Going After Murderous Drug Dealers: Nathan Hochman Talks To A&G.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Nathan Hackman is a candidate for California Attorney General. He's
former assistant US Attorney General, um U S attorney and
UH and he's running to restore public safety and justice
for all, according to his campaign, Well, I'm in favor
of both of those things. Nathan Hawkman, how are you, sir,
I'm great. Thank you very much for had me on
the show. Joe, Oh, it's our pleasure. So why don't

(00:21):
we start with where do you think we've gone wrong
in terms of crime and punishment in the last decade
or so, whether in California or since we have a
national show, just in general. Sure focusing first on California.
In two thousand and fourteen, just eight short years ago,
it was considered one of our safest years in California history.

(00:42):
In the last fifty years, all trend lines were down
for violent crimes, street prime, homelessness was flash sent at all.
Poisoning didn't even exist on the West coast back in
two thousand and fourteen. Fast forward eight years. We weakened
our laws, we weakened our prosecutors, and sure enough wenton.
Street crimes are exploding almost as is an all time

(01:03):
hive and fent and all poisonings will kill more people
in California on average seventeen a day than COVID will
probably peel this year. So we have gone from again
one of the safest times eight years ago to one
of the more dangerous times in the last generation. Yeah,
I'm glad you brought up fentyl because that's such an

(01:24):
enormous problem. And uh, you know, every I think most
people will understand that young people in particular maybe like
to get loose from their senses now and again, get
a little buzz on that sort of thing. But kids
who think they're getting some harmless pill that's gonna make
them feel loopy for an hour are dying in horrifying numbers.
What do we do to stop the flow of fentanyl,

(01:46):
sometimes in the form of these counterfeit pills, from from
hitting our streets and doing the devastating damage they're doing.
You know, Joe, I really appreciate the focus on FENTINELO.
It's one of the top three things my campaigns focused
on because of this reality. Fence at all is fifty
times it's a man made opiate, fifty times stronger than heroin,
a hundred times stronger than morphine, two milligrams of it

(02:09):
will kill you in two minutes. And I call it
fence at all poisonings. It's just that there are millions
of counterfeit pills being made with Chinese ingredients coming over
the southern border through the Mexican drug cartels that have
not only infected the whole East coast, but now I'll
come to the West coast. And it's not just it's
not about getting high. The d A says that four

(02:32):
out of ten of these pills have a lethal dose
to fent and all. This is basically like people playing
Russian Roulette, but with worse odds, and right in Russian
Roulette it's, you know, one bullet and a six shooter.
This is four added ten. And so what I would
want to do, and what the California Attorney General, Rob
Bonte has absolutely failed to do, it's put fence at

(02:53):
all front and center on enforcement efforts federal and local.
Go after the drug dealers at the border, Go after
the drug dealers across California, and make sure they understand
that they are committing murder. This isn't drug trafficking, this
is actually murdering people. And then I would begin at
massive education effort in the high schools and middle schools

(03:13):
to go out to the students and their parents and
again communicate this message it is not about getting high,
it is about actually dying. One pill can kill. It's
what the d e A says, what the l A
Sheriff's office says, and what basically d a's offices across
its states say. The one voice you are not hearing
in this debate is the California Attorney General. And if

(03:35):
I become and when I become the California Attorney General,
you'll hear about trans at all place and things all
the time. Well, it's extraordinary to me that in the
name of I don't know, compassion or ending the war
on drugs, you have open air drug markets in San Francisco,
for instance, When people are dying more often of drug
overdose than UH than COVID. In San Francisco, at least

(03:58):
and a hundred thousand plus Americans are dying on an
annual basis from drug poisonings and overdoses. What would it
take to recognize that this is a crisis, and that's
what it is. It's actually a crisis, whether it's a
public health crisis on the magnitude of COVID. Uh, it
could be even a national security crisis if you view

(04:18):
it as Chinese ingredients coming over the southern border to
kill Americans. I mean, jove, we had a sniper who was,
you know, coming originally from China, worked his way through
the Mexican drug lords and came into California and was
killing seventeen people a day. California would shut down until
it found that sniper. Imagine there are now hundreds of

(04:40):
snipers across California and you have the magnitude offense at all.
It's silent assassins that are literally coming across our border
and killing without any distinction to race, political party, gender, anything.
They're just killing Californias, and we need to treat it
as the public health and national security crisis it is.

(05:01):
I think that's really well said Nathan Hawkman, is candidate
for California Attorney General. Let's talk a little bit about
crime more generally. Uh, in your mind, why the explosion
and property crime murder rates? Does it have to do
with the post George Floyd pullback of policing, the so
called Ferguson effect. How do you perceive the whole situation uh,

(05:21):
complex as it is, I know it briefly surely. Two fourteen,
California passes Proposition forty seven. It's called the Safe Neighborhoods
and Schools Act deceivingly, but what it effectively did is
it made property crimes in certain drug crimes misdemeanors instead
of felonies. And then what happens You had a whole

(05:42):
batch of prosecutors come in, most notably in San Francisco,
in Los Angeles that says we're not going to prosecute
any more of these misdemeanor property crimes. So what ended
up happening is that people can go One person can
go into a CDs still just under nine hundred and
fifty dollars, walk, not run out, and not be prosecuted.

(06:02):
And that it's created what I call the spiral of lawlessness.
So one person in CBS becomes three people running out
of a Walgreens, eight people running out of the Lords, drugs,
smash and grab robberies, follow home robberies, train robberies in
Los Angeles, and double digit rise in homicides across the
entire state. My goal, my goal and becoming California Attorney General,

(06:26):
is to arrest and stop this spiral of lawlessness and
turn it on its head and become a spiral of lawfullness.
I know that both you and we talked to cops
a fair amount, and I know plenty of really good cops,
be they local guys, sheriff's deputies, um, some FBI people
even who are just frustrated because they're there to serve

(06:49):
and protect and they can't because the bad guys are
out on the street, you know, tomorrow or even the
same afternoon. They get arrested, sometimes for really nasty stuff.
And again that is the problem. The problem is not
the rank and file. The problem is the leadership. When
you have the current Attorney General, Rob Bonta, he brings
literally zero years of experience to the job. He was

(07:12):
not a DA, he was not a prosecutor, he was
not a police officer. In contrast, I bring thirty years
of criminal justice experience as a federal prosecutor, a U
S Assistant Attorney General, and a defense lawyer to the job.
And what I have found, he said, you can remain
removed the sort of the blockages in the system, which
sadly are the leadership, whether it's the Attorney General, of

(07:33):
California or the d as. In these certain cities, you
have prosecutors who want to do their job, law enforcement
officers who are dying to do their job, and once
we can remove the blockages, they will do their job,
which is why I'm confident I can bring back safety
and security to the State of California. Nathan Ackman is
running for Attorney General State of California. Nathan, great to

(07:55):
talk to you, A good luckless stay in touch. Gregory,
you think you haven't one of the weekend