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00:00:00.000Nancy Pelosi can't contain her glee as she conveys impeachment to the Senate, the Government Accountability Office dumps all over Trump, and we finally know what Warren and Sanders said to each other.
00:00:23.000Well, it's almost as though there is some sort of coordination going on as the impeachment charges are conveyed to the Senate.
00:00:29.000Why, in the last 24 hours, it's as though a bevy of bombshells have dropped on President Trump in the midst of this impeachment inquiry.
00:00:36.000They didn't drop for weeks, for months, actually.
00:00:38.000Well, the Democrats were pursuing their impeachment investigation.
00:00:41.000Democrats didn't even bother calling any of the relevant witnesses.
00:00:44.000But now we have two big bombshell stories dropping within literally hours of each other and all of that within hours of Nancy Pelosi conveying the impeachment charges to the Senate.
00:00:54.000I mean, maybe all of that's a coincidence, or maybe it's not so coincidental.
00:00:58.000In any case, we're going to go through all of it momentarily, but the big news yesterday was that Nancy Pelosi had finally decided to stop holding up impeachment.
00:01:06.000She was going to convey the impeachment charges to the Senate, and she was gleeful in doing so.
00:01:15.000Well, I don't think that Nancy Pelosi was too sober and too serious yesterday, aside from handing out golden pens after she signed the impeachment.
00:01:29.000Which, again, there's some precedent for it, but not a great look.
00:01:34.000Basically could not contain herself as all of this happened.
00:01:37.000She signed the articles and she handed them over and you can watch how it looked.
00:01:40.000Again, didn't look very sober and serious to me, but that is the way that it is.
00:01:53.000She literally cannot stop smiling as this is happening.
00:01:57.000But don't worry, it's incredibly sober, it's incredibly serious, and she's writing each letter of her name with a different pen so that she can hand out the pens to all of those who have worked so hard to impeach President Trump.
00:02:09.000And here she is conveying the impeachment charges to somebody, and everybody is clearly pretty happy about this.
00:02:14.000Maxine Waters standing right behind Pelosi, and also unable to contain herself.
00:02:18.000Nancy Pelosi then came out and talked about how sad she is about all this, again, not able to contain her joy.
00:02:25.000So sad, so tragic for our country that the actions taken by the president to undermine our national security, to violate his oath of office, and to jeopardize the security of our elections, the integrity of our elections, has taken us to this place.
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00:05:21.000Okay, so the Democrats better have some bombshells in waiting here because what they conveyed to the Senate doesn't have bombshells.
00:05:27.000What they conveyed to the Senate doesn't even have an articulated crime.
00:05:29.000Chris Wallace over at Fox News, who has been no proponent of the president throughout this process, he says, look, Nancy Pelosi blew this.
00:05:35.000She could not make Mitch McConnell bow to her will.
00:05:38.000I want to just talk, if I could briefly, Harris, about Speaker Pelosi's delay, the month's delay in sending over the articles of impeachment, because I think you can see it two ways.
00:05:49.000If the purpose was to force Mitch McConnell to bow to her will and to agree to call witnesses and to get more documents, then it was a total failure.
00:06:04.000Well, now Nancy Pelosi has picked her team and she's picked an extraordinarily political team.
00:06:08.000She didn't attempt to drive any sort of bipartisan consensus by picking well-respected members of her House contingent.
00:06:13.000Instead, she decided that she was going to bring forth the most radical members of her contingent.
00:06:19.000She said that she is going to deploy Adam Schiff, She's also going to deploy Jerry Nadler of the Judiciary Committee, two of Pelosi's quote-unquote top lieutenants, according to the Associated Press.
00:06:28.000Nadler says President Trump gravely abused the power of his office.
00:06:32.000He did all of this for his personal, political gain.
00:06:35.000Ahead of Wednesday's session, Schiff released new records from Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, about the Ukraine strategy, including an exchange with another man about surveilling later-fired Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.
00:06:45.000Schiff said that the new evidence should bring more pressure on McConnell to call Lev Parnas as a witness.
00:06:49.000There are a couple questions about that.
00:06:53.000Two, Lev Parnas could have been called by the House, and the House didn't bother to call him.
00:06:56.000But according to Adam Schiff, you know, there's new evidence likely to emerge And behold, within 24 hours, new evidence is emerging, almost as though something was mildly coordinated here.
00:07:07.000There's a tremendous volume of documents and materials that Mr. Parnas has turned over to us.
00:07:13.000We are still going through them all because there's such a great volume.
00:07:16.000Many of them are in Russian and they had to be translated.
00:07:20.000And fortunately, we have members of our staff that can help do that.
00:07:25.000But there is still a great many other documents to go through.
00:07:30.000And it's not just what we got from Lev Parnas.
00:07:33.000And then Adam Schiff then talks about how there will be more Lev Parnas documents that are forthcoming in the very near future.
00:07:39.000He says we're still going through the Parnas documents.
00:07:41.000So Schiff obviously is treating the House impeachment effort as though it is not over, which is weird since they just conveyed the impeachment charges to the Senate.
00:07:50.000OK, this brings us to today's bombshells.
00:07:52.000We have a couple of bombshells that we have to go through today.
00:07:55.000None of this is fantastic for President Trump.
00:07:56.000I mean, President Trump was His behavior with regard to Ukraine was bad.
00:08:00.000Okay, the reason that it was bad was not because he was interested in Burisma or Hunter Biden or Joe Biden or any of the rest of it.
00:08:07.000The reason that it was bad is because he has law enforcement agencies at his disposal and deploying Rudy Giuliani, Who has a tenuous grasp on reality to say the least to Ukraine in order to dig up dirt that would prove that 2016 it was Ukrainian election hacking that was responsible rather than Russian election hacking.
00:08:25.000President Trump's tendency to buy into his own conspiracy theories with regard to CrowdStrike hiding Hillary Clinton's server in Ukraine.
00:08:31.000All of that was sheer nonsense and to hold up Ukrainian military aid in order to go after all that information was bad policy.
00:08:40.000Now, you can make the argument that President Trump was doing that, not with an eye toward 2020, not with an eye toward corrupting the 2020...
00:08:46.000Presidential race it was with an eye toward 2016 and uncovering what he thought to be corruption and so is his version his ill-founded version of the Mueller report that basically the Mueller report was all about Russian interference in 2016 and Trump's response was 2016 was not about Russia it was about Ukraine and I'm deploying my friend Rudy Giuliani and his friends to go and investigate this whole thing inside Ukraine and that is going to ask questions about Ukrainian corruption and Ukrainian coordination with the Obama administration and all the rest of this.
00:09:15.000And I've been suggesting for a while that I think that that situation is much more plausible than he did it in order to quote unquote get Joe Biden in 2020.
00:09:22.000And notice how the charges here have morphed, right?
00:09:24.000The charges here have morphed from President Trump was going after Joe Biden to have the Ukrainian government basically manipulate information to take Biden out of the 2020 race or hurt Joe Biden.
00:09:34.000And then they moved to President Trump doesn't have the authority to do any of these things that he actually has the authority to do, like fire Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.
00:09:41.000Well, this brings us to the big bombshell story of the day.
00:09:44.000We'll get to the Lev Parnas stuff in just a second, which is a little more complicated.
00:09:48.000This brings us to the big bombshell story of the day.
00:09:50.000That big bombshell story of the day is that the Government Accountability Office has now released an eight-page letter suggesting that the Trump administration violated what is called the Impoundment Control Act.
00:09:59.000Which was passed in 1974 when the administration did not convey to Congress the reason for holding up Ukrainian military aid.
00:10:07.000And there had been some signals that this was going to become an issue for the Trump administration as soon as it was announced that Trump had held up the aid without really giving an excuse to Congress.
00:10:15.000Now, the Empowerment Control Act Kind of an obscure provision of federal law.
00:10:19.000It was passed in 1974 in response to a Supreme Court decision declaring that President Nixon could not simply withhold budget requirements that had been passed by Congress.
00:10:28.000So Congress had passed certain budgetary items, sent them over to the President of the United States.
00:10:32.000The President of the United States, Nixon, had refused to then spend the money, and Congress sued and went to the Supreme Court.
00:10:37.000The Supreme Court said, no, Nixon does have to spend the money that has been allocated to the executive branch.
00:10:42.000The executive branch does not, in fact, have a quote-unquote line item veto.
00:10:45.000Right, which allow the executive branch to basically cut down on spending by refusing to spend money already allocated by the legislative branch.
00:10:51.000The legislative branch has the power of the purse.
00:10:53.000The executive branch doesn't get to pick and choose which parts of the allocations it wants to spend.
00:10:59.000And the Impoundment Control Act, which may or may not be constitutional, that was passed in the direct aftermath of that Supreme Court case.
00:11:06.000Now, this has always been a sort of controversial provision of federal law.
00:11:09.000Daniel Henninger, writing back in 2011 over at the Wall Street Journal, he points out, here is a list of U.S.
00:11:14.000presidents and public figures who have used or supported the impoundment power.
00:11:17.000Impoundment power would be Congress allocates money for something, the president says, nope, not spending it.
00:11:23.000Here is a list of people who have supported the impoundment power.
00:11:25.000Abe Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton, the Bushes, John McCain, John Kerry, Al Gore, Pat Buchanan, Jeb Hedzerling, Russ Feingold, Joe Lieberman, Judd Gregg, Paul Ryan, and Barack Obama.
00:11:36.000Daniel Henninger writes, in the early 1970s, Richard Nixon tried aggressively to impound spending, touching off a war with Congress's prerogatives.
00:11:44.000In a fury, one of the most liberal Congresses passed the Budget Control Act of 1974.
00:11:47.000It transferred most spending control to Congress, which one commentator at the time called a congressional government and chaos.
00:11:54.000And it's unclear exactly how to divide this authority, and the Supreme Court in coin flip decisions has tended to side with Congress.
00:12:03.000Many sort of political watchers over the past few years have suggested, including Barack Obama, that having the president have a sort of line-item veto power to be able to not spend that sort of money would be a good thing.
00:12:13.000But suffice it to say, the Impoundment Control Act is an operative act of law, right?
00:12:19.000So, with that said, there are specific provisions to the Impoundment Control Act.
00:12:22.000The Impoundment Control Act dictates the president has to spend money that is allocated to the executive branch within a certain period of time.
00:12:29.000If it is not allocated within a certain period of time, then it will Then the executive branch has to make a report to the legislative branch.
00:12:37.000And if the legislative branch does not make a report, the executive branch does not make a report to the legislative branch, and this is the key, then the legislative branch is supposed to launch its own inquiry into why the executive branch is not doing that and or file lawsuits.
00:12:50.000So there is no impeachable Offense in violating the Impoundment Control Act in the sense that there is an actual statutory remedy for this, right?
00:13:00.000In the statute it says what is supposed to happen if the president violates the Budget Control Act, if he violates the Impoundment Act.
00:13:09.000The answer Right there is that the Comptroller General is supposed to file a civil lawsuit against the President of the United States against the Executive Branch, which did not happen here.
00:13:18.000At no point does the Comptroller General of the United States, who by the way is a Barack Obama appointee with a 15-year term, at no point was that lawsuit actually filed.
00:13:25.000Okay, so this is more a matter of sort of imagery and imagistics than it is a matter of, okay, now he's committed an impeachable offense through the Impoundment Act.
00:13:35.000In fact, there have been allegations that Trump was violating the Impoundment Control Act with regard to Puerto Rico because he wasn't freeing up the money to go to Puerto Rico fast enough.
00:13:42.000So this is a pretty regular feature of American government that the executive branch is accused of not doing Congress's will and spending money that has already been allocated by Congress.
00:13:49.000Okay, so now the Office of Management and Budget said, no, we didn't violate the Impoundment Act.
00:13:53.000And you have the General Accounting Office, the Government Accountability Office rather, suggesting that the act has indeed been violated.
00:14:04.000They say, in the summer of 2019, OMB withheld from obligation approximately $214 million appropriated to the Department of Defense for security assistance to Ukraine.
00:14:12.000As explained below, we conclude that OMB withheld the funds from obligation for an unauthorized reason in violation of the Impoundment Control Act.
00:14:19.000We also question actions regarding funds appropriated to the Department of State for security assistance to Ukraine.
00:14:25.000In accordance with our regular practice, we contacted OMB, the Executive Office of the President, and DOD to seek factual information and their legal views on the matter.
00:14:33.000OMB provided a written response letter and certain apportionment schedules for security assistance funding for Ukraine.
00:14:38.000The Executive Office of the President responded to our request by referring to the letter we had received from OMB and providing that the White House did not plan to send a separate response.
00:14:46.000Thus far, the DOD has not provided a response or a timeline for when we will receive one.
00:14:51.000On October 30th, 2019, Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Delaware, asked the Comptroller General about this matter during a hearing before the Senate Committee on the Budget.
00:15:00.000And then they get into the background.
00:15:01.000We'll get into that in just one second.
00:15:03.000First, let's talk about a brand new way that bad people have of stealing your money.
00:15:08.000People online, criminals, are incredibly clever.
00:15:10.000They've found ways to steal credit card numbers.
00:15:12.000They've found ways to steal your data.
00:15:13.000Well, here's a brand new way that they're going about stealing your data, and they could actually bankrupt you.
00:15:20.000I mean, what they are doing right now is they actually go online, they find your home title, they find the documents that you filed for your home title, and then they hijack those documents, they alter the documents, and then they run up tabs on the basis of your home equity.
00:15:38.000Deborah says criminal found the title to our home online and filed forged documents claiming they owned it.
00:15:43.000She says I was evicted from my own home and 85 grand in equities stolen.
00:15:47.000Nobody believes you can get your home stolen this easily, but as all these records become digitized, as it's easier and easier for hackers to access that data, And then to go after your home title and then use that.
00:15:56.000I mean, it's probably the biggest asset you own in all likelihood.
00:15:59.000And then use that to rack up all sorts of charges to take out loans, to steal your home title.
00:16:43.000Okay, back to this Government Accountability Office report suggesting that the President violated the Impoundment Control Act.
00:16:49.000For fiscal year 2019, Congress appropriated $250 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.
00:16:55.000The funds were available to provide assistance including training, equipment, lethal assistance, logistics support, supplies and services, sustainment and intelligence support to the military and national security forces of Ukraine.
00:17:05.000DOD was required to notify Congress 15 days in advance of any obligation of the USAI funds.
00:17:11.000In order to obligate more than 50% of the amount appropriated, DOD was also required to certify to Congress that Ukraine had taken substantial actions on defense institutional reforms.
00:17:20.000In its certification, DOD did include descriptions of its planned expenditures totaling $125 million.
00:17:25.000On July 25, 2015, OMB issued the first of nine apportionment schedules with footnotes regarding USAI funds from obligation.
00:17:36.000The footnote said, amounts reapportioned but not yet obligated as of the date of this reapportionment for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative are not available for obligation until August 5, 2019, to allow for an interagency process to determine the best use of such funds.
00:17:50.000Based on OMB's communication with DoD, OMB understands from the department that this brief pause in obligations will not preclude DoD's timely execution On both August 6th and 15th, 2019, OMB approved additional apportionment actions to extend this pause in obligations with footnotes that, except for the dates, were identical to the July 25th, 2019 apportionment actions.
00:18:15.000They kept basically saying that we are investigating, we're trying to figure out the best way to spend the money.
00:18:20.000OMB approved additional apportionment actions on August 20th, 27th, and 31st, and on September 5th, 6th, and 10th.
00:18:26.000The footnotes from these additional apportionment actions were, except for the dates, otherwise identical to one another.
00:18:31.000They nevertheless differed from those of July 25th and August 6th and 15th, 2019, in that they omitted the second sentence that appeared in the earlier apportionment actions regarding OMB's understanding that the pause in obligation would not preclude timely obligation.
00:18:44.000So now, they're saying, well, maybe it will preclude timely obligation.
00:18:47.000Okay, well, as we'll see under the Act, it's the timely obligation aspect of here that makes the situation ripe for violation of the Impoundment Control Act, because there is, in fact, a statutory period where they can consider whether to release the funds.
00:18:58.000If you don't release the funds in time, then you're supposed to send a notice to Congress.
00:19:02.000The apportionment schedules issued on August 27th and 31st, 2019, and on September 5th, 6th, 10th, 2019, were identical except for the dates.
00:19:11.000According to OMB, approximately $214 million of the USAI appropriation was withheld as a result of these footnotes.
00:19:17.000OMB did not transmit a special message proposing to defer or rescind the funds.
00:19:21.000So, the question is whether OMB had the authority to withhold or defer the funds.
00:19:26.000According to the GAO, the Constitution specifically vests Congress with the power of the purse, providing that, quote, no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of the appropriations made by law.
00:19:35.000The Constitution also vests all legislative powers in Congress and sets forth the procedures of bicameralism and presentiments, and now they're going through the law, suggesting that the President has to faithfully execute the law by spending the money allocated to him by Congress.
00:19:47.000And Appropriations Act is a law like any other.
00:19:49.000Therefore, unless Congress has enacted a law providing otherwise, the President must take care to ensure that appropriations are prudently obligated during their period of availability.
00:19:57.000The Constitution grants the President no unilateral authority to withhold funds from obligation.
00:20:02.000Instead, Congress has vested the President with strictly circumscribed authority to impound or withhold budget authority only in limited circumstances expressly provided in the Impoundment Control Act.
00:20:12.000And here's where they get into the actual law that they say Trump violated.
00:20:15.000The ICA separates impoundments into two exclusive categories, deferrals and rescissions.
00:20:19.000The president may temporarily withhold funds from obligation, but not beyond the end of the fiscal year in which the president transmits the special message by proposing a deferral.
00:20:43.000The president may also seek the permanent cancellation of funds for fiscal policy or other reasons, including the termination of programs for which Congress has provided budget authority by proposing a rescission, which he didn't.
00:20:55.000In either case, the ICA requires that the President transmit a special message to Congress that includes the amount of budget authority proposed for deferral or rescission and the reason for the proposal.
00:21:03.000These special messages must provide detailed and specific reasoning to justify the withholding as set out in the ICA.
00:21:08.000So Democrats are going to claim that it's a cover-up because President Trump did not actually convey a special message to Congress suggesting why the funds were being withheld.
00:21:16.000There's no assertion or other indication here that OMB intended to propose such a rescission.
00:21:19.000Not only did OMB not submit a special message with such a proposal, the footnotes in the apportionment schedules, by their very terms, established dates for the release of the amounts withheld.
00:21:27.000The only other authority, then, would have been a deferral.
00:21:30.000The ICA authorizes the deferral of budget authority in a limited range of circumstances, to provide for contingencies, to achieve savings made possible, or through changes in requirements or greater efficiency of operations, or as specifically provided by law.
00:21:44.000may defer budget authority for any other purpose.
00:21:46.000Here, OMB did not identify any contingencies as recognized by the ICA, savings or efficiencies that would result from a withholding, or any law specifically authorizing the withholding.
00:21:55.000Instead, the footnote in the apportionment schedules described the withholding as necessary, quote, to determine the best use of such funds.
00:22:02.000In its response to us, OMB described the withholding as necessary to ensure that the funds were, quote, not spent in a manner that could conflict with the president's foreign policy.
00:22:09.000The ICA does not permit deferrals for policy reasons.
00:22:12.000OMB's justification for withholding falls squarely within the scope of an impermissible policy deferral.
00:22:17.000Thus, the deferral of USAI funds was improper under the ICA.
00:22:22.000All of that is perfectly fair, by the way.
00:22:24.000When the GAO says that the President of the United States does not have the power to simply, for policy reasons, withhold the funding under the ICA, that's correct.
00:22:33.000So the question becomes, what is then the solution for when the President does not comply with his obligation here?
00:22:39.000Really, this is just a fight between the branches.
00:22:41.000It's a normal fight between the legislative branch and the executive branch.
00:22:44.000And the GAO says, faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law.
00:22:51.000In fact, Congress was concerned about exactly these types of withholdings when it enacted and later amended the ICA.
00:23:23.000The GAO concludes, OMB's assertions have no basis in law because OMB asserts that its actions are not subject to the ICA because they constitute a programmatic delay.
00:23:34.000It argues that a policy development process is a fundamental part of program implementation, so its impoundment of funds for the sake of a policy process is programmatic.
00:23:42.000OMB further argues that because reviews for compliance with statutory conditions and congressional mandates are considered pragmatic, so too should be reviews undertaken to ensure compliance with presidential policy prerogatives.
00:23:53.000OMB's assertions, say the GAO, have no basis in law.
00:23:57.000We recognize that even where the President does not transmit a special message pursuant to the procedures established by the ICA, it is possible that a delay in obligation may not constitute a reportable impoundment.
00:24:07.000However, programmatic delays occur when an agency is taking necessary steps to implement a program, but because of factors external to the program, funds temporarily go unobligated.
00:24:16.000This presumes, of course, the agency is making reasonable efforts to obligate.
00:24:19.000So, now they're making the argument that it's true, Trump didn't withhold the funds, right, the funds went forward, but the reason that he didn't withhold the funds was not sufficiently given to Congress, and not only that, you can't call it a programmatic delay, because a programmatic delay is we meant to give the funding, and then exigent circumstances barred us from giving the funding.
00:24:36.000The GAO says, At the time OMB issued the first apportionment footnote withholding the USAI funds, DoD had already produced a plan for expending the funds.
00:24:44.000DoD had decided on the items it planned to purchase and had provided this information to Congress on May 23rd, 2019.
00:24:50.000Therefore, programmatic spending was already underway, so we can't accept OMB's assertion that its actions are programmatic.
00:24:56.000We conclude that OMB violated the ICA when it withheld USAI funds for policy reasons.
00:25:02.000Hey now, there are a couple of problems with this whole thing.
00:25:07.000Okay, so, Josh Blackman Is a law professor over at the Cato Institute and he has a threat on this says the GAO found that OMB violated the Impoundment Act and suggested that the President violated his duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.
00:25:25.000To be precise, President did not and could not personally violate the Impoundment Act because the law does not control his personal actions.
00:25:31.000His liability, if it exists at all, derives from his failure to supervise that his subordinates faithfully executed the law.
00:25:37.000Seth Tillman and I explained this dichotomy.
00:25:40.000In the impeachment context, Trump's liability could result from knowingly failing to take care that his subordinates faithfully executed the law.
00:25:47.000Most of the criticisms we received assumed the president personally violated the ICA.
00:25:51.000OMB violated the statute, not the president.
00:25:53.000Whether the president violated his duty of faithful execution is a different question that the OMB does not decide, but only hints at.
00:25:59.000Beyond that, even a violation of law, even a violation of law in this particular case, Does not necessarily mean that the proper solution is impeachment.
00:26:09.000The reason I say that the reason I say that is because the law itself.
00:26:18.000Code 2, Section 687, Chapter 2, Section 687, suits by Comptroller General, if under this chapter, budget authority is required to be made available for obligation, and such budget authority is not made available for obligation, the Comptroller General is hereby expressly empowered, through attorneys of his own selection, to bring a civil action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, to require such budget authority to be made available for obligation.
00:26:43.000And such court is hereby expressly empowered to enter in such civil action against any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States, any decree, judgment, or order which may be necessary or appropriate to make such budget authority available for obligation.
00:26:56.000No civil action shall be brought by the Comptroller General under this section until the expiration of 25 calendar days of continuous session of Congress following the date on which an explanatory statement by the Comptroller General of the circumstances giving rise to the action contemplated has been filed with the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate.
00:27:12.000In other words, The Comptroller General is supposed to file a lawsuit against the President in the D.C.
00:27:38.000He says Democrats have long sought whatever excuse was available to impeach, but the law prescribes a much less drastic remedy for when a president withholds appropriated funds.
00:27:45.000First, the committee's report falsely characterizes what the law says about the temporary withholding or deferral of funds.
00:27:52.000The original report by the impeachment committee, the intelligence committee, says, quote, any amount of budgetary authority proposed to be deferred or rescinded must be made available for obligation unless Congress completes action on a bill rescinding all or part of the amount proposed for rescission.
00:28:06.000Although permanently rescinded funds must be made available in this manner, the language in Section 684 contains no such requirement for funds that are temporarily withheld or deferred, as in the case of the aid to Ukraine.
00:28:18.000The difference between a rescission and an impoundment resolution is actually pretty significant here.
00:28:23.000The former must be taken up by Congress before the end of the first period of 45 calendar days, but the latter, an impoundment resolution, has no timeline.
00:28:30.000Also, the report implies that Trump failed to send a special message, and that is an obstructive act, but if you read the law, it's not.
00:28:37.000Because if the Comptroller General finds that the President has failed to transmit a special message with respect to such reserve or deferral, the Comptroller General makes a report, and such report shall be considered a special message transmitted under Section 683 or 684.
00:28:48.000In other words, if the President does not transmit a special message explaining why the thing has been deferred, the Comptroller General is supposed to make a report, and that is considered the presidential message.
00:28:58.000So, the actual remedy for all of this is not impeachment.
00:29:02.000The actual remedies that now does that mean that Trump did the right thing here?
00:29:17.000There's an actual solution under the Impoundment Control Act.
00:29:19.000And again, as I will remind everyone, the power of impoundment has been a controversial power that pretty much every president has wanted, including Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
00:29:28.000So this is more of a fight between the executive and the legislative branch as far as what sort of powers the executive branch should have than President Trump did something that is impeachable.
00:29:37.000Even by the actual solution of the ICA, it's not impeachable.
00:29:41.000Okay, in just a second, we're going to get to the other big bombshell.
00:29:44.000And this, of course, is the testimony of Lev Parnas, who's not actually testified, but he was on Rachel Maddow last night, and everybody's going crazy about it.
00:29:50.000So we're going to talk about what exactly Lev Parnas had to say.
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00:31:45.000I've been saying this since the very beginning.
00:31:47.000The President has an unfortunate tendency to to believe things that confirm his priors.
00:31:53.000He never has wanted to believe that the Russians were involved in the 2016 election.
00:31:57.000Now, I agree with the president that the Russians were not the reason that Hillary Clinton lost.
00:32:01.000Hillary Clinton is the reason that Hillary Clinton lost.
00:32:04.000But Trump's obsession with this idea that it wasn't the Russians, it was actually the Ukrainians, because this apparently gets him off the hook in some way, although I'm not sure what hook he thinks he has to get off of.
00:32:13.000His belief that it was the Ukrainians who were the real problem led him to employ Rudy Giuliani as his man in Ukraine, and Rudy Giuliani then relied on a bunch of nefarious characters, including Lev Parnas, who were people doing business in Ukraine who had a series of cross-cutting interests.
00:32:27.000So Lev Parnas was this guy doing business in Ukraine with a bunch of Ukrainian oligarchs who didn't like the ambassador, Maria Ivanovich.
00:32:34.000Parnas had been seeking Yovanovitch's ouster since 2018.
00:32:36.000Yovanovitch had apparently been blocking things that Parnas wanted, so Parnas had his own sort of agenda in Ukraine.
00:32:44.000And then, when Rudy started talking to him, suddenly Parnas, being a somewhat canny political operator, he then starts feeding Giuliani what he thinks he wants, which is You know what happened here?
00:32:53.000Yovanovitch is blocking investigations into Biden and Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election.
00:33:33.000That does not Honestly, it doesn't hold true to the record of the fact that Lev Parnas is under indictment, sitting under indictment right now.
00:33:40.000So here's Lev Parnas suggesting that the President is responsible for everything he did, shifting responsibility from himself to President Trump.
00:33:46.000Even though, by the way, again, Parnas has never had a conversation with President Trump about any of this, so far as we are aware, like at all.
00:34:12.000And, uh, you know, it was kind of unclear what he wanted and all of this.
00:34:15.000Well, Lev Parnas is again, two steps removed from Trump himself here.
00:34:20.000And yet he is testifying as to President Trump's intentions and, of course, shifting responsibility from himself.
00:34:25.000And again, he'd been engaged in nefarious actions in Ukraine for quite a while, including going after Yovanovitch before Trump was even concerned about it, before Trump knew who Yovanovitch was, frankly.
00:34:33.000He's now trying to shift responsibility.
00:34:35.000And Rachel Maddow is there for it, man.
00:34:54.000I wouldn't do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president.
00:34:59.000Okay, so again, he's trying to shift all responsibility onto Giuliani and the president as opposed to what appears to be more accurate, which is that Parnas was doing his own stuff in Ukraine and then he was using Giuliani in order to try and give him authority and color of authority to do things, right?
00:35:13.000Parnas wanted to meet with people in Ukraine.
00:35:14.000How do you do that if nobody wants to Well, you find the president's man, you get the president's man's request that you meet with those people in Ukraine and suddenly you have an awful lot more power.
00:35:22.000I know people who are like this in politics.
00:35:25.000So Parnas then starts testifying as to his impression of the Ukrainian aid issue.
00:35:31.000And again, you got to take everything that Parnas says with a grain of salt, even the notes that he submitted where he says, get Biden to commit, get Ukraine to commit, Zelensky to commit to announcing an investigation of Biden.
00:35:46.000Was that Parnas's impression of that's all that it would take in order to satisfy Trump?
00:35:50.000We don't know the answer to this because again, we still have not heard testimony from anyone except for Gordon Sondland who had a direct conversation with Trump.
00:35:56.000So once again, we are getting third-hand reporting by a guy with absolutely obvious conflicting interests in Lev Parnas.
00:36:03.000Mayor Giuliani told me, after meeting the president at the White House, he called me.
00:36:08.000The message was, it wasn't just military aid, it was all aid.
00:36:12.000Basically, the relationships would be sour, that we would stop giving him any kind of aid.
00:36:21.000There were several demands at that point.
00:36:24.000A, the most important one was the announcement of the Biden investigation.
00:36:28.000Okay, so again, he's got an agenda here, and we're going to have to take all of this with a grain of salt, and the biggest grain of salt of all is the House never called this guy, right?
00:36:55.000Well, Robert Hyde is a human who apparently was coordinating with other members of sort of Team Giuliani.
00:37:05.000Hyde had a relationship with Lev Parnas that involved sending a large volume of WhatsApp messages and there are accusations that Hyde was stalking Maria Ivanovich.
00:38:04.000According to NPR, Ukraine's national police are now investigating And whether U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was under surveillance in Kiev last spring, something implied in a series of WhatsApp messages between Robert Hyde and an associate of Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer, between Lev Parnas and Robert Hyde.
00:38:20.000The text made public between Parnas and Hyde, a Trump supporter and retired Marine running for Congress in Connecticut, suggested that Yovanovitch was being monitored both electronically and in person in an apparent breach of diplomatic security.
00:38:33.000Hyde wrote in one message, they are moving her tomorrow.
00:38:35.000He added, the guys over there asked me what I would like to do and what's in it for them.
00:38:38.000Ukrainian authorities said the implication that an ambassador was under illegal surveillance and her electronic gadgets were interfered with by the private persons at the request of U.S.
00:38:45.000citizens suggests a possible violation of its own laws, as well as the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which protects diplomats on foreign soil.
00:38:53.000So, in other words, Lev Parnas, the guy who is testifying that this is all Trump's fault, was coordinating with Robert Hyde, possibly, according to these text messages they seem to suggest, in order to surveil Marie Yovanovitch.
00:39:03.000And, according to Parnas, all this is coming top-down from Trump.
00:39:06.000Which is weird, because Trump could have just fired Yovanovitch anytime he wanted.
00:39:17.000Now, it's possible that idiocy explains all of this and that Trump is involved deeply in the idiocy, but we're going to need to talk to somebody who actually talked to Trump.
00:39:24.000And that is why, in the end, all that's going to happen here is the Senate is going to have to call some of these people as witnesses.
00:39:31.000The Senate will, in fact, call these people as witnesses.
00:39:33.000There is not enough support in the Senate to just dismiss the charges outright, especially not with all of this roiling.
00:39:39.000So, this impeachment thing in the Senate could actually get fairly interesting between talk about the Impoundment Control Act and Lev Parnas and all the rest.
00:39:47.000But, suffice it to say that the media's newfound obsession with Lev Parnas, hero of the resistance?
00:39:57.000Lev Parnas is under indictment right now for corruption.
00:40:01.000Those are not your best sources when it comes to an unbiased view of what exactly is going on here, especially when they're appearing on Rachel Maddow and enthusiastically feeding her whatever it is that she wants to hear.
00:40:11.000So that is your latest on the bombshells in Impeachment Gate 2020, which is in fact eating up.
00:40:15.000I mean, both of those are relevant pieces of information.
00:40:20.000Again, the GAO story, I tend to actually kind of agree with the GAO's assessment, but that does not mean that it's impeachable.
00:40:25.000It just means a problem between the executive and the legislative branch that has a statutory remedy.
00:40:29.000You have Parnas stuff, the idea that the president was telling him to go get people to shadow Yomanovich, or that the president was telling Lev Parnas that he ought to go dig up nefarious information on Joe Biden or all.
00:40:43.000Again, that is third-hand stuff, and the Democrats could have called Parnas at any time, and they could call Giuliani at any time, but they are not calling any of these people, which is, at the very least, somewhat suspicious.
00:40:53.000Better for them, frankly, that Trump gets acquitted, and then they can sit around talking about how it's a giant cover-up by all the Republicans.
00:40:59.000I think that is what they're looking for at this point.
00:41:01.000Okay, meanwhile, in the 2020 Democratic presidential race, we saw Rock'em Sock'em Robots in the debate.
00:41:06.000The other night it was really between Sanders and Warren.
00:41:09.000Elizabeth Warren suddenly conveniently remembered like two weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, which by the way are going to be wild because the Iowa caucuses this year are going to be held differently than they have been in past years.
00:41:21.000Come down to who has the most delegates.
00:41:23.000Now, the Democratic Party is going to announce who has the most votes at the beginning of the night, who has the most votes at the end of the night, and the number of delegates won, which could create the ability for several candidates to claim victory, because just because you win the most votes does not mean that you win the most delegates in caucus states, because again, the caucuses are not held on raw voting power, not on aggregate voting power, right?
00:41:44.000The way that you have certain caucuses, and the caucuses, if a majority of the caucus votes for a candidate, then all of that caucuses Electoral votes, all of its delegates go to that candidate.
00:41:54.000So it's sort of like the Electoral College.
00:41:56.000There could be a difference between the popular vote and the Electoral College in Iowa, effectively speaking.
00:41:59.000Well, that could create room for conflict.
00:42:03.000Well, as you're saying, Elizabeth Warren the other night suddenly conveniently remembered two weeks out that Bernie Sanders is a brutal sexist.
00:42:10.000And then you'll recall the magical moment after the debate Where Elizabeth Warren went up to Sanders, Sanders stuck out his hand to shake her hand, and she immediately started berating him about something, and Tom Steyer, awkwardly in the background, started to back away like Homer Simpson into the bushes.
00:42:24.000Well, now, CNN has released the audio of this exchange.
00:42:29.000How is that even remotely journalistically decent?
00:42:32.000Truly, like, that's a serious question.
00:42:35.000You know, we have all of these, like, if you're on CNN and you're one of the candidates, your assumption, fairly, is that after the debate is over, your mic is off, right?
00:42:46.000And the fact that CNN is not, like, CNN's not releasing the conversations that are going on in the background right here between Joe Biden and Tom Steyer or anything, right?
00:42:53.000They're only releasing the conversation between Warren and Sanders.
00:42:57.000I mean, I think Sanders's people have absolute reason to complain here.
00:43:00.000Why is it that CNN is conveniently releasing audio I think you called me a liar on national TV.
00:43:45.000Elizabeth Warren is awful, and she comes off awfully in that exchange.
00:43:48.000The Sanders-Warren thing is not good for the Democratic Party.
00:43:51.000It really is not, which is why party leaders are apparently freaked out Over the Warren Sanders split.
00:43:56.000The Washington Post has an entire piece today about this freakout taking place on the top level.
00:44:00.000They say an angry split among liberal Democrats broke into the open Wednesday as two prominent presidential candidates exchanged accusations of dishonesty, raising fears among party leaders of a repeat of the internecine bitterness that many Democrats say contributed to President Trump's victory in 2016.
00:44:15.000The dispute simmered all day between Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren over whether he had told her that a woman cannot win the presidency.
00:44:21.000Social media users identifying themselves as Sanders supporters used snake icons to symbolize Warren's ostensible duplicity, played up her Republican roots, and circulated a hashtag that never Warren hashtag.
00:44:32.000So things are getting ugly over in the Democratic Party, which is probably why they would prefer to focus in on impeachment.
00:44:36.000whether many of Sanders' supporters are sexist, and whether he contributed to the party's disastrous 2016 loss with a display of self-centered petulance.
00:44:43.000So things are getting ugly over in the Democratic Party, which is probably why they would prefer to focus in on impeachment.
00:44:48.000Okay, time for a quick thing I like, and then we'll get to a thing I hate.
00:45:27.000There are certain things the duo appears open to considering, this is according to Variety, and other conversations that are non-starters when it comes to selecting the next bond.
00:45:34.000He can be of any color, but he is male, says Broccoli.
00:45:36.000I believe we should be creating new characters for women, strong female characters.
00:45:39.000I'm not particularly interested in taking a male character and having a woman play it.
00:45:43.000I think women are far more interesting than that.
00:45:46.000Okay, it's time to cancel them, obviously.
00:45:47.000They just said that women and men are different, and that you can't just have a woman play a male character, or a male player play a female character, and then expect that the dynamics are exactly the same.
00:46:01.000Every female character should be played by a male, and every male character should be played by a female, because males and females are exactly the same.
00:46:08.000We should remake Casablanca, except that Rick and Ilsa are Rick and Bob.
00:46:51.000If you change the gender dynamics, it does not work.
00:46:53.000The entire appeal of James Bond is that he is a competent man who can bed any woman.
00:46:57.000That is the appeal of James Bond as a character.
00:47:00.000That is why he's a long-standing character.
00:47:02.000You know what we call... James Bond is a rogue, but he's a rogue with a heart of gold, and he is utterly capable with women, so he's wish fulfillment for a lot of dudes.
00:47:11.000You know what we call a woman who can bed any man?
00:47:31.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:47:33.000With all the focus here in the United States on domestic politics, have you noticed that America's two greatest enemies are now lifelong dictatorships?
00:47:45.000So Xi Jinping over in China has declared himself dictator for life.
00:47:48.000The Communist Party is ensconced, well ensconced there, presumably for as long as the West allows it to be without any sort of economic sanctions.
00:47:58.000That is a dangerous move, especially because China is getting more and more aggressive on the international stage, as the people of Hong Kong can attest.
00:48:04.000Well, yesterday we found out that Vladimir Putin has essentially made himself dictator for life.
00:48:08.000This has been true since he took office in, what, 1999?
00:48:10.000He's been in power for 20 years at this point.
00:48:14.000According to Russia Today, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has announced that the entire government is resigning in a surprise statement released shortly after President Vladimir Putin delivered his annual State of the Nation address.
00:48:25.000Accepting the resignation, Putin thanked the ministers for their hard work and asked them to function as a caretaker government until a new one can be formed.
00:48:31.000Medvedev and Putin had met for a work meeting to discuss the State of the Nation address earlier on Wednesday.
00:48:36.000Medvedev explained that the cabinet is resigning in accordance with Article 117 of the Russian Constitution, which states, The government can offer its resignation to the president, who can either accept or reject it.
00:48:47.000During his speech, Putin said he intended to create the position of Deputy Secretary of Russia's Security Council, which would then be offered to Medvedev.
00:48:53.000So instead of Medvedev having sort of an independent position in the Russian government, now he will just be purely and simply without any sort of, without any sort of obfuscation, a lackey of Putin directly.
00:49:03.000Medvedev's move to the new rule will mean Russia will have a new Prime Minister when a new government is formed.
00:49:13.000He is one of the world's worst people.
00:49:14.000This is why, when you hear people on the right these days defending Vladimir Putin, why can't we be friends with Vlad?
00:49:20.000Because he is an old KGB thug who wishes to maximize Russia's security presence in the world, expand its borders, and oppress dissenters.
00:49:29.000He's a bad man, and he just enshrined his own dictatorship basically forever.
00:49:35.000Putin also proposed multiple amendments to Russia's constitution.
00:49:38.000His proposals would entail substantial changes to the constitution, as well as to the entire balance of power, the power of the executive, the power of the legislature, the power of the judiciary.
00:49:48.000Putin will now, under the Putin plan, the State Duma, which is the lower House of Parliament, will be granted the power to appoint the Prime Minister and the rest of the Cabinet, as opposed to just approving their candidacies, as is currently the case.
00:49:59.000And the State Duma is basically run by Putin.
00:50:01.000Another idea voiced by Putin is to make the consultation body, the State Council, a permanent fixture, with its status and role written into the Constitution.
00:50:09.000The President praised the Council's effectiveness, stressing its working groups ensure that the most important problems for the people are thoroughly looked into.
00:50:18.000Even according to RT, which is a Russian government outlet, basically.
00:50:21.000They say that this is a step towards diversification of power.
00:50:45.000Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with all the latest developments and news is breaking fast, so you're going to want to stick around for that.
00:50:50.000Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
00:51:23.000Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:51:26.000You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.
00:51:32.000But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.