| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Of the rules of professional conduct that deal specifically with requirements for prosecutors debating the Charlie Krock assassination law enforcement personnel, employees, or other persons assisting or associated with the prosecutor. | ||
| So, in other words, the prosecution team. | ||
| And there's no rule or case law or statute that expands the prosecution's duties beyond that group, the prosecution team. | ||
| So, with respect to clarity, we're seeking clarity as to what exactly does the court mean by witnesses. | ||
| And we think the court just means the prosecution team because if that term stretches beyond just the prosecution team, then the order is written, we don't believe is a valid and lawful order because it would result in a prior restraint on certain speech, and at the very least, it would have a chilling effect on that speech. | ||
| If the prosecution agrees that we have an ethical duty to take reasonable measures to make sure that those who are identified with the prosecution team are alerted to the requirements of the court's order and to make sure that they do not make a statement that the prosecutors themselves would not be able to make, a public statement. | ||
| But if the order extends beyond that, then we have concerns because a prior restraint is an order that forbids certain communications in advance of the time that they are to occur. | ||
| And as the Court of Appeals has recognized, the Utah Court of Appeals has recognized, and state versus LM. | ||
| And widespread publicity in a case does not itself justify a prior restraint. | ||
| As the United States Supreme Court has recognized, the Nebraska Press Association, there's no justification for a prior restraint unless it's clear that the further publicity unchecked would so distort the views of potential jurors that you couldn't find 12 jurors who could be fair and impartial. | ||
| That's the high standard that applies in this case. | ||
| And so, in order to apply a prior restraint to persons beyond the prosecution team, the court would need to engage in a very detailed and demanding analysis. | ||
| The court would have to make a factual finding of necessity, that the speech that would be restrained poses a risk of material prejudice to the ongoing judicial proceedings. | ||
| The court would need to make findings that there are no less restrictive measures and that the prohibitions are likely to prevent the potential prejudice, and that whatever prohibitions this court decides on are very narrowly tailored. | ||
| And as the state has explained, the Spencer versus State case from the Arkansas Supreme Court that just issued earlier this year is very helpful, I think, on this issue in explaining the analysis that applies to various different people that might be associated with a criminal case. | ||
| You have attorneys, that category of trial participants, certainly the court has the highest degree of ability to be able to restrain the speech of attorneys. | ||
| And in fact, as I've expressed, the ethical rules require that. | ||
| But when it comes to trial participants like witnesses, the standards are more demanding as far as restricting the speech of trial participants. | ||
| And as the Spencer case pointed out, non-attorney trial participants, the court can impose a restraint on their speech only to the extent that the court first finds that any speech by those non-attorney trial participants poses a serious and imminent threat of material prejudice to the ongoing proceeding. | ||
| And I think the court also needs to note that there are several people associated with this case who have very significant interests in exercising their First Amendment rights in talking about how this case has affected them. | ||
| And of course, I can't say that someone's, one person's First Amendment right is more important than another person's, but there are certainly some people here who have a larger, some people involved who have a larger or a greater interest in speaking than others. | ||
| And so I think the court needs to take that into consideration if this order is meant to apply beyond just the prosecution team. | ||
| And then finally, as far as making the order, so we need a clear order, we need a lawful order, and then we need an order that the state can actually comply with. | ||
| And the state recognizes that there are serious sanctions that this court can impose for violations of a court order, as we've just seen. | ||
| And so we want to avoid these. | ||
| We want to avoid litigation over whether there's been a violation of the order. | ||
| And as it stands right now, we don't believe that there will be any issues if the court limits the term witnesses to just the prosecution team. | ||
| We can comply with that order. | ||
| It gets more difficult for the state if the term witnesses then applies even broader at this stage of the litigation for the state to be able to comply with that order, depending on how the court clarifies what witnesses mean. | ||
| Score have any questions for the state? | ||
| No, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Roller. | |
| Mr. Novak. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I'm going to try to be brief because our views on the propriety of the court's order were set forth in a publicly filed document. | ||
| which of course the court has reviewed. | ||
| And the first thing that I want to say is that the order that the court issued is not a prior restraint on any member of the public. | ||
| And it's certainly not, I think, as the state's motion suggested, some sort of a prior restraint on the press. | ||
| This has nothing to do with the press. | ||
| The order, as we noted in our papers, is directed at the conduct of and the court's expectations for counsel. | ||
| So even if under that order that the court issued, somebody who we could all agree is a witness within the court's definition of that made public statements which implicated Mr. Robinson's fair trial rights. | ||
| The potential sanction is on the party who had a duty to make a reasonable effort to notify witnesses that they should not be doing so. | ||
| If I represented a witness who was accused of saying too much publicly, the first thing that I would tell this court is the order isn't directed at the witness. | ||
| The order is directed at the counsel for the parties. | ||
| There may in the future be some theoretical situation where the court issues orders that control the statements or conduct of specific people, but this or other than counsel, but this order is directed at counsel. | ||
| And we have no, meaning Mr. Robinson's defense counsel, have no problem complying with the order. | ||
| And we also think that we understand what a witness is when the court uses that term. | ||
| So it is our view that the court's order is not overbroad, it's not vague, doesn't put the state or the state's attorneys in some untenable position. | ||
| And I think it's a little bit simple to say witnesses are either everybody under the sun or people who are under subpoena at the last second. | ||
| Because counsel have not only the training but a duty to figure out along the way who the potential witnesses are and to notify those people. | ||
| And yes, down the road, maybe there's going to be an issue and maybe an attorney on either side of litigation is going to have to explain to the court when a particular person did or did not become a potential witness in the eye of the eyes of that party. | ||
| That doesn't make it impossible for the state to comply with the order. | ||
| It just means that the state needs to be thinking along the way about who its witnesses may be. | ||
| And that's why in our papers we refer to it as a potential lay witness because we believe that the court intended it to go beyond members of the prosecution team, which are law enforcement officers, retained experts, retained consultants. | ||
| And we don't believe that that creates an enforcement problem. | ||
| We don't think it creates a compliance problem. | ||
| We noted in our papers, and I'll emphasize here again, that the court's order actually places responsibilities on defense counsel that the rules don't. | ||
| The rules have special guidelines for the prosecution, and the court has expanded that to include the defense, and we don't have a problem with that. | ||
| I also think that the standard that the state is suggesting for when a potential lay witness, as we've defined that in our papers, may make public statements that violate the court's order. | ||
| The best standard is actually the one that we believe the court should look to, which is the standard set by the 10th Circuit, because as the state points out, it may be that there isn't any Utah law on this issue. | ||
| So it seems to me that the closest Source of authority on this constitutional question is going to be the 10th Circuit, and that's the case United States versus Tijarina, and I'll spell it. | ||
| It's T-I-J-E-R-I-N-A, 412, Fed 2nd, 661, 10th Circuit, 1969, where the court says that the constitutional balance between the First Amendment rights of a non-attorney participant and the defendant's right to a fair trial are properly balanced, where extrajudicial statements present a reasonable likelihood of a non-attorney participant. | ||
| of prejudicing a fair trial. | ||
| That is a more protective standard than that which appears in Rule 3.6, and we think it's the appropriate standard which should be applied here. | ||
| And that's part of, as we've told the court before, a motion that we will bring because we actually think that while the court's order is wholly appropriate, it's not vague, it's not overbroad, it's not a prior restraint, and it doesn't create a lack of clarity for the state. | ||
| We would like it to be a little bit broader in other areas, especially concerning the standard to be applied and the definition of what is the prosecution team. | ||
| But that's not germane to hear. | ||
| So we think that while we understand the state's concern, we think that their motion should be denied. | ||
| I think at the last hearing, the court actually clarified verbally from the bench what it meant by a witness. | ||
| And I think that's pretty close to what we described in our papers as a potential lay witness. | ||
| So I feel like if I say anything more, I'm going to be reiterating again what's already in our papers. | ||
| If I've muddled it, I'm sure the court will tell me and I'll clarify it. | ||
| I hope I haven't. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Novak. | ||
| Okay, thank you, Your Honor. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And we'll turn to the last matter. | ||
| Anything further, Council? | ||
| Yes, thank you, Your Honor. | ||
| I do want to point out that the court's order, as it's written, does impose limitations on speech. | ||
| And the issue here is whose speech? | ||
| Is it just the prosecution team members, or does it extend beyond that? | ||
| And limitations on speech are a prior restraint. | ||
| The court's order says that if you look at page two of the order, it specifically talks about lawyers, that lawyers cannot make a statement that would violate Rule 3.6 and need to inform witnesses that they cannot make similar statements, and then requires the parties to inform lawyers, excuse me, I'll just read it. | ||
| Lawyers participating in the investigation or litigation of this case shall inform all witnesses and then the list that I read about the prohibitions contained in this order. | ||
| So the order is prohibiting speech. | ||
| And because if it extends beyond the prosecution team, it needs to have the findings that are required for that kind of prohibition on speech. | ||
| That's what we're asking the court to do. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Ballard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| All right. | ||
| Let's turn to the final matter before this court, the motion for limited intervention and request for notice of motions to close, seal, or reclassify. | ||
| And I'll hear from the parties on that. | ||
| Thank you, Your Honor. | ||
| David Ryman representing the news media, Mr. Judd, and I represent different groups of clients, so I'm going to invite him if I miss anything to weigh in after I'm done. | ||
| But my intent, the issues are basically the same, so my intent is to address them for all of the interveners at once. | ||
| And I'll be very brief. | ||
| We have only ever sought, in this case, limited party status. | ||
| That is what we do in every high-profile case that involves these type of closure issues. | ||
| We are not seeking to be parties for all purposes. | ||
| We are just seeking to be parties for the purpose of showing up and being heard, which we unquestionably have a right to do. | ||
| We unquestionably have standing. | ||
| That is settled law in Utah. | ||
| And the filing, the last filing at least, that we got from Mr. Robinson's team that just came in, I don't know if it was a couple days ago, basically gets there at the end where it says, look, if you're going to grant them intervener status, it should just be limited. | ||
| That's all we've ever sought. | ||
| And so the question that was raised in the only case that they cite, this FL case from the Utah Supreme Court, that addressed whether we wanted to allow full party status under Rule 24 of the civil procedure rules in a criminal case, they said we don't need to do that. | ||
| The woman in that case just needed limited party status. | ||
| And so in a way, we're not really, the state really hasn't disagreed with this either, but we're not really disagreeing with Mr. Robinson's team. | ||
| We have explained in our papers that we've cited the court to extensive authority saying that this is the procedure to use. | ||
| It's the most efficient procedure to use. | ||
| Otherwise, I don't know what exactly the suggestion is for Mr. Robinson's team that we're supposed to do from here on out, but it kind of sounds like just this sort of ad hoc show up anytime you happen to see something on the public docket that might affect the public's rights. | ||
| And that's just not the orderly way that this typically happens. | ||
| The other thing, as I've mentioned in our papers, that it does is it allows for the media to be able to take an appeal of a closure issue without having to rely on the court's extraordinary writ jurisdiction. | ||
| And that was what they had to do in either Kernstribune or Bullock, where the media was not granted party status. | ||
| And it is the situation that happened in FL where they had to review her claim regarding records under extraordinary writ jurisdiction rather than invoking their appellate jurisdiction because she was improperly denied limited party status. | ||
| So all of that authority supports the process that we are requesting in this case. | ||
| We think it's the most orderly way to do it. | ||
| And I'll end just by saying, you know, there's been some discussion, and especially from Mr. Robinson's attorneys, about what rule it is that you need to do this under, whether Rule 24 applies. | ||
| They seem to suggest that it doesn't. | ||
| I will just point the court to two different rules that give you the authority to do what we're requesting aside from Rule 24. | ||
| Rule 24 is in the civil procedure rules, but Rule 81 and particularly subsection F of that rule says that the rules of civil procedure govern in criminal proceedings where they don't conflict with a rule of criminal procedure. | ||
| That's the case with Rule 24. | ||
| That's why courts and criminal cases have relied on that rule. | ||
| The other one is Rule 31, and that's in the criminal procedure rules. | ||
| And that gives this court the discretion, if it's not inconsistent with the rules, to fashion remedies and to deal with civil procedure, not civil procedure, but rather just procedural matters. | ||
| And so that is essentially what happened in the FL case, which is that whether you do it under Rule 24 or whether you do it as a judicially created remedy, it doesn't matter. | ||
| It gets to the same place, which is just that we are interveners for the very limited purposes that we've set forth in our order. | ||
| We're not going to be here at every hearing arguing. | ||
| We didn't take a position on the gag order motion that you just heard. | ||
| We are only planning to appear and argue so that the court has the benefit of someone who's representing the interests against closure. | ||
| Because as you know, and this is sort of why we're here today, a lot of time this just happens by stipulation. | ||
| Because these, you know, the state and Mr. Robinson's lawyers, they might not want to fight over a particular issue. | ||
| And so it really is a situation where no one really represents that interest. | ||
| And the purpose of this whole process is to give the court the benefit of the briefing that we've submitted and the benefit of arguments to represent the public's right to attend these proceedings. | ||
| So unless the court has any questions, that's all I have. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| To the state. | ||
| Mr. Beller. | ||
| Your Honor, as the state briefed in briefing on a prior motion, I think it's clear that parties have the, or excuse me, outside entities have the ability to intervene in a case as a limited purpose party when there's a statute, a rule, or case law that authorizes them to take specific action in a proceeding. | ||
| And there's well-established case law that allows the media to intervene to be able to appear and be heard on matters of public access to court proceedings and to court documents. | ||
| And Rule 4-202.04 of the Rules of Judicial Administration also make it clear that the media can appear and do just exactly what they've done in the closed session that we held earlier. | ||
| So it doesn't make them a capital P party to the case. | ||
| It makes them a limited purpose party. | ||
| And they certainly have the right to be able to do that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Mallard. | |
| Ms. Visser. | ||
| Thank you, Your Honour. | ||
| So I just want to clarify the issue really, if we boil it down, is if these 23 media entities have met their burden to be a limited purpose party in this case. | ||
| And I think another part of that is what that means. | ||
| And really that is what we are primarily concerned with. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| What does that enable them to do? | ||
| What jurisdiction is this court exercising over them as a result of them being a limited purpose party? | ||
| Because I do believe that is another aspect of asking to intervene in a case. | ||
| I do think that Rule 24 does not apply here. | ||
| I think that's what we learned from the Supreme Court. | ||
| They don't want individuals using Rule 24 of the Rules of Civil Procedure because it's too expansive. | ||
| It's about broad entry into a case for many purposes. | ||
| In the instances where our courts have allowed intervention into civil cases, and I want to be very clear here, the case law is in the civil arena. | ||
| There are very few instances where we're dealing with this in a criminal case on appeal. | ||
| So we're a little bit in the dark, and we're asking this court to kind of wade through and make a decision that potentially hasn't been made before. | ||
| But I would ask the court to be very clear, no matter what it does, on what the media can and can't do in this case. | ||
| And it sounds to me like the media has somewhat conceded that their role in this case is under Rule 4-202.04, and their role is to have a voice regarding closure, which has already happened today and will surely happen again. | ||
| We have no objection to that. | ||
| And to be clear, we're not objecting to the court's order about notice. | ||
| We will provide notice. | ||
| We will follow the court's order. | ||
| We have no problem with it. | ||
| But we do want this court to make the procedure very crystal clear. | ||
| We want timeframes. | ||
| We want orders saying this is when you need to respond so that we don't end up with filings like we did this week, very shortly before the hearing, that we have to rush to respond to. | ||
| We're all attorneys. | ||
| We all know that these things happen from time to time. | ||
| And we're not unreasonable folks. | ||
| If they reach out to us, we will grant reasonable requests for extension, just so everyone is aware. | ||
| But there was no communication. | ||
| So I want it very, very clear what they can and can't do. | ||
| It's less about semantics. | ||
| This isn't about semantics. | ||
| It's about substance. | ||
| What are they allowed to do? | ||
| If this court wants to call them a limited purpose party, that has to be, well, it's so you can exercise your rights under 4-202.04. | ||
| And in doing so, this is what you need to do. | ||
| That's what we're asking the court to do. | ||
| And I also have some practical concerns that maybe need to be addressed with the court's clerk. | ||
| For example, are we adding all 23 media entities to the court docket? | ||
| Will they have access to all of the filings? | ||
| I have had instances in the past where, unfortunately, parties have been added to a case and still receive documents that are intended to be private or non-public. | ||
| I'm very concerned about that. | ||
| So I think it would be appropriate if they are going to be added to the docket that it be reasonable, perhaps just the two entities that are requesting, the two conglomerate entities that are requesting, and that there be an order from the court saying if they receive something that they shouldn't have, they notify us in the court immediately and they delete it. | ||
| They don't review it. | ||
| At a minimum, I think that's necessary. | ||
| But I also think it would be reasonable for this court to not to put them on the docket for that very same reason. | ||
| So we don't think that they should have permanent status in this case. | ||
| We don't dispute that they are going to be here. | ||
| They're already here, as we well know. | ||
| But we do think how that happens is important and that this court should exercise its authority to make very clear what everyone's roles are here. | ||
| And as I believe they put in their briefing, that they are neutral observers, neutral observers. | ||
| We don't want the chaos that is out in the media in this courtroom. | ||
| So whatever this court can do to prevent that is what we're asking. | ||
| Does the court have any questions for me? | ||
| No, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Alright, Council. | ||
| Thank you, Your Honor. | ||
| Just very briefly, I'm not sure what neutral observer is supposed to mean. | ||
| We have interests in the case. | ||
| We are here to advocate for openness and against closure. | ||
| And so I don't think that's what counsel meant to imply, but that's the whole reason we're here, is that no one else represents our interests. | ||
| That is straight down the middle of what the intervention rule requires. | ||
| Just a couple clarifications. | ||
| Counsel said we haven't cited any criminal cases where this has been allowed. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| We cited the court to eight different cases, all criminal cases in the state of Utah, where this is the procedure that judges routinely follow, including judges in this building. | ||
| Counsel said that our role is strictly limited to advocating for what is under Rule 4202.04. | ||
| I don't think she meant this, but as the court probably knows, that just deals with court records. | ||
| We are also entitled under governing constitutional case law to advocate against the closure proceedings. | ||
| And that rule does not technically apply to proceedings. | ||
| It just applies to records. | ||
| So just to be clear, but I think we have been clear, and this is all, I mean, there wasn't a whole lot of daylight between what counsel was just suggesting our role should be and what we've asked for, you know, which is just if they file a motion that seeks to prevent, that wants to classify something as non-public, like they did last night with the motion to disqualify. | ||
| They were able to at least provide that to us. | ||
| It's not very hard to send an email. | ||
| That's all that we've asked for in terms of the notice. | ||
| And then we have the right to be heard on those issues. | ||
| And so I didn't really hear from counsel any reason why we should not be granted limited party status in this case, other than just some sort of, you know, confusion on their part as to what that would actually look like. | ||
| I don't know how the clerk deals with parties on the docket. | ||
| I assume you guys can sort that out. | ||
| Typically, when we intervene on behalf of the news media in cases, they are listed because they are limited purpose parties. | ||
| But the court can, you know, if it doesn't want to hear from us on a particular issue, it can certainly say that. | ||
| I mean, we don't have any interest in weighing in on aspects of the case that don't have anything to do with the public strike to know. | ||
| And so I didn't really hear an argument against what it is that we are asking to do. | ||
| Just one last point on, well, two things. | ||
| One is that counsel is chastising us for filing something late. | ||
| I mean, this was a stipulated motion that got us here today. | ||
| We weren't asked to weigh in on it. | ||
| It was submitted to your honor with an order, you know, which they just assumed you would sign because it was stipulated. | ||
| It was only because this court said, no, I'm not going to do that. | ||
| I want to actually hear from the parties that we weighed in. | ||
| So this was not your typical deadline where we were invited to weigh in and just didn't. | ||
| Last thing is, in terms of docket access, you know, Mr. Hunt and Mr. Jedd and I are all officers of the court. | ||
| If the court says you can have access to things that are that are the parties are seeking to classify as non-public, but you can't share them with your clients until further notice from the court, that's fine. | ||
| Some judges do handle it that way. | ||
| Sometimes we just, you know, if they don't concern closure, sometimes we don't weigh in at all. | ||
| But, you know, when they file things that they say we need to file this under seal and we're not allowed to see it, then the briefing for you is not super helpful, you know. | ||
| And so typically the way this happens is we are allowed attorneys' eyes only access to documents just like the state and the defendants would be. | ||
| Their counsel can see things that are non-public, and we don't share them with our clients unless the court orders otherwise. | ||
| And typically, if the court decides, no, this really doesn't need to be filed under seal, then we can provide it to our clients at that time. | ||
| But this idea that our clients are somehow going to get access to things that are non-public, that's just not the way this typically works. | ||
| If they're not public on the docket, if they're public on the docket, anyone can get them. | ||
| And if they're not public on the docket, then our clients can't get them. | ||
| And if there's a procedure where we can see them so that we can give the court the benefit of briefing substantively as to what it is, then we keep them attorney size only until the court orders otherwise. | ||
| That's just typically the way this works. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, thank you. | |
| Anything further? | ||
| Your Honor, I'm not going to belabor what's already in the briefing. | ||
| I do think it's concerning to just cite to a bunch of trial court cases without providing any pleadings or context for what occurred in those cases. | ||
| I can't argue against what happened in other cases. | ||
| This is our case. | ||
| Our case is different. | ||
| This court has already acknowledged it. | ||
| There are many interests. | ||
| We have concerns about leaks, information getting out that shouldn't be out. | ||
| I think those are valid. | ||
| And our concern is access. | ||
| I'm not impugning the integrity of these gentlemen. | ||
| I'm sure they would act as officers of the court. | ||
| But the more this court controls the information that ultimately it determines to be private, the more able we are to identify if there are leaks, if there's information that's getting out that shouldn't be, and who did it. | ||
| So we are objecting to providing the media our pleadings in advance, even just to their counsel. | ||
| We don't think that's appropriate. | ||
| I don't see any authority for that. | ||
| We're asking the court not to consider that. | ||
| And we're concerned about opening the door to multiple other entities just filing in on this case, getting involved in the proceedings. | ||
| We don't know exactly what media means either. | ||
| So our position is and remains: they can file what this court has authorized to file in the manner this court authorizes to file it and be heard in the manner this court indicates. | ||
| We understand they're entitled to closure hearings, and I did make a mistake. | ||
| We agreed that they have standing to object to closure as well. | ||
| So they should be able to file those things, but we do not agree that that requires status in our case. | ||
| So does the court have any questions? | ||
| No, thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I appreciate the argument from all parties throughout this day. | ||
| I wish to commend the preparation and the quality of the arguments, as well as the civility that is sometimes overlooked. | ||
| But I wish to recognize that and appreciate counsel's demeanor and their arguments today. | ||
| I previously stated when we began that I would be issuing rulings on the first issue. | ||
| And when I began, I initially said October 14th is actually the October 24th audio recording of the closed hearing, as well as the October 24th transcript of that hearing. | ||
| And so I wanted to create, make that small correction. | ||
| But given the in-depth and necessary Arguments made in the closed hearing. | ||
| I wish to take the time to issue a ruling that will say what will be disclosed and what will be kept private because this court has a duty to do so. | ||
| And I would rather do it right and take more time than to be rash and miss the mark. | ||
| I need to be narrow in my approach, and it is an important issue, and so I plan to do that. | ||
| In regards to the motion for limited intervention and request for notice of motions to close zero reclassify, I also wish to craft my order in such a way that is concise and addresses all the issues, the important issues brought up by all parties. | ||
| And so I will be issuing that ruling at the same time. | ||
| And so I will be issuing the ruling in regards to the state's motion to clarify courts' pretrial and trial publicity order. | ||
| And I am prepared to do so. | ||
| Before I do that, what I want to do is, and counsel is being caught off guard because they were anticipating a ruling today. | ||
| But what the court is intending to do is, and proposing to the parties, is issuing an oral ruling on WebEx that all parties can attend to. | ||
| The reason why is I don't want to take a lot of time. | ||
| These are important issues. | ||
| I don't want to wait until January 16th. | ||
| And I want to talk about potential dates. | ||
| I don't imagine it will take longer than 20 minutes for this court to issue ruling. | ||
| And I want to get the parties' input in regards to their thoughts of the court issuing an oral ruling on WebEx. | ||
| And so I'll open it up to the parties. | ||
| We don't have any objection to that, Your Honor. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have no objection to that, Your Honor. | |
| Yeah, same. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, next comes the trickier part when you have a room full of attorneys trying to find a date that we're all available. | ||
| To our staff, what dates do we have available for a 30-minute block before the end of the year? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Judge, we do have December 29th at 10 o'clock. | |
| Okay. | ||
| I'm going to work with you. | ||
| We've got amazing breaking news here today. | ||
| Let's go ahead and keep the camera on that. | ||
| You're seeing the alleged assassin for the first time, big fight when we came here about where the camera is going to be placed as we picked up coverage today. | ||
| Let me go to, I've got Alex deGrasse, big breaking news, a blowout, ladies and gentlemen, against Megan, against the president in Indiana this afternoon. | ||
| Alex deGrasse joins us. | ||
| Alex, you've got some breaking news about what happened. | ||
| It was a 19 to 31 defeat. | ||
| In fact, we did not even carry the Republican conference. | ||
| We lost that 21 to 19. | ||
| I couldn't think of a bigger middle finger to the president. | ||
| What's your update, sir? | ||
| So a couple of things. | ||
| I want to just set the table, but then I'm going to get into sort of a backroom deal that's now breaking within the last 20 minutes within Maryland Democrats and the Rhinos in Indiana. | ||
| I think the big issue is this guy Bray, the leader, he had been lying. | ||
| I just want to paint the whole story. | ||
| Do I have time for that, Steve, just quickly, like walk everyone through? | ||
| Because it's so important for the posse to understand what we are up against from what we've been talking about in the show. | ||
| The masks are totally off, Steve. | ||
| Do I have a second or how quick should I be? | ||
| Yeah, take your time. | ||
| We're back to this now. | ||
| They're just going through logistics on that. | ||
| Charlie Kirk, they're trying to muzzle the media there. | ||
| They agreed to allow cameras in, and the camera angled on the alleged assassin today. | ||
| That was huge. | ||
| But then there's this big fight about, you know, they don't want to have chaos, all the chaos outside they don't want in the courtroom. | ||
| There are going to be big fights about media access to that. | ||
| Alex, this story is monumental. | ||
| The president, his political team, people were talking this morning. | ||
| They thought they had the votes. | ||
| Something happened in the early to mid-afternoon here because this was not close. | ||
| This is a blot. | ||
| And the reason they did this, Alex, was to cover their tracks. | ||
| They didn't want to lose by one or two votes. | ||
| They wanted to have it 19 to 31 and to say that we couldn't even get it at a conference. | ||
| They lost conference 21 to 19 to cover themselves and their crimes in Indiana. | ||
| Take it from there, sir. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So this guy Bray, who's in charge, state Senate president, he had been lying to the administration every step of the way and had always been directing, I think, the White House, my friends on the Hill, you know, a lot of interested groups here, obviously, that are working in tandem with the grassroots, with the White House up front. | ||
| And they had been saying, hey, don't talk to members, build a consensus. | ||
| It was really his way of controlling the room. | ||
| I mean, remember, Steve, we talked about, I mean, you say it, I say it, these statehouse rooms, you know, the state senate, the state house, these are like the dirtiest places in politics, even on our side, I'll say it, okay? | ||
| All over this country. | ||
| It's all corporate. | ||
| It's really controlled and crazy. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And what he did was, again, he lied to the White House and he arm twist and cajoled all of these potential votes that would get him, you know, the 1926 had them threatened. | ||
| I think another major breaking news is Todd Young, who obviously is a huge anti-Trumper. | ||
| Did he impeach Trump? | ||
| I forgot. | ||
| Didn't he didn't? | ||
| He didn't vote for Trump. | ||
| That's what it was. | ||
| His top consultant, Cam Savage, had promised Bray millions of dollars to defend the no votes in primaries, did that last week, which is now breaking out. | ||
| That's a huge thing. | ||
| You've got, obviously, the consulting class at play. | ||
| You've got the corporate entities. | ||
| You've got, obviously, the Mike Pence, you know, just how Indiana has been this battleground. | ||
| Now that guy's getting fired from some of his folks, Mitch Daniels, another name that we have to do. | ||
| But hang on, but hang on a second. | ||
| But hang on, hang on, hang on. | ||
| If you're telling the president, hey, we're very close and I think we're going to have this. | ||
| We got to shift a few more votes. | ||
| And then you get blown out. | ||
| It's always an excuse to sit there and go, we were lied to. | ||
| They're paid to understand what people are lying to them. | ||
| You're playing at the highest level of politics in the world. | ||
| They got to know and they got to have 10 other sources to know because this is not something some guy thinks up out of his head. | ||
| You've got Mitch Daniels representing the Bush family. | ||
| You've got the Mike Pence faction. | ||
| You've got the Todd Young who's promising, hey, if La Savita is telling you we're going to get millions of dollars, I'm going to come in and get you millions of dollars. | ||
| The president, also this afternoon in the House, the president lost a huge vote on the unions. | ||
| 20 Republicans sided with Democrats in this House vote. | ||
| You know, something's got to change here. | ||
| This is a huge defeat today for the president of the United States. | ||
| And somebody's got to be straight with the president and saying, look, people think that you're an easy target now. | ||
| And people in the White House get paid to make sure these type of things don't happen. | ||
| This is, it's just not acceptable. | ||
| This was a blowout. | ||
| You can't look at it any other way. | ||
| And I realize people are misleading people, but let's be honest. | ||
| This ain't Tallahassee or Albany. | ||
| This is Indianapolis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| If you can't handle it in Indianapolis, you're not going to be able to handle it as we get into the tougher ones here, sir. | ||
| Well, I think, I mean, Steve, I think it's certainly upsetting. | ||
| I think there's, this is mass cost. | ||
| Like, we got to look at this as like, this is for everyone to see. | ||
| Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. | ||
| This ain't nine. | ||
| Correct me if I'm wrong. | ||
| This is not 9-0. | ||
| This is 7-2. | ||
| They took away because it was in a package. | ||
| The other seat's gone too, correct? | ||
| So, so what the Indiana map's going to be is a 7-2 map, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| We didn't pick up any seats. | ||
| And, you know, that's obviously a disaster. | ||
| And I think, Steve, you've got the enemy within our party that are willing to work with the Democrats, and that's a huge task at hand. | ||
| And I think it's hard to control these things. | ||
| I mean, I'm not going to make excuses, but I think the reality is that. | ||
| Are you saying, hang on, are you saying the scoop here? | ||
| Hang on. | ||
| Are you saying the scoop here is that the Indiana Republicans reached out to Westmore and agreed that Westmore will not try to push for 8-0 in Maryland and they won't try to push here? | ||
| That's the deal they cut. | ||
| Now being reported. | ||
| So they reached out to this guy, Bob Ferguson, name I've never heard of, but it's now breaking on the internet. | ||
| He's, I think, their state senate president. | ||
| The reality, Steve, is they tricked them and said, hey, we're not going to redistrict if you don't redistrict. | ||
| And the reality is they can't redistrict in Maryland because they'll get tossed and we would probably actually pick up a seat there or two with the Supreme Court, which Republicans control. | ||
| And they know that. | ||
| And so we would have actually liked that because we could have actually picked up four seats with this little equation, two in Indiana and possibly another one or two in Maryland, to be frank with you. | ||
| And so it's that's a huge, I mean, this is coming out on the internet. | ||
| I mean, literally as I'm getting ready to go on the show, as I'm waiting, watching the court situation, it's that they got totally played or this guy is totally bought and paid for and corrupt. | ||
| I mean, it sounds like both, most likely. | ||
| So they've, I mean, what type of Republican, Steve, okay, who's in touch with the White House is reaching out to Democrats to cut a deal? | ||
| I mean, these are vicious, psychotic people that we're up against. | ||
| And I think, look, turning point, there were a lot of groups here on the ground working. | ||
| I think it's tough to control these things, obviously, from afar. | ||
| And I think it's a wake-up call for everyone that it's going to take a lot of effort, a lot of shoulders to the wheel to really rid ourselves of this taint within our own party. | ||
| People that are willing to put the Democrats first and, you know, put the House majority at risk. | ||
| I mean, this is really sick stuff, Steve. | ||
| This is really sick. | ||
| It's not the House majority. | ||
| They want to get rid of Trump. | ||
| They don't mind sacrificing the House to take care of Trump. | ||
| Today, it couldn't be more evident. | ||
| Let's just say what it is. | ||
| This is the Bush faction. | ||
| This is Mike Pence, Judas Pence, and that crowd. | ||
| Todd Young, who's been a hater from day one, Todd Young telling people, hey, I'll get you the money. | ||
| Don't worry about Las Vita. | ||
| They're all blowhards anyway. | ||
| We're Indiana and we'll hang together and get it. | ||
| If this is not a wake-up call, because we talked today about how this could drive momentum, it could actually get people excited in Virginia. | ||
| The Commonwealth of Virginia has absolutely no energy right now. | ||
| As you know, we still got Florida to go, Ohio. | ||
| We've got a nail in Kansas. | ||
| I mean, this is going to be a tractor poll. | ||
| And the Democrats tonight are going to be dancing on Donald Trump's political grave. | ||
| Are they not? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I think, look, I think with Todd Young, it was a consultant, but I don't think he's publicly supported this, but a very powerful consultant that was making those deals. | ||
| But I don't think he was helpful. | ||
| And that's a problem, obviously. | ||
| I mean, look, I think the Democrats are, you know, I think that this are tough fights ahead, whether it be votes in the House, of course, with a thin majority. | ||
| And you look at the president and he has to be very involved and is very involved. | ||
| And so is their team, just to move a couple inches in the house with all the issues there, right? | ||
| And I used to be in those rooms, Steve. | ||
| Now I'm not. | ||
| Thank God, to be honest with you. | ||
| But, you know, so that, you know, it's very challenging. | ||
| And there's a lot of important things. | ||
| We've got another government shutdown situation coming up, Steve. | ||
| I mean, you and I can talk all day at the sort of challenges facing us ahead. | ||
| But the reality is that we must address the scourge and the people that are willing to partner with the Democrats to what you said, Steve. | ||
| I mean, this is how they want to get rid of Trump. | ||
| They want to suppress momentum. | ||
| They want to give us that there's no hope. | ||
| They want to. | ||
| We're going to have, they've been contacting us all day. | ||
| Tomorrow morning on the show, we're actually going to have a couple of three, I think, people that confirmations have been held up. | ||
| This is both the Senate with no change of the filibuster, no recess appointments. | ||
| They're not pushing President Trump's confirmation. | ||
| There has to be people around the president in the White House drawing a paycheck have got to wake up. | ||
| Okay, we've got to wake up. | ||
| I don't want to hear you were lied to. | ||
| Okay, this is the National Football League. | ||
| You've got to know when you're getting a misrepresentation, you know, when they're working behind the scenes. | ||
| There's enough information out there. | ||
| Right now, President Trump can't get his confirmations done. | ||
| We had another debacle in the House today on, I think, this union thing, about 20 Republicans in revolt. | ||
| There's got to be penalties for this. | ||
| People need to start to fear the president of the United States. | ||
| Hell, they fear him in the Ukraine and in Europe. | ||
| They're fearing him in the Middle East. | ||
| They fear him down in Venezuela. | ||
| We ought to start making sure they're fearing him in the capitals of these states where they're going against the redistricting for these fair districts. | ||
| And we ought to make sure that the Republican Party starts to fear him in Washington, D.C., or this thing is going to spin into a total and complete debacle. | ||
| We've already got a big enough fight against the Democrats in the deep state and what they're doing to fight folks trying to sort out the mess in Minneapolis and in Chicago and New York as they refuse to back any deportation of these illegal alien invaders. | ||
| And the Republican establishment, I've said this for a while, they think they can wait Trump out. | ||
| He's just a passing summer storm. | ||
| And the Elise Stephonics and all the people who support him are just going to fade away. | ||
| And MAGA is going to return and just vote for the Bush agenda. | ||
| That's what they want. | ||
| The Bush Pence neoliberal neocon agenda. | ||
| It couldn't be more blatant. | ||
| In the Senate, you see what's happening where they're just folding around saying, no, we can't help you with the filibuster. | ||
| I know you say it's vitally important. | ||
| We're not going to do recess appointments. | ||
| We're not going to appoint your nominees. | ||
| We're not going to talk about $2,000 per American citizen taken back from the tariff. | ||
| Bang, everything president wants on his agenda. | ||
| Now that he gave him the tax cuts, they can't be bothered. | ||
| Alex, we're going to come back and drill down this overnight and have you back tomorrow. | ||
| Where do people go in the interim? | ||
| You're our lead sled dog on these redistrying wars, which we have to win. | ||
| And this is a startling development in Indiana as the Republican establishment basically tells the president to go F yourself in so many ways. | ||
| Sir, where do people go? | ||
| Let me close out quick, Steve, by say Donald Trump and the White House are leaving everything on the field to win. | ||
| We have four years to turn this country around. | ||
| Any Republican that partners with Democrats to stop that are worse than Democrats themselves. | ||
| I believe, Steve, that these traitors are going to lose. | ||
| They have to. | ||
| I will help ensure that. | ||
| A lot of people will. | ||
| There's going to be a price to pay. | ||
| I think that they will learn a lesson. | ||
| And I think this is a turning point and a focal point on what is going to come with MAGA. | ||
| But anyway, I'm at DeGrasse 81. | ||
| You can catch me on X and everything else, but it's critical because we're taking risks to succeed and do something great. | ||
| And others that have managed to decline, Steve, are literally aligning with Democrats and destroying what we can. | ||
| This country's unfortunately. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| I love Elise Stefanik and her courage to run for governor of New York. | ||
| I think it's a profile and courage to take that great state back. | ||
| But I will recommend again, I think Elise Stefanik ought to throw her hat in the ring. | ||
| Let's go against Johnson right now. | ||
| What do you got? | ||
| Let's see who could be Speaker of the House. | ||
| And then we can get Alex deGrasse back in those rooms where he should be, not wandering around, not wandering around upstate New York. | ||
| Well, I need to say no on that. | ||
| You know, she's running for governor and, you know, that's a very tough challenge that we're focused on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And she said that publicly. | |
| Okay, sir. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Alex deGrasse wandering around somewhere in upstate New York. | ||
| Just kidding, doing great work. | ||
| John Fredericks, you were pretty optimistic when we left this morning. | ||
| You said, hey, it's going to be a fight in the early afternoon for one or two seats, a total and complete blowout in Indiana. | ||
| Your thoughts, sir? | ||
| We came in here today. | ||
| We thought we had on Monday, Tuesday, Monday, we thought we had 22 votes. | ||
| We needed another three. | ||
| We needed one to get to 23. | ||
| Two said they would get us to 25. | ||
| We weren't lied to. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Here's what happened. | ||
| It was a collapse in the last two days. | ||
| I mean, we lost four votes that we thought we had that went the other way. | ||
| Greg Good, Liz, Linda Rogers, a couple others we thought we had. | ||
| They went the other way. | ||
| As far as Rod Bray is concerned, I mean, he was against us from day one. | ||
| He was against us at the beginning. | ||
| So no change there. | ||
| I mean, he was the president pro tem. | ||
| He rallied his caucus. | ||
| The bottom line of this thing is, Steve, you nailed it. | ||
| No respect for MAGA, no respect for the president. | ||
| They moved on. | ||
| They expect the MAGA to the whole coalition to dissolve itself. | ||
| They think President Trump is done. | ||
| Tuesday's election results in Georgia and Miami hurt us, and they figure, you know what? | ||
| Why am I going to throw in with them? | ||
| Now, Alex nailed it in that Todd Young did tell Rod Bray to tell these people that we're going to primary, that money will be there for them, but we got $1.2 billion. | ||
| We have got to now fight. | ||
| You just can't stand around and throw your hands up and say, well, you know, we put up the good fight. | ||
| That ain't going to do crap. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| They see President Trump get laying up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So what's on the party? | |
| Okay. | ||
| But the way you do that, you got to have some respect. | ||
| And respect comes from both appreciation and from fear. | ||
| What is the plan? | ||
| What's the White House plan for making sure that there's a penalty to be paid in Indiana? | ||
| Do you have any insights at all? | ||
| Because if you let Indiana go, you're going to get run. | ||
| The Bush faction that wants to take back the party, the Mike Pence's of the world, the Todd Young's of the world. | ||
| Look in the Senate. | ||
| He can't get when you talk to people about how many votes in the Senate to the filibuster, people say maybe 20, right? | ||
| The Senate just sitting there going, We don't care about your agenda. | ||
| And President Trump says, I must change the filibuster to get my because the Democrats are going to do it right away. | ||
| They go, We're not interested in hearing about it. | ||
| They won't even, we're going to have people on tomorrow. | ||
| They won't even push for their confirmations right now. | ||
| Forget recess appointment. | ||
| They won't push for their confirmations right now. | ||
| We're going to have a couple of folks on here. | ||
| So we got about two minutes before I got a bounce. | ||
| What is the White House going to do to get people's attention that if you cross us, there's a penalty to pay, sir? | ||
| They put out a primary list within minutes. | ||
| I sent it to Cameron. | ||
| Cameron, we have that primary list. | ||
| We got a bunch of rhinos that were going right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| These are the primary target lists. | ||
| The White House put this out before I came on your show to put on your show. | ||
| You got Dernlick, Niemeyer, Linda Rogers, who totally stabbed us in the back. | ||
| Holdman, got a couple open seats. | ||
| Buck. | ||
| This guy, Theory, total weasel. | ||
| Another guy stabbed us in the back. | ||
| Greg Good, 38. | ||
| The couple ones is open. | ||
| So Good, Deary, Buck, Rogers, Holdman, Derlick, Niemeyer, all of these need primary opponents. | ||
| All of these need top candidates. | ||
| They have to recruit. | ||
| And all of them need a couple million dollars behind them. | ||
| And Lasavita's got to get out here. | ||
| We got to do this immediately. | ||
| Otherwise, what you're seeing is the beginning of the basic middle finger, the New Jersey salute to MAGA. | ||
| They don't think, here's the bottom line. | ||
| The people that I were talking to that flipped their vote, what I heard is they don't think we got the, they don't think we have the juice anymore. | ||
| They looked at Miami. | ||
| They looked at all these results. | ||
| We're losing everything. | ||
| They figured Trump's gone. | ||
| MAGA's imploding. | ||
| We don't have to fear you guys. | ||
| We're going to do what we want. | ||
| Screw you. | ||
| That was the message they gave to us today and they gave to the White House. | ||
| It's one thing if I didn't gain a vote. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We lost three votes today. | |
| Unbelievable. | ||
| It's not an 8-1 map. | ||
| It's a 7-2 map. | ||
| It's not 9-0. | ||
| It's 7-2. | ||
| Anyway, we got to bounce. | ||
| John Fredericks, where do people go to get you? | ||
| This is going to be a continuing battle for this redistricting. | ||
| Where do people go to get you, sir? | ||
| At JAF Radio Show, at JF Radio Show, everywhere. | ||
| Look, don't tail. | ||
| All this means is we've got to fight. | ||
| We've got to fight. | ||
| We've got to fight back, Steve. | ||
| Otherwise, this is going to be the trend. | ||
| They're right now saying. | ||
| We're going to fight back. | ||
| Hang on, hang on. | ||
| We're going to fight back. | ||
| We got it. | ||
| People will be up on the ramparts, but the White House has got to wake up. | ||
| Let's be blunt. | ||
| This is humiliation for the White House. | ||
| This is humiliation. | ||
| And the Democrats and the Rhinos are going to be dancing on his grave tonight. | ||
| Watch it. | ||
| They're going to have their party in Indianapolis. | ||
| Judas Pence is partying. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you very much, John Fredericks. | ||
| Appreciate you. | ||
| Thanks, Steve. | ||
| To make sure they were all having a great time. | ||
| I think they're going to sign. | ||
| Rumor has it, the executive order for artificial intelligence may be even signed this evening. | ||
| I'll be up on Getter the entire time. | ||
| The six o'clock show is going to be unbelievable. | ||
| Stick around. | ||
| I want to thank the folks at Birch Gold. | ||
| Philip Patrick was going to be with us. | ||
| We thought it was very important. | ||
| We're going to cover everything related to the assassination of Charlie Kirk this trial wall to wall. | ||
| Very big today. | ||
| Cameras allowed after a fight. | ||
| Cameras allowed back in, at least for today's session, I think, permanently, about where they're going to be stationed. | ||
| You saw the smirk. | ||
| I say it's a smirk. | ||
| Some people said a smile looked like a smirk to me on the alleged assassin's face of the big fights about the access to media on this. | ||
| They're talking about leaks. | ||
| This has been the most hermetically sealed pretrial I've ever seen. | ||
| You haven't had a leak on the ballistics report on autopsy on anything. | ||
| So anyway, they were all over the media today. | ||
| Quote unquote, the chaos on the outside cannot come into this courtroom. | ||
| Of course, you know what I say? | ||
| I'm not so sure they're we're going to actually get to trial. | ||
| I think we're going to try to cut a deal in advance. | ||
| Stick around. | ||
| The second hour of the afternoon, early evening show of War Room is upon us. | ||
| Birchgold.com. | ||
| Philip Patrick's going to join us tomorrow. | ||
| Didn't want to try to jam him in. | ||
| He's got a lot, lot, lot to talk about. | ||
| Silver on fire. | ||
| I think silver might have hit 70 today, at least part of the day. | ||
| Gold, another closer, another all-time high. | ||
| Take your phone out. | ||
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