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Robert Kaplan talks about his book, Wasteland, A World in Permanent Crisis, on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
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| Focus now on President Trump's Department of Justice and the courts. | ||
| Our guest is Mike Davis, founder of the Article 3 project. | ||
| And Mike Davis, first remind viewers what the Article III project is, your mission. | ||
| The Article 3 Project, or A3P, is a conservative nonprofit that fights for President Trump's judicial nominees and fights against the lawfare. | ||
| We also fight for election integrity. | ||
| How long have you been around? | ||
| How are you funded? | ||
| We started the Article 3 project back in 2019 after the Kavanaugh confirmation because we saw there was a major void on the rights that needed to be filled that we filled with the Article 3 project. | ||
| And we are funded with private contributions and people can go to article3project.org, article number3project.org and donate there. | ||
| You say you fight against lawfare. | ||
| Define the term lawfare. | ||
| Lawfare is when you politicize and weaponize intel agencies and law enforcement to go after your political enemies for non-crimes or non-violations. | ||
| It's just turning the legal system into another political weapon. | ||
| A headline from the BBC, the Trump administration fires the Justice Department lawyers who investigated him. | ||
| What's your view on that firing? | ||
| I think President Trump absolutely should do that. | ||
| These Justice Department operatives engaged in an unprecedented Republicaning lawfare against President Trump. | ||
| They made up crimes against the president. | ||
| It is not a crime for a former president to have his presidential records in the office of former president. | ||
| That is allowed by the Presidential Records Act. | ||
| It's also not a crime to object to a presidential election. | ||
| That's allowed by the Electoral Count Act of 1887. | ||
| And if it were a crime to object to a presidential election, you would see Democrats in prison for objecting to Republican wins in 1968, 2000, 2004, and 2016. | ||
| We don't see Al Gore and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry in prison, but they did try to put President Trump in prison for objecting to the presidential election in 2020. | ||
| What was your view of last Friday's firing of some 17 inspectors general, though I guess notably not specifically the Department of Justice Inspector General? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, the president of the United States under Article 2 of the Constitution has the absolute power to fire executive branch officials. | ||
| And it doesn't matter what statute Congress tries to put in the way, you can't have a statute trump the president's constitutional power. | ||
| So the president has an absolute right to fire inspectors general. | ||
| And then what is your view about the reshuffling of career staffers, the reassignments that we're hearing about out of the Justice Department? | ||
| How is this different than what takes place at the outset of a new administration when a different political party takes over the federal agencies, the reins of power here in Washington? | ||
| These Democrat prosecutors, Biden Democrat prosecutors at the Justice Department, at the State Attorney General's office in New York and various DA's office and in Manhattan and Fulton County, Georgia, the state AG in Arizona, they ran unprecedented Democrat lawfare and election interference against President Trump. | ||
| They tried to bankrupt him. | ||
| They tried to throw him in prison for life four times for non-crimes. | ||
| They tried to take him off the ballot in Colorado and Maine and elsewhere unconstitutionally. | ||
| They tried to take off his head when Joe Biden intentionally underfunded President Trump's Secret Service protection and said that he's the gravest threat to democracy who must be stopped at all costs and put a target on him. | ||
| So the American people heard all of these allegations and all of this so-called evidence against President Trump, and the American people rendered our verdict on November 5th. | ||
| And President Trump won in a landslide, 312 electoral votes, all seven swing states, the popular vote. | ||
| The American people rendered a verdict. | ||
| And that verdict was that we are going to end this lawfare. | ||
| We're going to end this weaponization of our intel agencies and our justice system. | ||
| And there must be accountability. | ||
| And you're starting to see that accountability now. | ||
| The people who waged this lawfare should be reassigned or fired, and they need to be held accountable. | ||
| There needs to be several probes on what happened. | ||
| There needs to be Office of Professional Responsibility probes at the Justice Department on these officials. | ||
| There needs to be civil rights investigations because they violated President Trump's civil rights, along with the civil rights of his top aides like Steve Bannon and Peter DeVaro, who went to prison after asserting 250 years of constitutional executive privilege going back to George Washington. | ||
| President Trump's supporters on January 6th were politically persecuted, yes, persecuted according to the Supreme Court's Fisher ruling last unit. | ||
| And it wasn't just Trump supporters. | ||
| The Biden Justice Department went after parents praying at abortion clinics, including putting a 75-year-old Christian woman in prison for praying in an abortion clinic. | ||
| They sick the FBI after parents, outraged by gender chaos in schools and the resulting rapes in high school bathrooms, right? | ||
| And at the same time that Joe Biden and his Justice Department did this to Trump and his top aides and his supporters, his supporters and his allies, Biden and his Justice Department gave amnesty to the much more deadly and destructive BLM and Antifa rioters, right? | ||
| They gave amnesty to the Planned Parenthood abortion industry activist who terrorized, you know, terrorized Catholic churches and pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, illegally obstructed justice by targeting Supreme Court justices outside of their homes with intimidation campaigns before they're ruling on the Dobbs decision. | ||
| There needs to be accountability for what happens. | ||
| We need to have new priorities in the Justice Department. | ||
| The Justice Department should actually be going after the invasion of our southern border and the resulting rapes and murders and robberies and other violent migrant crime. | ||
| I think that President Trump and his Justice Department team are doing exactly the right thing by reprioritizing the Justice Department on real crimes and holding people accountable who weaponize the Justice Department against political enemies. | ||
| Mike Davis of the Article 3 project with us for about the next half hour this morning. | ||
| If you have questions, comments for him, phone lines as usual, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, we'll put the numbers up on the screen for you to call in. | ||
| Mike Davis, you say there needs to be multiple probes, several probes about what happened. | ||
| Is it lawfare to investigate the last administration's investigators? | ||
| No, because we would actually be investigating real crimes here. | ||
| It is a very serious federal civil rights felony, conspiracy against rights, 18 U.S.C. Section 241, to politicize and weaponize intel agencies and law enforcement against your political enemies for non-crimes, right? | ||
| Non-crimes. | ||
| And so when you do that, that is the most dangerous thing you can do in our Intel agencies and our legal system. | ||
| And there has to be accountability for that so it never happens again. | ||
| And frankly, this goes back to Crossfire Hurricane, the Russian collusion hoax. | ||
| And here it is right here. | ||
| This is what happens. | ||
| You had Hillary Clinton with her illegal home server as the Secretary of State with our nation's most classified secrets. | ||
| More problematically for Hillary is it had evidence of the Clinton Foundation pay-for-play foreign bribery schemes where the Clinton Foundation has taken millions of dollars from these shady foreign actors. | ||
| And Hillary Clinton is the Secretary of State at this time. | ||
| This money going into the Clinton Foundation is underwriting the Clintons' lavish lifestyle around the world where they're taking private jets and living like Hollywood actors. | ||
| What was Hillary Clinton doing as Secretary of State in exchange for these millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation? | ||
| Was there quid pro quo foreign corruption? | ||
| Was there foreign bribery? | ||
| We'll never know because Hillary Clinton destroyed her home server, bleach-bitted her home server, took hammers to the phone after a congressional subpoena. | ||
| So it's obstruction of justice. | ||
| She thought this evidence went away, but maybe, just maybe that home server was hacked by our worst enemies, including Russia. | ||
| And maybe, just maybe, as Hillary Clinton is running for president in 2016, she's worried that this hacked material of her foreign corruption will come out before the 2016 election. | ||
| And so her campaign worked with their law firm, Perkins Cooey. | ||
| They made up the steele dossier. | ||
| They made up the Russian collusion hoax. | ||
| They lied to the FISA court. | ||
| They got spy warrants on then presidential candidate Donald Trump. | ||
| They continued to spy on him as the president of the United States. | ||
| They hobbled his presidency. | ||
| This is the biggest scandal in American history. | ||
| And you say, oh, that's not possible. | ||
| How could you possibly think they would do that? | ||
| They did the same thing with Hunter Biden's laptop of the Biden corruption. | ||
| They said 51 former Intel officials said it had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign. | ||
| They got the New York Post, America's oldest newspaper, deplatformed from social media. | ||
| They made it where you couldn't even pull up the story. | ||
| If people would have known about Hunter's laptop before 2020, there's no chance that Biden would have been in the White House for four years. | ||
| Let me get you some colors because there's plenty for you already, and we have you for less than about 25 minutes this morning. | ||
| This is Lizzie in Indiana. | ||
| Democrat, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| Hello, Mike. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| Thank you, C-SPAN. | ||
| My question is: how come we're people from the Trump administration and Trump putting in the worst people possible to run our country? | ||
| And the reason is, and he's trying to get rid of all the people that run the government because they're trying to take over the government to run it as a dictatorship. | ||
| And I will have nothing of that. | ||
| And I know there's lots of people out here that do not want a dictatorship, and especially with Donald Trump being the dictator. | ||
| And this needs to be stopped. | ||
| And they need to be accounted for. | ||
| They need to be, they need to be accounted for for doing their crimes. | ||
| Mike Davis. | ||
| Well, I would say that when you have a president of the United States win a presidential election, it's his job to take over the executive branch and get rid of the political appointees from the last administration and put in his political appointees who are going to carry out his policy agenda the American people elected him to carry out. | ||
| This is Joe in Dayton, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning from a sunny day in Ohio. | |
| Good morning, Mr. Davis. | ||
| I just want to tell you I love you. | ||
| I watch you on YouTube. | ||
| You are a breath of fresh air. | ||
| All these cases against Donald Trump are bogus. | ||
| There was no insurrection on January 6th. | ||
| Donald Trump did request troops on January the 3rd. | ||
| General Milley testified under oath on that, but no one wants to report that. | ||
| The Judge McConnell case has got more holes in it than Swiss cheese. | ||
| And Letitia James is going to lose her $500 million case in New York. | ||
| The grand jury, that was a disaster. | ||
| But these Democrats love to use the word fascism, dictator, Adolf Hitler, Mussolini. | ||
| And not one person in this country has ever lived under a dictatorship or fascist. | ||
| My parents did under Mussolini, but these people today want to put labels on Donald Trump, and it's sad. | ||
| But Mr. Davis, the reason of this call is I just want to tell you I love you and keep up the good work. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Appreciate that very much. | ||
| Barbara, Oklahoma, Independent, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I just, I can't watch y'all anymore. | ||
| I don't understand this thing when we don't have facts on here. | ||
| You just let him just go off on Hillary. | ||
| Hillary's not in the government. | ||
| Hillary did nothing. | ||
| Y'all, they did everything they did. | ||
| Oh, my goodness. | ||
| I don't get it. | ||
| I like the last guy. | ||
| He was honest. | ||
| I didn't agree with him with everything, but he was honest. | ||
| This man is one of the liars you have on here every day. | ||
| Three hours of lies is destroying our country. | ||
| And I don't understand, C-SPAN. | ||
| You have never been like this before. | ||
| You have, oh, my gosh. | ||
| You just, It just really, it's something. | ||
| And every day I wonder, I can't. | ||
| I'm not going to watch you. | ||
| I don't. | ||
| I can't stand it. | ||
| I have to turn it every day because these lies, you just let you puke out the lies on us every single day. | ||
| That's Barbara. | ||
| Mike Davis, anything you want to talk about? | ||
| I appreciate it, Barbara. | ||
| Richard, Montreal, Canada, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mike. | |
| Love your work, by the way. | ||
| Do you think Pam Bondi is going to investigate the demonization and the banning of early treatment drugs during the pandemic, like hydroxychloroquine Ivermention, that led to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths and forcing us to take an experimental vaccine? | ||
| Because I know several people who have been injured by the vaccine. | ||
| And, you know, they want justice. | ||
| They want accountability. | ||
| Thank you, Mike. | ||
| Yeah, there's so much that went wrong with COVID. | ||
| And it started with Tony Fauci. | ||
| He's probably very happy he got his pardon from Joe Biden because I think Tony Fauci committed crimes when he illegally funded COVID in the Wuhan lab from NIH through a subcontractor, which was illegal. | ||
| Gain of function research is illegal to fund. | ||
| And Tony Fauci did it anyway. | ||
| He lied about it to Congress. | ||
| He obstructed the investigations. | ||
| He covered it up. | ||
| He conspired with others. | ||
| This led to trillions of dollars in lost treasure, millions of lost lives, years of learning loss for kids, particularly poor black kids who are already at a huge disadvantage and years of unnecessary suffering, human misery, because of COVID. | ||
| And there has to be accountability. | ||
| And then after this COVID came out, when they were pushing the vaccine at all costs and not any of the therapeutics and pushing a mask mandate, a cloth mask mandate that does not work, a six-foot rule that is not based upon the science. | ||
| How much disruption did Tony Fauci cause to our lives? | ||
| He may have his Biden pardon, but he must be held accountable. | ||
| He must be brought before Congress so this never happens again. | ||
| You mentioned COVID and the response to COVID and vaccines. | ||
| Expect to hear a lot more of that today at 10 a.m. | ||
| In less than an hour, it's the confirmation hearing for RFK Jr., up for Health and Human Services Secretary. | ||
| He'll be before the Senate Finance Committee. | ||
| That's where we're going to go after this program today, if you stick here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Mike Davis, you talked about Dr. Fauci's pardon. | ||
| Do you think presidential uses of pardon is something that can be used as lawfare? | ||
| I mean, the president has very broad power to pardon anyone he wants, for the most part, for federal crimes. | ||
| And it is an important safeguard for presidents to have this pardon power because it's supposed to correct injustices. | ||
| And so the president has every right to pardon. | ||
| President Biden had every right to pardon Tony Fauci and his family. | ||
| He had every legal right to do it. | ||
| I think politically it was disastrous for Joe Biden, for example, to pardon his family. | ||
| You know, they said when President Trump was doing pardons, the Democrats said when President Trump was doing pardons that you only pardon people who are guilty of crimes. | ||
| Well, Biden preemptively pardoned his family. | ||
| And it is probably because his family took over $23 million from our worst enemies into their bank accounts. | ||
| And that's just not speculation. | ||
| There are bank statements that House Oversight Chairman James Comer has subpoenaed, showing over $23 million going into what seems like every Biden member's bank accounts, except for the six-year-old granddaughter who they didn't claim until they had to. | ||
| So again, even though these Biden family members have their pardons, there needs to be accountability. | ||
| So we need to have an intel assessment to see what China and Russia and Kazakhstan and every other hellhole around the world, why they were paying the Bidens, every Biden family member, and what they were getting out of those payments from Vice President Joe Biden and President Joe Biden. | ||
| On pardons, a discussion on pardons on the Senate floor yesterday, specifically the pardons of those convicted of crimes in relation to January 6th, this is from Senate Majority Whip, Dick Durbin, yesterday on the Senate floor. | ||
| It's about a minute and a half. | ||
| The mob, the insurrectionist mob, was taking over the Capitol. | ||
| Thousands of people were storming into this building, not for peaceful demonstration by any means, but sadly for violence and destruction. | ||
| That day was the worst day I can recall in the history of the Senate in terms of our respect for this building that has become a symbol, not only for the United States, but for the world, for peace and democracy. | ||
| And I thought of those poor Capitol policemen who were asked to defend us with their lives. | ||
| They were asked to risk their lives for us, and they did. | ||
| Four or five of them lost their lives as a result of it, and over 140 were seriously injured. | ||
| Some of the things that were done to them were outrageous. | ||
| You've seen the videotape. | ||
| We don't have to speculate on what it was. | ||
| We saw it as they tore down building structures, as they beat up on these cops, as many of them faced death and knew at the time it was that serious. | ||
| The grimmest reality of those riots was the subsequent death of five of these law enforcement officers and the injuries to approximately 140 others, many of whom still pay that price to this day. | ||
| Mike Davis, that speech on the Senate floor as Senate Democrats attempted to pass a resolution condemning Donald Trump's pardon of those convicted of January 6th crimes, what did you think about that effort on the floor yesterday? | ||
| Just total nonsense. | ||
| And Dick Durbin knows better. | ||
| First of all, he called this an insurrectionist mob when he knows that no one was ever charged with insurrection after the Biden Justice Department ran the biggest law enforcement operation in American history and charged over a thousand people. | ||
| They couldn't find evidence at all of insurrection because it didn't happen. | ||
| January 6th was a lawful protest permitted by the National Park Service that devolved into a riot. | ||
| And there were three categories of people there who were at the Capitol that day. | ||
| There were people who were outside. | ||
| And even if you think they're crazy, even if you think they're wrong, they have an absolute First Amendment right to be there. | ||
| Then there were people who trespassed, who should have been charged with trespassed. | ||
| And then there were people who were violent who should have been charged more harshly. | ||
| But like Dick Durbin did, the Biden Justice Department lumped them all together, charged them all, said they were all insurrectionists, treated them like they were enemies of the states, persecuted them for four years. | ||
| Yes, the Supreme Court's Fisher decision makes clear that they persecuted these January 6th defendants. | ||
| And at the same time that they persecuted these January 6th defendants, overcharged them, kept them in pretrial detention for too long, kept them in solitary confinement, abused them in the D.C. jail. | ||
| They gave amnesty to the much more deadly and destructive BLM rioters who caused a billion dollars in damage and killed a dozen people. | ||
| Those police officers that died at the Capitol that day, that's very, they didn't die that day, but the police officers who died, that was very unfortunate. | ||
| But that was not caused by the riots that day. | ||
| They were not killed at the riot that day. | ||
| And Dick Durbin's making it sound like the riot killed five police officers that day. | ||
| And that's just not true. | ||
| And I would say this, that people who are concerned about President Trump pardoning and commuting the sentences of these January 6th defendants who were persecuted, I would say this, they have suffered enough over the last four years. | ||
| And where the hell were these people who are concerned about January 6th pardons? | ||
| Where the hell are their concerns about Joe Biden pardoning a monster who murdered two FBI agents? | ||
| Joe Biden freed this man from prison. | ||
| So he commuted the sentence. | ||
| He didn't pardon him. | ||
| He commuted his life sentence and freed this man from prison after he killed two FBI agents. | ||
| So I don't want to hear the fake tears from Dick Durbin about police officers when Joe Biden freed this monster who killed two FBI agents. | ||
| More calls for you. | ||
| This is Mark in Austin, Texas, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, Mike. | |
| I just want to say, you know, you guys are sitting here defending Donald Trump when you know this man is absolutely the worst, the worst ever. | ||
| And for all the Trump supporters that are out there, he used you guys. | ||
| You guys were useful idiots for him. | ||
| So you said tattoo that on your forehead. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Mike Davis, do you want to respond? | ||
| Well, I would say that you're calling over half of America useful idiots. | ||
| You're calling half of the American voters useful idiots who just elected President Trump in a landslide, 312 electoral votes, all seven swing states. | ||
| You know, the popular vote, I would say that that caller might be the useful idiot of the Democrat Party. | ||
| Phillip, Mississippi, Independent, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| This gentleman has the nerve to be such a hypocrite and talking about all the sins of the Democrats, but not looking at self. | ||
| Remember, Jesus, if that's what you know of his name, the spiritual leader of this country, were to say, if you're going to judge, look at the beam in your eye before you make that judgment. | ||
| Now, the Republicans are famous for that now. | ||
| They just automatically take the high road with they're the most sanctified group of people helping the American public. | ||
| And it's the furthest from the truth. | ||
| Philip, do you have a question for Mike Davis? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My question is, how do they go about recruiting the members to go and tell us the hypocritical statements that they make each and every day? | |
| And this country has been doing it for over 400 years. | ||
| Please tell us how they can say the things that they say and get up in the morning and go on a normal basis. | ||
| All right, that's Philip. | ||
| Mike Davis. | ||
| I would say I can't fix stupid, and this is why we need school choice in America. | ||
| Victoria, Texas, Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you, C-SPAN and Mr. Davis for taking my call. | ||
| Please hear me out. | ||
| Please hear me out. | ||
| There must be some accountability. | ||
| I am not a politician. | ||
| I am a former veteran educator and I'm not ignorant. | ||
| This is very personal to me and I would love to see for the last four years I have been going through living hell. | ||
| I am glad to see Trump come in and do something with justice. | ||
| My home was pending in litigation, in litigation that was sold for $585,000. | ||
| The Dallas DA judge, Crusoe DA, refused to indict the people that sold my home illegally on a crime. | ||
| What kind of DA is that? | ||
| Judge Soros have put a lot into our elections, and these DAs across the United States in Georgia, New York, and Dallas including have refused to uphold the rule of law. | ||
| That's Victoria in Texas. | ||
| Mike Davis, can you explain what the role of DAs are and how quickly they change over when it comes to a new administration? | ||
| Well, the DA district attorneys are generally elected at the local level. | ||
| Those are the local prosecutors, and they play a crucial role. | ||
| They're the ones who handle the day-to-day crimes in your communities. | ||
| And so if you have a bad DA, like a George Soros-funded DA like Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, or Fulton County DA, Fannie Willis, or one of these other Larry Kreshner, one of these other terrible DAs like in Philadelphia, it can cause just utter chaos in your communities. | ||
| Because if you don't have a local DA who's going to fight crime and then you have a Justice Department, for example, like the Biden Justice Department, who didn't want to fight real crimes, they wanted to fight, you know, they wanted to fight against Republicans and Trump supporters and parents and Christians instead of criminals, you have a real problem. | ||
| And this is why these elections are so critically important. | ||
| You should pay attention to your local races. | ||
| You should pay attention to your local sheriff, your local mayor, your local DA because they have a tremendous impact on your lives. | ||
| And so I guess the difference between a DA and a U.S. attorney, and the U.S. attorneys are the ones that then change over in a new administration. | ||
| Yeah, there are U.S. attorneys all over the country. | ||
| I think it's like 94 right now, 93 or 94. | ||
| I just can't remember the number that are U.S. attorneys. | ||
| They are nominated by the president. | ||
| They are confirmed by the Senate. | ||
| And they are the chief law enforcement officer of your federal district. | ||
| And so, you know, most states have one or two of these districts where they have one or two U.S. attorneys. | ||
| Some states have more, like California, I think, has four, but they are the ones who are responsible for prosecuting federal crimes and supervising federal law enforcement. | ||
| Why are there some U.S. attorneys? | ||
| Why are there some districts in this country where U.S. attorneys operate that we hear so much more from than others, the Southern District of New York here in D.C., the Virginia District as well, that we hear a lot of? | ||
| Why are some, I don't want to say more famous, but why do we hear from more from some than others? | ||
| Well, it's because, for example, D.C. obviously is our seat of government. | ||
| The Eastern District of Virginia, which is just outside of D.C. and covers the CIA, the Pentagon, a lot of government agencies. | ||
| The Southern District of New York covers Wall Street, the financial sector. | ||
| Those tend to be the biggest offices. | ||
| Also, the Southern District of Florida and Miami has Miami has a big office. | ||
| The Central District of California or LA has a big office. | ||
| But the major offices are D.C., Eastern District of Virginia, and Southern District of New York. | ||
| And you've gone through a lot of these confirmation hearings. | ||
| You talk about they all get Senate confirmed. | ||
| Can you talk about your background in that process, what you did on Capitol Hill, what role you played? | ||
| Yeah, I was the chief counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee for then Chairman Chuck Grassley back in 2017 to 2019. | ||
| I helped with the first two years of the Trump administration to confirm President Trump's Justice Department officials along with his federal judges, including Justice Gorsuch, my former boss, | ||
| who helped lead his confirmation effort as his former law clerk from the outside that I went then to then I went to work for the Senate Judiciary Committee, confirmed a record number of President Trump's lower court judges and then helped confirm Justice Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. | ||
| Then I started the Article III project after that in 2019 and we helped confirm Justice Amy Coney Barretts. | ||
| For the last three and a half years, we've been very busy working on this lawfare against President Trump, turning lemons into lemonade. | ||
| These Democrats thought that these indictments, these civil lawsuits were going to take out President Trump electorally. | ||
| And so we did 4,200 media hits supporting and defending President Trump, constant social media, constant opinion pieces. | ||
| We changed the public opinion on this lawfare. | ||
| We coined the phrase lawfare and it ended up not working out so well on November 5th when the American people rendered our verdict. | ||
| You talk about judicial appointments, a chart from the Pew Research Service on judicial appointments. | ||
| Over the years, it was 174, I'm sorry, 226 total in the first Trump administration. | ||
| You talk about the record there. | ||
| The Joe Biden administration will say they had a record at 228. | ||
| You can see the numbers in the previous years. | ||
| How are there this many judicial vacancies that get filled? | ||
| Why does each administration seem to set a record? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you the reason we set a record under President Trump is because I helped break every piece of China in the Senate to get through the Democrats' unprecedented obstruction to help President Trump confirm a near-record number of judges to the federal courts, particularly the critically important federal courts of appeals. | ||
| President Trump, when he started out, the Democrat appointed judges controlled the federal courts of appeals. | ||
| And by the time President Trump left, we had the first constitutionalist majority in 90 years on the Supreme Court, along with the majority of the critically important federal courts of appeals that had Republican appointed judicial majority. | ||
| So President Biden was able to make up for a lot of that in that four-year term. | ||
| We set up the conveyor belt for President Trump. | ||
| And unfortunately, President Biden took advantage of that conveyor belt. | ||
| So it would have been disastrous from my perspective if Joe Biden or Kamala Harris won the presidency in November because they would likely be able to appoint a number of justices and maybe take control of the Supreme Court. | ||
| And I think when left-wing justices take control of the Supreme Court, there goes our God-given rights to speak, worship, associate, and protect ourselves. | ||
| How many justices do you expect to step down from the Supreme Court in these next four years? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| And, you know, if you look at their tradition, I think President Trump will at least appoint one justice to the Supreme Court. | ||
| In his second term, he could appoint two or three. | ||
| More calls for you. | ||
| Just a few minutes left in this segment with Mike Davis. | ||
| It's the Article III project. | ||
| It's his group. | ||
| Terry is in Illinois. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Yeah, I have two subjects. | ||
| One is about the Hillary Clinton Foundation. | ||
| We all know that President Trump during his first term, all the way through it. | ||
| In fact, I think it was right at the last year where he dropped it because he couldn't find one bit of evidence against Hillary Clinton. | ||
| Two, I want to talk about this law fair. | ||
| I'm talking about the hush money payment. | ||
| And we know that he assaulted her, and a jury of his peers found him guilty. | ||
| And he did this to interfere with the election at that time by hiding the information that he was sleeping with a porn star while his wife was at home. | ||
| So I understand this law affair, but the Democrats learned that from the Republicans. | ||
| All we have to do is just look back through the years, especially the Clinton years. | ||
| They went after him for tea parties in the White House, selling the Lincoln Bedroom, the hordes of women that came through that said he sexually assaulted him. | ||
| Hillary was. | ||
| Let me give Mike Davis a chance to respond. | ||
| I would say this, that if you want the goods on Hillary Clinton, just wait till crossfire hurricane records come out. | ||
| President Trump declassified them the day before he left office the first time. | ||
| The intel community, the law enforcement agencies like the FBI ran to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff at the time and said, you can't release these. | ||
| You're going to violate the Privacy Act, criminal violation of the Privacy Act. | ||
| You're going to reveal sources and methods. | ||
| So Mark Meadows issued an order on January 20th, 2021 saying do your Privacy Act review and get out these crossfire hurricane declassified records. | ||
| Well, they didn't do that review. | ||
| Instead, they did the Mar-a-Lago raid. | ||
| And that's what this law fair is all about. | ||
| And so this time, when President Trump releases these crossfire hurricane records, I think people are going to see just how damning the evidence is against Hillary and Obama and Biden and Clapper and Brennan and all these other people who politicized and weaponized intel agencies to take out President Trump. | ||
| And so that's number one, it's kind of amusing that he picked the weakest case possible against President Trump, the hush money case. | ||
| It is not a crime to settle a nuisance claim. | ||
| It is routine in business to settle nuisance claims with a non-disclosure agreement. | ||
| That happens every day. | ||
| I've been a lawyer for nearly 20 years. | ||
| I've done that routinely. | ||
| I didn't realize that I was committing a felony by settling a nuisance claim with a non-disclosure provision in that agreement or a hush money provision. | ||
| And it's certainly not a campaign finance violation. | ||
| The prior Manhattan DA, Cy Vance, declined to bring these charges. | ||
| The Manhattan U.S. Attorney declined to bring these charges. | ||
| The Democrat Manhattan U.S. Attorney, the Democrat Federal Election Commission declined to bring these charges. | ||
| Alvin Bragg himself, who campaigned on getting Trump, declined to bring these charges. | ||
| It wasn't until Matthew Colangelo got deployed from the number three office in the Biden Justice Department that they decided to bring these bogus charges and bring the first indictment ever against a former president. | ||
| And the only reason they brought it is because they knew that Trump was running for president again. | ||
| If the hush money case was the weakest case against Donald Trump, as you describe it, what in your estimation was the strongest case against him? | ||
| The strongest case would probably be, look, and I don't think that there's a legal basis for this, but on the documents case in Mar-a-Lago, the obstruction case would be the strongest case against President Trump. | ||
| But the issue is, is there's an Office of Legal Counsel memo from 2019. | ||
| It's binding on the executive branch. | ||
| Of course, Jack Smith ignored this memo and so did Merrick Garlands. | ||
| But the legal memo says this, if you do not have an underlying crime, you cannot obstruct justice for a non-crime. | ||
| So if it's not a crime for President Trump to have his presidential records in the office of former president in Mar-a-Lago, which is allowed by the Presidential Records Act, the subpoena issued based upon the Espionage Act is invalid because there's not an Espionage Act violation when the Presidential Records Act allows the president to have his records. | ||
| And so the OLC memo from 2019 would suggest that you can't obstruct justice when there's not a crime. | ||
| Time for just a couple more calls. | ||
| This is Michelle Staten Island Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Mike, thank you for being on. | ||
| I just, I have something to say, and then I have a question. | ||
| First, I'd like to say, what a crew we have work in this country that the other countries have to be laughing. | ||
| They have to be. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| I mean, this is ridiculous, what's going on. | ||
| And the people today, with this, this hearing today is just, I'm an RN. | ||
| Got the bit he gets elected. | ||
| He gets this position, JFK. | ||
| I don't know what's going to go on. | ||
| You're talking about RFK Jr.'s confirmation hearing today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's correct. | |
| I mean, kids are going to drop like flies. | ||
| This is horrible. | ||
| This is really horrible. | ||
| And why is Trump doing all this? | ||
| 38 felony counts. | ||
| Our president has 38 felony accounts. | ||
| This is horrible. | ||
| You're a lawyer. | ||
| I think the American people heard all of these allegations and evidence against President Trump, and the American people rendered our verdict on November 5th. | ||
| The American people know that this was lawfare. | ||
| They know it was election interference. | ||
| They know these were bogus charges brought by Democrat prosecutors and Democrat judges and Democrat juries and Democrat hellholes like New York, D.C., and Atlanta. | ||
| And the American people, not these whack jobs and these Democrat hellholes, get to select the president. | ||
| John's last, Temple Hills, Maryland, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| First of all, I would like to say good morning to all of the C-SPAN listeners. | ||
| We are dedicated listeners and we sometimes endure a lot of stuff. | ||
| Mike Davis, good morning, sir. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am an independent and I'm an independent for a reason. | |
| So I would love to have a colloquy with you, sir, but I know we don't have time. | ||
| So I have four questions for you, and I would love for the C-SPAN listeners to listen to your answers and be objective when they hear them. | ||
| The first question is, is Donald Trump perfect? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Second question is, let me finish the four and I'll get off the line and you can answer them. | |
| The first question was, is Donald Trump perfect? | ||
| The second question is, is there anything that you can think of that Donald Trump has done wrong? | ||
| Third question, Biden, Is Biden perfect? | ||
| Fourth question and last question, and I'll get off and hear off the line. | ||
| Is there anything in Biden's whole career that you can say that he did right? | ||
| Thank you so much, Mike. | ||
| And I'll listen to the answers offline. | ||
| Mr. Davis, you get the final two minutes. | ||
| This is pretty easy. | ||
| No, President Trump's not perfect. | ||
| He made mistakes in his first term, including picking bad personnel. | ||
| No, President Trump's. | ||
| or President Biden's not perfect, but President Biden did one thing that he did right, and I've said this very publicly, is he picked very good people for the Justice Department Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission to do bipartisan antitrust law enforcement to hold the trillion-dollar big tech monopolist accountable. | ||
| Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple. | ||
| That started under President Trump. | ||
| President Biden continued that and put it on steroids, and now President Trump is going to continue it again. | ||
| Mike Davis is the founder and president of the Article 3 project. | ||
| It's article3project.org. | ||
| Appreciate your time this morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Today, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will hold a news conference to discuss interest rates and monetary policy following his meeting with the Federal Open Market Committee. | |
| You can watch that live at 2.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. |