Transcripts For RT On Contact 20240713

Youre in warfare all the history going back 100 years or more is the executive branch lies lies lies the u. S. S. Me Mexican American war illicit u. S. S. Greer a gulf of tonkin resolution every time so we know theyre probably lying about this stuff. Bruce fein a former senior official and department of justice and a constitutional scholar has identified 12 impeachable offenses committed by donald trump but as he notes many of these constitutional violations are not unique to the trumpet ministration they have been normalized by democratic and republican administrations these longstanding violations for this reason were ignored by the Democratic Party leaders seeking to impeach the president they chose to focus exclusively on trumps attempt to get the ukrainian president to open an investigation of joe biden and his son. Hunter in exchange for 400000000. 00 in u. S. Military aid and a visit by the ukrainian leader to the white house ignoring these institutional violations during the impeachment inquiry fine argues legitimates them and accelerates the death of our democracy joining me in the studio in washington to discuss the multiple failures of the impeachment process is bruce fein so as this was beginning. You and louis attorney ralph nader sent a letter to nancy pelosi. And you warned that trump is right shattering our entire Constitutional Order and you list the most serious constitutional violations were going to go through them 12 of them and yet despite your emphatic warning the Democratic Party chose to prosecute or attempt to impeach trump on the most trivial offenses and i think now that we finish the impeachment process essential as you had pointed out what we have done is normalize these agree just constitutional violations but talk about the the danger that i think you correctly you know raised well 1st chris i want to elaborate having been up in those congressional quarterlys of power well the issue is how serious charges to launch d against mr trump the calculation with a purely political one by the House Speaker pelosi trying to save the seats of the half dozen or dozen democrats who won districts that otherwise voted for trump and there was no principle to the standards or the Decision Making whatsoever but also when we confronted big headwinds was precisely when we started to focus on charges that democrats and republicans were complicit in flouting. Declare war clause flouting the oversight power flouting the Treaty Authority flouting the appointments cause flouting the appropriations clause all those kinds of things nancy pelosi yourself was complicit in some of those for example saying nothing when mr obama went to war with libya on his own expanded the war in syria on his own did what was really should have been a treaty with iran to constrain their Nuclear Ambitions without a treaty but just an executive agreement which i would treat as was supposed to be approved by the congress exactly by orders or it was already declared by absolutely and the reason why it was very disappointing a couple one these other agreed is violations in huge implications are warfare state were now involved in least 9 president ial wars the absorbed its Staggering Amount of money aside from the lives that are shattered in liberty thats curtailed trillion dollar plus every single year and it makes us less safe what does that mean we dont have money for the roads the schools the hospitals the social welfare programs can cleaning up environmental contaminated sites and things of that sort so the consequences are huge over a trillion dollars most all of our Discretionary Spending outside of Social Security is the military budget for what we are say and the military comes back every year and says oh after we spent a trillion dollars now the world is more dangerous than it was before these are what are we spending this money for but the 2nd thing i think this is equally important chris was totally overlooked by the democrats and indeed the republicans too remember the framers adopted impeachment they said it was a surrogate for turan aside bill civilized way you remove somebody whos not a trustworthy steward of our liberties and think of 789. 00 and how much trivial power the president had as opposed to today the ability of George Washington views his powers was nothing you know he had a budget maybe of a couple 100000. 00 he didnt have a Standing Army he had 3 cabinet members you know now look at the current incumbent almost 5 trillion dollar budget the most terrifying arsenal in the history of the world so since the ability of the president. If hes trustworthy to destroy the whole country in the world is so much greater the standards of impeachment should be even more strict because you dont want to rule dice not only with the nation but with the tire species and yet theyre arguing like were back in 70 needed 9 and they charge these little kind of offenses if you will and the democrats didnt want to sell arms to ukraine when obama was there so little time hypocritical now youre denouncing to do we want so the whole thing was a complete disaster so all these huge violations now become more permanent embedded in our practice in our precedents so i mean one of the things that we saw and i think what were going to talk about is complete breakdown of the rule of law and constitutional protection but just this open decision by the white house to repeatedly ignore subpoenas and. If i have that right when they impeached nixon it was one subpoena nor one subpoena right yes and now its indiscriminate in its very important things just in the last week the administration has denied congress 3 critical pieces of information one they would never Tell Congress what was the foundation for killing general sula money runs head based upon 4 embassies allegedly subject to imminent attack say no were not going to tell you its a really backed away and they wouldnt give that information to congress if Congress Funds the defense that are secondly they said they will not share with congress the intelligence communitys findings is who are the responsible parties for assassinating Jamal Khashoggi because it was saudi arabia and trump wants to continue selling these huge non arms then then most recently. The congress of the United States was asking for this information relating to one of our of our the forgot the 3rd item here. But the congress simply said we are not. Who would supply any information that we believe should be held secret this is the taliban deal to peace deal with alabama so that the congress and what we need to know what the terms and conditions of the peace deal will tell and we said no we arent going to tell you taliban can know but not you and those are just the tip of the iceberg chris over and over and over again they will not Tell Congress where we have these secret military bases special forces members of congress wake up and that we had a soldier die in bali this year or even know that they have the troops stationed there and so when congress basically is brain dead they dont know anything thats going on in the executive branch theyre totally feeble and able to police wrongdoing in abuses and thats where we are today. Essentially what we by giving trump a pass now is complete impunity you can use using it hes purging the Us Government and him and making appointments based on. Personal loyalty to him rather than incompetence. Before we get into what weve normalized in terms of constitutional violations in your list what is the. What are the consequences of the failure on the part of the senate to uphold the rule of law with the consequences are we now have basically a limitless power in the executive far greater than king george the 3rd who provoked American Revolution exercised over the columnist i mean this president now goes to war on his own decides whether or not hes going to share information on his own he surveils he spies on his own he spends money on his own he decides to appoint members to his cabinet on his own Senate Confirmation is out the window d he doesnt have any obligation to take care that the laws are faithfully executed and he doesnt like a law he just says well i just dont feel like i want to enforce it whatever so all those kinds of things shows that were really off the charts with regard to should general constraints that the constitution in place imposes on the chief executive. Lets go through the list 12 impeachable offenses committed by. The democrats their contempt of congress yes the contempt of congress is the flouting of congressional subpoenas the obligation to testify and memory even at the time when the house was considering a contempt article they had donald again john bolton all these people say no that they dont want to testify or they wouldnt testify under oath all of his cabinet members pompei o wasnt going to know that i had to testify have all been. The ones that testify truthfully are the ones who lost their jobs the ones who flooded the Congress Mick Mulvaney a member nick used to be the chief of staff and he said about the ukraine deal well of course you get to get over it we always do these things so we obviously would have undercut the president s killing that nothing was wrong done here you know im not going to testify i dont want to say anything about this now when you have National Security assessments that are supposed to be available to the congress of the United States since they fund the trillion dollar plus National Security budget no you dont want to tell you all the secret off the record we need to have all of this their own so that contempt of congress is a huge issue abuse of the powers of the president abuse of public trust yes this is the abuse of public trust of the powers the present with regard to his obstruction of justice he didnt cooperate in the moeller investigation at least 5 or 10 times he attempted to obstruct it by asking his subordinates to have mr molder fired to have mr sessions the attorney general on recuse himself to suggest that he may offer pardons to people that go along with them so that he can some sense kind of coach testimony he wouldnt permit donald began to testify about the overtures that he made to mr began to have mr molder fired hes not faithfully execute the laws hes obstructing those laws and then you can move to other areas like the immigration laws and the consumer welfare laws the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau if you dont like a law the president to ask for it to be repealed to remove but he just cant stand. Well they have we dont want to enforce these laws anymore well just ignore them and let all of the protections that have been built up by prior administrations become de facto no one void by simply inaction i say we have a process by which a president can change the law it means going to congress and get the laws changed hes doing this by unilateral decree i mean one example i want to underscore chris is this wall issue he asked congress 15 times over i want money to build the wall he shut the government down for and then he says you know what ive got the money i can spend the money anyway for the pentagon budget yeah im not a legal i dont think it is the anti deficiency act provides a criminal penalty if you spend money thats not been appropriated for that purpose by congress now hes not can force the act against himself obama however did the same kind of problems were Congress Said you cant spend money to release any money at Guantanamo Bay in this you give congress 90 days notice because they may want to do something obama did that bernie swap with going to go didnt give any notice at all that oh and the g. A. O. Found that a violation of that spending caught many of these violations you know the democrats. Engaged in much the same kind of activity its true that trump in some cases take a new level but the fact is chris no president has ever surrendered power back no matter how violently its been usurped by the predecessor haganah day and that that precedent and just move it to a new level whether its republican or democrat when we come back well continue our conversation about the impeachment process and constitutional violations with legal scholar bruce. I. I dont trust medical authority at all never and there isnt for that as i had this horrible autoimmune disorder growing up and it turns out it was completely alleviated with very drastic dietary measures and i went to a number of doctors to discuss what happened to me and i was basically laughed at like diet has nothing to do with our immune disorders so my suggestion to people who have Health Issues they cant figure out if theyre going to see a medical professional and theyve been going for 10 years and theyre still in the same place they should probably take it upon themselves to Start Testing things out testing out diet testing out exercise and try and figure out things on their own. Is youll be a reflection of reality. In the world transformed. What will make you feel safer. Solution to community. Or you go in the right way or are you being let. Go of. What is truly forces. In the world corrupted you need to descend. To join us to the depths. Or remove the shallows. Welcome back to on contact we continue our conversation about the impeachment process and the normalization of constitutional violations with legal scholar bruce fein so we were. About the the the who. 12 principal constitutional violations that have now been normalized and it looks like were not going back and lets continue with that appropriations clause revenue because yes appropriations and revenue is lets talk about revenues 1st the constitution clearly provides that any measure to raise money for the federal government must originate in the house of representatives lets think about all the 10s of billions that mr trump is raising by unilaterally imposing tariffs quotas on foreign goods and this is money that has been appropriated by congress it obviously didnt originate in the house it originated in the white house and so we have all this money now is a pool that mr trump is been able to raise like the former king of england without any input and origination in the house thats clearly a violation then on the appropriations clause to he spends money that hasnt been appropriated for the purpose that hes spending they say the most egregious example is the wall but there are other measures as well where he was spending money to keep certain when the government was shut down to keep Certain Services open even though congress made clear no when its a shutdown there isnt any money for these kinds of purposes and remember it was James Madison fall of the constitution that the power of the purse is the its the keep it is the fire wall against abuses the executive branch because you cant do anything without money and now congress has given up the power of the purse to the president. The emoluments clause boy he certainly violated the one 0 yeah i mean hes hes so obviously you want to i want to federal government as a hall inauguration parties run the drum. And for governor the emoluments was basically says for the audience that if the United States a state of the United States or a Foreign Government provides you some kind of monetary or other benefit and congress hasnt consented then you violated the mall humans class the Trump International tell is a walking living. Grieving violation of the most humans or. Declare war cause yes we now president. Is engaged in continuing and expanding 9 president ial wars it is very clear from the very beginning of the constitution that the americans who wrote the document never trusted the president the executive to go to war because during that period everything flows to the center the money the power the secrecy the fame and that the president would be inclined if he had the war power to concoct excuses because Everyone Wants to aggrandize power of their own politics so it made clear everybody and i mean all the delegates of Constitution Convention everybody participate in the ratification beats all said only the congress can take us from a state of peace to war not only did they do that during the convention and ratification process George Washington said Thomas Jefferson said it James Madison said it Alexander Hamilton it everybody totally uniform understanding and now president s go to war on their own he stands up mr trump and hes not unique obama no mo bomber did it obama say ill decide whether to go into iran and or to try to bush or north korea and bush w. Bush did the same in member will clinton in his administration he asked congress for a declaration of war against serbia congress voted it down so he said ok ill do it anyway. The take care clause presentment clause yes the present clause go back and reverse it goes building on the precedent set most prolifically by president w. Bush but then obama as well the signing statements the Founding Fathers understood that part of the strength of congress the executive was to log rule put different provisions in a single bill the president has to take the good with the bad or veto the whole thing if you dont permit the president to pick and choose he has a line item veto which the u. S. Supreme. In court said is unconstitutional so now we have the present because the president signs the bill and says that but these provisions i think encroach on mamma powers im not going and force them thats clearly of a flagrant violation of the requirement that a president sign or veto a bill in toto the then the have the the other provisions in the take care clause the president says he decides which clause heald he want to faithfully execute if he doesnt like them even when he signs the bill theyll say ill just ignore them and bridgie and treat them as hortatory if you will. Due process clause yeah here we have is a one of the most stunning things in my entire life here in washington chris is the ease with which weve accepted the idea that the president in this war against terrorism can play prosecutor judge jury and executioner to kill anybody he wants which obamas it is that obama did it almost he took it higher than bush he took it out of them and he can kill anybody wants based on secret evidence never confirmed doesnt have to be events anybody indicted and he doesnt have to share an explanation with anybody you just say i trust you to do it and thats what obama did when he killed the radical cleric anwar lockheed and his kid and his 16 year old son in yemen yes and it continues on and i believe chris that today that the. Assassinations president ial assassination which by the way also violate an executive order which prohibits president ial exist as asked in agents 12. 00 triple 3 they continue on a scale that we dont know about because the congressional oversight power has completely collapsed so these people just disappear and we never even know about them or weve tribute im somebody else the israelis did it aside lets assign that to them because how many times you know people just disappear out of the in we no longer see them and we know that the executive branch is inclined any time youre in warfare all the history going back 100 years or more is the executive branch lies lies lies the u. S. S. Me the Mexican American war eliciting the us is greer gulf of tonkin resolution every time so we know theyre probably lying about this stuff. Like sulaimani the appointments close yes under the constitution the president needs to said it has to confirm every principle officer of the United States President Trump has gone way over any past practice he has half the cabinet or more they have never been confirmed by the senate whatsoever theyre acting this acting that and moreover its equally egregious and its not unique to trump the National Security adviser. Perhaps the 2nd most powerful man in the world has not 70 percent confirmation the senate lets him get it but chris you know that trustees of the Kennedy Center require Senate Confirmation the general counsel the cia requires them to go the National Security adviser does not this is utterly and completely ridiculous and i want to point out just one example of why it would make a difference Michael Flynn in my judgment if you want through confirmation he never would have passed muster we had known earlier on that he was engaged in lobbying for turkey illegally he was doing various and sundry things require him to register on the foreign agents registration act wasnt truthful he never would have been in and moreover john bolton never would have been confirmed you remember he couldnt even get confirmed as an appointment to the u. N. Ambassador under w. They had some kind of face it was it was one of the vacant react. So the this confirmation power is very very important soliciting a foreign contribution for the 2020 president ial campaign and bribery this was truly a stunning omission because nancy pelosi at one time during the investigation of the impeachment said we have bribery here and senator Richard Blumenthal of connecticut just laid out the case quite clearly but the law is not ambiguous here if you are a candidate for federal office and you solicit anything of value from a Foreign Government to help your campaign thats a crime open and shut and we have something obviously mr trump solicited something of value from the president of ukraine namely an investigation against perhaps his rival and his opponent in 2020 in exchange for what in exchange for releasing the 400000000. 00 in official act violating citizen privacy that this out of both parties in both parties it would privacy is out the window chris without any warrants at all were spying and collecting information relating to foreign intelligence whatever that means it we dont even know where the information is it is so stay green. I talked to a close friend of mine you may know him belbin used to work at the n. S. A. They have so much collected data that they require 600 ports a minute if youre trying to even look at what we have so not only does it invade privacy but it makes the difficulty of identifying anything useful even greater because you have a needle in a haystack youre looking for and the haystacks growing at logarithmic speed and suppression of free speech yet here we have the president openly in the tourist lee threatening that he will take action against media people and in one of these suing your. Post already yes for life for c. N. N. For alleged defamation and plus the fact is that he is uses the media if you will is as. A. Vehicle a weapon to claim that theyre unpatriotic and to exercise and perhaps this is the most dangerous instead of acknowledging that with all its flaws that organize scrutiny of government the 4th branch is indispensable to having checks and balances its even more important today than yesteryear because congress does no oversight anymore without the press out there its a free pass for the executive branch and stead of encouraging that and again to go back to one point Thomas Jefferson if you had to choose between government newspapers newspapers or without government either rather have newspapers the president has the everything he can to discredit and undermine the what i would call the checking these surveillance power over go over government of the media lets just talk locally what does this mean what does it mean for a constitutional democracy such as ours well i think our constitution has now been taken off of life support and whats truly i mean just another recent example is this the president goes after 2 Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg. Sotomayor saying you have to recuse yourself you know otherwise you need a price to pay in stupidly Chuck Schumer kind of. Its a situation by suggesting on abortion decisions of the court doesnt have to pay a price of they dont vote the way these 2 would rather than acknowledging you know through civilized argument this is what we believe is a sound Decision Making but the institutional integrity is very critical so that what does that mean Going Forward that with the constitution off of life support all we have is political checks on the press and those political checks are vanishing very rapidly in less we come to a congress and members recapturing the equilibrium that the framers understood was the cornerstone of liberty its just a matter of time before we fall off the cliff were there on the installment plan each president takes us further and further toward the cliff where we no longer will have liberty and the president will soon do nothing but rule by decree congress will become purely ornamental and we should have even fought the American Revolution wed be like collis under king george the 3rd maybe even worse. When you say off life support youre talking about the death of the constitutional state yes the death of constitutional state and notice this if you look at all of the debates that the Democratic Candidates for the nomination of had the constitution is like not even there you know these Critical Issues that weve just broached here and you can make arguments theyre not even in the playbook like where are you you have to take an oath as president to support and defend and uphold the constitution now why is that theyre the english when they overthrew james the 2nd and william and mary came in the Parliament Said we are not going to permit you to become crowned king and queen unless you take an oath to support the english bill of rights and thats why the oath is actually in the constitutional text itself is what the president has to do and none of them talk about the most important pledge that a president must make in order to enter office understand and force and. Check the constitution of the United States right. Now is bruce fein former senior official in apartment justice and constitutional scholar. Im going to fulfill the repeated promises oh politics to the people i promise to be you know weve all pots. You really really really. Pretty good. Now you want to 1st correct that. You know. Or. Cut. The link out my. Tax rises financial Survival Guide stacy lets learn about fill out lets say im not so i get any earthly andris some banks have to fight street spot thank you for something. On the story 6 thats true. Slavery