Well whiskey coming pain with pain? Does my brain? Oh whiskey, don't let me? From Powerline blog dot com and produced by Ricochet dot Com, this is the three Whiskey Happy Hour with your bartenders Steve Hayward, John You, and power Lines international Woman of Mystery Lucretia's gotta give me and let that whis People where you're feeling lost, down and low, well coming same Welcome
everybody to the three Whiskey Happy Hour. This is a very special international edition of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour because I am in the usual place h some some place where international women of mystery hang out, and John is in an undisclosed bunker on the East coast. But Steve, where are you? Steve, I'm in Budapest where it's four forty five in the morning because I gage
maul jet lagged. Okay, Well, it's nice to have you. If he sounds dumb, it's mostly because he's in Budapest without good, good equipment. John, on the other hand, has great equipment where he is I'm trying to think, called a Lavalier microphone. So people write in and tell us whether we should switch from our nineteen thirties looking radio style microphones and switch to the nineteen seventies style technology. But more important, more important is this.
I feel lonely because this is the first time in like three weeks that we haven't been together because we co taught a class at Berkeley this last week which was wonderful on constitutional interpretation, me, Steve and Lucretia and then twelve unfortunate students who had to sit between us as we wailed on each other. And we did. Actually it was fun. I mean it was great. Actually, I hope the students liked it. I would have if I were
a student. Well, you're gonna be getting the evaluations back. I will one of the future episodes, we'll do a dramatic reading of some of the some of the evaluation comments. Sometimes the students can be quite funny. I think, you know, this is when they can truly be creative writers and not just crushed under the demands of the law. Oh boy, that's gonna be fun. There was an interesting mix of students in there too. Let's
just leave it at that. But I think it's fair to say that of the personas we're playing in class, I was the reasonable, pragmatic, moderate, and Lucretia was well and Steve was the offender of natural rights, and Lucretia was the first mega constitutional interpretationalist known in the academy. But the surprising thing was how often I got the very very left wing transgender etcetera, etcetera,
young whatever days to actually take my side on things. I think so actually, I think that there was a kind of the left end and the right end of the circle met because your desire to burn the house down was met by an equal desire on the left to burn the house down. Yep. But they were smart students. You got to give them credit. They knew a lot of stuff, and they did the research. You know.
They usually legal scholarship is very narrow compared to it. They had an answer for objections, let's put it that way, that was based on legal reasoning, history and so on too. I was impressed when ild have mentioned we also had in the class Judge Janis Rogers Brown, Yes, a friend of all of ours, who's was a judge on the California Supreme Court and then on the US Court Appeals for the DC Circuit, commonly called the second most
important court in the country. And then she fully retired rather than taking a kind of emeritus judge status, because so she could be free to speak her mind. You know, John wasn't able to to join us for dinner one night when we were out with the judge, and I looked across the table at her and I said, I am so disappointed in you, and she's I said, why did you retire? She has to be the soundest person in the country. I think she may even be more sound than Clarence Thomas.
And she she just she wouldn't go farther, Yes she would. My sense of it is she is a great believer in economic rights as part of our package of natural rights. And I don't think any any judge and the out of courts would go as far as she would to revive, you know, the right to contract, the right to property, the right to earn
a living, and so on. Right. She also evinced quite a very negative opinion of progressivism and it's woeful, baneful effects on our constitutional system, which you don't often see that coming out of I mean, I'm a little bit surprised actually when I hear it out of you. Not nothing. What I mean by that is it's not a legal thing. Most of the time, it's usually much more a Claire Monster thing and whatnot. So this is one thing that became very interesting in class. And I hope we're not boring
any listeners here. But when you go to law school, you don't really read about the progressive era. It's a complete change in our way of thinking, but it doesn't get expressed in legal doctrine. They don't say, oh, this is the progressive legal doctrine. And even though it is, yeah, even though it is so the progressive, your shifts, you know what
it's like. It's like the Stevia like this. It's like the like side By when they tell something's there because the black hole exerts gravitational force on something. You can't see the black hole. You see the other things change their orbits. And that's kind of like progressivism. It's never written, as in the Supreme Court cases progresses of a progressivism requires us to do this. What you do is you see doctrines and things change and you don't know why they
change. And it's only because of teaching this class you really get this sense that we're not really we can't fully teach constitutional law without taking into account these changes the way people think that don't get fully expressed or written down in the cases. Well, you know, I remember Robert Borke used to say that for the left, the Constitution really boiled down to the equal protection clause of the fourteenth Amendment. That's the whole constitution. And I think in the practical
sense that's often correct. It is odd that well, I'll put it this way. I mean, one of my arguments with the famous Hla Heart, who defended positivism, is that he seems to think that all legal thought begins with Bentham, which is really kind of recent when you think about it. But for the American liberal, all constitutional thought stems from the Fourteenth Amendments equal protection clause and begins with Brown versus Board of Education that Obama. Well,
well, okay, at my point, precisely right. So uh it's it is unusual, Sorry, not unusual. I'm still trying to wake up here and figure out where the hell I am. You're you're far more articulate now than you were in class, So credit yourself. Harsh. The modern left ignores its own patrimony, That's what I was trying to get to. It turns out the conservatives, what's that, wouldn't you if you had that kind
of patrimony. Well, that's not the way they think of it. I'm trying to think of the guy at Virginia who's sort of a moderate progressive. I'm blanking on his name, but he said only conservatives read Herbert Crowley and Carlo Wellen and Roscoe Pound and all those old political leaguer thinkers of one hundred years ago, or Carl Becker in the case of Lucretian. I are sort of all over that guy. And I think that the thoughts that the progressives
imparted to us have just simply taken her place. With the furnishings of the liberal mind. They don't even need to bother with figuring out where they came from, how they got moved into their apartment of the mind. Although you guys couldn't see the faces of our very liberal students who were sitting across from me when I was trying to remember the name of Margaret, Margaret Sanger, and you know caught that reference though that well, they made a horrible part
of her. Remember what I called her, You know, that abortion chick. You didn't say that in class. I hear I heard abortion. I didn't hear you say abortion chick. Actually, I don't want to read the evaluations. Now. They don't know you invited me, John, they don't know that this was just some one of these protesters who found their way into the classroom. And I'm gonna jump ahead, so we're not going to talk
about it yet. But I do want to tell you that I'm I was sitting in a stupid meeting board to death, and so I surreptitious legal on Twitter X formerly known as Twitter on my phone, and the thing that pops up is somebody talking about John Eastman is the greatest constitutional scholar since excuse me, John, you is the greatest constitutional scholar since John Eastman. And he's
hasty, I know, and he's well. Anyway, it was a link on Twitter to your testimony, which we're going to talk about at the end. But anyway, there was I sent it to you, but you probably didn't even look at it, John, But there was just a whole bunch of really positive tweets or ex's what are they called now if it's not Twitter anymore anyway, tweets on x files on Twitter on formerly known as Twitter,
about how great you were. John. I'm surprised to hear that. I actually, when I did, it had very little sense anybody's watching because it's just done on zoom. Well, somebody put it out there in a certain you know what would you call it a group on Twitter and it got a ton of attention. So anyway, oh John, I think there's you know
about knowing you Sorry, yeah there was. I started watching some of the hearings when they first started, what three weeks ago, four weeks ago before the recess, and what understood was that they were getting thousands of people tuning in to watch this. It is amazing. Now, guess what the zoom link. I don't know what the what they do, but it's not available here in Hungary. I can't. I try to tune in yesterday and I got a little, you know, a little screen popped up and said not
available in Hungry. Sorry. So I have not been able to watch. But there is a reporter covering it live. I think her name is I want to say, Rachel Alexander. I can't. That's who did the Twitter feed. Yeah, okay, and and she's I don't know who. She writes reading in good Taste, no doubt. Yeah, there you go. She's very sympathetic to John Eastman, and uh, you know, I'm not surprised that she would write that. So but she's she's you're reporting what the
witnesses are saying, and it's been interesting stuff. That's for the end. So keep it sorry now, Steve, because first we're going to talk to John about impeachment because as everybody knows, uh, Matt gets what would it be, what's the right word? Tricked forced McCarthy, right, Kevin McCarthy into going ahead and calling for a congressional impeachment inquiry into Hunter Biden and any
possible corruption that ties him to the president. And so John was telling me that he has a really interesting argument, legal argument being made by the left about why it is what impeachments tell us. Here's the argument, and in fact, very cleverly, the left is trotting out a Justice Department opinion issued by the Trump administration to attack the validity of the first impeachment and it goes
like this. You may or may not remember this, but back when the House began the first impeachment investigation over Ukraine with President Trump, it started out without any vote of the House. Nancy Pelosi just said, I am declaring the investigation started, and I ordered the committees to begin the investigation. Apparently, the Trump Justice Department decided that this was unconstitutional because it doesn't say in
the Constitution the Speaker of the House gets to write conduct impeachment. It says the House conducts impeachment. And so according to this opinion that was released by the Trump Justice Apartment at the very end. Actually this did not become public until January of twenty twenty one, when the Office of Legal Counsel, where
I worked, pushes all the opinions out the door before the changeover. They issued an opinion saying that is not actually a constitutional way to start an impeachment, and so nobody has to obey any subpoenas or any demands for information issued by those committees until there's a majority vote in the House that says we're starting ampeaching investigation. And so, actually, because of the were criticisms by the administration and by outsiders back then, the House did eventually a few weeks later
vote to start an impeaching investigation. So now they're saying it's usually one side. Biden supporters are saying, well, we're going to obey the Trump administration, and we're not going to comply with any of these subpoenas or demands for information from the impeachment. On the other hand, Senator mc McCarty said, well, and Nancy Pelosi set a new precedent for the House, and so I'm just doing what she did. That's the dispute in a nutshell. Do
you think there are the votes? I'm sorry, you're just gonna say, do you think they are the Republican votes? I'm told that that's the one thing that they mostly all agree on, other than some people are saying it's a distraction from the economy the budget. But so here's the problem where you know, the Republicans have a bare majority five six votes in the House. Do you think that they'll vote as a group to launch the impeachment investigation?
The Washington Post stories about this, in the New York Times, Post stories, New York Times stories. I know you can see Lucretia's temperatures already starting to rise. They report that McCarthy's doing it this way because he's not sure whether there are enough votes, because he's there's five or six people know they don't even want to vote because they're worried it'll hurt them in their re elections.
I don't know what you guys think. Your turn, Steve, I think, well, I'm shaking my head at at the cowardice of the House Republicans who this ought to be an easy vote to start an impeachment inquiry, right. I mean, that's just think from voting for impeachment itself, right. Uh. And and I can't believe that they'd be chicken enough to not even want to authorize an inquiry and go on the record for it. I
think they shouldn't believe. First of all, when you see all the liberal commentators saying, oh, this is going to backfire on Republicans, you know what they're trying to do here. They're trying to work a Jedi mind trick to scare them and say, oh, look, it didn't work for you with Clinton back in nineteen nineteen ninety nine. But I'm actually not sure that's correct. I think it would have been more damaging for Republicans under Clinton if
they hadn't done it. I mean, it was a big train wreck and all the rest of that. But I think, Steve say, isn't the most important, more important question, how many Democrats lost their seats because of the two Trump impeachments. Much are a much more relevant sort of I don't know. I never chased after the effect of that on maybe, I mean, I don't Democrat Liz Cheney, well, sorry, keep going, all
right, point taking no that you could be right about that. I mean that might have been a factor in some of the House Democrats who lost in a surprise in twenty twenty. I'm not sure I never chased after that, but I do think, Look, there's the path of duty here, right, there's so much you talk about whether smoke there's going to be fire. I would I would match Lucretia's level of disgust for House Republicans if they shrink
from casting a vote for an impeachment inquiry. Well, you know, if if they cast a vote for the impeachment inquiry and it turned out to be slightly unpopular, they could always go on, let's see what the hooks it called chaster bait and get paid to have sex with their husband and her wife. This is a family show, Lucretia, Oh god, you do you know to that which I referred on, I don't. I don't even want
to guess I can't. I mean, I'm not I am not trying to be Scott in any way sort of turned this not into a family show. There is a woman running for a competitive seat New York, Steve. It's it's just a Virginia state legislator. It's a Virginia state legislature, which of course is is pretty evenly divided, and it could spell the difference between Republican versus Democratic control of that House, the Burgesses, whatever it is. I can't be that much attention. And so so she and her husband, she's
a nurse practitioner and mother of two children. She and her husband are on
this website called Swear to God chasterbait Chats. I want to keep saying it, but anyway, it's kind of like only fans something like that, but you get paid whatever, and they're frequently having very yeah, very that's not the picture I keep seeing, uh, anyway, on this And so somebody found out about it and you know, kind of made a big deal and you know, put it out on Twitter, did something like that, and she's suing them under remind me, Steve, under some sort of victims Act
that no under the Computer Fraud and Protection Act, where saying that that they have violated her privacy by Yeah, it's just mift microsoft. John, you're muted. You couldn't hear me laughing. Yeah, you're afraid you're going to get some sound effects. Where are you looking up the story? John? Right? So so really quick lasting about that? Uh, Molly's husb.
Mark Hemingway had an article today and the caption was something like, well, I suppose it was only a matter of time before the politicians whoring stopped being figurative and became literal. But yeah, she's trying. She's trying to say that the fault is that of those people who invaded her privacy. Yeah, pretty funny, Yeah, John, John's just he's going to find I'm trying to find this online, but it's not in New York New York Times or
Washington Post. John, you have to go to a different media outlet. Okay, enough of that. Sorry. I do, however, want to ask you guys what you think about the point Dexter White House spokes nerd Ian Sam, Oh my god, did you see a picture of that guy? Honest to god, he must have gotten his lunch money stole every single day of his life, even yesterday. He is the nerdiest little anyway. Sorry, I'm that's something there. Someone gave me a great line about the youngsters
who seemed to work in the Biden White House. They said, don't they all still look like they're using their parents credit cards? That's sure, doesn't it? Yes, And it brings me back to those those mistakes that we keep seeing the Biden White House making. Like I know, I use this example before, but it just tops right up again when you look at this guy. I mean, he's just the worst nerdy looking little I mean looks like he's about five foot one. He's young, but already completely bald with
you know, little anyway. It's no wonder he didn't know anything about the fact that the Georgia Bulldogs won their first national championship or thought it was important because he's probably never even heard of football. He probably spent his whole life playing. Look at that guy. Come on, oh my god, we're showing a picture listeners, and I'll try and remember to put it in the show notes. Oh my god, and that's his official picture. He will
he looked like that on purpose. That's lukkism, isn't it. I know, I can engage in lukism. Let anybody try it on me. Poindexter said it's time for the media to do more to scrutinize House Republicans demonstrably false claims that they're basing impeachment stunts on describing impeachment. This is great as grave, rare and historic. I think that one through he urges outlets to avoid reporting on the process and instead focus on the substance of the allegations. Covering
impeachment as a process. Republicans say x, but the White House says why is a disservice to the American public who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable. How can this guy even speak? It goes on like that. It just makes me, you know, I'm going to go punch that guy in the face and steal his lynch money when I get there.
I just I have to Okay, yeah, well, look, the real the real I think the real point here is that the Democrats in the White House now assume that they the media is so far in the bag for them that they can just give them orders and do it openly. I'm not sure that, I mean, I'm not sure that this is actual news. I mean, we should be glad that they're being so open about the fact
that the media is considered their de facto. Well, what's Glenn reynolds line that the major media today are Democrats with bylines and this is confirmation of that. Would you be offended, John, if you were a member of the media and he said this to you, Well, this isn't The weird thing is to me that that complaint is that the media is not doing enough and
what else they're supposed to do? You know this this actually ties in with some other topic we're going to talk about later, which is the collaboration between the White House and social media platforms and suppressing information and criticism about COVID nineteen. Have to you read that, You're used to think of what what else could the media do to help the side? I know, I know, Well, in the months of not talking about Hunter waited do you have to
ask you guys about this when the Hunter indictment. So before you go we get to the Hunter indictment on weapons charges, I want to ask you if you heard that Hunters suing Oh gosh, I'm gonna forget his name. Some Trump aid that now has a blog post or something and has been talking about or publishing things from the Hunter laptop, and he's suing him that he's you
know, invaded his privacy another Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or something. But I thought Hunter said it wasn't his laptop well, and that he you know, that he didn't remember take that, that he didn't recall taking it to the guy you you know, to work on it. How does he get away with just I mean, do people just consider he's like his father and he can lie anytime he feels like it, and everybody's used to it. Why I didn't get I don't get it. Did he learned from the master
apparently? Okay? That I hadn't heard that he'd done that recently. I thought he did it a while ago. No, he did it yesterday, yesterday, about two or three months ago. The guy I wish I could remember saying I should look up, was you know, given notice to preserve all of his records, and you know that's the thing that they do when
they're getting ready to sue you. And then he I guess he got and he also is was on I think Twitter saying if any of Biden's process servers show up at my house to try to serve me with with any papers,
I will shoot there ecking heads off, and probably not wise. But anyway, well, well, I mean, there is one storyline here work following as this all goes forward, I think, and a few liberal publications have written about this, and that is that the Biden legal team, people like Bob Bauer, who's you know, an old legendary war horse in Washington politics, they've been apparently crafting one strategy that Hunter Biden and his own personal attorneys
out in California disagree with I think Bauer and the other folks around, and they want to play an inside game the way Washington people would and Hunter Biden's own lawyers, and first they hire that Abbey Lowell guy, who's also been around these games for a long time. They want to play hardball. They want to attack the critics of They want to do what Clinton did in the nineteen nineties, which is attack Ken Starr and all the people who are out
to prosecute Clinton. So my guess is there's a lot of tension, a lot of friction between the Hunter Biden camp and Joe Biden's political team in the White House. And we'll see where that unfolds into something down the road. But I suspect it's it. I think it may end badly for all of them. What do you think, John, You know me, I'm that infernal optimist, as you always say. Well, I think there's this interesting
I don't know if anyone's commented on it. There's this interesting relationship inverse relationship between the Hunter Biden prosecution and the impeachment investigation. And I think you saw just a little bit of it with the busted plea deal that you would have given away the store to Hunter, and that is the better deal the Hunter gets. You know, the more the lighter that the Justice Department treats him,
the better the case for impeachment is going to be right. So the more that Hunter gets special treatment, the more he gets these weird plea deals, the more it looks like obstruction of justice but within the Justice Department, And then the more grounds that you're going to have to, you know, with Comber's investigation, to start issuing a blitter blizard or subpoenas, start digging into how the Justice Department's actually working, how the White House and the Just
Department are communicating. I don't think people have realized that. So in I think in a weird way now the Justice Apartment has a really strong incentive to come down hard on Hunter, you know, which is why you know, we see that just today there was the indictment of which brings me though to my next question for you charge for the fire for the weapons charge. So I just want to say, let me where's my hat? Guys? You
know, I thought you loved me. But anyway, without my conspiracy hat, I will still pose this question to you, knowing that there have now been two separate cases where I believe it's federal district judges have overturned convictions of felons for possessing weapons, saying it violates their Second Amendment right? Is this uh too clever? By half charging charging Hunter with weapons violations and not charging him with either tax evasion or fair of violations, which of course are actually
in many ways much more serious. Uh, this is either enough to sort of throw a little red meat to oh, look, we're really charging him with something, and be knowing that at the very least it's likely to be overturned because he's not actually not a convicted felon. I mean he he's he's
in less violation than a than a convicted felon. One of the felons who got that that weapons charge overturned because of his Second Amendment rights actually had used a gun in the commission of a crime, and you know, had done his time and whatnot. So is this is this just a faint to keep us all thinking, Oh, well, maybe wis isn't the corrupt inside stooge that we all think he is because he indicted Hunter on something. I mean, I think Hunter should go to jail, just like Paul Manafort. That's
a good point. I apreciate everyone should realize that the firearms charge has nothing to do at all with the where the real public interest here here is is to figure out was Hunter getting bribed by foreign governments? Was Hunter bringing in the vice president or this future president or even the sitting president into this kind of this corruption? Was their conspiracy to avoid federal law? What did they
do in exchange for the money? That's all still yet to come. So the only amendment I would make tear your point, Lucretia, is that, yes, the firearms is a distraction, but just putting that out there doesn't relieve the pressure. I think on fully investigating all those other claims, and like I said, the less that they do, the more grounds that the
House has to push forward on a serious impeachment investigation. So where's the pressure coming from, John, people like you with the tinfoil has Actually I think I'm just kidding. No, No, I think the pressure is coming from Comber and it's coming from these committees and their investigations, and they're putting out such incredible facts that it's hard for even the Justice Department prosecutors to ignore, which mark this point insure. But I think that kind of pressure led to
the appointment of a special counsel. For example, mark this point in history that calling John Wright, or at least prescient, because it was you. You will all remember that was John who said the only the only thing. Steve would said, No, the media is going to pick this up and it will matter. I said, no, they're not. John said, no, they're not. But if Congress does, congressional investigations will be the only the only way we will make any progress in finding out whether or not
the Biden crime family is corrupt as we think it is. Right, do you remember that, Joan? No, but it sounds good, So I must have said it. I'm giving you credit and you don't even you don't even remember. Oh my god, looking, but it sounds so good. It must it must have been to me. Yeah, well, look, I mean, what's gonna happen is Hunter is going to get a plea deal, but not quickly. I suspected we'll try and drag out getting he's not
good. I mean, I think he's going to get a plea deal, but they probably don't want a plea deal until after the election next year. So I looked for lots of continuances on this guncase, and like you say, that is the deflection from the real heart of the matter, which is the the Biden money money money laundering syndicate. The other thing is that whatever happens with this, if the Congressional Committee still keep hammering on what did Hunter
get, where do you put the money? Follow the money trail, you know, always follow the money? What did you do to the money? All that's going to come out before the election, right, that's not that can't be put off because that's up to Congress to control, and they can keep pushing forward on it. And that's all going to come out between now
and the election. So a little tangent here. Miranda Divine in the New York Post this morning had a piece and she was talking about one hundred indictment and all those other things, and you know, the whole ludicrous argument that there's no evidence, and she demunks that completely. But then she moves on and it's very interesting. She says, you know, foreign foreign, foreigners
people. There are a lot of people that say that Biden is actually quite lucid and capable of carrying on intelligent conversations, that he doesn't he gets out of the public limelight and he doesn't shuffle like an old man. And she goes on with just a few anecdotal things like that here and there, and
she says, I wonder if this is the bathrobe defense. And I'm not familiar with the case John, but she talks about Vinnie the Chin who was a some some big mafio so whose entire defense was was walking around somewhere Brooklyn or something in his bathrobe, muttering acting like he was, you know,
completely demented. Uh. And she she ends it by saying, so maybe when when the gig with the Biden crying families finally up, he will plead dementia, and all of the people prosecuting him and persecuting him will be made to look, you know, like horrible people, and uh, leave the old man alone. No joke. This is why she ended it was hilarious. But I mean, what do you think, Yeah, yeah, I remember that now when you describe the facts, I do remember that case.
It didn't work. I mean it was you know that. You know that that sounds like one of those things they tried and the sopranos or something, But yeah, that, I mean, right, you know, the insanity defense is usually, you know, a little more than showing that you're a little confused like an old guy from you know now, And then I mean you have to you know, you have to be you know, diagnosed by basically by a psychiatrist, right that you actually are you know, not,
although I think she was making it's not going to work. A second point. She was making the political argument more than she was making the legal argument, which is that if he's a daughtering old fool suffering from dementia, leave the old man alone. You know, how how mean are you that you would pick on an old man with dementia? You know, kindly interesting thing? It's kind of like my point about how the d J investigation Hunters adversely
related to an impeachment. You could do that, but then doesn't that kill you in the general election to be saying, Oh, I'm so out of it, I don't know what Hunter was doing and I have no idea why who was talking to on the smart on the speaker phone. Isn't that going to make him look even more incompetent for her? Now? Yeah? No, Look, Biden does not have the discipline to carry off that kind of
deliberate strategy. Uh, you know, it's true that you know, we can remember that Reagan used to when he walked back from the helicopter to the White House and Sam Donaldson, the human foghorn, would be yelling questions at him, and Reagan would point to his ear where he had a hearing it because he did have a hearing problem in one ear, and say, oh, I can't hear you, right, And he'd smile and wave and walk
on in. But on the other hand, Reagan was still doing press conferences, he was still having journalists in the Oval office to interview him all the way through his second term, when he was getting getting a lot older and Biden is really getting quite conspicuous. He can't even give a speech or much of one. Uh. These press availabilities are scripted with the questions put in
ahead of time. And we saw the other day they cut him off when he was straying off the SPIP and he's not going to sit down here. But I needn't have right, he can't pull that off. But the other case, there's the mafioso you mentioned walked around a bathroom. I'm not sure I remember this clearly, but I think one of the problems getting John Gotti years ago was he didn't have any money himself. He only had like, you know, five thousand dollars in the bank. He never none of the
money ever flowed directly to him in an accountable way. So I think they finally had to get him for conspiracy to murder and things like that. Wouldn't be at all surprised if at the end of the day Joe Biden actually didn't get any of the cash that you know, the kids are holding onto it. And I mean, I know there's the ten percent for the big guy, but that may be an escrow somewhere. That's my suspicion. How someone how doctor Joe Biden, you never actually practiced medicine, by the way,
or taught in a community college. And Joe Biden, who never made more until he became president in what hundred seven thousand dollars a year? How many houses million dollar houses? Do they give me a break that never made it? I mean, you know, that's just such a spull. Some of the money will come from like the University of Pennsylvania paidium you know, seven
figures I think for something. And he was political philosophy something like you guys, Yeah, Joe Biden too, that's what he said for four years. Yeah. I mean the point is he got some money. I'm doing air quotes here or listeners legitimately or what if you know. Of course it's based on influence and all the rest of that. But the laundered money from foreign sources, I wouldn't it wouldn't surprise me if none of that is traceable directly to Joe. If I give all my money to my kids, that gets
me out of being corrupt. Is if the money goes to kids first, never gets to you, that seals you off. I think. I mean, you know, we'll see, John, You'll have to give all your money to me to get around your corruption. Okay, so wait a minute, I'm not doing I reserve all that for mister Lucresha. Then take God, take on funding. This is Lucresha's extravagant lifestyle. Yep, yep.
Well, everything John just said might be true except the big the big buzz in Washington and all everywhere now is David Ignatia's column saying, uh, you know, And of course the theory behind that is that he's a CIA I'll say, spokes. What's the right word, what's not the bad word? I wanted to use? What's what's a legitimate word? A mouthpiece, you
know, piece? Yeah, that's not bad seeing. Yeah, as great as Biden is, and it hurts me to say it after all the amazing things he's done, and he and Kamela can't run in twenty twenty four, What does that mean to you, guys? Well, I thought the odd thing about that article was not so much saying Biden's too old to run, but going along all the way to saying and Camela can't either. It was
kind of a bank shot. He wants to get rid of Kamela, and he I think he recognizes that if Biden dumps her or whatever, that it causes a big fight from the party. And so that was a very amusing article. I'm sure it's getting passed around a lot of Democratic circles equally amusing to me. And I wrote about this yesterday on Powerline is Nancy Pelosi was on one of the TV chat shows and was asked about Harris. And she was asked three times to say something nice about Harris, and three times she
deflected vice presidents aren't that important? Yeah, vice important, And you know, Joe Biden thinks she's the best running mate, and that's the opinion that counts. I mean, she couldn't even give a pro forma DNC talking point on defensive Harris. One thing she said was there there to give counsel and intellectual death or something. Right. But course you have to remember that Nancy Pelosi is related to Gavin Newsome, and obviously Harris is in Newsom's way,
So there is that little personal angle. But the fact that she couldn't even bring herself to give a pro forma talking point about how great Tamala Harris is I thought it was very significant. Well, so this is the thing I didn't get is it seemed to me this I haven't read the She's just column, but everybody's been talking about it. So one is, isn't this just what lots of your Democratic friends I have been saying to you already that he
just openly wrote what people have been talking about for months. Yea. And on the other hand, how do they push Biden and Harris out? I don't see how it happens. Yeah, I mean, I think there's two possibilities here. One is that Biden is not going to run again. It may have already decided that, but won't announce it until it's a faa company that Harris succeeds him. I think he wants part of his legacy bequeathing to America, our first woman, black woman president. But second, if I
don't know it's gonna I think this is less likely. You know, she's a woman, Shush a woman. Though I said it again, didn't I. Yeah, you're in trouble now, Steve, Like I'm not in trouble most of the time. Look, I mean, I think that's unlikely but possible. And then the second possibility is, although I think it's even less likely, is there's not much time left maybe six weeks until you reached the
deadlines for filing for primaries. To actually run a campaign is you know, some senior Democrats would have to go to Biden say you have to go, or someone might say it publicly, which would be a big bold move, you know, like somebody said, maybe what if Senator Amy Klobascher made a speech on the Senate floor saying what Ignatius said, it might start a cascade.
I don't know. That seems unlikely, but you know, it's the way Nixon was totally had to go as senior Republican senators went down the White House and said, you can't survive impeachment. Your only course is to resign, and then Nixon did so. I don't know. I think it's very unlikely, but possible. I don't know. What do you think You're there on the East coast, John, all those things that Steve mentioned, I
couldn't see moving Biden to step down. I don't see it. I could see him leaving if there was something more tangible for the Biden family, or you know what if he reached a secus. This is the kind of thing
you know you had seen in the movies. What if he and Kamala Harris reach a secret deal where he steps aside, and then Harris pardons him and Hunter right there, you know, something like that, you know, the things that people thought but didn't happen, but thought happened between Nixon and Ford, right right, I could But I could see Biden being motivated by something
like that. I don't see you know, some Democrat, you know, Biden thinks these are all kids, all these other senators and all these other compared to his age, they are kids, you know, giving a harsh speech about him isn't going to cause him to step down. I don't think. I could also see maybe if there were some disaster, I you know, I sure hope nothing happens to the country, but suppose there's some horrible foreign policy disaster or the economy really tanks, I could see him maybe stepping
aside the way LBJ did. That's only reason that really distinct possibilities. Yeah, no, yeah, But isn't that really the only precedent we have is something like this happening. Is lb LBJ at sixty eight stepping aside from Humphrey? So isn't the question though, at the end of the day, whether
it's Biden's decision or somebody else's. And what I mean by that is, you know, it's even Steve I think put the meme in his weekend pictures of Obama the puppet master with these little Camela and Joe, was that you Steve and Joe Biden puppets. Uh, you know, and of course you know that's that's it's usually Obama. They're talking about being the master behind the
throne sort of thing. I mean, yeah. I actually was doing a Hillsdale event earlier today in Washington, and we're talking about threats to the constitution and someone came up after the panel asked me exactly that. They said, what do you do when Obama is really in charge and controlling everything? And I said, why do you think it's Obama? And he mentioned this cartoon.
I said, you're it's deeper than that. This is what this is, what we've been living through these last three years, is what the administrative state, with the civil service, the bureaucracy does when there's no political restraint on what they want to do. It's not that Obama is running everything. Obama and Biden, if they had their truthers, we just release the regulatory
state on us all with no defense. And so when you have a president who's out of it right and no leadership from the White House, and the agencies just all do what they want to without anyone saying no. That's the kind of government we've been having for the last two This is a really important point. The Democrats have built a government that can run without them, right, You almost don't need a president. And with a democratic essentially a democratic
administraive administrative state, why do we need these elections? They just get in the way. Well that's the that they think, of course, But I mean you John he made this point, I think was John who said, uh yeah, not only elections are a nuisance, but the machine runs of itself. Oh I'm getting a little a little window saying my internet connection is unstable. Well we'll see if it like you're like, oh, never mind. She's just about to say, like your personality. But often we've been
giving you so long I can complete her sentences. Now let me try this again. There is are this This points out the asymmetry between democratic presidents and Republican presidents. Democratic presidents assume office knowing they are all gonna do what I want them to do without me having to give them any directions. And you point some terrible people who push things along faster, like John Kerry and whatever. A Republican president who wants to resist this, and that's not been all
of them, of course, has an uphill fight. Everything is hand to hand combat. It's a street fight everywhere. Uh you know, Nixon learned that, Reagan learned that Trump, John you right there you go. So there's a and that's and this is why I've been saying for a long time
that Republicans make them stay talking about just big government and wasteful spending. They really need to talk about Bureaucracy is the partisan instrument of the Democratic Party, and that's why it needs to be attacked directly and not use all the feel good wasteful spending, waste, fraud and abuse and just a generic bureaucracy that doesn't work. That we need much tougher rhetoric if you're going to have a serious campaign to reform it. Okay, hold that for a moment for our
sponsors. Welcome back everyone. We only have a little bit of time left, so I want to get to I want to get to talking to John you about his infamous famous testimony on behalf of the infamous famous John Eastman. But before that, I want to talk briefly about the Missouri Biden case, which is still in the news. The Missouri Biden case, we had a long discussion about it when it first came out a couple months ago. I
guess it's been now. And that's the case where two Republican attorneys general state attorneys general are suing the Biden administration for for their what's the right word, persuasion. That's what some people are saying. They're straw army threatening of social media. To make it simple, it's not just this, but we'll make it simple by saying to get them to suppress anything that went against the COVID you must get vaccinated, don't take quiet core clean or ivermect a narrative.
And a district court judge Dowdy Dowdy is that how you say his name? Dowdy? Dowdy? Uh said, you know this is this is the horrendous We went through some of the facts of that case that we're presented in the opinion went to the the appellate court. UH. The Biden Justice Department took it to the Appellate Court, who agreed with the substance of the District Court's opinion, but pushed back on a number of the agencies that were under an
injunction by that Missouri versus Biden case. And then today I don't know if you know this, Steve, because John had not had a chance to catch up on it. The Biden administration appealed it to the Supreme Court. It went to Aledo Alito stayed the injunction until next week to give the government excuse me, to give the other side a chance to answer the governments appeal.
I guess it would be right. So did you ever have a chance, John, because we talked about it briefly in our podcast that you weren't able to join us because you were too popular and had better things to do. Did you ever have is having a dinner with Olympic athletes that the Steve used
to hear a warship back in the day. Yeah, yeah, So, I guess what my sense of it is that importantly, the appeals court, the Fifth Circuit, basically agreed with most of the factual findings of the lower court that all of this had actually gone on, and the principal findings. Yeah. Yeah, the thing the only thing he really changed, the Appeals Court changed from what I could tell, was what we call the the remedy.
The Fifth Circuit actually found that the you know, there had been all this collusion slash coercion of the White House and the social media companies, and then they found that this indeed violated the First Amendment. Right, that's very important. That's actually something that could go to the Streme Court. That's just entirely new because of the role of social media is new. And then the thing that I think the media made it sound like, oh, but the
fists are really curtailed the district judges findings. There's more than the district judge. I'm sorry. The Appeals Court were narrowed with the district judges orders were because it found that the district judge was, for example, having any junction reaching doctor Fauci for example, doesn't make sense. But to say, you know, they basically said stop, you know, trying to force social media companies to censor, to de emphasis. What is it. It's not called
de emphasizing. It's a D platform, not D platform. Right, So when you slow down or de emphasize someone's profile so that they don't get as many hits and links. So that's important, But the most important thing I think is really the legal finding that if the government is social media get too intertwined, then social media is subject to the First Amendment, which means they're
not allowed to discriminate against speakers based on their viewpoint. And you know, as we've talked about many times of this show, social media is clearly discriminating against conservative speakers and has been for several years. Think about it this way. If there's there's more of this to come, there's going to be a lot of money these social media coman is going to have to pay out to
conservative plaintiffs. Steve, I don't have much to add to it. I didn't read the Peel's court opinion, but I know that our friends Jay Badicharia and others are claiming vindication O Ritz, so I think it's a win, even if they did scale back some of the remedies. I know the su J doctor J is So here's here's the key thing. So one doctor J is one of the people in the and they've mentioned in the case doctor J. Bardicharia for those who don't remember, as a professor of medicine at Stanford.
He's actually got a medical degree and a PhD in economics and studies disease, and he was one of the people who thought that we were going too far in the lockdowns. Rightly, So we were doing an event at Berkeley, Steve and I where we had Heather McDonald come and speak, which and we hope to have this event posted online because there was an effort to protest
Heather, but both Steve and Heather soldiered through it. And it was remarkable because to me, I think this was the first time a lot of people in the audience had ever heard facts and figures about crime, about discrimination, about the costs of affirmative action. I thought it was actually a wonderful event. And so I'm looking around and day doctor Jay Bati Cherry is sitting in the audience listening, and I'm like, so I go out to what are
you doing here? Turns out he was dropping his kid off for college first freshman year at Berkeley, even though as the Stanford professor his kids coming to Berkeley, and so he happened to be on campus that day and showed up for the talk and didn't mention that I don't think we could have had this at Stanford Law School as we've seen, right, Yes, he said that several times. He's like and then I said, well, why don't you come and speak and he said I'd love to. He said Stanford won't let
him speak on campus. Wow, he actually said he wanted to speak and was told no, we're not going to let you speak about this. And they, you know, they basically did the same thing to Scott Atlas there at Stanford too. So I'm looking for we can have an open debate about COVID and lockdowns and you know, at Berkeley anytime. I think so.
There was an article by Matt Tayibi where he interviewed a doctor I'm probably not going to see it, right, Karyate, who was also one of the original plaintiffs along with Badicharia, and he wrote a book similar unit, kind of a similar focus, which looked at the incredible emotional cost of emotional cost of the lockdowns and not But it wasn't just the lockdowns that he found.
It was the absolutely the abject fear that people felt as a result of this kind of government propaganda machine to make everybody terrified that if they ever took their mask off, except when they were taking a bite of food that they would get COVID and die in a respirator and a painful, horrible death. And he said, you know, he just saw the effects of this. That's
interesting in and of itself. But the article was actually about the circuit court opinion, court opinion, and he talked about how it was interesting how these justices excuse me, judges on the Fifth Circuit because they're they're a little bit older and they don't understand they when John said that they set some things aside on the injunction. One of the things that they did was they said, Okay, it's not going to apply to the State Department, it's not going
to apply to SISSA. The cyber security and I always get it wrong, and the Cyber Security, Infrastructure and Security Agency is what it is, and of course it was originally designed to make sure that it was protecting you know, cybersecurity infrastructure and grids and all of that sort of thing. But he talks about the evolution of this agency to something that became what he calls part of the censorship industrial complex and in some ways the clearinghouse for the censorship industrial
complex. He talks about it because the former head of SISSA, I just I'm gonna throw this out there and then I'll stop with this subject. But talked about no longer protecting the cybersecurity infrastructure. They moved from that to protecting of course the election infrastructure makes a certain amount of sense, but now it's cognitive infrastructure. But the job of SISSA is to control and protect Americans cognitive
infrastructure. What does that mean, control Americans way of thinking, control their mind orwell would be proud. Yeah, it was an interesting piece anyway, I just wanted to throw that up, so he said, you know, I get it. And the idea that they didn't put these other agencies in the injunction is not that big of a deal. Injunction has of course, you knew it's a very difficult thing to get in the first place, and
so on. But he said, they really need to be thinking about the fact that it wasn't just the FDA, it wasn't just the CDC, it wasn't just the White House, it was some of these other agencies, and talking specifically about how back to what really what you were saying, Steve, so many agencies of the federal government have been weaponized against the American people.
Well, my takeaway here is a wonderful nucliche to you is, which is when I'm having one of my senior moments, I'll just say, my cognitive infrastructure is not matching up with the router just now. So there's a great phrase. All right, speaking of cognitive infrastructures. How's yours doing lately?
John, Since you're in the unenviable position of defending our friend John Eastman, unenventable because you know you will automatically be put on the side of fascists and mega hat wearers and so on because of this, how's that been going? Well, I wouldn't be the first time I'm afraid in that camp. So I guess they just kept my reserve seat open in that in that train. So it's interesting. I have a lot of problems with what the bar is
doing, but my primary job is to be an expert witness. And it's a funny explain to our listeners in what just in case they don't know ya. So what's going on is that there are these groups that are trying to get disbarred, people like Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and other lawyers that advised Trump in the effort to challenge the results of the November election in twenty twenty,
and in particularly they're claiming that Eastman or Giuliani. It's so clear to me at one level they might be claiming, well, their legal advice was just so wrong, so bad, that it wasn't really legal advice. It was actually participating in the criminal conspiracy. They were just they knew they were violating the law. They were trying to help Trump violate the law, and
this legal advice was just to cover. Then I guess they could also be trying to claim, well, whatever the legal advice was, they just conducted themselves in a way that broke the law. You know, there was conduct, not their speech. Now, the problem is you have to show, well, what's the range of acceptable legal advice. And I think it's very hard to show in this kind of case that somebody was giving legal advice that
was so bad, so wrong, that it was really just criminal. And one reason is because this is an Irish area where there's no Supreme Court cases, there's no precedents. Is it really is unprecedented? I mean the eye if you thought there were fraud in the election, and this is part of where I disagree with John, but it doesn't have to do with whether he's a good lawyer or not. I just think the facts were different. But suppose you did think there had been sufficient fraud, then you've got to figure
out what to do. And we really haven't had many cases like that in our history. The major one is eighteen sixteen eighteen seventy six disputed presidential election where several vacious Southern governments which wanted to oppress the rights of the freed slaves, basically engaged in widespread voter fraud and even set up alternative state governments to
send on their own electoral votes. So I think one the question I asked, and I asked it when I was deposed by the Bar, is that you can be a lawyer and be confronted by precedents, by Supreme Court opinions, by written statutes which are against you, against you. That doesn't mean that you're wrong to challenge them if you think they're im moral. It doesn't mean it's wrong to challenge if you have an argument as to why they're wrong.
Think about third Good Marshal before Brown versus Board of Education, every precedent was against the right plus Cy versus Ferguson was spinning Supreme Court precedent statutes throughout the entire South enforced right racial segregation. Case after case upheld racial segregation. Should all those Southern states disbarred? Third good Marshal for saying right plus he
is wrong the fourteenth Amendment should be followed. I don't think so. And I think if that's the standard you're used, then I don't think you can say John Eastman should be disbarred either. And how's it going? I mean, I have my my sense of it, but I really have know what means to judge it. So so far we've had the questions, you know, and this is, you know, being on the stand, although it's by zoom. Though I stand, I don't like to sit. I stand
up. So for eight basically eight hours in a row, I've been I was standing except for one hour lunch break, and the Council for John Eastman's going through my qualifications, my work, and then how I came to write about the twelfth Amendment and this whole controversy, you know, strange to me. I was like, how could you not write about it? It's like the most important constitutional question of the last you know, three four years. It's like it's a resist but you know, they asked you, why did
you start writing about it? What methods did you use? And so on. So after that first full eight hours, complete with you know, tussling between the lawyers, between the bars lawyers and the bar by these acting as the prosecution and John Eastman's lawyers and the judge, I think we're almost finished with that testimony. And then the state bar gets to cross examine to me, which was always unpleasant, and that'll be Uh, this will be posted
afterwards, but we're taping it the night before. Yeah right, so probably yeah, Well mim at me. My impression from watching the you know the first few days of this, which I found riveting was John Eastman is putting up a ferocious defense, as you would expect of him, of course, and my hunch is, uh, this will probably set a record for the length of a bar disbarment proceeding. I can't imagine there's ever been a disbarment
case that's going on this long. And then finally, if nothing else, he's establishing a trial record for appeal that looks like it's going to be pretty ample. So go to the interest Supreme Court. Yeah, le's go to Californy Supreme Court and then I think which supervises the bar. And then ultimately he could go to the US Supreme Court and say my right free speech, my right to participate in the political process and express my views as being punished
by the bar. No, I have no idea what the Supreme Court would make of that. And that's I mean, you also have this. This would destroy his living. I mean, he's a lawyer. What is he going to do after this? I mean, he is really taking away his ability to make a living for himself and his family. I'm wondering if there might be if the vigor of his defense might make the bar flinch and propose a suspension instead of a disbarment, which would disappoint the left. I don't
know that. You know that they do lots of suspensions as well as disbardments. Right, Well, this is the weird thing. This is the troubling thing about it is you look at bar proceedings are mostly about this guy stole money from his client, this guy fell asleep during the trial. There's you'd be amazed how many cases there are people your lawyer falling asleep during the trial. You know this, You know, this guy was secretly talking to the
other side because they wanted to get a job. Right, This is not what the bars usually police that kind of stuff. I mean to intercede in this kind of you know, unprecedented constitutional dispute of the first order. It
really is not what the bar I think is supposed to do. And think about it again, I think, you know, Lacretian and I were talking about briefly before, does this mean that no one will ever challenge a vote or an election ever in the future because someone's going to launch dispartment proceeding against you and then this will this will have liberal's favorite word, chilling effect.
I don't think they care about that anymore. And and what last point is I find it very strange that the party that claims is for democracy does not trust democracy because the answer to this is elections. If people think John Eastman or President Trump went too far, then don't vote for them again. They did vote them out of office the first time. Don't vote them, you know, don't vote for him in twenty twenty four. That's how the founders
thought. I think that these things would be resolved. And so why don't they have enough faith in democracy that they're not trying to use prosecution or these strange dispartment proceedings to effectively cut off the choices. So she's going to hear, let's make that the start of our next podcast, Steve, what do you say, because we could say seventeen podcasts talking about that one one last quick question, when do you think that a decision will come down? Oh?
Well, this is a weird thing. So John made an emotion which I thought was completely reasonable, which is, as you know, he's been indicted in the Georgia case, and so he reasonably said we should suspend this disbarment proceeding, right, And he could fairly say, Look, if I get convicted of a felony in Georgia, then you can dispard me. Usually that's a reason to suspend or disparse someonees that they committed a felonies. You
could say that he said. And he said, look, you're going to force me to testify and say things in this bar proceeding which actually could be used against me in Georgia. I mean that's just unfair. But the judge for the moment is rejected that. So I would think that means they want to wrap this up before anything happens in Georgia. Otherwise the case really would
be strong for John that the two proceedings canfere with each other. So I figure they're going to get done pretty soon, before the end of the year, certainly before the Georgia trials will start. All right, I'm moving to Babylon. Bees. I don't know if either of you have a commalism you want to do. Okay, good, But because I haven't, I don't think he used this last week. I hope while I was away. If
we did, it's okay. Okay, you can say it again. So wait, hold on, sorry, let me do Babylon first, and then you can do Camela. So the White House says there's no direct evidence that Hunter Biden actually exists, and then Joe comforts Hunter by talking about the time his son was indicted for gun crimes, taking down a minute to figure that one. Sorry, there's so many, I'll leave the last one. No too. Democrats scrambled a fine replacement for retiring Mitt Romney. That's good.
New Mexico governor suspends first Amendment to criticism over suspending second Amendment. Is good. Okay, I'm sorry. I don't even talk about We didn't even talk about that whole about man. We talked about the Second Amendment one last week. Yeah, because it happened just through the Kamala discussion of culture. Her definition of culture, No, okay, I may have heard this, but go ahead. So she was at a music festival in New Orleans and gave
a definition of culture. Here it is culture is it is a reflection of our moment in our time right and in present. Culture is the way we express how we're feeling about the moment. It gets better, and we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment. That is a reflection of joy, because you know it comes in the morning, she said, bursting into laughter. There's even more, though. We have to find ways to also express the way we feel about the moment in terms of just
language and a connection to how people are experiencing life. And I think about it in that way too. Can I write that culture only happens in the morning. But that's that's deep, man, that's deep. It's very mis profound. Okay, let's take us out of here. John, You have a long day tomorrow. Oh yeah, so always drink, drink your whiskey meat. Let's go, Brandon and Steve. I'm going to modify it slightly for the next month. Bring back the Habsburgs. Did he actually say that
I did? No, he does. They don't say that Hungary accuse us. I mean plus or monarchist. I thought I'd live up to it or down to it. Okay, all right, Well, it's lovely to see you guys. Be careful on your travels. I hope to be with you soon again. Okay, take care of see you next week. Ricochet joined the conversation