October 10, 2025 • 42 mins
On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Hans A. von Spakovsky, manager of The Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, joins Federalist Senior Elections Correspondent Matt Kittle to analyze former FBI James Comey's arraignment, discuss former special counsel for the Department of Justice Jack Smith's spying operation against Senate Republicans, and give an update on accountability for the peple who enegaged in weaponization and lawfare.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
(00:37):
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Hans von Spakowski, manager of the
Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative and senior legal fellow
and the Edwin Meets the Third Center for Legal and
Judicial Studies. Our topic today the weaponization of justice in America,
(01:03):
the political motion therein, and some very stunning news on
that front of course this week. Cons thank you for
joining us on this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well man, listen, I have to tell you before I
say thank you. Look, you do a great job at
the Federalist, particularly. I mean, you cover a lot of things,
but your articles about elections are always very insightful and
full of a lot of information, so I actually appreciate
the work you do over there.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Oh well, thank you very much. And you know, you
and I have known each other for a long time
and we have covered and talked about everything from John
Doe investigations, the weaponization of government in Wisconsin years ago,
you know, all the way to what's being writ large
(01:53):
of course across America during the Trump era. And you know,
my reporting is very much tied into the good sources
I have, and I think you are. I always have
thought you are at the top of my list when
it comes to the sourcing on this stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, I appreciate that, but in fact, listen, I'm glad
you mentioned what happened in Wisconsin, the John Doe investigations,
which was the.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Very political.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Local district attorney an attorney there and there was a
Dane County who basically was doing political persecutions of conservative organizations,
and I think that was like a model for the
Biden Justice Department.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I think you're absolutely right. In fact, Tom Tiffany, who's
a congressman from Wisconsin, I tell this story often, but
I think it bears repeating because you know, it was
so prescient at the time. This was before he was
a congressman from the seventh Congressional District, and you know
Tom is now a candidate for governor in Wisconsin, but
(03:00):
I remember him telling me as I was talking to him.
He was in Washington, d C. For Trump's first inauguration,
and I said, wow, what do you expect with all
of these protests and things starting, you know on that day.
We remember the pink hat ladies and all of that
sort of thing. And he said to me, Matt, what
(03:22):
we saw over the last several years in the state
of Wisconsin through the unconstitutional John Doe investigations into at
that time was a governor Scott Walker, Republican. He said,
we're about to see that writ large in America. And boy,
was Tom Tiffany ever wright about that. I mean, impeachments,
(03:45):
Russia collusion, you know, the insanity of two thousand and twenty,
and then you know the years after and what Jack
Smith was doing in the name of as they were
calling it, the name of justice. I mean, it's just
it's one thing after the rate on mar Lago. It's
(04:07):
one thing after another. And now here we are, you know,
the better part of a decade into the Trump era,
and we see a guy like James Comy, the disgraced
FBI director, former FBI director now facing charges, I'll start there.
(04:27):
What do you think of that case, Hans, And do
you think there will actually be accountability for guys like
James Comy?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Well, I will tell you that I think James Comy
is guilty, but proving that it may be very tough
for the Justice Department. And what I mean by that is, look,
it's a very short indictment. They filed it right before
the five year statute limitations was going to run. We
might see a superseding indictment with more details. But es
since he was charged with providing false statements lying during
(05:03):
a congressional hearing, and when you testify a congressional hero,
you're doing so under oath. And what was he asked
about and what were the things that he the government
claims he lied about. Well, one wash, did you authorize
leaks of internal FBI memos, all of this being related
(05:25):
to Hillary Clinton, the Trump Russia collusion hoax, et cetera.
And he said, oh, no, I never did that. Well,
we know that's not true. Every what he said he
did leak internal memos. In fact, I think at one
point there may have been an Inspector General report who
criticized him for doing that. And then the other question
(05:46):
was related to the fact that, you know what, what
got that whole Russia Trump investigation.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Going on was what are the FBI used.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
To justify that the Steele dose right, the opposition research
basically created out of whole cloth by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Yea,
and Hillary Clinton apparely approved the use of that false
dulsier to feed it to the FBI so that an
(06:20):
investigation would get going. And he denies Komi that he
knew that. Well, again, there have been all these internal
communications that have been released showing that he knew that exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
But the problem is.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
The federal statutes under which he's been charged have a
very high evidentiary standard. I mean, you have to show
that the person knew that he was lying at the time,
was making a false statement, that he did so intentionally
in order to deceive, and that the statements were in
fact false. There's the reason that's such a tough state,
(07:00):
and it is because if there's any kind of impreciseness
in the question that was asked and impreciseness in the answer,
you can't really meet the standards of the statute. So
it's difficult and Yeah, he was arraigned. As you know,
(07:20):
he's pleaded not guilty. I think the judge set a
trial date for January, but there's a lot of time
between now in January, and his lawyer has already said
that he's going to file a flurry of motions claiming
things like this is a vindictive prosecution, that it's not
(07:40):
valid because he claims that the acting US Attorney who
is in charge of this was improperly appointed by the president.
And look, I don't know what the judge is going
to do. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised and that this
judge acts. But this was a Biden as a Biden
(08:02):
judge used to be a federal public defender. And you know, Matt,
what have we seen in the first six months of
the Trump administration. What have we seen about the behavior
of Biden judges.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, it's it's been amazing. I mean, they have, in
their own way, been complicit in the weaponization of you know,
justice in America. And you're right, I mean, I don't
have a lot of faith in a Biden judge. I
don't have a lot of faith in DC circuit judges,
circuit judges in general that we've seen over and over again,
(08:38):
like you said, over the first opening months of the
Trump administration Trump two point zero. But I'm curious. You
worked in in the Justice Department, and what are you
hearing from your sources therein Do you think they have
the goods? Do they have the documents, the evidence to
(09:02):
definitively show that intent was indeed there?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, I think they do. But keep in mind another
problem that this Justice Department is basic. They are completely overwhelmed.
And the reason for that is that, look, you know,
I worked at the Justice Department for four years. I
was actually a career lawyer there. The career staff there
(09:28):
was overwhelmingly left wing ideologues, and apparently so many of
them have quit because they refuse to work for Donald Trump,
which tells you something about their ideology that they are
really shorthanded when it comes to good lawyers and lawyers
(09:51):
who are willing to.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Pursue these cases.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
I mean the number of lawyers who have left, I've
never seen such a large number leaving the billing.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Now, oh, the one had that's good. I know many of.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
These biased lawyers who left it. I like, going, thank goodness,
they're finally gone. But that leaves the political appointees there,
folks that are trying to do the right thing here.
It leaves them very shorthanded. So that that makes all
these cases very tough.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, very much. So you think you'd rather have these
kinds of soiled lawyers out of the Department than in.
But the resource issue is definitely a question. Wow, this
week was something else that you think we would be
here in America. An explosive FBI document obtained by Senate
(10:44):
Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, Republican from Iowa, reveals the
FBI the Biden FBI targeted eight Republican senators personal cell
phones for tolling data part of the Arctic Frost investigation.
One Republican member of the House of Representatives was also impacted.
(11:09):
If you'll recall, the Arctic Frost investigation form the basis
of Jack Smith's elector case against President Donald Trump. I
talked to one of the individuals who was spied upon
targeted in that case today, Senator Ron Johnson, the senior
Senator from Wisconsin. I asked him, how does it feel
(11:34):
to be spied upon by your government? And sadly, Senator
Johnson said, I'm not surprised. Are you surprised by any
of this?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
No, but I'm outraged by it.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Look, I, as we discussed, I worked at the Department
of Justice. The FBI is part of the Department of Justice,
and it's the most powerful law enforcement agency in America.
It can if you have prosecutors and agents who are
willing to abuse their powers, it can ruin you and
(12:08):
your life. They can ruin you personally, they can ruin
you professionally. And to have news come out that Jack
Smith actually was spying on members of the US Congress.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
And why was he spying on them?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Why because they raised questions about the outcome of the
twenty twenty election. That is one of the most outrageous
and one of the most dangerous developments that we have
had in law enforcement in this country in a long
long time.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
But Matt, don't forget.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah, this is outrageous, but it's also just as outrageous.
Ruber Chuck Grassley two weeks ago released information that he
didn't just spy these members of Congress, he did the
same thing with almost a hundred conservative organizations, yes, sending
(13:10):
out secret subpoenas to get, for example, their bank records,
including the Republican Attorney Generals Association, you know, the organization
represents state attorney generals, and he was spying on them.
In fact, another organization that was I couldn't believe it
(13:30):
I saw on the list was an organization, you know,
I'm very familiar with Public Interest Legal Foundation, you know
Jay Christian Adams right.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
They had no legal.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Justification whatsoever for issuing those kind of secret subpoenas. And
you know what's even just as bad is the fact
that apparently none of the banks notified their customers, so
the customers would have had had a chance to fight
those SIPs and do something about it. I got to
(14:05):
tell you, I would recommend any organization that was targeted
by this.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Your rank didn't notify you.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
You ought to change banks, and you should tell them
why you're changing banks.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Should property taxes just come to an end?
Speaker 5 (14:23):
The Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every
day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the
economy and how it affects your wallet.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Truly, owning your own home shouldn't be a piggy bank
for government to extract revenue. Property taxes will forever make
you not an owner. Just nothing more than a surf
on the lord's manner.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street,
it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
Be informed.
Speaker 5 (14:46):
Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
No doubt about it. I certainly would be making the
move of my finance is if my bank allows a
weaponized government, the government to spy on me, I certainly
would be changing my financial institution, that's for sure. But
(15:14):
that's you know, the more things change, Johns, the more
they stay the same. This sounds very reminiscent of what
we saw in you know, twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, when
we had the Obama Justice Department targeting conservative groups across
the country because they had hatriot in their name or
(15:34):
tea party in their name. It just happens over and
over again. And for folks you know who are talking
about the left in this country, you know, the Biden administration,
the weaponization of government, the Biden administration was just really
in that regard and in so many regards the third term,
the extension of the Obama years, was it not?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah, it was?
Speaker 2 (15:58):
And thing I want to say to folks, because I
I was talking to reporters about this kind of thing
the last couple of days since Comy Wash went in
for his arrayment, and particularly for example, I talked to
somebody from the BBC and they were saying, oh, well,
you know, the fact that Komy's been diet isn't that
(16:19):
just weaponization of the just spart And I said, no,
it's not. It is not weaponization. When you are trying
to bring justice against individuals who in fact engaged in
weaponized investigations and prosecutions, that's not weaponization. That's trying to
(16:41):
stop the weaponization that occurred and frankly deter federal employees
in the from doing this kind.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Of thing in the future.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
But that's amazing to me. And it's you're right, it's
the BBC, at CNN, it's the New York Times, the
Washington Post. Why do think that first see and certainly
why do you then ever report on the weaponization that
occurred that took place that now the Trump administration is
trying to hold to account. Not only did they ignore it,
(17:16):
I think in many regards they were complicit in it.
When you take a look at oh I don't know
the Hunter Biden laptop issue, or how deep they were
in on the Russia collusion hoax. It is just amazing
to me and for anybody who has followed any of
(17:37):
this at all, to look at the allegations of weaponization
of the Trump Justice Department, it's just absolutely ignoring how
we got here to try to hold these individuals into account.
(17:58):
How does the Trump Justice Department deal with that kind
of thing as they tried to go about getting justice.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
They just keep going forward, and that has been one
of the best things, frankly about the administration is that
they don't back down. And you know, it's not just
that the liberal media sources were ignoring it. They approved it.
They approved the weaponization. They liked they liked the fact that,
for example, you know, they're overwhelmingly pro abortion, so they
(18:33):
liked the fact that prior administration was abusing the Face Act,
which is a federal law involving violence at churches and
abortion facilities, a law which specifically says this is not
applied to peaceful First Amendment activity. And yet they filed
(18:54):
criminal prosecution after criminal prosecution against anti abortion individuals who
were outside of abortion clinics, not engaging in any violence,
not blocking access, but simply engaging in prayers and other things.
And did the Washington Posts, did CNN? Did they get
(19:16):
outraged about that? No, they thought it was a great thing.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, that really shows their stripes. Our guest today is
Hans van Spokanski, manager of the Heritage Foundation's Election Law
Reform Initiative and senior legal fellow in the Edwin Mees
Third Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Hans, you have
been in this business for a long time. Does anything
surprise you about these revelations that we've seen? And we're
(19:44):
getting these revelations of course because the American people said
enough is enough on a number of levels, and so
the Trump administration is able to get this information out
to the public. This is the sort of stuff that
that would have been buried for a very long time
had there not been a sea change. But is this
(20:08):
about as bad as it can get in your estimation?
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yes, the answer to that is yes.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
And and you know, I keep thinking about the fact
that if Kamala Harris had won, not only would we
not know about this, yeah, but this kind of of
misbehavior would have continued. And and that's that scares me.
It scares me because again I've seen from the inside
(20:35):
the power of federal law enforcement like the Justice Department
and the FBI, and when it is in the hands
of individuals who are willing to use it to go
after political opponents, for example, there's nothing worse than that
that that is just so dangerous to our democratic republic.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
And the and the way we do things.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
And thank goodness they're making this kind of thing public.
I mean, I think Chuck Grassley, who's always just been
terrific in getting out information from whistleblowers, and kudos to
Cash Patel for combing through internal records there and also
making this public, because if they weren't doing that, we
(21:21):
wouldn't know about this, and the chances that it could
be repeated would unfortunately be very great.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Well, and we know too that it's not just weaponization
at the federal level. The Biden administration obviously had a
lot of allies and friends in places like Manhattan, Madison, Wisconsin.
And I think about the weaponization of one of the
most ridiculous eras. We've talked about this on a number
(21:52):
of occasions. You have written multiple columns on this front.
It's the whole phony fake elector's narrative we have and
he's not alone. But I think about Jim Troops, the
well regarded, well respected judge in Dane County in Madison, Wisconsin,
(22:14):
whose only crime was the fact that he stepped up
when no one else would to represent President Donald Trump
in his understandable and rightful concerns about the integrity of
the twenty twenty election. And whether you agree with any
(22:34):
of that or not, Donald Trump, just like anybody else,
has the right to be represented and to hear his case.
Jim troopis a former Dane County judge, stood up and
did that.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
He worked with.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Ken Cheesebro and now they are facing a serious prison
time simply because they were trying to defend their client
and use alternate electors, as has been done in the
past in presidential elections in this country, to secure their
(23:06):
client's position while the court challenges played out. But you
have this again, this highly partisan Attorney General, Josh Call
from the state of Wisconsin, languishing and pushing this incredibly
twisted case about you know, fraud and other things. And
(23:30):
this case continues to go on. Where do you see
all of that playing out in terms of the nationwide
weaponization of justice.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Well, that is also a terrible development.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Now, as you probably saw recently, Matt, you know the
horrible Attorney general Michigan try to do the same thing.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
And what happened recently, Judge threw it all out.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yep, threw it all out because it was such a frivolous,
meritless criminal prosecution. Look, this, this is this is very problematic.
You would think that bar associations would be outraged over this. Unfortunately,
(24:12):
so many of them have been taken over by the
political left that when they have lawyers being prosecuted for
doing what representing a client vigorously, they're not saying anything
about it. I actually I haven't looked at this, and
I'm focused on this the way I should. But boy,
(24:33):
I think the US Justice Department ought to look at
those prosecutions and see if they're if they believe there's
any kind of violation of any applical federal law being
being violated by these prosecutors, including these Attorney generals, because
I think actually they are violating these civil rights of
(24:56):
these lawyers and their clients by trying to prevent them
from having sufficient legal representation.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, and as you said, before. I mean, really, the
process is the punishment. I don't know how in any
real court. I'm not talking about a Dane County or
Manhattan court, kangaroo court, but any real court, I don't
know how you get convictions. Like you said, Michigan threw
the whole thing out because it's garbage. It's garbage in Madison,
it's garbage in Arizona where they have cases like this.
(25:29):
They proved the show and it was garbage in Nevada.
But this is a targeted effort, and I just you know,
you think about how they can financially cripple someone because
you have to spend so much money defending yourself. We
know that where do you go to get your reputation back?
(25:50):
All of those kinds of things. So it's just awful.
But I always do Conservatives not yet fully understand that
the left in this regard when it comes to law
fair will never ever stop unless they are truly held accountable.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
No, that is absolutely right, and that needs to happen.
By the way, something else that ought to happen for
those who were wrongly prosecuted. I actually should should say persecuted,
because prosecuted is giving too much credit by Jack Smith
and others. All of them should get together, they should
(26:37):
file suits against the Justice Department of the federal government.
And you know what Pamboni and the dust barant to do.
They ought to settle every one of those cases. They
ought to say, you know, you're right, you are improperly prosecuted,
and we're happy to settle the case and pay you,
(26:57):
reimburse you, for example, for all your attorneyses and costs.
I haven't seen that being done in any of these cases,
and it ought to be that. You know, that can't
fully compensate the folks who were the products of these
kind of persecutions, whether they were people improperly prosecuted under
(27:19):
the Face Act or other prosecutions like that. But that
would be one way to write the ship of justice
and the terrible things that were done.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Well, these people were, as you say, truly persecuted and
are still being persecuted. And I think about what the
Biden Justice depart They did exactly that with the likes
of Peter Struck and his paramore Misspage. They got a
lot of money and look at the emails, Look how
(27:55):
politically motivated they were. They ended up getting a huge
settlement there. So what would you say to again, to
individuals who say, well, of course the Trump Justice Department
would do something like that, they're going to take care
of their allies, when we have seen that actually truly
(28:16):
done in the Biden administration.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Yeah, except with those cases that they Look Peter Scharck
and his girlfriend, they sued claiming they'd been wrongfully terminated.
They weren't wrongfully terminating. If they were terminated for behavior
unbecoming to FBI agents, that case should never have been settled.
It should never have been paid off. That is very
(28:41):
different from the claims it could be made by those
who actually were wrongfully prosecuted and persecuted by the Biden administration.
They I think have legitimate claims, and those claims ought
to be settled. That's very different from the but what
we're basically pay off in these other cases.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Let me ask you this, do you think Attorney General
Pam Bond, the FBI Director Cash Fattel, and his assistant
Dan Bongino, do you think they have enough time to
truly clean out this corrupt agency in the FBI and
the corrupt corners of the Justice Department.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Look, they're making the effort to do it. But I
don't think people understand just how large, how large the
Justice Department is, and how many agents are in the FBI.
So I think they're making a valiant effort to do it.
I don't know whether they're going to have enough enough
time to do it. You know what I kind of
(29:47):
hope is that, Yeah, this president's term is over in
twenty twenty eight, but I'm hoping that whoever succeeds him
has exactly the same views when it comes to cleaning
up the Just Department and the FBI.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
There is, of course, as well, the main issue that
President Trump campaigned on in his Justice Department is trying
its best to accomplish. I know it's an uphill battle,
but to take on the crime and the violence, the
(30:25):
radical violence going on in our cities across the country,
from Portland to Chicago to New York. We saw in
Boston recently. Again, is this Justice Department stretched too thin
with some very ambitious goals.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Well, look there they're desperate, I think, to hire more people,
and they need them.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
But so far they've.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Done a very good job of fighting back against the
often frivolous, meritless.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Lawsuits that have been filed against them.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I've actually been favorably impressed at how hard they have
fought back. And the result of that is something mad
I know you've seen that. Remember, the Supreme Court takes
the summers off, but they have an emergency docket, that's
a docket where people file emergency appeals. That docket has
(31:26):
been the busiest I have ever seen it. Why well,
because every single time some nutty district court judge has
issued an injunction against something that the Trump administration is doing,
the just fartman has been filing emergency appeals with the
Supreme Court asking them to stay or suspend that injunction.
(31:51):
And they have been remarkably effective the Trump administration. They
may be losing before these district court judges, but they
are winning at the Supreme Court. And that tells you
that they've been doing a pretty good job in the
court battling what I would call rogue federal judges.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah, and they've had some success at the appeals level
as well, and that's really really part of it too.
The Supreme Court this past summer, I think, had a
critical ruling on that front on these national you know,
just broad scope injunctions or you know that we've seen
(32:39):
from from the lower courts, as you have observed, is
that making a difference, because there's the other side of that.
You have the Trump administration filing a record number of
these challenges. But the law fare has just absolutely from
the left has just exploded.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Yeah, it has.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Unfortunately, that decision by Supreme Court didn't go far enough
and it has not seemingly curbed many of the federal
district court judges who still issue what are clearly wrong decisions.
Can I can I give you an easy example of one. Oh, yeah, absolutely,
because look, this is this is an area of the
(33:23):
law that's not gray, it's not this is black and white.
But it shows you how federal judges just ignore the law.
Just recently, the super US Supreme Court issued a stay
or suspension of an injunction that was issued by a
judge out in California and was upheld by the Ninth
(33:46):
Circuit Court of Appeals. Secretary Nome of DHS had ended
what's called TSP temporary I'm sorry TPS temporary protected status
of Venezuelans. There's a federal statute that a lot allows
the president to provide temporary lawful presence in the US
(34:06):
to aliens who otherwise would be here illegally if, for example,
they can't return to their country because of a hurricane
or an armed conflict going on. That's how a lot
of Haitians, you know, came to the US legally for
a while because of the big hurricane.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
That hit right.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
TPS had been granted to Venezuelans. Biden administration extended it,
Secretary Nome ended it, and you had these judges say, oh,
you can't do that. We're sharing an injunction. You can't
end the TBS status Venezuelans. The federal law that sets
up and gives the precedent the power to do this
(34:48):
has specific language Matt saying it is the Secretary of
DHS and the President have the sole discretion to decide
whether to grant TPS and whether to end it. And
then it says no court, no court shall have jurisdiction
(35:10):
to review the granting of TPS or the suspension. In
other words, Congress told the court can't you can't decide this.
Your jurisdiction is stripped.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
And yet these.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Courts ignored that to issue an injunction, that shows you
how bad. Unfortunately, too many of the judges are in
the federal system.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Well, I think that's because those judges have a case
of TEDS Trump derangement syndrome as they're doing this. But
that's absolutely right. How are they getting away with this?
Because if a president and so many of these executive orders,
(35:54):
you know, Joe Biden came in and removed all kinds
of executive ended all kinds of executive orders of the president.
President Trump came back in did the same thing. That
is the power of the second branch. The executive branch
has that authority, the president has that authority. How do
(36:15):
how have we gotten these kinds of judges that are
so transparently partisan that they will absolutely ignore the law
to rewrite their own law for their own preferences. Is
it the American Bar Association? The schools? What's going on here?
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Well, for one thing, it's the law schools. Christian Adams
and I I think last year wrote a ten article
series for PJMRIA PJ Media where we looked at the
ten top rated law schools in the country, which are
almost you know, all the ivy leagues, places like Stanford also,
and what do we do? We simply looked at the
(37:02):
curriculums what are the courses being taught. You would not
believe the courses that are being taught as a standard
courses at these law schools.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
It is all.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Left wing, woke ideology. It has turned these law schools
into training camps for social justice warriors. And anybody thinks
I'm exaggerating, just read a couple of those articles where
we cite the actual courses being taught, the courses all
these law schools basically teaching law students that the United
(37:43):
States is a white supremacist society. It is a society
in which discrimination is everywhere. The justice system is completely racist.
Prisons should be closed, police should be defunded. All the
things we've been seeing that is the standard thing being
taught in law schools. And those are the people from
(38:05):
those law schools that the Biden administration before them, the
Obama administration said, Uh, these folks will be ideal federal judges.
Why is They're not going to pay any attention to
the actual law. They're not going to pay any attention
to the Constitution. They are going to issue rulings that
put in the kind of policies that we want and
(38:28):
that maybe we can't achieve through the regular political process.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, and if you've seen some of the coursework, the
syllabus of these classes, you know exactly what Hans is
talking about. But I think that these future lawyers going
into these law schools are primed already from the public
(38:55):
education system right in the United States, and there in
lies the problem. And here's my final question for you.
If you've had already a couple few generations of this
inculcation at the law school level and at the you know,
(39:16):
high school level, but before they get in at the
college level, the Bachelor of Arts and Science level, how
do we go about saving this republic? Because there is
much to worry about with you know, the next generation
and the generation after that believing in this stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Look, that's all true, and this is not an easy job.
But look we've already seen the ways to do it.
Remember when Trump came in, he basically is issued executive
orders driving woke ideology DEI training out of the federal government,
which is a great thing, and we see that now
(40:00):
happening in many states with state government. Rohnda Sanders in
Florida has been very strong about that. That's the method
of trying to clean up the colleges and also the
high schools to do it, and unfortunately, there does seem
to be a great resurgence going on among young people.
(40:24):
I mean, think about the fact that Donald Trump, one
of the first Republican presence a long time, was getting
a majority of the votes of young people, and that
tells you that the.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Game is not lost.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
We are in a battle for the heart and soul
of America. But I actually think we are making progress,
and I think the other side has been retreating, and that, actually,
I think is why we have seen so much violence
from the left. I think they are desperate, and I
think that violence that they are now instigating and encouraging
(41:04):
is a sign of their frustration with the fact that
they are losing many political battles and frankly the public
relations battle too.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
You're right, they are retreating and they are reeling, and
it's like when you got a rat cornered, it's going
to fight, and we're seeing that with the violence in
the streets of Portland to the left wing assassination culture,
(41:37):
unfortunately we're seeing play out right now. But as Hans said,
there's a reason for that. Well, thanks to my guest today,
Hans von Spakowski, manager of the Heritage Foundation's Election Law
Reform Initiative and Senior Legal Fellow, and the Edwin Meese
the Third Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. You've been
listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm
(41:58):
Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at The Federalist. We'll be
back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom
and anxious for the frame.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
I heard the
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Fame, voice the reason, and then it faded away.
And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
(00:37):
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Hans von Spakowski, manager of the
Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative and senior legal fellow
and the Edwin Meets the Third Center for Legal and
Judicial Studies. Our topic today the weaponization of justice in America,
(01:03):
the political motion therein, and some very stunning news on
that front of course this week. Cons thank you for
joining us on this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well man, listen, I have to tell you before I
say thank you. Look, you do a great job at
the Federalist, particularly. I mean, you cover a lot of things,
but your articles about elections are always very insightful and
full of a lot of information, so I actually appreciate
the work you do over there.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Oh well, thank you very much. And you know, you
and I have known each other for a long time
and we have covered and talked about everything from John
Doe investigations, the weaponization of government in Wisconsin years ago,
you know, all the way to what's being writ large
(01:53):
of course across America during the Trump era. And you know,
my reporting is very much tied into the good sources
I have, and I think you are. I always have
thought you are at the top of my list when
it comes to the sourcing on this stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, I appreciate that, but in fact, listen, I'm glad
you mentioned what happened in Wisconsin, the John Doe investigations,
which was the.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Very political.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Local district attorney an attorney there and there was a
Dane County who basically was doing political persecutions of conservative organizations,
and I think that was like a model for the
Biden Justice Department.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I think you're absolutely right. In fact, Tom Tiffany, who's
a congressman from Wisconsin, I tell this story often, but
I think it bears repeating because you know, it was
so prescient at the time. This was before he was
a congressman from the seventh Congressional District, and you know
Tom is now a candidate for governor in Wisconsin, but
(03:00):
I remember him telling me as I was talking to him.
He was in Washington, d C. For Trump's first inauguration,
and I said, wow, what do you expect with all
of these protests and things starting, you know on that day.
We remember the pink hat ladies and all of that
sort of thing. And he said to me, Matt, what
(03:22):
we saw over the last several years in the state
of Wisconsin through the unconstitutional John Doe investigations into at
that time was a governor Scott Walker, Republican. He said,
we're about to see that writ large in America. And boy,
was Tom Tiffany ever wright about that. I mean, impeachments,
(03:45):
Russia collusion, you know, the insanity of two thousand and twenty,
and then you know the years after and what Jack
Smith was doing in the name of as they were
calling it, the name of justice. I mean, it's just
it's one thing after the rate on mar Lago. It's
(04:07):
one thing after another. And now here we are, you know,
the better part of a decade into the Trump era,
and we see a guy like James Comy, the disgraced
FBI director, former FBI director now facing charges, I'll start there.
(04:27):
What do you think of that case, Hans, And do
you think there will actually be accountability for guys like
James Comy?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Well, I will tell you that I think James Comy
is guilty, but proving that it may be very tough
for the Justice Department. And what I mean by that is, look,
it's a very short indictment. They filed it right before
the five year statute limitations was going to run. We
might see a superseding indictment with more details. But es
since he was charged with providing false statements lying during
(05:03):
a congressional hearing, and when you testify a congressional hero,
you're doing so under oath. And what was he asked
about and what were the things that he the government
claims he lied about. Well, one wash, did you authorize
leaks of internal FBI memos, all of this being related
(05:25):
to Hillary Clinton, the Trump Russia collusion hoax, et cetera.
And he said, oh, no, I never did that. Well,
we know that's not true. Every what he said he
did leak internal memos. In fact, I think at one
point there may have been an Inspector General report who
criticized him for doing that. And then the other question
(05:46):
was related to the fact that, you know what, what
got that whole Russia Trump investigation.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Going on was what are the FBI used.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
To justify that the Steele dose right, the opposition research
basically created out of whole cloth by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Yea,
and Hillary Clinton apparely approved the use of that false
dulsier to feed it to the FBI so that an
(06:20):
investigation would get going. And he denies Komi that he
knew that. Well, again, there have been all these internal
communications that have been released showing that he knew that exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
But the problem is.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
The federal statutes under which he's been charged have a
very high evidentiary standard. I mean, you have to show
that the person knew that he was lying at the time,
was making a false statement, that he did so intentionally
in order to deceive, and that the statements were in
fact false. There's the reason that's such a tough state,
(07:00):
and it is because if there's any kind of impreciseness
in the question that was asked and impreciseness in the answer,
you can't really meet the standards of the statute. So
it's difficult and Yeah, he was arraigned. As you know,
(07:20):
he's pleaded not guilty. I think the judge set a
trial date for January, but there's a lot of time
between now in January, and his lawyer has already said
that he's going to file a flurry of motions claiming
things like this is a vindictive prosecution, that it's not
(07:40):
valid because he claims that the acting US Attorney who
is in charge of this was improperly appointed by the president.
And look, I don't know what the judge is going
to do. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised and that this
judge acts. But this was a Biden as a Biden
(08:02):
judge used to be a federal public defender. And you know, Matt,
what have we seen in the first six months of
the Trump administration. What have we seen about the behavior
of Biden judges.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, it's it's been amazing. I mean, they have, in
their own way, been complicit in the weaponization of you know,
justice in America. And you're right, I mean, I don't
have a lot of faith in a Biden judge. I
don't have a lot of faith in DC circuit judges,
circuit judges in general that we've seen over and over again,
(08:38):
like you said, over the first opening months of the
Trump administration Trump two point zero. But I'm curious. You
worked in in the Justice Department, and what are you
hearing from your sources therein Do you think they have
the goods? Do they have the documents, the evidence to
(09:02):
definitively show that intent was indeed there?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, I think they do. But keep in mind another
problem that this Justice Department is basic. They are completely overwhelmed.
And the reason for that is that, look, you know,
I worked at the Justice Department for four years. I
was actually a career lawyer there. The career staff there
(09:28):
was overwhelmingly left wing ideologues, and apparently so many of
them have quit because they refuse to work for Donald Trump,
which tells you something about their ideology that they are
really shorthanded when it comes to good lawyers and lawyers
(09:51):
who are willing to.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Pursue these cases.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
I mean the number of lawyers who have left, I've
never seen such a large number leaving the billing.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Now, oh, the one had that's good. I know many of.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
These biased lawyers who left it. I like, going, thank goodness,
they're finally gone. But that leaves the political appointees there,
folks that are trying to do the right thing here.
It leaves them very shorthanded. So that that makes all
these cases very tough.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, very much. So you think you'd rather have these
kinds of soiled lawyers out of the Department than in.
But the resource issue is definitely a question. Wow, this
week was something else that you think we would be
here in America. An explosive FBI document obtained by Senate
(10:44):
Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, Republican from Iowa, reveals the
FBI the Biden FBI targeted eight Republican senators personal cell
phones for tolling data part of the Arctic Frost investigation.
One Republican member of the House of Representatives was also impacted.
(11:09):
If you'll recall, the Arctic Frost investigation form the basis
of Jack Smith's elector case against President Donald Trump. I
talked to one of the individuals who was spied upon
targeted in that case today, Senator Ron Johnson, the senior
Senator from Wisconsin. I asked him, how does it feel
(11:34):
to be spied upon by your government? And sadly, Senator
Johnson said, I'm not surprised. Are you surprised by any
of this?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
No, but I'm outraged by it.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Look, I, as we discussed, I worked at the Department
of Justice. The FBI is part of the Department of Justice,
and it's the most powerful law enforcement agency in America.
It can if you have prosecutors and agents who are
willing to abuse their powers, it can ruin you and
(12:08):
your life. They can ruin you personally, they can ruin
you professionally. And to have news come out that Jack
Smith actually was spying on members of the US Congress.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
And why was he spying on them?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Why because they raised questions about the outcome of the
twenty twenty election. That is one of the most outrageous
and one of the most dangerous developments that we have
had in law enforcement in this country in a long
long time.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
But Matt, don't forget.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah, this is outrageous, but it's also just as outrageous.
Ruber Chuck Grassley two weeks ago released information that he
didn't just spy these members of Congress, he did the
same thing with almost a hundred conservative organizations, yes, sending
(13:10):
out secret subpoenas to get, for example, their bank records,
including the Republican Attorney Generals Association, you know, the organization
represents state attorney generals, and he was spying on them.
In fact, another organization that was I couldn't believe it
(13:30):
I saw on the list was an organization, you know,
I'm very familiar with Public Interest Legal Foundation, you know
Jay Christian Adams right.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
They had no legal.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Justification whatsoever for issuing those kind of secret subpoenas. And
you know what's even just as bad is the fact
that apparently none of the banks notified their customers, so
the customers would have had had a chance to fight
those SIPs and do something about it. I got to
(14:05):
tell you, I would recommend any organization that was targeted
by this.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Your rank didn't notify you.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
You ought to change banks, and you should tell them
why you're changing banks.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Should property taxes just come to an end?
Speaker 5 (14:23):
The Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every
day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the
economy and how it affects your wallet.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Truly, owning your own home shouldn't be a piggy bank
for government to extract revenue. Property taxes will forever make
you not an owner. Just nothing more than a surf
on the lord's manner.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street,
it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
Be informed.
Speaker 5 (14:46):
Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
No doubt about it. I certainly would be making the
move of my finance is if my bank allows a
weaponized government, the government to spy on me, I certainly
would be changing my financial institution, that's for sure. But
(15:14):
that's you know, the more things change, Johns, the more
they stay the same. This sounds very reminiscent of what
we saw in you know, twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, when
we had the Obama Justice Department targeting conservative groups across
the country because they had hatriot in their name or
(15:34):
tea party in their name. It just happens over and
over again. And for folks you know who are talking
about the left in this country, you know, the Biden administration,
the weaponization of government, the Biden administration was just really
in that regard and in so many regards the third term,
the extension of the Obama years, was it not?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah, it was?
Speaker 2 (15:58):
And thing I want to say to folks, because I
I was talking to reporters about this kind of thing
the last couple of days since Comy Wash went in
for his arrayment, and particularly for example, I talked to
somebody from the BBC and they were saying, oh, well,
you know, the fact that Komy's been diet isn't that
(16:19):
just weaponization of the just spart And I said, no,
it's not. It is not weaponization. When you are trying
to bring justice against individuals who in fact engaged in
weaponized investigations and prosecutions, that's not weaponization. That's trying to
(16:41):
stop the weaponization that occurred and frankly deter federal employees
in the from doing this kind.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Of thing in the future.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
But that's amazing to me. And it's you're right, it's
the BBC, at CNN, it's the New York Times, the
Washington Post. Why do think that first see and certainly
why do you then ever report on the weaponization that
occurred that took place that now the Trump administration is
trying to hold to account. Not only did they ignore it,
(17:16):
I think in many regards they were complicit in it.
When you take a look at oh I don't know
the Hunter Biden laptop issue, or how deep they were
in on the Russia collusion hoax. It is just amazing
to me and for anybody who has followed any of
(17:37):
this at all, to look at the allegations of weaponization
of the Trump Justice Department, it's just absolutely ignoring how
we got here to try to hold these individuals into account.
(17:58):
How does the Trump Justice Department deal with that kind
of thing as they tried to go about getting justice.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
They just keep going forward, and that has been one
of the best things, frankly about the administration is that
they don't back down. And you know, it's not just
that the liberal media sources were ignoring it. They approved it.
They approved the weaponization. They liked they liked the fact that,
for example, you know, they're overwhelmingly pro abortion, so they
(18:33):
liked the fact that prior administration was abusing the Face Act,
which is a federal law involving violence at churches and
abortion facilities, a law which specifically says this is not
applied to peaceful First Amendment activity. And yet they filed
(18:54):
criminal prosecution after criminal prosecution against anti abortion individuals who
were outside of abortion clinics, not engaging in any violence,
not blocking access, but simply engaging in prayers and other things.
And did the Washington Posts, did CNN? Did they get
(19:16):
outraged about that? No, they thought it was a great thing.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, that really shows their stripes. Our guest today is
Hans van Spokanski, manager of the Heritage Foundation's Election Law
Reform Initiative and senior legal fellow in the Edwin Mees
Third Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Hans, you have
been in this business for a long time. Does anything
surprise you about these revelations that we've seen? And we're
(19:44):
getting these revelations of course because the American people said
enough is enough on a number of levels, and so
the Trump administration is able to get this information out
to the public. This is the sort of stuff that
that would have been buried for a very long time
had there not been a sea change. But is this
(20:08):
about as bad as it can get in your estimation?
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yes, the answer to that is yes.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
And and you know, I keep thinking about the fact
that if Kamala Harris had won, not only would we
not know about this, yeah, but this kind of of
misbehavior would have continued. And and that's that scares me.
It scares me because again I've seen from the inside
(20:35):
the power of federal law enforcement like the Justice Department
and the FBI, and when it is in the hands
of individuals who are willing to use it to go
after political opponents, for example, there's nothing worse than that
that that is just so dangerous to our democratic republic.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
And the and the way we do things.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
And thank goodness they're making this kind of thing public.
I mean, I think Chuck Grassley, who's always just been
terrific in getting out information from whistleblowers, and kudos to
Cash Patel for combing through internal records there and also
making this public, because if they weren't doing that, we
(21:21):
wouldn't know about this, and the chances that it could
be repeated would unfortunately be very great.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Well, and we know too that it's not just weaponization
at the federal level. The Biden administration obviously had a
lot of allies and friends in places like Manhattan, Madison, Wisconsin.
And I think about the weaponization of one of the
most ridiculous eras. We've talked about this on a number
(21:52):
of occasions. You have written multiple columns on this front.
It's the whole phony fake elector's narrative we have and
he's not alone. But I think about Jim Troops, the
well regarded, well respected judge in Dane County in Madison, Wisconsin,
(22:14):
whose only crime was the fact that he stepped up
when no one else would to represent President Donald Trump
in his understandable and rightful concerns about the integrity of
the twenty twenty election. And whether you agree with any
(22:34):
of that or not, Donald Trump, just like anybody else,
has the right to be represented and to hear his case.
Jim troopis a former Dane County judge, stood up and
did that.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
He worked with.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Ken Cheesebro and now they are facing a serious prison
time simply because they were trying to defend their client
and use alternate electors, as has been done in the
past in presidential elections in this country, to secure their
(23:06):
client's position while the court challenges played out. But you
have this again, this highly partisan Attorney General, Josh Call
from the state of Wisconsin, languishing and pushing this incredibly
twisted case about you know, fraud and other things. And
(23:30):
this case continues to go on. Where do you see
all of that playing out in terms of the nationwide
weaponization of justice.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Well, that is also a terrible development.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Now, as you probably saw recently, Matt, you know the
horrible Attorney general Michigan try to do the same thing.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
And what happened recently, Judge threw it all out.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yep, threw it all out because it was such a frivolous,
meritless criminal prosecution. Look, this, this is this is very problematic.
You would think that bar associations would be outraged over this. Unfortunately,
(24:12):
so many of them have been taken over by the
political left that when they have lawyers being prosecuted for
doing what representing a client vigorously, they're not saying anything
about it. I actually I haven't looked at this, and
I'm focused on this the way I should. But boy,
(24:33):
I think the US Justice Department ought to look at
those prosecutions and see if they're if they believe there's
any kind of violation of any applical federal law being
being violated by these prosecutors, including these Attorney generals, because
I think actually they are violating these civil rights of
(24:56):
these lawyers and their clients by trying to prevent them
from having sufficient legal representation.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, and as you said, before. I mean, really, the
process is the punishment. I don't know how in any
real court. I'm not talking about a Dane County or
Manhattan court, kangaroo court, but any real court, I don't
know how you get convictions. Like you said, Michigan threw
the whole thing out because it's garbage. It's garbage in Madison,
it's garbage in Arizona where they have cases like this.
(25:29):
They proved the show and it was garbage in Nevada.
But this is a targeted effort, and I just you know,
you think about how they can financially cripple someone because
you have to spend so much money defending yourself. We
know that where do you go to get your reputation back?
(25:50):
All of those kinds of things. So it's just awful.
But I always do Conservatives not yet fully understand that
the left in this regard when it comes to law
fair will never ever stop unless they are truly held accountable.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
No, that is absolutely right, and that needs to happen.
By the way, something else that ought to happen for
those who were wrongly prosecuted. I actually should should say persecuted,
because prosecuted is giving too much credit by Jack Smith
and others. All of them should get together, they should
(26:37):
file suits against the Justice Department of the federal government.
And you know what Pamboni and the dust barant to do.
They ought to settle every one of those cases. They
ought to say, you know, you're right, you are improperly prosecuted,
and we're happy to settle the case and pay you,
(26:57):
reimburse you, for example, for all your attorneyses and costs.
I haven't seen that being done in any of these cases,
and it ought to be that. You know, that can't
fully compensate the folks who were the products of these
kind of persecutions, whether they were people improperly prosecuted under
(27:19):
the Face Act or other prosecutions like that. But that
would be one way to write the ship of justice
and the terrible things that were done.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Well, these people were, as you say, truly persecuted and
are still being persecuted. And I think about what the
Biden Justice depart They did exactly that with the likes
of Peter Struck and his paramore Misspage. They got a
lot of money and look at the emails, Look how
(27:55):
politically motivated they were. They ended up getting a huge
settlement there. So what would you say to again, to
individuals who say, well, of course the Trump Justice Department
would do something like that, they're going to take care
of their allies, when we have seen that actually truly
(28:16):
done in the Biden administration.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Yeah, except with those cases that they Look Peter Scharck
and his girlfriend, they sued claiming they'd been wrongfully terminated.
They weren't wrongfully terminating. If they were terminated for behavior
unbecoming to FBI agents, that case should never have been settled.
It should never have been paid off. That is very
(28:41):
different from the claims it could be made by those
who actually were wrongfully prosecuted and persecuted by the Biden administration.
They I think have legitimate claims, and those claims ought
to be settled. That's very different from the but what
we're basically pay off in these other cases.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Let me ask you this, do you think Attorney General
Pam Bond, the FBI Director Cash Fattel, and his assistant
Dan Bongino, do you think they have enough time to
truly clean out this corrupt agency in the FBI and
the corrupt corners of the Justice Department.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Look, they're making the effort to do it. But I
don't think people understand just how large, how large the
Justice Department is, and how many agents are in the FBI.
So I think they're making a valiant effort to do it.
I don't know whether they're going to have enough enough
time to do it. You know what I kind of
(29:47):
hope is that, Yeah, this president's term is over in
twenty twenty eight, but I'm hoping that whoever succeeds him
has exactly the same views when it comes to cleaning
up the Just Department and the FBI.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
There is, of course, as well, the main issue that
President Trump campaigned on in his Justice Department is trying
its best to accomplish. I know it's an uphill battle,
but to take on the crime and the violence, the
(30:25):
radical violence going on in our cities across the country,
from Portland to Chicago to New York. We saw in
Boston recently. Again, is this Justice Department stretched too thin
with some very ambitious goals.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Well, look there they're desperate, I think, to hire more people,
and they need them.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
But so far they've.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Done a very good job of fighting back against the
often frivolous, meritless.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Lawsuits that have been filed against them.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I've actually been favorably impressed at how hard they have
fought back. And the result of that is something mad
I know you've seen that. Remember, the Supreme Court takes
the summers off, but they have an emergency docket, that's
a docket where people file emergency appeals. That docket has
(31:26):
been the busiest I have ever seen it. Why well,
because every single time some nutty district court judge has
issued an injunction against something that the Trump administration is doing,
the just fartman has been filing emergency appeals with the
Supreme Court asking them to stay or suspend that injunction.
(31:51):
And they have been remarkably effective the Trump administration. They
may be losing before these district court judges, but they
are winning at the Supreme Court. And that tells you
that they've been doing a pretty good job in the
court battling what I would call rogue federal judges.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah, and they've had some success at the appeals level
as well, and that's really really part of it too.
The Supreme Court this past summer, I think, had a
critical ruling on that front on these national you know,
just broad scope injunctions or you know that we've seen
(32:39):
from from the lower courts, as you have observed, is
that making a difference, because there's the other side of that.
You have the Trump administration filing a record number of
these challenges. But the law fare has just absolutely from
the left has just exploded.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Yeah, it has.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Unfortunately, that decision by Supreme Court didn't go far enough
and it has not seemingly curbed many of the federal
district court judges who still issue what are clearly wrong decisions.
Can I can I give you an easy example of one. Oh, yeah, absolutely,
because look, this is this is an area of the
(33:23):
law that's not gray, it's not this is black and white.
But it shows you how federal judges just ignore the law.
Just recently, the super US Supreme Court issued a stay
or suspension of an injunction that was issued by a
judge out in California and was upheld by the Ninth
(33:46):
Circuit Court of Appeals. Secretary Nome of DHS had ended
what's called TSP temporary I'm sorry TPS temporary protected status
of Venezuelans. There's a federal statute that a lot allows
the president to provide temporary lawful presence in the US
(34:06):
to aliens who otherwise would be here illegally if, for example,
they can't return to their country because of a hurricane
or an armed conflict going on. That's how a lot
of Haitians, you know, came to the US legally for
a while because of the big hurricane.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
That hit right.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
TPS had been granted to Venezuelans. Biden administration extended it,
Secretary Nome ended it, and you had these judges say, oh,
you can't do that. We're sharing an injunction. You can't
end the TBS status Venezuelans. The federal law that sets
up and gives the precedent the power to do this
(34:48):
has specific language Matt saying it is the Secretary of
DHS and the President have the sole discretion to decide
whether to grant TPS and whether to end it. And
then it says no court, no court shall have jurisdiction
(35:10):
to review the granting of TPS or the suspension. In
other words, Congress told the court can't you can't decide this.
Your jurisdiction is stripped.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
And yet these.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Courts ignored that to issue an injunction, that shows you
how bad. Unfortunately, too many of the judges are in
the federal system.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Well, I think that's because those judges have a case
of TEDS Trump derangement syndrome as they're doing this. But
that's absolutely right. How are they getting away with this?
Because if a president and so many of these executive orders,
(35:54):
you know, Joe Biden came in and removed all kinds
of executive ended all kinds of executive orders of the president.
President Trump came back in did the same thing. That
is the power of the second branch. The executive branch
has that authority, the president has that authority. How do
(36:15):
how have we gotten these kinds of judges that are
so transparently partisan that they will absolutely ignore the law
to rewrite their own law for their own preferences. Is
it the American Bar Association? The schools? What's going on here?
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Well, for one thing, it's the law schools. Christian Adams
and I I think last year wrote a ten article
series for PJMRIA PJ Media where we looked at the
ten top rated law schools in the country, which are
almost you know, all the ivy leagues, places like Stanford also,
and what do we do? We simply looked at the
(37:02):
curriculums what are the courses being taught. You would not
believe the courses that are being taught as a standard
courses at these law schools.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
It is all.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Left wing, woke ideology. It has turned these law schools
into training camps for social justice warriors. And anybody thinks
I'm exaggerating, just read a couple of those articles where
we cite the actual courses being taught, the courses all
these law schools basically teaching law students that the United
(37:43):
States is a white supremacist society. It is a society
in which discrimination is everywhere. The justice system is completely racist.
Prisons should be closed, police should be defunded. All the
things we've been seeing that is the standard thing being
taught in law schools. And those are the people from
(38:05):
those law schools that the Biden administration before them, the
Obama administration said, Uh, these folks will be ideal federal judges.
Why is They're not going to pay any attention to
the actual law. They're not going to pay any attention
to the Constitution. They are going to issue rulings that
put in the kind of policies that we want and
(38:28):
that maybe we can't achieve through the regular political process.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, and if you've seen some of the coursework, the
syllabus of these classes, you know exactly what Hans is
talking about. But I think that these future lawyers going
into these law schools are primed already from the public
(38:55):
education system right in the United States, and there in
lies the problem. And here's my final question for you.
If you've had already a couple few generations of this
inculcation at the law school level and at the you know,
(39:16):
high school level, but before they get in at the
college level, the Bachelor of Arts and Science level, how
do we go about saving this republic? Because there is
much to worry about with you know, the next generation
and the generation after that believing in this stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Look, that's all true, and this is not an easy job.
But look we've already seen the ways to do it.
Remember when Trump came in, he basically is issued executive
orders driving woke ideology DEI training out of the federal government,
which is a great thing, and we see that now
(40:00):
happening in many states with state government. Rohnda Sanders in
Florida has been very strong about that. That's the method
of trying to clean up the colleges and also the
high schools to do it, and unfortunately, there does seem
to be a great resurgence going on among young people.
(40:24):
I mean, think about the fact that Donald Trump, one
of the first Republican presence a long time, was getting
a majority of the votes of young people, and that
tells you that the.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Game is not lost.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
We are in a battle for the heart and soul
of America. But I actually think we are making progress,
and I think the other side has been retreating, and that, actually,
I think is why we have seen so much violence
from the left. I think they are desperate, and I
think that violence that they are now instigating and encouraging
(41:04):
is a sign of their frustration with the fact that
they are losing many political battles and frankly the public
relations battle too.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
You're right, they are retreating and they are reeling, and
it's like when you got a rat cornered, it's going
to fight, and we're seeing that with the violence in
the streets of Portland to the left wing assassination culture,
(41:37):
unfortunately we're seeing play out right now. But as Hans said,
there's a reason for that. Well, thanks to my guest today,
Hans von Spakowski, manager of the Heritage Foundation's Election Law
Reform Initiative and Senior Legal Fellow, and the Edwin Meese
the Third Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. You've been
listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm
(41:58):
Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at The Federalist. We'll be
back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom
and anxious for the frame.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
I heard the
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Fame, voice the reason, and then it faded away.
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