Jan. 6 Then & Now: The Insurrection Blueprint (with Tom Joscelyn)

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to another episode of The Oath and the Office.
<v Speaker 1>I'm John Feeble saying, so pleased to be with you.
<v Speaker 1>It's so pleased to welcome the professor, the author Corey Bretschneider,
<v Speaker 1>who I have read for years in the New York
<v Speaker 1>Times at MSNBC, and I read The Oath in the Office,
<v Speaker 1>and I read the Presidents and the People, and now
<v Speaker 1>I get to do a podcast with them.
<v Speaker 2>Professor.
<v Speaker 3>It's good to see you.
<v Speaker 4>Thanks John, and it's been a real pleasure doing this
<v Speaker 4>with you. And we have quite a show today. Of course,
<v Speaker 4>we're going to talk about the horror that ice is inflicting.
<v Speaker 4>I'm Minnesota, on the attempts to fight back in the
<v Speaker 4>hopeful ways in which people are fighting back in the
<v Speaker 4>courts and through protest, and then of course we have
<v Speaker 4>a guest. I think it's going to be one of
<v Speaker 4>our most important episodes. Literally, the author of the January
<v Speaker 4>sixth Report, Senior staff to the January sixth Committee, and
<v Speaker 4>it's just the person who really knows the most about
<v Speaker 4>the details of what unfolded on January sixth, the truth
<v Speaker 4>of what happened. And I also want to ask him
<v Speaker 4>too about well part of it about how we correct
<v Speaker 4>the record, because it's really a history that's being written
<v Speaker 4>by Trump and his cronies to undermine what really happened.
<v Speaker 1>I can't wait for it. I'm really pleased. Let's talk
<v Speaker 1>about what's going on now. Saturday, federal agents killed another Minnesotan,
<v Speaker 1>shooting a vaic unurse named Alex pretty seven to ten times,
<v Speaker 1>we're not sure yet, after wrestling into the ground as
<v Speaker 1>doing him he was filming ICE agents, which is legal
<v Speaker 1>in all fifty states, and tackled after helping another woman
<v Speaker 1>off the ground. Now, for those who saw the video,
<v Speaker 1>they didn't kill him while he was committing a crime.
<v Speaker 1>They didn't kill him while he was threatening civilians, or
<v Speaker 1>while he was fleeing or brandishing a weapon, Nor was
<v Speaker 1>he protesting, nor was he interfering with law enforcement. They
<v Speaker 1>disarmed and then killed an American citizen while he was
<v Speaker 1>trying to protect a woman who had just been shoved
<v Speaker 1>to the ground and peppered sprayed by a masked, armed
<v Speaker 1>government agent. As folks probably know by now, he was
<v Speaker 1>a registered nurse and ICU caregiver for vets, a man
<v Speaker 1>with no criminal record, a man who spent his life
<v Speaker 1>healing bodies broken by violence, and he was killed for
<v Speaker 1>trying to stop it. Following the shooting, Border Patrol Piumunculust,
<v Speaker 1>Greg Bavino, and a bunch of ICE agents, including those
<v Speaker 1>who killed him, have been reassigned out of Minnesota, but
<v Speaker 1>they remain on duty.
<v Speaker 2>Corey.
<v Speaker 1>When federal agents kill a civilian and then immediately try
<v Speaker 1>to control the narrative immediately, as we saw with Renee Good,
<v Speaker 1>lie about the victim, lie about the circumstance, and essentially
<v Speaker 1>ask us to not believe what our own eyes tell
<v Speaker 1>us on video. What core democratic principles are being violated already.
<v Speaker 4>It's almost a case study if you want to think
<v Speaker 4>about what democracy is and should be a case study
<v Speaker 4>and how to undermine it because it is the definition
<v Speaker 4>of authoritarianism. The multiple ways that in Minnesota and with
<v Speaker 4>the second killing, that they're systematically trying to destroy our democracy.
<v Speaker 4>I've used the term self coup. Some people worried, well,
<v Speaker 4>that suggests a kind of violence. Well here it is.
<v Speaker 4>The violence was not far from the service. And now
<v Speaker 4>with a second killing, really execution. If you see that video,
<v Speaker 4>you see that this is an attempt to create a
<v Speaker 4>group of stormtroopers employed by the government to shut down
<v Speaker 4>free speech.
<v Speaker 3>And what better example than that than.
<v Speaker 4>To look at this horrible second killing.
<v Speaker 3>Where was he what did he have?
<v Speaker 4>This ICU nurse had nothing more than a camera that
<v Speaker 4>he was recording what was going on. Now, he did
<v Speaker 4>have a weapon on him, which was perfectly legal under
<v Speaker 4>Minnesota law, but he wasn't brandishing it, it wasn't threatening
<v Speaker 4>them with it. And the lies that they're telling also
<v Speaker 4>speak to the way that they're trying to shut down
<v Speaker 4>free speech, not just with murder and with the use
<v Speaker 4>of force, but by really denying us access to basic
<v Speaker 4>information of what's happening, lying to our faces, gaslighting us
<v Speaker 4>as we see these videos over and over it's clear
<v Speaker 4>what happened, and claiming that somehow this was a terrorist,
<v Speaker 4>that he was intent on killing people at the scene.
<v Speaker 3>None of that is true.
<v Speaker 4>And yet Stephen Miller said precisely that, so you ask,
<v Speaker 4>you know, what does it teach us about democracy? First
<v Speaker 4>of all, the right to protest. If you're an authoritarian,
<v Speaker 4>shut it down with the use of force, that's what
<v Speaker 4>the most aggressive authoritarians do. What else, changed the information
<v Speaker 4>flow so that we can't have access to the truth.
<v Speaker 4>Those are the two things, most obviously that we're seeing
<v Speaker 4>right now.
<v Speaker 1>You know, Corey, my friend, the great comedian Rick Overton
<v Speaker 1>likes to say about everybody, all citizens, having a video
<v Speaker 1>camera in their pocket. He refers to the phone as
<v Speaker 1>little brother is watching. Little brother is watching, and we've
<v Speaker 1>already seen. If Renee Good hadn't been filmed, we'd assume
<v Speaker 1>she was a terrorist. If this man hadn't been filmed,
<v Speaker 1>the government lies with stick that he had attacked agents. Now,
<v Speaker 1>folks watching us or listening to us have probably already
<v Speaker 1>seen the videos. If you haven't, I highly recommend them.
<v Speaker 1>It shows Alex Pretty in the middle of a street
<v Speaker 1>legally recording. He waves a car through traffic. He's calm,
<v Speaker 1>he's not shouting threats. He's not a protester. That's another
<v Speaker 1>lie they keep telling. There's like half a dozen people
<v Speaker 1>out there. There is no protest. There's people on the
<v Speaker 1>sidewalk watching. And this DHS agent approaches a woman near
<v Speaker 1>mister Pretty. Voices are raised. Mister Pretty moves the woman
<v Speaker 1>toward the sidewalk, away from the agent. This other woman
<v Speaker 1>comes over and yells at the officer, and the officer
<v Speaker 1>because these are not men, shoves that woman to the ground,
<v Speaker 1>and that's the pivot point. Alex Pretty then, instinctively, because
<v Speaker 1>this guy is a man who has compassion for people,
<v Speaker 1>steps in between the agent and the woman that's just
<v Speaker 1>been shoved to the ground, and he softly places one
<v Speaker 1>hand on the agent, raises the other hand in the
<v Speaker 1>air like hands up right, like his whole body language.
<v Speaker 1>Corey is like, I'm not attacking you. It's not domination,
<v Speaker 1>it's de escalation by a civilian. Single woman get hurt,
<v Speaker 1>and the agent responds by pepper spraying the guy in
<v Speaker 1>the face and he turns away. He's still filming. He
<v Speaker 1>bends to help the woman. The agent sprays both Pretty
<v Speaker 1>and the woman. More agents come in. At least six
<v Speaker 1>officers tackle this guy, spray them again. They punch him
<v Speaker 1>and Corey. My understanding is that pepper spraying a person
<v Speaker 1>while trying to handcuff them when they haven't broken any
<v Speaker 1>laws doesn't really create compliance. I mean it creates panic
<v Speaker 1>and involuntary resistance. Trained cops would know this. Now we've
<v Speaker 1>heard the initial claim. They said the director of who
<v Speaker 1>Land Security said he pulled a gun on ice. How dangerous?
<v Speaker 1>How dangerous is it when the state not just lies
<v Speaker 1>reflexively to justify lethal force. But when they lie so
<v Speaker 1>broadly and stupidly believing they can get away with it.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, this is what you mean when you talk
<v Speaker 1>about the erosion of truth as a democratic value.
<v Speaker 4>That's right that Steven Miller thought he could call this
<v Speaker 4>person a terrorist and claim that he was somehow involved
<v Speaker 4>in a violent act when we have video after video
<v Speaker 4>that is showing that. Thankfully we do have these videos,
<v Speaker 4>because as you say, not only would they have gotten
<v Speaker 4>away with it in the first case, they would have
<v Speaker 4>gotten away with it in the case of alex pretty
<v Speaker 4>if we didn't have evidence, at least a large portion
<v Speaker 4>of their base, and many Americans who are sort of
<v Speaker 4>on the fence about all this might have thought, you know,
<v Speaker 4>this is really what happened was a justifiable attack. But
<v Speaker 4>giving you access to the video shows you not just
<v Speaker 4>that he didn't pull a gun on them, but that
<v Speaker 4>he was disarmed. In fact, they pulled the gun away
<v Speaker 4>that he was lawfully carrying well before they began to
<v Speaker 4>shoot him multiple times, including after he was clearly incapacitated.
<v Speaker 3>This was a panicked.
<v Speaker 4>Group of as you say, untrained really you know, thugs.
<v Speaker 3>I think is really we described them.
<v Speaker 4>They're like a violent gang that are trying to act
<v Speaker 4>at the behest of Donald Trump and even Miller. And
<v Speaker 4>there is a kind of chaos that comes out of
<v Speaker 4>the video that really is what this is about. Now,
<v Speaker 4>you know, I love your piece John on Substack about
<v Speaker 4>you know, don't invoke the Nazis unless it's called for,
<v Speaker 4>while I'm going to invoke a comparison because there were
<v Speaker 4>a group of stormtroopers untrained in Nazi Germany the SA
<v Speaker 4>later replaced by the s S.
<v Speaker 3>Shows you that the.
<v Speaker 4>Kind of training that we're talking about is what's important.
<v Speaker 4>We have to talk about training for civil liberties protection,
<v Speaker 4>not just for effectiveness and subduing people.
<v Speaker 3>And you know, that's.
<v Speaker 4>What you have here, a group of stormtroopers acting chaotically, untrained,
<v Speaker 4>many of them, by the way, trained online. That's what's
<v Speaker 4>coming out about their training, that they actually haven't been
<v Speaker 4>trained in person for one thousand dollars bonus for ICE recruitment.
<v Speaker 3>These are not professionals.
<v Speaker 4>And so we'll get into this later, but that's that's
<v Speaker 4>why this is systemic. It really is Steven Miller and
<v Speaker 4>Christy Nome, who we talked about the need to impeach
<v Speaker 4>ordering a group of really chaotic, untrained ice agents. I
<v Speaker 4>hesitate to use that term. It sounds too legitimate thugs
<v Speaker 4>to attack people exercising no more than their first amendment right.
<v Speaker 3>So the fact that he had the phone up, what
<v Speaker 3>is that?
<v Speaker 4>That is the exercise of something that is constitutionally protected activity,
<v Speaker 4>and yet they murdered.
<v Speaker 5>Him for him.
<v Speaker 1>Now, some important facts, Professor, that are never going to
<v Speaker 1>go away here. As you mentioned, he was a lawful
<v Speaker 1>gun owner. He had a permit to carry, never drew
<v Speaker 1>his weapon, never pointed it, never threatened anyone with it.
<v Speaker 1>Video appears to show an officer removing the gun from
<v Speaker 1>Preddi's holster, and then someone yell's gun, and then the
<v Speaker 1>shooting starts, and he shot between six and ten times
<v Speaker 1>by at least two officers. Apparently several of those are
<v Speaker 1>in the back. It's going to be very interesting when
<v Speaker 1>the autopsy comes out and they have to give his
<v Speaker 1>body back to his family. And afterwards you can hear
<v Speaker 1>the officer saying, where's the gun, where's the gun, like
<v Speaker 1>nearly a minute after this poor man's been shot and
<v Speaker 1>is motionless.
<v Speaker 2>So think about that.
<v Speaker 1>If the gun was justification for killing this man, they
<v Speaker 1>didn't even know where it was after killing him.
<v Speaker 2>This was not.
<v Speaker 1>Controlled force, This was not discipline. The NRA has spoken
<v Speaker 1>out about this here and there in pockets, but generally
<v Speaker 1>we've seen tons of our right wing friends who love
<v Speaker 1>Kyle Rittenhouse saying this guy should never have brought a
<v Speaker 1>gun to a protest. First off, he wasn't at a protest.
<v Speaker 1>He was on the streets of America with his firearm.
<v Speaker 1>And the liberals, Corey, the liberals are the ones standing
<v Speaker 1>up for the First Amendment and the Second Amendment, both
<v Speaker 1>of which were taken away from this man. So, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>what is the silence of these gun douchebags who've always
<v Speaker 1>just praised Kyle Rittenhouse and just bring your gun everywhere,
<v Speaker 1>bring your gun the subway to buy a sandwich. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>what does this tell us about those whose rights they
<v Speaker 1>actually defend. I think this moment exposes the myth that
<v Speaker 1>gun absolutism, what we've gotten used to is about liberty.
<v Speaker 1>Apparently it really is just about political alignment. As with
<v Speaker 1>so much else with right wing fascist and country, laws
<v Speaker 1>are to be used on the other guy, not for us.
<v Speaker 4>That's right, and it's why this really is an assault
<v Speaker 4>on the rule of law. Because as much as the
<v Speaker 4>NRA and other groups talk about gun rights, well, you know,
<v Speaker 4>we can disagree with them about the extent to which
<v Speaker 4>the Second Amendment protects an individual right.
<v Speaker 3>I actually don't think it protects one at all.
<v Speaker 4>I think it's clear from the text of the Second
<v Speaker 4>Amendment that it's about the outdated and anachronistic institution of militias.
<v Speaker 3>But the reality is that this isn't about the Second.
<v Speaker 4>Amendment, whether it's good or bad, or whether we should
<v Speaker 4>have more protective gun laws. The laws on the books
<v Speaker 4>protect exactly what he was doing, and we're seeing it
<v Speaker 4>protest after protests, people armed who weren't killed, including in
<v Speaker 4>state houses you mentioned Kyle Rittenhouse instances in which they
<v Speaker 4>weren't murdered by ice agents or by police. So the
<v Speaker 4>fact is that he was acting lawfully. There was nothing
<v Speaker 4>about his possession of that gun that should have put
<v Speaker 4>him in danger. And now the first people who should
<v Speaker 4>have been speaking out about this, and the clearest possible voice,
<v Speaker 4>are the NR are the defenders of the Second Amendment,
<v Speaker 4>Because if you believe there's a Second Amendment right, this
<v Speaker 4>is almost a paradigmatic case of it being violated. Him
<v Speaker 4>being murdered for legally holding a gun on his person.
<v Speaker 4>He owned it legally, you know, he wasn't brandishing it
<v Speaker 4>or using it in an illegal way. So not only,
<v Speaker 4>as you say, were his First Amendment free speech rights
<v Speaker 4>shut down, but like it or not, his Second Amendment rights.
<v Speaker 3>He was doing nothing illegal.
<v Speaker 4>And that's part of the tragedy here that we're seeing
<v Speaker 4>the kind of fake defense of the constitution that you
<v Speaker 4>often get for the right. I'm going to use a
<v Speaker 4>phrase used to be said, this is one of the
<v Speaker 4>worst moments of the sixties, that free speech for the
<v Speaker 4>left not for the right. That's not a good way
<v Speaker 4>to think about free speech. Free speech is the right
<v Speaker 4>of all Americans, whether we agree with them or not.
<v Speaker 4>And that's got to be true too of the Second Amendment.
<v Speaker 4>We can't have Second Amendment for the right, not for
<v Speaker 4>the left exactly.
<v Speaker 1>And again, wanting to have public safety regulations on who
<v Speaker 1>gets the case firearms that were never intended for civilian
<v Speaker 1>use does not mean you want to get rid of
<v Speaker 1>our Second Amendment rights. The very fact that citizens aren't
<v Speaker 1>allowed to own white phosphorus or tactical nukes shows we
<v Speaker 1>already accept some limitations on our Second Amendment rights. I'm
<v Speaker 1>not against concealed carry and permits. I'm against civilians having
<v Speaker 1>AR fifteens and high capacity magazines and a crummy system
<v Speaker 1>of background checks. But I want to bring it back
<v Speaker 1>to this administration because they lied that he attacked the officers,
<v Speaker 1>that he brandished a gun. I think it was Bovino
<v Speaker 1>who said he arrived intending to massacre law enforcement. The
<v Speaker 1>cops fired defensive shots. It's all rationales for these folks
<v Speaker 1>to say he deserved to be murdered with no trial,
<v Speaker 1>having neverly drawn his legally purchased firearm. Kyle Rittenhouse brought
<v Speaker 1>an AR fifteen he wasn't legally old enough to purchase
<v Speaker 1>yet to a protest kill people, but they were people
<v Speaker 1>the right also think deserved violent death. So it's okay,
<v Speaker 1>just as this is okay because the right things Alex
<v Speaker 1>Preddy deserved violent death.
<v Speaker 4>I mean, yeah, it looks bizarre if you think of
<v Speaker 4>it as one off, but if you think of it
<v Speaker 4>in the wider context, which is an assault on free
<v Speaker 4>speech itself, an assault on the rule of law, it
<v Speaker 4>makes perfect sense. Because really, and you're hearing this from
<v Speaker 4>I just heard Megan Kelly, another right wing commentators saying, well,
<v Speaker 4>if he didn't want to be murdered, he shouldn't have
<v Speaker 4>been at a protest. What the right to protest is
<v Speaker 4>our First Amendment right, It's the core of the constitution
<v Speaker 4>to object to the government. The Declaration of Independence, are
<v Speaker 4>founding one of our founding documents is about the right
<v Speaker 4>to protest, the First Amendment, right to free speech, to
<v Speaker 4>petition the government, to assemble. All of that is the
<v Speaker 4>core to what American democracy is. And now we have
<v Speaker 4>commentators saying stay home if you don't want to be murdered.
<v Speaker 3>I don't think so.
<v Speaker 4>And that's why the American people are fighting back in
<v Speaker 4>such a strong way rather than backing down or being scared.
<v Speaker 3>We've seen the emergence. I think of the Democrat fire
<v Speaker 3>that we use right constitution.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, it's not just democratic Cory. This is this is
<v Speaker 1>bigger than a political dodgeball team. This is for independence.
<v Speaker 1>This is for responsible conservatives, I mean the coalition, the beautiful.
<v Speaker 3>Multi racial right.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, right on.
<v Speaker 1>Well, in that case, can I just say this was
<v Speaker 1>not an isolated incident. There's there's been five federal shootings
<v Speaker 1>during these operations in January, at least six immigrants are
<v Speaker 1>dead in federal detention this month alone, including Heraldo Luna's
<v Speaker 1>compos who was murdered in El Paso. At first the
<v Speaker 1>government said that he just died of natural causes, then
<v Speaker 1>they said it was suicide, and now the autopsy's revealed
<v Speaker 1>it was homicide, which is what his cellmates say. They
<v Speaker 1>are murdering people on our tax dollar. And again, three
<v Speaker 1>thousand agents deployed to Minnesota for what does the stupid
<v Speaker 1>think Operation Metro Surge. That's more agents than the combined
<v Speaker 1>force of the ten largest Twin cities police departments. And
<v Speaker 1>I think, Professor, that Alex Pretti's greatest mistake was touching
<v Speaker 1>the officer. He did it gently. He had one hand
<v Speaker 1>and raised saying it's okay, dude, saying he was trying
<v Speaker 1>to reassure him. He's protecting someone on the ground, saying
<v Speaker 1>it's okay. He did it in the most non aggressive,
<v Speaker 1>de escalatory way possible.
<v Speaker 2>Corey.
<v Speaker 1>It should have burned him some space, but that's it
<v Speaker 1>earned him death. It seems that it was putting his
<v Speaker 1>hand on this ice agent, completely, non violently, completely gently,
<v Speaker 1>that sealed his fate. That was all the excuse a
<v Speaker 1>man who wants to kill. Someone needs to kill someone
<v Speaker 1>when he has a badge. I want to ask you
<v Speaker 1>what makes this killing qualitatively different from even other cases
<v Speaker 1>of police violence that we've seen. How do you separate
<v Speaker 1>this from besides the fact that it was a white guy,
<v Speaker 1>how do you separate this from the other police killings
<v Speaker 1>we've seen.
<v Speaker 4>Well, I think in most police departments, first of all,
<v Speaker 4>the police are not mass We know instantly who did it.
<v Speaker 3>Instantly, there's accountability.
<v Speaker 4>Even if there's a problem within the ranks or in
<v Speaker 4>the culture of a particular police department, there's going to
<v Speaker 4>be an investigation, not just internally from the police department itself,
<v Speaker 4>but from the district attorney to hold these people to account. So,
<v Speaker 4>in some of the most brutal instances of police killing,
<v Speaker 4>as terrible as they are, the law is there, and
<v Speaker 4>what's happening here is the opposite that the federal government
<v Speaker 4>ICE is obstructing the investigators from even coming onto the
<v Speaker 4>scene yor trying to block investigators from finding out what happened.
<v Speaker 4>They will certainly try very hard to keep charges from
<v Speaker 4>being filed, although absolutely I think charges here in the
<v Speaker 4>case of this killing need to be filed unless we're missing.
<v Speaker 3>Something that's not obvious.
<v Speaker 4>From everything that we've seen, it looks like this is
<v Speaker 4>a case in which there should be an indictment for murder. Right,
<v Speaker 4>And now you know that's what's different here that we
<v Speaker 4>have not a police force.
<v Speaker 3>I wouldn't call it that.
<v Speaker 4>We have force that's ostensibly supposedly going after dangerous undocumented people,
<v Speaker 4>but what it's really doing is stirring up protests, acting
<v Speaker 4>in a way that's going to make people angry, and
<v Speaker 4>then using it as a chance to clamp down on
<v Speaker 4>political opponent's political enemies descent. And that's not what a
<v Speaker 4>normal police force is doing.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I should take a moment to commend the Minneapolis
<v Speaker 1>Saint Paul Police departments because they have shown extraordinary restraint.
<v Speaker 1>This is the same department that made history when a
<v Speaker 1>commissioner testified against one of his own policemen for murdering
<v Speaker 1>a citizen, and that would be Derek Choubin after the
<v Speaker 1>murder of George Floyd. So, I mean, we already have
<v Speaker 1>the Minneapolis Police Department in a very special place in
<v Speaker 1>terms of justice and progress. And kudos to the Minneapolis
<v Speaker 1>local media as well for being incredible and responsible on
<v Speaker 1>all this. But we learned last night that Greg Bavino,
<v Speaker 1>America's shortest Nazi, is not being fired or demoted. They're
<v Speaker 1>moving them around. They're cycling some of these guys out
<v Speaker 1>of there, and they're moving Greg Bavino around.
<v Speaker 2>Like a predator.
<v Speaker 1>Priest Corey, we've discussed Trump hires these idiots because they
<v Speaker 1>won't tell him he's.
<v Speaker 2>Breaking the law.
<v Speaker 1>Right, the idiotcy hires like the cash Betels and the
<v Speaker 1>Christy Nomes and the Pete Hegsess, they won't tell any
<v Speaker 1>he's breaking the law. So that means when he gets
<v Speaker 1>in trouble for something the idiots don't know. They're also
<v Speaker 1>going to be the fall guys. So Bavino says he's
<v Speaker 1>going to retire. Now we still don't know the name
<v Speaker 1>of the shooters. At what point does secrecy itself become
<v Speaker 1>a form of injustice, Professor? If ordinary citizens obstructed a
<v Speaker 1>homicide investigation like we're seeing here, they're not letting the
<v Speaker 1>local cops investigate any of this. If ordinary citizens obstructed
<v Speaker 1>a homicide investigation the way the Feds are doing here,
<v Speaker 1>what would happen to those citizens?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, no question that you'd be guilty of a crime
<v Speaker 4>of obstruction of justice. But unfortunately there are legal resources,
<v Speaker 4>including qualified immunity, that are going to be used to
<v Speaker 4>try to block this investigation and block the law from
<v Speaker 4>being carried out.
<v Speaker 3>There are obvious remedies. Congress could fix this tomorrow.
<v Speaker 4>It could have a law that strips ICE agents of
<v Speaker 4>qualified immunity. We need that local prosecutors, I think, have
<v Speaker 4>to pursue these charges, even though of course there'll be
<v Speaker 4>legal objections.
<v Speaker 3>They might prevail, and I should say too.
<v Speaker 4>The other hope that I have is there's a lawsuit
<v Speaker 4>that's challenging not just individual actions by ICE, but they're
<v Speaker 4>entitlement to be there.
<v Speaker 3>What are they doing there? That argument that I gave you.
<v Speaker 4>That suggests that they're supposedly cracking down on undocumented people
<v Speaker 4>who have also committed violent crimes just doesn't ring true.
<v Speaker 4>So under our tenth Amendment, we've talked about this, it's
<v Speaker 4>local government, state government, and cities that are in charge
<v Speaker 4>of basic policing, and the federal government has no generalized
<v Speaker 4>police power. So I'm hopeful about that argument. I think
<v Speaker 4>it's really important. It's before a judge who seems to
<v Speaker 4>have a lot of integrity, and you know, in addition
<v Speaker 4>to seeing justice done in this case, the most important
<v Speaker 4>thing is that the illegal policy that has ICE there
<v Speaker 4>in the first place be pushed back on.
<v Speaker 1>You know, before the break, I just want to ask,
<v Speaker 1>I want to go deeper on this, but we're seeing
<v Speaker 1>judge after judge across jurisdictions rebuke ICE for ignoring warrants
<v Speaker 1>and DOE process and just basic constitutional limits. What is
<v Speaker 1>this pattern, coreory of repeated rebukes by different judges tell
<v Speaker 1>us about the agency itself?
<v Speaker 4>Well, I think that, you know, That's why this overall
<v Speaker 4>argument that the whole presence.
<v Speaker 3>Of ICE in Minnesota is illegal is.
<v Speaker 4>So important because what's frustrating, I'm sure for the judges
<v Speaker 4>on the bench is as they see case after case,
<v Speaker 4>and by the way, ICE is losing almost all these
<v Speaker 4>cases within the district court, is that there's obviously a
<v Speaker 4>systematic abuse of democratic and constitutional.
<v Speaker 3>Rights happening by ICE.
<v Speaker 4>And one of the problems here too, we've talked about
<v Speaker 4>how in the birthright citizenship case, the ability of district
<v Speaker 4>court judges to issue universal injunctions to stop ICE period
<v Speaker 4>from acting illegally, how that has largely been stripped away,
<v Speaker 4>and unfortunately that is coinciding with a massive attack by
<v Speaker 4>this rogue agency on our rights, including our right to
<v Speaker 4>actually be alive.
<v Speaker 3>You know.
<v Speaker 4>So courts, I think are in a frustrating moment where
<v Speaker 4>they're pushing back, pushing back, But each of these individual
<v Speaker 4>things doesn't do what we really need to do, which
<v Speaker 4>is stop ICE universally throughout the country from its constitutional abuses.
<v Speaker 1>Well, when we come back, I want to talk about
<v Speaker 1>the DOJ interference into the case, how they try to
<v Speaker 1>shut down a civil rights investigation for Renee Good and
<v Speaker 1>are doing the same thing right here, and also talk
<v Speaker 1>about what's the opposition going to do. There is now
<v Speaker 1>talks about defunding ICE and maybe another government shutdown. So
<v Speaker 1>I want to ask you a bit about the power
<v Speaker 1>the purse. We will be right back on the Oath
<v Speaker 1>and the Office.
<v Speaker 2>Hey, y'all play Kurshner here.
<v Speaker 6>Friends, I hope you'll join me on my audio podcast,
<v Speaker 6>Justice Matters. We talk about not only the legal issues
<v Speaker 6>of the day, but we also talk about the need
<v Speaker 6>to reform ethics in our government.
<v Speaker 2>Here's one example.
<v Speaker 6>The oath of office, you know, the one I do
<v Speaker 6>solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies,
<v Speaker 6>foreign end domestic. Let's add twenty two words to that
<v Speaker 6>oath quote, and I will promptly report any instances of
<v Speaker 6>crime and or corruption by government officials and employees of
<v Speaker 6>which I've become aware. Friends, our democracy is worth fighting for.
<v Speaker 6>Join us in this fight, because justice matters. Look for
<v Speaker 6>justice matters wherever you ordinarily find your podcasts.
<v Speaker 1>Welcome back to the oath in the office, I'm John
<v Speaker 1>Feugel saying, you know, Corey, the Second Amendment does not
<v Speaker 1>say the right of the people to keep in bare
<v Speaker 1>arms unless federal agents get nervous. And the Fourth Amendment
<v Speaker 1>does not permit execution for possession, and the Fourteenth Amendment
<v Speaker 1>does not allow an equal application of rights based on
<v Speaker 1>political convenience. I learned all that from you. So is
<v Speaker 1>it fair to say that ICE is operating less like
<v Speaker 1>a law enforcement body more like an executive enforcement arm
<v Speaker 1>that is seemingly untethered by what we call laws.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, no question.
<v Speaker 4>And I'd go even further that it really is a force,
<v Speaker 4>a government agency that is devoted to the shutdown of democracy.
<v Speaker 4>And if that sounds like an exaggeration, we don't have
<v Speaker 4>to only look at the two cases that we've talked
<v Speaker 4>about in the last segment in depth, including the claims
<v Speaker 4>afterwards that the fact that this protester had a legal
<v Speaker 4>gun was one of the basis for what they were
<v Speaker 4>doing in total disregard for the First and Second Amendment.
<v Speaker 4>We've talked about that, but the Fourth Amendment, which you mentioned,
<v Speaker 4>which protects us in our homes against unreasonable search and seizure.
<v Speaker 4>You know, one of the main things that the Constitution
<v Speaker 4>is about, after the tyranny of the British system of
<v Speaker 4>disregarding people's the integrity of their homes and providing for
<v Speaker 4>a judicial warrant. And I'm going to say more about
<v Speaker 4>that as necessary to enter the home after showing in court.
<v Speaker 3>And I'm using these emphasizing these.
<v Speaker 4>Words like court and judicial warrant purposely because that's really
<v Speaker 4>the system that we have, these external checks that are
<v Speaker 4>guaranteed in the Constitution. Now, if you listen to the
<v Speaker 4>Vice President, maybe I'm jumping the gun here, but you know,
<v Speaker 4>if you listen to him defend what's going on, he says, well,
<v Speaker 4>we have different kinds of warrants, we have administrative Well
<v Speaker 4>that's just a trick. I mean, he's really trying to say, well,
<v Speaker 4>Ice can give itself a warrant. The administration, the executive branch,
<v Speaker 4>which is what they mean by administrative, can give itself
<v Speaker 4>a warrant, and we don't need these judicial warrants. That's
<v Speaker 4>nothing less than the destruction of the Constitution and the
<v Speaker 4>total disregard of it.
<v Speaker 1>Boy, that's going to really ruin all the respect I've
<v Speaker 1>built up for jd Vance. You know, lawyers for the
<v Speaker 1>state of Minnesota are arguing that this sole surge violates
<v Speaker 1>the Tenth Amendment, which protects states from encroachment by the
<v Speaker 1>federal government. I learned that from my conservative friends years ago,
<v Speaker 1>and then that provision has been held both to stop
<v Speaker 1>the Feds from commandeering local officials and from using coercion
<v Speaker 1>to force the state to comply with federal demands. Which
<v Speaker 1>is really interesting now that we've heard that Pam Bondy
<v Speaker 1>stupidly sent a letter to Tim Walls saying more or
<v Speaker 1>less a quid pro quo, that we will withdraw our
<v Speaker 1>forces from your state if you give us control of
<v Speaker 1>your voter roles. I mean the names of public information,
<v Speaker 1>but the actual that's how you rig an election so seemingly,
<v Speaker 1>and if Pam Bondy was a smart fascist, she would
<v Speaker 1>have just sent an aid to verbally convey this to
<v Speaker 1>a Wall's aid. But being stupid and presumably thinking there
<v Speaker 1>will never be any consequences to her for any of
<v Speaker 1>this because she enjoys full immunity, she put it in writing.
<v Speaker 1>So I mean we've got it in paper. We know
<v Speaker 1>that they're violating the tenth Commandment using coercion to date
<v Speaker 1>comply with federal demands, right, and we.
<v Speaker 3>Also it's a great slip but you said commandment.
<v Speaker 1>Oh sorry, well there, I'm always talking tabernacles. But on
<v Speaker 1>top of this, we also know that the senior DOJ
<v Speaker 1>officials tried to shut down a rights investigation into the
<v Speaker 1>killing of Renee Good last week because normally, when a
<v Speaker 1>cop murders a citizen, you always have the DOJ Civil
<v Speaker 1>Rights Division, and in this case, the guy said effing bitch,
<v Speaker 1>So it indicates bias, and they wouldn't allow the division
<v Speaker 1>to investigate, just like they won't allow local police to investigate.
<v Speaker 1>I mean it's a cover up. And isn't this the
<v Speaker 1>definition of weaponizing the justice system. I mean they're smearing
<v Speaker 1>the victim to put off an investigation.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I mean to launch on the theme they don't
<v Speaker 4>know that they're doing this, but they are inadvertently giving
<v Speaker 4>us evidence after evidence of their illegal attempt to shut
<v Speaker 4>down our basic liberties and to undermine our constitution. Tying
<v Speaker 4>together the question you asked now from our previous exchange.
<v Speaker 4>The reason I know that they're trying to subvert the
<v Speaker 4>Fourth Amendment is because they put it in a memo
<v Speaker 4>that says, you know, you don't need a judicial warrant anymore,
<v Speaker 4>even though I said always relied on jujdicial wars before
<v Speaker 4>barging into people's houses. Now there's a memo that says, no,
<v Speaker 4>you only need this administrative war. In other words, you
<v Speaker 4>need us to tell ourselves that you can use to
<v Speaker 4>tell ourselves so that we could and the administration to
<v Speaker 4>tell ourselves that we can bust into people's houses for
<v Speaker 4>whatever reason we want. That is a destruction of democracy.
<v Speaker 4>The other thing that we're seeing, and you brought this
<v Speaker 4>out too in the demands to hand over all sorts
<v Speaker 4>of information so that the administration can I'm sure do
<v Speaker 4>lots of evil with it. You know what is that about.
<v Speaker 4>It's a kind of coercion of the states. And you know,
<v Speaker 4>I want to go back to this principle that we've
<v Speaker 4>brought out because the Tenth amendmental though it has a
<v Speaker 4>terrible history of being used to subvert civil rights in
<v Speaker 4>the mid twentieth century, right now it is one of
<v Speaker 4>our best tools for fighting back against an evil and yes,
<v Speaker 4>fascistic federal government. What it says is, and I really
<v Speaker 4>want to emphasize this, this isn't controversial for liberals or conservatives.
<v Speaker 4>It's basic constitutional law. What it says is it makes
<v Speaker 4>clear that our system is one of what's known as
<v Speaker 4>dual sovereignty. The federal government has certain limited powers granted
<v Speaker 4>to it by the Constitution, and what the Tenth Amendment
<v Speaker 4>says is those powers that aren't given to the federal
<v Speaker 4>government are reserved to the states.
<v Speaker 3>What is the bottom line of that that when it
<v Speaker 3>comes to.
<v Speaker 4>Policing and more generally, the police powers to ensure the health, safety,
<v Speaker 4>and morals of a population.
<v Speaker 3>That's the legal terminology.
<v Speaker 4>There is no general power of the federal government, no
<v Speaker 4>general police power.
<v Speaker 3>They're local powers.
<v Speaker 4>And what you see BONDI trying to do is through coercion,
<v Speaker 4>say well, give us what we want, or we're going
<v Speaker 4>to invade your state. We're going to disregard to the
<v Speaker 4>Tenth Amendment disregard local sovereignty. And one of the best
<v Speaker 4>chances that we have right now is a case that
<v Speaker 4>deals with not just the individual tactics of ICE, but
<v Speaker 4>the overall violation of the Tenth Amendment. That's in federal
<v Speaker 4>court right now, and that's one of the cases.
<v Speaker 3>We don't have a ruling on it yet. They had
<v Speaker 3>a hearing very.
<v Speaker 4>Recently, a few days from when you'll be hearing this,
<v Speaker 4>and I'm hopeful that they're going to see. You know,
<v Speaker 4>this is exactly what the framers feared, not just the
<v Speaker 4>break in of Howses the Fourth Amendment point, but the
<v Speaker 4>subversion of the Tenth Amendment, the idea that leasing is local,
<v Speaker 4>not national.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, I mean this.
<v Speaker 1>They're turning state violence into political leverage, right. That's the escalation.
<v Speaker 1>Federal violence is no longer just coercive now, it's transactional.
<v Speaker 1>ICE is not just being deployed based on public safety needs.
<v Speaker 1>We know they're turning it on and off like a
<v Speaker 1>bargaining chip to pry loose a state election infrastructure. So
<v Speaker 1>once you have the voter rolls, you know which voters
<v Speaker 1>to challenge, which registrations to purge, which ballots to throw out,
<v Speaker 1>which districts to throw into bogus investigations. I mean, I
<v Speaker 1>gotta say, the judges in these Minnesota ICE hearings, it
<v Speaker 1>seems to me as a labor as a professor, they've
<v Speaker 1>been unusually blunt, and some of them are openly furious.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, when judges speak this way, what is that
<v Speaker 1>signal to you? Institutionally? Is a bunch of anker rejudges
<v Speaker 1>a sign of courts failing or is it a sign
<v Speaker 1>of the judicial branch doing its job?
<v Speaker 3>Well?
<v Speaker 4>I think that's a brilliant question, and it goes to
<v Speaker 4>the heart of what's happening. I think at the same time,
<v Speaker 4>two things are happening. The constitutional violations are so many,
<v Speaker 4>and again and again ICE is being called out for
<v Speaker 4>its illegal behavior that judges.
<v Speaker 3>Have had enough.
<v Speaker 4>And these aren't hard cases, I should say, you know,
<v Speaker 4>saying that you can enter a house without a judicial
<v Speaker 4>warrant not a hard case, I think too. Deploying ICE,
<v Speaker 4>you know, with a subterfuge of trying to arrest undocumented
<v Speaker 4>people who are violent, when what you're really doing is
<v Speaker 4>trying to shut down protests, violation not just of the
<v Speaker 4>Tenth Amendment, but of course of the First Amendment, right
<v Speaker 4>to free speech, right to assembly.
<v Speaker 3>That all of that is so obviously constitutional. That's why
<v Speaker 3>you're getting these screaming voices.
<v Speaker 4>But at the same time, it's a frustration because there
<v Speaker 4>is no longer the ability of federal district court judges
<v Speaker 4>to institute these universal injunctions. And that's part of the
<v Speaker 4>frustration too that you're seeing. So you're seeing a strength
<v Speaker 4>and standing up to unconstitutional behavior by Ice in the administration,
<v Speaker 4>but you're also seeing a frustration in the fact that
<v Speaker 4>they're being bombarded and that they lack a lot of
<v Speaker 4>the tools that they had until recently to fight back
<v Speaker 4>against it.
<v Speaker 1>So in that case, then the DOJ is filing these
<v Speaker 1>criminal complaints against seven of the protesters who went inside
<v Speaker 1>the Saint Paul church last weekend. I know this seems
<v Speaker 1>like a thousand years ago, but I loved this protest.
<v Speaker 1>They weren't mean, they didn't break anything. They went in
<v Speaker 1>and did what Christ did. They flipped tables in the
<v Speaker 1>place of worship because of injustice. Because this pastor in
<v Speaker 1>the church it was also an ICE official. And you know,
<v Speaker 1>both God and Jesus are pretty thorough about welcoming the
<v Speaker 1>stranger and so they had a non violent protest inside
<v Speaker 1>a church and this was outrageous. Not the dead bodies
<v Speaker 1>of Americans, but this, so they filed criminal complaints against
<v Speaker 1>seven of these protesters. They tried to charge Don Lemon
<v Speaker 1>for filming it, but the magistrate judge refused to sign
<v Speaker 1>the warrant against him. This shows how scared they are,
<v Speaker 1>I think, Professor and as well as Pambondi's memo being public,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, this sort of just says nothing but fear
<v Speaker 1>to me and authoritarianism that they think is going to
<v Speaker 1>be a lot more popular.
<v Speaker 2>Than it really is.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I mean, the examples are just so numerous of
<v Speaker 4>the instances in which they're shutting down protests. We've been
<v Speaker 4>focusing on the protests in Minnesota against ice, but even
<v Speaker 4>this protest in the church. They're abusing this nineteenth century
<v Speaker 4>law that basically that's meant to protect civil rights and
<v Speaker 4>to protect against violent incursions in churches that will shut
<v Speaker 4>down religious freedom. But the way that statute has to
<v Speaker 4>be understood is as consistent with the First Amendment, and
<v Speaker 4>so the right to protest. And in this story, one
<v Speaker 4>of the leaders of the church in question was supposedly
<v Speaker 4>working for Ice, and so it was an anti ICE
<v Speaker 4>protest in the church. You know, that's an abuse to
<v Speaker 4>use a statute that's meant to protect civil rights in
<v Speaker 4>order to shut down one of the main civil liberties,
<v Speaker 4>which is free speech. And just to show you that
<v Speaker 4>this is what they're doing now, they tried to charge.
<v Speaker 3>A journalist, Don Lemon.
<v Speaker 4>It didn't work, but you know that's what's going on
<v Speaker 4>here too when it comes to the less famous people
<v Speaker 4>who are trying to protest.
<v Speaker 1>So then this leaked memo that you mentioned that reportedly
<v Speaker 1>direct SISE agents to enter private property regardless of legal
<v Speaker 1>standing or warrants. I mean, it's just open constitutional defiance, right.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, at what point does obeying an order like
<v Speaker 1>that expose agents themselves to criminal liability because again these
<v Speaker 1>are state charges. Trump won't be in power forever and
<v Speaker 1>there's no statute of limitations on killing people.
<v Speaker 4>Well, it's just you know, the overall attempt to shut
<v Speaker 4>down our civil liberties is being documented, and what this
<v Speaker 4>leak memo shows is that and you know, I'll elaborate.
<v Speaker 3>For the amendment couldn't be more clear.
<v Speaker 4>You have a right to be free from government just
<v Speaker 4>walking into your house, Willy nilly for any reason.
<v Speaker 3>Now, what's the check on that.
<v Speaker 4>It's the judiciary, and the judiciary has to be shown
<v Speaker 4>evidence that there is a re to search your house.
<v Speaker 4>There's reasonable search and seizure. Now, once you get rid
<v Speaker 4>of that, what's left it's the government giving orders to itself.
<v Speaker 4>I'll tie this to my theme of the self coup. Remember,
<v Speaker 4>the definition of a self coup is the administration, the
<v Speaker 4>executive branch, destroying the other branches by aggrandizing itself. This
<v Speaker 4>one memo strikes me as the ICE memo an example
<v Speaker 4>of doing just that. And you're claiming, okay, well now
<v Speaker 4>our lawyers have looked at this and said, you know, yeah,
<v Speaker 4>you can enter houses. Their lawyers have said get rid
<v Speaker 4>of the Fourth Amendment. How frightening.
<v Speaker 1>So, Corey, before we hit a break, I want to
<v Speaker 1>ask you this. Defunding ICE used to sound really radical,
<v Speaker 1>and I've been telling people who call the Serious XM Show,
<v Speaker 1>this is just like abolish the police. It's something the
<v Speaker 1>left does so Democrats have a chance to show how
<v Speaker 1>moderate they are. I mean, abolish the police was a
<v Speaker 1>gift to Joe Biden's campaign because it allowed him to say.
<v Speaker 2>Folks, I'm not like Donald Trump. But I'm not like
<v Speaker 2>those far.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, this is what Democrats, even the ones I like,
<v Speaker 1>always do, right. But now, after everything we've seen, dead civilians,
<v Speaker 1>naked stupid lies, destroyed evidence, judicial rebukes, why does it
<v Speaker 1>feel like it's almost inevitable? I mean, constitutionally speaking, is
<v Speaker 1>the power of the purse Congress's only remaining check on
<v Speaker 1>a lawless executive.
<v Speaker 4>I would say the difference between abolish the police and
<v Speaker 4>abolish ICE is that ICE is not a police force.
<v Speaker 4>It lacks any of the basic training the standards that
<v Speaker 4>are used to protect civil liberties in policing, to protect,
<v Speaker 4>after all, are not just our.
<v Speaker 3>Security but our liberty.
<v Speaker 4>Instead, what you have is a gang of thugs that
<v Speaker 4>are murdering people in the streets, that are far from
<v Speaker 4>respecting the right to protest, that are in the case
<v Speaker 4>that we've been talking about at length, murdered somebody for
<v Speaker 4>having a camera. And you know, even if they he
<v Speaker 4>had a gun on him, again, it was a protected
<v Speaker 4>Second Amendment right that he.
<v Speaker 3>Was not brandishing that gun. So there is.
<v Speaker 4>No training, and by training, I'll be specific, meaning to
<v Speaker 4>respect civil liberties in the way that you get in
<v Speaker 4>police force. And that's systematic, and you see that in
<v Speaker 4>places like the memo saying, you know, invade houses without
<v Speaker 4>a judicial warrant clearly illegal. You see that in the
<v Speaker 4>pattern of violence and abuse. So the Democratic Party has
<v Speaker 4>to do something, and I would say, at minimum, the
<v Speaker 4>limit on funding is one of the few places where they're.
<v Speaker 3>Able to push back.
<v Speaker 4>They need, because of a fillbuster, sixty votes to get
<v Speaker 4>this funding through in the Senate, and that's a place
<v Speaker 4>where the Democratic Party can finally start to stand up
<v Speaker 4>for civil liberties. So I think they have no choice
<v Speaker 4>when it comes to whether to abolishize.
<v Speaker 3>Or try to reform it.
<v Speaker 4>I mean, you know, there is something systematically wrong with
<v Speaker 4>this agency, and this isn't going to happen, you know,
<v Speaker 4>unless the Democratic Party takes power. But I do think
<v Speaker 4>that we have to look in depth at who these
<v Speaker 4>people are. Let's just talk about who's been hired for
<v Speaker 4>the fifty thousand dollars bonus. I said this before, but
<v Speaker 4>I'll say it again online training. Really, So either massive
<v Speaker 4>reform where yes, reconstituting under a different umbrella. Yeah, those
<v Speaker 4>who are going to do the kind of enforcement that
<v Speaker 4>ICE is rightly charged with doing.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Well, in that case, one more really quick question,
<v Speaker 1>because I know our guest is waiting. So the Democrats
<v Speaker 1>now are saying, hey, we may allow a partial government
<v Speaker 1>shutdown again unless Ice gets rained in now. Historically we've
<v Speaker 1>talked on the show in the past about how this
<v Speaker 1>kind of brinksmanship doesn't usually work out. But I don't
<v Speaker 1>see how the Democrats cannot take a stand right now
<v Speaker 1>with these bodies of dead citizens in the street. Is
<v Speaker 1>a shutdown more dangerous than continuing to fund an agency
<v Speaker 1>that openly defies courts?
<v Speaker 4>Well, government has proper functions. Its functions are to respect
<v Speaker 4>the citizens' rights, to ensure for the public welfare.
<v Speaker 3>It's not doing that right now.
<v Speaker 4>It's engaged in an authoritarian exercise to try to destroy
<v Speaker 4>civil liberties and destroy democracy. So the idea of shutting
<v Speaker 4>down a government that's doing that, we're used to thinking
<v Speaker 4>of the state as legitimate. Well, it's on the brink
<v Speaker 4>of illegitimacy, and so I think, yes, shutting it down
<v Speaker 4>seems like a smart place to start.
<v Speaker 3>At least there's some bargaining power.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, And at least it will limit that kind of
<v Speaker 4>funding that there is now for this large scale abuse.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you very much.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, just please democrats use the Constitution, an outrage and
<v Speaker 1>basic morality as leverage and ask for more than you'll
<v Speaker 1>know you'll get for once.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, we got to take a break.
<v Speaker 1>I'm very excited about our guest. When we come back,
<v Speaker 1>we'll talk all about January sixth, which has quite a
<v Speaker 1>few non surprising links to what we're seeing in Minneapolis.
<v Speaker 1>This is the oath in the office.
<v Speaker 7>One million downloads. That's the listenership that Good News for
<v Speaker 7>Lefties has gotten since we started bringing you positive news
<v Speaker 7>stories for progressives every day of the week. These may
<v Speaker 7>be difficult times and the headlines may seem bleak, but
<v Speaker 7>if you believe in justice, progress and democracy, you are
<v Speaker 7>not alone. There are millions like you, and there is
<v Speaker 7>reason for hope in the news every single day. That's
<v Speaker 7>what we remind you on Good News for Lefties and
<v Speaker 7>America every day of the week, positive news stories for
<v Speaker 7>progressive listeners, because no matter how disturbing the headlines might be,
<v Speaker 7>there's always hope that we can build on for a
<v Speaker 7>better tomorrow. One million downloads and more coming. Good News
<v Speaker 7>for Lefties and America. Listen on this platform at goodnewsfor
<v Speaker 7>Lefties dot com or wherever podcasts are heard.
<v Speaker 1>Welcome back to the Oath and the Office. You know, Corey,
<v Speaker 1>the five year anniversary of January sixth feels like it's
<v Speaker 1>already five years ago, and yet these events are all
<v Speaker 1>inextricably linked violence against citizens towards corrupt ends. It seems
<v Speaker 1>to never go out of style. So I'm really excited
<v Speaker 1>and honored about today's guest.
<v Speaker 4>Absolutely, it's my pleasure to introduced Tom Jocelyn, who was
<v Speaker 4>one of the principal authors of the January sixth Report
<v Speaker 4>and senior staff member of the January sixth Committee, which
<v Speaker 4>did so much to uncover what really went on in
<v Speaker 4>January sixth, and I'm looking forward to a deep dive
<v Speaker 4>into what actually did happen, what the report showed, and
<v Speaker 4>the details behind it.
<v Speaker 3>Tom is a way of just jumping off.
<v Speaker 5>And hello, thank you, Yes, welcome, Thanks, thanks for having me.
<v Speaker 5>I really appreciate it's great to be with you.
<v Speaker 3>Thank you great.
<v Speaker 4>And I should say too, Tom had me on his
<v Speaker 4>Just Security podcast which was really a pleasure.
<v Speaker 3>So I'm looking forward to contry.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I'm sure as soon as I'm an Ivy League
<v Speaker 1>law professor Hill at me on his show as well.
<v Speaker 4>Tom I mean, I just have a first way just
<v Speaker 4>to get you introduced to our listeners.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, tell us how you came to have this position.
<v Speaker 4>It's a sort of extraordinary role in history that you
<v Speaker 4>were a senior staffer for the committee that uncovered what
<v Speaker 4>happened and really wrote the official account of what happened,
<v Speaker 4>including for the first time, I'm taught us about not
<v Speaker 4>just the violence at the Capitol, but the widespread plot
<v Speaker 4>to undermine the election.
<v Speaker 3>So how did this happen?
<v Speaker 5>I asked myself that question a lot too. You know,
<v Speaker 5>I have a very strange career story, very securitist route
<v Speaker 5>to the Genero sixth Committee. You know, originally I went
<v Speaker 5>to University Chicago. I graduated in three years. I said,
<v Speaker 5>hopefully it don't offend you, Corey, but I don't want
<v Speaker 5>to go back to academia at all. That's it for me.
<v Speaker 5>I'm out. And I went into economics, became an economic consultant,
<v Speaker 5>and I sort of was known for running these very
<v Speaker 5>large research projects. I'm basically a research nerd who likes
<v Speaker 5>to assimilate and accumulate a bunch of different data and
<v Speaker 5>evidence and then figure out how to tell the story
<v Speaker 5>from it. So I started doing that at a very
<v Speaker 5>young age, and then eventually I migrated to after nine
<v Speaker 5>to eleven, I started doing my own independent research on
<v Speaker 5>extremism and terrorism. It built up my own career on
<v Speaker 5>the side doing that type of work, and eventually became
<v Speaker 5>an expert on counter terrorism counter extremism. Actually was the
<v Speaker 5>chief counter terrorism advisor to Mayor Giuliani during his two
<v Speaker 5>thousand and eight run. For a bit now, I would
<v Speaker 5>just say about that. You know, I was working for
<v Speaker 5>him when he was technically known as America's Mayor Rudy Giuliani,
<v Speaker 5>not four seasons total landscaping Mayor Giuliani. So you gotta
<v Speaker 5>forget me. You got to forgive me for that one.
<v Speaker 1>Many many crates of Chardonnay before many many crates of shard.
<v Speaker 2>Right.
<v Speaker 5>So I built up that career and I came to
<v Speaker 5>know a lot of people on the Hill because I
<v Speaker 5>testified a ton of times for the Senate. In the House,
<v Speaker 5>I testified I think more than two dozen times on
<v Speaker 5>different foreign policy, counter extremism, characterrorism issues. And I came
<v Speaker 5>to know Liz Cheney well, and she introduced me to
<v Speaker 5>other people on the staff and was basically this is
<v Speaker 5>the nerd that she wanted to hire to help, you know,
<v Speaker 5>put the report together, and so that's what I did.
<v Speaker 5>I was you know, I've always been considered myself an
<v Speaker 5>American who's very loyal to the Constitution, and I saw
<v Speaker 5>January sixth and the months preceding it as a dire
<v Speaker 5>threat to our constitutional order. And you know, I left
<v Speaker 5>my job to go work for the committee, not because
<v Speaker 5>I wanted to document what happened on January sixth, although
<v Speaker 5>it may see that was my role, but really I
<v Speaker 5>was afraid of what was going to come next. I
<v Speaker 5>thought that if Trump and his movement got back in power,
<v Speaker 5>they were going to start where they left off, which
<v Speaker 5>was in a post constitutional moment, and that's exactly what's happened. Unfortunately.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, a lot of people see the kind of violence
<v Speaker 4>of January sixth. I feel like the images in particular
<v Speaker 4>of the officers being attacked both inside the Capitol and
<v Speaker 4>at the barricades. You know, it's such a haunting image
<v Speaker 4>that I think that violence is what people think of
<v Speaker 4>as the danger. But of course, as the report shows,
<v Speaker 4>and I'm going to ask you to just sort of
<v Speaker 4>open up this part of it, it was so much
<v Speaker 4>more than that. It was really an attack on democracy
<v Speaker 4>itself and specifically an attempt and one that, in my view,
<v Speaker 4>might have succeeded actually had a few things happened differently
<v Speaker 4>to steal the election. And so can you talk to
<v Speaker 4>us about that. How in your research, you know, you
<v Speaker 4>came to uncover what really is a deep plot to
<v Speaker 4>steal the election, with the legal theory behind it, all
<v Speaker 4>sorts of ideas, seeing the vulnerability of the electoral college,
<v Speaker 4>Like what was it about in the sense of how
<v Speaker 4>was it supposed to work? Yeah, I mean, I think
<v Speaker 4>the final report that the committee produced, which I had
<v Speaker 4>a big hand in producing, although I wasn't alone, of course,
<v Speaker 4>came out to eight hundred and forty five pages.
<v Speaker 5>And I think that report could have been eight four
<v Speaker 5>hundred and fifty pages easily in terms of just trying
<v Speaker 5>to tell the entire the entirety of the story. And
<v Speaker 5>the first thing that I would say is, you know,
<v Speaker 5>and I said this very early on to people in
<v Speaker 5>the committee, what worried me was that the political conspiracy,
<v Speaker 5>the non violent part of the conspiracy to overturn the
<v Speaker 5>election between election day and January six, to my mind,
<v Speaker 5>was just as worrisome, if not more so than the
<v Speaker 5>actual violence on January six, which came from the political conspiracy.
<v Speaker 5>The political conspiracy gave us the violent, you know, insurrection
<v Speaker 5>on January six. And what you see is you see
<v Speaker 5>a president and his advisors between election Day twenty twenty
<v Speaker 5>and January six, trying to figure out where there are
<v Speaker 5>all these holes in our electoral college process that they
<v Speaker 5>can exploit to stay in power. Right, that's what they're
<v Speaker 5>trying to do. They're trying to find any lever they can,
<v Speaker 5>and the entire process that they go through, everything they
<v Speaker 5>try is a threat to the constitution, our constitution order.
<v Speaker 5>It's not nothing they do other than they had some
<v Speaker 5>valid court cases they could bring. Of course, they were
<v Speaker 5>shot down in the courts, but they had the right
<v Speaker 5>under the constitution to challenge the results in different states
<v Speaker 5>in the court of law. They of course they lost
<v Speaker 5>sixty one out of sixty two times or whatever the
<v Speaker 5>number is. But everything else was clearly an assault on
<v Speaker 5>the constitution order and trying to exploit this antiquated electoral
<v Speaker 5>college system. That's what they were trying to do. And
<v Speaker 5>so they were trying to twist the meaning of those
<v Speaker 5>different steps all along the way in order to keep
<v Speaker 5>Trump in power. And so just to give a couple
<v Speaker 5>of examples of coming off if you want to ask
<v Speaker 5>them a question about just give you a couple of
<v Speaker 5>quick examples for listeners of what I mean by that. So,
<v Speaker 5>the first thing is, under the constitution, states run our
<v Speaker 5>federal elections, right, they have the constitutional authority to oversee
<v Speaker 5>our elections. One of the biggest prongs of the political
<v Speaker 5>conspiracy that Trump will or saw was dispatching his people,
<v Speaker 5>including Rudy Giuliani again forgive me and others, to go
<v Speaker 5>to the States and try to interfere with their process
<v Speaker 5>to say no, no, no, no, no, no, you got it wrong.
<v Speaker 5>Trump really won, and you need to overturn, you know,
<v Speaker 5>go to these Republican led state legislators and say you
<v Speaker 5>need to overturn the results because you know there was
<v Speaker 5>you know, fraud that we can't prove, but believe us
<v Speaker 5>it was there, and so therefore you need to hand
<v Speaker 5>victory to Trump. And that would have disenfranchised millions upon
<v Speaker 5>millions of voters and in fact more than eighty million
<v Speaker 5>voters who voted for Joe Biden in that election, but
<v Speaker 5>would have directly disfranchised the millions of millions of voters
<v Speaker 5>in the states. That is a dire constitutional threat.
<v Speaker 2>Right.
<v Speaker 5>What you have is you have a sitting president of
<v Speaker 5>the United States who says he fires or sidelines his
<v Speaker 5>previous legal team. He brings in what many people describe
<v Speaker 5>as his clown car of lawyers to do what he
<v Speaker 5>brings them in to try and validate the state's rights
<v Speaker 5>and states constitutional power of elections, and disenfranchised millions of voters.
<v Speaker 5>Now that's long before we even get to the violence
<v Speaker 5>on January.
<v Speaker 1>Six, see against voters go on, please.
<v Speaker 5>Well exactly I mean to me, you know, as an
<v Speaker 5>American who is you know, that's a fundamental right, right,
<v Speaker 5>This is a fundamental right that he was assaulting and
<v Speaker 5>his advisor were assaulting. And it showed they had absolutely
<v Speaker 5>no respect for the will of the people or how
<v Speaker 5>this process should be played out. And of course, the
<v Speaker 5>thing about that moment is it fails.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 5>So to their credit anyway, Republicans leading state legislators in
<v Speaker 5>the swing states, including in Georgia, in Arizona and elsewhere Michigan,
<v Speaker 5>they say, no, we're not going to help you overturn
<v Speaker 5>the election. You can't prove any fraud. You're not showing
<v Speaker 5>us that the election was actually tainted. And all your
<v Speaker 5>lies about dominion voting systems and all this other stuff,
<v Speaker 5>none of that adds up to anything, right. It's just
<v Speaker 5>all conspiratorial nonsense from from the web. So that hold
<v Speaker 5>that part holds. Go ahead, Corty, you.
<v Speaker 4>Guys, I was gonna ask, I mean, and tell us
<v Speaker 4>how they're related, because to my mind in reading the report,
<v Speaker 4>but you know you wrote it. So I was saying
<v Speaker 4>to John, you know, there's not a lot of moment
<v Speaker 4>where you can say I have Marshall McLuhan right here.
<v Speaker 4>You know, the famous line from any Hall. But this
<v Speaker 4>is it the guy who actually wrote the thing. And
<v Speaker 4>so I've read it. I see what you uncovered. And
<v Speaker 4>one question I think that viewers will be interested in
<v Speaker 4>is the complicated but important way that they saw the
<v Speaker 4>role of the vice president. So on the one hand,
<v Speaker 4>you have this fake elector's scheme, and then that combines
<v Speaker 4>with this reading, as I understand it, of the twelfth
<v Speaker 4>Amendment that said that really Mike Pence was the one
<v Speaker 4>who was going to get to decide what happened. So
<v Speaker 4>I think that's a part that's not always understood, and
<v Speaker 4>they have this sort of fake constitutional wave of reading
<v Speaker 4>the twelfth Amendment that will give them that supposedly gives
<v Speaker 4>the vice president that power. So talk about Pence and
<v Speaker 4>his role in all of this, and also the setup
<v Speaker 4>from people like John Eastman who argued that that really
<v Speaker 4>he could what steal the election.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, I mean, that's the next step in the political
<v Speaker 5>part of the conspiracy, because after the state legislators turn
<v Speaker 5>him down, what they do is they still convene these
<v Speaker 5>fake electors in December mid December of twenty twenty to
<v Speaker 5>meet and cast their votes on behalf of Trump these
<v Speaker 5>electoral certificates. Now, what's interesting is so there are people
<v Speaker 5>on the right throughout the MAGA world and the American
<v Speaker 5>right who would claim that they were just doing what
<v Speaker 5>had been done in the past, like in Hawaii in
<v Speaker 5>nineteen sixty or the ninety sixty election in other instances
<v Speaker 5>for the past right, that is complete fiction. In fact,
<v Speaker 5>you can go to the report and we debunk that
<v Speaker 5>in the report. This was nothing like those past circumstances.
<v Speaker 5>There was no court order or court sanctioned reason for
<v Speaker 5>these fake electors to meet. There was no process here
<v Speaker 5>that they were upholding. It was deliberately intended to undermine
<v Speaker 5>the actual electoral college process of the legitimate electors. And
<v Speaker 5>we know that because actually the evidence that the Committee
<v Speaker 5>and investigation uncovered, but also some of the evidents that
<v Speaker 5>they hid from us. So there's a key memo from
<v Speaker 5>Canada Chesbroo, an attorney that the Committee did not get,
<v Speaker 5>which is dated I think December sixth of twenty twenty.
<v Speaker 5>And if you read that memo, you see that he
<v Speaker 5>knows and you can divine this from the other memos
<v Speaker 5>he wrote that we did have. But you could see
<v Speaker 5>from that memo that he knew as one of the
<v Speaker 5>architects legal architects of all this, legal illegal architects of
<v Speaker 5>all this, that in fact they knew that this was
<v Speaker 5>not part of any kind of process in the past. Right.
<v Speaker 5>This was all about gumming up the Joint Session of
<v Speaker 5>Congress on January six. They wanted to find a way
<v Speaker 5>to delay or deny Joe Biden's victory and the certification
<v Speaker 5>with victory on Jenry six. And that's what the elect
<v Speaker 5>these fake electors were all about. So the Pence part
<v Speaker 5>of the conspiracy you're talking about is tied into all
<v Speaker 5>this because the States reject this idea that they're going
<v Speaker 5>to overturn the popular will. The Trump team keeps going
<v Speaker 5>forward with this fake elector effort anyway, in order as
<v Speaker 5>a gambit to tie up the Joint Session on January
<v Speaker 5>six and deny Biden his victory. Right, Pence comes in
<v Speaker 5>because they say to Pence, well, Pence, and this is
<v Speaker 5>where John Eastman and others are arguing to him. As
<v Speaker 5>you mentioned, you could do one of two things. One
<v Speaker 5>you can either reject the legitimate electors outright, and this
<v Speaker 5>is what Trump pushed for, and hand the election to
<v Speaker 5>Trump on January sixth. So there was a gambit, and
<v Speaker 5>you could see this even in what Trump was tweeting
<v Speaker 5>at the time. There was a gambit to just outright
<v Speaker 5>reject the lawful electors at hand the victory to Trump.
<v Speaker 5>Or you could say, well, we have this uncertainty here
<v Speaker 5>because we have two slates of electors and we need
<v Speaker 5>to send the matter back to the States for an
<v Speaker 5>investigation to tell us which one of the slates of
<v Speaker 5>electors is legitimate. But you see, either Prong was trying
<v Speaker 5>to get Vice president has to do something that he
<v Speaker 5>and his team determined was unconstitutional, and he said that
<v Speaker 5>very clearly at the time, and he said it very
<v Speaker 5>clearly since then.
<v Speaker 1>You know, I know it's illegal, and I know it's
<v Speaker 1>wrong and unconstitutional, but a part of me is always
<v Speaker 1>going to wish Vice President Kamala Harris had seated some
<v Speaker 1>alternate fake electors to hand the presidency over to herself,
<v Speaker 1>just because our Republican friends would not be allowed to
<v Speaker 1>complain if she did it.
<v Speaker 2>Mister Jocelyn, I.
<v Speaker 1>Think the through line that I keep seeing with the
<v Speaker 1>news going on today back to January sixth, is the
<v Speaker 1>same idea that loyalty to a leader is elevated above
<v Speaker 1>loyalty to the constantue. And that's the real connecting thread
<v Speaker 1>between what we've seen in Minneapolis and when we see
<v Speaker 1>cops beaten on the Capitol steps for a lie. And
<v Speaker 1>you've written so much about how that was a breaking
<v Speaker 1>point that day, and it's so misunderstood. I've generally called
<v Speaker 1>it terrorism because that meets the dictionary definition of using
<v Speaker 1>violence against a government or civilian population to bring about
<v Speaker 1>policy change. But I accept coup is probably better. And
<v Speaker 1>yet our media keeps calling this a riot. And I
<v Speaker 1>want to ask you about this or why is it
<v Speaker 1>important for Americans to keep calling it a failed coup
<v Speaker 1>attempt and not just call it a riot.
<v Speaker 5>Well, you know, you could go to chapter eight of
<v Speaker 5>the report and you can see how I described it,
<v Speaker 5>because I described it as an organized or planned riot.
<v Speaker 5>In other words, it was not something spontaneous, and in fact,
<v Speaker 5>we debunked the idea of spontaneous. I mean, it was
<v Speaker 5>a push. The whole The whole point was in terms
<v Speaker 5>of on the ground. For example, the Proud Boys clearly
<v Speaker 5>led the charge. They had a plan that day to
<v Speaker 5>come in and run the capitol. They had a plan
<v Speaker 5>to let these thousands of members of the mob that
<v Speaker 5>Trumpet summoned to Washington. They wanted to clear a path
<v Speaker 5>for them onto the Capitol's grounds and pointentially into the
<v Speaker 5>capitol itself. And they were found guilty of this in
<v Speaker 5>the court of law. They're found guilty of sitious conspiracy.
<v Speaker 5>The leaders were and you know a few dozen Proud
<v Speaker 5>Boys were convicted for their roles before being pardoned by
<v Speaker 5>Donald Trump for doing this. Right and so we one
<v Speaker 5>of the things the committee did, and there was great
<v Speaker 5>reporting in the New York Times, well Street Journal elsewhere,
<v Speaker 5>So we weren't alone in this but we did have
<v Speaker 5>new footage and new details I think that people didn't have,
<v Speaker 5>which is we showed how the Proud Boys did this.
<v Speaker 5>At the point of attack, there's this place called the
<v Speaker 5>Peace Circle. That is, you know, so Donald Trump holds
<v Speaker 5>this rally south of the White House on the lawn
<v Speaker 5>of what's known as the Ellipse, and of course he
<v Speaker 5>tells everybody in the crowd that he's going to march
<v Speaker 5>with them down to the Capitol, and ultimately he doesn't,
<v Speaker 5>but he says he wants to, and he did want to,
<v Speaker 5>but he doesn't. And then he and of course in
<v Speaker 5>that of course that speech, he says all sorts of
<v Speaker 5>incendiary things which we can dissect, but anyway, he sends
<v Speaker 5>them down to the Capitol. When they leave the Ellipse,
<v Speaker 5>they start marching in the Capitol. They're going to march
<v Speaker 5>down Pennsylvania Avenue through this circle called the Peace Circle,
<v Speaker 5>which sits right between Pennsylvania Avenue and the Capitol. The
<v Speaker 5>Proud Boys and their associates what they did was they
<v Speaker 5>cleared a path at the Peace Circle for this stream
<v Speaker 5>of mob, the mob that was gonna come down Pennsylvania Avenue.
<v Speaker 5>They cleared out there was a there's a minimal security
<v Speaker 5>presence there of Capitol police officers. They overran them very quickly,
<v Speaker 5>and they basically created a path for this whole stream
<v Speaker 5>of thousands of thousand people to get on the Capitol grounds.
<v Speaker 5>And that was a deliberate thing they did. They had,
<v Speaker 5>they had a plan of mind. It wasn't some sophisticated
<v Speaker 5>nine to eleven style terrorist attack, but it was they
<v Speaker 5>you know, deserve more credits somebody who studied terrorism and
<v Speaker 5>extremism for twenty years, twenty five years now, it's more.
<v Speaker 5>It was a clever it was a more clever strategy
<v Speaker 5>than they're given credit for. And it worked. It did work.
<v Speaker 5>I mean they did delay for the first time our
<v Speaker 5>nation's history, the peaceful transfer of power.
<v Speaker 3>Tom.
<v Speaker 4>You know, this is such a complicated plot, and I
<v Speaker 4>think we're doing a very nice job of getting it
<v Speaker 4>all out. You have the planned riot part of it,
<v Speaker 4>which looks spontaneous or it's been described by Trump of
<v Speaker 4>course as a pro test. We know it was not
<v Speaker 4>a protest, that it was a planned riyah. You have
<v Speaker 4>the fake elector's scheme, which is very complicated. You have
<v Speaker 4>the role of the vice president and all of this,
<v Speaker 4>you know, designed to, as you said in the beginning,
<v Speaker 4>quite well, to exploit the vulnerability of the antiquated electoral college,
<v Speaker 4>which requires this joint session of Congress and the approval
<v Speaker 4>of electoral votes as sort of all these technicalities that
<v Speaker 4>lead to the election of a president that we rely on.
<v Speaker 4>And they were spotting each of these vulnerabilities and trying
<v Speaker 4>to exploit them, and it is a vulnerable system, as
<v Speaker 4>you said in the beginning. One big question that I
<v Speaker 4>have that I've been dying to ask you is how
<v Speaker 4>did you piece all of this together as you were
<v Speaker 4>working for the report. You know, you know you're a researcher,
<v Speaker 4>but I'm fascinated to hear this because you know, I
<v Speaker 4>can talk to our listeners and to others about what
<v Speaker 4>happened as a result of your research.
<v Speaker 3>But I want to know how did you do this work?
<v Speaker 3>How did you piece it all together?
<v Speaker 5>Well, I mean, of course I wasn't alone. I mean
<v Speaker 5>there was a big thing people that I was not
<v Speaker 5>the only one doing this by a long shot. See
<v Speaker 5>the committee's work in the hearings, which I contributed to
<v Speaker 5>as well. You know, all throughout the summer of twenty
<v Speaker 5>twenty two and then you know, all the way through
<v Speaker 5>the port. So there was a big team of people
<v Speaker 5>doing this work and working on this stuff. But you know,
<v Speaker 5>I to me, to my mind, this always fit the
<v Speaker 5>spoken wheel model of the conspiracy. So you have all
<v Speaker 5>these different spokes on the wheel to make the wheel
<v Speaker 5>go round. Yeah, and basically they were you know, Trump
<v Speaker 5>was overseeing all these different spokes. He's the center of
<v Speaker 5>the conspiracy, and he has all these different spokes to
<v Speaker 5>make the wheel go around. And it's really January sixth,
<v Speaker 5>the violence and the summoning the mob on the night
<v Speaker 5>of December nineteenth to January sixth in Washington, and the
<v Speaker 5>dispatching the mob down to Congress, and they'll say, we're
<v Speaker 5>about on one second. That's really the final spoke of
<v Speaker 5>the conspiracy to put in place to make the wheel
<v Speaker 5>go around. Now here's the thing about that, right, So
<v Speaker 5>just put aside the violence for a second, because you
<v Speaker 5>brought up Corey a couple times of the violence how
<v Speaker 5>offul it was, and it was. And more of one
<v Speaker 5>hundred and fifty officers were assaulted that day, many of
<v Speaker 5>whom were seriously injured, one of whom passed away the
<v Speaker 5>following day. Some of whom committed suicide. In the aftermath
<v Speaker 5>and the trauma of the whole event, some of them
<v Speaker 5>suffered some very serious injuries. But what I ask you
<v Speaker 5>to do is just put put aside that violence for
<v Speaker 5>just one second, and whether or not Trump knew what
<v Speaker 5>was coming in terms of the violence or not, just
<v Speaker 5>put that aside as a question in your mind. He
<v Speaker 5>had no legitimate reason to send a mob down to
<v Speaker 5>the Capitol on January sixth to impede the counting of
<v Speaker 5>the Electoral College votes. He had no legitimate reason for
<v Speaker 5>doing that. This is a fundamentally unconstitutional act. Whether he
<v Speaker 5>knew the mob was gonna get violent or not, he
<v Speaker 5>clearly wanted them to pressure Vice President pens because he
<v Speaker 5>told him so to not count the votes. Right to not.
<v Speaker 1>But he's still allowed to. Citizens can still petition the
<v Speaker 1>government for address of grievances. A protest a non violent
<v Speaker 1>protest itself, while pointless in this case because he couldn't
<v Speaker 1>undo it, that's still technically legal, right.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, it's still legal and protest, sure, But my point
<v Speaker 5>is if you actually look, it's and he did call
<v Speaker 5>protests and he could have stipted there. But my point
<v Speaker 5>is that the actual reason he wanted them to protesting,
<v Speaker 5>that he was calling them to protest was to pressure
<v Speaker 5>Pence into an unconstitutional action.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 5>Yes, that's where that's where it's different.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 5>It's not just saying, hey, go down to the Capitol
<v Speaker 5>and protest the election because I think it was fraud
<v Speaker 5>and was stolen. It was no, go down to the
<v Speaker 5>Capitol and try and convince my vice president to not
<v Speaker 5>certify the vote. See that's where even that part of
<v Speaker 5>it crosses the line.
<v Speaker 4>Right, and also in the context time of what you've said,
<v Speaker 4>which is the scheme, the elector's scheme at the state level,
<v Speaker 4>the role of the vice president, this fake claim that
<v Speaker 4>the vice president can really make the decision of whether
<v Speaker 4>which is supposed to be. Just to clarify for listeners,
<v Speaker 4>the role of the vice president under the twelfth Amendment
<v Speaker 4>is purely formal, and as a result of Tom's work
<v Speaker 4>and others, that's now clarified thankfully in the Electoral count
<v Speaker 4>Reform Act.
<v Speaker 3>But they didn't care.
<v Speaker 4>They were trying to use this fake argument in order
<v Speaker 4>to really destroy our election.
<v Speaker 3>So it's all of this that you put Togeah.
<v Speaker 5>Just on John's point about protests, right, keep in mind too,
<v Speaker 5>that the vast majority of people who attended the quote
<v Speaker 5>unquote protests in Washington Jerry six were not charged with crimes, right, correct,
<v Speaker 5>They were not. They were not There was no legal
<v Speaker 5>they were not charged of doing something illegal.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 5>It was only a very small subset of those, right fact.
<v Speaker 5>In fact, not even And here's here's the sticking point
<v Speaker 5>that MAGA tries to cover up. Most of the people
<v Speaker 5>who went on the Capitol's grounds illegally, right into restricted areas.
<v Speaker 5>Most of those people weren't charged, correct, Yeah, so it
<v Speaker 5>was it was really a small subset of about fifteen
<v Speaker 5>to sixteen hundred people at the day of the thousands
<v Speaker 5>and thousands more who were actually charged with committing crimes.
<v Speaker 5>And that part of it has been obscured by MAGIL,
<v Speaker 5>which likes.
<v Speaker 2>The it's a very important point.
<v Speaker 1>Well, they want to say, oh, well, the Feds just
<v Speaker 1>locked up people who walked into the Capitol after the
<v Speaker 1>doors were open and police said they could come in,
<v Speaker 1>and these were complete Whenever your right wing troll says
<v Speaker 1>this to you, please ask them give me the name
<v Speaker 1>of one specific person who just entered the building, broke
<v Speaker 1>no laws and was put in jail. Give me that
<v Speaker 1>person's name. Can I ask you about Mike Pence. I
<v Speaker 1>love your whole metaph for the spokes and the wheel.
<v Speaker 1>I've always been calling them cogs, and I now realized
<v Speaker 1>I mistooled them. They are spokes more than cogs. But
<v Speaker 1>Mike Pence's recent comments, you know, show he understood the
<v Speaker 1>stakes and he ultimately refused to break the constitution. How
<v Speaker 1>low is the bar that that now qualifies as moral courage?
<v Speaker 1>It kind of feels like our constitutional democracy is so
<v Speaker 1>fragile that maybe it depends more on individual character than law.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, I mean I can say a couple things about that.
<v Speaker 5>I totally agree. I mean, first of all, it is
<v Speaker 5>a very low bar, right, I mean, it's ridiculous. This
<v Speaker 5>was a ridiculous scheme that they were trying.
<v Speaker 2>To I mean, I'm praising Mike Pence.
<v Speaker 5>Good lord, Yeah, I mean so am I And I
<v Speaker 5>actually met with Mike Pence in the situation room with
<v Speaker 5>the White House in twenty eighteen. Actually, so yeah, I'm
<v Speaker 5>in his staff one time. And I'm not a Mike
<v Speaker 5>Pence stand or anything like that, but you know, I
<v Speaker 5>mean it was I was laughing though, because I remember
<v Speaker 5>Pence talking about how the Jerry sixth Committee was criticizing
<v Speaker 5>at the time for being political and this and and
<v Speaker 5>I'm sitting there as the research nerd who's working on
<v Speaker 5>this thing, thinking, my man, uh, you know, we're holding
<v Speaker 5>up your decision. We're saying your decision was the right one.
<v Speaker 5>And a lot of the report, a good chunk a
<v Speaker 5>chapter of the report is based on the testimony of
<v Speaker 5>your people, right who helped you go through this whole
<v Speaker 5>process of trying to fight off this stuff and the
<v Speaker 5>idea and you wouldn't come, you know, TESTI five for us,
<v Speaker 5>mister Pence. But the idea that you know the report
<v Speaker 5>is somehow, you know, been tainted by politics when it's
<v Speaker 5>actually upholding Mike Pence against Trump's assault, It's really ludicrous
<v Speaker 5>to me, you know. So I do praise Pence for
<v Speaker 5>a lot of his decisions. Sure, sure, by the same token,
<v Speaker 5>it is a low bar. And some of what he
<v Speaker 5>said about the committee and some other things I felt
<v Speaker 5>like just was like stupid politics. Like if he didn't
<v Speaker 5>if he didn't know at that time that he wasn't
<v Speaker 5>going to win over Maga, then I don't know why
<v Speaker 5>he did that.
<v Speaker 1>Well, because he thought he still had a chance to
<v Speaker 1>win over MAGA. I mean, he's more popular with liberals
<v Speaker 1>now than conservatives because he followed the law this one time.
<v Speaker 2>It's just amazing.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, was there anything Tom he went through all of this?
<v Speaker 4>I'm gonna ask one more process question, but like that
<v Speaker 4>surprised you that you didn't expect, you know, kind of
<v Speaker 4>moment and all of this, because I'm just trying to
<v Speaker 4>imagine what it was like to look at this vast
<v Speaker 4>amount of information. We knew about the violence. We knew
<v Speaker 4>generally what happened, but you know the details of the report,
<v Speaker 4>as you said, which could have been ten times as long,
<v Speaker 4>are really incredible. So I'm wondering, you know, as he
<v Speaker 4>went through, was there one moment where you're like, whoa,
<v Speaker 4>this is really I mean, what I would say is
<v Speaker 4>that you know Trump has and this is I'd like
<v Speaker 4>to hear John comment on this too, because I got
<v Speaker 4>I've got one.
<v Speaker 5>That went to throw his way Trump. Trump has exploited
<v Speaker 5>very skillfully a lot of currents in our society, and
<v Speaker 5>he did so in the lead up to an on
<v Speaker 5>January six. You know, one of which is you know,
<v Speaker 5>white nationalism and Christian nationalism, which I as a counter
<v Speaker 5>streamism guy think of as like siblings, right, like they're basically,
<v Speaker 5>you know, fraternal twins. I would say, you know, not
<v Speaker 5>quite not quite, not quite identical, but they look an
<v Speaker 5>awful lot like, you know, and they're both right of
<v Speaker 5>course for the most part, you know, so, but he
<v Speaker 5>very carefully exploited that. I mean, you know. And one
<v Speaker 5>of the things about doing this type of work is
<v Speaker 5>such a short, condensed time period is you have to
<v Speaker 5>focus on, you know, what made the wheel go around right,
<v Speaker 5>the force at the middle of it, the center of
<v Speaker 5>the wheel, and all the spokes you can document. And
<v Speaker 5>we definitely, you know, got a lot out about the
<v Speaker 5>extremism aspect of it, and you can see that in
<v Speaker 5>chapter six and eight, but there's always more to the story,
<v Speaker 5>including on the Christian nationalist aspect of it. I mean,
<v Speaker 5>you know, I I looked through, you know, all the
<v Speaker 5>speeches on the night of January fifth, which were which
<v Speaker 5>were riling up the crowd before Janey sixth, and they
<v Speaker 5>were littered with Christian nationalist imagery, so many flags, so much,
<v Speaker 5>so much of it.
<v Speaker 1>And they're beating cops for a lie, they're waiving their Christian.
<v Speaker 5>Flag exactly, and you know, I mean, Alex Jones is
<v Speaker 5>the guy who riled up the crowd the night before,
<v Speaker 5>and if you actually one of the things I think
<v Speaker 5>Alex Jones is actually very misunderstood. He's in the report
<v Speaker 5>in a number of places, but if you look at
<v Speaker 5>his conspiracism, it's actually littered with Christian nationalism, oh always. Yeah.
<v Speaker 5>A lot of what he's actually selling is like like
<v Speaker 5>the most conspiratorial version of Christian nationalism, I think, in
<v Speaker 5>a lot of ways. And he evoked God the night
<v Speaker 5>before Janary six and painted this as a religious battle,
<v Speaker 5>you know, And so you see them doing that throughout
<v Speaker 5>the whole thing, you know, And I don't think that
<v Speaker 5>that part of the story. We got into it somewhat
<v Speaker 5>in the committee, but there was a lot more that
<v Speaker 5>could have been done. I think we had more time,
<v Speaker 5>and it's a lot more that I'd like to do
<v Speaker 5>writing about because something I've been studying is this christiannationalist aspect.
<v Speaker 5>I just wonder if you had any thoughts about that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I just published a book about it, and I'm
<v Speaker 1>writing another book that I'm writing another book about it
<v Speaker 1>right now. I mean Donald Trump won the hearts of evangelicals,
<v Speaker 1>not by promising to do a single thing Christ teaches
<v Speaker 1>or commands in the gospels. He promised to get them
<v Speaker 1>by putting them first, putting them above other groups, which
<v Speaker 1>is the opposite of the humility that Jesus commands. He
<v Speaker 1>pandered to them and said they were under siege and
<v Speaker 1>played up the persecution narrative. That's how you get Christian
<v Speaker 1>national lester fundamentalists or authoritarians, or I call them master
<v Speaker 1>race Christians. You know, the ones who are so convinced
<v Speaker 1>that not that they're better than you, that God thinks
<v Speaker 1>they're better than you. Those folks, and they exist in
<v Speaker 1>every religion, but in our country, they don't follow Jesus.
<v Speaker 1>They use Jesus, and they despise the actual teachings of
<v Speaker 1>Jesus because those are woke, so they believe in what
<v Speaker 1>they fight for, and what they fight for is not
<v Speaker 1>anything Christ commands, because then they could never vote for Trump.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, on immigration alone, you got to welcome the stranger.
<v Speaker 1>They hate the actual teachings of Jesus. What they fight
<v Speaker 1>for is conservative Christian control over society and government and culture.
<v Speaker 1>They don't care about religious freedom, they don't care about Jesus,
<v Speaker 1>they don't care about God or Satan. They don't care
<v Speaker 1>about abortion, they don't care about immigration. Those things are
<v Speaker 1>what gets them power. If they wanted to immigrate and
<v Speaker 1>lawful border crossings to stop, they'd lock up the employers
<v Speaker 1>and take down the help want it signed. They won't
<v Speaker 1>do that. If they wanted abortion to stop, they fund
<v Speaker 1>sex at and make birth control free, they won't do it.
<v Speaker 1>They don't want it to stop. They only care about power,
<v Speaker 1>and these things help them to that eventual end. And
<v Speaker 1>that's why I as bleak as all this is and
<v Speaker 1>zooming out from January sixth to ice in Minneapolis.
<v Speaker 2>I mean this.
<v Speaker 1>Really coherent theory of power over law that has emerged.
<v Speaker 1>I just want to ask you, mister Jocelyn. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you know this area better than anybody. What's giving you
<v Speaker 1>hope right now? The courts, the public, the whistleblowers, something else.
<v Speaker 2>What's giving you hope in this moment?
<v Speaker 5>Well, France, I just want to say one more thing.
<v Speaker 2>Abou Christi nationalism, please please?
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, you know, I am as someone who's a student
<v Speaker 5>of American history in the Founding, I find it amazing
<v Speaker 5>how much Christian nationalists lie about the Founding and how
<v Speaker 5>much they portray the Founding as a fundamental Christian founding. Yeah,
<v Speaker 5>and if you actually go through the writings and rhetoric
<v Speaker 5>of James Madison or Thomas Jefferson or Tom Payne, got
<v Speaker 5>Tompayne especially right, Tom Payn's been my avatar on what
<v Speaker 5>was Twitter since twenty fourteen, and that we can get
<v Speaker 5>into that whole other thing another time. You know, there's
<v Speaker 5>a whole sorts of examples, right, I mean the.
<v Speaker 2>Treaty of Tripoli, they wrote it down so many.
<v Speaker 5>Times it's clearly just false.
<v Speaker 2>Right.
<v Speaker 5>But that to me is what that to me is
<v Speaker 5>a commonality here is that their movement and their leader
<v Speaker 5>right had no respect for the Constitution up to and
<v Speaker 5>leading on January six, and it doesn't after the fact, right,
<v Speaker 5>And that seems to be a symbiotic relationship with them
<v Speaker 5>because they don't seem to really understand where the Constitution
<v Speaker 5>comes from or the Founding principles.
<v Speaker 1>You know, extremism and defensive liberty is not a vice, right,
<v Speaker 1>Like God, It's okay if I lie, because I'm doing
<v Speaker 1>it all for God. This is this is why people
<v Speaker 1>fly planes into build.
<v Speaker 5>Which was written by Harry jeff I think right for
<v Speaker 5>Barry Goldwater that line. Yes, yes, yes, And Harry Jeffa
<v Speaker 5>came from the Claremonts too, which is a Christian nationalist
<v Speaker 5>institutionell with it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 5>So the bottom line is like there's a commonality there.
<v Speaker 5>So now to your pointment what the hope is, Look,
<v Speaker 5>I think there's I think there's two fundamental competing systems here.
<v Speaker 5>One is like the maga monoculture right, which is wants
<v Speaker 5>a certain type of person who thinks a certain way
<v Speaker 5>and looks a certain type of way, with very much differences.
<v Speaker 5>And they are in the thrall of the authoritarian culture
<v Speaker 5>personality around Donald Trump, and there's all sorts of contradictions
<v Speaker 5>and mixed messaging there, but there's you know, it's not
<v Speaker 5>it's not a cohesive logical a lot of times. Although
<v Speaker 5>they do hate majority, they hate modern America, and they're
<v Speaker 5>bound by their loyalty to Trump and things like that.
<v Speaker 5>But there's also this multicultural America right that I think
<v Speaker 5>is still very much alive, and it's still very much
<v Speaker 5>it's still very much in the fight, and that's what
<v Speaker 5>I see myself as fighting for every day, Like I
<v Speaker 5>want to live in the multicultural America, not not the
<v Speaker 5>mega monoicultural hell, right, And and what you see in
<v Speaker 5>Minneapolis is the multiculture fighting back, right. What you see
<v Speaker 5>is people standing up. You know, We've had two white
<v Speaker 5>people who were killed this month alone by federal agents,
<v Speaker 5>Renee Good and Alex pretty right, but they were both
<v Speaker 5>They're both killed in the act of standing up for
<v Speaker 5>the rights of people who are not white people predoun correct, correct,
<v Speaker 5>you know, and the spine populations who are who are
<v Speaker 5>being assailed by the Stephen Miller's of the world and
<v Speaker 5>their whole project, you know. And I think that that
<v Speaker 5>says something about what the real tension is here. The
<v Speaker 5>real conflict is between this magamonic culture that wants to impose,
<v Speaker 5>just like you were talking about with Christian nationalist John.
<v Speaker 5>They want to pose their will and their power on
<v Speaker 5>the people and all the other people. And what you're
<v Speaker 5>seeing is the hope of the people say no, you
<v Speaker 5>don't get to oppose that here in Minneapolis. I don't
<v Speaker 5>get to impose that elsewhere.
<v Speaker 4>Tom, We're almost out of time, but I really have
<v Speaker 4>a question I want to ask you about rewriting history.
<v Speaker 4>You talked about the way that Christian nationalists have certainly
<v Speaker 4>rewritten our constitution and John and I have that as
<v Speaker 4>one of our large themes on the oath in the office.
<v Speaker 4>Of course, we have a First Amendment which bars not
<v Speaker 4>only the establishment of religion, but laws respecting an establishment
<v Speaker 4>of religion. If there's ever a greater rebuff to Christian nationalism,
<v Speaker 4>that's it. It's an explicit legal rebuff to it and
<v Speaker 4>its entire ideology.
<v Speaker 3>Have a right to believe what you want or say
<v Speaker 3>what you want.
<v Speaker 4>But our government at core is not Christian nationalists, or
<v Speaker 4>Christian or any religion, and we have no established religion.
<v Speaker 4>But in the same way that that has been rewritten,
<v Speaker 4>so too is the story of January sixth. And that's
<v Speaker 4>what I want to ask you about that. What does
<v Speaker 4>it feel like? And as importantly or more importantly, how
<v Speaker 4>can we ensure the truth of January sixth comes out
<v Speaker 4>in the face of what you're seeing, which is the
<v Speaker 4>rewriting of that story as a nonviolent protest and an
<v Speaker 4>illegal attack on constitutional rights. That's how the Maga and
<v Speaker 4>Trumps of the world are framing it.
<v Speaker 3>So I mean, just as a.
<v Speaker 4>Way, you know, listeners now I think have a very
<v Speaker 4>strong understanding, if they didn't before, of what actually happened
<v Speaker 4>in depth.
<v Speaker 3>That's what this amazing interview has given us.
<v Speaker 4>So how can we fight back against that attempt to
<v Speaker 4>rewrite history?
<v Speaker 5>Well, I think you and your listeners have a very
<v Speaker 5>good understanding of that. I think there's a whole segment
<v Speaker 5>of our population, tens of millions of people who don't write,
<v Speaker 5>who have been drinking it a well of disinformation and
<v Speaker 5>lies for so long that they believe lies, you know,
<v Speaker 5>And I think I think you both understand students of history,
<v Speaker 5>and I consider myself a student of history, consider myself
<v Speaker 5>a student of basically everything. You know that history is
<v Speaker 5>always contestant, it's fought for, it's never just decided, right.
<v Speaker 5>It's not like you know, Corey, your excellent book on
<v Speaker 5>the Constitution and your writings, right, you had to weigh
<v Speaker 5>into a whole field where there's all sorts of different
<v Speaker 5>competing views and competing ideas about what certain things mean
<v Speaker 5>and what certain people believed, and what the text means
<v Speaker 5>and that kind of thing. And there's definitely a common
<v Speaker 5>agreement on some of it, but some of it is
<v Speaker 5>still contested to this day. So the point is you
<v Speaker 5>have to fight for that reality. You have to fight
<v Speaker 5>for that truth in history and fight for facts. It's
<v Speaker 5>not something you can give up on right and everybody
<v Speaker 5>has to do it. It's a communal act of civil society
<v Speaker 5>that the citizenry have to stand up for what the
<v Speaker 5>actual truth is, because otherwise you'll allow an authoritarian figure
<v Speaker 5>like Donald Trump to rewrite history for all of us.
<v Speaker 4>Brilliant, what a great, great statement. Thank you so much,
<v Speaker 4>Tom Joscelyn for joining us on the oath in the Office.
<v Speaker 4>This has been an in depth discussion, you know, from
<v Speaker 4>the person who literally helped write the report that revealed
<v Speaker 4>the conspiracy to steal this election, this attempted coup, and
<v Speaker 4>we really thank you for joining us on the oath
<v Speaker 4>in the Office. We hope you'll come back. Thank you
<v Speaker 4>so much, No, thank you for having me.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you Tom Jocelyn, So professor. I mean, when we
<v Speaker 1>zoom out from January sixth to ice in Minneapolis, it's
<v Speaker 1>not really isolated abuses, is it. It seems like it's a
<v Speaker 1>coherent theory of authoritarian power that is emerging.
<v Speaker 3>That's right.
<v Speaker 4>And if you think that's paranoid, that what Tom Jocelyn
<v Speaker 4>gave us was a deep dive into the way in
<v Speaker 4>which a coup almost happened in the United States. If
<v Speaker 4>you listened to him talking about the vulnerability of our
<v Speaker 4>system of the electoral college, the details with which it
<v Speaker 4>was almost subverted, the way that these plans fit together,
<v Speaker 4>the role of the vice president being subverted, the role
<v Speaker 4>of the state electors and fraudulent electors being sent to
<v Speaker 4>the joint Session of Congress, and the violence of the
<v Speaker 4>Proud Boys and others, the role as you brought out
<v Speaker 4>from him in a great exchange of Christian nationalism. All
<v Speaker 4>of that really showed that we almost lost our democracy
<v Speaker 4>on January sixth. And these are the same people back
<v Speaker 4>in power. So it's not a surprise that they're trying
<v Speaker 4>to use the administration again to destroy our democracy, to
<v Speaker 4>destroy civil liberties. And when you see them looking for
<v Speaker 4>things like voter information in Minnesota, remember what they did
<v Speaker 4>last time.
<v Speaker 3>It's the same people.
<v Speaker 4>Amazing discussion with Tom Joscely an amazing in depth discussion
<v Speaker 4>of what's happening now.
<v Speaker 3>John, in our first half. What a pleasure to do
<v Speaker 3>this with you.
<v Speaker 1>That's why I want to thank you for being such
<v Speaker 1>an amazing podcast host. My god, why didn't you get
<v Speaker 1>into this years ago?
<v Speaker 2>Professor?
<v Speaker 1>And I want to thank Wendy and Beowulf and everybody
<v Speaker 1>who puts the show together. And of course I need
<v Speaker 1>to thank our deeply sexually attractive listeners for making this
<v Speaker 1>show so popular. Hey, professor, what's the best way for
<v Speaker 1>our listeners to follow you and keep up with your
<v Speaker 1>brilliance the other six days.
<v Speaker 2>Of the week.
<v Speaker 4>Well, follow our newsletter on substack. It's called The Oath
<v Speaker 4>in the Office. Are amazing to you. The amazing reviews
<v Speaker 4>on Apple keep coming in. We're well over five hundred
<v Speaker 4>and they're almost all five stars.
<v Speaker 3>And you know, listen to us on Spotify.
<v Speaker 4>Tell your friends, and also we have a YouTube channel,
<v Speaker 4>The Oath in the Office, so you can watch us,
<v Speaker 4>not just listen to us brilliant.
<v Speaker 2>I'm John people Sank.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you guys so much for joining us, and we'll
<v Speaker 1>see you next time on The Oath and the Office