The Charlie Kirk Show - The House Got What it Wanted, Which Was… With Russ Vought

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today's Charlie Kirk show.

00:00:01.000 What exactly are the concessions that the 20 holdouts, the 20 Freedom Caucus members received?

00:00:11.000 What exactly did they get in exchange and return?

00:00:15.000 We explore that.

00:00:16.000 And then Russ Vogt joins us to help explain why he believes that these concessions are significant, worthy of appreciation, and why it's a big, big deal.

00:00:30.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:35.000 That is freedom at charliekirk.com.

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00:01:19.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:01:20.000 Here we go.

00:01:21.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:23.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:01:25.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:28.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:31.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:32.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:33.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

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00:02:03.000 Late Friday evening, going into Saturday morning, a deal was struck for Speaker of the House.

00:02:09.000 The 20 holdouts negotiated a fabulous deal.

00:02:13.000 And I will be very honest with you, as many of you who watch and listen to this program with regularity, I was skeptical.

00:02:19.000 And I was skeptical for a good reason.

00:02:21.000 And I'm going to prove that my skepticism was rooted in a real threat.

00:02:25.000 But these holdouts got us a terrific deal.

00:02:29.000 They pushed it just far enough with real demands, serious asks of what success looks like.

00:02:38.000 And these are patriots.

00:02:39.000 They're not terrorists, as some people on television called them. 0.90

00:02:43.000 Dan Crenshaw called them narcissistic insurgents, sociopathic enemies. 0.98

00:02:51.000 This is all nonsense. 0.84

00:02:52.000 These are patriots that showed in the end that they were willing to negotiate in good faith.

00:02:59.000 Now, these concessions led to real substantive rule changes if the rules package can indeed pass in the next day or two.

00:03:08.000 We're going to talk in great detail of what that means, but we must realize that on late Friday evening, the kind of forces that were holding out, everyone from Andy Biggs to Eli Crane to Matt Rosendale to Lauren Boebert to Matt Gates to Anna Paulina Luna, they were pushing and pushing and pushing for real rules changes.

00:03:30.000 But there was a rumbling that began to surface.

00:03:35.000 And that rumbling was from the moderate wing, the moderate wing that consists of people like Nancy Mace and Tony Gonzalez and Dan Crenshaw and Burgess Owens, people that are very much in the establishment of the Republican Party.

00:03:53.000 And they were getting, and Don Bacon, they were getting very angry at Matt Gates and Lauren Boebert and Andy Biggs and the people that were trying to strike a conservative deal that would represent voters.

00:04:06.000 Now, you might say, oh, what's the difference?

00:04:08.000 They should have pushed this forward further.

00:04:10.000 They never should have caved in.

00:04:11.000 Like, hold on a second.

00:04:12.000 They did not cave in.

00:04:13.000 That is an incorrect way to view this because the moderates were starting to say, well, we're going to blow up the deal.

00:04:21.000 You see, the moderates consisted of 150 to 175, maybe less, let's say 100 people.

00:04:28.000 And so, for example, on Friday evening, Tony Gonzalez from Texas, a very moderate Republican, came out and said, I'm not going to vote for the rules package.

00:04:40.000 He said, I am not going to vote for the second vote after a speaker, the House vote.

00:04:45.000 I'll vote for Kevin McCarthy for speaker, but I'm not going to vote for what they're actually negotiating on, trying to kill the actual deal of negotiation.

00:04:53.000 To the credit, though, of Gates and to Boebert and to all of these people that were negotiating, they pushed it to the absolute limit and they started to see the legitimate threats of how the moderates were trying to sabotage the deal.

00:05:10.000 And they sold the shares at the highest possible moment to use kind of a stock market equivalent.

00:05:16.000 In fact, they took the concessions.

00:05:19.000 Those that were not comfortable voting for Kevin McCarthy, they said, all right, I will vote present.

00:05:24.000 And they got a very good deal.

00:05:26.000 Now, I know some of you are probably upset.

00:05:29.000 Some of you are probably emailing me, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:05:31.000 Charlie, they sell out.

00:05:33.000 They sold us out to Kevin McCarthy.

00:05:36.000 And I'm not okay with that.

00:05:38.000 I don't think that's the correct way to view this.

00:05:40.000 You must recognize and realize that the moderates still controlled 80% of the House.

00:05:45.000 So you got serious concessions that we're about to go through for a couple days of very firm negotiation tactics, understanding that the moderates could have prepared, could have sabotaged the entire deal.

00:05:59.000 Now, if you don't believe me, look at Cut 12.

00:06:02.000 Cut 12 is Nancy Mace, who went on television yesterday and said, I don't know if I'm going to vote for the rules package.

00:06:09.000 The rules package is the whole enchilada that the Freedom Caucus negotiated last week.

00:06:15.000 So the deal that we're about to go through, the concessions we went through, if the moderates don't vote for that on the floor when it comes forward, then it effectively blows up the entire speaker's race.

00:06:26.000 And we might have to start all over again.

00:06:27.000 You can only push a negotiation so far until the deal blows up.

00:06:32.000 And I want to give credit to Chip Roy and give credit to Ana Paulina.

00:06:35.000 Give credit to Gosar.

00:06:36.000 Give credit to all of them.

00:06:38.000 This is Nancy Mace, the moderates, play Cut 12.

00:06:41.000 How are you going to work with these folks to get anything done for the American people?

00:06:48.000 It's going to be very difficult. 0.95

00:06:49.000 Matt Gates is a fraud.

00:06:50.000 Every time he voted against Kevin McCarthy last week, he sent out a fundraising email.

00:06:55.000 What you saw last week was a constitutional process diminished by those kinds of political actions.

00:07:01.000 I don't support that kind of behavior.

00:07:04.000 Yeah, you just support obedience to the regime.

00:07:06.000 We got that, Nancy.

00:07:07.000 Thanks for shopping.

00:07:08.000 There's another piece of tape, though, where she says she might not even vote for the rules package.

00:07:12.000 Now, you might say, oh, who cares?

00:07:14.000 That could obliterate very serious concessions that were brokered thanks to these courageous holdouts.

00:07:21.000 Again, I was skeptical of the strategy.

00:07:23.000 I was skeptical because I thought the moderates were going to blow this up.

00:07:26.000 I thought Don Bacon and Tony Gonzalez and Nancy Mace were going to blow this up a lot earlier.

00:07:30.000 They were starting to threaten that finally on Friday.

00:07:33.000 Now, what are these concessions?

00:07:35.000 First and foremost, concession number one, adding conservative freedom caucus members to the House Rules Committee.

00:07:41.000 Now, you don't hear very much about the House Rules Committee.

00:07:44.000 It's the machinery of Congress.

00:07:46.000 It's kind of where the sausage is made.

00:07:47.000 It's the behind the scenes type work.

00:07:49.000 Well, the rules committee decides whether the house will vote on legislation at all.

00:07:54.000 Usually, it is just a proxy of the speaker of the house.

00:07:57.000 The speaker of the house usually puts his or her most loyal members on the rules committee, and they basically, whatever they want, the rules committee mirrors or parallels.

00:08:08.000 So, the house committee has the House Committee on Rules has 13 members and always has a supermajority for the party in power, typically nine to four.

00:08:15.000 For the past half century, this committee has basically been under control of the speaker.

00:08:19.000 Getting Freedom Caucus votes on this committee matters a lot, though.

00:08:24.000 They otherwise would have had no representation.

00:08:26.000 Under Paul Ryan or John Boehner, this would have been a fantasy.

00:08:29.000 This would have been a far-off dream that they would have been scoffed at and laughed at by the DC cartel.

00:08:35.000 Now, if they get two members on the rules committee, it won't matter very much.

00:08:41.000 If the Freedom Caucus can get three, they have a lot more power. 0.98

00:08:44.000 All of that is going to be in the upcoming rules package that Nancy Mae says she might not vote for.

00:08:50.000 And Tony Gonzalez says he will not vote for because the moderates, and here's the thing: before I go any further, I have on good authority some people that were texting me because I made a lot of phone calls this weekend asking around.

00:09:00.000 The moderates were in Kevin McCarthy's office all weekend complaining about this deal.

00:09:10.000 The moderates were in McCarthy's office pounding the table saying we gave Matt Gates too much, we gave Lauren Boebert too much, we gave Chip Roy too much, and it was McCarthy, and this is factual, that was holding the line, saying, Guys, we needed to get a deal done.

00:09:26.000 We needed to get a deal done.

00:09:27.000 That's how you know you got a good deal.

00:09:29.000 The moderates are not happy with this.

00:09:31.000 McCarthy is now telling the moderates to suck it up and vote for the rules package.

00:09:37.000 Second concession: McCarthy has reportedly promised with the Freedom Caucus.

00:09:44.000 Again, this will all be reflected in the rules package that is going to be voted on very soon, an open rule on all spending measures, meaning conservatives will get to offer amendments that would defund or reduce funding for programs that we oppose.

00:09:56.000 Of course, this could be risky.

00:09:57.000 It could allow moderates to team up with Democrats to increase spending on some things, but it does give power to the House Freedom Caucus.

00:10:04.000 Now, the third concession we're going to get to in a second.

00:10:08.000 But the fact that the moderates were complaining to Kevin McCarthy all weekend shows that a great deal was cut, and also that they brought this to the best possible moment to sell their shares and to cash out when the stock was the highest.

00:10:22.000 It was very wise negotiating.

00:10:24.000 A tactic that goes on too long becomes a drag, in the words of Saul Linsky.

00:10:29.000 And they brought the tactic to a perfect pitch, pitch-perfect moment and said, We got what we wanted.

00:10:34.000 We might not have wanted Kevin McCarthy, what a lot of them says, but we are willing now to strike a deal.

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00:12:16.000 Based on our emails, people are pretty upset.

00:12:19.000 They say never, a deal should not have been struck.

00:12:21.000 You know, this was, it's a total fraud.

00:12:23.000 I disagree.

00:12:24.000 I trust the negotiation.

00:12:26.000 Even Matt Gates said he ran out of stuff to ask for.

00:12:30.000 Matt Gates said, I got nothing else to ask for.

00:12:32.000 There's a fair amount of positive emails as well, but I want to keep on hearing from you, freedom at charliekirk.com, because the moderates have power too.

00:12:39.000 You have to remember that.

00:12:40.000 It's not just the 20 holdouts that had power for a limited time.

00:12:44.000 The moderates were preparing to strike back.

00:12:46.000 Someone said, Charlie, stop calling the moderates, call them Democrats.

00:12:49.000 Okay, they could be rhinos.

00:12:50.000 They could be Biden Republicans.

00:12:52.000 They could be whatever you want to call them.

00:12:53.000 They were preparing to strike back.

00:12:56.000 For example, Nancy Mace went on television and said that, I don't think I'm going to vote for the rules package, or I don't know how I'm going to vote on the rules package.

00:13:04.000 The rules package, by the way, is going to be an 80 to 100 page bill that will be voted out in the next day or two that crystallizes all of these concessions.

00:13:15.000 So for example, many of you said, well, Charlie, how do we trust them?

00:13:19.000 How do we trust them?

00:13:20.000 There is no trusting.

00:13:22.000 If McCarthy is going to be good for his word, then all of this will be summarized in that 80 to 100 page rules package.

00:13:31.000 If not, they're not going to vote for it and the deal will be dead.

00:13:35.000 And since there's now a one person, there's now a one threshold to vacate the chair, we will restart.

00:13:40.000 So McCarthy is going to be forced to be good for his word.

00:13:43.000 It's not a matter of trust.

00:13:44.000 Once that rules package passes and it is put into ink, it doesn't matter if you trust somebody or not, it becomes the standard operating procedure.

00:13:58.000 It becomes the framework that all congressional business of this Congress has to operate.

00:14:02.000 Play cut 14.

00:14:05.000 This is Nancy Mace saying she might not vote for it.

00:14:08.000 Play cut 14.

00:14:10.000 Are you saying that you're going to withhold your vote on those published agreements?

00:14:15.000 I am considering that as an option right now.

00:14:18.000 I like the rules package.

00:14:19.000 It is the most open, fair, and fiscally conservative package we've had in 30 years.

00:14:23.000 I support it.

00:14:24.000 But what I don't support is a small number of people trying to get a deal done or deals done for themselves in private, in secret, to get a vote or a vote present.

00:14:36.000 I don't support that.

00:14:37.000 That is just what Nancy Pelosi does, and that's not what they should be doing.

00:14:40.000 And so I am on the fence right now about the rules package vote tomorrow for that reason. 1.00

00:14:44.000 Nancy Mace is such a fraud. 1.00

00:14:46.000 Yeah, I don't like people cutting backdoor deals unless it's me cutting a backdoor deal. 0.59

00:14:50.000 So concession number three, this is my favorite of all the concessions.

00:14:56.000 The House, this will be in the rules package, is going to establish a select committee.

00:15:01.000 Remember, we had the January 6th committee.

00:15:03.000 This will be a new select committee on the weaponization of government.

00:15:07.000 This new church-style committee that we've been talking about is now going to be put into practice.

00:15:15.000 The church committee, as you remember, was a special Senate committee in the 70s.

00:15:19.000 And there was the Pike equivalent in the House, which exposed all of the abusive and illegal behavior by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and so forth. 0.94

00:15:28.000 Now, the new weaponization on government committee will be chaired by Jim Jordan.

00:15:35.000 Now, they are going to have wide-ranging congressional authority to go where the facts lead them.

00:15:40.000 We now have on good authority, Christopher Wray, the CIA, they are lobbying hard.

00:15:46.000 They are lobbying aggressively to try to stop this rules package because of this new church and pike committee equivalent. 1.00

00:15:54.000 With only the House, the new Congress can't necessarily pass laws with the Senate, but we can send subpoenas and compel transparency.

00:16:03.000 And we have Rust vote coming on our program to explain to us the significance of what this new Jordan committee, the Church and Pike Committee, could mean.

00:16:13.000 Thomas Massey, one of my favorite members of the House, one of the most ethical, honest, and real members of the House of Representatives.

00:16:24.000 Thomas Massey says this is a dream.

00:16:26.000 He could not have imagined getting a select committee to go look into the FBI, to go look into the NSA, to go look into the CIA.

00:16:36.000 Only Congress can do this.

00:16:39.000 Now, some of you are skeptics and cynics, and I see your emails.

00:16:41.000 Charlie won't matter anything.

00:16:42.000 The swamp will win and all this.

00:16:44.000 The only body constitutionally, the only body that can look into the abuses, the overreach, the terror, and the tyranny of the fourth branch of government is Congress.

00:16:56.000 It is the only body.

00:16:59.000 And so if this ends up happening and if this gets voted on and if the rules package passes, that is a serious and substantial takeaway from what was an underwhelming November midterm election into something that is material and real and will have ramifications positively for generations to come.

00:17:21.000 To go look into the raid on Mar-a-Lago, to go look into the collusion with Twitter, to go look into all these different things.

00:17:28.000 Matt Gates said on television, we were at a stage, this was him right before the final speaker vote, where I have run out of things to ask for.

00:17:37.000 The end of the year is right around the corner, and it's time for you to consider a change in your investment plan.

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00:18:39.000 So look, McCarthy has also promised the Club for Growth that the Conservative Leadership Fund would not get involved in primaries of open seats, meaning that if there was a safe and comfortable Republican seat, they're not going to get in.

00:18:52.000 They're just going to allow it to play out, like Anthony Sabatini or Caroline Levitt's race.

00:18:57.000 Discretionary spending is capped at the 2022 fiscal year level, which counterintuitively means the spending levels of Biden's first year in office.

00:19:05.000 But more importantly, this means pairing back defense spending, aka Ukraine spending.

00:19:12.000 McCarthy, in writing, has promised not to raise the debt limit again without major spending cuts to go with it.

00:19:19.000 Concession number six, floor votes on proposals for House term limits and enhanced border security.

00:19:24.000 This is where Tony Gonzalez has kind of lost his mind.

00:19:27.000 And finally, McCarthy has agreed with the House Freedom Caucus, will allow a single House member to propose essentially a no-confidence motion against him.

00:19:35.000 So if he tries to break any parts of the deal, they can immediately launch a revolt and pick a new speaker.

00:19:40.000 I'm going to go to a piece of tape here.

00:19:41.000 Matt Gates, Cut 15, saying this deal is so good, I have run out of things to ask for.

00:19:46.000 Play cut 15.

00:19:47.000 I am grateful that Speaker designate McCarthy has been so receptive to each and every change that we have demanded.

00:19:54.000 And Sean, we're at the stage right now where I'm running out of stuff to ask for.

00:19:58.000 I mean, read the bills, have a balanced budget, have a border plan.

00:20:02.000 Kevin McCarthy is agreeing to all these things.

00:20:05.000 And again, it's never been about him.

00:20:06.000 It's been about draining the swamp, making this a more honest, transparent, open place.

00:20:11.000 Now, many of you are emailing me, Charlie.

00:20:13.000 This will never go into effect.

00:20:14.000 This will never happen.

00:20:16.000 We'll see what happens with the rules package and the vote.

00:20:20.000 If that happens, then every single one of the Freedom Caucus members should move to block the rules package.

00:20:27.000 And the Democrats won't vote for the rules package because the rules package will say that they're in the minority in every committee.

00:20:32.000 And so let's see.

00:20:34.000 Trust, but verify.

00:20:36.000 I fully support the Freedom Caucus reading every word of this rules package.

00:20:41.000 And if it's not what they negotiated, block it.

00:20:43.000 With us is Russ Vogt from the Center for Renewing America.

00:20:48.000 And Russ is the original architect, the designer of this new church committee.

00:20:53.000 It might be called the Jordan Committee, which I think is a major win for liberty and oversight and for reigning in the fourth branch of government.

00:21:00.000 Russ, welcome back to the program.

00:21:02.000 Thanks, Charlie.

00:21:03.000 Appreciate you having me on.

00:21:04.000 Russ, first, let's just talk more broadly.

00:21:07.000 Do you believe that the deal as it is right now, it has yet to be voted on in a rules package, is a significant win for constitutional conservatives?

00:21:16.000 I do.

00:21:17.000 I think it's a historic and transformational agreement.

00:21:20.000 Most of it is not going to be voted on as part of the rules package.

00:21:23.000 The procedural aspects will be, but a lot of this goes to the policy commitments.

00:21:28.000 But this gets to the control of the House and whether conservatives representing the American people have the tools to dismantle the cartel in Washington, D.C.

00:21:40.000 And I don't think we've seen something on the procedural aspects of this since 1961.

00:21:45.000 So I think it's very substantial.

00:21:47.000 And then you get to some of the policy wins, like you just mentioned with the church committee, the agreement to balance the budget in 10 years by going after woke and weaponized government.

00:21:56.000 And I really think that conservatives were able to get a significant result from this situation.

00:22:02.000 So you said most of it is not part of the rules package.

00:22:06.000 How will we put this into writing?

00:22:08.000 How will we make the ink manifested into reality so it's not just words or bloviating from House leadership?

00:22:17.000 So one of the key aspects is in rules, and that's the motion to vacate.

00:22:21.000 And most of your audience would think of that in a legislative body as a vote of no confidence.

00:22:26.000 That was very, very critical.

00:22:28.000 That is in the rules committee that needs to pass.

00:22:31.000 But the rules committee controls procedurally what comes to the floor in the House of Representatives.

00:22:36.000 Since 1961, the speaker says, the rules committee, this is what I want.

00:22:40.000 You're going to put it on the floor.

00:22:42.000 Now it's going to be independent.

00:22:44.000 And so any of the policy agreements that were made are now self-enforcing because the very people controlling the floor are the conservatives that struck this agreement.

00:22:56.000 And the non-things that they can't control are going to be enforced by the fact that you now have 20 members.

00:23:03.000 They showed they're willing to use the motion to vacate.

00:23:06.000 They will have that ability to do that.

00:23:08.000 And so what I think is so powerful about this is it's the emergence of coalition government in the House, which is we knew that the Republican Party is largely made up of their establishment.

00:23:18.000 Yes, in the last election, we were rooting for them.

00:23:21.000 But we also knew that they're the conservatives is who we want to empower.

00:23:25.000 And now 20 of them, and their numbers are bigger.

00:23:28.000 There's conservative.

00:23:29.000 There's Ken Buck.

00:23:30.000 There's Thomas Massey.

00:23:32.000 It just so happens those 20 were, let's just say, convicted enough to speak.

00:23:40.000 Exactly.

00:23:40.000 And so you've got a much bigger number that's going to be able to be interested in balancing the budget in 10, or it really amplifying the work of the church committee.

00:23:52.000 And so this coalition government is going to really have a lot of ability to be able to go to town for the American people.

00:24:00.000 So Russ, just to make sure I'm understanding this correctly, you make a really smart point about coalition government, which about time we start to use the power of conservatives to try to make Congress more representative.

00:24:14.000 The Democrats have been doing something similar for years, but they do this all behind closed doors.

00:24:17.000 I mean, they would never put up with something like this publicly.

00:24:21.000 The machine would not put up with it.

00:24:23.000 The board would not be happy.

00:24:25.000 But so you say that some of this is part of the rules package.

00:24:29.000 So when are they voting on that?

00:24:30.000 I think it's the next day or two.

00:24:31.000 It might be today, right?

00:24:32.000 So they're putting an 80 to 100 page rules package together.

00:24:36.000 I was laughing when I was watching some of the coverage very early on Saturday morning.

00:24:40.000 It was like 2 a.m. Eastern, where they said, now we're not sure if we're going to get a rules package vote tonight.

00:24:45.000 Involved in the rules package is 72 hours to read a bill.

00:24:48.000 And I said, hold on a second.

00:24:49.000 How could you pass a rules package where one of the rules is that you need 72 hours to read the bill and you're going to do it with only two hours?

00:24:56.000 Actually, to McCarthy's credit, he said, you guys need time to read the rules package.

00:25:02.000 When is that vote going to come?

00:25:03.000 And I think motion to vacate the chair is the, is the, is the new Jordan committee part of that rules package, or is that just kind of a sidelined promise?

00:25:13.000 It is a, it's not, the resolution is written for the Jordan.

00:25:17.000 It could be Jordan.

00:25:18.000 The select committee is ready to yeah, it's written it's written.

00:25:22.000 It'll be voted on soon.

00:25:24.000 I don't expect, it's not part of the rules committee package itself.

00:25:27.000 That's that vote is tonight.

00:25:29.000 It includes the motion to vacate your vote of no confidence.

00:25:32.000 It includes the 72-hour holdover for a piece of legislation.

00:25:37.000 It includes this rule that allows you to go directly at the funding of a particular bureaucrat like Tony Fauci.

00:25:43.000 Those are the kinds of things, the restriction against raising taxes on the floor of the House or increasing spending in the amendment process.

00:25:51.000 Those are all things that will go tonight.

00:25:54.000 And then there's a lot of personnel aspects.

00:25:56.000 Like, for instance, when I talked about the rules committee, that's being done right now through the selections of who sits on rules.

00:26:03.000 And so people think, you know, there was this argument, well, that's self-dealing and they're just trying to get themselves on committees.

00:26:08.000 No, If we want to wield real power on behalf of the American people and the conservatives and break the cartel, you got to have someone that actually sits on the committee and does it.

00:26:19.000 And so that process is working out right now.

00:26:22.000 You saw Mark Green got the Homeland Security chairmanship over Den Cross, Dan Crenshaw.

00:26:27.000 That's an example of how this is working in real time.

00:26:30.000 And so there's all sorts of different aspects of this that will unfold.

00:26:36.000 But tonight is very, very important as it pertains to this thing having to pass.

00:26:41.000 But I think the leadership knows this has to pass.

00:26:45.000 They can't not have a rules package.

00:26:47.000 And it's one and the same in the commitment that they agreed to.

00:26:51.000 And I think they'll be able to get the votes that's necessary to do that.

00:26:54.000 So let me ask you, Russ, let's zero in on this committee.

00:26:57.000 You kind of designed what this church committee would be.

00:27:00.000 A lot of it would be done in the SCIF.

00:27:02.000 Is that correct?

00:27:03.000 I mean, this is the Church and Pike Committee was actually more public than I could imagine.

00:27:09.000 Go back and watch the tapes of it.

00:27:10.000 It's fascinating.

00:27:11.000 I mean, they have this, the heart attack gun, and they're talking about, you know, I think it's Cointelpro.

00:27:16.000 I always mispronounce it.

00:27:17.000 Coin, whatever, Coin Telpro and Operation Mockingbird.

00:27:22.000 But some of the members that were actually part of the committee, they went mad because they kept on running up against classified excuses and documents.

00:27:31.000 Two questions.

00:27:32.000 What is this going to look like?

00:27:33.000 How much of this is going to be in a skiff or basically in the basement of Congress?

00:27:37.000 And number two, how are we going to get actually something done when the intel agencies just put up their hands and say, sorry, classified?

00:27:45.000 Yeah, one of the things you've done your history on this, and you know the debates that they had even within the church committee about the hawks and those that were really trying to get at this.

00:27:54.000 And I was, I originally wanted it to be a committee outside of judiciary because I wanted to make sure that certain things, like judiciary only has law enforcement.

00:28:05.000 jurisdiction and they don't have the same ability to declassify information that intelligence committee has.

00:28:11.000 However, in the rules that they are writing for this subcommittee, this select committee, they are including the jurisdiction that's necessary to go wherever the evidence goes to subpoena wherever they need to, and they have the same ability to declassify.

00:28:27.000 So the things that I was concerned about, about it being within judiciary, have been resolved.

00:28:34.000 And this will be able to, if they can resist the urge to make sure that they do too much, right?

00:28:40.000 Where we want to make sure that whoever chairs this has a lot of ability to focus on the task at hand and to really prosecute and make this their number one priority.

00:28:50.000 They've got the tools with this committee to staff it up.

00:28:53.000 Same funding levels as the January 6th committee.

00:28:56.000 So that's tens of millions of dollars, if I'm not mistaken.

00:28:59.000 Exactly.

00:28:59.000 So, you know, church committee was about 135, 140 staffers.

00:29:03.000 This could have that similar level and it would be fairly significant.

00:29:08.000 So is this going to be under judiciary or is it TBD?

00:29:12.000 No, it's within judiciary.

00:29:13.000 The question at this point is who chairs it right now.

00:29:16.000 And they're working through that right now.

00:29:17.000 So was this January 6th select committee, was that under a certain committee or was that its own kind of floating thing?

00:29:25.000 It was its own floating thing.

00:29:27.000 Okay, so this is not a select committee then.

00:29:30.000 It is a subcommittee under judiciary.

00:29:32.000 I'm just making sure.

00:29:33.000 It is, but with one little wrinkle, which is that it's intended to be able to pull in, the select portion of it is intended to pull in non-judiciary committee members.

00:29:42.000 Got it.

00:29:42.000 Good.

00:29:42.000 And so there will be elements of it.

00:29:44.000 That's why we're talking about in terms of select.

00:29:46.000 Yeah.

00:29:46.000 And the thing I want to ask you is also range, because sometimes if it's too narrowly written, which all these creeps are going to do, they're going to say, oh, sorry, you can't look into the CIA.

00:29:56.000 You can't look into this because you were only supposed to look into this very particular thing.

00:30:01.000 And so they just, they just create all these, it's a maze, basically.

00:30:04.000 And the intel agencies right now are building a maze.

00:30:08.000 They are building a maze that will take decades to navigate so that when Thomas Massey and Jim Jordan start to go there, there'll be like fake doors and smokes and mirrors and documents that lead to fake documents that lead to classified that lead to people that don't exist and foreign agents.

00:30:27.000 Drawing up one of my favorite books that became a movie was Maze Runner.

00:30:32.000 You guys remember Maze Runner?

00:30:34.000 If you've never seen Maze Runner, it actually ends poorly, in my personal opinion, but it's one of those series that starts and it's so compelling and it's so well written and it's there's so much mystery.

00:30:45.000 And I actually think the author didn't bring it properly to completion.

00:30:48.000 But in the movie or in the book Maze Runner, essentially the premise is this.

00:30:53.000 Teenage boy wakes up in an underground elevator with no memory of his identity and he's basically got a, they're part of this maze and there's all these different traps and these rules and all this.

00:31:01.000 Basically, the intel agencies right now are creating a maze of their own, a labyrinth with us as Russ Vogt from the Center for Renewing America.

00:31:09.000 But Russ, they can't necessarily destroy documents, even though they do that anyway.

00:31:13.000 But there's too many documents probably to destroy, but they can classify them or they can create trapdoors and fake mirrors and smoke screens and delays and dead ends.

00:31:22.000 How is this committee going to navigate all of that?

00:31:25.000 Because I guarantee you, Christopher Ray is probably having an all-on-hands deck meeting right now, telling all of his lieutenants, create all these different ways to hide the evidence or to disclose it.

00:31:36.000 Us through that.

00:31:37.000 Well, number one, it learns the lessons from the the Russia hoax uh investigation that Devin Nunez Uh was a hero for, and that is, it understands the degree to which the agencies will try to classify and cordon things off and say, this is law enforcement, so we're not going to ask, we're not going to allow that to be addressed.

00:31:56.000 If you are the intel side or this is intel, so we're not going to allow you to have a conversation on the law enforcement side.

00:32:04.000 No no no, no.

00:32:05.000 This Church Committee itself will make the determination about what it wants to ask questions about.

00:32:11.000 It has full range to go after anything with regard to ongoing investigations, so that they can't use that as a a big banner of protection from any from answering questions, uh sources and methods, so that we get a handle on not just what the information is we need, but how they came about that information, so that we can unpack it and change that structure within the agency.

00:32:34.000 The final thing I would say is that, unlike the Church Committee, we've got to figure out how to use the appropriations process in comp at the same time as the Church Committee is being used to pull back money, so that the agencies are being starved at the very same time that they're having to make decisions about whether they're going to comply.

00:32:55.000 So yes, subpoenas can be fought.

00:32:58.000 What cannot be fought is the fact that the Appropriations committee is defunding you in the process and with the gains that are being made from a personnel standpoint on the Appropriate committee and the Rules committee, there's going to be a lot of opportunity to make sure that any appropriations bills are synced up with the work of the Judiciary Committee and the Church Committee and Cash.

00:33:18.000 Patel and our program introduced and floated a very interesting idea of fencing in the money, which is not necessarily taking in the entire FBI budget, which I do believe should be whittled down to almost nothing but saying, what is the line item that Christopher Wray treasures the most?

00:33:35.000 So let's maybe fence in his Gulf Stream, let's fence in the 80 million bucks that he has a year for counterterrorism travel so he could fly to the Adirondacks.

00:33:44.000 What is fencing in the money and why is that an important strategy for this new House Republican Caucus to employ?

00:33:52.000 I'm smiling Charlie, because Cash is one of our fellows at the Center and he always used the word fencing and I don't know what nobody, what he means in a budget construct.

00:34:00.000 But what he means by that is exactly what I just said, which is you cannot do this effectively unless you are using the power of the purse and to pull back and defund the things that are most critical to the agency's leadership uh, not necessarily to do their job, to con to the the, the activities to keep the American people safe, but that change their eye level and their center of gravity as to whether they're going to comply.

00:34:24.000 And to that extent, you really do need to fence the money in carefully and to do it through the appropriations process and finding the pressure points right.

00:34:32.000 So finding the ones where the heads of the IRS or the FBI they're going to be personally disenfranchised right word but they're going to be personally upset, they're going to have a more difficult life.

00:34:44.000 They're little luxury items, correct that?

00:34:47.000 That, Actually, you could win a PR battle around, right?

00:34:50.000 So if House Republicans say, okay, we could make a whole PR battle around the FBI, but they're probably going to win that on MSNBC and New York Times.

00:34:58.000 But if we pick a fight on the private jet fund for Christopher Wray, I think that's a fight worth having.

00:35:06.000 I think there's going to be a host of places that we can win fights with them.

00:35:10.000 And the church committee needs to be very strategic about how they roll this out to the American people because part of this is establishing the credibility with the entirety of the country to know what these agencies have done so that in two years, when the next Republican administration or conservative administration has a chance to govern, they will have been able to run a campaign against woke and the weaponized part of the federal government.

00:35:35.000 Got to go.

00:35:36.000 What's the website that people can support you, Russ?

00:35:39.000 Americarenewing.com, and they can get me at Russvode on Twitter and all the social media channels.

00:35:44.000 Very good.

00:35:44.000 Russ, keep up the great work.

00:35:45.000 Great commentary.

00:35:46.000 Thank you.

00:35:47.000 Thank you.

00:35:48.000 This committee could make history.

00:35:50.000 And yes, I know there's a lot of cynics and skeptics out there.

00:35:53.000 I'm choosing to believe based on the evidence, based on what's already been verified, and the promises that have been made to members that I trust.

00:36:01.000 If this ends up becoming a reality, which I think it will, it'll be a victory for oversight and reigning in the fourth branch of government.

00:36:10.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:36:11.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:36:15.000 Thank you so much for listening and God bless.

00:36:19.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - January 09, 2023

The House Got What it Wanted, Which Was… With Russ Vought

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