00:00:27.000Today in the Charlie Kirk show, we go through in great detail the Trump indictment, rising crime in New York City, and also we briefly touch on the American founding and independence.
00:00:36.000You guys can listen to more of that on Monday when we drop our Ask Me Anything episode.
00:00:40.000Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:43.000And if you want to support our program, go to charliekirk.com slash support.
00:01:14.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:23.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:37.000Truth is, I know millions of people, in fact, that over 100 million people that are struggling with some kind of pain, whether it knee pain, back pain, joint pain, and exercise or getting older or whatever it might be.
00:01:48.000I'm so impressed with the team at Relief Factor.
00:02:11.000We're going to get into some breaking news here with the indictment against the Trump organization.
00:02:16.000And one of the most stunning and alarming indictments that I have ever seen.
00:02:21.000As we celebrate independence, we need to ask ourselves the question, are we currently living under some form of totalitarian, authoritarian tyranny?
00:02:31.000And when you read this indictment and how the opposition is willing to use criminal power to go after people that they don't like their politics, it just begs the question, how do the truths of the Declaration ring true to what we're living through right now?
00:02:49.000And then later in the hour, we're going to be joined by Pastor David Engelhart, again, from New York City, who's also a lawyer and attorney to go through the indictment.
00:02:57.000And then I'm going to go through in great detail kind of what is the, what does the Declaration stand for?
00:03:04.000And also what happened on July 3rd, July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
00:03:11.000But maybe you didn't know, but July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd were the three days of the Gettysburg battle.
00:03:16.000You see, Abraham Lincoln didn't give the Gettysburg address until I think November 19th.
00:03:20.000We didn't get a fact check on that, 1863, almost four and a half months later.
00:03:24.000But Abraham Lincoln, when he talked about America's founding, he was pointing directly to the same time that the Battle of Gettysburg occurred.
00:03:34.000But first, let's get into the indictment here.
00:03:57.000Yeah, I would say my initial reaction is witch hunt.
00:04:00.000And I mean that in the context of, if you remember last year, the DA, the Cyvance, and Letitia James, they were saying that they were going to find this was the wording they used.
00:04:13.000They were going to find fraud as related to bank applications.
00:04:16.000Remember that they were inflating the amount of money the operations.
00:04:20.000And then insurance companies that they were defrauding.
00:05:43.000It's almost as if the rule of law and the way that we go about treating our fellow countrymen is that if you live in New York City or the state of New York, they will use whatever political power they have to destroy your life.
00:05:56.000So, what's happening right now reminds me of a man named Andre Vyshetsky.
00:06:19.000And his quote is something that is referenced in cocktail parties and in law classrooms across the country, which is, you show me the man, I'll show you the crime.
00:06:30.000And if you show me a man like Donald Trump who has gone through two years of exhaustive investigations, criminal investigations that they said, we don't know what the crime is, but we're going to try to find it.
00:06:44.000And then they had to perp walk this man who is the CFO for the Trump organization.
00:06:49.000And if you read this indictment, they act as if he is smuggling children into New York City.
00:06:56.000They act as if he is running a gun-running operation, or if that he is trying to launder money from the third world, you say, Oh, wait, he didn't pay his taxes because of some sort of benefit that he received.
00:07:08.000So, just so you guys understand, the main thrust of the argument is that he was given cars that he was not paying tax on.
00:07:14.000Now, what I find interesting, though, is how do they know those were not company cars?
00:07:20.000Also, if New York City was not his residence, who's to say that that was not imperative for him to be able to do his job as CFO of the Trump organization?
00:07:29.000The point is, under certain accounting principles, some of these things very well could be argued as legitimate deductions.
00:07:36.000Now, when you get to living expenses, it gets harder, obviously.
00:07:39.000But the argument could be made that was not my residence.
00:07:42.000You know, Mr. Trump wanted me in the city, and this was part of one of the benefit packages.
00:07:47.000And if they weren't declaring it as income, that's on them.
00:07:51.000And then also, let's talk about remedies.
00:07:53.000They are now using criminal prosecution for something that very well could be figured out in an afternoon in a boardroom where the state of New York and say, look, we see what you were doing here.
00:08:04.000Pay us $400,000 and that's a settlement.
00:08:07.000Have you ever seen, David, the criminal process used to try to remedy tax payment issues like this?
00:08:15.000No, and I think it was one of the Trump organization lawyers, Ron Fisher, who said a fringe benefits tax case has never been applied this way.
00:08:24.000And even the New York Times said it was either yesterday, the day before that, you could not imagine another corporation in New York City having files, charges filed this way.
00:08:35.000The funny thing about his residence here versus his residence in Long Island is this is a normal New York City corporate officer situation.
00:08:56.000And is it your place of permanent residence?
00:08:58.000Well, it sounds like Long Island has been Weiselberg's state, you know, permanent residence.
00:09:03.000And if he's a smart finance guy, he knows that and he knows he needs to spend 183 days so he doesn't have to pay the taxes.
00:09:11.000So, Charlie, like if you actually look at just the New York state tax liability that Weiselman has over the entire period of 15 years, it's 100 grand.
00:09:38.000And you're running a multi-billion dollar business and you're talking about fringe benefits for the CEO.
00:09:43.000And you know what's amazing as we're here in New York City, and I say this as a conservative, the people that crashed our economy and manipulate the financial banking laws all in Wall Street, none of them went to jail after 2008.
00:09:55.000None of the people that were on the phone with the Treasury, on the phone with Goldman Sachs, on the phone with the FDIC, crafting together all of these very specific bailout packages that were playing games with people's deposits.
00:10:11.000None of them had exhaustive investigations from the New York Attorney General.
00:10:15.000But instead, we now have to see Donald Trump's CFO get perp walked at the New York Attorney General's office while every one of the other legitimate financial criminals here in New York City, they're wealthier than ever before.
00:10:30.000I was in the cab on the way home last night and the cab driver said to me, well, Donald Trump has killed 100,000, a minimum of 100,000 people.
00:10:55.000There's such a cognitive dissonance in the people of New York that only listen to left-wing media that actually truly believe that the Wuhan, the Chinese virus was the fault of Donald Trump, who has not been more opposed to China than any other leader we've had in the last 10 years.
00:11:15.000With the ever-increasing numbers of makes and models, it is now impossible to stock all the parts you need on a traditional chain storefront.
00:11:21.000Why endure often pointless and seemingly intimidating questioning and wait while the counterman orders the parts on his computer or her computer, choosing the only brand his warehouse happens to carry?
00:11:31.000You have computers with access to rockauto.com at home and in your pocket.
00:11:37.000One reason to repair and maintain your cars is to save money and that you can then use for other important things like mortgages or food.
00:11:43.000Why choose to spend 30, 50 or 100% more?
00:12:20.000Maybe you need a new thing that I don't know anything about cars, so maybe you need that thing.
00:12:24.000Then go to rockauto.com and type in Charlie Kirk to how you heard us.
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00:12:35.000We were just asking the question: what is the potential benefit to the Trump organization here that was being alleged in the indictment?
00:12:42.000And I think that's the main question for any reasonable person that reads through the 25 pages of the indictment.
00:12:47.000If you get away from the millions of dollars, blah, blah, blah.
00:12:49.000There's a general rule, Charlie, in business law called the business judgment rule, which means a business will not intentionally harm itself or damage itself because it functions on the basis of profits for itself and the holders, owners of that corporation.
00:13:05.000And so when you look at what the indictment tells us, it tells us that it's taking certain dollars and then it's giving them to Weiselman for fringe benefits.
00:13:14.000And it's instead of giving it to Weiselman as payment, if it was just payment, they would have to pay, you know, a social security tax, Medicaid, Medicare, whatever that body of taxes is.
00:13:25.000Instead, they're paying it for a car or an apartment or whatever.
00:13:29.000And therefore, the Trump organization is guilty criminally because they paid in one manner and not the other manner.
00:13:37.000But it's still a loss for the Trump organization, either way.
00:13:41.000So, according to the business judgment rule, they would never do something to shoot themselves in the foot purposely.
00:13:47.000And so, what this has basically opened up is this question of what laws do you choose to enforce and against whom to the state of New York?
00:13:54.000Because if this is now the case, I guarantee you, in a city of 8 million people, you got at least 80 to 90,000 people that are cheating significantly on their taxes or not even filing returns altogether.
00:14:05.000I mean, there are people with the IRS that go five, six, or seven years without filing a return.
00:14:09.000The IRS comes and says, Stop doing this, pay a big penalty.
00:14:15.000Instead, they are using an abuse of the fraud statute, unlike anything we have ever seen before.
00:14:20.000This sets a precedent that if we don't like your politics, we are now able to open up endless investigations into you, make you spend millions of dollars in legal fees.
00:14:30.000Meanwhile, Peter Strzzok walks free, Lisa Page walks free, James Colmy walks free, Hunter Biden walks free.
00:15:59.000And unfortunately, for most voters, they're still voting in droves for Democrats.
00:16:03.000I mean, you have Adams, who hopefully will get elected as a former police officer.
00:16:10.000And if that happens, maybe they'll bring more police back into the city and back into the subways because the crime rate, as we spoke about yesterday, has dramatically increased in New York City because we have an administration right now that's not focusing on the most important things.
00:16:44.000But all of a sudden, we now, the focus of the law enforcement arm of the city of New York is not about solving the 70% of unknown shooters and murderers.
00:16:56.000No, it's about whether or not Weisselberg was in an apartment that he didn't perfectly pay for.
00:17:05.000And instead of sending a letter saying, can you guys just solve this?
00:17:40.000But all of a sudden, if you're a Democrat chuckling at this and you think that there's not going to be, you know, an equal and opposite reaction, you're naive.
00:17:49.000Did you get hit with a big tax bill you weren't expecting?
00:17:52.000With rates still being very low and home equity being high, it's the perfect time to refinance and get some cash out of your home.
00:17:58.000If you have to take out a loan, don't go to the big banks where you know they don't share your values.
00:18:03.000And at any time, they might kick out conservatives from using their banks.
00:18:07.000Remember Tucker Carlson revealing that Bank of America probably unconstitutionally and maybe outside of the law, who knows, handed over depositing information, credit card transactions to the federal government to try to target conservatives.
00:20:51.000You see, the priority of the ruling class is not the well-being of black children in Brooklyn or Harlem that are shot on the way to school.
00:21:02.000No, it's whether or not they punish people that threaten their political power.
00:21:07.000This is what we're seeing now in New York City.
00:21:09.000We're going to keep on monitoring this story, but at least we know everybody.
00:21:31.000And it's now a day that is under major accusations from the intelligentsia, the enlightened, the postmodern folks in our country, which is the Declaration of Independence, July 4th, 1776.
00:21:58.000It starts with: when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them.
00:22:17.000A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation.
00:22:24.000When in the course of human events, what does that mean?
00:22:27.000It means this is a universal principle.
00:22:29.000It means that when Thomas Jefferson was writing this, he wasn't saying that, oh, this is just for 1776.
00:22:35.000No, he said, this is a moral right for all human beings.
00:22:39.000Professor Harry Jaffa, who was the professor for Dr. Larry Arn from Hillsdale, he argued that the Declaration of Independence was the second most profound moment in this idea of self-governance from Moses coming down from Mount Sinai.
00:22:56.000Because this was not just a political document.
00:22:59.000This is a document that talked about who are we as human beings and how should we be governed.
00:23:05.000In fact, Thomas Jefferson made the argument that government exists simply and solely to protect you as God made you and there are certain laws that you are able to operate in.
00:23:27.000Yeah, so the laws of nature and nature's God is, I mean, first, God is creator of all things.
00:23:32.000And second of all, that he creates us in an environment which allows freedom, allows what we call the pursuit of happiness, not the pursuit of narcissism or self-indulgence, but for me to be able to pursue my dreams and goals in life without being taken by a tyrannical government, without being treated in an unequal way.
00:23:52.000And that's the second clause of the Declaration, right?
00:23:55.000That this is the number one thing we hold to be self-evident, that we're created equal.
00:24:00.000You can't, because of a political bent, treat this party significantly different than you treat this other party.
00:24:07.000And that was happening and it's happening again in our current political climate.
00:24:11.000What makes America so beautiful is first, this idea of liberty bounded by basic laws.
00:24:18.000We hold these truths to be self-evident.
00:24:21.000So this idea of self-evident truth is a Lockean idea.
00:24:25.000John Locke, who is heavily influenced by Aquinas and Augustine and by Aristotle, there are three social contract theorists that all happened around the same time.
00:24:35.000They all lived in the same time, basically.
00:24:37.000They were contemporaries, to use the philosophical term.
00:24:41.000And that would be John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Hobbes.
00:24:46.000Thomas Hobbes believed that human nature, that we were nasty and we were brutish and short to one another.
00:24:52.000And therefore, we need a dictator type like tyrant to govern ourselves.
00:25:21.000He prioritized the adulterer over the loyal spouse.
00:25:25.000Confessions, written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, was actually the second best-selling book in the 1800s in France.
00:25:33.000His idea of a social contract was that his most famous quote was not that all men are created equal and that they're endowed by their creator.
00:25:41.000Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, no, no, no, no.
00:25:43.000All men are born free and they live the rest of their lives in chains.
00:25:48.000Basically, he was saying that private property and commercial society, that is actually keeping people handcuffed.
00:25:56.000So there's this tension point between John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, where John Locke said, who are you in the state of nature?
00:26:47.000This is part of Locke in the second treatise on government.
00:26:51.000He says property itself is something that you invest your life into.
00:26:56.000So when someone steals something from you, they're not just stealing your hat or your shoes or your car.
00:27:01.000They're stealing a piece of your life because you've invested your years to have that and your life exists inside that property.
00:27:09.000And that can't be taken away from you without appropriate process of law.
00:27:14.000Then it says life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:27:17.000Now, the original draft said property, which was part of John Locke's original thesis.
00:27:24.000Now, I want to stop really quick because there is this idea that our true birthday was 1619.
00:27:31.000It's being put forward by the charlatan and the dishonest, let's just say, quasi-intellectual Nicole Hannah Jones, who has just been granted tenure at University of North Carolina and she wrote the 1619 project, amongst other things, despite intentionally misinterpreting the documents, the founders.
00:27:49.000So her whole argument is that the American founding was actually about defending slavery and racism.
00:27:55.000Nicole Hannah Jones, I will write you a personal check of $10,000.
00:28:00.000And I know you're a grifter, so you love money.
00:28:02.000If you can find me one original source document of any signer, of any founding father that ever wrote robustly about connecting the American founding to slavery, I will write you a personal check.
00:28:14.000You can't find it because you made it up.
00:28:16.000You did not use original source documents.
00:28:18.000You did not use quotes that are attributed to the founders.
00:28:20.000In fact, if you look in the private journals and musings of every single founding father, Thomas Jefferson included, they abhorred slavery.
00:28:26.000They did not say, are we going to get rid of slavery?
00:28:29.000They asked, how are we going to get rid of slavery?
00:28:35.000Nine out of 13 of the original colonies by the Constitutional Convention by 1787 had already abolished slavery.
00:28:42.000The Declaration was a universal call of what a human being is in relationship with that government.
00:28:47.000It wasn't until the Democrat Supreme Court Dred Scott decision, 7-2, the two dissenters were Republicans, did they say the Declaration doesn't apply to black people.
00:28:57.000The Dred Scott decision was one of the most immoral and evil legal decisions ever made in the history of the world.
00:29:03.000But this is a really important thing that when we look at the Declaration, we look at our founding, this was a call for all of humanity.
00:29:10.000So it gets to the question of what is a human being, which is something the other side cannot answer.
00:29:15.000The other side says, well, a human being is what I choose it to be.
00:29:18.000We believe a human being is the speaking being, as Aristotle would say.
00:29:22.000Nature is the norm, that we are the reasoned beings.
00:29:26.000That makes us different than dogs and dolphins.
00:29:28.000The Constitution does not apply to butterflies.
00:29:31.000It is a human document, and it says it right here.
00:29:34.000It says that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, not among elk, not among moose, not among dolphins, but among men deriving their powers from the consent of the governed.
00:29:46.000That idea of consent to the governed comes down to one word, permission, that the government needs our permission to use force.
00:29:54.000You see, what Thomas Jefferson was doing here, he was a big thinker, is he was completely inverting human beings' relationship with government in real time.
00:30:03.000He said, you know what, King George, you're actually at the bottom of the hierarchy.
00:30:07.000The top of the hierarchy is the creator.
00:30:09.000And then those rights are transcendently passed down to the equality of all human beings.
00:30:14.000Then government springs out beyond that.
00:30:17.000You see, this idea of the divine right of kings, which obviously King George believed in, was the opposite, was that there was a hierarchy of the human being above one another where Thomas Jefferson said, no, we're all equal with rights under our creator.
00:30:30.000And therefore, King George, if you're in that position of authority, we have to give you that permission.
00:30:35.000We have to have some sort of system to either vote for you or to collaborate or to cooperate.
00:30:41.000You're not just there through blood right.
00:30:43.000What Thomas Jefferson was doing here in the Declaration of Independence was the most articulate and effective indictment of the blood right to ancestral rule.
00:30:53.000That's a leap forward, the likes of which is just so mind-blowing because it was an act of courage and one that was filled with clarity of wisdom that I argue was actually transcendent.
00:31:05.000And Thomas Jefferson was tasked with this project by the fellow signers, 56 of them, where they said, hey, Thomas Jefferson, TJ, can you put all these ideas into one?
00:31:19.000But there's something that people miss, which is this was just merely an extension of the demand of the people that was laid by the preachers of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield and many others.
00:31:31.000And there was a committee that was formed.
00:31:33.000The chairman of that committee was Benjamin Franklin.
00:31:36.000And they said, hey, young Thomas Jefferson, take a stab at this.
00:31:39.000Dr. Larry Arn from Hillsdale, he famously has said, you could only really become a master of three things.
00:32:01.000And it's just so important and it's being so intentionally misrepresented because almost all of these conversations of the destruction of our country go back to a misunderstanding of the philosophical roots and the ambitions and the dreams of the founding fathers.
00:32:15.000So I want to go back to this, David, really quick.
00:32:17.000Can you walk through what was the landscape like of the church and activist pastors right before the Declaration of Independence?
00:32:28.000Was there a citizenry that was demanding this great leap forward to self-governance?
00:32:33.000Yeah, you mentioned in the previous segment, Charlie, the shift between the divine right of kings, subjugating law, reinterpreting law, living under the tyranny of ever-changing laws, and this famous pamphlet called Lex Rex that came out and started shifting the ideological landscape through pastors.
00:32:54.000And Lex Rex meant that Lex, that's the Latin word for law, and Rex is the Latin word for king.
00:33:03.000So it wasn't that the king was above the law, that he could interpret it any way he wanted, but actually that the law was above the king and the king was subject to law.
00:33:13.000In that pamphlet, it's John Knox, I believe, is one of the ideological kind of seed bearers of that movement.
00:33:22.000He was saying that the kings of the Old Testament always ended up doing corrupt things.
00:33:27.000That's why the law has to be fixed and permanent because it doesn't change and apply differently to different groups of people.
00:33:36.000And we just talked about the Declaration of Independence.
00:33:39.000One of the axioms is equality under the law.
00:33:43.000And this is something in the Summa that Thomas Aquinas said.
00:33:48.000He said, when there are a thousand laws, when there are innumerable laws, it creates the opportunity for tyranny because you never know what law you're breaking.
00:33:57.000And the tyrannical can apply whatever law, just like you said, the fascist dictators boy said, you show me the man, I'll show you the crime.
00:34:06.000Well, that works in an environment where there's a million laws and you don't even know if you're breaking those laws.
00:34:11.000Andrei Vyshevsky, Mark Cicero famously said, the more laws, the less justice.
00:34:17.000James Madison famously said, if the laws become too voluminous and too counted and too plenty, justice will disappear.
00:34:24.000I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what James Madison said.
00:34:27.000James Madison, the author and the father of the American Constitution.
00:34:30.000And then finally, as you say, Andrei Vyshevsky, show me the man, I'll show you the crime.
00:34:35.000You pass a bunch of laws professionally.
00:34:37.000It then all comes down to who's enforcing it, who's in charge.
00:34:41.000And if you get a carve-out, that means you're a friend or an ally of the party.
00:34:45.000But if you're a dissident against the party, like Donald Trump, they will crush you.
00:34:50.000And on this July 4th weekend, I hope all of you take time to go reread the Declaration of Independence and then listen to our podcasts and think deeply: are we near a precipice where we have to redeclare our moral right to self-govern?
00:35:07.000I'm not calling for anything violent, obviously.
00:35:09.000I'm saying, but do we have to redeclare this idea that we have a moral right to be able to charter our course and to be able to build a partnership with our leaders?