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