Time To Investigate The Assassination Attempt on Former President Trump | The Trey Gowdy Podcast

Intro hey this is Trey and I am actually in Wisconsin beautiful Wisconsin Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention and today is Monday although you will not hear this on Monday so by the time you hear it nominee Donald Trump will have likely already picked his vice presidential running mate um so I don't know who it is don't have any U inside knowledge would just make a couple of observations I mean whoever look the nominee is entitled to pick whoever he or she feels most comfortable running with the president H former president has said that the two Criterion that he is looking for are number one uh the ability to take over uh should the need um emerge to run the country uh and number two um someone that that shares his ideological belief structure um I would ask um no one's asked my opinion but sometimes I do volunteer even though it isn't asked I think in The Assassination Attempt light of recent events uh the presidential immunity ruling from the Supreme Court um the very very uh near assassination uh on Saturday the assassination attempt that was unsuccessful really by a matter of inches that the the the nominee the former president Trump is in a unique position uh to pick the person he wants to pick but also has a chance for an electoral Victory the likes of which we have not seen since Ronald Reagan I think all of the all the trends are heading in the right direction for him and if you listen to this podcast or watch the television show or no know me at all you know that Tim Scott is someone I'm very high on Marco Rubio I've known for a long time Tom Cotton Mike Pompeo John Ratcliffe I don't know Governor berham um I don't know JD Vince I've actually never met either of them that may change at some point um again Donald Trump can pick whoever he feels most comfortable running with but there is an opportunity to to reach Beyond those that you already have I was talking to a friend of mine in the US Senate and he kind of stated the obvious which is the the your supporters can only vote for you once um it doesn't matter how passionate they are it doesn't matter how enthusiastic they are they only can cast a single vote for you so if politics is a game of addition who can actually make that tent broader who can appeal to folks that maybe need a nudge maybe need a push so it will be fascinating and again by the time you hear this he will have already made his pick and you're he's the nominee he's entitled to pick whoever he feels most comfortable running with I just think that that that he has this arguably once in a generation opportunity given recent events given polling given his current opponent to really do something almost reaganesque and I say that because winning the Electoral College earns you the right to govern and that is no small thing you're the president of the United States you're the chief of the executive branch it earns you the right to govern if you're seeking a mandate if you're seeking transformational change if you're seeking to fundamentally remake America in a better more prosperous safer way that requires more than just simply narrowly running the Electoral College Gauntlet you know I'm thinking in my recent past Ronald Reagan obviously won the popular vote and the Electoral College George W bush once won the popular vote and the electoral college but that's only two presidents since I was in college that I can think of that won both the Electoral contr college and the popular vote and there's you don't have to win both but there's no rule or law that says you can't and sometimes sometimes who you pick as a running mate reflects um something or tells us something about who you are and how you view the country so I'm hopeful that it will be an inspired pick um obviously um a man or a woman capable of stepping in should they need a rise someone that shares the nominees IDE ideological belief structure core ideology but also someone who brings things to the table that aren't currently at the table now for what I really wanted to talk about I was on air with two of my favorite people in the world this morning Dana Pino and Bill hmer when news broke that a judge in Florida had issued an order in the documents case also known as defense material also known as possession of classified documents special prosecutor Jack Smith's prosecution in Florida judge eileene Cannon issued her order literally while we were on air and the good news for me Special Counsel is I spent three years in law school talking about cases I had not actually read and there's a special talent to be able to talk about cases that you haven't read so I was unique Al well positioned to do it I was trying to read the opinion during commercial breaks on my phone but I'm so old in my eyesight so bad I was having a hard time doing that I should have had one of my kids with me that can actually read the tiny print on the phone but I can break it down to you like this do y'all remember Ken star God Rest his soul Ken star was what we call Independent Council and that was a statutory creation Congress created in independent Council and then that statute lapsed and was never renewed so put that in one bucket special counsel not independent counsel special counsel is not a statutory creation that emanates from Department of Justice regulations so it is regulation 600 if memory serves me correctly and you can go read it and should read it for yourself special council is warranted if there is a conflict of interest in a criminal matter that requires either further investigation or prosecution so there must be either a real or perceived conflict of interest with the current attorney general or Deputy attorney general and then so where do you look next you look at all the US attorneys that we have in the country and there are scores of them there are dozens and dozens of us attorneys you look at your Deputy or assistant attorney generals to see whether or not someone can take over if you have a conflict but that's not what Meritt Garland did he did not go to Someone Like A John Durham who was already a sitting us attorney um or had already been approved by the US Senate he didn't even go to a bob meller now Bob Mueller I believe was in private practice at the time he was picked uh to be special Council but he had been confirmed by the Senate twice once as a US attorney and once as an FBI director so he had been Senate confirmed unless I miss something Jack Smith has never been Senate confirmed so you have a private citizen impowered by a doj regulation that was never passed by Congress never signed into law so you take that Chevron opinion rundo which kind of overruled Chevron which kind of cast a kind of a skeptical eye at the whole administrative State and then you couple that with the reality that the special Council regulation is not a statutory creation it is truly just that it is it is an administrative regulation and it makes you My Recommendations wonder how we got to the point where a private citizen is empowered to investigate a major political candidate so here's what I would ask you to do and I know this sounds naive and I don't mean to sound naive but read the doj regulations read what is required to appoint special counsel and then ask yourself is there not a better way why not have Congress get involved why not have it pass the House and Senate be signed into law if you don't want to go back to Independent Council that's fine but at least don't allow something as important as the investigation of a presidential candidate to be conducted by someone who has not been vetted by either house or Senate and is essentially a private citizen who happens to have vast prosecutorial power discretion and nearly Limitless resources so those are the dominant things on my mind I would add finally just because we have a tendency in this country sometimes and necessarily so human nature does not like to dwell in darkness we don't like to dwell uh where things are sad we we want to move on we're kind of wired to move on but before we move do move on we need to make sure we have all the facts we are merely days removed from an assassination attempt on a presid on a former president who is the leading candidate to be president again and so I'm going to reiterate that we should gather all the facts and it may well be that Congress can investigate Secret Service themselves and I have tremendous respect for law enforcement but that does no one is immune from investigation we need to know how someone could scale the top of a building with a long gun and take a shot at the head of a former president maybe Congress can do that maybe it requires an outside Law Firm maybe it requires a fresh set of eyes but we need to know how that happened and I was reminded because I'd almost forgot um you know getting bills signed into law um is not easy and that is not the way I judge success when it comes to people who have served in Congress I have colleagues who never had a Bill signed into law and I still viewed them to be successful but it may have been the first bill that I had signed into law that provided lifetime protection for former presidents and I did it President Obama was President at the time but we had George W bush who was still a relatively young man you still had Bill Clinton you still had Jimmy Carter you still had presidents who will unfort fortunately because of human nature and because there's always people with malevolent hearts that seek to do harm they will always need to be protected and so we changed the law we changed the law to guarantee that former presidents have lifetime Secret Service protection and aren't we glad we did that because the the younger the the longer we live the younger we elect presidents the more need there will be and is it expensive yes yes is it expensive to have Secret Service protection absolutely is it worth the cost of someone's life for which you can place no value on of course not so yes I get it it's expensive lots of things are expensive and we still do them because it's the right thing to do here's what I would ask you to do don't rely on me don't rely on people who don't like the decision that judge Kenan reached and therefore think that she must somehow be corrupt or crooked because you happen to disagree I got lots of rulings from judges that I disagreed with and I never once viewed that judge as being corrupt I may have disagreed I may have thought that judge was wrong but go read her opinion and then ask yourself is there not a better way if there is a conflict of interest if the Attorney General and all the US attorneys and all the career prosecutors at doj are not able to manage an investigation is there not a better way than to have some regulation wherein an otherwise private citizen is given this enormous power with an unlimited budget to investigate leading presidential candidates and I would be shocked politics aside I don't care if you're Republican Democrat bull mov wig don't care is there not a better way of ensuring that we have the best most proper investigation but it's done by someone who has been vetted as highly as you can vet someone the more power you give someone the more they should be vetted the more power you give someone the more oversight that person should have the more power you give someone the more check there should be on that power so read the opinion before you fall for what the left is doing now which is vilifying a judge and you will recall sometimes people say you know I hate to say I told you so I actually never hate to say I told you so it actually makes me feel good to say I told you so but remember when the immunity opinion came out and I encourage you to read that opinion Clarence Thomas devoted part of his concurring opinion on the validity of special counsel how preent was that in light of what happened today the fact that he would take time to question the propriety the authority of special counsil given what judge Canan rule today so I will summarize this as succinctly as I can there is no substitute for reading these opinions these orders for yourself do not rely on headlines do not rely on pundits don't even rely on me even though I try to be fair and I went to law school and I practiced law rely on your own eyes your own intuition your own sense of fairness read these opinions and orders for yourself you may agree with the conclusion you may disagree with the with the conclusion but I don't think you're going to reach the conclusion that someone is corrupt simply because they happen to rule in a way different from the way in which you would have ruled with that I'll see you on Thursday for Mary Langston's podcast and we will know who former president Trump perhaps future president Trump's running mate and who perhaps the future Vice President of the United States will be until then take care