Biden's aides believed that at the beginning of his administration, he had a legal obligation to personally hand sign all presidential actions, including pardons and commutations. But by the end of his presidency, Joe Biden was so disinterested in that sort of behavior that he was outsourcing clemency decisions to then-VICE President Kamala Harris, who doesn't have any powers under the Constitution.
00:08:54.900So he's obviously in a situation where he's got to do something to make things better for the people in the city.
00:09:00.900But also at the same time, as we were talking about before we came to air and we were laughing about with you,
00:09:05.860Democrats have been yanked so far to the left and there's not hardly a middle ground for them.
00:09:10.340So about three months ago, we had Tom Homan on this show and he said that he was willing to provide cover as the bad cop for any blue city mayors
00:09:18.280who wanted to be the good cops and, you know, resist the Trump administration.
00:09:22.480But, hey, guys, come in and kind of help us clean this up.
00:09:24.960Is there an opportunity here for blue city mayors to maybe face forward, act like they are, you know, opposing what the administration is doing?
00:09:34.540But meanwhile, letting them actually come in and make things better for their constituents to help boost their numbers so they can win again.
00:09:40.140Well, look, I think looking at what's happening in Washington, D.C. with Mayor Muriel Bowser, right, she's done that.
00:09:47.580You know, she's she's publicly spoken and she said, you know, initially, we don't want it.
00:09:52.200We don't need it. But then it came in and the proof is in the pudding.
00:09:55.980You know, the fact that crime is down 50 percent since Trump got our National Guards involved.
00:10:02.900This can happen in other cities. Get control of your city.
00:10:07.400They're not they're not saying they want to permanent permanently be there.
00:10:10.540We can't afford to have all of our National Guards all over our cities permanently.
00:10:14.380But if you can come in and at least help them, I'm shocked that these city mayors don't want that help.
00:10:20.140It's amazing how all they want is the cash.
00:10:22.640You know, they come in and out of our offices all the time asking for more money, asking for more appropriations, asking for more CDBG funds.
00:10:29.940And so here you have a president who is offering to do it, allowing them to save face.
00:10:35.780And yet you still have them in denial.
00:10:37.520And it's as if they actually are protecting the criminals or fine with that happening in their cities.
00:10:43.020And they are doubling down. Think about what would happen if you actually had a mayor who said, you know what?
00:10:48.080I've talked to one too many victims today of violence in my city.
00:10:52.200One too many kids who've died from fentanyl.
00:10:54.360We are going to accept that help because it could because crime should not be a partisan issue.
00:10:59.100Can you imagine that? I think that mayor is saving face, but also protecting their community.
00:11:03.960And that is exactly what they get elected to do.
00:11:08.020You mentioned the money, and I'm wondering whether there is a growing trend in Congress to consider tying future federal funds to a city's willingness to abide by common sense law and order measures.
00:11:18.980Like, if someone's a bad guy, don't let them out the next day after they've committed a bad crime.
00:11:23.200Is there some conversation behind the scenes of Congress using the power of the purse to start to crack down on these wayward cities?
00:11:30.700I have introduced legislation to do that.
00:11:33.120I am on and I've co-sponsored a number of my colleagues who also have bills to do that.
00:11:38.560Mine basically says if you are a sanctuary city, you're not going to get federal dollars.
00:11:42.140And we're going to actually claw back unspent federal dollars for the last five years if you are a sanctuary city.
00:11:48.020So if you have actually had a – you pass a bill that says this is your sanctuary city, if these are the policies that you are carrying out,
00:11:57.420if you're preventing police from doing their job and working with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, then, yes, you're going to get your federal dollars clawed back.
00:12:31.480Well, what we're saying is when we see these rioters that have been just taking over cities, taking over campuses around the country, they are organized riots.
00:12:40.920These are organized violent riots where you're seeing people in the same kind of military black gear with assault weapons, having the same literature.
00:12:55.140So what this would do is it would expand the RICO definitions to include these organizers of riots.
00:13:02.840It would give the federal government power to be able to go into some of these jurisdictions like we were just talking about that aren't enforcing their laws.
00:13:10.360And it would allow the federal government to come in and do that.
00:13:12.420But we are going to find out who is behind them, who is organizing them, and who is paying for it.
00:13:18.060Because the people who are actually committing the riots right now are the only ones that we can hold responsible.
00:13:23.560And you've got cities who aren't doing that.
00:13:26.760So this actually allows us to get and find rioters who are showing up in cities over and over again, in different cities around the country.
00:13:34.140It expands it to allow us to find out who is committing this crime, who is paying for it.
00:13:41.660And I think we're going to try to figure out any way that we can to get down to the bottom of the problem.
00:13:49.560And it allows other jurisdictions to actually connect the dots.
00:13:54.260So cities can talk to one another, but federal law enforcement can actually investigate it and put the dots together.
00:14:03.060Somewhere there's a racketeering conspiracy waiting to be discovered in that evidence.
00:14:07.180And it's going to be important, I think, for us to all watch how that develops in the next few months.
00:14:11.860Congresswoman, there is a signal that the president will soon unleash a new blueprint for helping make housing affordable again in America.
00:14:22.580J.D. Vance said something profound the other day.
00:14:26.200He said that part of the reason is that when we let those millions of Americans, millions of illegal aliens into America a few months, years ago, over the Biden years, we actually put enormous pressure on the housing market that drew prices up.
00:14:39.120A lot of people didn't put that together.
00:14:42.700What are some of the ideas on the table now in Congress to get behind what the president does and maybe make housing more affordable again in America?
00:14:53.400When you have got the federal government that's paying on market rate and above, basically cash money and kicking out people who are already living there to be able to house illegal aliens, yes, it absolutely increased the cost because it also made the demand higher, which made the costs higher.
00:15:10.320But we've got to get down to the bottom line, whether or not that is looking at a total revamp of HUD policies, which that's the first agency that they went into.
00:15:19.420And as you know, I used to work with Ben Carson at HUD under the first Trump administration.
00:15:24.020But they have they have a strategy of being able to allow get the federal government out of people's lives.
00:15:30.120The overregulation is one of the key factors in the cost of housing.
00:15:34.220And we find that in areas like California, where the housing is the most the most expensive.
00:15:41.300The reason why a lot of the times is the additional burdens that the federal government, state government and local governments put on these these home builders to be able to actually build new houses.
00:15:53.040So I think we're looking at totally going revamping a regulatory reforms.
00:15:57.900And that is something that's happening at HUD right now.
00:16:00.120They've already figured out how to kick out like over a thousand either duplicative or illegal regulations that right now are being forced on home builders.
00:16:11.200And when you're talking about literally trillions of dollars, when we start looking at regulatory reform, that could be that could be saved.
00:16:17.700And that will definitely help people who are trying to buy and build new homes.
00:16:22.280The other thing that we're trying to do is look at it from a tax perspective and allowing people to use more of their earned income that's that's pre-taxed to be able to put down down payments on homes.
00:16:33.160But there's a whole host of of options at the table.
00:16:37.180We're just trying to put together a very thoughtful strategy.
00:16:40.880When we come back, we'll address that big scoop.
00:16:42.640We had overnight big exclusive on Joe Biden, the auto pen in the possibility that some of those pardons and commutations may be voidable.
00:16:51.360We'll discuss that next with the Oversight Project's great lawyer, Sam Dewey.
00:17:01.580All right, folks, welcome back from the commercial break.
00:17:03.740At the top of the show, I told you about those new documents we got from the National Archives dug up by the Trump White House Counsel's Office as part of their review of what we call auto pen gate.
00:17:14.900Joe Biden's unwillingness to take the time to sign official documents like clemency orders, pardons, sometimes legislation, executive orders.
00:17:26.260Now, while that was a big development and while there's more big developments on the horizon, none of this would have been known.
00:17:32.900None of this controversy, none of the important public issues that this raises about the Biden era of government would have been known if it weren't for the great work of my friends at the Oversight Project.
00:17:45.300We had Mike Howell on a couple of weeks ago.
00:17:47.180You get a sense of everything that they're doing that makes a difference to a better, smarter government.
00:17:53.480And right now, I want to bring in another one of their great lawyers.
00:17:56.400He has served in so many different roles across the time, but he used to be a senior advisor at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, a place that I did a lot of work at back about four or five years ago exposing things.
00:18:07.140Today, he's one of the top lawyers at the Oversight Project.
00:18:25.780And I think every time we peel a little bit more of the onion back, we see just how bad it is.
00:18:31.320When you look at these new documents, you've got sort of two points.
00:18:34.000At the beginning of the Biden presidency, it's clear his inner circle team believes he has a legal obligation to sign personally on things like clemency or executive orders.
00:18:44.660Or legislation, because that's what the precedent was in the Obama administration.
00:18:51.100But by the end of it, Joe Biden seems to be so disinterested in his job.
00:18:55.360He's like, I'll let Kamala Harris do that.
00:18:57.140When you see those two bookends, and now we have paper for it, what's your analysis now?
00:19:03.240What does this do to the legal analysis about the possibility that what Joe Biden did was illegal and possibly even voidable?
00:19:35.080The Supreme Court has said five or six times, look to British law as it existed at the time of independence when determining how to deal with a pardon, construe it, see whether it's valid.
00:19:50.860And there are a bunch of state cases from the 1900s where some weird issues arose.
00:19:57.540There were ones in Oklahoma where there was a disputed election.
00:20:02.960The secretary of state refused to seal a pardon that the governor, who may not have been the governor, issued.
00:20:08.480And in all those cases, the court said, it's got to be sealed under the law.
00:20:17.160So at the highest level, people, a lot of people don't get that because a lot of legal acts, you know, you can ratify, you can repair, not pardon.
00:20:28.060If you screwed up issuing it, there was no pardon.
00:20:34.780And then drilling down from your broader thing, I mean, this confirms all of our suspicions.
00:20:41.300If you stipulate to the broadest use of the auto pen, let's say we don't get into the legality, we stipulate to the broadest legal version of how much you can auto pen.
00:20:52.580The one thing every one of those DOJ opinions says is you've got to have documentation somewhere.
00:21:00.320If you use the auto pen, make sure it's documented.
00:21:03.340And I'm looking at a decision memo, essentially nullifying the death penalty statute in most cases that isn't even signed.
00:21:14.120And the only indication is some random memo claiming Jeff Sents had an oral conversation.
00:21:23.460And that's insane because under the broadest view of the legality of the auto pen, they did exactly what DOJ said not to do, which is they didn't document anything.
00:21:35.400So I know that they're looking very closely at this, and I do think there are some real legal questions on some of the pardons.
00:21:47.760And I can put that in two buckets if that's of interest to you.
00:21:53.440Listen, nobody knows this better than you guys.
00:21:55.080You guys have been at the forefront from the beginning.
00:21:57.340The two things I would look at are the death row commutations because they were the worst of the worst.
00:22:03.480I mean, there was a case where the guy on appeal, where the guy was pardoned, and there was a circuit judge, very, very prominent circuit judge in Texas, Oldham, who wrote a concurrence saying, this guy literally murdered a mother, kidnapped her minor daughter, murdered the minor daughter.
00:23:08.420And in the in the UK, when they were dealing with their abolition, the home secretary said, I'm just going to commute every sentence while the bill is pending.
00:23:19.580And all the judges got up in the House of Lords and says, that's an illegal suspension.
00:25:15.040He, senior most career, wrote a memo that wasn't a cover yourself memo.
00:25:20.600It was a full on, this is a drug deal.
00:25:23.420I'm having nothing to do with it memo.
00:25:25.240And these people were released, seems like by the careers, just, you know, a couple of days into Trump's term.
00:25:34.840And I think the thing to look at there is, with that particular warrant, and given the Wensheimer email, is that pardon valid?
00:25:43.800And do you notify people, hey, the 15 years you thought were shaved off your sentence are not shaved, please report back to federal prison.
00:25:51.940So that's really what I think we should be looking to are those two issues.
00:25:57.760There's another part of this that has struck me now that we've seen the great documents that you guys have been able to uncover, and then these new ones that the archives turned over.
00:26:08.320And that is an utter lack of attention, an utter lack of care or concern.
00:26:15.620The president, this is one of the most awesome powers that a president can exercise, the power of the pardon.
00:26:22.620This is like really important stuff that, you know, presidents take really seriously.
00:26:26.120They weigh these things before they execute them.
00:26:29.480And it seems as though Joe Biden was so disinterested that he's like offshoring it to someone else or to Kamala Harris, who doesn't, by the way, have the pardon of the power, only the president does.
00:26:39.340Because the mentality that Joe Biden seemed to be so disinterested in how this power got exercised is perhaps the most stunning thing when I look at these documents.
00:26:49.320What is one to make of a president who allows one of his most awesome powers to be treated as though it's, you know, third-hand job?
00:27:02.920And given the other context and everything we know, you have to wonder, was it a deliberate abdication or was it that he just wasn't competent?
00:30:45.160So walk us through the likely steps here.
00:30:47.980So we know that the White House is putting the finishing touches on its review report.
00:30:51.700That's why we reported on the documents we got overnight.
00:30:54.580That could come out as early as this weekend.
00:30:57.320And then I assume that the White House and the Justice Department work together because the notifications would probably have to come from the Justice Department in most places.
00:31:06.480Is that what we should be looking for over the next several days?
00:31:10.840I mean, I think that, you know, we don't know exactly what's going to happen.
00:31:15.600But I think that either the White House will issue a direction or they will ask ODAG, where the pardons are handled, the deputy attorney general, to evaluate a set of criteria.
00:31:27.640But in terms of how this will play out, how this will play out, the court, it may be, OK, you've been on death row for 20 years.
00:31:37.960You've had nine different courts uphold your death sentence.
00:31:42.280You were notified the pardon was invalid.
00:31:44.520Your execution date is scheduled in three months.
00:31:46.700And at that point, that prisoner would petition for – go to court, petition for habeas corpus and say, I have a valid pardon, and it will be litigated.
00:32:00.360And it will all be litigated in Terre Haute or where the prisoner is located.
00:32:07.360Most of them are still in Terre Haute in Indiana, so it actually won't be in D.C.
00:39:01.340I want to tackle something that I think a lot of Americans don't know.
00:39:04.940They see this young man and he has this sort of socialist, populist rhetoric.
00:39:09.500And you think, well, maybe he grew up, you know, working class or working poor or maybe, maybe middle class.
00:39:17.020But he comes from a very well-to-do family.
00:39:20.580He went to a $72,000 a year college in Maine called Bledoyne College.
00:39:26.680How does Americans get to know who he really is?
00:39:29.780Because I think some of the rhetoric masks the fact that this guy lived the ultimate capitalist life in America before he played this game.
00:39:36.880Well, maybe he's just a great actor like our friend Zelensky over in Ukraine because his mom is a big film director in the movie business, right?
00:39:46.480So, he's grown up in the movie business.
00:39:48.480His dad is a professor, teaches classes.