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Feb. 12, 2024 - Doug Collins Podcast
27:02
The Courts have opened up a Pandoras Box
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Welcome back to the Doug Collins Podcast.
Glad to have you with us today as we get started.
And as we get started, a lot has been going on.
Friday's Finest, we had a great Friday's Finest last week that sort of headlined some of the issues.
I'm going to head in to talk about a little bit today on Joe Biden.
Going after the break, though, I want to dive a little bit deeper into this district court ruling last week on immunity that President Trump had It's going to be an interesting case, a lot of nuance to it, not just as simple as the liberal media wants to say that now it's Citizen Trump, not President Trump.
There's a lot of issues that, again, I'm not going to go deep, deep.
It's not going to be a legal seminar exercise for you, but I want you to understand at least some of the legal nuance as we go forward with this, and you'll hear a lot about it over time.
Jack Smith thinks this is his ultimate case of insurrection and against Donald Trump and the things that went on around January 6th.
I think there's a long way to go from that.
In fact, I think it's not a good case at all, but Again, legal minds can differ.
I'm willing to admit that on this.
I just believe this is a political-based trial from Jack Smith.
It is something that will be discussed many, many years from now.
But right after the break, we're going to get into this court case.
It is an interesting case.
It's a case, really, of first impression.
And we need to...
You know, dive into it.
So right after the break, we'll be right back.
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Okay, in this case, as I said at the beginning, we're going to look into it.
This is the Court of Appeals, United States of America versus Donald J. Trump.
This is an appeal from the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.
This is the D.C. Appellate Court.
A lot went into this case.
This is the one, if you remember, that Jack Smith wanted to skip this part and go straight to the Supreme Court because he's trying to actually get the case moved.
Along quicker.
He wants to get it to trial.
And the part now has already been pulled from the court calendar in March of 2024, which is when it was scheduled.
This is on the presidential immunity claim, especially as it regards to January 6th and the issues around January 6th.
Jack Smith wanted to jump to the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court said no, put it back to the appellate court.
Pellet Court now has issued its ruling and gave a shorter amount of time, which is really unusual, to President Trump's legal team to actually file their brief with the Supreme Court or ask for certiorari at the Supreme Court.
Jonathan Turley brought this out.
A legal constitutional scholar brought this out in the fact that it's normally a longer period, up to 90 days.
To be able to file that, they have shortened that for the Trump team here.
Again, I think in a move that actually tries to help The Jack Smith prosecution.
There's just so much about this that's very frustrating as we move forward.
But let's just dig into this case and really the understanding of it.
And you can find this if you read the case, and I'd encourage you to read it.
It's not something you can understand.
It's a little bit technical if you're not a lawyer, and it goes back and forth on jurisdiction in cases.
But really the heart of this is that the government alleges that President Trump denied that he had lost his bid for the second term and challenged the election results through litigation, pressure on state and federal officers, organization of alternative slate electors and other means.
His alleged interference is a constitutionally prescribed sequence culminated With the Washington DC rally held on January 6th, the day set for the electoral count, Act 3, US Code 15, Congress to meet in a joint session certify the results.
The rally headlined by Trump resulted in march of thousands to the Capitol and a violent breach of the Capitol building.
Now, again, It goes on to say that it delayed the proceedings, but finally they were ratified and Joe Biden took office.
Interestingly enough, let's talk about this in the statement of facts, and it's going off of the case itself.
It said the rally headline by President Trump resulted in the march of thousands to the Capitol.
So again, they're tying a fact in the case that they're saying or implying from the allegation and the indictment is to be factually stated.
Is it the rally by Donald Trump and others led directly to those who went to Capitol Hill and entered the Capitol illegally?
I mean, this is the starting of this discussion.
Discussion.
President Trump was charged in a four-count indictment in August of 2023 as a result of actions challenging the results of the election and interfering with the sequence set forth in the Constitution for the transfer of power to one president to the other.
Former President Trump moved to dismiss the indictment and district court denied his motion.
Today we affirm The appeal.
This next line in this case has gotten a lot of publicity.
It says, Let's just start off here.
This is going to become an issue that I want to talk about as we go through this as precedent setting in that what they're saying and they continue in this whole 57 page brief is that President Trump understood that he lost the election, that the election results were legitimate, and that he nevertheless was determined to remain in power.
He then conspired with others to cast doubt on the election and contrived to have himself declared the winner.
Indictment charges that he and his co-conspirators allegedly advance their goals through five primary means.
And then he drops then the co-conspirators, the fraudulent electors, Department of Justice, and other things.
Again, taking this as faithfully asserted, they're taking and saying that this is what happened and the case is to be moved forward.
I say this because I really want to...
You know, set up the fact that there is an assumption of truth to the indictment made.
Now, that doesn't mean that he did it.
That doesn't mean that they're factual.
It doesn't mean that they're not been tried.
The decision actually discusses that.
The problem you're getting into here is this is a new argument that has never been made.
I'm going to point out several assumptions That I think are interesting in a case that is this nuanced dealing with the highest office in the land.
They have said, as we just read a minute ago, that he is no longer afforded the immunity that he had in office.
And now it's just a citizen Trump facing a criminal activity.
First off is if you Give the facts as he did something wrong, which I do not.
But if you take the case as they have and said, okay, the indictments until proven untrue are true as stated in the indictment, they are saying that what he did as president was illegal and that the actions taken were illegal.
Because they say that his belief that something was wrong and that he actually won the election was false, and that by continuing to try and have questions thrown about the election, he was improperly influencing and improperly trying to challenge the constitutional authority and the transition of power.
Now, what is not given here, and again, probably the problematic issue here is that if Donald Trump, as he has stated, believes that he was the actual winner, that if some of this would have actually been investigated at different points,
and irregardless of what had happened at court trials, which by the way, still to this day, were all mainly thrown out on procedural grounds, not actual Equated evidential grounds.
They were thrown out for standing and many other things.
There have been a couple of cases that have went forward in Georgia and others that are actually dealing with some of the ballot issues.
They're still left to be litigated.
I'm not making the determination on what those cases will hold.
I'm just simply saying at this point, there Making their whole argument that Donald Trump knew the election was fine and still went about this anyway.
I think that's a large leap.
And for anyone who knows President Trump knows that he has stated it many, many times that he does believe that he won the election.
And looking at this from the case perspective, I'm going to draw the analogy to...
If he believed that he was acting in his executive capacity to find out what went on with a national election, then what is the difference, and this is where I have the concern about this ruling, of any other presidential decision that not only Donald Trump made, that Joe Biden makes, that President Obama made, or that even George Bush made.
Because there are things that are given under presidential immunity for decisions made in official capacity That outside of that official capacity are illegal.
I give the examples that have been brought forth before, George W. Bush, in dealing in some of the cases that have come before it, dealing in the detainees, the issue of torture being used, or supposedly being used, the torture memos, as they were called back then.
And operating in the wartime environment.
You have President Obama who liked to use drones to blow people up.
He was one of the most prolific at it.
The one problem that accompanied with that was that he actually killed Americans, knowingly killed Americans without a due process of law.
This is an interesting case because if it is stated That he believed it to be true, although it is illegal, what would keep a future prosecutor or Department of Justice from charging the former president in a case of murder, which has no statute of limitations.
This is why this case is going to be interesting to see how the Supreme Court takes this.
I do hope they take it and that they actually argue, have arguments about this case and that this case, and even if it meant Jack Smith's case is not going to be perceived in the timeframe he wants it to.
This is an important enough discussion that I think it needs to have the Supreme Court decide it, not just summarily say we're agreeing with the district court or we're going to not hear this appeal.
It is important from a perspective of Individuals in this country because this is going to become more and more.
We're a more litigious, politicized Department of Justice that we have seen.
We saw it under the Obama administration.
We saw the questions come up during having to have the Trump administration dealing with prior acts of The Department of Justice and then having to deal with a special counsel investigation that came up during his administration with Robert Mueller, and now with Joe Biden.
And again, opening it up here to a really interesting nuance is what we have seen just this past week, in which a Department of Justice special counsel said that the president himself was not fit to stand trial.
That was, in essence, what he said.
So my question to anyone in the Department of Justice, let's just say a Republican, Donald Trump, wins and the Department of Justice looks back on it and determines that actions taken by Joe Biden were not within the scope of the law and actually his fitness, mental fitness to make certain decisions were called into question.
By this reading, in my mind, of the reading of this Decision to strip presidential immunity simply because he is not in office would flow back to these cases as well.
I would be interested to ask this three panel of justices, what if we're talking about the drone cases With President Obama.
And now, if you want to go back and say, well, it was in a time of war, it was a time of, okay, that's fine, but it is very clear in statute and law that you cannot kill Americans without due process.
This has been the whole issue we had with FISA. If you want to go back with George Bush and starting under the Auspices of the Patriot Act in which James Sensenbrenner, who was a friend of mine while he was in Congress, who actually wrote the Patriot Act and got the Patriot Act through, told and said many times in his later years in the Congress that the Patriot Act was being abused, that it was not intended for the way they were using it.
So does that mean that President Bush and President Obama and other presidents up until then who have allowed the Department of Justice to continue to do this and use this process, could they be found legally culpable in not following the law and then presidential immunity not applying?
Now, I'm not here to convince you, if you're listening to this podcast, that Donald Trump And this court is right or wrong.
I'm simply sitting here that I believe that this case in this decision is wrong.
I believe that coming beforehand, as this case argues, that they had to decide this before case because Donald Trump is making the argument that he should never be put on trial as opposed to having the charges dismissed, in which they go into a great deal.
That he should never even stood trial as opposed to a difference of standing trial.
This is the crux of the argument that's going on here.
The Trump legal team has stated that these actions were taken at a time in which they were covered, that we've not went through the process, that the assumptions made in the indictment, which, by the way, you can indict pretty much anything that you want to To do, and Jack Smith certainly did that in this process, and he got what he wanted, and that was an indictment of Donald Trump.
And basically throwing away the immunity challenge and immunity claim.
Now, is this an easy aspect to go about?
No, it is not.
We saw that in the oral arguments.
We saw this in how far a presidential immunity claim can actually go.
All I'm saying here is, is if a presidential immunity claim can be revisited after the fact, then there are a lot of, there's several people in this country who should be concerned about that.
Namely, the former presidents.
Obama, Bush, Clinton.
Because, and Carter, you know, at this point, but I mean, I think just going back on the last three, the last three living who you could look at saying that they are issues here with decisions made under what they would have believed were inside the scope of presidential authority that now a new Department of Justice says no.
This is why people are really struggling with these cases against Donald Trump.
The cases themselves are setting precedent in a first impression case that could have unintended consequences or intended consequences for past presidents and future presidents after they leave.
And I don't believe that this court took that into account.
I believe that the court, if you read this opinion, is very much of a rosy-eyed view of the Department of Justice and the government in general.
Basically, they state in this that the idea that this would have a chilling effect on future presidents is false because it's never happened before.
Well, no kidding.
They've never had this issue happen before.
But now, in just the last couple of years, you have seen a Department of Justice that has went after a former president when not going after a sitting president.
So my question is, and this is the case right now.
They're not indicting Donald Trump, I mean, Joe Biden right now in the documents case, because number one, frankly, the prosecutor said he was not fit to stand trial.
But let's just say they wasn't doing it because the understood rule in the Department of Justice is you don't indict a sitting president.
Let's just say that this time next year, Joe Biden is no longer president and the Department of Justice re-looks at the case and says, yes, there is reason to charge Joe Biden with reckless mishandling of these documents.
This document, this case, this precedent, if allowed to stand, would be used against Joe Biden, I think in many ways, because there's nothing he could hide behind at that point.
There's no document that says, well, he's a president, we're not going to charge him.
I mean, the DOJ says, I can't charge a sitting president, but can I charge him after that?
Precedent has been said already that that can happen.
Okay, so that takes into account other activities of this administration.
Could, depending on the knowledge given, you know, it's a stretch, but could it have happened that in the Afghanistan withdrawal, Joe Biden's decision to withdraw in the way he's decided to withdraw, could that have be held criminally liable now for the deaths of those service members?
Now, I think most of us would agree, probably not.
But we're taking on a whole different world here.
If we open it up in one area, are we opening it up in more areas than is contemplated here?
I would hope that the District of Court here was not political in this decision.
In the sense of, we believe Donald Trump's arguments are bogus, we believe he did what he did, and we're going to make sure that he's held accountable for it.
Was there at least some determination, which I'd hope the Supreme Court would actually look at, is what is the possibility of presidential chilling?
And not just simply with a dewy-eyed look toward the Department of Justice that this would never happen in a political vein.
We see it being played out in these prosecutions in which especially one of the documents cases are being very much known.
In which there is no presidential immunity from the Joe Biden perspective because a lot of these documents were basically from his vice presidential days.
When he had no ability to declassify, his Senate days, no ability to declassify, but yet the Department of Justice says we're not going to indict a sitting president.
Could that be overturned?
Again, these are the issues that are very disturbing.
To me, as I read this case, there's too much deference to a benevolent Department of Justice or government action in this case.
There is too little deference paid to what they perceive as actions by a sitting president that were not within the scope of his duties.
If the election and making sure the integrity of an election Was at least not being able to be asked by a sitting president simply because he is the president that would benefit if there was some issue found, I think is another issue that can be legally discussed here.
We're not seeing that.
So, a lot of issues here.
I raised it a few weeks ago when I said on the podcast that there are certain things that determine what will win elections and what will lose in elections.
And I always said there's always these things you didn't know.
The past two weeks have prescribed two of those things that I think are going to be interesting as we go forward.
Both of them are going to Eventually end up at Supreme Court.
One has already been there.
That's the Colorado case on keeping Donald Trump off the ballot.
From last week, there is no doubt in my mind that that will be a 9-0 or 8-1, 7-2 at worst decision, depending on how they want to frame it as a saying that this clause does not apply to presidents.
It doesn't apply to national elections, however they want to describe it.
If they wanted to summarily dismiss it because of procedural issues, you'll probably get a full 9-0 court on it.
You got that case.
Then you got this immunity appeal that's going to go before the Supreme Court.
Hopefully they will take it up.
Hopefully they will do a little bit more digging and taking into account other aspects of what they believe immunity is.
Because if not, we're setting this up to every president being a citizen after they leave.
To any Department of Justice that believes they acted outside the law while they were president.
I mean, there's no other way to read this, and liberals can spin this however they want to.
But Obama, among issues that he had, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, as this court has said, loses the ability to defer what they did as president loses the ability to defer what they did as president to not be charged after the fact by someone who wants to go back and look at history in a different light.
You also have the decision by the Department of Justice to not charge Joe Biden in the documents case, in which clearly he kept documents in a reckless manner.
Clearly, he was these were not something should have happened.
Joe Biden's defense is it was all about his staff.
There were other people.
And but the bigger issue is here is in that report.
It actually said that Joe Biden really we're not going to bring prosecutorial charges because we believe that he's frankly going to be an old man who has bad memory.
And he's not a would be something to be sympathetic to a jury phrased another way.
He's not mentally, frankly, with it enough that we can charge him that he knew what he was doing to stand trial.
These are the kind of things that will throw people off.
I also think that this one, especially the Joe Biden one this week, could be a hinge point for will Joe Biden actually be the nominee.
I think there can be a lot of people discuss it.
I think at this point he has shown a stubborn determination to be the nominee no matter what, but I think there's a lot of things that still could be Played off here as we go forward.
So I wanted to lay this out.
I promised I wouldn't go in-depth, you know, completely with everything in the case.
I took the top lines out of this on things and questions that I hope are going to be answered when the Supreme Court takes this up, but we will see as we go forward.
So again, that's where we're at with the election.
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