Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / #FreeBritney

Transcript

#FreeBritney · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: The Department of Justice is suing the state of Georgia
0:03
Speaker 1: over its voting rights law. There is a new voting
0:06
Speaker 1: rights law up for discussion named after the late Congressman
0:10
Speaker 1: John Lewis. There's a major court case that the Supreme
0:14
Speaker 1: Court refused to hear on whether or not there's a
0:16
Speaker 1: constitutional right for men to use the women's bathroom. But
0:20
Speaker 1: there is one legal issue on the mind of America
0:24
Speaker 1: before any of the others. That, of course, would be
0:28
Speaker 1: when will we hashtag free Britney Spears. This is a
0:33
Speaker 1: Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict. I'm Michael Knowles. Oops,
0:43
Speaker 1: I did it again. I did not lead with the
0:47
Speaker 1: most important story and one that I really want to
0:49
Speaker 1: get into. Senator, so good to be with you to
0:51
Speaker 1: touch on all the important legal issues of the day. Well,
0:55
Speaker 1: if there's anything this podcast is known for, it is
0:57
Speaker 1: focusing on the issue shoes that will determine the fate
1:01
Speaker 1: of the Republic. And so I'm glad we can continue
1:03
Speaker 1: in that tradition today. In that case, Senator, hit me
1:07
Speaker 1: baby one more time. I want to know what the
1:09
Speaker 1: real details are of this case. I actually I'm only
1:13
Speaker 1: being half facetious here. Because we've seen this pop up
1:16
Speaker 1: in the culture. Every now and again, you'll see the
1:18
Speaker 1: hashtag free Brittany movement. She's under a conservatorship. You know,
1:24
Speaker 1: a lot of us grew up with her as a
1:26
Speaker 1: very important figure, especially the young men out there. She
1:29
Speaker 1: occupied a lot of space in our minds, and she's
1:32
Speaker 1: been under this conservatorship for some time, so she doesn't
1:34
Speaker 1: appear to have any real legal rights. I read somewhere
1:38
Speaker 1: that she has a birth control device that her doctors
1:42
Speaker 1: will not remove, and that her family will not allow
1:45
Speaker 1: her to remove. I mean, this seems like in some
1:47
Speaker 1: cases the stuff you hear about in communist China, and
1:50
Speaker 1: yet that's permitted to go on here. So do you
1:53
Speaker 1: know anything about this or you know conservatorships more generally
1:57
Speaker 1: and how people can be deprived of their civil rights.
1:59
Speaker 1: So I will say this, this may be an illustration
2:02
Speaker 1: of something of a generational divide. Where whereas you grew
2:05
Speaker 1: up with Britney spears on your wall, I was more
2:10
Speaker 1: of a fair faucet guy. But but you know, they're
2:12
Speaker 1: the decades have a way of passing on. So I
2:16
Speaker 1: will readily confess I am no expert in in Britney
2:20
Speaker 1: Spears music that was not particularly my cup of tea.
2:24
Speaker 1: But I got to say on the question of the
2:27
Speaker 1: conservative ship, I am squarely and unequivocally in the camp
2:33
Speaker 1: of free Brittany. I think this is frigging ridiculous. What
2:38
Speaker 1: is happening to Britney Spears and a needstand? Can you
2:41
Speaker 1: tell me any? I don't even really understand the idea
2:44
Speaker 1: of the conservatorship. More broadly, I understand, if it's someone
2:46
Speaker 1: has personal troubles, then someone else can be designated to
2:50
Speaker 1: make legal decisions for them. But how broad is it?
2:53
Speaker 1: Because just knowing what I read in the newspapers, it
2:55
Speaker 1: seems deeply Unamerican, it seems deeply wrong. What is what
2:59
Speaker 1: is happening? So it is it is incredibly broad. And
3:03
Speaker 1: look that there are various steps in the law that
3:06
Speaker 1: that an individual can forfeit their their freedom, their liberty.
3:11
Speaker 1: If you're seriously mentally ill, you can be involuntarily committed.
3:15
Speaker 1: But for you to be involuntarily committed, you've got to
3:18
Speaker 1: be typically a danger to yourself or a danger to others,
3:21
Speaker 1: and that's got to be demonstrated. It varies state by state,
3:24
Speaker 1: but usually with a pretty high evidentury standard. For your
3:28
Speaker 1: freedom to be taken away from you and you to
3:29
Speaker 1: be incapacitated. A conservatorship is similar to that the demonstration
3:35
Speaker 1: under California law. For a conservatorship to be entered into
3:38
Speaker 1: for someone else to have the ability to make life
3:41
Speaker 1: decisions for you, either about you, your person, your health
3:45
Speaker 1: like what you can do with your life, or your finances.
3:50
Speaker 1: The threshold is quite high, and they're typically used for
3:53
Speaker 1: people who are very, very elderly, for people's whose faculty
3:57
Speaker 1: have lost them. If you have, say Alzheimer's, and you're
3:59
Speaker 1: no longer able to care for yourself, then there's a
4:02
Speaker 1: role for a conservatorship if you have someone whose mental
4:05
Speaker 1: capacity is not there. What is bizarre about what happened
4:09
Speaker 1: to Britney Spears is she's a thirty nine year old woman.
4:14
Speaker 1: She's a mother of two. She h you know. Has
4:17
Speaker 1: she had issues in life? Sure? Has she had issues
4:23
Speaker 1: with mental illness? Perhaps? I don't know. I'm not her doctor.
4:26
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that demonstrated. Has she had issues with
4:29
Speaker 1: substance abuse? So we know she's been to rehab. But
4:32
Speaker 1: but I gotta say, if if you're gonna lock up
4:35
Speaker 1: everyone in Hollywood who has had substance abuse issues. You're
4:39
Speaker 1: gonna have a long, long line. And and and in fact,
4:43
Speaker 1: Sunset Boulevard might be empty. H that's the real estate
4:47
Speaker 1: prices would blumme, it would be great. So so the
4:49
Speaker 1: threshold it is bizarre. And and this conservatorship. It happened
4:54
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. It happened while she was
4:59
Speaker 1: in the midst of and coming out of a nasty
5:02
Speaker 1: custody dispute with her ex husband over her kids. Look,
5:05
Speaker 1: custody disputes get ugly, and she had had an incident.
5:08
Speaker 1: You know, she went and took a took an umbrella
5:10
Speaker 1: to a paparazzi. Now listen, you know, I don't know
5:14
Speaker 1: any of us that would react well to people hounding
5:19
Speaker 1: you every moment you go outside, when you go to
5:22
Speaker 1: the seven to eleven, when you go to the grocery store,
5:25
Speaker 1: when you do anything, people taking pictures, constantly being in
5:28
Speaker 1: your face. You know, I'm reminded of the scene in
5:34
Speaker 1: The Untouchables to use a movie example, where where al Capone,
5:39
Speaker 1: played beautifully by de Niro, gets mad at a photographer
5:42
Speaker 1: and grabs the cameron and and breaks it like that.
5:46
Speaker 1: That reaction, while perhaps not the best reaction is an
5:52
Speaker 1: incredibly human and understandable reaction, and the idea that and
5:58
Speaker 1: so all right, she shaved her head. Okay, last I checked,
6:02
Speaker 1: shaving your head is not a capital offense. She had
6:05
Speaker 1: pretty hair, But who the hell's business is if she
6:07
Speaker 1: wants to shave her head or not. The threshold for
6:12
Speaker 1: taking away someone's liberty and capacity to make decisions properly
6:17
Speaker 1: under the law is very high, and it should be high.
6:20
Speaker 1: And at this point we're looking at what thirteen years
6:24
Speaker 1: of a grown woman having every decision made by her father. Now,
6:32
Speaker 1: it might even be a different story if her father
6:34
Speaker 1: had been a carrying, nurturing figure throughout her life, had
6:37
Speaker 1: helped her through a career, was someone who had demonstrated
6:40
Speaker 1: enormous love for As best I can tell from her history,
6:44
Speaker 1: her father was out of her life for much of
6:47
Speaker 1: the period of her life, had his own drinking problems,
6:51
Speaker 1: his own issues as she was rising up as a
6:54
Speaker 1: pop star, and then when she got super rich, just
6:57
Speaker 1: kind of parachuted in there and said, hey, I like
7:00
Speaker 1: me some hundreds of millions of dollars. Well, I get
7:03
Speaker 1: that he might, but that seems absurd. And then let
7:09
Speaker 1: me put really the finishing touch on it. If for
7:13
Speaker 1: the last twelve thirteen years she had been severely mentally ill,
7:17
Speaker 1: if she was sitting in the corner, you know, playing
7:21
Speaker 1: with blocks and counting on her toes, Okay, maybe you
7:24
Speaker 1: could say, all right, this is someone not able to function.
7:28
Speaker 1: There is an important place in the law for protecting
7:31
Speaker 1: someone who's not able to function. But during the last
7:34
Speaker 1: thirteen years, she's done hundreds of shows, She's made hundreds
7:39
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars. She's able to stand up on
7:42
Speaker 1: stage and sing and perform and dance over and over
7:45
Speaker 1: and over again. Look, I gotta admit you and I
7:49
Speaker 1: couldn't do that to save our lives. Well, maybe you could,
7:51
Speaker 1: but I couldn't do that the same by life, and
7:55
Speaker 1: everything I have seen about this case, it seems like
7:58
Speaker 1: an enormous abuse of the judicial process, going right down
8:04
Speaker 1: to when the conservatorship was first put in place. She
8:08
Speaker 1: tried to hire a lawyer to fight it, and the
8:11
Speaker 1: California District judge threw her lawyer out, says, no, she's
8:15
Speaker 1: not capable of hiring a lawyer. I've got a medical
8:19
Speaker 1: report that proves it, and I'm not going to show
8:21
Speaker 1: it to you. So I've got a secret report. By
8:23
Speaker 1: the way, I have a secret report right here on
8:25
Speaker 1: Michael Knowles. It says that you're not capable of handling yourself,
8:29
Speaker 1: and so, by the way, you're vast one hundred dollars fortune.
8:33
Speaker 1: I'm taking you over right now. Like Senator, no one
8:37
Speaker 1: would dispute that every I think in that particular case
8:39
Speaker 1: it's public knowledge. Different for Brittany, But what an assinine
8:43
Speaker 1: situation for a judge to throw out a lawyer that
8:47
Speaker 1: she tried to retain and a point instead another lawyer.
8:52
Speaker 1: The entire process throughout it seems design to just trample
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Speaker 1: on her rights. And I don't have any any dog
9:03
Speaker 1: in the fight of saying that she's the wisest and
9:08
Speaker 1: most capable person on earth. I don't know. I don't
9:10
Speaker 1: know her, but there are no outside in Disha of
9:15
Speaker 1: the level of lack of competence that should be required
9:21
Speaker 1: to justify a conservatorship for one week, much less for
9:25
Speaker 1: thirteen years. And I think part of the reason why
9:28
Speaker 1: people care about this story is not just because Britney
9:31
Speaker 1: Spears actually wasn't a very important pop culture figure for
9:34
Speaker 1: a lot of people, But I think it's also because
9:38
Speaker 1: all around our country. We're seeing people's civil rights being
9:41
Speaker 1: taken away, We're seeing abuses of the judicial process. It
9:44
Speaker 1: seems that this is sort of one particular sensational story
9:49
Speaker 1: that is a representative of corrosion around the justice system.
9:53
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but there there
9:56
Speaker 1: are other examples of these major abuses. Now I think
9:59
Speaker 1: that's right, and there are a couple of other points. One,
10:04
Speaker 1: in ordinary circumstances, she's not someone who would be considered powerless.
10:09
Speaker 1: This is someone who has made hundreds of millions of dollars,
10:13
Speaker 1: has vast resources, which may explain why vultures are circling
10:17
Speaker 1: around and want access to her money. Two that the
10:22
Speaker 1: entire affair there seems enormous misogyny connected with this. It's
10:27
Speaker 1: difficult to imagine a similar situation with a man. I mean,
10:33
Speaker 1: I mean, you want to talk about people who are
10:36
Speaker 1: irresponsible with their money. You don't have to stretch to
10:40
Speaker 1: find some pro athletes who hemorrhage cash like crazy and
10:44
Speaker 1: spend money on everybody on earth. You don't have to
10:46
Speaker 1: stretch to find rock stars and people who look all
10:50
Speaker 1: of us have watched the sort of you know, late
10:54
Speaker 1: night eon television series of they started off young and bright,
10:58
Speaker 1: and then to the descent to drugs and alcohol, and
11:01
Speaker 1: it always ends and then and then sometimes there's a
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Speaker 1: redemption and then they cleaned up and are living their life.
11:07
Speaker 1: In this instance, it seems that Britney Spears encountered the
11:11
Speaker 1: kind of challenges with fame and success that many, if
11:15
Speaker 1: not most people who have experienced that encounter. But for her,
11:20
Speaker 1: that was used as an excuse to strip away or liberty.
11:24
Speaker 1: And you mentioned one of the more stunning allegations. She
11:28
Speaker 1: gave a recent interview where she said that they put
11:31
Speaker 1: an IUD, a birth control device in her involuntarily because
11:38
Speaker 1: they didn't want her to have kids. I mean, good God,
11:42
Speaker 1: that that sort of forced prevention of childbirth, forced sterilization.
11:49
Speaker 1: It has an ugly, ugly legacy. It goes on in
11:53
Speaker 1: China communists China all the time. But we have an
11:55
Speaker 1: ugly legacy in the United States of people with mental
11:59
Speaker 1: reach ardation being forced to be sterilized. And that is grotesque.
12:03
Speaker 1: And the idea that that that the court would step
12:06
Speaker 1: in and say she doesn't have a right to make
12:09
Speaker 1: a decision to have a child, that that is stunning.
12:15
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't know that that fact is confirmed,
12:18
Speaker 1: but it's an allegation she's made, and the judicial system
12:22
Speaker 1: ought to be protecting her rights, not treating her like
12:29
Speaker 1: a child because she's not a child. That was the
12:32
Speaker 1: fact that really pushed me over the edge. It's just
12:36
Speaker 1: intrinsically evil. It is just the kind of thing that
12:39
Speaker 1: you read about in communist China. This, for all intents
12:43
Speaker 1: and purposes, forced sterilization. It's it's just, you know, if
12:48
Speaker 1: the allegation is true, it is just such a stunning overreach.
12:52
Speaker 1: And so I agree. I am entirely with you on
12:54
Speaker 1: the hashtag free Brittany train. I was wondering if we
12:58
Speaker 1: could also if you can enlighten me on some of
13:00
Speaker 1: these broader overreaches, because I just from the legal I
13:04
Speaker 1: have my own political views, of my own philosophical views,
13:07
Speaker 1: but from the legal perspective, it would be good to
13:09
Speaker 1: get an expert here. What is going on between the
13:13
Speaker 1: DOJ and Georgia. Georgia passed a voting rights law. We've
13:17
Speaker 1: now heard that Merrick Garland, the AG is going to
13:19
Speaker 1: sue Georgia. The people of Georgia don't have the right
13:22
Speaker 1: to pass their own election laws. Apparently not look If
13:25
Speaker 1: you look at the Department of Justice under Joe Biden,
13:29
Speaker 1: Merrick Garland had been a judge for a couple of decades.
13:32
Speaker 1: It actually earned a reputation of being relatively fired and partial.
13:37
Speaker 1: So when he was first nominated, I was cautiously optimistic
13:40
Speaker 1: that this was not a wild eyed partisan. That optimism
13:46
Speaker 1: was substantially shaken during his confirmation hearing, where where Merrick
13:51
Speaker 1: Garland refused to answer just about any question. Look, no
13:54
Speaker 1: matter what you asked, he wouldn't make even the barest commitments.
13:58
Speaker 1: He just basically dodged everything, and that was disconcerting. I
14:00
Speaker 1: voted against Garland's confirmation, But then it got much worse
14:06
Speaker 1: because I saw Biden's subsequent nominations, and in particular two
14:09
Speaker 1: in particular Benita Gupta, who's the number three lawyer at
14:12
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice now, and Kristin Clark, who is
14:15
Speaker 1: the head lawyer at the Civil Rights Division. The two
14:19
Speaker 1: of them are both radicals, and and in fact I've
14:22
Speaker 1: dubbed them the radical twins. They're both they're two of
14:25
Speaker 1: the leading proponents of abolishing the police in this country.
14:29
Speaker 1: And by the way, we're not talking about a long
14:30
Speaker 1: time ago. We're talking about last year, both of them
14:34
Speaker 1: either gave testimony or in writing advocated for defunding or
14:38
Speaker 1: abolishing the police. These are now two I'm just asking
14:41
Speaker 1: a very practical level senator, how is it that two
14:44
Speaker 1: of the top cops in the country would end up
14:47
Speaker 1: be advocating for abolishing the Doesn't that seem a little
14:50
Speaker 1: self undermining? It should, because Biden has handed control of
14:54
Speaker 1: the agenda over to the radicals. And by the way,
14:57
Speaker 1: at their testimony for both their confirmations, they said, well,
15:01
Speaker 1: okay ay, they denied that they'd written it. Even when
15:05
Speaker 1: you read them the words back at them, I mean,
15:07
Speaker 1: and it was almost like a you know, obi wan kenobi,
15:10
Speaker 1: these aren't the droid you're looking for. There's like, nope,
15:12
Speaker 1: I didn't say that, and you'd read the words Nope,
15:14
Speaker 1: that's not what that says. And then more importantly, they
15:17
Speaker 1: just say, I do not advocate abolishing the police. Today,
15:20
Speaker 1: by the way, the politicized fact checkers, so today the
15:27
Speaker 1: Washington Post fact check a sort of joking tweet I
15:31
Speaker 1: made about Joe Biden's anti crime agenda. I laid out
15:34
Speaker 1: five points, one of which was abolished the police, and
15:37
Speaker 1: they came out four pinocchios. Why because they say, well,
15:40
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, Joe Biden himself has not advocated abolishing
15:43
Speaker 1: the police. Well, you know what, when you nominate not one,
15:47
Speaker 1: but two senior officials at your Department of Justice who
15:50
Speaker 1: were among the leading advocates for abolishing the police in
15:53
Speaker 1: the country, you don't get to pretend you're on the
15:56
Speaker 1: other side. So one of them, Kristin Clark, is leading
15:59
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Division, and she has been a radical
16:03
Speaker 1: partisan her entire life. By the way, in law school
16:07
Speaker 1: she put on a conference celebrating cop killers as heroes.
16:12
Speaker 1: This is the kind of radical that she is, that
16:14
Speaker 1: that that that people who murder police officers are heroes
16:18
Speaker 1: to be lionized. So what did the depointment. I seem
16:21
Speaker 1: to recall that that Kristen Clark also wrote. I believe
16:24
Speaker 1: it was in the Harvard Crimson. It may have been
16:25
Speaker 1: in some other publication at Harvard. She wrote a peace
16:28
Speaker 1: about the biological racial superiority of black people over whites,
16:34
Speaker 1: and I didn't believe it when I saw the allegations,
16:37
Speaker 1: so I actually had to go look it up in
16:38
Speaker 1: the newspaper, and there it is with her her name
16:41
Speaker 1: in the byline. She did now she claims that was satirical.
16:47
Speaker 1: Whether it was or not, I don't know, but that's
16:49
Speaker 1: her explanation today. Regardless both she had been made a
16:53
Speaker 1: goop to have had an entire career decades of being
16:57
Speaker 1: hard partisan radicals. So what happens George je passes a
17:01
Speaker 1: voter integrity law. Democrats and the press demonize that voter
17:05
Speaker 1: integrity law. And now we see the Department of Justice
17:09
Speaker 1: is the enforcement arm for the radical left. Because the
17:13
Speaker 1: Department of Justice sued Georgia under what's called Section two
17:17
Speaker 1: of the Voting Rights Act. And here's what the Department
17:18
Speaker 1: of Justice is arguing that it violates the Voting Rights
17:22
Speaker 1: Act for Georgia to do things like, for example, not
17:28
Speaker 1: send absentee ballots to people who didn't request them. I
17:32
Speaker 1: gotta tell you, there are a whole bunch of states
17:33
Speaker 1: all across the country, including Texas, that don't send absentee
17:38
Speaker 1: ballots to people who don't request them. Now in twenty
17:42
Speaker 1: yet Biden jets way. In twenty twenty with COVID, a
17:47
Speaker 1: lot of states, including Georgia, relaxed or failed to enforce
17:53
Speaker 1: their voting laws to make voting to lessen the protections
17:58
Speaker 1: against voter fraud and it was just a fi because
18:01
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. Set aside for a second, which of
18:03
Speaker 1: those justifications were in worn't right? Look, providing absentee ballots
18:08
Speaker 1: to people who requests them is the way an awful
18:11
Speaker 1: lot of states across the country do it, and have
18:12
Speaker 1: done it for a long long time. The idea that
18:15
Speaker 1: that violates the federal voting rights law is absurd. Another
18:19
Speaker 1: element of George's bill is a requirement of voter ID.
18:23
Speaker 1: Eighty percent of Americans support voter ID, over sixty percent
18:28
Speaker 1: of Democrats support voter ID, over sixty percent of African
18:31
Speaker 1: Americans support voter ID. The Department of Justice is suing,
18:36
Speaker 1: saying the fact that Georgia passed a law with ID
18:40
Speaker 1: requirements violates the federal civil rights laws. That this is,
18:44
Speaker 1: I believe, an abuse of the justice system, and it
18:47
Speaker 1: really is the fruits of what happens when you put
18:52
Speaker 1: partisan radicals in senior positions of the Department of Justice.
18:56
Speaker 1: They turn around and use the Department of Justice as
18:59
Speaker 1: a partisan But I could I push back on their
19:02
Speaker 1: behalf because what they're going to say is they're going
19:05
Speaker 1: to say, look, when you have widespread mail ends more
19:08
Speaker 1: people vote right, We had something like seven zillion people
19:11
Speaker 1: vote in the last election. When you don't have voter ID,
19:13
Speaker 1: you're going to get more people to vote. Some of
19:15
Speaker 1: those people might be dead, and some of those people
19:17
Speaker 1: might be foreign nationals. But as we actually talked about
19:20
Speaker 1: on this show, in the federal attempted takeover of many
19:24
Speaker 1: of these elections, there was actually a provision to give
19:26
Speaker 1: legal immunity to foreign nationals who would vote in the elections.
19:29
Speaker 1: But I guess that's a point for another episode. My
19:32
Speaker 1: point is, if these Democrat policies expand the number of
19:37
Speaker 1: people who vote, and if the Georgia law will, whether
19:41
Speaker 1: for right or wrong, make it more difficult to vote,
19:45
Speaker 1: whether it's because you have to show an ID, and
19:47
Speaker 1: it could be a perfectly legitimate policy, but still will
19:49
Speaker 1: make it more difficult to vote, then do they have
19:52
Speaker 1: an argument that, by the Voting Rights Act and by
19:55
Speaker 1: these other provisions of the law, we need to expand
19:58
Speaker 1: the vote. No, that they don't. Nothing in the Voting
20:02
Speaker 1: Rights Act requires you to allow people to vote for
20:07
Speaker 1: whom it is illegal for them to vote. The Voting
20:10
Speaker 1: Rights Act does not require you to turn the other
20:13
Speaker 1: way to voter fraud. For you to allow people to
20:15
Speaker 1: vote illegally, and the argument that it does is pretty crazy.
20:22
Speaker 1: You know, there's right now litigation at the Supreme Court
20:25
Speaker 1: concerning laws restricting ballot harvesting. Ballot harvesting is the practice
20:32
Speaker 1: where you send a paid political operative to collect collect
20:36
Speaker 1: the ballots of other people, of other voters, and it
20:41
Speaker 1: is it is an instance that is particularly ripe for
20:45
Speaker 1: voter fraud. That case, as we sit here to today,
20:48
Speaker 1: has not been decided by the Supreme Court, is expected
20:50
Speaker 1: to come out any day now. I led an amicus
20:53
Speaker 1: brief of a number of Senators in that case, arguing
20:56
Speaker 1: that protecting the integrity of elections is entirely consistent with
21:01
Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Acted. In fact, it furthers the Voting
21:04
Speaker 1: Rights Act. You know, Spring Court has said for a
21:06
Speaker 1: long time that when you allow voter fraud, it steals
21:13
Speaker 1: the right to vote from legal voters. Number of years ago,
21:16
Speaker 1: when I was Slicer General of Texas, Indiana passed one
21:21
Speaker 1: of the first photo ID laws for voting, and Indiana
21:25
Speaker 1: was promptly sued. A bunch of Democratic plaintiffs came in
21:28
Speaker 1: and they sued, and they argued that this discriminated against minorities. Now,
21:32
Speaker 1: by the way, the argument that minorities can't figure out
21:36
Speaker 1: how to get an ID is asinine. The last time
21:41
Speaker 1: I checked, African Americans are perfectly capable of getting IDs. Hispanics. Look,
21:46
Speaker 1: I'm Hispanic. You know what. I got a driver's license
21:48
Speaker 1: in my pocket. You know I'm not under a conservatorship
21:52
Speaker 1: in California. I am actually capable of going to the
21:56
Speaker 1: DMV and sitting there for nineteen hours in an endless line.
21:59
Speaker 1: And the sort of paternalistic, condescending argument that minorities can't
22:05
Speaker 1: get IDs is absurd. And by the way, you need
22:10
Speaker 1: a photo ID to get on an airplane, to drive
22:13
Speaker 1: a car, to get a beer, to go into an
22:19
Speaker 1: R rated movie if you look like you're under seventeen.
22:21
Speaker 1: There's a reason why over sixty percent of African Americans
22:24
Speaker 1: support voter ID laws, because they recognize that getting an
22:29
Speaker 1: ID is not a difficult thing, and protecting the integrity
22:33
Speaker 1: of elections is well. I led a coalition of states
22:36
Speaker 1: in front of the US Supreme Court in that Indiana
22:39
Speaker 1: photo ID law, and we ended up winning sixty three. Actually,
22:43
Speaker 1: the decision was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, one
22:48
Speaker 1: of the most prominent liberals on the Court who explained
22:52
Speaker 1: that protecting the integrity of elections actually protects the right
22:58
Speaker 1: to vote, and looking the other way on voter fraud
23:02
Speaker 1: undermines the right to vote. That sadly, the Department of
23:06
Speaker 1: Justice under Joe Biden has turned that upside down. Well,
23:09
Speaker 1: I will not like a white liberal presumed to tell
23:12
Speaker 1: my Hispanic senator friend that he can't go get an ID.
23:15
Speaker 1: I think you've you've disavowed people of that crazy notion Muscarras, Yes, Benata, Okay, Well,
23:24
Speaker 1: I mean you get the blade and that's about I
23:31
Speaker 1: think we go, we get to the BiblioTech. That's about it.
23:34
Speaker 1: But we have established in English and perhaps in Spanish
23:37
Speaker 1: as well, that the Voting Rights Act does not currently
23:40
Speaker 1: prohibit these sorts of things. But right now on Capitol Hill,
23:43
Speaker 1: many people that you go to work with every day
23:46
Speaker 1: are discussing an expansion of the Voting Rights Act. So
23:49
Speaker 1: under this proposed expansion, what does that mean for voter
23:53
Speaker 1: fraud and election integrity measures? Yeah, Well, as you know,
23:57
Speaker 1: last week the Senate took up S one, which many
24:00
Speaker 1: of us are calling the Corrupt Politicians Act. And we've
24:03
Speaker 1: talked about all the different ways. The Corrupt Politicians Act
24:06
Speaker 1: was going to federalize elections, strike down protections against a
24:10
Speaker 1: voter fraud, strike down voter id laws, mandate ballot harvesting,
24:15
Speaker 1: register millions of illegal aliens, allow criminals and felons to vote,
24:21
Speaker 1: provide welfare for politicians, and billions of dollars in federal
24:25
Speaker 1: funding for politicians. Turned the Federal Election Commission into a
24:29
Speaker 1: partisan enforcement arm. All of that's in the Corrupt Politicians Act.
24:32
Speaker 1: We voted on it last week. It was a fifty
24:35
Speaker 1: fifty vote, so it failed because under the filibuster, it
24:38
Speaker 1: takes sixty votes to move to legislation, and at least
24:42
Speaker 1: right now, only forty eight Democrats would end the filibuster.
24:46
Speaker 1: There two who would not, Joe Mansion, Democrat of West
24:49
Speaker 1: Virginia and Kirsten Cinema, Democrat of Arizona. We've covered all
24:52
Speaker 1: of that before. So the next iteration on this front
24:57
Speaker 1: that Democrats are expected to push is a different change
25:01
Speaker 1: to the voting laws. And it's a law called the
25:04
Speaker 1: John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and it's named after legendary
25:08
Speaker 1: civil rights pioneer John Lewis, who was a member of Congress.
25:14
Speaker 1: Let me say a couple of things on that. Number One,
25:16
Speaker 1: let me just talk about John Lewis for a minute.
25:17
Speaker 1: I actually I knew John Lewis. I got to know him.
25:19
Speaker 1: I didn't know him well, but I got to spend
25:23
Speaker 1: significant time with him back in December twenty thirteen, because
25:27
Speaker 1: we went together to Nelson Mandela's funeral, and it was
25:32
Speaker 1: it was my first year in the Senate and Mandela
25:34
Speaker 1: passed away, and every member of Congress was invited. If
25:37
Speaker 1: you want to go to the funeral, you can. And
25:39
Speaker 1: I remember I was in Texas. I was in Austin
25:41
Speaker 1: meeting with my team at the time we got the invitation.
25:44
Speaker 1: I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? Of course I'm
25:46
Speaker 1: gonna go. Like to go to Mandela's funeral. What an
25:48
Speaker 1: incredible honor and privilege. And so I went. And here's
25:53
Speaker 1: the astonishing thing, Michael, out of one hundred senators, do
25:57
Speaker 1: you know how many senators went to Mandela's funeral, I can't.
26:00
Speaker 1: I couldn't even guess one. No, really, no other senator went.
26:05
Speaker 1: I was I was astonished. I didn't know how ninety
26:09
Speaker 1: nine senators could say no to that. Um. There were
26:12
Speaker 1: a number of House members who went. It was essentially
26:15
Speaker 1: me and about half of the Congressional Black Caucus, so
26:18
Speaker 1: they were almost all Democrats. And so I flew over
26:22
Speaker 1: with John Lewis, I flew over with Maxine Waters, who
26:26
Speaker 1: you know, my mom said, if you don't have anything
26:28
Speaker 1: nice to say, don't say anything. So I've said everything
26:30
Speaker 1: I'm going to say about Maxine, right, But John Lewis,
26:35
Speaker 1: I mean talk about someone who was who was legendary.
26:39
Speaker 1: And I spent much of that trip, you know, long
26:42
Speaker 1: trip to South Africa, we went to the funeral together,
26:45
Speaker 1: long trip home. I spent a lot of it just
26:48
Speaker 1: just listening to him and saying, you know, can you
26:50
Speaker 1: tell me stories about being on the Edmund Pettis Bridge
26:54
Speaker 1: in Selma, about standing up for civil rights as a
26:57
Speaker 1: young man, about stand with doctor Martin Luther King on
27:01
Speaker 1: the on the steps of the Lincoln Memorials as he
27:05
Speaker 1: gave the the I Have a Dream speech. I mean,
27:07
Speaker 1: you know, as a young young teenager, John Lewis was
27:11
Speaker 1: was a leading figure in the civil rights movement, and
27:14
Speaker 1: he was he was charming, he was he was courageous
27:20
Speaker 1: um and his leadership in the civil rights movement made
27:24
Speaker 1: a big difference and he's passed, and so Democrats doing
27:30
Speaker 1: what they do are taking his name and trying to
27:35
Speaker 1: use it to pass a bill that would be a
27:38
Speaker 1: terrible bill. Yeah, yeah, I was wondering if they have
27:42
Speaker 1: a bill to erect a statue of John Lewis, sign
27:45
Speaker 1: me up. If they have a bill to tell John
27:48
Speaker 1: Lewis's life story, sign me up. If they have a
27:52
Speaker 1: bill to vindicate the legacy of John Lewis by defending
27:57
Speaker 1: people's civil rights, sign me up. But what this bill
28:00
Speaker 1: does is it reinstates Section five of the Voting Rights
28:06
Speaker 1: Act and extends it to everyone. All right, what does
28:09
Speaker 1: that mean? That's lawyer gobbledegook. There are two main sections
28:14
Speaker 1: of the Voting Rights Act that have had significant teeth
28:18
Speaker 1: over the years. Section two of the Voting Rights Act,
28:22
Speaker 1: which prohibits deluding the votes, reducing the right to vote
28:28
Speaker 1: of minorities. That's the provision under which the Department of
28:32
Speaker 1: Justice is suing Georgia. Section two still applies. Where it
28:36
Speaker 1: typically applies is where you have, say, a redistricting effort
28:41
Speaker 1: that is designed to dilute the votes of minority So,
28:44
Speaker 1: for example, white Democrats for decades had a path to
28:51
Speaker 1: elect more white Democrats, and we actually had back in
28:56
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, I was the lead lawyer for
28:58
Speaker 1: Texas on redistrict and argued the Texas Redistrict in case
29:03
Speaker 1: in front of the US Supreme Court. Won that case
29:06
Speaker 1: five four, and in that case we went through the
29:09
Speaker 1: history of white Democrats in Texas. What they discovered is
29:14
Speaker 1: that if you design a district that has just enough
29:20
Speaker 1: African American voters and just enough Hispanic voters, that neither
29:23
Speaker 1: one can win a primary. In Democratic primaries, they found
29:28
Speaker 1: traditionally the African American voters and the Hispanic voters would
29:31
Speaker 1: vote differently than each other. That you made sure you
29:36
Speaker 1: didn't put from their perspective, too many African Americans are
29:39
Speaker 1: too many Hispanics. What would happened is if you had,
29:41
Speaker 1: say an African American Democrat against a white Democrat, the
29:45
Speaker 1: Hispanics and white Democrats would vote for the white Democrat. Likewise,
29:49
Speaker 1: if you had a Hispanic Democrat versus a white Democrat,
29:54
Speaker 1: the white Democrats and the Black Democrats would vote for
29:56
Speaker 1: the white Democrat over the Hispanic Democrat. And Southern Democrats
30:01
Speaker 1: had this down to a science in terms of how
30:03
Speaker 1: to have just enough minorities to be sure to win
30:07
Speaker 1: the general because they would all come together and vote
30:09
Speaker 1: for the Democrat the general, but not too many that
30:13
Speaker 1: you could actually have an Hispanic or African American win
30:16
Speaker 1: a Democratic primary. Was all about stopping minorities from winning
30:19
Speaker 1: Democratic primaries, and that was the cynical strategy Democrats pursued
30:24
Speaker 1: in Texas and in states across the South. In Texas
30:28
Speaker 1: in the two thousand and three redistricting, essentially, when the
30:31
Speaker 1: Republicans took control of the legislature, Essentially what they did
30:36
Speaker 1: is they created a new African American Democrat district, They
30:40
Speaker 1: created a new Hispanic Democrat district, and they obliterated all
30:44
Speaker 1: the white Democrats who had jerrymandered their seats so they
30:47
Speaker 1: could stay in power. And Democrats were furious about it.
30:52
Speaker 1: They didn't want new Hispanic Democrats and new African American
30:57
Speaker 1: Democrats elected, and so we had testimony at the trial
31:00
Speaker 1: about how this had been the long strategy of white
31:05
Speaker 1: Democrats to disenfranchise minorities. Anyway, all of that is analyzed
31:13
Speaker 1: under Section two of the Voting Rights Act, and so
31:15
Speaker 1: part of the reason why we one virtually every claim
31:19
Speaker 1: in the Texas redistricting case because we laid out that
31:22
Speaker 1: the effect of this redistricting actually increased minority representation, and
31:27
Speaker 1: so that the results satisfied the legal test that Section
31:31
Speaker 1: two of the Voting Rights Act. So what section five?
31:34
Speaker 1: Section five is a provision the Voting Rights Act had
31:38
Speaker 1: that for certain jurisdictions that were almost exclusively jurisdictions in
31:43
Speaker 1: the South where there had been a history of significant
31:48
Speaker 1: prior discrimination, that those jurisdictions required what's called preclearance. What
31:56
Speaker 1: that means is if the legislature changed any voting law,
31:59
Speaker 1: made any change in voting laws at all, that change
32:04
Speaker 1: had to be submitted to the Department of Justice for
32:08
Speaker 1: preclearance by the Department of Justice. And so what you
32:12
Speaker 1: would have was unelected bureaucrats, career lawyers who work of
32:16
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Division, who were almost one hundred percent
32:20
Speaker 1: hard left liberal Democrats. Yeah, they were required to determine
32:25
Speaker 1: whether a change in voting rights law could go into effect.
32:29
Speaker 1: And it was only a limited number of jurisdictions that
32:33
Speaker 1: were subject to preclearance. And essentially in the South, Texas
32:38
Speaker 1: was a preclearance jurisdiction not based on actually discrimination concerning
32:43
Speaker 1: African Americans, but based on a determination of discrimination concerning
32:47
Speaker 1: Mexican Americans is what made the state of Texas subject
32:50
Speaker 1: to it. But you know the entire Northeast where there's
32:54
Speaker 1: rampant history of discrimination, sadly as there is across a
33:00
Speaker 1: planet Earth, that bigotry is something we've wrestled with as
33:04
Speaker 1: long as man has been on the planet. Much of
33:09
Speaker 1: the country was exempt from this. Well. A few years
33:13
Speaker 1: ago the Supreme Court struck down Section five of the
33:16
Speaker 1: Voting Rights Act, struck down preclearance. The Supreme Court thirty
33:20
Speaker 1: forty years ago, it upheld it and said, look, this
33:25
Speaker 1: really stretches our constitutional system to have an unelected federal
33:30
Speaker 1: bureaucrat having veto power over laws passed by elected state legislatures.
33:36
Speaker 1: But the Supreme Court concluded that the history of the
33:40
Speaker 1: Civil War and segregation was so profound and pervasive that
33:45
Speaker 1: it justified a massive departure from the ordinary constitutional structures. Now,
33:52
Speaker 1: whether or not that decision is right or wrong, that
33:54
Speaker 1: decision was made forty plus years ago. Supreme Court a
33:57
Speaker 1: few years ago said, however, the formula to determine which
34:03
Speaker 1: jurisdictions are subject to Section five was fifty years old.
34:08
Speaker 1: The Supreme Courts said, look, this formula is out of date.
34:10
Speaker 1: The entire country has changed. Most of the people who
34:13
Speaker 1: were alive at the time of this formula are dead.
34:15
Speaker 1: Now there's a whole new population. People who moved in
34:18
Speaker 1: move out. And for this kind of extraordinary remedy, you've
34:24
Speaker 1: got to have a current evidentiary basis of a pattern
34:29
Speaker 1: of pervasive discrimination that justifies such a remarkable step. Democrats
34:35
Speaker 1: in the media screamed and hollered and said, oh, the
34:38
Speaker 1: Supreme Court has struck down the Voting Rights Act, which
34:40
Speaker 1: is not true. It was one provision of the Voting
34:42
Speaker 1: Rights Act, which was a fairly extraordinary provision. So what
34:46
Speaker 1: does the John Lewis Bill do? Reinstates Section five preclearance,
34:50
Speaker 1: but instead of defining a formula based on a history
34:53
Speaker 1: of discrimination, it subjects the entire country to it. So
34:57
Speaker 1: it says, every change in voting rights laws anywhere in
35:01
Speaker 1: the country, ye cannot go into effect until the Department
35:06
Speaker 1: of Justice authorizes it. Now, what I'd like to what
35:10
Speaker 1: I'd like to know about this is, you know, look
35:14
Speaker 1: look at me. I don't have a law school education.
35:16
Speaker 1: So it seemed pretty simple. If they struck it down before,
35:18
Speaker 1: if they struck down the more modest version of this,
35:21
Speaker 1: and now there's an even more ambitious version of this.
35:23
Speaker 1: Surely the court would strike it down. Now, the Court
35:26
Speaker 1: has given us a lot of disappointing decisions. Actually, just
35:30
Speaker 1: in recent days, they've now discovered some right of men
35:35
Speaker 1: to use the women's bathroom, and multiple ostensibly original ast
35:39
Speaker 1: judges voted for that as well. So it would seem
35:43
Speaker 1: very obvious that the Court should should strike this down.
35:45
Speaker 1: That would just seem logical. And the court isn't has
35:48
Speaker 1: given us a lot of terrible decisions. So something tells
35:51
Speaker 1: me that that is not necessarily what's going to happen.
35:54
Speaker 1: So it's not at all clear the court would strike it. Dad,
35:56
Speaker 1: I agree that it should. More fundamentally, we talk about
36:00
Speaker 1: Christin Clark a minute ago. Kristin Clark is the head
36:03
Speaker 1: of the Civil Rights Division. So what Democrats are proposing
36:06
Speaker 1: is that Kristin Clark, this hard leftist radical who about
36:12
Speaker 1: advocated abolishing the police, who organized a conference celebrating and
36:17
Speaker 1: lionizing cop killers, that she should be in charge of
36:21
Speaker 1: deciding what voting rights laws are allowed and what voting
36:24
Speaker 1: rights laws are not, and she should have veto power
36:27
Speaker 1: over every state legislature in the country if she disagrees
36:31
Speaker 1: with what they're doing. The reason the Democrats want this
36:35
Speaker 1: is they know the civil rights Division even under a
36:37
Speaker 1: Republican president, the career lawyers are a hard leftist activist.
36:42
Speaker 1: Here's the consequence if this so called John Lewis Bill
36:46
Speaker 1: were to pass, no state in the country could ever
36:49
Speaker 1: again pass a voter id law because the Department of
36:52
Speaker 1: Justice career bureaucrats would strike it down. No state in
36:55
Speaker 1: the country could pass a prohibition on ballot harvesting lawyers
36:58
Speaker 1: that Department of Justice would strike it down. No state
37:01
Speaker 1: could pass any provisions designed to prevent dead people from voting,
37:07
Speaker 1: to prevent any legal aliens from voting, to prevent felons
37:10
Speaker 1: and criminals from voting, because the hard political activists of
37:14
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice would veto the decision of democratically
37:18
Speaker 1: elected legislatures. And what this all comes down to, Democrats
37:22
Speaker 1: today don't believe in democracy, just like the corrupt politicians act.
37:27
Speaker 1: They want to rig the system so that they win. Heads,
37:31
Speaker 1: they win, tails, you lose, and it's all about disempowering
37:35
Speaker 1: the voters. Ironically enough, in the name of voting rights,
37:39
Speaker 1: right right. It's an interesting point that we seem to
37:43
Speaker 1: be okay right now on the Grupt Politicians Act that
37:46
Speaker 1: seems to be on the back burner for the moment.
37:48
Speaker 1: So now the Democrats are trying to achieve perhaps an
37:51
Speaker 1: even more ambitious paragraph from another angle. All of this
37:55
Speaker 1: is enough to depress one unless you knew that we're
38:00
Speaker 1: going to be taking Verdict on the road. We are
38:01
Speaker 1: partnering with the Young America's Foundation. We're going to multiple
38:05
Speaker 1: school I think we're going to six schools and universities
38:09
Speaker 1: with YAF. You can go to YAF dot org slash
38:13
Speaker 1: Verdict right now to request that we come to your school.
38:17
Speaker 1: The deadline is August eighteenth, Senator. Should we go to
38:22
Speaker 1: the really nice, wonderful conservative schools with the Young America's
38:25
Speaker 1: Foundation or should we go to the crazy leftist, insane
38:28
Speaker 1: schools that are going to run us out of town
38:30
Speaker 1: on the rail. Well it sames to me that should
38:32
Speaker 1: be up to the listeners of Verdict to decide. And
38:34
Speaker 1: so so you tell us if you're a student right now,
38:37
Speaker 1: you might be at one of the few havens of sanity,
38:41
Speaker 1: and you say, hey, come come cheer us on and
38:44
Speaker 1: and and reach out to us. On the other hand,
38:48
Speaker 1: you might be behind enemy lines, surrounded by Bolsheviks and Mensheviks,
38:52
Speaker 1: and and and and looking for a Berlin airlift. You know,
38:57
Speaker 1: my guess is we're We're open to do it a
38:59
Speaker 1: little of both. But it's really the incredible listeners a
39:03
Speaker 1: Verdict who are going to make that decision. We want
39:05
Speaker 1: to free Brittany, we want to free the students on campus.
39:09
Speaker 1: We want to free all of us here in this country.
39:11
Speaker 1: So make sure you get those names in yaft dot
39:13
Speaker 1: org slash Verdict. August eighteenth is the deadline, but we'll
39:17
Speaker 1: be speaking much more before until then. In the meantime,
39:20
Speaker 1: I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This
39:31
Speaker 1: episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to
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Speaker 1: you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action
39:37
Speaker 1: committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across
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39:49
Speaker 1: and help the Republican Party across the nation.