America's Criminologist 05 12 26 Guests Christopher Farrell Russ Nobile Judicial Watch

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Col Steals Wait just tsing him as a face shadows
Secret Doctor Curryst Mary scram anologist.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Seals of the Law in Alosy Cackles a crime break
and Jay Bruce Frame.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
And here's America's criminologist, doctor Kerry Myers. Thank you, mister producer.
I hope everybody's doing well. This is Curry Myers, better
known as America's criminal uh Criminologists. In my book The
Evan of fairal Man, I talked about the importance of
faith family information in the wilding of humans that we're seeing.

(00:56):
I'm a retired major county sheriff, former special agent, State
trooper smith, fifteen years in academia. Don't hold that against
me serving as a school dean and teaching in the
criminology and basically an applied criminologist. This is the show
where we talk about crime culture and the foundations that
sustain as civil society, the three important pillars. I call

(01:18):
it a faith family information because crime doesn't begin in
the streets, it begins when those foundations are weaken. And
as always, I'd like for you to explore more about
my work on applied criminology and criminal justice, ethics, public policy,
and my philosophy. You can visit Substack doctor Curry Meyers
dot substack dot com. That's doctor Curry Meyers dot substack

(01:41):
dot com, where you can just google doctor Curry Myers
and a whole bunch of stuff comes up, both good
and bad about me. Before we get started, this segment
of America's Criminologists with doctor Curry Myers has brought to
you by Real Resilience. That's our ee L Resilience. It's
a transformative program helping inmates prepare for success re entry
using inspirational films and guided discussions. Real Resilience teaches practical

(02:06):
tools to build resilience, strengthen relationships, and restore hope for
the future. It's real learning through real stories where positive
choices are modeled. Not just preach Real resilience, because re
entry isn't just released, it's second chance done right. All right,
here's my riff for the day. One of the great
dangers facing this country, especially today, is not simply street crime.

(02:29):
It's institutional corruption, and my goodness, gracious, we're going crazy
with it right now. It's the normalization of fraud that
is occurring in this country. It's the cultural acceptance that
rules only apply to ordinary Americans like you and I.
Why political and bureaucratic elites operate under a completely different standard.

(02:50):
We've created an environment where accountability is selectively enforced, ethices
are optional, public trust continues to erode. Refer to this
about environmental conditions that produce these kinds of criminal behavior,
But we really rarely discuss the moral conditions. When faith declines,

(03:11):
when family structure collapses, when proper civic and moral formation disappear, Man,
you create a fertile ground for what again, I refer
to as feral man, individuals untethered from responsibility, discipline, or virtue.
And that phenomenon doesn't only emerge in the streets. It
emerged inside institutions. We now live in a society where

(03:34):
government employees, people entrusted with taxpayer resources, exploited pandemic relief
programs for luxury lifestyles while millions of struggling Americans were
trying to survive economic shutdowns imposed by the ferries same government.
Gucci bags, Mercedes Benz vehicles, vegas trips, investment accounts, massages.

(03:56):
This wasn't desperation. This was opportunity and corruption enabled by
weak oversight and a culture that increasingly rewards entitlement over accountability,
and this was on fire during the Biden administration. Broken
windows theory teaches us that tolerated disorder leads to created disorder,
where the same principle applies institutionally when ethical disorder to

(04:20):
tolerated inside government, corruption metastasizes. Today, we're going to discuss
exactly that institutional misconduct, public corruption, political targeting, and transparenting.
And we have one of the leading investigators in America
from Judicial Watch. He's been with them for many, many years,
over twenty years. We were just talking off before the

(04:42):
show started, because with accountability, constitutional government cannot survive. So
we welcome Christopher Ferrell, Director of Investigations and Research for
Judicial Watch, one of my favorite They really do yeoman's
work in the world of corruption, and a member of
its Board of Director since two thousand and three. Chris

(05:02):
is a distinguished military graduate from Fordham University and served
in the US Army Military as an intelligence officer, specializing
in counter espionage in clandestine human intelligence operations. He has
spent decades investigating government corruption, the abuse of power, institutional misconduct,
and one of the most respected investigating voices in our country.

(05:25):
He's also the author of Exiled Emissary George H. Hurl Earl,
the Third Soldier, excuse me, Sailor, Diplomat, Governor and spy
Chris Farrell, my friend, welcome to America's Criminologist. But glad
to have you.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
It's great to be with you. Thanks very much, you.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
Bet, and thanks for all you do. I mean, you
really have to. You know, you've been doing it a
long time with Judicial Watch, but you have to stay
fresh and you always do.

Speaker 5 (05:52):
It.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
Seems like you guys are constantly on the cutting edge
on criminal justice matters and I don't know where we'd
be quite frankly without Judicial Watch in your work, it's
been extremely important. And of course the lawyers. We're going
to have a senior attorney with you all coming on
in the latter half of the show. You know, you

(06:12):
can't have good investigations without a bunch of really good
watchdog attorneys there to help follow up and try to
change some things within the Supreme Court and in the
judicial process. So thanks for again for coming on the
weaponization of labels and political targeting by activist organizations masquerading
as objective watchdogs. So there's an an organization called Southern

(06:35):
Poverty Law Center. They were huge early on. I think
they started in maybe the seventies, late seventies, got it.
They were massive in the nineteen eighties. Everybody went to them, so,
you know, especially the left went to them as for
matters of corruption, and we have just recently seen a

(06:56):
huge fallen out in Southern Poverty Law Institute and the
work that they've done, it looks like they've committed kind
of a shift shaping, if you will. They've manufactured things
that manufactured evidence. I don't know if they did that
a long time ago, but they certainly the evidence purports

(07:17):
that they are doing some not very good work. When
it comes to actually the ethical side of the house.
What are your thoughts.

Speaker 4 (07:25):
I think, if you go way back, SPLC may have
done some good work identifying white nationalists, white supremacist type
organizations that were, uh, you know, violating the law through
violent racist behavior. But I think at some point, and

(07:47):
I don't know exactly where it is, because frankly, I
haven't studied it to that great degree, but at some
point they went astray and it was less about trying
to identify criminal activity by persons operating outside the law
as being trying to fulfill political agendas and trying to

(08:08):
curry favor with or develop a philosophy that aligned itself
with opportunities to a make money and b leverage political power.

Speaker 6 (08:21):
And so.

Speaker 4 (08:23):
When they started down that path, I think they got
themselves in the position that resulted in the indictment just
a couple of weeks ago. And essentially, and this is
a very cursory explanation, you know, they were manufacturing their enemies, right.

(08:43):
They were paying money to sources and to organizations into
persons operating within white nationalists, white supremacist groups, fringe militia,
people that were advocating the overthrow of the government, people
that were advocating violence, people who were I mean, they

(09:07):
were legitimate bad guys, but they ended up funding, either
directly or indirectly, informants, organizers, key figures for them to
carry out those activities, so that SPLC could then point
at them and go, oh, look there's bad guys. Well,
of course there are. You funded them, You created them.

(09:29):
I mean, it's a little bit like the FBI and
the you know, the Gretchen Whitmer fed napping case, right
where they had twelve or fourteen bad guys. But they
of the twelve or fourteen, they had sixteen to eighteen
people recruiting the twelve to fourteen people. I mean, the
FBI was manufacturing.

Speaker 6 (09:48):
Their own.

Speaker 4 (09:51):
You know, terrorists, quote unquote, and so there's a parallel,
there's a similarity in what was going on. So that
that's probably a much too long winded answer to your question,
but that that's my understanding and take on what was
going on with the SPLC.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yeah, no, not long winded at all. It's complicated and
as you said, at one time, they may they may
have done some good when it comes to bringing out
issues that occurred. This can happen with with any organization
if they if they don't watch what they're doing. If
they don't, you know, I mean, it's it's easy for
you to start getting you know, and especially in today's

(10:31):
day and age, this Trump derangement system of syndrome is
alive and well, I mean it's turned in an actual
you know, psychiatrists haven't called it actual you know, a disease,
but man, it's it's you couple that with it with
the social contagions that are going on today, it just
seems to catch fire.

Speaker 4 (10:53):
One of the things that sort of disturbs or at
least it raises a question mark in my head and
has to go to the Justice Department and how they
conduct their operations is that they've indicted SPLC, but they
haven't indicted any individuals. So what I mean, it's wonderful

(11:16):
that you've I mean, I guess in the legal sense,
the organization is a person. I use air quotes, but
it's not really a person. I mean, it's not a
human being, and it didn't make decisions by itself. It's
not it's not self actuating. So at some point, you know,
persons A, B, and C decided hey, this is a

(11:38):
bright idea, let's go do this. Okay, Well who decided that?
And then who signed off on it? Someone they were
giving money to various sources and people and organizations. Well
who signed the check? I mean, that's what I want
to know. You want to get cut to the chase.
Find the person that said, yeah, let's give this bad guy.

(12:00):
Think one of the people that was involved in the
Charlottesville you know nightmare story. You know, they got money.
So who decided to give that guy money? Give me
the name of the person, right.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yeah, exactly. I mean you can't. The whole premise is
you can't send a business to jail. I mean, I
mean it's asinine to even think about that. It's around people,
and there's somebody who fed false information and here's the kicker,
they fed it to the federal government. So there's twabilities here.

Speaker 4 (12:35):
For a long time, the SPLC was I mean, they
were almost like a government vendor, right, Yeah, they were
the go to people give you know, give us your
list of bad guys, and the d o J or
FBI would accept that and say, okay, these are the
certified bad guys. I'm sure there were. I mean, I'm

(12:55):
not knocking. They probably had a list of you know,
either fringe or outright criminal groups that were engaged in
all kinds of weird, unlawful behavior. And so that was
not I'll use a double negative, that was not invalid.
But I also think that there was probably people that

(13:19):
just didn't like that were also nominated to be bad guys.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
Yeah, and that's the crux of the problem is not
setting up some sort of ethical behavior. This is where
judicial watch is, you know, having a proper board for oversight,
making sure you have guardrails in place when you're doing
investigations to make sure even as a special agent. I mean,
there are people I couldn't investigate without having it go

(13:47):
to the very highest top to make sure that we
are we really have evidence against this person. It's not
something that's being made up. It's not something that's been
made against you. So it's to me the FBI, especially
under the Biden administration, has some culpability here and prior

(14:07):
to that under Obama's administration, because they were the ones
that were taking the information from the Southern Poverty Law
Center and then putting that in their intelligence briefings, and
not only including the intelligence briefings, they were using it
as evidence to go get people. I mean, you know,
it ended up being a talking point in the presidential

(14:29):
election when it came to Charlotte.

Speaker 4 (14:33):
Right. And the other problem is you had folks on
the outside who maybe were not playing with a full deck, right. Yeah,
they got forty eight guards and they're running around and
they think that the SPLC list of bad guys is
a hunting list. And you remember that there was a

(14:53):
Bernie Sanders supporter who shot up a baseball field of
Republicans who were practicing for the congressional baseball game, and evidently,
you know, that guy believed or felt that some of
the people on the field there were fair game. And
that I mean, that's why it's such reckless talk that

(15:14):
you've seen about people that are all excited about the
Trump assassination attempts. They think it's funny, they think it's great,
you know, And that's the kind of poison that once
it's in the body politic, it's very difficult to negate it,
you know, to shut it down. Well.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
And I spent a lifetime dealing with informants, some of
them at at at a high level, with information, and
you just can't let them run, you know, wherever they
want to go and make up stuff without verifying that information.
It's almost like and again if someone wants to say, okay,
Southern Poverty Low Institute or center wasn't a law enforcement agency.

(15:57):
But again the information's being fed to the FBI, and
the FBI can't assume that the informants that are being used.
I wouldn't. I wouldn't use an informant that would would
have been the Southern Poverty Low Institution. I would have
made him or her into my informant and then took
over that case and used them. I wouldn't have relied
on SPLC to be the only person that's controlling I

(16:21):
don't know if they did or not, but it certainly
sounds like if the FBI got winn that they were
paying these people hundreds of thousands of dollars or tens
of thousand to some of them. You know, once again,
what are you getting back from? And if you go
back in history, we've seen a litany of informants that
have been paid high levels of money that gave false,

(16:42):
out of date, useless information just to continue committing crimes
on their own right. So that's kind of the you know,
the sticking point here. What concerns me the most, and
I'm sure it concerns you guys, is this long term
civil liberty liberties implicated with you know, being able to
use this kind of organization to go out and chase

(17:07):
bad guys. You again, you're in an organization that has
to do some similar activities. How do you guys set
things up to be successful?

Speaker 4 (17:19):
Well, you know, a huge part of our mission is
to get government records and documents and make them available
to the public. And so even if you don't agree
with us philosophically. You can say, oh, you're you're too conservative,
you're this, or you're that. Okay, fine, don't agree with
us philosophically, but here are the records that we've obtained

(17:42):
through legal process. And generally speaking, people lie and records don't.
Sometimes records are phonied up, so you can't say it
absolutely right. But generally speaking, records and documents that we
compel the production of through court process from the government,
it's tough to argue with them. And so we make

(18:06):
use of the open records laws of the country to
try to get records and documentation so that you can
explain and show to people what the government is or
is not doing. And so that's a huge portion of
our mission. And again, you know, when you can count
on the records of documentation, even if we disagree, you

(18:28):
read them, you tell me what it means.

Speaker 7 (18:31):
Right.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because you always
have the receipts almost first correct before you launch into investigation.
And that's the correct that's the you know, that's the
background or the emphasis or the baseline for you guys
to go out and investigate stuff. It also helps to
have very qualified attorneys. You know, SBLC over the years

(18:52):
was was on strong on the legal portion of it,
but it doesn't seem to have been caring about the
legal portion of it. They've just been went out and
trying to collect evidence the last few years and however
they get it's fine. So, yeah, we appreciate your work.
Can we transition over to what is going on in
America today? Which is this complete pandemic relief fraud. It's

(19:16):
medicare frauds, you name the fraud out there, it's going on.
You guys have been again the point of the spear
on it. And what is judicial Wash has reported I
r S employees themselves stealing pandemic relief funds for luxury purchases.
What does that case tell us about the level of

(19:38):
oversight if you will, inside the federal government.

Speaker 4 (19:41):
Yeah, well, the oversight is non existent. And whether it's
IRS employees who are gaming the system and using all
the sort of levers of government to gain access to
those funds or you've saw the nightmare in Minnesota right
with the efforts to again leverage the process. Right, the

(20:01):
government dolving out money and how it does it and
how it's checked or not checked. You know, it's it's
essentially a blank check if you know the if you
know the right words and the right forms to fill
out and make the correct claim that you're running you know,
a child development learning center, daycare, whatever people are collecting,

(20:27):
you know, multimillions of dollars as a story just a
couple of days ago of a Chinese national. He may
have been a dual citizen, but who's funneling money out
to China? He took fifty nine million dollars of COVID
related money. It's just one guy, right, and so it's
probably more it's probably easier or more prone to to

(20:51):
a manipulation of the system. When you're an IRS employee
with access to databases and information and accounts and those
things where you've got an inside track, you can basically,
I mean it's like owning a printing press. You can
generate as much cash as you want and you also
know how to hide it.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah, you know how things work. You know what buzzwords
that you know are topical, or what kind of accounts
aren't checked.

Speaker 4 (21:18):
Yeah, you got to know the game. And when you
have inside knowledge of the game, it's that much easier
to abuse the system.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, well, speaking of inside knowledge of the game, we
are seeing, in my opinion, we're seeing a large number
of political elected officials that have been engaged in Now
this kind of fraud I haven't seen. We've always have
it because people are people and people commit crimes, but
it seems like this has been on fire with elected

(21:47):
officials recently where they've gotten their hands dirty with setting
up shell organizations or getting it under the table. Or
you look at Minnesota, the allegations is that the congressman
there helped, congress person there helped final you know this
money to some of these significant organizations and now you

(22:08):
backtrack with cash and you see that it ended up
in her campaign accounts and you know, money that can't
be accounted for. What's your thoughts on the American you know,
elected official system that's going on in the amount of
corruption that we're seeing there too, and it seems like nobody. Yeah,
we have some people hell accountable, and I know it's

(22:29):
difficult to kick people out if they're elected, but man,
it seems like we really don't have much. We have
a lot of tolerance for imperfection in our government leaders
with the congressional leadership it seems.

Speaker 4 (22:43):
Like, and it's not just Congress. Even in the great
State of Virginia, the Commonwealth of Virginia where I am
right now. You know, the Senate Democratic leader was involved,
just had her home rated because she and allegedly her
husband and also were involved in another racket there. And
you know, when these stories come out, it usually happens

(23:06):
in groups of three to five a year, about all
at once. The problem with that is that we become
this is the frog and the pot of boiling water.
You know, you get numb, or you kind of shrug
and go, there's another one, right. The problem with that
over the long term is that it becomes deeply corrosive
to the public's trust in government. Everybody thinks it's a racket.

(23:29):
Everybody thinks people are on the take, or it's almost
expected to be that way. The FBI, of course, had
a very all through the Trump administration and through even
through Biden, had its sort of credentials and honor and
history really smeared because of you know, the whole Komi

(23:50):
saga and the Russia Russians area, and you know, Peter
Strock and all the scandals swirling around the FBI. It
was very damaging to the reputation of the organization, where
if you had an FBI agent or two come to
the door, you wouldn't even answer it. You tell them
to call your attorney and you get back with them later.

Speaker 6 (24:09):
Right.

Speaker 4 (24:10):
Yeah, that has a long term effect on the American
public and it undermines their confidence that they have a
legitimate government. That's the real problem.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, known as one of the finer law enforcement agencies
in the world. And then it gets hit you know,
in the last twenty years or so, there's been more
incidences of corruption and mismanagement, if you will, than ever before.
So they've got to get it back. I think they're
making strong headway towards that. I think they're doing what
they can. But some of those things are deep, you know,

(24:44):
when it's hard to get rid of people that have
been embedded in those and are part of that culture,
if you will.

Speaker 4 (24:50):
Yeah, there's also a certain degree I hate to say this,
but it's true. It's a certain percentage, and it's actually
quite large of people that just want to go through
the system and hit their twenty year mark and get
their retirement, and they're not going to raise their head
up and ask an unpleasant question or tell someone no,

(25:10):
I'm not going to do that. They they will go
along to get along because they want to get their
twenty year retirement. And that's that there's a certain soft
cowardice in that.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
Yeah, well, I think buying large law enforcement is a
direct I tell this to my students or you know,
I'm no longer teaching now because I've retired from that,
but when I was teaching, they're a mere reflection of
the society that they that they serve and law enforcement
about fifteen to twenty percent of them that are out
there are really go getters. I mean they want to

(25:43):
they're there because they want to have to make a
major difference. Yeah, and then you have, you know, you
have fifty percent of it they just want to you know,
they want to be ethical, they want to be good,
but they're not going to push the envelope, you know,
any and then you have you know, fifteen twenty percent
that are worthless that you you know, wish you could,
wish you could get rid of.

Speaker 4 (26:03):
But you know, so you should tell us what you
really think.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
Well, it's just, you know, it's just kind of that
human nature thing. So so what uh, Judicial Watch has
played an important role in forcing transparency and exposing these
abuses that many legacy media organizations have ignored. So let's
talk about the media for for just a quick moment.
They have a due, diligent responsibility to be reporting the

(26:32):
news openly and evenly, and we haven't had that in ages.

Speaker 4 (26:37):
No, it's I mean, there's everyone's pick sides, and there's
you know, left right divide, and your news is wildly
canted either direction based on what you would like to
watch or read.

Speaker 6 (26:51):
Right.

Speaker 4 (26:52):
Yeah, and it's uh, you know, you can check any
number of different you know, news organizations and look at
the their editorial philosophy and you know exactly where they're
coming from and what their objectives are. And the even
handed reporting of the news is long gone.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
Yep. Christopher Ferrell, my friend, thanks so much from judicial
Watch about political targeting, institutional accountability, and massive government fraud
trying to pandemic relief programs. Thanks for coming on the show. Anyway,
we can follow your work specifically, just.

Speaker 4 (27:24):
Go to judicialwatch dot org. That's the way to track
all the good work we're doing.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
You also have podcasts that's real good, so make sure
go looking at the unwatched that Chris is doing so okay.
After the break, we'll continue our discussion on transparency, corruption
and constitutional government with our second half guest, Russell Nobile
of Judicial Watch. You're listening to America's Criminal Just America's
Criminologists with Doctor Curry Myers will be right back, Hi, folks,

(28:07):
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(28:28):
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Hey, my friends, is doctor Curry Meyers, America's criminologist. I
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(30:51):
an important tool, Real Resilience, because reentry isn't just released,
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(31:12):
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(31:32):
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there and you can schedule me to come out for
an event. Be happy to my friends. One of the
most important foundations of any constitutional republic is public confident
and confidence and elections. Without trust in the electoral process,

(31:57):
civic legitimate begins to erode, and once legitimacy erodes, social
instability follows. Election integrity should never be a partisan issue.
It should be an American issue. Unfortunately, that's not the
case today. Laws governing elections exist for a reason, transparency, accountability,

(32:19):
chain of custody, equal protection, public confidence. When states begin
extending deadlines, weakening verification standards, or failing to maintain accurate
voter rolls, Americans naturally begin asking some serious questions. And
those questions are not threats to democracy. In many ways,
they are democracy and action. A functioning republic requires both

(32:43):
ballot access and ballid integrity. Those principles are not mutually exclusive.
For the remainder of the show, we're going to discuss
major election integrity litigation currently making its way through the courts,
including cases involving late arriving ballots, federal election law, voter
role maintenance, and one of the leading attorneys in the
country working on these issues at Judicial Watch. Joining US

(33:07):
now is Russell Nobile, Senior attorney at Judicial Watch. Mister
Nobile's work frequently involves a development and presentation of investigative
findings concerning violations of state and federal law. His legal
practice focuses primarily on election integrity, constitutional law, civil rights,
and official misconduct. He has litigated elections and civil rights

(33:29):
matters and federal courts across multiple circuits, and has testified
before the US House and Senate Judiciary Committees, along with
other congressional committees. Prior to joining Judicial Watch, he served
as a trial attorney at the Civil Rights Division of
the US Department of Justice, where he litigated federal enforcement
actions under the Voting Rights Act and related statutes. He

(33:51):
also served on the US Election Assistance Commissions Board of Advisor.
He's also been in front of the United States Supreme
Court quite a bit here recently, so we appreciate his work. Russell.
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 6 (34:04):
Yeah, thanks Curry, thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
Glad to be here. Yeah, and thanks again for everything
you're doing. My goodness you. I'm sure you have a
lot of road miles logged up. Yeah, Yeah, getting the chance.
Tell us what before we get started getting the chance
to go before the Supreme Court. Now you've done it
a couple of times, right.

Speaker 6 (34:24):
Yeah, we had two cases that the Supreme Court heard
this term. So the Supreme Court sis terms beginning in
October that usually wrap up at the end of June,
and so the court heard two of our cases this year.
So it was a pretty big year. I'm not sure
how next year we can top it. But you know,
we'll start worrying about that once we get the.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
Ruling with the justices where they going, hey, this guy's back,
Do they remember that?

Speaker 6 (34:46):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, you know, I think
they just want to get to the get to the
heart of the issue. I mean, the first case we
had was really should have never should have never gotten
that far We should have won crazy to begin with.
So it was just ray, I'm happy to go into it,
or I'm happy to start wherever you would like to.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
Well, the big question I have is does election day
really mean election day?

Speaker 6 (35:09):
And Judicial watches invested a lot of money to uh
get that answer finally resolved, and so yes it does.
We think. You know, I'm trying to think where to
begin here without going on for too long.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
For the longest time, you do what you need to do.

Speaker 6 (35:27):
For the longest time, people forget that, you know, for
the longest time. Election dayman election day. You could early
vote sometimes, and you could do absentee when you're traveling.
But sometime after Bush v. Gore States there was this
concerted effort to try to make it so people don't
have to go to poll sites, and and you know,
that's an understandable sort of viewpoint, but it really, you know,

(35:50):
requires additional sort of safeguards, and the less you have
it in the pole site, the greater safeguards need to be.
But there's this group of people out there that they
don't want safeguard and they don't even want you to
go to pull sites. And so in the last twenty
years has been this push to extend election day well
past election day. And you read the pundits and you
read the articles, and they act like this is something

(36:12):
that's been going on for centuries, and it just hasn't.
And so, you know, it really started after a bushby
Gore like two thousand and five ish. The Blue states
all adopted it in the intervening time, and then during
the pandemic. A lot of purple and red states sort
of went along with it, not just for short term,

(36:32):
for long term. And so you know, this thing where
they start allowing elections to extend and ballot receipt to
extend days and weeks after election day, it's frankly responsible
for a lot of the instability that's going on in
our elections. And it's just really turning our elections into
banana republic style elections where you got to wait weeks
to find out if Maricopa County knows whatever, however many

(36:53):
ballots it's got, or Philadelphia, and it's always these same places,
and it really agitates the electorate and causes really good
questions to come up as to you know, why do
new tranches of ballots continue to come up days and
weeks after the election. And so when you go to
bed at night, you know, people should know it's really

(37:13):
important people know, like, okay, well maybe we don't have
the final absolute total of votes and how they break down,
but the tally needs to be there, right, and so
the denominator what we say is the denominator needs to
be there. The numerator may change, right, you know, the
split may go but you know, if they're finding tens
and twenties and hundreds of thousands of ballots after election day,
it's really it's really a dubious practice, and it really

(37:38):
causes a lot of agitation. Frankly, it's not what the
Congress set in eighteen forty five, right, I mean Congress
set and national election day in eighteen forty five. And people,
you know, we the last thirty years of elections have
been well, you know, from like you know, from the
seventies to the early two thousands, elections ran pretty smoothly.

(38:00):
But in the nineteenth century, especially in the eighteen hundreds
and all that, I mean, elections.

Speaker 3 (38:06):
Were a real.

Speaker 6 (38:08):
Were fraught with fraud and fighting. And it wasn't just
racial strife, it was class strife. And poll sites were
basically bars, and it was a rough and tumble setting
to go to the pull site. And they had a
real problem in the eighteen forty election. Maybe I may
get the number wrong, but where the states were announcing

(38:32):
their electoral votes and conducting their elections on different days,
and there was some concern that people were looking at
other states to figure out how the vote totals were
and getting more voters to go show up there and vote.
And so in eighteen forty five, Congress at the first
national election day for all federal offices, well it was
first national election day for the presidential election. Eighteen seventy

(38:53):
two Congress applied that for congressional elections, and then nineteen
fourteen the Senate elections. And you know what we you know,
this issue came up in twenty twenty and Tom was,
you know, not happy about it and with you know,
some of the shenanigans and the sort of the you know, misadministraate,

(39:13):
maladministration the twenty twenty election if you want to call it,
if you want to be diplomatic. H And so he
really tasked us with trying to figure out, like, how
can we help address this. And so what we started
doing is we just did a really deep dive into
electoral history. Like we didn't look at any sources before

(39:35):
two thousands, right, because everything since two thousand is largely politicized, right,
There's always somebody's got an ass to grind one way
or the other. Uh, and so you can't really rely
on contemporary sources. So we did a deep dive, and
we went into the Smithsonian and we went into all
these collegiate and governmental sources and pulled up all these

(39:57):
treatises from there, and we we showed that, you know,
and Congress created it that you know, ballot's not cast
really at that time until ballot was received, you know,
because you can change your vote. You can, you know,
you can mark a ballot, you get an absentee ballot.
It sits on your desk, and you know, even if
you're right, you know, George Bush and and you know
it's not cast. Just because you mark it doesn't mean

(40:18):
it's cast. And just because you mail it, it's not cast.
And frankly, and so it's not cast. It's not officially
cast until it is received by the government official and
not the not the postal service, because frankly, the postal
regulations have always allowed you to recall any letter you

(40:39):
ever sent, right, so it doesn't mean they'll be able
to accomplish it. You know, if I send Curry Meyers,
doctor Curry Meyers a letter, I can call my the
postal inspector and say, you know, I sent this letter
to this person to this address. I wish to recall it,
and so I still always have that. So if you
can cancel your ballot after it's been mailed. It's not cast.

(41:01):
The cast ballot is one that's irrevocable. It may not
be a qualified ballot, but it's irrevocable. And so we
started this shortly after the twenty twenty election and we
filed our first suit. Took some time to sort of
get buy in, but we you know, we we took
some time, and so we filed our suit, our first

(41:21):
suit in twenty twenty two in Illinois on behalf of
Congressman Bost and.

Speaker 7 (41:27):
We lost.

Speaker 6 (41:28):
The court said he didn't have standing to bring that case.
And standing.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
Is this theory?

Speaker 6 (41:34):
Well, I mean, just give you an over. We brought
three cases. We brought the first one in twenty two
in Illinois. We brought another one in twenty twenty four
in Mississippi that the RNC also brought one as well
in the same location.

Speaker 7 (41:48):
And then.

Speaker 6 (41:50):
And then we filed another one in California that's still pending.
But the first case, which I mentioned in Illinois, we
got thrown out for lack of standing. And standing is
this concept that you've got to actually have a specific,
unique injury. You can't just go to court because you
hate a policy, right, You have to have an injury.
It's this sort of unique, you know, reason that you

(42:10):
are or are allowed to in vote court jurisdiction rather
than going to the legislator to fix your problems.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
And so as it means judicial watch themselves had to
show that they were they were.

Speaker 6 (42:22):
Hurt or you know, we represented Congressman Mike Bostrom, Illinois,
and so he was our client. Yeah, so he was
our client. We had two presidential electors, and electors are
technically client excuse me, uh, on the ballot when you
vote for a president, you know, their names aren't there,
but their offices even if the verbiage doesn't reflect that

(42:42):
when you see a ballot. And as many people may recall,
you know, many of Donald Trump's lawsuits got thrown out
in twenty twenty four allegedly not having standing, not having
an actual injury, which frankly is a farcical you know
for you know, I don't know how many election cases
I've read, but a lot from the last two hundred years,

(43:06):
and almost in no instance as a federal candidate been
found to not have federal standing the challenge of law
affecting his federal election. I mean, it's just craziers, and so,
you know, but when you're in this sort of post election,
pre election, when you do election cases, you got to
think about them like there's post election and pre election,

(43:27):
and so in the post election context, it's just a race, right,
it's just a it's a mess. You've got like really
compressed time schedules. You can't build up the records you need.
And so what we did is we took the slow
boat to the federal courts, and and so we documented
exactly how our client was injured, and the district court

(43:48):
in Illinois tossed us out. So we appealed it, and
then the Seventh Circuit, which is the big regional federal
court that oversees the lower level federal courts, and a
divided opinion said we didn't have standing. And so we
just thought that was preposterous. We didn't think there was

(44:08):
any way that the United States Supreme Court would allow
congressmen who were constitutional officers, officers to be thrown off,
you know, to not be have their day in court
to get an answer to its rule, you know, to
the procedures affecting their federal elections. And so we've asked
the Supreme Court to hear it, and you know, the

(44:29):
court heard it. People many people told us to dismiss
the case. They said this issue was completely dead and
resolved after twenty twenty in Donald Trump's election, and we
thought that was just wrong. Unfortunately, Tom and Chris and Paul,
the leadership of Judicial Watch were willing to invest the
money because it was not cheap to go through this
process and grind that out and get the Supreme Court

(44:50):
to hear it. They heard it last October. We at
that point, we had Paul Clement join us, and we
presented the case to the Supreme Court. We won seven
to two. We even won Justice Kagan during the oral argument,
she said, we don't.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
Know what to deal with.

Speaker 6 (45:05):
What's the deal here? Of course they have standing, which
is what we'd said for three and a half or
four years. But you know, you say, but until you
have somebody because to spend the money to do that,
you know. And so we did that and then and
after we lost to the Seventh Circuit in Illinois, before
we went to the Supreme Court, we filed suit of
Mississippi and the R and C filed a companion case,
and we were consolidated into one. It's known as Wetzel

(45:29):
was R and C versus Wetzel, and now it's Watson
versus R and C. And so we lost at the
trial court. But the trial court in Mississippi rightfully said
we had standing even you know, without having to go
to Supreme Court, which you know was you know, at
least that was right. And then we went to the
Fifth Circuit in October twenty ninth, twenty twenty four, the
Fifth Circuit agreed with us and ruled that all ballots

(45:52):
are due by election day, and if a ballot's not
received by election day, uh, it's it's too late. And
and basically, you know, the case wasn't like when does
an election begin. It's questions when does the election have
to end? What is the administrative practice that must end
by election day? And the Fifth Circuit said, well, receipt

(46:12):
And so Mississippi appealed that, and so the Supreme Court
we briefed it. The Supreme Court heard arguments on it
on March twenty third, last or six weeks ago, and
we will get that ruling probably one of the last
weeks in June before the court dismisses for the summer.

(46:33):
We feel pretty good about how the argument went. You
never know how it goes when they discuss it. We
think we've got, you know, three solid votes against us,
we think we've got four solid votes for us. And
then you know there's the Chief who didn't say a
word at oral argument, and Justice Comy Barrett, who you know,

(46:55):
people have a hard time sort of sort of putting
her in sort of a characterized her. But you know,
she has a very deep concern about how the history
fits in uh uh sort of you know, how the
courts used history and what the term election day meant
in eighteen forty five, and so she wrestled with that.

(47:16):
I think we satisfied her concerns at argument. Uh but
you know, but you know, when we started out this endeavor,
we thought, you know, we you know, we had two
goals in mind other than obviously win. You know, obviously
you know you're in a competition, you want to win, right, So, uh,
but we wanted to clarify that federal candidates had standing
to bring cases in federal courts affecting their federal elections.

(47:40):
And we wanted the Supreme Court to tell the public
why this sort of frankly, you know, corrosive practice of
allowing ballots to come in days and weeks after election
were to occur. So you know, in that regard, we
think we've really sort of nailed the two main like
litigation objectives. But now as a group, you know, we
obviously want to win and we're hoping that we're going

(48:02):
to win, and we think we are. Frankly, Uh, it's.

Speaker 3 (48:06):
It could be transformative, no, no question about it. That
case comes down in your favor, it's going to be
transformative in establishing I feel like Russ, I feel like
we are revisiting Tammany Hall in current days. I mean,
it's without without the court, and I'm glad they intervene
because sometimes the court has got to step to the

(48:30):
plate because I really it felt as if we were
going back to Tammany Hall of New York City in
the in the eighteen fifties, again where anything went, Uh,
you could, you could submit stuff whenever you want. And
we're going to get into the next thing we're about.
Voter rolls. Were there huge abose, huge abuses in.

Speaker 6 (48:50):
Tammany Hall in New York. They would sit and they
would do telegrams or telegraphs and they would listen to
where the voting was in other parts of the state
and then and didn't fill the ballance.

Speaker 4 (49:00):
Get people together.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
And so they would round up people and say, hey,
give him a beer. And then they'd shave a guy's
mustache off. If he had a mustache, they'd shave his
mustache off and put him back in line again.

Speaker 6 (49:12):
And so you hear these things like, you know, it's
oppressive and all this stuff, and all we're doing is
returning it to the days of pre bushbegre before this
national you know, effort to try to undermine the electoral process.
So we think it'll be clean. I think most people
understand it. Most people support it. Frankly, it polls at
eighty percent, so people want it.

Speaker 3 (49:35):
Yeah, So you guys have been you guys have been
extremely successful in cleaning up voter rules somewhere in the neighborhood.
If you remove some nearly six million inactive names nationally,
then you get into recently in Colorado, he removed three
hundred and seventy two thousand ineligible voter registrations. So what's

(49:55):
exactly happening in this era?

Speaker 6 (49:58):
So just to sort of give a big picture, I mean,
you know, dirty voter registration list is sort of the
gateway to Shenanigans and elections, right, Like, you got to
have somebody on the list, and that's the best way
to start, right, And so you know, it's sort of
the gateway for electoral malfeasant and so malfeasan's. And so
about twelve years ago Judicial Watch started this program. They

(50:22):
brought a couple of us in house. I worked with
two other lawyers, Bob Popper and Eric Lee, who are
excellent election litigators. To Bob's been doing list maintenance for
quite a while. He's probably the best in the country
at it. And so we just look at the public
data that these states put out and we say, hey,
you know, this county was seven hundred thousand people. You know,

(50:42):
didn't remove anybody for two years or four years for
change of address.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
Right.

Speaker 6 (50:47):
So federal law, you know, has a very narrow lane
that we can enforce in terms of removals death that
are largely death and change of residents, right. And so
what we do is we focus on those two criteria
and we make states do them to the max as
we can.

Speaker 8 (51:06):
Right.

Speaker 6 (51:06):
So, you know, there's all these other reasons why people
may get removed. They call up and say I've done whatever,
I no longer we want to be in the list.
You can withdraw your name or maybe you get declared
in saying you know, we we you know, we look
for that stuff, but those aren't really the big tranches.
And so you know, we've removed about we've our work
has resulted in about six million removals in about ten years,

(51:26):
I think. And so we have three cases pending right
now I think, or no, two cases one coming Illinois
and Oregon. And so you know we are, you know,
pretty busy in that. And you know, we don't really
reinvent the will with that. The states have an obligation
report every two years to congress their registration metrics, and

(51:50):
we just take that data and we look at it,
and I mean it's all spelled out in our complaints.
I mean, I can't remember the numbers off the top
of my head, but when we sued California recently, I
think they had a eleven counties with I think two
million total registered voters that remove like eighteen voters. It's
in our complaint. I'm sorry, I should have read it

(52:10):
before I got it, but it was it was something
like crazy, you know, and in there in the operative
language of the statute is they have to have a
general program that makes a reasonable effort. And if you're
a county, like hypothetically Riverside County, California, California, that has
I don't know how many hundreds and hundreds of thousands
of people, you'll have more than you know, twenty people

(52:32):
that need to be you know, removing the voter registration
list for change of address, so.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
Just people exiting California and go into other states alone. Yeah,
I mean, if you look at that exodus. Let me
ask you a question here, because people will bring this
up and I want the man to be able to
address this because you know better and better than anybody else.
Voter suppression. That's that's the talking point. On the opposite
end of the spectrum. How do you how do you

(53:00):
make the argument that it's not has nothing to do
with voter suppression.

Speaker 6 (53:05):
I mean, people can still vote, they show up, they
cast the provisional ballot, they can still register. There's no
you know, if they get removed or moved to the
an active list prematurely, they get a provisional ballot, and
they still vote, and they get the and then and
then they clarify it. They being the county clarifies it, so, uh,
it doesn't result any voter suppression. Frankly, when you get removed,

(53:27):
it means you haven't voted in over four years.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
So you know, certainly something that doesn't mean they can't
vote anymore. You just have to reapply and say I'm
a voter.

Speaker 6 (53:37):
Yeah, and a lot of places will allow you to register.
Someplace will allow you to register on the sites the
week before the election. It's pretty uh, pretty lax. I
mean what you have here, it's this sort of ongoing
fight nationally where it's been ballot access versus election integrity, right,
And for the longest time, ballot access was the big
mantra because you had the terrible eras of the fifties

(53:58):
and sixties, right, you had some things that frankly should
never have happened. And you know, America is not defined
by its irredeemable pass It happened, uh, but you know
it stopped and it's not happening. And so but there's
been this mantra of ballot access. Ballot access, let votes
come in days and weeks after the election. Ballot access,

(54:19):
you know, let everyone stay in the voter registration list,
don't ever remove anybody, do whatever it takes, regardless of
the election integrity metric, right, and so, uh, you know
you've had ballot access prioritized over election integrity and it's
just sort of overwhelmed the whole process. And so there
is no ballot access frank problems. I mean frankly, ballot

(54:40):
turnout and access has increased over time. And so every
time you Georgia was a perfect example, Georgia and North
Carolina's voter ID, you know, turnout continues to go up,
registration continues to go up, and you still hear all
these cries and complaints about lack of ballid access. And
you know, it's a civil rights industrial complex. It's great
money and at the southern poverty loss and it raises

(55:01):
a lot of money. It's just that a lot of
lawyers that get funded that way.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Uh, got to go.

Speaker 3 (55:09):
How can we follow your work?

Speaker 6 (55:11):
So you can follow our work probably best at judicialwatch
dot com. We have a great, great media team. And
then I'm on Twitter at Russell Nobile that's my handle.
I tweet about my work sometimes and I just tweet
about the random things that interest me the other day.
But that's where I am, well Russelling.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
You're doing great work. Thanks for everything. It's a pleasure
to take the time to come on the show. I
really appreciate it, so thanks so much.

Speaker 6 (55:35):
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (55:37):
All Right, friends, that's another wrap for America's criminologists. We'll
see you next week. Stay safe, stay informed, and remember
to check out my work on substack doctor Curry Meyers
dot substack dot com. Stay safe, have a great week.

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