Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - Episode 106 LIVE: Trump Prosecutor Pleads Fifth! – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

In this episode of Firebrand Live, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GA) responds to a good Samaritan being arrested in Tallahassee, Florida, and calls for Congress to take action to protect former presidents from political prosecution funded in part by federal dollars. Also, former prosecutor Mark Pomerantz defends his decision to take on the role of special counsel in the case against Donald Trump, who is now facing an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney s office. And some legal experts question whether or not this is a good thing. Thanks to everyone who joined us on the live stream, and all the patriots who sent in their thoughts and reactions to the latest news. We are broadcasting from Room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building in the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. Our border is in total disarray, and we need to keep running those stories to get hurt again. If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then you are in the right place. This is the movement for you. Firebrand: We are in a movement, we are in it for you, my fellow patriots. Tweet Me! Timestamps: 1:00:00 - What's wrong with the Deep State? 4:30 - What is the deep state? 6:00- What are we should do about it? 7:00 8: Should Congress do? 9:15 - Who should be protected from political prosecutions? 11:30- What should be prioritized? 12: Should the DOJ investigate a former president? 15:00 | What are the boundaries of political prosecution? 16: What does it mean to be a political target? 17:40 - Is it illegal? 18:20 - Is there a special interest? 19:40- Is it ethical? 21:10 - Is this a crime? 22:10- What do we get to do with our money? 24:30 25:00 -- Is this case? 26: What should we do with my money or my time? 27:30 -- Is it a crime ? or do I get a chance to pay my money back? 35:00-- Is it possible to have a job? 36:10 37:40 -- Should I pay for my legal fees?

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:04:50.000 Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.

00:04:57.000 Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem for the Democratic Party.

00:05:00.000 He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.

00:05:03.000 So we're going to keep running those stories to get hurt again.

00:05:06.000 If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots.

00:05:15.000 You are in the right place.

00:05:17.000 This is the movement for you.

00:05:19.000 You ever watch this guy on television?

00:05:21.000 It's like a machine.

00:05:23.000 Matt Gaetz.

00:05:24.000 I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet.

00:05:27.000 Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.

00:05:32.000 They aren't really coming for me.

00:05:34.000 They're coming for you.

00:05:36.000 I'm just in the way.

00:05:41.000 Welcome back to Firebrand Live.

00:05:43.000 We are broadcasting from Room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building in the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. Our border is in total disarray.

00:05:53.000 I've got news from Tallahassee, my alma mater, Florida State.

00:05:58.000 I also have my reaction to a good Samaritan in New York being arrested.

00:06:04.000 The total mischaracterization What am I trying to say?

00:06:09.000 Miscarriage of justice that's happening there.

00:06:12.000 And certainly grateful everyone is tuning in on the live stream.

00:06:16.000 We've got folks from California, Oregon, Texas, Florida, Arizona, internationally from the UK. Travis on Facebook says the Democrats are liars. 0.80

00:06:25.000 Bob on Facebook says he's drowning in BS. Tired of the BS, wants action, not talk.

00:06:33.000 Well, I can tell you the action I was directly involved in today.

00:06:36.000 I spent hours taking the deposition of Mr. Mark Pomerantz.

00:06:41.000 Mr. Pomerantz was the person from the New York Manhattan DA's office who left, wrote a book.

00:06:50.000 We now had him before the committee.

00:06:52.000 And when it became evident that the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, Was going to take this unprecedented step and indict the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, on dubious legal grounds.

00:07:06.000 The House Judiciary Committee was understandably very concerned.

00:07:11.000 Were federal funds misused?

00:07:13.000 Were laws broken?

00:07:15.000 Were constitutional rights impaired?

00:07:16.000 All for the sake of politics.

00:07:19.000 Let's remember, this is President Trump.

00:07:22.000 It's easy to see how shady the Alvin Bragg indictment really is.

00:07:26.000 Alvin Bragg is a Soros-backed, ultra-liberal prosecutor who campaigned explicitly on taking down Trump, said he had sued Trump more than 100 times as the organizing principal of his campaign for the Manhattan DA position.

00:07:42.000 Now, Bragg's predecessor, Cyrus Vance, declined to bring charges against Trump, given the lack of Michael Cohen's credibility and presumably other major factual and legal challenges.

00:07:54.000 There was a statute of limitations problem they faced.

00:07:58.000 There was a merging of federal and local law, and Cy Vance decided not to bring an action during his tenure, and even initially Alvin Bragg decided not to, but then that changed.

00:08:11.000 Alvin Bragg bootstrapped federal campaign law to local business regulations to invent a felony where none would have existed for any person other than the left's number one target, President Trump.

00:08:26.000 Former president, leading Republican candidate for president in 2024. So should Congress take action to insulate current and former presidents from political prosecutions funded in any part by federal dollars?

00:08:42.000 It's an open question.

00:08:44.000 Enter Mark Pomerantz, the subject of this discussion we're having on the podcast today.

00:08:51.000 Mark Pomerantz described himself as one of the legal eagles of New York.

00:08:57.000 He's a top-flight shark.

00:08:59.000 And he literally volunteered to go into the Manhattan DA's office to take on a special role for Cy Vance in building this case against Trump.

00:09:09.000 When he wrote a book about it, he wrote a scene where he comes home from having obtained this position from Cy Vance.

00:09:17.000 And his wife asks him about the economic conditions of this new employment relationship.

00:09:23.000 And Mr. Pomerant said to his wife, Oh, the financial terms are outstanding.

00:09:29.000 They gave it to me for free without even knowing how much I would be willing to pay to go and prosecute Trump.

00:09:39.000 You shouldn't be able to buy your way with influence or prestige into a case just because you have a particular grievance with someone who could be a target or a subject.

00:09:52.000 When Alvin Bragg initially declines to prosecute before then deciding to prosecute, Mark Palmerance literally wrote a book slamming Alvin Bragg and many of the actions taken by the Manhattan DA's office.

00:10:07.000 He even went on Chuck Todd's Meet the Press to defend his decision to write that book.

00:10:12.000 Take a listen.

00:10:16.000 Here's some legal experts.

00:10:17.000 Barbara McQuaid, a former U.S. attorney, writing a book about a pending investigation was really poor form.

00:10:21.000 Cynthia Altsney, a former federal prosecutor, strikes me as totally improper. 1.00

00:10:25.000 Eliza Orleans, New York City public defender, this book could do irreparable damage to an ongoing investigation. 0.59

00:10:31.000 I know you've heard this criticism.

00:10:33.000 What say you?

00:10:34.000 Well, I think the criticism is unfounded, and I can tell you in a nutshell why.

00:10:41.000 First, with respect to the Stormy Daniels investigation that has gained impetus over the last month or so, the facts have been in the public domain for literally years.

00:10:54.000 In fact, as I was doing research and pulling together the facts for my summary of what would go into the book, Where I went to discover those facts was the Internet, Michael Cohen's book, and the publicly available information from the federal prosecution of Michael Cohen.

00:11:12.000 That's item one.

00:11:13.000 Item two...

00:11:14.000 In fairness, you know what was in that grand jury testimony, though.

00:11:18.000 So you know what...

00:11:20.000 You can't unknow that information, so even though you're using the public record, what you choose to excerpt is certainly not, is it not influenced by what you know took place in the grand jury?

00:11:31.000 Everything that went into the book with regard to the Stormy Daniels investigation, the financial statement investigation, was in the public domain and If there was a detail that wasn't, as soon as there's an indictment, if there is an indictment, we don't know yet whether there will be a prosecution.

00:11:51.000 If there is a prosecution, on day one, under New York's discovery law, which is among the most liberal in the United States, the defendant, in this case Donald Trump, will get everything that the DA has by way of witness statements, documents, facts, and so on.

00:12:08.000 So there's nothing that...

00:12:10.000 So in theory, anything in this book, what you're saying is...

00:12:12.000 He's going to get disclosed to him on day one, post-indictment, if one is apt.

00:12:17.000 He will get on day one all of the materials, for instance, that reveal what...

00:12:22.000 And we are back live on Rumble.

00:12:25.000 The question is asked, will Bragg be investigated?

00:12:28.000 On Instagram, Steve says, drag Bragg before Congress.

00:12:32.000 Well, this is the investigation.

00:12:33.000 We sent a letter requesting documents and witnesses, and here was the first subpoena that we had worked to convert into a deposition.

00:12:43.000 And that deposition resulted...

00:12:46.000 And Mark Pomerantz taking the Fifth Amendment.

00:12:49.000 That's what I'm here to share with all of you live on Firebrand.

00:12:53.000 Now, because Mark Pomerantz had written a book on the subject of his time at the Manhattan DA's office, because he was a Trump-hater working to build this case, because he may have broken laws on rules of legal ethics, statutes, we wanted to interview him in the House Judiciary Committee.

00:13:14.000 That interview occurred today, and I can report exclusively to our Firebrand audience.

00:13:21.000 Mark Pomerantz, the prosecutor who was literally in charge of building the case against Trump, pled the fifth to almost every question we asked him today.

00:13:33.000 I asked him if he violated Donald Trump's constitutional rights.

00:13:37.000 He took the fifth.

00:13:39.000 I asked if he violated standards of legal ethics.

00:13:42.000 He took the fifth.

00:13:43.000 I asked if he misused federal funds.

00:13:46.000 Fifth.

00:13:47.000 I asked if he broke any laws during his time with the Manhattan DA while investigating Trump.

00:13:52.000 And he exercised his constitutional right not to incriminate himself.

00:13:58.000 While every American is entitled to take the fifth, and taking the fifth in no way means that someone is guilty of anything, It sure does raise additional questions regarding the propriety of the unprecedented charging of Donald Trump.

00:14:15.000 Think about it.

00:14:17.000 Mark Palmerance was pleading the fifth to all these questions about a subject he was willing to literally write a book about.

00:14:25.000 Pomerantz even pled the fifth when Democrats asked him questions.

00:14:30.000 New York Democrat Representative Dan Goldman asked Pomerantz if he still speaks to folks at the DA's office.

00:14:37.000 He took the fifth.

00:14:39.000 Goldman asked Pomerantz if he has non-public information on these cases.

00:14:45.000 Fifth.

00:14:45.000 He even asked Alvin Bragg questions that would...

00:14:52.000 Be easily answerable just by a review of the documents before him, and he asserted the same privilege.

00:14:58.000 Something is rotten in the New York Manhattan DA's office.

00:15:02.000 I am more certain of this now than when this day started, and we are not done investigating potential misconduct, misuse of federal funds, and further concerns.

00:15:14.000 I suspect we will be calling Mr. Pomerantz back to compel responses when we are armed with a court order requiring him to do so.

00:15:24.000 I believe he engaged in a subject matter waiver of the Fifth Amendment rights he asserted.

00:15:30.000 More on that later.

00:15:34.000 Switching now to a story of a Subway Superman.

00:15:38.000 You're sitting on the subway... 0.70

00:15:40.000 In New York City, a crazed lunatic appears.

00:15:44.000 He starts threatening violence against your friends, your family, your loved ones, your spouse, your children. 0.69

00:15:51.000 Even against innocent bystanders.

00:15:53.000 Do you take action?

00:15:55.000 Do you do your duty as a free American?

00:15:59.000 Or do you just sit there, like an extra in the movie, watching the violence go down?

00:16:06.000 Well, Marine U.S. Patriot Daniel Penny probably asked himself similar questions, and he decided to act.

00:16:14.000 When the dangerously insane Jordan Neely walked into Daniel's subway car, when he was making violent threats, Daniel bravely put himself in harm's way to subdue Jordan Penny.

00:16:28.000 And to put him in a hold until the police arrived.

00:16:31.000 Daniel is even on video providing due care and releasing this person from the hold, even trying to wake him up after he was subdued.

00:16:42.000 Tragically, and in the course of this altercation that could have been avoided, Jordan Neely took his last breath.

00:16:51.000 Maybe you haven't heard of Jordan Neely.

00:16:53.000 But the NYPD has.

00:16:56.000 Jordan Neely has been arrested 42 times.

00:17:00.000 Many such cases involved crimes on the subway.

00:17:05.000 These soft on crime policies like we see in New York kill.

00:17:09.000 It's just a matter of whom in far too many cases.

00:17:13.000 And it shouldn't be the people not committing crimes.

00:17:16.000 If we reopen the asylums and put disturbed and dangerous people like Jordan Neely inside them when they need to be, maybe he'd still be alive today.

00:17:27.000 Maybe there would be some opportunity for recovery or a renewed life.

00:17:34.000 But the left doesn't actually want this.

00:17:37.000 The Soros prosecutors like Alvin Bragg They want you to fear for your life.

00:17:43.000 They would rather you die than defend yourself.

00:17:46.000 Maybe you die while asking yourself the question about whether or not you should defend yourself.

00:17:50.000 But it isn't Jordan Neely that the New York City prosecutors are removing from the streets.

00:17:56.000 They never did that, in fact, never to any success or significant oration.

00:18:01.000 It's Daniel Penny.

00:18:03.000 Daniel had the nerve to stand up to the anarcho-tyranny That is running rampant throughout New York and particularly in their public transit systems.

00:18:15.000 And now it seems he will pay dearly for it.

00:18:18.000 Look at how New York prosecutors perp walked him.

00:18:22.000 I mean, this was the guy who literally...

00:18:25.000 He stood up to protect those around him from what could have been a dangerous situation.

00:18:30.000 Now it's imperative that Daniel prevail and that Alvin Bragg drop the bogus charges against him.

00:18:36.000 This nonsense is all too familiar.

00:18:38.000 When did we see this before? 0.94

00:18:40.000 Kyle Rittenhouse faced the same evil that Daniel Penny is now facing when he defended himself against a group of armed pedophiles and rapists chasing him down to murder him in the streets.

00:18:53.000 And Firebrand listeners will also remember the case of Jose Aldo, the bodega store owner in New York City.

00:18:59.000 We talked about him on Firebrand.

00:19:01.000 Then he was one of the witnesses in the House Judiciary Committee's field hearing on crime in New York City.

00:19:07.000 He faced similar persecution when he used a knife to defend himself against a couple who tried to beat him to death when he insisted that they pay for a bag of Doritos.

00:19:20.000 In blue cities, there is an all-out assault on self-defense.

00:19:25.000 Meanwhile, they let the criminals and the dangerous and the insane seemingly do whatever they want to the rest of us.

00:19:32.000 Preventing good women and men from defending themselves and their communities is nothing new, actually.

00:19:38.000 It comes from some of the worst governments that have ever existed.

00:19:43.000 The Marxists have been doing this for ages.

00:19:47.000 Alexander Solzhenitsyn commented on this very problem. 0.84

00:19:51.000 He famously said,"...in the Criminal Code of 1926, there was a most stupid article 139 on the limits of necessary self-defense, according to which you had the right to unsheathe your knife only after the criminal's knife was hovering over you, and you could stab that criminal only if he had stabbed you. 0.83

00:20:14.000 Otherwise, you would be put on trial." This fear of exceeding the measure of necessary self-defense led to a total spinelessness as a national characteristic.

00:20:26.000 A hoodlum once began to beat up the Red Army.

00:20:32.000 Alexander Derhoff was that army member. 0.51

00:20:35.000 He was outside of a club and Zakharov took out a folding knife and he killed the hoodlum.

00:20:40.000 And for this, he got 10 years for murder.

00:20:44.000 And what was he supposed to do?

00:20:47.000 He was astonished, and the prosecutor replied, you should have fled.

00:20:51.000 So tell me, who creates the hoodlums?

00:20:56.000 This isn't unique to communist dystopias either.

00:20:59.000 Actually, 40 years ago, on March 13, 1964, in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York...

00:21:06.000 Funny how this is New York again.

00:21:08.000 See how much it's changed since 1964. So in 64, we have this case, Kew Gardens, Queens, New York, 28-year-old Catherine Genovese, known as Kitty, was brutally murdered.

00:21:19.000 But it wasn't the particulars of the killing that became the focus of the nation in this case.

00:21:26.000 It was the response, or the lack of a response, from her neighbors.

00:21:32.000 As this 28-year-old woman screamed for her life, please help me, please help me. 1.00

00:21:39.000 38 witnesses in that community did not do anything to intervene.

00:21:44.000 And according to reports, nobody even bothered to call the police.

00:21:48.000 One witness later explained himself with a phrase that passed into infamy.

00:21:54.000 Quote, I didn't want to get involved.

00:21:58.000 This was so bizarre back then in New York.

00:22:02.000 Psychologists struggled to comprehend the behavior, the despondence.

00:22:08.000 Were we all becoming sociopaths as bystanders that we wouldn't react and help someone screaming for their life?

00:22:15.000 The public quickly picked on this story as an example of the ills of contemporary urban decline.

00:22:22.000 And the decline of life in urban areas.

00:22:25.000 People even cited the general moral collapse of modern society, the decay of Western civilization because of what happened in 1964 in Kew Gardens, New York.

00:22:36.000 Back then it was shocking.

00:22:38.000 Now, it's the norm.

00:22:41.000 And if you do respond, if you do get involved, you may end up just like Daniel Penny, on the wrong end of the law.

00:22:49.000 A life ruined because you wanted to be a good Samaritan.

00:22:53.000 But the American left isn't alone in its depravity.

00:22:57.000 If you want a glimpse into the future, look at China. 0.99

00:23:00.000 China is famous for this behavior. 1.00

00:23:03.000 They are collectivists with no sense of community.

00:23:07.000 Look at this horrible video of what reality is like in China. 0.95

00:23:15.000 China is doing a little soul-searching after this heartbreaking video began making the rounds.

00:23:21.000 It shows a two-year-old girl being struck by a van, not once, but twice, as more than a dozen people walk, drive, and cycle by, ignoring her, leaving her to lie in a pool of her own blood.

00:23:36.000 The scene unfolded Thursday and was captured by a surveillance camera.

00:23:40.000 A garbage worker eventually comes to the girl's side and picks her up. 0.92

00:23:45.000 She is alive, but in a coma.

00:23:47.000 The drivers of both vehicles have been arrested.

00:23:50.000 However, the public outrage is directed mainly at those who went by and did not help.

00:23:56.000 One television commentator says the morality of the whole country has taken a hit.

00:24:04.000 We're back live.

00:24:06.000 That is the future that the left wants for us, that you just saw there on that clip from China, where we are so desensitized to human life and the loss of human life that we would walk by, that we would let bad things happen. 0.65

00:24:21.000 Well, Daniel Penny wasn't going to let bad things happen at the hands of a person who had been arrested 42 times, who was harassing and scaring the other people who were there.

00:24:33.000 We can't let this happen.

00:24:34.000 We can't let that vision from China become our America. 0.98

00:24:39.000 We have to push back.

00:24:40.000 We have to take back our streets.

00:24:41.000 And we have to repopularize the notion of duty.

00:24:45.000 The duty we have to one another.

00:24:47.000 Our brother's keeper.

00:24:49.000 Our fellow Americans.

00:24:51.000 Some say, stay out of the situation.

00:24:53.000 Don't put yourself in harm's way.

00:24:56.000 But it's our duty to act, and when good men sit silently watching as criminals and deviants take over our streets, evil gains ground.

00:25:05.000 It's not only permissible, but it's right and just to act in self-defense and in the defense of others.

00:25:14.000 This is the behavior that all great societies must encourage.

00:25:19.000 We must do our part to save Daniel Penny from the leftist lynch mob.

00:25:24.000 He deserves our support.

00:25:25.000 Today, it's a Marine in New York facing the proverbial firing squad.

00:25:30.000 Tomorrow, it's you and yours.

00:25:33.000 Alvin Bragg must drop these charges, and we must make our country righteous and just and fair again.

00:25:41.000 Daniel Penny has set up a Give, Send, Go account, and I will be donating to his legal defense personally today.

00:25:50.000 There's another story I want to bring to you regarding Florida State University, my alma mater, big news out of Tallahassee, and sadly it is the news of fraud.

00:26:01.000 Only good part is I think we've got the fraud fees are identified, caught, and appropriately exposed.

00:26:09.000 An African-American professor named Eric Stewart from the criminology department at Florida State University has abruptly left the university after more allegations of fabricating data used in his papers to make it seem like racism against blacks and Hispanics is more common than it is actually came to light.

00:26:30.000 Once again, the demand for racism is greater than the supply.

00:26:35.000 Imagine building a career on crying wolf over racism while you fake and manipulate data to support those very delusions.

00:26:46.000 That's your brain on critical race theory, I guess.

00:26:49.000 Now this story was first reported by the Florida Standard's Livia Caputo, and it's really something else.

00:26:55.000 Apparently Eric Stewart, who made quite a name for himself as a, quote, fellow of the American Society of Criminology, has had six research studies retracted. 0.90

00:27:07.000 What a doofus. 0.64

00:27:09.000 But it's not general incompetence. 0.93

00:27:11.000 It appears to be more sinister.

00:27:12.000 Stewart was first accused of falsifying data in 2019 by another professor who co-authored a study with Stewart in 2011. This particular study resulted in Stewart's findings published, saying,"...as black and Hispanic populations grow, so did the public's want for more discriminatory sentences." Sounds grisly.

00:27:35.000 Maybe even racist.

00:27:37.000 The problem was that the actual data showed the exact opposite.

00:27:43.000 Stewart had rigged the data so bad to show bias that the numbers added up to the point of a mathematical impossibility.

00:27:52.000 Since then, Stewart has authored a number of similar studies that have been retracted and put under investigation by a three-person committee at FSU. The investigation stalled, of course.

00:28:03.000 Maybe it had something to do with the fact that two of the committee members had previously authored papers with Stewart, which violates FSU's own academic conflict of interest rules.

00:28:14.000 Stewart has no other defense than to call these investigations and allegations racist. 0.96

00:28:21.000 What a clown. 1.00

00:28:22.000 Hopefully nobody takes this moron seriously anymore, and it is a shame that anyone ever did in the first place. 0.98

00:28:29.000 Thankfully, after the sixth retracted piece, the last of which coming in June of 2020, it seems Stewart has left Florida State University. 0.96

00:28:37.000 Goodbye.

00:28:39.000 His sudden unexplained absence in March of 2023 and subsequent replacement indicates his fraudulent life work has come to an end with the Knowles.

00:28:49.000 What does this teach us about academia?

00:28:52.000 The peer review process is bogus, and if fraud is ever discovered, these universities are slow to act.

00:28:59.000 The media and academia are starving for content that shows racial bias in society.

00:29:05.000 Some have literally built their careers on it.

00:29:09.000 There's so much of an incentive to put out the fake data and push this BS, but there is no oversight and little accountability when people get caught just making it up, literally making up numbers so that you believe that your fellow Americans are racist when in fact, while we all have our bumps and bruises and warts and problems, this is a just, kind, and loving society.

00:29:32.000 We need a complete and total auditing of academia and a mass purging of some of the academics.

00:29:39.000 People like Eric Stewart are simply evil and they should be ashamed of themselves for doing this.

00:29:44.000 They are absolutely, absolutely wrong to bear false witness.

00:29:50.000 In the meantime, we need to go after these ilk, catch them in their lies, and force universities to hold them accountable.

00:29:56.000 Maybe even hold federal funding back if they continue to promote this nonsense or if they turn a blind eye to manipulation of data so that there can be social virtue signaling.

00:30:07.000 We owe it to our future to force academia to do better.

00:30:13.000 Other big news of the week, I wanted to share the passage of HR2 in the House of Representatives.

00:30:18.000 I voted for it proudly.

00:30:20.000 We have got to secure our border.

00:30:22.000 We have got to get these asylum reforms in place.

00:30:25.000 And the key feature of HR2 is to not just release and parole people in the United States.

00:30:31.000 You wait in Mexico.

00:30:32.000 You wait in your home country. 0.88

00:30:34.000 If we have detention beds, people who are Justly and appropriately in the right categories to be detained should be detained.

00:30:45.000 But telling people to show up somewhere and self-report as illegal immigrants or however they've abused the asylum process to call these people asylum seekers, they're not.

00:30:55.000 It's just a legal fiction.

00:30:57.000 Anyhow, this bill, very important.

00:30:59.000 If it were law today, the Title 42 authorities that are expiring under the public health end of the emergency disaster declaration, those authorities would transition over to an immigration context and be used to turn people away.

00:31:18.000 Detain or turn away.

00:31:20.000 The vote was 219 to 213. Two Republicans voted against the bill.

00:31:26.000 One was Thomas Massey, our good friend and frequent Firebrand guest.

00:31:30.000 Thomas Massey's objection was to the E-Verify provisions of the legislation.

00:31:36.000 I support E-Verify.

00:31:37.000 You can go back and watch the episode I did with Andy Biggs, Homeland and Security, to see some of the points and arguments there around E-Verify, but that was why Massey didn't vote for it.

00:31:48.000 And the other no vote was Representative John Duarte of California's 13th District.

00:31:53.000 He put out a statement afterwards saying, quote, While I wholeheartedly support enhanced border security, valley families deserve practical solutions that both Democrats and Republicans can support.

00:32:05.000 Unfortunately, this bill would harm any families that work in our valley and create difficulties for our food producers.

00:32:12.000 So the Duarte standard for a bill he would support is that Democrats have to vote for it too.

00:32:19.000 That's quite the standard because every single Democrat voted against HR2, even the ones in the border communities who are being overrun and harmed the most by this Biblical Migration of people without permission, without process, without consequence, and it must be stopped. 0.70

00:32:40.000 H.R. 2 would solve the problem, but we know the Senate will not take it up.

00:32:44.000 Fundamentally, we will not secure this border until a Republican is in the White House because the executive powers are essential to exercise fully and thoroughly to internally enforce our existing immigration laws in our country,

00:33:01.000 To expel the people who are not here legally and to ensure that none come again without us inviting them and giving them the great extension of American grace that we've always been willing to give to people willing to do it the right way, not the people whose first act in our country is a criminal act of unlawful entry. 0.89

00:33:21.000 We'll have more on the border and on our investigative work in the coming days and weeks.

00:33:27.000 Thanks so much for joining us on Firebrand.

00:33:29.000 The big favor you can do me, make sure you share this episode, give us a five-star rating, leave a comment with the information you'd like to learn about in great detail from the United States Congress.

00:33:40.000 Appreciate you being part of our audience.

00:33:42.000 Have a great weekend.

00:33:43.000 Roll the credits.

Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - May 12, 2023

Episode 106 LIVE: Trump Prosecutor Pleads Fifth! – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

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