00:00:01.000Awesome episode in store for you today.
00:00:03.000My exclusive conversation with Judge Ken Starr, who was the impeachment lead against Bill Clinton, was on the defense team for President Trump, and speaks out against this impeachment charade and circus.
00:00:17.000Email us your questions that you might have for our guests as we follow impeachment this week, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:23.000If you'd like to support us, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.
00:00:29.000Again, that's charliekirk.com/slash support to get behind the work we are doing and support us at charliekirk.com slash support, our team of editors, our team of researchers.
00:00:41.000Please do that, charliekirk.com/slash support.
00:01:02.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:09.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:51.000Not only are you getting the lowest price ever, $29.98 for a queen-size premium, but Mike is extending a 60-day money-back guarantee to March 1st, 2021.
00:02:01.000So go to mypillow.com right now and click on Radio Listener Square and use the promo code Kirk.
00:02:08.000If you want to support Mike and you want to support MyPillow, you will also get deep discounts on all MyPillow products, including the Giza Dream bedsheets, the MyPillow Mattress Topper, and MyPillow Towel Sets.
00:02:34.000Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:02:36.000I am super thrilled to be with us today.
00:02:39.000Judge Ken Starr, a friend of mine and a board member, honorary board member at Turning Point USA, and author of the new book, Religious Liberty in Crisis, Exercising Your Faith in an Age of Uncertainty.
00:03:05.000And did you ever think after you presided over the, presided is not the right term, but you were involved in the impeachment in the 90s.
00:03:13.000You helped defend the president over the last impeachment that we'd have another impeachment a year later.
00:03:19.000What does this tell us about how impeachment is now being brought up more and more frequently?
00:03:25.000What was the framers' original intent behind impeachment?
00:03:29.000And do you even think that this impeachment is constitutional?
00:03:33.000The answer is the framers use this as or envision this as a tool of last resort, which is the way impeachment was in fact historically used.
00:03:43.000We went in our country's history for 100 years almost before the first impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
00:03:51.000Then we went for a century plus before the beginning of the impeachment against Richard Nixon.
00:03:58.000We'll, I hope, come back to that in the conversation.
00:04:01.000But a new era came in with a law that Congress passed, which was a very ill-advised law.
00:04:08.000It was one under which I was appointed as special prosecutor.
00:04:12.000The name kept changing because they couldn't figure it out.
00:04:14.000So I was known as an independent counsel at the time.
00:04:17.000And that law ushered in what I called during President Trump's first impeachment and my presentation, the age of impeachment.
00:04:25.000Boy, are we in the age of impeachment?
00:04:27.000Which is impeachment is now since that statute was passed in 1978, impeachment is simply a political tool.
00:04:35.000And that's not what the framers envision.
00:04:39.000But specifically with respect to now impeachment two, this approach of what I call eternal impeachment, you can always be impeached.
00:04:47.000Why don't we just impeach people after they're deceased as well?
00:04:52.000To make a political point, this is patently unconstitutional.
00:04:57.000I know, Charlie, a lot of people disagree.
00:04:59.000That's why it really should be resolved by the Supreme Court of the United States.
00:05:02.000I'm sorry they're not getting a shot at it because it's unconstitutional under the text of the Constitution.
00:05:07.000It's unconstitutional in the light of our history.
00:05:11.000It's also unconstitutional because of the presiding officer who's going to be United States Senator from the majority party, sort of kind of quasi-majority party, right?
00:05:48.000Due process, Charlie, as you well know, requires, among other things, a fair and unbiased presiding judge.
00:05:57.000That's what the Constitution provided for by saying when the president is impeached, and the President Trump was the president when he was impeached, but it anticipated a trial during his service as president, and thus the Chief Justice should preside.
00:06:20.000That is, the Chief Justice of the United States should receive a formal letter, in my judgment, requesting his attention as his presiding, and he would formally say no.
00:06:48.000Let's talk about a bill of attainder in one of our segments here, because if this goes forward, and heaven forbid, if there is an actual conviction, we don't anticipate that.
00:07:00.000It seems very far-fetched to even think of it.
00:07:03.000But we have to play this out to think about the constitutional issues.
00:07:07.000If he is convicted, and if the punishment is any kind of disqualification, then Congress, congratulations, Senate, you will have passed a bill of attainer, which is absolutely expressly forbidden by the text of the Constitution.
00:07:23.000A bill of attainder is the legislature can't single you out, Charlie, or any individual out.
00:07:28.000They couldn't single out Richard M. Nixon and to say, we're going to now disqualify you because you abused the powers of office, et cetera.
00:07:37.000That is another indication that this whole process is unconstitutional.
00:07:43.000Can you explain to our audience in more detail what a bill of attainder is and the significance of that?
00:07:49.000I'd like to build that out a little bit more.
00:07:52.000A bill of attainer is when the Congress of the United States, or here one body has is asserting the power to impose any form of punishment on a named individual.
00:08:02.000Instead of passing a law, it's passing a punishment.
00:08:09.000So, Charlie, when you see the arguments about, well, parliament did this and parliament did that, red flags should go up.
00:08:17.000Part of the reason that we have a separation of power system is that the founders were very aware of the dangers of congressional overreach.
00:08:27.000We do not have a parliamentary democracy, and the Congress of the United States was forbidden that power, which Parliament used to bully effect.
00:08:37.000They loved passing bills of attainers against political enemies.
00:08:43.000If the president is convicted, the former president is convicted, it will be because his political enemies, even in his own party, have said we do not want to have him run for any office again.
00:08:56.000Remember, John Quincy Adams lost the presidency, but he said, I would be very happy as a member of the House of Representatives.
00:09:03.000So, who knows what President Trump, the former president, may decide to do in the future.
00:09:13.000We live in a limited government, constitutional democracy that's designed to assure freedom.
00:09:19.000And this prohibition against a bill of attainder being passed is just another indicia of the freedoms that we enjoy.
00:09:29.000So, reading from justthenews.com, you said, and I quote, I would hope that those 10 Republicans and hopefully even some Democrats would say as we now look at the timelines, the media, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and all are reporting on, here's exactly it, the facts.
00:09:45.000You said that they made a huge, colossal blunder.
00:09:49.000And then you said, so walk back and apologize to the former president, apologize to the American people that I never should have voted in favor of this without the benefit of all the facts.
00:11:14.000And the timelines, of course, suggest that this mob rule, the mob attack, the violence was underway before the president had even finished his remarks.
00:11:26.000In our fast-paced world, it's tough to make reading a priority, at least it used to be.
00:11:30.000At thinker.org, they summarize the key ideas from new and noteworthy nonfiction, giving you access to an entire library of great books in bite-sized form.
00:11:38.000Read or listen to hundreds of titles in a matter of minutes, from old classics like Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People to recent bestsellers like Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life.
00:12:32.000Now, the 46-minute speech will be analyzed very closely, right?
00:12:37.000And we'll see exactly what the worst case that can be put on looks like.
00:12:45.000That is the least favorable to the president.
00:12:48.000But our baseline, again, in this country, is freedom, including free expression.
00:12:52.000And the idea, and this came out in one of the submissions by the House managers, that the president doesn't enjoy First Amendment rights, I think, is just profoundly in error, manifestly wrong, demonstrably wrong.
00:13:08.000The First Amendment protects all persons, including, but not limited to the president.
00:13:12.000Certainly, the president's not excised from the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
00:13:18.000It is only, so to come back to what is the core issue, incitement is when you essentially are saying, we want you to go take violent action now.
00:13:28.000And so now it's important to analyze the text as well as the context.
00:13:34.000The text points in favor of the president, especially the exculpatory text about do so peacefully, make your voices known, and so forth.
00:13:45.000And there is, thus far, no indication I've seen, Charlie, that the president was in any way advised.
00:13:51.000By the way, there's some really bad actors in this crowd.
00:13:56.000Did he have an intelligence briefing that morning that said, by the way, Mr. President, Antifa is here and some very violent right-wing organizations are here.
00:14:09.000If he had that briefing, that would be a fact that the decision makers should take into account in terms of incitement or inciting to insurrection.
00:14:37.000But he obviously, like any other citizen, is subject to the criminal justice process.
00:14:43.000Well, or so we would hope, without the kind of circus that happened in the House with no witnesses, no due process, no representation, just complete and total, you know, just a couple hour process and then you're impeached, which is extraordinary.
00:15:00.000We've never seen anything quite like that.
00:15:31.000History is a great guide, especially when we look at presidential impeachments.
00:15:36.000Each presidential impeachment was preceded by numerous and careful hearings, a sifting of the facts, an assessment of the credibility of witnesses.
00:15:59.000But the more information we actually find, it's not that simple.
00:16:04.000There were groups that were there coming with the intent to try and take federal buildings with militia gear and without any of the remarks of the president.
00:16:17.000And Judge, can you talk about for some of our younger listeners why our system is designed the way it is, why it is supposed to be deliberative, why we're not supposed to be able to convict somebody in 24 hours or less.
00:16:31.000You have to have time to be able to build a defense to submit evidence.
00:16:35.000It feels as if this is almost like the Russian system where they convicted the Alexei Novelani guy in four days or less.
00:16:44.000I said, look at the similarities between the two of this kind of rush to judgment.
00:16:49.000Can you just, from a constitutional perspective, talk about why our system is actually built that way?
00:16:55.000It goes back to Magna Carta almost a thousand years ago that government, whether it's the king, whether it's Congress, whether it's the president, whether it's the governor, can abuse power.
00:17:10.000And what we treasure in a constitutional democracy throughout the English-speaking world is power has to be limited.
00:17:19.000And that includes the power of the House of Representatives.
00:17:22.000One justice of the Supreme Court from yesteryear put it very well: the history of liberty is largely the history of procedure.
00:19:14.000This is, I'm just going to go ahead and say the House of Representatives should be condemned by fair-minded historians of tomorrow as having been carried away, intoxicated with emotion and with power.
00:19:31.000And I love your point about how the process counts, because without the process, you really don't have the system that is considered to be the greatest justice system in the world.
00:19:42.000As William Blackstone said, it is better for 10 guilty people to walk than one innocent person to suffer.
00:19:50.000The system is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.
00:19:54.000And if you don't even have a representative from the side of the accused, especially at the highest level of government, which is the legislative branch, then what does that say for the entire system itself?
00:20:04.000And the irony, Judge, is that most of the people that were overseeing it were lawyers themselves.
00:20:09.000You know, most of the people that were actually doing the House impeachment management, they have law degrees.
00:20:15.000They know better than this, don't they, Judge?
00:20:46.000The Bill of Rights, of course, was part of the Great Compromise because a lot of people oppose the Constitution because there was no Bill of Rights.
00:20:54.000And so Mr. Madison, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, rightly dubbed so, says, okay, I got it wrong.
00:21:05.000As a political matter, I got it wrong.
00:21:58.000You can't be subject to unreasonable searches and seizures.
00:22:01.000You can't have your property or your life or your liberty taken without due process of law.
00:22:05.000You've got to have the right to counsel.
00:22:08.000You have a right to a jury trial in civil cases, right?
00:22:11.000Eighth Amendment, the government cannot punish you in a cruel and unusual way.
00:22:15.000And then, of course, the ninth and tenth amendments are structural amendments to reserve power to the people and to the states.
00:22:23.000And the thought process behind that entire system is one that the government, if not given specific rules for what the government cannot do, will abuse its citizens.
00:22:36.000And power can be abused against the people.
00:22:43.000Look, conservatives are getting kicked off social media and it's not okay.
00:22:46.000So why exactly are we choosing to give these big tech companies all of our personal data?
00:22:52.000Protect your personal data from big tech with the VPN I trust for my online protection, ExpressVPN.
00:22:58.000You see every device, whether you're on your phone, laptop, or TV, has a unique string of numbers called an IP address.
00:23:03.000When you search for stuff, watch videos, or even click a link, big tech companies can use that IP address to track all your activity and tie it back to you.
00:23:10.000When I use ExpressVPN, my connection gets rerouted through their secure encrypted servers.
00:23:14.000So these companies can't see my IP address at all.
00:23:16.000My internet activity becomes anonymized and my network data is all encrypted.
00:23:20.000And the best part is you don't need to be tech savvy at all to use ExpressVPN.
00:23:23.000Just download the app on your phone or computer, tap one button, and you're protected.
00:23:27.000Protect your internet activity with the VPN I use every day.
00:23:35.000You get a three extra months free on a one-year package.
00:23:38.000That's expressvpn.com slash kirk to get three extra months free, expressvpn.com/slash kirk.
00:23:47.000Judge, I want to talk about your book and how you build this out.
00:23:51.000And I want to reiterate the title, Religious Liberty in Crisis: Exercising Your Faith in an Age of Uncertainty.
00:23:58.000And so we saw the lockdowns this last year, which has really put the church through difficult times.
00:24:04.000My pastor has remained open since May and has been fined and has been ridiculed, investigated by local and state authorities for just opening his church.
00:24:15.000Whereas other assemblies seem to be deemed appropriate, the church seems to be singled out.
00:24:20.000Can you talk about how we do have the free expression clause and we have the establishment clause when it comes to religion in our country about how the church actually does have separate constitutional carve-outs to assemble, different than if we were just going to a sporting event or to a concert?
00:25:24.000Does the government have absolutely no power?
00:25:26.000What if you've got a small sanctuary and 10,000 people are coming in?
00:25:31.000Ah, you do have the police power to say, okay, wait a second, 10,000 people in that small sanctuary, people are going to get crushed or whatever.
00:25:54.000And that's exactly what was happening.
00:25:57.000Governors were permitting, and the Nevada case to me was one of the most atrocious, but there were others that you can go to Caesar's Palace and it can occupy the occupancy limit was 50%.
00:26:13.000Churches were limited, regardless of the size, to 50 persons.
00:26:19.000You and I have both been to the wonderful church in Palm Beach, right?
00:26:38.000And one of the things that was made clear in all these cases is the pastors, the deacons, those in charge, the executive directors were all taking the appropriate precautions.
00:26:48.000And as one case put it, we're a lot safer than Walmart, which is open down the street.
00:26:56.000We have more social distancing and so forth.
00:26:58.000And so one of the things my book does is identify the principles of freedom as applied over the years.
00:27:06.000And the freedom here that's implicated that I spend a chapter on is the freedom from non-discriminatory action by the government.
00:27:15.000The government can't single churches out and say, oh, you're limited to 50, but Walmart or cannabis stores in Colorado, keep it at half capacity, would you?
00:27:28.000That's discriminatory, and that is a constitutional no-no.
00:27:34.000So, Judge, why is it that this was such a difficult issue for our legislators and our judges to get right?
00:27:40.000You cited the Calvary Chapel Las Vegas lawsuit that went up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
00:27:46.000Justice John Roberts sided with the four liberal justices while Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still on the court.
00:27:54.000And the four dissenting were Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch, who believed that, no, Caesar's Palace should not be given more right to assemble than Calvary Chapel, Las Vegas.
00:28:26.000But what could possibly be the reasoning for that?
00:28:28.000Well, let's just stick with, I'm not going to get into motive, but let's just stick with Chief Justice Roberts because we were surprised, right?
00:29:13.000In December, as you know, this got turned around with a case coming out of New York, the Roman Catholic diocese in Brooklyn, and lots of opinions, lots of words spilled.
00:29:26.000And really, once again, Chief Justice Roberts in dissent saying, no, I believe that we should be deferring to local officials, was really making this process point.
00:29:37.000But also, it ends well because by Christmas time, guess what?
00:29:46.000I realized there were some exceptions to that because I don't want your viewers to come in and say, hey, Starr doesn't know what he's talking about.
00:30:09.000And can you talk about the Christian tradition that has always enriched the American experience?
00:30:16.000Let me talk about the latter first, and then I'm going to talk about the Fulton versus City of Philadelphia case that's now pending before the Supreme Court.
00:30:24.000I don't know whether he's secular or he's a believer, but Robert Putnam, one of the nation's leading sociologists, co-authored a book with Professor Campbell from Notre Dame entitled American Grace.
00:30:35.000And he talks about how wonderful churches are.
00:31:08.000When Bill Buckley, one of my great heroes, William F. Buckley Jr., so I pay tribute to his memory right now, wrote God and Man at Yale talking about the secularization of Yale and sort of where's the place for God.
00:31:29.000So, this culture has changed very dramatically.
00:31:34.000And that is now putting pressures, even though so many good works are done.
00:31:39.000And we see that in the cases coming before the Supreme Court, including Fulton versus the City of Philadelphia.
00:31:46.000Sharon L. Fulton is a very devout Roman Catholic, African-American woman who has taken precious children.
00:31:54.000Her ministry is taking care of foster children.
00:31:57.000She's had over 20 in her care and keeping, lovingly so, over the years.
00:32:02.000She performs this individual ministry and social service under the auspices of Catholic Social Services.
00:32:11.000Catholic Social Services of Philadelphia has been providing this service for the children of Philadelphia for well over a century.
00:32:19.000But the current administration of Philadelphia said no more because you will not place precious children with LGBTQ families, even though no LGBTQ couple had ever requested such a placement.
00:32:39.000It's really tragic because their children, there are approximately 300 children, as I understand the record in the case, who still could use, not could use, could avail themselves of a foster home, a beloving foster home.
00:32:54.000And CSS Catholic Social Services was so respected.
00:33:04.000Okay, so Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cake Shop.
00:33:09.000This is a case that's already been decided by the court in suburban Denver, Colorado, has this bake shop, and he will serve anyone and everyone.
00:33:21.000There's no status discrimination, but he has principles, and he will not depart from those principles in terms of his art.
00:34:07.000And they come into him to celebrate their nuptials.
00:34:12.000And he says, and he had served them apparently before.
00:34:15.000I'll sell you anything in the shop, but I cannot in conscience create this cake for you.
00:34:20.000That began then his saga, which continues seven years later.
00:34:24.000But he won in the Supreme Court of the United States on freedom of conscience.
00:34:29.000And in particular, in that case, the, and this makes the point that you flagged earlier, hostility to religion.
00:34:37.000In his opinion, for the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is very sensitive to issues of coercion, freedom of conscience, and so forth.
00:34:48.000So Jack Phillips prevails in the Supreme Court of the United States in a powerful opinion by Justice Kennedy.
00:34:55.000And one of the things that I'm trying to say in the book is not the lower courts, but the Supreme Court of the United States has been, over these last 20 to 30 years, a friend to religious liberty.
00:35:11.000We have to not take these kinds of onslaughts lying down if we're not taken to court, we being friends of faith of all faiths, including those of no faith.
00:35:24.000We're talking about the rights of conscience here for all Americans, which is so fundamental to our constitutional system.
00:35:32.000So, Judge, if you could clarify a question we get quite often here, where people say it is illegal to discriminate based on religion and it is illegal to discriminate based on race.
00:37:06.000I don't think it necessarily should be because what if all of a sudden Turning Point USA had to, you know, allow every socialist into our organization?
00:37:16.000So it could, in some ways, if it was just viewpoint or politics, it could cause some problems down the road if it were to become a political thing.
00:37:43.000But groups have the right to say, here's who we are, as long as you're not discriminating on certain enumerated terms, especially racial discrimination and so forth.
00:37:55.000And so just think, and here's the Supreme Court opinion by Justice David Souter, who cannot be characterized fairly as some, what shall I say, very conservative, traditionalist kind of justice.
00:38:12.000And in a very important opinion involving the Boston St. Patty's Day parade, the friendly sons of St. Patrick and so forth, the people who organized that parade said to an LGBTQ Irish American group, I'm sorry, you are welcome to march in the parade, but you can't march under the banner of your group.
00:38:35.000That's not what this parade is all about.
00:38:37.000You have the right to identify what your organization is.
00:38:42.000And so Turning Point USA has every right to say, it might say, if you're a Marxist, come in because we want to convince you.
00:38:50.000But you don't have to allow the Marxists to form a student chapter, right, even at a state university.
00:38:57.000You do not have to allow someone whose views are inimical to the views of freedom articulated so ably by Turning Point USA to then say, okay, I'm now your chapter president.
00:39:09.000Or I'm going to run for your chapter president.
00:39:10.000And the same with the Democrat socialists.
00:39:12.000They don't have to allow a capitalist or a conservative into their groups.
00:39:23.000This arose out of the civil rights movement when certain states were trying to intrude into the operations of the NAACP, a civil rights organization.
00:39:35.000And the Supreme Court said, uh-uh, uh-uh, you can't even get their membership list, much less, this is going way beyond, much less an attempted open infiltration.
00:40:00.000I know it's a very tough environment out there and it's getting tougher all the time, but do so in as charming and winsome a way as Charlie Kirk.
00:40:09.000Stand firm, be firm, be a justice warrior, a freedom warrior, and so forth.
00:40:16.000And then I hope that don't feel moved to purchase my book, pre-order the book.
00:40:24.000And thank you so much for the opportunity.
00:40:26.000I felt very strongly that this is an important book for now in light of all the tensions and pressures on religious liberty, religious expression.
00:40:35.000So I hope that will be of use to people.
00:40:37.000That's what it's designed to do, to help us gird our loins for the battle that's already underway.