you can just see the fear in normal New
York workaday New yorker's eyes as crazies walk by, screaming
and yewling, carrying on, holding a bottle, and you just see,
and you know, I'm going to tell you, I'm gonna
say something that's very politically incorrect, but it is falls
(16:00):
particularly on women. You know, I'm sorry, but it does.
The crazies are predominantly male, the violent ones certainly, and
they focus on women. And ask any of the you'll
see it come out of trial, because it's going to
be a trial. The judge declined to dismiss the indictment
in the Penny trial you're going to hear from witnesses
(16:20):
who are women of color. From what I understand that
there are at least two, perhaps three who are going
to testify on Penny's behalf, saying that they were terrified
when Neely started screaming. I saw it, as I said,
I'm on a subway a lot I was on yesterday,
and you see people inching the way, inching by young women,
staying together, staying alert. There's no way to live in
a modern city. What kind of city is this? Where
(16:41):
you go out if you're a young woman or a
young man, an old man, whatever, and you have to
be fearful as you go from one place to another
in one of the most expensive subway systems in the world.
It's not the way to live. And it's palpable, and
we all see it, and the cops feel it too,
because aside from the fact that the attacks on the
cops are up, weatistics the other day that the tax
(17:01):
on NEPD officers are at a record level. But they
also know that who's also gunning for them in addition
to the purps, all the prosecutors, and God forbid you
go a little too far if you press a diaphragm.
New York City's City Council has the diaphragm law. If
in wrestling with a purp, you depressed that purpose diaphragm
for an instant, you're guilty of a misdemeanor in this town.
(17:23):
And I have been in the middle of an attempt
to charge one of the officers who was defending himself.
They dropped the charges against the purp, and they wanted
to arrest a cop for the misdemeanor. Now I'm not
going to go into the details. I was still working,
but let's just say we were able to successfully argue
that this case shouldn't be brought. But if you don't
believe that the district attorneys in New York City are
gunning for a case like that to make their careers,
(17:44):
you don't know this town.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
You know you're a lawyer.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Do you think that Daniel Penny was legally justified in
his actions?
Speaker 3 (17:53):
I do, and I'm not going to be too equivocating
about that. Look, it's going to come down to the
defense of justification. It's called legally and what it really
means is was he justified in doing what he did?
Was he able to overcome what he can he articulate
that the actions he took were commensurate with the threat
(18:13):
that he faced. Now, I say it without equivocation based
on the facts that I know. So I guess I
am equivocating because you know, I don't know everything that's
going to come out at trial, and it's going to
be clear that the people in that subway car genuinely
feared for their lives, or at least feared that something
(18:34):
very violent was going to happen. And you know, under
the law, you are not required to allow yourself to
be attacked and then see how far the guy goes
before you respond. The law does allow for a sort
of preemptive strike for lack of a better term. Now
it has to be again, commensurate. You know, you can't
pull out a gun and start shooting because somebody asks
you for a dollar on the street, and that would
(18:55):
be the extreme example. But if the testimony in that
subway car is very easy to be sitting in Alvin
Bragg's office and say Penny should have handled it differently.
But when you have a guy like Penny who was
screaming I want to die, I don't care if I
go to jail and screaming in women's faces, etc. He
took the actions that he felt when necessary. The intent
to kill was not there, and so I think the
(19:18):
case was overcharged, and I think it was mishandled, and
I think it was a makeup for the Jose Albert
case that you reference. There's going to be a trial.
It's going to be really ugly. Unfortunately, it's going to
be a Manhattan jury, and all you can hope is
that on that jury there's one person male, female, old, white, black, green, whatever,
(19:39):
who has been on the subway, had that experience and
understands where mister Penny was coming from.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Quick break, more on the mess that is New York
City as an intel guy who's done that in a
city that gets a lot of threads, we've seen a
lot of huge influx of illegal immigrants, huge in fl
flux of well I think they're illegal immigrants, but you
know seeking asylum, likely fossely that have been you know,
(20:07):
heading to the to New York City. Now, how does
that complicate both one the threat of terrorism when you
already have the FBI director who has warned of you know,
Hamos linked people being the United States warned of you know,
the border being an issue on that, and then two
just crime in the city where you have an influx
(20:27):
of people who you know likely already broke the law
in coming here.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, so we didn't have enough problems right now, we'll
go to courts. We're going to import some more. So
let's use history again. It's one of the things that's
a benefit of having been in the middle of a
lot of this for a long time. You see the
patterns repeated, and so you can identify them. Nineteen eighties
we had the Marial boat Lift. Castro sent a contingent
of about one hundred and fifty thousand Cuban assylies to
(20:55):
the port of Key West, Florida, at Jimmy Carter's invitation
during an election year. It was similar political pandering. Most
of them solid people who ended up becoming part of
the American fabric. But what Castro also did, infamously was
in the movie Scarface, is he emptied the prisons and
the insane asylums. And here's the key point. When we
(21:16):
became aware of what he had done, he wouldn't take
them back when we tried to send them back. I
have a website and a blog called the ops desk,
and I have a couple of videos up there that
go through this because some of the details on this
are amazing, because they tracked it today. Out of one
hundred and fifty one hundred and sixty thousand people that
Castro sent, seventeen hundred were acknowledged hardened criminals. We had
(21:40):
at least two serial killers, one of whom operated here
in New York and another one operated in Miami. We
had a guy who killed somebody inside Saint Patrick's Cathedral
is another thing he sent by According to somebody who
was captured and who was flipped by the FEDS, three
thousand intelligence agents. Cuba has a very very active intelligence arm.
(22:04):
So what do I go into? It was Soviet trained,
by the way, Why do I go into that? Because
Cuba provides Venezuela's intel training and supervision. Okay, the Venezuela
and Cuba are fellow travelers that you know, far left
communist regimes, notionally but really digesticatorships and the Cubans have
been teaching Venezuela instead of do intelligence for years. And
(22:27):
that's what we got here. We got another boat left.
Meduro is almost certainly Trump's got this right. Maduro is
emptying his prisons, he's emptying his insane asylums, but he's
also sending US intelligence agents and you know what, look
at Venezuela as allies Iran China. Okay, The former vice
president of Venezuela is a guy named Suliman. He's a
(22:48):
Syrian Lebanese Shia who is Hesbila linked. So I don't
have to speculate very far to say that somebody characters
coming in here are potentially at almost likely to be
serious dangers in terms of intelligence and terrorism. But then also,
as you point out, and as we're discovering by hard
practice here, we're getting organized criminal gangs. And the NYPD
(23:12):
just took down a big ring of smashing grabs, which
was quite sophisticated because they were grabbing the phones. But
it didn't end there. They had tech people who could
jail break the phones, get into the phones, and then
empty people's bank accounts using Venmo and other apps, Apple pay, etc.
That's pretty sophisticated. These phones are supposed to be unbreakable,
and that almost argues a nation state level of cryptography.
(23:35):
So I'm very surprised. I actually will confess I was
surprised about that. And the head of the ring is unapprehended,
which tells me he's likely back in Venezuela and the
ring went back to Florida, that the Texas and then
the phones were going out of the country and down
to Venezuela and Columbia. Reportedly, that's a very big ring,
very sophisticated, all of it imported, and you know what, Lisa,
(23:57):
is a big missing piece when you look at something
like that. Where are the FEDS? Qdos to NYPD for
taking it down? They're the largest police agency in the
western hemisphere. They have the sophistication and the bodies to
do it. I know that I ran at the intelligence
operations for got twelve to fifteen years. I know what
they can do. But it shouldn't be beholden to them.
(24:19):
It shouldn't be on them to try to put together
a case like that that stretches to Florida, to Texas
and down into South America. That's very much a federal mandate,
and as usual with this administration, on anything that could
hurt reelection, he's completely absentee. Where is Ray? Where is
the president? Where is the Attorney general? You know, Garland
(24:40):
is far too busy trying to protect Biden's flank on
all the investigations into him than he is to go
with a case like this.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Well, you know that's the I think the frustrating thing.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
I'm sure for you as someone who has you know,
served and protected a city, but you know, even just
for some like me, and I think for most Americans,
is like where are the Feds? Well, you know, they're
going after Trump and you know using resources are taxpayer
dollars to do that?
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Or you look at you know, New York City.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
You've got all this crime, all these issues that you
just laid out, yet they've got the time and the
resources to go after Trump. And it's like, you know,
like they don't care about the plight of New Yorkers
or or Americans, but they sure as hell care about
sticking it to you know, one man, they.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Do, and what they really care about is maintaining their power. Right.
So look at some of the culprits. I mean, Alvin Bragg,
who doesn't seem to be able to put together a
newsworthy case at gunpoint, manages to put together a preposterous, dirty,
three point indictment of Donald Trump that is basically found
in some allegation of accounting error. All right, we're going
(25:54):
to be seeing in that case soon. That's a criminal case,
and then you and I can buy the way. I
can tell you one of my partners on the ops
desk that I was just talking about is the former
commanding officer of NYPD Financial Crime, and he's incredulous over
the fact that this case was even brought. So I
don't have to judge. And I brought a few financial
cases as well. I know this would never have gotten
(26:14):
off the ground, but I don't have I default to
him and say, well, what do you make of this?
And couldn't believe his eyes. But let's move on from Bragg.
There's also Tiss James. Now, the Tiss James case that
just came down with the thirty three hundred and fifty
five million dollars settlement was such a dog Bragg's office
walked away from it. Criminally, they wouldn't bring it criminally.
It was floated by them. They rejected it. Okay, So
(26:37):
what happened James, who likes to call herself New York
State's top law enforcement officer, which is a joke, and who,
by the way, during the Summer of Love twenty twenty,
when my cops were getting bricks bounced off their faces
and then he had nothing to do with the Floyd situation.
Was on Twitter giving a hotline for anybody out there
who could claim police abuse during the riots to reach
(26:59):
out and lodge a complaint with her so that she
could investigate the officers. Okay, so they were burning down
the city, billions of dollars of damage, a week of rioting,
hundreds of cops injured, But her main remit was let
me know if there's any cops I can prosecute, and
she put that right out on Twitter. DM me, I
have people monitoring, and said, that's how you're dealing with
She comes into office vowing to get Trump, everybody else
(27:22):
walks away from the case. Why does she bring then
a civil case? She has the ability to bring criminal cases.
Why did she bring a civil case? You got to
ask yourself why Because in a civil case, the standard
of proof for a win is preponderance of the evidence
only fifty one percent, whereas in a criminal case it's
beyond a reasonable doubt, which is generally considered to be
(27:42):
a ninety seven to ninety nine percent assurance. So a
civil case is always easier to win, as we saw
in the O. J. Simpson case. Right he beat the
criminal case, they got him civilly. She knew she'd be
able to slam dunk this with a Manhattan grand jury,
I'm sorry, with a Manhattan civil jury, and that's why
she did it, and nobody else would sign on to
(28:03):
the case. In a case like this with this kind
of money, invariably you get federal agencies sneaking around saying, Okay,
you know what, we're going to attach earnings, We're going
to come in, we're going to maybe go to criminal,
We're going to charge wirefraud, mail fraud, all these sort
of amorphoge charges. The fense love that allowed him to
do a money grip. They all steered clear of it
because they knew it was a barking dog. It's going
(28:25):
to have a lot of trouble on appeal. I mean,
the amount of the settlement is never going to hold up.
It actually is probably an Eighth Amendment violation for cruel
and unusual punishment, even though it's not a criminal case.
A really harsh civil decision can segue into that area,
and this qualifies and they know it and That's why
(28:47):
angeron Front loaded it to say that Trump had to
pay interest, can't do business for three years, can't use
a New York bank. He knows this is a dog
and that it's going to get knocked around on appeal.
But all they really want to do is take Trump
off the set going into November.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Well, that certainly seems to be you know, they're trying
to bankrupt him or put him in jail or both
if they can, which is a sad state about you know,
where we are in the country and just the fact
that you know, there doesn't seem to be any equal
application of the law. You know, there is even the
rule of law doesn't even seem to exist anymore, to
be honest.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Very disheartening for somebody who grew up in the criminal
justice system here. You know, my old man was a cop.
My grandfather was a called Minieri as they call him
back in Italy. That's a federal cop back. They're kind
of in my blood. And to watch, you know, people
forget Iraq had a constitution, Steria I had a constitution.
South Africa had a constitution during apartheid. Constitution's a piece
(29:45):
of paper at the end of the day, It comes
down to the integrity and the professionalism of the people
who have to safeguard and administer it. And in that
area we're really suffering.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
You know, before we go, what is the biggest thing
we could do to restore order to our cities and
the justice system?
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Vote? It really not that complicated. Its vote. You know,
you and I both know what happens, Lisa. Only the
most fired up and dedicated go out to vote in
these small, local level elections, and they really matter. Right now,
Adams is comparatively powerless in New York. I mean, yeah,
he's the man as sure, he's got the bully pulpit
a little bit, but really the city Council has hemmed
(30:30):
him in and up in Albany during the Cuomo years,
Cuomo was at war with de Blasio because they were
trying to occupy a similar progressive space and they just
personally didn't like each other. And so Albany asserted through
various means, including the bail reforms, which are statewide, they
asserted a lot of power over New York. Traditionally in
(30:52):
New York City is to tell that wags the dog
of New York State. That's been reversed and nobody votes
in these Albany elections, the statewide legislature, nobody votes in
the city council New York City council elections, And so
what do you get? You get the most progressive, the
most extreme, the loudest voices. They managed to rally their voters.
(31:13):
They get them out there and they win. And then
common people who have everyday concerns like food on the
table and getting to them from work safely look around
and say how did it get so far? But invariably, invariably,
if you then say well, did you vote in the
last city council election, they'll say when was that? So?
If I could put a very fine point on it,
(31:34):
all politics is indeed, local city councils, state legislatures, school boards,
these things matter, and the left has managed to leverage
these then weaponize them. They did. You know, they're much
better at that stuff than the right. Is the right
better wake up because we're being beaten on a granular
level and it matters.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Well, you heard the man, go vote. Paul, Well, appreciate
you taking the time and this is super interesting learn
lot from you. Appreciate you bringing your expertise to my
audience and for taking the time to come on the show.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Lisa, any time for you and I appreciate you having me.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
I was Paul Morrow.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Appreciate him taking the time a really interesting interview. I
want to thank you guys at home for listening every
Monday and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week.
I want to thank John Cassio, my producer, for putting
the show together.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Until next time.
New York City is a mess.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
We've got an Attorney general who is weaponizing her position
purely for political reasons to get Donald Trump. We have
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who doesn't want to prosecute criminals,
but wants to go after people who engage in self
defense like Daniel Penny. We've got a mayor who's a mess,
(00:23):
a governor who's a mess of the state.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Kathy Hokeel, I want to.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Dig into a lot of the problems in this city,
the crime. We've recently seen illegal immigrants make news for
beating police officers there, as well as just the broader
issues facing the country. So we're going to talk to
one man named Paul Morrow. He's a contributor at Fox News.
I was on with him recently on out Numbered, and
he just did such a great job. He's so interesting,
(00:49):
So I wanted to have him on the show to
get into some of those more granular issues that are
going on in New York City, but also the broader
issues facing the country of crime, also just wasted resources,
as our cities are falling apart in America, but they
sure as hack have enough money and time to go
after Donald Trump. And then also just looking at New
(01:10):
York City with this influx of illegal immigrants, you know,
what's the likelihood of a terror attack. Paul is a lawyer,
and he also previously served as the commanding officer of
the NYPD's Legal Bureau and the executive officer of the Intelligence,
Operations and Analysis Bureau, so he's sort of seen all
(01:30):
different sides of these issues that we're going to talk
about today. Really interesting guy, super smart. I think you're
going to like this one. Stay tuned for Palmorrow. Well, Paul,
it's great to have you on the show. I was
on Outnumbered with you not too long ago, and you
just did such a great job, so I really wanted
(01:51):
to have you on the show.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So I'm glad we're able to make it happen.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I appreciate that. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
You'd made a really interesting point from your perspective of
when Secretary Austin was in the hospital and he failed
to alert the White House. That meant that Joe Biden
was not the guy in charge, and you had kind
of seen that before, and I just thought it was
such an interesting perspective and an interesting point that you
had made.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yeah, so I think it's a subtlety, and you may
have had to have worked in a military paramilitary organization
to kind of pick up on it. But Austin got
a lot of heat to that, and then there was
the sort of reflective heat of it on the White
House for saying, well, how was he not even missed?
But going a little further, what occurred to me almost
(02:34):
immediately was the fact that it was the atmosphere within
the administration itself as which explained why Austin didn't feel
compelled to notify his overhead. And anybody who's worked in
this sort of environment knows that it often happens in
transition periods when a big commissioner or a chief leaves
(02:55):
and there is a vacuum at the top, you suddenly
feel a little bit it cast a drift. Now, the
good side of that is when you have somebody who's
not micromanaging you, right, it's a macro manager is letting
you do your thing. But then the continuum goes to
the point where you have an overhead that's absentee, and
what happens then is that you just don't feel like
(03:17):
anything you do much matters or is going to be
responded to by the people above you. And that's my
read on why Austin didn't bother to make what would
have been a simple email or phone call notification, which,
trust me, is in the blood of people, especially at
his level. In a military or power military organization, you
have to keep your overhead notified, and the fact that
(03:41):
he didn't just really speaks to me of a very
very loose and disjointed organization at the top of our
military apparatus, These bureaus, these bureaucracies, they survive by their
connective tissue, and very clearly here that connective tissue is
worn down.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
You know, of having served in the n y PD
is both a committing officer of the legal Bureau as
well as in the intelligence Opera, Operations and Analysis Bureau.
I mean, it's got to be hard to see what's
happening in this city, just the lawlessness.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
The lack of respect for the law.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
When do you think the breakdown started and why do
you think it's gotten so bad?
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Well, I think it's always there here in New York
and in our major cities because it's such an endemic
part of the progressive narrative. And what you have is
disciples where they are either in the incendency or they
are not post nine to eleven, the lack of a
better term, we got a little bit of honeymoon period
(04:50):
and there was great support for the police and for
the mission of the police of law and order in
general that even went so far as too sort of
how the Feds were perceived. And so you had all
these federal test forces and they were really given a
lot of purchase, and we had about a twenty year
renaissance where we were able to implement the classic broken
(05:12):
windows policing. The metrics were cleared, they were working, and
then what you had was the sort of, for lack
of a better term, victims of our own success syndrome
where it just became received wisdom that this is how
it always was. And a lot of new arrivals into
this city have no cognizance of what New York looked
(05:32):
like when I was a kid in the eighties, seventies, eighties, nineties,
you know, when the city had not implemented broken windows,
and when they went to an all hands on deck
approach and so very naively they began to advocate for
a much less proactive policing and in fact villainized the
police as has traditionally been the case on the left
(05:54):
since at least the nineteen sixties. And then you got
a fellow traveler in office named Bill de Blasio, and
that's when I would say that the trend that you're
referring to really took off. The Blasio had to play
ball for his first two years or so because he
knew the narrative was that his was going to be
a failed mayoralty because he was going to cut against
everything I just said. Everybody was waiting to that. Now,
(06:17):
the Blasio isn't a stupid man. He has a certain
reptilian political intelligence, which is how he got where he got.
So he put in Bill Bratton, one of the nation's
premier police commissioners. And I mentioned all that because it
was a real honeymoon period. Not only did crime continue
to go down to record low levels, so did incarceration rates.
(06:38):
And that's something we really should be looking at, and
that these so called police scholars were really worth their salt,
they would be looking at that era to figure out
why it all worked so well, because it did, and
I had a front row seat. But the Blasio couldn't
take that. No could the progressives in this town who
just use all this as a lever for power. And
so once Bratton moved on, he put in a police
(07:01):
commission on the Blasio, put in a police commissioner who
he could control. And his subsequent two police commissioners for
the rest of his tenure were really just catspaws. They
were uniform guys who came up to the rank. And
it's no knock on them, but it's just they were
very beholden to the mayor's office. Where As Bratton could
tell the may to go pounce in, the Blasio wouldn't
mess with. And as a result, the Blasio, as much
(07:22):
as we have Adams now becomes the police commissioner. And
so you had the beginning of the erosion, and it
took It was snowballing downhill, getting worse and worse, because
it's much harder to build than it is to destroy. Right,
once you start to destroy something, it just that's the
easy part. It's much easier to break things down. And
of course he couched it in all of the usual
(07:43):
liberals soaring rhetoric, etc. But it was a breakdown and
things were getting worse and worse, and then of course
to spig it open death to George Floyd, which the NYPD,
of course, had nothing to do with, and which is
a narrative that I think we're seeing undermined now after
seeing the Fall of Minneapolis and some other documentaries that
have looked at that whole case. And so we're really
(08:05):
now in a position where I don't think we've yet
bottomed out, and it really is depressing. You're right, because
we've made so much progress and now everybody I know
is either left or wants to move out.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
We've got to take a quick commercial break more.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
With Paul on the other side, do crime statistics matter
anymore in this sense of, you know, if we're not
arresting people or crime statistics truly a reflection of what
is happening in some of these areas like New York City.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Good question, and you know, I think more and more
there is a feeling that they don't because, and it's
just human nature, if nobody's getting arrested, or if the
police take four hours to call. I was recently told
that a non emergency call, let's say, a burglary in
the past or something, the response time is four hours
because that's how overwhelmed the police are. Because they're down
at least three thousand officers, which is what the PD
(08:54):
will admit to, so it's probably a lot more. So
people don't even call, they don't even report. With shoplifting,
Let's say if the security guard struggles with the shoplifter,
then what would be a larceny which is not even
attract crime, A pettit larceny, a larsennie under one thousand dollars.
Well that'll bump to a robbery, and now you have
a felony and that's tracked. So the police, security guards,
(09:17):
and the stores are incentivized not even to call the
police because they don't want that insurance headache. You get
two or three of those. The CEO to command, the
committee officer of the precinct now has a bunch of
felonies he didn't want to have to deal with. He's
gonna have to answer for. He'll come in and he
can do things like Okay, I'm gonna shut down your
store and we're going to process it as a crime scene. Well,
you know what, that Dwayne Reed just lost three hours
(09:38):
of commerce. The insurance companies will call up and say,
you know what, this is a third felon that you've
had now you have an injury, you're gonna get sued
with dropping you for your insurance purposes. The security guard,
who's probably an off duty cop who needs the money,
is now going to get fired because he's the one
that keeps intervening and they don't want that. So all
of these things cut against reporting, and especially when you
see things like felonies being up to misdemeanors, which Alvin
(10:01):
Brage is setting a record with. And if there's a
misdemeanor arrest, they don't even go downtown. They go to
the precinct, They get a piece of paper and they leave.
All of these things incentivize not even bothering to report.
There are certain crimes that I think of the bell
whether they tend to point to murders as the bellwether
crimes that's accurate and that you can use as a
true metric. Murders and auto theft are two crimes that
(10:24):
people tend to say you can count on. I actually
think that the better metric for actual street safety is robbery,
and that's the crime I always look at because that's
crime that's stealing with violence. That's the basic formula for robbery,
and that's when you know, things in your neighborhood and
your community are going bad. When there is there are
(10:44):
people committing violence for a profit motive on the street,
where people are calling the police and saying, this guy
took my wality at a gun, et cetera, those numbers
are up. Those things tend to be reported. People need
to cancel, cancel credit cards and sometimes they get hurt,
and I always look at that, and those numbers are up,
and I find that disturbing.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
You know, you'd mentioned brag.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Does that also I assume if you're a police officer,
if you're an NYPD officer, you're kind of disincentivized to
even arrest because you put your life on the line,
you stick your neck out to get the guy, and
then he's not even convicted. You know. So it's like,
(11:29):
does that kind of I mean, do you think cops
are sort of feeling like, you know, why even go
through with the arrest and doing the job if you
know there's not going to be any repercussions for this person.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Oh well, I don't have to speculate. I know that
to be true. Yeah, obviously, I still have a lot
of contacts on the job, and this was going on
even when I was there, you know, are going back.
The last good district attorney Manhattan had was Morgentha who
was there set a record for the longest serving and
he was right in with the intelligence led broken windows
(12:05):
theory of enforcement, and he was one of the main
players and why all of that worked out well. Subsequent
to it that we had a guy named Cyrus Vance
who was just a democratic political functionary, and then we
got Bragg. Now, so yeah, it does. And yet, Lisa,
you know, there is a counterfactual here that really startles.
(12:26):
In light of the fact that Bragg is setting a
record for dropping felonies to misdemeanors, he's also setting a
record for declining prosecution, which is the most disheartening thing
in the world. You got the guy, you have him
dead to rights, You write up the paperwork, you go
downtown in a district attorney because of a policy that's
been set by the Brag administration says no, we're not
(12:48):
going to prosecute period DP this decline prosecution, in which
case all the paperwork has to be voided. And I'm
thinking specifically of a absolute foundational crime in broken windows policing,
which is fair jumping and as the old maxim goes,
not everybody who jumps the fair is a member of
a robbery crew. But no member of a robbery crew
(13:09):
pays the fare. So if you do fair enforcement, you're
going to get guys with guns who are coming on
the subway, or knives or sharpened screw sharp and screwdrivers
or whatever they're coming on to do robberies. Well, all
of that stuff's gone away. And yet and yet in Manhattan,
Alvin Braggs jurisdiction and hyped arrests are up by a third.
(13:33):
So consider that they're still working, which I find astounding
because imagine you go to work every day and whatever
you do at your job immediately gets undone in front
of your eyes, and it happens every day, and you're
operating with who are supposed to be your partners, and
all they do is knock you on the head. Would
you still keep showing up? Would you still keep doing
the job? Most of us would say no. But there
(13:55):
is still enough of a culture of professionalism and identity
is what I would call it, that the cops still
aren't doing it, which I find fairly astounding. But I
will say that the over under on that is ticking
and it can't go on forever.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Well, and it also just creates this really dangerous environment
where you know you have sort of these lacks policies
in place. But then also, like God forbid, you engage
in self defense. When you look at what initially happened
to Jose Alba until there was so much backlash that
store clerk who defended himself, Or what's happening to Daniel
(14:33):
Penny who stepped in a situation where people felt unsafe.
You had a career criminal, do you know, engaging in
scary behavior and then now you know he is in
serious jeopardy his life and his future. So you know,
like God forbid, you engage in self defense or try
to protect anyone else in the city.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Well, everybody feels that, and it's why you know, I
had to give a lection yesterday up back Columbia, and
so I went way uptown, and you know, some of
those subway stops up there can be can feel a
little bit sort of unpleased, and it's just interesting to see,
just as it does here in Midtown where I'm speaking
to you from now, the attitude on the subways, which
(15:15):
are always you know, there are two sort of key
areas that the police department tends to look at as
a barometer of safety in the city, and really the
media does it too, which is Central Park and the subways,
because in the bed seventies and eighties, both of those
had gone south. You didn't even go in the Central
Park when it was anywhere near dark, and so crimes
in those areas tend to get a lot of attention.
(15:36):
And the subways of the life blooded this town, and
the subway crime in New York is up twenty two percent.
And you can just see the fear in normal New
York workaday New yorker's eyes as crazies walk by, screaming
and yewling, carrying on, holding a bottle, and you just see,
and you know, I'm going to tell you, I'm gonna
say something that's very politically incorrect, but it is falls
(16:00):
particularly on women. You know, I'm sorry, but it does.
The crazies are predominantly male, the violent ones certainly, and
they focus on women. And ask any of the you'll
see it come out of trial, because it's going to
be a trial. The judge declined to dismiss the indictment
in the Penny trial you're going to hear from witnesses
(16:20):
who are women of color. From what I understand that
there are at least two, perhaps three who are going
to testify on Penny's behalf, saying that they were terrified
when Neely started screaming. I saw it, as I said,
I'm on a subway a lot I was on yesterday,
and you see people inching the way, inching by young women,
staying together, staying alert. There's no way to live in
a modern city. What kind of city is this? Where
(16:41):
you go out if you're a young woman or a
young man, an old man, whatever, and you have to
be fearful as you go from one place to another
in one of the most expensive subway systems in the world.
It's not the way to live. And it's palpable, and
we all see it, and the cops feel it too,
because aside from the fact that the attacks on the
cops are up, weatistics the other day that the tax
(17:01):
on NEPD officers are at a record level. But they
also know that who's also gunning for them in addition
to the purps, all the prosecutors, and God forbid you
go a little too far if you press a diaphragm.
New York City's City Council has the diaphragm law. If
in wrestling with a purp, you depressed that purpose diaphragm
for an instant, you're guilty of a misdemeanor in this town.
(17:23):
And I have been in the middle of an attempt
to charge one of the officers who was defending himself.
They dropped the charges against the purp, and they wanted
to arrest a cop for the misdemeanor. Now I'm not
going to go into the details. I was still working,
but let's just say we were able to successfully argue
that this case shouldn't be brought. But if you don't
believe that the district attorneys in New York City are
gunning for a case like that to make their careers,
(17:44):
you don't know this town.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
You know you're a lawyer.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Do you think that Daniel Penny was legally justified in
his actions?
Speaker 3 (17:53):
I do, and I'm not going to be too equivocating
about that. Look, it's going to come down to the
defense of justification. It's called legally and what it really
means is was he justified in doing what he did?
Was he able to overcome what he can he articulate
that the actions he took were commensurate with the threat
(18:13):
that he faced. Now, I say it without equivocation based
on the facts that I know. So I guess I
am equivocating because you know, I don't know everything that's
going to come out at trial, and it's going to
be clear that the people in that subway car genuinely
feared for their lives, or at least feared that something
(18:34):
very violent was going to happen. And you know, under
the law, you are not required to allow yourself to
be attacked and then see how far the guy goes
before you respond. The law does allow for a sort
of preemptive strike for lack of a better term. Now
it has to be again, commensurate. You know, you can't
pull out a gun and start shooting because somebody asks
you for a dollar on the street, and that would
(18:55):
be the extreme example. But if the testimony in that
subway car is very easy to be sitting in Alvin
Bragg's office and say Penny should have handled it differently.
But when you have a guy like Penny who was
screaming I want to die, I don't care if I
go to jail and screaming in women's faces, etc. He
took the actions that he felt when necessary. The intent
to kill was not there, and so I think the
(19:18):
case was overcharged, and I think it was mishandled, and
I think it was a makeup for the Jose Albert
case that you reference. There's going to be a trial.
It's going to be really ugly. Unfortunately, it's going to
be a Manhattan jury, and all you can hope is
that on that jury there's one person male, female, old, white, black, green, whatever,
(19:39):
who has been on the subway, had that experience and
understands where mister Penny was coming from.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Quick break, more on the mess that is New York
City as an intel guy who's done that in a
city that gets a lot of threads, we've seen a
lot of huge influx of illegal immigrants, huge in fl
flux of well I think they're illegal immigrants, but you
know seeking asylum, likely fossely that have been you know,
(20:07):
heading to the to New York City. Now, how does
that complicate both one the threat of terrorism when you
already have the FBI director who has warned of you know,
Hamos linked people being the United States warned of you know,
the border being an issue on that, and then two
just crime in the city where you have an influx
(20:27):
of people who you know likely already broke the law
in coming here.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, so we didn't have enough problems right now, we'll
go to courts. We're going to import some more. So
let's use history again. It's one of the things that's
a benefit of having been in the middle of a
lot of this for a long time. You see the
patterns repeated, and so you can identify them. Nineteen eighties
we had the Marial boat Lift. Castro sent a contingent
of about one hundred and fifty thousand Cuban assylies to
(20:55):
the port of Key West, Florida, at Jimmy Carter's invitation
during an election year. It was similar political pandering. Most
of them solid people who ended up becoming part of
the American fabric. But what Castro also did, infamously was
in the movie Scarface, is he emptied the prisons and
the insane asylums. And here's the key point. When we
(21:16):
became aware of what he had done, he wouldn't take
them back when we tried to send them back. I
have a website and a blog called the ops desk,
and I have a couple of videos up there that
go through this because some of the details on this
are amazing, because they tracked it today. Out of one
hundred and fifty one hundred and sixty thousand people that
Castro sent, seventeen hundred were acknowledged hardened criminals. We had
(21:40):
at least two serial killers, one of whom operated here
in New York and another one operated in Miami. We
had a guy who killed somebody inside Saint Patrick's Cathedral
is another thing he sent by According to somebody who
was captured and who was flipped by the FEDS, three
thousand intelligence agents. Cuba has a very very active intelligence arm.
(22:04):
So what do I go into? It was Soviet trained,
by the way, Why do I go into that? Because
Cuba provides Venezuela's intel training and supervision. Okay, the Venezuela
and Cuba are fellow travelers that you know, far left
communist regimes, notionally but really digesticatorships and the Cubans have
been teaching Venezuela instead of do intelligence for years. And
(22:27):
that's what we got here. We got another boat left.
Meduro is almost certainly Trump's got this right. Maduro is
emptying his prisons, he's emptying his insane asylums, but he's
also sending US intelligence agents and you know what, look
at Venezuela as allies Iran China. Okay, The former vice
president of Venezuela is a guy named Suliman. He's a
(22:48):
Syrian Lebanese Shia who is Hesbila linked. So I don't
have to speculate very far to say that somebody characters
coming in here are potentially at almost likely to be
serious dangers in terms of intelligence and terrorism. But then also,
as you point out, and as we're discovering by hard
practice here, we're getting organized criminal gangs. And the NYPD
(23:12):
just took down a big ring of smashing grabs, which
was quite sophisticated because they were grabbing the phones. But
it didn't end there. They had tech people who could
jail break the phones, get into the phones, and then
empty people's bank accounts using Venmo and other apps, Apple pay, etc.
That's pretty sophisticated. These phones are supposed to be unbreakable,
and that almost argues a nation state level of cryptography.
(23:35):
So I'm very surprised. I actually will confess I was
surprised about that. And the head of the ring is unapprehended,
which tells me he's likely back in Venezuela and the
ring went back to Florida, that the Texas and then
the phones were going out of the country and down
to Venezuela and Columbia. Reportedly, that's a very big ring,
very sophisticated, all of it imported, and you know what, Lisa,
(23:57):
is a big missing piece when you look at something
like that. Where are the FEDS? Qdos to NYPD for
taking it down? They're the largest police agency in the
western hemisphere. They have the sophistication and the bodies to
do it. I know that I ran at the intelligence
operations for got twelve to fifteen years. I know what
they can do. But it shouldn't be beholden to them.
(24:19):
It shouldn't be on them to try to put together
a case like that that stretches to Florida, to Texas
and down into South America. That's very much a federal mandate,
and as usual with this administration, on anything that could
hurt reelection, he's completely absentee. Where is Ray? Where is
the president? Where is the Attorney general? You know, Garland
(24:40):
is far too busy trying to protect Biden's flank on
all the investigations into him than he is to go
with a case like this.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Well, you know that's the I think the frustrating thing.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
I'm sure for you as someone who has you know,
served and protected a city, but you know, even just
for some like me, and I think for most Americans,
is like where are the Feds? Well, you know, they're
going after Trump and you know using resources are taxpayer
dollars to do that?
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Or you look at you know, New York City.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
You've got all this crime, all these issues that you
just laid out, yet they've got the time and the
resources to go after Trump. And it's like, you know,
like they don't care about the plight of New Yorkers
or or Americans, but they sure as hell care about
sticking it to you know, one man, they.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Do, and what they really care about is maintaining their power. Right.
So look at some of the culprits. I mean, Alvin Bragg,
who doesn't seem to be able to put together a
newsworthy case at gunpoint, manages to put together a preposterous, dirty,
three point indictment of Donald Trump that is basically found
in some allegation of accounting error. All right, we're going
(25:54):
to be seeing in that case soon. That's a criminal case,
and then you and I can buy the way. I
can tell you one of my partners on the ops
desk that I was just talking about is the former
commanding officer of NYPD Financial Crime, and he's incredulous over
the fact that this case was even brought. So I
don't have to judge. And I brought a few financial
cases as well. I know this would never have gotten
(26:14):
off the ground, but I don't have I default to
him and say, well, what do you make of this?
And couldn't believe his eyes. But let's move on from Bragg.
There's also Tiss James. Now, the Tiss James case that
just came down with the thirty three hundred and fifty
five million dollars settlement was such a dog Bragg's office
walked away from it. Criminally, they wouldn't bring it criminally.
It was floated by them. They rejected it. Okay, So
(26:37):
what happened James, who likes to call herself New York
State's top law enforcement officer, which is a joke, and who,
by the way, during the Summer of Love twenty twenty,
when my cops were getting bricks bounced off their faces
and then he had nothing to do with the Floyd situation.
Was on Twitter giving a hotline for anybody out there
who could claim police abuse during the riots to reach
(26:59):
out and lodge a complaint with her so that she
could investigate the officers. Okay, so they were burning down
the city, billions of dollars of damage, a week of rioting,
hundreds of cops injured, But her main remit was let
me know if there's any cops I can prosecute, and
she put that right out on Twitter. DM me, I
have people monitoring, and said, that's how you're dealing with
She comes into office vowing to get Trump, everybody else
(27:22):
walks away from the case. Why does she bring then
a civil case? She has the ability to bring criminal cases.
Why did she bring a civil case? You got to
ask yourself why Because in a civil case, the standard
of proof for a win is preponderance of the evidence
only fifty one percent, whereas in a criminal case it's
beyond a reasonable doubt, which is generally considered to be
(27:42):
a ninety seven to ninety nine percent assurance. So a
civil case is always easier to win, as we saw
in the O. J. Simpson case. Right he beat the
criminal case, they got him civilly. She knew she'd be
able to slam dunk this with a Manhattan grand jury,
I'm sorry, with a Manhattan civil jury, and that's why
she did it, and nobody else would sign on to
(28:03):
the case. In a case like this with this kind
of money, invariably you get federal agencies sneaking around saying, Okay,
you know what, we're going to attach earnings, We're going
to come in, we're going to maybe go to criminal,
We're going to charge wirefraud, mail fraud, all these sort
of amorphoge charges. The fense love that allowed him to
do a money grip. They all steered clear of it
because they knew it was a barking dog. It's going
(28:25):
to have a lot of trouble on appeal. I mean,
the amount of the settlement is never going to hold up.
It actually is probably an Eighth Amendment violation for cruel
and unusual punishment, even though it's not a criminal case.
A really harsh civil decision can segue into that area,
and this qualifies and they know it and That's why
(28:47):
angeron Front loaded it to say that Trump had to
pay interest, can't do business for three years, can't use
a New York bank. He knows this is a dog
and that it's going to get knocked around on appeal.
But all they really want to do is take Trump
off the set going into November.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Well, that certainly seems to be you know, they're trying
to bankrupt him or put him in jail or both
if they can, which is a sad state about you know,
where we are in the country and just the fact
that you know, there doesn't seem to be any equal
application of the law. You know, there is even the
rule of law doesn't even seem to exist anymore, to
be honest.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Very disheartening for somebody who grew up in the criminal
justice system here. You know, my old man was a cop.
My grandfather was a called Minieri as they call him
back in Italy. That's a federal cop back. They're kind
of in my blood. And to watch, you know, people
forget Iraq had a constitution, Steria I had a constitution.
South Africa had a constitution during apartheid. Constitution's a piece
(29:45):
of paper at the end of the day, It comes
down to the integrity and the professionalism of the people
who have to safeguard and administer it. And in that
area we're really suffering.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
You know, before we go, what is the biggest thing
we could do to restore order to our cities and
the justice system?
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Vote? It really not that complicated. Its vote. You know,
you and I both know what happens, Lisa. Only the
most fired up and dedicated go out to vote in
these small, local level elections, and they really matter. Right now,
Adams is comparatively powerless in New York. I mean, yeah,
he's the man as sure, he's got the bully pulpit
a little bit, but really the city Council has hemmed
(30:30):
him in and up in Albany during the Cuomo years,
Cuomo was at war with de Blasio because they were
trying to occupy a similar progressive space and they just
personally didn't like each other. And so Albany asserted through
various means, including the bail reforms, which are statewide, they
asserted a lot of power over New York. Traditionally in
(30:52):
New York City is to tell that wags the dog
of New York State. That's been reversed and nobody votes
in these Albany elections, the statewide legislature, nobody votes in
the city council New York City council elections, And so
what do you get? You get the most progressive, the
most extreme, the loudest voices. They managed to rally their voters.
(31:13):
They get them out there and they win. And then
common people who have everyday concerns like food on the
table and getting to them from work safely look around
and say how did it get so far? But invariably, invariably,
if you then say well, did you vote in the
last city council election, they'll say when was that? So?
If I could put a very fine point on it,
(31:34):
all politics is indeed, local city councils, state legislatures, school boards,
these things matter, and the left has managed to leverage
these then weaponize them. They did. You know, they're much
better at that stuff than the right. Is the right
better wake up because we're being beaten on a granular
level and it matters.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Well, you heard the man, go vote. Paul, Well, appreciate
you taking the time and this is super interesting learn
lot from you. Appreciate you bringing your expertise to my
audience and for taking the time to come on the show.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Lisa, any time for you and I appreciate you having me.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
I was Paul Morrow.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Appreciate him taking the time a really interesting interview. I
want to thank you guys at home for listening every
Monday and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week.
I want to thank John Cassio, my producer, for putting
the show together.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Until next time.
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