Sean covers the breaking news that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is retiring from the bench. Sean reviews some of the critical court decisions and reviews some of the candidates who may take Kennedy's place. Take a listen as Sean explores Justice Kennedy's legacy. The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Justice Anthony, you know who I'm talking about.
Justice Kennedy will be retiring.
And he is a man that I've known for a long time and a man that I've respected for a long time.
He's been a great justice of the Supreme Court.
He is a man who is displaying great vision.
He's displayed tremendous vision and tremendous heart.
And he will be missed, but he will be retiring.
And we will begin our search for a new justice of the United States Supreme Court that will begin immediately.
And hopefully, we're going to pick somebody who will be as outstanding.
So I just want to thank Justice Kennedy for the years of tremendous service.
He's a very spectacular man, really a spectacular man.
And I know that he will be around, hopefully, for a long time to advise.
And I believe he's going to be teaching and doing other things.
So thank you to Justice Kennedy.
Thank you.
Who will you pick to replace him, sir?
Well, we have obviously numerous people.
We have a list of 25 people that I actually had during my election.
I had to 20, and as you know, I added five a little while ago.
We have a very excellent list of great talented, highly educated, highly intelligent, hopefully tremendous people.
I think the list is very outstanding.
When I was running, I put down a list of 20 people because not being a politician, I think people wanted to hear what some of my choices may be.
And it was pretty effective.
And I think you see the kind of quality that we're looking at when you look at that list.
But I did add, I added five additional people to the list.
So it will be somebody from that list.
So we have now boiled it down to about 25 people.
All right, there's the president making the announcement today that Anthony Kennedy now has decided to resign.
There is a vacancy at the United States Supreme Court as he steps aside.
No doubt the predictable, contentious fight looms.
We're going to play in a minute.
Remember when Ted Kennedy said about Robert Bork?
This is what they do.
Remember what was said by Clarence Thomas.
We'll play some of that for you in the course of the program today.
But you heard the president now saying that he intends to choose his nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy in the same way that he chose Neil Gorsuch.
And we see the importance just yesterday with a 5-4 decision on the travel ban.
And it does bring into play a lot of political questions because if you go back to the election in 2016 and especially the never Trumper superior intellect crowd that thinks that we're dumb, we're stupid, and they're brilliant and they're geniuses, even they can't even find it within themselves, many of them, to admit that Donald Trump is governing as a conservative.
And the president during the election was very, very clear about the type of person that he wanted to put on the court.
He talked about his two favorite justices being Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
He talked about the philosophy of originalism, as opposed to the liberal leftist wing of the court that actually would even go as far as citing foreign law, law, to justify their decision making when a fact that a religious originalist actually believes in the interpretation of the Constitution.
You know, this is a very, very probably one of the most important things a president will do.
The impact of the president's decision here will impact the country.
It'll be their everlasting legacy that goes on sometimes 20, 30, 40 years or more in terms of court decisions that impact the culture and society of this country and the rule of law in this country.
And the fact that there are some that wouldn't even rely on our own Constitution in the process of making a decision should be alarming to every American.
The president is not looking for a judicial activist.
He's not looking for somebody that believes they have the power and the authority to legislate from the bench.
He's looking for somebody that believes in co-equal branches of government, the executive branch, the judicial branch, and, of course, Congress and the legislative branch.
He's looking for somebody that doesn't want to usurp the role of the legislative branch or the executive branch and somebody that interprets the Constitution and its true meaning and what our founders and framers had as their intention and when they designed this great democratic republic of ours because it is a republic.
It's a constitutional republic.
And so I think that Neil Gorsuch, as of now, has been a pretty good pick.
It's interesting when you watch Kennedy because, you know, Kennedy, I'm looking at the backgrounds and the voting records of the so-called conservative five that are on the bench right now.
And, you know, one of the biggest disappointments I thought we had was with John Roberts as, you know, he was, you know, the chief justice, his ruling on health care.
And we were told that he had actually been on the other side of that vote, which would have demolished Obamacare at the time, but he changed at the last minute because he didn't want the court to appear to be politicized.
Well, that in and of itself is not sound judicial practice in my view.
But it has been the only time, by the way, that he has gone along and sided with the court's more liberal wing of the bench, and that would be Sonia Sotomayor before her David Souter or Elena Kagan and before her, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is hanging on and Stephen Breyer.
I mean, we have a very, very solid left-wing, you know, left-wing, if you will, or let's just say liberal justices on the court.
And there's four of them, and they vote as a block, and they rarely show independent thought.
Anyway, that was the one time that Justice Roberts went with the court's more liberal half.
Clarence Thomas, over the years, he sided only two times with the liberal half of the court.
And he found that in one particular case under maritime law that an injured tugboat worker could seek punitive damages from his employer.
And in another case, an injured locomotive engineer was entitled to damages.
And I don't remember the specifics of those cases.
In the case of Antonin Scalia, I mean, he and Clarence Thomas, there's never been a keener legal mind than his.
And he was literally hated by liberals in this country because he had a consistent judicial philosophy.
And that was one of originalism.
Gave a great speech once on originalism.
I remember playing it right here on this program.
Two times, though, he did side with the court's more liberal half.
And in one case, he found that a defendant who had been wrongly forced to accept a lawyer was entitled to have a conviction overturned.
And before he died, he had ruled that states may exercise supervision over banks in addition to federal regulators, which I don't really, off the top of my head, think that that in any way supersedes his consistent judicial philosophy.
Samuel Alito, well, he's never ruled with the liberal half of the court in any 5-4 decision.
But if you look at the case of Anthony Kennedy, well, in 5-4 decisions just since 2005, well, Justice Anthony Kennedy has now joined the court's, well, more liberal half about twice as often as, for example, he's joined the court's more conservative half about twice as often as the liberal half.
But that's 25 specific instances where he joined the more liberal half of the court.
And, for example, in a case involving the handling of detainees at Gitmo and a death penalty case that was very high profile in Texas.
So nobody ever kind of knew which position where he would come down.
Not that you could ever really read the court.
I mean, sometimes we hear these arguments and it sounds like they go in one way and really they're just kind of, you know, involved in an intellectual exercise.
You know, there's a lot of questions about whether or not that we should have cameras in the Supreme Court when arguments are being made.
I don't think it would be educational for the American people.
I've listened to audio of enough cases.
I mean, you know, every justice has their own way of handling cases.
I mean, sometimes the attorneys in a case, both sides would begin their arguments.
They don't get three words out of their mouth and the justices are jumping down their throats because they'd read the briefs before they ever walked in the room.
And then literally, they will push and push and push.
It's fascinating to watch.
And I think the person that has been best and most entertaining and frankly who had a wicked sense of humor and a keen intellect was Scalia.
And interestingly, Clarence Thomas, he just sits back and takes it all in.
And he's very, just watches the process unfold and does his research and writes amazing opinions or dissents, whatever happens to be the case.
So he's fascinating to watch, too.
I'm getting very interested in Samuel Alito as well.
I think he's been pretty amazing.
John Roberts, I know, ticked a lot of us that are conservative, conservatives off because we couldn't believe the decision as it relates to health care.
But there's going to be a fight.
You know, there's going to be a fight.
We don't use the term borked for no reason at all.
Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions.
Blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters.
Rogue police could break down citizens' doors and midnight raids.
And schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution.
Writers and artists would be censured at the whim of government.
Yeah, remember that?
All of what Kennedy said was not true.
And then Robert Bork, you know, his big mistake is he actually wrote about judicial philosophy and wrote ideas.
And then Kennedy smeared, yeah, the Chappaquitta Kennedy, the guy that left Mary Joe Copechni at the bottom of the Chappaquittick River when he drove the car off the bridge.
And he went home that night and told nobody.
That Kennedy that got away with all of that, said all of that about Robert Bork.
Remember, I'll never forget, you know, Clarence Thomas having to defend his name and honor and the absolute viciousness of attacks against him.
This is a circus.
It's a national disgrace.
It is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.
And it is a message that unless you cow town to an old order, you will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.
One of the most powerful moments of testimony I can recall in my lifetime, and one of the most vicious, vile, unfair attacks against any one individual in Justice Thomas' case, because he happened to be an African-American that was a conservative.
It was vicious.
If you've never read his book, My Grandfather's Son, read about his life and his background, and you're going to find one of the most amazing American stories you'll ever read.
It's an incredible story.
He's an incredible man.
Probably has the funniest laugh I've ever heard in my life, too, on top of everything.
I think I should share this with the audience, right?
Why not?
Why not?
Just, you know, we tell the people.
If you share it, just leave names out.
All right, leave the names out.
So I get a note from a reporter at one of the fake news outlet papers.
I'm not going to say which thing.
Hi, Mr. Hannity.
Hope you're doing well.
First of all, that's a lie.
This guy has hated me forever.
True.
How many hit pieces can one person write about me?
Well, by his taking, it's like, what is it, 38 now?
Yeah, it's like every other day.
Just wanted to see if you had any comment regarding the reports that Bill Schein, your former colleague at the Fox News Channel, is close to being named as communications director at the White House.
I was interested in knowing whether you had put in a good word for him with the president, whether you discussed the matter with Bill Schein himself, how well suited you believe he is for the job, and just anything you might want, might have to say about it.
Thank you for any consideration.
So I wrote back to the person.
As you already know, so-and-so and so-and-so are in charge of Fox public relations.
Please follow the process that has been in existence for 23 years before you write the predictable hate Hannity piece.
Thank you, Sean.
Now, I think that was being polite, especially considering who it is.
By the way, we got to give Linda some kudos here for actually eating normal foods.
Is that toast and eggs?
This is the first day I've seen.
Oh, my God.
I thought you were going to say something really nice.
Breaking news.
I can't believe it's not something putrid green or putrid orange that like is a puree of some kind that you're throwing into your body.
It's my first and only meal today.
Okay.
I hope it's delicious.
Yeah, Bill Schein, I think, and I see it up on Drudge right now that it says X Fox News boss Bill Sheinin talks to become White House Communications Director.
If that's true, I think it would be great because he's great at his job.
And he's one of the smartest people I've ever known and one of the nicest people I've ever known.
As far as what I know about it, if I didn't know anything, it's none of your business anyway.
How's that?
Remember, everybody want to know, did you go with Nuke Gingrich?
Like, I'm not, I don't reveal private conversations with my friends and maybe some sources I have.
If it's true, I'll say this.
It's a great choice.
Quick break, right back.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, you know, this is a great question.
Let me go to Sean, is in College Station, Texas, because it's actually exactly where I was going to go next, but I'll do it in the form of a question.
How are you, Sean?
Welcome aboard.
Thanks for being with us.
Hey, Mr. Hennedy, I'm doing great.
How are you doing?
I'm good, sir.
What's happening?
Well, you know, I'm in Texas.
I love Ted Cruz.
And I think it's time to make Ted Cruz the next justice on the Supreme Court.
I like Ted Cruz a lot.
I would take Ted Cruz on the Supreme Court any day of the week.
I think Ted Cruz is an honorable, smart, principled man, and I like him a lot.
I know he got mad at me at some point during the election, but he's been back on this program many, many times.
He's been a big help to the president.
He's put the country ahead of everything else and politics aside, and I admire him for it because, you know, when you have 17 guys running, 16 are going to lose.
And I know Ted went in with all of his heart.
I think he ran a hard, good campaign.
And I think, you know, he's a young man.
I think it'd be a great choice for the Supreme Court.
I know Levin is pushing.
I know Mark likes Mike Lee, who I know is on the list.
Look, but I can tell you that, you know, the president has 25 names.
And, you know, one is a guy by the name, I don't know if you want me to give the bios of these guys.
Brett Kavanaugh is one, and his name seems to come up a lot.
And his name is on the shortlist.
And he was, you know, he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in the D.C. Circuit in May of 2006.
He was appointed by George W. Bush.
Confirmation by the Senate, et cetera, et cetera.
You know, there's very, there's a lot of interesting people.
William Pryor's name, he was on the short list the last time.
A lot of people know about Judge William H. Pryor, and he's on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, widely considered, along with Judge Diane Sykes, to be a frontrunner to replace, this is going back to Antonin Scalia.
He was one of the frontrunners in that particular case.
There's another guy out there by the name of Paul Clement, and he was the 43rd Solicitor General of the United States and appointed by George W. Bush and preceded by Ted Olson.
I mean, you know, I can't, look, I don't know all 25 people that are on the list, but I know the president is looking for a judicial philosophy.
And the philosophy is that of originalism and a belief that there should not be a thing as known as judicial activism from the court.
One of the problems is liberals in this country, things that they can never accomplish legislatively that they cannot accomplish through the ballot box, they attempt to get passed through the court system.
You know, look how long it took on the entire travel ban.
You know, look how long that has taken.
Look at what the left did.
The left literally and purposefully went to courts that they knew had liberal justice, judges, knowing that they would favor their way.
It's called judge shopping, knowing that the next step in the process would be the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
And that that court is, again, that's where the heart of judicial activism in the country.
And so that's what the left tries to do.
That's why it was interesting.
This is why elections matter.
This is why the president, I never understood never Trumpers.
And I never understood why on this one big issue alone, when we knew there was a Supreme Court opening, that that was not an issue that would be above all others.
By the way, Mike Lee's brother Thomas is on the president's list.
And that was interesting, although I didn't see that the president got too much favor from Mike Lee in the early days of his administration.
I don't know if that's since changed, but my memory is kind of long.
Maybe it's too long.
Maybe I need to be more forgiving in life.
I don't know.
I just don't know at times.
But I hope the president follows through on his promise.
He says he's going to appoint somebody like Neil Gorsuch.
Neil Gorsuch, you know, it just, I'm very impressed with where he is at this particular point in time.
Seems very, very interesting to me.
And he seems like, you know, that 5-4 decision meant something yesterday.
Now, we have other news, by the way, and I think this is a really big win as we go through, like, for example, yesterday's decision, and there was another decision in the Supreme Court today.
And it's a huge win for conservatives as Neil Gorsuch ruled against forced union dues.
And what are forced union dues about?
You have conservatives, mainline Republicans, they can thank Donald Trump today.
All you never Trumpers, you can thank Donald Trump for yesterday and today because of his appointment of Neil Gorsuch.
Anyway, because Neil Gorsuch cast the deciding vote in the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned a 41-year-old prior ruling that forced employees to pay union dues whether they wanted to pay them or not.
Now, imagine, why do you force rank and file union members?
Why would you force them to pay dues when that money is often funneled to Democratic Party candidates that union members, rank and file, don't support?
That's not fair to them.
That's like forcing them to donate money to people that they disagree with.
And now today, conservatives can celebrate because this has now been overturned.
A 41-year-old prior ruling forcing employees to pay union dues.
Why does an employee have to pay a union due when the unions spend the money to support people like Hillary or Barack Obama?
And now you can celebrate today because Donald Trump put an originalist, a conservative, on the Supreme Court.
And by the way, one of the main engines behind out-of-control government spending, public employee unions, and their ever-escalating contract demands, this is a big blow.
You know, look, one of the reasons we became, you can look to unions.
Now, there's a place for unions.
I don't like companies that mistreat employees.
I don't.
Now, everybody on Team Hannity here, you can all weigh in if you like.
We'll start with Linda, considering she considers herself the boss of that room in there.
You consider me the boss.
In that room.
Oh, okay.
Did you make a decision on hiring Sunshine there as Republicans?
He's the boss.
I'm going to reserve my comments.
Have you made your decision, though?
I have.
And it's coming down to Kylie or Jen.
That's right.
And you made the decision.
I have.
And which one is it?
Again, reserved.
I already know the answer.
All right.
Now, you advocate for everybody in that room.
And one of the things I'll say is, you know, what do you think about who deserves this bonus, who deserves this raise?
And by the way, everybody gets a nice bonus.
And we buy everybody lunch because I think that's the right thing to do.
We should start there.
We should start with the fact that you don't have to do any of that.
So anything above nothing is an amazing gift of generosity.
So that should be duly noted.
Everybody on our staff doesn't have time to leave to go get lunch.
Nobody has time to go out a wall.
We couldn't order it on our own dime.
The fact that you pay for it is very kind.
No, okay, but I think that's fair.
Thank you, Linda.
Oh, you're welcome, Sean.
Thank you, Linda.
And the same thing we go over, for example, we do yearly raises for everybody, do we not?
Yes, we do.
And we do yearly bonuses for everybody.
Yes, we do.
And I go over all of that.
Now, if I was like a company that was mean to employees, you guys might want to form a union.
By the way, you're going to be.
There's a really popular company.
What's that name again, Ethan?
What's the name of that kind of Amazon?
That's right.
Oh, that's right.
How many of their workers are on food stamps and welfare, and they can't get potty breaks, and they're doing defecating in trash cans and all kinds of fun stuff.
Yeah, they don't have enough money in their own welfare, right?
Guess what?
That story was killed at WAPO.
They weren't allowed to write it.
So Washington Post is owned by Bezos, who owns Amazon, and he's a cheapskate to like 30,000-plus employees, right?
That's correct.
I can't roll like that.
That's not who I am.
But they gave lots of money to illegal immigrants.
This is where you're supposed to say, you know what?
You're right.
You're generous.
You are right.
You are so generous.
I think I started the segment by saying that you're duly noting your generosity.
I believe that was the first thing.
It's not effusive enough for my liking.
Let's go to Ethan.
Oh, my God.
It's just, you know, right?
Best boss ever.
Best boss ever.
Jason, how are we doing with you?
You happy back there?
I'm chipper.
Can't you tell?
That's not, you're happy with your lunch every day, your bonuses every year, the salary increases.
You know that I keep the, I still have bonuses from bonus money from years ago.
Well, that's good for you.
That's smart, by the way.
And Sunshine, who's apparently not that happy because she's abandoning ship.
She's abandoning ships.
I love you.
I think you're one of the best bosses ever.
My dad's a boss, too, so I love him as well.
But that being said, when I was telling Kylie about the job, about what it's like, I actually started.
So Kylie got the job?
Is that what you're saying?
No, I'm talking to her about this position.
I actually started to tear up because it made me so sad that I was going to leave you guys.
Well, you're like family.
I mean, it's just a fact.
We all are.
She is family.
In your case, you are marrying Linda's brother for crying out loud.
So that is family in every sense of the word.
I will say in terms of just the sweetest person you'd ever meet, you're in that category.
Thank you.
And I don't really think Linda's brother's worthy of you.
But, you know, that's a side note.
Careful there.
Careful there.
Oh, so you're going to stick up for the brother more than the sister there?
I never said anything negative about Lauren.
I'm merely warning you to tread lightly.
Okay, I'm just weighing the two.
My little brother.
I love your little brother.
He's actually very cool.
I enjoy him a lot.
He's very funny.
I know.
You told me you like him better than me.
I know I was messing with you.
And then, so I did, but I do think he's marrying a little out of his league.
As all men should.
Do you agree with me?
Absolutely.
He's marrying way above his pay grade.
A man should always love his wife more than she loves him.
Okay, new rules.
Anyway, but if you want to know why states like New York, California, Illinois, along with pretty much every other blue state in the country, why are they all on the verge of bankruptcy and they're all the highest tax states?
Well, you can look in part at how these public employee unions have driven up government spending in those states.
I'll give you an example.
There's news in New York City.
Democratic, you know, communist mayor Bill de Blasio, Comrade de Blasio, awarded one of the city's largest public employee unions.
Get this, a billion dollars in wage increases, a billion dollars for one city, which, by the way, they then spend some of that raise money.
They compel their employees to donate.
And by the way, just because of this court ruling, let me tell you, arms are still going to be twisted.
You better donate.
And in the words of Andrew Napolitano, he said it is, quote, devastating for the Democratic Party.
Well, that's because Donald Trump was elected, all you never-Trumper geniuses over at National Review.
And I'm not talking about Andy McCarthy, and I'm not talking about Victor Davis Hansen and some other people.
As their union dues, you know, collection shrink, it's a disaster for the Democrats because that's how they get money turned back to them.
They get the pay raises, billion dollars, and those people are forced to donate to parties they don't even agree with.
So that's a huge victory that nobody's really paying a lot of attention to.
And de Blasio, 7.4% pay hikes in 44 months because he wants the kickback.
It's the biggest pay-to-play scam that ever has been.
And Elena Kagan, by the way, went rogue and ripped conservative justices for weaponizing the First Amendment.
It's just the opposite of what Elena Kagan's writing here.
You know, she literally, you know, read forcefully her dissent.
There's no sugarcoating today's opinion.
The majority overthrows a decision entrenched in the nation's law and its economic life for over 40 years.
As a result, it prevents the American people acting through their state, local officials, from making important choices about workplace government.
No, it's about shaking down workers to pay for candidates that they don't want to pay for.
I would like unions that stick up for the, you know, the hardworking men and women, but for crying out loud, stop stealing their money so you can throw money back to politicians.
Stop it.
That's so corrupt.
You know, Bernie Sanders, by the way, scored a huge upset win against the Democratic Party leader, believe it or not.
This was a big, big issue that happened.
There was an unapologetic Bernie Sanders socialist who campaigned on open borders, abolishing ICE.
Well, this person defeated longtime liberal congressman who was actually a contender to replace Nancy Pelosi as the top Democrat in the House.
And so this is pretty interesting.
And so liberals with sanity, it sounds like Ed Koch's old time.
Anyway, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi won't admit it.
The Democratic Party now has lurched so far to the left.
This is a big, big win.
A 28-year-old political neophyte, Democratic socialist, Alexander Cortez, blindsided this guy Crowley, Congressman Crowley, and an insider said a 10-year incumbent.
He was expected to be the future speaker for the Democrats.
Bye-bye.
I was waving bye-bye last night on TV.
Oh, the restaurant that booted Sarah Sanders has failed to reopen.
I guess nobody wants to go there anymore.
The Red Hen?
Anyways, will remain closed until July 5th in the wake of the Sarah Sanders controversy.
The owner said her position, she did the right thing.
They apparently followed the whole crowd to another place.
Maxine Waters faces assault charges after a confrontation with a reporter on Tuesday evening.
Apparently, there's an activist we know her.
We've had her on the program before, Laura Loomer, went to Capitol Police.
Did you ever see the video?
I haven't seen the video yet.
And apparently wanted an interview.
And I only saw a small portion of it.
And she just kept saying, well, coach, come to my office.
Anyway, she said she filed a police report with Capitol Hill Police against Maxine Waters and his pressing charges.
All right, we got a lot to get to today.
Supreme Court now a vacancy at the high court as Justice Kennedy has now stepped aside.
The battle begins.
It will be contentious, predictably so.
We'll get to all of that more on this decision.
I want to get to tell Joe in Altoona.
He's a union guy.
Joe, stay right there.
When we come back, I'm going to get to Joe because Joe's not understanding me.
I love union.
I love union people, union jobs.
I'm saying that this court decision today now frees union workers so they're not forced to pay money to unions for political candidates that they don't like or support.
That's called freedom, Joe.
I'll explain it next.
All right, glad you're with us.
Hour two, there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
And Anthony Kennedy is retired.
And let me just warn you, the left, the Borking, the Clarence Thomas-like style attacks, it's all coming because that's all the left does.
It's so predictable.
Just like, you know, everything that we've been watching with Sarah Sanders and Pam Bondi and Secretary Nielsen and even attacking Baron Trump and even going after Don Jr.'s little girl, a four-year-old named Chloe, the president's granddaughter.
That's how bad it's gotten.
Never mind the regular attacks on Melania Trump, a first lady and the first daughter of Anka Trump.
That goes now without saying.
But this election now just got even bigger.
I said it's the most important midterm election in our lifetime.
Well, now it's even more important because with Justice Kennedy out, the left, whoever the president chooses, you better buckle up because they're going to smear, slander, assault you verbally, assassinate your character because that's what they do.
Every two and four years, Republicans are racist.
Republicans are sexist.
Republicans are misogynist.
They're xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic.
Republicans want dirty air and water.
Republicans want children to die.
And of course, they want to throw your grandmother in a wheelchair over the cliff.
That's what we get.
And I prove it because I keep playing the ants.
If you like the Republican, black churches are going to burn.
And it goes on from there.
Anyway, there is some other news that has gone on today.
Peter Strzzok, yeah, the Peter Strzok, has now testified behind closed doors earlier today.
And Freedom Caucus members, Andrew Andy Biggs of Arizona, Congressman Matt Gates of Florida, here to talk about this and so much more.
And apparently, I'm hearing reports, Matt Gates, you were in the room, that, in fact, Peter Strzok actually was never questioned by Robert Mueller, even though Robert Mueller knew about all these text messages that he had the anti-Trump bias that this man had.
Well, Sean, we can't get into the specifics of the questions or the answers.
We can share our reactions.
What I can say in response to your question is that I am shocked at the lack of curiosity with Robert Mueller.
I mean, Sean, if you were in Mueller's shoes and you had found these text messages, I would think that you would want to ask whether or not they impacted the investigative decisions that were made, whether there was bias, whether there was contact with other members of the FBI regarding the investigation and where it was going and who was making the critical judgment calls.
And I just cannot believe the lack of curiosity on the part of Robert Mueller.
It was the strongest reaction I've had today from Peter Strzok's testimony.
Let me ask you this.
If I was in the room, and you know how closely I'm following this case, and Peter Strzok is in the heart of all of this.
He was writing the exoneration of Hillary long before they did the investigation, interviewed her.
He was part of that interview, part of the interview with General Flynn.
He immediately started the witch hunt against Donald Trump.
We've seen all the text messages, insurance policies.
We'll stop him, loathsome human being, and it can go on from there.
Can you give us a headline?
What would my reaction, knowing how passionate I am about the corruption here, because this involved literally saving somebody guilty of felonies, ringing an investigation, and then trying to tear down the other candidate and impact a presidential election?
How do you think I would have reacted if I was in the room?
I don't think you would have been surprised because the Inspector General's report says that when he spoke to Peter Strzok, Strzok reflected, you know, personal feelings that he was sharing with his personal lover, but that those weren't impacting the decisions he was making in the investigation.
Those were the assertions Peter Strzok gave to the Inspector General.
And so none of his responses when confronted with those messages have really surprised us today.
You know, the thing that the out of with what we saw in the Inspector General's report deals with how this investigation was started.
Sean, you will know that we have been demanding documents from before the 31st of July to determine whether or not there was intelligence collected on the Trump scene and whether or not people were paid to collect that intelligence.
In those types of questions, we have not gotten clear answers from Peter Strzzok.
And if it were true that no intelligence collection occurred prior to opening up on Tapadopoulos, then you would think Strzok would just clearly state that if there was nothing going on.
But the fact that he was obtuse in his responses, it really raises a lot of suspicion that that intelligence might have in fact been going on.
I can ask you your impression.
Did you feel he was telling the truth?
I felt like in some cases he was not being clear in his responses.
You know, I don't think that it is ever truthful to reflect on the text messages as anything other than a bias and a willingness to take official action based on that bias.
So in that sense, no, I don't believe that Peter Strzzok has been truthful to the Inspector General or to Congress today because it's so obvious that this was someone who held bias and who was willing to take action based on that bias.
Do you agree with me in my characterization that this is the biggest abuse of power corruption scandal in American history and that we had a number of high-ranking FBI officials and others that were involved in an effort to literally to frame Donald Trump,
to attack him unfairly, create a phony narrative about Russia while simultaneously and previously saving Hillary Clinton from what other Americans would have gotten, which is an indictment?
I think it is entirely correct that this represents an unprecedented abuse of power.
But Sean, that's not just your view.
When my colleague Jim Jordan asked the Inspector General if he had ever seen anything like this, where essentially the entire leadership of the FBI has to be swept out at once because of firings, demotions, criminal prosecutions, conflicts of interest.
They're leaving days after they have to give testimony to Congress because they don't want to have to account for that testimony.
This is unprecedented.
Those aren't your words and my words.
Those are the words of Michael Horowitz, the Democrat Inspector General.
Let me go.
There's a lot of other issues now happening in Washington today, and Congressman Andy Biggs with us.
And I know you weren't in the hearings, Congressman, so I'm not really going to ask you about that, but you are a part of this effort on two different issues.
Number one, the move for censure as it relates to Maxime Waters, number one, and number two, the immigration bill, the more liberal bill, and whether that has a chance of getting more votes than the conservative one, which I hope not, and where it's going.
Well, let's take a first, I have been in that hearing all day, Sean, but second of all, the immigration bill, the liberal immigration bill that provided amnesty, the first vote for general amnesty, failed with about 100 and they only got 120 votes there.
So the more conservative bill, 193.
So big, huge difference there.
The other aspect is I filed the motion to censure Maxine Waters for her verbal tirade and her inciting and inflammatory language.
And Matt, of course, co-sponsored with me.
And we have got that's pending right now.
I've worked with leadership trying to get some motion on it.
They've asked me to do a couple things.
I'm going to try to do a couple things because she needs to be censured.
She needs to know.
A censure really is an official reprimand, and she needs to be reprimanded for her misconduct.
Well, and what happens with that?
What does that ultimately mean?
What it means is that the body itself has said, you have brought discredit to yourself and to the body.
And so we are officially sanctioning you.
But it doesn't remove her from office, of course.
It doesn't expel her from the body, nor does it even necessarily remove her from committee assignments.
That would be left up to her leadership at that point and her conference based on the fact that she was reprimanded by the body.
Let's talk about the immigration bill.
Now, the Goodlap bill, which had, I think, far more, was far better and far closer to the four principles that the president outlined, Congressman Gates.
We didn't get enough votes.
Why can't we get Republicans to, and it's simple.
Fund the wall, give the president all the money from the wall up front because any money promised down the road is never coming.
Number two, it would give the Democrats things they say that they want.
You know, protect would be a DACA fix, separation of families fix.
The president, I know his executive order the other day, I don't think it's going to pass muster in any court, but putting that aside, it gives Congress time to do their job.
This is Congress's law.
This is a past president that put this into law.
It's not Donald Trump.
Donald Trump's the only one that stood up and fixed it.
Well, Sean, there are two key questions that are dividing the Republican Party right now on immigration.
The first is whether anyone who came here illegally should have a path to citizenship.
You know, it's my view, and it's the view of the good last and the president, that there is a way to be compassionate with legal status with people who've come here through no fault of their own.
But when you give people citizenship, a first-generation illegal entry into the country, you build all the wrong incentives into the system.
The second key question is whether or not the parents of the DACA kids ought to be given some opportunity to live here legally and obtain citizenship.
A lot of us think that the problem that you have with children that we all want to be compassionate for is that their parents are choosing to illegally enter our country against the wishes of our country and against the dignity of our very border.
So the conservatives believe that we can be compassionate to children, but that we cannot reward the illegal alien parents with citizenship, and we cannot create broad new pathways to citizenship.
And I hope that we can make the conservative case on those points so that we can persuade our colleagues.
You know, I don't think this is difficult, but I don't think the Democrats want a solution either because they want to keep this as a campaign issue.
And as I said, every two and four years, the playbook is the same.
It's, you know, the four things that Democrats, I think, are certain, Congressman Biggs, that they're going to do.
They want to impeach Trump, but they don't want to tell us.
They want open borders.
They're pretty transparent about that.
They want to keep Obamacare pretty transparent about that.
And they want to take back the crumbs, as Nancy Pelosi calls them.
In other words, the tax cuts from the hardworking men and women in this country.
That's right.
And, you know, we're looking at, you said it.
This is the most serious and important midterm election in perhaps my lifetime.
And it's because of the very things that you're talking about.
They want the open borders.
They don't want to give us money to build the wall or secure the borders.
They want to take away the tax reform, which has now produced this robust economy, the foundation of an economy that, remember, it wasn't too long ago that President Obama and Hillary Clinton said, hey, look, we'll never get above 1.8% GDP growth.
We're not going to see that kind of growth ever again.
And all it takes is reduction in regulation.
All it takes is reduction in taxes.
And then people, the great creators that Americans are, create jobs.
They create wage increases.
The first real wage increase that beats inflation in like 40 years.
And the American people know it.
And so the Democrats, they're left with throwing bombs, which is, this is back to maximum.
But they do that every single election season.
This is the silly season because they don't have ideas.
All right, let me get to our busy phones here.
Joe has been really patient.
Now, Joe apparently is a union guy in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
What union are you in, Joe?
Utility Workers, United Utility Workers of America.
By the way, you guys work hard.
Thank you for what you do.
I mean that.
I mean, I know how hard you work every day.
Thank you.
So what's on your mind, this decision today?
I know you want to talk about.
Oh, yeah, real quick.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought there was a COPE fund, which I have opted out.
I thought that was the only money that went to the politicians that you had no control over.
Listen, that option is available.
You're absolutely right.
But on the other hand, if we're going to be realistic and honest about it, there's a lot of pressure.
Well, first of all, you've got your initiation fees that you pay for unions and union dues that you pay, et cetera, et cetera.
And you know and I know that there's a lot of pressure that is brought to bear on a lot of people in a lot of unions to do exactly what I was talking about.
Am I wrong?
I'll admit I'm wrong, but I know a lot of union guys.
And the problem.
And the problem is I love rank and file guys.
I really do.
They're the heart and soul of the country.
You know, I view myself as the dishwasher and the painter and the contractor because that's two decades of my life.
And I know how hard you guys work.
I want you to get the best salary and the best benefits.
I hate bad bosses.
And I wasn't putting my staff on to pat myself on the back, but a lot of these companies, if they would just treat people the right way, nobody's going to go to a union.
Nobody that works for me is going to join a union on this radio show because they're not going to do better with a union.
It's just not going to happen.
Why are you rolling your eyes just to annoy me?
You're rolling your eyes to annoy me.
Oh, okay.
Let's lynch up being funny.
But you know what I'm saying?
There's a way to treat people.
And if you're doing well, then the employees should do well.
If the company's doing well, let them benefit.
That's why these tax cuts have been so amazing for, you know, the forgotten men and women that have jobs that are now getting raises.
Look at, what was it, Walmart or Target this week?
$14 an hour, you know, is now their starting wage.
Their minimum wage is, we don't need the government to tell us it's $8 an hour, $10.
We don't need that.
Because the companies are doing it because now they have more money because the government's getting out of the way.
Does that make sense?
Oh, I agree 100%.
I thought you were going to...
I think we have one other quick...
Yeah, go ahead.
What's that?
Go ahead.
One quick question.
I guess there was a vote something today on the Social Security.
I don't know if you can explain that and tell me your thoughts.
I really don't know what it meant or what it was about.
All right.
I'll tell you what, I think you're talking about the, well, first of all, they have the big immigration vote that's going on today.
Let me pull it up when we get back and we will and we'll literally just give him the details on that because we have another segment we got to do here.
And I don't want him to have to wait a half hour.
We'll come back.
We got Jim Jordan of Ohio coming up and much more.
Straight ahead.
All right, 25 to the top of the hour.
All right, Jay Seculo.
Yeah, Jay Seculo will be joining us as well in the next hour.
Also beckon, checking in Greg Jarrett.
I see him in the next room over there.
He'll be joining us, and David Schoen will be joining us.
So we'll get into Justice Kennedy.
If you're just getting in the car today, there's now a vacancy in the U.S. Supreme Court.
You know, I just want to stop for one second here.
You never Trumpers out there.
I want to address you.
You know, you people that were so critical of me for supporting Donald Trump and you're not voting for Donald Trump under any circumstances.
I want people to understand there's something deep and profound here because there's a lot of those people that are trying to hide who they were and who they really are.
And what they're kind of trying to do now, and there's a part of me that says, well, better late than never.
But the reality is all those outspoken, I'll never vote for Donald Trump, and I said, well, that's a half a vote for Hillary, now all of a sudden they're trying to make their living, sounding as if they're the most pro-Trump people that have ever existed.
I want to actually name names.
Maybe I'll do that tomorrow because they're all full of crap.
You should do some of them now.
But you want to know the sad part of this is the only reason some of them now are on board is because they're doing, they're not doing what we do.
When I vet Barack Obama and I do Alinsky and I do Acorn and I do Reverend Wright and Frank Marshall Davis and Ayers and Dorn and the Church of GD America, I'm getting calls from people like Newt Kingridge telling me that I'm about to end my career.
It's over.
I'm going too far and you need to let it go.
And then, of course, I'm like, no, my principles guide me in my decision making.
And I was called an unprincipled conservative when Donald Trump, as I predicted, is governing as or more conservatively than Ronald Reagan.
It's actually the comparisons are eerie.
You've got Evil Empire, Mr. Garbert, tear down this wall.
You got that.
And then you got, let's see, Fire and Fury, Little Rocket Man, my button's bigger than yours, and I'm going to blow you to smithereens if you dare try it.
Now look what happened.
Peace through strength actually works.
He didn't bribe dictators like Clinton or like Obama.
You know, now not only do we have, we wouldn't have had the court decisions the last two days if Hillary were president.
We wouldn't have now another opportunity to put another originalist on the court if Hillary Clinton won.
You know, and then you got the, I mean, you got the same old predictable people, starting with Bill Kristol.
Not that he's supporting him or George Will.
Oh, we've got to defeat Donald Trump in the November.
Okay, then what are you going to get?
You're not getting tax cuts.
The crumbs are going to be taken back.
You get to keep Obamacare as if we haven't had enough damage to the American people and their health care system with Obamacare.
Keep your doctor, keep your plan, and save money.
None of that came true.
Then we're going to have open borders because that's what they want.
And they want to impeach the president.
For what?
And none of these people have had the courage to go out on a limb like we do every day.
We went out on a limb, and I stand by where I stood because I knew Trump.
I knew him.
And I interviewed him.
I looked him in the eye.
And my gut told me, wow, this is a no-brainer.
He said he'd pick originalists.
He said he'd cut taxes.
He said he wants to build the wall.
He said he'd get rid of burdensome regulations.
He said, if we're fighting wars, we're stupid.
He tried to talk to people, and he wasn't going to do any more bad deals or blackmail deals that never work anyway.
Relocing missiles at Japan, and he's now literally dismantling missile launch pads and facilities, gives us our hostages back.
He's purging the old guard of his father.
He's not having his yearly hate America rally.
And things are getting better.
By the way, Jerusalem is now the capital of Israel.
And the Iranian deal, well, we're out of it.
We just need our $150 billion back.
Thank you, Obama.
And I just, I sit here and I'm watching some of these people.
You know, and Ann R. Rowe was as bad as anybody.
And I say that with great, great deference to people like Andy McCarthy.
And I mean that.
And Victor Davis Hansen and some others.
Even Rich Lowry, to his credit, has come around quite a bit.
Some of the other ones, oh, I mean, these, I just can't take it.
But you know something?
Those people that they will never be leaders, unless you have skin in the game in this, you know, this is what we do differently.
This is why this show, I think, is different.
This is why I don't mind going out on a limb.
I'm willing to risk my career.
I'm willing to put it all on the line for what I believe in.
And trust me, there were people that wanted me dead when I was vetting Obama.
There were people that thought I was crazy, that Trump had no chance to win.
There were people that didn't believe that he'd be this successful, that he would govern with the conservative principles he's governing with.
And now that he put Neil Gorsuch on the court, my question to you, I'll never vote for Donald Trump people is, why?
Where are you now?
And some of you are actually trying to jump on the Trump bandwagon today, because if you had your way, Hillary would be making this choice.
Hillary would be negotiating with Iran and little Rocket Man.
Hillary would never have made Jerusalem the capital.
Hillary would never have cut taxes.
Hillary would have nothing but open borders.
Hillary would now have her second Supreme Court nominee.
So I really don't have a lot of, you know, some of the people that I'm, well, because I'm saying it behind, yeah.
You know why I don't want to do it?
Because I'm just, I just, there's a part, I know people that I could ruin their lives today because of their stupidity, and I just don't do it.
Now, somewhere deep inside of me, my parents taking me to church every Sunday.
In the name of the Father and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, amen.
It got in.
Somehow, God got in there.
And I was fighting it tooth and nail.
I didn't want to be in church.
I didn't want to.
I was causing trouble in church.
Then my father made me be an altar boy.
That was worse.
You know, we're drinking the wine behind the, it was not good.
I was incorrigible.
But, yeah, I really do believe strongly in a God.
And I believe the whole story of Jesus.
And I just, and I believe that there's that he created all of this.
And I don't think God made us to be timid and weak.
I think God, you know, if I'm going to have this microphone and the honor of this microphone that you give me every day by listening to this program, yeah, I'm going to vet Obama.
Yeah, I am.
And I'm going to do the best job I can, even if nobody else is doing it.
Yeah, I'm going to vet every presidential candidate, and I'm going to tell you the truth about how I think they're going to govern.
I'm not going to hold back.
And even though there was probably at least 50,000 versions of Hannity's career is over written before the November 8, 2016 elections, I'm glad it turned out right.
Not for my sake, for the country's sake.
And I'm doing the same thing now with Robert Mueller and his witch hunt and Rod Rosenstein.
And we're doing this exactly, we're going out on a limb.
I mean, I was kind of happy this week when the Wall Street Journal jumped in.
Gee, a little late, guys.
But the reality is, it is the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the country.
It's the biggest abuse of power scandal in the history of the country.
And there have been a few of us that have been willing to go out on a limb and do real reporting and get to the truth.
And a part of me should be satisfied in as much as we have corroborated everything.
Hillary broke the law.
She committed felonies.
Hillary, in fact, used Bleach Bit to acid wash her hard drive.
Saying it that way, what's the name of that stupid publication that didn't understand?
The Hollywood Reporter.
I don't have to go to one of their stupid red carpeting.
I don't know why you went the first time.
What a waste of time.
That's a good point.
Yeah, she did the biggest, the clearest obstruction case ever.
Yeah, Christian Saussure went to jail a year for six pictures.
And then we see the FISA warrant issue is true too.
But Comey and Strzok and McCabe and Paige and Loretta Lynch, all of them abused their power because they put the fix in to save Hillary from an indictment in jail because she was the favored candidate.
And then they actively, purposefully went to undermine Donald Trump with lies.
And FBI spies inside the Trump campaign and then lying to FISA court judges, violating the FISA law, which is so crucial if you believe in the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution against unreasonable search and seizure.
That's all true, too.
We told you March 7th, 2017, there was a FISA warrant against the Trump campaign.
And we haven't stopped.
And everything that we said has been right, accurate, and true.
And I'll be honest, I don't want any credit.
I do think people like Sarah Carter deserve a Pulitzer.
But of course, that will never happen in this corrupt world.
And the media, basically just an extension of all things liberal.
What have they done?
They have advanced a lie and a narrative designed to undermine a duly elected president of the United States.
It's the biggest story ever in our lifetime.
If we don't get it right, we're going to be Venezuela.
If we don't get it right, it's going to be the former Soviet Union.
If we don't get it right, equal justice, equal application of our laws are done.
It's finished.
It's over.
And the foundation of this great republic, this constitutional republic is the Constitution.
That is the foundation of all of our laws.
You know, that's why, I mean, it's almost a little ironic, all the cuts of Obama that we've been playing.
He actually understood the truth, but he didn't live by the truth.
I'm not an emperor.
I can't do these things by executive fear.
You know, funny, people think that I could just, with the magic wand of a pen, fix the law.
No, we have co-equal branches of government.
We have in this country separation of powers.
And that's why, for example, the vacancy now at the U.S. Supreme Court matters.
And Hillary would be choosing.
I don't, I am never going to be a Republican again.
I vote for the person I am a conservative.
I'm not a populist.
I'm not a nationalist.
My entire career has been one of consistent Reagan conservatism.
I've not changed an iota.
And I know people in this industry, for whatever reason, maybe ratings up and down, there's always cycles in news.
And sometimes it's slow news and busy.
But they feel like they've got to remake themselves.
And all it is is a means of manipulating you, the American people.
But you know one thing I have learned, and I said this to Mark Levin recently, you can't really fake it for three hours a day on radio because like in the election that just passed in 2016, the American people are too smart.
You know the phonies.
You know the showmen.
You know the conmen.
You know the liars.
You know the Johnny come lately's.
You know when people put it on the line and when people don't.
You know what all I want to do for the rest of my life?
I just want to serve any way I can.
That's it.
Do my little part and be a spoke in the wheel and just do my part every day.
And part of my part is to do what I always do.
And that's climb the tree, go out on the smallest limb and the smallest branch and find the one leaf that didn't fall during the last fall and hang on to that because I know it's the truth.
That's what we do on this show.
For all the people in the media, they don't understand Hannity's number one in cable.
Why?
That's the secret.
I tell the people the truth.
And I have respect for the people of this country because you make it great, not me.
You get up every day, you work hard, play by the rules, pay your taxes, raise your kids, obey the laws, serve other people every single solitary day, and you don't bitch, whine, and complain about it, but you're screwed over by your government.
Well, you kind of do complain.
We all do.
And you're screwed over by your government.
Finally, now we're cleaning up the mess.
That's it.
You want to understand who I am?
That's it in a nutshell.
And I don't give a flying rip what any of these people think.
They disgust me in the media.
Johnny, come lately.
I have no respect for you at all, and you know who you are.
Glad you're with us.
We continue our big news today.
The Supreme Court Justice, well, he's really moved solidly left.
He's viewed as the swing vote on the Supreme Court.
Justice Kennedy has now announced his retirement at the age of 81 years of age.
Let's go back in our archives and pull out some of the sound from some of the decisions he's been involved in.
The same, it seems to me, would be true, say, for the market in emergency services.
You don't know if you're going to need a heart transplant or if you ever will.
So there's a market there.
In some extent, we all participate in it.
So can the government require you to buy a cell phone because that would facilitate responding when you need emergency services?
You can just dial 911 no matter where you are.
No, Mr. Chief Justice, I think that's different.
I don't think we think of that as a market.
This is a market.
This is market regulation.
And in addition, you have a situation in this market not only where people enter involuntarily as to when they enter and won't be able to control what they need when they enter.
It seems to me that's the same as in my hypothetical.
You don't know when you're going to need police assistance.
You can't predict the extent to emergency response that you'll need.
But when you do, and the government provides it.
I thought that was an important part of your argument, that when you need health care, the government will make sure you get it.
And here the government is saying that the federal government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act.
And that is different from what we have in previous cases.
Well, that changes the relationship of the federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way.
It seems to me that you cannot say that everybody is going to need substance use of treatment.
All right, so that was Justice Kennedy.
You know, we've done our research, and what we found that there are, for example, if you look at John Roberts on the health care, the ACA Supreme Court decision, that was the one time he sided with the left wing of the activist wing, if you will, of the Supreme Court.
Clarence Thomas, over the many, many years, you know, under maritime law, an injured tugboat worker could seek punitive damages from his employer.
In another case, sided with the left wing on the court, and that involved an injury locomotive engineer who was entitled to damages.
That's it.
In the case of Antonin Scalia, it was twice, too, that he sided with the more left-wing of the court.
And in one case, he found that a defendant who had been wrongly forced to accept a lawyer is entitled to have a conviction overturned.
And more recently, before Antonin Scalia passed away, he ruled that states may exercise supervision over banks in addition to federal regulators, which is almost pretty consistent, as Scalia always was with his originalist philosophy.
But in the case of Anthony Kennedy, it's 25 times.
He was the swing vote.
And Justice Kennedy joined the court's more conservative wing of the court about twice as often as the liberal half, but 25 major key decisions is a big deal, especially in a divided court.
Look at the decision yesterday as it relates to the president finally winning the battle about the ban that he put in place.
Anyway, here to discuss and debate Greg Jarrett, Fox News analyst.
His book is coming out on just a couple of weeks now, The Russia Hoax, the illicit scheme to clear Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump and also David Schoen, civil liberties attorney and criminal rights attorney.
Politically speaking, to me, this heading into the 2018 midterms is going to have a big impact.
Your thoughts?
It's going to be huge, and it's, I think, frankly, good news for conservatives and Republicans, because this will trigger Republicans to go to the polls on Election Day in droves because they will be scared that if Democrats take over the U.S. Senate, they won't be able to replace Kennedy with a rock-solid conservative.
And this is a golden opportunity to do that.
Kennedy, yes, the swing vote, but he has been a schizophrenic jurist.
There's no telling where he's going to go.
He's inconsistency in his judicial philosophy is obvious to all.
And he's been a disappointment, quite frankly, to conservatives.
Well, David Souter has been the biggest disappointment because he was appointed by George Herbert Walker Bush.
Right.
And he has been a solid leftist activist liberal judge from day one.
And he always votes with the liberal wing of the Supreme Court.
David Schoen, you actually have a little different political philosophy than I do, but I view myself as an originalist, and I believe in originalism, if you will.
And in other words, a strict interpretation of the Constitution.
And I'm not a big believer in judicial activism or making laws, as some do from the bench.
And we've seen a lot of judicial activism, especially out of, say, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is why the left often goes judge shopping, and they'll go to an area like California or Portland or Hawaii, knowing that when it gets to the Ninth Circuit, that they're probably going to be an activist group of jurists.
Well, as usual, you're absolutely right in what you've said, certainly about the Ninth Circuit.
I have to say about Justice Souter.
I happen to have been a friends of Justice Souter, and he's a great guy, whatever one thinks about his judicial philosophy.
Look, I would say that Justice Kennedy, I made some notes for myself, breaks down like this.
If you look at certain of the key cases, on Citizens United, which is a big case for the right, supposedly, he wrote the opinion.
Bush versus Gore is with the majority.
Second Amendment, he's pretty good.
Voting rights, pretty good for the right.
Travel ban case, the Texas redistricting case, recently.
I did an amicus brief in the Masterpiece Cake Shop case, the recent one, on behalf of the Baker, on behalf of an amicus called Restoring Religious Freedom Project.
You know, he wrote in our favor on that case.
The left likes him better on issues like gay rights, of course, and abortion and affirmative action and the death penalty.
So on the one hand, while one might say that's schizophrenic, on the other hand, some might say it's a judicial philosophy kind of on the merits of the case and that he was down the middle sort of justice.
He disappointed me on both sides.
Well, he did, but I mean, in that sense, I didn't gain or glean from him a consistent judicial philosophy, which I think, for example, really governs people like Sam Alito and Antonin Scalia before he passed away, and certainly Justice Thomas.
Jay Seculo was with us.
He's the chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and also counsel to the president, President Trump.
To me, this is now going to have a big impact on the election because Supreme Court nominees and Supreme Court justices impact this country for generations to come, Jay.
It's the lasting legacy, Sean, of every president: the selections of judges, in particular, Supreme Court justices.
I had the honor of appearing before Justice Kennedy for almost three decades.
And more times than not, he agreed with the position I advocated.
How many times have you argued before the Supreme Court?
At least 20, right?
Yeah, so we've had now, effective after a couple that came down to LIMPAC cases this week, about 20.
And how of the 20, how many did you win?
And by the way, you're not taking on easy cases.
You take on really serious, hard, difficult constitutional issues.
About, I think about 78% of the time we've been successful.
I will say this: Justice Kennedy has been generally in our favor on probably 80% of those cases.
When he dissented, he did so in a respectful way.
That's the way he is as a judge.
He did it with reason.
We disagreed on the reason, obviously, but he was definitely what I would call a justice that you was probably the most pivotal vote on so many cases.
Look at this term.
Now, this term, he ruled consistently conservative on a lot of cases, not all of them, but on a lot of them.
Well, more than any other justice.
For example, Roberts, one time, has gone with the more left-wing jurists on the court, and Clarence Thomas only two times, and Antonin Scalia only two times, and Sam Alito, never.
Absolutely zero.
So that's right.
And here's what you have with Justice Kennedy.
He, on, for instance, on the religion clauses, the First Amendment Establishment Clause for Exercise of Religion, he was most frequently very much pro-religious freedom.
You saw that even this term.
He also was very good on the speech cases.
So I had a lot of those.
And some of those were close cases.
But you saw that most recently in the National Institute for Family Life Advocates.
I had a case, the companion case of that up at the same time that was up yesterday as well.
Now that we won that, my case will be a reversal.
So he was, but then on there were other issues where he was not consistent with the conservative position.
Having said that, the president has a unique opportunity to not only impact the force of the judiciary for generations, but also to appoint a justice in the mold of, and this is what's important here.
He's not obligated to appoint a justice in the mold of Justice Kennedy, although Justice Kennedy on a lot of cases got it right.
But he tends to, President Trump liked the judicial philosophy of Anton and Scalia.
You saw that with Justice Vorsich.
I think that's exactly what you're going to see with the next nominee.
That type of thing.
I mean, how fast.
I would assume the president has a shortlist already, and the president probably knew very well this was a possibility.
I mean, rumors now have been running around for two weeks about Justice Kennedy.
So I would assume the president probably has a name he could put forward any day.
Look, any president, this president in particular, is always prepared for what at the end of the term happens, and that is justices, especially with an aging court, justices that retire.
That's what's happened here.
So I know that the president has, I'm sure, a list of names and will put forward nominee, a nominee that he feels is most qualified to fill this slot and to advocate a judicial philosophy that matches his position as president of the United States.
Let me go back to Greg Jarrett.
I mean, Greg, because the impact of this is now massive.
I mean, we've seen so many 5-4 decisions.
This would almost lock in if the president picked somebody that had a originalist judicial philosophy like Anton and Scalia.
This would lock in 5-4 pretty much.
Originalist, textualist, strict constructionist, use any term you want.
That was the mold of Anton and Scalia.
It's what Clarence Thomas adopts.
Alito tends to be that as well.
Roberts, not so much, but still a conservative, and Gorsuch as well.
So you want somebody in that mold, not in the mold of Anthony Kennedy, who was notoriously the swing.
You never knew which way he was going to go.
And the White House has a huge advantage here because they're experienced in already guiding a nominee successfully through the process in the U.S. Senate.
And they already had a list.
You know, the president may turn to the second or third or fourth choice that he had behind Gorsuch.
And these people have already been well vetted and re-vetted and vetted all over again because this was no secret that Kennedy was contemplating retirement.
Many people thought he'd do it last term.
He didn't.
He did it this term.
And, you know, so they're well prepared for this.
And the president, I guarantee you, will now be running on this issue as he endorses candidates in campaigns across the nation in the run-up to the midterm elections because all will depend on the U.S. Senate and Republicans holding it.
David Schoen, David, let me get to you.
And by the way, we're going to carry you guys into the next half hour.
This is just too big a day here, too big a news.
And we want to go over the plethora of topics that literally are now potentially covered as a result of Justice Kennedy retiring.
David Schoen, you seem to like the fact that he's down the middle.
I tend to have a more originalist philosophy, and I don't like judicial activism in any way.
No, I hear you.
Look, there is certainly an entire school of judicial philosophers who say predictability in the court should have the premium also, so that we know as lower courts get guidance from the higher court what direction the court's going to go in.
And certainly someone, another originalist, as you might call it, would aid that.
Listen, you know, you asked Jay Seculo.
He might be the next nominee, frankly, but he certainly would know who it might be.
Except I'm too old.
Yeah, no, I hope not.
In any event, though, but he couldn't say.
I want to throw out there, you know, one of the names originally on the president's list before Justice Gorsuch was named was Diane Sykes in the Seventh Circuit.
I recently argued a case before her on a panel.
She ended up writing the decision in our favor on a voting rights case, ballot access case.
She was terrific.
I mean, she was as sharp a judge as I have appeared before on an appellate panel in many, many years, many, many appellate panels.
I think that's a name to look out for in any event.
Well, I agree.
How many times have you argued now before the Supreme Court?
I haven't argued before the Supreme Court.
I've filed many, many briefs, but I haven't argued there.
And Jay Seculo certainly has and knows the court very well.
I'm a student of the court and always have been.
And as I say, I was friendly with Justice Souter and others.
Yeah, whatever happened to Justice Souter.
He was supposed to be the great originalist himself.
He turned out to be a major disappointment.
And he regularly votes with the left wing of the court.
I mean, he basically has, you know, aligned himself with Brut Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan and John Paul Stevens and Sonia Sadamayor.
You know, that's where he's been over the years.
Sometimes, to me, at least, the labels don't hold up necessarily.
For example, Justice Elias.
I was going to say you guys.
All right, hang on one second.
We'll pick up.
We'll continue.
Jay Seculo, David Schoen, and Greg Jarrett.
And yeah, Justice Kennedy is now retired.
A Supreme Court vacancy now exists.
So we'll get to your calls as well.
800 941 Sean.
Congress, Commerce, in order to regulate it.
That's not what's going on here, Justice Kennedy, and we're not seeking to defend the law on that basis.
In this case, what is being regulated is the method of financing the purchase of health care.
That itself is economic activity with substantial effects on interstate commerce.
So any self-purchasing, anything I perch, you know, if I'm in any market at all, my failure to purchase something in that market subjects me to regulation.
No, that's not our position at all, Justice Sculya.
In the health care market, the health care market is characterized by the fact that aside from the few groups that Congress chose to exempt from the minimum coverage requirement, those who for religious reasons don't participate, those who are incarcerated, Indian tribes, virtually everybody else is either in that market or will be in that market.
And the distinguishing feature of that is that they cannot, people cannot generally control when they enter that market or what they need when they enter that market.
All right, that was the ACA debate regulation meeting, and of course that decision was lost, and the ACA was considered constitutional.
I thought it was one of the worst decisions.
Definitely a definitive moment in terms of John Roberts.
And it was believed at the last minute that he changed his decision.
It had been reported fairly widely because he didn't want the court to be viewed as political in any way as the Chief Justice.
Anyway, we continue with Jay Seculo, the American Center for Law and Justice, and counsel to the President.
Greg Jarrett is with us, and don't forget his new book is coming out.
And it is the illicit scheme, the Russia hoax, the illicit scheme to clear Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump.
David Schoen, criminal defense attorney, civil liberties attorney.
Jay, that one decision shocked everybody, and especially because the chief justice, it had been reported, had changed his mind on that.
Well, it happens.
And the fact is that I think David said this earlier, that sometimes the ideological lines don't mesh so well when it is, in fact, they become a justice of the Supreme Court.
So what you want to have or what you want to see is the best you can, and there's never a guarantee that the individual that's been nominated has a clear and concise judicial philosophy respecting the rule of law and respecting the Constitution, that has a view of the Constitution that, in my opinion, you want to call it originalist, if that's the phrase you want to use, that the way you amend the Constitution is to amend it, not by a judicial fiat.
So where Justice Kennedy was not a predictable vote, I suspect, and you know that the president is going to be looking for a vote, a justice who will vote in a manner that has a consistent judicial philosophy.
Again, you never are 100% sure, Sean.
You do the best you can.
Look, you do the best you can.
I think the case in point, although he's no longer there, I keep bringing him up, is David Souter.
I mean, I think he was one of those.
I mean, how about if you were, you could do that for others, too?
I mean, how about John Kennedy nominates Byron White, to tell you how old I am?
I appeared before Byron White, and Byron Wright was appointed by John Kennedy, was deemed to be a liberal, was going to be a liberal member of the Supreme Court and was perhaps the most conservative justice of the Supreme Court of the United States during his tenure.
So you don't know, but you do have track records now.
There's a whole list of appellate judges and some non-judges too that have written track records.
You understand where they are.
And you've got to ask the right questions on judicial philosophy.
And I am sure that the White House was prepared and is prepared to move expeditiously on this.
There's been a lot of people who are not.
Let me throw out some names.
Yeah, I mean, Brent Kavanaugh, have you heard his name?
Yeah, great.
What do you know about him?
Or, you know, for example, William Pryor's name.
He was brought up the last time.
That's another name.
Bill was on the shortlist last time.
I've been friends with Bill Pryor, but I've also worked with Bill Pryor, actually.
So I've been a great judge of the 11th Circuit.
Brett Kavanaugh is another one.
I knew Brett from his days in the Bush administration, Newman Private Practice.
We've worked some cases together.
He's been an excellent judge of the Court of Appeals.
I think David mentioned Diane Sykes, another very, very well-respected Court of Appeals nominee.
And there'll be some others.
So the way it works is there's a list.
The White House is constantly working on that list, narrowing it down, and then the president will once again do interviews.
And usually the White House Council participates in all of this.
And it'll be narrowed down.
And I suspect we'll get a nomination in short order.
I don't want to predict the date.
I don't know the date.
But none of this is shocking to a White House that is prepared.
And this White House counsel's office and the White House, there was a lot of speculation on this, and there has been for a long time.
And just the sheer age of the court, you always have to be prepared.
Agree with that as well.
What about Paul Clement?
Do you know him?
Yeah, I do.
Clement was the Solicitor General of the United States under George W. Bush.
He and I have done probably four or five cases together at the Supreme Court.
Not a judge, excellent lawyer, has a tremendous reputation, would be an excellent, excellent Supreme Court justice.
Is there any other name on the short list that you can think of?
Oh, there's others out there.
Vietnam, who's one of the partners of Paul Clement, could be on a short list for the Supreme Court.
What about Jay Seculo on the shortlist?
I'm just asking.
He's too old.
Man, you want them in their late 40s, you know, mid-40s, late 40s, early 50s.
You don't want old geezers like, you know, he's 62-year-olds.
So, you know, and I'm plenty busy right now, in case you haven't noticed.
So, you know, I think, look, there's a lot of good options out there.
What you're looking for is, like I said, I had the privilege of appearing before Justice Kennedy for three decades.
He ruled with me more times than not.
When he disagreed, his dissents were reasoned.
I just disagreed with the reasons.
What you're looking for now is, I think the president has an opportunity, someone like Justice Gorsuch that is that kind of judicial philosophy.
So I think that's what you're looking for here.
Yeah.
And by the way, this is where elections matter.
You know, Greg Jarrett, this is why.
This was one of the biggest.
That's why I couldn't understand the Never Trumpers.
Right.
Because Donald Trump had promised an originalist, and he said, who are your favorite, who are your favorite Supreme Court justices?
He said, Scalia.
And he said, Clarence Thomas.
He was very clear.
And that meant those are the type of justices he'd be looking for.
And it appears, by the way, that he found one in Neil Gorsuch.
Right, he did.
And look, two things.
First of all, he's going to try to get, with the help of Mitch McConnell, to get the nominee through before the November elections.
But Democrats will try to obstruct and delay all they possibly can.
I mean, the president would love to have somebody seated by the beginning of the term in October.
So that, I mean, that is one possibility, but it will only underscore the issue of the U.S. Supreme Court in the midterm elections, even if they get somebody seated ahead of time.
Second of all, you want to find somebody, as Jay pointed out, who is younger.
For example, Amy Barrett, Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
She was born in 1972.
So you would have a woman who is reasonably young who would be on the court for a long time, and that is always important for presidents.
That is their legacy.
You know, the other thing to point out is that you don't want to whiff.
And for goodness sakes, the presidential landscape is littered with Republican presidents who made mistakes.
Eisenhower said the two biggest mistakes he ever made were the appointment of William Brennan and Earl Warren, who turned out to be two Supreme Court justices who were liberal.
Ronald Reagan was only one for three.
He appointed Sandra Day O'Connor as well as Anthony Kennedy.
You're right.
I mean, he only got one right, which is Leah.
Yeah, but the only problem is it's always Republican presidents that get it wrong.
Well, I can't think of.
Kennedy appointed Wizard White.
Okay, we have to go back to 1961 to find the one example where a liberal, well, and Kennedy wasn't even a liberal.
I mean, Kennedy, at least on the economy, and in many ways, would be judged as a conservative today.
Let me bring David Schoen back in.
David.
Right.
You know, one of the reasons I mentioned Diane Sykes is to the point Greg just made.
That is, if you want to move this thing through quickly, and obviously that has to be balanced because it's an important decision.
But she's less controversial.
She certainly has the president's judicial philosophy.
But with all due respect, I mean, Judge Kavanaugh and Judge William Pryor are going to be very controversial decisions because of some things they have said that have been brought up before.
Some people thought some of them were the death knell.
But let me make this point because this to me is a tremendous program you're doing today.
You're providing tremendous educational resources on this subject.
I've been accused of a lot worse, but look, go ahead.
Thank you.
So many things these days are polarizing.
Let's be clear.
You know, sometimes originalist is used as a bad term to the left, or liberal is a bad term to say, take a guy like Justice Scalia.
I don't suggest you're going to find a duplicate of him, but he had, by all accounts, left and right.
He had one of the great minds on the court.
And you say he was predictable.
On the other hand, who would think that when it comes to a criminal defendant, he would line up with them at times?
For him, the confrontation clause, the right to really cross-examine and ferret out the truth, was of key importance to him.
Now, you might say that's a liberal issue, but it's not.
It's a constitutional issue, and that's how he saw it.
So some of you, you're not going to find necessarily someone with the depth and breadth that he had.
But let's be clear, you know, we don't mean these words as bad words.
He was a guy who thought through the issues, and that's how he came down.
But, Jay, let's be very blunt and very honest here.
I mean, knowing the borking of Robert Bork, I mean, we go back there.
You know, there was probably no greater, smarter judicial mind ever that was more qualified to actually be on the Supreme Court.
But then Ted Kennedy, you know, it's now become a verb, if you will, borking.
And literally, they demonize this man in such an unfair, inaccurate way.
It seems that if anybody has a history of writings on judicial philosophy or ideology or thought, it's almost a death knell for them.
Yeah, they can't do that anymore for two reasons.
Number one, the rules of the Senate are now simple majority, so 50 plus one, and that person is confirmed.
Number two, the media landscape today is much different than it was during Robert Bork's era, in large part to what you're doing and what your colleagues do, both on TV and radio.
And that has changed a lot of the way the perception goes and also how media controls.
So I think what you're looking at is you're going to see a justice nominated.
I think that will be very similar to Justice Gorsuch, and that man or woman will be confirmed.
It's not going to be an easy process because it's unfortunately an ugly process.
But the fact is there's going to be a new justice come the first Monday in October before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Yeah, and that's what it's going to be.
But a president does have the right to appoint a justice that shares his judicial philosophy.
Absolutely.
And by the way, everybody should kind of be happy with Donald Trump's judicial philosophy in this sense.
He doesn't believe in legislating from the bench.
He believes in checks and balances and separation of powers.
And he doesn't want the left has always tried, and I'll throw this to Greg Jarrett.
They have tried to achieve things through the courts that they would never achieve through the ballot box.
Right.
because they legislate through the bench, and that is not the role of a judge.
No, and the perfect example is that the travel ban, the Ninth Circuit, the so-called netty ninth, is composed largely of liberal justices who view the Constitution as they did the travel ban incorrectly.
They view it in a very elastic sense, a present-day sense.
It can mean whatever they want it to mean at any given time on any given day for any given issue.
And people like Scalia and other reliable conservatives view it narrowly, strict constructionalists or originalists.
And we will interpret it according to how it was written and what it meant at the time.
And that's important because I think it was David Schoen who mentioned a moment ago, you know, if you want to, you know, change a constitutional principle, there's a way to do it.
It's called amend the Constitution or enact a new amendment to the Constitution.
So that's the way you do it.
And that's, for example, the Convention of States, which way you support ConventionOstates.com.
That's in the Constitution.
It is.
All right, let's get final thoughts.
David Schoen, where is this going to go?
How soon will the president make his announcement?
I think the president needs to make an announcement very soon.
I think, again, this country needs stability in every realm.
I'm looking for someone straight, fair, and honest.
I tell you this, he appointed someone to the 11th Circuit this term, Kevin Newsom.
I wrote a letter for him.
He may be as right-wing as they come, but my experience with him was that he was fair, honest, and called it straight.
I may not win my civil rights cases with him, but I want a guy who's going to call it straight on the Constitution.
Newsom is a good pick.
He was born in 1972.
He's young enough he could be there a long time.
Last word, let me go to Jay Seculo.
Well, look, I think it'll happen, I think, in short order, but there is a process.
The term of the Supreme Court is over.
It doesn't mean the work's over, but it does slow up in the summer.
The justices are not meeting.
They do not come back for a major conference until right before that first Monday in October when they have the main conference on CERC petitions.
That is request for review.
I'm going to have a case up there again that'll be seeking review.
So there's time, but it needs to move swiftly and expeditiously.
And I think that's what you're going to see, Sean.
All right.
I want to thank you all for being with us.
Great analysis by all of you, three very smart attorneys.
And I actually think all three of you would be qualified to be on the Supreme Court because you're all lawyers that I would hire.
And in the case of Jay Seculo, I actually have at one point.
Jay Seculo, thank you.
Greg Jarrett, great to see you.
Looking forward to the book coming out in July.
And David Schoen, as always, we appreciate your input.
All right, Hannity, tonight, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel, there is a Supreme Court vacancy.
The president speaks tonight, Jay Seculo, Leonard Leo, also.
Peter Strzok goes before Congress.
Jim Jordan was in the room.
He will give us his take, as well as Greg Jarrett.
Sarah Carter is going to join us as well.
Jesse and Jessica and Sebastian Gorka.
Hannity, big show.
Tonight, breaking news, a vacancy at the Supreme Court.
