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your support. Gosha City Council. We're not corrupt press conference.
I got a new pope today. Also, Tom Tillis has
tanked Trump's pick for the top federal prosecutor in Washington, DC.
The pressure campaign that was launched against Tillis to try
to get him to reverse course did not work. And
so this came down a little bit ago that President
Trump says he will pull ed Martin's nomination, saying we
have somebody else that we'll be announcing over the next
two days. All right, So what is all of this about?
Republican Senator Tom Tillis from North Carolina, who is up
for reelection next year twenty twenty six, He said, I
guess this would have been two days ago that he
told the White House that he would not be supporting
Ed Martin, who was the pick to be the dc
US attorney, which stalled his nomination. Martin's nomination because in
the Senate, nominations go through the Judiciary Committee, then they
go on to the full Senate for confirmation. That's sort
of the process. And if you don't get a majority
on the Senate Judiciary Committee, you don't get out of
the committee, and normally that means you're not going to
you're not going to win appointment. Tillis told reporters Tuesday
that he had met with Ed Martin the previous day.
So Monday evening, he and Martin have a meeting, and
Tillis says then the next day on Tuesday, that he
is opposing Martin's nomination because of his defense of rioters
who breached the Capitol. On January sixth, twenty twenty one, Martin,
a leading figure in Trump's campaign to overturn the twenty
twenty election, spoke at a rally the day before January sixth,
and I do have the audio here is here is
Tom Tillis with that gaggle of reporters in the hallway.
Speaker 2: He is I don't believe he's been in advanced to
the markup and I'm met.
Speaker 3: With mister Martin, who seems.
Speaker 2: Like a good man. Most of my concerns related to
January sixth, and he built a compelling case on some
of the fifteen twelve prosecutions that.
Speaker 3: Were probably hey to the moment, bad decisions.
Speaker 2: But where we probably have a difference is I think
anybody that reached the perimeter should have been in prison
for some period of time.
Speaker 3: Whether it's thirty days or three years is debatable.
Speaker 2: But I have no tolerance for anybody who entered the
building on January the sixth, and that's probably where most
of the friction was fit.
Speaker 1: He has no tolerance for anybody that entered the building
on j six none. And Tillis says that, okay, maybe
there were some over prosecutions, would he say fifteen to twelve?
So like a dozen out of the what fifteen hundred
prosecutions that maybe twelve of them were a little bit much.
There were people that entered that building that were waves
in by Capitol Police. They're on video, they were waved in.
There were people that were following the crowd. They arrived
after the breach of the building after people had gotten in,
and so then you have this crowd that's just kind
of filing through, and there are people that just like
saw everybody walking through, so they just walked up through too.
You're telling me they deserve prison time for that when
they did not know that they were breaching the Capitol
as part of a riot, because the breachers were way
ahead of them into the interior of the building. Well,
they should have known they can't do that. They should
have known that they shouldn't follow a Capitol police officer
waving them in. The US Attorney's Office in Washington is
the country's largest and prosecuted more than fifteen hundred riot
defenders defendants rather after the j six attack, Rump pardoned
most of the rioters the day he was inaugurated, and
he later appointed Ed Martin to temporarily lead the DC office.
That appointment expires in less than two weeks because it
was a temporary appointment and Trump had urged Republican senators
to confirm Martin to the job full time. So that
was why we are waiting. So the job has been filled.
Martin's been doing it, but it was for it's like
one hundred and eighty days or something like that. It's
a temporary post until he can get the confirmation. And
Tillis has this meeting, they have this discussion, and I
kind of feel like maybe Tillis isn't fully informed on
all of the cases. If he's saying that if you
entered the building, you should have been thrown in prison,
and he dismisses that there was Okay, maybe there was
some over prosecuting in about half a dozen cases, like
there have been movies made about the overper prosecuting these
They went after these people for four years, and some
of these folks have served lengthy prison time and did
nothing more than walk through the Capitol following a line
of people, not knowing there was some sort of breach
or a riot. They some of them didn't even enter
the building itself. So and look, I've done no deep
diving into every case of the J six people. I
do follow some of the attorneys that represent some of
those J six defendants, and the cases that I have
seen spelled out's more than a dozen. One guy, forget
his name, he's a lawyer. Shipwrecked crew is his Twitter handle,
and he's for four years he's been talking about his
cases and the over zealous prosecution of people that don't
deserve the charges that the prosecutors were throwing at them,
and the way their lives were completely destroyed in the
investigatory process. There were abuses, and that's why this guy
had Martin came an He demoted or fired a whole
bunch of people out of that office.
Speaker 3: So he disagreed with you on them.
Speaker 2: Well, now I have to say that mister Martin did
a good job of explaining how there were people that
probably got caught up in it, but they made the
stupid decision to come through a building that had been
breached and that the police officers and others were saying
stay away. So the difference wasn't that they should be
charged in my estimation, it's by how much.
Speaker 3: That's an argument I'm willing to have.
Speaker 2: But we have to be very very clear that what
happened on January the sixth was wrong. It wasn't It
was not prompted or created by other people to put
those people in trouble. They made a stupid decision and
they disgraced the United States, but by absolutely destroying the Capitol.
Speaker 3: And I can't have any patients. It sounds like your
concerns were not.
Speaker 2: But let me be very clear, though, mister Martin did
a good job of explaining the one area that I
think he's probably right that there were some people that
were over prosecuted, but there were some two or three
hundred of them that should have never gotten a.
Speaker 3: Pardon, and he agreed with that. But the disagreement there
had more to do if.
Speaker 1: Mister wait a minute, so there were two to three
hundred people that never should have gotten a pardon. Martin
agreed that they should have gotten a part in, but
Trump did the pardons. Trump did that, not Martin. Martin
doesn't have that power. And Martin, you just said Martin
agrees with you. So what exactly is the disagreement over
I'm now unclear.
Speaker 2: Martin were being put forth as a US attorney for
any district except the district where January sixth happened, the
protest happened, I'd probably support them.
Speaker 1: But wait, wait a minute. Now, I'm even more confused
that if he was appointed to the bench in Charlotte
or something, you would have no problem with him being
a US attorney or not the bench, but the bar,
the US Attorney's office in Charlotte than no problem. But
because it's DC, big problem. What is it about the
d C U S Attorney and that office that makes
it different? Is it just that that was the jurisdiction
where J six happened as he, as Tillis is saying,
I'm not I'm not following that logic now. Now granted
I'm no US senator, but I'm not really following that.
I don't understand. If the guy's unqualified to be the
US attorney in DC, then he's unqualified to be the
US attorney anywhere. Why would the venue matter is because
that's a more powerful venue you do you deal more
with government related lawsuits and criminal investigations and such. Is
that it?
Speaker 3: But not in this district? Learning advanced to the markup?
Speaker 2: Was he operating under that understanding that he's not being
advanced through to it? Well, I think, mister Martin, I'm
sure they're looking through it.
Speaker 3: I mean, be clearer.
Speaker 2: Some of the deadline has to do with the length
of time he can operate as acting and the administration
can work through that if they want to have more
time and potentially work them through. But at this point
I've indicated to the White House, I wouldn't support his nomination.
Speaker 1: So that apparently did it. Trump announced that they're going
to be pulling at Martin's nomination. They're going to announce
somebody else. By the way, I would point out, Tillis
did vote to confirm Merrick Garland as US Attorney General,
said he had an outstanding record serving our country and
has a deep understanding of the law. His experience reflects
his extensive legal knowledge and unbiased application of the law,
and his long standing reputation of bipartisanship has earned the
respect from both Democrats and Republicans. I have no doubt
he will serve our country well. I have a feeling
that maybe Senator tell Us might not be great at
reading people. Maybe all right, if you're listening to this show,
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News as they make the media landscape more transparent. One
of the risks with Tom Tillis's blockage of Ed Martin
for the US Attorney position in Washington, DC was that
if he were to be blocked and nobody were to
be nominated and put in his place, then the appointment
would actually go to a judge in the DC circuit,
which I was not aware of this process, which is
completely insane. Why would why why would a judge think
about it? The US Attorney would be arguing sometimes in
front of this judge and the US attorney would have
the job because that judge. It's ridiculous because you know
who would get to be the appointee or the appointer Sorry,
here is Ed Morrisey Hodier dot com. Thanks to the
decision to have Martin serve only as an interim US attorney,
if the position is not filled within one hundred and
twenty days by a Senate confirmed appointment, then the chief
Judge of the Circuit can appoint an interim US attorney
to serve until the confirmation takes place. And guess who
is the current chief judge of the DC Circuit. Do
you want to take a guess? Boas Berg Judge James Bowseburg,
the Obama appointed judge at the center of the legal
efforts targeting Trump's deportation efforts, is the current chief judge
of the U S District Court for the District of Columbia.
Morrisy goes on to say, we have a truly absurd situation.
Forget how we arrived at it. This is a constitutional conflict.
How can an Article three official, So the Article three
is the judiciary appoint an Article two official, which is
the executive who will almost certainly appear before him in
that courtroom. That's not just a constitutional conflict, it is
a conflict of interest. Boasberg will essentially appoint his own
prosecutor for cases that directly involve inherent Article two powers
and authority. He says, absurd doesn't even do the situation justice.
Imagine this in the context of a criminal prosecution. If
the prosecutor owes his job to the judge and the
judge chose him to prosecute, how can that possibly be
seen as impartial for the defendant. In the long term,
this process has to be changed to keep Article two
officials accountable to the Article to authority, keep it inside
the executive branch, the president or his designees like the
Attorney general or something. Having judges appoint prosecutors who appear
before them is bizarre, and in this case, it would
have given Boseburg the chance to short circuit Trump administration
policy by perverting the constitutional order, rather than addressing legal
challenges through the impartial application of the law and the Constitution.
And so what Morrissey was saying, in the short term,
the only way to address the absurdity is to confirm Martin.
But if they can't get his nomination to the floor.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune could still call a floor vote,
but failing to get the committee approval makes that more problematic.
The White House better have a plan be ready to
go if this fails, and apparently it did, they'll be
announcing somebody within the next two days. So score one
for Tom Tillis over. Donald Trump doesn't get the guy
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Got some messages regarding Tom Tillis and his blockage of
the uh DC appointment for US Attorney Ed Martin from Russ.
Tillis is ignorant on the J six stuff. Really bad
things were done that day, But if you can't easily
differentiate at least three groups of offenders, then you've only
seen the mainstream media reporting or the Trump is Savior accounts.
There were people in black block within, provised weapons, rowdy
pro Trump folks, and patriotic tourists, as well as other categories.
I have seen in Shipwrecked Crew, the lawyer for many
of the JA sixers and others reporting stories of people
being denied medication, being denied access to attorneys, being left
in their underwear in dark, cold solitary confinement. Yeah, there
were there were a ton of allegations and not easily debunked.
I might add allegations of abuses of the J sixers
when they were arrested and incarcerated. You know, pressure was
brought to bear that if they don't take the deals,
then you know, the full weight of the federal government
was going to come crashing down on them and their
families would be destroyed. And so a lot of them
took deals because their lawyers advised them to. And by
the way, I've seen reports and comments from lawyers that
were public defenders that were anti Trump and were celebrating
the fact that they got their clients to agree to sentences.
So they learned their lessons like that's not being an
advocate for your client. Goodwa who says, like Richard Burr
before him, Tom Tillis gets elected to Congress and then
begins to take votes that make zero sense. Critical votes
where he votes with the Democrats and against the wishes
of his constituents. And the question is why, Well, look
at what happened with Richard Burr. That might be a
clue for any real journalists looking to do some real
investigative journalism. You'll recall Richard Burr was involved in the
insider trading scandal right ahead of the pandemic. And I
remember talking to an individual that shall remain nameless, but
they they were up in DC.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 1: They said, what was he thinking? Why would you do
that for especially somebody in his position for as long
as he held it like he knew better? Why would
why would he do that? Well, then it raises the
you know, the question of well, was that just the
first time he got caught? There is a Twitter account
she goes by the handle of insurrectionist Barbie, so you
know it's believable. But well, let me let me start
off by saying this. When Tillis came out and announced
that he was blocking Ed Martin, that he was not
going to be allowing him to get through the Judiciary Committee,
which then put on the table the possibility that Judge
Boseburg would be the one to appoint a replacement for
that post, thus derailing the Trump agenda. Tom Tillis became
the target of a nationwide campaign. You know, a lot
of people are now aware of Tom Tillis in a
way they were not before. And you know, with the
retirement of Mitch McConnell, there are a number of these
Republican senators that are are now getting examined for not
being sufficiently MAGA or conservative right or on the team.
I think John Cornyn he's won. Tom Tillis is one
now two, and so the massive emailing and phone calling
campaign that was launched to try to get him to
flip his vote did not work. But now people are
aware of him, and now I am wondering if this
generates more campaign donations from out of state that flow
into the GOP primary. As I understand it, Don Brown
is running for the seat. He's already announced said he's
going to run for it, I should say, and Don
Brown ran for the congressional seat that Mark Harris won
in the last congressional election. Don Brown local author, veteran,
and so he's going up against Tillis. I don't know
if there's anybody else. People are asking like, why would
he do this, I don't understand it from a political
strategy standpoint. Tillis's biggest challenge is going to be getting
through the primary, because he does pretty well in the general.
And his positions on J six, I would submit, are
part of the reason why that if he were to
if he were to switch his positions on J six,
then I think he gets more flack from the left
who can use that against him, right. I think that's
the political calculation on just that question. I'm not accusing
him of making this decision to block ed Martin based
purely on that one issue and that political calculation. But
you cannot deny that a political calculation is involved to
some degree, so this account says. In February twenty nineteen,
Tillius wrote a Washington Post op ed opposing Trump's declaration
of a national emergency to fund the border wall, arguing
that it violated the Constitution's separation of powers. He eventually
caved after pressure from his North Carolina voters. He also
co sponsored a bipartisan bill in twenty eighteen to protect
Special Council Robert Muller's investigation into Russian interference in the
twenty sixteen election, which by the way, I was supportive
of that too, because Muller's investigation gave us more information.
I want more, I want more information. I want more investigations. Yes,
get people on the record, get people under oath. The
more you do that, the more you can find the
inconsistencies and you can find new information and you get
to the bottom of the situation. And what did Muller's
report end up finding? Nothing? And now you can use
that as proof in your arguments. Right next, Tayl has
tried to tank the heg Seth nomination. When he worked
behind the scenes to oppose the nomination, he encouraged heg
Seth's ex sister in law to provide a sworn statement
alleging alcohol abuse and spousal mistreatment, hoping to sway other
GOP senators. So there is another read on that. By
the way, there's another explanation for that, which is he
is told by heg Seth's former sister in law about
these accusations, and his response to her is simply, all right, well,
if this is what you're alleging, do an affidavitous Warren's statement,
go under oath, do a statement and make your allegations
that way, because if you're not going to go under
oath and make the allegations, then these are basically worthless,
which she did not do. If I recall correctly, she
did not end up doing that, so it could be
seen as a way to basically smoke her out. I
don't know if I don't know one way or the other,
but there is another read on that situation. Tillis delivered
a fiery Senate speech condemning Vladimir Putin as a liar
and murderer and the greatest threat to democracy, implicitly rebuking
Trump's take on the conflict, and stated that he would
not support trump national security nominees who did not back Ukraine.
And during the first impeachment in twenty twenty, Tillis voted
or I guess that would be the last one. In
twenty twenty, Tillis voted to a quit, arguing the House
case was weak, but he ran campaign ads emphasizing his
opposition to remove distancing himself from Trump's legal peril. He
also supported the Bipartisans Safer Communities Act, which had the
funding for the Red Flag laws. And now he stands
in the way of confirming Ed Martin, so he has
now gotten a lot of attention from outside of the
state of North Carolina. Will it matter? Don't know? All right?
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video dot com. North Carolina gun owners, listen up. If
you have a concealed carry permit, you know the hassle
of having to renew this thing every five years. Right,
every five years, you got to fill out the original application.
It's like eight pages. You have to list every single
address you've ever lived at. Think about that. That's crazy,
especially for a renewal, because you already went through all
of this and took the class, you did the range time,
you went through the background check, you did the mental
health background check, you did all of this stuff. You
got your permit, you haven't violated any laws, you haven't
had it revoked or anything. And five years later, now
you have to go and get another renewal and you
have to fill out all the paperwork again, and you
got to go through the background screenings again. You got
to pay the money for the renewal again, even though
your status hasn't changed. So the North Carolina State Legislature,
well in the House, I should say, they passed yesterday.
They had a flurry of activity. I'm going to go
into in depth on more of this tomorrow on a
bunch of the different pieces of legislation that moved, so
concealed carry handgun permit holders could soon have to apply
only once if a bill in the state legislature becomes law.
This is from the Charlotte Observer. The current law requires
concealed carry permit holders to renew their permits every five years.
Under House Bill six seventy four, which passed the House
yesterday evening, there would be a new lifetime concealed carry
permit too. Holders of that permit would be able to
keep it for life, never again having to take another
firearms safety and training course. Hey guys, you don't have
to do that right now. See, this is what happens
when people who don't know anything about firearms or concealed
handgun permit process or anything, when they write stories. It's
obvious that they don't know what they're talking about. Because
when I go for a renewal of my permit, I
don't have to retake the firearm training safety class. I
don't have to do any of that again. I just
have to submit all the paperwork again, they run the
background checks again, they run the mental health background checks again,
and that's it. I don't have to take these the
firearms safe and training courses. You don't need to do
that now. The bill passed seventy to forty two, with
mostly Republican votes and with some Democrats objecting to ending
the renewal process. Representative Shelley Willingham, a Rocky Mount Democrat
and retired law enforcement officer, voted in favor of the bill.
So it's bipartisan, you would call that, but they don't.
But it is. Republicans argue that the process is burdensome,
it is to permit holders, and that some states require
no permits at all, something that has also been proposed
for North Carolina what they call constitutional carry. That's a
separate bill. Democrat Representative Marsha Morey of Durham, a former
judge who you would think might know the law. She says,
you know, it's a lifetime like there could be a
lot of changes over the course of your life. Like
this five year renewal is just a check to make
sure the good guys with guns stay a good guy
who's content an end, who's save and knows how to
operate the gun and does not have any affliction that
would be a danger to one's self or the public.
So what this tells me is that she doesn't know
the renewal process, nor does she know about the revocation process.
People who get concealed handgun permits want to keep those permits.
They very much adhere to the laws so as to
not lose their ability to have that permit. And if
you beat up your spouse and get charged with such,
you lose your permit. Like you get these things taken
away for violating the law. So as long as you
don't get it taken away, why should you have to
keep renewing it. Representative Jay Adams at Kataba County Republican
encountered that somebody can go off the deep end two
days after getting any permit or license, and the permit
doesn't prevent bad behavior. Exactly right. I go out and
get a concealed handgun permit, go through the whole process,
get the permit. Now I have it, and then I
have a mental breakdown, and I'll have to say that
is that it is that politically incorrect. But anyway, I
have an episode and the permit doesn't stop me from
doing something bad. In March, the Senate passed a bill
along party lines that would allow somebody to carry a
concealed handgun without a permit. House Speaker Destin Hull said
Republicans do plan to take up the constitutional carry the
full repeal this session, but he said, whether we have
a requirement for a permit in this state or not,
they're still useful for folks because they get a permit
here that they can use in other states. That's exactly right.
So even in a constitutional carry state, I would still
get that handgun, the concealed handgun permit, because I would
want the ability to go to another state and still
have a permit with reciprocity that they recognize in that
state as well. So me personally, I would not utilize
constitutional carry. I would still keep a permit, So a
lifetime permit would be very very awesome. All right, that'll
do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.
I could not do the show without your support and
the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast,
so if you'd like, please support them too and tell
them you heard it here. You can also become a
patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again,
thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.