I'm very excited right now to have my next guest with me. He is the Associate dean and professor of Government at Haillsdale College's DC campus. They have a campus in Washington, DC, and doctor Matthew Mehan.
Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Mandy.
So let's talk about something that is a big, big, big fear of those on the left and for some on the right, a big big hope. What are we looking at when it comes to the Department of Justice. Pam Bondy just got grilled pretty hard by Democrats who wanted to ensure that she would not weaponize the Department of Justice. And I got to say, they have cajones the size of cantalopes, because we all know what's happened over the last four years with the Department of Justice.
But I want a functioning, fair minded Department of Justice. How do we reform the DOJ without retribution from the DOJ?
Yeah, I mean the short answer is very carefully.
I think it's a real trick to be able to both go after some of these law fair antics while also keeping the proper understanding and the appearance so that people understand that justice isn't about going after one's political enemies.
I think the problem is the left, the Dems in a certain sense, have actually decided to hide within a kind of thicket of thorns where they do bad things, but they do them very overtly politically, so that when you go after them, they say, oh, you're being political, so tempting the good guys to destroy justice while trying to do it. And so I think we have to do it very carefully, and I think there's a kind of order or procedure that we need to go about in order to do that.
Well, let's start with personnel, because I think that in my view, and I'm not, you know, intimately involved with the upper echelons of the Department of Justice, but there seems to be some people at the top that fill us sophocally may need to go.
How do you do that without.
Those accusations of he's purging, he's purging political enemies. How do you change or make any personnel changes without to your point, them saying, oh, you're stacking it with loyalists or whatever.
Well, I think that in one sense, there's easy ways to do to do that. With regard to the civil service, looking at people who've done what they ought to have done or not done, what they have to be done. And I think that one of the major kind of well lea back up.
You don't want show me the man and.
I'll show you the crime, stalinists, purges, right. What you do want is show me the crime, and oh, look, here are the here's the man. Here are these people that violated a really important law and therefore need to go. And I think that's the way to go forward. And so I think Trump should with Pam BONDI say, you know what we're going to do. We're going to go after anyone who perjured themselves or suborned perjury, or lied
to the courts, to the Congress, to their superiors. And where you can find someone who broke good faith with others in a egregious way. I mean, not every little thing needs to be enforced. Obviously, there's prosecutorial discretion. I think that's going to just happen. Perforce Pampondi's an experienced person, so as Trump. But what is the thing you go after?
I think you go after they're breaking faith. And why that is, I think is because that protects you from any kind of understanding of oh, you're just doing this against your political enemies, because when you attack, rather persecute and try to purge that crime, the reason you try to purge it is we have to be friends. We
have to be a nation again. We have to know that the thing you say is the truth, so that we can know what each other thinks, know what the other is doing, and then we can agree to disagree. Sometimes we can win in those elections, but we can trust one another that our word is our bond.
Pam Bondi said that in her testimony before Congress, and it's.
Actually in the words of the oath of office that the Donald Trump and Jade Vance just took that they're going to do this in good faith without mental reservation. Meaning if I speak under oath, or if I speak before Congress or before a phi as a judge, or if I speak to the press about someone's reputation, I'm telling the truth. And if they're not, if they're a liar and worse, and I think these is where you start.
If they're a perjurer, that's where you have to go, because I think that will actually get rid of a lot of the worst malefactors. Because it's one thing to say I have a bad ideology. It's another thing to say I have a bad ideology that defends and upholds lying to my fellow Americans and to Congress and to courts and to the press. That's I don't care what your ideology is. We can't have a democratic republic if you're doing that.
So let me ask you about the Biden pardons on the last day in office, because the notion of accountability and I'm gonna use the j six pardons that just came out yesterday. Donald Trump partons everybody from the January sixth situation. Doesn't matter what they did, doesn't matter who they hurt, they were all pardoned. I said earlier on
the show. I don't necessarily know if everybody gets pardoned, had Biden not used his pardons to preemptively pardon all these people, something that Democrats have railed against in the past when they thought.
Trump was going to do it.
Which is kind of funny, But how does all this this is kind of new. We're in uncharted territory a little bit, this pardon versus pardon thing, what is this?
Yeah, So I do think that if we're talking about the sort of going after one's political enemies. That's almost a different thing pardoning someone you think is a political ally, and in one sense the j six pardons, I mean, the punishment has been the process for a lot of them. I mean, anyone who's being released now has been in prison for a long while, I think commensurate with the riot. Actually, ideally you'd want them to be sorry for the things they did wrong, and I think that's true of many
of the Jay sixers who did something wrong. I've heard a lot of apologies about the parts that they shouldn't have done. But the ones who are welcomed in by a cop and said, you know, I don't like, I don't respect what you're doing, but I understand it, or something like that, or I don't like what you're doing, but I respect it like that, that's a person who thinks they're being let in by.
The authorities, right into the people's house, right.
That's so it's very complicated, and so the blank cot pardon, I understand it.
I don't. I would rather be parsed out more easily. But I get the symbolism.
With regard to what Biden's doing, that's a masterclass and how to abuse the plenary power of clemency, right, those blanket pardons for eleven years, those pregnant eleven years and protecting Fauci and others like that, stuff's gross and wrong because which you're supposed to do is actually someone should either have been punished, right and then you show mercy, or if they're about to be punished, the only way you can let them off is if they are contrite, they're actually sorry.
And say, look, I screwed up.
And the reason why that's the point is back to that perjury question of how do you actually have friendship and politics again as opposed to this creepy sort of cold civil war where the long knives are out and it's law fair and lying and destruction of person, property and reputation.
Right. The way to go.
Back to that is that you actually are honest. Hey, I want clemency, I want to be pardoned.
But I screwed up. I lied, I did ax, I did why it was not right.
I am sorry, and I would like to come back in to a relationship with the political community.
I think you have to do that. And so.
A real clemency is there's some strictness or there's already prior punishment. I think with Jay six, you have prior punishment, but with Biden you have neither. Nobody's been punished. It's all preemptive, a lot of it right or mealy mouthed, and nobody's sorry because there's no strictness. So you've got to put justice first, then mercy can follow. And I think that's the way Trump should and Pam BONDI should be looking at this too. Is be very strict on
some of these high level lawfare perjurers and deceivers. And then once the punishments have been assembled, the prosecution has been successfully demonstrated beyond this jedile with doubt, then you can open the door to clemency and say are you sorry for what you've done?
Then maybe you can get your jail get out of jail free card.
But first you have to be honest and you have this much good faith which is a lie because you've been a liar. Right, we're going to take you down a negative four and if you want to come back to zero and just be a citizen again, and you gotta say sorry, and then we let you out.
And so we don't want it. We don't want our enemies to.
Be locked up and bloodthirsty revenge right and and sort of snakes in the bed Roman Empire style like killing emperors and things. We want justice and friendship again and equality under the law, and I think you have to go after these sort of high level things that threaten honesty and integrity even between people who disagree. And that's why I think perjury is the top of the list. Subordination of perjury, meddling with documents, that sort of thing.
You know, I agree with you.
I mean, there's a there's very shades of like post Civil War reconstruction in what you're saying. It's it's that if we if we handle this the wrong way, we just create more animosity. But I think every American wants to know that if the FBI comes knocking on our door, we're going to be treated fairly and that there isn't
this two tiered system of justice that we've seen. So what are the chances that that, you know, some high level people will be held accountable, do you think in some way before they ask for clemency or I don't know, because I think that for me as a citizen, I want to know that that two tiered system of justice has been dismantled because that concerns me greatly, It truly does.
My friend Matt Kittle made the point the other day in a similar conversation we were having, saying, there's no two tiered system. Really, it's just justice or injustice, right, Like some people are just being treated very badly.
Right. So yeah, I agree, it's an intolerable thing to have that two tiers. The I do. I do think that that part of.
What needs to happen is is that you have to lay out strictness first and mercy will come as a kind of vision for people.
But with there's two temptations.
One is the bloodthirsty, go too hard right, and then you get the Trump administration looks like they're just continuing the cycle, the sort of carousel of death that destroys the republic, reprisals, law fair, go after your enemies. The other temptation is the sort of false honor of nope, forgive and forget, just move on, right, Because that's actually they've been too bad. It is too systemically corruptly grotesque.
There have to be repercussions.
So I think Trump is in a probably a good place to actually take some high.
Level people to task, right.
But I think that he's also hopefully and he's made gestures and noise to this to this effect. So I'm very hopeful that he can and will sort of thread this needle very carefully, but also open up the door to you might be my political enemy right now, and you're also a violator of the law, and so you're going to be punished. But if you can make friends with the American people, with me and with the law again, clemency is yours and we can go back to zero and have a handshake.
And I think that you have to give people that whole arc because if.
You're just after them to punish them and they don't see that you have strictness here, because they have to stop doing this to everybody, right, And you punish people at the time so that they stop meddling with people at the bottom.
Right.
So you're gonna go after some big fish, I think, right, so that the littler fish know that they won't.
Be protected by big fish, right.
And I think that will solve the citizens being mistreated by the FBI or anybody else by doing that. But then there has to be this vision of no, no, no, we actually want restoration of peace, amity, concord, citizens, friendship, good faith. It's not just justice and punishment that's gonna come right, but that can be ameliorated if you are contrite, forthright about what you did wrong and show a firm purpose of amendment that you won't do this anymore. And
then the door of mercy is open. But people too often flip it. They're too merciful at the beginning, so there's no justice. It's just fake forgiveness, and everyone just goes about doing bad things in the next administration.
I think that I love that. I would love it if that was the way things went down, but I think that would ultimately be really unsatisfying to at least a section of Trump supporters who are tired of seeing Republicans roll over on this stuff.
To your point earlier, and I don't think they're wrong.
I do think Republicans have jumped to forgiveness too quickly without holding people accountable. But that being said, I would love it if we could do this, And then at that point, you know, I was raised in the South, and whenever I would get start acting like an idiot right and just act the fool, my grandmother would look at me and say you were raised better than that, right, And I kind of feel like I want to say that to the party, like we were raised better than that.
We can't control what if somebody else does, but if we can just hold someone accountable and then if they deserve it, give them grace. To me, that would be the best possible outcome from your lips to God's ears.
Yeah, I agree, I think that's right.
I also think, though, don't forget, some of these people are recalcitrate liars, and they will not ask for clemency on the proper grounds.
And if they don't, it shouldn't be granted them.
So I think there will be some satisfaction because some of these people will try to pretend to be martyrs and congratulations, you're a fake prisoned, imprisoned martyr under your own lying garbage, you know, gaslighting, like good for you. Like they'll I think they'll they'll be a pound of flesh regardless, because some people really do need to go to prison if they're so vicious that they cannot break out of you know, the shell or the mode they're in of lined everyone.
So I think it'll be a little of everything.
But I also think I think the American people, and I think MAGA, and I think the Republican Party, and I think a lot of people who've even been abused, they do have the common sense of the American way, which is right, you can't get everything you want in the life, right, and so you better get what you should.
And I think this path forward is something like what we should do, even if it's not everything that we might want, because it's not until heaven when God will wipe away every tier right and every justice will be done and every wrong will be righted. And I think you know, it's the Marxist to try to make a heaven on earth, and that's not what we do.
Amen to that. Associate Dean and professor of Government at Hillsdale College in Washington, d C. They have two campuses, one in Michigan, one in Washington, d C. I really appreciate your time at Thank you for coming on the show, and hopefully we can revisit in a year or maybe a little bit shorter and see how we've done with our prognostication about this. We can regroup and see what's actually happened. I appreciate your time today.
Yeah, No, happy to report from our forward Operating base in d C