Speaker 1: I'm very excited right now to have my next guest
Speaker 1: with me. He is the Associate dean and professor of
Speaker 1: Government at Haillsdale College's DC campus. They have a campus
Speaker 1: in Washington, DC, and doctor Matthew Mehan.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Mandy.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about something that is a big, big,
Speaker 1: big fear of those on the left and for some
Speaker 1: on the right, a big big hope. What are we
Speaker 1: looking at when it comes to the Department of Justice.
Speaker 1: Pam Bondy just got grilled pretty hard by Democrats who
Speaker 1: wanted to ensure that she would not weaponize the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice. And I got to say, they have cajones
Speaker 1: the size of cantalopes, because we all know what's happened
Speaker 1: over the last four years with the Department of Justice.
Speaker 1: But I want a functioning, fair minded Department of Justice.
Speaker 1: How do we reform the DOJ without retribution from the DOJ?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the short answer is very carefully.
Speaker 3: I think it's a real trick to be able to
Speaker 3: both go after some of these law fair antics while
Speaker 3: also keeping the proper understanding and the appearance so that
Speaker 3: people understand that justice isn't about going after one's political enemies.
Speaker 3: I think the problem is the left, the Dems in
Speaker 3: a certain sense, have actually decided to hide within a
Speaker 3: kind of thicket of thorns where they do bad things,
Speaker 3: but they do them very overtly politically, so that when
Speaker 3: you go after them, they say, oh, you're being political,
Speaker 3: so tempting the good guys to destroy justice while trying
Speaker 3: to do it. And so I think we have to
Speaker 3: do it very carefully, and I think there's a kind
Speaker 3: of order or procedure that we need to go about
Speaker 3: in order to do that.
Speaker 1: Well, let's start with personnel, because I think that in
Speaker 1: my view, and I'm not, you know, intimately involved with
Speaker 1: the upper echelons of the Department of Justice, but there
Speaker 1: seems to be some people at the top that fill
Speaker 1: us sophocally may need to go.
Speaker 2: How do you do that without.
Speaker 1: Those accusations of he's purging, he's purging political enemies. How
Speaker 1: do you change or make any personnel changes without to
Speaker 1: your point, them saying, oh, you're stacking it with loyalists
Speaker 1: or whatever.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that in one sense, there's easy ways
Speaker 3: to do to do that. With regard to the civil service,
Speaker 3: looking at people who've done what they ought to have
Speaker 3: done or not done, what they have to be done.
Speaker 3: And I think that one of the major kind of
Speaker 3: well lea back up.
Speaker 2: You don't want show me the man and.
Speaker 3: I'll show you the crime, stalinists, purges, right. What you
Speaker 3: do want is show me the crime, and oh, look,
Speaker 3: here are the here's the man. Here are these people
Speaker 3: that violated a really important law and therefore need to go.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the way to go forward. And
Speaker 3: so I think Trump should with Pam BONDI say, you
Speaker 3: know what we're going to do. We're going to go
Speaker 3: after anyone who perjured themselves or suborned perjury, or lied
Speaker 3: to the courts, to the Congress, to their superiors. And
Speaker 3: where you can find someone who broke good faith with
Speaker 3: others in a egregious way. I mean, not every little
Speaker 3: thing needs to be enforced. Obviously, there's prosecutorial discretion. I
Speaker 3: think that's going to just happen. Perforce Pampondi's an experienced person,
Speaker 3: so as Trump. But what is the thing you go after?
Speaker 3: I think you go after they're breaking faith. And why
Speaker 3: that is, I think is because that protects you from
Speaker 3: any kind of understanding of oh, you're just doing this
Speaker 3: against your political enemies, because when you attack, rather persecute
Speaker 3: and try to purge that crime, the reason you try
Speaker 3: to purge it is we have to be friends. We
Speaker 3: have to be a nation again. We have to know
Speaker 3: that the thing you say is the truth, so that
Speaker 3: we can know what each other thinks, know what the
Speaker 3: other is doing, and then we can agree to disagree.
Speaker 3: Sometimes we can win in those elections, but we can
Speaker 3: trust one another that our word is our bond.
Speaker 2: Pam Bondi said that in her testimony before Congress, and it's.
Speaker 3: Actually in the words of the oath of office that
Speaker 3: the Donald Trump and Jade Vance just took that they're
Speaker 3: going to do this in good faith without mental reservation.
Speaker 3: Meaning if I speak under oath, or if I speak
Speaker 3: before Congress or before a phi as a judge, or
Speaker 3: if I speak to the press about someone's reputation, I'm
Speaker 3: telling the truth. And if they're not, if they're a
Speaker 3: liar and worse, and I think these is where you start.
Speaker 3: If they're a perjurer, that's where you have to go,
Speaker 3: because I think that will actually get rid of a
Speaker 3: lot of the worst malefactors. Because it's one thing to
Speaker 3: say I have a bad ideology. It's another thing to
Speaker 3: say I have a bad ideology that defends and upholds
Speaker 3: lying to my fellow Americans and to Congress and to
Speaker 3: courts and to the press. That's I don't care what
Speaker 3: your ideology is. We can't have a democratic republic if
Speaker 3: you're doing that.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you about the Biden pardons on
Speaker 1: the last day in office, because the notion of accountability
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna use the j six pardons that just
Speaker 1: came out yesterday. Donald Trump partons everybody from the January
Speaker 1: sixth situation. Doesn't matter what they did, doesn't matter who
Speaker 1: they hurt, they were all pardoned. I said earlier on
Speaker 1: the show. I don't necessarily know if everybody gets pardoned,
Speaker 1: had Biden not used his pardons to preemptively pardon all
Speaker 1: these people, something that Democrats have railed against in the
Speaker 1: past when they thought.
Speaker 2: Trump was going to do it.
Speaker 1: Which is kind of funny, But how does all this
Speaker 1: this is kind of new. We're in uncharted territory a
Speaker 1: little bit, this pardon versus pardon thing, what is this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I do think that if we're talking about
Speaker 3: the sort of going after one's political enemies. That's almost
Speaker 3: a different thing pardoning someone you think is a political ally,
Speaker 3: and in one sense the j six pardons, I mean,
Speaker 3: the punishment has been the process for a lot of them.
Speaker 3: I mean, anyone who's being released now has been in
Speaker 3: prison for a long while, I think commensurate with the riot. Actually,
Speaker 3: ideally you'd want them to be sorry for the things
Speaker 3: they did wrong, and I think that's true of many
Speaker 3: of the Jay sixers who did something wrong. I've heard
Speaker 3: a lot of apologies about the parts that they shouldn't
Speaker 3: have done. But the ones who are welcomed in by
Speaker 3: a cop and said, you know, I don't like, I
Speaker 3: don't respect what you're doing, but I understand it, or
Speaker 3: something like that, or I don't like what you're doing,
Speaker 3: but I respect it like that, that's a person who
Speaker 3: thinks they're being let in by.
Speaker 2: The authorities, right into the people's house, right.
Speaker 3: That's so it's very complicated, and so the blank cot pardon,
Speaker 3: I understand it.
Speaker 2: I don't. I would rather be parsed out more easily.
Speaker 2: But I get the symbolism.
Speaker 3: With regard to what Biden's doing, that's a masterclass and
Speaker 3: how to abuse the plenary power of clemency, right, those
Speaker 3: blanket pardons for eleven years, those pregnant eleven years and
Speaker 3: protecting Fauci and others like that, stuff's gross and wrong
Speaker 3: because which you're supposed to do is actually someone should
Speaker 3: either have been punished, right and then you show mercy,
Speaker 3: or if they're about to be punished, the only way
Speaker 3: you can let them off is if they are contrite,
Speaker 3: they're actually sorry.
Speaker 2: And say, look, I screwed up.
Speaker 3: And the reason why that's the point is back to
Speaker 3: that perjury question of how do you actually have friendship
Speaker 3: and politics again as opposed to this creepy sort of
Speaker 3: cold civil war where the long knives are out and
Speaker 3: it's law fair and lying and destruction of person, property
Speaker 3: and reputation.
Speaker 2: Right. The way to go.
Speaker 3: Back to that is that you actually are honest. Hey,
Speaker 3: I want clemency, I want to be pardoned.
Speaker 2: But I screwed up. I lied, I did ax, I
Speaker 2: did why it was not right.
Speaker 3: I am sorry, and I would like to come back
Speaker 3: in to a relationship with the political community.
Speaker 2: I think you have to do that. And so.
Speaker 3: A real clemency is there's some strictness or there's already
Speaker 3: prior punishment. I think with Jay six, you have prior punishment,
Speaker 3: but with Biden you have neither. Nobody's been punished. It's
Speaker 3: all preemptive, a lot of it right or mealy mouthed,
Speaker 3: and nobody's sorry because there's no strictness. So you've got
Speaker 3: to put justice first, then mercy can follow. And I
Speaker 3: think that's the way Trump should and Pam BONDI should
Speaker 3: be looking at this too. Is be very strict on
Speaker 3: some of these high level lawfare perjurers and deceivers. And
Speaker 3: then once the punishments have been assembled, the prosecution has
Speaker 3: been successfully demonstrated beyond this jedile with doubt, then you
Speaker 3: can open the door to clemency and say are you
Speaker 3: sorry for what you've done?
Speaker 2: Then maybe you can get your jail get out of
Speaker 2: jail free card.
Speaker 3: But first you have to be honest and you have
Speaker 3: this much good faith which is a lie because you've
Speaker 3: been a liar. Right, we're going to take you down
Speaker 3: a negative four and if you want to come back
Speaker 3: to zero and just be a citizen again, and you
Speaker 3: gotta say sorry, and then we let you out.
Speaker 2: And so we don't want it. We don't want our
Speaker 2: enemies to.
Speaker 3: Be locked up and bloodthirsty revenge right and and sort
Speaker 3: of snakes in the bed Roman Empire style like killing
Speaker 3: emperors and things. We want justice and friendship again and
Speaker 3: equality under the law, and I think you have to
Speaker 3: go after these sort of high level things that threaten
Speaker 3: honesty and integrity even between people who disagree. And that's
Speaker 3: why I think perjury is the top of the list.
Speaker 3: Subordination of perjury, meddling with documents, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: You know, I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a there's very shades of like post
Speaker 1: Civil War reconstruction in what you're saying. It's it's that
Speaker 1: if we if we handle this the wrong way, we
Speaker 1: just create more animosity. But I think every American wants
Speaker 1: to know that if the FBI comes knocking on our door,
Speaker 1: we're going to be treated fairly and that there isn't
Speaker 1: this two tiered system of justice that we've seen. So
Speaker 1: what are the chances that that, you know, some high
Speaker 1: level people will be held accountable, do you think in
Speaker 1: some way before they ask for clemency or I don't know,
Speaker 1: because I think that for me as a citizen, I
Speaker 1: want to know that that two tiered system of justice
Speaker 1: has been dismantled because that concerns me greatly, It truly does.
Speaker 3: My friend Matt Kittle made the point the other day
Speaker 3: in a similar conversation we were having, saying, there's no
Speaker 3: two tiered system. Really, it's just justice or injustice, right,
Speaker 3: Like some people are just being treated very badly.
Speaker 2: Right. So yeah, I agree, it's an intolerable thing to
Speaker 2: have that two tiers. The I do. I do think
Speaker 2: that that part of.
Speaker 3: What needs to happen is is that you have to
Speaker 3: lay out strictness first and mercy will come as a
Speaker 3: kind of vision for people.
Speaker 2: But with there's two temptations.
Speaker 3: One is the bloodthirsty, go too hard right, and then
Speaker 3: you get the Trump administration looks like they're just continuing
Speaker 3: the cycle, the sort of carousel of death that destroys
Speaker 3: the republic, reprisals, law fair, go after your enemies. The
Speaker 3: other temptation is the sort of false honor of nope,
Speaker 3: forgive and forget, just move on, right, Because that's actually
Speaker 3: they've been too bad. It is too systemically corruptly grotesque.
Speaker 2: There have to be repercussions.
Speaker 3: So I think Trump is in a probably a good
Speaker 3: place to actually take some high.
Speaker 2: Level people to task, right.
Speaker 3: But I think that he's also hopefully and he's made
Speaker 3: gestures and noise to this to this effect. So I'm
Speaker 3: very hopeful that he can and will sort of thread
Speaker 3: this needle very carefully, but also open up the door
Speaker 3: to you might be my political enemy right now, and
Speaker 3: you're also a violator of the law, and so you're
Speaker 3: going to be punished. But if you can make friends
Speaker 3: with the American people, with me and with the law again,
Speaker 3: clemency is yours and we can go back to zero
Speaker 3: and have a handshake.
Speaker 2: And I think that you have to give people that
Speaker 2: whole arc because if.
Speaker 3: You're just after them to punish them and they don't
Speaker 3: see that you have strictness here, because they have to
Speaker 3: stop doing this to everybody, right, And you punish people
Speaker 3: at the time so that they stop meddling with people
Speaker 3: at the bottom.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So you're gonna go after some big fish, I think, right,
Speaker 3: so that the littler fish know that they won't.
Speaker 2: Be protected by big fish, right.
Speaker 3: And I think that will solve the citizens being mistreated
Speaker 3: by the FBI or anybody else by doing that. But
Speaker 3: then there has to be this vision of no, no, no,
Speaker 3: we actually want restoration of peace, amity, concord, citizens, friendship,
Speaker 3: good faith. It's not just justice and punishment that's gonna
Speaker 3: come right, but that can be ameliorated if you are contrite,
Speaker 3: forthright about what you did wrong and show a firm
Speaker 3: purpose of amendment that you won't do this anymore. And
Speaker 3: then the door of mercy is open. But people too
Speaker 3: often flip it. They're too merciful at the beginning, so
Speaker 3: there's no justice. It's just fake forgiveness, and everyone just
Speaker 3: goes about doing bad things in the next administration.
Speaker 1: I think that I love that. I would love it
Speaker 1: if that was the way things went down, but I
Speaker 1: think that would ultimately be really unsatisfying to at least
Speaker 1: a section of Trump supporters who are tired of seeing
Speaker 1: Republicans roll over on this stuff.
Speaker 2: To your point earlier, and I don't think they're wrong.
Speaker 1: I do think Republicans have jumped to forgiveness too quickly
Speaker 1: without holding people accountable. But that being said, I would
Speaker 1: love it if we could do this, And then at
Speaker 1: that point, you know, I was raised in the South,
Speaker 1: and whenever I would get start acting like an idiot
Speaker 1: right and just act the fool, my grandmother would look
Speaker 1: at me and say you were raised better than that, right,
Speaker 1: And I kind of feel like I want to say
Speaker 1: that to the party, like we were raised better than that.
Speaker 1: We can't control what if somebody else does, but if
Speaker 1: we can just hold someone accountable and then if they
Speaker 1: deserve it, give them grace. To me, that would be
Speaker 1: the best possible outcome from your lips to God's ears.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, I think that's right.
Speaker 3: I also think, though, don't forget, some of these people
Speaker 3: are recalcitrate liars, and they will not ask for clemency
Speaker 3: on the proper grounds.
Speaker 2: And if they don't, it shouldn't be granted them.
Speaker 3: So I think there will be some satisfaction because some
Speaker 3: of these people will try to pretend to be martyrs
Speaker 3: and congratulations, you're a fake prisoned, imprisoned martyr under your
Speaker 3: own lying garbage, you know, gaslighting, like good for you.
Speaker 3: Like they'll I think they'll they'll be a pound of
Speaker 3: flesh regardless, because some people really do need to go
Speaker 3: to prison if they're so vicious that they cannot break
Speaker 3: out of you know, the shell or the mode they're
Speaker 3: in of lined everyone.
Speaker 2: So I think it'll be a little of everything.
Speaker 3: But I also think I think the American people, and
Speaker 3: I think MAGA, and I think the Republican Party, and
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people who've even been abused,
Speaker 3: they do have the common sense of the American way,
Speaker 3: which is right, you can't get everything you want in
Speaker 3: the life, right, and so you better get what you should.
Speaker 3: And I think this path forward is something like what
Speaker 3: we should do, even if it's not everything that we
Speaker 3: might want, because it's not until heaven when God will
Speaker 3: wipe away every tier right and every justice will be
Speaker 3: done and every wrong will be righted. And I think
Speaker 3: you know, it's the Marxist to try to make a
Speaker 3: heaven on earth, and that's not what we do.
Speaker 1: Amen to that. Associate Dean and professor of Government at
Speaker 1: Hillsdale College in Washington, d C. They have two campuses,
Speaker 1: one in Michigan, one in Washington, d C. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate your time at Thank you for coming on the show,
Speaker 1: and hopefully we can revisit in a year or maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit shorter and see how we've done with
Speaker 1: our prognostication about this. We can regroup and see what's
Speaker 1: actually happened. I appreciate your time today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, happy to report from our forward Operating base
Speaker 2: in d C