12 15 25 We talk with SC AG Alan Wilson

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Jonathan and Kelly Show. Jonathan Rush, over
the last year, President Trump has been engaged in a
dizzying campaign to increase violence in this country, Kelly Nash,
that's a pretty big statement. He's in a campaign to
make violence more likely.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Of course, Jonathan.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
And Kelly Show, when you get Dana Bash to go,
wait a minute, what did you say?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yeah, we sought up some crazy conspiracy theories over here
at CNN, but we hadn't considered Trump was actually well, Trump,
I guess would say, is to make violence great again.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
I uh, I need to do a Google search on
that to find out exactly which bipartisan because the longer conversation,
he talks about the bipartisan Republicans and them cross coming
together to make Americans more safe, make America more safe,
and Donald Trump overturned that.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well, he's saying in twenty twenty two when the when
Congress passed their gun legislation, that that is was making
Americans more safe, and that Trump executive ordered that out.
That's not exactly the way it happens, but that's his
bolt claim.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
And I know that he made several executive orders that
went back to reverse basically the overreach of the DOJ
and the Biden administration of several different gun issues. But
I have not done a deep dirt, deep deep internet
search to find out exactly which ones and enumerate those
for you at this time. Hold on, We're going to
get to the hotline here real quick, and we talked

(01:21):
more about some South Carolina there is coming up in
a second. Kelly nash Rock, come on the phone. South
Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, Good morning, sir, Good morning.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
Hey, good morning, gentlemen. Great to be with you.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Well, your office has been busy. We're reading specifically, and
recently one of the bigger stories has been the ganjrepreneur.
Talk to us about the bus because I know obviously
you had a couple of things to say about the
way this is being marketed, but also just the distribution
and the collection here in South Carolina.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
Well, first question I get is what does entrepreneur mean.
It's Ganja and entrepreneur cram together. That was the name
of the operation that left dealt with US seizing two
million dollars worth of marijuana related poducts here in the
midlands of South Carolina. I think about six twenty two
foot U haul trucks worth of product that we seized.

(02:07):
The first thing I want to tell people is is
that this bust was not a bust against law abiding
citizens who thought they were selling something that was infused
with THHC and it was actually over the legal limit.
These were people who were intentionally violating criminal statues. They
were intentionally trafficking marijuana. This is products that were not
just infused with THHC, but what had high level dosages

(02:30):
of THC. They were marketed to children. They had pictures
of cartoon characters on them. They had pictures of obi
Wan the cartoon obi Wan Kenobe, you know, they were caught.
There were packages called stonios and packages looked like you know,
oreos and skittles and edibles that children would like. But
these had the concentration of THHG equivalent to maybe five

(02:53):
or six marijuana cigarettes. So this isn't your cheech and chong,
this isn't your granddad's pot. This is high level, high
constant trade synthetic marijuana THHC that could be very very dangerous,
and they were knowingly selling it. They knew it was criminal,
and they were doing it in large wholesale of fashion.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Talking with the Attorney General Alan Wilson. There's been you know,
you obviously had your entrepreneur Bust study that was huge news.
Looking at Donald Trump, he seems to be leaning towards
the idea of reclassifying marijuana as a almost I don't
you know, it's like prescription strength tilanaw is how it's
being described. And yet at the same time that he's

(03:32):
considering all this, we're getting news stories that's saying marijuana
study reveals secret risks that seem to outweigh the benefits
amid the warnings of a horrifying new side effects. What
is your position if you were if do you have
a position regarding marijuana maybe being lessened for criminality or

(03:52):
maybe even strengthened.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
So we have a scheduling process at the federal level
that is a monster by the DEEA. I believe it's
scheduled by the FDA. But the drugs that are being scheduled,
like Schedule one narcotics, marijuana is considered a Schedule one narcotic.
Schedule one narcotics mean there is no medically recognized application
and it's highly addictive. Scheduled two very similar, but it

(04:17):
does recognize that there's a medical application, but it's also
highly addictive. If you look at this, Cocaine is a
Scheduled two drug. Marijuana is a Schedule one drug, which
means the government has decided that there is a medical
application for cocaine, but there is no medical application for marijuana,
and they have left it a Schedule one drug for decades.
The problem is states are going around that scheduling regime

(04:41):
and they are passing laws to legalize recreation or medical marijuana.
I have always advocated for that. If you're going to
allow states and not stop states and preimp states from
legalizing aspects of marijuana, the government ought to at least
study it and reschedule it as a schedule too. That
way you can at least study the harmful of side

(05:02):
effects or the medical application of marijuana. But they haven't
even scheduled it, and so I support the President's decision
to reschedule marijuana so that it can at least be studied,
so we can know the full scope of the harmful
effects as well as the full scope of the positive
a medical application, if there are any, whether it should
be a Schedule two or a Schedule three, that is
a good policy. Debate, But I certainly don't think marijuana

(05:24):
should be a Schedule one drug while cocaine is only
a Schedule two drug.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
You know, you mentioned the government studies and then categorization
of Schedule one schedule two. Do we create a problem
here by not involving the USDA and somehow because it
seems like when you buy like a supplement off the shelf,
it can give you the list of ingredients. Now that's
not necessarily exactly what's in there, nor what's in there

(05:49):
exactly is being reflected in the label. So when you
look at the THC infused drinks, for instance, the ones
that you can buy in a bar and walk down
the street with because it's not open it's not an
open alcohol, we just seem like maybe and also with
the hemp that's now being grown to the state of
South Carolina, we got a huge gray area here. And

(06:09):
how would retailers even know exactly what's inside the products
that they've been given to sell by their understanding of
the label outside, which may or may not be true.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Jonathan, that's a great question. First, let me say this,
after our entrepreneur drug Bust this month, I had a
number of retailers who are friends of mine who sell
these hemp infused drinks to each teach infuse drinks, and
they are trying to follow regulations and are trying to
follow the law, and they were very concerned. Let me
say this when it comes to go entrepreneur, when it

(06:41):
comes to these drinks that are otherwise in a gray
area and legal, we are not targeting reputable people who
were trying to follow the law, who are trying to
follow Obviously, they are federal and state laws that allow
us to have zero point three percent THHC by dry weight.
But the problem with that is when South Carolina passed
that law, all that many of these retailers who were

(07:02):
lawfully trying to sell these beverages. The General Assembly made
it very vague because of dry weight is green leafy,
you know, like substances, But when you convert it to
the manufacturing process into a liquid, it changes its properties,
and all of a sudden, you might have a sixteen
or twenty four ounce sugary beverage with himp infused in it,

(07:24):
and all of a sudden, it may have a very strong,
you know, side effects. It could it could obviously you
could get behind the wheel of a vehicle and be
you know, have this equivalent of smoking two or three joints.
While technically legal, we haven't accounted for the fact that
the manufacturing process from a dry leafy substance by dry weight,
you know, become far more you know, you know, impactful,

(07:47):
you know, or abusive when converted to a wet weight.
So this is one of the things that the legislature
needs to pick up to We need to clarify. We
need to clarify that gray area so that people who
want to sell these drinks in a way that is
lawful and can do so without the fear of being
prosecuted or investigated. That's what we want for them. But
a lot of these packages might have stamped on it

(08:09):
DEA approved. The DEA does not approve these things. You know,
when you put them in bright rainbow colored packages with
cartoon characters and you make them smell like, you know, candy,
you make them taste like candy, and you have a
picture of a cartoon character that's stoned with bloodshot eyes.
You know that that is where we have a problem
because you're intentionally trying to sell and market to a

(08:30):
group of people, and you're also selling these packages where
the contents are far far, you know, stronger than the
package indicates, and that's what we need to lock down on.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Talking with the Attorney General Alan Wilson, who is running
for governor, and it's it's it seems weird to me
that you and I mean, there's like five or six
other people running for this office, and yet somehow it's
become a national story that you and an another one
of the candidates have been going back and forth with

(09:02):
each other. You recently were on CNN with Caitlyn Collins.
Is it bizarre to you that it's basically seems to
be just you and this other candidate, and they're in
the national fascination with this.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
Well, I think the national fascination is with the bizarre
behavior of one of these other candidates, not with me.
I got drug into it because I'm constantly being attacked
by the other person. At the end of the day,
as I'm running for governor, my intent is to focus
on what I want to do for South Carolina. I
don't want to get sucked into the drama that goes
with some of these other folks out there running. I've

(09:38):
often told people, when you get down in the mud
with a pig, you get muddy, and the pig likes it.
And so I don't like getting down in the mud
with other candidates. I don't like doing this. But when
other candidates attack me and accuse me of doing horrible things,
lie about my record, lie about what the men and
women in my office have done, accused me of being
part of a conspiracy with law enforcement at the airport

(10:02):
to make them look bad. And you know, my simple
retort to that was, look, I'm going to address this
once by saying I didn't make that individual show up
late at the wrong location the morning they got to
the airport. I did not make that individual go down
and cuss out all the TSA and security folks who,
by the way, were working for free during a government shutdown.
This individual wasn't on business. They were going to Las

(10:23):
Vegas for a pleasure trip, and they were screening and
cussing out law enforcement who were working for free. And
this person had this entitlement mentality that they should be
treated a certain way. And so when they accused me
of orchestrating all of this against them, I just thought
it was ludicrous. And so I went on and I
addressed it, and now I'm moving on to talk about
what I want to do for the state of South Carolina.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Well, let's talk about what you're going to do for
the state of South Carolina and the governor's office, because,
as you have talked about before on this podcast, it
is a bully pullpit with very little authorization over the
General Assembly, and we're continuing to read seemingly every month
other JMSC wrinkle, like now the fact that we may
have to we're going to go to court and determine

(11:06):
whether a Supreme Court justice is too all to become
a Supreme Court justice and who rules on that one.
How are we going to get the JMSC in line
with what the people of South Carolina really want as
opposed to the General Assembly running a rough shot by
writing laws they know the loopholes are written in especially
for them.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
Well, Johnson, that's a great question. And let's define JMSC
for your listeners, because some may not know what it
stands for. JMSC stands for Judicial Merit Selection Commission. Every
state is given the opportunity to pass laws on how
they elect their own judges, and South Carolina and only
Virginia are the only two states in the country that
use a JMSC or Judicial Merit Selection Commission that is

(11:44):
a nominating and selection vehicle that picks candidates for the
General Assembly to vote on. The problem is the JMSC
is overwhelmingly controlled by the legislature. We did do some reforms.
The legislature did give the governors some appointments to the
JMAS although it's a minority shareholder on the appointments of
the JMSC, but they did give the governor some input.

(12:07):
But the reality is, if you want true accountability in government,
you want the three branches of government, the executive, the legislative,
and the judicial, to have equal power over each other.
Right now, there is an inordinate amount of power in
the legislature over the judicial branch of government, and that
is how it's been for decades. And while we went
in the right direction a year ago, we still need

(12:29):
to give the governor and the executive branch more oversight
into who sits on the JMSC. In fact, I'm proposing
that the Judicial Merit Selection Commission be completely in the
executive branch of government, with all of the staff that
work on it and all the commissioners that vote on
these candidates being under the executive branch with the governor
having sole appointment authority. Let the legislative branch of government

(12:51):
vote up or down on the judges that are nominated
by the JAMSC, but give the governor complete control over
the nominating process. It's as close as we're going to
get to a federal model because of JMSC is in
the South Carolina Constitution and you would have to amend
the constitution to get rid of the JMSC to go
to a federal model. But these are just some ideas
that I've been advocating for and I believe this will

(13:12):
give more accountability to the people. This will give more
transparency to the selection process for judicial candidate.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Parking with the Attorney General Alan Wilson, who is running
for governor, and I see on your website, Wilson for
sc dot com, you have a lot of information on
different issues that be facing South Carolinians as we move
into a new era here after Henry McMaster has left
the office. Is it possible to pick one issue? I mean,

(13:40):
there's so many different things we've been talking. You know,
Henry McMaster recently put out a thing about water that
we have the water issue. We have the roads that
are a disaster in South Carolina by a lot of
people's assessments. Bridges are collapsing, We've got power issues that
are coming. We've got growth issues. A lot of communities
are concerned about growth, maybe too much in their community.
So there's just a lot happening in South Carolina. As

(14:03):
the governor, is it possible to even just say this
would be my number one issue that I'm going to
try to deal with and how would you deal with it?

Speaker 3 (14:10):
Well, that's like saying, what's the number one ingredient in
a recipe for cake? I mean, try to make cake
without sugar or flour, you know, I mean, which ingredient
are you going to leave out? I mean every ingredient
to a good economy, to a sound state is important. Obviously,
you have to prioritize what you're going to do because
you have limited bandwidth in what you're going to pursue
as an executive. But let me say this, I mean,

(14:32):
you guys have been harping about infrastructure. I think infrastructure
is vitally important. I believe creating an economic, you know,
environment in South Caron that attracts businesses and promotes economic
growth while maintaining the character of our communities. We don't
want to turn every you know, town into a major thoroughfare.
But on you know, Kelly, to talk to your point

(14:53):
about infrastructure, I mean, we have to find a way
to fund roads, bridges, and even the energy grid. A
couple ideas I had are in the interstate systems. All
of the grass between the two interstates north and southbound,
east and westbound are owned by the state. Let's privatize that.
Let's create toll expressways. Let people driving through our state
help pay for those. Let people who in our state

(15:15):
want to select a drive on those. Let's privatize that,
and let's collect the revenue. Let's privatize the rest areas
along the interstate and put gas stations in restaurants and
you know, charge a premium to use those and let
that be revenue. Let's have mixed use government buildings where
you have private retail and restaurants on the ground floor
and government workers upstairs. That way you collect the property taxes.

(15:37):
There are lots of you know, we can even lease
pipelines for telecommunications companies and energy companies along the interstates
and the areas that South Carolina owns, and let's collect
the revenues from those leases and funnel it back to infrastructure.
But we have to grow our state infrastructure to account
for our growing population. I want to eliminate the income
tax to allow more businesses and more people in businesses

(15:59):
to put their harder money back into the economy, growing,
raising all boats, and growing the economy. I want to
reform property taxes. These are just a couple of the things,
a couple of the ingredients, so to speak, that I
would like to focus on as governor of South Carolina,
and I think it would help go a long way
to making our state more sound, more stable, and more prosperous.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
You know, I'm sure that smartphones and the Internet have
helped expose what has been for obviously since the history
of man, a cedy unseemly behavior. And we used to
think primarily just to men, But now we're reading more
and more about women, including school teachers, who are abusing
young children. And I've learned just recently there are different
classifications for sexual predators in the like is there some

(16:43):
kind of federal guideline that we followed? Is are there
other states that are more harsh in their penalties and
demand certain penalties. Is South Carolina too lenient with the
way that we handle with these people? I mean, why
do we let them plead out a case to begin
with when they're plainly a public threat? And if that
was the case, the state would never produce a sexual

(17:03):
predator map. If you put these people on a map,
you're telling the public they are a threat. So why
aren't we dealing with them more sternly?

Speaker 3 (17:10):
So a guilty plea is not a bad thing. A
guilty plea There's two ways someone is convicted, through a
guilty plea or through a trial. A conviction is a conviction.
Sometimes people don't make the government go through a trial
because the investigation is so good and there's such overwhelming
evidence that they go into the court room they own
it and they throw themselves on the mercy of the

(17:32):
court hoping that they will get a better sentence than
had they gone to trial. They're entitled to, you know, obviously,
you know, to not have that held against them if
they go to trial. But a plea deal is where
someone says, you got me. There's nothing I can do
to get off the hook of a conviction. So when
you say please, that's not a bad thing. Obviously, there

(17:53):
are tens of thousands of cases right now in the
criminal justice system. On the court system, you can't have
trials for all of them possible, and people will sit,
victims will not get justices, and defendants will sit in
local county jail, sapping local resources if you don't have
plea deals. Plea deals don't mean they get less time
or get less punitive measures held against them. It just

(18:13):
means that they are trying to get the best deal
that they can and they're throwing themselves on the mercy
of the court. So in South Carolina, I am advocating
for harsher penalties for repeat offenders. Obviously you had you
might have a twenty one year old who has a
dozen photos of a fourteen year old girl. That is bad.
That person should be held responsible. But is that person

(18:35):
worse than a fifty year old who has pictures of
toddlers being sexually assaulted or videos. Obviously you've got to
have aggravating on factors that allow you to go harder
for one type of online predator as opposed to another.
You know, a twenty one year old having pictures of
a fourteen or fifteen year old is bad. They should
be prosecuted. But the people who have the worst of

(18:56):
the worst, who are fifty and have toddlers, those people
should be put under the jail. And so we want
to give prosecutors elevated punitive sentences to go after as
well as I'm hammering mandatory minimums for repeat offenders and
people with certain types of videos and pictures.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
And Alan Wilson, you say that as a father of
a teenage daughter, so the people know that, and I
think I agree with you completely on that. As we're
kind of pressing you for time, I just have one
final question as the if you are in fact the
next governor of South Carolina. All three of us on
this conversation are long suffering, passionate Gamecock fans. Is there

(19:36):
anything the governor can do in his power to fix
the Gamecock football program?

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Lord Kelly, all I can do is give you the
advice don't give your heart to eighteen year old boys.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
They will break it down.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
They will let you down. Yeah, they will let you down.
Every time I listen, I will be I will always
be a Gamecock fan. It's like a child. When your
child gets in trouble with the law, you love your child,
when your child becomes a famous doctor, you love your
You love your child no matter how good or bad
that they are. And I'm always gonna love the game. Consent, man,
this was a tough season. I'm not gonna lie.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
We need a big size, says Welcome to Williams. Brice Stadium,
the Home of Unconditional Love. We would now be called
the Agappies. Oh, thank you for your time, South Carolina
Attorney General Alan Wilson. We know that the holidays won't
be slow enough for many people on the gubernatorial trail,

(20:32):
but we hope you have some time to spend with
your family and enjoy the holidays.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
Yes, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. Merry Christmas,
and I wish you both a very happy and prosperous
new year.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
God bless you, and I understand we'll be hearing from
another gubernatorial candidate coming up this week.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
I think we're going to get most of them this week.
That's Ralph Norman will be on this podcast. Pamela Evant's
going to be joining us. We're going to get most
of them this week as we try to wrap up
the year, letting you know who's running for governor and
what they're thinking.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
All right, now, a couple of other things going on
in the state of South Carolina today, at least in
the state newspaper. There was an incredible picture in my
iconic bridge here in South Carolina. You know it by side.
It's the Jervey Street Bridge if you've ever driven across that,
And even as a child, I remember thinking, wow, we're
really close to this oncoming traffic over here in the

(21:22):
left hand lane, and when you get to the right handlane,
you go, wow, we're really close to that curve that
sits about eight inches off of the asphalt and doesn't
have any type of ramp, So if you hit it,
you're going to definitely go over the side of this thing.
It's a little dangerous going across the Jervey Street Bridge.
Since nineteen twenty eight, was it yep? And at that

(21:43):
point it was one of the widest bridges in the state.
Not so much now even according to DOT guidelines.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Oh, we've been out of code for over thirty years,
probably longer than that. It thirty years ago it was
it was supposed to be. The lanes were eleven feet.
In twenty twenty one, they switched the lanes to twelve feet.
Currently we're at eight feet, so we're not even close

(22:11):
to being the width it's supposed to be, which certainly
does I mean, you do have a higher rate of
accidents on that bridge, You have a higher rate of challenges.
We'll just say, because again, the vehicles are coming in
at five feet six feet wide, so there's really not
a lot of wiggle room left if the lane is
only eight feet. You know, I guess on the good news,

(22:34):
you slow down, right, you slowed down when you're going
to cost the bridge. But it's amazing that they built
that bridge originally, well originally it was built in the
eighteen hundreds. He got burned to the ground in eighteen
sixty five. But then they rebuilt the bridge. And eighteen
years after they rebuilt it is when they said, you
know what, this is not modern fitting our modern technology

(22:57):
for the late twenties, so they read did the bridge?
So this is another incarnation of that. And now for
almost one hundred years we've sat by South Carolina legislators
have just let this thing continue to be a challenge
and a danger to motorists. And I guess now they
would say, well, now it's historic. Now you've got to

(23:17):
keep it.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
So in the National Registry of Historic screw Ups could
be Yeah, I know if we got a national registry
for that, but we should, and you know, pretty much
South Carolinians have always, and with this one particular case,
we've always kind of worked together in traffic, which is
unusual given today's road rage and people who just take
advantage of full advantage or impose on you all the

(23:41):
time in traffic. We have like a near voluntary stagger
ball so that you don't ever drive side by side
with someone in the in the lane next to you
as you cross the bridge. We kind of staggered them
voluntarily and independently. It's basically a one lane bridge. Just
repaint the stripes on it and make it one lane
bridge either way.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Well, the problem is that you've got twenty six thousand
vehicles per day, almost twenty seven twenty six nine hundred
on a typical day, and it's pretty active with all
four lanes being used. If you go to two lanes now,
you're going to have serious problems trying to get onto
the bridge in two pretty active areas. Obviously, the West

(24:23):
Columbia area has been on fire for the last but
five six years now, and then of course, if you're
coming in from downtown Columbia, now you're gonna have backups
going all the way into the vista as people have
to stock by that. Taking that right, If you're coming
in off of one twenty six, yeah, that'll be bad.
It's already backed up a quarter a mile as it is,

(24:43):
so now you're looking at a half mile or more delays.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Well, I'll tell you one thing you're not gonna do
is build another bridge next to it.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
So why not?

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Oh no, hell no, you're not going to build another
bridge now of the congrete. That's a flood zone. For
God's sake. You want to see the damn environmentalist go nuts.
Tell me going to build another bridge down there, they'll
burn down this one.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
So yes, kind of like the environmentalists who are setting
the Teslas on fire to save the environment. I guess
I don't know that's right.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Oh my god, you can't even you can't construct anything
across that bridge. It's a flood zone. We learned that
with Temple Ligand when he wanted to be able to
convention center across the bridge. For God's sake, well, the
flood zone.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
But I mean wouldn't that be better than having dead
bodies floating in the river. No, no, no, we got
to look out for the special fish or whatever it
is that we preserving this little baby.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Small price to pay. Let him at their funeral at Charleston.
They'll wash all the way down. The environmentalists would go
wacko if you even think about that. Okay, all right,
well we'll see what happens. Plainly, we have other bridges
we need to look at. With the ones that are

(25:57):
crumbling and falling all over the state, we might want
to take a look at some other bridges and let
South Carolinians be slightly inconvenienced. Then please use the voluntary
stagger law.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
And yet again, what did another one of the bridges
that's own and run and operated by the state, which
is so ironic because it has, I mean, the state
has done a very poor job of maintaining roads.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
I was looking something up on my smartphone and Sally
was driving me somewhere. Believe this to be Sunday, late afternoon.
We're head of the Sunday evening church service, and so
it was already dark. So I'm looking at my phone
and I'm reading her the answer. She wanted to, and
I'm not looking at the road, and looking at the
road allows you to brace yourself from the potholes. But
if you just close your eyes and look down, even

(26:42):
if you're not looking something up on your smartphone, and
if you're not driving, just sit in the passenger seat
and just start feeling all the bumps in the potholes
that the average driver hits, it will just infuriate you.
I was in a bad mood walking into the House
of Worship for Pete's say, because I travel on South Carolina.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
To lose a filling on your way to church very

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Well, could almost lost my religion right there.