On today's show, we have a special guest from the Texas House Freedom Caucus, Tim Cain, who has served in the House of Representatives for 5 terms and is currently serving as the Chairman of the Freedom Caucus. He joins us to talk about a variety of topics, including: - Democrats fleeing the state of Texas - Should the FBI be called in to help find and arrest them? - What is the role of the FBI in this situation? - Who has the right to break quorum in a state where there are no quorum? - And what should the FBI do about it?
00:07:26.100I can read you the statute if you're interested.
00:07:27.620I know we've got time, but it's Section 3602 of the Texas Penal Code.
00:07:32.600It says person commits an offense if he intentionally or knowingly offers, confers or agrees to confer another or solicits, accepts or agrees to accept from another person any benefit as consideration for the recipient's decision, opinion, recommendation, vote or other exercise of discretion as a public servant, party official or voter.
00:07:54.480Some of this sounds like it might be might be on point, man.
00:07:58.060So so has have there been fundraising efforts from these Democrats in this area?
00:08:04.800In fact, I think recently Jasmine Crockett kind of got caught mentioning doing exactly that, not just fundraising, but helping to fund their lifestyle, to fund them there.
00:08:16.180They funded the private jet to help them leave, right, in exchange for their discretion not to be there.
00:08:47.460So this is this is the weird thing to me.
00:08:51.580Any job on the planet, if you if you are called in by your boss for what is part of your job, part of your contract, and you go, nah, I'm hopping a private jet and leaving and I won't be back.
00:09:02.800So how is it that they have not vacated their seat by their own admission by saying we will not be president?
00:09:09.760I mean, they've publicly admitted it, admitted this is what they're doing and why shouldn't that be statement enough to say we have vacated our seats?
00:09:19.800Of course, it's gonna be left to the courts and they're gonna have to struggle with where's the line, right?
00:09:23.780We gave an extreme example earlier, like you could not show up for two years and literally prevent the legislature from doing anything.
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00:10:27.920Well, that'd be weird if the only repercussion was the voters.
00:10:32.000It doesn't make sense. So where is it?
00:10:33.940Do you have to express some intent to return?
00:10:36.200Right now, they've expressed no present intent to come back, right?
00:10:40.500If you're like, hey, I'll be back in a few days, you go, okay, they haven't abandoned it.
00:10:44.040Right now, they're like, we're never coming back.
00:10:50.200And so not only should they face, you know, the repercussions from the voters at the ballot box, which the past two times, which is 2004, they broke quorum.
00:10:59.320They ran off to Oklahoma and in New Mexico.
00:11:21.740I was the chairman of elections, and that was my bill when they walked off the floor that day.
00:11:27.440We grew the Republican majority after that as well, and some of them lost their seats, and we still did it anyways.
00:11:34.420And I think this time it's going to be even worse.
00:11:37.060Anybody that's paying attention to Texas politics may know that our speaker was elected with a majority of the minority party.
00:11:44.040And so there's been a coalition speakership.
00:11:46.300And what they're doing now, I believe, is actually uniting the moderates and the conservatives in the House against them.
00:11:53.260And I think they've committed political suicide.
00:11:55.360They don't realize it because no longer for a while it was a theory or rumor that in order for them to say, you know, the speakers may be offering things, right, taking certain things off the table.
00:12:04.960Well, now they broke that, and there's literally no reason for leadership to give them absolutely anything.
00:12:10.780We should shove it all down their throat when we get them back.
00:12:12.720So on this bribery point, do you believe, based on what you've seen so far, that there should be criminal charges for bribery?
00:12:22.540There should at least be a grand jury investigation.
00:12:38.180Well, let me ask you now about the redistricting effort itself.
00:12:40.840The argument that's being made by Democrats, you know, Governor J.B. Pritzker went on Colbert and said, Trump called Texas and said, I need five seats.
00:12:49.420It is exceedingly rare to have a redistricting in the middle of a decade before the census comes in, and that this violates the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution.
00:12:59.220So the first question is, why are you guys redistricting right now?
00:13:03.400And, you know, what do you have to say about Pritzker's comments?
00:13:08.620Well, Pritzker's, of course, you know, talking at his rear end, trying to claim this violates the Constitution.
00:13:14.780Those things are left to the states, as you may know, and it's perfectly fine for us to do so.
00:13:20.880In fact, there is a case out of Galveston, Galveston County, you know, that's the island down here on our coast, that allowed them to do a similar thing based on their redistricting.
00:13:30.780And so for some time now, we realized we could do that, and it was an opportunity.
00:13:35.400But also, the states change, not just because of the open border policies, but somewhat our good policies.
00:13:43.340We're attracting people from those states, and they're fleeing.
00:13:45.980And so to adjust for those demographics and that change, it would only make sense that we adjust our seats because we have our one-man, one-vote rule.
00:13:56.180And through an interpretation of some federal case law, the seats must be almost perfectly identical.
00:14:02.000We're meeting 766,987 people, plus one or minus one, right?
00:14:08.460So you've got to get perfect, and obviously there needed to be an adjustment over the last five years from the, you know, 13-plus million illegals have come because it's not based on voters.
00:14:43.780Because you don't know or you'll get in trouble.
00:14:45.360This is going to be heavily, heavily litigated.
00:14:47.500I can just say that I had been talking about it for over a year with some other folks that we were allowed to, at least, because of this Galveston County case.
00:14:55.640Now, it doesn't mean they did it in response to me, but people were aware of the opportunity.
00:23:30.880The argument is you've abandoned your seat, right?
00:23:35.400It's like if you didn't give a letter of resignation when you left the job, but you didn't show up to work for a week and no call, no show.
00:23:42.500They're kind of like, I think that guy quit.
00:23:49.460I think we should go ahead and, you know, declare their seat vacant, order a special election, which, by the way, can be a great opportunity for Republicans.
00:23:57.320Maybe flip some seats for a little bit.
00:23:59.680What do you think the Supreme Court of Texas leans?
00:24:02.740You think they're going to go Republican or what?
00:24:21.520That's the thing that I think separates us from the left is that process, right, matters, that law matters, that we still have that moral high ground.
00:24:31.000And I'm actually in talks with a few of my colleagues on whether we're going to do some amicus letters and things advocating for it or explaining kind of the reasons, especially some of the historical context of why that quorum requirement's there.
00:24:44.760Because the Democrats are arguing, like, this is a legitimate procedure.
00:24:50.860I'm sick of the politicking across the board, across the country.
00:24:55.540The purpose of the quorum, you already mentioned it, but back in the day when you're walking, the idea was, hey, if people aren't here, we don't want the minority rushing in and then passing bills against the will of the voters in the state.
00:25:07.920The quorum rule is basically to be fair, but it's being exploited by people who've lost the elections.
00:25:15.940So the politics – here's my concern is the judges are going to be not weighing the law or the practical reality, but they'll be weighing the implications politically.
00:25:25.920And that's what we see over and over and over again way too often.
00:25:50.000You know, I see – I would say in Texas, our judges are elected statewide, so they stand for election.
00:25:55.600And they're not strangers to political pressures or name-calling.
00:25:59.900And what I'm going to say is I think our state judges, at least elected judges, kind of tend to stand up to political pressure a little better than the federal appointed guys, right, who grew up in this bubble, have never been name-called before, have never had anybody yell at them or send mail or put up billboards.
00:26:14.420Those dudes tend to kind of back down a lot easier than some of the elected ones.
00:26:20.400And so I think they'll do the right thing.
00:26:24.620I mean, one thing we've seen over the past decade plus is the left has been particularly good at organizing pressure campaigns.
00:26:32.220So the real question for a lot of these elected officials and just judges in general, I mean, with all due respect to the Supreme Court, I think they've done pretty well recently.
00:26:40.960But you look at Amy Coney Barrett's rulings after someone threatened to – someone actually tried to kill Brett Kavanaugh, they bend.
00:26:48.060There's absolutely no doubt that federal judges do that, 100 percent.
00:26:52.760I've talked with some buddies that do federal practice, and they've discussed that exact thing, that, one, there needs to be defense to it.
00:26:59.960Two, why aren't we doing the same thing to those guys, or at least their people, if it works, or at least if it's bad?
00:27:09.960I'll put it this way, you know, we had that famous court case, Texas v. Pennsylvania, back in 2021.
00:27:15.100I think end of 2020, 2021, over the election, Texas as a state arguing that other states violated the Constitution by altering the rules of federal elections without going through their state legislatures.
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00:28:24.000And the Supreme Court, except for Alito and Thomas, said, nah, we're not even going to hear the argument, which is cowardice.
00:28:30.820I mean, it drove me nuts. I was in Pennsylvania during, after the election.
00:28:36.440And the case, it was the Mike Kelly lawsuit.
00:28:40.020It's actually five Texans and two New Yorkers that came up with the idea.
00:28:43.760And we pitched it. And then eventually, you know, the big boys kind of stepped in.
00:28:47.440And it was that exact point that you can't alter these things.
00:28:50.700In fact, what was fascinating is Pennsylvania's constitution set forth when you could do mail-in balloting.
00:28:55.860And so they passed the thing to amend that constitution.
00:29:01.140Now, in Pennsylvania, in order to amend the constitution, the resolution to do so has to pass in two consecutive sessions.
00:31:28.920With what we're seeing Democrats do in your state, saying they're not going to come back,
00:31:33.180Politico's reporting a fine of upwards of $400,000 per special session called by the governor, civil arrest warrants.
00:31:40.440I mean, it sounds like the only way this gets resolved is if the state is willing to actually enforce action against these Democrats or at least take the interpretation.
00:31:50.220If the courts don't say the seats are vacated, Democrats can just say, fine us.
00:32:03.040And I was only here for the 2021 quorum break.
00:32:05.260But after all of us kind of sit here for like two and a half months doing nothing, waiting on them to return, right, interrupting our lives and being away from whatever, right?
00:33:06.220If the courts drag their feet or play dirty games, we need men of action.
00:33:12.700Listen, we need people who are going to say, listen, I'm not playing this game where you can leave, violate the spirit of our laws and our goodwill to steal political power in the state and in this country anymore.
00:33:24.660So just say, nope, you know what you should do?
00:33:28.300Just pass the resolution without quorum.
00:33:31.180And the problem is very few people have the political will to even do it.