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July 22, 2022 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:36:53
20220722_defund-fallout-arizona-showdown-and-the-hunter-bid
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Crime and Policing Myths 00:15:07
FICE presenter is super inkled.
We have a jam-packed show for you today.
Two Kelly's Court Originals are here: Jonathan Bilvore and Mark Eiglars, meaning I've been having these guys on Kelly's court since it was Kendall's court, and I was just starting at Fox News in 2004.
Holy Lord, getting long in the tooth.
But that's how good they are.
Now they withstood the test of time, and they'll be here in our second hour to get into our juicy legal cases.
Hunter Biden, Steve Bannon, and Amber Heard, all on the docket.
Plus, earlier this week, I spoke to Trump-backed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Carrie Lake and made an offer to her pence-backed rival to come on the show.
Well, she took us up on it.
Karen Taylor Robeson will be here today to respond to charges that she is, quote, a rhino, and will ask about the former vice president's endorsement and what this race tells us about the future of the Republican Party.
We're seeing these intra-party wars pop up state after state.
But we begin with Rising Crime.
My first guest has a book coming out in a few days that takes a deep dive into the criminal justice system.
He looks into the claims that activists have been making about police, criminals, and the defund the police movement, and finds out if the stats back any of these charges up.
He also offers thoughtful ways that we can make things better.
Rafael Mangual is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of Criminal Injustice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts the Most.
Rafael, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me.
My gosh, you knew how to hit your book at exactly the right time.
Yeah, I guess so.
You know, crime kind of has been an issue for a really long time, but unfortunately, we are in the middle of a bit of a crisis.
You know, 2020 saw the single largest homicide increase in American history year over year, and which is the year I started working on this book.
So hopefully it makes an impact and encourages some debate that can get us through some of the issues that are holding us back on this front.
We can move in the right direction.
2020 saw the single largest.
Go ahead.
The single largest spike in homicides year over year in American history is 30% across the country, which is a huge jump.
Of course, it was larger in some cities, smaller in other cities.
I get into this in the book a little bit, but it's kind of a colloquialism to talk about crime in national terms.
And it's understandable.
It helps simplify the conversation for some people.
And I get that.
But sometimes it distracts us from a really important reality, which is that crime is a problem that is not and has never been equally distributed across the country.
If you were to be randomly dropped by a parachute over someplace in the United States, chances are pretty good you're going to land somewhere with a murder rate of zero.
You repeat that experiment, say, 10,000 times, and there'll be a handful of times where you land in a place that rivals some of the most dangerous neighborhoods on earth.
And that's what really drives national crime rates.
And we have to remember that there are people living in these places, good people who deserve safety, who are just trying to go about their lives.
And they're living in neighborhoods with homicide rates, 20, 30, 40 times the national rate.
When you read your book and anything at City Journal or Manhattan is to do, all the stuff is so great, Raphael.
So grateful to you, all of you guys there.
You see the truth, which is what happens is the media and the Democrats find one cherry-picked case of cops who do the wrong thing, cops like a Derek Chauvin. with George Floyd, and they put it on loop and they try to say it represents all police officers.
And then policing in the neighborhood goes down.
The cops feel demoralized.
Crime goes up and murders spike, sometimes in record levels in the very communities that the people who got the firestorm started in the way they did, in the dishonest way they did, claim they want to protect.
It is black and brown people who are in those numbers that caught in the 2020 record-setting spike.
Those are the people getting killed.
Yeah, they bore the absolute brunt of that spike.
I mean, to begin with, you know, if you just look at homicide victimization rates, it's about 10X for black males than it is for white males.
So when we talk about, you know, violent crime in New York City, for example, every single year for which we have data here, going back to at least 2008, a minimum, a minimum of 95% of all shooting victims are either black or Hispanic, almost all of them male.
That is one of the starkest and most persistent disparities in the criminal justice data that you can find.
And it gets nowhere near as much attention as the disparities of enforcement statistics.
And that is, of course, the focus of people who have been critical of the criminal justice system and of policing.
And you're exactly right.
They take these really terrible cases, and these are terrible cases, right?
By no means am I arguing that the criminal justice system is perfect, that policing is perfect.
It's a human endeavor.
Any human endeavor is going to be susceptible to human error, even malice and malevolence, right?
So that exists.
There is a such thing as a bad cop.
But we live in a really, really big country, 330 million people.
In a country this size, even really rare things happen every day.
And if you have an institution like the sort of mainstream legacy media that's dedicated to playing up one of those really rare things, it can make it seem like this happens on a regular basis.
And then that distorts our perception of what the issue is.
I mean, sometimes I'll give public talks and I'll poll audience members and I'll say, like, how often do you think police officers use force?
And sometimes people say it's 15% or sometimes it's 50% or 60%.
It's less than 1%.
For deadly forts, it's like less than a fraction of 1%.
Of the days on the job.
But this is not something that say that one more time.
Of the days on the job, like less than 1% of what?
The days that there are?
Less than 1% of all arrests that are affected are affected without the use of force.
So just one example of this.
There was a study that looked at a million calls for service across three police departments, one in North Carolina, one in Arizona, and one in Louisiana.
That million calls for service, those resulted in 114,000 criminal arrests.
In that entire data set, there is just one fatal police shooting capture.
And in 99.7% of the arrests captured in that data set, no force was used to affect the arrests.
And in 98% of the cases in which force was used to affect the arrest, there was either no injury or mild injury to the suspect.
This is completely at odds with what the dominant narrative about policing is in America, right?
We're all told that police are these sort of trigger happy, violence-prone Neanderthals who are just going out there hunting black people like LeBron James said.
It's just not true.
Police are incredibly restrained.
Again, that doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes and that there aren't examples that you can pull and essentially cherry pick to try and create the sort of distorted image that I think a lot of Americans have in their head about policing, but that doesn't do us any good.
What it does is it encourages both a pullback on the part of officers who are understandably afraid that should they find themselves in a controversial use of force, that they're not going to get the benefit of the doubt, that they're not going to get a fair shake when that case is being evaluated, whether it's by the executives in their department or by the court of public opinion.
And so they pull back.
And then on top of that, it encourages a policy regime, a policy agenda that we've seen over the last two years really get accelerated that is sort of singularly aimed at constraining the power of police, defunding them, minimizing the resources at their disposal.
And that has costs and it has costs that are disproportionately borne by the places with the highest levels of crime.
And that's the kind of sad irony of this whole debate is that a lot of these reform proposals are advanced in the name of so-called black and brown communities, but these are the places that had benefited the most from the crime declines that policing helped bring about.
But if you look at just homicides from 1990 to 2014, it was a massive decrease in the nation's homicide rate.
That decrease added 0.14 years to the life expectancy of white men and 1.0 years to the life expectancy of black men.
This is from a study done by a sociologist named Patrick Sharkey.
The public health equivalent of that, according to him, was the elimination of obesity altogether.
And so what I try to ask people is: what sense does it make to claim that the institution of policing and criminal justice writ large is sort of designed and operated to the detriment of black communities?
How is that congruous with the reality that when the system achieves its stated ends, which are crime declines?
Ask any police executive in America, what are you trying to do?
They're saying control crime.
Well, when that succeeds, when that happens, it's black and brown communities that benefit the most.
So there's a real kind of underlying incongruity in just the basic framing of the argument that I think just doesn't get enough attention and makes for a really just unproductive national conversation.
That is so profound.
I mean, that's many of us have been saying it in the wake of George Floyd and so on over the past couple of years in particular.
But really the proper response to the, you know, cops are bad, cops are racist.
You know, look at George Floyd, look at Derek Chauvin is you're having the wrong conversation.
You're focused on the wrong thing.
That's really the proper response.
Because if you tell me that 95% of the murder victims in America are black and brown people, do we know what the homicide rate, like how many people were killed?
Like on an average basis, how many people get that kind of thing?
This is shooting victims.
This is shooting victims in New York.
So I mean, last year it was over a thousand.
Okay, in New York City.
In New York City, yeah.
So you're talking about a thousand people, just to take one city as an example, a thousand people, 95% of whom are black and brown, killed by murder or killed by shooting in a year.
Shot.
Not killed.
Yeah, just shot.
Shot, shot.
Okay.
So we don't look at that at all.
Never mind what happens in Chicago, what happens in Baltimore, what happens in Philly.
We don't look at that at all.
We take one case of a bad cop or an allegedly bad cop and we put it on loop and say that's the problem because it's so much easier to fix.
It's so much easier to attack the cops and say bad policing, you know, this is a problem, racism, as opposed to taking a hard look at why.
Because in a lot of those cases, it's black on black crime, it's black on brown crime, whatever.
And so that's where the media says, well, they don't mind covering it.
If it's a black cop killing a black defendant, you know, a suspect, they'll cover that.
They'll say the black cops are racist too.
They've done that many times.
But they don't want to get into black on black crime or black on brown crime where neither person has a uniform on at all.
And anyone who's called attention to that, like in the media or otherwise, many have been fired for even trying to raise it or contextualize what we're seeing.
Why?
Why can't we go there?
Who was, I think, a data journalist at Reuters who lost his job after bringing attention to this kind of thing.
And so, yeah, I think I think there's just so much power that was discovered, so much political power discovered in just perpetuating the narrative that these big legacy institutions, policing, prosecution, corrections, that they were systemically racist.
If you can make that claim, you have a foe to fight against.
And if you're fighting against a foe, that just makes you attractive to the public in a way.
Like everyone loves kind of an underdog story.
Everyone loves someone who's sticking it to the man.
And so it helps to kind of ignore the good that the man or the system does.
I mean, if you look at just study after study after study, I mean, it's one of the most robust findings in the criminological literature.
More policing means less crime.
And that holds true everywhere.
But the effect, given where crime concentrates, the effect is more pronounced in black communities.
And so more policing doesn't just mean less crime.
It means less black on black crime, means less black victimization, less brown victimization.
These are precisely the communities that need the most help that already have enough to deal with.
They already have all these other social problems that they're fighting.
And so it becomes really, really just important to kind of take a step back, reground the debate in data and acknowledge that for all of its problems, institutions like police, like incarceration, like our carceral system, that they exist because there is this underlying reality of violence that is, again, not equally distributed.
Take any city in America, about 5% of street segments are going to see about 50% of all crime.
And so that has really profound implications for and over again.
It's not just New York.
You see that pattern over and over again in the numbers.
Exactly.
That experiment's been replicated in cities across America and cities across the world.
It's just the nature of violence.
I mean, part of it is just a function of the built environment, right?
There are studies showing.
Wait, Stand by because I actually want to get there through a different door.
Sure.
The book talks about sort of why the left doesn't want to go there or what they'll say when like looking at black on black crime or minority on minority crime in the major cities.
And it says, oh, you know, they'll talk about poverty, poverty.
So sort of, it's sort of like, we don't want to go there because we caused it.
You know, America's not doing its part to help these communities.
And that's what leads to crime.
So don't lecture me about the crime rate with those people because we should be doing something about that too.
And you take that on square and say, A, it's not true.
And then say, B, here's what's actually leading to crime.
Here's what actually we might want to consider.
It's not necessarily that we can fix it, but here's what's actually driving criminals to commit crimes.
So let's start with A.
Poverty vs Violent Crime 00:03:55
It's the poverty rate.
It's the poverty rate.
And that's bad.
America's bad.
Yeah.
I mean, look, it's just not true.
There is not a consistent relationship with things like between things like poverty, unemployment, economic inequality, and violent crime.
There's some relationship between those things and property crime, things like theft, which is understandable, right?
If you're poor, you're more likely to steal.
But that's not the majority of violence, right?
Where we're talking about shootings, robberies, rapes, homicides, that is not driven by socioeconomic deprivation.
We know this because it's just what the data says.
I mean, take New York City, for example, 1989, which is the year before homicides peak in New York in 1990 with 2,262 killings.
The poverty rate in New York City was actually slightly lower than it was in 2016.
Why pick 2016?
Because that's the year before our valley number of homicides of 292.
So here you have poverty moving in the wrong direction, albeit slightly, and yet you have this massive, massive decline in homicides.
And I have yet to hear the sort of socioeconomic explanation for New York's decline in homicides.
It just, it's not out there because it's not a socioeconomic phenomenon.
It had a lot more to do with the fact that we reinvested in policing, we revolutionized policing, and we took seriously.
Standing by, standing by, because it's taking my brain like one 10-second delay to catch up with your information, which is also good.
So what you're saying is over a somewhat, I don't know, 20-plus-year period, the poverty rate basically stayed the same, stayed the same.
And so you would think that if poverty is what's causing violence, criminal and violent crimes, that the violent crime rate would have stayed the same, right?
Because we did nothing to solve poverty.
But it didn't.
If you look at what happened in New York, the crime rate went way down, like way down.
So the statistician, the philosopher, the scientist has to look at, well, what else was happening in New York City during that time?
And you in the book go into that.
I mean, we increased policing.
We took a much more aggressive approach toward crime and incarceration and truth and sentencing and so on, right?
Like we got very tough on crime in New York in a way that really did affect the crime rate.
So there's real data there from which you can extrapolate.
You may find it controversial.
You may not like the methods, but we know how to decrease crime.
Absolutely.
We've done it.
We've done it recently.
And we've done it in multiple jurisdictions.
And so it's really just a political choice that we're making now to sort of forego these time-tested methods of keeping crime under control.
And if you want to make the argument that just things like incarceration, policing, hotspot policing specifically, things like truth and sentencing, actually extending the amount of time that repeat offenders are going to spend behind bars, which is less time that they're going to be out on the street.
If you want to oppose those things by saying that the sort of social costs of that kind of program outweigh the potential benefits, then by all means, make that case, but make it honestly accept that there are going to be costs and try and convince people that those costs are worth bearing.
What people do instead is they just try to say, well, we can safely cut incarceration in half.
We can safely defund the police.
They don't actually help.
All we have to do is just reinvest that money in other social programs, which is frankly bunk.
I mean, again, we've just seen so many shocks to the system, whether it's changes in unemployment.
Look at the Great Recession, right?
Unemployment rate nearly doubles across the country.
The homicide rate declines by 15% during that period.
Crime didn't go, violent crime didn't go up during the Great Depression.
It's long past time for us to let go of that trope and just start dealing with the reality.
Antisocial Personality Risks 00:02:17
The argument I hear about incarceration, one of them is it takes these men, again, as we've pointed out a lot of times, minority men away from their families.
And that's part of the problem to begin with, is that fatherless homes lead to criminal, you know, kids who don't get ahead and then they become criminals and blah, blah, blah, on and on the circle goes.
So we're against incarceration and we're certainly against lengthy incarceration and mandatory minimums and so on.
You take that on as well.
Yeah, I mean, well, there's there's a big assumption underlying that argument, which is that the sort of men that are likely to find themselves behind bars would otherwise be sort of reliable sources of economic and emotional support if they were able to remain with their families.
That is a very big assumption that is based on zero data.
If you just look at the incarcerated population, what you're going to find is a really large group of highly antisocial individuals.
And there is a large body of sociological research showing that when you expose children to highly antisocial parents, their outcomes are worse, often worse than just the bad outcomes associated with being raised in a single parent family, right?
So we know that two parents are better than one, generally speaking.
But if one of those parents is highly antisocial in their disposition, it may actually be worse to have both parents present than it would be to have the one pro-social parent absent.
And that, you know, I think shocks a lot of people.
But I mean, just the numbers are astounding.
Take something like antisocial personality disorder.
This is a very sort of serious psychological diagnosis that sort of takes the form of lacking remorse and outward facing aggression and lack of patience and empathy.
The prevalence rate for men in just the general public for antisocial personality disorder is about 2% to 4%.
In prison settings, it can range from as high as 40 to 70%.
So on what grounds do we posit that we can release people from prison or not incarcerate them in the first place on the belief that they're going to go and be good fathers and good role models in their community?
I mean, the data just isn't there.
Bail Reform Debates 00:04:37
I mean, everything from some of the things that we're going to do is...
Doesn't that get to a cause and effect question, right?
Because this is what the people, for example, of no bail are saying.
Like you take a relatively decent person who falls off the non-crime wagon once, commits a mild crime and winds up sitting in Rikers for a year because they can't afford the bail.
And then they finally get tried and they put in and get a too long sentence in with all these maniacs that kind of helps turn them into a criminal where, you know, if you let them out on bail and stay with the family, maybe we could have kept them on the good side instead of the bad side.
Yeah, look, that happens, but almost never.
It's just not a particularly common outcome.
People have it in their head that incarceration is this very, very sort of common response to low-level criminality, even high-level criminality.
But the reality is that only 40% of felony convictions in the states result in a post-conviction prison sentence.
So 60% of people who are convicted of felonies are not then going to prison.
They're either getting out with time served in pre-child detention or on sort of pre-trial release conditions, or they're getting probation or a conditional discharge where it's like you behave for this period of time and then we'll drop the case against you.
So we'll defer conviction.
So yeah, there just isn't a large group of people who are committing low-level offenses who don't have serious criminal histories and then are getting shafted by the justice system and being forced to stay inside.
Again, that doesn't mean that you can't sort of cherry pick cases in which this does happen.
And I've been critical of sort of heavy reliance on cash bail insofar as I think there's something to the critique that you don't want to end up with a system in which someone who is dangerous but wealthy gets to buy their freedom, whereas someone who is relatively harmless but indigent gets stuck behind bars.
So my answer is, well, let's just reorient the inquiry around risk.
And when someone turns out to be risky, we'll hold them.
And if they're not risky, we'll release them.
That seems to solve the sort of central critique of cash bail in the United States.
Unfortunately, there is not a real appetite for doing that.
Even in the jurisdictions that have sort of made their bail reforms in such a way that judges have this option, you see a reluctance to exercise it.
And part of that has to do with, I think, the mischaracterization of a body of research that shows kind of what you described when you were framing your question, which is that there is evidence showing that for some people, for some people, exposure to incarceration will produce worse outcomes insofar as it will make them more likely to commit crimes in the future.
Now, the way that you study that is you have to create circumstances under which the decision to incarcerate is random.
But that decision is never random, right?
There are really good reasons why people get incarcerated and there are really good reasons why people get spared incarceration.
So what researchers do is they find a population of offenders who are engaged in criminal conduct that isn't so bad that it like becomes obvious that they'll get incarcerated, but also isn't so minor that it becomes obvious they'll be spared incarceration.
So they call these people on the margins of incarceration.
And then they look at the judges in that jurisdiction and they categorize them as sort of moderate, lenient, and then really harsh.
And they only look at the harsh and lenient judges and the cases get randomly assigned to those judges.
And they look at people who the harsh judges incarcerate and they look at people on the margins who the lenient judges set free.
And yes, the ones that get incarcerated have worse outcomes.
The problem though is that that research is then grafted on to a body of offenders that is not at all represented by the people in those studies.
The typical jail inmate, the typical prison inmate is not the marginal offender, right?
These are people who have a much more serious risk profile.
And so, yeah, I'm all for not incarcerating first-time offenders with no criminal history and who have engaged in low-level misconduct.
But that doesn't mean that it's a good idea to release somebody who has 15, 16, 20 prior arrests, which we see very commonly in the stories of really heinous crimes.
And I'm just frankly sick and tired of reading about.
I mean, you know, how many times do you read a story about a homicide and then it's like, oh, well, the person arrested was out on probation or out on parole and has five prior convictions, 15 private arrests.
Especially now, we have these soft on crime DAs in city after city.
Thankfully, I mean, like there was good news this week out in San Francisco.
We know Chesa Boudin got recalled and his replacement as DA fired 15 DAs.
Empirical Evidence on Safety 00:04:31
Yay, go, right?
Like get rid of them.
If you don't want to prosecute crime, get the hell out of the DA's office.
So like bit by bit, as we see these experiments in, as you would call it, criminal injustice fail, even far left cities like San Francisco are coming back to reality and saying, hold on, this is insanity.
No one can live like this.
All these approaches have been afforded to these cities by years of tough criminal justice programs that gave them safety and security and a false belief that they could reverse all the policies and have the same outcomes.
Right.
That's exactly right.
I mean, you know, is there a case to be made that there was an overcorrection in the 80s and 90s in the punitive direction?
Yeah.
But the answer to that is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, right?
Like we should be trying to reform at the margins and make the system as fair as possible without eskewing the benefits that were associated with the program of policing and incarceration that helped bring about one of the greatest achievements in urban American history, which was our violent crime decline.
I mean, I don't think people fully appreciate what it means to a community to have crime under control.
That allows kids to concentrate in school in ways that they just wouldn't be able to if violence was more prevalent.
It encourages economic investment that creates jobs, that gives people security and the sense of security that allows them to go out into the world and be productive.
If that is lost, that's how you get these sort of generational, you know, pockets of poverty and disinvestment that no one wants to see.
And I think part of the problem is, is that the criminal justice debate is sort of framed as one between compassionate supporters of these communities and people who, you know, just don't like black and brown people.
And that couldn't be further from the truth.
I mean, the people I know making the sort of cases that I'm making genuinely want to see these communities better off.
We're aware of what the research says.
I mean, Rafael, it could be the truth.
It's just that the labels are switched.
That's the truth, right?
Because these Democrats, if they really cared about these black and brown communities, they wouldn't be using them to advance their own quest for power or electoral hopes, et cetera.
They'd be taking an open, honest look at the problem and for real solutions, like people like you are and our other friends at the Manhattan Institute.
Yeah, no, I mean, it really is frustrating in part because a lot of the people kind of making the most outrageous claims about criminal justice, they would never step foot in some of the neighborhoods that have the biggest crime problems.
They don't live there.
They wouldn't dare walk through those neighborhoods at night.
They wouldn't send their kids to school there.
They have no idea what it's like to wake up in the morning as a 15-year-old kid and dread going to school, not because you didn't study for a pop quiz or something like that, but because you know there's a gangbanger in the school that you've got beef with that wants to jump you.
And just the anxiety.
They have no idea what it's like to hear gunshots at night.
And I think there needs to be a just sort of real conversation and a real exposure of these people to the realities of violence.
And I think that would actually be a really good first step in sort of taking us back.
I feel like, so I'm 51 years old and I do feel like people 10 years older and 10 years younger, that's the group that really, really gets this, that gets this easily because we lived it.
You know, I grew up first 10 years in the 1970s when crime was terrible.
My parents didn't turn on the news every night, but I saw enough of it to know it was very dangerous out there.
We were in New York State.
I go down to visit my Nana, who was right outside of New York City, and there was no way we'd go into New York.
I mean, it was a hellhole at that time.
And then you get into the mid 80s and things starts, you know, people start taking a hard look at this and through the 90s, you know, just starting to come out of it.
And then this sort of glorious period where the crime situation had largely gotten under control in many places like New York, where I then moved with my entire family.
And now I'm on the back end watching it deteriorate as a result of people forgetting the history or just never knowing about it at all and thinking there is a new way of finding safety and security and a kinder, gentler way with criminals.
And it's just, there's no empirical evidence for their approach.
And now the empirical evidence is disproving all of their hopes and dreams.
Conservative Political Donations 00:15:10
Will they listen?
Rafael, I got to run, but I want people to buy this book.
This is an important book.
And you guys do great work, you in particular.
So to tell the audience again, it's criminal injustice, injustice, with the push for decarceration and depolicing gets wrong and who it hurts most.
We're not done with this debate.
You're going to need the facts.
Rafael provides them.
Rafael Mayangual, all the best with it.
Thank you.
Good luck with it.
Up next, it's Trump versus Pence today in Arizona.
And we have got one of the candidates smack dab in the middle of that fight.
On Monday, we brought you the Trump back candidate for the GOP nomination for governor in Arizona, Carrie Lake.
Today we have her main opponent, Karen Taylor Robeson.
And she has been endorsed by Mike Pence.
So it's kind of interesting, right?
You got Trump, Pence splitting on the candidates.
We've seen this in a couple of states, but that's one of the many reasons all eyes are on this primary race in Arizona.
Karen, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Megan.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, my pleasure.
All right, so I don't know if you saw your opponent's interview on the show, but her essential description of you was as a rhino, Republican in name only.
She thinks you're sort of a soft Republican, as our viewers today might understand, that that word is used about people like Susan Collins of Maine or Mitt Romney.
And she ties you very much to John McCain and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, who she says are also not on board with the sort of America-first MAGA agenda agenda, which I think is why she uses the term rhino.
I want to give you the chance to respond to that.
Well, I am a lifelong Republican.
I am an unapologetic conservative.
And people who know me know that I check every box.
You know, I believe our rights come from God and not the government.
I believe in the right to life.
I've been pro-life my entire life, always have been, always will be.
Second Amendment, I mean, I could go through the entire conservative platform and I check every box.
And I have been conservative my entire life.
I have worked for Republican candidates.
I have worked for conservative causes.
I worked for Ronald Reagan.
It was my first job out of college.
I worked for Republican candidates, you know, since before I could even vote.
And so it's kind of rich coming from a woman who walked doors for Barack Obama, who donated to Barack Obama, for her to name call and call others a rhino.
She's an actress, and with every single passing day, people are beginning to understand they can't trust her because she is very, her actions are very, very different than her words.
In fact, Fox News just this week reported on a, they had a, somebody found a meme that she posted about a week before Donald Trump was inaugurated that basically it was a picture of Donald Trump, said, not my president, and even had suggestions for revenge donations to Planned Parenthood, to the ACLU, to the NAACP with hashtag not my president.
And so, you know, while I was out raising money for and supporting Donald Trump both in 2016 and again in 2020, she was out telling people he was not her president.
So it's very interesting to be called a rhino by somebody with that kind of background.
Her campaign did respond to Fox saying this is very clearly a news anchor's post reporting that there was outrage against President Trump's election and asking if people were going to visibly protest.
In other words, this isn't her sentiment.
This is a news anchor saying this sentiment is out there.
Would you like to weigh in on it?
You know, do you plan on doing any of these things to protest him?
That's what she said.
But I think, you know, on our program, she admitted that she had supported some Democrats in the past and had different party affiliations, but she thinks that is an asset for her because that describes Donald Trump.
It describes some of his base who used to be Democrats, but just got so disaffected that they came over to the Republican side.
She thinks that's an asset for her.
For you, I think she thinks you're too soft today on some of these core issues that are important to the MAGA crew.
What do you think?
Well, I think her overnight conversion is an insult to Donald Trump and to Ronald Reagan, who was also a Democrat.
But their conversion was over years of talking about conservative issues.
She found God Guns in the GOP about a day and a half before she decided to run for governor.
I mean, it is just a fake.
She is an opportunist.
And with each passing day, more and more is revealed about her history and her character.
You know, it's one thing to vote for Barack Obama, which she has admitted to doing.
It's another thing to write checks to him.
And it's a whole new level to go out and knock doors for the most progressive president in modern history.
She is just not who she says she is.
And so she's hard to, and then as, you know, she, you know, she is, she was a purveyor of fake news for 27 years, and she freely admits that she was lying to us for much of that time.
And my response to that is, to be the governor, you don't have 27 years to learn your next job.
It took you 27 years to figure out you were peddling fake news in your last job.
You know, I have spent the last 30 years in the private sector building a career, building communities, creating jobs and giving back to my community and giving back to conservative causes.
I have a 30-year track record as an executive leading teams, accomplishing results, signing both sides of a paycheck.
And Arizonans are looking forward and they want a CEO, somebody who knows how to get things done.
And I have a record of doing that.
What do you mean when you say that she admits she was a purveyor of fake news for all those years and that she was lying to people?
What do you mean?
She's admitted as much, that she was reading what was put in front of her and that it was fake news.
So she's admitted that.
And those are her words.
So I just, you know, I am who I am.
My record is abundantly clear what I've done, who I've supported, and I'm ready to lead.
You two have supported Democrats, though, in the past.
You donated to Democrats like Representative Ruben, is it Gallago and other Democrats and other local races?
Ruben Gallego.
I did donate to Ruben Gallego after he was elected in a 40-plus Democrat district here in Arizona.
And he also is the only member of our delegation on the House Armed Services Committee.
And everybody who knows me knows how much I love and support our military and the importance of the aerospace and defense industry in Arizona.
And he is the only voice representing that industry and our military in Washington, D.C.
So just to clarify, you donated to him because this is a district in which the Republican had absolutely no chance.
It was D plus 40.
So you wanted to back the Democrat who is best aligned with your own vision.
Who's best aligned with the importance of the military to Arizona?
You know, our principal military installations in Arizona have a tremendous economic benefit to the state, $13 billion in annual economic impact.
And again, I have been a big supporter of our military for decades.
And he's the only voice in our delegation who has a seat at the table on the House Armed Services Committee.
I got it.
I got it.
That makes sense.
Yeah, go ahead.
I would put my record of donating to Republican candidates in conservative causes up against anybody running for office today.
She was very animated on this show as she has been on Twitter about she said you exploited older voters by sending out a solicitation for donations that suggested you were going to be pushing the Trump agenda.
I'm paraphrasing right now.
When in fact it was a solicitation for you and it made it sound more like they were going to be giving to something more directly aligned with Trump.
Here she is on Twitter.
I'll let her put it in her words.
Here it is.
These kind-hearted retirees would click the link and little did they know they were signing up for a recurring donation, but not to build the wall or help President Trump.
It was a recurring donation to a woman that they don't even know.
Our team spoke to some of the victims of this ploy.
Going to investigate donations to Karen Taylor Robeson, a candidate for Arizona governor.
I have a record that you made a donation to her.
Do you recall making this donation?
Karen Keene, I'm not familiar with this person that you're even telling me.
I don't remember anymore.
I did not give her a donor.
She's a pleasure.
Obviously, a part of her campaign to call you those names and go find voters who sound like they didn't know they donated to you.
Would you like to respond?
Absolutely.
You know, digital fundraising efforts that are done all over this country.
You probably get them.
We all get them every single day.
And anytime somebody wants their money back, they get it.
But I can tell you that my refund rate is far lower than the average.
In fact, by implication, she's attacking Donald Trump because his refund rate for doing the same thing is a multiple of my refund rate.
So she's attacking Donald Trump as well.
And it's quite interesting that she has, you know, she doesn't report refunds.
So that's a statistical impossibility.
And so, you know, from my perspective, it's much, much better to be completely transparent.
You know, if you want to take a pair of shoes back to Macy's, they refund your money if you don't like your shoes.
So anybody who wants a refund, we give them a refund.
And I will stand by our practice.
And she needs to be transparent.
She also needs to include Donald Trump in her complaint about me.
She suggests that you're trying to buy the election.
You're married to a very rich man, as I understand it.
And, you know, that you've definitely thrown a lot more money at this race than she has.
She's in, I think, the low couple of millions in Europe, around 13 million.
And that you're thus going to be beholden to that donor class in a way she says Trump wasn't, and in a way she says she won't be.
Well, a couple of things.
You know, she was living in the living rooms of Arizona for 27 years.
So her name ID walking into this race was extremely high.
Meanwhile, the last 30 years, I was in the private sector working to build communities, and I wasn't on TV for 27 years.
But she's also attacking any successful woman.
I have had a very successful career.
So, you know, she doesn't know the source of my money.
But I have been putting my money, my family treasure, my time, my career on the shelf to give back to Arizona.
Meanwhile, she has been using her campaign to support herself and her family.
All you have to do is look at her disclosures, and she's paying family members.
She, you know, spends an awful lot of money at resorts and fine dining establishments.
And it's just, it's so hypocritical, but it's, you know, quite frankly, it's no surprise coming through.
You, as I understand it, and obviously, since I didn't know how to pronounce Galega, it's Gallego.
Gallega.
I don't pay enough attention to the legislators coming from Arizona unless they really hit national prominence.
So, you know, forgive me.
But I don't explain to me why you, as somebody who seems to have donated to President Trump, raised a bunch of money for President Trump, supported President Trump's agenda for many years, did not get his endorsement.
Like, why did he go with her over you?
I think he was given bad information, but I, and I can't explain it because, yes, we donated and raised an awful lot of money.
Several members of his family were at our home for fundraisers.
And I will defend Donald Trump's record all day long, and I do every single day.
He has an incredible record of accomplishment.
You know, we can rattle off everything from USMCA to getting our NATO partners to pay their fair share to historically low black and Hispanic unemployment to the rollback of federal regulations to 234 federal judges.
I can go on and on.
My daughter worked for him at the White House.
She was there until January 20th, turned out the lights at the White House.
So we have a long history of supporting supporting the president.
But what I'm looking for is the endorsement of the voters of Arizona.
This race is about Arizona.
It's about Arizona's future.
That's what I'm out there earning every day.
Don't you think it has to do with January 6th?
I mean, frankly, you know, like she's not a believer that Biden won.
She calls him an illegitimate president.
She says this is a stolen election.
And I know, and I pointed out to her, you've said there were problems.
It was by no means a perfect election.
And there were some unfairnesses in the process, but not stolen.
Don't you think that's what did it?
It may have.
I don't know.
Again, that's, you know, you'll have to ask President Trump why he did it.
You know, I wouldn't be running if Donald Trump was still in the White House.
I'm running because Joe Biden's in the White House and our freedoms are under attack.
Arizona's borders are overrun.
I tell everywhere I go, we're being invaded from the South and our freedoms are under attack from the East and Joe Biden.
The Biden-Harris administration is a disaster in this entire country.
And Arizona families are feeling it every day.
They go to the, you know, having to make a decision whether they're putting gas in their gas tank or food on their tables or asking whether they can even fill their gas tank up to go to work.
And I will bring to Arizona a vision for education freedom, economic freedom.
There's 70% of our adult population in Arizona came from somewhere else.
We are still that shining city on the hill.
And the left is coming for Arizona.
And I'm going to do everything I can, everything I can to win in 2022 in 10 days from now.
The Democrats are coming after me now because they know I'm the nominee that they're going to have trouble beating in November.
They want Kerry Lake to win because they know they can defeat her.
They think they can do better in a state that's not hardcore red with a Kerry Lake sort of Trump MAGA type candidate.
But when, you know, I had an interesting reversal with her when she was on the phone.
I mean, when she was on the show, because first she said either one of you would beat Hobbes, the Democrat.
She said, we're not going to lose to her in Arizona.
But then she changed it later and said, no, I'm actually the only one who can beat her, that you would lose to Hobbes.
Beating the Democratic Candidate 00:06:01
So what do you think?
Do you believe that either one of you would beat Hobbes?
I believe I will beat Hobbes.
Arizona has a Do you think she will?
Do you think she could?
I don't.
Based on the numbers that I've seen, no, I do not.
Arizona has a long history of electing the person, not the party.
In fact, 20 years ago in 2002, in a red wave year, we had a Republican candidate lose to Janet Napolitano.
That's right.
So it can happen.
Arizona now has two Democrat senators.
Never in my lifetime did I think I would see that.
But Carrie Lake has put herself in a position where she's not going to be able to appeal to the majority of Arizonans.
We now have more independents registered in Maricopa County than we have Republicans, which is a first-year question about whether you can go hardcore MAGA in Arizona in today's day.
That's one of the reasons why your race is getting national attention, the split between the two of you and between Trump and Pence.
She is polling ahead of you.
What do you make of that?
Because the latest polls show her the Real Clear Politics Average showed her, I think, it was 8.5% ahead of you.
So how do you like your chances in this primary race on August 2nd?
I feel really, really good about our chances.
There's a lot of polls out there.
The polls that I listen to are my own internal polls.
And the poll, of course, that matters is the poll on August 2nd.
And of course, the voting's already underway.
So that's voting day.
But as we now know, election day is weeks long and months long in some places.
One of the many issues that has been thrust into the national conversation.
Karen, thank you so much for coming out.
Appreciate it.
And we're going to be watching this race very, very closely.
We'd love to have you back on after it's over.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for having me.
All the best.
Okay.
Up next, a deep dive with our panelists on Kelly's court.
The probe into Hunter Biden hits a quote critical stage.
They're basically saying he's going to get charged with something.
They're not going to do it within two months of the midterm elections.
So that means ASAP basically means August is the last chance.
And that's what we'll get into.
Is he actually going to be charged by the feds and with what?
And what about Amber Heard, who has now just filed an appeal?
We'll tell you her grounds and whether she's got a chance.
Don't go away.
It's time for Kelly's court on the docket today.
Hunter Biden, Steve Bannon, Amber Heard, and a woman who is suing a man for not showing up for a date.
I kid you not.
This is going to be fun.
Joining me now, criminal defense attorney Jonas Bilbore and Mark Eiglarsch, former prosecutor, now criminal defense attorney, and he does civil work as well.
Great to see you both.
Welcome back.
I was just talking about, can you believe that?
That we got this started in 2004?
Are we that old?
No, don't say it.
Yes.
Yes.
I was still married to Dan back then.
So it was Kendall's court.
And since then, I've moved on to another husband, had three children.
Wow.
Wow.
We're getting old, but we're getting wiser.
We're getting more brilliant in our legal analysis.
You two are.
Yes.
And wearing more makeup, really, you know?
Yeah, why not?
Why not?
That's what comes with age, the need for it, that in genucelle.
Okay, let's talk about Hunter Biden, who's not using the right facial products.
He's not making any good decisions, as a matter of fact.
He's really just into his crack, his hookers, and his guns.
And there, the three shall meet under the law.
The law says.
You're not, I mean, I don't know about the hookers and the guns, but you're not allowed to have the crack and the gun at the same time, as it turns out.
Something he's apparently admitted to many times.
And what we read now, John, is that it's on the list of things he's being investigated for as all the Hunter Biden stuff, all of it, all the weird stuff overseas, seems to have boiled down to whether he broke gun laws or drug laws, right?
Have I accurately summarized where we think the federal investigation is?
Well, pretty much.
And I think it's summarized thusly because those are the tax.
I forgot about the tax law.
Sorry, go ahead.
Right.
The tax, right?
The tax evasion.
But those are the easy charges that can be made against Hunter Biden.
Because trust me, when you prosecute Hunter Biden, you're not just prosecuting Hunter Biden.
Like Hunter Biden's case is going to have tentacles.
It's not like Nancy Pelosi's husband getting popped for DWI, where the worst thing that's going to happen is, oh, sorry, old man, but we're going to take your license for 90 days.
This is way bigger than that.
So I don't know if, you know, the feds are going to try to get the easy stuff, the drugs, the prostitution, the firearms, the stuff that's not going to affect America as much as just sort of a way to get around it and finally prosecute this loser, or if it's going to really, really blow up.
And I'm a little scared by that, but I think, you know, we're going to have to see because they're just, this is just the tip of the iceberg, what they got.
I mean, they wouldn't have any of this.
They wouldn't have any of this, Megan, if he wasn't stupid enough to drop his laptop off at a third party place that a disinterested party's establishment.
So that's where they're getting all this evidence of his bad behavior.
And in a way, Mark, the feds are in a tough position on the gun and the drug stuff because the evidence is pretty clearly there, but it's not really the kind of thing they would normally run around prosecuting.
Right.
I don't think.
So now it's a tough situation because they don't want to look like they're doing special favors for him.
Right.
Listen, if I represent him, I'm celebrating right now if their investigation is now solely focused on guns and crack.
Firearm Application Lies 00:06:53
Because number one, how serious, really.
And number two, who knows whether they're really going to bring those charges?
They're not in the business going after those types of cases typically.
Third, it's not clear.
In other words, yeah, in his book, he brags about using crack every 15 minutes or whatever.
But do we really know that he answered untruthfully when he said that he wasn't?
Listen, I'd rather be on the prosecution side, but you know, I'm a defense lawyer.
So I'm thinking like in his mind, maybe during the time period that he answered the question, he was either in denial.
Explain the question.
They don't know what we're talking about.
Where he said, I'll say it.
I don't have it in front of me, but in 2018, he responded no to a question on, I think it was his gun application record that asked, are you an unlawful user of or addicted to marijuana or any depressant stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?
And he said no.
Meanwhile, five years earlier, he'd been discharged from the Navy Reserve for testing positive for cocaine.
Family members have spoken out about his history of drug use.
According to his memoir, Beautiful Things, he was smoking crack every 15 minutes during the period in which he bought the gun.
So by his own hand, which wrote allegedly beautiful things, he admits, he admits he was smoking crack when he said no to that question.
Hold on, hold on, no.
And now I'm going to, now people are going to roll their eyes, but hold on.
I'm a lawyer.
So are you, Megan?
Let's read that question again.
The didn't ask during a time period.
They asked the same question.
Are you?
As he's answering that question, read the first part and then we'll go to the next one.
Are you an unlawful user of, doesn't have to just be an addict, user of or addicted to marijuana?
Nope, one at a time.
Are you, now they didn't say what period of time?
Are you, as you're signing this, an unlawful user of drugs, right?
And his answer would be no, because maybe that day or that week he had quit.
They can't prove otherwise.
Second, stop it.
Second, no, I got you.
Now, the second part is, are you an addiction?
An addict?
Number one, denial is part of, you know, the whole thing.
So does he really label himself as an addict?
Had he stopped in that brief moment, whether it be a day or two?
Does he want the stigma of being labeled an addict?
Does he believe he can conquer the addiction by not calling himself an addict?
These are ambiguous terms.
Stop rolling your eyes.
I win.
Bad question.
Guilty, John.
How is that going to lie?
Appeal to somebody.
I've always said that if I'm ever in trouble, I'm calling Mark, and that is why, because you can create a great argument at enough.
And look, he wasn't sober for the five minutes that he filled out that application.
Although I will say, I will give you this.
That is the world's dumbest question because nobody is going to say, oh, you know what?
Yeah, I am an illegal user of drugs.
They're just going to rip up the application.
They're not going to testify truthfully on that kind of application.
And it's up to the people who are vetting those applications to do a little digging to make sure you're not crazy on drugs.
I'm going to let you finish your point, but let me just interject.
It's in large part to his own father that he even had to answer that question and that lying in response to that form 4473 question is a federal felony.
This is from a Charles C.W. Cook article on National Review that's punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison.
So take it up with daddy.
Once again, your daddy issues are ruining your life.
Go ahead, John.
No, and that's a great point.
My point was made, and that's exactly right.
I don't know if the daddy issues are ruining his life or if he's ruining his daddy's life because what came first, the chicken or the egg?
But yeah, that's right.
I would ask all of you, as I would ask my jurors, do you think you can come up with a way to word that question with more detail or in a better way?
And everybody would say, Well, yeah, I would say, have you used in the last week?
Have you, you know, whatever you want to want to specify since they didn't, that question sucks, especially for prosecution.
And I know prosecutors are thinking that.
All right, well, let's move on to the other piece because it's also illegal under federal law to use banned drugs while in possession of a firearm.
So you're supposed to answer the question on the application for the firearm, honestly.
But you're also, once you get the drugs, or sorry, the gun, not supposed to use drugs while in possession of it, which matters.
This is Charles C.W. Cook and a good point.
A great deal, because a week or so after he purchased his firearm, Hunter Biden appeared in a bunch of sorted photographs with one hand on the trigger of the gun and his other hand, of course, cupping his genitals, something he loves to do.
While what appears to be crack cocaine can be seen on a plate alongside used and packeted condoms, gross, alongside drug paraphernalia and a spoon.
What do you mean, not enough?
Not enough.
Listen, crack right next to him.
I'm sorry.
You tested it, Megan.
What do you mean?
You said appears to be crack.
Do you think, do you think that ever in the criminal justice arena, they have ever prosecuted someone for possession without a lab test?
We don't know what that is.
You don't know what it is.
I see that.
That one's a little shaky.
It's a little shaky, but Johnny, you told me.
Do you need a test to convince a jury that's crack?
You're not going to need a test to convince a jury that that's crack.
And here's the other thing.
Even, I mean, he's committing crimes left and right, but let's look at the other, the bigger point.
This man should not have a license to possess a firearm.
And you don't need to prove what drug is on the coffee table when you snatch his license.
So even if they don't successfully prosecute him on that, they've got to yank the firearms license if they haven't already.
This guy, he's just a walk-in time.
He had, didn't I read that he had his friend actually was so concerned over his drug use and his possession of the firearm that she took the firearm and threw it in a public garbage can across the street from a school, but which is also everyone in his orbit is stupid.
Yeah, everyone.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I don't disagree.
I don't disagree that during the time period per his own admission with the drugs that he was allegedly doing, which by the way, doesn't prove conclusively that he was doing drugs, but with what he says in his own book, I think that's enough to prove, if true, that he shouldn't have been possessing a gun.
I'm not making that argument.
I am solely making a legal argument, which is what we're here for as lawyers in Kelly court, that I don't believe that they can carry their burden on this case solely because a picture in the background looks like something you guys think may be crack.
Sorry, doesn't do it in a court.
Political Prosecution Tactics 00:15:23
I think they're going to get the little Hallie, the then girlfriend, who was the dumb-dumb, who thought a better place would be right across from a school.
And she could absolutely be a witness to say, yeah, he did it.
He loved to wield the gun and he loved to grab his genitals and he loved to do the crack in between.
All right, let's move on to the next question, though, about possible prostitution charges, because that's another crime that doesn't often get, you know, pursued, get prosecuted, though sometimes it does.
And if your name's not Hunter Biden, definitely sometimes does.
I don't know.
I don't know anyone to whom it's happened, but so I read they do go after both prostitutes and Johns.
And Hunter Biden, if there's anything he loves more than crack, it's prostitutes.
I mean, the stories are out of control.
Documents, texts, videos showing he spent, this is citing the Daily Mail, $30,000 on quote escorts in just five months.
This is why he needed that seat on Burisma, the Ukrainian company.
He had so many hookers running around and they don't come cheap, Mark.
The president's son wrote checks to a Ukrainian woman.
Oh, speaking of Ukraine, whose transactions were red flagged by banks for suspicious activity.
Okay, this is like an anti-corruption thing that they normally look into.
They're like, why is he doing this?
Turns out he's hiring hookers and a lot of them.
He's got a check here.
They're showing a picture of the Daily Mail for $3,400.
It says the money is for the Blue Water Wellness Reboot.
And that's the name of the rehab facility.
Joe Biden was loaning Hunter money to pay, you know, to pay to go to.
But in fact, we believe it may have been all one big disguise to cover his payments to the hookers.
Aren't you so happy your kids are okay?
Megan, if I had a dollar for every time you said genital and hooker so far, I'd be a wealthy fellow.
You do could hire one of these hookers.
I mean, they're not coming cheap.
$3,400 is a lot.
So would they go after him for quote transporting prostitutes across state lines, which, by the way, violates another set of laws.
You can't use the hooker and you can't transport the hooker across the state lines.
Should I go first and tell you how I don't think this is going to happen again to everyone's dismay legally?
Let me, can I play Mark for a minute?
Let me just play Mark.
Let me tell you what Mark's going to say.
Mark's going to say, we're not going to prove that they're hookers.
Mark's going to say, what if they were his girlfriends?
And he's just buying expensive gifts.
Am I right or am I right?
You're in the ballpark.
I mean, unless you bring in cinnamon, amber, fallopia, and toiletta to say, yeah, that's what he did, then I don't think you have a case.
Fallopia is the greatest name ever.
That's a new one.
Thank you.
Someone has used it.
Maybe we could.
I don't know.
If they're in Ukraine, it's going to be tough, but this is alleged just across state lines, not across country lines.
Look, I think you're right.
If this is what all of the big web has boiled down to, Hunter's in a good position.
The tax charges are a different matter.
Those looked pretty good against him, but he did pay over a million dollars in back taxes once he found himself in the federal in the fed's crosshairs, which lowers the likelihood of prostitution, prosecution.
Yeah, but doesn't eliminate it.
So, all right, final predictions.
Will Hunter Biden in the next 45 days be charged with a crime, Mark?
No.
That's it.
All right, Johnna.
I'm going to say.
And by the way, wait, hold on.
Not because he didn't do anything so you can minimize the hate mail, folks.
I'm just saying, I don't think based upon the analysis that I provided and more that I can share with you if you just go to speaktomark.com.
I am telling you, I don't think they could prove all these charges.
And they wouldn't bring it unless they got that exactly.
That's why he might get charged, Mark, because now then he can become a sympathetic figure instead of the idiot that he is.
Because if they charge him with this crap and then they can't prove it, then it's like, oh my God, my son, my son, Hunter, look, he's an innocent man.
And that's going to be more theater.
And that's going to be a bunch of BS.
And that's why he probably will get charged, but not with anything significant.
That's a good theory.
Either way, it looks good for him.
Either way, we're celebrating if hypothetically he was my client.
I think you're right.
I think you would be celebrating.
I think this is kind of pathetic that all of these multiple violations of the law will result in nothing for him.
Pathetic, can we flip that?
Pathetic that we have due process and you actually have to prove things.
Not like it looks like a crack or it might be sugar.
Who knows?
If his name were Joe Schmo or whatever, Hunter Schmo instead of Hunter Biden, no, he'd be, no, not on this many violations and the tax violations, all that stuff.
No way he would be under, he would be getting indicted.
Okay.
Let's move on because Steve Bannon is also in some really big trouble.
And the jury, if people haven't been paying attention, he's been on trial this week for contempt of Congress.
The jury's deliberating right now.
We're kind of on verdict watch at this moment.
It could come back at any moment.
And the reason he's on trial is because he got subpoena by the January 6th committee to turn over all documents and information and sit for depositions, I think, too.
And he basically said, pound Sam, you can go take a long walk off a short pier and tried to claim executive privilege.
But that was sort of a bogus claim from the start, John.
I mean, I can see just from any, I'm trying to be fair to the guy, but like he wasn't even working in the White House for most of the time covered by the subpoena.
Yeah.
My take on what really happened here.
Now, first, let me let me jump ahead.
I think this is a, this is another BS prosecution.
I think it's just the feds kind of sticking it to him because what he did here was when he got subpoenaed, he said, I'm not playing your game.
I'm not participating to himself.
I'm not participating in these hearings.
You can go pound Sand, got on the phone with his lawyers and said, you know, make me look like I'm not saying go pound Sam, but I'm telling them to go Pound Sam.
So what do the lawyers do?
Then the lawyers are like, oh, subpoena.
I don't know.
Blubly flub.
Let's try to change the date.
Let's change the scope.
Let's do something.
Let's talk about these subpoenas.
And while they're doing that, which is perfectly normal and happens all the time in civil and administrative cases, by the way, not involving famous people or sometimes involving famous people.
While they're doing all that, the DOG is like, you know what?
Forget it, Bannon.
We're going to pants you, your pants.
We're going to take your lunch money.
We're going to prosecute you for two misdemeanor charges, which the most you can do on these charges is 60 days in jail, which is nothing in real time.
So that's what they did to him.
And so now Steve Bannon's like, well, wait a minute.
I didn't exactly say I wasn't going to supply anything.
I just said I needed to, the scope and the dates and the this.
So even if he loses this trial, which he probably will, it's again, it's a whole lot of nothing.
He didn't want to participate in this, in this theater, which is what these hearings seem to be to me.
Just to tell the listeners, it's a federal trial.
It's been seven decades since someone went to jail for this offense, criminal contempt of Congress.
So, you know, once again, we have, you know, somebody connected to a very famous politician who may or may not be prosecuted.
In Bannon's case, yes, in Hunter's case, we'll see, for crimes that are definitely on the books, but aren't always pursued.
Having said that, Mark, he does appear to have like stuck his finger right in the eye of the congressional committee and said, F you, I'm not doing it.
Yeah, that appears he did.
And let me say two things.
One, Jonna is so hardcore.
60 days in jail is no big deal, really.
That's a lot of time.
I wouldn't want to do that.
And number two, I will say that the stronger argument is not necessarily executive privilege, but is to somehow get his lawyers to say the date that they asked him to come forward.
Listen, that's a suggestion in our business.
And I do deal with subpoenas all day long from federal prosecutors.
It kind of is.
It's not always a hard set date.
You kind of work with things.
You negotiate.
You say, well, maybe we'll do this.
And he's going to say, you know, that's my lawyer's doing.
We're still working on it.
The committee has said, time is of the essence.
You know, it was a real date and time is of the essence.
Like, we don't have a lot of time.
And of course, the reason for that, and they've stated this publicly elsewhere in New York Times and also, they realize they're probably going to lose control of Congress in the midterm elections.
And they really want to have this wrapped up.
They love their little investigation.
They want to get all their witnesses.
And they realize that a Republican-controlled house probably doesn't give two damns about Steve Bannon, what he has to say.
So like, I don't know if that's a real time is of the essence argument.
I mean, I suppose if the judge is, you know, a Democrat, maybe, but I don't think the judge is a Democrat.
Isn't it a Trump appointee?
I mean, you're in a Democrat area in DC, but I think the judge might be a Trump appointee.
So I don't know how this, yeah, how does this, how does this shake out with the jury?
Like, what do you, what do you predict is going to happen, Ant?
Well, you know, this is interesting.
I'm wondering why he actually didn't maybe waive jury for a case like this, because, you know, maybe a Trump appointed judge would be a little bit more sympathetic and kind of get rid of it.
But he's probably he's probably dead to rights, legally speaking, because there are laws in the books that say, you know, would you have to comply with subpoenas, et cetera?
And the jury might not understand.
Oh, no, wait a minute.
Actually, let me take that back.
The jury is probably going to be very savvy because it's a jury, a DC jury.
A lot of them work in the area.
They know how politics works.
So I don't know.
Maybe for that reason, they'll either hang or they'll find a way to find him not guilty.
I wonder because in its federal court, which is always like, you know, that's better, I think.
It's just better in general to be in federal court, although the feds usually win.
They usually win when you're in federal court.
But I think that, you know, you still got coming from the same jury pool in federal court.
And these are going to be DC area people, which tend to be very, very blue, very, very blue.
And in the very, very blue circle, Steve Bannon is the devil.
He's the devil.
It might be worse than Trump to these people.
One of the jurors admitted that they watched at least the opening prime time January 6th hearing.
Only Democrats watch that.
I mean, only partisans watch that and news people like me.
Although I didn't, I made my team do it.
I didn't want to watch any of that.
But anyway, my point is that's not good for him.
So I think the odds are very much against Steve Bannon.
And I don't know.
There's no plea deal to be cut.
I mean, he went into the trial mark saying, never mind, I'll give you what you want.
I'll sit for a deposition.
And by that point, they were like, nope.
That does help.
You know, if I'm a juror go, well, he was going to do it.
And maybe he was counting on the delay to help, you know, iron things out.
But I also think that if the prosecutors keep this simple, we sent him a subpoena.
He was supposed to show up.
He thumbed his nose at it.
Now he's arguing.
It's gray.
It was black and white.
He didn't do it.
Find him guilty.
I disagree with Johnna.
I would never waive jury.
I would want, as a defense lawyer, to have 12 people and just find one who just says, you know what?
I'm not going to go along with the rest.
I don't think he should be found guilty.
And at least you get a hung jury.
I wouldn't trust just because this is a Trump appointee, let's say, that the judge would then say, so anything under the whole Trump arena, you know, I'll go in that direction.
This judge may say, you know, what you did was thumb your nose at a subpoena and we value subpoenas and you have to abide by that.
I do think the going for a jury trial suggests he knows he has no defense.
Like if he thought he had a very solid case, a very solid defense, I think he'd be happy to put it in the hands of the judge.
But he doesn't, he really has no defense.
No, he didn't put on a defense.
I mean, it's really like maybe my lawyers misled me.
This is a bullshit crime.
Who the hell knows with Steve Bannon?
Maybe he wants a conviction.
Maybe he wants to like a moment.
Can I throw out a theory?
Can I throw out a theory with that?
His podcast apparently is rocketing up the charts.
He's like in the top 10.
He only then, you know, becomes a stronger and more marketable and a bit of a martyr if he's found guilty.
I, you know, I don't follow him, but I would imagine that this is all helping him.
That's true.
His podcast was like at 111 and now it's in the top 10.
And if you're telling me it's really potentially only 60 days or two, two months, I don't know.
I heard it could be potentially longer than that.
But if that's all it is, I don't know.
That's not that hard to do.
And I doubt he'd get the full time anyway.
Maybe he won't get any time.
Maybe he'll get some sort of a slap on the wrist.
Right.
Okay.
Let's move on to January 6th, because the whole reason Steve Bannon's testimony was relevant was because they're going after the big kahuna, and that's Donald Trump.
And certainly they've dinged up Trump, you know, his character in these hearings.
They've dinged him up politically, which is really their goal.
But the big, big question is whether they're going, have they laid the foundation for legal charges against Donald Trump, insurrection, conspiracy to seditious insurrection?
Like, have they done that?
Because there's a large faction of Democrats that want to see that.
They want to see Donald Trump in handcuffs.
And of course, exit the political scene, but that's the consolation price.
They want to see him in handcuffs.
I don't know.
I mean, I've watched enough of it and read enough about it to say they don't have anywhere close to what they need for that.
But what do you guys think?
Johnna?
No, I'm with you.
I don't think they have anything close.
And, you know, I don't, maybe I'm in the minority here, but I really think the January 6th hearings are nothing but political theater, kind of like a Hail Mary.
They know they're coming up on the midterms.
They know that I don't know if I can be really critical of Joe Biden.
Like, seriously, you guys, lights are on, but nobody's home.
I mean, this is, it's a, it's a scary time.
And the committee who is conducting this, these hearings are all completely anti-Trump.
I mean, there's like two rhinos out of nine people on the committee and one of them hates Donald Trump.
Liz Cheney can't stand the guy.
So it's like, what are you really trying to accomplish here?
Just more egg on his face because they're not going to, all they can do, they can't find him guilty of anything.
They can just recommend that the DOJ institute criminal charges against him.
And then you'd have that.
So I don't think, I don't really think this is going to go anywhere.
And I don't know if they're going to finish up before the midterms, to be honest.
Moral Versus Legal Guilt 00:04:35
But Mark Adam Schiff at the beginning of this said he thought there was now credible evidence to support a variety of criminal charges.
Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, said the committee would show that Trump organized a coup on January 6th.
John Dean, former Nixon counsel, said an indictment would be forthcoming.
Indeed, I don't see how the line prosecutors at DOJ cannot take a lot of this evidence and use it.
Trump's in trouble.
He's in real trouble.
Lawrence Tribe said the only question is what's going to be charged first.
That's it, because there's tons of felonies shown.
These are all Democrats, of course.
The tone has shifted a little as we go into, as we went into final hearing last night, or maybe his final hearing, final hearing for now, where it's more like, he's terrible.
He ought to be held accountable.
I don't know.
It's like a little softening from these Democrats.
I think they might know they didn't get there.
But what do you think?
Criminal charge?
There's a big difference between morally and legally.
So morally, hypothetically, if they proved, and again, I don't know what they proved.
There's no vigorous cross-examination.
There's nobody representing the other side.
So I just have to take everybody's word for it.
So I don't know what the facts are, but let's just say hypothetically, there's facts that show that he knew that there was a potential riot happening.
And for a period of time, he chose not to do anything about that.
One would say, yeah, morally, the leader of our free world should probably put a stop to it and have said something.
Question is, is there some type of criminal charge that you could levy?
I don't see it for that.
So the next question is, and a lot of people ask me, what about inciting a riot?
Look what he did.
And I'm a huge free speech advocate.
There's a difference between, let's say, you're on a crowded street, you yell, those cops are horrible.
They did something horrible.
And you just say that.
And as a result, people then attack the cops.
That's legal and constitutionally protected.
That's different than saying, let's attack the cops.
You guys attack the cops.
So similarly, if Donald Trump is saying things like the election is fraudulent and they stole it and all of that then causes people to react, that's very different than him saying, let's go to the Capitol and let's commit crimes.
Let's do damage.
Let's revolt.
There's this fine distinction between what's First Amendment protected speech and what's criminal activity.
And I think they fall short in terms of proof so far.
You're 100% correct.
I could not agree with what you just said more.
And he said, we're just kind of pretending that his rhetoric about the election is the same thing as incitement, I-N-C-I-T-E meant under the law.
Their case is political.
You know, their case is political and the voters will decide whether they've made that or not.
But by the way, his support has gone up.
Trump's numbers have gone up.
His lowest poll numbers ever, which I do believe were post-January 6th, are still not as low as Joe Biden's are right now.
How about that?
But what they're saying is he knew he hadn't lost and he lied when he said over and over again that Joe Biden had lost.
Like he, let me restate that.
He knew that Biden won and he was lying to the American public when he said that Biden actually lost.
And then he falsely incited a bunch of insurrectionists to go and take over the Congress in an attempted coup.
First of all, Trump absolutely believes to this moment, and I 100% believe from January 6th forward, that he won.
Does anyone really think Trump doesn't actually believe he won?
Like, how are these Democrats?
Like, of course he believes that.
That's why he gets so mad at people.
No, wait, wait, hold on.
Megan.
Yeah, 100% thinks he won.
Wait, wait, wait.
What?
You think he won?
In his mind, he genuinely, to his core, believes that he won this election.
You really believe that?
I would bet every dime I have on it.
Every single dime.
Yes.
He believes it.
No, he's selling it, baby.
He knows.
He can't accept that he came in second place.
So he just comes up with this theory and many people jump on that bandwagon.
Really?
Well, no, but I mean, whatever's in him that can't allow him to lose is making him reject any evidence that suggests he lost.
So this whole argument by the Democrats like knowingly lied was out there.
They keep trying to prove like Bill Barr told him this was bullshit.
This person went in and said, we don't have any fraud that would change the results.
Ensuring Election Integrity 00:03:29
That's their case.
It's like, well, that only shows us that Trump heard that.
That doesn't show us that Trump believed it.
Bingo.
He's just kicking.
I'm still listening to you and who I respect very much.
I can't believe that Trump has actually convinced you that he believes that any more than I think that he believes that abortion should be unlawful.
I mean, I think it's all about politics.
And I don't know.
I agree with you on point two.
I agree with you on point two.
Trump is not at his heart pro-life.
But nobody on that side gives a damn because he did what they wanted him to do.
Say what you want about Trump.
He's at least smart enough to know that he fell short and won a second place medal in that election.
He's smart enough, but he has enough damage done from, I don't know what.
I don't want to psychoanalyze the guy.
Whatever happened in his childhood has made him incapable of accepting the label loser.
He's incapable.
He's not like the rest of us where it's like, I don't like it, but every once in a while it happens and I'll just get back up and fight back.
He's like, hard pass.
It didn't happen.
But wait, I want to get to the reason I'm getting into all this is because their big evidence on Thursday night was listen to Trump in the outtakes from the speech he ultimately finally gave condemning the rioters and all that.
Like he finally did get around on January 7th to saying the things that they wanted him to say.
But there were several things that were taken out of those remarks.
And we have a mashup of what they played last night on the outtakes.
Here it is.
I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday.
And to those who broke the law, you will pay.
You do not represent our movement.
You do not represent our country.
And if you broke the law.
I can't say that.
I'm not going to.
I already said you will pay.
The demonstrators who infiltrated the capital have defied the seat of justice.
It's defiled, right?
See, I can't see it very well.
Okay, I'll do this.
I'm going to do this.
Let's go.
But this election is now over.
Congress has certified the results.
I don't want to say the election is over, but I just want to say Congress has certified the results.
I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday.
Yesterday is a hard word for me.
Just take that.
The hands of the heinous attack on our heads.
Good.
Take the word yesterday because it doesn't work with the heinous attack on our country.
Say on our country.
Want to say that?
No.
My only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote.
My only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote.
I am not moved.
The only thing in there that was interesting was where he said, I don't want to say this election is now over.
I'm not going to say that.
Well, he's been saying that ever since.
I mean, he's kind of been suggesting he still thinks it's up in the air.
He doesn't think Biden's legitimate.
I'm being quiet.
I'm getting quiet over here because I don't know if Biden's legitimate.
But when I look at, like, I honestly, do you really think that Biden got more votes than Obama?
Perjury and Insurance Claims 00:14:10
I just, I'm not buying it either, but we're talking about the January 6th hearing.
So no, I hear you.
It is hard to believe.
I will concede that point.
But I, you know, as a journalist, I need proof.
As a lawyer, I need proof.
And I know people say, well, there wasn't enough time.
Well, there's been lots of time since then, and none of it has actually proven that anything would have changed the actual outcome.
Even Arizona, we talk about Arizona all the time, Arizona, Arizona.
Even if Trump had won Arizona, he would have lost the election.
So that's not to say there wasn't any funny business, not to say that they didn't change the law to Biden's benefit in Pennsylvania and so on.
The media put their thumb on the scale, all that stuff.
Yes, but proof, different story.
Anyway, I don't think they've got Trump on January 6th.
I think they need to move on for the love of God, shut up and move on.
And if they get thrown out in November and are forced to move off of this stupid, never-ending prime time show that people aren't into, so be it.
Okay, Mark and John, standby, because we have somebody else who people think is delusional, and that's Amber Heard.
And she's back with a new appeal, trying to get the entire verdict against her thrown out.
Standby for that.
Okay, so Amber Heard.
cannot let it go.
She has filed an appeal after losing her motion last week for a new trial.
She first tried to get the trial judge to set aside the verdict.
And she had like a new interesting curveball.
I mean, she's asserting all the same stuff as before, you know, like it's unfair.
You shouldn't, but she said in the motion, juror number 15 is a problem.
Juror number 15 was a 77-year-old man who was not the one they wanted.
No, reverse that.
Juror number 15 was a 52-year-old man, right?
Trying to get it.
Yeah.
That's the one who showed up.
Yes.
It was the younger guy, but they had subpoenaed, you know, when you get your jury summons, the 77-year-old dad.
And the two guys have the same name.
They're father and son.
They live in the same house.
And so the younger guy showed up and the older guy should have.
And he wound up getting picked and he served.
And on this basis, Mark, she says that they should throw out the verdict.
How do you even get from A to B?
Yeah, that seems bizarre.
I don't know that state's specific law if there's something in there that I don't know about, but ultimately I don't think so because whoever showed up, whether it be a potato or the guy's son, they then vetted him and had full opportunity.
Both sides did, including the judge, to ask questions to determine whether they can render a fair and impartial jury, impartial decision.
And they did.
And thus he was admitted on the jury.
I don't think this is going to do anything.
Maybe it was Toiletta.
Maybe that's who first got.
Oh, no, Pallopia.
Both of them.
There's 15 and 14, respectively.
You're just tuning in.
Megan's just quoting random supernames.
Welcome to Kelly's Court.
So, John.
They say Amber Heard's lawyers say Virginia laws very extremely is the word strict about juror identities.
And they say this case of mistaken identity is grounds for a mistrial.
They are so reached.
You know, if I could talk to Amber Heard, I would shake her by the shoulders and say, please quit while you're behind, because that's where she is.
Now, on the juror issue, the person who should be the most upset right now is the father who actually got summoned but didn't serve because he might get summoned again.
And nobody likes jury duty.
So he should be like, give me my pass.
But I agree with Mark.
Jurors, it's not a game show.
You don't walk into a courthouse, sit down, and all of a sudden you're a juror.
There's Boadir, there's questions by the judge, there's written questions, and the summons go out just randomly.
Like, you know, they go to whatever, the voter election board, and they, and they, and out they go.
And so it's not like they're handpicking the jurors who are going to be possibly seated on a jury, number one.
So it really doesn't matter who shows up.
And number two, what's Amber's endgame here?
I think she's trying to say face, yes, but ultimately she just doesn't want to have this $10 million judgment hanging over her head.
And there are better ways to get out from under that than doing what she's doing and incurring more attorney's fees when she can't afford to pay the attorney's fees to date.
She needs to have a little heart to heart with her ex-husband and say, what's it going to take for you not to come after me for this judgment?
Because if you're going to come after me, I might go bankrupt or, you know, whatever other option she has to run from this judgment for the rest of her life.
So that's a better course of action for her.
Yeah.
If that's what she wants to do.
When you're in a hole, stop digging.
But she's got to, you know, she's trying.
Like she has a terrible verdict against her right now, which her lawyer says she cannot afford to pay.
So it's like, and the lawyer is supposed to be getting paid by an insurer because when you get sued like this in a civil court, generally you have insurance that will defend you.
And if you settle or get a verdict against you, the insurance company will pay, which is why Don Lemon can say publicly, in my opinion, that he didn't pay anything to his accuser.
I bet you dollars to donuts, it was the insurance company.
Okay, that's another case.
But anyway, back on this case, her insurance company's telling her to take a walk too.
So the insurance company doesn't want to pay anything.
So she really is in a pickle.
We'll get to the insurance company in a second, maybe.
But Mark, she's going to go in there on appeal and she's going to say, among other things, I believe, based on what we heard from her lawyer, unfair.
Social media was out of control.
This jury was influenced.
I believe they listened to the Twitter mob and didn't listen to the evidence.
And as a result, she didn't get a fair trial.
So far, the appeal is only two pages and it says the court made errors that prevented a just and fair verdict consistent with the First Amendment.
We are therefore appealing.
Yeah, deny, deny, deny, deny.
Here, denied, meaning they're not going to do anything that can disturb the verdict on those grounds.
I'm going to make the strongest argument.
It doesn't mean it will prevail, but her strongest argument, follow me here, is that the jury did find in her favor on the countersuit for 2 million, the substance of which would suggest that there was some credibility to the fact that she was a victim.
Because when the attorney claimed that she manufactured the whole thing, apparently they found in her favor and said that was not right.
So if there is some shred of evidence or belief that she believed that she was a victim, then she writes that statement from the position of someone who believes that they're an abused person and thus they have the First Amendment constitutional protection afforded to all those who write things.
Now, obviously, the argument on the other side, which I'm going to get in the hate mail, because boy, did I get it during the trial when I raised that argument just as a lawyer is, you know, no, they found that you can't make it up and it was all not accurate and she just lied.
But then what about that verdict that she got in her favor?
What does that say?
Well, I know what it says.
It says, we don't, we think you're a hot mess liar.
You made up this whole thing against Johnny Depp.
They said that in their verdict.
You saw that hot?
Yes, I read that.
You got to read between the lines.
You learn later when you've been practicing longer.
It's a joke because Mark can run circles around me legally.
But I think it was saying that representative Johnny Depp, who went out there, the agent who went out there and said, you created a fake scene.
You know, like you messed up your apartment to try to make it look extra bad when the cops got there.
That was bullshit.
Like that, there's no evidence you did that.
You may have made up all this other stuff, but we don't believe you created a fake crime scene.
They didn't prove that.
So we're going to say that that was defamation by Johnny Depp's representative and therefore he gets pinned with a 2 million.
I think they were just looking for a compromise just to say, I'll give her something.
So we look fair.
Maybe.
That explains that explains the split to me that like they did not believe her.
And even one of the jurors has given an interview to a news outlet saying we never believed any of her claims of abuse.
We knew that she was acting.
We did not believe her.
So I really don't get that.
And I don't know if it's been said, but the mistake was she was so poorly prepared to testify.
He was honest and open, unbelievably.
All she needed to do was sit down and say, oh, there were things that I did that I'm embarrassed.
Yes, the poop was my job.
I did that.
I said horrible things to him.
She didn't admit anything.
And thus, when she had claims that they could have embraced potentially, supported by her sister, supported by some of the audio recordings, they just rejected her outright.
She wasn't prepared at all because being abused, being abused or feeling abused, that's a very kind of abstract term.
It could be verbal.
It could be physical.
They would have accepted it to some extent, I think, maybe, if she had just been open and honest about other stuff, but she wasn't.
No, Megan, I disagree.
I think she was over prepared.
Her testimony came across so damn rehearsed that it was almost, you think that she learned a whole new script for it.
And the jury didn't buy it and the public didn't buy it.
And you know what?
The fact that her team thinks that maybe social media didn't do her any favors, I think social media did do her favors because they were so hard on her based on what everybody was watching that I actually started to feel sorry for her.
So if I'm feeling sorry for her and I'm an ice queen, then the jury might have started to feel a little sorry.
I'm an ice queen.
That's why she got a little $2 million.
No, no, no.
Sympathy, sympathy team of one.
She was crucified on social media.
My kids were bringing me all the TikToks.
She was crucified.
Delightful for those who were getting it, but it actually did make me feel sorry for her because it was so relentless.
But I mean, too bad.
It was like, that's not a grounds for appeal.
First of all, the jurors are not supposed to be looking at social media unless the defense, I mean, Amber Heard has proof they did.
She's just, you know, she's throwing darts without a real target.
And secondly, secondly, she started the PR war.
She started it.
She's the one who called TMZ and said, take pictures of me outside of the, she did.
They proved that at trial.
So you cannot, as I said in my talking points the day after the verdict, live by the sword, die by the sword.
You can't start the PR war, lose it, and then cry, I'm a victim and this is unfair.
Well, I disagree.
I disagree.
No, no, no.
I got to disagree with Megan.
You could start it if it persists and that then influences the jury, which they cannot prove.
That's a different story.
They can't prove it.
That's the problem.
You could start it.
And if that somehow adversely affects the jury because it continues and somehow their verdict is based upon a TikTok that they saw or other influences other than the evidence and the law, then yeah, you've got an argument.
Unfortunately, they're not going to be able to prove it here.
Yeah, they have not been able to close that loop.
All right, let me finish with this.
A woman is suing over a date that didn't happen.
Okay, wait, let me.
I have so many papers in front of me.
I got to get to this because it's amazing.
The woman says that her, she went out on one date with the man.
Oh, here it is.
Her name is Kashante Short of Flint, Michigan.
They went out on one date.
They were supposed to go on another.
He did not show.
Now she's suing him for intentional infliction of emotional distress, saying it was the anniversary of her mother's death, or it was her mother's birthday and her mother had just passed away and he knew it and it caused a lot of pain.
And here's the defendant, Richard Jordan, making his defense to the judge.
We had a date, one date, and nothing else after that.
And now I'm being sued for $10,000.
It was, I don't see how this is going to go any further.
I think it's a waste of your time.
The judge said, then file a motion to dismiss.
Here's a bit of the exchange between the plaintiff, Kashante, and the judge himself when she claimed that was a lie, that the defendant was lying to the judge.
Watch.
It was never perjury in the beginning.
It was perjury after his response.
Well, you can't, you can't say, listen, he has the right to put whatever is in the answer.
I'm not saying he's not.
Can't do you can't add another count because you don't like or you disagree with what is in his answer.
If he responds and his response is a lie, it's perjury, then my documents will prove that he lied in his response.
No, no, no, no, it's his version.
First of all, do you understand what perjury is?
Yes, I think perjury is a lie.
I know what perjury means.
Perjury is a statement, a false statement made under oath.
Exactly.
And I got documents that proved he was lying.
Okay.
So, what do we think about Kashante's chances of recovering her $10,000, John?
I love this case.
Well, first of all, it's not a thing.
You can't sue somebody for standing you up on a date.
It doesn't rise to emotional distress.
But I got to love this poor schlub who had the one date who's now hauled into court on this.
He's got to be saying to himself, damn, I dodged a bullet here.
He's got to be.
And that poor judge, you know, she was giving it right back to him.
There's more to that video where she says to the judge, Are we done here?
Like, could you imagine?
Here's a picture of the defendant with just his head buried in his hands.
He's so unhappy.
Mark, do you disagree?
She should pay for his gas to the court.
Malicious Courtroom Drama 00:00:40
She should pay for every single expense.
She should be fined.
And she apparently has a history of malicious prosecution against people.
I hate vexatious litigants.
All right, I stole the last word.
You guys hate that, but don't hate you.
Love you guys.
Thank you so much.
Want to tell the audience that I'm going to be off for a short vacation next week, but we will be back with a fantastic lineup of guests, Adam Carolla, Dr. Laura Yay, and Glenn back to name just a few.
So see you in about one week.
And thank you in the meantime so much for listening.
Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no
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