Off The Cuff Declassified exposes James Comey’s alleged insubordination—ignoring DOJ officials before his July 5, 2016, email server statement and reopening the probe just 11 days pre-election—while criticizing Mueller’s demand for encrypted messaging app data as a Fourth Amendment violation. Daniel Horowitz warns Supreme Court rulings like the wedding cake case erode religious liberty, linking it to criminal justice reform risks: Trump pardoned Alice Marie Johnson (cocaine trafficking), Obama commuted 1,700 felons, and the U.S. Sentencing Commission freed 46,000 prisoners, potentially boosting Democratic voter turnout in swing states. Meanwhile, 52,000 unsolved homicides across 50 cities reveal arrest disparities (63% for whites vs. 46% for blacks) due to witness fear and systemic failures, not just police resources. The episode also scrutinizes liberal media bias, citing TBS’s revocation of Samantha Bee’s control and CNN contributor April Ryan’s debunked tweet about Trump being heckled, urging accountability for misconduct. [Automatically generated summary]
Trouble for James Comey as the impending Inspector General's report allegedly paints him as insubordinate.
Robert Mueller ratchets up his intimidation tactics.
Daniel Horowitz joins me to discuss the latest Supreme Court decision.
I'm going to tell you about 50,000 unsolved homicides in the U.S. and why many are occurring in the same areas.
And big trouble for liberal television personalities.
One is reined in, the other publicly shamed.
Trouble for former FBI director, fired FBI director, James Comey as this impending inspector general's report paints him as having had defied authority and being insubordinate.
Now, there are elements of this OIG report leaking.
That's why I say allegedly we don't know if what we're seeing now will comport with the full report, but I suspect it will.
This was being reported by ABC News, and I'm reading to you from a New York Post story, citing a draft of Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report, ABC, that Comey was rebuked for failing to consult.
And I'm going to tell you my problems with because it's problematic for Comey, but it really doesn't help the Republicans, Trump.
So, citing a draft of IG Michael Horowitz's report, ABC said Comey was rebuked for failing to consult with then Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other top DOJ officials before he announced the FBI completed its investigation into Clinton's personal email server.
During the July 5th news conference, which we all remember, Comey said there was no, quote, clear evidence that Clinton, quote, intended to violate the law, but he called her handling of the classified information, as you well remember, extremely careless.
Now, the report supposedly also slams Loretta Lynch for her handling of the investigation, especially that June 2016 meeting with Bill Clinton on a private jet.
That, I've been telling you, for well over a year, that meeting was filthy.
It is unheard of, unheard of, in an investigation for the chief prosecutor to meet with the husband of the suspect without any other attorneys present.
It is bizarre.
It doesn't happen.
It is completely improper, possibly illegal.
Now, the draft report also said that Comey ignored objections from inside the Department of Justice when he alerted Congress that the FBI had reopened the probe into Clinton's email server 11 days before the election.
Comey was all over the place.
Comey was all over the place.
Now, this OIG report bothers me for a couple of reasons.
Number one, it's going to make it look as if Comey tried to throw the election for Trump.
By calling him insubordinate, by saying that he acted, he defied authority, it will give Trump's firing of him cover.
But no one is going to be criminally charged for trying to engage in a soft coup against a political campaign, then the campaign and president-elect, and now the president of the United States.
And that soft coup, of course, trying to be carried out with Robert Mueller's bogus investigation.
So while I'm happy to see Comey being called to task in some way, I'm very disappointed at how tepid, how softly this is all being worded.
He defied authority.
He was insubordinate.
None of this is really, Comey broke the law.
He leaked classified memos.
We, OIG, agree with Congress.
He should be criminally referred for prosecution.
We're not seeing that.
And that concerns me because Mueller's team, man, are they getting heavy-handed.
This from CNBC, but it's all over the place.
Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is requesting that witnesses, mind-blowing, that witnesses turn in their personal phones to inspect their encrypted messaging programs.
Absolutely not.
So think about this.
Now, I'm going to read you.
I'm going to read you excerpts from the left-leaning lawfare blog where even they, and they despise Donald Trump over there.
They're very concerned about the level of evidence Mueller has with regards to witness tampering on the part of Paul Manafort.
They call it virtually non-existent.
So what Mueller's team is doing here, and let me read you a couple of excerpts, then we'll analyze.
This is from CNBC.
Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is requesting that witnesses turn in their personal phones to inspect their encrypted messaging programs.
This is the more problematic part.
And potentially view conversations between associates linked to President Donald Trump.
And they're asking people to turn these phones in, and many are, because they don't want to be subpoenaed and have to spend more money figuring out if what Mueller is doing is constitutional.
This has now gone from prosecutorial misconduct to potential criminal abuse of authority, in my opinion.
Since as early as April, Mueller's team has been asking witnesses in the Russia probe to turn over phones for agents to examine private conversation on WhatsApp, Confide, Signal, and Dust, all encrypted applications, according to the sources who spoke, of course, on the condition of anonymity.
Fearing a subpoena, witnesses have complied and given over their phones.
This is killing.
The United States government, via an unrestricted, unmanaged, unmanageable special counsel with seemingly unlimited power who works outside of the Department of Justice, a man who went through no confirmation process, is now violating with a wink and a nod the Fourth Amendment protections of Americans.
Give me your cell phone.
I want to look at all your encrypted apps.
Or, hey, we could do this the hard way or we could do this the easy way.
The hard way is I get a subpoena and it costs you another $100,000.
You might win.
You're probably going to win.
But do you have the $100,000?
I didn't think so.
Give me the phone.
What Mueller is doing now is disgusting.
Now, this is beyond Trump, beyond Manafort, beyond Gates, beyond General Flynn, beyond Papadopoulos.
This is now the Constitution.
Mueller is now abusing, crampling the constitutional rights of Americans.
Now, they're saying that the revelation that Trump associates are giving Manafort access to their encrypted apps comes obviously as Mueller is alleging that Manafort tampered with witnesses.
And we're going to get into that in a moment and why some people think that is a ridiculously silly allegation.
Now, we spoke about that, that Mueller is alleging that Manafort called certain people in a business he was involved in that has ties to the Ukraine to influence their testimony, influence what they tell investigators.
However, like I said, the lawfare blog, which we'll get to in just a bit, finds this claim very dubious, and they do one of the best jobs at analyzing the individual conversations and explaining why they think Mueller's claim is flimsy and razor-thin paper-thin at best.
But let's take a look at the bigger problem here.
Now, we use encrypted apps like Confide, like Signa, like WhatsApp to protect our privacy.
We don't want anybody looking at our conversations, the least of which is government, especially if we're witnesses.
We're not subjects.
We're not under criminal investigation, indictment.
Now, the CNBC explains what these are, and they explain how certain services encrypt your messages, others like dust.
Your messages go away.
They turn to dust in 24 hours.
Now, legal experts are not surprised by Mueller's move.
It isn't surprising that witnesses are voluntarily giving over possible evidence to federal investigators.
And Robert Ray, who was an independent counsel during Bill Clinton's Whitewater investigation, says it's just more typical for law enforcement to ask for consent for the obvious reason that it's much easier than applying to the court to get judicial permission, meaning a subpoena or a warrant.
He added, it's not commonplace, but not all that unusual either.
Now, Michael German, a retired FBI agent and a current fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at Liberty program, there's nothing wrong with asking people to voluntarily provide information to the FBI for whatever investigation.
And to the extent that that's a voluntary action is where the rub is.
That's the point.
That's the point.
Is it voluntary if the government says to you, we're going to get a subpoena, and if you don't give it to us, well, maybe you're doing something wrong.
So are you voluntarily giving over the phone or are you waiving your Fourth Amendment rights under duress because of the threat of a crushing legal bill, your name being smeared, a potential investigation, them potentially jamming you up on some bogus false statement charge because, excuse me, my allergies are terrible because you've watched them do it in the past.
That's the problem here.
Is it voluntary?
Is it voluntary?
I don't think it is.
I think that Mueller has shown himself to be heavy-handed.
Mueller has kicked in Paul Manafort's door at five in the morning and frisked his wife while she was in her nightgown at gunpoint.
You don't do that in white-collar crime cases.
Mueller is acting in one of the most heavy-handed intimidation tactic fashions I've ever watched a prosecutor operate.
Now on to what the lawfare blog says.
Now, it's written by Paul Rosensweeg.
This guy is a veteran of the Department of Homeland Security.
He's a left-leaning guy.
He hates Trump.
He even says in the second paragraph of this piece, I yield to no one in my disdain for President Trump, and I certainly have no brief for Manafort.
Hmm.
He's no friend of the administration.
So this is entitled the Manafort Tampering Allegations.
And this guy, Rosenzweg, who just said he yields to no one in the disdain of President Trump, he has no brief for Manafort.
Let me read you that paragraph.
I yield to no one in my disdain for President Trump, and I certainly have no brief for Manafort, who has been accused of laundering tens of millions of dollars from sources connected with Russia and the Ukraine.
Thus, my overall assessment is that Manafort has some significant legal exposure and that, given his role in the Trump presidential campaign, that exposure is of concern to Trump and of interest to the special counsel.
Now, I disagree with Rosensweek there because Manafort was only around the campaign for weeks.
His exposure to Trump was limited to talking about delegate wrangling when they were talking about a brokered or a contested convention.
Manafort was not well liked by the grassroots ground teams, the state directors.
Manafort was in.
Manafort was out.
So his role in the Trump campaign, really no big deal.
But even after saying that, this guy Rosensweek says, all that said, I think the special counsel's allegations of witness tampering are dot dot dot rather thin.
And what he basically says is that the evidence of communication between Manafort and witnesses he is alleged to have contacted in a tampering effort.
Well, all that is really flimsy, thin at best.
I'll read you what he writes.
Study that exhibit, the exhibit N, and you will see that Manafort was successful in speaking to one witness for exactly one minute and 24 seconds.
He attempted three other calls that did not connect, and he sent two WhatsApp messages.
One, a link to an article describing his indictment, and the other saying we should talk.
When asked about the contents of the conversation with Manafort, according to paragraph 14 of the FBI declaration, person D1 said that, quote, Manafort stated that he wanted to give person D1 a heads up about Habsburg and that D1, the subject, immediately terminated the call because they were concerned about that conversation being deemed improper.
That is hardly witness tampering.
If a person is indicted and charged and they call somebody they did business with and said, hey, take a look at this news item.
Just want to give you a heads up.
I want to explain it to you.
That's not witness tampering.
He goes, and that's it, really.
The other part of the allegation is that someone else, person A, reached out to person D2 and told D2 in a series of texts that P, presumably Paul Manafort, was trying to reach D1 to brief him.
And that, quote, basically P, presumably Paul Manafort, wants to give him a quick summary that he says to everybody, which is true, that our friend never lobbied in the U.S. and the purpose of the program was the EU, end quote.
A month later, person A reached out to D1.
Now, the key to all this is person D1's perception.
He says he thinks that Manafort was trying to suborn his perjury because he knew that the Habsburg group had, in fact, lobbied in the United States.
Person D2 also seemed to think that Manafort was doing the same.
Now, they might be right.
Manafort might have been trying to do it, but what they think without corroborating evidence, well, it's kind of irrelevant.
And that's what Rosensweek writes here.
He writes, but direct evidence against Manafort is almost non-existent, non-existent.
Pressure Tactics and Perceptions00:02:02
Saying, quote, we should talk, quote, end quote, and I want to give you an update, end quote, or a heads up, end quote, is hardly the stuff that witness tampering charges are made of.
And more to the point, he writes, if the entire conversation in which Manafort participated lasted for less than a minute and a half, remember a minute and 24 seconds, he'd have to be a very, very fast talker to have accomplished tampering.
All of this really describes very nicely what Robert Mueller's been doing to date.
Doesn't it?
Twisting arms, using intimidation tactics, and leveling bogus charges on virtually no allegations because he needs a scalp, because he needs a scalp.
So this guy, I want to read you his summary.
He writes, so what's going on here?
Why would Mueller's team, whose actions to date have been premised on overwhelming evidence, that's not true?
Take this risk and go out on this evidentiary limb.
My speculation is simple.
This is a sign that they are feeling pressure, possibly from Trump, possibly from Rod Rosenstein, possibly just from reading the public tea leaves.
Whatever the source of that pressure, they have an increased sense of urgency to move quickly.
And that translates to the want and need for Manafort's cooperation.
By doing this, we spoke about it yesterday, by twisting arms, by threatening witnesses, by putting pressure on them, by throwing these bogus charges at Manafort of witness tampering, you pressure Manafort to cooperate and put an end to this before Mueller is publicly discredited and shamed further.
This is a perversion of our criminal justice system.
From the OIG report going what I think is soft on Comey to Manafort trampling the Constitution.
And it all needs to come to a head, to an end, very, very quickly.
Supreme Court Struggles00:06:45
Busy, busy week for Supreme Court decisions.
The president seems to be pardoning anyone he wants to pardon, which I don't have a problem with, but others do.
Although I will say I haven't seen anybody yet that I have a problem with.
Here to make sense of it all is my good friend, Daniel Horowitz, senior editor of Conservative Review, and somebody who is very passionate on these issues.
Daniel is often my go-to guy on Supreme Court decisions.
Daniel, thanks as always for being here.
Great to be with you.
Busy times.
Busy, busy.
I know both of us are hoarse because we're talking so much about this.
All right, first, the masterpiece decision.
So let's break this down.
Seven to two, I believe Kagan, she voted with the conservatives on this one, right?
She did, and it's a trap.
Okay.
Explain this because you've been one of the few people out there that doesn't like this decision, that's really digging in.
Run with it.
Explain why this is a trap.
What's wrong with this decision?
Of course, we're talking about the decision in favor of the bakery that refused to make a cake, a wedding cake, for a gay couple.
Sure.
I have the right, John, to go into your house, take your cookies on the table, take the milk in the refrigerator, take your pillows.
And you know what?
Even I could even take your wife.
But see, in this case, I was really, really rude about it.
And they said, you can't do that.
You just can't do that.
And you're like, well, what's to that?
Well, be rude about it.
Okay.
Just for the audience.
So your initial assessment is they didn't address the underlying.
What I'm saying is the underlying offense legally.
They addressed a symptom.
They're saying you could rip somebody off.
Just be polite when you do it.
But let me just say it a little stronger.
It's not just that they didn't address it.
They didn't address it in a legally binding way because it wasn't relevant to the case, but they absolutely said very clearly that, and this is not a direct quote, but as a general rule, you as a private business owner cannot assert religious liberty rights to deny people service.
They were just saying in this case that they were set up.
They weren't, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission did not apply their law neutrally.
If you actually do a word search on neutral in the opinion, it comes up over a dozen times.
The ACLU lawyers are right.
You know, I agree with them in the sense that they lost the battle but won the war.
Most other circumstances.
Daniel, let's go there.
So are you saying they won the war because of, and what you paraphrased, the Supreme Court ultimately saying the Colorado Civil Rights Commission got this one wrong, so we have to rule in favor of the bakery.
However, in the broader sense, we feel that a baker should have to bake a cake for a gay couple because that baker doesn't have a right to exert religious liberties as a reason to deny service.
That and also in conjunction with the fact that the lower courts, like the Ninth Circuit, have already done this in the Stormann's case, forcing a pharmacy to stock their shelves with every type of contraception, many other cases, and the Supreme Court is not taking up the appeal.
So did we 100% officially lose?
Yeah, no, but that's my point.
We need to act legislatively in Congress and the state legislatures to protect this beforehand.
This is the equivalent of being in between Windsor and Obergerfell on gay marriage.
You didn't yet lose, but you know you will.
And that's my point here.
Yeah, it's better than if it would have been 100% the other way.
But I'm just telling you, the fact that Kagan and Breyer signed on was a way of screwing us in the long run.
And it's hanging by a thread.
And, you know, like anything hanging by a thread, you got to come there and secure it immediately.
What is the solution?
Is it legislative, the solution, where states and the federal government have to enact legislation that says businesses can absolutely exempt religious liberties to deny service?
And it's a simple thing.
And that is absolutely true.
Mississippi is the only state that has done that.
It's a disgrace.
Republicans have supermajorities in the state legislatures in like 20 states.
I don't know what they're doing, but also we need on a federal level, as I've been advocating, and this ties into immigration, the lower courts are killing us, and the Supreme Court is allowing this stuff to stand.
We need to at least strip the lower courts of jurisdiction over these cases to force any individual private business owner to violate his conscience.
Can we do that?
Is there legally binding precedent to strip the lower courts of authority to decide over these cases?
It's more than that.
Congress created the lower courts.
They can break them.
They could abolish them overnight.
They could even strip most of the Supreme Court's jurisdiction.
It's the subject of my book back here, Stolen Sovereignty.
It is the most, actually, Clarence Thomas recently said something about this.
He said Congress has the power to strip the courts over jurisdiction the same way they have the power to coin money or declare war.
Wow.
wow so it's amazing that our members of congress when did congress when when when was the period in time that congress started establishing these lower courts and essentially allowed legislation from the bench Well, I mean, the lower courts, the existence of them in their proper form, not overturning laws or overturning the Constitution.
It was around pretty much since 1789.
Although they created the latest one is the Special Appeals Court in D.C. That's what that's created.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
I'm not talking about the case.
was created in 1982 and what's funny is these magistrates and these these different little courts that most americans don't know about or is what i'm talking about that seem to create these legal quagmires that then result in legislation from the bench so So that's a relatively recent addition to the judicial system, right?
I was laughing.
Last year, this Special Court of Appeals overturned part of the VA Accountability Act that led to the firing of the head of the Phoenix VA, who was at the center of that scandal, was unbelievable.
I was laughing because that entire court was created by Congress in 1982.
The notion that somehow they can overturn a law of Congress is insane.
That is just ludicrous.
All right.
Pardons and Amnesty00:15:21
So we know what the solution now needs to be a masterpiece.
Look, I agree with you.
I like legislative solutions far better than judicial ones because if you don't like it, vote for somebody else next time around.
And with Congress coming up every two years, it's a very easy remedy on the part of the people.
Now let's talk about something.
You and I spoke about it offline.
You're passionate about it.
You were texting me about it last night.
Jailbreak.
You're not a fan of what's going on with regards to the criminal justice system in the White House.
Sure.
The president campaigned like Ronald Reagan on this issue.
You know it.
He was more emphatic than anyone that we don't have enough people in prison in general on net.
There's thousands of murderers, rapists, armed robbers, assault.
I mean, all this stuff that goes uncleared by law enforcement on net for.
Daniel, after our segment, I'm going to be talking about a Washington Post report.
50,000 unsolved homicides, over 50,000 unsolved homicides, many in the same areas.
So, yeah.
Believe me, it's on every single thing.
So, John, but the point, the reason why I'm starting with this point is that the entire philosophy behind this effort, and it's not just about Alice Johnson or one person, that's a straw man like, you know, oh, this dreamer that served in the military.
So, therefore, we need to have open borders.
I mean, you can have certain narratives, and there's what to say about her, what happened, and what didn't happen, and what it represents.
But this is not a jab, but just about a pardon.
And I agree, I'm okay with the concept of pardons.
It's that legislatively, they want to uproot Reagan's entire legacy that led to two decades-long decline in crime.
It worked inversely with the growth of the prison population.
I got news for you.
We're already having jailbreak for 10 years.
The incarceration rate per capita is down to 1993 levels.
It erased the entire baseline increase.
And incidentally, crime the last two years is going up.
We got to be careful and balanced.
Well, yeah, the FBI saw a dramatic increase in violent crimes 2014, 2016.
The 2017 UCR will be out uniform crime reporting.
It's going to be published usually late September, early October.
So very curious to see those numbers.
But go back to Alison Reed Johnson, these pardons.
I see these pardons more thumbing his nose in Obama's face, Trump doing that, than it is about criminal justice reform or any ideology.
Here he pardons an African-American grandmother who was a nonviolent drug offender.
Now, I have issues with that because he was trafficking tons of cocaine directly with the Colombian drug card.
People around her were not nonviolent.
So I've got issues.
But isn't this really saying, hey, Obama, you never pardoned a black grandmother?
Hey, Obama, you didn't pardon people that deserves it.
Hey, George W. Bush, you went against me.
You only commuted Scooter Libby.
I pardoned him.
Isn't this just retaliation by Trump toward his enemies?
You know, why maybe we should just raise taxes by 50% and say, look, we're more Democrat than you are, or give amnesty.
Well, Obama, you never gave an official amnesty.
I'll do amnesty better than you.
We have to look at things on principle.
I mean, I'm not looking for a talking.
Hey, don't say that.
Don't say that too loudly.
It might just happen.
Well, they're actually doing that.
And Trump is getting roped into amnesty now, too.
What I mean by this is just broadly speaking here, it's not too many people only follow news when Kim Kardashian talks about it.
But this thing, I started writing about it before.
Trump is breaking his campaign promise because of Jared and the people around him.
And he's signing on to a much broader effort that is going to let go tens of thousands of people earlier.
Now, the fact that Obama went through the prison system with a fine tooth comb and let go 1,700 drug traffickers on the hardcore ones that had gun felonies too.
Oh, remember that.
Yeah, biker gangs, trafficking meths.
I dug into those cases.
These were bad guys.
To me, the fact that the U.S. Sentencing Commission let go 46,000 over the last 10 years and Obama let go specifically around 1,700 drug traffickers and didn't let go this person.
That kind of tells me something.
There's one thing your listeners need to understand.
You would know this from working in law enforcement.
There's something called a pre-sentencing report.
That is what the judge relies on.
This gives the full picture why they did it, their lifestyle, if it really was low level and they didn't do anything else wrong and it was just trying to get money.
They were desperate at that time.
They're not going to be a threat.
If that is true, they have the ability to unseal that document.
And the media is being very dishonest in general.
When they come up with these sob stories, they're not verifying and they're not saying, all right, if that's really true, release your pre-sentencing report because that will show this all.
The reality is, look, you could always say that.
But Daniel, I'll even say, you don't even need it.
When I saw the quantities of cocaine involved in her, in her sentence, she's dealing directly with the suppliers.
Like you said, the cartels.
She was dealing with their lieutenants.
Brutal murderers, these people on the streets.
You know, this is not a mystery.
The flip side is the woman did 21 years.
He was a first-time offender, given life without parole, did 21 years.
Even the warden of that federal facility gave her a glowing recommendation.
So I guess the question is, if that doesn't warrant a pardon, what does?
So again, we don't have the full details.
Why was she sentenced to that to begin with?
And again, I don't want to.
I believe that's the mandatory minimum.
That's the mandatory minimum.
But it's not with that weight.
It's not over.
Roughly 70% of people are escaping the mandatories now.
There's a lot of loopholes in them.
And we have the fewest percentage getting the mandatories as we ever had since the early 90s.
That whole trend has been reversed.
Yet this person in 98.
I'd love to know.
97.
No, I know, but I'm saying we're at the lowest rate.
And I would like to know what exactly is the full story.
Now, I could take this.
No, I agree with you there, as would I. All right, wait, we're going to go back to Alice Marie Johnson, but Scooter Libby, do you agree with his pardon?
Sure.
I'm okay with pardons.
What I'm not okay is with carte blanche broad statements that there are too many nonviolent people in federal prison.
You and I agree there.
You and I agree prison.
Yes.
We agree there.
But again, also, you have to understand the specifics of what is going on here.
Let me give you a perfect example of a case.
Jose Garcia Zarate, the murderer of Kate Steinman.
We all know he murdered her.
We all know that, and that's very notorious.
But picture a situation that didn't gain national attention, and he's a random Joe Schmo that you never would have heard of.
So what's happening to him now?
He was acquitted.
Like many people that you know committed second-degree murder, even first-degree murder, and they're acquitted for all sorts of loopholes.
So what often will happen is the feds will come in and be like, this guy needs to be locked up.
So what is this guy being charged now?
The feds are coming in and charging him on immigrants on re-entry charges and firearms charges.
Let's say I come retrospectively 20 years later and I look at it like, come on, like firearms charges is sitting in there.
But if you would understand the full history there, the guy's really a murderer.
There's a lot of this in the federal prison where they're there's another step.
You and I are on the same page.
And look, something the audience needs to know that we statistically you know, but I know it both scientifically and anecdotally.
About 70% of the cases we arrest in this nation are misdemeanors, about 30% felony, give or take a few points.
But of the 30% of those felonies, about 70% of those are pled out to misdemeanors to adjudicate.
And so, Daniel, I speak from experience.
You know how many guys I arrested for a violent armed robbery that was pled down to a misdemeanor assault or a theft, a criminal possession of stolen property, misdemeanor, just to get it off the docket, to get the guy a year in jail and to make the case go away.
So you're 100% right on that.
We need to know the facts of the arrest, the facts pre-charge, not even pre-sentencing.
I like to know the fact pattern of the arrest before I know anything else, because that tells me more than anything that happened subsequently.
Exactly.
Just two more points on that.
There's a big problem with even a lot of our colleagues.
Like, yeah, locking up people for drugs.
Like, what's the deal?
Okay, two things.
First of all, nobody is sitting in federal prison, not really state prison either, for possession.
That is just not true.
That's right.
Nobody is.
Nobody is.
It's flared down.
It's pled down.
It's pled down to a felony possession, but I would venture to guess.
Even pled down, they're all out.
I have.
But that's what I'm saying.
Even if it's on your record as a possession and you did jail time, chances are you were trafficking and you took the plea for possession.
Yeah, but nobody is currently sitting in federal prison for simple possession.
There's maybe about literally 20, 30 people who are, and they're illegal aliens.
So they're in the federal system just because of immigration.
Nothing to do with it.
So they're drug traffickers, and you know, there's inherent violence.
And as we see, 70,000 people were killed last year, mainly from fentanyl, heroin, meth, and cocaine.
Okay, so this is not exactly, you know, everyone's talking about, oh, the opioid crisis.
Oh, well, gee, that's where it's coming from.
But finally, there's a very important point to be made here.
You said the point.
Most of the time, these are the same dudes doing other things, according to a massive study from the Bureau of Justice statistics.
Yeah, look, we know we have this going back to the 90s when I was on the street, the broken windows policing theory.
If you arrest drug traffickers.
Right.
And if you arrest a guy for jumping a turnstile, you might clear three robbery warrants.
Criminals are criminals or criminals.
They commit many types of crimes.
And the thing is, this is why we actualized probably the best social trend in our lifetime, the miraculous decline in crime.
It's because of those drug laws that you guys hate, you know, out there in the media and politics, but it took the bad guys off the street, the armed forces.
Broken windows, broken windows, and aggressive policing.
Did you look?
If I've got to give Bill Clinton credit for anything, it was the millions upon millions he appropriated for the Safe Streets, Safe Cities program that actually worked.
It went to patrol cars and weapons for cops and better training.
There was a significant crime reduction.
By today's standards, Bill Clinton would be a Tea Party Republican on crime.
Oh, yeah.
And again, it was all started with four or five pieces of legislation in Reagan's era.
This was Reagan's one of his top three issues, legacy issues.
He talked about it so passionately that we always focus on the criminal and not the victim.
And the thing here is, again, very importantly, that retroactivity is toxic.
You can't do that.
There's one thing you say going forward, you want to look at some things, but you can't just carte blanche, retroactively take people out.
I'm okay with case-by-case pardons, but this is not what Congress is looking to do and what this jailbreak movement around Jared and Kardashians.
I agree with you.
Yes, they want a mass release of prisoners.
And let's face it, they want rights restoration so that they can take all these convicts that are going to vote Democrat, put them back on the street and pick up a few million more Democratic voters in Florida, in Texas, and turn those states blue.
John, you just said the point.
Concurrent with jailbreak is a movement in every state, and they're succeeding to have felons vote.
And guess what?
Where they're not succeeding, like in your home state of Florida, the courts are doing it.
Believe me, we know felons vote.
And so my warning to conservatives and libertarians that are jumping on this train, you better be very careful because you need a very balanced approach to this.
Because if you don't put the brakes on this, this will be just as destructive as the amnesty agenda.
All these people are going to vote Democrat.
And then finally, as far as the sympathy and compassion, forget about drug trafficking.
Let's talk about murderers.
If I go through the prisons and take people that were downright convicted for murder, especially once they're elderly and have been there for a while, and they find Jesus in prison, I could concoct a documentary and focus, especially if it's a female.
And I'm telling you, I'm with you on this.
Very carefully.
I care about, listen, I've always said when it comes to murder, I care about the victims.
That's it.
And their families.
If the victims and their families want this person to rot in prison, they should rot in prison.
And if the victims and their families don't and the person still hasn't served their sentence, they need to serve their sentence.
Murderers get no sympathy from me, nor to rapists, nor to child molesters.
Zero.
I will never see the other side of the crime.
I mean, the thing, John, also to understand is, look, when it comes to these people, it's not just a matter of justice.
There's also the deterrent.
That is why we, in other words, I'm not trying to be sarcastic here.
Even murderers, there's a certain number of them, especially once they get older.
If you look at them, they're probably not going to murder again.
It'll be like, why do we need to spend so much money to lock them up?
But if we make that a policy retroactively, I'll keep doing that.
It's going to lose its deterrent.
And I'm not just speculating.
See, look.
No, look, you're not speculating.
Unfortunately, we're running out of time.
I could talk to you about it all day.
We see that on a micro level with giving cops Narcan to administer to people that overdose.
Sure.
You've got medics and cops administering Narcan to the same person twice in a shift.
When you are permissive toward any type of nefarious behavior, let alone crime.
You're going to encourage people to continue to engage in that behavior.
They're going to see it.
Just one more point.
You can't half-ass libertarianism.
Okay.
So in other words, if you're going to be libertarian to law enforcement side and say, oh, screw the drug laws, let the markets work.
If they want to drink the poison, let them die.
And then the next generation won't do it.
Fine.
But then the problem is, I don't see any Koch brother libertarians with me fighting all these nanny state health care programs and the treatments and the Narcan.
Homicide Rates and Unsolved Murders00:07:43
We bring them back alive.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing.
You are preaching to the choir.
Daniel, unfortunately, we're out of time.
Daniel Horowitz, senior editor, Conservative Review, always informative.
Always great to have you on the show, Daniel.
Thanks.
Take care.
God bless.
Very interesting story in the Washington Post today.
The Post is profiling, they've actually mapped 52,000 homicides, and they found areas where murders are common, but arrests aren't.
Now, they talk about murders in cities from San Francisco to Omaha, Nebraska to Kansas City to Boston.
And in many of these cities, in similar neighborhoods, the arrest rates are very high.
In other areas, the arrest rates are low.
These cases go unsolved.
So they say the overall homicide arrest rate in the 50 cities, the Post profiled, where they looked at 52,000 homicides is 49%.
But in these areas of impunity, police make arrests less than 33% of the time.
Now, despite a nationwide drop in violence to historic lows, 34 of the 50 cities have a lower homicide arrest rate now than they did as a decade ago.
Some cities, and this is very concerning when I tell you the name of the cities, such as Baltimore and Chicago, two cities with the highest murder rates in the country.
They're definitely in the top five, solve so few homicides that vast areas, excuse me, solve so few homicides that vast areas stretching for miles experience hundreds of homicides with virtually no arrests.
In other places, such as Atlanta, police manage to make arrests, and the majority of homicides, even those that occur in the city's most violent areas.
Now, to give you an example, Baltimore and Chicago are cities with mostly low arrest areas.
Atlanta and Richmond, Virginia, when you look at, they did a heat map on this Post article.
I encourage you to read it.
I'm going to be tweeting out the link to the article as we tweet out parts of the segment.
Cities with mostly high arrest areas, like I said, include Atlanta, Richmond, Virginia, then Phoenix and San Antonio.
It's scattered.
Certain areas, and it's very interesting, neighborhoods right next to one another.
One will have a high arrest pattern for homicide.
One will have a very low arrest pattern for homicide.
But it goes on to say that police blame the failure to solve these homicides in these places on insufficient resource and poor relationships with residents, especially in areas that grapple with drug and gang activity where potential witnesses fear retaliation.
But the families of those killed, and even some officers say the fault rests with apathetic police departments, all agree that the unsolved killings perpetuate cycles of violence in low-arrest areas.
And that's true.
But I do have to agree, and I will, I've got to give credit where it do.
I slam the Washington Post enough, but when they do exposés like this, they're actually very good.
They're very good.
This is a very solid piece of reporting here.
Now, oftentimes, when you have a gang-related homicide, it's very difficult to close because if the gangbanger is going to kill that guy or that girl, they're very easily going to kill you if you're a witness and you testify.
I understand why the people in these neighborhoods don't want to cooperate.
Retaliation is a great motivator to keep your mouth shut and your eyes closed.
Now, are there some apathetic departments?
Yes.
But for the most part, big city departments aggressively pursue homicides because you want your case closure rate to be high, right?
Your crime stats look horrible if you have homicide upon homicide upon homicide that's unsolved.
Doesn't look good for you.
You don't stay chief, commissioner, sheriff very long in that scenario.
So again, my personal experience, having worked on the street in the Bronx, is that if you're not going to solve it, it's typically because no one is coming forward to help you.
The best you can hope for is a CI, somebody that you arrest on a charge that's going to, you know, maybe result in long jail time.
They knew on the street who committed the homicide, they give the guy up in exchange for a lesser sentence.
If you can't get that, though, solving these is very, very difficult.
Now, detectives say they can't solve homicides without community cooperation, which makes it almost impossible to close cases in areas where residents are ready to trust the police.
As a result, distrust deepens and killers remain on the street with no deterrent.
Quote, if the cases go unsolved, it has the potential to send the message to our community that we don't care, said Oakland police captain Roland Holmgren.
He leads the department's CID, the Criminal Investigation Division, and that city has two zones where unsolved homicides are clustered.
Now, homicide arrest rates vary widely when examined by the race of the victim.
An arrest was made in 63% of the killings of white victims compared with 48% of the killings of Latino victims and 46% of the killings of black victims.
Almost all of the low arrest zones are home to primarily low-income black residents.
Now, now, you would think that the Post is trying to say racism, racism, but they're not.
Those are the numbers I've dug in.
The reason is, homicides, homicide in general is an intra-racial crime.
Whites kill whites, blacks kill blacks, Hispanic kill Hispanics, Asian kill agents, etc.
The white on white homicides are typically domestic.
They're typically the result of a bar fight or some non-criminal beef.
The black on black and Hispanic on Hispanic homicides, sure, they have their smattering of domestic.
Those are the ones that are typically solved, but the others tend to be drug on drug, gang on gang, things of that nature.
Much tougher to get a witness.
A spouse kills a spouse, a lot of witnesses, the family of the victim go to bat, they testify against the murderer.
Those cases you can close, or there's a loud domestic, or there's a loud argument, or it's road rage, and one guy shoots another guy, and 37 people have the license plate as he pulls away.
But when you're dealing with, and those are typically the white-on-white arrests for murder.
Now, there is crossover, but murder is typically an intra-racial crime.
The majority of the data points to that.
Well, the data points to the majority of murders being intra-racial, I should say.
But when you're dealing with the minority communities, the black, Hispanic community, the fear of retaliation is higher.
The relationship with the police are worse.
It's true.
So what's the answer?
Well, the answer really is people in these neighborhoods are going to have to step up.
They're going to have to say, look, maybe we dislike the police, but let's reflect.
Maybe we haven't been all that cooperative with them.
Maybe we haven't helped them do their job.
And maybe it's time for us to start doing that because we can have a nation with 52,000 homicides, almost half of them, over half of them going unsolved when the murders are black and Hispanic, and 40% of them, 37% of them going unsolved when the victims are white.
These are unacceptable numbers and witnesses need to step up.
And really, I encourage you to read this.
Great piece.
April Ryan Boos Samatha B00:04:13
Really good reporting.
Very interesting subject matter from the post.
Going to close out the show today with some good news about a spankdown of two vile leftist women who happen to be on TV.
Samantha B, who was reprehensible and disgusting in the way she spoke about Ivanka Trump, is having her full creative control on her show pulled by TBS.
TBS management will reportedly have more scrutiny over Samantha B's show Full Frontal after the firestorm over her use, the vile word, to describe first daughter, Ivanka Trump.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the plan entails management working with the show to prevent another incident.
that could drive away advertisers and draw rebukes from both ends of the political spectrum.
Well, this was long overdue and a long time coming.
What Samantha B did was pretty much disgraceful and should never have happened.
But hey, they can blame B all they want over at TBS.
Problem with that is, I know how the editorial process works.
Samantha B didn't just say that off the cuff.
Producers knew about it.
It was in her teleprompter.
Editors knew about it.
Standards and policy people knew about it.
Network lawyers knew about it.
Samantha B knew about it.
Samantha B's agent manager and personal lawyer knew about it.
All of these people most likely knew about it.
That's the editorial process.
Samantha B went ahead with it anyway.
So I love that TBS is pulling back creative control and doing something, but it's complete nonsense because many of those same executives that are going to now have input in that creative control, they were complicit in this.
Even better, CNN contributor April Ryan was embarrassed for putting out fake news.
And it was actually another CNN reporter that called her out.
Now, you know, April Ryan, she is this black activist parading around and masquerading as a reporter.
He's constantly disrupting the White House press briefings.
When Sarah Huckabee Sanders calls on her and gives her a question, April Ryan doesn't stop.
She speaks over her colleagues.
She disrupts the press conference.
It's led to some pretty tense exchanges between Ryan and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Well, the president held that event to honor troops in lieu of the Philadelphia Eagles coming a couple of days back.
April Ryan tweeted.
Now, there was a heckler in the crowd.
You've probably seen the video.
The heckler insulted the president.
The crowd booed the heckler.
The president went on, gave a speech.
It was a nice event.
April Ryan, though, tweeted, breaking.
Reporters on the South Lawn have confirmed that real Donald Trump was heckled and booed when he came out to celebrate America.
The only problem is, now April Ryan's a CNN contributor.
Noah Gray from CNN promptly spanked her down and said, this is not true.
There was a protester who shouted at Trump and was booed.
He said, after the anthem, this man shouted, stop hiding behind the armed services and the national anthem.
He was booed, then called a Cowboys fan.
April Ryan then tried to backtrack.
She took her tweet down.
She then tweeted, she deleted the initial tweet and said, with a new tweet, the original breaking boo tweet was deleted as reporters on the South Lawn who told of the booing and heckling did not see all what happened on the other side of the lawn.
After the tape was watched, the heckler was booed, not Donald Trump.
But April was lying again because no reporters reported what April did.
April was the only person in the United States of America that saw it as Trump being booed.
She was called out on Twitter by reporters, other people in the media, people on Twitter who watch the video and who have eyes and ears.
So once again, CNN commentator and political analyst April Ryan caught in fake news.
It's happening every five minutes, but it was a really good day, really good day to see Samantha B and April Ryan both embarrassed for their moronic behavior.
And keep on it because it's you tweeting, you Facebooking, you're catching them in this.