Judging Freedom - Jan 6 Hearings - today

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, June 13, 2022. It's about 135 in the afternoon. I spent some time this morning watching the hearings before the January 6th committee because I know some of the witnesses, Chris Starwalt, who testified about the decision of the Fox News desk to designate Arizona as a state that was going for Joe Biden before any of the other news desks did testify. And Bill Stepien was to have testified. Now, Bill is a Jersey guy who was the campaign manager for President Trump's reelection in 2020. And Bill was to have testified this morning. Ah, last night his wife went into labor and he's with her as they're expecting their next child. But instead of testifying, they ran clips from his deposition. Now, what's a deposition? Well, whenever you see someone testify in a courtroom or before a congressional hearing, that is not their first testimony.

In the case of a courtroom, the lawyers know in advance what that person is going to say. And in the case of a congressional testimony, everybody on the congressional committee knows what the person is going to say because they've already said it in a deposition. A deposition is an examination under oath before trial in a courtroom or before public testimony before Congress. I myself have testified before Congress, and I was required to tell them in writing, which is called an interrogatory Q&A, questions and answers in writing at a time, so they knew what I was going to say. In this case, the questions and answers are given to the person's face, sometimes remotely over Zoom, other times in the same room with the person, and it's recorded. So when the members of the committee who are generally not present during

these examinations before trial want to know what the witness is going to say ahead of time, they just go to their computer and type in the witness's name, and there it will be. So even though Bill Stepien wasn't there this morning because of his wife going into labor, the members of the committee knew what he was going to say, and they ran clips of what he was going to say. And the clips argue that the president's campaign manager told him, you've lost, it's over with, there aren't enough votes out there. Bill Stepien is one of the most decent, honorable guys I know. And I know him because he was the campaign chair for Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, and Governor Christie has been a friend of mine for many years, and through him and others, I've met and gotten to

know Bill. So the committee is trying to make its point that everybody around the president, from his attorney general to his campaign manager, I think to his chief of staff, but we haven't heard that from Mark Meadows yet, has told him, you lost the election. It was fair and square. There are some irregularities, but they're minuscule. And the stuff from Giuliani, about 50 to 100,000 votes in garbage pails, all of which are fraudulent, is itself fraudulent. I'm not being critical of Mayor Giuliani, and I'm not being critical of the governor, of the president, President Trump. I'm just trying to explain what the committee's doing and where it is. We know where the committee is going. It's going to a criminal referral. It's going to ask the Department of Justice to indict Donald J. Trump for sedition.

Sedition is an effort, rarely succeeds, an effort to overthrow the government of the United States by force. That's where they're going. The committee, thanks be to God, can't indict because of a clause in the Constitution that prohibits the Congress from declaring people guilty of crimes. The committee can only refer to the DOJ and the team, a small team of lawyers headed by the Attorney General himself will decide where to go with it. Some of this stuff is boring. Some of it's interesting. I'll be talking to Roger Stone about it. You can imagine what he thinks of it a little later on at two o'clock Eastern this afternoon. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.