Speaker 1: There are now more than one thousand cases in thirty
Speaker 1: eight states. In Washington, d see the largest cluster in
Speaker 1: the country. It's happening in the New York City suburb
Speaker 1: of New Rochelle. The National Guard has been called at
Speaker 1: New states of emergency have been declared in Colorado, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and Michigan. We will see more cases and things will
Speaker 1: get worse than they are right now. Bottom line, it's
Speaker 1: going to get worse. We have the for amid the
Speaker 1: assessment that COVID nineteen can be charactorized as a pandemic.
Speaker 1: We have already lost twenty four twenty four of our citizens.
Speaker 1: We're heading towards an epidemic in the United States, and
Speaker 1: the question is what the scope is going to be.
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks and his wife, the actress Rita Wilson, have
Speaker 1: announced that they have both tested positive for coronavirus. To
Speaker 1: keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be
Speaker 1: suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for
Speaker 1: the next thirty days. That was a year ago today,
Speaker 1: and we have no idea how much more to there
Speaker 1: was to come. And um one of the things I'd
Speaker 1: like to ask Tim the lawyer about is the last
Speaker 1: year in terms of personal freedom and private property, since
Speaker 1: he's an expert in that, and we'll get to that. Indeed,
Speaker 1: Tim the lawyer, Sandy First, the vice president for Litigation
Speaker 1: at the Goldwater Institute's were also written a number of
Speaker 1: interesting books, including The Ascent of Jacob Bronowski, Frederick Douglas
Speaker 1: Self Made Man, corner Stone of Liberty, Property Rights in
Speaker 1: twenty first America and Century America, and one of my favorites,
Speaker 1: The Permission Society, which was inspired by this dopey little
Speaker 1: radio show Tim Sander for how are you, Tim? I'm great?
Speaker 1: How are you guys? Done? Terrific? I noticed from your
Speaker 1: Twitter picture that you changed it. I think you're planning
Speaker 1: on running for office. It has the look of a
Speaker 1: guy who's running for office. It really does have a
Speaker 1: sort of I'm I'm running for governor and kind of
Speaker 1: vibe to it. Yes, really intentional, but I just, you know,
Speaker 1: I thought I should update it because my my previous
Speaker 1: picture didn't have my COVID long hair. She still have
Speaker 1: the beard, do you? I do, and I have long hair,
Speaker 1: hair hair down past my ears. At this point, I
Speaker 1: really need to take care of this. But you're standing
Speaker 1: in You're standing an electron in a suit and tie
Speaker 1: and like pointing in your mouth or open like you're
Speaker 1: really telling a crowd what's going on. So, yeah, Tim Lawyer,
Speaker 1: clearly running for office. Look, my wife has put her
Speaker 1: foot down about this that if I ever run for office,
Speaker 1: she will leave me, So that that has a wise woman.
Speaker 1: So let's we are anxious to talk about just the liberty,
Speaker 1: the history of the last year in terms of liberty
Speaker 1: and how quickly we've given it up. But we want
Speaker 1: to pay heed to what you've been working on specifically
Speaker 1: these days, which is civil asset forfeiture, something a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't even understand exists. Oh yeah, and and
Speaker 1: I don't blame them because it's so contrary to the
Speaker 1: basic principles American liberty that it's it really stuns people
Speaker 1: to learn that what goes on. And this is a
Speaker 1: legal principle that says that the government can take away
Speaker 1: your property on the theory that the property was involved
Speaker 1: in a crime and then just keep it without filing
Speaker 1: a charges against you and certainly without convicting you of
Speaker 1: any crime. They just come in and they take the property.
Speaker 1: And what happens then when they take it is that
Speaker 1: you get a little document that says, hey, we have
Speaker 1: your property. If you want it back, you have to
Speaker 1: come come down to the to the police station. You
Speaker 1: have to sue us, basically, and of course when you
Speaker 1: do sue them, what that means is since it's technically
Speaker 1: considered a civil proceeding and since you are technically the plaintiff,
Speaker 1: the Fifth Amendment doesn't apply, which means that you can
Speaker 1: be forced to testify against yourself and you're required to
Speaker 1: prove your innocence instead of the government having to prove
Speaker 1: your guilt. So what happens is basically the government, the
Speaker 1: police officers can target you, take your property, and then
Speaker 1: force you to come and pay to get it back.
Speaker 1: We'll give me an example, like, um, I get pulled
Speaker 1: over at night and they suspect me of drunk driving?
Speaker 1: Could they just take my carsly, and absolutely they could.
Speaker 1: Or if you just have a lot of cash in
Speaker 1: the car, or if they just think that you have
Speaker 1: you know, might be engaged in some sort of drug traffing,
Speaker 1: trafficking or something like that, or even a relative of yours.
Speaker 1: So just this week we've got a good result in
Speaker 1: a case in Massachusetts where the police officers seized our
Speaker 1: client's car because her son was engaged in drug crimes allegedly,
Speaker 1: and the police officers decided that she was involved somehow
Speaker 1: or the car was involved in somehow, and and took
Speaker 1: it and put it in an impound lot and left
Speaker 1: it there for five years before even serving her with
Speaker 1: the paperwork. Wow, they didn't even let they didn't even say, hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, you can get your property back until
Speaker 1: this year when they took the property. In ten they
Speaker 1: took this car, and she was They never accused her
Speaker 1: of being involved in a crime. They've never filed charges
Speaker 1: against her, let alone convicted her in court or anything
Speaker 1: like this. They simply kept it. And guess what, when
Speaker 1: we showed up and said, hey, we're a bunch of
Speaker 1: lawyers and we're prepared to take this to court, they
Speaker 1: backed down and gave her back a car. And that
Speaker 1: happens time and time and time again. The government takes
Speaker 1: this property on the on the in the assumption that
Speaker 1: you are too afraid to get it back. Now, there's
Speaker 1: no interest in the police, or there's no benefit to
Speaker 1: the police having a lot full of impounded cars. What's
Speaker 1: the incentive? Why is this happening a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: They sell it at those police auctions and things. They're
Speaker 1: also allowed to keep the cash they cash is very
Speaker 1: often still seized by the government. And remember this idea
Speaker 1: is that it's supposed to be this is supposed to
Speaker 1: be a tool against big level drug kingpins, right like
Speaker 1: you see like back in the olden days when you
Speaker 1: saw it on Miami Vice, it was always they're gonna
Speaker 1: take some some big drug kingpins luxury yacht or something.
Speaker 1: But the reality is most seizures through civil asset forfeiture
Speaker 1: are very small, less than five hundred dollars in most cases,
Speaker 1: and most cases people are not even charged with a crime.
Speaker 1: And this amounts to an enormous amount of money flowing
Speaker 1: into police departments since they're allowed to keep this money.
Speaker 1: In Massachusetts alone, in the past twenty years, it's been
Speaker 1: three hundred and twenty seven million dollars that has been
Speaker 1: seized through asset forfeiture that goes directly into the accounts
Speaker 1: of law enforcement, on top of the tax dollars that
Speaker 1: they already get. So there's reason to believe that some
Speaker 1: of it is just a profit deal. Absolutely, we call
Speaker 1: it policing for profit because the these forfeitures pay for themselves,
Speaker 1: and the prosecutor is very often like to use that
Speaker 1: as an advertisement. They say, hey, this is a great
Speaker 1: program because it pays for itself. The reason why it
Speaker 1: pays for itself is because the government isn't bothering to
Speaker 1: have a lawyer actually show up in a trial court
Speaker 1: and prove the defendant guilty. They're just taking the cash
Speaker 1: and pocketing it. And the law enforcement in this country
Speaker 1: has become truly addicted to this influx of cash, to
Speaker 1: the point that many law enforcement agencies don't even bother
Speaker 1: prioritizing crimes such as rape and murder, because those have
Speaker 1: no profit making aspect properly. They prioritize going after property
Speaker 1: from people that they say, in some vague terms, might
Speaker 1: somehow be involved in a crime. We had a case
Speaker 1: in Tucson just a couple of months ago where the
Speaker 1: police seized our clients jeep because his girlfriend drove the
Speaker 1: jeep to a seven eleven in order to arrange for
Speaker 1: the sale of an ounce of marijuana. And they seize
Speaker 1: his brand new jeep. And when he said, I want
Speaker 1: my jeep back, they said, well, if you give us
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred dollars, We'll give you back the jeep. Where
Speaker 1: did the nineteen dollars come from? They just came up
Speaker 1: with that amount. They just said, give us a little back,
Speaker 1: she'sh and will return the jeep to you. Then when
Speaker 1: we wrote them a letter and said, hey, by the way,
Speaker 1: now the guys hired a lawyer here at the Goldwater Institute,
Speaker 1: they back down. No, no, you can, you can, you
Speaker 1: can have your j back. You know, that's just the
Speaker 1: mom that's the mob. Well, how in the name of
Speaker 1: James Madison does this square with the Fourth Amendment? It
Speaker 1: absolutely does not. But what happened was this It's actually
Speaker 1: a very very old legal principle. In fact, it was
Speaker 1: around in the Founding Father's day, and it was one
Speaker 1: of the reasons for the American Revolution. What happened was
Speaker 1: the British government expanded the authority of what was called
Speaker 1: admiralty courts, which were supposed to be governing crimes at sea,
Speaker 1: and the British government expanded their authority to allow British
Speaker 1: admiralty courts to hear cases that arose on land. And
Speaker 1: what they would do is they would do just this.
Speaker 1: They would seize people's property and forced them to come
Speaker 1: in and prove themselves innocent of a crime. And the
Speaker 1: judge got to keep a cut of it if he
Speaker 1: ruled against the guy. So that's why when you reach
Speaker 1: the separation of Independence, the Declaration of Independence refers to this.
Speaker 1: It says, it says that the King has subjected us
Speaker 1: to a system of laws that is alien to our constitution.
Speaker 1: They're talking about these admiralty courts which were engaged in
Speaker 1: asset forfeit your two hundred years ago, and yet we
Speaker 1: allow it to go on in the United States today
Speaker 1: because of of course, the drug War, the most famous
Speaker 1: of those cases. Of course, you are versus r which
Speaker 1: was decided in favor of our Tim, the lawyer Sander
Speaker 1: for Tim Sanders, the VP for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute. Jackie.
Speaker 1: Ready to move on to the last year and the
Speaker 1: incursions in the verse. The President's given us address to
Speaker 1: the nation tonight, because it's one year ago today that
Speaker 1: the w h O officially declared to the pandemic. You
Speaker 1: can pick a variety of days of the China Love
Speaker 1: and Liars beginning. But as a guy has written books
Speaker 1: and spoken and thought a lot about private property and
Speaker 1: personal freedom. What's your overarching feel about this last year.
Speaker 1: Is this shocking to you that these things happened, not surprising? What? Well,
Speaker 1: I would say that my overall feeling is that it's
Speaker 1: very complicated. It's a lot more complicated than people on
Speaker 1: either side really want to admit, because we're not talking
Speaker 1: about something that government has absolutely no business doing. Like
Speaker 1: when we're talking about something like eminent domainia, everment takes
Speaker 1: away your house and to build a shopping center there,
Speaker 1: government has absolutely no business doing that whatsoever. But when
Speaker 1: you're talking about a pandemic and stuff, obviously government does
Speaker 1: have a legitimate role in protecting people against infectious diseases
Speaker 1: and things of that sort. So it's it's harder to
Speaker 1: draw clear lines. But what you find is a lot
Speaker 1: of the time the government says, oh, well, we've got
Speaker 1: this great idea, so we're gonna do this tray it
Speaker 1: truly crazy, wild thing based on what was originally a
Speaker 1: good idea. And so you find things like in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: for example, and the governor says, well, we're gonna shut
Speaker 1: down all these businesses, but by the way, you can
Speaker 1: come to me and ask for an exemption, and I
Speaker 1: will grant exemptions based on purely arbitrary criteria. And I'm
Speaker 1: not even gonna tell you what my reasoning is as
Speaker 1: to whether or not people get exemptions. And by the way,
Speaker 1: my friends get exemptions, but other people don't, and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and that's a real problem. And so
Speaker 1: there have been lawsuits all across the country over stuff
Speaker 1: like that, but those really do violate the Constitution. So
Speaker 1: it's hard to answer the question in the abstract. One thing,
Speaker 1: although I would say that is a real concern, is
Speaker 1: you mentioned my book The Permission Society, which was indeed
Speaker 1: inspired by conversations on your show. Especially Joe likes to say,
Speaker 1: whenever you hear the word permit, remember that a permit,
Speaker 1: that's actually a verb. The government will permit you to
Speaker 1: do something. And the this we are sliding very quickly
Speaker 1: from a country where you are free to act unless
Speaker 1: you're harming somebody else into a permission society where you
Speaker 1: are not allowed to act unless the government allows you to.
Speaker 1: And when that happens, then you have to satisfy the government.
Speaker 1: Yes they mother may I before you do whatever the
Speaker 1: thing might be. And I would say California, for example,
Speaker 1: has has basically become the permission society, where there's virtually
Speaker 1: nothing you can do without some kind of government approval,
Speaker 1: which depends on the largely arbitrary decisions of bureaucrats at
Speaker 1: the city, county, state level, and so forth. Well, speaking
Speaker 1: of Unicornia, what really troubled me about the COVID response
Speaker 1: was that there are specific statutes that describe what an
Speaker 1: emergency is and when the government can invoke emergency powers,
Speaker 1: and there has been nothing close to an emergency for
Speaker 1: many months now in most California counties, and yet apparently
Speaker 1: the mechanisms for correcting that are too slow or something.
Speaker 1: How is Here's here's the thing when it comes to government.
Speaker 1: So government wants to protect people's safety. Right, So let's
Speaker 1: say the governments and this is Let's say they're all
Speaker 1: being very conscientious about this. Let's put aside any question
Speaker 1: about bribery, self dealing, anything like that. Let's say these
Speaker 1: people are all angels and they want to protect people's safety. Well,
Speaker 1: the safest thing to do in almost every circumstance is
Speaker 1: nothing whatsoever, right, Because if there there's always a risk
Speaker 1: to doing anything, we call it a type to error,
Speaker 1: as opposed to a type one error, which is when
Speaker 1: you go and do something and it really is risky
Speaker 1: and you don't know what you're doing. Right. A type
Speaker 1: two error is when you decide, well, gosh, better safe
Speaker 1: than sorry, and the there there's an old in fact.
Speaker 1: Thomas a Quaintance, the old philosopher used to say, if
Speaker 1: if the captain's number one priority was safety, he would
Speaker 1: never leave port. And that's what happens when you prioritize
Speaker 1: safety over other concerns, is you actually end up hurting
Speaker 1: people more. For example, by withholding medical treatments that could
Speaker 1: save lives. You say, well, I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: going to allow people to sell this medicine because it
Speaker 1: might hurt people. Well, yeah, but it might cure more people.
Speaker 1: But see, the government won't get punished if it refuses permission.
Speaker 1: It'll get permission if it allows if it'll get punished
Speaker 1: if it allows permission and that thing ends up hurting people,
Speaker 1: then you then it's a scandal. Right, Well, how dare
Speaker 1: you allow the sale of this dangerous medicine? And that
Speaker 1: becomes a big deal. But if the government refuses to
Speaker 1: allow a good medicine to go out, well, nobody finds
Speaker 1: out about it, right, It never occurs to anybody because
Speaker 1: it just never went on sale. So what the government
Speaker 1: does is it's overly conservative. And I don't mean that
Speaker 1: politically conservative. I mean it's temperamentally. It's overly conservatives. It's
Speaker 1: afraid to take risks, and there's no incentive to do so.
Speaker 1: Who wants to be the elected official in California who
Speaker 1: stands up and says, I don't know, I think it's
Speaker 1: time for us to waive this state of emergency and
Speaker 1: then is wrong? Right? They're terrified of that, and so
Speaker 1: there's every incentive for keeping the state of emergency in place,
Speaker 1: and there's really no mechanism for eliminating in. What California
Speaker 1: and other states need to do is to have a
Speaker 1: law that says a state of emergency automatically terminates unless
Speaker 1: it is renewed by the state legislature. That's where it is,
Speaker 1: and California doesn't have that. Tim Sanderford, Vice Presidents, the
Speaker 1: litigation for the Goldwater Institute. As always, we're sitting here
Speaker 1: wishing we can talk to you all day, but we
Speaker 1: really need to take a break. Tim, really interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: Keep fighting a good fight, thanks guys. Yeah, Kansas is
Speaker 1: doing that and every state needs to do that. Your
Speaker 1: your emergency powers last X number of days and then
Speaker 1: it has to be renewed by the legislature or perfect.
Speaker 1: That'd be a good outcome of this whole thing. More
Speaker 1: on the way