There's so much talk about the president's memory that I can't even remember when it
started. Oh all right. I want to cut through that though, and
get to more of the legal stuff, because when you take a step back,
I think a lot of Republicans are a little bit crowing because the thing
we've been saying for so long has been kind of shown to be true by
an outside, more know, more neutral source. President Biden is senile.
We all knew this, everyone knows it. And now we've got a prosecutor
saying I'm not prosecuting him because his memory is clearly so terrible that I think
it would ruin my case. Well, why would it ruin his case?
And this this is why we I want to kind of dig into this because
Biden is sort of trying to crow that I've been totally rendicated and he hasn't
really, So let's explain what's going on. So let's get started with what
is this crime that President Biden is has possibly committed, And it's very similar
to what President Trump is in fact being charged with. So the crime at
play here involves willful retention of classified material which you're not authorized to retain.
So let's go to this section of the Special Council report. Right, So,
just and again to understand how this works. Okay, it was discovered
that President Biden had classified documents at the pen Biden's enter, so an office
in Washington, and then it was discovered he had stuff at his home.
The FBI raided his home, searched his home, found all of these classified
documents all over the place in his garage. The Justice Department, the America
Garland appointed a special Council to investigate the President for this matter. Now,
they kind of had to do this to save face. Why so, the
president is in charge of the Department of Justice. He is at the top
of its org chart. If the normal chain of command of the Department of
Justice investigates its own boss, there's an obvious conflict of interest there. Why
would you want to harshly investigate the person who can fire you. Now,
ultimately, the President can still kind of fire the Special Council. But the
idea is, in a situation like that, the Attorney General hires someone from
the outside, brings someone in who doesn't work for the department, who isn't
working for the mainline of the Department of Justice, brings someone in and appoints
to that person special council to investigate and bring criminal charges if warranted, for
misconduct that the mainline prosecutors within the Department of Justice can't prosecute without a conflict
of interest. So it seems reasonable that Merrick Garland picked a special counsel to
investigate President Biden for unlawful retention of these documents. So the Special Council does
his investigation and then issues a report which he provides to the Attorney General and
the Attorney General can publish. So the special Council investigated, the special Council
determined that he was not going to bring charges against the president. Now,
in fairness, there's the question of presidential immunity of you know, should should
presidents be subject to criminal prosecution during their time in office? And generally speaking,
no, presidents are not subject to criminal prosecution federal criminal prosecution during their
time in office. But beyond that, a special prosecutor said, beyond that,
I would not bring charges against the president. Why, well, what
crime was President Biden allegedly guilty of? What did they find evidence of?
And it's basically they're looking at the Espionage Act, okay, and the Espionage
Act is the statute that forbids the unlawful retention of classified documents and with any
crime, with any criminal charge, one of the things the prosecutor has to
show is a certain level of what's called men's raya men's rea. Okay,
it's a Latin phrase. It literally means defendant mindset. Raa means relating to
a defendant, and men's means your mind your mindset, So your defendant mindset?
What was the defendant mindset? And it basically it has to do with
what level of intentionality does the prosecutor have to show beyond a reasonable doubt on
the part of the defendant, and that well, what does it matter what
the criminals thinking? If they just did the thing, then they should go
to jail. Well, no, it actually matters a lot. Okay,
what mindset you have as a criminal. That's the difference between murder and manslaughter.
For example, Okay, murder, I was directly intentionally with malice aforethought.
You know, I camped out with a sniper rifle outside of his house
for three hours waiting for him to walk outside his door, and I shot
him through the head. Okay, that's murder, first degree murder. Manslaughter
is I behaved in an unacceptably reckless fashion. You know I drive. I
drove, you know, one hundred miles per hour in a twenty five zone
in a neighborhood, and I ran over a kid. Okay, I might
get charged with vehicular manslaughter. I wasn't intending to run the kid over,
but I was acting recklessly, unacceptably recklessly. So your mindset of intentionality versus
recklessness versus negligence can change the level of crime. And every crime has some
kind of mensraa that you have to prove. There's some kinds of violations criminal,
some kinds of legal violations that they don't care what your mensraa is.
Okay, if you're speeding, the cop doesn't necessarily care. If you're meant
to be speeding. Youaiting, you know, you cross that red line and
you get a ticket. But for many things you have to show a certain
kind of mindset. Under the Espionage Act, the retention of documents, basically
what they say is to basically to successfully prosecute someone, the prosecutor would have
to show that this person really retained these documents wilfulness. This under the Espionage
Act, an act as wilful when quote, it is done voluntarily and intentionally
and with the specific intent to do something that the law forbids, that is
to say, with a bad purpose, either to disobey or to disregard the
law. So what's clear is that they have pretty darn clear evidence that Biden
had these documents during time frames. They have some evidence anyway that Biden had
these documents during time frames when he wasn't supposed to. Now it isn't quite
as clear cut as we think. Well, it was in his home in
Delaware, of course he wasn't supposed to. Well, while he's president,
and he was president when that stuff was found his home as in Delaware.
Yes, he wasn't allowed while he's president. He's actually allowed to have that
stuff in his house. While he was vice president, he was allowed to
have a lot of that stuff in his house. The problem is the four
year window from January twenty first of twenty seventeen through January twentieth of twenty twenty
one. During that four year window, he wasn't allowed to have any of
these documents. So a lot of the evidence centers around a recorded conversation Biden
had with his ghost rider in twenty seventeen, where he is heard on the
tape saying I found all the classified stuff about Afghanistan down downstairs, meaning that
in twenty seventeen he was very casually telling his ghost rider that he had classified
documents in his home at that time, a home in Virginia. But one
of the things a prosecutor would have a difficult time with is showing that's sort
of the only evidence they have that he had these documents unlawfully in his possession
during that four year window. They can't really show a chain of custody demonstrating
that where those documents were over the course of that four year span. Okay,
so that's one thing, But the second is wilfulness and wilfulness in retaining
the documents. Why well, because one in the course of the conversations,
these recorded conversations that Biden was having with his ghostwriter in twenty seventeen, evidence
of which and all of that. The Special Council reviewed all of those recorded
conversations with his ghostwriter and also their interview with him in twenty twenty three.
Biden demonstrated that his memory is absolutely terrible. That's why they don't think they
can prosecute him, because if he completely forgot about these documents, he forgot
that they were in his home, then that's not willful retention. They can't.
And let's understand, if you're going to criminally, this is a criminal
charge. To convict someone of a crime, you have to demonstrate beyond a
reasonable doubt that the person satisfied every single element of the crime. You have
to satisfy. You have to show beyond a reasonable doubt that he had the
documents at his house during the unlawful time period the four years between vice presidency
and presidency. You have to demonstrate that beyond a reasonable doubt. All they
have is the audio recording of him saying that in twenty seventeen, and then
you have to show beyond a reasonable doubt that he retained it willfully, beyond
a reasonable doubt. I gotta say, if I put myself in the shoes
of a juror, am I beyond a reasonable doubt sure that President Biden that
you know, then former Vice President Joe Biden, knowing how senile he is,
that he didn't forget about this, I don't know. I don't know.
I think you could at any rate. I think the Special Council makes
a decent point that President Biden is so like the audio of the recordings he
made with his ghostwriter in twenty seventeen, he said it was so labored,
it was so difficult, even like they're down a little stuff like I don't
know if Biden apparently constantly misspelled the word Afghanistan. That was like that was
how he was able to show to remember that it was his handwriting on stuff,
because he knew he always misspelled Afghanistan. The word Afghanistan was written in
his handwriting. A lot of this stuff, by the way, in case
you're wondering what this stuff was, it seems like the crux of it,
it was a lot of stuff. Well, you know what, let me
get to the next segment to sort of understand the kinds of classified materials Biden
was holding onto that. I think it sort of shows his kind of you
know, he wasn't just a jackdaw kind of saving odds and ends just for
kicks. I think it shows a little bit of his ego. And we'll
get to that right after the break. This is the John je Already show
on Power Talk. One of the things that didn't get talked about much in
the Special Council. In all the commentary after on the Special Council report,
obviously the main headline is Joe Biden is has such a poor memory that the
Special Council thought there was no way he could get a conviction that Biden was
willfully retaining the documents. So basically, yes, they found evidence. There's
plenty of evidence that Biden had these documents, had these documents inappropriately. There's
evidence that he willfully there is evidence that he had these documents in his house.
The problem is, to be convicted of this crime, you have to
show that he retained them willfully. And the Special Council basically thought, based
on how he sounded in these twenty seventeen interviews and based on how he sounds
today, there's no way a jury is going to find that he can willfully
do anything. That his memory is so bad that there's no a jury could
very reasonably come to the conclusion that Biden just forgot he had this stuff.
Now what? And it's, by the way, that's why Biden can't have
it both ways with this thing. Biden's trying to have his cake and eat
it too. He's trying to argue their Sairs, Druss and a lot of
people on the left are trying to say, oh, the Special Council was
being completely inappropriate making these comments about President Biden's memory. There was no need
to discuss any of that. But also, oh, but the Scial Council
found that he absolutely didn't commit any crime. Well, it's one or the
other, the only way you can And basically, by the way, he
didn't find that Biden didn't commit a crime. He found that there was evidence
that he committed a crime, but that it would be extremely difficult to prove
to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden had the appropriate mental state for
that crime, which means which is wilfulness and intentionality in retaining something he's not
supposed to retain. Why, because his memory was so bad, the Special
Council basically thought, it's a very good possibility he just completely forgot he had
this stuff. Because he's forgetting everything. This guy can't remember, Jack,
and that's why the Special Counsel brings up mister Biden has terrible lapses of memory.
He can't remember what year he stopped being vice president. He can't remember
with in several years when his son Bo passed away, like that's why he
brought that stuff up. The Democrats are acting as though this is just a
special count, just snifing President Biden completely gratuitously, and it's not. These
facts about Biden's memory being this poor are essential to why he's not getting charged.
This is like my grandpa Joe, who was from New York. He
used to say this of anyone who was who he thought was really dumb.
It was like his ultimate insult was he couldn't even get arrested. That's basically
the assessment of Joe Biden. He's so senile that he doesn't have even the
mental capacity sufficient to commit this crime that there's evidence he committed. So the
Biden people can't act as though he cannot act as though one his memories totally
fine and two he absolutely didn't commit any crime. No, if his memory
is really good in Razor Sharp, then we have a much better case against
him and there's a much better chance that he should be criminally charged. Now,
I want to talk about the kinds of things he was retaining, Okay,
and the Special Council document sort of lists it. First of all,
it was like thirty plus things that were all that had some marking or indication
that either were top secret or had some marking or indication that it was top
secret. I think I counted thirty four. I was doing control F and
it's kind of hard to classify. But anyway, it was like over thirty
things that either were top secret or had a top secret label on it.
So there's also the idea of like, whoa, well, President Trump was
so much worse now it does seem as though President Trump was obviously much more
resistant to turning stuff over to the National Archives when they asked him for it
back. That's undoubtedly true. Either well he was either more hostile to returning
it or more deceptive. And then some of the stuff from the Special Council
investigation that it seems like Trump actually lied to his own attorneys about where stuff
was. So again Trump kind of being his own worst enemy with this.
Trump could have very easily avoided all these problems if he wasn't so slippery.
But it's also a thing of like to act as though Biden is this paragon
of doing the right thing and Trump is a monster. Like no, Okay,
well, Trump had more documents. Okay, Biden had thirty four top
secret documents in his house that he wasn't supposed to have sitting in a garage,
like highly insecure, incredibly dangerous, incredibly irresponsible, and there's a very
I mean, we don't have a perfect chain of custody, but it's very
very likely he had these things when he had absolutely no right to have them,
when he was a private citizen, in between his vice presidency ending and
his presidency starting. So it's almost like saying, well, you know,
Joseph Stalin was a terrible he murdered twenty million people, but Adolf Hitler he
only murdered six million people. Like that, They're both really bad. It's
like the idea that Trump is so much worse than Joe Biden, as far
as this goes, is absurd. And the kinds of stuff Biden was retaining
the Special Council gives this narrative that Biden has long thought of himself as a
historic politician. He got elected to the Senate when he was only twenty nine
years old, had this decades long career in the Senate, and one of
the things he seemed to be really big on was retaining a lot of stuff
relating to Afghanistan and President Obama's early decision to have a surge of troops in
Afghanistan early on, which Biden was internally opposing within the Obama administration. Biden
kept because and because I think this is the only way that Biden can think.
He can only think of things in terms of Boomer examples. Biden was
convinced it would turn Afghanistan into Vietnam, and so he opposed Obama increasing,
you know, doing troop surges in Afghanistan. And he was retaining all this
documentation as a way of showing for posterity that he was right and vindicating the
historical record of this. So a lot of it was stuff he produced as
Vice president, and that stuff, a lot of it was notes he was
taking on secure already briefings, intelligence briefings, et cetera. There was a
memo he wrote on Thanksgiving of two thousand and nine two Barack Obama urging him
not to do the troop surge. So that was the kind of stuff he
was retaining. It was this very like, you know, it's this very
prideful sort of like trying to buttress, like acting like it's it's his museum
stuff. So of course, so what happens, Well, he stops being
president and it doesn't get turned over. Now he does the typical Biden thing
he threw during the press conference yesterday. He throws all of his staff under
the bush. Oh my staff forgot about it, and it's like, well,
doesn't seem like it. He mentioned to his biographer in twenty seventeen that
he found the classified Afghanistan stuff. And he mentioned this very matter of factly,
apparently on the tape, which makes me think, you know, I
get it. Maybe you couldn't get a conviction of President Biden that he willfully
retained this stuff and knew what he was doing, that his memory was too
bad for him to actually willfully. But the whole tenor of his career and
vice presidency and presidency, I think you can see this hostility to staying in
Afghanistan. Why did President Biden pull out of Afghanistan as abruptly and with as
slipshodily as he did. I think it's because of this. He didn't like
that Obama increased troop numbers in two thousand and nine. He was convinced of
this narrative in his head that Afghanistan would become Vietnam. To a certain extent,
he was right about that. I mean Afghanistan. Afghanistan is in exactly
the same place today that it was in two thousand and one before we invaded.
But it's that sort of pridefulness that led to him retaining this stuff inappropriately
when we return. What are the Democrats options? Now? They're gonna stick
with this guy next on the John Girardi Show. So what do the Democrats
do? Now? What do they do? They just ride this out,
Just ride it out with this guy. My suspicion is that they actually have
no good options. They actually have no good options, and as a result,
I think they're gonna just try to ride this out. Let me explain.
What are the Democrats options? The options are Kamala Harris or somebody else,
and that somebody else is for the most part, inevitably white. The
options are Kamala Harris or some of the other names that have been banned about
for years. As it became readily apparent that Kamala Harris was not a very
effective vice president and was not very popular and was probably a pretty lousy pick
on Biden's part, well, I have a whole theory that Biden absolutely did
not pick Kamala Harris. I think that was the California donor class of the
Democrats who insisted on Harris because she was kind of there darling, and it's
the whole Willie Brown connection. Anyway, story for another day. But what
have been the names that have been bandied about since it became clear that Kamala
Harris was a political liability and a total nothing burger? What are the names
that have been bandied about? Well, the names that have been bandied about,
chiefly are Pete Boodhagg a little bit, Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of
Michigan a little bit, she certainly thinks she's going to be president, and
Gavin Newsom. Problem, all of them are white, and I think that
my be a bigger problem than a lot of us on the right realize.
Like I think a lot of us on the writer, a lot of people
are sort of maybe half joking, half serious, except this conventional Oh they'll
just you know, they'll just stick Gavenuwsom in there. They'll just stick Avenuseom
in there. They'll just stick Avenuseom in there. I think that might be
a little more problematic than you realize, because a lot of the Democrat hardcore
base is black women. Black women vote for Democrats in enormous, huge majority
percentages a lot of the Democrat and beyond just black women, you have young
gen Z millennial to gen Z people who are very committed to a lot of
the principles of modern day left wing inter sectionality. Why did President Biden feel
the need that he had to pick an African American woman to be his vice
president? If he didn't, he would alienate a certain core of his constituency
who was not going to feel great about voting for another white guy, especially
after Barack Obama. To go back to voting for old white guys left a
sour taste in the mouth of a lot of hardcore Democrat based voters. These
people are very much animated by the racial politics of the modern day left.
So and that's the problem is they they've made their bed with Kamala Harris.
They have to lie in it. As horrifying a metaphor as that is,
they have to. They sort of have to because let me, let me
tell you what's going to happen. These young intersectionality engaged voters, they are
already pretty ticked off at Joe Biden right now, and I think a lot
of us listening probably you know, I'm sure there are many Democrats listening,
but probably, you know, most people listening to me are more aligned as
conservatives. They're not necessarily up to date, up to speed on what's going
on. Among hardcore Democrat voters right now, a lot of them are super
ticked off at Biden. Why because he's been very well, at least in
their eyes, incredibly supportive of Israel. Ever since October seventh, it's been
clear that if you have to put Joe Biden on one side or the other
of is he more supportive of Israel or is he more supportive of Hamas he's
more supportive of Israel. Everyone kind of agrees that we want to give military
aid to the Israelis. No one's talking about military aid to the other side,
and everyone's kind of agreed they want to give military aid to Israel.
Now, Congress and the President can't really agree on anything because everyone keeps tying
Israeli aid to some other goal that's a poison pill for the other side.
But everyone's kind of agreed on that. Everyone's kind of agreed on that,
except John Girardi, who sort of asked the question of does this real need
foreign military money? Like, why do we need to pay for this?
You know, if you support Israel, can't we just kind of do a
at a boy? Why Why does our support for someone's cause always have to
involve spending billions of dollars? Just sort of my question about that whole thing.
Anyway. Nonetheless, Biden has made it clear he's kind of more on
the Israeli side of the Ledger than the Palestinian gaza side of the Ledger,
and that has royally ticked off a lot of these younger voters, college aged
voters, voters in their twenties, these people who are often core Democrat base
voters, whom you need them to turn out in a close selection. You
need everybody to turn out. You need your modern voters, you need to
convince the moderns, but you need your base voters to show up, and
you need your young base voters to show up. And young voters are always
flakier than older voters. They'll find a reason not to show up if you
give it to them. So you've got these young voters very animated by racial
politics, very animated by intersectionality, very woke. If you will if you
tell them, all right, we're president. Biden's not running because and also,
by the way, whatever happens is going to have to happen at the
Democratic Convention, which is at August. Okay, there's no e. You
can't get Gavin Newsom on the ballot for the California primary. It's next month.
We already have our ballots. You can't get Gavin Newsom on the ballot
for any of the Super Tuesday primaries too late. You can't get Pete Boutaji
John. You can't get Gavin Newsom on you can't get Gretchen whitmarn So whatever,
it's going to have to happen at the Democratic Convention in some shady backroom
deal. And by the way, all the Democrat delegates at the Democratic Convention,
they don't necessarily have to vote for the person they've been delegated to support.
Okay, so Joe Biden Democrats have been having primaries. By the way,
no one cares about it because it's just Joe Biden and a bunch of
nobody's. But Joe Biden has been getting nominations and winning Democrat primaries in Iowa,
New Hampshire, all these different states, So he has delegates who are
sort of dedicated to him who are going to the Democratic Convention. Those delegates
don't necessarily though under the Democrats' rules they're not quite as strict as the Republican
convention rules. Those Democrats they can vote for somebody else. So if Biden's
going to get replaced, it's going to be at the convention through some backroom
deal that Democratic voters don't get the chance to vote on just their delegates,
delegates who are sort of picked by state party apparatus. So you're going to
tell all those hardcore young bass activist voters big into intersectionality that yeah, we
know, we literally have a black woman vice president and that's literally the whole
point of a vice president is that she can step in for the president if
something happens. We think something's happened with this president, that he's too old,
the natural thing to do would be for the vice president to step in.
But instead we're going to replace her with a white woman, or worse,
instead we're going to replace her with Pete Boodagige, a gay man,
but he's still a straight white man who used to work for McKenzie. No
exceed he's not straight, he's a white man used to work for McKenzie.
Or worst of all, we're going to replace Kamala Harris, a half African,
half African American, half Indian woman, with Gavin Newsom a as straight
and as white, a straight white guy as you can ever possibly imagine.
You think they're going to go for that. No, when we return.
The one thing I'm actually really and by the way, just to just clarify,
if they don't get those base voters, they will lose. And that's
the thing that's the that's the one thing about Gavin Newsom that makes me think
maybe that won't work. I don't know. Maybe maybe they'll get over it.
Maybe they'll just say, look, we got a binary choice between Trump
and Newsom here, we're gonna vote for Newsom. But I don't know.
I think that will irritate their base of a lot more than you think.
And I also, I've always said this about Newsom. I think he's more
like Harris than people think. I think he's gonna get more disliked the more
airtime he gets. Just my hunch, he's not exactly super relatable to people
in Middle America. All Right, when we return, the one person who
I think could actually save this whole thing for Democrats, and the one person
I'm actually secretly terrified of that's next on the John Girardi Show. I've been
going back and forth today between thinking that the Democrats have some grand, elaborate
scheme for getting rid of Joe Biden and that yesterday was part of a well
oiled, orchestrated attempt by sinister forces holding the puppet strings. Maybe this was
the moment when they you know, that Biden wants to do the press conference,
and they just let him. It's like they the cut the brake line,
let him crash and burn, so that now we can place him with
the person we really want. Yeah, and it's Susan Rice or Barack Obama
or somebody you know holding the puppet strings to orchestrate Joe Biden getting out of
the race so that they can put their actual favorite candidate in. On the
one hand, there's that fear. On the other hand, there's sort of
the Okham's razor of it, that everyone's an idiot, and you know,
just like Republicans insist on going with a seventy seven year old man who has
his problems, Democrats just kept insisting on going with an eighty one year old
man with his problems. So I'm not sure that there's some grand, elaborate
plan. I do fear it. I fear the elaborate plan. I go
back and forth. I have to admit I waffle back and forth between thinking
that the Democrats are perfectly orchestrated, you know, cabal of devious strategists,
whereas the Republicans are a bunch of bubbling, bumbling idiots. But maybe the
Democrats are also kind of bumbling idiots. Well, here's the one person who
terrifies me, the one person who can make all their problems go away if
she decided to run for president, Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama, if you
get rid of Joe, the one person that you could credibly get rid of
Kamala Harris for and not tick off the Democrat base, who are very committed
to having a minority woman, and it would admittedly for the Democrats. Think
put yourself in the Democrats shoes. They're so committed to racial and sexual justice
and equity, and the minute the going gets tough, you kick Kamala Harris
to the curb and replace her with another straight white guy, you go from
Joe Biden to Gavin Newsom. Okay, that's a bad look. If you
put yourself in their shoes and you believe what they believe, and you think
that, yes, we should, you know, equity African American women,
bubb that's a bad look. It'll tick off a lot of their base voters
who really care about that? All right? You know how many African American
women vote for Democrats? Like all of them? Well all of them that
vote vote for Democrats. So who's the one person who would obviate that concern?
Who would clear the path so that none of those people would be upset
about that? If Michelle Obama waltzton to replace Kamala Harris, nobody would be
upset on the left, not a single person. She's as far as policy
views, she's no better, no worse than Kamala Harris. She ticks the
African American woman box. It would seamlessly do it. And guess what I
think Michelle Obama is clearly Look, I don't like her. Probably a lot
of you who maybe many of you are base Republican voters, don't like her.
She's easier to like. She's a better public speaker, she's smoother,
she's got the reps all right, She's not a dummy. I mean,
she's a very smart lawyer or a lawyer anyway who went to a very good
law school. I just think it's kind of a no brainer, and I
don't understand why the Democrats haven't pursued it sooner. And it's the one thing
that absolutely terrifies me. Like I think, I think if the election were
held today, Donald Trump would win. But if you stick Michelle Obama in
instead of Joe Biden, I think Donald Trump gets his absolute ass handed to
him. So that's the one person I'm completely terrified of. I really hope
the Democrats don't realize it and don't act on it at any point prior to
the Democrat convention in August. And I think the events of yesterday sort of
demonstrate if Joe Biden is still the nominee they will lose. If they replace
him with someone like Michelle Obama, they have a very very good shot of
winning. That'll do it for John Girardi Show See next time on Power Talk