Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to the newsmakers line to describe the first-ever lawsuit of its kind he is leading against the Biden administration by Texas sheriffs and ICE officials.
Leahy: We welcome to our newsmaker line our good friend Kris Kobach, the former Secretary of State of Kansas, now filing a lawsuit representing a group of Texas law enforcement officers suing Joe Biden’s administration over their immigration policies. Welcome, Kris Kobach.
Kobach: Great to be back with you.
Leahy: Kris, last time we talked was at the Breitbart Embassy where Steve Bannon lives. You had a little event there. We went and talked and had a great time. And hats off to you for continuing to fight the good fight.
Kobach: Well, thank you. It’s a really important punch we threw in the state yesterday.
Leahy: Tell us about the lawsuit, who you represent, and what you’re arguing about.
Kobach: I represent a group of Texas sheriffs as well as an association of ICE officers. And this is the first time ever that local sheriffs have teamed up with federal law enforcement officers to sue a President and his Department of Homeland Security.
And the reason that they are suing is that something extraordinary is going on. On February 18 a memorandum was issued within ICE, where basically, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ahead of DHS, told ICE officers, you may no longer deport basically everybody except for a narrow category of terrorists and aggravated felons.
You may not deport them unless you get special approval from your superiors. And it turned out that this approval was virtually never granted. And that violates three different federal statutes because back in the 90s Congress said, we’re sick of this catch and release.
We’re going to start passing statutes that take away executive discretion and say you shall deport people in this category shall deport people in that category. Like those who’ve already been deported once, and they reappear in the United States, people like drug offenders and people who have committed certain crimes.
And so basically, the Biden administration is ordering ICE officers to break the law. And it’s a pretty shocking state of affairs when it now takes a lawsuit for law enforcement officers to be permitted to follow the law.
But that’s where we are. And thankfully, the ICE officers and the sheriffs have stepped forward to do this.
Leahy: Kris, Crom Carmichael is in studio with me today, and he has a question for you.
Carmichael: Mayorkas is telling ICE agents to actually break the law. So there’s not a prosecutorial discretion type of thing here. He’s actually telling them, do not follow the law. My question is in a subsequent administration, is Mayorkis himself, can he be criminally prosecuted?
Kobach: Well, that’s a good question. I think probably the answer is no, just because you have sovereign immunity for people acting in their official capacity.
Carmichael: Even if they break the law?
Kobach: Mayorkis would say, oh, well, these lawyers at the Department of Homeland Security told me they drafted this well enough that it doesn’t really violate federal law. And that’s the thing.
I doubt that you would be able to prosecute the leadership because, of course, the memorandum in itself doesn’t use the words we are ordering ourselves, break the law.
It’s crafted in legalese and says, well, if you wish to deport anyone in these non-priority categories, you must seek pre-approval. And we’ve since learned that pre-approval basically never granted. Only in very rare cases.
Leahy: Can I ask you this question.
Kobach: Yes.
Leahy: I’m not an attorney. I don’t play one on the radio. But is this a memo by Homeland Security’s Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, an impeachable offense?
Kobach: You know, that’s a good question. Of course, the high crimes and misdemeanor words in the Constitution have been debated for centuries. I think at some point it has to be whether or not is it a crime?
And the answer to that is more complicated. It may not be, but it is. Even if it’s not an impeachable offense, it is so outrageous and it’s unconstitutional. We bring a separate claim, in addition to the federal statutes that are clearly being violated here, we also point out that it violates Article Two of the Constitution, which says that the executive shall take care to faithfully execute the loss.
There’s no question that’s being violated. So you have an order being given by the DHS Secretary, in effect by the whole Biden administration to not enforce the law, and indeed, to tell ICE officers themselves to break the law. Clearly, that’s not faithfully executing the law as our Constitution requires.
And interestingly, those words in the Constitution have very rarely been litigated. The Supreme Court has rarely spoken about them. It would be wonderful if this case did end up in the Supreme Court and if we finally got the court to say something about what that means.
Carmichael: What is the time frame? Because you’ve got people who are now being allowed to stay in this country, who are clearly dangerous and will clearly cause harm to Americans.
What is the time frame that this will wind its way through the courts and where the ICE agents will then be free under the law to do what they are legally required to do?
Kobach: That’s a great question. Obviously, as you and your listeners know, cases can take years. But one step we can and we’ll be taking very soon here is filing a motion for a preliminary injunction which asks the judge to say, look at this case.
There’s a good chance we’re going to win, we ICE officers and sheriffs. Please enjoin the administration from enforcing this policy anymore as this case is being litigated. Hopefully, we’ll prevail an emotion fulfill under injunction. We might get released within the next few weeks.
Carmichael: And then if you were to get that, then the ICE agents would be able regardless of the memo, we would be able to do their job.
Kobach: Yes, that’s exactly right. Let me add one thing here. I think the liberals or the people who support the Biden administration might be looking for some excuse and they might be thinking, oh, you know what? This is just a priority memo.
This is just the Biden administration saying we want you to focus on the high-priority criminals. That’s not what this is. This is a memo that says you shall turn loose onto the streets and people who commit all sorts of crimes.
And I just want to give you some examples which we site in our case. These are coming from the ICE officers. They have been forced to turn loose when they could have taken custody and would have deported them prior to this memo.
Rape of a child, aggravated sexual assault on a child, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, larceny, burglary, domestic violence, carrying a prohibited weapon, possession of drugs, resisting a law enforcement officer, and driving under the influence.
The list goes on and on and on. These are not minor crimes. These are illegal aliens who committed these crimes and now are being released onto the streets because of this ICE memo.
Leahy: Kris, I notice that you file this case in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Now, it seems to me that if any judge is going to be right in the presence of this problem, it would be a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas. Do you think that your odds are of winning are better because of the venue you chose?
Kobach: The venue we chose was, of course, driven by the fact that these sheriffs are in the Southern District of Texas. The Texas federal district lines include sheriffs in the Southern District. They are in our group as well as the Western District.
So really it would have to have been brought in one of those two districts. But you’re right. The judges here can see the impact of illegal immigration. They can see the crisis firsthand. And so I think that may have some effect.
But, you know, at the end of the day, judges are supposed to be neutral wherever they are. They are supposed to look at the law faithfully, wherever they are. But as you and I know, sometimes judges can have a very different perspective.
Leahy: Yes, we certainly do.
Kobach: We hope that the judge here, we’ll see that this is a clear violation of the law.
Leahy: Kris Kobach, let me just say this personal statement to you. I salute you for your courage. I salute you for your devotion to the Constitution. And you have really been a true warrior for the side of the United States of America throughout your career. And I thank you personally for all that effort.
Kobach: Well, thanks for those kind words. I appreciate it.
Leahy: Kris Kobach, thanks very much, and come back again and tell us how this case proceeds.
Kobach: Will do. Take care.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio who discussed how justice may be served only based on the color of one’s skin and referenced justice for George Floyd versus that of Ashli Babbit who was murdered on Capitol Hill January 6 on video as well.
Leahy: We are joined now as we almost always are this hour by the original all-star panelist on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday by Crom Carmichael. Crom, we were talking about, I don’t know, I guess we’d call it the disintegration of society. And one element of that is the rule of law and people’s respect for the law. It strikes me, of course, we have Derek Chauvin guilty on all counts verdict in Minneapolis and then the shooting of Daunte Wright. Now a shooting in Columbus of a 16-year-old Black girl with a knife who is attacking other girls, shot dead by a Columbus police officer. Now, that happened yesterday.
Carmichael: Okay, now, first of all, here’s kind of a way that I’m trying to describe this, which is very very close to what you just said. And that is that the difference in how people care about justice.
Leahy: That’s a very good way of framing it.
Carmichael: For example, the people who thought that Chauvin got what he deserved and are thrilled with that verdict don’t care about the woman who was shot, Babbit.
Leahy: Ashli Babbit, the 14 year Air Force veteran, shot and killed by an unnamed police officer. She was unarmed on January 6 in Washington, D.C.
Carmichael: She was not a threat to him but she was just murdered. I mean, if there is such a thing as a police murder, that would be it.
Leahy: Except the Department of Justice disagrees with you, Crom. They’re not filing any charges against that unnamed officer.
Carmichael: It doesn’t matter because I’ve seen the video. And what I’m saying is, is that for the George Floyd people, for the people who think that justice was served, and I’m not even arguing over the verdict. I’m saying just what their argument was. They said you didn’t need anything other than the video. And the video was the evidence. There’s no question about the video being the evidence.
Well, there’s a video that shows an officer raising his gun, pointing it through a barrier to a person who was not a threat to that officer. Through a barrier and shot you right in the chest. Now, that’s on video. And so for the Justice Department to claim that after an investigation, there doesn’t even need to be a trial then the question is, does Babbitt’s family have justice?
Leahy: The answer would be no.
Carmichael: The answer for their family would clearly be no. And the point that I’m trying to make here is that a large part of our society either agrees that bad Babbit’s family doesn’t deserve justice because she was there. Not because of what she was doing, because she wasn’t doing anything. She was there. And the fact that she was there made her so bad that she should be murdered and that that was just.
There are people who believe that. And then there are people who believe that a police officer, for example, now we’ve got this case that you raised in Columbus. Let me be sure I understand that I understood what you said are the circumstances. You had a Black girl who had a knife and she was using it against other girls.
Leahy: She had it in her hand, and she was attacking…
Carmichael: What I’m saying is she was attacking other girls with her knife.
Leahy: That’s what the video shows. The body-cam video shows right now, she is poised with the knife in hand, looking to thrust it at a girl in a pink outfit who was trapped against a car.
Carmichael: Okay. Alright. And then the police officer shot and killed the girl with the knife.
Leahy: Shot and killed the girl with the knife.
Carmichael: And is the last claiming that that was unwarranted?
Leahy: We haven’t seen everything yet on it.
Carmichael: Because there is a video.
Leahy: There is a video that was released late yesterday.
Carmichael: Now, by the way, did you see the video of the girls who hijacked the Muslim Uber driver?
Leahy: The Pakistani driver? I saw that. They hijacked him and killed him.
Carmichael: Killed him. And they were more concerned about their phone still being in his car than they were than the fact that they killed him. And so what I’m saying is, is that in our society now, race seems to determine guilt or innocence. Just race itself. And society won’t last very long if a person is guilty of being a bad person based simply on race. It just won’t.
Leahy: I can’t disagree with that at all.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss the filibuster in the Senate and the convenience and importance of rules and laws when it’s convenient for Democrats.
Leahy: So Crom the news of the day we’re talking about in Washington. I can barely even talk about it sometimes. It’s so awful. Everything up there is awful. In particular, now, there is an effort by the Democrats to get rid of the filibuster in the Senate. What you take on all that?
Carmichael: Well, the rules of the Senate, and I learned this literally yesterday in listening to McConnell and his speech after he quoted Schumer and Durbin from just three years ago.
Leahy: And previously, Harry Reid.
Carmichael: All these leading Democrats saying how important the filibuster is to the Senate and to the institution of the Senate and how it makes it different from the House and all these hyperbolic expressions. And now the Democrats are saying the opposite, which means that they’re just liars. And that’s so sad. I’m not going to say Republicans are pure as the wind-driven snow.
But Republicans in the Senate have always respected the rules of the Senate until the Democrats break those rules. And then after the Democrats break them, then the Republicans use the same broken rules that the Democrats did because the rules will have then been changed. But they will have been changed by the Democrats. They weren’t changed by the Republicans. And that goes to judicial nominees when Harry Reid blew up the filibuster on the judicial nominees.
Leahy: And lived to regret it.
Carmichael: But now they want to blow up the filibuster. But the reason they want to blow up the filibuster now is to fundamentally change our election laws so that cheating becomes the way of elections.
Leahy: Yeah. That’s why they want to do that.
Carmichael: And the Democrats are willing and I will say this because it’s true, Democrats are willing to cheat to win.
Leahy: Oh, Yeah. They did in 2020. No question about it in my view.
Carmichael: When you look at all of the evidence that we all agree on that happened, all the evidence that we know that we all will agree happened to believe that there wasn’t cheating going on is absolutely ridiculous. So having said that, let’s go back to the filibuster issue. What Mitch McConnell pointed out was that the Senate can only operate if there is a quorum and that if the Democrats persist in trying to blow up the filibuster, then what the Republicans will do because, in order to have a quorum, you have to have 51 senators. Are we going to have to go talk about this afterward?
Leahy: Let’s just hold on to that. We want to grab our caller Don who wants to talk a little bit. He’s right on point. Don you’re? Welcome to The Tennessee Star Report.
Caller Don: Good morning, guys. Yeah. And it’s funny you all mentioned Harry Reid just now. The news media has done what Harry Reid did about….Well, he didn’t pay his taxes and talking about Trump’s phone call. And you go back and ask him. And he said, well, it served the purpose of what we were trying to do.
Leahy: Harry Reid at the time, a majority leader, in the Senate, when Mitt Romney was running for president, he went on to the floor of the Senate, you may recall this, and asserted that Mitt Romney had paid no taxes.
Carmichael: In 10 years.
Leahy: In 10 years. Well, that was a lie.
Carmichael: That’s correct.
Don: Right.
Leahy: It’s a flat-out lie. And he responded after he was called out for the I tell our listeners what Harry Reid said about that Don.
Don: And he said, well, it served its purpose. And I take that is what they’re saying about Trump in the phone call. Well, it served its purpose, so it doesn’t matter. Nobody’s held accountable. It’s absurd.
Carmichael: Well, there’s one other thing. Because of the location that Harry Reid said that Mitt Romney had not paid taxes in 10 years, he could not be sued for slander.
Leahy: He said it in the Senate.
Carmichael: He said it in the Senate. And anything said in the Senate cannot be used in a court of law to prove a point. That’s pretty interesting. It’s pretty interesting that a fake phone call of Donald Trump can be used as evidence of obstruction. But an actual statement on television cannot be used because the statement is made on the floor of the Senate.
Leahy: We got about 10 seconds here Don for your response.
Don: And my response is, if you got a D by your name, the law don’t apply to you.
Carmichael: There you go. A whole separate set of laws.
Leahy: I love that.
Don: Amen.
Leahy: If you’ve got a D by your name, the law don’t apply to you.
Don: Thank you, guys.
Carmichael: It’s what led to the French Revolution. There became two systems of justice. One for the kind and his court, and one for everybody else.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio who discussed how it was the Democrats that benefited from the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday afternoon.
Leahy: We are joined as we almost always are on Wednesdays by our good friend the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael. Crom, good morning,
Carmichael: Michael, good morning, sir.
Leahy: It’s a little snowy out there this morning. Did you have a safe ride in the snow?
Carmichael: Well the snow had stopped. You saw something I didn’t.
Leahy: Well, Crom I’ve been talking all morning about this. And I want to set it up by saying the event on Wednesday when the peaceful Trump rally on the mall transformed into something that wasn’t peaceful when rioters breached the Capitol rioters. Rioters, it turns out, and possibly some Antifa, possibly some Trump supporters. But nonetheless, the rule of law was broken.
And I’ve said it’s a watershed in this sense that our side of constitutional populist conservatives lost the moral high ground with those events. And the question that I’ve posed is what happens now with the conservative movement? Do you agree with me on the moral high ground issue? And what do you think happens now?
Carmichael: Well, I don’t know if I agree or disagree on the moral high ground issue because I think that there were some Trump supporters who are in the building. I think there were some Antifa people who were instigators of the violence first with the police and then and then the breaching of the building. The Capitol Hill police were strangely and completely unprepared.
Leahy: Strangely.
Carmichael: And when I say “strangely” and I’m putting that in quotes because I think that they were told to stand down and stay away and let the breach happen. because you have to ask yourself who benefited? Yeah who benefited from the breach of the nation’s Capitol. Who benefited? It certainly wasn’t Trump. It certainly wasn’t it wasn’t the Republicans. It wasn’t the conservative movement.
And so there’s a lot in history that is staged. I think this past election, there’s a great deal that we staged. And so do I think there were some people who were in the building? Yeah. Do I think they’re running around kind of having a great time? Yeah. Did they maybe break a couple of chairs and sit in speaker Pelosi’s chair? Yes.
Leahy: I’ve actually seen some reports that the person sitting in Pelosi’s chair was an Antifa person. I’ve seen those reports. I don’t know whether it’s true or not.
Carmichael: Well at some point that may or may not become a factor or not. I don’t know. But but but the bottom line is that the Democrats benefited from what happened.
Leahy: A crisis Crom is a terrible thing to waste.
Carmichael: Yeah. When you create the crisis. That’s part of it.
Leahy: Yeah, exactly.
Carmichael: And so and you know, and then the media called it just ignored what’s happening in the past. Now, I’m not saying all this in complaining because we’re at a point now where I learned yesterday at lunch where the term gaslighting came from. Do you know where it came from?
Leahy: I don’t I’d love to be enlightened.
Carmichael: There was a movie back in the I think in the 30s or 40s. An old movie where the husband wanted his wife to think she was crazy.
Leahy: Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman.
Carmichael: Okay. And so what he did was he would do things that were slight and imperceptible. And so then when she would comment on them he would say well that’s not happening. And so and so in other words, it’s one of those things where are you going to believe me or believe your lying eyes.
Leahy: Exactly.
Carmichael: So that’s what’s going on now in this country. I would also recommend to our listeners, my daughter recommended to me that I watch a documentary that’s on Netflix called The Social Dilemma. And it is a documentary with interviews of people with a little bit of drama in it. When I say drama I don’t mean drama in the sense of drama but how it’s done. And that is how social media companies manipulate people’s thinking.
Leahy: And clearly happening.
Carmichael: And that they didn’t intend to do that when they started but now they’re being paid to do it. And these are people who used to work for these companies who have quit because of the ethical problems that they see.
Leahy: There is a professor at Harvard Robert Epstein I think his name is, who’s made that argument for like 10 years and said that Google for instance would be able to change like 5 or 10 million votes using those techniques.
Carmichael: Well, but I’m not talking about votes. I’m talking about thinking. It’s much bigger than voting. And so so I would encourage our listeners to watch it.
Leahy: It’s on Netflix. The Social Dilemma. I’m going to watch it.
Carmichael: Yeah, The Social Network I think was the movie about Zuckerberg and Facebook. But this is The Social Dilemma and it’s well worth watching because we are observing it in real-time. Then you move forward and it didn’t take very long after the Capitol was breached for them to move back into session go ahead and finish what they would have done anyway. And what Hawley was doing and what Ted Cruz was doing would not have changed the results.
Leahy: I use the term Crom, that process, I agree with you on that. I use the term almost akin to a kangaroo court in terms of the way they were looking at the evidence.
Carmichael: Michael there’s where you and I differ. If the outcome were going to be different it would have been done when the electors were voted on. That’s a job for the state legislatures. It’s not a job for Congress to overturn what the state legislators did. They voted for the electors. They sent them to Pence.
Leahy: I will make one little correction on that. The state legislators actually didn’t do that.
Carmichael: Well, whoever did it the envelopes got to Pence. He was going to open them. Nothing in Washington was going to change what was in those envelopes.
Leahy: That is a true statement.
Carmichael: Okay. So if nothing was going to change it, that doesn’t mean that what Hawley and Ted Cruz and the Republican House members when they objected to it and what they were intending to do was shine a light on the election fraud.
Leahy: And they said that. They were saying we don’t expect this will change the outcome. We just want to have the information out there.
Carmichael: And that’s all valid. All I’m saying is for people who thought that once the envelopes were in the Senate that what was in the envelopes was going to be changed by people in Washington, as much as I would like for it to be changed that wasn’t going to happen. So what did happen is because of the breach so-called of the Capitol, all of the House and Senate went to someplace safe. And then after the danger part was over they then raced back and finished their work literally in the middle of the night.
Leahy: Literally. And nobody was paying attention.
Carmichael: Nobody was paying attention.
Leahy: Because it was all about what happened from the breach.
Carmichael: Right. And so then they moved quickly to the next day invoking the 25th Amendment.
Leahy: Well, there were calls for the invoking of the 25th amendment by Democrats but not from the joint session.
Carmichael: No. But the calls were from the leadership of the Democrat Party. From Pelosi and Schumer.
Leahy: Shockingly Crom, we have a story at The Tennessee Star. I know this will shock you. Steve Cohen and Congressman Cooper here have called for invoking the 25th amendment.
Carmichael: Okay. So at any rate. So that is now happening. Then you have to ask yourself, why would a party that claims over and over again with a leader now president-elect Biden. Now president-elect saying that we need to heal and come together? Why would they immediately call for the removal of President Trump?
Leahy: I have an answer to that question. Go ahead. They don’t want to heal. They don’t want to come together. What they want to do is crush any opposition to their agenda.
Carmichael: Here’s what is interesting. I have some friends of mine who are Republicans. They have been supportive of what I would call the institutional Republican Party for years. I have no idea what they think of Ronald Reagan because I’ve never asked them because that’s a long time ago.
Leahy: A long time ago.
Carmichael: But to a person, they are very upset with Trump and have been ever since he’s been the president. And when I asked him why it’s always about his behavior.
Leahy: Yes. Okay, not his policies, his behavior.
Carmichael: Yes. But they can’t get past his behavior and discuss his policies. The Democrats on the other hand are exactly, as far as my friends are concerned, about exactly the opposite.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Capitol Protest” by Elijah Schaffer.
