00:04:33.540And in fact, the source continued the guerrilla Marxist element kidnapped an American executive 1976.
00:04:39.920He was held for three years until authorities located the group hiding in the Amazon jungle.
00:04:46.580She is she she she was sanctioned by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control because of her senior role in the Maduro administration.
00:12:56.740This is a speech where he was blasting Trump in 2020 for not having taken Maduro out.
00:13:02.940And now, in the wake of President Trump having another enormously successful military operation, the last just a few hours in actual execution, and then it was over and then Maduro was gone and he was on his way to the United States, Schumer and Kamala Harris and just about every Democrat you find are freaking out.
00:13:27.640And just like they're defending every illegal immigrant, they're defending all of the gangbangers who are here.
00:13:34.180In this case, the Democrats are becoming the chief defender of Nicolas Maduro.
00:13:41.120But as I mentioned, on the legal front, if you look back to Noriega, front and center in terms of the litigation that will happen over this is that in 1989, Bill Barr was the assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.
00:14:01.360Now, Bill Barr, you'll recall, ended up becoming George Herbert Walker Bush's attorney general, and then he was also AG for President Trump in the first term.
00:14:10.000Bill Barr at the time was leading what's called OLC.
00:14:13.240And OLC is charged under federal law with writing authoritative opinions on what is the Constitution, what is legal, what are the constraints on the executive branch.
00:14:25.240And, by the way, there is a long history of incredibly important jurists and scholars being the heads of OLC, including Antonin Scalia.
00:14:35.960He was the head of OLC, including William Rehnquist, for whom I clerked, the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
00:14:41.600He was the head of OLC under Nixon, including Chuck Cooper, my first boss when I practiced law.
00:14:47.640So OLC, they are typically, they are often U.S. Supreme Court clerks themselves.
00:15:11.360But Barr concluded that, number one, the FBI's statutory arrest authority, quote, authorizes extraterritorial investigations and arrests.
00:15:24.180So that's in the statute, existing U.S. law, the FBI can go abroad and arrest someone.
00:15:29.640And Barr concluded the president can lawfully order that extraterritorial arrest.
00:15:36.420And interestingly, Barr, so one of the main arguments that Democrats in the media, although that's redundant because they're one in the same, Democrats in the media.
00:15:47.060And by the way, law professors fall into that same camp.
00:15:51.540And their main argument deals with the United Nations Charter.
00:15:55.020And Article 2.4 of the U.N. Charter prohibits the, quote, use of force against the territorial integrity of any state.
00:16:03.600And so their main argument is this violates the U.N. Charter.
00:16:06.920Well, what Barr concluded, and this is a quote, and by the way, it's not just Barr's opinion.
00:16:12.700This is a binding decision from OLC that binds the executive unless and until it's overturned.
00:16:17.660So it is like a judicial opinion but within the executive branch.
00:16:21.440Barr said that Article 2.4 of the U.N. Charter does not, quote, prohibit the executive as a matter of domestic law from authorizing forcible abductions.
00:16:35.260Put another way, quote, as a matter of domestic law, the executive has the power to authorize actions inconsistent with Article 2.4 of the U.N. Charter.
00:17:07.960It was an incredibly consequential case, but it dealt with the authority of the International Court of Justice, the World Court, the judicial arm of the U.N., to bind the U.S. justice system.
00:17:19.040And I argued, representing the state of Texas successfully, the U.N. doesn't have the authority to do that.
00:17:24.760The World Court doesn't have the authority to do it.
00:17:26.660It is the U.S. Constitution, and it is U.S. laws.
00:17:29.640And if Congress wants to pass a law, that can be binding, but Congress had not, in Medellin, passed a law relevant to the issue there.
00:17:38.600Likewise here, the DOJ opinion was, even if the U.N. Charter says something different, as a matter of U.S. constitutional law, the president can order this.
00:17:49.080And critically, the Barr opinion also concluded that a U.S. arrest abroad, quote, in violation of foreign law, does not violate the Fourth Amendment.
00:18:00.760And to be clear, the Barr opinion was litigated in the Noriega case, and Noriega stayed in jail.
00:18:10.900That is really powerful legal precedent, and it is very closely on point.
00:18:16.040You talk about the legal side of this.
00:18:18.020I want to ask, just real quickly, are there other legal aspects and challenges in this case that could come up as well?
00:18:25.460Well, yes, and look, there are distinctions that I would expect Maduro to argue between this case and the Noriega case.
00:18:33.780In the Noriega case, the General Assembly in Panama had actually declared war on the United States.
00:18:42.520Secondly, they had shot and killed a U.S. Marine.
00:18:45.740And so those are both facts that leaned in favor of Noriega, the president being able to respond and respond militarily.
00:18:54.100In this instance, the government of Venezuela has not formally declared war on the United States, and they have not killed a Marine or a service member.
00:19:05.840Although Maduro's drug trafficking has killed countless Americans, thousands and hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, a massive number of Americans Maduro is responsible for killing through drug trafficking.
00:19:19.760I will say also, there is a second issue that will be litigated, which is what's called head of state immunity.
00:19:27.760So Maduro will go and argue that the actions he carried out were as the leader of Venezuela, and as a general principle, U.S. government, U.S. courts don't impose criminal liability for the actions a head of state does.
00:19:43.900And Noriega was the de facto leader of Panama, but he was not elected by the people.
00:19:51.860In this case, the guy was recognized as a head of state, and so it's different from Noriega.
00:20:03.680That may have been, he may have enjoyed that immunity back in 2017, 2018.
00:20:09.560But 2019, when he ignored the results of the election and seized power illegitimately, everyone agrees he was illegitimate.
00:20:18.740The United States, by the way, the Biden administration agreed that.
00:20:21.420The first Trump administration agreed that.
00:20:23.700Most of the rest of the world has acknowledged that Maduro stayed in power illegitimately.
00:20:29.980One exception from head of state immunity is if the government invites you in.
00:20:35.360In this case, I think you would say there's not an operational government that is legitimate, that he was an illegitimate dictator.
00:20:44.560But that will be a subject of litigation.
00:20:47.580It would not surprise me to see that question go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
00:20:52.080All right, and finally, I know I'm going to laugh because I know you're going to have an answer for this.
00:20:55.840Are there any other legal precedents that are going to come up in here as well as we wrap up the legal side of this?
00:21:00.860There are, and there's a line of cases that's known as the Kerr Frisbee doctrine.
00:21:05.360Which says that unlawful abductions of criminals on foreign soil does not stop the criminal prosecution of those individuals in U.S. courts.
00:21:19.340And the lead case in this line of cases is a case called the United States v. Alvarez Machain.
00:21:25.820It was a 1992 ruling, and the Supreme Court 6-3 concluded that a Mexican national who was forcibly abducted in Mexico from his home brought to the United States that he could be criminally prosecuted.
00:21:41.240And it didn't matter if his being seized abroad was illegally.
00:21:45.040And so that line of cases, if Maduro were just a run-of-the-mill drug dealer, it would be a very easy question that regardless of the circumstances of his capture, if he violated U.S. criminal laws, he could be prosecuted here.
00:21:59.820And so that line of cases, I think, will be relevant.
00:22:03.280And again, all the folks on TV claiming this is illegal are ignoring both the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent, not to mention the binding DOJ opinion from 1989.
00:22:15.960As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing.
00:23:34.960Yeah, look, the Democrat politicians in Minnesota are in crisis right now because this Somali fraud is the worst instance of fraud that has ever been uncovered in American history.
00:23:50.900It is so bad that Tim Walz, I mean, remember like 12 minutes ago, the Democrats said he was going to be vice president of the United States.
00:23:58.600And now he's ended his campaign for re-election even as governor because, look, I think he's facing potentially very real criminal liability for the fraud that unfolded under his leadership.
00:24:11.780And it is – and Waltz and the mayor in Minneapolis, they're not the only ones.
00:24:17.820I think there's an entire array of Democrats who are responsible.
00:24:22.780And one of the reasons why they are so eager to foment riots – I mean, look, they are rooting for a replay of the Black Lives Matter and the Antifa riots we saw all over the country.
00:24:37.040They want people going to the streets.