No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Evidence of a criminal investigation into Trump -- FINALLY

Episode Date: June 5, 2022

Brian discusses Republicans' new stall tactics when it comes to passing gun legislation and what CONSERVATIVE readings of the Second Amendment actually say. And Brian interviews former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner about the prospect of a criminal investigation of Trump at the DOJ, what would happen if Trump had given himself a pocket pardon before he left office, and what the best case scenario for the January 6 Committee will look like as we get into their highly-anticipated hearings.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the Republican stall tactics when it comes to passing new gun legislation and what conservative readings of the Second Amendment actually say. And I interview former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirshner about the prospect of their finally being a criminal investigation of Trump at the DOJ, what would happen if Trump had given himself a pocket pardon before he left office, and what the best case scenario for the January 6th committee will look like as we get into their highly anticipated hearings. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So we're over a week out from the shootings in Buffalo and Yuvaldi, where 10 and 21 people respectively were shot and killed.

Over a week out, and since Yuvaldi, there have been 20 more mass shootings in the U.S., where 91 people were shot and 19 of them died, just in the 10 days since Yuvaldi. So now the Senate is in bipartisan talks to Steve if it can find a law that's suitable enough for 10 Republicans to sign on to, which is underscored by the fact that every time a Republican is asked about the possibility of passing some legislation. they get defensive and qualified that they're only interested in addressing the real problems here, which are obviously mental health issues

and doors in schools, obviously. Because the U.S. very clearly is the only country in the world with mental health issues and numerous entrances into buildings. That's apparently how every other country has managed to avoid these mass shootings. So, Cornyn is the Republican who is tapped by McConnell to represent the GOP in these talks. But every public indication we get from him is less than promising. The guy is supposed to be working toward

a solution to gun violence, and yet took to Twitter when someone tweeted about Second Amendment restrictions and wrote, quote, not going to happen. And like, that's the best we've got. That's the guy who'd even come to the table. And I just want to touch on this idea for a moment that any restrictions on guns are a violation of the Second Amendment. I know that's a new big talking point for the right now. So just so we're clear, the Second Amendment is not unlimited. It is not carte blanche to own any and all weapons. When Supreme Court Justice Antonin and Scalia was alive. He's probably the most conservative justice on the bench at that time. He said, quote, like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to

keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever for whatever purpose. He goes on to say that any pro-second amendment decisions passed by the judiciary, quote, should not be taken to cast doubt on the longstanding prohibitions on the possessions of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms, which is reasonable, and he was the far right wing of the court. And yet when you contrast that with today, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single Republican even willing to do background checks, even willing to stop the sale of firearms to the mentally

ill. Like, what are we doing? Who does it benefit to bury your heads in the sand on background checks? The only person who shouldn't want to make a gun sale dependent on passing a background check is someone who wants a gun and wouldn't pass a background check. that's it. The rest of us, like all of us, should have a collective vested interest in making sure that people who are handed semi-automatic weapons and unlimited ammo aren't the kinds of people who would use those weapons to indiscriminately kill a bunch of people. Which is why,

by the way, most of these common sense gun laws are popular. According to Pew Polling from last year, April 2021, so before a bunch of eight and nine-year-olds were killed in their classroom, 87% of Americans supported mental health restrictions, 81% supported background checks, 79% opposed permanentless carry, 77% support red flag laws, two-thirds of Americans support bans on high-capacity magazines, and a new assault weapons ban. Americans are mostly on board with all of this. It's the Republican conference where there is zero support. That's the issue.

Yet again, you've got these Republicans in Congress who aren't even pretending to advocate for even a fraction of what their own constituents want, because, you know, cashing those gun lobby checks is just too important. Not getting into the bad graces of Tucker Carlson on Fox is just too important. So, God forbid, they have a shred of integrity, of courage. God forbid they see a child die and think, hey, maybe we shouldn't have that anymore. Maybe we lift even a finger to at least try to stop that from happening. The fact is that right now we have a really small window where some action can be taken

because the reality of politics is that if you don't take advantage while it's time, of mind for the country, people forget. That's just how it is. And I know it might sound like I'm being hacky by saying that we're missing a political opportunity by waiting. But gun violence is political. You can't divorce them. And in fact, waiting for the political pressure to subside so that Republicans once again can go back to doing nothing is political too. So anyway, you cut it, any response you give is going to be political. It's going to be imbued with politics. So given that it's going to be political, the question becomes, do you want to use this political pressure to save more lives, or do you want to wait for the political pressure to subside

so that you don't have to ultimately do anything? And if that makes me a partisan hack to want to use this moment and strike while the iron's hot to make changes that mean we don't have to bury kids anymore, guilty is charged. I will take that designation any day of the week. And I know that Republicans are trying to claim that they need more time to hammer out a deal. And you know what? If it happens, I will gladly eat my words, gladly. But otherwise, here's what you get with more time. It's not good faith efforts by Republicans to address this issue. It's people like J.D. Vance trying to draw a link between pornography and shootings. He said that porn is leading to a decline in families and then cited the absence of family values as a cause for these shooting. And of course,

Ted Cruz is selling his door kick, a talking point that seems only mildly more adoptable by the GOP. You'll hear Republicans touting door control on a nightly basis on Fox if they're forced to offer some tepid solution. That's what you get by these efforts. You get more time spent by these Republicans advocating for the distractions. So no, more time isn't equating to a better faith effort. We're still getting the same bullshit distractions, knowing full well that the more that they dawdle, the less political pressure that they'll have to face

because that's how the new cycle works these days. And then, of course, when it happens again in a day or a week or a month, they'll act surprised and claim that they couldn't possibly have seen this coming, but offer their most fervent thoughts and prayers, same cycle every time. So look, I hope that something gets done. I don't think it will, but I'm holding out hope. I know that Senator Murphy is working to make sure that something passes, but I think the bigger issue beyond holding out hope for whatever watered down piece of legislation

Republicans will find meager enough to sign onto is recognizing that while Republicans do have a say on this issue, which they do because the filibuster is intact, nothing of substance will change. And so until we can expand our Senate majority by two more seats and get enough votes to eliminate the filibuster so that we can get something through the graveyard that is the Senate, we'll keep going in circles and pretending that somehow doors are a bigger issue than guns. I'm tired of it. I know you're tired of it. I can guarantee that there are plenty of Republicans who are tired of it too.

So I know that we're supposed to, you know, surrender all of our thinking to those very serious pundits who say that Democrats are doomed in midterms. But I refuse to think that the only fucking issue that people are willing to vote on is gas prices. I'm sorry, but I just, I don't buy it. Not when we have kids who can't even go to school safely. and when we have women who can no longer have a say on their own reproductive health. Like, I refuse to believe that we are all so collectively short-sighted and shallow as a country that people will give more power to the party that's currently rolling back abortion rights

and blocking any moderate shred of progress on guns in the face of these daily rampages. This isn't politics as usual. This is life or death. And I have to believe that people recognize that and will make their voices heard based on that in November. Next up is my interview with Glenn Kershner. Today we have former federal prosecutor and the host of Justice Matters, Glenn Kershner. Thanks for coming back on. Hey, my pleasure, Brian. So you've spoken about this on your YouTube channel.

Why do you believe that the DOJ is finally criminally investigating Trump? So I have an opinion on that. And, you know, opinions are like elbows. Everybody's got a couple and they're often no use to anybody else. But I'm going to take a stab at it. So first of all, I think DOJ has been doing a lot behind the scenes that we don't know about, which is ordinarily the way things should play out. DOJ doesn't run to the mic and announce what crimes it's investigating, who their targets are. However, you know, we've got the public hearings getting ready to kick off June 9th.

And I am as optimistic as I think I've been over the course of the past few years that this is going to be exactly what the American people do. need. And the reason I say that is because the chief investigative counsel for the January 6th select committee, the gentleman named Tim Keefe, a friend and former colleague of mine. We work the same major RICO case together in the DC U.S. Attorney's Office. And I sat and I watched Tim give his opening statement in the most consequential RICO case we ever brought in the courts of Washington, D.C. And I got justice goosebumps. He is just that good at both criminally investigating a case and presenting a compelling message to the audience, whether it's a jury or the American people. He's assembled a team of former federal prosecutors, and that's why

everything I see out of the J6 committee has the feel to me of a RICO investigation being conducted by prosecutors. So I am so optimistic. I am so looking forward to the public hearings kicking off. And now that more directly answer your question, it sure feels like all of a sudden we've had this avalanche of information tumbling into the public square about the Department of Justice criminally investigating Donald Trump. Most directly, we know that because Peter Navarro, important caveat, if he is to be credited, said he received the subpoena to appear before a criminal grand jury in D.C. And among other things, the subpoena directed him to provide all evidence of his communications with Donald Trump. We now know, assuming that's true,

that the grand jury's investigating Donald Trump. But we've also had other indications. They're going, you know, they're investigating Rudy Giuliani and Janet Ellis and John Eastman for the sort of Trump-involved fake elector scheme. So we know DOJ is now criminally investigating Trump and his associates. Why now? Well, I think because what we're going to begin to see on June 9 will, as Representative Raskin said, blow the roof off the house. And there will be, I'm convinced, a public clamor, an outcry.

Why isn't the Department of Justice criminally going after the people that we are now seeing? There is ample evidence committed crimes against our democracy and DOJ apparently is doing nothing about it. That kind of pressure bursts pipes. And I'm not going to say DOJ is playing catch up now. I do think they've kicked it into high gear going after the command structure of the insurrection, not just Donald Trump's foot soldiers that he set on the Capitol on January 6th. I think that may be one of the reasons. All of this information is now tumbling into the public square. So I have a lot of questions on the J-Sex committee, but I want to stick with DOJ for a moment.

What would the end result of a criminal investigation from the DOJ look like? Explain it to me as someone with no law experience. what are the steps as this plays out? And could this at some point end up with Trump sitting in a courtroom? Yes. So the steps are they will begin to aggressively subpoena lots and lots of witnesses. The challenge for them is determining who's a witness and who's a target of the investigation. So Mark Meadows, it seems, based on the reporting by CNN about the nearly 3,000 texts, many of them pretty dramatically incriminating and implicating all three branches of government being complicit in the insurrection. You know, this is mind-blowing stuff. The Department of Justice will

have to decide who do we want to go at as a witness and who do we want to go at as a target. So when we determine, let's just say hypothetically Mark Meadows is a target of the investigation as part of Donald Trump's conspiracy. The Department of Justice will have to decide, well, is he so big a criminal fish that we want to prosecute him and we don't want to try to develop the information he has against or about the crime of others? Or is he somebody that we want to perhaps threaten with prosecution and, you know, get the information in what we call a proffer under a queen for a day letter, an immunity for a day letter, and then assess what we want to do with Mark Meadows. So there are lots of tactical decisions that will go into the way

DOJ will approach each and every individual. But what it will look like at the end of the day, Brian, I'm confident is that there will be an indictment handed down under 18 United States Code Section 371. Shorthand, we call it a 371 conspiracy. That's a conspiracy to commit offenses against or defraud the United States of America. It's a very broad criminal statute. It's precisely one of the charges that was brought by Robert Mueller against the Russian Internet Research Agency.

for interfering in our free and fair elections, which is what Donald Trump and his criminal associates did as well. The reason I'm so confident that charge will be brought probably as the lead charge once we see the first big indictment handed down is because a federal judge in California, Judge David Carter, has already ruled that Donald Trump and John Eastman together committed the crime of an offense against the United States or an attempt to defraud the United States and committed a second federal felony obstructing an official preceding the certification of Joe Biden's win. And importantly, and I'll stop running my mouth here, the stream of consciousness, importantly, Judge Carter made his ruling after an evidentiary hearing in a case that was litigating whether John Eastman would have to give over some emails. And he made that ruling by a preponderance of the evidence, more likely than not 51% of the evidence supported his conclusion that Donald Trump,

of these crimes. And Brian, to indict somebody, you only need probable cause, far less than the 51% Judge Carter already found. So I am pretty confident, based even just on the public reporting, that is going to be the sort of lead charge in the big indictment once we see it. But isn't Judge Carter's precedent only binding insofar as somebody else, another judge, wants to support the bindingness of it like we've seen so many judges kind of say that they respect precedent only to then you know not care once it's their turn to to rule on something yeah and i hope i don't sound like i'm contradicting myself but judge carter's ruling is not precedent at all binding or persuasive there are different kinds of precedent his is not precedent his is a trial court

conclusion after an evidentiary hearing but here's why it's important i would call it at misphyspheric precedent because he assessed evidence, and he decided that evidence met an evidentiary burden by a preponderance of the evidence. That is arguably more powerful than precedent. That's a ruling based on evidence. Precedent means an appellate court has announced some proposition of law that will now apply in other courts under the control of that appellate court. This, I would argue, is more important than legal precedent because it's a factual finding. It doesn't bind people, but it informs people. Now, since this is a federal manner, if Trump ends up in a courtroom, is this the kind of thing

that could ultimately be appealed to the Supreme Court? And would any conflict of interest prevent something like that, given that he's appointed a third of the bench, although I strongly presume that the answer is no. Yeah, it depends on who you ask. I would say a conflict of interest should come into play if you have a Supreme Court justice who has a direct conflict. Now, let me hasten to add, you don't have a direct conflict just because a certain president appointed you.

You do have a direct conflict if you're sitting as a Supreme Court justice and you're asking to decide issues regarding your wife's conduct, like whether her potentially incriminating texts should be released or hidden. That's apples and oranges there. But of course, the Supreme Court has no code of ethics that binds them. So, you know, we're up to the goodwill of the Supreme Court justices to make that decision. But I would again hasten to add, Brian, I don't have a lot of confidence in the Supreme Court. They've showed themselves to be somewhat compromised.

Their legitimacy is at an all-time low. They're about to take it looks like women's constitutional privacy rights away from them. And that's probably just for openers. I believe they'll move on to contraception and gay marriage and perhaps other constitutional rights that they'll try to claw back from the American people. Here is the only arena in which I'm confident regarding the Supreme Court's actions. It's when it comes to issues of self-preservation. Remember, they did not try to corruptly throw the 2020 election to Donald Trump,

and they had every opportunity to review cases that they could have used to accomplish that end. But they said, oh, heck no. Remember, there was also recent Supreme Court litigation or the opportunity for them to weigh in on whether the incriminating information should be released by the National Archives to the J6 Committee. And all but Clarence Thomas, who was conflicted, said, oh, heck no, what does that tell us? When it comes to the power of the Supreme Court and issues that could impact their power, like elevating a president to a dictator, they're not going to have it, not because they're good ethical moral jurists, but because it impacts their position and their power because a Democrat has no need for a truly supreme court. Now, is it possible that Trump could have issued himself a pocket pardon while he was

still president and that that could come into effect if he's actually convicted of a crime? Brian, I'm not a betting man. My $1 is my betting limit. I would bet a buck Donald Trump has a pocket pardon, as does Jared and Ivanka and Don Jr. and Rudy. Part of what informs that opinion is why would all of these people waltzed into the J6 committee, all of them having various degrees of self-incriminating information, and none of them pleaded the fifth. It's because they have a pardon, I believe. That is bolstered by Kellyanne Conway. If her book is to be believed, if it's not alternative facts. She said Donald Trump ambled up to her at the end of his term and said, and I'm going to use his word, hey, honey, you want to pardon? This is what Kelly Ann wrote in her book

and it's been reported by Ashley Parker from the Washington Post and others doing something of a book review. If he offered unsolicited a blanket pardon to Kelly Ann Connolly, who reported that she politely declined because she didn't think she'd committed any crimes. Do you really think he didn't give pardons to his kids and his close criminal associates? Of course he did. Donald Trump has never wanted to pass up a good grift. Now, do you think that that could come into effect in the event that he's convicted of a crime? Yeah, once not only convicted but charged. Once any of these people, if they have pocket pardons, is charged with a crime, indicted for a crime, they will pull out that pocket pardon and say, you can't, you can't convict me, you can't charge me. And that is when the Department

of Justice will have to take the principled position that we will challenge corruptly delivered pardons. Because there are these pardon purists out there who say, no, the president's pardon power is unconstrained because the Constitution doesn't put any constraints. That's pure nonsense. There are constraints on every power announced or embodied in the Constitution. You can always check the power for abuse. So if Donald Trump set up a pardon kiosk at the front door of the White House and was selling pardons for a million bucks a pop, the courts will not sanction that. They will strike it down as unconstitutional and against public policy, in my opinion. So I do think, and I hope, frankly, so we can set this issue to rest once and for all,

corruptly delivered pardons, get challenged in court. What would the crime be for Trump? And what could the punishments range from? assuming being barred from running for office is among them? Sure. It could be a seditious conspiracy. It could be inciting an insurrection. And if I have my big ugly blue book of federal laws, the United States code out of arms reach, sitting right over there on my desk, I'm not going to run over and get it. I believe that inciting an insurrection does not include, as part of its authorized punishment, a ban from future public office. But I believe a seditious conspiracy does. but I'd have to check the code.

Here's what I know, though, Brian. And we've already talked about conspiracy to commit offenses against and defraud the United States. That is a viable charge that should be brought, obstructing an official proceeding. That's a viable charge that should be brought. But I think treason is in play. And stick with me for a minute because I'm not being hyperbolic. When you read the U.S. code, treason is defined as whoever owing allegiance to the United States. And Donald Trump does because he took an allegiance.

oath to the United States. Whoever owing allegiance to the United States levy's war against the United States is guilty of treason. What we know, based on the publicly reported evidence, is that not only did Donald Trump, in a very literal sense, launched the attack, because he lied to everybody. He told him, your vote was stolen, go down to the Capitol, fight like hell, or you won't have a country anymore. They obeyed his commands.

In fact, the insurrectionists being tried for their crimes are using, that as a defense. I was only doing what my president told me to do. That's not a legal defense. It may be what we call a mitigator. It may impact what kind of a sentence a judge hands down someday, but it's not a legal defense. He incited and actually launched the attack. And then we know for more than three hours, people were streaming into the White House dining room where Donald Trump was watching the attack on TV, rewinding to the good parts. We don't have any evidence on what Donald Trump believed the good parts were. I would assume it's when his angry mob was giving a really good beat down to the Capitol

police officers who were being overrun. And everybody was going in there, including Ivanka, imploring him to call off the attack. And he refused. And now what do we know most recently? One of Mark Meadows' aide said, and Meadows comes out of a meeting and says, Donald Trump, one, is angry that Mike Pence is being whisked to safety. and two, he said maybe Mike Pence should be hanged. Brian, I will take that case in front of a D.C. jury or any jury and make the argument that Donald Trump levied war against the United States.

He waged war for at least three hours, and he should be held accountable for treason. And that comes with a ban from future office. Now, that's a good time to transition to the upcoming January 6 hearings. But first, a quick break. Okay, so on the January 6 hearings, are there really any facts about January 6 that aren't known? Like, is there anyone who doesn't remember Trump peppering his supporters with the big lie on a daily basis or him tweeting for the wild crowd to come or his blatant connections with far-right

militia groups or John Eastman's three easy step guide on how to do a coup? Like, what new information do you actually expect to be uncovered here? And I imagine that's going to play a pretty direct role in terms of, you know, what people, what Americans more broadly take away from this? Yeah, we know a lot, you know, in this day and age of instant reporting, you know, sometimes reporters are criticized as being little more than stenographers of current events. A lot of research and analysis goes into it sometimes, but we know a lot. And my guess is we know probably about 20% of what the J6 committee knows,

courtesy of more than a thousand witnesses. Because, yes, Benny Thompson and Liz Cheney and Representative Raskin, all members of the J6 Select Committee, have been sharing with us some details of what those thousand plus witnesses have said. And remember, they have probably millions of documents, evidentiary, little pieces of evidence at this point that they're learning from. But we know maybe 20% of it. We're going to learn a whole lot more beginning on June 9. And I take Representative Raskin at his word that it will blow the roof off the house. Now, how would you consider these hearings to be a success? Like, what's the best case scenario for Thompson and Cheney and Raskin and Kinsinger and the rest of them when all is said and done?

So I think success looks like a couple of things. One, it looks like legislation because that's really one of the primary purposes of the House Select Committee's investigation. They want to legislate to protect us against this ever happening again. Secondarily, they are going to make them convinced a number of criminal referrals based on the evidence that the investigative team has put together. And it is an adept investigative team. The reason I believe, Brian, these hearings are going to be unlike anything we've ever seen is because the investigative team consists of a whole bunch of former federal prosecutors who are experts in RICO prosecutions, gang prosecutions, white collar prosecutions, and public corruption prosecutions. It's a powerful mix. And not only do they know how to investigate crime, they know how to present information to a jury.

The jury in this case will be the American people. So that's what I think a success looks like. And I also think, look, pressure bursts pipes. And I think once we, the American people, see with our own eyes the evidence that they have amassed against Donald Trump and others for what they did to our democracy, DOJ will have no place to go but to indict them for their crimes. Now, I want to move over to the Supreme Court for a moment. You know, we're seeing decisions being handed down one after the next on issues that really only appeal to like 30 percent of Americans that are likely going to gut the Clean Air Act.

We've got Roe. Do you think that the Supreme Court needs to be expanded? Oh, it does. There's no question about it for lots of reasons. Notably, the population of the country and the caseload of the federal courts have expanded dramatically. So what do we see? Well, around the country, we see federal judges being added to the federal bench to keep up

with the litigation caseload. It only makes sense to up the number of justices, even before we get into ideology, right? We have 13 federal jurisdictions, but we only have nine justices. Each justice is responsible for certain supervisory duties, often largely administrative, but supervisory duties over the different federal circuits, some of them have to do double duty and take two federal circuits because we don't have enough justices to cover the 13 federal jurisdictions. Plus, look, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump soiled the federal bench, right? They crammed judges down the throats of the American people that had been rated, not qualified

by the American Bar Association. That's a travesty. You know, if you look back to the Obama administration, every time the ABA weighed in with respect to somebody that President Obama was considering nominating to the federal bench, if the ABA weighed in and said, Mr. President, they are not qualified. He never once nominated a not qualified candidate. That's the way America should work, divorced from politics or the ideology of any judicial nominee. You know, they soiled the federal bench so badly. And what we have now seen is a number of Supreme Court, a number of judges who aspired to be Supreme Court just flat out lied in their confirmation hearings, you know, virtually embracing the precedent of Roe v. Wade only to, you know, be so desperate to overturn it that the substance of their testimony was a lie. The question is, Are we just going to let them all get away with that perjury, those false statements to Congress? Or are we going to open a hearing into it and look into it?

I suggest the latter is the appropriate course. Yeah, I think my biggest beef with this is at what point do we stop pretending that we have no other choice? Like the number nine is not sacrosanct. We've had more than nine before. We've had fewer than nine before. I think it's just a matter of how much we're willing to take here. But we are watching kids get slaughtered in their classrooms. And yet we know full well that if there was any Second Amendment challenges, the Supreme Court would strike them down.

We're watching women be stripped of their bodily autonomy. And we know if a federal ban on abortion were to be put in front of the Supreme Court, that they would uphold it, that if the opposite was put in front of the Supreme Court, that if protections for abortion, they would strike it down. So, you know, I guess the question is, are we really going to pretend that we're helpless here just because it's customary to have nine justices, six of whom our federalist society hacks, because God forbid, we're really going to pretend that we're helpless here just because it's customary to have nine justices, six of whom our federalist society hacks, because God forbid, we're We save countless lives and the planet because we wouldn't want to upset longstanding tradition. I think that's my biggest beef with this, is that there is recourse and we're so held back just by this idea that the number nine is sacrosanct and that this is how it's always been, even though the right is completely content to gut any tradition, any precedent that

doesn't suit them, but we have to sit here and play by all of the rules that nobody else plays by. Nine is not a magical number. And Brian, I think you put your finger on an issue that I think can be applied across the board when it comes to norms, traditions, and customs. As you say, in our nation's history, we've had as many as 10 Supreme Court justices and as few as five. Nine is not magic. So I think we have to reevaluate norms, traditions, and customs in our present day climate with, as you say, not only our children being slaughtered in mass shootings, but our. Black brothers and sisters being slaughtered, just trying to buy groceries.

We've got our, you know, LGBTQ brothers and sisters in the Pulse Nightclub. We've got our Hispanic brothers and sisters just shopping at Walmart in El Paso. We've got our Jewish brothers and sisters at the Tree of Life Synagogue. We've got Asian American brothers and sisters worshipping who are being, you know, this is insanity. It's pure insanity. And, you know, if I were president, I can't even utter that, if I got to sign executive order I would sign 100 executive orders in 100 days until my right hand fell off that I'd learned how to sign them with my left hand.

And I would attack, I would attack the proliferation and the unrestricted access to weapons of war in this country like nobody's business with executive orders. You have to be careful trying not to run afoul of the Constitution. But for gosh sakes, Donald Trump, one of his first executive orders, was his hate-filled ban of human beings, Muslim ban. And the first one got struck down. But what happened? His nefarious administration went back, retooled, and got it right, or at least got it to pass constitutional muster the second time. Why can't we do the same thing in the gun arena to flood the zone with good? Get out there and protect the American people with executive orders. Lord knows,

I put every restriction on high capacity magazines that I could think of. And then I'd fight in court And I'd say we're trying to protect the lives of the American people. That's why we're signing these executive orders and let the legal challenge come. Because if we lose, then we retool, we learn based on what the judge ruled and we get it right the next time. But shouldn't we at least, Brian, shouldn't we at least put ourselves in a position where mass murderers have to reload as they're murdering and slaughtering our children? let's go after the high capacity magazines at least. Let me just finish. I want to go and my blood pressure is up. I got to go back to norms and traditions because the other one that your question reminded me of is we have this quaint little Norman tradition that within 60 days of an election,

the federal government, the Department of Justice, the FBI, tries not to take any overt law enforcement act that could interfere in the election or be perceived as being motivated by politics. Now, Jim Comey didn't follow that rule as an aside, but that is a quaint little Norman tradition that we need to move away from. Why? We have insurrectionists in Congress running for re-election. You do not give them an election holiday from investigating their crimes. Indite them on the eve of the election if the evidence is sufficient to do so. Don't let the insurrectionists get another foothold by being.

re-elected because you've given them an election holiday based on a quaint little Norman tradition. Yeah, perfectly put. Glenn, we'll leave it there. Thank you so much. Your insight is just beyond valuable. So I really appreciate you taking the time. My pleasure, Brian. Thanks. Thanks again to Glenn. One quick note, if you enjoy this podcast, please leave me a rating and a review and suggested to a friend, word of mouth is the single best way for me to get new listeners. Okay, thanks so much. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app.

Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Briantylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.