You're listening to KFI AM six forty the Bill Handle Show on demand on the
iHeartRadio f And this is KFI AM six forty Bill Handle here on a Monday
morning, hot Monday morning, July one, and boy, what a morning
it is. And I may just tick to the topic at hand for a
while because a decision, the decision came down just a few minutes ago by
the US Supreme Court, and it has really muddied the waters. Now.
The decision actually in some ways makes sense. The problem is that this is
Donald Trump. And I don't think this could ever happen with any other president.
I cannot imagine that because Trump's argument that went up to the Supreme Court
is he had asked the court to stop the Jack Smith special prosecutor case against
him, the criminal trial or the criminal allegation that the president in trying to
overturn the election, a legal election which the courts of courts of deemed legal,
and trying to overturn the vote of the electoral college, which the courts
have deemed legal, and trying to stop the certification of the announcement that Joe
Biden had won, which the court said deemed legal. And he is saying,
none of that matters because he, the president, has complete and total
immunity for virtually anything he does as president. And the Supreme Court came down
and by the way lower courts had said, he has no immunity, that
he's like anybody else that could be charged. And the president argued former president
argued, I think legitimately argued. That means any prosecutor can open up any
investigation charge any president at any time with miss conduct, even though it has
never happened in the history of this country. But we've never had a president
like Donald Trump. So it boils down to this, and that is that
there is immunity given to the president if during his presidency he has, within
his official capacity, has done anything that even remotely can be considered a criminal
act. Jack Smith is arguing his federal trial that Trump violated the law and
is being charged criminally and wants to go to trial on Trump's attempts to overturn
a legal election. Trump argued, it doesn't matter what I do. I
have immunity. And this is one of the issues that was arguing from the
Supreme Court during the argument phase. When Atlanta Kagan says that means anything and
specific. Two things happened with sour He his attorney. Now I'm going to
get a little bit more into the weeds. One is, yes, the
president. The only thing that you can do with the president is impeach and
remove him from office and then after that charge him. But he is immune.
Well, what if he does this a week before leaving office and there's
no time for an impeachment hearing or their or kicking him out of office.
Does that mean he's never going to be charged? And Sower said that's right,
he could never be charged. And she came up with, gee,
what if he assassinates order the assassination of arrival? Is he immune? And
Sower said, yeah, basically he is, which kind of floored everybody.
Now, the other thing that sour his attorney said, there is such thing
as non official acts, even though Trump himself argued there's nothing that's non official.
No matter what he did, it's all official, and even said,
yeah, there might be some stuff that's non official. And so what the
court just did, Supreme Court just did is say that a president has partial
immunity, but has immunity for official acts and then kicks it to the lower
court and effectively says, you guys, figure out what's official and not official.
That's not what the Supreme Court does. They only decide on broad strokes.
And so now every time that there is an allegation or a prosecutor charges
a president after being president, because they can't be charged during the presidency.
Afterwards, charge for criminal act that the president did, then he the president
is liable for any prosecutor at any time to charge, and now the former
president has to defend. And Trump further argues that stops a president from acting
because of fear of being prosecuted. You know, for example, Joe Biden
orders arms being sent to Israel or Ukraine. Well, it can be argued
that that was a criminal act, and then it goes to trial, and
the trial determines, the court determines that that is official. Prosecutor says,
no, he's violated the law. Well that has to be tried. Is
it official or not official? And here's Trump's argument, anything I do can
be argued that it's not official, or that I'm allowed. That should not
be argued anything I do I have immunity. So he of course is going
to the furthest extent. But that's this president. Can you imagine a prosecutor
anywhere in the country charging a president for anything dealing with foreign relations, anything
dealing with ordering the army, anything dealing with asking for arms, anything dealing
with moving the air force around. And Trump is saying that, yeah,
there's a prosecutor that might be able to do that, and therefore I have
immunity. That's an official act. But the problem is he goes even further.
He says, trying to overturn an election of which he deems illegal unconstitutional,
I should have immunity from No other president has ever tried this. By
the way, no other president has ever tried to overturn an election saying the
election is illegal. It's a wild case. You're going to see case after
case while Trump is president. If he wins again, you're going to see
a lot of stuff because he's going to do a lot of things that he's
going to argue he is doing in his official act. Here's one of the
fears, as he has said, he is going to arrest and prosecute every
member of the July sixth committee. I'm going to put them in jail.
The investigation of the June of the January sixth investigation. I'm putting those congress
people in jail, and he's going to argue that's an official act. I
can have them arrested. I can order the Department of Justice to try them,
and that's official. Now, would any other president ever do that?
I can't imagine. Would Trump do that? I guarantee he's going to do
that. He has said he's going to do that. Boy, what a
decision by the court. What's official? What is an official act? That
is the question. We'll be back and I'm assuming we continue this or we're
going to do wealthy Americans, or we're going to do shark attacks, or
we're going to do whatever the hell we're going to do. This thing is
blown out. Do they have a case? Maybe an hour ago, Supreme
Court just handed its decision on the Trump immunity case, and we were awaiting
this. I think is one of the most important decisions the Court is going
to hold in a very long time, and this has to do with presidential
immunity. I've talked about it a little bit about this in the last segment
or two. Do they have a case with Wayne? We're going to talk
about this, Wayne being I would not say an expert in federal or constitutional
law, but certainly having dealt with the criminal aspects in federal law for twenty
eight years. And this is based on a federal violation of law. Jack
Smith, who is a special prosecutor, charge Donald Trump with violation of federal
law interfering with an election and interfering with the continuing business of Congress, that
is, counting the votes and the Electoral College having voted that o'biden is had
won, and stopping the announcement of Joe Biden as president. For some crazy
reason, the Trump organization, somehow, and it made no sense, decided
that if Mike Pence doesn't actually count the votes and refuses to certify, the
election is not legal. It's not legitimate. And guess who stays president if
the election is not legal? Why Donald Trump stays president? And he argued
for another election, I think somewhere in the midst of all this, and
if he lost that one, the same thing, it would go through the
courts and he would effectively stay president for well years and years and years.
That's what John Eastman said, Constitutional attorney former Dean A. Chapman School of
Law. That was his idea, And so Jack Smith said, that's all
crapola. He can't stop the election, and him trying to stop the election
is a violation of federal law. And Trump argued that he has immunity from
being persecuted, well, certainly persecuted the way he views it, but prosecuted
by special counsel Jack Smith, federal prosecutor. And the court just said,
yep, the president has limited immunity. What does that mean. Well,
if the president is engaging in official acts, there is immunity. In unofficial
acts, there is no immunity. And the problem becomes, now who decides
what's official and unofficial? Why the courts do? And what the Supreme Court
said is that you the courts get to define official and non official, which
means that every single case brought against the president by any prosecutor has to now
go to the court to determine officiality or not, and then that is appealed
and then it goes up. And that's per incident. Now the reality is
what and this is what Trump said. That means any prosecutor at any time
could effectively hold the president hostage because of fear that a decision would made would
end up landing the president court to determine whether it was an official or non
official act. I can't imagine any prosecutor arguing that whatever the pression, the
pressure the president does is non official. And here is what the prosecutors in
this case and the Jack Smith violation of federal law prosecution said even if the
president is immune, and this is what he's going to argue, even the
president is immune. Now it goes to the lower court to determine is what
he did official or not. That's what's happening now. Of course, the
trial will go on. We'll see it in eight years unless Trump gets elected.
Then he stops at cold he tells the Justice Department to withdraw the case
completely with prejudice, means the case is over, or he simply pardons himself,
which I don't think he's going to do. I think he's going to
just have the Justice Department drop the case. So now the question is,
is trying to overturn an election based on what he says is a fraudulent election
is at an official act? And he's going to argue that it is,
and that is going to be tried, and then that is going to be
appealed. That's why this thing is such a mess because the court blew this
wide open to determine what's official and not official. And we're going to go
to Wayne, do they have a case? In just a moment, bottom
of the hour or till we get off the air at nine, and Wayne
and I going to discuss this. And this is no fun, but I
think it's limited just to Donald Trump. That's what I think is going to
save the day. I can't imagine any other president ever going this far or
doing this and arguing that an election was fraudulent when it wasn't, it was
illegal when it wasn't. And I'm bringing Wayne in, Wayne Resnik, who
we always do, do they have a case? And so I think we're
going to talk about this one Wayne, because it's so important, and I
want to have you bring in your expertise in criminal justice cases because that's exactly
what this is about. And so number one surprised at all this came down,
No, Because if you divorce this case from who it's about, it's
not that radical of a decision. No, it makes all the sense in
the world if you think about it. And that's exactly the point. You're
right if you divorce this case, because this really is a case excuse me
about Donald Trump and what he did. There's been no other president in the
history of the United States. There will be no other president that will question
an election that is legal, and as a matter of fact, the security
of this last election was the strongest we've ever had in the history of this
country. And because he lost, he said it was fraudulent. So other
presidents, I think would argue his case. I'm arguing that what they do
are official acts and can't be prosecuted. I think it would be hard to
make an argument that you should be able to criminally prosecute a president for There's
three buckets that the Supreme Court made in this case. Right. There's the
content institutional powers that are exclusively those of a president, for which now they're
saying absolute immunity under no circumstances. Could you ever criminally prosecute a president for
those? Then the official acts, those are the things that are are about
things that he does not have exclusive power about. The only things I can
think of off the top of my head is when he pardons the turkeys or
when he I don't know, hosts a state dinner. Those are official acts,
but they're not his exclusive constitutional domain, and he has They said he
has presumptive immunity, meaning maybe you could prosecute a president criminally for an official
act, but you would have to clear a really high hurdle that by criminalizing
what he did, you were not unnecessarily intruding on the on the power of
a president. Right on unofficial acts, there's no protection of any kind.
Now, I even Sour when he was arguing in front of the Supreme Court,
agreed that there were acts that can be considered non official. And he
is arguing that trying to overturn an election of which I think sixty three judges
across the country upheld the election of Joe Biden, that it wasn't fraudulent,
that it was legitimate trying to overturn those by making calls to for example,
Raffensberger in Georgia saying find me votes, telling Mike Pence, do not count
the votes, do not announce. Well, then the argument of sending people
over to the capitol, whether he had I think he had influence, but
I don't think he ordered the overrunning of the capitol. But certainly trying to
overturn the election, there is no issue he did that he is arguing that
it's an official act. Can you see the saying yes, that's official.
Well, this is where the Supreme Court and most courts they like to rule
and say here are the rules, and then they don't tell you how the
rules work, so you have to figure out how the rules work. Is
it within a president's official role to try to make sure that elections are fair?
Sure? Okay, So if he says these are things to do to
try to make sure the election was fair, then why isn't it an official
act? Argue that's true. But let me extrapolate, and that is the
election is unfair and the votes shouldn't even be counted because we know they're unfair
or they've been rigged, and stops the vote counting because he says it is
fraud done. Is that an official act? Because he's arguing he was just
upholding the constitution? Is that an official act? Now you have to go
to court and the court has to decide. And do you think there's some
crazy ass judge in the South that would say it's totally official And then it
goes up to the Appeals Court, which is gonna, of course turn him
down. But that's each allegation and that's the problem I have. And you're
right, this is only Donald Trump who would do something insane like try to
call a Secretary of State to say, don't count those votes, or find
me other votes or come up with some just based on John Eastman, constitutional
lawyer, in quotes saying that, my if Mike Pence doesn't announce that President
Biden is the president, then Trump stays the president basically forever. Who's gonna
say that's an official act other than a judge in the South. Well,
you keep saying a judge South, Then I'm thinking how many, Yeah,
how many judges in the South might you get to say to agree with him?
This? Just what this does is it creates the need to litigate every
little thing he does. That's what we've never had before with any other president.
And it's not that the Supreme Court said you can do whatever you want.
That isn't what they said. They said their rules about when you can
criminally prosecute a president. The problem is Donald Trump has a very broad view
of what he's entitled to do. And what happens is he does the thing
and then there's somebody tries to prosecute him for it, and then you go
through now this process of trying to analyze whether he can be prosecuted or not.
Up three levels to the Supreme Court, down again, up again,
down again. Oh yeah, it just blows it wide open. I have
a question to ask you when we come back, and you can answer it.
You know that. Also, the argument of his prosecution is that the
Department of Justice has been weaponized, and you have officials a Department of Justice
that are going after him specifically, totally weaponized, except in the case of
going after Hunter Biden and they got a federal conviction, then it's not so
much weaponization. When someone who's an enemy of Donald Trump gets nailed by the
same weaponized Department of Justice, that's a little contradictory. I'd love to see
the explanation on that one. In the case of former President Trump, it
is particularly i think appropriate because it says an official act that a president does,
the president is immune from prosecution. And the argument is what is official
And that's the issue that Wayne and I were bringing up, because now any
prosecution done by any prosecutor, the president can argue it's an official act.
By the way, only in the world of Donald Trump. That's it It's
never happened before where a president is being prosecuted, even Nixon versus the US
that was not a criminal prosecution. They never got that far. It would
have probably gone that far, but gerald Ford stopped at cold so Wayne with
his pardon. So Waine, I need your opinion on this one. Number
one, what is the offshoot. Let's say that they go ahead and argue
official non official act in the courts and it is deemed non official if Trump
wins the election, oh, even before it goes beyond even before a jury
verdict. If Trump wins the election, one of two things happened. One
he pardons himself, which I don't think it's going to happen. He won't
have to bring that up. Or two, he as head of the Department
of Justice, as the head of government, can order that the prosecution stop
and orders that the case be dropped. Withdraws the case with prejudice, meaning
done, it can never be brought up again. So tell me about the
possibility and the law on that one dismisses the case with prejudice. Well that's
let me let me. Let me let me try to answer your question by
asking you some questions. Because this is largely in your wheelhouse. So would
you say, ordering your your attorney general to order whichever US attorney it is,
to dismiss a case without prejudice? Is that an official act that a
president prejudice with prejudice with prejudice sorry, yeah, which means can be ever
brought up again without prejudice, you can refile it. Yeah. I would
argue that's an official act. This is what a president does. A president
commutes, a president pardons. A president can say I'm going to go forward.
I disagree with my attorney general. I do not want that case prosecuted.
I think that would be considered an official act. I buy that,
all right, What do you think? Let me ask I think so let
me ask you this though. Do you think that that doing that, which
is basically directing his underlings to do something. Do you think that's part of
the core constitutional powers that a president has that Congress doesn't have. Yes.
Yes, because that's part of the executive branch, and it's something that the
president does uniquely and without the influence of any other branch. I could be
turned. Well, the Supreme Court can deem something unconstitutional all day long,
because in reality, Supreme Court has the ultimate power in deciding which way either
branch of government goes. So yeah, now the question is Kenny pardon himself,
And by the way, you can pardon himself before it goes any place.
Richard Nixon was pardoned by Gerald Ford for any trial and was pardoned for
anything he did, is currently doing and I think even anticipation, anticipation wise,
anything he does in relation to what happened in Watergate, I think that's
what happened if memory serves. Yeah, that's right. So so first of
all, giving your answers, if he orders the cases to be dismissed with
prejudice against him, he has absolute immunity and you cannot criminally prosecute him for
anything for doing that. He's now protected based on this decision that came down
today. Now, trying to overturn an election that the courts have deemed is
a legitimate election, is that official? And I'm going to argue that is
not. This gets into and this is going to come up now, especially
I think with Donald Trump, if he's reelected, it comes down to semantics.
You say, trying to overthrow an election. Other people will say trying
to protect the integrity of an election. That was stolen through criminal behavior on
the part of the other side. Right. Let me throw this at you,
though, which I think makes my argument a little bit stronger, And
that is, it's not an argument one side or the other. It's an
argument that Trump is making, which has been turned down by sixty three judges
in federal in appeals court. It's I don't know even how many jurisdictions.
That's harder to argue that I'm overturning an election that was fraudulent. Yes,
but see, are you separating the court actions that he took from this extra
judicial stuff he did, like calling calling the guy in Georgia and the fake
electors and those things. See, I don't think you could ever Would you
want to ever prosecute a president prosecute for filing a case in court about something,
Yeah, if it is frivolous, if it has to do with trying
to cover up what every court has said is an act by omission, a
criminal act. Overturning an election, a federal election is a crime in of
itself, and it doesn't matter who does it. I think that's uh,
the That's how I would interpret all of those decisions. Uh, the District
Court judges as well as the Appeals Court. So we could go on and
on with this. This doesn't stop, does it wane? Well, this
decision has not made anything easier. No, no, it hasn't uncomplicated anything.
Let me just ask you this one big major question. Bottom line,
This decision total win for Trump, partial win for Trump, partial win.
But being Donald Trump individually, it's a total win in terms of the Constitution
and the president, what the president's power has, it's a partial win.
They parsed it, and I think they were right. The problem is they
went beyond what Donald Trump did. They took the big picture, and with
Donald Trump, you cannot take the big picture. It's just impossible. All
right, Wayne, Thanks, We'll talk again next Monday and we'll get into
some cases. Do they have a case in the meantime, Wow, we're
at the end. And me Well, tomorrow morning five am. Heather Brooker
comes in at five o'clock with wake up call, and Neil and I come
aboard at six And as I always say, Kono and Ann never leave there
there twenty four hours a day. This is KFI Am six forty live everywhere
on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch
My Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and anytime on demand
on the iHeartRadio app