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Jan. 24, 2020 - Rudy Giuliani
34:35
Rudy Giuliani Common Sense EP. 1: Since No Crimes Exist, It Must Be Dismissed
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Welcome to the first episode of Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
It's our purpose to bring to bear the principle of common sense and rational discussion to the issues of our day.
America was created at a time of great turmoil, tremendous disagreements, anger, hatred.
There was a book written in 1776 that guided much of the discipline of thinking that brought to us the discovery of our freedoms, of our God-given freedoms.
It was Thomas Paine's Common Sense, written in 1776, one of the first American bestsellers, in which Thomas Paine explained, by rational principles, the reason why these small colonies felt the necessity to separate from the Kingdom of Great Britain and the King of England.
He explained their inherent desire for liberty, for freedom, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the ability to select the people who govern them.
And he explained it in ways that were understandable to all the people, not just the elite.
Because the desire for freedom is universal.
The desire for freedom adheres in the human mind and it is part of the human soul.
Today we face another time of turmoil, of anger, of very serious partisan division.
This is exactly the time we should consult our history.
Look at what we've done in the past and see if we can't use it to help us now.
We understand that our founders created the greatest country in the history of the world.
The greatest democracy, the freest country.
A country that has taken more people out of poverty than any country ever.
All of us are so fortunate to be Americans.
We're not a perfect country.
They weren't perfect men and women.
And neither are we.
But they did it better than anyone else.
And we have to hope we can do the same thing.
To keep America a leader.
But a great deal of the reason for America's constant ability to self-improve is because we are able to reason.
We're able to talk, we're able to discuss, we're able to analyze.
We're able to apply our God-given common sense.
So let's begin.
And appropriately, let's begin with the major issue that seems to be consuming us today and for some time.
Thank you.
The Democrats would call it impeachment and the Republicans would call it a coup.
And it's of course, the impeachment that was voted by the Democrats in the House of Representatives, the two articles of impeachment against our lawfully elected president, Donald J. Trump.
This is only the third time in the history of this country that there has been articles of impeachment presented To the United States Senate.
I emphasize that to tell you how rare it is because in the motion and the coverage and all the discussion of it, sometimes it seems like, I'm not going to say it's routine, but this isn't so uncommon.
I mean, a lot of young people in our society today don't really consult history as they once did.
And it's important to understand.
That we have done this very, very, very few times in our history.
Once, in the mid-19th century, to Andrew Johnson, he was impeached and he was acquitted by the Senate.
And a second time, more recently, to William Jefferson Clinton, he was impeached by the House and also acquitted and there was one that got very close But the president resigned, Richard Nixon, before it came to an actual presentation of articles of impeachment.
So today we face this very divisive, very startling, very difficult process of government in which, think about it, a group, a partisan group, As initiated a proceeding to remove the President of the United States less than one year before the people get to make that decision in November of this year.
Again I emphasize this is being done and every day that goes by as they work their way through it we're getting closer and closer to the time when you Get to make the decision about your president and don't have at least one of those decisions taken away from you by a partisan group.
So what are, what are these articles and what are they about?
Well, the power of impeachment was debated very heavily by our framers, our founding fathers.
And it was decided that that power be given to the Congress.
And that it be given great leeway and great scope in being able to carry it out.
There are very few words about impeachment in the constitution.
It's a very, very weighty subject about which very little is written.
Uh, the way it's divided is the house of representatives sits as a grand jury.
If we were thinking of a criminal case and they decide, are there charges that should be brought?
That would warrant the removal of the President of the United States.
And then that's given to the United States Senate.
That becomes the trial jury presided over by, quite appropriately, the Chief Justice of the United States.
That's about all that's said about it, except it has to be voted, the removal by a two-thirds vote.
And it almost appears in the discussions that we're having, and particularly led by some of the more rabid Democrats, that the power of the house to impeach is unlimited.
There are no restrictions.
There are no rules.
There are no constraints.
Well, of course that cannot be true because all power in the constitution is limited.
The genius of our framers was to limit All the power is given to government.
To define them.
To put them within categories so that one branch of government, one person, couldn't become a dictator.
Couldn't rule everything.
So there are words of limitation that limit the ability to bring charges of impeachment or to remove a president.
And the words are contained right in Article 2.
Section four of the United States Constitution.
The president can be impeached for only four reasons.
Treason, bribery, high crimes, misdemeanors.
He cannot be impeached for anything else.
He can't be impeached for something that just kind of appeals to a majority of the House as something wrong or something bad or something offensive.
The power is limited.
So let's look at these two charges.
Neither one of them is a crime.
Uh, the list of crimes, which I'm very familiar with having practiced law for way too many years and been a prosecutor for a lot of it.
Most of the federal crimes are contained in 18 United States code.
Then in an assorted other statute books, there is no crime there called abuse of power.
It's a nebulous term.
It's a debatable thing.
It's more of a theory than it is a charge that's defined.
So this is a unimpeachable act.
It's not one of the acts about which Congress has the power to vote an article of impeachment.
And the way in which they voted the article of impeachment is quite unusual also.
They voted it with just a partisan majority.
What that means is it was all Democrats, no Republicans.
Prior impeachments that have reached this stage have had partisan support.
What the Democrats have done is to make Alexander Hamilton's nightmare a reality.
Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers and in some of the discussions, although he favored impeachment and he favored giving the power to Congress, feared That it could be abused.
He hoped that it wouldn't, but he said someday a partisan group can get together and for purely political reasons, or maybe even corrupt reasons, garner a majority of votes.
All partisan, all based on political anger, political jealousy, greed for office, and attempt to or remove a president And that would be a terrible desecration of the responsibilities that are given to those who take oath of office to represent us.
So I share that the great Alexander Hamilton, who's buried six miles south of here at Trinity Church, is not having a restful period right now because he thought about this nightmare, but I believe he hoped it would never occur.
Well, it has occurred.
We have a partisan, totally partisan impeachment.
And to make it even worse, we have a totally impart, a totally partisan impeachment that is based on something that is not an impeachable offense of which there are only four.
What is the abuse of power about?
The abuse of power is about.
A conversation, the core of it, a conversation between President Trump of the United States, of course, and President Zelensky of Ukraine.
And there are two interpretations of it.
One interpretation is based on a transcript written contemporaneously with the conversation
and attested to by the person who did it as the accurate version of the conversation.
And the other is based on a leak before that was actually disclosed, which said that President
Trump threatened President Zelensky with not being able to receive his much needed military
funding of somewhere around $400 million if he did not investigate Joe Biden or Joe Biden's
son, Hunter Biden.
Bye.
That was the version leaked to the newspapers.
That was the version that was blasted all over the world for several days until it was amended and it was said that the leak was incorrect.
That there was no quid pro quo.
There was no threat.
There was no linkage in the conversation.
And lo and behold, the president took the extraordinary act of releasing the entire conversation.
And you can read the transcript backwards and forwards or sideways if you want.
And what emerges is a cordial conversation between two heads of state.
Some of it is devoted to funding and the president's complaint, which is rather universal, that a number of countries don't pay their fair share.
President Zelensky's agreement to that.
And then it turns to the subject of corruption.
Why?
Because there are serious allegations that in 2016 there was a pattern of corruption in Ukraine That affected the 2016 election.
That it involved false evidence being produced, money being paid, Ukrainian officials being used by American officials of the Obama administration and of law enforcement to gather dirt on Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort.
Strangely, all the things that the Democrats falsely accused President Trump of appear to have been alleged, allegedly done, and I can tell you from my own investigation, actually done in Ukraine.
It included activities by the then Vice President Joe Biden to help with that collusion.
And in a very, very dramatic move, getting the prosecutor investigating this, thrown out of office, and then sabotaging the main investigation of collusion, as well as the investigation of the Vice President's son, and the investigation of his son's very crooked, multi-billionaire Ukrainian organized crime figure, Nikola Zlochevsky.
These are startling allegations.
President discusses with President Zelensky the need for us, meaning both the US and Ukraine, to get to the bottom of this.
And he goes on for some time talking about the collusion part, just to show what his major objective was.
And then in only four or five lines out of, oh, some four or 500 lines, he says that he has to look into the, or he should look into the allegations about Hunter Biden.
Very, very important, the words that he used.
The word that he used was, would you do me a favor?
He asked him to do it.
There's nothing in that text, nothing in that conversation, in which he tells him to do it, demands that he do it, threatens him, or in any other way urges him to do it.
He asks him to do it.
It's a request.
So when that appeared, one would think that the whole issue would go away.
He wasn't threatened.
There was no mention of military aid.
There was no force.
This was not like the conversation that Joe Biden had several years earlier with the president of the Ukraine, in which he threatened him with the loss of a loan guarantee that was critical to the country if he didn't fire the prosecutor who was investigating Joe Biden's son and Joe Biden's son's crooked boss.
The president of Ukraine was told he had six hours to do it or he wouldn't receive the money.
That's not disputed.
That's on tape.
So in fact, Joe Biden did what President Trump was originally falsely accused of and didn't do.
The irony in that, the almost sickness in how that can be turned around is of great concern, but the reality is, Conversation between the President, President Zelensky, no quid pro quo, no threat, no words of anger, a cordial discussion.
The reaction of President Zelensky, which is the only important one, to the issue of was there undue pressure of any kind, has been numerous statements now made by him that he doesn't see what this is all about, that it was a perfectly normal conversation.
in which he felt an issue of mutual concern was brought to his attention,
and one on which he believes the two countries have to do a good job of working constructively,
really to reverse a good deal of the corruption, which is not Ukraine alone.
The Obama administration you're going to find in these episodes had a great deal to do with making the corruption in Ukraine much worse than how they found it.
And Joe Biden was not the only one to be involved in that.
He may have profited the most, but he wasn't the only one to be involved in that.
But that's for another time.
The fact is.
That the abuse of power allegation does not allege an impeachable offense.
They fail to do that.
So we have a second article of impeachment.
It's called obstruction of Congress.
Once again, you can search the statute books far and wide.
You can do the old fashioned search in the library, or we can go and Google it.
And you are not going to find a crime called obstruction of Congress.
You're going to find a lot of obstruction crimes.
A lot of them.
Complicated ones, but none involving obstruction of Congress.
So once again, the charge is a charge beyond the limited powers that were given to the United States House of Representatives.
They charge something that is not an impeachable offense.
What is the obstruction of Congress about?
This is even more absurd.
Obstruction of Congress is about the President of the United States asserting privileges that are time-honored privileges that have been asserted many, many times by executives of both parties, probably none more often than Bill Clinton, Executive privilege.
Deliberative privilege.
Privileges that exist so that presidents can receive information and advice without people having to worry that it's going to be repeated because sometimes decision-making, good decision-making, begins with bad ideas.
And if you're afraid to express the bad ideas, sometimes the good ideas never emerge.
So the law, in its wisdom, has created an area of privilege for our chief executive so that his aides can speak to him freely.
This is not an unimportant privilege.
The less discussion, the more constraints on discussion, the worse the decision making.
So asserting executive privilege is not a game that has been done probably by every single president.
And what that means is the president told his aides that he's asserting executive privilege and they're not to comply with the subpoena.
Also, in my particular case and several others, we assert attorney-client privilege.
That's part of our constitution.
They're saying that this is a obstruction of Congress.
If I were to turn over to the Congress what they are asking of me, or some of it, I would violate my oath of office as an attorney and I could be subject to disbarment.
For me to do that, for me to turn something over, I have to get a ruling of a court that tells me that it isn't privileged or my client has to waive it.
Well, neither is the case.
And this whole use of these draconian techniques, even threatening to arrest lawyers for asserting the attorney-client privilege, is so beyond what we usually tolerate, that it really does make the case that we're living in an age of a double standard.
That we are living in an age not unlike the age of McCarthy.
When people were just accused, they had no rights, can't have counsel.
Lawyers were attacked for representing bad people.
The lawyers who represent Donald Trump are under constant attack.
I am, all the time, for doing my job, for representing the president of the United States.
Lawyers who represent terrorists.
Lawyers who represent murderers.
Lawyers who represent very unpopular causes are considered heroes because our profession says everyone's entitled to a defense, except to the opponents of Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is really not entitled to a defense.
I really would ask everyone, because history is so important, to look back a bit.
at history and see that something similar has happened to us in the late 1940s and the 1950s.
And this book that's recently been written by David A. Nichols, Ike and McCarthy, gives you a good, very readable description of a man named Joseph R. McCarthy, who was the Adam Schiff of his day.
We could have, after you read it, an interesting debate.
Who was worse, McCarthy or Schiff?
It's not easy to decide who.
Schiff conducted secret proceedings.
Schiff demonstrably lied in ways that obstructed the investigation.
Schiff gave contrary answers to his involvement with this whistleblower, who he insists remain anonymous, making very serious charges.
We don't have to go into all the different things that shifted because a lot of the others of them, Pelosi and Nadler, have equally been abusive.
But the point is that in that period when that happened, we were together enough as a country so that, notice the, notice the, the title, Ike and McCarthy.
McCarthy was a Republican senator from the state of Wisconsin.
Eisenhower was the Republican president who won the state of Wisconsin with McCarthy's support.
McCarthy, unlike Schiff, was a popular political figure with an over 50% approval rating.
But the head of his party had the courage to discipline him because he was violating the rights of the people.
Because to Dwight David Eisenhower, American rights Protection of the American people is much more important than political party.
Things have gone so far here that hatred of Donald Trump has completely obscured love of country, which is why we end up with a charge like obstruction of Congress.
Doesn't exist.
There is no charge.
Congress has no power to impeach.
I give, just to conclude this part of it, a silly example.
Suppose Donald Trump was impeached by a majority Democrat vote of the House of Representatives for being late for four press conferences in a row.
You say, well, that's silly.
Well, it's not silly if Congress can make up what it impeaches for and is not constrained by, once again, treason, bribery, high crimes, misdemeanors.
Being late for press conferences is none of those four things, nor is obstruction of Congress, nor is abuse of power.
So what should be done?
Well, there are two avenues, and I've written on this.
One avenue is to go before the court and argue that the president's constitutional rights are being violated.
The court would say, initially, this is a political question.
We should stay out of it.
We are not given that power, but the court wasn't given the power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional.
In Marbury against Madison, our great Chief Justice Marshall created judicial review as a obvious necessary conclusion from the Constitution because there had to be some arbiter when there were two conflicting interpretations of the Constitution that the two different branches of government, the executive
And the legislature stood firmly behind and there couldn't be agreement.
Or the government did, the federal government did, and the states disagreed.
Justice Marshall reasoned that by being the chief law agency of the United States, that the high court had that power.
Well, here we have the same thing.
We have a diametrically opposed executive, And a partisan Congress ruled by just Democrats expressing just their will.
And we have a constitutional crisis.
And the court, of course, is created for that purpose.
But that would take a long time.
The outcome is debatable because it is a case of what we call first impression.
And there's another remedy.
And that remedy comes from the rules of criminal procedure.
The Constitution says that the Chief Justice presides.
It says nothing else.
It doesn't say how he presides.
But you have to assume in presiding that he would set down a set of rules so that it isn't a circus like the shift thing was.
And the rules that normally are used are the federal rules of criminal procedure.
So let's assume that this was an indictment, which is what the Chief Justice would be familiar with and what the federal rules of criminal procedure are all about.
If an indictment is brought before the trial begins, the defense must challenge the indictment for failing to state a crime.
If the defense neglects to do it, it loses that argument forever.
It's a mandatory motion that must be made.
What it says is, yes, the government went about the Work of getting an indictment and getting a grand jury to vote for it.
But when you look at the final indictment and you read it, it does not charge a crime.
It fails to list the necessary elements of fraud or bribery or drug dealing.
And what happens is a motion under, don't want to get too technical, under rule 12 of the federal rules of criminal procedure is made.
And the judge decides at that point, if that is the case, to dismiss it.
He can dismiss it with or without prejudice.
With prejudice means he can't bring it again.
Without prejudice means you can fix it.
Well, what should happen in the Senate is, after the Democrats get a chance to present their entirely partisan picture of what they did, of their articles of impeachment that charge no impeachable offense, And the Republicans respond in their opening statement as to why this didn't happen and why this is totally unjustified.
There should be a vote, a motion should be made to dismiss the articles of impeachment for failure to state an impeachable offense, similar to dismiss an indictment for failure to state a crime.
I believe that that is the correct outcome.
And it's the correct outcome because many arguments could be made for why it would be good for one side or the other to have a big, long trial.
I could see as a lawyer for the president and as a supporter of the president, how that would reveal facts that you don't know about, about the vast corruption of not just Joe Biden, but of the Democrat party in Ukraine.
It was like, it was like their breeding ground for corruption.
I stand back from it and I think of history.
fact that there's some appeal to that I stand back from it and I think of
history and what I think about is we've got to close the book on this way of
doing things In other words, we've got to go back to, you can only impeach for the reasons why the Constitution allows you to impeach.
We have got to go back to what Hamilton wanted.
That impeachment is rare, very rare, because it is so jarring.
Because it negates what our country is all about.
Election by the people, not by the political potentates.
And if that power, this interpretation is allowed, where they can impeach for a reason they make up, we just changed the structure of our government dramatically.
And we've given the House of Representatives Much more power than any other branch of government.
Much more power than the Constitution ever envisioned.
And the minute, the minute you readjust that balance of power, it's like a very, very finely tuned machine.
It's going to destroy the whole machine.
Congress is then going to be able to use that as threats for more money, for unworthy projects, for not investigating corrupt congressmen.
Of which, unfortunately, we've had some.
And I've had to prosecute some of them successfully.
So we need an outcome here that vindicates the law.
Not an outcome that appeals to our emotions.
You know, those of us on the president's side, our emotion is, let's get out just how corrupt Schiff was, just how corrupt Pelosi was.
What a big crook Biden and his son were.
And let's see all the other Democrats that were crooks in Ukraine.
You're going to see millions and millions of dollars flowing into their hands.
And you're going to see a pattern with Biden that goes beyond Ukraine.
When you see the words point man Biden, Then put next to it, how much money, how many millions did the family get when he got the point man job?
It was a good day in the Biden family when he became point man.
When he became point man in Iraq, lots of money came to his brother.
When he became point man in Ukraine, lots of money came to the son and the brother.
And when he became point man in China, well, you'll find out what happened.
But that isn't what an impeachment's about.
Impeachment should be done by strict rules.
Democrats have alleged, they've alleged things that are non-impeachable offenses.
The Senate should make that clear and hopefully it will act as a, as a deterrent.
So another president doesn't have to go through this and this does not become a new part of the political leverage that we have.
Well, this of course is an unfolding story.
We will follow it in more detail.
I particularly look forward to bringing to you many of the facts that I have discovered that no one knows yet, that are quite traumatic, and that clearly support every single thing that we've talked about.
I found those facts in my role as counsel for President Trump in order to defend him.
And I can think of no more appropriate thing to do than to share them with you.
They're somewhat, they're somewhat startling.
So don't get ready for it, but we will do it in a careful way and we'll do it as we do everything else.
We'll do it by applying our powers of reasoning, applying common sense.
So I hope to see you very shortly and God bless America.
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