The Biden-Harris Transfer: Can They Do This?

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hans van Sparkowski joined us for afew minutes from the Heritage Foundation, And
I'm interested, particularly Hans this morningand the many messes of the Democratic Party
these days, but particularly you,as a former member of the FEC.
What issues are there that they don'tseem to be paying any attention to regarding

(00:23):
a new candidate and delegates and moneyand all of that going to the convention.
Well, you know, it's reallyinteresting because they're up against a very
short deadline. In almost all ofthe states. Half the states have August
deadlines for a political party to notifystate election officials of who their presidential nominee

(00:52):
is so that they can get thatname onto the general election ballot and get
them printed. Now a small handfulof states have an early September deadline,
but they've got to do it reallyquickly or they're going to be too late.
And you know, Garry, thisproblem has gotten worse in the last

(01:14):
decade because so many states have putin early voting. I mean, in
Virginia these days, for example,where I live, early voting starts forty
five days before election days, andabsentee ballots also Now so many people are
using those and those have all gotto get printed and ready, So that

(01:34):
alone is a real deadline for themthat they have to meet. What would
happen theoretically if ballasts didn't get printedcorrectly and somebody voted early and they voted
for Joe Biden, what would happen? Would that vote just well, right,
I don't look, it's going todepend on the rules of that state,

(01:57):
But I don't think that ballot wouldcount just for that race, though.
I assume just for that race exactly, all the ballots for everybody else
would count, I mean the votesfor all the other candidates on it,
but I don't think it would forJoe Biden. I saw the current chairman

(02:20):
of the FEC the other night onFox and he said, typically what happens
when something strange occurs leading up toan election, the campaign will come to
the FEC and ask for guidance.And he hasn't heard squat from the Harris
Biden Biden Harris campaign, Yeah,well, I don't think he will.
Why would he? The whole pointwhat he's talking about is they have what's

(02:43):
called an advisory opinion process. Acampaign can send a letter to the FBC
saying we would like to take thefollowing actions. Is this legal under the
law, and then the FBC looksat it and decides whether it is or
isn't an she's an advisory opinion.But in this situation, why would they

(03:05):
want to do that? If theysend a if they send a letter in
saying oh, no, Kamala Harris, no, she doesn't have the legal
right to have access to all ofthe money that the Biden for President campaign
has already raised. They don't wantto have an advisory opinion back. They'd

(03:29):
rather just use the money, spendit. And so what if somebody files
a complaint? It takes the FPCupwards of a year two years to investigate
a supposed violation of campaign finance laws. So somebody files that they spend the

(03:49):
money, somebody files a complaint,the fc investigates, maybe a year from
now, two years, they say, oh, you have to pay a
civil penalty, a fine of acouple of million dollars. What do they
do? That's right, that's agood point. We were chatting earlier,
Scott and me Hants about tonight atseven am time, the President will come

(04:10):
out with what is sold as anexplanation for why he dropped out of the
race, and man, they gotto be up all night crafting a language
for this. What do you thinkhe'll say. I don't think you know
what. I really don't know whathe can say, because remember, just
a couple of days before, allof a sudden, we get this letter

(04:32):
where he takes himself out of therace. He was when people asked him
about that at a public appearance,He not only was adamant that he was
not getting out of the race,he looked angry, yeah, that anyone
was asking him to get out.So I'm not sure we're really going to
get much much of an answer otherthan him saying, well, you know,

(04:55):
I've served the country loyally for fiftyyears and it's time for me to
make a make room for the nextgeneration. But other than that, I
don't think we're gonna hear anything aboutthe real reasons he got out. Hans,
I got a question for you realquick. Here. You did a
great job jumping on here with Garythe other day talking about Project twenty twenty
five, and you can hear thaton the Morning News podcast link at kfab

(05:19):
dot com. What do you thinkabout President Trump now distancing himself from this
saying, I haven't seen it,I don't know anything about it. There's
nothing to do with me. Well, he's right, it has nothing to
do with him, because he hadno involvement whatsoever in our putting it together.
But look, it's a nine hundredpage policy proposal. It's got chapters

(05:45):
on every major department within the executivebranch, everything from DoD to the Justice
Department. And he's in campaign mode. He's trying to win. What we
hope happens is if he wins theelection, we're going to hand a copy
of this over to him. Wehope at that point then he'll finally read

(06:09):
it. He clearly hasn't read it, so he doesn't know what did it.
But we think at that point hopefullyhe'll read it and say, you
know, these are really good ideas. This is the way the federal government
ought be reformed. And we hopehe then does what Ronald Reagan did,
because is not the first time wedid this. We first did this when
Ronald Reagan got elected. We hopehe then hands it to his cabinet secretaries

(06:31):
and says, these are the reformsyou ought to implement in your department.
Right. Project twenty five dot orgincidentally can have aby a nation if you'd
like to check that out. HasYou're the best? Thanks so much,
sure, thanks for having me.Have a good one.