Speaker 1: Welcome. It is verdict or Ted Cruz Weekend Review. Ben
Speaker 1: Ferguson with you, and these are the stories that you
Speaker 1: may have missed that we talked about this past week.
Speaker 2: It started with Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a new scheme now to bring him down
Speaker 1: as advertisers are trying to destroy his platform x formerly
Speaker 1: known as Twitter.
Speaker 2: By pulling all of their ad dollars.
Speaker 1: So what can you do to stand by the man
Speaker 1: that is standing by free speech?
Speaker 2: Will explain that in a moment.
Speaker 1: Plus, Christopher Ray, the FBI Director, had a big toe
Speaker 1: to toe battle with Senator Ted Cruz, and you won't
Speaker 1: want to miss the back and forth. And finally Sandrade O'Connor,
Speaker 1: former Supreme Court justice, passed away. Senator Ted Cruz took
Speaker 1: some time to talk about some of the most historic
Speaker 1: court cases and his memories of Sandrade O'Connor.
Speaker 2: It's the weekend Review and it starts right now.
Speaker 3: Let me ask you how many of you are grateful
Speaker 3: that Elon Musk purchased Twitter. I'll tell you I'm intensely grateful.
Speaker 3: I think it is the single most important development for
Speaker 3: free speech in decades. But what is striking, and this
Speaker 3: again is a topic I discussed at great length in
Speaker 3: my brand new book, Unwoke, is how corporate America has
Speaker 3: become woke and how they use economic power to punish
Speaker 3: those that crossed them. So corporate America is mad at
Speaker 3: Elon Musk Why because he stopped censoring views that were
Speaker 3: not the orthodoxy of the Biden White House. He stopped
Speaker 3: censoring conservative views, and he allowed free speech to occur. Now,
Speaker 3: what was the volcanic rage of corporate America? One company
Speaker 3: after another began boycotting what used to be Twitter is
Speaker 3: now x. So IBM was the first to pull its ad. So, IBM,
Speaker 3: if you have an IBM computer at home, you know
Speaker 3: what you're supporting? A company that says we're not going
Speaker 3: to advertise on a social media company that believes in
Speaker 3: free speech. Now, right after IBM, what followed Apple, Disney, Sony,
Speaker 3: Warner Brothers, Comcast, NBC, Universal, and Paramount. All of them
Speaker 3: have said we're pulling our ads. But not only that,
Speaker 3: you know who else has pulled their ads? Chevrolet, Chipotle, Ford, Jeep, Kindrel,
Speaker 3: Mercant Company, Novartis AG and Eli Lilly in Company. All
Speaker 3: of these companies, they are engaged in censorship. Understand when
Speaker 3: they say.
Speaker 1: It's the corporate assassination of a free speech company, orchestrated
Speaker 1: and designed to cripple them and to bring them to
Speaker 1: their neees. This doesn't happen by accident. I think that's
Speaker 1: what some people need to understand. When one corporation does
Speaker 1: this and the others do it, don't think this isn't
Speaker 1: orchestrated and being done by the left in leftist groups
Speaker 1: and organizations that organize these companies and get in the
Speaker 1: ear of these companies and say, hey, guys, so and
Speaker 1: so is going to do it, you should do it too.
Speaker 1: And then they call the next one they say, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: we hear these two companies are about the boycott.
Speaker 4: Are pull their ads?
Speaker 3: You should too, and understand art. So here's what Elon
Speaker 3: Muskus said about it. He said, the decisions of advertisers
Speaker 3: to boycott Twitter quote could kill the company. And he
Speaker 3: went on to say, quote and the whole world will
Speaker 3: know that these advertisers killed the company. That is their
Speaker 3: objective and what they want. They want Twitter to go under,
Speaker 3: they want X to go under, and then they want
Speaker 3: the only social media to be Facebook controlled by Mark Zuckerberg.
Speaker 3: That sensors conservative views because they're silence that works on
Speaker 3: behalf of the Biden White House. They want Google that
Speaker 3: is controlled by left wing socialists, that sensors views they
Speaker 3: disagree with, that skews public discourse in the favor of
Speaker 3: the left. They want YouTube that actively sensors conservative views,
Speaker 3: including this podcast Verdict.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just a few weeks ago, they censored one of
Speaker 1: our one of our episodes because we were telling the
Speaker 1: truth about what was going on.
Speaker 3: And mind you, we were telling the truth about a
Speaker 3: Palestinian who, by all appearances is a christ this actor
Speaker 3: who creates false videos pretending to be a victim of
Speaker 3: what he claims is Israeli aggression, when in fact he's
Speaker 3: a Hamas propagandist, and we laid out the evidence for that,
Speaker 3: and YouTube propatly said, oh, oh, we don't want people
Speaker 3: to notice this, so they blocked so you could not
Speaker 3: access our podcast on YouTube without signing in and beh verified,
Speaker 3: because apparently seventeen year olds cannot know.
Speaker 4: There's a crisis actor that's a Hamas warrior.
Speaker 3: And mind you, it's not just that they want Facebook
Speaker 3: and YouTube and Google to be driving the topics. They
Speaker 3: want TikTok, which is controlled by the Chinese Communist which
Speaker 3: is actively pushing pro hamas propaganda. Every one of these companies,
Speaker 3: So I want you to go back and look at
Speaker 3: this list. Ibm Apple, Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, Comcast, NBC, Universal, Paramount, Chevrolet, Chipotle, Ford, Jeep, Kindrel,
Speaker 3: Mercan Company, novartis a g Eli Lillyan company. Every every
Speaker 3: one of them is saying you Americans, you don't deserve
Speaker 3: the right to speak, and even more importantly, you don't
Speaker 3: deserve the right to hear the speech of others. We
Speaker 3: want big tech to silence and skew and mind you,
Speaker 3: this is all based on an allegation that is a
Speaker 3: bogus allegation attacking Elon Musk for retweeting a tweet that
Speaker 3: their claiming is antisemitic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it was deliberate.
Speaker 1: They just went and met with it over in Israel.
Speaker 1: They just flew over there, met talked to the leadership
Speaker 1: and is now clearly supporting is.
Speaker 3: Look, their attack is deliberately disingenuous. But it doesn't matter,
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter what the claim is. It is an
Speaker 3: excuse because they want to use economic muscle to punish
Speaker 3: Twitter and force either Elon musk to sell it or
Speaker 3: shut it down, because once they do, then the rest
Speaker 3: of big tech will have a monopoly unchecked. And this
Speaker 3: is an assault on free speech. It's an intersection of
Speaker 3: what I talk about in multiple chapters of my book Unwoke.
Speaker 3: It's an intersection of big tech, big business, and journalism
Speaker 3: all coming together, and it's designed to be dishonest and
Speaker 3: to silence free speech among the American people.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you real quick about your retirement.
Speaker 1: You've probably seen a lot of the headlines lately. We
Speaker 1: are the third highest deficit in US history. We are
Speaker 1: also saying that there is more than one trillion dollars
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Speaker 1: we have the highest rate of debt we've ever seen
Speaker 1: this country when it comes to college debt, and we're
Speaker 1: living with high interest rates, inflation issues, and then there's
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Speaker 1: Precious Metals dot com. Senator, last thing I want to
Speaker 1: just point out here conservative radio. And many of you
Speaker 1: know I do a podcast outside of this, and I
Speaker 1: do an actual terrestrial radio show every day. For about
Speaker 1: ten years now, everybody in radio has had to deal
Speaker 1: with what Elon Musk is dealing with now, yep, which
Speaker 1: is all corporate people stop spending money on conservative talk radio.
Speaker 1: They went after the Great Wrestling Ball, That's where it started. Yes,
Speaker 1: Then they went after Handy, then they went after Back,
Speaker 1: Then they went after Leven, Then they went after guys
Speaker 1: like me.
Speaker 4: And what we used to have in radio was the
Speaker 4: big ones. We had Chevy, we had John Dear, we
Speaker 4: had you know, Mutual for None of.
Speaker 3: These giant companies advertising conservative podcasts, none of that. There's
Speaker 3: a funny skit that we've talked about in Verdict a
Speaker 3: couple of years ago that contrast a left wing hippie
Speaker 3: comy Marxist podcast saying this podcast brought to you by Pfizer,
Speaker 3: get the jab right now, you need your forty second
Speaker 3: booster shot, yeah, compared to they have a conservative broad
Speaker 3: broadcast and they say this broadcast brought to you by
Speaker 3: pay treat water, a bucket of water in your closet.
Speaker 3: And and the contrast is strike striking because all of
Speaker 3: the Fortune five hundred boycotts.
Speaker 1: None of them spend money, none of them will ever
Speaker 1: reach a conservative audience. They deliberately try to destroy conservative
Speaker 1: talk radio.
Speaker 3: By the way, even Fox News, which is incredibly profitable
Speaker 3: at the hour, spend an hour watching CNN, and spend
Speaker 3: an hour watching Fox News, want right down? Who advertises CNN?
Speaker 3: It's the entire Fortune one hundred. Fox News doesn't have
Speaker 3: any of them. It's it's my pillow, which look, I'm grateful,
Speaker 3: I'm grateful in my pillow advertises, because they are not
Speaker 3: many that do. But even though Fox News has two x,
Speaker 3: three x, four x five x the vie as CNN
Speaker 3: on care, it's not about money. Understand, this is not
Speaker 3: the economic marketplace. This is they're enforcing their ideology. They
Speaker 3: don't want to support views that are right a center.
Speaker 3: They want to silence them.
Speaker 1: Now, if you I want to hear the rest of
Speaker 1: this conversation, you can go back and listen to the
Speaker 1: full podcast from earlier this week. Now onto story number
Speaker 1: two brings me to also the fireworks that took place
Speaker 1: this week, and it was between you and the FBI director.
Speaker 1: I want to play a large chunk of this. But
Speaker 1: before I do set the stage, why was the FBI
Speaker 1: director before your committee in the Senate and what was
Speaker 1: this all about?
Speaker 3: Well, the FBI Director, Chris Ray was testifying before the
Speaker 3: Senate Judiciary Committee, and periodically the director of the FBI
Speaker 3: testifies before judiciary, and so I took the opportunity to
Speaker 3: question him. And there are a lot of topics I
Speaker 3: could have questioned him on. I could have questioned him
Speaker 3: for hours on end, but I only had seven minutes,
Speaker 3: and so I chose to use the seven minutes to
Speaker 3: focus on the politicization of the FBI and the refusal
Speaker 3: of the FBI to investigate the growing, the becoming overwhelming
Speaker 3: evidence of Joe Biden's corruption, and so that's what I
Speaker 3: asked him about.
Speaker 1: I want to play a chunk of this because it's
Speaker 1: really important, and I hope that every vertical listener will
Speaker 1: make sure that you take this and share this podcast
Speaker 1: so that you can let people know about what these
Speaker 1: questions were. They're really important questions and also I would
Speaker 1: argue the shocking response from the FBI Director Ray.
Speaker 2: Take a listen to this.
Speaker 5: Thank you, miss chairman Director Ray. Welcome.
Speaker 3: As you know, I am deeply concerned about the conduct
Speaker 3: of both the Department of Justice and the FBI, particularly
Speaker 3: in the last three years during the Biden administration. I
Speaker 3: think the Department of Justice has been profoundly politicized under
Speaker 3: Attorney General Merrick Garland, and I think the FBI has
Speaker 3: as well, and unfortunately, I think you've been unwilling to
Speaker 3: stand up to senior career officials in the FBI who's
Speaker 3: allowed the FBI to be politicized. I'll tell you I
Speaker 3: regularly speak with FBI agents across the country who are
Speaker 3: unhappy about the integrity of the institution being weakened because
Speaker 3: DOJ is being treated as a political weapon. I want
Speaker 3: to talk in particular about the investigation into multiple allegations
Speaker 3: of corruption concerning Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, because the
Speaker 3: Department of Justice has, i think from the outset, tried
Speaker 3: at every step to stop investigation into corruption from Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: As you're aware, a WhatsApp text message was sent to
Speaker 3: Henry Zoo, a senior Chinese communist from Hunter Biden that
Speaker 3: reads as follows, I'm sitting here with my father and
Speaker 3: we would like to understand why the commitment made has
Speaker 3: not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like
Speaker 3: to resolve this now before it gets out of hand,
Speaker 3: and now means tonight and Zee, if I get a
Speaker 3: caller text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zanger,
Speaker 3: the Chairman, I will make certain that between the man's
Speaker 3: sitting next to me and every person he knows, and
Speaker 3: my ability to hold a grudge, that you will regret
Speaker 3: not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for
Speaker 3: the call with my father.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: Democrats and those in the media trying to defend the
Speaker 3: White House repeatedly say there is no direct evidence of
Speaker 3: Joe Biden's involvement in his son's corruption. Well, this is
Speaker 3: a text that is direct evidence that is stating that
Speaker 3: it is his father that is going to retaliate.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: An IRS whistleblower, Gary Shapley, testified before the House of
Speaker 3: Representatives that the natural step he wanted to follow was
Speaker 3: to determine whether Joe Biden was in fact sitting next
Speaker 3: to his father when this threat was made to extort
Speaker 3: millions of dollars from a Chinese communist. And what the
Speaker 3: IRS whistleblower testified is that when he tried to find
Speaker 3: out whether Joe Biden was sitting next to Hunter that
Speaker 3: the DOJ blocked getting the GPS data on Joe Biden's phone.
Speaker 3: Did the FBI try to ascertain where Hunter Biden was
Speaker 3: and where Joe Biden was when this text was sent?
Speaker 6: Well, I think the questions you're asking go to the
Speaker 6: ongoing investigation being led by a special counsel Wise, and
Speaker 6: so I'm not going to be able to discuss what
Speaker 6: is or is in scope.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: Look, there's been testimony under oath from the IRS whistle
Speaker 3: blower that you did not seek the GPS data, And
Speaker 3: you're right. David Wise's special prosecutor is in charge of it.
Speaker 3: And it is David Weiss and his underlings who, the
Speaker 3: accord of the IRS whistle blowers have alleged that they're
Speaker 3: the ones try to stop the investigation. They allow the
Speaker 3: statute of limitations to run on many of the most
Speaker 3: serious violations. Not only that, IRS whistleblower Shapley testified that
Speaker 3: on September, third Assistant US Attorney Less Wolf explicitly told
Speaker 3: investigators that, despite having probable cause to search quote, there
Speaker 3: is no way a search warrant would be approved when
Speaker 3: the evidence in question was located inside of Vice President
Speaker 3: Biden's guest house Wolf stated that quote the optics prevented
Speaker 3: such a search.
Speaker 5: Is the FBI?
Speaker 3: Do they make a routine practice of allowing partisan political
Speaker 3: optics to prevent investigating serious evidence of corruption.
Speaker 6: My instructions to our people on this and on every
Speaker 6: other investigation are the weird to follow the facts wherever
Speaker 6: they lead, no matter who likes it, no matter what
Speaker 6: political influence.
Speaker 3: And why may be a GBS state on where Hunter
Speaker 3: Biden and Joe Biden were.
Speaker 5: Again center with respect, I can't this.
Speaker 3: It's an ongoing and Director Ray, you and I have
Speaker 3: gone round a round on this, because I understand anytime
Speaker 3: you're asked about this, the answer is it's an ongoing investigation.
Speaker 3: Of course, the investigation is an ongoing you're not doing
Speaker 3: the work. You got whistleblowers pointing out that you're not
Speaker 3: doing the work and you are hiding behind the skirts
Speaker 3: of the attorney general. Look, the whistleblower also testified that
Speaker 3: the Attorney General, when he came before Congress. Go to
Speaker 3: the next chart, came before Congress lied under oath to
Speaker 3: this committee. The Attorney General testified to this committee in
Speaker 3: response to my questioning, I have pledged not to interfere
Speaker 3: with the Hunter Biden investigation.
Speaker 5: I have carried through on that pledge.
Speaker 3: The irs whistleblowers of alleged the Attorney General lied under
Speaker 3: oath a felony. Was the Attorney General telling the truth
Speaker 3: when he said this? Was the Attorney General telling the
Speaker 3: truth when he said, I have pledged not to interfere
Speaker 3: with the Hunter Biden investigation, and I have carried through.
Speaker 6: In my pledge. Again, I can't speak to the Attorney
Speaker 6: General's testimony. I can only tell you what my instructions
Speaker 6: have been to our people.
Speaker 3: Has there been political interference in the investigation into Hunter
Speaker 3: Biden and Joe Biden?
Speaker 5: Not that I have experienced.
Speaker 3: Were the investigators allowed to investigate whether Joe Biden was
Speaker 3: complicit in the corruption?
Speaker 6: Again, there is an ongoing investigator asking you about corruption
Speaker 6: from DJ.
Speaker 3: Were they allowed to investigate Joe Biden? Or is the
Speaker 3: whistleblower telling the truth that DJ said Joe Biden's off limits.
Speaker 5: No questions about the big guy.
Speaker 6: And as to what is in scope or not in
Speaker 6: scope of the ongoing investigation, I would refer you to
Speaker 6: Special Council Whites. That is not me hiding behind anything Center.
Speaker 6: That is a long standing policy that has been in
Speaker 6: place multiple administrations, a risk going back in years and
Speaker 6: years from the responsibility to the FBI not to allow
Speaker 6: it to be a partisan tool and a partisan weapon.
Speaker 3: The testimony and by the way, the FBI has done nothing,
Speaker 3: and I have not and I will not. Have you
Speaker 3: opened an investigation and to whether the Attorney General led
Speaker 3: under oath to Congress and whether the Attorney General obstructive justice.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to go down that road here. I
Speaker 5: know you're not. That's the point.
Speaker 3: Nobody thinks you've opened an investigation because you're.
Speaker 5: Not willing to.
Speaker 3: And the amazing thing is, directory I've known you thirty years.
Speaker 3: You're not a partisan Democrat. You're simply sitting blithely by
Speaker 3: will career partisans in your agency allow it to be weaponized.
Speaker 3: And you were damaging the FBI, and you were damaging
Speaker 3: the Department of Justice.
Speaker 5: Let me ask you.
Speaker 3: Also, the whistle blower testified that investigators wanted to execute
Speaker 3: a search warrant on a storage unit used by Hunter Biden,
Speaker 3: and instead they tipped off Hunter Biden's lawyer before the
Speaker 3: search warrant was carried out. Is a typical FBI practice
Speaker 3: to tip off the subject of a search warrant before
Speaker 3: the search warrant so they can remove any evidence that's incriminating.
Speaker 6: What is typical is that when you're dealing with an
Speaker 6: individual who has a protective detail, it is typical for
Speaker 6: the agents to be in contact with.
Speaker 3: Does the protective det details the protective detail guard the
Speaker 3: storage unit?
Speaker 5: Again, I can't speak to the storage unit specifically.
Speaker 3: What I can tell you is they were Why Why
Speaker 3: would the FBI tip off the subject of a search
Speaker 3: warrant about the storage unit that was going to be
Speaker 3: searched beforehand? Does that not undermine the very essence of
Speaker 3: an investigation that DOJ is purporting to undertake.
Speaker 6: Again, I'm not going to be able to discuss specific
Speaker 6: investigative set.
Speaker 5: Who will take it?
Speaker 1: You're not.
Speaker 3: Nobody answers these questions. And it's why people are furious
Speaker 3: with the cover up, because you don't believe the FBI
Speaker 3: is accountable to Congress or to the American people. Your
Speaker 3: time is up, dirtor Rey has requested a five minute recess.
Speaker 5: Five minutes, I'll just let me just send it.
Speaker 6: If I might just quickly respond and then respun code
Speaker 6: of the break thank you.
Speaker 5: I understand why this is frustrating. I do.
Speaker 6: But it is also the case that these policies that
Speaker 6: I am referring to about my inability to discuss ongoing
Speaker 6: investigations and certainly internal deliberations related to ongoing investigations, are
Speaker 6: policies that have not only been in place for many,
Speaker 6: many years through multiple administrations of both parties, but in
Speaker 6: fact these were policies that were actually strengthened under the
Speaker 6: last administration, and that my predecessor was faulted in a
Speaker 6: fairly scathing Inspector General report for not following, and that
Speaker 6: you have an obligation call it out.
Speaker 5: He's engaged in this job. Thank you have an obligation
Speaker 5: to call out corruption.
Speaker 2: Senator.
Speaker 1: I understand him saying it's an ongoing investigation, but hiding
Speaker 1: behind that when you're talking about basic things that the
Speaker 1: FBI didn't do clearly to protect the Biden family. He
Speaker 1: should still be able to answer those questions, shouldn't he?
Speaker 3: He should, and he's stonewalling, and there's an arrogance of
Speaker 3: the director of the FBI. Look, as I mentioned in
Speaker 3: my questioning, I've known Chris Ray for thirty years. Uh
Speaker 3: he clerked for the same federal judge I clerked for.
Speaker 3: He's not a liberal Democrat. That that's the amazing thing.
Speaker 3: I think Chris Ray still believes he's a Republican. I
Speaker 3: think he still believes he's a conservative. He just is unwilling.
Speaker 3: He's a company man, unwilling to take on the career
Speaker 3: officials at the FBI who were rabid partisans, who are
Speaker 3: left wing zelots. And he also he buys into the
Speaker 3: notion that he has no responsibility to the American people,
Speaker 3: no responsibility to Congress, no responsibility to be accountable or transparent.
Speaker 3: So he views his obligation no sorry, ongoing investigation piss off,
Speaker 3: jumping a lake. I'm not going to answer your question. Look,
Speaker 3: you've got two irs whistleblowers who come forward and alleged
Speaker 3: felonies from the Attorney General. A director of the FBI
Speaker 3: has an obligation to answer questions about that. I asked
Speaker 3: a very simple question, did you try to ascertain the
Speaker 3: GPS data about where Hunter Biden was and where Joe
Speaker 3: Biden was when Hunter Biden sent the email asking for
Speaker 3: bribes trying to shake down the Chinese communists for bribes.
Speaker 3: The email, on its face says he's sitting next to
Speaker 3: his father Biden. If he's in fact sitting next to
Speaker 3: his father, it directly implicates Joe Biden in trying to
Speaker 3: extort millions of dollars from Chinese communists, much of which
Speaker 3: ultimately went to Joe Biden himself. What the RS whistleblower
Speaker 3: said is they wanted to get that GPS data that
Speaker 3: is readily ascertainable, and the Biden DOJ blocked it. There
Speaker 3: is nothing to prevent Chris Ray from answering the question
Speaker 3: did you try to seek that GPS data? Yes or no?
Speaker 3: Did DOJ Blockett? Yes or no? He refuses to answer,
Speaker 3: and his shield everything. He says it's an ongoing investigation.
Speaker 3: But as we've discussed, it's not ongoing. They are deliberately
Speaker 3: not investigating Joe Biden. And so it is a view
Speaker 3: that there's a hubris. We are the FBI, we don't
Speaker 3: have to answer your questions. And I got to say
Speaker 3: it is profoundly harmful to the rule of law and
Speaker 3: the integrity of the FBI to have the leadership of
Speaker 3: the FBI refuse to provide even the barest minimum of
Speaker 3: transparency or accountability.
Speaker 1: So our last question for you, and I want to
Speaker 1: go back to the FBI director and really the advantage
Speaker 1: that the Biden family has, which it seems that everybody
Speaker 1: is covering for them. The House Oversight Committee put out
Speaker 1: this tweet saying Hunter Biden must appear for his deposition
Speaker 1: on de Ever, the thirteenth Chairman, Comer and Jim Jordan
Speaker 1: will initiate contempt of Congress proceedings if Hunter does not appear.
Speaker 1: He has obviously said I will only appear before a
Speaker 1: public hearing. That's not what they're subpoenating for. In your gut,
Speaker 1: will Hunter Biden appear or will he be a no show?
Speaker 5: Look, I put the odds at about fifty to fifty
Speaker 5: on that. I think it could go either way.
Speaker 3: I think there's a chance Hunter appeers, and I think
Speaker 3: he could be defiant. He could be he could be
Speaker 3: hiding behind his lawyers. I also think there's a very
Speaker 3: real chance he just and show up. He just says,
Speaker 3: go pound sand if he does. If he refuses to
Speaker 3: show up, the House will vote have in contempt. But
Speaker 3: once the House votes him in contempt, nothing will happen
Speaker 3: because the Biden DOJ will not do anything to enforce
Speaker 3: the contempt sanctioned. Remember the House Representatives held Eric Holder
Speaker 3: in contempt when he was Attorney General under Barack Obama
Speaker 3: and nothing happened. Now why did nothing happen Because to
Speaker 3: enforce the contempt finding, DOJ has to bring it. And
Speaker 3: you know what, Eric Holder was in charge of DJ,
Speaker 3: and so magically, Eric Holder said, you know, when I
Speaker 3: think of things that I want to prosecute, the contempt
Speaker 3: finding against me is not one of them. I think
Speaker 3: the chances of Merrick Garland doing anything to enforce a
Speaker 3: contempt finding against Hunter Biden are very close to zero.
Speaker 3: And so look, there's a chance Hunter shows up. He
Speaker 3: did publicly say he was willing to show up. It
Speaker 3: was in public, but either way, I do not expect
Speaker 3: him to be forthcoming. Whether if he shows up, he's
Speaker 3: not going to say much of substance. If he doesn't
Speaker 3: show up, he feels he can defy the subpoena without
Speaker 3: meaningful consequence.
Speaker 1: As before, if you want to hear the rest of
Speaker 1: this conversation on this topic, you can go back and
Speaker 1: dow the podcast from earlier this week to hear the
Speaker 1: entire thing. I want to get back to the big
Speaker 1: story number three of the week.
Speaker 2: You may have missed all.
Speaker 3: Right, one more Santredaly O'Connor story. So I was Slicer
Speaker 3: General five and a half years. We ended up being
Speaker 3: very fortunate.
Speaker 5: We had some.
Speaker 3: Really big constitutional law cases that just through serendipity came
Speaker 3: down the road and we ended up litigating and we won.
Speaker 5: Most of them.
Speaker 3: One of the biggest cases it was a case called
Speaker 3: Van Orden versus Perry. Now Van Orden versus Perry was
Speaker 3: a challenge to the Ten Commandments monument outside of the
Speaker 3: Texas State Capitol. And let me set a little bit
Speaker 3: of context for it, because it's relevant to O'Connor, it's
Speaker 3: relevant to Renquist in the court. So this is the
Speaker 3: mid two thousands. There had been mitigation all over the
Speaker 3: country challenging the public display of Ten Commandments all over
Speaker 3: the country. The history of the Texas Ten Commandments Monument
Speaker 3: it was erected in nineteen sixty one, but its history
Speaker 3: actually goes back to the nineteen fifties. The nineteen fifties,
Speaker 3: there was a Minnesota state judge named E. J. Rugemeier
Speaker 3: who in the nineteen fifties was upset about the diminishing
Speaker 3: morals of the youth in America. By the way, pause
Speaker 3: and thinking the nineteen fifties, he was worried about youth morals.
Speaker 3: Think about today, like Holy Cow, in eighty years it
Speaker 3: hadn't gotten better. Yeah, And he came up with the
Speaker 3: idea to help the morals of the youth in America,
Speaker 3: let's publicly display the Ten Commandments in public areas across
Speaker 3: the nation. And he went to a public service organization,
Speaker 3: the Fraternal Order of Eagles, sort of like the Rotary
Speaker 3: Club or Quanas Club. He said, Hey, what do y'all
Speaker 3: think of this idea? And they said, great idea, We're
Speaker 3: all for it all right now, Ben, this is where
Speaker 3: the story takes a weird turn. This is exactly coterminous
Speaker 3: with the release of Cecil B. De Mill's movie The
Speaker 3: Ten Commandments. No way, you know, Charlton Heston comes down
Speaker 3: from Mount Sinai carrying the Ten Commandments and Cecil B.
Speaker 5: De Mill was a larger than life Hollywood character.
Speaker 3: And Mill gets wind of this and he and he
Speaker 3: was thinking like a Hollywood producer. He's like, hey, this
Speaker 3: is a great idea, but I don't want a piece
Speaker 3: of paper on a frame posted on the wall.
Speaker 5: If you're going to erect this.
Speaker 3: I want big honkin granite Ten Commandments monuments, just like
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have Charlton Heston coming down the mountain with.
Speaker 3: There are dozens of what are called Eagles monuments all
Speaker 3: over the country and they're all identical Texas. At six
Speaker 3: foot three inches tall three foot six inches wide, it
Speaker 3: is red granite. It looks exactly like the tablets that
Speaker 3: Charlton Heston carried. And actually, I'm going to take a
Speaker 3: brief aside and say, if you ever are argue you
Speaker 3: a case in court, since you're not a lawyer, something
Speaker 3: would have to go terribly wrong for you.
Speaker 5: To be arguing a case in court.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if you're convicted of murder and you're defending yourself.
Speaker 3: The advice that I have given lawyers is never ever
Speaker 3: ever try to be funny. It is the province of
Speaker 3: judges to be funny, It is not the province of lawyers. Now,
Speaker 3: that is excellent advice, But I will tell you I
Speaker 3: have twice in my career broken that advice, and I've
Speaker 3: been very lucky. The gods of litigation have spared me
Speaker 3: my just deserts. Both times when I was arguing the
Speaker 3: defense of the Texas ten Commandments case in the Fifth
Speaker 3: Circuit Court of Appeals. The process that the Eagles use
Speaker 3: to develop the text of the Ten Commandments. There are
Speaker 3: differences across the dominations, and so what the Eagles did
Speaker 3: is they brought together a committee that consisted of a pastor,
Speaker 3: a priest, and a rabbi. So an oral argument, I said,
Speaker 3: this was drafted by a pastor, a priest, and a rabbi.
Speaker 3: And one of the judges of the Fifth Circuit, Judge Prato,
Speaker 3: leans forward and says, Council, that sounds like the beginning
Speaker 3: of a joke. And I immediately said, yes, your honor,
Speaker 3: but nobody walked into a bar. And miraculously, the judges
Speaker 3: took pity on me and laughed. It was stupid, but
Speaker 3: I was grateful for their mercy. Were in front of
Speaker 3: the U. S. Supreme Court on the Texas Ten Commandments monument,
Speaker 3: and at the time there had been dozens of cases
Speaker 3: challenging Ten Commandments monuments. Almost all of the monuments had
Speaker 3: lost the weight of the case. Law was headed very
Speaker 3: significantly against the public display of the Ten Commandments as
Speaker 3: the case was being appealed. So we had won in
Speaker 3: the Fifth Circuit Court of appeals. The plain iff, a
Speaker 3: guy named Thomas van Orden, who was an atheist. He
Speaker 3: was a homeless man who had walked past the monument,
Speaker 3: was offended by it and filed a lawsuit seeking to
Speaker 3: tear it down. He filed a cert petition asking the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court to take the case. Now, normally, if you've
Speaker 3: won and the other side appeals to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 3: what you do is you fight against it. You say no, no,
Speaker 3: don't take this case. There is no split of authority.
Speaker 3: It's not consequential. You don't need this say no, because
Speaker 3: if they say no, you've won. Here was the problem.
Speaker 3: There was an enormous split of authority. I thought the
Speaker 3: court was going to take one of these cases very
Speaker 3: very soon, and we might have won a pyrrhic victory
Speaker 3: of a short term victory, but if a bad decision
Speaker 3: came down to the Supreme Court, we'd lose in the
Speaker 3: long term and lose our monument. So I went to
Speaker 3: my boss, Greg Abbott, and I said, general, I think
Speaker 3: we should do something that's called acquiescing insert, which is
Speaker 3: we should agree, yes, Supreme Court, you should take this case.
Speaker 3: And we drafted a brief in opposition where we said,
Speaker 3: there is a split of authority. It is real, it
Speaker 3: is deep, it is wide, it is significant. And what
Speaker 3: we wrote in the brief was, if the Court is
Speaker 3: inclined to resolve this issue, this case presents the single
Speaker 3: best fact pattern to uphold a permissible display of the
Speaker 3: Ten Commandments.
Speaker 5: It was very risky because if the.
Speaker 3: Court took the case and we lost, everyone would pillory
Speaker 3: both Abbot and me. You idiots asked them to take
Speaker 3: this case, and then you got your butt kicked. Well,
Speaker 3: it ended up we were right. They were going to
Speaker 3: take a case. They took the Texas case, and they
Speaker 3: took a case out of Kentucky. They took them both,
Speaker 3: and they scheduled them for argument on the same day.
Speaker 3: As we're preparing the case. Abbot, my boss, who was
Speaker 3: attorney Generally, he told me when he started, he said, look,
Speaker 3: I want to argue one Supreme Court case while I'm
Speaker 3: ag and let me know which one I should do.
Speaker 3: And so when this case was granted, I said, General,
Speaker 3: this is the one.
Speaker 5: You should do.
Speaker 3: It's a discreet issue of law, it's incredibly important. He
Speaker 3: spent two months preparing for the argument. I put together
Speaker 3: some moot courts, I did moot court in DC with
Speaker 3: a murderer's row of Supreme Court advocates. They had collectively
Speaker 3: over one hundred oral arguments between them, and they just
Speaker 3: beat him senseless. I actually felt really nervous, Like when
Speaker 3: you put your boss in front of a moot that
Speaker 3: like pounds them senseless, You're like, uh, General, I hope
Speaker 3: that was productive. Yeah, please tell me I'm not unemployed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, please tell me I'm not get my walk
Speaker 4: in papers a day.
Speaker 3: But look, if you do it right, you want the
Speaker 3: mood to be harder than the actual argument. So he
Speaker 3: went through, did several moods. He was ready for it,
Speaker 3: and in the brief I told him, I said, okay, General,
Speaker 3: I've got a plan. So for about three decades, Sandarday
Speaker 3: O'Connor was the deciding vote on every almost every religious
Speaker 3: liberty establishment cause case in the country. And I read
Speaker 3: every opinion she'd written over and over and over again.
Speaker 3: And I told my team as we're drafting the brief,
Speaker 3: I said, I want us to swim in Sandraday O'Connor's
Speaker 3: establishment clause jurisprudence. I want I want this to embody
Speaker 3: everything she's ever thought or said about the First Amendment,
Speaker 3: And in fact I told my lawyers, I said, I
Speaker 3: want the most frequent words in the brief to be
Speaker 3: O'Connor Comma jay.
Speaker 5: I want them to occur more frequently than and or THEE.
Speaker 5: And one of my.
Speaker 3: Lawyers said, well, Ted, is it possible to be too
Speaker 3: obsequious to Justice O'Connor in this brief? I said no,
Speaker 3: If we can put an oil portrait of Sanderdale O'Connor
Speaker 3: in the cover of our brief, we should do so.
Speaker 3: And again I was, you know, probably I was a
Speaker 3: cocky thirty four thirty five year old. I went to
Speaker 3: Abbott and I said, General, we are we're living in
Speaker 3: her psyche. This brief is exactly what Saturday O'Connor thinks.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 3: At the oral argument, I'm sorry to say we missed horribly.
Speaker 3: She was utterly unpersuaded. She voted to strike down the
Speaker 3: Texas ten Commandments.
Speaker 5: Mindment.
Speaker 3: Now here's where Spring Court arguments are weird. Every argument
Speaker 3: we'd aimed at Sanderdale O'Connor missed her, but bizarrely enough
Speaker 3: struck Steve Bryer. Wow, Bill Clinton appointee relatively liberal justice.
Speaker 3: And the two cases I told you there was Kentucky
Speaker 3: in Texas. Four justices voted to strike down both monuments,
Speaker 3: four justices voted to uphold both monuments. Steve Bryer voted
Speaker 3: to strike down Kentucky and to uphold Texas, which, among
Speaker 3: other things, was a vindication of If we hadn't acquiesced insert,
Speaker 3: the only opinion would have been Kentucky, and it would
Speaker 3: have been devastating for Ten Commandments monuments across the country.
Speaker 3: There was also a really nice kind of personal vindication
Speaker 3: in this. So Chief Justice Renquist had been an original
Speaker 3: dissenter in a case called Stone versus Graham, which struck
Speaker 3: down the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools
Speaker 3: across the country, and he had dissented. He said, this
Speaker 3: is not the first amendment, this is not right Van
Speaker 3: Orden versus Perry. Chief Justice Renquist wrote the plurality opinion
Speaker 3: for the court upholding Texas's display of the Ten Commandments,
Speaker 3: the very last opinion Chief Justice Renquist ever wrote, and
Speaker 3: he passed away later that summer. And so, as his
Speaker 3: former clerk, it was really cool to have been part
Speaker 3: of a case where he was able to vindicate a
Speaker 3: view he had articulated two decades earlier and Sanderday O'Connor.
Speaker 3: When it came to the standards, we didn't meet her standards,
Speaker 3: but miraculously enough Steve Bryer liked what we had to say,
Speaker 3: and so we entered. And by the way, since then,
Speaker 3: the McCreary case out of Kentucky has proven to be
Speaker 3: a very unimportant precedent. It is rarely cited, and the
Speaker 3: Van Orden case changed the entire direction of case law
Speaker 3: so that Ten Commandments displays are now routinely uphill.
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