Speaker 1: Being like Jack Webb, just moving from Fatima to Chesterfields.
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
what you can do for your country.
Speaker 2: Mister Gorbuchaw, Tear down this wall.
Speaker 1: It's the Ricorche Podcast with Peter Robinson and Charles S. Cook.
I'm James Lilacs. Since there's a lot of legal stuff
in the news this week, of course we've got to
talk to John and you. So let's ever so was
a podcast.
Speaker 3: Was asked directly, and he has said he wouldn't pardon
his son if he gets convicted.
Speaker 4: Let's quit see what happens if he loves Yeah, I mean,
but he said it.
Speaker 1: And this pardon is all about Joe Biden protecting Joe Biden.
Speaker 5: It's shameful and completely unsurprising.
Speaker 1: Ladies, gentlemen, as you know I'm in the final weeks
of my presidency.
Speaker 2: You don't have to clap for that. You can if
you want.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven, one hundred
and eighteen. I'm James Lilacs, overly enunciating for some reason
here in Minneapolis where it's cold and crisp and uh
trending towards Christmasy a little dusting of snow. We like
to have our white Christmases. After that, we're done with it,
get it out of here, bring the spring on. But
that's months and months away. However, next month brings what well,
an inauguration, and then a new era begins. Here to
discuss that cast the rize forward as well as backwards
are Peter Robinson and Charles C. W. Cook gentlemen.
Speaker 5: Welcome, Thank you, James, Charlie Jesus.
Speaker 3: Very polite of you, James, thank you? What was very
polite of me saying welcome? Oh well, that is my duty,
I guess. I mean you will just raw dogg it
as tam.
Speaker 6: I appreciate. No.
Speaker 1: So we had Thanksgiving before we get to the future.
Everybody knows that Thanksgiving is you know, it's done, it's over,
we're moving towards Christmas. But yet we ought to stop
and think and wonder exactly what we were thankful for.
Speaker 5: Briefly, Peter, Oh, well, I mean, my crude political is
self is thankful that the other side lost, and I
really am thankful for that. Honestly, the uh, the pall
that lifted, just a feeling, there is a feeling of
I'm in my x feed, Mark Andriesen is making this
point a couple of times a day. But here in
Silicon Valley there is a feeling of renewed energies. Now,
I know that that may not sit well with the
rest of the country, and there are plenty of people
here in Silicon Valley about whom I have my own reservations,
and some companies about whom I have my own reservations.
But the notion that people are free er, much freeer,
feel freer, will be freer to invest as they choose
to invest, to gather capital, to hire engineers to start
new projects, is quite a thing, and to my surpproblem
more than I I would have expected. You can actually
feel the difference. Then, of course the usual things which
are more important to me but less interesting to everybody else,
which is the health of each of my children. Nobody's
in jail, nobody's in the hospital, We're doing fine as
a family. All that, of course matters enormously, but is
of no interest in anybody but me.
Speaker 1: Chars like spoken like a true privileged member of the
oligarchical overclass doesn't have to worry about being sent to Auschwitz.
Speaker 5: On the Rio Grande Auschwitz. Ah, yes, yes, Charles.
Speaker 7: What am I grateful for? That's a fellow member of
the overclass. Well, I'm very grateful for my family. I
am grateful that I have a job. But you know,
the thing that struck me this year more than any
other was inspired by a comment from Rich Larry on
the Editors podcast, which was actually in connection to a
discussion of space rockets going up near where? And he
said to me, did you ever think you would be
able to walk out of your back door and you
would be able to watch rocket launches? And so one No,
I wanted to live in America, and I do, and
I'm very, very grateful for this. This year, I felt
especially grateful for this that of all the things when
I was a little kid, I wanted more than anything
before I had any politics or any real conception of
the adult world.
Speaker 6: I just wanted to live in America. And I do.
And that's a magical thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What I love about the rockets launching is that it's
become so ordinary, It's become almost banal to see this
slender tower rising on a pillar of flame to go
into the imperium and deposit its litter of satellites connecting
to the world. What I love about it, of course,
I love the fact that Elon Musk in the back
of his head is motivated by the same sort of
sci fi tropes that I probably grew up with. Is
that you land a rocket on a pad with its
legs that come out of the side like they did
in Destination Moon. I'm surprised that he hasn't put up
something and looks exactly like the rocket and Tintins and
Adventures to the Moon. I never cease to marvel at
seeing these cylinders come from the sky and right themselves
and land on a platform on the ocean. It's astonishing,
and I love the fact that it's absolutely ordinary. People
always say, you know, in the future, where's my flying car?
You don't want a flying car, trust me, you don't.
You don't want people to be up there buzzing a round.
I mean, if anybody actually remembers Jetson's flying cars were
actually pretty horrible because you were stuck in traffic all
the time in this narrow little band and everybody bunching
it up together. So no, I don't want that. I
don't want that at all. But I mean, when you
look at the size of the starship compared to the
Saturn five. You goggle and you realize we're back. We're back,
and this is an extremely consequential moment in human history.
Speaker 5: Have you noticed, James, that I seem to be winning
an argument that you and I have been having for
perhaps a decade now. You keep saying space travel, space travel,
the romance of it, it touches something in our souls.
And I keep saying, space travel, but only if financed
with private money. I'm done. During the Cold War, it
was an active war to go to the moon. Fine,
we needed to do it in some basic way to
defeat the Soviets. That's over. And I keep arguing, fine,
go explore space, but not with the public's money. And
the world has taken Apparently Elon has been listening to
you and me debate this for over these many years.
Speaker 1: Well, good for him and good for you, and yes,
I'm happy however we get there. I wouldn't have mined
the expenditure of public funds because I think it's an
act of sort of civilizational philanthropy. But that's just me
and everybody's got their little carve out. You know, I
don't want you to spend on that. But this is
my pet project which tickles my gizzard. So do this. Yes,
well here we are then good, so we're all grateful.
I was actually not in America. I was in Mexico
on Thanksgiving Day?
Speaker 5: And was that why you were so to you look
rather be basted yourself?
Speaker 1: It was? It was. It was wonderful, and they put
on a Thanksgiving dinner for the Americans who come to
come to the resort, and it's always there. We're in Mexico, Cancun, which,
as I say in my upcoming podcast, doesn't really qualify
as going to Mexico. It's getting into one little sealed,
pressurized tube and going to a place, getting briefly scammed,
getting out of the scam, and then taking a car
to a nice little walled garden where you can pretend
you're in Mexico. But I still will take it napped
and I'm you know, we were, We actually were, but
we got out of it, and Barren hangs it. Well,
inasmuch as we were the do I have to go
into this. We were the victim of a scam at
the airport. Uh And by victim, I mean to say
that I walked right into it and actually had the
misfortune of trust trusting a man with a badge. Uh,
never trust a man with a badge in Mexico, is
what I have learned since now we were not actually
probably in any physical peril. We wouldn't we ended up
would have ended up spending twice as much money as
we needed to get to our resort, but we would
have got there. But it was. It was still a
thing that makes me look back and say, ha ha,
you old can't coon hand, you idiot. But we had
a Thanksgiving dinner in Mexico which was amusing because they
can't get it right and it's not that hard. But
they had a turkey that was The stuffing was basically hagas.
That's okay, I love hagus too, but it wasn't but
it's not but it's not is great.
Speaker 5: Un American to love has Charlie, Well, it's illegal.
Speaker 7: It was for me pizza because it's a Scottish dish.
I'm pretty it's a former Englishman.
Speaker 1: You can't get it here because it's illegal. They don't
allow you know, loves foods in America. But there's this
stuffing was wrong. There was no pumpkin pie. There was
pumpkin cake and everything was all the details were a
little off, but it was you know, it was like
it was like being in the zoo run by aliens,
where they've studied enough of your culture to be able
to try to make you feel at home in the
special day. So that was great.
Speaker 5: Yes, May I mend my thanks? Yes, And it's your
tales of Mexico that bring this to mind. It has
been in my mind the last couple of days post Thanksgiving,
but still I'm thankful for it. Survey the world and
France is in a constitutional crisis. The Fifth Republic does
not see the Constitution of the Fifth Republic does not
seem to have taken into account the kind of circumstance
in which a government has fallen, but it is not
legal for the President of the Republic to call a
new election for something like a year. Germany is facing
a series of elections in which the general expectation is
that the two parties that the Part of the Right
and the Party of the Left, will have to go
into coalition to avoid the Party of what everybody is
calling the far right. In other words, we have paralysis.
The government of Prime Minkre Starmer only a few months
old in Britain is now polling below, well below thirty
percent paralysis in Britain. In Mexico, conversation with a friend
of mine who an American who ran the American branch
of a bank in Mexico City, and every single person
of the rank of vice president and above had either
been kidnapped or had a family member kidnapped. Mexico beautiful
country where some large portion of the economy is run
by cartels, and everybody knows it. Gentlemen, we live in
top country. The country that is not having a constitutional crisis,
despite all the nonsense, all the claims that Donald Trump
would represent a threat to democracy. The country that is
functioning is this one. It is good to be in
country number one.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. I'll give you an example of this. You
left out Syria, of course, well we left out the
whole Middle East. But Syria is in a perilous state
at the moment, and it's going to be interesting to
see how that shakes out. But while in Kancun, I
had the con I had the opportunity to talk to
people from every nation because a lot of people come
Germans come there.
Speaker 5: Oh, I didn't know that that's it's popular with the Europeans.
I didn't realize long.
Speaker 1: Way to get there, Brits talk to some Britz talked
to a lot of Canadians, everybody who's unhappy with their country.
Everybody was unhappy with their country, and across all kinds
of demographic and money lines. There's some you know, this
man Mountain Kinoko is talking to it. The bar Slam
of Tequila was a miner in Manitoba. Guy who's down
there with a pickaxe, and they all are drastically unhappy
with their with their country, and they're all really giving
a thumbs up to America and for Donald Trump. Now
there was a German I was speaking to who was
when I finally got him going, and it took a
little while. Uh went on a rant about decarbonization and
renewables that was just epic in its scope and scale,
about the idiocy of it, and how they've undercut their
own security and their own industrial capacity and made themselves
rely on others, and how it isn't going to work
and the numbers aren't there, and it's absolutely I mean,
it's just it was, it was, it was, It was operatic.
And I asked him, I said, wow, yeah, I agree
with you. What do you what do you do for
living in Germany? And he looked down and then he
looked up and he said, I sell photovoltaic rooftop equipment
solar and there you go, there you go, uh, you know,
complicit in it up to his neck and knowing exactly
what's happening. But that seemed to sum up some of
the some of the attitudes anyway. Charles, Yes, right, well, he.
Speaker 7: Likes the regime just because he has to carry out
his orders, just fulfilling.
Speaker 1: Orders that have been placed by legitim customers.
Speaker 5: Charlie, Charlie, it was seventy years ago. Let it go, Let.
Speaker 6: It go, absolutely not. I will never let it go.
Speaker 7: I grew up with this being the running joke. Frequently
returned to running joke. We have junkies, but every Saturday
afternoon we had Dad's Army Lolo and it was just
make fun of the Germans day and the local pub
that we would go to, even when I was a kid.
In the bathroom, the men's bathroom, all over the wall,
they have a collection framed each one of Gallow's humor
cartoons drawn for the newspapers during.
Speaker 6: World War two.
Speaker 7: During the war, and of course that's the point at
which it wasn't funny at all. And still the British
managed to make joke after joke after joke about the
Germans and Hitler and Son.
Speaker 6: So I will not let it go.
Speaker 1: Actually, well there you go. I would like to say
something about something, but Rob isn't here, so I'm not
even going. I want Rob to know that there's not
even a commercial ad segue for him to spoil. I
want him, in whatever monastic cell he is right now,
to just all of a sudden, bolt upright and bang
his head on the bunk above and say it. I
could be spoiling the segue, but I'm not because frankly,
I just want to stop and tell you that Charles
is going to give what I believe to be on
the Flagship Podcast his first personal endorsement. Now you're wondering
for what he is going to be for a fine
fine you know, golf cart accessory, Is it going to
be for a great American monitor or what he drinks?
But we can find out that you know what it is.
It's sheets. M h. And if you're thinking, oh, I've
heard this, no you haven't. No, you haven't because I'm
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And I imagine that matters in Florida, does it us? Charles?
Would you like to tell people about your personal experience
with Cozy Earth sheets.
Speaker 7: I love these sheets, but you know I did the
smart thing when I was choosing them, which was not
to choose them, but instead let my wife choose them.
Speaker 5: So she use sexist pig is what a thing.
Speaker 7: To say, because if I had if I had ordered
Cozy Earth sheets of my own choosing, I would have
got it wrong. You see, not because the sheets would
have been wrong, because they're all terrific, but because I
would have got the wrong color or got the wrong
size or got ones.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: So I said to my wife, and I don't just
need to endorse this on behalf of myself. Although I
do love these sheets and they are nice and cool,
but my wife absolutely loves them.
Speaker 6: Was extremely excited at the prospect.
Speaker 7: So far from being sexist picked she jumped with joy
when I said, you can go onto the internet and
choose some sheets and then put them on the bed
and then sleep in them, which we do every night,
and staying cool is actually extremely important and quite difficult
sometimes here. So cozy sheets are terrific. Everything James said
is true. Go buy them.
Speaker 1: Well, there you have it. You can go on the internet,
you can buy them, you can have them delivered, you
can put them on the bed and then you can
sleep on them. Imagine that.
Speaker 6: You have to do it, and actually otherwise it won't work.
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Speaker 5: You get one of those.
Speaker 1: Tell him you heard about Cozy Earth from the guys
at the Ricochet Podcast, and we thank Cozy Earth for
sponsoring this the Ricochet Podcast. I now we happily bring
to the pot. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought we had
that other guest. Oh, I know.
Speaker 2: The only reason I'm here is because someone canceled last Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: All right, we got John you, Professor of Law UC Berkeley,
also seen your research fellow Civitas Institute, University of Tech
at Austin and a non resident Senior Fellow at the
American Enterprise Institute. I hope they upgrade you at some point.
He's the author of several books, most recently Defender in
Chief Donald Trump's Fight for Presidential Power. Hey John, how
are you doing good? Good?
Speaker 2: How are you guys?
Speaker 1: Got?
Speaker 2: I can't Are we talking about Pardons or Penny Penny?
Speaker 1: Well, let's let's talk Penny first, because Pardons is bigger
and thicker and richer and deeper. But wow, are we
gonna have a mistrial? And then and then they're gonna
do this the smart thing and say, nah, we're not
gonna try him again.
Speaker 2: This is why electing prosecutors in the DA can be
an important thing. Because here's a guy, Alvin Bragg, who
put Penny on trial, I think for doing something heroic.
He now has a choice if this goes into a mistrial,
whether to retry Penny again, continue taking his freedom away right,
put him on trial for his freedom for years, or
whether you, I think, do the right thing and use
his discretion to drop the case. Here's the guy, this
is the same Alvin braggart course, who decided to spend
years and millions of dollars going after Donald Trump in
the hush money case and not bringing certain felonies for
a violent crime in New York City and Manhattan while
pursuing people like Donald Trump. So I think, unfortunately this
guy is this guy Alvan Bragg is probably gonna retry
Penny again. If this mister just declaire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, because maybe they're not completely stupid and a
wetted finger can tell them that there is a there
is something of a vibe shift even in New York
when it comes. I mean, then I'm one. I would
love to hear exactly what the jury's jurors are discussing precisely. Yes,
how many of them? The herodon who got up there
and you know, made the case case about the white
man doing this thing. It's prime a facia. I don't
think that they had anything with it. Again, I'm not
a lawyer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so can you tell John a lawyer that you are?
Or can you can you give us I can speculate?
Can you give us informed speculation? How could it be
that there are any jurors at all who want to
convict this guy.
Speaker 2: Tru's not a legal question, that's a psychology question. Well,
all right, or you're not a psychologist either, Peter, although
you play one on TV. So here here's the thing.
So for a hungury or what we're seeing now, you
only need one person actually to hold out. So they
may only be one person on the jury who wants
to convict I see, and eleven other people who don't.
So hungary just means that the jury couldn't come to agreement,
all right, And that's why you can That's why the
usual possibility after is you can have a whole new
trial and try with a different jury. So it's neither
an acquittal or a conviction. Now, why this is happen?
Speaker 5: How long can the judge just a technical question? How
long can the judge? I guess Actually I was about
to say, permit this to go on, but it's actually
the judge who's insisting that they continue to deliberate. When
does the judge say, all right, that's it, hung jury on?
Speaker 1: We go?
Speaker 5: Well, how long does he have? How does his does
his discretion come into play?
Speaker 1: There?
Speaker 2: Oh, he doesn't have months or even weeks. Usually judges
get right to it. So what they've done now is
issued what's called an alan charge, which is I think
of it as the pretty please, pretty please issue from
the judge which he goes to the jury and the
aland charge just says, could you guys really really think
hard and try to be reasonable and come to a
unanimous verdict. If that fails, then usually the jury can
come out and say, even with this Island charge, we
still can't come to a unanimous decision. Then usually the
judge right away will declare mistrue.
Speaker 5: Well okay, And does the judge know if it's six
six or one versus eleven? Does he have any indication
of how hung they are?
Speaker 6: So to speak?
Speaker 2: No, but I think you're allowed to find out afterwards
after the trials are Then you see all the jurors
will rush out to the TV cameras accompanied by Jonathan
Early and we'll find out pretty quickly what.
Speaker 5: The But the notion that the judge issues of an
Alan charge does not imply that he thinks there's only
one or two holdouts who could be tek.
Speaker 2: He doesn't know, He doesn't know. The Alan church is
usually judges. If you think about a trial, judges spent
and the state, the you know, the public spends a
lot of time and resources to put on a jury trial.
It takes months if this one, you know, takes months,
so they don't want to The judge doesn't want to
waste all that time. Plus the judge is gonna have
to do it all over again for a new trial.
So most I think most of the time they do
issue an allan charge. It's not unusual to do something
like this.
Speaker 7: So, Charlie John, as far as I understand this, there
are two charges, the second degree manslaughter and then there's negligence.
So if the jury is hung on the second degree
manslaughter to charge, it can still convict of negligence. If
that's the case, do you think that would diminish Alvin
Bragg's desire to try the manslaugh to charge because he'd
have got something out of this. He'd be able to
say we didn't waste time, It wasn't a crazy prosecution,
and Daniel Penny is going to pay some.
Speaker 6: Price, a bit I think unjustly for his actions.
Speaker 2: An interesting question, Charli. Yeah, there's two different charges, and
the jury so far has hung only on the first one.
They haven't proceeded to the lesser charge. The first charge
is what we call reckless manslaughter. That's different than the
murder we see on British TV shows that Peter likes.
If you can see Peter's background, he's watching Masterpiece Theater
right now on his little screen. We know it and
I know it. If you were a first degree manslaughter,
you know, intentional murder, you know, with deliberation and planning
some usually that would be different things. This is reckless.
This means that Penny acted with disregard, right, that he
acted recklessly and that led to the death of subwry writer.
Even if he's not convicted. That Charlie's choir right, there's
a lesser charge, which is just negligence, which is just
kind of like, well, even if you weren't reckless, you
still shouldn't have done what you did. Now, the important
thing I think for Charlie's question this gets more into
the political aspect of it is I think that really
depends on the sentence. Suppose a jury convicts on this,
you were merely negligent, as I understand that the sentencing
range could be zero. There is no required sentence, so
that's when we will really see. In response to Peter's question,
what the judge really thinks about all this. The judge
could sentence him to zero and say I think you
know that. Actually, yeah, you've been through and what you
did had a lot of benefits to society. Then brag
looks I think. Then brag looks the worst. Right then
you have a judge saying this should never have been
brought and I'm giving you zero years in jail. Now
he could also I think, give him up to I
think the sentence arrange could be up to four years,
so it gives a full sentence of four years. Right,
then Alvin Bragg, as Charlie suggests, might come out looking
good and not need to retry him on the tougher
first charge.
Speaker 5: And to raise the obvious issue here, meaning we have
to get to this issue before we let you go, John,
one way or the other. Presidential pardons. If the judge
slams this guy with a maximum sentence, wouldn't that be
a case where Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: That's the state, Yes, the clause.
Speaker 2: We got to rely on the guy for Britain to
read the text of the constitution.
Speaker 4: Charlie's John, if the guy not even even worse the
guy from Florida, Charlie makes you and Richard Epstein look
perfectly ignorant.
Speaker 5: John, I want you to.
Speaker 2: Well, it's right here.
Speaker 4: So the.
Speaker 2: Pardon power only has two exceptions for impeachment, and as
Charlie just said, it only applies to federal crimes. This
is a state crime. But I'm going to start suggesting this.
That doesn't mean Donald Trump can't do something about this.
In fact, I'm surprised he hasn't thought of this already.
Maybe after he listens to this podcast to start doing it.
Why doesn't Donald Trump go out and say, I think
the criminal justice system in New York is broken and wild.
I'm cutting all federal funds off to the City of
New York's justice system. I'm not giving anymore police grants,
I'm not giving any more law enforcement effected. I'm sure
the federal government sends millions and millions of dollars to
New York City's courts and police officers. And I'm going
to have the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department
conduct an investigation and to whether the New York City
Prosecutor's office is racist, because here I see case after
case of innocent white guys being prosecuted for things like
being heroes on the subway, where I see right, dangerous
felons who may be minorities, not being prosecuted by Alvin Bragg.
He could launch an investigation, would drive that office bonkers.
Speaker 1: Refusing to use federal money to control a state apparatus
and then investigating them for racial preferences instead of racial neutrality.
That's fascism straight up.
Speaker 5: So what about Biden's pardon of Hunter, and what about
this notion of preemptive pardons? He could do that, couldn't
he He could say as far as that goes, he could say,
everybody in the state of Delaware, I here by every
pardon everybody in the state of Delaware, and according to
the Supreme Court it's done. Everybody in the state of
Delaware is pardon correct.
Speaker 2: This is actually a question where George Washington and Abraham
Lincoln set the precedence, not the Supreme Court. At the Court,
the pardon power doesn't say anything about whether you can
pardon people for actions, not charges. So what Peter's asking is,
can you pardon someone for things they did? But there's
been no investigation, there's been no prosecution. There may we
may not even know about it yet. It just happened
in the past. So this is this is and you
could have gone the other way. If you look at
the text of the Constitution. You could have gone the
other way and said, oh no, the part and power
really exists only for people who are charged or people
are actually sentenced and in jail. That would have been
the narrower reading. So what happened in the first time
the part of power is used by George Washington is
in the Whiskey Rebellion, which sounds like rob Long at
a bar i digress. So in the wisky rebellion, Yeah, well,
with whisky reboundon, there's a people out in western Pennsylvania,
my home state, who still hate taxes to this day.
They didn't want to pay tax on whiskey, so they
actually kind of attacked the courthouse and harassed federal officials.
George Washington came out at the head of an army.
I mean he actually led the army in the field
to suppress it. But then after he put down the
rebellion with no loss of life, he pardoned the ring leaders,
as you're saying, preemptively before they were even charged. And
then the biggest one we've ever had in our history
was Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson pardoned all the members
of the Confederacy. Millions of people as a way to
heal the nation after the Civil War. So because of
those presidents, we've always accepted this idea, but it's not
i would say natural from the text of the Constitution.
Speaker 7: Is there a difference, John, between preemptively pardoning someone in
say the Whiskey Rebellion for an act that is by
definition cabined because Washington had to intervene and giving them
a blank check. For example, the Hunter Biden pardon was
issued at I think eight pm, but it lasted until midnight,
so everyone joked, you know, Hunter has four hours to
go out and do whatever he wants. But the potential
preemptive pardons that are now being debated in the White House,
apparently without Joe Biden's involvement, if you read the reporting,
seem to be completely black.
Speaker 6: In other words, it's not Washington.
Speaker 7: Saying, we know we just had this rebellion, I am
pardoning you in a blanket sense for your involvement in it,
or Lincoln saying I am pardoning you for being involved
in the Confederacy. That I assume the crime being treason.
That this is if you are somebody we suspect that
Trump might not like you, cannot be federally.
Speaker 6: Prosecuted for anything anything. Is that different or not.
Speaker 2: I think it is different in the sense that there
haven't been examples of this from American history. So now
we must blame our forebearers and Charlie's direct ancestors. We
would have to go back and look at English constitutional
history leading up to seventeen eighty eight to see if
the English king had ever issued a pardon like this.
My memory is that Queen Elizabeth, I swear to God,
might have issued in like this. This has never come
up to the Supreme Court before. Usually what has happened
is the prosecutors just choose to recognize the pardon and
never bring charges or even investigate. It has become a
kind of immuniy shield. But I think you're quite right.
We never had pardons that didn't mention any particulars of
a crime. Right, as you say, it's just a time period,
and it's just like anything you might have done in
this time period. I mean, that would be an interesting challenge,
but I don't. I think the courts would probably still
uphold pardons like that. But it is really different in
nature because you see, take all the arguments that the
liberals have made about why the Trump presidential Community decision
is so bad, right, oh, undermines the rule of law,
so on and so forth. The Supreme Court still gave
the immunity because of the singular importance of the presidency.
What these prospective pardons are doing is giving that immunity
to lots and lots of other people who aren't the president,
and in fact they are private people. In many cases
they get the same kind of right the fucktor shield
from all federal investigation and prosecution, which is Supreme Court
is really said, should only really be applied to the president.
Speaker 5: So okay, so you're in the White House. By the way, James,
I think said a moment ago, or what was Charlie,
that the debates are taking place without the involvement of
President Biden.
Speaker 4: If that makes difference in the other exactly, if a
debate has taking place, you can be sure it's without
his involvement.
Speaker 5: Okay, So these bright sparks at the White House, say,
Anthony Fauci, he had to do all kinds of things.
We don't know whether they were criminal. There's this question
about whether he he permitted funding of gain of research
function and wuhan. But we're for sure. We for sure
feel that Trump and his people are going to go
after Fauci, and so we're going to issue a pardon
for Fauci for anything he might have done from date
A to date B. One, do they have to get
Fauci's permission?
Speaker 1: Can they do it?
Speaker 5: Because I think Fauci is on record A saying he
doesn't want to pardon. Do they have to get his permission?
Speaker 1: Two?
Speaker 5: If there are these constitutional questions, who has standing to
take to object to who has standing to take that
to the Supreme Court? How does that get litigated?
Speaker 2: So first, usually the practices, you have to accept the pardon,
so you can you can turn it down. It's a defense.
So if you want to don't want to rely on it,
you don't want to accept it, you don't have to
you say I don't want the pardon. And often there
have been people exactly like doctor Fauci said, I'm innocent,
I don't want to pardon. Don't give me a part,
and I won't accept a pardon because they maintain their
innocence throughout. So there's a number of interesting ways that
would come up legally. One thing is this will come
up with the Hunter case. Interesting because despite Charlie and
I talking about how broad the partner is, it's not
a comple get out of jail free card. Hunter can
still be investigated for state crimes. I mean, the basic
things he's been accused of, money laundering, influenced pedling are
state crimes too, So the story's not over for him.
Wouldn't be over for doctor Fauci either. I mean he's
a simple fraud and lying is still state crime, primarily
a state crime, So it could come up in several ways.
For example, Congress, would I expect say, now that you're
an under under threat of prosecution Hunter Biden or doctor Frauchi,
you come up and testify. So one the beginning thing
will be, would Hunter Biden be able to claim the
Fifth Amendment anymore as he has been doing?
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like it.
Speaker 2: No, No, you would think not. But he could say,
what if I get prosecuted by some red state DA
what if Ken Paxton and Texas comes after me, I'm
still going to claim the Fifth Would doctor Fauci do
the same thing with a pardon? That could get litigated
because Congress could then go to court and say, Nope,
you don't have the right to refuse US pardon could
also come up in a state prosecution. Donald Trump is
actually this is interesting. Donald Trump is actually making the
same claims in court now. Right at the beginning of
the week, he filed briefs in his New York and
Georgia cases basically saying, well, on the same ground. I mean,
I don't think it makes sense legally, but he's saying rhetorically,
because Joe Biden said such terrible things about the Justice
Department and its corruption and the need to give Hunter
Biden to pardon, you should drop these cases because I'm
even more important than Hunter.
Speaker 1: Right right, what could they get Founci on. I mean,
I know, in our gutta guts, what we all think
happened was that Obama signed the degree that said that
we're not going to be weaponizing coronaviruses anymore. And then consequently,
as it goes the story, Fauci in cooperation with Eco
Health and some other people off shortage to Wuhan send
some money their way, and the stuff continues, so that
they could put together a robust catalog of viruses that
they could then have the antidote for the vaccine. That
was the idea, you know, we got to make the
absolute worst devil superbug, so we can figure out how
to beat it. And then it got out of hand
because bad, bad management, bad protocols, It escapes and the
next thing you know, you got millions of people dead.
Now you think that that's sort of criminal. But is it?
If it's the line to Congress. I mean, people get
up there in the line to Congress all the time.
It can't be that. So what is the what would
Joe I mean? I know we've said this before, but
exactly what would by Joe Biden pardoning Faunci. I think
a lot of people who hadn't paid any attention this
would swirl their head up and say, wait a minute,
what did he do?
Speaker 2: I think the first one is, as you mentioned, lying
to Congress, right, doctor Fauci said, I believe he said
to investigators that he had no knowledge and was not
involved in any diversion of funds to this nonprofit, and
then they sent it to China, right to the Wuhan
Institute of Virology. The second thing is it could be
criminal if right, this is kind of like Iran contra. Right,
he took money from appropriated funds and he diverted it
to this group with the intention of sending it to
China to conduct illegal research. Is that really that much
different than the Iran Contra? Fair You remember that's where
the Reagan national security officials diverted funds and sent them
to the contras that was supposed to go back into
the treasury. So you could say, I mean, you could
investigate him at least for misuse of federal funds. I mean,
this is actually if he did it with that, really
lot of it depends on his understanding and intention of
where the money was going and why he approved those funds.
But if he did that, that's criminal, great abuse of
federal funding. It's like it's almost like stealing federal money.
Speaker 1: Well, if there arecopenis, let's have doctor j Bonicharia delivered them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. I think we should issue Jay a pardon
right now. Hey, John grade grade, Merrick Garland, how partisan
has he been? Really? And grade? Jack Smith? Those two
what grade would you give them?
Speaker 2: But Jack Smith, just as a federal prosecutor, suppose I
agreed with Jack Smith, agreed with the just Department that
Donald Trump and I've always said, you know a lot
of these prosecutions were focused but not the January sixth prosecution.
If there really was involvement with president by President Trump
in an attack on the Capitol, that should be investigated
by prosecutors and could be charged. If that's the case.
Jack Smith is one of the most incompetent federal prosecutors
run across. I mean, he had two years to at
least get charges in and get the case going, and
he failed. Not only did he fail, but you look
at the indictment, you look at the documents, it doesn't
seem he discovered any new facts. Plus he got whooped
on this unity case. I mean, if you look at
the outcome, is he left Donald Trump stronger than when
he found him. I mean, he has been so you
just look at the results. He has been a tertorable
federal prosecutor, even if you agreed with everything in terms
of purpose of the investigation. Marek Garland, I feel a
lot of I feel actually that he's not as partisan
as people make him out to be. I think actually
he turned out to be quite a week attorney general.
And that's the reason you saw because he could have
said at the beginning, much like the Supreme Court ultimately said,
you know, we're putting this page behind us. We are
not going to investigate a former president. We're certainly not
going to investigate the major opposition party candidate for president
in the middle of an election. So that would have been,
you know, a strong controversial I think that would have
been the right thing to do. Or putting it on
the other hand, you could have said, starting in twenty
twenty one, we're going to open an investigation into Donald
Trump because of what we all saw January sixth. He
spent over a year and a half dilly dallying right
and then ultimately to appoint Jack Smith as a special counsel.
Was in admission that the Justice Department couldn't handle this.
So I actually think we're going to look back and see,
I say, Merk Garland was a torch bearer for the
Democratic Party or for Joe Biden. I think ultimately turns
out he was a weak, vacillating attorney general. He didn't
show any leadership. And this is this is actually my
view of the Biden administration as a whole, that lack
of leadership just let the machinery of bureaucracy, which is
always progressive in nature, just go ahead and do what
it wanted.
Speaker 1: To do.
Speaker 2: And Jack, that's Jack Smith. He's the ultimate expression of
the unelected professional bureaucracy and the machine. But without leadership,
it's not that competent most of the time.
Speaker 5: Charlie or James, I can't pronounce scrammetti, So I'll leave
that one to you guys.
Speaker 1: Skibbitty, it's pronounced skibvity. Charlie, you want to take that.
Speaker 5: That case, yes, please?
Speaker 6: But John, did you listen to the oral arguments?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 2: I never do. I can't stand hearing other people talk
about the Constitution.
Speaker 7: Even Clarence Thomas, with that beautiful voice, he doesn't say
very much.
Speaker 2: I did read, I did read the I did read
about the oor argonists, but I didn't listen to them.
Speaker 6: Do you have a view on it?
Speaker 7: I mean, I will preempt this by saying that to me,
it just seems self evidently ridiculous that the fourteenth Amendment
to the US Constitution, written in eighteen sixty six, ratified
in eighteen sixty eight would micro manage the state's capacity
to prevent the cutting off of the genitals of eight
year olds. But perhaps you have a different views, as.
Speaker 2: They say in court, asked and answered, yeah.
Speaker 1: No, one's coming to Charles. They're just rendering them useless
for the rest of their lives. Let's not go There's a.
Speaker 2: Lot there are a lot of interesting things in the
oral argument, and the briefing is really interesting because I
read most of the important briefs and I learned a
lot actually about what's been medical, what's actually place, yeah,
what's actually been happening, but also the prevalence of this disorder.
One interesting thing I did not know is that for decades,
the number of adults who have this gender dyspharia problem
is something like point five percent of the population. So
one question is, why are we re ordering all of
our social relations and our rules, our bathroom sports, blah
blah blah for point five of the population. But here's
the interesting thing. Well, I can do that, yes, but
go on for minors. For kids, for many, many decades,
it was also point five percent of kids had reported
this issue, and then starting about ten fifteen years ago,
it tripled to one point five percent. What happened then
social media? I think, But this is an interesting question
that the actually Tennessee and other states that have issued
these bands have said, is we're not banning this. We
just don't understand the problem. Yet we're not saying we
could never allow this kind of procedure. But if miners
are suddenly saying triple rates that they have this problem,
and adults the numbers flat, Yeah, is it really a
wise thing to do to allow these kind of permanent
surgical changes when we really don't understand what's going on.
I thought that was interesting factory Legally. The other thing,
I totally agree with Charlie. There's no way the fourteenth
Amendment was intended to recognize gender dysphoria as a protected
class on a par with blacks and women.
Speaker 5: It's just like, so you have a less expansive view
of the Fourteenth Amendment. Then, for example, Justice Gorsicic, who.
Speaker 2: Charlie did listen to the oral argument you should note
was utterly silent, was and the reason why, But the
reason why is I think he's embarrassed because the logic
that Charlie offered to make fun of comes from Justice
Gorsuch's decision about Title seven in a case called Bostock right,
where he didn't ask Boskas. Does the nineteen sixty four
Civil Rights Act provide protections to people based on their
sexual orientation, not their sex. Of course they wish their
sex to be as conclusion, didn't he Yeah, and he did.
He ignored. Actually, the way Charlie put the question, did
the people who wrote the sixty four Act what they
have ever thought they were providing protections for this? Obviously
all the evidence was overwhelming.
Speaker 1: So you got your living in your breathing don't you. You
got your living breathing constitution right, So it has to
be elastic enough to accept the definitions, the new, brave,
new world definitions that we come up with. And if
we shake off our old archaic notions of gender and
sex and the rest of it and come into a
new world in which these things are understood to be
kaleidoscopically varied, well, then of course the Constitution must must
must bend to that. That's what they say. I mean that.
That's why this is important to them, because it is
a validation of the whole gay rights but queer right,
the queering of the Constitution in order to make it
some sort of you know, Procrustrian bed that can be
is what they want. And the line that's being drawn
in the sand here is important, is critical, and I'm
not going to any conclusion that I can actually think of,
because I already passed my segue. I'm afraid I would. John,
you were going to be present in for an actual
commercial segue, but the moment has been lost.
Speaker 5: Would you like it?
Speaker 2: Ever been in a commercial?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: Have you guys finally been sponsored by McDonald's.
Speaker 1: I've been waiting, no, but it's coming along well. I
wanted to talk about the constitution being living in breathing.
Of course, I was thinking of breathing, and I was
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before we go here and John is still with us,
let's get out of the law for a second here
and discuss if you will, John, I'm sure you've been
following this other case in Manhattan where the CEO was
shot down on the street. And there's an for all
the people who are saying that Twitter is a cesspool
of hate and anti and neo Nazi behavior. There's a
lot of people running around on Twitter saying good, good,
they got one. There's something very disturbing about the reaction
that we're seeing to the murder of this guy.
Speaker 2: It's a great contrast to what we started talking about here.
On one hand, you've got Penny, Right, I think, is
a genuine hero who just walks onto a subway car
and he witnesses this person threatening the health and safety
of his fellow pastors, intervenes to save the life. Right,
And conservatives don't like him being prosecuted, and I think,
I think rightly want him acquit it or charges dropped.
Then on the other hand, you have a guy who
clearly carries out a planned, premeditated murder, and the liberal
blogosphere is saying, what a great hero. Doesn't that just
show you the difference and values these days between conservatives
and progresses, where you have one one group. Loss of
life occurred, We're sorry about it, but it was a
way necessary to save the lives of more. Here's, on
the other hand, someone who did nothing wrong. You know,
it was just walking across the street to go to
the Midtown Hilton. By the way, I was like, he's
going to shut down Hull all guys, because if you're
bound to the Midtown Hilton. The street corner is where
the whole all guys started and they're still there. The
best best Egyptian food in New York anyway.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, the liberals have finally discovered the idea of
a good guy with the gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they want them to kill corporate executives. I
don't know if you guys are watching this TV show
The Jackal, have you guys?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I love the show. I remember the original movie, you know,
The Day of the Jackal. I think the TV show
is really good and the you know it's it's you know,
it's ten episodes, so it gives you more of the story.
This is they're praising. They're praising a guy who's basically
assassin who goes and plans out them and in the
in the Jackal show, he goes CEOs that's the main target.
And I'm sorry to give out this John.
Speaker 1: Was this crime?
Speaker 5: Was this crime essentially unpreventable? Or does it indicate a
decay in policing in New York when Bloomberg was mayor
could this have happened?
Speaker 2: I don't see how the level of policing could have
stopped someone who's got I mean, look, if this is
like Godfather too, you know, Michael says, if history has
told us anything, they said, you can get anyone if
you really want to, right. I think that's true. Well,
I don't see what police could have done here. Now.
I think it seems, you know, this speculation, but it
seems obvious that someone was helping this guy because how
did he know exactly when I was going to cross
the street without any security detail. It's a little after
six in the morning to go from the hotel Hey's
staying across the street to the shareholder meeting, and the
shareholder meeting wasn't for a few more hours. You look
at the tape, this assassin arrives I think five to
ten minutes early right before. How would he know when
this guy was going to walk cross street that he'd
have no security where he was going to be exactly
in that moment?
Speaker 7: John, Is this a state level first degree murder or
is this terrorism? I've seen some people suggest that because
the assassination was of somebody who worked in a particular industry,
and because there were words on the bullet casings, and
because the assumption is that this was a revenge message
driven killing, that this could be classify as something other
than a first degree murder that you would see prosecuted
in New York all the time.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I mean, it might meet rhetorically
what we might call terrorism, okay, But in terms of
the criminal law, terrorism has involved some component where the
murderer is attempting to use islence to coerce the population,
the government or the people of the United States to
change a policy. So it's you know, with this is
revenge or not. It doesn't. This doesn't seem to be
I am right going to shoot this guy because I
want the United States government to change its Medicare reimbursement
policies or insurance possible. So legally, I don't think you
could charge him.
Speaker 1: But right for the cold.
Speaker 2: Bloodness of this murder means I don't think there's any
lack of things to charge this guy with. And you know,
if New York State were a normal state, you'd be
charged with, you know, capital murder with the possibility of
the death penalty. But right Alvin Bragg's not going to
go that far. Who knows if Alan Bragg will even
charge the guy.
Speaker 1: Well, he did right the he did write out his
manifesto on the bullets, and he wrote three words which
have come to be connected with insurance company behavior. So
there it is. Is So it's going to be hard
for him to say that he was just temporarily seized
by some sort of brainfasm, a brain phantasm. No, I
mean this was targeted and this had to This had
an ideological component. And it just reminds you how many
people are completely at ease with seeing political violence used
in the street if it's in the application of furthering
the right thing. So, but what's amusing, of course, is
all these people who believe that if the government just
paid for everything, then there'd just be more of it.
We'd get, we would have absolutely the anesthesiologists would just
you know, they'd put that mask in your face for
ten twelve hours or so and didn't care what they
were paid, instead of course being rationing and denial of
services and death panels and all the rest of it.
Speaking of death panels, this show is dead in the
water because it's come to a stop because we have
to leave. But what we want to do, or a
couple of things we want to remind you. The podcast
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by the moderator. John. Thanks for joining us today, Charles,
as ever, give my regards to Florida. Peter, give my
regards to California. I accept your regards from Minnesota if
you have any and what else can I say, except
we'll see you all in the comments at Ricochet for
point zero.
Speaker 5: Next week, Guys Take Care Boys Ricochet join the conversation