Speaker 1: And we're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Matt Kittle's 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, make
sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and of
course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today on The Federalist Radio Hour, Montana Attorney
General Austin Knutsen, fighting the good fight the tough fight
in Montana. Welcome to the show. Thank you for being here, Ah.
Speaker 2: You bet, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Absolutely give us a sense of Montana politics as it
stands today and what folks don't maybe don't fully understand
the bruising nature of cowboy politics.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, Montana is an interesting state. So I've been around
politics for a little bit now. I had a couple
sessions of the Montana House of Representatives. But prior to
this job, and I was an elected county attorney, which
is our version of district attorney. We have county attorneys
in Montana, so you know, historically Montana has been a
very purple state, a very populist, very purple lot of
split ticket voting. Even just ten years ago when I
was in the state legislature, you know, we had Republican
majorities in the House, Republican majorities in the state Senate,
but then a Democrat governor to Democrat governors actually, and
that literally means that Montana's were splitting ticket as they're
voting their general ballot. So and that's We've been a
long track record of that. It's kind of a tradition
in Montana. What's interesting really, in the last I would
say five six, seven years, Montana has shifted to the
right pretty dramatically. I mean, it wasn't that many years ago.
We had a Democrat governor, a Democrat Attorney General, Democrat
Secretary of State, Democrat Superintendent Public Instruction, Democrat state auditor.
Those are your five state wides. But then you had
two Democrat US senators and literally the only Republican we
had was Congressman Denny Rieberg. He was it that has
completely flipped around.
Speaker 1: What change all of that in the last seven eight years.
Speaker 2: I think it's a couple of things. I mean, I
think COVID played a big part of that. Number One,
I think it made a lot of people really mad.
Number Two, it brought a lot of Republicans to Montana.
We kind of felt this in twenty twenty, but we
couldn't quite quantify it. But just it seemed like as
I was campaigning and the governor was campaigning, we'd be
out and you'd talk to people and they'd all, you know,
you'd say, hey, we glad to meet you where you're
from and they'd real sheepishly look down and go, we
just moved here from California. But I swear we're on
your side, and you got that everywhere. And so but
again we couldn't quantify that. What we have now, I
mean we now know Montana has added roughly seventy five
thousand new Republican voters.
Speaker 1: That is amazing, Yeah, and.
Speaker 2: Which in a little state like Montana, I mean, that's
a lot. That's a huge that moves a needle for
us tremendously. I mean, we've added a second congressional district,
which we lost in the early nineties. We were at
large for decades, so we're a growing state. But the
good news is it seems to be like, we're trending,
We're trending red, we're trending to the right. So that's
kind of where we are right now. In Montana. John Tester,
our US senator who's up right now. He's the last
man standing. He's literally the last elected Democrat in the
state of Montana.
Speaker 1: And a very critical race there, one that is nationally
watched and as we were talking before we began today,
perhaps maybe the most expensive race in the country, not
just in Montana, but in the country.
Speaker 2: There is talk that between the DNC and the Democratic
Senatorial Committee that they're going to put five hundred million
dollars into Montana. When I was said and done, I
don't know how you do that, Matt, Like, we don't
have that much media in Montana. Lots of mailers, lots
of mailers, well there already are. They're just stuff in
the mailbox. But yeah, they are desperate to keep that
fifty first vote in the Senate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and as I said, it will be nationally watched.
What is interesting to me in Montana and you're living
at daily, is that things have changed. The dynamics and
politics have changed dramatically over the last seven eight years.
As you noted. So, now you have a Republican controlled legislature,
you have a Republican in the governor's house, you have
a governor who are excuse me, a Republican attorney general.
Yet here's the big here's the big Yet, and it
really does speak to the importance of the third branch.
You can get all the legislation you want passed to
make real significant reforms in government. And there have been
a lot of really good, significant reform legislation bills passed,
signed by the governor. And then what happens after that?
Speaker 2: We get hauled into state district court and we get
a temporary restraining order and an injunction slapped on us
by whatever environmental or leftist liberal group sued us that day,
and we get those laws blocked, and most of them
are still sitting blocked. So yeah, I mean, to your point,
the judiciary in Montana is owned by the left, period hardstop.
Speaker 1: What are the numbers in terms of the makeup of
the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: So it's a seven members Supreme Court if you're asking
my personal opinion, I think it's seven to zero. Really, Now,
we do technically have one former Republican legislator he served
years and years and years ago. He's been on the
court for a long time. I mean, technically, some people
like to say he's a Republican or a conservative. I
guess you would say, I think he's got Stockholm syndrome.
He's been on that court so long. I don't know
if he's just been browbeat or what. But he's not
a reliable even dissent. He seems to get better when
he's up for election.
Speaker 1: Interesting, he tends.
Speaker 2: To trend to the right and issue a few more.
Speaker 1: So about every five years or so, and something something changes.
But it's interesting to me that you've had this dynamic
shift going on in Montana politics and you're getting, you know,
pretty significant margins for Republicans in the legislature. Yeah, all
of that. You cannot get that for Supreme Court candidates.
You have elections for your Supreme Court candidates. Why?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 1: Why is that? What's going on?
Speaker 2: So Montana, we elect all of our judges from from
the Supreme Court to our district court. We we don't
have an intermediate Court of Appeals. You go right from
state district court to our to our state Supreme Court,
but even down to our local justices of the peace.
They're all elected at the higher level that the try
lawyers really have funded and owned those elections for decades.
But but it's it's interesting the these judicial candidates. They
will largely hide behind state law so they're not allowed
to run partisan there. There there are laws that you know,
they say they have to be unbiased and they know
they can't expose their their positions. Well that's what they'll
tell you. The law doesn't actually say that, but almost
every judicial candidate in the state will hide behind that
and say, oh, you know, when they're in public or
they're at a rally or whatever, they'll get asked a
direct question, you know, what, what's your stance on abortion?
What's your stance on the Second Amendment? Well, and let's say, well,
you know, I really can't talk about that because odds
are there's going to be a case in front of
me at some point and I have to rule on
the merits. And so they just duck. And so you
for the last twenty years, you've had judges in Montana
that we largely the public don't know who they are.
There's a lot of ignorant voting that goes on. I
tell voters in Montana they've done a great job voting
for governor and senator and AG. But man, when they
get to the judicial races, they just punt. And I
think that truly is what happens. I think a lot
of it's name id. Oh, I think maybe I've heard
that judge before, so yeah, I'll pull the lever for that.
Speaker 1: For that way, I just don't seem to pay as
much attention. That's I mean.
Speaker 2: Everywhere, And to be fair, I mean it's hard to
find the information on these judicial candidates in Montana. It's
not impossible if you know where to look. But the
problem is your average Montana voter doesn't know where to look.
Speaker 1: And then you have the trial lawyers, of course, dumping
in a lot of money, letting or telling the voters
what they want the voters to know, when that certainly
isn't the certainly isn't the full record of the matter.
But it's interesting to me that you talk about how
they hide behind the whole you know, the veneer, and
that's really what it is. Nonpartisan because there are a
lot of states where you have judicial elections. They're all
supposed to be nonpartisan, but you know exactly where they stand.
You know, you know the people who are funding them.
You know how if they have an experience in lower courts,
you know the sorts of where they've been in terms
of their policies on crime, you know where they stand
on issues with regulation and business, all of those sorts
of things. But let's fast forward as you serve as
attorney general. They want to hide behind this veneer once
again of nonpartisanship. Yet some emails about a very very
important topic where you know, they have absolutely exposed themselves.
And it's pretty clear not just that they have exposed themselves,
but they are doing things that certainly anyone could take
a look at and say this has gone well beyond
the whole nonpartisanship things right into lobbying.
Speaker 2: Overt overt political activity from our judicial branch of Montana. Yeah,
so this goes back to twenty twenty one. I had
just gotten elected attorney general. Our legislature meets every other
year for ninety business days, so it ends up being
so it's odd number years. First week in January, it
starts ends up being roughly five months because it's just
business days, so they take weekends and holidays. In the
course of the twenty twenty one legislative session. There were
a number of judicial reform bills that came through the legislature,
as there always are, but that you know, in the
last few years we've kind of gotten wise to some
of the shenanigans going on the court and there's always
there's always some some judicial reform stuff that comes up. Well,
what we found out is through a series of leaked
emails from the Montana Judges Association, which stop and pounder
that for a moment. Now you you've got a Montana
Judges Association, You've got a lobbying group made up of
sitting judges in Montana. That speaks to a problem, and
they hire a lobbyists to come work the halls at
the Montana Legislature to kill legislation or pass legislation that
they do like. So I mean that in and of
itself raises some serious, you know, nonpartisan questions, and that
was air quotes. These emails came to light, and what
it turned out was you had you had a large
number of sitting district judges in Montana. Uh and perspectively,
maybe even some of the some of the Supreme Court
justices involved in pretty overt lobbying. But using their state
email Matt And and this is a key point here, right,
So I have a state state email address. Every legislator
in Montana has a state email address. The governor all
his staff have a state email address. That's public record
in Montana. We have very strong open government laws in Montana,
and that extends to emails. I mean, anything I put
in an official email, I just know that's in the
public domain. If it's got an at dot mt at
mt dot gov, that's a Montana public record.
Speaker 1: Well, they's judges has to be saved for it should
anybody request that information?
Speaker 2: Don't get ahead of me. Okay, So these emails get
leaked that these judges in Montana, they've all been and
they've been pulling each other. What positions should we take
on this various legislation. And here's here's the votes and
lots of you know, pretty bombastic language being used in
some of these emails. Well, okay, so the legislature steps
in and they subpoena these emails because you know, open record,
we want to look at these. The Supreme Court administrator
who works for the Chief Justice, Oh oops, oops, I
deleted them. Oh my bad, total mistake. Butterfingers, I mean
whatever she tries to pulling that. Well, then the legislature,
I mean that they kind of expected that out of
her office. Frankly, well the judiciary, obviously they're not very
good at it. Every email in the state system goes
through the Department of Administration and their servers. So the
legislature turned around and went, well, it's okay, we'll just
subpoena the Department of Administration and get the emails from them.
Thanks Supreme Court panics. Somehow they get notified that these
subpoenas are coming and call themselves in on a Sunday.
So there's some kind of ex party communication going on here.
A lawyer somewhere on the left, very likely, it looks
at all evidence suggests made direct contact with somebody on
the Supreme Court, one of the justices. Those justices call
themselves in a Sunday, called in the Chief Clerk, who's
an elected Republican official in Montana chief Clerk the Supreme Court,
and they quashed that they purport to quash their own subpoenas.
Speaker 1: How do they explain that.
Speaker 2: Lots of inns, lots of outs, lots of what have you,
is that you know, you Plebeians just wouldn't understand. But
only US August Olympian judges understand.
Speaker 1: They or translation, we're above the law.
Speaker 2: That is what this looks like. And it really is
the tact that they've taken in this entire fight. And
again this is clear back in twenty one that this
came to light. So I mean, this just blew up.
I mean, this lit the legislature on fire. Unfortunately, it
was right towards the end of the legislative session that
the ninety days were almost up when this came to light.
But this has just been simmering and perking. I ended
up only two of the justices actually came before the
Senate Judiciary Committee, which which promptly subpoenaed them to appear.
Five of them just gave basically gave the finger and
said we're not coming. But the Chief Justice came uh.
And and one one of the other justices did did
show up.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: Strangely, these are the two that are not seeking reelection now,
and they're because because they're up this this cycle. But
a lot of really really this this looked looked quite bad.
My office got involved because as the Attorney General and
in charge of the Department of Justice. One of michaelis
is the Montana Legislature. It's my job to represent the
legislature in legal controversies such as this one. So we
were we were literally in this constitutional kind of check
and balance crisis. You know, who had authority to do
what here? What was the scope of the legislative subpoena power?
Could the Supreme Court quash their own subpoenas? They The
Supreme Court amazingly even ordered all of these emails to
be given back. Now they're already out, They've been published
their online exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I mean they were going through just extraordinary lengths
to protect information and cover their own rear ends.
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Speaker 1: Just a point on that as well. I'm curious you
could the legislature could go through the administrative channels the
it through there. We don't need you to turn this
information over to us. We have another channel. Were they
able to find out through that channel if these emails
at the Supreme Court were destroyed and intentionally so?
Speaker 2: We don't know the answer to that yet.
Speaker 1: I see. It's just part of that plot that really
stuck in my mind as the oops factor came in.
I'm sorry, I don't know bad. You know, when you
think about that sort of thing, you think about scrubbing
of Hillary Clinton's files in two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: Seventy if it looks like a duck and walks in, Yeah, exactly.
And I also note that, you know, I'm sure entirely
coincidentally that Supreme Court administrator has now announced her retirement.
Speaker 1: Oh that's very interesting, well, because perhaps there's more to come.
Speaker 2: She's an under tremendous pressure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely more to come on that front. But that
launches into what was happening in twenty twenty one. Then,
you know, as you said, it's still simmering. It got
to a really heated point. However, we're about a year
now from was it September of twenty three, when all
of a sudden you get some interesting contacts. And this
is where the leftist law fair that we constantly talk,
we constantly report on because it is such a now
a significant part of politics and policy, and the left
has excelled at it and they have so many resources
devoted to it, and a lot of people when they
think about leftist law fair, they immediately think about the
attacks the former president Donald Trump has been under. And
that's a good place to start. And it's all well known,
but it's happening in states like Montana and so many
others across this country and Attorney's General office and elsewhere,
and it's happened to you.
Speaker 2: It has so Yeah, back in twenty one, this whole,
this whole fight was going on, and it was quite contentious,
and it was new territory. I mean, frankly, we were
in uncharted territory. We didn't have any jurisprudence and no
case law, you know, and there really was this constitutional
check and balance fight between the legislative branch and the
judicial branch, and then me as a member of the
executive right in the middle of it, trying to represent
my client as I'm bound to do ethically. So okay,
this this kind of dies down, and both sides there
was kind of a mutual stand down and calmer heads prevailed,
and you know, now there's talk some new legislation. The
twenty three session has come and gone, you know, and
for the large part we avoided a lot of these
things that they were still some talk about some judicial reform,
but you know, nothing blew up like it did in
twenty one. So you know, life is good two years later.
And so yeah, in September of twenty three, more than
two years later, I get contacted and noticed that I
have been a forty one count legal ethics complaint has
been lodged against me with our state Office of Disciplinary Council.
So that's ODC, and that's under the auspices of the
Supreme Court. It gets kind of the lawyer self policing.
Speaker 1: Pretty incessu system. It seems to me.
Speaker 2: There's a few conflicts, yes, a few conflicts, but I mean,
this is the process that lawyers report other lawyers or
clients report lawyers and Typically what this process is used
for is is if a lawyer has stolen money from
a client or if they've had an inappropriate sexual relationship
with a client, which is a flagrant violation of ethical
rules for lawyers. That's what this process is for. There's
an investigation, investigation process. It's a quasi judicial hearing, and
then this board makes a recommendation for sanctions, penalties, disbarment
possibly and that has ultimately agreed to ordained by the
state Supreme Court. And so it's usually a two or
three count and I get a forty one count ethics complaint.
Speaker 1: For something that is usually tied with just massive lapses
of ethics, egregious legal behavior indeed, and so that's what
I want to This has been almost a year in
the making and a lot has happened. Then we are
talking with Montana Attorney General Austin Kannutson on this edition
of the Federalist Radio Hour. It's been quite a ride
over the last eleven plus months. Where does the investigation stand?
And I actually take us back, because you had brought
up this point that the people in this office could
not get their first investigator to bring about charges and
so they had to bring in someone who was a
little more agreeable to what apparently they wanted to accomplish here.
Speaker 2: That's a good way of putting it so well, we
could figure out why this was two years late. I mean,
if this went back to actions that supposedly I took
in the twenty one legislative session, which I'll back up
and tell you, like most of these forty one complaints
are that I am essentially I'm impugning the integrity of
our state Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: And how are you doing? I'm asking questions.
Speaker 2: I'm very critical of our state Supreme Court publicly. I
have no problem telling people what I think of our
state Supreme Court. I don't call them names, you know,
I don't get petty. I'm just I'm very critical of them.
I think they're incredibly partisan. I think they're incredibly result oriented.
I don't think they're doing their job with impartiality like
they're supposed to.
Speaker 1: But you're a citizen of Wyoming. You still have that
righta by Montana sorry, excuse me close. You're a citizen
of Montana. You still have that right. You're also the
attorney general, so it is, and you're speaking for your client.
The legislature who has similar has a case built really
that fact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I didn't realize that when I was sworn
in the state bar that I apparently gave up part
of my First Amendment rights. And that's essentially what they're
arguing here, is that by being critical of our state
Supreme Court numerous times, I have somehow impugned their integrity
and eroded the public's confidence in the judicial branch. That's
literally what almost all of these charges are. But to
your question, process, we couldn't figure out why it took
them two years to file this, and we finally once
I was actually served that the complaint and told them, well, no,
I'm not just going to roll over and take whatever
sanctions you give me, and we're going to go through discovery.
We got the investigative file and we found an answer
they had actually that this complaint had been filed in
twenty one. They hired a longtime liberal Democrat lawyer, a
fairly well respected one in Montana, not particularly one that
I agree with on anything, but they hired this lawyer
to come in and do the investigation. This lawyer did
the investigation and recommended no charges be brought. He just Basically,
he said this, this is First Amendment, and not only that,
this is fraught with all kinds of politics. We should
not be doing this. The Office of Disciplined Disciplinary Council
promptly fired him and hired an even more radical Democrat
liberal lawyer to get them to the result they wanted.
And that's where we are. That's that's literally what happened here.
Speaker 1: How is this not seen as a partisan act? I mean, really,
what is happening to you in Montana is similar in
one of the myriad cases against former President Donald Trump.
That's the exact same situation that we have going on there.
They didn't get the result that they wanted, so they
kept pushing or bringing someone else in, or manipulating the
law as it existed, massaging it until it's something. You know,
I think about the Alvin Bragg case in Manhattan, and
I think about you know, the Federal Election Commission. There's
no crime here, you know, the former district attorney, there's
no crime here. But here's a guy who campaigned on
going after Donald Trump. And so that's what it appears
to me is happening with this, you know, phony process
that they've put in place. This little star Chamber to
try to go after you when they've already gotten the
answer from an attorney previous to this. So why do
they keep pushing this?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's pretty clear. I mean that it's
the old adage you don't take flack unless you're over
the target. I'm a very aggressive attorney general. I mean,
as opposed to AG's in the past in Montana, I'm
quite conservative. I'm quite aggressive. We're leading on a lot
of things. And I hit back at the Supreme Court
quite hard. I mean, I had been quite critical. I
have been openly campaigning against a lot of them. I
think they're flagrantly partisan, and they're flagrantly result oriented. They
don't like that sunlight and they don't like being criticized.
And then the timing of this whole thing is quite suspect, right,
I mean, I'm facing disbarment right before my reelection. I'm
running for reelection right now. I'm up in November for
a second four year term that will be my last term,
and the hearing for this disciplinary is set for October.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: I mean it's pretty hard not to look at this
entire process and think this is awfully overtly partisan.
Speaker 1: But this isn't just you know, it's bad enough that
it is directed at you. You know, let's call it
what it is politically to try to knock you out
as attorney general. But you're not just the attorney general
of Montana. You're a practicing attorney. This is your life
and your life avelihood that's on the line that goes
well beyond the next four years for you and your family.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, I think people have this idea that
maybe elected officials a lot of times are wealthy. I
can assure your listeners I am not. I'm a farm
and ranch kid from Podunk Nowhere, Montana. I don't even
own the farm my parents do. I went to law
school because there wasn't enough there to be made to
make a living. So you're right, this is my livelihood.
I've got significant investment in my law degree. Obviously, disbarment
losing my law license would be a very detrimental hit
to me.
Speaker 1: And it's your reputation too. Absolutely, not forget about that.
I mean, we know of myriad cases over the last
decade in this country, law fair has been practiced. Just
some of the most awful situations politically driven investigations prosecutions
in this country, and I've heard it from the victims
of these things over and over again. Where do you
go to get your reputation back? You know, and you're
in the middle of a political campaign where reputation is everything.
Speaker 2: Well, especially as the nation as our state's top law
enforcement officer, which is literally what I am as the
attorney general. Right, Yeah, I don't think. I think there's
no question here they're trying to destroy my reputation. They're
trying to I think there's a lot of fear of
me within the Democrat Party, you know, just from my
time in the legislature and now I'm the attorney general.
They don't have much of a bench long term. I
think they're looking around, going, we better try to kill
this baby in the crib. Well, we can. I think
that's definitely part of this. You know, early on there
there was some talks of, well, you know, maybe we
could resolve this if you just agree to, you know,
to take take some sanctions that we suggested, and you
know their terms. I looked at them and just I
just outright rejected them. I'm like, I'm not doing that.
I'm not admitting wrongdoing, I'm not one of them. Was
that I had to agree to not ever criticize the
Supreme Court again.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2: Right, And I had the same reaction, like I laughed,
like it.
Speaker 1: Has a godfather feel to It doesn't. But I'm telling
you he would be unfortunate, Austin, if if something bad
were to happen to your political career, that shame.
Speaker 2: It really would.
Speaker 1: And now I got an offer you can't refuse here.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it, but that's kind of the cartel
that that that the trial lawyers have had on the
judicial branch in Montana and the process and and again
this all leads to the Supreme Court. The person who
was in charge of the office of this Disciplinary Council
is a former Democrat candidate for state Attorney General who
just happened to have been the chief deputy for the
current sitting Chief Justice when he was the attorney general.
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Speaker 1: And that's the thing. Where do you go to ultimately
get justice? This is a four year battle that began
in twenty twenty one that's not resolved because it's that,
as you mentioned before, it's the check and balance battle
that's going on. There's no precedent for this. Where do
you go outside of the state of Montana. You don't,
And where do you go if you can't go to
the highest court in the state to resolve this? When
the highest court in this state is what we've just
been talking.
Speaker 2: Well, and that that because of these really extraordinary circumstances
and the fairly blatant conflicts of interests, we actually did
petition the US Supreme Court. All that that's a rare
step for us to do in a case like this,
but we we felt that this was extraordinary enough that
we needed neutral harbitrators to come in here and look
at this. So we we did petition the US Supreme
Court for cert They ultimately denied, which didn't really surprise us.
This this is you know, it's a state matter. They've
got a lot of stuff on their docket. They clearly
the Roberts Court just by the precedent they put out
that they are they are loath to involve themselves in
state matters.
Speaker 1: Rarely do it. Yeah, so they.
Speaker 2: They passed on this case unfortunately. So I mean, we're
gonna We're gonna keep going down this road and see
where we end up. And I'm hoping hoping cooler heads
prevail here and we get it, we get a decent outcome.
But I'm also I'm not holding my breath.
Speaker 1: I can understand that. But I think ultimately it's a
political resolution to this problem. And I think that's where
the US Supreme Court has said over and over again
that that's why they are loath to take up these cases,
because you do have an election coming up. People can decide.
So we'll close with this question, how confident are you
that the people of Montana are going to repudiate this
Supreme Court by taking a first initial step, because you've
got two seats up coming up, and what do you
think the chances are for you personally and for conservatives
at the state and the federal election level.
Speaker 2: Conservatives of Montana. I think we're in a great spot.
I mean, I personally, my race looks good. You know,
you never take anything for granted, but just the fundraising
and some of the polling we've seen, by all accounts,
it's looking like I'm probably going to get re elected. Barring,
barring some major thing.
Speaker 1: Barring you're not disbarred.
Speaker 2: I mean, that would certainly be an interesting wrinkle if
come October, I get my law license taken away and
mail in ballots. I mean, Montana, we're about seventy five
percent mail in ballot. They're going to have already gone out,
and you know, roughly three quarters of the state already
have voted. That will be an interesting wrinkle if I'm
already voted in as attorney General and the Supreme Court
elects to disbar me. I think the repudiation of that
is probably going to be from the Montana legislature. They
are now keenly, keenly aware of what's going on with
the judiciary in Montana. The sitting Senate President right now
has convened a special select committee on judicial oversight judicial accountability.
It's making the Supreme Court quite uncomfortable. Not just the
Supreme Court, you know district district judges in Montana as well.
But look overall Montana, I think we're in a really
good spot for conservatism. I look at where we were
ten years ago when I was in the legislature. We
were a very purple state. We had a lot of
state wide elected Democrats, but at the same time, we
had Republican control of the legislature. That means people were
split ticket voting, which is an interesting phenomenon that's largely
gone away in Montana. I mean, we are a solidly
read state. Every state wide elected official in Montana is Republican,
Republican governor, Republican, the state Senate, Republican. State House. John
Tester is literally the last man standing for the Democrat
party in Montana. So I think his days are numbered.
I really do think. I think Timshee he can take
him out, and I think he's likely to do so.
So overall, I'm very optimistic about conservatism. In Montana.
Speaker 1: Never a dull day in Montana, and let's face it,
you know we talked about it early on in this conversation.
The rest of the country we'll be watching Montana this November,
that's for sure. I very much appreciate your time. The
politics that are going on on the ground are so
critical to what is going on in the national conversation.
You're living at every day.
Speaker 2: Well, happy to be here and for what it's worth.
I'm a huge fan of The Federalist and love what
you guys do.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it very much. Thanks to my guest today, Montana
Attorney General Austin Kannuts, and you've been listening to another
edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior
correspondent at The Federalist. We'll be back soon with more.
Until then, stay lovers of freedom. I'm anxious for the Fray.