Verdict with Ted Cruz - December 09, 2023


Corporate Wokeism Hits Elon, Sen Ted Cruz Takes on FBI Dir Christopher Wray, plus Van Orden v. Perry-Remembering Justice Sandra Day O'Connor the Week In Review


Episode Stats


Length

37 minutes

Words per minute

171.98755

Word count

6,391

Sentence count

473

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The FBI Director Christopher Wray had a toe-to-toe battle with Sen. Ted Cruz. Elon Musk is being targeted by advertisers. And former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has passed away. Ted Cruz pays his respects to her.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.540 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.460 Welcome.
00:00:05.220 It is Verdict for Ted Cruz Weekend Review.
00:00:07.860 Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:09.060 And these are the stories that you may have missed that we talked about this past week.
00:00:13.380 It started with Elon Musk.
00:00:15.880 Well, there's a new scheme now to bring him down as advertisers are trying to destroy
00:00:20.700 his platform X, formerly known as Twitter, by pulling all of their ad dollars.
00:00:26.160 So what can you do to stand by the man that is standing by free speech?
00:00:30.100 We'll explain that in a moment.
00:00:31.700 Plus, Christopher Wray, the FBI director, had a big toe-to-toe battle with Senator Ted Cruz.
00:00:37.900 And you won't want to miss the back and forth.
00:00:40.900 And finally, Sandra Day O'Connor, former Supreme Court justice, passed away.
00:00:45.140 Senator Ted Cruz took some time to talk about some of the most historic court cases and
00:00:49.660 his memories of Sandra Day O'Connor.
00:00:52.320 It's the Weekend Review, and it starts right now.
00:00:55.260 Let me ask you, how many of you are grateful that Elon Musk purchased Twitter?
00:01:01.700 I'll tell you, I'm intensely grateful.
00:01:03.400 I think it is the single most important development for free speech in decades.
00:01:09.440 But what is striking, and this, again, is a topic I discuss at great length in my brand
00:01:14.420 new book, Unwoke, is how corporate America has become woke and how they use economic power
00:01:23.880 to punish those that cross them.
00:01:27.620 So corporate America is mad at Elon Musk.
00:01:30.080 Why?
00:01:31.080 Because he stopped censoring views that were not the orthodoxy of the Biden White House.
00:01:37.020 He stopped censoring conservative views, and he allowed free speech to occur.
00:01:40.880 Now, what was the volcanic rage of corporate America?
00:01:44.260 One company after another began boycotting what used to be Twitter is now X.
00:01:48.540 So IBM was the first to pull its ads.
00:01:51.800 So IBM, if you have an IBM computer at home, you know what?
00:01:54.520 You're supporting a company that says, we're not going to advertise on a social media company
00:01:58.640 that believes in free speech.
00:01:59.900 Now, right after IBM, what followed?
00:02:02.520 Apple, Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, Comcast, NBC Universal, and Paramount.
00:02:11.940 All of them have said, we're pulling our ads.
00:02:14.380 But not only that, you know who else has pulled their ads?
00:02:17.820 Chevrolet, Chipotle, Ford, Jeep, Kindle, Merck and Company, Novartis AG, and Eli Lillian Company.
00:02:31.360 All of these companies, they are engaged in censorship.
00:02:35.580 Understand, when they say...
00:02:36.800 Well, it's the corporate assassination of a free speech company orchestrated and designed
00:02:41.780 to cripple them and to bring them to their knees. 0.96
00:02:45.240 This doesn't happen by accident.
00:02:46.800 I think that's what some people need to understand.
00:02:48.740 When one corporation does this and the others do it,
00:02:51.680 don't think this is an orchestrated and being done by the left
00:02:55.060 and leftist groups and organizations that organize these companies
00:02:59.460 and get in the ear of these companies and say,
00:03:01.600 hey, guys, so-and-so is going to do it.
00:03:03.560 You should do it, too.
00:03:04.380 And then they call the next one.
00:03:05.440 And they say, hey, guys, we hear these two companies are about to pull their ads.
00:03:09.180 You should, too.
00:03:10.760 And understand, Art.
00:03:11.860 So here's what Elon Musk has said about it.
00:03:14.500 He said the decisions of advertisers to boycott Twitter, quote,
00:03:18.340 could kill the company.
00:03:19.780 And he went on to say, quote,
00:03:21.420 and the whole world will know that these advertisers killed the company.
00:03:25.260 That is their objective.
00:03:26.720 And what they want, they want Twitter to go under.
00:03:29.280 They want X to go under.
00:03:30.260 And then they want the only social media to be Facebook controlled by Mark Zuckerberg
00:03:35.780 that censors conservative views because their silence that works on behalf of the Biden White House.
00:03:40.600 They want Google that is controlled by left wing socialists that censors views they disagree with.
00:03:46.220 It skews public discourse in the favor of the left.
00:03:49.020 They want YouTube that actively censors conservative views, including this podcast verdict.
00:03:54.840 Yeah.
00:03:55.000 Just a few weeks ago, they censored one of our one of our episodes because we were telling the truth about what was going on.
00:04:00.380 And mind you, we were telling the truth about a Palestinian who, by all appearances, is a crisis actor who creates false videos, 0.99
00:04:07.400 pretending to be a victim of what he claims is Israeli aggression when, in fact, he's a Hamas propagandist.
00:04:13.780 And we laid out the evidence for that.
00:04:15.240 And YouTube probably said, uh-oh, we don't want people to notice this.
00:04:19.400 So they blocked so you could not access our podcast on YouTube without signing in and be age verified
00:04:27.280 because apparently 17-year-olds cannot know.
00:04:30.060 There's a crisis actor that's a Hamas warrior.
00:04:32.400 And mind you, it's not just that they want Facebook and YouTube and Google to be driving the topics.
00:04:37.900 They want TikTok, which is controlled by the Chinese communists, which is actively pushing pro-Hamas propaganda.
00:04:45.300 Every one of these companies.
00:04:46.760 So I want you to go back and look at this list.
00:04:49.700 IBM, Apple, Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, Comcast, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Chevrolet, Chipotle, Ford, Jeep,
00:04:59.640 Kindrel, Merck and Company, Novartis AG, Eli Lilly and Company.
00:05:04.080 Every one of them is saying, you, Americans, you don't deserve the right to speak.
00:05:09.780 And even more importantly, you don't deserve the right to hear the speech of others.
00:05:13.300 We want big tech to silence and skew.
00:05:17.980 And mind you, this is all based on an allegation that is a bogus allegation attacking Elon Musk
00:05:23.160 for retweeting a tweet that they're claiming is anti-Semitic.
00:05:26.880 The same guy that just went and met over in Israel.
00:05:31.320 That just flew over there, met, talked to the leadership, and is now clearly supporting Israel.
00:05:35.880 Look, their attack is deliberately disingenuous, but it doesn't matter.
00:05:39.000 It doesn't matter what the claim is.
00:05:41.060 It is an excuse.
00:05:42.340 Because they want to use economic muscle to punish Twitter and force either Elon Musk to sell it or shut it down.
00:05:52.400 Because once they do, then the rest of big tech will have a monopoly unchecked.
00:05:58.380 And this is an assault on free speech.
00:06:01.060 It's an intersection of what I talk about in multiple chapters of my book on Woke.
00:06:05.780 It's an intersection of big tech, big business, and journalism all coming together.
00:06:10.940 And it's designed to be dishonest and to silence free speech among the American people.
00:06:16.380 I want to talk to you real quick about your retirement.
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00:06:31.500 We have the highest rate of debt we've ever seen in this country when it comes to college debt.
00:06:36.620 And we're living with high interest rates, inflation issues, and then there's the unpredictable world on top of that.
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00:08:00.140 Senator, last thing I want to just point out here.
00:08:03.600 Conservative Talk Radio, and many of you know I do a podcast outside of this, and I do an actual terrestrial radio show every day.
00:08:10.840 For about 10 years now, everybody in radio has had to deal with what Elon Musk is dealing with now, which is all corporate people stop spending money on conservative talk radio.
00:08:23.780 They went after the great Rush Limbaugh.
00:08:26.100 That's where it started.
00:08:27.000 Yes.
00:08:27.260 Then they went after Hannity, then they went after Beck, then they went after Levin, then they went after guys like me.
00:08:33.860 And what we used to have in radio was the big ones.
00:08:37.400 We had Chevy, we had John Deere, we had, you know, mutual fund companies.
00:08:41.620 None of these giant companies advertise on conservative podcasts.
00:08:44.280 None of them.
00:08:44.580 In fact, there's a funny skit that we've talked about in Verdict a couple of years ago that contrasts a left-wing, hippie, commie, Marxist podcast saying,
00:08:53.380 this podcast brought to you by Pfizer, get the jab right now, you need your 42nd booster shot.
00:08:58.920 Yeah.
00:08:59.140 Compared to, they have a conservative broadcast, and they say, this broadcast brought to you by Patriot Water, a bucket of water in your closet.
00:09:07.680 And the contrast is striking because all of the Fortune 500 boycotts.
00:09:13.240 None of them spend money.
00:09:14.240 None of them will ever reach a conservative audience.
00:09:16.660 They deliberately try to destroy conservative talk radio.
00:09:19.640 By the way, even Fox News, which is incredibly profitable.
00:09:22.420 Look at the advertisers.
00:09:24.780 Spend an hour.
00:09:25.220 Spend an hour watching CNN and spend an hour watching Fox News.
00:09:28.380 Write down who advertises.
00:09:30.740 CNN, it's the entire Fortune 100.
00:09:33.360 Fox News.
00:09:34.420 Doesn't have any of them.
00:09:35.160 It's MyPillow, which, look, I'm grateful.
00:09:37.440 I'm grateful MyPillow advertises because there are not many that do.
00:09:40.780 But even though Fox News has 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x the viewers.
00:09:45.760 6x, 7x, yeah.
00:09:47.060 As CNN.
00:09:48.540 The Fortune 100 doesn't care.
00:09:50.520 It's not about money.
00:09:51.240 Understand, this is not the economic marketplace.
00:09:54.100 This is they're enforcing their ideology.
00:09:57.260 They don't want to support views that are right of center.
00:10:02.380 They want to silence them.
00:10:03.520 Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week.
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00:10:40.200 Now, on to story number two brings me to also the fireworks that took place this week.
00:10:48.360 And it was between you and the FBI director.
00:10:51.060 I want to play a large chunk of this.
00:10:53.180 But before I do, set the stage.
00:10:55.240 Why was the FBI director before your committee in the Senate?
00:10:59.800 And what was this all about?
00:11:01.240 Well, the FBI director, Chris Wray, was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:11:05.720 And periodically, the director of the FBI testifies before Judiciary.
00:11:09.340 And so I took the opportunity to question him.
00:11:11.300 And there are a lot of topics I could have questioned him on.
00:11:13.360 I could have questioned him for hours on end.
00:11:15.900 But I only had seven minutes.
00:11:17.180 And so I chose to use the seven minutes to focus on the politicization of the FBI and the refusal of the FBI to investigate the growing,
00:11:27.680 the becoming overwhelming evidence of Joe Biden's corruption.
00:11:31.540 And so that's what I asked him about.
00:11:33.480 I want to play a chunk of this because it's really important.
00:11:35.740 And I hope that every verdict listener will make sure that you take this and share this podcast so that you can let people know about what these questions were.
00:11:45.440 They're really important questions.
00:11:46.640 And also, I would argue, the shocking response from the FBI director.
00:11:50.800 Ray, take a listen to this.
00:11:53.420 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:11:55.760 Director Ray, welcome.
00:11:56.840 As you know, I am deeply concerned about the conduct of both the Department of Justice and the FBI, particularly in the last three years during the Biden administration.
00:12:07.940 I think the Department of Justice has been profoundly politicized under Attorney General Merrick Garland.
00:12:14.040 And I think the FBI has as well.
00:12:16.940 And unfortunately, I think you've been unwilling to stand up to senior career officials in the FBI who's allowed the FBI to be politicized.
00:12:26.640 I'll tell you, I regularly speak with FBI agents across the country who are unhappy about the integrity of the institution being weakened because DOJ is being treated as a political weapon.
00:12:41.280 But I want to talk in particular about the investigation into multiple allegations of corruption concerning Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
00:12:50.460 Because the Department of Justice has, I think, from the outset, tried at every step to stop investigation into corruption from Joe Biden.
00:13:01.020 As you're aware, a WhatsApp text message was sent to Henry Zhao, a senior Chinese communist from Hunter Biden that reads as follows.
00:13:17.040 I'm sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.
00:13:23.120 Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand.
00:13:27.300 And now means tonight.
00:13:28.600 And Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman,
00:13:32.700 I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.
00:13:43.140 I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.
00:13:46.920 Now, Democrats and those in the media trying to defend the White House repeatedly say there is no direct evidence of Joe Biden's involvement in his son's corruption.
00:13:57.680 Well, this is a text that is direct evidence that is stating that it is his father that is going to retaliate.
00:14:06.140 Now, an IRS whistleblower, Gary Shapley, testified before the House of Representatives that the natural step he wanted to follow was to determine whether Joe Biden was, in fact, sitting next to his father when this threat was made to extort millions of dollars from a Chinese communist.
00:14:26.340 And what the IRS whistleblower testified is that when he tried to find out whether Joe Biden was sitting next to Hunter, that the DOJ blocked getting the GPS data on Joe Biden's phone.
00:14:43.200 Did the FBI try to ascertain where Hunter Biden was and where Joe Biden was when this text was sent?
00:14:49.280 Well, I think the questions you're asking go to the ongoing investigation being led by a special counsel, Weiss.
00:14:56.840 And so I'm not going to be able to discuss what is or isn't in scope.
00:15:00.200 So look, there's been testimony under oath from the IRS whistleblower that you did not seek the GPS data.
00:15:08.000 And you're right. David Weiss, the special prosecutor, is in charge of it.
00:15:11.160 And it is David Weiss and his underlings who, according to the IRS whistleblowers, have alleged that they're the ones trying to stop the investigation.
00:15:22.020 They allow the statute of limitations to run on many of the most serious violations.
00:15:26.660 Not only that, IRS whistleblower Shapley testified that on September 3rd, Assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Wolfe explicitly told investigators that despite having probable cause to search,
00:15:39.520 quote, there is no way a search warrant would be approved when the evidence in question was located inside of Vice President Biden's guesthouse.
00:15:47.760 Wolfe stated that, quote, the optics prevented such a search.
00:15:52.200 Is the FBI, do they make a routine practice of allowing partisan political optics to prevent investigating serious evidence of corruption?
00:16:03.660 My instructions to our people on this and on every other investigation are that we are to follow the facts wherever they lead, no matter who likes it, no matter what political influence there may be out there.
00:16:13.840 Then why did you get the GPS data on where Hunter Biden and Joe Biden were?
00:16:17.120 Again, Senator, with respect, I can't discuss an ongoing investigation.
00:16:20.420 And Director Wray, you and I have gone round and round on this because I understand anytime you're asked about this, the answer is it's an ongoing investigation.
00:16:26.980 Of course, the investigation isn't ongoing.
00:16:28.840 You're not doing the work.
00:16:30.040 You got whistleblowers pointing out that you're not doing the work and you are hiding behind the skirts of the Attorney General.
00:16:37.120 Look, the whistleblower also testified that the Attorney General, when he came before Congress, go to the next chart, came before Congress, lied under oath to this committee.
00:16:47.200 The Attorney General testified to this committee in response to my questioning.
00:16:52.520 I have pledged not to interfere with the Hunter Biden investigation.
00:16:55.460 I have carried through on that pledge.
00:16:57.680 The IRS whistleblowers have alleged the Attorney General lied under oath, a felony.
00:17:03.400 Was the Attorney General telling the truth when he said this?
00:17:07.100 Was the Attorney General telling the truth when he said, I have pledged not to interfere with the Hunter Biden investigation and I have carried through on my pledge?
00:17:13.700 Again, I can't speak to the Attorney General's testimony.
00:17:17.020 I can only tell you what my instructions have been to our people and I expect those to be followed.
00:17:20.240 Has there been political interference in the investigation into Hunter Biden and Joe Biden?
00:17:24.880 Not that I have experienced.
00:17:27.240 Were the investigators allowed to investigate whether Joe Biden was complicit in the corruption?
00:17:34.220 Again, there is an ongoing investigation.
00:17:36.700 I'm asking you about corruption from DOJ.
00:17:40.800 Were they allowed to investigate Joe Biden or is the whistleblower telling the truth that DOJ said, Joe Biden's off limits, no questions about the big guy?
00:17:51.200 And as to what is in scope or not in scope of the ongoing investigation, I would refer you to Special Counsel Weiss.
00:17:57.040 That is not me hiding behind anything, Senator.
00:17:59.400 That is a long-standing policy that has been in place through multiple administrations going back years and years and years.
00:18:06.040 Have a responsibility to the FBI not to allow it to be a partisan tool and a partisan weapon.
00:18:15.440 The testimony, and by the way, the FBI has done nothing.
00:18:18.440 And I have not and I will not.
00:18:20.040 Have you opened an investigation into whether the Attorney General lied under oath to Congress and whether the Attorney General obstructed justice?
00:18:27.420 I'm not going to go down that road here.
00:18:29.460 I know you're not.
00:18:30.480 That's the point.
00:18:31.400 Nobody thinks you've opened an investigation because you're not willing to.
00:18:35.700 And the amazing thing is, Director Wray, I've known you 30 years.
00:18:38.640 You're not a partisan Democrat.
00:18:40.320 You're simply sitting blithely by while career partisans in your agency allow it to be weaponized.
00:18:47.900 And you are damaging the FBI and you are damaging the Department of Justice.
00:18:53.660 Let me ask you also, the whistleblower testified that investigators wanted to execute a search warrant on a storage unit used by Hunter Biden.
00:19:03.060 And instead, they tipped off Hunter Biden's lawyer before the search warrant was carried out.
00:19:08.100 Is it typical FBI practice to tip off the subject of a search warrant before the search warrant so they can remove any evidence that's incriminating?
00:19:15.460 What is typical is that when you're dealing with an individual who has a protective detail, it is typical for agents to be in contact with the subject's protective detail.
00:19:25.460 Does the protective detail guard the storage unit?
00:19:29.260 Again, I can't speak to the storage unit specifically, but I can tell you is that when it comes to...
00:19:33.800 Why would the FBI tip off the subject of a search warrant about the storage unit that was going to be searched beforehand?
00:19:41.060 Does that not undermine the very essence of an investigation that DOJ is purporting to undertake?
00:19:48.820 Again, I'm not going to be able to discuss specific investigative sets that we're taking in.
00:19:52.680 You're not...
00:19:53.680 Nobody answers these questions, and it's why people are furious with the cover-up, because you don't believe the FBI is accountable to Congress or to the American people.
00:20:02.000 Your time is up.
00:20:02.900 Director Wray has requested a five-minute recess.
00:20:05.880 Five minutes.
00:20:06.900 I'll just...
00:20:07.580 Let me just...
00:20:08.180 Senator, if I might just quickly respond and then...
00:20:10.660 Respond.
00:20:11.140 Go to the break.
00:20:11.700 Thank you.
00:20:13.780 I understand why this is frustrating.
00:20:16.520 I do.
00:20:16.920 But it is also the case that these policies that I am referring to about my inability to discuss ongoing investigations and certainly internal deliberations related to ongoing investigations are policies that have not only been in place for many, many years through multiple administrations of both parties,
00:20:35.500 but, in fact, these were policies that were actually strengthened under the last administration, and that my predecessor was faulted in a fairly scathing Inspector General report for not following.
00:20:48.820 And so I keep that in my mind when I engage in this job.
00:20:53.120 You have an obligation to call out corruption.
00:20:56.760 Senator, I understand him saying it's an ongoing investigation, but hiding behind that when you're talking about basic things that the FBI didn't do,
00:21:04.920 clearly to protect the Biden family, he should still be able to answer those questions, shouldn't he?
00:21:12.260 He should, and he's stonewalling. 0.98
00:21:14.440 And there's an arrogance of the director of the FBI.
00:21:17.840 Look, as I mentioned in my questioning, I've known Chris Wray for 30 years.
00:21:21.880 He clerked for the same federal judge I clerked for.
00:21:25.340 He's not a liberal Democrat.
00:21:27.020 That's the amazing thing.
00:21:28.240 I think Chris Wray still believes he's a Republican.
00:21:30.360 I think he still believes he's a conservative.
00:21:32.640 He just is unwilling.
00:21:34.320 He's a company man.
00:21:35.280 He's unwilling to take on the career officials at the FBI who are rabid partisans, who are left-wing zealots.
00:21:44.660 And he also, he buys into the notion that he has no responsibility to the American people, no responsibility to Congress, no responsibility to be accountable or transparent.
00:21:57.160 So he views his obligation.
00:21:58.840 Nope, sorry, ongoing investigation, piss off, jump in a lake, I'm not going to answer your question.
00:22:03.000 Look, you've got two IRS whistleblowers who've come forward and alleged felonies from the attorney general.
00:22:10.360 A director of the FBI has an obligation to answer questions about that.
00:22:14.160 I asked a very simple question.
00:22:15.440 Did you try to ascertain the GPS data about where Hunter Biden was and where Joe Biden was when Hunter Biden sent the email asking for bribes, trying to shake down the Chinese communists for bribes?
00:22:31.560 The email on its face says he's sitting next to his father, Joe Biden.
00:22:35.740 If he's in fact sitting next to his father, it directly implicates Joe Biden in trying to extort millions of dollars from Chinese communists, much of which ultimately went to Joe Biden himself.
00:22:49.380 What the IRS whistleblowers said is they wanted to get that GPS data that that is readily ascertainable and the Biden DOJ blocked it.
00:22:58.340 There is nothing to prevent Chris Wray from answering the question.
00:23:01.800 Did you try to seek that GPS data?
00:23:04.480 Yes or no.
00:23:05.520 Did DOJ block it?
00:23:07.080 Yes or no.
00:23:08.240 He refuses to answer and his shield everything.
00:23:10.720 He says it's an ongoing investigation.
00:23:12.880 But as we've discussed, it's not ongoing.
00:23:15.940 They are deliberately not, not, not investigating Joe Biden.
00:23:20.700 And so it is a view that there's a hubris.
00:23:25.800 We are the FBI.
00:23:27.520 We don't have to answer your questions.
00:23:30.300 And I got to say, it is profoundly harmful to the rule of law and the integrity of the FBI to have the leadership of the FBI refuse to provide even the barest minimum of transparency or accountability.
00:23:45.280 Senator, last question for you.
00:23:47.320 And I want to go back to the the FBI director and and and really the advantage that the Biden family has, which it seems that everybody is covering for them.
00:23:57.260 The House Oversight Committee put out this tweet saying Hunter Biden must appear for his deposition on December the 13th.
00:24:04.120 Chairman Comer and Jim Jordan will initiate contempt of Congress proceedings if Hunter does not appear.
00:24:09.780 He has obviously said I will only appear before a public hearing.
00:24:13.580 That's not what they're subpoenaing for in your gut.
00:24:16.900 Will Hunter Biden appear or will he be a no show?
00:24:19.740 Look, I put the odds at about 50 50 on that.
00:24:22.460 I think it could go either way.
00:24:24.000 I think there's a chance Hunter appears and I think he he could be defiant.
00:24:28.440 He could be he could be hiding behind his lawyers.
00:24:32.580 I also think there's a very real chance he just doesn't show up.
00:24:35.940 He just says, go pound sand.
00:24:37.680 If he does, if he refuses to show up, the House will vote him in contempt.
00:24:42.240 But once the House votes him in contempt, nothing will happen because the Biden DOJ will not do anything to enforce the contempt sanction.
00:24:49.780 Remember, the House of Representatives held Eric Holder in contempt when he was attorney general under Barack Obama and nothing happened.
00:24:56.680 Now, why is why did nothing happen?
00:24:58.160 Because to enforce the contempt finding, DOJ has to bring it.
00:25:02.620 And you know what?
00:25:03.180 Eric Holder was in charge of DOJ.
00:25:04.840 And so magically, Eric Holder said, you know, when I think of things that I want to prosecute, the contempt finding against me is not one of them.
00:25:12.740 I think the chances of Merrick Garland doing anything to enforce a contempt finding against Hunter Biden are very close to zero.
00:25:20.580 And so, look, there's a chance Hunter shows up.
00:25:23.760 He did publicly say he was willing to show up.
00:25:26.320 It was in public.
00:25:27.160 But either way, I do not expect him to be forthcoming.
00:25:31.700 Whether if he shows up, he's not going to say much of substance.
00:25:34.740 And if he doesn't show up, he feels he can defy the subpoena without meaningful consequence.
00:25:40.360 As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from early this week to hear the entire thing.
00:25:50.480 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00
00:25:52.640 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.
00:25:56.840 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:26:00.560 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:26:01.740 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:26:02.960 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
00:26:06.720 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers.
00:26:10.000 All at different stages of their journey.
00:26:12.480 So, if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:26:15.680 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:26:21.140 I want to get back to the big story number three of the week you may have missed.
00:26:25.960 All right.
00:26:26.620 One more Sandra Day O'Connor story.
00:26:28.580 So, I was Solicitor General five and a half years.
00:26:32.200 We ended up being very fortunate.
00:26:33.880 We had some really big constitutional law cases that just through serendipity came down the road.
00:26:40.740 And we ended up litigating.
00:26:41.800 And we won most of them.
00:26:44.220 One of the biggest cases was a case called Van Orden versus Perry.
00:26:49.080 Now, Van Orden versus Perry was a challenge to the Ten Commandments monument outside of the Texas state capitol.
00:26:56.340 And let me set a little bit of context for it because it's relevant to O'Connor.
00:27:00.400 It's relevant to Rehnquist in the court.
00:27:02.700 So, this is the mid-2000s.
00:27:05.720 There had been litigation all over the country challenging the public display of Ten Commandments all over the country.
00:27:10.540 The history of the Texas Ten Commandments monument, it was erected in 1961.
00:27:18.460 But its history actually goes back to the 1950s.
00:27:21.160 In the 1950s, there was a Minnesota state judge named E.J. Rugemeyer, who in the 1950s was upset about the diminishing morals of the youth in America.
00:27:32.200 By the way, pause and think.
00:27:33.160 In the 1950s, he was worried about youth morals.
00:27:35.360 Think about today.
00:27:36.220 Yeah.
00:27:36.620 Like, holy cow, in 80 years, it hadn't gotten better.
00:27:39.120 Yeah.
00:27:39.360 And he came up with the idea to help the morals of the youth in America.
00:27:44.760 Let's publicly display the Ten Commandments in public areas across the nation.
00:27:48.960 And he went to a public service organization, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, sort of like the Rotary Club or Kiwanis Club.
00:27:55.240 He said, hey, what do you all think of this idea?
00:27:57.140 And they said, great idea.
00:27:59.020 We're all for it.
00:28:00.740 All right.
00:28:01.040 Now, Ben, this is where the story takes a weird turn.
00:28:03.440 This is exactly coterminous with the release of Cecil B. DeMille's movie, The Ten Commandments.
00:28:11.900 No way.
00:28:12.720 You know, Charlton Heston comes down from Mount Sinai carrying the Ten Commandments.
00:28:16.400 And Cecil B. DeMille was a larger-than-life Hollywood character.
00:28:20.840 And DeMille gets wind of this.
00:28:24.220 And he was thinking, like a Hollywood producer, he's like, hey, this is a great idea.
00:28:28.560 But I don't want a piece of paper on a frame posted on the wall.
00:28:31.700 If you're going to erect this, I want big honking granite Ten Commandments monuments, just like I'm going to have Charlton Heston coming down the mountain with.
00:28:43.300 There are dozens of what are called Eagles monuments all over the country.
00:28:48.360 And they're all identical.
00:28:50.080 Texas, it's six foot three inches tall, three foot six inches wide.
00:28:53.400 It is red granite.
00:28:54.600 It looks exactly like the tablets that Charlton Heston carried.
00:28:58.700 And actually, I'm going to take a brief aside and say, if you ever are arguing a case in court, since you're not a lawyer, something would have to go terribly wrong for you to be arguing a case in court.
00:29:11.740 But if you're convicted of murder and you're defending yourself, the advice that I have given lawyers is never, ever, ever try to be funny.
00:29:22.320 It is the province of judges to be funny.
00:29:24.940 It is not the province of lawyers.
00:29:26.260 Now, that is excellent advice, but I will tell you, I have twice in my career broken that advice, and I've been very lucky.
00:29:33.500 The gods of litigation have spared me my just desserts both times.
00:29:37.800 When I was arguing the defense of the Texas Ten Commandments case in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals,
00:29:43.560 the process that the Eagles used to develop the text of the Ten Commandments, there are differences across denominations.
00:29:53.060 And so what the Eagles did is they brought together a committee that consisted of a pastor, a priest, and a rabbi.
00:30:00.620 So at oral argument, I said, this was drafted by a pastor, a priest, and a rabbi.
00:30:05.000 And one of the judges on the Fifth Circuit, Judge Prado, leans forward and says,
00:30:09.080 Counsel, that sounds like the beginning of a joke.
00:30:11.040 And I immediately said, yes, Your Honor, but nobody walked into a bar.
00:30:14.300 And miraculously, the judges took pity on me and laughed. 0.99
00:30:20.540 It was stupid, but I was grateful for their mercy. 0.98
00:30:23.800 We're in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on the Texas Ten Commandments monument. 0.99
00:30:29.400 And at the time, there had been dozens of cases challenging Ten Commandments monuments.
00:30:34.860 Almost all of the monuments had lost.
00:30:36.840 The weight of the case law was headed very significantly against the public display of the Ten Commandments.
00:30:43.960 As the case was being appealed, so we had won in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
00:30:50.020 The plaintiff, a guy named Thomas Van Orden, who was an atheist, he was a homeless man,
00:30:54.980 who had walked past the monument, was offended by it, and filed a lawsuit seeking to tear it down.
00:31:00.180 He filed a cert petition asking the Supreme Court to take the case.
00:31:02.940 Now, normally, if you've won, and the other side appeals to the Supreme Court, what you do is you fight against it.
00:31:07.600 You say, no, no, don't take this case.
00:31:09.860 There is no split of authority.
00:31:11.160 It's not consequential.
00:31:12.160 You don't need this.
00:31:13.120 Say no, because if they say no, you've won.
00:31:15.640 Here was the problem.
00:31:16.860 There was an enormous split of authority.
00:31:18.940 I thought the court was going to take one of these cases very, very soon.
00:31:22.780 And we might have won a pyrrhic victory of a short-term victory.
00:31:26.640 But if a bad decision came down to the Supreme Court, we'd lose in the long term and lose our monument.
00:31:30.780 So I went to my boss, Greg Abbott, and I said, General, I think we should do something that's called acquiescing in cert,
00:31:38.180 which is we should agree, yes, Supreme Court, you should take this case.
00:31:43.560 And we drafted a brief in opposition where we said there is a split of authority.
00:31:48.440 It is real.
00:31:49.180 It is deep.
00:31:49.800 It is wide.
00:31:50.460 It is significant.
00:31:51.220 And what we wrote in the brief was if the court is inclined to resolve this issue, this case presents the single best fact pattern to uphold a permissible display of the Ten Commandments.
00:32:08.080 It was very risky because if the court took the case and we lost, everyone would pillory, both Abbott and me. 1.00
00:32:14.540 You idiots, ask them to take this case, and then you got your butt kicked. 1.00
00:32:18.660 Well, it ended up, we were right, they were going to take a case. 1.00
00:32:21.420 They took the Texas case, and they took a case out of Kentucky.
00:32:25.220 They took them both, and they scheduled them for argument on the same day.
00:32:30.220 As we're preparing the case, Abbott, my boss, who was attorney general, he told me when he started, he said,
00:32:35.860 Look, I want to argue one Supreme Court case while I'm AG, and let me know which one I should do.
00:32:40.860 And so when this case was granted, I said, General, this is the one you should do.
00:32:44.280 It's a discreet issue of law.
00:32:45.820 It's incredibly important.
00:32:48.220 He spent two months preparing for the argument.
00:32:51.520 I put together some moot courts.
00:32:52.840 I did a moot court in D.C. with a murderer's row of Supreme Court advocates.
00:32:58.080 They had collectively over 100 oral arguments between them, and they just beat him senseless.
00:33:05.400 I actually felt really nervous.
00:33:06.500 Like, when you put your boss in front of a moot that, like, pounds him senseless, you're like, General, I hope that was productive.
00:33:14.040 Yeah.
00:33:14.480 Please tell me I'm not unemployed.
00:33:15.940 Yeah, yeah.
00:33:16.320 Please tell me I'm not getting my walk-in papers today.
00:33:18.340 But look, if you do it right, you want the moot to be harder than the actual argument.
00:33:21.520 So he went through, did several moots.
00:33:22.960 He was ready for it.
00:33:24.140 And in the brief, I told him, I said, Okay, General, I've got a plan.
00:33:27.020 So for about three decades, Sandra Day O'Connor was the deciding vote on almost every religious liberty establishment clause case in the country.
00:33:38.180 And I read every opinion she'd written over and over and over again.
00:33:43.080 And I told my team as we're drafting the brief, I said, I want us to swim in Sandra Day O'Connor's establishment clause jurisprudence. 0.98
00:33:52.460 I want this to embody everything she's ever thought or said about the First Amendment.
00:33:58.900 And in fact, I told my lawyers, I said, I want the most frequent words in the brief to be O'Connor comma J.
00:34:05.100 I want them to occur more frequently than and or the.
00:34:07.780 And one of my lawyers said, well, Ted, is it possible to be too obsequious to Justice O'Connor in this brief?
00:34:16.100 I said, no.
00:34:17.720 If we can put an oil portrait of Sandra Day O'Connor on the cover of our brief, we should do so.
00:34:25.280 And again, I was, you know, probably I was a cocky 34, 35 year old.
00:34:30.420 I went to Abbott and I said, General, we are we're living in her psyche.
00:34:35.500 This brief is exactly what Sandra Day O'Connor thinks.
00:34:40.880 Well, at the oral argument, I'm sorry to say we missed horribly.
00:34:46.460 She was utterly unpersuaded.
00:34:48.240 She voted to strike down the Texas Ten Commandments monument.
00:34:51.780 Now, here's where Supreme Court arguments are weird.
00:34:54.320 Every argument we'd aimed at Sandra Day O'Connor missed her. 0.58
00:34:57.940 But bizarrely enough, struck Steve Breyer.
00:35:02.220 Wow.
00:35:02.520 Bill Clinton appointee, relatively liberal justice.
00:35:07.100 And the two cases I told you there was Kentucky and Texas.
00:35:11.380 Four justices voted to strike down both monuments.
00:35:14.880 Four justices voted to uphold both monuments.
00:35:17.820 Steve Breyer voted to strike down Kentucky.
00:35:20.300 And uphold Texas, which, among other things, was a vindication of if we hadn't acquiesced in cert, the only opinion would have been Kentucky and it would have been devastating for Ten Commandments monuments across the country.
00:35:34.720 There was also a really nice kind of personal vindication in this.
00:35:38.120 So, Chief Justice Rehnquist had been an original dissenter in a case called Stone v. Graham, which struck down the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools across the country.
00:35:50.760 And he had dissented.
00:35:51.720 He said, this is not the First Amendment.
00:35:53.260 This is not right.
00:35:53.980 Van Orden v. Perry, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote the plurality opinion for the court, upholding Texas's display of the Ten Commandments.
00:36:05.360 It was the very last opinion Chief Justice Rehnquist ever wrote, and he passed away later that summer.
00:36:11.340 And so, as his former clerk, it was really cool to have been part of a case where he was able to vindicate a view he had articulated two decades earlier.
00:36:22.740 And Sandra Day O'Connor, when it came to the standards, we didn't meet her standards, but miraculously enough, Steve Breyer liked what we had to say.
00:36:30.500 And by the way, since then, the McCreary case out of Kentucky has proven to be a very unimportant precedent.
00:36:37.160 It is rarely cited.
00:36:38.840 And the Van Orden case changed the entire direction of case law so that Ten Commandments displays are now routinely uphill.
00:36:46.440 As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:36:51.700 Don't forget to download my podcast, and you can listen to my podcast every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards.
00:36:58.320 I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast, and we will see you back here on Monday morning.
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