We've seen a lot of legal drama in the country recently, coming off the heels of President Trump being found guilty on thirty four felony counts. Even though that was a witch hunt, we know that that was a sham trial from a judge who literally donated to Joe Biden and a group called Stop Republicans. So he's trying to do just that, Stop Republicans, Stop Donald Trump.
And now Hudder.
Biden has been found guilty in all three federal felony gun charges that he was facing. He also has a tax trial beginning on September fifth. He's facing three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanors in that one. So where do we go from here as a country? What should you know about Hunter Biden being found guilty on those federal gun charges. What's next for him? What kind of sentencing will he face? Also, what will we find out
during this tax trial? Well, Hunter Biden plead guilty to try to avoid embarrassing information coming to light about his dad and his own business dealings. What do you need to know about that? Also, as we await President Trump's sentencing on July eleventh, will Judge Matron try to send him to jail. I mean, we've already seen democrats take it this far, so what should we expect from that and what does the appeals process look like for President Trump?
We're going to get into all of that with Andy McCarthy. He is a best selling author, contributing editor at the National Review, and a fellow at the National Review Institute. He's a Fox News contributor, and most importantly, he's a former chief Assistant US Attorney. This is someone who's dedicated his life to the rule of law, dedicated his career to it. So what does he think about the justice
system now? After following the Trump trial so closely and following this so closely, we have so much to dig into with Andy McCarthy. His analysis is always so smart. I learned so much from him. I hope you do as well, So stay tuned and named Carthy.
Well, Andy, thanks so much for making the time.
I know you've been really busy with all this legal drama in the country, so you always give such great analysis. I just really appreciate you making the time for the show.
Lisa, It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much.
You know so Andy, I assume you probably weren't surprised with Hunter Biden being found guilty and all three federal felony gun charge accounts. What does a typical sentencing look for that look like for that.
Well, for this kind of a charge, he's probably an unusual defendant in that there is no evidence, at least that I'm aware of, that he was trying to obtain the gun for criminal purposes. I suspect, given that he has this bad narcotics issue that you know, he could very well have decided that he needed to be armed, given the dangerousness of some of the places that he had to purchase drugs from, or that he chose to
purchase drugs from. But I don't think there's any evidence of that in the record so far as I understand. He's an ineligible person. So you start from the premise that he's not allowed to have the gun. But the sentencing guidelines, and I should say, Lisa that the you know, a lot of the rhetoric in the media always talks
about the statutory range, which is huge. So you keep reading again and again that Hunter's looking it up to twenty five years in prison, But real sentencing litigation in the federal government is really controlled by the sentencing guidelines,
not the statutes. So the objective of the sentencing guidelines is to take k which are brought under, say a statute like the possession statute that Hunter violated, where it's a where it's a ten year it's actually now a fifteen year penalty, but in the when he violated it was a ten year penalty. You know, it's zero to ten.
There's no mandatory minimum, tends to maximum. So you're going to have a you're going to have a wide range of defendants, and some should be on the ten side of the spectrum and some should be on the zero side, right, So what the sentencing guidelines try to do is bring a little predictability to that range. So what they look at is the typical factors that come up in an offense like this, and then they look at personal factors, which they call criminal history, so that they can establish
a criminal history category. And that's how you go on. There's a graph in the sentencing guidelines and it's like you plot the offense factors against the criminal history and that's where you come up with the same So he doesn't have the kind of factors that exacerbate a sentence like this. For example, he does not have a bunch of prior felony convictions from which you would infer that if he was trying to get a gun, it was
probably because he was up to no good. He's not trying to obtain a gun that's extraordinarily destructive or at least regarded as such under the guidelines. This is a pretty conventional it's a cult Cobra thirty eight revolver, and he may fit in the category of people who just wanted to get the gun for sport and other legal purposes. So he's going to be pretty low in the offense category computation. I the way I figure it, he could be as low as a sentence of zero to six months.
I see other people say, you know, fifteen to twenty one months. But as you can tell, it's not going to be very high. And he's in what we call chrimeminal history category one because he doesn't have any prior criminal convictions.
You can argue he probably should.
Yeah, well, but but that's not that's different from different from does you know, like even for example, he should have gotten a dishonorable discharge from the military. Uh. And of course somehow he got that job in the in the Navy's press office even though he was too old, because his father just happened to be the vice president. And then after he got booted for cocaine, uh, he somehow managed not to get a dishonorable discharge while his
father was vice president. God knows how that possibly could have happened, right.
Weird, weird how that happens.
Yeah, but you know the fact is he's not like a multiple felon. In fact, listening to the evidence, it occurred to me that, you know, Haley Biden testified that he's the one who got her hooked on crack, and it seems to me that, you know, if you actually charged him with what you could charge someone for distributing narcotics to another person. You know, it doesn't have to be a financial transaction. If I hand you illegal drugs,
I've distributed them. So may you could argue that that's probably more serious than anything he got convicted of in terms of what the you know, the punishment structure is in federal law. But this is a you know, the three different crimes under the sentencing guidelines, because they're all
related to the same transaction. They would be treated as one offense, and I think he's going to have very low guidelines, anywhere from zero to six range, which would mean the judge doesn't have to impose a prison sentence to fifteen to twenty one months. And the only other thing I'd say about at LISTA is it's important to note that judges don't have to follow the sentencing guidelines, but they tend to at least to approximate it. So it's a much more reliable barometer for us than the
statutory range, which is very wide. And the other thing is, in my experience, sentencing is the hardest thing that judges do, and they tend to and I think this is a very human thing. I think they tend to come to it with the idea that just being convicted by a jury of your peers, or admitting guilt in court, there's a stigma attached to that that is in and of itself punishment, and therefore they tend to sentence at the low range of whatever the guidelines are. And you can
understand that, you know, sentencing another human being. It's one thing to say I really disagree with this person politically, or I really hate what this person did that was proved in my courtroom. But now it's up to you to decide the course of another person's life. And that's an awesome responsibility. And most of the time the judges are, you know, reasonably lenient. I'm not saying ridiculously, so although I've seen some of that too, well.
I assume too.
I mean, this is the judge who blew up the Sweetheart deal, so she has demonstrated you know, independence and I think fairness. I mean, I would assume being the president's son has to play a role in sentencing as well, right, I mean that's you know, I mean, I would like to think people are unbiased, but I would have to imagine that plays a role.
Well, if it didn't, there would be something wrong because what the law says is that.
They're not with Trump though that's the opposite direction.
Yeah, yeah, well but it's a factor, right. The what the law says is that a sentencing judge can take any relevant factor into account in terms of whether it's something that should make the sentence more severe or less severe. So you're supposed to be looking at the whole person, the whole reason for looking at criminal history category. What we mainly think about when we think about criminal history, category is like how many priors does the guy have?
But in truth, what a sentencing judge does is size up the entire individual. And what you're supposed to be gauging in any sensible sentencing exercise is what's the likelihood that in the future this person will recitivate, that he'll continue to commit crimes, or is the likelihood that, you know, if he's found the straight and narrow, he'll live a productive,
law abiding life and make a contribution to society. That's why it's such a it's it's an awesome responsibility for judges because those are very hard things to gauge, you know.
And then now he's facing his tax trial next September fifth, facing three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanors. Probably got lucky with that as well, given you know the scheme of what iris whistleblowers have you know, expressed publicly about how the doog has thwarted a lot of their attempts to dig deeper and dig deeper into the Biden family
and potentially Joe Biden as well. What do you think he's facing at that trial, and based off of the evidence known how much trouble is he facing with that one.
Well, he's got serious trouble, which is why he tried to plead guilty. You know, the gun thing is one thing. They tried to make that disappear with a diversion arrangement, even though really into Justice Department rules that offense shouldn't have been subject to diversion. When I say diversion, that means they divert the case out of the justice system for an alternative resolution other than conviction in a legal proceeding, so you know, probation or community service or you know,
just keeping your nose clean, that kind of thing. Whereas the tax charges, he actually was ready to plead guilty to two of them. Now, obviously he wanted to plead guilty to them in the form misdemeanors, but the underlying facts are the same. So the evidence against him is sufficiently daunting that he himself, even though he doesn't want to plead guilty to everything, was willing to plead guilty
to this. On the other hand, as you point out, there's been a strategic delay in this case by the Biden Justice Department and its trustee quote unquote special counsel David Weiss, these are cases, you know, the evidence against Hunter, and the gun case was known completely to law enforcement. It happened on October twelfth, and they knew about it
by less than two weeks later. And the tax cases, the tax problems that Hunter has had have been well known, notorious for years and years, to the point where there were leans on his house and all kinds of other stuff. So that's a long winded way of saying. Almost everything David Weiss needed to know to file charges and convict in these cases was known in twenty nineteen, and he intentionally sat on his hands. There's no other way of
interpreting it. And in the tax case, that had the real effect of chewing up what was available to be charged under the Statute of limitations, And I think that was done deliberately. Some of the worst tax offenses and potentially other offenses, not just tax, but let's just talk
about tax, because that's what they charged. Some of the worst of those crimes happened in twenty fourteen and twenty fifteen, when Joe Biden was vice president and when Hunter was raking in millions of dollars from Barismo, which was actually obviously buying access to Joe Biden. So because of the way Weiss handled this case, those charges can't be brought.
He waited till the statute of limitations had passed, and the way, just so people understand, the way prosecutors stop the clock on the statute of limitations is you file charges. So what I'm saying is everything they needed to know to charge these crimes was known in twenty nineteen. He sat and did nothing for years, and he was trying to do nothing in the way of like do nothing
and make the case go away. And then the whistleblower agents courageously came forward and talk publicly about the Biden Justice Department interference in the case. At that point it was politically untenable to make the case just disappear. So that's when they tried the sweetheart plea deal. And only when that blew up did Weiss actually file these charges.
But I think, Lisa, in the end, they're going to win because to the extent that the idea here was to make these cases go away, if you think about it. In the gun case, Hunter is not going to be sentenced till probably August, and and he has an appellate issue under the Second Amendment that I think the judge will allow him to have bail pending appeal while he litigates that, which means any execution of his sentence if he gets a prison sentence, will not happen until sometime
next year, meaning after the election. The tax case, I can't imagine in a million years the Biden, whether it's Hunter Biden or the White House, are going to want to have that trial happen in September, in the run up to the election, when early voting has already started. I think he's got to plead that case out at some point, but they will try to structure the plea and schedule the plea so that he doesn't get sentenced until after the election. So I think that the goal
here is to push everything past the election. And then this ridiculous supposed vow that Joe Biden made that he won't pardon his son. I don't think that will be operative ten seconds after the polls close on November fifth, And if Biden wins the election, then he can bide his time and if Hunter gets a prison sentence, he can pardon them at that point. If he loses the election, then sometime between election day and inauguration day, Biden will
pardon his son. But you know the fact that Weiss has delayed the way that he is delayed, I think ensures that Hunter is not going to get the kind of accountability and justice that people expect for people who are put through the criminal justice system.
We've got more with Anny McCarthy, but first, since the terror attacks in October seventh, anti Semitism has been on the rise, not just in Israel but here in the US and around the world. That's why I have partnered with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and today I'm coming to you, my audience, to ask that you stand with us and IFCJ to raise your voice, just
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stand today. Do you think that if Hunter did not if he does not reach a plea deal, which I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense, that he would want to do that for political reasons, to protect his dad, who has obviously protected him to a great extent throughout his life and shielded him from, you know, probably a lot of consequences that he should have been facing. But if he did not reach a plea deal, would Joe Biden be exposed?
And what we would learn from the tax trial? Do you think?
Yeah, this is why I don't think they can let it go to trial. So Weiss, as I said to somebody this morning, Weiss is the best defense lawyer that Hunter has ever had. But his main objective in this investigation, and the Biden Justice Department's objective has always been to protect the president. That's first and foremost. They tried to protect the president and bring Hunter along for the ride, but that became politically undoable once the whistleblowers came forward.
So even in prosecuting Hunter, they've kept the objective of protecting the president front and center. So, for example, Weiss writes finally a fifty six page indictment on the tax case, it doesn't mention President Biden, even though what the tax case is about is the invasion of tax on income that Hunter earned by peddling Joe Biden's political influence. So Joe Biden is a central figure to the case, but
he's not discussed in the indictment. The other thing, Lisa, that Weiss did here that I think people are going to be reminded of, even though it escaped a lot of people's attention at the time. Do you remember that the Sweetheart plea deal had a statement of facts in it. Yes, So I'm convinced, having read that a few times, that this never happens with federal prosecutors by the way they control the plea process, including what the defendant is going
to say. If you're giving somebody a plea deal, you tell them this is what we expect you to admit to, and if you don't admit to it, there's no deal, and we'll go to trial. So in this process, it seems to me that Weiss allowed Hunter's lawyers to write the statement of effect, which the government then stipulated to, meaning they agreed that that would be the statement of facts that was presented to the court in connection with
the case. If you read that statement of facts, what they say is that Hunter earned a lot of money from these overseas associates and deals because he was a high end lawyer and businessman. You don't get any sense reading it that he earned it because he was a ne'er do well drug addle failure who was cashing in on his father's political influence, which is a lot closer
to the truth. So the defense is going to try to say that Weiss is stuck with that version of events because he already agreed to it in connection with the POLA. But one way or the other, I don't think the Biden people can afford in the run up to the election to have a trial that's about Hunter basically monetizing his father's political influence and then not paying his fair share on that right. So I don't think he'll I don't think he'll go to trial. And when
you say if they can't strike a plea deal. This is how this is how cynical I've become about this.
I'm right there with you.
Why don't they try If he's going to be pardoned anyway at the end of the rainbow, and he's never really going to do a day in jail on this, why not write before the election, or reasonably before the election, like August September, announce a plea deal where Hunter is going to plead guilty to two felonies, and the Biden Justice Department, like they've done the last twenty four hours, can run around, beat their chest and say, see, we
prosecuted the president's son without fear or favor. In the meantime, they delayed it so long that he won't get sentenced until after the election, and then his father will pardon them. But at least before the election, they'll try to make it look like this was a real serious, you know, hard ass prosecution, and it'll all be play acting.
I think that is probably one hundred percent what's going to happen. Unfortunately, you know, I think we've realized that justice is not equal in America these days. I also wanted to ask you President Trump is facing his sentencing on July eleventh. I am very concerned that he will either get thrown in prison or under house arrest, that they're going to use this to try to sideline him from the campaign trail.
What are your.
Thoughts on that, and then also what does his appeals process look like and are there any ways for him to expedite that in a meaningful way ahead of the election.
So I think he's going to get a prison sentence, but he's not going to be sent to prison. I think that he will get bail pending appeal. In New York, it's a non violent crime, you know. I mean, it's when I say it's a crime, I'm you know, I'm just reading off like a judgment docket. In terms of whether it's really a crime. I think if you asked any twenty people randomly on the street what he was
convicted of, they wouldn't be able to tell you. But let's assume like we have a crime that he turned into thirty four crimes and he's going to be sentenced. I think that Merchan, who has shown himself to be like a progressive performance artist on this case, notwithstanding that it's against the code of ethics in New York to sit on a case if you've given political contrib they're not supposed to give political contributions at all.
So to group Stop Republicans, I mean, that's the group that's one of the politically stop Republicans and Joe Biden, it's like that tells the story, you know.
But yeah, all right, Agres.
And no, you're right. And even if his even if his daughter wasn't making a very lucrative living as a progressive political activist who does election work for Democrats who defined themselves by the loathing of Trump, I mean, you wouldn't even have to get into that. Just to judge, his own contribution should have been enough to have him off this case. So I think we know what we're
dealing with this judge in New York. Under these circumstances, Trump should get bail pending appeal because he's got very profound appellate issues in this case. So I think that Merchon knows he's going to impose sentence, but that the consequence of the sentence he imposes is not going to have Trump actually going to jail. And to my mind, and again, this is the cynicism we're left with after
watching this process unfold. I think that increases Merchon's incentive to impose a prison sentence on Trump because he knows it's not really going to have that effect, so why not pose as a hero. That's what he's tried to do all along. So I think he will give Trump a prison sentence, but it won't be executed. Trump will at bail pending appeal whether he and by the way, Trump should not get a prison sentence for that crime. In New York. We're talking about New York, where Alvin
Bragg is like the paragon progressive prosecutor. Don't ask me to say that ten times fast, but he You know, in New York, we have felonies that get pled down to misdemeanors if they get prosecuted at all. We have a district attorney whose default position is that you don't prosecute. And yet in this case, he turned something that I don't even think is a misdemeanor into thirty four felonies with one hundred and thirty six years of prison exposure. And I'm now doing the same thing I criticized a
second ago. Right, I'm highlighting the statutory exposure. But I think the reason I'm doing it is because that's why they did it. They wanted to say that, you know, Trump's crimes were so serious that this would be what he'd be facing. So this whole thing is just his theater. And consistent with that, I think march On will impose a prison sentence even though he shouldn't. It's a non violent crime and it's a bookkeeping offense, which wouldn't even
normally be prosecuted in New York. So the thought that anyone does five minutes in jail for this is laughable. But the important thing with that, Lisa, is there's the charge that the grand jury brought, or the charges that the grand jury brought, and then there's the charge that Alvin Bragg told them was the center of the case,
which isn't in the indictment. So the indictment just has like thirty four falsification of business records, which is a misdemeanor in New York, becomes a felony if you're trying to conceal or commit another crime. But Bragg won't tell him in the indictment what the the felony is, and in the meantime, Bragg, at the same time, the grand jury indictment comes out issues to statement of facts, which is his, not the grand juries in which he does.
This sort of fabulous recitation of a conspiracy to steal the twenty seventeen twenty sixteen election. And it's amazing that you could steal the twenty sixteen election by crimes that you don't commit until twenty seventeen. But nobody should think that logic has anything to do with what we saw for the last six or eight weeks while that case was going on. But when the New York prosecutors opened to the jury, the first thing they said to them was that this is a case about a conspiracy to
subvert the twenty sixteen election. The whole idea of business records offenses was a complete afterthought. This case was presented to the jury and to the judge as a successful conspiracy to steal the election. To deprive the fraud here. If you can believe this is because I keep asking, what's the where is the beyond the reasonable doubt proof of an intent to defraud? Who was defrauded here? And Bragg's theory is the people of the United States were
defrauded out of the Hillary Clinton presidency. There's no you know, there's no financial nobody. Uh, the state got every penny of taxes that it was supposed to get and probably more. There's no victim of fraud here. And I mentioned fraud because you're supposed to The crime here, if that matters, is falsification of business records with intent to defraud. And the intent to defraud is supposed to include the concealment of another crime. But you have to prove intent to
defraud beyond a reasonable doubt. I don't see it. But Bragg's theory was the country was defrauded out of the Hillary presidency. That would have happened if Trump hadn't concealed these trusts that he had with these women by what Bragg says were violations of the federal campaign finance laws. But this is a long winded way of saying the case is, it's presented to Judge march On, who will impose sentence. Is not a penny anti business records fraud case.
They have described the worst conspiracy in the history of the United States, a successful conspiracy to steal the presidency, which they say worked. If that's the way they tee it up for the judge, how does he not impose a prison sentence.
I guess what I'm worried about is he's going to reach the same fate in the appeals process in liberal New York that has it out from them in the same way that Judge Majahn has as well. Is there Do you agree with that? And then if so, how can he expect to the Supreme Court?
Yeah? I think two things about that. First of all, the quality of justice in the trial courts in New York is appalling, and that's largely because there are a lot of them are political appointees. A lot of them are elected. I mean, the system is pervaded with politics. So a lot of the trial judges, like Judge and Goern is an elected judge, right, Judge merch On is an appointed judge. But they're appointed by Club Democrats and
Democratic officials. So the whole thing in the trial section is, you know, it's elected lawyers and appointed lawyers who are good Club Democrat lawyers who if they do the right thing for the party long enough, they get on the bench either through a an unopposed slot in the election or they managed to get themselves appointed. And we get a lot of stuff from the trial courts, that's awful. As you go up in the New York system, the
quality gets better. The appellate division is significantly better than the trial courts, and the Court of Appeals, which is the highest court in New York, is better than the appellate division. And I think that's shown for example Lisa by Harvey Weinstein, who is a very very unpopular figure, like you could say that about Trump as well in New York. And yet it took three or four years, but they threw out his conviction because the trial was
utterly completely unfair. So it's just as delayed, but eventually they came out to the right result. I think with Trump, the thing is the appeals process is going to stretch
into years from now. By the time it gets decided, Trump will either have lost the twenty twenty four election, in which case they won't care about him that much anymore, or he'll have won the twenty twenty four election, and that'll mean everything in New York will probably be frozen until after he'st of office, at which point they won't
care about him that much anymore. So I think what the Democrats did this for the whole timing of it was so that they could have a talking point going into the election that Trump is a convicted felon, a thirty four time convicted felon, and they've accomplished that, so that can't be unwrung. But I think down the line he will get better quality of justice in the appellate process.
That's already been evident by the way in the in the civil fraud case where the Court of Appeal or the Appellate Division in New York reversed anger On on a number of things he did during the trial and then cut the bond that Trump had to post in order to have his appeal. So you can see, you get he's done better already in the appellate division than he did in the trial court. And I expect that to continue.
Can get your Supreme Court for that.
Is there any means to try to get the Supreme Court to take it up given the significance to the country.
So this is a great question, and I know a lot of people that we both know are trying to brainstorm to do that. Here's the problem I think with that that people are overlooking This case has already been in federal court. You know, we're so riveted to what's happened in the state court, because it was so egregious that I think some people are forgetting some of the
important procedural history in the case. But if you remember, Trump gets indicted I think in April of twenty twenty three, and one of the first things he does is he tries to remove the case to federal court. And his theory there was that he had federal defenses because Bragg was trying to enforce the campaign finance laws and a
lot of the activity happened while he was president. So he goes into the Southern District of New York, my old courthouse in Manhattan, and unfortunately for them, but for Trump, the draw he gets is Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who is a ninety year old senior judge Clinton appointee, and basically, Hellerstein blesses everything that Bragg wanted to do, including to enforce the federal campaign finance laws. Now, it was a
terrible decision, but it is a decision. So for like these people who keep saying, we got to get this case into federal court, what New York's going to come back and say is this case was already in federal court. We had to give Judge Hellerstein all of our theories for what we were prosecuting here, what the crimes were. We had to give discovery to Trump about what the other crime was that that we were alleging he concealed
by the business records fraud. So what they're going to say is this has already got played out in federal court, and because it did, it's going to make it much more difficult for Trump at this point to try to get out of the regular state appellate process and jump into federal court on a theory that like the federal courts have to intervene here because the state is gone rogue. What the state's going to say is, we already ran
this past a federal court. That's how we got to be able to do the case.
We've got to take a quick commercial break more with any McCarthy. On the other side, Alvin Bragg is going to face the House Judiciary Committee on July twelfth, the day after the sentencing.
Now, could anything.
That he says during this hearing help President Trump's appeal process, Like, could anything come to light during that that could then be used, uh, you know, evidence of bias or you know what have you.
I'm really surprised he's agreed to testify. Frankly, you know this. This came up once before they tried to They tried to make him come after the indictment, and he told them to pound sand I was kind of expecting, uh, he do that again. So I'm I'll be interested to see if he if he says anything of note. I think, you know, he's a clever enough guy that you know he'll answer what he does when he wants to answer, and then he won't answer anything that he doesn't want
to answer. Because the New York state system is not under the supervision of Congress. And I must say, if I was a state district attorney, and this is like completely set apart from how I feel about Bragg or any other state official. But if Congress, if I was a state district attorney and Congress subpoened me to come and explain my charging decisions as a state official, I tell him to screw themselves. I wouldn't. I wouldn't come,
I wouldn't testify. I'd let him. I'd say, you know, good luck try and forcing it in court.
Is it a victory lap then? For him? Is that?
Do you think he's doing it as a to be spiteful, you know, kind of a middle finger to Republicans kind of thing.
No, No, I don't, well, I think there's a lot of that, But you know, I think Democrats are very
good at playing this game. So I'm sure that Bragg is coordinating with Jamie Raskin and like all the all the kids who are on that committee, and they'll have a very well orchestrated performance, and Bragg will look appropriately combative when like whether it's Jim Jordan or Jamie Comer, who else goes after him, And then he'll have a whole they'll have a whole scripted performance with the Democrats on the committee, and I'm sure he'll come off looking
pretty effective. But he won't tell them anything. I mean, he doesn't have to tell them anything. He's a he's he's an executive official who was elected by you know, all the you know, the big problems that we have in this country are not legal problems. They're cultural problems. You know. We have we have a situation where in big blue states and cities, people now campaign on the idea of elect me and I will use the powers
of our office against our political enemies. When I was a young prosecutor in the eighties and Bob Morgenthal was the state prosecutor there, that would have been disqualifying to make an argument like that, And he got elected for twenty five years because he would never in a million years have done something like that. Now, these people like Letitia James and Alvin Bragg campaign this way and they get elected comfortably. So I think, you know, that's a
big problem. But he is an elected state official. He doesn't owe any answers to Congress. What I keep hearing is that, well, they take federal money. You know, Congress appropriates federal Well maybe they can ask him about how he is using the federal money that he gets appropriated. But I don't think he has to answer any questions about his charging decisions. I wouldn't.
You know before we go, I'm really interested in hearing your perspective on the justice system in America. You know, you're someone who's really dedicated your life, your career to the rule of law. I know it's something you take very seriously. So after following the Trump case, what's your viewpoint on America's justice system today?
So I wrote a piece for National Review that was called in Memory of Justice. I think it was a day or two after this all ended, and it was kind of a despondent essay. But I was covering the trial with and speaking to a lot of people who, like me, had their roots in the justice system. And a lot of the people I would talk was talking to have absolutely no use for Donald Trump. You know, they won't vote for him, their hostile to them, et cetera. Not all of the people I'm talking to, but a
lot of them. You know, this was New York after all, and yet those people were despondent as well, and it was kind of I've referred to it as a as a kind of they know not what they do moment, because if you take Trump out of this, you can't have a strong republic, a free republic, a flourishing, profitable, rich society without the rule of law. And it's an a essential building block. You know. Look every Western movie that anyone's ever seen in America about like the country
as the you know, as the Frontier was expanding. The first thing they do when they move into town, well, the first thing they do is construct a saloon. But the second thing they do is they have law enforcement right, they have the sheriff, they have the whole. But that's because everybody understands that if you don't have the rule of law, then you have the law of the jungle. There's no you know, there's no middle ground. And the essential building block of the rule of law is that
everybody believes that they get a fair shape. That is that our first guiding principle is equal protection under the law. That the bar of justice. To speak of it in the kind of emotive tones that we often use in legal protection, but the bar of justice is where everybody comes to get a fair shake and where the smallest, most helpless citizen stands as an equal with the most
powerful government. If you lose that, you lose everything. And what I don't think democrats and progressives realize is that by turning this essential building block of a free and prosperous society into a political weapon, they are threatening. They may be beyond just threatening. They are threatening the legitimacy of it in the sense that people accept its outcomes as fair and just. And if you lose that, we lose the system. And if we lose the system, we
lose the United States. So I don't think this is about Trump. I think Trump is like, you know, he shines a spotlight, as he often does, you know, I mean, he shines a spotlight on a serious problem. But the problem is not about Trump. The problem is about the fact that culturally it's become acceptable to use the justice
system that way. And the thing I worry most about, Lisa, in terms of the country is that we're like two ships passing in the night, in the sense that on our side we're saying, you're using the justice system as a political weapon, where the process is the penalty, and instead of saying nowhere not, the other side is saying, you're damn right, we are. That's what we do, you know.
And in too many big cities in America where too many you know, look, millions and millions of people live in these places, and they drive, they drive popular opinion in the culture, but they think it's just peachy to use the processes of the system in a punitive way
against their political enemies. And anybody who thinks like there's a suy generous Trump law law where this is all going to be cabin for Trump and it's only ever going to be applied to Trump, and that the precedents that they're setting in going after one political enemy won't be used again and again and again against other political enemies. As if Trump is their only political enemy. You're crazy if that's what you think.
I totally agree, Annie McCarthy. I'm praying that you know, Americans are awake and we can turn this all around in November and they realize that, you know, there's this is so much more than just a political election. It really is about the survival of the republic in my opinion. But you know, I hope people realize what you're saying. You're You're not a partisan guy. You're just someone who cares about the law. So I really hope people are
paying attention to what you just said. Always appreciate you coming on the show.
It's always a pleasure, Lisa, Thanks so much.
It was Anny McCarthy.
I swear I always learned so much from him when he comes on the show. Always just super interesting analysis and he is able to just really dig in and let us know what's really going on. So appreciate so much for him making the time. Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Monday and Thursday. But of course you can listen throughout the week. I want to think John Cassio and my producer for putting the show together Until next time.