The Daily Signal - #411: Meet the California Lawyer Defending Daleiden, Covington Teens

Episode Date: March 5, 2019

What’s it like to be a conservative lawyer in a liberal bastion like San Francisco? That’s exactly what Harmeet Dhillon does every day, and her clients include a dozen of the Covington High School teens, pro-life activist David Daleiden, and many others. Listen to the interview in the podcast or read the transcript below. Plus: Rob Bluey and Rachel del Guidice sit down with Congressman Mike Johnson, who now heads up the largest conservative caucus in the House. We also cover these stories:•President Trump now says he agrees 100 percent with keeping U.S. troops in Syria. •New Attorney General Bill Bar will not recuse himself and will oversee the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. •An Alabama woman who joined ISIS is trying to get back into the country -- and her first effort just failed. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, March 6th. I'm Kate Trinko. And I'm Daniel Davis. What's it like to be a conservative lawyer in a liberal bastion like San Francisco? Well, that's exactly what Harmeet Dylan does every day. And her clients include a dozen of the Covington boys, David Delighton, who exposed Planned Parenthood's sale of fetal tissue, James DeMore, the conservative who left working at Google, and many others. Today, we bring you Kate's exclusive interview with Harmeet. Plus, Rob and Rachel sit down with Congressman Mike Johnson, who now heads up the largest conservative caucus in the House. He discusses border security and other major items this Congress. And just a reminder that if you're a fan of this podcast, please mention it to your friends and families. Please subscribe and please leave a five-star review on iTunes.

We are here to make sure that busy conservatives can get the news highlights and in-depth interviews they need every day. And we'd love your help in spreading the word. Now on to our top news. Well, once again, anti-Semitism is in the news. The House is considering a vote Wednesday on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism just three days after Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, yet again, stirred up trouble with anti-Israel comments. She accused her pro-Israel colleagues of pushing allegiance to a foreign country. But another freshman Democrat, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was less critical of Omar and questioned the House's response.

On Twitter Tuesday, she said, quote, One of the things that is hurtful about the extent to which reprimand is sought of Ilhan is that no one seeks this level of reprimand when members make statements about Latino and other communities. During the shutdown, a GOP member yelled, go back to Puerto Rico on the floor. End quote. She went on to say, where are the resolutions against homophobic statements? For anti-blackness, for xenophobia, for a member saying he'll send Obama home to Kenya, end quote. Well, President Trump blasted Omar's comments and said they mark a dark day for Israel.

A conservative watchdog, the National Legal and Policy Center, is accusing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, and her chief of staff, Shoycott Chakrabati, of potentially violating laws about spending in politics. Tom Anderson, director of the National Legal and Policy Center's Government Integrity Project, told the Washington Examiner, quote, it appears Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her associates ran an off-the-book's operation to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, thus violating the foundation of all campaign finance laws, transparency. The National Legal and Policy Center has filed a complaint with the FEC, and the group says on its website that Ocasio-Cortez and others, quote, orchestrated an extensive operation to hide hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign spending, during the 2018 campaign in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 as amended.

Ocasio-Cortez, reached by Fox News, said, quote, there is no violation. Well, in a full reversal, President Trump now says he agrees 100% with keeping U.S. troops in Syria. Just over two months ago, the president had announced that all U.S. troops in Syria were coming home. We've been fighting for a long time in Syria. I've been president for almost two years, and we've really stepped it up, and we have won against ISIS. We've beaten them, and we've beaten them badly. We've taken back the land, and now it's time for our troops to come back home. Well, in late February, members of Congress from both parties sent the president a letter,

congratulating him on his decision to keep a small military presence in Syria. And according to NBC, the president sent a scanned copy of that letter back to members of Congress with one paragraph highlighted. Quote, like you, we seek to ensure that all of the gains made in Syria are not lost, that ISIS never returns, that Iran is not emboldened, and that we consolidate our gains and ensure the best outcome in Geneva for American interest, end quote. While the president then appears to have written in his own handwriting, I agree 100%.

All is being done, Donald Trump. New Attorney General, Bill Barr, will oversee the investigation conducted by Special Council Robert Mueller. Justice Department spokesperson, Carrie Kupec, said, quote, following General Barr's confirmation, senior career ethics officials advised that General Barr should not recuse himself from the special counsel's investigation. Consistent with that advice, General Barr has decided not to recuse. A New Jersey Congressman has backed off from introducing a bill that would have condemned North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for the death of Otto Warmbier. Warmbier was an American student who died shortly after being released from North Korean captivity.

According to the Cincinnati Inquirer, the congressman, Democrat Tom Malinowski, had planned to introduce the bill as a rebuke to the president, who recently said that he doesn't hold Kim responsible for Warmbier's death. Malinowski chose not to introduce the bill after speaking with Warmbier's family, saying that they preferred he not move forward. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to face fallout amid charge. of a corruption scandal, with two members of his cabinet now having resigned. The crisis began after former Canadian Attorney General Jody Wilson Raybold said, quote, I experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, end quote, and then claimed that Trudeau had pressured her to handle a certain way an allegation that a Canadian

company, per NPR, quote, engaged in a legal. long-term bribery and corruption scheme in Libya that involved funneling tens of millions of dollars to the family of former dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. Now Treasury Board President Jane Philpott has stepped down citing her concerns over Wilson-Raubold's allegations. Trudeau says, per Reuters, concerns of this nature must be taken seriously, and I can ensure you that I am. Well, an Alabama woman who joined ISIS is trying to get back into the country, and her first

effort just failed. The 24-year-old Hoda Muthana requested re-entry along with her toddler's son on an emergency basis, which a federal judge in Washington has just denied. That means that for now she'll have to stay at a refugee camp in Syria. The U.S. says that Muthana is not actually a U.S. citizen because at the time of her birth in New Jersey, her father was a Yemeni diplomat, but her lawyers dispute that. Well, there's at least one Democrat left in America who says they're not running, Hillary Clinton. I'm not running, but I'm going to keep working and speaking and standing up for what I believe. Clinton made the remarks in an interview with News 12 of the Westchester, New York area.

Well, up next, Kate's interview from CPAC with Hartmeet Dillon, the conservative attorney in San Francisco. Do you have an opinion that you'd like to share? I'm Rob Blewey, editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal, and I'm inviting you to share your thoughts with us. Leave us a voicemail at 202-608-6205 or email us at letters at dailysignal.com. Yours could be featured on the Daily Signal podcast. Okay, joining us from CPAC is Harmeet Dillon, who is a lawyer who lives in San Francisco, so we know she's used to defending what she believes in. I wanted to start off with.

You represent your lawyer, clients who were injured in the 2016 Trump Rally in San Jose, California, about an hour from San Francisco. Remind us what happened there, and how is the case going? Sure. So on June 2nd, 2016, then candidate Donald Trump came to San Jose for a big rally. I was actually at the rally and did the Pledge of Allegiance. It was a great event. The problem is that the city of San Jose has a liberal mayor

and they did not want Trump to come. And so they tried to discourage it. Then he came anyway because California people wanted to hear him. And there were 250 riot gear. clad police from San Jose and surrounding jurisdictions there. Basically, there was a very aggressive, organized protest by people waving Mexican flags and shouting very aggressive anti-Trump epithets. And the police forced all the people who were leaving the event directly into the mob that was protesting the event and then stood there and watched people get assaulted. So we have, I think,

19 plaintiffs who were physically assaulted or, you know, chased or otherwise put into fear of their lives at this event. We sued the city of San Jose, its mayor, its chief of police, and several other police officers on civil rights grounds for violating the civil rights of the attendees. And we were able to keep that case in court after two motions to dismiss. The city of San Jose appealed it to the Ninth Circuit where it languished for almost two years. Really? In the Ninth Circuit? Yes. But we won in the Ninth Circuit. Oh, wow. So the court then sent the case back down, and now we're in the middle of depositions.

So we're having depositions taken of our clients. We're taking depositions of the police. And we are set by the court for a settlement conference with a federal judge to try to see if we can broker a settlement. Okay. And do you have other political clients right now? Many. I am also representing David Deladen, who is the gentleman from Center for Medical Progress, who exposed national abortion federations, trafficking and human body parts.

We're representing him in the Ninth Circuit, an appeal of one of the rulings in the district court case below. I'm also representing teachers who are seeking to challenge the union dues in the post-Janus era. That's an ongoing, soon-to-be-filed situation in California. And I'm representing families of 12-plus Covington kids who were the target of this mob hatred there. James DeMore, who sued Google for firing him for expressing anti-PC viewpoints in the workplace. And so, and there are more, but those are a few. Well, that's a lot right there. So tell us, how is James DeMore's case going?

He, of course, as you mentioned, expressed unpolitically correct views. He suggested that maybe if you look at, you know, women as a group and men as a group, they might occasionally have different skill sets, which I think a lot of us would say is common sense. How's his case going? Well, he didn't even say they have different skill sets. He said that they have sort of different approaches to problem solving and that if Google wanted to attract more women, which he thinks is a good goal,

they need to sort of look at those issues and make Google more attractive to women as opposed to simply forcing quotas down the throats of the workers. So his case, unfortunately, is stuck in arbitration because workers and all these big tech companies file arbitration and sign arbitration agreements. So we are in arbitration right now. with his case, another case of another person who was fired there.

And then in court, we have a class of job applicants who believe they were not hired because they were conservative, white, and male. Okay, so you're in Silicon Valley. You're representing clients who are no longer with these tech companies. Obviously, we all use Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, et cetera. Do you think these tech companies can be trusted when they say they want to be a platform for everyone,

or do you have concerns? No, they can't be trusted. I mean, I'm going to be on a panel tomorrow with James O'Kee. who exposed yesterday, sort of the equivalent of shadow banning at Facebook. We're aware from his prior work of shadow banning at Twitter. And the leaders of all of these companies, Google is really the worst of all of them, but they're very liberal. They wanted Hillary Clinton to win.

She didn't win, and they're still trying to get their vengeance out of that. But some of these people have these messianic complexes. They really want to change the world and shape it in a progressive way. And so I don't think you can trust them at all. And in fact, many consumer lawsuits have been filed about privacy violations and so forth. So I'd love to see more conservatives take this issue seriously. And not to say the market will shift and the market will handle these issues. There's a certain point in time and a certain volume of power where the market cannot do that.

Okay. So you said you're representing some of the teens who were involved in the Covington fake news crisis for lack of a better. term. What's going on there? Well, one lawsuit has already been filed by a different lawyer for Nick Sandman, and I can't reveal strategy, but there will be, you know, more lawsuits filed. Okay. And do you know, can you say, like, what's the hope here? Is it holding the media accountable? Or what's the overall goal? Keep in mind, it wasn't just the media that attacked these boys. There were prominent liberals and politicians who docks them, who called for them, who called for them to suffer harm and their families to be shamed and suffer harm. The school was harmed.

So it's actually a much broader societal problem. I think this problem of mob rule on the internet and group shaming and destroying people's lives over something they said or a smile or a smirk if you have that is a big societal cultural problem that we need to address. So the courts are only going to be able to address so much, but we're hoping to draw attention to these issues and it's bad on both sides when it happens. So on that, I think a lot of conservative are reluctant to often take things to the court. They don't want to be like lawsuit, happy, et cetera. But it seems like there's beginning to be a shift

where people are more comfortable, perhaps realizing they don't have any other option. I mean, do you think that we're going to see more of these battles fought in the courts going forward? Well, if we don't see them, you're not going to hear anything from conservatives. Nobody's going to hear your podcast. Nobody's going to hear from any of us in five years.

So we cannot be fighting the wars of the 20th century with the tools of the 19th century. we have got to fight back in the same way the liberals do. The minute the president signs an executive order, somebody files a lawsuit over it. Republicans and conservatives need to do the same thing. Okay, so what is it like for you being a conservative in the San Francisco area? Well, I was a conservative at Dartmouth College.

I was a Sikh in the Deep South where I grew up and I'm an immigrant. It doesn't faze me. Popularity Contest is not what I'm about. So I believe what I believe, and I'm going to say it until my voice is muffled. Okay. grow up conservative or did you become conservative or what was that journey like for you? My parents registered as Republicans when they became United States citizens and I've always been a conservative. Okay. And do you have any thoughts on, you know, I'm from California. My parents

are still there. It seems like every time I talk to them, they say the state is going further down the tubes. Is there any hope for the golden state? There's no hope in the short term to be very frank at a state level in Sacramento. There remains to be quite a bit of places in the state where Republicans can still get elected at the local level and in some of the counties, and we're going to really be focusing our efforts in the Republican Party over the next term, on those, on winning back seats that we lost due to some changes in the law. And again, there, Republicans have to play the same games as the Democrats. If Democrats are doing ballot harvesting, and as long as that's the law, we need to be doing it too, et cetera.

So we'll be focusing on winning at various levels. Okay, well, thanks very much for joining us. My pleasure. Do you own an Alexa? You can now get the Daily Signal podcast every day as part of your daily flash briefing. It's easy to do. Just open up your Alexa app, go to settings, and select Flash briefing. From there, you can search for the Daily Signal podcast and add it to your flash briefing

so you can stay up to date with the top news of the day that the liberal media isn't covering. Next up, Rob and Rachel's CPAC interview with Representative Mike Johnson of the Republican Study Committee. We're joined on the Daily Signal podcast today by Congressman Mike Johnson from Louisiana's fourth congressional district. He's also the chairman of the Republican Study Committee in the U.S. House. Congressman, thanks for joining us. Great to be with you. I want to begin with one of the topics that's on everybody's mind, and that's immigration and border security. The House recently voted to override and block President Trump's declaration of a national emergency. Why do you think building a wall is so controversial when we know there's

evidence that walls work? Clearly walls work. That's a matter of common sense. But also if you talk to DHS, Department of Homeland Security. You talk to the Border Patrol officials, they tell you, it is definitely a measure that assists them in their very important job. And, you know, until recently it's interesting. Many of the Democrats who voted no against all this used to openly acknowledge that as well. Clearly we have a crisis at the southern border. It's both a humanitarian crisis and a national security crisis, and Congress is simply not doing its job here. What do you think the next step should be to address this crisis at the border? Well, you know, the president really had no choice but to issue this emergency declaration, and I think that will be an important first step in this.

But Congress can't abdicate that responsibility. We've got to get right back to this. We will continue to work at this in piecemeal fashion, and hopefully when the Republicans take the majority again in the House and the next Congress, which I'm convinced is going to happen, we can get right back to that as a top priority. Congressman, you've been outspoken in the attempts on some members of the House to remove words like, so help you God, from oaths of office and testimonies. Why is this so concerning to you? Well, it's of deep concern. In fact, I'm talking to you guys right now. I just left the Constitution Subcommittee meeting in the House Judiciary, where we were having actually a hearing on the National Emergency Declaration. And the witnesses, there were two law and attack.

attorney, a law professor, two law professors and another witness. The chairman of the subcommittee, Representative Cohen, swore them in without using the phrase, so help me God. And I stopped him, as has become my custom now and made a parliamentary inquiry, why we left it out. And they refused to incorporate it again, which now is a break from the tradition that they started a couple of weeks ago, adding it back in when we object. So, look, this looks to be a concentrated effort on the part of Democrat leaders and a number of committees across the hill, and I think it's very unfortunate. The reason it's so important. It's more than just symbolism. It dates back to the founding of the country. It was part of the law as early as the Judiciary Act of 1789. There's a reason we do this.

It's because the founders understood and acknowledged that persons who take a solemn oath of office or who take an oath to testify before the Congress, they wanted them to acknowledge the owe responsibility to something higher than our human institutions, our temporal institutions, that it's so important that you owe an allegiance responsibility for truth to God Almighty that's why it's so important. And courts as recently as last fall, a federal district court in Massachusetts upheld the phrase as it's included in the oath to become a naturalized citizen. So help me God.

They said it's not a violation of the establishment clause. It's part of the fabric and tradition of who we are as Americans, and we should not abandon it now. Well, thank you for taking a strong stand on that and explaining to our listeners why it's so important. At the beginning of January, the Daily Signal covered your goals for the Republican Study Committee. What are some of the top issues in legislation you want to? influence in this Congress? Well, the Republican Study Committee, as you know, is the largest caucus of conservatives in the Congress. And we have about 140 members in this Congress, and they're working very hard.

And this is what's so exciting, and I think should be encouraging to your listeners, there's a lot of important substantive work going on behind the scenes. It's not being covered on the media every night. But all of those conservatives in the House are working every day. We have them divided into task forces, working groups on various issues, and the persons who are on each of those task forces have a real burning passion for those issues, lots of expertise, and we are grinding it out on a daily basis. So we're producing what I refer to using a football analogy as our playbook,

so that when we do get the majority back, we know exactly what we're doing, we know the agenda to run. And Republican Study Committee, RSC, is the policy shop from where all that comes out of. So some of the task forces, just by way of quick example, we have a budget task force, of course, that is working on the RSC budget, which is a truly conservative, fiscally responsible, balanced budget. You got 150 votes on the House, and the last Congress will do a similar measure this time. We have an American worker task force.

We have a health care task force. We have a national security task force. In so many different areas of interest, we have real important substantive work going on right now, and this is what's going to carry our agenda through in the next Congress and over the next several years. Switching to the Senate for a moment, you recently had a vote that I think surprised a lot of people, President Trump called it a vote that will go down in history. Of course, I'm talking about the Born Alive Bill, which Democrats managed to block when it failed to get 60 votes.

What's your reaction to the fact that so many Democrats decided to vote in this manner? Stunning, shocking. I was standing in the back of the House chamber with about 30 members, conservative members of the House, in the back of the Senate chamber when they made that vote. And I went to social media right after that and gave my response to that that it was so jarring to us that some of the Democrats, 44 Senate Democrats, as you know, voted against that measure

to protect a newborn baby to protect a life in a failed abortion attempt. And people like Elizabeth Warren, for example, came on the floor and seemed to be gleeful in her vote in that regard. And that was just a very shocking moment to us. And it's a very kind of a scary place that we are in this country. When we devalue the sanctity of life to the point where we will actually endorse infanticide, which is what that is. We're in a very dark place, and we better pray for God's mercy over our nation.

So Republicans would have to acquire about 21 signatures from House Democrats to force a four vote on the Born Alive Bill in the House. Do you think that's possible, given that so few Democrats in the Senate, I'd only think three voted in the Senate for this bill. So do you think it's possible in the House to gain this? I do think it's possible. I certainly hope it is, and there's a number of Democrats in the House who are in swing districts, and they're in a perilous situation,

here politically. It should not be a controversial notion at all. It shouldn't be a political issue at all. The idea that we were protect, the most vulnerable, the most defenseless among us, we should get every Democrat in the House to sign on, but we're going to continue to try to bring that up until we get the requisite number, because this is

absolutely essential to who we are. The reason that we value the sanctity of every human life is because of that famous language in the Declaration that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. The reason the founder said that, is because he understood that all of us, as the President said in his state of the Union, are made in the image of a holy God.

And because of that, every single human life has an estimable dignity and value. And guess what? Your value is not related in any way to the color of your skin or what zip code you live in or how good looking you are, what your talents may be.

Your value is inherent because it is given to you by your creator. And if we abandon that principle in America, we lose a very big part of what it means to be an American. So we're going to fight for it every day. Congressman, of course, the discharge petition is one tactic that the minority party in the House can use to force a vote.

Republicans have also used quite effectively so far in the first few months of the year the motion to recommit forcing some tough votes for Democrats. What are some other tactics that Republicans, conservatives can use over these two years with Democrats in control to force your agenda to the forefront? Well, it's interesting. procedural maneuvers are important when you're in the minority to block dangerous, harmful legislation. We've been so successful with the motion to recommit that the word from the House floor today was that the Democrats are going to change the rule and take that little procedural maneuver out of the playbook which would be unprecedented in the history of the Congress.

Look, we're in unprecedented times. We recognize that in every way on the policy, on the substance of it, on the procedure. We're going to use every tool that's available to us and we've got some really smart men and women on our team. One of our task forces in the Republican Study Committee is dedicated to floor strategy. it's the RSC Action Group.

And we're the ones cooking up some of these good ideas. And you don't want to reveal your playbook before it comes to that. But just know that every single day, and conservatives can, I think, take some solace in this. Every single day, they're a really smart, procedural strategist on our team on the floor, looking for ways to exploit the weaknesses on the other side. And let me tell you, there's a lot of them. Well, recently on Twitter, you highlighted the fact that only 26 Democrats

joined Republicans on a vote that was a, a Republican measure that would have notified ICE when an illegal immigrant tried to purchase a gun. What did you think about only 26 Democrats joining in on that vote? Well, it was stunning, and that was an example of us using procedure to our advantage. They sort of got caught flat-footed, and, you know, the idea that we would not want to allow ICE to do its job. I mean, the enforcement of our immigration law is critical to maintaining our national security, and ultimately, as the President of our president, likes to say our national sovereignty. If you can't allow the enforcement of immigration laws

and you have completely open borders, we really don't have a country. We don't have a sovereign nation anymore. And so these Democrats are in a very precarious position, I think, because they're taking some votes right now that I believe are going to haunt them in the future and in the next election cycle. And I can tell you, there's some Democrats in some of these swing districts who are nervous about these votes. The ones that came along with us are a good example, but there are others who went the wrong way on that vote, among many other votes, and I think they're going to come to regret it at the ballot the next time. Congressman, thanks for visiting with the Daily Signal

and your leadership of the RSC. We appreciate it. Thank you. Great to be with you. And that will do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review and a five-star rating on iTunes to give us feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow.

You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Rampersad. For more information, visitdailySignal.com. Americans have almost entirely forgotten their history. That's right, and if we want to keep our republic, this needs to change.

I'm Jared Stepman. And I'm Fred Lucas. We host the Right Side of History, a podcast dedicated to restoring informed patriotism and busting the negative narratives about America's past. Hollywood, the media, and academia have failed a generation. We're here to set the record straight on the ideals and people who've made this country great. Subscribe to the right side of history on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Stitcher Today.