Off The Cuff Declassified： Trouble for Comey, Unsolved homicides, & liberal media reined in
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Summary
Today on Off The Cuff: Trouble for James Comey as the impending inspector general s report allegedly paints him as insubordinate. Robert Mueller ratchets up his intimidation tactics. Daniel Horowitz joins me to discuss the latest Supreme Court decision.
Transcript
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Today on Off the Cuff Declassified, trouble for James Comey as the impending inspector
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general's report allegedly paints him as insubordinate. Robert Mueller ratchets up
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his intimidation tactics. Daniel Horowitz joins me to discuss the latest Supreme Court decision.
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I'm going to tell you about 50,000 unsolved homicides in the U.S. and why many are occurring
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in the same areas? And big trouble for liberal television personalities. One has reined in,
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Trouble for former FBI director, fired FBI director, James Comey as this impending inspector general's
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report paints him as having had defied authority and being insubordinate. Now,
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there are elements of this OIG report leaking. That's why I say allegedly, we don't know
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if what we're seeing now will comport with the full report, but I suspect it will. This was being
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reported by ABC News, and I'm reading to you from a New York Post story, citing a draft of inspector
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general Michael Horowitz's report, ABC, that Comey was rebuked for failing to consult. And I'm going
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to tell you my problems with it. Because it's problematic for Comey, but it really doesn't
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help the Republicans, Trump. So citing a draft of I.G. Michael Horowitz's report, ABC said Comey
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was rebuked for failing to consult with then attorney general Loretta Lynch and other top DOJ
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officials before he announced the FBI completed its investigation into Clinton's personal email
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server. During the July 5th news conference, which we all remember, Comey said there was
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no, quote, clear evidence that Clinton, quote, intended to violate the law, but he called her
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handling of the classified information, as you well remember, extremely perilous. Now, the report
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supposedly also slams Loretta Lynch for handling of the investigation, especially that June 2016
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meeting with Bill Clinton on a private jet. That I've been telling you for well over a year,
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that meeting was filthy. It is unheard of. Unheard of in an investigation for the chief prosecutor
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to meet with the husband of the suspect without any other attorneys present. It is bizarre. It doesn't
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happen. It is completely improper, possibly illegal. Now, the draft report also said that Comey ignored
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objections from inside the Department of Justice when he alerted Congress that the FBI had reopened the
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probe in a Clinton's email server 11 days before the election. Comey was all over the place. Comey was all
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over the place. Now, this OIG report bothers me for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's going to make
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it look as if Comey tried to throw the election for Trump. By calling him insubordinate, by saying that
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he acted, he defied authority, it will give Trump's firing of him cover. But no one is going to be
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criminally charged for trying to engage in a soft coup against a political campaign, then the campaign
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president-elect and president-elect and now the president of the United States. And that's off
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coup, of course, trying to be carried out with Robert Mueller's bogus investigation. So while I'm
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happy to see Comey being called to task in some way, I'm very disappointed at how tepid, how softly
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this is all being worded. He defied authority. He was insubordinate. None of this is really
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Comey broke the law. He leaked classified memos. We, OIG, agree with Congress. He should be criminally
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referred for prosecution. We're not seeing that. And that concerns me because Mueller's team,
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man, are they getting heavy handed? This from CNBC, but it's all over the place. Special counsel
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Robert Mueller's team is requesting that witnesses, mind-blowing, that witnesses turn in their personal
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phones to inspect their encrypted messaging programs. Absolutely not. So think about this now. I'm going
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to read you. I'm going to read you excerpts from the left-leaning lawfare blog where even they, and they
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despise Donald Trump over there. They're very concerned about the level of evidence Mueller has
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with regards to witness tampering on the part of Paul Manafort. They call it virtually non-existent.
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So what Mueller's team is doing here, and let me read you a couple of excerpts and we'll analyze.
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This from CNBC. Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is requesting that witnesses turn in their
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personal phones to inspect their encrypted messaging programs. This is the more problematic part.
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And potentially view conversations between associates linked to President Donald Trump.
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And they're asking people to turn these phones in, and many are because they don't want to be
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subpoenaed and have to spend more money figuring out if what Mueller is doing is constitutional.
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This has now gone from prosecutorial misconduct to potential criminal abuse of authority, in my
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opinion. Since as early as April, Mueller's team has been asking witnesses in the Russia probe to turn
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over phones for agents to examine private conversation on WhatsApp, Confide, Signal, and Dust,
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all encrypted applications, according to the sources who spoke, of course, on the condition of anonymity.
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Fearing a subpoena, witnesses have complied and given over their phones. This is killing.
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The United States government, via an unrestricted, unmanaged, unmanageable special counsel with seemingly
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unlimited power who works outside of the Department of Justice, a man who went through no confirmation
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process, is now violating, with a wink and a nod, the Fourth Amendment protections of Americans.
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Give me your cell phone. I want to look at all your encrypted apps.
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Or, hey, we can do this the hard way, or we can do this the easy way.
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The hard way is I get a subpoena, and it costs you another $100,000.
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You might win. You're probably going to win. But do you have the $100,000?
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I didn't think so. Give me the phone. What Mueller is doing now is disgusting.
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Now, this is beyond Trump, beyond Manafort, beyond Gates, beyond General Flynn, beyond Papadopoulos.
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This is now the Constitution. Mueller is now abusing,
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rampling the constitutional rights of Americans.
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Now, they're saying that the revelation that Trump associates are giving Manafort access
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to their encrypted apps comes, obviously, as Mueller is alleging that Manafort tampered with
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witnesses. And we're going to get into that in a moment. And why some people think that is a
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ridiculously silly allegation. Now, we spoke about that, that Mueller is alleging that Manafort
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called certain people in a business he was involved in that has ties to the Ukraine
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to influence their testimony, influence what they tell investigators. However, like I said,
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the Lawfare blog, which we'll get to in just a bit, finds this claim very dubious.
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And they do one of the best jobs at analyzing the individual conversations
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and explaining why they think Mueller's claim is flimsy and, you know, razor thin, paper thin
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at best. But let's take a look at the bigger problem here. Now, we use encrypted apps like
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Confide, like Signal, like WhatsApp to protect our privacy. We don't want anybody looking at our
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conversations, the least of which is government, especially if we're witnesses. We're not subjects.
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We're not under criminal investigation indictment. Now, the CNBC explains what these are. And they
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explain how certain services encrypt your messages. Others like dust. Your messages go away. They turn
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to dust in 24 hours. Now, legal experts are not surprised by Mueller's move. It isn't surprising
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that witnesses voluntarily giving over possible evidence to federal investigators. And Robert Ray,
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who was an independent counsel during Bill Clinton's whitewater investigation, says it's just more
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typical for law enforcement to ask for consent for the obvious reason that it's much easier
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than applying to the court to get judicial permission, meaning a subpoena or a warrant.
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He added, it's not that it's not it's not commonplace, but not all that unusual either.
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Now, Michael German, a retired FBI agent and a current fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice's
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Liberty program. There's nothing wrong with asking people to voluntarily provide information to the
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FBI for whatever investigation. And to the extent that that's a voluntary action is where the rub is.
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That's the point. That's the point. Is it voluntary if the government says to you,
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we're going to get a subpoena? And if you don't give it to us, well, maybe you're doing something
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wrong. So are you voluntarily giving over the phone or are you waiving your Fourth Amendment rights
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under duress because of the threat of a crushing legal bill, your name being smeared, a potential
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investigation, them potentially jamming you up on some bogus false statement charge because,
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excuse me, my allergies are terrible because you've watched them do it in the past.
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That's the problem here. Is it voluntary? Is it voluntary? I don't think it is. I think that
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Mueller has shown himself to be heavy handed. Mueller has kicked in Paul Manafort's door at five
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in the morning and frisked his wife while she was in her nightgown at gunpoint. You don't do that
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in white collar crime cases. Mueller is acting in one of the most heavy handed intimidation tactic
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fashions I've ever watched a prosecutor operate. Now on to what the lawfare blog says. Now it's
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written by Paul Rosenzweig. This guy is a veteran of the Department of Homeland Security. He's a left
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leaning guy. He hates Trump. He even says in the second paragraph of this piece, I yield to no one
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in my disdain for President Trump. And I certainly have no brief for Manafort.
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Manafort. Hmm. He's that is no friend of the administration. So this is entitled the Manafort
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tampering allegation. And this guy, Rosenzweig, who just said he yields to no one in the disdain
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of President Trump. He has no brief for Manafort. Let me read you that paragraph. I yield to no one
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in my disdain for President Trump, but I certainly have no brief for Manafort, who has been accused
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of laundering tens of millions of dollars from sources connected with Russia and the Ukraine.
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Thus, my overall assessment is that Manafort has some significant legal exposure and that
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given his role in the Trump presidential campaign, that exposure is of concern to Trump and of interest
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to the special counsel. Now, I disagree with Rosenzweig there because Manafort was only around the
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campaign for weeks. His exposure to Trump was limited to talking about delegate wrangling when
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they were talking about a brokered or a contested convention. Manafort was not well liked by the
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grassroots ground teams, the state directors. Manafort was in. Manafort was out. So his role in the
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Trump campaign, really no big deal. But even after saying that, this guy, Rosenzweig, says,
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all that said, I think the special counsel's allegations of witness tampering are dot, dot, dot rather
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thin. And what he basically says is that the evidence of communications between Manafort
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and witnesses, he is alleged to have contacted in a tampering effort. Well, all that is really flimsy,
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thin at best. I'll read you what he writes. Study that exhibit, the exhibit N, and you will see that
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Manafort was successful in speaking to one witness for exactly one minute and 24 seconds.
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He attempted three other calls that did not connect, and he sent two WhatsApp messages,
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one a link to an article describing his indictment, and the other saying, we should talk.
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When asked about the contents of the conversation with Manafort, according to paragraph 14 of the
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FBI declaration, person D1 said that, quote, Manafort stated that he wanted to give person D1 a heads
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up about Habsburg and that D1, the subject, immediately terminated the call because they were concerned
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about that conversation being deemed improper. That is hardly witness tampering. If a person is
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indicted and charged and they call somebody they did business with and said, hey, take a look at this
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news item. I just want to give you a heads up. I want to explain it to you. That's not witness tampering.
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He goes, and that's it, really. The other part of the allegation is that someone else,
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person A, reached out to person D2 and told D2 in a series of texts that P, presumably Paul Manafort,
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was trying to reach D1 to brief him. And that, quote, basically P, presumably Paul Manafort,
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wants to give him a quick summary that he says to everybody, which is true, that our friend never lobbied
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in the U.S. and the purpose of the program was the EU, end quote. A month later, person A reached out
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to D1. Now, the key to all this is person D1's perception. He says he thinks that Manafort was trying to
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suborn his perjury because he knew that the Habsburg group had, in fact, lobbied in the United States.
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Person D2 also seemed to think that Manafort was doing the same. Now, they might be right.
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Manafort might have been trying to do it, but what they think without corroborating evidence,
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well, it's kind of irrelevant. And that's what Rosenzweig writes here. He writes,
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but direct evidence against Manafort is almost non-existent, non-existent, saying, quote,
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we should talk, quote, end quote, and I want to give you an update, end quote, or a heads up,
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end quote, is hardly the stuff that witness tampering charges are made of. And more to the
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point, he writes, if the entire conversation in which Manafort participated lasted for less than a
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minute and a half, remember, a minute and 24 seconds, he'd have to be a very, very fast talker
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to have accomplished tampering. All of this really describes very nicely what Robert Mueller's been
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doing to date, doesn't it? Twisting arms, using intimidation tactics, and leveling bogus charges
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on virtually no allegations because he needs a scalp, because he needs a scalp. So this guy,
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I want to read you his summary. He writes, so what's going on here? Why would Mueller's team,
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whose actions to date have been premised on overwhelming evidence? That's not true.
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Take this risk and go out on this evidentiary limb. My speculation is simple. This is a sign
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that they are feeling pressure, possibly from Trump, possibly from Rod Rosenstein, possibly just from
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reading the public tea leaves. Whatever the source of that pressure, they have an increased sense of
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urgency to move quickly. And that translates to the want and need from Manafort's cooperation.
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By doing this, we spoke about it yesterday, by twisting arms, by threatening witnesses,
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by putting pressure on them, by throwing these bogus charges at Manafort of witness tampering,
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you pressure Manafort to cooperate and put an end to this before Mueller is publicly discredited and
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shamed further. This is a perversion of our criminal justice system. From the OIG report going,
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what I think is soft on Comey, to Manafort trampling the Constitution. And it all needs to come to a
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Busy, busy week for Supreme Court decisions. The president seems to be pardoning anyone he wants
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to pardon, which I don't have a problem with, but others do. Although I will say I haven't seen anybody
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yet that I have a problem with. Here to make sense of it all is my good friend, Daniel Horowitz,
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senior editor of Conservative Review and somebody who is very passionate on these issues. Daniel is
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often my go-to guy on Supreme Court decisions. Daniel, thanks as always for being here.
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Busy, busy. I know both of us are hoarse because we're talking so much about this.
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All right. First, the masterpiece decision. So let's break this down. Seven to two,
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I believe Kagan, she voted with the Conservatives on this one, right?
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She did. And it's a trap. Okay. Well, explain this because you've been one of the few people
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out there that doesn't like this decision, that's really digging in. Run with it. Explain why this
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is a trap. What's wrong with this decision? Of course, we're talking about the decision in favor
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of the bakery that refused to bake a cake, a wedding cake for a gay couple.
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Sure. I have the right, John, to go into your house, take your cookies on the table,
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take the milk in the refrigerator, take your pillows. And you know what? I could even take
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your wife. But see, in this case, I was really, really rude about it. And they said,
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you can't do that. You just can't do that. And you're like, well, what's the that? Well,
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be rude about it. Okay. Okay. So your initial, just for the audience, your initial assessment is
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they didn't, they didn't address the underlying offense. The one thing is they, they, they look,
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they didn't, they didn't address it. They didn't address the underlying offense legally. They
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addressed a symptom. They're saying you could rip somebody off. Just be polite when you do it.
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But, but let me just say it a little stronger. It's not just that they didn't address it. They
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didn't address it in a legally binding way because it wasn't relevant to the case, but they absolutely
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said very clearly that, and this is not a direct quote as, but as a general rule, you as a private
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business owner cannot assert religious liberty rights to deny people service. It was, they were just
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saying in this case that they were set up, they weren't, they did the Colorado, Colorado civil
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rights commission did not apply your law neutrally. If you actually do a word search on neutral in the
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opinion, it comes up over a dozen times. The ACLU lawyers are right. You know, I agree with them in
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the sense that they lost the battle, but won the war. Most other circumstances.
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Daniel, let's, let's go there. So are you saying they won the war because of, and what you paraphrase
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the Supreme court ultimately saying the Colorado civil rights commission got this one wrong. So we
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have to rule in favor of the bakery. However, in the broader sense, we feel that a baker should have to
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bake a cake for a gay couple because that baker doesn't have a right to exert religious liberties
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as a reason to deny service. That, and also in conjunction with the fact that the lower courts
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like the ninth circuit have already done this in the Stormans case, forcing a pharmacy to stock their
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shells with every type of contraception, many other cases. And the, and the Supreme court is not taking
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up the appeal. So did we a hundred percent officially lose yet? No, but that's my point.
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We need to act legislatively in Congress and the state legislatures to protect this beforehand.
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This is the equivalent of being in between Windsor and Obergefell on gay marriage. You didn't yet lose,
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but you know, you will. And that's my point here. Yeah. It's better than if it would have been a hundred
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percent the other way, but I'm just telling you the fact that Kagan and Breyer signed on
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was a way of, of screwing us in the long run. And we, and it's hanging by a thread and, you know,
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like anything hanging by a thread, you got to come there and secure it immediately.
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But what is the solution? Is it, is it legislative, the solution where, where states and the federal
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government have to enact legislation that says, that says businesses can absolutely
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accept religious liberties to deny service. And it's a simple, that is absolutely true.
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Mississippi is the only state that has done that. Um, it's, it's a disgrace. Republicans have
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control, super majorities in the state legislatures and like 20 States. I don't know what they're doing,
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but also we need on a federal level, as I've been advocating, and this ties into immigration,
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the lower courts are killing us. And the Supreme court is allowing that this stuff to stand.
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We need to at least strip the lower courts of jurisdiction over these cases to force any
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individual private business owner to violate his conscience.
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Can we do that? Is there legal, is there legally binding precedent to strip the lower courts of
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authority to decide over these cases? It's more than that. Congress created the lower courts.
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They can break them. They can abolish them overnight. They could even strip most of the Supreme court's
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jurisdiction. It's the subject of my book back here, stolen sovereignty. Um, it is the most,
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actually Clarence Thomas recently said something about this. He said, Congress has the power to
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strip the courts over jurisdiction, the same way they have the power to coin money or declare war.
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Wow. Wow. So it's amazing that our members of Congress, when did Congress, when, when, when was
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the period in time that Congress started establishing these lower courts and essentially allowed legislation
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from the bench? Well, I mean, the lower courts, the existence of them in their proper form, not
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overturning laws or overturning constitution, it was around pretty much since 1789. Although they
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created, um, the latest one is the special appeals court in DC. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not
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talking about 1982. And what's funny is these magistrates and these, these different little courts that most
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Americans don't know about, or is what I'm talking about that seem to create these legal quagmires
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that then result in legislation from the bench. So that's a relatively recent addition to the judicial
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system, right? I was laughing last year, this special court of appeals overturned part of the VA
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accountability act, um, that led to the firing of the head of the Phoenix VA, who is at the center of
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that scandal was unbelievable. I was laughing because that entire court was created by Congress
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in 1982. And the notion that somehow they could overturn a law of Congress is insane.
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That is just, that is just ludicrous. All right. So we know what the solution now needs to be a
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masterpiece. Look, I agree with you. I like legislative solutions far better than judicial ones,
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because if you don't like it, vote for somebody else next time around. And with Congress coming up
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every two years, it's a very easy remedy on the part of the people. Now let's talk about something.
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You and I spoke about it offline. You're passionate about it. You were texting me about it last night.
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Jailbreak. You're not a fan of what's going on with regards to the criminal justice system
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in the white house. Sure. The president campaigned like Ronald Reagan on this issue. You know,
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he was more emphatic than anyone that we have. We don't have enough people in prison in general on net.
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There's, there's thousands of murderers, rapists, armed robbers, um, assault. I mean,
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all this stuff that goes uncleared by law enforcement on net.
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I'm going to be Daniel after, after our segment, I'm going to be talking about a Washington Post
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report, 50,000 unsolved homicide, over 50,000 unsolved homicides, many in the same area. So
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yeah. So believe me, it's on everybody. John, but, but the point, the reason why I'm starting
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with this point is that the entire philosophy behind this effort, it's not just about Alice
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Johnson or one person that's a straw man, like, you know, all this dreamer that served in the
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military. So therefore we need to have open borders. I mean, you can have certain narratives and there's
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what to say about her, what happened and what didn't happen and what it represents. But this is
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not a jab, but just about a pardon. And I agree. I'm okay with the concept of pardons. It's that
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legislatively, they want to uproot Reagan's entire legacy that led to two decades long decline in
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crime. It worked inversely with the growth of the prison population. I got news for you. We're already
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having jailbreak for 10 years. The, the incarceration rate per capita is down to 1993 levels. It erased the
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entire baseline increase. And incidentally crime. The last two years is going up. We got to be careful
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and balanced. Well, yeah, the FBI saw a dramatic increase in violent crimes, 2014, 2016, the 2017 UCR
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will be out. Uniform crime reporting is going to be published usually late September, early October. So
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very curious to see those numbers, but go back to Alice Marie Johnson, these pardons. I see these pardons
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more thumbing his nose in Obama's face, Trump doing that than it is about criminal justice reform or any
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ideology. Here he pardons an African-American grandmother who, uh, was a nonviolent drug
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offender. Now I have issues with that because he was trafficking tons of cocaine directly with the
00:26:18.160
Colombian drug cartels. People around her were not nonviolent. So I've got issues, but isn't this
00:26:24.260
really saying, Hey Obama, you never pardoned the black grandmother? Hey Obama, you didn't pardon, uh, uh,
00:26:30.400
people that deserves it. Hey, George W. Bush, you went against me. You only commuted Scooter Libby. I
00:26:35.900
pardoned him. Isn't this just retaliation by Trump toward his enemies?
00:26:42.040
You know why? Maybe we should just raise taxes by 50% and say, look, we're more Democrat than you are or give
00:26:49.940
amnesty. Well, Obama, you never gave an official amnesty. I'll do amnesty better than you. We have
00:26:54.760
to look at things on principle. I mean, I'm not looking for a talking point. Hey, don't, don't,
00:26:58.500
don't say that. Don't say that too loudly. It might just happen. Well, they're actually doing that.
00:27:02.600
And Trump is getting roped into amnesty now too. What I mean by this is, is, is just broadly speaking
00:27:07.680
here. It's not too many people are only follow news when Kim Kardashian talks about it. But this thing,
00:27:14.680
I started writing about it before Trump is, is breaking his campaign promise because of Jared
00:27:20.140
and the people around him. And he's signing onto a much broader effort that is going to let go tens
00:27:27.520
of thousands of people earlier. Now, the fact that Obama went through the prison system with a fine
00:27:33.220
tooth comb and let go 1700 drug traffickers on the hardcore ones that had fell a gun felonies too.
00:27:40.300
Oh, I remember that. Yeah. Biker, biker gangs, trafficking meth, some of the, I dug into those
00:27:44.960
cases. These were bad guys. To me, the fact that the, the U S sentencing commission let go 46,000 over
00:27:52.760
the last 10 years and Obama let go specifically around 1700 drug traffickers and didn't let go this
00:27:58.680
person. That kind of tells me something. There's one thing your, your listeners need to understand.
00:28:04.000
You would know this from working in law enforcement. There's something called a pre-sentencing report.
00:28:09.440
Right. That is what the judge relies on. This gives the full picture why they did it,
00:28:15.400
their lifestyle. If it really was low level and they didn't do anything else wrong,
00:28:19.440
and it was just trying to get money. They were desperate at that time. They're not going to be
00:28:22.780
a threat. If that is true, they have the ability to unseal that document. And the media is being very
00:28:30.320
dishonest in general. When they come up with these sob stories, they're not verifying and they're not
00:28:35.640
saying, all right, if that's really true, release your pre-sentencing report, because that will show
00:28:41.020
this all. The reality is, look, you could always find. But Daniel, I'll even say you don't even need
00:28:45.660
it. When I saw the quantities of cocaine involved in her, in her sentence, she's dealing directly with
00:28:53.060
the suppliers. Like you said, the cartels, she was dealing with, with their lieutenants, brutal
00:28:58.240
murderers, these people on the streets. You know, this, this is not a mystery. The flip side is the
00:29:05.140
woman did 21 years. She was a first time offender given life without parole, did 21 years. Even the
00:29:11.040
warden of that federal facility gave her a glowing recommendation. So I guess the question is, if that
00:29:17.520
doesn't warrant a pardon, what does? So again, we don't have the full details. Why was she sentenced
00:29:23.820
to that to begin with? And again, I don't want to- I believe that's the mandatory minimum. That's the
00:29:28.620
mandatory minimum. But it's not- With that weight. It's not over, roughly 70% of people are escaping
00:29:35.820
the mandatories now. There's a lot of loopholes in them. And we have the fewest percentage getting the
00:29:41.700
mandatories as we ever had since the early 90s. That, that whole trend has been reversed. Yet this
00:29:47.560
person was always denied. She was convicted in 98. I'd love to know. 97. No, I know. But I'm saying
00:29:55.940
we're at the lowest rate. And I, I would like to know what exactly is the full story. Now I could
00:30:04.100
take you- No, I agree with you there as, as would I. All right, wait, we're going to go back to Alice
00:30:08.100
Brie Johnson, but Scooter Libby, did you agree with his pardon? Sure. I'm okay with pardons. What I'm not
00:30:15.580
okay is with carte blanche, broad statements that there are too many nonviolent people in federal
00:30:22.740
prison. Now you and I agree there. You and I agree there. You and I agree there.
00:30:26.200
State prison. Yeah, we agree there. But, but, but again, also you have to understand
00:30:32.300
the specifics of what is going on here. Let me, let me give you a perfect example of, of a case.
00:30:39.700
Jose Garcia Zarate, the murderer of Kate Steinle. We all know he murdered her. We all know that.
00:30:49.060
And that's very notorious, but picture a situation that didn't gain national attention. And he's a
00:30:54.300
random Joe Schmo that you never would have heard of. So what's happening to him now? He was acquitted.
00:31:00.260
Like many people that, you know, committed second degree murder, even first degree murder,
00:31:05.340
and they're acquitted for all sorts of loopholes. So what often will happen is the feds will come in
00:31:12.560
and be like, this guy needs to be locked up. So what is this guy being charged? Now the feds are
00:31:18.160
coming in and charging him on immigrant, on reentry charges and firearms charges, right? Let's say I come
00:31:24.780
retrospectively 20 years later. And I look at it like, come on, like firearms charges is sitting in
00:31:32.000
there. But if you would understand a full history there, the guy's really a murderer. There's a lot
00:31:37.920
of this in the federal prison where they're, they're, there's another step. You and I are on the
00:31:44.820
same page. And look, something the audience needs to know that statistically, you know, but I know it
00:31:49.560
both scientifically and anecdotally, about 70% of the cases we arrest in this nation are misdemeanors,
00:31:56.440
about 30% felony, give or take a few points. But of that, of the 30% of those felonies,
00:32:01.220
about 70% of those are pled out to misdemeanors to adjudicate them. And so Daniel, I speak from
00:32:07.360
experience. You know how many guys I arrested for a violent armed robbery that was pled down to a
00:32:11.900
misdemeanor assault or a, or a theft, a criminal possession of stolen property misdemeanor just to
00:32:18.460
get it off the docket, to get the guy a year in jail and to make the case go away. So you're a hundred
00:32:23.080
percent right on that. We need to know the facts of the arrest, the facts pre-charged, not even
00:32:29.580
pre-sentencing. I like to know the fact pattern of the arrest before I know anything else, because
00:32:34.820
that tells me more than anything that happened subsequently.
00:32:38.120
Exactly. You know, just two more points on that. There's a big problem with even a lot of our
00:32:43.320
colleagues, like, yeah, locking up people for drugs. Like what's the, okay, two things. First of all,
00:32:48.780
nobody is sitting in federal prison, not really state prison either for possession. That is just not
00:32:54.380
true. That's right. Nobody is. Nobody is. That's right. It's pled down. It's pled down to a felony
00:33:02.020
possession, but I would venture a guess. Even pled down, they're all out. There's, I have enough.
00:33:09.120
But that's what I'm saying. Even if it's on your record as a possession and you did jail time,
00:33:13.380
chances are you were trafficking and you took the plea for possession.
00:33:16.760
Yeah. Yeah. But nobody is currently sitting in federal prison for simple possession. There's
00:33:22.040
maybe about literally 20, 30 people who are, and they're illegal aliens. So they're in the federal
00:33:26.920
system just because of immigration, nothing to do with it. So they're drug traffickers and you know,
00:33:31.100
is inherent violence. And as we see, 70,000 people were killed last year, mainly from fentanyl,
00:33:38.820
heroin, meth, and cocaine. Okay. So this is not exactly, you know, everyone's talking about,
00:33:42.760
oh, the opioid crisis. Oh, well, gee, that's where it's coming from. But finally, there's,
00:33:49.720
there's a very important point to be made here. You, but you said the point, most of the time,
00:33:56.040
these are the same dudes doing other things, according to a massive study from the Bureau of
00:34:02.420
Justice Statistics. Yeah. Look, we know, we know, we know this going back to the nineties when I was on
00:34:06.900
the street, the broken windows policing theory. If you, if you arrest drug traffickers, right. And
00:34:12.320
if you arrest a guy for jumping a turnstile, you might clear three robbery warrants. Criminals are
00:34:16.700
criminals are criminals. They commit many types of crime. And the thing is, this is why we actualized
00:34:24.700
probably the best social trend in our lifetime, the miraculous decline in crime. It's because of
00:34:31.640
those drug laws that you guys hate, you know, out there in the media and politics, but it took the
00:34:37.680
bad guys off the street. Broken windows, broken windows and aggressive policing. Did you look,
00:34:43.340
if I've got to give Bill Clinton credit for anything, it was the millions upon millions he
00:34:48.300
appropriated for the safe streets, safe cities program that actually worked. It went to patrol
00:34:53.480
cars and weapons for cops and better training. There was a significant crime reduction by today's
00:34:59.540
standards. Bill Clinton would be a tea party Republican on crime. Oh yeah. And again,
00:35:04.420
it was all started with four or five pieces of legislation in Reagan's era. This was Reagan's,
00:35:10.360
one of his top three issues, legacy issues. He talked about it so passionately that we always
00:35:15.200
focus on the victim, on the criminal and not the victim. And, and, and the thing here is again,
00:35:19.940
very importantly that you retroactivity is toxic. You can't do that. There's one thing you say going
00:35:27.680
forward. You want to look at some things, but you can't just carte blanche retroactively take
00:35:32.420
people out. I'm okay with case by case pardons, but this is not what Congress is looking to do.
00:35:37.120
And what this jailbreak movement around Jared and Kardashian.
00:35:41.500
I agree with you. They want, yes, they want in mass release of prisoners and they, let's face it,
00:35:47.340
they want rights restoration so that they can take all these convicts that are going to vote Democrat,
00:35:52.200
put them back on the street and pick up a few million more democratic voters in Florida,
00:35:59.560
John, you just said the point. Concurrent with jailbreak is a movement in every state and
00:36:05.880
they're succeeding to have felons vote. And guess what? Where they're not succeeding,
00:36:09.900
like in your home state of Florida, the courts are doing it.
00:36:16.860
They're making felons vote. And so my warning to conservatives and libertarians that are jumping
00:36:23.000
on this train, you better be very careful because you need a very balanced approach this. Because if
00:36:29.880
you don't put the brakes on this, this will be just as destructive as the amnesty agenda. All these
00:36:35.320
people are going to vote Democrat. And then finally, as far as the sympathy and compassion,
00:36:39.440
forget about drug trafficking. Let's talk about murderers. If I go through the prisons and take
00:36:46.180
people that were downright convicted for murder, especially once they're elderly and have been there
00:36:50.640
for a while and they find Jesus in prison, I could concoct a documentary and focus, especially if it's a
00:36:57.640
female. And I'm telling you, I'm with you on this. Very careful. I care about. Listen, I've always said
00:37:04.500
when it comes to murder, I care about the victims. That's it. And their families. If the victims and
00:37:10.500
their families want this person to rot in prison, they should rot in prison. And if the victims and
00:37:17.200
their families don't, and the person still hasn't served their sentence, they need to serve their
00:37:21.800
sentence. Murderers get no sympathy from me, nor to rapists, nor to child molesters. Zero. I will
00:37:28.300
never see the other side of the crime. I mean, the thing, the thing, John, also to understand is,
00:37:35.480
look, when it comes to these people, it's not just a matter of justice. There's also the deterrent.
00:37:41.540
That is why we, in other words, I'm not trying to be sarcastic here. Even murderers, there's a
00:37:47.300
certain number of them, especially once they get older. If you look at them, they're probably not
00:37:52.180
going to murder again. It'll be like, why do we need to spend so much money to lock them up? But if we
00:37:56.640
make that a policy retroactively, I'll keep doing that. It's going to lose its deterrent. And I'm
00:38:02.740
not just speculating. See, look. No, look, you're not speculating. Unfortunately, we're running out
00:38:07.460
of time. I could talk to you about it all day. We see them on, we see that on a micro level with
00:38:11.700
giving cops Narcan to administer to people that overdose. You've got medics and cops administering
00:38:18.680
Narcan to the same person twice in a shift. When you are permissive toward any type of nefarious
00:38:25.560
behavior, let alone crime, you're going to encourage people to continue to engage in that
00:38:31.460
behavior. They're going to see it as a get an jail free card.
00:38:35.060
Just one more point. You can't half-ass libertarianism. Okay? So, in other words,
00:38:41.560
if you're going to be libertarian to law enforcement, I say, oh, screw the drug laws. Let the markets work.
00:38:46.640
If they want to drink the poison, let them die. And then the next generation won't do it. Fine.
00:38:50.940
But then the problem is, I don't see any Koch brother libertarians with me fighting all these
00:38:56.480
nanny state healthcare programs and the treatments and the Narcan. We bring them back alive. I'm not
00:39:01.820
saying it's a bad thing. I'm just saying. Hey, man, you are preaching to the choir. Daniel,
00:39:04.820
unfortunately, we're out of time. Daniel Horowitz, senior editor, conservative review,
00:39:08.160
always informative, always great to have you on the show, Daniel. Thanks.
00:39:13.360
Very interesting story in the Washington Post today. The Post is profiling. It actually mapped
00:39:29.280
52,000 homicides and they found areas where murders are common, but arrests aren't. Now,
00:39:39.280
they talk about murders in cities from San Francisco to Omaha, Nebraska, to Kansas City,
00:39:46.140
to Boston. And in many of these cities, in similar neighborhoods, the arrest rates are very high.
00:39:54.620
In other areas, the arrest rates are low. These cases go unsolved. So they say the overall homicide
00:40:00.680
arrest rate in the 50 cities, the Post profiled, where they looked at 52,000 homicides is 49%.
00:40:06.540
But in these areas of impunity, police make arrests less than 33% of the time. Now,
00:40:14.780
despite a nationwide drop in violence to historic lows, 34 of the 50 cities have a lower homicide
00:40:21.120
arrest rate now than they did as a decade ago. Some cities, and this is very concerning when I tell
00:40:27.900
you the name of the cities, such as Baltimore and Chicago, two cities with the highest murder rates
00:40:33.080
in the country, they're definitely in the top five, solve so few homicides that vast areas,
00:40:38.920
excuse me, solve so few homicides that vast areas stretching for miles experience hundreds of
00:40:47.000
homicides with virtually no arrest. In other places, such as Atlanta, police manage to make arrests in a
00:40:53.480
majority of homicides, even those that occur in the city's most violent areas. Now, give you an example.
00:41:01.640
Baltimore and Chicago are cities with mostly low arrest areas. Atlanta and Richmond, Virginia,
00:41:06.760
when you look at, they did a heat map on this Post article, and I encourage you to read it. I'm
00:41:12.160
going to be tweeting out the link to the article as we tweet out parts of the segment. Cities with
00:41:19.180
mostly high arrest areas, like I said, include Atlanta, Richmond, Virginia. Then Phoenix and San
00:41:25.400
Antonio, it's scattered certain areas. And it's very interesting neighborhoods right next to one
00:41:31.860
another. One will have a high arrest pattern for homicide, one will have a very low arrest pattern
00:41:36.880
for homicide. But it goes on to say that police blame the failure to solve these homicides in these
00:41:45.740
places on insufficient resources and poor relationships with residents, especially in areas
00:41:50.780
that grapple with drug and gang activity, where potential witnesses fear retaliation.
00:41:56.960
But the families of those killed, and even some officers say the fault rests with apathetic
00:42:00.880
police departments, all agree that the unsolved killings perpetuate cycles of violence in low
00:42:06.000
arrest areas. And that's true. But I do have to agree. And I will, I've got to give credit where I do.
00:42:11.600
I slam the Washington Post enough. But when they do exposés like this, they're actually very good.
00:42:16.980
They're very good. This is a very solid piece of reporting here. Now, oftentimes, when you have a
00:42:24.360
gang-related homicide, it's very difficult to close. Because if the gangbanger is going to kill that guy
00:42:30.780
or that girl, they're very easily going to kill you if you're a witness and you testify. I understand
00:42:37.900
why the people in these neighborhoods don't want to cooperate. Retaliation is a great motivator to
00:42:44.700
keep your mouth shut and your eyes closed. Now, are there some apathetic departments? Yes. But for
00:42:51.000
the most part, big city departments aggressively pursue homicides because you want your case closure
00:42:56.180
rate to be high, right? Your crime stats look horrible if you have homicide upon homicide upon
00:43:03.860
homicide that's unsolved. Doesn't look good for you. You don't stay chief commissioner sheriff very
00:43:09.300
long in that scenario. So, again, my personal experience having worked on the street in the
00:43:16.040
Bronx is that if you're not going to solve it, it's typically because no one is coming forward to help
00:43:21.740
you. The best you can hope for is a CI, somebody that you arrest on on a charge that's going to, you
00:43:27.720
know, maybe result in long jail time. They knew on the street who committed the homicide. They give the
00:43:32.600
guy up in exchange for a lesser sentence. If you can't get that, though, solving these is very,
00:43:39.600
very difficult. Now, detectives say they can't solve homicides without community cooperation,
00:43:44.200
which makes it almost impossible to close cases in areas where residents are ready to trust the
00:43:48.580
police. As a result, distrust deepens and killers remain on the street with no deterrent. Quote,
00:43:55.340
if the cases go unsolved, it has the potential to send the message to our community that we don't
00:44:00.240
care, said Oakland police captain Roland Holmgren. He leads the department CID, the criminal
00:44:05.260
investigation division, and that city has two zones where unsolved homicides are clustered.
00:44:12.500
Now, homicide arrest rates vary widely when examined by the race of the victim.
00:44:16.760
An arrest was made in 63 percent of the killings of white victims compared with 48 percent of the
00:44:21.940
killings of Latino victims and 46 percent of the killings of black victims. Almost all of the low
00:44:26.760
arrest zones are home to primarily low-income black residents. Now, now, you would think that the
00:44:34.300
post is trying to say racism, racism, but they're not. Those are the numbers I've dug in. The reason is
00:44:39.140
homicides, homicide in general, is an intra-racial crime. Whites kill whites, blacks kill blacks,
00:44:47.100
Hispanic kill Hispanics, Asian kill Asians, et cetera. The white-on-white homicides are typically domestic.
00:44:53.580
They're typically the result of a bar fight or some non-criminal beef. The black-on-black and
00:45:03.120
Hispanic-on-Hispanic homicides, sure, they have their smattering of domestic. Those are the ones
00:45:07.620
that are typically solved, but the others tend to be drug-on-drug, gang-on-gang, things of that
00:45:13.580
nature. Much tougher to get a witness. A spouse kills a spouse. A lot of witnesses, the family of the
00:45:21.340
victim go to bat, they testify against the murderer. Those cases you can close, or there's a loud
00:45:28.040
domestic, or there's a loud argument, or it's road rage, and one guy shoots another guy, and 37 people
00:45:35.700
have the license plate as he pulls away. But when you're dealing with, and those are typically the
00:45:40.100
white-on-white arrests for murder. Now, there is crossover, but murder is typically an intra-racial
00:45:46.980
crime. The majority of the data points to that. Well, the data points to the majority of
00:45:52.080
murders being intra-racialized. But when you're dealing with the minority communities, the black
00:45:57.320
Hispanic community, the fear of retaliation is higher. The relationships with the police are worse.
00:46:02.020
It's true. So what's the answer? Well, the answer really is people in these neighborhoods are going
00:46:07.800
to have to step up. They're going to have to say, look, maybe we dislike the police, but let's reflect.
00:46:13.400
Maybe we haven't been all that cooperative with them. Maybe we haven't helped them do their job.
00:46:18.520
And maybe it's time for us to start doing that, because we can't have a nation with 52,000 homicides,
00:46:26.460
almost half of them, over half of them going unsolved when the murders of black and Hispanic,
00:46:33.060
and 40% of them, 37% of them going unsolved when the victims are white. These are unacceptable numbers,
00:46:39.340
and witnesses need to step up. And really, I encourage you to read this. Great piece,
00:46:44.260
really good reporting, very interesting subject matter from the coast.
00:46:47.280
I'm going to close out the show today with some good news about a spankdown of two vile leftist
00:47:05.260
women who happen to be on TV. Samantha Bee, who was reprehensible and disgusting in the way she spoke
00:47:12.540
about Ivanka Trump, is having her full creative control on her show, polled by TBS.
00:47:19.780
TBS management will reportedly have more scrutiny over Samantha Bee's show,
00:47:23.620
Full Frontal, after the firestorm over her use of a vile word to describe first daughter,
00:47:29.720
Ivanka Trump. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the plan entails management working with the show
00:47:34.200
to prevent another incident that could drive away advertisers and draw rebukes from both ends of
00:47:39.280
the political spectrum. Well, this was long overdue and a long time coming. What Samantha Bee did was
00:47:45.340
pretty much disgraceful and should never have happened. But hey, they can blame Bee all they
00:47:52.680
want over at TBS. The problem with that is, I know how the editorial process works. Samantha Bee didn't
00:47:59.340
just say that off the cuff. Producers knew about it. It was in her teleprompter. Editors knew about it.
00:48:04.580
Standards and policy people knew about it. Network lawyers knew about it. Samantha Bee knew about it.
00:48:09.720
Samantha Bee's agent manager and personal lawyer knew about it. All of these people most likely
00:48:14.020
knew about it. That's the editorial process. Samantha Bee went ahead with it anyway.
00:48:18.520
So I love that TBS is pulling back creative control and doing something, but it's complete nonsense.
00:48:24.560
There's many of those same executives that are going to now have input in that creative control.
00:48:28.280
Well, they were complicit in this. Even better, CNN contributor April Ryan was embarrassed for
00:48:38.420
putting out fake news. And it was actually another CNN reporter that called her out. And you know
00:48:42.520
April Ryan, she is this black activist parading around and masquerading as a reporter. She's
00:48:48.060
constantly disrupting the White House press briefings. When Sarah Huckabee Sanders calls on
00:48:52.660
her and gives her a question, April Ryan doesn't stop. She speaks over her colleagues.
00:48:56.520
She disrupts the press conference. It's led to some pretty tense exchanges between Ryan and Sarah
00:49:02.300
Huckabee Sanders. Well, the president held that event to honor troops in lieu of the Philadelphia
00:49:09.800
Eagles coming a couple of days back. April Ryan, there was a heckler in the crowd. You've probably
00:49:14.880
seen the video. The heckler insulted the president. The crowd booed the heckler. The president went on,
00:49:20.640
gave a speech. It was a nice event. April Ryan, though, tweeted, breaking reporters on the South
00:49:26.240
lawn have confirmed that real Donald Trump was heckled and booed when he came out to celebrate
00:49:30.740
America. The only problem is now April Ryan's a CNN contributor. Noah Gray from CNN promptly spanked
00:49:38.880
her down and said, this is not true. There was a protester who shouted at Trump and was booed.
00:49:46.700
He said after the anthem, this man shouted, stop hiding behind the armed services in the national anthem.
00:49:52.260
He was booed, then called a Cowboys fan. April Ryan, then tried to backtrack. She took her tweet
00:49:59.780
down. He then tweeted, she deleted the initial tweet and said with a new tweet, the original
00:50:04.820
breaking boo tweet was deleted as reporters on the South lawn who told of the booing and heckling did
00:50:09.860
not see all what happened on the other side of the lawn. After the tape was watched, the heckler was
00:50:14.440
booed, not Donald Trump. But April was lying again because no reporters reported what April did.
00:50:21.560
April was the only person in the United States of America that saw it as Trump being booed.
00:50:26.380
She was called out on Twitter by reporters, people, other people in the media, people on Twitter who
00:50:33.680
watched the video and who have eyes and ears. So once again, CNN commentator and political analyst
00:50:38.980
April Ryan caught in fake news. It's happening every five minutes, but it was a really good day,
00:50:44.720
really good day to see Samantha Bee and April Ryan both embarrassed for their moronic behavior and
00:50:52.700
keep on it because it's you tweeting, you Facebooking, you're catching them in this,
00:50:56.260
you're calling them the task. Keep on it. We need more of it and less of their fake news