What are the legal ramifications of the protests in L.A.?

Attorney Brad Koffel looks at the response to the riots with the National Guard, and whether or not it is legal to do so

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's jump over to the Legacy Retirement Group dot com
phone line. Say good morning to Columbus defense attorney the
Kaffel Law firm, Brad Kaffel. He hosts the show here
Called for the Defense Fridays at six Sundays at eleven
and seven. Counselor, Good morning. This is the perfect story
for you talking about the La immigration riots. It involves politics,

(00:23):
it involves law. There's so many things to unpack, and
I guess the first question is what legal authority does
President Trump have? What did he cite to bring in
the National Guard in Los Angeles without the approval or
consultation of that state's governor.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Good morning, Thanks for always great to be on with
your listeners. The well the aside from the law, I
think we're losing a lot of momentum if we fail
to say the president has the duty, whether he wants
to enforce it or not, like some presidents from the

(01:02):
mid fifties and mid sixties that sent federal troops down
to the South. Horrible political repercussions for big political decisions.
But the site not a law, not a statute, but
the importance of the commander in chief and the president

(01:23):
of the United States to faithfully uphold and enforce all
the federal laws. And whether you want to whether Trump
wants to jump in here and do this or not,
it seems like he does. He must. It's a part
of his duty as the commander in chief of the
United States and his duty to us, his people that

(01:47):
we elected, to protect us from domestic turbulence, whether there
are civil rights anti civil rights protesters in the South
or they are highway obsters that are in LA in
the early nineties after the riot to the Rodney King beating.

(02:09):
The police that got exonerated on the Rodney King beating,
You don't look at what the message that you're trying
to put down or the people that you're trying to
put down. You look at We've got a problem out
on the streets. It's exceeded what local law enforcement can do.
It's now gotten to the point where it's threatening the
people of the state, and the local and state leadership

(02:34):
are unable to keep it in check.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Well, I like that you said use the word duty,
that the president has the duty to step in and
do something here. Immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility at
the end of the day. To start it as an
immigration issue. And then when local jurisdictions refuse to cooperate
or maintain the order, the federal government has the right

(02:57):
and the duty to step been and protect not only
its agents, law enforcement agents, uh buildings, federal buildings, and
the citizens of that city or state. He is absolutely
within his right to do this. Uh. You know, there's
a lot of discussions about these, you know, is it
the posse commentatus act? I don't know if i'd said that, right.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
That's they're throwing that crap at us. They're throwing they're
throwing insurrection addicts. Yeah, they're throwing possy commatitis that they're
they're they they think they're totally right with then, as
Reagan used to say, you know, it's not that Democrats
are always wrong, it's just they they just don't when
they're no, when they're not right. These are political issues.

(03:41):
It's not a political This is not a political issue.
This is not pick which statute your your president is
using to send in federal soldiers. It's before that the
very basis of our individual rights, the entire part of
the whole whole reason are country was founded so that

(04:03):
we could express all of our rights, religious, political, whatever
your rights are, your inherent fundamental rights, and those rights
guarantee freedom, and our freedom rests upon the certainty that
the president, the federal president, the executive, the commander in chief,
will support the decisions of the federal courts. There's your

(04:24):
civil rights acts, where they will also support our individual
rights and freedoms to be free from mob rule. You
don't need a particular federal statute for that. Whether you
are a critic of what Eisenhower did down at Little

(04:45):
Rock in nineteen fifty seven, he sent the one hundred
and first Airborne Division down to block the mob that
was down there trying to keep the nine black students
from entering Central High School. Horribly unpopular decision, at least
in the South, and every Republican president knew, from Kennedy

(05:07):
Nixon forward, you had to win the South. And Ike said,
this decision I'm making is as tough as the decision
that I made went on D Day, because he knew
how absolutely caustic this is and this could turn Kent
State like on Donald Trump. And I'm kind of shocked

(05:29):
because he's made so many great decisions in his second term.
Political decisions and media hailing the media and like what
I mentioned to yesterday and we were talking about, this
is what his predecessors did. If someone would show hip
some history from Eisenhawer to JFK to LBJ, George H. W.

(05:49):
Bush in ninety two, the LA riots. He has to
keep control of the political climate on this, get in
the oval, deliver a televised draft prime time, stick to
the script, don't addlib. But he must emphasize the importance
of a polding law and order any United States that

(06:13):
comes before any federal statute that comes before constitution. Someone
has to make sure the mob rule doesn't take over
and put down roots and grow.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
And that's where we are. I mean, that's what happened
in the summer of twenty twenty, the Summer of Love,
as you well remember, where we let the loudest mobs
decide and dictate what was going on. I mean, we
are a country of laws. I mean President Trump is
the law and order president. I mean I applaud his

(06:47):
decisiveness on this. You know, who knows what we'd be
dealing with today if he didn't send in the National Guard.
I don't know. It could have just they could have
just tired themselves out and it went away. I doubt
that that's what have happened. It would have escalated in
some way, shape or form. But I mean this, as
we were texting about this yesterday, these are not innocent

(07:09):
people looking for a better life. I mean there are
two There are two factions here. There are the people
that are protesting the ice deportations during the day, mostly peaceful,
and then there's the hooligans that come out at night
that are just they're anarchists, they're chaos creators. They want
to see things burned, and it's just need that part

(07:31):
of it needs to stop.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Let me, let me, let me throw the flashlight, the
mag light on one other thing that they're not saying,
but it's what they're arguing. In the from eighteen seventy
six to nineteen sixties, it was all protecting the new
civil rights of freed enslaved people, freed slaves, and the

(07:56):
federal government had to step in the South there a
few times, one big time, you know, after the Civil
War they pulled out Jim Crow laws kicked in for
sixty years, and then IKE and JFK and LBJ pulled
those back, rolled those protests back. Those were civil rights
that were guaranteed by virtue of being Americans the Fourteenth

(08:21):
Amendment at the end of the Civil War. What we're arguing,
what the left, this new left is arguing, is that
these Central Americans, South Americans, whoever else, the Free Palaceline,
the Palestinians that are over here, whoever, they're not American citizens.
The basis of what the critics of Trump are citing

(08:45):
but they're not saying, is these are human rights. And
once the new Left starts to bring up the issues
of human rights, the Republican Party and the establishment better
be ready. How are you going to handle that? How
do you argue against human rights? And that, to me

(09:06):
is the flashpoint. This could go Kent State if Trump
administration doesn't get ahead of the human rights beef. It
goes Trump's Kent State if he treats it as our
civil rights are being violated, meaning those of us that
are living in Columbus that we're still affected by what's
going on in LA because we've had that stuff blow

(09:28):
over here. Our fundamental rights, our civil rights are being
violated and these people are waving foreign flags.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
That's what I can't I've been mentioning that all morning.
I don't understand that they're burning American flags, but they're
waving their own flags to the country that they don't
want to go back to.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
They're human rights, they're human rights. They have human rights.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, but human rights don't allow you. You can't just
pick and choose what country you'd like to live in.
That's the difference.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
They have human rights, we have human rights. But human
rights have not been fully defined by Western civilization yet.
We're still dealing with civil rights. And right now their conduct,
whether they're legal or illegal, doesn't matter, are violating our
civil rights. And it's time to get federal troops down
there to protect our citizens. As though they're the nine

(10:20):
students in Little Rock. Get the troops in there to
protect the millions and millions and millions of us don't
want to be left alone from these anarchics.