West Michigan Live from Washington DC 4-22-2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
By from higher top Monroe Center in downtown Grand Rapids.
We're talking about what matters most to you when West
Michigan Joining a conversation now at six one six seven
seven four, twenty four twenty four. At six one six
seven seven four twenty four twenty four, it's West Michigan
Live with Justin Barklay on Wood Radio.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
All Right, we gotta do things a little different today
because I'm coming to you live from an undisclosed location
deep in the bowels of the swamp. Even though draining
is in progress right now, things are a little bit
cherry blossoms are in full bloom, and things are gorgeous here.

(00:42):
But I was invited to the White House, and as
much as I despise the Swamp, I wasn't going to
turn that down. What an honor to be invited to
the White House and in fact headed their moments away
this morning. So in the meantime, wanted to bring you
the unique programming live for the Swamp that you won't

(01:07):
hear anyway. By the way, tomorrow we'll have full details
of the swamp visit, and I'm planning on the interviews
that I get to do today. I'll be able to
bring them to you tomorrow and maybe even over the
next few days. So that is the goal as it
stands right now. Joining us on the program a little

(01:27):
later on this morning, going to hear from Sam Sobo.
She's the wife of Kevin Sorbo, a brilliant actress, producer, herself,
entrepreneur and mother successfully raising. I think they got three
kids and they've done a fantastic jobebout. She says, she's
got the keys to saving the country, and in fact,
they're a lot closer to home than you might imagine,
right there in your own kitchen table. We're going to

(01:50):
discuss that, get into that conversation a little bit later on,
but first a conversation with the man who's the attorney
for at least one of those alternate electors. They are
well still, I mean almost two years later now, still
being as we speak, well, I believe politically persecuted for

(02:15):
their involvement in at that point, just making sure the
twenty twenty election was all on the up and up.
Now you've seen the Democrats lately all about due process
and all about making sure that folks get the due
process that they deserve. You know, they left the January
sixth ers completely out of the picture, and these people

(02:37):
are being forgotten right along with them. Attorney John Freeman
joins US Now with the latest update on what's going
on with these folks.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
Hey, it's my pleasure, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
It's a big break in the case, sort of an actually,
you know, really an updates that's needed at you. I
think that people tend to forget this thing is still
going on. As much as we've seen change. Of course,
lots of big news happening. This that's one of those
things that's still hanging over some of the folks here

(03:07):
in Michigan.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
It's been quite an ordeal. I think for everybody that's
been involved, it seems to be the case that just
doesn't want to end. Although I think the district court
judge has got quite a task in front of her
because there are so many different people that are charged,
and each one's entitled to have their day in court,

(03:29):
and everybody has done that, and there's been a lot
of briefing that's been filed on both sides. So it's
not surprising to me that it's taking as long as
it is, simply because I think that Judge Simmons is
really trying to do a thorough job, but we remain
optimistic about what the outcome is going to be.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
You know, this case is so wild to me because
I think it's so clear that there wasn't anything done
wrong here at all. In fact, I think most people
paying attention to understand this know that these alternate electors
were presenting in case as things were still in the balance,

(04:12):
waiting to see how things would shift in lit of
court cases that might eventually come forward and out at
this point in time in twenty twenty, and they came
through with an alternate slate of the leg. Now, this
is not something that's abnormal. It's been done before. It
may be rare, but it's happened before. And in fact,

(04:33):
this is the first time I've ever seen any Maybe
you correct me on this, but I don't think I've
ever seen any charges filed in anything like this before.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
I'm not aware of anything like this being done in
the past. And I think he hit the nail on
the head. There just is no evidence of any criminal intent.
You know, we as criminal law practitioners, and I've been
doing this for more than thirty years, what we have
to do is try to get in the minds of
the client, and the state is obligated to prove in

(05:04):
this particular case that my client had some criminal intent
an attempt to do something wrong, and there just isn't that,
and that's become painfully obvious during the course of the
preliminary exam. Even the Attorney General's Office, in its brief
following the exam testimony, indicated that their principal witness struggled

(05:30):
to explain how any of the electors had any criminal intent.
And it's been our position all the way along that
not only could they not show that there was any
criminal intent, but the evidence that came out at the
exam showed just the opposite. The electors and my client

(05:51):
in particular, was in her mind doing her civic duty,
and the evidence of that came out during the exam
reference to a press conference that my client was involved
with where she clearly stated what was on her mind
at the time back in December of twenty twenty, which
was that the electors were putting forward an alternate slate

(06:14):
in the event that it turned out that the popular
vote was not in favor of Joe Biden was instead
in favor of Donald Trump. Agent shock, the principal witness
for the state said that during his testimony the Attorney
General herself and this all came out during the preliminary exam.

(06:35):
It was on record publicly as essentially saying that the
electors had no criminal intent. There were multiple controversies that
the electors were aware of when they met in December
of twenty twenty in Lansing to formulate the alternative slate,
and those controversies cut right to the core of the
integrity of the presidential election here in Michigan. The election

(07:00):
is relied on a variety of different attorneys in doing
what they did. In fact, there was testimony if you
examine that my client had a memorandum, a legal memorandum
provided by an attorney that flat out justified the approach
that was being taken. So you have all these bullet
points that cast amazing doubt on the idea that the

(07:26):
electors had anything in their mind that was a nefarious
or underhanded or an attempt to try to cheat or
commit fraud or impede a legitimate government function. And that's
why I think, at the end of the day, when
the court has an opportunity to fully analyze all of this,

(07:46):
and the testimony that was in front of it that
the outcome seems pretty clear to me as well.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Toney John Freeman with us right now talking about this case. Look,
we've seen law fair place that your all and I
don't know if he comment in this case, but in
so many different ways in the last several years. In fact,
we just saw a New York Attorney General, Letitia James
on the other end of a mortgage fraud case just

(08:12):
announced yesterday this could be coming in days ahead. Now,
this little idea and then no matter where it comes from,
this whole idea of lawfair is a very very dangerous game,
isn't that.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
I would certainly agree. And one of the things that
it's very troubling in my eyes. And this is why
we sought to reopen Bruce at the Pulmonary Exam and
introduce a letter that was written by twenty two members
of the Michigan House of Representatives addressed to the United
States Attorney General Pam Bondi. That letter calls for a

(08:50):
federal investigation into widely known concerns regarding voter registration fraud
and that controversy was known in the minds of the
electors and my client in particular back in December of
twenty twenty, and it's part of the public record that

(09:14):
this is something that has been appears to have been
swept under the rug and nothing is being done about it,
notwithstanding the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and
the Attorney General's Office were involved in an investigation of
this alleged voter registration fraud. And so why we have

(09:37):
sought to reopen the proofs and actually have Judge Simmons
consider the existence of that letter as further proof that
there was a controversy related to voter registration fraud. And
then my client knew about that controversy because there's all
kinds of witness testimony that she knew about it, and

(09:58):
it just it. You know, that letter is a spotlight
on concerns that the Republicans electors had back in December
of twenty twenty when they met in Lansing, and I
think that letter is significant. It's significant that the Michigan
legislators are asking the United States Attorney General to investigate

(10:20):
alleged fraud that's been swept under the rug.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, go ahead. You're, of course referring to the GBI
strategies case, and of course this is a case out
of West Michigan, a Miskeigan County, as folks are really
familiar with. These are one of the big, big questions
that folks had, And to your point, this was widely known,
it was widely covered it here and those electors they

(10:43):
would have had the same concerns. And of course, obviously
that was something that I think is that you could
say at the heart of this, these people who acted
your client would be included in this. They wanted the
truth and they wanted law and order to prevail. They
weren't trying to to go the other way, in fact
that they wanted to make sure that everything was done

(11:04):
to make sure that that could happen.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
You're absolutely correct, that's exactly the argument that we're making.
And hopefully Judge Simmons will allow that letter to become
part of the public record because I think it's very
relevant and I believe that it cuts right to the
core legal issue that the electors were not trying to
do anything nefarious or anything fraudulent in any way, shape

(11:29):
or form, and that's all part of the record that
was acknowledged by multiple witnesses. There was actual testimony of
about that investigation during the course of the preliminary exam.
The Attorney General's Office was involved in that investigation, the
FBI was involved, there were search warrants that were done,
and that was just one of several different controversies that

(11:49):
the electors were aware of. Back in December of twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Turny John Freeman with the latest on this, of course,
your client and the others that are involved in this case.
One month later, we're continuing to fileow all this story
and of course the developments and the worst part is
these people have to still deal with this and of
course there's time, there's money that there's a threat of
jail time on this as well. This is this is

(12:16):
something that ought to be concerned to everyone, and of
course we want to see justice prevail here. We want
to see these folks be able to move on with
their lives. What are the odds of that and how
soon do we see that happening.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
It's hard for me to have a crystal ball on
the timetable because Judge Simmons, I think is really trying
to do the right thing, and I suspect that she's
sifting through the very boluminous filings that have been submitted
by the parties and the transcript so it's hard to

(12:49):
predict the timetable whether justice prevails or not. I think
in part that depends on your definition of justice. If
your definition of justice is that the defendants my client
is cleared of all wrongdoing, I think that that's likely
if your definition of justice includes or takes into consideration

(13:12):
the human told that being the focus of a criminal prosecution,
what that means, I don't know how you get justice
after being put through the ringer like this unfairly so,
and you know these are real people, These are just
not These are not just names and a file number.

(13:32):
And as a former prosecutor, I know there's a danger
from the prosecution side that all you think about is
the name and the file number. As a defense lawyer,
I've come to realize we're talking about real people. And
if you sat in that courtroom during the preliminary exam
and you look, you saw a bunch of senior citizens
sitting there who were there because they were doing what

(13:54):
they believed to be the right thing. They're not criminals.
They're literally grandmothers and grandfathers who have been participants in
the political process and take their civic responsibility very, very seriously.
I don't know how you get justice for somebody who's
been put through that ringer.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Well, that's certainly a good point. Please keep us posted.
I know this fight continues and it's one that we're
all curious about but very concerned to hear the updates
on Tony John Freeman. Thank you for the latest on this,
and come back and give us more reports as you have.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me
more from.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
The swamp on the way this wanting to in line
from an undisclosed location in Washington, DC, we have we
have a fantastic conversation for you with Sam Sorbo. She's
she's the wife, she's Kevin Sorbo's wife, and she's fantastic
gut her. It's a very talented individual anyway, but it's
part of our podcast from this weekend and wanted to

(14:59):
make sure you because it was such a great conversation,
at least pieces of it. She has the key to
save the nation, and she says it might even be
closer than you think. The answers maybe right there at
your own kitchen table. She's an actress, a truth teller,
a fearless advocate for parents, and she's calling out the

(15:19):
system that created the mess that we're in today. Sam
Sorbo is here with us today, author of Parents' Guide
to homeschool making education easy and fun to help you
reclaim your authority, your kid's future, maybe even your sanity
and the nation. While we're at it, how do we
save the American family? I mean, it's obvious it's been

(15:41):
under attack for decades. Now, what are some of the
keys and are they closer than we can even imagine?
In fact, joining us to talk about this, that's a
subject close to home. U pun intended. Sam Sorbo with
us right now. Sam appreciates you being here with us.

Speaker 4 (15:58):
All that in a sense of you.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
I love it.

Speaker 5 (16:01):
Hey.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
You know, my wife and I my daughters are four
and two and we just started homeschooling. We just started
this year with my four year old right right, so young.

Speaker 4 (16:13):
Let me leave them alone for a little while.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Let me well, let me give you like the first
of all, like the four year old loves it. She's
just two year old. She kind of you know, she'll
just go along with anything else that's happening. You know,
but we wanted to just we wanted to do something
just to kind of burn the energy and everything else,
you know, just little activities, not nothing crazy. But we

(16:37):
found at our church folks had to homeschool co op
set up, and so she really enjoys going to that
and be a part of Some of the things that
they're they're teaching are very very like high level concepts
for a four year old. It's like even for me,
like I'm learning things. But the way we landed on this,
it was like my so my dad was a teacher

(16:59):
for forty years public schools, and my wife's grandmother was
a teacher and a principal and then eventually a superintendent,
maybe the first female superintendent in Michigan. She's ninety seven today.
So we both looking at schools going, oh my goodness,
we can't imagine sending our girls into this. What are

(17:20):
we going to do? And that's what we landed it.
But we we've had an amazing ride so far this year,
and my wife was thinking like, there's no way I
can do this, but she's done a fantastic job so
far and we couldn't be happier. So, just to give
you the background, or where we're at on this. To

(17:41):
see you talking about this, I feel like this is
something that I think I'm just really excited about more
and more people waking up to we're some of those people.

Speaker 4 (17:51):
Yes, well, it's the freedom mindset, right.

Speaker 5 (17:53):
The schools teach slavery and they enslave you to them,
and that's why parents feel like, oh my gosh, I
can't I don't know anything. They've separated the family over generations,
so the families now people growing up were largely unparented.
We are a largely unparented society at this point. We've

(18:14):
lost a tremendous generational knowledge. You know, Grandma's poultice for
the grip or for you know, the best recipe for
turkey soup or whatever, is all gone by the wayside.
And I think that that's sort of at our own peril.
I think that's a tremendous loss that we didn't really
take into account when we embraced the idea of institutionalizing

(18:37):
our little bitty children. I joked with you that your
kids are four and two, why are you schooling them already?
But the fact is that we have been made to
feel beholden to the system and so if we don't
do something along the lines of the system, we feel
like we are letting ourselves down, or letting our children

(18:57):
down or whatever. I was there with you when I
started homeschooling. I had a second grader, well soon to
be third grader, right, and a first grader and then
a toddler. And I started with school, of course, because
my second grader had already attended first and second grade,
and they were abysmal failures. And so I said to

(19:20):
my husband, I think I could homeschool the kids, and
they I think I could fail at homeschooling, but they'll
still be better off as you were doing.

Speaker 4 (19:28):
And so what I try to.

Speaker 5 (19:31):
Do to empower parents is have them relax about the academics,
because because education really is more about character and virtue
and maybe a third of its academics. But what happens
is when you instill the character and the virtue and
the child, the child still desires to learn. But when

(19:54):
you focus on the academics, the child stops desiring learning
in large part. Now it depends on how you go
about it also, right. And so I didn't completely, you know,
extinguish my children's love of learning, luckily, but that's because
we homeschooled, you know, in the morning for a couple

(20:16):
hours and then they had the rest of the day
to go explore. And the exploration is it feeds the
curiosity engine of the child. And so yeah, you can
sit the child down for you know, half an hour,
an hour here and there and get some of the
schooling that you believe in a much space that we
all believe in school because we were hought to believe

(20:38):
in school, and so you can sort of get that
schooling into the child. But education is not data entry,
and we really have to get away from that model
that somehow if you perform well on a test, you're smart,
and if you don't perform well on a test, you're not.

Speaker 4 (20:54):
And you know, we have examples of.

Speaker 5 (20:55):
That throughout our lives of very very highly skilled, intelligent
people who never went to college who are like super
successful in business and also very happy in their personal lives.
And then we have the flip side of people who
went all the way through got the multiple degrees, are
tremendously unhappy and can't hold a.

Speaker 4 (21:15):
Job or whatever.

Speaker 5 (21:16):
Right, So it's not that the school paradigm is this
hugely successful paradigm that we all should emulate. I mean,
I can't say that out loud properly.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
It's it's it's wild because, as you mentioned, I like
thinking of my experience as a kid in school and
certain points of it, I think I probably enjoyed more
than others. And it's all the things that my kids
get to do now that I probably would have loved,
you know, just the freedom of like you said, the

(21:47):
exploring and everything else. I think there's so much that
instead of allowing, like the way the public schools work,
allowing that kid to develop into who he or she
was created to be, it really is more about sort
of hammering out all of that and putting them into molds.

(22:09):
At least that's an experience I sort.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Of felt like I had right.

Speaker 5 (22:12):
So Instalms, it says raise up a child in the
way he should Proverbs raise up a child in the
way he should go, and in his old age you
will not depart from it. I think there's a little
bit of a mistranslation in there, because it's not raise
up a child in the way you think he should go.

Speaker 4 (22:27):
It's raise up a child.

Speaker 5 (22:29):
To discover who he's meant to be, and then he
will not depart from it. And so the idea is,
how do you help him discover who he is meant
to be, not by sending him into an institution that
tries to make him conform to their way of thinking
or doing.

Speaker 4 (22:44):
And the fact is, your.

Speaker 5 (22:45):
Children want to be you. Children want to be adults.
They think adults are the coolest things, especially the parents.
Their parents are the coolest, and so they want to
be their parents. So what's the best way to facilitate that.
And by the way, they should want to be their parents, right, Like,
let's take this head on. They want to be you,
They should want to be you. You should encourage them to

(23:08):
be more like you, and in fact.

Speaker 4 (23:10):
That will make you a better person.

Speaker 5 (23:12):
And so it's a beautiful paradigm that we have completely
disrupted with our schools and at our own peril, and
we are seeing the results of that. We're seeing decimated families,
children who are just lost, the predation on young children
in our schools and outside of our schools, the child
trafficking that's going on right now, and the tremendous surge

(23:35):
in the predator population as well, and all of this,
you know, we can attribute, at least to some degree
to our schools, So let's just abandon them, let's get
rid of them, and then let's talk about school choice.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah yeah, Sam, So you wrote the book. Obviously, this
is I know it. Writing a book about anything has
got to be kind of a it's like a like
a journey emission, something you feel like you're called to do.
But this had to be it's so close to your heart.
Is like getting this into the hands of people so

(24:11):
that they can understand it. I mean, one of the
biggest hurdles I just mentioned about my wife and her
thought was like, I don't know that I can do this,
but I know you have encouragement for that. Once you
take that first step, it's so you start to really
understand that it's completely different than you could have ever imagined.

Speaker 4 (24:29):
Oh I love that you say that, So I like
in it too.

Speaker 5 (24:34):
If you go see a silent film that's black and
white and grainy, that's the school and home education is
like Wizard of Oz or actually you know Avatar like
it's three D, Dolby sound, you know, full color, immersive,
Like immersive.

Speaker 4 (24:53):
Actually is a really good way to.

Speaker 5 (24:55):
Look at home education because one of the big discoveries
that I made when I first started a I did
write a book called They're Your Kids, which documents, in
large part, our journey as a family through home education,
the mistakes that we made and the triumphs that we had.

Speaker 4 (25:12):
And so when you.

Speaker 5 (25:14):
Look at it that way, one of the big discoveries
that I had was that learning happens all the time.

Speaker 4 (25:22):
It's not sequestered in a classroom.

Speaker 5 (25:25):
Yes, and you as a parent, yes, you're the teacher,
but ultimately the child is the teacher.

Speaker 4 (25:32):
The child is his own teacher.

Speaker 5 (25:34):
And the reason I say that is because we won't
learn anything that we don't first purpose to learn that
we don't first decide I want to learn that, and
then a teacher can help that. A teacher can facilitate that,
but so can a book. So can a YouTube video,
So can just going and watching somebody do it for
a while. There are plenty of different ways, So can

(25:55):
a documentary. There are plenty of different ways of learning
information that is available to a young person that doesn't
necessarily require the teacher or the professor. And we so
am we so absorbed this paradigm of the teacher with
the classroom.

Speaker 4 (26:14):
The teacher is the spigot of.

Speaker 5 (26:15):
Knowledge that we actually adopted the trust the expert attitude. Yeah,
throughout the nation now, so that we just lived through
a whole season of trust the expert.

Speaker 4 (26:28):
How did that work out for us?

Speaker 3 (26:29):
Right?

Speaker 4 (26:30):
Don't question the expert.

Speaker 5 (26:31):
If you're questioning the expert, you're questioning science itself. Yes,
how dared you never mind that science itself is the
act of questioning?

Speaker 1 (26:41):
Right?

Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yes? Yes? Oh my gosh. So I pulling my hair
out during that time, the whole time of hearing this,
and I said the same thoughts in the Fauci you.

Speaker 4 (26:55):
Know, just ask him.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
I am the science.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
You know this guy. It's like you couldn't You couldn't
ask any questions. And to me, that was the most
frustrating because I'm a I'm just like a Look, I'm
a genuinely curious individual. I don't know about you, but
I want answers, and uh I think you get them
is by asking, Hey, no matter what the markets look
like on a daily basis, we've been on a rollercoaster lately,

(27:18):
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Speaker 1 (28:18):
It's West Michigan Live with Justin Barklay on News Radio
Wood thirteen hundred and one oh six nine a f m.