Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / Corporate Wokeism Hits Elon, Sen Ted Cruz Takes on FBI Dir Christopher Wray, plus Van Orden v. Perry-Remembering Justice Sandra Day O'Connor the Week In Review
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome. It is verdict or Ted Cruz Weekend Review. Ben
- 0:03Speaker 1: Ferguson with you, and these are the stories that you
- 0:06Speaker 1: may have missed that we talked about this past week.
- 0:09Speaker 2: It started with Elon Musk.
- 0:11Speaker 1: Well, there's a new scheme now to bring him down
- 0:14Speaker 1: as advertisers are trying to destroy his platform x formerly
- 0:18Speaker 1: known as Twitter.
- 0:19Speaker 2: By pulling all of their ad dollars.
- 0:22Speaker 1: So what can you do to stand by the man
- 0:23Speaker 1: that is standing by free speech?
- 0:25Speaker 2: Will explain that in a moment.
- 0:27Speaker 1: Plus, Christopher Ray, the FBI Director, had a big toe
- 0:31Speaker 1: to toe battle with Senator Ted Cruz, and you won't
- 0:34Speaker 1: want to miss the back and forth. And finally Sandrade O'Connor,
- 0:38Speaker 1: former Supreme Court justice, passed away. Senator Ted Cruz took
- 0:41Speaker 1: some time to talk about some of the most historic
- 0:44Speaker 1: court cases and his memories of Sandrade O'Connor.
- 0:48Speaker 2: It's the weekend Review and it starts right now.
- 0:51Speaker 3: Let me ask you how many of you are grateful
- 0:55Speaker 3: that Elon Musk purchased Twitter. I'll tell you I'm intensely grateful.
- 0:59Speaker 3: I think it is the single most important development for
- 1:02Speaker 3: free speech in decades. But what is striking, and this
- 1:07Speaker 3: again is a topic I discussed at great length in
- 1:09Speaker 3: my brand new book, Unwoke, is how corporate America has
- 1:15Speaker 3: become woke and how they use economic power to punish
- 1:21Speaker 3: those that crossed them. So corporate America is mad at
- 1:25Speaker 3: Elon Musk Why because he stopped censoring views that were
- 1:30Speaker 3: not the orthodoxy of the Biden White House. He stopped
- 1:33Speaker 3: censoring conservative views, and he allowed free speech to occur. Now,
- 1:36Speaker 3: what was the volcanic rage of corporate America? One company
- 1:40Speaker 3: after another began boycotting what used to be Twitter is
- 1:43Speaker 3: now x. So IBM was the first to pull its ad. So, IBM,
- 1:47Speaker 3: if you have an IBM computer at home, you know
- 1:49Speaker 3: what you're supporting? A company that says we're not going
- 1:52Speaker 3: to advertise on a social media company that believes in
- 1:54Speaker 3: free speech. Now, right after IBM, what followed Apple, Disney, Sony,
- 2:01Speaker 3: Warner Brothers, Comcast, NBC, Universal, and Paramount. All of them
- 2:08Speaker 3: have said we're pulling our ads. But not only that,
- 2:11Speaker 3: you know who else has pulled their ads? Chevrolet, Chipotle, Ford, Jeep, Kindrel,
- 2:21Speaker 3: Mercant Company, Novartis AG and Eli Lilly in Company. All
- 2:27Speaker 3: of these companies, they are engaged in censorship. Understand when
- 2:31Speaker 3: they say.
- 2:32Speaker 1: It's the corporate assassination of a free speech company, orchestrated
- 2:36Speaker 1: and designed to cripple them and to bring them to
- 2:40Speaker 1: their neees. This doesn't happen by accident. I think that's
- 2:42Speaker 1: what some people need to understand. When one corporation does
- 2:46Speaker 1: this and the others do it, don't think this isn't
- 2:48Speaker 1: orchestrated and being done by the left in leftist groups
- 2:51Speaker 1: and organizations that organize these companies and get in the
- 2:56Speaker 1: ear of these companies and say, hey, guys, so and
- 2:58Speaker 1: so is going to do it, you should do it too.
- 3:00Speaker 1: And then they call the next one they say, hey, guys,
- 3:02Speaker 1: we hear these two companies are about the boycott.
- 3:04Speaker 4: Are pull their ads?
- 3:04Speaker 3: You should too, and understand art. So here's what Elon
- 3:08Speaker 3: Muskus said about it. He said, the decisions of advertisers
- 3:12Speaker 3: to boycott Twitter quote could kill the company. And he
- 3:15Speaker 3: went on to say, quote and the whole world will
- 3:18Speaker 3: know that these advertisers killed the company. That is their
- 3:21Speaker 3: objective and what they want. They want Twitter to go under,
- 3:25Speaker 3: they want X to go under, and then they want
- 3:27Speaker 3: the only social media to be Facebook controlled by Mark Zuckerberg.
- 3:31Speaker 3: That sensors conservative views because they're silence that works on
- 3:34Speaker 3: behalf of the Biden White House. They want Google that
- 3:37Speaker 3: is controlled by left wing socialists, that sensors views they
- 3:41Speaker 3: disagree with, that skews public discourse in the favor of
- 3:44Speaker 3: the left. They want YouTube that actively sensors conservative views,
- 3:48Speaker 3: including this podcast Verdict.
- 3:50Speaker 1: Yeah, just a few weeks ago, they censored one of
- 3:52Speaker 1: our one of our episodes because we were telling the
- 3:54Speaker 1: truth about what was going on.
- 3:56Speaker 3: And mind you, we were telling the truth about a
- 3:57Speaker 3: Palestinian who, by all appearances is a christ this actor
- 4:00Speaker 3: who creates false videos pretending to be a victim of
- 4:04Speaker 3: what he claims is Israeli aggression, when in fact he's
- 4:08Speaker 3: a Hamas propagandist, and we laid out the evidence for that,
- 4:11Speaker 3: and YouTube propatly said, oh, oh, we don't want people
- 4:14Speaker 3: to notice this, so they blocked so you could not
- 4:17Speaker 3: access our podcast on YouTube without signing in and beh verified,
- 4:23Speaker 3: because apparently seventeen year olds cannot know.
- 4:25Speaker 4: There's a crisis actor that's a Hamas warrior.
- 4:28Speaker 3: And mind you, it's not just that they want Facebook
- 4:31Speaker 3: and YouTube and Google to be driving the topics. They
- 4:34Speaker 3: want TikTok, which is controlled by the Chinese Communist which
- 4:37Speaker 3: is actively pushing pro hamas propaganda. Every one of these companies,
- 4:42Speaker 3: So I want you to go back and look at
- 4:43Speaker 3: this list. Ibm Apple, Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, Comcast, NBC, Universal, Paramount, Chevrolet, Chipotle, Ford, Jeep, Kindrel,
- 4:56Speaker 3: Mercan Company, novartis a g Eli Lillyan company. Every every
- 5:00Speaker 3: one of them is saying you Americans, you don't deserve
- 5:03Speaker 3: the right to speak, and even more importantly, you don't
- 5:06Speaker 3: deserve the right to hear the speech of others. We
- 5:09Speaker 3: want big tech to silence and skew and mind you,
- 5:14Speaker 3: this is all based on an allegation that is a
- 5:16Speaker 3: bogus allegation attacking Elon Musk for retweeting a tweet that
- 5:20Speaker 3: their claiming is antisemitic.
- 5:22Speaker 5: Yeah, and it was deliberate.
- 5:24Speaker 1: They just went and met with it over in Israel.
- 5:26Speaker 1: They just flew over there, met talked to the leadership
- 5:29Speaker 1: and is now clearly supporting is.
- 5:31Speaker 3: Look, their attack is deliberately disingenuous. But it doesn't matter,
- 5:34Speaker 3: It doesn't matter what the claim is. It is an
- 5:37Speaker 3: excuse because they want to use economic muscle to punish
- 5:43Speaker 3: Twitter and force either Elon musk to sell it or
- 5:47Speaker 3: shut it down, because once they do, then the rest
- 5:50Speaker 3: of big tech will have a monopoly unchecked. And this
- 5:54Speaker 3: is an assault on free speech. It's an intersection of
- 5:58Speaker 3: what I talk about in multiple chapters of my book Unwoke.
- 6:01Speaker 3: It's an intersection of big tech, big business, and journalism
- 6:05Speaker 3: all coming together, and it's designed to be dishonest and
- 6:09Speaker 3: to silence free speech among the American people.
- 6:12Speaker 1: I want to talk to you real quick about your retirement.
- 6:14Speaker 1: You've probably seen a lot of the headlines lately. We
- 6:17Speaker 1: are the third highest deficit in US history. We are
- 6:20Speaker 1: also saying that there is more than one trillion dollars
- 6:22Speaker 1: now in debt. When it comes to Americans on credit cards,
- 6:27Speaker 1: we have the highest rate of debt we've ever seen
- 6:29Speaker 1: this country when it comes to college debt, and we're
- 6:33Speaker 1: living with high interest rates, inflation issues, and then there's
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- 7:53Speaker 1: Precious Metals dot com. Senator, last thing I want to
- 7:57Speaker 1: just point out here conservative radio. And many of you
- 8:01Speaker 1: know I do a podcast outside of this, and I
- 8:03Speaker 1: do an actual terrestrial radio show every day. For about
- 8:08Speaker 1: ten years now, everybody in radio has had to deal
- 8:11Speaker 1: with what Elon Musk is dealing with now, yep, which
- 8:14Speaker 1: is all corporate people stop spending money on conservative talk radio.
- 8:19Speaker 1: They went after the Great Wrestling Ball, That's where it started. Yes,
- 8:23Speaker 1: Then they went after Handy, then they went after Back,
- 8:25Speaker 1: Then they went after Leven, Then they went after guys
- 8:28Speaker 1: like me.
- 8:29Speaker 4: And what we used to have in radio was the
- 8:32Speaker 4: big ones. We had Chevy, we had John Dear, we
- 8:35Speaker 4: had you know, Mutual for None of.
- 8:37Speaker 3: These giant companies advertising conservative podcasts, none of that. There's
- 8:40Speaker 3: a funny skit that we've talked about in Verdict a
- 8:43Speaker 3: couple of years ago that contrast a left wing hippie
- 8:46Speaker 3: comy Marxist podcast saying this podcast brought to you by Pfizer,
- 8:51Speaker 3: get the jab right now, you need your forty second
- 8:53Speaker 3: booster shot, yeah, compared to they have a conservative broad
- 8:56Speaker 3: broadcast and they say this broadcast brought to you by
- 8:59Speaker 3: pay treat water, a bucket of water in your closet.
- 9:03Speaker 3: And and the contrast is strike striking because all of
- 9:06Speaker 3: the Fortune five hundred boycotts.
- 9:09Speaker 1: None of them spend money, none of them will ever
- 9:11Speaker 1: reach a conservative audience. They deliberately try to destroy conservative
- 9:14Speaker 1: talk radio.
- 9:15Speaker 3: By the way, even Fox News, which is incredibly profitable
- 9:18Speaker 3: at the hour, spend an hour watching CNN, and spend
- 9:22Speaker 3: an hour watching Fox News, want right down? Who advertises CNN?
- 9:26Speaker 3: It's the entire Fortune one hundred. Fox News doesn't have
- 9:30Speaker 3: any of them. It's it's my pillow, which look, I'm grateful,
- 9:33Speaker 3: I'm grateful in my pillow advertises, because they are not
- 9:35Speaker 3: many that do. But even though Fox News has two x,
- 9:39Speaker 3: three x, four x five x the vie as CNN
- 9:45Speaker 3: on care, it's not about money. Understand, this is not
- 9:47Speaker 3: the economic marketplace. This is they're enforcing their ideology. They
- 9:53Speaker 3: don't want to support views that are right a center.
- 9:58Speaker 3: They want to silence them.
- 9:59Speaker 1: Now, if you I want to hear the rest of
- 10:01Speaker 1: this conversation, you can go back and listen to the
- 10:03Speaker 1: full podcast from earlier this week. Now onto story number
- 10:08Speaker 1: two brings me to also the fireworks that took place
- 10:12Speaker 1: this week, and it was between you and the FBI director.
- 10:16Speaker 1: I want to play a large chunk of this. But
- 10:18Speaker 1: before I do set the stage, why was the FBI
- 10:21Speaker 1: director before your committee in the Senate and what was
- 10:25Speaker 1: this all about?
- 10:26Speaker 3: Well, the FBI Director, Chris Ray was testifying before the
- 10:29Speaker 3: Senate Judiciary Committee, and periodically the director of the FBI
- 10:32Speaker 3: testifies before judiciary, and so I took the opportunity to
- 10:35Speaker 3: question him. And there are a lot of topics I
- 10:37Speaker 3: could have questioned him on. I could have questioned him
- 10:39Speaker 3: for hours on end, but I only had seven minutes,
- 10:42Speaker 3: and so I chose to use the seven minutes to
- 10:44Speaker 3: focus on the politicization of the FBI and the refusal
- 10:49Speaker 3: of the FBI to investigate the growing, the becoming overwhelming
- 10:54Speaker 3: evidence of Joe Biden's corruption, and so that's what I
- 10:56Speaker 3: asked him about.
- 10:58Speaker 1: I want to play a chunk of this because it's
- 10:59Speaker 1: really important, and I hope that every vertical listener will
- 11:02Speaker 1: make sure that you take this and share this podcast
- 11:05Speaker 1: so that you can let people know about what these
- 11:09Speaker 1: questions were. They're really important questions and also I would
- 11:12Speaker 1: argue the shocking response from the FBI Director Ray.
- 11:15Speaker 2: Take a listen to this.
- 11:18Speaker 5: Thank you, miss chairman Director Ray. Welcome.
- 11:22Speaker 3: As you know, I am deeply concerned about the conduct
- 11:25Speaker 3: of both the Department of Justice and the FBI, particularly
- 11:29Speaker 3: in the last three years during the Biden administration. I
- 11:32Speaker 3: think the Department of Justice has been profoundly politicized under
- 11:36Speaker 3: Attorney General Merrick Garland, and I think the FBI has
- 11:40Speaker 3: as well, and unfortunately, I think you've been unwilling to
- 11:46Speaker 3: stand up to senior career officials in the FBI who's
- 11:49Speaker 3: allowed the FBI to be politicized. I'll tell you I
- 11:52Speaker 3: regularly speak with FBI agents across the country who are
- 11:55Speaker 3: unhappy about the integrity of the institution being weakened because
- 12:02Speaker 3: DOJ is being treated as a political weapon. I want
- 12:06Speaker 3: to talk in particular about the investigation into multiple allegations
- 12:11Speaker 3: of corruption concerning Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, because the
- 12:17Speaker 3: Department of Justice has, i think from the outset, tried
- 12:21Speaker 3: at every step to stop investigation into corruption from Joe Biden.
- 12:26Speaker 3: As you're aware, a WhatsApp text message was sent to
- 12:35Speaker 3: Henry Zoo, a senior Chinese communist from Hunter Biden that
- 12:40Speaker 3: reads as follows, I'm sitting here with my father and
- 12:44Speaker 3: we would like to understand why the commitment made has
- 12:46Speaker 3: not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like
- 12:49Speaker 3: to resolve this now before it gets out of hand,
- 12:52Speaker 3: and now means tonight and Zee, if I get a
- 12:54Speaker 3: caller text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zanger,
- 12:57Speaker 3: the Chairman, I will make certain that between the man's
- 13:00Speaker 3: sitting next to me and every person he knows, and
- 13:03Speaker 3: my ability to hold a grudge, that you will regret
- 13:06Speaker 3: not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for
- 13:09Speaker 3: the call with my father.
- 13:12Speaker 5: Now.
- 13:12Speaker 3: Democrats and those in the media trying to defend the
- 13:14Speaker 3: White House repeatedly say there is no direct evidence of
- 13:18Speaker 3: Joe Biden's involvement in his son's corruption. Well, this is
- 13:24Speaker 3: a text that is direct evidence that is stating that
- 13:28Speaker 3: it is his father that is going to retaliate.
- 13:32Speaker 5: Now.
- 13:33Speaker 3: An IRS whistleblower, Gary Shapley, testified before the House of
- 13:37Speaker 3: Representatives that the natural step he wanted to follow was
- 13:42Speaker 3: to determine whether Joe Biden was in fact sitting next
- 13:45Speaker 3: to his father when this threat was made to extort
- 13:49Speaker 3: millions of dollars from a Chinese communist. And what the
- 13:52Speaker 3: IRS whistleblower testified is that when he tried to find
- 13:57Speaker 3: out whether Joe Biden was sitting next to Hunter that
- 14:03Speaker 3: the DOJ blocked getting the GPS data on Joe Biden's phone.
- 14:08Speaker 3: Did the FBI try to ascertain where Hunter Biden was
- 14:11Speaker 3: and where Joe Biden was when this text was sent?
- 14:15Speaker 6: Well, I think the questions you're asking go to the
- 14:18Speaker 6: ongoing investigation being led by a special counsel Wise, and
- 14:21Speaker 6: so I'm not going to be able to discuss what
- 14:23Speaker 6: is or is in scope.
- 14:25Speaker 5: Now.
- 14:25Speaker 3: Look, there's been testimony under oath from the IRS whistle
- 14:29Speaker 3: blower that you did not seek the GPS data, And
- 14:32Speaker 3: you're right. David Wise's special prosecutor is in charge of it.
- 14:36Speaker 3: And it is David Weiss and his underlings who, the
- 14:41Speaker 3: accord of the IRS whistle blowers have alleged that they're
- 14:44Speaker 3: the ones try to stop the investigation. They allow the
- 14:47Speaker 3: statute of limitations to run on many of the most
- 14:50Speaker 3: serious violations. Not only that, IRS whistleblower Shapley testified that
- 14:56Speaker 3: on September, third Assistant US Attorney Less Wolf explicitly told
- 15:01Speaker 3: investigators that, despite having probable cause to search quote, there
- 15:05Speaker 3: is no way a search warrant would be approved when
- 15:08Speaker 3: the evidence in question was located inside of Vice President
- 15:11Speaker 3: Biden's guest house Wolf stated that quote the optics prevented
- 15:16Speaker 3: such a search.
- 15:19Speaker 5: Is the FBI?
- 15:20Speaker 3: Do they make a routine practice of allowing partisan political
- 15:23Speaker 3: optics to prevent investigating serious evidence of corruption.
- 15:28Speaker 6: My instructions to our people on this and on every
- 15:31Speaker 6: other investigation are the weird to follow the facts wherever
- 15:35Speaker 6: they lead, no matter who likes it, no matter what
- 15:37Speaker 6: political influence.
- 15:38Speaker 3: And why may be a GBS state on where Hunter
- 15:40Speaker 3: Biden and Joe Biden were.
- 15:41Speaker 5: Again center with respect, I can't this.
- 15:43Speaker 3: It's an ongoing and Director Ray, you and I have
- 15:46Speaker 3: gone round a round on this, because I understand anytime
- 15:48Speaker 3: you're asked about this, the answer is it's an ongoing investigation.
- 15:51Speaker 3: Of course, the investigation is an ongoing you're not doing
- 15:54Speaker 3: the work. You got whistleblowers pointing out that you're not
- 15:57Speaker 3: doing the work and you are hiding behind the skirts
- 16:00Speaker 3: of the attorney general. Look, the whistleblower also testified that
- 16:04Speaker 3: the Attorney General, when he came before Congress. Go to
- 16:07Speaker 3: the next chart, came before Congress lied under oath to
- 16:11Speaker 3: this committee. The Attorney General testified to this committee in
- 16:15Speaker 3: response to my questioning, I have pledged not to interfere
- 16:18Speaker 3: with the Hunter Biden investigation.
- 16:20Speaker 5: I have carried through on that pledge.
- 16:22Speaker 3: The irs whistleblowers of alleged the Attorney General lied under
- 16:26Speaker 3: oath a felony. Was the Attorney General telling the truth
- 16:30Speaker 3: when he said this? Was the Attorney General telling the
- 16:33Speaker 3: truth when he said, I have pledged not to interfere
- 16:35Speaker 3: with the Hunter Biden investigation, and I have carried through.
- 16:37Speaker 6: In my pledge. Again, I can't speak to the Attorney
- 16:40Speaker 6: General's testimony. I can only tell you what my instructions
- 16:43Speaker 6: have been to our people.
- 16:45Speaker 3: Has there been political interference in the investigation into Hunter
- 16:48Speaker 3: Biden and Joe Biden?
- 16:49Speaker 5: Not that I have experienced.
- 16:52Speaker 3: Were the investigators allowed to investigate whether Joe Biden was
- 16:56Speaker 3: complicit in the corruption?
- 16:59Speaker 6: Again, there is an ongoing investigator asking you about corruption
- 17:03Speaker 6: from DJ.
- 17:05Speaker 3: Were they allowed to investigate Joe Biden? Or is the
- 17:08Speaker 3: whistleblower telling the truth that DJ said Joe Biden's off limits.
- 17:13Speaker 5: No questions about the big guy.
- 17:15Speaker 6: And as to what is in scope or not in
- 17:18Speaker 6: scope of the ongoing investigation, I would refer you to
- 17:20Speaker 6: Special Council Whites. That is not me hiding behind anything Center.
- 17:24Speaker 6: That is a long standing policy that has been in
- 17:26Speaker 6: place multiple administrations, a risk going back in years and
- 17:30Speaker 6: years from the responsibility to the FBI not to allow
- 17:35Speaker 6: it to be a partisan tool and a partisan weapon.
- 17:40Speaker 3: The testimony and by the way, the FBI has done nothing,
- 17:43Speaker 3: and I have not and I will not. Have you
- 17:45Speaker 3: opened an investigation and to whether the Attorney General led
- 17:48Speaker 3: under oath to Congress and whether the Attorney General obstructive justice.
- 17:52Speaker 5: I'm not going to go down that road here. I
- 17:54Speaker 5: know you're not. That's the point.
- 17:56Speaker 3: Nobody thinks you've opened an investigation because you're.
- 17:59Speaker 5: Not willing to.
- 18:00Speaker 3: And the amazing thing is, directory I've known you thirty years.
- 18:03Speaker 3: You're not a partisan Democrat. You're simply sitting blithely by
- 18:08Speaker 3: will career partisans in your agency allow it to be weaponized.
- 18:13Speaker 3: And you were damaging the FBI, and you were damaging
- 18:16Speaker 3: the Department of Justice.
- 18:18Speaker 5: Let me ask you.
- 18:19Speaker 3: Also, the whistle blower testified that investigators wanted to execute
- 18:24Speaker 3: a search warrant on a storage unit used by Hunter Biden,
- 18:27Speaker 3: and instead they tipped off Hunter Biden's lawyer before the
- 18:31Speaker 3: search warrant was carried out. Is a typical FBI practice
- 18:34Speaker 3: to tip off the subject of a search warrant before
- 18:37Speaker 3: the search warrant so they can remove any evidence that's incriminating.
- 18:41Speaker 6: What is typical is that when you're dealing with an
- 18:44Speaker 6: individual who has a protective detail, it is typical for
- 18:48Speaker 6: the agents to be in contact with.
- 18:50Speaker 3: Does the protective det details the protective detail guard the
- 18:53Speaker 3: storage unit?
- 18:54Speaker 5: Again, I can't speak to the storage unit specifically.
- 18:56Speaker 3: What I can tell you is they were Why Why
- 18:58Speaker 3: would the FBI tip off the subject of a search
- 19:02Speaker 3: warrant about the storage unit that was going to be
- 19:04Speaker 3: searched beforehand? Does that not undermine the very essence of
- 19:08Speaker 3: an investigation that DOJ is purporting to undertake.
- 19:13Speaker 6: Again, I'm not going to be able to discuss specific
- 19:15Speaker 6: investigative set.
- 19:16Speaker 5: Who will take it?
- 19:17Speaker 1: You're not.
- 19:18Speaker 3: Nobody answers these questions. And it's why people are furious
- 19:21Speaker 3: with the cover up, because you don't believe the FBI
- 19:24Speaker 3: is accountable to Congress or to the American people. Your
- 19:26Speaker 3: time is up, dirtor Rey has requested a five minute recess.
- 19:30Speaker 5: Five minutes, I'll just let me just send it.
- 19:33Speaker 6: If I might just quickly respond and then respun code
- 19:36Speaker 6: of the break thank you.
- 19:38Speaker 5: I understand why this is frustrating. I do.
- 19:42Speaker 6: But it is also the case that these policies that
- 19:45Speaker 6: I am referring to about my inability to discuss ongoing
- 19:49Speaker 6: investigations and certainly internal deliberations related to ongoing investigations, are
- 19:54Speaker 6: policies that have not only been in place for many,
- 19:57Speaker 6: many years through multiple administrations of both parties, but in
- 20:02Speaker 6: fact these were policies that were actually strengthened under the
- 20:05Speaker 6: last administration, and that my predecessor was faulted in a
- 20:10Speaker 6: fairly scathing Inspector General report for not following, and that
- 20:15Speaker 6: you have an obligation call it out.
- 20:16Speaker 5: He's engaged in this job. Thank you have an obligation
- 20:18Speaker 5: to call out corruption.
- 20:21Speaker 2: Senator.
- 20:22Speaker 1: I understand him saying it's an ongoing investigation, but hiding
- 20:25Speaker 1: behind that when you're talking about basic things that the
- 20:28Speaker 1: FBI didn't do clearly to protect the Biden family. He
- 20:33Speaker 1: should still be able to answer those questions, shouldn't he?
- 20:37Speaker 3: He should, and he's stonewalling, and there's an arrogance of
- 20:41Speaker 3: the director of the FBI. Look, as I mentioned in
- 20:43Speaker 3: my questioning, I've known Chris Ray for thirty years. Uh
- 20:46Speaker 3: he clerked for the same federal judge I clerked for.
- 20:50Speaker 3: He's not a liberal Democrat. That that's the amazing thing.
- 20:52Speaker 3: I think Chris Ray still believes he's a Republican. I
- 20:55Speaker 3: think he still believes he's a conservative. He just is unwilling.
- 20:59Speaker 3: He's a company man, unwilling to take on the career
- 21:04Speaker 3: officials at the FBI who were rabid partisans, who are
- 21:07Speaker 3: left wing zelots. And he also he buys into the
- 21:11Speaker 3: notion that he has no responsibility to the American people,
- 21:16Speaker 3: no responsibility to Congress, no responsibility to be accountable or transparent.
- 21:22Speaker 3: So he views his obligation no sorry, ongoing investigation piss off,
- 21:26Speaker 3: jumping a lake. I'm not going to answer your question. Look,
- 21:28Speaker 3: you've got two irs whistleblowers who come forward and alleged
- 21:32Speaker 3: felonies from the Attorney General. A director of the FBI
- 21:37Speaker 3: has an obligation to answer questions about that. I asked
- 21:39Speaker 3: a very simple question, did you try to ascertain the
- 21:44Speaker 3: GPS data about where Hunter Biden was and where Joe
- 21:48Speaker 3: Biden was when Hunter Biden sent the email asking for
- 21:53Speaker 3: bribes trying to shake down the Chinese communists for bribes.
- 21:56Speaker 3: The email, on its face says he's sitting next to
- 21:59Speaker 3: his father Biden. If he's in fact sitting next to
- 22:02Speaker 3: his father, it directly implicates Joe Biden in trying to
- 22:07Speaker 3: extort millions of dollars from Chinese communists, much of which
- 22:12Speaker 3: ultimately went to Joe Biden himself. What the RS whistleblower
- 22:16Speaker 3: said is they wanted to get that GPS data that
- 22:19Speaker 3: is readily ascertainable, and the Biden DOJ blocked it. There
- 22:23Speaker 3: is nothing to prevent Chris Ray from answering the question
- 22:26Speaker 3: did you try to seek that GPS data? Yes or no?
- 22:30Speaker 3: Did DOJ Blockett? Yes or no? He refuses to answer,
- 22:34Speaker 3: and his shield everything. He says it's an ongoing investigation.
- 22:37Speaker 3: But as we've discussed, it's not ongoing. They are deliberately
- 22:42Speaker 3: not investigating Joe Biden. And so it is a view
- 22:48Speaker 3: that there's a hubris. We are the FBI, we don't
- 22:53Speaker 3: have to answer your questions. And I got to say
- 22:56Speaker 3: it is profoundly harmful to the rule of law and
- 23:00Speaker 3: the integrity of the FBI to have the leadership of
- 23:03Speaker 3: the FBI refuse to provide even the barest minimum of
- 23:08Speaker 3: transparency or accountability.
- 23:10Speaker 1: So our last question for you, and I want to
- 23:12Speaker 1: go back to the FBI director and really the advantage
- 23:18Speaker 1: that the Biden family has, which it seems that everybody
- 23:21Speaker 1: is covering for them. The House Oversight Committee put out
- 23:23Speaker 1: this tweet saying Hunter Biden must appear for his deposition
- 23:27Speaker 1: on de Ever, the thirteenth Chairman, Comer and Jim Jordan
- 23:30Speaker 1: will initiate contempt of Congress proceedings if Hunter does not appear.
- 23:34Speaker 1: He has obviously said I will only appear before a
- 23:37Speaker 1: public hearing. That's not what they're subpoenating for. In your gut,
- 23:41Speaker 1: will Hunter Biden appear or will he be a no show?
- 23:44Speaker 5: Look, I put the odds at about fifty to fifty
- 23:46Speaker 5: on that. I think it could go either way.
- 23:49Speaker 3: I think there's a chance Hunter appeers, and I think
- 23:52Speaker 3: he could be defiant. He could be he could be
- 23:55Speaker 3: hiding behind his lawyers. I also think there's a very
- 23:58Speaker 3: real chance he just and show up. He just says,
- 24:01Speaker 3: go pound sand if he does. If he refuses to
- 24:04Speaker 3: show up, the House will vote have in contempt. But
- 24:07Speaker 3: once the House votes him in contempt, nothing will happen
- 24:10Speaker 3: because the Biden DOJ will not do anything to enforce
- 24:13Speaker 3: the contempt sanctioned. Remember the House Representatives held Eric Holder
- 24:17Speaker 3: in contempt when he was Attorney General under Barack Obama
- 24:20Speaker 3: and nothing happened. Now why did nothing happen Because to
- 24:23Speaker 3: enforce the contempt finding, DOJ has to bring it. And
- 24:27Speaker 3: you know what, Eric Holder was in charge of DJ,
- 24:29Speaker 3: and so magically, Eric Holder said, you know, when I
- 24:33Speaker 3: think of things that I want to prosecute, the contempt
- 24:35Speaker 3: finding against me is not one of them. I think
- 24:38Speaker 3: the chances of Merrick Garland doing anything to enforce a
- 24:41Speaker 3: contempt finding against Hunter Biden are very close to zero.
- 24:45Speaker 3: And so look, there's a chance Hunter shows up. He
- 24:48Speaker 3: did publicly say he was willing to show up. It
- 24:51Speaker 3: was in public, but either way, I do not expect
- 24:55Speaker 3: him to be forthcoming. Whether if he shows up, he's
- 24:57Speaker 3: not going to say much of substance. If he doesn't
- 25:00Speaker 3: show up, he feels he can defy the subpoena without
- 25:04Speaker 3: meaningful consequence.
- 25:05Speaker 1: As before, if you want to hear the rest of
- 25:07Speaker 1: this conversation on this topic, you can go back and
- 25:10Speaker 1: dow the podcast from earlier this week to hear the
- 25:13Speaker 1: entire thing. I want to get back to the big
- 25:17Speaker 1: story number three of the week.
- 25:18Speaker 2: You may have missed all.
- 25:20Speaker 3: Right, one more Santredaly O'Connor story. So I was Slicer
- 25:24Speaker 3: General five and a half years. We ended up being
- 25:27Speaker 3: very fortunate.
- 25:27Speaker 5: We had some.
- 25:30Speaker 3: Really big constitutional law cases that just through serendipity came
- 25:33Speaker 3: down the road and we ended up litigating and we won.
- 25:36Speaker 5: Most of them.
- 25:38Speaker 3: One of the biggest cases it was a case called
- 25:40Speaker 3: Van Orden versus Perry. Now Van Orden versus Perry was
- 25:45Speaker 3: a challenge to the Ten Commandments monument outside of the
- 25:49Speaker 3: Texas State Capitol. And let me set a little bit
- 25:51Speaker 3: of context for it, because it's relevant to O'Connor, it's
- 25:54Speaker 3: relevant to Renquist in the court. So this is the
- 25:58Speaker 3: mid two thousands. There had been mitigation all over the
- 26:00Speaker 3: country challenging the public display of Ten Commandments all over
- 26:04Speaker 3: the country. The history of the Texas Ten Commandments Monument
- 26:09Speaker 3: it was erected in nineteen sixty one, but its history
- 26:13Speaker 3: actually goes back to the nineteen fifties. The nineteen fifties,
- 26:16Speaker 3: there was a Minnesota state judge named E. J. Rugemeier
- 26:20Speaker 3: who in the nineteen fifties was upset about the diminishing
- 26:24Speaker 3: morals of the youth in America. By the way, pause
- 26:26Speaker 3: and thinking the nineteen fifties, he was worried about youth morals.
- 26:29Speaker 3: Think about today, like Holy Cow, in eighty years it
- 26:32Speaker 3: hadn't gotten better. Yeah, And he came up with the
- 26:35Speaker 3: idea to help the morals of the youth in America,
- 26:38Speaker 3: let's publicly display the Ten Commandments in public areas across
- 26:41Speaker 3: the nation. And he went to a public service organization,
- 26:45Speaker 3: the Fraternal Order of Eagles, sort of like the Rotary
- 26:47Speaker 3: Club or Quanas Club. He said, Hey, what do y'all
- 26:50Speaker 3: think of this idea? And they said, great idea, We're
- 26:53Speaker 3: all for it all right now, Ben, this is where
- 26:55Speaker 3: the story takes a weird turn. This is exactly coterminous
- 27:01Speaker 3: with the release of Cecil B. De Mill's movie The
- 27:04Speaker 3: Ten Commandments. No way, you know, Charlton Heston comes down
- 27:08Speaker 3: from Mount Sinai carrying the Ten Commandments and Cecil B.
- 27:11Speaker 5: De Mill was a larger than life Hollywood character.
- 27:14Speaker 3: And Mill gets wind of this and he and he
- 27:19Speaker 3: was thinking like a Hollywood producer. He's like, hey, this
- 27:21Speaker 3: is a great idea, but I don't want a piece
- 27:23Speaker 3: of paper on a frame posted on the wall.
- 27:25Speaker 5: If you're going to erect this.
- 27:27Speaker 3: I want big honkin granite Ten Commandments monuments, just like
- 27:34Speaker 3: I'm gonna have Charlton Heston coming down the mountain with.
- 27:37Speaker 3: There are dozens of what are called Eagles monuments all
- 27:41Speaker 3: over the country and they're all identical Texas. At six
- 27:44Speaker 3: foot three inches tall three foot six inches wide, it
- 27:47Speaker 3: is red granite. It looks exactly like the tablets that
- 27:51Speaker 3: Charlton Heston carried. And actually, I'm going to take a
- 27:55Speaker 3: brief aside and say, if you ever are argue you
- 28:00Speaker 3: a case in court, since you're not a lawyer, something
- 28:02Speaker 3: would have to go terribly wrong for you.
- 28:04Speaker 5: To be arguing a case in court.
- 28:05Speaker 3: Yeah, but if you're convicted of murder and you're defending yourself.
- 28:11Speaker 3: The advice that I have given lawyers is never ever
- 28:14Speaker 3: ever try to be funny. It is the province of
- 28:17Speaker 3: judges to be funny, It is not the province of lawyers. Now,
- 28:21Speaker 3: that is excellent advice, But I will tell you I
- 28:23Speaker 3: have twice in my career broken that advice, and I've
- 28:26Speaker 3: been very lucky. The gods of litigation have spared me
- 28:29Speaker 3: my just deserts. Both times when I was arguing the
- 28:33Speaker 3: defense of the Texas ten Commandments case in the Fifth
- 28:36Speaker 3: Circuit Court of Appeals. The process that the Eagles use
- 28:42Speaker 3: to develop the text of the Ten Commandments. There are
- 28:45Speaker 3: differences across the dominations, and so what the Eagles did
- 28:49Speaker 3: is they brought together a committee that consisted of a pastor,
- 28:52Speaker 3: a priest, and a rabbi. So an oral argument, I said,
- 28:56Speaker 3: this was drafted by a pastor, a priest, and a rabbi.
- 28:59Speaker 3: And one of the judges of the Fifth Circuit, Judge Prato,
- 29:01Speaker 3: leans forward and says, Council, that sounds like the beginning
- 29:04Speaker 3: of a joke. And I immediately said, yes, your honor,
- 29:06Speaker 3: but nobody walked into a bar. And miraculously, the judges
- 29:12Speaker 3: took pity on me and laughed. It was stupid, but
- 29:15Speaker 3: I was grateful for their mercy. Were in front of
- 29:19Speaker 3: the U. S. Supreme Court on the Texas Ten Commandments monument,
- 29:23Speaker 3: and at the time there had been dozens of cases
- 29:27Speaker 3: challenging Ten Commandments monuments. Almost all of the monuments had
- 29:30Speaker 3: lost the weight of the case. Law was headed very
- 29:34Speaker 3: significantly against the public display of the Ten Commandments as
- 29:38Speaker 3: the case was being appealed. So we had won in
- 29:41Speaker 3: the Fifth Circuit Court of appeals. The plain iff, a
- 29:44Speaker 3: guy named Thomas van Orden, who was an atheist. He
- 29:47Speaker 3: was a homeless man who had walked past the monument,
- 29:50Speaker 3: was offended by it and filed a lawsuit seeking to
- 29:52Speaker 3: tear it down. He filed a cert petition asking the
- 29:55Speaker 3: Supreme Court to take the case. Now, normally, if you've
- 29:57Speaker 3: won and the other side appeals to the Supreme Court,
- 30:00Speaker 3: what you do is you fight against it. You say no, no,
- 30:02Speaker 3: don't take this case. There is no split of authority.
- 30:05Speaker 3: It's not consequential. You don't need this say no, because
- 30:07Speaker 3: if they say no, you've won. Here was the problem.
- 30:10Speaker 3: There was an enormous split of authority. I thought the
- 30:13Speaker 3: court was going to take one of these cases very
- 30:15Speaker 3: very soon, and we might have won a pyrrhic victory
- 30:18Speaker 3: of a short term victory, but if a bad decision
- 30:21Speaker 3: came down to the Supreme Court, we'd lose in the
- 30:23Speaker 3: long term and lose our monument. So I went to
- 30:25Speaker 3: my boss, Greg Abbott, and I said, general, I think
- 30:29Speaker 3: we should do something that's called acquiescing insert, which is
- 30:32Speaker 3: we should agree, yes, Supreme Court, you should take this case.
- 30:37Speaker 3: And we drafted a brief in opposition where we said,
- 30:41Speaker 3: there is a split of authority. It is real, it
- 30:43Speaker 3: is deep, it is wide, it is significant. And what
- 30:46Speaker 3: we wrote in the brief was, if the Court is
- 30:50Speaker 3: inclined to resolve this issue, this case presents the single
- 30:56Speaker 3: best fact pattern to uphold a permissible display of the
- 31:00Speaker 3: Ten Commandments.
- 31:02Speaker 5: It was very risky because if the.
- 31:04Speaker 3: Court took the case and we lost, everyone would pillory
- 31:07Speaker 3: both Abbot and me. You idiots asked them to take
- 31:10Speaker 3: this case, and then you got your butt kicked. Well,
- 31:13Speaker 3: it ended up we were right. They were going to
- 31:14Speaker 3: take a case. They took the Texas case, and they
- 31:17Speaker 3: took a case out of Kentucky. They took them both,
- 31:19Speaker 3: and they scheduled them for argument on the same day.
- 31:24Speaker 3: As we're preparing the case. Abbot, my boss, who was
- 31:27Speaker 3: attorney Generally, he told me when he started, he said, look,
- 31:29Speaker 3: I want to argue one Supreme Court case while I'm
- 31:31Speaker 3: ag and let me know which one I should do.
- 31:34Speaker 3: And so when this case was granted, I said, General,
- 31:36Speaker 3: this is the one.
- 31:37Speaker 5: You should do.
- 31:38Speaker 3: It's a discreet issue of law, it's incredibly important. He
- 31:42Speaker 3: spent two months preparing for the argument. I put together
- 31:45Speaker 3: some moot courts, I did moot court in DC with
- 31:49Speaker 3: a murderer's row of Supreme Court advocates. They had collectively
- 31:52Speaker 3: over one hundred oral arguments between them, and they just
- 31:57Speaker 3: beat him senseless. I actually felt really nervous, Like when
- 32:00Speaker 3: you put your boss in front of a moot that
- 32:02Speaker 3: like pounds them senseless, You're like, uh, General, I hope
- 32:05Speaker 3: that was productive. Yeah, please tell me I'm not unemployed.
- 32:09Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, please tell me I'm not get my walk
- 32:11Speaker 4: in papers a day.
- 32:12Speaker 3: But look, if you do it right, you want the
- 32:13Speaker 3: mood to be harder than the actual argument. So he
- 32:15Speaker 3: went through, did several moods. He was ready for it,
- 32:18Speaker 3: and in the brief I told him, I said, okay, General,
- 32:20Speaker 3: I've got a plan. So for about three decades, Sandarday
- 32:23Speaker 3: O'Connor was the deciding vote on every almost every religious
- 32:28Speaker 3: liberty establishment cause case in the country. And I read
- 32:33Speaker 3: every opinion she'd written over and over and over again.
- 32:37Speaker 3: And I told my team as we're drafting the brief,
- 32:39Speaker 3: I said, I want us to swim in Sandraday O'Connor's
- 32:44Speaker 3: establishment clause jurisprudence. I want I want this to embody
- 32:48Speaker 3: everything she's ever thought or said about the First Amendment,
- 32:52Speaker 3: And in fact I told my lawyers, I said, I
- 32:54Speaker 3: want the most frequent words in the brief to be
- 32:57Speaker 3: O'Connor Comma jay.
- 32:58Speaker 5: I want them to occur more frequently than and or THEE.
- 33:02Speaker 5: And one of my.
- 33:03Speaker 3: Lawyers said, well, Ted, is it possible to be too
- 33:07Speaker 3: obsequious to Justice O'Connor in this brief? I said no,
- 33:11Speaker 3: If we can put an oil portrait of Sanderdale O'Connor
- 33:15Speaker 3: in the cover of our brief, we should do so.
- 33:19Speaker 3: And again I was, you know, probably I was a
- 33:21Speaker 3: cocky thirty four thirty five year old. I went to
- 33:24Speaker 3: Abbott and I said, General, we are we're living in
- 33:28Speaker 3: her psyche. This brief is exactly what Saturday O'Connor thinks.
- 33:34Speaker 5: Well.
- 33:34Speaker 3: At the oral argument, I'm sorry to say we missed horribly.
- 33:40Speaker 3: She was utterly unpersuaded. She voted to strike down the
- 33:44Speaker 3: Texas ten Commandments.
- 33:45Speaker 5: Mindment.
- 33:45Speaker 3: Now here's where Spring Court arguments are weird. Every argument
- 33:49Speaker 3: we'd aimed at Sanderdale O'Connor missed her, but bizarrely enough
- 33:54Speaker 3: struck Steve Bryer. Wow, Bill Clinton appointee relatively liberal justice.
- 34:01Speaker 3: And the two cases I told you there was Kentucky
- 34:03Speaker 3: in Texas. Four justices voted to strike down both monuments,
- 34:08Speaker 3: four justices voted to uphold both monuments. Steve Bryer voted
- 34:12Speaker 3: to strike down Kentucky and to uphold Texas, which, among
- 34:19Speaker 3: other things, was a vindication of If we hadn't acquiesced insert,
- 34:23Speaker 3: the only opinion would have been Kentucky, and it would
- 34:25Speaker 3: have been devastating for Ten Commandments monuments across the country.
- 34:28Speaker 3: There was also a really nice kind of personal vindication
- 34:31Speaker 3: in this. So Chief Justice Renquist had been an original
- 34:36Speaker 3: dissenter in a case called Stone versus Graham, which struck
- 34:41Speaker 3: down the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools
- 34:43Speaker 3: across the country, and he had dissented. He said, this
- 34:46Speaker 3: is not the first amendment, this is not right Van
- 34:49Speaker 3: Orden versus Perry. Chief Justice Renquist wrote the plurality opinion
- 34:54Speaker 3: for the court upholding Texas's display of the Ten Commandments,
- 35:00Speaker 3: the very last opinion Chief Justice Renquist ever wrote, and
- 35:03Speaker 3: he passed away later that summer. And so, as his
- 35:06Speaker 3: former clerk, it was really cool to have been part
- 35:10Speaker 3: of a case where he was able to vindicate a
- 35:13Speaker 3: view he had articulated two decades earlier and Sanderday O'Connor.
- 35:18Speaker 3: When it came to the standards, we didn't meet her standards,
- 35:21Speaker 3: but miraculously enough Steve Bryer liked what we had to say,
- 35:24Speaker 3: and so we entered. And by the way, since then,
- 35:27Speaker 3: the McCreary case out of Kentucky has proven to be
- 35:29Speaker 3: a very unimportant precedent. It is rarely cited, and the
- 35:32Speaker 3: Van Orden case changed the entire direction of case law
- 35:36Speaker 3: so that Ten Commandments displays are now routinely uphill.
- 35:40Speaker 1: As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Center
- 35:43Speaker 1: Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to down
- 35:46Speaker 1: with my podcast, and you can listen to my podcast
- 35:48Speaker 1: every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each
- 35:50Speaker 1: day when you listen to Verdict afterwards, I'd love to
- 35:53Speaker 1: have you as a listener to again, Ben Ferguson Podcasts,
- 35:56Speaker 1: and we will see you back here on Monday morning.