We know what happened, and we know who did it.

That's right.

Yeah, and anyone who says otherwise is high, stupid, or from a different planet.

I mean, this was an attack that was the easiest thing to see coming.

in retrospect.

We've been following al-Qaeda for years.

Osama bin Laden had written two fatwas in Al-Quds Arabia in London newspapers in the 90s.

Is it possible to separate religion from this conversation? And even more so, have we lost the ability to draw a distinction between Islam and Islamism?

Okay, so how many charges are against her, and what exactly are they? What are they trying to decide?

Well, really what they're trying to decide is at the time she murdered her three children.

It's not a question of whether she did.

She did it.

Was it first-degree premeditated murder, willful, deliberate premeditated murder? Was it second-degree murder? Was it manslaughter, which is a lesser included offense of murder? Or is she not guilty by reason of insanity or mental disease or defect? In other words, at the moment she was strangling each of those precious little kids with those exercise bands, did she not understand the difference between right and wrong at that moment of each time she did it? And, I mean, I think it's hard on one level, but to a lot of us, I mean, she sends her husband away.

She plans ahead.

She gets the exercise bands.

I've been on a jury, and it is a really – interesting dynamic when you actually live it because it is like people want to get out of there and they are just livid that you are not letting them free there they feel like they're trapped and so as much as i do think that i mean it's not a perfect system but it is the best system out there wouldn't you agree

uh but prisons like historically the numbers probably bear it out that they don't really they don't obviously they work because they keep people in that are are terrible human beings but there's really no or not a lot of rehabilitation should we try to figure out a way just to really improve those numbers

well let's let's first look at the big picture here 90 percent of crimes are prosecuted at the state and local level.

Only 10% are prosecuted at the federal level.

So the first step back, which was passed in the first Trump administration, which was a bipartisan effort to reform federal criminal justice, was helpful, but that only affected the 200 plus thousand people in federal prison.

The other reality is that a third of the people who get arrested end up not being prosecuted.

Another third who get arrested and prosecuted, the cases don't amount to much.

And even the third that get prosecuted who go to prison, their prison sentences aren't that long.

And I don't see why we can't get to a place where we understand that together.

But at the end of the day, there's three kids in coffins.

She's not the victim.

She may be a person who didn't get the best medical care.

And we certainly feel sorry for people who suffer from postpartum anything, especially psychosis or people who are drug dependent.

But the victims are three young angels who are now in heaven.

That's it.

This is a case about a woman who murdered her three children by strangulation, which is hard to do.

Come on, you got to read the room here.

So what do you attribute it to? And also, how do we maintain and keep the momentum going?

Well, they're definitely going in the right direction and you always want crime numbers to go down, but let's, let's start with the bad news.

Then I'll focus on the good.

The bad news is we still have a major crime problem in this country.

Murder problem.

Last year when the crime numbers were down, uh, more murders were happening and happened in the United States than all of Europe, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia combined.

So we had a big problem still.

So why not jump on board with law enforcement? Why try to defund the police departments? Why try and abolish ICE? Why are we sending social workers to violent crime scenes to try and solve the problems? What the hell's going on? Why don't we get more serious about it? Even in the blue states about crime, who wants that in their backyard?

Yep

... it's less likely that you're gonna commit a crime in front of them.

And so that has helped.

But Jeanine Pirro's, you know, actually prosecuting people and holding people accountable, and then bringing some juveniles who are eligible, uh, 16 and 17-year-olds only, and trying them as adults.

I mean, most of the armed carjacking in this c- in this city are done by 14, 15 and 16-year-olds.

She can take the 16 and 17-year-olds, but look, let's not be t- naive here.

The DC City Council tried to pass a massive, massive pro-criminal re- quote, "reform of the criminal justice system", eliminating all mandatory minimums.

Hmm.

I mean,

what a moron.

What a moron.

I mean, I served in the government and the military and the civilian side and stuff.

And, you know, not only are you subject to the Freedom of Information Act, right, when you're in government service, as you should be.

But if you're going to have a private diary, you don't write it on your government computer and you don't write private stuff on your government issued phone, which is where, by the way, these texts are coming from.

And so, you know, I mean, character is destiny, and he's getting his destiny right now.

What if he sat down today and admitted everything he knew and that he was purposely misleading the American public? If he admits that now, is that still covered by the pardon because he did it then?

This only underscores what I was saying All that many months ago

I think what we're starting to see is that, you know, Tony Fauci, who probably had a somewhat decent career, probably a remarkable career as an unknown government scientist in public health for years, and then COVID happens.

Uh, I have it on good authority that he had an ego bigger than the state of Alaska before that, and he was vicious in private meetings to people and berated people in private meetings when they didn't, uh, say things he wanted to hear.

But he was the public face for this pandemic.

Uh, and when it's your turn to step up in the public spotlight, regardless of whether it's a national security issue or any other issue, what you really owe the American people is to be forthright, honest, and direct.

It's okay to say, "We don't know." It's okay.

In fact, it's probably better than doing what he's done.

No.

No big deal?

Oh, I think Fauci and his defenders and the Democrats are going to make a big deal out of it, and they're going to say, look, Senate rules exist for a reason, and we can't do this just after a committee vote.

And if we ever get in control of the majority, if you guys are going to play it that way, then what we'll do is we'll just have our committees vote on something and send it directly to DOJ.

But the statute itself doesn't require a full vote of the Senate.

But in the past, in the House and the Senate, like, for example, Lois Lerner – who was head of the tax-exempt organizations of the IRS.

She targeted conservative organizations, including Heritage, by the way, the Heritage Foundation, where I work.

The committee voted her in contempt.

What's the consequences? What penalty? Second of all, do you believe at some point he could be criminally charged in any of this?

How can you hold somebody in contempt of Congress for merely exercising their constitutional right?

Well, I think as Josh Hawley put very succinctly yesterday, he essentially had testimonial and transactional immunity for anything that happened during that time.

So he had no Fifth Amendment right because he'd already been pre-pardoned for anything he happened then.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court has been very clear that And as Holly put out, put forward, and anyone who's done criminal law knows that, you know, if you're asked a question like, what color is your tie? What is the day today? What's your name? And you claim the Fifth, there's no reasonable likelihood that you're going to be prosecuted for that.

So this was an abuse of and blanket invocation of his Fifth Amendment rights.

And if the committee was going to drill down into what happened during those bookend time periods where the immunity, where the pardon was covered, there was no way he was going to get prosecuted.

Now, I think most criminal defense attorneys would have told Fauci, take the fifth and we'll roll the dice and see what happened next.

What do you say if you were a prosecutor, which you have been, what would you be looking for on these phones?

What is the basis for that referral and does it expose him to any legal jeopardy?

Well, he was held in contempt by a committee of the Senate.

And under the applicable federal statute now, what has to happen is the committee's referral will now actually go to the president of the Senate, who actually is the vice president of the United States under the Constitution.

And then I'm sure Leader Thune and the vice president will decide whether the full Senate will vote to accept the committee's referral and contempt.

And if they do, then they're required to send that over to the U.S. attorney here in D.C., Jeanine Pirro.

And then she has the discretion of whether or not to bring that to the grand jury or not.

So there's a lot of green between the ball and the cup on this one.

Now, the Justice Department, if they decide to pursue this referral, what comes next?

Mm-hmm

... of our nation's, uh, founding.

Um, if you think 1776 was the nation's founding, I think some people would say it was actually 1787 or '89 once the constitutional ratification debates took place in the States.

Uh, but regardless of your number, um, it is, it is an anachronism.

It is, it is an anathema to think that Congress can set up a so-called independent agency and then plop it over in the executive branch and then not have the head of the executive branch have a say over who the heads of these so-called independent agencies are.

And so in the conservative movement, not just the conservative legal movement, this separation of powers abomination, Humphrey's Executor, has led to all sorts of things, including, but not limited to, Congress passing gauzy-sounding laws, punting it to the executive branch, to the independent agencies, and then the so-called fourth branch of government-

Uh, but fortunately, the court slapped that down and said, uh, "We're not gonna play games with the procedural posture of these cases."

Yeah.

What did we see in this term of the court that maybe indicated where the court will be going in the future? What this particular court was thinking when they were going through this term? What were the trends?

So I think a lot of people don't really have an understanding of the scope of number of cases the court takes up.

And so last year, this term that just ended in June, they issued 66 majority opinions, 58 of which were signed.

The rest were per curiam.

That means no signature.

But interestingly enough, 43.9% were unanimous decisions.

I don't think a lot of people are surprised by that.

And so it'll be interesting to see if the justices try to tweak that in the upcoming terms.

in

a case where the D.C.

Circuit actually upheld and decided, no, we're not going to let Trump's so-called transgender ban and the executive order that Pete Hegseth put into place barring people who are transgender to serve in the military.

And this is despite the mountain of evidence, mountain of evidence that Justin Walker lays out in his dissent, that this isn't just an opinion.

This is based on medical information on people in transition that they're just not fit to serve.

And you know, as a father of a sailor, There is an entire list with thousands of disqualifying physical or mental issues that disqualify people from service.

And this gender dysphoria is no different than a lot of these other medically disqualifying issues.

when when we did not only you know uh bring in uh people of various uh races or skin skin colors into the military and they were integrated into the the entire uh force that was not a judge saying you must do this that was the executive branch saying we're going to do this when women were brought in the military when women were allowed into the service academies it wasn't because a court told the military they had to do it it was done via the executive branch through the commander in chief uh because that's what the constitution dictates What about this new approach here of courts forcing the Pentagon to make these decisions?

Do you agree with President Trump's position that it shouldn't exist anymore?

Well, I think it's irrelevant now.

I mean, the Heritage Foundation, where I work, took lead on the scholarship, and many other distinguished conservative scholars took the position that the language in the Fourteenth Amendment subject to the jurisdiction thereof was intended to free the children of emancipated Blacks after the Civil War, and it wasn't meant to grant universal birthright citizenship to any alien who came to our shores.

But we've lost that argument, and now the only way to change it is to amend the Constitution.

Um, and in terms of, uh, the broader immigration agenda that the president is pushing, how does this fit into that? Of course, Heritage has worked on some of those policies, uh, and some of those ideas.

Well, I think that, you know, Trump should be applauded for securing the border, which was one of the mandates the people gave him when they put him back into office.

And then he's having a tough time removing the many people that he promised he would try to remove because of resistance in this country.

But, you know, President Obama removed many more people than President Bush, and President Trump did at, at this point in his tenure.

A major defeat for, uh, Donald Trump, right?

Yeah, or any president who wants to try to do this by executive order.

The interesting part about this decision to me is the chief, just like he did yesterday in Slaughter, spends a lot of time going through the history of the United States.

He goes through the odious decision of Dred Scott, which of course was authored by Roger Brooke Taney from Frederick, Maryland.

Uh, he lays out from Blackstone's commentaries all throughout the, the history of our country this concept of jus soli, which means right of the soil.

So if you were born in England, you were a person of the soil and you were an English citizen, and how that migrated over here to the United States, it's been the case the whole time.

It was embedded in the 14th Amendment, uh, and so I'm not surprised, uh, by, by this at all.

What do you think, Elie?

What's your reaction to this, uh, opinion, this, just released by the US Supreme Court?

I'm actually not surprised by the holding of the opinion because this is, I would say, uh- The further extension of the Court's jurisprudence and the Second Amendment, starting with Heller, then McDonald, then Bruen, then Rahimi.

Uh, and you see that the Court has said very loud and clearly that, "Look, you do have a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

You do have...

It applies to the states," that's McDonald.

Uh, there are good...

There are restrictions out there that you can place on your Second Amendment rights.

Give us your sense, uh, Cully, what's the, what's your reaction?

What is happening here?

Well, it's not all of New York.

It's the radical liberals in New York who simply want the nuns, who are Roman Catholic, not to violate their Holy Grail, which is transgender policies.

And this should remind everybody of the Little Sisters of the Poor and other cases that came before the Supreme Court years ago where, for example, in that case, the Obamacare mandate required people to enroll in health care plans that provided abortifacients.

And the nuns, in a cloistered nunnery, were like, we don't need those.

We're cloistered nuns.

We take a vow of chastity and poverty.

They're just not dealing with the other stuff that comes with it.

What is happening here?

Well, it's not all of New York.

It's the radical liberals in New York who simply want the nuns, who are Roman Catholic, not to violate their Holy Grail, which is transgender policies.

And this should remind everybody of the Little Sisters of the Poor and other cases that came before the Supreme Court years ago where, for example, in that case, the Obamacare mandate required people to enroll in health care plans that provided abortifacients.

And the nuns, in a cloistered nunnery, were like, we don't need those.

We're cloistered nuns.

We take a vow of chastity and poverty.

They're just not dealing with the other stuff that comes with it.

How did this suddenly become some indictment of America's racist criminal justice system? The facts seem pretty clear here.

The facts are crystal clear.

This is not a race issue, and in fact, if you ...

You don't have to take my word for it, the defense attorney said that in his closing remarks.

The prosecution said that in their remarks.

And the only people that are race hustling about this case are the people outside the courtroom, uh, mainly the Blacks.

And frankly, uh, there have been thousands of beefs between young boys, uh, since the murder.

Yeah.

Fernandez

is different.

Fernandez... was engaged in a convicted murder-for-hire scheme, killing two rival gang members.

And he got a life sentence.

And he was appealing his convictions like people do after their state convictions run their course.

through the federal habeas process.

And the federal habeas process is essentially you run your state convictions through the state, you get denied by the state Supreme Court or the highest court, and then you bring a habeas corpus petition to the federal side saying you were denied certain civil rights, okay? And what this guy was saying was, wait, I don't think I should have been convicted because this piece of evidence or that piece of evidence was insufficient to convict me.

Can you talk about that?

So what happened in those cases? What was kind of at issue?

Yeah.

So in, um...

First off, these are bad dudes, okay? They committed these crimes.

They're not challenging the, uh, at least in, in, um, uh, the Rutherford case, they weren't seeking, um, to contest their convictions.

They were simply saying, "Look," um, uh, in Rutherford, you know, two guys, "W- we got, we got long sentences," all right? And, uh, and in fact, we got long sentences that were a result of what are called the twenty-five-year stacking provisions under the criminal law sentencing provisions of the law before the FIRST STEP Act.

These guys were bank robbers.

Can you talk about that?

But in the end, this really was a pretty straightforward murder case, wasn't it?

It was.

It was not a whodunit, nor did the defense pretend it was a whodunit.

They knew their client did it.

But their defense was either self-defense or heat of passion.

And I think the victory for them And there is a little victory here for them, is that they got the judge to instruct the jury on a manslaughter charge, which is the lesser included offense of first-degree murder.

Now we know the jury came back with a very quick verdict, which almost always means that they're going to find him guilty, and they found him guilty of the top charge, and now he'll put the case over for several weeks or longer to get the pre-sentence report and sentence the guy.

But I don't know, Cully, where does it go from here? What's the next step?

Yeah.

Uh, and, uh, it's literally called Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America's Communities.

We didn't dedicate a chapter to Steve Descano, 'cause he's a little guppy compared to the George Gascons in LA and the Chesa Boudins and the Larry Krasners and the Mosbys, but he's a big problem.

And he got $659,000 from Soros-related PACs when he first ran.

That was 70% of his campaign contributions, Larry.

And so-

Can you please explain to us, um, what the actual law states when it comes to victims of crime, regardless of their immigration status?

Yeah.

some of the hysterical coverage and really, like, how the court system probably will look at that revelation?

Yep.

Uh, this happens all the time, so this is nothing new.

Uh, first off, procedurally, we are waiting for the preliminary hearing to take place, and a preliminary hearing, uh, is a hearing, no jury, just a judge, and the standard that the government has to meet is probable cause.

That's it.

Probable cause to believe that this dude committed these crimes that are charged against him.

It's not an opportunity for the defense to engage in discovery.

What do you, what, what do you take from today's arguments, and what surprised you most about, uh, what, what some of the justices elicited?