Civil Liberties Under Attack

the FBI set him up. This was a huge miscarriage of justice, but thankfully the case was being dismissed until I just read a headline that the judge is not letting go of the case even though the prosecution said that they were pulling out of it. Can you explain to me how that's even possible. What's going on? It is ridiculous that this federal judge. We've seen too many judges on the bench behaving like their members of the resistance and signing up to to really the partisan objective

of attacking the president and this administration. Listen, everything about this Michael Flynn investigation and prosecution stinks from the get go, and and what has come public in the last couple of weeks is stunning. What we now know is number one Attorney General Bill Barr, when he came in, assigned a US attorney who is a long time, experienced veteran with the FBI and the Department of Justice to go and invest go look at this case and make sure

nothing untoward happened. And he went and investigated, and they were horrified by what they found. They found that the FBI agents going after Michael Flynn Number one. The FBI was going to dismiss the case because they didn't have any evidence. And then Peter Struck, who we've seen as a rapidly partisan Trump pater, stopped from being closed and said how lucky they were that their incompetence, that's his word, was such that it saved them from closing the case.

And they decided, all right, let's go interview him and see if we can somehow entrap him in a lie in order too. And this is the FBI zone notes get him fired, get him to lie so we can get him fired. That's not the FBI's job. Why are they trying to get the national security advisor for the newly elected president fired? So that came out initially, but

it gets worse. And by the way, James Comey bragged, the old FBI director bragged in an interview how essentially he suckered General Flynn, who's a decorated three star general, by the way, who's who's spent his whole life fighting to defend this country. They suckered General Flynn into this, this interview where where they said, oh, you don't need a lawyer, No, no no, no, you don't need to tell

the White House counsel about it. We're just coming to chat chat and he was and actually Komy said something the effect of, you know, a White House that knew what they were doing would never have fallen for this. Of course, they did this right after Trump was elected, right when they're getting started, when they're getting their team in place. But but it's worse than that. What's come out in this last week are two things that are beyond stunning. One, we know that there was a January

fifth meeting in the White House with President Obama. The President Obama was directly part of the meeting where it was discussed with senior law enforcement and intelligence that they were targeting the National Security Advisor for the incoming president. Not only that, we know that Joe Biden was at that meeting, and stunningly that Joe Biden personally directed the

unmasking of General Flynn. Let's let's unmask his name. Normally the intelligence reports, the intercepts come around with names blocked out. Joe Biden personally said, unmask him, let's see his name.

And then on top of that, in the last week of the Obama administration, Susan Rice, the National Security Advisor, send an email to herself and to the intelligence community saying, under the directions of President Obama, and she made this clear, this was coming from Barack Obama himself, you may not be able to share certain aspects of national security information

concerning Russia with the incoming president. What in the hell like this has never happened in the history of our country, an outgoing administration launching a political investigation, a political persecution, and telling all of the deep state bureaucrats when the new president comes in, he's not your president. You don't have to tell him what's going on. Just go after him, target him and trap him, set him up. I mean, it was stunning and in more than two centuries of

our nation history. I'm not aware of any outgoing administration that ever so much has tried to do this to the new administration. It is wrong, it is offensive, it has grotesque And so the Department of Justice came in and said, we shouldn't have brought this case. We don't have the evidence. Let's dismiss it. Now. Here's what happens when the prosecutor does that. The judge says, case dismissed. Right, prosecutor is not going to prosecute you. The case is dismissed.

But this judge apparently has has strapped on his little pink hat and he's decided he's part of the resistance. So number one, he issued this call to a meeky to friends of the court. You guys, tell me if this prosecution should continue even though the prosecutors aren't prosecuting it. And then he appointed another judge who happens to be a democratic appointing as well the coincidence, no assess whether he should charge Michael Flynn with perjury. All right, well,

let me give you a clue. Judge, you or your body who you've appointed, don't charge anybody with anybody. Go'll read that document that you may have put away a long time ago, called the constitution. They're three articles Article one, Article two, an article three that set up our constitution. They're seven all together, but three that set set up our government. You're an Article three. You're the judiciary. It is the executive that charges, it is the judiciary that

tries the case. And so this is grotesque. It is a violation of civil liberties. And of course all the left wing partisans don't care because they hate Trump. It is offensive. This is a very bizarre case. I'm glad you could lay that out because I've had trouble trying to relate. You have a Michael Flynn. Part of it relates to this January fifth meeting, how it relates to Susan Rice and Barack Obama and now Joe Biden. We've

learned this is being called Obama Gate. The mainstream media are denying that Obama Gate exists, just like they denied all the rest of Brock Obama's presidential scandals. You're saying, this is possibly unprecedented, this is historic. This is an egregious abuse of power. I don't know of any history. They've been administrations that that didn't like each other before

that shifted from one to the other. But but one of the hallmarks of our democratic system, of our constitutional republic is the peaceful transition of power from one party to another. We're not a bean at a republic. We don't go to try to prosecute those we disagree with because of political disagreements. We enforced the law regardless of party. That's that's what our tradition is. You know, the closest I can think of it is when the Clinton administration

was leaving in the George W. Bush administration came in. Well, we knew that that that that the Clintons did steal the silverl wear from the White House residence, but that was the furniture that that was uniquely characteristic of them. But the outgoing Clinton White House staff, they did on a number of the keyboards in the White House they pulled the letter W off of and you know, it's George W. Bush. And that was sort of a juvenile prank.

But they didn't unleash the Department of Justice and the FBI and the intelligence community to set up to entrap, to prosecute, to target the incoming administration. The National Security Advisor to unleash wire taps on the incoming administration's campaign to base it on a bogus dossier compiled by the opposite Bye bye, I guess the outgoing administration's own party, paid for by the DNC, paid for by Hillary Clinton. What a grotesque abuse of power. And let me tell

you something. The Senate needs to do something about it. The Senate needs to have every one of these clowns that abused their power brought in front of us and testify under oath, the entire array of them, the ones that we're sitting in that White House. I'm talking James Comey, I'm talking Yates, I'm talking Susan Rice, I'm talking Joe Biden,

I'm talking Barack Obama. Every one of them should testify about their weaponizing and politicizing law enforcement and the intelligence community to prosecute, target and wrongfully go after the next the incoming president of the United States. That's right, and it's so corrupt. And even if you're a Trump hater out there, even if you're glad you know that the outgoing administration was going after the incoming administration, all of that it does come down also to a question of

civil liberties. And it's not just being attacked by government thugs who are spying on people. Were also seeing this in other places. You had a great tweet earlier today. This was in regard to Betsy DeVoss, the Education Secretary, who said that Betsy DeVoss is now issued these policies that will protect the accused on college campuses. But the ACLU is now going after Betsy divoce for protecting civil liberties, even though the ACLU is supposed to be the American

Civil Liberties Union. So you tweeted out, ACLU moves to delete the C and the L from their name. Hereafter it shall be the ADPU, the American Democratic Party Union. They are for all criminal defendants unless they're Republicans, and they are for all sexual assault victims unless they are accusing Democrats. Can you just tell us a little bit about the Betsy divorce decision, what that means on campus, and how on earth the ACLU now opposes civil liberties. Look,

it is crazy. Let's start with Betsy Divace's Secretary of Education, the Obama administration when it came to college campuses, that they really got radicalized and sexual assault is a horrific evil. I've spent a lot of my life in law enforcement, secuting those who commit sexual assault. It has been a lifelong passion of mind. It is a grotesque evil that should be punished. What criminal defendants have rights, We have

due process, we have a bill of rights. We have where people are an accusers entitled to the presumption of innocence.

What the Obama Department of Education did is they use the federal education dollars to try to course frankly, a bunch of radicals on campuses who were happy to do this anyway into creating these start chambers where where if there's an accusation of sexual assault, the accused is presumed guilty and has little or no rights, can't confront their accuser, can't even know what the charge is in some cases,

I mean it really is. It's cough gas. Where where you have been charged, we will not inform you what the charge is, We will not inform you who is raising the allegations. You can't call witnesses in your defense because you don't know what you're charged with. But here are the consequences. Okay, that's not fair, that's not right, that's not just. But but in the radical leftist world,

it was politically expedient. The Department Education said, no, we're going to follow federal law, and that means we're not going to force colleges just to just to immediately summarily execute anyone who's facing an accusation. Instead, there should be a fair fact fighting proceeding that respects due process. Now, in any ordinary circumstance, you take the ASLU a SLU.

I disagree with a lot of the things they do, but they were formed to protect civil liberties, and in fact, to protect civil liberties of those who have been charged with something. Those who have been accused with something, many times they're guilty, and if they're guilty, they should be punished. But you're entitled to have due process protections. Here's the problem the ASILU, like most of the left, Donald Trump has driven the nuts. I mean that they're they're just

that they're in straight jackets, babbling bugs, bunny. I mean, I mean, they just they don't make any sense anymore. And so ASO used to support all criminal defendants. Okay, I understand that. Sometimes I don't like it if it's mass murders, that they've taken it too far. But okay, that's at least a coherent position is I'm going to support criminal defendants against government prosecution, defend their rights. A

cl you hadn't doing that anymore. Where is the ACLU, And Michael Flynn show me the ACOU coming in and saying, judge, if the prosecution is just missing the case, you can't become judge, prosecutor and presumably execution. I don't know if the judge is gonna lock him in his own jail cell too. Any reasonably coherent ACOU would be standing alongside Michael Flynn. But god forbid, he's a Republican and worked for Trump. Oh no, no, no no, no, a CLU has

got nothing to do with it. On the flip side, you know they want a virtue signal on sexual assault. Where's the ACLU on the allegations against Joe Biden? I don't recall the ACLU. And by the way, you remember the lieutenant governor of Virginia, pretty serious allegations rape against him. But but but he's a Democrat. Of course you've forgotten him. Has any media outlet covered that for six months? It's disappeared? Why because he's a Democrat. Where's the ILU on that?

And so it is at this point so shamelessly partisan that it ought to be possible to defend principles, defend the Constitution, defend the Bill of Rights with coherency and and fairness. Let's look, when there's a sexual assault allegation. I believe the alleged victims should be treated with respect, should be listened to, should the allegations should be treated seriously.

But it still depends on the evidence. The accused deserves a presumption of innocence, and you should look to the facts that that's actually a fair and neutral way to apply it. It's not the way these hardcore lefty partisans are.

That's right. We have kangaroo courts on college campuses that are trampling over the due process rights of the accused, and that for some reason, these panels of professors are dealing with one of the most serious crimes you can commit, not our criminal justice system, but for some reason, these random professors and deans. You've got the kangaroo courts there. You got the kangaroo courts at the federal level now

trying to continue the persecution of Michael Flynn. We're looking around, We're saying, what happened to our civil liberties and I think for most Americans, the way it really affects our lives is we were told fifteen days to slow the spread. We're going to give up some of our civil liberties because obviously there's this epidemic going around and we want

to keep everybody safe. Now, you know, I think a lot of states are being very reasonable about this, reacting to evidence some states some cities are becoming downright arbitrary in their power grabs. They're saying that these power grabs are going to go on indefinitely, or have those places just simply lost our civil liberties. Well, let me make two points, one on sexual assault and then one more

generally on individual liberty and civil liberties. Yeah, on sexual assault. Look, I have argued and one numerous cases dealing with prosecuting and in some cases seeking the death penalty for child rapists and those who committed sexual assault. I think it needs to be punished very seriously. I've also been leading the fight, along with New York Democrat Kirsten Jellabrand, to change the way sexual assault is prosecuted in the military.

The military, unfortunately has been a long problem where the decisions charging decisions right now are made by the commanding officer, and the problem is you get conflicts of interest and victims of sexual assault the military don't don't feel confident

to come forward with those allegations. So I've long been an advocate of changing the charging decisions from the commanding officer to a military rear prosecutor, so keeping it within the military, but not in the immediate change of command, so the prosecutor can fairly evaluate the evidence, be credible and decide whether or not there's sufficient evidence to charge sexual assault. The reason I bring that up is all of the virtue signaling lefties. For eight years Barack Obama

was president. He could have changed it any day, he could have changed how sexual assault in the military is prosecuted, and Barack Obama for eight years refused to do it. That actually would make a difference, and it needs to be done. So your second point about about individual liberties we are seeing in any crisis. You remember the movie Wall Street. Yes, there's a great Saint scene where where

Lou the old broker, says says to Charlie Sheen. You know I'm going to paraphrase this and mess this up, but something to the effect of there comes a time in a crisis when a man stares into the abyss, and in the abyss is where he finds his character, and that is what saves him from the abyss. That's close to it. It's a good rendition. Look in a ton in a time of crisis, you see someone's character. Yeah, and we are seeing the character of these petty authoritarian

tyrants who are running around stripping away civil liberties. You know. Just earlier today, I saw a video of a woman in New York, an African American bomb who was walking

with her son. He's I don't know, maybe three or four years old, young child, walking through the subway and she committed apparently the cardinal sin of She wasn't wearing a mask, and she was surrounded by police officers who threw her to the ground, wrestled her to the ground, pushed her into number one, the nasty, dirty subway station floor, which I can't imagine anyone laying down and handcuffed her.

And her little son is sitting there watching this. By the way, where's the AA you you want to talk about? But like, okay, and I'm not saying it's so easy for people to embrace extremes. I'm not saying never wear a mask ever. I wear a mask when I'm on an airplane. I wear a mask when I'm go to the grocery store. I'm wearing a mask. I want to

be respect public safety. But it could have been really different if they had given her a mask, if they hadn't, Like, you shouldn't be throwing young moms to the ground in front of their little kids and handcuffing them for not wearing a mask. That's just stupid. But these authoritarian tyrants, they believe in government power. They hate liberty. It's the same numbskulls. It's different numbskulls, but the same type of numbskulls who sent in bulldozers in California to fill a

skate park with sand. Like what I mean that video, If you haven't seen it, you ought to watch it. And by the way, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for the local officials to have a police officer there and say say, kids, you guys need to socially distanced. Don't all gather together, spread apart and be safe. But you know, look, if a kid wants to go skateboarding, like, it's only malicious tyranny. Yes, that fills a skatepart with sand,

that's just dumb. And it's the same malicious tyranny that throws a mom on the floor and handcuffs her in front of her little kid. And of course, the people who filled that skatepark should have known that teenage skateboard punks are not exactly known for following the rules, so they were obviously going to dig the sand out and go right back to skateboarding. More power to them. I really enjoyed it. And lest I checked a skateboarders are

are loaners, certainly, all the skateboarders I've known. And by the way, for anyone who who's sort of young and hip and rebellious, remember it is the lefty Dems ye, that are trying to strip away your freedom. Remember who's doing it, Remember the tyrants. And by the way, you know you're in California right now, I don't see actually the monitors watching you, although I kind of expect a Skynet drone to come in any moment now and like

find you. But but I gotta say, there are a lot of Californians looking to flee, including some pretty prominent players. You know. I noticed Elon Musk was it is. I mean, he's one of the wealthiest guys, one of the most successful guys in California. I think he's put his houses on the market. He said he's going to move to either Nevada or Texas. You're seeing a number of other people, Senator, is this an invitation or we should we all just

go down to Texas? Now? Yes, with a caveat. So you're all invited, but there needs to be an entrance exam. If you're going to vote for the sort of lefty commies that screwed up California, please stay where you are and enjoy what you voted for. If you're willing to come for freedom, we would welcome you. And so Elon Musk. Look his Tesla factory. He wants to open, as workers want to open, and the petty tyrant said, no, you

can't work. And by the way, there was a Democratic state legislator who sent out a tweet that was fu Elon Musk, what on earth is going on that elected officials are tweeting expletives at their constituents. These are the same clowns who last week we talked about the elected Democratic judge in Dallas that demanded of Shelley Luther the hairdresser. Apologize to your elected officials. You guys are not frigging overlords. Get off your power trip and don't curse at your constituents.

And so I sent out a tweet to Delon Musk saying, come to Texas. We welcome you. We love jobs, we like making cars and trucks down here. We'd love to have Tesla. By the way, I gotta say Tesla's I don't have a test save some friends who have it. They're amazing drives. And my girls desperately want us to get a Tesla because so the coolest thing is on

the giant TV screen in the middle. I guess there's a button that makes a fart noise from each of the seats, which to a nine year old and twelve year old and even to a forty nine year old year old really damn funny that is. I don't know about that. Well, how do I want? And you know who also it was talking of moving to Texas. Is Joe Rogan? That's right now, Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan said, all right, I can't stand it. I may move to Texas.

I said, Joe, we'd welcome you here now you and I know Joe had been the number one podcast until till Joe Rogan was dethroned by yours truly and this podcast here right, Yes, I do remember that. Well. I hope I hope he didn't take it so hard that he realized that, you know, really that huge podcast is in Texas. It's at the Cruise Residence. So he's got to go go see where the magic is. And look,

Joe Rogan had his flirtation with Bernie Sanders. And if he thinks that that big government status or the way to go, then to day where you are, Joe, We don't want you if you want to bring that that that that that kind of tatalitarianism to us. But but if if this has made you realize, you know, people like to be free, leave me the hell alone. That doesn't mean anarchy. It means respects civil liberties, respect freedom. If you're willing to stand for freedom, come to Texas.

We want. And you know, the Joe Rogan move and the Elon Musk move are both interesting because I know that Joe was a Bernie bro for a while, but he really is a sort of independent thinker. You can't always nail him down on one political party or the other. And the fact that the effect of this government overreach has been to tell people who like Elon Musk or like Joe Rogan, who are a little more independent minded, maybe the left is really not where the future is.

Maybe the left is not not where your interests are. That could have some serious effects for November. Obviously, there are a lot of a lot of variables are found. Well, am I remembering right that that that Joe Rogan had an episode that he had Elon Musk on where they

both smoke pot. I believe he's on the podcast. I don't know if he inhaled, but they did both smoke pot, so I don't know if if maybe there's sort of a libertarian streak that's coming out that's okay, You're welcome to come here to you and I might have an episode in which, you know I was asking you before if you owned a smoking jacket, I can see you pull it out like a Sherlock Holmes pipe or something. That's true. We could that's I guess that's one thing

I could bring from California to Texas. Well. I'll have to save that for a future episode. Obviously, Before we go, we got to get to some mailbag questions. There are a lot of people who have questions all over the place, so let's get right into it. From Nick, Senator, what do you think, if you think anything at all about that video that came out of Georgia, the shooting of the man Ahmad Arbory by those two guys in the truck.

Do you have any take on this? This is being On one hand, people are saying that these were crypto clansmen and it's a modern day lynching. On the other hand, people are saying even possibly it was justified. I think most people are not taking either of those extreme positions. What is your take? Look, I saw the video of the shooting. I think I think it's really troubling, and so I'm glad to see that the prosecution is moving forward.

Based on what I've seen, what happened seems wrong. Now, now, look, this whole theme has of this show. We focused on civil liberties, and so the defendants have a right to presumption of it is since they have a right to do process, and so so the trial ought to go forward. They ought to look at what the actual evidence is.

We don't know all the evidence but I got to say, you know, anytime you have two people driving up in a truck and shooting an unarmed man, that's really problematic, and certainly with the tragic history of race in our country, it raises it's messed up. So I'm glad that the prosecutors are moving forward based on what I've seen, there's certainly enough evidence to move forward. But the process needs to play out, and we need to find out the truth.

That's too reasonable, Senator. That has no place on Twitter or anywhere else on the Internet. You have to have a very extreme position, or else you're not allowed to voice it on the Internet. From Vince, is there any legislation planned or being proposed to curtail the suppression of content on social media platforms? Or could or should this be a private citizen endeavor to sue where needed or where possible all of the above. Yes. As you know, a huge focus of mine has been the power of

big tech, and big tech is engaging in censorship. It's a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires who frankly are too often petty tyrants and authoritarians themselves, and then they feel unchecked. You know, I shared a hearing a number of months ago on censorship a Big Tech where we put up an internal PowerPoint from Google and it was entitled the Good Censor. And by the way, that Google's own term,

that's not my term, that's how they entitled it. And they described how the Internet used to be believe in laise fair free speech. Yeah, but instead Big Tech they said, had made a decision to move towards what they called a European style censorship model. And they identified Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter as the kind of major players. That's exactly right, and I think it is a profound threat to democracy. I give you a recent example, YouTube which has been

Google and YouTube have been the worst offenders. By the way, I mean Google, they used to have their motto be do no Evil. Now I think they've just deleted the first two words. Now their motto is just evil, like they're just shameless. Yeah, you know, Google's gone after Prager University. One of the more absurd examples they restricted as adult content. Prager use episode on the Ten Commandments. You really can't make this crap up the Ten Commandments because it discuss murder.

I mean I guess it does. Like you know, you would think that that that that these techy autocracts would actually pause and say, Okay, maybe we're beclowning ourselves too much here, let's stop. But YouTube's latest and in the midst of the pandemic they said they're going to block and pull down any video that disagrees with the health

recommendations from the World Health Organization. Now, the WHO, as you know, has really disgraced itself, yeah, by its willingness to be a puppet for the communist government in China to repeat Chinese communist lies to repeat. In January, the WHO was loudly saying that the Chinese lie there is

no human to human transmission of coronavirus. Okay, if YouTube followed that, that that plan if you were one of the communists, the Chinese physician whistleblowers who heroically stood up against it, stood up and pointed out the coronavirus if you made a video on YouTube, apparently are YouTube's policies, they pull you down because the WHO says coronavirus cannot pass from person to person. What uttered garbage. And so we need to do much more to go after big tech.

That includes potentially repealing Section to thirty the Communications Decency Act. Which gives them a special protection from liability that Congress has passed nobody else gets. I've been leading the edge on that. It also includes looking at antitrust litigation or a case from the Department of Justice. These are monopolies that are abusing their monopoly power. I think we've got to do more, and I think it's a profound threat to our democracy. It is, it's an urgent threat. It

does happen a lot on YouTube. Maybe they'll take this episode down. I don't know. I hope they don't. And if they do, I bet the ACLU will be nowhere in sight to defend us so much. No, no, no no, no, the a sail you will be with big tech saying yes, we're all for silencing speech because we are partisan lefties. It really, it's sad. It's a sad thing to see.

That's the ACLU, the ADPU. As you say that that will be the next one, will probably be even further into the upside down by then, but we'll we'll just have to wait until next time. That's our show. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country.

In twenty twenty two, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.