The Daily Signal - The Whistleblower, Impeachment, and New York's Orwellian Speech Policy

Episode Date: October 4, 2019

New York City is banning the term “illegal alien”—and what’s more, they say they’ll fine you up to a quarter-million dollars if you say it. Today, we’ll discuss that situation with Heritage Foundation legal expert Hans von Spakovsky. We’ll also have him weigh in on the latest impeachment news, and whether foreign leaders staying at the Trump International Hotel in D.C. is a problem. We also cover these stories: President Trump urges Ukraine and China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy asks Speaker Nancy Pelosi to stop the impeachment proceedings until she answers key questions A doctor in England who lost his job after refusing to use transgender pronouns loses his legal case The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, Pippa, 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 Friday, October 4th. I'm Rachel D. Judas. And I'm Daniel Davis. New York City is banning the term illegal alien. And what's more, they say they'll fine you up to a quarter million dollars if you say it. Today we'll discuss that situation with Heritage Legal expert Hans von Spikovsky. We'll also have him weigh in on the latest impeachment news in D.C. And whether foreign leaders staying at the Trump Hotel is a problem.

Also, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave us a review or a five-star rating on iTunes and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. President Trump on Thursday urged Ukraine and China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. Here's what he said to reporters. She started an investigation into the Biden.

Because what happened to China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine. So I would say that President Zelensky, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens because nobody has any doubt that they weren't crooked. That was a crooked deal 100%. Those comments come as Democrats ramp up impeachment efforts, claiming that the president used military aid money as leverage to get Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. President Trump has denied pressuring Ukraine and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy. also denies pressure from the Trump administration. But Trump has maintained that Biden's actions as Vice President in regards to Ukraine were corrupt and helped enrich his son. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi to stop the impeachment proceedings

until she answers certain questions, which he outlined in a letter. One of those questions is, do you intend to hold a vote of the full House authorizing your impeachment inquiry? McCarthy tweeted Wednesday, quote, Given the enormity of the question at hand, impeaching a duly elected president, the American public deserves fairness and transparency, end quote. This comes on the heels of a New York Times report that Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was in conversations with the whistleblower via his staff before the complaint went public.

Hong Kong is preparing to invoke a British colonial era law to ban protesters from wearing face masks. The move comes amid ongoing protests and skirmishes with police. Hong Kong residents have taken to the streets repeatedly since early summer to express opposition to Chinese encroachment on Hong Kong. The city's chief executive, Carrie Lamb, called a special meeting of her executive council to propose the face mask ban, which would go into effect Friday. The law would also allow the government to impose curfews, sensor media, and take the control of ports and all transportation facilities, according to the Wall Street Journal. A doctor in England who reportedly lost his job after refusing to use transgender pronouns

also lost his legal case on Wednesday. Dr. David McAreth, who worked for the Department for Work and Pensions, said he was fired for not calling patients by their chosen gender instead of their biological sex. He argued in court that his firing amounted to discrimination based on his Christian beliefs. The employment tribunal that heard his case said that his Christian beliefs were, quote, incompatible with human dignity, end quote. Well, it was one year ago that Amber Geiger, a Dallas police officer, walked into an apartment she thought was her own and shot and killed the man who was there. His name was Boetham Jean. He was 26 years old and African American. On Wednesday,

Geiger was found guilty of murder and received 10 years in prison. But what happened next was unexpected and moved even the judge to tears. The victim's brother, Brandt Jean, said this to Geiger. And I'm not going to say, I hope you rot and die, just like my brother did, but I personally want the best for you. And I wasn't going to ever say this in front of my family or anyone, but I don't even want you to go to jail. I want the best for you because I know that's exactly what both of them would want you to do. And the best would be give your life to Christ.

I'm not going to say anything else. I think giving your life to Christ would be the best thing that both of them would want you to do. Again, I love you as a person and I don't wish anything bad on you. I don't know if this is possible, but can I give her a hug, please? Please? Yes.

Up next, we'll have a conversation with Hans von Spikovsky. Exciting news for Heritage Members. Our 2019 Presidents Club is taking place October 21 through 23 in Washington, D.C. This is an exclusive event for Heritage Members to hear directly from our experts and other conservative leaders. This year, that includes Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. To learn more about how you can attend, please call 1-800-546-2843. That's 1-800-4-6-2843. Well, we're joined now in the studio by Hans von Spikovsky. He's a senior legal fellow here at the Heritage Foundation. Hans, thanks for being back on. Sure, thanks for having me. So we have a lot

that I want to get to today regarding a new hate speech policy in New York City, which you say violates the First Amendment and you've written for that at the Daily Signal. But also Congress getting up in arms about foreign leaders and wealthy business people staying at the Trump Hotel in D.C. And whether that constitutes some kind of corruption or violation of the Constitution. But first, because impeachment is so fast moving and there's new information coming out, I want to start with that. We've been learning more about the Trump, Ukraine conversations. But the latest news is about Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Reports have emerged that his staff was actually in conversations with the whistleblower before the complaint went public. The minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, has now called for Schiff to step down as chairman because of that.

Is this damning news about Schiff that his staff was talking with the whistleblower? Yeah, I think it is because what it does is it raises questions about whether this was really a legitimate complaint by an intelligence analyst over things that he thought were being done wrong in the intelligence agency where he worked. Or if he's having all this discussions with the Democratic representative and his staff who's leading the impeachment charge, was this a court? was this a coordinated, biased, and partisan political complaint that was being filed for its value in the media and to help spur the impeachment process? You know, it raises a lot of questions about the legitimacy of the actual whistleblower complaint. So President Trump, he initially called for the whistleblower to be revealed, although more recently he said that he thinks whistleblowers should be protected if their claims are in fact legitimate. Should this whistleblower's identity be protected or not?

Well, it's kind of interesting. You know, supposedly the whistleblower complaint, the whole purpose of the law is to protect your confidentiality. But the whistleblower complaint didn't seem to be concerned about members of shift staff knowing who he is. So if he was really worried, why would he do that? But there's a balancing act here. On the one hand, look, the whistleblower law is very important and there's a reason why it protects whistleblower so we can find out about fraud and government and things like that. But if this forms the basis of impeachment, fundamental requirements of due process require that the president and his lawyers be able to question the person making accurate. accusations against him. You know, that's why

in any state and federal court in this land, you have the right to confront whoever is accusing you of wrongdoing. So if this gets to that point of the House about to approve articles of impeachment, or if it gets

to the Senate, I think the president should be given the right to confront his accuser. Right, right. Well, something that the president has also mentioned is that the rule for whistleblowers were changed just days before this complaint went public, which raises real questions about who is this whistleblower and who is behind those rules changes. The previous rules were that you had to have firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in order to get

that whistleblower status. The rule change says, no, it can actually be second or third-hand information, basically just hearsay, and you can raise the complaint and get whistleblower status. What does that, what does that say to you? Well, that also raises a lot of questions about the credibility of the Inspector General for the intelligence agencies. Now, what this is about is the form, the complaint form that you previously filled out, you had to assert he had firsthand knowledge. And all of a sudden the form was changed recently so that you could check that you either have firsthand knowledge and or you have secondhand knowledge, which is considered hearsay. That's a legal term for it.

And, of course, hearsay is not accepted in any state or federal court anywhere in the country. You know, the inspector general is claiming that, oh, well, we just changed that because we've always accepted secondhand information. But that's a little hard to believe if that's true. Why did the form say you had to have firsthand knowledge? So again, that to me raises some questions about the credibility of the inspector general. Well, it's been said that Brennan, who was at the end of the Obama administration, left a bunch of his people actually in the intelligence community as career people. Do you think that this could be one of them trying to cover themselves with whistleblower status and try to get, quote unquote, get the president? Well, look, we don't know who the person is.

So, of course, that's certainly a possibility. We don't really know. The one thing I do, I can say, this is from my prior experience in the federal government. I arrived at the Bush administration early at the start of the Bush administration, and I discovered this happens all the time, that there were all these Clinton political appointees who had been squirled away into career ranks inside the Justice Department. And unfortunately, that's the kind of thing that happens all the time. And those individuals who I got to know, they basically did everything they could from their career slots to stop the enforcement priorities, for example, of President Bush, and to cause trouble by, for example, leaking stories to outlets like the Washington Post, whenever.

it looked like the administration was going to do things that they didn't agree with. They, frankly, were some of the most unethical lawyers I've ever had to deal with. So, Hans, how far do you think this impeachment probe will get? We were talking just a few minutes before we got started here. And do you think this is going to be a situation sort of like the Rush. Lick-Lews an investigation was where it's kind of an ongoing thing until it dies down? Or do you think we're going to see any kind of end to this? What is your forecast here?

Boy, I really don't know the answer to that. What I will say is, look, we don't know what we don't know, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld. But through today, particularly concentrating on the transcript of the phone call that the president had with the Ukrainian president, look, there's nothing in that phone call that is a smoking gun. There's nothing in that phone call indicating that the president violated any federal law. And I don't see anything in that letter that would warrant impeachment of the president. Maybe there's other stuff out there. But unless the Democrats can uncover real wrongdoing, serious misconduct by the president, I don't see how they could justify approving articles of impeachment.

Well, shifting to a story out of New York, which you've recently written about the Daily Signal, the city's Human Rights Commission, which is not an elected body, has announced that it's banning the term illegal alien from common business usage and threatening to find people if they use the term. Tell us what this is about. Yeah, not just a minor fine, up to $250,000. I mean, it's a lot. Yeah, they're banning the use of the term illegal alien. They even say the use of the word alien. of immigrant is demeaning to illegal aliens.

We're not talking about just people passing on the street using the word, right? It's like some kind of official capacity. Right. Right. This is a – they have an ordinance in New York that, of course, bans discrimination by employers, by people who provide public housing, including, for example, landlords of apartments, hotels, et cetera. And they can be fined if they.

use those terms. Now, what's so bizarre about this is that the term alien is the term used throughout federal immigration law. And the term illegal alien is not only used in specific federal statutes, but it's the proper legal term that's used in Supreme Court cases. So in essence, New York is trying to say that your use of a precise legal terminology is discriminatory and we're going to find you if you do that. Like I said, I can't think of a more fundamental violation of the First Amendment

besides just being totally absurd. So beyond the official terminology piece, it also seems that this goes against free speech and the First Amendment. Yeah. Do you expect to see a lawsuit brought forth against the city? I would hope so. The thing about that is it's going to take somebody either company, or hotel who's brave enough to do that because we all know that they're probably going to suffer

bad publicity because the political orthodoxy today, particularly of the kind of liberal media organizations that exist in New York City, is that, oh, you can't use the word illegal alien. You have to use undocumented immigrant, which is a euphemism that was created to hide what's really going on, which is an alien who's in the country. illegally. Yeah, the term kind of assumes that, you know, the only problem is you don't have documents, that documents are just, you know, fake and arbitrary and you just need your document, just like the rest of us.

Right. Or you just don't happen to have them with you when you're out and about in the community. It's, this is political correctness to the nth degree, and it is just so fundamentally wrong. So the city did try to say that this was limited guidance, saying that it only applies if you were intending to demean, humiliate, or offend someone. So limiting. Are you convinced? No.

Because, look, they say that in this guidance, which is very long, this legal guidance they've issued, but then you read other parts of it, and they clearly believe that just the simple use of those words is demeaning and humiliating. So that's not really a limitation. Like, if you could ask them, can you give me an example of a usage of this term that would actually not be demeaning in your? opinion. I don't think they could. Yeah. Man. Okay, well, shifting gears back to D.C., Democrats recently held a hearing that asked the question of whether Trump was in violation of the Constitution by letting foreign dignitaries, wealthy business owners, and others stay at the Trump International Hotel, which is a major five-star hotel near Capitol Hill. They're saying that Trump partly owns the

company that owns the hotel, so he might be influenced by people purchasing rooms there. And more importantly, he could be in violation of the Monuments Clause of the Constitution. What do you make of these claims? They're frivolous. I actually testified at the hearing, and it shows you just how far gone folks in the House are that the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which you think would be worried about, you know, rebuilding interstate highways and bridges, and instead they have a half-day hearing on the Trump Hotel. The Trump Hotel is one of only two five-star hotels in the city, according to Forbes. The GSA, General Services Administration, owns the building.

It's the old post office building. And it was a dilapidated rundown buildings built in 1890. And they put it out for bids to redevelop it. And a Trump organization of which Donald Trump at the time was a majority shareholder, but there were other shareholders too, They put in a bid. They won it in 2013. They rebuilt it. During the heart of the Obama administration.

The heart of the Obama administration. They rebuilt the hotel, GSA again, during the Obama administration, and entered into a 60-year lease. And the federal government went from losing, losing $6 million a year trying to maintain this old property to being paid $3 million a year by the Trump organization. When Trump became president, he transferred his interest from this company into a trust. And so he doesn't have any management control of anything about it. Here's the claim that's being made. The emoluments clauses, there are two of them, very obscure clauses, are clauses that say no federal official, including the president, can receive gifts,

presence, or amoluments from foreign governments, the federal government or state governments. Amoluments are considered compensation that you receive as you discharge your official duties. So in other words, you know, if the president signs some bill that provides foreign aid to, you know, some country in Africa, Africa can't send him money saying thank you very much for doing that. Same thing with state government. State governments, if he signed some bill that's going to distribute. money to a state government. The state government can't pay him anything above and beyond a salary.

Yeah. But emoluments don't include the business of a president, a business where people are paying the fair market value for services in an open market. That's not emoluments. And in fact, all you got to do is look back. I mean, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson kept running their plantations and farms, and they sold their agricultural products abroad. Was that illegal emoluments?

Of course not. Or under the most ridiculous part of this theory, remember, you can't get anything or state governments either. Under the view that anything of value that a president gets is a prohibited emolument, both Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan violated the emoluments clause

because, you know, they received pensions from their respective states from when they were governor while they were president. You know, it's just a, it's just another way of going after the president. And, you know, the claim was made is hearing. Well, the only reason foreign diplomats and others stay at this hotels are trying to curry favor with the president. Well, that ignores the fact that, look, I've been this town a long time. That's one of the nicest hotels in the city.

Right. I mean, it's a great place to stay. And, you know, if you're somebody with a lot of money, you're a jet center, you're a foreign diplomat. that's the place you're going to want to stay. Right, especially if you want to get close to Capitol Hill. I mean, it's the only one, the only five-star hotel right there. That's exactly right. It's on Pennsylvania Avenue.

It's within walking distance of the White House. It's not very far from the Capitol. I mean, you couldn't get a better location. Now, some might say, okay, yeah, state officials can't give the president money. But that's why you would expect countries like Russia and China to have front companies out or, you know, middlemen to funnel the money. to the president so that they don't have their fingerprints on it. How would you respond to that?

Because people might say, yeah, you got all these, you know, businessmen with Russian names staying at the Trump Hotel. That sounds awful suspicious. Well, first of all, it's not going to the president directly. It's going to a company that he owns a share in. And he has now put it in a trust and has said that the payments received from any foreign diplomats or foreign government officials. for staying in the hotel and paying the market price for hotel is going to be paid over to the U.S. Treasury.

So he's not profiting from it at all. I think it's just a silly claim. There are several pending lawsuits. One of them that was filed by Maryland and the District of Columbia just got thrown out of court by the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. So final question, Hans, if there was some kind of. of wrongdoing here, some wrongful influence going on that did violate the Monuments Clause. What would that look like? A violation of the Emoluments Clause would be if a Russian government official sent something

of value to the president because they're happy about something he did in his official duties. So if, for example, remember, we have sanctions right now against the Russians, right? In fact, we have some of the strongest sanctions that have been put in since the Trump administration came in. If suddenly those sanctions were lifted by the president, which is, you know, we did official duties, and the Russian government sent him a payment of $10,000 or sent him a horse as the King of Spain did to John Jay, you know, 200 years ago, that would be a pro-examian. prohibited emolument. But paying for a room at a hotel that is not an emolument. How did the horse situation end? Did he keep it? Yeah, I think he did. I think he did. And look, did it get prosecuted for that?

No, because that was before the Constitution of the emoluments. Oh, there you go. Off the hook. Well, Hans, thanks for coming in and covering all the news items. Appreciate your coming in. Sure. Thanks for having me. All right, well, I want to tell you about our favorite morning newsletter. It's called the Morning Bell, and it'll change the way you experience the news. Every weekday, we at the Daily Signal deliver the top news and commentary directly to your inbox, all for free.

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