It's A Saturday Morning Bonus Podcast For 01-18-25

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Berry Show. Happy Saturday to you if you're
listening on Saturday. We started something I don't know. It
must have been about a year ago, for a moment
where we were getting so many emails from listeners who said,
I wish y'all were on on the weekends, and I
realized that we have become for many folks kind of

(00:24):
you know, maybe like how you go for a drive
in your truck and your dog hops up in there
in the passenger seat with you, or Papaul, you know,
he can't wait for his grandkids to come because they
ride on the side by side out all over the pasture.
We have become like that to a lot of people,
a friend, an accompaniment, a whatever you want to call it,

(00:47):
and so on Saturdays they would get used to. We
used to do a Saturday and a Sunday podcast, but
that became too much. So what we decided to do was,
especially for our podcast listeners who stay up to date
on the podcast as the week is going by, we
decided to start adding some Saturday content and what it
allowed us to do was things that we personally enjoy

(01:11):
that are too long to play on the air.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Podcast is a perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Long form format where we can share things with our
listeners with you that we think are important that we
wouldn't otherwise get to, and that might be a speech
by Thomas Soul or Milton Friedman, or an interview, or
any number of other things. Hillsdale College does incredible work.

(01:37):
I hope they're going to be a sponsor of the show.
I have heard from our folks at Premiere that they may.
I don't know if that's true or not. I hope
they are because I think they do wonderful, wonderful work,
incredible work, and I would love to encourage our.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Listeners to support them.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Hillsdale College had a panel discussion. Hillsdale College is in Michigan.
Assume most of you know that because Rush used to
talk about them. They do lectures, interviews, panel discussions, and
today the panel discussion is on law fair and the
political prosecutions from the Biden regime, something we've talked a

(02:16):
lot about. This panel was held on September nineteenth, just
a few months ago, during a Hillsdale College Constitution Day celebration.
The panel included Ronald J. Pastrido, Chairman of Hillsdale College,
Peter Navarro, who many of you will know of former
assistant to President Trump, Bradley Smith Capital University Law School.

(02:39):
I think that's Catholic University. I think I wrote that
down and byron Yorke of The Washington Examiner. It's a
good writer, good thinker, and we hope you enjoy this
panel discussion as we did. We consume a lot of
content as well as creating a lot of content, and
I know many of you do as well. I want
to thank you if if you've ever shared our podcast

(03:01):
with even one person, because that's how we've grown from
the little podcast that could to a nationally syndicated show
and a pretty darn big audience of loyal podcast listeners,
which is cool because I get to hear from you,
and I'm always eager to hear from you. You can
go to our website, Michael Berryshow dot com and you

(03:23):
can says send Michael an email that comes directly to me.
Once the kids and my wife are put to bed
every night, I get that thing out and read during
the breaks sometimes of the show, when I have a moment,
when someone's late, when I'm early, whatever else.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
I do read.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Every single email, and I do love to hear from
you now to the panel discussion.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Thank you everybody.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
My name is R. J. Pastrido. I am dean of
the School of Statesmanship on the main campus at Hillsdale,
and I teach in the politics department. I'd like to
welcome you to our panel the second this morning's program
on law fair. If you're like me, prior to a
few years ago, you may not have been terribly familiar

(04:09):
with that term, but it's one that has been brought
into our lexicon by the self described defenders of democracy
that we have among us these days, who we know
are in fact very busily moving our country away from
what has been one of the most the most successful

(04:33):
democratic regime in the history of the world, very quickly
bringing it to the precipice of becoming a banana republic,
through a variety of tactics which are probably known to
everybody here. Trying to take one's opponent, the name of

(04:53):
one's opponent off the ballot, this kind of Soviet style,
inviting lunatics to attempt assassination of your opponent, pairing that
with an incredible amount of negligence to make that as
easy as possible, evidently engaging in a comprehensive campaign of censorship,

(05:19):
labeling any speech that opposes the regime, labeling it disinformation,
and going after it in various heavy handed ways. And then,
of course, more to the point of our piano here
this morning, the jail your opponent strategy, not only attempting
to jail the opponent himself, but anyone who might work

(05:43):
for the opponent, and even anyone who might.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Want to give legal representation.

Speaker 4 (05:51):
To the opponent. And this is something that they wouldn't
dare deny the worst criminals that we have, but they're
engaging in it all the time. With the political opposition.
We have a very distinguished panel here this morning to
lead us through a discussion of this. We're going to
begin with Peter Navarro. He is one of only three

(06:15):
White House advisors to serve President Trump all the way
from the campaign through the end of his term. Mister
Navarro served as Manufacturing and Trades are as a labor negotiator.
He then, as I think probably everybody knows, spent four
months in a federal prison, and he did that in

(06:35):
defense of the constitutional separation of powers. His White House
memoirs include the best selling in Trump Time and also
Taking Back Trump's America and I want to also give
a plug for his latest book, which is called The
New Maga Deal, The Unofficial Deplorable's Guide to Donald Trump's

(06:57):
twenty twenty four policy Platine. Please welcome Peter Navorrow.

Speaker 5 (07:10):
Good morning, Hey, just I want to do a plug
for Hillsdale first big fan, never visited, watched them from
Afar for a long time, and I got my doctorate
at Havid. But I'll tell you, if I had college

(07:34):
AD's children right now, I'd send them to Hillsdale before
i'd send them to Harvard. So thank you all for
your generosity, because we need this.

Speaker 6 (07:48):
We need this.

Speaker 5 (07:50):
When I walked into the White House in January twenty seventeen,
if I had encountered a gypsy.

Speaker 6 (08:01):
On the way who read my palm.

Speaker 5 (08:04):
And said, you're going to be speaking at Hillsdale College
event in September of twenty twenty four, I would have
thought that I might be speaking maybe about macroeconomic forecasting,
how's the economy going, Maybe about the state of the

(08:28):
trade deficit in trade relationship, maybe about how to crack
down a communists China. Never did I think i'd be
talking about what it's like to go to prison in
defense of the Constitution. That's where we are right now.
So let me talk a little bit about that. I
want to start off with a couple of quotations that

(08:51):
kind of set the stage for this Closswitch Prussian General.
War is politics by other means. War is politics by
other means. That's what lawfare is. Law fair is politics
by other means. And then you have the great art

(09:14):
of war, sun Zoo. The supreme art of war is
to win without firing a shot, without fighting. It's the
Chinese strategy that they're using on us now. But it's
also the Democrat lawfair strategy, because the modern version of
that is the supreme art of politics is to win

(09:38):
an election without having an election, or at least without
having your candidate that you want on the ballot to
fight their candidate. So is that that's the context, and
what we have here is a situation where the Democrat

(10:00):
have weaponized all three branches of government as well as
their own campaign mechanism in a way which has been
designed to keep Donald Trump in particular off the ballot
and keep advisors like me from serving him, and then

(10:24):
keep other people who might otherwise go into governments from
doing that. That's basically, it's very simple kind of agenda.
So you ask yourself how they go about that. If
you think about the trajectory of law fare, I think

(10:46):
it's fair to say that it began in earnest against
Donald Trump, before he even took office.

Speaker 6 (10:55):
And I remember.

Speaker 5 (10:58):
After election that transition time in Trump Tower, and one
of the great experiences I had was meeting General Mike Flynn,
and he was going to be the National Security Council,
national Security Advisor at the National Security Council, which is
I mean in the White House. That's one of the

(11:19):
most important elements of government. And we had great plans
to finally crack down on China's economic aggression, it's military aggression.

Speaker 6 (11:30):
This, that, and the other thing.

Speaker 5 (11:31):
And he had what amounted to a cup of coffee
in terms of working in the government before they took
him out early on. And it was a great loss,
not just because we didn't have mic in there, because
the next two guys were disasters and got us off mission,

(11:53):
off target and all of that. And so you saw
early on with the Russia hoax, and then throughout the
whole administration with the two impeachments, just a concerted effort
to the lively pushings to tie up Gulliver.

Speaker 6 (12:12):
I mean, that was kind of what they were doing.

Speaker 5 (12:15):
And then January sixth comes along, and that's created the
four years, four years of law fair opportunities unprecedented in
our history, that had been nothing but distract us from

(12:36):
the most important things we have to be doing, including
dealing with communists China, which seems to be a footnote
to a footnote even in the polling. I mean, if
you look at what people are concerned about right now,
communist China isn't even a blip on the horizon, when
in fact, it's in many ways the core source of

(12:57):
all of the many eken and foreign policy problems we face.
So we are once again distracted as a nation. So
just mechanically the way this works, if you think about
what they did to President Trump, you think about what
they did to me, there's there's a there's an interesting

(13:19):
analogs there.

Speaker 7 (13:22):
Right.

Speaker 5 (13:23):
So January sixth, you get a committee that's formed, it's
illegally formed, unduly authorized, it has essentially only one mission.
Mission wasn't to find out what happened on Capitol Hill
that day. We now know it was because Nancy Pelosi
didn't provide guards, and the FBI sent a bunch of

(13:45):
inflammatory instigators up there. That's my view of that. It
was simply to gather evidence by strong arming people with
subpoenas so that they could somehow take Trump out for
the twenty tour for election.

Speaker 6 (14:02):
That's all they were doing. That was it. That's all
they got out of.

Speaker 5 (14:07):
It was an orchestrated circus, and that's what they came
up with, and they did it. They think they did
it very well. You could argue they did it very well.
But in some sense, what they've done is expose this
whole weaponization strategy in a way which has boosted President
Trump's fortunes ironically to them. But what law Fair does

(14:33):
is when they come at you like they have with
President Trump, it's the first best for them is to
put the guy in prison. They thought they could quickly
do that, and you know, they had four years. They
figured they gave a present special prosecutor, they run through
the thing and they get him in prison and they
don't have to worry about them.

Speaker 6 (14:54):
Okay, So that's like that's like the first best goal.

Speaker 5 (14:56):
Well that didn't work out so well, So they got
these other are prosecutions going at Fannie Willison in Georgia,
they got Alvin Bragg in New York. They got these
civil suits going on, and there's there is collusion between them. Okay,
they're coordinating their court dates and this, that and the

(15:16):
other thing in a way which is specifically designed to
keep him off the campaign trail. Okay, and then what's
going on with President Trump? Well, he's having a raise.
This stuff's expensive. I mean for me, it's a million bucks.
I mean think about that million bucks. For him, it's

(15:38):
hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, I'm an economist, right,
There's something called the opportunity costs. Hey, what are those? Well,
that's money. That's money that could have went to the campaign.
Now I can tell you, like I had one case
and one one folks coming at me, and the most
I was going to face.

Speaker 6 (15:58):
Was a couple of years in prison.

Speaker 5 (15:59):
If I got four or five different folks coming at
me with seven hundred years of prison, that might give
me a little upset at night, maybe a little. I
don't know how Donald Trump does that.

Speaker 6 (16:15):
Well I kind of do because I spent four years
with him. He's amazing. But that's another story for another time.

Speaker 5 (16:22):
But what it does is it distracts you, or they
try to distract him from the mission, so they keep
him off the campaign trail, they take away his money,
they distract him.

Speaker 6 (16:34):
What they were trying to do to me simply was
strong army.

Speaker 5 (16:40):
You saw a parade of Trump officials who cal tawd,
bent their knee, testified when that was a violation.

Speaker 6 (16:50):
Of their oath of office.

Speaker 5 (16:53):
It was a violation of their oath of office when
the President invokes executive privilege, when he did for me,
it wasn't my privilege to waive. By law, I had
no right to waive that privilege. It was my duty
to do what I did, which was to tell that
committee two things, one pound sand not doing it, and

(17:17):
two happy to do it. Happy to do it, you
simply caalk to President Trump and get her to waive
the privilege. They did not do that. They didn't even
try to do that. And therein lies the rub. So
I wound up as the first senior White House official

(17:38):
ever charged with a crime that the Department of Justice
said for fifty years was not a crime that by
the constitutional separation of powers, Folks like me have absolute
testimony immunity because, as the Supreme Court has said repeatedly,
executive privilege is necessary for effective presidential decision making because

(18:05):
it provides that, in their words, candor and confidentiality that's
required for such effective presidential decision making.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
So what.

Speaker 5 (18:19):
Is happening now in my world? And you hear I mean,
it's it's pathetic in a way. It's like you hear
Mark Stein talk about twelve years of his life. You
hear Mark Morier come up talk about we shouldn't be
talking about this, We should be talking about the economy,
comedy is China, foreign policy.

Speaker 6 (18:37):
So it's like, but what's happening in my case is
that it's.

Speaker 5 (18:45):
Working its way ups in the Appeals Court now in
the District of Columbia, that's as the biggest cess pool
as you can have. It is as big a cess
pool as you can have in our justice system.

Speaker 6 (18:58):
Two thirds of the judges on the Appeals.

Speaker 5 (19:01):
Court are Democrat appointees, and virtue, all of them are
rigid idia logues who will make decisions not based on
the law, but on their vision of how the.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
Law should be made.

Speaker 5 (19:18):
That's not their job, not their job, but it will
go eventually. I believe to the Supreme Court where the
question of can Congress does Congress have the authority the
subpoena a president or White House officials?

Speaker 6 (19:37):
That will be resolved forever.

Speaker 5 (19:40):
And if the Supreme cord takes it, resolves the way
it should, then what happened to me will be worth it.

Speaker 6 (19:49):
That's what you do, That's what you do, thank you.

Speaker 5 (19:58):
And the other interesting question that came up during the
trial was what's a proper invocation a privilege?

Speaker 6 (20:08):
We had a very clever by half Judge Ahmet madea.

Speaker 5 (20:15):
Yes, a man who raised money for the Obama campaign
and was duly rewarded. He held an evidentiary hearing and
we brought in like a bulldozer with a big mountain
of evidence on the front end of it and things
like that, lopped it down and he said, Nope, President

(20:36):
didn't invoke executive privilege properly. It's like, uh huh, not
his role. That's not what the judicial branch is supposed
to do. So that was a violation of the separation
of ours.

Speaker 6 (20:48):
So what did he do?

Speaker 5 (20:49):
They stripped me of every possible defense and I get
to a DC jury. Mark Stein talked a little bit
about that last night where.

Speaker 6 (21:00):
Ninety five votes for Biden.

Speaker 5 (21:04):
In the jury pool because the jury pools drawn from
the electorate.

Speaker 6 (21:07):
Right, and here we go.

Speaker 5 (21:11):
Now, at that point, what should have happened was I
should have been released pending appeal.

Speaker 6 (21:15):
But the judge didn't even do that, right.

Speaker 5 (21:18):
So I'm going to serve four years four months in prison.
It seemed like four years four months in prison. And
if if I went on appeal, it's like tough luck,
irreparable harm. So it's not well as me. It's like
I went to prison, so you won't have to. My

(21:39):
case illustrates graphically what's wrong exactly with a system where
every person involved in putting me in prison was a Democrat,
every single person, Congressman, attorneys at the Department of Injustice,

(21:59):
jury judge, appeals court judges. That's where we're at, where
we're at now, and that's why we got to win
in November and begin to turn this around, because as
russ Vote said, we are at eleven fifty nine and
that's why we do this.

Speaker 6 (22:20):
All right, Thanks, look forward to your questions.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (22:33):
Next, we have Professor Bradley Smith. He is the Josiah
Blackmore and Shirley Nault professor of Law at Capital University
in Columbus, Ohio, and he has held prior visiting positions
at Princeton and at West Virginia University.

Speaker 6 (22:51):
He is the author or co author of.

Speaker 4 (22:54):
Three books on election law and voting rights, and from
June two thousand until August of two thousand and five,
he served as a commissioner on the Federal Elections Commission,
including a term as vice chairman and chairman.

Speaker 8 (23:09):
Professor Smith, all right, well, thank you, Professor p Studo,
thank you all for coming out. And I think, Peter,
you know, you go through life and you always like
to think if you were put in one of these positions,
you know you'd have that kind of internal fortitude. And
I'm not sure that I would have that internal fortitude.

(23:32):
I'd like to think I would. It's nice to meet
somebody who you know, does I will say, following up
on something Peter mentioned, I also got my degree at Harvard,
and my daughter actually did go to to Hillsdale. So
I presume that I was invited here not only because

(23:55):
of my incredible good looks and sterling wit, but because
I was also listed as an expert witness intended to
testify at the Trump trial in New York, New York
versus Trump, and the judge did allow me to testify.
It's been often reported that he refused to allow me
to testify. Now, he wasn't going to let me testify
as an expert witness, but he wasn't gonna let me
testify tom much other than well, the address of the

(24:16):
Federal Election Commission is and things like that, nothing of
any substance. So I do want to talk because I
think that's probably why they invited me. I do want
to talk a little bit about that as an example
again of how some of this works, follow up on
Peter's comments, and then.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
Talk a little bit more broadly about this concept of
the lawfare.

Speaker 8 (24:36):
So I don't know how closely people were all following
the Trump trial in New York, but basically the charge
against Trump was falsification of business records. Now, this is
a misdemeanor offense, it's not a big deal, and the
statute's limitations had passed on it in any case, So
what the prosecutors had to do was ratcheted up to

(24:57):
a felony measure. Now, by the way, it's not clear
to me that it was a misreporting of any business expenditure.
But that's more than I have time to go into here.
So in any case, they wanted to ratchet up to
a felony. Well, to do that, you have to hold
that it was falsification of business records in order to
cover up another crime. So then you have to decide, okay,
so what is the other crime. Well, it was decided

(25:19):
that the other crime is a part of the New
York Election Code, which makes it illegal to try to
influence an election by unlawful means. Okay, So now we
need some unlawful means by which they're trying to influence election,
because you know, one of the things you try to
do if you're running for public office is to influence

(25:40):
the election. That's actually one of the core things that
you do during the course of the campaign.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
So what were the illegal means that were used.

Speaker 8 (25:47):
It appears to have been assumed that it was a
violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act. Now, as we
start to unpack all that, let's go back to an
opening position here, which is the prosecutor is a fellow
name Alvin Bragg, who ran for office on one of
his positions was that he was the kind of guy
who knew how to put Donald Trump behind bars.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
He would this kind of guy who could get that done.

Speaker 8 (26:10):
It's a partisan office. There a lot of attorneys in
the United States. District attorneys and state attorneys.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
And so on are elected.

Speaker 8 (26:18):
Historically there was a norm, however, that they were supposed
to be nonpartisan law enforcement officers. Bragg and his campaign
bragged that that would not.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
Be the case. He judge was a fellow named Juan Mershon.

Speaker 8 (26:32):
Mershon actually donated to the Biden for President campaign a
vihlation of judicial canon of ethics. It wasn't a large
amount which might be viewed as exculpatory or might be
viewed as he just wanted to make sure that Biden
people knew he was in their camp. But he didn't
want to give much because that would really look bad.
His daughter was a major fundraiser for various Democratic operations

(26:53):
opposed to Trump, but he refused to accuse himself despite
those things. One of the officials prosecuting it had been
a Department of Justice official who was a very high
ranking Department of Justice official left the Department of Justice
to come back and do this like prosecution or this
records offense in New York.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
I don't know what one makes of that, obviously.

Speaker 8 (27:16):
Though I wouldn't want to suggest that the Department of
Justice had anything to do with the state processes in
New York.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
So this was the basic framework here.

Speaker 8 (27:26):
Now, as I mentioned, I was there to talk a
little bit about the Federal Election Campaign Act and how
these things would have been and interpreted, how the FEC
likely would have reacted to this kind of defense.

Speaker 3 (27:37):
And there's a lot here.

Speaker 8 (27:39):
I mean, this is a long explanation that I would
go into, and I'm not going to do that here. Rather,
I just want to highlight a couple points of things
that I did not end up being allowed.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
To testify to.

Speaker 8 (27:52):
One was throughout the trial, it was noted and allowed
in his testimony that David Pecker, he was the published
of the National Inquirer and the National Acquirer Company, had
signed a non prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
Federal prosecutors would.

Speaker 8 (28:07):
Not prosecute them and they would pay a civil fine
to the FEC. They just called up the FEC said Hey,
we want to plead that we did this. We're going
to pay you some money.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
The FC said, oh, I am.

Speaker 8 (28:16):
Sure, we'll take some money from that's fine, and that
was how they did that.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
Pecker did that.

Speaker 8 (28:23):
I think it's pretty clear because they were engaged in
some merger and acquisition talks and they essentially wanted to
clear the decks to get this off their charts.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Anyway, that was allowed in that Pecker.

Speaker 8 (28:34):
Had agreed that they committed this conspiracy to violate the
Federal Election Campaign Act. It was also allowed in Michael
Cohen's plea agreement. Now, Michael Cohen, remember they had him
on tax offenses and a whole bunch of things that
would have put him in prison for many, many years.
He pled guilty to a small federal Russian Campaign Act violation,
served a little bit of time in prison, and his

(28:58):
position was, I think you know that he was going
to then talk about Trump and implicate Trump, and the
theory that prosecutors brought up that became apparent at the
opening argument of the trial. At the opening statement was
that Trump had violated the Federal Action Campaign Act through
these payments to this porn star Stormy Daniels to keep
her quiet about her allegations that she had had an

(29:20):
affair with Trump some ten years prior to the twenty
sixteen campaign. That was the basic framework there, and the
prosecution emphasized that the Trump camp after the remember the
Access Hollywood tape came out and they were the panicked
over now this further allegation they really want this and
Trump's big desire, which Coin testified to and others, Trump

(29:43):
just wanted to put it past the election. We just
got to get this past the election. That was their
theme emphasized over and over. So with that in mind,
just to give you a taste for the trial, one
of the things that I might.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
Have testified too, a couple of things.

Speaker 8 (29:56):
One would be I might have testified to the fact
that the fe in fact chose not to prosecute President Trump,
as did the US Department of Justice, actually chose not
to prosecute President Trump on criminal grounds for fake A
violations federally Ruction Campaign Act violations because for many or
many reasons again that I won't go into in detail,

(30:17):
it's not at all obvious that there was any Federal
Uction Campaign Act violation.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
I think it's pretty clear that there was not.

Speaker 8 (30:24):
Okay, so that was you know that testimony wasn't allowed,
but they did allow in the other quote, co conspirators
to say, yeah, we all played guilty and we violate
the law. Judge Mersham said one reason I couldn't testify
was he was afraid I would testify as to the law.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
And of course it's basic idea that the.

Speaker 8 (30:41):
Judge tells the jury what the law is and expert
witnesses do not. And we try to point out I'm
not going to tell the jury what the law is,
but I'm going to tell them how the law works
in certain circumstances. Well, they wouldn't allow that, but it
was worth noting that he allowed Michael Cohen to repeatedly
tell the jury what the law was on campaign finance
violations and assert that he and Trump had both violated it,

(31:05):
and then, realizing that that was probably a big mistake,
he instructed the jury he said, pay no attention to
those last comments about the defendant's guilt.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
There's are only to give you context.

Speaker 8 (31:14):
Now, I couldn't testify for context, but Michael con cound
test five times.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
I allowed that only give you context.

Speaker 8 (31:18):
You shouldn't use that in considering whether or not the
defendant violated the law. And as I would say, this
is a little bit like if I said to you
all today I said, you know, for the rest of
the day, the one thing I don't want you to
do is think about a yellow VW microbus.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
You're all going to think about.

Speaker 8 (31:32):
That's probably going to be the only thing you'll remember
from this little talk, right is you'll be thinking of
Michael YELLOWVW microbus. So that's all called to the attention. Well,
in any case, I got to get moving along here.
So one of the things I would have pointed out there. Remember,
the theory was they were trying to hide this till
after the election. One of the things I would have
pointed out, without going through the whole system, is that
had they paid for this expense the way that the

(31:53):
prosecution said they should have, it would not have been
reported until December of twenty sixteen under the Federal Election
Campaign Act. So the entire prosecution's theory makes no sense
if you've got this theory that they're trying to violate
the Election Campaign Acts so they don't have to have
this thing become public knowledge when it wouldn't become public
knowledge even if they had.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
Done exactly what the prosecution thought they should do.

Speaker 8 (32:16):
So that's the nature of what was going on in
that prosecution I think there were bad instructions to the jury,
bad evidence, allowed many grounds for appeal.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
We ultimately will have to see what happens.

Speaker 8 (32:27):
So, because it's going to work up through the heavily
democratic New York court system, it's going to be some time,
I think then before it would ever get to the
Supreme Court. And one of the key things here, by
the way, is note that under one of our oldest laws,
the Federal Judiciary Act of seventeen eighty nine, federal offenses
have to be prosecuted in federal court. And they got

(32:47):
this into state court on this flimsy ground that really
we're prosecuting this New York state election law code which
makes it illegal to do this, or that was the
underlying fence for the records violation, which it's the New
York state law. But you know, ultimately it all comes
down to if a jury finds something that no federal
court has found, no federal jury or.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
Judge or anything, and then no federal agency has.

Speaker 8 (33:06):
Found that Trump violated the Federal Action Campaign Act, he
can go to jail if they don't find that he
walks right. That sounds to me like they were trying
a federal offense in the state court. Okay, Well, anyway,
that just gives you a little bit of flavor. And
you know, if that's not enough for you, you can
always try to corner me later and I'll give you
all the juicy details. But for now, let me just

(33:27):
talk a little bit. So I've got about five minutes
left about the Lawfair more generally, I think it's a
mistake to think that Lawfair is just focused on Trump
and Peter talked about this a bit, and it goes
a lot further even than the Trump administration. I think
this is important really to understand. You know, they go
after lawyers who represented Trump and other people and trying
to get them disbarred. They've gone after other lawyers and

(33:52):
other capacities. For example, Montana's Republican Attorney general now has
complaints have filed against him in an effort to bar
him in Montana because in a dispute between the Montana
Legislature and the Montana Supreme Court, again a complicated issue,
he represented the Montana Legislature and of necessity had to

(34:13):
say that the Montana Supreme Court should lose this case.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
And essentially they said.

Speaker 8 (34:19):
Well, you were demeaning the court, and that's a violation
of the Ethics Code, and they're trying to just bar
him for that, for representing his client. The legislature asked
the state's attorney general, which is his obligation to do.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
We see ordinary people.

Speaker 8 (34:32):
There's a poll worker in Michigan who thought one of
the other pole workers or election officials and making bad decisions,
and he went out in the hall and he made
some stupid comments to a friend.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
He said, Oh, that's treason. They ought to be hanged. Well,
you know, first, it's ridiculous, it's not treats. They shouldn't
be hanged.

Speaker 8 (34:47):
But but you know, this is just a comment made
to another person there. But at least one other person
overheard this, and several months later, this other person reported it,
and now they're prosecuting this person for death threats.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Right now, I'll be thought it was a death threat.

Speaker 8 (35:02):
This is the kind of comment people make when they're
a little excited and they're in a private conversation with somebody.
I mean, obviously the person who reported it didn't think
it was a death threat.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
It's not like she went running to the police. Oh
my gosh, she wants to kill the guy who's in there.

Speaker 8 (35:13):
You know, nobody thought that they're prosecuting him now for that.
One of the things I do is I had an
organization called the Institute for Free Speech. In recent years,
we've had to spend a fair amount of time offering
pro bono legal services to moms and other parents and
stuff who are being denied the right to speak at
school board meetings or threatened with prosecutions and so on.
And some of you may recall the memo that went

(35:34):
out from the Attorney General's office a couple of years
ago talking about these terrorist threats in the school districts
and that sort of thing. These are all forms of lawfare,
and they're designed to intimidate people and get people out
of participating. A case in New York that the Supreme
Court decided favorably earlier this year.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
It's a case called.

Speaker 8 (35:52):
Vilo versus the National Rifle Association, was an open attempt
by New York's state Attorney General, who had campaigned on
this platform to shut down the and it was held that,
you know, she could not do that. She was trying
to pressure banks and other operations not to do business
with the NRA by threatening them with regulatory actions and
then saying, oh, we didn't do.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
Anything to the NRA, it's just those private other entities,
the banks and so on.

Speaker 8 (36:16):
So all of these are forms of lawfare, and we
should notice well that lawfare can also take the form
of not prosecuting people that right now we have prosecutors
around the country, these liberal democratic prosecutors who are simply
excusing whole categories of crime from being prosecuted. Now, prosecutors
always have prosecutorial discretion as to a lot of people

(36:37):
in the law enforcement system. You know, your average police
chief is going to get mad if he's got an
officer who's out there just ticketing people left and right
for jaywalking.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
It's going to say, you know, that's not really an
efficient use of our resources. It's not what we want
to be doing.

Speaker 8 (36:48):
That's perfectly acceptable and normal. What's different is simply saying
it's not just that these kinds offenses are not priorities
to us, but simply, as a categorical matter, we are
not going to prosecute them. We essentially them out of
the law book in any circumstance. And that's a form
of lawfare, because of course it can be used against
the you know, to excuse actions by people on your side,

(37:09):
whether it's acts, whether it's acts of violence engaged in
during what's the term mostly peaceful protest or, or whether
it's you know, something else that somebody has done that
creates this two tier system of justice. And this is
I think very damaging to the rule of law. It's

(37:31):
very damaging to our republic, and the idea that you
know somebody is a threat to democracy. This is a
real threat to one of the core values that we
hold dear in democracy. And the one final thing I
would leave you with is just this, I urge you
to try to educate yourself on these points. In some
of these specific examples, I've not been able to go
into them in detail, but just allude to them because

(37:53):
the left doesn't know this. There are a lot of
actually good faith people on the left who would be
appalled by this, and they have no idea, idea what
you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
I'd be like, lawfair, what's that?

Speaker 8 (38:03):
Probably everybody in this room kind of knew something about
Lawfair before today. They have nothing on that, they have
nothing in their registry, they don't get it from their
media sources and so on. And so we need to
actually tell them that this is going on. Thank you
very much.

Speaker 4 (38:25):
Finally, we have Byron York, who is a chief political
correspondent for The Washington Examiner and also a Fox News contributor.
He has covered the Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden administrations,
as well as Congress and each presidential campaign since two thousand.
He is the author of two books, The Vast Left

(38:48):
Wing Conspiracy, which is an account of liberal activism in
the two thousand and four election, and Obsession, an account
of the Democratic efforts to remove President Trump from office.

Speaker 9 (39:00):
Right, Thank you very much, and thank you to Hillsdale
for having me, but also for doing this. It's really
important for us to be talking about it and listening
to what was said. I had the thought that a

(39:27):
lot of us talk about law fair as the four
cases for prosecutions against Donald Trump, and I think it's
important to note that those legal charges against Trump, which
have gotten so much attention, came after decades of abuse
of the actual constitutional process of investigating alleged wrongdoing among presidents.

(39:55):
And I would go back, I mean, you got to
go back to Watergate in this and they passed the
Independent Council Law in nineteen seventy eight, and it is
used very successfully to torture Republican administrations.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
In the nineteen.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Eighties, they love it.

Speaker 9 (40:15):
There was a very long around Contra investigation there or
other investigations. We had this same sort of situation of
administration officials going to court, being bankrupted by their legal
expenses and going to jail. And as it happened, the
law was set to expire in nineteen ninety two and Republicans,

(40:39):
and what I guess was an active statesmanship, said to Democrats,
let it die. Do not under any circumstances renew it.
Don't do it. But they had a new president at
that time, Bill Clinton, who was a Democrat who felt
apparently certain that he would not be investigated by these things,
and he.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
Said, no, no, we have got to ren this law.

Speaker 9 (41:00):
It's absolutely essential to maintaining public integrity in the United States.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
So they read into the law.

Speaker 9 (41:06):
And within a year Clinton has an independent council, and
then he has more independent councils. Then he has a
kind of star, the late kind of Star, who by
the way, really opposed the law, but said, look, Congress
passed it, the President signed it, and the Supreme Court
upheld it. And you know, the Supreme Court had upheld

(41:29):
it in this famous case called Morrison versus Olsen, and
it was decided seven to one in favor of upholding
that law. And the one was antonin Scalia who said,
this law is just reeks of threatened impeachment. What it
means is you can appoint an independent council who was

(41:52):
basically the the investigative arm, the weaponized arm of the
House Judiciary Committee, and he'll do all the work, give
it to the House Judiciary Committee, and they will impeach
the president. And darned if that didn't happen in nineteen
ninety eight. And you know, in the first one hundred
years the Republic, he had one impeachment, and then the

(42:14):
second you had one threatened impeachment, and then the last
twenty five years we've had three. So something something is
wrong here. So after Clinton, basically you see more threatened impeachments.
I mean, maybe we forget the number of Democrats who

(42:35):
wanted to impeach George W.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
Bush.

Speaker 9 (42:37):
When John Conyers, the Democrat became chairman of the House
Judiciary Committee.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
He tried to impeach Bush.

Speaker 9 (42:44):
In two thousand and seven. And this kept on and
on until we get to January twentieth, twenty seventeen, when
Donald Trump is inaugurated. It's inauguration Day and at twelve
nineteen pm, the Washington Post published an article and the

(43:06):
headline was, the campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.
And Trump had been president at that point for nineteen minutes.
And what we saw was a series of investigations, the
whole what Trump calls the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
But we were off to the races.

Speaker 9 (43:32):
And I think the thing that has been so disturbing
to so many people about the actual prosecutions of the
post presidential prosecutions has been that they've seen this process
of Trump being attacked in the press and then being
investigated and then being impeached, and then the question is, well,
what's next. So the answer was to try to bankrupt

(43:56):
him and put him in jail, and that's what we've seen,
and very recently we've seen that not work out too
well for some of the prosecutors involved here, that cases
have either fallen apart for lack of evidence or for novelty,
or for their own misconduct. And as we've seen, the

(44:19):
law Fair campaign actually fail to actually put Trump behind bars.
There was a lot of worry among Republicans. Okay, if
that doesn't work, what comes after that? And the fear,
of course, had been that some unbalanced individual would decide
that assassinating Trump would be the only way to solve

(44:43):
the Trump problem. And of course we've seen two attempts
of that just in the last two months.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
So you know, I spent last night.

Speaker 9 (44:53):
I went back and I watched Peter's speech to the
Republican Convention, and it was a spirited speech and basically
the point was, look, they'll do it to me, They're
ultimately going to get around to doing it to you
two unless we stop it.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
And the question is, well, how do you stop it?

Speaker 9 (45:14):
And in the one sense, the lesson of the Independent
Council law in the nineteen nineties was that if it
comes around and bites the other side on the behind,
maybe they'll agree to let it die, which is what
happened after the Clinton impeachment. The law came up for
renewal again and everybody agreed that it was a bad
idea and they let it die.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
So, yes, if you do it to the other side,
perhaps that.

Speaker 9 (45:40):
Will change their minds on the other hand. After the
Independent Council law died in two thousand and one or so,
this whole process just started again.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
We've had all.

Speaker 9 (45:54):
These abuses occur after the demise of this unconstitutional law.
So I hate to give a pessimistic assessment here, but
I think that if you talk to Democrats about the
law fair campaign that we've seen recently, Obviously the idea
was to put Trump in jail, but the secondary goals

(46:18):
were to keep him off the campaign trail, keep him
locked in a courtroom where to bankrupt him we're and
also just to get in his head. And I frankly
believe that he is not. His campaign is not really
hitting on all cylinders right now, and it's partly a
result of all of the incredible stress that not one,

(46:43):
not two, not three, but four indictments plus lawsuits that
were designed to destroy his business and take.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
All his money.

Speaker 9 (46:53):
That has an effect on people. I mean, maybe even
if you're not seventy eight years old, it has an
effect on people. And Trump appears to have on almost
supernatural level of energy, but it has an effect on people.
I interviewed him at mar A Lago a few months ago,
and and I asked him about this effect because he

(47:18):
he had. He at times seems mortified that it has
all happened to him. I don't know if you've watched
his speech as much, but he talks about his parents
in heaven looking down on him, saying, how did our
son get indicted more than more times than al Capone?

Speaker 2 (47:33):
And so that's his that's his joke line.

Speaker 9 (47:36):
But I think he's appalled and mortified that this happened
and the so I asked him about it, and he
said he was surprised. And this is the Alvin Bragg indictment,
which was the that Brad was talking about. It's the
first first indictment that happened. And I said, you were surprised, really,

(47:58):
he says yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
I said well.

Speaker 9 (48:01):
Why and he said because I'd been listening to all
those lawyers who said there wasn't a case. And I said, well,
you know, there really wasn't a case, and he said,
well that didn't matter, obviously, and he was kind of
the victim of old thinking that it would matter whether
there was a case or not for him to be indicted.
So I think that you would have to say, just

(48:25):
in terms of taking Trump off his game, making things
more difficult for him and showing him that there is
a price to to keep running for president. I think
the Lawfair campaign has had some level of success. And
obviously the judge is going to sentence Trump after the election.

(48:49):
He's put it off until after the election, but that's
hanging over his head.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
The judge can put Trump.

Speaker 9 (48:53):
In jail if he wants, and so this is an
extraordinarily serious moment. And Trump has spent months locked up
in courtrooms or in legal battles, and now he's.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Hunkered down against assassination attempts.

Speaker 9 (49:11):
He's having to constrict the way he operates, do more
of it behind bulletproof class. I do think that the
campaign to cripple Trump has had its effect. It's an
extraordinary testimony to him that he keeps going at this level.
It's really pretty amazing. But but I think the pessimistic,

(49:40):
pessimistic message I would give about this is that so
far Lawfair has actually worked, and I think we're going
to have to see some new development that perhaps we
can't predict to see it finally, finally stop thank.

Speaker 4 (49:57):
You, okay, thank you to our panelists. There's one observation,
quick observation I would make before we turned to discussion,
and that is I think the tie between this panel

(50:17):
on law fair and the panel earlier this morning on
the administrative state. And that is to say that in
both of those instances, you have a circuit Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia that is not minding
the store. That Court of Appeals is responsible for hearing
appeals from trials that are brought here in the Washington

(50:41):
DC area. And it's also the Court of Appeals that
is the natural place where citizens could take an administrative
agency to court to challenge abuses of the law and
the constitution, and that is the court. Some may remember
that Harry Reid back during the Obama administration, took a

(51:03):
lot of trouble to pack. He was actually went out
of his way to kill the filibuster so that he
could pack that court with leftist ideologues. And we are
now paying the price for that. Whether this is a
court that should should be the adults in the room
to rein in the administrative agencies to throw out some

(51:24):
of these ridiculous prosecutions. But now, of course everything has
to end up at the Supreme Court of the United States,
and that's always a risky venture. So that's just the
gift that keeps on giving, it seems to me, and
it's appropriate to understand that for both of our panels
this morning, I'd like to see if there are any
comments that the panelists themselves have with respect to one

(51:47):
another's presentations, or if they would prefer that I simply
throw it open to the audience. I'm reading, throw it
open to the audience. So yep, you know there are
how this works. There are microphones going around, so if
you would like to ask a question, please make yourself
known by raising your hand and wait for the microphone

(52:09):
to come to you, and don't try to grab the
microphone away. As you may have noticed, they won't give
it to you.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
So thank you, yes.

Speaker 10 (52:19):
Sir Peter, God bless you for what you've sacrificed.

Speaker 5 (52:29):
And and my fiance there, Bonnie sitting in the front,
give her a bigger hand, Blaze. What they don't understand
is when they put people like me in prison, they
put our family in prison too.

Speaker 6 (52:43):
So that's what I will like, condet.

Speaker 10 (52:48):
I would throw this open to anybody on the panel
and including R Jay that wants to respond. It seems
to me that the Democrats are at war with the
Trumpet administration, the MAGA group, and many, many, many people
are facing Mark Jeff Clark, we go on for twenty

(53:08):
minutes about a number of people who are their lives
are being ruined by the Democratic Party. Here here's my issue.
It seems to me that there was a cornucopia of
things that the Republican House of Representatives could have done
in opposition to what was being done to you and
Bannon and Trump and everybody else. Seems to me that

(53:30):
the governor of Georgia, Kemp, could have stepped in and
done a lot with the Fanny Willis mess down there.
And we've got plenty of red state governors that could
have done what Mike Davis calls the dead Chicken strategy
and taken out people on the Democratic side in red states.

(53:51):
Why is it that the Republican Party seems so impotent,
including the Supreme Court?

Speaker 5 (53:57):
Supreme Court, that's an easy lift, And I wish the
first panel at least touched on this, because we have
to be honest with ourselves. The Republican Party itself has
yet to coalesce around the principles of Trump Republicanism. There's

(54:26):
the original traditional Republicanism of Wall Street, which focuses on
principles like a lower tax burd and a lower regulatory burden,
a small government, and all of that which Donald Trump
folks who serve him like me, certainly embraced. But the
Trump Revolution really and I talk about this in the

(54:48):
book You guys referenced a New Maga Deal because I
wrote that book because when we lost the twenty twenty
two election, I thought that there wasn't a really strong
defen defense of MAGA. I mean, I went watching a
Trump last night on Gutfield. It was hilarious and very relaxed.
I don't know if any of you saw that, but

(55:08):
that's who he is. That's that's who Donald Trump is.
But he was going, he was like going, how can
Joe Biden attack megas extremists? That you know what it stands,
we make America great again? Right and so so for
me and the reason why I wound up in the
Trump administration was was what we call the iron Maga triangle.
It's it's very simply a strong manufacturing and defense at

(55:31):
industrial base that you bring about through things like terriffs
by American higher American things by the way, which are
anapthoma to the traditional Rhino Republican Party which prefers offshoring
jobs and ensuring cheap labor.

Speaker 6 (55:49):
Across our southern border.

Speaker 5 (55:51):
The second thing on that triangle is secure borders, again
anapthoma to the Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan Wing and frankly
half of the donors to Heritage. Right, there's a real
skisse in there. Well, we have to look in the
mirror and acknowledge. And then the third thing is the

(56:11):
end analyst wars. And you know those words were started
by Republicans. That was a Bush Cheney war. That's why
Liz Cheney hates Donald Frum because he explained exactly why
that was a waste of blood and treasure of this country.
So when you asked me, why the Speaker of the House,

(56:32):
when he got the gavels Republican did nothing, nothing, nothing
to help Donald Trump's the man and Peter Navarro, JF. Clark,
John Eastman and all the others who would be fed
into the meat grinder of Liz Cheney and Benny Thompson.

Speaker 6 (56:51):
It simply because there's.

Speaker 5 (56:53):
An element of the party which did not want Donald
Trump to be on the ballot and they're in action
was action.

Speaker 6 (57:03):
And shame on them. Shame shame on them, sir.

Speaker 5 (57:07):
And it goes on to this day with the current
House Speaker. I mean, they're they're they're crickets on that.
But we have to we have to win in November,
and then we have to consolidate this country around the
principles of Trump Republicanism, which is main street Middle America. Uh,

(57:33):
it's strong manufacturing base, its secure borders, it's an end
analysts wars, and it's to stop on the war by
the way, on Christianity. And that's what we have to
come together on. So thank you for that question. It's
very insightful.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
Any other I got comments?

Speaker 8 (57:57):
Uh, you know, so maybe putting myself in the squishy
Republican camp.

Speaker 3 (58:03):
I mean, one of the.

Speaker 8 (58:04):
Issues you always have in life is, you know, will
you adopt the tactics of your enemy?

Speaker 3 (58:10):
When should you do that? It's a question is at the.

Speaker 8 (58:14):
Core of Lord of the rings, right, will you seize
the ring of power to use against the enemy and
so on. It's a very tough question to answer, and
it's very tough to know when you have reached that
point where that's really the alternative.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
You have to do.

Speaker 8 (58:30):
You know, one of the best things I think Trump
did that for which she never got any credit, was
shortly after he took offviously said we're not going to
lock up Hillary Clinton. So that was kind of a
fun thing on the campaign trailer. It's just like a joke,
you know. It was kind of like good humor, you know,
and expressing the fact that we're not very happy with
her and we think she may have in fact violated
the law, but you know, we're not going to try to.

Speaker 3 (58:49):
Take out this vindictiveness on our opponents.

Speaker 8 (58:52):
He didn't get a lot of thanks for that or
much praise. He was not reciprocated in that. And you
see that where I just reminded very vaguely of you know,
the Antebellum period and the rise of the Republican Party.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
Then you had all kinds of.

Speaker 8 (59:08):
Violence in Congress and people getting you know, people are
familiar with a lot of people with Charles Sumner the
Center from Massachusetts being caned nearly to death on the
floor of the Senate. But there was a lot of
violence in Congress. Fist sites that would break out, threats
with guns and so on. And one of the early
reasons for the rise of the Republican Party was people saying, finally,
we want somebody who's going to go in there and
be tough fight back against those slaveholder types who are

(59:31):
used to you know, they're trying to push us around
just like their slaves and stuff, and.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
So we you know, really idea, but it is.

Speaker 8 (59:37):
It is a very you know, and of course we
ended up with the Civil War well good, bad, you know,
and the ugly. It's a very, very tough decision to make.
So I don't think we should be too harsh on
people who have not hit the point where they're ready
to say, you know, we need to adopt their tactics.
And I think it is at some point a utilitarian

(59:58):
question is.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
This the only way to stop?

Speaker 8 (01:00:00):
But I'm not sure it is, because you know, oftentimes
the end result of taking that approach is that the
other side just ramps up its tactics, and you know,
you see that people make the argument like Byron mentioned
the filibuster deal when they brought busted the filibuster for
judicial nominees so they could add all these people to
the DC circuit, and the argument, hey, you may regret this, well,

(01:00:22):
I mean they do regret it because Trump was able
to get people on the Supreme Court without having them filibustered.
But I'm not sure they really regret it. I think
they viewed as well, we got the d C Circuit.
Not many cases actually get to the Supreme Court, and
you know, when we get the presidency back, we're just
going to cram through our people. I mean, I don't
know that you get the reaction you always think you're
going to get. And that's one reason that you have

(01:00:44):
to be cautious about that. I honestly don't know what
the right answer is and when to step forward. And
I would say I would disagree with the notion that
Republicans did nothing. Jim Jordan, my former student, I'm proud
to say, you know, led numerous investigations. Others in the
House did as well. They got a lot of information
out there. The fact that it's not reported on by
the press, the fact that it doesn't deter Democratic officials,

(01:01:06):
I'm not sure I would dismiss that as nothing or
refusal to take action.

Speaker 6 (01:01:10):
So let me be clear exactly about what they did
not do.

Speaker 5 (01:01:16):
What they did not do is repudiate the formation of
the original January sixth Committee.

Speaker 6 (01:01:27):
They're very clear rules as to.

Speaker 5 (01:01:30):
How such committees should be formed, and those rules are
designed to preserve bipartisanship and objectivity. And what's supposed to
happen is you are supposed to have an even balance
on the committee of the parties, with whichever party in

(01:01:53):
power to have a slight edge. What's supposed to happen
is you're supposed to have a ranking member. And what's
supposed to happen is that when subpoenas are issued, there's
supposed to be a process whereby there's bipartisan.

Speaker 6 (01:02:10):
Input on that.

Speaker 5 (01:02:12):
What Nancy Pelosi did was unprecedented, unprecedented in the history
of our republic. What she did was essentially circumvent congressional
law to set up a committee which had two few
members that was consistent. Consisted of seven Democrats, most of

(01:02:35):
whom had been involved with both impeachments, and two Republicans
who were truly Republicans in name only Liz Cheney, who
had an axe to grind in Adam Kinsinger, both of
whom are gone now. Neither one of them were approved
by the minority. Kevin McCarthy was the person at the time,

(01:03:02):
and he had put forth five members to put on
that committee, including Jim Jordan, my friend. And what should
have been done immediately after the election and the gavel
moved over to the Republicans, is that that committee should

(01:03:23):
have been repudiated and what the evidence that they had
gathered should have been ordered released to the public.

Speaker 6 (01:03:34):
It was not repudiated.

Speaker 5 (01:03:36):
There's still something on the desk of Jim Jordan and
James Comber and those folks sitting there rotting.

Speaker 4 (01:03:43):
Well.

Speaker 5 (01:03:44):
Donald Trump hangs in the winds. Steve Bannons in prison
and I got out and there's there and so what
that what that does is it sets a precedent, and
so when so the Republicans can go in and start

(01:04:04):
supenion Democrats. And what we need there's only one word.
It's not retribution. It's accountability. It's accountability. If we do
not get accountability, we will get what we've got. So
this is not a time to be timid. And I
don't think I don't think it's a close call on
this one, not at all.

Speaker 11 (01:04:27):
Okay, we have a question over here, please, Yes, this
has to do with using their weapons against them. We've
had an administration that, among other things, has dumped thousands
of known felons in red districts. Couldn't we have some
of these district attorneys and solidly Republican counties bring charges.

(01:04:49):
I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but it seems like
these ought to be crimes committed by majorcas and the
president and other folks. My point being that they use
local you know, officials to bring charges against us, why
can't we do the same thing.

Speaker 5 (01:05:08):
This is what we want to avoid, to be honest,
I mean, this is the kind of crap that that's
going to stop us from dealing with with big problems.
But but I think, I think the accountability issue, if
you look at what's happened to me, it's a clear
clay case of election interference. Okay, every everything that's transpired

(01:05:33):
with Garland Smith Bragg willis even the judges like mar
Shawn Okay, if it can be shown, as I believe
it is, that there was any kind of tacit or
explicit collusion or coordination between any of that, then it's

(01:05:54):
clear that that's election interference and they need to be prosecuted.
I'm not looking for little here, but I do believe
that there should be a case made against Garland Smith
Bragg and willis for election interference.

Speaker 6 (01:06:12):
See, that's what they're doing. That's what they're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
I just have to I wasn't gonna I was gonna
let this go.

Speaker 8 (01:06:19):
I have there's no general crime against election interference. You
actually have to have a specific crime. And there may
be ethical rules, and there may be other things that
people are not allowed to do. But the fact that
a bunch of people get together and at least if
they're acting within their legal authority, even if they're abusing

(01:06:43):
their legal authority, it's not clear that that's a crime.
It may just be something voters hopefully would take into account,
but unfortunately, for example, New York City voters won't. But
you can't just go around saying they interfered with the election.
Let's prosecute them.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
Tell me what the actual crime is.

Speaker 8 (01:07:00):
Don't Donald Trump them and say, oh, well, you know,
we think he was doing something and they and they
kind of hinge together. This Jerry Mannard theory. Now, maybe
you know, maybe that takes us back to the earlier
discussion do you want do you want your conservative prosecutors
and legislators and so on to take to adopt the
other side's tactics?

Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
Maybe you do.

Speaker 8 (01:07:21):
It's a very tough argument. But the point is, even
if you do, you still got to get a crime.
You still got to find the crime someplace. So that's
the tough question that we're faced with at this point
in time. And I would not say, for example, even
in the House, that they did nothing.

Speaker 3 (01:07:38):
They did repudiate the January sixth committee. What can they do?
What are they supposed to do?

Speaker 8 (01:07:42):
Try to burn every copy of the report that exists?
I mean, you know, so we have to get realistic
about what we're trying to do, sir.

Speaker 5 (01:07:49):
If they had, if they had repudiated that early, Bannon
would not be in prison, Sir, I don't know, would
not be in prison.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
I don't understand it. You mean Peter in prison? Peter,
I don't understand, sir.

Speaker 6 (01:08:05):
Was that the.

Speaker 12 (01:08:06):
Committee was illegally formed and duly authorized.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
I don't understand what you mean.

Speaker 12 (01:08:12):
Ken on day one had said yeah, it was unduly
authorized and improperly constituted, Bannon would not have been convicted.

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):
I don't know, sir.

Speaker 6 (01:08:23):
See that. Please.

Speaker 8 (01:08:24):
You're obviously not going to let me respond, but I'll
try to respond. I don't know that that's the case.
In fact, I don't think it is. Kevin McCarthy pulled
his five Republicans from the committee when Pelosi wouldn't seat
the people exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:08:35):
That he wanted. I mean, I don't know what it means.

Speaker 8 (01:08:37):
To say they should repudiate the report, what legal effect
that has. It seems to me Republicans have been pretty
clear about that. So that's the issue that we have
to come to grips with, is we're dealing with the
abuse of legal processes. But that doesn't mean you can
just make stuff up and say they're abusing the process.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):
Let's get them.

Speaker 8 (01:08:55):
You've got to have the legal hook that's going to work,
and that's what you have to do.

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
And it's terrible what happened, Peter, It's terrible it happened
to other.

Speaker 8 (01:09:03):
People, right, But you can't just respond by saying, well,
if only Kevin McCarthy had done something.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
What what was he supposed to do? Was he supposed to
go Caine Nancy Pelosi on the floor of the House
or something.

Speaker 8 (01:09:14):
Okay, if that's where you are, I will tell you
flat out I'm not there. I'm not there, And nor
am I proud to be speaking for a group where
a lot of people are there.

Speaker 3 (01:09:23):
But if you want to go cane people in the house, great,
you go to it.

Speaker 4 (01:09:26):
I think we're gonna let me think we're going to
move on to the next I think we're going to
move on to the next question.

Speaker 3 (01:09:30):
I think it would be better if over here.

Speaker 9 (01:09:34):
I don't know it's a non combatant in this I
do want to do. You want to say one thing,
which is it's it's not an accident that a lot
of these prosecutions of Trump have come from New York.
The Egen Carol lawsuit was in New York. The Leticia
James lawsuit was in New York. The Alvin Bragg prosecution

(01:09:57):
was in New York. These were places where elected officials,
elected Democratic officials exceeded, in my view of their authority,
but there was nobody going to stop them because the
whole system was that way. And the other cases we've
seen was an elected Democratic prosecutor in Fulton County, Georgia,

(01:10:20):
and then two cases from the prosecutor chosen by the
Biden Justice Department.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
And so the Georgia case has kind of fallen apart.

Speaker 9 (01:10:28):
But the only case that has found itself outside of
the enclaves of New York or the District of Columbia,
which Mark Stein very eloquently talked about the justice system
in Washington, d C. The only one was this case
in Florida, the classified documents case, which the Trump attackers

(01:10:53):
could not count on a fully partisan situation. The one
problem I think you have when you say, well, Republicans
need to give them a taste of their own medicine
is you have to look at the specific circumstances that
these people used, which was one party jurisdictions where they

(01:11:13):
could just do what they wanted, and that probably won't
be replicated very much in the future. But you do
have to remember the incredible partisan advantage to Democrats in
New York, New York State and in the Biden Justice
Department managed to push these with which they managed to

(01:11:35):
push these cases through.

Speaker 6 (01:11:37):
I have time for one last question here.

Speaker 7 (01:11:40):
I don't know if this is going to help the
situation at all. It has been an extraordinary panel. You
all have explained to us how how horrific the situation is.
You have all said over and over again they should

(01:12:02):
have it was against the law, they violated all the principles,
and then you have summed up what the critical question
is now what do we do about it? I describe
it in a more benign way. It's we're playing cricket
and they're playing Australian rugby.

Speaker 6 (01:12:21):
So how do you get that together?

Speaker 7 (01:12:24):
You have one side that has rules, clearly stated rules,
moral rules that have grounded this country for cent a century,
two centuries, and then you have the other side that
totally ignores all the rules. When I talked to the
young lawyer who did the Dobs case before the Supreme
Court and said, what do we do patients? Patients work

(01:12:45):
on it, keep trying. And then I said to him,
the Dark Ages lasted six hundred years? Is that what
you mean by patients? So, yes, it is a dilemma.
They're immoral, they're doing illegal things.

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
What do we do?

Speaker 7 (01:12:59):
Pray?

Speaker 3 (01:13:07):
Who wants to take that one on? That's the issue,
That's exactly the issue.

Speaker 5 (01:13:12):
I think we have a split between the Old Testament
over on this side and the New Testament over there.
You know, that's why we have good discussions. When you
leave here, you can choose kind of what you do.
But what do we do here? Is I do believe
that that if President Trump gets elected, his first priorities

(01:13:33):
or the economy, foreign policy, securing the border, dealing with
crime in our cities, and restoring our energy dominance. But
we can walk and chew gum at the same time,
and we damn well have better hold those people accountable
for what they did, and it can be done under
the current laws. I humbly disagree with my colleague there.

(01:13:57):
Election interference can be it's trewed right now under the
law as being against the law. After all, didn't they
accuse Trump of that? Didn't they accuse him of that?

Speaker 4 (01:14:09):
So we can do that too, if I could, If
I could just follow up on that point and see
if uh, there's a commentary on this, if I understand
the Georgia case, which I don't pretend to understand, and detail, Uh,
didn't they use a rico a Rico like statute there
to sort of turn into a take a generalized accusation

(01:14:30):
of election interference? Uh, in somewhat like the like the
way that Peter is talking about. And might uh, I'm
not necessarily advocating that, but might that not be a
legal mechanism or a legal vehicle to pursue claims like this?

Speaker 8 (01:14:46):
Well, they tied Let me let me just I mean,
they tied it to a specific part of the election code.
Now I think they twisted that section of the code
and they set it and but that takes us back
to the quiquestion again again. First, you've got to have
the section of the code. You got to have an
actual offense. And then you know, how much are you

(01:15:07):
willing to twist the law to get to that offense.
And that's the question, and that's the question everybody's got
to decide at some point.

Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
I just suggest that it is a really big step, not.

Speaker 8 (01:15:17):
Necessarily wrong step, I honestly don't know, but it's a
big step to say, yeah, we're going to be like them,
We're going to use their tactics. There may be times
when you need to do that in life, though, and
so each person's got to think about that.

Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
But even then, you've got to have an offense.

Speaker 8 (01:15:33):
You know, even in New York they had something they
could start to hook this little daisy chain onto, and
you've got to have that somewhere.

Speaker 9 (01:15:40):
But in the present moment, the first thing the only
thing you can really do is win the election.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
Yeah if.

Speaker 4 (01:15:53):
Yeah, so I think we can agree this is this
is a debate that we'd like to get to have
in a couple of months, and so I'd like to
thank our panelists and let everybody know that we have
lunch that will follow in the room over there. Thank
you very much.

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