In this episode, Professor John Yu joins us to talk about presidential powers and the indictment, and then we have Peachy Keenan to discuss being labeled a domestic extremist, some reactions to the indictments, and more.
00:00:00.000Hey everybody, Tana Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:01.000Professor Yu joins us to talk about presidential powers and the indictment.
00:00:06.000And then we have Peachy Keenan to talk about being labeled as a domestic extremist, some reactions to the indictment and more.
00:00:13.000Email us freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to our podcast and get involved with Turning Point Action at tpaction.com and come to our event in West Palm Beach, Florida.
00:00:59.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:05.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:33.000He's Distinguished Professor of Law and University of California Berkeley Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution, and a non-resident senior fellow at AEI and author of the forthcoming book, Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, which we will definitely have him back to discuss.
00:01:48.000Professor Yu, there are a lot of questions about presidential authority here and declassification and your expert legal opinion.
00:01:56.000How should we think about this indictment?
00:01:58.000First off, we shouldn't ask necessarily, can President Trump be indicted, but should he be indicted?
00:02:05.000Should prosecutors, using their best judgment, think this kind of prosecution is in the national interest?
00:02:12.000We have crossed a constitutional Rubicon here in prosecuting for the first time in our history a former president for prosecuting for the first time in our history the leading candidate of the opposition political party for president.
00:02:29.000It's got to be, I think, a very high bar, no matter whether President Trump wily the law or not, whether to bring this case at all.
00:02:38.000Because we don't want future presidents to always be worrying about their personal legal liability when they make the toughest decisions for our country's sake.
00:02:48.000And we don't want to become a place where the party in power starts to prosecute and throw in jail the people they just beat in the election or the people they're thinking of running against.
00:03:00.000And so I could see a former president being charged for things like insurrection or rebellion or treason, but for mishandling classified documents in the way that it looks like President Trump did the indictment, I don't think that this rises to that level.
00:03:15.000Yeah, and that's an argument that needs to be made, which is there's been this unspoken rule that if you're a former president, you're not above the law, but we have to have a really high threshold to cross that Rubicon, right?
00:03:28.000I mean, it's got to be something that is so decisive because you know what it's going to do to the country.
00:03:33.000You know it's going to tear things apart.
00:03:35.000And I think that is actually how the Justice Department and the FBI under James Comey justified not charging Hillary Clinton, which is like, okay, we're near an election.
00:03:46.000You know, we'll kind of do a little bit of a memo.
00:03:49.000We don't want to have to set this precedent and be known as interfering in election.
00:03:53.000Professor, it seems as if that's just gone.
00:03:55.000Now it's like, hey, whoever has power is going to use the power.
00:03:59.000This unspoken rule has now been shredded.
00:04:02.000And so I think it's just really damaging for the Republic in general because now you're going, when you have an individual that serves in the presidency, there's all these criminal codes that could then be potentially applied to them.
00:04:23.000I'm glad you raised this issue, Charlie, because this is even the bigger issue that we should worry about that goes beyond Trump, that goes beyond the presidency, which is the health of our republic.
00:04:33.000One of the things that makes America exceptional, a unique country, is our faith in law enforcement.
00:04:40.000We have faith in law enforcement and its integrity.
00:04:43.000And so most Americans voluntarily cooperate with the law, with the police, with the FBI, even the IRS.
00:04:52.000Most Americans file their taxes on time voluntarily.
00:04:55.000They don't need to have the threat of being arrested or thrown in jail.
00:04:59.000That integrity, that reputation, that integrity depends on nonpartisan application of the law of an unbiased Justice Department.
00:05:10.000What have we seen now, unfortunately, is a train of abuses, starting with, you just mentioned Jim Comey and his expansion, his aggregation, his exaggeration of this Russia hoax, his effort to entrap President Trump into lying to the government.
00:05:34.000And then you have reports, most recently from the Durham Report, about the problems with the Justice Department.
00:05:40.000You had an internal investigation of the Justice Department showing that high-level members of the FBI may have lied to the government.
00:05:47.000So when you already have people losing faith in the Justice Department, and then you bring a case like this one, when Hillary Clinton back in 2016, the case you mentioned, was not charged, when what she did to create this server to root all her government emails in and out of was designed to prevent government surveillance and scrutiny of official documents.
00:06:10.000People are going to think that prosecution is becoming biased and then they won't cooperate with it.
00:06:15.000And then we will lose a vital aspect of a republic, which is faith in the integrity of the justice system.
00:06:24.000And again, this is just a cable news host bloviating and pontificating, but I think there's more to the story here.
00:06:31.000I'm going to get your reaction to Rachel Maddow wondering out loud if the DOJ could make a deal with Donald Trump to not charge him if he drops out of the race.
00:06:40.000Just as this is a trial balloon is shocking.
00:06:45.000You have to wonder if the Justice Department is considering whether there is some political solution to this criminal problem, whether part of the issue here is not just that Trump has committed crimes, but that Trump has committed crimes and plans on being back in the White House.
00:07:02.000Do they consider, as part of a potential plea offer, something that would prescribe him, proscribe him from running for office again?
00:07:12.000Or is it, Professor Yu, if the DOJ did something like that, how should we think?
00:07:16.000I mean, is there anything more interfering with an election than something like that, potentially?
00:07:21.000This is exactly why we should not have partisans in charge of the application and enforcement of the law, because you aren't supposed to pick cases based on their political consequences.
00:07:35.000And you're supposed to not refrain from prosecuting because of their political consequences.
00:07:40.000You want to prosecute based on deterrence and the stopping of harm to the country and the national interest.
00:07:47.000Thinking like this is just exactly the way the Justice Department and Jim Comey thought about not prosecuting Hillary Clinton.
00:07:56.000This is why you can't have people who think this way anywhere near the way the Justice Department acts.
00:08:02.000But when the Justice Department doesn't charge Hillary and then charges Donald Trump, then people, regular Americans, are going to see that and say, is law being enforced in a biased way?
00:08:13.000Are people, not necessarily Rachel Nadow, I hope, but the people who think like her actually calling the shots and what kind of cases are brought or not?
00:08:23.000I mean, and if that were to ever be the case.
00:08:26.000So I want to ask you, Professor, you know, there was this long-standing policy, it was not law, but the internal memo that the DOJ would not or would be very careful to indict a current presidential candidate.
00:08:59.000And so just fill us in on this because it seems as if these internal policies have just been steamrolled.
00:09:05.000So there is an opinion of the Justice Department, internal opinion, it only applies to the Justice Department and to the executive branch, which says DOJ prosecutors will not bring charges against a sitting president.
00:09:19.000And the reason for that is because, and it underscores here, who's really responsible for all of this.
00:09:25.000The reason for that is because under the Constitution, there's only one person who has the responsibility to enforce the law, and that's the president.
00:09:32.000So the Attorney General, Special Counsel, Jack Smith, every line attorney throughout the Justice Department is just constitutionally assisting Joe Biden in that responsibility.
00:09:44.000So your point, Charlie, is an excellent one, which I think has been missed by a lot of people, which is it's not just Jack Smith's decision to bring these charges.
00:09:53.000It's not just Merrick Garland's decision, which it is to bring these charges.
00:09:58.000Ultimately, it is Joe Biden's decision to bring these charges.
00:10:02.000Yeah, and I think people are missing this: there is some sort of a weird word game that is being played of Joe Biden, like, oh, I didn't talk to Garland and all that.
00:10:19.000And you're trying to tell me with a straight face that there was not a wink, a nod, a whisper, an ombudsman or a messenger that whispered in the ear of Joe Biden or his handlers that this thing was going to proceed to criminal charges, that Joe Biden read about it in the papers.
00:10:36.000And if that is then the case, then that is someone using the federal government of the United States to directly go after someone that is currently running them against them in the presidency.
00:10:58.000But you have to simultaneously do the other thing.
00:11:00.000I believe you actually have an obligation, which is to support women in need and babies in need that are at risk of being aborted.
00:11:08.000Look, when you introduce a girl to her baby by providing an ultrasound, you're giving her the truth at the most critical and important time in her life.
00:11:17.00085% of the time when they actually see the baby, they choose life.
00:11:23.000Now, mind you, pre-born provides resources.
00:11:28.000And I encourage you, if you're pro-life, to pray about this, are you giving money to actually support the unborn if you are voting for pro-life?
00:11:35.000Look, $140 gives five mothers a free ultrasound and saves babies.
00:11:39.000$280 can save 10 babies, and just $28 a month can save a baby a month for less than a dollar a day.
00:11:44.000I'm a donor to this organization, and you should be too.
00:11:46.000A $15,000 gift will provide an ultrasound machine that will save lives for years to come.
00:11:51.000Whether you want to save one baby or five or hundreds, this opportunity is just a phone call or click away.
00:11:57.000I think the world of pre-born, I give money financially.
00:12:01.000And every one of you that are pro-life, I believe you have a duty and an obligation to go to preborn.org/slash Kirk and give as you can, give your best gift, or call 833-850-2229.
00:12:23.000Professor, reading through the indictment, what do you think is the most serious charge against Trump here or the evidence that is going to be the most difficult for his defense team to navigate?
00:12:34.000So I think the charges are getting all the headlines right now: President Trump taking classified documents, President Trump storing classified documents.
00:12:43.000I don't think that's really his vulnerability because former Vice President Biden and former Vice President Pence did the exact same thing.
00:12:55.000The difference between the two cases is really over obstruction of justice and lying to federal agents, what we call process charges.
00:13:05.000You could even be innocent of the underlying real charges, but still commit a process charge like lying, and that could still get you in trouble.
00:13:13.000But then, this is what really makes this case and Hillary's case harder to distinguish: obstruction.
00:13:21.000Because, again, if you recall with Hillary's case, she created, again, a computer server through which she rooted all her emails.
00:13:30.000And then, when the government found out about it and asked to see the emails, she had her lawyers destroy thousands and thousands of the messages and never allowed the FBI to see them, only said, These are the ones we think you would be interested in.
00:13:43.000So, I ask you, and I think regular Americans are asking, how are these cases any different?
00:13:47.000Isn't actually what Hillary did far worse than what Trump is alleged to have done, and he's the one being charged.
00:13:53.000Well, Professor, there's other important differences, and you're touching on it.
00:13:57.000Everything was recovered by the government with President Trump.
00:14:03.000There is this question about the document that he was talking about on camera.
00:14:10.000Did the government get that back or not?
00:14:13.000But the other important component here that I think people are missing is Hillary Clinton did not have the ability to declassify something.
00:15:10.000The Supreme Court said this in a case called Navy versus Egan.
00:15:15.000All the classification power stems from the president.
00:15:18.000The president can therefore declassify anything he wants.
00:15:22.000If the president says out loud something that's classified, say in a press conference, it's automatically declassified by that very act.
00:15:31.000So, President Trump's lawyer should make the argument that all these documents were declassified when he sent them to Mar Ilago at the end of his presidency.
00:15:41.000But The hard thing is there is a little comment in the indictment where President Trump allegedly says, I think, to a reporter on tape, see, I've got this document.
00:16:39.000President Trump may take that one, and then this declassification one, and then one about executive push, all the way to the Supreme Court.
00:16:44.000This is not going to be over just in the middle.
00:16:47.000I mean, and as far as the declassification, again, the facts will have to learn, but I would imagine President Trump's defense is going to be, hey, when I was leaving the White House for Marine One at the last time, it was communicated to my staff, you know, hey, all that stuff's declassified.
00:17:02.000And I can't imagine if they had a problem.
00:17:04.000Why'd they allow that stuff to be stacked up on the side of the street if this stuff was highly sensitive and confidential?
00:17:10.000That's going to have to be remedied by a U.S. Supreme Court.
00:17:13.000What does a declaration of declassification mean?
00:17:18.000It's going to be a thicket for his defense lawyers because President Trump, in the sense of showing off the document, that on the stuff they have on audio is going to be a challenge because that one, the prosecutors probably smiled when they got that audio, if they actually wanted to proceed with that.
00:17:38.000Professor, you'd love to have you back on to talk about the Supreme Court and your book.
00:19:54.000And again, these other banks that I deal with, it's like, here's 955,000 pages to sign, and they don't call you back, and they don't work weekends.
00:20:02.000I had a problem with one of the things on the process because it was one thing that wasn't filled out.
00:20:06.000And they respond on a Sunday within minutes.
00:20:08.000You're trying to get a response from a woke bank on a Sunday.
00:21:02.000Okay, joining us now is a very special guest called The Greatest Writer in America by Citizen Free Press, contributor to The American Mind, Federalist, labeled a domestic extremist, Peachy Keenan.
00:21:54.000I mean, you know, I really don't care if you're for Trump or for DeSantis or whoever, but what's happening today and what's been happening since he was first elected is really a travesty.
00:22:18.000And, you know, they want to take him down.
00:22:20.000And, but really, what they, what they want to, who they want to take down are the people who support him and the people who don't like the direction his country is going.
00:22:28.000I've read your stuff on American Mind for quite some time.
00:22:33.000I think one of the reasons why Donald Trump is so popular, and to be perfectly honest, I think the other people running for the presidency don't get this, is that there is this micro connection to a macro trend of a sense of persecution.
00:22:48.000So, for example, if I were to go to one of our Turning Point USA meetings and I say, How many of you have been persecuted because of your conservative views?
00:22:56.000And they all raise their hand, graded differently and all this.
00:22:59.000Donald Trump, they have this in common with Trump.
00:23:02.000And they say, hey, he being at the courthouse is no different than, for example, Erica, our turning point USA New Mexico chapter leader, who had to go through Title IX investigations for six months because she was hosting an event for Tommy Lairn at University of New Mexico.
00:23:20.000And Tifa was trying to come in, and some other people were trying to come in.
00:23:24.000She said, Oh, those people look normal.
00:23:25.000Let them in, which they were just normal people, not with masks.
00:23:29.000She gets a nine-month Title IX investigation.
00:23:32.000So when they see this courthouse, it is a connection.
00:23:37.000I mean, we see, you know, his base, his supporters loved him because he really did seem to speak for, like, you know, what he would call the forgotten men and women of America, middle America, the normal people.
00:23:48.000And that's why I called my book domestic extremists because it's ironic.
00:23:53.000You know, we just want to raise our families.
00:23:55.000We just want, we want to have the country back, the one that we grew up with, with the one that I remember from, you know, the 80s and 90s.
00:24:01.000We don't have to look that far back to remember a time when it was okay to be conservative and there was two sides and we could have a debate.
00:24:07.000But now it feels like if you don't go along with the regime, if you are a conservative, if you voice your opinions, you have to be silenced, suppressed, canceled, fired, and Trump under indictment.
00:24:20.000I mean, we like to joke about, you know, we're all going to be put into the gulags, but it really feels like that's where we're headed.
00:24:27.000I mean, I just don't understand how he, you know, they keep talking about no one is above the law, which is, you know, it makes me laugh.
00:24:35.000How do they say that with a straight face when the president himself is smoking gun proof that he is accepting bribes from foreign countries?
00:24:43.000Like, where's Jake Tapper on that one?
00:24:47.000So I want to ask about something specific in regard to feeling persecuted.
00:24:52.000You had a viral threat a few months ago about what college admissions have become for ordinary middle-class white people who are not disabled or victims.
00:25:00.000Can you tell our victims what you heard from our friends and readers?
00:25:05.000Yeah, I had a friend texting me an anecdote.
00:25:09.000Her niece had been rejected from basically every California school, all the UCs didn't get in anywhere.
00:25:18.000She had above 4.0, very high SAT, was a competitive gymnast.
00:25:22.000And she ended up having to go to community college for two years.
00:25:25.000And I've been hearing many stories of friends at our school whose children were the valedictorian and they got rejected from every single UC.
00:25:33.000The University of California schools used to be the place where middle-class drivers could go and get a great and affordable education.
00:25:41.000And it feels like now those are just completely out of reach.
00:25:44.000And yes, unfortunately, it is based on skin color.
00:25:48.000I mean, you know, the UCs have a colorblind admission policy.
00:25:51.000But in my course of my investigation of like what is going on here, their applications ask you very precise questions that are, you know, easily, you could just easily deduce what someone's ethnic or racial heritage is.
00:26:04.000And so kids who normally would have gone into these schools have, I mean, I'm sorry, there is like a great replacement theory.
00:26:31.000You know, is the dress blue or is the dress white?
00:26:34.000Depending on where you are politically, that's how you're looking at what is going on in college admissions, which has been totally taken over by DEI.
00:27:02.000This thing, you know what I'm talking about.
00:27:04.000And where I actually don't know the science of why some people saw it differently than others, but I feel as if only one other person besides Donald Trump sees the dress the way that we do, right?
00:27:19.000Blue or gold, where all these other people, why is it that only one Republican candidate running for the presidency showed up to Miami today?
00:27:56.000And so I tweeted yesterday that, like, this is so far beyond one election.
00:28:01.000And it just gives me a bad taste in my mouth to see GOP candidates who may be able to capitalize on his, you know, conviction or potential imprisonment, who may like rise in the polls or even win because his main opponent, their main opponent, has been taken out by the enemies, our enemies.
00:28:19.000And I feel like this is a time for them to kind of join up and like say, you know what?
00:28:37.000But right now, it feels like there would be such an incredible power if all the GOP candidates could kind of shuck off their hatred of him and come together and say, you may not do this to a member of our party, to the leader.
00:28:50.000You know, he's the de facto leader of the party.
00:28:53.000It just, I don't know, it just leaves me like, I'm less able to support one of them, I think, now because they're just not backing him enough.
00:29:29.000I will tell you that we have sent this letter, and I'm happy to announce this is my commitment on January 20th, 2025.
00:29:40.000If I'm elected the next U.S. president to pardon Donald J. Trump for these offenses in this federal case, and I have challenged, I have demanded that every other candidate in this race either sign this commitment to pardon on January 20th, 2025, or else to explain why they are not.
00:30:15.000I mean, it's good, but he is saying that, you know, he's basically trying to use that as a way to pull Trump's Trump voters away from Trump towards him because he'll save their guy.
00:30:27.000So it is slightly exploitive of Trump's predicament, I think, in a way.
00:30:42.000I just think it'd be so much more powerful if all the candidates could just draw a line in the sand and just say, you know, no, you're not doing this to him.
00:31:19.000MSNBC is having quite a field day here.
00:31:23.000Without the narrative of domestic violent extremism, these people are going to lose.
00:31:30.000I am more confident than ever before that we're on a trajectory for inevitable victory if we can stay peaceful and they cannot incite us towards some sort of domestic violent extremism.
00:31:43.000Because rioting and messing up your society is really unpopular.
00:31:53.000Donald Trump on social media has now threatened his successor, Joe Biden, with a special prosecutor as one of the first things he'd do if he gets reelected.
00:32:04.000And there are domestic terrorists all over the place on the internet threatening violence.
00:32:09.000Any of those things would be unusual in American history.
00:32:15.000And all I'm saying is, as we watch all this, let us not become so inured to this that we don't realize what an extraordinary and in certain ways terrible situation this is.
00:32:27.000Wait, he's saying that threats of violence are unusual in American history?
00:33:00.000And what we're seeing from some of these calls to violence coming from some of the more extreme members of the right wing in this country is an abandonment of democracy.
00:33:12.000And that should frighten everyday Americans.
00:33:15.000Okay, I think we have Ben Berquam, if I'm hearing correctly.
00:33:18.000Ben, live on the ground in Miami, Florida.
00:33:22.000One thing that Natalie just mentioned that you notice here, and I mentioned there's one lady that had a sign that said lock him up, referring to President Trump.
00:33:31.000And she was out in the middle of all of the Trump supporters, and she was protected.
00:34:41.000That's the third or fourth person that we have interviewed on this program on the ground in Miami that is a first-generation American warning us about this.