As convention season ramps up, with team members recently deployed in Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin to attend statewide conventions and advocate for key election-related issues, President John Pudner returned to the airwaves amid the recent news that former President Trump has been indicted by the Dept. of Justice in Flordia pertaining to his handling of classified documents at his Mar-A-Lago estate. Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with a total of 7 different counts, including 31 instances of “willful retention of national defense information”, as well as conspiracy to obstruct justice, and multiple counts related to withholding or concealing documents from a federal investigation, and a charge of making false statements and representations.
However, as Pudner, as featured guest, and host Marc Cox lay out throughout their conversation, while this is a serious matter, as Trump becomes the first to have been elected President to be indicted both at all, as seen in the New York indictment, and by federal prosecutors, as seen in this case, it's serious for a completely different reason. Both discuss how this showcases the increased politicization of the judicial process as seen through the appointment of Jack Smith, whose case against former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell resulted in a rare, unanimous overturn by the US Supreme Court, with liberal justice Stephen Breyer highlighting, "To give that kind of power to a criminal prosecutor, who was virtually uncontrollable, is dangerous to the separation of powers."
Even more severe, as both discuss, are the implications behind the charging of this indictment and the potential political and constitutional crises that may occur as a result. Agreeing with US Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Pudner lays out the key questions prosecutors, the jury, as well as the broader electorate and government across our Republic need to think long and hard on as this case begins to unfold - Can Jack Smith, with his past track record, be trusted to be an impartial arbiter of the law? How will this case further affect Americans' crumbling faith in the justice system? If crimes truly were committed, are they so serious as to make it really worth taking the country through the process of a sitting presidential administration trying to throw their main political rival in prison?
It's now up for prosecutors and a jury of everyday citizens in Miami, Florida to decide.
To learn more about TBOR Action's efforts on topics including election integrity, please click here.
The following transcript from this interview is presented in its entirety with minor edits:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
law, Biden, Trump, case, Rubio, election, unanimous, allegations, prosecution, accused.
SPEAKERS
Marc Cox, TBOR Action President John Pudner, and Sen. Marco Rubio.
Sen. Marco Rubio 00:00
"And the second is, and it's one of the best things I've seen, is this montage of the media yesterday and all the histrionics going on with regards to the Trump situation. I think that's actually a good thing. We don't have to pretend anymore. It is now out there for everyone to see that everything is stacked - the media, all of these institutions, the highest levels of government at the permanent bureaucratic level, who view elected officials as temporary employees, but they're the ones that are going to be here before and after and can do whatever they want - People are now seeing the reality of it. This is not a conspiracy. This is not making things up or seeing ghosts. This is what it is.
Marc Cox 00:39
Targeted prosecution of a leading political opponent, there's no way to get around that. That was obviously Marco Rubio on last night talking about that. I think he was on Fox last night. Let me get to John Pudner, we've had him on before. He's the President of Take Back Our Republic Action. John, welcome back to the show.
John Pudner 00:59
Thanks, and thanks for leaving in with the greatest song ever, very appropriate for this topic, 'Won't Get Fooled Again'.
Marc Cox 01:05
Yeah, I'm afraid we might, because it seems to happen all too often, but I hope Americans are waking up this time around. You know, I've been accused of being an apologist for Donald Trump, and I'm not apologizing for anyone here individually for what I see as an opportunity that the left has jumped on to further try to tarnish his image and claim that he's committed some criminal act with absolutely no evidence of that.
John Pudner 01:33
Well, you have to start with the prosecutor, Jack Smith. He went after the Virginia governor to get prison time for him. He was one of the most popular governors in the country at the time - Bob McDonald - and he went so over the top in that case that you had a unanimous Supreme Court decision throwing out what he did. I mean, think of that - on the court, with all the contentious issues, the fact that you get a 9-0 from the Supreme Court. A quote from one of the liberal justices Breyer about Jack Smith, this was from his governor's prosecution, saying, "To give that kind of power to a criminal prosecutor, who was virtually uncontrollable, is dangerous to the separation of powers." I mean, this is about him, and that's who they pick as a follow-up to go after the former president and leading candidate to take on the current president in the election.
Marc Cox 02:28
What are your thoughts on the reaction so far from Republican primary candidates? And I guess I'm thinking, specifically here, so far, Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, who both very clearly jumped on the Democrat bandwagon, and have basically accused Trump of wrongdoing?
John Pudner 02:47
Well, you do have to wonder, while most have not done that, you have to wonder if the reason we have so many candidates is some of them were just wondering whether or not this eventually changes Trump from the clear front-runner that he is right now. Most have taken the other tack, which is let's focus on the big picture, and I do think Rubio was right on last night. These are all cost-benefit, so let's just go with the other assumption that he did something wrong here, etc, something in these indictments. Is that thing so serious that it's worth taking the country through this process of a sitting administration trying to throw their opponent in prison? That's a VERY high bar to say that is worth it and I think that's what Rubio was hitting very well last night.
Marc Cox 03:44
Moving forward, I haven't played this yet this morning, but I do want to play just to just a clip of something that I picked up, because we now have these allegations against Joe Biden, we don't know if they're true or not, but what's clear is that there hasn't been much of an investigation because the FBI has been dragging it's feet, or federal prosecutors have been dragging their feet, on these allegations of bribery. I don't know how the Democrats....this is a group of members of the media and Democrats all suggesting that, in the case of Donald Trump, we do know this...
Various Speakers 04:25
The idea that no person is above the law is a bedrock principle of American justice. No man is above the law, no matter what the crime. I agree with you. No man is above the law. No person is above the law. No one is above the law. No one is above the law. No one's above the law. No man is above the law. No man is above the law. Nobody is above the law. No one is above the law.
Marc Cox 04:45
It goes on and on for three minutes. The point is, if no one's above the law, why aren't we investigating Joe Biden?
John Pudner 04:52
Well, absolutely, and we were happy, at Take Back Our Republic Action, to actually bust open the initial Penn-Biden Center controversy, where he was being paid a million dollars for a no-show job. We had all that before the documents were found there that they had sitting over in a closet, and it's interesting, we purposely teamed up with this on a guy named Richard Painter, who was George W. Bush's ethics czar, but he also ran as a Democrat for US Senate, so this is no right-winger, serious lawyer, and he filed with the Pennsylvania Attorney General pointing out all the problems and pay for play with the Penn-Biden center. Of course, nothing, no investigation, no follow-up, and you're absolutely right, that's the double standard everyone is seeing. I think there spin that no one's above the law, well, that is based on the predicate that it's equally applied to everyone, so you can't make that argument without the first one, which is not the case.
Marc Cox 05:51
I hear the pushback whenever you bring up Hillary's name. I think she's fundraising on it now selling shirts, 'But what about Hillary?', or something like that I heard I heard the other day. It will be funny, though, if it is the legal finding in the Clinton Socks case, that ends up being the defense that Donald Trump uses to beat this, where the judge there, Amy Berman Jackson, was quoted as saying that, basically, the President is completely entrusted with the management, and even the disposal, of presidential records during his time in office. That's a direct quote from her ruling in that particular case. I mean, I think they're going to be surprised when this gets into a court of law.
John Pudner 06:36
Could be, and remember, getting a grand jury indictment is not that hard, I hate to say, just as far as the number of people you need a grand jury. I mean, you basically just need more than a few to say, "Yeah, go ahead, proceed." Getting a unanimous jury decision in Florida on this...Boy, they obviously have some more confidence in the case than what people are thinking, but that's a much higher threshold, and as you said, if a couple of months before an election, Donald Trump is found not guilty, just remember his surge in popularity after he was not convicted on the impeachment charges, it'd be the same kind of thing. They're making their beds.
Marc Cox 07:16
We're seeing that for sure. Tell us about Take Back Our Republic Action and what you guys are able to do over there.
John Pudner 07:22
We were people who'd run campaigns for years, including, as I mentioned, W's faith-based national effort back in 2000, and Missouri was a big state for us there, but we got out of politics, because we saw that the rules of elections were being rigged, and so in 2014, we shifted over to have a group on the right that focuses on the rules of elections. I'm not sure if people understood why we're doing that in 2014, by now they do, election rules are everything, so that's our focus.
Marc Cox 07:51
Very good. Takebackaction.org is the website. John Pudner, thanks for your time.