Verdict with Ted Cruz - August 23, 2025


The Battle for Somaliland, Trump takes a BITE out of DC Violence & DOJ Warned Biden Over Legally Flawed Pardons Week In Review

Topics
China creating new country in Africa violence in D.C
Hosted by
Ted Cruz
Mentioned
Donald Trump Joe Biden Verdict Ben Ferguson Jennifer Stewart Caitlin Clark Greg Pemberton Kyle Brosnan Brad Wenstrup Terrence Richardson Ferron Claiborne Caroline Levitt Henry Cuellar Abby Phillip Gavin Newsom Ron Paul Sam Dewey Hamas Mark
Trump WINS as NY $500M Judgement goes to ZERO plus DEM Registration Plummeting, Sen Eric Schmitt on Fighting the Left in Court & Biden Auto-Pen Scandal Gets Worse Dunking on Newsom, Forbidden Words for Democrats & SCOTUS Victory for Trump Cancelling $783M in DEI Grants

Episode Stats


Length

32 minutes

Words per minute

164.89

Word count

5,416

Sentence count

377

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ted Cruz calls out China on creating a new country in Africa, D.C. crime is down, as Donald Trump commits to making sure that people that live in the District of Columbia are actually safe, and Joe Biden was actually warned by his own Department of Justice that what he was doing was problematic, yet he did it anyway.

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 .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.600 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.460 Welcome, it is Verdict with Ted Cruz Weekend Review.
00:00:08.680 Ben Ferguson with you, and here are three of the major stories that you may have missed
00:00:12.020 that we talked about this week.
00:00:13.540 First up, Senator Cruz calling out China on creating a new country in Africa.
00:00:20.360 Why is the media not talking about it?
00:00:22.460 Well, we have the details that you need to know.
00:00:24.500 Also, D.C. crime is down as Donald Trump commits to making sure that people that live in the
00:00:31.240 District of Columbia are actually safe.
00:00:33.880 And the data is truly staggering just how quick the president was able to restore a law and
00:00:38.480 order to a city that had been broken for decades.
00:00:41.520 And finally, the auto pin.
00:00:44.100 Joe Biden was actually warned by his own Department of Justice that what they were doing was problematic,
00:00:51.280 yet he did it anyway.
00:00:52.620 Anyway, why did he not pay attention to the warnings?
00:00:55.560 And maybe it was because he wasn't actually even in charge.
00:00:58.840 We'll have that for you.
00:01:00.080 It's the Weekend Review, and it starts right now.
00:01:03.220 I want to move to this other story, and it's one, realistically, that probably 99% of this
00:01:09.260 audience doesn't even know about this because no one's covering it.
00:01:14.660 It doesn't mean that it's not an extremely important story.
00:01:18.460 It is you calling out China.
00:01:20.500 It's an epic fight over creating a new country in Africa.
00:01:25.160 This reminds me of that story we were talking about not that long ago about China creating
00:01:31.280 an island in the middle of the ocean, based in the middle of nowhere, that would help give
00:01:34.460 them air superiority.
00:01:36.020 If there was a massive world event that took place, another world war, it would give them
00:01:41.700 the ability to reach places they currently cannot reach.
00:01:44.480 And now we're hearing that they're looking at creating a new country in Africa.
00:01:49.360 You're trying to bring that to light and also stop it.
00:01:52.760 Well, that's exactly right.
00:01:54.440 So I am the chairman of the Africa subcommittee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
00:01:59.760 And so I've been sharing a number of hearings, in particular focusing on the growing influence
00:02:04.860 of communist China in Africa.
00:02:06.840 Africa has become a major battleground where China is trying to gain influence, trying to
00:02:12.540 gain power, and do so at the expense of America. 0.81
00:02:16.140 And so this last week I wrote a letter to President Trump urging the president to recognize
00:02:22.580 a new country in Africa.
00:02:23.820 I'm going to read you the letter.
00:02:24.740 Dear President Trump, I write to urge your administration to formally recognize the Republic
00:02:30.500 of Somaliland as an independent state, with sovereignty within its 1960 borders.
00:02:38.080 Somaliland first gained independence and international recognition in 1960, before voluntarily uniting
00:02:44.800 with Somalia later that year.
00:02:47.480 Since moving to reclaim its independence in 1991, it has functioned as a stable, self-governed,
00:02:54.740 governing, democratic nation.
00:02:57.240 It has held several peaceful elections since 2003, marked by strong voter turnout and peaceful
00:03:04.080 transitions of power.
00:03:06.540 Somaliland has emerged as a critical security and diplomatic partner for the United States,
00:03:13.340 helping America advance our national security interest in the Horn of Africa and beyond.
00:03:18.680 It is strategically located on the Gulf of Aden, putting it near one of the world's busiest maritime
00:03:26.220 corridors.
00:03:27.520 It possesses capable armed forces and contributes to regional counterterrorism and piracy operations.
00:03:34.940 It has enabled the opening of a Taiwanese representative office in the capital of Hargisa, sought to strengthen
00:03:43.720 ties in ties with Israel, and voiced support for the Abraham Accords.
00:03:49.180 It has proposed hosting a U.S. military presence near the Red Sea along the Gulf of Aden, and is open to critical
00:04:00.480 minerals agreements that would support our supply chain resilience.
00:04:05.240 The U.S.-Somaliland partnership is robust, and it is deepening.
00:04:12.360 Somaliland faces mounting pressure from adversaries, due in no small part to its role as a partner for the
00:04:20.340 United States and our allies.
00:04:22.120 The Chinese Communist Party is using economic and diplomatic coercion to punish Somaliland for its support 0.98
00:04:29.600 support for Taiwan, as well as to undermine that support.
00:04:34.680 The government of Somalia has played an unfortunate role in these efforts.
00:04:40.280 In April 2025, the CCP arranged for Somalia to bar Taiwanese passport holders from transiting into Somaliland.
00:04:50.220 And Chinese support Somalia is benefiting anti-Somaliland groups working to erode its sovereignty.
00:04:59.280 Despite these threats, Somaliland remains committed to forging closer ties with the U.S., and is actively
00:05:05.160 engaged in enhancing military cooperation, counterterrorism efforts, and economy and trade partnerships.
00:05:12.520 To do so to the greatest effect and the greatest benefit to American national security interest,
00:05:18.500 it requires the status of a state.
00:05:21.440 I urge you to grant it that recognition.
00:05:24.560 This is obviously significant.
00:05:26.860 What are the chances that this could move forward this way?
00:05:29.980 Look, I'm optimistic.
00:05:31.120 I think there's a real chance the president will recognize Somaliland.
00:05:34.660 As I said, they've been an ally to us.
00:05:36.880 They've been an ally.
00:05:38.120 This is a Muslim country in a very dangerous part of Africa. 1.00
00:05:42.620 And they've shown real courage.
00:05:44.080 They've shown real courage standing with the United States.
00:05:46.380 They've shown real courage standing up to China.
00:05:48.900 They've shown real courage siding with Taiwan, which infuriates communist China.
00:05:55.120 They've shown real courage embracing Israel and the Abraham Accords.
00:06:01.240 I think Somaliland would eagerly join the Abraham Accords. 1.00
00:06:06.000 And so it is in America's national security interest, I believe, to recognize Somaliland.
00:06:13.220 And probably the best confirmation of that is this week, China put out a public release blasting me absolutely furious that I made this public call to recognize Somaliland.
00:06:32.000 And here's what China put out as their statement.
00:06:35.900 They said, quote,
00:06:37.220 A U.S. senator, in a letter boasting of so-called U.S. recognition of Somaliland region, launched baseless attacks against China and China-Somalia relations.
00:06:49.900 The Chinese embassy in Somalia firmly opposes this misconduct.
00:06:54.060 This coercive letter constitutes serious interference in the internal affairs of Somalia and further exposes the hegemonic and bullying attitude of certain U.S. politicians to the Somali people.
00:07:08.800 Respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity and non-interference in each other's internal affairs are enshrined in the U.N. charter as basic norms governing international relations for safeguarding world peace and stability.
00:07:24.060 China never interferes in other countries' internal affairs and absolutely does not accept meddling in its own internal affairs by any countries.
00:07:34.900 Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory.
00:07:40.640 This is history and this is reality.
00:07:43.100 China firmly opposes Taiwan independence separatism and external interference and possesses the legitimate right to take measures to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.
00:07:57.440 The fact that China is freaking out, the fact that they are this pissed off, from my perspective, confirms that I was exactly right and is yet another argument why President Trump should recognize Somaliland as an ally to America and as a country in Africa willing to stand up to communist China. 0.79
00:08:20.440 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.
00:08:27.540 Canadian women are looking for more, more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them. 0.98
00:08:33.920 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:08:37.660 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:08:38.840 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:08:40.060 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
00:08:43.680 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.
00:08:49.240 So, if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:08:52.740 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:08:58.640 Now on to story number two.
00:09:00.560 You talk about the president having leverage.
00:09:02.760 Let's move to Washington, D.C.
00:09:05.360 And everyone that said the president was like being a dictator and a tyrant by sending in the National Guard, actually trying to fight crime. 0.91
00:09:12.460 They said this was just him being a bully.
00:09:15.640 He was obsessed with the media.
00:09:17.200 This is what tyrants and dictators do. 0.78
00:09:19.000 That he's going to roll the National Guard and militarize every city in America that he doesn't like.
00:09:24.740 That was the narrative.
00:09:26.560 Well, guess what?
00:09:27.180 They got it wrong again.
00:09:28.760 D.C. crime, since the announcement of the federal control versus the seven day prior to that, we have that data now.
00:09:36.460 Senator, please, for everyone that's listening, go through every category of a shock, right?
00:09:42.480 I say that sarcastically.
00:09:43.680 More law enforcement on the street, law and order.
00:09:47.520 What happens?
00:09:48.700 Less crime.
00:09:50.300 Yeah.
00:09:50.480 It turns out when you arrest criminals, you get less crime.
00:09:53.860 I know that's a shocking outcome.
00:09:55.700 It's one Democrats don't understand and the media doesn't understand. 0.70
00:09:59.140 But everyone whose head is not fully inserted up their rear end gets that point.
00:10:05.180 Here is a tweet from the D.C. Police Union.
00:10:08.280 D.C. crime, since the announcement of federal control versus the seven days prior.
00:10:15.960 Robbery, down 46%.
00:10:20.020 Carjacking, down 83%.
00:10:25.220 Car theft, down 21%.
00:10:30.320 Violent crime, down 22%.
00:10:35.100 Property crime, down 6%.
00:10:39.440 And all crimes, down 8%.
00:10:43.820 That is in one week, in seven days.
00:10:48.000 And if you hear a wailing in the distance, that is the collective wail of pain and unhappiness of Democrats in the media.
00:10:56.580 Because understood, this is not hyperbole.
00:10:58.920 They are rooting for the criminals.
00:11:00.280 They do not want crime to go down.
00:11:02.580 Because if crime goes down, it vindicates President Trump exercising his constitutional authority concerning D.C.
00:11:10.540 and exercising his authority as explicit statutory authority under the D.C. Home Rule Act.
00:11:16.040 The Democrats do not want that.
00:11:18.040 No, they don't.
00:11:18.640 And there's also another aspect of this story.
00:11:21.040 And that is, we now have the Justice Department that's investigating whether Washington, D.C. police manipulated their crime data.
00:11:30.100 Remember, I was, shoot, I was on CNN a week and a half, two weeks ago.
00:11:33.720 And they're like, your stats are wrong.
00:11:36.100 Crime is way down.
00:11:37.280 The president doesn't need to do this.
00:11:39.260 Everything's moving in the right direction.
00:11:40.560 Well, it may have looked like crime was down, but now the Justice Department is investigating whether D.C. police purposely, willfully manipulated the crime data to basically fake people out, lie to the citizens of D.C.
00:11:54.660 And they say, oh, no, no, everything's getting better from last year when it's really, really, really bad.
00:11:59.160 Now it's not as bad.
00:12:00.600 And apparently they may have manipulated the numbers, including a whistleblower that they've settled with.
00:12:05.080 Yeah, look, I can tell you from someone who works in D.C.
00:12:08.640 So most weeks I am in D.C. in the Senate when the Senate's in session.
00:12:13.280 And in the last four years under Joe Biden, the violence in D.C. has gotten much worse.
00:12:20.000 We've seen Rand Paul had a staffer who was stabbed on a public street at like four in the afternoon, stabbed in the gut.
00:12:26.860 There was a guy who served in the first Trump administration who was shot in the head and killed at about 5 p.m.
00:12:35.020 sitting in his car on a street in D.C.
00:12:37.620 This is not two in the morning in a rough neighborhood.
00:12:40.620 This is in a major metropolitan street.
00:12:44.060 We had, you know, not long ago, we had two Israelis murdered by a radical pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian leftist zealot from Chicago.
00:12:55.700 And D.C., as someone who works there, you know, it used to be when I started in the Senate, you know, I would, as you know, I love movies.
00:13:04.880 We've done a couple of podcasts where we talk about movies.
00:13:07.620 When I started in the Senate, I used to sometimes, if there was a night that I was done, let's say I was done at 8 or 9 o'clock at night,
00:13:14.140 there's a movie theater about five blocks from my house.
00:13:16.900 I used to routinely walk up to the movie theater and just go see a movie.
00:13:20.560 I don't do that now.
00:13:21.660 I mean, frankly, at 9 o'clock at night.
00:13:24.540 I know what it's movie theater you're talking about.
00:13:25.900 Yeah, no way you'd do that now.
00:13:27.700 At 9 o'clock at night, you don't walk five blocks in D.C.
00:13:32.820 I'll tell you, I've got a guy in my security detail in Washington who's a tough guy.
00:13:38.960 He's been in some pretty rough combat situations.
00:13:42.220 You bet him.
00:13:42.900 And he was walking back to the Capitol at 10 p.m., and he had two guys, two teenagers, jump him and try to rob him.
00:13:53.220 Now, Mark's a pretty tough guy, so he picked up one of them and body slammed them into the back of a car, and the two of them ran off.
00:14:00.240 But the violence in D.C. has gotten really significantly worse.
00:14:06.500 And, you know, it's been interesting, the reporters that are honest.
00:14:11.900 Well, look at the D.C. police shooting chairman, what he said about it.
00:14:14.060 The reporters that are honest, who are interviewing D.C. residents, many of whom, most of whom are African American,
00:14:21.680 the residents are saying, thank God, we think this is great.
00:14:24.780 Lock these criminals up.
00:14:26.060 Look, the D.C. residents don't like living with the risk of drive-by shootings.
00:14:29.820 Henry Cuellar, who is a Democrat congressman, was carjacked again in the early evening.
00:14:36.120 He was coming home with dinner to his apartment.
00:14:38.340 It was an apartment building apparently five other congressmen lived in, carjacked right out in the front of it.
00:14:43.580 And here's what Greg Pemberton, I want you to listen to Greg Pemberton, who was the D.C. police union chairman,
00:14:50.900 what he said about the security of D.C. under Democrats.
00:14:53.560 Give a listen.
00:14:54.480 The criminal justice system here in the District of Columbia is broken.
00:14:57.520 Every aspect of it is broken.
00:14:59.420 Whether that's policing, prosecution, judges and trials, sentencing and supervision, all of it is broken.
00:15:06.500 And you can trace every aspect of it back to a piece of legislation that was passed by the council.
00:15:11.940 They have destroyed policing.
00:15:13.420 They have destroyed prosecutions.
00:15:14.800 They have destroyed the way that the courts are allowed to operate.
00:15:17.220 And they've destroyed our ability to sentence criminals to sentences that are commensurate with the crimes they've committed.
00:15:22.680 And so the only way to fix this holistically is to go back and look at all of this legislation that the council passed.
00:15:28.680 Back in 2020, when there was all of this anti-police rhetoric and work to undo that.
00:15:33.560 I know from my experiences, the D.C. council will never do that on their own.
00:15:38.380 And so what we're hoping over the course of the next 30 days is that whether that's the White House, whether that's these federal law enforcement agencies, whether that's Congress, that people get an insight into exactly how the system got so broken.
00:15:49.900 Because the only way to fix it is if we can get rid of that legislation.
00:15:53.620 And my main concern is that 30 days are going to go by.
00:15:56.640 All of these folks are going to go up about their merry way.
00:15:59.100 And we're still going to be stuck with all this bad law.
00:16:01.700 He's like, we know what's wrong.
00:16:03.020 We know what's wrong.
00:16:03.900 We know exactly what's wrong.
00:16:05.680 And if they don't fix it, we're going to be back here.
00:16:08.540 Thank goodness the president stepped in here.
00:16:10.320 And the citizens, I go back to the media narrative here, Senator, the citizens overwhelmingly trust Donald Trump to fight crime more than they trusted Joe Biden.
00:16:20.860 And the citizens in Washington, D.C. overwhelmingly are trusting the strategy of Donald Trump than their own city council members and their mayor.
00:16:29.700 And that is a threat, I think, to all these other high crime cities, Memphis, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, the list goes on and on.
00:16:38.160 San Francisco, L.A., because, yeah, if this works, how do you then say no when the president offers you help or National Guard?
00:16:48.340 So understand, this is the same principle with securing the border.
00:16:51.960 So a year ago at the State of the Union address, Joe Biden said he could not secure the border.
00:16:56.680 He needed new legislation from Congress in order to secure the border.
00:17:00.380 We had at the time the highest rate of illegal immigration in our nation's history.
00:17:04.040 We had criminals and murderers and gang members and rapists and child molesters and terrorists streaming across the border.
00:17:10.800 And he said he was helpless to fix it.
00:17:13.020 Donald Trump came in and the rate of illegal border crossings dropped over ninety nine percent.
00:17:21.100 As President Trump said in the most recent State of the Union address, it turns out we didn't need new legislation.
00:17:27.200 We just needed a new president.
00:17:29.120 The same is true in D.C.
00:17:31.060 If we see violent crime numbers continue to go down and stay down, that demonstrates we can solve crime in other cities, too.
00:17:40.060 And the reason residents of your city are being murdered is because the Democrat mayors and the Democrat city councils care more about the radical leftists who hate the police,
00:17:50.820 who want to defund the police, who want to abolish the police, than they care about your family and your children.
00:17:56.300 Look, it spoke volumes when China's President Xi came to visit San Francisco a few years ago and Gavin Newsom came in and cleaned up San Francisco and took out the homeless people and took out the drug addicts and the streets were sparkling.
00:18:11.640 And I got to say, even if you are a left wing Bolshevik in San Francisco, a tiny voice in the back of your head must have said, wait a second, if they could clean up the streets today, why didn't they clean up the streets last week?
00:18:28.960 Why do my kids matter less than the president of China?
00:18:35.080 And so this is an existential threat to Democrats who want to say, we're helpless.
00:18:40.780 We can't stop crime.
00:18:41.820 And by the way, part of their message is the only way to stop crime is to disarm law abiding citizens.
00:18:48.120 That gun control doesn't solve it, but locking up violent criminals does.
00:18:53.640 And spoiler alert, that is what works in stopping violent crime.
00:18:57.300 Then the Democrats have a massive challenge.
00:19:00.240 And I want you to listen to Caroline Levitt talking about some of the results we've seen in just one week in D.C.
00:19:05.280 Give a listen.
00:19:06.280 President Trump's efforts to make D.C. safe again are working.
00:19:09.720 There have been a total of four hundred and sixty five arrests since the start of this operation on Thursday, August 7th.
00:19:17.300 Last night, there were a total of 52 arrests, including the arrest of an illegal alien MS-13 gang member with convictions for DWI and drug possession.
00:19:27.240 Thanks to President Trump's leadership and the outstanding work of both federal and local law enforcement, dangerous gang members like the one picked up last night will not be allowed on the streets of our nation's capital.
00:19:39.240 Other arrests last night included assault with a deadly weapon for stabbing, parole violation for robbery, murder, outstanding warrant for attempted murder, assault on federal law enforcement officer and felony assault.
00:19:52.480 Four more homeless encampments were also removed during yesterday's reporting period.
00:19:56.440 To date, a total of 48 homeless encampments have been cleared in Washington, D.C. by multi-agency teams.
00:20:03.860 MPD patrol units are actively working with city officials to locate and clear additional encampments and remove homeless residents off of Washington's streets.
00:20:13.060 And despite fake narratives from the media, again, a significant number of the arrests have been in high crime areas of D.C.
00:20:19.780 In fact, nearly half of all of the non-illegal alien-related arrests have occurred in Wards 7 and 8, the two wards that have the highest number of violent crime, as well as homicides and assaults with dangerous weapons last year.
00:20:35.060 So while Democrats continue to coddle violent criminals, President Trump and this administration are focused on putting them behind bars and unapologetically standing up for the safety of law-abiding American citizens.
00:20:47.440 And the White House will continue to provide all of you with the results of this operation in the days ahead.
00:20:52.500 By the way, this goes back to the narrative.
00:20:56.780 When this was announced the president was going to do this, that night I was doing Abby Phillips' show on CNN.
00:21:03.660 And all of the panelists were losing their minds saying, Donald Trump, this was going to do nothing.
00:21:09.000 They said he's putting them on the National Mall where there's no crime. 0.91
00:21:12.720 He's a dictator.
00:21:13.760 They're not going to put the law enforcement where the real crime is.
00:21:16.560 That's why this is a waste of resources.
00:21:19.420 This is just him showing and flexing his muscles that he can do this because the president, this is what a dictator does.
00:21:26.400 Yet you're the crime stats there.
00:21:28.420 Where are they fighting crime?
00:21:29.840 Where the criminals are.
00:21:31.640 And I said it, then I'll say it again.
00:21:33.260 It's amazing how much the left and the media hates Donald Trump so much.
00:21:38.900 They don't even care if they're able to save lives through this.
00:21:42.540 They just hate the fact that Donald Trump wants to fight crime.
00:21:46.180 So whatever he says he wants to do, we're going to fight it and lie and slander him.
00:21:51.080 And regardless of how many people lose their lives in D.C. or any other city when this comes out.
00:21:56.400 Yeah, look, that is exactly right.
00:21:58.240 And I will point out those very high crime neighborhoods in D.C. are overwhelmingly African-American. 1.00
00:22:05.140 And the woke left-wing Democrat mayor painted the words Black Lives Matter on the street in a giant mural.
00:22:13.200 They've removed that now.
00:22:14.780 But when it comes to actually protecting black lives, understand that a very significant percentage of the murder victims from these violent criminals are African-Americans.
00:22:26.460 And so Donald Trump and Republicans are stepping in and saving black lives. 0.55
00:22:32.020 And the position of Democrats in the media is those black lives do not matter. 0.70
00:22:36.540 They'd rather they be victims of murder than actually have law enforcement put violent criminals in jail. 0.94
00:22:44.520 And, Ben, when I say that, that sounds unbelievably harsh.
00:22:49.840 But I want to ask you seriously, give me an alternative explanation.
00:22:54.060 If the explanation is not that the Democrats do not give a damn about whether Black Lives Matter and whether they're saving African-Americans from being victims of homicide,
00:23:06.460 then why are they so adamantly opposed to supporting law enforcement putting violent criminals in jail?
00:23:12.780 Yeah, no, this is the Democratic Party now.
00:23:14.680 They'd rather see Donald Trump fail than actually save American lives.
00:23:18.540 Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
00:23:20.880 Also, this episode is up on YouTube, so if you want to watch it, we put it up there on YouTube as well.
00:23:26.140 Hit that subscribe or auto-download button.
00:23:28.680 We're going to keep giving you the stats out of D.C. because I promise you the media is not going to do it.
00:23:32.980 We cover these stories, give you the facts.
00:23:35.620 Please share it wherever you can on social media.
00:23:38.420 And the senator and I will see you back here on Friday morning.
00:23:41.380 As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic,
00:23:45.440 you can go back and download the podcast from early this week to hear the entire thing.
00:23:49.580 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00
00:23:52.680 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.
00:23:56.800 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:24:00.520 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:24:01.700 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:24:02.940 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
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00:24:21.440 I want to get back to the big story number three of the week you may have missed.
00:24:25.680 One other big story we got to get in here, Senator, is Biden's auto pen.
00:24:30.600 We've got a new big update on this story.
00:24:32.420 And apparently Joe Biden deliberately ignored his own Department of Justice's warnings over legally flawed auto pen pardons.
00:24:43.500 And we also found out about how many pardons they were giving out.
00:24:47.380 And they claimed from the White House podium that these are all nonviolent offenders.
00:24:51.800 That was also a huge lie.
00:24:54.160 Well, that's right.
00:24:55.360 And I will say this is the sort of story why we do Verdict as a podcast, why we do it as a radio show, because this is the kind of story you will never see on CNN.
00:25:04.880 You won't see it on MSNBC or ABC, NBC, CBS.
00:25:08.200 It will not be covered by the corporate media because it is inconvenient.
00:25:11.600 We have talked about at length the problems with Joe Biden's auto pen, that the president does not have the authority to delegate presidential power to another staff member.
00:25:22.600 And when it comes to an auto pen, the critical question, whether a statute signed in law by an auto pen, an executive order signed by an auto pen or a pardon or commutation signed by an auto pen, the critical question for whether it is legally valid is whether the president personally and directly authorized it, whether the president made the decision.
00:25:40.320 And if it's a staffer who made the decision, it is not valid and is legally void.
00:25:44.080 Well, what broke is recently is this week is is that at the time that Joe Biden was using the auto pen or rather the White House staffers were using the auto pen, a senior career staffer in the Biden Department of Justice was raising real legal questions about it.
00:26:00.960 Here's the story on Fox News headline.
00:26:03.480 Biden's auto pen pardons disturb DOJ brass doc show raising questions whether they are legally binding.
00:26:09.080 New documents and communications between Biden White House staff and career officials of the Justice Department prompted scrutiny of the legality of former President Joe Biden's thousands of last minute pardons.
00:26:20.600 The oversight oversight project shared documents obtained from the Trump DOJ with Fox News Digital showing that a career prosecutor warned Biden's inner circle that the administration's pardon process was unorthodox and legally troubling.
00:26:36.000 In the most scrutinized email, then Assistant Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer wrote a group email to several executive office staff members on January 18th asking questions about the more than 2,500 pardons.
00:26:53.000 Quote, the White House has described those who received commutations as people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses.
00:27:01.760 I think you should stop saying that because it is untrue or at least misleading.
00:27:09.520 That's what DOJ said to the Biden White House.
00:27:11.700 Mind you, they didn't stop it.
00:27:12.800 They continued to be untrue and misleading.
00:27:14.360 He continued, quote, as you know, even with the exceedingly limited review we were permitted to do of the individuals we believed you might be considering for commutation action, we initially identified 19 that were highly problematic.
00:27:28.760 He continued, he cited convicts Terrence Richardson and Ferron Claiborne, who were included in the clemency grants and noted that the DOJ received voluminous objections from the victims, families and law enforcement as the men had been sentenced to life imprisonment for drug trafficking offenses during which a police officer was killed.
00:27:52.260 Mind you, this is what the Biden White House said was a nonviolent offense, drug trafficking where a police officer was killed.
00:27:59.560 And beyond that, according to Oversight Project, Vice President Kyle Brosnan shows that DOJ was concerned about the, quote, vague construct of Biden's pardons and how they appeared to be, quote, illegally delegated to staff.
00:28:15.200 That left the DOJ wondering at times which offenses for people with multiple convictions were specifically being expunged.
00:28:24.660 Later in the email, he was like, quote, look, I read the statement you put out in the president's name saying you've released a bunch of nonviolent drug offenders.
00:28:32.660 You've got murderers on your list today.
00:28:35.200 So I'm trying to figure out what the president wants here for this funky warrant.
00:28:40.780 That is incredible, isn't it?
00:28:42.600 I mean, funky warrant that and that's coming again from his own DOJ saying we don't know what he wants.
00:28:48.460 We don't know what he's doing.
00:28:49.300 It doesn't make sense.
00:28:51.020 Yeah, this is the Biden DOJ.
00:28:53.360 Weinsheimer continued, quote, I think it is best that we receive a statement or direction from the president as to the meaning of the warrant language that will allow us to give full effect to the commutation warrant in the manner intended by the president.
00:29:04.960 And there was ultimately no no explanation for what the offenses or the or the proverbial descriptions were, according to the document tranche.
00:29:13.380 And instead, there was simply a spreadsheet of convicts attached to one of the emails that came from the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
00:29:23.400 But only the president has the power to grant pardons, not the Sentencing Commission.
00:29:28.860 Treating it otherwise would be an illegal delegation of presidential authority.
00:29:33.280 When you look at this, what does this mean moving forward for the investigation into the president's use of the auto pen and many things he may have signed that he didn't know about?
00:29:45.480 Right.
00:29:45.740 This was just anybody at the White House pretty much that had any type of power could just walk in there and get things done.
00:29:51.060 And what does this mean for all of the they claimed nonviolent offenders that they were they were pardoning?
00:29:57.900 We've also found out a bunch of that was very violent.
00:30:00.560 It was a lie.
00:30:01.820 Yeah, it was a lie.
00:30:02.620 They knew it was a lie.
00:30:03.880 Their own Department of Justice told them it was a lie.
00:30:06.080 They didn't care it was a lie.
00:30:07.220 They continued lying to the American people.
00:30:09.400 They knew that The New York Times would never call them out.
00:30:11.440 They knew that the corrupt media would never call them out.
00:30:13.600 So they could lie and lie and lie and know that know what nobody would know about it.
00:30:17.660 And and as a legal matter that the Brosnan from the Oversight Project said, quote, Biden did not pardon individual people, but laid out categories of types of people to release and left it to staff to figure out who meets that criteria.
00:30:31.980 Attorney Sam Dewey told Fox News Digital that, quote, literally no one, including DOJ officials, understands what the aforementioned pardon criteria are.
00:30:43.860 And he continued, quote, you generally don't see people write emails like this.
00:30:49.680 This isn't a CYA.
00:30:51.820 This is I'm going to do a Pontius Pilate routine because this is a drug deal and I want to make sure it doesn't come back on me.
00:31:00.420 And the consequence of that is that the pardons, if they were not authorized by the president of the United States, they are invalid.
00:31:10.860 And so what I have urged the White House to do, what I've urged the Department of Justice to do is to go through the records of everything that was auto penned and determine there may be some.
00:31:21.340 The president does have the authority to direct someone to auto pen something that he's signing, whether a law or an executive order or pardon.
00:31:29.000 And if it's the president who's making the decision, the prevailing Department of Justice interpretation is that is legal and binding.
00:31:36.440 But if the president didn't make the decision, if it's a staffer who's making the decision, then it has no binding force.
00:31:43.260 And so what I've encouraged both the White House and the Department of Justice is to find those pardons, those executive orders, those statutes that were auto penned for which there is a clear lack of evidence that Joe Biden had awareness of it, made a decision about it,
00:31:57.900 and then formulate and carry out a legal strategy to challenge and end up concluding that those statutes, executive orders, pardons and commutations are invalid.
00:32:08.500 I think the possibility of a legal determination of that is rising significantly.
00:32:13.640 And the fact that you had senior career DOJ officials in the Biden administration ringing the alarm bells and saying you're lying to the American people and what you're doing is lawless.
00:32:24.360 That is yet another stunning revelation that has come out this week.
00:32:28.140 As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:32:32.980 Don't forget to download my podcast and you can listen to my podcast every other day.
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00:32:39.880 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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