June 6, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
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| Hi, everyone. I'm Danielle D'Souza Gill, and I will be hosting Dinesh's podcast while he's away this week. | |
| I have had the best time hosting all week, so if you're a regular Dinesh D'Souza listener, then you've heard me on the last couple days. | |
| And it's been great. | |
| We've been heavily diving into the Trump guilty verdict in New York. | |
| But today we are going to dive in to more detail into the other cases. | |
| We're going to talk about D.C., we're going to talk about the Georgia case, we're going to talk about the Florida case, and we're going to speak with the legal expert from the Article 3 project, Will Chamberlain, all about this. | |
| We are also going to talk about some Christian missionaries in Haiti. | |
| If you like the content you're seeing on here, make sure to find me on social media. | |
| I'm on all the platforms. I'm on Facebook, Instagram, X, True Social, and Rumble. | |
| I am at Danielle D'Souza Gill. | |
| And if you want to know more about me, I am the author of two books, one on pro-life called The Choice, The Abortion Divided America, and one about Christianity called Why God? | |
| An Intelligent Discussion on the Relevance of Faith. | |
| But make sure to find me on social media, and we have a lot of content to get to today from all of the Trump trials, so stay with us. | |
| This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast. | |
| The times are crazy, and a time of confusion, division, and lies. | |
| We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth. | |
| This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast. | |
| In the current political climate, it's particularly difficult to predict what will happen in the upcoming presidential election. | |
| How can we be optimistic in the face of the seemingly insurmountable difficulties challenging us? | |
| In his inaugural speech upon winning the governorship of California in 1967, Ronald Reagan famously worried that we might have lost the ability to be, in his words, properly appreciative of the American experiment. | |
| He famously said, quote, freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. | |
| It is not ours by way of inheritance. | |
| It must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. | |
| Today we remember the strength of previous generations of Americans as 80 years ago on June 6, 1944, Operation Overlord commenced. | |
| D-Day saw the Allies storm five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the coast of Normandy in the largest naval, land, and air attack in military history. | |
| Eleven months and two days later, on May 9, 1945, the Allies succeeded in liberating France from the Nazis. | |
| The Greatest Generation gave their lives as they fought to preserve the freedoms we continue to enjoy to this day. | |
| As we find ourselves worrying about the next presidential election, it's important to remember that we are not alone in our struggle with powerful forces trying to rob us of our liberty. | |
| The Allies who fought so bravely and sacrificed so much also had to deal with vile sophists such as the infamous propaganda minister of Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels, who believed that any information war could be won by lying. | |
| Goebbels stated that we just need to say the lie often enough and it eventually becomes accepted as the truth. | |
| His method speaks for itself. | |
| It's obvious that a certain amount of repetition tends to sway crowds. | |
| But there's a fatal flaw in this method. | |
| It only works if you lie consistently. | |
| If you begin by boldly proclaiming what you actually mean to do, and then later try to deny your intentions because they get in the way of your virtue signaling, the lie will not take hold in people's minds. | |
| The American left clearly doesn't know about this flaw, as we can see from the way they're praising the May 30th guilty verdict in Trump's Manhattan trial. | |
| Throughout Trump's 2016 campaign and all during his four years in office, leftist commentators engaged in endless fevered imaginings about how they were going to get Trump and punish him and his supporters so severely that a reformist presidential candidate would, quote, never happen again. | |
| So here's a little advice to the left. | |
| We the people remember. | |
| With perfect clarity, we recall what you said about total political revenge, and we have noticed how this malignant idea captured your collective imagination and became your shared obsession. | |
| Babbling about democracy and sacred institutions now in the aftermath of the Trump verdict makes you come across as lunatics. | |
| For example, the June 1st article on Politico referring breathlessly to Alvin Bragg as this reluctant prosecutor, describing Bragg as a humble civil servant who at times seemed like a reluctant participant in the trial he'd launched. | |
| While campaigning, Alvin Bragg, like Letitia James and Fannie Willis, promised to get Trump. | |
| To make good on his promises, he treated a rarely prosecuted misdemeanor as a felony and ignored the statute of limitations. | |
| As Jim Garotti in the National Review and other pundits on both the right and the left have pointed out, Garotti writes that the charge was, quote, a unique interpretation of an infrequently enforced statute that had never been used before. | |
| And for which the statute of limitations had expired. | |
| However, Grotty continues, quote, The day after the verdict, in addition to praising Alvin Bragg's stunning bravery, Politico also compiled reactions from mostly leftist academics who offered their take on what the verdict means for our country. | |
| Professor of History and Journalism David Greenberg said of Trump that, quote, he now bears the permanent stain of being the first president convicted of a felony. | |
| Quote, reaffirming that no one is above the law. | |
| He must mean no one named Trump is above the law. | |
| Biden has avoided prosecution for far, far worse crimes. | |
| Law professor Catherine Ross also hailed the verdict, but cautioned Trump was going to engage in more concerted efforts to erode the rule of law and the institutions on which democracy relies. | |
| Does she mean institutions such as free and fair elections where we get to vote for the candidates of our choice? | |
| Please, Professor Ross, spare us. | |
| Even Rachel Maddow let the cat out of the bag when she suggested Trump drop out of the race in order to avoid these court cases. | |
| Wow. You guys are not fooling anyone. | |
| When it comes to effects on the election, the same leftist commentators predicted disaster for Trump because of the expected swing in independents. | |
| Unfortunately, reality seems to disagree. | |
| A TIPP poll taken from May 29th to May 31st showed that the verdict did not seem to weaken Trump's support among independents, nor did it increase support for Biden. | |
| Trump's also gaining in other demographics. | |
| Zero Hedge claims Trump's faith coalition is drawing evangelicals and Catholics together. | |
| Trump now enjoys dominating support among white and Hispanic Catholics, with increasing numbers of black Protestants swinging his way as well. | |
| Notice no one ever talks about Biden's expanding coalitions. | |
| Ever. The biggest nail in the verdict coffin, though, can be seen in the betting markets. | |
| According to sports betting expert Kevin Rogers, even after the guilty verdict, President Donald Trump still stands as the odds on betting favorite to win the presidency. | |
| This is where people are betting money. | |
| Despite being a convicted felon, despite everything the left has thrown at him, the 2024 U.S. presidential betting odds are in favor of a Trump victory in November. | |
| America isn't on board with the left's delusion therapy. | |
| Going back to the Politico article, English professor Mark Bauerlein writes that because half the country sees Trump's trials as a political hit job, the Democrats really should not be grandstanding with such pious insincerity. | |
| Bauerlein concludes that if the Democrats continue to act as if they had no choice but to prosecute Trump, they will likely be punished through the only recourse Americans have left, namely voting for Trump on November 5th. | |
| Of course, it's impossible to know the future and it is hard to be optimistic during times like these. | |
| But the snap polls that have come out since the trial are not definitive and the lawfare waged against those who oppose the Democrats is such a violation of all that we Americans hold dear that In a speech given to a leadership conference last February, Newt Gingrich offered a glimmer of hope to his worried audience as he shared the greatest lesson he had ever learned about optimism in American politics. | |
| Unsurprisingly, it was about one of his first meetings with President Ronald Reagan. | |
| In 1981, when Newt Gingrich was a sophomore congressman, Reagan had just won the presidency with the highest electoral vote count over an incumbent president in U.S. history. | |
| Wow. Gingrich and about 90 other lawmakers were at the White House to meet the new president when Reagan offered to tell a story to help them better understand him. | |
| I'm paraphrasing, but Gingrich recounts the story where Reagan told as follows. | |
| Once there was a couple who had twins. | |
| One twin had a sunny disposition and was extremely optimistic no matter what problems came their way, no matter what happened, while the other twin was sour and always pessimistic no matter how good things appeared to be. | |
| They had a negative disposition. | |
| The parents wanted to help their children be more balanced, more in touch with reality, so they devised a plan. | |
| That Christmas, the pessimist would go to a room filled with overflowing, expensive toys, grand Christmas. | |
| The optimist would go to a room filled with a pile of horse manure. | |
| So on Christmas morning, they sent the twins to their respective rooms and waited one hour. | |
| When the parents entered the pessimist's room, they found him crying, sitting with his head in his hands in the middle of all of these amazing toys, and said, What are you doing? | |
| You know, why are you crying? | |
| The pessimistic twin sobbed and, pointing at the presents, said, That toy's batteries will run out. | |
| That toy will break as soon as I play with it. | |
| And that toy, someone else will have the same one. | |
| someone else will surely steal it. He found a reason to complain about every toy in the room. | |
| Dejected, the parents went to the room of the optimistic twin. And remember, this is the room filled with the pile of horse manure. So when they found their optimistic child, you know, running back and forth, throwing horse manure in the air, yelling, yippee, they explained, what are you doing? | |
| And he said, I'm looking for the pony. At that point, President Reagan looked out at the lawmakers and said, guys, I just want you to understand, I'm the guy who is always looking for the pony. | |
| Like Newt Gingrich, let's be proud to call ourselves Ronald Reagan Republicans who are always looking for the pony. | |
| We have to be optimistic in times like these and remember that the best is yet to come. | |
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| It's D-I-N-E-S-H Dinesh. | |
| We recently had some monumental news, not good news, but no one's talking about it. | |
| For the first time in our history, the interest we pay on the national debt surpassed every individual budget item except Social Security. | |
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| I'm delighted to welcome Will Chamberlain. | |
| He's the Senior Legal Counsel at the Article 3 Project. | |
| Will, thanks for joining us. | |
| Thanks for having me. Yeah, well, I wanted to get your expertise because we've been talking a lot about the Trump case this week, the guilty verdict, and kind of wanted to get your thoughts on what an appeal would look like. | |
| What would the process be for that? | |
| And if anything happened with that, would that affect the election? | |
| Would it happen before the election? | |
| Or is this just going to be a longer road as far as appeal for the New York case? | |
| Right. So we won't hear anything about an appeal until the sentence is issued. | |
| The sentencing happens July 11th. | |
| And then what happens next will depend on how Judge Mershon handles the sentence. | |
| Like exactly what is the sentence? | |
| Is it probation? | |
| Is it imprisonment? Is it home arrest? | |
| And then also, will he stay the enforcement of the sentence until after the appeals process is done? | |
| to do that, which is possible. | |
| I would say not the likely outcome, but possible that he'll decide to let the sentence stay pending appeal, then there probably wouldn't be any appeal before the election. | |
| Because generally, criminal appeals, especially in the circumstances like that, where the sentence isn't even happening yet, there's no immediate urgency to resolve the appeal in the same way that there would be if the guy was thrown in prison right away. | |
| So that's one outcome where the judge, whatever sentence he decides to do, he says, OK, but you have the chance to appeal, and I'll only enforce the sentence once your appeals are exhausted. | |
| And the other option is, no, he sends him right to jail. | |
| Then there's a number of immediate appellate avenues. | |
| He can go, he can try first, he can go up in the New York State court system, he can go straight to the first department. | |
| And I don't, I'm not super familiar with like the exact details of New York criminal procedure in terms of timing, but... | |
| The basic concept is you could essentially apply to have the sentence stayed pending the resolution of your appeal to the appellate court. | |
| This is sort of similar. I mean, it's a little similar to what is happening in Georgia right now with the fact that there's an interlocutory appeal and that court just stayed all the proceedings in Georgia. | |
| So nothing's happening there. So that's one option. | |
| The other option is to kind of pivot to federal court, which is the ultimate way if you were trying to get it in front of the Supreme Court somehow, that's what you'd do. | |
| You'd go to federal district court and you'd file a writ of habeas corpus. | |
| And then that would get resolved on its own timeframe. | |
| But again, if he's already been thrown in jail, then you can ask for an immediate, essentially, basically an injunction type thing where you ask the court to please make the State Court of New York not for our client in jail. | |
| Thank you. Wow. | |
| So that's sort of the set of options available as to what the actual sentence will be. | |
| I mean, it could be jail. | |
| I think people need to not be cavalier. | |
| There's a very real possibility that Judge Mershon will order President Trump to jail. | |
| I think that's not the likeliest outcome, even assuming that Judge Mershon has ill intent towards President Trump and wants to take him off the campaign trail and hurt him, which I think is the right assumption. | |
| But there are a lot of logistical difficulties in terms of putting a former president in prison because they have secret service protection. | |
| So his secret service would go with him to jail? | |
| They would be at the jail? | |
| One would think, but I don't know what the answer to that is, and I guarantee you Judge Merchant doesn't know the answer to that either. | |
| We're in totally unprecedented territory. | |
| I mean, you know, there's never been a Secret Service protectee in jail before, which is why if I'm, you know, if I were a betting man, which I actually am on a regular basis, but if I were a betting man, I would be saying the likeliest sentence is home in prison, right? | |
| The idea being that if, you know, you can... | |
| You basically can say to President Trump, well, look, we're not going to toss you in jail unless we absolutely have to because of the complexity of doing so, but you're confined to Mar-a-Lago and you're going to serve your sentence at Mar-a-Lago. | |
| Do you think he could do events at Mar-a-Lago? | |
| That's the other thing. And that's the thing that this would allow the court to do. | |
| And while I think they might find an appealing option, when you're under home imprisonment, you are in jail, which means you don't get to... | |
| And your ability to be a public figure is constrained in the same way that it would be if you were in jail. | |
| So instead of simply not having access to any internet, the judge will order you. | |
| You do not get to speak publicly. | |
| You do not get to hold public events. | |
| You are in prison. Wow. | |
| So, if they do that, though, and let's say, I guess this is separate because this is maybe like touching on the gag order, but, sorry, I'm kind of conflating two things, but let's say he doesn't follow it, like with the gag order. | |
| If he doesn't follow it, they'll then say, you're in jail. | |
| Okay, well, let's say then he, they're like, you're in jail at home, and then he goes on true social. | |
| Like, then what? They say, time to go to jail? | |
| I mean, do they take away his... | |
| They might then try to send him to jail at that point because they're like, okay, clearly home imprisonment doesn't work. | |
| You're not capable of following the judge's orders. | |
| So that could be an option. But then maybe he's in Florida and Governor DeSantis refuses to extradite like he promised not to do all the way back last year. | |
| Who knows? It could go in any number of different directions. | |
| And that's actually, you know, that would be the biggest argument against home confinement is that given the fact that President Trump, the judge found President Trump in contempt of his gag order repeatedly during the trial, the judge might say that, well, I don't believe that you'll be able to abide by the conditions of home confinement, so off to jail you go. | |
| That's like something. So, this is so crazy we're even discussing this because it's like, how can you put a gag order on someone who is running for president? | |
| How are they supposed to run for president under that kind of circumstance? | |
| Similarly, how are they supposed to run for president if they're in jail? | |
| So, I guess let's discuss the Supreme Court avenue. | |
| Do you think that might be an avenue that his lawyers would want to pursue? | |
| At a certain point, I mean... | |
| Do you think the Supreme Court would intervene? | |
| And I guess part of me is kind of skeptical of even that because I feel like the court doesn't want to be perceived political. | |
| They don't want to be involved in these things. | |
| They didn't want to be involved in elections in the past. | |
| So in my mind, it's like... | |
| Some people think, oh, that's going to be a Hail Mary pass. | |
| It'll go to the Supreme Court. But in my mind, I'm like, Chief Justice Roberts, I mean, I don't know if the Supreme Court is going to want to weigh in. | |
| But then also, how do you have elections in a country where this is going on? | |
| So what would that path look like? | |
| I think that if the Trump lawyers managed to get the case to the Supreme Court in a manner that was procedurally proper, right, like that followed the normal, followed a procedure that they understood, I think they would probably succeed. | |
| I think the Supreme Court is... | |
| I think the Supreme Court generally sees itself as above politics and is very unhappy with the lawfare against President Trump and the attempt to put the leading presidential candidate in jail. | |
| That's sort of my general assessment of where a majority of the Supreme Court is. | |
| I mean, that would also explain, I mean, they've taken a bunch of cases and you're about to see opinions come down, I think, that are going to be friendly to the president. | |
| They've taken a bunch of cases that the DOJ and all the liberal legal eagles said, oh, the Supreme Court would never take this case. | |
| The law is super clear. | |
| Presidents don't have any immunity. | |
| Obstruction of an official proceeding means what we say it means. | |
| So they have gone down the road of... | |
| And they've been proven wrong every time the Supreme Court has said, no, this is all ridiculous. | |
| We're going to fix this and put a stop to it. | |
| So... And there's so many different legal problems with the trial itself. | |
| I mean, there's this huge massive due process problem with the fact that the prosecutors played hide the ball with what the actual crime was and then basically allowed the jury to pick from a menu of potential unlawful means and then also didn't require on the jury instructions that the jurors find that the unlawful means had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. | |
| So, you know, there's just all these different problems that make it pretty clearly reversible on appeal. | |
| It's just a question of getting it to the Supreme Court in a manner that is procedurally okay, because the Supreme Court has to think about if we let... | |
| Trump, as a criminal defendant, just skip every avenue of appeal and come to us directly, then that's going to be our world, right? | |
| Every criminal defendant, whoever loses a trial, is immediately going to show up with papers. | |
| And we don't want that. | |
| We want criminal defendants to go through the normal process because, I mean, otherwise they'd be overwhelmed. | |
| Okay, so that would be basically, we'd have to wait it out. | |
| It would be maybe after the election, eventually. | |
| I don't know. I think it could be done pretty quickly. | |
| There are emergency rules. | |
| So say, I mean, if... | |
| I think basically, it probably could get heard by the Supreme Court as quickly as like, or at least it could be in front of the Supreme Court for a potential injunction or a stay as early as like maybe August, you know, give it about a month after sentencing. | |
| That's about when I think the earliest reasonably that the Supreme Court could hear something about it, but maybe even sooner than that. | |
| I don't know. We'll see. | |
| I suspect that... I mean, I don't know the procedurally proper way to get it to the Supreme Court. | |
| I think it is a writ of habeas corpus in the Southern District of New York. | |
| And then if he loses that right away, then he can apply for an immediate stay of the sentence. | |
| And then if he loses that, he can go straight to ask for an extraordinary right, go straight to the Supreme Court, say, please stay the sentence. | |
| It's essential. Wow. | |
| Yeah. Well, I do want to get... | |
| Yes, definitely. I was just going to say, I do want to get to the Georgia case too. | |
| So that case has been put on hold. | |
| What is kind of the status looking forward to that? | |
| Is that kind of indefinite hold? | |
| When do things change? | |
| I mean, what can we expect? | |
| I know that there are so many cases and sometimes people lose track, but what's kind of going on with that one? | |
| Georgia, nothing's going to happen in Georgia at the trial level until 2025. | |
| And that's when the Court of Appeals in Georgia agreed to hear the appeal on whether or not Fannie Willis should have been disqualified. | |
| And they've docketed that appeal for an argument in October. | |
| And so, you know, there will be briefing until then, argument in October, and then the court will have to write an opinion. | |
| So until that's resolved, the Court of Appeals has stayed all the trial court proceedings. | |
| So nothing's going to happen there. | |
| I suspect that... | |
| So, you know, Georgia's done until well after the election, for sure. | |
| Even in the worst case. | |
| And I think very likely the Georgia Court of Appeals is going to look at what happened to the trial court and say that the judge got it wrong, that Fannie Wills did need to be disqualified. | |
| And I said this from the beginning, even when I read the judge's opinion, because the thing about the judge's opinion was... | |
| You know, he's in the position, normally the judge is the finder of the law and the jury is the finder of a fact. | |
| But in this case, because it's like, you know, this is just a hearing in front of the judge, he's both the finder of law and facts. | |
| So what does the law say and what actually happened? | |
| And his description of what actually happened in his courtroom was not favorable to Fannie Willis. | |
| He basically implied that they had lied repeatedly to him, that there was an odor of mendacity, if you remember that phrase, a whole bunch of things about how they've been, you know, he feels like he's been deceived, that they haven't been truthful. | |
| But then his legal holding was, I can clear up the odor of mendacity by kicking Nathan Wade off the case and Fannie Willis can stay. | |
| And that legal holding is questionable. | |
| That doesn't make sense because if there's a conflict of interest and there's been this massive amount of deception, that doesn't get resolved. | |
| The appearance of impropriety certainly doesn't get resolved by only getting rid of one of them. | |
| That appearance only goes away if Fannie Willis herself is kicked off. | |
| And so I think that that's the legal infirmity of that trial court opinion. | |
| And I think that when this actually gets to the Georgia Court of Appeals, Fannie Willis will ultimately get kicked off the case. | |
| Yeah. Wow. So just to play out two different scenarios, I guess one option is Trump wins, he's president, and then they continue to try to prosecute him in 2025? | |
| I mean, they might, I suspect that they're, you know, again, it'll be a pretty novel issue, but I suspect that there's not going to be any tolerance for state courts continuing basic, any sort of state court trial proceedings against the current sitting president of the United States. | |
| Because there's an obvious, I mean, the federal government is supreme over the states, and the president is head of the executive branch, the single most important person in the federal government. | |
| Individual states shouldn't be able to defeat the functioning of the federal government by putting the sitting president on trial. | |
| Right? It doesn't matter. They'll probably try to derail him or try to make it like, oh, this is unprecedented. | |
| You're criminal president or something. | |
| You're, you know, I mean, I guess the other option... | |
| That won't work. I suspect that federal courts will put a stop to it, even if the state courts themselves don't essentially stay any criminal proceedings until after the presidency, then federal courts, I believe, will almost certainly do so. | |
| It just doesn't work. | |
| If you understand how our system, the constitutional system, I mean, it's one thing for an individual state to go after a former president after he's out of office. | |
| But while he's in office, then it's this huge separation of powers problem. | |
| Because states need to be subservient to the federal government. | |
| And so if states have the ability to manipulate a sitting president in this way, it completely defeats how our system functions. | |
| Yeah, no, I agree. | |
| I feel like Democrats push the boundaries on everything, and they want to derail him. | |
| They want to derail him from winning, and then if he wins, they want to stop him from being able to do anything. | |
| So, okay, the other option is, let's say Trump doesn't make it, then do you think they'll just continue to go after him, even in a post-election world? | |
| Or are they doing these cases just because he's running for president? | |
| I think they'll continue prosecuting him. | |
| I think they just, they loathe the fact that he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016. | |
| They loathe what he represents, which is the 50% of the public that doesn't agree with him. | |
| And they'll want to put his head in a pipe, metaphorically speaking. | |
| So yeah, I don't expect them. | |
| If they manage to prevail, I expect that they will, I mean, there won't be a lot anybody can do about that. | |
| Yeah. You know, especially, I mean, and at that point, I think that's what's made this so dangerous because I think this election is win or go to jail for both candidates. | |
| We've really entered a new kind of dangerous phase of politics because I expect if Trump doesn't win, the Democrats will find a way to get him in jail. | |
| I think that that's the likely outcome or effectively home in prison or whatever you want to call it. | |
| But I think if Trump wins, I think Biden's going to end up going to jail. | |
| Really? Like how will he end up in jail? | |
| I mean, there's a lot of opportunity to really investigate and prosecute him over his Chinese business dealings and all the lies and falsehoods that have been told about that. | |
| I mean, you just saw yesterday there was a criminal referral by James Comer referring both Hunter and Joe Biden's brother to DOJ for perjury. | |
| You know, I don't expect this DOJ to act on that, but there will be a new Department of Justice in about six months, seven months. | |
| So... Do you think Republicans, though, would have the spine to say, hey, Biden, you're going to jail. | |
| We're going to prosecute you, even though you have dementia and you have all these problems and you're not president anymore. | |
| I just feel like, I don't know. | |
| I don't know if Republicans would send Biden to jail if he lost. | |
| You might be right. I mean, and we generally don't. | |
| We have a history of kind of holding back and being the party of not doing unprecedented things. | |
| Yeah. But I don't know. | |
| But he certainly would deserve it. | |
| I mean, Hunter Biden. | |
| Yeah, and I suspect that President Trump is going to put in a real bulldog as Attorney General if he's re-elected. | |
| Okay. Yeah. Do you have any predictions on who he would choose or any people you think are options? | |
| I don't know. I mean, I do work for the Article 3 project. | |
| Mike Davis is a lot more hooked into this, so he probably has some ideas, but I don't. | |
| I'm not. I'm in Tallahassee, Florida, so I don't. | |
| He's announcing the drama of who is going to be in that. | |
| Yeah. Okay, well, let's move to the Florida case. | |
| What is kind of the situation with that? | |
| Where are we on that case? | |
| Is it the Mar-a-Lago raid, all of that? | |
| Proceedings are also stayed in Florida, and again, probably well beyond the election. | |
| The big drama there is that And Eileen Cannon, in a couple weeks, has an argument scheduled on whether or not Jack Smith was properly appointed as special counsel. | |
| And the core argument there is that Jack Smith, from the Trump side, is that Jack Smith should be seen as a principal officer, and therefore his appointment should require presidential nomination and Senate confirmation. | |
| And he didn't go through any of those things. | |
| He was just a private citizen off the street when Merrick Garland on his own accord picked him and placed him as special counsel. | |
| And that's different. I mean, that's different from what President Trump did during his term. | |
| Everybody who was a special counsel under Trump, if I'm understanding, maybe except for Mueller... | |
| But everybody else under Trump, like John Durham, for example, they were already U.S. attorneys. | |
| They were sitting U.S. attorneys who had just gone through advice and consent. | |
| It was not unlawful for them to be moved within the DOJ to another position wielding the same authority. | |
| But Jack Smith didn't have that. | |
| Jack Smith wasn't, you know, he was just a private citizen. | |
| So I think that there's a very compelling argument that Jack Smith was never properly appointed and basically all his actions are null and void. | |
| He should not have been able to wield the sovereign power of the United States. | |
| And if that's the finding, then that creates a tension because... | |
| Judge Cannon will then have disagreed with the DC District Court judge's opinion on this issue, which means that we're almost certainly headed towards a collision at the Supreme Court on the question of whether Jack Smith was properly appointed. | |
| So that itself creates, again, a substantial delay. | |
| So even if the DC case manages to get past this presidential immunity thing, which is coming up in a month or so, or that opinion should issue in a few weeks, This Jack Smith properly appointed issue could throw another wrench in that. | |
| So I think, I mean, that's getting a little ahead. | |
| But long story short, Florida is not going anywhere anytime soon. | |
| There's a lot of motions practice that needs to be handled on a lot of pretty novel legal issues. | |
| And I don't see that going to trial until 2025 if it goes, if it ends up going to trial. | |
| Wow. Okay. And so that's a lot. | |
| So with the D.C. case, this is a presidential immunity case, that is being mulled over by the Supreme Court. | |
| We are going to get some kind of answer there. | |
| Yeah. No, we were going to have, there's going to be, we're going to get something from the Supreme Court on that soon, in the next, by I think the end of the month. | |
| And my prediction is that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of President Trump and find that basically that there's a decent, some amount of immunity from prosecution for official acts, at least those you're not impeached and convicted for. | |
| Now, exactly what the parameters of that immunity will be is not clear, but listening to the oral argument, it's really clear that the justices did not think much at all of the D.C. Circuit's opinion on this. | |
| And in fact, neither did DOJ, because the D.C. Circuit's opinion suggested that There was absolutely no immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts for foreign presidents. | |
| And that doesn't really jive with precedent, first, because in the civil context, there is absolute immunity for presidents for their official acts. | |
| And then second, it creates all sorts of weird hypotheticals where former presidents can suddenly be prosecuted for things that it seems like they obviously shouldn't be able to be prosecuted for. | |
| For example, President Obama drone-striped an American citizen in Yemen. | |
| Now, if he doesn't have some sort of protection... | |
| From criminal prosecution that is just inherent to his office, then that's a murder that he can be prosecuted for. | |
| But that doesn't seem right because he is the president. | |
| He's wielding the sovereign power of the United States in his official capacity. | |
| Whatever you think about that action, and I deplore it, obviously, but I don't think it justifies a criminal prosecution in our courts. | |
| That's not the right thing. | |
| You don't really have the ability to be president. | |
| It's like you're president, but you're not really president because you can't do things. | |
| You massively weaken the office and you weaken our president's ability to act on the world stage and to take action in exigences with our military. | |
| It's funny, often libertarians don't recognize that it's a very important part of our constitutional history is the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution and all the stuff Hamilton was writing about the importance of a strong An energetic executive. | |
| That's why we have the system we have. | |
| In fact, in many ways, the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution was this very anti-libertarian move to create a stronger, more powerful executive. | |
| And I think that's what a lot of people miss when they say, like, oh, there's no official acts of unity. | |
| It's like, no, our constitutional system invests a lot of power in the president. | |
| And it's not just the Constitution itself, but it's Supreme Court opinions that go back a very long time. | |
| They are loathe to do things that restrain the power of the president. | |
| They really are. Especially when it comes to things like foreign policy. | |
| So if you create a backdoor to prosecute presidents for stuff they did while they were president, it just doesn't jive. | |
| Yeah, I mean, all of our presidents would probably have to, you know, have faced that. | |
| It just wouldn't make sense. | |
| Yeah, I mean, and it would be a regular thing where presidents start getting prosecuted for what they did the moment they leave office, which would make people much more cautious as president when they get there, and also create this terrible tit-for-tat. | |
| Yeah. And at the end of the day, with all these legal cases, what do you feel like is the end goal? | |
| I mean, we all look at it and think, wow, they're trying to prevent Trump from campaigning. | |
| They want to prevent him from winning. | |
| They want to drain him of his funds, all these things. | |
| But hearing you talk about it makes me think, wow, these are... | |
| These are long games. | |
| If these are going to 2025, there's a stay on this and so on. | |
| It's like they're never going to give up on going after Trump, even after this election. | |
| So what do you think is the end goal here? | |
| I mean, it depends if we win or not. | |
| If we win, a lot of these cases are going to lose a lot of their force. | |
| Because he'll be in control of the Department of Justice. | |
| So that means the D.C. January 6th case and the Florida case go away. | |
| They just... Those prosecutions just stop. | |
| The cases get dropped. And the question is whether he'll try and pardon himself for all that stuff, too. | |
| That's another interesting question. | |
| The state cases, I mean, they'll have to wait. | |
| They'll have to all be stayed until after his term ends in 2029. | |
| 2029 is a long time from now. | |
| 83 and unable to be president again. | |
| So there's a real question about whether or not people will feel like the need to continue these prosecutions. | |
| Wouldn't bet against it given that they're, you know, liberals would be that angry at the president or, but, you know, it's hard to say. | |
| Wow. Wow. | |
| Well, maybe we can end by just getting your thoughts on the Hunter Biden case. | |
| Um... | |
| Where is that? | |
| I mean, it's crazy to even talk about because sometimes the Democrats act like, well, we're just going to be, you know, Lady Justice is blind and, you know, there's Trump cases, but Hunter Biden's also being held accountable. | |
| Obviously, slap on the wrist situation considering his actual crimes. | |
| But what are you expecting to come from the Hunter Biden case? | |
| I have to expect a guilty verdict. | |
| It is unbelievably clear that he violated these laws by his own admission. | |
| There's a law that says you can't own a gun when you're a regular drug user. | |
| He admitted to being a regular drug user at the time he purchased a gun. | |
| There's a law that says you can't lie on a form about being an addict and buying a gun. | |
| He lied on the form. | |
| And we know he lied on the form because he wrote a book where he described in detail what the situation of his drug addiction was and when it was occurring. | |
| So these are open and shut cases. | |
| And they're not any novel, strained theory of the law like what we saw in the New York case against Trump. | |
| These are just straightforward crimes. | |
| And I mean, really, I don't see it as particularly fairness. | |
| I mean, the DOJ wanted to do a sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden, if you remember. | |
| I mean, that was something that months ago they tried to get a plea deal, and it was only because a judge sitting there said, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a wild sweetheart deal. | |
| And also, do you guys actually agree on the terms of this deal? | |
| And the DOJ was not willing to admit that they did. | |
| So there might, you know, that actually might be the best grounds for appeal that Hunter has, that DOJ kind of basically got him, you know, had agreed to a plea and then went back on it. | |
| That'll be a very interesting issue for him on appeal. | |
| Yeah, I expect him to be prosecuted. | |
| And I think it's also, this is the crime that has the least to do with his dad. | |
| I mean, the real issues involving Hunter Biden are not really about the drug use. | |
| And they're not really about the gun. | |
| The real issues are that he was his father's bagman, that the Biden family brought in millions and millions of dollars from foreign countries and foreign entities and for consulting services, which was always fake. And that money ended up in the bank accounts of relatives of Joe Biden. | |
| That's the thing that really actually needs to be investigated, finding out whether there was meaningful quid pro quo there, like really get people under oath, etc. And that's not what's at issue in this DOJ prosecution. Right. If Biden was ever held accountable, would it be for that? | |
| Would it be for the crimes he committed and being the big guy with Hunter Biden? | |
| Yeah. I mean, if there was anything, yeah. | |
| And I mean, I'm not sure it's hard to prove, proving bribery is hard because you need to figure out what the official action was that was bribed, like was the object of the bribe. | |
| But I mean, there's something very shady about what the Biden family was doing. | |
| And that's not even counting Ukraine. | |
| I mean, we forget about this, especially because Biden's now president and urging so much money to go to Ukraine. | |
| But his son was on the board of a natural gas company that he had no business being on the board of. | |
| And Joe Biden was vice president at the time dealing with Ukrainian issues. | |
| And, you know, it would have been very easy for Joe Biden to call up his, you know, let's assume he's not in control of what his son does. | |
| And everything Joe Biden says is true. | |
| His son's just going off on his own and making his own business deals. | |
| There would have been nothing stopping Joe Biden from calling up his son once he found out what his son was doing and joining the board of some Ukrainian gas company and be like, you're quitting the board today. | |
| I'm not tolerating this conflict of interest. | |
| If you do not do that, I will publicly disown you. | |
| And he could have just forced that. | |
| He was the vice president of the United States. | |
| He doesn't have to tolerate his children trading on his name in this way. | |
| He has the ability to publicly rebuke them and make clear that they don't have any pull with him. | |
| He never did that. Instead, he just met with his son's clients all the time. | |
| We know what was going on. | |
| This was influence peddling. People go after President Trump. | |
| It's amazing. President Trump's the one president whose net worth substantially decreased as a result of holding the office. | |
| Everybody else seems to get rich. | |
| President Trump didn't. President Trump was rich and got less rich. | |
| Yeah. And yet nobody seems to wonder, why does Obama have a Martha's Vineyard residence? | |
| Why are the Bidens, despite living supposedly off a Senate salary for the last 40 years, why does he suddenly have compounds all over the place? | |
| Yeah. And with the fact, even thinking about that Biden is president, it's like, how much worse is the influence peddling now than when he was vice president? | |
| Yeah. Right. I mean, why haven't Republicans? | |
| Obviously worse. You know, Republicans should have been putting enormous pressure and saying, like, you need to recuse yourself. | |
| I mean, we're not going to give you a dime for Ukraine. | |
| You are compromised when it comes to Ukraine. | |
| Your son was on the board of Ukrainian oil and gas company. | |
| You got a prosecutor fired. | |
| We don't trust you in terms of your administration allocating money to Ukraine. | |
| We do not. And that never happened. | |
| Seems like it should have. | |
| It's amazing that it didn't. | |
| Right. Wow. | |
| Well, thanks so much for your thoughts today. | |
| I appreciate it. Lots of cases here going on. | |
| And thanks for all of your guys' hard work at Article 3 Project. | |
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| Now, a sad story I want to cover. | |
| American missionaries were killed by gangs in Haiti. | |
| A young couple, as well as the director, according to the Wall Street Journal, Davey Lloyd, had called his father during the attack. | |
| His father said, quote, They tied up my son and beat him. | |
| They got three vehicles. | |
| They got a bunch of equipment, money. | |
| I had my payroll in there for a week. | |
| Davey Lloyd managed to untie himself. | |
| He and his wife and the Haitian director made it to the small house compound where they sought shelter. | |
| His father recounts, quote, as he was going down there to the house, he was telling me what was stolen and what had been done to him. | |
| He said, Dad, something is going on. | |
| There are a bunch more guys and I think they may be back. | |
| He didn't know what was going on. | |
| End quote. | |
| So to recap, gangs had already looted them, but at this point they were hiding and hoping to ride it out in the house, hoping that they had left. | |
| But as his father says, quote, they, the gang members, ended up shooting all the windows out and shooting the house up. | |
| The Wall Street Journal obtained video of the killings, which showed three bodies sprawled on the floor. | |
| The men's bodies shot and burned. | |
| It's likely that the first gang was the Terre Noire gang and the second was the Canaan gang. | |
| The families of these missionaries are, of course, devastated. | |
| Natalie Lloyd's father, the wife who was killed, is the Missouri State Representative, Ben Baker, who wrote on Facebook, quote, My heart is broken in a thousand pieces. | |
| Their bodies were safely returned to their homestead and the funerals took place. | |
| An increasing number of Christian missionaries working in Haiti have been the target of kidnappings perpetrated by gang members. | |
| Some criminal groups rely on kidnappings to make money through ransoms while others are simply murdered. | |
| UNICEF reported an increase in the number of abductions since 2023 noting that women and children were most often at risk of being kidnapped. | |
| According to the Baptist Standard, in October of 2021, a group of 17 Christian aid missionaries, 16 Americans and a Canadian, were kidnapped by gangs. | |
| Twelve escaped and the others were later freed. | |
| In the past few years, Haiti has plunged into turmoil and this has been aggravated by the assassination of President Moise in July 2021. | |
| In the months following the president's assassination, armed gangs vying for control of the Capitol banded together and took advantage of this political unrest. | |
| The government was then run by Prime Minister Ariel Henry. | |
| His legitimacy was heavily contested through street protests until he resigned in April of this year. | |
| A transition council was named to lead the country after Henry's departure, but the gangs now control 90% of the capital and have blocked several roads into Port-au-Prince and the city's main port, stalling the flow of goods into the country. | |
| Since January, gang violence has killed or injured 2,500 and displaced 35,000, according to the United Nations. | |
| In March, gang members freed thousands of inmates, jailed in the capital's two largest prisons, leading to a massive spike in gang violence. | |
| A peacekeeping mission led by Kenyan police officers, including officers from Chile, Jamaica, Granada, Burundi, Nigeria, and others, is set to arrive in Port-au-Prince this week to help Haitian police fight the gangs. | |
| A total of a thousand Kenyan police officers will be deployed. | |
| Now, the reason I bring up this story is because Christian missionaries are under attack. | |
| There are Christian missionaries all over the world who are putting their lives on the line, who are slaughtered for their faith. | |
| Here in America, it's easy for us to take our faith for granted or to think that simply doing the bare minimum is doing a lot. | |
| We think, wow, that's a lot of work. | |
| If I force myself to wake up and go to church, then wow, I'm really, really doing a lot. | |
| But of course, we need to be going to church. | |
| But are we willing to sacrifice? | |
| We take Christianity for granted here, but it's not safe in other countries. | |
| And the political situations elsewhere are often fraught and missionaries put themselves on the front lines there. | |
| There are Christian murders in North Africa and the Middle East. | |
| Christianity is growing in the non-Western world, but it shows the sacrifice that people are willing to make to be a Christian and spread Christianity. | |
| So it reminds us not to be complacent about our faith, and I want to remind everyone just to renew your faith, and we can all pray for these Christian missionaries. | |
| Well, that wraps up today's show. | |
| If you enjoyed today's podcast, make sure to find me on social media. | |
| I'm at Danielle D'Souza Gill on all the platforms. | |
| I'm on Facebook, Instagram, X, True Social, Rumble. | |
| So make sure to find me on there. | |
| And of course, connect with other Dinesh D'Souza listeners. | |
| And thanks for being with us. | |
| I'll see you guys tomorrow. MAGA! Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify. |
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