Vegas to be the libertarian conference holds of the discussion and debate on a wide variety of political topics. On saturday, july 12, book tv will be live from the harlem but fair held at the Schomburg Center for research at black culture in new york city. On august 30th we are live at the library of Congress National book festival at the Washington Convention center. And from september 2628, the annual baltimore book festival takes place at the citys inner harbor. Let us know about book fares and festivals in your area and we will add them to our list. Email us. Youre watching book tv on cspan2. Here is our prime time lineup for tonight. John fund and Hans Von Spakovsky are next on book tv. They argue that eric holder and the lawyers is surrounds himself with have transported the Justice Department. They also talk about attorney general holders involvement with the recent scandals surrounding the atf and the surveillance of journalist james rose and. This is about an hour. I want to go ahead and get started. I would remind people, if they would just take a moment to turn off their cell phones, we appreciate that. There we go. Some enlisting the me. I am john malcolm, the director of the end wind be center for legal and judicial studies. We are here today to discuss a new book entitled obamas enforcer, eric holders Justice Department. The brunt book is a thorough, provocative, and unsparing account of the department of justice under the tenure of attorney general eric holder. It describes a Justice Department that is preoccupied with imposing its version of Racial Justice and which has no qualms about pending, ignoring, or breaking laws to suit its purposes, no qualms about attempting to discredit conservatives who served in the Prior Administration or whos still serve at the department of justice, and no qualms about covering up its own dirty laundry such as operation fast and furious. We are fortunate to have with us today the coauthors of this book Hans Von Spakovsky and john fund. They previously collaborated on who is counting, health rosters and bureaucrats put your vote at risk, published by counter books in 2012. To my immediate left is an Award Winning journalist to has been referred to as the tom paine of the modern congressional reform movement. Currently the National Affairs columnist for National Review magazine and a frequent analyst for fox news channel. The author of several books and a former columnist and member of the Editorial Board of the wall street journal. To my far left is my friend and colleague. Senior legal fellow here at the center, and a former president ial appointee to the federal election commission. Prior to adjourn the commission in 2006 he served as a counsel to the assistant attorney general in charge of the Civilrights Division at the department of justice. Please join me in welcoming our panelists. [applause] that you all for coming. Im john fund. Before we began about would give you an update on the news with such as on the Justice Department. You probably have heard the story the last friday that the irs notified congress that it lost two years of emails. The dog ate my emails for two years. Well, the dog was very angry because the day the irs quietly told congress that it has lost the mouths of six other key players in the irs scandal, including those of nicole flacks who was the chief of staff to the former irs commissioner, steven miller, who was fired in the wake of the targeting of conservative nonprofit scandal. Clearly this dog has eaten the seven employees in miles. I sure hope it is sent to the pounds and because he is gentle damage and trying to conduct this investigation. The reason why this touches on the Justice Department, of course, is the Justice Department is in charge of the investigation of the irs starting scandal. It has been moving with glacial pace. I cannot say they have not interviewed anyone, what of the players i know they have not gotten to them yet, and it has only been 13 months. They must be moving with all deliberate speed. In addition, the head of the investigation is Barbara Boxer man, a career Justice Department trial attorney, but she is also one of the most important Obama Campaign donors. Almost 7,000 to president obamas reelection original election campaign. An original supporters during all the way back in the primary season of 2008 when harry glenn was the clear front runner. Of course, there is no conflict of interest here according to the Justice Department, not even a smidgen of evidence, that there is a conflict of interest. So, i am not here to directly address the irs scandal, all of that make, but questions. What i would like to talk about before hawkins goes into more detail in our boat is a little bit about the record of the Obama Administrations rather remarkable expansion of executive power and authority. As you know, every president has the right or responsibility to exercise is all constitutional powers, and lament his electoral mandate and to resist encroachment on his powers by the legislature and judicial branch. However, this president has increasingly taken upon himself powers and authority that previous president s never half, and there are some egregious examples. Back in 2011 president obama rejected the notion that i could just suspend the partitions of Illegal Immigrants to executive orders. As a balanced budget doesnt 11 of our laws on the books of congress for me to simply do executive order ignored as congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriable. That was then and this is now. Congress then refused to enact the dream act which affected illegal aliens under the age of 18. Had come to this country and wisely through no fault of their own. Congresss failure to act got the Obama Administration reasons justify the adoption of the socalled deferred action policy which is precisely what congress refused to do. It exempted from deportation up to 2 million illegal aliens who were children when they came to the United States. Similarly the administration has announced it will not enforce Immigration Laws in perspective illegal aliens or parents, legal guardians of u. S. Citizens. Secondly, the Obama Department of education the effectively amended core requirements of the notes out look beyond that by granting states wholesale waivers in return for their agreement to about certain education policies established by the department. Rather than those established by congress, which is the lawmaking branch. Lastly, with the senate refused, to confirm president obamas nominees to the National LaborRelations Board president obama gave all of them temporary appointments under the recess appointments clause smallest and in the senate was meeting every third day in proforma sessions and was not in recess. President obama has declared this in its proforma sessions a practice which dated back over 60 years to be a nullity and thus presents to overrule the cynicism as to when it was a session and when it was in recess. They acted with extraordinary argument. The senate could, of course, retain its recess power by just remaining in session continuously forever. That would be the only remedy that they would have to avoid our recess appointment. This record, extreme positions of the soft have generally left even sympathetic judges to a liberal president s unimpressed and, frankly, an opposition. One of the more remarkable distinctions of the Obama Administration since 2012 has been the Supreme Court has ruled against the Justice Departments position to on key issues approximately a dozen times depending upon how you characterize the decision. At least ten, probably 11, possibly 12. These come in a remarkable series of cases involve everything from religious freedom to Property Rights to freedom of information of iraq requests. It goes down the line. Was this give you a couple of interesting examples. Again, these are all unanimous defeats the department of justice. Basically the epa directed this family, demanded they cease construction and give the epa access to it. Failure to comply would suggest the second family to a fine of 705,000 a day. Basically what the department of justice was effectively defending was the right to put aside its into accustomed to situation. Either they comply with the epa rules or face fines of up to 75,000 a day while waiting for the Environmental Protection agency to sue and basically denying them their day in court. The Supreme Court rejected this. Then we have the case of u. S. V jones. It essentially trying to convince the Supreme Court that the Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure should not prevent the government from tracking every american at any time without any reason. Believe it or not they went into court and argue that the police should be able to attach a gps device your car without a search warrant or any reason to believe you had committed a crime. The Justice Department arguments fell on deaf ears. Justice sotomayor, president obamas own nominee to the court chastised the Justice Department for invading privacy interest. I could go one. This is a remarkable record of defeat. In fact, if you look back over the last two or three terms the Obama Administrations Justice Department has succeeded before the Supreme Court only about 40 percent of the time. That is compared to an average of over 70 percent the previous president s. More than three times as often as the bush illustration. Hopefully it does not put them in good stead with the legal community, and i believe in the next to a police we may see a couple of more unanimous decisions, perhaps even on the recess appointment question that will come down and for the return is this just a record. Even liberals are starting to wake to this. A very distinguished professor of law at george Russian University has said he is very concerned their is a shifting a rare view within our constitutional system and a very dangerous way that makes it unstable. Squeezing your love of rejection objections. They have not been raising the same objections now that we have a democrat and the white house, and i believe this is happening at our peril. I am afraid this big this is beginning to border. I happen to agree with many a president obamas policies. In our system it is often as important how you do something is what you do. For that and other reasons we wrote this book covering a wide range of subjects, everything from fast and furious to the irs scandal to the withholding of documents from various congressional investigations for much as the ira scandal, to the administrations record on National Security, business law kamal whole range of things. For some of that and, of course, in preparation for your questions that will pick up the pace now. That kind of puce of power is, frankly, dangerous to our freedom and our liberty. One of the people we interviewed for this book who was hired during the Clinton Administration said to us that eric holder is the worst attorney general since mitchell under nixon which, to most veterans of the department, will tell you they consider to be the nader of the Justice Department. Now, part of this book is talking about how eric holder came to the Justice Department, and while theres been a lot of discussion of his tenure over the past few years, many people forget that he was the number two guy there during the Clinton Administration. And, in fact, he was the go obo guy for the white house. Why . Because they didnt trust janet reno to make the right political decisions. But they trusted eric holder to do that. And thats the key thing for you to understand here is that eric holder is an idealogue, and he considers himself the president s attorney first, the attorney general second. And that is a very big problem with the attorney general. Now, some will characterize this as a partisan attack. It is not. c we have hadc very good, veryxdi ethical, very rollsal attorney generals professional attorney generals in the past under both democratic and Republican Administrations. But im afraid if you read this book, youre going to come to the same conclusion that we did, that we dont have that with the current attorney general. And ill give you just one example of how this is not something new with this attorney general. That is something that happened during the Clinton Administration. Im sure most of you have heard about the mark rich part in which he helped engineer a pardon for someone who was an International Fugitive which is im not sure that had ever happened before, you know . The president has the authority, and theres a Pardons Office at the Justice Department that veterans are familiar with, and, yeah, we know about this pardon that was given to someone who had not been arrested, had not stood trial, had not been convicted and who was in court, but somebody who had fled the United States abroad after richs wife gave a lot of money for building the new clinton library. But thats not actually one of the worst things that eric holder engineered. One of, one of the worst things that he engineered was another series of pardons for 16 terrorists. There were 16 terrorists of the faln, this was a puerto rican independence group. They had been involved in 130 bombings, armed robberies, six killings and hundreds of injuries in new york, chicago and elsewhere. The federal judge who sentenced them said that if the Death Penalty had been available, he would have given it to them. They were totally unremorseful. E being sentenced, they threatened the judge. They threatened a federal judge who was sentencing them. The career pardon attorney at the Justice Department was against any pardons for them. So were the fbi, prosecutors, victims. And you know what . They hadnt sought pardons. None of the 16 terrorists in federal prison had sought pardons from the Clinton Administration. But eric holder engineered these pardons. He was all in favor of it. And why . Well, because at the end of the administration when this was going on, was when Hillary Clinton had started her run for the senate in new york, and all of these Political Consultants and others were saying this would help her campaign, it would help her get the puerto rican vote. And so eric holder was willing to sacrifice nationalc security and the victims of these bombings and killings, why . For political advantage. Now, we talk about many other areas of the Justice Department, including, for example, the environmental division. And we have a whole chapter talking about the gibson guitar raid. And i have to tell you, that in itself, again, is just, its just shocking when you read it. Gibson guitar is a storied american guitar maker, been in business for a hundred years. And what happened . The Justice Department treated them like they were a Mob Organization or a drug cartel. Armed federal agents showed up at their factories and their offices and seized all of their business records, computers and hundreds of thousands of dollars of wood that they were going to use for finger boards under the claim that they had illegally imported this wood from madagascar and india despite the fact that gibson guitar had evidence that, in fact, this wood was perfectly legal in india and mad gas car. Madagascar. But this was something that was urged by the environmental allies of the administration, jju like greenpeace and others. And so they get treated, gibson guitar, like they are the worst kinds of criminals. Now, this case went on and on, and in the end, the Justice Department entered into what they called a deferred prosecution agreement. I can tell you that when the Justice Department enters into what they call a deferred prosecution agreement, its because they dont have the evidence to go to trial and convict. And, in fact, its very clear they didnt have the evidence to convict in this case because as part of this agreement, they agreed to