Advisory Opinions - Justin Amash vs. Death Star

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan joins David and Sarah to discuss his announcement that he is exploring a presidential run as a candidate of the Libertarian Party. David and Sarah then turn to the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, in a South Georgia neighborhood. Show Notes: -A Vigilante Killing in Georgia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Ready? I was born ready. Oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isker, and I'm going to correct a mistake that I've been making in recent podcasts, which is I've been asking you all to rate our podcast, to continue to rate it on Apple Podcasts, and to continue to subscribe. I've been asking you to do that at the very end.

And not everyone hangs in for the last hour. It's still important for the full hour, I should say. It's still important for you to subscribe. It's still important for you to give us a good rating on Apple Podcasts. So we would really appreciate it if you do it. It helps us out a great deal. This is a very special podcast. So we would really appreciate it if you do it. It helps us out a great deal. This is a very special podcast, not a very special podcast in the sense of like a very special family ties or a very special different strokes, but a very special because this is the

first time in advisory opinions history that we have an active, is it precise to say presidential candidate or someone? No, it is not. It is not. Someone who has formed an exploratory committee to determine whether or not he's going to be a presidential candidate. The Federal Election Commission thanks you for your precision. Yes. As always, we like to be precise. So we're going to begin today with an interview with Justin Amash, who gave us a half hour of his time earlier today.

So we're going to start with that. I'm also going to note whose guest he is. And then we're going to follow up. We're going to follow up with an extended discussion of this horrible case that is dominating the media, rightfully so, out of Brunswick, Georgia, the Ahmaud Arbery case. I wrote about it today.

Sarah's been looking into this in detail. We're going to talk about the legal and cultural aspects of that. And also, before we go on, we're going to put a pin in the fact that the DOJ, just moments before we began recording this podcast, decided to drop its case against Michael Flynn. So we're going to put a pin in Flynn. We're going to talk about that probably on Monday after we've had a chance to review the DOJ filings. We don't want to do some sort of spontaneous hot take. So without further ado, let's start with Congressman Justin Amash. So we have Congressman Justin Amash, who has just made a bit of history and congressman you

correct can correct me if i'm wrong are you now the officially the first libertarian member of the libertarian party who's also a member of the united states congress that's what i'm told so i'll take people's word for it i think that's. You've also just formed an exploratory committee to run for president of the United States, seeking the Libertarian Party nomination, creating a splash and a furious amount of sniping back and forth, left and right, as to who you're helping, who you're hurting, what kind of chance do you have. i i just want to begin by noting that you had a a tweet that warmed my nerd heart earlier today and that was after brad parscale uh compared the trump campaign to the death star you tweeted a gif of luke skywalker blowing the death star up

which that is exactly the way to get the coveted dav French endorsement, highly coveted. But my question is, as you launch this effort, do you think that you are Luke Skywalker, or is this the charge of the Light Brigade, where it's a doomed charge with cannons to the right of you and cannons to the left of you? I think this is a winning battle. I don't view it as some kind of kamikaze attack or anything like that. I'm running because I believe I can win. And I wouldn't have gotten into this race if I didn't think there was a path to victory. So I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about it. And as part of that, of course, you think about the other candidates who are in the race. And I think you have two very weak candidates, candidates that aren't really inspiring and in some sense are just the default candidates of the party. You know, people are stuck with Donald Trump because he's already the president.

I know that he gets high marks in the Republican Party, but I think that's largely because things are so polarized right now. Republican Party. But I think that's largely because things are so polarized right now. And people often contrast him to the alternative, which they view as socialism or Democrats or Nancy Pelosi or whatever it might be. And I think that helps him just as a contrast matter. If you had someone else in the race presenting a different vision that was acceptable and, in fact, desired by millions of Republicans and conservatives, I think that they would welcome that. And so I looked at that, of course. But more important, neither of these two candidates is talking about what's really wrong with government.

The system itself is broken. The system itself is broken, and I want to fix that system by being a president who restores the proper role of each part of government. So as an executive, I want to limit my own powers and restore Congress as a representative body, because I think that's the only way we can get back to the thing I care about most and the thing that a lot of Americans care about, which is protecting our rights. That's the whole function of government, really. That's why it exists, to protect our rights. But you can't have a system that protects our rights if you don't have government functioning properly. So we have to get to that point. And over the course of the campaign, I hope to connect all of that to show how a properly functioning government helps protect our rights and is something that actually millions of libertarians like and also millions of other Americans. Despite what David may have told you about my opinions on third party candidacies, I actually think they do play an important role in all of those things. But I want to push you on the winning point.

So let's fast forward to September. The Commission on Presidential Debates, at least in 2016, there's not a whole lot of reason to think they would change this in 2020, says that in order to be on the debate stage, you would need at least 15% of the national electorate as determined by five national public opinion organizations, averaging those, etc. as determined by five national public opinion organizations, averaging those, etc. If you're not at 15% by December, so you don't make that debate stage, would you still say that you're running because you think you can win the White House? Would you no longer be running?

Or would you say at that point that there's another reason to run as a third party candidate for president? Well, I'm in the exploratory committee phase. I'm looking at the libertarian nomination. I'm trying to seek that nomination and earn the trust of the delegates so I can run in the general election against these other two candidates from the major parties. I do believe that there is a path to victory. And I believe 15% can be achieved and that I can get into the debates. And if you put me in the debates against these two candidates, I think it will be a disaster for the other two parties. I think it will be a total disaster.

So if anything, people should be encouraging me to do this. Get someone else on the debate stage and let's have a real choice. Let's have a real contrast. Let's have something other than that guy is worse than me. That's because that's what we're going to hear from Trump and Biden. Yeah, I'm bad, but that guy is worse. And we need someone who's going to be positive and uplifting and present a different vision for America and protect people's rights. That's what I'm about. Protecting our rights, having a representative system of government. Of course, right now, we can't look into the future and know what percentage I'll have in the polls at what time. My goal is to get as high a percentage as possible and win this

election. But I can't know from right now. It's not possible. How do you get from... So current polling has about... Well, under 20% know who you are, have an opinion of you. Yeah, I think that's probably, I think that's probably inflated. I'll bet it's less than 20%. About 6% had a favorable impression of you in that poll, 6% of American voters. How do you get from there to where you need to be to make the debate stage to where to, you know, 51% or plurality, let's give you a few points there, but to win the White House, how do you get your name ID of even people knowing who you are? Well, I'm doing things like this. I'm out there in the media talking to people. And I think

probably it's fewer than 6% who even know who I am right now. So I think the 20% is an exaggeration. People, when they go on onto these polls, maybe say they know the person, but don't always know the person. I don't know. They weight these things and do different things. So it's hard to say, but I think a very low percentage of the population knows who I am right now, or they have some percentage of the population knows who I am right now, or they have some, um, caricature version of me. Like I'm the guy who, uh, worked to impeach the president or, you know, it's, it's very simplistic and, um, and very much a caricature. And that, that also might contribute to this notion that people have that I'm going to somehow pull votes away from Biden and help Trump, because I think I'm probably more widely known right now for opposing Trump and for doing things

that make Democrats happy in Congress. I mean, that's how I got some of the fame, even though my voting record is not aligned with the Democrats. You know, my voting record is more aligned with Republicans. It's not really aligned with either party in any major way. You know, I'm more of a libertarian, more of a classical liberal. But I'm probably more well known now for things that are not related to my conservatism or libertarianism. And over the course of this campaign, that will change. People will start to get to know who Justin Amash is, what I stand for. And I think

that will really have an impact on the polling and an impact on my ability to win this race. I think I will start to draw a lot of people from the right and still some people from the left, and it will start to have a big impact. And there are obviously millions of independents out there as well. So let's talk a bit about distinctives. So, I mean, there's an obvious distinctive in that, let's see, by what, how many orders of magnitude have you been accused of fewer scandals than your potential general election opponents. But let's talk policy. So I follow your public pronouncements closely, and you had a pretty withering critique of a lot

of the congressional response, the economic stimulus response to the coronavirus. How would President Amash have attempted to shepherd through the financial, well, for lack of a better term, I don't like the term stimulus because it wasn't exactly stimulus, but how would you have helped support Americans during the course of this coronavirus pandemic in a way that's different from how it's been done? I would try to get government out of the way as much as possible. A lot of the troubles we face are due to the fact that there are regulations in place and people can't adapt very quickly. There are some things that can be done at home, can be done in different forms of interaction than what we're used to, not necessarily going into a place of business, but maybe there are other ways to sell goods and services. And there are a lot of regulations that

get in the way of that. And there are even licensing laws at the state level and other things that get in the way of a lot of the assistance that could be provided. And that's not a federal thing, obviously, dealing with licensing in most respects. But that's another issue that I would have pressed governors on. But the fact is, and I get pushback sometimes from libertarians on this. The fact is there will be a federal response. And it is not possible that the American people will accept no federal response. And it is not possible that the American people will accept no federal response. It's just not, it's not in the cards right now. There are Republicans and Democrats in Congress who are going to demand a federal response. And there are constituents who are going to demand

a federal response because the federal government can act more quickly than the state governments when it comes to producing resources. Not when it comes to making decisions on the ground, then the federal government's slow. But when it comes to just, here's some money, federal government is faster at that because it doesn't have the same kind of budgetary requirements that most state governments have. So my position has been, if the federal government's going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars or trillions of dollars, it's spent $3 trillion now, if it's going to spend a bunch of money, get the money directly to the people. Why are we sending it in 12 different directions? It doesn't make any sense.

We're making it hard for people at home to get the resources. And it also increases a lot of tension and friction in society when they see very large corporations getting assistance very fast. And people who are ordinary employees at home, they're put out into the streets or they can't pay for their rent. They can't pay for food. They're struggling. They're not getting the assistance. There's unemployment benefits that are too slow. Everything is way too slow for people who actually need the help. And it's fast and easy for the people at the top. So I want to make it simple for people. You get a check. It's that simple. This is not a permanent UBI. I get accused of supporting UBI. It's not a permanent UBI. I'm willing to consider things like UBI if you were to get rid of the welfare state, if you were to reform all social welfare programs and come up with some practical approach to using UBI. I think it could serve a purpose, but not with our entire welfare state overlaid on top of it. Okay. Describe your ideal running mate to us. You're not necessarily a traditional libertarian. You were in the Republican Party. Do you think your running mate would have also potentially

left the Republican Party recently? Give us the dating profile of your running mate, if you will. So my running mate has to be someone who is libertarian because I'm in the Libertarian Party. I don't think you can run candidates in the Libertarian Party who aren't libertarian. That's really important. It's important for the party. It's important for spreading the message. You know, I really believe in libertarianism. I believe in classical liberalism and I want to spread these ideas. So we need a running mate who also subscribes to those ideas. But the person has to be someone who can present the message to all Americans. If you have a running mate who is a libertarian, but is only talking about Austrian economics or some kind of obscure

parts of our government or whether the CIA should exist at all. When you're talking about these things, it's a distraction for millions of Americans who might be very open to the ideas. I understand that these also might be important issues to other libertarians. I understand that some of these more, you know, I guess, primal sort of libertarian ideas or aspects of libertarianism are really important, but we have to get people there. You don't get people there right off the bat. You get people there by presenting libertarian solutions to problems that they can relate to. And that's why I would want a running mate who understands that message and is aligned with my way of

presenting it. So I've got a question. Let's move into, we're going to veer into foreign policy. So on domestic policy, I would say, just honestly, I'm probably more aligned with you than maybe any other member of Congress that I could think of off the top of my head. Foreign policy, I expect we diverge a little bit, but there's two areas I'm particularly interested in. Here's one that I agree with you, and here's one that I'm just genuinely curious about what you think. So one is you have made it very clear that we shouldn't be fighting wars that Congress has not declared. So part A of my question is, are we so far down the road that from a national security standpoint, it would be incredibly difficult to extricate ourselves from undeclared wars? Would that place ourselves in a national security risk? And then part B is you have been accused of being, quote unquote, soft on China. Um, and so I'd be very interested to hear what your post coronavirus foreign policy would be regarding China. I know that's a lot to bite off, but, um, do your best.

Yeah, no problem. The audio cut out a little bit at the end there, but, um, but I think I got the gist of your question. So, um, uh, on foreign policy, I think an important first step is to make sure that all of our wars are properly authorized. Now, there are lots of different ways to talk about authorizations for use of force. The most important thing to me from a constitutional aspect, set aside the libertarian aspect of it, From a constitutional aspect, the most important thing is that Congress makes the decision because Congress is closest to the people. So I want Congress to be having those votes. And if Congress holds those votes, you're going to have a lot less war because they don't really want to take these votes. They want to leave things to the executive branch and shirk their own duties because they don't really want to take these votes. They want to leave things to the executive branch and

shirk their own duties because they don't want the accountability. They don't want to be held accountable for things that go wrong. Now, I think that there is a way to deal with things like international terrorism through some kind of authorization, but you have to create a mechanism that ensures Congress is actually responsible for making the decision. Sometimes people say, well, this wouldn't be practical. Are you saying that every time there's a missile strike, Congress has to present a new authorization? No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying you could create some kind of system where Congress authorizes the engagement and Congress is presenting a continuous check on the action.

Right now, we don't really have that at all. So there is some sense in which you take a somewhat incrementalist approach on some of this. It's not a matter of overnight you get in there and all the wars end. and all the wars end. But I would tell Congress that within 90 days, I'm going to pull forces from conflicts that I believe are not validly authorized under our constitution. I think it's really important to do that, to put Congress back in control of the mechanism. As for China, I think we've learned a lot about China through this process. I think all Americans have had their eyes open about what China is doing, how China lies to people, how China has been a bad actor in the world. Now, this doesn't excuse the Trump administration for failed policies or failed approaches. But I think people are starting to understand the problems of

relying on China. But as a person who believes in free trade, I don't think that the right approach is to put a bunch of tariffs in place and try to create some kind of massive economic conflict with China. I think that most of these things can happen organically. As we get out of this crisis, American businesses are going to understand that they can't rely on China the same way they used to, that they have to diversify. And I think a lot of that is going to happen naturally through the free market mechanism. I don't think you need the heavy hand of government telling everyone that they can't do business with this country or that country. I don't think that's particularly helpful for relations and may also lead to some

kind of more serious conflict. So I want to avoid that. But businesses will make these decisions on their own. Congressman, veering very much not only to domestic politics, but to domestic meaning your own home, perhaps, are you wearing a mask when you go out in public? Yes, I am. Even if I didn't want to, I couldn't get away with not wearing a mask as the congressman. So I'm going to wear a mask in public. When I go grocery shopping, I wear a mask and people still recognize me surprisingly with the mask on. That is surprising. It's my distinctive eyebrows, I think. I barely recognize my husband in his mask. Yeah, but I'll go to like Costco and people will say, Congressman, you know, thanks for what you're doing. And I'm like, how can this person

even recognize me? I'm covered up, you know, I'm barely visible. So we've had some discussion, I guess, over the culture war aspect that mask wearing is now becoming performative in some ways. So what do you say to people who say they can't tell me to wear a mask or I'm not going to wear a mask in public? Well, first of all, if you believe in the free market and if you believe in property rights, as most people on the right do, then business can tell you to wear a mask if they want. That's the business's decision. You're coming onto their property. It's a strange thing to say,

oh, we believe in freedom, but we are going to tell business owners that they can't require us to wear masks. They have to protect their own business and their own customers, and they should be allowed to make those kinds of decisions. Yeah, it is very odd to me that we accept no shirt, no shoes, no service without

question. But tell me to stop trying to transmit a potentially fatal infectious disease, and that's a bridge too far. So, as you know, you may not know this because, Congressman, my name ID is orders of magnitude below yours, but you're talking to one of the few pundits who has a podcast who actually considered a third-party run for president back in 2016. Yeah, I think I do remember that, actually. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. I remember you putting that out there. That's right. Yeah, yeah. I remember you putting that out there.

And so one of the things that I was thinking hard about, because 2016 was the conflict between Trump and Clinton. And the question that I had in my mind, and one of the questions I had in my mind, and again, this is not saying in any way, shape, or form, I'm not a perfect person because I'm not, but was to what extent does a message centered around both personal and ideological integrity resonate? And to what extent would that be something that could catch fire in the American public? And you've been known for a long time as one of the folks in Congress who's really consistent about your worldview. And like I said, we've already seen a whole lot of scandals from the other two candidates. How like I said, you know, we've already seen a whole lot of scandals from the other two candidates. How much do you think you either A, will, or B, will it

resonate if you try to put character and integrity sort of front and center in your campaign? I think character and integrity are important. And I do think that they are important aspects of a campaign. This doesn't mean that I'm going to spend a lot of time going after particular allegations against the two candidates. I think that the media will cover a lot of that and I don't have to focus that much on it. But these are really important qualities in an elected official. public proclamations, you know, whatever they tell the public they believe in. If someone says they believe in X, Y, and Z, but they have no character and integrity, well, you know, you can count on them actually violating their principles when they get to Congress, whether they're on the left or on the right. So I think that these are really important aspects of an elected official.

And I also think that we're trapped in this partisan bubble on social media and regular media. We have a view of the American people that is not right. Most Americans are not super partisan. Most Americans are very nice people and very tolerant of each other and very kind to each other. I go around my district all the time and run into people who just aren't that active in the political world, but they like me and they hear about character issues, I think, primarily. They think I'm someone they can trust and that means a lot to them. They're not following all the policies. So I think it does resonate with a big swath of the electorate. All those people have to get out and vote, of course, and being less politically active might mean that you don't vote as much as the

people who are politically active. But there are millions of Americans out there, and 45% of the electorate didn't vote in 2016. Let's get those people out to vote. The Libertarian Party has been criticized in the past for its views on civil rights legislation and really not being a party that necessarily is interested in diversity necessarily. virus or even this case in Georgia of the man who was, it sounds like jogging, and was shot by two other citizens about racial disparity in criminal justice. What is your message on those issues coming from the Libertarian Party? Well, to be clear, I don't think it's a fair characterization of the Libertarian Party that they don't care about civil rights or um have you know shun diversity i i do agree that the libertarian party has tended to draw um uh more white men uh as part of the party and it has to become more diverse we

that's something we have to work on as a party. That is, that's probably, you know, a crowd that is drawn to libertarianism more naturally for whatever reason. And we have to diversify that and get more people engaged in the party. But I care a lot about civil rights. I care a lot about these racial disparities. I've talked about them for many years and have gotten in trouble with people on the right for taking positions. I know David does too. I've seen much of his stuff over the years, but I've gotten backlash from law enforcement who have criticized me for taking positions that were contrary to, I guess, conservative orthodoxy on some of this stuff, that were contrary to, I guess, conservative orthodoxy on some of this stuff, or at least Trumpian conservative orthodoxy. You know, I really believe there are disparities in our system.

I believe what happened in Georgia doesn't happen if that's a white man who is the, you know, there wouldn't be a victim. It wouldn't have happened. And the fact that justice takes so long also is a problem for people who are black and brown in this country. It's not okay. I've tried to be someone who has attempted to moderate things and bring people together and have tried to encourage people on the law enforcement side to meet with people in ethnic and racially diverse communities. And, you know, it's still a problem. Even here in Michigan, it's a problem. And it you know, it's still a problem, even here in Michigan, it's a problem. And it's something I'll continue to fight for. And, you know, the criminal justice

system has so many disparities. Drug laws are another example of these disparities. Incarceration rates for people who are black and brown in this country compared to white Americans, it's unbelievably different. And so we need to pay attention to that and figure out how to address it. All right. So we've got time for one last question. Not exactly the most important, but Sarah and I always end, we always end our podcasts with a little bit of pop culture commentary. And as someone who's been in Washington on the inner workings of government,

we recently had a podcast where we talked a bit about some of the greatest sitcoms of all time. And we inadvertently omitted one of the greats, well, at least what I think is a sitcom, Veep. But you've been on the ground in Washington, Veep and HBO. Veep and HBO, is that a sitcom or is that more of a documentary? Well, I think it's more of a documentary, especially these days. And actually, Veep started to have problems as the Trump administration got underway because

the comedy they could produce wasn't as funny as real life anymore. The things that were happening within the administration were more absurd. So maybe that was a challenge for them. And they seem to rise to the occasion. But yeah, that's a great show. I do highly recommend that show to people. But I have to tell you that, so I went back and rewatched it from the start.

And when you rewatch it from the start, the first two or three seasons of Veep suddenly look aspirational. Like, this is what we could be. We could be this sometime again. And look forward to seeing you on the campaign trail. And I truly hope that millions more Americans will know the name Justin Amash. Thanks so much, David. Thanks, Sarah. Before we move on, we want to thank our sponsor today, ExpressVPN. Being stuck at home these days, you probably don't think much about internet privacy on your home network.

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slash opinions to learn more. Okay, Sarah, what's your first thoughts after our interview with Congressman Amash? So here's the tension in our current political environment. Okay. On the one hand, you and I, I think it's fair to say, like, we want thoughtful, articulate representatives who display character, as you talked about at one point, and all of those things. And you and I have a podcast, and we work for theatch, which our whole thing is we're allergic to hot takes.

Right. Okay, great. So we want thoughtful, non-hot takey politicians as well. On the other hand, when you have someone who, let's even, I love that he was like, I don't think I'm at 6% name ID. Let's say he has 6% favorability rating right now from American voters. The way that you get that up is through earned media and attention-grabbing stuff. Well, guess how you get attention-grabbed? Controversy, hot takes, news. And so I think that's a tension that I didn't really hear him address of how he's going to overcome that. I also think that, you know, he's at the very

beginning of this. It's an exploratory committee, but I don't hear a lot of super in the weed detailed, you know, here's how we're going to do this. I have a 10 point plan for this. Now, what did I just say? 10 point plans don't sell a lot of people. Well, but also isn't that sort of like what his Sarah's are doing? They're helping generate the, you know, they're not only getting in the weeds on to in the campaign strategy, they're also going to be working on generating the position papers and the policy papers, et cetera. Yeah, so stay tuned. That's where I come out at the end of that interview.

Stay tuned. Yeah, I appreciate his voice in the public square a great deal. I like a guy who's elected on a platform of principles and sticks to those principles. And then here's what I really like about him. He explains the principles. He's very well known for taking a vote and explaining why he took the vote.

Look, not everybody in his constituency, not all his constituents pay attention to that. Probably only a small percentage, you know, pay attention to that. That's just the way things are. But look, you know, if there's going to be a way out of this morass that we're in, this sort of tension that you very accurately described, that it's almost as if our politics demands WWE to get into office and then like wants James Madison once you're there, there's a tension. There's a tension there. Or I should say Abe Lincoln, better example, once you're there, there's a tension. There's a tension there. Or I should say Abe Lincoln, better example, once you're there. And there's a huge tension there. And if we're going

to get out of this morass, somebody's got to do it. Well, let me give another tension. I loved his answer to my last question on race in the Libertarian Party. I think it's a huge problem with the Libertarian Party. I wasn't's a huge problem with the Libertarian Party. I wasn't going to, you know, pin him down on what libertarians think about, you know, the 1964 Civil Rights Act or even Brown v. Board of Education when it comes to some of the, you know, libertarian con law folks. And it's again, it's not that they're for racial discrimination. No, but what they don't want are the laws that they think are unconstitutional on that front. And it ties into my question about his running mate. And I really think if the Libertarian

Party wants to have a moment where they try to expand, and as you said, he's very good at articulating the values of the Libertarian Party, but, and I know there will be listeners who will be annoyed about this. The medium is the message sometimes. And so when he's looking at running mates, when he's looking at the issues that he wants to put at the front of his campaign, that in some ways is what I'm going to look for. Are you really looking to expand the libertarian base beyond what is, you know, predominantly a white male third party is like an understatement of what the libertarian party is right now. Well, it's funny you brought that up because in some ways, in many ways, I'm not a libertarian, mainly because I've not supported the libertarian position on foreign

policy, the predominant libertarian position on foreign policy over the years, but I'm very civil libertarian, very much a civil libertarian. And I'm kind of on the nose for the demographic of the libertarian party, which is like the Dungeons and Dragons playing white dude, right? I'm sorry, that was like too spot on. I'm laughing a little more than is appropriate. Sorry, that was like too spot on. I'm laughing a little more than is appropriate. It's true. It's true. But I will say this, the way in which civil liberties have been systematically denied to minority communities in the history of the United States means that in some ways, in the civil libertarian space, in the civil liberty space, I believe libertarians have real potential to reach into minority communities because minority communities have suffered the most grotesque violations of

the American social compact and the Bill of Rights. And so I think that there's a real avenue for opening. And let's just be honest about the Libertarian Party. It hasn't exactly been an entity that's gotten its act together in a real systematic way. I mean, all props to them for constantly getting in all 50 state ballots, which is not an easy, easy thing to do. But aside from that, let's just say they could use some real competence out of the person who's sort of the standard bearer for the party. And I think he correctly identified the right area, the right opening. Well, let's use that segue to talk about Georgia, which know, I, let me tee you up to talk about this in terms of how this came to my attention. I saw the New York times story several days ago about

this and read it. Um, and I read it, I was interested in it, but I also got to the end and thought, huh, this does read like many of the other stories where it's not quite clear what happened. There was probably a lot of confusion at the time. And you know, I put away my phone and I didn't think too much more about it that night, to be perfectly honest. And then yesterday, the video came out and it stopped me in my tracks. I watched it three times. I then handed it to my husband and was like, you need to watch this. Um, and I guess, you know, punchline upfront here, I am so sad and horrified. What if there hadn't been a video? Yeah. And so I want you to talk through what happened and what we know now.

And thank God there was a video. So this is getting some of the attention it deserves and we'll get more, I hope. So you were ahead of me. I had not actually heard about this case until Monday when my friend Jane Koston, who's over at Vox, sent me an email. Oh, she's so good, by the way. Can we just have friend Jane Koston, who's over at Vox, sent me an email. Oh, she's so good, by the way.

Can we just have a Jane Koston love fest of how talented she is? Yeah, she's fantastic. She really is. If you're looking to follow someone on Twitter and you want a different perspective than maybe the one you share, I'm not sure there's anyone I recommend more highly. So Jane, we've struck up a kind of email, Twitter relationship over the years. Because I'm in Tennessee, I don't get to actually meet all that many people who are living and working in Washington. Or just meet all that many people.

Yeah. Hey, wait a minute. But anyway, so I've gotten to know Jane a little bit over the years. And so she sent me this link to the video and just asked me, what do you think? It's 36 seconds. It depicts a young African-American man named Ahmaud Arbery running, obviously in like workout clothes. There's a car following him and videoing him. As he rounds a corner, he comes up on a pickup truck. There's two men in the pickup truck, one standing in the bed of the truck, one standing on the driver's side with the driver's door open.

Arbery moves to run around it. Now, he's not sprinting. He's not sprinting at this time. He's jogging. And he moves to run around. And then as he moves to run around, you hear yelling. The younger of the two men, the man that's on the driver's side, has a shotgun and he moves to intercept Arbery brandishing his shotgun. At that point, Arbery starts to scuffle with the man with the shotgun, obviously in an effort to try to take away the shotgun.

The man with the gun, there's three shots fired. It's not entirely clear that all three came from the shotgun. One may have come from the man in the back of the truck. But the last shot is absolute point blank range directly into the chest of Ahmaud Arbery. He staggers, he falls. It's horrifying. It is horrifying. Jane sent that to me, and the first thought was, this is horrible. I mean, this is just horrible. It's a 36-second video. So I wanted to know more about the greater context. And so I went and I dug in. Now, this was an event that no one had been charged for a crime. Let's make that very clear. No one had been charged for a crime. This happened on February 23rd. It's now May. No one had been charged. I began to dig into it. How did I dig into it? I looked at the available, the excerpts of the, the available excerpts of the 911 calls that were made.

I read the prosecutor's, the second prosecutor's statement arguing why he didn't charge the two men in the truck. I read the police report. I studied Georgia law. And I'm, Sarah, it's hard to describe how appalled I am. It's hard to describe. It felt a little like watching A Time to Kill. Right. I mean, it was like yeah i i mean really because you just can't there's no there are situations of nuance there are situations of confusion but in a time to kill there are bad guys there are evil guys and it felt far more like that reading your piece on the dispatch today uh dispatch.com um and and watching that video and what i'm you know we should get to the legal uh standards that apply here but let's just get into how bad this is so in the 9-1-1 there were there were two 9-1-1 calls

one is i call a person we don't know who it is because the name was redacted on the transcript calls and says There's a guy in the house right now. It's under construction calls 9-1-1 for this The dispatcher says are you and you said someone's breaking into it? No, the man replies it's all open. It's under construction. Then he says there he goes right now And then the dispatcher is obviously puzzled here. So the dispatcher says, why are you calling 911? Yeah. Dispatcher says, I'll get police out there. I just need to know what he was doing wrong. Was he just on the premises and not supposed to be? And then everything sort of garbled from there. He's the guy says he's been caught on camera a bunch at night

It's an ongoing thing the man in the building the man building the house has got heart issues. That's not relevant to anything And so then he identifies him as a as a black man in a white t-shirt. That's one 9-1-1 call Friends if you see somebody walking around an open construction site don't call 9-1-1 It's absurd. Well well as you said like you did that just the other day so did i like i've been walking around my neighborhood a lot more i saw an open construction site my husband of course was like what are you doing nope but i was like i want to go see the construction site i wanted to look at the floor plan yes so then here's the next 911 call is even worse. This is how it begins. I'm out here at Satia Shores, the man says, and here's the report.

There's a black male running down the street. What? What? And then the dispatcher says, where? And the man says, I don't know what street we're on. And then you can hear him saying, stop, stop, damn it, stop. And then there's the call sort of blank for a while. And then there's a hang up.

What on earth is going on? You don't call 911 to report a black male running down the street. That's insane. So then there's a guy named Gregory McMichael. And he's in his front yard. And he sees Aubrey, a person that friends and family said he loved to run and jog and work out. And they said he saw him hauling ass down the street. That's the quote. He's hauling ass. Again, he's just running. And so McMichael later told police that there had

been several break-ins in the neighborhood, and the suspect, why was he calling him a suspect? There's no law enforcement involved here at all, was caught on surveillance video. We don't know exactly what that means, but the Brunswick News, God bless it, local news, found out that in the entire year of 2020 up until, or the first, you know, eight weeks of 2020 up until the incident, there'd only been one call of a break-in and it was a burglary of a car. That was it. And another person said there was a break-in where $2,500 worth of fishing equipment was sold, stolen, but he didn't report it to the police. Huh. So anyway, he apparently has some sort of seen some kind of surveillance video. So what does he do? And this, Sarah, my mind has been like blown about four times already. What does he do? He grabs his 357,

gets his son, apparently a third person. His son grabs a shotgun. They mount up in a three-person, two-vehicle posse and start pursuing Arbery. Now, why would they grab all that firepower? Because they said they'd seen him, quote, the other night stick his hands down his pants. And that meant that they believed he was armed. Now, they had just seen him running in workout clothes with his hands empty. So, they've seen no weapon. So, this posse goes rolling after him. At the end of the tape, what you see is there's one car behind him. There's a truck blocking the road in front of him. They've cornered him. And in the police report, and this is going to be important when we get to the legal

part, he says that he said, stop, stop, we want to talk to you when he pulled up beside him. But the video doesn't show him pulling up beside him. It only shows him blocking the road, which looks like an old school lying in wait ambush. And by the way, if two men with guns pulled up anywhere near me and said, stop, we want to talk to you, I would start screaming. I would assume at that moment, my life is very much in danger, honestly. Yeah. These are not cops. They have blocked the road. As Arbery moves to get around them, they move to intercept him. Now, Georgia law is actually pretty darn clear on this point. Attempting to arrest

someone without lawful justification, grab and hold somebody without lawful justification is called false imprisonment. It's a crime. It's kidnapping basically. Yeah. It's basically kidnapping. Pointing a gun at somebody without legal justification. That's not open carry y'all. open carry, y'all. That's a crime, okay? So this all seems, this is unbelievable appalling, but it gets worse. So the older gentleman, the one who did not fire the fatal shot, his son fired the fatal shot, the older gentleman is a former detective and a former investigator for the local district attorney's office. So the first DA, a woman named Jackie Johnson, recused herself from the case because of the prior work. There's a second DA who also recuses himself, but not before he writes a truly spectacular and all the worst ways

legal memorandum justifying his claim that there was insufficient probable cause. legal memorandum justifying his claim that there was insufficient probable cause and sarah insufficient probable cause to arrest and sarah wow wow that memorandum did you read it um i did not so i honestly find this whole thing so upsetting it's like difficult uh It's, you know, I need to like take a break, be in the right place. And I guess, you know, the one thing that we should note is decisions on when you can use deadly force are, the circumstances matter somewhat. However, David, as you know, it does come down to the moments. So like at, you know, there's sort of this larger thing of like, could they pursue him?

Can they try to arrest him? Things like that, which I think are very clear cut legally. The one thing that I will flag is at the moment that they have this gun out, if Arbery grabs the gun, that's where you're now making a decision on self-defense. So I have an answer for that. Great. Okay. So let me tell you the prosecutor's argument for not charging. He said that the Michaels, the father and son team, that the Michaels, the father and son team, were in the process of making a lawful citizen's arrest pursuant to probable cause. Now, Georgia does have a citizen's arrest statute, but your nope is exactly right. Stop, we want to talk to you as they have two guns, is not a citizen's arrest, first of all. Bingo. So this is a statute like a lot of statutes across the country that sort of the

paradigmatic version of it is, of a lawful citizen's arrest is somebody is shoplifting right in front of you. So the crime is occurring right in front of you. You grab the person who's shoplifting, call the cops, hold them till the cops arrive. That's classic. So, and under Georgia law, it says, and I've got the exact language right here. So, under Georgia law, it says a person, a private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender's escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion. Now, like all, virtually all other statutes, there's case precedent, case law that

sort of helps you understand it. And basically, this is a law that's designed to deal with situations where crime is committed in front of you, or you have immediate knowledge of an ongoing crime. And let me give an example of that. Someone's running away from me and I'm yelling, stop, stop. He just stole my purse or my baby or whatever. Exactly. And you are, he's running towards you. So you, you know, movie style, right? You like trip him and, and try to get my purse back or something. Exactly. Exactly. So, and so there's actually two, two elements here. It's, you have to have a reason to hold them, but then if you're going to hold them, you have

to immediately, quote, without any unnecessary delay, get the person to a peace officer or judicial officer. Now, you cannot, Georgia case law is clear on this. You cannot grab a person as a private citizen to question them, okay? You cannot do that. In fact, the very notion that you say you're going to question them is deemed evidence that you don't have immediate knowledge of a crime being committed. In other words, it's saying, it's confessing. I don't have knowledge if you're trying to question them. And what did they say they said? Stop, stop, I want to talk to you.

And again, I just, as a woman, and like this road, it's mossy. It's not like some suburban cookie cutter. There's like houses everywhere. It's not densely populated. There's no sidewalk that I could see in the video. So it's pretty isolated. Yeah.

And two men pull up in a pickup truck and say, stop, stop. I want to talk to you. Both brandishing open carry weapons. I just can't tell you how much at that moment I think my life is very much in danger. Oh, any reasonable human being. I don't care if you're Dwayne the Rock Johnson, the most proficient at all forms of single combat. If people have got loaded weapons and they're demanding that you stop, I mean- Or like, God forbid, get in their truck. That's the thing that every mother warns her daughter about. Never get in the truck. You're better off getting shot in the head at that point than getting in the truck. That's what's running through my head when I see this and I watch the video and I read what was going on. What were these guys thinking? So, and to deal with your question about self-defense

in the moment of the shooting, this is, and I've had several people ask me this. So, at the moment that they're yelling, stop at him and intercepting him with a gun lowered pointing at him, they're committing two crimes. One, they're committing the crime of pointing a weapon at somebody without legal justification, and they're committing the crime of false imprisonment. At that point, the person who has the right to use force is Ahmaud Arbery and Ahmaud Arbery only. Only him. The other two have created the dangerous situation. This would be, any other argument would be like walking into, imagine somebody walking into a convenience store, holding up the store clerk, and then when the store clerk pulls

his own gun saying, at that point, I had a right of self-defense against the store clerk. No. That's a really good example, actually. No, that is not the way it is. You're committing a felony. A citizen is engaging in an act of self-defense, and I don't care if he's grabbing your shotgun. You are responsible at that point for all the violence that follows. This is just basic. And so, you know, and so the district attorney,

though, says this was a lawful citizen's arrest followed by a lawful act of self-defense under the Georgia Stand Your Ground law. I mean, and then he recuses from the case. Thankfully, there's now a third prosecutor who says he's going to take it to a grand jury. He shouldn't, he shouldn't, he doesn't need to take it to a grand jury. He's got probable cause now to issue an arrest warrant. But that's where we are now. And social media blew up over it. If you wonder, listeners, why the Black Lives Matter movement caught on, or you wonder why there's mothers who are worried about, you know, their sons not being able to wear hoodies in public. Uh, and, and you think this is some sort of

political racial only issue. I just, I urge you to dig into this and imagine if it's you, imagine if it's your son jogging out that day, um, and how you would feel if, and you know, David, I watched some of the back and forth in the comment section of your article and online on Twitter of people trying to say, well, maybe it wasn't a race issue. Okay. You're going to have to tell me the last time anything like this has happened to you. Well, let me put it this way. It walks like a duck. It quacks like a duck. But we have not yet had the DNA analysis to confirm that it is a duck. But yeah, I mean, I can't remember hearing the last time that an armed posse mounted up to go pursue and seize a white dude jogging through a white neighborhood.

Pursuant to two 911 calls that identify his crime as jogging while being black. Right, right. I mean, so that's, you know, there's a lot. We have got a lot of the evidentiary onion to peel here. There's not just what were the full motivations of the shooters. It's also what, why was there actually a recusal in the case? Why was there, we need to really dive in to find out why there was a no charging decision because the memorandum is kind of facially ludicrous. How much of this was a favor for a former investigator and cop?

um how much of this was a favor for a former investigator and cop um you know what david i'd be curious to get your thoughts on this because in my legal um reading of all of this you know what is irrelevant though whether arbery had ever robbed any of these houses because these people did not have firsthand knowledge if he did or not. Right. That I think even if evidence comes to light that, you know, questions whether he was on that property for some other reason or that he was involved in stealing the fishing equipment from someone's house or, you know, the front porch, I actually think that would be legally irrelevant to this trial? The only way, so let me put it this way. If the end result of this is that a judge allows instructions to go to a jury and then a jury determines that it is lawful to pursue someone on the basis of having prior seen a surveillance video of them,

prior seen a surveillance video of them, can you imagine the vigilantism that that would empower? Let's just walk through this because what that would then empower is that I could engage in freelance investigations of criminal activity. And as long as I could then later on go and make out a case of probable cause for my ultimate private citizen decision to arrest, I'm then empowered to strap on a weapon, go find my suspect, and book him, Dano. Not as David French, you know, not as David French law enforcement officer, just David French, senior editor of the dispatch. And that's not the world we want to live in. And that is actually, though, that is the world of the lynch mob. That's the world of the lynch mob. That's how these guys, that's the, we forget, and we should not forget, but a lot of these lynchings that took place in the south and elsewhere were based on the pretext that these that white armed white citizens were

in hot pursuit of a criminal that was the pretext um and that's what this that's this is as i wrote in twitter this isn't just an echo of that. It's an imitation of it. My heart goes out to the Arbery family. I can't imagine being his mother, his family right now. I hope that this getting the attention that it deserves will help a little, but I can't imagine it helps much. Yeah. Oh, no, no. Yeah, there are things.

It is. But I think it's good to end on the note. We're fortunate, as gruesome as the video is, that the video exists. skipped over a news article about a case where there was no video, where maybe I just dismissed what, uh, the, you know, maybe I just dismissed the allegations against law enforcement or the allegations against the armed citizen, um, and sort of threw up my hands and said, I have no way of knowing what's true and what's not true. Um, it'sing thought. And it's so hard to adjudicate anything from a news article, but that was a very sobering thought to me. Okay. Well, I don't necessarily think it's the greatest time to transition to our pop culture segment that we had planned. This is a really serious conversation, and I think it's appropriate

to just end it there. Thank you guys for listening. We're going to go, we'll be back on Monday. We're going to talk about General Flynn. We're going to talk about due process on campus. Sarah and I are going to have some disagreements. So it will be a really interesting conversation. We may have Supreme Court cases to talk about. But in the meantime, I just encourage you to go to thedispatch.com. I wrote a very long breakdown of the facts and law in Arbery's case. So if you could please go there to thedispatch.com, read that article, look at the evidence. And if you're a member, please leave a comment. I'd appreciate it very much. But this has been the Advisory Opinions Podcast with David French and Sarah Isker.

Thank you for listening.